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  • #16
    Re: Description

    Originally posted by gravitas View Post
    I've posted this in the past, but hopefully it will help the OP. This is my own experience and I can't dispute others because I know better. It can be different for everyone. But there was a rather sharp shift in my writing when I was told by both my agent and a producer I was being too brief. It sounds like you already have brevity in mind, a staccato style. And that's cool, it's different for everyone. I found a better response to my writing when I didn't take the staccato thing too literally. Now I use as many words as it takes to effectively create an exciting world for the reader. I was TOLD to describe action/fights/places that makes a director salivate at the thought of shooting them. And write characters and dialog that make an actor NEED to say them. This was a long-ass way of saying - don't assume the reader can paint the picture on their own.
    Sounds like you took the brevity thing a bit too seriously and your agent and that producer had to remind you that there's a sweet spot wherein we're describing compelling events with good but less than verbose language.

    It will indeed be diffeent for each of us and it will depend to some extent on the genre one is working in. It's nigh onto impossible to discuss this strictly in qualitative terms because the desired end defies meaningul description using terms like "brevity" and "economy" and "verbosity" and "short" and "brief" and "white space" and "dark space" and the myriad other terms we use when we discuss this sort of thing.

    About all that can be said is that generally, brief paragraphs of no more than four or five lines at most (40 to 50 words) is a target to shoot for in most instances, the fact that we'll all have the odd six to eight-liner notwithstanding.

    It's sort of like boxing it in, we know that a script filled with 12 line paragraphs probably isn't going to cut it as well as we know that a script in which descriptions are all one line paragraphs probably isn't going to either. So the "right amount" falls in between those extremes somewhere and we each have to find the sweet spot for ourselves.

    I do occasionally consult my writing software to check on average descriptive paragraph length. If it's running around 2 sentences and 15 or 16 words or thereabouts, I'm happy; if it's six sentences and around 50-60 words I'm not so happy and will go look to see what's pushing the average up into that range.

    But I seem to be long past writing long paragraphs. As I've said here before, when a paragraph begins to approach eight lines it starts to feel draggy and heavy and my tendency is to stop right there and re-think what I'm doing with that paragraph and figure out a way to condense what needs to be said in it, better word choices, better phrasing, better composition, more precision.

    I will sometimes write long paragraphs when first drafting, but they always get redeveloped and tightened up as I get into a second and third draft.

    And of course none of this addresses the idea of the actual content we are writing.

    But in any case, practice makes perfect!

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    • #17
      Re: Description

      Originally posted by FADE IN View Post
      And of course none of this addresses the idea of the actual content we are writing.
      This is really what I'm saying. I get that people don't want to let a reader's eyes glaze. Maybe their eyes were glazing text simply because the content could have been more interesting. In my individual case, more was better. I gave up counting lines after that input, because the tendency if you know the principle is to pull back - to make sure you aren't writing too much. This is creatively stifling and therefore defeating the purpose of writing something that should ultimately be creative. If there's a way to tell it shorter, but sustain interest, fine. But if it takes that extra line to make it rich, memorable and interesting, embrace it. Make a director want to shoot it. Make an actor want to play the role. Do whatever it takes to DO that. Certainly an extra line in a paragraph.

      I've learned a lot of lessons in the last 6 years of writing. And damn it I swear, nearly every writer I know (including me) has taken these principles too literally at some point, and their stories have suffered. Know the "rules"/principles, sure. Also know when to break them. Don't truncate the life out of it.

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      • #18
        Re: Description

        Originally posted by gravitas View Post
        This is really what I'm saying. I get that people don't want to let a reader's eyes glaze. Maybe their eyes were glazing text simply because the content could have been more interesting. In my individual case, more was better. I gave up counting lines after that input, because the tendency if you know the principle is to pull back - to make sure you aren't writing too much. This is creatively stifling and therefore defeating the purpose of writing something that should ultimately be creative. If there's a way to tell it shorter, but sustain interest, fine. But if it takes that extra line to make it rich, memorable and interesting, embrace it. Make a director want to shoot it. Make an actor want to play the role. Do whatever it takes to DO that. Certainly an extra line in a paragraph.

        I've learned a lot of lessons in the last 6 years of writing. And damn it I swear, nearly every writer I know (including me) has taken these principles too literally at some point, and their stories have suffered. Know the "rules"/principles, sure. Also know when to break them. Don't truncate the life out of it.
        All of course while not pushing your page count beyond reason.

        Reader's eyes can glaze over from seeing too much text or reading text that's less than effective at conveying the images on the screen, or both I suppose.

        My tendency is to lean your way and embelish upon the telling with good strong paragraphs that are, nevertheless, brief, hard hitting but brief.

        My current piece is a political drama so it has some long speeches (you know how those pols can go on!), yet, my writing software shows that my average speech length is running 16 words in two seven-word sentences, which tells you there's an awfuly lot of one line speeches in there too.

        My average descriptive block is shown to be 1.5 sentences using an average of ten words per, for a total of 15 words/paragraph. This shows my economic style (which is sometimes staccato and sometimes not) but it is surprising because the script seems to read like a thousand others I've read, plus I don't "stack," at least particularly.

        As for the content, I think I've found a middle road between too much detail and not enough and try to keep things focused on what's happening in the most compelling ways I can think of, with lots of colorful adjectives and energetic verbs. I like it when my narrative has some pizzazz and gumption going on and there's not a shred of doubt about who is doing what, and the portrayals are accurate within the world I've created.

        Like yourself, I've honed this over several years and any number of screenplays. I can go back and read a piece I wrote three or four years ago and find it's just fine, and that usually doesn't happen until one has penned several (I still can't read my first and be happy about it).

        I think screenwriting only gets to be fun when you've got most of your learning behind you and have some competence in hand and can just then write, and not have to think or worry so much about all the alleged rules.

        It appears to me that we establish our own rule sets intuitively, and abide them as we go, with hardly a thought. This really frees one up to concentrate on their story and their movie, and makes all those dues paying years worth their while (!)

        Just gimme a good story!

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