How They Write A Script: Paddy Chayefsky
The only individual writer to win 3 Academy Awards for screenwriting.
Noted playwright, screenwriter, and arguably the most famous television writer during its so-called golden age of live TV, Paddy Chayefsky is a deeply revered figure among American authors. This fact is underscored by the “Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement, presented annually by the Writers Guild of America. Chayefsky was a prolific writer whose movie credits include Marty (1955), Paint Your Wagon (1969), The Hospital (1971), Network (1976), and Altered States (1980).
Here are some interview excerpts taken from the book “The Craft of the Screenwriter.”
ON THE THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
“The three-act structure is the form that I grew up in the theater with. You generally present a situation in Act I, and by the end of Act I the situation has evolved to a point where something is threatening the situation. In Act II you solve that problem producing a more intense problem by the end of Act II. In Act III you solve that problem, either happily or unhappily, depending on whether you have a comedy or a tragedy or a drama: you work out the final solution accordingly.”
ON EDITING
“If it should occur to you to cut, do so. That’s the first basic rule of cutting. If you’re reading through and stop, something is wrong. Cut it. If something bothers you, then it’s bad. Cut it. If you can cut inside the speech, you’re really cutting most effectively.
“It’s purifying, it’s refining. Making it precise. Precision is one of the basic elements of poetry. My own rules are very simple. First, cut out all the wisdom; then cut out all the adjectives. I’ve cut some of my favorite stuff. I have no compassion when it comes to cutting. No pity, no sympathy. Some of my dearest and most beloved bits of writing have gone with a very quick slash, slash, slash. Because something was heavy there. Cutting leads to economy, precision, and to a vastly improved script.”
ON THE WRITING METHOD
“I always write a prose treatment. I write about half the story in prose to keep order among all the elements of the plot so I don’t get stuck when I do the screenplay.”
ON DIALOGUE
“My dialogue is precise. And it’s true. I think out the truth of what the people are saying and why they’re saying it. Dialogue comes because I know what I want my characters to say. I envision the scene; I can imagine them up there on the screen; I try to imagine what they would be saying and how they would be saying it. and I keep it in character. And the dialogue comes out of that.”
ON THE THEME
“The best thing that can happen is for the theme to be nice and clear from the beginning. Doesn’t always happen. You think you have a theme and you then start telling the story. Pretty soon the characters take over and the story takes over and you realize your theme isn’t being executed by the story, so you start changing the theme.”
ON NAMES
“Names are fun. In Hospital I used a lot of mystery writers. Had a nurse named Christie. A doctor is named Chandler. Sometimes I go to baseball box scores and pick out names. Sometimes I keep characters from one project to another — Arthur Landau, a lawyer, runs through a variety of things.”
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