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The way you tell a story in a screenplay is much different than how you would tell a story in a novel or newspaper article. Take story-telling in a novel, for example, in these stories it’s possible to hear a character’s inner monologue and to read lengthy descriptions about the character’s feelings in any given situation.

In films and television programmes, it’s the visuals that drive the action. You need to engage all the senses to demonstrate what your characters are thinking and feeling. Challenge every sentence you write – is it visual enough? Am I using dialogue as a crutch to tell people what’s going on? A good screenplay uses as little dialogue as possible to tell the story.

It’s also important to refrain from using emotional descriptions to tell your story. The script should not include layers of adjectives which describe how the character is feeling. This puts too much weight on the actor to convey the emotional story. Instead the script should be descriptive of the action taking place.

During the “screenwriting for writers and producers workshop” in June, seminar leader Brendan Foley demonstrated this point whehn he passed out pieces of paper to small groups of delegates, each with a different emotion written across it. We were then asked to act out the emotion, using only facial movements (no noise) to convey what the character was feeling. Afterwards, we were allowed to act out the emotion a second time, still with no sound, but incorporating a hand gesture. It was a surprise to see how widely the delegate’s answers varied and changed when the hand-gesture was thrown into the mix.

Even the best actors in the world struggle to depict a single word emotional description. Instead, use actions, as opposed to emotions, to set the scene.

Using hand gestures can be an effective way to express emotions. For years, silent movies used hand gestures to convey what couldn’t be said in words. These films developed movements that can now be recognised as universal symbols for feelings. For instance, twirling a moustache often indicates plotting. Why? It’s not really known, but we do know that this visual vocabulary is recognised in many areas across the world.

In your writing, it’s important to branch out from these universal clichés and to find realistic ways of conveying emotion without dodgy hand movements or emotional words.

This post is based on the notes from the “screenwriting for writers and producers” workshop run by FilmFlyn in June 2011.