The Orthodox Poetics of Screenwriting

Julia Donaldson’s popular children’s book Room on the Broom (2001) is a charming poem, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, about a witch who keeps losing things and offering space for a ride on her broom to the animals who find them. Towards the end, they are threatened by a dragon. In 2012, it was adapted as a short animated film, with the plot structure staying very close to the book, with one exception: the dragon was introduced briefly twice, earlier in the plot, before he actually arrived and threatened them. The film thus introduces tension and a dramatic build to a climax. In the book, the dragon appears unexpectedly (surprise); in the film we know what the witch doesn’t, that she is heading for trouble (suspense). The book follows the children’s storybook tradition where the heroine simply meets one character or event after another, in picaresque style; the film conforms to the current orthodoxy of screenwriting, which suggests that simple screen storytelling requires a build of tension, a climax somewhere near the end, and a coda.1 This example shows, neatly, that those who produce screen narrative have certain assumptions about what that narrative should look like, irrespective of content.