Focusing entirely on your first screenplay or writing very little in between will not progress your writing skillset. Even if you are hoping for a one hit wonder, why not give your screenplay the best chance for success?
Many people struggle to produce the brevity and clarity that screenplay action description requires, whilst also maintaining interest. With a small investment of time and effort, you can familiarise yourself with the art of screenwriting language and hone your abilities in the necessary manner to write effective action description.
Typically, poor writing might be lengthy, rambling, and subsequently unclear. At worst it will also be boring and more of the same, plagued with repetition. If you look at an unguided screenplay and compare it against one from James Cameron, for example, you will immediately notice the difference in the flowing readability of action description.
James Cameron writes with a flair which maintains pace whilst painting the scene clearly.
How best to write effective action description can be seen in a separate blog post, but here I want to look at an exercise I use to help shape my writing. The idea is exposure to the mindset of screenwriting with a practical scenario which helps nurture your instincts and abilities.
We all struggle when faced with a new toolset or mindset. Until you get familiar, you can’t do it justice. Someone new to life drawing in art will do much better once the alien nature of the pencil/charcoal/pastel is overcome and the language of art becomes more fluid. So how do you get used to the screenwriting toolset?
It is as simple as getting a blank book which you may use at any time when faced with a moment where you wait, be it for a coffee, appointment or the like. Try not to be fussy about the location you’re in, as this exercise is about overcoming constraints and writing freely. These exercises are not to be assessed, marked or shown to anyone, unless you wish to.
The task is devoted to developing your thought process and visual skills towards bettering your action description writing, specifically ‘scene setting.’
Wherever you sit and have a minimum of 5 minutes, observe your surroundings and put them to paper.
Let’s say you’re in a typical cafe scenario. Never mind whether it feels boring or that nothing much is happening. This is an exercise about breaking the barriers you might have in observing and describing a scene. The more you do it, the more naturally it will come and the more economic your words will be.
So, establish what’s important around you to enable the reader to get a sense of the environment (and eventually for the film makers to construct an appropriate set). You will see many details, furnishings, constructions, but only those necessary to the story are important.
Therefore, to help facilitate this exercise, it is useful to imagine a brief story. It can be as simple as a character waits in a cafe for their date to turn up. You are free to make up anything you like. Exercise your imagination!
Let’s give an example and go with the idea that MARK waits for EMMA to turn up. A further twist could be that this is a follow up to an argument they had on the weekend:
Don’t get hung up about whether you’re doing it right from the start.
Don’t worry about being verbose or lengthy.
These will streamline over time.
This idea of practice brings familiarity and is the same with any discipline. A novice bricklayer will begin by getting to know his tools first and then before launching into the build of a whole house, will no doubt start with a small wall. The process will become easier with each brick and the cement work will become less sloppy.
Have fun with this exercise and see if you can do it a few times a week. Your screenwriting will benefit greatly.