Writing Style
Chayefsky gained the reputation as a realist for his television scripting. Chayefsky’s plays, broadcast live, adapted themselves well to the small screen format of early television through the utilization of physically restrained stage sets crafted so dialogue took precedence over action. His themes were often a testament to the struggles of the human condition, sagas of ordinary, hard- working people striving to maintain their hard-won middle-class status. His protagonists wrestled with personal problems, such as loneliness, pressure to conform to society’s expectations, and inability to understand or successfully manage their own emotional drives.
Read more about this topic: Paddy Chayefsky
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or style:
“I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only
way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me,
everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of
them that I know can want to know it and so I write
for myself and strangers.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)