Any yo-yo screenwriter can write a scene. But it takes a special kind of yo-yo screenwriter to write a good one.
Here are three things you can do right now that will improve the scenes in your screenplays: hone your description, get into your scenes late, and weave in that awesome thematic sauce known as subtext.
#1 Write lean and mean scene description!
Writing scene description, for many screenwriters, often involves going into super-fine detail for every element of a scene, but that’s simply not the way to do it.
It might be fine for a book, but not a screenplay, which is essentially the blueprint of a film, with its own special format and everything, and as such, must read quickly and be understood quickly by a team of potentially hundreds of cast and crew.
That is, the challenge is that not only must the action convey what’s going on to someone reading the script, but also to people turning the screenplay into a produced movie.
Yet, balancing the entertaining with the informative is no easy task.
Let’s look at several ways we can write scene description a lot more efficiently and effectively for everybody reading that script, from the executive producer to the movie star to the art department crew member figuring out what color to paint a flat.
Keep action/description text sparse and easy to read
The mistake of going overboard when writing scene description usually happens when a writer veers too far into prose. Here’s more about prose so you can see how it differs from screenwriting in general.
In an effort to make the reader really feel what it’s like to be in the scene, we sometimes overdo it when it comes to the amount of decorative language that doesn’t actually help make the script produceable. Let’s look at an example:
Dawn breaks over the ravaged field torn asunder by Fall’s plows leaving the forest green leafy plant debris of the remaining harvest to strike a sharp contrast with the bright orange plastic cones placed at five-meter intervals along the left, right, and front sides. Idling, with the rumble of the engines sending ripples across the large ceramic Fiesta-wear bowl of fresh organic mimosa punch, the hovercrafts await the start of the race.
Well now, isn’t that a lovely description? Look how vivid and detailed it is. It paints with all the colors of the wind, right? Stirs the emotions left, right, and center, no?
Unfortunately, this is not, not, not a good example of writing scene description. While it may evoke strong images in our minds and perhaps even be an entertaining read, it breaks two holy screenplay commandments.
First, it’s too long. Second, it’s highly unlikely a production will want to spend the effort (and money) to recreate that specific, intricate vision when ultimately none of these particular details affect the plot or characters or the big picture. So let’s revise this example.
In the morning light, spectators sipping mimosas gather at the edge of a racetrack laid out by traffic cones on a farmer’s muddy field. With a rumble of their engines, the hovercrafts are ready to begin.
Or even better, if you’re really into word economy:
EXT. MUDDY FARM RACETRACK — DAY
Dawn. Spectators sip mimosas as they wait for the hovercraft races to begin.
In the revision, we lose the unnecessary descriptors and stick to the details that will make a difference.
Writing scene description that really engages the reader means choosing what to keep and what to take out isn’t always a clear-cut case, so a technique to help in these instances is to visualize the scene in your mind but make everything but the named characters as generic as possible.
What changes in the scene’s narrative? If the lack of a specific detail creates a different feeling, then keep it. But if not, then that detail probably needs to go.
Use camera directions sparingly in a scene’s action/description text
When a director crafts a scene on set, they’re often laying out the various movements and locations of the actors. This is called blocking.
You’ll note we said “When the director…” because blocking is usually under the purview of the director and not the writer. The presence of large amounts of blocking in a script can look something like this.
Teddy moves away from the hovercraft parked caddy-corner and towards the snack table’s left side. Opposite his hovercraft, Belinda walks over to Teddy, standing on the right side of the snack table. Smiling at one another, they go around the front side of the table and smooch.
While the description certainly functions, it reads clunky because the writing is busy worrying about where the characters and props are positioned.
As mentioned before, unless there’s a narrative purpose for this placement, like a plot point requiring things to be just so, then this is mostly useless fretting over the locations of things that will likely get changed by the production. Let’s look at it in a revised state.
Teddy leaves his hovercraft. At the snack table, he sees Belinda approach. She exchanges a knowing smile with him. They smooch.
See what we did there? We took out all the positioning information that was just cluttering up the description. What is left are the essential narrative elements of the scene that effectively communicates what’s going on.
Writing scene description that’s crisp and effective means not worry about shot composition and actor blocking, which are both the director’s concern, not the writer’s. We have more important things to do, like deciding if Belinda makes it to 3rd base with Teddy. He’s new at this so go slow, Belinda.
Try to write only what we can see and hear
At the risk of stating the obvious, scripts differ from books because the audience must see the story conveyed on screen rather than created in their imaginations.
When we’re writing scene description, sometimes we want the audience to know a character is thinking about a situation.
This can result in screenplays containing too much information that doesn’t actually appear on the screen which means only the person reading knows what’s going on.
While this is fine for literature, in a script it usually looks something like this:
Standing by the wrecked hovercraft, Teddy contemplates what to do. He thinks about Belinda’s words and the good luck kiss she left on his cheek. Aching with desire and suffering from grief, Teddy decides to pop the question.
Looks like Teddy has a big moment coming up. However, what the audience will see on the screen, based on how we’re writing scene description in this example, is just Teddy standing by his hovercraft looking sad.
Since the rest of the action takes place in Teddy’s mind, the viewer is prevented from seeing this according to the script’s writing in its current form. Let’s see if we can’t revise this to something a little more visual.
Teddy weeps softly by the wrecked hovercraft. He rubs his eyes smearing the lipstick on his cheek and getting red smudges on his hand. Wiping his fingers off on his shirt, Teddy brushes against a small box in his pocket. He opens it to reveal an ENGAGEMENT RING.
By converting Teddy’s internal thoughts to external actions, the example gives the audience action they can see on the screen and not something they have to assume by staring at Teddy’s expressions. In some cases, this might necessitate adding more details or breaking down a feeling into actions that demonstrate the sentiment.
A hazard to avoid when doing this is the temptation to add visual tics that are too subtle or vague to be conclusive. In most cases, the visual actions that correlate to what the character is thinking need to also have unique narrative importance. By that, we mean the writing should lead everyone in the audience to the same conclusion.
Of course, this isn’t always easy or obvious for a writer to determine, so getting feedback helps, even if it means playing a form of charades to see if the actions lead to the intended conclusion.
Finally, these are by far not the only mistakes writers make when doing action description but they are significant obstacles for most. Conquering these problems will help make you a better writer and a better hovercraft pilot. Okay, maybe not that second one, Teddy.
#2 Get into your scene late and leave early!
Sad but true: a screenplay often lives or dies depending on how well it can dance on the ever-shrinking stage of a script reader / gatekeeper’s attention span.
In other words, there’s not much space to tell the whole tale in exhaustive detail, so savvy screenwriters know they have to constantly make judgment calls: nix what’s “nixable” and skip to the good parts.
Arriving late into a scene (aka “in media res,” which is Latin for “in the midst of things”), and leaving that scene early is the best way to make a splash at a party, but that same panache applies to writing scenes as well.
Arguably, Alfred Hitchcock summed it up the best when he asked:
“What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out?”
The goal is to pace the screenplay so that the audience is constantly being pulled to the next story beat before they get bored of the last one.
The mindset of getting into a scene late and leaving it early forces the screenwriter to focus on what’s most important — the core purpose or function of the scene in question.
Let’s look at an example and see how the technique of getting into a scene late and leaving it early plays out:
INT. MANOR LIBRARY – NIGHT
Searching through the book-filled shelves, GREG and LUMP can’t help but make noise in their ill-fitting tuxedos. They look at the top shelves. They look at the bottom shelves. Behind a desk, Greg finds a small stand of paperback novels.
GREG
Lump, come here and take a look at this. Madam Celeste loves hardcore—
LUMP
Don’t you say that. Mama says we ain’t allowed to say those words, Greg.
GREG
They’re hardcore science fiction.
Greg holds up the book, it’s FOUNDATION by Asimov.
LUMP
Ass-imov? Doesn’t sound scientific to me.
GREG
Don’t make me throw this at you.
LUMP
Mama says the judge threw a book at Daddy.
GREG
I’m gonna throw this book and then the desk is next.
From outside, a THUMP is heard. The two men stand still.
LUMP
You hear that?
GREG
Just keep looking for the jewels.
The doors to the library open. MADAM CELESTE, in her regal gown, enters with contempt.
MADAM CELESTE
Aha! I’ve found you. And they said you can’t play Sardines-style hide-and-seek at a gala. Lady Everclear informed me of such rules but that nosy dilettante can kiss my trust fund. Okay, boys, under the desk. Let’s go.
Greg and Lump exchange looks but obediently crawl under the desk. Madam Celeste follows. Underneath the desk, the three people barely fit. Their squirming shakes the desk.
LUMP (O.S.)
Someone’s touching my foot.
GREG (O.S.)
Scoot over, Lump. The Madam needs more space.
MADAM CELESTE (O.S.)
I love a good contact sport. This is far better than Cynthia’s Hide and Seek soiree.
While this scene is far from perfect, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong about the brief narrative it constructs: Two thieves looking for jewels are interrupted by the host of the party.
Now that we have the source material, let’s apply the technique of “Arriving Late” to this scene by cutting as much from the beginning as we can. Even action/description text.
Consider the difference between this version of the scene and the previous:
INT. MANOR LIBRARY – NIGHT
Greg finds a small stand of paperback novels.
From outside, a THUMP is heard. The two men stand still.
LUMP
You hear that?
GREG
Just keep looking for the jewels.
The doors to the library open. MADAM CELESTE, in her regal gown, enters with contempt.
MADAM CELESTE
Aha! I’ve found you. And they said you can’t play Sardines-style hide-and-seek at a gala. Lady Everclear informed me of such rules but that nosy dilettante can kiss my trust fund. Okay, boys, under the desk. Let’s go.
Greg and Lump exchange looks but obediently crawl under the desk. Madam Celeste follows. Underneath the desk, the three people barely fit. Their squirming shakes the desk.
LUMP (O.S.)
Someone’s touching my foot.
GREG (O.S.)
Scoot over, Lump. The Madam needs more space.
MADAM CELESTE (O.S.)
I love a good contact sport. This is far better than Cynthia’s Hide and Seek soiree.
To begin with, it’s obviously a shorter, faster scene with the banter at the beginning cut out.
Of course, there might be an argument that the banter adds to the narrative and it was certainly quite fun to write, but does it really push the story forward? No. It doesn’t.
After we’ve arrived late to the scene, now let’s see what happens when we get out of it early as well:
INT. MANOR LIBRARY – NIGHT
Greg finds a small stand of paperback novels.
From outside, a THUMP is heard. The two men stand still.
LUMP
You hear that?
GREG
Just keep looking for the jewels.
The doors to the library open. MADAM CELESTE, in her regal gown, enters with contempt.
MADAM CELESTE
Aha! I’ve found you. And they said you can’t play Sardines-style hide-and-seek at a gala. Lady Everclear informed me of such rules but that nosy dilettante can kiss my trust fund. Okay, boys, under the desk. Let’s go.
Slick and lean, this scene now conveys the essentials of the situation and uses every inch of the audience’s attention span far more judiciously.
While the length on the page might indicate this final scene will have a running time of around 30 seconds (and it might in the film), there’s still plenty of breathing room for the director to play with the pacing of the scene because the screenwriter has given her only the vital parts of the narrative.
That is, the dull bits have been cut out. Well, mostly.
A few caveats with this handy screenwriting approach:
Just because it was liberally applied to this particular scene doesn’t mean it can apply to all scenes in all scripts. e.g. If the paperback novel had been hollowed out to hold the jewels Greg and Lump were looking for, then the part of the scene where the book falls open would be important to show.
Similarly, if this is the first time we’ve met Greg and Lump and they’re supposed to be main characters, the banter at the beginning might serve as entertaining exposition.
However, more often than we’d like to admit, we end up with scenes that have a lot of inactive, dead space that a vigorous application of this pacing technique might solve.
Show up late to make an entrance and leave early. Good for parties, good for screenwriters, good for Alfred Hitchcock.
#3 Write scenes in stereo! (AKA write using subtext)
Subtext in a scene isn’t easy to spot, and writing subtext — or writing subtextually — isn’t easy to do. A screenwriter requires not only verbal dexterity, but a certain depth of life experience to draw from, in order for her subtext to actually work.
At the end of Arthur Miller’s classic feel-good play Death of a Salesman, the central character Willy Loman tells his son Biff that “the woods are burning.”
Now, for those of you who haven’t read or seen the play before, let me assure you that no actual woods are burning. It’s a metaphor — a way for Willy to articulate to his son that things are not good.
Of course, he can’t just say “Biff, due to the flaws in my fundamental understanding of society, I’m experiencing a breakdown of personal apocalyptic proportions. It’s likely I’m going to kill myself.”
If Arthur Miller had written that, he likely would’ve been laughed out of the profession. That’s because in real life, people don’t say difficult things with the assertiveness afforded to writers of fictional characters.
So what do we do when we need a character to confront or convey a difficult truth to another without sounding like bad action movie dialogue? To borrow a familiar metaphor, we burn the forest and talk about the trees.
That is, we forget trying to say what needs to be said outright and instead discuss something figuratively related to what we’re trying to say.
In other words, we use SUBTEXT.
Let’s take a look at a scene where one character needs to find out if his mother still loves him despite his most recent crime. In the first example, we’ll be as direct as possible.
An example of a scene without subtext
EXT. POLICE STATION – DAY
A minivan parks.
INT. MINIVAN – DAY
The engine idles. Mama sits in the driver’s seat. Her son, nervous, fiddles with his seat belt.
SON
Mama, I’ve committed a crime and I know it was the wrong thing to do. I’m about to go in there and confess. I need to know if you still love me.
MAMA
Son, you burned down the Christmas tree farm two months before December. No one was hurt. I still love you. Now go inside.
He unbuckles the seat belt and exits the vehicle.
On a logical level, this scene functions just fine. The Son asks Mama what he needs to know and she answers him.
But on nearly any other level, this scene reads awkward, stiff, and completely contrived. Instead of this robotic, matter-of-fact interaction, let’s have another go at the scene, this time having them trying to say what they both need to say, but coming at it more realistically, more obliquely. That is, employing subtext.
The same screenplay scene with subtext
EXT. POLICE STATION – DAY
A minivan parks.
INT. MINIVAN – DAY
The engine idles. Mama sits in the driver’s seat. Her son, nervous, fiddles with his seat belt.
SON
Do you remember when you used to drop me off at school when I was little and I couldn’t get the seatbelt off because it was stuck and you’d have to help me?
MAMA
You ain’t little no more, son. I can’t fix this.
SON
I used to think if you couldn’t fix it for me, then I’d get to skip school and just stay in the car all day. I thought you might bring me office supplies to keep me busy while you worked, and then we’d go have burgers for lunch like we did that one day when everybody brought their daughters to work and you brought me because I’m the only kid you got. I was worried we’d get in trouble but you told me that you loved me and that’s all that mattered. Mama, what would you do if I said this seatbelt is stuck?
MAMA
Get in there and accept responsibility for what you’ve done.
He unbuckles the seat belt and exits the vehicle.
Well, that was emotional. I’m not crying. Are you crying? I’m totally not. I just need a moment to get the seatbelt out of my eyes, okay?
Alright, that’s much better.
Comparing the scene with subtext to the scene without
The first thing we can notice about the example scene with subtext is that there’s more dialogue and it’s a longer scene because of it. Normally in screenwriting, we try to be as efficient as possible so converting boring, straightforward conversations to exciting, spicy conversations with subtext might seem to run counter to those instincts.
However, when you consider a spicy, interesting conversation to be the standard for all of your dialogue, subtext becomes a focusing agent, not a source of page inflation.
By that we mean subtext will help pare down a screenplay’s unnecessary dialogue simply by requiring more investment of resources (page length, audience attention span, performer skill, etc.) that makes otherwise breezy scenes justify their inclusion in the script.
In short, if something is worth saying, it’s probably worth saying, or can be said with more impact, by using subtext.
The second thing to notice about the above examples is how much more narrative work the scene with subtext does versus the one without.
While running longer than the first scene, the second scene allows the script to draw out thematic elements and motifs. It creates connections between the characters that exist not only for the characters but also for the audience.
It’s possible to call them Mama and Son in the script’s action description in order to establish the relationship but it’s a stronger script that shows the audience the meaning and depth of the relationship rather than relying on baseline assumptions. In subtext, we have a name.
Finally, to implement subtext in your own screenplay, look for opportunities where characters are faced with a difficult conversation.
Put yourself in their heads for a minute and think about not only how they see the world but how they might try to communicate to people in it.
Some situations are more difficult than others. Ordering a pizza probably doesn’t require subtext. But when it comes to terrible truths, guilty confessions, unrequited romance, or any number of sticky situations your characters might be in, the effective use of subtext will provide a path forward for the conversation.
Smarter, leaner action/description, not boring us with scene intros and outros and just getting smack dab into the meat of the scene, and then weaving in a little theme and subtext with every scene you write: not too tall of an order is it?
If so, I apologize. Yo-yo.
