Screenwriting and emotional rhythm

Abstract Recent advances in neuroscience have begun to unravel the part played by emotion in decision-making and creativity. All storytellers rely on emotion, but the screenwriter, conveying the essential narrative and technical information required to make a film, carries a unique burden. Screenplays must act as a bridge from the author to the audience, describing the narrative’s capacity to evoke emotion through action and image. In discussing a screenplay, the narrative is usually assessed in terms 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.