Story Design
Page 10
E.T.
Elliott learns the lesson that sometimes the people you love must leave and, although this may be a painful experience, the friendship can still remain for a lifetime. Elliott and E.T. have triumphed over the forces that have sought to keep E.T. a captive. He has won his freedom. Their final parting is witnessed by Elliott's family and "Keys," the government agent. Friendship, along with freedom, are reconfirmed as values that the community should cherish.
Avatar
Jake Sully, laying at the base of the Tree of Souls, transmigrates through Eywa into his Na’vi avatar.
Shrek
The wedding party in Shrek's swamp. All the Fairy Tale creatures participate in the celebration.
Harry Potter-The Sorcerer's Stone
Hagrid gives Harry an animated photograph of Harry as a child with his mother and father.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo sail off to the west in the Elf ship. Sam enters his cottage with his wife and two children.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Will and Liz will marry. Will accepts that he can be a pirate and a good man. Jack sails the Black Pearl toward the horizon and freedom.
Writing Assignment: Write a one paragraph description of the resolution scene of your movie. Describe the celebration that will take place for the protagonist, the love interest, and their supporters.
SCENE CONSTRUCTION QUESTIONS
When constructing a standard scene, answer the following questions:
Who is the scene's protagonist? If it's not the primary protagonist, then it should be one of his supporters, a character for whom the audience has empathy.
Who is the scene's antagonist? If not the primary antagonist, then it should be one of his supporters; a character for whom the audience has enmity. This character is the cause of the obstacles for the protagonist in this scene. If not a human character, then it is some other "force" that creates problems for the protagonist.
What is the jeopardy? What is at stake for the protagonist?
How can the protagonist be harmed in this situation?
What is the object (or objective) of the conflict?
What are the obstacles that the character(s) must overcome? Which character wins the objective?
Does the scene start in the midst of conflict? What is the scene crisis?
What is the scene confrontation? What is the scene climax?
What is the scene resolution?
What is the protagonist's emotional reaction? What is the antagonist's emotional reaction?
What codes of behavior are expressed by the protagonist?
What codes of behavior are expressed by the antagonist?
How does the protagonist change as a result of this conflict?
Is the scene cinematic? Does it consist primarily of character physical actions and reactions, or just dialogue?
SEQUENCES
A Series of Scenes
Entertaining the Audience
Excitement
Surprise
Suspense
The Chase
Ticking Clocks
ENTERTAINING THE AUDIENCE
"Movies are for audiences ... Don't be boring!!!" -Richard Walter, UCLA, Screenwriting
Entertainment is something that is performed to amuse an audience. Amusement causes people to laugh or smile, and to make time pass pleasantly. To entertain an audience means to give them the thrills and excitement of vicariously being in the midst of danger, while still having a pleasurable and humorous experience.
Every scene should be constructed in terms of its effect on the audience. Each character's action or any event that occurs in the story should be designed in terms of its impact on the audience. The audience's emotional reactions should be carefully designed to maintain the intended character empathy, along with the appropriate levels of tension, stress, fear, surprise, and laughter.
Humor in the midst of conflict relieves tension and produces pleasure in the audience. To entertain an audience is to make them laugh in the midst of terror and excitement. The audience desires thrills and the experience of seeing fascinating images that they have never seen before. What they want is a sense of adventure: to journey somewhere they've never gone before. Most of the megahit movies contains elements of adventure in which all the characters are in great danger and jeopardy in a strange environment. But most importantly, the audience will be entertained if they have a pleasurable and emotionally satisfying experience.
EXCITEMENT
To excite a person is to arouse in them an intense emotion. Normally, this emotion will involve terror, sex, or joy. Most of the megahit movies do not rely on sex to create excitement in the audience.
In the top-grossing popular films, the audience becomes excited when a character for whom they have empathy is placed in jeopardy. This danger can be either to his own person or to someone and something that the audience knows that the character holds dear: a favorite possession, a friend, a family member, a wife, a lover, or a child. In Wizard of Oz, the dog, Toto, plays this role for Dorothy.
The relationship of the character to this object must be established in the early scenes, so that the audience will unequivocally know the character's affection for the object. Then, whenever the object is placed in jeopardy by the antagonist, the audience will have empathy for the character. The audience becomes "thrilled" when the character is able to rescue the endangered object from jeopardy. This gives them the feelings of joy and happiness at seeing the love interest saved. The danger that the protagonist confronts must be believable for the audience. The filmmaker can establish this by having companions close to the protagonist die violent and horrible deaths.
In order to keep the story exciting, there must be an order to the objects placed under jeopardy, starting from those the protagonist cares least about to those that he loves more than life itself. The last object of affection (usually the "love interest;" a child, or a very close friend) is typically placed in danger of death in the climax scene. Here the values and abilities of the protagonist are finally tested to determine if he can defeat the antagonist and obtain the dramatic objective, while still preserving the life of the person he most cherishes.
Situations are thrilling to an audience when the protagonist confronts impossible odds and the threat of imminent death, yet still outwits his opponent and survives in an unexpected way. The films that are the most exciting, such as Star Wars, are those in which the protagonist is constantly in jeopardy. This is accomplished by continuously throwing dangerous obstacles in their paths and their near misses with death. Even in a "children's film" like Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is in danger in almost every scene.
The amount of excitement in a scene is equal to the intensity of the danger to a character, with the greatest intensity resulting from life threatening situations. Characters overcoming dangerous obstacles make these films thrilling to watch. This, with the addition of unexpected obstacles to a protagonist's plans and actions, provides excitement that an audience is willing to pay to experience time and time again.
Surprise is generated when the expected does not occur. This emotionally shocks the audience.
One method of creating false expectations in the audience is to have a character intentionally mislead another as to his real plans and subgoals. Since this is all the information that the audience has about the situation, they are surprised when the outcome is other than expected.
SUSPENSE
Suspense is also created when the audience knows more about what will occur in the scene than the protagonist does. They gain this knowledge whenever the antagonist reveals his plans to destroy the hero, or when the audience knows of imminent danger of which the protagonist is unaware (e.g., the killer is hiding in the closet).
Suspense involves audience uncertainty about the outcome of future events. This is different from mystery, in which the audience knows less about what is taking place in the story than the characters. The structures
of a chase and ticking clocks are methods of creating suspense, and both rely heavily on the use of obstacles.
THE CHASE
One method of creating suspense is to construct a classic chase scene, where the life of the protagonist and his supporters are placed in jeopardy. In these situations, the protagonist attempts to overcome distance and the obstacles placed in his path that prevent him from reaching his destination. Obstacles are effective time-stalling devices that help to keep the audience in a state of frenzy.
Fast paced action differentiates the chase scene from a scene where the character is solely in pursuit of his objective. In the chase scene, it is necessary that the protagonist constantly be in peril. Usually, at the end of the major chase scenes, the protagonist confronts the antagonist in the life and death climatic battle.
Wizard of Oz
Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion are chased through the castle by the Wicked Witch of the West.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
The RingWraiths chase Frodo and Arwen.
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Black Pearl chases the Intrepid.
TICKING CLOCKS
Ticking Clocks are another technique for building suspense. The protagonist must race against time to either achieve his objective, save his life, or both. The suspense is intensified as more and more obstacles are thrown into his path as he is running out of time. This creates "urgency" and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, wondering if the protagonist will achieve his objective and survive.
Avatar
Jake and the Na’vi must stop the Colonel and his air force before they bomb and destroy the Tree of Souls.
Independence Day
The President must take off in his plane before the clock runs out and the aliens launch their attack. The American fighters must destroy the alien's prime weapon before it destroys their headquarters.
Shrek
Shrek must save Fiona before she marries Farquaard.
Matrix Trilogy
Neo must destroy the Agent Smiths before the Machines destroy Zion.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Will must save Jack before he is hung by Norrington.
Writing Assignment: Create a chase and ticking clock sequence for the climax scene in Act 3 of your story.
Study Independence Day.
EMOTIONS
Making the Audience Feel
Emotion and Story
Emotion Words
The Cognitive Theory
Intensity of Emotions
Reactions to Events
Reactions to Actions
Reactions to Objects
EMOTION and STORY
Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. - Aristotle, Poetics
... let us determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful. - Aristotle, Poetics
When you open the dramatic works of Shakespeare, you find a number of words on white paper. These words were arranged in a certain order about four centuries ago. Today, they still have the unbelievable power of making us cry in certain places and laugh in others. Because they were arranged in such manner as to contain emotional stimuli, they have the effect of making us feel sympathy or hatred, of filling us with pity or horror. If such a transmission over hundreds of years can take place, if generations and generations of audiences consisting of different kinds of people are able to experience the same emotions, surely there must be laws and rules which effectuate such an amazing feat.
-Eugene Vale, The Technique of Screen and Television Writing
The most certain method of effectively communicating to a mass audience is through the emotions. The theory of emotions, therefore, has a dual role to play in the theory of story construction:
(l) The analysis of the situations that produce different types of emotional reactions in characters within the story.
(2) The analysis of situations that produce emotional reactions in members of the audience, especially empathy for the protagonist and enmity for the antagonist.
The second, analyzing situations that produce emotional reactions in members of the audience, is the most important for designing stories which result in the audience having a satisfying emotional experience, which is critical for a film to become a megahit movie.
EMOTION WORDS
There is a difference between telling the audience what emotion the character is feeling, and showing the audience the character feeling the emotion. This is a very important distinction for screenwriters.
To tell the audience the emotion a character is experiencing involves nothing more than having the character state the emotion word in dialogue, such as "I am angry," or to have another character state this about the first character, as in "You are angry."
To show the audience the emotion that a character is feeling is to write the situation in which the character finds himself or the write the behavior of the character that expresses the emotion. Showing the emotions is much more effective dramatically because it causes the emotion to also be experienced by members of the audience. This is the way to write a story which will eventually produce a satisfying emotional experience in the audience.
But it is often very helpful for a writer to tell what emotion the character is experiencing in the story treatment to ensure that they are writing an emotional reaction for each character for every event. Then in the first draft of the screenplay, the writer should concentrate on writing scenes that show the character experiencing the emotion.
Below is a list of emotions. Associated with each basic emotion word is a list of synonyms obtained from a thesaurus. These are the words that a writer should use when telling which emotion a character is expressing.
In the following chapters we will discuss techniques used for showing these emotions, as developed in the Cognitive Theory of Emotion by Ortny, Clore, and Collins.
ANGER: rage, outrage, fury, wrath, ire, temper, gall, bile, indignation, resentment, exasperation, vexation, annoyance, displeasure, hostility
ANXIETY: uneasiness, unease, apprehension, misgivings, foreboding, distress, concern, tension, anguish, angst, dread
APATHY: indifference, unconcern, lack of interest, inattention, unresponsiveness, passiveness, lethargy, lack of feeling, numbness, emotionless, coolness, impassivity
CONFUSION: bewilderment, stupefaction, bafflement, perplexity, puzzlement, mystification, disconcertment, discomposure, abashment, disorder, disarrangement, disarray, untidiness, shambles, upheaval, mess, muddle, clutter, jumble, hodgepodge, snarl, tangle, riot, tumult, madhouse, turmoil, pandemonium, hullabaloo, hubbub, commotion, ferment, disturbance, bedlam, uproar
CONTENTMENT: satisfaction, content, contentedness, gratification, happiness, peace, serenity, ease, comfort
DESPAIR: hopelessness, discouragement, desperation, despondency, gloom, depression
EXCITEMENT: thrill, adventure, stimulation, interest, animation, enthusiasm, elation, action, activity, furor, ferment, commotion, brouhaha, turmoil, tumult, agitation, flurry, flutter, frenzy, stir
FEAR: fright, dread, foreboding, terror, panic, threat, horror, apprehension, alarm, dismay, trepidation, consternation, disquietude, quaking, perturbation, qualm
FONDNESS: tenderness, affection, attachment, devotion, care, love, amorousness, desire, passion, ardor, liking
GRATITUDE: gratefulness, appreciation, thankfulness, thanks, acknowledgement, recognition, obligation
GRIEF: grieving, sorrow, sadness, heartbreak, heartache, misery, agony, woe, wretchedness, suffering, anguish, distress, despondency, despair, desolation, affliction
GUILT: guiltiness, guilty conduct, criminality, culpability, misconduct, misdoing, misdeed, misbehavior, wrong, turpitude, transgression, sinfulness, sin, vice, trespass, delinquency, dereliction, shame, disgrace, self-disgust, humiliation, degradation, dishonor, infamy
HAPPINESS: gladness, joy, delight, felicity, contentment, content, sense of well-being, pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, light-heartedness, rejoicing, elation, jubilation, high spirits, bliss, beatitude, blessedness, rapture, ecstasy, gaiety, exultation, exuberance, merriment, cheer, cheerfulness, cheeriness, glee, jollity, mirth
HATE: dislike, despise, detest, abhor, loathe, abominate, execrate, hold in contempt, bear malice toward, be hostile to, not be able to bear, have no use for, recoil from, shrink from, be repelled by, be sick of, be tired of
HOPE: faith, confidence, belief, assurance, reassurance, encouragement, trust, reliance, conviction, optimism, expectation, great expectations, expectancy, anticipation