BY CHARLES DEEMER
Hollywood loves buzzwords, and one of the latest is
"vertical," as in make your screenplays
vertical. Like many buzzwords, this one is based
on a fundamental truism: it is easier to read a
manuscript that is "vertical" with lots of white space
on the page than one that has great text density.
You know this yourself. Remember your college days
when you were cramming for an exam? What was easier to
read, the long dense paragraph that took most of a
book's page -- or the airy open text written in short
paragraphs? The latter. This is because the eye could
race down the page, in a kind of vertical
reading style, rather than plodding across the page
horizontally. For quick reading, for skimming, the
page that invites vertical eye movement is far more
friendly to the harried reader.
Now who is going to read your screenplay the first
time around? A harried reader, believe me. Readers are
over-worked and under-paid. Trust me, I've been one.
They also get paid by the script. Does this invite a
slow, careful reading? Of course not. Their job is to
fill out a form about the story -- called coverage --
and the more quickly they can read a script, the
happier they are. Screenplays that invite vertical
reading are loved by readers. In contrast, text-dense
scripts requiring horizontal reading start out with
one or two strikes against them.
Let me reinforce the point with an example. Here is a
scene from one of my students:
Derek is walking across campus. All over, there are
students reading copies of the official campus
newspaper and Derek's magazine. One girl, ANNA KABIS,
is laughing hysterically. She is young and beautiful.
Derek stops and stares at her. A friend of Anna's is
reading over her shoulder, a look of shock on her
face.
This snippet has much to recommend it. The writing is
clear and direct. But this is not vertical writing.
Let's open up the text:
Derek is walking across campus.
All over, there are students reading copies of the
official campus newspaper and Derek's magazine.
One girl, ANNA KABIS, is laughing hysterically. She is
young and beautiful.
Derek stops and stares at her.
A friend of Anna's is reading over her shoulder, a
look of shock on her face.
Notice how much easier this is to read quickly, to
skim. Believe me, readers skim your script before
anyone reads it carefully! This is, in contemporary
jargon, a much more user-friendly version of the exact
same language. This is vertical writing.
And there is an additional advantage to this kind of
writing. Notice how each short paragraph is its own
image. The paragraphs suggest the way the scene should
be shot. This is the writer getting to play director!
That's right, by selecting short paragraphs that
emphasize a visual unit, the screenwriter not only
makes the script easier to read but invites the way
the scene should be shot. This is the best of both
worlds.
So, in the example above, we start with a shot of
Derek. Then we see students reading his magazine. Then
we focus on the girl who will become important, Anna.
We get a reaction shot from Derek. Back to Anna, and a
reaction to the magazine.
We in effect have directed the scene while at the same
time opening it up vertically, adding white space,
writing short paragraphs that are easily and quickly
read.
Skilled screenwriters know that "white space" on the
page is as important as correct format. In fact, a
producer once showed me what he called "the white
space test." He picked up a random unread script from
his desk. He held it out at arm's length and flipped
the pages. A dark cloud of heavy text density rushed
by. "Too much writing," he said. "Not enough white
space." He tossed the script, unread, into a box
labeled "Return."
I once agreed to read a screenplay written by a
novelist friend. The script's first paragraph took
over one page! When I tried to explain the rhetorical
realities of screenwriting to him, he called me names
I'd rather not repeat, accusing me of selling out to
the literary imbeciles of Hollywood. His mistake was
thinking that a screenplay is a literary document. It
isn't. It's the blueprint for a movie. Put that word
in caps: BLUEPRINT.
Make sure your screenplay can be scanned and skimmed
as easily as a blueprint. Open up your writing by
using short paragraphs (I suggest five lines or less)
and simple sentences, avoiding complex sentences and
other wordy rhetorical devices. Keep it simple,
stupid. Readers will love you for it -- and when they
love you, they pay more attention to your story.
Make your screenplays vertical. There's no down side.
Charles Deemer teaches graduate and undergraduate
screenwriting at Portland State University. He is the
author of the electronic screenwriting tutorial, Screenwright: the
craft of screenwriting. His book Seven
Plays was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
His new book, Practical Screenwriting, is due
in 2005. Deemer maintains two websites:
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