“How to Write Photoplays” by John Emerson and Anita Loos

If you are a screenwriter, you should know about Anita Loos. Loos was one of the most influential writers in the early history of American cinema, associated with 136 film projects per IMDb.

Married to writer John Emerson, the pair wrote perhaps the earliest book on screenwriting in 1920: “How to Write Photoplays”.

Here are the chapter titles:

I. Let’s Write A Movie

II. Tools And Trades

III. Getting The Story Across

IV. The Photoplay Writer’s Dictionary

V. The Theme

VI. Star Sympathy

VII. “Action! Camera! Grind!”

VIII. The Synopsis

IX. The Continuity

X. Titles and Sub-Titles

XI. A Model Scene

XII. Marketing The Story

XIII. Writing For The Camera

XIV. Scenery For Scenarios

XV. The Actor’s Angle

XVI. Character On The Screen

XVII. The “Interest”

XVIII. The Kind Of Stories That Sell

XIX. What To Write — And Not To Write

XX. Cutting The Picture

XXI. Writing For The Censors

XXII. The Pictorial Element

XXIII. The Denouement

XXIV. How To Begin

XXV. Midway In The Photoplay

XXVI. The Final Close-Up

XXVII. The Love Expert

Okay, maybe not Robert McKee or Syd Field, but isn’t it remarkable how many of those topics have relevance for today’s screenwriters?

Gee, wouldn’t it be kind of fun to flip through this book. But come on, it’s over 100 years old. There’s no way you could possibly find it, right?

Wrong. Check this out: You can read the book online for free!

But you know what? I shall save you the trouble. Each day for the next several weeks, I will post key excerpts from the most applicable chapters of this book. You will be absolutely amazed at how little things have changed in terms of the fundamentals of the screenwriting trade in nearly a century’s time.

Here is a short film called The New York Hat (1912) written by Loos, directed by D.W. Griffith, and starring the biggest star of the era Mary Pickford.

Screenwriting wisdom from Loos in the weeks to come.

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Note: I ran this series originally in 2012. Unfortunately, the individual articles got bungled up on the site in some sort of technical snafu. So, I am recovering them one by one in this reprise of the series.