5 Scriptwriting Tips that Will Make Any Story Better by Jeff Goins | 26 Comments | Twitter, Facebook, Google+ From Jeff: This is a guest post from Lia London. Lia is a writing coach, author, and blogger. You can connect with her at her blog or follow her on Twitter (@LiaLondon1). Whether it’s a work of fiction, a poem, or the narrative of a soul, good writing pulls the reader into the reality of its words and imprints an experience in the mind’s eye as real as any staged play. After 30 years of scriptwriting, I’ve found a handful of techniques that can help tell any story. Script Writing Photo credit: Karen Cox (Creative Commons) 1. Establish and maintain a clear voice In a well-written play, each character has his own speech patterns. Some ramble; some utter grunts. Some use flowery language; others are coarse. If they all sound alike, none feel genuine, and the audience senses a disconnect. Likewise, our voice — our character, if you will —should not sound like everyone else. We may admire the way another person writes, but if we emulate too closely, we rob readers of diversity and run the risk of presenting only a stale copy. If we are writing a work that requires more than one voice, we should be careful that no given speaker flips back and forth between sounding like Dr. Spock and Anne of Green Gables. That gets very distracting. Each voice should be distinct and consistent to ensure fluidity and credibility. This is not to say that a writer cannot be poetic and verbose in one essay, and practical and concise in another. But within a given text or persona, we need to make the voice clear.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 01:46:01 +0000