Dwight V. Swain
Quick Facts
Biography
Dwight Vreeland Swain (November 17, 1915 – February 24, 1992), born in Rochester, Michigan, was an American writer.
His first published story was "Henry Horn's Super Solvent", which appeared in Fantastic Adventures in 1941. He contributed stories in the science fiction, mystery, Western, and action adventure genres to a variety of pulp magazines. His first published book was The Transposed Man (1955), which appeared as Ace Double D-113, bound dos-à-dos with J.T. McIntosh's One in Three Hundred.
He joined the staff in the extremely successful Professional Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma training writers of commercial fiction and film. He pioneered scripting documentaries and educational/instructional films using dramatic techniques rather than the previously common talking heads. In the 1960s, he scripted a motion picture, Stark Fear, starring Beverly Garland and Keith Toby. He later wrote non-fiction books about writing, including Techniques of the Selling Writer; Film Scriptwriting; Creating Characters: How to Build Story People; and Scripting for Video and Audiovisual Media, and was much in demand as a speaker at writers' conferences throughout the US and Mexico.
Swain is a member of the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame.