Secrets Of Description & Voice

by William C. Martell

IS HALF OF YOUR STORY IN TROUBLE? Most screenplays are about a 50/50 split between dialogue and description - which means your description is just as important as your dialogue. It just gets less press because the audience never sees it, the same reason why screenwriters get less press than movie stars. But your story will never get to the audience until readers and development executives read your script... so it is a very important factor. Until the movie is made the screenplay is the movie and must be just as exciting as the movie. So how do you make your screenplay exciting to read? Description is important in a novel as well, and the “audience” does read it... how do we write riveting description? This Blue Book will dive into techniques to improve your description, with sections on Just Good Writing, How Much Detail Is Too Much, How & What You Should Write, and a section on Your Writer’s Voice. SUBJECTS What Is Good Description? 25 Professional Techniques To Improve Description, Hidden Camera Directions, Contrast, Why You Need To Be Vaguely Specific, Using “Gags”, Hitchcock’s Chocolates, Unusual Storytelling Devices, The “Unfilmable” Controversy, Too Many Or Too Few Details? Using Name Brands, “Bound” And Creating Vivid Imagery, Stunts (Like First Person Screenplays), The New Normal, What Is Voice? Developing Your Unique Voice, Voice & Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards”, and much more! Take command of your description and your unique writer’s voice!

Genres: Writing

303 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 26, 2017

About the author

William C. Martell has written nineteen produced films, including three HBO World Premiere movies: the Tom Clancy style techno-thriller STEEL SHARKS (filmed with full U.S. Navy cooperation) with Gary Busey, Billy Dee Williams, and Billy Warlock, the submarine thriller CRASH DIVE! starring Frederic Forrest, Catherine Bell, Chris Titus, and Michael Dudikoff (also with Navy cooperation), and the sci-fi actioner GRID RUNNERS starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Michael Dorn and Athena Massey (all three produced by Ashok Amritraj, producer of the Bruce Willis Comedy BANDITS and the Steve Martin - Queen Latifah comedy BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE.)

His two Showtime Films include BLACK THUNDER, about a stolen stealth fighter plane, starring Michael Dudikoff and Richard Norton and a sci-fi film (both produced by Andrew Stevens, producer of Jack Nicholson's THE PLEDGE and the Bruce Willis-Matthew Perry film THE WHOLE 9 YARDS and its sequel). He has written a couple of CineMax Premieres like action-thriller TREACHEROUS which stars Tia Carrere, C. Thomas Howell, and Adam Baldwin (from 20th Century Fox), the martial arts vampire flick NIGHT HUNTER and military action flick THE BASE (starring Mark Dacascos), plus a USA Network thriller.

His noir thriller HARD EVIDENCE (starring Gregory Harrison and Joan Severance - from Warner Bros.) was "video pick of the week" in over two dozen newspapers, was a Blockbuster featured new release, and beat the Julia Roberts film "Something To Talk About" in video rentals when both debuted the same week.

He is the West Coast Editor of Scr(i)pt Magazine (the largest circulation screenwriting magazine in the world) where he has written the "Independents" screenwriting column for over a decade, a contributor to Writer's Digest Magazine and a past columnist for The Hollywood Scriptwriter Magazine. He was Entertainment News Editor for Dean (INDEPENDENCE DAY) Devlin's Eon Magazine, wrote the Screenwriting 101 column for the Independent Film Channel Magazine, and was the only non-nominated screenwriter mentioned on "Siskel & Ebert's If We Picked The Winners" Oscar show in 1997. He is a frequent contributor to Ebert's Movie Answer Man syndicated column and Ebert's annual Year In Film books. He was on the jury of the Raindance Film Festival (London) in 2001 (with director Mike Figgis and actress Saffron Burrows) and again in 2004 (with actor Lennie James and director Edgar Wright) and just returned from 2009 "jury duty".

Reviews

[Nitin Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Try this if you don't like reading what you write

I have been writing bland. Somehow I got it in my mind that screenplays are reporting what is happening. There was no feeling when I read my own pages. With this and the Visual Blue Book, I feel I have cracked some of the puzzle. No masterpieces yet. But now I don't care if I write shit. Atleast it will be repulsive. That is a feeling. No more bland now.