In an article on ScreenCraft, Ken Miyamoto analyzes five layers of story pacing. Yes, the concept, story, and characters have to be great,” he says. “But if you have a poorly paced screenplay—no matter how good the concept, story, and characters are—you’re shooting yourself in the foot by not providing a good reading experience.”
Miyamoto identifies 5 layers of excellent pacing:
- Broadstroke Scene Description. “Screenplay scene descriptions shouldn’t have long paragraphs of text or lengthy descriptions,” Miyamoto writes. “Eliminate unnecessary scene descriptions and trim important descriptions to the bare essentials to create stronger pacing.” Use sentence fragments like “cold and wet” to convey atmosphere without lengthy description. Single sentence blocks of description flow faster and convey a single powerful visual to the reader. Above all, don’t overwrite.
- Every Word of Dialogue Needs to Count. As with prose, every word counts. This is especially important in a screenplay, which may have no more than 30,000 words compared to a 90,000 word novel. Miyamoto suggests writing actions and reactions into your scene descriptions. “Actions speak louder than words,” he says. “A lack of dialogue is often your best bet.”
- Scene Length and Relevance. Get into scenes quickly and exit quickly, and make sure each scene moves the story forward. Your audience doesn’t need to see your protagonist enter a location. If your character or the audience don’t learn something in a scene, cut it. Ask if each scene or part of a scene needs to be in the manuscript to tell the story.
- Scene Placement and Editing. “The choices an editor makes are vital to the telling of a cinematic story,” Miyamoto notes. Editors make choices such as when to enter and leave a scene; how much or how little dialogue is used; what emotions are shown; what points of view are utilized; what transitions are made from scene to scene, and what those transitions are telling us. Watch some quality films in your genre and look for ways the editor helped tell the story. Incorporate those ideas in your script. Consider breaking up long scenes by intercutting with other scenes, or jumping from one location or character to another. “Screenwriters can follow the emotional pacing of the story and the character from scene to scene by making the right choices that offer cinematic transitions for the reader to comprehend easily,” Miyamoto writes.
- Conflict, Conflict, Conflict. Conflict should be central to all of the above four elements. “When you look at your scene description, dialogue, scenes, and how you edit the scenes, you need to insert building conflict that your characters must face” Miyamoto says.
