Fix This - 1.5.25
Trends in screenwriting come and go, but good writing is priceless. Avoiding mistakes makes you look like you know what you're doing and keeps the reader focused on your story.
Can you spot the errors in the excerpt below?
Let’s kick of this week’s scene study with a few pointers about character descriptions. First, the reason you give the character’s age in the script is to help the casting director find actors for the role. Because of this, it’s not usually necessary to put an exact age, and you’re better off giving an age range (e.g. mid-forties, late sixties, 20s, etc.). An exception might be if you’re writing about high schoolers. At sixteen, they can drive. At fifteen, they can’t. Unless the specific age is important to the story, an age range works just great.
Speaking of things that are important to the story… 98% of the time, the character’s hair color doesn’t matter. Just because you picture her as having blonde hair, doesn’t mean the folks making your movie are going to cast a blonde actor. The only time you want to call out the character’s hair color is if it plays a critical role in the story itself (think BARBIE or LEGALLY BLONDE). As a general rule, it’s better to tell us something more meaningful about the character when you introduce them.
Hang on just a minute!
Did the new character description make your antennae go up? It should have.
Even though we’ve replaced the character’s hair color with more detail, it’s not the right kind of detail. Why? Because the character description is still focused on the character’s looks and doesn’t really tell us anything about her. This kind of description is especially prevalent for female characters. Plus, “would be beautiful if she tried” is horribly clichéd.
Take a look at your character descriptions and make sure you’ve included details that would make an actor want to play that role. Maybe something like…
Okay, let’s keep rolling.
The next mistake in this excerpt is that O.S. has been used in place of V.O. when Jeremy’s voice comes over the intercom. Remember, O.S. means “off screen” and is used when the character is in the room but not on camera. When you hear a character’s voice but they’re somewhere else, you use V.O. to show it’s voice over. Use V.O. for things like phone conversations and radio broadcasts.
What else would you change?
The next change we’d suggest is in the line, “Blair’s face scowls.” We recommend you avoid telling readers things they already know or that are obvious. Here, we know it’s her face that scowls because what else would it be? Her knee? Not likely.
Bonus point for you if you think this line borders on over directing the actor. It’s definitely close. Here, it’s up to the writer, but they should know it limits the actor’s choices. The actor playing Blair might feel it’s more in her character to roll her eyes, throw her hands in the air, or even not to let her frustration show. If the character needs to scowl, write she scowls, but do so with full awareness of what it means for your actors.
If you decide to stick with the scowl, the line reads better like this…
One last mistake to go! Did you catch it?
It’s the interruption.
Here, Blair cuts Jeremy’s line short, but the ellipses reads like Jeremy trails off. To make sure it’s clear your characters are interrupting each other, format the dialogue like this…
There you go! Another scene study in the books and you’re on your way to better writing.
If you want help getting your script in tip-top shape, send it to us for professional script notes. In addition to suggestions for how to improve your writing, we’ll do a deep dive on your story, characters, structure, scenes, and dialogue.