Action Lines

Neither screenwriting or copywriting are the end product. They are a step in a process. Both of these forms are a call to action.

Processing any combination of basic principles is far more likely to lead you down the right path as well as get you out of trouble.

"How do I format slow motion in my screenplay?" It sounds simple, right? But it's the wrong question.

Nearly every screenplay has 100+ transitions from one scene to another. This can be a major area of stress with the reader. Don't let it be.

Don't let proper montage format sabotage your montage.

Do professional writers operate under different rules? No. They do not. Can they get away with more aggressive formatting? Yes, they can. But not because of rules.

One of your primary tasks early in a script is to convince the reader that they are in excellent hands with you as their storyteller. The page count is the first evidence you submit to persuade them.

You can take a giant leap in the readability of your action lines just by paying more attention to them. It's about committing to care about the little things.

We ask ourselves: what is the emotion we want to evoke? What information do we want to impart, or what visual do we want to reveal? Put simply, what is the intention?

If we can get the reader to see the images and feel the emotions, we can transmit our enthusiasm and excitement for the project to them.

Put simply, writing vertically refers to making choices that push the reader's eyes DOWN the page more often than they go ACROSS the page.

I want to discuss little visual actions we didn't intend to be emotional, but could. These tend to be discoveries and can be a lot of fun. In these cases, it's not whether the line of action takes up too much space, but whether it takes up ENOUGH space to really work, and therefore be worth keeping.