screenwriting

T.V. writing / screenwriting / storytelling — No Comments
3
Mar 10

Write Back To Front

Start with your target.

Your target is the moment you build to — that big reveal, big stand-off, joke on the scene, revealing look, twist — whatever pushes us stumbling forward, searching our hearts for more. This is the last moment in the novel, last beat in the scene, last beat in the act.

Drive the arrow of your story through the target where you want it to land. Find that last beat — of the story, of the scene, of the act — start with where you’re going.

Unless you experiment with rhythm and timing by placing your big moments in the middle or the beginning, your biggest moments should go last. Your end beats stand as booster rockets pushing us forward, constantly building tension and emotion, propelling us all the way past THE END to continue the story in our minds and in our hearts.

Instead of loading up your arrow and launching it, hoping it will stay on course and land where you want it, target these end beats first. Then, pull back — what happened right before the arrow nailed the target? What happened right before that? Follow the line of the arrow back all the way from where it hit its target to where you loaded your bow. You’ll find the path between target and pulling the string a lot shorter than it might have been had you started with the quiver.

I’ve been writing back to front for a long time — both within scenes and over entire scripts and novels — but it didn’t occur to me to write a post about it until I read this post at Screenwriting Foxhole in which Michael Lee discusses how to structure a scene — from back to front. Ensuring the last beat is caused by the beat immediately preceding it, which is caused by the beat preceding it, and so on. Like a director organizing a shot list, ensuring that every beat has a shot and that these shots flow in a tight, inter-dependent chain like a spine through the back of the scene.

Begin where you want to go. You’ll get there fast.

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T.V. writing / fiction / screenwriting / writing — 4 Comments
20
Feb 10

Story Shorthand

I used to write slowly. As a novelist, I would meander, let myself go, simmer, get stopped up, go around in circles, find my way again and again. I still do that, I just do it very fast now.

If you’re on a deadline, but want to write a rich story fast, here’s a shorthand:

Every character gets an arc that hits at least three beats:

  • We meet them when they’re low — or don’t know yet they’re about to take a big fall.
  • They struggle with a new challenge.
  • They change as a result.

Show each of these beats in a scene or scenes consisting of:

  • a visual image
  • an emotion
  • a question in the mind of the audience — what comes next?

Weave these scenes together like a building conversation: each scene interviews the next, asking a more insistent question that’s only partially answered by the next, which answers a question with its own question in turn. Building in speed and intensity.

Every moment in your story is a great moment — if it’s not, lose it.

If you’re on a tight deadline, you can use this shorthand to develop a pretty tight story. Once you’ve got the story down, you can get profound.

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T.V. writing / screenwriting / storytelling / writing — 3 Comments
4
Jan 10

You Don’t Have To Explain

The more you explain, the weaker your position.

I was watching this show that had a character with a damaged, gravelly voice. But they didn’t explain it at first, and I thought it was great. It was subtle, textured storytelling. Because it opened up this little mystery within the show that could have lead in many different directions — but the point is it was sticky. It was another little surface to grab our attention, to make us think and wonder and fill in our own explanations. It was a little hook that didn’t matter that much at all, but it did, because it added up to the whole. Immediately I was like “huh, this battle-hardened commander guy has a ruined voice. Is that typical? Was he gassed in Vietnam? Do years of being exposed to the toxins of war do that to your voice? Is that supposed to symbolize the character?” A tiny moment lead me down a long path.

Then later, one of the voice-guy’s soldiers: “What happened to your voice?” “Throat cancer.” “Were you a smoker?” “Nope. Just lucky I guess.”

Clunk. They solved the mystery for us, instead of leaving it for us to do. They explained too much. They acted as journalists, rather than storytellers.

Here are ten different ways they could have handled that information better (not to be used in combination):

1. Never explain the character’s voice. This is the boldest choice, and one that probably wouldn’t fly with the network. But it’s most interesting because it allows us to fill in the gaps. When no explanation is given, the possibilities we come up with are far more dramatic than reality.

2. The character drops frequent references to throat cancer in a conscious manner. When this guy says something like “those insurgents are gonna feel like they just had chemo rammed down their throats” we’ll get it.

3. The character makes reference to throat cancer in an unconscious manner. Voice-guy would be talking about the situation and say something like “they’re like parasites that invade the organism. You don’t even know they’re there. You’ve always got to be on patrol.” We catch a reaction shot on the men to see if this registers on any of them — see them glancing at his throat, and wondering what happened to him.

4. Voice-guy speaks in a manner that really strains his voice. Juxtapose with other characters wondering if you can get throat cancer from the toxic chemicals associated with war. Never explicitly link the two, because that’s dull.

5. Voice-guy’s wife seems very concerned about his health. We don’t know why, or don’t find out why until she reveals it bit by bit.

6. Voice-guy takes medicine compulsively — or someone has to remind him to.

7. Voice-guy seems hyper-aware of certain elements in the environment that non-cancer survivors wouldn’t be aware of. Like, ducking below clouds of toxic smoke.

8. Take the other tack as the one above — voice-guy seems to have a death wish. He’s a Marine and he resents any reminders of his mortality. He rushes head-on into the fray, cancer be damned. Little reminders of his illness crop up, however, like his damaged voice and other physical reminders — getting winded, being unable to stand long periods — that tell us SOMETHING IS WRONG without having to say “I have cancer.” We get it.

9. Voice-guy lectures his men about not smoking and looking after their health. He even mentions that he never smoked, but that’s not the only thing you have to worry about.

10. Voice-guy envies a guy his age/rank who is in perfect health. We see that there is no reason for him to have a damaged voice. We see him feel the loss of his perfect health. We see him lose the attention and respect of his troops as he feels unable to speak to them. We intuit that he has a disease.

These may be too oblique, depending on the piece. But there are many ways the information could have been delivered that would have held our attention and kept us guessing. Telling us outright helps us change the channel.

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T.V. writing / drama / screenwriting / storytelling / writing — 4 Comments
26
Dec 09

Find The Mystery

We watch for the mystery. All stories have a mystery. Sometimes we don’t notice because the mystery sucks.

  • Love stories — The mystery is who is going to love who in the end, and why? There should be genuine doubt about who is going to wind up together, and why, and how. If there isn’t, you’re writing porn. We should care about this mystery — this is the pleasure of love stories. See Jane Austen.
  • Dramas — The mystery here lies in who the characters really are versus who they say they are and who they think they are — see Mad Men — or in us making discoveries about the character’s world at the same time she does. The protagonist is in trouble — how is she going to get herself out of it?
  • Crime/Thrillers/Action/Sci Fi — These have mystery built in, or they should. How are we going to solve this big fucking problem? What’s really going on here? Good to have competing mysteries — say, the overarching mystery of the situation and the mysteries of characters’ identities and the mysteries of love stories. As for the overarching mystery, see my joke’s on them post — the joke is always on the main characters, and the mystery here is figuring out how to get them out from under the punchline.

Our mission as detectives is to solve the mystery — by finding out what happens next. If the story doesn’t compel us on this journey, doesn’t send us racing to the finish, we need to shave clutter and bulk up clues and foreshadow and raise the stakes so that nothing matters more than solving this big, interesting mess.

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emotion / fiction / non-fiction / screenwriting / writing — No Comments
21
Dec 09

Follow The Emotion, Cut The Rest

Here’s the difference between fiction and non-fiction: fiction evokes emotion. Non-fiction conveys information.

As storytellers, we side with fiction.

Even if you write articles or blog posts or biographies or State Department briefings, you convey information by transporting your reader emotionally. You sacrifice telling them everything in favor of telling them enough, in the right way, so they’ll be moved. Or engaged. Or entertained.

Here’s what got me thinking about this: I put aside the pilot for a few days because I wanted to do a quick pass on this novel before sending it to some people. I cut and resisted cutting and finally realized that in fiction — if it doesn’t follow the emotional throughline, it doesn’t belong there. No matter how interesting or informative or important-seeming or beautifully written — if the writing doesn’t build to the emotional whole, it must be cut.

All stories are fiction.

The purpose of story is not to inform. It’s to transport. We don’t engage the heart and senses when we fill someone in on everything they need to know. If it’s important, they’ll get it because it comes attached to something a character cares about. Descriptions of place don’t matter, but a character might be devastated then notice her vicinity in a way that echoes what she’s feeling. That’s the only way that descriptions of place matter: how they reflect our insides.

We’re not reading travel guides. We’re reading metaphor guides, travel guides inward. This is the function of story.

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novelists / screenwriting / sex / storytelling — No Comments
18
Dec 09

How Porn Teaches You How To Tell A Story

“Make the screwing scene advance the story,” the producer said. “Wherever the story stands when the actors start banging each other, I want it to have moved to the next level by the time they finish.”

In other words, he said, if it’s a private eye and his gorgeous client, by the time they finish, their relationship has to have advanced—she confesses something, he reveals some secret, whatever. The story has “turned” and mounted to a higher level.

This was the porn producer’s first instruction to young Stephen Pressfield, who would go on to write “The War of Art ” — a must-read primer on how to overcome your blocks — as well as “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and many other fine things. The other instruction was:

“Never write me a sex scene where nothing happens but the sex. Always have something else going on at the same time.”

Example: “The wife is getting it on in the bedroom with the horny carpenter. Now the husband comes home unannounced. He enters the front door. The husband doesn’t know the wife and the carpenter are in the bedroom. They don’t know the husband has just come in the front door. Now we’ve got something! We can cut back and forth and milk the suspense. It’s not just two people screwing, see? And when the husband discovers what his old lady’s up to, we’ve advanced the story!”

“Sex scene” can mean “action scene” or “emotional outpouring” or “exposition dump.” Whatever the thrust of the scene, give it a layer of tension and suspense and depth by adding another complication, ideally one that contrasts the tone and tells us something new about a different side of the story.

Pressfield went into the meeting prepared to condescend to this man who was about to give him a job. Instead, he received insightful storytelling advice that he went on to use in every piece he ever wrote.

Read more at Pressfield’s blog here.

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T.V. writing / comedy writing / drama / dramatic irony / future / how-to / jokes / screenwriting — No Comments
17
Nov 09

Your Story Boils Down To One Joke

Your story is one joke. Even if it lasts 10 seasons. It’s one joke. At least — it should be if your Prius is running on all fuel cells. Whether you’re writing comedy or drama, your entire premise boils down to “. . . but the joke’s on them.” Where “them” = your main characters.

The joke isn’t necessarily funny. But it has that thing that all jokes share: surprise. We start in one world, and we wind up in another, with the old world blown up in our face. That’s what a joke is. When it’s short and tight and sharp, it’s funny. When it depends on context and character, it’s dramatic irony.

Dramatic irony is what happens when we know more than the characters do — because we know them better than they know themselves. Because we perceive something in the situation they don’t. Because we’ve picked up clues they’ve missed. So the joke is on them: they strive, struggle, blithely unaware of what’s about to happen. And we enjoy it. Because when we know more than they do, tension builds as we watch them struggle to find out what we know — because the joke’s on them. And we win. We’re in the superior position.

Dramatic irony happens when a character doesn’t know he’s in a joke, and he’s surprised by the punchline.

Dramatic irony is the joke your character finds least funny right now. Because we want them to suffer. Because that’s what we find funny — or alarming — or affecting — or profound.

Your character may run into variations of the same joke over and over, or she may live out the consequences of the joke slowly over the course of the story. The joke must be clear, and your entire story must boil down to this one joke. To test this, see if you can answer “how is the joke on them?” about your story. Here are some examples:

People survive a plane crash only to fight for their lives against mysterious Others who force them to confront their past lives. (LOST) (joke’s on them.)

A boss loves his office like family but taints everything in it with his incompetence. (THE OFFICE) (joke’s on him — and the other people in his office.)

Humans create a race of machines who now want to destroy them. (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) (joke’s on them.)

These are TV examples, but it works for all stories.

Distill your story to its essential joke — ask how is this situation a joke on them? — and then repeat that same joke on a larger and larger scale, with greater consequences, until you reach your conclusion or 100th episode. Here’s my post on how to tell a joke.

Telling jokes keeps you tight and light on your feet. And it’s fun. Try it.

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action writing / screenwriting / story ideas / writing — No Comments
11
Sep 09

The Turning Point Before The Turning Point

New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was kidnapped by the Taliban  and held for four days in Afghanistan, along with his translator Sultan M. Munadi. Munadi and an unnamed British soldier were killed in the British-led rescue.

Farrell filed this devastating account of their four-day imprisonment and rescue the day he returned.

I was struck by the following moment, which occurred soon after the initial capture:

Once away from immediate pursuit, they transferred me to a waiting car and drove into the dusty back roads of Char Dara District at high speed. “Russian?” one asked me, a question that seemed so out of recent historical context that it made my heart sink.

I see this as an example of the turning point before the turning point: a subtle signpost of foreshadowing that contains in microcosm what lies ahead. It’s like a little crystal ball in the story, there to foretell the future by containing inside it in miniature everything that’s about to happen.

In this instance, Farrell’s being rapidly driven away from safety by his captors, knowing his chances of surviving diminish the further they go. When his captor, his enemy, thinks he’s Russian (the enemy of twenty years ago), he’s overwhelmed with the feeling that he’s been captured by people who don’t know anything about which war is happening or who they’re fighting against. As it turns out, these captors will spend the next four days moving from house to house with seemingly no plan, no purpose, before finally bringing the brunt of the British military on them all, losing two good men their lives. And they don’t even know who they’re fighting against, or why.

All of this is neatly foreshadowed in the captor’s “Russian?” comment — and Farrell’s heart-sinking reaction. If I were dramatizing this story, I would careen towards this moment jarringly, out of control, then dwell on this “Russian?” beat to underscore its sickening, foretelling quality. Just an extra couple viscous beats too long, making it snag the pace the way it does Farrell’s heart. And then speed up the chase again, now with Farrell having caught a glimpse of what lies ahead.

The turning point in a story is an important structural support, giving us something to build to, react to, creating new energy and direction for the story. However, these mini turning points before the turning point — these moments of foreshadowing — can have the same effect without changing the course of the story over-all. Like a twig propping the outer edge of the tent leading up to the tentpole. When Farrell heard the word “Russian?” he knew his story had just changed for the worse, but it took the next four days to watch it unfold until the real turning point when he was rescued and saw his friend killed in front of him.

via The Reporter’s Account: 4 Days With the Taliban – At War Blog – NYTimes.com.

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