I've recently come up with a 'different' idea - one that I've not seen before, and at this point, not really ready to share as I haven't fully covered all aspects of the story!
But it got me thinking... How much detail is too much, or too little?
The movie uses 'vehicles' that characters use to fight in. How much detail should I go in with the battle scenes?
Should I list everything our protagonist does or should I simply put something along the lines of:
'A large battle takes place between TEAM A and TEAM B. Protagonists's vehicle's tire explodes, forcing him to sit out.'
I've posted this on two forums, to see and compare the two results and opinions.
Thanks guys and gals.
The only real answer one can give is a "Goldilocks and the three Bears" sort of answer.
The goal, in writing a script, is *not* simply to describe the action of the scene in abstract terms, but rather to create in the mind of the reader, the *sense* of seeing the scene unfolding as one might see it if you were sitting in a theatre watching it on a movie screen.
Obviously, given the fact that one absorbs written information off the page in a fundamentally different way from the way in which we absorb visual and audible information coming at us off of a movie screen, the best that we can hope for is to give the reader a sort of "impression" of that experience through the selective use of detail and the tools of prose.
The "right" amount of information and detail is neither too little information, which gives the reader no sense of emotion or involvement or connection to the characters and what they're going through -- nor too much information, which results in the reader being bogged down in irrelevant detail which, because they're reading it, they have to take in one little bit at a time while, were they watching in on the screen, they'd take it all in a great bit bite.
The trick of course, is to decide how much of that great big bite that a viewer would normally take in at a glance you really need to lay out in specific detail.
If you've got a vast ruined battlefield -- that consists of hundreds of specific details, but you may only need to choose a handful of telling details to give a *sense* of what the battle field environment is like. The reader reads those defining details, gets the immediate "sense" of the battle field -- and you have given the reader the equivalent, in prose of that big visual bite, without belaboring all of those specific details.
And I will also tell you something that many beginning writers fail to understand about action sequences and something even that many not-so-beginning writers fail to understand about action sequences.
Action sequences are character sequences.
The question that you asked above -- should I just write (in essence) -- Insert begin dramatic action scene here -- I doubt you would ever have asked the question, "Should I just write, "Insider big dramatic character scene here." Like "insert scene when the girl has her dramatic death scene."
Should you just do that, and leave it to the director and the actors to figure out how to make it work?
Of course not. But why? Could it be because that's your job, as the writer?
Well, that big action scene that involves those same characters -- the one with the volcanos and the car chases and the giant robots?
Those are character scenes not one bit less than those tender scenes where the girl dies or he finds out that he's adopted or any other scene like that.
Action scenes, if you're writing them correctly -- even action scene -- should be a character scene. The way in which the scene unfolds should be absolutely dependent upon who the participants are and the particular decisions they make and they should be designed to reveal and unfold who and what they are.
If the action scene is just about stuff generically blowing up -- then it's a junk scene, no less than if you just decided to stop the action and include a scene with some people having sex -- just to include such a scene.
If you look at the best action movies you will always find that the action scenes inevitably unfold the way they do *because* of who the main character is -- the kind of person he is, his particular story need -- and the events of each action sequence would not be able to unfold as they do, except for the fact that the MC is the kind of person that he is and makes the particular decisions that he makes.
That makes those "action" scenes into character scenes.
That is what audiences want and need to see in every scene -- and no amount of explosions or special effects or pyrotechnics will take the place of your characters being the central driving force behind the events of each and every scene in your movie.
NMS
