by Jeff Kitchen
Enough Material to Apply the Central Proposition
I always knew my work would be cut out for me with Cutter and St. Nick’s final showdown, but it wasn’t until I turned my attention to applying the Central Proposition that I realized just how tricky it would be. Bear in mind that half the musings I just came up with could get tossed out. I’m struggling to find a madcap finale, and at this point I’m only into the first part of the ending. I still need Cutter to build a system of lies that are designed to destroy St. Nick. The ending has to be satisfying, all-inclusive, entertaining, dangerous, and funny. The Central Proposition is helping me shape the material, but it can be an extremely demanding tool. Look at how much I must form, experiment with, turn upside down, throw away, and stretch my concepts in order to utilize it properly. Even after the Writer’s Notebook session, I feel that this confrontation still needs more, but being ambitious with a story means feeling stumped regularly. I’m in over my head, but that’s where I live as a writer. (If you’re not in over your head with your script, then you’re probably turning out material that’s too simplistic or has already been done to death.) However, this chaotic brainstorming session has produced some necessary raw material, and now I’m ready to return to the Central Proposition.
USING THE FIVE-STEP PROCESS TO CONSTRUCT THE CENTRAL PROPOSITION
Remember, the Central Proposition boils the action down to three sentences—setting up the potential fight, touching off the fight to the finish, and pinpointing the Central Dramatic Question that arises in the minds of the audience. This tool will help us focus on the plot’s central and compelling action. The process of building the Proposition consists of five steps. To isolate these five components, we work our way backward through them using deductive reasoning.
Step 1: Visualize the Fight to the Finish
First, we want to Visualize the fight to the finish. This will involve Cutter and St. Nick battling to the maximum degree within the limits of this story. Cutter is in the fight of his life, trying to coordinate this whole scheme. To win, he must attack as hard as he can, and not just St. Nick; a big chunk of the conflict that gets touched off is Cutter versus everybody and everything—Senator Hutchings, Umbotha, Apollo, Mischa, the FBI, the CIA, etc. But it’s St. Nick he’s truly after, and St. Nick who’ll be in his face as much as I can arrange it. The Central Proposition keeps the protagonist-versusantagonist focus strong. From St. Nick’s side, he doesn’t trust Cutter after Shallott’s cover is blown, and that battle isn’t over until either St. Nick is finished off or Cutter fails totally.
Step 2: What is the Central Dramatic Question?
Now I need to know What’s the question in the minds of the audience once the fight to the finish has only just started and they don’t know how it’s going to turn out? Essentially, the audience will be wondering if Cutter can pull off this revenge against St. Nick. But I should frame the Central Dramatic Question as specifically as possible, because the audience is watching a specific set of events that will give rise to a highly specific question in their mind once the conflict goes beyond the point of no return. If the situation changes and I’m looking at a different or more complex state of affairs, then the question will change, too. Essentially, Cutter is declaring war on St. Nick but also on all those who are conspiring to derail his revenge. The untamed Cutter is like the cavalry that appears at the crucial moment. His old addictions have kicked in and he’s in attack mode. I understand this and try to direct it at St. Nick as much as possible. So the question that would arise in the mind of the audience once Cutter launches his attack is, Can Cutter possibly pull this off and take down St. Nick?
Now I’ve isolated the Central Dramatic Question, but how much does the audience really care about how the story turns out? I need to know if this question is powerful enough to drive the whole movie. The more trouble Cutter is in and the more we utterly loathe St. Nick, the more powerful the question will be. Merely isolating the question in the minds of the audience is only the first step in evaluating its power. On a scale of 1 to 10, how intensely does the audience care? A weak situation can give rise to a dramatic question with the same wording, but we’re not gripped by it. A protagonist about whom we don’t care all that much or an antagonist about whom we’re not very worried keeps the question weak. Look, for instance, at the plethora of spy movies, many of which would have roughly the same Central Dramatic Question: Will [our hero] stop [the bad guy] and save the world? In some instances we’ll be in a state of high-intensity suspense, but think about how many other times you couldn’t have cared less if the whole damn planet got vaporized. In fact if it did, then the movie would finally get interesting.
In terms of evaluating the power of the Central Dramatic Question for Good Old St. Nick, I notice that things could definitely be worse for Cutter. What are various ways to pile on the strain? How can I create a true life-or-death showdown? How can I add to the chaos? How intimidating are St. Nick and Hutchings? How brutally insane, slimy, and darkly humorous is Umbotha? How uncertain is Umbotha’s deal? Is the bank on the edge of going under? What about the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, U.S. Customs, the Federal Reserve, the White House, the Senate, the drug runners, and organized crime? These are all possible players in the mix.
Step 3: What Action by the Protagonist Touches Off the Fight to the Finish?
Now we want to put our finger on what sends the conflict beyond the point of no return, so we ask, What action by the protagonist touches off the fight to the finish, giving rise to the Central Dramatic Question? The Writer’s Notebook session confirmed that Cutter snaps into his old self and explodes into the situation as an out-of-control liar. He’s going after St. Nick, Hutchings, the thieves, the hustlers, the billionaire bankers, and the arms dealers who are trying to drag this revenge operation down. I’m still carrying a lot of possibilities as I wrestle this touch-off into shape, but the basic answer to this question is: Cutter snaps and goes on the attack, fighting to keep St. Nick’s trust and to keep the deal together so he can complete his revenge.
Step 4: What Earlier Action by the Protagonist Sets Up the Potential Fight?
Moving a giant step backward in the plot, I now want to know What earlier action by the protagonist sets up the potential fight? Remember our proportion diagram (see chapter 6), in which the set-up of the potential fight usually comes much earlier in the plot. I’m trying to integrate the complete action of the script, so I’m looking for a situation earlier in the plot in which Cutter and St. Nick cross swords. This tool reveals that such a scene doesn’t exist yet; I’ll have to come up with one on the spot. I’ve been thinking that St. Nick might challenge Cutter on the truth of something Cutter has said. If Cutter—who is struggling to stay honest in this difficult situation (this is, after all, half of his dilemma)—is called a liar, then he might respond fiercely to St. Nick. Being branded a liar, especially by his number one enemy, really pushes his buttons. (This idea comes directly from my brainstorming in Chapter 10 on the 36 Dramatic Situations. The subheading Revenge for a false accusation triggered a story possibility: Cutter may overreact irrationally if he is falsely accused of lying, even though he’s lying in general with the whole revenge scheme.) Then when Cutter panics, thinking his fight with St. Nick has ruined their plan, he uses the can and string to eavesdrop on St. Nick and Hutchings, and learns that St. Nick is actually impressed by how ballsy Cutter was in standing up to him. I’m not yet sure what this argument between Cutter and St. Nick will be about, but now I’ve tentatively planned an approximate scene to set up the potential fight at around one-third of the way into the script.
Step 5: Do the Set-up and the Touch-off Have Anything in Common that Can Bind Them Together?
To answer this question and establish this final component of the proposition, I look at both these points and determine if they have any>thing in common. There isn’t really a rule of thumb for the common term except that there should be some kind of linkage between the setup and the touch-off so that
there’s a valid logical connection between them. The first thing they share is that Cutter gets bent out of shape each time he’s called a liar. The second common feature is Cutter’s intense dedication to taking down St. Nick. In the set-up, he is freshly undercover in St. Nick’s organization and secretly seething with vengeance because of Frenchy’s death. In the touch-off, he has just seen Shallott murdered, which would renew this fervor. However, I think the former option feels more like the common element that ties these two plots points together, reinforcing the structural unity of the script.
ASSEMBLING THE PROPOSITION
Now let’s assemble the three-sentence Central Proposition from the components we’ve just ascertained with the five-step process (the common term is underlined):
Set up the potential fight
Cutter, furious at being called a liar by St. Nick, gets into an argument with him.
Touch off the fight to the finish
Cutter, now cornered and in real trouble—and again outraged at being called a liar—snaps and totally reverts to his old lying self, going on the attack against St. Nick
The Central Dramatic Question
Can Cutter pull this off and take St. Nick down?
ADDING A LITTLE MORE DETAIL TO THE PROPOSITION
I’ll state the proposition again with a little more information included so that a stranger to the story can make sense of it:
Set up the potential fight
Cutter, a reformed pathological liar who has vowed to his wife never to lie again, is blackmailed into a revenge-oriented “perfect” crime by his former prison cellmate, Apollo, to whom he owes his life. Cutter poses as a bank examiner and reluctantly begins lying again to take down St. Nick, a legendary, savage crime lord who’s in the process of going legitimate by buying a bank in collusion with the corrupt Senator Hutchings. When St. Nick falsely accuses Cutter of lying to him, Cutter—refusing to be called a liar—attacks St. Nick and defends his integrity.
Touch off the fight to the finish
Cutter gets drawn deeper into this complicated situation when he learns of St. Nick and Hutchings’s secret plan to make a fortune exploiting government-guaranteed agricultural loans in a crooked deal with a brutal African dictator, Umbotha. The plan changes when Cutter is unexpectedly promoted within St. Nick’s organization, and now has a chance both to destroy St. Nick more thoroughly and to derail a deadly criminal conspiracy. Cutter sees one of his partners murdered and, again outraged at being accused of lying to St. Nick, kicks into his old self, going on the offensive against his nemesis and the others in order to pull off the scheme and destroy St. Nick.
The Central Dramatic Question
Can Cutter pull this off and take St. Nick down?
You can see how the proposition tells the core of the story. It actually doubles as a great pitching tool because it forces you right to the nucleus of the plot, which enables you to present it clearly and logically. I’ve now become focused on the pure drama in this story. This tool also helped by forcing me to pull the story from that diverse collection of possible story elements into a more coherent plot. I often find myself resisting this tool because it forces me to get clear and logical when I’m not ready to give up that expansiveness and chaotic flexibility of another type of creative zone. But then once I’ve done it, I find that the plot has not only improved, but it is also cleaner and clearer—as is my thinking.
EVALUATING THE PROPOSITION
The next step is to stand back from this proposition and evaluate it. How strong is the Central Dramatic Question? Is it measuring up to my intentions for the film? Are the audience members clinging to the edge of their seats? I’ve structured the argument, and now I want to step back and see if it’s worth a damn.
I’ve probably got tunnel vision right now—it’s easy to get trapped in narrow sets of possibilities when you’re deep in the process of developing a story. I’ve been working it, pounding it, beating it up, shaking it out, violating it, and redirecting it, all to uncover the potential lurking in there. This is the creative process. It takes time to get outside certain types of thinking, and it takes time for the obvious to become apparent. There’s just no substitute for time.
So I take some time off from assembling the proposition, and when I return to it, a flood of realizations, ideas, and oversights washes over me. These blind spots are entirely organic to the process. It’s very hard to hold everything in your head, and if you direct your thinking to one aspect of the plot, then other aspects can become lost or eclipsed.
As I evaluate what I’ve constructed, one of the first things that comes to mind is that I want still more conflict. Earlier on I felt the story had been too much of a thriller, so I started developing the comic take on it. Now, I think I’ve steered it too much in the direction of comedy. This back-and-forth process is normal. At this point, I want to return to the savagery of the story and make sure that element is properly spun up.
The wacky stuff is entertaining and it does need to be a part of this plot, but it struck me again after I constructed the proposition that St. Nick is a brutal murderer, and the stakes are huge. He and Hutchings are plotting to rob American taxpayers of billions, as well as conspiring with a genocidal dictator to enslave his people in a sweatshop. If Cutter overhears them planning this, then his outrage should be explosive. I want the audience to hate St. Nick with absolute intensity. He must be diabolical, malignant, treacherous, psychotic, demonic, and depraved. All of this will fuel the audience’s fiery reaction and upgrade the power of the dramatic question.
As soon as I recognized the need to go darker, a new idea floated up concerning the whole arena of the CIA, arms dealers, money laundering, drug smuggling, covert foreign policy, and government conspiracy. Evaluation often gives rise to more brainstorming—I’ll switch to my Writer’s Notebook for the following section.
A Dynamic New Plot Possibility Arises
A major new idea has come to me: The situation could change dramatically if Mambia’s neighboring country is in the throes of a communist revolution. This may have been brewing for a while, which would have made Umbotha a useful asset to the CIA, but now it’s erupted. This would put Umbotha in the catbird seat: He immediately goes from being useful to being absolutely indispensable. All of a sudden the CIA needs to covertly funnel a lot of money to Mambia so that Umbotha can arm himself against this threat.
By choosing Communism, I sidestep the whole minefield of using terrorism in a comic way at this point in world history. Terrorism and the various takes on defending ourselves against it is such a politically sensitive hot button that a Hollywood studio might run the other way. I’m paying attention to marketability, which is always a consideration unless you’re independently wealthy and are going to make, market, and distribute the movie yourself.
Umbotha is suddenly the toast of the town, and is escorted to high-level meetings with the CIA, the White House, arms merchants, covert operators, high-ranking senators, and so on. I can see the CIA coming to St. Nick and asking to use his bank as a cover for CIA money, because the bank already has a solid relationship with Umbotha and it’s new and clean—untouched and unaffiliated. The lid could be taken off the agricultural loan program, with government guarantees being extended from $2 billion to $8 billion, so that “free” money flows like champagne. The loans will be granted, all disguised as agricultural financing, but certain banking regulations will be waived so that a big chunk of the money goes straight to arms purchases from American defense industries. St. Nick, Senator Hutchings, and Umbotha’s original plantation and factory deal will still be in place, but it will just be one of many deals, rather than the centerpiece. Plus, all of this will be done through St. Nick and Hutchings’s bank, so they’ll collect fees on every transaction.
St. Nick and Hutchings would obviously be delighted. Hutchings, who might also be on the Senate Intelligence Committee, could even have steered the CIA to their bank. This arrangement would make any pending investigations of S
t. Nick or the bank vanish immediately and permanently. Immunities could be issued, subpoenas quashed, and investigators told that it’s a matter of national security. St. Nick is now in the VIP club. He’s untouchable, and no cop in the world would be looking for him—now or in the future. He’s home free!
This is all going to put much, much more pressure on Cutter, who again uses his primitive listening device to eavesdrop on St. Nick and Hutchings in their secure room as they discuss this great turn of events. His window of opportunity to catch and destroy St. Nick is being slammed shut right before his eyes. Now that the stakes are higher, I’ve just ratcheted up the pressure on the audience as well. There’s still a certain tongue-in-cheek aspect to it, but the danger and intensity factors have been cranked way up, and therefore the power of the Central Dramatic Question goes way up, too.
Laying Out the Plot on Note Cards for Clarity
At this point in the process, I’ll go back and review all my notes for the script. As usual, this causes certain ideas to pop. To get an overview, I lay out the bare basics of the plot on 3 x 5 index cards, writing on them neatly with a Sharpie marker. Using 3 x 5 cards cut in half (or out-of-date business cards) instead, I can lay out well over a hundred cards on a regular desk—and I can read them from a distance because the Sharpie ink is fat and I’ve written legibly.
I go to note cards in order to collect my wits before taking the plot to the next level. Having just worked out the Central Proposition for this plot and found that it was missing big chunks of story, I knew it needed lots of work. The cards help me to visualize the whole script, including these gaps. They enable me to see what I already have, lay out the new ideas that come to me, and incorporate them all into the right order. The following list shows what is written on each card. You can recreate them on your own cards if you want to practice with them. Bear in mind that these are my notes to myself, so I don’t need to over-explain them. Using note cards that are stripped down to the basics keeps things clear and simple.