The Craft of Scene Writing

by Jim Mercurio

  Remember in Lethal Weapon, when Riggs and Murtaugh first meet? Murtaugh jumps Riggs because he thinks Riggs is a madman. This introduction effectively hints at each of their shadow sides. Riggs is a lethal weapon who also can be a productive member of a team and family. And despite Murtaugh’s cautious nature, he opens a small window into his courageous risk-taking side. The fact that each character is the only one in the story who recognizes and appreciates the shadow side of the other one is exactly the same scenario, craft-wise, as the classic meet-cute.

  A meet-cute is the ubiquitous moment in romantic comedies when the eventual lovers bump into each other figuratively and meet for the very first time. Conflict is often a spark for the two characters, but you also want to establish some affinity, usually something that they have in common. In Deadpool’s send-up of the meet-cute, Wade/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and the prostitute who eventually becomes his wife, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), bond over their competition to see who had the worst childhood.

  WADE WILSON

  Rough childhood?

  VANESSA CARLYSLE

  Rougher than yours, Daddy left before I was born.

  WADE WILSON

  Daddy left before I was conceived.

  VANESSA CARLYSLE

  Ever had a cigarette put out on your skin?

  WADE WILSON

  Where else do you put one out?

  In a meet-cute or even at the center of best friends’ relationship, there is the ability for the characters to see the shadow side, the unrealized potential, of the other. The dilemma quickly captures the simultaneous push and pull—the strongest of both conflict and affinity—between them.

  Their limited, pre-character-arc flawed selves will butt heads. However, their sense of each other’s essence, who they are supposed to be, will attract them. The love interest or friend will be the only one who clearly sees and appreciates the protagonist’s unfulfilled destiny.

  A scene in An Officer and a Gentleman illustrates how this works. While lying in bed, Zack shares with Paula (Debra Winger) the painful events from his past that yielded his current perspective on life: “You’re all alone in the world. Once you got that down, nothing hurts anymore.” Paula surprises us and him with a muted laugh, a wry smile and the line, “I bet most people buy that line when you feed it to them.”

  In the Good Will Hunting scene in the Harvard bar when Will meets Skylar for the first time, there are several opportunities for each of them to show interest in each other. When does Will smile? The moment he sees Skylar’s beauty? No. That works for Chuckie because he is a one-dimensional character, but it doesn’t work for the protagonist. When she deftly handles Chuckie’s come-ons without being mean? That moment has possibility, but no. Then when?

  When she tells Clark to go away.

  It’s not until she reveals her disdain for the snobbish Clark, who is belittling Chuckie. Despite looking like a wealthy and arrogant snob (more of a perceived flaw), she reveals her true self as someone who despises Clark’s values. Will must see evidence of her inner beauty to make him smile.

  When does Skylar smile about Will? When he reveals how smart he is and crushes the Harvard snob, Clark, at his own game? No. When he puffs his chest and invites Clark outside to fight, showing that he is intelligent and tough? No. Then when?

  When he makes it clear that his reason for confronting Clark is to protect his friend.

  She does not fall in love with Will because, despite his blue-collar, rough-around-the-edges appearance, he is actually an outlier genius who can earn boatloads of money with his skill. She loves him because she sees that, underneath all that, is a sensitive, caring, and loving person.

  Ultimately, the dilemma helps you to fill in the blanks in the relationship between two characters: I can’t stand ________ about you, but I put up with you because of ________.

  Rock Bottom/Character Arc/Climax

  Your protagonist has a goal that can be achieved only by overcoming his psychological deficiency, defense mechanisms, or flawed way of looking at the world. The dilemma brings unity to the entire story. It helps to create what I call the Killer Ending:

  A Killer Ending is where the goal and need intersect into one succinct action in the climax.

  Rock bottom is the down dip, the most extreme zig preceding the happy ending zag. Here, your protagonist is the furthest away from the goal and also has regressed to his or her worst self, the extreme “wrong side” of the dilemma.

  The dilemma defines the path in the extreme swing from the rock bottom to the character arc in the climax that enables the character to “save the day.”

  Before Jake unites everything to save the day in Avatar—bringing together humans, the Na’vi, and all of the species of animals—he is kicked out of the body that gave him love and mobility, he has betrayed the woman he loves and her race, and he is responsible for the destruction of the tree of life, their connection to everything—even their deceased ancestors. Before the upswing toward connection, he is thoroughly disconnected.

  In Casablanca, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is full of hate for politics, for Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and for himself. At the end he chooses love for all of the above. He does the right thing for the rebellion, remembers his love for Ilsa without needing to be her lover and claiming her for himself. The film even ends with a touch of platonic love with him and Renault (Claude Rains): “Louis, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  In a tragedy, the rock bottom becomes sort of a mountaintop, a temporary upswing to accentuate the eventual fall. In Se7en, the serial killer, John Doe (Kevin Spacey), has turned himself in, and Mills (Brad Pitt) smugly revels in what appears to be the upper hand. See how this specifically gnaws at Somerset, tempting him to believe that things are in control, the world is rational, and the game is winnable. For Mills, the story is tragic when he succumbs to his own wrath and kills John Doe, thus completing the final step of the serial killer’s plan. Somerset’s growth is subtle and bittersweet. He can neither save his friend nor stop the villain’s plan, but he does pledge to persevere in the face of unfathomable chaos and violence.

  Look at the single action in the climax of your story and orchestrate it so that the protagonist could not have made that choice earlier in the film. Make sure that her clear-cut growth facilitates the ending. Is your climax a culmination of the one and only dilemma for the character?

  In L.A. Confidential, Exley defeats Dudley Smith only by getting in touch with his dark side and shooting him in the back. In Lethal Weapon, Murtaugh can defeat the villains and save his daughter only by trusting Riggs and his shoot-to-kill approach.

  If you think your action is right on but not all readers understand it, ask yourself if you need an alley-oop or a tweak of the aftermath to orient your audience and control how they feel and think about the ending.

  Character Orchestration: Make Your Characters Rhyme

  As your understanding of the supporting characters grows, so will the specificity of their individual clashes. Use this insight to extract more conflict.

  In The Remains of the Day, James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) clings to the idea that his noble commitment to his role as butler in Darlington Hall supersedes any personal expression or emotion, which prevents him from having a relationship with the lively housekeeper, Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson).

  At one of the political conferences hosted by his misguided employer, Darlington (James Fox), an American politician (Christopher Reeve) criticizes Darlington and the attending European dignitaries for their misguided attempt to meddle in foreign affairs. He says noble instincts are no longer enough. He calls them amateurs and tells them, “What you need is not gentlemen politicians, but real ones. You need professionals…” Darlington argues that what he calls amateurism is actually honor.

  Your challenge is to define flaws and conflict in terms of a single, unified dilemma that plays across the cast of characters. Here, what seems to encapsulate the internal and external conflict in both the person
al and political realms is the clash between passion and principle. This dilemma manifests itself even in the smallest of exchanges.

  On his deathbed, Stevens’s father summons his son and justifies some cruel emotion with a twisted sense of principle:

  FATHER

  There’s something I have to tell you.

  STEVENS

  I have so much to do. Why don’t we talk in the morning?

  (Of course, Stevens deflects with his sense of duty and his immediate obligation to the manor.)

  FATHER

  Jim… I fell out of love with your mother.

  The father clings to a charade of principles to justify telling his son that he lost passion for his wife, Stevens’s mother. Rather than a meaningful confession or loving gesture of connection, it is a mean and hurtful act that can only reinforce Stevens’s fear of love and emotion.

  Is it any wonder that the most powerful reveal of his emotions to Miss Kenton is his eventual, “You mean so much to this house”? Despite her passion for Stevens, when Kenton realizes this is the best he can do to express his love for her, she reveals her principles by finding the dignity to leave.

  When Darlington is finally revealed to be a wishy-washy effete and Nazi sympathizer, Stevens must face the truth that he misplaced devotion in what was merely a façade of honor and nobility. He sacrificed a chance for love and a meaningful life for nothing. No passion or principle.

  Look for various ways that the characters embody permutations of the same idea as opposites, rhymes, similarities, or on-point contrasts. The idea of “same” versus “different” in Avatar allowed us to see clearly the interrelationship of supporting characters. The Colonel thinks they are very different. Grace understands that the humans and the Na’vi are the same on an intellectual level. Ultimately Jake understands this on an emotional and spiritual level.

  If you are struggling to define your characters with respect to each other using a common idea, try to define them as a variation of a common word. Here is a brainstorm of how to describe Avatar’s supporting characters with permutations of the word human:

  • Colonel Quaritch: Na’vi are opposite of human: monsters

  • Selfridge, the CEO: Like a corporation, treats them inhumanely

  • Grace, the Scientist: Knows that both biologically and chemically, Na’vi are identical to humans

  • Jake: A human who becomes a Na’vi

  You may find multiple ways to couch character personalities and perspectives.

  I could describe the character orchestration in L.A. Confidential in terms of Freudian psychology: Exley was the superego, White is the id, and Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is pure ego. However, we could express their interrelationship through politics instead of psychology:

  Vincennes is an empty politician relying merely on charisma and has lost all sense of morality and purpose. Bud White is a brute, a wild animal with primitive survival instincts but with no political savvy. Exley is a well-intentioned, by-the-book politician who will ultimately need to delve into the grayer areas of politics to achieve the power to master the bigger, messier game.

  If both descriptions work with equal efficacy, that doesn’t detract from either approach. These exercises and paradigms are merely metaphors and models that try to mirror the inner workings of drama. There is no one perfect answer. There may be many.

  Scenes:

  Finessing the Dramatic, Thematic, and Pragmatic

  Whereas the next chapter explores scenes by staying within the few pages of their boundary, this chapter does just the opposite. We are not limiting ourselves to an individual scene but rather exploring how the elements of a given scene relate to and spread throughout the entire script.

  You are not looking for new story twists but rather to finesse—strengthen, accentuate, and set up—your story. Look for people (conflicts and dialogue) and things (props, locations, motifs, action description, ideas) that can recur through the script and build on themselves, not only to add depth and richness, but also to clarify your intent both dramatically and thematically.

  “Thematic” and “dramatic” are informal categories that describe two slightly different goals:

  Your dramatic intentions involve the subtext of dialogue and the motivation and meaning behind the characters’ actions. Ensure that the audience effortlessly understands what’s happening at all points and tracks the character arc. This encompasses dialogue, interpersonal conflict, and insight into characters.

  Thematic intentions are about making your message cohere. Harkening back to our circumstantial evidence metaphor, you want to ensure you have made your case and that everything corroborates your intended message. This is accomplished with props, motifs, symbols, and anything that illuminates ideas related to theme, such as alley-oops, setups, and reframes.

  Finally, we will look briefly at the pragmatic—the peculiar nuts-and-bolts challenges of language and action description—in describing recurring locations and images.

  The Dramatic:

  Characters and Conflicts

  At this point, you go through the script and strengthen the beats and conflict in each scene enough to see how they are consistent with other scenes and the overall story.

  Instead of wrestling with every line of dialogue, strengthen characters’ perspectives and make sure they are confronting one another harder, with more specific conflict related to the larger progression of the story. Rewrite a few key lines that get to the core of the conflict, and if you are in the flow, consider making brief notes that allow you to move on.

  This is the best time to nail down your characters. Look for the moments when an important character calls out the protagonist with something like, “The problem with you is ________” or “The reason you will never get what you want is because ________.” Filling in those blanks bolsters characters, their perspectives, and the nature of their clash(es).

  Now you should be deep into the writing process to the point that you understand the world and character well enough to write character summations or double entendre lines. Be open to stumbling upon lines like Gothel’s in Tangled when she impatiently waits for Rapunzel to lower her hair so she can climb up into the castle: “I am not getting any younger down here.” This single line brilliantly connects a moment of irritation to the entire reason for Rapunzel’s imprisonment.

  The character’s resolution of the dilemma creates meaning and develops the theme. So it shouldn’t surprise you that your search for words that resonate on deeper and more global levels will lead you back to the specific language and ideas you chose for couching your protagonist’s dilemma.

  Consider the ironic elegance of a logline for Harold and Maude, in which a teenager falls in love with a much older woman:

  A brooding teenager obsessed with death and suicide falls in love with a 79-year-old woman who has an ebullient passion for life, but her eventual death by suicide has a surprising effect on him: he learns to love life.

  At the end of the first sequence in Harold and Maude, Harold swings from his fake noose contraption and appears to be dead while his formal, manners-obsessed mother confirms dinnertime. She chastises him with the line: “And do try and be a little bit more vivacious.” Vivacious! Find the perfect word.

  Ripple Effect

  While you focus on the dramatic elements, consider working somewhat chronologically. You will not obsess over every detail during your big-picture passes, but when you elevate tension and stakes in any given scene, you create a ripple effect in ensuing scenes that you must address.

  In your first draft, it may take you twenty to thirty pages to get to a deep understanding of your characters’ relationships. But in your new draft, if you can figure out how to incorporate that insight on page 12, then the conflict and dialogue on, say, pages 14, 22, and 46 will be that much more specific.

  But if you polish page 16 with a great insight on conflict and then jump immediately to polish page 46, you will lose the opportunity to track the impact of yo
ur new conflict. Working in roughly chronological order enables you to follow up on your newfound clarity and make the most of it in each subsequent scene.

  Find your own balance between moving backward and forward. However, know that the more specific you are when polishing scenes or dialogue at this stage, the more important it is to work chronologically. If you not only get to the root of a conflict but come up with perfect lines, you will want to build on that specificity.

  You might write a great line of dialogue that summarizes your characters while polishing page 67. That doesn’t mean the line belongs on page 67. If you insert it earlier, you’ll need to retrack the conflict escalation by carefully rereading the pages leading up to page 67 and write dialogue appropriate for that newly revised scene. This is a good problem to have and solve.

  Remember, you will not even recognize the impact of changes—especially some of the subtle ones—until you read your pages in their current state. Occasionally, you will need to do a “page-1 reread”—where you read your script from the first page to the last page that you have written.

  The Thematic:

  Motifs, Locations, Visuals, and Ideas

  You can use the same process you use to track your characters throughout the script to track props, motifs, and other setups, including alley-oops. Although we don’t want theme lines—self-referential comments and character summations to grind the story to a halt—you’ll want to make sure you are not being too subtle for your own good.

  Take your established motifs and charged props and images, ones that have been assigned specific dramatic significance, and spread them out through the script. Make sure your payoffs have setups, and then look for ways for your payoffs to become setups for even more surprises.

  A silly metaphor illustrates why the thematic process relies less on working in chronological order than the previous dramatic process. Think about how you frost a cake. Regardless of where you plop down the glob of icing, you will eventually spread it in every direction toward all of the corners until it is smoothly distributed across the entire cake.