Example of poor screenwriting

In contrast to the examples of good screenwriting, consider this:

INT. LARGE SITTING ROOM IN A MANSION IN ENGLAND  -  DAY

WE HEAR CLASSICAL MUSIC being PLAYED on a PIANO.  WE SEE a PAINTING
 on a wall of a little blond girl holding a doll and sitting on a 
gold chair.  WE SEE VARIOUS ART OBJECTS on tables and SEVERAL CANES 
against the wall.  Next to a FIREPLACE leans a very exquisite 
DIAMOND-STUDDED and RUBY WALKING STICK.  At the opposite end of the 
room is a HIGH-BACK LEATHER CHAIR next to a SMALL TABLE.

A very thin, distinguished gray-haired servant named NIGEL ENTERS 
CARRYING A TRAY with a TEAPOT, CUP AND SAUCER, PITCHER, and SEVERAL 
PINE CONES on it with a NEWSPAPER UNDER HIS ARM.  He walks over to 
the piano.    

There are many things wrong with the writing here:

  1. Over-use of capital letters. Use caps as infrequently as possible. They are distracting. You must capitalize a character name the first time we meet the character but after that, avoid caps. SOUNDS used to be capitalized but this, too, has dropped out of fashion. Save your caps for EMPHASIS and use them sparingly.
  2. The use of "we." Avoid it. It smacks of directing the movie.
  3. Over-writing in the descriptions. A novelist gives us detail like this, not a screenwriter.
  4. Too much detail in slugline. Put it in the action element.

I would rewrite this as follows:

INT. ENGLISH MANSION - SITTING ROOM - DAY

The room is large, expensively decorated, with a fireplace. Someone is 
playing classical music on a piano.

NIGEL, a servant, enters with a tray for tea-time. He marches to the piano.

See the incredible difference? In fiction, we depend on rhetoric to set the scene -- but in a movie, the camera will set the scene. The writer's job is to simply tell the story, simply. The writer is not the set designer and "expensively decorated, with a fireplace" is the only clue that is needed. Now if certain objects, just as the walking stick, have dramatic importance in the story, then there is justification for mentioning them. Otherwise only present the essentials.

Another example.


Use the PREV (back) button to return.

9/00