The Craft of Scene Writing

by Jim Mercurio

  She was the one who got away, the one he always secretly pined for, and he was too afraid to ask her out.

  The writer’s laziness continues and this idea never quite makes itself clear. Later, in his darkest moment, Bob sits alone with his high school yearbook—which does have some built-in potential to convey the intention—and looks at a picture of Shelly. But here, the cheat conveys so much more depth to the reader than can be expressed to the viewer:

  Bob looks at Shelly, longing for all of the love he has thrown away and lost. It’s time to take a chance.

  This is a classic example of telling instead of showing. But it’s beyond academic. Your mom, accountant, and even a bad Hollywood reader might fall for it. However, a good reader, producer, or director knows it’s a scam. The script isn’t shootable. The movie isn’t on the page.

  The script might deliver an emotionally satisfying experience to the reader, but you haven’t solved enough of the problems of telling a visual story—giving the viewer the same emotionally satisfying experience as the reader.

  The cardinal sin of cheats is when a script gives an experience to the reader that is fundamentally different from the one it gives to the viewer. This isn’t good screenwriting. In fact, it’s not even bad screenwriting; it isn’t screenwriting at all.

  Promoting Your Cheats

  Although you have some sense of when a cheat might be acceptable, more often than not, err on the side of cinematic storytelling. Take a cue from Air Force One and challenge yourself to eliminate or expand on a cheat to achieve your intent by employing a visual solution.

  In The Amazing Spider-Man, Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard (Rhys Ifans), who is missing part of one of his forearms and hands, describes his desire casually to a group of students during an orientation.

  DR. CONNORS

  But like the Parkinson’s patient who watches on in horror as her body slowly betrays her or the man with macular degeneration whose eyes grow dimmer each day I long to fix myself. I want to create a world without weakness.

  Later, he discovers a potentially dangerous potion that might allow him to regrow his hand. The screenwriters might have enough context to let a cheat like this slide in the script:

  His mind spins as he contemplates the consequences of his action; he could become whole again.

  However, the film finds a visual solution. In a glass wall, a reflection of his hand creates a mirror image illusion that he has two healthy and functioning hands. The stunning image externalizes what’s on his mind.

  I have read simple and innocent cheats like this hundreds of times:

  She walks into the kitchen like she has every day of her life.

  In the Italian neorealist classic Umberto D, Maria walks into the kitchen in the morning and casually strikes a match against the wall to light the stove. There are dozens of subtle strike marks on the wall in the exact same place that eliminates the need for this description. Basically, make your cheat obsolete.

  In True Romance, when Vincent is ready to shoot Cliff, he turns away for a second. In that brief moment when Cliff doesn’t need to hold up the façade, we see the fear on his face. This action makes additional language like this unnecessary:

  Despite his cocky attitude, deep-down inside, he is really scared.

  Here are a few simple tips to help you manage your cheats and determine if they are acceptable:

  • Maintain clarity and consider story density. If you are expanding on your action description, make sure that what you are gaining outweighs the additional words and space.

  • Avoid redundancy. If the cheat carries the moment, don’t also include the conventional action description. In the paragraph below, we have three sentences that say essentially the same thing. Trust the “Wow!” or if you feel it needs some clarification, use only one of the last two sentences with it:

  Wow! Did he really just say that? A look of disbelief washes over her.

  • Don’t make your script cry wolf. If you want to emphasize an important moment with a parenthetical or clarify your intention with the help of a cheat, do it sparingly. If you call attention to unimportant things too often, the reader begins to tune out and not trust you when you imply that something is important.

  • Don’t violate the cardinal sin of screenwriting. Your viewer and your reader must gain the same information at the same time or you’re not doing your job as a screenwriter.

  Action Description Is Storytelling

  Yes, we’re discussing the language of describing visuals, but the visuals are in the constant service of story. Your language must multitask to achieve several goals simultaneously. The sought-after efficiency that allows your language to accomplish all of this and make it look easy is what makes action description deceptively challenging.

  Consider sentence fragments. Used properly, a fragment can save space and move the story along, but what really matters is the storytelling. There will be times in your script where sentence fragments can capture a subjective, kinetic experience, like in an action scene.

  The Bourne Identity uses fragments in a novel way and style that goes beyond the Lethal Weapon example earlier in the chapter:

  COP #1 -- he’s falling -- catching the bench -- trying to fight back but -- THE MAN -- like a machine -- just unbelievably fast -- three jackhammer punches -- down-down- down and -- COP #1 -- head slammed into the bench -- blood spraying from his nose -- he’s out cold and --

  What matters is the precision and clarity of story, not grammar. Everything is storytelling! By internalizing this principle, you can solve problems and develop a great action description style.

  To that end, let’s look at the multiple functions of action description in telling your story.

  Initial Function

  At the beginning of a scene, the primary function of action description is to establish the setting and how the characters are oriented in space.

  Screenwriters don’t have the luxury that a novelist has to describe every element of the setting. Whereas “beat-up shack” or “rundown trailer” offer efficiency and would be preferred to a three-line description, a more productive approach would be to think in terms of synecdoche, where a part stands for a whole. Find a slice of the reality that paints a bigger picture in the viewer’s mind.

  The beat-up trailer is covered with flecks of peeling paint.

  The specifics here create a better sense of what we see. One way to make static images more dynamic is to challenge yourself to capture a sense of movement in your description even when it does not seem immediately warranted.

  Flecks of peeling paint from the trailer scatter in the wind.

  Blocking

  Just as we don’t have time or space to describe every element of the setting, we also don’t have time to portray every single movement a character makes.

  Blocking is a description of the character’s movements. Other than descriptions of practical actions, such as characters entering or exiting, the essential movements that require description will correspond with a character’s inner mental state, i.e., the beats of the scene.

  A change in the intention of the character that isn’t telegraphed by dialogue or a change in the state of the environment will almost always warrant a line of action description.

  Remember the Good Will Hunting therapy scene in which Will hurls a litany of insults at Sean? No blocking is needed in the scene until Will stumbles upon a way to get under his skin. When he finally does, here is Sean’s reaction:

  Sean is walking slowly towards Will.

  In the movie, Sean removes his glasses, which is possibly a clearer foreshadowing of the ensuing fight:

  In a flash, Sean has Will by the throat. Will is helpless.

  Context

  Context is the invisible glue that holds your scenes together. It allows leeway in your action description and style, including the usage of expressive language,

  By building on the preestablished world and what the audience or reader already knows, you c
an avoid superfluous description and focus on descriptions of images that propel the story.

  The overall set of circumstances—the memory of previous descriptions layered throughout the entire script—has a cumulative effect that becomes indispensable to a tight and prolific prose style. For instance, your setups for scenes will become shorter and shorter as your story progresses. This “memory” is the context that allows your action description to multitask and, say, sneak in mood and tone early in a scene.

  If we establish that the characters will be attending a funeral, then we are not obligated to specify every mundane detail. You may choose to be elliptical and creative with your images: silhouette of dead tree, gravestones, a line of black cars.

  Consider the moment in L.A. Confidential after Dudley Smith shows Bud White the photos of Exley sleeping with Bud’s girlfriend. We anticipate Bud White will enter the precinct to violently confront Exley.

  Here is how a bland description of the action might begin the scene:

  Bud shows up behind the door, which creates a shadow through the glazed window. He comes out from behind the door. Exley sees that Bud is there. Bud enters the room.

  If Bud reveals himself, obviously the characters and an audience member, even if he had just walked into the theater, would see this. So language such as “Exley sees Bud show up” is completely superfluous. The same space could capture something meaningful and intriguing.

  Let’s consider what we know. We should expect it to be Bud’s shadow because Dudley Smith put Exley and White on a collision course based on his understanding of White’s impulsive and violent nature. As White reviews the pictures, Smith even adds that he wouldn’t want to be Exley.

  This is more than enough context for us to assume that a shadow on a door should be Bud, so we would cut this sentence of flat description:

  Bud shows up behind the door.

  We have some leeway to try a more intriguing and expressive image that even incorporates movement:

  Over Exley’s shoulder, a shadow looms large on the glazed window.

  Now we can focus on language that better conveys the emotion in the moment. Even if he doesn’t suspect that Bud is on his way to confront him, Exley could be impacted by the shadow:

  Exley turns and notices the growing shadow. His eyes widen.

  Or if you want to reveal Bud before Exley reacts, let’s get rid of the most banal line possible:

  Bud enters the room.

  … And try something like this:

  The door flies open to reveal Bud White.

  The physical reality of the actual event is established, so we can replace some of the bland description above with a small detail that tracks Exley’s motion and emotion:

  Exley stumbles backwards in fear.

  Enough information has been layered into the story at this moment that we can live without the perfunctory details in our original hypothetical description.

  The accumulated setups will establish a context so that you have freedom to explore expressive visuals that do the double duty of establishing the physical reality but also telling the story:

  Exley engrossed in records. A shadow looms on the glazed window. Exley turns toward it. His eyes widen. The door CRASHES open to reveal Bud White. Exley stumbles backwards.

  The second excerpt is more visual. It creates suspense. It tracks the emotion of the character. And it orchestrates a surprise reveal.

  Context allows your words to be expressive while still communicating the events of the story. However, there is an additional way that your language must multitask: it must also describe the correct action and images. The answer to “how do you choose the correct actions and images?” comes down to story, so let’s take another look at a principle we have visited and revisited.

  Setup

  While you are describing the essential movements of character, addressing mood and tone, and finding expressionistic and clever language, you must simultaneously pull off the ultimate multitask. In addition to everything else that your action description is doing from this list, it must also foreshadow the surprises that will come later in the scene.

  All surprise comes from setup. If you ask yourself, “What surprises does this scene bring?” and “What is the climax?” the answers reveal the setups you need to plant in the beginning of the scene.

  Let’s consider a tool table in a basement with a window above it. What will happen later affects how we need to establish the space. On the left is potential action description that describes the tool bench, and on the right is the scene’s eventual surprise.

  SETUP NOW

  SURPRISE LATER

  Dirty window casts pale light on some old RUSTY tools.

  Someone will use a METAL tool to break a window to escape.

  Glints of light bounce off the EDGES of shiny saws, knives, and picks. Streak of dried blood below window.

  Psychopath will torture victim with SHARP tools from bench.

  The corkboard behind the tool bench has an outline for every imaginable tool. All the tools lie on the table in a MUDDLED HEAP.

  Will reveal disorganized SLOB

  Every tool is IN ITS PLACE on the corkboard, which has an OUTLINE FOR EVERY ITEM.

  Broad comedy about overly meticulous therapist with OCD

  Each of these descriptions fulfills most of the lower-level functions of establishing the space. But notice how a different “slice” of the details sets up a completely different surprise. The initial action description for a scene is like a mini-opening image for the entire movie. It subtly hints at all that is to come.

  During your writing process, if you make any changes to the structure, concept, or reversals in a scene, you will have to change the strategy of how you introduce it. If, in the first draft of your scene, the villain is shot by a police sniper from a building across the street, the fact that it’s raining might be introduced with this emphasis:

  The rain barrages the window, making it almost impossible to see even to the buildings across the street.

  Once you commit to your specific choice, it might inspire you to use the decreased visibility as an obstacle in the scene. Maybe the protagonist, who is being held hostage by the villain, is in increased danger because the sniper can’t get a clear shot at the villain until the rain stops.

  However, if the new draft of the scene culminates in a new twist in which the villain slips and falls in the rain while trying to run away, the scene might be introduced with a different focus:

  The rain splashes on the glistening patio tile outside the sliding glass door.

  Do you see the power you have in what you choose to set up?

  Density and Detail

  One of the challenges every screenwriter struggles with is how much detail is necessary. The principles of storytelling and story density we’ve been discussing should guide you toward an effective balance of clarity and efficiency. Storytelling will dictate which details are essential and must be included. Story density will remind you how much space you have for them.

  We just saw that there may be several clever and pithy ways to visually orient us in a scene. However, the best ones will contain setup that hints at the scene’s eventual surprise and reversal.

  Then, your decision regarding how much detail you should include comes down to story density and an intuitive sense of whether a detail is worth its space on the page.

  In Good Will Hunting, when Sean pins Will’s head against the bookshelf at the end of their therapy session, there is one and exactly one book title in literal and figurative focus: I’m Okay, You’re Okay. Although this detail is not in the script, its inclusion would have been justified because it is a substantial contribution. Not only does it ironically juxtapose with the “not-so-feel-good” therapy we are witnessing, it is a small visual joke that lets us know the filmmakers are well aware of what they’re doing with the tone and actions.

  The office of a stuffy therapist might be described with this sentence:

&nbs
p; Thick, dusty, canonical tomes of western psychology line the shelves.

  Let’s consider adding some specifics to see what that gets us:

  On the shelves, various books including Two Essays on Analytical Psychology by C.G. Jung, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle towards Self-Realization by Karen Horney, and The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by R.D. Laing.

  In four times as much space, besides putting the reader to sleep, what have we gained? Not enough to warrant this expansion or elaboration. If you decided it was important to emphasize that the doctor’s specialty was psychoanalysis, then try something like this.

  Thick canonical tomes of psychoanalysis, half of them written by Freud, line the shelves.

  If your film is absurd or a broad comedy, expanding the description of the books on the shelf might be an opportunity to set the tone of the movie, clarify the character, and show off your comedic voice. However, you can’t just list three random titles.

  A book called I’m Not Yelling, I’m Italian would be appropriate if your protagonist is a hotheaded anger management counselor, but not if his character flaw is narcissism. If the therapist’s issue is egotism, then these titles would be on-point:

  On the bookshelf next to certificates of achievement and some shiny trophies are several psychological tomes including Solipsism and I, There Is no I in Team, but There Should Be, and And, Another Thing about Me…

  The books are thematically related, indicative of the character, and build to a mini-punch line. The fives lines of the paragraph are structured like a story and tell a joke, and with fewer words than the long, dry passage above that included reference to Freud and Jung, giving the audience more emotional satisfaction, in this case, enjoyment.

  Look for places that might warrant expansion, i.e., where you can tell a story within your story. If you decide to add more, then your new story must follow all of the principles of storytelling. There should be unity, escalation, and a build to a surprise.

  What Is Your Medium?