Regardless of the medium for which they are written, dramatists design plays
for performance. Moreover, screenplays are “blueprints” for film
productions. Once a movie is “in the can,” there is no further use for the
screenplay, and they are rarely published. When one does find screenplays in
book form, they tend to look like stage plays. One can read them for content,
but one could not make a movie from the script.
In fact, people who write drama create behavior:
For actors to perform.
For presentation on a stage or screen.
For an audience to watch.
For the purpose of presenting story that unfolds as if it were happening
in real time
Screenplays have evolved over the past century as the means by which a
writer presents a story cinematically. While stage plays are confined to
the theater in which they run, screenwriters can take an audience anywhere. A
hospital operating room. The Taj Mahal. An actor’s face. For that reason,
screenwriting emphasizes visual images as the building blocks for its stories.
Film industry admonitions hammer home this point. “Screenwriting is show,
not tell.” Also, “If it can’t go on the screen, leave it out of the scene.” Directors,
producers and agents tend to advise, “If you can’t photograph something, cut
it.” But perhaps the most effective way to bring home the point is to ask an
individual, “Do you buy a ticket and go to the movies so that you can sit and
listen while someone reads to you? Or describes and explains behavior to you?”
In Glass Menagerie, the protagonist, Tom, talks about going to the
movies to have adventures. It’s also the reason people go to see stage plays.
Many novelists, including greats such as William Faulkner, failed at
screenwriting. They could not make the transition from narrative prose to
drama, and the special needs of cinema left them cold. Novelists who succeed do
so because they realize the difference and can handle both art forms. Forgive the
repetition, but a screenplay is drama. It has to work as drama. If one simply
writes novels and puts them into screenplay format, the script will be dead on
arrival.