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VISUAL STORYTELLING

When working with new clients, or when visiting with participants at my lectures, I often ask writers why they want to be screenwriters or novelists. I always find it interesting that screenwriters often say, “I’m very visual,” but novelists never do. This seems kind of backwards to me.

I assume what these screenwriters actually mean is that they picture what we will see on the screen as we watch their movies. They think in terms of camera angles and shots and backgrounds. But these are not things screenwriters should be worrying about. Screenwriters are not so much “visual” storytellers; Screenwriters are storytellers who use only action and dialogue.

Certainly a screenwriter must briefly describe characters and settings. But screenplays are stories told primarily though the things the characters say and do. No omniscient narration, no interior thoughts or monologues, no author’s asides or commentary, and no character backstory (unless it’s in flashback or dialogue). Movies are certainly visible – the characters must pursue visible goals and face visible obstacles – but the writing is not visual, in the sense of including every single thing we see on the screen.

Good novelists, on the other hand, must be visual writers, because the stories they tell are fully contained on the page. No one (unless they’re writing graphic novels or children’s books) is going to come along and supply pictures to go with their words. So it falls to the author to envision what is happening in the story, and then to select the specific details of that setting and character and movement to write about – to create clear images in the mind of the reader.

So if you’re a screenwriter just focusing on what’s visual, you’re omitting the more important elements of your story: the invisible elements of your characters (fears, longings, inner conflicts and backstory); the desires of your hero and love interest and nemesis and best friend that drive the story forward and create the conflict for the hero; and the dialogue that will punctuate the action and reveal these invisible elements when the action alone cannot.

And if you’re a novelist and you’re not thinking visually – if you’re dwelling on thoughts and meanings and opinions and backstory and inner conflicts and dialogue and style – then you’re failing to create the vivid images in the readers’ minds that will draw them into the story, enthrall them completely, and keep them turning the pages until they reach that last, powerful image.