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Screenwriting Goes Mainstream

By Zinn Jeremiah

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Published: 03Aug2007
Word count: 430
Viewed: 317 time(s)

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There's been a decisive trend change over time on the part of aspiring fiction writers, from seeking to write novels professionally to seeking to professionally write screenplays. The novel at one time was unequivocally the great aspiration in writing. Almost absolutely, any hopeful fiction writer at any given time was working on a novel they dreamed of getting published.

Playwriting has always held an appeal for some fiction writers, but not to the extent that the novel once did. The playwriting community has pretty well constantly been centered in New York, the theater capital of the United States, and perhaps this geographic reality had a limit on the number of potential playwrights. Additionally theater, certainly in years past, didn't have the same perception of importance that novel writing did. A great novel could win a Pulitzer, after all.

And then along came the screenplay. The watershed event in screenwriting's popularity may have been the publishing of the book "Screenplay" in 1979. "Screenplay", written by so-called screenplay guru Syd Field, is a how-to book about writing screenplays, and is probably the first ever book of its kind. "Screenplay" explained a process for writing screenplays, and the book proved to be a phenomenal success. Prior to "Screenplay" being published, screenplay writing technique was a trade secret, so to speak, of the entertainment industry. After "Screenplay" was published, anyone who wanted to learn to write a screenplay could, presumably, just read Syd Field's book.

But there was dissension around "Screenplay". Firstly, a number of screenwriting professionals disagreed completely with Syd Field's diagnosis of how screenplays are written. It was also pointed out that Syd Field had never been credited with writing a screenplay. He was teaching a trade that he himself had apparently never professionally accomplished. Perhaps as a critical response to Field's book, perhaps just as a means of cashing in on a new niche, a slew of screenwriting books followed "Screenplay" into the market. And the genie was forever out of the bottle.

Today, screenwriting is probably the most mainstream of all forms of fiction writing. People everywhere, in every remote corner, are writing screenplays. Screenwriter gatekeeping has even become an industry itself, through screenplay contests and other methods. And the novel? The novel continues on, to be sure. But fewer aspiring fiction writers seem to have the motivation to write a novel these days. The positive in this, of course, is that the market for novel writing has cleared. It may just be the perfect time to see a novel get published.

Zinn Jeremiah is an online author. Read more of Zinn's work at article exchange. Learn more about screenwriting at how to write a screenplay.

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