JOSC 5 (1) pp.

47–57 Intellect Limited 2014

Journal of Screenwriting
Volume 5 Number 1
© 2014 Intellect Ltd Keynotes. English language. doi: 10.1386/josc.5.1.47_1

Ian David
Sydney University

Screenwriting and emotional

rhythm

Abstract Keywords
Recent advances in neuroscience have begun to unravel the part played by emotion neuroscience
in decision-making and creativity. All storytellers rely on emotion, but the screen- screenplay
writer, conveying the essential narrative and technical information required to make screenwriting
a film, carries a unique burden. Screenplays must act as a bridge from the author lucid dreaming
to the audience, describing the narrative’s capacity to evoke emotion through action emotional rhythm
and image. In discussing a screenplay, the narrative is usually assessed in terms film
of its characters, plot, subplots, theme, dialogue, tone, style, etc. Yet, emotion, the
quality that determines the screenplay’s (and ultimately the film’s) overall effect, is
often poorly understood. This paper proposes Emotional Rhythm - that subliminal
sequence of emotions underpinning all the dramatic components - as a means of
evaluating the screenplay’s potency as it relates to the construction of the narrative.

The ghost in the machine

It’s often asked of writers, those of us who write screenplays, ‘where do we
go from here?’ At one of those ubiquitous script meetings we have all agreed
the screenplay needs more work, there is something missing. If it were a song
we would say ‘it’s not catchy, it just doesn’t grab me’. Someone will always
toss off, ‘I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it’. Someone else will
suggest beefing up the narrative, fixing the dialogue, re-jigging the second act,
adding more action, making a character less passive. What remains unuttered
on the tip of everyone’s tongue is emotional rhythm. Whilst many elements are

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important to how well a narrative works, I suggest they are all secondary to
the underlying emotional rhythm that carries an audience along an imagina-
tive journey. Emotional rhythm is the ghost in the narrative machine.
This article is a preliminary study of the relationship between the screen-
writer and the audience through the transference of emotion. I work on the
premise that the narrative’s potential for involving an audience is determined
by carefully plotted sequences of feeling that navigate a rising conflict to a care-
fully choreographed resolution; a verdict of emotion. Such a film narrative
works because it satisfies the audience’s need for social and personal insight,
via an emotional path that is at once plausible and complex, yet unpredictable.

The narrative
Drama isn’t necessarily man-made. An astonishing example of a real-life
narrative can be found in the YouTube video, Battle At Kruger (2004), a gripping
eight-minute life-and-death struggle between hungry lions, a crocodile and a
herd of buffalo in the Kruger National Park. What seems pure Hollywood is in
fact an unedited wildlife saga shot on a camcorder by a tourist who can hardly
believe his luck. The battle’s theatricality is immediate, a compelling conflict
played out in a classic three-act structure that would have pleased Aristotle.
Act One: On the bank of a watering hole in the African savannah, a large
herd of Cape buffalo arrives to quench its thirst. They’re nervous, but there’s
safety in numbers and they approach the crumbling bank. A pride of lions
moves in and succeeds in capturing a baby buffalo, dragging it into the water.
The beaten buffaloes retreat. Act Two: Before the lions can devour their prey
a ravenous crocodile rises from the muddy waters. After a vicious tug-of-war
over the baby buffalo, the crocodile surrenders and the lions drag the lifeless
baby ashore. The last Act opens with the sudden return of the buffaloes, newly
emboldened and backing their numbers. Their enthusiasm gathers momen-
tum with the miraculous revival of the baby buffalo. After a stirring fight, the
herd makes off with the baby and the lions retreat to lick their wounds.
How many times have such ‘natural’ dramas been witnessed down the
millennia; riveting stories of life and death with twists, turns and a gratifying
outcome? The drama may belong to the natural world, but the narrative is
surely ours (see Carr 1991: 9). In relating such an event, the witness becomes
a storyteller and the audience reconfigures the world in a communion of
imagined experience. Evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar are
convinced that this communion is essential to our social and personal well-
being, understood at a deep level through our need to function in a social
context (2004).
The structure of a narrative is often described as a journey. Although
journeys traverse time and space, it is also possible to understand a narra-
tive as primarily a journey of emotion. As the normal world falls away we,
the audience, search for clues to any imbalance or key to excite our curiosity.
As our emotions engage, we begin to project over the narrative, trying to
guess the future from a palette of dramatic possibilities. To keep our interest
the narrative must surprise us with emotions that reveal character through
conflict, as Lajos Egri has asserted (1946: 59–61).
Our engagement with the protagonist deepens; we want what they want,
we fear what they fear. It may be knowledge, enlightenment or acceptance of
our fate, for ultimately, are not all stories about death? Perhaps not a physical
death, it could be a social death or the extinguishment of love or hope or the

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 Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

universe. Whatever it is, we want to know how to deal with it, how to endure
it, and by enduring it find some tangible sense of happiness, fulfillment or
purpose.
By committing to the narrative journey, the audience agrees to share the
protagonist’s struggle and sacrifice. Like the protagonist, we will only perse-
vere if the prize is worth claiming. As the journey matures, we are drawn
into greater and greater conflict, as we keep trying to guess the next step.
If we succeed in correctly guessing outcomes too often, we lose interest in
the journey. Provided the next emotion is on our possible/plausible list, we
will remain committed. The existential implication is that something is shift-
ing the emotional stepping stones into place. It is not us. Perhaps it is fate or
divine providence. Perhaps it is that random, nihilistic shit engine at the end
of the universe. The answer, of course, is in the credits.
Eventually, we will follow the protagonist to the cold, dark gates of
emotional hell. There, we will realize what sacrifice has to be made for the
prize. Nothing comes from nothing. We press on to the climax and resolution,
hoping to be surprised when we tear away the wrapping. If the emotional
verdict is too passive or obvious we tear up our ticket in disgust. If not, we bask
in a deep sense of wonder at our capacity to enjoy the revelation afforded us.
Then, we must return to the normal world carrying our prize, our Holy Grail.
We have earned it.
In The Battle at Kruger all these elements are played out in eight minutes.
We experience an unfolding suite of emotions in sympathy with the action.
From fear to horror to grief to surprise and hope to revelation and joy,
we create the narrative. It is a journey, mapped out in emotion, which we
construct from images to conjure the drama in time, space and action.
Narrative theorist, David Herman, says narrative must be represented in ‘a
specific discourse context or occasion for telling’ that ‘cues interpreters to draw
inferences about a structured time-course of particularised events’ (2007: 314).
The events described must ‘introduce conflict into a “storyworld”, whether
that world is presented as actual or fictional, realistic or fantastic, remembered
or dreamed’. He goes on to suggest that the narrative ‘also conveys what it is
like to live through this storyworld-in-flux, highlighting the pressure of events
on real or imagined consciousnesses undergoing the disruptive experience at
issue’. It is critical, says Herman, that the narrative has an ‘occasion for telling’
(2007: 314). Without an audience there can be no story. The setting must be
prescribed. Respect is essential. The contract is understood. The storyteller
must entertain. The audience must pay attention, must agree to be receptive;
clearing the mind, suspending the clamour of the world, and listening with
the door to the emotions wide open.
After the performance, as audience members drift away, they may
discuss the richness and complexity of the characters, the themes that under-
pin the text, the structure, style and tone of the work, ideas within a certain
speech, or the relationships between the various characters. These various
elements, and more, afford them the tools to pull the story apart to examine
the machinery behind the facade of the performance. Yet, the narrative’s sub-
structure of unfolding emotions is usually overlooked, although it drives the
story’s dramatic power.
We tend to focus almost exclusively on other things: the theme that under-
pins the story, the dramatic arc or structure, the tone of the work, ideas and
quality of language within a certain speech, the richness and complexity of
each of the characters, and particularly the protagonist, and their relationship

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to each other. These various elements, and more, may allow us the tools to
pull the work apart and examine the machinery beneath the facade of the
performance. However, they fool us into ignoring the course of that flowing
river of emotion which has sustained us through the film’s narrative.

The verdict of emotion

In the opening moments of a film, when our preparedness to enter the narra-
tive is only available for a short time, we search for the protagonist and engage
in a state akin to that described by Stephen LaBerge as ‘lucid dreaming’ (1985),
a state similar to meditation or dreaming while conscious. At the end of the
narrative journey, that state lifts like a veil. Most of us have had the experience
of ‘waking up’ as the credits roll. As we venture out to the real world, blinking
at the bright lights, we may talk about being ‘transported’ or ‘carried away’,
but more often than not any critical analysis is reserved for George Clooney’s
smile or the car chase.
If the audience follows the emotional rhythm of a narrative through a
form of lucid dreaming, why is it not referred to directly? In his work The
Dream Frontier, Mark Blechner’s description of dreams as ‘meaning without
communicability’ (2001: 9) offers a possible explanation. Dreams and narra-
tives use a lingua franca of image and emotion. Perhaps it is the language of
another age. When waking from REM sleep our dreams are rarely remem-
bered or translated into conscious thought. The profound emotional rhythm
of dreams and narratives are rendered in a form that is difficult, perhaps
impossible, to adequately describe. It is easier to discuss characters, plots and
recurring themes.
Most stories describe a journey: they set problems, explore and test
obstacles, offering us knowledge to take back to the ‘real world’. Although
they have particular relevance to each individual in society, stories leave us
talking about the ideas, the lessons, the information and not the soup they
float in. In Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994),
Antonio Damasio argues that the senses feed the emotions, which in turn are
critical in predicating rational decision-making; perhaps this is an explanation
for the power of storytelling on human beings of any age. In fact, Damasio
suggests we cannot make a decision to act without an inciting emotion.
Apart from fast-tracking decisions during a crisis, emotions serve to shape
and inform our social environment. They are essential in creating or rejecting
bonds with others. Without emotion we cannot choose or judge or exercise
our conscience. All our verdicts are emotional. All emotion is truthful. If we
were feeling it, it must be true.
Jonah Lehrer suggests that recent discoveries in neuroscience reveal that
the human brain is ‘designed to amplify the shock of mistaken predictions’
(2009: 43). When we guess at an outcome and get it wrong it claims our
attention. Perhaps that is why the narrative that is built on a powerful
sequence of emotions, yet surprises us at every turn, will sustain our atten-
tion and take us further and deeper than the journey that’s predictable or
uneven in its construction. Neuroscience may have begun to unravel the part
played by emotions in constructing narratives. According to Lehrer, work in
the 1980s on the dopamine system by Cambridge University neuroscientist,
Wolfram Schultz, provided evidence that dopamine ‘helps to regulate all our
emotions, from the first stirrings of love to the most visceral forms of disgust’
(Lehrer 2009: 40, original emphasis).

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 Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

[When dopamine neurones are] working properly, they are a crucial

source of wisdom. The emotional brain effortlessly figures out what’s
going on and how to exploit the situation for maximum gain. Every time
you experience a feeling of joy or disappointment, fear or happiness,
your neurones are busy rewiring themselves, constructing a theory of
what sensory cues provided the emotions.
(Lehrer 2009: 47)

Apparently, the emotions are prone to be dark ones. When R. F. Baumeister

et al. concluded that ‘the psychological effects of bad [events] outweigh those
of the good ones’ (2001: 323), it opened up the possibility that there are
reasons apart from entertainment for our deep interest in narratives. When
we ‘engage’ with a narrative, it is as though we enter some virtual reality of
our own making, an engagement by proxy, looking over someone’s shoulder.
From that vantage point, we look for our place in the world, or that part of
the world that belongs to us, via the character who sees the world as we see
it. Our proxy is the protagonist. D. Kahneman and A. Tversky’s observation,
that in human decision-making, ‘losses loom larger than gains’ (1984: 346),
suggests the rationale for this vicarious participation. In dramatic terms, the
audience does not necessarily ask, ‘How do I find love?’, but ‘How do I stop
from losing love, or if I have found it can I keep it?’ The pain of loss, the fear
of danger, the terrible uncertainty of risk are all ‘at a distance’. Not only is
the hurt filtered, but we also get a second chance. Not only do stories help us
bridge that space around the self, but they also allow us to venture into the
unknown without fear of physical danger. The risk is vicarious.

How does it work?

In Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing (1946), a text long considered a classic,
he describes the narrative as a series of transitions building to a decision, each
one more critical than the one before. In effect, any Act structure is deter-
mined by this sequence of transitions and decisions. The decision, accepted by
the audience, is not arrived at by deduction or calculation, but by emotion. In
effective storytelling these progressive, rhythmical waves of emotion must be
carefully given their appropriate weight and place. The sequence of emotions
must build like the underlying chords of a song to break on the shore of the
audience’s imagination.
In charting this winding river of emotion it is helpful to locate a reference
point, the climax, the intended prize the audience will take with them as the
credits fade. That is the destination. With that in sight, the task of assign-
ing emotions can begin. It must be acknowledged that describing feelings
is fraught with problems. One person’s sense of unease may be another’s
misapprehension. It is however, possible to ask some basic questions to help
the process. Is the emotion negative or positive? Is it the same or similar to
the emotion preceding it? Is it passive or aggressive? We are making subjective
assessments and that takes time and skill to get right.
What we are tracking or mapping is Egri’s ‘transition’ (1946: 212), a
sequence of actions charting the rising conflict leading to the fundamental
decisions or turning points through the course of the narrative. By breaking
Acts down into sequences it is usually possible to assign a major emotion to
each sequence. To use an analogy from music, we are not trying to follow
the melody, but the underpinning structure of chords. If the sequences are

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complex, overflowing with action, then it is advisable to break the screenplay

down further into groups of related scenes, assigning each an emotion.
The emotion we are looking for is that which is generated by the action
and intended to incite or compel the audience to a decision. The rhythm
will build and release tension, only to return to take the tension higher. If in
doubt it is helpful to ask, what is the emotional intention here? How does it
relate to the emotions that precede and follow it? Is the dramatic conjunc-
tion surprising or predictable? Is the emotional rhythm describing dramatic
tension that is rising, falling or static? As the narrative develops, the melody
of dialogue, images, expressions, gestures and shifts in time and space, may
ripple across the senses, however, it is the path of unfolding emotion that
determines the strength of our engagement for we, the audience, perceive
these feelings primarily through the lens of the protagonist.
In the same way, a sequence of emotions that is inappropriate in terms
of genre can destroy the narrative’s intention. Moving from one heightened
emotion (like panic), to another (such as playful lust), may well work in a
comedy, but not in a thriller. It should also be noted that Dunbar’s work in
evolutionary psychology suggests that while there is much variety in the
responses of individuals to specific scenes or actions, the responses by an
audience to the emotional journey of a well-crafted narrative approaches
consensus (2004).
Author Robert Kernen has suggested that overloading the audience with
narrative information can kill the story; ‘too much exposition, or too much
at one time, can seriously derail a story and be frustrating to the reader or
viewer eager for a story to either get moving or move on’ (1999: 57). However,
I suggest that it is not exposition that derails a story, it is a drying-up of the
narrative’s emotional rhythm.
As we know screenplays labour to claim a simple, direct path in the making
of any film. They are not literature, yet they contain the essence of every-
thing that will make the film good or bad. It is the screenplay that establishes
the emotional rhythm in its original form. Ultimately, however, emotional
rhythm belongs to every contributor in the collaborative process. The director,
running a rule over every aspect of production, will be making decisions that
can critically change, enhance or deflate the emotional rhythm. The editor,
the composer, designer and cast similarly can lift or damage the audience’s
involvement in the narrative.
As a diagnostic tool, finding and naming the emotional rhythm can create
a very different lens to examine a screenplay.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

To show emotional rhythm at work, I have set out to unpick the flow of feel-
ings of W. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. As a journey into the shadows of power
and guilt, it is written in five acts, although the narrative can also be seen as
possessing a three-act structure, with a profound and compelling midpoint.
The technique I have adopted is to first synopsize all the scenes of the play.
The intention is to simply describe the ‘action line’ of each scene, dealing
only with ‘what happens’ and leaving aside the motivation of the charac-
ters. Thereafter, a dominant emotion is assigned to each scene, arrived at by
asking several specific questions: What are the perceived motivations of the
characters? What does the author intend the audience to feel? What emotion
resonates at the climax of the scene? I accept that reducing scenes, especially

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 Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

Shakespeare’s, to a line or two is fraught with danger. The subjective nature of

the process, however, should not diminish its worth. Creativity reveals above
all else, that we are only human.

Act One
Act 1, Scene 1. T
 here’s trouble brewing in Rome. The plebians are upbraided with
a command to remember Caesar’s former ally, the vanquished
Consul Pompey.
Scorn
Act 1, Scene 2. A
 Soothsayer’s advice to Caesar, ‘Beware the Ides of March’, is
rejected.
Hubris
Act 1, Scene 2. W
 hile Caesar is being offered the emperor’s crown, Cassius buries
a seed of malice, emphasising Caesar’s mortality and ordinariness
to Brutus. He tells us the theme, ‘Well, honour is the subject of my
story.’ Then, he offers us the dramatic lesson, ‘Men at some time
are masters of their fates.’
Envy
Act 1, Scene 2. B
 rutus rejects Cassius’s suggestion that he should aspire to be
emperor.
Humility
Act 1, Scene 2. C
 aesar identifies his enemy to Antony, ‘Yond Cassius has a lean
and hungry look; He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.’
Fear
Act 1, Scene 3. C
 assius marshals his co-conspirators and plots to have Brutus join
them.
Anger
Act Two
Act 2, Scene1. B
 rutus divines Caesar’s path, ‘And therefore think him as a serpent’s
egg, Which hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous, And kill
him in the shell.’
Hate
Act 2, Scene 1. B
 rutus joins the conspiracy. ‘Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the
gods.’
Malice
Act 2, Scene 2. C
 alphurnia fails to convince Caesar to stay home. ‘Alas, my lord,
your wisdom is consum’d in confidence.’
Pride
Act Three
Act 3, Scene 1. C
 aesar’s murdered. Casca strikes the first blow, ‘Speak, hands, for
me!’

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Bloodlust
Act 3, Scene 1. B
 rutus receives word from Mark Antony, asking to be reconciled.
‘Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead, So well as Brutus living.’
Cassius has his doubts. ‘… yet have I a mind that fears him much.’
Shame
Act 3, Scene 1. D
 espite Cassius’s misgivings, Brutus grants Mark Antony’s wish
to present Caesar’s corpse to the public in the market place. ‘… as
becomes a friend, Speak in the order of his funeral.’
Indignation
Act 3, Scene 1. M
 ark Antony promises revenge, ‘let slip the dogs of war, That this foul
deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.’
Vengefulness
Act 3, Scene 2. B
 rutus appeals (in prose) to patriotism to explain the assassination.
‘Who is here so vile that will not love his country?’
Self pity
Act 3, Scene 2. M
 ark Antony declares war. ‘I fear I wrong the honourable men
whose daggers have stabbed Caesar; I do fear it.’
Disgust
Act 3, Scene 2. M
 ark Antony buys the crowd. ‘To every several man, seventy five
drachmas.’
Contempt
Act 3, Scene 3. C
 inna, the poet, is murdered by the mob. ‘Tear him to pieces; he’s
a conspirator!’
Terror
Act Four
Act 4, Scene 1. M
 ark Antony, Octavius and Lepidus begin their campaign. ‘… we
are at the stake, and bay’d about with many enemies.’
Sorrow
Act 4, Scene 3. B
 rutus and Cassius fall out and make up. ‘Is it come to this?’
Spite
Act 4, Scene 3. B
 rutus, weary of life, accepts his fate. ‘We, at the height, are ready
to decline.’
Revulsion
Act 4, Scene 3. B
 rutus confronts his conscience in Caesar’s Ghost. ‘Thy evil spirit,
Brutus.’
Profound guilt
Act Five
Act 5. Scene 1. B
 rutus and Cassius agree to finish with honour. ‘… end that work
that the Ides of March begun.’

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 Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

Deep remorse
Act 5, Scene 1. B
 rutus takes his own life. ‘Caesar, now be still.’
Hopelessness
Act 5, Scene 1. A
 ntony’s eulogy ... ‘This was the noblest Roman of them all.’
Love

From scorn, hubris and envy – which could be said to be low-arousal – the
narrative’s intensity builds to the high-arousal emotions of bloodlust and
vengeance. The climax then slowly subsides, coming to rest on pity, guilt and
eventually love. The choice and order of such charged, complex emotions
drives the narrative, providing a powerful framework to bear each revelation
generated by the characters’ actions. Take any emotion away and the struc-
ture is weakened.
The emotional rhythm of Julius Caesar, satisfies the unfolding of a tragedy
as described in Aristotle’s Poetics. Fear and pity are dominant throughout and
Aristotle would have approved of the play’s darkening emotional progression,
where good fortune turns bad through the agency of Caesar’s hubris. The
unfolding drama also conforms to Aristotle’s view that an audience is best
served if the dramatic events are surprising when presented, but utterly plau-
sible on reflection.

Conclusion
In an interview with American National Public Radio in 1999, Frederica
Sagor Maas, a legendary screenwriter who began working in Hollywood in
the 1920s, described how she learned to write screenplays. She described
countless hours in darkened cinemas watching films again and again to
understand the ‘rhythm of the scenes’ (Nelson 2012). I suggest that, in the
purest sense, Maas taught herself to ‘read’ the emotional rhythm of the story.
These were silent films, where character and narrative information came by
way of subtitles, occasional sound effects and live music, and Maas had to
rely on action and mood relayed by way of gestures, expressions, design and
lighting. Her screenplays, written in light of her insights, are remarkable for
the power and elegance of their narratives.
Constructing a narrative on film is, of course, a multi-layered process.
It involves many creative people. While producers, directors, designers and
actors each have their own burden, writers and film editors in particular are
obsessed with the order of things, the sequence of images, words and sounds
that produce a flow of feelings. Oscar-winning film and sound editor, Walter
Murch, describes emotion as the cornerstone of his creative decision-making:
‘If the emotion is right and the story is advanced in a unique, interesting way,
in the right rhythm, the audience will tend to be unaware of (the film’s techni-
cal aspects)’ (2001: 19)
In summary, the experience of watching a ‘bad’ film is often a matter of
being painfully aware of the passing of time; of observing the passing parade
of colour and movement without getting involved. In effect, the emotional
rhythm has dried up. Neuroscience suggests there is some evidence that
supports the idea that drilling down past plot and character to the audience’s
engagement with the narrative is important. For it is there that the story is
‘read’ and understood in the deeper reaches of our emotions. For screenwriters,

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understanding how to construct (or restore) a narrative’s emotional rhythm

may well be essential. Murch reminds us that it is the audience who must
embrace the journey:

At the top of the list is Emotion, the thing you come to last, if at all, at
film school largely because it’s the hardest thing to define and deal with.
How do you want the audience to feel? If they are feeling what you
want them to feel all the way through the film, you’ve done about as
much as you can ever do. What they finally remember is not the editing,
not the camerawork, not the performances, not even the story – it’s how
they felt.
(2001: 18)

References
Battle at Kruger (2007), ‘Battle at Kruger’, YouTube, http://youtu.be/LU8DDY
z68kM. Accessed 14 February 2013.
Baumeister, R. F., Bratskavsky, E., Finkenauer, C. and Vohs, K. D. (2001), ‘Bad
is stronger than good’, Review of General Psychology, 5: 4, pp. 323–70.
Blechner, M. J. (2001), The Dream Frontier, New Jersey: Analytic Press.
Carr, D. (1991), Time, Narrative and History (Studies in Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy), Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Damasio, A. (1994), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain,
New York: Vintage Books.
Dunbar, R. (2004), The Human Story, London: Faber & Faber.
Egri, Lajos (1946), The Art of Dramatic Writing, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Herman, D. (2007), ‘Storytelling and the sciences of mind: Cognitive narra-
tology, discursive psychology, and narratives in face-to-face interaction’,
Narrative, 15: 3, pp. 306–334.
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1984), ‘Choices, values And frames’, American
Psychologist, 39: 4, pp. 341–50.
Kernen, R. (1999), Building Better Plots, Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books.
LaBerge, S. (1985), Lucid Dreaming: The Power Of Being Aware And Awake In
Your Dreams, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Lehrer, J. (2009), The Decisive Moment: How The Brain Makes Up Its Mind,
Melbourne: Text Publishing Company.
Murch, W. (2001), In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing, Beverly
Hills: Silman-James Press.
Nelson, V. J. (2012), ‘Obituaries: Frederica Sagor Maas, 1900–2012’, Los Angeles
Times, 7 January, p. AA.1.
Shakespeare, W. (1978), Complete Works, London and Glasbow: Collins.

suggested citatioN
David, I. (2014), ‘Screenwriting and emotional rhythm’, Journal of Screenwriting
5: 1, pp. 47–57, doi: 10.1386/jocs.5.1.47_1

Contributor details
Ian David is a lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English at
the University of Sydney. He is the award-winning screenwriter of Australian
television productions such as Joh’s Jury (1993), Blue Murder (1995), The Shark
Net (2003) and Killing Time (2011).

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 Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

Contact: The School of Letters, Art and Media, John Woolley Building,
University of Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia.
E-Mail: ian.david@sydney.edu.au

Ian David has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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Rosebud Sleds and Horses’ Heads presents incisive
discussion of 50 of the most significant objects in cinema
history and explores their importance within their films and
within the popular imagination. Inspired by the popular
‘Screengems’ feature in The Big Picture film magazine and
To view our catalogue or order
accompanied by original full-colour illustrations, this book
our books and journals visit
surveys objects from a range of genres, from the birth of
cinema to the present day. www.intellectbooks.com

Curated and written by a prominent film critic who routinely

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road,
writes for leading publications, as well as broadcasts for
the BBC, Rosebud Sleds and Horses’ Heads is the only Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG.
book of its kind. With a fascinating, original and instantly
understandable concept, it will find grateful audiences in Tel: +44 (0) 117 9589910
film buffs around the world. Fax: +44 (0) 117 9589911

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