Between Borders

Screenwriters produce an intermediate product. Although a screenwriter has to be a good writer to make a sale (with occasional market-driven exceptions) what they sell isn’t what the general public pay money for. Put broadly, screenwriters sell instructions for film-makers. Which is why screenplays have so many technical constraints and requirements.

Prose writers, however, are selling the finished product, so they can please themselves with regards things like formatting and typeface choice, right?

Wrong!

Take away our styled hair, cotton underwear and antiperspirant and what are you left with? The Savannah-dwelling, hunter-gatherer social hominids we like to pretend we aren’t.

This less sophisticated truth is a useful thing to keep in mind…