Tips For Tuesday - Description, part 1

In this next series of tips, I’m going to talk to you about writing “description”.

I realize that a lot of these might seem elementary for some of you, but my experience has told me that even writers with a few scripts under their belts slip up from time to time. That applies to what I’m going to talk about today.

First of all, description is one of the three elements of a scene. The first is the scene heading (often called a slug line). And the second is dialogue, which is the only one of those three elements not required in every written scene.

So what is “description”? Simply put, description is what the audience will see and hear as it is taking place on the screen. This post is about what doesn’t belong in description as much as what does.

For instance, I often see writers put history or back story in their description. You know, they’ll describe their character and tell us that he was the captain of the football team and dated a cheerleader back in high school. That’s nice, except it doesn’t belong in description. Why? Because we can’t see or hear that. It’s back story. It happened to the character before the start of the film. It’s not taking place on the screen right now.

If that part of a character’s history is essential to the story you’re telling, it’s going to have to come out some other way. You can’t just write it in your description. In a future post, we can talk about how to get back story in front of the audience. But for now, know that you can’t simply write it in description. If you do, you'll give yourself away as an amateur.

Another mistake writers sometimes make is writing in description what a character is thinking. Again, no! Remember: description is only what we can see or hear taking place on the screen. We can’t see or hear what people are thinking. Therefore, it doesn’t belong in description.

That's not to say that what a character is thinking isn’t important. It just means that you can’t simply tell us in description. Telling the reader a character’s thoughts is perfectly fine in a novel. In fact, that’s what that form of storytelling is best suited for - narrative and internal dialogue, meaning thoughts. Film is moving pictures. A story told in images and action.

As with back story, I will tell you in a future episode how you can show an audience what your character is thinking without simply writing it in description. Until then, just know that you can’t write thoughts into your description.

Similarly, you cannot tell us in description what a character feels. Once more, that is internal. We can’t see it or hear it. It’s inside and therefore can’t be shown on the screen.

Or can it?

There’s a difference between thoughts and feelings in this regard. Namely, you can’t tell us that your character is “sad”. That’s a feeling. However, you can tell us that your character “looks sad”. That is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because any competent actor can show a “feeling”.

The same doesn’t apply to thoughts. There isn’t a way for an actor to “play” a thought. They can look to be deep in thought, but you can’t write what that thought is because thoughts aren’t as easily expressed facially or physically. There are methods by which you can convey what a character is thinking. But they go beyond simply “looking” a particular thought.

In sum, when writing description, only tell us what can be seen or heard and what is taking place in the moment. Forget history, thoughts and internal dialogue.

(Please note that all of these tips are available as podcasts at the itunes store.  Just search under my name.)