Screenplay as Narrative

Before we write a screenplay, let’s agree on what the screenplay is.  Screenplay; movies, short films, video clips, TV films, TV series, web series, documentaries, presentations, etc. is the written form of the contents of visual works. The script is not written only for ‘fiction’ genres.  Screenplays are also written for non-fictional (documentary, presentation) visual works.

Stephen King – Writer

Fiction: a generic name given to narrative genres that are fed from the imagination of a writer, who are basically not fed from facts or history. Sometimes the author can feed or draw a real / live chronicle, but his imagination is based on making some basic choices, such as perspective and chronology, while describing events and characters. It may be useful to look at the narrative arrangement of events and characters to distinguish the freak. For example, the writer is a freak if he or she is describing the behavior of a character at a time when no other creature has ever seen it. Often, all fiction is interested in the characters’ inner world and their behavior not seen by other people. A news text is not a fiction. A documentary screenplay (which may contain fictional sections) is not fiction.

Today the general screenplay is the fiction screenplay. In some of world languages, the word ‘scenario’ is widely used in the sense of ‘full of lies’. There is a gray and problematic area between imagination and reality. The writer’s presence poses this problem. For most of the time (as an option) the fictional writer is in the position of ‘the man who knows everything’.

Billy Wilder – Screenwriter

As with the work written by the author, the fictional path can vary according to the cultural, social background and philosophical approach and beliefs, such as the relationship with the real world / life. There are disciplines full of detailed and complex topics that examine all these differences. There is no general consensus. However, the tradition of ancient narratives as well as humanity continues to exist in some way. The narrative is a descriptive human function that can change shape, change environment, but will continue to exist. All cultures, all religions and mythologies, beliefs and even thought systems, societies, football teams in the world need a narrative. Individuals can not live without narratives. Everyone has an individual story / narrative.

For this reason, writing a script requires a claim to be a narrator. Talking about stories and listening to stories is one of the qualities we can not give up. Even when the people we do not know speak to each other, we even hear and try to catch a story. Yes, gossip is a kind of narrative.

Long story short, if you want to write a script, you have to be a master of ‘narration’ enough to be able to design the events and the sequence in which the characters are written. Screenplay writing, is not only to know screenplay page layout. If you want to write a script, you have to write according to the effect you want to create on the storyteller you want to tell. As we have seen, we face many fundamental problems that require in-depth thought and effort. For this reason most people say ‘my life is a novel’, but there are very few people who have been able to sit and write novels and are accepted after writing. It is perfectly natural that you have watched a movie or a series of movies and said, ‘I want to write.’ And that means you have taken your place among those who say ‘my life is a novel’. There is a big problem left: sit down and write.

David Peoples – Screenwriter

The writer is an audience / reader before everything else. He/she is an human being who is burning with the desire to build on the influence of the book on others, which he/she affected before . Good writers are good readers, good screenwriters are good ones too. It is as tragic as the situation of a man trying to bargain with his/her own fate; to resist reading and reading for a writer.

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