[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Are there some simple tips you can give us on writing better scene description and action?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: Yes, a couple things. First of all, make sure you write things in the order we see them. There’s a tendency some writers have to still write a little prosy. Prosy you can get away. Prose is not all written in literal order. In screenwriting, everything is happening now and now and now. There’s no this and then that as this happens. I actually don’t love the word as. Sometimes it’s a prosy kind of word. Believe me you can use the word as there are a lot of great great screenplays that have the word as in it but often I think it’s something just a flag for people to be aware of. Very often I see it in a sentence where it could have been broken into two sentences and it would have worked better. As I don’t love because it is throwing off the forward linear time. I also don’t like it because we use it for a dependent clause and so that means your sentence is going to be unnecessarily long. Instead of telling me that:
–As she clears the dishes, he runs out to the car.
Break it into two sentences. Make it two different moments:
–She washes the dishes.
–He runs out to the car.
Something like that. Shorter sentences by the way are often easier as a reader. You don’t want us to have to read something twice. This is a way where I can get it a lot more clearly. If you have a longer sentence with a dependent clause, things like as, I have to parse it sometimes and so it’s just easier.
Sometimes it does feel a little regressive like we’re writing…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About:
Jill Chamberlain is the founder of a screenwriting school, a script consultant, a screenwriter, and the author of The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret to Successful Screenwriting.
The Nutshell Technique is considered the go-to manual many professionals swear by. It’s on the syllabus at film schools all over the world and has been published in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Italian, and in audiobook format.
As a script consultant, Jill has fixed and fine tuned scripts for Oscar-nominated screenwriters, top television showrunners, screenwriters whose movies have made over a billion dollars at the box office, award-winning independent filmmakers, and for many, many spec script writers.
In 2006, Jill founded The Screenplay Workshop with Jill Chamberlain (Screenplayworkshop.org) where she has personally taught thousands of screenwriters feature film and episodic television writing. Complete beginners to Emmy-winning screenwriters and award-winning producers enroll in her classes.
Find out more about her and her script consultancy at jillchamberlain.com.
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