MOOIEV BLOG
The one stage direction a scene can’t lose
Screenwriter Jacques Fieschi recalls two directors with very different scripts. A fictional radio broadcast shows how to decide which actions belong on the page.
In this article 3 sections
One line in the studio
A radio host tells a guest they’re off the air, then turns the microphone back on. One line of action can turn the conversation into a betrayal. How much else does the writer need to put on the page?
In a November 6 profile from France’s Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), screenwriter Jacques Fieschi recalls working with Maurice Pialat and Claude Sautet. He describes Pialat’s pages as built around dialogue, with little written direction for performance. Sautet’s pages could be precise even about how an action played. The profile appeared the week L’Arabe (The Arab), which Fieschi co-wrote with director Malek Bensmaïl, opened in France.
Those two approaches suggest a useful way to read a draft. Take one action out and see what becomes undecidable. An actor can find a gesture that makes a line sound reassuring. It’s a different matter if the missing gesture is the only evidence that the speaker has broken a promise.
What the switch changes
In the fictional radio studio, a guest is talking about a neighborhood choir. During a break, she says there’s another reason the choir stopped meeting. The host tells her they’re off the air. She starts to explain. If that’s all the script says, the host could be keeping a confidence or getting ready to use it. A smile, a pause or an intense look can suggest either.
Write that the host puts her microphone back on while she’s still speaking. Now the scene has an act the guest can hold against him later. The script can leave the host’s expression and the speed of his hand to rehearsal. What the page has to establish is that his decision happens before she has finished.
Move that action a few seconds later, after she’s done. The host can still look calculating, and the guest may still distrust him. But the private information stays in the studio. The same line of dialogue and nearly the same physical action now lead to a different next scene. If the next scene needs the choir director to hear the disclosure, the timing is part of the story.
Try reading the page without it
Give the scene to someone who hasn’t heard you pitch it. Ask what a listener could repeat after the broadcast. If their answer changes when you remove an action, you’ve found a decision the page is making. Keep the smallest version of that action that makes the answer clear.
Then read the scene aloud twice. Have the host put the guest back on air first as if it’s a routine part of the show and then as if he’s been waiting for the opening. Both readings can land the same story turn. An actor can still discover whether the host thinks of it as a betrayal.
Mooiev editorial, prepared with AI assistance and reviewed before publication. The radio studio and its characters are fictional.