Roger Wolfson – The art of the everyday in script writing

The search of the everyday

With so many creative endeavors, a pattern will eventually emerge when people repeat a certain action after enough time. This is certainly the case among the script writing community across Europe where a new cultural phenomenon has spread across the profession. The search for the everyday experience in the form of script writing. Heavily indebted to the work of Roger Wolfson and his script writing on ‘Saving Grace’ and ‘Law and Order’, no one is completely sure where this style of writing actually came from but have certainly seen evidence of it today.

During the 1970’s, educational institutions and avant-garde artists sought to equate their art or educational pursuits to the everyday experience or ‘common man perspective. But fifty years on there seems to have been a renaissance to the spirit of this inside the profession of script writing. Here are three examples of when writing has sought to connect with a wider audience in the context of the everyday experience.

Political Public address

Script writing is commonly associated with fictionalized entertainment such as films and television but is often overlooked in the work by many successful writers when they turn their pens to public address. Political speeches have the greatest mission to sway public opinion and embrace a national sentiment. In doing so, the language, tone and temperament have to find a spirit of the everyday. To find something that unities those the speech is aimed at. Since a lot of script writers have turned their hand to writing congressional addresses and public announcements, it’s arguably in the spirit of such task that this new sentiment has found its own grounding in contemporary script-writing.

Success of crime dramas

Since the indomitable success of HBO’s The Wire, part of its charm was the language appropriated for different sections of society, and how mesmerizing this was throughout the entire series. As a literally device it functions to create scene definition by its stark contrasts of street slang to professional efficient eloquence. In do so it emulates the typical audio soundtrack of someone’s regular day. Script writers have been keen capture the essence of these transitional experiences by recording daily journeys throughout the city and making glossaries of words that signify a certain part of the urban landscape. In doing so, script writing the everyday has the objective of finding an authenticity to the narration of the story.

Immersive theatre

The ‘Punch Drunk’ Theatre company were astute enough to recognize this attribute and its significance to creative script writing. They sought out particular writers that took great lengths to maintain a contemporary language adopted for refashioned productions of Goethe’s ‘Faust’. Their objective was to dismantle the ‘4^th wall’ to a point that participants in the audience would soon forget they were part of a production and lose themselves to the immersive theatrical experience of the production. By employing such commonality to the script writing inside the theatre, a certain nod to the script writers of the everyday was made and has cemented this style as a cultural turning point the literary community of the 21^st century.

If you fancy yourself as a writer, why not join in the revolution?