ABSTRACT
The screenwriter uses tone to imply directionality. Generally, in the treatment phase, the writer is faced with pinning down many dimensions of the story. This process continues into the first draft, and perhaps the second. (Events subsequent to this phase are the subjects of Chapter 24.) In further drafts, the writer, or the writer, producer, and director, introduce the directionality (voice) that leads the reader, and, later, the viewer, to interpretation. Of course, interpretation is not singular; there are many ways to construe material, and each yields a different interpretation. Two of the screen versions of the 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (director Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons and Miloš Forman’s Valmont) are good examples of differing interpretations.
