Vale's Technique of Screen and Television Writing

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The Film and TV Language

The sole purpose of any language is to tell something. Style, rhythm, the beauty of word arrangements, may be developed artistically; still, the language is never self-sufficient, but remains in the service of what is told.

Thus the motion picture language must not be judged by its aesthetic values alone, but by the service it renders to the story. The motion picture language is not the ultimate goal — instead, the story is our ultimate goal. The best use of the motion picture language is not the one that plays artistically with what the motion picture means, but the one that tells the content in the best possible way. All other efforts can be compared to the senseless though interesting sounding combination of words ...