Screenwriting Advice From The Past: Getting Ideas

If you are a screenwriter, you should know about Anita Loos. She 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 one of the earliest books on screenwriting in 1920: “How to Write Photoplays”. Here is some advice from early in that book:

Hmm. Where have I heard this before? Something about Read Scripts, Watch Movies, Write Pages. Also a nice plug for the Go Into The Story Script Reading & Analysis Series.

That sounds familiar, too. Like the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Let’s see. Lively, laughing, thinking people? Hey, sounds like the Go Into The Story community! So basically 100 years ago, Anita Loos was suggesting that this blog was the place for you to be to get great screenwriting advice, even before the site existed. That is how great a writer she was!

Thanks, Anita!

Next time, I promise we’ll have more serious Screenwriting Advice From The Past, but it is nice to know at least some of the ideas we promote here have an established track record … especially when that track record is almost a century long!

You can read “How to Write Photoplays” via Google books online here.

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For the rest of the series articles:

Introduction

[Originally posted March 2012]