Photoplay writing
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| Photoplay writing |
Excerpt
"She wrote It in one evening — and they paid her fifteen hundred dollars for it and asked her to do more photoplays for them,
That's the sort of thing that we all hear about writing motion picture scenarios. We hear that just anybody, in a few moments that they have to spare, can write a scenario and get a lot of money for it — that the motion picture companies are wild for stories and can't find them fast enough. Now, this is not true.
There have been very few people who could, without previous training or experience, write a story that Would screen well, and that would sell. In the early days of the motion picture industry, such cases were more common than they are now, but even then they were few and far between.
But — anyone can write for the screen; that is, anyone who has a feeling for the thing that makes a screen story, for the right kind of plot — anyone who has the inventive ability, and can devise new situations, and show us old ones from an angle that is ne\y enough to interest us; anyone who can show us everyday people on the screen, in such a way that we like to look at them, and to see what they are going to do next.
It is a thing that can be cultivated, rather than taught — this ability to write scenarios. It does not require years of study of technical terms, but rather, the study of human nature. There are a few simple things that can be taught, and that anyone can learn — after that, it's what you have in you, yourself, that counts.
That is why I say that anyone can write for the screen — so far as technical training is concerned. Nobody can teach you to succeed unless you have the ability in you, just as, though each year hundreds of people go to law schools, and dramatic schools, and art schools and teachers of singing, we have comparatively few great lawyers and actors and artists and singers.
In order to write scenarios, you do not have to be able to express yourself well, as you would have to if you were going to write short stories, for instance. It is the idea that counts, rather than the way in which it is told. Therefore the fact that you have not had a great deal of education from books will not necessarily stand in your way.
It is far more important that you should know people. You must have imagination if you are going to write for the screen — not the wild, untrained im- agination that pictures incredible things that never could happen, but imagination that can work out interesting situations; that can take a newspaper clipping that tells of an incident that is funny, or amazing, and weave it into a story that really could happen to real people.
You cannot write for the screen if you expect to jump to the heights of fame and fortune overnight I suppose that every scenario editor has received hundreds of letters saying "I need some money right away, so please buy this story."
It just isn't done that way. You will have to look at scenario writing as a diversion, an interesting pastime, something that you can afford to entertain yourself with. Don't dream of depending on it as a means of earning money until you have sold several stories and know that you can turn the trick.
Contents:
Can you Write for the Screen 5
What Scenario Editors Want From You 9
How Much Material You Need 18
Where to Begin Your Photoplay 23
Plot Construction 29
Aiming at a Star 34
How You Can Study the Screen 39
Your Title 44
What a Continuity Is 49
The Photoplay in Two Reels 60
The Five or Six Reel Feature 82
Writing a Serial Story 106
A Motion-Picture Comedy Script 125
An Indirect Market for Scenarios 145
How Censorship Affects the Writer 153
How to Prepare Your Manuscript 160
How a Story is Handled 165
The Language of the Screen 176
Titling a Separate Job 184
The Photoplay Market, Past, Present and Future 188
How and Where to Sell Your Scenario 197
Honesty the Governing Policy 204
Courses in Photoplay Writing 214
The Value of Organizations 217
A Word in Conclusion 223
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