Where this sits in the pilot
Britt has just learned Sheriff Briggs is dirty, armed herself from her sister's hidden weapon stash, and driven off alone. Across town, the Sheriff is doing dishes while his wife reads their kids an Aesop's fable at bedtime. The script never tells you these two scenes are about to occupy the same space. It just starts cutting between them.
EXT. BRIGGS HOUSE – NIGHT
The police car parked out front. Sheriff Briggs visible in the kitchen window. Doing his share of the nightly chores.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
There was a wheat farmer. Who carried a grudge against a Fox.1
INT. BRIGGS HOUSE – CONTINUOUS
Sheriff Briggs at the sink, wife reading to the kids behind.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
This Fox had been stealing the Farmer’s chickens for years.
EXT. BRIGGS HOUSE – CONTINUOUS
Britt moves toward the house in a low crouch, shotgun in hand. She finds cover behind the police car and peers toward the kitchen window where the Sheriff scrubs away, unaware.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
The Farmer had had enough. He wanted revenge. So he set a trap.
Britt moves cautiously toward the house, from cover to cover.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
After catching the fox, he soaked some rope in gasoline and tied it to the varmint’s tail.
INT. KITCHING – BRIGGS HOUSE – NIGHT
Briggs still at the sink, wife still reading to kids.
MRS. BRIGGS
The match was lit and started on the rope, the Fox panicked. Broke right out of that trap.
Briggs stops washing dishes, looks outside, sensing danger.
EXT. BRIGGS HOUSE – NIGHT
Britt makes her way up to the side of the house, under the kitchen window, but Sheriff Briggs is no longer there.2
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
It was harvest time, so the fields were filled with wheat. That runnin’ Fox set all of it on fire.
Sheriff Briggs exits the house through the back door, gun in hand. He scans the darkness and moves to go around the side.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
The Fox burned up, yowling and screaming. And the Farmer would never have to worry about it again.
Britt sneaks around the house, unaware Briggs is hunting her.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
But the wheat was all gone. There was no food for the winter.
Sheriff Brigg rounds the front of the house as Britt slips around the opposite side, they don’t see each other.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
And you know what happened? The farmer starved to death and died. That’s why you gotta be careful with revenge.
Britt moves along the side of the house, reaches a window, peers inside, seeing Mrs. Briggs scooting her boys down the hallway into their bedroom. Britt eases back, reconsidering.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
Gettin’ even’s likely to hurt you worse than your enemy ever did. And make you no better than they were.3
Sheriff Briggs stands in the front yard, scanning. He reacts to a PHONE ringing inside the house, but stays alert.
Britt holds her shotgun, then starts back the way she came.
Sheriff Briggs starts for Britt’s side of the house.
Britt approaches the corner of the house, not knowing she’s on a collision course with the armed man she came to kill.
Sheriff Briggs nears the edge of the house, unaware of Britt.
Britt is seconds from rounding the corner into the Sheriff.
MRS. BRIGGS (V.O.)
John! You out here?
Britt freezes.
Sheriff Briggs turns to his wife calling from the front door.
MRS. BRIGGS
Phone. Drug Enforcement Agency. He’s returning your call.
The Sheriff has one last look, not knowing he’s inches away from a shootout with Britt, who crouches around the corner.
Britt listens to the Sheriff walk away, after she hears the front door close, she makes her escape into the darkness.4
- 1
The cut from Briggs washing dishes to a fable about a farmer’s grudge asks no permission and offers no connective tissue — no line of dialogue says “this is about Britt.” Two unrelated images placed side by side, Kuleshov-style, and the reader supplies the third meaning neither one states alone.
White Space & Juxtaposition - 2
Every scene header from here alternates fable / stalking / fable / stalking, each one a sentence or two long. The two threads never touch on the page — the tension is built entirely in the gutter between them, the same way a comic-panel transition makes the reader construct what happens between two frames.
White Space & Juxtaposition - 3
The fable's explicit moral — "gettin' even's likely to hurt you worse than your enemy ever did" — lands in the exact beat where Britt is one blind corner away from a fatal collision with the man she's stalking. The theme is being stated in full sentences by a mother reading Aesop to her kids, while the audience watches it about to come true one wall away. Nobody in either scene knows this is happening.
White Space & Juxtaposition - 4
The near-collision doesn't resolve through anyone's cleverness or courage — a phone rings, a wife calls her husband's name, and the moment simply passes. Walter Murch ranked emotion above story, rhythm, and plot mechanics in what makes a cut work; this scene resolves on a beat chosen for exactly that, not for logic.
White Space & Juxtaposition
What this excerpt doesn’t show
This page is a single suspense unit built to work on its own, without needing the reader to already know why Britt believes Briggs is dirty, or what happens between the sisters afterward. Both of those are established in adjacent pages this excerpt deliberately leaves out, so the juxtaposition technique itself stays the whole point.
Read the whole thing
This excerpt is drawn from a 60-page pilot. The full logline, genre, and comps are on the original post — Spec TV Pilot: “Outlaw City” →
Related pages
- How to Use White Space, Cuts, and Omission in Screenwriting — the gutter, the cut, and Kuleshov's juxtaposition, the three disciplines behind every note on this page.
About the author
Jesse Alexander is a screenwriter, showrunner, and narrative designer whose work spans film, television, games, and transmedia storytelling. Scribbler’s Toolbox collects practical frameworks developed from professional story development and production.