Screenplay Writing The Picture 2nd Edition PDF

Screenplay:
Writing The Picture

Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Robin Russin and William Downs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ebook ISBN: 978-1-935247-48-7
Cover design by Wade Lageose

Silman-James Press
www.silmanjamespress.com
Los Angeles, CA
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
FADE IN
Note on Ebook Version
Preface
PART ONE: THE BASICS

1 How to Impress a Reader
Who Are Those Guys?
What Are They Looking For?
Writing in Style
Final Thoughts
Exercises
2 Format
Formatting and Formatting Software
Setting Up Your Script
Exercises
3 Theme, Meaning and Emotion

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing (Yet)
Themes All Right to Me
Write from the Heart
Papa, Don’t Preach
How to Reveal the Theme
Some Consequence Yet Hanging in the Stars
Final Thoughts
Exercises
4 The World of the Story
Through the Looking Glass (Story and World)
The Right (Wo)man at the Right Time in the Right Place
(Character World)
Laughing past the Graveyard (Contrast and Irony)
Show and Tell (World and Exposition)
Been There, Done That (Research and Consistency)
Final Thoughts
Exercises
5 Character
Which Came First, Honey of the Bee?
Geez, You Act like You’re in a Movie
What on Earth Is He Doing Here?
What’s the Situation? (Character and Context)
Turn On the Spotlight (Character Elements)
The Arc or the Covenant (Character Arc vs. Catalytic Character)
Write You Are (Building Characters)
A Piece of Sugar (The Shorthand of Dogs, Cats, Children and
Tucking in Blankets)
Final Thoughts
Exercise
PART TWO: STORY STRUCTURE

6 Historical Approaches to Structure
Structure Strictures
Aristotle and Poetics
Plotto and Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
Lajos Egri and The Art of Dramatic Writing
Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey
The Three-Act Structure
Automated Story Development
Final Thoughts
Exercises
7 Power and Conflict
May the Force Be With You (Power and Conflict)
The Orchestration of Power and Conflict
Types of Story Conflict
Final Thoughts
Exercises
8 Beats, Scenes and Sequences

Follow the Beat
Making a Scene
Sequences
That’s Another Story (Subplot Sequences)
Final Thoughts
Exercises
9 Scene Cards
It’s in the Cards
Final Thoughts
Exercises
10 Entering the Story

The Terminator: Man vs. Machine
Big Night: Soul vs. Success
Exercises
11 The Structure of Genres

A Moving (Picture) Experience
Courage
Fear and Loathing
The Need to Know
Laughter
Love and Longing
Final Thoughts
Exercises
PART THREE: WRITING

12 Narrative
Keep It Moving!
Write Only What We Can See or Hear
Describing Characters
Describing Locations
Exercises
13 Dialogue
The Role of Dialogue
How Can I Say This? (Dialogue Techniques)
I Was Born in a Log Cabin I Built with My Own Hands...
(Exposition)
Technical Do’s and Don’t’s
For Crying Out Loud!
Final Thoughts
Exercises
14 Rewriting
It’s Great! Now Let Me Fix It
Taking It Apart and Putting It Back Together
Final Thoughts
Exercises
PART FOUR: MARKETING

15 Marketing the Script
The Writers Guild of America
Representation
Where to Find an Agent
Production Companies
Networking
Film Schools
Final Thoughts
Exercise
16 The Pitch
To Pitch or Not to Pitch
Getting in the Door
Final Thoughts
Exercises
PART FIVE: ALTERNATIVES

17 Writing for Television
Writing a Spec
Sitcom Format Guide
Writing Comedy
You Need an Agent
L.A. Is Where You Want to Be
Pitching for Television
A Life in Television
Final Thoughts
18 Writing Webisodes
Webi-Premise
Webi-Structure
Webi-Characters
Webi-Pilot
Webi-Cheap
Webi-Format
Webi-Talent
Webi-Scripts
19 Writing for Video Games

You Are There
First Things First
The Real World: Breaking and Entering
Final Thoughts
FADE OUT
Final Thoughts on Becoming a Screenwriter
Appendix A: Templates
Appendix B: Suggested Reading
Appendix C: A Few Clichés to Avoid like the Plague
Appendix D: Graduate (MFA) Screenwriting Programs
Glossary
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Lew Hunter, Howard Suber, Richard Walter, Hal Ackerman, Bill
Froug, Stirling Silliphant, Jerzy Antczak and all the others at UCLA
film school, for showing us the way; Steve Peterman, for putting up
with our asking him how to be funny; Derek Burrill, Jeff Kunzler and
Patrick Seitz for helping us navigate the mysteries of video gaming;
Val Stulman, John Shannon and Rob Rinow for being great students
and now teaching us a bit about writing for the web; Lou Anne Wright
for her long months of editing and advice; Todd McCullough for
letting us use his webisode script; Sandra J. Payne, Ken Jones,
Cathlynn Richard Dodson and Rich Burlingham for their careful
reading of the manuscript and thoughtful suggestions, which helped
make this a better book. Barbara Rosenberg, David Hall and Matt Ball
for getting us into this mess in the first place; Michelle Vardeman for
making sure we cleaned it up; and lastly to Gwen Feldman and Jim
Fox at Silman-James Press, for seeing the merit in this book and, more
importantly, publishing it.
R. U. Russin
W. M. Downs
Robert and Adele Russin, for raising me with the belief that I could
live the life of an artist, because they lived it themselves; Sarah Russin
and my kids Olivia and Ben, for putting up with me no matter what;
James and Cookie Goldstone, for being my first and dearest film-world
mentors; my colleagues at the University of California, Riverside; and
Milah Wermer, patron saint of all that is dramatic, ecstatic and
“marvelous!”
Robin
Lou Anne Wright—the love of my life.
Bill
Note on Ebook Version
Be aware, that formatting may vary in the ebook version of this book
dependent upon your reading device and/or your user settings. This
may affect screenplay format examples. The fixed image below is an
example of correct screenplay format, and is detailed in Chapter 2 and
Appendix A.
Preface
“What’s all this business of being a writer? It’s just
putting one word after another.”
—Irving Thalberg
Welcome to the second edition of Screenplay: Writing the Picture.
What’s new? Well, a lot is the same; the principles of great
screenwriting remain the same. We’ve also kept references to classic
films that we consider worth your checking out if you don’t know them
already. But we’ve trimmed references to things that no longer apply
(or exist, for that matter), and included dozens of revised and updated
examples. Newly included are chapters on writing webisodes and
video games, but we no longer include a playwriting chapter because
we’ve now written a complete guide, Naked Playwriting (also
published by Silman-James), which we modestly believe is the best
book on the subject out there, and which should answer all your
playwriting questions.
As we said before, this book is not written by screenwriting gurus.
We are not trying to sell you special formulas, secret methods, tapes,
computer programs or gung-ho three-day seminars. We are not going
to show you how to write a screenplay in twenty-one days or twenty-
one steps. Nor are we going to tell you there is only one true path to
success; we offer no easy how-to formulas. Rather, this is a down-to-
earth guide written by two writers who came from the heartland of
America, moved to Hollywood, were lucky enough to get into UCLA
film school, struggled for years, made many mistakes, wrote every day
and in the end, against all odds, succeeded. Both of us are “produced”
writers (something akin to being “made men” in the Cosa Nostra),
meaning we’ve actually sold screenplays and had movies or television
shows produced from them, and we’ve both made our livings as
writers. And we preach only what we’ve learned and practiced
ourselves—every day. There are no shortcuts in screenwriting, no
magical recipes besides talent, an understanding of the basics and
then some very, very hard work. We wrote this book to help you find
your talent and understand the basics. The hard work is up to you.
We will not cheerlead or sugar-coat how difficult it will be for you—
for anyone—to succeed in writing for “Hollywood.” In fact, we have
some good advice for anyone who isn’t absolutely driven to write
movies or television: think long and hard before you commit yourself
to it. To paraphrase a line from Scent of a Woman, it’s just too damn
hard. Writing itself is too hard; or as Gene Fowler (journalist,
screenwriter and author of the John Barrymore biography Good
Night, Sweet Prince) put it, “Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at
a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
And writing for Hollywood is worse. Movies and television are the Big
Game for writers these days, and everyone wants to play. Not that
there aren’t enormous satisfactions and rewards, both artistic and
financial, if you do succeed. There are. But only a tiny fraction of you
will make it. That’s just a fact, and anyone who says different couldn’t
give you directions to Warner Brothers Studios if he were standing on
Warner Boulevard. Of course anything really worth doing is hard,
success in any truly challenging endeavor is a long shot, and the fact of
the matter is that you’ll never know whether or not you have what it
takes if you don’t try.
Do you have the talent to succeed? Only time and hard work will
tell. Talent is something neither you nor we have any control over,
anyway, so forget about it. Focus instead on the various techniques
that screenwriters must master in order to write exciting, entertaining,
well-structured screenplays, so that if you do have talent, you can
make the most of it.
That’s what this book is all about. We’ve included detailed chapters
on techniques and fundamentals that many screenwriting books and
gurus gloss over or skip completely. We’ve divided it into five easy-to-
use sections so that you can treat it as a textbook, a reference guide, or
something to read from cover to cover. The first section covers the
basics: who is going to read your script and how to impress them. If
you can’t get by the readers in Hollywood all your effort is for nothing.
You impress readers by giving your script a proper, professional
format, choosing interesting themes, finding the world and developing
effective characters. We’ll show you how.
The second section tackles structure. Rather than trying to sell you
on one theory or approach, we examine storytelling methods from
Aristotle to modern computer programs. We take you through the
principles of power and conflict and how they grow from scenes to
sequences to a well-structured screenplay. We include chapters on
how to design your screenplay using scene cards and how to structure
the beginning of your screenplay so that it grabs everyone’s attention.
We finish the structure section with an advanced chapter on genres.
Each genre arises from certain emotional sources and expectations,
and each has its own unique demands. Identify these and you’ll solve
many of your structural challenges before you begin.
The third section reveals the nuts and bolts of writing the script.
We detail techniques to help you write strong, visual narrative and
powerful dialogue. After you have pounded through the first draft,
what follows naturally is rewriting. How do you know what needs to be
fixed, saved or thrown away? How many drafts are needed? How can
you test what you’ve written? When is your script ready for the
market? We give real-world methods and advice to answer all these
questions.
Marketing is the fourth section of the book. It’s a sad fact, but most
screenplays that are submitted—after the months of brain-wracking
effort that went into writing them—get rejected. Once your screenplay
is done, you must plunge into the market and self-promote. We show
you how to approach agents and producers, take meetings, do pitches
—in short, how to start the process of becoming a professional. Is any
of it easy? No, it’s all really, really hard. But we’ll give you the tools you
need to attempt it.
The last section of this book covers related fields, including writing
for television, webisodes and video games.
In short, this book is intended to help you choose, develop, and
perfect your stories, avoid common mistakes, and get you up to speed
as a professional screenwriter so that you’ll look like you’ve already got
a dozen screenplays under your belt rather than only one or two.
What’s more, you’ll have some idea of what to do next. It is said that
people make their own luck by searching out opportunity and being
prepared when opportunity appears. We’ve written this to help you
make your own luck; you’re going to need it.
One other thing. We each have our MFA in screenwriting from the
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and we’re mighty proud
of it. Under the stewardship of Lew Hunter, Richard Walter, Hal
Ackerman, Bill Froug, Howard Suber, Cynthia Whitcomb and the rest
of the fine faculty, past and present, UCLA has achieved recognition as
the premier screenwriting school in the world, and counts hundreds of
successful (that is, working) screen and television writers among its
alumni. At a recent awards ceremony for UCLA screenwriting
graduates, honoree James Cameron noted (with typical reserve) that
now that he’d received the approval of UCLA’s film school, the critics
could all go to hell. Although this book of course reflects our own views
and experiences, we owe a huge debt to what we learned at UCLA, and
to these wise mentors. They taught us well.
1
How to Impress a Reader

Why Am I Reading This Joker’s Work?
Today’s screenwriters are among the most intelligent, imaginative and

skilled storytellers of our time. But one thing must be clearly stated
from the start: they are writing (and you, hopefully, will be writing)
movies. Screenwriting is a very particular kind of storytelling. It’s a
craft as well as an art. Perhaps the first, and in some ways hardest,
truth for new screenwriters to accept is that, while some rise to the
level of classics and even get published, screenplays are not intended
as literature. They are blueprints for films. And just as blueprints show
only the essential plan, elements and structure of a building, the
screenplay must show only the essential plan, elements and structure
of a film. If you want to write something intended to be read for its
own literary merit, write a novel, short story or poem—even a stage
play—not a screenplay. It’s true that some screenplays are now being
published, but these are usually put out in the wake of having been
made into successful films and are often not the original script
anyway, but transcriptions of the produced movies.
You’ll be writing a spec script. “Spec” is short for speculation script.
A spec script is a screenplay that the writer has created from an
original idea or from some underlying material (book, life story) to
which he or she’s acquired the rights. It is not a work for hire, and it
hasn’t been sold yet. This is the opposite of a “shooting script,” which
is a screenplay that has been sold and prepared for production. A spec
screenplay is never going to be read, nor should it be written, for its
own sake. It exists to persuade a very limited group of people (agents,
producers, professional readers, directors and/or actors) that it can be
the basis for something else entirely: a must-see motion picture.
This isn’t to say that it doesn’t matter how well or how badly a
script is written: it does. Your spec script, in addition to being a
blueprint, is a selling tool (which is why it’s sometimes called a “show
script” or “selling script”). You are hoping to sell the reader on your
idea for a movie, which means the more skillfully you tell your story,
through well-written narrative and powerful dialogue, the better it will
be received. An illegible, poorly worded screenplay is as sure to turn
off a reader as a poorly drawn blueprint is to turn off a home-builder.
Good writing convinces a producer that even if this isn’t the script for
him, you’re a strong, talented, imaginative writer to be remembered.
For the same reason, a well-written spec is essential as a writing
sample if you’re hoping to land an assignment.
It may seem strange, at the beginning, to worry so much about who
is going to read your screenplay. What has the reader got to do with
how you write? You haven’t even gotten started yet. But it’s critical for
exactly that reason; you must think of the reader before you begin
because, in a larger sense, your reader is the first member of the
audience to see your film—your film, not your script.
WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?
If you’re very lucky, your script will be read by an important agent,
producer, director or actor. But that’s rare; it’s more likely that your
script’s first “audience member” (outside your friends and family) will
be someone known as a script reader (sometimes called a story
analyst) whom the above-mentioned agent, producer, director or actor
has hired to read for them. This isn’t because they don’t want to read
the script themselves; they simply can’t. They may have thirty-plus
screenplays a week submitted to them by agents, studios, managers,
friends, as well as the guy they met in line at Starbucks, who wouldn’t
give up until they agreed to look at his script. Agents, producers,
directors and actors do read; it’s just that they will personally try to get
to the screenplays that seem likeliest to get made, meaning scripts that
have been sent along by someone who already has a production deal or
who is high enough in the showbiz hierarchy to be considered a strong
bet to get a deal. Scripts with strong “elements attached”—great actors,
directors or tens of millions of dollars already committed to them—are
the first to get read, and read most carefully.
The rest of the scripts—including yours—will go to one of their
hired, tired readers, usually a bright young person who has or is
working on an English or film degree, who also has written a
screenplay or two (unproduced, or he wouldn’t be reading) and who is
therefore primed to be judgmental about yours. Which is, after all,
why he’s there, although he probably, secretly, resents it a little (“Why
am I reading this joker’s work when my script is the one people should
be looking at?”). This reader is the lowest rung on the development
ladder, the plankton in the choppy ocean of Hollywood production.
And yet, in a strange way, the reader is the most influential person in
the business. He is the gatekeeper, the first line of defense. Nothing he
dislikes goes any further at his production company; when he
“passes,” the company has passed. When he says “consider,” then
those higher up might read the script; readers only have the power of
condemning to death, not of bringing to life. The reader’s synopsis and
opinion goes into the computer—“the system”—for future reference
and, if that opinion is negative, nothing short of a death threat or the
producer’s favorite actor pleading on bended knee will get your script
considered at that company again.
Now this lowly yet awesomely powerful reader is wearily
contemplating the ten or so screenplays—meaning 1,200 pages—he
must plow through by Monday, on top of trying to finish the next draft
of his own screenplay. And all for maybe forty or fifty bucks a script.
And so that precious story, which has occupied your every waking
thought for the past six months, which is so compellingly worthy of
being filmed that you can practically taste the celluloid, is now lodged
somewhere in his foot-thick stack of other hopefuls. You’re just
praying it isn’t near the bottom. You’re just begging that he will not
turn his thumb down, for any reason you can prevent. The screenplay’s
fate is in the reader’s hands, and so is yours.
Coverage: “Pass or Fail”
The reader’s report is called coverage, and it will include such items as
your name, the title, length and genre of the script, the date read, who
submitted it and who the reader is. It will also provide a one- or two-
sentence summary, as well as a one- or two-page synopsis and a
paragraph or so of comments as to the script’s merits, or lack thereof.
There are boxes in which the reader rates various aspects of the script
—story, writing, character, sometimes dialogue—on a scale of
excellent/good/average/poor. If the coverage is good or excellent, then
the producer may read it. If the coverage is average or poor, the script
is rejected. Coverage differs from one company or agency to another,
but they all have one thing in common: the screenwriter is not allowed
to see it, even if he asks to. Coverage is an internal report and for the
producers’ eyes only. On the following pages are examples of what
coverage looks like.
Unfair as it seems, this simple abstract, written by possibly the least
experienced person in the company, will determine the fate (at least,
in the negative) of your script there.
So there’s a bit of luck involved, and more than a bit of personal
bias. In spite of these vagaries—or because of them—your script has to
be as powerful and entertaining as possible.
WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR?
When you cut through all the personal opinions, tastes and prejudices,
the question remains: What are these readers looking for, and what
will make them pass your script on to that important agent, producer,
director or actor for further consideration? Simple. They’re looking for
a script that can become a must-see movie, a sure hit. It must convey a
strong “film sense” and be written in a straightforward, economical,
easy-to-read manner by someone who has a marvelous style and
terrific understanding of story and character. They’re not asking for
much.
Would You Go See It?
Now that you know your audience, what does it take, what does it
mean, to write a good movie? Strong characters? A terrific story?
Absolutely. But there is more. Put yourself in the reader’s place: is this
film (script) going to be an exciting, moving experience? Is it going to
be not just an interesting film, something you might like to see
sometime, but the very first film you’d choose on any given weekend?
Is this the movie you’d decide to take the time to go see at a theater, or
at least to choose from the thousands of titles available on your
internet movie service? This is what your reader is asking as he goes
through your script.
Reality Check
Also, you have to be somewhat realistic. If you’re writing a tragedy or a
huge period epic, for example, you’re cutting down your chances of
making a sale no matter how good the script turns out to be. In spite of
many great successes that would seem to prove the contrary, studios
don’t consider such stories “commercial” unless they are brought in
with some heavyweight talent attached. And sometimes not even then.
The Oscar-winning films The English Patient and Braveheart nearly
didn’t get made, and never would have been made if they had started
as spec scripts by unrepresented writers. The English Patient was
based on an award-winning novel that was the passion of a veteran
producer and an award-winning director; even so, one month before it
was about to begin production at Fox, the studio got cold feet and
insisted that the filmmakers cast the inappropriate (but high-profile)
Demi Moore instead of Kristin Scott Thomas in the lead female role, or
the deal was off. The producers wisely refused and luckily found
another home for the film at Miramax. But it could have gone either
way. In the case of Braveheart, the writer happened to be a personal
friend of Mel Gibson and got him to read it. Even then, it took Gibson
several years to decide to bring it in to Warner Brothers, where his
company is based. And even with his attachment, the studio balked; it
wasn’t until another studio agreed to split the cost—and the risk—that
the movie got made. We’re not saying, “Don’t write a period epic,” or
some other difficult material. We are saying that if you do, you’re
going to face an uphill battle getting a reader to consider it. By the
way, in the above coverage examples, the first script, Three Thousand,
did get made—as Pretty Woman. Although the screenplay was so good
that it was purchased, the studio ultimately couldn’t live with the down
ending. And so, instead of the tragic, anti-Cinderella story the writer
had intended, it became the opposite: a Cinderella comedy with an
upbeat ending.
Film Sense and Nonsense
There are things film can and cannot do. It can show us things and
make us hear things: the environment, characters acting or reacting to
it or to each other. Film can show us planets colliding or the nervous
tick of an eyelid. It can roar with the big guns of war or whisper with a
lover’s voice. But it cannot give us a character’s internal state, past
history or future dreams, unless those things are externalized in a
visual or aural manner. Internal moods, smells, tastes, attitudes must
be described in such a way that a director can direct them, an actor can
act them, a cinematographer can photograph them or a sound person
can record them. If you can’t see it or hear it, or an actor can’t play it,
don’t write it. Writers with film sense take the reader on a journey not
primarily of words, but of images. Readers are looking for scripts that
allow them to see the movie.
Short and Sweet
Shakespeare observed, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” To wit: being long-
winded is boring, and being boring is a cardinal sin in all storytelling,
but especially in writing for the movies. The phrase “cut to the chase”
originated as an editing term; when things were dragging in a film, the
editors cut to something exciting, like a chase. More importantly, they
cut out whatever was written, or even committed to film, that impeded
the forward motion of the story. So don’t give them that chance. Make
every moment of your story essential. Keep your writing as tight and
sharp as possible: Don’t use three words if two will suffice. This
applies to dialogue, too; even if you have a character who is meant to
be long-winded, you still must try to make every word meaningful. The
film industry is awash in a tidal wave of screenplays, most of them
bad. So whoever ends up finally reading yours will be in a hurry to find
out if the darn thing is any good. Writing actively and economically
makes for a cleaner, faster read.
Motion is the nature of film. You are trying to convey not a
painting, but an actively changing picture. Each page is regarded as
roughly a minute of screen time. You want the reader to forget she is
reading words on a page and begin to see the film, minute by minute,
its characters acting and talking, moving fluidly through time and
space. While in a novel there is the luxury of describing people and
locations for pages on end, this kind of writing stops the action
(motion) of a film dead in its tracks.
This means there cannot be long, unbroken paragraphs of
description. There’s nothing a reader reacts to with greater fear and
loathing than a page of dense, uninterrupted, overwritten prose. There
are always exceptions, such as the memorable opening of Eric Roth’s
script for Forrest Gump. But this was a work-for-hire assignment, not
a spec screenplay, that allowed Roth certain liberties. (Even so, his
long, poetic descriptions of Forrest and the floating feather last only a
page, and then the rest of his script is far less dense.) Dialogue should
be equally economical. Again, there are exceptions, such as the long,
entertaining dialogue passages in Pulp Fiction. But this film works
because Tarantino has a unique knack for making such dialogue
essential to the theme, subtext and world of the story. Right after Pulp
Fiction was released, Hollywood was inundated with scripts
superficially attempting to copy his style, almost none of which were
made.
You will always find and may create exceptions, but it is a general
rule to try to keep your writing as brief as the character and situation
will allow.
The more white space there is on the page, the easier it is to

contemplate reading, and the more likely it is that the script will
convey the motion of a potential film.
WRITING IN STYLE
Assuming the common strictures of brevity, clarity and “film sense,”
every screenwriter has his or her own style. This both affects and is
affected by what is being written. A writer’s natural style can to some
degree provide a clue as to the kind of movies he or she is best suited
to write. This is because each genre has its own feel and demands. An
action script, for instance, is usually written in a terse, aggressive,
spare style with limited dialogue, which moves the reader at maximum
pace through its story. If that’s the way you like to write, action might
be your field. A character drama or romantic comedy takes more time
to develop character relationships and is far more reliant on mood and
dialogue. If this kind of writing matches your interests and strengths,
you might be well-suited to write the next Juno or The Descendants,
not the next Inception or Fast & Furious. In other words, you should
write in a style that feels natural to you, and your style should be
consistent with the kind of films you are trying to write. If it isn’t, you
may need to change it, or change genres (for more on genres, see
Chapter 11).
Some think it’s good for students to try out a number of different
genres and styles until they figure out what’s right for them, and
within the context of a college program this may be true. However,
once you do determine a preference, stick to it for a while. You need to
create a consistent identity for yourself in a very crowded field that is
becoming more crowded every day. Producers have only so much time
and attention, and that is usually limited to projects coming in from
known sources. When you flicker across their radar screen, you want
them to sit up, take notice and remember your particular signature.
Be careful to choose a genre or style that truly reflects what you
want to be working on for the foreseeable future. The unfortunate fact
is that Hollywood pigeonholes writers. The same harried producer or
reader mentioned above, once familiar with a writer’s first work, will
tend to identify the writer with that particular work and will be
confused if something radically different appears on her desk.
It’s not that you shouldn’t write different kinds of scripts, but you
should identify your strengths and primary areas of interest and focus
your efforts there. You’ll get where you want to go faster. Once you’re
well enough established in one area (and financially comfortable
enough that you can take a chance), go for it and break the mold.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The moral of all this is that, just as in quantum physics, the observer
has a fundamental effect on the observed; in this case, your
screenplay. Over time, the process of how screenplays are read and
judged has helped to define what makes for good screenwriting, which
in turn anticipates the reader’s concerns. Remember, the reader is
your audience. He’s tired, bored and bombarded with horrible scripts.
But he’s also looking for strong blueprints for wonderful, exciting
movies. With these first lessons in mind, let’s start learning how to
write a screenplay that a reader can’t resist.
EXERCISES
1. Write a list of your top ten favorite movies. Now identify what it is
about each that appeals to you.
2. Read any screenplay and then create your own coverage for the
script. Use the examples of coverage in this chapter as a template.
2
Format
Looking Good
The first thing a reader looks for is proper format. You may think that
formatting the script is a pointless (if required) chore, but one that has
little to do with the larger concerns of your screenplay. In fact, proper
format, having evolved out of years of production and reading
demands, is as essential to the craft and conception of screen stories as
meter is to poetry. You don’t start writing a sonnet or a lyric until you
have an understanding of the form. Screenplays are not formless; they
are demandingly structured, and their format both reflects and helps
to create that structure.
Improper format is the surest way to get your script tossed in the
rejection pile. You may think that “technical” errors having “nothing to
do with story” will be forgiven, but they won’t. When an experienced
reader comes across a script that doesn’t look professional, her
assumption is that the writing isn’t professional either, because that’s
usually the case. Typos, punctuation errors and poor grammar will
also annoy readers and get scripts tossed. If a writer doesn’t know the
correct format, can’t spell or construct a sentence intelligently, why
should readers assume he can construct a proper story? The old saying
“You can’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t apply to screenwriting.
Producers, directors and readers always judge a script by its
appearance.
What follows are the basics of how to format a spec screenplay (as
stated in Chapter 1, “spec” is short for speculation script). This format
also applies to spec MOW (Movie of the Week) and spec hour-length
television (one-camera) shows like House, Breaking Bad and
Homeland. Sitcoms (threecamera shows) have a unique format that is
covered in Chapter 17.
A caution: Most of the scripts you can buy are either bound books
and re-formatted for that form, which is different than your script
format should be; or if you can actually find actual drafts of
screenplays at rare specialty stores like Book City Script Shop or Script
City, they’ll likely be shooting scripts, and again will have a slightly
different format from a spec (speculation or show) script. Nowadays
with a little effort you can also locate thousands of downloadable
scripts from various websites as well, but it’s a crapshoot as to which
draft may have been uploaded and whether the format has been
preserved properly in transmission. More often than not it hasn’t.
FORMATTING AND FORMATTING
SOFTWARE
Achieving the proper format no longer requires tabbing and spacing to
get your character names, dialogue and narrative all lined up. There
are software programs designed to help screenwriters (and television
writers). The industrystandard screenwriting programs are Final
Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter and SceneWriter Pro, which are all
pricey, and offer features you may not yet need. All of them can be
ordered online or found at a specialty store, if you’re in a city large
enough to have one. There are also two pretty good free programs as of
now that you can download from celtx.com and scripped.com. Any of
these will automatically provide the correct format templates for you,
but even so these can be confusing to use—most of our students still
get things wrong at first, even using a specialized program. So pay
attention here: stick to the spec format we’ve laid out for you, and
you’ll look professional.
If you don’t have the money for one of these programs, you can
usually achieve similar results with your own word processor, if you
don’t mindspending a little time. On PCs, the format-creating feature
is usually called “templates,” and on Macintosh it’s often listed under
“styles” or “style sheets.” Crack open that word-processing manual and
learn how to program your computer so that with a push of a button
you can format narrative, dialogue, character titles, slug lines and all
the rest of it. If you use the “Macros” feature you can also program
your computer to enter an entire scene header or character name with
the push of a single button.
SETTING UP YOUR SCRIPT
Title Page
The title page is a simple white sheet of paper that usually doubles as
the front cover. Just as with covers, the title page should not have any
fancy graphics, pictures, wacky typefaces or other distractions. Some
beginning screenwriters think that an eye-catching title page will help
separate their script from the pack, and it does: it practically shouts at
the reader that this is a script by a rank amateur. We know you can
find counterexamples, mostly horror scripts with “bleeding letter”
typefaces and/or graphics, but keep in mind that most unusual title
pages you see on shooting scripts were probably put on by the
production company after the film was produced or when it was going
into production as a shooting script.
All that’s needed on the title page is the following:
1. An exciting title, all caps and centered, about a third of the way
down the page. The title can be plain, or it can be underlined or in
quotation marks, but not both.
2. Your name, centered and double-spaced below the title, but not
in caps. It’s acceptable to write “by” or “An Original Screenplay
By” (if the story is wholly original) beneath the title and above
your name.
3. Your contact information (agent, manager, your own phone,
address and e-mail address), not in caps, placed in the lower
righthand corner.
4. If the script is based on secondary material (adapted from a
book, true story, short story or play you have permission to adapt,
or someone else’s story in some other form) describe such
collaboration or material below your name, centered and not in
caps.
Your title page should look something like the example on page 20.
Title Page No-No’s
Avoid the following common mistakes. Just because you’ve seen them
doesn’t make them correct.
1. Don’t use fancy typeface. Courier 12 point is preferred, although
New York, Bookman and Times will do—on the title page only.
2. Don’t announce a copyright or WGA registration number on your
title page. This is a waste of ink. Your work is legally considered
copyrighted as soon as it’s written, and if someone’s really going
to steal your idea a WGA registration number isn’t going to stop
them. (Complete WGA registration and copyright information is
covered in Chapter 15.)
3. Don’t try to make your script appear more legitimate by adding
statements like “Property of Harry Johnson and Associates,”
“Owned by Johnson Films” or “A Harry Johnson Production.”
This fools no one. The film business is a pretty tight community,
and anyone actively working in it is probably familiar with most of
the real companies in the business. Even if you have incorporated
yourself as a “production” loan-out company for tax purposes,
putting such information on the title page still does nothing for
you as far as selling your script. In fact, it may create the
assumption that the script is already burdened with attached
producers, and most companies prefer a script with no producers
attached, unless they’re very experienced and well connected,
because they have their own production team and don’t want to
pay extra salaries or percentages of profit. So trying to appear
“professional” in this manner may actually hurt your chances at a
sale.
4. Don’t indicate on your title page whether this is the “First Draft,”
“Second Draft” or “Final Draft.” These listings are for your own
personal use and shouldn’t appear on a spec script. No one cares
which draft it is; all they know is that it’s the draft they’re being
asked to read. Any other information is unnecessary. In fact, if you
place “First Draft” on the title page you may raise the concern that
you haven’t taken the time to send a well-developed script, and if
you put “Second” or “Third Draft” on it, it may look like it’s been
shopped around and had something wrong with it. It’s like selling
sausages. You don’t want or need your buyer to see the process of
how they’re made—or if the sausages look like they might be old…
Binding
Screenplay binding is simple. Scripts are three-hole-punched and
bound with brass brads or lesser-used Chicago screws. Plastic ring-
binders, fancy clamps, metal strip couplers, embossed leatherette
spring-notebooks or any other form of binding you can think of are
unacceptable. The industry standard is brass brads or Chicago screws
only. The best brass brads are made by ACCO. Use their No. 5 or No. 6
industrial, heavy-duty style fasteners. They come in boxes of a
hundred and are typically available (or can be ordered) at stationery or
office supply stores. The cheap, brass-colored brads you get at
discount stores are too flimsy. Most professional screenwriters use
only two brads per script, one in the top hole and one in the bottom,
the middle hole left empty. It’s just cooler that way, more Zen.
Covers
Covers are optional. Some writers use them, most professionals don’t.
If there is a cover or jacket on a screenplay, it’s usually added by an
agency or manager. Each agency has its own special cover that proudly
identifies it as the submitter of the screenplay. If you do want to use
covers, they should be simple, three-hole-punched card stock, in a
single color. Never write, print or glue anything on the cover; no
designs, drawings, quotes, decorations, family photos, not even the
title or your name. Simplicity is the rule.
No Character Page, Quotations or Dedications
A cast of characters page, where each character is described, is a
standard feature on a play script but is never done on a screenplay.
After the title page the script begins. Although there have been notable
exceptions to this, there also usually should not be any “meaningful
quotations” to set the reader in the right mood nor any dedications.
These are clutter.
The Basic Page
Use plain, white, 8½-by-11-inch, three-hole-punched paper. No
colors, no borders, no onion skin, just regular old 20 lb. bond paper.
Only one side of each sheet is used. (Some agencies or production
companies will make their own double-sided copies to save paper. You
may come across a double-sided script from time to time, but it is
never correct for a spec script.)
Fonts, Printers and PDFs
In spite of all the fancy typefaces your computer can do, the text of
your screenplay should look typewritten, meaning simple Courier 12-
point pica font. Period. No boldface, italics or bigger or smaller fonts
for emphasis. Real writers don’t get fancy with their typeface. They let
their story, not their font, carry the drama. The font should also be
extremely readable, so use a good quality printer if you’re sending a
hard copy. Most places like screenplay competitions and those rare
agencies that are willing to look at new writers usually accept PDF
copies via email or online upload, which can save on printing costs.
Your screenwriting program will either offer an option to Save, or
Export, or Print to PDF.
Margins
One inch on the top, bottom and right-hand sides of the page is the
norm. The left margin is larger (1½ inch) to allow for the three-hole
punch and brads. You can get away with cheating the right margin
down to ¾ inch if you need to, but not more.
White Space
The first impression is important. A properly formatted script tends to
have a lot of white space. This means the white of the paper, not the
ink, seems to dominate the page. When directors, producers and
readers open a screenplay and see lots of tight paragraphs, poor
spacing and hard-to-read fonts, they are immediately turned off. A
well-formatted script gives the reader breathing room.
Page Numbers
Page numbers appear in the upper-right corner. The title page is not
numbered.
Page One / Fade In
You do not put the title on the first page, only on the title page. Page
one begins with the words FADE IN: or FADE UP: or the less common
OPEN ON:. These words, followed by a colon, are capitalized and
placed flush with the far-left margin:
FADE IN:
Scene Headers
Scene headers (also known as slug lines or the more formal master
scene headings) are captions that identify where and when a scene
takes place. The scene header begins with either INT. meaning
“Interior” or EXT. for “Exterior.” Then it states the location, followed
by a dash ( — ) and the time of day (almost always DAY or NIGHT,
very occasionally DAWN, DUSK, MAGIC HOUR, or CONTINUOUS in
the event that the scene follows a continuous action from the previous
scene). Scene headers are placed flush with the far left margin (1½
inches from the left edge of the page). They are always in caps and
followed by a double space (hard return). Here are examples of various
scene headers:
EXT. GENE’S SWIMMING POOL — NIGHT
INT. DOG HOUSE — DAY
EXT. AN OLD GAS STATION — dusk
INT. HOLIDAY INN CONFERENCE ROOM — NIGHT
In a spec screenplay, the scene headers are not numbered. Scene
numbers are a production concern, and are added only when the script
is sold and being readied for production; in other words, when it’s
being turned into a shooting script. However, it is important that,
when you return to certain locations in your screenplay more than
once, your scene headers for each recurring location should appear
identical, other than time of day, if that variable has changed. This too
is a production concern because it alerts the production crew in a
clear, economical fashion as to the number of locations, days and
nights required to schedule the production. But it is also a reading
concern because scene headers help the reader easily recognize a new
or recurring location and see the transition from scene to scene
without having to work at it. Recently it’s become fashionable to
boldface your scene headers, and some programs are auto-set to do
that. But it’s neither a requirement nor that commonplace, so do it if
you like, or don’t. We prefer the cleaner, nonboldface look.
Narrative
The scene header is followed by a double space, then what is known as
the narrative, narration or business. Screenplay narrative describes
the physical action as well as the location and mood. The purpose of
narrative is to make your reader see the movie. Narrative is single-
spaced and aligned to the widest paragraph margin, 1½ inches from
the left edge of the page and 1 inch from the right. Do not justify the
right margin.
Here is a scene heading followed by narrative:
EXT. ROW HOUSE UNITS — NIGHT
A chain of old Chicago row houses, shackled
together with common walls and porches. A
solid sequence of Sears siding and shutterless
windows stretches to the horizon, a dank
cutout of the city’s nightline.
Narrative is kept brief, written in present tense and broken into short,
readable paragraphs. (Chapter 12 is devoted to writing good
narrative.) Within the narrative there are two elements that are
usually capitalized. Character names are written in caps the first time
the character appears in the screenplay, but not in subsequent scenes,
unless the character is actually going to be played by another actor.
For instance, if we meet SAM as a child, and later we come back to him
as an adult (second actor), we would again write SAM in caps.
Secondly, sounds (music or sound effects) may also be capitalized in
the narrative:
KONIGSBERG closes his eyes and with a flinch
squeezes the trigger. CLICK! A dud.
Capping sounds can serve to give them emphasis, but in fact the
practice survives from the old studio days, when contract writers sent
their scripts straight into production. Capping quickly alerted the
production and postproduction sound crews to music and sound
effects in the script, and it remains a standard feature on all shooting
scripts. While it is not necessary in a spec, many older writers still
capitalize sounds out of habit. Many younger writers do not. This one’s
your choice.
Character Headings
Character names are placed on the line immediately preceding the
dialogue, and are capped and indented 4 inches from the left-hand
side of the page. They are never centered. Character names are
followed by a single space, after which comes either the dialogue or a
parenthetical.
Dialogue
Dialogue is indented and left-justified 3 inches from the left edge of
the page and approximately 2 inches from the right. It’s single-spaced
below the character heading and is not right-justified. Here is an
example of character heading and dialogue:
WALTER CRONKITE
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals set
aside the conviction of Dr. Benjamin
Spock, author of ‘The Common Sense
Book of Baby and Child Care.’ Dr.
Spock was arrested and convicted of
conspiracy to counsel draft
evasion...
Dialogue must never be “orphaned” by letting a page break or

intervening narrative separate it from its character heading. The
following is wrong:
BILL, the football team’s center, emerges from
the tunnel twenty yards away.
BILL
Hey, Mark. Come on, buddy. It’s
over.
Sweat drips down Mark’s nose. He doesn’t

answer or move.
Mark, they’re closing up. Let’s go.
Instead, the second line of dialogue must include a new character

heading. Some writers add a (CONT’D), short for “continued,” to the
character heading when a character’s dialogue is interrupted by a bit
of narrative:
BILL, the football team’s center, emerges from
the tunnel twenty yards away.
BILL
over.
Sweat drips down Mark’s nose. He doesn’t

answer or move.
BILL (CONT’D)
However, this can be extremely cumbersome if you’re shifting dialogue

around and forget to remove the (CONT’D)’s from dialogue that is no
longer interrupted. Again, it’s just more clutter that doesn’t need to be
there. A new character heading is all you need. The only time a
“continued” is required is if a page break interrupts the dialogue.
When this occurs, the word “CONTINUED” or “MORE” should appear
in parentheses at the bottom of the page and the speech finished on
the next page. Example:
WALTER CRONKITE
Book of Baby and Child Care.’
(MORE)
_________________________Page Break
WALTER CRONKITE (CONT’D)

Dr. Spock had been arrested and
convicted of conspiracy to counsel
draft evasion.
You do not want a page break to interrupt a sentence; the break should
occur at the end of a sentence. If you have a very long sentence and
have no choice but to interrupt it, add an ellipsis to the end of the last
line on the bottom of the outgoing page and to the beginning of the
dialogue at the top of the next page:
WALTER CRONKITE
Book of Baby and Child Care’. . .
(MORE)
_________________________Page Break
WALTER CRONKITE (CONT’D)

. . . and long regarded by new
parents or the post-war generation
as the top authority in the care and
upbringing of young children. Dr.
Spock had been arrested and
convicted of conspiracy to counsel
draft evasion.
Widow Control
A “widow” is a character heading or scene header that is left by itself at
the bottom of a page, while the dialogue or narrative continues on the
next. This is a widowed scene header:
EXT. JOLIET STATE PRISON GATE — DAY
_________________________Page Break
Guards inspect Frederick Shapiro’s briefcase.
His starched collar and gold tie-pin set him
apart from the usual public defenders who use
this gate.
Widows make a script look unprofessional, and can easily be avoided,
if you’re writing on a computer, by creating a format style in which the
scene header or character heading is always kept with the following
narrative or dialogue. (In Microsoft Word, for instance, there is a
“Keep With Next” command.) In any event, always check your script’s
pagination. If a scene header or character heading falls at the bottom
of a page and is separated from the narrative or dialogue on the
following page, move the character heading or scene header to the
next page.
Parentheticals
A parenthetical, also known in slang as a “wryly,” is a small stage or
acting direction placed in parentheses between the character heading
and the dialogue. Parentheticals are usually indented 3½ inches from
the left edge of the paper. They are single-spaced and set one line
below the character heading:
Jim hugs Sam in an overly affectionate
embrace. Betty watches, annoyed.
JIM
(wryly)
I love you, man.
(to Betty, in French)
And of course, you too, my sweet.
Most beginning writers use far too many parentheticals. Professionals

try to avoid using them at all. Your narrative and dialogue should be
written well enough that parentheticals are not needed. As a rule,
actors and directors actively detest parentheticals as a screenwriter’s
intrusive attempt to interfere with their jobs, and they cross these
directions out if they bother to read the script at all. Parentheticals are
acceptable if you’re indicating that someone is speaking in another
language (which you are writing in English so the reader can
understand it) or if there are several characters in a scene and your
speaker is addressing first one, then the other. In the above example,
the second parenthetical is acceptable, the first is not.
Other acceptable parentheticals are (V.O.) or (VO), which means
“Voice Over,” and (O.S.) or (OS), which means “Off Screen.” (VO) is
used to indicate dialogue that the audience can hear but characters in
the scene cannot. For example, if one character is “silently” telling us
her internal thoughts, or if a narrator describes a scene, this would be
indicated with (VO). (OS) means that the dialogue or sound can be
heard by the characters, but the source of the sound is not visible on
the screen, such as someone shouting from another room or a car
honking outside. (Some screenwriters use (O.C.), for “Off Camera,”
which means the same thing. (OS) is more popular.) (V.O.) and (O.S.)
parentheticals are placed beside the character heading, like this:
MARTY (O.S.)
You’d better get your butts down
here right now!
Some writers prefer the abbreviations; others attempt to avoid

parentheticals at all costs and substitute the word “VOICE” for (O.S.)
or (V.O):
MARTY’S VOICE
Are you coming, or not!
Another occasionally used parenthetical is (beat), which indicates a

brief hesitation or pause, and is not the same thing as a story beat (see
Chapter 8). If this parenthetical is used sparingly at dramatic
moments or for comic effect, then it is acceptable. (See Chapter 13 for
more information on parentheticals.)
Cuts, Dissolves and Continueds
At the end of a scene, screenwriters sometimes place the words CUT
TO followed by a colon flush with the right-hand margin:
CUT TO:
This simply means that the movie is now changing to a new location or
time. But it is not necessary to place CUT TO: after every scene.
There’s an obvious cut every time there’s a new scene header or slug
line (meaning a new scene), so why be redundant? Sometimes the
words FADE TO: or DISSOLVE TO: are used to indicate that the end
of a scene melts into the beginning of the next. This should be used
sparingly and for specific effect, for instance, when going into a dream
sequence or a flashback, or when the time change between scenes is
great. CUT TO: should also be reserved for times when you want to
draw attention to the scene change for specific effect, such as when
bouncing between a pursuer and his pursued in a chase, or when going
from a very quiet scene into a loud one.
Shooting scripts will have a (CONTINUED) at the top and bottom
of every page. This is done to let the production crew know that
whatever scene is happening at the bottom of this page continues on
the next page (as if they couldn’t figure this out for themselves).
(CONTINUED)’s are an old tradition in shooting scripts, but are not
necessary or desirable in a spec script. Leave them off; they clutter the
page and add nothing to the read. Most computer screenwriting
programs allow you the option of using or turning off the
(CONTINUED) and CUT TO: functions. We advise turning them off.
You’ll save page space and script length.
Fade Out
The last line of a screenplay is usually FADE OUT. This is capitalized
and is right-margin-justified.
Capitalization
Here are what should be capitalized:
1. SCENE HEADINGS
2. CHARACTER NAMES above the dialogue
3. SOUNDS in the narrative
4. New CHARACTER NAMES the first time they are introduced in
the narrative, and in the subsequent introduction of that same
character if a new actor is being indicated (such as when a
character introduced as a girl later appears as a woman)
Line Spacing
SINGLE SPACE the following:
1. Narrative
2. Between character heading and dialogue
3. Dialogue
DOUBLE SPACE the following:
1. Between scene header and narrative
2. Between narrative and character heading
3. After dialogue
4. Between paragraphs within the narrative
5. Before and after a CUT TO: or DISSOLVE TO:
Screenplay Margin and Tab Guide
If you are using a standard Pica typewriter format in a regular word
program, the tabs for margins would be:
17—Narrative left margin
28—Dialogue left margin
35—Parenthetical
46—Character’s name
66—CUT TO:
63—Dialogue right margin
75—Narrative right margin
The guide on page 24 shows the proper margins. A template designed
to help you set margins is located in Appendix A.
Camera Directions
Camera directions, sometimes called camera angles (CLOSE SHOT,
WIDE SHOT, HIGH ANGLE, CLOSE 2-SHOT, CAMERA DOLLIES
LEFT, etc.), were once commonly used in a screenplay’s narrative to
tell the director how to shoot the script, but they are now considered
old-fashioned and inappropriate. Unless you’re going to direct your
own script, don’t pretend to be the director. Camera angles add clutter
to the narrative, and are more likely to annoy potential directors than
enlighten them. There’s a better way: Let the emphasis of your
description guide both reader and director.
Compare the following two approaches to a scene. First, the old-
fashioned way:
EXT. FOOTBALL STADIUM — NIGHT
HIGH EXTREME WIDE ANGLE ON a football stadium,
lit by floods, in the middle of a dark city
neighborhood.
LOWER WIDE ANGLE ON the stadium: the crowds
have gone home. Alone in the middle of the
field, a single player, MARK, the quarterback,
kneels as if in prayer, his head bowed.
PUSH CLOSER INTO LOW MEDIUM ANGLE and REVEAL
that he’s leaning with one hand on a football.
WIDE ANGLE ON the center, BILL, coming out of
the tunnel.
BILL
Come on, buddy. It’s over.
MEDIUM ANGLE ON Mark, who doesn’t answer or

move.
CLOSE UP ON Mark’s face: sweat drips down his
nose.
BILL (OS)
EXTREME CLOSE UP ON his eyes, which are

closed. More drops roll down from them, not
sweat, but tears. Suddenly the light dims.
There’s the sound of ELECTRIC BREAKERS being
thrown.
MARK (VO)
It was the worst moment of my life.
I’d just lost the Superbowl. Not my
team. Me.
WIDE ANGLE ON stadium, as the huge floods go

out, one by one.
Now here is the same scene without camera angles. Notice that it’s
clear we go from HIGH EXTREME WIDE ANGLE to EXTREME
CLOSE UP without cluttering up the page with the camera angles.
EXT. FOOTBALL STADIUM — NIGHT
A bright green oval glows like an emerald in
the middle of the velvet-dark city: a football
stadium, lit by floods.
The steps are empty, the bleachers deserted.
But out in the middle of the field kneels a
single player: MARK, the quarterback. He bows
his head, as if in prayer. One hand rests on
the football.
BILL, the team Center, emerges from the tunnel
twenty yards away.
BILL
over.
A single bead of sweat drips down Mark’s nose.

Then another. He doesn’t answer or move.
BILL (OS)
Mark squeezes his eyes shut. At their corners,

more drops emerge and fall: not sweat, but
tears.
Suddenly the light dims. There’s the sound of
ELECTRIC BREAKERS being thrown.
MARK (VO)
It was the worst moment of my life.
I’d just lost the Superbowl. Not my
team. Me.
The huge floods above the stadium go out, one

by one.
The one acceptable camera direction is POINT OF VIEW (P.O.V.).
This is used when the writer wants the reader to “see” the scene
through one particular character’s eyes. It should be used only when
this unique P.O.V. is crucial to the story.
GEORGE’S P.O.V. -- Counselor Johanson looks
like some giant extinct species of bird about
to devour him.
Horror movies use point of view a great deal, for instance to give us
the monster’s P.O.V. of his next victim without yet showing the
audience what the monster looks like, or to give us the frightened
victim’s P.O.V. as she stupidly goes alone into the basement. This
strictly limits “our” vision to what a character herself can see,
enhancing the sense of danger and claustrophobia.
The main point is that the way the scene is described should tell the
reader what angles are indicated. And learning to focus on these
telling details will make you a better writer. In all cases, remember
that your screenplay should “play the movie” in the reader’s mind. You
want him to see the movie, not the set.
Montages
A montage is a rapid sequence of brief scenes or images that
underscores the story or tells the viewer that time in the story is
passing. For example, if the character decides to become a skier and
the screenwriter wants to show the process of him learning, she might
use a montage, which would look like this:
EXT. MOUNTAIN SLOPES — DAY
MONTAGE:
1) Larry stands on the skis for the first time.
He falls.
2) He is now able to do a few simple movements.
3) He plows into a woman. She isn’t happy about
it.
4) He is getting better. He can now turn. He
smiles with his success. A four-year-old girl
passes him doing much better.
5) Larry brags in the bar about how fast he went
today. Then he sees the woman he hit. She’s
unimpressed.
6) He is now getting much better. He flies down
the hill.
7) He makes a perfect turn, just missing a tree.
8) He talks over his style with a trainer.
9) He tries a tentative jump. He makes it.
We’ve numbered the mini-scenes of this montage. However, you can
also simply put a dash-dash before each.
Flashbacks
If your story needs a flashback, this is usually done by using a
DISSOLVE TO: flush with the right-hand margin and placing the word
FLASHBACK within the scene header like this:
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. VIETNAM JUNGLE — NIGHT (FLASHBACK)
Once the flashback is over, it’s important to let the reader know that
we are back to the present. This is indicated by using another
DISSOLVE TO: or CUT TO: (or even a CUT BACK TO:), and again
addressing the time change in the scene heading:
CUT TO:
EXT. CENTRAL PARK — NIGHT (PRESENT)
Sometimes a writer needs to show a quick memory flash. These are
short bursts of pictures and sounds that show what the character is
remembering. It’s something like a P.O.V., only we see what the
character is thinking instead of seeing. A memory flash is followed by a
dash dash as follows:
The huge Suspect doesn’t even flinch. Rock
aims but it’s 50 feet or more--too far.
Ken is desperate, his busted face looks down
the barrel of the gun.
MEMORY FLASH--Ken sees his son’s smiling face.
Laughing, smiling, the boy plays with a toy
gun.
The Suspect readies an execution-style shot to
Ken’s head. . . BANG!
Blood flows from the Suspect’s ear. It was a
clean shot, right through his head. He stands
there for a moment. Amazed. He’s dead, he just
doesn’t know it.
Telephone Calls
If you need to indicate a phone conversation in which the audience
does not hear the party on the other end of the phone, then use ellipses
to mark the moments when the off-camera party is speaking:
GRACE
(on the phone)
No, you’re lying. He really asked
you to marry him? When?. . . You’re
joking!. . . What?
If we hear the other party speaking then indicate this by using O.S.
(Off Screen):
GRACE
(on the phone)
No, you’re lying. He really asked
you to marry him? When?
SUE (O.S.)
This morning. In bed.
GRACE
You’re joking!
SUE (O.S.)
I said no.
GRACE
What?
Seeing both characters talking can become clumsy, as you cut back
and forth between each scene. Instead you can shorthand the location
shifts by indicating an INTERCUT in the scene header, and describing
the action as if it were a single scene:
BUSY STREET — DAY
Bill dashes across the street to a corner
phone booth. He jams coins into the slot and
dials frantically, pressing his palm to his
free ear to shut out the traffic noise.
BILL
Come on, come on, pick up!
INT. JOE’S APARTMENT — DAY

A messy bachelor pad. Joe lounges on his
futon, munching potato chips as he answers the
phone.
JOE
Yeah?
INTERCUT JOE’S APARTMENT AND PHONE BOOTH — DAY
BILL
Joe? Joe, you gotta help me!
JOE
Who is this?
Bill glances around nervously. No one’s

following him.
BILL
It’s your brother—who the hell do
you think? Joe, I’m in trouble.
Joe sits up, pushing the chips aside.
JOE
Bill? Where are you?
Foreign Languages
When a character speaks a foreign language, which you are in fact
writing in English so the reader can understand it, you indicate that
it’s a foreign language in the narrative or in parentheticals. If you are
going to use subtitles, then point this out in the narrative or in the
parentheticals as well:
The Nazi slaps Meyer, shouting at him in
German (subtitled):
NAZI
I should kill you right now, but
that would be too easy. Stupid Jew,
you don’t even understand what I’m
saying, do you?
Meyer answers in English.
MEYER
I understand you perfectly. And I
know you understand me. So why don’t
you take a look behind you?
The Nazi glances back. Three RESISTANCE

FIGHTERS stand there, with their guns pointed
at him.
Or:
The Nazi slaps Meyer:
NAZI
(in German, subtitled)
I should kill you right now, but
that would be too easy. Stupid Jew,
you don’t even understand what I’m
saying, do you?
MEYER
(in English)
I understand you perfectly. And I
know you understand me. So why don’t
you take a look behind you?
The Nazi glances back. Three RESISTANCE

FIGHTERS stand there, with their guns pointed
at him.
This way we can read the dialogue unimpeded, knowing where
subtitles will make it comprehensible on screen. Subtitles may not be
indicated if the purpose of having a character speak in another
language is to create a sense of mystery and confusion, to hide
something from the audience or from another character who does not
speak the language.
Credits
Generally, screenwriters do not indicate where and when opening or
closing credits appear in a spec script. These are added to the shooting
or editing script.
EXERCISES
1. Properly format a page-long scene that includes a flashback scene in
which two people talk on the phone, one speaking in English, the other
in Chinese.
2. Write a scene that “directs” the reader to see a wide master shot, a
panning camera move and an extreme close-up, all without resorting
to camera directions.
3. Write two short scenes that flow naturally into each other, where a
CUT TO: is not needed. Then write two short scenes where a CUT TO:
will emphasize a change of mood, time or location.
4. Write a conversation with parentheticals after every character
heading. Then cut as many of them as possible, keeping only the ones
that are essential, and write any other actions into the narrative.
3
Theme, Meaning and Emotion

So What’s It About, Anyway?
Many new screenwriters are hesitant to discuss the theme of their

script. Ask what their story is about and they’ll answer, “It’s about 110
pages.” Theme goes by many names; it has been called meaning, the
root idea, the universal value, the primary statement, the unifying
objective, the moral, the premise, the central organizing principle and
the story’s purpose. Any way you say it, theme is the overall message,
the abstract truth that is made concrete by the action of the characters.
Sometimes the theme can be stated in a simple sentence, like, “A
house divided against itself cannot stand,” or, “You can’t keep a good
woman down,” but often it’s more complex. The great drama critic
Walter Kerr wrote, “Themes are, almost by nature, difficult to define
absolutely; they look to human nature in the round and, like a turning
crystal, give off multiple reflections.”
Every story is about something. Not as in, “The Terminator is about
a woman trying to get away from a robot,” or, “Frankenstein is about a
scientist trying to stop a zombie,” but as in, “The Terminator and
Frankenstein are about humanity’s sin of pride in creating dangerous
monsters beyond the control of their human creator.” Scholarly film
critics spend their days writing long treatises extracting the theme
from great movies like Citizen Kane (by the way, one of its main
themes is, “A man who tries to force everyone to love him will die
alone”), but for most writers theme is simply the relevant reason that
made them want to write. In other words, it’s the philosophical point
of the story that they hope will generate a strong emotional and/or
intellectual experience for their audience. Theme is simply the truth of
the script.
FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING
NOTHING (YET)
Let’s start by looking at two student screenwriters’ original ideas and
see how they move from story to theme. The first student pitched, “I
want to write a thriller about a female, rural cop who discovers that a
seemingly senseless murder is related to a white supremacist group.”
The second, “I want to write about a chubby boy who dreams about
becoming a great dancer and succeeds in spite of everything.” As with
most preliminary ideas, these focus on the characters and a general
sense of the plot. At first this is just fine, but as the idea develops you
will want to ask an important question: not “What is the theme?” but
rather, “Why do I want to write this particular story?” Often, after a
moment of uncomfortable silence, a beginning screenwriter’s answer
is, “Well, I just think it would be cool” or some similar flimsy response.
But what makes it “cool”? What is it about these particular characters
that appeals to you? Why this story and not that story? This often
takes some soul searching. When you discover the answers you’ll have
identified the conscious or subconscious forces that brought you to
these characters and this story. You have not arrived at theme yet, but
you are heading in the right direction.
In the case of the white supremacist story, what interested the
young screenwriter was the idea of an idealistic underdog who through
brains and courage overcomes an intrinsic evil in society, in spite of
prejudice against women and the doubts of her colleagues. Once the
story’s antagonist, the head of the supremacist group, was personified
as a powerful man in local politics and someone with whom the
protagonist had had a sexual relationship, the story took off. Building
on that, every scene and line of dialogue will be focused around the
concerns of regret, sexism and prejudice. With the dancer story,
although a bubbly comedy, the student was attracted to a character
whose dogged persistence overcomes personal limitations. Knowing
this, the writer was able to dispense with whole rafts of irrelevant
dialogue and scenes dealing with other issues, and focus the story on
the essential conflict. The humor, instead of coming from random fat
jokes, emerged from the hilarious situations in which this boy tries
every possible ruse to get into a dance school and prove his worth.
Notice that both stories revolve around an underdog who succeeds. It
doesn’t take years of psychoanalysis to find out that both screenwriters
had experienced being an underdog. In fact, pretty much everybody
has; that’s why underdog stories resonate with audiences. Now the
question is, how do underdogs succeed? Notice we are getting closer to
theme.
As these student writers finished their first drafts they began to
uncover their themes. The student working on the white supremacist
story discovered that her theme was about how unquestioned love
hides our better judgment, and how even the best of us hate to
question our assumptions because we cannot handle self-doubt, yet
only through self-doubt can we learn the truth about life. The other
screenwriter found that his dancer story centered on our need not to
be typecast by friends, society and especially ourselves. In both cases
the themes spoke to the writers on a personal level. Some writers say
that writing is like therapy because all writers are trying to find
truthful answers to life’s many questions. The answer the writer
uncovers or perhaps invents is theme.
THEMES ALL RIGHT TO ME
Great movies stand the test of time not only because they mean
something to the screenwriter, but also because they touch upon
lasting and meaningful ideas that say something about our common
humanity. For example, the theme of the movie Social Network is not
about the development of Facebook. It is about how single-minded
ambition destroys friendship and loyalty and leads to jealousy and
guilt. It is about universal and unchanging truths about human nature.
Add three witches and some swordplay to The Social Network and you
have Shakespeare’s 400-year-old Macbeth (well, at least if Macbeth
had realized he was being a jerk by the end and had somewhat
redeemed himself). Why does the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex
still ring true two and a half millennia after Sophocles wrote it?
Because its themes of fate wrestling with free will, of self-delusion and
guilt colliding with self-knowledge and catharsis, still appeal to our
modern confident-yet-insecure psyche. Once you have a basic theme,
the first question you need to ask is, is it universal?
When it comes down to it, there are a limited number of universal
themes to go around and different films often share similar if not the
exact same theme: both The Silence of the Lambs and The Exorcist
make the same thematic statement: “Courage and overcoming self-
doubt are necessary for the destruction of evil.” One of the themes of
the Dustin Hoffman movie Little Big Man concerns lost innocence in
the face of “progress,” which is also the theme of the silly comedy
Dumb and Dumber. The theme of the musical How to Succeed in
Business Without Really Trying—that “only through hard work and
love do we find happiness and true success”—is also found in the
movie Ghostbusters.
The way to address this prefabricated theme problem is to
construct your movie so that its theme is sufficiently specific and
makes a statement that modifies the universal theme. James
Cameron’s Titanic’s central theme, the one that gets Celine Dion
singing “My Heart Will Go On” (which by the way is why it’s called the
theme song), is that love conquers death, at least spiritually. You
might think that this is the same universal theme as Romeo and Juliet,
where similar “tragic young love” events transpire, but that’s an error
of not really looking at the specific story. Titanic is about a woman
who lives to a ripe old age, never having forgotten the adventure of her
love for a young man who died to keep her alive. Romeo and Juliet is
not about the immortality of love but rather how two immature young
people are destroyed by their rush to love; every important character
and action reinforces the theme of how giving in to headstrong
passions brings misery to all involved: “Never was a story of more woe
/ Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” The fact that Shakespeare makes
their passion so attractive is what gives this theme its ironic power. So:
similar protagonists and story elements, very different themes.
Similarly, “Courage overcomes evil” is too general—it applies to
practically every action movie ever made, as well as many horror films,
such as those noted above. Even the more specific theme we gave for
The Silence of the Lambs and The Exorcist could be improved by
making each still more specific: For The Silence of the Lambs, how
about: “The courage to overcome paralyzing childhood fears is
necessary to confront and destroy an evil threatening the lives of
others.” Or for The Exorcist, try “To defeat a supreme evil that
threatens to destroy one’s soul as well as the innocence of others, one
must have the courage to overcome one’s own self-doubts about faith.”
The theme of the science fiction film District 9 speaks to how we only
bring harm to ourselves when we ghettoize people we don’t
understand (or in this case, ghettoize alien “prawns” from another
solar system). This same universal theme is one of those contained in
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: Shylock says, “If you prick us,
do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do
we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” District 9
takes the idea one step further, however, by stating that in order to
understand another person (or prawn) you must walk in their shoes
(or in this case be sprayed in the face with a grotesque extra-terrestrial
liquid that slowly mutates your DNA and turns you into one of them).
This nudges the original theme a little further, but is it unique? Not
really. Blade Runner, about a cop who hunts down ghettoized
“replicants” only to discover that he is one himself, has a similar
theme. What modifies the theme in District 9 is that its ghettoizing
isn’t done just by evil antagonists or violent tough guys, but also by
nice people such as District 9’s bumbling protagonist (Wikus Wan De
Merwe), a bureaucrat who accepts the assignment to relocate the
aliens without making the slightest attempt to understand them, their
culture, or their needs. He’s just doing his job. District 9 adds an
important twist to its theme by addressing the banality of racism, to
paraphrase Hannah Arendt; the film’s theme makes us deal with the
fact that we—the nerds, the average guys on the street who just go
along to get along—are the problem.
Another example is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This is
more than just a funny and fascinating script; it makes several
important statements about love. It says that love is more than just
attraction, or that “happily ever after” is never really going to be that
easy. Okay, plays, poems, and movies have been saying something like
this for thousands of years. It says that love is complex, again nothing
new. But when Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski
(Kate Winslet) set out to erase each other from their memories, they
discover that although there are numerous reasons why they are each
less than perfect, yet there is something each sees in the other that
makes them still want to be together. The theme says that true love is
the ability to still long for each other, to still be infatuated, even after
knowing all of each other’s flaws. This excellent script finds a new way
to tell the age-old story to reveal a universal theme and stand the test
of time.
The key is to find a theme that is universal and says something
about the human condition—and also that has specific meaning to you,
and that you can reveal afresh in an entertaining and inventive way.
You are an artist (yes, screenwriters are artists), and artists have
something meaningful to say about how the world is and/or should be.
You are going to spend months on this script, so make sure the theme
is something you have a deep desire to communicate to the world. In
short, the theme must reflect who you are.
WRITE FROM THE HEART
A screenplay has to be written with passion, or it will never engage the
passions of the reader. The audience wants to be moved—hey, maybe
that’s why it’s called a “moving picture.” Those elements that
contribute to an emotional experience are valuable; those that don’t
are either extraneous and dispensable or need to be reimagined so that
they become part of the emotional experience. According to Aristotle,
“catharsis” (emotional and spiritual cleansing) is the goal of drama
and, in the case of tragedy, is produced by the strong emotions of “pity
and fear.” His treatise on comedy is lost, but it probably insisted on
comparably strong emotions to create the catharsis of laughter. But
why do we need cleansing, and of what impurities—and why do we
need such extreme emotions to burn them away? To ask this is to ask
why we need stories at all. Perhaps, we need to be cleansed of the
aimless chaos of our lives. The characters and actions of real life are
raw, in an unorganized state; a story structures life into a unified
whole, and a unified theme. The great American playwright Arthur
Miller wrote, “The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos
crying for order, for meaning. . .” A well-told story and theme let the
audience find, if only for a few hours, some coherent expression of
meaning. It can’t just be an intellectual experience. The audience
needs to feel the theme in their bones. They need, they crave, both
understanding as well as emotion. Without either, we cannot have a
good story, well told.
PAPA, DON’T PREACH
So what do we make of the famous dictum supposedly uttered by Sam
Goldwyn (who founded several Hollywood studios including MGM—
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer): “If you want to send a message, call Western
Union.”? (For those of you too young to remember, Western Union
was the email service of its day.) He meant that no one wants to be
lectured or take medicine just because it’s good for you. No one wants
to go see a movie they “ought” to go see just because it has an
“important message”; that’s the humor Woody Allen exploits in Annie
Hall when he obsesses about taking Annie to see Max Ophuls’ The
Sorrow and the Pity. As Annie says, “I’m not in the mood to see a four
and a half hour documentary on Nazis.” Few people are. People go to
the movies to enjoy themselves. And yet, good movies always contain a
strong thematic point of view, and if your script is going to be the basis
for one of them, then you must make sure that you do not browbeat or
try to indoctrinate the audience. Didactic screenplays sacrifice
character and story to dogma and ideology. In other words, they
become propaganda, stories in which the characters are only
mouthpieces for the author’s message. This type of a story, wrote
Walter Kerr, the Broadway theatre critic, “is in a hurry; it has no time
for the hesitant inflection of the human voice.” So take your time and
let the theme emerge though character and story. Whether it’s a
complex motif or a simple idea, the theme should be deeply embedded
in the action, woven into the subtext, not stated openly, unless you can
do this naturally and concisely within the context of a scene.
So develop your themes, but don’t allow them to become political
slogans, personal mottoes or life lectures. Allow your audience a
chance to think, consider—but mostly, to feel. You do this by making
your characters real. Let them have real feelings and motivations, and
don’t let them become puppets who only do what you, the author,
want them to do in order to represent a cause or philosophical idea.
One way to accomplish this is not to let the characters know what the
theme is. In other words, as they strive to fulfill their goal they never
(or at least not until the end) come to understand what their goal
means to their (or your) philosophy of life. American playwright,
director and actor Howard Lindsay is credited with saying that if your
story contains propaganda the writer should not let the characters
know what the propaganda is. Walter Kerr took Lindsay’s idea one
step further when he wrote that it would be best if even the writer isn’t
aware of what the propaganda is. In short, persuade, don’t preach, and
you’ll stand a better chance of moving the audience—and a better
chance of selling your script.
HOW TO REVEAL THE THEME
John Howard Lawson, the great screenwriter and first president of the
WGA west (the union that represents Hollywood screenwriters), wrote
that the unifying force of a script “is the idea; but an idea, however
integral it may be, is in itself undramatic.” There’s the rub. Writers
desperately want to make a point, but making a point risks being
inherently undramatic and therefore uninteresting. George Pierce
Baker, the renowned professor of dramatic literature at Harvard
University who taught the Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene
O’Neill how to write, said, “People rather than ideas arouse the
interest of the general public,” and that action “far more than
characterization wins and holds the attention of the great majority.” If
we put these two thoughts together we find that theme by itself is
useless unless it is supported by character, and characters are useless
unless they are supported by action. In other words, the characters
must do something and what they do must reveal the theme. Let’s go
back to District 9’s protagonist Wikus Van De Merwe, the bureaucrat
whose job it is to relocate the alien “prawns.” Notice that he is totally
unaware of the theme of the movie, or theme of his life for that matter.
He is simply trying to do his job, save his love life, save himself, and as
he becomes an alien himself, to understand and save the aliens. His
character and his desperate situation drive the actions of the story, but
the result is theme. Once again Walter Kerr said it best when he wrote
that it is better to make a character than make a point. If your
characters feel real and take the right actions, you will make the point.
Coming back to the concept of catharsis: The actions the characters
take at the end of the movie are the concluding building blocks that
reveal the theme, and the result must have a profound impact on your
characters and your protagonist in particular. For example at the end
of The Help, the maid (Aibileen) is fired from her cleaning job and
walks off into the distance, making a profound existential statement
about standing up for herself in spite of a racist society. She sets out to
tell her own story rather than allow other people to tell it for her. This
is a universal theme, for there have always been voiceless and
oppressed people—underdogs—for whom her actions represent
courage and hope. But the theme is not clear until the end of the
movie. The protagonist’s final actions make the closing moments
remarkable and moving, and the theme clear and memorable.
SOME CONSEQUENCE YET HANGING IN
THE STARS
Having said this, we now remind you that, while it may be
advantageous, it is not always necessary to know your theme in
advance. Interesting characters and/or a good plot are enough to
begin writing. Some writers insist that they simply write what moves
them, and they do not attempt to understand their reasons for writing
one way rather than another, at least on the first draft. They simply let
it spill out. It is only later—not unlike their characters —when they
look back to see what they’ve done and refine the writing that the
theme emerges. Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman) said that he
often did not know the theme of his plays until the second or third
draft. Other writers know exactly what their theme will be. The point
is, not to let it prevent you from starting if you don’t. Simply because it
is your story and they are your characters, if you’ve created them well
the theme will emerge organically.
A critic once supposedly complimented Robert Frost on his poem
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The critic admired the way
Frost’s repetition of the last line, “And miles to go before I sleep,” so
simply and yet profoundly expressed man’s melancholy awareness of
life’s inevitable journey toward death, and how that awareness both
limited and gave meaning to the journey. To which Frost replied,
“Really? I just liked the way it sounded.” Whether this actually
happened or not, the story contains an essential truth about writing,
and about the problem of trying to teach someone how to write:
sometimes great things simply happen by accident, and there’s no way
to predict or force them. The writer, acting on talent and instinct, may
unconsciously create several layers of meaning where only one was
intended, and these may in fact be discovered long after the piece is
written. An experienced writer may be able to rely on her own instincts
and know they won’t lead her astray. But many beginning writers fail
precisely because they don’t yet have any instincts to rely on, and they
end up frustrated with a story that meanders to a pointless, theme-less
conclusion. Given that the best things often happen by accident and
can only be discovered after the fact, it isn’t possible to plan for and
predict every layer of meaning in a screenplay. But it is possible—in
fact, it is essential—to come to at least a strong initial sense of the
intellectual and emotional ideas of your story, and to organize your
various story elements around it.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Look at any movie of any quality, and you will discover that it coheres
around a specific theme, a meaning that gives it emotional power. Now
take a look at your script and your need to write it. There is a reason
certain stories occur to you, just as there is a reason certain movies
appeal to you. They may express your worldview, your sense of humor
or pathos, or address deep personal concerns. Find out why you want
to tell your story, what you’re trying to say with it, and, whether in
your first draft or your fourth, you will find a theme. Ultimately, the
questions you must ask are: Why does this story need to be told? Why
is it important? Why is it necessary? Most of all, why is it
funny/sad/horrifying/thrilling/moving? When you have the answers
to these questions you will have more than another knockoff
action/SF/love story/horror script; you will have one with a universal
theme, yet unique to yourself, that might just stand the test of time.
EXERCISES
1. Write three themes from your life that you believe would make great
movies.
2. Write a list of your top ten favorite movies. Now identify each
movie’s theme.
3. Write a list of your top ten favorite movies. Now answer the
following questions about each one:
a. Why does this story need to be told?
b. Why is it important?
c. Why is it necessary?
4
The World of the Story

Where Are We, Anyway?
“Where am I?” is one of the first questions readers ask when they start
a novel or audience members wonder when the lights dim and a new
movie begins. Like emerging from a long tunnel or the effects of
anesthetic, we are disoriented, suddenly immersed in the light of a
new and unfamiliar place. This is especially true of movies, where we
sit in darkness while an immensely magnified “reality” unfolds before
us. A movie’s “world” includes the story’s season, geographic location,
physical environment and historical period. The world is as large as
outer space and as small as a candle flame. It can be as simple as
beginning a children’s fable, “Once upon a time, long ago,” or as
complex as the vast milieu of War and Peace. In many ways, the world
is like another character, with a distinctive appearance and identity,
acting upon and defining the course of the story. The world creates the
mood and defines the protagonist, the stakes and the antagonist.
(Sometimes the world is the antagonist, as in Alive or in disaster
movies.) There should be a sense that in this world, this story is the
essential conflict, and that your characters are the essential people;
conversely, we must feel that for this particular story and characters,
this is the essential world. A screenplay’s world is a critical part of its
characterization and exposition. Yet it is also the one element that is
most often taken for granted by beginning screenwriters.
Years ago, set designers for the theater simply painted the
background environment on two-dimensional flats or backdrops.
Doors, handles, windows, even furniture and trees were drawn or
painted on, and the actors performed in front of them without
interacting with them. These flats were made as generic as possible, so
that they could be used time and again, no matter which play was
being performed. Some screenwriters seem to approach the world of
their story the same way. They treat the environment as decoration or
ornamentation, not as a critical part of the story. They rely on dialogue
to tell us the emotions and journey of the characters, almost ignoring
the enormous emotional potential that the huge, glowing canvas of the
screen presents.
Yet every story and every character would change if we picked them
up and deposited them in a new environment. Imagine the Christmas
classic Miracle on 34th Street placed in the steamy South, or the chilly
moral fable Fargo or the ice-bound vampire scarefest 30 Days of
Night set in sunny Hawaii. Their stories, characters and possibly even
their themes would be transformed. Change the world and you change
the story and characters. Look at how even the most well-known and
dialogue-driven plays by Shakespeare are transformed when turned
into movies, set in new and unexpected locations: the politics of
medieval England become the harsh threats of modern fascism in the
Ian McKellen version of Richard III, and the early Renaissance feudal
struggle of Romeo and Juliet is transformed into an ultra-
contemporary gang war in the Leo DiCaprio version. The plots and
most of the dialogue are kept unchanged, and yet the change in world
drastically alters the tone and character of the stories. So these are the
critical questions a screenwriter must ask, right from the start: Have I
chosen the right world for my story and the right characters for that
world? How does this world affect and reflect my story and characters;
how do my story and characters affect and reflect the world?
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (STORY
AND WORLD)
Audiences want to be transported to someplace new and wonderful, or
be shown the familiar in an unfamiliar way. Obviously, a movie that
takes place in a visually stimulating environment will be more eye-
catching than one that does not. But spectacular settings alone do not
create a meaningful world. A screenplay full of wild parties, stadiums
jammed full of screaming fans and wonderful island sunsets might
dress the scenes, but will not necessarily make for an interesting story.
The setting of each scene must reflect an overall sense of the larger
world of the story, and work to advance the latent emotions and
thematic possibilities that world presents. Some films go so far as to
get their title from their world: Titanic, Halloween, Journey to the
Center of the Earth, Escape from New York, The Abyss, The Hills
Have Eyes, Wall Street. The world is the playing field that defines the
rules and the nature of the game.
When the world reflects the story, it assists by providing important
ambiance, perspective, tone and context in which each particular
scene takes place. In Sling Blade, for instance, each scene—from
mental hospital to small southern town—strongly affects how Karl
Childers talks, lives his life and makes decisions. The same is true for
Forrest Gump, or for Bad Blake in Crazy Heart. In Sense and
Sensibility, Slumdog Millionaire, Winter’s Bone, and The King’s
Speech, for instance, the worlds dictate a code of behavior that directly
influences each character’s ability to speak and take action—and the
consequence of each action is made clear by the setting within which
the characters live. Their social life is visible in the texture of their
surroundings (in other words, their environment), and everything
from the carefully maintained homes to the rolling seaside vistas or
crowded slums or bleak, rural Appalachia tell us what is and is not
possible for them.
The world can also affect a story by supplying sources of conflict,
throwing traps or roadblocks in the path of a character’s success. And
only the perfect character, with just the right abilities, can overcome
them or reflect their larger meaning. In Avatar, the alien planet forces
the hero to literally inhabit a different physical body, which in turn
transforms his inner nature as the story progresses. In Dog Day
Afternoon, the police corner two incompetent robbers in a Brooklyn
bank. The mundane environment of the bank is simultaneously the
source of their hopes (to get money) and of their despair: they are as
securely sealed inside as the money they came to steal. The world here
is a claustrophobic snare that forces the characters to confront
themselves and their desires. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window,
Jimmy Stewart’s character is trapped by a broken leg, which reduces
his world to what he can see from his window. This limitation forces
him to become a voyeur and distorts and enlarges his judgment and
imagination until he isn’t sure what is real any more. In The Last
Picture Show, teenagers are entangled by the small minds and limited
expectations of a tiny Texas town. The dusty streets, drab houses,
cheap amusements and limitless, barren plains that surround them
define the frustrations and futility of their lives. In The Poseidon
Adventure and Titanic, a wrecked luxury ocean liner literally turns the
characters’ world upside down and forces them to fight their way to
freedom. In Saw, the world is reduced to a single, abandoned
bathroom in which the terror plays itself out. In each of these
examples the world is the background for, as well as the source of, the
essential conflict, trapping the characters into confronting their
desires and limitations in a way they would not normally do. Without
their worlds, their stories simply would not exist.
THE RIGHT (WO)MAN AT THE RIGHT TIME
IN THE RIGHT PLACE (CHARACTER
WORLD)
Characters grow out of a specific environment, which they understand
and which defines and reveals their personalities. This is particularly
true of the character’s personal surroundings: their home, office, car,
room, or any location directly related to one particular personality.
Characters’ tastes, lifestyles, incomes, jobs, educations and
temperaments can be seen in their environment, the elements of
which create a kind of indirect characterization. We know who they
are because we see where and how they live.
Consider sound as part of your characters’ world, as well. Where
Blow-Up and One Hour Photo are intensely visual stories about
voyeuristic protagonists, The Conversation, Children of a Lesser God
and Blow-Out are about characters whose lives are defined by sound
(or its absence). In Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, the constant roar from
the Coney Island rollercoaster above the protagonist’s childhood home
creates a funny metaphor for the noisy circus of his life.
You want to find those few significant details that depict and
individualize the character. How is the personal environment in or out
of harmony with the character? Look at Joan Wilder’s apartment in
Romancing the Stone: It is feminine, with a pampered cat, little
bottles of airplane booze and Post-it notes reminding her of other
Post-it notes to remind her of what she has forgotten to do. From this
environment we can guess many particulars of her personality and life
—that Joan Wilder lives alone (the pampered cat), she is a romantic
(the feminine features of the apartment, contrasting with the
masculine, elusive poster illustration of her book), she travels a lot
(the tiny airplane liquor bottles) and has a hectic schedule and
nonlinear mind (the Post-it notes on Post-it notes). And not a word
needs to be spoken to give us all this. In 50/50, right at the start we
see Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Adam, decide not to cross the
street when the Don’t Walk light is on. He’s a careful young man who
takes good care of himself, which creates the irony of the situation
when he’s diagnosed with cancer.
A Stranger in a Strange Land
Often the world is a major source of conflict by being in direct contrast
to the characters: rather than reflecting them, it clashes with them.
When the protagonist finds herself a stranger in a strange land,
suddenly ill-equipped to understand or handle its challenges, it is
known as a fish-out-of-water story. Characters may travel to
unfamiliar territory, or realize they don’t really understand the place
they’ve considered home, in which case they find themselves lost, “fish
out of water.” The whole premise of these pictures is to take a
particular character and place her or him in an environment that is in
direct contrast to his or her personality. In Romancing the Stone, the
exotic and dangerous world of Wilder’s dreams (hinted at by the
poster) becomes real when she goes into the South American jungle.
By leaving her cozy New York environment, she’s become a fish out of
water. But she’s still exactly the right character for the story, because
we’ve been clued in to her romantic personality—even her name
indicates that there is a “wilder” side of her that will ultimately
emerge. In 50/50, Adam becomes a fish out of water when illness
changes every aspect of his previously normal world; his girlfriend
cheats on him, his intolerable and ignored mother becomes essential,
and his sloppy, crude best friend turns out to be the most sensitive
soul around. Beverly Hills Cop made a star out of Eddie Murphy with
his turn as a tough Detroit cop pursuing a criminal to toney Beverly
Hills.
In The Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves’ character is a successful
southern lawyer who takes his small-town wife to live in an expensive
New York apartment building that just happens to be owned by the
Devil. Not only is their apartment foreign to her, but the whole world
of upscale New York, with its corrupt sensualism and deal-making
parties, comes into direct conflict with her innocent personality. Her
new world—the world of the Devil—literally causes her to lose her
mind. The same is true of the foolishly idealistic American actress
played by Diane Keaton in The Little Drummer Girl, who finds herself
lost and betrayed in the labyrinthine world of Middle Eastern
espionage. In Crocodile Dundee a big city reporter is plunked down in
the strange environment of the rugged Australian outback, while the
backwoods hero she meets there is later equally out of place in the
urban world of New York City; similarly, Coogan’s Bluff took Clint
Eastwood’s cowboy sheriff from Arizona into the wilds of the Big
Apple. In Being There an illiterate, childlike gardener enters the
foreign world of Washington, D.C., politics. In Pretty Woman a hooker
finds herself in the contrasting world of the Beverly Hills ultra-rich.
The most obvious fish-out-of-water story is of course Splash, which
places a mermaid on dry land. In each of these, the screenwriter has
created a character and a world that are in direct conflict; this is the
lifeblood of a screenplay.
The world of the story, therefore, can have a variety or combination
of effects. When you ask, “Is this the best location for a scene or
story?,” you’re really asking a number of questions:
How does this world affect my characters?
How do my characters affect this world?
Does this world reveal the nature of my characters?
How is my story affected by this world?
How is this world affected by my story?
Does this world reflect the theme of my story?
How does this world affect the theme of my story?
Is this world visually interesting?
If you have a good answer to each of these questions, then you’ve
probably found your world.
LAUGHING PAST THE GRAVEYARD
(CONTRAST AND IRONY)
Contrast is at the heart of all art—in fact, of all perception. Put your
hand in water and slowly warm it, and you may end up boiling yourself
without realizing it. Thrust your hand into hot water and you take
immediate notice, in the form of pain. We don’t take notice of the
myriad small sounds that drone around us constantly as “noise”—but
when a sharply contrasting sound like a doorbell or a voice appears, it
creates “information” and we take notice. The same thing goes for
what we see. We crave contrast; without it, there is no way to establish
perspective, boundaries or imagery. Contrasting objects define one
another, create positive and negative space, foreground and
background, information. How this information is presented defines
the mood and effect of the image. Rembrandt and Caravaggio used
exaggerated light sources to cast deep shadows, their dark
backgrounds in sharp contrast to their subjects, in order to intensify a
mood of mystery and contemplation. Picasso often flattened space and
defined his subjects with hard outlines and bold color elements to
emphasize design and subvert natural perspective. Rodin gave his
bronze sculptures shimmering, faceted surfaces to intrigue the eye and
emphasize the underlying form. Magritte and Dali used extremely
naturalistic techniques to paint impossible or dreamlike images that
challenged rational assumptions about our perception of the world. A
screenwriter can create the same kinds of effects by contrasting the
characters and/or the actions of the scene with each other, and with
the world in which they exist. Visual—and aural—contrast can make a
rather bland scene interesting. A man reading a book in a quiet room
is bland. A man reading a book in a noisy construction site is
intriguing.
When the screenwriter draws a sharp and deliberate contrast
between apparent and intended meaning, we have visual irony. The
most uninteresting scene can become powerful, even memorable. In
Harold and Maude, a rather bland scene in which a casket is loaded
into a hearse after a funeral is made extraordinary by having it take
place while a marching band booms past. In Jaws, the fun of a summer
beach contrasts with the terror of a shark attack only a few yards away.
In Blues Brothers, a rather generic car chase is made original by
having it take place inside a mall crowded with shoppers. All of these
contrasts reflect what the movies are about. The contrast between the
sorrow of a funeral and the inappropriate exuberance of the marching
band perfectly reflects Harold and Maude’s theme of life’s joy
overcoming death’s shadow. The element of danger lurking beneath
the surface of everyday life reflects the theme of Jaws, that human
control is an illusion, masking a deeper, primordial chaos in the world
and in our own subconscious. The Blues Brothers’ car chase in the
mall reflects the theme of joyous anarchy, of inspired insanity
puncturing the humdrum commercialism of everyday life. In Avatar, a
paraplegic soldier in a hyper-mechanistic mercenary unit is given the
freedom to run again by becoming his Avatar in an alien, primordial
world that he ironically at first helps to attack, and then in another
ironic twist helps to defend by becoming the kind of legendary
primitive warrior who can, essentially, tame the most terrifying of
flying dinosaurs.
A student of ours wrote a screenplay about two medical students
who fall in love. The writer had a scene in which one student asks the
other for a first date. This scene occurred in a mental hospital hallway,
and was rather bland; he asks her out, she says no. There was nothing
to make the scene unique. While the world of the scene—the mental
hospital—held possibilities, they were not used to full advantage. The
environment did not reflect or affect the characters or action and so it
did not help tell the story:
HALLWAY — DAY
Richard sees Leslie near the water cooler. He
confidently strides up.
RICHARD
So, how would you like to go out
tonight? We’ll start off with a mud
bath, maybe play some laser tag.
LESLIE
You’re not my type.
RICHARD
Why’s that?
LESLIE
I don’t date patients.
She walks away.

On the rewrite, the student writer took better advantage of the world
to build a far more interesting environment. He moved the scene from
the generic hallway to an operating room:
INT. SURGICAL AUDITORIUM — DAY
Doctors and nurses hunch over an operating
table. The patient is receiving a lobotomy.
They open his right eye and insert a never-
ending needle through his upper eyelid and
into his brain. The patient quivers.
A gaggle of nearby interns watch the
operation. Richard inches toward Leslie.
RICHARD
So, how would you like to go out
tonight? We’ll start off with a mud
bath, maybe play some laser tag.
LESLIE
You’re not my type.
RICHARD
Why’s that?
LESLIE
I don’t date patients.
On the table, the patient twitches as they

rotate the needle.
Not a single line of dialogue has been altered, but because the
environment now contrasts with the action and creates a sense of
irony, a bland scene has become interesting. The new location also
allows the reader to understand the characters better. Richard is the
type who’d ask for a date during a lobotomy, while Leslie’s motivation
for saying “no” is understandable: the guy must be a creep. A
spectacular shoot-out between G-men and gangsters in Grand Central
Station is not as interesting as when the shoot-out occurs with a baby
carriage rolling through the line of fire (The Untouchables). The
soldier who dies while charging the machine gun nest is not as
thought-provoking as the soldier who is killed while reaching for a
butterfly fluttering above the mud of the battlefield (All Quiet on the
Western Front). Lovers who argue in the living room are not as
provocative as lovers who argue during a wedding (It Happened One
Night; Arthur) or a funeral (Death at a Funeral). Contrast and irony
make for a visually interesting scene that can define the characters,
reinforce and reflect the theme, and move the story forward in unique,
dramatic and surprising ways.
Visual contrast and irony can also define the whole story. Witness
would be a rather forgettable police drama if it were not located in a
peaceful Amish community. The love story in The Great Gatsby
wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it didn’t contrast lavish flapper
parties with poverty. Phantom of the Opera would be another typical
horror movie if it weren’t for the contrast and irony provided by its
world. The disfigured recluse abducts the pretty soprano and takes her
from the ornate beauty of the Paris opera house down into the maze of
sewers beneath the streets; glorious art and noxious shadows are the
two opposite, yet coexisting, sides of his world. Contrast and irony
deriving from the world of the story can be the two elements that make
a story different from all others of its kind, whether police dramas,
horror thrillers or love stories.
Bouncing off the Walls (Interacting with the World)
The world of your story is carried by your narrative, and you need to
exercise careful judgment in writing it. Hollywood readers often
become impatient with the narrative and will skim through it or skip it
altogether if they find it’s either overwritten or if it adds little to the
story. These problems can almost always be traced to one of two
problems. Either the writer has added unimportant details, which do
not advance the characters or story, or she has not created an exciting
and relevant world for the story, but instead something generic that
gives the characters nothing with which to interact.
The following scene is a section of a long fight sequence. Two cops
fight it out in a parking deck. The screenwriter doesn’t use the location
to make the scene or fight interesting:
Buddy points the gun at Nick.
NICK
Just let me have Kevin. I’ll leave
you alone.
BUDDY
Oh, demands.
Nick upends Buddy. Nick smashes Buddy’s hand

against ground.
The gun flips out of Buddy’s hand. They both
dive for it. Buddy gets there first. He points
the silver semiauto pistol at Nick’s temple.
Nick is too exhausted to fight. He awaits his
end. Buddy’s sweat drips down on Nick’s face.
BUDDY
Unmarked gun. Good-bye, asshole.
NICK
Be good to my kid.
BUDDY
I’ve been screwing your wife since
you married her! What the hell makes
you think Kevin is yours?
Nick snaps. He attacks with new life. They

struggle over the gun. Nick forces Buddy’s arm
up. BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! in quick succession, the gun
empties.
Buddy slams the hot, metal barrel into Nick’s
face. Nick is blinded by the blood. With one
last burst Nick lands a desperate swing on
Buddy’s jaw. He’s out. Cold.
To fix this scene, the screenwriter took advantage of the environment.
She added details—a Mercedes, an open, antiquated car elevator—
which allowed the characters to interact with the surroundings. In
other words, the location was used to individualize and move the story
forward:
Securing Nick with his foot, Buddy reaches
onto the elevator and pushes the lever
forward. The pulleys creak. The ancient
elevator pops up two feet. Buddy shoves Nick’s
head under the elevator. With his free hand,
he grabs the lever and inches the elevator
down toward Nick’s skull.
NICK
I’ll leave you alone.
BUDDY
Oh, demands.
Nick digs his teeth into Buddy’s ankle. With a

scream, Buddy slams the lever down. The
elevator drops.
Nick jerks his head away just in time.
Nick upends Buddy and dives for the gun. They
struggle. With a groan and jerk the elevator
disappears down into the dark shaft.
WHACK! WHACK! Nick smashes Buddy’s hand
against the metal lip on the shaft.
The gun flips out of Buddy’s hand. CLANG,
Clang, clang. Each ‘clang’ softer as the gun
falls down the shaft.
They continue to struggle, rolling in the
grease spots. Suddenly, they roll off and
disappear down the shaft.
CRASH! They collide with the thin metal grid
on the top of the car elevator. They’ve fallen
only a few feet.
The exposed cables slap against each other as
the open elevator continues to descend.
Nick works his way free from Buddy. But with
his first step, he crashes through the thin
metal grid and lands on the hood of the
classic Mercedes convertible below.
BUDDY -- jumps down, reaches over and opens
the glove compartment, pulls out a silver
semi-auto pistol and points it at Nick’s
temple.
NICK -- is too exhausted to fight. He awaits
his end. Buddy’s sweat drips down on Nick’s
face.
BUDDY
Unmarked gun. Good-bye, asshole.
NICK
Be good to my kid.
BUDDY
I’ve been screwing your wife since
you married her! What the hell makes
you think Kevin is yours?
Nick snaps. He attacks with new life. They

struggle over the gun. BOOM! The first shot
shatters the Mercedes’s windshield. Little
diamonds of glass shower down on them.
Nick forces Buddy’s arm up. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! in quick succession, the gun empties.
THE BULLETS -- cut into the elevator’s worn
metal cables. They begin to unravel. An
ominous rumbling comes from the elevator, then
it drops three feet. Other cables begin to
twist as the metal hairs splinter.
IN THE CAR --A snapped-cable falls on to the
front seat. Buddy slams the hot, metal barrel
of the gun into Nick’s face. Nick is blinded
by the blood.
POP POP like an assassin’s distant gun, the
cables, one by one, twitch and snap.
Suddenly, ALL CABLES split.
They slingshot like massive rubber bands. Nick
grabs a cable and flies up, as the elevator,
with classic Mercedes aboard, plummets
downward.
There is only the intense rush of air. And
then an EXPLOSION as it impacts five stories
below.
Then . . .
Silence.
Exhausted, Nick hangs from the oily, braided
wire. His hands slip. He’s losing his grip. He
looks down.
NICK’S P.O.V. -- Buddy hangs from his shoes.
It’s clear to see that in the rewrite, the fight is directly affected by and
uses the location. The environment causes greater obstacles and
complications and, therefore, greater conflict and interest. The
thematic elements of “falling” into corruption or “rising” to the
occasion, the destruction of the emblem of illgotten wealth (the
Mercedes), all reflect and strengthen the story and its theme.
SHOW AND TELL (WORLD AND
EXPOSITION)
The world is a critical part of exposition. In a stage play, dialogue is the
primary method of conveying exposition, because playwrights are
constrained by the limitations and conventions of the theater. Twenty-
five hundred years ago, the great Greek playwrights wrote their plays
to be performed in massive open-air theaters that held up to 15,000
people. Viewed from the back rows, the performers on stage were hard
to see, and the early convention of using masks eliminated any
possibility of complex facial emotion. Actions were limited by space
and the technical limitations of the time. All this forced playwrights to
write rather obvious dialogue and verbal exposition. In comparison,
screenwriters have it easy. We are allowed to focus the camera in on
one small, revealing detail of the environment, blow it up on a screen
forty feet across and show things about the characters and story that
playwrights would find nearly impossible.
In the following scene, a student screenwriter describes Kasey, a
thirtyyear-old who still lives at home. She has just had a horrible fight
with her father and is running away. She comes into her bedroom to
pack her bags and is followed by her concerned brother. The
screenwriter wants to communicate to the audience that Kasey has
never grown up. This can be done in one of two ways: one, have Kasey
do or say something immature, or two, have Kasey’s environment
reflect her immaturity. Notice that the screenwriter depends on the
former, without even describing the surroundings, and the dialogue
creates a rather obvious, talky and ultimately bland scene (along with
being too on-the-nose; see Chapter 13, Dialogue):
INT. KASEY’S ROOM — NIGHT
Kasey storms in and packs her luggage. Norman
follows.
NORMAN JR.
Where are you going? You have no
money. No place to stay. Kasey,
you’re just a child in a grownup’s
body.
KASEY
Do me a favor and get that bastard.
Why didn’t you speak up? Why did you
stand there and not say a word?
NORMAN JR.
I don’t know. I’m scared of him,
too.
KASEY
Screw off, Norman.
NORMAN JR.
Kasey, I don’t think you should do
this.
KASEY
Are you trying to tell me I can’t
take care of myself?
NORMAN JR.
I didn’t say that.
KASEY
But you thought it.
NORMAN JR.
You do act a little young for your
age.
KASEY
I do not. I am an adult!
NORMAN JR.
You still play with dolls.
KASEY
I collect them!
She gives him the finger and crawls out the

window.
Here is the same scene with the environment carrying the weight of
exposition:
INT. KASEY’S ROOM — NIGHT
Kasey struggles with the latch on her ancient
Barbie luggage set. She rips it open and
begins dumping in her meager belongings: party
dresses, a diary, several porcelain dolls.
Norman runs in.
NORMAN JR.
I’m sorry.
KASEY
Do me a favor and get that bastard.
Kill him if you have to!
She pulls her pictures of The Monkees and The

Bee Gees off the wall and loads them in to her
Ken Doll shoulder bag.
KASEY
Why didn’t you speak up? Why did you
stand there and not say a word?
NORMAN JR.
I don’t know. I’m scared of him,
too.
KASEY
Screw off, Norman.
She gives him the finger, pulls the bows on

her perfect pink curtain sash, and crawls out
the window.
Describing a key bit of the world allows the audience to see that Kasey
is immature without the need for excessive dialogue. In the rewrite,
the environment is now a critical part of the story. But again, don’t add
details that accomplish no purpose. If you find yourself doing so
compulsively, go back and reexamine your outline and theme, because
often overwriting the narrative is a symptom of not being sure what
your story is about. It’s the writer’s equivalent of “vamping,” where a
comedian has run out of material but still has ten minutes left on
stage.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT (RESEARCH AND
CONSISTENCY)
Finally, it is important to create a world that is true and consistent. A
writer’s imagination is wonderful, but often wrong. When it comes to
environment, imagination is no replacement for solid research. If
you’re going to write about a place, then you must know the place.
Research does not mean borrowing from other movies or novels that
take place at the same location. It means doing detailed investigation
into the place, people, time and culture. Lack of research can be
particularly disastrous when the screenwriter tries to depict a culture
or society that they do not understand and have not experienced. The
writer who vacationed in Wyoming once may know enough to write
about vacationing in Wyoming, but not necessarily enough to write a
story concerning the local people, their lives, environment or
personalities. Once a young screenwriter set her story in the crazy
world of live television in the 1950s. It was badly written, full of
inconsistencies, misinformation and stereotypes. When questioned
about her research, she admitted that she had watched every episode
of the Dick Van Dyke Show ever made. This isn’t doing research.
Books and newspapers are good for research, but going to a place
or conducting personal interviews with people who are from a given
world is even better. If you’re going to write about cowboys, then you’d
better talk to a few cowboys. Once, while in the midst of doing
research for a cop movie, Bill was pulled over by a state bull, fifteen
miles an hour over the speed limit. He immediately saw it as an
opportunity to do research. While his record was being checked, he
told the police officer that he was writing a screenplay about a
policeman. Twenty minutes later, he had the cop’s life story, two jokes
that cops tell about citizens, and got off with only a warning. On a
recent cruise, Robin shared a table with a psychiatrist. Within half an
hour the fellow wanted Robin to write a script about one of his more
interesting cases. People love to talk about their lives, professions,
problems, dreams and where they come from. Imagination is still very
important, and no screenwriter can work without it, but proper
research gives the imagination something with which to work. A frame
of reference sets the imagination free.
Research can include:
Time Customs Architecture History
Place Weather Social rules Landscape
Location Local language Work rules Culture
FINAL THOUGHTS
The world is a necessary part of story, character and theme. It affects
and reflects each of these, and yet a screenwriter must not linger in its
description. Just like the poet, the screenwriter must find those few,
perfect words that can bring the setting vividly alive for the reader.
Use only those words that reveal the essential details that are deeply
characteristic of and relevant to the action. The inconsequential must
be cut. The screenwriter’s goal is to present a clear, sharp, focused
version of the world that allows the reader to understand and move on
without pausing, but to not be so brief as to become generic. A
successful world is full of particulars. Find those that affect and reflect
character, story and theme, and you’ll have found your place in the
world.
EXERCISES
1. Describe a leaf floating on a lake. Describe only the leaf, but from
your description we should know details about the lake.
2. Write a short description of a personal environment (such as a
room, house, office). Now read the description to a classmate or
friend. Can your listener guess at the character’s personality and
occupation by your description alone?
3. Write a brief description of a character from which we can guess the
world she lives in.
4. Write a description of a building that hints at the theme of the story.
5
Character
Meet John Doe
All right, you have a great premise, your “world” is well thought-out,
the story is coming along, and you have all sorts of exciting scenes in
mind. And yet you can’t help feeling that something is wrong.
More than likely, your problem is character. Not your own—the
ones you didn’t develop well enough in the beginning to carry your
story. Often, new screenwriters spend too much time plotting out the
events of a script without thinking much about the characters who
create those events. They worry, “What happens next?” rather than,
“Who is this guy, and what would he make happen next?”
“But wait,” you say, “how do I even know who my characters ought
to be until I know my story? Or is it vice versa? Is story more
important than characters, or are the characters more important than
the story?” Good questions all.
WHICH CAME FIRST, HONEY OF THE BEE?
Aristotle argued 2,300 years ago in Poetics (required reading at all
film schools) that character is less important than story. He felt that a
story should be conceived first and then characters fabricated to carry
it out. His logic was that a dramatic story is an imitation of a course of
action in life, not of any particular person: “The drama interests us,
not predominantly by its depiction of human nature, but primarily by
the situations and only secondarily by the feelings of those therein
involved.” More recent writers tend to feel that Aristotle put the cart
before the horse. Without great characters, the argument goes, you
don’t have a story worth caring about. Early screenwriter John
Howard Lawson pointed out that a story “may contain a duel in every
scene, a pitched battle in every act, and the spectator be sound asleep,
or be kept awake only by the noise.” Or even worse, be heading for the
exits.
In The Art of Dramatic Writing (also required reading in all film
schools), Lajos Egri grumbles, “What would the reader think of us if
we were to announce that we had come to the conclusion that honey is
beneficial to mankind, but that the bee’s importance is secondary, and
that the bee is therefore subsidiary to its product?” According to Egri,
the bee is the character, and its product the story.
The question for Aristotle is, how can a story be interesting without
multi-dimensional characters to make us care what happens in it? And
yet Egri seems to forget that without a well-constructed story, even the
best characters will wander around as aimlessly as, well, bees. Both
methods—putting story ahead of character, or character ahead of story
—can lead to critical failure. Go too far one way and you end up with a
formula Hollywood plot machine whose characters are mere puppets
in the action; go too far the other way, and you get a French film (at
least, the kind in which people meander through their day, talking
endlessly, without any apparent point). Somewhere in the middle
lurks the unique, involving story for which you’re hoping.
So what’s a writer to do? If they’re both of equal importance, which
do you concentrate on first? This is more than just a chicken-and-egg
argument, it is at the heart of the storytelling process.
The answer must be to create both story and character
simultaneously. They are forever tied together and define one another
in the process of their creation. At its most basic, a story is characters
in action, while characters are defined by the actions they take. You
must know your characters as you plot their action, in order to know
what actions they would naturally take in any given circumstance. And
you must simultaneously know what you want your story to be about,
because it provides the circumstances that motivate your characters’
actions.
GEEZ, YOU ACT LIKE YOU’RE IN A MOVIE
Characters differ from one type of storytelling to another. In novels,
short stories, cartoons, sitcoms and operas, not only does the writer
approach a character differently, but the characters are different in
kind. Each form of storytelling has limits and approaches as to how
the characters are revealed. The novelist can delve into the personal
history and thoughts of a character through inner monologue or third-
person description. Operatic characters are revealed by the role of
their voices—tenor as hero, basso as villain—and are allowed long
expository arias.
Screen characters must reveal themselves through action, the
outward manifestation of that which is within. They come to life not
when they feel and think, but when they act—when they say and do
things that reveal their thoughts and feelings. It is not enough for
them to be, or to merely contemplate—at least not if they are major
characters whose purpose is to push the story forward. For thousands
of years playwrights have used the word “action” to define character
and story. In a broad sense, action means simply “to do.” Actions are
the characters’ deeds, their response to the existing circumstances of
the story, which in turn affect the future course of the story. Therefore,
the character who does the most defines that course.
But action alone is not enough to create a gripping story: it must
have a goal, and it must encounter opposition. In other words, it must
be dramatic action. There must be conflict and important stakes
hanging on its outcome. There is no interest in watching someone run
a race alone. The character—a young woman, let’s say—is taking
action, but there are no stakes unless someone is pursuing her, or she
is pursuing someone else, or she is desperate to outrun her own best
time for some reason with which we can empathize (in which case she
is in conflict with herself). If there is inner conflict, dramatic action is
its outward expression. Dramatic action can mean fighting to
overcome the inertia of one’s own fears or limitations, or it can mean
resisting the flow of other characters’ desires and actions. Dramatic
action can mean acting when action is not allowed, taking a stance
against authority, expressing an unpopular opinion. It can be shown in
an armed encounter or a quiet kiss, as long as it is an act of intention
and as long as it has consequences.
Dramatic action, then, occurs when a character decides to do
something either because of or in spite of the consequences. This is
also the problem with trying to write your characters as “real people.”
While everyone takes dramatic action now and then, most of us go
about most of our lives trying to avoid conflict. We receive an
unjustified parking ticket and we pay rather than go to court. Our boss
insults us and we bear it rather than confront him. We stay at home
rather than face the raging storm outside. Most real people try to
maintain the status quo, occasionally want or feel deeply about
something, but only rarely do anything about it. This is deadly on
screen, because until we can see characters do or say something that
changes their circumstances or their world, there is no way to get a
handle on them, or care about them. Unlike real people, screen
characters are willing to force the issue, to engage in conflict, to take
dramatic action—which is why we pay to watch them. They are
metaphors. They do what we only dream.
Therefore, screen characters shouldn’t necessarily feel like real
people, but rather they should feel real within the context of the world,
the theme, the goals and the conflicts you’ve created for them. All
characters are abstracts from reality, and in movies their personalities,
actions and placement within the story reflect and are determined by
the function they serve.
WHAT ON EARTH IS HE DOING HERE?
It’s not enough to ask, “Who are your characters?” You must also ask
why they’re in the story at all. How do they—who they are, what they
are—reflect and express the central theme? What drives them? What
are the sources of conflict between them? How much do we really need
to know about them? Most importantly, are they essential to the story?
Why are these the best, indeed the only, characters with which to
populate this particular story? A character without a function does not
belong in your screenplay. Each must serve a unique purpose, and
have a unique temperament and focus, a reason why the story would
be less effective, or even collapse, without him or her.
The Tweedledee and Tweedledum Problem
In acting there is a movement known as a double gesture. This is when
an actor gestures with both hands in exactly the same way: both hands
pointing, both hands pleading, both accusing. This is considered a
weak gesture, because both hands are expressing the same emotion.
One of the first things actors learn is that a single gesture or two
contrasting gestures are more powerful than a double gesture. The
same is true in writing. If two characters have similar functions and
personalities, then a strong case can be made for eliminating one,
combining them into a single character or figuring out how to
differentiate them (unless you’re creating a specific, usually comic
effect, like having twins who always speak at the same time, but these
are usually really one character). For example, suppose you’re writing
a Western. You’ve got two bad guys, train robbers. Both are mean,
quick to kill and cunning. Because they are similar, chances are you
could eliminate one train robber and in the process make the story
stronger, or you could give each a unique function and temperament.
This could be done by making one of the bad guys the chief antagonist
and the other his sidekick. Now the chief bad guy becomes the brains
of the operation, while the other does the dirty work. This leads to
conflict because one wants to hit the train and get out fast, while the
other is having too much fun intimidating the passengers. Now both
bad guys have separate purposes and temperaments; they come into
conflict and move the story forward in unique ways.
Another important reason why no two characters should have
similar temperaments, desires or functions is that such characters are
not apt to clash, so there will be less conflict (see Chapter 7, Power and
Conflict). In order to avoid this problem, make sure that there are
never two characters who consistently sympathize or agree. Again,
such conflict should not be arbitrary or imposed upon them, but grow
out of their natural differences and the different purposes they serve in
the screenplay.
When determining the differences and functions of each of your
characters, think about what actions they will take to move the story
forward, and why. Is the character a mentor, who provides advice and
wisdom to your protagonist? Is she an ally who helps carry out the
protagonist’s (or antagonist’s) plan? Is he a false ally who appears to
act on the protagonist’s behalf, but in fact is betraying her to the
antagonist? Is he a “threshold guardian,” whose purpose is to warn the
protagonist away from his course of action, or even impede it? Does
the character drive a subplot? Or does the character represent us, the
audience, as a “fly on the wall,” watching and interpreting the actions
of the protagonist? (Many of these functions apply across genres. See
Chapter 11 for more on specific character functions in different kinds
of stories. For another excellent and much more complete analysis of
character functions in a “hero’s journey” or quest story, see Chris
Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey.)
The Main (Wo)man (Protagonist)
The protagonist is the central character, the hero, the Big Enchilada,
the principal figure around whom the screenplay is written and the
one with whom the audience can identify or empathize. The word
“protagonist” comes from ancient Greek drama and referred to the
first actor to engage in dialogue or action (literally, the first
combatant), but it soon came to mean the principal player. This
remains true today. Because of this, the protagonist is introduced early
on, although many movies actually start with the antagonist instead, to
set up the stakes and the problem that the protagonist must face.
Some movies also keep the audience waiting on purpose, to create a
sense of suspense or anticipation: when will we finally meet the guy
everyone’s been talking about? In such cases, even though absent
physically, the protagonist may be present in the form of the
anticipation his impending approach inspires in others. This is a
classic technique in Westerns, detective and action movies. Others
may introduce the protagonist as a surprise: the world is in chaos, no
one knows what to do, when suddenly the hero rides into town.
The vast majority of movies have a single protagonist, but
occasionally there are two who work in tandem, as in Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid or Thelma & Louise. These are known as
“buddy movies.” Even more rare are “ensemble movies” such as The
Big Chill, Gosford Park, Love Actually or Crash, in which there are
many protagonists. Buddy and multi-protagonist movies generally
have one protagonist who is more important than the others. For
example, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch is the more
important of the two because he is the main decision-maker. Sundance
is the muscle. In Lethal Weapon, Danny Glover’s character is more
important than Mel Gibson’s because the enemy is from Glover’s
(Murtaugh’s) own Vietnam war past, and it’s his daughter’s life at
stake. Buddy and ensemble movies can be difficult to write, so if you
are writing your first screenplay, you may want to start simple, with a
single protagonist story.
Often (almost always in crime or action thrillers) the antagonist will
initiate the conflict or create the situation that forces the protagonist
to respond. In other words, the protagonist enters a situation created
by the antagonist: for instance, in a detective story the killer may
already have taken action by committing a murder, and now the
detective reacts by determining to solve the crime. The antagonist may
or may not specifically target the protagonist, but once the conflict is
engaged it becomes personal. The murderer may not even know about
the detective, but once he does, the story focuses on their conflict.
James Bond only takes action in reaction to a plot already initiated by
the evil mastermind, who usually does not start out by targeting Bond,
but is forced to do so once Bond goes after him. In Avatar, the
corporation’s plan to rape Pandora of its natural resources is already
underway when Jake gets recruited, and at first he’s fighting for the
wrong side. It isn’t until halfway through that he switches sides and
takes the fight to his former commander.
It’s often said, inaccurately, that the protagonist has to drive the
conflict from the start. This is occasionally true, but more often the
protagonist needs to be forced into reacting, may (often does) have
second thoughts about getting involved, and then eventually drives the
conflict. For instance, in Casablanca, usually considered one of the
two or three greatest films of all time, Rick (Humphrey Bogart)
famously refuses to take action or “stick his neck out for anyone” until
two-thirds of the way into the film. It takes him that long to react to
what’s happening and overcome his personal demons, which represent
an internal conflict he’s fighting rather than the external confrontation
with Major Strasser and the Nazis. However, by the time Rick does
decide to enter the fray, the audience is cheering for him and, having
defeated his internal antagonist (himself), he is the one who drives the
conclusion of the larger conflict against Major Strasser. Other
characters may make the situation intolerable, they may abuse or
prod, but the main action, and therefore main conflict, is ultimately
the protagonist’s. What you do not want is a protagonist who remains
passive or reactive throughout.
Even when the protagonist’s main action seems to be running away
from something, he or she should also eventually be running toward
something. In The Fugitive, although Dr. Richard Kimble is running
away from the federal marshal, he is simultaneously running back to
Chicago, acting to solve the murder of his wife and prove his own
innocence. In North by Northwest, the classic Hitchcock thriller about
a businessman who is mistaken for a spy, Cary Grant is not just
running away from James Mason and his thugs, but pursuing his goal
of freeing Eva Marie Saint. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Jim Carrey’s character is running away from the pain of his past
relationship with Kate Winslet, but also running toward trying to
recover what he’s erased from his mind (their love). The difference
may seem subtle, but it can distinguish an interesting protagonist from
one who seems to be nothing but a victim. A protagonist may be a
victim or at least an underdog, and often is; this is often how the folks
in the audience feel and why they relate to the protagonist. But the
whole point of the story is for the protagonist to eventually be willing
to fight back, seek revenge or move toward a definite goal, so that the
audience is empowered by vicariously participating in the
protagonist’s action.
Lastly, the audience must be able either to identify, or at least
empathize with or relate to, the protagonist. You want them to root for
the protagonist. If the protagonist is too headstrong, aggressive,
powerful or self-absorbed, the audience will lose interest unless you
give them a reason to remain engaged, some deeper merit to the
character that shines through. Then, even apparently despicable
protagonists such as Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk
Empire, Jane Fonda’s prostitute in Klute or even Jack Nicholson’s
loathsome writer in As Good as It Gets will engage the audience’s
sympathies and they will root for them. Even if you are writing about
an extraordinary hero, there must be something to which everyday
people can relate. This is done by giving the protagonist a
vulnerability: he or she is an underdog in the contest with the
antagonist. This vulnerability may reveal itself as a comic or character
flaw, or it may be shown in the virtue of the protagonist’s goal or the
difficulty of the struggle to attain it.
But this is only half the equation: the audience must feel the same
emotional investment in the protagonist’s success as the protagonist
does, and this investment comes from understanding and approving
the protagonist’s struggle. Empathy comes when the protagonist’s
motivation is clear, laudable and plausible. The audience should be
able to say, “If I were the protagonist, in this situation I would have
similar feelings and wish I would have the courage, strength or
motivation to take the same actions.”
When the protagonist takes dramatic action—as he or she must—it
must be action with consequences, especially for the protagonist, but
that also affect others. Your protagonist should have more to lose or to
gain than anyone else in the screenplay, except for those who depend
on him or perhaps the antagonist. Only a weak or selfish protagonist
fights for his life or well-being alone; these are low stakes, unless
you’re writing a light comedy, or the character is alone in his or her
jeopardy (as in The Naked Prey, 127 Hours, or The Most Dangerous
Game). The protagonist should also fight on behalf of others whose
lives or well-being will suffer without his taking action. Obviously,
these others have as much to lose as the protagonist, but the
responsibility is the protagonist’s alone, and his or her success or
failure is proportionately increased by the stakes that the other
characters represent. In the classic Western High Noon, the
townspeople are faced with having their town overrun by a gang of
outlaws, but it’s Gary Cooper, the protagonist, who puts his life at
stake to stand between the opposing forces and save the townspeople.
Even in a light comedy like Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey’s stakes (he might
lose his family) are multiplied by the potential unhappiness of others
(his family might lose him). In Dodgeball, Vince Vaughn’s need to
triumph over Ben Stiller is not only personal, but affects the happiness
of the entire community of his gym. The protagonist who takes action
against a sea of troubles but has nothing personally at stake in the
outcome is not as interesting as the protagonist who stands to lose his
own life, love or honor. The protagonist who fights only on his own
behalf is less interesting than one who risks sacrificing herself on
behalf of others.
The Heavy (Antagonist)
The antagonist is the person, place or thing standing in opposition to
the protagonist, in the way of his or her achieving the goal. The
antagonist can be a human, animal, an act of nature or can even be
something supernatural. It can also be the protagonist’s inner conflict
or character flaw, such as alcoholism or self-doubt (see Power and
Conflict, Chapter 7). The antagonist must appear more powerful than
the protagonist and be in a position in which compromise is
impossible. If the antagonist is weak, the conflict will also be weak.
A common mistake young screenwriters make is not fully
developing the character of the antagonist. An undeveloped antagonist
is boring. In good scripts, the antagonist (or the circumstance of
conflict) is at least as complex as the protagonist, if not more so, which
is what makes their contest so involving. As noted, the antagonist’s
plan is often what sets the stage for the central conflict. Professor
Moriarty is more than the equal of Sherlock Holmes, and more
complex in his motives. In The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner’s
addiction to the adrenaline rush of war is really his “antagonist,” and
its seduction is what drives and defines him. The screenwriter must
find the antagonist’s character arcs, dominant emotions, history, traits
and “positive” motivations (the rationale by which he or she justifies
his or her actions), or else fully define the circumstances that create
the conflict for your protagonist. The antagonist is most effective when
he is the dark doppelgänger of the protagonist, his shadow self, and
whom he is necessarily forced to confront because of his own nature:
in Star Wars, for instance, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. In
Casablanca, Rick is his own worst enemy, his inner shadow-self
created by heartbreak and self-pity. The antagonist is often the one
character who reflects the personal aspects of the screenwriter that she
likes least about herself, and therefore is the most difficult to create—
unless the writer can look into her darkest and most contrary
impulses. So get inside what’s hidden in your own heart and mind, and
then have fun with it. And remember—that shadow self has its own
reasons for being there. From the shadow’s (the antagonist’s) point of
view, it’s acting correctly. Even Darth Vader or Goldfinger—even the
shark in Jaws—all think they’re doing the right thing from their point
of view. If the screenwriter does not find the strong motivations
behind the antagonist’s actions (or the rationale for the antagonistic
circumstances confronting the protagonist), the end result will be a
cheap, dull stereotype. A great screenplay always has a fully developed,
interesting antagonist.
Right Hand (Wo)man (Supporting Roles)
Supporting roles are exactly that: characters who support the main
characters. They are intrinsic to the story, but are not the main focus
or as fully explored as the protagonist or antagonist. However, even
though supporting characters are not the main focus, considerable
time should still be spent in developing them. The same steps taken to
develop a protagonist or antagonist must be taken with the main
supporting roles, although their motivations and actions can be less
complex. Supporting roles take action to support the protagonist or
antagonist, or act within a subplot that supports or contradicts the
main plot. A good example of the former is found in The Sting, where
all the supporting roles have unique characteristics and all have a part
in helping Robert Redford and Paul Newman pull off their elaborate
caper. Even the thugs who work for the antagonist are colorful and
complete. Steve Carell’s pals all conspire to help get him get laid in The
40 Year Old Virgin. Another example of characters who create a
subplot that mirrors the main story is found in Casablanca, where the
young Bulgarian bride is willing to sacrifice herself (by sleeping with
Captain Renault) in order to gain safe passage to America for herself
and her unwitting husband.
A Cast of Thousands (Minor and Background Characters)
Not all screen characters must be fully developed. The function of
minor characters is either to fill the world of the story, or to push the
story forward at a given moment and then disappear. Full character
development is not needed because it would pull attention away from
the main characters and upset the balance of your story. But that
doesn’t mean they should be faceless; even a walk-on should be given
one simple dominant trait or emotion to individualize him, keep the
story interesting on all levels and provide a specific visual description.
Minor characters are like the spice in the meal of the story; if they
aren’t individualized and entertaining, they and the story will become
flat. They might have a particular mannerism, special look, skill or
speech pattern, anything to make them unique.
It could be argued that in crowd scenes or scripts with large
numbers of cops or soldiers or students, there are plenty of minor
characters who seem interchangeable. But in such instances, they are
in fact there to fill the world with a single recognizable human
element, and can be thought of as a single character. For example, the
generic (non-starring) crew members in Star Trek are “expendables”
with no real personality or contact with the main characters; they’re all
pretty much the same, except insofar as their deaths or the threat to
their lives increases the stakes. But they fill the world and create a
revenge or hostage-saving motivation for the central characters. They
represent a life that must be saved or avenged.
Keeping Focused
When determining how much detail or emphasis to give any particular
character, an analogy may be helpful: movies are pictures, and in every
picture there are areas that are in focus and others that are less so. The
same is true of the characters within the movie. The leading roles
(protagonist and antagonist) are in sharp focus; they are the clear focal
points of the movie. The supporting roles are slightly less in focus, the
minor roles begin to look fuzzy, and finally the background characters
stand on the perimeter and are barely discernible. Or you can look at it
from the point of view of complexity, starting from the protagonist and
antagonist as the most complex and well-rounded characters and
going down to the simple and uncomplicated presence of the
background characters or extras. The point is that each character must
be clear and lively for the reader, but the secondary characters cannot
pull the focus away from the main characters, just as extras should not
“steal the scene” from the stars.
WHAT’S THE SITUATION? (CHARACTER
AND CONTEXT)
Whatever their function, in order for characters to take dramatic
action, they must be in a situation (story) in which something is at
stake, and also in which there is more than one option for them, so
they can make decisions. Dramatic action can only happen when the
characters have choices and are willing to make those choices. The
more important the choices, the higher the stakes, and the more
important and interesting the character. A character who is faced with
and makes difficult social, moral or ethical choices can’t help but be
fascinating.
Let’s look at character Bob Jones, a forty-year-old businessman.
Average height, middle class, decent, Bob has three young kids, a
mortgage, a receding hairline and is stuck in a rut. He can’t advance in
the company because he can’t work weekends. His routine is set, and
he lives with it. Bob is not a worthy screen character. Why? Because he
just exists, he doesn’t take action.
But what if one day Bob is robbed. After filing the police report,
he’s late for work. His boss reads him the riot act for being late. What
does Bob do? He goes back to his cubicle and finishes his work. He
swallows his pride, glad that at least he didn’t lose his job. He is safe.
How about now? Is Bob a worthy screen character? The answer here
is, “It depends.” True, he takes action, he keeps his job, but he makes
no decision to take dramatic action, or action that will change his
circumstances. This kind of character only works if his refusal to take
action is limited and later reversed (as in the sequence from Saving
Private Ryan where the young translator’s fears paralyze and prevent
him from rescuing his friend from a German soldier; his cowardice
later leads him to take action by executing the German). Or,
alternatively, the refusal to take dramatic action over the course of the
entire story might reflect the theme of the film. For instance, in
Remains of the Day, the butler’s tragic inability to seize the
opportunity for love condemns him to a life of loneliness. These
passive characters are tragic and express life’s limitations, which is
why they usually turn up in subplots, their lack of courage to act
contrasting with the protagonist’s willingness to do so. They are
reasonably common as protagonists in European films (La Dolce Vita,
for instance), but are rare as protagonists in American movies (other
than in small independents like The Low Life) because they express a
distinctly “can’t do,” and therefore un-American, attitude.
Going back to poor old Bob—what if, after being humiliated by his
boss, he quits on the spot, just up and quits? Tells his boss where he
can go, cleans out his cubicle and walks. Now Bob is looking more like
an American protagonist. He has taken action, but more, he has taken
a dramatic action that has great consequences. Notice that in either
case, what Bob does (his action) or doesn’t do defines his character
more than the fact that he is forty, a businessman with a mortgage and
a receding hairline. A perfect example of this kind of character is found
in The Truman Show, where a boring businessman suspects that his
whole world is a fraud. He quickly begins to take dramatic action,
investigating his house, setting up verbal traps for his wife and
neighbors. Eventually, he uncovers the truth and takes the most
dramatic action of all, leaving everything he knows in order to find the
real world outside.
Don’t Just Stand There! (Action/Reaction)
The necessities that make for good dramatic action are that the
character must eventually initiate action, not simply react to others or
the environment, and the action should cause circumstances to change
or another character to take action. While most characters, even the
protagonist, may start out by reacting to what’s going on around them,
strong characters at some point will instigate their own courses of
action to change their world; weak characters will remain merely
reactive to changes caused by others. For example, let’s take Sally, a
young woman on her way to her father’s funeral. Her father, a
respected leader in the community, molested her as a child. Her
mother never believed her. Sally enters the funeral parlor alone,
breaks down in tears, beats on his dead carcass and, sure that no one
else can hear her, spits out her pitiful accusation at the corpse. Unless
this leads to some later determination to change her life, Sally remains
a weak screen character, because she is simply reacting to the situation
in a way that has no consequences. We may feel sorry for her, but not
care much beyond that because she isn’t doing anything about her
pain. But what if, as the funeral starts, Sally insists on giving a eulogy
in which she tells the entire congregation about what her respected
father did? Or what if Sally walks up to the casket, but this time her
mother is with her? What if Sally opens her purse and takes out a large
set of scissors and, to her mother’s horror, slowly unzips his trousers,
performs a postmortem amputation and hands the item to her
mother? Her action fundamentally changes her father’s corpse as well
as her relationship with her mother. In these last scenarios, Sally
doesn’t merely react. She makes a conscious decision to take dramatic
action with deep consequences. Note that the final one is more
visceral, visual and personal, and therefore—although definitely more
objectionable—it is stronger cinematically. (It can be funnier, too, as in
graphically disgusting comedies such as There’s Something About
Mary.) It is important to have your characters take dramatic action,
and the more gripping, even visceral, the better.
Let’s look at another example. Let’s say Jack is a hard-working cop,
who one day finds out through the grapevine that his wife is sleeping
with his best friend and partner, Larry. Jack beats up Larry and then
divorces his wife. While his reaction of anger leads him to alter his life,
Jack is still a less-than-interesting screen character, because what he
does is mundane and predictable. Beating up Larry and divorcing his
wife are both reflexive reactions, more than decisive actions. But what
if Jack decides to seek a calculated revenge. He sets out to wine, dine
and sleep with Larry’s wife. True, now Jack acts, but it still isn’t very
inventive. But what if Jack—without letting Larry know he’s aware of
the affair—finds some excuse to move in with Larry; maybe he
arranges with their captain to have them both assigned to a long
stakeout. And then, by “casually” talking about how he met his wife,
how much he loves her, what they’ve planned to do when they retire,
Jack slowly talks Larry out of the affair. And then Jack returns to his
wife, never mentioning what he knows or has done. This character not
only acts decisively, but in an unpredictable and therefore fascinating
way. Or, what if—let’s say they live in Miami—Jack invites Larry to
join him and his wife scuba diving off his boat one day. He rigs their
regulators so they’ll run out of air without knowing it, and then, while
they are down in the water, he gets back on the boat and leaves them
there, miles from shore? What if, for good measure, he knows there
are sharks in the area, and pours buckets of blood he’s hidden onboard
into the water to attract the sharks to his unwitting victims before he
leaves? Not very noble or pleasant, but it is a conscious and inventive
plan. In short, the most compelling screen characters move under
their own power, they don’t only react to the power of others.
Made You Look! (Cause and Effect)
The strongest dramatic actions from a story point of view are those
that cause another character to take action. Cause and effect, stimulus
and response are the building blocks of any story. For example, let’s go
back to our businessman Bob with the receding hairline. What if Bob
went home and told his wife that he quit and she accepts it. His act
stands alone, it is a cause without an effect. On the other hand, if Bob
goes home, tells his wife, and she sets out to sleep with his boss
because his boss still has an income, or applies for Bob’s old job
herself, now it is a more effective dramatic action on the wife’s part.
Bob’s action has motivated her to take action. Action causing action
(as opposed to reaction) is at the heart of all stories.
Yet, an action will not be credible unless there is a deep, personal
and understood motivation behind it. Emerson said, “Cause and effect,
means and end, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect
already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit
in the seed.” In story terms, this means that there must be a strong
foundation within the character that makes this particular action
possible, justifiable, even inevitable. In order to know the causes, you
must not only look to the circumstances surrounding your characters,
but to their own personal reasons for acting the way they do. Like
seeds awaiting rain and sunlight, the characters’ personalities and
needs are the origins of motivation, which grow into dramatic action
when the situation is right.
There are countless motivations: revenge, injustice, ambition,
haunting memories, sick relatives; that’s the easy part. The hard part
is knowing why one character will act upon the motivation while
another will not—why does one of two brothers seek revenge for the
murder of their father, while the other just wants to let it go? If you,
the writer, do not understand why your characters act upon their
motivations in the ways they do, then their actions will never appear
integral or justified. You’ll have one-dimensional characters who take
action, but for no compelling reason. This is just as pointless as a
character with plenty of motivation who does nothing. (Unless you are
after exactly those qualities, in which case you’d have created either a
hopeless scatterbrain or a resolutely passive-aggressive character, and
neither is attractive.) More often in novice screenplays, characters
appear and do things for no reason because the novice writer hadn’t
bothered to set one up. In other words, the writer didn’t really get to
know the characters. In order to do so, you’ve got to spotlight those
elements that define and differentiate your characters.
TURN ON THE SPOTLIGHT (CHARACTER
ELEMENTS)
The spotlighted elements of a screen character are those that reveal
unique personality, and the needs and desires that cause the character
to take action. You have to get inside your character’s head and figure
out why she is doing what she’s doing in the context of this particular
conflict. To know a character well enough to make a strong evaluation,
we have to know all the elements that cause the character to make
decisions and take action. In order to gain that understanding, a
screenwriter can make a list of the character’s traits by asking a series
of questions about the general qualities of the character: physical,
sociological and psychological. The list creates a thumbnail sketch of
the character. A list of questions might look something like this:
GENERAL
What are the character’s hobbies?
What are the character’s mannerisms?
What are the character’s tastes?
What are the character’s political views?
What is the character’s career?
What is the character’s education?
What is the character’s occupation?
What is the character’s financial situation?
PHYSICAL
What are the character’s medical problems?
What does the character wear?
What are the character’s age and sex?
What is the character’s appearance?
What is the character’s health?
SOCIOLOGY
What are the character’s hopes, ambitions, fears?
What are the character’s morals?
What is the character’s class or status?
What are the character’s family relationships?
What is the character’s nationality?
What is the character’s religion?
PSYCHOLOGY
What are the character’s ambitions?
What are the character’s disappointments?
What are the character’s inhibitions?
What are the character’s obsessions?
What are the character’s phobias?
What are the character’s superstitions?
What are the character’s talents?
What is the character’s philosophy?
What is the character’s temperament?
What was the character’s childhood like?
There are some screenwriting teachers who even recommend writing
long and detailed biographies of their characters, all the way back to
their birth, histories that take every facet into account. The problem is
that such lists or biographies can go on indefinitely, each question
leading to new ones, one past event suggesting another. But it’s all
wasted time if it doesn’t somehow affect your screenplay. Making a list
or biography ceases to be helpful if it becomes overwhelming; it can
paralyze and deflect you. And, frankly, an exhaustive biography is
neither realistic nor necessary. The sum total of a character is too
much for any writer or audience member to completely comprehend.
Even a commonplace character is too complex to be presented
effectively and convincingly in his or her entirety; perhaps James
Joyce’s great novel Ulysses came closest, and it isn’t even remotely
filmable (just check out the one attempt that was made).
We do not recommend this approach to anyone. Sure, it sounds
convincing theoretically to say, “When you know what your character
did in first grade, you’ll know why he’s doing something now.” But in
practice it’s utter nonsense—unless one specific and still powerfully
present thing happened back then, such as your character having
accidentally shot his father’s head off with what he thought was a toy
gun. That might be worth including if it affects his current state of
mind, but not whether he’d finally gotten potty-trained before
kindergarten. The goal of a screenwriter is not to reproduce a total
living person, but to create characters who give the impression that
they are living people within the confines of a particular story. You
must be selective.
The litmus test is simple. If a particular element of a character’s
history directly affects the character’s actions during the two-hour
course of the story—during the present—then it is important and
should be included. Everything in a movie is present tense: the action,
the narrative, even flashbacks are told as if they are happening now.
The same is true of your characters. If something in the past is
haunting a character, then it is present tense, because it is currently
haunting and affecting him and will be referenced either in a scene or
line of dialogue.
On the other hand, if a part of the character’s history—no matter
how colorful—isn’t directly affecting the here and now, then it doesn’t
belong and must be cut. For example, a recent student screenplay had
an important speech in which a lawyer regrets that years ago, during
his first case, he failed to get a conviction. The murderer left the jail
and murdered again. Yet, at no time in the screenplay did this memory
affect his judgment, give him pause or make him take a different
course of action than he would have without it. It was a fine little
speech, well written, but it did not affect the present course of the
story and so should have been cut, not only from the screenplay, but
from the character. It was useless clutter.
A screenwriter must turn the spotlight only on those characteristics
critical to the story, those things that create a unique identity and set
of needs and desires. So once you’ve begun your list or biography,
exercise your judgment and ask only those questions whose answers
will show up in your script.
Character vs. Characteristics
One important distinction to make, however, is between what your
characters appear to be, and who they are on a deep level.
Characteristics and character are two different things. Sometimes the
two coincide: the friendly old grandpa is just that, he looks like a
friendly old grandpa, and guess what, that’s who he is. However, what
if he has all the characteristics of the friendly old grandpa—white hair,
kind face, nice old pocket-watch, and so on—but in fact it turns out
he’s a ruthless, even evil mastermind? Max von Sydow plays this kind
of character in Minority Report, as does James Cromwell in L.A.
Confidential. In Gremlins and other similar fantasy comedies, what at
first appear to be sweet, cuddly little critters turn out to be horrible
little monsters. In other words, the characteristics are the surface
appearance, which can either accurately reflect the inner self or be a
mask disguising it. The more a character’s true self is hidden or
distorted by the mask she wears, often the more complex she can be
and the more interesting the revelations as the story progresses.
Something’s Missing (Needs, Motivations and Goals)
In order for desire or needs to exist—something that predisposes a
character to act upon a given motivation—there must be something
emotionally important missing from the character’s life, something
either taken away or not yet attained, but greatly desired in either case.
What is missing ties directly into the character’s goals and what the
character is willing to do (action) in order to achieve them. The greater
the missing element, the greater the need. The greater the motivation,
the greater the resulting action.
The key to understanding motivation is to look at it from the
character’s point of view and not the writer’s. A strong character is
always attempting to change a negative into a positive from his or her
perspective. In other words, the character is energized by certain
specific needs and desires, which motivate him or her to try and find a
positive action to counter a negative situation. Whether an event,
action or situation is “negative” or “positive” reflects the character’s
beliefs, not necessarily the writer’s. This applies to the protagonist,
antagonist, in fact all the characters.
This means that a character can commit an evil act based on a
strong “positive” motive. For example, you’re writing the role of an
antagonist, a terrorist who hijacks an airliner. A weak writer simply
makes the terrorist “evil” just because he is. Reason, desire, need,
motivation are glossed over in some brief exposition about him being
insane, or wanting to make a vague and clichéd religious/political
statement, or by showing him taking random cruel actions. A stronger
writer attempts to find the negative that the character hopes to turn to
a positive through the terrorist act. What has happened to the
character to make him think that hijacking a plane was the right thing
to do? Instead of being a cliché, the character acquires emotional
weight and reality when he has an exact and comprehensible reason
for an action, however misguided, which he believes will positively
affect the world from his point of view.
One classic example of such a character is found in Medea, the
great Greek tragedy about a woman who murders her children because
her husband has abandoned her for a younger princess. In Medea’s
mind, there are several positive reasons for murdering her children:
(1) it is better than letting her children starve to death in exile, and so
it is actually a loving act; (2) it will punish her husband, which is better
than having him go unpunished; and (3) it is better than letting her
children live and be a constant reminder of what their father did to
her. It is perhaps the most horrible action a person can take—to
murder one’s own children—but in Medea’s mind, it is a positive
action taken in the face of a negative situation.
Of course, such actions usually result in other negative
consequences. Although characters may believe that their destructive
means will justify their hoped-for ends, they may in fact discover that
they reach an end more in keeping with their chosen means: they are
themselves destroyed. More recently (by 2,500 years or so), in what is
generally considered to be one of the two or three greatest films of all
time, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, the protagonist destroys himself and
poisons his relationship with everyone for whom he cares through his
vanity and ambition. In the Godfather series, Michael Corleone has
first his brother-in-law and then his brother killed for betraying “the
family.” It is an intensely ironic, even perverse enforcement of family
loyalty, but in Michael’s world, it’s better than letting a disloyal family
member go unpunished. In the end, Michael discovers that his wife
has had an abortion rather than give him another son, his young
daughter is shot to death in front of him, and he eventually ends up
alone, without any family at all. Many of the best films noir feature
this kind of self-destructive protagonist, such as The Asphalt Jungle,
Out of the Past, and Night and the City. In It’s a Wonderful Life,
George Bailey attempts to kill himself rather than face the
disappointment of his family and a jail sentence for bank fraud; on a
deeper level it is his disappointment with his own life and the
unrealized dreams that he has subordinated to his responsibilities to
his family. Now he feels he has failed even in those. It’s his response to
a negative situation of unbearable pain. But here there’s a difference:
he isn’t really guilty of the bank fraud and he hasn’t failed in either his
responsibilities or his life. In fact, he’s a great guy, and his motivations
are later altered by seeing how valuable, how wonderful, his life really
has been. On a more comic note, in My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julia
Roberts’ character aims to prevent her best friend (a man) from
marrying another woman, which appears better to her than letting her
own long-denied love for him go unrealized. Finally she realizes that
her course of action is wrong: it’s too late, she blew it, and she’s only
brought pain to everyone and made a fool of herself. The Diablo Cody–
scripted Young Adult has a similar, though darker, plot: Charlize
Theron’s beautiful but unhappy Mavis becomes a near-psychotic
stalker when she learns that her high school boyfriend, now happily
married to someone else, is about to become a father.
All well-written characters, at any given moment—even when they
know they’re doing something wrong—think their action, given the
situation, is the right or only thing to do. They may be totally
misguided, they may end up doing more harm than good, even
bringing destruction down upon themselves, but their original impulse
comes from a desire to turn what they perceive as a wrong into what
they perceive as a right, a negative into a positive.
This brings up an important truth that flies in the face of a lot of
screenwriting “musts”: It is not necessary for us to “like” your
characters. Rather, we need to be fascinated by them, to understand
why they’re taking the actions they do, and that we get caught up in
their story because we want to know what on earth will happen.
That Can’t Be Me! (The Limits of Self-Knowledge)
Aristotle speaks of a character flaw as being an “error,” a “defect in
judgment” or “shortcoming in conduct,” especially in the greatest (i.e.,
tragic) characters. Similarly, screenplays are not about well-rounded
people who have perfect 20/20 vision concerning their lives, the lives
of others or their situations. The character’s point of view, like that of
the camera angle, is always limited and clouded by personal prejudice,
fears, hopes and desires. The characters are flawed, and too immersed
in their own life to have any objective perception. Characters must feel
their way, learn, adjust, fail and grow. Hamlet is capable of revenge,
but he doesn’t know that about himself; Charlie Sheen’s character in
Wall Street is greedy, but again (at least in the beginning) he is not
aware of it; Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day thinks of
himself as a hotshot reporter who doesn’t need anyone else—and who
goes to great lengths to let everyone around him know as much,
regardless of their feelings—but soon learns to despise himself and
tries to become worthy of love. Even Superman overestimates his
power, underreacts and makes mistakes. These mistakes are caused by
a lack of self-knowledge, overcoming which is at the heart of the story.
The key is to find the most critical, appropriate and characteristic
flaw or blindness. In the case of your protagonist, this flaw is an
exception to the character’s more dominant traits, at odds with them.
For example, John is a loving husband, an insightful stockbroker and
fair businessman, but he loses his temper behind the wheel of a car.
Valerie is a good lawyer, a strong advocate of women’s rights, but is
intimidated by her father. A mother may be a good provider and a
caring wife, but she is a workaholic. A cop may enjoy his work, be fair
and understanding, but he takes great risks. People do not know their
own limits. All characters have limits: limited self-endurance, limited
mental power, limited understanding. These limitations are known to
the author but not to the characters, or else they do secretly know
them but are afraid to confront them. In other words, the screenwriter
must know the characters better than the characters know themselves
and force them to confront their flaws. If a flaw is great enough to
destroy all hope of success, it is called a tragic flaw. When it is a
comical and/or harmless shortcoming, then it is called a comic flaw. In
the antagonist, however, the flaw may in fact be the most extreme
example of the character’s dominant traits, and the source of his
undoing: for instance, he may suffer from overwhelming pride, that
blinds him to defects in his plan, or be insanely jealous, which
compromises his judgment in taking action.
The actions that the characters take and the results they get
eventually reveal their own true natures to themselves and expose
what has been motivating, crippling or nurturing them. Once this is
known, the character flaw can be recognized and corrected and the
character made whole (or, in the case of a tragedy or of an antagonist,
the revelation may bring only pain and defeat). With this the conflict
ends, the goal is attained or lost forever and resolution quickly follows.
Getting Your Ghost (Unfinished Business)
A common variation on or aspect of the character flaw is what John
Truby and others have called the “ghost.” This is something that
haunts the character from his or her past, some baggage or unfinished
business that is so compelling that it cripples the character until it is
addressed. In Hamlet, for example, there is a literal ghost—the ghost
of Hamlet’s father—and the need to avenge his murder is what both
causes the action of the story and cripples Hamlet, who is torn by the
conflicting desire to take murderous action and his own gentle,
irresolute nature. In modern dramas (including comedies) the ghost
may also be the unresolved death of a loved one (Marathon Man, The
Fugitive, The Descendants), but it can also be an unhappy breakup
(Liar, Liar), a lost opportunity for love or success (Jerry MacGuire,
Dumb and Dumber, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), having
been humiliated or disgraced (Rambo, The Verdict, The Fugitive
again) or some other debilitating factor from the past that preoccupies
the character until, over the course of the story, he or she is able at last
to put it to rest. In Ghost, what haunts the protagonist is why he was
turned into a ghost himself and how to resolve his interrupted
relationship with the woman he loves. The Sixth Sense and The Others
offer variations on this concept of the protagonists as their own ghosts.
Sometimes the ghost is known only through exposition; sometimes
there may be a prologue in which we see the ghost created (as in
Cliffhanger, Braveheart or The Fugitive). Usually it is part of your
protagonist’s makeup, but good antagonists may also have ghosts,
such as Captain Ahab having lost his leg to Moby Dick, or the Phantom
of the Opera having had his music, his physical appearance and his
lover stolen away from him. This element can make an antagonist
more complex and understandable, even sympathetic, to an audience.
Whatever your character’s ghost may be, it must relate both to the
central conflict faced by the character and to the theme of your story,
or it will not feel integral or even necessary.
Characters that do not have a flaw and/or a ghost are as interesting
as distilled water. Understand the characters’ positive motivations and
negative situations in relation to their character flaws and past
baggage, and you are well on your way to creating an interesting
character.
Should I Stay or Should I Go? (Internal Conflict)
Internal conflict is a contradiction in a character’s life that he or she
must work out, overcome or rise above. Conflict with oneself comes
from a moral struggle, a debate over which action to take, anything
that makes the character doubt him or herself (for more on internal
conflict, see Chapter 7, Power and Conflict). The internal conflict is
most effective when caused by two powerful, positive desires of nearly
equal strength, but which are opposed to each other. For example, in
Baby Boom Diane Keaton wants to be a good mother, but also feels
that she must work hard to shatter the glass ceiling at work. These two
desires, to be a good mother and to be a success, are opposed to each
other and cause internal conflict. In Donnie Brasco and The Departed,
both about undercover cops, the protagonists find themselves in the
dilemma of being committed to wiping out the Mob, but also of
betraying those criminals to whom they’ve become attached in their
undercover lives or else facing their own destruction.
Like the ghost and character flaw, internal conflicts must grow
naturally from the characters’ own natures, or those conflicts will not
be strong enough to motivate them. For instance, say Jack is a good
cop. He voluntarily works in a dangerous neighborhood because he
feels that there he does the most good. Jack also desperately wants
children, but his wife refuses to have them until he quits the force or
takes a safer desk job. Jack knows she’s right, yet the good citizens of
the neighborhood need him. Jack has an internal conflict between two
positives: helping the neighborhood or having children. He is also the
cause of the conflict: because he is a good man, he chooses to work in a
bad neighborhood.
Internal conflict can also occur when characters’ needs and goals
come into conflict with their flaws. Suppose that when Jack was a
child, he and his mother were homeless. The experience never left
him, making him fear losing his job. His wife wants him to transfer to
a safer job so they can have children, but he is afraid to ask, afraid that
he will be fired and lose his security. Maybe his wife makes him feel
guilty because he grew up homeless and should know better than to
keep working at a job where he might be killed and leave his new
family homeless. The internal conflict is brought on by several
positives (or at least what the character perceives as positives): his
desire for a child, his need to keep his job, and his concern about not
wanting to leave his family homeless.
Just to up the stakes, let’s give poor Jack a drinking problem. His
wife won’t have children now until he also stops drinking. This would
appear to be a conflict between a positive and negative: having
children or drinking. But Jack’s alcoholism is not the internal conflict,
it is a result of it. The conflict of fear and desire motivates his drinking,
which only compounds his problem. But even the drinking makes
sense to him. It’s how he escapes his pain. So once again it is a
positive. It is important that the screenwriter not confuse a character’s
action with the internal conflict. The character’s action is often the
result of the internal conflict, not the conflict itself.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Need vs. Desire)
As John Truby has pointed out, a powerful source of internal conflict
can come from the fact that often what the protagonist consciously
desires may be something quite different from what he subconsciously
needs. A good example of this is As Good as It Gets, where Mel’s
crabby desire to be left alone is in conflict with his deeper, romantic
nature and need for love and human contact. Or say a protagonist
begins with a burning desire to get rich in order to prove himself and
win the affections of a beautiful but materialistic woman (because of
his ghost or initial character problem: that his father died a poor,
unloved man). But what he really needs is to be happy with who he is,
with or without riches, and to marry the unselfish girl next door. His
realization of what he needs will come after he’s foolishly pursued the
false goal of his desire and found it lacking. Along the way he acquires
the self-empowering understanding that his father died unloved
because he was unloving, not because he was poor. Once his illusions
and misleading desires have been stripped away, he is free to find the
true happiness that has been under his nose all along. The result is a
happy ending. This, by the way, is why the guy always ends up with
someone like Doris Day when he’s been distracted all along by
someone like Veronica Lake. Though more beautiful, Veronica
represents the fool’s gold of desire. Doris—pure and virginal—is what
the hero really needs to be happy (again, Hollywood is into moral
tales). Turn this around, have the protagonist never achieve wisdom or
achieve it too late, and you have a darker ending, as in Basic Instinct,
where the hero ends up taking lust over love (clearly the wrong “pick”)
or is destroyed, as in Dangerous Liaisons.
The conflict of need and desire can be one of the most powerful
tools you have in constructing your character, creating new levels of
psychological depth, but it always depends on the story you’re telling.
Sometimes need and desire coincide, as in Rocky, where his desire to
survive a title fight on his feet mirrors his need to prove he’s not just a
bum.
SWF, 30–40, Loves Long Walks in the Park (Character
Traits)
Along with determining your character’s internal conflicts, positive
motivations and self-knowledge issues, you must define a dominant
trait and emotion. Listen to people describe other people. Almost
always they will describe one dominant trait and/or emotion.
“Emily, the wacky pregnant woman in the office.”
“Tybalt, the hothead who’s always picking a fight.”
“Beth, the basket case who can never find her purse.”
“George, the quiet guy who never says good morning.”
“Wanda, the spaz who’s good with numbers.”
When we describe a person it comes naturally to hit upon a dominant
emotion and/or trait. The key for a screenwriter is to find the traits
and emotions that are essential to pushing the story forward.
A dominant character trait is the defining quality that makes this
character unique in your story, and also makes the character
appropriate for his/her role in the screenplay. It can be that the
character is a real problem-solver, silly, clever or cool; it can be
something subtle or even extraordinary. But this trait always
differentiates the character from all the others and defines his/her
purpose. Look at Jaws: each of the characters has a dominant trait.
Quint (Robert Shaw), the old shark chaser, is independent, self-reliant
and obsessed; Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), the academic, is cocky and
self-assured; Brody (Roy Scheider), the sheriff, is a down-to-earth man
of the people forced to take action against the danger posed by the
shark in order to save swimmers from death and his community from
financial ruin—and he’s afraid of water. Each is unique, and perfectly
suited to tell this particular story.
The dominant emotion is the overall mental state of the character.
All characters have a wide range of emotions, but there is usually one
strong feeling that defines each character. A character’s dominant
emotion could be jumpiness, depression, coolness, defensiveness,
rage, etc. In A Time to Kill, Matthew McConnaughy’s defense lawyer is
cool and business-like, while Samuel Jackson’s vengeful father is
impassioned and cunning. In Adaptation, Nicolas Cage plays the dual
roles of Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. Charlie is
tormented and self-doubting, while Donald is cheerful and optimistic;
in the end, when Donald dies, Charlie’s character transforms to
incorporate his brother’s better qualities. About the only dominant
emotion that doesn’t work well in a movie is self-pity. Characters who
indulge in self-pity generally take no action and, as we know, a screen
character who takes no action is boring and undefined. An exception
might be a subplot or comic character whose self-pity affects the
actions of others by negative example—for instance, the long-suffering
Jewish mother or jilted girlfriend who appears in some Woody Allen
films, who drives the protagonist to exasperation. Remember, we’re
talking dominant emotion: George Bailey is surely self-pitying at the
beginning of It’s a Wonderful Life, but is forced to snap out of it and
revert to his dominant emotion, which is love for others.
THE ARC OR THE COVENANT (CHARACTER
ARC VS. CATALYTIC CHARACTER)
Change is a fundamental law in nature. Everything is in motion: the
seasons change, the fields die and are reborn, mountains are washed
away. The same is true with human beings. Lovers come together and
divorce, children become adults, the weak grow strong and the strong
weak. The change or growth in a character during the two-hour course
of a motion picture is called a character arc, which dramatizes the
writer’s thematic attitudes about life’s journey. Emotionally,
intellectually and spiritually, such characters grow, learn and
“become,” and in the process express some truth about human
experience. Lajos Egri says, “There is only one realm in which
characters defy natural laws and remain the same—the realm of bad
writing.” Notwithstanding this pronouncement, not all good
characters, or even good protagonists, have an arc. There is a class of
characters, sometimes known as “traveling angels,” whom we call
“catalytic” characters: they do not change, but their steadfast presence
and the unbending moral covenant they represent changes or affects
the world around them. We’ll examine each in turn.
The Irresistible Force (Change)
A character arc is almost always caused by conflict. People seldom
grow without ripping themselves apart, questioning and reinventing
themselves and their world. For example, the college years are often a
time of tremendous growth because college is a competition. It is a
time full of highly charged circumstances, anxiety, excitement,
deadlines, mental and physical tests and discoveries and sheer
exhaustion. There is seldom time for meditation, reflection or revision.
College is full of conflict, both positive and negative, and when there is
conflict there can be growth; students go in as teenagers, as kids, and
come out (hopefully) as informed adults. Other stressful situations
that can transform people are war, marriage, divorce—in short, many
of the situations you find in the movies, because screen characters also
grow through conflict. When you build a character you must create not
only who the character “is” at the start, but who the character will
“become” after living through the conflict of your story.
Here are a few examples of characters with an arc: In Shine, David
Helfgott starts as a shy, odd man who in the end performs in front of
huge crowds. In Cop Land, Sylvester Stallone starts off as a quiet cop
who turns a blind eye to corruption but in the end proves himself a
good policeman interested in equal justice. Over the course of the
terrific Argentine film, The Secret in Their Eyes, Ricardo Darin’s
Detective Esposito goes from being too intimidated by his own low
social class to confess his love for beautiful, upper-class prosecutor
Irene Hastings, to being at last confident and capable of wooing her. In
Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones begins as a dedicated alien hunter
and in the end wants his memories erased so that he can forget about
the aliens and have a normal life. In Animal House, John Belushi
starts as a drunk fraternity member and ends as a U.S. Senator. (Of
course, whether this is really an arc or just a change of clothes might
be debatable.)
The kind of story you’re telling will determine the extent and speed
of the characters’ arc—their change—and how it occurs. We don’t all
change at the same rate, or to the same degree. Sometimes change
occurs at a moment of great crisis, and other times steady conflict
brings on a gradual transition. Change can be as broad as a pig
becoming a hero in Babe or as subdued as John Lithgow’s hardline
local preacher in Footloose, who, after first condemning dancing,
quietly, privately, ends up slow-dancing with his wife. Sometimes the
smallest change is the most powerful.
At the end of the movie we should be able to look back and see why
and how this character became who he is now. It should all make
sense. Although not always obvious in the beginning, the small seeds
that make the arc possible must be planted early on in the character’s
development, so that by the end the change is not only possible, but
appears to have been inevitable.
The Immovable Object (Conviction)
Characters who do not change—well-written characters, at any rate—
must also appear to have an inevitable quality to their natures. This
comes from the fact that they live by an unshakable covenant, a set of
beliefs or a code of honor that allows them to persist as rocks of
stability in the face of a morally unstable, ever-changing universe.
They are the immovable objects who turn the tide one way or the other
by their presence and conviction. Sometimes these changeless
characters have important secondary roles, such as being allies or
mentors (Yoda, for example) who cause growth in the protagonists
they are assisting or teaching. But often they are the protagonist. Most
of Clint Eastwood’s classic characters—Dirty Harry, the Man With No
Name in the Sergio Leone Westerns, Blondie from The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly—are the same from beginning to end. The same is true
for (among others) many John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Sly
Stallone characters—Rooster Cogburn, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe,
Rambo—as well as characters in the superhero mold such as James
Bond, Superman and Batman. These protagonists cause change in the
world around them and in those with whom they’re in conflict by
preventing their wrongdoing, bringing them to justice, getting them
killed, showing them the error of their ways or by doing all of the
above. These characters are usually loners who rarely age or die
because they are more icons than real people. They may be put
through hell, beaten up or nearly killed, their new lover slaughtered in
front of them, but in the end they survive with their world and world
view intact, thanks to their efforts. This is why, under the grateful gaze
of the townsfolk, the heroic cowboy rides off alone into the sunset;
there’s no way to imagine him settling down.
This is also why these kinds of characters work well in sequels,
because their essential nature remains intact. Some attempts have
been made to take catalytic characters and have them age or change
(such as Philip Marlowe in Poodle Springs, Robin Hood in Robin and
Marian, Peter Pan in Hook or James Bond as a senior citizen in
Casino Royale or showing a soft side in License to Kill), but these were
doomed to failure because they betrayed the essential expectations
and nature of the protagonist. Such characters have a kind of contract
with the audience: we are comfortable because we know who they are,
what they are and what they will and will not do. That’s why we go to
see them, to have a predictable wish-fulfillment. If you break the
contract, you alienate your audience. This is also why characters with
strong arcs usually don’t fare as well the second time around: because
the “contract” with the audience from the previous film, which was the
satisfying completion of their arc, must now be denied or undone in
order for them to have another one.
The unchanging character is a staple of television shows as well,
because they allow a recognizable, ongoing situation or franchise to
continue over tens or hundreds of episodes. The character you know
and love this show or this season isn’t going to change on you; look at
Seinfeld, Perry Mason, The Simpsons, M*A*S*H, The Mentalist,
House—take your pick.
WRITE YOU ARE (BUILDING CHARACTERS)
Building a character is an arduous process. It begins with the first
inkling of an idea, grows through research, exploration of motivations,
and continues unabated to the last draft of the script, as the story
nourishes the characters and as the characters enact the story. But all
this work can still lead to weak characters if they lack believability.
Believability comes only when a character—any character in the
screenplay—comes from the screenwriter’s own makeup. The writer
must invest a part of him or herself in every character in order to make
them real. Their life comes from yours, so you must have a level of
intimacy with your characters. You must recognize them as aspects of
yourself and listen to their voices from within. This is true no matter
how different from you the character might be; as with theme, the
character wouldn’t have occurred to you if there wasn’t something in
you that responded to him or her, positively or negatively. If you’re
honest with yourself, you know that inside you are a hundred different
fantasies or tendencies, not all of which you’d boast about publicly, but
which you can tap to create believable characters. Inside everyone are
memories or fantasies of power, revenge, sexual irresistibility, past
humiliations and so on. This is what we mean by writing from yourself
—not that all your characters should be imitations of the person you
show to the world, but that they should reflect some facet of the rich
cast of inner characters who make up your complete identity. Even if
it’s some part of your personality that appalls you, you must find and
draw on that part of yourself that will bring reality to the character.
One excellent technique for discovering the part of yourself who is
to become a character is to ask the “magic if”: What would I do if I
were this character in this situation? Constantin Stanislavski, the great
Russian director and acting teacher, proposed the “magic if” as the key
to all great characterizations. It works for writers, too; after all,
screenwriters “act” on the page. If you can find the similarities
between your own impulses and those of your characters, you can
make the characters more real, because no matter how large the
difference between you, there is common, human, shared experience.
The shy writer must find within himself the tragic lover in order to
write a Romeo. The passive writer must find the bully within herself in
order to create a wife beater. The headstrong writer must recall his
tentative childhood in order to write about the first day of grade
school. No worthwhile character ever came from a writer whose inner
life was withheld from the character’s creation.
There comes a point in writing a screenplay when the characters
become personalities. Writers often say that after long hours of
struggling to find the right words to put in their characters’ mouths,
the characters begin to speak for themselves. A line of dialogue is
written and the screenwriter wonders where it came from. It is almost
as if someone else took control of the keyboard and wrote the line.
This is the magic moment when the characters come alive. Of course,
it’s still the writer who creates that life, but this is the moment of true
connection with one of those inner voices.
Precisely because of this connection, it is imperative that the writer
should never lose aesthetic distance. The screenwriter creates
characters, but he doesn’t live their lives. One young screenwriter,
while receiving critical notes about his protagonist, became more and
more frustrated until he blurted out, “But that’s not what I would do!”
With this statement he confirmed that he had fallen into a classic
pitfall of beginning screenwriters. On the surface it would seem that
this was good, that a “magic if” had come up and the writer was
appropriately defending his character’s actions. But, in fact, the
problem was that he had created a protagonist who was exactly like
himself, although the character’s world and situation was nothing the
student would ever have experienced himself. He had not connected
with the right parts of his personality to create a separate character,
and therefore the character didn’t work in the situation. The
sympathetic/empathetic emotional rapport between the writer and the
protagonist was so great that the character, for all practical purposes,
had become the writer. When this happens, the screenwriter is no
longer writing characters, but recording diary entries. Diary entries
may be fascinating to the writer, but they will bore the audience.
Screenplays are not diary entries. A producer we know was once
invited to a college writing class; asked what advice she’d give the
young writers, she declared with real passion, “Just remember, no one
gives a damn about your life story.” What she was saying was not that
you shouldn’t write what you know, but you shouldn’t slavishly depend
on it. No one cares about your life story unless it’s really, really
interesting, or unless you can alter the truth until it becomes truly
entertaining. After years of reading bland, pointless “my girlfriend
broke up with me in high school and boy did it hurt” screenplays, this
producer was giving some valuable advice. Use that hurt, but create a
story a wide audience would care to see.
Time and again, young screenwriters create secondary characters
who are more interesting than the main characters. This is because
they are so close to the main characters that they lose their sense of
proportion and balance. They see the story through their protagonist’s
eyes, and since from the writer’s perspective, he or she is normal, the
protagonist will become bland and normal as well. The writer feels
more free to change and develop secondary characters, who are less
like the writer and seen from an outside perspective. Screenwriters
must try to achieve a similar distance from their protagonists, because
judgment is only possible when one regards the characters from a
distancing frame of reference. In short, it is acceptable to imagine
yourself to be the characters in your story, to use the “magic if,” as long
as you never lose perspective about your characters, especially your
protagonist. If you discover that one of your secondary characters—an
ally, say—is not only more interesting but also better carries the
thematic material of the story, you might decide you’ve got the wrong
protagonist in the first place and that this other character is really
whose story you’re telling. In this case you might consider recasting
the story from the point of view of the better character.
However, it should also be noted that being the “most interesting”
character is not what defines a good protagonist. Often, secondary
characters are more interesting because they can be more oddball or
extreme: In Star Wars, Han Solo and Yoda are more interesting than
Luke Skywalker; in Jaws, Robert Shaw’s shark-hunter Quint is more
interesting than Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody; in Inglorious Basterds,
Christoph Waltz’s “Jew Hunter” is more interesting than Melanie
Laurent’s Shoshana (who is actually the protagonist); in The
Terminator, Kyle Reese is more interesting than Sarah Conner; in
Lethal Weapon, Gibson’s Riggs is more interesting than Glover’s
Murtaugh (who is, again, the protagonist). This is not always the case;
in Terminator 2, for instance, Sarah Connor now becomes more
interesting than any of the other characters. What makes a good
protagonist is less how distinctive he is, but instead whether his need
and desire and willingness to engage in the central conflict is the most
compelling, and whether his success or failure has the largest
consequences for the world of the story.
Name That Character
Characters’ names can provide insight—often humorous—into their
nature, and reflect their attitude, class and heritage. A name provides
a first impression that can influence the reader’s attitude about a
character. Name a character Adolph and we will immediately think of
Adolph Hitler; name her Jacqueline and we’ll associate her with
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The Bond movies have great fun with
their character names: Oddjob, Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole,
Goldfinger, Dr. No and so forth. In most cases the associations are
subtler. In Unforgiven, the protagonist is named Will Munny,
reflecting his active nature (he will take action) and the source of his
dilemma and motivation (money), while the antagonist is named Little
Bill, suggesting that he is the protagonist’s flip side (both are named
William) as well as his own connection to money (dollar bill). Jason
Bourne evokes the idea of rebirth, as The Bourne Identity is about his
recovering his memory and his past. Sometimes a name suggests
rugged strength, like Shane or Matt Helm; sometimes it evokes other
qualities: Scarlett O’Hara, Hans Kreuger, Tinkerbell. What you want to
do is find just the right name to evoke your characters’ inner nature in
the same way that your narrative describes their appearance, so make
sure you pick exactly the right handle. Find a unique combination of
words and sounds that are easy to remember and fit the character—or
contrast with him or her, creating an ironic distinction. Look to
popular culture, song titles, people in the news, anything that might
have created a larger social association for a particular and
appropriate name. Phone books and graveyards are all great sources of
inspiration, but baby-name books are even better. One last caution: do
not, ever, give two characters names that are so similar that the reader
gets them confused with each other, like Garry and Barry, or Jim and
Tim, or even Harriet and Hazel. There are enough names out there for
you to create some variety. (The best baby-name book is The Baby
Name Personality Survey by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod,
published by Meadowbrook Press. This book not only lists thousands
of possible character names but identifies the images that are often
associated with those names. Another wonderful baby-naming book is
Proud Heritage: 11,000 Names for Your African-American Baby by
Elza Dinwiddle-Boyd, published by Avon Books.)
Screenplays often have an abundance of characters, too many for a
reader to keep straight. If you name the minor characters, readers tend
to think these characters are important or are going to resurface later
as a twist in the plot. Soon they become confused by having to keep up
with all the names. When readers get confused, they seldom take the
time to go back and reread; they just throw the script in the rejection
pile. Therefore, it’s best to refrain from naming characters who appear
only once or twice. For example, a scene takes place in a mini-mart.
The protagonist is drilling the night shift clerk about a recent murder.
If this is the only scene in which the clerk appears and/or he is not
central to the understanding of the story, you might give the character
a descriptive nickname rather than a real name. Nicknames like
CARROTHEAD or NIGHTSHIFT LOSER will give a good picture of
the clerk while also letting the reader know she won’t have to keep
track of this character later.
On the other hand, it is best not to give minor characters generic
names like COP #1 and COP #2, which can drain the emotional charge
of your story by making the characters seem like items on a laundry
list. Instead, give each minor character a name that will place an image
into the reader’s mind. FAT COP, SMILING COP, BULLDOG COP are
better names for distinguishing such minor characters.
Casting Call
If I were to refer to Karl Childers in Sling Blade or Randall P.
McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, few people would
know who I was talking about, but if I said Billy Bob Thornton in Sling
Blade or Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Jack Nicholson in One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Chinatown, the reference is clear. It is often
the case in Hollywood that the actor makes the role. Therefore, one
trick to creating a realistic character is to write with a specific actor in
mind. Directors often talk of “casting to type.” This means that they
are trying to find the actor who exactly fits the needs of the role.
Casting to type can also work in reverse; when creating a character,
you can “cast” to your mental image of the character. The person you
cast should be close to the age, style and temperament of the character
you’ve created. If the character is soft-spoken and easy going, you
might cast a young Jimmy Stewart in the role. If the character is
manipulative and vindictive you may think of Richard Nixon. If you
are writing the role of a mobster, you might imagine Harvey Keitel
playing the role and/or scene. In the end, whether Harvey Keitel plays
the role is unimportant; the substitution was effective in creating a
vivid image of the character for the writer.
As suggested in the paragraph above about character vs.
characteristics, often the best way to create surprising and unique
characters is to invert this strategy: cast someone “against type.” This
means that instead of modeling your firefighter character after a
ruggedly handsome actor like Brad Pitt, you might cast Jonah Hill or
Zach Braff, and imagine how aspects of their personality might still
work for your story. Instead of casting Kristen Stewart as the vampish
“black widow” in your thriller, you instead cast Kristen Wiig as an
unlikely—and therefore more dangerous—antagonist. James Woods
was the original casting choice for Rambo, not Sylvester Stallone; Tom
Hanks was originally pursued for the roles of the twin writers in
Adaptation before Nicolas Cage was cast; imagine how different and
surprising they would have been. Remember, both Napoleon and
Alexander the Great were little guys; it didn’t stop them from being
great warriors, and in fact, being short might have fueled their fire.
Look beyond the obvious and you might get a much more interesting
set of characters. Of course, there’s also a danger in doing so: look at
how terribly miscast Seth Rogen and Jay Chou were in The Green
Hornet.
In order for either approach to work, the writer must have a vivid
image of an actor’s look and personality, and be able to hear how that
particular actor talks. This technique works not only with stars but
also with real people. Character models are all around us. Every
person is a potential model for a screen character. Life is full of raw
material.
Tall, Dark and Handsome (Stereotypes)
F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “Begin with an individual and you find
that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you
have created—nothing.” The danger of casting to type with actors
familiar from other roles, or even with people you know in only a
superficial way, is that you can end up not with a type, but with a
stereotype. A stereotype is a character that reflects a common
prejudice or attitude towards a certain type of person, without adding
to or improving it. Such characters reiterate generalized clichés and
are tagged with stock conventions. In short, they are the result of lazy
writing. To avoid stereotypes you must ask: how can I make this
character distinctive? How and why is this character different from his
or her type? The difference between a stereotype and a real character
is that between a character you have borrowed without alteration and
one you have re-created. The existing character from another film that
you are using for a model may fulfill the same functions you are after
in your screenplay, but you shouldn’t reproduce exactly his or her
actions or mannerisms. This is plagiarism, not borrowing. Find or
create those elements that can make your character fresh and unlike
any other, including your model.
Know Your Characters
You’ve seen enough real people and movie characters that you can
hear them, see them, imagine them playing the role you are writing,
but that isn’t the same as knowing them. It all goes back to investing
your own emotions and inner self in a character. When you create
characters, you must synthesize different parts of people you have met,
known or studied, with elements of your own nature. It is this that
allows you to really know the character. One student screenwriter
created a rather plain, stereotypical character. When questioned
whether he really knew the character, he answered, “Oh sure, I’m
using my roommate from college.” The problem is that you can live in
the same room with someone for years and not really know them.
Knowing a character is more than understanding their mannerisms,
moods or traits. Knowing a character means that you do not have to
stop and think about what they will do or say in a given circumstance;
there is no moment of doubt about the next action, because the
character is acting as you would. As we’ve discussed, this isn’t to say
that you should turn the character into a copy of your normal self,
doing what you would normally do; rather, you should think of what
you would do if you were that character in that situation, taking into
account the traits, desires and flaws you’ve given him or her.
A PIECE OF SUGAR (THE SHORTHAND OF
DOGS, CATS, CHILDREN AND TUCKING IN
BLANKETS)
One last thing. There are certain techniques and character traits that
screenwriters use to make their characters likable, no matter how
apparently awful. These techniques are so familiar that they verge on
cliché, but they work, and there’s always a way to reinvent them and
find a way to make them feel unique and fresh. Basically, they boil
down to associating your character with innocence.
One technique is to have your character like dogs and/or children
(or come to like them, as in Jurassic Park). Other unusual animals will
do, such as apes, elephants, even iguanas (in Free Willy, you have the
double whammy of a child liking an unusual animal). Even better,
have a dog or other animal like your protagonist, proving that
underneath it all there is something in his/her character worthy of
selfless love.
Another technique is to have the character “nurture” others, caring
for others even when they stand no chance of being thanked. This is
the purpose of that hoary cliché of having the protagonist tuck in
someone’s blanket while they sleep—usually a child, certainly someone
without power, thereby doubling the “nurturing” message that the
protagonist is a good egg. Again, this effect is intensified by flipping it
around: the small child will tuck in the snoring and exhausted brute
warrior who has to look after the tyke, although he professes hating to
do so. This shows that the big guy isn’t such a brute after all, if a little
kid can warm to him. Even better if it’s a sickly child. A classic
example of this appears in As Good as It Gets, where the apparently
loathsome protagonist, Melvin, unaccountably attracts the affection of
a small dog, even after Melvin has dropped him down a trash chute.
Later, Melvin arranges medical care for a sickly child. The same
strategy is used in The Accidental Tourist, where the affections of a
dog and a sick child humanize William Hurt’s icy protagonist.
The reason these techniques work is because dogs and children
usually represent innocence, while nurturing represents altruism or
selfless love. While dogs or children are vulnerable (powerless), they
bestow moral power upon those they care for, or who care or sacrifice
for them.
This does not work with cats. Cats are usually seen as knowing,
sexual and selfish, distinctly not innocent, so a character who likes cats
is usually despicable (see Blofeld in the Bond movies) or at any rate
suspicious. For another example, look at the cat character in Babe. If
the protagonist has a cat, even when it isn’t explicitly evil, it will
usually get him or her into trouble, as with Ripley’s cat in Alien,
Cinderella’s stepmother’s cat Lucifer in Disney’s Cinderella, Mr. Jinx
in Meet the Parents, or Julianne Moore’s cat in Assassins; this may
serve the plot, but does not help to humanize the character. This does
not apply, by the way, to kittens, which are just cute, or big cats such
as lions or tigers, which are generally associated with nobility and
power. Additionally, anyone who owns an evil or aggressive dog is
necessarily a villain, because the subtext is that he/she has corrupted
the innocence of the animal.
A character can’t kick a dog or a child unless he’s a villain or unless
the dog is a corrupted agent of the antagonist, but cats are fair game.
Especially snotty, fluffy ones. Small, yappy dogs are an exception, but
then the character must feel badly and do something to make amends,
like adopt the beasty.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What a Character! One of the first books on screenwriting was The
Photoplay Handbook of Scenario Construction. It was published in
1923, in the time of silent films, a time before the word “screenwriter”
had even been invented. The advice given in this early screenwriting
book still applies:
“Our ultimate purpose, as a photoplaywright, is to arouse the
emotions of the audience—to make them weep, to grip their
hearts with pity, to thrill them, to make them laugh, and fear,
and shed tears of joy. We strive to do these things by means of
the actions of the people we create. We make our characters
struggle and suffer and win and lose in their fight for happiness.
Every act of every character may be regarded as an effect.”
This was true in 1923 and it is still true today. Strong, well-developed
characters who take action make the story. There may be a limited
number of stories out there, but character is inexhaustible.
EXERCISE
Use the following headings to create a character worksheet for leading
and supporting roles. Provide each element fully and with specificity,
in order to create an interesting, well-developed character.
6
Historical Approaches to Structure

From Aristotle to Brutus
In Hollywood, story structure (or plot structure, as it’s sometimes

called) is spoken of with nearly religious reverence by development
executives, script gurus and writing professors. This is because all
good movies depend upon well-structured screenplays. Structure is
the ground plan of the protagonist’s journey, how the different parts of
the screenplay (character, world, action, events, dialogue, theme) fit
together into a unified whole. But figuring out how to organize these
fluid, ever-shifting elements in a strong, coherent fashion is one of the
most daunting challenges facing the writer. The result, as with most
things regarded with awe, is that structure has acquired an aura of
mystery, of hidden truths that may only be perceived by the initiated.
Not surprisingly, many schools of thought have arisen regarding
structure, sects that vigorously expound and defend their particular
oracles. Writing professors and professional screenwriting theorists
like Syd Field, Robert McKee, John Truby and many others have come
up with a wide range of theories, formulas and templates (three-act,
four-act, seven-act paradigms, twelve-step programs, twenty-two–
point story frameworks, numbered plot points), some helpful, some
impossibly complex. Many of these formulas are based on classical
drama, others on psychology or mythology.
STRUCTURE STRICTURES
Let’s look at some of the basics of how Hollywood often structures
movies by using artificial guidelines called formulas. We do this
because every screenwriter must have a working knowledge of at least
some of the major story structure paradigms out there, in part because
some of them contain helpful, even essential truths along with their
arbitrary rules, and in part because their terminology has become a
kind of convenient shorthand when people in “the business” need to
talk about story structure. It’s practically impossible to get through a
story meeting without someone referring to a “plot point,” a “problem
in act two” or the exact nature of the “inciting incident.” You’ll need to
know what they’re talking about and respond in kind, even though,
hopefully, after reading the next few chapters you will have a more
organic understanding of how your screenplay is actually structured.
We’ll start with the basic ideas and people that all students of
screenwriting must know in order to understand how those in
Hollywood view plot. These ideas and people include Joseph
Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, William Wallace Cook’s
Plotto, Georges Polti’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, Lajos
Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, the traditional three-act structure
as represented by Syd Field and other teachers, and plotting using
page numbers. We begin with the first screenwriting guru, Aristotle (if
only he knew. . . ).
ARISTOTLE AND POETICS
All screenwriting students must begin their study of structure with
Aristotle’s Poetics, the first known treatise on how to plot a dramatic
story. Aristotle (384–322 b.c.), a philosopher in ancient Greece,
remains one of the most influential forces in Western thought. His
writings focused primarily on such issues as logic, biology,
metaphysics, ethics and politics, but he also dabbled in the arts and
wrote two treatises on plot. Poetics deals with the structure of tragedy,
while its companion piece examined the structure of comedy;
unfortunately, as it has come down to us, Poetics is incomplete and
fragmented, while the treatise on comedy has been lost altogether
(although a few of its principles are included in the Poetics). Because
Poetics lacks cohesiveness, many feel it was written over a long period
of time or abandoned for some reason. Some suggest that it may be
merely a student’s notes, taken while attending one of Aristotle’s
lectures. Complete or not, it has remained the first authority on the
techniques of dramatic structure and has guided Western drama for
hundreds of years.
With typical Greek rationalism, Aristotle approached dramatic
storytelling as a science. He sought the universal elements that
comprise a dramatic story. Aristotle identified six essential
components of drama:
1. Plot—the arrangement of incidents
2. Character—the personalities
3. Diction—modes of utterance
4. Thought—the ideas or themes behind the story
5. Spectacle—the performance, set, costumes and effects
6. Song—(ancient tragedies were sung and so this section, while
appropriate to them, is largely irrelevant to modern writers, unless
you’re writing an animated feature like The Lion King or an actual
musical like Evita or Chicago).
Aristotle defined plot as an “arrangement of the incidents.” These
incidents, he said, must have “unity.” Unity means that there is a
cohesiveness, a synthesis, in which character, thought, diction, etc.,
come together to bear on a single subject or “spine.” Unity also comes
from the “likelihood” and “necessity” of each incident. In other words,
the incidents must be both probable and essential to the story. This
probability does not come from real life but from the internal logic of
the story. A story, he said, does not slavishly copy nature but rather
imitates it, and so it is not what is being imitated—nature—that
determines the need and order of incidents, but rather the
requirements of the story.
Unity also comes from the cause-and-effect relationship between
incidents. Each incident must be related to the ones preceding or
following it. Stories in which the incidents do not have a cause-and-
effect relationship Aristotle labeled “episodic,” the lowest form of
storytelling, “in which the episodes or acts succeed one another
without probable or necessary sequence.” Episodic storytelling has
been a common problem through the ages for playwrights and
screenwriters alike, especially when they’re attempting to dramatize
long, picaresque novels, biographies or true stories. The problem is
that in a true or picaresque story, the main characters may move from
one incident to another, meeting and leaving other characters who will
never be seen again, and all without any sense of singular motivation,
theme or necessity. People’s lives happen by accident. Drama doesn’t.
While a true story’s incidents may in and of themselves be fascinating,
if they’re connected only because “that’s the way it happened,” or
because the writer hasn’t found a coherent cause-and-effect
relationship to drive the narrative toward some necessary resolution,
then the whole story will fall apart, or as Aristotle would say, it will
lack unity.
An interesting way to put this in perspective is to look at sitcoms
(though Aristotle, of course, didn’t know about them). Each individual
episode is usually a coherent cause-and-effect narrative. But if you
look at the twenty-episode season as a whole, then the sense of unified
storytelling often disintegrates. The season is by definition episodic.
With rare exceptions, each episode is independent, has little relation
to the preceding episode, and does not affect the next. Sitcoms are
written this way so that the episodes can be rerun out of order in off-
season or syndication without affecting viewer pleasure or
understanding. This may be advantageous to the networks but it’s a
disadvantage to “story,” as defined by the overall life of the show,
because the characters are never allowed to learn, grow or change
from one episode to the next.
Aristotle next points out that not only should the incidents have a
cause-and-effect relationship, but they must also have “order and
magnitude.” When the incidents have a proper order and magnitude,
they form a beginning, middle and end. Aristotle has a habit of
pointing out things that seem obvious, but that are, in fact, deceptively
difficult to achieve. “The beginning is that which does not itself follow
anything. . .but after which something naturally is or comes to be. The
end. . .is that which itself naturally follows some other thing. . .but has
nothing following it. The middle is that which follows something, as
some other thing follows it.” Sounds easy enough—but where does a
story truly begin, so that nothing of dramatic importance happens
before that particular moment? How do we know where a whole
course of action truly ends? How do we chart a journey of cause-and-
effect to get inevitably from one incident to another? From this we see
why screenplays (especially action stories) often begin with a
spectacular event to kick things off, toppling the dominoes of the
succeeding scenes in an order of growing magnitude, and ending in a
similarly spectacular fashion, so there’s a clear conclusion to the
domino effect.
Let’s look at the rather simple structure of an ancient Greek
tragedy.
Beginning—The protagonist lives a good life, but he has a great
character flaw. At the end of the beginning, there is a reversal of
fortune. This reversal is not simply a fall from fortune but a fall
brought on by the character’s own flaw.
Middle—The protagonist fights against his change in fortune but
at the end of the middle recognizes his error. He changes from
ignorance to knowledge, but it is too late.
End—In the end there is a catastrophe that brings on great
suffering, which results in catharsis (“soul cleansing”), if not for the
protagonist then for the audience. The world, which had been
thrown into chaos, is restored to order.
Aristotle was attempting to synthesize the parts that make up a Greek
tragedy. When all these parts came together into a unifying structure,
he called it “form.” All good plots have an arrangement, a sequence of
incidences that link together to create a form. This form, Aristotle said,
should guide all other elements: “One should first sketch the general
structure, then fill in the exact occurrences and amplify in the details.”
In keeping with his concern about episodic writing, Aristotle
insisted that a drama must be limited in scope and “easily embraced”
within a single viewing. A plot that imitated an entire life would lack
form: “The infinitely miscellaneous incidents in one man’s life cannot
be reduced to a unity.” Only when we look at one small part of a life
can we find a sequence of incidents that have a cohesive beginning,
middle and end. Unity depends on order. Order must be of a limited
length. Thus, the proper length of a story depends on editing
unimportant incidents that do not form the unity.
For Aristotle, plot defined the story. He wrote that “most important
of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not
of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action. .
.without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without
character.” In other words, since drama can only imitate action—what
happens—then action defines drama, rather than character. It didn’t
matter to Aristotle why a character would be motivated to take a
certain action, just that he took it.
Poetics is the first known guide to formula storytelling. It’s a short
work, only about 15,000 words, but it has had a huge impact since its
rediscovery in the sixteenth century. What made Poetics so powerful
was that Aristotle was a systematic critic. He generally didn’t care if a
particular story was good or bad, but rather questioned how the story
worked. His appraisal was not primarily a value judgment but rather a
technical evaluation. While Aristotle’s “scientific” approach to plot was
immensely perceptive regarding the drama of his own time, it started
us down a path of mechanical formulas that have culminated
thousands of years later with competing plot systems and a variety of
computer programs, all purporting to take the pain out of plot
construction. (For more about the ideas expressed in Aristotle’s
Poetics you might read Backwards & Forwards by David Ball and
published by Southern Illinois University Press.)
PLOTTO AND THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC
SITUATIONS
The next major influence on modern Hollywood screenwriting was
Georges Polti’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, published in 1921.
Inspired by the writings of the eighteenth-century Italian playwright
Carlo Gozzi, Polti claimed there were a limited number of human
emotions and therefore a limited number of story ideas. He asserted
that all plays, novels, short stories—and screenplays, for that matter—
are variations on only thirty-six plots. He included categories such as
“Fatal Imprudence,” “Daring Enterprise” and “Murderous Adultery.”
According to Polti, there are no new ideas. A few years later, in 1928,
William Wallace Cook also attempted to categorize plots in Plotto.
This book was supposed to help the writer construct a plot by stringing
together hundreds of possible “interchangeable clauses.” Plotto lists
hundreds of plot twists and story beats, along with an intricate
crossreferencing system that is difficult to follow at best. These books
mark the next step in attempting to organize plots. Both failed, but
again were spiritual precursors to a growing number of computer
programs now on the market that claim to do the same things.
LAJOS EGRI AND THE ART OF DRAMATIC
WRITING
In the 1940s, Lajos Egri wrote The Art of Dramatic Writing. It is an
essential work, and many of the ideas in this book owe a great debt to
it. Unlike Aristotle, who emphasized plot over character, Egri argued
that plot grows naturally out of premise, character and conflict—in
other words, that it is a result, not a precondition, of the other
elements of drama. This is one of the few books on dramatic writing
that does not have a chapter on story or plot. As a result, many in
Hollywood think it’s a great book but not a useful tool in constructing
a story; it’s the attractive fork in the road they’d like to take, but just
don’t have time to. Most screenwriters are in too great a hurry to find
the “hook,” the exciting one-sentence element that will catch a
producer’s fleeting interest, and then to slap together a formulaic,
plotdriven script before the “heat” of the idea goes cold. Or else they’ve
been given a high-concept assignment by a producer, with no time to
think about anything but nailing together a script to service the
supposedly salable elements, whether these be the hook, or a star with
a scheduling window of opportunity. But these scripts, if made, usually
fail on the screen, because their characters are ill-conceived puppets
going through the motions. It’s hard to care about a puppet. . .unless,
let’s say, it’s on a wonderfully character-driven journey to become a
little boy. Egri’s methods are perhaps better suited to the artistry of
theater, where the primacy of a catchy plot idea is less of a concern,
but they cannot but help to build more involving, charactercentered
screenplays.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL AND THE HERO’S
JOURNEY
The next major player in Hollywood story structure, although it wasn’t
his intention, was anthropologist Joseph Campbell. Campbell
generated unprecedented interest in mythology and storytelling with
his books and his enormously popular series of interviews with Bill
Moyers on PBS. Campbell was not a plot guru. Building on the work of
Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung—who sought to understand the
universal story archetypes and mythic characters that seem to pop up
in varying cultures—Campbell took it a step further by outlining a
basic, ageless pattern of storytelling. His book The Hero with a
Thousand Faces details how the plot structures of most heroic quest
myths were similar no matter the country, culture or century from
which they came. Campbell argues that all storytellers—from the
ancient Greeks to Kenyans to Chinese to Hollywood screenwriters—
follow the same basic formula as they retell these heroic stories, in
spite of their infinite surface variations. This ancient structure involves
the twelve stages of the “Hero’s Journey:”
1. THE ORDINARY WORLD
A myth begins with the hero in his own element.
2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
A problem or challenge is presented that will unsettle the ordinary
world of the protagonist.
3. THE RELUCTANT HERO
The hero balks at the edge of adventure. He faces his fears
concerning the unknown.
4. THE WISE OLD MAN
The hero acquires a mentor, who helps the hero make the right
decision, but the hero must undertake the quest alone.
5. INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD
The hero makes the decision to undertake the adventure and leaves
his own familiar world behind, to enter a special world of problems
and challenges.
6. TEST, ALLIES AND ENEMIES
The hero confronts allies of his opponent, as well as his own
weaknesses, and takes action while dealing with the consequences
of his action.
7. THE INMOST CAVE
The hero enters the place of greatest danger, the world of the
antagonist.
8. THE SUPREME ORDEAL
The dark moment occurs. The hero must face a crucial failure, an
apparent defeat, out of which he will achieve the wisdom or ability
to succeed in the end.
9. SEIZING THE SWORD
The hero gains power. With his new knowledge or greater
capability, he can now defeat the hostile forces of the antagonist.
10. THE ROAD BACK
The hero returns to the ordinary world. There are still dangers and
problems as the antagonist or his allies pursue the hero and try to
prevent his escape.
11. RESURRECTION
The hero is spiritually or literally reborn and purified by his ordeal
as he approaches the threshold of the ordinary world.
12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR
The hero returns to the ordinary world with the treasure that will
heal his world and restore the balance which was lost.
The most famous example of a movie that follows this formula is Star
Wars. Here is how Luke Skywalker’s (the protagonist’s) journey
follows Campbell’s ancient story line.
1. THE ORDINARY WORLD—Luke Skywalker is a bored farmboy
on a distant planet.
2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE—Princess Leia and the rebel forces
who resist the evil Emperor are in trouble. She sends a
holographic request for help to Obi Wan Kenobi, who in turn asks
Luke to join him.
3. THE RELUCTANT HERO—Skywalker refuses to join Obi Wan.
He has too many responsibilities on the farm, but when he goes
home, he finds that his family has been slaughtered by the
Emperor’s storm troopers.
4. THE WISE OLD MAN—A wise mentor, Obi Wan Kenobi,
prepares Luke for the battle ahead. He gives Luke a light saber
that once belonged to Luke’s father, a Jedi knight. He tells Luke of
the dark side of The Force.
5. INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD—Luke decides to leave his
ordinary world and set things right.
6. TEST, ALLIES AND ENEMIES—Luke enters the dangerous
world, meets strange creatures in the “threshold” area of the bar,
joins forces with Han Solo, runs from the Emperor’s storm
troopers and enters the fight, flying off into space to rescue
Princess Leia.
7. THE INMOST CAVE—Luke enters the Death Star, the home and
ultimate weapon of the evil Emperor’s main warrior, Darth Vader.
8. THE SUPREME ORDEAL—Luke, Han Solo and Princess Leia
are trapped in the giant trash crusher of the Death Star; Luke is
sucked under water by a strange creature. They are then saved by
an ally, R2D2.
9. SEIZING THE SWORD—Luke rescues Princess Leia and seizes
the plans of the Death Star.
10. THE ROAD BACK—Luke is pursued by Darth Vader.
11. RESURRECTION—Luke is almost killed by Darth but fights
back and wins. Luke destroys the Death Star.
12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR—Luke is rewarded for all his hard
work. The world is back in balance.
When Hollywood discovered The Hero with a Thousand Faces, many
producers, directors and writers were overjoyed: they had finally
found their plot-structure bible. Now they could plug any idea into this
simple blueprint and come up with a pretty good story. But others
were not so thrilled. Many felt that too many producers, anxious for a
quick fix, saw Campbell’s formula as the only way to structure a
screenplay, no matter what type of story was being told. Campbell’s
structure might work great for Star Wars and other quest stories, but
it offers little insight into stories like ’night Mother, My Dinner with
Andre or Lost in Translation.
For more information on Joseph Campbell’s work we recommend
Chris Vogler’s excellent book The Writer’s Journey. Vogler reworks
Campbell’s twelve-step “Hero’s Journey” paradigm into a model that is
useful to contemporary writers. This book is essential reading, but
Vogler himself (leery of having his analysis misunderstood as another
formula) is the first to warn that these steps may not occur in the same
order as he presents them. Even worse for those seeking the holy grail
of structure, he warns that the “Hero’s Journey” paradigm doesn’t fit
all story types.
THE THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
Most modern screenwriting theorists preach some interpretation or
version of what is known as the “three-act structure.” Inspired by
Aristotle and Campbell, there are several different versions of this
formula out there. We’ll try to present here a version that remains true
to all of them.
“Act One, Act Two and Act Three” is really just a different way of
saying “beginning, middle and end.” Each section involves different
elements:
Act One—The Situation
Act Two—The Complications
Act Three—The Conclusion
If a producer says that your second act is weak, he means the middle of
your story, the complications, needs work. Acts are structural divisions
used to divide a screenplay into workable units, not divisions marked
by an intermission (or indicated in the script). But they have a
concrete reality in the minds of those concerned. (To add to the
confusion, sitcom and hour-length television writers use the word
“act” in the same way as playwrights, as a formal break in the story
marked by an intermission or, in their case, a commercial.)
The three-act system attempts to pinpoint the exact structural
moments in the story where something important occurs. These
moments are called plot points. Plot points are structural reference
points that can take many forms: a character’s realization, a decision, a
twist or turn in events or the climax. Two points are generally thought
of as essential: the point that begins Act Two, and the point that begins
Act Three. To understand the three-act structure, it is necessary to
identify the exact plot point where each act ends and the next begins—
in other words, to identify where the beginning begins, the beginning
ends, the middle begins, the middle ends, the end begins and the end
ends. Confused? Read on; it gets simpler.
Let’s examine the structures of two completely different movies:
The King’s Speech, the biopic for which David Seidler won an Oscar
for Best Screenplay, about Prince Albert the Duke of York trying to
overcome his stuttering, and Rambo: First Blood, the Sylvester
Stallone action-adventure flick of a few years back. The King’s Speech
and First Blood (as unlikely as it may seem) share similar three-act
structures, just as a grand cathedral and a plain boxlike office building
can share the same structural skeleton.
Act One
The following are elements and plot points contained in the beginning:
the opening balance, an opening event, a disturbance, a major
dramatic question, and a decision.
Opening Balance Most screenplays begin with a world in apparent
balance. The lives of the characters have achieved a certain
equilibrium, which must be disturbed if there is to be conflict. First
Blood starts with John Rambo, a Vietnam vet with special guerrilla
training who is now a warrior without a war, unable to identify with
the country he’s worked so hard to defend. He is backpacking through
the great Northwest looking for inner peace, and hoping to find an old
war buddy. The King’s Speech begins with Prince Albert (“Bertie,”
played by Colin Firth) attending the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at
Wembley Stadium with his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter).
Opening Event An opening event is a unique moment in the
characters’ lives. It can be an unusual incident, special occasion or a
crisis. It could be a wedding, a funeral, a homecoming, preparation for
a party or anything that makes this moment a little more special than
the normal humdrum of the characters’ lives. Both First Blood and
The King’s Speech begin with events. In First Blood, John Rambo
discovers that his buddy has died of cancer caused by Agent Orange, a
defoliant used in Vietnam. In The King’s Speech, Bertie struggles to
address the large crowd at the Exhibition. Elizabeth is agonized by
witnessing his difficulty in performing this aspect of his public duties.
The Disturbance The disturbance is a plot point that disrupts the
opening balance and gets the main action rolling. The opposing forces,
protagonists and antagonists, are placed in a situation rich with
possible conflict. In First Blood, after learning of his friend’s death,
John Rambo wanders into a small town. He’s looking for a meal and a
place to bed down for the night when the city’s chief of police (who
represents the country’s indifference to Vietnam vets) lets Rambo
know he’s not welcome. The cop escorts Rambo to the city limits and
tells him to keep walking. The police chief disturbs Rambo’s search for
inner peace. In The King’s Speech, Bertie’s problem with stuttering
leads him to consult a series of upper-class but incompetent speech
therapists, until Elizabeth essentially forces him to visit an
unorthodox, lower-class Australian, Geoffrey Rush’s Lionel Logue,
who practices speech therapy without having had formal training or
accreditation, but who has a reputation for success. Logue insists that
he and Bertie start out on a first-name basis and disregard their class
difference.
Screenwriter/theorist Robert McKee and others refer to this plot
point as the “inciting incident.” It is supposedly the single event that
sets the story in motion. The disturbance or inciting incident,
depending on whose interpretation of the three-act structure you
follow, has been variously identified as the end of the first act, or
perhaps a midway point in the first act. Either way, it is the plot point
at which the protagonist is confronted with the challenge that
eventually will define the story’s spine, its central conflict.
The End of the Beginning (End of Act One) The disturbance has
caused the basic situation to deteriorate. This deterioration continues
until the protagonist takes action. The beginning of a formula
screenplay ends when the protagonist makes a major decision to act, a
decision that results in more conflict. This decision now defines what
the screenplay is about. It states the protagonist’s goal and the core
action of the plot. In First Blood, the end of the beginning occurs when
John starts to walk away from the small town but then stops. He
fought for this country, his friends have died for this country and he
can’t even get a meal. He decides to walk back into the small town and
have dinner. Having dinner may not sound like a “major decision,” but
after the police chief told him not to show his face there, it becomes a
decision (a declaration, if you will) that will lead to great conflicts,
complications and death. In The King’s Speech, Bertie is appalled at
Logue’s irreverent manner and at first refuses to continue treatment
with him. He’s convinced that it’s all hopeless—until he learns he has
no choice, that his father thinks Bertie’s older brother, the Prince of
Wales (who is in line to be king) is morally corrupt. “Who,” he asks,
“will stand between us, the jackboots, and the proletarian abyss—
you?”
The Major Dramatic Question The disturbance and the
protagonist’s decision cause a major dramatic question (sometimes
called an M.D.Q.). This is the “hook” that keeps people in the theater
for two hours because they want to know the answers, or the outcome.
It’s not the overall statement or theme of the screenplay, but a
question that arouses curiosity and suspense. In First Blood, the
M.D.Q. is: “Will John Rambo earn the respect he (and all Vietnam
vets) deserve?” In The King’s Speech, the question is: “Will Prince
Albert accept help from a lower-class Australian and overcome his
stutter in time to take the throne and inspire the English people as
World War II erupts?”
How Long Should Act One Be? If you know what kind of decision
your protagonist makes at the end of the beginning (end of Act One),
then you can also predict how long your beginning will be (this is why
it’s called a formula; decisions are made without the screenwriter
having to think about them). If the protagonist makes a morally
correct decision—“I will fall in love” or “I shall save my father from
alcoholism” or “I must stand up for all Vietnam vets”—then it’s not
necessary to have a long beginning. Rambo makes morally correct
decisions, so the beginning is rather short (in this case, Act One barely
lasts longer than the opening credits). If the protagonist’s decision
lacks moral fiber—“I’ll steal the money” or “I shall leave my family” or
“I will cheat on my fiancé”—then the beginning needs to be long
enough to make the audience feel that, in a similar situation, they too
might make the same decision. In The King’s Speech, Bertie’s difficulty
in accepting Logue’s help, and his self-doubt when confronted with the
possibility of having to be the public voice of the Royal Family, reveal
that his character has not yet matured and so the movie has a long
beginning and a late point of attack, also known as the point of no
return.
The point of attack or point of no return is the moment in the story
in which the main fuse is lit, the clouds of conflict appear and the
primary action of the story clearly declares itself. First Blood has an
early point of attack, when Rambo refuses to be run out of town or
intimidated by the Sheriff. In The King’s Speech, Europe is on the
brink of war and the point of attack could be defined as when Bertie
realizes he must be able to address the nation over the radio. Some
formula writers believe that the point of attack should fall about 10
percent of the way into a screenplay. This is called the 10 percent rule.
Others feel it happens 25 percent of the way in, so that the first and
third acts are roughly equal quarters of the script, with the second act
occupying half the length. The only thing we insist on is that you know
what it is, that it presents the protagonist with an irrevocable and
unavoidable course of action, and that the event or need that defines it
becomes the protagonist’s central motivation.
Act Two
The plot points contained in the middle are: conflicts, crises, obstacles,
complications or reversals; rising action; and the protagonist’s “dark
moment.”
Conflicts, Crises, Obstacles and Complications/Reversals
The middle of the three-act screenplay is made up of the roadblocks
that ensure that the protagonist’s course of action is not clear sailing,
for clear sailing is the death of drama (and comedy). Until the final
climax, there’s always another conflict, crisis, obstacle and/or
complication. In First Blood, John meets stiff resistance as the police
chief has him arrested and tortured. John escapes, but the police chief
calls in the National Guard and their tanks to try to stop him. In The
King’s Speech, Bertie fails terribly at reading a speech his father has
prepared for him, and thinks he’s doomed to failure—until he at last
listens to a recording of his voice that Logue made, having forced
Bertie to recite a passage from Hamlet while listening to Beethoven
through earphones. To his amazement, Bertie learns that he had
recited it perfectly and without a stutter. Then he has to overcome his
consciousness of class and the various burdens he carries from his
childhood that left him feeling inadequate, including other physical
disabilities, the death of his beloved little brother, and being treated
harshly by his parents.
Rising Action In the middle of a screenplay, the world is unstable.
This instability is governed by rising action that makes each conflict,
crisis, obstacle and complication more powerful, more dramatic and
more important than the one before. In other words, the middle of a
screenplay must follow the path of most resistance. There may be
moments of apparent success, but they always lead to an even greater
undoing. The middle of a screenplay is a series of actions that result in
the failure of the protagonist.
The Dark Moment The end of Act Two (end of the middle) occurs
when the hero totally fails, the quest collapses, the protagonist’s
shortcomings have tripped her up and the goal becomes unattainable.
This is the dark moment. It’s the ultimate obstacle—the antagonist has
won and the battle appears to be over. Rambo’s dark moment is a
literal moment of darkness. Pursued by a growing military force, he
takes refuge in an abandoned mine. The National Guard use bazookas
to close the entrance. Rambo is caught. He will surely suffocate. In The
King’s Speech, as his now-deceased father had predicted, Bertie’s older
brother has proven too weak for the throne and abdicated, leaving
Bertie as the new King. He must address the nation—and it’s at this
moment that he discovers that Logue has been treating him without
any formal qualifications. He thinks Logue has betrayed his trust, at
the very moment he needs him most. He’s terrified of being known as
“Mad King George the Stammerer, who let his people down so badly in
their hour of need.”
Act Three
The plot points contained in the end are: enlightenment, climax, and
catharsis.
Enlightenment The beginning of Act Three (the end) is
enlightenment. Enlightenment occurs when the protagonist
understands how to defeat the antagonist. Enlightenment can come in
many forms: the protagonist may join forces with another, there may
be a revelation that sheds new light on the problem or the protagonist,
by falling into an emotional abyss, may now be able to see her error. In
First Blood, enlightenment occurs when John finds an air shaft that
leads to the mountaintop and gains a position of superiority over the
armies below. In The King’s Speech, Bertie becomes so angry with
Logue (who’s casually sitting on the throne in the Cathedral where
Bertie’s about to be crowned) that he loses his stammer: “I have a
voice!” he exclaims—and suddenly realizes that it’s all thanks to
Logue’s help.
A good enlightenment involves several elements. First, it must be
something the protagonist (and audience) could not have understood
before enduring the conflicts and trials of the middle. What this often
means is that the protagonist comes to realize that what she wanted,
or thought she needed, was in fact a false goal; now she understands
what her true need and goal should be. Second, the enlightenment
must be delicately set up earlier in the screenplay. Ancient
playwrights, working within a universe of divine fatalism, used to
depend on the character of a god, lowered from above, to set
everything straight. This is called deus ex machina, which translates as
“god from a machine.” Today, the idea of divinely ordained and
immutable fate doesn’t hold, just as divine—or unbelievably
coincidental—intervention to set things straight doesn’t work. So the
term has come to mean when a writer hasn’t logically set up the
enlightenment or the ending of a screenplay, and has to cheat his way
out. If you’ve ever seen an old melodramatic Western, then you
understand. It’s the dark moment: the wagon train circles, the Indians
attack, the settlers run out of bullets, and then, suddenly, without
anything to indicate that they’ve been alerted, the cavalry arrives. This
is deus ex machina.
Climax Armed with enlightenment, the protagonist is renewed and
ready to defeat the antagonist. The outcome of the story becomes clear
—although there should be enough doubt as to who will win to
maintain suspense—so the pace should increase as the rising action
drives toward climax. The climax, in a formula three-act screenplay, is
usually defined as the moment the antagonist is defeated. The climax
can be a violent, horrible moment as in First Blood, when John finally
shoots the corrupt police chief, or a more profound moment as in The
King’s Speech when, after having taken the throne, Bertie must now
come to grips with the threat of Hitler’s Germany and bravely
addresses the nation with an inspirational speech over the radio. This
pays off his earlier terror and inability to read the prepared speech his
father had given him to practice for reading over the radio.
Catharsis After climax is catharsis. Catharsis is a final purging of the
character’s emotions, restoring the world to balance and hinting at
what the future might bring. There are two requirements of catharsis.
First, it must not linger. Once the climax is over and the antagonist
defeated, the story is essentially over and the audience wants out.
Second, the ending must be consistent with the beginning. Although
the ending may not be predictable at the beginning, by the end, in
retrospect, it must appear to have been inevitable. In The King’s
Speech, the catharsis occurs after the speech, when Bertie’s daughters
tell him how splendid he sounded, and Logue gives him a simple nod
of approval—at which point he goes with his family to the palace’s
viewing balcony and waves to his cheering people, having become the
king they need. In First Blood, Rambo’s former commanding officer
takes him into custody and will make sure he will receive a fair trial for
the trouble he has caused. John feels purged; he has stood up for his
rights, defeated his antagonist and made an important statement
about how we treat our veterans.
The King’s Speech and First Blood, although wildly different, follow
the same three-act formulaic structure. The fundamental elements
(event, disturbance, decision, conflict, crisis, obstacles, complication,
dark moment, enlightenment, climax and catharsis) all occur in the
same order.
The following graph maps the structure of the standard modern
formula (top) and Joseph Campbell’s elements of universal myth
(bottom). Notice the similarities.
Structuring by Numbers
Some modern theorists proclaim that specific moments in the plot
must occur on particular pages. This method of screenwriting is much
like the painting-by-numbers you did as a child. Those who follow this
model insist that the first “act break” must occur roughly half an hour
in, or at the end of 25 to 35 pages. The second act ends by page 85 to
95, and the third by page 115 to 125. As with all the formulas in this
chapter, some Hollywood screenwriters have met with a great deal of
success by following such tight page number formulas, but the
disadvantage is that this rigidity can (and often does) result in
mechanical storytelling. Here is an example of what one of these page
number formulas might look like. (There are several different samples
out there and they don’t all follow the same page count.) This one
assumes that your screenplay will be 115 pages long.
ACT
ONE
THE INGREDIENTS—These pages will ask the central questions: What is
Pages 1–
the ordinary world, who is the protagonist, who is the antagonist, what is
11:
the theme, what does the protagonist want and what does he need?
THE DISTURBANCE—A new opportunity or problem presents itself to
Page 12:
the protagonist.
Pages
THE CRISIS—Causes the protagonist’s life to become unglued.
13–29:
Page 30: THE CATALYST—Something happens to force the protagonist to act or

set a new plan or goal.
ACT
TWO
Pages THE STRUGGLE—At first the new plan is working out, but the stakes get
31–45: higher as the antagonist reacts. The road becomes more difficult.
Page 37: THE REVERSAL—First major plot twist or reversal.
THE POINT OF NO RETURN—Something happens so that the
Page 45:
protagonist cannot return to where he/she was in the beginning.
Pages THE STAKES RISE—Complications and stakes make the goal now almost
46–59: impossible to achieve.
THE LOSS OF HOPE—There is a major setback; at this point, the
Pages
protagonist stops acting on behalf of others or on behalf of what he falsely
60–84:
thinks he needs and starts acting on what he really needs.
THE DARK MOMENT—The protagonist at last knows the true nature of
Pages
the antagonist but, although he now knows the truth, his renewed action
85–89:
again seems doomed to failure.
ACT
THREE
Pages THE SECOND REVERSAL—The protagonist recovers, often through the
90–95: aid of an ally, and suddenly the goal is again possible.
Pages THE FINAL PUSH—The conflict intensifies as the protagonist now has
96–111: the energy or knowledge to defeat the antagonist.
Page
THE FINAL OBSTACLE—The hero achieves the goal.
112:
Pages THE DENOUEMENT—The final catharsis, resolution and look at what the
113–115: protagonist’s new life will be like.
Some page count outlines suggest that a major plot point or twist
should occur every fifteen pages, others say it should be every ten
pages. We may be fortunate because these page count methods of
structuring a screenplay have not yet become so specific that they tell
you whether the particular plot point should happen at the top, bottom
or middle of a given page. All of this leads to the question: Should all
movies follow the exact same formula, right down to the same page
count? If so, can’t computers do the job?
AUTOMATED STORY DEVELOPMENT
For the last few thousand years, technology has played a minor role in
storytelling. Quills, paper, typewriters and computers have slowly
replaced the oral tradition, but until recently they have not played a
role in the building of a story. This is no longer the case. In the last few
years, story creation software has evolved at an amazing pace. Some
programs are designed to simply spark a writer’s creative juices, others
are designed to actually structure a story. Among the many
proliferating programs designed to help screenwriters are:
• Plots Unlimited, which is inspired by William Wallace Cook’s
Plotto.
• Collaborator, which is based on Aristotle’s six elements of drama.
• StoryLine Pro and Blockbuster, which are based on the teachings
of story consultant and script doctor John Truby, who uses a 22-
step plot, a deviation from the basic three-act structure.
• Dramatica, which is derived from a unique story-building theory
called “story mind,” which has a four-act structure and is extremely
complex.
• StoryCraft, which is based on the ideas of Aristotle and Joseph
Campbell.
• StoryWeaver, which is meant to be an intuitive approach based
on Dramatica.
Where will all this formula structuring lead? Recently scientists have
built computers that can structure stories on their own. One example
is Brutus, the joint creation of Selmer Bringsjord of Rennselaer
Polytechnic Institute and David Furuchi of IBM Research. Brutus is a
story computer that pushes the limits of artificial intelligence. Brutus
is coded with a number of plot structures, story tricks and a working
database of literature that allow it to build a basic short story. Brutus,
like some screenwriting theorists, reduces plot/structure to pure
reason and logic. The result is a less-than-inspiring, computer-
generated, formula story, but Brutus is only round one. Computers can
now beat humans at Jeopardy, so how long will it be until they can
construct a better story? The answer is never. Computers lack the
human passion, love, talent and self-awareness that allow for the
interesting, unpredictable structure of a good, human story. The late
great Davey Marlin Jones, playwriting professor at UNLV, said, “A
computer could never write as well as a human—it didn’t have a bus
door slammed in its face this morning.”
FINAL THOUGHTS
Form vs. Formula So which of the story structure gurus are right?
The answer is. . .none of them. Or all of them might be, if their models
or systems help you to organize the morass of shapeless information
with which you begin. Aristotle, Campbell, Cook, Polti, Egri or their
modern counterparts Field, Truby, McKee, Vogler and all the others
have perceptive ideas and helpful suggestions, and all are worth a look.
But the problem remains that a system that works for one story might
not work for another. There’s no easy, paint-by-numbers, onesize-fits-
all formula when it comes to creating a strong, original story, and the
unfortunate reliance on formulaic thinking in Hollywood is largely
responsible for the current lack of structural innovation and the
cookie-cutter quality of so many American studio movies. This is not
to say that standard formulas should not be studied, but no one
formula or theory will answer all your storystructuring questions. The
same is true of the various story design applications: These programs
can be useful if they actually help you get into the writing of your
script, and if the formulas they use are right for your kind of story.
They may not be, and often they become just another form of
procrastination, where the would-be writer gets caught up in fooling
around with the program’s elements and never actually gets to writing
the script. There’s a great moment in The Sopranos where Christopher
(Michael Imperioli) has decided to become a filmmaker and buys
some screenwriting software, then becomes frustrated when it won’t
write his script for him. You know who never had the advantage of
these programs? Shakespeare, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, the Epstein
brothers, Frank Capra. . .you get the point.
It’s interesting to note that few Hollywood screenwriting gurus
have ever sold a movie (even Aristotle never wrote a play, but rather
based his Poetics on existing tragedies such as Sophocles’ Oedipus
Rex). This is because the ability to structure a story and the ability to
analyze the structure of a story are two totally different talents. They
come from different parts of the brain. Plato pointed out in his
Apology that writers are unable to give an exact account of their
process. The same is true with top-notch screenwriters; unlike the
story computer Brutus or screenwriting gurus, good writers seldom
have an analytical understanding of what they do or how they do it.
Instead they have a practical understanding of dramatic techniques,
the basics of several different storytelling methods (like Aristotle,
Campbell and the others), and the ability to use a technique or follow a
formula if it works, or to abandon all formulas if they don’t.
Isn’t there one basic overall guide to help a young writer structure a
movie? Isn’t there one general theory that will show the common
structural elements that all movie plots have? Yes, there is. It’s not a
cold formula, but rather the natural order that comes from characters
and their conflicts. These conflicts organically build in the form of
beats, scenes and scene sequences, the natural building-blocks of a
good story. In the next two chapters we’ll examine how these elements
combine to create a natural, nonformulaic approach to structure.
EXERCISES
1. Try working out your story idea using the three-act formula. Add
one short sentence to each part of the structure.
2. Try working out your idea using Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s

Journey.”
3. Try working out your idea by chaptering and titling each sequence,
with no fewer than seven and no more than sixteen sequences.
7
Power and Conflict

Fighting for the Gun
Looking at dramatic writing empirically, we see that Shakespeare

wrote without acts (the five-act structure you find in his plays was
imposed by editors years after his death). A hundred years ago, plays
commonly had four acts, then three and now most modern plays have
only two or one. TV movies have seven acts, while most television
shows have from two to seven acts. Of course, each school of thought
has ways to prove that, in fact, these various acts are false
subdivisions, and that on a deeper level all drama follows their
particular model. But all you have to do is go to a movie to realize that
movies have no acts at all: we never go to commercial, the curtain
never drops.
In film, each moment flows into the next, each scene builds on the
last, each grouping of related scenes adds up to larger movements
within the story, and finally each larger movement combines with
others to form the story as a whole. Each transition from beat to beat,
scene to scene, sequence to sequence, presents either a success or
setback in the protagonist’s power struggle with the antagonist,
moving either toward eventual success or failure for the protagonist.
There is, of course, a beginning, a middle and an end, but there are no
two or three or twelve or twenty main “plot points” that can reliably be
found (or planned) in every successful film. Every scene must be, in a
sense, a plot point, something in which crucial events and conflict
occur, or that scene does not belong in the script.
This isn’t to say that structure isn’t essential. It is. But it’s not a
matter of specific page numbers, acts, paradigms or numbered plot
points. To demystify it: A screenplay’s structure is simply (a) the plan
for how its story events and conflicts are arranged into a unified,
satisfying journey, and (b) how the different elements of its story (plot,
character, conflict, theme) fit together. The key words are “plan,” “fit”
and “unified.” Once your theme, story, world and characters have been
identified, you must have a plan, the elements must fit properly and
the whole thing must be unified.
So let’s look at what a movie really is: a continuum. And the first
organizing factor in the structure of this continuum—of its screenplay
—is the nature, levels and orchestration of its conflicts. Conflict is at
the core of every screenplay, every scene, every character and every
moment. A screenplay is essentially the history of a particular conflict.
The story begins with the first inkling of conflict and traces it through
a series of peaks as the conflict grows to a climax. Only the final scene,
after climax (catharsis), is allowed to be played without conflict—and
in some films, not even there. In short, as UCLA screenwriting
professor Richard Walter says, “No one wants to watch a movie about
the village of the happy people”—unless something really unhappy is
about to happen to it.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU (POWER
AND CONFLICT)
In essence, conflict is the result of a struggle for power. We all desire
power over our enemies, over our lives, over our destiny. Professor
Howard Suber, also of UCLA, puts it in a nutshell: “All conflict is about
power,” who’s got it, who wants it, who or what helps them get it and
who or what gets in the way. And therefore, so is all drama, whether
tragic or comedic. (Professor Suber’s insights and classroom
discussions about the fundamental nature of power relationships in
drama inform much of this chapter.)
If there is no power struggle, there is no conflict. If there is no
conflict, then there is no story, because everyone has what they want
or is unwilling to try to get it. To this we might add that a power
struggle can also mean aspiring to empowerment. Movies from
Spartacus and Big Night to Rocky to Finding Nemo to Precious are
about characters trying to empower their lives. And of course, in
following their efforts, the cathartic effect empowers the audience. In
human relationships, conflict can be physical or confrontationally
verbal, but more often it takes a subtler form. Some of the most
devastating sequences in Hamlet or Schindler’s List are very quiet, but
boiling with conflict nonetheless.
Let’s examine the nature of conflict and power, their forms, the
mechanics of how they build a story, the techniques screenwriters use
to create them; in short, how conflict and power inform everything
from the overall story to each individual scene and sequence.
The Nature of Story—Conflict and Power
Conflict is a defining characteristic of existence, from the Big Bang
itself to the birth of stars and mountain ranges, from the Darwinian
struggle of predator and prey, species against species, to the difficult
relationships between great nations, parents and children, men and
women, young and old. It includes all races, all regions, religions and
cultures. It is the chaotic cauldron of creation and destruction, its
resolution the foundation of order and balance.
The simplest and most visually gripping form of human conflict is
physical violence, which is the reason so many movies resort to it. If
things are getting slow, a good brawl, gunfight or car chase is a quick
way to liven things up. It’s active, raw and visceral, an obvious power
struggle with an obvious resolution—whoever is stronger/smarter
wins. At its lowest common denominator, the fascination with raw
conflict is exploited by “tough man” contests or exploitative talk
shows, the louder and angrier the better.
And yet, although entertaining to watch in a mindless way, raw or
violent conflict alone won’t make a good movie. As an example, El
Salvador once broke off diplomatic relations with Honduras after
massive riots crippled the World Cup Regional Soccer Finals. The
extreme conflict during the first two games caused the third game to
be played while two thousand police kept control of the fans. On its
own, this was fascinating to watch on the evening news, but it was still
just raw material, meaningless conflict. For it to become meaningful,
the soccer riot would need to be focused on the story of a particular
character or set of characters whose dreams depend, for example, on
winning the game in spite of the most adverse circumstances. Their
victory would be proof of the triumph of civilized human competition
in the face of uncivilized rioting. In other words, it would have to move
from the general turmoil reported on the news to a personal story with
meaning and purpose, a story with which an audience can empathize.
The Mechanics of Conflict and Power
The first steps in building a story are to understand the dynamics of
dramatic conflict, and then to apply them in creating characters and
circumstances that promote a power struggle, which is the source of
conflict. In essence, a power struggle is made up of three elements: a
goal, an obstacle and an inability to compromise.
Movies are not about people who have idyllic lives; they’re about
people whose lives are incomplete and who therefore have needs and
desires, as we all do. But for there to be story, the need or desire
cannot be easily achieved, or the movie will end before it begins:
success is predetermined. There must be a barrier, an obstacle or
opponent (or a series of these) preventing the protagonist from
obtaining what she wants, and finally there must be something that
causes an inability to compromise in the struggle to defeat or
overcome that obstacle or opponent.
This is different from how most real people act. For example,
statistics show that when a woman is involved in an abusive
relationship with a wife beater, most will return to the man a shocking
seven times before they take action to end the relationship. That’s
reality—these women continue to compromise their safety. But reality
of this sort doesn’t make for a good movie, because in a movie—if the
woman is the protagonist—she must take action to end her abusive
situation. When Uma Thurman’s protagonist in Kill Bill gets abused,
she takes action to gain power and end the relationship, rather
definitively (by slicing to pieces everyone responsible).
Compromise for a main character cannot be an option, because it is
the end of conflict. If the protagonist or antagonist is willing and able
to compromise in any way and does, the conflict is over and so is the
story. However, if the protagonist is willing or able to compromise in a
positive way and doesn’t, he will also lose sympathy. The only way to
solve these problems is to eliminate the possibility of compromise
altogether. Story occurs when there can be no mutual agreement,
because the antagonist won’t allow it and/or the protagonist’s desire is
too great. Often the lack of compromise is justified by using an event
(a scene) to show why the protagonist and antagonist cannot find a
middle ground and are irrevocably committed to confronting each
other. The result is a power struggle. It’s a simple equation:
Desire + Obstacle × Lack of Compromise = Conflict
Here are some examples:
1. Desire—She wants money for new textbooks.
2. Obstacle—He wants to balance the school’s budget.
3. Reason Compromise Is Not an Option—The student test scores
are the lowest in the state.
1. Desire—Kim desires the wedding of her dreams.
2. Obstacle—Her mother wants to choose the bridesmaids.
3. Reason Compromise Is Not an Option—Bride magazine will be
there and will offer Kim a job if it goes well.
1. Desire—I must avenge my friend’s death.
2. Obstacle—I do not know who killed him.
3. Reason Compromise Is Not an Option—I have been accused of
the murder.
Notice that the third element is what makes the story possible. The
desire and obstacle may be interesting, but the reason the story exists
is because compromise is not an option.
However, compromise can be used in a subplot as a contrast to, or
a motivating factor for, the main plot. For example, in a subplot of The
Godfather, Sonny and Michael’s sister Connie is married to an abusive
husband; she’ll complain about him, but will not leave him. Her
compromising attitude contrasts with that of Sonny, who beats the guy
up. And when it’s revealed that the husband beat Connie in order to
lure Sonny into an ambush, Michael (the protagonist) has him killed.
There is no compromise allowed, even though the guy is the father of
Michael’s godchild. After he’s been killed, Connie mourns for him, her
attitude of compromise unchanging, but its presence has been the trap
that springs the story.
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
There is a tendency to equate conflict only with destructiveness, but in
fact it is also the basis of creation. In a movie, conflict must result in
growth or new wisdom (what James Joyce called epiphany). A world
out of balance is restored to equilibrium, or at least is more profoundly
understood. Success or failure depends almost by definition on a
power struggle—the sickly patient battles against diseases, the seedling
pushes its way to the surface, the oppressed rise up to correct injustice,
a tyrant crushes the leader of the opposition and imposes servitude on
his country, a serial killer destroys the cop who’s after him, resulting in
a darker understanding of the nature of the world. Conflict with
positive results can be like exercise—when your muscles work hard
against some form of resistance, the result is a lot of sweat, but also a
stronger body. This kind of conflict arises from an attempt to effect
change for the good, although it doesn’t come easily in nature or in
human character. Conflict with negative results can be like a cancer
eating away at a healthy body; it consumes or destroys the good.
The power struggle at the heart of many movies has moral
connotations: there is good power and evil power. Mr. Smith is good,
the corrupt Senators in Washington, D.C., are evil. Silkwood is good,
the nuclear power industry is evil. Little David kills Goliath and Moses
defeats Pharaoh because they have the power of God (good) on their
side, while the power of their enemies is worldly (evil or profane). The
protagonist’s acquisition of good power often comes from acquiring
wisdom without loss of innocence, while the antagonist’s bad power
comes from the darker side of human desires. Spiritual or emotional
enlightenment is positive, while carnal knowledge is negative. Love,
morality and personal convictions are good, while selfishness and
ruthlessness are evil. These polarities imply that at the heart of a story
is a reversal. At the beginning, the world is out of balance because of
the antagonist’s exercise of bad power. When the protagonist
overcomes the antagonist and the power polarity is reversed, good
overcomes evil, the protagonist wins, the antagonist loses and we all
go home happy that the world has such marvelous order. Or the
protagonist loses, and we all end up miserable.
But not all movies are about a struggle between opposing moral
positions, one of which necessitates destruction of the other; conflict
and power reversal do not only apply to good against evil or positive
versus negative. Antagonism can also occur between two good people
or causes; likewise the term “antagonist” does not necessarily imply an
evil element or character. To the ancient Greeks, who invented the
term, the antagonist was simply “the opposing combatant.” There was
no thought of the antagonist being evil, corrupt or immoral. The
antagonist was simply the character or force who stood in the way of
the protagonist’s action. The same still holds true.
For example, in a love story, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets
girl (or in the modern version: girl meets boy, boy is gay, they become
close friends). True, the lovers are in oppositional conflict with each
other and there is a power struggle (often comical) to reach the same
positive goal—love—but it is not a conflict between good and evil,
although the conflict may have moral overtones, such as self-sacrifice
vs. selfishness. The one who is in love is the protagonist, the one who
denies love is the antagonist. Other examples might be dramas or
comedies like Driving Miss Daisy or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind or The Odd Couple, where neither character is “good” or “bad,”
they’re just very different and the differences, combined with their
situation, cause a power struggle and conflict.
Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings ...
Many young screenwriters confuse conflict with emotional situations.
An emotional situation can be a private outpouring of feelings, a
special occasion or a vivid theatrical event. A screenplay can and
should be full of emotional situations, but these must also involve
conflict (or its eventual resolution) if the story is going to sustain itself.
Conflict isn’t inherently present in a scene just because it’s emotional.
Many emotional situations have no conflict. A wedding may be
emotional, but is there conflict if everyone is happy? Is there a desire,
obstacle and lack of compromise (for instance, Hugh Grant’s hilarious
discomfort and hopeless desire to be elsewhere in Four Weddings and
a Funeral)? A retirement party may be full of emotional moments and
surprises, as old friends celebrate the past, but is there conflict? Not
unless someone wants something, someone or something stands in the
way of his obtaining it, and there is no compromise (for instance, a
story in which a man has been forced to retire, and this party is the
scene where he rebels or decides to get even).
The Super Bowl has conflict, but the emotional award ceremony
after it does not. A kiss may be emotional, but it lacks conflict unless
someone doesn’t want the kiss to happen (not necessarily one of the
kissers, either—it could be their parents, as in Romeo and Juliet). Both
of these events, without conflict, would only be appropriate in the
cathartic final scene, where the conflict is resolved.
Or let’s look at an emotional funeral. Everyone is crying. One by
one the mourners get up and remember their dear, departed friend.
We have tremendous misery mixed with fond remembrances. Later, at
the grave, as the sun sets in streaks of blue and pink, a lone bagpipe
blows a sad tune. The scene is very emotional, even visually
compelling, yet in a screenplay it will not be interesting because no
one has a goal, obstacle or a lack of compromise. Yet, if the eulogies
turn to threats and accusations, if one person sees the other as a
barrier or challenge to his goal, if just one of the mourners has an
ulterior motive and someone tries to stop him, if there is a hint that
this funeral is only the lull before the storm, now we have conflict.
Now we have drama. Now we have an interesting scene. In Four
Weddings and a Funeral, the death of a friend forces Hugh Grant’s
character to confront his own reluctance to commit to the woman he
can barely admit to himself he loves; here, the protagonist is in conflict
with himself. The core of a screenplay is conflict, not emotional
moments. Both are needed, both are important, but the emotions must
arise from or cause conflict, until the resolution in which balance is
restored.
THE ORCHESTRATION OF POWER AND
CONFLICT
The first step is to create characters and circumstances that involve or
promise conflict. This means that the screenwriter must orchestrate
(i.e., arrange or change) the conflict between the protagonist and
antagonist so that it seems inevitable—they not only are the best two
opponents for this story, but must seem like the only opponents
possible. The second step is to arrange the types of conflict into a
progressively rising and compounding series of power struggles as
your scenes and sequences develop. Fundamentally, it is the
orchestration of this progressively complex power struggle into
sequences of rising action that defines the conflict and shapes the
structure of the screenplay.
The David and Goliath Factor
The protagonist always starts from a position of disadvantage (less
power). At the beginning, your protagonist must be or appear to be
weaker than the antagonist. Both characters must have deep desires
and strong justifications, but if your protagonist starts out stronger
than your antagonist, your story will be boring because it is essentially
over before it begins. The resolution can only go one way; your
protagonist will win because he or she has the power to do so from the
get-go. The antagonist must have so much power that your
protagonist’s chances for success are always in doubt until the climax.
If your story is weak or boring, the problem can almost always be
traced to a weak antagonist or a too-powerful protagonist.
No matter how strong the protagonist, the antagonist must be
stronger in some way, have some crucial power that could spell defeat
for his opponent. This is why Superman needs kryptonite; without it,
the antagonist would have no chance. It is also why someone like
James Bond is always up against an antagonist with such enormous
intellectual, economic and military capabilities that he threatens to
control or destroy the world. Only someone like that could put
someone like James Bond at a disadvantage. But as with James Bond,
each protagonist must have the raw material to learn or acquire the
specific power he needs to overcome each specific adversary, which is
why he will be the right protagonist for this particular conflict.
Circles of Influence
The world and the characters in a movie can be seen as going from the
most personal to the most impersonal. Howard Suber illustrates these
levels as concentric circles, with the individual at the center and
society as the largest, outermost circle. These are the levels where
different kinds of conflict originate.
The Individual This is the person with whom we identify, the
protagonist. (Even in buddy movies, usually there is one person who is
more important.) Think of a soldier in Vietnam, as in Platoon.
The Family or Team This group is composed of people who inhabit
the protagonist’s home turf and its small constellation of personal
friends or relatives. Family may be there at the start, or if the
protagonist is a drifter, he’ll acquire them early on. The family or team
forms a unit that supports the protagonist; it may perhaps initially
oppose what he wants to do—one kind of conflict—though the
protagonist will win the family over in the end. Allies and mentors
sometimes appear here. Think of the soldier’s best buddies in the
platoon, along with the good sergeant who offers mentoring wisdom.
The Community This group is a little less personal, but it comprises
the protagonist’s immediate world, where everyone seems to be on the
same side. Think of the soldier’s platoon as a whole.
The Society In the world of the story, society is impersonal. It is hard
and cruel, caring nothing for the individual, and is ruled by powerful
people who have been corrupted by their power. It is this society that
defines the world in which and against which the protagonist acts.
In this case, think of the society as the corrupt military and the
Vietnam War as the world. The evil sergeant is our antagonist because,
although part of the community of the soldier’s platoon, he embodies
the soulless evil of war itself. And he kills the good sergeant, a member
of his own community, the mentor with whom the protagonist
identifies.
The Intimate Enemy
Often, the conflict is orchestrated so that protagonist and antagonist
share more similarities than differences; they are intimate enemies.
Even if the antagonist often comes from the outermost circle of the
protagonist’s experience (from the impersonal society) he often,
paradoxically, will have originally come from the protagonist’s past or
inner circles of team or community. Because the protagonist and
antagonist are similar and perhaps have shared experiences, they
become more inevitable as adversaries. In fact, part of the antagonist’s
superior power position at the beginning may come precisely from the
fact that he knows the protagonist well enough to use his weaknesses.
In Crimson Tide, for instance, the antagonist is the captain of the sub,
and we are told he is “one of the three most powerful men” on the
planet. The protagonist is his lieutenant—in fact, he chose the
protagonist to accompany him on this mission—and so they are of the
same world and appear to share the same community. But the
antagonist is again part of the “society” of war, while the protagonist is
introduced as part of the “team” of friends and family, only to have to
make a choice to stand against his former patron. The same situation
happens in the first Mission: Impossible movie, in Avatar, and many
other examples.
You and I Are Not So Different, Mr. Bond…
Intimacy between your protagonist and antagonist will help you
ensure that they both want or need the same thing. Both want love.
Both want the Maltese Falcon. Both want the Grail. Both want to win
the race. Both want the bomb, one to use it, one to stop him from
using it. Both have become, at the end, almost equally powerful, with
the protagonist winning (if he does) because he has the power of virtue
on his side. This derives from the fact that the best antagonist is the
dark doppelgänger, the shadow or mirror image of the protagonist—
that’s why they’re inevitably drawn into a fundamental and personal
conflict with one another (it’s also why the antagonist is often the
protagonist’s own inner self—he’s his own worst enemy). It’s also why,
incidentally, so many action movies have a final battle where the
villain says, “I know you, you’re the same as I am,” and the hero says,
“I’m nothing like you.” With that, the hero kills the villain—his dark
alter ego. Alternately, in the case of a tragedy, the protagonist loses
because he is unable to overcome his internal obstacles, which fatally
disempower him in his struggle with the antagonist.
The Ebb and Flow of Conflict and Power
Most stories combine more than one type of power struggle. Usually
the screenplay adds in and orchestrates different levels of conflict over
the course of the action in order to build a progressively more
involving, multilayered story. Sometimes a different kind of conflict
will be introduced, sometimes the same kind in a different context.
This addition and progression is an important factor in story
construction. As more types of conflict—more obstacles—are added,
the overall intensity and complexity of the protagonist’s struggle
increases, until they are progressively overcome and finally eliminated
by the protagonist in the climactic victory (in the case of a comedic
ending) or until they relentlessly combine and compound to crush the
protagonist (in a tragic ending).
TYPES OF STORY CONFLICT
There are essentially two categories of conflict: external and internal.
External conflict is antagonist-driven or situation-driven, while
internal conflict deals with the protagonist’s own character flaw, ghost
or personal dilemma. External conflict falls into four general groups:
character vs. character, character vs. society, character vs. nature and
character vs. fate, while internal conflict involves character vs. self.
Character vs. Character
Simply put, in this type of conflict two characters want something and
believe only one can have it, or one character has something (or is
about to have it) and another wants to get it from her (or prevent her
from getting it). The protagonist is the one the audience wants to
succeed in the struggle, while the antagonist is the one the audience
wishes to fail. Often this interpersonal conflict involves a good
protagonist and an evil antagonist, but as we’ve seen, this is not always
the case. Almost every Hollywood movie has this kind of conflict, and
it’s worth noting that most love stories use character vs. character
conflicts.
Character vs. Society
The old phrase “You can’t fight City Hall” expresses our sense of
powerlessness as individuals against the impersonal might of society.
When an individual decides to challenge society against all odds, it
creates conflict. The protagonist faces the obstacle of organizational
opposition, and in a happy ending proves the theme that an individual
can make a difference. In an unhappy ending, the protagonist may be
crushed for his efforts, proving a darker theme that one person cannot
defeat the system. “Society” can mean many things: another
government, our government, the military, the IRS, the CIA, the Nazis,
aliens from outer space—in short, “them,” any of the huge, impersonal
forces that can control, threaten or ruin “us,” our lives or communities.
In order for character vs. society stories to work, society—the
antagonist—must be given a face, a character or group that personifies
the faceless threat. There are plays, such as Waiting for Godot or
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, where the faceless universe
remains a mysterious and irresistible force, but these are rare even in
theater, and even more rare in good films. In films, we want to see the
antagonist one way or another in order to emotionally understand its
presence and threat. This antagonist represents all of society’s dreaded
power and can bring all of its resources to bear against the singular
protagonist. Dead Poet’s Society, All the President’s Men, Silkwood,
Three Days of the Condor, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Gallipoli are all examples of stories in
which the main conflict focuses on character vs. society.
Character vs. Nature
This kind of story traps the protagonist in a battle with the
environment. The geography or natural disasters become the obstacle
(antagonist) as the protagonist tries to make it from point A to point B,
to safety. As with character vs. society conflicts, the physical
environment can be enormously powerful, impersonal and
threatening. It creates a test of the protagonist’s courage and abilities,
but the question of whether a human being can succeed against the
irrational forces of nature is seldom enough to sustain an entire movie.
This problem is often addressed by having the environmental threat
motivate character vs. character conflicts among a group who must
make the journey together. The source of this conflict may in fact be
the hubris of the one or more characters who got everyone into such a
dangerous spot in the first place. (Most mountain climbing or
dangerous-trek stories involve this conflict.) Alive, White Squall,
Jurassic Park, Into Thin Air, Volcano, Twister, Titanic and The
Poseidon Adventure, 127 Hours, even 2012, all include character vs.
nature conflict.
Character vs. Fate
To the ancient Greeks, Fate was a real force in the world, and most
classical tragedies fall into this model. For instance, Oedipus was fated
to kill his father and marry his mother. Even though his parents heard
this prophecy and left him to die as an infant, he survived and
unwittingly fulfilled it. There was nothing he or they could do about it,
try as they might. Drama arises when humans, seeking to express their
individuality and free will, come into conflict with the preordained
plans of the gods. With the advent of realism and the notion that
people create their own destinies, writers have become less concerned
with fate, real or imagined. Hollywood has made a few movies with
old-fashioned character vs. fate conflicts, but they are almost always
based on ancient stories (like Jason and the Argonauts and the Steve
Reeves Hercules films) and have plenty of other forms of conflict to
sustain the story. Modern writers have replaced fate with other innate
limitations: the characters’ own fears and the limitations imposed by
their sex or race or age or the constraints of the world in which they’ve
grown up. An example would be Norma Rae, also a character vs.
society story, in which Sally Field’s character not only fights the male-
dominated factory management but also her own quiet, shy nature
and her lowly place in life in order to unionize a factory. In American
Graffiti, the teenagers struggle with the limitations and low
expectations imposed upon them by small town life. In the end, some
succeed in overcoming their fate, while others give in to it. Unlike the
ancient Greek tragedies, in modern movies fate is ultimately
determined not by the gods, but by the protagonist’s actions.
The Last Picture Show, The Adjustment Bureau, Bonnie and Clyde
and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid all have character vs. fate
conflict.
Character vs. Self
Internal conflict—character vs. self—involves a character’s struggle
with an inner flaw (like fear, alcoholism, mental illness), a moral doubt
(should I or shouldn’t I?) or a psychic wound (such as responsibility
for the death of a loved one). Internal conflict is present in almost all
good films; the protagonist will start with some fear or failure of
character that she must overcome in order to face the larger, external
conflict presented by an antagonist. But, occasionally, a story deals
primarily, if not exclusively, with this kind of internal antagonist, as
the character grapples with an aspect of his or her own self. These
internal conflicts, agonizing decisions, misgivings or self-hatred often
result in a moral tale. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an obvious example,
in which two sides of a man’s character are physically separated into
protagonist and antagonist. But, more often, the character’s internal
struggle with self is more subtle. In Days of Wine and Roses, the
protagonist struggles with his drinking; in How to Make an American
Quilt, she wrestles with her own doubts about love and marriage; in
Death of a Salesman, he struggles to overcome his sense of being a
failure; in Charly and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he is at
war with the deterioration of his own mind. Finding Nemo is about a
father overcoming his own agoraphobic fears in order to find his son.
An internal power struggle can also happen if the character is facing a
difficult moral dilemma. For example, suppose a soldier must choose
between staying with the pregnant wife he loves or answering his
country’s call to duty; it’s not clear at all whether love or duty is the
right choice.
In a character vs. self story, the conflict is not on the surface and so
can be harder to demonstrate in a filmic way. (Movies are pictures,
and pictures can’t always show what someone is thinking.) In theater,
a character like Hamlet or Willie Loman (Death of a Salesman) can
express their internal struggle through long soliloquies or monologues,
but film has little patience for this. The conflict can be externalized by
creating additional characters to reflect the inner conflict. In the
delightful Crossing Delancey, a New York bookstore manager must
come to understand her contradictory feelings about men and
marriage. Her internal struggle is externalized by having her
encounter a nutty singer in a deli who sings about love, having her
grandmother harangue her, and having her date two men who couldn’t
be more different, the pickle salesman who represents the core
decency of her nature, and the egocentric poet who represents her own
petty intellectual ambitions and pretensions. Confronting the internal
antagonist means confronting the protagonist’s own demons, and in
doing so, the protagonist either manages to overcome them or, as in
Leaving Las Vegas, may be overcome by them. (For more on internal
conflict, see Chapter 5.)
How Conflicts Combine
Action and adventure movies present conflict in its clearest, most
visceral form—character vs. character violence—yet they can also be
about internal and other forms of conflict. In Cliffhanger, Stallone’s
mountain-climbing protagonist Gabe is disempowered by the self-
doubts and self-hatred from having failed to save the life of his best
friend’s lover (character vs. self). That best friend now hates him
(character vs. character) and they must join up to rescue survivors of a
plane crash. The survivors are high-tech thieves and killers, and while
Gabe quickly escapes from them (another character vs. character
level), his best friend does not, and his life now depends on Gabe. The
antagonist has great power: intelligence, absolute ruthlessness and a
team of trained assassins brought from the outside world (character
vs. society). Gabe, alone on the snowy mountain, stripped even of
protective clothing (character vs. nature), must somehow save his
friend and defeat this antagonist. He is the perfect protagonist for this
challenge because of his skills as a mountain-climber and the ghost he
must put to rest. As he uses his knowledge of the mountains to his own
advantage, he overcomes his fears, and is further empowered by the
love and assistance of an ally, his girlfriend. Conversely, as the
antagonist loses members of his team and becomes ensnared by the
protagonist’s superior knowledge of the mountains, the antagonist’s
power level progressively falls until, by the final showdown (climax),
he is overcome.
In Star Wars, the idea of conflict as a moral power struggle is
explicit: Darth Vader represents the dark side of “the Force,” and
therefore has negative power over the galaxy. The protagonist (Luke)
starts disempowered: alone, without knowledge, without the power of
The Force, but compelled to acquire it if he is to succeed. Helping him
are mentors and allies. (There is also character vs. character conflict
with these allies—Obi Wan, Princess Leia and Han Solo. These
conflicts do not involve good vs. evil, but rather depression vs.
encouragement, the desire to take action vs. obstinacy, greed vs.
altruism.) Hindering Luke are adversaries in league with the
antagonist (character vs. society) and/or Luke’s own fears and
limitations (character vs. self). It is only when Luke learns to channel
the power of the good side of The Force and accept the help of allies
and mentors that he wins: the power balance shifts from antagonist to
protagonist as the story develops. When Luke is strong enough to
overcome the obstacles that Darth Vader, the antagonist, represents, it
is both a personal victory (character vs. character) and a victory over
the forces of evil (character vs. society).
Clear conflict levels (different kinds of power struggle) are not
limited to action films, however. They inform the structure of any good
film. In The Verdict, Paul Newman’s character is an underdog,
alcoholic failure (character vs. self) who must fight virtually alone
against an opponent referred to as “The Prince of Darkness,” an
unbeatable lawyer (character vs. character) with nearly infinite
resources and a mighty law firm to back him. The antagonist ironically
represents the institution of the Church (character vs. society), which
has forgotten its values. In order to win, Paul Newman’s lowly attorney
must give up the vice of drinking in order to gain power, and overcome
the obstacles such as lust that his opponent provides (character vs.
self/character vs. character), as well as his own inclination to give in to
the cardinal sin of despair (character vs. self). He gains the power of
goodness by appealing to the innocent decency of the ordinary people
on the jury, rather than the corrupted, institutional power of the judge
(character vs. society).
The Piano, hardly a traditional Hollywood film, is set in the
nineteenth century. It is the story of Ada, a mute, disempowered
Scottish widow (character vs. self) who travels with her small daughter
to New Zealand as a mail-order bride for a wealthy, respectable farmer
she’s never met. She also brings her prized piano; her music is her only
way to express herself and provides a source of internal power.
However, when the farmer arrives at the wild beach where she’s been
left, he refuses to bring the piano along (character vs. character) on the
arduous journey to his home (character vs. nature). This takes away
her “voice,” a disempowering setback. It falls to an earthy, tattooed
fellow who is more sexually uninhibited and in tune with things native
to rescue the piano (power restored by another). He eventually
seduces her by offering to “sell” it to her a few keys at a time in
exchange for lessons. At first Ada resists the arrangement, resentful of
having to buy back something that is already hers (character vs. self,
character vs. character), but the exchanges quickly become lessons in
erotic empowerment for her. Her husband tries to lock Ada in their
house (a disempowering setback), but she regains power and achieves
victory by escaping to the arms of her natural man.
Since the primary antagonist in each case is external, the
protagonist’s internal handicaps of fear, alcoholism, personal
insecurity or resentment can be considered structurally as allies of the
antagonist, who uses them against the protagonist. Defeating these
internal opponents helps to disempower the antagonist.
The internal flaws or wounds also serve to engage our empathy for
the protagonists by giving them personal vulnerabilities to which we
can relate. By contrast, in the unsuccessful Christmas movie Jingle All
the Way, an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie you probably never heard
of, his character does not engage us. He comes into conflict with the
postman (character vs. character), crowds at shopping centers
(character vs. society) and winter (character vs. nature) in order to
find the perfect gift—but there is no internal (character vs. self)
conflict. Arnold might be mad at himself for not getting the gift earlier,
but he has no doubt that he should get the gift and get it now. He has
no moral debate, no internal conflict within his own psychological
makeup.
It’s not just that it’s a comedy; successful comedies like Annie Hall,
Groundhog Day, There’s Something About Mary, Dodgeball or City
Slickers have protagonists in hilarious conflict with themselves, as well
as with others and their environments. There are some very successful
comedies that do not involve character vs. self, such as the Pink
Panther, Dude, Where’s My Car? and Ace Ventura films, but in these
cases the protagonists and their actions are so extreme and absurdly in
conflict with everything around them that there is more than enough
to generate humor. In Jingle All the Way, the protagonist is shown as
just a regular guy, so without internal conflict he’s just a regular bore.
All of the above examples are structurally “comedies” not because
they’re all funny, but because the protagonist succeeds. Most
American films end this way, but many foreign films and a few of the
best American films do not, and follow a tragic model. In the case of a
“tragedy,” the power shift is reversed: a protagonist with some power
faces adversaries interior or exterior, and ultimately is left powerless.
Sometimes in a tragedy someone powerless will acquire power, be
blind to what it means, and then lose it again, as in the Godfather
series. In this case, Michael, the protagonist, actually has the power of
innocence at the beginning but abandons it in favor of the corrupt
power of “the family.” The protagonist may also lose what it was he
wanted the power for—love, happiness, belonging—as in the case of
King Lear. In tragic stories, the protagonist’s internal failing is usually
a moral vice, such as pride or vanity, which is so embedded in the
protagonist’s character that it cannot be overcome, and this moral vice
proves the character’s undoing. It goes back to the ancient Greek
notion of every great protagonist having a “fatal flaw,” a hamartia that
is more precisely translated as a crucial blind spot in their nature that
prevents them from overcoming their Fate. Such characters are at war
with themselves, unable to see the truth that is destroying them, and
so their better instincts are defeated by the stronger, darker forces
within their own psyches. In these cases, the hamartia is the primary
antagonist, and the story becomes a conflict of character vs. self.
Take, for example, the brilliant Australian film Gallipoli. Here,
society—represented by the murderous arrogance and institutional
stupidity of the British military—defeats the protagonist, a soldier
whose efforts to stop an order to send his unit and his best friend into
certain death comes too late. The soldier is athletic, cocky and has an
empowering friendship—his competitor, the only boy who can outrun
him—but the overwhelming might and stupidity of the British military
and the limitations of his own abilities combine to defeat him. This is a
modern tragedy, in which the impersonal forces of war are too great
for our protagonist to overcome. His own earlier arrogance (fatal flaw,
character vs. self) about his athleticism comes back to haunt him when
he cannot run quickly enough to save those he loves.
Upping the Stakes
In every struggle for power there is something to lose. When a
screenwriter “ups the stakes” she is making the possible failure and its
consequences as great as the story can handle. This can be taken to
extremes, as in Star Wars where the entire galaxy is at stake, or it can
mean a small loss that clearly implies greater repercussions. For
example, the old sitcom The Wonder Years was full of power struggles
that, if forfeited, implied a major loss that would affect the boy’s
relationships, friendships and loves for the rest of his life. The conflict
must involve stakes that are high enough that an audience will care
whether or not it is resolved. This is a huge problem for many first-
time screenwriters: they make the stakes so low, so commonplace or
negligible that they cannot generate enough interest to carry the story.
The Stakes Upping the Stakes
The head of a small Savings and
Loan is under great financial
If he hadn’t lived (if he kills himself) not only would his
pressure. This will ruin his
family have been ruined, but the entire town and all its
family. He is going to kill
people would have been ruined by an evil banker.
himself. He wishes that he had
never lived.
The daughter was injured and her friend killed in the same
An accident. A horse is badly
accident. The daughter has developed deep psychological
injured by a logging truck. A
scars that will not heal if the horse does not recover. The
woman takes the animal to a
mother falls in love with the horse whisperer and must
“horse whisperer” to be healed.
choose between her family and the man of her dreams.
When a big city detective
discovers that there are corrupt An Amish boy witnesses the murder and must be
murderers running the police protected. The detective falls in love with the boy’s Amish
department, he sets out to stop mother. All of them now face death.
them or die trying.
The stakes in a film work when the characters and premise contain
enough potential conflict to justify them and when the conflict is
orchestrated with progressive levels of complexity and intensity.
The Trap
The trap is the way you ensure the impossibility of compromise.
Publisher’s Weekly once released a list of children’s book titles that
were rejected. One of the titles was The Little Train that Could but
Chose Not To. Inherent in this title is the reason it was rejected. The
story lacked a “trap” to force the essential power struggle. In other
words, the premise did not contain potential for conflict, because the
protagonist was not motivated to engage in any; he was willing to
compromise. Once the antagonist is in a position of power over the
protagonist, once the protagonist is even aware of the antagonist
(internal or external), they must be put on a collision course. This is
set up with a trap: a situation, environment, time lock (an unavoidable
deadline) or character trait that makes it impossible for the
protagonist and antagonist to leave or back down to avoid conflict.
They must act.
Often the trap is implied in the title. In Jurassic Park, the scientist
physically cannot escape from an island full of cloned dinosaurs,
although he might like to. In Not Without My Daughter, Sally Field’s
character cannot leave Iran (leave the conflict) until she rescues her
daughter—not because it isn’t physically possible, but because she is
trapped by her love and moral responsibilities. The most famous
example of a title expressing the trap is High Noon. In this movie, the
trap is time: the bad men are arriving on the noon train and the sheriff
is driven by his own moral code to confront them. Every good
dramatic story has a trap. In the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex,
the city of Thebes is racked by plagues, forcing the king to act now to
find its cause and end it. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora must act
before her husband discovers the forgery, or face disgrace. In Walt
Disney’s Bambi, there’s the fire, in Alive there’s the threat of
starvation, in Juno and Young Adult there’s the impending birth of a
child. The trap is an event, situation, time lock or character trait that
forces a character to stand and take action.
Motivation
The ultimate trap is character. Powerful conflicts grow out of
characters who have strong motivations and are not willing to
compromise. Often, beginning screenwriters arbitrarily put their
characters in direct opposition to each other without creating a reason.
But coldly manipulating the characters into opposite corners of a
boxing ring means that you are puppeteering them into conflict rather
than generating the conflict out of deep motivations and needs. Say
you’re writing about a young daughter who wants to marry the boy she
loves; she’s our protagonist and it’s a match made in heaven. A
simplistic way to create conflict would be to turn the girl’s father into
an evil, power-hungry guardian who wants to control and perhaps
destroy his daughter’s life. And she just loves the boy because she
does. Juliet in this mold would have been kept from Romeo because of
simple, controlling selfishness by her father, and she would have no
idea why she was in love with Romeo. It’s the same as in old,
programmed Westerns where the pure, honorable homesteader fights
off the wicked land baron whose soul is as dark as midnight. This form
of conflict descends directly from the Miracle and Mystery Plays of the
Middle Ages, in which pure good faced pure evil. It’s true that great
conflict can be drawn this way, but a more satisfying conflict comes
when two opposing characters both see themselves, their goals and
desires as righteous, honorable and worthy of the good fight (whether
they are or not is another question). This is how Shakespeare,
although coming out of the Miracle and Mystery Play tradition,
developed some of the elements even plays where it’s not so obvious.
For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s father is a good man, trying
to do the best for her within the confines of his prejudices and social
constraints. Romeo has won Juliet over with his declarations of
selfless passion and his claims that he is her soulmate. Her father’s
angry insistence that she marry the man of his choice rather than hers
leads to her death, but this fact is not a reflection of his evil nature, but
rather of his very human nature. The fact that she chooses Romeo
reflects her trap: she cannot deny her own passion. Now instead of
good vs. evil, Shakespeare has the most powerful form of conflict of
all: good vs. good.
Good writers create powerful motivations that cause their
characters to act, and draw them inevitably into opposition. The
characters oppose each other not because the writer forces them to,
but because the characters both desperately want the same thing or
want to prevent each other from achieving their goals. They are not
manipulated into conflict. Rather, because of the way the writer has
created their backstory, orchestrated their needs and desires and
motivated their conflicts, they simply cannot avoid it. The more
complex your characters’ motivations, the more interesting they and
the journey of your story will be.
REVIEW
1. Protagonist—He, she or it must be in a weakened, inferior and
threatened position at the beginning of the screenplay as a result
of some internal failing or ghost. But the protagonist must also be
capable of generating or eventually acquiring the power to over-
come the obstacles presented by the antagonist.
2. Antagonist—He, she or it must not be weak or your conflict will
be weak. The antagonist must be in a position of power from the
start and unwilling to surrender power easily.
3. Motivation—There must be a strong reason(s) behind the
characters’ desire(s) and a definite need that must be fulfilled.
4. Compromise—Your protagonist and antagonist must be trapped
in a situation in which there is no possibility of mutual agreement.
5. Obstacles—There must be a sufficient number of obstacles to
thwart the protagonist, and they must grow in intensity.
6. Emotion vs. Conflict—The story must be built on one or more of
the basic conflicts, not just on a string of emotional moments.
Other Aspects of Conflict (Conflict and Scene)
Every scene up to the resolution must contain conflict, immediate or
imminent, which is related to the action or theme of the overall story.
If the scene doesn’t contain immediate conflict, there must be implied
conflict waiting around the next bend. This threat can be used to
charge an entire movie or a single scene with suspense. Let’s look at a
problem scene from a student screenplay about life on the home front
during the Vietnam War. It’s 1969 and Jon, Gina, George and Idemary
are going to Lover’s Lane:
EXT. LOVER’S LANE — NIGHT
Jon’s Volkswagen follows a two-rutted road.
Here the road widens and splits into several
parking spots. Each occupied with cars and
high school kids at different stages of the
mating ritual.
INT. JON’S VOLkSWAGEN — CONTINUOUS
In the front seat, Gina is passionately, if
not rather professionally, kissing Jon. He’s
too cool to respond.
In the back, Idemary leans in to kiss George.
They are less experienced. She takes careful
aim. Docking procedure commences. It’s almost
that romantic. George is the Apollo
spacecraft. Idemary is the Lunar Module. One
slip up and they’ll crash into each other and
tumble into the sun.
IDEMARY
I love you, George.
GEORGE
I love you, too. But I’m not ready
for this.
IDEMARY
I totally understand.
This is boring because it lacks conflict! There is nothing to keep the

reader interested. It’s not that there is no immediate conflict—there is
some nervous adolescent fumbling around—but it is extremely low-
stakes. And there is no hint that any greater conflict is imminent. Now
here is the same scene with both.
EXT. LOVER’S LANE — NIGHT
Jon’s Volkswagen slows near a peeling “NO
TRESPASSING” sign. The warning has been
riddled by shotgun blasts.
Jon veers off the blacktop and follows a two-
rutted road into the darkness.
Here the road widens and splits into several
parking spots. Each occupied with cars and
high school kids at different stages of the
mating ritual.
Jon pulls up within a few inches of the cliff.
A chunk of dirt breaks loose from beneath the
wheels of the car and tumbles down a hundred
feet, disintegrating as it hits the banks of
the Wabash River.
INT. JON’S VOLKSWAGEN — NIGHT
George SCREAMS, alarmed.
GEORGE
Nobody breathe!
JON
Relax, enjoy the view.
George peeks out, unsure.
GEORGE
Perhaps if we all lean to this side,
we’ll live.
IDEMARY
Isn’t this romantic?
Idemary wants to be tongued. George considers

his options. The cliff or Idemary.
In the front seat, Gina is passionately, if
not rather professionally, kissing Jon. He’s
too cool to respond.
In back, Idemary leans in to kiss George. They
are less experienced. She takes careful aim.
Docking procedure commences. It’s almost that
romantic. George is the Apollo spacecraft.
Idemary is the Lunar Module. One slip up and
they’ll crash into each other and tumble into
the sun.
IDEMARY
I love you, George.
GEORGE
I love you too, I think...
IDEMARY
kiss me.
GEORGE
I’m not ready for this.
Idemary pulls a condom from her purse.
IDEMARY
I am.
George pulls back. The car shifts slightly as
more dirt crumbles under its wheels, spilling
down the cliff. Jon and Gina don’t notice, but
George throws open the door opposite and jumps
out.
In the first scene, there is no conflict. Idemary wants it, George
doesn’t, and she understands. The scene is over before it begins. In the
second scene, Idemary wants it, is not willing to compromise, and this
produces immediate conflict. But more, there is also imminent conflict
—the symbolic as well as real possibility that they may go over the
edge. There is suspense as to what will happen next. The imminent
conflict idea of going over the edge relates to the immediate conflict
idea of going all the way, and it adds voltage to the scene.
Core Conflict
As we’ve said, economy is the rule in screenwriting. Enter a scene as
late as possible, focus on the essentials and exit as soon as possible.
The screenwriter must cut to the core conflict. All unnecessary
elements must be lost—and the unnecessary elements are usually the
non-conflicts. In the following scene, the writer wants to show that the
father has a nasty temperament, but rather than cutting to the core
conflict, he weighs the scene down with unnecessary details.
We have crossed out everything that does not advance the conflict.
INT. FATHER’S NEW BUICK — NIGHT
Norman looks out from the front seat at the
remains of Flint. Beside him, Father’s
vitriolic chin dominates the front seat. In
the back, Caroline and Belle are silent.
FATHER
How is school?
NORMAN
JR. Fine.
FATHER
Grades?
NORMAN JR.
I’ve got a “C” in botany, but I
think I can bring that up by
Christmas.
FATHER
Good.
NORMAN JR.
And the football team is doing well
too.
FATHER
Good.
NORMAN
Father?
FATHER
Yes, son?
NORMAN
What did you get in Botany?
FATHER
I had a “C” at midterm, too.
AN ABRUPT SCREECH.
Norman’s P.O.V.-- A car full of OLD LADIES
from the Saturday night Senior Citizen BBQ at
the Episcopal Center cuts them off.
Father slams on the brakes harder than he has
to. The HORN BLARES. Unconcerned, the guilty
car drives off.
FATHER
Wouldn’t you know they’d be coming
out of a church!
Father lays on the gas. Belle and Caroline,

after having been flung forward with the stop
are now thrown back from the acceleration.
Father swings the car around the side of the
guilty party. Pulling up parallel with the
other car...
FATHER
(to Norman)
Roll your window down.
NORMAN
Dad don’t do this.
FATHER
Roll Your Window Down!
Norman cranks it down.

The two cars continue side by side. Father
beeps. The OLD LADY driving puts down her
window.
FATHER
(yelling out the window)
You’re a very lucky person!
The Old Lady driving the other car can barely

hear.
FATHER
... I say, you’re a very lucky
person! Because of me, you’re still
alive! Or do you believe your God
saved you just then?
Norman sinks deep into his seat.
OLD LADY
Jesus loves you!
FATHER
I doubt that very much!
The Old Lady shoots Father the bird.

That’s it! Father slams on his brakes and
comes in behind the Old Lady’s car.
FATHER
Piece of paper and pencil!
Father points to the glove box. Norman digs in

and comes out with a half-chewed pencil and
scrap of paper. He hands them to his Father.
Father takes down the Old Lady’s license plate
number. But, he can’t just do it, he must make
a show of it. Letting the Old Ladies see what
he’s doing...
FATHER
These people really think they’ll
get away with this.
When he’s done, he smiles and waves at the Old

Lady as if his uncle might be the chief of
police and he’s already planning what type of
revenge to take.
In the back, Belle smiles at Caroline as if
nothing happened. Caroline tries to smile back
but can’t. She manages only restrained shock.
Norman sinks deeper into his seat.
Father points at the glove compartment, Norman
shoves the license number in ... The box is
full of little scraps of paper with license
plate numbers.
Norman rolls the window back up.
FATHER
Is everyone buckled in?
NORMAN JR.
Yes.
CAROLINE
Yes.
BELLE
Yes.
FATHER
Good, because there are a lot of
jerks on the road tonight.
BELLE
So true.
FATHER
Yes, so true.
And they continue on their way.

One technique to keep the conflict going from scene to scene is to cut
out of a scene just before the conflict has a chance of exploding,
thereby investing or carrying over that energy into the next scene. This
second scene can therefore open with the conflict already in motion,
rather than having to restate it all over again; this creates a sense of
pace and urgency. So sometimes it’s better to enter a scene as late as
possible, just as the conflict begins or where it left off in the previous
scene, and exit as soon as possible, before the climax, carrying the
tension over to the next scene, until the conflict finally comes to
resolution. Smaller conflict resolutions will end scenes or scene
sequences; overall conflict resolution will bring your story to its end.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Power Structure Look at your favorite films with an eye to the kinds
of conflict they use, the nature of the power struggles they explore, and
you’ll come to understand how it all works. Screenwriting instructor
John Truby perceptively calls the overall power shift through conflict
and resolution a movement from “slavery to freedom” in the case of a
happy ending, or “freedom to slavery” in the case of a tragic ending.
This is another way to think of the journey from powerlessness to
power or vice-versa. This is the arc of the story, the progression of the
journey. The organization of the protagonist’s conflicts, advances and
pitfalls forms the structure of the screenplay. How to organize them is
the subject of the next chapter.
EXERCISES
1. Rent a film you admire and analyze the movement of power
throughout.
2. Write a scene in which there is only immediate conflict. Then write
one that has only imminent conflict. Then write one that has both.
3. The following examples have a desire and obstacle. Create a reason
that does not allow compromise to be an option:
a. Desire: Sally wants a new job so that she can move on with her
life.
b. Obstacle: Her father, the boss, is the nicest guy in the world. It
will break his heart if she quits.
c. Reason Compromise Is Not an Option:
a. Desire: Darla wants to confront her father’s sexist, macho
behavior.
b. Obstacle: He tells her that he is dying.
4. Take your own screenplay idea and see if you can find the
protagonist’s desire, the obstacle (the kind of conflict) and the reason
compromise is not an option.
a. Desire:
b. Obstacle/Kind of Conflict:
5. Take the story you’re working on and identify the key elements of
power, conflicts and rising stakes. Eliminate or combine any elements
that do not contribute to these.
8
Beats, Scenes and Sequences

Flexible Structure
Once you’ve determined the nature of the conflicts and power

relationships in your story, it’s time to organize them into an
appropriate structure. Again, this is not accomplished by adhering to
strict plot points or page numbers, but by building the order and
complexity of your conflicts and story events with the fundamental
structural units of every screenplay. All movies (and therefore all
screenplays) are made up of beats, which combine to form scenes,
which are linked together into sequences. Each of these contains some
aspect of the theme, the overall conflict and the power struggle. (See
also Robert McKee’s fine book Story for a good analysis of scenes and
sequencing.)
Unlike the formulas of many screenwriting systems, the number of
beats, scenes and sequences is not fixed but changes from story to
story; so does the ebb and flow of the power relationship. The
screenwriter who understands the basic nature of each of these—
beats, scenes, sequences and power flow—and how they unite to form
a story is free to choose the structure that best fits her screenplay
rather than following predetermined guidelines that may or may not
fit the story’s needs. Let’s look at each element, starting with the
smallest structural building block, the beat.
FOLLOW THE BEAT
Just as a scientist comes to understand the structure of the universe by
studying subatomic particles, so must the screenwriter understand the
smallest structural unit of a story. A beat is a single unit of thought or
action. It’s a small section of dialogue or behavior that’s accented by a
particular emotion, subject and/or action. A change in emotion,
subject or action marks the beginning of a new beat. But beats cannot
stand alone, in and of themselves. The nature of a beat is that it not
only represents itself but almost always is the motivation or cause of
the next beat. When beats cause new beats, they link to form a
beginning, middle and end, or in other words, a small story within the
main story called a scene. For example, in the following series of beats,
a nonreligious family has dinner with the daughter’s new, very
religious boyfriend. The moment is divided into five beats. Notice that
each beat not only is a unit of action or thought but also causes the
next unit of action or thought.
BEAT #1
Dinner is set. Extra table-leaves have been
placed in the table to handle the guests.
Everyone gathers around a meal of wiener
wraps, pasty green bean casserole and piles of
mashed potatoes that look like the mountains
of the moon.
MOTHER
We’re Reaaaady!
BEAT #2
Mother places the coffee mug in front of
Father.
MOTHER
Terry, why don’t you tell us a
little about yourself.
BOYFRIEND
First, my name is Larry and I’ve got
a paper route and I’m a member of my
Sunday School bowling team and...
MOTHER
Oh! You play against other teams,
like the PTA. Blue Devils?
BOYFRIEND
Sure do. We call our team “The
Apostles.”
MOTHER
You’re such a busy child, with your
paper route and bowling team.
BOYFRIEND
I’m also a junior member of the
N.R.A.
MOTHER
Oh, Michelle, he even has time to
advocate for women’s rights!
BEAT #3
MOTHER
This is such a special occasion. Why
don’t we make it even more special?
Norman Junior, say grace.
The Son takes the fork out of his mouth.
SON
What?
MOTHER
You heard me, say grace!
SON
But... I don’t know...
Mother shoots the son the evil eye. Then,

smiles desperately at the Boyfriend.
MOTHER
We’re waiting.
BEAT #4
Father grunts and begins to eat.
FATHER
Well, I’m not. Pass the salt!
BEAT #5
Humiliated, the Daughter begins to cry. She
avoids her boyfriend’s eyes as she chokes out
the words.
DAUGHTER
Dear God, thank you for this food we
are about to receive. Forgive our
sins as we forgive those who sin
against us. Make us thankful for our
family, friends and those we love.
The word “beat” is misleading. It seems to suggest a rhythmical unit of

time, a common cadence or a brief pause. So why do we use the word
“beat”? Why not “unit” or “section”? The theory as to how this musical
term has come to its nonmusical structural meaning comes from when
the disciples of Constantin Stanislavski (the head of the Moscow Art
Theater and often called the father of modern acting) came to the
United States in the 1930s to teach. Legend has it that the Americans
were confused by the Russians’ thick accents, and they mistook the
word “bit” for “beat.” If you say the line, “First you must split the scene
into little bits,” with a Russian accent, you’ll find some truth to this
theory. Whether it’s true or not, looking at “beats” as “bits” makes a lot
of sense. Scenes are made up of little bits; each bit is a new action that
is motivated by something in one of the preceding bits. Each bit is
logically interlocked with the bits before and after it to form the
beginning, middle and end of a scene. In the example above, notice
that each beat not only causes the next beat, but also increases the
tension until it is resolved.
MAKING A SCENE
On a shooting-script level, a scene is everything that requires a new
scene heading; that is, every time there is a change in location or time
there is a new scene. But for the purposes of the spec screenwriter, a
scene is the location for and the action of a particular event. It may be
limited to one scene heading, just like a shooting script, but it may also
effectively combine several, such as when a single continuous event
takes a character from an interior to an exterior location without
altering the nature or purpose of the action. For example, if you are
writing about a principal who tells a student that he’s kicked out of
school, the scene starts in the principal’s office. The young boy gets up
and walks out. Pissed off, the principal follows the boy down the hall,
telling him that he’s washed up, kicked out for life. Through the
cafeteria they go, the principal still hollering at the boy, and they
finally end up out in the parking lot, where the boy turns and punches
the principal in the nose. In a shooting script, this would be considered
four scenes (principal’s office, hallway, cafeteria and parking lot) but
for the purpose of structuring a spec script, it may be considered only
one scene because there is only one action—the principal telling the
kid that he’s through. (You still need to write each scene header.) A
scene is made up of a group of beats that create the action of a
particular event or, as Aristotle would say, an “incident.”
The best way to see how scenes are constructed out of beats is to
examine a few. Here are the opening two scenes from an action movie
Robin wrote and sold. In these scenes we meet the antagonist and
protagonist for the first time, encounter a “false” scene (an
establishing shot) and see how beats link and build to form scenes
with real and implied conflict:
INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM — DAY
A large, bleak room with several rows of
tables and chairs bolted to the scarred cement
floor. PRISONERS in blue outfits talk in
hushed tones to their WIVES; one talks with a
seedy LAWYER.
One of two DEPUTIES stands watch, bored.
The SECOND DEPUTY escorts in another prisoner:
JULIUS KAISER--40, muscular, handsome except
for the ragged scar and powder burn on his
cheek--a mob boss used to getting his way. Or
getting rid of those who won’t give it to him.
Kaiser takes a seat across from two waiting
visitors: his lieutenant, SALINAS--30,
powerful, cheap suit, a face to inspire
nightmares—and the more expensively suited DR.
GREENE--short, fat, balding, habitually
arrogant. Right now his eyes are bloodshot
from tension.
SALINAS
How you doing, chief--?
KAISER
How’s Octavius?
Salinas and Greene exchange a glance. Salinas

shrugs: not his call.
Kaiser glares at Greene. Greene stammers.
Spreads his hands on the table. Hedging.
GREENE
Well... it’s hard to know exactly—
KAISER
Don’t screw with me.
His voice is calm, but his eyes bore into

Greene’s. Greene blinks. Pulls his hands back.
GREENE
A week. Maybe two.
Kaiser nods. At least he’s being told the

truth.
KAISER
Have you made the arrangements I
asked for?
Now it’s Salinas who hedges. Not happy.
SALINAS
Yeah. But I gotta tell you, it’s a
risky set up. I don’t see how we can
pull it off.
KAISER
You let me worry about that. Bring
your car around front. keep the
engine running.
Salinas stares at Kaiser. Not quite sure he

heard right. Then he and Greene go to the
visitor’s door, are BUZZED outside.
The Second Deputy comes over.
SECOND DEPUTY
All right, visit’s over. Let’s go.
Kaiser remains seated, elbows on the table,

head propped on his hands. The Deputy claps a
hand on his shoulder.
SECOND DEPUTY
I said--
Quick as a snake striking its prey, Kaiser

grabs the Deputy’s hand, spins around behind
him and has him in a chokehold with one hand.
The other hand has the pistol from the
Deputy’s holster. Pressed against the Deputy’s
spine.
The other Prisoners and their visitors duck
down.
Through the security window, Deputies in the
next room scramble to full alert. SIRENS GO
OFF.
KAISER
All right. Walk me out of here.
The First Deputy, hand on his holstered gun,

cautiously approaches.
FIRST DEPUTY
You’re not going anywhere, Kaiser.
Now just let him go, put the gun
down.
Kaiser whispers into the Second Deputy’s ear.
KAISER
You got a family? Wife, couple of
kids?
SECOND DEPUTY
(nodding)
Yeah.
Kaiser points the gun at the First Deputy.

Shoots him right between the eyes. He falls
dead. Visiting wives SCREAM.
KAISER
So did he, I bet. Let’s go.
He returns the gun-barrel to the Second

Deputy’s spine.
SECOND DEPUTY
Open the door!
A beat. Then the visitor’s door opens. More

Deputies stand there, guns drawn. Hesitating.
Kaiser whips the gun around and SHOOTS one of
the other Prisoners dead. His visiting WIFE
SCREAMS. Kaiser puts the gun at the Second
Deputy’s head.
KAISER
This gun has a fifteen round clip. I
still have thirteen left. Not a
lucky number. Maybe I should make it
twelve?
The Deputies back off.
KAISER
Let me out and I’ll let him go. But
I even think I’m being followed, his
wife and kids’ll see him next at the
funeral.
Kaiser walks the Second Deputy out the door.

EXT. ESTABLISHING, HOSPITAL, NEW YORk CITY —
DAY
A small, upscale hospital in the big, bad
city.
INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR — DAY
A quiet day in the hospital. A few NURSES go
about their business. An Elderly Patient
pushes a wheeled IV rack with a drip-bag,
looking lost.
A laundry cart whizzes by him, going the other
way.
JOEY LUPO shadow-boxes as he catches up. In
his mid- twenties. Tough, Italian good looks.
Long hair tied back in a bun. Hard muscles
fill out his orderly’s uniform. Tattoos and a
new wedding ring punctuate his rough, scarred
knuckles. Another tattoo of a ravening wolf
crawls up his right arm.
He scoops in more dirty linen from a wall bin.
Then shoves the cart ahead toward the next
bin, whistling as he goes...
The first scene begins with a scene heading indicating we’re in a prison
visiting room, daytime. The first paragraph sets the look and mood; we
know by their generic names that the players described are extras, not
important characters. In the second paragraph we meet the
antagonist, Kaiser. (It is a common strategy in action movies to meet
the antagonist first, thus setting up the eventual threat and stakes the
protagonist will face.) Kaiser’s demeanor is authoritative, his
appearance marred by violence. His name suggests absolute power.
(Note that his name is all-capitalized in the narrative because this is
the first time we meet him; it will not be in subsequent scenes.)
Kaiser’s entrance is the first beat, the first true action in the scene,
and when he meets his “lieutenant” and doctor, we get our first
glimpse of his allies and power base. Even in this prison context,
Kaiser has absolute control over them. His dialogue is to the point: we
know he’s only interested in learning two things, the well-being of
someone named Octavius (it is revealed later that this is his son), and
whether the “arrangements” are in place. We learn that Octavius only
has a week or two to live (the second beat, setting up Kaiser’s urgency)
and that in fact Kaiser’s arrangements are in place (the third beat,
concluding Kaiser’s need for information). It isn’t spelled out; only
enough is revealed to create a sense of curiosity as to whom and what
they are referring. Once he learns these two things, Kaiser takes
immediate and ruthless action, seizing a gun and killing one deputy
(the fourth beat), and then escapes from the prison (the fifth and final
beat, ending the scene). His dialogue and action subtextually hit on the
theme of looking out for one’s children. Once Kaiser has completed the
action of the scene—to escape—the scene is over. There is plenty of
conflict, both actual—the killing and kidnap- ping of the deputies—and
implied: Kaiser, a proven killer, has some other plan in motion.
The second scene, although it has a scene heading, is just an
establishing shot and actually part of the third scene. It acts like a
master shot to reveal the location and time. Because it is also daytime,
as was the previous scene, we can assume it is probably the same time,
if not shortly later. Although only one sentence, the narrative tells us
that this hospital is an oasis in the harsh urban landscape. There are
no real beats in Scene Two, because no character has taken action.
As we begin the second true scene, the header tells us we’re in a
hospital corridor in the daytime. (Again, the assumption is that it is
the same time as the previous scene.) The narrative fills this out in as
brief a fashion as possible; in three sentences we know the look and
mood of the place. It’s quiet, calm, in contrast to the tension and
violence of the first scene. And since we’ve heard in the first scene that
Octavius only has a week or two to live, we can assume that this
hospital is our “world.” The fourth and fifth sentences (involving the
first two beats, the appearance of the cart, followed by the appearance
of the protagonist) introduce the protagonist, Joey, and something
about his personality and past: he seems easygoing, doesn’t take his
job too seriously. His physical description provides the essential
details: what he looks like, that he may be a fighter, is probably a
former gang member and he’s just been married.
The last paragraph (the final beat as well) completes his action in
the scene: to do his job as an orderly. Where’s the conflict? Well, this is
the calm before the storm. Remember, no one wants to see the “village
of the happy people” unless something really unhappy is about to
happen to it. The immediate juxtaposition with the prior scene implies
that Joey will eventually have to face Kaiser, an effortlessly ruthless
and violent man. Certain questions are also raised. Joey seems
physically capable, but a bit lightweight. Will he have the intelligence
and moral strength, given his obvious background, to meet the
challenge? The question as to why he should, why he is the essential
protagonist, is left to be answered a few pages later. Not all the
information about a character has to appear the minute they appear,
only what is necessary for the scene. From this, we see that each beat
has a singular purpose. Each beat gives us information that builds the
action into a scene.
Next, let’s look at a short scene sequence from Clint Eastwood’s
Unforgiven, from an original script by David Webb Peoples. In this
Western, a former gunslinger, Will Munny, is invited by a young,
nearsighted, tough-talking wannabe gunfighter to leave his pig farm
and go on one last adventure: to kill some cowhands who disfigured a
whore after she laughed at one of them. Now the other prostitutes
have offered a large reward for the death of these cowhands. Munny
doesn’t want to go; he’s been reformed by his now- dead wife, and has
given up killing and booze. But he needs money to raise his children,
he’s a lousy farmer, and so eventually he agrees to go. However, when
he gets to the town where the whores live, he encounters Little Bill, a
nasty gunfighter-turned-sheriff, who beats Will nearly to death on first
sight. Here are a couple of scenes following Will Munny’s beating at
the hands of Little Bill.
INT. SHED — DAY
DAYLIGHT and the cut whore’s face. Delilah is
leaning over Munny, wiping his brow. He is
lying in the straw looking up at her and he
looks like shit... his face ghastly pale and
stubbled and covered with horrible cuts and
bad stitching... but his eyes are clear.
MUNNY
I thought... you was an angel.
DELILAH
(embarrassed, getting up)
You ain’t dead.
Delilah goes over to her horse and gets some

packages out of the saddle bags. Munny tries
to sit up weakly.
MUNNY
Some big guy beat the shit out of
me.
(feeling his sore face)
I guess I must look a lot like you,
huh?
DELILAH
(angry, hurt)
You don’t look nothin’ like me,
mister.
MUNNY
I didn’t mean no offense.
(she doesn’t answer)
I guess you’re the one them cowboys
cut.
(no answer)
Ned and the kid, my partners, are
they. . .?
DELILAH
(coldly)
They went out scouting when they saw
your fever broke.
MUNNY
Scouting?
DELILAH
On the Bar T... looking for... them.
MUNNY
Oh... How long I been here?
DELILAH
(still cold)
Three days. Are you hungry?
MUNNY
Three days? I must be.
EXT. WOODS NEAR SHED — DAY

CLOSE on robins, four of them in the woods
near the shed and Munny is watching them where
he sits wolfing chicken hungrily, his back
against the shed. Delilah is watching him eat.
MUNNY
I thought I was gone. See them
birds? Most times I wouldn’t even
notice them birds much. But I’m
noticin’ ’em real good ’cause I
thought I was dead.
DELILAH
I brought your hat. You... left it
down at Greely’s.
MUNNY
That big guy lookin’ for me?
As he looks over at her Munny’s eye falls

briefly on her exposed ankle and Delilah feels
the look.
DELILAH
Little Bill? He thinks you went
north.
Munny can’t help it and his eye flicks back to

the ankle.
DELILAH
Are you really going to kill them?
MUNNY
(unenthusiastically)
Yeah, I guess.
(suddenly)
There’s still payment, ain’t there?
She nods and she moves so that more ankle is

showing, but Munny’s eye is drawn to her
breasts as she moves, then he looks away
quickly, guiltily and they sit there silently
until...
DELILAH
Them other two, they been takin’
advances on the payment.
MUNNY
Advances?
He can’t help looking at her body and she

knows it.
DELILAH
(shyly)
Free ones.
Her body is getting to him.
MUNNY
(stupidly)
Free ones?
DELILAH
Alice an’ Silky gave them... free
ones.
MUNNY
(understanding, embarrassed)
Oh. Yeah.
DELILAH
(shy, timid)
You want... a free one?
MUNNY
(looking away, embarrassed)
Me? No. No, I guess not.
And Delilah is hurt... crushed. She gets up

and covers it by picking up the remains of the
chicken and Munny is too embarrassed to look
at her.
DELILAH
(covering her hurt)
I didn’t mean... with me. Alice and
Silky, they’ll give you one... if
you want.
MUNNY
I... I guess not.
(unusually perceptive suddenly)
I didn’t mean I didn’t want one
’cause of you bein’ cut up. I didn’t
mean that.
Delilah keeps her back to him.
MUNNY
(trying to get up)
It ain’t that at all. You’re a
beautiful woman. What I said before,
how I might look like you... I
didn’t mean you was ugly, like me,
hell no... I only meant how we both
have scars.
He is standing weakly, supporting himself on

the wall and his speech is so sincere and
Delilah wants to believe it.
MUNNY
You’re a beautiful woman an’... if I
was to want a free one, I guess I’d
want you more than them others. It
ain’t... See... I can’t have no free
one on account of my wife...
DELILAH
Your wife?
MUNNY
Yeah. See?
DELILAH
(after a pause)
I admire that, you being true to
your wife. I’ve seen a lot of... of
men... who weren’t.
MUNNY
(pleased and embarrassed)
Yeah, I guess.
DELILAH
She back in Kansas?
MUNNY
Uh... yeah. Yeah. She’s uh...
watchin over my little ones.
And Munny gives her what for him is his best

social smile... sort of like a pig strangling.
These two scenes work as a pair; in fact—although there are two
locations, an interior and an exterior, even a time lapse between them
—they could be seen as a single scene. The main action or event of
both scenes is that Will Munny comes back to consciousness after
having been beaten and gets his bearings. But each scene works on its
own, with a beginning, middle and end. The two scenes taken together
also have a beginning, middle and end, working off of and enriching
the meaning of each one separately. (Mr. Peoples uses a lot of
parentheticals, which we advise against.)
The first scene starts with “DAYLIGHT and the cut whore” as Will
Munny wakes up in a manger thinking that he’s died, and that Delilah
—the whore—must be an angel. Like many adventures set in the world
of the Old West, this is a moral fable, heavy with religious overtones.
The first beat immediately and efficiently presents a subtext of false
death and resurrection, down to the fact that he learns that he’s been
unconscious for three days (the period Christ supposedly spent in
harrowing Hell before his own resurrection). In the second beat, Will
inadvertently insults Delilah by touching his own cut-up face and
saying that he must look like her, now. Delilah retorts that he looks
nothing like her. But clearly we see that there is a bond between them,
the reluctant bounty hunter and the injured woman who regrets the
fact of the bounty in her name. Both are moral creatures, in spite of
being a killer and a whore, and there is a tentativeness and mutual
respect to their dialogue. In the third beat, Will learns that his friends
are out preparing to earn the bounty, thus reminding the audience that
the lethal plot is still in motion. In the final beat, just as elements of
light and the “angel” begin the scene, the element of physical
resurrection ends it; these work thematically, but also fit the emotional
arc of the scene, going from the ethereal return to consciousness, to
the solid fact of hunger.
The second scene picks up the action referred to in the first scene’s
ending dialogue (“Are you hungry?” and “Three days? I must be”) by
having Will already wolfing down some food. Note that we cut to this
action already in progress; there was no need to have beats or scenes
where the food is being prepared, or the small talk we can assume
accompanied it. But the second scene contrasts with the first in that it
is exterior, a hard transition from the darkness of the shed, signaling
Will’s shift from unconsciousness and awakening to full
consciousness. Will’s attention is on the small but real beauties of the
day, its physical wonders: the food he’s eating, the robins nearby, the
sensual flesh of Delilah’s ankle. Will draws explicit attention to the fact
that something as insignificant as some birds mean something special
to him now, because he thought he’d died.
Delilah returns Will’s attention to the grim business by mentioning
his hat, which he’d left at the whorehouse/saloon. He asks if the “big
guy” is looking for him, and there is a subtextual resonance to his
using these words. The “big guy” is his alter ego and antagonist, Little
Bill, but is also the “Big Guy” in the religious sense. Delilah makes the
issue of killing explicit, just as Will does with the issue of payment,
keeping the plot clearly in mind. But both are uncomfortable with
these grim topics, and besides, Will’s sensual appetites have been
awakened. He can’t keep his eyes off Delilah’s ankle, which leads to the
flirtation as she offers him a “free one” and he refuses. She is hurt,
assuming it’s because she’s now ugly from her wounds. But Will
assures her this is not the case; in fact, they share a bond because they
“both have scars.” This a splendid bit of subtextual dialogue: they both
have surface scars—of course—but they both suffer from deeper
wounds of the spirit as well.
Will affirms her physical attractiveness to him, and then reveals the
real reason he’s not interested—he remains true to his wife. Delilah,
not knowing his wife is dead, is simply charmed by his unusual
faithfulness and asks about his wife. Will replies that she’s watching
over his little ones, thereby giving his dead wife the explicit role of an
angel.
So we see that the first scene has four beats. It starts with the
ethereal, the misperception of a living whore as an angel (beat 1), and
then turns to the physical (beat 2), reveals what his friends are up to
(beat 3) and climaxes with Will’s expression of hunger (beat 4). This
physical hunger—for food, beauty, sex—starts the second scene (beat
1), which then shifts back to the practical, the reason he’s there (beat
2), then to the sexual offering (beat 3), which is refused, and the scene
climaxes with Will’s reference to the real angel in his life, his dead and
sainted wife (beat 4). Each scene works on its own, but both combine
to form a small, discrete sequence. Although not specifically about
Will’s goal of killing the cowhands, this sequence contains a small sub-
plot—Will’s flirtation with Delilah. The subplot gives a moral context
to the main action of the plot: the possibility of redemption, of costs
and payments in both the physical and spiritual worlds and of the
price of divine judgment regarding the fate of the cruel cowhands and
Will’s soul as well.
Scenes are microcosms of the script as a whole. All of these
subtextual and contextual issues run through the entire story and are
returned to explicitly in later scenes, such as when Will and the Kid are
waiting for their money to be delivered, and the Kid has an attack of
conscience about having killed the man who cut Delilah’s face. The Kid
tries to rationalize it, saying, “I guess he had it coming.” To which Will
replies, “We all have it coming, Kid.” This comment, by the way, states
the movie’s theme as clearly and yet subtly as any line in film ever has.
When the money is brought by a whore, Will learns that it’s come at a
terrible cost: Little Bill has tortured Ned to death. And unlike the Kid,
who flees, sickened at the carnage, Will reverts to his former,
murderous nature and kills Little Bill. “I don’t deserve this,” says Little
Bill, to which Will Munny replies, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
It’s all about the prison of a man’s own character. Will’s prison is to be
an agent of death, whether he likes it or not, no matter what angels
may be looking out for him.
A scene follows the same rules as the script as a whole. It has a
beginning, middle and end, should be entered as late as possible and
cut out of as soon as possible. There must be at least one main
dramatic “question”—the purpose of the scene—with rising conflict
and a climax. This climax should lead naturally into the next scene.
While there are interstitial scenes with separate headers (such as
establishing shots used to fix a location or to indicate a transition, such
as getting into a car) these are not true scenes but rather parts of a
larger scene.
SEQUENCES
Just as beats grow to form a scene, scenes are linked to form
sequences. A sequence is a group of scenes that build toward a
common goal. It’s one section or movement of a movie that is linked
by a common struggle, theme and/or action (not unlike movements in
a symphony). Sometimes a sequence is a simple montage like the
“training sequence” in movies like Rocky or G.I. Jane, where the
protagonist must hone his or her abilities in order to achieve the goal.
Other times the sequence is a major movement in the movie
comprising numerous scenes linked together. There is the sequence in
High Noon when the town clears out and the Sheriff is left alone to
face the coming outlaws. There is the sequence at the end of Sleepless
in Seattle, where Meg Ryan’s character tries to get to the top of the
Empire State Building to meet Tom Hanks, is delayed by traffic, and
finally gets there only to discover that it looks as if it’s too late.
Interwoven with this, and generating more tension, is a matching
sequence where Hanks’s character goes there, waits and then leaves,
only coming back because his little boy forgot his backpack. Note that
the scenes in these sequences are not told one after the other, but
staggered, going first to one sequence, then the other, weaving the two
together into a larger sequence in which boy and girl finally meet at
the top of the Empire State Building.
Rising Tension Sequences are governed by rising tension,
because either the stakes are rising (the Sheriff discovers he must face
the outlaws alone) or more obstacles appear in the path of the
character (traffic gets in Meg Ryan’s way, delaying her) making the
goal seem unattainable. In many films, the actions of the antagonist
define the raising of the stakes. In The Terminator, for instance, the
cyborg assassin first kills a loathsome punk (we don’t care, we might
even approve), then a gun merchant (again, not much grief there),
then an innocent housewife (we begin to really care), then Matt, the
boyfriend of Sarah’s roommate (we begin to hate the Terminator), and
then Sarah’s roommate, shooting her in the back in gruesome slow
motion (we are fully committed to hating the Terminator). The killings
have been organized into a careful sequence of rising emotional
impact, not simply thrown in randomly. In the climactic battle
sequence, the Terminator keeps coming back, no matter how many
times Sarah Connor and Reese “kill” it, its disguise of humanity—
clothes, flesh, voice—stripped away until it is revealed as a stark image
of death itself, a shining steel skeleton. It kills helpless bystanders,
then kills Reese—the love of Sarah’s life—and then threatens Sarah
herself. Her need to destroy it (her stakes) is progressively heightened:
at first the stakes are simple self-preservation, then revenge and finally
the desperate need to survive in order to save the human race. So each
sequence—just like a beat or scene—also has a beginning, a middle and
end with the most important, the most tension, the highest stakes
placed at the end.
Sequences Form a Story Aristotle defined plot as an
“arrangement of the incidents.” As he pointed out, this arrangement
has a cause-and-effect relationship. The same relationship that causes
beats to become a scene, causes scenes to become a sequence and
sequences to become a story. Each beat, scene and sequence has a
purpose within the larger story or it is a meaningless link and must be
cut. The number of beats, scenes or sequences changes from story to
story. There is no overall formula as to how many there must or should
be. The key to writing a good movie is finding the purpose and order of
all the sequences.
Often beginning screenwriters discover that this is hard to do. Their
story lacks structure because they cannot construct the sequences out
of the random order of their scenes. They’ll use a screenwriting guru’s
plot point formula only to find that between plot points they write
mush, they’re only filling in space between the major “tent poles.” If
each beat is necessary to the scene, and each scene is an important
incident, then each sequence becomes a critical component of the
story.
So, if formulas are so flawed, why do young screenwriters use
them? They use them because formulas carefully label the plot points
with easy-to- understand titles (opening event, inciting incident, etc.).
These labels allow inexperienced screenwriters to get a handle on
exactly where they are in the story. That’s very comforting when you
are trying to structure one. But following a formula is creating a
structure without understanding why or how it works. By using
sequences to construct a story, the writer—not the formula— has
control over the material.
The best way to structure with sequences is to give each sequence a
title. A hundred years ago, writers of Victorian melodramas used to
give each act of a play an alluring title. This title was a mini-label that
pinpointed the conflicts and purposes the characters had in that
particular section. A screenwriter can do the same thing by titling each
sequence (by the way, this can be done with each scene and beat) just
for themselves. The mini-title focuses the action of the sequence
around one central purpose.
Let’s examine how this method might work using a full movie.
Following is a step outline of the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams
(screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson) divided into scenes and
sequences. We have given each sequence a title that identifies its
purpose within the story. Notice that each scene builds to the next and
that there are no sequences extraneous to the entire story. There are
twelve sequences in Field of Dreams; your movie may need more or
less.
FIELD OF DREAMS
Scenes and Sequences
SEQUENCE #1 “How I Moved to Iowa and Learned to Love
Baseball”
MONTAGE--Photos and narration tell us about
Ray’s life, why he loves baseball, how he met
his wife, why he became a farmer and his
troubled relationship with his now-departed
father.
SEQUENCE #2 “The Voice”
SCENE 1: EXT. CORN FIELD — NIGHT
Ray hears the voice for the first time. It says,
“If you build it he will come.”
SCENE 2: INT. KITCHEN — NIGHT
Ray is worried about the voice. Tells his wife
about it.
SCENE 3: INT. BEDROOM — NIGHT
Ray hears the voice the second time.
SCENE 4: INT. KITCHEN — DAY
Ray tells his daughter that people who hear
voices are sick.
SCENE 5: INT. FEED STORE — DAY
Ray questions other farmers about hearing voices.
They think he’s nuts.
SCENE 6: EXT. CORN FIELD — DAY
Ray hears the voice again. This time he gets mad.
He sees the mirage of the baseball field.
SCENE 7: INT. LIVING ROOM — NIGHT
Ray tries to figure out what the voice means. He
thinks that it might mean that if he builds a
baseball field, Shoeless Joe Jackson will return.
SCENE 8: INT. BEDROOM — NIGHT
Ray worries that he is turning into his father.
He lacks dreams. He and his wife decide to build
the field.
SEQUENCE #3 “Building the Baseball Field”
SCENE 1: Montage--Ray plows under his corn
field in order to build the baseball field.
His neighbors think he’s a weirdo. He tells
the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson to his
daughter.
SCENE 2: EXT. BASEBALL FIELD — NIGHT
The baseball field is done. “I have done
something completely illogical.”
SEQUENCE #4 “Waiting for Shoeless Joe”
SCENE 1: EXT. BEDROOM — NIGHT (FALL)
They wait for something to happen, but nothing
happens.
SCENE 2: INT. LIVING ROOM — NIGHT (WINTER)
Christmas has come and still nothing has
happened.
SCENE 3: INT. LIVING ROOM — NIGHT (SPRING)
Still nothing. They have gone over budget. They
are running out of money. Suddenly, there is a
man on the lawn.
Shoeless Joe Jackson has arrived. Ray introduces
Shoeless Joe to his family. Shoeless Joe wants to
bring the other players back with him. Ray
decides no matter what the cost they’re keeping
the field.
SEQUENCE #5 “The Brother-in-Law”
SCENE 1: INT. KITCHEN — DAY
Mark, Ray’s brother-in-law, offers to buy the
farm to save Ray from bankruptcy.
SCENE 2: EXT. FIELD — DAY
The players return for a game. Mark cannot see
them.
SEQUENCE #6 “The Second Message”
SCENE 1: EXT. BASEBALL FIELD — DUSK
Ray gets his second voice which says, “Ease his
pain.”
SCENE 2: INT. HOUSE — DAY
Ray tells his wife that he heard the voice again.
He doesn’t know what it means.
SCENE 3: INT. SCHOOL BOARD MEETING — NIGHT
Book banning is debated. Ray is preoccupied with
understanding what “ease his pain” might mean.
The townspeople want to ban a book by Terence
Mann. At the mention of Terence Mann, Ray
understands the voice’s message.
SCENE 4: INT. SCHOOL HALLWAY — NIGHT
Rays tells his wife that he must find Terence
Mann.
SCENE 5: Montage--They research Terence Mann.
SCENE 6: EXT. LOCAL LIBRARY — DAY
Ray discovers a lot about Terence but he can’t
decipher how he figures into the voice’s plan.
SCENE 7: INT. TRUCK — DAY
They find out that Terence was a great baseball
fan. Wanted to play, but it never happened.
Terence hasn’t been to a game since the 1950s.
SCENE 8: EXT. RAY’S FARM — DAY
Ray comes to understand that he must take Terence
to a baseball game. He simply does not know why.
SCENE 9: INT. FARM HOUSE — DAY
Ray decides he must go to New York to find
Terence Mann.
SEQUENCE #7 “Finding Terence Mann”
MONTAGE--Ray traveling to New York. He
interviews people in Mann’s New York
neighborhood. He finds the door to Mann’s
apartment.
SEQUENCE #8 “Meeting Terence Mann”
SCENE 1: INT. APARTMENT BUILDING — DAY
Terence Mann slams the door in Ray’s face. When
Ray begs him to listen, Mann gives Ray only one
minute to talk. Ray entreats him to come to a
baseball game.
SCENE 2: EXT. STADIUM—HOT DOG STAND — NIGHT
Terence and Ray go to a baseball game. Terence
still thinks this whole thing is silly and that
Ray may be psychotic.
SCENE 3: EXT. BASEBALL STADIUM — NIGHT
Ray hears another voice “Go the distance” and
sees the stats for Archibald “Moonlight” Graham
on the scoreboard. Terence sees nothing.
SCENE 4: EXT. TERENCE MANN’S APARTMENT — NIGHT
Ray says good-bye. The mission is a failure,
until Terence admits that he too saw the stats
for “Moonlight” Graham. They decide to go to
Wisconsin together and find Graham.
SEQUENCE #9 “The Search for Moonlight Graham”
SCENE 1: MONTAGE--They drive to Wisconsin.
SCENE 2: EXT. GAS STATION — DAY
Ray calls his wife to tell her that everything is
fine.
SCENE 3: INT. RAY’S FARM — DAY
His wife hangs up. Mark is back. He’s going to
foreclose on the farm.
SCENE 4: INT. WISCONSIN county office — DAY
Ray and Terence find that Moonlight Graham is
dead. They discover that he was a wonderful
doctor who helped everyone, but they still don’t
understand why they have to find him.
SCENE 5: INT. BAR — NIGHT
They interview people in a bar about Moonlight
Graham.
SCENE 6: INT. HOTEL — NIGHT
They look over their research. They still cannot
understand why they must find this man.
SCENE 7: EXT. CITY STREET — NIGHT
Ray goes for a walk. He suddenly finds himself in
the past. He sees Moonlight Graham walking alone.
SCENE 8: INT. Graham’s OFFICE — DAY
Ray asks Graham about his short major league
career. Graham played half of one inning. He
never got to bat. His great wish is to bat, just
once, in a major league game. Ray asks Graham to
come with him back to Iowa. He refuses.
SCENE 9: INT. HOTEL — NIGHT
Ray and Terence are confused about their purpose.
Why didn’t Graham come with them?
SCENE 10: INT. FARMHOUSE — NIGHT
Ray calls home. The farm is in trouble. Terence
decides to go to Iowa with Ray.
SCENE 11: EXT. HIGHWAY — DAY
They pick up a hitchhiker, a kid who turns out to
be the younger incarnation of Moonlight Graham.
SEQUENCE #10 “Why Ray Regrets His Relationship with
His Father”
SCENE 1: EXT. HIGHWAY — DAY
The three of them head to Iowa. Ray tells Terence
about his troubled relationship with his father.
SCENE 2: EXT. HIGHWAY — NIGHT
Ray admits to Terence that he and his father
fought over his father’s worship of Shoeless Joe
Jackson.
SCENE 3: EXT. Ray’s FARM — NIGHT
They get home--the ghost team is playing.
SEQUENCE #11 “Moonlight Graham Gets His Wish”
Terence and Graham are introduced to the ghost
players. They ask Graham to play.
The teams play ball. Graham has his chance to bat
against the big league players. He drives home a
run.
SEQUENCE #12 “The Climax”
SCENE 1: EXT. BASEBALL FIELD — DAY
Mark comes to take the farm. Ray’s daughter falls
off the seats. As he steps from the baseball
diamond, to help her, Moonlight Graham becomes
the old doctor again and saves her, but finds he
can’t go back. Graham, his dream fulfilled,
disappears into the field. Mark sees the
ballplayers for the first time, and decides not
to foreclose. The players ask Terence if he wants
to come along. Terence gleefully goes with the
players. Ray’s father returns, is introduced to
Ray’s family, and Ray and his dad play catch.
These sequences add up to the largest sequence, the script as a whole,
which might have the thematic title of “Ray Makes Peace with His
Father.”
THAT’S ANOTHER STORY (SUBPLOT
SEQUENCES)
The step outline is also where you’ll want to think about your
subplot(s). Many, though not all, films have secondary stories going,
usually involving the secondary characters; these subplots either serve
to reinforce or contrast with the main story line. For example, in Field
of Dreams, the subplot involves Ray’s tense relationship with his
brother-in-law and the bankruptcy. In a love story involving two
people who seem hopelessly incompatible, the subplot may involve a
couple of friends (allies) who are perfectly, even nauseatingly, right for
each other, thereby reinforcing the sense that our main characters will
never get together. In the end, because the secondary characters’
relationship was, let’s say, based on superficial compatibilities but
not true love, they may end up splitting just as our main characters
embrace.
Or a subplot may involve the protagonist in another story line to
complicate the events or deepen our sense of his character. For
example, in Casablanca, the main plot is that of Rick and Elsa’s
relationship, but the subplot involving Claude Rains’ Inspector
Renault gives Rick another deep relationship that evolves over the
course of the story. Rick starts off in an uneasy, amoral camaraderie
with the French officer while he is agonizing over his reunion with the
love of his life. In the end, he loses Elsa but sticks with Renault, in the
“beginning of a beautiful friendship.” This works, because the film is
thematically not about the survival of true love, but rather about
having to follow the call of duty. Another subplot involves Elsa and her
husband, Victor, in which he learns about her infidelity with Rick and
forgives her— where Rick can’t. This proves he is, at this moment, a
better man than Rick, deserving of her love. In the end, Rick regains
the upper hand by sacrificing his own feelings—and Elsa—for the
greater cause that Victor represents.
In the screenplay for Titanic there’s a subplot (that was cut from
the film for length reasons) in which Jack’s love for the upper-class
Rose is mirrored by that of his Italian friend Fabrizio (Danny Nucci)
for a working-class Norwegian girl named Helga. Their early
relationship is uncomplicated, where Jack and Rose’s seems
impossible; but at the end, when Rose chooses to leave her family and
go with Jack, she ends up surviving, whereas Helga will not leave her
family for Fabrizio and dies tragically, her love for him aborted.
In the detective thriller Seven, the subplot reinforces the tragic
theme of pervasive evil. The main plot is that of Brad Pitt and Morgan
Freeman’s detective characters attempting to catch a serial killer who
embodies evil. The subplot is that of Brad Pitt’s love for his pure,
lovely wife, who seems living proof that goodness exists in the world.
In the end, the serial killer not only murders her, but their unborn
child as well, and that act forces Pitt’s character to commit the mortal
sins of rage and murder himself. The subplot connects perfectly with
the main plot.
There is no hard-and-fast rule as to how often a subplot element
should appear, or how long it should last over the course of a
screenplay. There may be one long subplot matching the main story
point for point over the whole screenplay; for example, the subplot in
As Good as It Gets involving the protagonist (Jack Nicholson’s Melvin)
and his gay neighbor reflects and reinforces the main love story. Or
there may be several smaller subplots that appear, are resolved and
vanish at various points in the screenplay. In The Terminator, for
example, there is a short subplot at the beginning involving Sarah’s
roommate and her boyfriend Matt, a muscular but goofy guy who
attempts unsuccessfully to scare Sarah (failing where the Terminator
succeeds) and is totally incapable of defending himself or his lover
from the Terminator (failing where Reese succeeds). Both face the
same antagonist, but Matt and Sarah’s roommate die, whereas Sarah
lives, because she—with Reese’s help—is stronger and more capable.
The point is that the subplot should in some way deal with the same
things as the main plot, either as a cautionary contradiction or as
another level of reinforcement.
In planning out your subplots, you may wish to outline their
sequence or sequences separately, so you can make sure they’re
properly constructed: that they have a distinct beginning, middle and
end. Irritating “loose ends” can almost always be traced to incomplete
or unresolved subplots. Again, you want to be sure that they
thematically reflect or contrast with the main plot and don’t wander
away from it. Subplots should connect with the main story (share
scenes or even the final resolution with it) at reasonably regular inter-
vals so they remain integral to the main story. And however long or
involved they are, subplot scenes and sequences should not all be
jammed together. You don’t want to lose sight of the main plot; split
up the sequence(s) here and there to interweave subplot scenes with
the scenes of the main plot. Where and how is your job, but one hint is
that a subplot scene ending in a moment of crisis or high action may
be a good jumping-off point into a scene of apparent calm or subdued
action in the main plot. This will provide emotional and perhaps visual
or aural contrast and give a sense of variety to the motion of the script.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Building Blocks The smallest story unit is a beat, which constitutes
a particular moment or action within a scene. A sequence of beats
linked together—introduced, organized and ended properly—add up to
a scene. An organized progression of related scenes add up to a
sequence. Sequences combine to form the movement that is the
screenplay as a whole. Each step of the way is informed and defined by
the ebb and flow of the conflict, by the power struggles that result in
the progressive empowerment (and occasional setbacks) of the
protagonist and the progressive weakening (and occasional victories)
of the antagonist. With all this in mind, in the next chapter we’ll get
into the most productive ways to map out your screenplay.
EXERCISES
1. Break the following scene into beats:
EXT. FRONT PORCH — DAY
The shoes belong to BELLE BURNAND, a flaky
fifty-year-old who is always in a quiet,
personal hurry. Right now she’s balancing
three shopping bags and a hatbox. She hasn’t
got a free hand for the door.
BELLE
knock knock knock! Hands are full!
The door opens on Kasey’s sarcastic smile.

Belle scurries. . .
INSIDE:
BELLE
I’m sorry I’m late, I ran over some
dog between the funeral and the
shopping mall.
KASEY
Your son is here.
BELLE
Norman?
KASEY
You only got one son.
Norman comes out of hiding from behind the

door.
BELLE
NORMAN! Look at you!
Belle gives him a huge bear hug. The bags are

pinched between them.
BELLE
Oh, crushables! Crushables!
She unloads one sack into Norman’s hands.
NORMAN JR.
What’s in here, a bowling ball?
BELLE
As a matter of fact, yes. She opens
a package and hauls out a blue and
white swirly Lady Bowler II.
BELLE
They’ve got this new PTA bowling
team. It gets me out of the house on
Tuesday nights and Saturday
mornings. Now all I’d need is
something to occupy me on Friday
nights and I’d be able to avoid your
father in his retirement completely.
Belle takes some practice swings.
BELLE
Oh! You won’t believe it! They’ve
changed the supermarket again. Three
times in as many years. Meat against
the back wall now. Canned products
where the vegetables were. You know
what I just don’t understand? The
milk is right back to the same place
it was two years ago!
Belle stops talking long enough to catch

Norman’s troubled look.
BELLE
What is it? Your father home?
But before he can say it, Caroline enters. At

first, she doesn’t see Belle.
CAROLINE
Norman, did you tell your parents
that I was... Hi.
Belle stops mid swing.
BELLE
(dazed)
You brought someone with you.
NORMAN JR.
Mom, I’d like you to meet Caroline.
Belle just stands there. A frozen stupid look

on her face. Caroline steps up to shake her
hand but the bowling ball is in the way.
CAROLINE
Mrs. Burnand, I’ve heard so much
about you.
BELLE
Like what?
CAROLINE
Like... ah.
NORMAN JR.
I didn’t give away any family
secrets.
BELLE
Well, it’s... ah...
NORMAN JR.
... It’s nice to meet you.
BELLE
Right. It’s nice to meet you. What’s
your name?
CAROLINE
Caroline... Chrisler.
BELLE
Where did you meet my son?
CAROLINE
At the Campus Suicide Prevention
Center.
This brings an anxious pause as Belle attempts
to cover her shock.
CAROLINE
... I work there as a counselor. I’m
getting my Master’s in psychology.
Norman used to do volunteer work
there.
BELLE
(dumbfounded)
My Norman did volunteer work at a
suicide prevention center?
CAROLINE
Yes. It’s very rewarding.
KASEY
Well... that’s interesting.
Belle takes control.
BELLE
Kasey! Pick up your sister at
school!
KASEY
Yeah right.
Kasey heads for the door. Belle wants to talk

to Norman... alone. There is an uncomfortable
lull. Belle smiles at the stranger. Beat.
Caroline gets the message.
CAROLINE
Kasey, can I help?
KASEY
Sure.
Caroline and Kasey exit to the car. Belle

waits for them to clear the door and then...
BELLE
Don’t tell me, she’s pregnant!
2. Write a scene in which the location reveals the larger world of the
story, and in which the character has an action that has a beginning,
middle and end, and which reveals something about his/her character
without telling us everything about his/her intentions.
3. If you are currently working on a screenplay, divide it into scenes
and sequences. Give each sequence a title.
9
Scene Cards
Mapping the Journey
New writers are often so anxious to start that they dive in with a basic
idea, hoping to find their way as they go. This method might work for
screenwriters with long years of experience who have developed an
instinctive sense of how to create scenes and sequences into a coherent
structure, but it’s almost a surefire path to failure for beginning
screenwriters. Finding your way as you go will only lead to wasted
scenes, wasted rewrites and wasted time. Although it may seem
frustrating and even painful, you have to take the time to work out a
detailed step outline before you even think of typing the words “Fade
In.”
Think of your screenplay as a cross-country trip you want to take;
you’ve only got a few days and you want to see as much as possible
while still arriving at your destination on time. If you start driving with
only a general sense of where you’re going, you’ll likely spend a lot of
time getting lost, having to stop and ask directions, or doubling back
because you missed a turnoff or a landmark you wanted to see. You
might even run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, never getting
where you wanted to go in the first place. If you don’t want to take
twice as long to see half as much as you’d hoped, you need to have a
map and plan things out before you get into your car.
Your map in screenwriting is your step outline. It lets you plan the
overall journey so that you can be sure you’re traveling in the right
direction and covering all the ground you need to, before you get lost
in the details of the actual narration and dialogue. Once you’re into the
beats and scenes you’re writing, it’s hard to keep the larger plan in
mind, and it’s impossible if you haven’t formulated the larger plan.
You’ll tend to wander from scene to scene, hoping your characters will
more or less lead you to your story. They won’t, they’ll just wander
with you.
The step outline also helps you maintain objectivity. At this stage,
your story isn’t locked in, and you can more easily make decisions
about what is important and what can be done without. Once you’ve
truly written a scene and given your world and characters a reality
within it, it becomes much more difficult to change or eliminate them.
You become emotionally attached to that brilliant bit of description or
choice line of dialogue, whether or not it (or the character saying it)
belongs in the script. The inevitable tendency— since everything to
come is still vague and ill-defined—is to then warp the whole course of
the story in order to keep these few cherished details, a classic case of
the tail wagging the dog.
This is a particular trap for new writers who have not yet
internalized the fact that a great scene or line of dialogue that doesn’t
fit the story only hurts the screenplay. Your story must track easily;
each scene must tie directly into it, growing properly out of the
preceding scene, and leading inevitably into the following scene.
Perhaps the simplest way to think of it is that creating your step
outline is in fact writing your screenplay. In fact, the outline is where
you do most of the hard work and where you should spend a great deal
of your time. The more complete and polished your outline, the faster
and easier your first draft will be. Instead of staring at the screen,
tormented over what to write next or how to resolve the situation
you’ve gotten yourself into, you’ll already know the answers, and you’ll
breeze on through. Your step outline details the various destinations
that together form the map of your journey. Once this is done—and
not until it is done—the journey of the screenplay can begin.
IT’S IN THE CARDS
The most common way to compose a step outline is to use scene cards.
These are nothing more than 3” × 5” index cards on which the writer
jots a brief description of each scene, one scene per card. The cards are
then pinned on a bulletin board or spread on the floor, arranged,
rearranged, rewritten and modified until they form sequences so that,
eventually, the full structure of the movie is realized. The number of
scenes and sequences changes for every screenplay, but usually you’ll
need between forty and sixty scene cards and eight or more sequences
to plot out your entire screenplay. Some gurus insist that there are
only eight sequences in any good script, that break down to three acts:
two for Act One, four for Act Two, and two for Act Three. Some insist
there are seven sequences. Some insist there are twelve. We insist that
each script is different, and you should write what works for your
story. If you have less than eight sequences, however, your script will
probably either be too short or will feel play-like because you’ve
limited your location and scene changes; more than sixteen or so and
the script will probably be too long.
The advantage of using scene cards instead of simply outlining
scenes on a page is that they’re easier to rearrange, they force you to
keep descriptions brief and essential (there isn’t much room on a
card), and they allow you to step back and actually see the flow of the
story. There are now a variety of writing and screenwriting programs
that include a “corkboard” function with virtual “scene cards”; some of
them allow you to export these into screenplay format as well. These
virtual corkboards aren’t bad, but you’ll be limited by the size of your
monitor, and so may sacrifice the ability to see the whole layout of
your story, and so we still recommend old-school outlining with
physical scene cards.
You’ll need a place to display your scene cards. You don’t want to
have to take out your cards and lay them down every time you begin
work. Instead, pin them up on a large bulletin board, ready to be
worked on at a moment’s notice. You never know when a thought or
inspiration will strike, so scene cards should be ready twenty-four
hours a day. Your finished scene cards board should look something
like this:
How Much Is Enough?
So, what exactly should be on the cards? Well, at first that depends on
how much you know about the scenes you think you’ll want. Scene
cards are the map, but sometimes you may not have a clear idea of
where you’re going. If you are not sure (few screenwriters are at first),
scene cards can be used to explore the story, as a brainstorming
exercise. You don’t need to start from the beginning. Just write out the
scenes that you think you’ll want, put them roughly in the order you
think they’ll go, and then start filling in the gaps both on and between
the cards you have. If you only know that a certain event is going to
take place, but haven’t figured out exactly which characters will be
there or what they’ll say, you might simply write down the event:
“Titanic hits iceberg,” for instance. If you’re still searching for your
characters—as we all are—you might want to concentrate only on the
action and conflict, and how they move the story forward. This will
allow you to discover the characters as you go so that they will justify
the action. But leave room going to take place, but haven’t figured out
exactly which characters will be there or what they’ll say, you might
simply write down the event: “Titanic hits iceberg,” for instance. If
you’re still searching for your characters—as we all are—you might
want to concentrate only on the action and conflict, and how they
move the story forward. This will allow you to discover the characters
as you go so that they will justify the action. But leave room for more
information, which you’ll add as you fill in the rest of the scenes and
get a clearer idea of the story as a whole.
Some writers spend more time on their scene cards than they do
writing the script. Through weeks of working, creating and
rearranging, eventually you’ll have all your scenes on cards and in
proper order. A finished scene card contains the information needed
to actually write the scene: information about where and when the
scene takes place, who is involved, the event or action, the central
conflicts, perhaps a thumbnail of the dialogue that will occur, and how
the scene ties into the thematic arc of the story. You may also want to
note whether certain characters or events relate to the main plot or the
subplot. (Some writers indicate the subplot elements and characters in
a different color, so they can get a visual sense of going back and forth
between plot and subplot.) The scene cards should end up containing
all the relevant information that will go into the scenes themselves.
Think of them as rough first drafts of your scenes.
Your scene cards might include:
Location and Time It’s a good idea to top each finished scene card
with a scene header (such as INT. LUNCH ROOM — DAY). This
header forces you to think of each card as representing a scene that
will happen at a particular location and a particular time. Locations
are the larger world of the story (see Chapter 4), and you want to be
sure that each scene uses the world to best effect. By indicating NIGHT
or DAY on the outline cards (occasionally DAWN or DUSK, etc.) you
can see at a glance whether the timeline flows logically, or whether
there are too many consecutive scenes happening at night or during
the day. (Robin once had a student whose script covered a week’s
worth of action, but somehow it all took place during what seemed to
be the course of a single night.) Once you get into actually writing the
scene, you’ll use your narrative to amplify your descriptions of time
and place; for example, you might describe the quality of the night or
the golden light of the setting sun to create the proper visual
impression and mood.
Characters Obviously, you’ll need to know who appears in the scene.
It isn’t necessary to indicate every single character, just those central
to the action. Some writers jot each name in a color specific to that
character, so they can see just by looking at their scene cards if they’ve
left a central player out of the action for too long. We’ve both seen
many student screenplays in which either the protagonist or
antagonist mysteriously vanishes for twenty or thirty pages because
the writer got lost in a subplot or irrelevant series of scenes and forgot
whose story it was. Your story is about your main characters. Make
sure they actually show up every so often.
Event/Action Each scene card should describe at least one
significant event essential to the arc of the story, keeping in mind how
the event involves the actions or reactions of your characters. In his
wonderful little book Backwards & Forwards, David Ball states,
“When one event causes or permits another event, the two events
together comprise an action.” Each event flows into the next and
defines or triggers a new action. This event-triggering action forms the
step outline, which defines the journey of your screenplay. Instead of
“the murder takes place,” you’ll eventually put something like, “Bill
shoots Jenny in a jealous rage. Herbert runs for his life, shouting that
he’ll get even with Bill if it’s the last thing he does.” (Hopefully your
card will say something more original than this, but you get the idea.)
And this event, triggering Herbert’s flight and threat, will in turn result
in another event and action—in a new scene card. Events are what
happen in the scene; the action is the characters’ deeds, the tactics
they use to obtain their goals and objectives.
Conflict Try to note the basic conflicts in the scene. If you can’t find
any, then you need to rethink or cut the scene. The outline is the place
to figure this out, before you’ve lost sight of the problem in the
wondrous camouflage of your narrative and dialogue. Recently, a
student writer penned a screenplay in which the middle of the story
was occupied by two lovers, who read poems to each other, ran
barefoot on the beach and proclaimed their love, without any
underlying conflict between them or from outside sources. The fact
that the couple was in love was clear within the first eighth of a page,
but since nothing dramatic (nothing that threatened or challenged
their happiness) occurred for the next fifteen or so, there was no
conflict and the story was dead. This could have been solved early on if
the writer had attended to the issue of conflict in his outline. We’re not
saying he should have tossed in a fistfight for no reason; rather, he
needed to work out the story better, both what happened in the scenes
and how they related to one another, so that the love affair became an
essential and exciting part of the larger dramatic (or comedic) arc—in
other words, the ebb and flow of power and the conflicts that result.
You Don’t Have to Include Minor Scenes Not all scenes must be
included in a step outline. Most screenwriters do not include scene
cards for establishing shots (interstitial scenes that reveal locations or
simple transitions between locations). For example, if you need a short
scene in which the characters walk from the car into a house, or get on
to the airplane, it’s usually not necessary to make a scene card. These
are not true scenes, but rather extensions of other, more significant
scenes. Only scenes that define action and the thematic arc of the story
need to be included in the step outline.
The Whole deck
Flexibility George Pierce Baker, Eugene O’Neill’s professor at
Harvard, said, “He who steers by the compass knows how with safety
to change his course. He who steers by dead reckoning is liable to
error and delay.” Scene cards are the compass, but they are not the
finished screenplay, so don’t feel trapped by your first arrangement of
cards. This is where you have the freedom to move things around and
see how they work best. Even after you’ve begun writing you’ll
occasionally discover that a scene doesn’t work or you get a better
idea. So go back to the cards and try your changes out there before
committing to them.
Below is an example of how the scene cards for an entire movie
might look, in this case derived from the comedy/drama Juno by
Diablo Cody (who won the Academy Award for Best Original
Screenplay for this script). Note that in some places where there’s a
continuous action, even though the exact location may change within
the house (for instance), we’ve counted it as a single scene. We’ve also
“chaptered” each sequence of scenes with a title. Chaptering and titling
sequences can help you sort out what happens where in the script, in a
way that’s more precise and relevant than abstract labels like “plot
point one” or “the beginning of Act Two.” It’s not an exact science, but
each sequence, like each scene, should have a beginning, middle, and
end in which something important has changed for the characters.
JUNO
Sequence #1 – Sex and the Overstuffed Chair and Girl
Sequence #2 – How Can a Boy Be a Father?
Sequence #3 – The Life of a Pregnant Sixteen-Year-
Old
Sequence #4 – Juno Decides to Keep the Baby
Sequence #5 – Old Parents, New Parents
Sequence #6 – Babies Who Made a Baby
Sequence #7 – Juno Bonds with Mark and Bleeker
Sequence #8 - Will the Baby Kick for Neurotic
Vanessa?
Sequence #9 – Bleeker and Mark Both Mess Up
Sequence #10 – Juno and Vanessa Hit Rock Bottom
Sequence #11 – Can Two People Love Each Other
Forever?
Sequence #12 – Juno Gets Her Man, Vanessa Gets Her
Boy
FINAL THOUGHTS
One Step at a Time. At UCLA film school, students have to turn out
a first draft of a new screenplay every ten weeks (UCLA is on a
trimester rather than semester system). Writing a 100- to 120-page
screenplay in such a short time is a daunting challenge. After almost
missing their deadlines on their first scripts, most students quickly
discover that they are diving into their screenplays too quickly and
spending too little time on their step outlines. Their panic over time—
and the subsequent headlong rush into writing before their stories are
thought out—usually leads to many false starts, endlessly rewritten
first pages, and even failure to finish their first drafts at all. Robin once
had a student who was confident in his ability to write quickly and who
thought wasting time on a step outline would only slow him down. At
the end of eight weeks the student came to Robin’s office, distraught.
He’d written almost 250 pages and still had no idea how (or when) he
was going to end his screenplay. Finally beaten into submission, he
retreated, spent a sleepless week coming up with a step outline that
worked, and was able to go back and finish a 110-page first draft by the
end of the term, one week later.
Perhaps the most important scene sequence is that which opens the
screenplay. To this we’ve devoted the next chapter.
EXERCISES
1. Study the structure of an existing movie similar in genre or theme to
what you want to write. Find one you can rent and watch it with pen in
hand. Write down every important scene as you watch it on scene
cards until you have “step outlined” the entire movie. When the cards
are done, pin them up on a board and study how the story is
organized. How many scenes are there? Are they all necessary, and if
so, why? Why not? How do plot and subplot map out? Does the story
follow a three-act structure, or does it employ another model? What
structural lessons can it show you that might help you build your
story?
2. Looking at the scene cards for Juno, identify a specific scene
sequence and describe why it is a scene sequence and how it works
within the larger story. Then write out a scene sequence for your
screenplay, using scene cards. Do the scenes flow into each other
properly and create a discrete unit within the larger story?
10
Entering the Story

First and Ten
This is a fact of life: if your first ten pages—roughly the first ten
minutes of the movie—aren’t what they need to be, your script has very
little chance of being taken on by an agent or bought by a producer.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” you say. “That’s less than ten percent of what
I’ve written here!” True, but it’s the most important less-than-ten-
percent in terms of how your script will be read.
We reiterate—there are literally hundreds of thousands of scripts
out there that need to be analyzed quickly and economically by tired
readers, agents and producers; so don’t hope they’ll get to the good
stuff on page 23. They won’t unless there’s good stuff on the preceding
22 pages.
“But,” you complain, “you said a reader is paid to provide a
complete synopsis of my script to his boss, so he’ll have to read the
great stuff on page 23!” Yes, but he won’t read it carefully or with
much enthusiasm. You’ll have lost him. Not because he’s a jerk (well,
okay, he might be), but because he’s looking for a good MOVIE for his
boss to make. And he knows that a movie must have a gripping,
irresistible opening, or it will lose its audience. If a movie based on
your script would have people heading for the exits after ten or twenty
boring or confusing opening minutes, your reader is going to assume
you don’t know what you’re doing. And guess what? He’ll be right.
The world, the protagonist, the antagonist, the tone, the theme, the
stakes and the nature of the conflict all must be there within the first
ten pages or so and in such a complete and compelling fashion that the
reader simply must read on. As if that isn’t hard enough, you must also
make clear in the first few pages that, in this world, this story is the
essential conflict, and your characters are the essential people to
resolve it.
In order to see how so much can be done in such a seemingly short
amount of time, let’s take a look at two very different but effective
movies, The Terminator and Big Night (the hit of the 1996 Sundance
Film Festival) and examine how their first ten minutes work.
THE TERMINATOR: MAN VS. MACHINE
The Terminator is a Frankenstein story set in an action/adventure,
science- fiction framework. (Mary Shelley’s original Frankenstein was
itself a kind of science fiction, in its own time.)
The world is the “normal,” present-day city of Los Angeles, set in
contrast to a potentially horrific future society in which machines have
nearly wiped us out. The protagonist is an average, present-day
working girl, assisted by a brave but virginal soldier from that future.
The antagonist is an unstoppable robotic killing machine from this
hellish future, disguised as a man. The tone is ominous and
frightening, with moments of dark humor. The stakes are both global
(if our heroes don’t succeed, humanity will be wiped out) and also
intensely personal (if our heroes don’t succeed, they and their unborn
child, the hope of the future, will die).
The nature of the conflict in The Terminator is the survival of the
human race vs. the prospect of its complete annihilation. It is also
about living, breathing people vs. a soulless killing machine. In the
near future, government scientists (hubristic, faceless members of
society) will create a “Frankenstein”—an intelligent, computerized
defense system that will turn on its makers. Now, other fallible but
courageous human beings—an everyday woman and a soldier who
loves her—must fight their way back from the brink of this apocalypse.
And all this is set up in the first few pages.
Let’s see how The Terminator does this.
MINUTE ONE/TWO: The movie begins at night in
the blighted future, with human bones strewn
among the wreckage of a ruined city.
Terrifying machines crunch human skulls under
caterpillar treads or fly through the sky
shooting lasers at desperate human resistance
fighters. A “crawl” (a written message
superimposed on the screen) informs us that
this is Los Angeles, 2029, but also that the
battle of this story does not take place in
the horrendous future we are looking at, but
today.
MINUTE THREE: The next scene, also at night,
returns us to the present day. It takes us
behind a schoolyard, where a dump truck is
pulling in. Suddenly, flashes of static
electricity frighten away the truck driver.
There’s a bright blast of light and a
thunderclap, out of which appears a naked,
perfect, muscular man, who kneels in fetal
position on the pavement: the Terminator. He
shows no pain or emotion. He stands up and
walks to a view overlooking the lights of the
city below.
MINUTE FOUR/FIVE: He hears noise from several
punk teenagers nearby and goes to them. They
make fun of his nakedness; he repeats their
words in a monotone, and then demands their
clothes. They refuse and attack him. One punk
stabs him in the stomach, to no effect. The
Terminator plunges his fist into the punk’s
chest, effortlessly lifting him off his feet
and killing him. The others quickly give the
Terminator their clothes.
MINUTE SIX: Down in a seedy alley, a bum is
disturbed by a similar electrical disturbance.
Another naked man, Reese, appears—but this
time he drops hard to the pavement, in agony.
He is muscular, but smaller than the
Terminator. His hair is ragged, his skin
scarred.
MINUTE SEVEN: Reese steals some filthy clothes
from the bum. A police car appears, its
searchlight finding him. The cops order Reese
to stop, but he runs away. They chase him
through the trash-strewn alley. He’s fast,
agile.
MINUTE EIGHT: More cops chase him; Reese runs
into one who has his gun drawn and shoots, but
misses. Reese snatches the gun away and points
it at the cop, demanding to know what date and
year it is. He escapes the cops by breaking
into a department store. He’s momentarily
confused by the plastic mannequins. Then he
steals some shoes and moves on. Coming back
into the alley, Reese goes to an empty police
car left behind in the pursuit, and steals the
shotgun. Then he disappears into the night.
MINUTE NINE: Reese finds a phone booth and
scans it for the name of Sarah Connor. He
finds several, rips out the page. We then meet
SARAH on her moped, a typical young woman, not
gorgeous, but appealing. She’s late for work
as a waitress at a diner. We see her name
again on her time card. She’s harassed from
the first moment, trying to get to all the
complaining customers, knocking over a glass
of water. A little boy makes her life even
more miserable by dumping his scoop of ice
cream into her apron pouch. Her coworker
whispers to her, “Look at it this way: in a
hundred years, who’s gonna care?”
MINUTE TEN/ELEVEN: The Terminator, wearing the
punks’ clothes, punches out a car window and
gets in. He rips open the steering column with
his bare hands and hot- wires the car. He goes
to a huge pawn shop/gun shop, and after
selecting a huge arsenal of weapons, kills the
owner. Then he, too, finds the list of “Sarah
Connors” in a phone book, after first
effortlessly yanking out the big bruiser who
was using the phone booth.
Let’s go back over this and see if we have our essentials: the best
“world” for the story, an essential protagonist, an essential antagonist,
a strong tone, a clear theme, high stakes and plenty of conflict.
In the first minute we see that the stakes are a future ruined by
machines gone amuck, but that the conflict will take place today. The
world of our story is clearly presented, as is the central conflict. The
theme begins to emerge; the tone is appropriately dark and ominous.
It’s interesting to note that this prologue was not in the original script,
but was added later. As the film progressed, it became clear that the
audience would need to better understand both the two worlds and the
stakes of the story early on, in order to fully identify with the dilemma
of the characters.
Three minutes in we meet the Terminator, our antagonist. He is
huge, perfect, without pain or emotion, though at this point we don’t
know he’s a machine. He is shown to us in a superior position, looking
down from a height over the sleeping city. And he kills the first human
he encounters. Right away we know the Terminator is powerful, lethal
and unstoppable. And he gets some cool, heavy-metal clothes.
By six minutes in, we meet our chief ally, Reese, in a roughly
parallel way. Reese is fearless, but clearly human, battle-scarred and
on the run. He does not emerge in painless perfection from the
mysterious electrical cocoon or calmly look down on the sprawling
city. Reese drops right into the city, into an alley no less, right into the
grime of humanity. He looks as if he belongs there, too, especially
when he puts on the bum’s clothes. Unlike the Terminator, who seems
to know exactly what date it is, Reese is unsure. He is a skilled fighter,
but not superhuman. And he kills no one. His character is clear and
distinct from the Terminator’s.
The parallel structure is repeated as both Reese and the Terminator
acquire weapons (the Terminator again killing to get them, while
Reese doesn’t), and both find Sarah Connor in the phone book. The
comparison shows us that this ally, though tough and capable, is
definitely up against a more powerful and ruthless antagonist. They
think alike, and are both after the same thing: Sarah Connor. The
larger, somewhat abstract stakes of a destroyed future are therefore
made personal: one young woman’s life is in danger.
But Reese is not the main protagonist. Sarah is. Although at first
she seems to be the object of salvation, the “princess in the tower,”
Sarah is the one who undergoes the greatest transformation, from
waitress to warrior to mother of the future. Reese and the Terminator
are both outsiders to our “world,” two sides of the same problem for
Sarah—whether she will die or live to fulfill her destiny. Importantly,
when we first meet her, she is “one of us,” an ordinary person just
trying to get by, someone in whom we can invest our feelings.
The conflict is clear. Two people must rise above themselves (gain
power) and destroy (deprive of power) the flawless robotic emissary of
a futuristic war machine if the human race is to survive. The imagery
reinforces this conflict. From the death machines in the future, we
cut to the seemingly innocuous machinery of the dump truck, and then
the Terminator
appears. The dump truck, with its frightened human driver,
prepares us for the garbage-strewn alley into which Reese is “dumped”
and alludes to the terror humanity is about to face. These, in turn, tell
us that our human champions are severely outmatched—it’s going to
take every resource Reese and Sarah can muster simply to stop the
Terminator.
By the tenth minute (page nine of the script), the dialogue subtly
reiterates the stakes: “In a hundred years, who’s gonna care?” The
prologue has shown us that in a hundred years, the world may be a
living hell. The first ten pages vividly present all the needed elements
and leave us in no doubt that Sarah and Reese, in all their fallible
humanity, are somehow uniquely indispensable in preventing that
future from happening. We identify with Sarah, admire Reese, and are
genuinely terrified by the Terminator.
All of the above clearly expresses and reinforces the theme, that is,
by giving away power and responsibility to the machines we create, we
may unleash the terrible forces of our own destruction. Only by
retaining our own humanity can we survive. And it’s all there in the
first ten minutes: the best “world” for the story, an essential
protagonist (plus a great ally), an essential antagonist, a strong tone, a
clear theme, high stakes and plenty of conflict. What reader could put
it down?
BIG NIGHT: SOUL VS. SUCCESS
Stanley Tucci and Joseph Tropiano’s award-winning Big Night is
about as different from The Terminator as it can be. It’s a small,
intimate character drama about two immigrant Italian brothers in the
1950s who are trying to open their own restaurant. The older brother,
Primo, is the chef, a true artist unwilling to compromise his vision of
what food should be to suit their middle-brow American customers.
Primo longs to go back to the old country and hasn’t learned much
English yet. Secondo, the younger brother, speaks English better and
longs to achieve the American dream of financial success, even if it
means compromise. Serious tensions arise between the brothers
because of their different visions and desires.
Such a film, about ordinary people living their lives, is perhaps the
hardest kind of film to write because there are no special effects,
gunfights, lurid sex or violence to juice up the conflict and distract
from lack of character. There is nothing but character interaction to
create the drama and stakes of the story. Because of this, such scripts
often tend to wander, following their protagonists through the
minutiae and random conversations of their day in an attempt to be
“honest” and true to life. The problem, as we’ve said, is that movies are
not true to life; they are true to its essence, as defined by the film-
maker. A character drama must be as concise and compelling in its
first ten pages as any other kind of screenplay. So let’s see how the first
ten pages of Big Night accomplishes this. First we’ll go over the main
elements.
The world is a small New Jersey town in which the brothers have
opened a restaurant, an ordinary slice of America in the 1950s. The
protagonist is Secondo, the younger of the two brothers. Driven,
ambitious, he longs for the kind of success that, to him, defines the
American dream. The antagonist (not the bad guy, but the
oppositional character) is his older brother, Primo, a brilliant chef who
resents the crassness of America, longs for the Old World, and defines
success in terms of artistic purity. It may at first seem that Pascal—the
ruthless, successful restaurateur across the street—is the antagonist,
but in fact he is a false ally, someone who pretends friendship while
actually sabotaging Secondo. Pascal forces Secondo to recognize the
truths that Primo represents. He is an example of the success Secondo
thinks he wants, without realizing that such success comes at a terrible
cost, a cost that Primo is unwilling to pay.
The tone is quiet and intimate, defined by the sleepy restaurant and
the streets of this small town. Both the drama and the humor come
from the complex reality of the characters, their immigrant
background and their hopes and dreams. These also define the stakes:
will Secondo succeed in achieving the American Dream? If he does,
will it be at the cost of his own dignity and Primo’s integrity? Such
personal stakes are not heroic or larger than life; they do not affect the
world at large. Rather, they represent the challenge common people
face as they struggle to make a success of their own lives. The stakes
are compelling not because we are in awe of them, but because we can
identify with them.
Let’s look at the first ten pages (minutes) and see how all of this is
introduced, minute by minute.
MINUTE ONE: The film opens at dusk. The
restaurant’s Spanish busboy, Cristiano, sits
looking at the ocean, quietly eating a piece
of homemade bread. He goes back to the
restaurant; the kitchen entrance faces the
ocean.
MINUTE TWO: Cristiano enters to find Primo and
Secondo in the kitchen, cooking risotto. He
picks up some plates and goes through the
doors to the restaurant. Primo asks Secondo to
try it: “Prova?” (“Try it?” in Italian)
Secondo tries it and approves. Primo asks in
Italian if it needs more salt. Secondo insists
he ask again, in English. They discuss the
finer points of the ingredients, Primo
cautioning his little brother to cut up the
garlic the right way. He reverts to speaking
Italian, and cleans the garlic smell from his
fingers with a slice of lemon.
As Cristiano comes back into the kitchen,
Secondo tells him to get ready—the restaurant
opens in five minutes. Cristiano comments in
Spanish that it’s a lot of work for not much
money. He goes to wash the ashtrays, but the
plumbing doesn’t work well.
Secondo, nervous about the opening, gets
dressed up in a suit and tie. He picks up
menus, labeled “Paradise Restaurant.” In the
restaurant, he goes around fussing,
straightening the silverware, perfecting every
table setting. Original and interesting
paintings hang on the walls.
MINUTE THREE: Secondo downs an espresso (in
the film it’s a shot of vodka). Then he
carefully turns the “Closed” sign to “Open.”
Stepping out the front door to the street, he
carefully adjusts the placement of the potted
plants outside. For a moment in the script we
see his dream of some wealthy patrons arriving
in a Cadillac, dressed in all their finery.
But it’s just a daydream, and he goes back
inside.
MINUTE FOUR: Later; Primo is still perfecting
his seafood risotto. Secondo is urging him to
serve it already, as the sole customers in the
restaurant have been waiting an hour. They
smoke as they eat; as Secondo brings out their
dishes, they say it took so long they thought
he had to go all the way back to Italy to get
it. Woman isn’t sure this is what she ordered:
she doesn’t see the seafood in it. Then she
asks for a side order of spaghetti. Secondo
tries to explain to her that they’re both
starch, but she insists. She wants spaghetti
with meatballs. Secondo tells her they don’t
make meatballs; exasperated, she finally just
orders a side of plain spaghetti. But she
isn’t happy.
MINUTE FIVE: Primo argues with Secondo about
making a side order of spaghetti: “Who are
these people in America?” Primo asks. Secondo
insists that “This is what the customer asked
for--make it, make it, make it.” These are
their only customers. Primo counters that the
woman is a criminal, a philistine. Secondo is
sick of having this argument every night.
Furious, Primo throws a pot at the door.
(The next five minutes contain roughly the same scenes in both the
script and the finished film, but their order has been changed around a
bit. For the purpose of this analysis we’ll stick to the film, since that is
what the filmmakers, who were also the screenwriters, eventually
determined was the best way to open the film.)
MINUTE SIX: There’s a brief scene of the two
brothers silently going to bed, side by side
in their little apartment bedroom.
MINUTE SEVEN/EIGHT: The next day, Secondo
visits his banker, PIERCE. He tries to seem
cool and collected, talking about their
renovation plans. Pierce abruptly tells him
he’s going to have to change the direction of
the conversation right now: Secondo is behind
on his loan payments. He’ll have to do
something, maybe sell his car. He worries that
Secondo may not understand him; Secondo
responds “I speak English.” He tries to
explain the situation, that he’s doing
everything he can, but Pierce insists there’s
no more time. They’ll foreclose if they don’t
get a payment that month.
MINUTE NINE: That night while Cristiano puts
the chairs on the tables, Secondo compares the
day’s meager receipts with the bills he must
pay. STASH, a painter and friend, sits with
Primo and finishes a meal. He compliments them
on being the only restaurant where he can get
rabbit, and apologizes that he can’t pay with
money; instead he gives them another painting.
Primo laughs it off: “Please, money. What
would I do with money?” Secondo hopes that
someday Stash will become rich and famous so
he can pay them with money. Primo is
enthusiastic about the painting. Secondo just
says, “Great, put it with the rest of them.”
MINUTE TEN/ELEVEN: Secondo approaches Primo,
who’s alone in the restaurant, reading an
Italian newspaper. He asks “How do you feel if
we take risotto off the menu?” Primo pretends
not to hear him, forcing him to repeat the
question. Secondo tries to make it seem
sensible: risotto costs them a lot to make and
the customers don’t really understand it.
Primo at first seems to agree. Then he says,
maybe they could instead serve “...what do
they call them? You know...hot dogs? Hot dogs,
hot dogs, hot dogs. I think people would like
that. Those.” It’s an unkind dig at his
brother, and he retreats: “If you give people
time, they learn.” Secondo angrily answers
that they don’t have time, and this is a
restaurant, not a school.
Are all of our essentials present here in the first ten minutes? In the
first two minutes, the world, tone and characters are clearly defined.
We start with an immigrant worker, eating food and looking at the
ocean over which the immigrants have come. We then meet our
protagonist and antagonist in the restaurant itself, which forms the
largest part of their world, the setting for the conflict between art and
commerce, sustenance and failure. It’s almost night, which is when the
restaurant comes to life. The tone is set by the quiet location, the
careful skill and clear tensions between the brothers as they prepare to
open. The themes of becoming an American and preserving one’s
integrity are clear from the very first lines of dialogue, where Secondo
insists that Primo speak English and Primo cautions Secondo to
prepare the garlic correctly. The stakes of potential failure are quickly
indicated by the failure of the plumbing and Cristiano’s comment
about working so hard for so little money. We also quickly see that
while Primo is focused on the quality of the food, Secondo is focused
on appearances: how the restaurant looks. They have called their little
place “Paradise”—their piece of heaven.
By minute three, we see that the town is a typical small town, the
period reminding American audiences (themselves mostly descended
from immigrants within the last century) of their own families’
experience. We also see that Secondo’s dream of wealthy patrons is
just that: a dream. Not long after we’ll see it come true, but only for the
crass restaurant across the street.
Four minutes in we see the essence of the brothers’ conflict with
each other and with the larger world, as Primo’s labor of love takes
second place to Secondo’s desire to please the customers. Secondo
wants desperately to fit in and succeed, while Primo couldn’t care less
and resents wasting his skills on “philistines.”
In the next few minutes we see the source of Secondo’s anxiety: he’s
going to lose the restaurant. The hard reality that he needs money
contrasts with his brother’s willingness to trade food for art—an even
exchange for him, because he is an artist himself. It all comes to a head
when Secondo suggests compromising their menu and Primo
responds with bitter humor that instead of his masterful risotto,
perhaps they should serve hot dogs. But throughout we can see that
under the struggle there is a deep current of love between the brothers
as they try to get along and help each other’s dreams come true.
The script strongly and quickly brings a special world to life, gives
us an intimate protagonist–antagonist relationship that reflects both
the world and theme, and creates an appropriate tone with its loving
details in the kitchen and hard realities outside the kitchen. The stakes
are high within the context of the story: success in the new world or
humiliation and bankruptcy. Each scene is filled with the conflict
generated by those two potential outcomes.
These two examples, though wildly different in kind, are similar in
how their first ten minutes are used to set up the rest of the story. “But
wait,” you say—“I’ve seen great films where we don’t meet the
protagonist or antagonist until well after the first ten minutes!” This is
only apparently the case. It is true that not all stories require the actual
presence of the protagonist or antagonist early on. In detective stories,
for instance, we may not meet our antagonist in person until well into
the story, even at the end. But we will encounter evidence of the
antagonist, in the form of his or her crimes. In Chinatown, we don’t
meet Noah Cross until an hour into the film. But we do see a photo of
him in the first ten minutes and, of course, we see plenty of evidence of
his machinations, though we don’t yet know he’s behind them. In
Seven, the horrible, perversely moralistic murders represent the
antagonist—his presence is felt in every gruesome detail—though we
don’t meet him in person until better than halfway in, and even then
we don’t see his face. It isn’t until near the end of the story that we
meet him face-to-face, but the accumulation of details regarding his
identity have kept him very much present in every preceding scene.
So the fact remains that whatever the genre, within the first ten
minutes each element still needs to be addressed: world, essential
protagonist and antagonist (or evidence of his work or crime, in place
of his actual presence), tone, theme, stakes and conflict. No matter
what kind of script you are writing, your main objective as you open
your story must be to introduce all these elements in a clear, concise
and compelling fashion so that after finishing your first ten pages, the
reader’s only thought will be to keep on reading and find out what
happens next.
EXERCISES
1. Look at the first ten pages of your favorite movie if you can get the
script, or view the first ten minutes if you can’t. Can a short statement
about each of the following be drawn?
2. Look at the first ten pages of your favorite movie and describe what
happens minute by minute to draw the audience into the story and
characters. (Remember one page equals one minute of screen time.)
3. Scene-card the first ten pages of your screenplay. Make sure each
scene has a location that works with your “world,” the right characters,
a central event or action, conflict and something to indicate how the
scene advances the thematic arc of the story.
11
The Structure of Genres

It’s a Sci-Fi, Romantic Comedy, Western
Thriller
Any discussion of film genres is bound to be controversial. Some

respected screenwriters and film professors feel that there are no such
things, and that the practice of categorizing different kinds of stories is
deceptive. They emphasize—correctly—that all good films, no matter
what stories they are telling, depend on the essentials (character,
theme, world and so forth) and that attempting to follow the “rules”
for any supposed genre can result in shallow, formulaic writing.
Besides, once you’ve decided on your world, story and characters, then
you’ve pretty much already defined the genre in which you’re working.
But the fact remains that films are categorized into genres by
everyone from producers to critics to audiences. It’s how we bring
order to the tremendous variety that movies offer us. It’s the reason
video stores have different sections, so that if you’re in the mood for a
laugh or a thrill or a dose of the weepies, you’ll know where to look.
When, as a writer, you make your choice of world and story—your
genre—you set up certain expectations that must be satisfied, or the
script will disappoint the reader. A suspense-thriller must be
suspenseful and thrilling, a horror film must be frightening, a comedy
must be funny, while a drama may not need to create any of these
reactions.
There’s nothing pernicious about it; genre is simply a parcel of film
terrain to which audiences choose to return again and again. At first a
genre is newly discovered territory, fresh and virginal. Then it gets
developed, and eventually becomes overused and tired, its veins of
valuable material tapped out. (This is when a genre also becomes so
rife with cliché that it is ripe for satire, as Jim Abrahams and the
Zucker brothers and their imitators have discovered—in such movies
as Airplane!, Naked Gun or Scary Movie—creating a genre of their
own that exploits this.) After a while, new filmmakers re-explore the
old territories with fresh eyes and find new treasures there that others
have missed or the passage of time has revealed, and the genre is
revived.
Of course, many of the greatest films of all time are not easily
pigeon- holed into a particular genre; part of their richness and
complexity comes from the fact that they successfully mix elements of
several genres at once. The Terminator, Avatar, Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid, Sherlock Holmes (the one directed by Guy Ritchie)
and Casablanca are all good examples. In many cases, genre is simply
a matter of emphasis. When a film contains both action-adventure and
love story elements, it will be an action-adventure movie if the
protagonist’s struggle with an antagonist other than the lover is the
central element; but it will be a love story if the romantic struggle is
fore- most, in which case the lover becomes the primary antagonist
and the action is relegated to a secondary or subplot status. But it’s
important to know in principle what the expectations are in each area,
more or less what will satisfy them, and why.
Writing students, in the throes of struggling with their stories, often
beg to be told the “rules” of their genre, the magic key or formula
which will suddenly make sense of it all. But it’s not a matter of
slavishly following a formula; every successful film script pushes and
alters certain aspects of a genre, combines or even inverts them,
follows certain rules and breaks others, in order to present something
both recognizable and yet surprising and original. From the writer’s
point of view, it’s a matter of understanding not the rules but the
strategies that different genres employ to achieve their desired effects.
Producers want more than anything to find a story that both falls
within a recognizable and popular genre, and yet is in some way
different from anything they’ve seen before. They want it because
they know audiences also want it. In order for you to be in control of
what you’re writing to accomplish this, you must work from a base of
understanding. If you know how and why a genre works—in fact, why
it exists at all—you can more clearly decide which one your intended
story falls into, and more clearly organize and innovate its elements.
A MOVING (PICTURE) EXPERIENCE
All films aim to evoke an emotional response in the audience: “make
’em laugh, make ’em cry.” And at their core, genres spring from the
same source as all storytelling: desire—the desire to experience love, to
overcome fear (even the terror of death), to understand the meaning of
it all (whatever “it” may be) or simply to escape the ordinariness of
real life and experience places and thrills that only the imagination can
provide. It’s not an intellectual longing, or movies would be made from
philosophical treatises. It’s a deep, gut-based desire for a heightened
sense of order, of connection, of adventure, of love or hate or hilarity
or sexual passion—of power over the mysteries of life. As we’ve seen,
all drama is about power. And movies, more than any other medium,
empower their audiences because when people enter the dark dream-
world of the theater, they can enter other worlds and vicariously
experience the struggles and eventual successes or failures of the
characters. They can come away unharmed, yet still filled with the
emotional power of the experience. This is what Aristotle meant by
“catharsis”: we are emotionally purified by sorrow, by laughter, by
sheer adrenaline—by having accompanied the fictional protagonists
through their varied crucibles of intense experience and emotion.
Genre is simply the classification of these variations. There isn’t
room to cover every genre in detail, and our intention here isn’t to
provide a laundry list of descriptions and formulas; these can be found
in other books, on the internet and elsewhere. Rather, let’s step back
and look at a number of genre categories from the point of view of
their emotional intentions. We do not pretend to present a
scientifically exact or complete taxonomy. In some cases we will
examine a specific genre in detail; in others we’ll simply examine the
emotional and story strategies common to genres within a given
emotion category. There will necessarily be many omissions, and some
overlap as well, since different genres may employ similar strategies,
or a film may employ the strategies of different genres. The
Terminator, for example, successfully incorporates the action, horror
and love story genres in almost equal measure. But although many
different emotions may be aroused over the course of a given film, one
will be primary, the one most intimately related to the theme and
purpose of the story, to the catharsis at the end. This specific emotion
guides and defines the film’s genre.
Internal Consistency
Before we go into specifics, there are certain elements that apply
across genres and which you ignore at your peril. First, it is essential
that you create an internally consistent world, whether for a
contemporary love story or an exotic science fiction/fear story. Each
world has certain parameters that you must set up and to which you
must remain true, or you will lose your audience. If you’re telling a
classic vampire story and set up at the beginning that the monster can
be destroyed by sunlight or a wooden stake, your audience will feel
cheated if you then spring the surprise that, guess what, this vampire
is different. If you set up a world in which pain is harmless (as in a
laughter film), you will shock and risk alienating your audience if the
pain suddenly becomes real. So be careful to remain true to the new
world you’ve created. You don’t want to be like the writing student
who wrote an outer space movie, went into detail about how this world
had no gravity, but then had the space villain “fall” to his death at the
climax. It’s as annoying as the vampire who is not affected by a cross
or sunlight: it breaks the rules of the story—not so much of the genre,
but of the particular story—and each particular story world has its own
internal rules. Either there is gravity, or there isn’t. Either you can’t
hear sound in outer space, or you can. Discover or create these
parameters, and then stick to them, or you will create plot holes,
destroy the delicate illusion of reality, and lose your reader.
Another way to look at it is that once you have set up a certain
“reality level,” you must remain true to it. Movies, like poetry and
other forms of fiction, depend on what John Keats called the “willing
suspension of disbelief.” If you’re writing a horrific thriller and
suddenly it veers into a slapstick comedy (an extreme example), you
risk throwing the audience out of the movie. They will no longer be
caught up in the world you’ve created, but suddenly distanced from it,
since the world has changed. The contract you’ve drawn with them in
your setup, enticing them into a willing suspension of disbelief, has
been betrayed. There are exceptions, like Something Wild, which
starts as a laughter film and ends as a dark thriller, or Harold and
Maude, which also starts comically and ends up with a death and
genuine pain; but these are rare exceptions and are not accidental
shifts of reality levels. Such movies skillfully use the change of level
and genre to challenge or give deeper meaning to the conventions with
which they began. This is very difficult to pull off and probably not a
good idea to attempt in your first few scripts. Get comfortable with
creating solid, consistent worlds; then mess around with them once
you know what you’re doing.
That said, let’s take a closer look at how genres work. The major
emotion categories we’ll examine here are courage, fear, need to know,
laughter and love.
COURAGE
Action-Adventure, War, Western, Historical epic and Heroic
Science Fiction
One of the strongest human desires is to be brave, to have what it
takes to save ourselves and our loved ones, even our nation, without
sacrificing our dignity or morality. We want to have courage in the face
of pain, but particularly in the face of death. It’s been argued that the
fear of death—that final, inevitable and most impenetrable mystery of
all—is behind the belief in God, the creation of religions, the impulse
to create art and even the act of war; for by creating something that
will outlast us, or by killing a deadly opponent, in effect we have killed
death itself, achieved a glorious immortality, at least in reputation. Of
course, most of us aren’t brave. We are terrified of pain and the
oblivion that may await us all, of the fundamental uncertainty with
which death confronts us, and we will do almost anything we can,
from working out until our muscles scream, to plastic surgery or even
going to Switzerland for sheep-hormone injections, to put off the final
day of reckoning.
We want to defeat death. In art, we hope our talents and
personalities will somehow survive and be immortalized and admired
by generations to come. In religion, we hope to be resurrected, to go to
heaven, be reunited with loved ones, be reincarnated or to have our
consciousness merge in some meaningful, sentient way with the larger
universe. In our recreation, we ride rollercoasters or go skydiving to
experience the thrill of a near-death experience, knowing that we will
safely return to our lives after having conquered death for just a
moment. In our lives, our desire for immortality is why we look to see
ourselves remade in the faces of our children; the intensity of sexual
climax has been called “the little death” or “dying in each others
arms.” We equate the ecstasy of procreation with the moment of
expiration, because the one cancels out the other. Our longing to see
death defeated is also a great part of why we go to the movies.
Action-Adventure
Action-adventure movies are perhaps the most successful genre
worldwide because they specifically address courage in the face of
death. The Mel Gibson epic Braveheart (written by Randall Wallace)
makes this explicit in the title. In such movies, the antagonist is a
surrogate for death, an enormously powerful and lethal presence
against which success seems hopeless. The protagonist is a surrogate
for ourselves—an enhanced version, to be sure, smarter, stronger,
better equipped—but basically someone through whose struggles we
manage not only to fight the grim antagonist, but to win a new shot at
life. (Throughout this section we will refer to both the protagonist and
antagonist as male, for convenience, and because in this genre these
characters have historically been almost exclusively male—although
movies like The Terminator and The Long Kiss Goodnight provide
welcome exceptions.) The emotional stakes are profound: death has
been beaten back and the life force reaffirmed.
This type of movie is linear, meaning that once motivated, the
protagonist’s entire action is devoted to the eventual defeat of his
antagonist. It is about a life-and-death struggle, and the test of courage
is physical. It may also include a spiritual or emotional dimension, but
essentially the danger to the protagonist and his world is physical
death. If there is a love story or other subplot, it is kept strictly
secondary, and usually involves nothing more than the lover warning
the protagonist against the fight, standing helplessly by (often being
captured) during the struggle, and then bestowing a congratulatory
kiss on the victorious hero at the end; this is the elixir, of course, the
promise of sexual intimacy and the restoration of the life force. In
recent movies, the lover usually has been given some skills that assist
the protagonist, turning her more into an active ally and involving her
more in the central action.
Therefore, the most essential thing in an action-adventure movie is
to be sure that the stakes—meaning the threat from the antagonist—
are literally life-threatening, at least to the protagonist, and better
still to the world itself. The antagonist must be identified with the
forces of death and chaos. He must have not only the power, but the
desire, to kill and destroy all that the protagonist holds dear. An
obvious example is Darth Vader, the master of the Dark Side of The
Force whose domain is the Death Star. In Indiana Jones the
antagonist is the obsessed Nazi who sees God’s Ark of the Covenant as
the ultimate apocalyptic weapon; in Spartacus he’s the dictatorial
Crassus, who is willing to murder tens of thousands of slaves or other
opponents who stand in the way of his totalitarian vision; in The
Terminator it is an unstoppable killing machine revealed at the end to
be a walking steel skeleton; in some of the Bond movies, he is the head
of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., bent on enslaving the world, and so forth.
Enslavement or deprivation of free will, by the way, is the
storytelling equivalent of death, especially to American audiences. It is
a spiritual death, and may in fact be more frightening (which is why it
appears often in the horror genre, in such films as Invasion of the
Body Snatchers). In any event, the antagonist comes from and derives
his power from the impersonal, larger forces (society) that now
threaten the existence of the protagonist’s community.
Because the stakes are so high, your world must create an
intensified setting. Many action adventures take the hero on a journey
to a strange and terrifying new location to confront the antagonist,
along the lines of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” Death is by its
nature otherworldly, and so in the classic myths and fairytales, the
hero had to leave the bounds of the normal world in order to confront
the demonic adversary and bring back the “elixir” or life force, which it
guards. Similarly, in action-adventures, especially those with a science
fiction element, the lair of the antagonist is often otherworldly. In
martial arts movies, the protagonist must journey to a mysterious set-
ting (usually Asian) where the forbidden fight is going to take place. In
the Indiana Jones and Bond movies, we follow the hero to exotic
locations where the normal rules of law do not apply. In Armageddon,
the protagonists journey to the surface of an asteroid. In Stargate they
go through a threshold portal to another planet. All of these are
threatening, intensified and otherworldly settings.
Alternately, if the antagonist has brought the battle into the
protagonist’s “normal” world, the ordinary location must be
reimagined to become a place of otherworldly terror. For example, in
Die Hard, the mundane location of a high-rise building shifts from the
known—the suite where the party is taking place—to the strange and
unknown—the elevator and ventilation shafts, the basement with its
high-tech safe and so on. We are forced into the hidden underworld, or
else the normal world is disrupted and threatened with destruction, as
in Independence Day. In Westerns, we are transported to a mythical
setting in which the town and its community are transformed into the
boarded-up battleground of the high-noon shootout. The same thing
occurs in science fiction stories where we begin in a location other
than present-day earth: we establish a mythical setting that
nonetheless has its own normality. It is a surrogate for present-day
earth, the real world, and is quickly threatened with destruction (e.g.,
Star Wars, Star Trek, The Fifth Element).
The protagonist with whom we identify belongs to the normal state
of whatever world is created, to its community. In order for the
protagonist to represent us, he must in most cases share our own
fears, so we can empathize with his situation. He must be an
underdog, because that’s someone with whom we can identify.
Therefore, the protagonist is usually given a “ghost,” a personal
shortcoming or fear that provides an internal obstacle; the protagonist
lacks self-confidence on some level. This is the first level of his conflict.
But he also has skills or potential that make him the uniquely suited
character to challenge the death force. There is often a prologue scene
or short sequence at the beginning that reveals the capabilities of the
protagonist, and that later is usually related to the climactic
confrontation, bringing the movie full circle. And when the protagonist
finally masters the skills necessary to defeat the antagonist, when he
realizes his potential and manages to overcome his fear, the awesome
power of the enemy is diminished.
Whatever his internal doubts, the protagonist also hesitates to meet
the challenge early on (as we would) because the danger is lethal and
the antagonist appears unbeatable (as death does). So something
beyond his own skills must motivate him to go to battle; the
protagonist is never sufficiently motivated at the start to face death
until he is personally and irredeemably engaged. In movies like the
Bond series or war films, the protagonist goes to battle because it’s his
job or his duty. Or he may be incited by the desire for fame or glory or
even money, at least at first. Very often, the initial motivator is that
most basic and identifiable emotion of all: the desire for vengeance.
Revenge Toward the beginning of many action movies, someone near
and dear to the protagonist is killed or gravely endangered by the
antagonist. In the simplest form of action movie—the “revenge” or
“challenge” film—the point is to see the protagonist kick some butt,
and the formula is that he is forced to accept a physically dangerous
challenge in some form of prescribed contest because he is seeking
revenge. Most martial arts, sword-fighting and boxing flicks and some
old-fashioned Westerns fall into this category, but many others also
follow the same basic pattern. In such movies, the protagonist is a
martial artist of limited skills but enormous potential. He also has a
close ally (usually a brother; in Hong Kong flicks, a master) of greater
skill, but this ally is either murdered outright or recklessly drawn into
a secret or illegal contest where fighters from various backgrounds
come to prove their skills. The murderer is another fighter of great
strength and wickedness, and either he or the promoter of the contest
who backs him is the antagonist. The killing of the
brother/friend/master solidly identifies this antagonist with the power
of death. It also creates the ghost and the revenge motivation for the
protagonist, because the death has been inflicted on someone close to
him. In many such films, the protagonist is there when the ally is killed
and the challenge is given, and the antagonist specifically points him
out as the next intended victim.
In challenge films, that’s pretty much all there is to it; the hero
wants revenge, and the antagonist is an evil, two-dimensional killing
machine. The protagonist could simply turn away from the antagonist
and the threat of death, but his personal outrage and his pride won’t
let him. It is the nature of the world in such movies that the
protagonist must accept the challenge on the antagonist’s terms—in
the formalized setting of the combat arena—in order to win honorably
(which is why he doesn’t simply pull a gun or ambush the bastard in
an alley). Westerns use the convention of the shootout, in which the
protagonist honorably waits to march alone into the street at the
appointed hour.
Freedom In more complex action films, revenge may have a
prominent place, but it is superseded by larger motives, tied to the
theme of freedom over slavery. In Star Wars or Braveheart or Zorro
or The Terminator, for example, members of the protagonist’s family
are killed by the antagonist, launching our hero on a path of revenge.
In Spartacus, Crassus brutally stabs a gladiator who refuses to kill
Spartacus, his friend. But these protagonists soon see that their
personal revenge is less important than the antagonist’s threat to their
world in general. In all these films, many other lives are at stake, and
those who aren’t killed will face enslavement if the protagonist does
not succeed. He fights for the good of all, not just personal satisfaction,
and our identification with him is therefore enhanced. Sure, we want
to see him kick some butt, but we also identify with the dream of being
the savior of those we love. Sometimes the stakes can be more
personal and yet still more evolved than mere revenge, as in Rocky,
where we identify with the protagonist’s desire to realize his full
potential.
The (Intimate) Enemy It is important to note that the antagonists
in these films are more complex as well. For one thing, while the
antagonist often represents larger, impersonal “societal” forces, he or
one of his henchmen may sometimes paradoxically have a close
personal relationship or history with the protagonist; they will be
“intimate enemies” (see Chapter 7, Power and Conflict). For instance,
in Star Wars, Darth Vader is Luke’s father; in Raiders of the Lost Ark,
the archaeologist helping the Nazis is an old competitor of Indiana’s;
in On Deadly Ground, Seagal’s antagonist is his employer. While
Saving Private Ryan returns somewhat to the clarity of older war
films, where the antagonist is the obvious, impersonal enemy (the
Nazis, the “Japs” and so on), in most war movies from the post-
Vietnam era, the enemy, like the war, are often simply part of the
world, and the antagonist is closer to home: he is one of us. He is an
intimate enemy, as with Tom Berenger’s evil sergeant in Platoon, Gene
Hackman’s submarine captain in Crimson Tide and the CIA operative
in Rambo: First Blood Part II. Here, our own system of values has
been poisoned from within, and the protagonist only faces the obvious
enemy because of the corrupt motives of those who initiated the
action, the intimate antagonist. It’s instructive to note that even
Saving Private Ryan contains an intimate enemy, the German
prisoner of war who strikes up a friendship with one of his American
captors. Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) lets the man go—only
to be shot dead by him at the end.
Good antagonists also have depth because, from their point of view,
what they’re doing is correct. Sometimes they simply want to get rich,
but often they have a larger end in mind. Whether it’s Crassus or
Hitler or Darth Vader or Edward Longshanks, each feels a moral
imperative to impose a rigid, mechanistic “societal” order on their
messy world. In Rocky, the antagonist Apollo Creed doesn’t hate
Rocky but sees fighting him as a way to achieve greater fame and
fortune. In some ways, it could be argued that Creed isn’t the
antagonist, but that he is really just another aspect of the true
antagonist, Rocky’s own debilitating self-doubts. Creed is the
“mountain” Rocky must climb in order to prove himself.
Even though the challenge and motivation are now in place, the
protagonist—an extension of us—still does not have the ability to take
on the antagonist. At this point a mentor arrives, sometimes a former
fighter and now teacher, who offers to train the protagonist and give
him the physical and spiritual skills required to win. In Zorro, this
point is made explicit in the dialogue. The elderly Don Diego, the old
Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) tells Alejandro, the future Zorro, that
“there’s an old saying: When the pupil is ready, the master will
appear.” In order to keep the story focused and increase the emotional
desire to win, the mentor often is written as someone who has long
been involved in the struggle against the antagonist. He recognizes in
his student the one fighter who has the potential to defeat the
antagonist once and for all. In James Bond films, it is M who knows
that Bond is the only agent capable of defeating the adversary. In the
first Star Wars, it is Obi Wan Kenobi, the aging Jedi knight who
knows that Luke is destined to become one himself; in The Empire
Strikes Back, Obi Wan is replaced by Yoda, who takes Luke’s lessons
further. In Spartacus, interestingly enough, the mentor is Batiatus, the
“noble” slave trader who sees in Spartacus the potential to be a great
gladiator and who brings him to his fighting school for training.
Although Batiatus is amoral and addicted to luxury, his heart is on the
side of the honest Republicans (Crassus’ enemies) and he eventually
ends up saving Spartacus’ wife and child from being enslaved by
Crassus.
The Team In courage movies, other allies should come from the
protagonist’s community, or be drawn to it as new members. Together
they form a team upon whom the protagonist can depend, thereby
increasing his power. During the central struggle, the antagonist may
attack, kill and/or buy off these allies in response; these actions up the
revenge stakes and thwart the protagonist’s progress. Braveheart
provides a good example, as William Wallace builds his “team” from
first his hometown friends, then other Scotsmen, and then their Celtic
relatives, the Irish. While these latter seem potentially untrustworthy,
they prove to be faithful to Wallace, while the Scotsman he most
admires, Robert the Bruce, is persuaded to betray him. And along the
way most of Wallace’s team are killed by Edward Longshanks, the
antagonist.
In war films, these ally characters become the emotional core of the
story: the platoon, squad or other group of buddies whose lives mean
everything to the protagonist and whose deaths drive him to face
death himself. Although set against a context of defeating a larger evil
—the enemy—war movies focus their emotional impact by
concentrating on the themes of looking out for the group and living up
to personal responsibility. The mentor in such films is usually the
sergeant or other older leader directly responsible for the protagonist
and his friends; in the Dirty Dozen, this mentor role becomes so
central that the mentor is the protagonist. The same is true in most
John Wayne war films. In Saving Private Ryan, Captain John Miller
is the team leader, but also clearly the protagonist; in this case the role
of mentor, insofar as there is one, shifts to Tom Sizemore’s battle-
hardened Sgt. Horvath, who although lower in rank has equal, if not
superior, experience and wisdom.
Because this is war, men will die, including members of the core
team of allies. Who dies is determined by how each character is drawn.
A mentor like Sgt. Horvath or the motley group of allies who make up
The Dirty Dozen or The Great Escape seem incapable of existence
outside the context of war; it’s impossible to imagine them in civilian
life, and so when they are killed off we are saddened, even angered,
but generally do not feel betrayed or blindsided by the filmmakers.
Also, a character—ally or otherwise—who expresses a dream of
settling down in some romantically agricultural setting is usually
marked for death; think of Sam Neill’s character in The Hunt for Red
October, for instance, who dreams of getting a ranch in Montana, or
Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, who wants to see his wife’s
rose garden again, or William Wallace in Braveheart, who attempts to
return to the family farm. Writer and teacher Cynthia Whitcomb put it
this way: “Anyone who mentions dreaming of retiring to a farm in
Wyoming is dead meat.” The way we put it is that by dreaming of the
farm, the character buys it. The hope for an idyllic, peaceful future
gives us empathy for the character, but it is unrealistic within the con-
text of a brutal world, and is therefore a sign of weakness. In a way,
such a character’s dream of pastoral peace is realized by sending them
to the Elysian fields of heaven.
The Hero as Common Man It’s important to note that the
protagonist invariably identifies with and is part of the rank and file,
while the antagonist is associated with the impersonal “military
machine.” In Braveheart, the protagonist is in fact a Scottish
nobleman, but is characterized as a humble farmer who rises to lead
the rebellion. In Spartacus the protagonist is a slave. Schwarzenegger
and Seagal movies are careful to have their protagonists working with
and identifying with lower-level operatives (or children), who are
invariably killed or kidnapped in order to provide revenge motivation.
The same is true in James Bond films. In the Dirty Dozen, while the
colonel who puts the team together is of high rank, he relates to his
convict-platoon and has to constantly defend them against his higher-
ups. Even in Patton, where the protagonist is a general, he is portrayed
as a soldier’s soldier who is happiest fighting in the trenches with his
men; his internal antagonist is his own intolerant pride and his
external antagonist is less the Nazis than the effete British general
Montgomery, who is portrayed as a pompous creature of the Allied
war machine.
Training In order to defeat the antagonist, the protagonist must
acquire wisdom, skills, tools and a belief in himself—bravery—and
thus many action films involve us and maintain the story’s credibility
by showing us this progress in a scene sequence. The protagonist at
first doubts the mentor, but finally agrees and goes into training. As
we see him gain power, we more easily accept that he has a chance of
winning. This sequence is occasionally leavened with humor as the
protagonist comically stumbles here and there, to the benign
exasperation of the mentor. But he improves dramatically, until he
appears to be ready to face the inevitable confrontation. The training
sequence is a staple of martial arts flicks and movies like Rocky, where
we see the increasing physical power and skills of the protagonist, but
we also find it in movies like Zorro, Star Wars and The Terminator.
And good movies manipulate this sequence to achieve more than one
end. In Spartacus, for instance, the training is intended to prepare
Spartacus for the arena, but ironically ends up preparing him for war
against Rome.
Not all action movies have this sequence, but they have something
like it. In the Bond movies, training is replaced by an arming scene in
which Q shows Bond the tools he’ll be using. Similarly, in many Steven
Seagal and Schwarzenegger films, the protagonist is already supremely
trained, but must either acquire or improvise an arsenal with which to
fight. Improvising weapons serves two purposes. It arms the
protagonist and shows us that he is surprisingly clever; such
“McGuyverish” improvisations appear in most Seagal and
Schwarzenegger action-fests, but also in more serious films like
Braveheart or Saving Private Ryan. In the Indiana Jones movies,
training is replaced by a sequence in which Indiana learns more about
the antagonist, gains some allies and travels into the antagonist’s
territory. In Cliffhanger, it’s replaced by Gabe finding the tools and
clothing he’ll need to survive on the mountain and hooking up with his
ally-lover, Jesse.
Similarly, instead of a formalized challenge and a known time and
place for the final confrontation to take place, the protagonist must
put together the pieces of the antagonist’s endgame. He only learns
through great effort where the antagonist’s final actions will take place
in order to prevent their success. Wherever this is becomes the arena
for the final combat.
Attack and Counterattack During all this time the antagonist has
not been standing still, and all of the above must be interlaced with
scenes showing him putting his plan in action. The Terminator arms
himself, kills the wrong Sarah Connors and zeroes in on the right one;
Edward Longshanks takes action to divide and conquer Scotland;
Darth Vader prepares the Death Star to destroy the rebel stronghold;
Crassus maneuvers for control of the Roman Senate and army. It’s
important that the antagonist’s actions become increasingly lethal and
ruthless, and that they increasingly affect those close to the
protagonist, to increase the protagonist’s personal commitment and
jeopardy. In order to keep the central conflict going and the stakes
rising, as the antagonist becomes aware of the protagonist’s challenge
to his power, he must take action to cause complications and setbacks
for the protagonist. While at first his actions may affect unrelated,
innocent people, as the protagonist begins to take action, the
antagonist will increasingly focus his efforts on destroying the
protagonist’s morale and power base. He will attack the protagonist’s
close friends and allies. He may kidnap the protagonist’s lover or child,
or kill his mentor, or threaten innocent people who mean something to
the protagonist, or buy off an ally or all of the above. He will do
anything to ensure that the protagonist’s initial efforts are defeated or
his skills held ransom. And, of course, the antagonist—who is not
bound by rules or honor—will not be above cheating, thus cementing
our hatred for him and our rooting interest in the protagonist.
The protagonist often learns of some profound setback when
actually involved in the final combat, and the distraction makes him
vulnerable and almost succeeds in undoing him. In Braveheart,
Longshanks buys off Wallace’s allies with promises of land and money,
a betrayal that Wallace discovers in the heat of battle. And
Longshanks, like Bond villains or the villain in Cliffhanger, is not
above killing his own allies if it means winning the battle. In a kung fu
or boxing flick the antagonist may reveal that he’s kidnapped the
protagonist’s lover or child, or he may throw blinding dust in the
protagonist’s eyes during the battle; in Westerns, he may cheat during
the final shootout by having lackeys with rifles hidden on the rooftops.
The antagonist also has a team that forms part of his power base
and helps enact his plan. A common element in courage stories is the
antagonist’s chief henchman (or woman)—the dark mirror image of
the protagonist’s best friend or ally—an enormously capable character
who acts as a surrogate for or projection of the antagonist’s power,
especially if the antagonist is not physically imposing. Think of the
character in Die Hard played by Alexander Godunov, or Oddjob in
Goldfinger. These characters go all the way back to the story of David
and Goliath, in which Goliath was the huge champion—the henchman
—of the Philistine king. These allies of the antagonist are exceptionally
lethal fighters chosen for their abilities; they provide both the
antagonist’s first demonstration of power and last line of defense.
They also engage the protagonist in the greatest test of his physical
skills before his final combat with the antagonist. Sometimes the
henchman character will rebel against the antagonist as his plan starts
to fall apart, and sometimes he will reappear after the protagonist has
apparently killed him, to provide one final surprise obstacle.
Sometimes the henchman is presented as a false ally of the
protagonist, but is actually secretly in league with the antagonist.
Occasionally the henchman will change sides and actually ally him or
herself with the protagonist, if there is a sexual attraction (such as
Pussy Galore, in Goldfinger), or if the henchman has an attack of
conscience (such as Weps, Viggo Mortensen’s character in Crimson
Tide). Sometimes, even though he’s changed alliance to the side of
good, the henchman dies anyway as retribution for his former sins;
sometimes he assumes the protagonist’s struggle (such as Robert the
Bruce, in Braveheart). Whatever the case, the henchman is nothing
more than an aspect of the antagonist’s power, and his or her death or
changed alliance are part of the antagonist’s disempowerment.
Victory over Death Eventually, the tide turns for the protagonist.
Somehow the kidnapped child or lover escapes, the mentor manages
to encourage him from beyond the door of death, or an ally frees the
threatened innocent people and the protagonist is freed to dispatch
the antagonist. Usually wounded during the time of his distraction, the
protagonist must now call on the moral strengths instilled by the
mentor and his own internal morality, until he is able to rise above his
injuries. In the final battle, the antagonist must use all of his powers
and wiles and force the protagonist almost to the point of defeat—but
he will ultimately fail. The skills and powers the protagonist has
acquired—plus the moral power he possesses by being on the side of
the angels—ensure his success.
In challenge films, the protagonist will sometimes stop short of
killing the antagonist, thus proving his moral superiority, but in most
films the antagonist dies in some way that mirrors his own moral
deficit. In Zorro, he’s buried under a pile of gold bars; in The
Terminator, he’s crushed by a giant machine; in Braveheart, while
Wallace is being tortured to death, Edward Longshanks is also dying,
helplessly immobilized by the cancer from which he’s been suffering
all along, and which is emblematic of the cancer in his soul. And
although Wallace is not there to see it, the false ally who has
repeatedly betrayed him, Robert the Bruce, now takes up Wallace’s
fight and accomplishes his goal of freeing Scotland from English
tyranny.
If there are others present at the protagonist’s victory, they will
applaud (there’s sometimes a crowd of onlookers, gamblers at the
fight, villagers, townsfolk, fellow combatants, whatever), reaffirming
the hero’s courage and the strength of the community, and the lover
will bestow the life-affirming kiss. In movies where the protagonist
dies, such as Braveheart or Spartacus, the kiss is replaced by the
knowledge that the protagonist’s lover is carrying his child, and
therefore his life will continue in another form, long after the
antagonist has gone to meet his maker. This also happens in The
Terminator; the Mentor, Reese, dies, but Sarah, the protagonist, lives
to carry his child. In Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller dies, but in
that moment he becomes a surrogate father to young Ryan (who is
shown having only a mother) as he passes on the stern command:
“Earn it.” And we see that Ryan as an old man has not only earned the
opportunity to live, but gone on to create a large family, helping to
replace the lives that were lost in the war and to affirm the value of
their sacrifice. Love is not the goal in these movies, but a result of the
hero having proved himself. It is evidence of life conquering death,
and the reward for the protagonist—us—having had the courage to
fight the good fight.
FEAR AND LOATHING
Horror, the Supernatural and dark Science Fiction
The flip side of courage is fear; courage is the overcoming of fear.
Because of this, movies devoted to fear are almost equally as popular
as those devoted to courage; there are obvious examples like
Frankenstein or Scream or the endless variations on the zombie and
vampire subgenres, but the fear category also includes such all-time
blockbusters as Jaws, Alien, Jurassic Park and even The Dark Knight.
Here, fear is primary, and death is much more personal, malicious and
often serves no larger aim than simply to demonstrate its power over
us. And if fear is the emphasized goal of a story, the strategy must
change from that of a courage movie, or action-adventure. In a
courage movie, the protagonist is an enhanced version of ourselves,
whom we know from the start has the potential to defeat the
antagonist; the thrill comes from identifying with the protagonist’s
courage. In a fear movie, we are overwhelmed by the face-to-face
confrontation with our deepest and most irrational insecurities, and
courage must be suppressed almost until the end of the movie. We
include The Dark Knight because, even though Batman is a franchise
character who we know will not die and an apparent “courage”
protagonist, he is also a flawed hero plagued by internal fears and
doubts. The persona Bruce Wayne adopts is not like those of Captain
America, Superman, the Green Lantern or even Iron Man, as emblems
of the invincibility of goodness and human capability. In the telling of
his origin in Detective Comics #33, he realizes that in order to revenge
his parents’ death and fight the terror that afflicts Gotham, he himself
must “strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night,
black, terrible...a...a bat!” In effect, he has decided to appear like a
vampire. In The Dark Knight, his own internal darkness becomes
most horribly and threateningly externalized in the personification of
chaos that is the Joker; in his challenge to sanity and reason itself, the
Joker is actually rather similar to the shark in Jaws—he represents our
darkest fear that the world is savage and irrational, and that we live in
a bubble, an illusion of control and moral compass.
Terror and Horror
Terror arises from helplessness, so we must be (almost) helpless
before the dread that arises from our subconscious, unable to clearly
see that which is lost in darkness or only glimpsed at the edge of our
peripheral vision. Horror results when that which we have only barely
seen is brought into sudden focus and our worst imaginings are
confirmed, leaving us paralyzed with the realization that death in its
most cruel, brutal, intransigent form is in our midst, closing in on us
as relentlessly as...well, as death. In order to experience this
helplessness and paralysis, the protagonist with whom we identify
must be more ordinary, much closer to “us,” lacking the enhancements
of the courage protagonist. The desire for revenge is often exploited as
we come to hate the antagonist, but the thrill of fear comes less from
revenge or from heroic conquest than from mere survival, from
experiencing our deepest terrors in safety—and the more terrifying the
better. The worse the fear we confront and survive, the stronger the
cathartic release when it’s over. As we see everything we most fear
come true, we are both supremely vulnerable and yet invulnerable at
the same time. Because of this shift of emphasis, the titles of such
films (The Stepfather, Dracula, The Birds, Jaws, The Thing, Psycho)
often name or refer to the antagonist rather than the protagonist, who
is more often included in the titles of courage movies (Spiderman,
Patton, Rocky, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). What we are
after is less the rush of boldly going into battle than the exquisite
anxiety of being pursued. Adrenaline is a “fight or flight” response to
danger. Courage is “fight.” Fear is “flight.”
The Illusion of the Rational and the Failure of Law As with
courage movies, the normal world is threatened, but fear movies go on
to undermine that sense of normalcy by suggesting that just under the
apparently safe surface of the world lies a festering, irrational chaos
whose agents are specifically devoted to our destruction. It is the
subconscious underlying the conscious, Satan’s hell underlying and
actively undermining God’s placid creation. Courage is required when
dealing with fear, but acting in a rationally courageous fashion, while
denying the true nature of the threat, is foolhardy when dealing with
the irrational. Those who attempt directly to confront or explain away
the horror that has emerged are doomed to fail. In Jaws, the attempt
to keep the presence of the shark quiet leads only to more death.
Similarly, in The Relic, the mayor’s insistence on keeping the museum
open for a gala fundraiser—after the police lieutenant has warned him
that the deadly killer may still be there—leads to chaos and many more
deaths. Those in authority foolishly cannot believe that they are no
longer in control. In movies like Saw, Psycho and The Descent, the
problem is that the characters foolishly insist on trying to maintain
control in the face of the uncontrollable, and refuse until it’s too late to
acknowledge that it’s their own sins or deceptions that have put them
in trouble. In films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance,
The Strangers and The Hills Have Eyes, it’s the foolish belief that the
world is a safe place and/or that strangers can be trusted (rural
strangers are particularly not to be trusted in movies like these,
because they are closer to “the natural” and therefore to the
irrational). Perhaps more disturbingly, in movies like The Shining,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Scream, it’s the foolish belief that
those who are not strangers can be trusted. But only by accepting and
understanding the true nature of the evil can we defeat it. Often the
protagonist understands it too late or not at all; sometimes con-
fronting the dark forces of chaos leads to madness or even death. But
even if the protagonist or his or her allies are destroyed, their self-
sacrifice leads to the apparent salvation and restoration of the normal
world. It must be only an apparent restoration, because once the
presence of the irrational or supernatural is revealed and accepted as a
fact, we can never truly go back to innocence and ignorance. The story
has provided proof of the failure of sanity in the world, and perhaps
most terrifyingly, in our own minds.
The loss of sanity or ability to find refuge is personified in those
instances in which the protagonist himself becomes “infected” by
whatever created the monster, and becomes or risks becoming one
himself (as in most vampire or werewolf movies, District 9 or Invasion
of the Body Snatchers), or becomes host to it (as in the Nightmare on
Elm Street and Alien movies). And there are some films like The Fly,
The Wolfman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in which the protagonist
becomes a monster early on and is his own antagonist. Or, as in The
Lost Boys or Wolf or the Blade, Underworld and Twilight series, the
protagonist becomes a benign version of the monster and must face a
more dangerous and malignant antagonist (such as the James Spader
character in Wolf, the “evil vampires” like Victoria in Twilight, or the
Keifer Sutherland and Edward Hermann characters in Lost Boys). In
these movies, death awaits if the protagonist cannot adapt to the loss
of refuge or accept the failure of sanity; a new and positively altered
reality, opening gates to previously forbidden wonder, awaits if he can.
Love it or hate it, the Twilight series is an interesting hybrid of Young
Adult romantic fantasy and fear genres, a potent emotional mixture
that made it one of the most hugely successful series, both books and
movies, in history.
Taboos: the Lust for Sex, Knowledge and Immortality
Related to this is another common theme in fear movies: that we, in
our foolish, rationalistic pride, are to blame for unleashing the forces
of chaos and terror, by over- stepping moral boundaries.
Transgression leads to retribution. In normal life, certain things are
forbidden, defined by conventional morality and wisdom as taboo.
Taboos are related to our most primal, common desires and fears,
which is why they are so powerful and also so naturally tempting—and
why we can identify, even empathize, with the transgression. The most
common and potent transgressions are sex and knowledge we
shouldn’t have; both relate to our fear of death, our longing to defy it,
our hubristic lust to be immortal, like God. They’re aspects of the same
desire; it’s not for nothing that the Bible refers to sexual experience as
“knowledge.” The Serpent convinces (the naked) Eve to take a bite of
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge by telling her, “You will surely not
die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And yet,
when she and Adam have eaten, the result is shame over their
nakedness, and the knowledge that they have condemned themselves
to strife and mortality.
The same sexual/knowledge transgressions apply to modern fear
movies as long as it is illicit sex and forbidden knowledge. The
transgression may seem minor or egregious, but either way it
unleashes a terrifying retribution. Two teenagers have illicit sex in a
car by a lake (Friday the 13th); a scientist ignores the natural order of
life and mixes or revives unusual DNA strands or otherwise perverts
the natural order (Species, The Relic, Jurassic Park, The Human
Centipede); a doctor tries to revive the dead (Frankenstein); a man
finds a mysterious device and seeks to unlock its forbidden secrets
(Hellraiser); a beautiful woman or a group of sexually free hippies
foolishly travel through unknown countryside (Psycho, Texas
Chainsaw Massacre); a normal group transgresses by entering off-
limits or unknown territory (The Descent, The Hills Have Eyes) a
woman goes swimming naked in the ocean at night, after having illicit
sex (Jaws); in each case the transgression releases unexpected and
drastic consequences. In The Omen, the sex/death equation is
expressed as a father who substitutes an orphaned baby for his own,
which was stillborn; by illicitly accepting the unknown changeling,
without telling his wife, he has perverted the sexual contract of his
marriage.
A World of Fear In fear stories, the world of the story is either a
supernatural or otherworldly place to which the protagonist has
traveled, or the normal world, which the antagonist has invaded. The
latter is more common, because we can best experience terror if what
appears to be safe is proven to contain hidden danger. Our lovely new
house is built on a cursed Indian burial ground (Poltergeist); we’re at a
sunny beach, when under the surface of the water a primordial
predator attacks (Jaws); we’re out for a boat ride, when previously
docile animals descend from above like insane dive-bombers (The
Birds); we’re going about our work at a staid museum—albeit one full
of dinosaur skeletons and arcane objects—when one of the specimens
from the deepest Amazon comes to life (The Relic); we’re enjoying
casual sex with a beautiful woman in our hot tub or hotel bedroom
when she transforms into an insectoid monster from another world
(Species) or a ravening wolf (American Werewolf in Paris); we stop
for roadside assistance and become barbeque fodder for a group of
cannibalistic hillbillies (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). In Blue Velvet,
we have a seemingly perfect, all-American little town in which sexual
perversion and cruelty fester like the bugs that gnaw on the severed
ear buried under a perfect lawn. In another successful hybrid, of
family comedy and fear genres, the cuddly creatures in Gremlins are in
fact monsters waiting to be unleashed.
Sometimes, as in The Relic, King Kong, Alien, or The Exorcist, we’ll
start in or go to an exotic location where the antagonist’s reality seems
more probable, a place of primordial, pre-rational assumptions: the
deep jungle, an ancient archaeological site, an asteroid or a distant
planet. But once the antagonist’s exotic reality is transported to the
normal world, our world, it will disrupt it and give expression to the
moral or the theme: we shouldn’t lust after the forbidden (The
Mummy, Hellraiser) or try to improve or alter creation (Frankenstein,
Species, Jurassic Park); we shouldn’t break sexual taboos (Friday the
13th and practically all other “teen scream” films); we shouldn’t
assume that we are in control of the mysterious world (Jaws, Alien,
The Birds, Predator, The Descent). Sometimes the unleashed
“monster” acts out of primal instinct (The Relic, Jaws, Congo, Species,
Anaconda, Jurassic Park, Deliverance), sometimes it has actually set
a trap, with conscious intention (Dracula, The Omen, Rosemary’s
Baby, The Hills Have Eyes). But either way, things spin out of control,
chaos reigns, and our normal assumptions about this world no longer
apply. This model goes back to the Greek idea of “hubris,” the foolish
pride of thinking that we know and control our destiny, which
inevitably results in the supernatural forces of the Gods destroying us.
Illicit sex, knowledge and denial of the irrational are all present in the
ancient Greek tragedies. In Oedipus Rex, the protagonist
(unknowingly) kills his father and marries his mother, in the process
bringing disaster to his city. He thinks he can solve the problem by
uncovering the culprit, when in fact what he learns—that he himself is
the culprit—destroys him. Medea kills her children after being
abandoned by the man she illicitly “knew” and for whom she killed
and dismembered her brother. In the Bacchae, the King is destroyed
by his refusal to recognize Dionysus, the god of wine and primal lust,
and his own mother rips his head off in a sexually orgiastic madness.
In many ways, fear films are the closest to these classical models.
The Nature of the Beast and the Reality of Evil The antagonist
in a fear film is an example of the worst that could go wrong in any
given world, and in order to thoroughly destroy our sense of safety it
must appear in a believable fashion from whatever the surroundings
may be. It must be the right antagonist for this world, attacking its
specific weaknesses, hypocrisies and taboos, and not be just some
arbitrary monster. And the antagonist must be not only powerful and
lethal, but from beyond the realm of normal experience or expectation
or negotiation, a being driven to such extreme and/or irrational
actions that the real world seems to warp and shift into the realm of
nightmare.
Just as the antagonist subverts our sense of a normal and safe
world, the antagonist also represents either a perversion of something
normal (our neighbor, husband, nanny, sanity), an exaggeration of
something in the natural world to which we have a reasonable
aversion (such as bugs, slime, snakes) or an extreme personification of
a recognizable supernatural force or “bogeyman” (ghosts, vampires,
demons). In zombie and Frankenstein movies, the antagonist is a dead
body brought to life; in Atomic Age horror flicks, it’s either a horrific
incarnation of radiation (The Blob) or something like a lizard
(Godzilla) or bug or even a rabbit (Night of the Lepus) that has
mutated to gigantic proportions (or that, as in the Incredible
Shrinking Man, has become enormous in comparison with our
protagonist’s reduced size). In Anaconda, the monster is a super-
snake, in Jaws, a super-shark; in Alien, Predator, Invasion of the
Body Snatchers and War of the Worlds it’s a malevolent
extraterrestrial predator. In the Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream,
Saw, and Nightmare on Elm Street movies, we’re in classic fairytale
territory: be good or the bogeyman will get you. In ghost and Satanic
stories, we enter the religious realm, which uses and reinforces
cultural or institutional notions of good, evil and otherworldly
retribution.
Fatal Attraction In movies like Dracula (and its progeny such as
The Hunger, Interview with the Vampire and the Twilight Series),
Cat People, and Species, we are confronted with an irresistible sexual
power—we are attracted like moths to the flame that will destroy us.
We long to be seduced, sucked dry (so to speak) and transformed, even
as we are terrified of the prospect. We long for the sexuality and power
of the wolf, even as we cringe from the blood- lust that accompanies it.
The delicious thrill comes from flirting with the idea of unimaginable
ecstasy, potency and/or potential immortality, whatever the cost to
our souls. This attraction-repulsion is especially powerful, which
accounts for the endless success and reinvention of the vampire story.
Sexual obsession, and the fear of losing control of our lives to it,
pervade films that are built on the fear model, even if they’re not
obviously “horror” flicks. These are sexual bogeyman (or
bogeywoman) stories, such as Fatal Attraction and The Hand that
Rocks the Cradle.
Scorched Earth Because the antagonist in fear movies is so
overwhelming and terrifying, it must be destroyed completely. Where
the antagonist is human, death in some grisly fashion is the minimum
punishment. But where the antagonist is supernatural, it must either
be dispatched in a prescribed supernatural way (a silver bullet, a
wooden stake) or be disintegrated without a trace. This is why so many
“fear antagonists” are destroyed by fire or sunlight, because these
elements are metaphorically purifying and all-consuming. They are
forces of light and heat, harnessed toward the destruction of dark-
ness. An interesting variation appears in The Wizard of Oz, where
water—the source of life—melts the wicked witch, the agent of death.
As an aside, water as a signifier of the unconscious and the realm of
sleep or death is more often associated more with the power of the
antagonist (Jaws, The Ring, the bath scene in The Shining, etc.). But
however it is eliminated, the antagonist must be so thoroughly erased
that it cannot return. As noted above, once true evil has entered the
world, it may be impossible to get rid of it completely, and some small
trace of the antagonist may contaminate the protagonist or escape the
flames (which, of course, provides fodder for sequels).
Who’s to Blame The initial transgressor is often, but not necessarily,
the protagonist. It can also be someone who stumbles innocently into
a situation in which another has unleashed a demonic force, but who is
then forced to deal with the consequences. This increases the sense of
vulnerability; it’s the difference between having a car accident due to
reckless speeding or drunkenness and one in which we were innocent
and simply blindsided. There is no way to prepare for or avoid this
kind of evil, which is why it is so terrifying. In movies like Fatal
Attraction, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein and Species (and
even King Kong) the protagonist must deal with a (sexually charged)
monster he himself has created or unleashed, but in movies like
Dracula, The Strangers, Poltergeist or Phantom of the Opera, the
protagonists are simply innocents who have accidentally entered a
realm of evil. In Dracula, the original transgression was Count
Dracula’s, when he cursed the name of God after his lover committed
suicide. In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary is just an ordinary housewife
whose husband is the transgressor, betraying her into the hands of a
Satanic cult, and ultimately of Satan himself. While her natural
sexuality is nonthreatening, her unwitting sex with the Devil is her
undoing. In The Exorcist, a priest doubts his faith—a form of
transgression, it’s true—but the demon he confronts was unleashed by
the budding sexuality of a young girl. In Night of the Living Dead, the
government is the transgressor: a group of people find themselves
surrounded by flesh-eating corpses brought to life by a returning
radioactive space probe. In Jurassic Park, the paleontologist played by
Sam Neill is the protagonist, but the transgression is caused by the
entrepreneur who re-created dinosaurs by perverse means, mixing
dinosaur and amphibian DNA. Normal sexuality has been
intentionally corrupted by this hybrid process: The dinosaurs are
created asexually and intended to be sterile. This is also reflected by
the protagonist’s “perverse” avoidance of love and of children. It’s only
when he overcomes these unnatural aversions that he successfully
escapes the perverse monsters.
The Savage Breast An interesting corollary to human responsibility
for creating or releasing the antagonist is that the particular monster
of the story may actually be quite sympathetic, a soulful beast whose
destruction is almost as tragic as its creation. It is not its fault it’s
there, after all; look at Frankenstein’s monster, for example, with his
love of music and his pathetic, innocent attraction to the old blind man
and the little girl; or King Kong, who falls tragically in love with Faye
Wray. They are actually more innocent than the protagonists.
Japanese audiences cited the betrayal of this principle for their
disappointment with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s remake of
Godzilla. In the original movies, Godzilla was an empathetic, almost
lovable creature whose destructive rampages were a response to
human irresponsibility. The new mega-lizard and her ferocious brood
were soulless and unmotivated by comparison.
Whether innocent or evil, the antagonist often proves his or her
power—and raises the stakes—by killing off those who are
progressively closer to the protagonist. Initially, those who die may be
faceless strangers: the boat crews in Dracula or The Relic, the island
workers in Jurassic Park, the beachgoers in Jaws. As the threat
involves more specific characters, it will begin to affect those who have
themselves transgressed in some fashion—who “deserved it.” In The
Relic, there’s the security guard who has snuck off to smoke a joint and
the ruthlessly ambitious scientist who tries to subvert the protagonist’s
funding. In The Terminator, it’s an obnoxious punk. In Jurassic Park,
we have the amoral scientist who’s trying to sell the embryos and the
immoral lawyer who represents the project. Sometimes these
secondary characters die for the simple transgression of stupidity or
curiosity: they go into the basement when they shouldn’t. We take
comfort from the fact that we’re better than they are (even though we
secretly know we may be just like them). But, eventually, the victims
include true innocents or characters we like, such as the young couple
or the child in Night of the Living Dead, Sarah Connor’s best friend
and her mother in The Terminator or the cops in The Relic, and we are
left no refuge: this terror applies to us, too.
The Voice of Experience Also, as with courage movies, there is
usually a mentor in fear films, an older character who has some
experience with the nature of the monster. He may be a kindly old
fellow like the ancient anthropologist in Wolf or, because of prolonged
exposure to or obsession with the antagonist, the mentor may seem to
be a near-madman like Van Helsing in Dracula or Quint in Jaws. But
he always possesses some wisdom or secret talisman that the
protagonist must use in order to succeed. His wisdom will eventually
be accepted, but often only after the veils of reason and disbelief have
been stripped away. Often, the mentor character is destroyed in an act
of obsessive hatred for the monster, a self-sacrifice that both saves and
passes the mantle on to the protagonist.
Suspense (Terror) vs. Shock (Horror) There are essentially two
strategies to create a sense of fear and vulnerability, which are
sometimes used separately, sometimes together. Movies can play on
our fear of the unknown, creating suspense and terror, or they can
actually show us something so shocking that we almost—almost—
cannot bear to look at it, creating visceral revulsion, or horror. Terror
may give way to horror when what might happen actually does
happen, but it doesn’t have to physically appear on screen for the
terror to be generated. In fact, what we don’t see—can’t see—is often
more haunting than what we do. Creating terror requires more skill
than producing horror, because terror is about the suggestion of what
might happen, while horror is a simple matter of showing us
something revolting. This is why movies that depend exclusively on
horror are usually lower-budget and lower-quality affairs. It’s easier
and cheaper to show torn flesh and fake blood than to generate a
solidly suspenseful story. Movies like Orgy of the Dead and the Friday
the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw and Hellraiser series (and
most zombie flicks) all rely on a “gross-out” factor—we see heads cut
off, guts ripped out, people’s skin flayed off, demons of revolting
appearance feasting on raw flesh. The antagonists—while having some
justification for their presence, such as prior mental illness, being
summoned by some spell or religious transgression, or having been
created by the characters’ own dreams—exist mainly to exploit the
voyeuristic desire to see someone (other than ourselves) gruesomely
tortured and dispatched. Movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen,
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Psycho or Hush, Hush,
Sweet Charlotte hardly show anything graphically disgusting, relying
instead on the protagonist’s growing terror as he discovers that what
ought to be safe surroundings prove dangerous. Movies like Night of
the Living Dead, The Birds, Jaws, the Alien movies and The Relic
incorporate both. It’s a matter of emphasis—are you after terror, or
horror or both?
THE NEED TO KNOW
Detective Story, Suspense Thriller, Political Thriller
Fascination with the idea that just below or beyond normal
appearances, a hidden truth is “out there”(as series like the X-Files or
Lost or Fringe would have it) is the basis for films in the detective, film
noir and thriller genres. The protagonist may be a cop, a private
detective or just an ordinary person put into a situation where nothing
is as it seems. These films draw power from our own sense of
powerlessness in a world in which events often happen mysteriously
and almost always beyond our control; we suspect there is more to any
given situation than we are actually aware of. Give this suspicion a
sinister twist and you have the makings of a criminal, supernatural or
political conspiracy story. The antagonist is equally mysterious. All we
have at the start is some faded and often confusing evidence, like the
washed-out tracks of an animal in the woods or the Zapruder film of
the Kennedy assassination.
The story, then, is about uncovering the truth, putting the puzzle
together, discovering the antagonist and what his or her agenda really
is. That discovery may or may not affect the success of the antagonist;
in some cases it does, in others it doesn’t (other than that the
protagonist survives). In Conspiracy Theory, L.A. Confidential, The
Bourne Identity and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, for example, the
protagonists manage to foil the conspiracy by uncovering the
antagonist’s identity and agenda. In The Maltese Falcon, it’s a mixed
success. Sam Spade gets justice for his murdered partner—he has the
beautiful killer Brigid arrested and the Fat Man dealt a setback in his
search for the jeweled bird—but Spade also loves Brigid and therefore
loses her, and the Fat Man lives on to continue his search. In
Chinatown, however, the antagonist wins. Jake—the detective—
uncovers Noah Cross’s conspiracy to steal water and control half of
Los Angeles, but he can do nothing to stop it from happening, prevent
Evelyn’s death, or prevent Cross from taking custody of his daughter,
who was conceived through his incestuous rape of Evelyn (his other
daughter). Similarly, in Body Heat, JFK, Three Days of the Condor
and the 2010 Fair Game, the conspirators/antagonists are too smart
or powerful to be derailed or brought to justice. But from a storytelling
point of view, it doesn’t matter. The point of these films is that the
dark truth has been revealed to us, the audience, even if it’s at the
expense of the protagonist. The mystery has been stripped away, and
we are empowered by being “in the know,” having our worst
suspicions confirmed.
Suspense vs. Surprise
When constructing a need-to-know movie, you must understand and
use the primary tools that create curiosity and fascination: suspense
and surprise. Suspense comes from withholding information from the
protagonist, though not necessarily from the audience. If we know no
more than the protagonist does, then suspense comes from
empathizing with his or her vulnerability as we watch events unfold. If
we do know more than the character, then suspense comes from being
helpless to assist or warn the protagonist of imminent danger, from
the tension of waiting for an attack to take place. For example, we see
a figure with a knife hiding around the corner as our protagonist
approaches, unaware. Surprise, on the other hand, always applies to
both the character and the audience. For example, the protagonist is
walking down a hallway when someone unexpectedly bursts out with a
knife. He— and we—react with adrenalized shock. Surprise is also a
key element of a “reversal”—when someone we think is an ally proves
actually to be an enemy, or vice versa, or when the innocent character
seems to have escaped a pursuer but has actually run into a blind alley.
A classic fear movie technique (which also applies to a need-to-know
movie) incorporates both—we know there’s a killer in the basement,
but the character doesn’t and goes down into danger unwittingly. Or
he or she may suspect danger, but goes down anyway to investigate.
Usually we see this from his or her P.O.V., which keeps our vision
claustrophobically limited, blind to what is beside or behind us. We
might also intercut this with the similarly claustrophobic point of view
of the killer, who is focused intently on his prey. When the killer
springs into the character’s P.O.V., the suspense is ended by the
surprise. Sometimes—and this effect has been overused to the point of
cliché—the surprise is manipulated into a two-part sequence. The
suspense of the approach to the basement and the first surprise
frightens us, but is harmless: it’s only a cat or a pigeon that has burst
out at us. The resulting relief lulls us (and the character) into a false
sense of security, and then the second surprise is sprung as the killer
leaps out.
The key to making the elements of surprise and suspense work well
is timing. This is not something you can leave up to the director or
editor—you as writer must give them the plan, the effect you want, and
the tone and order of events that will accomplish it. This includes
determining the length of the scenes and sequences to create a slow
build of tension or a rapid-fire series of shocks, whether to intercut
one sequence with another in order to string it out and build tension,
and determining how much to reveal or withhold, how much the
reader should know at any given moment. It also includes finding
exactly the right details and imagery to bring the scene to life. As with
the audience member, you want the reader to experience thrills and
chills as he reads the script.
Whatever the case, suspense and surprise create different effects,
and should be used intentionally. If you want to create suspense, you
must limit what your protagonist knows, but you may want to provide
some clues to the audience. Contrary to what some screenwriting
experts claim, this does not make the protagonist more stupid than the
audience, it simply reflects his or her state of knowledge at a given
moment. Great suspense, even dread, can be generated by letting the
audience know about a threat of which the protagonist is unaware.
Suspense can occur without direct audience knowledge of the
antagonist’s plans, but there must be an accumulation of clues and
events to maintain the antagonist’s presence and threat, or you run the
risk of the story seeming random or arbitrary. Similarly, surprise must
be used judiciously, because after a few unanticipated surprises the
story can feel too coincidental; to avoid this, especially when dealing
with a character reversal, you must plant seemingly innocuous clues
that are both telling enough and yet misdirecting enough that they
simultaneously set up and justify the surprise without giving it away.
As far as the audience (and character) is concerned, the surprise works
by suddenly casting what has come before in a new and unexpected
light; for instance, the protagonist’s brother seems like his closest ally
and never leaves his side, but seems anxious and short of cash. He
explains it away by saying it’s just nerves and expenses for his
upcoming wedding; but in fact he’s deeply in debt to a loan shark and
is setting up the protagonist for betrayal.
By carefully orchestrating suspense and surprise, mystery and
knowledge, creating a world where everything is cast in darkness or
where nothing is as it seems, you achieve the basic aim of the films
that fall within these genres: to confirm the audience’s suspicion that
just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get
them.
The trick with a need-to-know movie is to find and exploit a
suspicion or paranoia that enough people share. A movie that plays on
our fascination with the hidden and our belief in conspiracy must have
a mystery worth solving, or it won’t be fascinating. And the world
depicted—what we see—must either reinforce that sense of mystery, as
in the dark, rainy cities of film noir, or contrast with it by its bland,
apparent normalcy, as in a Hitchcock film.
The Detective Story
In a detective film, the problem initially seems to be pretty
straightforward. We start with a crime, or the suspicion of a crime.
There’s a dead body, or someone comes to the protagonist and says
that someone is missing or out to get him or her for some unknown
reason. This is the first appearance of the antagonist, in the form of
the evidence of his criminal activity or the suspicions of someone
supposedly innocent. It is also the first piece of the puzzle that the
protagonist must put together. But while it also seems to be the easiest
piece, the most obvious clue, it must in fact lead the protagonist to new
and progressively more shocking pieces of the puzzle. The initial crime
is merely the bait, leading the protagonist into a labyrinthine web
where nothing is obvious until the end.
The Cynical Believer Why does the detective (protagonist) take on
the challenge? It’s not so much because he or she is personally
threatened or someone close is threatened—although both may
eventually become the case—but because the community is threatened
in some way and it’s the protagonist’s job to protect the community, or
at least avenge it. That’s the kind of person the protagonist is, or he
wouldn’t be doing this kind of work. In order for the protagonist to
have chosen the life of a detective, private or official, he must already
be willing to take action against an antagonist. He (or she) is the
perfect protagonist because of a base of prior experience, even
cynicism, that has prepared him or her for the investigation. In Agatha
Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and Thin Man types of stories, the
protagonists take on the challenge as a kind of elaborate chess match
or crossword puzzle, without much emotional involvement beyond the
excitement of winning or solving it. The resolution comes in the form
of an explanation, in which all is laid bare before the assembled
victims and suspects, with the protagonist taking delight less in the
meting out of justice than in the proof of his or her skills. The stakes
are not life and death, but success or failure; the antagonist may
attempt to kill the protagonist or escape, but rarely poses a real threat
beyond the initial crime.
Code of Honor Things take on a darker, more personal tone in film
noir and more hard-edged stories. In The Maltese Falcon, for
instance, Sam Spade’s partner is killed, and even though Spade didn’t
much like him, it’s bad form, bad for business, for him not to take
action—even if it eventually means sending his lover (the killer) up the
river. In the Dirty Harry and Philip Marlowe movies, a private code of
honor drives the protagonist, in addition to—or in spite of—other
considerations, such as attractive women or official duties. These are
moral men in an amoral universe, driven to try and bring some sense
of justice or accountability to it. It’s again about defeating death, but
where in a courage movie death is overcome by action, in a need-to-
know movie death is overcome by knowledge (though action may be
involved).
Although capable, the detective protagonist still needs to be an
underdog, which initially is indicated by a lack of knowledge. But he
or she may also be alcoholic, divorced, disliked by superiors or
disgraced through no fault of their own. Because of this background,
and to maintain audience empathy, at some point early on there must
be something about the particular crime or antagonist that gives the
protagonist a moment of doubt—is he up to the challenge? Does she
really want to get involved? Or the protagonist’s boss may warn him
away from the case, not wanting to open a can of worms or have to
deal with the protagonist’s unorthodox tactics. But this doubt or
obstacle usually comes after the protagonist has taken some action
that has resulted in him or her being entangled in the web. Whether he
now needs to clear his name, or she has taken up her client’s cause out
of sexual attraction, or out of a personal code of honor or all of the
above, the protagonist is hooked, overcomes whatever his or her
objections might be, and doesn’t back out.
Eventually the protagonist will uncover the truth, though in the
darkest film noir, this may come at the cost of his life (as in Kiss Me
Deadly, where atomic radiation is released), or of his freedom and
innocence (as in Seven, a cross-genre fear/need-to-know movie, where
he is driven to murder by the revelation that the antagonist has killed
his pregnant wife).
For further exploration, P. D. James has written an excellent
analysis of the genre, Talking about Detective Fiction (Knopf 2009),
whose insights also apply to film.
The “Innocent Man”
Films like Three Days of the Condor, The Manchurian Candidate, The
Net, Breakdown, The Fugitive, Enemy of the State or those in the
Hitchcock model (North by Northwest is the classic example) follow a
somewhat different tack. These are known as “innocent man” stories.
Rather than having a detective whose life is devoted to solving crimes,
here an innocent man (or woman) is suddenly thrust into danger,
caught up in some mysterious conspiracy, and in order to survive,
must figure out what has disrupted the bland, ordinary course of his or
her life, and why. These stories share many elements with the fear
movie genres: some dark power is at work in the world and has either
specifically targeted the protagonist for destruction, or the protagonist
has inadvertently stumbled across its path and plan. You want to be
sure that something about your protagonist justifies making him or
her the lead character in your story, something beyond simply being
“innocent.” Something in the protagonist’s life and character must
make him or her vulnerable to becoming involved. For example, in
Three Days of the Condor, the protagonist is a low-level information
gatherer for the CIA; his work is pedestrian, but his proximity to the
sinister power of the organization puts him in jeopardy. In The
Manchurian Candidate, the protagonist is a soldier whose service has
subjected him to being captured and brainwashed by the enemy.
Sometimes the protagonist “trespasses” in some way and unwittingly
causes his own entrapment. In Blow-Up, he’s a photographer with
voyeuristic tendencies. In Rear Window, the protagonist’s broken leg
limits his world to his window and allows his own latent voyeurism to
get him into trouble. In The Net, she’s a computer whiz who becomes
the victim of her own technology. In North by Northwest, he’s an
unattached playboy, the perfect fall-guy whom no one will miss or care
about. In The Fugitive, he’s a doctor devoted to saving lives and now
accused of having taken one. In Breakdown, he’s simply someone who
is too trusting and not careful enough in strange surroundings.
Innocence and Paranoia Like fear movies, “innocent man” movies
play less upon the pleasure of watching a clever, tough protagonist
unravel a mystery than upon our own paranoia, our sense of
vulnerability to the faceless (societal) threats in our lives: foreign
governments, our own government, the CIA, criminals in the garb of
authority figures (sheriffs, cops) and so on. Some other examples
include Touch of Evil, Lone Star, Three Days of the Condor, North by
Northwest and The Siege. The protagonist is like us, an innocent, and
therefore what happens to him or her could also happen to us. What
would we do then, if only we were brave and clever enough? The story
provides the wished-for answer: we would survive, perhaps sadder,
but always wiser. The unknown threat provides the suspense; the
uncovering of the mystery brings release and resolution.
Because need-to-know movies are based on a paranoid world-view,
mentors and allies may exist, but they also carry with them the (often
true) suspicion that they are in league with the antagonist, part of the
conspiracy. In The Truman Show, for example, everyone in the
protagonist’s world is part of a conspiracy to control his life. Some
appear to be friends in a real sense, but we’re never shown for sure
until the end. In The Manchurian Candidate, the protagonist has been
brainwashed and can’t even trust himself; in A Beautiful Mind, Russell
Crowe’s John Nash is subject to schizophrenic delusions. Whatever the
case, you want the audience to feel that they never know whom the
protagonist can trust, and the sense of jeopardy increases as the
number of people the protagonist can trust decreases.
This is especially true of the love interest. In need-to-know movies,
sexual intimacy can be used as a tool to leave the protagonist open to
the danger of intimate betrayal; take a look at Sea of Love, Basic
Instinct, The Maltese Falcon or North by Northwest. In Sea of Love,
the protagonist’s lover is also his chief murder suspect, but is factually
innocent. In Basic Instinct and The Maltese Falcon, she’s guilty. In
North by Northwest, she is guilty of betraying and using the
protagonist, but ends up redeeming herself. In Body Heat, which riffs
off the classic noir Double Indemnity, the protagonist is a weak man
irresistibly drawn into the web of a sexy black (about-to-be) widow. In
all of them, the sexual attraction is intensified by the potential danger
to the protagonist. This is what is behind the convention of the
“femme fatale,” or deadly woman. It’s another form of the sex/death
conjunction. Of course, the “fatal” partner doesn’t have to be female;
in Gaslight, for instance, Ingrid Bergman is nearly driven to insanity
and death by the smoothly handsome Charles Boyer; the same applies
to Julia Roberts’ and Patrick Bergin’s characters in Sleeping with the
Enemy.
Sexual danger (The erotic Thriller)
Erotic thrillers operate on much the same basis, but here the focus of
what’s hidden and discovered is sexual transgression. This is woven
into a story involving some other secret agenda—a plot at the
protagonist’s workplace to discredit him or her, or a serial killer who
menaces a beautiful radio talk show host—but these films exist
primarily for the purpose of exposing flesh. Because pornography has
become readily available and does a much better job of this, the
market for erotic thrillers has diminished, but some are still made,
even by studios or other large companies (Basic Instinct, Eyes Wide
Shut, Sea of Love, Body Heat and Bound fall within this category). If
you have a strong main plot—a good murder mystery, for example—
and if enough attention is paid to the basics, the sexual dimension can
provide another watchable element and not cheapen the film. As
noted, sex is a powerful force of motivation, transgression and
betrayal. But if titillation is your goal, masked as a thriller—if what we
“need to know” is how the actors will look naked—then you’re
probably not going to write a good script, or sell it.
LAUGHTER
Situational Comedy, Farce, Romantic Comedy
We use the term “laughter movie” here instead of comedy, because
technically a comedy is simply a story with a happy or positive ending.
What we’re after is more specific. The goal of laughter movies is to get
people to laugh. Sounds easy enough, but in fact it’s one of the hardest
results to accomplish. What is funny, anyway? How do you get
millions of people to agree on it, and more importantly, to laugh? And
if you fail to be funny in a laughter movie, the entire movie fails,
because humor is its reason for being. This is why screenwriters who
can consistently make people laugh are among the highest paid writers
in the world.
The Gift of the Gods
Laughter is universal, and yet elusive; it’s apparently inconsequential,
and yet of profound importance to us, affecting everything from our
health to our attitude about life. Laughter helps us cope with adversity
and put problems that are beyond our control into perspective. It
helps us survive. In Preston Sturges’ wonderful Sullivan’s Travels, the
protagonist is a successful comedy director who longs to make an
“important” film, a serious drama that will mean something to the
masses. But when he sets out to shed his identity, to become poor and
live like the masses in order to research his “important” material, he
instead comes to realize that laughter is perhaps the greatest gift he
can bestow, allowing ordinary, hardworking people to escape the
heavy loads of their lives and experience joy, if only for a few hours.
No Joking Matter But how do you go about achieving the desired
effect? The most common mistake novice writers make is to depend on
jokes, verbal or visual; this approach almost always fails. Why?
Because jokes are short, discrete units of humor that do not depend on
a larger context. Imagine listening to someone tell unrelated jokes for
two hours in a row, not all of which can be that funny to begin with;
that’s the effect you achieve by stringing them together over the course
of a two-hour movie. It becomes tiresome. Some movies whose whole
intention is to spoof other movies—such as Airplane! or the Naked
Gun series—successfully depend on using one joke and visual gag after
another, but these also depend on a general audience familiarity with
the clichés and conventions of an overused, moribund genre that
provides the coherent context.
In fact, humor arises from the same source as other human
emotions: the situations in which people find themselves, their
dreams, desires and personal quirks, and their conflicts. This is why
the humor genre on television is called “situation comedy,” or sitcom.
Creating humor is a matter of creating situations in which people act
or respond verbally in ways that make sense to them, but which are
clearly and unintentionally inappropriate, overblown or harmlessly
self-defeating.
So Funny It Hurts There’s an old saying that comedy is cruel;
comedians talk about “killing” an audience. It wouldn’t really be funny
to slip on a banana peel and smack into the floor, but watching it
happen—without serious consequence—to a pompous school
principal who’s chasing after a student who’s late for class can give us
a primitive release because we identify with the student’s plight, and
because the principal’s fragile balloon of self-importance has been
punctured. The boring, normal course of events has been disrupted.
We laugh because we’re put in a superior position to the characters,
knowing that their extreme emotions or actions are silly, or their self-
images are deserving of comeuppance—and because we can observe
and enjoy the characters’ discomfiture, harmless pain, overreaction or
embarrassment from the safety of the audience. We know from
common experience how they must feel, but we are provoked to
laughter by the simultaneous experience of feeling the character’s
distress along with the relief that it isn’t happening to us. Humor often
comes at someone’s expense—someone else, that is.
The banana peel pratfall and other expressions of such primitively
physical, slapstick humor tend to appeal more to men than women.
Whether this is because men are less evolved is open to argument, but
it seems to be an accepted fact: men like the Three Stooges and women
do not, unless there’s something seriously wrong with them (as Jay
Leno says, “please, no outraged letters”). To indulge in a gross
generalization, it may have something to do with the difference in
response to the infliction of pain; perhaps because men have been
taught to enjoy rough horseplay more, but also generally tolerate pain
worse than women do, they’re more reactive to its depiction and
experience more of a release when the pain of horseplay has no serious
consequence beyond making the characters look ridiculous. The
simplicity and physicality of slapstick is also why it appeals to children
and is a staple of cartoons—Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, take your pick
—or family films like Home Alone, Blades of Glory or Paul Blart: Mall
Cop. No sophistication is called for, and no matter how extreme the
pain and destruction apparently inflicted, they always prove harmless
save for the frustration they create for the character.
Humorous situations such as those in I Love Lucy have been
popular with women and also involve a great deal of physical comedy
that makes the female characters look ridiculous, but these situations
involve embarrassment rather than pain. Embarrassment is in effect
another kind of harmless pain, the depiction of which can be very
funny. Another obvious example— perhaps because it’s something
women can viscerally relate to—is the pain of childbirth, which is often
used to comic effect, sometimes combining the physical pain of the
woman with the embarrassment pain of any men who might be in
attendance. Here again there are no serious consequences, and the
pain is recognizably a prelude to joy (the birth of a child).
So there are harmlessly painful situations that create humor for
men and women alike. It depends on the context and how serious the
plight of the character is. Pain is an aspect of chaos, a response to
injury, and when chaos damages the order of the world, it can either
have horrific or comic consequences, depending on whether it is
dangerous or merely discomfiting. But this is only part of the
equation; there’s another element that men seem to respond to more
than women do: stupidity. Characters like the Stooges, or those in
Dumb and Dumber and Dude, Where’s My Car? generate humor
through idiotic behavior and appeal to men. Where the character is
smart, such as in Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton films—and where
the situations involve more than simply the visual gag of poking
someone in the eye—then even slapstick can appeal to both men and
women. Watching three idiots slap each other around appeals to a
male audience culturally conditioned to approve of rough-housing
(and to take delight in female expressions of dismay, such as those of
their mothers, sisters or wives). Watching the poor little tramp getting
mauled by a health-spa masseur is something anyone who’s ever tried
to get in shape can identify with—because the tramp is smart enough
to know he doesn’t want to be there, any more than we would. He is a
victim of a harmlessly painful situation, and we laugh for him in
empathy. The Stooges, on the other hand, are cheerfully ignorant of
the idiotic behavior that they themselves are perpetrating, and we
laugh at them in contempt.
So, if you’re going to use “foolish” male pain-infliction as the
primary source of humor, you must accept that you have also probably
narrowed and pre- selected your audience. The same goes for bodily
function humor. Perhaps because of an historically macho culture,
men simply find the coarseness— the social transgression—of farting,
belching or vomiting funnier than women do. There’s of course a
certain sexism—or sex distinction—in these assertions, and with the
general popularity of gross-out laughter films like There’s Something
about Mary, this distinction may be lessening. But there’s still a great
deal of truth to it; men and women can find different things funny or
disgusting. It’s the reason most standup comedians depend on the
differences between the sexes as a source for their humor.
Serious Absurdity Only rarely are the characters in a laughter film
aware of being funny, or their situation being preposterous, unless
they are making an ironic commentary (as opposed to a joke). They
are acting and responding honestly to events within the context of a
given, usually distressing, situation. This is true even in slapstick:
Moe, Larry and Curly are not joking it up, they’re dead serious. So is
Lucille Ball. The fact that she’s serious about some patently ridiculous
plan to get rich or make wine, or that the Stooges are serious about
pretending to be surgeons or plumbers—and the progressively sillier
lengths each of them goes to in order to maintain their plans—is the
source of the humor. Charlie Chaplin’s deadpan seriousness only
accentuates the absurdity of the situations he finds himself in, whether
it’s slaving away to the point of delusion on an assembly line until he’s
chasing after a woman whose buttons look like hex-nuts (Modern
Times), or belting his pants up with a rope (so he can dance with the
girl of his dreams) only to discover that the rope is attached to a large
dog (The Gold Rush). The more absurd the situation, the funnier it is
when the character treats it seriously.
Their conflicts are humorous because their distress, actions and
responses are somehow out of proportion with the situation, or else
the situation is so absurd that it’s hilarious to see them taking it
seriously. A woman yelling at another woman to get out of her way can
be serious and threatening. A woman yelling at a cow to get out of her
way, however, is comic; the woman’s action may be emotionally
justified from her point of view, but is still inappropriate; it makes her
ridiculous. Or perhaps something causes a burly weightlifter to scream
in mortal fear; but if it’s absurdly unthreatening—say a mouse running
around his gym—then his response provokes laughter. Or say a
character wanders through a urban shootout as if on a Sunday stroll,
carrying his groceries. With bullets whizzing all around him, he
doesn’t even seem to notice until a bullet spills his milk—and then he’s
pissed off, because he has to go back to the market. Or perhaps a Wall
Street banker, filled with pride at his high position in life, is reduced to
despair when he becomes responsible for caring for his sick cousin’s
farm and cannot even milk a cow without soaking his five-hundred-
dollar Gucci shoes. Our delight comes from his consternation, from his
serious but inappropriate approach to the situation.
Even in spoof movies, the characters do not actually tell each other
jokes, but rather play it straight in the face of grotesquely exaggerated,
absurd and/or clichéd situations. Farce follows the same pattern, not
in mocking other films, but by taking real-life situations to absurd
extremes while everyone within them struggles to maintain an
appearance of normality.
Comic Premise and Character The first job for the writer whose
primary goal is to inspire laughter, therefore, is to find a premise that
has the potential to force characters into absurd, harmlessly painful or
embarrassing situations, or to create characters who will by their
nature act absurdly within normal situations. Either way, they are fish
out of water, and the humor comes from the conflict of their
inappropriate actions and attitudes with a given situation. Examples of
normal people in absurd situations include: a trio of city dwellers who
decide to get away from it all on a dude ranch (City Slickers); an
ordinary guy who discovers that his world has been overrun by not-
very-competent zombies (Shaun of the Dead); an adopted
paleontologist who decides to find his real birth parents (Flirting with
Disaster); a male nurse who has to deal with his paranoid, CIA officer,
future father-in-law (Meet the Parents); a weatherman who finds he’s
been trapped in an ever-repeating Groundhog Day; an irresponsible
lawyer who discovers that he has to tell the truth for one whole day
(Liar, Liar); the women of a country who decide to stop having sex
with their husbands until they stop fighting a foolish war (Lysistrata);
an upper-class linguist who makes a bet that he can turn a guttersnipe
into a lady (Pygmalion, My Fair Lady). Inappropriate or absurd
characters within more-or-less normal situations can include: a
dimwitted but self-important detective who goes after a world-class
jewel thief (The Pink Panther); a manic private detective who will go
to any length to retrieve stolen animals (Ace Ventura); an out-of-work
actor who pretends to be a woman in order to get a part on a soap
opera (Tootsie).
All of these were obviously ripe with the potential for situational
humor, and relied on the exaggeration of a personality or situation to
give it comic proportions. But sometimes the best humor comes from
everyday situations, from simple recognition of the common
annoyances and foibles of life. In Parenthood, for instance, Steve
Martin’s character does everything he can as a dutiful father to make
his son’s birthday party a success, including setting up a piñata. But
the thing is impregnable, and he ends up—after trying everything he
can think of—finally resorting to a handsaw to open it. The rest of the
party is equally fraught with setbacks with which every parent can
identify, and the humor comes from the exasperated extremes to
which Martin goes in order to overcome them. In LA Story, Martin
only slightly exaggerates the cultural stereotypes that people associate
with Los Angeles. In one scene, he and some other Angelenos sit at a
cafe, unselfconsciously ordering everything decaffeinated, from
cappuccinos to coffee ice cream. Then an earthquake hits, and no one
seems to notice. And when Martin’s character expresses reservations
about “making love” to the much younger, spacey babe played by
Sarah Jessica Parker, she responds by saying that’s all right, “we’ll just
have sex.” Within the context of America’s perceptions about Los
Angeles, it’s funny because it makes sense. In Shaun of the Dead, the
protagonist learns that his best friend really isn’t all that different once
he’s a zombie.
Outrage and Transgression In fear films, transgressions of taboo
or social norms result in terrifying consequences. In laughter films,
they result in hilarity because the initial fear associated with taboo
violation is there, but not the serious consequences, and so we
experience giddy relief. The transgressions themselves may also be of
an embarrassing rather than dangerous nature. Sex and bodily
functions, as noted, are both subject to taboos and are sources of
embarrassment, although the level of the humor is unsophisticated
and visceral. It can be at the simple level of a practical joke, as in
Dumb and Dumber, where one fool secretly puts a laxative in the
drink of the other in order to embarrass him in front of the girl they’re
both after; when we see and hear him noisily relieving himself, only to
discover that the toilet he’s on doesn’t flush, it’s the laughter
equivalent of showing onscreen gore in a splatter film. But humor
derived from upsetting “civilized” social norms can also reflect a
deeper desire to see everyone cut down to size. Having someone fart or
reveal his private parts on screen by itself crosses a social boundary;
having it disrupt a stuffy social setting adds another layer of
transgression. Audiences, especially American audiences, delight in
the humiliation of hypocrites and the upper classes, of those who think
they’re better than the average person. If such transgressions happen
to or occur in the presence of uptight, socially correct characters—or if
such persons are shown in situations where they are exposed, naked,
dirtied or performing a bodily function—it punctures the pompous
conventions by which they protect and define their inflated self-
images.
Cut Down to Size Humor of this sort is a great leveler, a
reaffirmation of our democratic belief that no one is above ridicule.
We love to catch powerful people “with their pants down.” There’s
perhaps no better example in real life than the plethora of jokes
emerging from moralizing politicians’ alleged (and confirmed)
infidelities and other sexual embarrassments. It’s a case of the
“Emperor’s New Clothes.” In the Three Stooges, the recipient of a pie
in the face—other than one of the stooges—is usually a stuffy socialite.
In Dumb and Dumber, we take secret revenge on all those officious
cops who’ve given us tickets when one of them takes a swig from a
beer bottle filled with urine. Even laughter movies of great
sophistication take advantage of sexual/bodily function humor. Think
of the scenes in Robert Altman’s classic, MASH, where the arrogant,
puritanical “Hot Lips Hoolihan” is revealed to be an adulterous
hypocrite, first when we overhear her lovemaking on the PA system,
and then when she’s humiliated by being exposed before the entire
camp while taking a shower. Her Bible-quoting, intolerant lover Frank
is sent away in disgrace. We delight in their embarrassment because
they’ve brought it on themselves by pretending to be superior.
Humiliation is not limited to sexual or body- function taboos. It can be
reducing a rapacious land-developer to poverty, a famous but arrogant
athlete to public defeat, a pompous intellectual to admitting he was
wrong; in short, anything that brings the self-impressed and mighty
low.
Those who are perceived to be seriously damaging the social
contract or who act malevolently against innocent people—criminals,
dishonest politicians, corrupt bosses, lawyers—are also targets for
humiliation (Home Alone, The Apartment, Dave, The Social Network,
Working Girl, Liar, Liar). They too need to be brought to justice,
usually by a character representing innocence, and with whom we
identify: a child, an honest worker, a caring citizen, a smart dog. In
these cases, public ridicule of those who have tormented or betrayed
the protagonist (us) creates the same cathartic effect that death or
imprisonment for the antagonist would in a serious movie.
Cynical Laughter Darker comedies, such as Bob Roberts, Network,
Eating Raoul, Young Adult, Greenberg, or Dr. Strangelove, usually
reveal a more generalized and cynical attitude about human nature,
and contain a comeuppance for the protagonists as well, that often
occurs at each other’s hands. The protagonist may actually kill the
offending antagonist(s), as in The Last Supper, or get away with
murder, as in The Player. In effect, everyone is corrupted and becomes
an antagonist. To write such a film, you need to identify a theme and
premise that are specific to the social foible you want to skewer—
greed, hunger for power, lust—and then create a protagonist who has
reason to obsess about it and strike out against it. However, the
protagonist is drawn to fight the foible, as represented by an
antagonist, precisely because he or she suffers from the same failing,
and ultimately both are brought down. The humor in such movies is
less cathartic than satiric and cautionary. The theme is that none of us
is above sin or condemnation. This effect can be deliciously evil,
playing to an audience’s sophisticated cynicism rather than to its sense
of the absurd. But you run the risk of alienating your audience if the
effect is too self-righteous or bitter, or if you create a protagonist
whose actions they ultimately cannot justify.
Laughing at Love (Romantic Comedy)
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl; that’s the timeworn
formula for romantic comedy. Sometimes the genders will be reversed
(or be identical, in a gay story), but the model remains. But what
exactly does it involve, and why does it work? And does it still work, in
a theoretically more advanced society? Sure it does.
As we’ve seen, humor comes from putting a character in an
untenable situation, and from his or her inappropriate actions and
responses to the obstacles or conflict that the situation presents. When
that conflict involves the additional insecurity of trying to prove
oneself lovable to another person, you have the basis for a romantic
comedy. In most romantic laughter movies, the primary oppositional
relationship is that between the two lovers. Structurally one is the
protagonist and the other the antagonist; the untenable situation is
that one would-be lover’s greatest conflict (other than with him- or
herself) is with the other would-be lover. In addition, the two potential
lovers must appear clearly right for each other to the audience, while
appearing clearly wrong to each other; either the protagonist,
antagonist or both don’t see this as working. (We will refer here to the
“boy” and “girl” as protagonist and antagonist, and maintain this
gender assignment except when referring to specific examples in
which the gender roles are reversed; while we want to get away from
the idea that only the male can be the protagonist in a romantic
laughter film, it is too cumbersome and confusing to keep saying “him
or her,” or to alternate the genders in our discussion.)
“Not if You Were the Last Man on Earth” This oppositional
relationship is also why in movies—unlike life—romantic laughter
films often start off with the eventual lovers actively disliking, fearing
or avoiding each other, and having to overcome this initial antagonism
in order to get together. There would be no conflict, and therefore no
story, without it. This is a staple of Katherine Hepburn movies,
whether the male lead is Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart or Cary
Grant, as well as others of that era (like It Happened One Night).
Another classic example is When Harry Met Sally, and is taken to an
extreme in As Good as It Gets and What Women Want, where the
protagonists (Jack Nicholson’s Melvin and Mel Gibson’s Nick) are
apparently vile misogynists, and the antagonists (Carol and Darcy, in
both cases played by Helen Hunt) can barely tolerate them. Sometimes
the would-be lovers appear impossibly mismatched because of class
differences, as in Pygmalion, The Prince & Me and Pretty Woman.
There may also be other external obstacles, such as pre-existing
relationships, competing suitors, delaying situations that arise,
accidents of fate that disrupt or abort their initial union or internal
obstacles such as the desire to remain single or a poor self-image. In
some cases, where the “object of love” either doesn’t know about the
protagonist’s affections or is so kind and sweet that she is not a good
source for creating conflict, you can structure the story so that one of
these other obstacles is more fully developed and becomes the
antagonist. For instance, in There’s Something about Mary, Ben
Stiller’s and Cameron Diaz’s characters initially like one another, but
are separated when he accidentally catches his privates in his zipper
on their prom night; when a wistful Stiller decides to find her years
later, he hires a sleazy private eye. And when this character (Matt
Dillon) falls in love with her, too, he becomes the antagonist. Cameron
Diaz—“Mary”—is both too perfect and too unaware of what’s going on
to be the antagonist, and so becomes the MacGuffin (see Glossary):
she and love are essentially the same thing. In Sleepless in Seattle, the
potential lovers are separated by a continent; they are never in direct
conflict with each other, and so the distance and the combination of
their mutual internal doubts and hesitations becomes the antagonistic
force. In The Truth about Cats and Dogs and Roxanne, which recast
the classic story of Cyrano De Bergerac in modern times, poor self-
image is the primary antagonist.
However, although these alternative antagonist structures can work
beautifully, they are less common because in a romantic laughter film
you normally want your two lovers to be the focus of the story and to
be equally interesting and well-rounded—a balance that more
naturally suggests a protagonist/antagonist relationship. We’ll
proceed on that model.
An old expression (slightly altered) goes: first you put the
protagonist up a tree, then you throw rocks at him until he figures out
how to get down. In laughter films, the more “rocks” the merrier. But
there must also be an initial attraction, and the lengths to which the
characters go to avoid admitting it to each other or themselves, and
then to winning one another over after having made fools of
themselves, create the humor of the story.
Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl When the
protagonist meets the antagonist, he doesn’t have the confidence or
ability to win or keep her, so he does something to lose the object of
his affections by some misguided action that proves he lacks the power
of charm/wit/self-confidence/knowledge of what the antagonist or
desired person wants or needs. The antagonist’s superior power comes
from the fact that she has what the protagonist needs to acquire: she is
more centered, caring or decent. Look at the wholesome waitress
Helen Hunt plays in As Good as It Gets, or Mary, who is practically a
saint in There’s Something about Mary. In Jerry MacGuire, the
antagonist is the only honest, selfless woman with whom he works, the
only one who sticks by him in his troubles. In The Truth about Cats
and Dogs and While You Were Sleeping, where the antagonists are
male, they are incredibly kind, decent men. Note that in As Good as It
Gets, the antagonist cares for a sick child; in There’s Something about
Mary, she cares for a mentally disabled brother; in Jerry MacGuire
she also has a goofy-looking little kid; in The Truth about Cats and
Dogs, the male antagonist has a problematic dog. In all four, these
“innocent” dependants are drawn to the protagonist in a way they
never have been with any other person, and this acceptance is a signal
to the antagonist that the protagonist is worthy. The antagonist is
morally and emotionally where the protagonist needs to be; the
protagonist is out of balance with the world and victory comes when
the antagonist’s power brings the protagonist back into balance. In the
words of Jerry MacGuire, the protagonist needs the antagonist: “You
complete me,” he tells her.
Historically, in a male-centered culture in which one of a woman’s
primary powers came from withholding or allowing sexual intimacy,
the female antagonist—like the dragon guarding its golden fleece—
held the prize, the holy grail of sex: whether or not the protagonist gets
to make love to her. (As noted, in the Greek comedy Lysistrata, this
power alone brings a war to an end.) In recent years—as during the
thirties and forties, when strong actresses were allowed to carry films
—the playing field has become more level, and the roles occasionally
appear reversed, with the man as the object of affection (as in The
Truth about Cats and Dogs, While You Were Sleeping and Young
Adult). Sex as an equivalent of the Holy Grail works either way.
But the raw desire for sex alone won’t do, since it is too worldly and
falls into the vice category of Lust. If that remains the protagonist’s
only goal, then he or she is doomed to comic failure. Sexual desire
must be sublimated or combined with the higher level of true love.
Through the advice of friends (allies and mentors), the failure of a
series of inappropriate actions that backfire and embarrass or
confound the protagonist, and through coming up against the powers
of the antagonist, the protagonist is forced to learn how to be a better
person and overcome his crippling self-doubts or character flaws. He
acquires the power to “win” the antagonist over. Usually, the
protagonist must also prove worthier than a secondary adversary such
as a competing suitor or the snotty, inappropriate lover the antagonist
is already stuck with. If such a relationship exists, the antagonist will
be in it only out of a sense of obligation or some other admirable but
ultimately insufficient reason.
Wrong Turns The protagonist’s internal flaws or self-doubts must
cause him to take certain deceptive actions that he mistakenly thinks
are appropriate, but that in fact are self-defeating. These actions and
deceptions may be mean-spirited, foolish or well-intentioned, but in
every case they backfire. In The Truth about Cats and Dogs, the
(female) protagonist thinks of herself as a “dog”; because of this she is
too afraid to meet the man of her dreams and concocts a scheme to
introduce him instead to her beautiful best friend. In While You Were
Sleeping, Sandra Bullock’s lonely protagonist plays along with the
misconception that she’s engaged to a man in a coma in order to stay
close to the family with whom she wants to belong. In As Good as It
Gets, the protagonist is a true crackpot, who tries at first to get the
attention of the waitress he fancies by cruel jokes. In Working Girl,
Melanie Griffith’s protagonist, a secretarial assistant, pretends to be an
executive in order to get ahead in her work and with the man for
whom she’s fallen. In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere’s billionaire tries
to keep the relationship financial, even when he knows he’s in love
with Julia Roberts’ prostitute. The deception may simply be that the
protagonist will not admit to his true feelings. But slowly, his
deceptions and defenses begin to erode by exposure to the antagonist
and her positive actions. The protagonist learns from the antagonist
how to cast away fears and become more real, more honest, more
worthy.
The conflict comes from the fact that all these deceptions may
either distance the antagonist in the first place, or if they attract the
antagonist at first, the deceptions will later come back to haunt the
protagonist and undo the attraction. In other words, just as the
protagonist seems to have achieved success, this final and apparently
fatal conflict will arise due to the protagonist’s own prior
machinations, which are now revealed. This also applies to alternative
antagonist structures as well. In There’s Something about Mary,
Stiller’s hiring of a private eye backfires and actually puts more
distance between himself and his beloved, both through the
machinations of the private eye and then through Mary’s discovery of
Stiller’s surveillance plan.
“Fessing Up” Once the deceptions are revealed and the plan
unravels, the protagonist must come clean with a confession that
everything he did was because of true love. The point is that true love
can only bloom when deceptions are cast aside, when the protagonist
reveals all and makes himself vulnerable in the presence of the
antagonist. This exposure is actually where the protagonist exhibits
greatest power, because honesty is the one quality that will win over
the antagonist. Where courage movies depend on taking physical
action and need-to-know movies on acquiring knowledge, romantic
laughter films depend on “fessing up”—on honesty. Where fear movies
are about transgression and retribution, romantic laughter films are
about transgression and redemption.
The power relationships are the same in romantic movies as in any
other kind of movie. The protagonist has the potential to win, but the
antagonist appears too powerful. They come into oppositional conflict
with each other, struggling to reach the same goal. But in romantic
laughter films, we say that the protagonist “wins over” the antagonist
rather than “defeats” her, because the difference is that a power
equilibrium rather than a reversal is established at the end. The
protagonist wins, but the antagonist doesn’t lose, because the goal that
they both need to achieve is positive for both and achieved by both; in
fact, it depends on their mutual success, because it is true love.
LOVE AND LONGING
Romance, Melodrama, Platonic Love
Love is the most profound connection people can have with one
another; in love, we lose our loneliness and sense of isolation in an
impersonal or threatening world. The longing to experience love—to
know that there can be one perfect union with another in which we can
both lose ourselves and acquire the certainty that the world has
meaning and purpose—is something almost everyone can identify
with, and has led to some of the greatest stories and movies we have.
They are stories of sacrifice and passion, of people who feel life’s most
exquisite pleasures and pains, who are allowed, as very few of us are,
to become completely alive, perhaps for the rest of their lives, perhaps
only for a brief but priceless moment. It doesn’t really matter.
Although it’s more a buddy comedy than a love story, there’s a
wonderful moment in City Slickers when Curly—Jack Palance’s old
cowboy—describes having once long ago seen a beautiful girl, backlit
by the sun; but he never even spoke to her, or saw her again. Billy
Crystal’s character is appalled—why didn’t he? She could have been
the love of Curly’s life! To which Curly responds, “She is.” Later, as a
result of his adventure, Crystal’s character comes to realize that his life
has all the meaning it needs, because he has the love of his life, his wife
and family.
Heart Beats
In a love story, this search for a perfect moment of connection and
understanding becomes the main emphasis. Passion and the need for
connection may be secondary or even absent in other genres; in a
positive love story passion and the need for connection are expressions
of the life force. We talk of “deathless love,” of characters living
happily ever after, not because they—us—will be literally immortal, but
because we believe that if we can experience true love, we will have
truly lived, and death will lose its power over us. The opposite is also
true; in a negative love story, where the protagonist’s love and longing
remain unrequited, death’s power is increased, and the results can be
emotionally devastating.
Selfless Love The longing for love can lead to empowerment and joy
if it reiterates, responds to or positively alters the underlying morality
and necessities of the world in which the characters live. The result is a
love story with a happy ending. In City Lights, perhaps Chaplin’s
greatest film, a little tramp manages to scrape together the money to
allow a blind flower girl to have an operation and restore her sight. But
because he does not imagine himself worthy, he does not reveal his
identity to her; the gift is entirely altruistic, a selfless act of pure love,
and she mistakenly assumes that a wealthy man must have been her
benefactor. In the end, however, the memory of his touch, from when
she was still blind, reveals the little tramp’s true identity to her, and we
end with the knowledge that his actions have at last brought him the
happiness he so richly deserves. His actions have positively
transformed his world and that of the woman he loves. Marty is
similar; two lonely underdogs find one another and against all odds
redefine and improve their callous, cruel world.
Happy endings do not always mean that the lovers end up together.
Casablanca, for example, has a happy ending that reinforces the moral
necessities of a world in which good is at war with evil. Rick’s reunion
with Elsa allows him to leave behind the cynicism and pain that have
paralyzed him, and allows her to unburden herself of the guilt of
having abandoned him years before. But both come to realize that the
greater cause in their world— as personified by Elsa’s freedom-fighter
husband, Victor—is more important than continuing their affair.
Positive love is selfless, and Rick and Elsa’s selflessness in spite of
their longing reinforces the values of their world. They cannot be with
one another, but that doesn’t mean their love is lost; rather, they are
able to sublimate it to a perfection that requires nothing more: “We’ll
always have Paris.” Forrest Gump is another good example. In a
chaotic, often absurd and cruel world, Forrest’s decency and selfless
love end up saving—at least spiritually—the victimized and tormented
girl he’s always loved. And even though Jenny dies, as with a courage
film, the result of Forrest’s actions is life-affirming: she has borne him
a son, in whom her love survives. Perhaps the most successful example
of selfless love—certainly at the box office— is Titanic. Here an
apparently well-ordered world is thrown into chaos. Although he
perishes, Jack’s selfless love for Rose saves her “in every way that a
person can be saved,” and allows her to experience a fuller and longer
life than almost anyone could imagine. All of these films have a
bittersweet quality, but ultimately are still “comedic,” in that life and
the value of love have been reaffirmed.
It is important to note that much of what applies to romantic
laughter films also applies to almost any comedic (happy ending) love
story, whether or not its primary intention is to engender laughter.
The difference is the degree of genuine anguish the characters
experience before they succeed (remember, genuine pain is not
funny), who or what is at fault for the deceptions the protagonist is
driven to, and the degree of exaggeration applied to the situations and
characters’ actions. In a laughter film, the problems a protagonist
faces are largely of his own making, and his efforts to overcome them
become increasingly ridiculous. In a serious “comedic” love story,
deceptions are imposed upon the protagonist by others or by
circumstances, and evoke empathy rather than laughter.
This is clearly seen if we compare Jane Austen’s Emma (or its
modern derivative Clueless), which is clearly a laughter story, with
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which is not (although it has
comic elements). Both follow largely the same pattern: a young woman
in the socially rigid society of early nineteenth century England falls in
love with a perfect man, but is prevented by circumstances from
having him until the end. In Emma, it’s Emma’s own foolish blindness
to what she needs combined with her busybody mismanaging of a
friend’s love life that are the sources of the laughter. She’s well off, and
cannot leave well enough alone. Her misguided deceptions, plottings
and denials are entirely her own fault, based on her own pride and
social prejudices, and she must be comically humbled, her pride
stripped away, before she can achieve the honesty and understanding
that true love requires. Sense and Sensibility, by contrast, elicits
pathos, because the protagonist is constrained into denying her
feelings against her will; her once well-to-do family has fallen on hard
times, and through no fault of her own she is left no choice by the
social constraints of her day but to deny her feelings. She is ultimately
rewarded with love for her constancy, discretion and virtue, while
others who have acted against her are humbled for having imposed
their prejudicial constraints and deceits upon her. Both examples use
the same world and very similar kinds of characters (as far as
appearance and social context go) to achieve very different effects.
Love stories with happy endings are usually set in a world where
the normal order appears solid. At first this provides contrast to the
inner chaos that the characters are experiencing and that throws them
out of balance with the world. The happy resolution of their love, the
new equilibrium of protagonist and antagonist, brings them both back
into balance with the world and reaffirms its order.
Selfish Love: Romantic Tragedy However, the longing for love
can be so great and all-consuming, where nothing else matters, that it
comes into unresolvable conflict with the larger world. It is “star-
crossed,” against the will of the gods (whoever those might be), and
therefore represents a kind of hubris or fatal pride. Their love burns
too hot, the light so bright that it blinds the characters to anything but
their own selfish desire, and as a result they are consumed by it. This is
a tragic love story.
One obvious example is Romeo and Juliet; their love is the hot,
pure desire of youth, innocent but nonetheless hormonal, lust
sublimated into exquisite mutual worship. Because they cannot accept
the realities of their world, they end up destroying those closest to
them and ultimately themselves. The same thing happens in The
English Patient, where Ralph Fiennes’ and Kristin Scott Thomas’
characters betray those closest to them, even their country in a time of
war, in order to satisfy their blinding love, and both are destroyed. In
both of these examples there are contrasting subplots that present
“comedic” alternatives in order to reaffirm the proper order of their
worlds. Romeo and Juliet’s deaths shock their families into accepting
peace with each other, and Juliette Binoche’s nurse finds happiness
and love with her Indian sergeant as the Allies achieve victory. But in
the film (which reverses the emphasis of the Michael Ondaatje novel
from which it’s adapted) these are secondary to the themes of burning,
destructive passion.
In spite of its having won the Oscar for Best Picture, many
American audiences disliked The English Patient, and a comparison
with the ever-popular Casablanca is revealing. In The English Patient,
the main characters put their own consciously adulterous passions
ahead of the cause of victory over the Nazis, while in Casablanca they
sacrifice their personal feelings for the greater cause; and although
they did commit adultery in the past, they were unaware of it (Elsa
thought her husband was dead). Casablanca reflects an American
sentiment that faithfulness and sacrifice for a larger, noble cause are
always correct, while The English Patient represents a more European
attitude that honor and fidelity are relative matters. Europeans live in
a world where armies and allegiances shift back and forth across
national boundaries, and where marriages have traditionally been
financial rather than emotional arrangements, so that what matters
more are personal passions and needs. These two movies demonstrate
the difference between (and differences in attitude toward) honest and
transgressional love.
Tragic (unhappy ending) love stories are often set in a world where
chaos has been unleashed by war or other extreme circumstances; in
stories like Gone with the Wind, Anna Karenina or The English
Patient, the chaos of the world mirrors and intensifies the inner chaos
of the lovers. As the world returns to order, the lovers remain out of
balance, their love still chaotic or transgressional. They are like
swimmers who have gone too far out to sea and cannot return to
shore, and so they drown. In other movies, like Hemingway’s For
Whom the Bell Tolls, their love may be pure, in contrast to the chaos of
the world, but it is unable to stand against the force of the whirlwind.
The theme here is that two people’s love for each other cannot save
them from a world swept by hateful destruction.
Alternately, tragic love can be set in an ordered world, but be
irrevocably transgressional from the beginning, as in Brokeback
Mountain (homosexuality), Othello (miscegenation) or Lolita
(pedophilia), or European films like Swept Away (adultery and class
transgression). This is an unusual strategy in American films and
usually gets a tepid or even angry response, because it goes against the
largely positive and equalizing American psyche. To Americans, if the
world is in order, then love must eventually reaffirm it, even if it is
transgressional; look at Mississippi Masala, The Adjustment Bureau
or Moonstruck, for instance. If love fails or goes beyond the pale, the
story loses us. Europeans are generally more pessimistic and therefore
more accepting of human failure.
Platonic Love Not all love-and-longing movies are sexual. Some of
the most powerful involve the love of a parent for a child (Mask,
Lorenzo’s Oil); one friend for another (Brian’s Song, Scarecrow,
Midnight Cowboy, The Secret Garden, Enemy Mine); a child for a
special adult (The Bicycle Thief, Cinema Paradiso, The Little
Princess); or a human, usually a child, for an animal (The Black
Stallion, Old Yeller, Free Willy). Because these stories are
uncomplicated by erotic passion, they have a different kind of purity.
Depending on whether they are comedic or tragic, they are stories of
the triumph or failure of innocence in the face of a cruel world, of
selflessness in a selfish world.
To write such a story, instead of sexual attraction, you need to
explore the impulse to care for another, the instinct to comfort the
wounded or shield the weak; in short, that constellation of actions and
emotions that we label altruism. You can approach this kind of story
from two directions. As in a romantic love story, you can set it up so
that one (or both) of the two main characters dislikes the other at first,
but comes to love him or her in the end, as in Enemy Mine (where the
human and alien start off trying to kill each other and end up as best
friends) or in Cinema Paradiso (where the cranky old projectionist at
first rejects the young boy, but ends up replacing the father the boy has
lost). Or you can set up a situation in which two people deeply love one
another but are separated, or in which their love is endangered by
circumstances, as in The Little Princess (where the little girl and her
father are separated by war) or in Lorenzo’s Oil (where a fatal illness
threatens to kill the little boy). The conflict and theme arise from the
struggle to provide, to protect, to maintain connection when the
chaotic forces of the world threaten to tear your characters apart. In a
tragedy, these forces succeed, as in Midnight Cowboy or The Bicycle
Thief; in a comedy, they fail, as in the Black Stallion or The Secret
Garden. Even death does not spell failure if the survivor ends up
empowered by the love he or she has experienced, as is the case in
Cinema Paradiso, 84 Charing Cross Road and Brian’s Song. Although
heart-wrenching, these have positive endings and themes, and are
comedic.
Furthermore, most “buddy” movies fall into this category. Lethal
Weapon, for instance, is about two mismatched cops who come to love
each other over the course of the action. The aforementioned City
Slickers is about platonic male-bonding, as are the classic Diner and
the Hangover movies. Every version of Sherlock Holmes is essentially
a buddy-love film about the mismatched, misanthropic genius Holmes
and the good-hearted but less perceptive Dr. Watson. Thelma & Louise
is about female bonding, about two women whose journey challenges
their male-dominated world, even to the moment of their deaths.
Kristen Wiig’s brilliant Bridesmaids gives female ownership to
previously male-oriented raunchy buddy-bonding.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Picking Your Poison There are many other genres to explore, such
as biographies and historical sagas, where the varied events of specific,
real experiences are organized and focused around resonant, universal
themes; or fantasy and science fiction, where, in the context of being
transported to other worlds, we can both marvel at their strangeness
and yet see our deepest moral and emotional concerns played out. We
do not have space to pursue all these genres here; but hopefully the
elements and strategies outlined above will give you a good sense of
how and why different kinds of stories work the way they do, why they
fascinate and move us, and most importantly, how to choose and
create the kind of story you want to tell.
EXERCISES
1. Take two characters and create, in a paragraph or two, a romantic
laughter film around them.
2. Now take the same characters and alter their world and
circumstances so you have a romantic tragedy.
3. Now take the same characters and alter one of their personalities so
that you now have a fear movie. The point of the above exercises is to
see how you can, by altering one or two essential aspects, create a very
different kind of film using otherwise similar elements.
4. Create a “trail of evidence” that reveals the nature and agenda of an
antagonist in a need-to-know movie. Do not introduce or reveal the
character in person.
5. In a paragraph or two, describe a courage character who has a
specific arc. Now take that same character and see if you can re-create
him or her as a catalytic character, again in a paragraph or two. Define
the similarities and differences.
12
Narrative
Writing the Picture
A movie is a story told in pictures and sound. The narrative—also

called the “narration,” “business” or “description”—is where a
screenwriter creates those pictures and sounds (other than dialogue).
Set at the widest margins, the narrative occupies a position of
authority on the page as it details the action, setting, character
appearance and mood of each scene. At its simplest, it is a basic
description of what the audience will see and hear. Yet, while the
screenwriter must strive for simplicity, narrative should not be a mere
summary or bland listing of scene elements. It must convey motion
and emotion with an almost poetic economy and force and feed the
reader’s imagination. It is through the narrative that the writer tries to
get the reader to experience not only the sights and sounds, but also
the excitement of the story, so that the movie itself “plays” in her head.
KEEP IT MOVING!
Keeping the story moving, literally, requires brevity, clarity and pace.
A novelist can linger on a moment or a physical detail and devote
paragraphs or pages to full-blown descriptions. This is death in a
screenplay, the equivalent of stopping the film projector on a single
frame. There simply isn’t the time or luxury. A screenplay’s narrative
must manage to convey a vivid sense of location, a hint of character
and mood, and a lively account of the action, all with the fewest
possible words. Only that which is relevant to the story and/or
characters belongs. No repetitious words, no hyperbolic descriptions
or phrases, no asides to the reader, nothing should interrupt the flow
of the story (movie) as it progresses through time.
Narrative is a critical part of any screenplay, yet unfortunately it’s
often skipped by readers because most beginning screenwriters—and
some experienced writers who should know better—don’t take the
time to learn how to write powerful, active, lean narrative. So the
reader simply scans the narrative, focusing instead on the dialogue—
which means the reader may be paying attention to the least important
part of the screenplay. Let’s look at what makes good narrative by
starting with paragraphs and working our way down to phrasing and
individual words.
Paragraphs
When readers open a screenplay to find large blocks of dense narrative
dominating the page, they are immediately turned off. For one thing,
lengthy paragraphs make the narrative hard to read. For another,
experienced readers know that dense narrative is indicative of the
writer spending too much time on unimportant details that must now
be sifted through in order to get to the meat of the story. Lastly, one
page of a screenplay roughly equals one minute of screen time. If the
page takes too long to read, the reader will lose a sense of the story’s
movement. As a result, no paragraph in a screenplay should be longer
than four or five sentences—short, uncomplicated sentences. The
following is the kind of narrative that readers dread:
EXT. KONIGSBERG’S HOUSE — NIGHT
Konigsberg peeks outside to find that the fuse box--simple metal walls buckled
from a massive blow--has been smashed. Konigsberg hears a MUFFLED
SOUND, something hard to identify, that comes from behind him. He turns to
find a DARK FIGURE in a knitted wool ski mask and surgical gloves holding a
Louisville Slugger. Konigsberg quickly runs inside and locks the back door
behind him, then frantically searches the kitchen drawers, from which he pulls
out a silver semi-automatic handgun with a pearl handle. Then there’s only
silence. Only his hard breath. He slowly approaches the door and peers through
the curtained glass. SMASH! The baseball bat shatters the window. A surgical
glove reaches in and unlocks the door. The Dark Figure, bat raised, coolly
enters and walks toward Mr. Konigsberg, who backs away in terror. The broken
glass twinkles on the Dark Figure’s ski mask. Konigsberg closes his eyes and
with a flinch, squeezes the trigger of his pearl-handled semi-automatic
handgun. CLICK! A dud.
There are several problems with this paragraph in addition to its
length. First, it’s in the wrong font: screenplays should be in Courier 12
pt. For another thing, there are sentences with subordinate and
complicated clauses: “Konigsberg peeks outside to find that the fuse
box—simple metal walls buckled from a massive blow—has been
smashed.” For yet another, there’s way too much unessential detail,
such as the description of the gun, which is repeated painstakingly.
And we don’t need to see him described as “Mr. Konigsberg.” There is
even another, greater problem; the scene shifts from exterior to
interior without the change being indicated by a new scene header.
This narrative should be trimmed and broken into easy-to-read
paragraphs as follows:
EXT. KONIGSBERG’S HOUSE — NIGHT
Its simple metal walls have buckled from a
massive blow.
A MUFFLED SOUND comes from behind him. He
turns.
There’s a DARK FIGURE in a ski mask and
surgical gloves, holding a Louisville Slugger.
INT. KONIGSBERG’S KITCHEN — NIGHT
Konigsberg runs in and locks the back door. He
frantically searches the kitchen drawers.
Pulls out a silver semi-auto hand gun.
Then, silence. Only his hard breath. He slowly
approaches the door and peers through the
curtained glass.
SMASH! The baseball bat shatters the window. A
surgical glove reaches in and unlocks the
door. The Dark Figure, bat raised, coolly
enters and walks toward Konigsberg. The broken
glass twinkles on his ski mask.
Konigsberg backs away in terror. He closes his
eyes and with a flinch squeezes the trigger.
CLICK! A dud.
Shortening and dividing up the description makes it easier to read. A
few incomplete sentences are okay, if they create the effect of a scene
in motion. And by choosing the paragraph breaks carefully, the writer
also helps to “direct” the scene in the reader’s mind, by hinting at
shifts from shot to shot.
Some screenwriters use “mini-slug lines” to refocus the reader’s
attention on what each character is doing within a given scene. When
using mini-slug lines, the screenwriter places (in caps) the character’s
name, which is followed by a dash dash, and then the narrative. Mini-
slug lines can lead the reader’s eye and break the action into easy-to-
read bits. However, if overused they can make a read feel choppy,
even mannered, so they should be used with discretion. Here is the
same scene using mini-slug lines:
KONIGSBERG’S HOUSE — NIGHT
KONIGSBERG’S P.O.V. -- The fuse box has been
smashed. Its simple metal walls have buckled
from a massive blow.
A MUFFLED SOUND comes from behind him. He
turns...
A DARK FIGURE -- Ski mask, surgical gloves,
holding a Louisville Slugger.
INT. KONIGSBERG’S KITCHEN — NIGHT
KONIGSBERG -- runs in and locks the back door.
He frantically searches the kitchen drawers.
Pulls out a silver semi-auto hand gun.
Then, silence. Only his hard breath. He slowly
approaches the door and peers through the
curtained glass.
SMASH -- The baseball bat shatters the window.
A surgical glove reaches in and unlocks the
door.
THE DARK FIGURE -- bat raised, coolly enters
and walks toward Konigsberg. The broken glass
twinkles on his ski mask.
KONIGSBERG -- backs away in terror, closes his
eyes and with a flinch squeezes the trigger.
CLICK! A dud.
Sentences
The narrative describes the action and imagery with economy, so
simple sentences (subject, verb, object) should dominate the text.
Complex grammar will only slow the read and lessen the impact.
These simple sentences should be written in present tense, in an active
voice and with a minimum of adverbs and adjectives.
Present Tense
Keeping verb tenses consistent is never a problem for screenwriters
because all narrative is written in present tense. Even flashbacks take
place in the here and now: everything is written as if it were happening
now, in front of our eyes, just as the film will be. This might seem
rather elementary, yet a surprising number of beginning screenwriters
make this simple mistake. As a reminder, here are several lines of
narrative the wrong and right way.
WRONG (PAST TENSE)
Samuel staggered up the blurred stairs. The
floorboards creaked in the dark. He inched his
way towards the closed bedroom door.
RIGHT (PRESENT TENSE)
Samuel staggers up the blurred stairs. The
floorboards CREAK in the dark. He inches his way
towards the closed bedroom door.
WRONG (PAST TENSE)
Jack watched for unwanted eyes. The coast was
clear. He took the duffel bag from the trunk,
walked over to the edge and dropped it into the
slow-moving river.
RIGHT (PRESENT TENSE)
Jack watches for unwanted eyes. The coast is
clear. He takes the duffel bag from the trunk,
walks over to the edge and drops it into the
slow-moving river.
Even in (what should be rare) moments of poetic license indicating a
character’s internal state, such as “Beauty was in the eye of the
beholder,” the narrative should read, “Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder.”
An even worse problem is for a screenwriter to mix tenses. Here,
the screenwriter suddenly switches from present to past tense.
STUPID (MIXING TENSES)
They kiss. And again. More passionate. Grace
presses Andy against the refrigerator. Barnyard
animal magnets fall on them. CRASH, a jar of
pennies rains down. They didn’t notice, they were
too busy enjoying each other’s company.
Remember, present tense only. There is no exception to this rule.
Active Voice
Narrative should also be written in active voice. Active voice is easier
to understand and more immediate than passive voice (present
progressive, technically, but we’ll call it passive for simplicity). It also
conveys the sense of—guess what—action! The subject of the sentence
performs the action of the verb on the object:
Jill slaps Jack.
Jill, the subject, performs the action “slaps.” When the sentence is
written in passive voice, the object receives the action of the verb from
the subject:
Jack is slapped by Jill.
An active voice energizes the narrative by concentrating on verbs that
emphasize the performer of the action. It is more direct and dramatic.
And, of equal importance, it uses fewer words.
Right (Active Voice) Wrong (Passive Voice)
Sam slams the car into reverse. The car is slammed into reverse by Sam.
Oswalt takes aim. The gun is aimed by Oswalt.
Sandra kisses her Mother. Mother is kissed by Sandra.
WRITE ONLY WHAT WE CAN SEE OR HEAR
As noted, screenplay narrative can only describe what the audience
can see or hear. Unlike the novelist, who can describe a character’s
thoughts, past events and future considerations, a screenwriter is
limited to the present, and to what can be filmed. For example, in the
following narrative, a student screenwriter describes a character’s
thoughts. How can this be filmed?
The stone-faced members of the PAROLE BOARD
huddle behind a huge oak table. Nearby, Nick
waits for the verdict. He misses his wife and
child. He wants to forget all this and relive
happier times. He loved his wife and son so
much; they were the light of his existence.
Now they seem a world away.
From what we can see, how can we know that Nick is thinking all these
things? We see an actor sitting there thinking, perhaps upset or
wistful, but how does the audience know that he is thinking in
particular about his wife, son and happier times? This is poor
narrative because it describes elements that no director could possibly
shoot, no actor could reasonably be expected to act. Both require
specifics to shoot or play. Now here’s the same narrative with visuals
to help the audience “see” what Nick is thinking.
The stone-faced members of the PAROLE BOARD
huddle behind a huge oak table. Nick’s haunted
eyes drift down to his manacled hands; he
clutches the tattered photo of himself with
Kevin and Sally in happier times.
Notice that if the visual is strong, it’s not necessary to even hint at
what Nick is thinking. His thoughts are clear by the action alone. Or
the context of a scene, in relation to the scenes preceding and
following it, may provide the crucial information. For instance, a man
may be staring wistfully out at the ocean and we know what he’s
thinking because in the previous scene his wife left him, in spite of his
begging her not to. Or you could achieve a comic effect by having a
chubby man in a running outfit staring soulfully across a park, and
then cut to what he’s looking at (a thin fellow on a bench, devouring a
candy bar), at which point the chubby man’s belly growls audibly
(something we can hear).
The same goes for exposition. In the following, the screenwriter
includes information we cannot see or hear.
BETH enters; she is John’s long-lost sister.
Nearby, SALLY and JILL wave, they were once
roommates in college and have remained close
friends ever since.
If Beth is John’s long-lost sister, that information must come out in
the dialogue or be somehow revealed by the context or visual clues,
and not be stated in the narrative. If Sally and Jill are best friends, you
might write that they hug and treat each other like old chums, but the
fact they were roommates and have remained close since college
must come out in the dialogue or be shown visually.
DESCRIBING CHARACTERS
When introducing a new character, a screenwriter is allowed few
words of description in the narrative. You don’t want to stop the action
with a long delineation. For example, you could write, “CAPTAIN
BARTS is five-feet-five, two hundred and twenty pounds, dark hair,
blue eyes, short stubby features, etc...” and bore to death everyone who
reads it, or you could just state, “CAPTAIN BARTS looks too fat to be a
cop.” Let the brief description be a stepping-off point. Just give the
reader a first impression; any further character information will come
from the dialogue and action. One way to do this is to contrast two
character traits. For example, “SAM is a handsome man in spite of the
burn marks on his cheeks”; “age is catching up with pretty SALLY”;
“JUDD, a tall yet drooping basketball player, enters.”
It’s also best to concentrate on a character’s visual appearance
rather than digging into personality or character analysis. For
example, you don’t want to say “Beth is a strong woman with frank
insights” or “Johnny treats people as if they were all his best friend,
and he loves children even more.” The problem here is that these
elements of character must be shown to the audience rather than
explained to the reader in the narrative. If Beth is a strong woman,
show us: have her do something that lets us see that she is strong, or
have her express a frank opinion. If Johnny treats people well, let his
actions or words speak for his character. Here are some good examples
of character description:
BLADERUNNER
The man facing him is lean, hollow-cheeked and
dressed in gray. Detached and efficient, he looks
like a cop or an accountant. His name is HOLDEN
and he’s all business, except for the sweat on
his face.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
She is tense, sweaty, wide-eyed with
concentration. This is CLARICE STARLING--mid-
20’s, trim, very pretty. She wears Kevlar body
armor over a navy windbreaker, khaki pants. Her
thick hair is piled under a navy baseball cap. A
revolver, clutched in her right hand, hovers by
her ear.
THE TERMINATOR
The man is in his late thirties, tall and
powerfully built, moving with graceful precision.
His facial features reiterate the power of his
body and are dominated by the eyes, which are
intense, blue and depthless. His hair is military
short. This man is the TERMINATOR.
DESCRIBING LOCATIONS
There are several mistakes beginning screenwriters make when
describing the location. First, as we’ve seen, they overemphasize
details of the environment at the expense of story or action. Second,
they ignore it altogether. True, the description of the environment
must be kept brief, but it can’t be omit- ted. If the location is
nonspecific, not only will the story appear generic, but it will be
difficult for the reader to visualize. When the screenwriter doesn’t
tempt the reader’s imagination, build a sense of illusion, the reader
remains outside the story and reads it as if it’s an essay, not a
screenplay. Third, as a result of not having done proper research,
inexperienced screenwriters create clichéd descriptions of locations
that are instantly recognizable as having been cadged from other
movies. Lack of research is the mother of cliché. If you really know
your world, you’ll be able to describe those things that make it unique
and original.
So how much is too little description and how much is too much?
The key is story and character. If a detail ties directly into the story, if
it is needed to advance the audience’s understanding of the characters
and actions within the story, then it must be included. If it does not
apply to character or story, it is extraneous and must be cut, no matter
how dear it is to the writer’s heart. Robin once had a student who
spent six pages describing a location, without ever introducing
characters or what the story was about. Each facet of the world was
lovingly described and it was agony for the rest of the class (who were
listening to it being read) to get through because everyone was waiting
for the story to begin. Worse, once it did, very little of what had been
described had any bearing on the specific actions of the characters.
Chekhov, the great Russian playwright, said, “If you describe a gun
hanging on the wall in the first scene, by the final scene that gun had
better go off.” In other words, if a detail of the scene is described, it
must have some relevance to the story: it must be useful. If it isn’t,
then you’ve set up an expectation that is never met, disappointing the
audience and muddling the story. Sometimes a whole world can be
conveyed with a single word. The most famous example of this comes
from the late, great Stirling Silliphant, author of such movies as In the
Heat of the Night and The Towering Inferno. Once, when describing
the environment of a bar, he simply wrote “shitty.” While not strictly
visual, no other description was necessary.
Picture-Making Words
The environment should have an effect on the reader. You don’t just
want the reader to understand your world, you want her to see and
experience it, to lose herself in it. The best way to do this is to use
picture-making words, words that place specific images in the reader’s
imagination. Picture-making words appeal to the senses, not to the
intellect. Here is an example of a description lacking in picture-making
words.
INT. LIVING ROOM — DAY
An eccentric lives here. There is a door into
the kitchen and windows to the front porch.
It’s an old scary place.
This description is made of up generalizations and gives the reader
very little to see. For example, does the word “old” mean that the room
is physically falling apart or is it of older style? The word “scary” tells
readers what to feel rather than allowing them to feel it. The
description informs the reader that an eccentric person lives here, but
gives no indication of what might lead to that conclusion. It also
consumes precious resources (words) by providing unimportant
details like where doors and windows are located. It’s a living room;
we can pretty much assume there are doors and windows.
Strong descriptions of the environment allow the reader to see,
hear and feel. Readers derive great satisfaction from creating their
own mental pictures, drawing on their own memories and
associations, but it’s your job to guide them. This reader/writer
collaboration happens when the writer feeds the reader’s imagination.
Rewritten with picture-making words and cutting unimportant
particulars, the description might read like this:
INT. VICTORIAN LIVING ROOM — DAY
A faded shell of its former glory. Thin sunset
light leeches through the crud on the cracked
windows. In the shadows sits Spike, the family
dog, fangs bared. But he’s dead and dusty.
Stuffed, like the furniture.
From this description we can guess that the living room is scary and
that whoever lives here is an eccentric. The writer concentrates on
strong, specific picture-making words/images that allow the reader to
feel the environment rather than coolly examine it.
Here is another example. This narrative was actually handed in
during a graduate-level screenwriting class at UCLA. (The names have
been changed to protect the innocent.)
INT. COURT ROOM — DAY
The Judge sits at his desk with several file
folders open in front of him. Jack is seated
at a table, facing the Judge. Tom, Jack’s
attorney, sits beside him. Dick sits at
another table facing the Judge. Dick’s
attorney sits beside Dick.
We don’t know about you, but we couldn’t care less about what’s going
to happen next. The screenwriter wastes valuable words detailing the
seating arrangement for the reader, but says nothing about the
courtroom. How does the courtroom look? Is it packed with press-
hounds and onlookers, or bleak and unattended? How does the room
reflect what’s about to happen? How do the characters look?
Confident? Tired? Afraid? What do we see and feel? Anything would
be better than this uninteresting laundry list of place settings. To give
the screenwriter credit, he redeemed himself on the rewrite:
INT. COURT ROOM — DAY
Dark. Military. Cold. Flanked by his attorney,
Jack faces his Judge. On one side a door to
freedom, on the other, the door leading to
hell.
Similes and Metaphors

A simile is a comparison of one thing to another using the words “like”
or “as.” For example, “The bridge lists like an old lady tipping under
the weight of time,” or perhaps, “The soldiers stand as stiff as ironing
boards.” A simile compares two unlike things and draws an analogy. It
compares something the reader is unaware of in the scene to
something she is aware of, images and things that draw on common
experience. Similes dress up the description by giving it a pictorial
appeal. Metaphors differ from similes by stating that one thing is
another thing. For example, “Mary leaps around playfully, a young colt
in spring,” or “He’s a tough old battleship, battered but still floating”
or “There is a mummified Twinkie in the dead man’s hand.” You are
not actually saying that the woman is a horse, the man is a boat or the
Twinkie has gone through the ancient mummification process, but the
analogies still work.
Here is a student’s description without the help of metaphors and
similes:
INT. JOHN’S ROOM — DAY
John enters. His room is a mess. Paper,
garbage, clothing are spread about. The bed
isn’t made, cookie crumbs are everywhere and
the lamps are broken, the window shades bent.
This is a serviceable description, but it could be made shorter and
more interesting by use of similes or metaphors:
JOHN’S ROOM — DAY
John enters his room, which looks like a
wrecked garbage truck.
or
INT. JOHN’S ROOM — DAY
John enters the wrecked garbage truck of his
room.
The function of metaphor and simile is to evoke visual images and
emotions in the reader. In order to work, the metaphor or simile must
first be original. Clichés do not evoke emotions. Trite stereotypes
evoke postcard pictures that bore the reader, if they evoke anything at
all. “He’s strong as an ox,” “She’s cute as a button” and the like are
worse than no description at all. Second, the metaphor or simile must
be simple, short and to the point. Gratuitous metaphors will only
distract the reader and weigh down the description with unneeded
flowery gymnastics. (For more on location and environment, and their
effect on story, see Chapter 4.)
Trim Adverbs
An abundance of adverbs slows and weakens your narrative. An
adverb is a word or group of words that modify a verb, adjective or
another adverb. In the following sentence the adverb is italicized and
the verb is underlined.
Ben enters the bar bravely.
Adverbs are simple modifiers that add some particular quality to the
manner, degree, amount of time or action denoted by the verb. You
can tell a word is an adverb if it answers the questions: “how,” “when,”
and/or “how many.” Adverbs are easily identified, as many end in “ly”
and all can be moved to different places in the sentence without
changing the meaning. The problem with adverbs is that they are often
redundant, adding clutter to the narrative, as in the following
example:
The old man inches slowly toward the electric
chair.
In this sentence the verb “inches” already tells us how the old man is
moving and so the adverb “slowly” is redundant. Often, adverbs can be
replaced with a more powerful or descriptive verb.
John speaks loudly.
Here the adverb “loudly” is unnecessary if the screenwriter comes up
with a snappier verb:
John bellows.
In the following examples, the left column has bits of narrative with
the useless adverb in italics. In the right column, the weak verb and
adverb have been replaced with a more powerful, more descriptive
verb, making the adverb unnecessary.
Mary looks at John closely. Mary inspects John.
Kathy badly plays a tune on the piano. Kathy grinds out a tune on the piano.
Jake walks quietly down the alley. Jake tiptoes down the alley.
The guards quickly stop the riot. The guards crush the riot.
We’re not saying that all adverbs should be cut. Skillfully chosen, they
can add a great deal to any read. But the majority of adverbs are
crutches for unimaginative choices of verb, are not needed and should
be eliminated... quickly and expeditiously.
Trim Adjectives
Just as with adverbs, too many adjectives will weaken the narrative.
Adjectives modify nouns: they answer the questions “which one,” “how
many” or “what kind.” In the following sentences the adjectives are
italicized and the nouns they modify are underlined:
Jack peers at the expensive, brilliant
chandelier.
She smiles at the dark-haired, blue-eyed
gentleman.
Adjectives are a necessary part of any narrative, but beginning
screenwriters tend to pile them on, as in the following example:
LAGATTUTA, an old fuddy-duddy, trudges from
his generic door to retrieve the thin evening
newspaper. His fidgety, liver-spotted hands
shake in the gripping, cutting December cold.
His old-man pants droop, barely held up by
timeworn, deteriorating, slim suspenders. His
long, flaccid ears look red and chapped in the
icy, midwinter sun.
The abundance of adjectives here slows the read and hampers the
simple action of the scene, which is that Mr. Lagattuta walks out on his
porch and picks up his newspaper. The rest is all mood and
environment, most of it overwritten and redundant. The clutter of
adjectives has also led the writer into using passive voice in the
description of the pants and suspenders, further slowing things down.
Mood and environment are important, but could be established with
one-third the adjectives used above, allowing the action to dominate:
MR. LAGATTUTA, an old fuddy-duddy, trudges out
to retrieve the evening newspaper. His liver-
spotted hands shake in the cold. Timeworn
suspenders barely hold up his old-man pants.
His flaccid ears look red and chapped.
One way to eliminate redundant or numerous adjectives is to find
more descriptive nouns. A precise or colorful noun can reduce or
completely eliminate the need for an adjective. In the following
examples, the left column is burdened with adjectives, while in the
right column, the adjectives and nouns have been reduced or replaced
with stronger, more descriptive nouns (and stronger verbs, which can
also help).
Jerry saunters into his
Jerry enters his cool, masculine, sexy apartment.
bachelor pad.
May, an old, ugly and witchlike woman, looks angrily at the
May, a crone, scowls at the
abusive young gang members who are yelling obscene insults at
gang, who sling curses her.
her.
Stuck in the jalopy, the
Inside the old Studebaker, the fidgety kids squirm on the stark,
toddlers squirm on the
barren and flat seats.
benches.
As with adverbs, we are not saying that adjectives should be

completely eliminated from a screenplay narrative. A scattering of
adjectives can be helpful, but if they dominate they can make a
screenplay appear to be all mood and environment and very little
action.
They can also indicate a deeper problem, which is that you may be
“vamping,” using overdescription and repetitions to cover the fact that
you’re not sure what your next action needs to be. If you find yourself
piling up the adjectives, step back and make sure you know what your
scene is about.
Common narrative Mistakes
Repeating Verbs—Don’t repeat the same verb over and over, page
after page. How many times can characters “run,” “jump” or “look?”
It’s time to break out that old thesaurus and find a variety of action
verbs—specific to the kind of running, jumping or looking—that place
accurate, moving pictures into the reader’s mind. When you finish the
first draft, go back and highlight verbs you use more than twice per
page and replace them. (A good thesaurus is The Synonym Finder,
edited by J.I. Rodale and published by Warner Books.)
Improper Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar—We’ve said it
before and we’ll say it again: poor spelling, improper punctuation and
bad grammar will sink a script. This is also true in the narrative. It’s
time to relearn all those lessons you thought you’d learned. It’s not
that you can’t use incomplete sentences, or even “sentences” of a single
word here and there, but these must be intentional and used for a
specific effect, such as to create a sense of hurried activity or terse,
tense action. (The best book is still Elements of Style by William
Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, published by Allyn & Bacon. This book is
also available on the web. Good grammar and punctuation sites can be
found on the web, such as the Purdue University Online Writing Lab
(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/).
Too Many Words—Be brief. When reading a screenplay, the reader
should have the sense of moving along at roughly the same pace as the
film itself would. So never use seven words when four words will do.
Details are essential, but only those details that provide unique and
necessary imagery and that advance the story or the characters.
Too Few Words (Nonspecificity)—This is usually the result of not
enough research, or simple laziness when it comes to creating the
characters and the world (see Chapters 4 and 5). There simply isn’t
any, or enough, description to allow the reader to visualize the story.
And it isn’t necessarily a matter of adding more words, but of finding
exactly the right words.
Camera Angles—Don’t include camera angles; as stated in Chapter
2, this is a big no-no. We don’t care if you can find examples to the
contrary, they’re probably either very old, or production (shooting)
drafts or were written by the director. Your narrative should achieve
the visuals without telling the director how to shoot the film. Again,
you want the reader to see the movie, not the set.
Overdescribing in the First Few Pages—Don’t start a screenplay
off with nothing but narrative, unless there is a long and involving
action sequence that will keep the reader engaged. Even so, as a
practical matter, if after your first few pages you don’t have some
dialogue, the screenplay will appear to be a difficult read. You want to
try for a nice balance of dialogue and narrative. This is not a hard and
fast rule; some wonderful screenplays do not have dialogue on the first
few pages, but these are the exceptions and are usually the work of
experienced writers who understand how to keep their narrative
involving and related to the action of the story. With novice writers,
pages of uninterrupted narrative are a sign of overwritten description
that delays the action of the story and irritates the reader.
Final Thoughts
Make It Personal A writer can and must infuse the narrative with
his own personality. Holding yourself back, looking at events from
light years away in the name of objectivity, will only lead to boring
narrative. It’s totally acceptable to let your personality show; it’s part
of your style, your voice. A passionate, individual voice tells readers
that you care about the characters and situations, and that you are also
deeply involved in the events. If you’re not involved and passionate,
why should they be? Here is an example of a narrative in which the
author shows his own personality by very nearly having a conversation
with the reader. This is perfectly acceptable as long as it fits the mood
of the screenplay.
INT. DAVE’S ROOM — NIGHT
Dave is a tall, owl-faced kicker with heart.
People like him at first sight.
DAVE’S P.O.V. -- Okay, the place isn’t messy,
but it could be cleaner. The three-day-old
sandwich is a bit much. Dried tomatoes; gross.
After all, the narrative is the writer speaking directly to the reader.
Dialogue is written for actors and the audience. Narrative is just you
and the reader. It’s a one-on-one relationship. If the reader feels
connected to the writer, he’ll stick with the narrative and read it with
the same interest as he does the dialogue. But don’t get too jokey or
informal, because this will distance the reader, too; you’ll be
commenting on the story instead of conveying it. Remember, the
narrative is where you create your world. It’s where you play the movie
for your reader. It’s where you, and no one else, is in control.
EXERCISES
1. A strong verb doesn’t require additional amplification. A descriptive
noun needs fewer adjectives. In the following narrative, replace the
adverbs with more descriptive verbs and reduce the number of
adjectives by finding more powerful, visually specific nouns.
EXT. GRACE’S APARTMENT — NIGHT
A marginal, older, dilapidated neighborhood. A
hard rain falls. Bob pulls up in the rusty
taxi. He checks the address against the ripped
slip of paper, then coolly looks up at the
cold stone apartment. The dim, gloomy lights
on the third floor are on. She’s home. He
slowly climbs out, turns up his collar against
the briskly falling rain and quickly runs to
the door.
2. In the following scene, the writer describes characters’ thoughts that
cannot be seen or heard. Rewrite the narrative using visuals and
action to make the characters’ thoughts clear (using a voice-over is not
allowed).
EXT. GRAVEYARD — DAY
A shabby family gathers around a coffin. A
child hangs on to his widowed mother,
wondering why his father isn’t there with
them. Several older ladies dressed in black
cry, wishing they’d treated their dead friend
better in life, as a priest sprinkles the box
with holy water.
Two hundred feet away, half hidden by a stand
of trees is Angel, silently watching. She
knows that this is all her fault. If only she
were a better driver. She cries when she
thinks of all the trouble she’s caused. If
only they would allow her to attend, she
thinks.
3. Verbs in active voice show the subject acting. Verbs in passive
(present progressive) voice show something else being acted upon by
the subject. The following bits of narrative have lines written in
passive voice. Find the passive clause and rewrite it so that the verbs
show the subject acting (in other words, rewrite in an active voice).
a. Nick and William shake on the deal. Nick’s
hand is squeezed by William. Nick fights back.
William twitches, obviously in pain from the
power of Nick’s grip.
b. The punk is thrown down by Anne, a woman
half his size. Before he knows what is
happening, he is handcuffed by Anne.
c. Wine, candlelight, romantic music and the
fake fireplace. Sally’s tear is wiped away by
Larry. She smiles.
13
Dialogue
You Don’t Say
William Strunk, Jr., the great writing tutor, said, “Vigorous writing is
concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph
no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should
have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
Nowhere is this more appropriate than when it comes to screen
dialogue. While stage plays depend almost exclusively on dialogue to
tell and advance their stories, film is primarily a visual medium, as we
emphasized in the previous chapter. The first filmed dramas were
silent, of course, and contained no dialogue at all, at best a few
interspersed cards to fill us in on the conversations. Dialogue is almost
equally sparse in many of the most expensive contemporary block-
busters, whose huge set-pieces and elaborate special effects take the
visual (nonverbal) storytelling side of the medium to new extremes.
Words seem barely necessary, almost vestigial. In fact, many big-
budget action movie screenwriters (such as Sylvester Stallone) have
prided themselves on how little their characters actually say.
But this is a simplistic attitude. Film is about what we see, certainly,
but it’s also about what we hear. Not all screen dialogue can or should
be reduced to the grunts, expositional fillers and ironic asides you find
in action- adventure flicks. It all depends on what kind of movie you
are writing. Many of the best dramas, especially those with lower
budgets, depend heavily on dialogue to tell their stories. Dialogue is
cheap. It’s the least expensive special effect, although even in big
action movies it can be the most memorable element: “Go ahead,
make my day”; “Hasta la vista, baby”; “... you’ve got to ask yourself one
question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”; “Who are those guys?”
Dialogue is how we hear the mind, nature and feelings of the
characters expressed (“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the
world, she walks into mine . . .”; “Show me the money!”; “You’re not
too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”). Both old masters like the
Epstein brothers (Casablanca), Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond (The
Apartment, Some Like It Hot), Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer)
and Robert Towne (Chinatown), as well as those from more recent
generations of screenwriters like Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction,
Inglorious Basterds), Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) and the Coen
brothers (Raising Arizona, Fargo, A Serious Man), luxuriate at length
in the humor and texture of their characters’ voices. And Stallone’s
best screenplay, Rocky, is also his talkiest. However...
THE ROLE OF DIALOGUE
In screenwriting, the role of dialogue is much more limited and
subjugated to other aspects of storytelling than it is in playwriting.
Screen dialogue serves three chief, simultaneous purposes:
1. It advances the story.
2. It reveals the characters.
3. It plays off of the visual world of the film.
To advance the story, dialogue reflects immediate circumstances and
needs, addresses future considerations, and perhaps recounts events
in the past. It reveals the characters by showing us their personalities
through their unique voices. And it reinforces or provides contrast to
what we are actually seeing happen on the screen.
In a movie, most information can be conveyed without dialogue.
We can focus in on a newspaper article, show a particular scar or
follow the smoke from a hidden gun. What we see can be more
powerful than what anyone says, so a screenwriter should always try
to show rather than tell. James Cameron’s Titanic was much criticized
for its mediocre dialogue, but became the most successful movie in
history, until his equally dialogue-impaired Avatar came out.
Reflecting on this, no less an authority than screenwriter William
Goldman (winner of two Oscars and writer of Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and Marathon Man) wrote
that movie dialogue “is among the least important parts of a
screenplay. Sure, intelligent talk is always better than dumb stuff
[especially in witty comedies or dramas]. But for the most part, the
public and critics have come to believe that screenplays are dialogue.
Wrong. If movies are story, and they are, then screenplays are
structure” (Goldman’s italics). It’s Cameron’s storytelling, his
arrangement of character and story events and his use of astonishing
visual imagery to convey the drama, that makes Titanic a good
screenplay, in spite of some lousy dialogue. That said, however, it
would have been a better screenplay with better dialogue.
One student screenplay concerned some college kids who discover
that their weird professor has invented a time machine. In the first
scene, at a bar, the students recounted the previous night’s adventure,
talking about how they broke into the professor’s office and attempted
to start the machine. The problem was that there was no need to
express these events through dialogue. Since this was the event that
started the story, the answer was to create an exciting scene in which
the students crawled in the window, discovered the time machine and
tried to start it, letting the audience see the action rather than hearing
about it.
There are times in which dialogue can be used effectively to recount
past events, such as the scene in Jaws in which Quint expresses his
hatred of sharks by telling his experience of watching thousands of
sailors being eaten alive when their ship sank in the Second World
War. But in general, it is better to show us the scene, not tell us the
story. In the following, the student screenwriter allows the characters
to talk about the action rather than showing it.
EXT. FRONT YARD — DAY
Karoline and Casey walk up to the old Buick
Roadmaster parked in the driveway.
KAROLINE
So this is a Buick.
CASEY
The American Dream gone to pieces. I
swear this thing is held together by
rust.
KAROLINE
Boy, it’s old.
CASEY
Yeah, how do you like those fins?
KAROLINE
Neat.
CASEY
We’ve had it for years.
KAROLINE
Does it run?
CASEY
Dad still drives it to work
everyday.
KAROLINE
You’re kidding.
CASEY
The man lives in the past. He
actually thinks this car is cool.
KAROLINE
It’s junk.
CASEY
If you want him to like you, say
something nice about it.
What do we learn from this scene? That Dad owns an old junky
Buick Roadmaster he’s had for years. The car still runs, Dad thinks the
car is cool, and Casey wants Dad to like Karoline. Little of this needs to
be expressed directly in dialogue:
EXT. FRONT YARD — DAY
BANG, a backfire: Casey and Karoline wait as
Dad approaches in an ancient, rusted 1950s
Roadmaster, trailed by a glutinous cloud of
smoke. BANG.
CASEY
If you want him to like you, say
something nice about the car.
The chromemobile pulls into the driveway. From

its sad- faced dented grill, faded two-tone
paint flows back through its baroque
architecture to the massive jagged fins and
cathedral taillights.
As Dad gets out, Karoline attempts a
complimentary smile.
KAROLINE
Nice car. Cool fins!
Dad’s face lights up. He pats the fender

affectionately.
DAD
Yep. They just don’t make ’em like
they used to.
In this shorter scene, most of what is talked about in the previous

scene is now either obvious from or implied in the action.
No One Talks like That!
The second thing to understand is that dialogue is not real speech.
Dialogue must sound natural, but it is not natural. It’s an echo of real
speech that has been carefully edited, refined and designed to appear
as real speech. Record and listen to any real conversation and you’ll
find yourself wading through mostly garbled thoughts, lost trains of
association and irrelevancies. Film dialogue is stripped of these and
shaped to fit a character’s background, needs and function. It is sort of
like what you wish you’d said if only you’d had the time (or a writer) to
come up with the perfect words.
Also, it isn’t random. Every dialogue passage has a beginning,
middle and end that follow the same rules as script and scene
construction: get in as late as possible, keep it as brief and as colorful
as possible, develop and intensify the argument, end with a climax of
some sort (a “capper”) and then get out. This is why we get
conventions such as characters who answer the phone with a “yeah?”
instead of a “hello?”—it’s briefer and seems hipper—and why they
never say “goodbye” before they hang up. It isn’t how real people
answer or say goodbye, but for the character, the essential dialogue is
over.
When You Say What You Mean, do You Mean What You Say?
Why do we talk? At the most basic level, we talk because we want.
When Kurt Vonnegut taught creative writing, he said he “would tell
the students to make their characters want something right away—
even if it’s only a glass of water.” Generally, if we want nothing, we say
nothing. As infants, we cry when we’re hungry or wet. As we grow and
our needs become more complicated, we’re forced to learn speech in
order to communicate what we want. The need for a bottle or a fresh
diaper is replaced by the need to conquer, to acquire, to find justice, to
protect our egos, to seek companionship. And our strategies to get
what we want through speech become more complicated, too: when
we fail to get what we want, we either become inhibited, or we learn to
hide our agendas and manipulate our arguments in order to provoke,
settle scores, find love, defeat our enemies and satisfy our wants
without announcing them directly. We do this because sometimes,
direct communication can get us in trouble. Simply and openly stating
our desire (“I want to have sex with you”) is often the surest way not to
get it, and so we disguise our intentions and create indirect verbal
strategies to get what we want. Sometimes, when our deepest wants go
unfulfilled, they seep into our subconscious, coloring our speech with
secondary meanings and concealed desires. These are the origins of
subtext, of saying one thing and meaning another, which is the most
sophisticated kind of dialogue.
Speech, then, is the result, the function, of characters who want.
Know what a character wants, know what her fears, hopes and
limitations are, and you’ll understand why and how that character
needs to speak. (For more information on character see Chapter 5.)
Get Off the Nose
When a character states exactly what he wants it’s called on-the-nose
dialogue. The character is speaking the subtext; there is no hidden
meaning behind the words, no secret want, because everything is
spelled out. But most interesting people, and certainly most
interesting characters, don’t do this. They approach their needs
indirectly, because they are complex, and often because they don’t
consciously understand what their needs are. Dialogue must feel
simple, but its simplicity is deceptive. Dialogue is like an iceberg: only
one level of meaning can be seen “above the waterline,” yet many other
unspoken levels of emotion and intention are present beneath the
surface.
These levels are provided not only by the lines themselves, but also
by who speaks them and when and where they are spoken—in other
words, by the context. The line “I hate you” seems simple, with few
interpretations, until the screenwriter provides the context. Then it
can take on many possible meanings. “I hate you,” in the context of a
grieving husband yelling at the grave of his dead wife, could mean, “I
miss you.” Spoken by an aspiring actress to her screen idol, it could
mean, “I wish I were you.” In When Harry Met Sally, this final line of
the movie means, “I love you.”
Dialogue reveals character and is therefore determined by it, by the
nature of the characters you’ve created and the situations in which
they find themselves. Is your character honest or dishonest?
Straightforward or manipulative? Humorless or ironic? Is he relaxed,
or under great stress? Is she acting and speaking casually because it is
a casual situation, or because she is trying to remain in control of a
desperate one? Is he being cruel because he wishes to be cruel, or
because he is in love and afraid of rejection? Is she joking because
she’s happy, or because she’s masking some internal pain?
On a deeper subtextual level, as with everything else in the
screenplay, screen dialogue should reflect (reinforcing or
contradicting) the overall theme of the story, what it’s about (see
Chapter 3).
There is a fine example of subtextual dialogue in Big Night, a
terrific film about two immigrant Italian brothers in the 1950s who are
trying to open their own restaurant. In the following conversation,
Pascal, the ruthless and very successful restaurant owner from across
the street, is paying them a visit, bragging about having bought a boat.
Secondo is terribly anxious to impress Pascal and envies his success.
Pascal has promised to help them by inviting a celebrity to eat at their
restaurant that night, but in fact he has not done so, and intends to
ruin Secondo and try to hire Primo for himself:
PRIMO
Oh. That mean you’re gonna sail
away?
PASCAL
Maybe. When the sky is red ... you
know, what’s that rhyme?
SECONDO
Oh, yeah. When is the good one?
PRIMO
Red sky at morning means it will
rain outside.
SECONDO
What about rain inside?
PRIMO
Huh?
SECONDO
Nothing.
PRIMO
No, what do you mean?
SECONDO
You say, “rain outside,” and I think
for you to say the word “outside” is
funny.
PRIMO
Why?
SECONDO
Because it can’t rain inside.
PRIMO
I didn’t say “inside.”
SECONDO
I know.
PRIMO
I say “outside.”
SECONDO
No, I know.
PRIMO
So where is the problem?
PASCAL
Yeah, I don’t get it.
SECONDO
No, it’s just you don’t have to say
“outside” ... because it can’t rain
inside.
They all think about this for a second. A

beat.
PASCAL
What the fuck--
PRIMO
I know it can’t rain inside.
SECONDO
Forget it. Forget. Forget.
PASCAL
What the fuck is he talking about?
PRIMO
I am confused.
SECONDO
No, no ... I make fun.
PASCAL
You make fun of your brother?
SECONDO
No. It was a joke. I make like a
joke.
PASCAL
I don’t hear the joke.
At this point, Pascal ends the seemingly pointless argument by

proposing a toast to the brothers’ success that night, knowing full well
that he has under- mined any chance they have.
But the argument isn’t pointless. Although all they are actually
talking about is whether Primo should have said it rains “outside,” the
subtext is that Secondo is trying to embarrass his older brother and
make himself look good in front of someone he’s trying to impress. It
is about Secondo’s frustration and anxiety: who speaks the language
better, who is smarter, who is more “American.” And because it is a
petty, mean-spirited jab, it instead comes back to embarrass Secondo
himself—just as he will later find his dreams crushed, through his own
blindness to the realities of the world in which he lives.
You’re One of a Kind
As noted, character determines dialogue. So, just as there should be no
redundant characters who fulfill identical functions in the script, each
unique character must be given a unique voice. They should speak the
language of their own world, their own experience, their own
personality and regional idiom, distinct in some way from the other
characters in the film.
HOW CAN I SAY THIS? (DIALOGUE
TECHNIQUES)
Once you’ve created the perfect characters for the world and story of
your screenplay, there are several basic techniques that can help you
master your dialogue: cast your characters, write headlines, avoid
conclusionary statements, show emotions—don’t talk about them—
replace conversations with visuals, and know how a character listens.
Casting Call
As discussed in Chapter 5 (Character), one way to create unique voices
is to “cast” the parts as a casting director would. That is, write dialogue
with a particular actor, celebrity or person in mind. Find a movie star,
celebrity or person whose voice style is imprinted in your memory and
can be easily “borrowed.” Writers are always looking for “imprints,”
the words, inflections, tone and resonance that make a voice unique. If
you simply cannot come up with a character’s voice, then do some
research: go out and listen to people. While keeping in mind that
dialogue is not real speech, remember that good listeners write good
dialogue.
Now write out your perfect cast list. Include only movie stars,
celebrities or persons whose voices you can hear in your mind.
Example:
Ben—Donald Trump
Sandy—Glenn Close
Mr. Walterton—Jeff Goldblum
Davey—Kevin Bacon
Sally—May (my next door neighbor)
Mark—Danny Glover
Mrs. Murdock—Hillary Rodham Clinton
Once you have your “cast,” write each character’s dialogue as if that
particular cast member were playing the role. Think of the person’s
speech patterns and write using that voice. The reader should be able
to mask the character’s name and still identify who is speaking by how
they speak. But lastly, be careful not to slavishly copy an existing actor
or person’s voice or your dialogue will feel mannered and derivative.
Use it as a model, but then reinvent it to suit your own purposes.
In the Headlines
In a stage play, dialogue dominates. This is because, for thousands of
years, the live set has been a place for characters to use language to
explore the mystery, horror and comedy of life. Because the stage has
much more limited visual possibilities than movies have recently come
to provide, dialogue has always been the playwright’s main tool.
Through it, stage characters work out their problems, describe their
world, take action and find compromises and new understandings.
They talk their way through their stories, much the way patients
undergoing Freudian psychoanalysis talk their way through their
problems to slowly discover the hidden truths, the subtexts, to their
lives. Freud called it a “talking cure.” Play dialogue is the art of talking
through to the truth.
In a screenplay, truth is equally important, but there are other,
powerful tools available to reveal it. Where a stage character is
reduced to describing a huge battle, for example, a movie can show us
the battle in all its scope and terror. Screen characters can take
unspoken action that is as revealing as any dialogue, often more
revealing. And because on film we can see every detail of expression
crossing the character’s face, thoughts and feelings can also be played
silently. As a result, screen dialogue is compressed, eliminated in favor
of anything that can better be shown using the enormous visual and
aural power of the movie. Because of the limitations of the stage, the
playwright has license to present entire conversations, go into interior
monologues, and recount events that cannot possibly be staged. The
screenwriter, while freed to show almost anything of which her
imagination is capable, cannot indulge this way without betraying the
very nature, demands and possibilities of the medium. Dialogue can
too easily become a crutch, rather than a tool; it is the screenwriter’s
job to fill the screen, and dialogue is only a small part of that. Dialogue
should not be substituted for strong visual storytelling. It must be
essential, not convenient.
Think of it as “writing headlines.” Say only what needs to be said.
There’s no need, as there is in theater, to go into the extended details
and description of the story. As noted, different types of movies
require different approaches to and amounts of dialogue, but all are
the same in that each passage of dialogue must be terse, strong, to
the point. Even where characters are shown working through their
feelings or talking through their therapy, every word must count, or it
must be cut. The following dialogue might be fine for a play, but it
lacks the compactness necessary for the screen.
INT. EMMA’s GUEST BEDROOM — DAY
A Victorian bedroom, warm light, wood tones, a
high ceiling and the feeling of history. A
perfect place to read the New York Times Book
Review. EMMA enters with JILL, who carries an
overnight bag.
JILL
How’s Herman? Is he still writing
that novel?
EMMA
Oh, he’s dead.
JILL
Oh. I’m so sorry.
EMMA
He had prostate cancer. He died
almost five years ago now.
JILL
I haven’t kept in touch. I should
have at least written. I’m a
terrible person.
EMMA
I found him here. Slumped over a
copy of Bartlett’s Familiar
Quotations. Sixteenth edition.
Emma sets out to tidy the place. Jill tries to

lend a hand whenever possible.
JILL
Emma, I’m imposing here. I should
have at least called before I came.
EMMA
I’m all grown-up now, I can make
basic decisions, like who I invite
to stay in my house.
JILL
Are you sure about this?
EMMA
You’re not uncomfortable sleeping in
the room where Herman bought it, now
are you?
JILL
(lying)
No. Not at all. I’m fine with that.
EMMA
He was a good husband, I miss him
horribly, although he did have a bad
case of testosterone poisoning. Men
have that, you know. It’s quite
common.
JILL
Yes, I know.
EMMA
You know, once in my life I’d like
to be shot full of testosterone so
that I’ll know what it’s like to be
totally right!
JILL
I have to admit I often feel the
same way.
Now, here is the same scene with over fifty words cut from the
dialogue:
INT. EMMA’s GUEST BEDROOM — DAY
A Victorian bedroom, warm light, wood tones, a
high ceiling and the feeling of history. A
perfect place to read the New York Times Book
Review. EMMA enters with Jill, who carries an
overnight bag.
Jill spots a writing pad, inkwell and ink pen
on the desk. She opens the inkwell; it’s dried
out and crusted. Emma notices.
EMMA
Herman’s dead. Cancer. Five years
ago. I left his things as they were.
JILL
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so terrible, I
haven’t kept in touch.
EMMA
I found him here. Slumped over this.
Emma shows Jill a copy of Bartlett’s Familiar

Quotations, still lying on the chair. She puts
it on a shelf and starts to tidy the place.
Jill tentatively lends a hand.
JILL
Emma, I should have called, before--
EMMA
It’s okay, I’m a big girl now. You
don’t mind sleeping in here?
JILL
No. Not at all. I’m fine with that.
Emma lets Jill’s lie go. She picks up the ink

pen, touches the tip, tenderly.
EMMA
He was a good husband ... but ...
Jill raises an eyebrow. Emma laughs, puts the

pen down.
EMMA
You know, just once I’d like to be
shot full of testosterone so I’d
know what it’s like to be totally
right all the time.
Jill laughs, too. The tension is gone.

The idiosyncrasies of the characters and particulars of the scene are
kept, but the dialogue has been reduced. Notice that some of what had
been talked about is now shown through visual elements in the scene—
we see rather than hear that Herman was a writer and was reading
Bartlett’s Quotations. Each word is now justified by carrying only the
information and emotion that can’t be carried by the picture.
Leapfrogging One technique in writing headlines is
“leapfrogging,” skipping unnecessary lines to get to the important
thought or emotion. We’ve already had an example of this in the
previous scene. Notice that the first draft has the following lines:
JILL
Is he still writing that novel?
EMMA
Oh, he’s dead.
JILL
Oh. I’m so sorry.
EMMA
He had prostate cancer.
In the rewrite, we leapfrog several lines that can be assumed, implied

by the picture, or combined:
EMMA
Herman’s dead. His prostate. Five
years ago. I left his things as they
were.
Leapfrogging can also be done with entire thoughts. Here is the

Emma–Jill scene cut again:
She opens the inkwell; it’s dried out and
crusted. Emma notices. She shakes her head.
EMMA
Herman died. Cancer, five years ago.
JILL
I’m so terrible, I haven’t kept in
touch—
Emma starts to tidy the place. Jill

tentatively lends a hand.
EMMA
You’re okay sleeping here?
Jill nods, hiding her discomfort. Emma picks

up the pen.
EMMA
He was a good husband ... but just
once I’d like to know what it’s like
to be totally right!
Jill laughs, the tension gone.

Now the scene is even closer to headlines, but still reveals the
character and action of the story. Of course, you don’t want to cut the
dialogue to such bare bones that it becomes colorless and generic. The
test is, does each word advance the story and/or reveal something new
about the characters?
Don’t Come to Conclusions
The problem with writing extremely lean dialogue is that it can lead to
another type of “on-the-nose” dialogue: having the characters state a
conclusion rather than having them reveal the specifics that lead to it.
The writer puts generalized observations in their mouths, rather than
colorful thoughts or details that reveal an unsaid truth. Conclusionary
dialogue tells the audience what to think rather than letting them draw
their own conclusions. For example, in the following scene two off-
duty cops talk late at night in a bar:
INT. JOE’S TAVERN — NIGHT
A sweltering hole-in-the-wall pub. A bored
COUNTRY BAND plays a tired TUNE. Nick and
Buddy suck down lifeless beers.
NICK
I’m a fool. She hates me.
BUDDY
She doesn’t hate you.
NICK
No. She hates me. It’s over.
The statements, “I’m a fool” and “She hates me” are both
conclusionary, telling us what the character thinks in generalized
language. They don’t allow the audience to see or understand what
brought the character to those conclusions. But the dialogue can
become more interesting, without sacrificing understanding, by
concentrating on details:
JOE’S TAVERN — NIGHT
NICK
I got her a humidifier.
BUDDY
For Valentine’s Day?
NICK
She went home to her mother.
From this bit of dialogue we can assume that she hates him and that
he feels like a fool (or is a fool). The dialogue is still written in
headlines (it actually uses fewer words), but the conclusionary
statements have been replaced with details that provide the time
frame, specific characterization and context.
Let’s look at a second example. Here’s a sample of dialogue that is
full of on-the-nose, conclusionary statements:
INT. HENRY’S BOARDING ROOM — DAY
Henry calmly sucks down another Lone Star.
Darla slams in while juggling her purse,
several heavy, disintegrating grocery bags and
keys. She makes it to the counter just as the
bag rips open.
DARLA
Christ, no wonder everyone hates
you.
HENRY
Haven’t you heard, I’m loved by
millions.
DARLA
Says who? You can’t name a single
person who’s read your books.
HENRY
That’s not true.
DARLA
I never see them in stores. I’ve
looked and looked and no one carries
them. You’re so self-important.
HENRY
Drop it or I’ll get mad!
DARLA
You just think you’re popular, but
you’re not. No one has read your
work. No one!
This is horrible dialogue. Now, the same scene with the conclusionary
statements replaced with dialogue that leads the reader to the same
conclusions without openly stating them.
INT. HENRY’S BOARDING ROOM — DAY
Henry calmly sucks down another Lone Star.
Darla slams in while juggling her purse,
several heavy, disintegrating grocery bags and
keys. She makes it to the counter just as a
bag rips open.
DARLA
Christ, what were you thinking?
Writing an attack on Miss America?
No one’s going to buy it!
HENRY
I have a hundred thousand books in
print!
DARLA
Self-publishing doesn’t count.
HENRY
I have never self-published!
DARLA
Who are you trying to kid? You’ve
got a basement full of books that no
one’s ever going to read.
HENRY
Just drop it. Drop it now!
We’re not saying that you should never have a conclusionary

statement, but reserve them for moments of great impact, or else (as
discussed above) give them a subtextual twist.
Don’t Talk of Love, Show Me!
Again, avoid conclusionary statements about the characters’ emotions
or state of mind in which they talk about their feelings rather than
about the events or circumstances that have generated them. This goes
back to the issue of subtext. If a character is shy or sensitive, talking
about his shyness or sensitivity is the weakest way to reveal it. Better
to see him struggling to verbalize whatever it is that’s troubling him.
In a screenplay, whenever a character stops to speak about his or her
feelings, the story stops, too. When a character acts or speaks in
response to his or her feelings, the story moves. A screenwriter should
imply emotions while allowing the dialogue to advance the story.
For example, a woman who’s worried that her husband is having an
affair might bring up the subject of having another baby. This way she
tests her husband to see if he’s still interested in her without revealing
her true purpose. The dialogue involves having another baby, but the
emotion is, “I’m afraid you want a divorce.” As in the example from
Big Night, good screen dialogue uses what the characters are talking
about to reveal what the characters are not talking about. This is
known as “writing between the lines,” because what is not said is often
more important than what is.
Let’s go back to our two off-duty cops, Nick and Buddy:
NICK
I’m sick of how you look at Sally
all the time.
BUDDY
Why do I get this feeling that you
think I’m after your wife?
NICK
I can’t prove anything, but it’s
just tearing me up inside.
BUDDY
Relax, I got a wife.
NICK
You don’t love Amelia.
BUDDY
Maybe not, but I don’t hate her.
NICK
God, sometimes you piss me off.
Again, this is horrible, on-the-nose dialogue that stops the story dead
in its tracks. Because Nick and Buddy speak their emotions rather
than revealing them through an action or subtextually charged
dialogue, the story stops. Also as a result, their characters are
undifferentiated. Here is the same scene, but now the emotions are
made clear through action and indirect dialogue:
AMELIA, Buddy’s wife, suck down lifeless
beers.
Nick glances gloomily at the dance floor:
Buddy spins SALLY around, cheek to cheek.
They’re not Fred & Ginger, but she’s the type
of woman men love to dance with and Buddy is
loving it, all right.
DRUNK OLD-TIMERS watch Sally. She teases them
with a flip of her skirt as she sails past.
They like that.
Nick tries to catch her eye, but she avoids
him as they dance nearby. He overhears Buddy’s
flirtatious banter.
BUDDY
... then this taxi comes flying
around the corner, misses the
mother, but hits the baby carriage.
Proceeds to drive ten blocks with
the carriage lodged between the oil
pan and the street. It was like the
4th of July, sparks shootin’
everywhere!
SALLY
Ooh. I like sparks.
Buddy pulls Sally in close, pressing his chest
against her breasts.
Nick can’t take it anymore. He walks out and
taps Buddy’s shoulder.
NICK
I’m cuttin’ in with my wife.
BUDDY
We’re partners, Nick. Supposed to
share things.
Nick gives him a cold stare. Buddy shrugs and

relinquishes Sally to Nick’s arms. She’s still
talking to Buddy.
SALLY
...So what happened to the baby...?
Nick pulls her away, ending the conversation.
NICK
Baby’s fine. No big deal.
NICK’S P.O.V.-- Buddy swings and rocks over to

Amelia, by the bar. She smiles and stands
expectantly, but Buddy sits and orders a beer.
She slumps back onto her stool, disappointed.
They say nothing to each other.
Now Nick’s emotions and Buddy’s intentions are clear without them
having to talk about them, and their personalities are distinct. Try not
to allow your characters to stand outside themselves and describe
feelings they should be showing.
Are You Listening?
Writing dialogue isn’t just about what the characters are saying, but
what they are hearing and how they react to it. Seldom do characters
hear exactly what another is saying. More often than not, characters
(just like people) filter what they hear through their own needs,
desires and wants. Characters ignore, interpret, misinterpret or read
special meanings into everything. When writing dialogue, you must
keep in mind not only what is being said, but also how it is being
heard. These can be two very different things. Let’s look at a simple
exchange of dialogue between two characters:
John pokes around in the kitchen cabinet,
frustrated. Sally doesn’t appear to notice.
JOHN
Honey, where’s the coffee?
SALLY
In the fridge.
JOHN
And sugar?
SALLY
Right beside it, on the left.
This is boring dialogue. Why? Both John and Sally hear each other
perfectly and respond obviously. The conversation is nothing more
than an information exchange. But look what happens when the
obvious is used to express the hidden:
JOHN
Sally ignores him.
JOHN
Honey--
SALLY
You don’t think I know, do you.
John looks some more, finds the coffee.
JOHN
What, about the sugar?
SALLY
Are you testing me?
Or perhaps:
JOHN
SALLY
The doctor said no more caffeine.
JOHN
That’s not what I asked.
SALLY
Did you take your medication?
In the rewritten examples, a simple question is heard and interpreted

to mean something quite different from its obvious meaning, adding
purpose and richness to an otherwise mundane exchange, and moving
the story along.
Don’t Say That! (Dialogue Problems)
Just as there are basic techniques to writing dialogue, there are
mistakes that must be avoided. The most common are: filler lines,
speeches, raw exposition (including characters telling each other what
they already know), clichés and didactic dialogue.
Filler Up Filler lines are those words and sentences that take up
space between real conflicts or ideas. Lines like “What do you mean by
that?” or “What’re you trying to tell me?” are filler lines. They are false
prompts and can almost always be leapfrogged. Lines like “I can’t
believe you’re moving to Alaska” or “So what do you think?” are
clumsy ways to start a conversation and should be avoided—unless
clumsiness is the effect you’re after. The situation must be alive and
full of energy and conversations should start spontaneously without
false prompting. Another form of filler is the use of words like “So” or
“Well” to begin a sentence. By the second draft, you’ll discover that
most of the “so’s” and “well’s” can be eliminated, as this example
illustrates:
JOE
So, are you going to the funeral?
ALLEN
Well, I’m late for work.
JOE
Well, I think you should. You need
to end this part of your life.
ALLEN
So, are you telling me or asking me?
Another type of filler to avoid is name calling. This happens when

characters overuse each other’s given names; again, these can almost
always be cut.
CLARA
Sally, you’ve never told him about
this have you?
SALLY
Oh, Clara. He thinks I’m brilliant
at stretching the budget.
CLARA
Thank you for paying the marriage
counselor, Sally.
SALLY
No problem, Clara.
Fillers indicate that the writer is still fishing for what the dialogue
ought to be, or worse, obfuscating it. The English author George
Orwell said that too many vague words will cloud a work and “fall
upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all
the details.”
Speech, Speech! Monologues may be wonderful on the stage but
they generally don’t work in a movie. Some exceptions are voice-over
narration or actual speeches being given in context, such as a lawyer
giving her summation at the end of a trial, or William Wallace rallying
his troops before the battle. Another example from the same movie
—Braveheart—comes when
Edward Longshanks, having killed his son’s lover, meditates on the
best plan of action to follow to defeat Wallace. But these are the
exception, and even these kinds of speeches must be approached with
caution. In real life, people generally don’t go on at great length
without interruption, so monologues are a bit unnatural. This is true
in screenplays as well. Long monologues often slow the pace because
there is little interaction with other characters or little action being
taken by the character who is speaking. Monologues are also visually
boring. Whenever possible, try to break monologues up into shorter,
more manageable dialogue passages. There’s a famous story of a
producer who took a ruler, slapped it down on a screenwriter’s script,
measured the length of a monologue written there, and said, “Three
inches long! Cut it by two.” This is a bit extreme, but you get the point.
Another “speech” problem occurs when the character works out his
problems in complete, extended thoughts rather than through
exploration and interaction with other characters. This form of
dialogue (sometimes called a “false monologue”) turns characters
inward; it causes them to feed off themselves rather than relate to or
act off of other characters. In the following example, two lawyers argue
over evidence. Notice that they are not interacting but thinking
everything out in complete thoughts.
ZOOKER
That was twenty years ago. People
change. What’s the truth today? I
mean, you should’ve said something.
Demanded proof. You can’t blame
someone today for how they acted
twenty years ago. You should’ve
objected!
ACE
Thank you for telling me how to do
my job, but we adjourned before I
could do so. They asked the
question. A question I couldn’t
answer because I’m afraid the
prosecution has exactly what I have.
Proof!
Ace digs out a divorce decree.
ACE
I stole it from the county records
when the trial began. Was bein’ a
good little lawyer-man, coverin’ my
client’s ass. I’m good at that.
Now here is the same scene, broken into dialogue rather than
speeches. Notice that it is more realistic and allows the characters to
play off each other rather than feed off themselves.
ZOOKER
That was twenty years ago. People
change. What is the truth today? You
should’ve said something--
ACE
Thank you for tellin’ me how to do
my job--
ZOOKER
Demanded proof.
ACE
We adjourned before I--
ZOOKER
You can’t blame someone today for
how they acted twenty years ago...
You should’ve objected!
ACE
I couldn’t! I’m afraid the
prosecution has exactly what I have.
Proof!
Ace digs out a divorce decree.
ACE
I stole it from the county records
when the trial began. Was bein’ a
good little lawyer-man, coverin’ my
client’s ass. I’m good at that.
Now there’s some reality to the scene, some believable conflict, and
some energy.
Touché ... Cliché! A cliché is a commonplace phrase that has
become overused and trite. “Beyond the shadow of a doubt,” “beat
swords into plow- shares,” “It’ll all come out in the wash,” “water
under the bridge,” “as close as peas in a pod,” “You’ll never get away
with this,” are all obvious clichés both on and off the screen. In movie
talk, there are many more: “I’m too old for this [pick your expletive],”
“Are you all right?” “Let’s do it,” “Run for it!” are examples of overused
and essentially meaningless phrases which should be avoided. People
do occasionally talk in clichés, but a screenplay deals with heightened
language. A screenwriter should try to come up with new ways to re-
express a familiar sentiment, rather than resort to shopworn phrases.
The only exception is if you have a character like Polonius in Hamlet,
whose superficial character is revealed by his reliance on clichéd truths
and sentiments.
Get Off the Soapbox Characters who speak from a soapbox
(unless, as in the case of Polonius, this is their nature) are usually the
result of inexperienced writers who wish to convey a “message.” This
results in didactic or propagandistic speeches. Your message (which is,
of course, your theme) should be subtextual, suggested rather than
openly stated, dialectic rather than pedantic. If you must have a
character talk about the theme, then it should come as a revelation, a
discovery based on the action of the story. But allow the action to
“speak first” and lead the character to his or her dialogue, as for
instance, when Dorothy finally realizes that “There’s no place like
home,” or when Jules explains the meaning of his salvation at the end
of Pulp Fiction. Show and persuade your audience (and your
characters), don’t browbeat them. Dialogue is exploration and
communication, not indoctrination.
I WAS BORN IN A LOG CABIN I BUILT WITH
MY OWN HANDS... (EXPOSITION)
Exposition is dialogue that sets up or explains the story; it is like the
getting- to-know-you conversation on a first date. It relates action that
has happened, is happening or will happen outside the frame of the
movie: everything that happens between the words FADE IN and
FADE OUT. Most exposition is handled visually—we see what is
happening, or what happened, through flashback or prologue scenes—
but occasionally a screenwriter must use dialogue. Contrary to popular
opinion, there’s nothing wrong with verbal exposition if it’s handled
properly, but there are many pitfalls.
If the sole purpose of the dialogue or scene is to provide exposition,
to “fill the audience in,” then it will fail, because the scene becomes
static; the action of the story pauses while we get information.
Exposition must be woven into the action, so that it contributes to the
forward motion of the story, or at any rate doesn’t hinder it. Problems
also occur when exposition is too obvious (relating things that are
already clear to the audience, or having characters tell each other
things they already know in order to inform the audience), or is too
extended, containing unnecessary details.
You’re So Obvious Phrases like “As you can see,” “As you
know...,” or “As I told you...,” “...remember?” and “Like I told you
yesterday...” are sure signs that obvious or on-the-nose exposition
lurks nearby. The characters aren’t talking to each other, they’re
simply filling in the reader. Many novice writers fall into this trap, not
knowing how else to reveal the information they feel the reader needs
to know. Years ago a friend of ours at the Second City improvisation
company did a skit called the Obvious Exposition Players. It went
something like this:
SON #1
How’s Mom?
SON #2
Considering the fact that she’s
nearly seventy, she’s doing just
fine.
SON #1
If only she hadn’t had that heart
attack last year.
SON #2
That was a bad one. Left her in the
hospital for three months.
SON #1
I took care of her, remember? I was
there every night till the nurse
kicked me out.
SON #2
What about me? I was there every
morning.
SON #1
You were. She’s been a good mother.
Remember the time she lied about
your age so that you could join
Little League?
SON #2
How could I forget? I’d never be a
big league pitcher if it wasn’t for
her.
SON #1
And I’d never be a barber if she
hadn’t let me experiment on her
head.
While this is a comic example of bad dialogue, it highlights a very

common problem. Obviously, both sons already know everything
they’re telling each other. So why on earth would they speak like this?
Only because the writer has forced them into it. If the information is
crucial to understanding the story, then the writer must find more
skillful ways of providing it.
You’re Missing the Point The key to writing exposition is to
make sure that it directly affects the current action. Unnecessary
exposition can take several forms: it can retell things we’ve already
seen on screen or already know from other dialogue, it can contain
back story that is not needed to make sense of the story, it can describe
things that are happening as the character speaks, and it can tell us
things that are going to happen on screen anyway, or that have
nothing to do with the resolution of the story. The question the writer
must always ask is, do we need to hear this? For example, we
absolutely need to know what Leonardo Di Caprio’s character does for
a living in Inception, because it’s the basis of the plot. In contrast, we
barely need to know what Leonardo Di Caprio’s character does for a
living in Revolutionary Road, because it’s just an office job that he
hates and that has little to do with the story. And was Cary Grant ever
married before he was abducted in North by Northwest? What about
Willy Loman, what does he sell in Death of a Salesman? These bits of
“backstory” are not revealed because they do not affect the story.
Necessary exposition contains information that affects our
understanding of the present action, of the characters and the story. If
it affects the story now, then it is necessary. You may want to develop
and know many things about the past in order to have a clearer idea of
how to write what happens in the script, but very little of it actually
needs to be said on screen unless the character has an urgent and
present need to say it.
Let’s Put It This Way... (Dialogue Solutions)
Once you’ve determined that you need to use dialogue for exposition,
you must find ways to integrate it with the natural flow of scene. Some
methods include “hiding” the exposition by use of background action,
conflict, humor, question and answer, conversation with a confidant
and use of a narrator.
Listen to Me! The simplest and most commonly used method to
hide or mask exposition is through conflict. Characters can either talk
while they’re in the midst of exciting action and/or they can disagree
with each other. For instance, in The Terminator, Kyle Reese reveals
the backstory of who he is, where he’s from and what dangers are
facing Sarah Connor, all during a desperate car chase in which they are
directly reacting to the threat he’s attempting to explain to her. At the
same time, Sarah doesn’t yet comprehend the reality she is facing and
thinks Kyle must be insane; she pleads with him to let her go, bites
him and tries to escape. They are in conflict with the antagonist, as
well as with each other, and so the backstory exposition doesn’t slow
the story down; it illuminates what is happening to them, right now.
This allows the audience to hook into the emotional conflict without
focusing on the exposition.
Whatever the fight or argument, of course, it must be a natural part
of the story and characters. This shouldn’t be a problem because a
screenplay is never about people who agree with one another, at least
for long. Remember, drama is conflict.
You Must Be Joking If the audience is laughing, they’re seldom
aware that the scene (or line) contains expositional information. Take
a look at any Woody Allen film. In his rants, he fills us in on who he is,
what his relationships are with the other characters, what he wants or
fears from them—but everything is couched in jokes and ironic
commentary, which are essential to the nature of his character. In Die
Hard, both Bruce Willis’ and Alan Rickman’s characters reveal details
of backstory and plot through humorous exposition. But they do so
because it is natural for them to speak this way. The humor must arise
organically from the character and the conflict in the scene.
Cry on My Shoulder (Confidants) A confidant is a character who
is basically there to give the main character someone with whom to
talk. As the confidant is filled in, so is the audience. The trick is to
make sure the confidant’s reason for being in the story is more than
just being a confidant; he or she should be a lover, ally, mentor,
parent, someone who fulfills another function within the story. All
characters must advance the movie and not just serve the writer’s need
to get out exposition.
Once upon a Time. . . Nowadays, narrative voice-overs (V.O.) are
generally looked down on as non-cinematic. Movies have become
more sophisticated in their storytelling techniques, and having some
disembodied voice carry us through the movie can feel old-fashioned
and clumsy. Gurus and critics complain that too often a voice-over is a
crutch, a simple commentator who tells the story only because the
writer doesn’t know how else to reveal her exposition. However, when
used effectively, the narrative voice-over can be a wonderful tool—just
look at Little Big Man, Annie Hall, Reversal of Fortune, Juno, Road to
Perdition, Days of Heaven, Tree of Life, the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
or Sunset Boulevard. In fact, two of the top four all-time movies on the
AFI top 100 list use extensive voice-over, including arguably the best
American movie ever made, Citizen Kane. These work because the
narrators are integral parts of the story, full characters who are rich in
personal conflict and whose narration adds to the tone and quality of
the story. The V.O. offers a sense of dramatic irony or perspective. In
Little Big Man, the narrator is an ancient invalid being interviewed by
a skeptical young reporter. His narration conveys humor, contempt
and savage irony, which give both us and the interviewer perspective
and a sense of undeniable truth as to what he’s relating. In Annie Hall,
the narrative voice provides a humorous and philosophical context. In
Reversal of Fortune, American Beauty and Sunset Boulevard, the
narrators are either dead or comatose, and their narration reinforces
their themes of the subjective nature of knowledge, ambition and final
judgment. In other words, the narrator is a real character in the story.
Never use a narrator as merely a source of information, as a last gasp
to clarify a story that is confusing and needs to be explained. If this is
the case, you need to fix your story.
Shades of Things to Come One technique of writing “between the
lines” that is particularly useful is foreshadowing, in which seemingly
normal, everyday dialogue actually hints at either the future or theme
of the story. Such foreshadowing dialogue is sometimes referred to as
“signposts,” which hint at and sometimes justify future events.
For instance, in The Terminator, look at how seemingly innocuous
dialogue both foreshadows the story and reflects the subtext. Near the
beginning, when Sarah is having a terrible day at her waitressing job,
her co-worker jokes, “In a hundred years, who’s gonna care?” Of
course, in a hundred years the future of humanity will depend on
Sarah. Later, when she and her roommate are preparing themselves
for a date, her roommate looks at Sarah and exclaims, “Better than
mortal man deserves.” Reese, a man who drops out of the sky from the
future, is surely more than a mere mortal man. And when Reese and
Sarah are on the run from the Terminator, she asks him to tell her
about her future son. Reese tells her: “He’s about my height. He has
your eyes.” Reese at this point doesn’t know he’s going to be the father,
but the screenwriter does, and uses this innocent bit of dialogue to
foretell what is going to happen.
A good signpost foreshadows future events, yet does not spoil the
movie by allowing the audience to predict exactly what is going to
happen. Lines like, “I hear there’s a storm coming. That creek may
overflow. Someone could get killed,” or “Be sure to look out for Dead
Man’s Curve, there’s construction there, and I hear they’re using
dynamite,” are both really bad signposts. They don’t hint at future
events, they force us to assume that the dangers referred to will
happen. If these dangers do occur, the audience will have lost the
pleasure of surprise, and if they don’t, the audience will feel betrayed.
The signpost must be integrated into and hidden in the dialogue.
Often, if the writer wants to create suspense—there’s a dead man’s
curve where danger may occur—it’s best to reveal it visually. Dialogue
about it is much clumsier and calls attention to itself.
The classic example of a visual signpost is the “gun on the wall,” in
which we see a gun in the background and therefore have been
prepared for the fact that it will be used to solve some story problem,
like killing the bad guy. Similarly, a mention of some characteristic
—“He was a fireman when he was young, but he lost his nerve”—
signals that there’s probably going to be a fire later on which will test
that character’s courage. In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere tells Julia
Roberts that he’s afraid of heights. Over the course of the story he
inches further and further out on his balcony, showing his growth,
until at the end he must climb a fire escape to prove his love to Julia
Roberts. If you do mention a distinctive character trait of this sort,
you’d better use it later on, or the audience will feel cheated.
Unnecessary signposts clutter the story with useless information.
Catching Red Herrings The one exception to this is the “red
herring,” a signpost that leads the audience to think the story is going
one way when it’s really heading another. Usually a red herring is
more than a line of dialogue, it’s a whole character, even a subplot. But
reduced to its essentials it’s a false signpost by which the audience’s
attention and expectations are intentionally misled, turned toward
future events, problems and/or solutions that in fact will appear
elsewhere in the story. Dialogue can be an essential part of such
misdirection. For example, in a murder mystery there might be
foreshadowing comments that hint at several characters with motives
for murder, or at one in particular who will later be revealed to be
innocent. Red herrings can be great fun, but must be handled with
care or the story will become confusing and contain too many
coincidences. They can be either visual or carried in dialogue, but it’s
better if they’re visual.
TECHNICAL DO’S AND DON’T’S
Let’s move on to some of the technical aspects of writing dialogue,
including punctuation, telephone conversations, foreign language and
dialects.
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are used to clarify the dialogue’s meaning. All the
standard practices concerning punctuation apply to dialogue, although
they can be tweaked for special effect.
Dash-Dash The dash-dash (--) or hyphen-hyphen is used to indicate
when a speech or line has been interrupted:
FRED
If you ever talk to Kathy again,
I’ll teach you a few things! Just
look at her and I’ll--
SAM
Shut up and get out!
Ellipsis Ellipses suggest a slower pace. Sometimes you can use a

dash-dash when there’s a rapid shift of direction within a line of
dialogue:
BUDDY
I’m not sure if you realize what
just happened. I started this
conversation because... look, I paid
you a compliment. Showed some
interest and... but you’re really
not interested.
The ellipsis ( . . . ) is used to show a suspended sentence. The character

may lose the train of thought, drift off or fade to another subject:
SALLY
I can’t believe it! I was just
standing there but--I mean he came
out of nowhere, and--damn, I think
my arm’s broken!
Italics and Capitalization Screenwriters will occasionally use

italics to emphasize a particular line or word in a speech. But this feels
like a kind of parenthetical (see Chapter 2), forcing a reading of a line,
and should be used sparingly. Capitalization indicates that a speech or
line is shouted:
BETH
You’re talking about me? ME! In
front of my face? Fine! YOU CAN ALL
GO TO BLAZES!
But neither italics nor capitalization are really necessary to these (or
most other) lines:
BETH
You mean me? You are talking about
me? Me! In front of my face? Fine!
You can all go to blazes!
Following the overall rule of simplicity, it is better to avoid these

devices unless the meaning is opaque without them. In that case, it’s
better to just rewrite the line in the first place.
Abbreviations Abbreviations are used in dialogue only if the
character also uses the abbreviation. For example, if you want the
character to say “TV” instead of “television,” then the abbreviation is
acceptable. Other abbreviations should be eliminated because we need
to hear how a word will be spoken. Numbers should be written out.
Instead of writing “15,” write “fifteen.”
Comma In dialogue, the comma (,) is used to show a slight hesitation.
Hesitations occur naturally in speech, so it may be appropriate to
indicate them. By careful placement of commas, a screenwriter can
help the reader or actor understand the tempo of a given line of
dialogue. But if you don’t intend a hesitation, there’s no need to use a
comma in the traditional way; dialogue does not have to be the
Queen’s English.
Other Dialogue Issues
Screenwriting has evolved certain conventions or solutions when
addressing common dialogue issues such as phone conversations,
foreign languages and accents.
Phoning It In Telephone conversations are often used in movies, but
in fact should be a last resort. The problem with the telephone is that it
is visually boring. What do we see? Some guy with a phone pressed
against his ear. Dialogue is therefore forced to carry the entire action
of the scene. Whenever possible, eliminate phone conversations; it’s
much better to allow the characters to meet face to face. (For
formatting information on this, see Chapter 2.)
“Speeka de Inglitch!” If a character is speaking in a foreign
language, it will bore readers terribly if you attempt to write in the
actual language, especially if they don’t know the language you’re
writing. So keep it short, only a phrase or two, and then shift into
English. Better yet, use English throughout, and indicate that they are
speaking Swahili or whatever in the narration or parentheticals. (For
formatting information on this, see Chapter 2.)
Accents When a character has an accent, then it should be noted in
description or in a parenthetical, but not phonetically spelled out in
the dialogue (you only need to mention it once). Instead, the dialogue
should be written with the rhythm, tempo, words and slang of the
dialect, leaving the exact sounds for the actor playing the role:
DARLA
(with a southern twang)
That’s because men don’t train boys
to be men, mamas do. And whether you
like it or not, a father trains a
girl to be a woman, but they seldom
finish.
This is the wrong way (obviously exaggerated):

DARLA
That’s cawse mayun don’t trayun boys
to be meyun, mawmuhs doo. And
whither you lahk et owuh not, uh
fathuh trayuns a gull to be uh
wom’n, but they sayldum finish.
We have read many examples of this kind of thing, especially where

the characters are mafiosi or southerners, and it is torture to get
through. Also, if you are using a dialect to make a statement on the
characters’ intelligence or socioeconomic class, you stand a good
chance of falling into the trap of stereotype. Further, do not assume
you know how one part of the country speaks. Research is essential.
While you want to cast your part, as noted, don’t rely exclusively on
what you hear on television or in the movies; the screenwriter you are
imitating may have been lazy or incorrect in creating his dialogue, and
the actor may not have gone through the trouble of hiring a dialect
coach. Above all it’s crucial that the screenwriter understand the
sensibilities of the character: the forces that shape a region, its people
and dialects. A screenwriter certainly wouldn’t imbue a farmer from
Warwick, Rhode Island, with the same tempo and rhythm as a farmer
from Cuthbert, Georgia. They may both be farmers, but they’ve been
shaped by very different socioeconomic, religious and historical forces.
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Screen dialogue is not written to be silently read, it is meant to be
spoken. The only way to know if your dialogue works is to read it
aloud, or better yet, have it read to you. Playwrights, dependent on
dialogue as their chief tool, have done this for centuries. Once you
think your script is ready, make copies, invite a few friends over
(preferably actors, but not necessarily), assign roles (including
someone to read narrative), and listen to your script as it’s read aloud.
Don’t be tempted to read a role yourself; you cannot be objective about
your own reading and you’ll be too distracted by performing to really
hear the others. Keep quiet, and listen actively. Take notes and
analyze. Does some dialogue seem to fall flat? Is the exposition too
obvious? Have you indulged in conclusionary statements? Does it
make sense? Above all, does the dialogue seem to drag or feel
unnatural? These questions are phrased as negatives—what is wrong—
because you’re not looking for praise or for what is just fine. You’re
looking for what needs to be fixed. A reading can be a very painful and
humbling experience when you realize that what seemed so perfect on
the page is so awful coming out of an actor’s mouth. But that’s the
point. You want to find out what works, and what doesn’t. When the
reading is over, ask for suggestions. If there’s time, go back to problem
lines and have your actors improvise dialogue; often a spontaneous
expression will work beautifully. You might also record the reading on
tape, so you can listen to it again if you want to; sometimes your first
impressions may be wrong, or you may find new problems the second
time around. Then write it all down. You should be armed with pages
of notes and be ready to attack a new draft.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda Throughout this chapter we’ve stressed that
dialogue defines character and vice-versa. It’s worth repeating—until
you remember it! What a character says and how he says it reveals
who he is. When Dirty Harry is confronted with a robber who has a
gun pointed at Harry’s favorite coffee-shop waitress, threatening to
blow her head off, Harry doesn’t plead or run or put his gun down and
negotiate. He points his gun at the robber point- blank and calmly
says, “Go ahead. Make my day.” It’s a simple line, but it tells us a world
about him: he’s fearless, he takes chances with his own and other
people’s lives, he has a grim sense of humor, a straightforward
approach to a difficult problem and, most importantly, at some deeper
level he just doesn’t give a damn. The certainty of his character
convinces the robber that Harry would just as soon see a friend die, if
it would give him the satisfaction of being able to exact a lethal
revenge. Brevity, keeping to the point, working on several levels of
obvious and subtextual meaning—these are what you’re looking for in
your dialogue. Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
EXERCISES
These exercises include examples of problem dialogue. See if you can
come up with specific solutions.
1. The following scene has several filler lines and extra words. How
many words can you edit or leapfrog and still have the scene advance
the story and reveal the characters?
INT. MICROFILM ROOM — NIGHT
Alone in the dark, Grace cranks the microfilm
reader. The screen scrolls, then stops and
scrolls a little more. She leans forward.
She’s found it.
GRACE’S P.O.V.: The newspaper byline reads,
‘COP PLEADS GUILTY.’
FAT TROOPER (OS)

Grace!
GRACE
I’m back here. In the microfilm
room.
A FAT TROOPER runs in.
FAT TROOPER
They want to see you, now.
GRACE
Why now?
FAT TROOPER
You’re in big trouble with the
higher ups.
GRACE
Who?
FAT TROOPER
The Captain. The Chief of Police.
The Mayor. They’re all upset.
GRACE
So, what are you trying to tell me?
They don’t like my article?
FAT TROOPER
Well, you name it, they’re pissed
off
GRACE
about it. They want to see you now.
Send ’em in.
FAT TROOPER
ASAP.
2. In the following scene, characters express themselves through

conclusionary statements. Rewrite, allowing for specifics to lead the
reader to the conclusion, rather than making the conclusion for them.
Use the same number of words, or fewer.
INT. COUNSELOR’S OFFICE — DAY
COUNSELOR JOHANSON looks like a giant extinct
species of bird of which he is the last
surviving member. He looks down on George, who
is twenty, but looks fifteen.
COUNSELOR JOHANSON
You’re flunking.
GEORGE
I know, but that doesn’t mean I’m
stupid.
COUNSELOR JOHANSON
I think you’re stupid. So does your
mother.
GEORGE
I hate my mother.
COUNSELOR JOHANSON
I’m so tired of you, George. When
are you going to grow up?
GEORGE
I am grown up.
COUNSELOR JOHANSON
You act like a child. You even look
like a child! You’re never going to
get anywhere until you learn to be
more mature.
3. The following scene has characters talking about their emotions
rather than showing them. Rewrite the scene so that characters never
talk about their emotions, yet allow how they feel to be clear.
INT. CLASSROOM — DAY
MARY, an assistant professor in her thirties,
sits nervously waiting for GEORGE, her
department chairman, in his sixties, to look
up from her class evaluations. Finally he
looks over his silly half glasses.
GEORGE
I know you’re nervous about this.
MARY
Oh, terribly. All morning I’ve been
feeling touchy.
GEORGE
My daughter took an “Intro to
Theatre” class from you. She says
she really enjoyed it.
MARY
I liked her. She always made me feel
appreciated for what she learned in
my class.
GEORGE
Well, I’ve always felt that “Intro
to Theatre” was superficial. I never
had the patience for it. Too easy to
teach. I like something more
demanding.
MARY
It’s not that easy. I only have
fifteen students, but I’m
overworked.
GEORGE
A Working mother with two kids; you
must be tired
MARY
Tired and sick. Half the time I
don’t what I’m doing.
GEORGE
I thought as much. Did you know what
you were doing when you gave my
little sweetheart an “F”? That
really pissed me off.
4. In the following dialogue the screenwriter has the characters talk

about the story rather than enact it. Create a scene in which visuals
and actions largely replace the dialogue.
GARRY
You should really try to get along
with your father. You know, you
never miss your father until he’s
gone.
ROSS
What a pleasant thought.
GARRY
My father was always filled with
grand delusions about me. Then one
day I decided to come straight with
him. I told him the truth about
myself. Suddenly, all the games were
stripped away. We really looked at
each other for the first time.
Naked! Only our true emotions on the
table. He immediately grabbed his
chest, fell back in his Craftmatic
adjustable bed and died. How’s that
for a guilt trip?
ROSS
You told him you were gay?
GARRY
No, I told him I was an actor.
ROSS
And he believed you?
GARRY
Why shouldn’t he?
ROSS
If I knew I’d get the same result
you did, I might try the same
approach with my dad. Wonderful guy-
-not! When I was a kid, from the
time I was five, I asked him for a
baseball glove. Finally he got me
one when I graduated from high
school. It was for the wrong hand!
5. In this scene, the characters speak in short speeches rather than

dialogue. Rewrite so that characters interact rather than speaking in
complete thoughts.
DORIS
Look, I know you mean well, but
pouring him a drink is part of our
evening ritual. It means so much to
him when I pay attention to the
little things. I think that’s what a
good wife should do. I just want my
husband to be happy. Isn’t that what
you want for your husband, when you
get married?
SHARON
No! Just because he wants a drink,
that doesn’t mean you have to leap
up, dump everything and run to get
it. He’s got legs. He doesn’t even
ask for the drink, he just sits
there and stares at you. I’ll never
marry a man like that.
DORIS
He’s a man of few words. But he’s
very sensitive. For instance, his
drink has to be just perfectly mixed
or he won’t enjoy it. He has
wonderful taste buds. Never smoked.
You remember how much I smoked, for
five years. Thank God your father
beat that out of me.
SHARON
Mom, we all get lonely. And Dad was
a pig; I hated the way he abused
you. I suppose his death was hard on
all of us, but you can’t marry this
man just because he reminds you of
dad. Mom, you may think this is
love, but this isn’t, and it never
was. This is being a maid.
DORIS
Or a prostitute. Am I right? Oh come
on now, you can say it if you want
to. I’ve heard the word before. It’s
in the dictionary. Prostitute. Well,
maybe there are some practical
considerations. He’s got money ...
and did I tell you that he is a
practical man? Nothing wrong with
that. You’re just upset because I
found happiness. Learned to love
again. In my own way. Sounds like
the title of one of those trashy
supermarket books doesn’t it? But
that’s how life is sometimes.
6. Now take your rewrite of the previous scene and leapfrog as many
words and thoughts as you can. Turn the dialogue into “headlines.”
7. The following scene is full of obvious exposition. Rewrite the scene
using conflict, humor or a confidant to replace obvious exposition:
SAL
So, when did you move to Cleveland?
TED
Almost two years ago.
SAL
You are kidding. I moved here two
years ago myself.
TED
What are you doing now?
SAL
I work for a large investment
banker.
TED
I’m a successful umpire.
SAL
I love baseball. But I have no time
to go anymore, let alone play. I
used to be pitcher on the bank’s
softball team.
TED
I’m getting a little bored with it,
actually.
SAL
How could you? Everyone loves
baseball. My kids especially do.
TED
I have no kids.
SAL
I thought you were married.
TED
I was. We divorced. My wife was very
selfish; she didn’t want to ruin her
figure with children.
SAL
I have three great kids.
TED
That’s great.
SAL
One from each of my marriages. But
the third time is a charm; my new
wife is a wonderful woman.
14
Rewriting
Not So Fast, Bub
All right, you’ve finished your first draft and it’s a thing of beauty. It’s
so hot that it’s burning your fingers, and you just can’t wait to send it
out to agents, producers and anyone else you can think of, sure that
big bucks and a major studio release are soon to follow. Of course
there might be a detail or two that needs work, a few nagging doubts
about that problem section in the middle; but no one’s really going to
care about those, if they notice any problems at all. So basically it’s
ready to go! Right?
Wrong. Really wrong. Do not delude yourself into thinking that
your first draft is good enough. It almost certainly is not. There’s an
old saying: “All writing is rewriting.” While this is an exaggeration, it
contains a great deal of truth. The first and purest reason to rewrite is
that, no matter how talented you are or how careful you’ve been with
your outline and first draft, there are always things that need to be
altered, cut or improved, things you forgot you wanted, things you
were sure you needed but really didn’t. No first draft is ever ready to
be seen by anyone other than yourself and a few trusted readers, who
will hopefully help point out all the various, previously unnoticed
failings of your precious creation. And it’s likely you won’t catch all the
problems on your second pass, either. Most professional screenwriters
go through three to five drafts before they send their scripts out.
There is a practical reason for this as well: you will ruin your
chances with your script in the real world if you send it out
prematurely. Remember, you have exactly one shot with whomever
you send it to. If they pass on it, that’s it. Forever. Once you submit a
script to a producer, studio or agency, it gets covered by the reader
(see Chapter 1) and “goes into the system,” which means that the
reader’s synopsis and recommendation are entered into a computer
database. If you later realize that you needed to fix some things and try
to resubmit it, whoever gets it—even years later—will simply type in
both the title and your name (in case you get the tricky idea of
changing the title) and take a look at the prior review. If it was a pass—
which it probably was, or you wouldn’t be resubmitting it—that’s as far
as it’ll go. If they’re friends of yours they may lie and tell you they’ll
look at it again, but they won’t. No one is going to read your belated
new draft unless Leonardo DiCaprio personally insists they do because
he’s dying to star in it even if it means working for scale. Ain’t gonna
happen. You blew your chance, at least at that place. And there aren’t
that many places.
So take a deep breath, take that brand-new, virgin first draft and
give it to a few trusted friends to read. Then try to forget you ever
wrote the thing for the next couple of weeks. Once you’ve had time to
get a little distance from your writing, gather whatever comments and
criticisms you can, reread the script carefully along the lines described
in this chapter, and get back to work. Then rinse and repeat, until your
script is as good as you are capable of making it, if not better. Take the
extra time and effort or you will simply be throwing away all the time
and effort you’ve already spent in writing the first draft.
IT’S GREAT! NOW LET ME FIX IT
There’s a joke that goes: “A writer and a producer are lost in the
desert, dying of thirst. The writer begins to hallucinate a beautiful
oasis, with gorgeous, shady trees and a pristine pool of water. His
imagination is so powerful that even the producer sees the mirage...in
fact, it becomes real. The writer, overjoyed, runs to the water to
drink, when the producer shouts, ‘Wait!’ He shoves the writer aside,
unzips and relieves himself in the water. The producer then steps back.
‘There,’ he says, ‘now it’s perfect.’” The point is that even when you’ve
written a fantastic script, even when it’s been purchased and is set for
production, it’s still going to be messed with. Hollywood, a land of
infinite ego and insecurity (two sides of the same coin), loves to
rewrite. Movies are rewritten at every stage of the process, from the
writer’s many drafts, through development, during pre-production, on
the set just before a shot, and even in post-production. (Editing the
film is sometimes called the final rewrite and, in any event, scenes are
often reshot or new ones added.) And usually the person, or persons,
doing the rewriting is not the original writer. Some Hollywood
screenwriters have made their reputation and a very good living on
their ability to rewrite other people’s scripts. These script doctors,
sometimes called closers, can receive huge sums (as high as
$200,000 per week) to whip a script into final shape just before or
during production.
There is a serious debate among working writers as to whether this
is a valuable and necessary aspect of the business or an immoral act of
cannibalism, in which some writers, driven by money and the desire
for credit, glom onto and deform other writers’ work. Some writers
have gone so far as to actually sign a pledge not to rewrite another
person’s script. Others laugh happily all the way to the bank.
The fact is that many good scripts—and the resulting films—are
harmed by this process. But this doesn’t always result in an inferior
product. Sometimes the script just isn’t quite there and no matter how
hard the original writer has tried, it needs a fresh perspective. If you
are that original writer, your only defense against having your project
taken away is to figure out how to gain that perspective yourself, so
that the producers do not feel another rewrite—or another writer—is
necessary.
Don’t Object (Be Objective)
Producers are continually hiring new writers to rewrite the scripts they
have in development. A movie may have several dozen writers, but due
to complicated arbitration rules set up by the WGA, only a few will
receive screen credit. The rest will remain what might be called
ghostwriters. Why do producers demand so many rewrites? Put
simply, they lack objectivity. “The biggest problem is so many
producers today are less sure of what they think and believe,” says
Lucy Stille, a Hollywood screenwriting agent. “...It’s hard to stay with
one writer if you don’t know what you want.” These producers are
making one of the most basic mistakes when rewriting (whether you’re
doing it or hiring someone else to do it): they’re trying to rewrite
before they know what they want.
What do they want? They want what all producers, directors, actors
and writers want, a great script. What makes a great script? How do
you know that what you’ve got isn’t already a great script? It’s hard to
know, to be objective. This is where craft, where knowing what belongs
structurally and thematically, comes in. There’s a story about three
Hollywood script doctors who were doing an emergency group rewrite
on a children’s movie. They had been working on it for days, the
deadline was closing, but they just couldn’t make the story work. The
problem was that the original script contained the character of an
enchanting little horse, which no longer seemed to fit. They were
pulling another all-nighter, it was getting near dawn, when one of the
writers suddenly said, “What horse?” It occurred to them that they
were trying to adhere to a scenario that no longer worked. The story
had grown; the little horse, no matter how enchanting, was no longer
needed. The solution had always been obvious, but they’d been too
mired in the rewrite to see it. They cut the horse and finished the
rewrite.
Good rewriting is a special talent. Writing the first draft can be
magical and creative, but rewriting—whether your own work or
someone else’s—is more analytical. Rewriting is repair work; it is like
editing a novel. It’s asking the question, “What horse?” It demands
objectivity, problem-solving skills and a detailed knowledge of
technique. If you have these abilities, then you might be suited for this
kind of work. But even if you’re only interested in rewriting your own
work, you must learn to be objective and capable of problem solving
after the hard work of your first, second, or eighth draft is done. Being
objective means that before beginning a new draft you have a clear
idea of what needs to be repaired. Only when you are armed with a
solid understanding of the script’s problems and possible solutions
should your next draft begin.
In this way, rewriting is much like writing in the first place: it
requires a plan of attack. The problem is, after weeks or months of
work on the same story and characters, a screenwriter’s vision can
become narrowed and weary, the creative answers elusive. What a
screenwriter needs is “new eyes.” This is the ability to see a script
fresh, as if for the first time. There are three ways to gain objectivity:
time, readings and notes.
Gimme a Break! (Time Is Your Friend)
Have you ever found an old short story or poem you wrote years ago,
read it and disliked it? Here is something you thought was wonderful
when you conceived it but now you see all its faults. Distance is one of
the best ways to achieve new eyes. Heraclitus (ca. 470 B.C.), the Greek
philosopher, said, “You can’t step in the same river twice.” Events
move along, the world changes, and you’re constantly changing and
growing, too. This change and growth happens much faster than most
of us realize. Parmenides (ca. 515–440 B.C.), Heraclitus’ successor,
was even more to the point when he said, “You can’t step in the same
river even once.” The present is no sooner here than it’s become the
past. We’re all being rewritten, all the time. And when you come back
to your script, you’ll be a slightly different person, with new eyes.
Take advantage of this. Once you’ve finished your first draft, totally
divorce yourself from the screenplay, lock it up, don’t even think about
it. It doesn’t take years; in fact it seldom takes more than a few weeks.
You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll have changed perspective and
achieved a new objectivity. Between drafts, some writers work on
another project, others simply take a vacation (even writers deserve
vacations). Whatever your choice, this intermission will recharge your
mind, reset the breakers on your imagination and let you work or play
at something different while your subconscious works on your script.
Then, perhaps two weeks later, open the script and read it. Suddenly
faults will reveal themselves, hidden problems will become obvious,
and the strong/weak elements of the script will no longer be cloudy.
All those little nagging doubts you dismissed, the problems you hoped
weren’t there and just skipped over, will declare themselves and
demand to be addressed. And probably you’ll have come up with the
solutions. Time is the best editor, distance the best way to achieve
objectivity.
Hear, Hear! (Readings)
Objectivity can also be gained though a reading. Readings are easy;
gather a few friends (actors are nice but not necessary), make copies,
assign roles and listen as the script is read out loud, in your living
room.
Here are a few tricks that will help you stage a successful reading.
First, make it a party, treat everyone to pizza. Then, since screenplays
have many roles, you’ll want to double-cast. This doesn’t mean having
two people read the same lines at the same time, which only creates an
unpleasant echo effect. Double-casting means that one reader will play
multiple roles, unless you have a great many friends whom you can get
in one room all at the same time. One way to do this is to assign the
leading roles (protagonists and antagonists) to an individual while
other readers will play multiple smaller roles. Next, do your readers a
favor and highlight their lines for them; this way there won’t be any
uncomfortable pauses when someone doesn’t pick up their cue or
searches for their part. It’s best to cast two readers for the narrative so
they can switch off and keep it fresh. Also, your script should be read
cold; in other words, without rehearsals. This is because the script
should be clear and easy to understand on the first reading. Rehearsal
will only hide problems. When a line goes wrong, when a scene fails,
don’t be tempted to blame the readers. The screenwriter who thinks,
“It really does work, they’re just not reading it right” is more than
likely simply finding excuses for a script’s faults.
During the reading, don’t read anything yourself, not even the
narrative. With your copy of the script in front of you, just listen, and
make notes, right there on the script page: what works, what doesn’t.
When a reader stumbles on lines, note the line so it can be checked.
Don’t try to rewrite it on the spot or stop the readers so you can
discuss a problem that has arisen. You’ll lose the flow of the reading.
Just jot down a few key words to remind yourself of what and where
the problem lies. It’s also a good idea to tape-record the reading, so
that you can go back over it for anything you may have missed.
Basically, readings allow you to hear the script interpreted by
someone other than yourself; everything sounds different in
someone else’s mouth than it does in your own mind when you’re
writing. Flaws, unintended but happy accidents, not-so-happy
accidents, poorly written narrative, unclear plot points, boring
stretches and rushed passages, all will become much more clear to
you.
At some point during the evening, should one or more of the
readers need to take a break or go to the bathroom, mark the place in
the script where they feel they can put it down and take that break. It’s
probably a spot where the story has slowed down. A script should be a
page-turner; there should never be a lull where readers feel it’s okay to
stop. During a reading, if possible, use the squeakiest chairs you can
find. When readers become bored they will shift in the chairs. You can
tell how bored they are by the number of squeaks. If no squeaking is
possible, then just notice how many times they yawn and re-cross their
legs. Mark which pages seem to take forever to read. Where does the
action slow down? When are the characters inconsistent? Where does
the story fail?
By the end of the reading, your script should be full of notations
(use red ink—it’s easier to spot your notes) and you’ll be ready for the
next draft. If you loved the reading, if you wouldn’t change a thing,
then more than likely you were not listening critically—so ask for and
pay careful attention to the (hopefully constructive) criticisms of your
readers. Invite people to stay and talk about the script. Friends will
have a tendency to be kind, so let them know that they should not
sugarcoat their comments. Promise them you won’t be offended—and
then keep that promise. Don’t argue with them or justify your choices
—just listen, and learn. Remember, this isn’t about you, it’s about the
screenplay. Better to hear it now than in a rejection letter from an
agent or producer. Sometimes they’ll all agree that something is wrong
and if that happens, they’re probably right. (There’s an old expression,
“If everyone tells you you’re drunk, then hand over the keys whether
you agree with them or not.”) More often, there will be some
disagreements among your readers, and then you’ll have to decide
who’s right.
But remember one important point—often people can sense a
problem in a certain part of the story without being able to pinpoint
the exact cause. They may agree something’s wrong, but each of them
points to a different part of the scene or line of dialogue as the culprit,
when in fact the problem may be the scene’s relationship to a scene
just preceding or following it, or to some other unidentified flaw in the
vicinity. In a scene with three beats (A, B and C), for instance, one
reader may point to beat A, another to C, when in fact the problem is
with beat B. It’s all a matter of the context. Again, be objective.
Acknowledge that something here needs work, whether or not it’s the
exact line or scene someone has identified. Then, when you’re
rewriting, step back and look over the problem area for the true cause
of people’s misgivings.
All of this may seem painful, but it is actually a positive experience
because the problems you and your friends discover are also guide
posts that will help point your rewrite in the right direction. (By the
way, playwrights have been using readings to test their writing for
thousands of years. Many theatre companies do weekly readings of
new scripts, and some will even consider screenplays.)
Notes from the Underground
Where to find an honest opinion? Whom can you trust? Young writers
spend much time trying to find mentors to guide them through the
process. They want an authoritative voice to tell them they did well, or
how to improve. The internet is now full of such advice, usually for a
price; but who are those guys, anyway? Most of them have never
written a thing. Everyone is willing to make suggestions, but a true
mentor is difficult to find.
Once, during a class at UCLA film school, a professor made an
offhand suggestion concerning a student’s script. The student
desperately seized the suggestion and rewrote. A week later the
student returned to class, haggard and exhausted; he had pulled
several all-night writing sessions to completely incorporate the
professor’s notion. The class read the new script aloud. It was worse.
The professor said, “Naw, that doesn’t work either.” The student was
stunned. Not all suggestions are gold. Just because someone makes a
suggestion, even someone with years of experience, doesn’t mean
they’re right. But how do you know who’s right and who isn’t? Exactly
what will work, what will sell, what makes a script great? No one really
knows. One reader will call you brilliant; the next will label you an
amateur. As valuable as other people’s opinions are, ultimately you
must become your own mentor. Remember, it’s your story, your
inspiration—and your responsibility. Have confidence in what
genuinely excites you about your script, because if it truly pleases you,
it will likely please others.
Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
An important caution: before you ask people for notes, be very clear
with them that this is not an offer to share authorship with them. If
they even hint at shared credit should you use their idea, don’t listen!
Your work is your work and you must never share authorship because
someone has given a good note. This doesn’t arise in classroom
situations, but it can in the real world. It’s a fact that until a
screenwriter sells his work, he retains the copyright and all rights
therein are guaranteed. This means that if someone makes a
suggestion on how to improve your script and you incorporate the
suggestion, they cannot legally demand joint authorship. But that
doesn’t mean they won’t try. There have been several court cases
related to this situation. The courts have ruled that the only way an
individual can claim to be a collaborator is if his or her additions to
your script are independently copyrightable and the two parties (you
and the actor, director, producer, any note giver) intended to be joint
authors at the time the screenplay was created. This conflict doesn’t
arise often, but if an unscrupulous note giver confronts you regarding
sharing credit because of a suggestion, stand your ground. The law is
on your side. But it’s always better to establish the ground rules first.
(Of course, once you sell your script, this no longer applies.)
TAKING IT APART AND PUTTING IT BACK
TOGETHER
Hearing the problems with your script is, of course, only half the
battle. Now you have to figure out how to fix them. When a writer has
trouble solving problems, it’s usually because she is trying to solve too
many problems at once. A rewrite is made up of hundreds of small
obstacles and choices. So start your rewrite by attempting to separate
and identify each problem so that you can solve them one at a time.
Here are the steps to try:
To Be Precise (Specify the Problems)
This is really a matter of organizing and focusing what you’ve learned
from your own perspective and the notes or comments of others. Once
you’ve gotten all the input you can, it’s time to sit down and organize
all the consistent comments and problems others have mentioned, as
well as those you’ve come up with yourself. If your notes seem vague,
take the time now to figure out exactly what problem they’re
indicating. Statements like “the middle is boring” or “the character
doesn’t work” will not do. Which parts are boring— and where exactly
does the script lose energy? Which beats? What aspect of the character
is creating the problem? Exactly when is the character not working?
What aspect of the character has inconsistencies or seems under-
developed? Make lists of everything that occurs to you, in discreet
categories.
Track Your Man (Isolating each Component)
Basically, tracking means unweaving the various elements of the story
into separate strands so you can examine each one independently and
see more clearly where each problem lies. With tracking, the
screenwriter checks to see if story, images, characters and dialogue are
consistent from beginning to end, as well as if there are any
unintended lapses or gaps. This is done by isolating the one element
being tracked from everything else.
For example, if you want to track a particular character, then you’d

make a copy of your script and cut out everything but that one
particular character’s appearances and dialogue. With the character’s
arc and dialogue lined up without interruption, you can now easily
check to see if there is a consistent speech and thought pattern, or if
she suddenly starts speaking like someone else or makes unprepared-
for leaps of logic, understanding or action. Tracking the dialogue helps
you catch redundancies and wordiness as well as lapses.
Tracking can be done with any element: locations, environment,
theme. If the world seems chaotic or ill-defined, or at cross-purposes
with your characters’ journey, isolate and look at how you’ve
structured the sequence of images from scene to scene. See if they
reflect or properly contrast with the intended purpose and meaning of
each scene. If there’s a problem with an ally or other secondary
character, you can isolate them and see if their roles are properly set
up, carried out and concluded. As with dialogue, tracking characters
also helps eliminate redundancy. You might find that two secondary
characters are repeating each other’s actions, in which case they might
better be combined into a single character. Instead of two or three
weak characters, you’ll have one strong one. Tracking subplots and
secondary characters also helps catch loose ends and plot holes that
otherwise might slip unnoticed.
It’s especially important to track the working out of your theme. If
there are scenes or dialogue that don’t express what your story is
about, they must be altered or cut. Don’t wander away from the spine,
because that’s where the emotional power and structure coherence of
your story come from.
Your Head and the Wall, Part One (Brainstorm Possible
Solutions)
Once the problems have been identified, the “machinery” of the script
taken apart and laid bare, it’s time to find the techniques that will
solve each problem. Go back to the basics. Is there conflict? Does it
increase properly, scene by scene? Are your characters consistent, or
are they doing things that seem out of character? Is your theme clear?
Be specific in your solutions. You can’t rewrite using vague ideas.
It’s really the same process you went through when you first
outlined your story. For all your planning, inevitably, some
unanticipated problems have arisen—but the techniques for solving
them are the same, after the fact. Rewriting is sort of like re-outlining,
honing each element so that it fulfills its previously intended role, or
cutting it if it now seems unnecessary.
Your troubleshooting chart, with the techniques to solve the
problems, might look something like this, although you’d want to be
much more specific:
Problem Technique
1. Raise the stakes; right now only Bill’s job is at stake. Have his life and
that of his daughter Emily in jeopardy, too.
2. Too much narrative devoted to description of environment and mood
rather than the action of the story. Trim and focus.
The story drags.
3. Too many pages between major events. Eliminate the subplot where
Jill’s car goes on the fritz.
4. Dialogue is meandering away from the issues. Look at what Bill is
really trying to say.
1. Add a piece of “sugar.” Give Bill a dog, some homeless mutt who keeps
The protagonist following him around until he accepts it.
doesn’t seem very
2. Weak motivation, not enough positive reasons for his actions. Related
likable.
to the stakes, put Bill’s life in danger.
1. Add a character flaw or “ghost.” Internal conflict: Bill wasn’t there for
The protagonist his brother when his brother died in a similar situation.
seems shallow, 2. The character has too much self- awareness; rewrite dialogue so that
one-dimensional. he isn’t so sure of why he’s doing what he’s doing. Give him a false
motivation or excuse, hiding the deeper reason.
1. Make the antagonist more powerful than the protagonist. Right now
The conflict Bill gets the upper hand too quickly.
seems weak. 2. Increase the consequences of the protagonist’s actions. Have what he
tries to do create more problems.
1. Use the environment to reflect the exposition rather than having them
The exposition is talk about it.
too obvious 2. Add conflict to the moments where the exposition becomes obvious.
overall. Bill tells Jill his life story while they’re running from the cops, rather
than over dinner.
1. Enter the scene as late as possible and exit as early as possible.

A scene with the
2. No conflict in scene; just yakking. Actually, just cut the scene, it
fiancé is too long.
doesn’t add anything.
1. Edit. Look at every scene and subplot. The ones with Jill’s fiancé are
The script is 130 all dispensable; don’t need his character anyway. Cut them.
pages, too long. 2. Check the narrative; is it too wordy? Can the same thing be said with
fewer words?
1. Redo scene cards and track the entire movie. Study the structure; does
The story seems it follow a logical cause-and-effect structure?
to be all over the 2. What is the protagonist’s objective; does each scene of the movie
place. follow the spine of that objective?
3. Does the story follow the correct strategies for its genre?
Of course a troubleshooting chart like this could go on for pages, and

in a way it does: this whole book is one big troubleshooting chart. The
point is, once you acquire objectivity and use these basic techniques to
solve a script’s problems, you’ll discover that rewriting can be far more
fun than writing. Rewriting is where average scripts can become great
scripts.
Your Head and the Wall, Part Two (Turn Off Your Inner
Critic)
One roadblock to problem-solving is allowing yourself to be too critical
of your ideas. So don’t edit your thoughts right away. Writers are more
creative when they come up with many imaginative possible solutions
and hold off critical judgment until later. One study placed a group of
scientists in a think tank with a problem to solve. They were told that
once they came up with a possible solution, they should all
immediately and analytically judge the idea. After a day of thinking
and judging, they failed to solve the problem. The next day they were
given an equally difficult problem to solve, but this time they spent the
morning pitching possible solutions without critically judging them or
even considering plausibility. That afternoon, the scientists returned
and were asked to critically judge each solution they had come up with
that morning. It worked. One of their morning pitches solved the
problem. By at first turning off the critical side of the brain, they
succeeded in increasing creativity.
The same is true for screenwriters. By constantly judging your ideas
as they occur, you can stifle the creative side of your brain. The next
time you have a problem to solve, write down as many possible
solutions as you can, without being critical. Don’t judge whether they
will work or not. Soon you’ll have a list of possible solutions. Then,
later, try to logically make each solution work—or, in other words, use
the critical side of your brain—and you’ll have a better chance of
solving the problem. But once you’ve turned on your internal editor,
listen to it. Don’t gloss over or ignore new problems you know are
arising, or you’ll simply have to solve them later in your next draft.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Baby vs. the Bathwater In Hollywood there’s a rather crude
saying: “Kill your babies.” What this means is that if you are really
attached to something in your script, if it’s “your baby,” you should
edit it because it probably doesn’t play to the rest of the world. Often
this is true: a writer will keep a scene or line of dialogue in spite of
knowing in her heart that it just doesn’t belong in this story. It may
even have been the scene or image or line that gave you the idea for
the script in the first place, but like the writers mentioned above, you
may simply have to say, “What horse?” Screenwriters should be ready,
even eager, to rewrite anything that doesn’t work.
But this shouldn’t be an absolute, knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes
it’s “your baby” because it’s marvelous writing and it works! In order
to know which babies to keep, a screenwriter must first gain
objectivity, then troubleshoot and finally apply the techniques needed
to solve the problems. And then, if you’re lucky enough to sell your
screenplay, get ready to do it all over again.
EXERCISES
1. Have a reading of your script. Be quiet and objective. Sit in back
where your note-taking won’t bother anyone. Be sure to have a copy of
the script so you can make notations—but listen, don’t read.
2. Take one small problem within your script and follow the three
basic steps for problem solving: specify the problem, break the
problem into manageable components (track it) and brainstorm
possible solutions to each component.
3. Write your own troubleshooting chart. In one column, list your
screenplay’s problems. In the second column, list the technique you’ll
use to repair each problem.
15
Marketing the Script

It’s Called Show Business
FADE OUT--THE END. It’s taken months to reach these words and
many more to rewrite and polish what came before them. Finishing
your mega-smash- hit screenplay is a great achievement, yet it’s only
half the battle. Selling a screenplay can take years of work, countless
letters, contacts, networking and an intimate knowledge of the
crowded Hollywood market. It’s estimated that 300 times per day,
some screenwriter types the words FADE OUT--THE END and a new
would-be, mega-smash-hit enters the world. There are tens of
thousands of screenplays written each year, yet less than 2,000 will
sell, and only 300 or 400 will be made into movies.
Faced with such severe competition, the first step is to make sure
that your screenplay is ready. Just like any product you want to sell,
yours must be as marketable as possible. This means that you have an
original, catchy premise, good structure, strong characters, proper
format and, of course, it’s been proofread. First impressions are
important, so the script must have an impressive look as well as an
impressive hook, a jump-started story and commercial appeal. In
short, it must be a “page-turner.” A page-turner is a story so exciting,
so well-written, that the reader can’t put it down. A page-turner is a
script that’s easily read in one sitting.
Once you have a solid product to sell, it’s time to find an agent, to
approach studios and/or independent production companies, to
network and hustle. In order to do this, a writer must have a basic
understanding of the WGA, registration, copyright, agents, producers
and the market.
THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA
Hollywood is a union town. There are unions that represent actors
(SAG—the Screen Actors Guild; and AFTRA—the American Federation
of Television and Radio Artists) and directors (DGA—the Directors
Guild of America). There is even a union for extras (Background
Actors Union). Just about everyone who works in television or motion
pictures—other than in very low-budget productions—in front or
behind the camera, is a union member. The union that represents
writers is the WGA (Writers Guild of America). The WGA is a closed-
shop union. This means that you must be a member of WGA in order
to write for a signatory company. A signatory company is any film or
television producer, studio or show that has signed a Minimum Basic
Agreement with the WGA. The list of signatories is very long. It
includes all the major networks and studios like NBC, ABC, CBS,
Paramount, Columbia, Fox, Warner Brothers and hundreds of other
studios and film companies. Only very small companies are
occasionally not signatories and are usually fly-by- night operations or
produce low-quality, straight-to-video product. Signatory companies
agree to hire only WGA writers, and WGA writers agree to write for
only signatory companies.
Unfortunately, you can’t just walk in and join the Writers Guild of
America. WGA rules state that you can’t write for a signatory company
unless you’re a member of the union, yet you can’t become a member
of the union unless you write for a signatory company. It’s a Catch-22,
but there is a way in. To become a member, you must sell a screenplay
or teleplay to a signatory company or compile twenty-four “units of
credit.” The rules on compiling these units of credit are rather
complicated. Each writing job is worth so many units. For example,
selling a story you’ve pitched to a signatory television program that is
less than thirty minutes long is worth four units. If you sell a story to a
television program that is ninety minutes long, or a story for a feature-
length theatrical motion picture, then you get twelve units. If you write
and sell a feature-length screenplay to a signatory company, it’s worth
a full twenty-four units. For more detailed information about units of
credit check out the Writers Guild website at
http://wga.org/subpage_whoweare.aspx?id=84.
What the WGA Is, What It does and Why You Should Care
Once you’ve succeeded in selling a script (or compiling enough units),
you must join the union. You’ll automatically receive a bill from the
WGA for your membership fee of $2,500.00. Next, you will be
required to pay 1.5 percent of your yearly writing income to the union.
Both are expensive, but worth it, for the union keeps wages high, looks
out for the writer’s interests, and provides health insurance and
pension plans (if you meet wage and time requirements). The WGA
also monitors and collects both domestic and foreign residual
payments, conducts arbitration, maintains a credit union, library,
work rules and calls strikes.
When the WGA strikes (which doesn’t happen that often), all its
members stop work, technically shutting down network television and
movie production companies. Soap operas are the first to feel the
pinch; sitcoms and hour-length dramas go into reruns, and eventually
film companies grind to a halt because they can’t buy new scripts or
get rewrites on scripts in development. The WGA is a powerful union
and they come down hard on strikebreakers. If the WGA is on strike,
all writers are expected to honor its picket lines. If you write for a
signatory company during a strike, you’ll be blackballed from
membership in the WGA for life—even if you’re not yet in the union.
There have been stories about talented college writers who cross picket
lines only to find, after the strike is over, that they can never again
write for Hollywood.
The WGA was formed in 1933 during the Great Depression. Before
this, all screenwriters had was a loosely knit group called the Screen
Writers Guild, which was more a social club than union. It had a
clubhouse, activities, exchanged professional information, but it did
not defend writers’ economic and creative rights. When Louis B.
Mayer, the head of MGM, tried to use the Depression as an excuse to
cut writers’ wages by 50 percent, the WGA was born. This was a time
of great anti-union sentiment. The studios attempted to block the
creation of the WGA by forming their own company-controlled union
called the Screen Playwrights Guild. The battle between these Guilds
lasted almost a decade. It was not a clean fight. Early WGA organizers
and members were accused of being left-wing “Commies.” It wasn’t
until 1942 that the Screen Playwrights Guild died and the Writers
Guild of America was officially recognized as the sole collective
bargaining representative for motion picture writers. In the years
since, the WGA has also come to represent television, cable and
interactive writers. It will soon represent animation writers as well
(they have their own guild, but it has little clout).
Today, there are over 12,000 members of the Writers Guild. More
than half are retired or are writers who’ve sold perhaps one script and
never worked again. This means that there are relatively few full-time,
working writers in Hollywood. The vast majority of films, sitcoms,
soap operas and dramatic shows are written by about 4,000 people
(2,500 write for television, 1,500 for the movies). It’s an exclusive club,
but membership in the Writers Guild does not guarantee employment
or riches. Of its members, less than half are employed during any
given year. The average union member’s yearly earnings is only
$60,000 overall and $130,000 a year for those lucky or talented
enough to be employed. This is your reality check.
For more information about the WGA, explore their Web site,
located at http://www.wga.org/. This site has valuable advice,
interviews, lists of agents and agencies, research links and databases.
Written By—The WGA Journal
The WGA’s official monthly magazine is called Written By and is a
must-read for all screen and television writers. Each issue contains
articles by WGA members that cover the art, craft and business of
writing in Hollywood, as well as TV market contacts, which shows are
open to new submissions, and reference information, such as research
sites. WGA members get their subscription for free, but nonmembers
can also subscribe. You can subscribe by calling (323) 782-4699 or
going to www.wga.org. Written By is also available at most larger
bookstores and some newsstands in big cities.
Copyright vs. WGA Registration
Before you market a script you may want to copyright it or get a WGA
registration number. Copyrighting and WGA registration are not the
same. When you copyright a script, you are guaranteeing yourself
exclusive rights to your creation. A copyright is a form of protection
provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of original
works. WGA registration is only a legal record of the date you
completed your screenplay.
All screenplays are technically copyrighted from the moment of
their creation, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prove ownership
through the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. Copyrighting
is easy. All you need is a form “PA.” Write to:
Register of Copyrights
Copyright Office
Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540
Or you can call the Library of Congress Forms Hotline at (202) 707–
9100 (24 hours a day). It’ll take several weeks for the form to arrive (or
you can also download these forms from their website, which is listed
below). Send the completed form and script, along with a $40.00
money order to cover the specified nonrefundable filing fee, to the
Register of Copyrights. Be sure to mail the form, your check and the
script in the same envelope. It may take up to sixteen weeks, but
eventually you’ll receive a Certificate of Registration, which is your
official record of the copyright. For detailed recorded information on
copyrights call (202) 707–3000 (24 hours a day). To speak with an
information specialist, call (202) 707–3000 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Better yet, check out the
Library of Congress copyright Web site at http://www.copyright.gov.
You can copyright plays, books, articles, screenplays, and even
treatments. You cannot copyright titles, character names, short
phrases or bits of dialogue. You also cannot copyright ideas, but the
expression of an idea (i.e., a script) can be copyrighted.
WGA registration is not a copyright, it’s a service provided to
writers to assist them in establishing the completion date of particular
pieces of their literary property. In other words, registration is merely
evidence of the writer’s claim to authorship. What the WGA means is
that their registration is merely evidence of the writer’s claim to
authorship and a date of completion. The date is important because if
someone should attempt to plagiarize or steal your script, with a WGA
registration number you can prove that you were the original creator.
Unlike a copyright, which is good for the writer’s lifetime plus seventy
years, WGA registration lasts only five years (it can be renewed for an
additional five years). At the end of five years, if it’s not renewed, the
material is destroyed without notice. So why do screenwriters often
use WGA registration when a copyright does everything a registration
does plus more? Because WGA registration is quicker and easier and,
for WGA members, cheaper.
You can register scripts, treatments, synopses, outlines, television
and theatrical motion picture scripts, video cassettes/discs, interactive
media, plays, novels, short stories, poems, commercials, lyrics and
drawings, but as with copyright, you cannot register a title.
The WGA registers well over 30,000 works annually. This service is
available to members and non-members. Registration can be done in
person, by mail or, most conveniently, through their website. You can
find information on exact formatting requirements, addresses, etc. at
their registration website:
http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/regmail.html.
FAQ (Copyright and Registration)
Q: WHEN SHOULD I RE-COPYRIGHT OR RE-REGISTER A
SCRIPT?
A: Only when the script has been significantly altered, meaning that
there is at least thirty percent new material (characters, events,
dialogue) should you bother with re-registration or re-copyrighting.
Q: WHAT IS A POOR MAN’S COPYRIGHT?
A: This is an unofficial way to copyright. The writer takes his script
and mails it to himself. The writer then puts the unopened envelope
into storage. This way he can prove he wrote the script by that
particular postmarked date. A poor man’s copyright is neither legally
defensible nor recommended. You can also send it to yourself certified
or registered mail, which provides another measure of protection.
Q: IS PLAGIARISM A PROBLEM IN HOLLYWOOD?
A: There are a few celebrated cases, such as Buchwald vs. Paramount,
but it is not a frequent occurrence. If you’re worried, be sure to
copyright or register your script, send dated follow-up letters referring
to the script by name to anyone to whom you’ve shown the script,
with a copy sent to yourself by registered or certified mail. (This
“reminds” them that what they’ve seen is yours, and creates a “paper
trail” to prove who had access to your material and when, if you ever
go to court.) Also, keep all rejection letters. There is, however, no
cause to be paranoid. For one thing, if your script is good enough to be
plagiarized, the producer will still have to pay someone to do so, and
most will simply buy what they like in the first place. For another,
studios and production companies are very wary of lawsuits. Most
professional writers don’t worry too much about this and many who
have agents don’t even bother to register their scripts, because the
agency will maintain a paper trail on every script it submits.
Q: DOES THE WGA ALSO HAVE A COPYRIGHTING SERVICE?
A: No. The only organization that copyrights a manuscript is the
Library of Congress.
Q: WILL REGISTRATION HELP ME BECOME A MEMBER OF THE
GUILD?
A: No. Registration is just a service the WGA provides; it will not help
you become a member. Nor will the Guild provide any legal advice or
assistance beyond providing proof of registration.
Q: IS IT WISE TO GET BOTH A COPYRIGHT AND WGA
REGISTRATION?
A: No. You are wasting your money if you get both.
REPRESENTATION
Agents
Few Hollywood studios, production companies or producers will
consider work that is not submitted through an agent or manager. The
days of young writers pounding out a script, folding it under their arm
and bumping into just the right person at Schwab’s drugstore are
pretty much over. Today, you need an agent, but it’s a waste of time
looking for one if you are not ready. How do you know you’re ready?
First, you should have at least two complete, wonderfully written
screenplays. These scripts should be so good that you have a hard time
telling which one is better. You need several scripts because agents are
not in the business of nursing young writers, they want to represent
talented, professional, prolific writers, not one-script wonders. They
want to be sure you can do it again. The other reason you want more
than one script is because agents will often ask for a second sample. If
they like your writing, but this particular script is not what they’re
looking for, they’ll often ask “What else ya got?” You want to be ready
with a second script. This is not to say that it can’t be done with only
one script, but the more you write, the greater your chances for
success.
We’re not just saying this to sound coldly professional. It used to be
that it wasn’t that hard to get an agent if you had a pretty well-written
script, but this has changed. With the higher profile of the film
industry and the exponential increase in scripts being written, it is
now extremely difficult to find representation, at least good
representation (and bad representation is worse than none at all). Put
yourself in the agent’s shoes. They receive hundreds of scripts and
query letters a week. They are overworked and inundated by people
who think they can write, as well as people who actually can. And the
business has become much more competitive. In recent years, the
costs and expectations for movies have made it almost impossible for
an unproduced writer to get a writing assignment, once the bread and
butter of lower-level writers; unless your spec looks like a no-brainer,
sure-thing sale, a good agent—meaning a busy one—will not want to
waste his time on it. He already represents many other proven writers
who are easier to sell to the studios. Agents simply do not have the
time or inclination to nurture talent. It must be there, full-blown, or
they will not consider representing you. Their goal is to make money,
pure and simple. It’s not personal, it’s a business; if your script can’t
make them money they aren’t interested.
WHERE TO FIND AN AGENT
Once you have several great scripts and make the effort to understand
the agent’s point of view, you’ll need a list of agents and a dynamite
query letter.
The WGA does not assist writers in finding an agent, nor does it
recommend individual agents, but it will provide any writer (member
or non- member) with a list of signatory agencies that can serve as a
good starting point. A signatory agency is one that agrees to abide by
WGA rules, which are designed to protect writers. For example,
signatory agencies agree not to charge a reader’s fee. Some unsavory
agencies will charge you a fee just to read (and reject) your script. To
avoid this, use only WGA signatory agencies. You can find the list at
http://wga.org/agency/agencylist.aspx. The WGA list no longer tells
you if a particular agency is open to new writers, so you may have to
explore a bit. Many agencies limit from whom they will accept
submissions. Some have all the writers they need and are not
interested in new submissions, others will consider submissions only
through referral or only if the writer is a member of the WGA. Of the
agencies that are open to all writers, some want the full script, while
others will accept only a query letter, based on which they’ll decide
whether or not they’ll read your script. The WGA list gives you the
information you need so that you will not waste your time and postage
mailing to agencies that are disreputable, closed or limited to new
submissions. The WGA list gives the names, phone numbers and
addresses of agencies, but not names of individual agents. Each agency
has from one to a hundred agents working for it, and you’ll want to do
some homework to find the right individual to contact—write to a
particular agent, not just the agency. “To Whom It May Concern” is
usually the death of a great query letter, unless you the writer happen
to have a story that’s been in the news or have the rights to a
bestselling novel—in which case, agencies most likely will already have
contacted you.
Using these sources, you should be able to compile a list of a few
dozen agents; some may be at the same agency (but you’ll only want to
contact one at any given agency at a time). The next step is to write a
query letter and mail it or email it to everyone on your list. In
Hollywood, simultaneous submissions (submitting to more than one
agency at a time) are perfectly acceptable.
Query Letters
Few agents have time for unsolicited scripts. An unsolicited script is
one that shows up in the mail, no one asked for it, no one requested it,
and most of the time no one will read it. However, many agents will
read a short, well-written query letter. A query contains a sentence or
two of introduction, a dynamite pitch of your screenplay, a little about
yourself, and any information that might make them want to read your
script. If you’re sending a query by snail mail, you can add to this
succinct letter is a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) that the
agent can use to request your script. If they say yes, your script
becomes a solicited script and will be read, if not by the agent, then at
least by an assistant.
Introduction The introduction of your query letter should contain a
hook, something to make the agent stop and say, “Maybe this writer is
different.” A hook can be that you both know somebody in common,
even better if that someone has recommended you: “I was talking to
your client J. J. Abrams and he said I’m the type of writer you’re
looking for”—but don’t make this information up, because the agent
would rather spend five minutes calling the person up to confirm it (on
the chance you are lying) than waste two hours reading your script.
The hook can be something you’ve done: “I’m a graduate of the UCLA
film school,” a professional success, “My screenplay was a finalist in
the Nicholls Fellowship contest,” your job (especially if it’s related to
your screenplay), “I am the lawyer who represented Jeffrey Dahmer,
and I’ve written a screenplay based on the case,” or something else
that makes you special, such as, “I was Jeffrey Dahmer’s cellmate in
prison.” The hook must be short, clear and to the point.
Pitch Next you want to pitch your idea. You are only allowed a few
sentences to tell the story. You want a crisp pitch that states a
compelling premise in a short paragraph or two, of not more than
three or four sentences each—not much longer than the brief movie
descriptions on Netflix, Amazon or film guidebook/websites (see
Chapter 16 on the art of pitching in person).
Closing In a short sentence, thank the agent for his or her time and
invite a reply to your letter. If snail-mailed, point out that there is a
SASE enclosed and all the agent has to do is write the word “Yes” on
this letter. Some writers use a postcard rather than a SASE and invite
the agent to place their response on the back of the card.
On the next page is a sample of how a query letter might look.
Acceptance
If 5 percent of the agents you’ve contacted ask to see your script, you
are doing great! The vast majority of your queries will be rejected.
Most queries are never even answered, they simply disappear into the
great circular time- space continuum that is Hollywood. Some will
come back with a form letter containing the standard rejection lines:
“It’s not something we’d be interested in.”
“We’re too busy.”
“We’re not taking new clients at this time.”
“It’s not right for us.”
“Our slate is full.”
If you should be lucky enough to get an invitation, then send the script
with a short note thanking them for reading it, reminding them of the
pitch, and telling them how much you’re looking forward to their
response. When you send the script, you might want to place the
words “REQUESTED MATERIAL” on the envelope or email header, so
that the agent knows this is something that was actually asked for, not
just another of the hundreds of unsolicited scripts that crowd their
mailbox/trashbin. If you send a hard copy of your script and want it
back you’ll have to include a large self-addressed envelope with return
postage. If you don’t want the script back, place a note on the script
and in your letter stating that it’s perfectly acceptable to toss it, but do
enclose a small letter-sized SASE so they can send their comments or
rejection. Don’t hold your breath, though. And if you’re one of the five
or six writers on the planet who actually still uses a typewriter, send a
copy—never, ever, under any circumstances send your only copy of
your script! Even with a SASE you more than likely won’t get it back.
Rejection
Most scripts that are sent to agents are rejected without comment.
Never call an agent demanding feedback or an explanation as to why
your script was rejected. Most agents don’t have time to explain their
decisions, and you’ll only irritate them if they take your call at all.
Don’t expect a quick response. Most agencies will take several weeks to
respond to a query, and as much as three months to respond to a
screenplay submission. If you haven’t heard by then (assuming your
script was requested) you can make a polite follow-up call or email to
be sure your script or query hasn’t been mislaid. If you don’t hear after
that, you won’t. They’ve rejected it and simply forgotten to tell you.
Occasionally a rejection will come back saying that they are not
interested in this idea, but they like the writing, and to “keep them
informed should you write another script.” This is an opportunity.
Keep a list of all the agents to whom you’ve sent scripts or queries,
which scripts were sent, the contact person (agent or assistant), their
reaction, and any other information that will help you next time you
submit. Database programs like Filemaker are perfect for this. Then,
either send along your second script or start working on a new one. By
the time you get your last rejection letter on this script, you should be
well on your way to finishing your next.
Ten Ways to Increase Your Chances of Getting an Agent
1. Write a remarkable script.
2. Write a good query letter with a great pitch.
3. Polite, gentle persistence.
4. Professional credits.
5. Live in Los Angeles (or New York).
6. Attend film school.
7. Win or place in a screenwriting contest.
8. Endorsements, recommendations and comments from friends of
the agent, especially if anyone is a producer.
9. Already have an agent while looking for a new one.
10. Get a director, producer or actor interested in your script.
Ten Ways to Reduce Your Chances of Getting an Agent
1. Write a long, complex query letter that makes you sound more
like a philosophy professor or used car salesman than a writer.
2. Ignore typos and horrible grammar.
3. Write a generic, uninteresting or silly pitch, “Star Wars meets
Bambi.”
4. Use faint dot matrix printing, 10 point type or smeared
photocopies.
5. Send crude or inappropriate material.
6. Constantly phone the agent to ask what’s taking so long.
7. Apologize for the letter and pitch.
8. Be defensive and overly cautious about the agency stealing your
exceptional idea.
9. Lie: State that a director, producer or actor no one knows (or
everyone knows) is interested in your script.
10. Submit a script that isn’t ready.
Tricks to Getting an Agent
Beginning writers are always looking for schemes to manipulate an
agent into saying “Yes.” The best scheme is to have a great script, but
there are little ways some writers do increase their chances of getting a
“Yes.”
First, look for new, young agents. Almost every agency has a few
agents who have just moved up from the mailroom, are just starting
out and are therefore more likely to be receptive to new clients. If you
politely ask the secretary, he might just give you the name of the
newest agent. When you call an agency, always be kind to the secretary
or assistants; they have been known to help polite young writers by
giving inside information or moving their scripts to the top of the pile.
There’s a saying in Hollywood, “This week’s secretary is next week’s
agent (or studio head).” Be polite to them now, as they may remember
you later.
Other writers try to get an endorsement. Agents are naturally more
interested in scripts that have been recommended by someone they
know. Young writers in Hollywood are constantly networking,
pressing the flesh, trying to get professional writers, directors and
producers to read and recommend their work to their agents. It can be
hard to find these endorsements because, when someone does
recommend it, he is putting his reputation on the line. But remember,
the least impressive endorsement is that of another writer. Agents
need writers, but don’t listen to them, even those they represent.
Writers are a mysterious and often unruly lot whose lives seem to be
devoted to making life difficult for them. Directors aren’t much better,
unless the director has the power to get a movie made and wants to
make yours. But agents do listen very carefully to producers and
development executives at production houses and studios. Why?
Because agents are sellers and these people are their buyers. So if a
buyer tells the seller, “Hey, I think you should sell this product,” the
seller listens. So if you can get a development person or producer to
read your script—and if they like it—that’s the person to ask for an
introduction to an agent.
Many writers get introduced to agents by hiring an entertainment
attorney first, if they’ve already landed a job that requires a contract to
be worked out; see below for more on lawyers.
Another thing to look for is an agent who has had success with your
particular kind of screenplay. For example, if you’ve written a science-
fiction thriller, go to the movies (or video store) and write down the
name of the writer(s) on this year’s science fiction hits. Next, call the
WGA and ask for the “agency department.” They will connect you with
an assistant who will give you the name of each particular writer’s
agent. You are allowed to ask for only three writer’s agents per day.
Now write a dynamite query to an agent you select, pointing out that
your screenplay may interest her because you share the sensibilities of
another writer she represents.
Does Size Matter?
Big Agencies The advantage to signing with a big agency (WME or
CAA) is that they have clout. The disadvantage is that a young writer
can get lost in the shuffle. Your agent may be too busy with more
important clients to return calls or give you the personal attention you
need.
Packaging Agencies Packaging agencies attempt to attach their
directors and actors to a script and then sell it to a studio as a
“package,” thereby collecting several commissions. If your script meets
the needs of their directors and actors, great; if not, they couldn’t be
less interested. Most big agencies are also packaging agencies.
Boutique Agencies These are smaller agencies that have specialized
in, or are known for, one particular type of writer: those that specialize
in television, or animation, or reality, or indie features--and have
become players in that specific market.
Small Agencies With fewer clients, smaller agencies can give the
writer more personal attention, but they might not have the clout you
need. Be careful not to sign with any agent or agency that is not a
signatory with the WGA. It’s a sure sign that they are either unethical
or ineffective. As a general rule, no agent is better than a bad agent.
Once They Want You
It may take several scripts and a few years, but your persistence and
talent may pay off. When an agency wants you, they will ask you to
sign a contract guaranteeing they are your exclusive agency for a
period of (generally) two years. This exclusivity may be in regard to
writing only, or it may include directing, producing or other kinds of
work. This means they not only represent you in those areas, but will
take 10 percent of whatever you earn in them, too. So if, say, you’re an
established freelance writer for magazines and don’t want to have to
pay the agency a percentage of your earnings from that source, you’ll
want specifically to exclude it in your contract so there’s no ambiguity.
The contract must be carefully read. If you are signing with a WGA
signatory agency—the only kind of agent with whom you should sign—
then you know the agent agrees to follow WGA rules. These are
designed to protect you. (For example, if you sign with a WGA
signatory agency, there must be a ninety-day clause in the contract
stating that if they do not make a sale in ninety days, you can leave the
agency.) If you are not sure if an agency is signatory, call the WGA.
Once you’ve signed with an agent, there is generally a honeymoon
period in which the agent will send you out on various meet-and-greet
or pitch meetings. If you’re lucky enough to sell or option a script, the
agent will take 10 percent and pay a lot of attention to you. Agents
make their living by getting paid a percentage. The standard WGA
approved rate is 10 percent, no more. But if you don’t sell quickly,
well...
Hip-Pocketing Occasionally an agent will “hip-pocket” a young
writer. This means that he will send the script to various producers
and production companies, but he does not sign the writer officially.
In other words, he agrees to market an individual script, not the
writer. When the script comes back rejected, the writer is cut loose, in
the cold, with nothing, not even an agent. Hip-pocketing isn’t all bad;
it will get your script to the readers at various production companies.
But it isn’t the same as having an agent—a person who is pushing for
your success, interested in all your scripts and constantly looking for
an opening where your style, your talent, your writing is exactly what
they’re looking for.
If an agent wants to hip-pocket you, it should be taken as a
compliment—the agent feels that your script is worth sending out. But
you should seriously consider the consequences. If the script is
accepted, the agent will sign you immediately and everyone will live
happily ever after, but if and when the script is rejected (as most
scripts are), you won’t have an agent and often won’t even know where
your script was submitted or who rejected it. The script is now dead
and the writer loses. By the way, agents seldom call it “hip-pocketing;”
this is a writer’s term. If an agent wants to hip-pocket you, he’ll say
something like, “I’d like to send it around, see what happens,” or “Let
me fly it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.” You want them to
say, “I like your writing; I want to sign you.”
Agents—The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
There’s an old joke concerning agents. It goes: One day a young writer
comes home to find his house in flames. He runs up to a fireman and
gasps, “What happened?” The fireman replies, “Your agent came by,
killed your whole family, took your car and set fire to your house.”
Stunned, the writer smiles joyfully and says, “My agent came to my
house?!” Agents have a tendency to be rather remote. Occasionally, a
writer finds an agent who is also a kind, caring friend, but this rare
and special relationship doesn’t occur often. Most agents are all
business, and every moment spent talking to you is one they aren’t
spending talking to someone who might buy something. And even so,
most writers never think their agent is doing enough to sell them. Ask
most writers and they’ll tell you they lined up the majority of their jobs
themselves.
But after all, it’s your career, so you should be active in promoting
it. Get out there. Just because an agent signs you does not mean you’ve
arrived. Agents can’t do it all; they can only open doors for you that
would remain firmly shut without their help. And that’s a lot. But the
writer must still hustle, promote, pitch and, most importantly, write
new scripts.
Managers
A growing alternative to having an agent is getting a manager. Some
writers have both. Managers have long been commonplace for actors
and are supposed to take a more active role in helping their clients
guide and shape their careers. Theoretically, managers can provide the
same access to producers and studios as agents and are in general
more approachable. They will also usually try to help their clients get
agency representation as well. There are some drawbacks, however.
For one thing, they may charge a greater commission (up to 20
percent, although 10 or 15 is more common). For another, because
managers are not required to be WGA signatories, there is more room
for abuse. They are not legally allowed to negotiate deals for their
clients, but many will do so informally. They may require you to hire
an attorney to cut the deal after they’ve made a successful submission,
and this will cost you an additional fee. Also, although agents are not
allowed to attach themselves as producers to their clients’ work, this is
common practice among managers. This means that when submitting
your script, they may present themselves (and their fees as producers)
as being included in the deal. Many agents and producers have
recently created their own management companies and are more open
to new writers for exactly this reason—they can get more out of a
potential sale. And most—though not all—managers will agree not to
charge the writer a commission if they succeed in getting a producer’s
fee of equal or greater value, an arrangement that can be attractive to
the writer. If your manager is powerful and well-connected, he or she
can be a great asset in protecting the project in their role as producer.
But more often than not, the potential buyer will view their
attachment (and fees) as unwanted “baggage;” the buyer may want to
get the script without any encumbrance and be free to produce it
themselves or attach another producer of their choice. With this
caveat, in today’s extremely difficult and competitive market, a
manager may be your best alternative when seeking representation.
Lawyers
Another common alternative (or addition) to getting an agent or
manager is to hire an entertainment attorney. Attorneys can be hired
for an hourly fee or for a 5 percent commission of anything you sell.
Some attorneys will act as surrogate agents and charge the agent’s 10
percent. Since they are legally empowered to negotiate contracts and
deals, and are also somewhat more approachable (because it’s a simple
business relationship), they may be a good way to enter the business.
They can also provide access to the buyers (though usually on a more
limited basis, since agenting is not their primary activity and they’ll
have fewer contacts and less time to devote to it) and they’ll try to help
you get an agent if you want. At some point, you’re going to need an
attorney anyway, since even agents will want to have them look over
the complex legal documents attending any script purchase. Only big
agencies use their own legal staff. So this is another attractive gateway
to representation.
PRODUCTION COMPANIES
We aren’t going to talk much about the studios or “mini-majors”
(large, independent production companies that are either owned by or
associated with one or more of the studios), because these are largely
inaccessible to anyone without good representation; and if you’ve got
an agent or manager, they’ll help you to navigate those waters.
But there are also a host of small independent companies, or
“indies.” This is both good news and bad news. While the ability of the
independents to produce and distribute films waxes and wanes on a
cyclical basis over the years, with some managing to carve out a niche
for themselves and stay afloat, most are in business for just a year or
two until their financing runs out. Most of these companies produce
very low-budget films and are not Guild signatories, which means that
they are not bound by WGA standards of payment or other obligation.
They are much more open to new writers, and many young
screenwriters get their start this way, but usually these companies try
to acquire scripts for as little as possible. For example, it’s common for
them to offer to pay one dollar to option the rights (see below) to the
script for a year; and even if the movie is produced (full payment for
the screenplay usually happens at the start of principal photography,
when the cameras are actually rolling), the writer may make only
several thousand dollars. Collecting residuals is almost unheard of,
again because they do not have to abide by Guild rules on ancillary
payments (such as video sales). Roger Corman was famous for
underpaying—but giving a break to—many beginning filmmakers,
some of whom went on to become very famous (such as Jim
Cameron).
But this is rare, and the world has changed. It used to be possible to
theatrically distribute marginal films in the days before cineplexes and
then to sell them to a product-hungry video market. But now the
major distributors have a virtual lock on the theaters and the video
market is glutted. So most small companies struggle, trying now to
figure out how to make money over the internet, and most do not
survive. However, with cable and satellite and some growing
sophistication on how to monetize websites, there are still
opportunities out there.
There are basically three kinds of independent production
companies:
Art House
One is the art house company, which produces eclectic, higher quality,
low- budget films aimed at the festival circuit and theaters specializing
in the unusual or offbeat. Most of these companies concentrate on
acquiring finished films that have been privately financed, but they do
occasionally finance films themselves. They are also reasonably
approachable, but have very little money and are extremely picky. If
they buy your script you’ll get peanuts, but if the film is made it’ll
probably be something you’ll be proud of.
Exploitation
The second type is the exploitation company. Exploitation means they
exploit a certain well-worn genre, such as horror, violent action or
erotic thrillers. Again, these are produced nonunion and on a
shoestring, as movies go, and the producers have no intention or
illusion of creating quality films. They simply provide salable product
to cable, video and the foreign market, which has a surprisingly large
appetite for junk. These companies will also pay you peanuts and the
product will reflect the quality of what they buy. (Hint: They’re not
looking for art, just for inexpensive-to-make formula scripts.)
Cable and Television
The third kind of independent feeds the better cable networks. These
companies produce a wide range of films and limited series exclusively
for television. The range of quality is equally wide, but the pay is
better, because most of them are Guild signatories. However, they are
rarely, if ever, open to new writers, preferring to work with
experienced writers who are on approved network or cable lists. It can
happen that you’ll sell them an original script, but more often they’ll
buy an idea or the rights to a story and hire someone else to write it.
Release Forms
If your script is not being submitted by an agent, you’ll almost always
be asked to sign a release form. This is a short contract that basically
says you give the producers permission to read your work, that they
are not responsible should the script be stolen, lost or destroyed in
transit, that there is no implied obligation to you of any kind, and that
you will not sue them if they produce something similar. (They need to
protect themselves before they even take a look at your story, because
they may have a similar story in development.) Release forms are
standard operating procedure. Read the contract, and if you are
comfortable, then sign. Probably you won’t be, but if you don’t sign,
they won’t read your script. It’s that simple.
Purchases, Options and the Right to Shop
While this isn’t a book about the details of selling your script, you
should be aware of the three basic approaches a producer has to
acquiring material (screenplays). First, and least common, is an
outright purchase, negotiated with your agent or lawyer and involving
a whole raft of clauses devoted not only to the purchase price, but to
secondary payments such as residuals or performance bonuses, the
potential to write a sequel, scales of payment if the movie is used as
the basis of a TV series, and so on. It’s very rare to sell a script outright
except to a studio, because it’s a large initial outlay of money that the
producer either may not have or may want to devote to overhead and
organizing pre-production of the film. And even studios like to hedge
their bets.
It used to be more common for a producer or studio to option the
screenplay for a percentage of an agreed-upon purchase price, but this
is rare now. If your script is optioned, WGA signatories must pay at
least 10 percent of the basic minimum purchase price. What this
means is that for a certain period of time (usually one year or eighteen
months) and a small fraction of the purchase price, the producer
essentially owns the rights to the screenplay; more precisely, the
producer owns an exclusive option to buy those rights and can
therefore pursue other financing or stars and directors without
worrying about having the script “shopped around” by anyone else.
This makes good sense from their point of view, because even after
laying out money for the option, the producer or studio knows that,
more often than not, the film will not be made. So it’s better to spend a
smaller sum on the gamble.
The eventual purchase price of the script is often not fixed, but tied
to the production budget of the film, with a “floor” and a “ceiling.” For
instance, you might be paid a $10,000 option toward a purchase price
equaling 3 percent of the production budget, but with a floor of
$100,000, meaning they will not pay any less than this (even if 3
percent of the eventual budget is less than this), and a ceiling of, say,
$300,000, meaning they will not pay more than this (even if 3 percent
of the eventual budget is higher). Most scripts are bought for between
2 percent and 5 percent of the budget. Sometimes, to sweeten the deal,
a bonus clause will be added to promise the writer some more money
if the budget is enormously higher than anticipated, or if the profits
are. Payment does not commence when the film is green-lighted, or
approved for production, but upon “principal photography,” meaning
when the cameras are actually rolling.
Producers and studios know that anything can go wrong, right up
to the last day before production begins (and sometimes after), so they
still hedge their bets. Normally, there is a negotiated right to renew the
option for another period of time, for an additional option payment.
The first option payment is commonly additional to the purchase price
(so the writer eventually will get 110 percent of the purchase), with any
subsequent option payments being applied toward it.
Nowadays, with the escalating costs of movies and the glut of
screenplays, an interesting change has been taking place.
Straightforward, 10 percent options have become a rarity. Rather, if a
studio or major producer perceives a screenplay to be an obvious
blockbuster, they’ll “option” it for perhaps 75 percent of the final price,
with the remaining 25 percent being paid upon principal photography
to seal the purchase. Although it’s not an outright purchase, it’s a large
enough upfront percentage to persuade the writer to accept the offer,
while still somewhat reducing the studio’s exposure. Conversely, if the
script is something a producer (not a studio) wants to try and make,
but doesn’t perceive as a surefire home run, these days he’ll simply ask
your agent for permission to “shop it around”—for free. Often an agent
will give several producers the right to shop, each one limited to
bringing it to a particular studio with which they have a deal or good
relationship. No purchase price is suggested or negotiated; it’s all left
up in the air until one of the studios bites. While some producers will
still option a script if they want to bring it around to all the studios and
other financing sources without competition, most—who realistically
have only a few places to take it—much prefer not having to pay at all
for the right to do so. This growing practice has meant that fewer and
fewer writers get the small, but still significant, payments that options
used to provide.
NETWORKING
Networking is more than just schmoozing, it’s the art of meeting
people and being in the right place at the right time. Everyone knows
someone who knows someone else who just happens to be the perfect
contact. Networking means keeping an organized log of every person
in the industry you have ever met (including descriptions, so you can
later put a face to the name), sending out holiday and thank-you cards,
never turning down a party invitation, never leaving a bar mitzvah
without someone’s business card, staying after and meeting the guest
speaker at seminars, taking classes, making contacts and creating
opportunities. In short, networking is treating your screenwriting
career as a business and your social life as an aspect of it.
There are a few general rules when networking. First, never seem
desperate or overconfident. We know that’s easier said than done, but
people in this high-stakes, high-stress business are suspicious of the
latter and detest the former. Remember, you’re just a good writer with
a good idea. Let your own personality and wonderful short pitch speak
for themselves. Desperate writers are like the homeless guy begging
for change that you wish would just go away. Overconfident writers
are obnoxious, overwhelming and suspect. So don’t slam into that
startled producer with, “I’ve got the best script you’ve ever seen, a lot
better than that piece of crap chick-flick that came out last week.” For
one thing, you come off as a jerk. For another, this guy might have
produced that chick-flick. Which leads us to...
Knowledge Is Power
Listen before you speak; find out about the people you’re meeting, get
to know them and their work. You must be up on who’s who in
Hollywood. It is imperative that you subscribe to and study the trade
magazines and websites—Variety, The Hollywood Reporter,
donedeal.com and deadline.com (any or all of which might have gone
out of business or been replaced by the time you’re reading this); in
short, the daily industry journals known as “the trades.” These are
where the subtle seismic shifts in the business are noted on a day-to-
day basis: which company bought which script, who brokered the deal,
which development exec has moved from one company to another.
These are far more important than knowing the weekend grosses or
your favorite actor’s intimate thoughts on love and dieting. At first it
will all seem like gibberish, a bunch of names and companies that
mean nothing to you. But as you clip and note those that are making
the kinds of films you’d like to make and that seem to be attracted to
your kind of material, you’ll begin to see that in the ever-flowing, ever-
changing currents of Hollywood, the same major players keep
cropping up again and again. These are the people who will hopefully
be your colleagues and buyers. The trades also publish constantly
updated lists of movies and TV shows in or going into production, lists
that can be enormously valuable. Say you are about to sit down and
write that great Joan of Arc script, when you open Variety and see that
not one, not two, but four Joan projects are in active development or
production. Still think that’s how you want to spend the next six
months of your life? Get to know the names, know what’s going on. At
a recent Hollywood party, a gentleman walked up to an Academy
Award–winning actress and asked her if she had ever been in a movie.
This is not a good opening line when you want to get a script read.
Remember, however, not to overdo it when introducing yourself.
You want to keep your name in their memory, but you want that
memory to be positive. It’s a good idea to send out thank-you cards
and follow-up correspondence, but some writers go too far and end up
defeating themselves. One writer we know sends out a bi-monthly
newsletter to keep everyone he has ever met informed of his progress.
Mom and Dad are thrilled, but for others it has become an
embarrassment.
Also, never make excuses for your script. You’re at a party, you
meet a producer, you start talking about your script. You say, “I don’t
know, it’s sorta not ready yet, and not very good, but would you read
it?” How appealing! Busy producers just can’t wait to read something
that isn’t finished and is not very good. The meek may inherit the
earth, but they don’t sell screenplays.
Finally, networking can be done almost anywhere connections are
made, at the laundry, the gym, funerals, but you’re obviously more
likely to find success if you live where the action is—Hollywood. But, in
the end, networking is no substitute for writing a great script. Once
you’ve met the right person, you must have the right product.
Networking on the WWW and in Magazines
There are organizations, magazines and sites on the internet that allow
screenwriters to pitch or even upload parts of their scripts—for a price.
The idea is that producers and agents will read these showcased ideas
and request the full script. Some organizations claim incredible
success rates for screenwriters who subscribe to their particular
service. The only problem with pitching your screenplay on these open
billboards is that anyone can see them (the loglines at any rate, if not
the entire scripts). The writer has no record of who has read the idea,
what they thought, or who might lift the idea. Remember, ideas cannot
be copyrighted. Secondly, you’re paying for this access. It might be
worth it, but then again these sites are run by people who make their
money by signing up subscribers—not by selling scripts. Before you
subscribe to one of these services, be sure to check them out and know
the risks. And do some homework; investigate to be sure their claims
are accurate.
Don’t Get Hustled!
Perhaps the best word of advice we can give you is this: Don’t do any
work for anyone else for free (unless you have a long, pre-existing and
productive relationship with that person). If you’re a member of the
WGA, you are forbidden to do free work for producers, and signatory
producers are prohibited from asking you to. But in the course of
meeting people in Hollywood, you will inevitably come across would-
be producers who have a killer idea they’d like you to work on with
them. The pitch is something like this: “Listen, you sound like
someone I’d like to work with. I’ve got this great story (fill in the story)
and I have a hot actor (or financier, distributor, director) who is really,
really interested. And I have half the money in place. But I need a
screenplay (or treatment) to clinch the deal. So won’t you sit down
and write it for me? I can’t pay you anything now, but we can work out
a good back-end arrangement.” Back-end means you don’t get paid
until the movie is actually financed or, more often, actually produced.
This is a great thing if the film is already greenlit, and many stars and
top directors will take lower upfront fees if they’re guaranteed a high
percentage of the film’s earnings. But what it almost always means
with these hustlers is that you’ll never see a dime, because their
contacts are tenuous or nonexistent. They’re all hoping to come up
with something they can sell, and they’re only too happy to ask you to
spend months of your life giving it to them. They will present
themselves as extremely real, well-connected and on the verge of huge
success, and you will be very tempted. They seem bright, honest,
aggressive...what if this is your chance? It isn’t, ever. If you agree to
write something for them based on their story, they and not you will
control the rights to it because they own the underlying material, and
so you can’t even try to sell the script when their contacts dry up and
the house of cards they’re building falls apart. Instead, spend the time
writing your own screenplay.
The same goes for doing free rewrites for producers who have
optioned or bought your screenplay (again, this is expressly prohibited
for WGA writers and signatory producers, but that doesn’t mean they
won’t occasionally ask). Usually a purchase price will include a set of
rewrites and a polish as part of the deal. But if a rewrite isn’t in your
contract, don’t do it unless you’re paid. You’ll feel guilty and obligated
—after all, they did pay you something, and you want to be a team
player—but you must resist. Hollywood often seems to run on guilt.
But if a producer is for real, he’ll pay for any additional work. If he
doesn’t want to, then be grateful for what you’ve already made, politely
tell him you’d love to rewrite it if in the future he’s willing to pay you to
do so, and move on. Your time and your skills have value—so value
them.
FILM SCHOOLS
It may seem odd to include film schools in a chapter on marketing, but
in fact they are trade schools and geared to help you enter the
business. Film schools came into prominence in the 1970s when a
group of alumni suddenly hit it big. The success of Francis Ford
Coppola (UCLA), Steven Spielberg (Cal State Long Beach), George
Lucas (USC) and many others put film schools on the map. Today, the
competition to get into them is fierce. The number of schools offering
degrees has doubled and doubled again, but so have the number of
people wanting to attend. Most major film schools have hundreds of
applications for only a few dozen positions. A list of film schools is
located in Appendix D, but on everyone’s list of top films schools are:
UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles)
USC (University of Southern California)
NYU (New York University)
Columbia University
Chapman University
Florida State University
We used to include AFI (the American Film Institute) on this list, but
recently it’s been so wracked by staff and faculty turnover and internal
problems that we can only now recommend it with the warning that
you check it out very carefully and be sure you know with whom you’ll
be studying and what you’ll be getting out of the experience. Come to
think of it, however, that’s not bad advice no matter where you’re
thinking of applying. We also, perhaps immodestly, would recommend
the writing programs where we teach, at the University of California,
Riverside, and the University of Wyoming.
Most major film schools offer an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in
directing, criticism and screenwriting (each usually as a separate
degree program). These degrees take two to three years to earn. Film
school can be expensive, but it offers screenwriters an opportunity to
spend several years perfecting their craft by studying with other
screenwriters; at the better schools, these are almost without
exception seasoned industry professionals. Film school graduates do
have an edge in Hollywood. Not only do agents actively look for new
graduates, but graduates tend to be well-connected, as their years in
school are also spent networking with current and future players in the
industry. Film school isn’t a replacement for talent and luck (in fact,
you’ll need both just to get in to any of the five schools listed above),
but if you get into a film school, your road to success may be a lot
easier.
FINAL THOUGHTS
That’s Showbiz There’s an old saying that screenwriters succeed not
by ability, but by persistence. They don’t fail, they quit. And most of
them do quit, even after going to film school, figuring (correctly) that
there must be easier ways of making a living. It’s tough; no matter how
hard you work at it, rejection is an integral part of being a
screenwriter. Lots and lots of rejection. You may write ten or fifteen
scripts for every one you sell, and you’ll probably have that one
rejected by dozens of companies before it finds a home. And that’s
only if you manage to get an agent—the rejection process starts long
before you get that far. One reader will call you brilliant, the next will
label you an amateur, without any apparent rhyme or reason. You’ll
have to learn to deal with it and keep going. There are two reasons a
screenplay doesn’t sell; the script isn’t good enough or the script can’t
find its market. The blame for the former is the writer’s alone, of
course. But even though blame for the latter can be laid at many
doorsteps, it’s still up to the writer to advance his or her own career
and see that the script gets to the proper people. A writer in Hollywood
must be part artist, part real-estate salesman. First you must build the
property, and then you must sell it.
For a list of books on how to market your script see Appendix B.
EXERCISE
Write a query letter to an agent, pitching yourself and your screenplay.
Read it aloud to your class and see how your fellow students respond
to it.
16
The Pitch
“Godzilla” Meets “Titanic”
“... it’s totally high-concept! The big crazy lizard wrecks the ship in an
act of insane rage—but then he falls in love with this beautiful chick
who’s actually a herpetologist—what? No, it doesn’t mean she has
herpes, it means she studies reptiles—and together they end up saving
everybody—even though the lizard dies facing off against the
sharks...or DOES HE?! It’s four-quadrant with huge tentpole and
sequel potential!” Okay...so what does that all mean? “High concept”
means there’s a clear, simple premise that will hook a large audience.
Obviously the writer is drawing upon two big, well-known movies to
sell his idea. “Four-quadrant” means it will appeal to every “quadrant”
of the audience: old, young, male and female. A “tentpole” is a huge
blockbuster that may support the studio even if all its other, less high-
concept movies fail. And obviously if it’s that successful, it should be
designed to spawn a line of sequels. But let’s take a step back and look
at what we’re doing here.
“Pitching” means going to a producer’s office and telling them a
story idea you hope they’ll buy. It’s selling ideas rather than scripts. If
a producer likes your spec script, they might invite you in for a meet-
and-greet and ask you to pitch a few of your story ideas. If the
producer likes an idea, she might buy it and hire you to write it.
However, sometimes the producer buys it and hires another writer to
write it. Pitching is a common way to get a job in television, but it only
accounts for a small percent of movie sales; for information on
pitching for television, see Chapter 17). Even with such a small
percentage of sales based on pitches, taking meetings and pitching is
still a regular practice for Hollywood writers.
TO PITCH OR NOT TO PITCH
There are basically two schools of thought about pitching. School One:
It’s a worthless waste of time and energy that could be better spent
actually writing a script, instead of talking about what you’d like to
write. Some writers feel that talking about their story actually drains
the psychic energy from it, so that it becomes stale and flaccid before
there’s a chance to capture its essential juices on paper. School Two:
Pitching is an essential way to try to sell more story ideas than you’d
ever have time to sit down and actually spec. Also, far from draining
your story, telling it again and again helps to refine it, and forces you
to address problems that may arise. Hey, it sure didn’t hurt Homer;
the Iliad and Odyssey where both spoken poems before they were ever
written down.
We come down in the latter camp. Yeah, we know that many
writers are shy, delicate creatures who may rupture an artery if put in
a room and forced to talk to people. They’re wonders on the page, but
incapable of condensing their long narratives into easily digested
verbal presentations. We know many producers who feel that writers
are often the worst people to pitch their own stories for that very
reason. But that doesn’t change the fact that pitching is a valuable tool
in a competitive business where every advantage must be pursued.
And if you’re hoping to write for television you simply cannot avoid
pitching, because it’s how that market works (see Chapter 17). So no
matter what your reservations, our advice is to get over them, suck it
up and get out there. Here’s why:
More Irons in the Fire
It takes a minimum of several months to complete a screenplay worth
sending out. The most prolific writers rarely manage as many as four
scripts a year; most are happy if they complete two. But most also have
many other good ideas in reserve, and Hollywood buys ideas, as well
as finished screenplays. If you don’t want to sit on those ideas until
you have time to write them (some time in the next decade) then
there’s only one way to see if someone might want to buy them. You
have to go out and pitch. In fact, there are those (like the legendary
Bob Kosberg) who do nothing but sell pitches to studios, attaching
themselves as producers, while farming the stories out to other writers
who actually write the screenplays. Such pitch-meisters may sell up to
a dozen stories a year. So, if you’re good at it, pitching can be the most
time-efficient way to get paid for your stories. Of course, as a writer
you’d probably want to write the story you’re pitching yourself, and
while a pitch usually doesn’t sell for as much as a completed script—
it’s still just an idea that the script may or may not be able to deliver—
it’s nice to be writing for real money right up front.
Know and Be Known
It’s important to make yourself known to those who are in a position
to buy your material and to advance your career. Film is a social
business—who you know and who knows you are important. So if a
producer or development executive can attach a friendly, intelligent
person to that otherwise faceless screenplay submission, you’re in a
stronger position to be remembered and considered. Most agents want
their writers to have a pitch to go out with along with a new spec
screenplay submission so that if the producer likes the writing, but
doesn’t go for the script, he or she might buy another story from the
same writer. Some agents have their writers actually pitch their
completed screenplays while submitting them, to ensure that the busy
producer or development exec will remember this particular project
and writer.
Who Wants What?
By getting out and meeting people, you’ll also get a much better sense
of what the buyers are looking for. You need to follow your own muse
and be true to your personal vision, but if you want to sell, you also
need to know what people want to buy. There are trends and currents
in the business, a general sense that “teen comedies are going to be hot
next year” or “big-budget action films are losing steam.” You can tap
into these trends only by talking with people who swim in these
currents. You might learn that you’d be better off developing that
romantic comedy and letting that period drama you were about to
spend six months writing sit for a while. You’ll also certainly get a
better sense of the individual tastes of the people you’re meeting for
future reference.
Say It Again, Sam
Pitching is a great way to refine your outline. When you tell somebody
a story, you quickly become aware of what feels essential and
entertaining and what feels like it’s off the point, dragging or slowing
the story down. You may find that you never seem to recount scenes or
whole sections that you’ve put into your outline; if so, there’s a good
chance you won’t need those scenes or sections in your screenplay.
You may discover that you need to know more about your story’s
world, or that you don’t really know why your characters are doing
what they’re doing. When you tell someone a story, character
motivations or their absence become much more obvious. So do
problems with theme, event sequences, even lines of dialogue. A good
producer or executive will often ask hard questions that you may not
have thought about. That doesn’t mean you won’t need to answer them
sooner or later. Far from draining the energy from your story, pitching
it can hone, reinforce and revitalize it in ways you might never have
accomplished had you never gone and tried it out on somebody.
Don’t Waste Your Time
The worst waste of time for a screenwriter is writing a screenplay no
one wants. You probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s valuable
advice. If you eventually find that no one seems interested in the story
you’re pitching— because it actually isn’t that interesting a story—
you’ll have saved yourself months of time you would have spent
writing it. We don’t mean that you should lose confidence after the
first “no thanks”; take it around to everyone who’ll agree to hear it. But
if you’re getting nowhere—especially if the reasons for your story being
rejected seem consistent from meeting to meeting—then you should
seriously think about pursuing a different story. There’s an old
expression which goes, “If everyone tells you you’re drunk, you’re
drunk.”
Of course, those who’ve failed to respond to your story may all be
wrong, and if you truly believe in it so strongly that you simply can’t let
go of it, then you should write it anyway. It may come across much
better on the page than in the pitch. You may not be capable of
pitching as well as you write. But you need to hear what the people to
whom you’re pitching are saying. They are your buyers and, if they
aren’t buying, you need to re-evaluate what you’re selling. You may
resent this paragraph now, thinking we’re crassly telling you to
abandon your original vision. We’re not. But the fact remains that your
screenplay must appeal to a very limited group of people and, if it
doesn’t, after all the hard work you’ve done to write it, it will simply
end up occupying space in a drawer or on your computer hard drive.
We promise you that at that point you’ll remember this section and
wish you’d paid attention.
One Is the Loneliest Number
Last, but not least: writing is the loneliest part of the filmmaking
business. You are the only one who sits in a room by yourself, month
after month, trying to create a new world that, hopefully, will be
translated into a movie. If you want to feel connected to the world
outside—the one you’ve chosen to live in—and to the people who may
actually bring your written world to the screen, then you need to get
out and meet them.
GETTING IN THE DOOR
Without an agent, getting a pitch is hard, just as it’s hard to get a
producer to read your script without an agent or some other
meaningful introduction. Your agent, if you have one, will set up the
pitch with the executive highest up the ladder that is possible to reach
(see Chapter 15 on getting an agent). If you don’t have an agent,
however, all is not lost. You just have to look a few rungs lower on the
ladder. Do some homework: learn which companies seem to be
producing which kinds of movies. By companies, we mean production
companies, not the major studios themselves. Studio executives
usually only take pitches from well-known writers with whom they
already want to do business. Production companies—often with studio
deals and offices on the studio lots—are where most new material is
found and generated. So look for the names of these production
companies in the credits of recent movies that are in the ballpark of
your story type. Get a subscription to IMDBPro.com or
www.donedealpro.com and learn who is the production company’s
“Director of Development” or “Creative Executive.” Disregard anyone
with a “Vice President” or “President” title, unless they’re the only one
listed at the company with a “development” or “creative” tag. They’re
usually too high up the ladder to consider meeting with an
unrepresented writer. What you want is someone young, hungry and
accessible.
Once you’ve got a name, do some more homework: what else has
the company produced? Lots of info is available at the above sites and
elsewhere on the internet. Visit last year’s online archives from
Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ (as of this moment—these
sites are bound to change, so stay current by doing your own searches)
for references to the company and to the person you’re hoping to meet.
See if that individual has expressed a particular story preference in
print, or if the person’s boss has. Knowledge is power, so learn all you
can about your prospective buyer. Usually, this will be a bright twenty-
something who is working at his first or second job, and who is full of
energy and passion to find the undiscovered project that will impress
his boss and make his career.
When you’ve done your homework, call that person and see if he
will meet with you. Your phone call should be brief and to the point.
Let’s say you’re approaching John Smith, the Director of Development
at Hot Tamale Pictures, on the Foxx lot. You’ve found his email and/or
phone number and are ready to get in touch. Email is the easiest and
least traumatic way to go about it, if you’re timid. But calling has its
advantages: When talking to a real person (you), the secretary or
assistant on the other end of the line (them) can’t simply hit “delete”
and may in fact display a glimmer of humanity by giving you a chance.
First of all, don’t call at 9:00 a.m. No one gets to the office in
Hollywood before 10:00. Then they’re usually in meetings until
around noon. Lunch is between 1:00 and 3:00, so call between noon
and one, or after three. A secretary or assistant will answer. The
conversation will go something like this:
SECRETARY
Hello, Hot Tamale Pictures, please
hold.
(five minutes go by)

SECRETARY
Hello, can I help you?
YOU
Yes, my name is Jim Beam. I’d like
to speak with John Smith, please.
SECRETARY
Will he know what this is regarding?
(Uh-oh, the first roadblock. If you’re old enough, you suddenly

remember old Saturday Night Live routines with David Spade as the
obnoxious assistant: “And you are...?” That’s okay, just take a deep
breath and continue.)
YOU
No. But I’m a screenwriter, and I’d
like to talk with him about setting
up a pitch meeting.
(If you were referred to him personally by someone you know, state
that now, as well).
SECRETARY
I see. Please hold.
(Then, after another five minutes, you’ll either be connected, or asked

to leave your number so John can call you back. The latter is more
likely. At the end of the day, or the end of the week, after all his more
important calls have been made, John will call.)
YOU
(answering the phone)
Hello, Jim Beam here.
JOHN
Hi, this is John Smith from Hot
Tamale Pictures. Returning your
call.
YOU
Oh, hi, John!
(Yes, call him by his first name; only a total newbie would say “Mr.
Smith.”)
YOU
The reason I called is that I loved
Hot Tamales’ last film, The Big Hoo-
Hah, and I have a story I’d like to
pitch along those lines.
JOHN
Oh, really? Do you have an agent?
(Another, perhaps fatal roadblock. But not necessarily. You knew he’d
ask, so you’re prepared. As prepared as you can be. Contain that
nervous chuckle and push on.)
YOU
No, not at the moment. But I do know
(fill in the blank if there’s anyone
even conceivably known to this
person) who thought I should bring
my pitch in to you; he/she speaks
most highly of you.
(This is, of course, probably a lie. He knows it, you know it, but it’s still
a nice touch. Try not to make it too much of a lie, since he may call you
on it.)
YOU
John, I know you must be very busy,
but I’d love to have a chance to
come in and pitch you my story. I
really believe it’s something Hot
Tamale might like.
At this point, John will either tell you they don’t take unsolicited
pitches, or he’ll ask you for a brief description of your story. Have this
prepared, written out in front of you if you need to. Don’t stammer,
denigrate it, mumble or make excuses. Keep it to one sentence, two at
the most, and make it sound like the greatest thing he’s going to hear
this year, or any other. If you sound intelligent, reasonable and
enthusiastic, without being desperate, John will chew his eraser for a
second or two, then probably decide he might as well meet you—who
knows, you might really have something, and it’ll help fill his calendar.
If you have a choice, schedule your appointment early. Avoid late
afternoon, when John will be tired, behind schedule and cranky
because he’s anxious to get out of there. Most likely, you’ll be given a
5:30 p.m. slot.
Okay, you’ve got your appointment, next Thursday. Time to get to
work. Although John may have slotted you in for half an hour or even
forty-five minutes, in fact you’ll have about ten minutes of grace time
(roughly equivalent to the first ten pages rule, see Chapter 10) to catch
his interest. After that, he’ll either find a way to excuse himself and get
rid of you, or he’ll want to hear more. What you need to come up with
versions of your story: a short pitch to hook him, and a longer pitch,
richer in detail, in case the short one works and you get that far.
How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice!
Before you go to your meeting, be sure to practice your pitch on
everyone who will tolerate you, friends, family, and especially people
who are in the business and can give you informed opinions. Don’t be
defensive: listen. Are you taking too long to get to the point? Are you
confusing them? Are you maintaining eye contact and confident sense
of your story, or are you mumbling into your navel? Does your story
make sense? Are your characters interesting and consistent? Are there
plot holes, where the logic falls apart? Try to locate and solve as many
of these problems as you can (in effect, you’re re-outlining your story).
You won’t catch them all, but you’ll greatly improve your pitch going
in. By the way, if you find that you keep losing your place or having to
backtrack to fill in details you forgot to mention, it’s a good sign that
your scenes don’t grow naturally and inevitably out of each other, that
your story may be too episodic (see Chapters 7 and 8), or that you
simply don’t know your story well enough to pitch it yet. Don’t go into
a meeting unless and until you know your pitch cold.
Anatomy of a Pitch Meeting
Pitch meetings only seem informal. In fact, they are ritualized
performances that follow roughly the same script every time. First of
all, you want to look right. Writers in Hollywood dress with studied
casualness.
Next, be punctual, in case John is ready to see you at the appointed
time (he won’t be, but miracles do happen), so plan to get there in
plenty of time to enter the studio lot and find parking. John or his
assistant will have told you on the phone how to get onto the studio
lot, and that they’ll have a pass waiting for you at the guard gate.
However, they may forget or the computers may be down, and the
guard will have to call in and confirm your appointment. The guard
will hand you a pass and tell you where to park. Since you’re a nobody,
you’ll probably have to park in a visitor area a good ten-minute walk
away from the office you’re going to, so plan for it.
Once you arrive at the proper office and identify yourself, an
assistant—perhaps the one you spoke with—will tell you that John’s
running just a few minutes late, but will be right with you. You’ll be
offered a seat in the waiting area and something to drink. By all means
accept it, even if you’re not thirsty. It’ll help calm your nerves and give
you something to do while you wait. But keep it simple. Don’t ask for a
can of peach nectar, just a Coke or water or coffee. But don’t drink it
all, keep some for the meeting. For one thing, you don’t want the call
of nature suddenly interrupting you. More importantly, your drink is a
prop. More on this in a moment.
After between ten and twenty-five minutes (depending on how
important you’re perceived to be), either an assistant or John himself
will appear, apologize for the delay, then lead you back to his office.
Usually John’s assistant will join you. This person is there to take
notes and will rarely speak. Don’t let it get to you. Take a comfortable
seat that isn’t facing a window, so you won’t have to squint to read
John’s expression as you tell your story. Avoid the deep leather couch,
because you’ll sink in and feel silly.
There are a requisite four or five minutes of chitchat, during which
you praise the view from his office as well as the last film Hot Tamale
produced, and John apologizes for the messy state of his office (they’re
in the process of moving) and finds out a little more about you. You
might want to ask (if you’ve learned a bit about him) how he likes the
change from Cold Fish Productions, where he used to work. He’ll be
flattered that you’ve followed his career, such as it is, and may be more
receptive. Then he’ll say something like, “So what have you got?” It’s
time to pitch. Start off with your short one.
The Short Pitch A short pitch clocks in at not more than ten
minutes. There are differences of opinion as to how a writer should
approach this. Some feel that you should just dive into some early,
exciting moment in the story, without any hint as to where you’re
going; the mystery itself will engage interest. Others, including the
authors of this book, feel that producers and executives take pitches
because they want to know what your story is and anything you can do
to help them follow the narrative is a good thing. So we advocate
beginning your pitch by telling them what genre it’s in, and perhaps
identifying a couple of other (successful) films that it might resemble,
as per the example that led off this chapter—but obviously better
thought out. This may seem almost cartoonishly hackneyed, but it’s
how producers generally lock onto a new idea. For instance: “My story,
High Tide, is a futuristic action- thriller set in the world of the Coast
Guard’s drug interdiction operations in the Caribbean. It’s kind of like
The French Connection meets To Have and Have Not.” (These are
very old references and if you can find more recent ones, use them—
for instance, you might try: “It’s kind of like Avatar meets Fast Five,
set in an alien paradise a lot like the Caribbean.” But stick to old
classics if they’re the best comparisons you have.)
Then go into a brief, visual description of your exciting opening,
complete with a brief, visual description of your exciting hero,
antagonist and central conflict. It’s okay to refer to major stars that
you think might be perfect for the role—especially if your research has
told you that this company is looking for a “vehicle” for a certain movie
star. You’d never want to do this in your screenplay, but in a
conversational pitch it can be useful. Then outline the general course
of the story, stopping to highlight two or three more of your most
exciting scenes with a brief, visual description (getting the point?), and
perhaps a few cool lines of dialogue, if you’ve got them.
When you pitch the story you should be passionate. There is no rule
that says you have to stay seated; some writers get up and pace the
room as they sell the story. They are moved by the spirit of the
characters as the story’s dramatic tension manifests itself within them.
It’s a performance. Some writers in Hollywood actually take acting
classes so that they can learn how to tell a wonderful exciting story.
Whichever way you tell the story, the one thing you don’t want to be is
boring.
Until you become practiced at pitching, you’re going to be nervous,
and you may get lost in your story. You should always have a small crib
sheet with a list of a few key words written down so you don’t lose the
thread of your story. By the way, this is where your drink may come in
handy. If you do lose your place, pause to clear your throat and take a
sip of your Coke or coffee—just enough to recapture the thread and get
back on track. Or, your throat may just be dry.
Throughout, maintain eye contact with the person or people to
whom you’re pitching. First of all, you’re telling them a story and want
to keep them interested. Secondly, you can see if their attention is
flagging, if their eyes are drifting off to that report they still need to
write, or if they’re checking their watches in anticipation of clocking
out. If that’s what you see, you’re being too windy—and probably
you’ve gone longer than ten minutes. So cut out anything but the most
exciting, salient parts of your story and try to reel them back in. Then
bring it to a dramatic, satisfyingly emotional conclusion—emotional in
that you focus on how your central characters end up. You may also
want to include some reference to the thematic point of the story and
how your protagonist’s journey exemplifies it.
Here is an example of one writer’s pitch that worked. In this case,
he dove right in.
JOHN THE PRODUCER
(on the phone.)
Hold my calls. Thanks.
WRITER
We come up on a Porsche. In the
passenger seat is Brad (Johnny
Depp). The driver is a woman who’s
not good enough for him- -too many
Abraham Lincoln moles. He says
“Shall we do it?” She agrees, starts
up the car and drives into a huge,
gated estate. Inside we find the
library and the girl’s old fart
father behind a tank of a desk. He
asks his daughter to step outside,
he wants to have a private word with
Brad. Once she leaves, he says,
“You’re not going to marry my
daughter.” Brad argues, “I’ve asked
her to marry me, she loves me.” The
old man takes 20,000 dollars out of
the desk and spreads it out in front
of Brad; “You’re not going to marry
my daughter.” Brad’s totally
insulted; “She’s old enough, we
don’t need your permission.” Another
20,000 is added to the pile. Brad is
more righteous, “How dare you sir!
You can’t buy love!” The old man
shoves another heap of bills onto
the pile; “You’re not going to marry
my daughter.” Brad looks at the
mountain of bills, glances out to
the cobblestone drive, thinks a
moment and says, “Throw in the
Porsche.” Cut to the autumn leaves
flying as Brad Hawk pulls out of
town in the Porsche.
The phone rings. John answers. The writer

waits five minutes.
JOHN
Sorry about that. Go on.
WRITER
This is a movie about a handsome kid
who’s got the perfect con ... he
goes into a town, finds the richest
girl, gets her to fall in love with
him, makes sure the parents hate him
and gets paid off not to marry into
the family. It’s Don Juan DeMarco
meets The Music Man.
The phone rings again. John curses, then

answers. The Writer knows he’s hooked. He
doesn’t mind waiting five minutes. The call
ends.
JOHN
Sorry, crisis on the set. Go on.
WRITER
Okay, so Brad’s in the islands,
enjoying his loot. Pool bar--Oprah’s
on television. Suddenly he sees a
composite picture of himself and
Oprah interviewing his last “love”
victims. They’re all happy that they
knew him, for they all learned about
men and love through him. But they
want his nuts. He realizes the game
is up and decides to pull one last,
major con before retirement. He has
to find the one place in the country
where the women aren’t that
attractive, their fathers are
wealthy and no one watches Oprah.
The answer Stanford. His goal, the
daughter of the President of the
United States.
The phone rings. John, upset, answers. The

Writer waits one minute. John slams down the
phone and yells to his assistant.
JOHN
Debbie, will you please hold my
calls! Sorry about that. Go on.
John leans forward. The assistant scribbles

furiously.
WRITER
At Stanford he starts the con ...
it’s working perfectly. It takes no
time for the President’s ugly
daughter to fall madly in love with
him. He’s invited to the White House
and begins to turn the family
against him--he makes a pass at the
first lady, the brother and the
downstairs maid. But, back at
school, there’s a problem--he keeps
seeing a pretty graduate student who
seems to be following him (Secret
Service, Reporter?). He finally
confronts her and she admits that
she saw him on Oprah. But she
doesn’t want to turn him in. Instead
she wants to write her graduate
thesis on the mating habits of the
American Male, with Brad as the star
specimen. Or else she’ll bust him.
He agrees. The con continues, just
as beautifully. But it’s not so
easy. Brad is beginning to fall in
love for the first time in his life
with none other than the winsome
grad student. He tries to tell her
how he feels, but all he can manage
are his trite, old lines. Which she
puts into her thesis. The payoff day
arrives. But the President says,
“You’re an S.O.B., son, I’m an
S.O.B. ... welcome to the family.
Oh, yeah--and if you let my baby
girl down, I’ll kill you.” The
Secret Service are assigned to make
sure Brad won’t run, his bank
account is emptied and his pretty
Porsche impounded.
The phone rings again. John glares out the

door and ignores it.
WRITER
There’s nothing Brad can do but go
through with the nuptials. After one
last attempt to tell his grad
student sweetheart how he feels, he
apologizes for his actions and heads
for the church. It’s a huge church,
thousands of people are there. He
walks out in front of the crowd,
there are TV cameras and klieg
lights and then Oprah Winfrey struts
out, turns to the cameras and says,
“Ladies and gentleman, we caught
him!” From the back of the
auditorium, the President gives Brad
the finger. Brad faces the music.
The phone rings in the outside office,

finally.
WRITER
Two hours later, Brad finds himself
penniless, carless and dateless as
he attempts to hitchhike out of
town. He’s cold and tired, when a
small V.W. bug pulls up. It’s the
graduate student. And for the first
time, he’s able to express his love;
“Love is infatuation with knowledge.
If you know someone, know all of
their idiosyncrasies and
shortcomings and you’re still
infatuated, then you’re in love.”
The grad student admits that she,
too, must be in love. They ride off
into the sunset together.
At this point, given this description of events, John will either want to
hear more, or ask you when you can come back and pitch to his boss.
He really liked it. And you’re really going to meet his boss. You’re
halfway there.
The Long Pitch If he wants to hear more, this is where your longer
pitch comes in. You should have a reasonably clear idea of all the
major scenes, characters and thematic issues, so you can pick up on
any part of it that he chooses to ask about. But this is still just a pitch,
so if John asks something you really can’t answer, don’t try. You’ll
start digging a hole for yourself that you can’t get out of. Just tell him
you haven’t worked that out yet, but you will.
The Real World
More likely, after your short pitch, he’ll thank you very much and
usher you out with the sad news that this just isn’t for them, or they’ve
got something too similar in the works, perhaps add a cruelly
optimistic promise to talk to those higher up, and they’ll get back to
you (they won’t). If he’s ending the meeting, don’t try to keep it going.
It’s over, and you lost. (Yes, meetings are won and lost, as Lynda Obst
points out in her essential, insider account Hello, He Lied.) So don’t
overstay your welcome; leave John with the sense that you gave it a
good shot, and maybe he’d like to hear what else you come up with in
the future. Don’t drag it out and annoy him.
Some writers like to bring in a second pitch or third pitch, just in

case the first one gets shot down right away (such as when you’ve just
opened your mouth and they interrupt with, “Sorry, we’re doing one
just like that”). This is a good idea, if you’ve got another pitch (or
pitches) of equal quality. But if it’s just a rough idea, don’t pitch it,
because you probably won’t sell it on the odds, and this is what they’ll
remember you by. Also, don’t bring in half a dozen stories to shop at
one meeting, because then it doesn’t seem you’re invested in any one
of them. Your excitement and commitment to your story is their first
clue that it might be worth theirs. Don’t confuse them. (This does not
apply to pitching to a television show. In a television pitch, four to
seven ideas are the norm. For more information on pitching to a
television show, see Chapter 17.)
Once you’ve answered their questions, ask them if there’s anything
else. If not, then thank them, and ask if there are any other particular
kinds of stories for which this company is currently looking. Often
they’ll just say, “Oh, just something good,” but once in a while you’ll
learn a very specific need. (John might say something like, “Well, we
are looking for an action vehicle for Jessica Chastain—she’d like to do
something like La Femme Nikita with us.”) If you just happen to have
such a script or pitch, then tell them about it; they’ll want to read it or
set up another pitch meeting. If not, shake hands, thank them again,
and leave. You’re not getting anything else out of them. Even if they
intend to buy your pitch (which wouldn’t happen immediately unless
the president of the company was there), they probably won’t tell you.
They’ll want to talk about it and get back to you.
Before you go, you’ll probably be asked if you have anything written
down, such as a treatment (a five- to fifteen-page prose description of
the story). Again, there are two schools of thought as to whether you
should leave one, if in fact you have written one. Some people feel that
if the pitch went well, it’s better to leave your animated, verbal
impression unmarred by something that isn’t a finished screenplay,
and can only suffer by comparison. Others believe that it’s better for
the higher-ups in the company to get your story in your own words,
rather than the rough story notes taken by the silent assistant in the
meeting. It’s a toss-up as far as we’re concerned. If you feel you’ve got
a terrific treatment written up, then you might want to leave it. If all
you have are rough notes, then you probably shouldn’t. But there’s no
right or wrong.
Once you’ve gone home, take a moment to jot John a letter
thanking him for taking the time to meet with you to discuss your
story; be sure to include the title and one-sentence story description.
Then send it by certified mail. Keep a copy for yourself. This is partly
to remind him of who you are, since he hears about twenty pitches a
week. It’s partly to remind you of where you’ve pitched which story.
But it also creates a clear, dated paper trail that will protect you in case
the company you’ve pitched to “borrows” your story and you decide to
sue. It will also hint to them that you know enough that it wouldn’t be
a good idea for them to steal your idea in the first place. This hardly
ever happens—honestly. Overt story theft is in fact quite rare in
Hollywood—most companies are far too wary of litigation—but it does
happen once in a while.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Life’s a Pitch Pitching can create possibilities, and in the end,
possibilities are where realities begin. Pitching doesn’t always work. In
fact, most of the time it doesn’t, but screenwriters should always be
ready to pitch their exciting, wonderful ideas. Pitching can open the
doors. At the very least, it gets you out of your own door, into the life
of the industry.
EXERCISES
1. Come up with a short, ten-minute pitch of your favorite movie.
When the movie is reduced to a short pitch, what are the important
points? Which lines, which events, which moments hold the story
together?
2. Rehearse a pitch of your story. Don’t memorize it. This will only
make it sound rehearsed. Instead, allow yourself to sell the story, as if
you were telling a friend about an exciting event that just happened.
17
Writing for Television

Down the (inter)Tube(s)
Let’s not sugarcoat it: getting a job writing for a television show is not
easy. The jobs are few and the competition is fierce; in fact, there are
far more writers trying to break into television than into features. Yet
writing for television can seem less daunting (writing a half-hour or
hour script rather than a two-hour feature) and more lucrative: a
working TV writer can have a regular gig with a high salary and
attractive benefits. However, there is a price. The pace and pressure
are relentless, and because there are often so many writers involved in
the process of developing each produced episode, it can sometimes
(depending on the kind of show) bear only a passing resemblance to
the original writer’s script.
There are two types of television writers: staff and freelance. Staff
writers are full-time employees who work all or part of a show’s season
and receive a weekly salary. Their title can be Staff Writer (sometimes
called Term Writer), Story Editor, Associate Producer, Producer or
Executive Producer. Freelance writers are self-employed writers who
sell spec scripts or are hired by a show to write individual episodes.
They may write episodes for several different shows in the same
season. Ordinarily a television show hires between eight and twelve
staff writers (from term to producer) per season. Staff writers write the
vast majority of episodes but sometimes they also hire freelance
writers to write individual episodes. This means that there are only a
few hundred jobs available. Thousands of writers fight for their piece
of this very small pie.
The strong competition for jobs is well justified when we look at
salary. Staff writers earn from $5,000 to $10,000 a week (some who
have reached the executive producer level make a great deal more). On
top of this weekly salary, the writer sometimes gets a payment for each
episode written; that fee currently stands at about $18,000 for one
episode of a sitcom and $27,000 per episode of an hour-length show.
There can also be residuals. Residuals are a type of royalty payment a
television writer receives every time an episode airs. If a show goes
into syndication, the residuals through the years can add up to more
than the original fee. Landing a job with this kind of salary requires a
long-term commitment, setting goals, the stamina to write every day
and, of course, talent.
There are three forms of television writing (sometimes called
teleplays) that we’ll cover: sitcoms (short for situation comedies),
hour-length dramas, and movies of the week (known as MOWs). We
will not cover skit writing (such as for Saturday Night Live or other
late night shows that include sketch comedy) or writing for soap
operas or reality television. At this writing, reality show writers are not
members of the WGA (for more on the WGA see Chapter 15), although
the union is hoping that someday they will be included. With soap
operas only head writers are members of the WGA. The head writers
decide on the storylines for the entire season and then the episodes are
divvied up between a throng of non-WGA episode writers who are paid
only a few thousand dollars to knock out scripts. Skit writing depends
more on writing gags than formal storytelling, the subject of this book.
And besides, most of these writers got their jobs by being successful
writers in other fields (e.g., as playwrights, standup comedians, hour-
length television writers, and so on).
In Hollywood, everyone has a story about how they were
“discovered.” From chance meetings, to knowing the right person, to
wild coincidence, each story is really about being in the right place at
the right time. Unfortunately, luck does play an important role in
getting a job, but there are many things writers can do to increase the
chances of luck invading their lives. Louis Pasteur, the great French
chemist and microbiologist, said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Preparing for a writing job in television means learning how to write
“spec” scripts (written on speculation), moving to Hollywood, getting
an agent, writing more spec scripts and pitching.
WRITING A SPEC
The first step in landing a job is to write several great spec scripts
(remember “spec” is short for speculation, see Chapter 1). Specs are
the writer’s calling card; they show that the writer has talent. Writing
one spec is never enough. It takes several specs to learn how to write
for television in the first place and perhaps many more before agents
begin paying attention. Spec scripts rarely sell; they are written
primarily to prove that you can write. They are the television writer’s
audition.
Spec scripts rarely sell because producers seldom respond well to a
spec for their own show. The reason is that the producers (who are the
writers) are very possessive about their particular show. They feel they
know everything there is to know about their characters and situations
and so they’re hyper- critical. Therefore, even if a spec writer thinks
she’s caught the exact tone of the show and voices of the characters,
the producers will automatically sense something slightly askew, or
see that the spec story is at variance with a direction they intend to
take their show in future episodes, so they’ll reject the spec. Instead,
producers want to see a spec script for a different show, one in which
they are not invested, and therefore can read without prejudice or
preconceptions.
While there are occasional lucky exceptions, it’s not uncommon for
struggling TV writers to pound out between ten and thirty spec scripts
before they get their first job. Here are a few things to keep in mind
when writing a spec:
They Are Not Looking for a Pilot (or Maybe They Are) A pilot
is the first episode of a brand-new series. The conventional wisdom
used to be that writing spec pilots was a waste of time. For one thing, a
spec pilot is a poor example of how well you can write for an existing
show, because the producers can’t compare it to anything they’ve read
or seen. For another, no matter how good it is, agents and producers
are usually not interested in pilots written by beginners. New shows
are usually developed and written only by writers who have paid their
dues with years of experience, or who are being courted by networks
because they’ve had great success in standup comedy or features. After
you’ve worked your way up from staff writer to story editor to
producer, then you can think about creating a pilot. So for now, write
specs for successful shows that are already on the air. HOWEVER:
Partly due to a number of studio initiatives and the spread of
competitions allowing for pilot entries, in recent years a number of
spec pilots scripts have in fact been bought, if not actually produced
and/or brought to completion. Ideas have also been generated by web
blogs and posts (for instance, $#*! My Dad Says was a comedy series
developed from Justin Halpern’s hilarious Twitter feed. It only lasted
one season or so, but still).
Pick a Winner When you write a spec, choose only those well-
known, successful, established shows that earn good ratings and
critical acclaim, and are going to be around for a while. Occasionally
writers create specs for hot new shows, hoping that agents and
producers have not yet been inundated by scripts for them and are not
yet sick of reading them (spec scripts arrive in Hollywood by the
truckload). This isn’t a bad idea if you already have several great specs
for more popular shows, but be assured that the producers of any new
show already have an arsenal of scripts to last at least one and
probably two seasons, so you’re not really much more likely to sell it to
them than to a more established show. Above all avoid shows that
have gone off the air. This means that those wonderful Seinfeld,
Cheers or Frasier specs you wrote are now worthless.
You know a show is popular when, at the proverbial water cooler
the next morning, everyone is discussing last night’s episode. The
national water cooler test for television shows is called the Nielsen
rating. Nielsen numbers are listed by rating point and share. For
example, a show will have a rating of 11.9 and a share of 20. One rating
point is equal to 1 percent of the total number of U.S. households that
have TVs (in other words, everyone). So if a show has a rating of 11.9
that means that of all the households in the United States
(approximately 103 million of them) 11.9 percent watched that
particular show. Share is the percentage of households that have their
TV sets turned on and tuned to that particular show (not all
households have their TVs on all the time, it only seems that way). If
the show’s share is 20, that means that of all the households watching
television at that particular moment, 20 percent of them are tuned
into that show. Show ratings are listed in most major newspapers, in
trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter or elsewhere on the
web. The value of these ratings continues to be debated as channels
multiply and other internet outlets continue to be explored.
Few Outside Characters Generally you don’t want to create a spec
for an existing series in which a new or outside character dominates
the story, so that wonderful episode idea you have about the main
character’s eccentric great aunt coming for a visit is dead on arrival.
Producers and agents want to see how well you can write existing
characters, not those of your own creation.
Involve the Main Characters Directly in the Story You want
to focus the story on the stars of the show. Make sure that the main
characters are at the center of every conflict and resolution.
Don’t Mess with the Premise All television shows have a premise,
a fundamental situation and assumption that never changes from
episode to episode. Characters begin and end in essentially the same
place. They might learn a lesson about life, but the premise of their
lives remains the same (this is why it’s called episodic television). In
other words, writing an episode in which a character’s mother dies is
not a good idea. The mother can go into the hospital, but in the end
she must be home so that everything can turn back to the status quo.
Yes, occasionally shows do change the premise, but these decisions are
made by the networks and/or the executive producer and should never
be done in a spec.
Use Existing Sets Try to use the standard locations of the show.
This is particularly true of sitcoms, unless they are in the Seinfeld,
Bored to Death or Hung mold, and even then they primarily rely on
standard sets. You want to show that you can create a story that uses
the standard, existing sets.
Get the Story Rolling Competition is fierce. When agents read
specs, they generally give you a few minutes. If you haven’t snagged
their interest by page four or five, it’s off to the rejection pile, so state
the major problem and begin the conflicts as close to page one as
possible.
Getting a Good Idea
How often have you watched a really awful episode and thought, “I
could write something better than that.” The truth is that you’re right,
maybe you could. Unlike television writers, you have time to go back,
rewrite, put it down for a while, come back to it and knock off a dozen
drafts. Network television writers, on the other hand, must operate
under a crushing deadline. They turn out material at a frantic pace. In
television there is an old saying, “I don’t want it good, I want it
Tuesday!” Sitcom writers, for example, are given only one week to
write an episode. There’s a famous story of a young staff sit-com writer
who was asked how long he needed to write his first episode and he
sheepishly answered, “two weeks?” The stunned producer leaned
forward and said, “Son, in two weeks, I could rewrite the Bible, with
jokes.” The lesson here is that when you write a spec, it must be
better than anything on the air. You have the time to make your
audition script perfect.
That perfection starts with a wonderful story idea, an idea that’s
new and distinct, yet does not deviate from the show’s style. All shows
have established structures, storylines and characters that cannot be
altered or you change the essence of the show. After a show has been
on the air for a while, unique story ideas can be hard to come by. You
certainly don’t want to write something they’ve already done, so you
must seek the rarest of all commodities in television, a new idea—or at
least a good one that hasn’t been seen for a while.
The small screen eats up original ideas so fast that it’s often forced
to re-hash, spit-shine and reinvent old ideas. An original, new idea is
always best, but it’s also perfectly acceptable to use an old idea, as long
as you disguise it and make it appropriate for and unique to whichever
show you’re writing. Story ideas come from watching television,
reading the show descriptions (sometimes called slugs or log lines) on
IMDB.com or the series’ own websites, and from studying old movies
and plays. The test is how good you are at inventing (or re-inventing)
an idea that feels original and new but fits the show exactly. As a
producer once said, “I want the same thing, only different.”
Start by writing down one idea after another as they come into your
head. At first, don’t allow yourself to be critical. Creative and critical
thinking come from opposite sides of the brain and seldom operate in
unison. Constantly judging your ideas as they occur will cause the
creative grid- lock known as writer’s block. Ask “what if”: What if this
happened, what if that happened?
Once you have a list of story ideas, go back and allow your critical
side to judge each one logically. Does it fit the show? Have they done it
before? Is it consistent with the show’s style? Does the situation you’ve
created contain enough surprise and conflict to sustain the comedy or
drama of the show?
Structure
Once you have a good idea, it must be tailored to fit the unique
structure of the show. Each television show has a singular structure.
The best way to understand a show’s structure is to stop watching it
for enjoyment and start dissecting it. Dissecting a show is done by
scene-carding several episodes, or “breaking them down” (scene cards
are discussed in detail in Chapter 9). When breaking an episode down,
the scene card process is reversed. Record an episode and then play it
back, one scene at a time. After each scene, hit pause and briefly write
out on a scene card what the scene was about, where it took place, how
long it took, who was involved, how it moved the story forward and
what comprised the major conflict.
Once you have scene-carded an episode, the show’s structure (or
skeleton) should become clear. Lay it out in order, indicating teasers,
tags and acts. A teaser, sometimes called a “cold opening,” is a short
scene just before the opening credits. For example The Office and
Breaking Bad start with a teaser. A tag is a short scene or epilogue
that falls after the last commercial and right before the closing credits
or sometimes during the closing credits. Some shows have teasers,
some have tags, some have both or neither. In television, an act is
everything that happens after the teaser and before the tag, and
between commercials. Today there are no set rules when it comes to
how many acts a sitcom has, some have two acts, some three, some
more. Hour-length shows usually have five acts, but again there are
many exceptions. The only way you’ll know is to watch and scene card
several episodes.
With your scene card breakdowns laid out in front of you, study the
show’s structure. Notice that almost all acts end with a plot twist. The
writers know that the audience members clutch remotes, their fingers
on the button, ready to change to any one of 500 other channels, so
they end acts on a moment of suspense, revelation or with a dramatic
question that will hopefully make the audience endure the
commercial without touching the button. You want to structure your
story with these same end-of-act cliffhangers.
Some shows have more than one story within the same episode.
These are known as “A” and “B” stories; occasionally there will be a
“C” and even a “D” story, too. The “A” story is the main plot of the
episode, the “B” story is a secondary or smaller plot, the “C” story, a
running gag. For example, the “A” story might be that (Name Your
Protagonist) has found a new love but keeps having a recurring dream
that “she” is really a “he,” while the “B” story is that (Name Your First
Regular Character) must attend a tractor pull with his father. The “C”
story might be the fact that someone keeps drinking (Name Your
Second Regular Character)’s soft drink and he doesn’t know who until
the end. Each story is complete, with a beginning, middle and end.
Sometimes the two stories start separately, but by the end of the
episode they collide into one ending (Name Your Protagonist’s new
love wins the tractor pull). A good “B” story will have some thematic
relationship to the “A” story; for instance, both “A” and “B” stories
could deal with the issue of characters nervously trying to prove their
heterosexuality. You want your spec to match exactly the number of
acts, “A-B-C” story, teaser/tag configurations and overall structure
that are the standard for that particular show.
Once you’ve dissected a few episodes, you should have a clear idea
of the show’s overall formula. You want to take your story idea and
structure it using the same formula. Deviation from formula is not
what television is about and will not look inventive to the producers,
only incompetent.
You must also keep in mind that television is a fluid medium, and
things keep changing. In an interview with Robin, Steve Peterman, the
producer and/or executive producer of enormously successful shows
from Murphy Brown to Hannah Montana to Blah, Blah, Blah with
Boys, described the state of sitcom this way:
What’s happened in television...is a combination of a whole lot
of outlets for people to watch, a lot of alternatives, which means
the attention span is shorter, which means you have to hook
people faster. Along with that is the fact that you have an
audience that is so much more sophisticated in terms of the
vocabulary of television that they know the shorthand, so you
don’t have to spend as much time setting up a story as you used
to. Seinfeld is the classic example. . .it went from a show that
told one story primarily, maybe two. But it soon began telling
four main stories, around its four main characters...they’d have
four different stories going on, and multiple scenes, and what
had started as a show with two acts of three scenes in one and
four scenes in the second, by the time you got to the later years
had twenty-two, twenty-five scenes. It turned television into a
more cinematic way of telling a story. You came into a story
much closer to a climactic moment. You’d sometimes see
Seinfeld start an episode with something like George in a taxi
with a woman he’d obviously been dating for a while. You’d
never seen the woman before, you hadn’t seen them meet, you
hadn’t seen their first date, you hadn’t seen him talk about her
to the others. In the old days you would have seen all that in the
setup to the story. Now they don’t bother with that. They say,
let’s get into the relationship right near the crisis point. This is
becoming more true for all sitcoms. We hear from the network,
“Don’t feel you have to tell your story in such a traditional way,
find a more unusual way, give the audience credit for being
faster.”
Characters
When dissecting a show, you must also analyze the characters,
understand their style, motivation and idiosyncrasies. All the
questions asked when creating a character (Chapter 5) must now be
asked when dissecting an existing character. The key to writing a
preexisting character is to know how they speak and behave. Each has
trademark speech patterns and modes of behavior that result from
their own unique thoughts, logic, comedy, education, history and
environment, but most of all because of the particular actor who plays
the role. Personality is revealed by analyzing what people say and how
they say it, as well as by how they physically act and react to particular
situations. Television writers must take it one step further and be able
to reproduce these patterns.
To successfully match a character’s speech, it’s necessary to listen
to the actor play the role over and over again. This can be very time-
consuming. One trick is to record an episode and play it back on that
long drive to work everyday. Listening to the voice will train your brain
to hear the particulars of the character and actor’s voice. Once the
voice is firmly implanted in your mind, you should be able to write
dialogue that closely matches it. Once you’ve written your spec, the
reader should be able to cover up the character’s name in the script
and know exactly which character is speaking by the dialogue alone.
Test this by whiting-out all the character names and having a friend
who knows the show identify each character’s lines. If she can’t tell
which character is which, the script is not ready. The challenge is to
catch the character’s nuances and still have them say something fresh
and surprising.
Even though TV relies more on dialogue than features do, teleplay
dialogue is lean. Every line must present the immediate conflict, reveal
the characters, advance the plot (or in the case of sitcoms, be funny). If
a line does not satisfy one of these needs, then it is excess fat and must
be cut.
SITCOM FORMAT GUIDE
Format
There are basically two formats when it comes to television writing:
one-camera and three-camera. One-camera television shows are shot
on location or on sound stages without an audience. They are just like
movies, only produced on a much smaller budget and with commercial
breaks. Homeland and Mad Men are examples of one-camera shows.
The traditional definition of a three-camera is a show is one that is
confined to a sound stage, and seldom, if ever, goes on location.
Sitcoms like King of Queens and Two and a Half Men are traditional
three-camera shows. The term “three camera” came from the 1950’s
when sitcoms like I Love Lucy were taped using only three cameras.
Modern sitcoms actually use more cameras. Similarly, many cameras
are rolling on a one-camera show like Homeland, but the handles have
stuck.
In the old days three-camera shows were taped in front of a live
audience, had few characters, and were limited to three or four sets.
Today three-camera shows have no limits. Some have dozens of sets;
some shoot on location (as does a one-camera show) and some are
even animated. There are also no industry wide consistent rules when
it comes to formatting. Some sitcoms use one-camera format, some
three camera. The only way to know if you are using the right format is
to get a copy of the script.
Getting a Script There are still some mail-order bookstores that sell
sitcom and hour-length scripts, but you can also download many from
a variety of websites. In contrast to feature scripts you may download
or order, with TV you want to make sure you’re getting the genuine
article, the final script of a produced episode, not some writer’s first
draft or spec. Real scripts usually have a show number on the title
page, a cast of characters page and a list of sets needed for that
particular episode.
They also often have little asterisks (*) in the margins of the script
to indicate where line changes have been made. In production
rewrites, instead of giving the actors, director and crew a totally new
script every time lines are changed, they are given only the pages with
changes. Each round of rewrites is marked by a new page color.
Monday’s changes, for example, might be on yellow paper, Tuesday’s
on green and so on. By the end of the week, a television script is a
rainbow of colors. (The same is true, by the way, of feature film
production scripts.)
Next, an asterisk is placed in the margin next to each change so that
everyone knows exactly what’s new on that particular page. If you have
a photocopy, the pages will, of course, no longer be colored, but the
revision key on the title page and the asterisks in the margins should
still be there, and you’ll know whether you have a genuine script.
Often, rewrite pages will appear partial, because they are inserts
dealing only with a portion of a pre-existing page. This is not how the
original draft looked.
Formatting Software The same advice we gave for formatting
software for feature films applies here as well. A program like Final
Draft or Movie Magic contains standard formats for all forms of screen
and television writing. Once you have the program installed you can
even go to their websites and download templates for specific shows.
These programs aren’t cheap, but can cost less if you can use their
student discounts. If you are really strapped for cash and you have the
time, you can create your own formatting templates (Check your word-
processing program under “templates” or “style” for more
information.) You can also download screenplay and sitcom templates
for both Macintosh and PC from the web, but as you know, when you
download anything you are taking a chance. (See Appendix A for one-
and three-camera, i.e., sitcom, templates.)
Title Page A spec television script has a simple title page. You don’t
want a fancy, clear plastic or colored cover, just a plain white sheet of
paper. About three inches from the top of the page, type the name of
the series in caps and underline it (TWO AND A HALF MEN, CSI:
MIAMI). Centered and double- spaced under it place the title of your
particular episode. Although these titles seldom appear on the air, all
television episodes are given a title. Give your spec a fun, funny,
dramatic or intriguing title. This title should be in lowercase and in
quotation marks (“Why Singers Don’t Get Nose Jobs,” “Shy Kidneys”).
Put your name about an inch under the title (Written By Bill Smith).
In the lower right-hand corner, put your address, e-mail and phone
number(s), or those of your agent if you have one. That’s it, nothing
else is needed.
Things to Leave Out On the very next page, after the title page,
start the first page of your script. Production scripts will often have
several pages of casting and production notes, but these should not be
included in a spec script.
Binding Television scripts use the same type of binding used on a
screenplay: three-hole punch with metal brads in the first and third
holes. Again, nowadays any place that has actually agreed to read your
script will probably accept an emailed PDF.
Length One-hour shows are generally fifty to sixty pages long, while
MOWs have around 100 to 105 pages. Length is important in a
teleplay because each episode must fit into an exact time slot (though
precise running time is handled partly in editing, and is not the
writer’s responsibility alone). When you cut out all the commercials
and credits, hour-length dramas are only about forty-six minutes long.
The scripts are longer than forty-six pages because of the act breaks.
Unlike a feature screenplay, where one page generally equals one
minute of air time, for a sitcom, each page equals only thirty seconds,
so a script is anywhere from forty-five to sixty pages long. When you
cut out all the commercials and credits, sitcoms are only about twenty-
three minutes long.
WRITING COMEDY
All the usual elements of good storytelling apply to sitcoms: character,
conflict, complication, suspense, crisis and climax. Of course, the key
to writing a good sitcom spec is that it must be funny, but more, it
must match a show’s particular style of humor. Some shows deal with
controversy, some have a nine o’clock time slot and have hard-hitting
or sexual humor, some have eight o’clock (family hour) time slots and
don’t even allow sexual innuendo. You must match each show’s sense
of humor, not your own.
There are three ways of testing to see if your script is funny enough.
First, draw a big red line across each page about halfway down. Then
check to make sure that there’s at least one funny bit above the line
and one below. In other words, you don’t want to go more than a half a
page (fifteen seconds) without something funny happening or being
said. Second, have a reading of the script (see Chapter 14, Rewriting).
Remember that, in most cases, humor does not come from
characters telling jokes, but rather from their comic reactions to or
commentary on the situation—it’s a situation comedy, not a joke
comedy. If your script isn’t funny but your premise and situation is,
your problem may be overwritten dialogue: too many words can cloud
the humor. Comedy is lean; dialogue must be sharp and punchy.
Here is an example of comic dialogue that fails because of too many
words. First read the scene with all the lines, then re-read, leaving out
the crossed-out words. Notice that with fewer words, it still makes
sense, and it’s funnier.
MILES
Settle down everyone, I have an
important announcement to make. It’s
no secret our ratings are slipping;
it’s time to take action.
MURPHY
What happened to ratings with
dignity that you were so hot about?
FRANK
I hate to admit this but it didn’t
work.
MILES
I’ve been trying to figure out how
to tell you this. This isn’t easy. I
came up with three different ways.
MURPHY
How about telling the truth.
MILES
I hadn’t thought of that. All right,
four ways. I’ve made an executive
decision. I signed Jerome Reardon as
a new member of the FYI team.
MURPHY
Not that malicious little columnist
for the New York Times?
MILES
Pulitzer-Prize-winning-malicious-
little-columnist.
FRANK
Oh, I know him. Wasn’t he a theatre
critic?
JIM
Yes, but he gave that up after the
assassination attempt. They missed.
MURPHY
You hired Satan and you didn’t check
with us first!
MILES
I only had a small window of
opportunity before 20/20 grabbed
him.
JIM
Remember Lanford Benley? That
talented young man who wrote “Gay
Nam Vet”? Great writer.
FRANK
Incredible play.
JIM
Well, Reardon panned it. Poor
playwright was so upset he ended it
all.
FRANK
He killed himself over a review? I
don’t believe it.
JIM
No, he sold it to Danny DeVito for
two point five mil, moved to Crete
and never wrote again.
FRANK
On that is tragic. Most tragic.
JIM
I was a consultant on the Viet Nam
aspect of the play. Yes, we put
those actors though hell. Made them
sleep in foxholes behind the
theatre, get up at four a.m. and go
to the bathroom in a hole in the
ground. The actors just couldn’t
take it. Three of the cast members
actually suffer from flashbacks. Now
that’s real acting.
YOU NEED AN AGENT

All of this initial effort and preparation is done in order to get an
agent. In television writing, you must have one. Unless you have a
personal “in” with a producer, almost no network television producers
will read an unsolicited script for their own show sent to them by a
writer. No matter how wonderful your cover letter, no matter how
great your script, it will be returned unread. There are two reasons for
this cold wall between television producers and spec writers. First,
producers don’t want to open themselves up to legal liability: if you
send them a spec that happens to be similar to a story they’re
developing (and with the thousands of scripts being submitted, odds
are some will be similar), you might sue them for stealing your idea.
You’ll probably lose, but it will still cost them energy and money to
defend themselves. Rather than dealing with this possibility,
producers usually only allow specs to be submitted through agents.
Agents know what the different shows are looking for and keep
records as to what was submitted and when. The second reason shows
only allow agented submissions is to winnow out the weaker scripts.
Agents want to keep a good relationship with producers, so they won’t
waste time submitting weak or average scripts. The assumption is that
an unagented script is most likely a weak one, or the writer would have
representation.
It is not, however, impossible to get someone to read a spec for a
different show, in hopes of getting in for a pitch meeting or an
assignment. Steve Peterman offers the following advice:
If you have some kind of a personal relationship with a writer on
staff, that writer can get your spec to the attention of the
executive producer. There are certain times of the year when
[producers] have time to read unsolicited scripts. At the end of
the season—most shows finish up in late February, March or
early April—that time of the year is a good time to send a very
gracious and begging request, if you do it with a little bit of
humor and sincerity. You might get somebody to read your spec
then, because they’re coming to the end of a season and they
have a little bit more time.
But again, remember, producers will not read an unsolicited spec
for their own show, ever!
Once you have several great specs—and again, make sure they are
absolutely as good as you can make them—your next step is luring an
agent. You will need several specs because agents want to be sure your
writing is consistently good before they sign you (see Chapter 15 for
more detailed information on how to write query letters and get an
agent). But remember: you want an agent who is located in Los
Angeles. There are agents all over the country, but for television you
only want to consider agents who are located in the heart of the
industry.
L.A. IS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE
While it is possible (difficult at first, but possible) to be a feature
screenwriter and live somewhere other than Los Angeles, this is not
the case with television. Just as you want your TV agent to be based in
L.A., you need to be there too. Success depends on talent, being
prepared, who you know and being in the right place at the right time.
All but talent involve living in Los Angeles, at least when you are
getting started. Los Angeles is the center of the universe for sitcoms
and dramatic shows. True, a small percentage are taped in New York,
Chicago or Canada, but the nucleus of “the Industry” is Los Angeles.
Want to work for a network show? Then be where you can “network”
with people working on network shows. And you have a greater chance
of bumping into the right person in L.A. than in Iowa City. While
you’re trying to break in, there are jobs in agencies as production
assistants and as script secretaries that can both help you pay the bills,
meet the right people and serve as stepping stones to writing jobs. If
nothing else, you’ll get to see how the business really works from the
inside. Also, when writing a spec, especially for a sitcom taped in front
of a live audience, it’s always good to try and see the taping of an
episode, which you can only do—guess where?
And even when you’ve broken in, you’ll most likely have to be in
Los Angeles. Unlike feature screenwriters, who (after they’ve gotten an
agent) can live just about anywhere and still have a chance for success,
network television writers are doomed to failure if they don’t live in
Los Angeles, unless they’re among the lucky few who already have jobs
on one of the handful of shows produced elsewhere. TV is a fast-
moving, deadline-driven industry that cannot wait for anyone. Agents
and producers expect writers to be available for meetings on short
notice and, if you’re lucky enough to land a staff position, you have to
come to work at the studio. Even in this age of high-speed modems,
the web and video/telephone conferencing, television writers are
expected to live within a stone’s throw of the industry. Maybe some
day this will change, but for the foreseeable future television writers
must be where the action is.
Before you move to L.A., take the time to test your talents by
writing several specs. Geographic location and bumping into the right
person will not help you if you’re not prepared to make the most of
the contacts you meet. What good is it to meet a friendly script
supervisor if you don’t have any good scripts to show him? Don’t pack
your bags until you’re really ready.
PITCHING FOR TELEVISION
So you’ve written some great specs and nailed an agent. Now you can
just sit back and wait for the offers to start pouring in, right? Wrong.
All you’ve done is lay the groundwork (no one said this was going to be
easy). While your agent is sending out your specs, you must always be
writing new specs. Agents need a steady supply of new scripts; they
can’t keep submitting the same old things. Sometimes your agent will
tell you which shows he wants you to spec. Listen to him, he’s on the
phone all day with producers and knows what they’re looking for.
Meanwhile, with luck, some producer will like one of your specs and
invite you in for a pitch meeting.
Pitching to a television show is much like pitching to a movie
producer (Chapter 16), with just a few exceptions. First, unlike a movie
pitch, where you’re bringing in totally original material, here you’re
working with an existing concept and set of characters. Before you
come in to pitch, you’ll first be sent a show’s “bible.” This contains
information about the show’s characters, particulars, a complete list of
the stories they’ve already done and sometimes a script or two. They
send you this because they don’t want you to waste their time pitching
ideas they’ve already tackled in previous seasons.
After studying the “bible” and watching as many episodes as
possible, you must come up with five to eight story ideas. Each idea
must be fully worked out, with a beginning, middle and end. You’re
given about a week to do this and then you head into the studio on
your appointment to pitch.
There are several keys to good television pitching. First, cut down
on the number of unknowns: do some research. Ask your agent for
details about this particular producer’s likes and dislikes. Producers do
like a writer who seems to really know the show.
Next, once you’ve come up with your stories, you must rehearse
your pitch. Never go in cold; there’s no time once you’re there to
fumble around trying to remember the beats of your story; that will
make you look unprepared. Also, your stories may not sound as good
or be as funny out loud as they look on the page. After you have come
up with your ideas, practice pitching them to friends. Run them over
and over until you can do them in your sleep. (For further details on
the actual process of pitching, see Chapter 16.)
Next, you also want to try and pitch to Producers, Associate
Producers or Executive Producers, not Story Editors. Story Editors
lack the power to okay an idea, so you’re less likely to sell; at best, if
the Story Editor likes one of your stories, you’ll be asked to come in
and pitch it all over again to someone who can say “Yes.” Of course,
the writer often doesn’t have any choice as to who on the show takes
the pitch, but your agent should push for someone as high on the food
chain as possible. Whoever takes your pitch, try to come in knowing
everyone’s name and rank. People like it when you know who they are.
Giving Them the Treatment
Writers Guild rules state that a writer cannot be asked by a producer
to write an outline or treatment of his verbal pitches. Even if you are
not in the Guild, it’s generally a good policy to follow, because
producers are only too happy to have someone give them work for
free, which you do not want to do. However, it’s acceptable to leave a
pitch outline behind if you already have one prepared, and it can be
helpful. Wouldn’t you rather have them look to your words than their
notes to remember what you pitched to them?
How’d It Go?
After the pitch meeting, the writer calls his agent and tells him how
things went (were the producers excited about the pitches, or were
they bored, or too busy to be bothered). The agent now calls the
producer and finds out if one of the stories interests them. If there is
no sale, then it’s over, at least with these pitches at this show. The
agent sends the specs off to other shows, the writer goes back to
writing specs and hopes for the phone to ring again.
If an idea sells, then the process moves to the next level, a story
meeting. In a story meeting, the staff writers meet with the freelance
writer and kick around the ideas, pitch jokes, test lines of dialogue and
try to structure the episode. (Yes, you already structured it, but now
it’s fair game for everyone, and it’s going to change shape whether
you like it or not. Your structure basically just proved to them that you
knew what you were doing and now it’s their turn.) The freelancer is
expected to take detailed notes. This meeting can go on for many
hours and often does. Once it’s over, the freelancer heads home and
takes a few days to write a detailed outline: a double-spaced narrative,
six to ten pages long, broken into scenes and acts, and written in the
present tense. Dialogue samples are often allowed. This story outline
must accurately reflect the structure and ideas that were agreed upon
in the story meeting. When the outline is turned in, the writer is given
more notes and is sent home to write the episode. In some rare cases,
after the freelance writer has finished the story outline he is simply
paid story money, sent home and a staff writer is given the assignment
of actually writing the script. Story money is about $4,000.
A LIFE IN TELEVISION
In Hollywood, television is called the writer’s medium. This is relative
to features. Novels, plays, short stories and poems offer writers far
more creative freedom than television. Yet, when compared to writing
for the movies, television is far more writer-friendly. On the big
screen, directors and producers reign supreme, while writers live a life
of quiet servitude. On the little screen, the power structure is different.
Writers can often work their way up through the ranks to become both
executive producer and head writer, while directors are largely hired
hands there to service the story. This means that on a television show,
there are far more opportunities for writers to gain positions of power.
Writing for television can also be more a team effort no matter
whether you are a freelance or staff writer.
Team Writing
Writing teams are common in television. Working with a partner has
some great advantages, particularity in sitcom writing, simply because
there is always someone there to bounce your ideas and jokes off of,
and because two people can often generate ideas and material more
quickly than one. Also, it is less lonely. But there are some serious
drawbacks to consider as well. You must not enter a writing
partnership casually. It is like a marriage; in fact, in some ways it is
closer. You will spend most of every day working intensely with one
another and so you’d better be very sure that you really get along and
respect each other’s talent. In fact, if you decide to work with a
partner, make sure you pick a partner who is better than you. You
don’t want to “carry” a writer who has less talent, less experience, or
less desire, or you will soon resent her. Another major consideration is
that teams are paid as if they were one writer, so if you do pair off with
a partner, know that you will be splitting your salary as well as all
future residuals. And if you sell a co-written script, you will be
identifying yourself as one-half of a team for the foreseeable future,
joined at the hip with your partner from then on as far as producers
are concerned. They know that you’ve worked well together, but will
have doubts about you individually: maybe only one of you was
talented, and if so, which one? If you do split up, it will be almost as
painful as a divorce, and it will also take a whole new set of successful
specs to break free and re-establish your own identity as an individual
writer.
The Life of a Freelance Writer
Freelance writers spend a great deal of time watching and recording
network television shows. They seldom know in advance which show
they’ll be pitching to and so they record many different shows in order
to build up a large library. This way, when they are called in to pitch,
no matter what show it is, they have several episodes to study. Some
freelance writers prefer to do only freelance work; the stress of a staff
job is not to their liking and so they work on their reputation of being a
good writer and hope that the phone rings. But most are freelancing
only until they can land a lucrative staff job.
The Life of a Staff Writer
Being a staff writer is stressful. Typically, staff writers arrive at the
studio at around ten in the morning and rarely leave before ten at
night. They can easily put in fourteen-hour days. While a staff writer’s
contract will state how many episodes she is guaranteed to write, she
must still pitch ideas, just like freelance writers. The first draft is
usually written by the staff writer alone, but then the team takes over
and the script is written and rewritten and rewritten again by everyone
involved. Dialogue is changed all week long, right up to taping.
Generally, May is staffing season, when all the shows hire writers for
the fall season. Writers are hired in thirteen- to twenty-week periods.
In other words, if you don’t measure up, your contract will not be
renewed at the end of thirteen weeks. Every two to three weeks the
directors and actors take a hiatus, or week-long break, but the writers
seldom have this luxury. They are too busy writing the next episode.
FINAL THOUGHTS
TV or Not TV The French playwright Molière said, “Writing is like
prostitution. First, you do it for the love, then you do it for a few
friends, and finally you do it for money.” And television writing does
pay handsomely, but there’s a cost as well. True, network television
writers have more power compared to feature screenwriters, but there
are many restrictions on subject matter, limited time to create, and
strict formulas that must be followed. Ratings, not art, control the
industry; as television producer, writer and actor Garry Marshall said,
“If you want to do art, go home and write poetry. On the other hand, if
you wanna buy things...” While there are those special shows that
transcend the medium, it’s good to remember the wisdom of Ernie
Kovacs, a great television comic during the golden age of TV. He
quipped that the boob tube was a lot like a steak: “It’s a medium that is
neither rare nor well done.”
For a list of books about writing for television see Appendix B.
18
Writing Webisodes
Doing It Yourself
The online Merriam-Webster at this moment defines a webisode as

“an episode especially of a TV show that may or may not have been
telecast but can be viewed at a Web site.” That definition is already
dusty; webisodes are more and more likely to have been produced
specifically for online consumption, and have not (and never will be)
broadcast on TV. We acknowledge that this chapter itself is likely
going to be out of date almost before it’s published. That said, we felt it
important to include some thoughts and guidelines for one of this
active and exciting new area of storytelling, and one which looks to be
more and more important as the internet becomes more and more the
source for our entertainment.
Felicia Day, the award-winning creator of the popular webisode
series The Guild (watchtheguild.com), said that she started writing,
directing, and starring in webisodes after she received a pile of
rejections from Hollywood. During her acceptance speech at the
Streamy Awards (the Oscar-inspired award ceremonies for online
videos) she said webisodes are for all those who don’t want to wait for
permission to make their art. She’s right. If your desire is to sidestep
the Hollywood gatekeepers and start seeing movies based on your
screenplays, webisodes are an increasingly popular (and affordable)
way to go.
Before we proceed let’s be clear: we are not talking about video
blogs or webcams or uploading a video of your cat playing the piano or
footage from a camera strapped to your dog’s head to show everyone
“A Day in the Life of Fido.” Such videos can be very entertaining and
perhaps lead to millions of hits on the web, but they will do nothing to
advance your screenwriting career unless they also contain the
elements of story. This chapter is about web based miniseries that you
will probably direct yourself, and edit yourself using programs like
Adobe, Final Cut, or even iMovie; they will have a production budget
no bigger (and hopefully a lot smaller) than your bank account or Visa
card credit limit. And we are going to concentrate on the script—the
story element—because there are plenty of good books out there about
how to direct and edit your own movie. Most of the lessons in the
other chapters of this book will also apply to writing webisodes, but
this chapter will focus on some of the writing techniques unique to this
new form. And if you manage to create a combination of whatever
makes some uploads go viral with a good story, then you’ll have hit
gold.
The dream is that you will write that mind-blowing web series that
gets 10,000 hits a day, and 3 million viewers in its first year, after
which Disney offers you a lucrative contract, but just as you are about
to sign, the President of Paramount knocks on your door, doubles
Disney’s offer, and includes a massive signing bonus. You go on to
become an Oscar-winning screenwriter with a Porsche and house in
Beverly Hills. And then one day you truly come to understand the
sweet smell of success when you are invited back to your alma mater,
where you give an awe-inspiring commencement speech about how
you “refused to play the Hollywood game” and sing Frank Sinatra’s
“My Way.” And to think it all started with a webisode you shot in your
garage. Or if you approach it with your feet on the ground, webisodes
are a great way to take your stories to the screen, in a form that may
find an audience for your ideas, and to learn a lot about screenwriting.
In order to get started on a great script, the first thing you need is a
great premise, a hook.
WEBI-PREMISE
Let’s not sugarcoat it, a lot of webisodes are crap. And there are tens of
thousands of them on the Internet. Over 200,000 videos a day are
uploaded to YouTube and hundreds of those are webisodes. Add to
this thousands of webisodes that are available on sites like Atom
Uploads, Blip.tv, Break. com, Brightcove, Crackle, FlickLife, Go Fish,
Jumpcut, Meacafe, Revver, and a dozen other webisode internet
libraries and it’s easy to see that the webisode—even though this word
is now just being added to dictionaries—is nothing new. The Wild
West days of short independent online movies was the late 1990s, so if
you are just getting into the market, you are a latecomer. So how do
you rise above the crowd?
The key to setting yourself above and apart is to have a great
premise, a hook or concept that is unique and so catchy that it will
propagate like wildfire through the web via social networks and blogs.
There are dozens of webisode parodies of medical shows, sitcoms,
comic books, horror movies, and Battlestar Galactica, that are all
really just a form of fan fiction— those won’t give you a unique
premise. There are thousands of too-generic webisodes about love,
death, cancer, mental wards, being single, murder mysteries, soap
operas, and teen wolf stories. There is nothing new under the sun—or
is there? Look at the webisode series Gaytown (available on Crackle),
which does have a unique, catchy premise: a heterosexual man
trapped in a world where everyone is gay. In one episode he is caught
in a bathroom stall sting operation when he tries to play fantasy
football with what he thinks are two other straight men; in fact they
are undercover gay cops. This is a current, inventive idea, something
that has not been done before or is, at the very least, a fresh take on an
old idea.
Speaking of bathrooms, limited locations are obviously an
advantage— another series happens to be called Bathroom
Confidential, about a plumber who’s been hired by a film production
company to keep the toilet working in the creaky old house they’re
using as a location. His dream is to somehow transform this lowly
service into a Hollywood career. The writing team includes Rob
Rinow, Val Stulman, John Shannon, A. H. Gullett, Tim Furlong and
Chuck Cummings, all working feature, theatre and TV writers, actors
or producers, and they approached the writing side very seriously.
Before beginning production, they came up with six webisodes and a
complete bible for the arc of the first season (twelve in all), character
bios, roles/functions and backstories, as well as a smart, standard six-
beat format for each four minute webisode: a ten-second teaser to
grab attention; introducing the current problem outside the bathroom;
a real world attempt to solve it, which fails; a fantasy comic sequence
that inspires the solution; the solution applied; a cliffhanger in which
the following webisode’s problem is introduced. It’s a lot of story to
pack into a short time, so every line is re-examined to make sure it’s
both funny and necessary. Each webisode is a stand-alone story, but
each has a character or story element that will be picked up on later in
the series. This setting might have been a trap as far as jokes are
concerned, but they’ve avoided relying on bathroom humor; rather,
the humor is situational and character-based. As of this writing, you
can check the series out at bath- roomconfidential.com.
Where do unique concepts come from? Simple (not!): Have
something personal to say about how the world is or how it should be,
and have a singular, innovative point of view about things that matter
to a lot of people. You want something with broad appeal, but with a
game-changing premise. One thing that can help is to watch a lot of
webisodes. Novelists read lots of novels; poets read lots of poems; and
webisode writers watch lots of webisodes. If you see your idea already
playing on the net, then you’ll know your idea isn’t unique. Next,
consider your audience: they own computers, smart phones, and they
spend a lot of time online. Felicia Day became a “webiname” by using
that very fact as a premise for her series, The Guild, a series about
characters who are addicted to online video games. It was such a good
idea that it led to over fifty episodes and millions of addicted followers.
Keep in mind that webisodes are fast moving, brash, usually brief, and
aimed at an information-overloaded audience, so your premise should
not be complicated, and it will probably work best if there’s irony
involved (true of most storytelling, by the way). If you cannot state
your premise in a sentence or two that contains a catchy, ironic hook,
it is probably not a good concept for a web series.
WEBI-STRUCTURE
There are no set rules when it comes to the length of a webisode. For
example, at half an hour per episode, the comedy Goodnight Burbank
(goodnightburbank.com) is one of the longest, while the drama Sam
Has Seven Friends (www.samhas7friends.com), which has two-
minute episodes, is considered short. Most average four to eight
minutes. There is also no rule about how many episodes a web series
should have, but most average ten to twenty. It’s important to
remember that people who watch webisodes are probably doing it on
their iPhone during a coffee break, or sneaking a quick hit between e-
mails. Webisodes are a compact form of storytelling told to an
audience with a short attention span.
Webisodes generally fall into two categories: those that follow the
arcing structure of a serial movie and those that conform to the
episodic structure of a sitcom. The ones that follow serial movies must
be watched in sequential order to make sense of the plot, while the
ones that follow the episodic structure of a sitcom can be watched out
of sequence because each video is a complete story in itself and only
loosely connected (through character) to the others.
From the 1920s to the 1950s serial movies (often called just
“serials”) were a mainstay of America’s moviegoing experience. Before
each feature film audiences would arrive early to watch a cartoon, a
newsreel, and a serial about comic book heroes like Captain Marvel,
sci-fi adventures with Flash Gordon, and especially Westerns—lots of
Westerns. Each serial was about fifteen minutes in length and had
eight to twelve episodes, with a new episode premiering each week. So,
in this age before television, if you failed to go to the movies for a week
you’d fall behind on the serial story. Serials were much like modern
soap operas, except that the story was split into weekly instead of daily
chapters. In order to entice the audience not to miss an installment,
each serial generally ended with a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is a
precarious situation, a shocking revelation, and/or a dramatic
question that leaves the audience in suspense and wanting more.
Movies that are intended to have sequels do that today: For example,
each installment of the horror film series Saw ends with a cliffhanger,
making the audience want to come back again for another helping of
torture, gore and blood. Modern serial webisodes use this same
structural device, so not only must this kind of webisode follow the
structural outlines found in Part Two of this book, it must also be
designed so that each two- or ten-minute (or whatever your length is)
episode ends with a hook that pulls the audience back for more. It’s
like ending each chapter with the words “To Be Continued.”
One way to make cliffhangers work is by asking a dramatic question
and then answering it with another dramatic question. Every script is
populated with small dramatic questions. For example, say that at the
beginning of a webisode a son comes home from the army and tells his
mother he’s been dishonorably discharged, but he doesn’t want to talk
about it. Of course, the dramatic question is: Why was he dishonorably
discharged? The writer wouldn’t answer that question immediately,
but instead would tantalize the audience by delaying the answer. And
once the question is answered (at the start of the next episode,
perhaps) the screenwriter does so by then asking a new dramatic
question. The soldier might, at the end of the new episode, tell his
mother that he was discharged for “psychological problems?” Of
course, this them leads to the question: what type of psychological
problems? And on that question you fade to black, forcing the
audience to click on the next episode in order to satisfy their curiosity.
Episodic webisodes, like many modern sitcoms and hour-length
television shows, have a beginning, middle and end for each episode
which stands on its own as a single adventure. This means that there is
no (or limited) overall arc to the characters—instead they are pretty
much the same at the end as they were at the beginning of each
episode, which simply place them in different escapades and
situations. This is the origin of the phrase “situation comedy” (or
sitcom) because the humor and story are derived from the unique
situations into which the writers put the characters, not on how the
characters grow over time. Episodic structures work well for television
because of syndication. When a show goes into reruns (syndication) it
is easier if they can be aired in random order and not sequential
installments that demand that the audience knows what’s happened in
prior episodes. Episodic structure is not limited to television: the
action adventure 007 movies are also episodic because the character of
James Bond does not change (except perhaps because different actors
will play him over time). Writers create the story by placing Bond in a
new situation for each adventure. One wrinkle that’s become popular,
however, is to create an “origin” episode for otherwise episodic
characters like Bond or other superhero types. But essentially these
movies stand on their own.
When it comes to webisodes both structures are perfectly
acceptable, you just have to make up your mind. Is your story about
characters who have an arc and grow over time, or are your characters
pretty much set and the story comes from placing them in unique
situations? Are you going to follow a serial structure like the
groundbreaking webisodes Sam Has Seven Friends, or the episodic
structure of comedies like Gaytown?
WEBI-CHARACTERS
As far as characters are concerned, everything that applies to a full-
length screenplay also applies to webisodes. So be sure to read Chapter
5, which covers everything from motivation to internal conflict. The
problem with webisodes is that you don’t have a lot of time for
character development. There is no room for that three-minute
monologue where your protagonist talks about how he was abandoned
as a child and had to fight his way out of the Amazon jungle with only
his wit and an app store compass. You can solve this problem by
concentrating on four critical elements that all screen characters have
in common: what they want, what they need (not always the same
thing), what they do about it (action), and what or who stands in their
way (source of conflict). Screen characters must have deep unfulfilled
desires, and be willing to (or forced to) take action to get what they
want or need. At its most basic, character is that simple: in essence a
character is what he wants and needs and how he chooses to act upon
those things. If you write about a man who wants to give the girl he
loves a diamond engagement ring and shoplifts it from a local jewelry
store, you have written the character of a crook. If he is willing to sell
his prized 1963 Corvette so that his best friend can buy the ring to
marry a girl he himself loves, you’ve written the character of an altruist
(or maybe a masochist). And if he crashes his 1963 Corvette into a
jewelry store, kills all the shoppers, and then as an afterthought
pockets the ring, you’ve written either a psychopath or a Quentin
Tarantino protagonist. The key is that no character (no protagonist at
any rate) can simply wish for what they want. They must take action.
With the compressed nature of webisodes it is critical to show the
character’s want as early as possible. Make your character desire
something within a half a page of entering, even if it is a cup of coffee.
And as soon as you can, make her take some sort of action, even if it
ends in total failure.
If you are writing a serial webisode you will want to consider the
character’s arc or how the character will change over time. Character
arc can include how her viewpoint, personality, needs, or personal
philosophy will change over time, and why. In the movie Tootsie,
Dustin Hoffman’s character starts off as a self-centered actor (is there
any other kind?) and something of a male chauvinist, but through the
action of the movie he turns into a man who understands women
because he’s been forced to pretend to be one.
If on the other hand you are writing an episodic webisode, you’ll
want to make sure that your protagonist is so compelling that he or
she will remain interesting no matter what situation you place him or
her in.
WEBI-PILOT
In writing a feature script, you’ve got five to ten pages (five to ten
minutes) to win over your reader. In webisodes, you’ve got maybe one
short minute— which in web-time is an eternity (don’t believe us?
How many online vids have you passed on because there was a ten-
second ad you’d have had to sit through before you could see them?).
There are tens of thousands of webisodes out there, at least one for
every hopeful screenwriter with a camera, all competing for your
audience’s ever-shrinking patience, so you had better win over your
viewer damned fast or they are not going to linger. The first minute of
your pilot episode, your first episode, had better be fascinating. Years
ago network television would occasionally keep a low-rated show on
the air because they felt it would eventually build an audience. Shows
like Seinfeld and Cheers were at the bottom of the ratings pile when
they first debuted, but over time became hits. Although your pilot will
be available and waiting there online once you upload it (as opposed to
the pre-DVR days of TV when you either watched something at a
certain scheduled time or you missed it), if you don’t hook your viewer
early, it might as well not be online. You must shine right out of the
gate.
One way to approach this is to follow the old Ten Percent Rule in
screenwriting. The Ten Percent Rule has been around for decades and
is a staple of screenwriting books and classes. What it means is that
you want the moment when the clouds of conflict appear, when the
primary action of the story clearly declares itself, to happen about 10
percent of the way into the script. This structural moment has been
given various names including: The inciting incident, the call to
adventure, the catalyst that leads to the film’s first turning point, and
the banana peel your protagonist slips on that starts the action of the
story. We’ll call it the point of attack. It is the moment when Bruce
Willis gets shot in The Sixth Sense (on page nine). In a 100-page
screenplay the point of attack usually happens on, around or before,
page ten. In Juno, it happens much sooner, when she confirms she’s
pregnant by page four). So, in a ten-page webisode, the point of attack
needs to happen by the end of page one.
In a full-length screenplay you might have a few pages to introduce
the characters, establish the environment, and provide relevant
exposition; in a webisode you don’t have that kind of time. You must
get the story rolling. One way to jump to the action is to start with a
brief narration. For example, the pilot episode of Gaytown begins with
a forty-second narrated montage where the protagonist explains the
premise. And then, because Gaytown is not a serial—it can be watched
out of sequence—each subsequent episode begins with a ten-second
version of the same narrated montage to let viewers who missed the
pilot in on the premise (pretty much the same technique that TV has
used for decades, and radio before that, as when each Superman
episode began with “The Adventures of Superman—Faster than a
speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall
buildings in a single bound!”).
Or just cut out the exposition. Start the story and jump right to the
point of attack, with a person wanting something and going after it.
They will define themselves and the premise by what they do. For
example, the pilot of the comedy web series Goodnight Burbank just
starts. It’s another day at work and things, very funny things, happen
in the very first minute. The background information is incorporated
into the action. You’ll be surprised by how little exposition or
beginning you need. Let’s face it, if your webisode needs more than a
minute of narrative or action in order to make sense, it most likely is
not a good idea for a webisode.
It’s also a good idea to write more than just the pilot episode before
you start shooting. If you are writing a serial then you need to write or
at least outline a majority of the episodes before you go to camera.
Even if you are writing an episodic series, have at least eight or ten
episodes scripted. Having a substantial chunk of the writing done
allows you to see the series as a whole: Beginning, middle and end. By
doing this many writers discover that their third or fourth webisode
makes a better pilot than the one they’d originally planned to upload.
During the writing process you will make discoveries about characters,
story and conflict that will need to be set up in the pilot. It also allows
you to plan your shoots more efficiently: remember, you’ve got to get
the most production value for the least money, so being able to shoot
several episodes at once while your set, actors, cameraperson, etc., are
there makes sense. Always remember, writing is cheap, production is
expensive. A good webisode artist spends 75 percent of their creative
time writing.
Whatever you have planned for your pilot episode, above all else,
cut out the opening credits. It sure feels great to see your name in
lights, but no matter how wonderful the music or how brilliant your
title sequence you are going to bore the hell out of everyone—the
exception being everyone listed in the title sequence and your mother.
Show the title card and go. If you need credits place them in the lower
corners of the first scene. You got one minute, that’s it, one short
minute, and you don’t want to blow it with credits.
WEBI-CHEAP
Webisodes are generally dialogue heavy for two simple reasons.
Reason One: As noted above, dialogue is cheap. And cheap is good—
isn’t that part of why you’re doing this? So, from the very first draft,
take expense into account. That sequence you might have written for
that feature spec, where your protagonist is shot at by a space alien
who misses and blows up a water tower by mistake and that comes
crashing down on City Hall could have been brilliant, but it doesn’t
belong here. Notice that the web series Goodnight Burbank is not the
story of a bigtime news program but of a tiny, local, underfunded
nightly program. This is not because the creators wouldn’t love to
make it about a network news show, but because they don’t have the
money (yet). General Elevator is a parody of medical shows—that
takes place entirely within an elevator at a hospital. This is not only
cheap, but funny. However, there are ways to open up your location
possibilities while keeping your expenses down by scouting locations
even before you write. If you have a friend who owns an auto
dealership and is willing to give you access—voila!—write an episode
in which a car dealership is central to the story. If you find out that a
local water tower or abandoned building is scheduled to be imploded
and you can get there in time to shoot it, maybe it’s time to start
writing an episode where that’s part of the story. Oh, yeah...Reason
Two: Though not as compelling as Reason One, webisodes are not
written and produced for the big screen, but rather for the small, or
very small, screen, so the primary emphasis on the visual that feature
films demand does not apply here.
WEBI-FORMAT
Generally webisodes use a standard screenplay format covered in
Chapter 2. Even if you are going to direct, act, edit and produce it
yourself you want to follow the standard Hollywood formatting rules—
if for no other reasons than to look professional and be consistent:
proper format gives you a rough idea of the length of each episode.
One page equals approximately one minute of screen time. If you are
just starting out it is not necessary to buy one of the expensive
screenwriting programs (Movie Magic, SceneWriter Pro, Final Draft),
although these are very good for longer and more involved projects,
and for exporting to production and scheduling software. There are
now two pretty good free screenwriting programs you can download,
Celtx (celtx.com) and Scripped (scripped.com). Or, if you want, you
can create a simple style sheet or template in Microsoft Word that will
work. Just search for “Screenplay formatting + Word + Template” on
the web and you’ll find sites telling you how to do this with your
particular version of Word.
WEBI-TALENT
When it comes time to actually film your webisodes, find good creative
people who if possible have some knowledge of film production. Your
script may be brilliant, but if the finished product has poor production
values you will never have the chance at giving that commencement
speech we talked about earlier. The (apparently) simplest thing, like
getting a clean recording of your dialogue, or cutting together takes of
two people talking, requires people who know what they’re doing
(sound and continuity in these cases) or you’ll have useless footage
and beat yourself up trying to “fix it in post.”
WEBI-SCRIPTS
It can be hard to locate sample webisodes scripts. They are seldom
published and you generally cannot find them on the web, as you can
with movie and television scripts. To give you an idea of what such a
script looks like, here is one called Headshots. It’s about actors trying
to make it in Hollywood and was written by Todd McCullough, who
also wrote the National Lampoon movie Van Wilder: Freshman Year.
Read, enjoy and then go online to watch the final product.
HEADSHOTS
by
Todd McCullough
Episode #4:
“MUGGING FOR THE CAMERA”
INT. THE HOUSE - BATHROOM -- DAY
TODD stands at the mirror, cleaning up for
work. He bends down to use the sink. When he
comes up, MIKE is there.
TODD
Jesus!
MIKE
Hey, buddy, whatcha doing?
TODD
I’m--
MIKE
Hey, remember when you said we
should be doing more to further our
acting careers?
TODD
Yeah.
MIKE
And that we should make our own
opportunities?
TODD
Yeah.
MIKE
And that you’d do anything to help
me?
TODD
Don’t remember that.
MIKE
I need three hundred dollars.
TODD
Excuse me?
INT. LIVING ROOM -- CONTINUOUS

Todd comes out of the bathroom. Mike follows.
MIKE
I wanna buy a video camera so I can
start shooting my own stuff.
TODD
You have a camera--
MIKE
I need an HD camera. People need to
see this shit times ten. I just need
to put three hundred down.
(takes out a checkbook)

Now, I already wrote out the check--
TODD
What are you doing with my
checkbook?
MIKE
I was trying to save you some time.
TODD
I You forged my signature!
MIKE
You gotta admit, it’s pretty good.
TODD
(tearing up the check)
No. This is not happening.
MIKE
That’s fine. Cash works.
TODD
What makes you think I have three
hundred dollars just lying around?
MIKE
You’re working that big party at the
restaurant tonight, right? You’ll
make three hundo in tips, easy.
EXT. HOUSE – CONTINUOUS

Todd goes outside, heads to his car.
TODD
Why would I give you money when you
still owe me for rent?
MIKE
Here we go again. Dude, how many
times do I have to tell you? This is
America. People don’t just get
kicked out of their homes because
they don’t pay their rent.
TODD
Yes, they do! Every day! The fact
that my parents own this place
doesn’t mean we get to live here for
free.
MIKE
Well, it’s not my fault your parents
don’t love you. Now, are you gonna
give me the money?
TODD
No! Now clear the driveway.
Todd gets in the car, takes off. Mike watches

him go.
INT. THE RESTAURANT – NIGHT
Todd is counting his tip money. His boss, DEB,
takes some, stuffs it in her cleavage.
DEB
Reach in there and get it.
TODD
No.
DEB
Come on. You want your money, don’t
you? Reach in there.
TODD
No.
DEB
Pussy.
Deb walks off. Todd sighs.

EXT. THE HOUSE - DRIVEWAY -- NIGHT
Home from work, Todd gets out of his car.
Suddenly a MUGGER in a hoodie and ski mask
jumps out at him, holding a knife.
MUGGER
Wallet!
TODD
What?
MUGGER
Wallet, motherfucker!
Terrified, Todd hands over his wallet.
TODD
Here! Here!
The mugger takes it, runs off.
INT. LIVING ROOM -- LATER
Todd, still shaken, sits on the couch in his
robe, holding a mug of hot cocoa. Mike enters
with a shopping bag.
TODD
Where have you been?
MIKE
Why? What happened?
TODD
I got mugged.
MIKE
Mugged? Like, by a mugger?
TODD
I’d just gotten back from work and
this guy jumped out with a knife and
took my wallet. He got all my tip
money.
MIKE
What? Aw, shit. That sucks. Did you
call the cops?
TODD
I’m gonna go to the station. They
said--
MIKE
Hey, they’re gonna get him. They’re
gonna get this piece of shit.
Mike sits, takes a new HD video camera out of

the bag.
TODD
God, my heart’s still pounding. I’ve
never been mugged before. I was just
getting out of the car, and then--
What is that?
MIKE
Camera.
TODD
Where did you get it?
MIKE
Store, dumb shit.
TODD
No, I mean where did you get the
money to buy it?
MIKE
From an actor friend of mine.
TODD
Who?
MIKE
You don’t know him.
TODD
Oh.
Beat. Todd walks out of the room, returns a

moment later.
TODD
Did you rob me?
MIKE
What?
TODD
You robbed me!
MIKE
What are you talking about?
TODD
Well, it’s just very strange. I
mean, you needed money for a new
camera, you knew I was working that
party tonight, I just so happen to
get mugged, you just so happen to
get a new camera....
MIKE
I can’t believe this. You actually
think I would rob you at knifepoint?
If I was gonna rob you, I’d use a
gun. Bam! Glock to the clock. Dead
bitches mean no snitches.
TODD
I wanna know where you got the money
to buy that camera. Look me in the
eye and tell me.
They get right in each other’s faces, eye to

eye.
TODD
Where’d you get the money?
MIKE
From. A. Friend.
TODD
Which. Friend?
MIKE
George.
TODD
“George.” George what?
MIKE
George Wash...
Todd raises an eyebrow.
MIKE
. . .burn.
TODD
“George Washburn.” You got the money
from your good chum, George
Washburn. Ol’ Georgie Washburn gave
you the money for that camera. Ol’
G-Dub.
MIKE
That’s right.
Beat.
TODD
I’m going down to the police station
to file my report.
MIKE
What’re you gonna tell ’em?
TODD
I’m gonna tell ’em the truth.
Todd exits.
EXT. POLICE STATION – ESTABLISHING
Todd comes out of the local police station.
EXT. HOUSE - DRIVEWAY -- LATER
Returning from the police station, Todd parks
in the driveway. The mugger jumps out. Same
outfit, same knife.
MUGGER
Gimme your money!
TODD
Oh, what the hell...?
MUGGER
Now, bitch!
TODD
You already took my money, remember?
MUGGER
Then gimme your phone!
TODD
Screw you, Mike, take the mask off.
MUGGER
Bitch, I will cut you!
TODD
(tilts his head back)
Okay, cut me. Go ahead and cut me.
I’m waiting. . ..
Suddenly, Mike runs up and CLOCKS HIM. The

mugger drops.
TODD
MIKE?!?
MIKE
Get outta here! Call the cops!
Mike starts kicking the crap out of the

mugger. Todd runs off. As soon as he’s gone,
Mike stops kicking.
MUGGER
Ow! Fuck, man! Stop it!
Mike stops, helps the mugger up.
MUGGER
You didn’t say you were gonna kick
me!
MIKE
Sorry, man. I got carried away.
MUGGER
I’ve got an underwear commercial
tomorrow and I’m gonna look like
Tina fuckin’ Turner.
Mike hands the mugger a few bills.
MIKE
Here. For your trouble.
MUGGER
I have sensitive skin. Dick.
The mugger walks off.
MIKE
I owe you one, George!
UNDER THE CLOSING CREDITS:

George tries to explain things to the cops as
he’s arrested.
THE END.
19
Writing for Video Games

You’re in the Driver’s Seat
We start this chapter with a disclosure: Neither of us has written for

video games. These games, however, are fast becoming the first
entertainment choice of the new generation. Since games such as
Grand Theft Auto (GTA), Halo, The Elder Scrolls and Call of Duty
have gross receipts rivaling or exceeding those of the biggest
Hollywood blockbusters (in fact, game sales have outstripped those
from every other sector of the entertainment industry), we felt it
important to add a brief chapter that provides a few relevant game-
scripting concepts and suggestions.
Assisting us in preparing this chapter were Prof. Derek Burrill of
UCR, an expert in games and game theory; computer graphic designer
and game artist Jeff Kunzler (who participated in the landmark 2008
EVE Online Goonswarm event); and Patrick Seitz, director and writer
of, and actor in, countless anime series and video games (including
directing the voice-over and facial motion capture for SoulCalibur V,
and voicing Scorpion in the most recent Mortal Kombat release).
Many of the insights are theirs; all of the mistakes are ours.
YOU ARE THERE
“In games there are three voices: there’s the voice of the creator,
there’s the voice of the game and there’s the voice of the player....
We’re invited by the artist to inject our own morality, our own
worldview, our own experiences into the game as we play it. And what
comes out is wholly different for everybody that experiences it.”—
Chris Melissinos, curator of the Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video
Games.”
The primary attraction of computer games, aside from whatever
immediate visual and auditory appeal they may have, is that the player
becomes a participant in an adventure—in fact, the adventure’s
protagonist, with whom the player identifies visually, aurally and
through its journey of action and acquisition. Depending on the game,
the player may be represented by an “avatar” (a personal image used
in a game environment) or may participate in a game world from a
first-person perspective, or perhaps guide the actions of whole armies
from above, like a chess player.
Unfortunately, until very recently games were almost purely action-
driven, not character-driven; what a character learned wasn’t as
important as helping it acquire more weapons, skills, or powers to
overcome new obstacles or foes. Also until very recently, game
characters were primarily driven by the game’s architecture (instead of
the character’s “personality”), determining its various conclusions via
encounters with an assortment of possible environments, pathways,
discoveries and opponents. But this is changing rapidly, as computer
advances allow the video game to embrace ever more deeply nuanced
characters, stories, environments and decision-making processes.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
As a game writer, your first creative task is to choose the general world
and nature of the game you’ll develop. (Some types of games may be
more suited to a given writer’s talents than others.) Perhaps a good
place to start is with the four game categories chosen to guide visitors
through the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s 2012 exhibit “The
Art of Video Games.” Its curator, Chris Melissinos, is founder of
JavaGaming.org and PastPixels, and Sun Microsystems’ former Chief
Gaming Officer.
The four categories are Action, Target, Adventure and Tactics.
Within each of these very broad and often overlapping designations
are many, many game genres and subgenres, which also more often
than not overlap each other. Jeff Kunzler points out, “A number of
people in the games industry take issue with modern genre
conventions and how games are labeled; for example, Mass Effect is
an RPG [Role-Playing Game] but also a Third-Person Shooter, and it’s
hard to classify it.... Dark Souls at first glance is an RPG, but within
that it is Masocore [masochistic games that are extremely difficult and
unforgiving to the player].... There [are] genres, subgenres within
those genres, and it can get pretty deep classifying games.”
For this chapter’s purposes, though, the following will help clarify
these categories:
• The Action category that contains such popular genres as
platform games, shooter games (both first-person and third-person
varieties) and fighting games. It has a history that dates from the
archaic Pac- Man (1980) to the more recent Gears of War 2
(2008), Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009) and Super Mario
Galaxy 2 (2010).
• Target is a category that includes series ranging from Space
Invaders (1980) to Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy (2008) and
Flower (2009).
• Adventure includes many role-playing games, from Pitfall!
(1982) to the action-adventure The Legend of Zelda: Twilight
Princess (2006) to Mass Effect 2 (2010) and the 3-D interactive
thriller Heavy Rain (2010).
• Tactics can include strategy games and puzzle games. This
category has a long history, running from the primitive Combat
(1977) to Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II (2006) and
Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure (2007).
If all you’re after is a really cool environment in which to engage in
one or another forms of combat, then story might not seem to involve
much more than setting up that environment and the kinds of
weapons and tactics you’re planning, i.e., the gameplay mechanics. But
that is more the game designer’s turf. For instance, Jeff Kunzler notes
that in first-person shooter games like Modern Warfare 2 (2009) the
plot is an afterthought, written to string together the action set-pieces
after the lead designers have developed them. Before jettisoning most
of your plot and character elements, bear in mind that with today’s
rapidly advancing computer technologies, such action games can now
be much, much more. Patrick Seitz notes that the newest version of the
old fighting game Mortal Kombat (first developed in 1994, with a
completely revised version introduced in 2011) takes the original
franchise’s disparate elements and integrates them into a much more
satisfying single plotline experience by applying the traditional
elements of character and drama development. In the best game
design situations, writers and designers work together to create fully
developed, innovative worlds rich in both story and gameplay content.
Generally speaking, the advancing complexity of video games, a
direct offshoot of advances in computer technologies, is making the
introduction of interesting, original and dramatic story ideas and
characters a very real and increasingly common aspect of all categories
and genres. Media scholar and USC professor Henry Jenkins suggests,
“What we’ve seen from games so far is just the beginning of what this
medium is capable of doing.”
Kids in a Sandbox
What really helped advance the integration of compelling story and
character ideas into video games was the emergence of “sandbox”
games (also known as “open-world” and “free-roaming” games), which
may embrace any game category or genre. A sandbox game is said to
be just like a kid’s sandbox, in that there are always new areas to
explore, new things to find and new villains to battle. In essence, the
player of a sandbox game may maneuver more or less freely through
its virtual environment.
Although video game historians date the first stirrings of this sort
of game environment to the mid-1980s, the 2001 release of the 3-D
action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto III seems to have done the
most to popularize it. GTA in its various iterations and locations has
combined a lot of genres, including racing, role-playing and adventure,
in landscapes that could also be explored for their own interest.
Character storylines, though still simple, became more important: In
GTA IV’s Liberty City, for instance, you start with only the knowledge
that you’ve come from Europe to look for your brother— then you’re
free to explore a world filled with parodies and references to all sorts
of New York icons and personalities, picking up information that helps
you advance in the game but that also makes your experience more
involving.
In sophisticated games like the action-role-playing The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim, when the player creates her own avatar she creates
its race, appearance, qualities, frailties and combat styles in a way that
isn’t just cosmetic but actually affects the kind of story she’ll
experience—there are racial and social prejudice and distinctions at
work, for one thing. Also, avatars can chart their own journeys without
actually following the game’s predetermined pathways. More and
more, the better the stories, the better the game experience.
Let’s look briefly at some of the story tools game writers use, and at
both what they share with and how they differ from what
screenwriters use.
The Decision Tree and Checkpoints
For a video game, the decision tree is the map—a branching diagram—
of the possible antagonists, pathways and levels that a player
encounters. It operates like a series of funnels, with wider possibilities
at the start of each, but always invisibly guiding the player, narrowing
her options until she reaches a “checkpoint”—a location where the
game changes level and/or direction— that allows her to move to some
other aspect or area of the game. The term “decision tree” comes from
game theory, a branch of applied mathematics used in various
disciplines from economics to biology to political science. To
paraphrase Nobel laureate economist Roger Bruce Myerson, game
theory mathematically models the interactions—both conflicts and
cooperation— between rational decision-makers. It is often used by
the military to map out possible war and battle scenarios.
Game theory is also used by multinational companies to strategize
their business plans well into the future. For instance, oil companies
and countries around the world hire energy consulting firms to “game
out” what will happen to the energy economy given various scenarios:
What if there’s a hurricane or earthquake? What if there’s a war or
terrorist attack involving certain energy-producing countries? This
kind of sophisticated prognostication is now a valuable part of the
video gaming world, as game writers use game theory to design
believable and compelling options and avenues for players of various
sandbox games.
The more invisible to the player the decision tree construction, the
better the illusion that the player has actual freedom of choice within
the game.
Exposition
The question here is, how do you deliver only as much information as
the player will need? In the past, video game players didn’t regard
exposition in the same way that viewers of film or TV did. A game’s
exposition was often absolutely straightforward because, unlike in
screenwriting, it didn’t seem as necessary to seamlessly hide it or
blend it into the character’s personality and motivation.
A lot of the exposition in a video game is like the pamphlet that tells
you how to put a swing-set together: it simply tells players what they
need to know to get going. However, not unlike the intro voice-overs of
some old movies, it also may be there to tell players about the world
they’re in—what its history and challenges may be—and to offer clues
to finding the hidden powers or weapons they’ll need to defeat the
enemies the game throws at them. Such exposition (consider the
extended voice-overs at the beginning of The Elder Scrolls series or
God of War) can be frustrating for movie-lovers to endure, but it’s
often a necessary part of helping the player get comfortable in a new
world that, unlike with the chiefly passive act of viewing of a movie, is
about taking action to move forward.
The recent well-written action-adventure sandbox games Red Dead
Redemption and L.A. Noire present decent hybrids of both
approaches, with voice-overs but also flashbacks to fill in the narrative
component. Along these lines, Patrick Seitz feels that “a well-done VO
or introductory cut-scene— or better yet, an intro cut-scene with
moments of player enfranchisement interspersed, à la Alan Wake [a
survival horror game about a writer, incidentally]—is the best way to
get [players] up and running. A good way to get info across during the
game or to world-build and flesh out the environment without
reducing your NPCs [non-player characters] to walking information
kiosks is to include media within the game—emails, scrolls, books,
what have you. Fans appreciate the effort, like being able to read them
at the time of their choosing, and some games go so far as to make
their discovery tied in with an Achievement or Trophy.... The Mass
Effect franchise does a good job of this, giving you all the background
you want on the sundry races and planets without talking your ear off
with it during the meat-and-potatoes of the gameplay; it’s accessible
from the menu system at your leisure, with each initial mention of a
new topic unlocking it for later perusal.”
As a rule of thumb, sandbox games, which present the player with
myriad changes in direction and level (at checkpoints), need less
upfront exposition. On the other hand, the more a game is about
straightforward action, the more exposition you’ll want to get out of
the way at the start, so that the player can simply jump into one series
of competitions or com- bats after another without having to stop,
impeding his action experience, to learn details.
Lastly, don’t forget to pay attention to how introductory exposition
pays off: One annoyance of Skyrim is that the avatar starts out as a
condemned prisoner, but that element really doesn’t have much to do
with the adventure other than to create a bit of suspense and
motivation for the initial escape. Another example is the fantasy role-
playing game Dragon Age II, in which the Mages are supposedly a
persecuted minority, yet a player can play a Mage character and never
face any consequences for it. Jeff Kunzler contrasts this with the role-
playing fantasy The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which he con-
siders a good example of “how to do a fantasy realm full of moral
dilemmas, racial issues and heavy ideas.”
Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
A non-player character is any character that the player does not
control. Carefully choosing and working out the NPCs that a game pits
against the player can help writers deepen and develop a game’s story
aspects. Patrick Seitz feels that NPCs may present writers with ever-
expanding challenges as they can reappear in a later version of a game
and “remember” situations from earlier versions: “Some studios are
now making games where your dialogue decisions and actions not only
affect the events of that particular game, but events in the sequels....
With Mass Effect 3 and potential subsequent releases, they’ll have had
to script any number of resolutions, side-quests and consequences that
have followed the player’s avatar throughout the course of the series.”
Keeping It Interesting
A player increasingly needs the puzzles, traps and challenges to be
varied and interesting, and to increase in spectacle and complexity he
moves toward the final confrontation. This provides an opportunity
for writers to integrate more compelling story elements into a game’s
sequence of goals and obstacles, as well as into the “free space”
between items and powers collected, “Easter Eggs” (hidden messages
or in-jokes that add entertainment value) and challenges. According to
noted game designer Warren Spector, “What story does in games is it
provides significance: You have to save your brother; you’ve only got
ten minutes; here’s the problem you have to solve to save your brother.
Go!”
Some games have tried to involve stories that allow for different
conclusions. For example, Heavy Rain, a noir psychological thriller,
has a sophisticated decision tree that allows the player to arrive at a
variety of endings depending on choices both of character and path.
(Heavy Rain’s writer-director, David Cage, says, “With Heavy Rain, I
was looking for a way to make the player play the story.”) The
challenge with this sort of game is to create a really new experience for
each branch of the tree. If you don’t, few players are going to remain
interested enough to replay the game again and again to encounter
each ending. But game designers are taking more risks in that
direction. L.A. Noire allows you to explore practically the entire land-
scape of 1940s Los Angeles, even if you just want to drive around.
Likewise, Skyrim is a remarkable experiment in that its challenges are
actually less interesting than the avatar design, and its world is created
with such detail and humor that a player can simply wander around in
it for hours without ever engaging in combat. One can even play
pranks on the NPCs, such as putting buckets over their heads so they
can’t see that you’re stealing from them.
According to Video Game Hall of Famer Nolan Bushnell, founder of
the Atari Corporation, “One of the things that’s really fun with games
is the whole idea of the playful mind. How can we make games
surprise you?”
How It Works
Writing for video games is a bit like writing for animation: The writer
describes the game’s world, characters and various other elements
such as backstories, opponents, obstacles and powers that can be given
or acquired, but then passes it into the hands of teams of artists and
engineers who lay out the actual parameters and possibilities.
Spinoffs
New stories are often reverse-engineered and shellacked over an
existing game engine. And new games are often developed within
companies based on existing successful models, by simply applying a
new “skin” and backstory to existing game architecture. L.A. Noire, for
example, for all its intensive recreation of 1940s Los Angeles, is a lot
like Red Dead Redemption, which in turn is a lot like Grand Theft
Auto and other sandbox games. Derek Burrill points out, “If you think
about the Tomb Raider series, the original design team on that put
that whole thing together focused on making it very story- heavy at the
beginning, and then developed the architecture for that world, which
means that both Tomb Raider II and III could be made pretty much
on the same architecture, they didn’t have to reinvent the whole
world.”
THE REAL WORLD: BREAKING AND
ENTERING
When it comes to finding work in video games, a solid writing
background is a plus, because it’s still rare and valued in the video
game industry. You don’t have to know how to code, but it helps, and
that knowledge will earn you more respect from the design team
responsible for actually making the game a reality. Have both writing
and code experience, and you’ll be way ahead of the game, so to speak.
That said, it’s tough to break in with a spec game. Software houses
generally hire from within, so you’ll want to start by trying to get a job
on an existing project as part of the team. If you’ve worked on a
successful game within the house, you’ll probably get a chance to work
on another project.
But writers within the industry aren’t typically known or identified
with a game. The credit tends to go to the software house itself. In
some ways these houses, with their distinct types of games, are more
like the movie studios of the 1930s and 1940s: in those days an MGM
movie had a distinctive identity from a Paramount or RKO film and so
on. As Derek Burrill points out, “there are only a few people who have
‘branding name’ identity, like Peter Molyneux.” Molyneux created
particular types of games like Dungeon Keeper and Black & White,
and designed them for early computers and consoles like Atari, Amiga
and Commodore 64. People identify that sort of game with him.
Another well-known writer is Patrice Désilets, creative director behind
the first Assassin’s Creed games.
FINAL THOUGHTS
“You don’t need technology to create feelings and love and fear and
hate and passion, you need great storytelling.”—Jen MacLeary, video
game developer and CEO of 38 Studios
Writing for games requires a different approach than writing for
movies or TV. Game players don’t sit down and watch a show; they do
something. Your job is to create a fascinating new world for them to do
something in. As Patrick Seitz notes, “The challenge in writing for
video games is that players are increasingly coming to expect the best
of both worlds: an unprecedented amount of choice and player
empowerment, on the one hand, with the most compelling stories and
characters linear storytelling has to offer on the other. It’s a real
tightrope act.”
For further reading, we recommend two books:
Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st-Century Fiction, by
Andrew Glassner (Natick, MA: A. K. Peters, 2004)
The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design, by Flint
Dille and John Zuur Platten (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle Publishing,
2008). The basic concepts in this book should remain reasonably
consistent, although the field is changing so fast that you’ll want to
make sure you have its most recent edition, or look for newer
resources.
Other knowledgeable resources:
Giant Bomb (www.giantbomb.com), which has highly detailed
information and a user-maintained wiki that covers the game
universe, is billed as “the world’s largest editable video game
database.”
Let’s Play Archive (lparchive.org), which has run-throughs of
hundreds of games viewable in screenshot or video form.
Final Thoughts on Becoming a Screenwriter
Writing for the movies or television is infinitely seductive, but it’s not
necessarily right for everyone. It takes years of work, many scripts, life
choices that are hard to make and rejection that is hard to take. You
can’t go into it half-heartedly. There’s a story about a cynical, over-the-
hill, middle-aged actor who goes to a party at a Hollywood Hills
mansion. He’s introduced to the owner, a star who seems to have it all.
Envious of her young success, he tells her that he too could have been
a great star, if it weren’t for his dying mother. It seems he had spent
years taking care of her and now regrets the lost opportunities. The
actress listens to his glum story and answers, “My mother was also
very ill, but I became a star.” The middle-aged actor can’t believe it.
How did you do it, he asks, how could you balance both? The starlet
answers, “I let her die.”
We are not saying that you should “let your mother die”; that’s not
the moral of the story. But it is true that those who really want
something will let little stand in their way—especially in Hollywood. In
this case, the regretful actor had not chosen his career over “taking
care of his dying mother,” and this might be the right path for you as
well. You cannot blame yourself if certain things are more important
than writing; that’s your choice, and your choices define who you are.
Either your priorities are organized so that you can become a writer or
they are not, but if writing is not first, or a close second in your life,
then the chance of being successful is small and even smaller in the
world of screenwriting.
Too many young screenwriters think only of success—they spend
their time writing with the goal of selling “the big one.” Few
Hollywood writers get big money. More people have won the
California State Lottery than have sold a million-dollar script. The
average Hollywood working writer (that means someone who actually
works as a screenwriter) makes just over $50,000 a year. Despite this,
there are 50,000 so-called writers living in Los Angeles, hundreds of
thousands more around the world, trying desperately to break into the
industry. Doctors, lawyers, cops, waiters—everyone seems to have a
spec screenplay or sitcom script. Even a talented writer in Hollywood
faces a massive uphill climb and constant disappointment.
If the picture is so bleak, why write?
The answer is found in the documentary Wild Man Blues, on the
life and music of Woody Allen. They ask him what his life is like. His
answer is simple. He says that he lives the life of a writer: he gets up in
the morning, he writes and then he goes for a walk. We must live the
life of a writer. We must get up and write every day, then go for a walk
and think about what we are going to write tomorrow. Only when we
live the writer’s life, only when our lives, our loves, our families, our
jobs revolve around and support the writer’s life, is there a chance at
success.
This doesn’t mean you have to live a life of poverty because you’re
devoting every waking hour to your writing. You have to find the
middle ground between total obsession and abandoning your dream,
between letting your mother die and letting your writing career die.
Most writers have jobs, as teachers, copy editors, marketers, attorneys,
whatever. It may make sense to get a job where you can practice your
skills; especially if you’re in Los Angeles or New York, you can try to
get work with a production company where you can see how the
business works, get to read the scripts coming in and make useful
contacts. And with the growth of film production in other areas, such
as Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Baltimore and elsewhere,
there are more film-related job opportunities than ever before. But
whatever your job, think of it not as a distraction, but as part of your
life as a writer. Study your co-workers as potential characters; find
material for drama in the conflicts of your own life, your work, your
family. Scott Turow, for example, turned his years of experience as a
prosecutor into material for his best-selling novels. Look to your own
life, passions and experiences for those stories that only you can
create. But above all, always, always set aside some inviolable time
every day when you can sit down and do what writers do: they write.
Don’t let anything get in the way if you can help it, and don’t
procrastinate. There’s an old saying that goes, “procrastination
preserves the illusion of genius because the illusion is never tested.”
You can’t call yourself a writer if you’re just thinking about it.
Years from now, after decades of writing every day and tens of
thousands of walks, what if the millions never roll in? What if you’re
still living in the little bungalow in North Hollywood and not the
Hollywood Hills mansion? What if we cannot call ourselves “a success”
by Hollywood standards? What then? Then we can at least look back
and, unlike that regretful middle- aged actor, be able to say, without
regrets, “I chose the writer’s life.” It can be a wonderful life, full of
discoveries, analysis and creativity, a life of the imagination. And who
knows? With a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, you might even be
able to “write the picture.”
Appendix A: Templates
These templates will help you set margins for screenplays, sitcoms,
and plays.
Appendix B: Suggested Reading
Note: With the rapid changes in the film industry, as well as the vastly
increased number of resources on the Internet since we wrote the first
edition of this book, we are only including books that we feel still stand
the test of time.
Must-Reads
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (New York:
Warner Books, 1983)
Aristotle’s Poetics by Aristotle (Trans. S. H. Butcher. New York: Hill &
Wang, 1961)
The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2004)
Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by
David Ball (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983)
Essentials of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and
Television Writing, Updated Edition, by Richard Walter (New York:
Plume, 2010)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd Edition, by Joseph Campbell
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)
Letters to Young Filmmakers: Creativity and Getting Your Films
Made by Howard Suber (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions,
2012)
Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434 by Lew Hunter (New York: Perigee
Books, 1994)
Making a Good Script Great, 3rd Edition, by Linda Seger (Los
Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2010)
The Power of Film by Howard Suber (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese
Productions, 2006)
Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by
Blake Snyder (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005)
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of
Screenwriting by Robert McKee (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition, by
Chris Vogler (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007)
Dealmaking in the Film and Television Industry: From Negotiations
to Final Contracts, 3rd Edition, by Mark Litwak (Los Angeles: Silman-
James Press, 2009)
How to Write Irresistible Query Letters by Lisa Collier Cool
(Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2002)
Opening the Doors to Hollywood: How to Sell Your Idea, Story, Book,
Screenplay by Carlos de Abreu and Howard Jay Smith (New York:
Three Rivers Press, 1995)
Pitching Hollywood: How to Sell Your TV and Movie Ideas by
Jonathan Koch and Robert Kosberg, with Tanya Meurer Norman
(Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books, 2004)
The Script Is Finished, Now What Do I Do? The Scriptwriter’s
Resource Book and Agent Guide, 4th Edition, by K. Callan (Studio
City, CA: Sweden Press, 2007)
The Writer’s Guide to Selling Your Screenplay by Cynthia Whitcomb
(Waukesha, WI: Kalmbach Publishing, 2002)
Television Writing
Comedy Writing for Television and Hollywood by Milt Josefsberg
(New York: HarperCollins, 1987)
The TV Writer’s Workbook: A Creative Approach to Television
Scripts
by Ellen Sandler (New York: Delta, 2007)
Writing Television Sitcoms by Evan S. Smith (New York: Perigee,
1999)
Writing the Pilot by William Rabkin (Pasadena, CA: Moon & Sun &
Whiskey, 2011)
Playwriting
Naked Playwriting: The Art, the Craft, and the Life Laid Bare by
William Missouri Downs and Robin Russin (Los Angeles: Silman-
James Press, 2004)
Additional Reading
The Complete Book of Scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski
(Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1996)
Elements of Style, 4th Edition, by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White
(London: Longman, 1999)
The Screenwriter’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting,
and Selling Your Script, 5th Edition, by David Trottier (Los Angeles:
Silman-James Press, 2010)
Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West (Los
Angeles: Writers Guild of America, West)
Appendix C:
A Few Clichés to Avoid like the Plague

Here are a few clichés to avoid. Many more can be found on various
websites, or in Roger Ebert’s hilarious little book Ebert’s Bigger Little
Movie Glossary, as well as on his website.
No Applause, Please
A common cliché at the end of many romantic laughter and courage
films is to have the lovers embrace and kiss in front of a large group of
people, whom, often, they don’t know. These people then break into
spontaneous, delighted applause. As noted, this is a reaffirmation of
the life force, but it’s been done to death. If you must resort to group
applause, find a new and unusual way to present it.
“Are You All Right?” (aka “Are you OK?”)
Almost every writer is tempted to use these words at some point in a
script. Try not to give in—it is meaningless filler. If one character
wants to express concern for another, find a more specific and
interesting way. The same goes for “What are you talking about?” and
when an older, usually ally character, declares, “I’m too old for this
shit.” These expressions are too old for any new screenplay.
Blowing Up Real Good
The worst action movie cliché is when the hero, usually dragging along
his helpless female companion, runs from an impending explosion. No
matter how capable or athletic, the woman will trip or break a heel
along the way. The man will yank her to her feet, they run on and are
blown into the air by a huge explosion behind them. Naturally they
land unscathed.
No Hookers with Golden Tickers
In spite of the success of The Owl and the Pussycat, Mighty
Aphrodite, Casino, Pretty Woman, Leaving Las Vegas and others too
many to list, and in spite of the fact that this character actually exists
in the oldest written epic, Gilgamesh, try to avoid the Hooker with the
Heart of Gold. Obviously this character neatly encapsulates the
madonna-whore complex endemic to our society’s perception of
women but, as a device, she’s as old as the hills and twice as dusty (to
rephrase another tired cliché).
No Architects, Writers or Advertising/Graphic Artists
These characters have been done to death as well. Find another
profession to display your character’s heart, smarts and creativity.
CGI Fatigue
As with explosions, audiences have become too sophisticated to be
won over by spectacular special effects in general, so don’t count on
including them to sell your script. Even in a light science-fiction
context, there’s no substitute for a good story.
The Ezsterhas Corollary (aka “Moore Is Sometimes Less”)
Great naked breasts do not constitute great special effects and won’t
save a movie from a lousy script, either. Witness the Joe Ezsterhas–
written Showgirls, the Demi Moore vehicle Striptease and any
number of similarly would-be “tit-elating” films.
Appendix D:
Graduate (MFA) Screenwriting Programs

MFA Programs
American Film Institute
Bard College
City University of New York, City College Columbia College, Chicago
Columbia University
Florida State University
New York University
Northwestern University
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco State University
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale Syracuse University
Temple University
University of California, Los Angeles University of California,
Riverside University of Miami
University of Southern California University of Texas at Austin
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Glossary
* An asterisk “*” in the margin of a shooting script means that
somewhere within the line beside the “*” there has been a rewrite.
A & B Pages These are part of pre-production formatting. In a
shooting script the page numbers are set. When there is a rewrite,
instead of adding to the page numbers, A and B pages are created. So,
for example, page 92 now becomes page 92A and 92B.
AEA Actors Equity Association. The union that represents stage
actors.
AFI American Film Institute.
AFTRA The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
anticlimax When the conflicting forces in a play fail to come to a
confrontation or to arrive at a conclusive decision. An example would
be Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
art director The person on a film crew who is responsible for every
aspect of set design and construction, as well as overseeing the
production designer, prop master and anyone else involved in creating
the look of the film (other than the cinematographer).
backstory Events that took place before the story begins. Exposition.
beat A brief pause. It also means a single unit of thought. It’s a small
section of the dialogue that’s accented by a particular emotion, subject,
and/or idea. A change in emotion, subject or idea means the beginning
of a new beat.
best boy The first assistant electrician on a film crew.
blue screen A visual effect. An actor is filmed in front of a single-
color background screen, usually blue. A computer can then be
programmed to replace the background with an image.
boom The telescoping microphone that is used on a set.
CGI (Computer Generated Imaging) A visual effect or image
created with computers.
character arc Just as a story has a beginning, a middle and an end,
so do most characters. Character arc is the growth or change in a
character caused by the events of the story.
cinematographer Also known as the Director of Photography or
D.P., this is the person who directs the lighting and filming of the
movie. Sometimes he/ she will also operate the camera; in bigger
productions there will be a separate Camera Operator who is
responsible to the D.P.
compositing A visual effect that combines two or more images into a
single shot.
dailies A working print of a day’s footage.
denouement The solution or unraveling of the plot. The final
outcome of the play. A liberal translation of the French “untying of the
last knot.” Usually comes after the climax and before the conclusion.
deus ex machina (The god from the machine) From the ancient
Greek theatre, this was a machine that lowered the god from above.
Once on stage, the god would resolve the characters’ problems and set
everything right. Today, deus ex machina often means a play that has
an unimaginative, sudden ending that may set everything right, but
lacks believability. Sometimes these endings are known as “acts of
God.” An act of God is a massive coincidence that is too unbelievable
for the audience to accept. (This type of coincidence only works now in
comedies.)
DGA (Directing) The Directors Guild of America. DGA
(Playwriting) The Dramatists Guild of America.
dramatic irony Occurs when the audience perceives a double edge
(a second ironic meaning) to the scene that the characters do not
perceive.
EXT. (Exterior) Used in Master Scene Headings to indicate that a
scene will be shot outside.
fish-out-of-water story A story that simply puts your protagonist
into a new or alien environment.
flashbacks A cinematic device in which a scene showing an earlier
event is inserted into the normal chronological order.
flatbed A motorized film-editing machine.
gaffer The chief electrician on a film crew.
grips The people who move equipment on a film set.
high concept A movie’s premise or storyline that is easily reduced to
a simple and appealing one-liner.
hook The key element that makes a story gripping or commercial.
inciting scene or incident An event that causes the opening
balance to become unglued and gets the main action rolling.
INT. (Interior) A Master Scene Heading that indicates that the
scene will be shot inside.
legitimate drama The term comes from eighteenth-century England
when theaters had to hold a license from the king in order to perform
legitimately. Today the term denotes a live stage performance rather
than movies or television.
logline One-line story description as in TV Guide or TV Log.
The MacGuffin The “MacGuffin,” associated with Alfred Hitchcock,
refers to the element in the story that motivates the action of the story,
but that in and of itself may or may not have a real effect on the story;
it is the excuse for the action. For example, in the Maltese Falcon it is
the statue of the falcon; in North by Northwest it is the microfilm
hidden in the PreColumbian statue; in the movie Mission: Impossible
it is the computer disk with the list of agents; in Charade it’s the stamp
worth $250,000.00. In these cases, it doesn’t really matter what
exactly it is, other than that it is something that both the protagonists
and antagonists are after; the Maltese Falcon could just as easily have
been a Chinese Dragon. The term is said to originate with a Scottish
story about two men in a train. One asks the other, “What’s that parcel
you’ve got up there in the baggage rack?” The second man replies,
“That’s a MacGuffin.” The first man asks, “What’s a MacGuffin?” to
which the second man responds, “Well, it’s a contraption for trapping
lions in the Scottish Highlands.” The first man laughs, “But there are
no lions in the Scottish Highlands!” “Well then,” answers his
companion, “then it’s not a MacGuffin!” The point being, the
MacGuffin is simply what you need it to be.
matte A visual effect in which part of the image is blocked out and
replaced with a drawing or model.
montage A series of shots in rapid succession.
motif The underlying poetic themes and verbal metaphors of the play
or screenplay.
moviola An older-style film editing machine.
MOW Movie of the Week.
obligatory scene The expected clash between adversaries. It’s what
the audience believes will be the outcome of the action. The obligatory
scene is an expected scene or conflict that the writer sets up and
therefore has an obligation to pay off. It’s the major showdown (also
called “scene a faire”).
O.C. (or OC) Off Camera. Dialogue or sounds heard while the camera
is on another subject.
on the nose When a character says exactly what’s on her mind.
option A percentage of the purchase price for a screenplay or
treatment that is paid by a producer in order to gain exclusive control
of the rights to the material for a certain period of time.
O.S. (or OS) (Screenwriting) Off Screen. Same as O.C.
O.S. (Playwriting) Off Stage or Off Set.
pathos Something that evokes a sense of pity. (From the Greek word
for “suffering.”)
P.O.V. (Point of View) A camera positioned from the point of view
of a particular character.
premise The premise of a film is the “situation.” It is usually
describable in a sentence or two.
red herring A story device that leads the audience to think the play is
going one way when it’s really heading in another direction. It is a false
setup in which the audience is warned of coming events and problems
that never appear. It’s a smokescreen.
SAG Screen Actors Guild.
script doctor A writer who rewrites someone else’s script,
concentrating on
polishing and correcting the script’s structural or character problems.
spec (short for “speculation”) A script that is written without any
guarantee of a sale.
special effects (SFX) Includes everything from explosions to bullet
hits to rain. Special effects are those effects that can be done live on
the set during a shot (see Visual Effects).
spin A spin is an offbeat or different twist in a character or story. It’s
the one thing that makes this story or character different from all
others.
spine The screenplay’s central or main action.
subplot The second or “B” plot, which mirrors or contrasts with the
main
plot.
super (superimpose) The photographic effect of showing one
image over another.
superobjective The character’s driving force or motivation.
Constantin Stanislavski is famous for this term. It’s the overall
purpose that carries a character though the story. For example,
according to Stanislavski, Hamlet’s superobjective is “to find God.”
talent In this business, it means the actors.
treatment A prose narrative (five to twenty pages long) which
recounts the events in a proposed script or movie.
visual effects Effects that do not happen on the set during the
shooting but rather are added to the movie by manipulating the filmed
image, usually by computer.
V.O. Voice-over.
WGAe Writers Guild of America East. (see Chapter 15)
WGAw Writers Guild of American West. (see Chapter 15)
About the Authors
Robin U. Russin is a Professor of Screenwriting at the University of
California, Riverside, where he serves as Director of the MFA in
Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. He has written,
produced, consulted and directed for film, TV and the theater,
including the box-office hit On Deadly Ground; America’s Most
Wanted on Fox; and Vital Signs on ABC. His short stories, articles and
reviews have appeared in Script Magazine, Verdad Magazine,
Connotation Press, Harvard Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The
American Oxonian and elsewhere. He and Bill are also the co-authors
of Naked Playwriting. A Rhodes Scholar, he received his Bachelor’s
Degree in Fine Arts from Harvard, and has graduate degrees from
Oxford University, Rhode Island School of Design, and UCLA, where
he received his MFA in screenwriting.
William Missouri Downs is a Professor of Screenwriting and
Playwriting at the University of Wyoming. He holds an MFA in
screenwriting from UCLA and an MFA in acting from the University of
Illinois. In Hollywood, Bill started as a script secretary on NBC’s
Moonlighting (Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd), and worked his way
up to staff writer on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads (Paul Reiser). He
also wrote episodes for the NBC shows Amen (Sherman Hemsley) and
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Will Smith). In addition he sold a movie to
Ron Howard’s Imagine Films and optioned another to Filmways. He is
the author of over twenty plays that have had well over one hundred
productions, including at the Kennedy Center, the Detroit Rep, the
Wisdom Bridge Theatre, New York City Fringe Festival, the
International Theatre Festival in Israel, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre,
the Charlotte Actors Theatre, the Durban Performing Arts Center
(South Africa), Performance Network, the Berkeley Rep, the
StadtTheater Walfischgasse (Vienna) and a Rolling World Premiere
through the National New Play Network. Samuel French, Playscripts,
Next Stage Press and Heuer Publishing have published his plays. He
also co-wrote the books Naked Playwriting (Silman-James) and The
Art of Theatre (Wadsworth).

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Screenplay:

Writing The Picture

Cover design by Wade Lageose

PART ONE: THE BASICS

3 Theme, Meaning and Emotion

PART TWO: STORY STRUCTURE

8 Beats, Scenes and Sequences

10 Entering the Story

11 The Structure of Genres

PART THREE: WRITING

PART FOUR: MARKETING

PART FIVE: ALTERNATIVES

19 Writing for Video Games

How to Impress a Reader

Today’s screenwriters are among the most intelligent, imaginative and

The more white space there is on the page, the easier it is to

Dialogue must never be “orphaned” by letting a page break or

Sweat drips down Mark’s nose. He doesn’t

Instead, the second line of dialogue must include a new character

Sweat drips down Mark’s nose. He doesn’t

However, this can be extremely cumbersome if you’re shifting dialogue

WALTER CRONKITE (CONT’D)

WALTER CRONKITE (CONT’D)

Most beginning writers use far too many parentheticals. Professionals

Some writers prefer the abbreviations; others attempt to avoid

Another occasionally used parenthetical is (beat), which indicates a

MEDIUM ANGLE ON Mark, who doesn’t answer or

EXTREME CLOSE UP ON his eyes, which are

WIDE ANGLE ON stadium, as the huge floods go

A single bead of sweat drips down Mark’s nose.

Mark squeezes his eyes shut. At their corners,

The huge floods above the stadium go out, one

INT. JOE’S APARTMENT — DAY

INTERCUT JOE’S APARTMENT AND PHONE BOOTH — DAY

Bill glances around nervously. No one’s

Meyer answers in English.

The Nazi glances back. Three RESISTANCE

The Nazi glances back. Three RESISTANCE

Theme, Meaning and Emotion

Many new screenwriters are hesitant to discuss the theme of their

The World of the Story

She walks away.

On the table, the patient twitches as they

Nick upends Buddy. Nick smashes Buddy’s hand

Nick snaps. He attacks with new life. They

Nick digs his teeth into Buddy’s ankle. With a

Nick snaps. He attacks with new life. They

She gives him the finger and crawls out the

She pulls her pictures of The Monkees and The

She gives him the finger, pulls the bows on

Historical Approaches to Structure

In Hollywood, story structure (or plot structure, as it’s sometimes

Page 30: THE CATALYST—Something happens to force the protagonist to act or

2. Try working out your idea using Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s

Power and Conflict

Looking at dramatic writing empirically, we see that Shakespeare

This is boring because it lacks conflict! There is nothing to keep the