Why This is Good

A screenwriter is constantly reminded to provide vivid visual details. One of the most important reasons why this is vital to the success of your screenplay is that it helps the reader visualize each place you describe in their mind.

When reading scripts, I often run across description like this: “A typical diner.” Or “A normal doctor’s office.”  Some provide no description at all, simply stating where we are in the slug line and going from there. I hate when writers neglect to describe a location. Not only does it leave the reader feeling disoriented, it gives your story a very generic feel. If you don’t give your reader an idea of what the doctor’s office or diner from your story looks like, the reader will reference a generic image of every other doctor’s office they’ve ever been in, and picture that doctor’s office for your doctor’s office. And you may think that is fine and that is what you intended with your lack of description. But it’s not fine. What that does is make your story feel very inauthentic, generic, and average. Nothing new is imagined in the reader’s mind, and that gives your story a setting that feels like what the reader has seen hundreds of times already, in real life and worse, in other movies.

You may think a place as banal as a diner or a doctor’s office doesn’t even require description because they all look the same anyway. But that is simply not true. A diner could be a tacky, 50’s inspired place with red vinyl booths and jukeboxes, or it could be a greasy spoon frequented by truckers, with ancient, worn formica countertops, aging, sassy waitresses and the best apple pie in the tri-state area. It could also be a brand new trendy hot spot that serves cappuccino and is frequented by artists and actors.

A doctor’s office could be a run-down clinic with a waiting room at maximum capacity and frazzled doctors dealing with frenzied patients and screaming infants with whooping cough and runny noses, or it could be an elegantly decorated, tranquil upscale office full of the latest equipment to cater to wealthy women seeking plastic surgery, or it could land somewhere in the middle. Each different location evokes a totally different image, a totally different feel, and helps contribute to the tone, uniqueness and authenticity of your story and your settings.

Don’t skip this important part of the creative process. Use your settings to help provide just the right feel to your story, and never leave the reader wondering what a person or a place looks like. If all your settings are described generically, that is how your story will read and resonate with your readers.

While working with screenwriters on critiques, one of the most common margin notes I make is: “How will your audience know this?” I include this question when the action description is full of information that would be impossible to convey on screen. This is usually thoughts and feelings a character has, but can also include job titles, personality traits, motivations, things the character did in the past or is planning on doing in the future (as discussed in my last post), and sometimes the passage of time.

Keep in mind what will, if you’re lucky enough to sell it, happen to your screenplay. It will be taken and turned into a motion picture. That means that everything you write is meant to be used as a guide for telling your story on screen, not on the page. If you include information that can only be understood if it is read, your audience will never be privy to the information your reader is, and the story won’t make sense. Of course, rewriting is possible, but as a writer shopping a spec script, you want to present the most complete, polished, production ready material possible, and including things that could not be understood by someone watching the film on screen is poor screenwriting.

Screenwriters are constantly told to write visually and to show not tell. One of the easiest ways to make sure you do this is to continually ask yourself how the audience watching will know that what you’ve written is true. If you tell your reader that your character is tired because she was out drinking the night prior, the reader will know this, but the audience will not. If, instead, you write that your character has bags under her eyes, winces when the sun hits her face, and tells her roommate that she has a nasty hangover, then the audience will know that she was out drinking. It’s a subtle difference, but understanding that difference is a key part of screenwriting.

Writing in the present tense is one of the most basic tenets of screenwriting. It’s a simple rule, and one that most writers immediately understand and implement. When consulting with screenwriters, I rarely read a script written in the past tense, aside from a few mistakes here and there. Overall, writers get the concept of present tense, even though it is hard to switch if one is used to writing novels, short stories, or even newspaper or magazine articles.

Beyond just writing in the present tense, it’s important for writers to understand that they need to be present in the scene. Everything described in the action section should be what is occurring at the present moment. Often, writers use the novelistic device of explaining what just happened before the scene began, or what is going to happen as the scene ends. Describing past and future action is not appropriate in a screenplay. Your action description should only include what the reader-or audience-can see happening as it happens. If you mention that a character just did something, or is going to do something, the reader sees and knows this, but how is the eventual audience going to know? The audience can only know what they see and hear happening on screen in real time. Any additional notes to the reader that the audience would have no way of knowing, are inappropriate and poor screenwriting.

For example, below is a paragraph that novelistically describes past and future action. It’s in the present tense, but the writing is not entirely present in the scene. It describes past and future action. Note the things discussed that the audience could not see or know without reading the screenplay:

Joe comes into the office, stressed and on edge after having spent the entire morning battling gridlock caused by a huge accident on the freeway. He sits down at his desk and turns on his computer. He checks his email and realizes that he needs some coffee. He decides to head to the café downstairs, because they serve a better brew than the office kitchen possibly could. He hopes that adorable barista will be there to brighten his morning.

The only elements of the above paragraph that are actually present in the scene at the time that the action is taking place are that Joe comes in, sits down, turns on his computer and checks his email. That he is stressed because of an accident and traffic is not a part of this present scene. The writer could choose to portray this hellish commute prior to this scene, but the writer cannot include the note that Joe was in traffic prior to the scene opening and expect the audience to know and therefore understand his stress. This information could only be revealed by a separate scene occurring when he was actually present in the traffic, or through dialogue mentioning it.

Similarly, describing future action and what Joe hopes to do next is wrong. All the audience can see is that Joe is sitting at his desk. The writer cannot inform the audience of what Joe plans to do via action description, because the audience will never read the script. Instead, the writer needs to show the following scene, in which Joe gets coffee at the café and flirts with the cute barista, or reveal in dialogue that he plans to go get coffee from her.

So, the appropriate, in the present version of that paragraph should read:

Joe comes into the office. Looks stressed. He sits down at his desk and turns on his computer. He checks his email.

The above describes only what is happening in the here-and-now of the scene, and is the only information the screenwriter can include in his or her action description.

Reread your scenes and ask yourself if you are present in the scene, or drifting off to recall the past or predict the future and including elements and events the audience would be unaware of.

When I see “we see” in a script, I cringe.

“We see” is redundant. Everything you’re writing in your action description is something “we”-the reader, the audience-“sees.” Or at least it should be. Since you’re not supposed to include internal thoughts, feelings, motivations, or past actions, everything in the action description paragraph is necessarily something we (at this point the reader, and someday the audience) are either seeing or hearing.

“We see” is also yet another underhanded way to direct without inserting an actual shot or camera angle. If, in lieu of writing CLOSE UP: hand holding gun, you say “We see a hand holding a gun” you’re still directing, still not fooling anyone, and still taking the focus away from the story.

The worst part of using “we see” is that it takes the reader out of the story and draws attention to the fact that they are reading a screenplay, rather than experiencing an emotionally engaging, intriguing story. Instead of becoming so engrossed in the story that they feel they’re seeing everything through the eyes of the character, the reader is reminded that they are a reader, part of that big audience of “we” who is just reading about what happened to someone else.  This is a sure way to bore the reader and lead them to put down the script and do something else.

A compelling, well-crafted, perfectly structured script can survive a few “we sees,” but it would be better without them. Instead of using these words, focus on finding a better way to describe what we see, insert adjectives, details and vivid description in place of those two controversial words. Just tell us what we see, not that we see it.

Writers, by nature, are creative people who dislike rules, limitations and being told what to do. If we liked rules, we’d be mathematicians, not writers. Screenwriting, more than many other types of writing, is full of rules. Screenwriters are being told what not to do and what to do more than any other type of writer. Prose writers have been expanding the rules of what is acceptable for years, and are now free to write in a mixture of tenses and points of view. Email and texting have made grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage rules more lax, and writing prose has always afforded the writer with the opportunity to say whatever he or she wishes, in whatever way works. There are no limitations on length or subject matter or tone.  Even poets have the freedom to write however they want, rhyming is no longer a requirement, and even punctuation isn’t imposed upon them.

But a screenwriter is limited. The tense must be present, the font must be courier, the margins must be just so, and the overall length must not exceed 120 pages. Screenwriters are so often told what not to do that they feel stifled and rebellious. And this is where attempts to buck the system and break the rules come in. I understand the need and the desire, but I am still here to tell you not to do it.

The writers I work with fall into two categories: those who are new and don’t really understand or know the rules, and those who know the rules all too well, and break them because they’re frustrated with being told what they can and can’t do. The latter try to subtly, slyly break the rules and fly under the radar with their violations, hoping their reader won’t notice or care. We do notice, and we do care.

The following are the most common attempts to subtly break some common screenwriting rules:

Margins-I see this all the time. When I was teaching screenwriting at Cal State Northridge, the problem was often margins that were too wide. Stressed and busy students who didn’t have time to meet the page requirements for an assignment would try to use huge margins to push their 2 page scene into the 5 pages required. Outside of school, it’s more likely that the script is too long, so tiny margins are used to turn what would normally be a 150 page script into something that falls within the 120 page maximum parameters.

This is obvious and easy to spot. Think about how many pages of script a professional reader observes daily. Anything outside of the norm is instantly recognizable. The same goes for odd spacing or smaller or larger font. Don’t do it, you’ll definitely be caught and written off as an amateur who doesn’t even know the most basic things about screenwriting.

Directing-Screenwriters often fancy themselves filmmakers, or soon-to-be writer-directors, so they cannot help but imagine their script and every single perfect angle and shot that it will take to tell the story best. Because of this, they can’t help but insert their brilliant camera directions into the script. Amateurs who haven’t been told no yet (usually those fresh out of film school) often just put the shots into the script, formatted properly, for a shooting script. Don’t do this. It’s not your job at this stage, and when writing a spec you have to assume that someone else may direct it. If you’re lucky enough to get the funding and power to direct what you wrote, you can go back then and add the shots and angles and lighting notes. If you already have the funding and are directing what you wrote and making your own film, then go nuts, no one but you and the actors will be judging your script. Until then don’t do it.

More sophisticated writers who have been told not to direct rely on the old trick to subtly direct without putting ANGLE ON: directly into the text. This is a gray area because we screenwriting consultants tell you to do this: instead of putting in shots as in a shooting script, write the action description in a way that implies direction. For example, instead of “CLOSE UP: Mary’s hand holding the gun,” write “A hand holds a gun.” This is fine if it’s subtle and limited. But if every single sentence in the entire script is written in this unnatural way in order to control and direct every shot without saying so outright, the script becomes hard to read. Keep this subversive way of directing limited to a few shots, and only use it when it truly matters that we focus on a certain item, or see a scene from a wide angle. You should only do this a few times in an entire script, not a few times in each scene.

Yesterday I talked about the vitality of writing for clarity. Today I’d like to give some examples of how to write clearly and show what works and what doesn’t.

There are some simple rules you can follow to ensure you writing is clear and precise:

-Use short, declarative sentences

-Use sentence fragments.

-Use basic sentence structure and avoid run-on sentences.

-Use the active voice, and avoid –ing ending verbs.

-Always orient the reader when you get into a new scene. In addition to describing what each location looks like, especially the first time we visit, briefly describe who is there and what they are doing. If you neglect to do this, and a character starts speaking that wasn’t mentioned in the action description, it seems to the reader that they came out of nowhere. Include entrances and exits-if a character enters the scene or leaves, mention it so the reader is always aware of what the picture in their mind should look like.

-Use names whenever possible, don’t use pronouns, especially when there are two or more people of the same gender. Make sure it is always clear who is doing what action.

For example:

Bob and Tom walk into a bar and sit down. He points at the top shelf whiskey. He pours the whiskey and takes a shot. He looks at him and waits.

There is no way to know which he and him we are talking about. Bob, Tom, and the bartender are all male. We can infer that the he that pours the whiskey is the bartender, but which he asked for it? Which he drinks it? Rewriting for clarity to avoid vague pronouns would look like this:

Bob and Tom walk into a bar and sit down. Bob points at the top shelf whiskey. The bartender pours the whiskey and Bob takes a shot. Tom looks at Bob and waits.

The second paragraph clearly indicates who is performing each action, since it’s all men, we can’t rely on pronouns. In your quest for brevity, never sacrifice clarity and ease of readability.

Reading more screenplays should help illustrate what is good, clear screenwriting and what isn’t. The more good, produced screenplays you read, the more examples you will see of how screenwriters accomplish the task of being brief, concise, visual, dynamic and clear all at once.

As a creative form of expression, and compared to other types of writing, screenwriting can seem limiting. As with poetry, writers are forced to choose only the most vivid, precise and appropriate words to describe things simply, yet clearly. A novelist can elaborate for as long as he or she desires on something as mundane as the color of a character’s hair or the way the cars are moving down the street. A screenwriter is forced to omit minor, unimportant details, and find the right way to clearly and concisely evoke a strong, visual image while using as few words as possible, and, as a further constraint, to do so using simple, easy to read language.

Considering how difficult this is, and the abundance of advice out there on how to screenwrite well, the admonitions to use the most visual, vivid language and imagery, it’s no wonder so many screenwriters get confused, and so many screenplays end up muddled and overwrought.

It’s important to remember that above all the other pieces of advice you’ll hear about screenwriting style, clarity is the most important. A screenplay will be better received and reviewed if it is clear, simple and easy to understand than if it contains unique and engaging sentence structure and creative language. If you are able to be vivid, unique and visual while maintaining clarity, great. If not, sacrifice vivid and unique for clarity. Remember that your screenplay is not a work of art in and of itself the way a book is. Your screenplay is simply the blueprint that will guide the actors, the director, the editor and the team of hundreds who will work to bring the story you wrote to life on screen. It’s not meant to be read, so it does not need to be phenomenally written in brilliantly creative prose. What it needs to be is a clear, efficient guide that tells the story in a way that anyone reading the script can understand. A young teen or smart fifth grader should be able to easily grasp what is going on. Anything more elevated and you’re not being clear and simple. If your story is good, it will stand out and get noticed, whether your language is beautiful and poetic or not. If your story is lacking, then the most amazing, gorgeous prose and perfect use of the English language won’t help save your screenplay from the reject pile.

As noted in the last post, have as many people as possible-of all educational levels and ages-read your script. Ask them if they understood what you were saying and if the action description is clear. If it is not, rewrite those sections that gave people trouble to make them clear and precise. Omit the big showy vocabulary words that impressed your creative writing teacher and choose simple, common words that everyone clearly understands and knows how to pronounce. Screenwriting is the place to showcase your storytelling and dialogue writing skills, not your expansive vocabulary. Save the imagery and flowery prose for your novel. In screenwriting, clarity reigns and clarity is the style element you should strive for above all others.

This may sound like a rather boring topic, but I think learning the history and origins of formatting will help you understand the reasons why proper formatting is so important.

Unlike books, screenplays have only been around since the age of the typewriter. While typewriters may seem like extremely archaic devices to those of us who have grown up with computers, compared to ancient books being written by hand, screenplays are relatively modern literary works. The most basic elements of contemporary screenplay format are holdovers from the early days when scripts were typed on typewriters. The font-Courier, is not just used because it makes the script look as if it were written on a typewriter. Filmmakers are not that nostalgic. Courier is used because it is a monospace font. A monospaced, or fixed-width font is one whose letters each take up the same amount of space on the page. Some fonts are proportional, a w will take up more room than an i. With Courier, each letter takes up the same amount of room, which means that the spacing is consistent and uniform. This is important because of timing. All of the formatting, along with the writing style contribute to a uniform style that keeps the words on the page as close as possible to one minute per page standard. If your formatting varies from these standards, it throws off this ratio. Your 120 page script in Times New Roman 14-point font with three inch margins will not translate into two hours of screen time. A 120 page script in Courier 12-point with the correct margins will, or will come very close.

Margins are also in place to provide consistency in both look and pacing. The origins of margins were to give readers, producers and directors ample room to write notes, and to make a clear distinction between dialogue and action description. Incorrect margins are one of the first things that will jump out to a trained reader and mark your script as amateur work, so make sure you understand and use the proper margins.

There are other picky, odd screenwriting format guidelines that may seem odd, but they are there for a reason. The binding with only two brads is to facilitate the easy unbinding of scripts so that multiple copes may be made. As we move towards a more electronic, paperless age, this may change, but for now, stick to the rules and go with brads-only two brads! Do not ever dream of binding your script in any way other than with brads. Your story will have to be the best thing they’ve ever read to pacify the intern or reader who has to unbind it from some fancy spiral binding, any script bound that way is likely to end up in the trash, unless your uncle is James Cameron, and even then you’re starting out on the wrong foot.

Fancy covers in anything but neutral colors, or, even worse, with illustrations or logos are a red flag of epic newbieness to readers. Your story should be strong enough to stand on its own. Don’t try to show off your graphic design talents or your ideas for casting or marketing your movie. You’re just the writer, and all they want from you is a properly formatted, emotionally engaging, marketable story.

For more on formatting and beginner mistakes to avoid, check out the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences guidelines here.

The first ten percent of the film establishes the character in their everyday life, or the “Ordinary World” to use Chris Vogler’s terminology. This part of the script is often the easiest to write, and because of that, many writers overlook it and don’t spend as much time here analyzing and agonizing over every word. Since the second act is often the most difficult, and the third act contains the climax and the most exciting part of the story, the opening ten percent is glossed over.

This first portion of your script is where you win or lose your audience or your reader, and it is vital to the success of your script. Some scripts open right away with an inciting incident that sets the story in motion. In this case the first ten percent is off to a quick start and the writer will have to go back when the action has slowed a bit to establish who the character is and what their world is like. For the majority of films, and the majority of screenwriting structure paradigms, the first ten percent prior to the inciting incident is what tells us who the character is, what their everyday life is like, and establishes why we should like them and care enough about them to want to watch the rest of the film.

In this short amount of time, you need to accomplish several things:

-Introduce and describe the hero.

-Grab the reader’s attention with an exciting, compelling story and engaging writing.

-Establish the hero’s normal life, what they are like and what they are doing before the story really starts.

-Invite the reader into the world of the story by using vivid detail and visual descriptions to create a realistic and three-dimensional setting, whether the story is set in a real or imagined world, in the past, present or future.

-Create empathy for the hero using some of the techniques described here.

-Show the inciting incident that sets the story in motion.

This is not to be confused with the first act turning point that occurs at 25% and firmly establishes the goal for the rest of the film. The inciting incident is the very first event that begins the hero’s journey out of their ordinary world and into the world of the story.

For the next few days, I’ll examine how to accomplish each of these objectives in depth. First I’ll discuss introducing the hero, specifically, describing them.

While character descriptions must be brief, the description of the hero can be a little longer. Take a full paragraph-at least a few sentences-to really describe the hero. Remember that the character description should not be about hair and eye color, or any physical description that would limit casting, unless specific looks are essential to the story or the character. For example, the hobbits had to be described as short, rotund, and with hairy feet,  that Elle Woods was Legally Blonde, and it did matter to the story that all those nerdy girls who would become hot by taking off their glasses or getting a makeover (She’s All That, The Princess Diaries, Walk to Remember, Never Been Kissed, etc.) looked nerdy. But even when looks matter, you’ll find that the descriptions aren’t so specific-as they often get in books-that only one person could play the part. Any number of blondes could have been Elle, the hobbits casting wasn’t limited to brunettes, and those nerdy pre-makeover girls could have any number of hair color, eye color or height.

What matters in describing characters, particularly your hero, is capturing their essence. Who are they? What can we tell about their personality from the way they act, the way they carry themselves, or the way they dress? And while you cannot get into the character’s head and give us a psychoanalysis of their neuroses and hang-ups, you can and should give us an overall image of what they’re like.

You can also use visual description to imply what a personality is like, it’s all about choosing the right adjectives. You need to pick words that can be acted and shown on screen. Shy is not as visual and actable as timid, meek, soft-spoken or careful. Mean is not as visual as aggressive or hostile. Nice is not as visual as warm, friendly or bubbly. Be careful in your descriptions, and try to choose the most actable, visual words to describe your hero. Throughout the script, make sure that we see them acting in a way that is consistent with this description. As you review your character descriptions, ask yourself how the audience will know that what you’ve described is true, since they won’t be able to see the words you’ve written. If your description is visual and actable, then everything you’ve written about your character will be easily known and understood by viewers watching your film, not just people reading your script.

Here are two character descriptions that say the same things about the hero. The first is an example of what not to do-and what most writers do out of habit in their first draft. The second description rewrites the first in a more visual way that an actor could take to the screen and portray.

JESSICA is 5’8” and 140lbs, thin but muscular and toned. She is 24 years old. She spends all her time outside riding horses so she is always tan, with some freckles on her nose and cheeks. She has long brown hair that she always wears up in a ponytail. Jessica’s parents divorced when she was six and she has always had a hard time trusting people because her father left her and her mom. She has abandonment issues and when she gets into a relationship she always suspects her boyfriends of cheating on her. She gets jealous easily and constantly starts fights with them, and has a hard time being friendly because she is afraid if she gets close to someone they will leave like her father did.

JESSICA, 24, is athletic and outdoorsy. She wears black mud-covered riding boots over dusty, worn jeans and a thin white tank top. Her hair is pulled up out of the way. Jessica is reserved and cautious.

It’s not just the length of the description that has been cut down, it’s the novelistic background details that aren’t visual. How would the audience know that Jessica’s parents divorced? The only way they would know is if she reveals it in dialogue, or if you show a flashback of this event happening. But those things are not part of the character description.

The details about what she does in a relationship are also not something that can be acted on screen when Jessica is first introduced. Rather than telling your reader something the audience cannot see, you will need to show that Jessica does this by writing out scenes in which she acts this way. The details about her looks that limit casting have been omitted, and the overall look is summed up in the general but visual adjectives of athletic and outdoorsy. The important thing about her is that she is athletic.

By describing her clothes, we can tell she rides horses. Even better would be if she were introduced in a restaurant, or at school or work-somewhere where the fact that she was dressed this way was not appropriate and would reveal that she is so into riding she is always just coming from seeing her horse and can’t be bothered changing into more suitable clothes. This is a good way to show that she is a rider rather than novelistically telling us that she rides horses a lot.

To transform the novelistic sentence: “She has long brown hair that she always wears up in a ponytail” to one that works in a screenplay, I have changed it to “Her hair is pulled up out of the way.” No need to limit casting with the long brown hair detail, it doesn’t matter to the essence of the character if her hair is long and brown or short and blonde. We can’t know that she always wears it up because we are only describing what we see here. Her hair is up now, but the audience would have no way of knowing that she always wears her hair in a ponytail, so it’s inappropriate to describe her this way in a screenplay.

By saying she is reserved and cautious, we have transformed all of her background information and hang-ups into two actable, specific, visual adjectives that the actor can use to approach the character and show us that she has all of these issues, the details of which can be revealed through dialogue and later events. The important thing now is giving an overall impression and a visual description that evokes an image in the readers mind, and character traits that any athletic, 20-something actress could portray.

In your first draft, don’t slow down your writing by worrying over every word. Describe the character as you see him or her, but go back in subsequent revisions and analyze whether or not your descriptions are visual or not. Ask yourself how the audience will see that what you have written is true. If the only way to know a detail you have put down would be to read the script, then you need to revise your description to make it more visual and appropriate for a screenplay.

For more information on the first 10%, check out Michael Hauge’s lecture Grabbing the Reader in the First 10 Pages-available on DVD by clicking here.

To illustrate what I’ve been discussing in the last few posts on how description in a novel versus a screenplay can differ, I’ve taken descriptions of characters from several different adapted scripts. Here you can see the difference between the language the author of the novel is able to uses, versus the more succinct, visual language the screenwriter has to choose in the adaptation.

The first example is the description of Chiyo’s mother in Memoirs of a Geisha. The excerpt from the book is long, detailed, and mentions things we are not necessarily seeing at the present time. The writer describes each character’s personality in a way that would be inappropriate for a screenplay:

“Because from my earliest years I was very much like my mother, and hardly at all like my father or my older sister. My mother said it was because we were made just the same, she and I-and it was true we both had the same peculiar eyes of a sort you almost never see in Japan. Instead of being dark brown like everyone else’s, my mother’s eyes were a translucent gray, and mine are just the same. When I was very young, I told my mother I thought someone had poked a hole in her eyes and all the ink had drained out, which she thought very funny. The fortune-tellers said her eyes were so pale because of too much water in her personality, so much that the other four elements were hardly present at all-and this, they explained, was why her features matched so poorly. People in the village often said she ought to have been extremely attractive, because her parents had been. Well, a peach has a lovely taste, and so does a mushroom, but you can’t put the two together; this was the terrible trick nature had played on her. She had her mother’s pouty mouth but her father’s angular jaw, which gave the impression of a delicate picture with much too heavy a frame. And her lovely gray eyes were surrounded by thick lashes that must have been striking on her father, but in her case only made her look startled. “

By contrast, the screenplay description condenses these images down to a few short lines, and the mother and daughter’s personalities are revealed through actions throughout the story, rather than talked about right when they are first introduced. The screenwriter must show, not just tell, what the characters are like:

“MOTHER (40) reclines, wrapped in a quilt. She is frail, her face etched with pain. She opens her eyes briefly to drink a medicinal tea: they are a silver color.”

This description still mentions the gray eyes, since they are an important detail, but rather than elaborate on each physical feature, the screenwriter gives an overall sense of the mother’s illness and state of pain by showing us that she is ill through her actions.

In Twilight, Stephenie Meyer spends a lot of time describing what the characters look like. In fact the entire book is filled with descriptions of how gorgeous Edward is. The author also spends a lot of time describing Bella, and not just what she looks like, but what this means about who she is and how she fits in:

“Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix, should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond—a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps – all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun. Instead I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself – and harming both myself and anyone who stood too close.”

By contrast, the screenplay description is short and simple, while still capturing the essence and most important points of her overall look as described in the novel:

“ISABELLA SWAN, 17. Long, dark hair frames alabaster skin. She’s a vulnerable, introverted, imperfect beauty.”

Again the screenwriter doesn’t need to mention here that Bella is clumsy, as the novelist does, because this will be show later through her actions during the course of the movie.

In the story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, the narrator, Red, describes his first impression of Andy in great detail. Here is another example of the type of detail that the prose writer can delve into, going off in tangents and mentioning things that aren’t being seen or heard in the present moment of the story:

“When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was a short neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His fingernails were always clipped, and they were always clean. That’s a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose, but it seems to sum up Andy for me. He always looked as if he should have been wearing a tie. On the outside he had been a vice-president in the trust department of a large Portland bank. Good work for a man as young as he was, especially when you consider how conservative most banks are…and you have to multiply that conservatism by ten when you get up into New England, where folks don’t like to trust a man with their money unless he’s bald, limping, and constantly plucking at his pants to get his truss around straight. Andy was in for murdering his wife and her lover.”

Stephen King doesn’t just describe Andy, he makes a comment on how New England bankers are, and mentions what Andy does for a living. He goes off on a tangent, because stories are not linear and are not meant to occur in real time, as a screenplay is. In the script’s description of Andy, Frank Darabont is much more succinct, and mentions what Andy normally looks like in contrast to how upset and agitated he is when we first see him:

“ANDY DUFRENSE, mid-20’s, wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek.  But these circumstances are far from normal. He is disheveled, unshaven, and very drunk. A cigarette smolders in his mouth. His eyes, flinty and hard, are riveted to the bungalow up the path.”

In The Time Traveller’s Wife, author Audrey Niffenegger spends a lot of time introducing Clare at age six, describing what she is doing in great detail:

“She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is still wearing her school uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and knee socks with penny loafers, and she is carrying a Marshall Field’s Shopping Bag and a beach towel. Clare spreads the towel on the ground and dumps out the contents of the bag: every imaginable kind of writing implement. Old ballpoint pens, little stubby pencils from the library, crayons, smelly Magic Markers, a fountain pen. She also has a bunch of her dad’s office stationery.  She arranges the implements and gives the stack of paper a smart shake, and then proceeds to try each pen and pencil in turn, making careful lines and swirls, humming to herself.”

The screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, describes the same action, but in a much more succinct, simplified way. Also note that in the screenplay, the action is already in progress when we first see her. Unlike the book, the movie has the constraint of time, and doesn’t waste precious minutes detailing how Clare unloads and sets up her art project. The action is already underway, so the more important parts of the story can take place sooner:

“CLARE ABSHIRE, 6, sits on a large beach towel on which she has spread crayons, colored pencils, magic markers, and a stack of paper.”

In the novel, Fight Club by Chuck Palanuik, the Paper Street house is described in detail, giving the reader a good sense of how it feels to inhabit such a dilapidated, odd home.

“The shingles on the roof blister, buckle, curl, and the rain comes through and collects on top of the ceiling plaster and drips down through the light fixtures. When it’s raining, we have to pull the fuses. You don’ dare turn on the lights. The house that Tyler rents, it has three stories and a basement. We carry around candles. It has pantries and screened sleeping porches and stained-glass windows on the stairway landing. There are bay windows with window seats in the parlor. The baseboard moldings are carved and varnished and eighteen inches high.  The rain trickles down through the house, and everything wooden swells and shrinks, and the nails in everything wooden, the floors and baseboards and window casings, the nails inch out and rust.”

The script mentions a few details in the action description, but more often shows us how the house is by mentioning things as they occur, and uses some brief voice-over to describe some of the home’s quirks.

“It’s a grand old three-story long abandoned.”

“Tyler and Jack climb CREAKY STAIRS to the 2^ND FLOOR LANDING”

“Jack turns on the water. LOUD VIBRATIONS from the walls. Water spits in starts.

Reading novels and screenplays is a great exercise to help you contrast how screenwriting differs from other types of writing you are used to seeing. By choosing the right details and the most vivid, descriptive words, screenwriters are able to convey images as effectively as novelists using far fewer words. This skill is extremely difficult and takes time and practice to master.