On Language in Scripts (Part I)

Scenes and Narrative

Dialogue and Description

Dialogue and description are the two functions the words in your script serve. How you choose to describe a scene and what you have your characters say are where your reader lives. They are the two elements that define the experience of your screenplay for the reader.

Writing Dialogue and Description is Writing a Screenplay

Screenplays are not literature. They are directions for people to make motion pictures. The descriptions not only inform the reader what they are seeing. It informs the Department Heads what they will need to realize your story.

What kinds of locations will be needed? What kinds of lights? What kind of sets will need to be built and dressed? What kinds of cameras, lenses and lighting will be needed? What kind of actors and in what numbers? All these questions and more will be implied by how you describe the action of your script.

Dialogue answers the same thing for the actors, producers and directors.

• What kind of actors are needed?
• What kind of director is needed? There are many different types. Some directors need a meaty plot, while others prefer long philosophical conversations. Some directors rely on mood and camera technique to…