Education

2 Features That Technical Writing Shares With Screenplay Writing

At first sight, there cannot be any two writing niches as different as technical and screenplay writing.
Their 2 differences are very obvious:
Difference 1) Screenplay writing aims to put us into the shoes of a fictitious character and take us through a roller-coaster emotional experience. It aims to move us.
Technical writing is the exact opposite. It actually tries to AVOID any emotional reactions whatsoever on the part of the users. A technical document that elicits an emotional reaction is probably a not-so-good technical document.
Difference 2) Screenplay writing is built around characters. No character means no story and no screenplay.
Technical writing, on the other hand, is not built on a narrative that centers on a character. There is one abstract “character” in every technical document – “you,” or the “user” which is also referred to as the “operator” or “administrator” depending on the document, task and context.
But these two different writing niches share two important characteristics as well:
1) NARRATIVE. Every document must have a logical, sequential narrative, explaining topic/step A after topic/step B, and not the other way around.
In the movie world we of course have “non-linear narratives,” the kind made famous by Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” But still the screen writer must write the script in such a fashion that, at the very end, all those non-linear scenes must still make sense linearly when the viewers re-order them in their imagination. The narrative order is there even in “Pulp Fiction” but it’s just concealed and broken into many jigsaw puzzle pieces.
In technical writing the narrative also needs to be there, as clearly stated in the Table of Contents, clear enough for all readers to understand and follow easily.
2) STRUCTURAL HIERARCHY. A screenplay, just like a technical manual, is a highly structured document.
Conceptually, a screenplay is made up of Acts (usually 3), which are divided into Sequences, which are made up of individual Scenes.
And what’s more, each scene is structurally constructed out of clearly defined elements. First comes the Scene TITLE, followed by Scene Description, Character Name, Parenthetical Note, and Dialog. Each “Dialog Set” is repeated for all the characters talking in a scene, interspersed by additional Descriptions, as needed. Then the scene ends with a Transition, if any (like FADE OUT etc.).
Similarly, a technical document (I’m assuming a printed one here) also starts with a Front Cover and ends with a Back Cover. In between we have the Front Matter, TOC, Lists of Figures and Tables (if any), followed by individual Chapters each of which is divided into sections, paragraphs and individual sentences. Most technical documents are capped off with an Index in the back.
Following a built-in and time-honored structure is ingrained in the training of every screen and technical writer. That’s why I believe those screenwriters with a technical bend would make great technical writers, and easily create traditional as well as XML-based structured documents.

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