“There is no (literary) language in a screenplay. (For me, dialogue doesn’t count as language.) What passes for language in a screenplay is rudimentary, like the directions for assembling a complicated children’s toy. The only aesthetic is to be clear… A screenplay, as a piece of writing, is merely the scaffolding for a building someone else is going to build… However many months I spend writing a screenplay, I never feel as if I’ve been writing at all. I’ve been constructing a story…”
—John Irving.
