“Plot action should arise from and be determined by character.”
Frances Marion
Walter Pitkin has said, ‘Melodrama gets somewhere, but means nothing, while undramatic character writing gets nowhere, but means something.‘ The film story in demand is the one that both gets somewhere and means something, because of its action based on character. The easiest way to destroy whatever illusion of reality it may have is to sacrifice character to plot.
Events, episodes, situations are interesting to us almost solely because of the human beings involved. It is what some person does in a given situation that is interesting, not the situation itself. Lincoln is more interesting than the Thirteenth Amendment; Joan of Arc is more interesting than the trial at Rouen. Let a barrel roll over Niagara Falls, and you have merely an incident; put a man in the barrel and you have added the necessary factor to interest mankind. As George Pierce Baker pointedly says, ‘There can be no dramatic situation without human beings. Even in fantasy everything has to be personified and in the photoplays with animal actors, such as Sequoia (1934), it is the human characteristics shown by the animals that make drama.”
Oscar winning screenwriter Frances Marion
How to Write and Sell Film Stories (1937)
page 32
Found this Sequoia movie trailer on YouTube:
P.S. George Pierce Baker was a professor of history and technique of
the drama in Yale University and published a book on playwriting in 1919 called Dramatic Technique that you can read on Project Gutenberg.
I am loving this series of excerpts from Marion’s book. Very inspiring and informative. Thank you! 🙂
Glad you’re enjoying them Debbi. Her book has been a fun find. And even though her book was published in 1937, I find many of her insights fresh.