Robert McKee's Story

Complicated Films

1. Large cast 2. Multiple sets and locations

Genre: Redemption Plot

Arcs on a moral change within the protagonist from bad to good

Character Arc

1. Story lays out the protagonist's characterization 2. We're led to the heart of the character and his true nature is revealed as he chooses to take one action over another 3. This deep nature is at odds with outer countenance of the character, contrasting with it, if not contradicting it. We sense that he is not what he appears to be 4. Having exposed the character's inner nature, the story puts greater and greater pressure on him to make more and more difficult choices 5. By the story climax, these choices have profoundly changed the humanity of the character

Mega-genre

Genres so large and complex that they're filled with numerous subgenre variations

Supra-genre: Sports

Crucible for character change

Setup and Payoff

Layer in knowledge, then close the gap by delivering that knowledge to the audience

Genre: Testing Plot

Stories of willpower vs. temptation to surrender

Pessimistic Controlling Idea

"Down-ending" stories expressing our cynicism, our sense of loss and misfortune, a negatively charged vision of civilization's decline, of humanity's dark dimensions; life as we dread it to be but know it so often is

Idealistic Controlling Idea

"Up-ending" stories expressing the optimism, hopes, amd dreams of mankind, a positively charged vision of the human spirit; life as we wish it to be

Ironic Controlling Idea

"Up/down-ending" stories expressing our sense of the complex, dual nature of existence, a simultaneously charged positive and negative vision; life at its most complete and realistic

Scene Analysis

1. Define conflict 2. Note opening value 3. Break the scene into beats 4. Note closing value and compare with opening value 5. Survey beats and locate turning point

Audience Emotional Involvement

1. Empathy- identification with the protagonist that draws us into the story, vicariously rooting for our own desires in life 2. Authenticity- internally consistent world, true to itself in scope, depth, and detail

3 Tips on Writing Characters for Screen

1. Leave room for the actor This old Hollywood admonition asks the writer to provide each actor with the maximum oppurtunity to use his creativity; not to overwrite and pepper the page with constant description of behaviors, nuances of gesture, tones of voice. The actor brings a character to life from the subtext out: desire meeting forces of antagonism. On-camera he'll say and do what the scene requires, but characterization must be his work as much as or more than yours. Writer/actor collaboration begins when the writer stops dreaming of a fictional face and instead imagines the ideal casting 2. Fall in love with all your characters Embrace all your creations, especially the bad people. They deserve love like everyone else. A hint about villians: If your character's up to no good and you place yourself within his being and asking what you would do, you'd do everything possiblr to get away with it. Sociopaths are the most charming folks we ever meet, sympathetic listeners who seem so deeply concerned about our problems while they lead us to hell. No one thinks they're bad. If you can't love them, don't write them. On the other hand, permit neither your empathy nor antipathy for a character to produce melodrama or stereotype. Love them all without losing your clearheadedness 3. Character is self-knowledge "Everything I learned about human nature I learned from me." -Anton Chekhov Where do we find our characters? Partly through observation. We observe, but it's a mistake to copy life directly to the page. Few individuals are as clear in their complexity and as well delineated as a character. Instead, we build characters out of parts found. Observation is our source of characterizations, but understanding of deep character is found in another place. The root of all fine character writing is self-knowledge. One of the sad truths of life is that there's only one person in this vale of tears that we ever really know, and that's ourselves. We're essentially and forever alone. We all share the same crucial human experiences. Each of us is suffering and enjoying, dreaming and hoping of getting through our days with something of value. This is why when you ask yourself what you would do in these circumstances, the honest answer is correct. You would do the human thing. Therefore, the more you penetrate the mysteries of your own humanity, the more you come to understand yourself, the more you are able to understand others

Supra-genre: Docu-Drama

2nd cousin to Historical Drama that centers on recent rather than past events but often with little documentary value

Titles

A film's title is the marketing centerpiece that "positions" the audience, preparing it for the experience ahead. Screenwriters, therefore, cannot indulge in literary, nontitle titles. An effective title points to something solid that is actually in the story. The best titles often name 2/all elements at once

Character Revelation

A hidden nature waits concealed behind a facade of traits and the only way we come to know characters in depth is through their choices under pressure

Structure

A selection of events from the character's life stories that's composed into a strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view of life.

Key Image

A single image that sums up and concentrates all meaning and emotion. When within the climactic action, it echoes and resonates all that has gone before. It is an image that is so turned to the telling that when it's remembered the whole film comes back with a jolt. Ones of quality are rarely achieved

Pacing

A story is a metaphor for life, so it must have the rhythm of life and this rhythm beats between two contradictory desires: relaxation and tension. We use our act structure to start at a base of tension, then rise scene by sequence to the Climax of Act One. As we enter Act Two, we compose scenes that reduce that tension, switching to a counterpointing mood (comedy, romance) that lowers the Act One intensity so the audience can catch its breath. After retarding pace, we build the progressions of the following act until we top the previous Climax in intensity and meaning. Act by act, we tighten and release tension until the final Climax empties out the audience, leaving it emotionally exhausted but fulfilled. Then a brief Resolution scene to recuperate. In a well-told story, the progression of scenes and sequences accelerates pacing

Story Climax

A story is a series of acts that build to a last act climax or story climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change.

Unity and Variety

A story, even when expressing chaos, must be unified: "Because of the Inciting Incident, the Climax had to happen. The cement that binds Inciting Incident and Climax is the Spine. Within this unity, we must induce as much variety as possible. The key to varying a repetitious cadence is research because superficial knowledge leads to a bland, monotonous telling.

Insight

A sudden awareness of the ineffable truths that lie hidden beneath the film's images through Turning Points and must be shaped into Setups and Payoffs

Scene

Action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of character's life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene is a story event. Minor change

Subgenre: Disaster/Survival

Action/Adventure that has Mother Nature as source of antagonism

Subgenre: High Adventure

Action/Adventure that incorporates ideas such as destiny, hubris, or spiritual

Law of Conflict

After the protagonist steps out of the Inciting Incident, nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. The soul of story

Obligatory Scene

Aka Crisis An event the audience knows it must see before the story can end, this scene will bring the protagonist into a confrontation with the most powerdul forces of antagonism in his quest, forces stirred to life by the Inciting Incident that will gather focus and strength through the course of the story. Called "obligatory" because having teased the audience into anticipating this moment, the writer is obliged to keep his promise and show it to them

Spine

Aka Through-line/Super-objective Formed by the energy of a protagonist's (often unconscious) desire, the deep desire in and effort by the protagonist to restore the balance of life and is the primary unifying force that holds all other story elements together

The Comic Character

All characters pursue desire against forces of antagonism. But the dramatic character is flexible enough to step back from the risk and realize: "This could get me killed." Not the comic character. The comic character is marked by a blind obsession. The first step to solving the problem of a character who should be funny but isn't is to find his mania. A comic character is created by assigning the role a "humour," an obsession the character does not see. Almost any obsession will do.

Genre: War

Although war is often setting for another genre (Love Story), its specifically about combat Subgenres: Pro-war, Antiwar

External/Internal Imagery

An Image System is created 1 of 2 ways, via External/Internal Imagery. External Imagery takes a category that outside the film already has a symbolic meaning and brings it in to mean the same thing in the film it means outside the film. This is the hallmark of the student film. Internal Imagery takes a category that outside the film may/may not have a symbolic meaning attached but brings it into the film to give it an entirely new meaning appropriate to this film alone

Resolution

Any material left after Climax and has three possible uses 1. Logic of the telling may not provide an oppurtunity to climax a subplot before/during the Central Plot's Climax, so it'll need a scene of its own at the very end. This, however, can be awkward. The story's emotional heart is in the main plot. Moreover, the audience will be leaning towards the exits, yet forced to sit through a scene of secondary interest. The problem can be solved, however. Ex. Andrew Bergman tweaked the main plot in the Resolution in THE IN-LAWS 2. To show the spread of climactic effects. If a film expresses progressions by widening into society, its Climax may be restricted to the principal characters. The audience, however, has come to know many supporting roles whose lives will be changed by the climactic action. This motivates a social event that satisfies our curiosity by bringing the entire cast to one location where the camera can track around to show us how these lives have been changed. 3. All films need a Resolution as a courtesy to the audience. For if the Climax has moved the filmgoers, it's rude to suddenly go to black and roll the titles. A film needs what the theatre calls a "slow curtain." A line of description at thw bottom of the last page that sends the camera slowly back/tracking along images for a few seconds, so the audience can catch its breath, gather its thoughts, and leave the cinema with dignity

Pointless Pace Killer

Any scene in which reactions lack insight and imagination, forcing expectation to equal result

Genre: Education Plot

Arcs on deep change within the protagonist view of life, people, or self from negative (naive, distrustful, fatalistic, self-hating) to positive (wise, truthful, optimistic, self-possessed)

Transition

As we design cycles of rising action, we must at the same time transition the audience smoothly through them. Between two scenes, therefore, we need a third element, the link that joins the tail of Scene A and the head of Scene B. The third element is the hinge for a transition; something held in common by two scenes or counterpointed between them. An imaginative study of almost any two scenes will find a link Ex. 1. A characterization trait (Common: bratty child/childish adult. Opposition: Awkward protagonist/elegant protagonist) 2. An action (C: foreplay of lovemaking/savoring the afterglow. O: chatter/cold silence) 3. An object (C: greenhouse interior/woodland exterior. O: Congo/Antarctica) 4. A word (C: phrase repeated from scene to scene. O: compliment/curse) 5. A quality of light (C: shadows at dawn/shade at sunset. O: blue/red) 6. A sound (C: waves lapping a shore/rise and fall of a sleeper's breath. O: silk caressing skin/grinding of gears) 7. An idea (C: child's birth/overture. O: painter's empty canvas/old man dying)

Define conflict

Ask who drives the scene, motivates it, and makes it happen? Ask what does he/it want? Desire is the key. Phrase this desire/scene-objective as an infinitive, "To do this"/"To get that" Ask what forces of antagonism block this desire? Ask what do the forces of antagonism want? This is best expressed as an infinitive "Not to do that"/"To get this instead" If the scene is well written, when you compare the set of phrases expressing the desires from each side, you'll see they're in direct conflict, not tangential

Note closing value and compare with opening value

At the end of the scene, examine the value-charged condition of the character's situation and describe it in positive/negative terms. Compare this not to Step 2. If the two notations are the same, the activity between them is nonevent. Nothing has changed, so nothing has happened. Exposition may have been passed to the audience, but the scene is flat. If, on the other hand, the value has undergone change, then the scene has turned

Horror Subgenre: Super-Uncanny

Audience is kept guessing between Uncanny and Supernatural

Gap

Between his subjective expectation and the objective result, the difference between anticipation and result, between the world as the the character perceived it before acting and the truth he discovers in action, leading him to the second action. These cracks in moment-to-moment reality mark the difference between the dramatic and the prosaic, between action and activity.

Progressive Complications

Body of story that spans from Inciting Incident to Crisis/Climax of the final act, built by drawing upon greater and greater capacities from characters, demanding greater and greater willpower, putting them at greater and greater risk, constantly passing points of no return in terms of the magnitude or quality of action. Must not retreat to actions of lesser quality or magnitude, but move progressively forward to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another

Progressions

Build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative charges of the values at stake in the story

Symbolic Ascension

Build the symbolic charge of the story's imagery from the particular to the universal, the specific to the archetypal If, in a heavy-handed way, we label images as "symbolic," their effect is destroyed, but if they are slipped quietly, gradually, and unassumingly into the telling, they move us profoundly Start with actions, locations, and roles that represent only themselves, but as the story progresses, chose images that gather greater and greater meaning until by the end of telling characters, settings, and events stand for universal ideas

Creative Limitation

Calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles

Turning Point

Centered in the choice a character makes under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of desire Effects include: surprise, increased curiosity, insight, and new direction When a gap opens between expectation and result, it jolts the audience with surprise. This moment of shock instantly provokes curiosity as the audience wonders "Why?" This propels the audience back through the story and what they've seen so far instantly clicks into a new configuration, so they experience a rush of insight into character and world, a satisfying layer of hidden truth. From each point of changed value, he must move his story in a new direction to create Turning Points yet to come. They fail when we overprepare the obvious and underprepare the unusual. They also create the dynamics of emotion

Multiprotagonist

Characters pursue seperate and individual desires, suffering and benefiting independently. They become Multiplot stories, weaving a number of smaller stories, each with its own protagonist, to create a dynamic portrait of a specific society

Genre: Maturation Plot

Coming-of-age story

Extra-personal Conflicts

Conflict with social institutions and individuals and with man-made and natural environments

False Mystery

Counterfeit curiosity caused by the artificial concealment of fact. Exposition that could and should have been given to the audience is withheld in hope of holding interest over long, undramatized passages

Supra-genre: Biography

Cousin to Historical Drama that focuses on a person rather than an era, but must interpret facts as if they were fiction, find the meaning of subject's life, and then cast him as the protagonist of his life's genre Subgenre: Autobiography

Mood

Created in the film's text: quality of light and color, tempo of action and editing, casting, style of dialogue, production design, and musical score. In general, like setups, is a form of foreshadowing. Moment by moment, however, while the dynamic of the scene determines whether the emotion it causes is positive or negative, the mood makes this emotion specific0

Supra-genre

Created out of settings, performance styles, filmmaking techniques that contain a host of autonomous genres

Story Event

Creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict

Mystery, Suspense, Dramatic Irony

Curiosity and Concern create 3 possible ways to connect the audience to the story. These terms are not to be mistaken for genres: they name story/audience relationships that vary according to interest In Mystery the audience knows less than the characters. Means gaining interest through curiosity alone. We create but then conceal expositional facts, particulary facts in the Backstory. We arouse the audience's curiosity about these past events, tease it with hints of the truth, then deliberately keep it in the dark by misleading it with "red herrings," so that it believes/suspects false facts while we hide the real facts. In Suspense the audience and characters know the same info. It combines Curiosity and Concern. In Suspense, curiosity is not about fact but outcome. As the characters discover expositional fact, the audience discovers it. We feel empathy and identify with the protagonist In Dramatic Irony the audience knows more than the characters. Creates interest primarily through concern alone, eliminating curiosity about fact and consequence. Such stories often open with the ending, deliberately giving away the outcome. When the audience is given the godlike superiority of knowing events before they happen, its emotional experience switches. What in Suspense would be anxiety about outcome and fear for the protagonist's well-being, becomes dread of the moment the character discovers what we already know and compassion for someone we see heading for disaster. This doesn't eliminate all curiosity. The result of showing the audience what will happen is to cause them to wonder how and why it came to be. It encourages the audience to look more deeply into the motivations and casual forces at work in the characters' lives

Character Dimension

Decorating a protagonist with quirks does not open his character and draw empathy. Rather, eccentricities may close him off and keep us at a distance. Fine characters aren't marked by one dominant trait. Dimensions means contradiction: either within deep character or between characterization and deep character. These contradictions must be consistent Dimensions fascinate; contradictions in nature/behavior rivet the audience's concentration. Therefore, the protagonist must be the most dimensional character in the cast to focus empathy on the star role. If not, the Center of Good decenters; the fictional universe flies apart; the audience loses balance

Genre: Disillusionment Plot

Deep change of worldview from positive to negative

Supra-genre: Musical

Descended from opera, this presents a "reality" in which characters sing and dance their stories. Indeed, any genre can work in this form

Dialogue

Dialogue is not conversation. Real conversation is full of awkward pauses, poor word choices and phrasing, non sequiturs, pointless repetitions; it seldom makes a point or achieves closure, but that's okay because conversation isn't about making those. It's what psychologists call "keeping the channel open." Talk is how we develop and change relationships. Screen dialogue must have the swing of everyday talk but content well above normal. 1st, screen dialogue requires compression and economy. Screen dialogue must say the max in the fewest possible words. 2nd, it must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue must turn the beats of the scene in one direction or another across the changing behaviors, without repetition. 3rd,it should have purpose. Each line or exchange of dialogue executes a step in design that builds and arcs the scene around its Turning Point. "Speak as common people do, but think as wise men do." -Aristotle The aesthetics of film are 80% visual, 20% auditory. Screen dialogue demands short, simply constructed sentences, generally, a movement from noun to verb to object or from noun to verb to complement in that order. Dialogue doesn't require complete sentences. We don't always bother with a noun/verb. Typically, we drop the opening article or pronoun, speaking in phrases, even grunts. Read your dialogue out loud or, better yet, into a tape recorder to avoid tongue twisters or accidental rhymes and alliterations. Never write anything that calls attention to itself as dialogue. The moment you think you've written something that's particularly fine and literary, cut it

Taking Story and Character to the End of the Line

Does your story contain negative forces of such power that the positive side must gain surpassing quality? Begin by identifying the primary value at stake in your story (ex. justice, love, truth) The Contradictory value is the direct opposite of the positive (ex. injustice, hate, lies) Between the Positive value and its Contradictory, is the Contrary, a situation that's somewhat negative but not fully the opposite (ex. unfairness, indifference, white lies/half-truths) At the end of the line waits the Negation of the Negation, a force of antagonsim that's doubly negative (ex. tyranny, self-hate, self-deception); it means a compound negative which a life situation turns not just quantitatively but qualitatively worse A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the Contrary, Contradictory, and Negation of the Negation. If a story does not reach the Negation of the Negation, the film may be satisfying, but never brilliant/sublime When a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that forces of antagonism are weak. Rather than spending your creativity trying to invent likeable, attractive aspects of protagonist and world, build the negative side to create a chain reaction that pays off naturally and honestly on the positive dimensions

Personal Progression

Drive actions deeply into the intimate relationships and inner lives of the characters If the logic of your setting doesn't allow you to go wide, then you must go deep. Start with a personal/inner conflict that demands balancing, yet seems relatively solvable. Then, as the work progresses, hammer the story downward (emotionally, psychologically, physically, morally) to the dark secrets, the unspoken truth that hide behind a public mask

Coincidence

Drives a fictional world in which unmotivated actions trigger events that don't cause further effects, and therefore fragment the story into divergent episodes and an open ending, expressing the disconnectedness of existence

Causality

Drives a story in which motivated actions cause effects that in turn become the causes of yet other effects, thereby interlinking the various levels of conflict in a chain reaction of episodes to the story climax, expressing the interconnectedness of reality

Dream Sequence

Everything said above applies doubly to these usually feeble efforts to disquise info in Freudian clichés

The Suspense Sentence

Excellent film dialogue tends to shape itself into the periodic sentence. The periodic sentence is the "suspense sentence." Its meaning is delayed until the very last word, forcing both actor and audience to listen to the end of the line

Beat

Exchange of behavior in action or reaction, changing patterns of human behavior. Beat by beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene

Supra-genre: Art Film

Favors the intellect by smothering strong emotion under a blanket of mood, while through enigma, symbolism, or unresolved tensions it invites interpretation and analysis in the postfilm ritual of cafe criticism. Depends on one grand convention: unconventionality Subgenres: Minimalism (Miniplot), Antistructure (Antiplot)

Consistent Realities

Fictional settings that establish modes of interaction between characters and their world that are kept consistently throughout the telling to create meaning

Inciting Incident

First major event, that happens randomly (coincidence)/casually (decision) and is dynamic and fully developed, of the telling and is the primary cause for all that follows. It radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist's life, swinging the value-charge of his reality to negative/positive, which arouses in him the desire to restore that balance and propels him into an active pursuit of his conscious/unconscious desire. Needs a setup and a payoff. Rule of thumb, occurs within the first 25% of telling

Flashbacks

First, dramatize flashbacks. Rather than flashing back to flat scenes in the past, interpolate a minidrama into the story with its own Inciting Incident, progressions, and Turning Point. Although producers often claim that flashbacks slow a film's pace, and indeed badly done they do, a well-done flashback actually accelerates pace Second, do not bring in a flashback until you have created in the audience the need and desire to know Exposition in prose is relatively easy, but the camera is an X-ray machine for all things falsr. If we try to force exposition into a film through novel-like free associative editing or semisubliminal flutter cuts that "glimpse" a character's thoughts, it strikes us as contrived

Problem of PoV

For the screenwriter Point of View has 2 meanings. 1. POV shots. 2. However, applies to the writer's vision. POV within a scene is the physical angle we take in order to describe the behavior of our characters, their interaction with one another and the environment. Each choice of POV has a different effect on empathy and emotion Protagonist's POV within a story is to discipline yourself to the protagonist, make hime center of your universe, and bring the whole story, event by event, to the protagonist. The audience witnesses events only as the protagonist encounters them. This, clearly, is the far more difficult way to tell story. The easy way is to hopscotch through time and space, picking up bits and pieces to facilitate exposition, but this makes story sprawl and lose tension. Like limited setting, genre convention, and Controlling Idea, shaping a story from the exclusive POV of protagonist is a creative discipline. The more time spent with a character, the more oppurtunity to witness his choices. The result is more empathy and emotional involvement between audience and character

Genre: Punitive Plot

Good guy turns bad and is punished

Protagonist

Has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre. Willful in someway, has a conscious desire, may have a self-contradictory unconscious desire, has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly, must have at least a chance to attain his desire, must be empathetic (may/may not be sympathetic)

Supra-genre: Animation

Here the law of universal metamorphism rules: Anything can become something else

Supra-genre: Fantasy

Here the writer plays with time, space, and the physical, bending and mixing the laws of nature and the supernatural

General Questions

How do my characters make a living? What are the politics of my world? What are the rituals of my world? What are the values in my world? What is the genre/combination of genres? With what conventions? What are the biographies of my character? What is the backstory? What is my cast design?

Mega-genre: Social Drama

Identifies problems in society, then constructs a story demonstrating a cure Subgenres: Domestic Drama (problems within family), Woman's Film (dilemmas such as career vs. family, lover vs. kids), Political Drama (corruption in politics), Eco-Drama (battles to save environment), Medical Drama (struggles with physical illness), Psycho-Drama (struggles with mental illness)

Note Opening Value

Identify the value at stake in the scene and note its charge, positive/negative, at the opening of a scene

Problem of Surprise

If what the audience expects to happen happens, or worse, if it happens the way the audience expects it to happen, they'll be very unhappy. We have to surprise them. There are 2 kinds of surprise: cheap and true. True surprise springs from the sudden revelation of the Gap between expectation and result. This surprise is "true" because it's followed by a rush of insight, the revelation of truth hidden beneath the surface of the fictional world. Cheap surprise takes advantage of the audience's vulnerability. In certain genres (horror, fantasy, thriller) they are a convention and part of the fun, but outside these genres, its a shoddy device

Scene-Objective

In each scene a character pursues a desire related to his immediate time and place, but must be an aspect of his Super-Objective/Spine

Cast Design

In essence, the protagonist creates the rest of the cast. All other characters are in a story first and foremost because of the relationship they strike to the protagonist and the way each helps to delineate the dimensions of the protagonist's complex nature. This dimensional role needs a cast around him to delineate his contradictions, characters toward whom he can act and react in different ways at different times and places. These supporting characters must round him out so that his complexity is both consistent and credible. The creation and design of characters A, B, C, and D is dictated by theneeds of the protagonist. They are what they are principally to make clear and believable, through action and reaction, the complexity of the central role. Although supporting roles must be scaled back from the protagonist, they too may be complex. The physical and social world in which a character is found is an aspect of characterization. Dimension, therefore, can be created by a simple counterpoint: Placing a conventional personality against an exotic background, or a strange, mysterious individual within an ordinary, down-to-earth society immediately generates interest. Bit parts should be drawn deliberately flat but not dull. Give each a freshly observed trait that makes the role worth playing for the moment the actor's onscreen, but no more We know that writers don't put dimensions in characters they're not going to use again. Don't cause false anticipation by making bit parts more interesting than necessary. The cast orbits around the protagonist. Supporting roles are inspired by the central character and designed to delineate his complex of dimensions. Ideally, in every scene each character brings out qualities that mark the dimensions of the others, all held in constellation by the weight of the protagonist at the center

Supra-genre: Science Fiction

In hypothetical futures that are typically technological dystopias of tyranny and chaos, often marries Modern Epic and Action/Adventure. But, like history, the future is a setting in which any genre may play

First Step

In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from his world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.

Montage

In the American use of this term, a montage is a series of rapidly cut images that radically condenses or expands time and often employs optical effects such as wipes, irises, split screens, dissolves, or other multiple images. The high energy of such sequences is used to mask their purpose: the rather mundane task of conveying info. Like the Dream Sequence, the montage is an effort to make undramatized exposition less boring by keeping the audience's eye busy. With few exceptions, montages are a lazy attempt to substitue decorative photography and editing for dramatization and are, therefore, to be avoided

Active Protagonist

In the pursuit of desire, takes action in direct conflict with the people and the world around him

Story

Inciting Incident, Progressive Complications, Crisis, Climax, Resolution

Genre: Modern Epic

Individual vs. state

3 Levels of Conflict

Inner, Personal, Extra-personal

Personal Conflicts

Inscribes personal relationships, unions of intimacy deeper than the social role

Ironic Ascension

Irony is the subtlest manifestation of story pleasure, it sees life in duality. Verbal irony is found in the discrepancy between words and their meanings, a primary source of jokes. But in story, irony plays between actions and results, the primary source of truth and emotion. Like symbolism, to point out irony destroys it, so it must be coolly, casually release with a seemingly unawareness of the effect it's creating and a faith that the audience will get it. The key is certainty and precision, like stories (Chinatown) of protagonists who feel they know for certain what they must do and have a precise plan how to do it. Ex. 1. He gets at last what he's always wanted...but too late to have it. 2. He's pushed further and further from his goal...only to discover that in fact he's been led right to it. 3. He throws away what he later finds is indispensible to his happiness. 4. To reach a goal he unwittingly takes the precise steps necessary to lead him away. 5. The action he takes to destroy something becomes exactly what are needed to be destroyed by it. 6. He comes into possession of something he's certain will make him miserable, does everything possible to get rid of it...only to discover it's the gift of happiness

Step-Outline

It is a story told in steps. Using 1 or 2 sentence statements, the writer simply and clearly describes what happens in each scene, how it builds and turns. On the back of each card the writer indicates what step in the design of the story he sees this scene fulfilling, at least for the moment. He does this for Central Plot and subplots alike A writer secure in his talent knows there's no limit to what he can create, and so he trashes everything less than his best on a quest for a gem-quality story. Finally, after weeks/months, the writer discovers his Story Climax. With that in hand, he reworks, as needed, backword from it. The writer never shows his step-outline to people because it's a tool, too cryptic for anyone but the writer to follow. Any story pitched from its step-outline to an intelligent, sensitive person must be able to grab attention, hold interest for 10 minutes, and pay it off by moving him to a meaningful, emotional experience. Regardless of genre, if a story can't work in 10 minutes, how will it work in 110 minutes? Until a good majority of listeners respond with enthusiasm, there's no point going forward. "With enthusiasm" means the whisper "Wow" and fall silent

Crisis

It means decision. The Chinese ideogram for Crisis is two terms: Danger/Opportunity, "danger" in that the wrong decision at this moment will lose forever what we want and "opportunity" in that the right choice will achieve our desire. The protagonist's quest has carried him through the Progressive Complications until he's exhausted all actions to achieve his desire, save one. He now finds himself at the end of the line. The Crisis is the story's Obligatory Scene. The Crisis must be true dilemma, a choice between irreconcilable goods, the lesser of two evils, or the two at once that places the protagonist under the maximum pressure of his life. This dilemma confronts the protagonist who, when face-to-face with the most powerful and focused forces of antagonism in his life, must make a decision to take one action or another in a last effort to achieve his Object of Desire. How the protagonist chooses here gives us the most penetrating view of his deep character. This scene reveals the story's most important value. The protagonist's willpower is most severely tested. As we know from life, decisions are far more difficult to make than actions are to take. Decisions take willpower. The Crisis must be a deliberately static moment. An emotional momentum has built to this point, but the Crisis dams its flow

Subtext

Life under a work of art's sensory surface, the thoughts and feelings both known and unknown, hiddent by behavior. Calls for the constant awareness of the duplicity of life, the recognition that everything exists on at least two levels, therefore, he must write a simultaneous duality

Break the scene into beats

Look at the scene's first action on two levels: outwardly, in terms of what the character is doing, and, more importantly, look beneath the surface to what he is actually doing. Name this subtexteral action with an active gerund phrase. Try to find phrases that not only indicate action but touch the feelings of the character The phrases that express the action in the subtext name the character's essential action with emotive connotations See what reaction that action brought and describe that reaction with an active gerund phrase The exchange of action and reaction is a beat. Even if their exchange repeats a number of times, it's still one and the same beat. A new beat doesn't occur until behavior clearly changes

Mid-Act Climax

Major reversal in the middle of Act Two, expanding the design from three acts to four acts, accelerating the mid-film pace

Exposition

Means facts, the info about setting, biography, and characterization that the audience needs to know to follow and comprehend the events of the story. Within the first pages of a screenplay a reader can judge the relative skill of the writer simply by noting how he handles exposition. Skill in exposition means making it invisible and as the story progresses, the audience absorbs all it needs to know effortlessly, even unconciously. The famous axiom "Show, don't tell" is the key. Never force words into a character's mouth to tell the audience about world, history, or person. Rather, show us honest, natural scenes in which human beings talk and behave in honest, natural ways, yet at the same time indirectly pass along the necessary facts. In other words, dramatize exposition Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict. Its secondary purpose is to convey info. The anxious novice reverses that order, putting expositional duty ahead of dramatic necessity. No one ever tells someone something they both already know unless saying the obvious fills another and compelling need. Therefore, if this info is needed, we must create a motivation for the dialogue that's greater than the facts. To dramatize exposition apply this mnemonic principle: Convert exposition to ammunition. Your characters know their world, their history, each other, and themselves so let them use what they know as ammo in their struggle to get what they want. Confident writers parse out exposition, bit by bit, throught the entire story, often revealing exposition well into the Climax of the last act. They follow these two principles: 1. Never include anything the audience can reasonably and easily assume has happened. 2. Never pass on exposition unless the missing fact would cause confusion. You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it info, but by withholding it, except that which is absolutely necessary for comprehension Pace the exposition. Like all else, exposition must have a progressive pattern: Least important facts first, next most important later, the critical facts last. What are these critical pieces of exposition? Secrets. The painful truths characters do not want known. Whatever is said hides what cannot be said. Where in a well-crafter story is pressure the greatest? At the end of the line. For if we reveal too much too soon, the audience will see the climaxes coming long before they arrive. Reveal only that exposition the audience absolutely needs and wants to know and no more. On the other hand, since the writer controls the telling, he controls the need and desire to know. If at a certain point in the telling, a piece of exposition must be known or the audience wouldn't be able to follow, create the desire to know by arousing curiosity Because lifelong Spines are rare, we take Aristotle's advice to begin stories in media res, "in the midst of things." Anytime you find yourself writing a line of dialogue in which one character is telling another something that they both already know/should know, ask yourself, is it dramatized? Is it exposition as ammo? If not, cut it.

Problem of Melodrama

Melodrama is not the result of overexpression, but of under motivation; not writing too big, but writing with little desire. The power of an event can only be as great as the sum total of its causes. We feel a scene is melodramatic if we cannot believe that motivation matches action.

Climax

Must be full of meaning, for meaning produces emotion. Once Climax is in hand, stories are in a significant way rewritten backword, not forward. The flow of life moves from cause and effect, but flow of creativity is reversed. An idea for the Climax pops unsupported into the mind, now we must work backward to support it in the fictional reality, supplying the hows and whys. All scenes must be thematically/structurally justified in the light of Climax. If they can be cut without disturbing the impact of the ending, they must be cut. If logic allows, climax subplots within the Central Plot's Climax, for this is a wonderful effect as it is one final action by the protagonist settles everything. If this multiplying effect is impossible, the least important subplots are best climaxed earliest, followed by the next important, building overall to the Central Plot's Climax What the audience wants is emotional satisfaction, a Climax that fulfills anticipation. The writer whispers to the audience to expect a up/down/ironic ending. Having pledged a certain emotion, he has to deliver. So we give the audience the experience we've promised, but not in the way it expects The artist gives us the emotion he's promised, but with a rush of unexpected insight that he's withheld to a Turning Point within the Climax himself. So that as the protagonist improvises his final effort, he may/may not achieve his desire, but the flood of insight that pours from the gap delivers the hoped-for emotion in an unexpected way. The key to a great film ending, as François Truffaut put it, is to create a combination of "Spectacle and Truth." He means a Climax written for the eye and by "Truth" he means Controlling Idea. In other words, he is asking us to create the Key Image of the film

True Choice/Dilemma

Must not be doubt but dilemma, not between right/wrong or good/evil, but between either positive/negative desires of equal wait and value. A human being is only capable of acting toward the right/good as he has come to believe/rationalize it. This choice is dilemma and occurs in two situations. 1. A choice between irreconcilable goods. 2. A choice between the lesser of two evils. The most compelling dilemmas often combine the two. How a character chooses in a true dilemma is a powerful expression of his humanity and of the world in which he lives. To construct and create, we must frame a three-sided situation. The moment we add C we generate ample material to avoid repetition. Triangular design brings closure to a telling as one must be risked/lost to gain the other

Multiplot

Never develop a Central Plot/Spine to structurally unify the telling, rather they weave together a number of stories of subplot size that either cross-cut or connect via a motif. The priniciple of thematic contradiction and variation is the genisis of these films. Held together by an idea and can be a portrait that captures the essence of a culture or community along with ample narrative drive to compel interest

"Character as Destiny"

Notion that your fate equals who you are, that the final consequences of your life will be determined by the unique nature of your character and nothing else

Mega-genre: Action/Adventure

Often borrows aspects from other genres (War/Political Drama) to use as motivation for explosive action and derring-do Subgenres: High Adventure, Disaster/Survival

Emotion vs. Feeling/Mood

Once a transition of value creates an emotion, feeling comes into play. Emotion is a short-term experience that peaks and burns rapidly. Feeling is a long-term, pervasive, sentient background that colors days or years of our lives. Indeed, a specific feeling often dominates a personality. Feeling makes emotion specific

Theme

One clear, coherent sentence that expresses a story's irreducible meaning

Emotional Transitions

Only two emotions: pleasure and pain. As audience, we experience an emotion when the telling takes us through a transition of values. 1. We must empathize with the character. 2. We must know what the character wants and want him to have it. 3. We must understand the values at stake in the character's life. Within these conditions, a change in value moves our emotions

Composition

Ordering and linking of scenes. Canons: Unity and Variety, Pacing, Rhythm and Tempo, Social and Personal Progression, Symbolic and Ironic Ascension, and Principle of Transition

Passive Protagonist

Outwardly inactive while pursuing desire inwardly, in conflict with aspects of his or her own nature.

Supra-genre: Historical Drama

Polishes the past into a mirror of the present, making clear and bearable the painful problems of racism, religious strife, or violence of all kinds, especially against women

Supra-genre: Mockumentary

Pretends to be rooted in actuality or memory, behaves like documentary or autobiography, but is utter fiction and subverts fact-based filmmaking to satirize hypocritical institutions

Meaning

Produces emotion A revolution in values from positive/negative or negative/positive with/without irony, a value swing at maximum charge that's absolute and irreversible. The meaning of that change moves the heart of the audience. The action that creates this change must be "pure," clear, and self-evident, requiring no explanation, for dialogue or narration to spell it out is boring and redundant. This action must be appropriate to the needs of the story

Problem of Holes

Rather than a lack of motivation, now the story lacks logic, a missing link in the chain of cause and effect. But like coincidence, holes are a part of life. So if you're writing about life, a hole or two may find its way into your telling. The problem is how we handle it. If you can forge a link between illogical events and close the hole, do so. This remedy, however, often requires the creation of a new scene that has no purpose other than making what's around it logical, causing an awkwardness as annoying as the hole. In which case ask: Will they notice? As the hole arrives, the audience may not have sufficient info at that point to realize that what just happened isn't logical or it may happen so quickly, it passes unnoticed

Subplot

Recieves less emphasis and screentime than a Central Plot. May be used to contradict the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and thus enrich the film with irony, may be used to resonate the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and enrich the film with variations on a theme, may be needed to open as a setup when the Central Plot's Inciting Incident must be delayed, may be used to complicate the Central Plot. To deemphasize, some of its elements (Inciting Incident, act, climaxes, Crisis, Climax, Resolution) may be kept offscreen

True Character

Revealed in choices a human being makes under pressure. The greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature

Rhythm and Tempo

Rhythm is set by the length of scenes. Tempo is the level of activity within a scene via dialogue, action, or a combination. As we head toward act climaxes, we take advantage of rhythm and tempo to progressively shorten scenes whil the activity in them becomes more and more brisk. *A typical 2 hour feature plays 40-60 scenes. This means, on average, a scene lasts 2 1/2 minutes, but not every scene. Rather, for every 1 minute scene, there's a 4 minute scene; for every 30 second scene, a 6 minute scene. In a properly formatted screenplay a page equals 1 minute of screen time. Most directors' cameras drink up whatever is visually expressive in 1 location within 2-3 minutes. If a scene goes on longer, shots become redundant. When shots repeat, expressivity drains away and the film becomes visually dull. Scenes of major reversal are generally long, slow, and tense, so let them breathe. The Law of Diminishing Returns apply and if the scenes before a major Climax are long and slow, the big scene which we want the tension to hold falls flat. Instead, we must "earn the pause" by combining rhythm and tempo, but the problem with this design, of course, is that it's a cliche. But we cannot ignore the principle. It needn't be a symmetrical swelling of activity and shaving of scene lengths, but progressions must be shaped. For if we don't, the film editor will

Text

Sensory surface of a work of art and in film, it's the images onscreen and the soundtrack of dialogue, music, and sound effects

Sequence

Series of scenes, generally 2 to 5, that culminates with greater impact than any previous scene. Moderate impact

Act

Series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values, more powerful in its impact than any previous sequence of scene. Major reversal in values

Inconsistent Realites

Settings that mix modes of interaction so that the story's episodes jump inconsistently from 1 "reality" to another to create a sense of absurdity

Second Action

Something the character would not have wanted to do in the first case because it demands more willpower and forces him to dig deeply into his human capacity, but most important, puts him at risk.

Horror Subgenre: Supernatural

Source of horror is an "irrational" phenomenon from the spirit realm

Horror Subgenre: Uncanny

Source of horror is astounding but subject to "rational" explanation Ex. aliens, science-made monsters, maniac

Survey beats and locate turning point

Start from the opening beat and review the gerund phrases describing that actions of characters. As you trace action/reaction to the scene's end, a shape/pattern should emerge. In a well-designed scene, even behaviors that seem helter-skelter will have an arc and a purpose. In fact, in such scenes, it's their careful design that makes the beats feel random Within the arc locate the moment when the major gap opens between expectation and result, turning the scene to its changed end values. This precise moment is the Turning Point

Subgenre: Soap Opera

Stories complicated only on the level of personal conflict, an open-ended combination of Domestic Drama and Love Story, in which every character in the story has an intimate relationship with every other character in the story. Characters have no inner or extra-personal conflicts.

Genre: Stream of Consciousness

Stories that're complicated only on the level of inner conflict and a verbalization of the inscape of thought and feeling

Classical Design (Archplot)

Story built around an active protagonist who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism to pursue his desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and casually connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute, irreveresible change. Causality, Closed Ending, Linear Time, External Conflict, Single Protagonist, Consistent Reality, Active Protagonist

Closed Ending

Story climax of absolute, irreversible change that answers all questions raised by telling and satisfies all audience emotion.

Open Ending

Story climax that leaves some questions unanswered and some emotion unfulfilled.

Problem of Coincidence

Story creates meaning. Coincidence, then, would seem our enemy, for it is the random, absurd collisions of things in the universe and is, by definition, meaningless. And yet coincidence is a part of life. The solution, therefore, is not to avoid coincidence, but to dramatize how it may enter life meaninglessly, but in time gain meaning, how the antilogic of randomness becomes the logic of life-as-lived. First, bring coincidence in early to allow time to build meaning out of it. Coincidence, therefore, must not pop into a story, turn a scene, and pop out. As a rule of thumb do not use coincidence beyond the midpoint of the telling. Rather, put the story more and more into the hands of the characters. Second, never use coincidence to turn an ending The one exception is Antistructure films that substitute coincidence for causality. When coincidence rules story, it creates a new and rather significant meaning: Life is absurd

Nonlinear Time

Story that either skips helter-skelter through time or so blurs temporal continuity that the audience cannot sort out what happens before and after

Linear Time

Story with or without flashbacks and arranged into a temporal order of events that the audience can follow

Mega-genre: Comedy

Subgenres all differ by focus of comic attack (bureaucratic folly, upper-class manners, teen courtship, etc.) and degree of ridicule (gentle, caustic, lethal) Subgenres: Parody, Satire, Sitcom, Romantic, Screwball, Farce, Black Comedy

Mega-genre: Crime

Subgenres vary chiefly by the answer to this question: From whose POV do we regard the crime? Subgenres:Murder Mystery (master detective), Caper (master criminal), Detective (cop), Gangster (crook), Thriller/Revenge Tale (victim), Courtroom (lawyer), Newspaper (reporter), Espionage (spy), Prison Drama (inmate), Film Noir (protagonist who may be part criminal, part detective, part victim of a femme fatal)

Love Story Subgenre: Buddy Salvation

Substitutes friendship for romantic love

Characterization

Sum of all observable qualities of a human being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny

Expressing Progression

Techniques: Social Progression, Personal Progression, Symbolic Ascension, Ironic Ascension

Crisis within the Climax

The action the protagonist chooses to take becomes the story's consummate event, causing a positive/negative/ironically positive/negative Story Climax. If, however, as the protagonist takes the climactic action, we once more pry apart the gap between expectation and result, we may create a majestic ending the audience will treasure for a lifetime. For a Climax built around a Turning Point is the most satisfying of all. The protagonist thinks he finally understands his world and knows what he must do in a last effort. He chooses an action he believes will achieve his desire, but, as always, his world won't cooperate. Reality splits and he must improvise. The location of the Crisis is determined by the length of the climactic action. Generally, Crisis and Climax happen in the last minutes and in the same scene. However, in other stories the Climax becomes an expansive action with its own progressions. As a result, it's possible to use the Crisis Decision to turn the Penultimate Act Climax, filling all of the final act with climactic action. In rarer examples the Crisis Decision immediately follows the Inciting Incident and the entire film becomes climactic action, which has a great risk of repetitiousness If the Crisis takes place in one location and the Climax later in another, we must splice them together on a cut, fusing them in filmic time and space

Problems of Interest

The audience needs compelling reasons to stay involved. A story must capture interest, hold it unswervingly through time, then reward it at Climax. The task is next to impossible unless the design attracts both intellect and emotion. Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations. Each Turning Point hooks curiosity. Concern is the emotional need for the positive values of life (justice, strength, courage.) Human nature is instinctively repelled by what it perceives as negative, while drawn powerfully toward positive As a story opens, the audience, consciously/instinctively, inspects the value-charged landscape of world and characters, trying to seperate good from evil, right from wrong, things of value from things of none. It seeks the Center of Good. The reason we search for it is that each of us believes that we are good/right and want to identify with the positive. No matter who's in the audience, each seeks the Center of Good, the positive focus for empathy and emotional interest. At the very least, it must be located in the protagonist. Others may share it, but we must empathize with the protagonist.

The Silent Screenplay

The best advice for writing film dialogue is don't. Never write a line of dialogue when you can create a visual expression, which should be the 1st attack on every scene. Obey the Law of Diminishing Returns: The more dialogue you write, the less effect dialogue has. If you write for the eye, when the dialogue comes, as it must, it sparks interest because the audience is hungry for it. Lean dialogue, in relief against what's primarily visual, has salience and power. "When the screenplay has been written and the dialogue has been added, we're ready to shoot." -Alfred Hitchcock. Image is our 1st choice, dialogue the regretful 2nd choice. Dialogue is the last layer we add to the screenplay

Inner Conflict

The closest circle of antagonism in the world of a character is his own being: feelings and emotions, mind and body, all or any of which may/may not react from one moment to the next the way he expects

Storytelling

The creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action. A story's event structure is the means by which you first express, then prove your idea without explanation

Short Speeches

The essence of screen dialogue is what was known in Classical Greek theatre as stikomythia, the rapid exchange of short speeches. Long speeches are antithetical with the aesthetics of cinema. Within 10-15 seconds the audience's eye absorbs everything visually expressive and the shot becomes redundant. When the eye is bored, it leaves the screen, so we lose the audience. Thinking the editor can break up long speeches by cutting to the listening face, but this only introduces new problems. Now an actor is speaking offscreen, and when we disembody a voice, the actor must slow down and overarticulate because the audience, in effect, lip-reads. 50% of its understanding of what is being said comes from watching it being said. What's more, a voice offscreen loses the subtext of the speaker Therefore, be very judicious about writing long speeches. If, however, you feel that it's true to the moment for one character to carry all dialogue while another remains silent, write the long speech, but as you do, remember that there's no such thing in life as a monologue. Life is dialogue, action/reaction Life is always action/reaction. No monologues and prepared speeches. An improvisation no matter how we mentally rehearse our big moments. Therefore, show us that you understand film aesthetics by breaking long speeches into the patterns of action/reaction that shape the speaker's behavior. Fragment the speech with silent reactions that cause the speaker to change the beat. A character can react to himself, to his own thoughts and emotions. That too is part of the scene's dynamics.

Premise

The idea that inspires the writer's desire to create a story

Risk

The measure of the value of a character's desire is in direct proportion to the risk he's willing to take to achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk

Law of Diminishing Return

The more often we experience something, the less effect it has. Story must obey this by creating dynamic alternations between positive and negative emotion.

Vivid Action in the Now

The ontology of the screen is an absolute present tense in constant vivid movement. And the screen expresses relentless action. Even static shots have a sense of aliveness, because although the imagery may not move, the audience's eye constantly travels the screen, giving stationary images energy. And, unlike life, film is vivid. On the page vividness springs from the names of the things. Nouns are the names of objects; verbs the names of actions. To write vividly, avoid generic nouns and verbs with adjectives and adverbs attached and seek the name of the thing (big nail=spike). The same applies to verbs, instead name the action (move slowly=pads). Eliminate "is" and "are" throughout. Onscreen nothing is in a state of being: story life is an unending flux of change, of becoming. "There is," "They are," "It is," "He/She is" are the weakest possible ways into any English sentence. Fine film description requires imagination and a vocabulary. Eliminate all metaphor and simile that cannot pass this test: What do i see/hear onscreen? "As if," for example, is a trope that doesn't exist onscreen. A character doesn't come through a door "as if." Eliminate "we see" and "we hear." "We" doesn't exist. Instead, "We see" injects an image of the crew looking through the lens and shatters the script reader's vision of the film. Eliminate all camera and editing notations. In the same way actors ignore behavioral description, directors laugh at efforts to direct the film from the page. Delete transitions. Instead of labeling angles, the writer suggests them by breaking single-spaced paragraphs into units of description with images and language subtly indicating camera distance and composition

Aesthetic Emotion

The simultaneous encounter of thought and emotion

Genre

The sorting of stories according to shared elements

Genre Conventions

The specific settings, roles, events, and values that define individual genres and their sub-genres.

Controlling Idea

The story's ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last act's climax. May be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end. It has two components: value plus cause.

Genre: Murder Mystery

The technique of compelling interest by devising a guessing game of red herrings and suspects, of confusion and curiosity, pleases the audience of this genre. Subplots: Closed Mystery, Open Mystery Closed Mystery is a murder is committed unseen in the Backstory. The primary convention of "Who done it?" is multiple suspects. The writer must develop three possible killers to constantly mislead the audience to suspect the wrong person, the red herring, while withholding the identity of the real killer to Climax Open Mystery is the audience sees the murder committed and therefore knows who did it. The story becomes a "How will he catch him?" as the writer substitutes multiple clues for multiple suspects. The murder must be an elaborate and seemingly perfect crime, a complex scheme involving a number of steps and technical elements. But the audience knows by convention that one of these elements is a fatal flaw of logic. When the detective arrives on the scene he instinctively knows who did it, sifts through the many clues searching for the telltale flaw, discovers it, and confronts the arrogant perfect-crime-committer, who then spontaneously confesses. These two pure designs may be mixed/satirized In the Mystery form the killer and the detective know the facts long before Climax but keep it to themselves. The audience runs from behind trying to figure out what the key characters already know. Of course, if we could win the race, we'd feel like losers.

Voice-Over Narration

The test of narration is this: Ask yourself, "If I were to strip the voice-over out of my screenplay, would the story still be well told?" If the answer is yes, keep it in. Generally, the principle "Less is more" applies: the more economical the technique, the more impact is has. Therefore, anything that can be cut should be cut. There are, however, exceptions. If narration can be removed and the story still stands on its feet well told, then you've probably used narration as a counterpoint. Voice-over to add nonnarrative counterpoint can be delightful. The art of cinema connects Image A via editing, camera, or lens movement with Image B, and the effect is meanings C, D, E, expressed without explanation "Show, don't tell" is a call for artistry and discipline, a warning to us not to give in to laziness but to set creative limitations that demand the fullest use of imagination and sweat. Dramatizing every turn into a natural, seamless flow of scenes is hard work, but when we allow for "on the nose" narration we gut our creativity, eliminate the audience's curiosity, and destroy narrative drive. Do not put them on your knee as if they were children and "explain" life, for the misuse and overuse of narration is not only slack, it's patronizing

Story Values

The universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive, from one moment to the next

Complexity

The writer brings his characters into conflict on all three levels of conflict, often simultaneously

Characters are not Human Beings

Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift and just when we think we understand them, we don't Character design begins with an arrangement of the two primary aspects: Characterization and True Character. The key to True Character is desire. Ask questions of their desire and with clear, true answers comes your command of the role. Behind desire is motivation. Do not reduce characters to case studies, for in truth there are no definitive explanations for anyone's behavior. Generally, the more the writer nails motivation to specific causes, the more he diminishes the character in the audience's mind. Rather, think through to a solid understanding of the motive, but at the same time leave some mystery around the whys, a touch of the irrational perhaps, room for the audience to use its own life experience to enhance your character in its imagination A character is the choices he makes to take the actions he takes. Once the deed is done his reasons why begin to dissolve into irrelevancy Nonetheless, a character's mask is an important clue to what may be revealed. What other characters say about a character is a hint. We know that what one person says of another may/may not be true, given the axes people have to grind, but that it's said and by whom is worth knowing. In fact, characters with lucid self-knowledge, those reciting self-explanatory dialogue meant to convince us that they are who they say they are, are not only boring but phony. The audience knows that people rarely, if ever, understand themselves, and if they do, they're incapable of complete and honest self-explanation. There's always a subtext. If, by chance, what a character says about himself is actually true, we don't know it's true until we witness his choices made under pressure. Self-explanation must be validated/contradicted in action

Problem of Comedy

There are important exceptions that begin in the deep division between the comic and tragic visions of life. The dramatist admires humanity and creates work that say, in essence: Under the worst of circumstances the human spirit is magnificent. Comedy points out that in the best of cirumstances human beings find some way to screw up. Comedy is pure: If the audience laughs, it works; if it doesn't laugh, it doesn't work. The comedy writer fixes on the social life, the idiocy, arrogance, and brutality in society. The comedy writer singles out a particular institution that he feels has become encrusted with hypocrisy and folly, then goes on the attack. When a society cannot ridicule and criticize its institutions, it cannot laugh. But Comedy allows the writer to halt Narrative Drive, the forward projecting mind of the audience, and interpolate into the telling a scene with no story purpose. It's there for the laughs. Comedy tolerates more coincidence than drama, and may even allow a deus ex machina ending if 2 things are done: 1. The audience is made to feel that the comic protagonist has suffered enormously. 2. He never loses despair/hope The incisive difference between comedy and drama is this: Both turn scenes with surprise and insight, but in comedy, when the Gap cracks open, the surprise explodes the laughter Simply put, a Comedy is a funny story, an elaborate rolling joke. While wit lightens a telling, it doesn't alone make it a true Comedy. If you pitch your story and people don't laugh, you've not written a Comedy. The solution is concentrating on Turning Points

Principle of Antagonism

This principle is one of the most important and least understood precept in story design. Neglect of this fundamental concept is the primary reason screenplays and the films made from them fail A protagonist and his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them The more powerful and complex the forces of antagonism opposing the character, the more completely realized character and story must become. Although conflict from one aspect of his life may seem solvable, the totality of all levels should seem overwhelming as he begins his quest.

Treatment

To "treat" the step-outline, the writer expands each scene from its 1 or 2 sentences to a paragraph or more of double-spaced, present-tense, moment by moment description. In treatment, the writer indicates what characters talk about but never writes dialogue. Instead, he creates the subtext. We may think we know what our characters are thinking and feeling, but we don't know we know until we write it down The 40-60 scenes of a typical screenplay, treated to a moment by moment description of all action, underlaid with a full subtext of the conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings of all characters, will produce 60-90 or more doublespaced pages. At this stage, we inevitably discover that things we thought would work a certain way in the step-outline now want to change. We won't change the overall design of the story because it worked every time we pitched it. But within that structure scenes may need to be cut, added, or reordered. We rework the treatment until every moment lives vividly, in text and subtext

Image Systems

To begin with, as audience in the ritual of story, we react to every image, visual/auditory, symbolically. We instinctively sense that each object has been selected to mean more than itself and so we add a connotation to every denotation. The storyteller then builds on this natural inclination in the audience. The 1st step in turning a well-told story into a poetic work is to exclude 90% of reality. The vast majority of objects in the world have the wrong connotations for any specific film. So the spectrum of possible imagery must be sharply narrowed to those objects with appropriate implications. Like all works of art, a film is a unity in which every object relates to every other image or object. An Image System is a strategy of motifs, a category of imagery embedded in the film that repeats in sight and sound from beginning to end with persistence and great variation, but with equally great subtlety, as a subliminal communication to increase the depth and complexity of aesthetic emotion. "Category" means a subject drawn from the physical world that's broad enough to contain sufficient variety. This category must repeat because 1 or 2 isolated symbols have little effect. But the power of an organized return of images is immense, as variety and repetition drive the Image System to the seat of the audience's unconcious. Yet, and most important, a film's poetics must be handled with virtual invisibility and go consciously unrecognized. And an Image System must be subliminal. The audience is mot to be aware of it. In the same way, symbols touch and move us, as long as we don't recognize them as symbolic. Awareness of a symbol turns it into a neutral, intellectual curiosity, powerless and virtually meaningless

Character's Function

To bring to the story the qualities of characterization necessary to convincingly act out choices. Put simply, a character must be credible.

Description

To describe in such a way that as the reader turns pages, a film flows through the imagination. 90% of all verbal expression has no filmic equivalent. So we constantly discipline the imagination with this question: What do i see on screen? Then describe only what is photographic

Structure's Function

To provide progressively building pressures that force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self

Anachronism

To use the past as a clear glass through which you show us the present

Plural-Protagonist

Two or more protagonists. All individuals in the group share the same desire and in the struggle to achieve this desire, they mutually suffer and benefit. Motivation, action, and consequence are communal

Backstory

We can turn scenes only one of two ways: on action/revelation. There are no other means Powerful revelations come from the backstory, the set of previous significant events that occurred in the characters' past that the writer can use to build his story's progressions and that the writer can reveal at critical moments to create Turning Points. With few exceptions, scenes cannot be turned on nothing but action. Revelations, in fact, tend to have more impact, and so we often reserve them for major Turning Points, act climaxes

Social Progression

Widen the impact of character actions into society Let story begin intimately, involving only a few principle characters. But as telling moves forward, allow their actions to ramify outward into the world around them, touching and changing the lives of more and more people. Not all at once, rather, spread the effect gradually through the progressions This principle explains why certain professions are overrepresented in the roles of protagonists (lawyers, doctors, warriors, politicians, scientists) people so positioned in society by profession that if something goes haywire in their private lives, the writer can expand the action into society

Subgenre: Black Comedy

Writer bends comic convention and allows his audience to feel sharp, but not unbearable pain

Plot

Writer's choice of events and their design in time

Screenplay

Writing a screenplay from a thorough treatment is a joy and often runs at a clip of 5-10 pages per day. We now convert treatment description to screen description and add dialogue. And dialogue written at this point is invariably the finest dialogue we've ever written. Dialogue written after in-depth preparation creates character-specific voices. At 1st draft stage, changes and revisions will still be needed. When characters are allowed to speak, scenes in treatment you thought would work a certain way now want to alter direction. When you find such a fault, it can rarely be fixed with a simple rewrite of dialogue/behavior. Rather, you must go back into the treatment and rework the setups, then perhaps go beyond the faulty scene to redo the payoff. A number of polishes may be necessary until you reach the final draft. If you shortcut the process and rush straight to screenplay from outline, truth is that your 1st draft isn't a screenplay, it's a surrogate treatment. The wise writer puts off the writing of dialogue for as long as possible because the premature writing of dialogue chokes creativity. Writing from the outside in, writing dialogue in search of scenes, writing scenes in search of story, is the least creative method. Screenwriters habitatually overvalue dialogue because they're the only words we write that actually reach the audience. All else is assumed by the film's images. If we type out dialogue before we know what happens, we inevitably fall in love with our words and don't want to cut our priceless dialogue. What's more, the premature writing of dialogue is the slowest way to work

Writing "On the Nose"

Writing dialogue and activity in which a character's deepest thoughts and feelings are expressed by what the character says and does, writing the subtext directly into the text