Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.

Story is about principles, not rules.

From inspiration to last draft you may need as much time to write a screenplay as to write a novel. Screen and prose writers create the same density of world, character, and story, but because screenplay pages have so much white on them, we’re often mislead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a novel. But while scribomaniacs fill pages as fast as they can type, film writers cut and cut again, ruthless in their desire to express the absolute maximum in the fewest possible words. Pascal once wrote a long, drawn-out letter to a friend, then apologized in the postscript that he didn’t have time to write a short one. Like Pascal, screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes time, that excellence means perseverance.

No matter how intimate or epic, contemporary or historical, concrete or fantasized, the world of an eminent artist always strikes us as somewhat exotic or strange. Like an explorer parting forest leaves, we step wide-eyed into an untouched society, a cliché-free zone where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

An artist is never at the mercy of the whims of impulse; he willfully exercises his craft to create harmonies of instinct and idea.

And the quality of your rewriting, the possibility of perfection, depends on a command of the craft that guides you to correct imperfection.

It is the concert of techniques by which we create a conspiracy of interest between ourselves and the audience. Craft is the sum total of all means used to draw the audience into deep involvement, to hold that involvement, and ultimately to reward it with a moving and meaningful experience.

The love of beauty—an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference.

The love of humanity—a willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins and see the world through their eyes.

superb screen stories, all vastly different, yet all produce the same result: an audience leaving the theatre exclaiming, “What a great story!”