Photoplay Writing (1922)
by William Lord Wright
Chapter I
Can you write for the screen?
“He just jotted his ideas down on the back of an envelope, that he mailed to a motion picture company, and he got a thousand dollars for the story."
"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 not true. There have been a 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 inventive ability, and can devise new situations, and show us old ones from an angle that is new 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, 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 imagination that pictures incredible things that never could happen, but an 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 over night. 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 on 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.
You may have to write for a year or two before you really know how to do it—or you may find, right at first, that you are able to write actable and screenable stories. It is likely to take time and patience—and a great deal of effort.
But don't be discouraged by the thought that you haven't had enough education, or enough travel or anything of that sort. If you know people, and life, that's enough.
Do not make the mistake, however, that thousands of others make. In an effort to impress a scenario editor with the fact that your story is natural and lifelike do not say, "I know that the enclosed story is human and dramatic because every bit of it really happened."
Whether or not it really happened is of no particular interest to the scenario editor, and he looks upon such explanations as an inexcusable waste of his time and is therefore prejudiced against your story from the start. What he wants to know is,—Is your story dramatic? Does it hold the interest? Does the action develop naturally step by step? Is it logical? Is it appealing?
Even though the incidents included in a story did actually happen, they might not fulfill all the requirements of drama. And if your story has all these qualities the scenario editor won't care whether it ever happened in real life or not. He will be too busy writing out a check for you.