Saturday, February 14, 2009

Moritz on Theme in Scriptwriting

Moritz (2001) writes about the two schools of thought regarding themes in scripts. One school of thought says that you should have a clear theme before writing a script and another school of thought says you can find it later. Moritz takes that latter position. He says that having a theme before can actually get in the way of "the framing of a specific story..." (p. 25). It can stifle creativity he says "by being intent on checking that every bit of what you put down conforms to the line of argument in your premise" (p. 25, my emphasis). However, is this workable advice for an E-E researcher? An E-E researcher begins with the argument that is being made, right?

Moritz seems to say in a good story, you'll discover the truth of your story, the theme as you work through your story.

Moritz suggests: "it's far more important to find out the way a story is going to go rather than worry too much about what it means" (p. 25).






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