everything i need to know about screenwriting...

...i learned from a novel.

that's not true, but after reading this passage from 'karoo', a novel about a self-destructive, self-described 'hack' who doctors screenplays, it could be:

"My job for the most part involves cutting the fat and adding jokes. I'm handy at both. I get rid of subsidiary characters, dreams, and flash-backs. I cut the scenes in which our hero or heroine visits his or her mother or his or her favorite high school teacher. I get rid of aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. I have cut entire childhood sequences from the lives of characters and have left them up there on the screen without a mother or father or past of any kind.

I keep my eye on the story line, the plot, and I eliminate everyone and everything that doesn't contribute to it. I simplify the human condition of the characters and complicate the world in which they live."

of course, steve tesich knows of what he writes. he was an oscar-winning screenwriter as well as a novelist.