Poor Reading Culture in NIgeria is Showing in the Poor Screenwriting in Nollywood
You have to be a good reader before you can be a good writer and you have to be a good writer before you can be a good screenwriter.
You cannot be good in storytelling if you are not good in reading and writing.
I have written about the literature of motion picture.before, but I can bet that majority of the people in Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry ignored it, because of their intellectual ignorance of the importance.
Majority of the screenplays of NIgerian movies are intellectually deficient in message development and dialogue.
How can someone who doesn't read novels, plays, poems and essays be a good screenwriter?
You can see the evidence of poor intelligence in sentence structure of the dialogue.
You can see the lack of intellectual comprehension in the poor characterization.
In most cases, what we have seen is garbage in and garbage out (GIGO)
You cannot give what you don't have.
Many of the screenwriters in Nollywood are lazy to do research on the historical personalities in the film adaptations of historical biographies such as on Queen Amina of Zaria, Mary Slessor and Madam Tinubu. They end up with poorly researched screenplays for the film and TV productions. But the filmmakers often use good casting, directing and cinematography to cover up the intellectual deficiencies of the screenplays.
Reading is essential for screenwriting in storytelling.
I was the youngest professional scriptwriter in Africa when I started writing for the puppet drama series of the NIgerian Television Authority (NTA) when I was 18 years old and I wrote for four years. Before then, I was already a notable young writer interviewed by the Times International newsmagazine for my play, "The Prodigal".
Reading improved my intellectual comprehension and literary abilities in creative writing and scriptwriting.
https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima
