BOOM: October 2012

8 POINTS FOR DIVINE PENCIL SHARPENERS

1. Get the first ten pages RIGHT

Several years ago, when I was working at AFTRS, I was challenged by the Director and the head of content creation for advocating for what they deemed a rather odd approach to the writing of feature screenplays. Rather than asking the writer to hand over a finished script, my approach required that they only give me the first ten pages along with a general outline (one page) of the story. Such an approach is founded on my conviction that the finding of a cogent and surprising screen story is an evolutionary process in which the writer evolves an understanding of the action by tracking the emotional logic of the characters’ actions scene by scene. In my view – and my experiences as both a writer and a script editor confirm this - one should construct a screenplay in much the same way one builds a house, laying the foundations of the story and making sure those foundations are secure before moving on the to the next phase of the process. I have worked this way with many writers, and with great success (Chopper being a case in point). It is worth noting that the Director and the head of content creation had little sympathy for my point of view, and that neither of them were writers.

What they had based their prejudices on was never made clear to me, but I went away from the experience of institutionalised film-making with the distinct impression that if they had had a greater passion and understanding of screen storytelling – as a written form (i.e.: as a screenplay) - they would’ve been more aware of and responsive to the grammar of drama and the way in which a story evolves in concert with the evolving awareness of the storyteller. They’re apparent inability or unwillingness to grasp this most basic tenet of the story-finding process speaks volumes about most of the film schools with which I have been associated.

It is absolutely essential that screen storytellers, whether they be writers or producers, directors or editors, cultivate a fine appreciation and dramatic understanding of the extreme importance of the first 10 pages – or 10 minutes - of any story, whether it be read or watched.

In Pulp Fiction, for example, the first ten pages of the script feature a restaurant robbery and the prophetic musings of two unforgettable hit men. The dialogue is fresh, imaginative, and unrelenting in its pace and originality. If you are a reader perusing the screenplay, you undoubtedly want to continue turning the page. This is the desire that EVERY reader of your screenplay should have. And when you consider that most prospective producers don’t need to read more than two or three pages to “know” whether or not you have what it takes, the need to grab your reader as quickly and as persuasively as possible is all the more acute. Make sure the first 10 pages are hot, and then – and only then - make the next 10 even hotter, and so on. Try it out on your audience – the one person that you believe NEEDS the experience that your story offers. Hand the script to him or her - the first ten pages only - and when they are finished ask them: “Do you want to read more?”

2. Write for an audience that is your adversary

No one would write an email to nobody, so why would you write a screenplay for nobody? You NEED an audience. But an audience must not be on your side. Your audience – the best audience you can have creatively – is decidedly against you. That is their job – to play the part of the antagonist. Their catch call is “Okay, Show Me!” They are the disbelievers, the cynics, the doubters. They want hard evidence, or else. And for whatever reason they are singularly hostile to your story’s premise. You’re job is to move them to another vantage point that will afford them a contrasting view to the one they hold. Your catch cry is “C’mon, Open up!” But it is not something that you can do by way of explanation. Art never explains! What you must work with is the emotional logic as it is enacted and expressed in the word and actions of the characters IN the story. When this is handled with some degree of technical mastery, insight, originality and inspiration, it is possible to effect a change in your audience‘s perceptions and prejudices, at least temporarily. But in order to reach your audience, you must start with the assumption that they aren’t terribly interested in you or what you are writing. In fact, most of them don’t give a damn about you OR your story, Your job is to make them give a damn.

One could argue that there are a range of factors contributing to the diminishing attention spans of contemporary audiences (MTV, video games, text messaging, IM, and the Internet to name a few), but it is safe to say that the attentiveness (or lack thereof) of the audience is directly related to YOUR ability to make a successful emotional connection – and that connection must be made quickly, or you will lose your audience even more quickly. Readers, like moviegoers, need to be entertained very quickly… if you can’t get them in the first ten pages you’ve probably lost them forever, unless they happen to be in love with you.

3. Write economically

Throughout my years of writing and reading screenplays, one of the most common mistakes I have experienced is “overwriting.” This phenomenon often falls into two categories:

1) verbose stage direction; and

2) “on the nose” dialogue.

Verbose Stage Direction - Keep your stage directions short (blocks of less than five lines) and to the point. Never forget you are writing a piece of entertainment, and stage direction should entertain as much as it informs us as to the comings and goings of your characters.

“On the Nose” Dialogue

Several years ago, I sent a script to my manager and received notes including quite a few pieces of dialogue circled with the comment, “OTN.” I was perplexed and asked him to explain. He said these were several instances where my dialogue was too “on the nose.” The point is to make the audience work a bit for the information – not too much (we don’t want to frustrate them) – but enough for them to feel emotionally involved in your story.

4. It’s the characters, STUPID!

Film stories – both fictional and factional - work best when they are populated with characters that are unique, and present compelling contrasts. Think of the Atlanta businessmen on their weekend canoe trip; think of the crew of the Starship Enterprise; think of the husband and wife in Scenes from a Marriage… Memorable stories are always surprising, fresh and thoroughly credible; they allow for the experience of discovery and realisation. They eschew predictability. In the television series, Minder, it is the relationship of Terry and Arthur that sucks us in and keeps us watching… there is something about their pairing that is unusual, unexpected, and yet believable. Think of the films that you love and what you’ll remember are the characters and their relationships. And the quality of any story you find will be directly related to the quality of the relationship you have with each of the characters. Hence, you should…

Avoid stereotypes
One of the problems I see over and over again with new writers is the depiction of characters that feel familiar and stereotypical. One must work with character until the characters are able to defend themselves against the wilfulness and fear of the writer. Arthur Miller once said that he couldn’t write a character until he could hear the character. Don’t settle for explanation – dramatise your character’s inner life based on an intimate understanding of your character origins, and an awareness of your own. Where your origins intersect with your characters origins, originality is possible.

Surprise us with quirks and unusual traits

Every once in a while, I’ll be sitting in a movie theatre and suddenly I’ll discover something fresh and unusual about one of the main characters. It is that feeling of surprise we all desire and unfortunately, those moments are few and far between.

Create someone an actor will love to play

One can only imagine Julie Roberts’ reaction when she read the script for Erin Brockovich. It is simply not the typical role afforded to actresses in Hollywood. The hero of the film is a quintessentially strong character any actress would love to play. She is confident, bold, sympathetic, and has plenty of memorable monologues. It is a classic underdog story resulting in Roberts winning the Oscar in 2000.

Transform him/her over your story

Rick Blaine in Casablanca is a great example of a hero transforming over the course of the story. At the beginning of the film he confidently states his mantra, “I stick my neck out for nobody.” But, at the end of the film, he does just that – sticking his neck out for the woman he loves.

Make everything about his/her journey difficult

We love watching our heroes struggle. What would Raiders of the Lost Ark be if Indiana Jones immediately stumbled upon the Ark of the Covenant and brought it back to America? What if John McClane burst into the Nakatomi Christmas party and took out Hans Gruber and all of his henchmen in one momentous moment? And, what if Ellen Ripley easily discovered the Alien’s whereabouts as well as a sure-fire way to destroy the monster? Boring!

5. Go on the journey

Every narrative is a journey founded upon a PROBLEM or an OPPORTUNITY, fueled by an OBJECTIVE or GOAL and materialised in a PLAN OF ACTION, which is what the characters actually do in order to overcome their problem/s and/or to seize the opportunity at hand.

Like it or not, there is a form – or logic – to DRAMATIC STORYTELLING. In broad terms it involves the following:

1. By page ten or fifteen at the latest, your audience needs to be introduced to your hero, and needs to know what s/he wants (the goal), and the sort of story world (genre) in which the action is set.

2. By page twenty-five or so, the audience needs to know exactly where the story is going, including the stakes (What happens if the hero does not achieve his goal?) and the villain (The person, place, or thing preventing the hero from achieving his goal).

3. By the page fifty-five or so), the audience needs to feel that the stakes for the hero have been raised in some fashion. Maybe a new character has been introduced. Maybe a new obstacle or villain has reared its head. Maybe the hero has experienced a distinct character transformation.

4. By the end of Act Two (page ninety or so), the threat has become so extreme the audience begins to feel that the odds facing the main character may be insurmountable. Up until now, the hero may have been steadily moving toward achieving his/her goal, but at the end of Act Two, things have changed. S/he has suddenly been put in a corner and the audience is asking itself, “How in the world is he going to get out of this one?”

5. From page ninety to the end of the screenplay (approximately), your audience needs to see the hero devise a new plan and escape from the mess that has presented itself at the end of Act Two (if it’s a happy ending), or see one last, mighty attempt to breakthrough, something with enough guts and passion that lends nobility to the character even though he/she fails (e.g. Chinatown). This is the big finish.

When looked at organically – rather than prescriptively – one readily grasps the fundamental notion that if you are going to find the story and participate in the emotional life of the characters with whom you are working, you must go on the journey with them – ALL of the them – without playing favourites or resorting to playing the role of the passive spectator or puppeteer that merely pulls the strings according to some preconceived formula. Their dangers are your dangers; their hopes, your hopes. Go on the journey.

6. Know what your story is about. What does it MEAN?

Theme is a tough nut to crack. When I ask my students the theme of Die Hard, they often restate the film’s core concept (or, in Hollywood terms, the “logline”), saying something like, “It’s about a cop thwarting a group of international terrorists while saving his wife and a bunch of innocent people.” While this is true, it doesn’t touch on theme. Die Hard is really about a man trying to reconnect with his wife. True, this reconnection takes place amidst the backdrop of an action-packed heist, but at its core, this is a story about John McClane discovering the importance of family and the love and appreciation he has for his wife, Holly. It is, in short, reconciliation story. It is personal, and therefore emotional.

7. Never lose sight of the characters’ objectives

Dramatic characters are dramatic because they are fighting for something. If you get lost in the writing of your screenplay, if you arrive at a point where you can no longer grasp what is going on, it is probably due to the fact that you have lost sight of the character’s objectives and have written too many scenes in which nothing is happening to advance the dramatic causes of the characters.

Every story worthy of the tag “dramatic” contains characters that are striving earnestly for a goal. In Toy Story 2, Buzz Lightyear is the primary hero whose goal is to lead a group of toys to save Woody from being sent to a museum in Japan. The primary villain of the story is Al (of “Al’s Toy Barn” fame) and the stakes are simple: If our hero and his team do not achieve their goal, they will never see Woody again. Jaws is another movie that quickly answers our burning questions. By the end of Act One, we know Police Chief Martin Brody (with the support of Quint and Hooper) is our hero, his goal is to kill the shark, the villain is the shark itself, and the stakes are: If Brody does not achieve his goal, more residents of Amity will die. In The Verdict, the protagonist/lawyer, Frank Galvin is fighting for his client, but the larger fight is to redeem himself from the desultory nothingness into which he has fallen.

8. Leave them wanting more

A principle as old as showbiz itself, yet as relevant today as ever. It suggests the crafting of a memorable, climactic ending that will forever be satisfying to your audience. An outstanding ending can often save a mediocre film while a mediocre ending can often ruin an otherwise outstanding story.

So, does your climax:

1. Feel like a big, fulfilling finish?

2. Reveal a significant character trait of your hero or villain?

3. Resolve the central problem established in Act One?

4. Contain a satisfying surprise?

5. Appear five to twenty minutes or so before the end of the film?

If your story accomplishes all of the above, you are on your way… and while the writing may not be entirely happy, it will certainly have a good chance of being dramatic.

Gone dry on ideas for stories? Wishing there was something you could get your teeth into? Tired of fruitlessly perusing your local newspapers for a high concept film idea?

Back in the mid-1980s, together with writers, Chris Lee and Steve Wright, I came up with an idea and a screenplay for a feature film based upon urban legends. I wanted to call it Urban Legend, but the project's producer put the nix on it, explaining that "no one would ever use that as a title - too academic". Subsequently, the project went through many drafts and was finally given a pre-sale by a big Hollywood company. Everything was set, casting was started, and the script was re-titled You Never Can Tell (from the song by Chuck Berry, which was to be featured in the film). Alas, at the last minute, the AFC (Australian Film Commission) decided not to pick up the "non-deductibles", owing largely to the fact that the producer wanted to assign an inexperienced director to the project, namely himself! Ultimately, the project fell over and became - as they say in the classics - "history".

Twenty years later, as is often the case, Americans took up the idea and made the very successful - albeit inferior version of the Australian-grown film - Urban Legends, a film - and a title - successful enough to warrant a sequel.

Here's what they came up with:

In light of the fact that there are any number of great ideas begging for imaginative writers and filmmakers to breathe some dramatic life into them, WHERE'S THE DRAMA? is happy and generous enough to offer a new service to screen storytellers that are wishing to broaden their story horizons.

The film "ideas" contained here will be written by some one, some time; and most of them will probably be made; the only question is when and by whom?

Each of these story "triggers" offers a compelling starting point for dramatic action; each is grounded in both the "real world" and in genre, with the potential for character and situation that most audiences will find intriguing. This page won't tell you HOW to write the script, but if your looking for starting points or something to inspire your imagination, the you've come to the right place.

ACCESS STORY TRIGGERS