Scene Description Spotlight: Express Your Voice

On August 11th, I’ll be offering an important one-week online class. It’s called Scene Description Spotlight which sounds super practical. And in a way, it is because at one level, it’s an immersion into the nuts and bolts of the writing craft. However, what it’s really about is this: Exploring and expressing your voice as a writer.

You hear this over and over and over again in Hollywood development circles. Agents, managers, producers, execs, talent. All looking for writers with distinctive voices.

If you think voice just means character dialogue… think again. Voice also involves scene description. You know, that boring stuff you write to set up and play out a scene.

Over the years, professional screenwriters have learned to use scene description as a way to create strong visuals… convey mood… entertain the reader… and express their voice. Like this from The Matrix:

Or this from Wall-E:

Or this from Little Miss Sunshine:

In my 1-week Scene Description Spotlight class, you will learn about:

• How Genre + Style = Narrative Voice
• The crucial importance of ‘editorializing’
• Using tempo and pace to make scenes spark to life
• The freedom screenwriters have to break grammatical rules
• Directing action through line management
• Imagematic, psychological, and action writing

And much, much more!

The class includes dozens of examples from notable movie scripts as well as some of the most recent selling spec scripts to give you a clear sense of how to use scene description to give expression to your voice and make your script worthy of one of Hollywood’s highest compliments: It’s a good read.

I’m really excited about this class and you should be, too. Take something as seemingly simple and mundane as scene description… and use it to show off your voice.

To learn more and enroll, go here.

The class begins Monday, August 11. As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!