Why This is Good

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.

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.

In addition to the differences discussed yesterday, dialogue in novels and dialogue in screenplays must be written differently. The reason why becomes apparent when you look at what each medium is. Novels and short stories are meant to be read, usually by a single person. Reading a novel is primarily done silently, so the dialogue is generally not spoken aloud. Because of this, dialogue in novels is often more formal than dialogue in screenplays. The dialogue in a novel can be long, drawn out, and flowery because it will rarely be spoken aloud.

Dialogue in a screenplay is ultimately meant to be read aloud, and because of this the screenwriter, unlike the novelist, has to take extra care to make sure their dialogue sounds as natural as possible. Many first drafts are full of dialogue that is stilted and formal because the writer neglects to use contractions, and doesn’t think about how people really speak. Most people rely heavily on contractions, including words that aren’t commonly seen in print because they aren’t really words, like “gonna” for “going to,” “dunno” instead of “don’t know,” “lemme” in place of “let me” and “wanna” for
“want to.” While English teachers permit the use of only the accepted, properly spelled contractions: don’t, won’t, can’t, I’d, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, etc., these new abbreviations aren’t really words, and won’t show up in most novels. In screenplays, however, it is perfectly acceptable to use these types of words, as they clearly represent a more natural, casual form of speaking that everyone recognizes as sounding realistic. Do not, however, go so far as to spell out accents and dialects phonetically. This gets much too tedious and difficult to read. Better to note if a character speaks with a strong accent in a parenthetical or a character description.

The screenwriter also faces another challenge when crafting dialogue that the novel author does not. As discussed yesterday, a screenwriter has to rely almost completely on the dialogue to reveal what each character thinks and feels, because unlike the novelist, they are unable to delve into the characters thoughts, and must convey emotion via the dialogue. While the novelist can have dialogue interspersed with long paragraphs describing what the phrase or word meant, how the character felt about saying it, how the other character felt upon hearing it, and then spend pages examining what these feelings mean, the screenwriter is left with only the dialogue. And of course, they must express their character’s inner thoughts and emotions while keeping their dialogue from becoming too expository or on-the-nose.

A fine line is walked by the screenwriter because while dialogue is the only tool they really have to express emotion (the actors, of course will express much with their skill when the script is turned into  a film, but the writer doesn’t have that tool at this stage), it still needs to sound real, and real people don’t generally wear their hearts on their sleeves, nor do most people even fully comprehend, let alone reveal, how they really feel in any given situation. Subtlety is the rule here, and psycho-babble laden, overly introspective speeches on a character’s emotions are a sign of a poorly written first draft by a newbie.

Emotions, feelings, and thoughts must be revealed slowly, naturally, and with as much left to the imagination as possible. The dramatic, extremely emotional scene in Chinatown when Evelyn reveals to Gittes that she has been the victim of incest is not dialogue heavy. Evelyn does not sit down and explain, in long-drawn out story, all of the pain she carries after having been raped by her father, she doesn’t get into how it happened, how it made her feel, what she thought about it then, what she thinks about it now. She does nothing but utter the few, memorable words, after much prompting from Gittes, “She’s my sister and my daughter.” This simple explanation conveys the emotion and pain behind the revelation much more effectively than if that scene had read like an hour long therapy session in. She does explain a little, but it is still relatively terse and succinct, given the nature of the event, and this works much better than pages and pages of overly revealing dialogue.

Citizen Kane expressed all of his longing for his childhood and lost innocence in a single word that had the other characters guessing and investigating what he meant. Imagine how much less powerful would that film have been if he had murmured instead the on-the-nose dialogue: “I’m sentimental about my childhood and longing to go back to a simpler time when I felt young and free and innocent.”

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.

Everyone who has ever taken an English class has heard the old writing advice that you should write what you know. This sounds logical enough, but taken literally, it is incredibly limiting. Most of us, by definition, are average people leading average lives. Writing only what you know makes it seem as if we can never use our imaginations to create new worlds, bizarre situations, or characters who do things we would never dream of doing. This is obviously not true, as successful writers have always written about both their everyday, known lives, as well as impossibly amazing realities no one had ever dreamed of before. Without expanding our writing parameters to include any and all possibilities, we are limited to a very dull set of stories set in the present or very recent past.

Some writers should take this advice literally. There is no shortage of stories about people’s everyday lives, and many of the most touching emotional dramas and poignant portraits have come from real-life experiences and writers simply recalling things that have happened to them. But if you grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and were born in 1983, you aren’t limited to that geographical location and that 26 year time period.

As I touched on in my post about research and fact-checking, if you do your homework, you are free to write about anything you want. Write about a historical time period you love, just make sure you get your facts straight and don’t accidentally feature your characters using a device that wasn’t invented yet. Write about an imagined fantasy world that you have created, just be consistent and make sure you outline how this world works.

You can and should still write what you know in terms of your character arc. Of course you can try to write about a character with experiences nowhere near your own, but the best stories, no matter where or when they are set, are about emotional experiences and thematic elements that the writer understands on a deep level. Your story may not take place in Chicago in 1992, but if you experienced, say your mother dying in childbirth, you can use your experience-what you know-to write a poignant portrayal of someone in post-World War II New York whose husband died in the war. The experience of loss, survivor guilt, and the feeling of being abandoned are consistent with your own experiences, regardless of the setting.  Maybe you’re an expert on breeding miniature schnauzers, because your family did that. This might make a boring movie, but if your character has a dog, it should probably be a mini schnauzer because you’re familiar with the breed and can more realistically portray what they are like. You may not have lived in rural France, but traveling there and researching about daily life there will give your setting credibility nonetheless. As you write down your ideas and develop outlines and stories, you’ll find that you know more than you realize, and you can use your experiences to craft compelling characters whose decisions, motivations, and character arcs are realistic and believable, even if the world they inhabit is something you have never seen.

Another gray area in screenwriting is music. Because we screenwriters often envision our story playing in our heads, we feel that we know best what will work, down to every last detail, including the music. This, again, is not your job. The background music, or score, will be composed by someone else. Whether the film’s score will use original music, existing music, or a combination of both, the soundtrack will be added later and should not be included in the script.

You can and should, however, write songs that are heard by the characters. A classic example is the song “As Time Goes By” as it is used in Casablanca. The song was a thematic element of the story, and it was part of both the background and a part of the story. As a modern screenwriter, you would have noted the song being played when it Sam was playing it and the characters themselves heard it. You would not include the times it served as an instrumental background soundtrack to the flashback montages. This distinction is easy to remember if you go back to the fundamentals of screenwriting, that you are to write only what we see or hear, and in this case, only what the characters see and hear. The characters do not hear their own background music. If they did it might play out like that Family Guy sequence where Peter wishes for his own theme music. It’s funny because it’s so silly. Remember that scene and use it to help you remember when to include music and when not to. If a character turns on the radio and sings along to “Free Fallin’” as in Jerry Maguire, it’s included in the spec script. When we hear the love theme of “Secret Garden” in the background, the characters do not, so it’s not a part of the spec script.

Like shots, many writers feel the transitions are a vital part of telling their story accurately. The new practice is to eliminate even CUT TO:’s from your script, though they used to punctuate each scene. A cut to is considered implied now, and most writers only use it a few times for emphasis.

But just like overzealous film majors obsessed with wide angles and close ups, a lot of writers are much too enamored of jump cuts, smash cuts, and fading in and out and to black and white. A few scene transitions may be necessary and add impact to your story. If you really feel you must indicate a change of time or a dream sequence with a dissolve, go ahead (although that is more than a little clichéd). But really, we’re talking about 2 or 3 maximum in the entire script. Do not use them for every single transition. And of course you still need FADE IN and FADE OUT or FADE TO BLACK.

Even if you do ignore me and put in a bunch of transitions, most likely, if your film is produced, an editor will be hired who will completely change everything anyway. You’re the writer, and for now, you’re expected to write the story. That includes what the characters do and say, no more, no less. Creating a film is a collaborative process, and if you must have complete creative control, you’re going to need to become a lot richer and more famous in order to be granted this much power over your story. Even still, doing a feature all on your own would be impossible. Maybe you should write a novel instead (of course you’d have to self-publish to avoid working with an editor…). If the idea of someone changing your beloved smash cut to a plain old cut breaks your heart, buy a camera, some editing software, and make your own film-start with a short-from start to finish. This is possible and it is certainly one of many ways to get your foot in Hollywood’s door.

When writing a film, most of us envision every detail. Not just what the characters will do and say, but how they say will each line, how the scene will be framed, what type of cuts will be used and when, how the credits will look, the background music, and which celebrity will play each part.

It is great to know this much about your film and to see it play out in your head in this much detail. And in the first draft, go ahead and put in all that information if you must. Get it out of your system if you must. But when you revise your script, you need to eliminate all of these elements, because they are not your job. Not only will including them insult the would-be director and actor who will eventually change everything you wrote anyway, having these indications in a spec scripts marks you as an amateur.

The next few posts will examine what not to do, and alternative ways to get your vision across without stepping on anyone’s toes.

Don’t do the Director’s job-First time writers love putting in camera directions. Some feel they will eventually direct. Others have read so many shooting scripts that they feel this is the way screenplays should be written. And others are so excited by their film classes that they want to put their new knowledge into play in their script.  It is hard for some writers to get their point across as precisely as they envision it without telling the reader when it’s a close up, a pan, or a wide angle shot. But don’t do it. Cut out all camera directions and figure out how to put focus on the things you want by the way you describe the scene, not by indicating specific camera directions. For example, if you feel a close up is important because we need to really emphasize the bad guy reaching for a hidden gun in his jacket, you can write something like: “His hand finds the gun in his pocket.” This indicates that we are focusing on the hand and the gun, whereas: “The man reaches into his coat and pulls out a gun” could be at any angle, and indicates a normal medium range.

When describing a scene, if you envision a wide angle or a pan, you can explain in your description a wide range of things that we can see which will imply a wide shot without you writing in that direction. “The vast, empty field stretches out all around her” indicates a wider angle than “She stands in a field.”

Another way to draw attention to an object or person is to put them on their own line, as a kind of slug line.

Instead of:

INT. SHOP-DAY

Rebbecca opens the door and sees a dead man lying motionless on the floor.

Write:

INT. SHOP-DAY

Rebbecca opens the door

A DEAD MAN

motionless on the floor.

The language of screenwriting is different than other forms of writing. We already know that screenwriting utilizes visual images, terse writing style, and short, declarative sentences. It is important to avoid overly flowery language but still use enough of the most precise adjectives to convey a vivid image of both person and place. This is done best by using details and visual clues that capture the essence of what things look and feel like without having to go into too much detail.

Every writer must find their own style, even within the generally accepted guidelines of screenwriting prose. This can become especially difficult if English is not your native language. Colloquialisms, slang, and current trends in language are important to incorporate into your writing, but if you’re not used to writing in English, this becomes a challenge. Both the action description and dialogue can sound too formal and stilted if you’re not a native speaker. Listening to real life conversations is important for all screenwriters trying to perfect their dialogue, but it is essential for non-native speakers. You’ll learn phrases, expressions, and sentence structure that isn’t taught in English classes. If you’re not a native English speaker, you should also try to read as many screenplays as possible. Reading only books, magazines and newspapers will not help you get used to the appropriate language that should be used in a screenplay.

After you’ve written your story, have as many native English speakers-whether they are screenwriters or not-read your script and give you feedback on the language you’ve used. Revise as many times as needed to make sure your script sounds completely Americanized.

Everyone, no matter what language they speak, should share their story, and screenwriting is one of the best ways to reach a large audience with your vision.