Film Courage: You had a Tweet recently about action lines and it got a lot of traction (a lot
of people engaged). Can we start with what action lines are aimed to accomplish? David Wappel, Screenwriter: I
think that action lines are aimed to accomplish two things tell you what is
happening but also how we see what is happening and you can use words to sort
of secretly cue your reader into how they should be seeing what's happening I
think one of the coolest parts of screenwriting is that we can use words
to cue in the readers brain how they see what's happening even without telling
them how they should see what's happening see what kind of an example so
if we were to say she entered the room with a sarcastic grin or she crept in
from this I don't know I'm help me out yeah I think you can if you want to
start a line a toothy grin spreads across her face as the doorknob clicks
and she enters the room the first thing I'm gonna see is that toothy grin so
even though I didn't say close-up on mouth the reader will probably just see
a mouth grinning because I haven't told them yet that this is a room so they're
only thinking in terms of what they've been told because that's just the way
our brain works I'm not gonna imagine something that no one has queued me to
imagine but if I wanted to say the room sits vacant as a door opens and she
enters smiling you're already in the room and you've I've told the reader
that there's a room which a room is probably going to cue a wide shot and
then the door opens and she enters and she has the grin now it's the same
action in both but I have used different words to hopefully cue the
into how I think they should be seeing it and I haven't told the director
necessarily how to shoot it but I've suggested what I think might be best for
the story and then if a director takes that and says that's great that gives me
an idea for something even stronger and they use a wide shot to get what I was
trying to achieve even better because I'm not telling them how to do their job
I'm just suggesting it but either way the director the actress the production
designer everyone knows that all we need to do is just get this actress entering
the room smiling I've just suggested what I think is the best way to visually
tell that but even if none of that gets across she's still entering the room
smiling and that's as far as I need to take it I think so the one where she's
smiling or the toothy grin which one do you think is but I like the toothy grin
in some sense because that keeps me like hmm
toothy as in showing the canines is it like a little more mischievous or is it
she's overjoyed I think it would depend on the context and that those are the
kind of choices that you get to make as a screenwriter when you're decided on
about how to tell the audience how to see what is in your screenplay so if
it's really important to me that is an establishing shot of this character and
I want the first thing the audience to see when they first meet his character
is her toothy grin then I'm going to want to cue that with those words but if
this is not necessarily that important or there's other considerations or other
reasons that that's I don't want to drop too much attention to this character and
her grin I might not do that and I might just have her enter the room from the
wide because it's more important that the room is vacant that's the creative
choice that I want to have in the screenplay perhaps this is an apartment
that this woman is entering where she lived with her husband and she's had a
good days so she enters smiling but we already know it's vacant and we see her
face drop so it's more important that we see
apartment vacant first but I could also flip that we could be on her with the
toothy grin maybe I just a big smile but I can say
big smile she opens the door and finds an empty apartment her face falls so I
can basically even though it's the same action I can swap those two visually
with my words and actually create different effects in the audience in one
of your tweets you mentioned writing action lines with special attention paid
to word order and what you call anchoring now mm-hmm what is an
anchoring noun and anchoring noun is a term that I made up because I didn't
know what else to call it but for me it's the first noun that you encounter
that communicates what sort of shot you should be seeing the action I'm
describing so if I say an orchard sprawls across the valley
I haven't said wide shot but orchard to me is the anchoring noun that anchors
you visually into a wide shot because you don't picture an orchard and
close-up because I've told you it's an orchard it's a big thing if I say an
apple sits on a branch then the anchoring noun would be Apple and I've
kind of cued you into a closer shot even though I haven't said camera close-up on
or anything like that so those nouns and where you place them are just what I
call anchoring downs because it anchors you to the image that I want you to
picture in your head and does that also kind of correspond with grounded stories
grounded cinema in some sense because it's sort of I mean maybe there's no
correlation on I'm not sure if it's all right well because to me this is like a
bit like a it's just like a little crass thing and depending on people use it
yeah it's uh it's a tool in the toolkit and I think people can employ it to any
level of stories it can be an incredibly heightened not grounded like fun space
romp but you can still use anchor nouns for heightening some of that craziness
what is visual writing in a screenplay to me visual writing is writing with the
notion that this is something to be seen so using words that in my mind are
visually sticky so a character walking across the room doesn't evoke a very
strong visual thing for me but a character leaping across the room I
guess that seems more visual to me because it's just more of a specific
action so I can picture a leap that's very specific and it's different than a
walk okay yeah this walk sort of falls flat
but with leaping there's more of an urgency to it whether it's a positive
thing or negative thing mm-hmm okay I don't know if there's more of an urgency
to it but there's a specificity to it a character that shuffles across the room
I can picture that and I can picture that very differently than a leap but a
walk kind of falls flat because we just see people walk every day so there's
nothing inherently unique about that action and if the character is just
walking and there's they should not be doing anything else then I think use
walk it's not that you have to use something else but if there's anything
you can give me that is just a little more specific than walk I'm gonna be
able to picture it I think a little bit easier so if you don't want to call
attention to the walk if it's not really a major thing in the story then just
maybe keep it something like that walk something more bland but if there's a
point to what you're trying to make or this character is going to be doing
something or setting it up for something then that's where the more the more
visual the better yeah I think the more specific the better every noun
and verb in your script is an opportunity to tell the audience
something and the more specific you can be with your nouns and verbs the less
you have to use adjectives and adverbs which saves you space and so a character
reluctantly walks is more words than saying a character shuffles across the
room or a character pads across the room oh I like where this is going this is
great yeah the more specific you can be with your nouns and your verbs the less
adjectives and adverbs you'll have to use in your screenplay do you see that a
lot with newer writers I think with newer writers the thing that I see the
most is more words rather than less so over written
I think over written might be a way to put it
you