I'm working on a pilot comedy and one of my scenes involves a character reading her poem. Do I have it set up like traditional dialogue or do I separate the lines with slashes like "/" ?
How To Format a Poem In Dialogue
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Re: How To Format a Poem In Dialogue
Just an educated guess, and I may be incorrect, but I would treat it as you would song lyrics (poetry set to music). Put the poem in italics and have it appear as it would if printed in a book. The way you suggest, it appears you’re attempting to save space on the page. Also, IMO, you lose the impact of the poetry your way (with slashes).Last edited by Clint Hill; 08-23-2020, 02:02 PM.“Nothing is what rocks dream about†― Aristotle
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Re: How To Format a Poem In Dialogue
Replicating the stylistic approach of this screenplay will likely serve you well:
THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY
by
Tom Schulman
https://www.raindance.org/scripts/De...ts-Society.pdf
(eg: see top of page 19)
Code:Giggles in the class. Pitts reads. PITTS "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may Old time is still a flying And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying." KEATING Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. The Latin term for that sentiment is "Carpe Diem." Anyone know what that means?
Know this: I'm a lazy amateur, so trust not a word what I write.
"The ugly can be beautiful. The pretty, never." ~ Oscar Wilde
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Re: How To Format a Poem In Dialogue
First, they do not pass laws saying that you must do it like this, or like that. So you have some freedom here.
You might want to look at what John August had to say about lyrics in screenwriting (not exactly the same thing as a poem, I know, but similar).
Here are my recommendations, and these are neither outrageous nor dogmatic.- As a general rule, do not use a slash at the end of a line. A slash adds nothing.
- Use italics for the poem. If you do not do that, put the whole poem within quotation marks.
- Put a line break (not a paragraph return) at the end of each line of the poem. In Windows you make a line break with Shift+Enter. This lets you enter several lines of a poem in one dialogue unit. When you are finished with the dialogue unit, hit Enter in the usual way.
- If you have long lines of poetry, you may need to reset the right margin for that particular dialogue unit. The line does not have to break where a normal dialogue line would break. You can let it extend to the right. But if a line is so long that you have to break it at the right page margin, let it break, and then hit Shift+Enter for the next line.
Code:STUDENT (recites verse) [I]I ask you, Captain, what our chances are To weather out this fearsome storm tonight?[/I] (to the Teacher) How was that? Enough emotion?
"The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.
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Re: How To Format a Poem In Dialogue
Originally posted by Madbandit View PostI'm working on a pilot comedy and one of my scenes involves a character reading her poem. Do I have it set up like traditional dialogue or do I separate the lines with slashes like "/" ?
If it is something shown on screen you could format it as a "general" element instead of an "action" element then play around with the spacing (Final Draft).
If you want to be creative in the ACTION lines, type a letter, any letter will do, then add the blank spaces you want then delete that one letter at the beginning of the line. The ACTION element won't let you just use the space bar... you have to type a single letter then remove it after."Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden
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