In a new post on The Script Lab, David Wayne Young offers advice on writing visually, a required skill for screenwriters, but also one that prose writers should have in their toolbox.
“When you take visual storytelling at its best, you’re left with something that’s both explicit and implicit in its meanings, rather than just one or the other,” Young says. “And at its worst…” As in prose, screenwriters have to show, not tell. An audience doesn’t want to listen to a character recite their emotions aloud; they want to see them in action.
Young shares an example of bad exposition from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. In the excerpt, the script says that a character is unnerved by the actions of a Nazi officer, but does not describe her reaction in visual, physical terms. This didn’t stop Tarantino because A: he’s Tarantino; and B: he was directing the film so presumably he and his actor could come up with some visual cues to the character’s emotions.
Young also shares some positive examples, including an excerpt from an episode of Game of Thrones.
“You could picture the Other right in front of your eyes, couldn’t you?” Young writes. “That’s visual storytelling.” The script doesn’t say that Ser Waymar is frightened – it reveals his state of mind through dialogue and says that his voice cracks and hands tremble, leaving no doubt in the audience’s mind.
There are also unconventional methods, including examples from Amazon’s The Boys, or even Tarantino’s script above. “When you write, you focus on the story, on showing the reader and more importantly, the viewer, what’s happening,” Young says. “If you do that, you’ll notice the difference right away, as you veer closer to presenting things with images and reactive language, rather than exposition and what your character’s thinking.”
