I went to a screenwriting course and learnt how to write a film script using three act structure, but now a writer has just told me that no writer ever uses it to write. What am I to do?

Once upon a time there was a young storyteller, full of many strange and wonderful ideas. She would tell her stories with passion, but she never knew how they would end. Sometimes the endings entranced people, other times they left people angry or bewildered. There must be something wrong with my storytelling, she thought, if they disturb people so. Then she heard of an ancient narrator who claimed the most magical formula for stories, where audiences would always be left satisfied and happy.

Naturally, she was interested and visited the old man who gave her a pair of dramatic sunglasses. Her vision of the world changed – everywhere she saw dramatic encounters, deeply engaging individuals with flaws and problems constantly in conflict with each other, fighting and even killing each other quite often but always succeeding in their goal in the end [if they were still alive that is].

At first when she told her stories they seemed terribly dangerous and profound, but after a while they became predictable and then rather laughable, and in the end she screamed "what a mad world, everyone’s the same, exactly the same", so she flung the shades away. But everything still looked just the same. Desperate to escape this vision she confronted him angrily, but he just sat smiling at her, confirmed in his inner knowledge - there is only one truth.

Structure is not a substitute for story. It will not help you look at the world and find stories, nor will it help you develop your story... (answer continues)

How does screenwriting differ from other dramatic writing, such as writing novels, plays, poetry?

Many successful screenwriters have come from writing in other media.

Indeed ‘A bigger picture’ the report of the Film Policy Review Group to the UK Government recognises this and advocates ‘conversion’ courses for these writers. The fact is that we are all used to watching films but not yet familiar with film scripts. Every day we read papers, books, advertisements, reports, letters – all prose. Many people have read some stage plays, most people have never read a screenplay – and even working writers will have read far less words of screenplay than other types of writing.

All drama works from the underpinning story. The words of the novelist or journalist directly inspire our dramatic imagination. But in screenwriting, words first conjure the cinematic action - reading the script we imagine watching a film... (answer continues)