Screenwriting Advice From The Past: The Final Close-Up [Part 2]

“If any considerable action takes place after the climax in the ‘big scene,’ you will have ruined your photoplay with one of these deadly anti-climaxes.”

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

Married to writer John Emerson, the pair wrote one of the first books on screenwriting in 1920: “How to Write Photoplays”. I have been running a weekly series based on the book. You can access those posts here.

Today: The Final Close-Up [P.103].

If any considerable action takes place after the climax in the “big scene,” you will have ruined your photoplay with one of these deadly anti-climaxes. On the other hand if you write “The End” before your plot has been fully unraveled, you have failed to accomplish anything — you haven’t any story at all.

Both of these points is true:

• Too much action after the Final Struggle / Resolution can often lead to a feeling of hanging on, a story straggling to The End rather providing a solid definitive conclusion.
• Too little action, specifically the kind that actually brings a sense of resolution, can leave a reader feeling unfulfilled. You may think “you haven’t any story at all” is rather hyperbolic, but ponder this: A script’s ending is often what impacts a reader most. You’ve built everything in the story up to this moment. If you fail to deliver, it can be anything from a mere disappointment to a decisive one. In any event, a story without an ending does not qualify as a fully baked story.

Here’s the thing: In my view, a story’s ending is indicated in its beginning. How? Look to your Protagonist. What is the nature of their Disunity? If you can dig down deep enough to discern what those dynamics are, you surface what the essence of their Authentic Self is, yearning to emerge into consciousness, then your story’s ending will almost always have something to do with a Final Struggle that caps the Protagonist’s metamorphosis allowing that to happen.

Tomorrow: More screenwriting advice from the past.

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

For the rest of the series articles:

Introduction
Getting Ideas
Conflict and Crisis
Situation
Theme
Star Sympathy
Action: Part 1
Action: Part 2
Action: Part 3
Action: Part 4
Action: Part 5
Story Synopsis
Continuity: Part 1
Continuity: Part 2
The Title
Marketing the Script
Writing for the Camera
Scenery for Scenarios
The Actor’s Angle: Part 1
The Actor’s Angle: Part 2
Character On The Screen: Part 1
Character On The Screen: Part 2
Character On The Screen: Part 3
Character On The Screen: Part 4
The “Interest”: Part 1
The “Interest”: Part 2
The Kinds of Stories That Sell: Part 1
The Kinds of Stories That Sell: Part 2
The Kinds of Stories That Sell: Part 3
The Kinds of Stories That Sell: Part 4
The Kinds of Stories That Sell: Part 5
What to Write and Not to Write: Part 1
What to Write and Not to Write: Part 2
What to Write and Not to Write: Part 3
Cutting The Picture: Part 1
Cutting The Picture: Part 2
Cutting The Picture: Part 3
Writing for the Censors: Part 1
Writing for the Censors: Part 2
Writing for the Censors: Part 3
The Pictorial Element
The Denouement: Part 1
The Denouement: Part 2
The Denouement: Part 3
How To Begin: Part 1
How To Begin: Part 2
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 1
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 2
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 3
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 4
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 5
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 6
Midway in the Photoplay: Part 7
The Final Close-Up: Part 1

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.