Screenwriting : Question by Christian Pius

If you mean is it reasonable to let yourself discover things about your characters and story as you write early drafts, then absolutely. If you're asking whether you should know this information and present it in your final draft - I'd say yes. Grounding your characters in a well-constructed world is a crucial way to draw a reader into your story.

Christian if you are writing a novel then you can hide stuff from the reader. People in the business that read screenplays are analyzing them from an audience perspective to see if the script is worthy of further development or production as it stands. The don't appreciate it when a writer holds something back and it is a rather amateurish thing to do. Good luck with your script.

Yeah Dan Guardino...Its something that deals with visuals and such basic information should come right away. Thank you... Thank you Matt Hurd for your beautiful and encouraging comment.

As someone who used to read scripts/write coverage, I always appreciated the following: general brevity, short location info, one or two sentences about the main characters when they first appear (and always capitalize the name when a character is introduced).

When I do the character intro I keep it short with enough info to cast the actor. HARRY bald, fifty, flabby and well dressed. Locations I do the same. I describe the postcard of the location. Small town of single storey buildings and picket fences. I use to go insane. But reading bad descriptions taught me to cut mine down. If is short, it gives then less time to hate it. Just joking.

Very well Craig. I describe my characters in short as you do. The thing is...in my script, the first scene/location is a small room structured with wood. I didn't actually describe its town or city. Though I intend gradually revealing it. That is the area, I'm still not sure if it applies on script. Of course, it goes well in novels...

Christian - I would have no problem reading an opening scene with a slug line 'INT. SMALL ROOM - DAY'. If the fact that it's structured with wood is important to the scene, I'd put that in a scene description. What it comes down to is, as a screen writer, your job is write words which focus us on what the camera sees as it records it. So if we start in a small room and we don't know the town or city yet, no big deal. Again, you let us know that town or city when the story needs us to know.

Only describe what can be seen.