Today we’re going to explore one of the most important components in the craft of screenwriting – visual storytelling. If you can master this part of the craft, you’ll have seriously leveled up. That’s no joke. The best writers tend to be the ones who consistently convey things visually.
Why is this? Because ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. The action of an unexpected kiss will always be more interesting than two lovers talking about how much they like one another. The action of a character turning his gun away from his enemy and towards his friend will always be more interesting than him telling his friend he’s betraying him.
Visual storytelling can be broken down into four components.
Action
Framing
Choice
Creativity
The heart of the visual scene is action. Instead of a character saying something, see if you can achieve the same thing with an action. So instead of a character saying, “You look cold,” have him take his coat off and hand it to the other character.
Framing is the process by which you re-frame what would typically be a dialogue scene and turn it into something that can be conveyed through action. So let’s say you’ve thought up this big blowout break-up scene outside of a night club. To write this same scene visually, why not put it in the night club? The noise will force you to show the breakup through actions.
Choice is like action on crack. You give your character a choice (or a series of choices) and those choices give us insight into the character (as well as push the scene forward). At the end of Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character comes upon a murder where the victim is still barely alive. Does he call an ambulance or get the footage that’s going to net him his biggest payday yet? That choice is what makes the scene so compelling.
Creativity is the final piece of the puzzle. Come up with a neat or inventive way to visually tell your story. I’ll never forget one of the commenters bringing up Ben Kingsley’s movie, You Kill Me, where Kingsley played an alcoholic. To show this, the movie opens with Kingsley shoveling snow while drinking a bottle of vodka. He’d toss the bottle a few feet forward in the snow, shovel to it, take a drink, toss it a few more feet, shovel to it, take another drink, and so on.
999 out of 1000 writers would’ve shown the character in a bar getting cut off at the end of the night, or waking up on their couch with an empty liquor bottle nearby (and a bad headache). This writer’s desire to push beyond the obvious, to be creative, led to a way more interesting visual scene.
Now what you may notice is that a lot of great visual scenes have dialogue in them as well. The climactic scene of Luke blowing up the Death Star isn’t dialogue free. We see him make the choice to use the Force instead of his targeting system, but it still contains some discussion with the base. And that’s fine. Dialogue and action are teammates, fighting the same opponent, trying to win the same game.
All I’m saying is that scenes tend to be more interesting when they’re first approached visually. And if the scene still feels incomplete after that, you can always sprinkle dialogue in where it’s needed. If you only ever see a scene through the words the characters speak, you’re probably writing a lot of boring scenes.
Okay, now time for today’s scene challenge. In this pretend movie, our main characters, Claire and Nick, are a married couple who have been together for 20 years. But that’s not where we start. We start on the day they met, where Nick spots Claire on the street and is instantly smitten with her. I want you to show us, in a single scene, how Claire fell in love with Nick that day. Not just, “Oh, he’s cute, I’ll go on a date with him.” She has to FALL IN LOVE with him right then and there.
You don’t have to use anything I taught you today. You can make up your own visual rules. The only stipulation is that the scene can’t have any dialogue. Write your scene in the comments below and make sure to up-vote your favorites! Winner gets a shout-out tomorrow and Scriptshadow brownie points. Good luck!
