How much of a scene's action should a scenario writer write down, and what test does Sargent (1916) give for what to cut?
1916 practice (Sargent, Ch. XXXIII). He says to see the action fully in the mind but write only the part that lets a director see what the writer saw, and only the part essential to the story: 'not the precise action, but action that will do as well'. He shows two versions of one invented scene (19 lines long, 8 lines brief) and a street meeting cut to one line, and says to take what you need but no more. No numeric rule is given; the line counts are his illustration.
1916 practice (Sargent, Ch. XXXIII). He says to see the action fully in the mind but write only the part that lets a director see what the writer saw, and only the part essential to the story: 'not the precise action, but action that will do as well'. He shows two versions of one invented scene (19 lines long, 8 lines brief) and a street meeting cut to one line, and says to take what you need but no more. No numeric rule is given; the line counts are his illustration.
Curator qualifications: Visualise fully, write only what is essential for the director to see; 19-line vs 8-line versions and a one-line street scene are his illustration; no numeric rule (stated by candidate, confirmed).
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
"citations": [
{
"url": "https://archive.org/stream/techniqueofphoto00sarg/techniqueofphoto00sarg_djvu.txt",
"note": "sar.flat (a3cff7eb) offsets per candidate; sar.txt lines 10719-11226 (Ch. XXXIII; XXXIV heading at 11194+)"
}
]
}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] 1916 practice (Sargent, Ch. XXXIII). He says to see the action fully in the mind but write only the part that lets a director see what the writer saw, and only the part essential to the story: 'not the precise action, but action that will do as well'. He shows two versions of one invented scene (19 lines long, 8 lines brief) and a street meeting cut to one line, and says to take what you need but no more. No numeric rule is given; the line counts are his illustration. · locator: sar.flat (a3cff7eb) offsets per candidate; sar.txt lines 10719-11226 (Ch. XXXIII; XXXIV heading at 11194+) source
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| documentation | unknown | permitted | permitted | unknown | unknown | Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources. |