Screenwriting Advice From The Past: Midway in the Photoplay [Part 4]

If you are a screenwriter, you should know about Anita Loos. Loos was one of the most influential writers in the early stages of American cinema, associated with 136 film projects per IMDB.

Married to writer John Emerson, the pair wrote one of the first books on screenwriting in 1920: “How to Write Photoplays”. I have been running a weekly series based on the book. You can access those posts here. Today: Midway in the Photoplay [P. 100]:

It is inadvisable to attempt a minor plot in a photoplay unless it has a distinct and important bearing on your big story. It is easy to confuse photoplay audiences, and there should be none of these “odd moments” of the spoken drama in the screen play.

As noted last week, what Loos and Emerson are talking about here is what has come to be known as a subplot, a secondary or “minor” plot.

Their advice is sound and speaks to one of the most fundamental truisms about a screenplay: Every aspect of the narrative has to be connected with and move forward the Plotline / central plot. At a bare minimum, as Loos and Emerson suggest, we do not want to veer off onto a tangent at the risk of confusing a script reader. More than that, however, subplots can shed light on the main plot and the journey of key characters, most notably the Protagonist, each subplot reflecting a different light on a story providing multiple layers of meaning and interpretation. As such, subplots are powerful tools for a screenwriter, allowing us to explore different dimensions of the narrative in terms of plot, theme, emotion, and so forth.

There is also an incredibly simple, yet valuable aspect of subplots which we will explore next week as we continue our exploration into Anita Loos and John Emerson’s book from 1920.

If you live in the U.S., you can read “How to Write Photoplays” via Google books online here.

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