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Entry and Exit State

craft.entry_exit_state

Describe the world before and after; if they match, cut the scene.

Scene craftintermediatescenescene_contract
You are doing it wrong if

The contract records a charge that moves but a world that does not, because the numbers were adjusted to clear a check while the prose stayed the same. The scene passes review and plays as inert, and nobody can say why because every field is filled in.

Why

Charge is a number and prose is a claim, and they fail in different directions. That is why both exist.

Charge answers how does this feel. It is quick to assign, easy to compare across a film, and trivially gameable — a writer who needs a scene to pass a "does it turn" check moves the exit number by one and the check is satisfied. Nothing about the scene changed.

Entry and exit state answer what is true in the world. Two identical sentences are much harder to write dishonestly, because writing them forces you to look at what actually happened. The prose is the check on the number.

The state should be written from outside the character, not inside. "She feels abandoned" is a charge in words. "Nobody in the shop has said the word closing" is a state — it is checkable, and it can be contradicted by the next scene.

A useful constraint: the exit state of a scene should be the entry state of the next one, or the film has skipped something. Reading the states in sequence is the fastest way to find a missing scene, and it is faster than reading the script.

How

  1. Write the entry state as one sentence about the world, not about a feeling.
  2. Write the exit state the same way. Do not write it until you have written the scene, or you will write the state you intended rather than the one you got.
  3. Compare them literally. If the difference is only an adverb, nothing moved.
  4. Check the pair against the charge numbers. If charge moves three points and the state is unchanged, the numbers are aspirational.
  5. Read every exit state against the next scene's entry state. A gap between them is a missing scene; an exact match across many scenes is a film standing still.
  6. Where the state cannot be made to change, take the cut argument seriously rather than adjusting the fields.

Notes for AI film

This pair is the most useful thing in the contract for generated film, because it is what a later diagnostic reads. Charge is per-scene; state is a chain, and a chain can be checked end to end without a human reading the script.

It is also the field most likely to be written vaguely by an agent asked to fill a form. A state that names no object, place, or piece of information is a mood in disguise, and it will pass every automated check while telling nobody anything.

In practice
Before Midnight2013

The hotel scene enters on two people on holiday and exits on two people who have said unforgivable things. No plot event occurs; the state change is total.

There Will Be Blood2007

The baptism scene enters with Plainview needing a pipeline and exits with him having been publicly humiliated for it — the objective is won and the state is worse.

Past Lives2023

The bar scene enters on three people being polite and exits on all three knowing what the evening was actually about.

Related
Every Scene TurnsEmotional PolarityObjective and ObstacleEnter Late, Leave Early
Surfaces at
scene_contract.gridscene.charge_fieldsscript.scene_lockedagent.screenwriter.systemagent.script_doctor.system

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