What I Learned About Writing Romantic Subplots from “I, Tonya” and “Downsizing”

(Spoilers: I, Tonya; Downsizing; Pretty Woman; Wedding Crashers)

Last week I watched I, Tonya (written by Steven Rogers) and Downsizing (written by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor) back to back. Seeing the two movies that way illuminated something for me about writing romantic subplots.

I have long advocated that, in order to create successful love stories on film, the writer should identify the way each character makes the other better. For example, in Pretty Woman (written by J.F. Lawton), Vivian teaches Edward the value of emotional commitment, while Edward shows Vivian that she deserves more than she is accepting. This is so that the audience has reason to root for the two characters to be together.

But at first glance, I, Tonya and Downsizing appear to demonstrate the opposite. In I, Tonya, Tonya and Jeff are not good for each other at all. Yet I never once doubted their attraction or why they were in a relationship. On the other hand, I can easily see how Ngoc and Paul make each other better in Downsizing, yet, for me, the biggest weakness in a promising movie was that I was completely unconvinced that these two characters were in love. Since their love was critical to the last half of the movie, the movie failed.

Thinking more about this, however, I don’t think these movies contradict my initial technique at all. Rather, they demonstrate that simply showing how the characters improve each other isn’t enough on its own.

In I, Tonya, in fact, we are not rooting for Tonya and Jeff to be together. We actually desperately wish they would realize how mutually destructive the relationship is. This is not normally the goal of a movie romance. It’s really my technique turned on its head. Since the writer wants us rooting against the romance, he shows how the characters make each other worse.

But we also see how physically attractive they are to each other, and how Jeff offers a teenage Tonya the kind of appreciation she isn’t getting anywhere else in her life, and how Tonya offers Jeff a brush with the kind of greatness he can’t find anywhere else. We know why the characters want to be together, even if we can see that the relationship is bad.

The flaw in Downsizing is that the characters show no romantic or erotic chemistry. Sure, they improve each other as people, and improve each other’s lives, but what creates the romantic attraction? Their relationship is based too much on mutual improvement. It needs some joy, some sexy interplay, some emotional connection. It needs a little of what Tonya feels when Jeff tells her she’s pretty while working on his car. The first hint of this kind of sexual tension doesn’t come in Downsizing until Paul is rubbing lotion into Ngoc’s knee – right before they have sex. It’s too sudden, and it’s not big enough to convince us of their attraction.

So, yes, if you want us to root for two characters to be together, we need to see why they are better together than apart. But we also need to see that they are attracted to each other in a romantic and sexual way. Crucially, both things need to be dramatized. You need to create incidents that show us how the characters are better together and show us that they are attracted to each other.

And if you don’t want us to root for a relationship, show us why the characters are bad for each other. But we still need to believe they are attracted to each other or we won’t understand why they are in the relationship in the first place. When characters are in obviously destructive relationships, they can seem stupid, which reduces are sympathy for them. For example, in Wedding Crashers (written by Steve Faber & Bob Fisher), Sack is such a jerk that the wonderful Claire seems less sympathetic for being with him.

In I, Tonya, neither Tonya nor Jeff are portrayed as geniuses, to be sure. But they are both set up as sympathetic – Tonya is continually berated by an overbearing mother, and Jeff’s plans were derailed by family responsibility. We see how each satisfies a longing in the other. Though we can see the relationship is destructive, we sympathize with the characters’ reasons for being in it.

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“Get Out” Analysis Part One: Building and Maintaining Psychological Horror

(SPOILERS: Get Out – of course!)

In the spirit of Halloween, I’m going to do several posts analyzing some of the writing techniques that made the horror movie Get Out (written by Jordan Peele) so successful earlier this year. How successful? It made more than $175 million on a budget of less than $5 million… and that’s just the domestic box office! It also scored a stunning 99% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps more significantly, it became part of the cultural conversation due to its integration of themes of race in America.

One thing that I found interesting about Get Out was that for most of the movie, the main character, Chris, was only vaguely aware of the danger he was in. He sensed that creepy thins were happening, but mostly chalked it up to being a Black man entering a very white world. (This added thematic depth to the movie, something I will discuss in a future post.) The audience experienced the story primarily from Chris’s point of view and was thus also kept in the dark about what was truly going on until well past the halfway mark.

Yet this was a horror movie. The desire to save twists for later in the film posed a challenge for Peele: how to provide the kind of scares that the audience was expecting while believably maintaining the façade for the character that this was simply a visit to his girlfriend’s parents?

One of the first techniques the script employed was using a prologue to set the tone. We see a scene of a young Black man walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Soon a car starts to follow him. He tries to avoid the car, but ultimately he is jumped and abducted. This abduction connects to events later in the film, but from a plot standpoint, we don’t really need to see it. However, without this scene, the movie would seem more like a character drama for a good thirty minutes. Using a prologue establishes for the audience that this is a scary movie, and that colors how we read later unsettling events.

There are a few jump scares scattered throughout the movie to keep us on edge – some admittedly a bit cheap. One good one, though, comes about ten minutes in, when Chris and Rose are driving to her parents’ place and a deer jumps in front of the car. This event leads to an encounter with a cop that sets up the danger to Chris in this community. By associating the scare with a relevant story point, it feels integral to the film, as opposed to a cheesy gimmick.

Other moments are designed to make us feel that something sinister is going on at the house. For example, the groundskeeper running at Chris in the middle of the night, and the fact that Georgina, the maid, keeps unplugging his phone while it’s charging and starts crying inexplicably when apologizing to him about it. This sense that there is a secret conspiracy in the house is expanded in the scene when the party goes silent after Chris walks upstairs, and the scene of the strange auction.

The two creepiest moments in acts one and two come at major structural points: At the end of act one, Missy hypnotizes Chris against his will, sending him plummeting into the floor. When he wakes up, he can’t really remember this clearly – allowing the writer to have his cake and eat it too. The audience knows what Missy has done, but understands why Chris doesn’t take action. This serves the purpose of act one by locking Chris into the story – we know he can no longer leave without dealing with whatever’s been done to him.

The next big structural point is the Midpoint, and this comes when Chris tries to take a picture of the young Black man at the party. The flash does something to the man, and he tells Chris to “Get out!” Now things start moving a little more quickly. Chris decides he wants to leave the house, though that will not prove as easy as he expects. The threat finally comes into the open when he discovers the pictures of Rose with a parade of other Black men, revealing she is in on the secret plot. The danger becomes even more explicit as we move to the Act Two Turning Point – when Chris wakes up tied to the chair and a video reveals what’s in store for him. From there, things unfold more like most horror movies.

It is important to deliver on the genre promises of your stories. And it’s important that you deliver on the genre throughout the film. Peele wanted to save the real suspense and action for act three, so he had to find ways to create and build tension as he was building to that point. He walked a careful balance between keeping the psychological horror present without giving away the twists.

It’s important that most of the creepy, inexplicable moments scattered through the first two thirds of Get Out end up paying off in Act Three. They aren’t just random scares created for tone; they grow out of the story. This kind of planting and payoff is one of the strengths of the script. I’ll delve into that topic in part two of my analysis.

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The Three Important Questions Your Story Should Answer

(Spoilers: Gravity, Little Miss Sunshine)

In my book, The Three Stages of Screenwriting, I describe what I refer to as the “Dramatic Question” of the story. This is the question that is asked by the Catalyst (also known as the Inciting Incident) and answered in the Resolution. At its most basic, the question is some form of: “Will the main character achieve their goal?” This question defines the scope of your story. On an unconscious level, the Catalyst lets the audience know what the plot is about by posing this question. The audience knows the story will be over when they get the answer.

The Dramatic Question relates to plot. When I ask my students to define the Dramatic Question of their screenplays, they sometimes give me an answer along the lines of: “Will Keisha overcome her fear of intimacy?” Now, this could possibly be the Dramatic Question of a story, but usually this kind of internal question relates to the character arc, not the plot.

Other times a student will give me an answer like: “Is humanity worth saving?” This is also not really a Dramatic Question. It’s a thematic question.

I demand the students form their Dramatic Questions in relation to the plot because they will be using this question to structure their story. The act breaks and other structural beats will be related to this question. Since this is film, it’s important to make it external and measurable. And I encourage questions with a yes or no answer because it’s easier to figure out what should be happening at each structural beat.

But I’ve been thinking lately that the other types of questions the students provide are also important, just perhaps not to structuring the plot. After all, the best stories typically have strong character arcs and deal with powerful thematic ideas. So maybe we should really be looking at defining three different questions in our stories:

The Dramatic Question

The Character Question

The Thematic Question

One of the films I use as an example in The Three Stages of Screenwriting is Gravity (written by Alfonso & Jonas Cuaron). The Dramatic Question in that movie is “Can Ryan make it back to Earth?” This is a good dramatic question that drives the plot, and the movie ends when we get the answer. So let’s consider what the other questions would be and try to determine how they work in the story.

The Character Question in Gravity would probably be: “Can Ryan find the will to survive?” This question is set up when Ryan tells Matt about the death of her daughter. We see that she has lost her reason for living. This happens in the beginning of act two. It comes to a head near the Second Act Turning Point when Ryan decides to give up and turns off the oxygen in her capsule. It is resolved when she has her vision of Matt and he asks if she wants to live or die. She chooses life, and figures out how to solve her problem. This coincides with the Epiphany stage of the structure.

Building from this, I would say the Thematic Question of Gravity is: “What keeps us going in the face of death and danger?” Though there is an answer to this question in the story, I will note that this is not a yes or no question. Perhaps that is what makes a thematic question different than the other types of questions. Maybe good Thematic Questions have more complicated answers.

Let’s consider another film I use as an example in the book: Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt). The Dramatic Question of Little Miss Sunshine is: “Will Richard enable his daughter to win the beauty pageant?” (Richard is the main character of Little Miss Sunshine. If you want to know my justification for this statement, read the book!)

The Thematic Question of Little Miss Sunshine has to do with winning and losing. Richard’s first words are, “There are two kinds of people in the world, winners and losers.” And when deciding whether to take Olive to the pageant, Richard asks her if she thinks she can win, because, “there’s no point in entering a contest unless you think you can win.” The themes of winning and losing are set up early in the script. And near the Midpoint, Olive confides in her grandfather that she fears Richard won’t love her if she doesn’t win. Of course, in the end she doesn’t win… but Richard has realized it’s more important to support his daughter no matter what.

And that reveals the Character Question of Little Miss Sunshine: “Will Richard support his daughter even if she doesn’t win?” And of course the answer there is “Yes.” Here that character question is established at the Catalyst and again answered at the Epiphany when Richard jumps up on stage to join Olive in her crazy dance.

I realize I never proposed an actual Thematic Question for Little Miss Sunshine. Let’s go with: “What is more important – being a winner or having people who love you?” You might notice that all of the subplots about the supporting characters involve that question in some way. Exploring the theme is a common use for subplots.

So from these two examples, the Character Question seems to be important to the Epiphany of the film. This makes sense. We want the character arc to affect the plot, and the plot to cause the character to change. And the Thematic Question seems to be the result of what it means to place this specific character in this specific plot.

As you may gather, I don’t yet have a fully formed theory about these three questions. But I will be watching for them in movies I study in the future, trying to figure out how they work. Stay tuned… there will be future posts on this topic!

Using a Prologue

(Spoilers: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix, Romancing the Stone)

I define a prologue in a screenplay as an opening sequence that is not critical to the plot. You could cut off the prologue and the story would still make sense. The audience would never know something was missing. The majority of movies don’t have a prologue, but it’s not uncommon either. For example, most James Bond movies open with a prologue.

Just because a prologue can be removed without damaging the audience’s understanding of the story doesn’t mean they serve no purpose. Prologues are useful to:

• Grab the audience and draw them into the story
• Establish the tone of the story
• Introduce fantastical elements

You should consider using a prologue if the opening of your story would fail to do one of these important things. Most movies open by showing the main character in their normal life – the status quo that will be interrupted by the events of the story. The character’s status quo may be interesting enough to draw the audience in, and it may serve to properly establish the tone and world of the story. If so, you don’t need a prologue. In Gravity (written by Alfonso & Jonas Cuaron), for example, the main character of Ryan is an astronaut working on a satellite in space. Her status quo is plenty dramatic and entertaining, so there’s no need to add a sequence before it! However sometimes showing the character in their regular life isn’t going to do the job.

Let’s look at some examples of successful prologues.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan) opens with a prologue about Indiana Jones recovering an idol from a trapped jungle cave. This has nothing to do with the plot of recovering the Ark of the Covenant. But if we didn’t have the prologue, we’d open with Indy at his college teacher job. It would be a while before we got to the good, swashbuckling action. The prologue here grabs the audience and establishes the adventurous tone.

Similarly, The Matrix (written by Andy & Lana Wachowski) opens with a cool action prologue of Trinity running from the agents. This not only grabs us with kung fu, sci-fi action to help carry us through the next relatively action-free half hour of the movie, but it lets the audience know that there is something strange about this world. We are open to almost anything in the first minutes of the movie, but as we start to grasp the rules of the story world, anything that breaks those rules feels implausible.

In the prologue in The Matrix, Trinity and the agents have superhuman abilities and somehow Trinity magically escapes the phone booth at the end of the sequence. If we didn’t have this, the first hint that the world is not the one we’re familiar with would come when the agents erase Neo’s mouth. This would probably be too late in the movie, and the audience would find it laughable or confusing. But with the prologue we accept it.

Romancing the Stone (written by Diane Thomas) has a particularly interesting prologue. The setting is the Wild West. A bad guy threatens a woman. A dashing hero swoops in to save her. It’s all very overheated and romantic. And then it is revealed that this is actually a scene from the main character’s novel, taking place in her imagination.

This prologue again serves to draw the audience into the story and establish an adventurous tone. This is important because Joan’s regular life as a hermitic writer living in Manhattan doesn’t suggest the romantic adventure that the movie will ultimately deliver. The prologue does other important things, too, though. It establishes what kind of man Joan likes and how she thinks romance ought to play out. This sets up a nice contrast when Colton appears and proves to be a very different kind of man.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone some people might consider the prologues part of the status quo. After all, Indiana Jones is a swashbuckling archaeologist from the beginning of the movie, and Joan Wilder is already a writer of overheated romantic adventures. I would still consider them prologues because they are like little mini-stories unto themselves. Both movies could start after these prologues and would still make perfect sense – although they wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable.

Prologues exist outside of the typical three-act structure. If you use a prologue, it would not be surprising to find your Catalyst coming a little later in the film. This is okay as long as the prologue is suitably exciting to engage the audience – and if it’s not, then it’s not doing its job as a prologue!

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Bridesmaids Analysis 2 – Structure

(Spoilers: Bridesmaids)

Last week I discussed the conceptual underpinnings of Bridesmaids (written by Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo). This week, as part 2 of my in-depth analysis, I’m going to break down the three-act structure of the movie.

I look at story structure as the interplay between an internal and external journey for the main character (Annie in Bridesmaids). The internal journey is the character arc, how the character will change on a psychological level. The external journey is the plot, which is driven by the character’s goal. The three-act structure is based on the plot, so we must start with that goal.

Last week we identified Annie’s goal as “to succeed as Lillian’s Maid of Honor.” This is what’s driving her through the story. We can rephrase this into the Dramatic Question of “Can Annie succeed as Lillian’s Maid of Honor?” This question defines the story of the movie.

Now let’s identify the main beats of the three act structure:

Catalyst: The Catalyst is the point where the dramatic question is revealed to the audience. We need to know the character and their goal and have a hint at why that goal will be difficult. So it’s pretty easy to identify the catalyst in Bridesmaids: Lillian asks Annie to be her Maid of Honor. Why will this be difficult? Well, we’ve seen that Annie’s own life is a mess, and it’s apparent in this scene that, though she’s putting on a positive face for her friend, Annie is a little freaked out.

Act One Turning Point: There are many ways to define this beat, but I like to look at the Act One Turning Point as the point where the character makes a decision to pursue a certain path that will take them through Act Two. In Bridesmaids, this comes during the engagement party. After Annie makes a conventional toast, Helen gets up and makes a more heartfelt toast. Annie then decides to take the stage again and try to top Helen’s toast. The two characters go back and forth, attempting to outdo each other. What is Annie’s decision? She’s decided to compete against Helen to prove she is the better friend to Lillian. (You may recall that last week I identified Helen as the primary obstacle to Annie’s goal.)

Midpoint: For the midpoint we usually look for a moment of false victory - if the ending is going to be a victory for Annie (and it will be). In Bridesmaids, the midpoint of Act Two is when Annie has the speed gun date with Rhodes, the cop. Life seems to be looking up. She then begins planning the bachelorette party… which will quickly spiral out of control. Why do we want this moment? It gives us some rise-and-fall to the story so things don’t progress in too linear a fashion. Normally I like the midpoint to relate to the dramatic question, so I probably would have let Annie succeed at one of her Maid of Honor duties, but the movie works and I believe structure should serve story, not the other way around.

Act Two Turning Point: Since Annie’s going to succeed, the Act Two Turning Point should be where she’s farthest away from success. Shortly after the midpoint, when the bachelorette party spirals out of control, Lillian takes the Maid of Honor job from Annie and gives it to Helen, so that might be a candidate. But then things get even worse. Annie has a meltdown at the bridal shower and Lillian un-invites her to the wedding. Their friendship appears to be over. Annie can’t get much farther from success at her goal than that. That is the Act Two Turning Point.

Epiphany: This is the moment where the character figures out how to solve the problem after a period of aftermath from the Act Two Turning Point. This comes when Helen tells Annie that Lillian is missing on the morning of the wedding. Annie knows Lillian better than Helen. Only Annie can find her missing friend. It will be a challenge – she will have to make up with Rhodes to enlist his help, and then talk Lillian through her cold feet, but the path to success has just become apparent.

Resolution: The Resolution, of course, is that Lillian gets married with Annie standing by her side. Annie has succeeded at the most important job of Maid of Honor: getting the bride to the altar! The Dramatic Question has been answered.

An argument could be made for breaking down the three-act structure using the romance between Annie and Rhodes. The beats of the romance are in all the right places. But there are several reasons why this is not the structural underpinning of the movie. Look back at the six questions from last week. Clearly this is a story about Annie trying to be a good Maid of Honor for her friend. In terms of screen time, the bridesmaid storyline gets a lot more time than the romance. And if you’re still not convinced, just look at the title of the movie! The romance is a subplot with its own structure that serves to illustrate the progression of Annie’s character arc.

The purpose of three-act structure is to make sure the story is dramatic and logical, and that the plot flows from the concept. Bridesmaids is a good demonstration of how this works.

Want to read the Bridesmaids screenplay? It’s online here.

How to Use Subplots

(Spoilers: Little Miss Sunshine, Almost Famous, Whiplash, Guardians of the Galaxy)

When we discuss story structure, most of our attention naturally focuses on the main plot line. And this is good – it’s the main plot line that forms the skeleton of the story. But often writers don’t put much thought into their subplots and the way those subplots can support the themes of the story.

Supporting the theme of the movie is one of the primary uses of a subplot. Often subplots will illustrate alternate paths or approaches to the central theme. One way of doing this is to create characters with a different point of view on the key thematic issue of the movie.

Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) provides a great example of this. Thematically, the story is about what it means to be a “winner.” The main character, Richard, establishes his point of view in one of his very first lines when he says: “There are two kinds of people in the world, winners and losers.” Before he’s willing to pack the family off to California, he tells Olive there’s no point in entering a contest unless she thinks she can win. And Richard firmly believes anyone can be a winner if they have the right mindset and commitment – in fact he’s planning a business based on telling people how to become winners.

The other characters in the story provide alternate perspectives. Olive mimics the poses of beauty pageant winners in her introduction, indicating her desire to be a beauty queen. However, at the end we discover she’s actually more interested in the joy of the competition than victory.

Dwayne is committed to his goal of being a pilot with single-minded purpose. However his dream is destroyed by something completely out of his control, exposing the flaw in Richard’s belief that the key to winning comes from attitude.

Uncle Frank represents a loser, someone who has given up on life. Grandpa’s point of view is that you should enjoy life and not worry about winning and losing. And Sheryl is the counterpoint, the practical one trying to hold the family together day by day. She isn’t concerned with being a winner, she’s just trying to get by.

Each of these characters provides a subplot that illuminates the thematic elements of the film.

Oscar nominated Whiplash (written by Damien Chazelle) explores the commitment and sacrifice required to be great, and the fine line between abuse and mentorship. The main plot line involves Andrew and his teacher, Fletcher, a cruel mentor who believes abuse is necessary to craft great musicians.

One of the main subplots involves Andrew’s family, particularly his father, who represents another perspective. Andrew’s father is loving and supportive, and is horrified at Fletcher’s treatment of Andrew. We definitely like the father better than Fletcher. However, the father is also a failed writer. And there’s a telling family dinner scene where another young man is being lauded for football accomplishments that Andrew calls out as mediocre. So the family subplot serves as a warning of what can happen if one lauds mediocrity. Because it provides a glimpse of a warm and supportive world, but also a trap that could undermine Andrew’s goals, it creates complexity in the theme.

There’s another subplot involving Andrew’s girlfriend. Ultimately Andrew breaks up with her because he feels she will become a distraction. This narrative thread shows us a potential alternative to Andrew’s choices. He could be in a happy relationship if he chose. The girlfriend subplot also illustrates an aspect of Andrew’s character – how much he’s willing to sacrifice for his goal. This is another use of subplots. They can add dimension to the character.

In Guardians of the Galaxy (screenplay by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman) Quill’s character has a subplot about his mother’s death and a cassette tape she left him. This gives us character insight that humanizes the character and adds vulnerability. Though Quill is a charming, wisecracking thief we enjoy spending time with, it’s the subplot about his mother that really engages our emotion. (In fact, all of the characters that comprise our team of heroes have similar back-stories that create vulnerability and sympathy.)

One other common use of subplots is as a catalyst for the character arc. For example, the main plot of Almost Famous (written by Cameron Crowe) is about William wanting to be a rock journalist. His problem is that he’s too worshipful of the rock stars to be objective. He isn’t heeding his mentor’s advice to be “truthful and merciless.”

There’s a romantic subplot in the movie between William and Penny Lane. Penny Lane’s character serves many purposes – to explain the world of rock and roll to William, to add vulnerability and heart – but it’s the treatment of Penny by the rock stars that finally disillusions William enough to be truthful and merciless. Penny is the catalyst for William’s growth.

Subplots will have their own three-act structure, though it won’t usually run at the same pace as the main storyline. Some subplots won’t start until after Act One. Many will wrap up before the end of Act Two so that Act Three can focus on the main storyline.

Once you’ve outlined the main structure of the movie, it can be useful to examine your subplots and figure out what purpose they can serve. Perhaps you’ll need to adjust a subplot to more fully explore your thematic ground. Perhaps a minor character with no purpose can be given a purpose.

And then you should outline the subplots, making sure you have a clear beginning, middle and end, and identifying where those fall in the script. If you use the common index card technique to outline your stories, you might find it helpful to use cards of different colors for the subplots. That will allow you to see how the subplot scenes integrate with the main plot.

Your subplots can do a lot for your story. Don’t waste them!

Twist Endings

(Spoilers: Sixth Sense, Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, The Empire Strikes Back, The Crying Game, Citizen Kane - in other words, the biggest spoilers of all time!)

A great twist ending, the kind at the end of Fight Club (screenplay by Jim Uhls) or The Sixth Sense (written by M. Night Shyamalan) that completely redefines everything that’s come before, is a powerful thing. When done well, as in these examples, it can take a film from good to legendary. But these kinds of endings are few and far between. Let’s look at how great twist endings work.

The first rule is that the story must be good without the twist. You cannot expect an audience to watch 90 or 100 minutes of film before they get to the good stuff. This means that the twist can’t actually be crucial to the concept. The twist may be the most memorable thing in the film, but the story concept must stand on its own.

For example, Fight Club is about a miserably unhappy man, a self-described slave to consumerism, who falls under the sway of a charismatic new friend. The two form a fight club to get in touch with their primitive side, but things spiral out of control when the club members resort to vandalism and terrorism to bring down consumer society.

The fact that the unhappy man and his friend turn out to be the same person is a critical revelation about the main character, but not critical to get us interested and involved in the story. The drama and conflict come from the unhappy man's transformation due to physical brutality, and then from the fight club spinning out of control – not the twist, though that does add additional conflict and drama for act three. You could use the above log line to craft a very interesting story that didn’t have a twist ending at all.

Similarly, the story of The Sixth Sense is about Malcolm attempting to help Cole overcome his problem. The conflict in the story comes from Cole’s unique ability to see ghosts and how that terrorizes him; the stakes relate to Cole’s happiness and sanity. For Malcolm, the stakes are redemption for his failure to help a previous, similarly afflicted patient. The twist, that Malcolm is actually a ghost that needs Cole’s help, relates to the subplot of Malcolm and his strained relationship with his wife Anna. It actually has little impact on the main plot line!

A perfectly good movie might have been made about a living psychologist trying to help a child who sees ghosts. In fact, Shyamalan has said that Malcolm was alive in the first several drafts of his script. It wasn’t until fairly late in the process that he hit upon the idea that Malcolm was actually a ghost as well.

Which suggests two important elements of twist endings:

First, they must grow organically out of the story concept. When you try to force a twist (as Shyamalan has a few times since), the story will feel labored or convoluted or unsatisfying. In the worst cases, the screenplay is boring until the twist is revealed. Only once we know what was really going on do the previous events become interesting. But this doesn’t work – it’s too late. The audience has already checked out. Industry readers will have stopped reading long before discovering the twist.

The second factor is that the twists usually have more to do with the character's arc than with the plot. Consider the big reveal at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (story by George Lucas, screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan). Learning that Darth Vader is Luke's father doesn't affect the outcome of the plot, but it is devastating to Luke and his beliefs.

Similarly, Fergus learning that Dil is actually a man in The Crying Game (written by Neil Jordan) – which happened more in the middle of the movie than the end, but still redefined everything we thought we knew – has a huge impact on Fergus emotionally, but doesn't materially change any of the events in the plot. If Dil had actually been a woman, everything would have come out exactly the same way. Yet that twist catapulted the small film into movie legend.

Another movie with a legendary reveal at the end is The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie), but this is actually a different animal than the twists in the movies I’ve discussed so far. In Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, etc. the twists are shocking at least partly because they are unexpected. But The Usual Suspects is a mystery – a question is raised (Who is Kaiser Sose?) and we know there must be an answer. It’s just that the answer is particularly shocking.

This is also true of Citizen Kane (screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles). The reporter is trying to find out the meaning of "Rosebud." The revelation of what Rosebud was at the end is surprising, but not truly a twist.

Whether using the mystery format or attempting an unexpected twist, the need to use planting and red herrings is equally critical. When the twist appears it must be plausible and understandable, which means it must be set up. But of course the audience must not anticipate it or you lose the surprise.

You have to think like a magician – distract the audience from the clue. Look at the scene where Malcolm goes to have dinner with Anna in The Sixth Sense. In retrospect, she never actually spoke to him or acknowledged his presence. Yet we don’t notice in the scene because the scene is given another reason for existing – Malcolm is late, thinks Anna is angry with him and apologizes. The scene is about their relationship. That’s what we pay attention to and why we don’t notice or question that she doesn’t talk directly to him.

This is perhaps why it’s so important the story works without the twist. In a way, the entire plots of The Sixth Sense and Fight Club and The Crying Game function as red herrings, distracting us from the coming revelation.

Remember, most great movies do not have the kind of twists that redefine all of the previous events. It is absolutely not necessary for a successful film. And if you are going to attempt a big twist, first make sure your story is good without it.

Three Signs Your Idea Isn't Fully Baked

(SPOILERS: Some Like It Hot, The King’s Speech, Her, Gravity)

I find young writers are often far too eager to rush on to the first draft without a fully developed story. Truth is, I find that in more experienced writers as well. In fact, when I get to the end of my first draft, I often wish I’d spent a little more time on my outline!

Generally the longer one has been writing, the more time one will spend making sure the idea is fully baked. Why? Because whenever you move too fast into the first draft, you will end up having to do huge changes in the second draft. Sometimes you even have to throw away large sections of the script – sections you may have spent weeks or months writing. It is even possible to discover the idea was fatally flawed to begin with and you have to throw out the entire project! Do this a few times and you will become devoted to proper idea development and outlining.

Here are three signs that your idea needs a little more time in the oven:

1. Is your idea exhausted by the end of act one? It is common to see scripts where everything interesting appears in the first 30 pages or the first 60 pages, and then the rest of the story just plays out as expected with diminishing entertainment returns. Your initial concept will probably give you plenty of material for your first act, since the first act will be the set up of this concept. If the concept is good, it should give you another 15-30 pages of scenes that exploit the ideas it encompasses. But without another element or twist beyond the premise, stories tend to lose steam by the middle of the script.

In Some Like It Hot (story by R. Thoeren & M. Logan, screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond) the first half of the movie is about Joe and Jerry disguising themselves as women to escape the mob. This generates lots of fun, character development and scene ideas. But when this concept exhausts itself in the middle of the film, Joe dons a new disguise – a millionaire oil heir – in an attempt to seduce Sugar, and Jerry starts his relationship with the older millionaire, providing many new interesting conflicts and scenes.

Good movies expand on the initial concept with new ideas. In The King’s Speech (screenplay by David Seidler), the hero’s brother abdicates, leaving the hero as heir, and then later his therapist’s credentials are revealed to be fake. In Her (written by Spike Jones) Theodore learns Samantha has relationships with other operating systems, turning his conception of their relationship on its head. In Gravity (written by Alfonso & Jonas Cuaron) Matt is killed, leaving Ryan to find a way back on her own. Each of these examples spins the respective story in a new direction.

If you don’t have such a twist or new element or spin, you need to keep developing your premise.

2. Do you know both the external story – the plot – and the internal story – the character arc? Good stories operate on two levels. In Some Like It Hot the external story is about Joe and Jerry trying to pass themselves off as women, with Joe’s seduction of Sugar constituting a subplot. But Joe also has an internal journey – he goes from womanizer to genuinely loving Sugar, from selfishness to sacrificing his own interests for hers.

In The King’s Speech the external journey is about the eventual King George overcoming a speech impediment while the internal journey is about him gaining the self-confidence to rule. In Her the external story is Theodore’s romance with an operating system while the internal journey is about him overcoming his depression at the failure of his marriage. In Gravity the external story is Ryan’s quest for survival while the internal journey is about her letting go of her grief and embracing a will to live.

Notice in all these cases the internal and external are related thematically. If you find you are missing one of these journeys (usually it’s the internal) then consider how the themes you are already dealing with could also be explored either internally or externally, as needed. (This post might help.)

3. Another warning sign I often see in inexperienced writers’ outlines is a third act that is really a denouement rather than an act. This occurs when the main conflict is essentially resolved at the end of act two and act three is simply showing us how everything ended up. There ought to be a radical change from the end of act two to the end of the story – either from failure to success or success to failure. (This is why the end of act two is sometimes called the “lowest moment” – because most stories have happy endings.)

If your act three is simply playing out the outcome of the end of act two, you most likely have improperly structured your story. It could be as simple as you’ve misidentified where the act break is. Though acts are theoretical, improperly analyzing your act breaks can still cause you problems even if the order of plot points is correct. Proper analysis helps you spread your story beats most dramatically across the length of your script. Remember, the third act should be the most exciting part of your story! If it’s not, you probably need to restructure.

Alternatively, you might have simply not given your characters a real lowest (or highest) moment at the end of act two. In this case your story will be predictable. This happens because writers fall in love with their main characters and it can be difficult to really make things hard on them. But if success is easy it isn’t dramatic. Whatever your resolution is, success or failure, at the end of act two that outcome should appear nearly impossible.

When checking your ideas to see if they are really ready, you have to keep an objective eye. But if you do it will make your first draft – and your second draft – much easier to write.

Cars vs. Cars 2

Today I have a guest blogger - novelist (and my sister) Chris Eboch. She writes on the difference between Cars and Cars 2, and how structure affects the success of each story.

Cars vs. Cars 2

by Chris Eboch

My husband and I own the movie Cars and watch it at least once or twice each year. It’s funny, it’s action-packed, it’s heartwarming. Recently we watched Cars 2 on video and found it… Lacking.

Cars was nominated for an Academy Award, won a Golden Globe, and won several other awards. According to IMBD trivia, Cars 2 is the only Pixar feature film to receive a Rotten collective rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the first Pixar film not to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film since the category began, and the first Pixar film not to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Film since the award was created.

Cars 2 has a lot going for it – an action-packed plot, gorgeous animation, and plenty of humor. So why did it fall short? In a word, structure. Let’s look at some of the basics:

Cars

Main Character: Lightning McQueen. Though there are some important secondary characters, this is his story, start to finish.

Goal: To win the Piston Cup. It’s a clear goal at the start, he works toward that goal despite many complications throughout the story, and he makes his final attempt at the end.

Stakes: Fame and respect. He may change what he values most as the story progresses, but the stakes are clear and they are important to him.

Plot Arc: With a clear goal and high stakes, the plot moves smoothly and logically through a series of complications with that goal always in sight. Suspense builds as the date of the Piston Cup nears, and he can’t get there. At the climax, it’s all about whether or not he will win.

Character Arc: Lightning McQueen changes over time in a believable way as his goal shifts from fame and fortune to an appreciation of friends and community. In the end, he gives up his original goal in order to help someone else, showing how much he’s changed and learned.

Cars 2

Main Character: Lightning… No, wait, Tow Mater. At least, if you look at how much of the screen time focuses on one character, Tow Mater would edge out Lightning McQueen. He’s also the hero at the climax. But it takes 30 or 40 minutes before you realize this is not Lightning McQueen’s story.

Goal: Mater’s goal is weak and confusing. He wants to support his buddy, but he loses that focus for much of the story as he gets caught up in a spy plot. In the end, he wants to save Lightning, but that’s a reaction to immediate circumstances, not an overall story goal. Lightning wants to win the race and beat the foreign car, but it doesn’t seem all that important to him, and it’s not the focus of the story. Besides, he’s not the main character (is he?).

Stakes: Without a clear goal, the stakes are automatically weak. There are big stakes in the spy plot – damage to cars and destroying the reputation of alternative fuel – but the main character (whether you think it’s Mater or Lightning) doesn’t know about any of that.

Plot Arc: The plot is all over the place. It starts with a spy scene with no context. Then a racing battle is set up between Lightning and a foreign car, but first Lightning and Mater do some touring, for no particular reason except that we get to see the Cars interpretation of Japan. Then the story focuses on Mater as he gets caught up in spy activities, with occasional race scenes. It’s like two different plots rammed together.

Character Arc: People make fun of Mater, but in the end they realize he has a lot going for him. However, those are secondary characters. Mater doesn’t know that people are making fun of him until close to the end, so his plot arc lasts for about five minutes. Lightning has a slightly stronger plot arc, as he realizes he shouldn’t be embarrassed by his friend, but he gets that epiphany far before the end as well. For a strong plot arc, Mater should understand early that people see him as a fool, feel bad about it, try to change it throughout the story, and realize his true value at the end.

By looking at these simple aspects of structure, it’s clear how Cars is stronger on every count.

Focusing on a different main character in Cars 2 might have been a good idea. We saw Lightning change in the last story, so he would either need a different strong character arc, or the movie could focus on someone else. The problem is that the main character isn’t clear and doesn’t have a character arc. Without a specific hero, who has a clear goal with high stakes, the character arc is weak and the plot wanders. A lot of stuff is happening, but there’s no sense of where you are in the story – no building toward a clear climax, so the pacing is off.

I expect Cars 2 would be more enjoyable with multiple viewings. Once you know what’s going on, you could focus on the fun animation and humor. But if the moviemakers had concentrated on structure at the start, they might have had another beloved classic instead of a disappointing sequel.

Structure: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the basis of sound storytelling.

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Chris Eboch is the author of Advanced Plotting. If you struggle with plot or suspect your plotting needs work, this book can help. The Plot Outline Exercise is designed to help a writer work with a completed manuscript to identify and fix plot weaknesses. It can also be used to help flesh out an outline. Additional articles address specific plot challenges, such as getting off to a fast start, propping up a sagging middle, building to a climax, and improving your pacing. A dozen guest authors share advice from their own years of experience. Read the book straight through, study the index to find help with your current problem, or dip in and out randomly — however you use this book, you’ll find fascinating insights and detailed tips to help you build a stronger plot and become a better writer.
 
This really is helping me a lot. It's written beautifully and to-the-point. The essays really help you zero in on your own problems in your manuscript. The Plot Outline Exercise is a great tool! – Carmen O.

Chris Eboch: www.chriseboch.com
The Eyes of Pharaoh: a mystery in ancient Egypt
The Well of Sacrifice: a Mayan adventure
Advanced Plotting
 Writing romantic suspense as Kris Bock: www.krisbock.com

How to Write a Road Movie

(SPOILERS: Little Miss Sunshine, Elysium, Rain Man, Vacation, Apocalypse Now)

There is a common type of movie known as a “road movie” or “trip-with-a-destination” film where the main character or characters embark on a trip from one place to another, learning life lessons along the way.

They’re not exactly a genre – road movies can be dramas, thrillers, romantic comedies, broad comedies, adventure movies, etc. The varied examples include Little Miss Sunshine; The Hobbit; Cloverfield; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Apocalypse Now; 2001: A Space Odyssey; The Sure Thing; Elysium; Vacation; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; About Schmidt; Rain Man; and Midnight Run. So the road movie is more of a structural form than a genre.

There are some common pitfalls involved in writing road movies. The first challenge is that they tend to be episodic. The character is moving from point A to point Z, having little adventures along the way. The trip itself gives us somewhat of a through line, but in many cases that’s not enough to keep an audience engaged.

In good road movies, often it’s the internal story that provides the momentum. Each episode will advance the character’s internal development. For example, the story of Rain Man (story by Barry Morrow, screenplay by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow) is really the story of the developing relationship between Charlie and Raymond. The adventures along the way are all built to push that relationship forward. Midnight Run (written by George Gallo) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (written by John Hughes) work the same way.

A ticking clock can help keep the tension up on the journey. For example, in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) the family has to reach the pageant in California by a specific deadline or Olive will not be allowed to compete. Each setback along the way increases the tension as time grows short. In Elysium (written by Neill Blomkamp), Max has five days before he dies of radiation poisoning. That puts a good ticking clock on his journey to reach Elysium and get a cure.

You’ll also want to use advertising to keep the audience looking forward and to remind them why we’re on the trip in the first place. In Little Miss Sunshine, Olive is often rehearsing her routine with her grandfather. Nobody else is allowed to see it. This gives us something to look forward to: what will Olive’s routine be like?

In Cloverfield (written by Drew Goddard), the journey is to Beth’s apartment to save her. Rob has received a confused phone call where it seemed she has been injured, but the situation is unclear. Like him, we’re anxious to know what he’ll find when he gets there.

Typically the characters embark on their journey at the Catalyst or the Act One Turning Point. In some cases, they’ll arrive at their destination at the Resolution. This seems logical – the story’s about a journey, it should end when they arrive at the destination – but in fact this is often a bad choice. Ending the journey at the resolution only really works if simply getting to the destination solves the character's problem, such as in The Poseidon Adventure (screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes). In these cases the obstacles are all designed to impede the character from reaching their destination.

But most road movies are not really about the journey. Once you start analyzing them, you’ll find that most often the characters arrive at the destination at the end of Act Two. The journey is there to force the character to grow and to build anticipation for what will happen at the destination. Then when the characters get where they’re going, either the destination isn’t what they expected, or it is what they expected but the character’s goal has changed. This allows the movie to spin into a new direction in Act Three.

For example, in Little Miss Sunshine the family arrives at their destination – the pageant – at the end of Act Two. But they discover the pageant is filled with creepy girls and their stage parents. Suddenly the family is worried about what kind of world Olive is getting into. They question whether she should compete. This becomes a new tension for Act Three.

In Apocalypse Now (written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola), Willard arrives at Kurtz’s compound to discover Kurtz has built a bizarre community of fanatical followers. Willard is taken captive. Act Three is the story of how Willard will resolve the conflict with Kurtz.

In Vacation (screenplay by John Hughes), the Griswold’s finally arrive at their destination, Wally World, at the end of Act Two, only to find it is closed for maintenance. This sets Clark off on a crazed plan to force a security guard to take them on all the rides – the new tension of Act Three.

In Elysium, Max is trying to get to Elysium because they can cure his radiation poisoning. There are plenty of action-packed physical challenges for him to overcome. But as his journey unfolds, Max comes to see the bigger issues and injustices in the world. By the time he arrives at Elysium, he is a different person. He started hoping to save his own life, but now his goal has changed. In the end, he sacrifices himself for the greater good.

In Rain Man, Charlie and Raymond arrive back in Los Angeles where Charlie had planned to use Raymond as leverage to get a portion of his father’s inheritance from the institution Raymond was living at. But since Charlie has learned to love his brother over the course of the movie, when he is offered cash to resolve things, he turns it down. His goal has changed – now he wants what’s best for Raymond.

If you’re writing a road movie, you need to ask yourself what the movie is really about and structure accordingly. Then you need to be sure that you use screenwriting tools to maintain the forward momentum.

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If you're in Los Angeles, Ken Aguado and I will be discussing pitching at the Scriptwriters Network on October 19th.

Structure vs. Formula

A recent essay on Slate blamed the structural outline in Blake Snyder's book Save the Cat for the formulaic nature of Hollywood movies. The essay has been getting a lot of play lately. It's well written, but the assertion is frankly a little silly.

First, Save the Cat is a popular and widely read screenwriting book, but it's hardly the most popular and most widely read screenwriting book. Second, though Blake Snyder put his own spin on structure, he's basically offering a variation of the three-act structure laid out by Syd Field in Screenplay (originally published in 1979) - and Syd Field was working from ideas laid out by Aristotle. So no, Save the Cat is not the guidebook for every Hollywood movie.

There are other questionable assertions in the article. It implies that Blake Snyder is responsible for blockbusters being targeted toward teenage boys, when in fact that started in the late-70's after Jaws and Star Wars introduced the blockbuster era. Save the Cat was published in 2005. It also claims Snyder was the first to specify page numbers for structural beats when, again, Syd Field did just that in Screenplay. Finally, it repeatedly says Save the Cat's structural breakdown gives a "page-by-page" formula. In fact, Snyder identifies fifteen structural beats. Unless you're making fifteen-minute movies, it's obviously not a page-by-page formula.

The biggest logic hole in attributing Hollywood's originality problems to Save the Cat is the historic time line. Many older movies follow Snyder's structural beats perfectly. In fact, if you convert page numbers to percentages of pages, most of Shakespeare's work fits pretty well. Even the Slate essay uses The Matrix as an example despite the fact it came out six years before the book.

When I read the Slate article I debated whether it was worth mentioning in this blog. Who really cares if it's being trumpeted by wannabe writers and lazy critics to justify a feeling of superiority over people who actually make movies? And it probably helped sales of Save the Cat. After all, if you want to write Hollywood movies and someone told you there's a book that all professional screenwriters use as a guide, wouldn't you buy it? (For the record, I think the book is quite good, though the structural stuff is its weakest part.)

But there's a bigger subtext here that appears regularly among aspiring screenwriters (including, occasionally, students of mine): That structure is a restrictive formula that inhibits creativity. And the inverse of that is often promoted by screenwriting "gurus" - that good structure is the key to good movies. Both of these ideas are not only wrong, they're dangerous to new writers.

In fact, structure is an element of craft. Understanding it is no different than understanding exposition, character development, or even grammar and spelling. It's a tool to tell the story. The story you tell can be original or derivative, imaginative or trite - regardless of whether the underlying structure is solid or not.

The parallel in architecture would be knowing the engineering required to keep your building from collapsing. You can make a beautiful building or an ugly building, but first you need to make sure it's not going to fall down!

The fundamental concepts of three-act structure are found everywhere - in European films like Amelie and art films like Beasts of the Southern Wild and classic films like Casablanca. Even, as I mentioned, the work of Shakespeare. Would you call those "formulaic"?

In fact Shakespeare worked within very rigid ideas of what a play should be. He even had to write in iambic pentameter! And he obviously didn't do that accidentally. He was well-educated in his craft. (I wonder if the Shakespearean version of Slate proclaimed iambic pentameter as the reason for unimaginative playwriting.) But Shakespeare accepted the traditions and conventions of his craft and used them to tell stories that have stood the test of time.

The danger of ignoring structure is that if your story is not well structured, it will likely have dull parts and logic holes. Counter-intuitively, it will often be predictable. You might get lucky and instinctively give your story a solid structure. But if you resist learning this aspect of craft, you will not be able to fix a story when instinct fails you. And it will.

On the other side of the coin, the danger of believing structure is the sole requirement of a good screenplay is that you might fail to do all of the other things necessary: create dimensional and compelling characters, build dramatic scenes, and write sparkling dialogue. Not to mention have something of value to say! Solid structure is the beginning of the process, not the end.

And whatever source you go to in order to learn structure, I encourage you to apply your own critical thinking. I don't like assigning specific pages to structural beats, either. That doesn't mean there's nothing of value to learn from Save the Cat. Take what makes sense to you and ignore the rest.

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The Hollywood Pitching Bible, is now available for purchase in print through Amazon, or as an ebook for Kindle and iTunes. You can learn more about the book at the Screenmaster Books website.

The Structure of Elf

(Spoilers: Elf)

Last post I looked at the conceptual decisions writer David Berenbaum made when scripting the movie Elf. Now I want to explore the structure of the movie, but from the point of view of how it grows out of these conceptual decisions.

The main character of Elf is Buddy. This may seem obvious in hindsight, but there was actually another potential choice: Buddy’s biological father, Walter. Walter goes through the biggest arc of the movie and makes several critical decisions. And Elf is similar to a type of movie where a seemingly crazy outsider comes in and disrupts the main character’s life, ultimately causing them to be a better person. (Examples would include Anger Management, written by David Dorfman, and What About Bob, Story by Alvin Sargent & Laura Ziskin, screenplay by Tom Schulman.)

So actually making Buddy the main character is a bit unusual. But it’s a smart choice because Buddy is the one who’s a fish-out-of-water in this premise. I’ll take a more full look at Buddy’s character in the next post. For structural purposes, though, the important thing is that we identify Buddy’s want and need within this story. These will determine the external and internal storylines respectively and keep Buddy as the main character.

We should first look to the premise: this is the story of Buddy the elf looking for his father in New York. Ah ha – he wants to find his father. Not bad, but Mr. Berenbaum decided this is a story about family, not a search. So it’s not about finding his father, but rather winning his father’s love. (His need is to believe in himself, but I’ll deal with that more in my next post when I discuss the internal journey.)

For a story to be dramatic the character needs big obstacles. If Buddy finds his father and his father is happy to see him, then it’s all a little too easy, isn’t it? So Mr. Berenbaum decided that Walter should be an unloving guy, a bad father even to the son he does know – in the language of Christmas, he’s on the naughty list. That’s the primary obstacle.

(The major secondary obstacle also grows naturally from the premise: Buddy is a fish-out-of-water. He will have difficulty navigating New York. But this is secondary and we want our structure to come from the main character facing the primary obstacle.)

So given this conceptual foundation we should be able to determine organic structural beats. Buddy is a Christmas elf so his status quo is living in Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. We know Buddy wants to fit in so his dilemma must be that he doesn’t fit in. The Catalyst is when this dilemma is crystallized for the audience.

Q: What would best crystallize this dilemma for the audience?

A: Buddy learning that he’s actually human. And that happens about twelve minutes into the movie.

The Act One Turning Point may be a little trickier. It should be when our character is locked into the story, the point of no return. They must resolve their dilemma or suffer the consequences. In Elf, Buddy sets out to find his biological father, expecting to find a home where he will be accepted for who he is. The Act One Turning Point could have been when he sets out on his journey, but remember, this isn’t the story of a search, it’s the story of winning his father’s love.

Q: What would lock Buddy into the story of winning his father’s love?

A: His father refusing to accept that Buddy is his son. And sure enough, when Buddy shows up at Walter’s office around twenty-five minutes in, Walter thinks he’s crazy and kicks him out. Buddy now has to win over Walter or be doomed to unhappiness.

Next comes the fun and games section of the script. This is where the premise of an elf in New York is explored, with all the action at Gimbles. The next big structural beat we need is the Midpoint, a high point that should mirror the ending. Since, based on the conceptual decisions, we know the ending ought to be happy, we should ask:

Q: What victory could Buddy achieve that brings him part way toward his goal?

A: Walter could accept the fact that Buddy is his biological son. And this is what happens about halfway into the movie.

Mr. Berenbaum also wisely raises the stakes here by having Walter’s wife invite Buddy to stay with them, and by having Walter get in trouble at work. This gives him new material to develop as we approach the Act Two turning point. And we determine that beat by asking…

Q: What’s the worst thing that could happen to Buddy in the context of this story?

A: He’s kicked out of his human family. And sure enough, after Buddy ruins Walter’s meeting, Walter tells him to get out, that he wants nothing more to do with him.

Now we’re in Act Three. We see the aftermath of this event – Buddy loses hope. Now we need the epiphany, the thing that will show Buddy how to ultimately succeed.

Q: What does Buddy need to succeed?

A: He needs to believe in himself. And this happens when Santa tells Buddy that he trusts him to fix the sleigh. And shortly thereafter Walter finds Buddy and apologizes and tells him he loves him.

But we still need the big climactic resolution. We’ve already determined we want a happy ending. And since this is a Christmas movie, someone really ought to save Christmas, and that someone should be our main character. But we also need this resolution to relate to our main storyline. The way we find the resolution is to ask:

Q: How is Buddy’s dilemma resolved?

A: Walter accepts him.

But what represents acceptance? Walter’s already said he loves Buddy. But actions speak louder than words. Mr. Berenbaum wisely uses the Christmas spirit to test Walter’s acceptance and dramatize that it is real.

Buddy is full of Christmas spirit; Walter consistently rejects it. So the way we know Walter really accepts Buddy is when he sings along with the crowd at the end. And Mr. Berenbaum then found a way to have this action save Christmas by establishing that Santa’s sleigh is powered by Christmas spirit. Walter’s transformation gets Santa flying again. This is a good example of how it’s not just a matter of figuring out the correct structural beat, but figuring out how you’re going to dramatize that beat.

There you go, the structure of Elf. Not terribly complex, but it does have a nice cohesiveness that comes from the fact Mr. Berenbaum grew his structure organically from his underlying conceptual decisions.

Here’s an interesting thought experiment: what would Elf's structural beats be if Walter was the main character? Do you think that movie would work as well as the one they made?

By the way, I’m curious what people think of this approach to analyzing structure. Was it helpful? Informative? Confusing? Please let me know in the comments section.

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Anthology Movies

(MINOR SPOILERS: Pulp Fiction, The Dead Girl)

“But how does Pulp Fiction fit into three-act structure?”

I get this question a lot when I’m discussing structure. Usually I dodge it. Because Pulp Fiction (story by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, written by Quentin Tarantino) falls into a category of films known as anthology films, but it disguises that fact. And I don’t like to talk about anthology films because they are difficult to pull off and nearly impossible to sell. But today, I’m gonna break tradition and talk about them!

An anthology film is made up of several short films bound together by theme or location or gimmick. Each short film follows the normal rules of narrative (on which three-act structure theory is based). If you think of the standard feature as a novel, then anthology films are short story collections.

And they have the same pitfalls as short story collections – primarily that the stories usually are not equally good. And presenting them together invites comparison. Audiences tend to walk out of these movies saying, “I liked the second story but not the third story.” They also risk feeling lighter weight since they spend less time on each character and story. And they can lack forward momentum without a single, overarching dramatic question. It’s easier to put a short story collection down than a novel.

One anthology movie that I thought overcame these challenges was Nine Lives (written by Rodrigo Garcia). The movie consists of nine short films, each shot in a single long take. There are a few repeat characters, but basically each film stands alone. And they are all pretty high quality so it works.

Another is The Dead Girl (written by Karen Moncrieff) – a movie that contains five short films all centered around the discovery of a body. It works because the body connects all of the stories and because the final story tells us how the girl in question died. There is a bit of mystery built up in the first four stories that is answered in the fifth. This provides a sense of cohesion to the film.

Anthology films that I think work less well include Four Rooms (written by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) and Aria (written by a whole bunch of people).

And something you may notice about all of these films: All were low budget independent movies. So if you want to do something like this, you better be prepared to raise the money yourself.

Let’s go back to Pulp Fiction, obviously a successful example of the form. Pulp Fiction contains three stories told for the most part one after another. There are crossover characters, but each of the stories has a different main character and the plots only overlap in the most minor of ways.

But Pulp Fiction does two things to disguise the fact that these are three separate stories: First, it pulls the opening scene(s) out of each of the three stories and puts them at the beginning of the movie. So we start by cutting between the beginnings of all three stories. Then we see the rest of the stories play out in their entirety one after the other. But we’ve been given three catalysts – three dramatic questions have been introduced. We want to find out how each plays out. We know the movie’s not over until all three are answered. Because of this, people tend to remember Pulp Fiction being more intercut than it actually was.

The second thing Pulp Fiction does is pull out a bit of the Jules story to use as a framing story for the movie. You could argue Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are a fourth story, but I’d say they are simply minor characters in Jules’ story. Jules’ story is the final one told and it ends with the robbery in the café. So Tarantino pulled out the opening of that scene and put it at the beginning of the movie to create a frame.

The first trick leads us to a way anthology movies can be morphed into more traditionally structured movies and become moderately commercial: by intercutting the short stories and pulling one out to be the main story. You then structure the film around the main storyline and the others become loose subplots.

Want examples? Love Actually (written by Richard Curtis), Crash (story by Paul Haggis, screenplay by Paul Haggis & Robert Moresco), Babel (written by Guillermo Arriaga), and Valentine’s Day (story by Katherine Fugate and Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein, screenplay by Katherine Fugate) all fit this model.

Obviously this approach is a little more marketable. But only a little. Of these, only Valentine’s Day is truly an American studio film. So if you want to do an anthology film, there are examples of success. But be prepared for an even steeper uphill battle than a normal movie.

The Act One Turning Point of Inception

(SPOILERS: Inception, Aliens)

Last post I promised to take a closer look at the Act One Turning Point in Inception (written by Christopher Nolan). You’ll recall that I identified two candidates for the Act One Turning Point: the scene about a quarter of the way in when Cobb has assembled his team and they start planning the mission, or the scene about an hour in where he gets on the plane – the “point of no return.”

The first thing we might want to keep in mind that there are no real act breaks in feature films (unlike plays where the curtain comes down and the audience goes out to the lobby for drinks and snacks; or TV where commercials interrupt the proceedings.) Feature films are continuous experiences. The idea of acts in features is simply a literary analysis device, a way to talk about concepts of story structure. So in a sense there is no “right” answer to this question.

But what are the possibilities? Well, I’ve already suggested two. The first is that the act break is when the team is assembled and they start planning the mission. This is definitely a turning point in the story. The hero has “taken on the problem” as we like to see at the end of Act One.

But, Cobb pretty much already took on the problem when he accepted the job earlier (that moment is actually another candidate for the end of Act One, I suppose). So now he’s simply focusing his energies on the main problem – trying to incept the idea in Fischer’s subconscious – after spending time gathering his resources.

The other issue is that Cobb is not yet trapped in the story. He could still walk away with no real consequence other than perhaps a lost opportunity. So if we say this is the Act One Turning Point, does that mean it’s a flawed turning point?

Perhaps, but here’s where understanding the purpose of these beats is more important than simply locating the page on which they tend to appear. Cobb IS trapped in the story eventually. And he does take on the problem. All the things we need to happen are happening even if they don’t fall neatly into a moment that resembles a prototypical Act One Turning Point.

So what happens if we say the Act One Turning Point is when Cobb is finally trapped in the story (the scene where he gets on the plane). From here on out, if he fails he will suffer grave consequences. All requirements of the turning point have been fulfilled. But this doesn’t come until an hour into the film. An hour long Act One should feel lethargic and dull. Get to the story already! But this isn’t the case in Inception.

Maybe it’s because there is so much interesting stuff going on. Nolan cleverly inserts an action scene while Cobb is trying to recruit his forger – a previous employer Cobb failed sends thugs after him. This chase doesn’t really have anything to do with the main story, but it juices things up when they might start to drag. We also get some visually stunning imagery as Cobb teaches Ariadne about creating dream worlds. And we’re meeting unusual characters and building the mystery.

As my mentor Frank Daniel used to say, “In screenwriting there is only one rule: Don’t be boring.” Regardless of where you want to identify the Act One Turning Point, Inception works because it keeps the action moving, keeps showing us interesting stuff, and eventually satisfies the requirements of the Act One Turning Point.

There’s another intriguing possibility: what if Inception has more than three acts? Whether you allow for this possibility depends how you interpret three act structure. You can look at acts as sections of the film with individual arcs. When one arc ends, there’s a turning point that leads to another arc (TV writers think this way).

I have actually previously considered that Aliens (story by James Cameron and David Giler & Walter Hill, screenplay by James Cameron) has a four act structure. In Act One, contact is lost with the colonists and Ripley decides to go back to the planet – it ends when she steps off the drop ship. Act Two would be them looking for the colonists, ending when they find them all dead and the drop ship crashes. Act Three is trying to get off the planet, ending when they retrieve the second drop ship but Newt has been taken by the aliens. Act Four is rescuing Newt.

Following this idea, you could look at Inception as a five act film: Act One is getting the job. Act Two is recruiting the team. Act three is planning the mission. Act four is going through the levels of Fischer’s brain. And act five is going into limbo to save Fischer from Mal.

I think this approach to structure can work as long as you keep the Catalyst, Dramatic Question and Resolution intact. We have to have some overall arc to the story, something that pulls us forward and delivers satisfaction at the end. Otherwise, using more than three acts could create an episodic feeling and prevent a satisfying, conclusive ending.

Remember when I said this is all just theoretical? We could argue these possibilities, but to what end? I analyze films to try to learn to be a better writer. If a multi-act approach helps you write better screenplays, then go for it!

I’m going to stick with identifying Inception’s Act One Turning Point as the moment when Cobb has assembled his team and they start planning. And since he’s not trapped yet, I’ve noted how Inception overcame that potential flaw by throwing in some action and some eye candy to keep us involved. That might be a way for me to solve a similar story issue in one of my future screenplays.

The Three Act Structure of Inception

(SPOILERS: Inception)

I’m going to start my analysis of Inception (written by Christopher Nolan) by attempting to break down the three act structure. Though the story appears complex, it’s actually very linear (there’s a little flashforward to kick things off and several flashbacks, but otherwise it unfolds chronologically.) And there’s a clear main character – Cobb. However, there is one aspect that may not work in the traditional fashion – more on that in a minute.

Let’s start by identifying Cobb’s want and need. This is essentially a caper film so we would expect the want – the goal that is driving the plot – to be the successful accomplishment of the caper. And that’s what we have here. Cobb wants to “incept” or implant an idea in Fischer. You might remember that he’s doing this so he can get back to his kids, and therefore some might suggest that’s his want, but his kids are really the stakes. The story is about inception (it’s the title, after all). Whether he gets back to his kids will depend on the success or failure of the mission.

The need has to do with Mal. Ariadne says it halfway through the movie when she tells Cobb that in order to succeed he’s going to have to forgive himself and confront Mal. And in fact, Cobb articulates it at the moment he achieves his need in Act III, saying to Mal, “I need to let you go.” In this case, achieving the need is what will allow Cobb to successfully achieve his want.

So the Dramatic Question, then, is, “Can Cobb implant the idea into Fischer’s subconscious?” Pretty simple – it comes right from the want. Since the Catalyst is the point at which this question is asked, it’s pretty easy to identify it as the moment when Saito offers him the job and promises to return him to his kids if he succeeds. And if we define the Resolution as the answer to the question, then it’s obviously when Fischer takes the pinwheel from the safe, and they all wake up on the plane. Mission accomplished.

So far so good. And to me, those are the most important things to understand. They’re the definition of what the story is.

Inception is two hours and twenty minutes long, so we expect the timing of the beats to be slightly later than normal. (Personally, I don’t obsess about this timing, but many do.) And the Catalyst I identified comes at about fifteen minutes, right on schedule.

The Act One turning point is what I find most tricky about this film. Using a traditional definition, we find a likely candidate about forty-five minutes in: Cobb finishes assembling his team and they begin planning the caper. That works. He’s embarking on the journey, and with the longer running time it’s not too late. We could close the case there.

But there’s another interesting candidate. When Cobb and his team are getting on the plane, Cobb points out to Saito that if Saito doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain, then Cobb will go to jail when they land. Getting on the plane is the real point of no return for Cobb. That’s something we look for at the Act One Turning Point. But if you’re looking at the timing, it’s an hour into the movie – and an hour long Act One is highly unusual.

This is interesting enough that I think I may devote my next post to it entirely. But for now, let’s finish the breakdown using the first candidate for the Act One Turning Point.

As we approach the middle of the movie, the team has gathered in the warehouse on the first level of Fischer’s dream. Here, Saito’s been shot, and Cobb belatedly reveals that with the kind of sedation their using, death in these dreams will not wake them up. Plus, they realize that Fischer is better protected than they realized. These elements raise the stakes, a common function of the Midpoint.

Also at this point, they decide on a risky variation of their plan – the "Mister Charles" option. This throws a new twist into the proceedings. But the actual Midpoint is when they manage to get what they need from Fischer and can move on to the next phase. This occurs around 1:23, a little after the halfway point. Remember, if the hero will be successful, the Midpoint is usually a point of success.

I define the Act Two Turning Point as the moment where it looks like the ultimate Resolution cannot possibly happen. Since Cobb will be successful, the Act Two Turning Point is the moment of greatest failure. Here that would be when Fischer is killed by Mal. It appears that the mission is over – in fact a couple members of the team say just that. (This occurs at about 1:52, right where we expect.)

But then we get the Epiphany. Ariadne hatches the idea of going another layer deeper, into Limbo. There we have the final conflict where Cobb must face down Mal so they can rescue Fischer. And, as I’ve already covered, that leads us to the Resolution when they succeed.

Pretty simple, actually. All the parallel dream times and questions of reality have nothing to do with the structure. With a traditional three act base, enormous complexity can be built without losing the core of the story.

But then there’s that Act One question… I’ll delve into that more next time.

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