Posts Tagged ‘scenes’

Visual style is something that is often neglected or overlooked.  Many new writers just put the story on paper and forget about the camera altogether.  The resulting script is often just a series of locations with basic action and dialogue, which isn’t wrong, it just leaves a lot open to interpretation. Visual style isn’t the [...]

Some writers will say that any instructions for directors is bad, while others will say some is okay.  Again, don’t look to professional screenplays for the answers because they aren’t spec scripts; they’re more than likely shooting scripts.  When you write a spec script, you want to keep the camera out of it.  The purpose [...]

Yesterday, I went over location descriptions; today, I’ll go over character action.  Character action is a little bit subjective.  Some writers prefer to leave it up to the actors, others believe they should put in every movement and gesture.  I think it’s best to work somewhere in between. Less is more A simple rule of [...]

Movies give the impression that scripts are comprised mostly of dialogue, but film and TV are audio-visual media; what you put on the page should be what we will see on the screen.  Beginning writers often make one of two mistakes: too much or too little description.  The problem of too much description We all think every minor detail [...]

By now you have the series act breaks, story lines and story arc.  You’re not done yet!  You need to break down each act into scenes and note what happens when.  If you’re thinking, “I already noted what happens when while looking at the story arc”, you may have noted the major plot points for [...]