Work together to tell the story cinematically.

Cinema isn’t dialogue illustrated by images under a director’s supervision. It’s a chain of images and sounds that capture and imply behaviour, inviting the viewer to create meaning.

The script – the shared blueprint for telling the story as well as possible within the constraints of time and money – must also capture the order on‑screen events are revealed, and which off‑screen events are implied.

Visual storytelling isn’t a gloss on top of dialogue; it is the meaning. Cinema is not radio with pictures.

Here’s the problem: what should be collaboration has become demarcation—too often by deliberate divide‑and‑conquer. Writers are told to stick to dialogue so the director can “put it on screen” however they like. This demarcation damages the end product. And isn’t the end-product what we all care about?

Even under this artificial separation of roles, the script is more than lines. Much more deeply, it’s the order of events and the order of reveals. But all too often, meaning is forced into the dialogue, which conveniently suits the producer who, beyond the power of the purse, claims the power of the locked script.

The fix? Writer and director collaborate on the scenario, with the producer encouraging and challenging from the sidelines, maintaining critical distance.

When that’s working, when you have a written document where the visual and aural storytelling lands, then and only then add the necessary dialogue.

Style is not meaning.

Everyone notices the “look”: grading, colour (or the lack of it), lighting, lenses, movement. Only professionals notice the cinematic storytelling that underpins it.

Style is not everything. Nor is it nothing. Style doesn’t create meaning, but it contextualises it. Meaning is made by cinematic language. Even in the work of overtly style-driven directors like Anderson and Aronosvsky, the meaning rests in the narrative: the controlled flow of character choice, action and consequence.

That’s the real language of cinema, and therefore the necessary language of the script.

Write for the screen, not the mouths of the actors.