City of Flickering Light by Juliette Fay

Author:Juliette Fay [Fay, Juliette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501192937
Google: Sb2NDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1501192930
Goodreads: 40539186
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Irene sat on an old bench on Mama Ringamory’s front porch, paging through How to Write Photoplays for the umpteenth time with a flashlight. Ringa insisted on lights out at nine. (Irene suspected it was because the girls who were leaving for “evening work” were gone by then, and Ringa wasn’t making a kickback on the rest, so she just wanted them to shut up and go to sleep.) Irene tried to spend as much time as she could with Millie at the Studio Club between dinner and bedtime, so this was her only chance to read and work.

For a how-to book, it was a real page-turner, or at least Irene thought so. The writing was smart but accessible, the instructions clear. You didn’t need any particular tools to submit your first synopsis to a studio, it said, except that it had to be typewritten. No chicken scratch.

I bet Olympic made that rule right after they hired Eva Crown, thought Irene.

Would-be scenario writers should own a dictionary and have a subscription to one of the fan magazines—it would give invaluable information as to the kinds of stories studios were looking for, because studios wanted whatever the fans wanted. With an eye toward dissecting and analyzing what makes them work, it was imperative to go to the movies as often as possible.

Irene chuckled. Movie-going as a job requirement? That was okay by her.

As for where ideas could be found, Miss Loos insisted the question “is probably the mootest of the moot in the scenario game.” They came from everywhere: news stories and current movements such as Bolshevism and spiritualism, classic books, plays, poems, and even music. These sources were not to be plagiarized but used as inspiration.

One should keep a notebook on hand at all times in which to jot down unexpected ideas, otherwise they would be lost. Most importantly, Loos exhorted the writer to “keep alive” by spending time with interesting people, whether smart or just unusual characters, preferably both.

Irene knew she should go to bed but couldn’t keep herself from rereading the next chapter, “Getting the Story Across,” one more time. Then, of course, she would want to expand on an idea she’d scribbled in her notebook earlier in the day. She toed off her shoes, tucked her feet up under her, and pulled her sweater a little more tightly around her shoulders. It was going to be a long night.

There had been an item in yesterday’s newspaper that had sparked an idea. The article was so short she would have missed it, but for the headline:

BABY FOILS ROBBERY

Apparently over Labor Day weekend, a burglar had broken into a property on Wilshire Boulevard at night. The nanny had heard him coming across the garden shortly after he’d busted the lock on the servants’ entrance gate. She was out there in the dark with her employer’s baby who had the croup, walking him in the cool night air to soothe him.

The criminal was sent packing when he heard a particularly harsh cough.

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