Andrew+Mosquera's+Unfamiliar+Genre+Project+Proposal

Genre of Study: Screenplay for a Mystery

Why am I interested?

I thought of this genre as, perhaps, the most challenging by virtue of its thorough detail, length, and limited time frame. Bring it on! I have many fond memories with my grandmother and many of them involve eating her dinners while watching shows like Law and Order (my favorite) or some silliness like CSI or NCIS. So, I wish to dedicate this project to attempting to make something half way decent for my grandmother to watch. I have written several short plays before, and I found that I always preferred to leave the technical details to the job of the director. I think it would be a good challenge to begin to understand how screen play authors play the part of writer and director in a way. I chose to write a mystery show for the challenge as well. I just could never figure out anything until the end while everyone else got it by the middle. Hopefully, by writing one myself I can begin to unravel other mystery shows at a faster rate!

What do I already know about this genre?

I have only ever read one novel written as a screen play and it fascinated me. As mentioned above, there is as much attention to detail as there is to the actual dialogue. There is also very little left to the imagination. Screen writers must include more extensive stage directions than those found in stage plays: camera cues, sound cues, timing of shots, special effects, to name the myriad generally. Obviously, the screen play is written for the audience of directors and actors for television or cinema. Nevertheless, this is crucial to remembering that I will not be writing to casual people at leisure nor in the hope of critical acclaim. The enjoyment and acclaim will go to the actual production. So this is a very transactional genre. On the other hand, if a shows dialogue is cheesy and the characters have no defining flair or quirk to their words then the show will probably not get through its first season. In this way I ought to bring my writing more towards the poetic end of the writing continuum. Now I just need to figure out whose commercials I want to sustain the suspense.