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’sFilmmaking 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.”
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
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.
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!
Less is more: Learn some minimalist screenplay techniques that successful screenwriters apply to streamline dialogue and action in their scriptto 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
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.
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.
