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oJOHNNYoNUTSo is indeed right. I've got to say though he does make it sound like it did when I was fourteen and had to listen to that weird teacher with the huge sideburns who used to fling the windows wide open in the middle of feckin' winter.
I was in a classroom at the time. He didn't come round my house or anything. Not as far as I know anyways. I hope not. Type of thing I'll have bad dreams about.
You can use words ending with 'ing', but much like winking at strangers down the pub, you should do it sparingly. And very carefully.
I note a lot of scripts on here of late tend to drop into the past tense. As Johnny says, you should keep it as much in the present tense as possible.
He also mentions syllables. This too is true. There's all types of tricks and styles you can incorporate when writing a script. You should read as many pro scripts as you can. Once you realise what is good and what isn't, and you practice writing your own, you'll get the idea.
All those links by LC are also extremely useful. Like Joan Collins, these discussions have been had many times. They'll be had many more too. Not sure Joan will be up for it. Maybe Jackie will.
When I started I used it very much because it felt like how people are actually speaking, before I learned it is not wanted. When I switched to simple present it felt clumsy at first but I found it gets more and more natural the more you use it. I'm not going crazy about it, and I don't care if it's used here and there, but often the -ings are used even if it would be very easy to avoid it.
Like others have said here - story is king, but active writing makes it much easier for someone to get through that story. After getting a lot of advice here, I redrafted my scripts to nuke most of the "ings" and as a result they read much crisper.
I'll always remember my French teacher, Mr Golby... he would do random things like jump onto the ground with a bin over his head and cry 'The Germans are coming!'
Or, walking by his classroom window he would jump out at you and demand you tell him the latter part of a verb... which is, of course, the infinitive.
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Why are "ing" words frowned upon?
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