Screenwriting Manuals - Text 2
Other even more theoretical texts, such as Greimas’ Structural Semantics, Genette’s Narrative Discourse, Eco’s Lector in fabula and Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative, have sometimes also been referenced in writing manuals (particularly in the French-speaking world).
Scriptwriting manuals are practical volumes written by professionals – sometimes by scriptwriters, but most often by script consultants – for use by professionals and especially by amateurs (students in particular). Their main goal is to present a method for conceiving, developing and writing a script. In the old tension between art and the artisanal, between the “having a calling” method and the “becoming a professional” method, these manuals quite obviously take the side of the professional system from the outset: writing can be taught and learned, know-how is as important as talent, it is important to be familiar with the profession’s techniques and little tricks. Because these are practical manuals and not theoretical tracts, their method is inductive and not deductive: their starting point is the analysis of a group of exemplary scripts – most often those of a few hit films – in order to recreate the rules of the art. This inductive labour obviously involves generalization, meaning a process of selecting, simplifying and formalizing.
For a number of historical reasons – the rapid industrialization of American cinema and the professionalization of scriptwriters there, the cultural hegemony of the United States since the early twentieth century, etc. – American scriptwriting manuals quickly came to dominate the market in a lasting manner.[2] Indeed the first manuals in the United States appeared early: Ralph P. Stoddard published The Photo-Play: A Book of Valuable Information for Those Who Would Enter a Field of Unlimited Endeavour in 1911, Epes Winthrop Sargent brought out Technique of the Photoplay in 1912, Victor Freeburg introduced The Art of Photoplay Making in 1918 and Frances Taylor Patterson (who for decades taught the course “Photoplay Composition” at Columbia University) published Cinema Craftsmanship: A Book for Photoplaywrights in 1920 and Scenario and Screen in 1928. These manuals became out of date with the arrival of sound, however, when speech became central to the art of telling a story. Few manuals were published in the 1930s. We should mention, however, Tamar Lane’s The New Technique of Screen Writing: A Practical Guide to the Writing and Marketing of Photoplays (1936), which was one of the first to take up writing for talking film. After the war came Eugene Vale’s The Technique of Screen and Television Writing (1944) and Lewis Herman’s A Practical Manual of Screen Playwriting for Theater and Television Films (1952).
Most manuals, however, have been published after the crisis of the large studios and the growth of so-called “independent” cinema (meaning independent of the large studios). There was a spate of publications in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s: Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979, 2005); Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great (1987, 2010); Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (1992, 1998, 2007); David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible (1994, 2014); Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997, 2010); Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (2005); John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (2007); etc.
A few books also appeared in the French-speaking world, such as Michel Chion’s Écrire un scénario (1985, 2007) and Yves Lavandier’s La dramaturgie (1994, 2014). These books, even though they often introduce a wider and more universal body of work, owe a great deal to the American manuals (Chion mentions Vale and Field, among others; Lavandier discusses Field, McKee and Truby). In this group, Isabelle Raynauld’s volume Lire et écrire un scénario (2012, 2019) easily stands out for the importance it grants to reading scripts as part of the work of scriptwriting and for its techniques for conceiving a project, but also, in its second edition, for its openness to documentary and new media. The best selling and most influential volumes outside of the United States continue, however, to be translations of the principal American manuals.[3]
Manuals published in the United States are highly similar. The vocabulary may vary from one writer to the next, as can the number of beats, pivots and acts, but the heart of the matter remains the same. The ideal story – whether it is called “The Paradigm” (Field), “The Quest” (McKee), “The Hero’s Journey” (Vogler), “The Story Spine” (Seger), “The Beat Sheet” (Snyder), “The 22 Building Blocks” (Truby), “The Six Stage Plot Structure” (Hauge), etc. – generally boils down to a few basic ingredients: a theme; a main character with a “weakness” and an (unconscious) “need”, a “goal” or a (conscious) “desire”; an obstacle to this desire, meaning an antagonist and most of all a central conflict; a linear structure divided into a few large acts, with a transformation of the character; and a dramatic progression, with a catalyst, at least two pivots, a high point and an ideally positive ending – all without a particular narrative perspective.
The starting point of the story is generally the character. As Syd Field wrote, “There are really only two ways to approach writing a screenplay. One is to get an idea, then create your characters to fit that idea... Another way to approach a screenplay is by creating a character, then letting a need, an action, and ultimately a story emerge out of that character.”[4] Most manuals adopt the latter method. In one of the exercises in his famous seminar, Field proposed to his students, precisely, to construct a character together and, from there, to sketch out an entire story: “Let’s create a character,” he would say. “I’ll ask questions, you’ll supply the answers.”[5] Is it a man or a woman? Where does she live? How old is she? What is her name? When was she born? What do her parents do? What are her relations with them like? What is she studying? What is the social and political context? Etc. In this guided discussion, the class quickly arrived at a consensus on each question and as a result developed in record time a “good story,” an example of which is given here: “In the ’70s, a young woman attorney discovers unsafe working conditions at a nuclear power plant and, despite political pressure and threats to her life, succeeds in exposing political corruption. The plant is shut down until repairs are made and safe conditions exist to protect the workers and the surrounding community.” “Not too bad – considering that it took us only a couple of hours to create a character and a story!,” Field concludes,[6] without noting that this story is already quite familiar (One Man, 1977; The China Syndrome, 1979; Norma Rae, 1979; A Civil Action, 1998; The Insider, 1999; Erin Brockovich, 2000; etc.).
The character’s importance may appear obvious: it is difficult to imagine a story without a hindered protagonist, or emotion without identification. Still, the character must be put in perspective, contextualized and historicized. As practical as these manuals may be, they are based not only on a theory of narrative, but also and above all on a theory of the subject, on a particular moral and political philosophy which, by means of a singular syncretism, blends liberalism and Christianity. Indeed the theory here is in the first place liberal, often utilitarian and sometimes even libertarian: protagonists are essentially sovereign, autonomous, conscious, intentional and effective, but above all free and a proprietor of their person, their abilities and the fruits of their labour. They are an interested party, acting out of personal interest and essentially maintaining with others relations of economic exchange. This conception of the subject forms part of what C.B. Macpherson called “possessive individualism,” which took hold with the growth of economic liberalism and capitalism and conceives the subject on the model of the economic agent, and society on the model of the market.
Paradoxically, this theory is also, to a certain extent, Christian: the protagonist is at one and the same time autonomous and heteronomous, free and predetermined, fundamentally good but also fallible, marked by some current weakness or a past fault, an original sin, which must be expiated. Such protagonists are responsible for their actions, but find themselves at the same time subject to higher forces: not only causality, blind and meaningless like chance, but also a purpose, intentional and meaningful like Providence, destiny or divine will. Truby spells this out in no uncertain terms: a good story must have a protagonist with a “moral weakness” and a “moral need” confronted with a “moral choice” and who makes a “moral decision” with irreversible consequences (punishments or rewards, malediction or redemption) which can provide a “moral self-revelation.”
Obviously many other models for scripts, stories and narratives exist, without a simple theme, a main character or antagonist, a central conflict, a linear structure, actions, transformations, marked dramatic progression, a catalyzing element, strong central figures, a high point or ending – and without a univocal narrative perspective.[7] But the American model of the “good script” continues to dominate around the world in academic institutions – schools and universities – and the film industry alike. And still today many films, and sometimes even so-called “national” films, are constructed to the letter of the recommendations by Field, McKee and Truby.[8]
