115 words for “walks” and 90 words for “looks”

Did you know that in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is no dialogue in the first 25 minutes, nor in the last 23 minutes. Indeed, there are around 88 dialogue-free minutes in the movie.

That’s a good reminder of perhaps the most fundamental fact regarding cinema: It is primarily a visual medium. Therefore as screenwriters, we need to think visually… and write visually.

Take the verb “walks”. Why use such a pedestrian word in scene description? Why not amble, shuffle, staggers, paces, speeds, lurches, leaps, skips, bounds, sprints, stumbles?

Same things with “looks”. Why not ogles, gapes, stares, gawks, squints, spies, inspects, surveys, peeks, peers?

On and on and on, there are so many better, more active and visual verbs than “walks” and “looks”.

Here’s a pro tip from screenwriter Larry Ferguson (Beverly Hills Cop II, The Hunt for Red October):

There was a girl who came to me with her first screenplay. It was a good first shot. I gave her some advice. I told her, ‘I want you to go home and take a yellow Marks-A-Lot and highlight every verb in this 120-page screenplay, and then I want you to read them out loud and ask yourself, ‘Can I find a stronger verb.’ Characters should never enter. They should storm in, they should skulk in, they should tremble in. These are the only chances you have to create visual pictures in people’s brains.

To help you out, GITS reader Alan Donahue was kind enough to put together these free PDFs: 115 Words for “walks” and 90 Words for “looks”. Download and use!

Movies — and by extension screenplays — are primarily a visual medium. Check your pages for every verb, especially “walks” and “looks”, and replace with stronger, more active and visual choices.

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