Breathe In, Breathe Out

Have you ever written a beautiful scene that mysteriously turns to nonsense overnight? Have you ever found a brilliant solution to a story problem one day, only to find it unbearably ridiculous the next?

If you have, you're in very good company. If you haven't, well -- the rest of us don't like you very much.

Insecurity it a part of writing, of course. But why does it happen so often? Why must it happen so often? My theory is that we go to bed as writers and wake up as editors. With the glow of inspiration behind you and a long slog ahead things start to look very different.

Getting past this unfortunate phenomenon is part of becoming a professional writer. Embracing this phenomenon is the mark of a happy writer.

Let me explain. When you wrote the scene or reworked the synopsis last night and all was light and brilliance, you were discovering something about your story. This morning when you were trying to re-enter writing head, you'd changed. You'd acquired the knowledge already. You assimilated it last night in a sea of beautiful, technicolor, exquisitely structured dreams. And this morning you woke a new person. You had new eyes. You had new knowledge. You had a new perspective. You woke a little bit smarter.

And it hurts. Thank god it's exactly where you want to be. You never would have had the opportunity to look down your nose at this brilliant idea otherwise.

Writing is all about gaining knowledge. It's about incremental gains and the occasional giant leap. When your inner editor puts down his coffee, gazes wearily out over his bifocals and asks, "What were you thinking," you need to answer honestly and fearlessly. There's a dialectic at work here. You need to respond. How do you respond?

When I'm developing a story, I work and rework synopses and loglines. I'll scratch out back stories and then slowly, maybe fiddle with some scene work. Somewhere along the line the synopses and so on start to build up on top of each other. One document decides to become the story encyclopedia. Things start to take on their own weight. I get away from my structure. I let things fall where they may. It starts to feel organic. I am enjoying the process.

But as I prepare to actually write the script, I see all the things that I've stepped away from. The SIMPLE structure. The conceit that conveys itself in a few words. The careful and straightforward construction of the main characters. Minor characters have stepped out of their place, and are mucking up the garden, building digressions and gossiping away about back story. It's a mess. The editor is asking unavoidable questions, and the writer is terrified.

But you pick yourself up and respond. You go back to your ideas about character -- the misbehavior and the goal -- and you start to apply it. You look at your 4.5-act mess through the eyes of your three-act model. You relax. You embrace the art. There's something speaking here, and it's not your conscious mind. The story is more important than your structure. The story had better be more than you had in your conscious mind.

I've wanted to write a posting like this for a while. I hit my readers over the head with the need for structure even when I don't remotely believe they somehow always magically hold the answers. Structure and careful back story development and good character hygiene and all that can make you productive, aware, even professional. They're a pretty good way of telling you when you're screwing up. But don't expect them to write the story for you.

Thought for the Day

"As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."

William S. Burroughs
The Adding Machine

Half Nelson

I finally saw Half Nelson last night. A tremendous film about a white progressive teacher teaching black youth at an inner city school. As he devolves into a serious crack addiction, he clings to the only thing that won't die -- his unlikely friendship with a female student.

I'd actively avoided the film. When your main character is a white, well-meaning liberal teaching history in an inner city school, you're going to get preachy sooner or later. Add drugs and you'll have difficulty not sailing that ship into the shoals of escapism from white guilt. No matter how sensitive and well-drawn the characters, I just knew that sooner or later he'd be busting down a door and saving her from an evil drug lord.

But it wasn't like that. Not at all. It's a beautiful, well-written film. It can teach us a lot.

This movie had to deal with some heavy expectations (see above). The filmmakers clearly didn't want to make that film. So a lot of making it was AVOIDING that easy, hackneyed interpretation. I want to point to three issues here.

First, structure. The white liberal drug movie set in the inner city makes fairly straightforward use of the three-act structure. In other words, it's predictable. You'll see the well-meaning liberal teacher. You'll get a nice inciting event, act break, midpoint, blah blah blah. It'll be darkest before the dawn -- his students reecting him and running off to a life of crime and inhumanity. And he'll save the day. Yada yada.

So the writers had a task here. Subvert that. Subvert it quick. And keep subverting it. And use it too.

What do I mean?

The audience is EXPECTING these beats. You're expecting a high point, where it looks like the teacher might get off drugs and make things work. It doesn't come -- and so your pulled into the character. The events of the script are open: you can't necessarily predict where the plot is going, because it's more of a life shape. Things fall into place as they go. It's open to interpretation. When we see the teacher stepping over the line physically with the student at the dance, we learn to watch the moment, rather than check the mental box for midpoint.

The teacher will likely get fired. We know that. It isn't the point. The viewer is still cradled in the plot, but not as a passive observer. You need to watch carefully since you have no idea what's coming next.

Second, character. One of the most interesting moments for me was when the teacher DOES have the face off with the drug dealer over the fate of his friend and student. He knows he has no moral ground to stand on. But he's got to do something. And he says that: "I'm supposed to do something, right?!"

What happens? The drug dealer is also a complex character. He's not just evil. He is -- in his own way -- looking out for her when he brings her into his business. And when the teacher keeps fighting his losing battle to stop him, he realizes that they do share something. They both want what's best for her. He invites him into his house (and yeah, gets him high).

It's an incredibly dramatic shift. And while you'll find evidence of it on the written script page, it's really the hard work of some determined screenwriters to produce this set up in the script *up to* that moment.

Third, dialogue. How do a teacher and student speak about the teacher's drug habit in real life? They don't. And virtually none of the dialogue in this movie is driven by the screenwriter's desire to get the issue down on the page. It's driven by the set up. There's not a single moment of 'stop doing the drugs or you'll die'.

Many screenwriters would insist on that scene, or at least not see a way around it. What happens when you do away with it? The audience member wonders what's going on with the kid. They remember that fear of seeing your teacher in a non-school environment. They remember the first time they really saw into the world of adults. They remember when they lost a friend to something they couldn't stop. They remember feeling powerless in their own environment.

It's an astonishing thing when a movie can have us both dig that deep into our own past AND get us that involved in a character.

And isn't that why we go to see movies?

What's a Beat?

I apologize for jumping around a bit with my blogging. One week I'm dwelling on my own fairly esoteric musings, then switching over to very basic stuff the next. I'm sure I'm boring the working screenwriters and confusing the beginners. So, apologies to all.

Today's a day for the beginners with maybe a warm fuzzy moment of recognition for the more advanced readers as well.

What's a beat? Virtually anyone new to dramatic writing asks this question. And there are many answers. A beat is first and foremost a unit of drama. It's a pearl in the necklace. It's a step forward.

It's scalable. When talking about structure, screenwriters are talking about 'big' beats -- your act breaks and midpoint and low point and so on. When you're deep in scene work, a beat means the same thing it does to an actor. It's a shift in action, objective, or circumstance. It's the moment to moment shifts, the step by step modulations that make a scene work or fall flat.

A beat is universal. Everyone involved in drama talks about beats. It's a way of connecting your work to other people's efforts. You learn to find the beats very quickly. You know a beat when you see one.

It's a beat, as in music. Beats have to line up correctly. Beats define pacing. Beats create tension or excitement. Beats invite the audience into the song of your story.

A beat might be a line of dialogue. A beat can be a new shot. A beat can be action, or a simple, intuitive shift in a character's objective. A beat is what makes the story make sense moment to moment.

It's the hard stuff. Beats will always call bulls*** on what seemed like a good idea when you were working out your synopsis. Beats are what sell or sink your scene. If the reader just doesn't believe what's going on (or even if she isn't particularly engaged), there's usually a problem with the beats.

What's that problem? Usually the writer is forgetting (or ignoring) something that's perfectly obvious a beat or two before. A character is on the verge of starvation one moment, then chatting amicably about Augustine's use of Aristotle the next. Or a character's bent on wooing a beautiful girl one moment, then when given the perfect opportunity a few beats later, steals a car instead. We've all done it. It's inevitable. Reality is slippery. Stories are slippery. It's always more complex than we know starting out.

For me, screenwriting is about working out the big beats first -- in a careful synopsis I write and rewrite until I'm happy. Then I move down into smaller beats: getting each 'big' beat to work. And after I'm happy at that level, I'll get into the really tiny beats that make a script sing. It takes a lot of work. But it keeps you focused on where the audience is. It keeps you locked into a couple absolutely central issues that are too easily forgotten.

CHARACTER. Who is the character? How does he or she react? What's his misbehavior? Her overall goal?

RELATIONSHIP. What's the power dynamic between the characters? What's really going on beneath the words on the page? How well do they know each other? How do I communicate this to an audience?

OBJECTIVE. In almost every good scene, the characters' objectives are in conflict. Frequently one character doesn't understand the other character's objective. But you do. Write to make it clear.

WHERE. Where are they? Do you REALLY know where they are? What's going on? Work hard to make that space less cloudy. Make some good choices. You'll find the beats you're looking for in the comforts and obstacles inherent in the location. And you'll be grounding the audience in the space too. They'll feel it. They'll buy it. And that'll do more to sell your script than you expect.

You've no doubt heard a million times that a winning script reads quickly. Readers will read the entire thing in a couple houra. They'll eat it up, take it in, absorb it, and remember everything. Yeah, you need a brilliant idea to start. But you also need to get everything working beat to beat.

You can lose a reader in a moment. There's always a distraction. The moment something doesn't ring true they'll be up checking their email or putting on the stereo. The moment the action feels guided by the writer's objectives rather than the characters', the reader's thinking about their aching back, or the fact that they haven't been to the gym all week. One beat out of tune can do that.

And the moment they're thinking about that stuff, you're sunk.

Shameless Plugs

I'm consulting on a couple projects, and both are highlighted in the latest edition of SF 360. I'm on board as a script/creative consultant for Lise Swensons's Saltwater, which goes into production next February. And I've been helping out unofficially on Laura Lukitsch's Beard Club also.

Check out the article here.

Narration

It's hard to go to a movie these days without Morgan Freeman dropping in on the experience to tell you all about what the characters are thinking. While he's at it, he might be framing the audience question oh-so-neatly for us. Or priming the pump for the next big plot point. It's a drag.

Many, if not most, screenwriting classes harp away on how our art is visual storytelling, and that narration is really a crutch for weak and half-baked stories. It's having Morgan Freeman do the audience's job of exploring the characters. If screenwriting teachers are to be believed, Morgan Freeman would be better off reading his lines back to the screenwriter, rather than the audience. They're notes on what's not clear, and therefore what the screenwriter hasn't accomplished yet.

So why the heck is Morgan Freeman so busy these days?

There are many reasons. Many of the reasons have not so much to do with the screenwriter's choices. Producers risking bazillions of dollars on these mere words like to see the careful framing of the plot on the page they're betting on. They want to dumb it down. It's safer.

But that's not what this post is about.

What are the positives and negatives of narration in your script?

I've laid out the basic argument against. Narrators ARE a crutch for lazy writers (and early drafts). It's simply easier to tell the audience whats going on than to work up a really compelling set up and conflict that would affect them more deeply. I've critiqued hundreds of scripts with this problem.

To look at the same problem another way, a narrator just adds another level of mediation between the audience and the story. If Morgan's been busy through the first act, we won't quite buy into the action on the screen until he's added his two cents. Morgan always points to the right way to view the action on screen. And so there's less to explore.

So why would any self-respecting screenwriter include a narrator?

Narration is an extremely economical device. You can accomplish very cumbersome narrative tasks in a quarter page. You can set up hundreds of years of galactic history. You can make sure that the audience is all on board, even if any number might have missed a very clever act of deceit on your protagonist's part. You can recap and add something while doing it. You can, yes, frame the all important audience question of What Happens Next.

Good narration works hard to not merely shape, but to be a real contribution to the story. When the narrator comes into play in Magnolia, it deepens our understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of the story while keeping us on track with the multiple storylines. The audience has been moving along with a whirlwind of developments. Anything less clever would insult and bore them.

Some great narrators are characters in the movie. They offer a point of view on the material. They aren't necessarily credible. But you do have a clearer view on what's going on in at least one character's head -- and therefore a better betting angle on what might happen in the future. In other words, the narration becomes more a way to explore assumptions and objectives than it is to accomplish the ostensible task of keeping us up to date. The writer is doing a sleight of hand here. Nothing fancy here. Move along. But human beings pick up on this stuff. Evolution and entertainment rely on it. We're walking social calculators.

Sometimes a narrator is just dead wrong about events. This can be entertaining for an audience. No less a figure than Lev Tolstoy introduced this little trick when he had a little girl describe a ballet for us.

What happens if a little girl narrates the story of her parents' divorce? What happens if a little boy narrates the tale of his teacher's work travails? Or a gullible young man tells the story of his first coke deal? When narrators understand less about the plot than the audience, there's great potential for building emotional depth into the story. This requires that narrators do their narrating in the moment, of course.

In all these strategies, the writer chooses to add something to the story with a narrator, rather than simply relying on him to do the dirty work. Writing a good narrator isn't easy. It doesn't save work, but it can take you deep into a story if you're lucky enough to find one. And if you've got a crummy narrator in your script right now, listen to him or her too. There are probably some great notes in there on what your script is missing.

Lantana

Just watched Lantana again. It's a tremendous Australian film starring Anthony Lapaglia. The plot revolves around the disappearance of a woman and how it reverberates through the lives of everyone from the detectives to her husband to her clients. It's one of those smart films we're always complaining don't get made anymore.

I like to watch movies a couple times. Even if I don't enjoy a film the second time, I get to learn something from it. It struck me halfway through that Lantana almost had to be based on a play. The characters all seem to be hanging out in the wings, ready to walk on stage in combinations you hadn't considered. There's an economy to it that allows you to believe that the cop's wife's shrink might run across his mistress's awkward fascination one night. And there's an awful lot of what I call 'pearly' dialogue: dialogue that's been worked and reworked until it shines with its own light. You see it in plays more than movies. Both the unlikely combinations and the unnatural pearliness of the dialogue can turn a viewer off in a movie. But the writer Andrew Bovell (who did in fact base the script on a play of his own) turns both to his advantage.

Not a lot of scripts really survive the transition from stage to screen. The two arts are much more different than they appear. One big difference, among many, is the audience. We too often assume movie audiences aren't that smart. We play down to them. We give them too much of a hand in understanding exactly how we want them to see the action. Genius can work there too, of course -- I've certainly marveled at it in this blog. But there's something incredibly refreshing about a playwright who intelligently and respectfully retunes his devices to work for film.

One thing to always watch for in ensemble pieces is transitions. Andrew Bovell does them remarkably well. You'll watch a scene coming to a head, a character coming to an unavoidable decision. And then you cut out and over to a new scene, and you see the *results* of that decision. The writer is employing dramatic lift -- and the audience lifts with him. The writer employs metonymy. One character walks alone at the end of a scene, her high heels clicking against the concrete. The next scene begins with a woman in heels walking down a road. Nothing said -- and everything explained. The audience naturally and unconsciously compares and contrasts the two characters. What affinity is there? Now the action is taking place in the viewer's head as much as anywhere.

We talk so much about drawing viewers in. Pages and pages are written about it. I've lectured about it. But when you get right down to it, it's really the simple, practical choices that come out of our *own* absorption in our work. Writers right now, all over the world, are overwriting scenes to express an affinity between two characters in opposite scenes. Don't be one of them. Stop, listen, remember why you're writing. And never assume the audience is dumber than you are.