Alice Paul?s true and violent struggle for women?s equality under the constitution, from Suffrage to the failed battle for the Equal Rights Amendment

Thank you, dpg. I appreciate your thoughtful feedback.

I think that movie are not the best media for a full biography. In a book, the author can explain feelings, he/she can even give conflictual voices. A well balanced biography give insight into a mind without falling into the trap of the hagiography or the other extreme the character assassination.
In a movie, a biography can only give you one point of view: the main character or an observer.
Straight away you are limited. If you chose to tell your story from the point of view of the main character, then you risk the trap of the hagiography or the overcraming of irrelevant information. If you use an observer, then you are limited to what your observer can see. So unless you invent a new character that is present at every important and relevant events, you are limited to the events your observer assists to.
A classic trick, scriptwriters have used is to introduced a fictitious character who can our eyes and ears. Usually he/she is the young innocent naive person who is befriended by the main character and much later recall his or her time with the hero. Badly used, that trick can quickly feel contrived. "Amadeus" solved that problem by using an existing character Salieri but giving him the role of jalous, envious nemesis.

By concentrating on the achievements, and a narrow band of activities, movie biographies can also give a sense of resolution that a full biography may not. The end had to have a sense of resolution, accomplishment. Most lives don't finish that neatly. Unless the main character dies just after he or she succeed in his/her main goal, then there is always some down time between personal victory and death. Having Alice Paul achieves a big political victory in the 20s, then spends the next 50 years failing to repeat the same feat sound very boring.

Another advantage of using a narrow set of events, is that it is easier to hide the character flaws of your protagonist or at least make them more palatable for your audience. From what I have read, Alice Paul may have been very effective at campaigning, but she was not the easiest of person to live with. Unless you intend to make an hagiography, you can avoid that minefield by concentrating on her political achievements. Even Better, in that context her stubbornness can be portrayed as a quality.

KellieMck:

You raised a very good example with "Lincoln". Spielberg had wanted to do a movie about America's most complex (and arguably greatest) President for years. But there was so much material, so many historical events, so many "actions" per Aristotle. Where to begin?

And when he tapped Tony Kushner to write a screenplay (not the 1st screenwriter who had tried to condense Lincoln's life into a manageable movie script for Spielberg), Kushner's 1st draft came to some 500 pages.

I don't know if either Kushner or Spielberg have read Aristotle's "Poetics" (although I would be surprised if they are not aware of the treatise's influence on dramatic theory); all I know is that they finally decided to focus on one dramatic action: Lincoln's political fight to pass the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery.

(And, of course, that is what a logline is about: one "action", one plot spine, one story thread.)

>>but then is assassinated.

Seventy four days after passage compared to 55 years that Alice Paul lived after the ratification of the 16th Amendment. (And the assassination is not the entire 3rd act; it transpires in the closing minutes.) That is a difference between the 2 stories -- and a challenge you may face in deciding how to wrap up your story.

As story lines with strong females characters are so appallingly under represented in cinema, I am keenly interested in scripts that have them. I hope we may stay in touch. I can be reached via my Facebook address as listed in the Logline.IT directory.