SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS #11 SHOW CHARACTER - DON'T TELL

A simple one today - but for some reason, it's an area that many writers fail at... 

We've all heard the maxim - Show Don't Tell.

But what does it really mean?

Telling is when the writer plainly states what the actor's emotions are.

Michelle feels sad.

John is happy. 

It's the simplest way of conveying an emotion on the page. 

The problem with this kind of writing is that the audience will be watching your film on a screen. They don't have access to the screenplay. 

But my actor will know how to show the emotion - the audience can tell from that.

Maybe.

Odds are the actor will go with a rote performance - they'll change their performance to try and reflect the emotion that's being asked of them.

This CAN work - but you run the risk of phony emotions. 

Emotions are best conveyed through context. 

You put a character in a terrifying position - say - trapped in their car teetering on the edge of a bridge, over a 300-foot-deep canyon - and you'll find that writing - John is really scared - is completely moot. 

We know just how John is feeling because of the context of the situation. 

Your first step is to setup the emotion through context. 

The audience should KNOW intrinsically how the character is feeling simply by the scenario of events that surround them. 

But what if my character's emotion is different to the expected emotion?

Great question.

We deal with this by SHOWING the REACTION to that scenario. 

This is where we get into SHOWING rather than TELLING.

Let's take that car teetering on the edge of a bridge about to plummet to the bottom of a canyon.

You've setup your context.

The expected emotion is TERRIFIED. 

But terrified is a broad canvas. What kind of terrified is your character going to be?

1) Terrified - panicked.
2) Terrified - together.

Let's look at how to SHOW these two different versions of the same emotion...

1) Terrified - panicked.

Rather than write - John is terrified and panicked... 

You would show John get out of his seat belt in a rush, try to open the door - but it's locked - he crawls to the back of the car quickly and kicks desperately at the rear window until it shatters then he dives out. 


2) Terrified - composed.

Rather than write - John is terrified but composed...

Try... John takes a second to breathe - think - how best to deal with this situation. He slowly releases his seat-belt - wary of his every move. He gently tries the door, won't open. He carefully climbs into the back seat, moving like a sloth so as to not upset the equilibrium of the car...

Of course - it doesn't have to be that your character is a variation of the expected emotion.

Their emotion could be the opposite...

3) Ambivalent.

Michelle looks at the canyon below, strangely fascinated by just how close to death she is.  She lights a cigarette, grabs her cell phone and dials a friend... 'Hey buddy, you won't believe where I am and what just happened...'

Ultimately it's up to you, the writer, to decide what emotion you want to convey, then when you've decided on that - express that emotion through the REACTION your character has to the CONTEXT of the SCENARIO you have setup.

THE TAKEAWAY

Go to the script you're working on at the moment. 

Go scene by scene.

Write down what the context of each scene is. 
Then write down the broad emotion that would be expected of that scenario.
Now decide - is my character going to react in an expected way or unexpected?

EXPECTED - which type of that expected emotion will it be?

HAPPY - What kind of happy?
SAD - What kind of sad?
ANGRY - What kind of angry?

Etc...

Now SHOW that emotion through your character's reaction to the scenario in the scene.

OR...

If you're not going with the expected emotion...

Decide on the UNEXPECTED emotion you want your character to express, then...

...SHOW that emotion through your character's reaction to the scenario in the scene.

SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS #10 OVERWRITING

Overwriting is another immensely common error I see in amateur screenplays.

The medium of screenwriting is very different from all other forms of writing.

The vast majority of people come to learn about writing from reading. 

What do we read?

Novels.

In terms of the style of writing, novels are the antithesis of screenplays. 

In novels there really are no rules. You can write a stream-of-consciousness story and have an award winning novel on your hands. 

If you write stream-of-consciousness in a screenplay you will be laughed at. 

(Unless you're David Lynch). 

The first major tip toward changing your writing style to suit the screenwriting medium is to...

ONLY WRITE WHAT YOU CAN SEE ON THE SCREEN.

That gets rid of a lot of floral writing right there. 

The reason for this should be obvious.

When writing a screenplay, you are putting down visual images in the written form. 

That's all a screenplay is.

There's a maxim in screenwriting that goes - if it's not on the screen, it's not on the page. 

This means you can't write what a character is thinking, because, unlike a novel you can't SEE thoughts on the screen.

Here's a test to do...

Go through the script you're working on and re-write EVERY SCENE so that you only write what can be seen on the screen.

The vast majority of people that do this exercise will be surprised by the amount of TELLING they were doing. 

What do you mean by TELLING?

Telling is where, you, the writer, simply TELL the reader the way the character is feeling. 

John is angry. 

How does ‘John is angry’ play on screen?

Unless you have a really talented actor, you're going to have a cheesy performance. 

Now, think about how to SHOW anger. 

Firstly you need to decide what kind of anger you want to show.

Here's another tip - KEEP IT SUBTLE.

CHEESY is synonymous with TOO MUCH.

While in real life you might yell and slam a door if you're really angry - in the world of film - everything is accentuated by a factor of 10. 

So if you write a character yelling and slamming doors, when filmed and put up on the big screen it's going to come across as CHEESY, OVER THE TOP, HAMMED UP, you choose the expression, you know what I'm saying.

If you want to SHOW John being angry, try subtly. 

Instead of yelling and slamming that door, perhaps he simply walks out on someone mid-sentence. 

Think how subtle, yet powerful, the act of walking away from someone mid-sentence is. 

For every over-the-top expression of emotion, there is a subtle alternative. 

ALWAYS go with the subtle option. 

Okay, so you've gone through your script and re-written every scene so that you are only writing what can be seen on screen. 

Here's the general exception to that principle...

It's okay to TELL when you are FIRST INTRODUCING a character. 

That said, keep it quick. Don't go into a three paragraph TELL about the character, keep it lean - JOHN (30s), quick-tempered, ill-fitting clothes, overweight.

We can see two of those three attributes. We can see his clothes, and we can see his weight.

We can't see his quick temper. 

So you need to SHOW us his quick temper as soon as you can.

Put John in a scene where his temper flares up quickly. 

This is another common mistake I see. The writer tells us something about the character - then fails to show us. 

If you don't show that character's personality trait, then the audience will never know about it. 

OKAY...

Moving on... 

I’ve written about START LATE, FINISH EARLY before. 

Simply put...

1) KNOW what the goal of your scene is. 

2) START the scene as close to that goal as possible.

3) AS SOON as the goal is achieved, end the scene.

Here's another takeaway...

Go to the script you're working on now.

Go through every scene. Write down the GOAL or the OBJECTIVE of the scene. Write down WHY you're writing that scene. Then look at the writing before that goal is achieved, and after it. How much can you cut out either side of the goal before the scene doesn't make sense?

Trim as much as you can. 

I recently did coverage on a 65 page TV pilot for a great writer. 

Once he had made the suggested trims I've outlined here, he chopped the page-count down to 55 pages. 

It gave him an extra 10 pages to fit more story in. 

Screenwriting real estate is rare and precious. 

Use it wisely. 

Next trim tip is...

NEVER EVER show a character traveling - unless during the travel we learn something important about the story.

There's macro traveling and micro traveling. 

MACRO TRAVELING

Say, your character is in England and she needs to get to the USA.

You could show your character...

Packing.

Getting to the airport.

Getting on the plane.

Take off.

Mid-flight.

Landing.

Getting to their destination in the USA.

OR...

You could show them phone a travel agent.

Then in the next scene, they're in their destination in the USA. 

The only time you would want to show any of the interim travel scenes, is if something important about the story happens mid-transit.

Say, they meet a significant character mid-flight.

But if that's the case, you should cut straight from the phone call to the travel agent to the moment that they're mid-flight and meet that significant character. 

MICRO TRAVELING...

Micro traveling is when you show a character move through a door, or walk down a hallway, or cross the room to do something.

Think about these micro-movements - are they necessary in conveying the object of the scene?

Most likely no.

If you want to see a movie that has far too much micro traveling - watch Transcendence (2014). Almost every scene in that film starts with a character walking for about 10 feet, before they get to where they need to be. 

One or two scenes like this are fine.

But when EVERY SCENE has a 10-30 second chunk of time at the start where we're just waiting for something to happen - it slows the movie waaaaay down. 

EVERY SCENE SHOULD MOVE THE STORY FORWARD.

What does that mean?

Simply put, if we don't learn something NEW in a scene, you haven't moved the story forward. 

Here's another great trim tip... 

Go to the script you're working on now.

Read each scene.

Write down the NEW INFORMATION that each scene has.

If you have a scene that doesn't tell us anything NEW.

CUT IT.

It doesn't matter if that scene has a great piece of dialogue or a really well-executed moment. 

You need to cut it.

But don't throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Save that great piece of dialogue and/or that great moment and use it in a different part of the script. 

AVOID USING METAPHORS AND SIMILIES.

That said - please note that I write AVOID – not - DON'T USE.

The reason for this is that a well-placed simile or metaphor can really add some personality to your script.

Think of metaphors and similes as sugar.

A little bit of sugar tastes amazing.

A cup full of sugar makes you sick.

My final tip for you to avoid overwriting is...

Once you have applied all the tips I've written about here, go through each sentence you have written and re-write using fewer words.

ALMOST every single sentence you have written can be trimmed by 10% if you just put your mind to it. 

Say you have a 10-word sentence... is it possible to say the same thing in 8 words?

Sometimes this might mean fusing sentences together.

You might have an entire sentence devoted to describing one action.

Then another sentence devoted to describing another action.

Is it possible to bring those actions together in one sentence?

If you do try this tip - be careful you don't create long paragraphs.

Remember, the aim of the game is to write a powerful story in a concise, and easy to read way. 

  

SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS #9 SYNTAX AND SPELLING

I do a lot of coverage of screenplays these days. I see a lot of common mistakes.

The following are a series of concise screenwriting tips.

#8 SYNTAX AND SPELLING

If there's one MAIN thing that separates the amateurs from the professionals it's spelling and syntax.

When I read a new script and I see spelling and syntax errors in the first paragraph I know right away that this writer hasn't put in the time and effort to spell-check their script. 

It really seems like a no-brainer, but the amount of spelling and syntax errors I see in non-professional scripts is astounding. 

The thing with spelling and syntax is that, unlike the creativity of writing, it's the one aspect of a screenplay that EVERYONE - no matter their creative abilities - should be able to do well. 

Here're some tips to reduce the spelling and syntax errors in your script. 

SPECIALISE YOUR PASSES.

What do I mean by that?

When you have 'finished' your script and you read it through looking for ‘errors’, you're not focusing on ONE particular aspect of your script.

If anything should pop up, be it a structure error, or a character error, or dialogue, or any of the myriad aspects that comprise a script, you make the change. 

This means that you're focusing on EVERYTHING at once.

This is a sure-fire way to overlook many mistakes. 

When your script is 'finished' and you're about ready to send it out to people, I highly recommend you do a series of about 10 passes of your script focusing on ONE ASPECT ONLY in each pass. 

10 passes? That's a lot!

Actually - no - it's not. If you're really serious about screenwriting, I'd suggest you do a pass of your script focusing on EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL ASPECT you can think of. 

One of those passes needs to be a spelling pass. 

Read through your script and ONLY focus on spelling. 

You'll find that it means reading your script in a very different way. 

Read it slower.

Focus on each word. Did you spell each word correctly?

The spell-check in Final Draft is appallingly bad. 

I recommend you copy and paste your script into WORD and use the spell check there.

It will pick up far more errors than Final Draft.

Next, once you have made those changes, copy and paste the document into grammarly.com

It's free to create an account - you don't need to register or pay anything.

You'll find that grammarly.com will pick up and point out a whole bunch of different errors.

But be careful - both these programs will suggest you make changes that are incorrect. 

Ultimately you have to look at the errors Word and grammarly.com detect and decide if the changes fit your script. 

There are some really common mistakes that you can go through and check yourself. Do a pass for each one of the following…

Their/They're/There
Its/It's
Your/You're

Use the find/replace function in WORD to search for these words.

Why use Word? Why not use Final Draft?

Because - for some strange reason - Final Draft likes to ignore some words. 

It's just a bug in FD. 

FD 10 may be better - but it still misses words.

WORD (or a similar word processing program) is far less likely to just randomly skip words.

Now that you've done these spelling passes, here's another tip for spelling...

START HALF WAY THROUGH and do a spelling pass.

Huh? Why do that?

Invariably, the first 50 pages of your script are read almost twice as much as the latter half. 

Why?

Because the human attention span finds it hard to deal with a two/three-hour pass, which is what it should roughly take you to read a script. 

How many times have you opened your script and started reading from page 1, only to find yourself running out of steam around page 50?

You get distracted, do something else, then you come back the next day, and just to get context you read from page 1 again. 

Trust me - the majority of spelling mistakes I see come after page 50. 

GIVE THE SECOND HALF OF YOUR SCRIPT AS MUCH LOVE AS THE FIRST HALF!

Another spelling check that I highly recommend is to go to fiverr.com and look for a highly rated copy-editor. You can find some reasonably priced ones on there.

Pay the fee, have your script copy-edited. 

Now the great thing about this is you don't have to do this with every script.

If you do it just once or twice, then you will learn what your common mistakes are.

Perhaps you tend to over-use commas (like I do). 

Perhaps you have a tendency to always write 'towards' - with an 's' - when you should be writing toward - without an 's'.

There's likely a dozen common mistakes that you're making without being aware of them. 

Once you have these mistakes pointed out to you, you can improve your writing on a technical level manifold. 


SYNTAX....

Syntax is the way you structure your sentence. 

The word order of your sentence.

Foreign language writers struggle the most with this for obvious reasons, but I see a lot of native English speaking writers struggling with it. 

Rather than go into ALL the syntax rules of the English language - of which there are many - here's a simple principle to apply to your script that will improve your syntax.

KEEP YOUR SENTENCES SHORT AND SIMPLE. 

If you have multiple things going on in a sentence - break them up into smaller chunks. 

Example...

John scrambles for the gun, picks it up, turns, aims, but Michelle already has the drop on him, she lunges at him, driving the knife deep into his stomach before he has the chance to pull the trigger.


There's a lot going on there. 

Let's break it up... 


John scrambles for the gun. Picks it up. Turns. Aims. 

Michelle lunges. Drives the knife deep into his stomach.

John collapses. He hasn't even fired a bullet.  

THE EXACT SAME THING has been described here - but the second one is much cleaner and simpler to read.

If you're not sure about all the syntax rules of the English language - break your long sentences up into smaller chunks - you're far less likely to make mistakes if each sentence is six words or less.

SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS #8 POV

 I do a lot of coverage of screenplays these days. I see a lot of common mistakes.

The following are a series of concise screenwriting tips.

#8 POV

This is a really important one today.

POV - point of view is something that a lot of screenwriters and directors know little about.

Let's start with the basics.

What is POV?

It's the character through which we experience the film. 

Sounds simple enough right?

Let's look at WHY POV is important.

For a film to be successful there needs to be a vicarious connection made between the main character and the viewer.

Why just one main character? Why not several characters?

Simple, each person watching the film is ONE person. 

Your job is to get your viewer to identify with the main character.

It is much harder to get your viewer to identify with multiple characters. 

That said - it is possible to have multiple protagonists - watch Paul Haggis' CRASH. (2005). This is a film with multiple protagonists with whom we identify. 

But here's the thing - Paul Haggis is an incredibly talented writer - so he's able to pull this multiple protagonist story off - the majority of multiple protagonist stories don't work simply because the viewer doesn't know who they're supposed to identify with.

UNTIL you're an uber-successful writer - stick with trying to create a connection between your viewer and your main character.

A key way of doing this is by telling your story through your main character's POV only.

What does it mean to write a scene from one character's POV?

Start by imagining the scene from an omnipotent POV. 

You can see everywhere and everything. 

Play the scene through in your mind.

Okay - good start.

NOW - imagine that very same scene - but as your main character would experience it. 

There are certain things that your main character (MC) can see, and certain things they cannot. There are things they can know, and things they can't know.

You're already starting to create a POV.

You create a POV by EXCLUDING information and visual elements that your MC can't see or know about.

That's step one. 

How to write the scene to create a sense of POV.

If you have three characters in a scene (or however many you want) - you start by introducing your MC. 

EXAMPLE...

Let's say MICHELLE is our MC.

In this scene, Michelle meets DONNA and MIKE and argues about a party that went awry last night. 

Here's how NOT to write it ...

EXT. PARK - PARK BENCH - DAY

Donna and Mike sit on a park bench. Donna has a black-eye that she holds an ice-pack on. Mike sips from a hip-flask of vodka, still drunk.

Donna and Mike watch Michelle approach, they whisper to each other.

DONNA
(whispers)
Shit, here comes the drama queen.

MIKE
(whispers)
I can't stand her, after what she did last night, I don't even want to talk to her.


Let's leave the scene there and look at what's wrong with it.

This scene is told from Donna and Mike's POV.

Why is that?

Because we introduce Donna and Mike first. The camera is with them to start with. It is Donna and Mike watching Michelle approach.

2) We can hear what Donna and Mike are whispering. If this scene were from Michelle's POV - we wouldn't be able to hear what they're saying. 

3) Location - we're at the park bench in the park, where Donna and Mike are. Not Michelle.

NOW... let's write it from Michelle's POV.

EXT. PARK - DAY

Michelle walks through the park, toward a park bench where Donna and Mike sit.

Donna has an ice pack on her black-eye, while Mike sips from a hip-flask, still drunk. 

As Michelle approaches, Donna and Mike whisper to each other, what they say is unheard.

Let's leave the scene there.

Here're the notable changes that make this scene told from Michelle's POV.


1) The change in location. We're now in the PARK with Michelle. The camera has changed position. We're following Michelle as she walks toward the park bench. 

2) We DON'T hear what Donna and Mike whisper - (exclusion of information).

3) We introduce Michelle BEFORE Donna and Mike.

It is possible to write an entire film from your MC's POV. 

The best film that does this is MY WEEK WITH MARILYN. 

In this film we come to meet Marilyn Monroe through the eyes of a runner on a film set. 

At first we see Marilyn across a crowded room.

Then later we move up to saying hello to her within the company of several others.

Then later we have a private audience with her in a public place.

Then later we end up having a private audience in a private place.

We then go skinny dipping with her. Just us and her.

We then fall in love with her.

We then have out heart broken by her.


This is a very general summary of the progression of that film - but the story is made all the more real because of the progression of the POV. 

We - the audience - meet and experience Marilyn through the eyes of the MC.

There is NO SCENE in that film where the MC is not present.

Even when the MC is passive and it's other characters speaking, the MC is present, and we the audience HEAR the others speak from the MC’s POV.

So there's a lesson for you.

If your MC is passive in a scene - that's okay - just don't exclude them from the scene - include them and tell the scene from their POV - simply listening to what others are saying. 

The more you maintain POV - the stronger your script will read.

It's not always possible for your MC to be present in a scene. 

It's not always possible to tell a scene from your MC’s POV.

The only time you should switch POV is when you go to your SHADOW'S POV to see what they're up to. 

Look at DIE HARD.

We often leave McClane's POV and go over to Hans Gruber's POV. 

This is fine - as it would be logically impossible to show Gruber's scenes from McClane's POV. 

As a rule of thumb - try to tell 80% of your film from your MC's POV.

ONLY ever switch POV when there is no logical way to tell the scene from your MC's POV.

THE TAKEAWAY

Go to the script you're working on now.

Go through scene by scene and make sure that you tell each scene from your MC's POV.

Secondly - go through the scenes where your MC is not present and ask yourself - can I re-write this scene with the MC present without it being illogical for the plot. 

If you can get your MC into that scene - even if they're passive and just listening - do it.

Your script will read much stronger for it.