Message Development For Screenwriting
Having a Message Development workshop is a must in screenwriting.
- Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
prize winning writer and Publisher/Editor of the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series, the first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry published since 2013.
I see the ignorance of the knowledge of message development by the majority of screenwriters in Nigeria.
They don't understand characterisation before writing screenplays.
To remember the five elements of Characterisation, simply remember the acronym STEAL, which stands for speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions and looks.
Speech. Characters' personalities can be greatly defined by the words they say and how they say them. ...
Thoughts. ...
Effect On Others. ...
Actions. ...
Looks.
Everyone who wants to be a good screenwriter must understand message development in character development to depict the personality of every character in the screenplay for a movie or series.
As a professional scriptwriter for TV from when I was only 18 in Nigeria, there was no room for flippancy in the writing of the dialogue. And I wrote for three years before I left to work as a public health illustrator for the John's Hopkins University's Population Communication Services (JHU/PCS) when I was 21 to produce fully illustrated booklets on family planning methods in the different languages of Pidgin English, Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa for the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN) in the 1980s and later became a national program consultant for the UNICEF in Nigeria. I produced a fully illustrated booklet for nomadic education which would have been very effective in the primary education of the herdsmen and their families and would have been used for the prevention of conflicts between the herders and farmers in Nigeria.
