The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement
Interpretation
Screenwriters must convey deep messages concisely while maintaining a sense of flow and ease.
Raymond Chandler highlights the unique challenge of screenwriting, where effective storytelling requires conveying significant themes and emotions in a compact format. The process involves distilling the narrative to its essence, ensuring that even with fewer words, the story retains a natural rhythm and captivates the audience.
In practice
In a film workshop, a mentor might quote Chandler to encourage students to be concise.
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
The best thing about writing has been the writer's life, the sense of being expressed, the ownership of the day, the entirely specious sense of freedom we have, however slave we are to some boss or other. I wouldn't trade it for any other life.
Fashion is in the sky, the streets, fashion has to do with ideas, the way in which we live, the events surrounding us.
To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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