Fix Your Screenplay
Photo by Aman Upadhyay on Unsplash
At some point, even expert writers ask themselves, “How do I fix my screenplay?”
There are as many rules for writing a cinematic masterpiece, compelling television series, or groundbreaking novel as there are ways in which to break them. It’s enough to drive any aspiring storyteller crazy.
There’s no time for that now. You need a rundown on how to turn the swirl of feelings in your head into a grand slam. Or maybe you’re staring at the script someone just delivered to your inbox and can’t figure out why it’s not compelling enough? I got you.
Keep Your Scenes Pristine
The best storytellers in the business live and die by their attention to detail within each scene. If a story is a necklace, then its ability to pique our interest depends on the luster of each ruby and diamond on the string.
From an audience or reader’s perspective, a story that works scene to scene is going to sit head and shoulders above the next project, no matter how nuanced or layered its competition may be.
If a scene were an engine, there are a hundred and one components that go into making a story tick. We could spend hours discussing the different pistons and valves for adjusting tension and stakes, painting with dramatic irony, subverting audience expectation, and being able to command the exact way people feel as they’re reading whatever you’ve put in front of them.
That said if we’re looking under the hood and a scene isn’t humming… if at any point you find yourself asking why you’re bored during a read… the answer is usually lack of conflict.
Two people sitting at a table agreeing with each other does not make for the most interesting content. Unless it’s at the end of a lighthearted indie movie about a mother and daughter who never agree and is an earned plot point, lack of conflict is going to kill any good story’s momentum.
The general formula for making a conflict-rich, interesting scene is laid with the following four parameters:
1. One or more characters…
2. … intends to accomplish something…
3. … that something or someone actively opposes…
4. … the success or failure of which determines the next scene’s motivation.
To put that into example with Raiders of the Lost Ark:
1. Indiana Jones, who we’re introduced to in small, question-provoking bursts…
2. … is willing to risk death to retrieve a golden idol…
3. … that the ancient people who built the temple don’t want him to have…
4. … and succeeds at attaining it, only to have it stolen by his murderous rival…
These four parameters are a tried and true equation for kicking things off with scenes, but they need a little flavor to make them sing. How do we do that? By understanding what’s in each character’s head before you’ve written your first word.
Know Your Characters
This is one of those “minutes to learn, a lifetime to master,” things, but it’s the most important lesson of all. Figure out your characters first. Take the time to sit with them and pull together a mind’s eye vision of what makes them tick.
Do that and everything else will fall into place.
It’s not as daunting as it sounds. Stories paint in archetypes or templates, and I always encourage my clients to start there. Are they the stalwart adventurer or the pale, sickly villain? Is your character a fighter or a pushover? The wildcard or the person who plays it too safe? As familiar as these character types may seem, what keeps stories fresh is how any unique character can be an amalgam of multiple traits, effectively making them something unique and wholly their own.
To that end, two key details do all the heavy lifting.
Motivation and Context
What do your characters want? Why do they want it? Are we rooting for them to succeed or worried that they might?
Formulate your characters so those questions are clear enough to answer in a few words going into each scene. Once you’ve nailed the beating heart of each person in your piece, you’ll have roadmaps within each character that will guide you toward the instinctive right answer when making creative decisions.
Motivation
When Indiana Jones’ idol has been stolen and he’s told he’s about to be killed, does he stick around and wait to die? No, he runs. An extreme example of motivation, but I hope it paints a clear picture that no other choice would have “felt” right for his character in that particular instance. Indy, after all, is a fighter and a survivor.
Defining your characters at a motivational level will give you a North Star to follow every time you’ve hit a creative roadblock. This will equip you with answers when you hit questions like, “What now?” and “Is this person pulling their weight in the scene?”
The more compelling and dramatic the motivation, the more tension and stakes there will be to mine later down the road. The clearer it is, the less likely details will be mistranslated in the great game of telephone that is producing scripted media.
A clear motivation will inform everything from the thrust of your scenes as you write them to how your director helps the performer embody the character, to how the editor stitches everything together.
Some examples of motivation include:
The people stuck inside Jurassic Park prefer to be alive.
Liam Neeson’s daughter was kidnapped by human traffickers.
The rat wants to cook.
Once you’ve ironed out what each of your characters wants, you’ll be able to create other characters who you can place in opposition to them. These are your antagonists, and they’re the only things that make a movie fun, a book impossible to put down, or a TV show binge-worthy.
Your antagonists should be equally, if not more motivated to stop your heroes. The best stories aren’t games of inches—they go big or they go home:
The velociraptors are evolution’s perfect killing machines.
The ruthless human traffickers prefer to be alive.
Kitchens are unkind to rats.
Get the paths of your story’s molecules (characters) clearly defined, set them on a collision course, and whatever shakes out is, at the very least, sure to be fun to read.
Die Hard’s story doesn’t pick up as Bruce Willis is in the TSA line waiting to board the 6-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles. It starts when things get interesting by way of Alan Rickman having a dastardly goal of his own, one he’s willing to take hostages to accomplish.
Two or more characters… entering a situation… their motivations are opposed… with room for only one victor.
Seeing a pattern? Motivation. It’s critical!
Context
This is another one of those “foot wide, mile deep” details I could spend three articles covering, but for the sake of brevity, let’s just say context is defined by:
· What kind of person your character is.
· How they came to be that way.
· How important it is that they succeed or fail in the scene they’re in.
Context is just as crucial as motivation because it’s where we start to play with nuance and propelling audiences. The proper context will give you all the kindling you need to make some serious fireworks happen on the page once motivations collide.
If you’ve ever had to keep reading to see what happens in the next scene, or if you’re on the edge of your seat unable to look away because you know something big is about to go down, then context has done its job.
A few examples, drawing from our previous ones:
Bringing dinosaurs back to life is bound to have fatal consequences.
Liam Neeson isn’t just a normal guy, he’s a trained government killer.
The rat has a passion the world won’t make easy for him to see through.
In short, if you dissect every piece of film, tv, or written media you’ve enjoyed, you’ll notice that they all follow that four-step scene work breakdown, the details of which are informed by each characters’ context and motivation.
I said it once, but I’ll say it again because it bears repeating:
Know. Your. Characters!
Why is this all so important? Your script doesn’t just bear the singular burden of being one hell of a campfire story. A lot of writers forget that it also has to serve as a crystal-clear schematic for everyone enlisted to help execute its vision.
That can be an exceedingly a long list depending on your budget, so for a quick and dirty rundown, I’ve got it broken down into a few major categories:
· Production – The people who hire everyone making the project.
· Cinematography – The people who decide how the project is filmed.
· Production Design – The people who decide the look of sets, props, and all of the non-living components of the project.
· Talent – Performers.
· Editorial – The people who review and assemble the footage.
· Directorial – The person or people who unify creative integrity among all departments.
For exactly as many amazing scripts have been overthought and noted into launchpad explosions, an equal number have reached impossible heights thanks to the cohesion of a team’s singular vision. In other words, how easily can your script be interpreted? The road to ease of interpretation starts with fleshing out your characters.
Fully-formed characters help every department function at its peak. They’ll make it easier for your directors to connect with your performers as much as they’ll help your performers click with their roles. They’ll help the people designing sets get into the headspace of characters when designing their rooms or offices or secret island lairs. You’ll avoid any questions when it comes to costumes or makeup—even the angles cinematographers employ when approaching certain scenes will all be informed by characters and their feelings scene-to-scene.
After all, nuanced characters are us, the audience. We are all complex emotional beings with surprises buried deep inside us that emerge when we’re pushed to the brink.
Projects fall flat when their characters are inaccessible. If we don’t get why a person we’re watching is doing what they’re doing, then the writer didn’t do their job. Beyond that, the best projects realize we’re placing our heads on the main characters’ bodies and are thinking to ourselves, “Yeah, that was the hard choice, but it’s probably the one I’d make.”
On the surface, we may be rooting for Indiana Jones to win the day, but what we’re doing is cheering ourselves on to overcome impossible odds. Why? Because Indiana Jones, as many lessons he learns, is still a work of fiction—words on a page. We’re the ones who walk away with the growth he’s experienced. That’s how stories have functioned since they were told around bonfires, and it’s a formula that all starts with clear, relatable character.
