ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses in detail and through the history of screenwriting practices the importance of “writing sound” into our screenplays. Sound is much more than dialogue and it can in fact be an integral part of the story and of the narrative structure. It is an understatement to say that screenwriters rely too much on dialogue to convey information, to move the action forward and tell a story. We argue that writers should be spending the same amount of time developing the “soundtrack” as they did creating the “visual track”. Sound and images are different means of expression and are more interesting when they are used concurrently to complement each other. The relationship between what we see and what we hear – between sound and image – is explored and encouraged through a great variety of examples dating back to, yes, silent cinema. Back then, the early film-makers found visual ways to convey the still unrecordable synchronous sound to be seen and thus “experienced” by the spectators.
It is no accident that this chapter is called “Writing sound” and not “Writing film dialogue”. We encourage screenwriters to write dialogue last, after having exhausted all other possible cinematic storytelling modes of expression.
