Screenwriting Tip for the Day

[MrBiddle]

---

by William C. Martell
http://www.scriptsecrets.net

YOU HAD TO BE THERE!


What if you told a joke and nobody laughed?

Just as it doesn't matter whether your character cries, the only thing that matters is whether the audience cries; a joke in a movies isn't for the entertainment of the characters. In fact, the earmark of a bad comedy script is that the characters are always laughing at the jokes. I think the more the characters laugh on screen, the less the audience will laugh - look at movies like AIRPLANE, every character is dead serious. The more serious they take the situation, the funnier it becomes. The jokes are supposed to make the AUDIENCE laugh - the most important part of screenwriting is creating an emotional response in the audience.

Mike Binder got a lot of attention from his HBO show, MIND OF THE MARRIED MAN... Enough to land him a role as the villain in MINORITY REPORT and a gig direting Joan Allen and Kevin Costner inm THE UPSIDE OF ANGER. A few years ago I met him at the Raindance Film Festival where he premiered his feature THE SEARCH FOR JOHN GISSING, starring himself, Janeane Garofalo and Alan Rickman. So far, the film has not been released in the USA.

The story revolves around an American executive (Binder) sent to London to close a business deal. When he and his wife (Garofalo) land at Heathrow, they're to be met by an executive from the London branch of the company, John Gissing (Rickman). Gissing is not only a no-show, he proceeds to sabotage Binder & Garofalo's trip - mixing up their hotel reservations, hiring a nun to seduce Binder and break up their marriage, cancelling their credit cards so they will be forced to sleep on the street. What Binder doesn't know is that once he closes this deal they're firing Gissing. Binder will end up with Gissing's job... unless Binder fails to close the deal. One situation after another pushes Binder and Garofalo to the breaking point... until they finally find Gissing and turn the tables on him.

Though much of the film is very funny, there's a patch of jokes that just don't work early on. Binder keeps quipping about Garofalo's stoner brother, and she keeps zinging him about his mother. Here's the problem: We don't know either of these characters. They aren't in any scenes, they don't have any dialogue... so these jokes are about people we don't know. So the jokes may be funny to the characters, but it's just a bunch of talk to the audience. We literally don't know who they're talking about. The mother and brother aren't characters in the movie!

The mother and brother gags are injokes for the characters.

Because we've never seen these characters - we don't know them - Binder ends up with "exposition jokes". The jokes TELL US what's funny instead of allowing us to EXPERIENCE something funny. The characters have to tell us all about the brother, then tell us what's funny about him. Compare this to a funny situation that we can experience along with the characters (like Binder trying to share a bed with a very sexy nun dressed in a very sheer nightshirt - we feel his confusion and embarrassment). There's no shortage of fish-out-of-water gags about an American couple trying to find their way in London... I have notebooks full of funny things that happened to me. There are dozens of words that have completely different meanings depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on - lots of room for funny confusion. There WERE jokes that could have made the audience laugh.

Remember, it's not whether your characters laugh, it's whether the audience laughs. Having your characters talk about something really funny that happened off camera is getting the joke second hand - hey, this funny thing happened! (Too bad you weren't there.) Let the audience EXPERIENCE the funny situation along with your character - give us the joke first hand. Don't use "you had to be there" jokes... TAKE THE AUDIENCE "THERE". If the audience isn't there for the joke, the laughter isn't going to be there, either.

[MrBiddle]

ONE STORY - ONE CONFLICT


To keep your script focused, you need to chose ONE external conflict. Your subplots will part of that conflict... like splinter beams from a prism. Each beam illustrates a different aspect of the main conflict or shows a different step in the solution of the main conflict. Dealing with each subplot moves your protagonist closer to the solution of the main plot.

Though you can't have too much conflict, you can have too many conflicts... that's what leads to "Sub-plot-itis" - a script with lots of subplots, but no clear main plot.


In ANALYZE THAT we have a dozen different conflicts fighting for our attention. Someone is trying to kill Robert DeNiro in prison, so he begins singing showtunes from WEST SIDE STORY in order to be released into the care of his psychiatrist Billy Crystal. Is the film about DeNiro trying to find out who is trying to kill him? Well, that's one of the plots. Some other plots include DeNiro and Crystal living together in a strange version of THE ODD COUPLE, DeNiro trying to find a legit job that matches his skills set, the death of Billy Crystal's father - the funeral and the grieving process, a ruthless Godmother played by Cathy Moriarity who is trying to take over the family, the relationship between Moriarity and her HIMbo assistant, we also have the other mob bosses who have relationships with DeNiro and all of the mob politics that come from that, a SOPRANOS-like TV show with an egotistical star played by Anthony LaPaglia and a hysterical director who seems to always say the exact wrong thing, an armored car heist that DeNiro becomes involved with, Crystal and his nagging wife, that strange WEST SIDE STORY thing, and others too numerous to mention.

The problem is, many of these conflicts don't seem to be connected to the story in any way. The SOPRANOS plot seems tacked on to create a few laughs... but so little time is spent on the rivalry between the fake mob boss and the real mob boss that no actual humor is generated. Instead we get a quick scene where LaPaglia imitates DeNiro - that isn't really funny. You could make a whole movie about a real mob boss who becomes the advisor to a TV series about the mob... and by focusing on that conflict there would be more humor. You could have done a whole film about a ruthless Godmother - a role reversal comedy where the bimbos are HIMbos. That would have been funny. But when you have all of these conflicts fighting EACH OTHER, they all lose! We have so many little plots that we have no time to focus on any one plot - and no time to really mine the humor. Instead of deep belly laughs from one story, we get surface gags from a dozen stories. Too many conflicts spoil the comedy!

To keep your script moving you need a strong external conflict - an obstacle that comes between the protagonist and their goal. That may sound obvious, but most of us probably take conflict for granted. We know our scripts need it, and we just assume that our ideas have it. Big mistake. The source of most script problems is a weak conflict or an unfocused conflict... or no conflict at all! Without conflict there is no plot, no way to expose character, no drama or comedy. If your story doesn't have a problem, your whole script has a problem!

The conflict needs to be part of your concept. Built in rather than built on. You can't go back and add it later. If you tack on a conflict, it's going to look tacked on. Your script will end up contrived and manipulative and you will be struggling to keep things exciting. You characters are the ones who are supposed to be struggling!

For your script to work, someone has to want something and someone else wants to keep them from obtaining it. One conflict per story... But a BIG conflict and an IMPORTANT conflict. Scripts are about the most important decision your protagonist will make in their entire life.

[MrBiddle]

THEN THIS HAPPENS, THEN...


When you boil it down to essentials, a storyteller is just giving information to the audience. WHAT that information is, HOW it is given to the audience and WHEN it is given to them is what makes a script good or bad. Today's Script Tip is going to focus on WHEN we give the audience the information.

There is no rule that says a story must be told chronologically. In fact, the most boring method of telling a story is to start at the beginning and go point-by-point until you reach the end. This happened and then this happened and then this happened. Most of the scripts I read that don't work are told this way - the read as if the writers were making them up as they went along rather than a story about a real world that existed before page one and will exist after page 110.

That doesn't mean every script should read like Chris Nolan's MEMENTO or a Nic Roeg movie. Though the scenes may be in chronological order, the INFORMATION in the scenes might be out of chronology. I know that sounds confusing, so here's a simple example: You're reading a novel and our hero Joe bumps into his old friend Bob... and the writer gives us a paragraph about how Joe and Bob became best friends in the 6th grade when they turned the tables on the school bully on day. Since Joe and Bob aren't currently in the 6th grade, that information about was given to the reader out of chronological order. The writer held the information until it became important to the story. Imagine how confusing it would have been to start the novel with the birth of the oldest character in the book! A large part of the art of screenwriting is finding the best time to release the information to the audience - the place where it has the most meaning and emotional impact.


A good example of releasing information at the best possible time can be found in the Farrelly Brothers' SHALLOW HAL (now out on DVD). Jack Black plays a "negative polarity babe magnet" who believes that physical beauty is everything. He only pursues the most beautiful women in the world... so he's mostly unlucky in love. When he's trapped on an elevator with Tony Robbins, the mind-power guru hypnotizes Hal to see people's inner beauty. From that point on, most of the time we are seeing people in "Hal vision" - their physical form reflects their inner beauty. Soon afterwards he meets the beautiful Rosie and falls madly in love with her. Hal sees Rosie as Gwyneth Paltrow, his buddy Jason Alexander sees her as a 300 pound "rhino". Rosie volunteers at the hospital in a children's ward, and brings Hal to work one day. Hal plays with the kids, hugging and kissing and giggling with them. When they leave the hospital, Rosie compliments Hal on how he treated the kids... but they hold the information about why these kids are in the hospital until much later in the film. If they had tilted up to show us what hospital ward they were in immediately, it would have been a gag about Hal's perception. Previously we saw Hal on the dance floor with a totally hot babe in "Hal vision", who was very unattractive in reality. That was a perception gag - a joke on Hal. They could have used the hospitalized kids as another joke on Hal... but that information could be put to better use later in the story. So the Farrelly Brothers hold on to the information until the hypnotic spell on Hal has been removed and he can see people as they really are. That way, the information can be used for maximum emotional impact. Instead of a gag, the same information becomes a scene so strong it will bring you to tears. WHEN you release the information influences the meaning of that information and the impact it has on the audience.

Near the end of the movie Jason Alexander asks a woman at a party if she likes dogs... and it gets a laugh because the information as to why this is important to Alexander was revealed a few scenes before (as the big scene in HIS character arc). Asking a woman if she liked dogs BEFORE we had that information wouldn't have been funny. Information about Alexander's character needed to be revealed to us which makes that question funny. The reason why they held the "dog revelation" was so Alexander could be the antagonist during Hal's emotional journey. Once Hal has discovered that true beauty come from within, the time is right to reveal Alexander's MOTIVATIONS for being the antagonist. After this information is revealed, the audience understands and sympathizes with Alexander... he's no longer the antagonist. But before this can happen, we needed to set up the transfer of antagonist from Alexander to "the unfair world"... that comes in a great scene between Alexander and Tony Robbins where they discuss the morality of hypnosis. Robbins had his opinions on the morality of hypnosis BEFORE he hypnotized Hal in the beginning of the movie, but the best time to reveal this information is later in the film... and revealed to Alexander rather than Hal. Without this information, Alexander wouldn't be able to take his emotional journey... which ends with the "likes dogs" gag at the end.

Concealing and revealing information is one of the most important parts of our art. We control the order in which the audience is given information, and THE STORY dictates that order, not chronology. When it happens isn't as important as when you tell the audience that it happened. Where in the story will revealing this information have the most impact on the audience?

[MrBiddle]

BUILDING BRIDGES


Your protagonist has never recovered from witnessing his mother's murder when he was ten years old. It is the defining moment of his life. It haunts him, now, as an adult. Everything he does in your script is caused by that traumatic incident. You need to open your screenplay with the scene so that the audience experiences it, too. So that the audience realizes that everything your protagonist does is tinted by that event.

So your story opens with YOUNG RICK, 10 years old, witnessing his mother's murder. It's a powerful scene. Then you cut to present day - a que of people getting off an airplane. One of the men is RICK, 34 years-old, returning home after all these years. Coming home to the town where his mother was killed. Powerful stuff...

On the page. But on screen it's going to be confusing. YOUNG RICK and RICK will obviously be played by different actors. One is ten and the other thirty-four. Even if the casting agent finds a ten year-old who looks like your star, the audience may not connect that the kid is the guy at the airport. It's the beginning of the film, and ALL of the characters are new to the audience. They may think RICK is YOUNG RICK's dad - that family resemblance is the reason why the ten year-old looks like the thirty-four year-old. What's clear on the page isn't clear on the screen at all. The audience can't read the names... they just see a boy and a man who look a little bit like each other.

So you need to build a bridge. You need a VISUAL LINK that connects YOUNG RICK and RICK. In Woody Allen movies when a kid plays YOUNG WOODY they give him identical eyeglasses and an identical hair color & haircut. They even dress him the same! That way the audience instantly knows the kid is YOUNG WOODY (even if Woody hasn't appeared in the movie, yet - we all know what Woody Allen looks like).

We need a bridge between YOUNG RICK and RICK, so that the audience knows it's the same guy. Something we can SEE. Some that IMMEDIATELY connects the two so hat we know right away that it's the same person. Because everything is new in the first few pages, you have to make connections as soon as possible - you have to tell the audience that RICK is the same character as YOUNG RICK the minute we see him.

In my NIGHT HUNTER film I have a father give his son a book and tell him to run for his life... Then badguys kill the father and search for the book. Once the boy reaches safety, he opens the book... Next scene has someone closing the book - the boy all grown up. The book bridges the two scenes - connecting the boy and the man.

You can use something like Woody Allen's glasses, or a piece of jewelry, or a scar (but be careful - if the movie star has to wear a scar for the whole film - hiding his pretty face - he may want that changed), or similar clothes... or use a direct link like I did in NIGHT HUNTER. But whatever you do, make it clear VISUALLY that these are the same people. And do it THE INSTANT we see the grown up version of the character. We don't want the audience to think Rick is his own father, do we?

[pnoize]

Nice Tips! Really Useful.

biddle: you have a film entitled Night Hunter? or was this taken from another site? book?

give credit to the author by putting a link or at least naming the author, site or book from which these tips came from.

[MrBiddle]

hehe. in he intitial post I edited it and put in where I got these tips from...
For awhile there, gipang ankon man ni nako tanan na tips.

William C. Martell? He has written movies for CINEMAX and cable tv, including one movie starring macho mofo Mark DaCascos.
Yeah, I always listen to him... and his judgment of movies although I don't always agree.



Why is it that a lot of writers think they are right and the rest of the world is wrong??
- William C. Martell

[MrBiddle]

VOICE OVER


You may have noticed that SIN CITY has voice over narration. It fits the film's pulpy roots - the old Film Noirs of the 1940s and Roman Noirs of the 1930s and 1940s. Tough guy stuff. But wait - isn't Voice Over Narration one of the two big no-nos in screenwriting? Shouldn't someone from the Film Police take Robert Rodriguez out and shoot him? Shouldn't he at least be kicked out of Hollywood (or Austin)?


The reason why everyone says "Never use flashbacks or voice over narration" is that most of the time they are used wrong. 95% of the scripts they read with flashbacks and voice over narration suck because the writer used both techniques to plug plot holes with a big chunk of verbal or visual exposition. The problem is, some of the greatets movies ever made have voice over - what would SUNSET BLVD be like without that "typical monkey funeral" narration?

One of my all time favorite undiscover flicks, PULP starring Michael Caine, uses voice over narration. It's about a novelist who writes tough guy action books, who takes a job writing the memoirs of a real mobster... and the narration is pure tough guy pulp - all of the cliches. What makes the film funny is that the tough guy narration is at counterpoint to the reality of the wimpy novelist. Like every other bookworm, he's not exactly an action hero. Often the narration describes him beating the heck out of the bad guys, while the picture shows the bad guys beating the heck out of the hero! And that's where the much of film's humor comes from. To remove the narration would remove much of the humor and kill the film! The story would still work, it just wouldn't be *funny*. The resulting film would be a semi-serious movie about a writer who gets in over his head with the mob... and a mob hit man - the late, great Al Letari dressed as a nun - is tracking him down.

So - is voice over a good thing or a bad thing? If Billy Wilder can use it in classics like SUNSET BLVD and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, why can't the rest of us? Is it something that only working pros can use? Or must we give up our DGA & WGA cards and move to Texas if we want to use VO narration?

It's easier for some Guru to say "Never use voice over narration" than it is to explain WHY you shouldn't use voice over in most cases but SHOULD use voice over in other cases. This is complicated, may be difficult to understand at first, but here goes:

1) Voice Over and Flash Backs are STYLES - that is, they don't just pop up here and there in the story. The entire story uses flashbacks or voice over. SUNSET BLVD is a narrated movie - the whole thing has a voice over. Same with THE OPPOSITE OF ***. The voice over doesn't just pop up in the middle of the film. Look at any of those great films that use voice over narration and you'll note that the *whole film* is narrated. One of the indicators that VO is being used to plug a plot hole is when it only pops up here and there - right where the plot holes are. Hmm, that's kind of suspicious! If you find yourself only needing the narration here and there, you are probably using it for evil rather than good and you should probably just get rid of it.


2) Voice Over isn't used to tell the story, it's used to comment on the story already being told through actions and dialogue. Remember, film is a *visual* medium. That doesn't mean dialogue is unimportant. But if you aren't using the picture part to tell the story, you're wasting film. You don't want a big chunk of narrative exposition telling your story, you want the audience to *experience* your story through what the characters SAY and DO. If the narration is telling us the story, what makes it a movie? Why don't you just stand in front of an audience and *read* the narration? Skip the whole film thing. Moving pictures are stories told through *moving pictures*. Don't tell us with the narration, show us - let us see and hear what happens.

3) You should be able to remove Voice Over Narration and the entire script still makes perfect sense. We still understand every character's motivations, we still understand the connections and relationships between characters, we still understand what happens. The script doesn't *need* the voice over narration - you aren't using it as a crutch or to cover up story problems. Narration is often mis-used as a way to get inside a character's head - it's thought balloons. The problem with using narration to get inside a character's head is that it isn't *visceral* - it's intellectual. Words have to be processed by the audience - we have to convert the words into feelings. They aren't actual feelings. If I show you a man kicking a puppy, *you* create the feelings yourself. *You* experience the feelings. No processiong required. So you want to find ways to convert thoughts and feelings into *experiences* rather than just have the character tell you about them. Make the story FIRST HAND instead of something related verbally. You want to make sure you are using the narration for the right reasons. If you're using narration to hide lazy writing, you're better off just getting rid of it. If you *can't* get rid of the narration and still have a script that works, your script doesn't work... fix the danged script!

4) Voice over is never used to plug plot holes... One of the reasons why Voice Over Narration has a bad name is that it's often used to "fix" screwed up films. When they used to have a film where the story didn't make any sense, or they had to chop a half hour out of the middle of he story for running time, or the film had some other big problem; the studio would try to fix it with narration. They were plugging holes. So Voice Over Narration became one of those signs thaat a movie sucked, along with no critic screenings and the words "Starring Ben Affleck". Though so many *great* films use narration, there are probably many many more bad ones that do. So when a producer sees narration in your script they may worry the narration might be seen as a negative. Why buy a script with a negative element?

5) Voice Over adds an ADDITIONAL LAYER to the story. Think of it as the icing on the cake. It's not the cake. You can eat the cake without the icing, but it's even better *with* the icing.


6) Voice Over is often used with book ended stories - where we begin after the story is over and flash back to the story in progress. AMERICAN BEAUTY does this very well. Again - you could remove the Voice Over from AMERICAN BEAUTY and the story would still make perfect sense.. We just wouldn't have Lester's funny commentary on the story. Same thing with PULP: we'd still get the whole story of novelist Michael Caine writing a gangster's tell-all biography and meeting up with other mosbeters who would rather he not *tell all*, but we'd miss the comedy that comes from the contrast between the tough guy Caine imagines himself as, and the wimpy writer he really is. SUNSET BLVD would work perfectly... but we wouldn't get William Holden's sarcastic commentary on the film biz. That commentary is an additional layer - it's icing on the cake.

7) Your Voice Over better be damned funny... who wants a cake spoiled by crappy icing? If the Voice Over doesn't make an already great script even better, it's best to just leave it out. If the narration isn't making a great story even better, it's just taking up space, isn't it? Because Voice Over is never REQUIRED TO TELL THE STORY a Voice Over that doesn't really kick ass is adding weakness to a perfectly good story. It will drag your whole script down! So make sure your narration *rocks*! Make sure it's as good as Billy Wilder's narration in SUNSET BLVD. If it isn't as good as Wilder's - get rid of it!

Voice Over Narration isn't evil. It can be used by new screenwriters as well as old pros. The problem is, narration can be used for good or for evil. Using it the wrong way makes your script suck really bad - and we don't want that. So use it with caution. Make sure you are using voice over narration for the right reasons - to add that additional layer to your script. Don't give in to the dark side!

[Carlo Borromeo]

Character and plot, in practice, are indivisible.

Character without plot is a painting, a static persona: Mona Lisa, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned, eyes lightly dancing, hands crossed just a bit unnaturally in her lap as a storm seems to gather over a landscape behind her that's cultivated but still seems to suggest something of the wild. Her hint of a smile has captivated viewers for centuries, but its meaning is lost, unknowable. She's only a moment in time, trapped there forever, and while we can judge her character by what daVinci left on canvas, that's all we'll ever have. She projects a character, but we can't even know what of it is real and what we're projecting. She has no story moving through time.

She has no plot.

Story, loosely defined, is character in motion through time. Plot is the shape of that motion. There's a concept in physics called the Heisenberg principle, which says that in order to truly understand sub-atomic particles you have to know two things - the nature of the particle and its movement - but if you slow down or stop a particle in order to determine its nature, it no longer has any movement to know, while if you don't interfere with its movement you can't discover its nature. You need both, but in getting one you lose the other. Fiction's a lot like that. If you fixate on character, you lose a sense of plot. If you fixate on plot, it's easy to abandon your character. It's not as complicated or indeterminate as nuclear particle physics, but you've got to keep your eyes on both elements at the same time.

Like I said, there has been a longstanding tradition of being dismissive toward "plot-driven" stories, and it's not a wholly inaccurate presumption, but the distinction is unnecessary: a better term for a story where the plot overwhelms and dictates a character's behavior is "bad story." But there's no reason to stigmatize plot or character during development; some writers are naturally more attuned to thinking mainly in terms of plot and others in terms of character, and more often writers will generate some stories from plot and start plugging characters into it and other stories by wrapping a plot around some character(s) they've conceived. I've done both; I suspect most writers with any sizable output have. The process of getting to the story is unimportant. Only the resulting story is important. The reader will only care how you got there in retrospect, if then.

So you've got your general idea, and you've whittled down the many possibilities it suggests to a general theme. At that point either characters that can carry and personify the theme are starting to occur to you (if the character wasn't already part of your original idea) or you're getting an idea for a plot. Start loose on either, and, again, don't get so in love with any concept that you won't throw it out to make your story better. Take whatever you've got and start working out the other.

Since we've already covered character, let's start with that. I mentioned the three most basic questions to ask about your main character:


What does he want?
What is he willing to do to get it?
What's he afraid of?

Answering those three questions brings you not only to the rudiments of character but to the rudiments of his plot. Goal is plot. Determination is plot. Fear is plot.
A spoiled girl wants to keep her family home. She's willing to lie, cheat, steal or kill to keep it. She's afraid she's going to lose everything that ever meant anything to her if she doesn't stay singlemindedly focused on her goal.

That's the loose plot outline to GONE WITH THE WIND. As soon as you know what your character wants, that's the beginning of your plot. And of your character. You just ask different questions of both.

Character: why does he want it?

Plot: what's he going to do to get it?

Plot is really problem solving. Initially, you present yourself with a series of questions/problems, and then you answer them. The answers you choose determine the direction of both plot and character, and those in turn (not to mention where they come into conflict with each other) generate other problems/questions, and the process recurs. And both plot and character develop.

Complications:

Your character does not exist in a vacuum. He's part of a world, whatever world that happens to be. Choice of world is what determines genre, and once you choose a world you play by the rules of that world; in a story set in the wild West your character can't suddenly haul out an Uzi unless you intend it to be a very different kind of genre. Presumably he's not going to be the uncontested lord of his world, unless he's either going to be brought low or you're writing a very boring story, so there will most likely be other people and at minimum other forces in his world whose goals will at least temporarily align or conflict with his. I spoke of primary and secondary characters; every time you introduce one, and answer those three questions and then start to answer new questions the answers generate, each character develops their own plot. Where the plots intersect is the soil where your larger plot grows.

Traditionally every protagonist has an antagonist. In the simplest stories, common in comics, either both are after the same goal (known from Hitchcock as the McGuffin, the something the characters have an excuse to fight over) or the protagonist's goal is to keep the antagonist from attaining his goal (The Shocker wants to rob a bank because that's what he does; Spider-Man wants to stop him because that's what he does). Those are plot-driven stories: in either the structure of the story determines the overall arc of the character's behavior, and, window dressing aside, any character used in them is basically interchangeable with any other character used in them.

On the other hand, it's how the characters play in them that distinguishes one story with that framework from the next, which is why one story may be far more memorable than another with basically the same overall plot. It's all in the details. It still all comes down to character in the end. How your characters act on the worlds they exist in, are acted on by those worlds, and the reactions of each to the actions of the other are your story. This can be as simple as a superhero fight where a villain hits a hero and the hero hits back or as complex as a political chess game between opposing sides of a major public issue, or two expert generals on either side of a war manipulating whole battlefields.

The main thing to remember is that conflict is drama, and, as mentioned before, there are three kinds of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself. Adversaries need not even be traditional enemies; loved ones in adversarial relationships are the stuff of many stories. Breaking away from traditional concepts of hero and enemy can increase conflict, as Akira Toriyama plays with consistently in DRAGONBALL: no matter how much martial artist respect and admire each other, only one can win the title of The Strongest Under The Heavens, and it's the emotional complexities of the players, and their struggles against their own perceived weaknesses as exposed in combat, as much as the fight scenes that makes DRAGONBALL a success.

As you develop your plot, which can simply be understood as the string of events that carries your story from start to finish, or the sequence of obstacles and resolutions that a character or characters experience on the way toward the achievement of their goal, a number of things must constantly be kept in mind. Unless you're writing a story that calls for random action - they exist, but they're tricky - all events added to your plot must serve several elements of your story simultaneously: in addition to pushing the story forward toward the ultimate resolution, they should also develop your characters, reflect your theme and highlight the story's milieu.

[MrBiddle]

A LATE START


Your script starts when the story starts. We've only got 110 pages, no time to waste. If your script doesn't kick into gear until page thirty, it might be that you are starting too early... giving us pointless background information or spending too much time setting up events. You may want to spend 10 pages introducing your character before the plot kicks in, but your character isn't important until the story starts. Character and story are connected on a basic level - you've chosen this particular protagonist because of the story - so the important aspects of the character are those things that are directly connected to the story. If your story is about an FBI agent tracking a serial killer, his previous job as a golf caddy isn't going to be important. Any time spent on golf is time taken away from the serial killer story. And what does the golf caddy past have to do with anything? It's a pointless detail, and we only have 110 pages... everything has to matter! Every element of your screenplay is there to tell the story - there are no accidents in a script. Every element of character, every subplot, everything is part of the story you are telling... or it belongs on the cutting room floor. Since the only aspects of the protagonist that are important are the aspects that connect him to the story, which makes him completely unimportant until the story starts. The script starts when the story starts.


M. Night Shyamalan's SIGNS opens with Mel Gibson sitting bolt upright in bed. Something is wrong. He gets out of bed and checks his kids' room... they are gone! Yelling from outside. Gibson goes downstairs, still no sign of his kids, walks outside his farmhouse... hears his children yelling. His dogs barking and growling. The sounds are coming from the corn field. Gibson runs into the corn field, yelling his children's names. Hears a muffled response. Runs through the maze of maize. Stalks slapping him as he follows the sounds of the barking dogs and yelling children. He beaks through the corn stalks, sees his son and daughter. His son is hysterical, says the dogs won't stop barking. Mel leans down and grabs his son, asking him if he's okay. His son says he's okay, but is still panicked. By what? He turns Mel's head so that he can see the barking dogs... roaming around the center of a massive crop circle in the corn field.

The story is about crop circles, and we get them right away. The film starts when the story starts. No boring scenes showing Mel and his kids on the farm before the crop circles - that would be wasting pages. The story is about a farmer who finds crop circles in his corn field - and that happens in the opening scene - the opening MINUTE! Though Mel Gibson is an ex-priest who quit the ministry when wife was killed in a car accident, those elements of his character only become important AFTER he discovers the crop circles. BEFORE he discovers the crop circles he isn't important - so any scenes about him would be pointless. Before the crop circles, Mel Gibson is just a farmer in rural Pennsylvania. There are HUNDREDS of farmers in rural Pennsylvania. Mel is no different than the others - no more important than the others. Other farmers have lived through tragedy. Other farmers have personal lives... but only Mel has a crop circle in his corn field. The crop circle makes him important. They make him part of the story. Any scenes with Mel pre-crop circles are about a character that doesn't matter... they'll be boring! We only have 110 pages, not enough time to be boring!

But not all scripts are about alien invasions and crop circles - what about a standard thriller? Shouldn't you spend act 1 setting up your character/ Or maybe the first ten pages introducing your protagonist? Let's say your script is about a businessman who witnesses a murder on his lunch hour and gets a great look at the killer. He describes the killer to a police sketch artist. The sketch looks similar to three known criminals. The criminals are brought in, and a pair of detectives that fit the same general description are added to the line up. The witness looks at the five men in the line up, identifies the killer... it's one of the cops!

Okay. You could start your story with the witness waking up in the morning, driving to the office, working half a day, breaking for lunch... then seeing the murder at end act one. But the story doesn't really start until he sees the murder - all of the stuff before that may be setting up the lead character, but it's boring. It's stuff that happens BEFORE the story starts.

After the story starts, you can fill in the protagonist's background. Once Mel is the farmer with the crop circles, he's an important character - the story revolves around him. NOW that he's in the center of the story, we'll want to know more about him... and we can reveal that he's an ex-priest (people still call him "Father") and that he quit the ministry when his wife was killed in a car accident. Once we have a story, and the story has a protagonist, we can look into the protagonist's life... but still we only explore the portions of Mel's life that are directly related to the story. We don't go off on any tangents. Mel may have been a golf caddy in the past - it doesn't matter. Carrying golf clubs has nothing to do with the story about an event that might lead to the end of the world... but losing your faith to the point that you don't want to waist a single minute praying? That aspect of Mel's character is critical to the story. Does Mel believe the crop circles are real? Does he believe aliens are invading? Does he believe in luck or fate or God? These elements of Mel's character are required to tell the story.

You want to start as late as possible. If the story can't start until the crop circles show up in Mel's corn field... that's not the end of act one, that's not page ten, that's the beginning of your script! Page one! Start your script when the STORY starts.

[MrBiddle]

SUBMISSION DEFINITIONS


QUERY (LETTER) - letter to a producer or agent asking if they would like to read your script. No more than one page long. This isn't a business letter, it isn't a book report - the purpose of a query letter is to sell them on your script. So think of it as an advertisement. Grab them with your first words - make your story sound like something they HAVE TO READ. Be entertaining, Usually a paragraph about your script, a paragraph about yourself, and that all important question - would you like to read the script?

TREATMENT - Prose version of your story - usually part of a "step deal" when you are paid to write a script. You'll write a treatment (the producer will tell you how many pages) and when they agree on the story, you "go to script" (they cut you a check to write the script based on that treatment - no coloring outside the lines!). Most treatments are between 5-15 pages. I've written detailed treatments that were as long as 35 pages. Treatments are also great to use when you're writing a script NOT on assignment - you can make sure the story works in a 10 page form before writing 120 pages (and finding out it doesn't work).

SYNOPSIS - 1-2 page distilled version of your script. The shorter the better! Mine are all 1 page. This is a sales tool to get people to read your script - so think of it like the back of a paperback book. People hate me for this, but I never tell the end of the script in a synopsis. I like to create a cliffhanger at the end of the synopsis so that they'll have to read the script to find out what happens next.

LOGLINE - Your script idea in 25 words or less. "A farm girl learns to appreciate her home and family when a tornado whisks her to an alien world run by witches." "An ordinary computer programmer must accept that he's the "chosen one" in order to free mankind from enslavement by a computer system." It's just the essence of the script - not the details. A good logline sums up the script PLUS makes you want to read the darned thing - "Military hero survives accident, comes home to find his wife with another man... his clone!" (Ah-nuld's THE SIXTH DAY).

NEVER send a script unless they have asked to read it!