THE RULES OF SCREENWRITING:
o During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
o All beds have special L-shaped sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman, but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
o All grocery shopping bags contain at least one loaf of French bread or bunch of celery that sticks out the top of a full bag.
o It's easy for anyone to land a plane, providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
o Once applied, lipstick will never rub off, even while scuba diving.
o The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there, and you can travel to any other part of the building without
difficulty.
o If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition, even if you weren't carrying any before now.
o You're very likely to survive any battle in any war, unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
o Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language - a German accent will do.
o If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.
o The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
o A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
o If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.
o Most dogs are immortal.
o If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick's Day parade - at any time of the year.
o When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
o Interbreeding is genetically possible with creatures from anywhere in the universe.
o Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
o Word processors never display a cursor on screen, but will always say: ENTER PASSWORD NOW.
o Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their families every morning, even though their husbands and children never have time to eat.
o Cars which crash will almost always burst into flames.
o The Chief of Police will always suspend his star detective - or give him 48 hours to finish the job.
o A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of the Astrodome.
o Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
o Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
o It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.
o Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
o All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know
exactly when they're going to go off.
o It is always possible to park directly outside the building you're visiting.
o If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.
o Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any alien civilization.
o When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage, and nobody involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.
o Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds - unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
o Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
o Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment, and it's never necessary to listen to the complete bulletin.
o It doesn't matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one. They'll dance around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
MORE RULES OF SCREENWRITING:
o All bombs will give a warning set of beeping usually increasing in rapidity as it approaches detonation. Flashing lights are also common. A block of C4 with an obvious detonator stuck in it will require some complex procedure to disarm it. Never just pulling out the detonator.
o People who are flatlining will be defibrillated. Never mind that no medical person would ever do such a thing as shock a flat line. By definition the patient would be fibrillating (the heart is out of rhythm but contracting) prior to being defibrillated.
o People on oxygen will have a ventilator next to them that is running despite not being intubated.
o Guns never run out of ammo until it fits the plotline no matter how many shots have been fired.
o Shooters always drop their magazines on the ground, never catch them and put them in their pocket like a rational person who had to buy them and might hope to reload them...
o Never check the bad guys for extra ammo when in a firefight. You need to run out of ammo for dramatic effect in the next scene.
o Shooters empty their gun at a blank wall to the left (or right) of the corner where the bad guy has taken cover even though they obviously have limited ammo and this offers no hope of hitting anyone.
o Guns are used as pointers to gesture at anyone including your friends and enemies.
o Shooters have their fingers on the trigger at all times.
o No one ever has a round in the chamber. They have been threatening someone for some time and now they rack the slide and put one in the chamber then a few minutes later they bleep the hammer.
o Everything has a specific expiration time and there is some clock that shows it. Unlike real life where no one knows when tims is going to run out or things go bad. This includes things as unpredictable as dying from a disease.
o Countdowns have to run into the single digits and preferably down to 1 before the hero stops them. If they run all the way to 0 to give us a false sense of failure (almost never) then something else happens to explain it later.
o Finding a treasure or some other goal has to trigger the entire building/cave/temple to self destruct.
o There is always some excuse for the male lead to take off his shirt and the female lead to shorten her skirt (by ripping cloth off of it for a bandage or something) or remove it, or otherwise expose more skin.
o All female leads are hot. None are ever ordinary looking.
o All female villains are also hot, unless they are really ugly.
o Most other female characters are also hot unless they are just plain ugly.
o All computer systems can be hacked from the internet. Even the ones that are not even connected to the internet, such as government classified systems.
o All security code devices can be hacked by some system that does a brute force attack. They never lock out after three wrong tries.
o No matter how logical the hero's theory is, no one in authority above him will believe him.
o The 90 pound heroine can throw 280 pound bad guys across the room.
o The hero who just had three ribs broken is ready to get in a knock down drag out fight half an hour later. Everyone who has had a broken rib knows how realistic this is.
o In the "modern" era you always have to explain why their cell phone won't work because that would solve everything in about 3 seconds.
o All romances have to start under some less than honest circumstances so we can break them up later. E.g. a bet, they are spying, they are not what they appear and failed to correct the misconception etc.
o Heroes can outrun explosions at least for a minute.
o Heroes can outrun rushing water.
o Heroes can be blown out of a building by explosives and land unharmed.
o Heroes can be shot in what is obviously an upper lobe of the lung and not suffer any serious harm.
o Heroes never make sure the villain is actually dead when it appears they are. The villain has to get back up while the hero isn't looking.
o Villains never make sure the hero is dead when it appears they are. The hero has to be nursed back to health by a beautiful girl while the villain thinks he?s dead.
o Villains always explain their plan to the hero in great detail just before the hero escapes.
o Villains never just kill the hero while they have the chance. They have to wait so the hero can escape. Usually they want the hero to die slowly while they are not there to observe it.
o Heroes never just kill the villain when first given the chance even though the villain is obviously a murderer who wants to take over the world. In the end the hero will finally kill the villain, after many more people have died, and then it will be in self defense.
o Heroes always have to say something laconic and cool just before they kill the villain.
o Heroes always put their gun down when the villain threatens to kill the woman/girl/boy despite there being absolutely no tactical advantage to this in general and the villain has proven he cannot be trusted at all and in real life only a moron would do so.
o Heroes will pull a gun on the villain at the same time as the villain but won't shoot leaving a "Mexican stand off" despite this being the stupidest reaction toward someone who is pointing a gun at you. If you haven?t already shot you?re an idiot or you are already dead.
o Heroes or villains will be left for dead rather than someone making sure. Other characters that appear to be dead will be dead.
o The villain will kill one of his minions for little reason so we can see just how evil he is. Ignore the fact that no one would continue to work for such a person and such actions accomplish the opposite of instilling loyalty in your followers.
o Every ?indestructible? device/building will have one vulnerability which the villain will never think will be exploited.
o Villains will be armed with whatever weapon is currently the ?bad? weapon in the leftist narrative except in full auto, rather than semi-auto, even if it is mythical, and none of the villains can hit the broad side of a barn with it. So this weapon is simultaneously extremely menacing and absolutely useless. If the story is particularly woke, the name of the weapon will be mentioned in the dialog with disdain or awe. Think: ?ceramic Glock 17 that is invisible to metal detectors? (a mythical gun from the 80s in Die Hard II)
o The hero while captured and in the control of the villain will ?lay all his cards on the table? and tell the villain what he has on him, so the villain can thwart that plan.
o Whenever someone is sacrificing their life to buy the good guys time, someone will have to dramatically scream and cry rather than run, thus making the sacrifice moot.
o After the culmination of the story, everyone will be happy and euphoric even though some close relative or best friend has just died minutes before.
o Someone will ?unload? a gun merely by removing the magazine.
o Someone will rack a pump shotgun every time they round a corner with it.
o Somewhere in the story usually near the beginning, some person with a helmet or full mask will do something very physically impressive for a man and then pull it off and shake their hair loose to reveal a hot woman instead with hair down to her waist. She could be the heroine or she could be the villain.
o If the hero goes through a window, door, or secret door, they will leave it open behind them so the villain can easily follow.
o If the hero is searching for something he will not carefully put everything back as he goes, he will make it obvious by moving everything thus tipping off the villain.
o The hero will follow a trail of clues which leads the villain to whatever or whoever he is looking for and thus leave a trail of dead bodies of innocent people.
o The hero will come upon a door that is ajar thus foreshadowing one of those dead bodies.
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