Darshan Vaidya

Screenwriter, filmmaker and producer. #SupportIndieFilm via #Crowdfunding. #screenwriting

[Dianna Ippolito @DiannasEye]

My short film "Locked out of Heaven" is now streaming on Tubi. Check it out. #shortfilm #awardwinner #love #death #drama #sanfrancisco

https://t.co/01lNeuecdJ

[Darshan Vaidya @darshvaidya]

@terri_dwyer Hi Terri. May be worth trying a low sugar cherry juice or magnesium glycinate supplements.

[Lord Sugar @Lord_Sugar]

ON THIS DAY 40 years ago! On 11 Apr 1984 I launched the Amstrad CPC464 - the first affordable all-in-one home computer. On other home computers you had to hook up a TV and a cassette player. Not with ours - the CPC464 had it all. It was the start of the era of Amstrad computers.

[Tom Vaughan @storyandplot]

My screenwriting took a huge leap when I decided to take responsibility for the reader's visual and emotional experience.

A big part of this was learning to write vertically.

Here is what I mean and why this stylistic choice helps. 🧵👇

First, what does writing vertically mean?

Writing vertically is obviously not literal. It refers to making choices that push the reader's eyes DOWN the page more often than they go ACROSS the page.

I am sure many will ask, "What does it matter how it is written on the page if the script is good?"

In a perfect world, this is correct. What goes on screen is what counts.

But we're not in a perfect world. And until a screenplay hits a certain amount of momentum, it is the reader's experience that matters most.

And yes, it is true: writing vertically can not make a bad story good.

But it can make a great story easier to identify.

And that is the goal.

Why does writing vertically make a great story easy to identify?

Mostly because it makes it easier for the screenwriter to direct the reader's experience.

Writing vertically helps by:

- Making the pages visually more inviting to read.
- Giving you better control of the rhythm.
- Making it easier to create imagery.
- Making it easier to control the reader's focus.
- Allowing the reader to turn pages faster.

The primary tool to do all these things is shorter paragraphs.

That's it. That's all it really takes.

The trick is how we use those shorter paragraphs to tell our story.

We are trying to create the visual, auditory, and emotional experience of seeing this movie for the first time for the reader.

That's tough to do with just text. We don't want them reading a novel.

We want them to see the movie.

In real time.

Nothing should take longer to read than it takes to happen on the screen.

There are 53 lines down an average screenplay page.

53 opportunities to go across all six inches of text (8.5 inches minus the margins.) You can reduce that to 26 times if no paragraph is longer than one line.

And even fewer than that if you write less than a couple inches across.

Like this.

Or this.

It hardly feels like you're writing left to right at all.

I rarely have paragraphs longer than three lines.

The vast majority of my paragraphs are one or two lines.

I have attached an example page of mine. The content is not important, but rather the look, feel, and flow.

Paragraphs do three things very well.

- Encapsulate a single visual shot.
- Extend time.
- Create emphasis.

All are quite helpful for the emotional experience we're trying to evoke.

Encapsulate a single visual shot.
A guideline I use: I can have a single shot go over many paragraphs, but I rarely have a single paragraph describe multiple shots.

Extend Time.
This often maximizes the vertical flow because you are using a new paragraph to speed up the read by making us flow down the page quicker, but creating the illusion of more time passing.

Create Emphasis
This one is obvious. This is a way to emphasize a sentence by giving it its own paragraph rather than burying it behind one or two other sentences. This last sentence gets a little lost.

This sentence does not.

Examples of writing vertically

I have included my own pages and an older screenplay I always liked, KRISTY by Anthony Jaswinski.

The mental battle.

You will find plenty of examples out in the wild of writers utilizing big, thick paragraphs. See the screenplay of Tár, with its infamous monolith of text on the first page.

Some of our best writers have no interest in writing vertically. I am sure some would scoff at the very term. And certainly, the closer you get to a production draft, the less style matters.

But don't use that as an excuse. Put forth the effort to write better and make your screenplays more reader-friendly.

If you believe you can offer up a better emotional experience with different tactics, by all means, use different tactics!

There are as many styles as there are writers.

Just don't let laziness and stubbornness sneak in, as they often do, under the cover of integrity.

I know this habit all too well from personal experience.

Do whatever you can to create the best emotional experience possible for the reader.

That's a wrap for this thread!

If you enjoyed this thread and are interested in screenwriting:

1. Follow me @storyandplot for more of these
2. Repost to share this thread. It took me hours to write. It will just take you just two clicks to share. :)
3. And be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for even more detailed talk on screenwriting.

[Danish Kaneria @DanishKaneria61]

Next time dedicate your victory to humanity. The almighty never supports cruelty. #IndvsPak

[Dr David Frawley @davidfrawleyved]

Today the BBC is blaming India for not feeding the world. It used to blame India for not feeding its own people. It has never blamed Britain for its genocides of millions of Indians up to 1943 by taking away their harvests and letting them starve.

[JIX5A @JIX5A]

Should India 🇮🇳 have a space program while hundreds of millions of Indians live in poverty? India just became the first country in the world to land on the moon near the South Pole.

But I’ve heard this question depressingly often and here is why it’s wrong!

Firstly, India’s moon mission cost around $90 million. So India landed a probe on the moon for less than the cost of the barbie movie.

$90 million is just 6 cents per Indian. Is this the first thing you would cut to fund meaningful poverty reduction?

Most importantly, space programs are an investment in the future. The US moon landings are thought to have earned $7 for every dollar invested. And economic growth, helps people out of poverty. #Chandrayaan3

[Aman Bhogal @amanbhogal]

Let's be clear.
No! The UK is NOT sending "aid" to India.
Yes, the UK is *investing* £££ in the Indian private sector via UK Govt's British International Investment co. for profit for UK taxpayer.

Whilst Indian firms add £55 billion to our economy employing ~150,000 in the UK.

[Kapil Sharma @KapilSharmaK9]

Thank you #uk ❤️🙏 #London #Birmingham #gratitude 😇 #kslive #kslive2023 #love #laughter #happiness 🙏

[anand mahindra @anandmahindra]

Really?? The truth is that, in large part, our poverty was a result of decades of colonial rule which systematically plundered the wealth of an entire subcontinent. Yet the most valuable possession we were robbed of was not the Kohinoor Diamond but our pride & belief in our own capabilities. Because the goal of colonisation—its most insidious impact—is to convince its victims of their inferiority. Which is why investing in BOTH toilets AND space exploration is not a contradiction. Sir, what going to the moon does for us is that it helps restore our pride & self-confidence. It creates belief in progress through science. It gives us the aspiration to lift ourselves out of poverty. The greatest poverty is the poverty of aspiration…

[ISRO @isro]

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
'India🇮🇳,
I reached my destination
and you too!'
: Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon 🌖!.

Congratulations, India🇮🇳!

#Chandrayaan_3
#Ch3

[Dan Wuori @DanWuori]

Last week I shared a flight with a crying infant who, despite his mother’s best efforts, wasn’t easily calmed in the minutes just before and after takeoff.

I was amazed by the level of anger it provoked among several fellow passengers - and one man in particular, who kept loudly asking if someone can’t “stick something in that kid’s mouth?”

I can only imagine how uncomfortable the baby’s mother, traveling solo with her child, must have felt.

She did eventually soothe her little guy (who may have cried for a total of five minutes) - but the man’s nastiness really soured the vibe on the flight - which may be why I felt so drawn to this video, which shows a markedly more empathetic community approach.

Alarmed by his first visit to the barber shop, this little guy begins to melt down.

Watch what the other patrons do to distract him from his anxiety and enable the barber to finish his work. Just beautiful.

Remember that we’re all in this together.

🎥 via shop.barberclassic

[Emily♡ @ItsEmilyKaty]

It’s autistic pride day, so I wanted to share this that I wrote for @thinkingautism over two years ago. It’s still one of my favourite things I’ve written.

The joy and vibrance of autism. https://t.co/3UFyccpdLT

[🌟Cheshire Cat ᓚᘏᗢ, @autismsupsoc]

Happy Autistic Pride Day!

[anita anand @tweeter_anita]

Forgive me… but this is one of the happiest days of my life! Princess Sophia Duleep Singh gets her blue plaque at Hampton Court! And sisters from everywhere come to celebrate her in the blazing sun! Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary. #suffragette #womem

[Deepak Shenoy @deepakshenoy]

@RichardDawkins @theliverdoc It's not been removed, it's been moved to a different grade. Evolution is a chapter in class 12, periodic table in class 11. It's not a religious thing.

(You may be right in that it deserves to be taught earlier, but it's not like they don't believe it should be taught at all)

[Happily Ever Afterlife - Short Comedy Film @HEafterlifefilm]

We're currently trying to raise enough to pay our actors. If you can, please help to get us funded 💙 they don't like it if you don't pay 'em!

#SupportIndieFilm #comedy #indiefilm #indiefilm #Filmmaking #LANCASHIRE #preston

[Naomi Canton @naomi2009]

Just seen the movie The Kerala Story at the cinema in the UK. It is an excellent film that probes what happens when women marry ISIS fighters. Not seen any films like this. To call it a propaganda film is complete nonsense and is itself false propaganda. It could have been a Muslim or non-Muslim woman who married these ISIS fighters. The treatment they get is the same - promised Paradise and when they get to Syria, they are raped, have all their freedoms and passports removed, are trapped and regret it (unless they are heavily radicalised like Shamima Begum and willingly take up ISIS militant roles). The film is entirely about the dangers that ISIS poses to everyone. It happens to focus on two Hindus and one Christian girl in India who get groomed and radicalised to convert to an extreme Islamist ideology. It shows how this is done which is important. It is a film, not a documentary, so is inspired by what happened to three girls in Kerala - not claiming to state their exact stories. I hope some journalists in Kerala have gone to interview the families of these girls. Also hope the police are now trying to arrest the men who radicalised these women. One of them is still in Kerala apparently running a pizza parlour. I had no clue that even one Hindu girl had gone to join ISIS from India. One alone is shocking. It is good the film showcases the truth of what happens when people do join such terror outfits and get radicalised. What is propaganda is not this film, but the methods ISIS use to radicalise people, which the film exposes. Good the BBFC released it in the UK and correct to give it an 18 rating as it is very violent.

[Happily Ever Afterlife - Short Comedy Film @HEafterlifefilm]

We promised big news, so here it is!
We want to make our film to the highest standard, which means paying our #actors and additional #filmcrew So, we've just launched our #crowdfunding campaign (with details about the project & character bios). 👀😁💙
https://t.co/iBFHiMg0wV

[Tim Cook @tim_cook]

The energy, creativity, and passion in Mumbai is incredible! We are so excited to open Apple BKC — our first store in India.