Whilst reading the assigned Ingelstrom reading for this week, it occurred to me that Ingelstrom directly contrasts McKee’s opinion on the use of the extra-fictional voice in screenplays (e.g camera directions.) She deems them to be a useful part of the writing, able to help the reader visualise the film, in contrast to McKee, who considered them to be taking the reader out of visualising the story. Ingelstrom does concede, however, that these notes could possibly have been added during the production process of the film, but this is not possible to know because most published screenplays are these final versions, not earlier drafts or spec scripts.

These extra-fictional voices are helpful also to add extra info, and to help the reader such as the example she notes from the king’s speech: “For ease of reading, Bertie’s stammer will not be indicated from this point in the script.”

So this appears to be a controversial topic, one that most screenwriting manuals disagree with, indicated by the quote from Field: ‘the writers job is to tell the director what to shoot, not how to shoot it.’

Only screenplays that do not have scene headings can not use extra-fictional voice (because these are also types of this technique) – but these are rare. I’d like to have a look at one if I can find one – it seems difficult/impossible to write a clear screenplay without using scene headings.

Ingelstrom notes finally that if this style of writing is used rather than a fictional voice, ‘the reader is always aware of the text’s purpose to become a film.’ Yet I would argue this is not a bad thing. A screenplay is not a novel – its purpose is to be adapted. so how can the use of camera directions and ‘we-form’ then be bad? if you want readers to be immersed without this then just write a novel.

As Ingelstrom concludes, these techniques are tools available to the writer. So to say you can’t use one or the other like McKee does is actually very limiting, and why would you want to limit yourself as a writer?