Reader Question: When writing do you paint a visual picture through your action lines?
Interesting timing for this question, Janna, because just a couple of weeks ago, I ran my first session of a brand new Craft class called Scene Description Spotlight: Express Your Voice. One of the points of emphasis in our week long time together was this: Since movies are primarily a visual medium, strong scene description reflects that.
In Lecture 4, we looked at the concept of imagematic writing. Here is an excerpt:
One of the simple pleasures I have discovered later in my life is poetry. I try to read a poem each day for inspiration, not only for the content and substance of the words, but also the actual usage of the words themselves. Word choices. Combinations of words. Verbs. Descriptors. Rhythm. Pace. Feel. Tone.
Consider these excerpts:
It hits the floor in a wet lump like yesterday’s road kill.----Rivers of sparkling traffic-jammed headlights bleed through
the checkered circuits of urban sprawl far below.----They pivot with sharp synchronized movements, as gravel
crunches under their perfectly polished boots.
Actually these excerpts are not from poems. They come from screenplays. The first is taken from a 2014 Black List script Beauty Pageant, written by Shea and Evan Mirzai. The second from another 2014 Black List script Dodge, written by Scott Wascha. And the last example comes from Catherine the Great, written by Kristina Lauren Anderson, which topped the 2014 Black List, the #1 most popular unproduced script in Hollywood.
As soon as I began to read poetry on a regular basis, I realized something: Screenplay scene description is more like poetry than prose.
Poems often deal in the moment — a boy watching a moth, an old man splayed on a porch chair, a single drop of rain trickling down a window — and search for meaning in it. And what are screenplays but a series of meaningful moments played out in the present tense?
Moreover poems can depict a scene, but equally as important they convey the mood and tone of the moment, making it become that much more alive and vivid in the imagination of the reader.
Consider the poem “The Spiral Notebook” by Ted Kooser:
The bright wire rolls like a porpoise
in and out of the calm blue sea
of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper
twisting in and out of his dreams,
for it could hold a record of dreams
if you wanted to buy it for that
though it seems to be meant for
more serious work, with its
college-ruled lines and its cover
that states in emphatic white letters,
5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems
a part of growing old is no longer
to have five subjects, each
demanding an equal share of attention,
set apart by brown cardboard dividers,
but instead to stand in a drugstore
and hang on to one subject
a little too long, like this notebook
you weigh in your hands, passing
your fingers over its surfaces
as if it were some kind of wonder.
My musings about scene description as poetry led me to invent a word: Imagematic. Using words, like poetry, to create strong, visual images. That is imagematic writing.
How to bring imagematic writing to scene description? Three touchstones:
• Verbs
• Descriptors
• Poetics
Verbs: This is Narrative Voice relating the active nature of the story’s present tense.
Descriptors: This is Narrative Voice capturing key visuals happening in the moment.
Poetics: This is Narrative Voice using words to evoke a sense of mood and tone.
Thus when we consider imagematic writing, we can think of Narrative Voice as, what else — a poet. As always, such stylistic choices are fundamentally connected to the specific type of story we are telling and the genre’s impact on our Narrative Voice, but there are ample reasons for you to look at scene description more as poetry than prose.
Circling back to your question, Janna, you nailed it: Paint visuals. Create pictures. Use active verbs, vivid descriptors, and poetics over prose in your scene description to conjure up images — your movie! — in the mind of your script’s reader.
Anyone interested in elevating their visual writing should consider taking my Core IV: Style class. It’s a 1-week online course that starts on August 31.
Beyond that, read scripts! Pay attention to how pro writers handle scene description, noting how visual their writing is. There are over 100 movie scripts you can download here — free and legal.