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I`m a credited writer on nine feature films. My latest movie, IRON ROAD, which stars Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill,is being offered to festivals. Sun Li, the Chinese star, won the best actress award at the Roma Fiction Fest recently. www.ironroadthemovie.com) I`m also the writer of over 40 hours of television drama for major networks in North America, and I`m a producer of three feature films and over 50 hours of television prime time drama. I've received Best Screenplay, Best Picture awards at international film festivals around the world. I've been coaching screen and television writers in person, and on the internet, for over ten years, and I've answered over 1000 All Experts questions!

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I've been in the business of writing and producing feature films, television series, and MOW's for over 20 years. You can check me out at this URL http://www.createyourscreenplay.com/aboutbp.htm

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Writing Plays/Screenwriting - Actor's direction in script

Expert: Barry Pearson - 10/29/2009

Question
I have always been a bit confused about how much scene direction to put in a screen play. For example, if I wanted a character to start of a conversation serious, then turn sarcastic towards the end of the scene, do I make note of that as in 'Fred replies with a sarcastic tone,' or should I just let the dialogue flow without any direction til the end of the scene?

Answer
Hi Cameron,

Check out my website at www.createyourscreenplay.com and look for my book HOLLYWOOD SCREENPLAY FORMATTING MADE EASY. It will answer definitively most of your questions about formatting.

A character's attitude is best portrayed by writing dialogue that conveys the attitude.

Of course you have to describe what the general scene layout is, as in:

Charlie crosses to the window and looks down at the street.

But you don't need to (and shouldn't) say:

Charlie scratches his head, crosses to the window, shrugs, and looks down at the street.

You'd be telling the actor how to act.

Similarly, take following in the dialogue as an example:

            CHARLIE
       (sarcastic)
I just love having these arguments
with you...
       (serious)
...but would you please shut up and
listen to what I'm saying.

You would be telling the actor how to act in the parentheticals, and furthermore you don't need to. Don't use parentheticals unless they're absolutely necessary to avoid ambiguity.

The dialogue you write, if it's good, will be sufficient for the actor to develop his or her own interpretation of the character's attitude.

Here's what Elmore Leonard, a master of dialogue, and the writer of numerous novels, almost all of which were made into movies, has to say about writing description:

Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Easy on the Hooptedoodle

Easy on the Hooptedoodle

By ELMORE LEONARD

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday," but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about.

He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he
talks and figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. Spin up some pretty words, maybe, or sing a little song with language.
That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated," and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" like, "he admonished gravely." To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs."

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories "Close Range."

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White
Elephants" what do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9.Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has
gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character, the one whose view best brings the scene to life, I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in "Sweet Thursday" was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. "Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts" is one, "Lousy Wednesday" another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter
"Hooptedoodle 2" as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: "Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want."

"Sweet Thursday" came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

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