Scholar of Cinema Chris Dzialo wrote that “screenplays should be experienced […] as a form of cinema itself” whereby “both, although via opposite polarities, are audio-visual (the screenplay cueing the images and sounds in our mind)” (2009, p. 109)
In this quote he is at surface level making a statement that sounds counter-intuitive. How can a written text exist as a piece of audio-visual storytelling? But that is what makes the form of screenwriting so unique. Unlike other writing, its entire purpose is to become a film and so it must communicate the audio-visual elements of the work to its audience (Ingolstrom, 2014). There are many rules in screenwriting texts, such as having separate sections for directions and lines, setting each scene in the mind of the reader, using as few words as necessary to keep the reader engaged when describing a character or scene etc in order to fully immerse the audience in the text. This is why a screenplay is similar to that of a film, because it should be experienced in much the same way. The Audience should be able to, just from the words on the page, relatively accurately imagine each scene visually in their mind.
This is the biggest challenge in screenwriting, in my opinion. Its one thing to craft a story, but it is another to use a form so devoid of sound or image as text to represent such an audio-visual medium like cinema. A screenwriting needs to, often using as few words as possible to ensure that the reader isn’t drawn out of the experience, continually focus the readers mind within the world, while also cueing to them what sounds they might be hearing, what they are seeing, which characters are nearby, the setting, the tone etc etc. All of this needs to be clear in an reader’s mind because, at the end of the day, if the audience cannot imagine the film while reading the screenplay, the text has ultimately failed its main goal of becoming a film, as naturally it would be unwise for a producer or directer etc to convert a text to cinema that they aren’t fully engaged in.
So I think the main crux of what Dzialo was trying to get to was that screenplays are an incredibly unique form. As although they exist entirely on the page in written word, the most important thing that they do is create a world full of images and sounds that captivate the audience and lead them through the story. If a screenplays ultimate goal is to become film, then its initial purpose is to create an imaginary world immediately in the readers mind, because once the audience can fully realise the visual and audio elements within the film, it is much easier for them to harness that initial imaginary film and begin forming it into a real one.
Reference:
Ingolstrom, A 2014, “Narrating Voices in the Screenplay text: How the Writer can Direct the Reader’s Visualisations of the potential film”, in Screenwriters and Screenwriting: Putting Practice into Context, Craig Batty (ed.) Polgrave Macmillan, New York
Dzialo, C 2009, ‘“Frustrated Time” narration: the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’, in W Buckland (ed.), Puzzle films: complex storytelling in contemporary cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 107-28.