ABSTRACT

Screenplays are written for two audiences: the Hollywood script reader first, the movie viewing audience second. To succeed with a script, to get it placed, purchased or produced, a writer must successfully engage the reader. In this chapter, we will study how a screenplay’s descriptive action must be as specific and succinct as possible but also dramatic enough to pull the reader into the story in an immediate, even visceral, way. In addition, the writer must tell the reader what he or she is actually seeing in every scene as explicitly, efficiently and dramatically as possible. In this chapter, various approaches to writing strong description will be examined in several successful projects, including the features American Beauty and Big Fish as well as the pilots for the television series Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.