: How to describe a seemingly-random doodle/symbol, whose details are significant? In my Crime/Mystery/Drama screenplay, there’s a seemingly random doodle at the bottom of a mysterious note. The

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Since this is a script, not a novel or a story, go ahead and describe it from a functional standpoint when it first appears:

In the bottom right corner is the Chinese character for "danger", but scrawled in such a way that it looks more like a child's stick figure.

That description is for the director and/or whoever else reads the scripts; it isn't available either to the characters or the final audience. When writing scripts you have to keep in mind you have two audiences, the filmmakers and the final audience. Their needs and wants are different, as is what they will have in front of them.

You generally want to provide the info necessary to film the script as you go along. You should assume that whoever is reading the script is playing it out as a movie in their minds. They don't need (or want) to know exactly what a given element looks like, but they do need to know its function in the plot. Similarly, you don't need to outline your forthcoming plot twists, but you do need to give a usable description of what's actually onscreen.

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A script is not supposed to contain images, so you can't include one. Use the description you have, without revealing it is Chinese, and later reveal the source.

Anybody considering your screenplay is going to read 100% of it ten times before they commit any resources [other than their reading time] to it, so NOT revealing it immediately will not be an issue.

If and when the script is produced, the director will know the nature of the writing and get an artist (and perhaps native chinese writer) to produce the drawing correctly in the early scene.

The problem I see with this plot line is that anybody that reads Chinese (like four of my personal friends) will know immediately what the writing is on screen, and that may ruin the movie for them. Or for people like me (I don't speak, read or write Chinese), I might find it ludicrously implausible that none of the main characters are world-savvy enough to recognize your 'puzzling symbol' as Chinese (or at least oriental) writing for half an hour of screen time!

You might be better off making it a more obscure pictorial writing. (I know there are others, I don't recall their names, but you could do some research.)

Added: You could look into Dongba Symbols for the Naxi language, an independent development of script from Chinese characters. It is written left to right (like ours) but if written top to bottom a reader would still understand it, just as we understand vertical English text. This is unknown enough to not be recognized by most Chinese, I would think.

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What's important isn't how it looks specifically, but how your character sees it. The moment of revelation when they discover what it actually is.

I would use the "stick man" description when they first see it. This will mislead the audience in a fun way.

Then point out how the details change -- "The sticks and dots now form what looks like a column of symbols" -- then reveal that it is actually a Chinese.

It sounds like a crime thriller, so the more you can play with the audience's expectations, the more you misdirect, the better.

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