#writers voice
Writers of spec screenplays often make the mistake of explaining things to readers, as if there is no other way of being understood.
Subtext is the opposite of that.
Since the easiest way to demonstrate this is to write two scenes, one with subtext and one without, that is what I did.
See if you can guess which one has subtext.
1.
2.
Both scenes establish that Janine and Cuddy are friends, that Maddy has cruelly broken Cuddy’s heart and that Janine ends up with the ring.
But the first scene also establishes that Janine is a smart girl who can handle herself, that Cuddy is prone to bad decisions and getting into trouble, and that Janine is not above a little deviousness, but ultimately she will do the right thing by calling for help.
So the answer is Scene 1.
That is subtext.
That is all.
It is an illusion that a screenplay is a transcription of the movie in your head.
It is as impossible to write a movie as it is to write a photograph.
It is only possible to write a story.
It can’t be a revolutionary idea, but I’ve never read it in a book or been taught it specifically by any of my outstanding teachers, so I’ll just say it here.
Write your spec script to entertain your reader, not as the draft you’re going to shoot.
Consider how you read a novel, and how you direct your own head movie while you’re reading it. It’s exactly the same. The more room you leave for a reader to richly imagine how your story looks, the better off you are.
Your story sells your story in ways that using your words to direct, DP, cast and decorate the sets cannot.
Knock yourself out in your action lines, use your writer’s voice.
For example, everyone has a picture in their head of a seedy bar, it lives in the collective imagination. It’s a waste of words to discuss the dusty bottles on the shelves, the mismatched furniture and dirty windows. That’s a given.
If you want to make it into a thing beyond calling it “the worst bar in town”, which is acceptable, BTW, go at it from a crazy new direction that adds something interesting, like…the bartender traps a roach on the bar with a shot glass and leaves it there.
Now that is a seedy bar.
Passive voice, generic tracking shots, descriptions of things that the reader will do all the heavy lifting to imagine for themselves, those go under the heading of “it took me out of the read”, which loosely translated means, “It kept me from directing it in my head.”
This is not to say that your action lines should fill with flowing, novel-like prose. That is bad. Think in images, but summarize them in your own voice.
Describe your idea more and the set design less.
