Writing description in a screenplay is a delicate balancing act. You want to give the reader enough information so they understand what is happening in the scene, and you also don’t want to overload them with unnecessary details. But what is necessary to describe, and what isn’t?
THE TECHNICAL PART
Description in a screenplay should be short and punchy. A general rule of thumb is that each section of description should be contained to four lines or less. If possible, try to avoid having ‘orphans’ in your description. An orphan is a word or very short line that appears at the end of your description. Example:
INT. JOE’S APARTMENT – DAY
Pizza boxes and beer cans litter the floor. Joe sleeps on the sofa.
In this example, the word ‘sofa’ is the orphan, and repeated instances of this can disrupt your page count. The description could be edited to this to remove the orphan:
INT. JOE’S APARTMENT – DAY
Trash litters the floor. Joe sleeps on the sofa.
If you find that you are unable to remove the orphan, then you can use more of the line it’s taking up to add more pertinent information, so the line doesn’t exist purely for one word. Example:
INT. JOE’S APARTMENT – DAY
Pizza boxes and beer cans litter the floor. Joe sleeps on the sofa, snores loudly.
DESCRIPTION IS ACTION
When someone reads your screenplay, you want the story to unfold for them visually. It should feel like they are watching your movie or TV show, and can see it in their mind’s eye.
Rather than thinking of it as DESCRIPTION, think of it as ACTION. Try to use an ACTIVE tense instead of a PASSIVE tense. This will make your description leap off the page and feel like it’s happening in real time.
Here is an example of ACTIVE TENSE in scene description: