Writing a Great Movie

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Writing a Great Movie Page 20

by Jeff Kitchen


  Revisiting the 36 Dramatic Situations

  This is a good time to go back and review the 36 Dramatic Situations. Even just taking a quick cruise through the list in chapter 3, you may find fresh ideas jumping out at you now that you’ve picked up a novel approach while researching and brainstorming. After some development, a script will often be entirely different from what it was when you were starting out. By going back to it, you’ll no doubt see many innovative possibilities. You’re wrestling with new plot problems, trying to nail down your ending, and struggling to understand your characters more completely. The 36 Dramatic Situations are a resource that you can keep coming back to as needed.

  Restating Dilemma, Crisis, Decision & Action, and Resolution

  Now go back and look at your dilemma again. It may have grown and changed as you developed the script and made certain plot choices. Articulate the dilemma as it now stands by stating it as two equally unacceptable alternatives. Are they still equal? It may no longer be a true dilemma if one of the alternatives has become less unacceptable. Remember, you want two equally painful choices. You’ll also find that so much time spent thinking about your character’s dilemma means you’ll now be able to state it more fully and completely. You may have started out with a rather tentative statement—“She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t”—that helped you get a handle on your dilemma, but now you can come back and articulate it with all its ramifications, layers, and dimensions.

  Next revisit your crisis, because it may have grown and changed, too. Now that some time has passed and you have acquired more knowledge and insight through research and brainstorming, you may have enhanced the crisis. Stop and state it clearly now. Nail it down again in much the same way that you might check your roof rack on a cross-country trip to make sure it’s still tied down tightly.

  Decision and action is a crucial turning point in the script, so it’s important to check it again. Does your earlier take on it still hold up? Can you revamp it for stronger effect? Do you understand your character’s decision and action more clearly now that you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it?

  Your resolution completes the transformation of your protagonist as it brings your audience’s ride to an end. You can keep tinkering with it because, since this is the end, it doesn’t generally send ripples of change through the rest of the script. Think about the mood you want for your audience when the movie is over, and ensure that your resolution produces that mood.

  Check in on your theme as well. Look at the resolution and the way in which the protagonist resolves the dilemma. The theme almost always grows as the plot does, so it may no longer be what it used to be. If it’s transformed into something else, are you satisfied with it now? Can you articulate it clearly?

  START USING RESEARCH AND BRAINSTORMING IN YOUR OWN SCRIPT

  1. Identify some good sources for research on the story you’re developing. What’s the best possible source? How can you get to it?

  2. Do you know any experts in the field? Do you know someone who knows someone? Remember, there’s a difference between classroom expertise and someone who’s really lived it. Both can be useful, but a soldier who fought in Vietnam will have real-world experience that a professor with a background in military history will not. At the same time, a professor will definitely have insights the soldier won’t. Consider these slants when choosing and interviewing a source.

  3. Dig deep into your research to unearth dynamic story options that you never expected. Allow yourself to be lured down unfamiliar and unpredictable story avenues. If you don’t try to control everything, you could stumble into untouched worlds. You may even discover an entirely separate screenplay or two lurking in the material. Remember that you’re a storyteller by trade, so always be on the lookout for a hot lead.

  4. Are you open to your material or are you already locked into the first conception of your plot? Keep coming back to the living energy of your original idea, but stay flexible about how you execute the plot possibilities.

  5. Details are important to a convincing representation of reality, but don’t get trapped in perpetual research. Bear in mind that strict accuracy is rarely necessary, and some stories require no research whatsoever.

  6. In order to brainstorm you must allow your imagination to explode with possibilities. Don’t be afraid of chaos. As a storyteller it’s part of your business. Don’t be afraid to get in trouble with your story. If you’re not in over your head, then you’re probably not doing your job right. Screenwriting is an adventure into the unknown, and too much control can stifle your imagination.

  7. Do you end up with the same old stuff everyone else is writing? Do you go to the movies and rant about all the lousy films being made, and then go home and work on a predictable, anemic screenplay? If so, then find ways to shatter your approach to your story or to storytelling in general. Research using deeper and more obscure sources than ever before. Brainstorm with abandon.

  8. Learn how to occasionally turn off your conscious mind—the yammering brain—and allow yourself to drift. Observe your dreams, your visions, your poetic impulses. Get away from your desk and take a walk. Work your body and rest your mind. Give your subconscious a chance to do some thinking without you. Leave your notes at home and forget your story, then sit down somewhere new with a blank piece of paper and see what pops up for your story. Unexpected solutions often appear seemingly from nowhere.

  The Central Proposition:

  Tying Your Plot Together and Cranking Up the Conflict

  he Central Proposition is a uniquely potent tool that will give you a crystal-clear focus on your script by forcing you to strip it down to its absolute bare bones: the central and compelling action of the plot. It uses the power of logic to help bring order to the chaotic creative process so necessary to the development of a dynamic story. In fact, the structural power of the proposition enables you to go even further creatively than you might otherwise. It has a power as irresistible as that of a lever, helping to pull what might be a collection of clever story components together into a coherent plot. The Central Proposition burrows to the core of the script’s plot. It strips the complete action down to its essentials, providing you with a valuable degree of objectivity, much like an x-ray of your story.

  The Central Proposition was created by William Thompson Price, who reminds us that we can have all the things that Aristotle talked about (dilemma, crisis, etc.) but still not necessarily have a functional drama. In order to have a great race car, you need a good strong engine, a solid transmission, and so on. However, while you may have an engine, it may be sitting on a workbench; you may have a transmission, but it’s on the garage floor. You’ve got all these components, but they’re not yet functioning as something you can actually drive. What Price did was to create a tool that ties all the parts of a script together into a coherent whole.

  Price was a highly educated, world-traveled lawyer who largely gave up his legal practice to devote himself to his true passion—the theater. He worked for some of the top producers of the day and read thousands of plays, many of them poorly written. He began to despair, wondering what was tripping up these playwrights. They weren’t stupid and they often had good stories to tell, but they just didn’t possess solid craft as dramatists. Price tried to create a tool that would help them make their scripts work.

  As a lawyer, Price was trained to use logic to strip a complex argument down to a clear statement of the facts, so he brought this kind of thinking to dramatic structure. He went back to the syllogism of formal logic. A syllogism is a logical argument consisting of three sentences—two premises leading to a conclusion: A and B, therefore C. The most famous is:

  All men are mortal.

  Socrates is a man.

  Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

  This argument is demonstrably true—it’s irrefutable. Price said that a plot has its own logic, and one ought to be able to state the complete action of the plot with this level of
simplicity and clarity. A lawyer goes through the same process in preparing a case for presentation in court. A proposition is a type of syllogism. A lawyer putting forth a proposition or a proposal to the court: “You say my client stole this car. I can prove he wasn’t in town that day. Therefore my client is innocent.”

  The ability to structure a solid, logical argument can be very useful in constructing a dramatic plot because argument, in the form of conflict, lies at the core of a movie. It is said that conflict is to drama as sound is to music.

  ADAPTING THE PROPOSITION OF LOGIC TO DRAMA

  So Price adapted the proposition of formal logic to drama, and it’s called the Central Proposition. We can use it to strip the plot down to a simple statement of the facts, focusing on the central conflict of the script. Conflict is clearly context-sensitive, because it will play out quite differently in a romantic comedy than in an action-thriller. But there should be some kind of conflict or opposition in every screenplay in order to create suspense.

  The Introduction to this book mentions that in the earliest Greek theater there were only two characters in a play. Stripping your plot down to just protagonist and antagonist takes you right to its nucleus—and making it work at that level will impact everything else. That’s exactly what we’re doing here with the proposition: stating the action of the entire plot in three steps, focusing on the conflict. We set up a fight, touch it off, and then bring it to a conclusion.

  A bar fight starts off as a shoving match and then erupts into a knockdown, drag-out fight. It’s over when one of the combatants walks away. In a screenplay we’re doing much the same. We establish a potential fight between the protagonist and the antagonist fairly early in the script, and the audience can sense that these two are going to go at it later in the story. Then, at around the two-thirds or three-quarters point of the script, we touch off a fight to the finish, which only one can win. This brings the viewers to the edge of their seats, wondering if their protagonist can pull it off. However, rather than just state the conclusion, Price adapted this tool to focus on the fact that the audience is caught up in wondering how the fight will turn out. This gets at what’s dramatic about the conflict.

  So the Central Proposition consists of three sentences in which we (1) Set up a potential fight, (2) Touch off a fight to the finish, and (3) Leave it hanging in the form of a question in the minds of the audience. We’ll get into the details of the adapted third step soon, but for now let’s get a firm understanding of the first two steps.

  Set Up the Potential Fight

  Let’s say that we’re developing a plot in which two gold miners fight over a claim. Our hero struggles to keep a claim jumper from stealing his hard-earned mine with phony paperwork and pure thievery. We’ll call our protagonist Tasker, and our villain will be Sharp. If, fairly early in the plot, Sharp brings in a fake sheriff and a trumped-up charge to force Tasker off his claim, then the two combatants would fight and Tasker could drive Sharp away. They have essentially crossed swords, but it’s not a showdown—yet—and the viewers are compelled to see where this conflict is headed.

  Touch Off the Fight to the Finish

  Later in the film, if Sharp returns with reinforcements to take out our miner, then Tasker would launch an all-out attack to try to vanquish the predator for good. Now the fight to the finish has begun. This is war. It’s the inevitable knock-down, drag-out conflict toward which the whole movie’s been building. Only one of them will own that mine when it’s over, and thus starts the most gripping section of the film: from this declaration of war to the ending.

  It’s important to have a sense of proportion when using this tool. Below is a diagram to give a general understanding of this proportion:

  The first triangle is roughly where the set-up often occurs, and the second triangle shows where the touch-off is usually triggered. Bear in mind that this is very approximate and is intended only to convey a general sense of proportion. When the fight to the finish has only just started, people come up on the edge of their seats, wondering how it’s going to turn out. We’ve created Dramatic Action—that state of subjective excitement in which you hope to put the audience. At this point of high suspense, if we could wave a magic wand and freeze the audience, then we could go out and get a closer look at their reactions. Let’s focus on one member of this frozen audience. We want to know how riveted is this person? Is her pulse racing? Is she white-knuckled? Do we have her or don’t we? If we don’t, then the plot we’ve set up and touched off isn’t working well dramatically. And if it’s not working, can we put our finger on why not, and can we correct it?

  Price said that part of our job as dramatists is to engage the audience in an unresolved situation—and the fact that they’re on the edge of their seats is what’s truly dramatic about the plot. This is an important point. Think about how the best movies catch you up in an uncertain story: The degree to which you need to know how it ends is a measure of how dramatic the plot is. If you don’t care, then it’s dramatically flat.

  The Central Dramatic Question: Leaving the Audience Hanging

  At this point, when the fight to the finish has only just started, a question appears in the minds of the audience, something roughly like: How is it going to turn out? This is called the Central Dramatic Question. It exists only in the minds of the audience—not on-screen, not in dialog. In our gold miner’s story, the Central Dramatic Question is, Will Tasker defeat Sharp and keep his mine?

  The question in their minds will be highly specific because the audience is watching a highly specific set of events. It will not be general or generic, such as, Will the good guy win? It will relate exactly to what they’re watching and to the way in which it is currently unresolved. As the screenwriter, you must be absolutely in touch with the audience at this point of your script. If this question in their minds is weak, then it indicates that you’re proposing an ineffective drama. If the question is strong, it’s an indication that the plot is riveting.

  If the Central Dramatic Question does turn out to be weak, then we can experiment with strengthening it. By altering the set-up or the touch-off, we can adjust the power of the question and the audience response. What we’re really experimenting with is a working model of the plot. Before engineers build a $50 million bridge, they construct a wooden model, subjecting it to crush tests and shear tests to determine how it holds up. If the model crushes too easily, then they might double the uprights or make other adjustments. Once the model performs well, they build the full-scale bridge. The process is similar with the Central Proposition. Once you’ve set up the conflict and touched it off in your script, then you try to gauge how engrossed the audience is. Do you have them or not? On a scale of 1 to 10, to what degree do you have them in your grip? If it scores low, then what element of the set-up or the touch-off can you modify to intensify the Dramatic Action?

  Understand that the question in the minds of the audience is going to be rather simple and straightforward, not overcomplicated or intellectualized. They’re caught up in the immediacy of a powerful emotional experience. Keep it simple and clear when you’re trying to isolate the question in the minds of the audience, and you’ll generally be right on track.

  One of the necessary skills in using this tool is to be extremely objective regarding the Central Dramatic Question. It’s very much a mind-reading trick. Imagine a magic camera that can take a picture of the question in the viewers’ minds. Or try a trick that I developed from using this tool over the years: When the fight to the finish has just ignited, pretend you are out sitting with the audience and ask, “What’s the question in our collective mind right now?” Become the audience at this high point of suspense. Feel out what “we’re” thinking, what exactly has us on the edge of our seats. Not what it should be, or what you insist it must be, or what it would be if the audience weren’t clueless—but what that question actually is in cold, hard fact.

  Take our chief example: In Training Day, the potential clash is set u
p early in the script when Jake challenges Alonzo about ripping off the Sandman’s cash with the fake search warrant. They square off about the reality of undercover work, and Alonzo insists that Jake either play it his way or go back to boring conventional police work. With this background well established, Jake then sparks the fight to the finish late in the movie when he tries to arrest Alonzo and seize his $1 million as evidence. Alonzo distracts Jake for a split second, flicks a cigarette in his eyes, grabs a hidden shotgun, and comes up shooting. They’re no longer just preparing to fight and they’re no longer simply skirmishing. This is war. Now, what is the question in the minds of the audience? You can sense it quite easily—it just becomes a matter of articulating it. Isn’t it something like, Will Jake defeat Alonzo? Or even, Can Jake possibly defeat Alonzo? But bear in mind that Jake is trying to jail Alonzo for corruption, so wouldn’t the question be something more like, Can Jake take Alonzo down? That’s pretty much it. It’s not complicated or intellectual, just a gut reaction—the audience is riveted and wondering how things will turn out. If this was your script and you were mapping out the plot, you’d get a sense of its power fairly early in the development process by gauging the strength of this Central Dramatic Question.

  When trying to measure this question’s potency, it’s crucial to take into account the context of the whole story. It’s one thing to isolate the wording of the question at this high point of suspense; it’s quite another to measure that question’s true impact. For instance, in our example of the gold miners, we said that the Central Dramatic Question would be, Will Tasker defeat Sharp and keep his mine? But how much does the audience really care? How much do they like this miner and care about his fate?

 

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