by Paul Ashton
THE MIDDLE 153
Sam’s mind and mouth is a cul-de-sac – it’s a series of small dead-ends in
one scene that show how far off he is psychologically and practically from
the road ahead in cracking this case and therefore getting himself home.
A CLEAR VIEW OF THE DISTANCE
Then there are the moments where the character gets a brief but clear view
of not just the road ahead but what lies at the end of it. Moments of insight,
inspiration, clarity and understanding, where their sense of purpose returns
and their faith is restored.
Sam Tyler cannot get his head round not only how to investigate
Suzi’s murder, but why he is doing it, what the point of it really is. Then in
the mortuary he makes the connection between this case and the one he
left unfinished back in the future. It appears to be the same killer – and
therefore it is his ticket to getting back home. And his purpose is renewed.
(And then he immediately hits a couple more very sharp bends – his beha -
viour means his colleagues think he’s going nuts, he is taken to the ghastly
bedsit in which he will be haunted by the TV test-card girl from the 1970s,
and he begins again to questions his sanity and his purpose . . . )
QUICKSANDS AND HIGH TIDES
Then there are the moments in the muddle where it’s not so simple a case
of reversing out of the dead-end. Quicksands and high tides are the times
when the character seems to be walking and walking but going no where,
sinking slowly in the gloop or failing to fight back a rising tide of failure.
These are more dangerous times, times when there is greater jeop ardy than
just a sense of surmountable bemusement and confusion.
Sam’s investigation using the novel (at that time) approach of pro -
filing and cross-referencing unsolved crimes is hideously slow when done in
this manual, non-computerised way. As this process trudges on, he is still
trying to reason out the reality he is in, caught up in complex and strange
conversations with WPC Annie and enigmatic pub landlord Nelson. And
meanwhile, Dora has gone missing, Gene and the rest of the doubting squad
are questioning Sam’s approach, and every attempt to make contact with
the future fails. For Sam, it is like wading through treacle that is slowly but
surely getting deeper and thicker and stickier.
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THE CAVE
The cave is the ‘big gloom’, the moments where the characters ask them -
selves: can it get any worse? Where their confidence, faith, energy, ability,
purpose, desire are at their lowest ebb and it almost seems easier to lie
down and stop trying than to carry on. But it is also therefore in the cave
where for better or for worse their journey forward is carved in stone –
because otherwise, the story would just stop here with no ending.
For Sam, it is when Gene Hunt tells him (via a fist fight) that time has
run out for Sam’s line and method of enquiries, and he strides out deter -
mined not to bother any more, to stop trying to solve this case and just walk
and walk until his mind can no longer invent any more 1970s wallpaper
and props. He isn’t physically inert and depressed, but he has had enough
and doesn’t see a way forward – and for a true-blooded policeman, being
forced out of the police station is about as deep and dark a cave as you could
expect to find. But as he questions the very fabric of life around him, his
police brain does what it does best – it has an idea, it takes an observation
from this fabric (the soundproofing in the record shop booth) that tells him
something about the case.
CHASMS AND ROCK FACES
Just because there has been a flash of light about the way forward, this cer -
tainly does not mean the journey becomes easy again. Just the opposite.
This is where the characters meet not just obstacles but deep, wide chasms
to traverse and sheer rockfaces to climb. These barriers to the journey
require not simply sheer effort, but a kind of leap of faith to just do it from
the gut / heart. In these moments comes a renewed faith in the road ahead,
one that isn’t just desired but earned.
For Sam, having the flash of inspiration is not enough and it’s not
something he can even pursue straight away. First he must become a part
of Gene’s team – jump in the Ford Cortina and be and look and feel like part
of the squad, out to catch a killer, despite everything about them that is
alien to him. He must take a big leap of faith in them across a wide chasm
of experience and attitude and opinion. And he must not only join the squad,
but use their ways to get what he wants. When Sam questions Mrs Raimes,
he fails; but Gene’s charm and way with certain kinds of interviewees (as
THE MIDDLE 155
well as the violence and intimidation he uses with others) is something that
does not come naturally to Sam and something that actually works. It is
here they get the information they need for Sam’s brainwave to become
useful. At this point, the momentum towards catching the killer is abso -
lutely back on track. But it’s still a steep, winding, perilous track.
A SECOND POINT OF NO RETURN
If the middle is about taking the characters from beginning to end, then
perhaps this moment or sequence of transition mirrors that from beginning
to middle – it’s another point of no return, where the pull of the inevitable
ending is so strong that it drives or drags the character forward inexorably,
whether they want it or not. Without this point, without the kind of momen -
tum the characters generate and build, you can’t really justify the climax of
the ending – the conclusion that everything has led towards, whether or not
it seemed like it.
THE (NOT SO) NATURAL ORDER
Episode one of Life on Mars is a fantastic piece where the order of the
fundamental elements of structure in the middle tends to run in the order
that I have discussed them here. They have a cumulative effect and build
upon one another. And this will be the case in a lot of stories, especially the
more genre-driven or format-driven they are, for whatever medium.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. And there are lots of maverick
examples I could use. But instead I’ll use the eternally popular one I have
already referred to heavily.
In Hamlet, the structure of the middle is unusual. It reaches a point
of intensity not in the final stretches but rather earlier on. When the play-
within-the-play seems to Hamlet to show the guilt of Claudius, the momen -
tum and intensity of events is high. Hamlet then steps up to take revenge –
but steps back again, convincing himself that he cannot murder Claudius
when he is at prayer because it will send him to heaven rather than to the
hell he deserves. Instead, he unleashes an invective at his mother, during
which he accidentally murders Polonius. From here he is sent away from
Elsinore (and in Claudius’s plan, to his death). While Hamlet is away, we
see the descent into grief and madness that consumes Ophelia. (In the
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earlier,
longer version we also see Hamlet soliloquise on the approach of
Fortinbras’s army, the distant threat that is seeded at the beginning of that
version.) Then he returns in secret, famously contemplates Yorick’s skull,
and witnesses Ophelia’s unconsecrated funeral, where the pace towards the
end begins to pick up again because it signals Laertes’s own desire for
revenge against Hamlet for the death of both father and sister. You could
say that the ‘cave’ is something Hamlet finds himself trapped inside much
earlier in the story – in the grief of his famous early soliloquies. And when
Laertes challenges him to a duel he accepts with a curious sense of calm,
perhaps even of understanding, that this is where he has been heading all
the time and this is where it will all come clear.
The structure in the middle in Hamlet is not generic – it is unusual
and disorienting. As such, perhaps it better tells and expresses the journey
of a character not quite like any other revenge hero we have seen before or
since. Hamlet’s journey forward is not just about putting together a plan of
revenge – which he essentially fails to do. Rather, it is a journey of accep -
tance towards the inevitable conclusion – and it is only this accept ance, this
sense of clarity beyond the antic disposition and the desperate grief and
anger from earlier in the play, that ironically allows him at the end to be
finally, irrevocably revenged upon Claudius – and to find a sense of peace
where ‘the rest is silence’ and no longer ‘words, words, words’.
CAUSING A SCENE
Here is a common scenario: a child is denied sweets and so has a tantrum
in the supermarket aisle as the mother looks on. The child is, as the
common phrase would have it, ‘causing a scene’. Why is it called this?
Because the child and mother are both refusing to back down from a
moment of conflict, where two personalities with opposed wants and desires
are at loggerheads. Writing a scene is all about causing a scene. It frequ -
ently will not involve something as spectacularly demonstrative as a
tantrum, but it should involve some kind and level of conflict.
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WHAT IS A SCENE?
If a dramatic story is a journey for the characters and audience, then a
scene is a mini-story that moves your larger story forward, scene by scene,
conflict by conflict. From conflict comes change – because in a story some -
thing must give, something must change, a deadlock can’t exist unchanged
for ever. If a scene is effecting a change, however subtle and miniscule it
might appear to be, it is moving your story, characters and idea forward.
Scenes are the basic building blocks of a drama. They may be small
and delicate or grand and cataclysmic, depending on their place in the
design of your story, but at their heart is the importance of dramatic
conflict, action and change that moves your story on. So if a scene isn’t
moving your story on in some way, you need to ask yourself this question:
does it need to be there?
THE BASICS
A scene is essentially the time, the place and the setting you design to
create a dramatic conflict. Scenes are unified by time and place. If the place
changes, then it is for all intents and purposes a new scene. If the time
changes, the same applies. Even if it isn’t necessarily clear to an audience
when and where a scene is taking place, the writer should know. It should
generally be clear in your script where the scene is set. Stage and radio
plays do not necessarily specify the time but in classic screenplay format,
night or day is clearly stated at the top of each new scene, along with
whether or not it is an interior (INT) or exterior (EXT) shot, and the specific
location:
INT. SUPERMARKET – DAY
When writing the ‘scene action’ or ‘stage directions’, keep it as simple and
focused as possible. If you can use ten words rather than twenty to describe
an action, then use ten. And then see if you can get it down to five. Remem -
ber that you are writing drama, not prose – you are writing essential
dramatic actions rather than exhaustively detailed minutiae or poetic
description. Remember also that you are writing scenes that can be played
by actors and shown to an audience – so don’t tell us what the character is
158 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT
thinking and feeling if it can’t be shown /played, or explain the character’s
backstory if it isn’t integral to the scene.
There is one simple basic rule of thumb for drama across all mediums:
show, don’t tell. By ‘show’ I don’t mean make it visual so much as make it
dramatic. Don’t explain what is happening – dramatise what is happening.
PICTURE AND MONTAGE
So what about pure visual or audio pictures and montages? How do you put
drama and conflict into a simple image or tableau? Well, you don’t. They are
not scenes – they are not times and places designed to present dramatic
conflict so much as links between scenes, texture, framing, pauses and breaths
and transitions, ways of contextual ising and juxtaposing and offering coun -
terpoint to scenes.
The only reason you should worry too much is when there are too many
of these and they take up too much time. I have seen films that are may be
only half story and half the in-between stuff. And although the director
might say it’s their ‘style’ or visual signature, it’s usually because they don’t
have enough story and so are padding out the gaps with visual sensation.
So if you find yourself resorting to indicating full-blown montage more
than occasionally then let the alarm bells ring clear and loud – because
reading such padding in a script is even worse than having to watch it on
the screen.
DRAMATIC ACTION
Drama is all about conflict and change for the characters. You need specific
actions that affect character. They need to be in some way unique, specific
actions because repeating action without variation means your story is
going nowhere; and going nowhere in drama means boredom.
It’s easy to mistake dramatic action simply for action. Explosions or
car chases are meaningful only if they tell us something about char acter.
Action is dramatic when it reveals something new about the character to
the audience, to other characters or perhaps to themselves.
A scene is a distinct piece of dramatic action and should be in some
way distinguishable from every other scene in your story, because it should
serve a unique, specific role in the story. The dramatic purpose of a scene is
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expressed in what the action uniquely shows us about the characters at a
specific time and in a specific place in your story.
CONFLICT
‘Conflict’, like ‘action’, is an unsubtle term. Dramatic conflict does not
necessarily (or even often) mean a stand-up row or fight. Conflict is not
always or necessarily visible; it can be in the subtler frictions and tensions
between characters or in situations. It isn’t necessarily a physical or
demonstrable action. It can be
emotional or psychological in nature; it can
be within a heart or mind or conscience or memory or instinct. It can be a
contradiction within or choice /dilemma for a personality as much as a
visible clash of swords.
GOALS
For the Hollywood-sounding term ‘goal’ you can substitute ‘want’, ‘desire’,
‘need’, ‘urge’, ‘compulsion’ or ‘belief ’ – whatever works for you. What do the
characters want? What stands in their way? What do they do to get what
they want? You need to focus in on at least one crucial goal and/or conflict
that must be dramatised in each scene in order to keep your story moving.
Without it, your story will grind to a halt.
If you can in no way think of anything that a character in or connected
to a scene wants or needs, then why is it there?
CONFLICTS THAT MATTER
You need to make the conflict in the scene resonate and cohere with what
we see of the characters in your larger story. Don’t make the conflicts ran -
dom, episodic or for the sake of finding an action; make them meaningful
to your characters, important in your story and engaging for an audience.
Meaningful conflicts are the bricks that will make your building stand
strong; if they are random sizes, shapes, designs, textures and colours then
no matter how solid the separate bricks appear to be, they will not make for
a strong or coherent or satisfying collective structure.
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WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Meaningful conflicts engage us when there is something at stake for your
characters – not just that a great battle must be won, but jeopardy on a
human, emotional, individuated, personal level. If there’s no hope of success
or gratification on the one hand (goal), and no risk of failure or fear of loss
on the other (obstacle), then there’s no compelling reason for an audience to
keep caring and keep watching to find out whether or not the character
achieves that goal. If that compelling reason does not connect with us on a
human, emotional level, the story will simply have no heart and no impact.
So with every scene along the way, ask yourself: what is really at stake in