Screenplay style is a little-understood, seldom discussed topic. Possibly this is due to the fact that screenplay writing is often dismissed as not having literary merit, and thus stylistic considerations are unimportant. Yet this is clearly untrue, as script style is inexorably bound with script format, and thus style is an essential mechanism for the transmission of information to readers -- who are often potential investors, buyers, producers, or directors. Style can make or break your screenplay on the open market.

Screenplay style of necessity combines the demands of the form with your own particular creative needs. Demands of form can include:

• The proper formatting of the screenplay: This includes not just obvious considerations such as the use and placement of sluglines, but less obvious and more important considerations such as how to effectively use screenplay form to tell a story.
• The genre in which you are working: Think of the difference in how you would approach writing an action film, a possible Schwarzenegger or Van Damme vehicle, in which terse dialogue and abrupt motion is the tone, versus how you would write a Merchant-Ivory-style costume drama along the lines of "Sense & Sensibility" or "Wings of the Dove," in which moments of genteel manners, suppressed passions, and even silence might prevail.
• The necessity to conserve space on the page: In a script, space is at a premium, which means that long descriptive passages are unacceptable. Also, people who read a lot of screenplays tend to skim, and they will skip over any description that looks too dense. Script pages should have a lot of white space. Always remember the standard measurement for script pages to onscreen time is one page equals one minute. This gives you at most 120 pages to tell your story. Longer scripts are not well-received.

Where your creativity and personal style come into play can be in the realms of:

• Description: Your words will affect how the final film looks onscreen. What kind of environment exists inside of a submarine? A haunted house? The office of a powerful corporate executive? What kind of lighting does the place have? What kinds of surfaces, textures, objects are in the room? When using descriptive passages, it is essential not to get carried away. Keep it simple, but essential -- pithy.
• Atmosphere: This relates to description, but is not specifically not what you describe but how you describe it. What is the mood you wish to set? What are the emotions you want to provoke? You can control these elements through the kind and sounds of words you use, and how you present them on the page. This is an area where your personal style truly manifests.
• Revelation: This is a combination of pacing, suspense, and surprise, and structure. It concerns the information you show and when you show it.

All of these elements tie into each other and overlap to produce the final effect of the written screenplay on the page. To show the interplay of these different elements in use, following are several examples of different screenplays and how they accomplish their aims.

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