Screenwriting : Showing character turmoil through action by David G Haddon

Don't forget to say he's sorry! Sounds good to me.

You’ll know when it moves from paper to performance.

Is it consistent with how the character has reacted previously?

It needs to be put in context before anyone can answer your question. What happens in the prior scene, what's the button, is there a transition, what happens in the scene following?

Yeah what Doug said, but also off the line itself, "visibly" is technically redundant. All action is what we're seeing or hearing. You may want to make it sound more active, too as "what he just did" is past, so what's the moment now? If he's thinking, "What have I done?" maybe it's "He cringes. What has he done?" I left out the emotions because letting the actor or initially, reader, infer the character through the context of the scene is much more powerful than stating the emotions happening.

I’d maybe remove the word visibly before cringes, because it’s already implied that we can see the character’s action if it’s written. Does the character have dialogue at the moment of turmoil? If so, and if you want to simplify it, you could put cringing in a parenthetical under the character's name. Sounds like a considerably important scene, so describing the significant reaction or emotional impact of that situation definitely doesn’t hurt.

Better line: "He cringes."

For context, the character just accidentally broke a friend's arm. He is afraid of hurting people and he just accidentally did what he fears the most.

Hi David,

Breaking someone's arm accidentally is quite traumatic and dramatic. That one line should just be a part of a series of lines - at least to me. And maybe it is in your script. But yes....at the very least he should "cringe."

As a writer I'd want to make that whole event and the aftermath as visual and dramatic as I could. What we see, the non-dialogue sounds that we hear...the lead-up, the event itself, the aftermath....that could be a really stunning piece of writing, other than just the "he cringes" part.

I'd imagine you've already done that. You should look up the end scene in GRIFTERS, when Lilly accidentally kills her son Roy. It's only a few paragraphs, but man...Donald E. Westlake's narration is beautiful poetry. The lines of her reaction are interspersed with descriptions of something else that she is doing, but the lines that describe her reaction to the accident (like the rest) are something special.

Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, David - stay safe and Happy Holidays!