But since the romanticism even novels have changed and depend upon dialogues and actions more than on inner thoughts, feelings, and comments of the author or his first-person narrator. Accordingly, a screenwriter is well advised to learn from literature, that offers a deep fund of interesting techniques for plots, dialogues, and descriptive writing styles.

Another important source for learning about the world’s visual codification is everyday actions. All of us have learned to differentiate a bus driver from a baker and a policeman from a gardener. Apart from their special clothing, these persons’ actions deliver us the base for interpreting their meaning in society in general and in certain situations in particular.

Moreover, all situations can be presented verbally, as they are part of our conceptual world. In real life, a small change in someone’s expression can, in specific circumstances, show us that he is going to rob somebody. And potential visual gestures can be semantically filled up with meaning. Placed in a context, signifiers gain their meanings. Imagine a five year old boy beside broken glass on the floor, crying as his mother comes in, a football player who takes of his shirt, throwing it into the audience while shouting and running, or a husband at his wife’s grave.