The messages aren't the scene. The scene is what's between them.

Most text scenes on the page are dialogue with bad formatting. Two people typing complete sentences at each other, and the reader's eye slides off. The problem is the assumption underneath. You're treating the messages as the scene. They're the transcript. The scene is what happens between them.

Somebody sends. Then there's a wait, and in that wait a person is doing something. Rereading what they sent. Turning the phone face down. Picking it up eleven seconds later. Typing a whole sentence, deleting it, sending a thumbs up instead. That's your scene. The words on screen are just the evidence. So write the gap.

The typing indicator is the only piece of dramatic equipment available, and most writers never use it. Three dots appear. They're choosing words. Three dots stop. They changed their mind. Nothing comes. A beat, a reversal and a decision, for one line.

Deleting is the other one. Aneesh Chaganty directed Searching and wrote it with Sev Ohanian. The whole film plays on screens, so they had to ask what a computer function means emotionally. What it costs a man to backspace a text to his daughter. That's a performance you can write.

Watch how Sherlock does it. Steven Moffat wrote A Study in Pink, Paul McGuigan directed it, and they put the messages in the air beside the actor instead of cutting to a prop. You never lose the face, and the face is the scene. Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and did the opposite for the same result. He holds on Kayla scrolling and lets you watch it land. We barely read the feed. We read her face.

Put the phone somewhere. A text in a parked car isn't the same text read at a funeral. Location does half the work, free. Then cut after three exchanges. If you need more, what you're writing is a phone call and you're avoiding it. And write one message nobody answers. Read 11:47 pm, then morning. Nothing lands harder.

Go count the lines of description between the messages in your own text scenes. If it's zero, you wrote a transcript and called it a scene. Nobody remembers the text. They remember waiting for the answer.