7. Do You Really Need That Voice Over?
If there's one thing that I've noticed reading through hundreds and hundreds of speculative scripts over the past few years, it's that writers love to use voice over narration. I think, for a lot of first-time writers, it's something of a comfort to have the constant ability to reiterate your story beats and explain things that you think might go over the audience's heads. As a framing device, it can sometimes be useful (think
Sunset Boulevard). In most cases, though? That voice over you've taken so much time with probably isn't necessary. The simple method I like to use to decide whether or not a voice over is needed (and trust me, they usually aren't) is to remove it completely. Does your story still pretty work without the voice over in place? If so, you probably don't need it, and it isn't helping your script. Fact is, a voice over should only be used to comment on the story at hand anyway, and not to actually
tell it, so removing it shouldn't take anything away from your screenplay. Which begs the question: how necessary was it in the first place? A lot of the time, you'll find that you're just wasting precious page space for something that doesn't really improve your screenplay overall. There are differing opinions on this, of course, and this one just happens to be mine. Generally speaking, though, there's a time and a place for voice over, and if you're not sure whether or not you're script is that right time or place, it's probably easier to disregard the device all together.