I was hoping you'd do this script, which I love ... I love stacking in a screenplay, tho' I confess it's not very popular (the technique) and a couple scripts I used it in, I was asked to take it out.

But I love how it looks and reads, I really do.

Thanks for posting this scene, Scott.

Missed reading "Wall-E" during the last "14 Days of Screenplays" (was busy doing 12 hour marathon polishing of a rom-com spec I'd written)

Anyway, I've got solid ideas for 2 feature length cartoon spec scripts. Thus ANY produced feature lenght scripts to read and learn from would be most appreciated by moi. Not sure when I'll actually get around to writing a cartoon script, but I am looking forward to the challenge.

Thanks again. The scene FEELS like a cartoon. In this case I think the writing style accents the genre quite nicely. And in that reguard I think this is some great writing.

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

Thanks for this one - I'm falling in love with the haiku form, now, too, so your warning on saving it for the right screenplay's also timely. :)

A question if you don't mind - I'm working on a project now in which some scenes could be done via camera POV (shaky-cam a la Cloverfield, et al; and appropriate to the story), and I'm thinking of writing those scenes in haiku style, and using standard for the, well, standard scenes. A way to make those scenes pop out without resorting to camera angles and so on. Would you switch back and forth, or do you think it's a bad idea?

Enjoying all of the scene description series, actually. Figuring out how to do scene descriptions was one of my bigger hurdles starting out, since it's one of the few aspects of format where you still have a fair amount of choices to make.

Thanks again!
Patrick Sweeney

I agree, this style can be amazingly effective in the right hands. Credit for it should go to Walter Hill though - not Dan O'Bannon - whose orginal draft of Alien is written in a more standard descriptive style. Hill's rewrite (with co-writer Giler) of Alien introduced the haiku style to the script, continuing a technique he had already used to great effect in the screenplays for The Driver and (to a much lesser extent) Hard Times.

@Paul: I made your exact point in this post in June 2008. Stanton was incorrect in giving O'Bannon credit for the writing style -- and I compare scenes between O'Bannon and Hill's respective drafts to point out the stylistic differences.

However it has to be noted that O'Bannon received credit for writing Alien and Hill did not.

I try hard to keep descriptions as short as possible.

ANd the biggest key is as you say

every line is an image or shot.

I guess it's that visual storytelling method.

Scott, thanks for linking to your earlier post. Interesting that Hill credits Alex Jacobs' Point Blank for this style - now there's a script I'd like to read!

@Paul re Point Blank: Believe me, I've tried to get a copy of it. I do have a hard copy of Hard Times by Hill which is where I excerpted the SD in the post I did.