Re: Advice on character reaction description
Okay fair enough. Someone can roll their eyes. Someone can pout. Someone can sneer. There are, in fact, a handful of useful, handy, pre-existing words in the English language that can be used to describe facial expressions.
But I hold to my sentiment that, "A happy expression crosses her face" or "A look of sadness creeps across Marvin's face..."
Not so good -- it simply gives the impression that emotions have been plastered across the characters' faces.
What I wrote above -- there's a particular gesture, followed by a line that conveys a state of mind or an emotion, from my perspective works much better, whatever the emotion might be.
Bob holds Jenny's hand until she finally stops breathing. He just stares at her, silent, empty, all the life draining out of the world.
Or ---
As Sidney watched from his back window the whole end of the block fell into abyss with a huge crash. He puts down his cup of tea with an annoyed sigh. Well, there goes the neighborhood.
It's obvious that the last phrase or sentence in both cases aren't action and they aren't description -- they're there to give a sense of tone -- to let us know what's going on inside the character -- so that we have a sense of how the character is reacting.
That's something that you can do in any number of ways using the tools of prose -- all of which I encourage screenwriters to make use of.
But I don't believe that prose can be used effectively to convey that sort of thing by physically describing a person's facial expressions -- beyond simply the broad -- he smiles he frowns, he scowls, etc.
I still don't think that between "shocked" and "shocked expression" or "terrified" and "terrified expression" or "confused" and "confused expression" that anything has been gained by the latter.
I'm not saying that it's the worst thing in the world -- I just don't think that the extra words are adding anything.
NMS
Originally posted by JoeNYC
View Post
Okay fair enough. Someone can roll their eyes. Someone can pout. Someone can sneer. There are, in fact, a handful of useful, handy, pre-existing words in the English language that can be used to describe facial expressions.
But I hold to my sentiment that, "A happy expression crosses her face" or "A look of sadness creeps across Marvin's face..."
Not so good -- it simply gives the impression that emotions have been plastered across the characters' faces.
What I wrote above -- there's a particular gesture, followed by a line that conveys a state of mind or an emotion, from my perspective works much better, whatever the emotion might be.
Bob holds Jenny's hand until she finally stops breathing. He just stares at her, silent, empty, all the life draining out of the world.
Or ---
As Sidney watched from his back window the whole end of the block fell into abyss with a huge crash. He puts down his cup of tea with an annoyed sigh. Well, there goes the neighborhood.
It's obvious that the last phrase or sentence in both cases aren't action and they aren't description -- they're there to give a sense of tone -- to let us know what's going on inside the character -- so that we have a sense of how the character is reacting.
That's something that you can do in any number of ways using the tools of prose -- all of which I encourage screenwriters to make use of.
But I don't believe that prose can be used effectively to convey that sort of thing by physically describing a person's facial expressions -- beyond simply the broad -- he smiles he frowns, he scowls, etc.
I still don't think that between "shocked" and "shocked expression" or "terrified" and "terrified expression" or "confused" and "confused expression" that anything has been gained by the latter.
I'm not saying that it's the worst thing in the world -- I just don't think that the extra words are adding anything.
NMS
Comment