Why This is Good

Scene descriptions are an important part of helping your reader visualize the world you are creating. Picking the right visual details is crucial to conveying an image effectively, and concisely. Whereas novelists have the luxury of taking paragraphs, even pages, to describe a setting, screenwriters limited to a few words, at most a few sentences.

A lot about what the place looks like can be revealed solely by the slugline, as in Being John Malkovich by Charlie Kaufman.

INT. CHEERLESS ROOM – DAY

The room is bare, dusty. A ceiling fan turns. The wall clock ticks.

By stating in the slugline that it is a cheerless room, he has eliminated the need for an additional adjective in the description, but he still takes the time to note some of the vivid sensory images that make up the room, allowing the reader to picture it, hear the ticking clock, and feel like they are there in the room.

Key details are crucial, and choosing a few of the most important ones can speak volumes about the setting, with no need to go into long drawn-out detail. As with character description, capturing the essence or sense of the place is the most important part, and this can be done very succinctly. In Fargo, the Coen brothers describe the bar as “downscale even for this town. Country music plays on the jukebox.” This simple sentence tells us about the bar and the town itself. You would never say “downscale even for this town” referring to a place like Paris or New York, Napa or Aspen. The fact that they say it this way says not only that this is a dive bar, but it’s a dive bar in a small, run-down town. Country music on a jukebox also says a lot about the type of bar this is, and they type of people there. There is a huge difference between a bar that plays country music via a jukebox and a bar where soft jazz is played by a live trio of musicians, or a bar where techno music blasts through a state-of-the-art speaker system. That detail alone gives you a different picture of the place and the people hanging out there.

In Pleasantville, the world of the perfect show-town is contrasted sharply with the modern day imperfection of the late-90s by describing details about each place.

In the 1958 idyllic world of Pleasantville, “Birds are chirping. The sun is shining. All the hedges are neatly pruned and the lawns are perfectly manicured. A sweet stillness hangs over the suburban street, which is bathed in beautiful black and white.” It’s easy to see why the tranquil, serene fantasy world tempts David to escape the frenetic world he inhabits. As opposite as possible, his world is described as: “a cacophony of modern life. Beepers and nose rings—blue hair and tattoos. Dissonant boom boxes compete with one another. The hormones are running crazy.”

Both descriptions use key visual details that show us what the scene looks like. Instead of using vague, generic adjectives, the writer has picked the most visually stunning and specific images to convey what each world is like, giving us a real, vivid sense of what the scene looks like through imagery.

Brevity is crucial in screenwriting, but by choosing key details and images you can convey an image to your reader that helps draw them into the story and give them a sense of place. Even if you are describing a place that is familiar to readers, it is important to include a description of what this place looks like so that your story feels unique and real, and not a generic cookie-cutter movie.

In another brilliant script by Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he describes the waiting room: “Every doctor’s office waiting room: chairs against the wall, magazines on end tables, a sad-looking potted plant, generic seascape paintings on the walls.” Even though we’ve all been in doctor’s waiting rooms, and even though in this case he is saying that this waiting room looks like an average waiting room, he still takes the time needed to include a few details to paint a picture in the reader’s mind.

Without doing this, there are still variations on what each person would imagine if he had merely slugged the scene as a waiting room and offered no other explanation. Some waiting rooms are run down, older, with out-of-date furnishings. Some are full of sick people, stuffy, crowded, and noisy. Some more successful doctors in affluent areas have gorgeous waiting rooms that rival five-star hotel lobbies. So even when describing a mundane, everyday place, visual details pin down exactly what we’re looking at and evoke an image in the reader’s mind.

Most of us have been in or seen a corporate conference room, but like doctor’s waiting rooms, they vary widely. In Jerry Maguire by Cameron Crowe, the conference room is not described by saying it is richly appointed or that the company is successful, instead, specific details are revealed that show us that this is true. “Sports photos and posters are framed on the walls. The signs of global marketing are omnipresent. Each agent has a silver tray containing soft drinks and a glass pitcher of water.”

Good scene description also evokes a feeling that conveys theme. In Jerry Maguire, the excess and ruthless ambition that bothered Jerry and forced him to quit are brought to life in the way Crowe has described in the conference room. The little details show us how these people live, what their lifestyle is like, and what they demand. There is nothing warm in the room, it is not practical or utilitarian, it is loud, driven by advertising and success, and the fact that each agent has his or her own personal silver tray of beverages shows us what kind of world they live in.

In Garden State, Zach Braff enforces his theme and creates the sense of loneliness and aimlessness that his hero feels by using visual details to create a sense of cold, clean emptiness in his bedroom. “Whiteness. Morning sun streams through a palatial picture window. The phone continues to ring. A ceiling fan spins above stacks of scripts, a cell phone charging, bare walls and a small human figure dwarfed by the enormous white bed in which he sleeps.” This not only evokes a concrete visual image of the room, but also gives us the sense of how the character feels, where the story is going, and what the theme of the film will be.

As you’re observing people, how they speak, and how what they wear colors your opinion of what they’re like, start noticing places, and what details matter. When you visit a new or familiar location, spend time looking at it. What jumps out at you first? What details show you what the people who inhabit this space are like, what they value? What is generic and what is unique? Keep track of what you observe, and you will get into the habit of noticing the most important and most visual details. This will improve your writing by allowing you to include the most vital and visual information in the scenes you craft in your screenplays.

When writing scene descriptions, there are three basic elements that you should always include. Without these three things your reader is left without a clear picture of what is going on, making it difficult for them to visualize the story in their heads. Anything that confuses the reader, takes them out of the story, or makes the story seem less real and vivid makes the reader enjoy your story less, and thereby decreases your chances of selling your story.

What it looks like-Your slugline will tell us briefly where we are-a diner, a classroom, a battlefield, and whether it is day or night. This alone is not enough, and I often see writers relying on the slugline alone to convey what the scene looks like. But while one diner could be a busy 50’s throwback, alive with customers, bright shiny vinyl booths and Elvis blaring on the jute box, another could be cold, dim, with aging, faded décor and tired, sad customers. A classroom could be bright and warm, with rich wood paneling and beautiful desks in a prestigious prep school, or a run-down, dirty cell, with bars on the windows and graffiti on every battered desk, or anywhere in between. A battlefield could be tense on a bright sunlit morning as two armies face off, or raging with battle, as soldiers fight for their lives and men fall to the blood-soaked earth only to be trampled on by the next wave of infantry, or it could be quiet and misty, as medics pick through the bodies looking for survivors, swatting flies and shooing vultures from the carcasses.

Descriptions of what the scene looks like give the reader a picture in their mind, and tell them where we are, what this place is like, and reflect the theme. The type of scene tells us where this movie will go and what we can expect. A run-down inner city public high school classroom promises a different type of movie and different characters than a fancy, expensive private school setting. If you only tell us it’s a classroom, the reader’s mind will pick the closest recollection they have of a generic classroom-whether it’s their own or the last one they saw on TV or in a movie, it will take away the uniqueness of your film, and they may picture something completely different than what you did, than what is appropriate for the story. This not only makes your script seem more generic, it can be jarring, if, for example, the reader is picturing this cold, desolate, run-down diner in their head, and all of the sudden reads about a bubbly waitress on roller skates popping bubble gum. This will take them out of the story and confuse them and draw attention to the fact that they are reading a poorly written story.

It is essential that you describe new settings in brief but vivid detail the first time we see them. When we return to the diner, the classroom, or the battlefield, you only need to note any changes, perhaps the diner is now quiet and dark as the owner wipes down the counter and closes up, or the classroom is strewn with crumpled papers and debris after the kids have left for lunch. Don’t neglect to describe any setting, no matter how small, even if it’s just with a few words. And don’t be redundant and repeat the information in the slugline in your description. If you wrote INT. CLASSROOM-DAY do not begin the action description with: “We’re inside of a classroom during the day.” Sounds ridiculous, but it’s something I read constantly.

Who is there-This is a step writers frequently neglect, and it is very confusing for the reader. It only takes a few words, but it is essential to tell us who is in the scene. As a reader goes through your script, they picture the events in their mind. Your words guide their imagination and tell them what to expect. If you leave out crucial details like this, we readers are surprised and confused, and worst of all, taken out of the story and reminded we are reading. After telling us what the place looks like, tell us who is there. Which main characters, obviously, but also the background people and extras that lend credibility to the scene. In the diner we’d probably have other customers, a waitress or two, maybe a short-order cook in back, the owner greeting people as they came in. If you don’t mention that these people are there, the reader won’t necessarily fill in the blanks the way you intended. Or worse, they’ll imagine a diner full of people, when in your head it was important to the story that there were only two people in the whole place.

What they are doing-As you describe who is in the scene, let us know what they are doing so we don’t picture them just standing around staring blankly. This lends credibility to the scene, and is important to the plot. Tell us that the teacher is sitting at the desk reading, the students are coming in and sitting down, or reading diligently, or making out in back. If we don’t know what everyone is doing when the scene opens it is not only difficult to picture it can often be confusing when they start to speak. If we know the teacher is pacing in front of the classroom, it will make sense that he starts to lecture, and tells those two in the back to get a room. Without telling your reader what your characters are doing, they are left with flat, generic imagery that fails to convey the story in a realistic way.