Screenwriting is everywhere!
Sometimes it boggles my mind how ubiquitous screenwriting has become over the last three decades. Syd Field’s “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting” gets published in 1979, then a trickle of early screenwriting gurus (McKee, Truby, Freeman) leads to a flood of other gurus (Vogler, Snyder, Hauge, Soth, Gulino, Chitlik) combined with the Million Dollar Spec Script frenzy of the late 80s and mid-90s (thanks, Shane Black!), and now it’s like you can drop into a 7–11 in Williston, ND and find a copy of “Emotional Impact” by Karl Iglesias or another tome on screenwriting to go along with your cherry Slurpee and microwave burrito.
Screenwriting is everywhere!
For instance, I get an email today from my friend Richard about a fellow named Mark Rovner:
He’s a screenwriter as well as a marketer.
Check out this post of his from yesterday: http://seachangestrategies.com/blog/2009/03/29/andy-goodman-ruined-my-life-now-i-want-to-ruin-yours/
So I click through to the site, an outfit called Sea Change Strategies. What do they do?
Sea Change is more than just a name. It’s a transformation.
We build, transform and integrate online marketing, communications and fundraising strategies. We work with all players and across the departmental divide to develop strategy and execute cohesive, brand-perfect online campaigns.
What we do is multi-disciplinary and tailored for each unique client.
Evidently they work with non-profits and their marketing efforts. Then I look at the post Richard recommended and here is a sampling of what Rovner is ‘preaching’:
How many of you have taken Andy Goodman’s storytelling seminar?
Pretty mind-blowing, huh? Andy unlocks the secrets of good story-telling, decoding a formula for narrative going at least back to Aristotle’s Poetics.
—
Andy ruined my life because I was so enraptured with the mechanics of story-telling that I enrolled in UCLA’s online program in screenwriting. Today, one year and one and a half midnight-scribed screenplays later, herewith are some thoughts and perceptions that may be of use.
What the heck is a story anyway?
One screenwriting guru, Michael Hauge, boils all stories down to three elements.. They are
- character;
- desire;
- conflict
That’s it. You have those three, and you have a story.
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If your reader or listener is not emotionally engaged in your story, you’re done. In a bad way.
Karl Iglesias is one of Hollywood’s most eminent script gurus and is the writer of the eminently readable book “Writing for Emotional Impact.”
This is how Karl puts it:
Good writing is good writing because you feel something. It’s why a great movie can be three hours long and you don’t even notice, while an awful ninety minute one can stretch into eternity. It’s why psychologists call movies “Emotion Machines.” The experience of emotions is the most compelling reason we go to the movies, watch television, read novels, and attend plays and sporting events. And yet, emotional response is a subject too often overlooked.
Emotion, not logic, is the stuff of drama. Emotion is your screenplay’s life blood.
So here I am, checking out a website for an outfit that deals with marketing for non-profits, and I’m reading about storyteling, screenwriting, Michael Hauge, and Karl Iglesias (whose book evidently made it from that 7–11 in North Dakota to Mark Rovner’s desk), and frankly, finding as much inspiration about the craft of writing than I do on many writing blogs.
Screenwriting is everywhere!
Why is that? What is it about screenwriting that makes it so… what? Applicable? Accessible? Relatable? Understandable?
What is it about screenwriting that has made it so omnipresent nowadays?
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