Screenwriting | Cyber Film School

Minimalist Screenplay for Maximum Punch

Less is more: Learn some minimalist screenplay techniques that successful screenwriters apply to streamline dialogue and action in their script to make for an easier read.

Written by Charles Deemer
Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

‘Less is More‘ is a surefire and lasting dichotomy in the screenwriting business.

Let’s look at how to put this philosophy into practice when revising the draft of a screenplay.

I’ll focus on two areas where my screenwriting students do most of their overwriting: The dialogue and the description (action).

Less Dialogue, Please

Often one glance will tell if a scene has a dialogue problem. This is when a series of long speeches are exchanged, each consistently taking up more than several lines in the block of dialogue text.

One character speaks for a dozen lines, the other answers for a dozen or so more, and so on. Large blocks of dialogue text fill the page.

However, there are exceptions. For example, the first 45 minutes of “Tar”(2022) is almost exclusively dialogue. If not for someone as capable and thus watchable as actor Cate Blanchett, perhaps the criticism over this wouldn’t be as evenly split. Still, a daring move.

I commonly see this problem in a student script. If the exchange is much too verbose, repetitive, and therefore boring, I copy the pages to do a classroom exercise.

I pass out the scene as originally written, select students to read the parts, and direct a staged reading. We discuss it.

The scene readings of large exchanges of dialogue are usually painfully slow. The class quickly picks up on this. They identify the common moments of repetition that happen in such scenes.

Then I take out my red pen and very dramatically start crossing out lines.

Over the years I’ve learned that most fat in a long speech comes in the middle. So in a 12-line speech, I might cross out lines 3 through 11, leaving the first line second, and the last – and that’s all. Maybe I add a phrase to make for a smooth transition.

I continue this through the entire scene, crossing out half to two-thirds of the dialogue. Then we replay the scene out loud.

The improvement is astounding! The pace immediately quickens. The exchanges are quick and snappy, not long and verbose. There is no repetition to cause boredom.

The class may think I’m a magician, able to fix a scene so dramatically by doing nothing more than hacking out excess lines of dialogue.

I’m not a magician. I just have experience. I’ve read thousands of pages of verbose, over-written dialogue. I can spot it half a room away.

The key test to any line of dialogue in a script is this:

What is lost if it is removed? If precious little is lost, then cut it.

Every line of dialogue needs to move the story forward in a fresh way or make a point about a character that we don’t already know.

Verbosity is your enemy. Less is more.

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

Less Description Please

Here is the description of John Nash’s fantasy CIA connection in, ‘A Beautiful Mind’:

“Fine dark suit. Thin tie. WILLIAM PARCHER.”

This is as much the character description as we get on this guy!

Here is how we meet the title character in ‘Citizen Ruth’:

“She is around 30.”

That’s all we’re given.

Clarice Starling in ‘Silence of the Lambs’:

“Trim, very pretty, mid-20s.”

That’s it.

The antagonist, however, gets more detail because he or she is more unusual:

“A face so long out of the sun, it seems almost leached
– except for the glittering eyes, and the wet red mouth.”

Descriptions of place get no more detail than descriptions of character. From Sling Blade:

“It’s an all-American girls’ room. Everything is pink.
There are stuffed animals everywhere and posters of pop idols.”

From The Ice Storm:

“A large New England Colonial,
with a few modern additions and touches.”

From Good Will Hunting:

“The bar is dirty, more than a little run down.”

None of these comes close to the long, verbose descriptions of character and place that my students love to write about, especially those who come from a background in literary fiction.

None of this detail is appropriate in a screenplay. Why? For one hugely important reason:

The screenwriter is a collaborator.

The Screenwriter is not the costume designer, not the set designer. A screenwriter sticks to a “fine dark suit” and lets the costume designer pick the color.

She writes, “a thin tie” and lets the wardrobe people decide just how thin.

A screenwriter offers, “stuffed animals everywhere and posters of pop idols,” letting the set designers select which animals and which pop idols belong on the set.

Write so it doesn’t sound like you are telling the costume designer and the set designer how to do their jobs.

Your job is to give them the appropriate clues so they can do their job in a way consistent with the context of the story.

Write with an awareness that you are a collaborator. Understand this and you will solve your tendency to over-write descriptions.

Make sure to read our related articles for a deeper look into streamlining your draft:
Writing Is Rewriting
Vertical Screenwriting For An Easier Read

The Writing and the Story

As we tend to repeat in many screenwriting articles, the screenplay is a blueprint for a movie.

It should be written accordingly, lean and mean, in a style that lets the story flow quickly, vertically, down the page. Your job is not to let the writing get in the way of the story.

Think about that.

What an odd thing to tell a writer! Don’t let the writing get in the way of the story.

Many of us are taught early to think about “writing” the way a novelist thinks about it, where every essence of the story, and literary style, is everything.

The screenwriting style is far more subtle and more poetic because there are far fewer literary tools to use.

When beginning screenwriters over-write, they often let the writing get in the way of the story.

Excess verbiage becomes camouflage that hides the story’s movement, leading to misdirection from the spine of the story that needs to be abundantly clear quickly and throughout the script.

Don’t let this happen in your script. Make your writing serve your story because a producer isn’t going to buy your writing, he or she’s going to buy your story that reads like a film.

“When in doubt, leave it out!”

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Charles Deemer authored Write Your First Screenplay among other titles and taught screenwriting at Portland State University.

Finding the Right Producer

Marketing a script is harder than writing it. Try these two approaches to landing the right producer for your work: the Target Method and the Shotgun Approach.

By Charles Deemer, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

Our previous post covered how to write a query letter
that may entice a producer.

The Target Method

First, do some research to find producers who have produced projects similar to yours, in terms of theme and audience appeal. Make a list of all the movies you can with the following statement in mind:

“The people who made “x” movie would do an excellent job with my story.”

Spend some time on this. Your list should have as many movies as you can think of that share a similar audience as you believe your story would.

Go to Internet Movie Database. We suggest that you sign up for IMDB Pro, or at least take out a trial membership for this.

Make a list of all producers and production companies associated with the movie. Do this for each title. You should end up with a long list of producers, whether title Producer, Co-producer or Executive Producer. Some of them could be in other countries, as many films are co-productions. These are important too.

Now take this information and search for production companies associated with the producers’ names, and add to the list.

Here’s a time-saving hint:

Disregard producers whose addresses are at studios and major entities (production companies you’ve heard of). They won’t have time for you.

You are looking for independent producers who are more likely to connect with your story. Here is how to seek them out:

Study the head credits of each film; you’ll see a big name you recognize upfront, like “Dreamworks,” but you’ll also see something like, “In Association With (Company Name).” That’s the place you want to target with your query letter!

Very often, such companies actually start and develop projects and then partner up with the biggies.

IMDB Pro may list their contact information – phone, email, and snail mail address. Once you have the names and the companies they represent, add their contact info to the list.

The Shotgun Method

The shotgun method is a second list. It’s not quite as targeted as the first but does have some level of qualification. These are producers who, for one reason or another, may have possible interest in your kind of story.

For example, they may be genre-specific or interested only in series, one-off films, etc., without necessarily having produced a like-minded film like yours. You now have a “second string” list of email addresses.

Finding these prospects will take some work because you’re not simply searching for a film title that drills you down to names. Search for delegate lists of film markets, festivals, and producers’ organizations – and don’t limit yourself to one country. Many nations co-produce with several countries.

As an ongoing hobby, read entertainment trade journals frequently such as Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, and Screen International. You’ll read about producers and their films. Perhaps you can reference some detail in your query letter relating to an article your read. That personalizes the message.

What you are looking for here is anything that can eliminate them from having a possible interest in your story, in other words, a slim chance that they may bite.

Sending the Email Query

We covered the format of the query letter here.

Direct the letter to a specific person, either the producer on your list or if found, the name associated with “development”.

Now bear in mind, many producers are represented or managed by agents. Write the letter to the agent, in the same manner, you would the producer, with equal respect.

Begin with your first list. Put the word QUERY in the subject line and send out your query letter to every email address on your Target List list. Repeat this with every name on your Shotgun List.

This will be a huge job, so break it into small parts. Send out 10 or 20 emails a day, for example, until you’ve exhausted both lists.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, marketing is a numbers game. The more queries you send out, the more reads you’re going to get.

If you haven’t sent out at least 100 emails, you aren’t working at marketing hard enough.

Waiting for Results

What kind of results can you expect? In the old days, it used to be at least ten percent or one reply per ten queries.

Today, more and more screenwriters, whether deservedly or not, are sending material and crowding inboxes. If you’re not getting a reply after, say twenty or twenty-five letters, jazz up your query letter.

Most emails go unanswered. A small percentage will respond with a polite no and a smaller percentage will request a script.

Follow-ups

Don’t make any follow-ups to the query letters alone. Drop it.

However, do follow up on those who have requested a script, but don’t follow up until three months after you have sent it. Give them time to read. Then just send a short paragraph asking if the script has been read yet.

Here is some advice for while you await a reply: Now is the time to start a new script!

You need to do this for several reasons:

To get in the habit of being a productive screenwriter who is ALWAYS working on a new script; and
Get the old one out of your system so the mountain of rejections coming your way will be less painful.

Marketing is harder work than writing. Trust me on this. But without biting the bullet in this area, your script is doomed to be unread.

You CAN get producers to read your script but you have to do the hard labor
to earn these readings. What’s keeping you from starting?

MORE SCREENWRITING ARTICLES

The Query Letter: Sell Your Screenplay

Learn how to write a query letter for your screenplay. Aside from the screenplay, the query letter to a producer is the screenwriter’s most important manuscript.

By Charles Deemer, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

The 4-Paragraph Model

This 4-paragraph letter can open or close doors into the marketplace. Learning how to write this important tool is essential.

I recommend this strategy to my students: always write a letter that’s less than one page in length (producers are busy). Limit the letter to four paragraphs, each with its own important task:

Paragraph one: Hook the reader so that he or she has to continue on.

Paragraph two: Pitch your story so that it becomes irresistible, and the reader must request the script.

Paragraph three: Summarize your relevant background as a screenwriter. Classes, contests, previous sales or options, whatever is relevant. I caution my students about mentioning a writing background in other fields.

Journalism is good, and ad writing is good. Poetry is good. Playwriting is good if only because so many playwrights have successfully made the transition. But fiction writing is another matter.

Right or wrong, the common attitude around the film industry is that fiction writer are notorious over-writers when it comes to screenwriting. I tell my students not to mention this background.

Paragraph four: One question: May I send you the script?

A Sample Query Letter

Let’s put these principles into action. Let’s write a query letter for the movie E.T.

Paragraph one

We want to hook the reader.

What if aliens are not monsters, as Hollywood has traditionally portrayed them? What if our alien is a cute creature with all the cuddling potential of a large teddy bear? And what if our alien gets stranded on Earth and is befriended by a lonely boy?”

Paragraph two

Now we tell more about the story, making the pitch.

“E.T., the extra-terrestrial, gets stranded when his spaceship has to make a quick escape from humans who have discovered it. Elliot, our protagonist, discovers E.T. hiding in the garage. Fearing for both the alien and himself, the boy lures E.T. into his house and bedroom. Elliot keeps E.T. as a secret playmate, sharing him only with his siblings – a secret from Mom. But E.T., no dummy, quickly learns to communicate and tells Elliot he wants to go home.

As the human scientists track the alien down (a ticking clock!), Elliot and his brother and sister help E.T. build a device to signal his spaceship, which becomes a race against time. Then E.T. gets sick and gets captured, and seems to die. But there is one more cosmic secret left that will help Elliot rescue his friend after all. E.T. is a coming-of-age story about a boy who learns that love sometimes means letting go.“

Do we tell the ending? There are two schools of thought about this: yes because producers want to know the whole story; no because we want to intrigue the producer into asking for the script. I usually do the former, taking a more business-like approach. But either strategy is used.

Paragraph three

Who are we?

“I’ve studied screenwriting at Portland State University. An earlier script, ‘The Secret’, was a semi-finalist in the Willamette Writers Screenwriting Competition.

Paragraph Four

And finally:

“May I send you the script?”

Now that we have our query letter, to whom do we send it?

Here’s how to go about finding producers for your query letter.

NEXT: Finding the Right Producer

MORE SCREENWRITING ARTICLES