2

How to Create Marketable Premises for Motion Pictures and TV

The Importance of a Producible Plot and Castable Characters

I had the pleasure of studying screenwriting with the legendary Irwin R. Blacker at USC (the University of Southern California). He taught screenwriters the importance of using Aristotelian Greek dramatic theory as applied to screenwriting. He forced screenwriters to know Aristotle's theories inside out and to think of a screenplay as a blueprint for making a film, with the same constructs classical playwrights used to appeal to audiences, including the three-act structure, and the importance of plot, conflict, character, exposition, and dialogue in well-written scripts. Irwin Blacker's lectures were published posthumously ...

Get Television and Screen Writing, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.