MONDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
KNOW WHEN TO HOLD 'EM
Life isn't the cards you've been dealt, it's how you play them. Though we're all looking for a
great story to tell, once we find that story we still have to find the best way to *tell it*. You could
take a very simple story and tell it in a fascinating way - look at MEMENTO. A husband
searching for his wife's killer is a fairly mundane story - it's the way that story is told that makes
that film exciting and innovative. Telling a story is just relating information to the audience - but the
method we use to relate that information is what will make that story a page turner or a bore.
That doesn't mean we need to tell our stories backwards or sideways or upside down, but it does
mean we have to find the most interesting way to give the audience the information.
INSOMNIA tells the story of Los Angeles detective Will Dormer who is sent to Nightmute,
Alaska with his partner to help them solve a murder. Instead of telling us everything about
Dormer up front, screenwriter Hillary Seitz parcels out the information a little bit at a time -
treating the character of Dormer as a mystery and each new bit of information about him as a
clue. We know if they're flying him up from Los Angeles he must be an expert... but on the plane
his partner hints that Dormer may have had other reasons for leaving Los Angeles. Bit by bit we
find out that there's an Internal Affairs investigation underway - with Dormer as one of the
targets. What the heck did he do?
Instead of telling us, the script continues to give us one clue
after another - allowing us to assemble the character of Dormer a little bit at a time. Every clue
exposes a little more about the man. Some clues make him look like a good cop who may be
wrongly accused of something... others make us wonder if he isn't the one who crossed the line
without even blinking. Each clue helps build the mystery and make us wonder what - exactly -
happened in Los Angeles?
Every time we think we may know who Dormer is, another clue is
revealed which strips off another layer and allows us deeper into his character. Instead of a static
character - one we know everything about - Dormer seems to be constantly evolving... we seem
to learn something new about him in every scene.
What happened in Los Angeles? Why is
Dormer's entire career on the line? In one scene we find out the name of the actual case that
Internal Affairs is investigating. In another scene Dormer tells his partner that Internal Affairs
won't really want to dig too deep into that case - no one wants to find anything that would
overturn the verdict... but his tone tells us he isn't quite sure. Dormer worries that what he did
was bad enough that they WILL overturn the verdict and let this scumbag back on the streets.
What the hell did Dormer do? The mystery surrounding his character INVOLVES us. We want
to know! By the end of the film we will discover the secret of Dormer's past - we will learn what
happened in Los Angeles... and we'll be able to decide for ourselves if he's a good cop or a bad
cop.
UNFOLDING STORY
Another thing to consider is - do you really need to give us ALL of the *story* information up front? Can some of it be held back and uncovered later? Give us the basics up front, and give us new information as the story progresses. The story "unfolds". Two ways new writers can err are to have no backstory at all and no information about who the characters are and what's going on... or to have all of the information up front in a huge info-dump of backstory. The best thing to do is be somewhere in the middle - enough information that we know who these people are and what's involved, but still hold back information so that the story can unfold with new information. Audiences like finding out new information, getting a new clue to what happened in the past or see the past through the eyes of a different character who may have a different take on the events. Give us the basic information and tease us that there's more - telling us that there are secrets which will be revealed later. That creates suspense and intrigue - we want to know what those secrets are. All of the films you mentioned have secrets that are revealed and "facts" that change with every new bit of information.
In SPANISH PRISONER we know exactly who Campbell Scott is... but we are constantly given new information about who Steve Martin and Rebecca Pidgeon are. We have a character that we know (our identification character) and the others are revealed a little bit at a time. Same thing in HOUSE OF GAMES - we know Lindsay Crouse (our identification character) but don't really know Mantegna or Ricky or any of the other guys. New information is revealed about them as the
story unfolds, and one minute they may be friends and the next foe. We learn the details of who they are one little piece at a time (and by the end we may know less about them then at the beginning). One of the things that's fun about movies like this (and USUAL SUSPECTS, etc) is the way information revealed in one scene may change our perception of a previous scene. As an audience we're constantly adding a new piece to the puzzle and trying to guess what the puzzle will show us when all of the pieces have been put together.
In INSOMNIA, Pacino's character's past is revealed a little at a time - making the character interesting because we KNOW he has a secret, we KNOW he's trying to hide the secret, but we aren't sure exactly what that secret might be. We don't have to know everything about your characters up front, we just need one character that we identify with and enough about the others that we THINK we know who they are. As the story goes on, you can add information that add dimension or even change our understanding of the character and their relation to the
story.
Creating a mystery around a character or an event and parceling out clues as the story goes on,
makes your story interesting and involving. In a script I finished writing a couple of years ago, the protagonist,
child psychologist Penny Temestra is introduced working in a county hospital in the Appalachian
Mountains. On page 15 she has been working all night on a case and stops to take a shower.
When she takes off her blouse we see a pair of ugly bullet exit wounds on her back. How did a
nice girl like her get shot?
You'll have to wait another 50 pages to find out! Throughout those 50
pages there are clues to the incident in her past that lead to her being shot.
I could have explained
her past when she was introduced but that would have been boring. A block of exposition where
two doctors in the hospital might have discussed how she's almost back to normal since being
shot... or maybe have Penny explain herself. Either way would have just dumped information on
the audience in the least interesting way... instead of creating a mystery surrounding her
character.
Of course, I knew exactly what happened to Penny before I began writing the script -
her past is what made her the person she is today. I decided to hold that information back and
reveal it at the most interesting time possible - in the most interesting way possible. Penny's past
was my ace in the hole - I had it in my hand but I didn't let any of the other players know it was
there.
And Hillary Seitz knew all of the details of the IA investigation into Dormer from the very
first scene - little clues we are given in that opening scene are critical to the mystery of Dormer's
past... plus, the whole darned film is really about his past (but we don't know that until his past is
revealed at the end of the film). She held onto that information so that she could tell the story in
the most interesting way possible.
Before you can reveal it., you have to conceal it, and before you conceal it you have to know
what it is. How you give the audience information is as important as the information itself. It's
not just having a great story, it's finding a great way to TELL the story.
MY BLOG!
SCRIPT SECRETS STORE - time to monkey around!
Did you like HANGOVER so much last weekend you needed a little hair of the dog that bit you?
Is this version of UP much better than Russ Meyer's version?
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Okay, I'm the West Coast Editor, so I'm biased - but this is the best screenwriting magazine out there. Other magazines have articles *about* screenwriters, Scr(i)pt has articles *by* screenwriters.
Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas on writing LAND OF THE LOST and interviews with Orci & Kurtzman on STAR TREK, plus Brancato & Ferris return to TERMINATOR
with TERMINATOR: SALVATION and Bob Peterson and PeteDocter talk about writing in 3D for Pixar's UP!
Scr(i)pt also focuses on the actual writing rather than the deal making - this is a "how to" magazine.
Real nuts-and-bolts stuff! Oh, and I have at least one article in every issue.
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