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Stories, Conferences and Manuals: The normative function of
screenwriting manuals in their historical context
Paper presented at the "Theorizing Screenwriting Practice Workshop" at
the Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
25.11.2012
Claus Tieber
Screenwriting manuals
There is hardly a field in the film production process where one can find
more literature on than screenwriting. As a film scholar and a film
historian I am interested in the question whether these manual are able
to deliver insights for film studies and if so how should they be read,
treated and contextualized? I am not concerned whether these books are
of any help for actual screenwriters but with the functions of these
manuals within and outside the film industry.
In general there are two positions held in film studies: those who ignore
the manuals (which in most cases also still ignore screenwriting as a
whole). This position can still be found in some textbooks and
introductory literature.
The other position wants to integrate manuals into film studies and treat
them as if they were scholarly literature. This position can be found
among others in Classical Hollywood Cinema (CHC), and David Bordwell
and Kristin Thompson’s writings about the subject.
Needless to say, neither of these two positions is able to give a satisfying
answer to my question. Both imply that studying screenplays means
	
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studying narrative structures and modes of storytelling, both are focusing
on film analysis and almost nothing else (with the exception of Bordwell).
Both forget to contextualize manuals and distinct the various fields or
discourses we have to deal with.
A third position emerged within the last years that took the manuals as
texts to be analyzed in the context of self-regulation and self-control.
Although this approach brings some aspects of the manuals to the
foreground, others, more important ones, I would argue, are still ignored.
The most important one: screenwriting as well as filmmaking in general,
is not an individual, but a collective process.
Manuals, screenplays and free markets
In order to understand the functions of manuals within the American film
industry it is crucial to put the manuals into their historical context. When,
why and for whom were these manuals written? Which functions did they
fulfill - economically, structurally, and didactically? Are they reflecting
and/or changing the mode(s) of production and, if so, in which way?
Bordwell’s treatment of the historical manuals from the 1910s is
important and influential for two reasons: he reads these historical
documents as evidence for his construction of Classical Hollywood
narration. So firstly he reads this material on the same level as studio
protocols, memos, etc. He implies that the manuals give insights into
historical screenwriting practices, in the organization of screenwriting
within the studio system as well as in the narrative structure of Classical
Hollywood films.
And secondly he uses it to construct his version of Classical Hollywood
narration that is quite similar to the one(s) that the more recent manuals
(published from the late 1970s until today, not those from the 1910s) are
	
  	
  
	
  
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propagating. Bordwell is therefore an important starting point for the
examination of the misunderstandings and misreadings of screenwriting
manuals to come.
Bordwell and his fellow travelers overlooked several important points:
Screenwriting manuals were not written at all times in screen history.
They were and still are not written for actual screenwriters but for
aspiring ones, for wanna-bees, for a specific market and a specific target
group and therefore they were only written at times when a free market
for screenwriters existed. In the US such a market only existed before
the late 1910s and then again from the late 1970s until today. In between
there was no demand for new writers, therefore no manuals were
published. The number of sold copies is targeting a market much larger
than the small number of actual screenwriters who can make a living by
their craft.
The so-called scenario fever was a phenomenon of the early 1910s,
when the film industry was searching for people who could supply them
with ideas for films. Columns in magazines, manuals and screenwriting
competitions were omnipresent. Manuals from the 1910s until the early
1920s are quoted in CHC to argue, that they would unveil storytelling
norms and conventions of the film industry. The fictional feature film
began to become an economically interesting format from 1912 onwards.
By 1917/18 it became the new standard product. But the vast majority of
all screenwriting manuals were written before this shift to feature films.
They instructed their readers on how to write one-reelers with one
plotline. Therefore they can only be taken as an argument for CH
narration if one considers the feature film as a simple development of the
one-reeler and shorter formats. Such a view is overlooking all the crucial
differences between telling a story in 20 or in 120 minutes.
	
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In addition, the most important aspects of CH narration – goal oriented
protagonist, three act structure etc. – cannot be found in these manuals.
The publishing of manuals phased out in the late 1910s, early 1920s.
Ann Morey dated the end of a free screenwriting market as early as the
mid-1910s: “After the freelance market collapsed in the mid-1910s, the
likelihood of a private individual’s placing a screenplay with a studio was
small” (Morey, 71). Manuals were written until the early 1920s, from then
on almost no manual was published until 1976. The ones that were
written in between can be counted on one hand. When the classical
studio system collapsed in the 1960s, new modes of filmmaking
emerged. The market for screenwriters was re-opened. Manuals as we
know them today started to get published, screenwriting began to be
taught as an academic discipline.
There are two points to make:
1. The manuals Bordwell is quoting to construct CH narration were
mostly written for one-reelers, not for feature films.
2. The manuals do not give insights into the actual historical
organization and structure of script development, they were
anything but official. (From the 1920s on screenwriting societies
actually opposed the remaining correspondence schools and the
dubiousness of screenwriting advice.) The terminology within these
early manuals is very heterogeneous, there is no standardization of
terms.
In the late 1920s the screenwriting market was closed, screenwriters
from the east went to Hollywood because of the depression and sound
changed the way screenplays were formatted and written. The story
conference as an institutionalized way to control and organize
screenwriting was established. Conferences discussing screenplays
	
  	
  
	
  
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were no innovation of the late 1920. D.W. Griffith had regular meetings
with his script editor and Thomas Ince seems to be the first one who
used story conferences as a way to control, guide and develop
filmmaking. But as an institutionalized form, as a sign of the classical
studio era, the regular story conference started in the late 1920s.
A story is not a story but a conference
From the late 1920s until the 1960s story conferences were the heart
and soul of the classical studio system. The conference and therefore
the screenplay was the tool to control creative work.
From the very first screen idea producer and screenwriter(s) met to
discuss every step within the script development. At a late stage
directors were added, representatives of the Production Code
Administration joined the conferences at a certain point (if it seemed
necessary), younger screenwriters took part to learn the craft and finally
a secretary took notes of which some survived that give film historians
valuable insights into the daily workings of the studio system.
The so-called creative producers within this system, guys like Irving
Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck, Buddy Adler and others were not just giving
orders or making decisions during these conferences. They were
discussing every detail of the script, every word of dialogue, every cut or
dissolve.
It was clear that the producer had the last word, but nevertheless
screenwriters had to take part in an ongoing discussion about their work,
that could last from weeks to (in some cases) years.
	
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There was no list of rules, no manuals where the participants of these
conferences drew their categories from, with which they could justify their
decisions. The arguments to keep or change scenes or elements were
not in all cases on the level of storytelling. In general writers sometimes
argued according to artistic motivation, producers tried to look for the
expected reaction of the audience.
The criteria that guided discussions and decisions included
verisimilitude, causality and motivation, but there was no mention
whatsoever about three-act structure, goal-driven protagonist, or plot
points. Not in these terms, not in others. Classical Hollywood storytelling
did not follow the later formulated notion of it, it was in fact based on
discussions and not on a normative dramaturgy.
These conferences dealt not only with storytelling, but with the whole film
production process. The screenplay to be developed was not the written
form of a well-told plot, it was the plan that made a film possible and that
meant that it should offer all the pleasures and gratifications of a
commercial, mainstream film. These pleasures should be built into the
script, and not just the suspense of “what will happen next?”.
The development of a screenplay therefore includes regular discussions
about attractions (in a broader sense that Tom Gunning is defining the
term) and the evocation of emotions. The script is never discussed as
only a way to tell a story, but always with regard to the film's reception.
When it came to deciding between a perfect dramaturgy and an effective
scene, the latter almost always won. There were also discussions about
the way stars should be given the perfect environment to deliver their
skills. In short: story conferences during the classical studio era dealt
with all the practical aspects of filmmaking with regard to the desired
reaction, not just with the story.
	
  	
  
	
  
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As the classical studio era faded out, filmmaking changed its
organizational structure. The creative producer as the one person who
controlled every aspect of filmmaking vanished. The job profile of
producers changed, knowledge and experience in screenwriting was no
longer a requirement. Stars and directors became more independent
from studios, directors became more involved with story development.
And the most important difference to the classical era: the amount of
communication during the process decreased.
In the 1960s epic films were written and produced that denied any notion
of effective, Hollywood storytelling. Forms and structures were almost
getting out of hand. Big budget films - epics, sandal films and musicals –
all of them with narrative structures one would not teach in screenwriting
seminars and all of them flops - are just a sign that “old” Hollywood had
some serious problems, and one of them concerned screenwriting.
New Hollywood then was new in terms of visuals, aesthetics, characters
and so on. But in terms of storytelling New Hollywood was looking
backwards. Genre became interesting again and so became a notion of
classical Hollywood storytelling that in fact never was. New Hollywood
was successful because it used simple, effective modes of storytelling.
New Hollywood followed an imagined version of classical Hollywood, the
storytelling of these films, at least of the successful ones, is neither new
nor classical, it is neo-classical.
At this point in history, when permanent discussions between producer
and screenwriter(s) were replaced by a vacuum of power and an
uncertainness about filmmaking in general that led screenwriter William
Goldman to write the famous line that in Hollywood “nobody knows
anything.” (Goldmann). No studio insider of the classical age has ever
said anything comparable no matter how incompetent he/she felt that
	
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studio people were. Because in the classical era, there was a deeper
level of involvement prevailing throughout the production departments,
most people were very experienced, , they knew their conventions and
most of all they knew that there was only one way to find solutions: to
talk about it. In other words: in the studio system everything was
negotiable.
At this point in the history of American cinema Syd Field’s “Storytelling”
was published and became a success that was followed by myriad
epigones, all propagating the same shallow do-it-yourself style
screenwriting advise that could not became successful at any other
moment in the history of Hollywood.
Hollywood’s search for answers, the re-opened market for screenwriters
and an un-defined hierarchy within the screen-idea working group made
manuals successful. They fulfilled a real need, first of the film industry
and then of the millions of wanna-be writers, film buffs and active fans.
The three-act, plot point, goal-oriented formula replaced the ongoing
communication between producer and screenwriter. Conferences took
place between director and screenwriter. The formula that Field and his
successors created, replaced the blurred hierarchy of the classical studio
system, mostly so because films based on that formula were successful.
This is not to say that any Hollywood film after 1976 is based on
manuals, but the essence of the manuals became “the rules”. In the
actual conferences during the studio system nobody is referring to rules.
There were no rules. There were conventions, experiences, and
audience’s expectations. Based on these factors, filmmakers had their
criteria on which their decisions were based upon. These “rules” and the
formula of the manuals replace the system of permanent conferences.
	
  	
  
	
  
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Outside the industry the manuals fulfilled similar functions like the ones
in the 1910s: they re-established the ideology that everyone could make
it in Hollywood, the old Horatio Alger myth. It involved film buffs and fans
into the construction of a greater community and set up a popular
discourse about screenwriting within the boundaries of Hollywood
filmmaking.
These functions in and outside the film industry made the manuals
successful. If today many scholars and critics are getting bored by
Hollywood films and are instead heading for television series, for “quality
TV”, this shift is also caused by the success of the manuals in Hollywood
on the one side and the mode of production, especially the mode of
script development of these series. The “formula” can not be applied to
these series, the decisions made during the script development are
again based on communication. But this time it is the screenwriter, the
creator of a series, who is at the top of the hierarchy, because s/he is
also the co-producer , who discusses the screenplays with a group of
writers. Again creative control is organized around ongoing discussions,
and not by fixed rules. The way script development is organized is
always closely connected with the aesthetics and the quality of film or TV
series.
Conclusion
So what shall we do with these manuals?
First of all we should read them in their historical context.
Shall we read them as a means to analyze storytelling?
In those cases in which screenplays were written according to these
manuals, and a lot of them were, especially during the 1980s, this might
	
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makes sense. But for all the films that were made before 1976 it leads
nowhere. Narratology has supplied us with various theories and
methods, even the most idiosyncratic ones are more detailed and more
serious than anything that can be found in manuals.
Shall we see them as insights into the work of screenwriters, into the
practice of screenwriting?
Manuals are written for those who are willing to buy these books, not for
those who earn their money with screenwriting. Screenwriting is a
process in which many people are involved. Successful screenwriting is
still to a great amount a matter of communication, and the screenplay is
a mean of communication. The screenwriting process and its
organization, the analysis of the industry’s internal discourse could and
should be part of something like production culture studies, or the
formulation of an aesthetics of production as a much needed expansion
of film studies. Can manuals help us to get insights into such a
production culture? I doubt it.
Screenwriting is communication, it is not the work done by a single
person sitting at his desk, it is done by filmmakers talking with each
other. And screenwriting is not only about storytelling. A successful film
consists of more than just a well-told story. The screenplay is framework
for all the elements of a film, it is the document that makes the film
possible. (And it is by no means an artwork in itself.)
So what should we examine, study and analyze in the field of
screenwriting?
Modes of storytelling, forms of organization of creativity, the relation of
production and creative structure, production culture, in their respective
historical contexts. Manuals are a part of these histories and contexts.
We should put them where they belong historically, study their influence
	
  	
  
	
  
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and their functions in and outside the film industry. But we should stop to
overrate them. They are no windows into the mind of writers. And as I
tried to make clear in this presentation: all of the above mentioned
aspects are far more interesting than a single creative mind, and far
easier to examine.