Moving Picture Words

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Aug 8, 2001

A Review of Linda Cowgill's Secrets of Screenplay Structure

Sometime a few years ago, nascent authors stopped dreaming of writing the great American novel and instead turned to writing screenplays. But many soon discovered that while great movies seemed so simple and clear on screen, the complexity of elements that form a feature-length script could quickly get out of control. As luck would have it, the publishing industry noticed this sea change and began printing books that explained to all, the secrets of the arcane craft of cinema storytelling.

Linda Cowgill’s Secrets of Screenplay Structure is a welcome addition to the screenwriter’s bookshelf. The author’s goal for this book is to develop an understanding of structure as the underlying strength of great movies. Beginning with chapter two, she selects one or more great films as the basis for studying a particular aspect of a screenplay's structure. Films such as Witness, Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives, Tootsie and even Se7en provide concrete study guides and illustrations of the subject for each chapter. Cowgill will often continue referring to a film once it has been introduced into the discussion.

I admit that I didn’t get around to viewing (or re-viewing) every film suggested by the author. Some I had recently seen, so I didn’t need to view again, but most of the films I did revisit and found the experience thoroughly rewarding. So my first word of advice is to follow the design of the book, and view the films before reading each chapter. The book begins with the basics, starting with a discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics, which will be familiar ground to literature majors or readers of Robert McKee’s Story. Using Witness as her study guide, she lays out the three-act structure that is the gold standard of commercial Hollywood filmmaking. Her explanation is both sufficiently broad, and thanks to the study film device, sufficiently specific, to make the points clear and understandable by even new screenwriters. Where other books on the topic tend to over-illustrate a point by citing too many conflicting examples, Ms. Cowgill keeps the reader grounded in the study film. She makes her case for five key focal points of a script by parsing Risky Business. She dives into murkier waters in Chapter 4, entitled “Characterizations Relationship to Structure” and bases her thesis on an examination of Casablanca, while beginning the lesson with references to the first two films.

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