A Beginner's Guide to Screen Writing - Step by Step Instructions to Plot, Character and Continuity. Including Exercises to Complete at the End of Each Chapter

By Howard T. Dimick

A classic guide to creating and writing your first screenplay, including chapters on, basic problems, plot and plotting, externalizing the play, surprise or the unforeseen, character development and much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473382831

Book preview

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

The rise of the photoplay in the past decade to the position of an individual ART—related to the drama in structure but unique upon its pictorial side—was foreseen by those who followed its mutations from the period of inception. From the point of view of the screen author the change in attitude of those who control the industry toward the contributor of screenable stories has undergone a complete cycle, ranging from the day of borrowed material, rehashed from standard literature by some studio hireling, to the day of the original photoplay written directly for the screen by an author whose importance is recognized. No other allied art can cite a growth more revolutional, although no other allied art exhibited in its early history a greater contempt for the author and his stock in trade.

There were those who foresaw this change presaged in the years when ideas were desired by the producing companies, when the sum of twenty dollars was regarded as fair return for an idea; and we watched the flickering variations through the period when the star was considered the principal attraction and the story secondary, when the adaptation from standard or current literature was blazoned forth with the name of a director as the chief advertising appeal, confident that the name of the author would one day take its proper place in the industry, and the industry thereby become an art.

That such premonitions were not without foundation is rapidly being established. The era of the screen author, whose profession is the creation of stories in dramatic form for the camera, is beginning; and the author’s remuneration is coming to rank with that of other important arts. The adaptation is by no means extinct, nor will it be while literature holds out material worth transforming into the medium of screen drama, yet the preparation of adaptations is now the recognized work of still another class of recognized screen authors—the continuity writers or dramaturgists proper, who correspond to the adapting dramatists of the stage. It is not a far cry back to the days when there were no continuity writers in the modern sense, and when those there were whose craft was not above that of the office-help or the extras.

Perhaps the most important single mutation of the new art is the gradual change in attitude toward the FORM in which the independent author is required to submit his story. The era of ideas was succeeded by the era in which the producers demanded the scenario or continuity; and this era may be called the era of smug incompetence, for the selection of scenarios fell into the hands of people as little fitted by education (if they could claim any!) and ability to judge the merits of proffered plays as well could be imagined. And in practically no instance was any chosen scenario produced as written by its author.

Numerous books there were rushed to the publishers which purported to unfold the art and business of scenario writing, most of which ignored the dramatic side altogether and laid undue stress upon the photographic and mechanical elements. Many were the reasons given for rejection of meritorious stories—when reasons were offered—and confusing were these reasons when analyzed; perhaps the star objected to portions of the story, perhaps expense prohibited acceptance, or maybe the producer’s equipment was unsuited to do a certain thing in any but a certain manner unknown to the outsider. The cry was raised that there were few gifted enough to write scenarios properly, and the assertion was even made that, among our hundred million or more population, there were not a hundred persons with playwriting ability.

Time, as in all things, has sifted the falsehood and misconception from this farrago of cross-purposes and incompetent control. Time has shown that there are many persons, a comparatively large proportion, with dramatic ability of the type able to recognize and outline effective photoplays and, when introduced to the DRAMATIC form and pictorial limitations and requirements, to express their conceptions either by the scenario or in a medium available to the producers. It has shown that the so-called gift of the scenarist, tightly clutched to the breasts of the fifth-grade morons who formerly presided over authorial destinies in the industry, is not confined to the few; there are many who possess the training to write a scenario worthy of production as written, but there are no producers equipped for the indiscriminate production, as written, of such scenarios. The outsider cannot know the conditions controlling the personnel or equipment of a given producer; he must write in that form readily adapted to the producers in general. Thus the period of the scenario has expired unmourned. The independent author of the modern era employs the medium best suited to relationship with many producers.

The modern photoplaywright submits his story in the form of the DETAILED SYNOPSIS, a synopsis amounting in length to a short-story, cast in the dramatic form, establishing the events, developing the characters, introducing the atmosphere, but minus all dialogue and moralizing not pertinent to the pictorial demands of the MECHANISM it is intended for, the CAMERA. Thus, the present period might be called the era of the detailed synopsis, which has evolved out of the era of the scenario. It offers to the author of ability the same opportunity to do effective dramatic composition as formerly was offered him, but now in a form unhampering to him who may be only indifferently effective in continuity. In other words, the author is permitted the freedom essential to convey his story in its entirety, leaving to another of the brotherhood, the continuity writer, its translation into scenario form.

Nor is the author of the synopsis any less a photoplaywright thereby; for we shall see that the detailed synopsis is a dramatic form distinct from the short-story or other narrative types, perhaps more closely related to the stage drama than to any other allied art, and conceived as a drama to be played by actors and reproduced upon the screen. The creator of such a story is a playwright in the meaning of the term; he is the analogue of the stage dramatist whose play must have the aid of a doctor or dramaturgist to fit it to its medium. That he may or may not be able to supply continuity acceptably for his work does not invalidate his title; he is a collaborator with the continuity writer.

In the modern photoplay world, then, playwriting may be divided into two branches or variations, synopses and continuities. To those best fitted to originate and develop plots and details, the synopsis is the suited branch; to those who may evince a talent for that technical and dramaturgical structure, the scenario, continuity is best adapted. It cannot be too strongly asserted, however, that the author of the plot is a playwright in the true sense. The failure of famous novelists and story writers to master the dramatic art of the photoplay is well known, for not every author has dramatic ability anymore than every dramatist has literary ability. A certain innate type of mind is required, a dormant faculty which yields readily to development. Without this type of mind training will have but little avail; training cannot but be a poor substitute for mentality.

There has been of late marked effort to discover those of playwriting ability or dramatic faculty by the method of the questionnaire. This psychological test has been applied to the choice of writers for both the stage and screen. Stripped of malpractice and fraud it may serve as an index to the faculties now known to be demanded of the playwright, i. e., power of analysis, recognition of the dramatic, and the CREATIVE faculty. To him who thinks seriously of the profession of screen authorship, therefore, it shall not be amiss to suggest some test by which he may even if faintly measure his fitness for the work. Questionnaires are, in most instances, mere memory tests or tests of special knowledge. They do not ordinarily test faculties. But faculties may be tested. They may be indicated by the ease or readiness with which the mind grapples with a problem or exercise presented to it; the greater the training in any direction the greater the ease of solving particular problems; but if the problem demands the labors of the creative faculty, training will not supply a lack of the faculty itself. Therefore, I suggest that the reader undertake the subjoined tests for his own enlightenment ere he set his heart on dramatic authorship.

TEST 1. (1) A bank forger who presents a fraudulent draft at the windows of a suburban bank is suspected by a quick-witted woman employee who consults a printed description of him sent to the bank by a national association; and after being pursued for several blocks by the police he is overcome after a struggle and taken to jail.

(2) In court the man, whose lawyer has advised him to shave his beard in order to make his identification difficult, is recognized by the girl as her father, whose whereabouts have been unknown for years.

Ask yourself the following questions, the answers to which should come readily, regarding the two preceding paragraphs:

1.    Is the first paragraph dramatic, that is, are the discovery and pursuit dramatic?

2.    What portion of the events is the climax or point of main interest and surprise in either paragraph?

3.    What details given in both paragraphs are irrelevant, or could be dispensed with and leave the remainder unchanged?

4.    Can you suggest a termination to the final paragraph which shall not be tragic for the daughter and shall yet have an ORIGINAL twist or development?

The first test is largely analytical and calls for dramatic recognition or perception. In test two we shall have two creative exercises.

TEST 2. (1) A wigmaker, who ships many wigs on order to his son in a distant city, and whose son exercises a mysterious influence in his affairs, visits the city and upon the invitation of this son attends a spiritualistic seance. There he recognizes one of his wigs upon the head of a deceased person summoned by the medium to communicate with relatives who are present. The wigmaker escapes from the seance and returning to his home disposes of his affairs at once and leaves for unknown destinations.

(2) A young bandit of the primitive West has religious leanings despite his profession. In a railway hold-up staged by him he is surprised by the Sheriff, who pursues him. He takes refuge in the home of a girl whom he loves and who loves him, and she shields him from the Sheriff, who is unable to prove his identity. The Sheriff also loves the girl and plans to trap the bandits and his rival. The young bandit, after aiding the girl’s father to pay off a gambling debt, swears to the girl that he will go straight, but he is later persuaded to take part in the robbery of a bank at which his companions are killed and he is captured by the Sheriff. In prison his religious bent develops, and his good work in reforming hardened criminals and preventing their revolt and attempt to escape leads to his release to marry the girl who waits for him.

Solve the following exercises based upon the two paragraphs of the creative test:

1.    Invent a plot to explain the origin and methods of the spiritualistic fraud and to account for the hurried departure of the wigmaker when he discovers it.

2.    Can you invent more novel incidents or improve upon the originality of the second paragraph?

3.    Can you supply an ending which shall be as effective but not so stereotyped as that of the bandit’s prison career?

4.    Does the novelty of the first paragraph stimulate your inventive powers?

If, after deliberation and experiment, you are unable to outline a story on the first creative paragraph, so as to explain the situation and link a complete series of events together plausibly and dramatically, your creative or inventive powers are