'“But this is the same old ending,” you protest. True enough. But it is essential if your audience is to feel satisfied.' I LOVE this! What's your focus as a screenwriter? If your answer isn't "the Reader/Audience," then refocus. Know your Audience and don't disappoint them. As screenwriters we have to be clever, creative, surprising, relevant and original--but not to the point of alienating our audience's expectations. "If you set something up, pay it off."

Scribbles "The Final Close-Up". Sticks post-it on the wall.

Amen, Traci. One of the very, very first pieces of advice I received when I stumbled my way into Hollywood was someone - I forget who - telling me the single most important question a filmmaker needs to ask up front is this: Who is the audience for this movie? I know a screenwriter who will flip through magazines or browse the Web to find a photo that most resembles the face of his target audience. And she cuts out or prints that photo, then tacks it up at her desk to remind her THIS is my target audience. If YOU have a clear sense of who your audience is and can write to that, then that makes a buyer's job so much easier: "This is a genre piece going after young adult males." "This is a romantic drama going after middle aged women." "This is a PG comedy going after families." Know your audience, then deliver the goods for them.

I believe I only have 1 or 2 more posts to do in this series. I hope at least some folks have benefited from it. I found the whole exercise fascinating. So many observations from the book are relevant to today, but also some things have definitely changed. One thing has DEFINITELY stayed the same: Movies are primarily a visual medium. Even though we have the benefit of spoken words which Loos and Emerson did not in the era of silent films, movies are still visually oriented. And in a way with the increasing internationalization of the Hollywood market, the need for visual storytelling will only increase as visuals are easier to sell overseas while dialogue requires translation, overdubs, subtitles, is culturally specific, etc. I'm thinking about going through Aristotle's "Poetics" after I get done with this series...

Aristotle series via Scott Myers would be epic. Here's a totally original title for it: got poetics? ;)