Hmm, I'm not sure I have! Certainly it's not something I've consciously set out to learn. I suppose I've just picked up things as I've gone along...

When I read/analyze scripts, I do a "style" pass, and read just for how the language sets the tone, with special attention to scene descriptions, character introductions, and action lines. When I'm writing, I'll go back and consult classic scripts in the genre to examine their stylistic choices, too. I hope others will report back on how they study style. I'd like to have a more effective or systematic way to do this.

I think I separate out the style of the writing itself from the documentary style or formatting of the document containing the script. The style of the writing itself is the encoding of the story, the formatting of the document is following the rules and guidelines of professional presentation. Here, I believe we are discussing the former, how the story craft is shaped and presented. Robert McKee (Story, Methuen, 1998) says, "The ontology of the screen is an absolute present tense in constant vivid movement." What I believe he means by this, is that the screenwriter performs in the present and active tense at all times. Nothing is written as though it happened in the past; rather it is: 'this is what's happening now' (to quote Mrs Incredible). Characters do two things: they make decisions and they take action, either pro-actively or reactively. Each of these functions need to be written as active moments, with specific detail that describes the event and the objects involved in the event. Advice given by a plethora of writing coaches (McKee, Truby, Frey, Vogler, Field ...) amounts to the same thing ... consult Strunk & White, write with specific nouns and active verbs and avoid adjectives and adverbs. Jim Frey talked to me once about finding the "clincher details" ... those things that can only be seen if you are actually there. When I read screenplays I try to pay close attention to how the writer has informed the reader of the setting and point of view, and the actions and decisions of the characters. In the opening scene of Godfather, Amerigo Bonasera is appealing to Don Corleone for retributive justice to be delivered to the men who raped his daughter. We hear the first sounds while the title screen is showing:

While this remains, we hear: "I believe in America." Suddenly we are watching in CLOSE VIEW, AMERIGO BONASERA, a man of sixty, dressed in a black suit, on the verge of great emotion. BONASERA America has made my fortune. As he speaks, THE VIEW imperceptibly begins to loosen. BONASERA I raised my daughter in the American fashion; I gave her freedom, but taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boy friend, not an Italian. She went to the movies with him, stayed out late. Two months ago he took her for a drive, with another boy friend. They made her drink whiskey and then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted; she kept her honor. So they beat her like an animal. When I went to the hospital her nose was broken, her jaw was shattered and held together by wire, and she could not even weep because of the pain. He can barely speak; he is weeping now. BONASERA I went to the Police like a good American. These two boys were arrested and brought to trial. The judge sentenced them to three years in prison, and suspended the sentence. Suspended sentence! They went free that very day. I stood in the courtroom like a fool, and those bastards, they smiled at me. Then I said to my wife, for Justice, we must go to The Godfather. By now, THE VIEW is full, and we see Don Corleone's office in his home.

In particular, we are getting the point of view, as well as the story that provides the emotional position of the characters. This leads to Don Corleone to question the motives of Bonasera, and ultimately to a decision, which is delivered in a later line of dialogue.

Slowly, Bonasera bows his head and murmurs. BONASERA Be my friend. DON CORLEONE Good. From me you'll get Justice. BONASERA Godfather.

Damn! I posted before I finished ... We see the actions described in close detail ... 'Bonasera bows his head and murmurs.' The Godfather delivers his decision quite precisely. The office setting is described in close detail:

The blinds are closed, and so the room is dark, and with patterned shadows. We are watching BONASERA over the shoulder of DON CORLEONE. TOM HAGEN sits near a small table, examining some paperwork, and SONNY CORLEONE stands impatiently by the window nearest his father, sipping from a glass of wine. We can HEAR music, and the laughter and voices of many people outside.

I perhaps would choose the wine (red or white or champagne) because that's also an indicator of the type of glass, I would perhaps describe an action that indicates impatience (shifts from foot to foot ... stares at a blank piece of wall ...) rather than use an adverb ... The object being to create a mood and allow the reader to fill in the atmosphere, leaving enough space for interpretation, but accurately reflecting the tension and emotional aspects of the situation.

> I would perhaps describe an action that indicates impatience (shifts from foot to foot … stares at a blank piece of wall …) rather than use an adverb … Kevin, I wanted to get back to you on this and ask you specifically about "describing an action." On one hand, I understand and support the desire to avoid adverbs and show-don't-tell. On the other hand, I feel like that kind of writing can veer into directing or micro-managing the actors. I feel like my own writing easily tends to over-directing and I struggle to strike a good balance. I'm always interested in how other people handle this: how much do you leave to the actors and how much do you put on the page? (For example, in the text you cite above, I'm happy with the writing choice of "impatiently", and leaving that specific small choice to the actor.) I'm not saying there's "one right way"; I'm asking: how do you find your right way with this?

Shaula, I don't know if I have a 'right' way ... my way could be completely 'wrong' ... success is not yet on my scoreboard (sometimes I wonder if I'm all pen and no ink). I think over-directing in the script possibly comes from telling the director what the camera should be doing, and telling the actor what they should be doing rather than being specific about the objects that create/add to the mood and actions that specify the business. Having said that, James Cameron uses adjectives aplenty ... here's the intro to Rambo II >>

EXT. V.A. HOSPITAL - DAY A drab GREEN SEDAN with U.S. ARMY printed on the door stops at the steps of a fortress-like colonial-style building. Iron bars cover the windows. The lawn sprinklers snap mindlessly to themselves. A CRT-style printout appears at the bottom of FRAME: D-MINUS 117 HRS FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA ANGLE ON SEDAN as the doors open and TWO POWERFUL MPs, one of whom was driving, emerge. The other opens the rear door for COLONEL SAMUEL TRAUTMAN who stands, eyeing the imposing facade of the hospital. Trautman is in his early fifties and wears the mantle of command sternly but without arrogance. He takes the stairs with purposeful strides, the MPs falling in behind him. HOLD ON THE SIGN above the main door as they go inside: VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HOSPITAL

He is being quite specific though ... 'lawn sprinklers snap mindlessly to themselves' ... does the 'mindlessly to themselves' actually add anything here for the director? I think 'snap' does the work, but adding the personification contributes to the mood, sterile, hot, dry, no-one else about. Yet, the advice seems to be to leave poetic devices such as metaphor out of the writing. '... wears the mantle of command sternly but without arrogance' Beautiful stuff in my opinion, tells the actor what the action should be to show the character, but not how to act (one adverb). Same with '... purposeful strides' (one adjective). But the verb, 'wears' and nouns, 'mantle', 'strides' really do convey the image of the moment. While I think directors have control of image, I do believe that the writer needs to put the image on the page. Shane Black's Lethal Weapon is another goody, but completely different. Here's his intro >>

FADE IN: CITY OF ANGELS lies spread out beneath us in all its splendor, like a bargain basement Promised Land. CAMERA SOARS, DIPS, WINDS its way SLOWLY DOWN, DOWN, bringing us IN OVER the city as we: SUPER MAIN TITLES. TITLES END, as we -- SPIRAL DOWN TOWARD a lush, high-rise apartment complex. The moon reflected in glass. CAMERA CONTINUES TO MOVE IN THROUGH billowing curtains, INTO the inner sanctum of a penthouse apartment, and here, boys and girls, is where we lose our breath, because -- spread-eagled on a sumptuous designer sofa lies the single most beautiful GIRL in the city. Blonde hair. A satin nightgown that positively glows. Sam Cooke MUSIC, crooning from five hundred dollar SPEAKERS. PASTEL colors. Window walls. New wave furniture tortured into weird shapes. It looks like robots live here. On the table next to the sleeping Venus lies an open bottle of pills ... next to that, a mirror dusted with cocaine. She rouses herself to smear some powder on her gums. As she does, we see from her eyes that she is thoroughly, completely whacked out of her mind... She stands, stumbles across the room, pausing to glance at a photograph on the wall: Two men. Soldiers. Young, rough-hewn, arms around each other. The Girl throws open the glass doors ... steps out onto a balcony, and there, beneath her, lies all of nighttime L.A. Panoramic splendor. Her hair flies, her expression. rapt, as she stands against this sea of technology. She is beautiful. On the balcony railing beside her stand three potted plants. The Girl sees them, picks one up. Looks over the balcony railing ... It is ten stories down to the parking lot. she squints, holds the plant over the edge. GIRL Red car. Drops the plant. Down it goes, spiralling end over end -- until, finally ... BAM -- ! SHATTERS. Dirt flies. A red Chevy is now minus a WINDSHIELD. The Girl takes another plant. GIRL Green car. She drops it. Green Dodge. Ten stories below, BAM Impact city. Scratch one paint job. Grabs the final plant and holds it out, saying: GIRL Blue car. POW. GLASS SHATTERS. Dirt sprays. A blue BMW this time. The Girl loves this game ... her expression is slightly crazed. She reaches for another plant -- There aren't any. Her smile fades -- And for a moment, just a moment, the dullness leaves her eyes and she is suddenly, incredibly sober. And tears fill her eyes as she looks over the edge -- GIRL Yellow car. And jumps the railing. Plummets, head over heels like a rag doll. Hits the yellow car spot on. She lies, dead, like an extinguished dream. Still beautiful. CUT TO:

In this, Black is definitely directing the camera and controlling the POV, using the camera as a device for foretelling the extent of the story world, but then narrowing down to a specific location. His description of the setting is detailed, but he's telling it as though he's a 'live' storyteller ... almost like a little kid zooming his toy aeroplane. '... and here, boys and girls, is where we lose our breath ...' Is he talking to the 'script reader' hinting that it might be dangerous to move this piece to the slush pile because there's breathtaking stuff following? Or is he setting the mood for the director, challenging the director to meet the demands of the image? He specifies the music (Sam Cooke), which to me is highly sensitive to creating the mood, but I have frequently seen advice not to specify the music. 'The girl throws open ....' She doesn't just open the door, she throws it open. '... she squints, holds the plant over the edge.' Squints is a very specific action verb, tells the director (and actor) not what she's doing with her look, but specifies the look to perform. I think this is the difference. What I was trying to get to in my earlier post was a reiteration of Scott's comment on another post about the images needing to be on the writer's page, in saying that the writer should specify the 'mood' so that the director can create the 'atmosphere'. I think Shane Black does this superbly. Another really superb one is Basic Instinct by Joe Eszterhas. But as a matter of interest, I thought I'd take a look at my own opening and see how it compares.

FADE IN: EXT. the STREETS - NIGHT A NARROW LANEWAY BEHIND THE CAFE STRIP It is dark and raining late at night; we don't see anything clearly. Small pools of light spill into the alley from outdoor lamps behind restaurants. We see deeply shadowed doorways and light reflected from iron roofs. A dumpster juts into the lane near the next street intersection, its far side lit from a streetlight. Strains of Joe Cocker's "CAN'T FIND MY WAY HOME" reach our ears as though coming from across the rooftops. Slow footsteps in an uneven shuffle intrude from behind, accompanied by the sounds of rummaging. A deeply shadowed human form dressed shabbily, clutching a tattered briefcase under one arm, gradually comes into view. It's HUNTER, 53, a bear of a man with a scraggly beard and wisps of grey hair tufting at the sides of a bald pate. He searches discarded food wrappers for remnants. He pounces on one such wrapper ... it turns out to have the crusted end of a hamburger roll, which he stuffs into his mouth. Hunter looks up at a movement near the dumpster. In deep shadow a young man, with what appears to be a guitar bag across his shoulders, is rummaging. HOMICIDE is tall and thin, around 17, with long unkempt hair. He is dressed roughly. He finds a pizza box ... INSERT - THE PIZZA BOX He opens the lid we see a couple of slices. He closes the lid. BACK TO THE ALLEY He looks towards us up the alley and turns to leave with the box in hand.

I think, using the previous two examples, I can improve on this, provide a stronger sense of place and character. Is the song important? To me it sets the mood ... it might be better as a cover being played by a band in one of the restaurants ... but it helps focus the story question. Anyway, I ramble. I don't know if there's a right way, or if mine is off the path ... I just know what raises the little hairs on the back of my neck, or gives me a slight curdle in the gut, or gets my loins warmed ... writing that does that, I think is good. But of course, I can't tell if that's what happens with mine, so I fall back on the advice and responses of others.

Yeah, but Kevin - you're quoting script(ure)from Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas..two of the most well established writers of our era, and, like a Tarentino, they can write any which way they want. Style, your style, his style, her style, is an individual 'thing'. You may pick up things from other writers that you like and incorporate into your own writing, like fighters, or martial artists...there is no 'style'. There is an "individual honestly expressing him/herself". Boxing, for instance, is boxing. jab, cross, hook, uppercut, bob, weave. All the same art form. But have you ever seen two fighters fight exactly alike? Did Ali fight like Frazier, or Foreman like Tyson, or Tyson like Holyfield? Quite frankly, no. They all developed their own individual style in the world of boxing. As we must develop our own individual style in writing. It's how WE write and feel comfortable about it that will make the reader read. Example, I've read screenplays from the blacklist, which were later produced, and I was like, "Wow, this sucked!" (OZ comes to mind). But then I read something else (SOURCE CODE) and say Daaaamn....I can see why they made this. Our writing has to be embedded with SOUL, our soul, our guts, on the page, to captivate the reader to want to buy it.

I wanted to come back to this discussion with a whole other perspective on style: anti-style, or the "Beckettian Strategy". > Samuel Beckett, born in a suburb of Dublin in 1906, was a native English speaker. However, in 1946 Beckett decided that he would begin writing exclusively in French. After composing the first draft in his second language, he would then translate these words back into English. This difficult constraint – forcing himself to consciously unpack his own sentences – led to a burst of genius, as many of Beckett’s most famous works (Malloy, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, etc.) were written during this period. When asked why he wrote first in French, Beckett said it made it easier for him to “write without style.” > Beckett would later expand on these comments, noting that his use of French prevented him from slipping into his usual writerly habits, those crutches of style that snuck into his English prose. Instead of relying on the first word that leapt into consciousness – that most automatic of associations – he was forced by his second language to reflect on what he actually wanted to express. His diction became more intentional. > There’s now some neat experimental proof of this Beckettian strategy. In a recent paper published in Psychological Science, a team of psychologists led by Boaz Keysar at the University of Chicago found that forcing people to rely on a second language systematically reduced human biases, allowing the subjects to escape from the usual blind spots of cognition. In a sense, they were better able to think without style. Read the whole Wired article here: The Benefits of Being Bilingual Read the cited paper here: The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases Fascinating stuff. Why would a screenwriter bother to do this? - Writing a first draft in a second language, unless you have 100% native-speaker fluency, means you will skip cliches and lazy writing; it forces you to examine your own writing intentions and express them economically and efficiently--or else realize that you aren't clear, yet, on what you're trying to say. - If you are writing comedy, and you make the effort to make your other-language draft just as funny as your first language intentions, odds are you've wound up with comedy that comes from situation and character, not language confusion or innuendo; in other words, a comedy that will export well to the international market. (British stand-up comedian Stewart Lee talks about this approach to international comedy in his Guardian article, Lost in Translation.) Do I have the second-language fluency myself, or the discipline, to write an entire screenplay draft this way? At this point, no, although I have written drafts of shorter pieces in a second language. Very interesting exercise, that generally spawns completely different work than if I were writing in English, and in my experience, a good way to brainstorm and work through blocks. Do I expect anyone else here to write a draft in a second language? Not really. But I thought you might find the idea of Beckett trying to excise style from his writing interesting and worth consideration. And, and if anyone here has the second-language proficiency to play with Beckett's writing technique, I hope you find it as productive as I have. If any ever genuinely compared my writing to Beckett's, I certainly wouldn't be offended.

Hello again, Style Discussers. I'm back, with two thoughts. 1. Here's the question of this post again: > How have you learned screenplay style? As is so often the case, I feel like there's a second, latent question hiding underneath the first. The obvious question is: "How /can/ one make a deliberate study of (other people's) screenplay style?" That's a good and valid question, and the one that most of us have answered here. The question underneath, it seems to me, is: "How does one cultivate one's own style?" 2. I just came across a quote that addresses that second question, in this video trailer for Andrew Zuckerman's Wisdom Project: At the 7:30 mark, architect Frank Gehry says: "Your best work is expressing yourself. Now you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert in it. "When I teach students in architecture, I try to get them to understand that they have a signature. Their body, their hand-eye coordination, their biological makeup, does make them write their name differently than I write my name." That sums up the whole "personal style" issue for me: it's essentially impossible to erase yourself from your writing (although it is still possible to write in a way that's crudely imitative, but your own voice will still shine through). So just write, as best you can, and serve the story. Your personal style will inevitably take care of itself. "Writing well" is the only style you need.