I think the key is that style follows from the genre you're writing. You have to be aware what genre you're writing and from there on fill in your style. Here come in tone, look and pace. I get tone and pace but don't understand look clearly. Is the look literally what you see on the pages. Lots of white spaces, much/less scene description, dialogue, etc.. and how that looks?

Style is a balancing act. Essentially, screenwriters are told to stay off the page! :) "Be scant with descriptions!" "Avoid talking heads!" "More white space!" "Less is more!" "Don't tell the director what to do!" "Don't tell the actors how to say it!" Well, if you followed all that, there would be nothing on the page! Granted, while I've often had the feeling the industry would be quite delighted to have all the writers in that same bus with the lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, "style" is as much our balliwick as the director's or the actor's. Our need to impress it on the medium is probably the reason so many writers want to be directors, so some smidgeon of their style, their personality, their individuality can remain attached to a property after everyone - including the craft service's delivery boy! - has given us their notes. :) Well, until you're Taratino, as famous for his prose-y, rule-breaking descriptions as his dialogue, or any of the other big hyphenates, I think "style" for writers comes down to HOW we balance the pages. Word choice, variability of sentence and scene lengths, pace, tone, and craft - *how* you put it together, the details you include and leave out, that's "style" if your medium is paper and ink. Your personal balancing act.

Voice is the hardest thing of all to talk about, for me, anyway. I swear mine changes with every script... I suppose the key must be translating what you want to appear on the screen into a screenplay style that (somehow) recreates your story world and your characters accurately in the mind of the reader...

Interesting - I tend to have a narrative style that uses the page effectively - no on the nose dialogue, to the point that people have said I need to sometimes be on the nose! Also, I write the way people talk - and that leads to few words. I like to keep the narration succinct - given the director is going to fill in much of that vision. I have a style, but it's to leave as much room as possible for it to be a blueprint for interpretation rather than anything set in stone. Having written 4 screenplays at this point, I seem to follow this style over and over again.

It's something I stress out about a lot! I just hope my voice and style are able to pique a reader's interest without pissing them off or putting them to sleep, and that it's something that translates my own vision well enough for the actor, director, and cinematographer to parlay that idea into something enjoyable for the audience. Or, you know, do it better ;)

The key to understanding screenplay style? Finding your own!! Sure, there are paradigms and "rules" and accepted ways of doing things -- within genres and across them. But within all of that -- or, perhaps better said: beyond all of that -- is what YOU, the writer, does on the page. Your word choice, your rhythm, your "voice", your vision of black marks upon white space, your pace, your level of bravado as well as tender loving care, your "efficiency" with words -- i.e. your painstaking attempt at mastering the fine art of "Brevity + Meaning = Impact" I spend hours reading the greats, and pouring over my fave movies' scripts. I'll also read the goofs and the awful stuff, because those too, keep me hungry and willing to put in the time and bear down and push through. Sure, STYLE can be benchmarked and mimicked but I honestly think you don't understand "it" until you find "yours".

So well said! I feel the same way with all those directives. As a newer writer, I've always heard most of those one way and as I get further and further into the content here and as I read more and more produced and recognized scripts, I'm realizing writers are breaking these "rules" all over the place! It's actually very liberating. Lol. I completely agree that style is a real balancing act and it seems that if you know what you're going for and you get notes against particular stylistic choices, you know you can chalk it up to the fact that not everybody enjoys every style. It really seems to be the overall package that's the most important thing. Plus it'd be so boring if everybody wrote the same way! Glad for these differences!