THE STORY VAULT BLOG
REVERSE ENGINEERING...OR ENGINEERING REVERSALS?
I've read more than a dozen books on screen (and story) writing: everything from John Truby to Joseph Campbell to Robert McKee to Syd Field to the many variations of Save the Cat! - as well as books on structure (Cowgill) and plot (Tobias).
These tomes advocate a great variety of approaches to crafting an engaging screenplay - but they all do one thing in common: they support their conclusions using examples from highly regarded screenplays and movies.
The authors of these books have derived their conclusions by reverse engineering successful film projects. This sounds like a reasonable approach - and it is. There's only one small problem. And that problem is that not all successful screenplays and movies are built the same way.
We open a book and the author tells us that our main character must have an arc; he or she must change during the story. And here's a list of movies to support this conclusion. But I can easily produce examples of acclaimed (critically and/or in terms of box office receipts) that support the opposite conclusion. In "Plots and Characters" Millard Kaufman mentions Chili Palmer in "Get Shorty," and Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley in "Heat." Forrest Gump is another character who never changes. In most of the Bond films, 007 is the same person at the end of the story as he in the beginning. The same for parody spy Austin Powers.
In "Casablance," Bogart's character, Rick Blaine, is massively transformed over the course of the film, but as Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon," it is imperative to the story that he does not change. So where does that leave us? This is not so important as where it leaves our main character.
I watch a lot of interviews with professional screenwriters. Some of them insist that writing an outline and determining your stories theme before you begin the script is imperative. And many reveal that they don't outline and that they discover theme through the process of writing their story. Who is right? They're both right. Trust your instinct and do what works for you.
Alfred Hitchcock was a proponent of revealing the identity of the murderer early and following that up with 90 minutes of suspense rather than having a late discovery and 2 minutes of surprise. "Knives Out," anyone? In "Knives Out" we get...roughly 120 minutes of suspense...but the suspense is not primarily focused on the identity of the murderer. There's nothing wrong with Hitchcock's advice, but there are multiple ways to achieve the same goal.
In screenwriting books exposition is often vilified. It's suggested that it should be avoided if at all possible. But exposition can be very useful. It can be a great time saver. The judicious use of exposition can preserve a story's pacing. Examples of movies that use exposition to great effect are "Jurassic Park," "The Godfather" and "Up." One of my favourite movies, "Amélie," doesn't shy away from exposition.
In general, exposition has developed a bad reputation because most writers don't do it well...but most writers are not good at crafting characters, dialogue or theme, but we don't endeavour to avoid these.
I enjoy Millard Kaufman's book "Plots and Characters" because it's not a book about screenwriting, it's a book about "writing for the screen." (If you understand what that means, please explain it to me.) In the final chapter he writes: "I fear that generously sprinkled among the preceding pages is an abundance of testimony that has brought me exceedingly close to contradicting myself, not once, but many times." This results from the fact that he is not, by and large, prescriptive. He provides examples of one thing working exceedingly well and it's opposite also working exceedingly well.
I get a fair bit of grief from other writers for saying that essentially there are no rules (other than "don't be boring"). I sense in my critics a fear of uncertainty. I get it. It would be great if there was a formula that worked every time without fail. But that's not writing. A writer needs to be prepared to think, to make judgements, to take risks sometimes. If we rely on formulas we don't have the Coen Brothers, Tarantino or Nolan. But thankfully there are artists like them who are prepared to do the very hard work of writing fiction. The human instinct is, of course, to make everything easier. As human beings we want to conserve energy and eliminate risk. This is the path to mediocrity. We need to find the energy and the courage and the freedom to explore new fertile ground.
Writing is hard. if it isn't hard you're probably not doing it well. So I should say, "good writing is hard." Great writing is even harder.
I made the mistake of saying (to a group of writers online) that "writing is a tyranny of decisions." I've learned over the years that most amateur screenwriters are incapable of abstract thought and don't have a poetic bone in their body. So why didn't I keep my mouth shut? A number of people seemed to take this as a personal affront to the art and craft of screenwriting. (As well, any challenge to dogma or convention is taken as a personal affront.) I was wrong because for them "writing is easy and fun." And it can be easy and fun. The first draft of a scene often is. Then comes the scrutiny: going over every line, every word and every punctuation mark to deliver the most in terms of story, tone, pacing, character, dialogue, atmosphere, theme, etc. Therein lies the real work. Therein lies the tyranny of decisions.
As Kaufman proposes, a writer should consider alternatives to the choices he or she has made. People are going to question your choices, so you may as well question them first.
Getting back to my original question, the title of this post: Reverse Engineering...or Engineering Reversals.
Do both. Find what works for a given story. Do the hard work of deciding for yourself. It might not feel safe or comfortable, but it can be very rewarding.
EXPLAINING EXPOSITION (A less than comprehensive guide)
I admit the first half of the title is misleading. I'm not explaining anything. We all know what exposition is.
I'm here to talk about one way to deal with it.
As I said in an earlier post, exposition can be very useful. Nearly every movie has it. It's not the exposition that's the problem...it's how it's delivered. (Just the way dialogue is not a problem...it's how ti's written that matters.)
In Moorland I have a character whose backstory is absolutely critical to understanding what motivates him (his life purpose, basically). But I realized that if I fed the audience his backstory in bits and drabs it was...
!) going to have less impact
2) going to slow the pace of the story
So I decided I would use exposition as a short cut.
Now, in the past, when I was a devotee of screenwriting books, I would take the predominately proffered advice. (Did that sound awkward? That sounded awkward.) Introduce conflict. This would either distract audiences so they didn't realize they were being fed a set of facts...or be the sugar that made the medicine go down. So that's what I did.
It still came across as exposition.
I feel the scene containing Caleb's backstory not only works, but it's a lot of fun. I believe it's the kind of scene that actors would love to play.
So what did I do differently?
I stared with an advantage. Caleb is a very dramatic, larger-than-life character. He's been described as Shakespearean...and to a degree that's accurate. So the first thing is
Caleb's delivery is very sincere and dramatic. This helps immensely.
It's not enough.
I then introduced conflict...but very specific types of conflict.
Not a conflict of ideas like "the only way to get the prisoner to safety is to go over the top of the mountain" vs. "are you crazy? we'll freeze to death before we reach the summit...we need to commandeer a boat and go by sea." Unless you're a mountaineer or the captain of a fishing boat it's hard to get emotionally engaged in that debate.
The type of conflict I engaged was one of values. We may not have an opinion on "by land or sea," but we have an opinion on values.
Third, I introduced humour. The humour is integral to the conflict and reflects the conflicting values of Caleb and Leticia.
To this point we have:
1) Over-the-top delivery
2) Conflicting values
3) Humour
There's one more ingredient...and this is as important as anything. And to be honest, I don't even know if I could pull it off again.
4) There's a payoff.
Early in the scene there's a setup so subtle that it doesn't appear to be a setup...but it's paid off at the end. A throwaway question that gets buried...only to suddenly resurrect itself.
I wish I could say I thought of all of this before I began writing the scene. But it just happened. The pieces fell into place.
AEBs. ASEMBEs.
Obviously, I didn't think this through.
A screenplay is never finished. It's a law of nature. Even if one is fortunate enough to see a movie he wrote on the big screen there's always going to be those "I could have done that better" moments. I'm sure actors experience the same thing. They're standing on stage clutching that Oscar and thinking, "I should have made a different choice in that scene."
Well, maybe not exactly at that moment.
Things sit in the back of my mind. They typically emerge when I'm lying in bed, before I go to sleep or shortly after I wake.
I had a scene in Moorland that was half a page long. No dialogue. It was a functional scene. It established the atmosphere of the setting and very efficiently introduced some characters who would shortly prove significant in that Leticia is able to use them to achieve an objective.
But I had Leticia walking through a space and taking things in...without revealing how she was feeling about her circumstances. The scene didn't have action, it didn't have humour, it didn't have any real conflict, and it didn't reveal anything new about Leticia. (Did I mention it was only half a page long? Maybe that's why I made it only half a page long.)
And so it sat there...in the back of my mind...getting ready to kick until the daylight bled through.
Opened up the wdz file. (It's okay if you don't know what that is.) Expanded the scene to almost 1 page...adding in emotional beats. Now everything that happens has deeper meaning and reflects what is happening to Leticia or how she feels about it. It's no longer a scene that just sets the stage for what is about to happen...it's filled with emotional impact.
I'm getting better at this.