Hello everybody.
I read pulp fiction and I saw he tells and not show for example "The Young Woman visibly takes in the idea". Is it fine to do so? From what I've heard it's not so why he did it?
Screenwriting : Telling and showing by Oded Nave
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Hi, Oded Nave. Quentin Tarantino was the co-writer and director of Pulp Fiction, so he could do things in his script that writers are usually told they can't do, but I think it's fine for a writer to put a "The Young Woman visibly takes in the idea" type of action line in a spec script. Writers can "Tell, not Show" in action lines, but it's better to "Show, not Tell." "Show, not Tell" action lines make the script more gripping and more entertaining to read. And "Show, not Tell" action lines help the reader visualize the script better.
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As Maurice Vaughan said, QT was intending (and set) to direct his own script. Try reading a few script with a writer-director and then by a seperate writer, the difference is "you can't unsee it"
For one, I tend to like Christopher Nolan films, but I don't like his scripts - formatting, wordy in a weird way - but it's his and works for him. Same with "Deep Rising" (1997), which is one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies, but the script was a tedious read with prosy description, music cues, and all that, but writer Stephen Sommers was also the director. "Van Helsing" (2004, also Sommers) is another fave of mine and it's the same: literal text walls of action. No way a spec could do that.
TL;DR - I'm always as visual as possible