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For example: A YOUNG MAN drifts into a bar. Something absent in his yes. His varsity jaket, dirty and torn. Blood still drips down his face from the accident. This is -- JAMES SMITH, 17, the boy next door, capitan of the football team, and one hell of a bad driver. ;)
I’ve seen this in various scripts and I have a few descriptions setup like this in my current script. But now I’m questioning if this is okay. Should I not ALL CAPS young man? Or not do this setup at all?
Thanks!
You are making the mistake of describing things we cannot see. And your spelling will get you rejected by a reader immediately.
First,
JAMES SMITH, 17, walks slowly into a bar, with a vacant expression. He has been in a car accident, his varsity jacket is torn and bloody, blood drips down his face from a forehead cut.
Leave out the indirection (one hell of a bad driver), leave out any humorous asides like a smiley face, do not reference "the accident" if you have not shown an accident in the previous scene. The prose is not a conversation between you and the script reader, it is a description of what the viewer sees, period.
Be concrete and literal, it is filmable. "drifting" into a bar is poetic, but you can't film it unless he is a ghost or weightless in space. "Walking slowly" is something the actor can do, James is stunned. "He has been in a car accident" is something the makeup department knows how to do. The specifics of the torn jacket and blood are for them too, and indicate the severity of the accident.
