The Soul of Screenwriting: On Writing, Dramatic Truth, and Knowing Yourself

There is something fundamentally incomplete, if not misleading, in trying to teach screenwriting in terms of models that are thought of mechanically as templates into which to fit your story idea. It is especially misleading to try to learn from a few "perfect" examples, like Chinatown, Witness, Terminator 2, or Titanic. It is the easiest thing in the world to take a finished product that has already been a smash success and extol it as a perfect model. One simply ignores the process: what it took to get there! Screenwriting is a long journey. Even the most gifted screenwriters get lost along the way. Getting lost, too, is part of the process. Therefore, to treat the resulting movies as models of perfection while ignoring the process is a rather mean self-deception.

What the writer experiences in the act of writing has never been taken into account--but, after all, this is where the screenplay comes from: the writer's here-and-now experience while working on the story. Information: left-brain concepts and techniques about how to handle plot structure, character development and orchestration, the dynamics of scenes and sequences--is all necessary. But it is what we do with the information that makes for really good screenwriting. In The Soul of Screenwriting, Keith Cunningham demonstrates that good screenwriting is more than hitting the big "plot points" with exciting action. Good screenwriting also has integrity and authenticity. It has a "voice," and because it has a voice it speaks to the audience. To gain a voice, the writer needs the heat of creative imagination: passion, commitment, enthusiasm, a drive to know the truth of the characters, a drive to get to the core of the dramatic conflict without resorting to escapism. These are qualities of the heart. The keystone premise of this book is that screenwriting can indeed be, in Carlos Castaneda's phrase, a path with heart.