Screenwriting | Cyber Film School

Premise vs. Theme: Know the Difference–Your Screenplay Depends On It

Fight all you want about the meaning of Premise vs. Theme, and why not? It seems every smart-aleck picks a fight over what these words mean. Truth is, it’s not that complicated. Welcome to the smart money.
Stavros C. Stavrides

Premise & Theme Defined

Let us show you how effective screenwriters use Premise and Theme when writing their screenplay. We did not invent the definitions of Premise and Theme as described here –many great film schools teach it this way. But we think that it sure simplifies things. So let’s get started.

Screenwriters approach the task of writing in several ways. Some are inspired by a sudden idea driven by a central character and situation. Others want to work in a genre they love, like science fiction, action-adventure, or horror. Yet others are preoccupied with a strong concept or wish to illustrate a point about society by sending a strong message.

Whatever gets you started on your screenplay, such a motivation can be the foundation of your work.

Premise and Theme Arise From the Creative Process

As you lean into your story, what arises from the creative process is a complex weaving of Premise and Theme, two aspects of a story you become aware of as you create your story.

The film industry has more than a few definitions of premise and theme within the film industry. In this book, we put it quite simply. Let’s look at the Premise and Theme of The Godfather (1972).

PREMISE: The idealistic son of a powerful Mafia crime boss returns a war hero with no interest in the family business, but tragic circumstances pull him into a mob war that could tear his family apart.

THEME: “You cannot avoid your destiny” or, “Family comes first “sharing its success and its downfall”

Premise: the “What If?”

The premise sets up the main characters’ characters, circumstances and challenges. It’s often presented as a ‘what if…?” proposition.

The premise becomes evident early in the process as you flesh out the characters, their circumstances and conflicts – the ‘what if…but’? For example, “Jaws” (1975):

What if a beach-town cop wants to stop a killer shark at the height of tourist season, but as deaths pile up, the greedy mayor blocks him for the sake of tourist dollars?

Theme: “What’s It About?”

The theme speaks to the film’s overall moral or lesson it teaches – the overall message. Jaws (1975):

Public good vs. criminal greed

Where the premise of your story likely comes early as you plan and execute, your story’s theme may reveal itself at any time in the process. You may know the theme upfront, or it speaks to you later as you “dream your movie”.

In the following clip from Cyber Film School’s Filmmaking Textbook Screenwriting Chapter: Gerald DiPego talks about a story’s Theme:

Don’t rush the theme – it will emerge. Themes can change as you go. More than one can appear, but once the main theme is clear, it should reverberate in every page and every scene of the script as you polish and rewrite it.”

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Build the Character’s Off-Screen Life

Writing Assignment: Build the Character

This screenwriting assignment helps build the character’s off-screen life. Before you write, imagine details that not only appear on screen but also their unseen life, which will inform the character’s response to circumstances as you write.

This assignment is drawn from “Develop the Character”, one of four assignments in the Screenwriting chapter of Cyber Film School’s Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook.

Inside:

Defining The Character
Get to Know Your Character Before You Write
Start a Journal or Notebook
The Average Day of This Character
What Your Character Looks Like
The Daydreams that Get Them Through The Day
Relate these details to your story
Characters '0ff-screen' life

Page 306 Screenshot

Defining The Character

Characters sometimes show up fully formed and shout, ‘Here I am!’ At other times, they are elusive, taking ages to feel real, or at worst, become dull and uninteresting very quickly.

Some writers believe that the easiest way to develop a hero is to put them in a place where they must make decisions that reveal their character. Others think that keeping them actively engaged with others reveals who they are.

Then there are those who rely on having the character heavily narrate to us what they are thinking.

All of these approaches are valid ways of developing a hero and all principal characters, but no single approach is sufficient.

Get to Know Your Character Before You Write

Get to know their passion or obsession; most heroes of a story have a goal, a need, and an intense desire.

Let’s start with what motivates this person:

What do they want more than anything else in the world?
What is this person willing to give up to get it?
Is your hero actively pursuing something or forced to react to a circumstance, such as running from or avoiding something or someone?

All good drama develops out of character so get to know your character intimately.

Start a Journal or Notebook

Start a notebook or journal just for character exploration. Label a page with the name of your main character, or hero. Add another page for each key character your protagonist hero interacts with, such as Antagonist, Romance, and Reflection.

Flesh out your main character first, both in the movie and in their life outside of the story. Begin to imagine and note the following:

The Average Day of This Character

What gets them out of bed in the morning?
Do they set their schedule or do others dictate their time?
Do they have a job or are they self-employed?

What Your Character Looks Like

Physical description.
How do they typically dress on a casual day? On a work day (if applicable)?
Does their physical size and shape affect how they feel about themselves?
How do they carry themselves? Do they slouch and shuffle, or are they bold and confident? And does this demeanor change between situations and interactions with others?

The Daydreams that Get Them Through The Day

Are they trying to pursue those dreams?
Are they eager and motivated or have they lost their drive, living in ‘wish’ mode?
Are they in love?
Are they searching for something?
Are they at home where they are, or are they a foreigner to this place?
Do they sometimes get depressed?
Is there a particular passion or hobby they have? What makes them memorable?

Remember: If you choose to show these cues visually, do so through their actions and interactions, before revealing them in dialogue.

Relate these details to your story

Once you have worked on your list:

Try to imagine where your main character has come from just before your story started.
What will happen to him or her after your story ends?
Why would these parts of their life most interest us?

Characters ‘0ff-screen’ life

Part of what helps build character is understanding the story behind the details, even if they’re not revealed in the script. Examples:

A particular tattoo and the reasons behind it.
An instrument that plays when the character is sad.
The hero’s relationship to a particular animal, landscape, song, artwork, etc.

Repeat this process for some of the secondary characters in your script, but with less intensity.

Try to understand:

What drives or motivates each character.
What makes them happy.
How they influence your hero.
Decide what role they will have in the development of the story.

Remember: Many of these details about your character may never appear in the movie. They help to more fully understand your characters, thus enabling you to richly write about them with more substance and authenticity.

Vertical Screenwriting For An Easier Read

Vertical Screenwriting is a formatting style that uses white space to make a screenplay easier to read for busy readers like producers and agents who often like to skim a screenplay for story, character, and genre before diving in. It could offer a better chance of getting noticed.

by Charles Deemer
Edited By Stavros C. Stavrides

•What is Vertical Writing?
• Horizontal Reading vs. Vertical Flow
•How to Make Your Script More Vertical

What is “Vertical Screenwriting”

I attended the Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles some time ago, where “verticality” was the buzzword. Speaker after speaker urged beginning screenwriters to make their scripts “vertical.” What exactly does this mean?

Let me begin by putting the “vertical script” in context.

Horizontal Reading vs. Vertical Flowing

In our Western culture, reading is a horizontal experience. We begin at the left of the page and read across to the right of the page, drop down a line, and repeat the horizontal sweep of the reading experience. Most of our reading is done this way.

The screenplay, however, is unique as a written document. It is not a literary document, which is to say that its primary purpose is not to be read and enjoyed for its artistic use of language.

A screenplay is but the first step on a long journey toward producing a film, and this is why many people have pointed out that the screenplay is the “blueprint” for a movie.

It is not an end product but the first step in a process.

In fact, in the beginning, screenplays are not read at all: they are skimmed.

Think about this. Remember when you were in college and behind on reading and had to skim text for a test? What was easier to skim, a highly dense language in long paragraphs composed of complex sentences, or short snappy writing in very short paragraphs? The latter, obviously.

Why? Because the eye didn’t travel horizontally for information so much as down the page, vertically. Vertical writing is easier to read quickly than horizontal reading.

Screenplays must first be read rapidly – skimmed for their story, character, genre, budget, and other practical concerns of importance to a potential producer. This means a vertical style of writing perfect for the screenplay.

The easier the writer makes it for a reader to get into the story and these other elements, the better the chance of garnering interest in a script.

This is a support article for Cyber Film School’s
Multi-Touch Learning System 2022 Edition

How to Make a Script Vertical

How do you make a script vertical?

You write snappy simple sentences in short paragraphs. This also is known as adding “white space” to a script. The vertical script is a script filled with white space.

Let me give some examples. Here is a paragraph from a student script:

Derek is walking across campus. All over, there are students reading copies of the official campus newspaper and Derek’s magazine. One girl, ANNA KABIS, is laughing hysterically. She is young and beautiful. Derek stops and stares at her. A friend of Anna’s is reading over her shoulder, a look of shock on her face.

The writing style is good: clear, simple sentences. However, the verticality is poor. Let’s make this passage vertical.

Note the same description but with line breaks and white space:

Derek is walking across campus.
All over, there are students reading copies of the official campus newspaper and Derek’s magazine.
One girl, ANNA KABIS, is laughing hysterically. She is young and beautiful.
Derek stops and stares at her.
A friend of Anna’s is reading over her shoulder, a look of shock on her face.

With this one simple change, Notice how much easier it is to skim this version for its essential information: the eye races vertically down the page, rather than more slowly across the page. This is the vertical style of screenwriting.

Be sure to read our related article for more ideas on streamlining your draft:
Writing Is Rewriting
Minimalist Screenwriting

There’s a hidden advantage to this style for the writer. By isolating the paragraphs this way, the writer is implicitly directing the movie! Each of the four short paragraphs tacitly suggests a new shot, for example:

A wide shot of students.
Close on Anna.
Back to Derek.
Back to Anna.

Writers are forbidden to ‘direct’ the movie, but they can nonetheless influence the flow of images by isolating new shots in new paragraphs.

Let me close with an example from my own work. My script Love in the Ruins ends with the protagonist, an art student, working on a new painting. Here is how I originally wrote it:

In a lower corner, under the dark shapes of destruction, he begins painting a new theme, less abstract than the rest, and what takes shape is the small figure of a woman in a brightly colored hijab, the figure of Hayaam, her back to us, overlooking the rising dark swirls and shapes of destruction like a misplaced flower, an oddity of brightness in the overwhelming dark presence of the canvas.

Now I admit that this is much, much too literary a style for a screenplay!

Yet I wanted to suggest the poetic quality of the painting with poetic language. So here is how I revised the description of the action:

In a lower corner, under the dark shapes of destruction, he begins painting a new theme, less abstract than the rest, and what takes shape is…
–the small figure of a woman in a brightly colored hijab,
–the figure of Hayaam, her back to us,
–overlooking the rising dark swirls and shapes of destruction like a misplaced flower,
–an oddity of brightness in the overwhelming dark presence of the canvas.

In other words, I didn’t change a word, I just rearranged how the description flowed on the page, making it more vertical.

The vertical script should be a quick, clear read, the eye racing down the page, not across, as if the page itself were a long strip of film passing in front of the eyes.

Adding verticality to your script has no downside!

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