Alternative Scriptwriting, 5th Edition

21

The Primacy of Character Over Action: The Non-American Screenplay

One of our goals with this book is to contextualize screenwriting as a form of storytelling related to and growing out of early forms of storytelling. Another of our goals is to challenge the myth that a single formula, form, or structure is sufficient to write a good screenplay. In this chapter, we challenge another myth—the myth that European and Asian films are a different type of screenplay and that what we have implicitly ascribed so far in this book is only applicable to American screenplays.

It is our goal to bring some clarity to the discussion of the non-American screenplay by illustrating how it is similar to as well as different from the American screenplay. In order ...