The Single Most Important Thing

Taking his cue from Aristotle's Poetics, William Goldman - who is perhaps as famous for his musings on the craft of scriptwriting as he is for his own screenplays - said, "The single most important thing contributed by the screenwriter is structure." In the late Seventies writers such as Robert McKee and Syd Field realised that there was more money to be made teaching people how to write screenplays than to be got from writing the scripts themselves. Their pronouncements on the three act structure, plot points, subtext, the hook, action beats and character development have become mantras for Hollywood executives, and their books (Screenplay and Story) are treated as scripture by screenwriting neophytes. So pervasive is the belief in story structure that it has even trickled down to the cinemagoing public via reviews and studio promotion. Listen to any press interview with an actor or actress on a press junket and see how long it is before they use the word 'journey' to describe their character's development.

Although it's not the only way to write a movie script -Stanley Kubrick, for example, preferred an approach that used six to eight non-submersible units - the three act structure remains the dominant force in Hollywood scriptwriting. Conveniently, Benchley's novel is divided into three parts, the final third being devoted to the shark hunt. The book's structure does not completely dovetail with the film, but it's fair to say that Benchley provided the filmmakers with their main action beats.

Jaws had millions of readers on its initial publication, all of whom read it without images of Spielberg's movie interpretation to distract them. For those who come to the book in the wake of the film, the response is usually one of disappointment. Perceived wisdom (if that's what internet forums are) seems to be that Spielberg performed some act of alchemy by transforming the leaden prose into cinematic gold. But, of course, it's not that simple, and, as we sieve through the final seventy three pages, we'll discover plenty of rich nuggets.