Show Don’t Tell – Here’s How
Film, as we all know, is an image driven medium, and yet it is surprising how many scripts we receive that fail to take this fully into account. The old chestnut of “Show don’t tell” is one of the most repeated phrases in screenwriting books, classes and seminars, and yet many aspiring writers still fail to put it into practice.
This results in a reliance on dialogue and is one of the worst things that can happen to a script. Pages and pages of characters talking about things rather than actually doing them. Without a full grasp of the concept of “Show don’t tell,” characters ends up talking about emotions or events when in fact we should be seeing them act them out.
In the long run, a writer spends hours honing that great speech, when in fact it could be completely cut out and replaced with a single line of action.
So, for this blog we thought we’d run through a few examples of what is commonly written in any given scene, followed by what should be written using the old adage of “Show don’t tell.”
Example 1
Instead of having a character say, “Mike never gets up until at least midday.”
Write a previous scene showing Mike falling out of bed in the middle of the day. Then we already know this information so it doesn’t have to be repeated by another character.
Example 2
Instead of writing, “Clare stares at Jim. She’s so angry she could burst.”
Write, “Clare kicks Jim hard on the shin and walks away.” This action alone says a million times more about Clare’s character as well as the fact that she’s angry.
Example 3
Instead of writing, “Tom walks confidently into the hotel, a mischievous smile on his face.”
Write, “Tom breezes into the hotel, snatching a drink from the tray of a waiter as he passes.”
Overall, it’s all about coming up with detailed images that convey a character’s mood, emotion and personality through action rather than dialogue or bland description.
Think about the dialogue in your script and how a line could instead be turned into a small scene, and think about your description and how it can be enhanced by using vivid imagery. Hope this helped and keep writing!
