Writing for Harried Readers
Avoid verbosity and craft the skimable screenplay
by Charles Deemer All writing that’s meant to communicate implies the existence of a reader. And readers are different. The reader of The New Yorker has different expectations from the reader of USA Today. Learning about the particular readers for whom your work is intended is part of understanding the marketplace. This is where the […]
What Can We Learn from Harold Pinter?
Pinter provides a model for using sentence fragments to create “good” writing
by Charles Deemer The students who enter my screenwriting classroom at Portland State University bring with them considerable language habits. Some write well, some not so well, but all of them have been taught the principles of “good writing.” It’s a shock, therefore when they learn that many of these values are not important in […]
