Darshan Vaidya

My screenwriting took a huge leap when I decided to take responsibility for the reader's visual and emotional experience. A big part of this was learning to write vertically. Here is what I mean and why this stylistic choice helps. 🧵👇 First, what does writing vertically mean? Writing vertically is obviously not literal. It refers to making choices that push the reader's eyes DOWN the page more often than they go ACROSS the page. I am sure many will ask, "What does it matter how it is written on the page if the script is good?" In a perfect world, this is correct. What goes on screen is what counts. But we're not in a perfect world. And until a screenplay hits a certain amount of momentum, it is the reader's experience that matters most. And yes, it is true: writing vertically can not make a bad story good. But it can make a great story easier to identify. And that is the goal. Why does writing vertically make a great story easy to identify? Mostly because it makes it easier for the screenwriter to direct the reader's experience. Writing vertically helps by: - Making the pages visually more inviting to read. - Giving you better control of the rhythm. - Making it easier to create imagery. - Making it easier to control the reader's focus. - Allowing the reader to turn pages faster. The primary tool to do all these things is shorter paragraphs. That's it. That's all it really takes. The trick is how we use those shorter paragraphs to tell our story. We are trying to create the visual, auditory, and emotional experience of seeing this movie for the first time for the reader. That's tough to do with just text. We don't want them reading a novel. We want them to see the movie. In real time. Nothing should take longer to read than it takes to happen on the screen. There are 53 lines down an average screenplay page. 53 opportunities to go across all six inches of text (8.5 inches minus the margins.) You can reduce that to 26 times if no paragraph is longer than one line. And even fewer than that if you write less than a couple inches across. Like this. Or this. It hardly feels like you're writing left to right at all. I rarely have paragraphs longer than three lines. The vast majority of my paragraphs are one or two lines. I have attached an example page of mine. The content is not important, but rather the look, feel, and flow. Paragraphs do three things very well. - Encapsulate a single visual shot. - Extend time. - Create emphasis. All are quite helpful for the emotional experience we're trying to evoke. Encapsulate a single visual shot. A guideline I use: I can have a single shot go over many paragraphs, but I rarely have a single paragraph describe multiple shots. Extend Time. This often maximizes the vertical flow because you are using a new paragraph to speed up the read by making us flow down the page quicker, but creating the illusion of more time passing. Create Emphasis This one is obvious. This is a way to emphasize a sentence by giving it its own paragraph rather than burying it behind one or two other sentences. This last sentence gets a little lost. This sentence does not. Examples of writing vertically I have included my own pages and an older screenplay I always liked, KRISTY by Anthony Jaswinski. The mental battle. You will find plenty of examples out in the wild of writers utilizing big, thick paragraphs. See the screenplay of Tár, with its infamous monolith of text on the first page. Some of our best writers have no interest in writing vertically. I am sure some would scoff at the very term. And certainly, the closer you get to a production draft, the less style matters. But don't use that as an excuse. Put forth the effort to write better and make your screenplays more reader-friendly. If you believe you can offer up a better emotional experience with different tactics, by all means, use different tactics! There are as many styles as there are writers. Just don't let laziness and stubbornness sneak in, as they often do, under the cover of integrity. I know this habit all too well from personal experience. Do whatever you can to create the best emotional experience possible for the reader. That's a wrap for this thread! If you enjoyed this thread and are interested in screenwriting: 1. Follow me @storyandplot for more of these 2. Repost to share this thread. It took me hours to write. It will just take you just two clicks to share. :) 3. And be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for even more detailed talk on screenwriting.