River Man
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John Fraim
I’m from LA and don’t know if I hold the record for the number of screenwriting books I’ve read and categorized but I have yet to find anything like what I’ve created in my manuscript Hollywood Safari: A Dangerous Trip Through Screenplay Theories. This is why I created it. The project seemed important to create: a type of rough roadmap to the world of screenwriting theory. Ready to be defined more by others which it should be.
The manuscript is being held now to check on copyright as we include many books and diagrams. The content is most likely protected under Fair Use laws. The publishing of diagrams of screenwriting gurue probably in violation of copyright. Anyway, the manuscript is complete yet continues to grow with latest screenwriting theories added to it. To my knowledge, it is the first attempt to categorized various screenwriting theories from Aristotle’s Poetics to John Trudy’s brilliant Anatomy of Genres.
Some type of reference book like this is needed by those newcomers to Hollywood who somehow get attached to one theory. The book attempts to classify screen theories. The idea for the book is based on the great business book called Strategic Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management by Henry Mintzberg. The idea of Mintzberg’s book was to show those interested in the particular career of strategic business consulting, that there were various theories and the world of strategy consulting was not ruled by one theory. Advice like this is so good to those starting out in a career to show them particular options of this career.
I anticipate putting it in a database and updating it on a regular basis. Not only the craft of screenwriting needs this. The entire craft of modern storytelling and drama needs this. Stories large enough for the times rather than too small for them.
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I discovered screenwriting books in the 70s with Syd Fields Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979). It was a short, concise division of a story into a three-act structure of Act I (Set UP), Act II (Confrontation) and Act III (Resolution). There were a few Plot Points in the structure but is presented screenwriting in such an easy structure. Everything in life has a Beginning, Middle and End.
After reading it, I tried writing a screenplay using this method. It was interesting because it exposed me to the basic of drama and change from beginning to end of a story. A movement between symbolic opposites. I wrote a manuscript titled Symbolism of Place: The Hidden Context of Communication (1990) regarding the use of this movement in screenplays. This is published online on our website.
I continued to read screenplay books after my introduction with Syd Field’s Screenplay. This might have been my big mistake. I thought reading more “how to” books on screenplays would make me a better screenwriter. But it had a different effect. It made me more confused as to what a story should be and how it should be structured.
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The number of screenwriting theories today is more a matter of marketing segmentation and branding than evolution into better storytelling methods. Refining into better storytelling methods. Better subjects, techniques, structure. More than anything, stories that connect rather than separate or segment in another product/brand niche intent on differentiation rather than connection. Like information today, more-and-more and smaller-and-smaller subjects. Look at the departments of the universities and their divisions into smaller and smaller segments. Look at the over-production of information today.
Products are not created for the mass consumer anymore (like the early years of mass media) but for small, niche segments in a broken-up culture of many niches. There are probably twenty to thirty brands of toothpaste one can find in a CVS today. Think of the competition of brands in a supermarket.
Unfortunately, American storytelling theory has been subject to this breakup into various ideas and brands. Just like other products sold in the marketplace. Screenplay theories are certainly products. In modern marketing, it’s important to “differentiate” oneself from competition and differentiation is accomplished not by incorporating what other theories say but being distinctly different from them.
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This break-up and disconnect from others sound familiar. It’s what our culture has done today under the break-up of old party systems. The tragedy is that a new way to tell stories is desperately needed. In effect, some type of consolidation or round-table amongst the various screenwriting theory or method holders in the Hollywood screenwriting books. Yet consolidation or sharing learning is not brand-building among screenwriting gurus/theorists.
Who cares how many toothpaste brands are in a CVS? Or types of beer, wine in a liquor store?
But one should care that a number of ideas in screenwriting structure and technique continue to battle with each other, protecting their own turf of structure steps or gender.
It might be unrealistic and a fantasy of mine. But I wish that we could all stop looking down and into screens all day and looking up into the large screen of the sky. (Even larger than Hollywood’s Silver Screen at the height of its glory.) I wish there could be some type of agreement of what drama is today for the general populace rather than the smaller and smaller niche segments of the population. Let’s continue to divide into smaller and smaller segments than unite into larger and larger groups.
In effect, the possibility for a great story that all can feel rather than just some segment of a cable audience. Or users of a brand of toothpaste. Stories of our times should not be like this.
The result of all of this is that I went back to a manual I published over ten years ago stating basic principles of screenwriting called GreatHouse Story Workbook. It’s an explanation of the basic elements of story composition. Much of it was based on Syd Field’s work and other leading Hollywood gurus.
In many ways, Syd was the source that created a paradigm for screenwriting in the late 70s. It was a paradigm that others could break free from and create their own ideas about screenwriting. Yet it seemed to me that the farther and farther screenwriters moved from the basic ideas of Field, the more they went up smaller and smaller tributaries. Creating smaller and smaller stories that failed to align with the times.
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John is founder of Midnight Oil Studios