Story, Character, Incident, Structure

After our genre digression, let’s get straight back to your story. Your premise is exciting and your notes are progressing at a furious rate. At this stage you’ll be thinking in story terms – beginning, middle, end – when developing your material, but the problem of how to organize the plot will constantly nag at the back of your mind. Keep it there for now. Only begin plotting when you have all of your main story events and you’re ready to sequence them.

 

Don’t be tempted to construct your events too skeletally and neglect the key ingredients of your story – characters and incidents. The narrative world can’t exist without them, they are inextricably intertwined. If you treat the story development as an academic exercise, even in a whodunit mystery, your work will be sterile and airless, and your characters won’t be able to breathe. The mechanics of cause and effect are always secondary to inventing and communicating a living world with a consistent set of rules. The world of your story should feel as realistic to readers as their own one, and your characters must be equally realistic to live there.

 

STORY is formed by characters’ actions as they cause or react to incidents, overcome obstacles and pursue goals.

 

CHARACTERS cannot act without goals to strive for, problems to overcome and incidents to respond to.

 

INCIDENTS need to be seen from the perspective of their effects on characters’ lives, to give readers a human element with which to identify.

 

STRUCTURE is the framework which supports the story and supplies the most drama, conflict and tension to draw readers in and maintain their emotional involvement.

 

The story world (macrocosm) must be presented through characters and incidents (microcosm). Even in a large-scale genre thriller like Heat, the cops-and-robbers macrocosm is boiled down to the Vincent Hanna versus Neil McCauley microcosm. The bravura daylight set pieces would have far less impact without examining each character’s specific behavioral attitudes to them before, during and after.

 

Theme

When pitching your project to someone important, don’t be surprised if, after you tell them the premise, they say “Okay – but what’s it really about?” What they’re asking for is the theme. They’re also asking whether or not you know it. If you don’t, there’s an old Hollywood maxim that goes, “If your script is about what it’s about, you’re in deep trouble.”

 

Your script must be about more than it appears to be on the surface. Not only in terms of plot and sub-plot, but also theme. The theme is the expression of the universal value of your story; the reason why it will connect with an audience. It may not arrive in your mind until your script is finished, but it will spring from what motivated you to write your script in the first place. What they are actually asking you is “What do you really want to say?” Theme can be expressed in one word (revenge, integrity, greed, justice), but this doesn’t tell anyone much. Something like “The amazing ability of the human spirit to triumph over adversity, or against the odds” is better, but you’ll be politely told that most stories fit this description. Try to be specific about your particular theme.

 

Themes are about emotion. Your primary task as a screen- writer is to convey the emotional impact of your script to a reader. This is one difference between a cinematic and a televisual premise. The cinematic premise may be action or character-oriented, but should connect and resonate with the audience’s emotions on a level that a televisual premise cannot. It’s not just about exageration, it’s also about sustaining an emotionally charged narrative for two hours and keeping an audience engaged. After being shot, Andy Warhol said “People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal. But actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television. You don’t feel anything.”

 

In a great script there may be several themes. One in Field Of Dreams is Second Chances: If you were granted another chance to have something that you only realized was important when it was gone, how far would you go to take it? To Ray Frensham, the theme is: “It is important for us to have dreams – even if those dreams are not ultimately fulfilled, it is important for us to have them.” Many themes are present because of the skilful layering and essential humanity in Phil Alden Robinson’s script.

 

Conflict & Tension

Syd Field says, “Without conflict there is no drama.”Conflict arises from situation, but more importantly from character, and should be present in every scene.The goals and needs of the protagonist meet opposition from without (other characters or situations) and from within (inner demons, conscience, fear, ghosts), creating conflict. Tension builds in the gaps between eruptions of conflict, but is also ever- present in the opposing goals or values of characters. Every major character needs polarities, within themselves and in their relationship to others. Polarities create conflict and tension. Include some form of conflict in every scene: physical, psychological, situational. When you lose sight of conflict, you also lose readers’ interest.

 

Building & Releasing Tension

The opening sequence of Robert Harmon’s horror thriller, The Hitcher: A young man (C Thomas Howell), exhausted from driving in the rain all night, picks up a soaking hitch- hiker (Rutger Hauer) in the middle of nowhere. The young man then runs an incredibly tense gauntlet as the hitch-hiker first refuses to say where he’s headed, then sticks a knife in his face and relates in graphic detail how he cut up the last guy who gave him a ride, and tells him he’s to meet the same fate unless he can stop him. Finally the young man summons the courage and strength to lunge at the hitch-hiker – who falls out of the door he left ajar. The young man yells and slams the dash in a frenzy of freed tension as the hitch-hiker bounces along the dark, wet road. CUT TO:

 

INT/EXT. Desert Road – Day. The young man is taking it easy. A station wagon overtakes. Two children in the rear window pretend to shoot him with toy guns. Smiling, he

“shoots” back with his finger, then freezes as slowly, between the two children, arms around their shoulders, rises the hitchhiker... A textbook lesson on the rhythms of tension. Slowly build to a crescendo, then release... and immediately start to build again.

 

Reversing Expectation

 

You’re watching a film. You’re thinking “I know what’s going to happen next.”You experience a slight rush of anticipation. Then, it happens. Exactly as you thought. And you feel... disappointed. The slight rush was because you secretly hoped that it wouldn’t happen; that the film would surprise you, show you something clever and unexpected. I remember watching Fatal Attraction sitting behind two old ladies who kept whispering to each other what they thought would happen next. Normally this would incur my wrath, but this time I kept quiet and listened – and they were right, every time, because they found the film’s reversals and switches so predictable. Try to subvert expectations of genre as well as story.

 

When developing your story ask yourself what you would expect to happen next if this were someone else’s script – and then don’t do it. Reverse it. As often as possible. If you can place a few major and several minor reversals in your script, that readers won’t see coming, then you’ll keep them turning the pages. It’s about uncertainty, and the building of suspense. If you also reverse the tone, then even better.

 

Ellipsis

Simply, cutting out the dead time. Real life consists of millions of dull moments interspersed with a few vital, dramatic ones – if you could tune in to Tom Cruise’s life for days on end, you would be mostly bored to tears. Story world and real world are in fact worlds apart. In The Truman Show, Truman Burbank’s every waking hour is manipulated in an artificial environment for a unique TV show. Once he becomes aware of this, he has to escape the cloying story world and gain his freedom. Similarly, in EdTV, the TV execs realize that Ed’s life just isn’t interesting enough to the viewers without dramatic intervention. Screenwriting excises the boring ‘real world’ moments and gives characters a series of vital, dramatic situations compressed into a narrative framework. Ellipsis allows these events to appear connected and seamless, almost as though they were playing out in real time.

 

Screen Time & Narrative Time

Screen time is the duration of the film; usually 1 1/2–2 hours, based on the average audience’s attention span. Narrative time is the duration of the story events. This can be real time (High Noon ’s narrative clock begins ticking at 10:30 am; the showdown is at, er, noon), decades (in Back to the Future and Pleasantville, the protagonists are displaced from the present to the 1950s), or several millennia (2001: A Space Odyssey moves from the Dawn of Man to a space mission to Jupiter). A tip: if you’re writing for a low-budget independent market, compress your script’s narrative time into weeks rather than months, days rather than weeks. Try not to include exterior locations showing seasonal changes – it’s too expensive.

Start At the End

 

The earlier you know your climax/finale/denouement, the easier the writing process becomes. If you are secure in the knowledge that you have a satisfying resolution, your confidence will be greater. On a more practical level, you can write ‘backwards,’ setting in place everything that narrows focus to your climax, rather than writing reams of exploratory material in the hope that it will lead to a tight and exciting conclusion.

 

Plot

Cut & Paste

Once your major story events are laid out in chronological form, you can move on to the complexities of plotting. As Jean-Luc Godard said, “A film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

Plots may or may not follow a linear progression. In Pulp Fiction, the first story event occurs when the young Butch is given his dead father’s gold watch by one of his army colleagues, but this event is placed an hour into the plot. Citizen Kane opens with the death of Charles Foster Kane, and the plot then flashes backwards and forwards, piecing together a jigsaw of Kane’s character by relating key events from his life as witnessed by those closest to him. In Memento, the narrative again begins with the last story event, then runs backwards in short overlapping segments, the plot structure cleverly paralleling the protagonist Leonard’s ten-minute memory span. The Limey is a patchwork quilt of fleeting non-sequential images which layer together to form a complex emotional mood. Before you order your plot events, you should have five fixed points established in your mind: opening sequence, climax/resolution, two end of act watershed incidents (plot points) and your mid-point. The art of plotting revolves around trying to find the most effective dramatic structure for your story.

 

Main Plot

The main plot follows the protagonist’s action line through the story. It connects with his outer motivations and the obstacles he faces. The main plot forms the immediate fore- ground of the narrative and carries the major thrust: to get the hero from the inciting incident to his goal in around one hundred pages.

 

Sub-Plots

Sub-plots involve other characters and events that connect directly or indirectly to the protagonist’s main plot. The foremost sub-plot reveals the protagonist’s inner struggle to conquer those elements within himself that stand in his way. Other characters and events may be connected to each other, but they are all somehow connected to the protagonist and his actions. They may run parallel to the main plot, or contrary to it. Cutting to sub-plots is a way to create anticipation in the reader by delaying the resolution of elements or tensions in the main plot. Sub-plots are also useful carriers of theme. The protagonist’s main plot is usually concerned with his actions to solve problems, complete tasks or achieve goals, but the theme that resonates with an audience may concern a sub-plot involving romance or injustice or hardship or anything that conveys the true emotion of your story.

 

Exposition

The reader needs to be provided with information about the context of your script; the background to the events of the plot. In a science fiction story set in the future or on a distant planet, you will need to inform the reader how the world evolved from the world we’re familiar with, or what particular conditions exist in this alien environment. Obviously you don’t have time or space to supply a full future history, but you must supply the information relevant to the story. This is known as setting your exposition, and applies to characters as well as events. Your characters have lived lives which have brought them to their start point and set up their individual and collective narratives. Events in their recent past will particularly influence who and how they are when readers first encounter them. As Lajos Egri said, “Motivation must have grown out of what happened before the story started. Your story is possible only because it grew out of the very thing that happened before. ” How you choose to relate these significant “backstories” will require a lot of thought, and may result in shifts along your narrative timeline. Voice-overs, flashbacks, flashforwards etc. are satisfying plot devices when well-crafted, but for a novice screenwriter they present problems of complexity and are often badly executed. The characters cannot tell their own stories; you must show the relevant events and incorporate them into your plot. You must also do this quickly; readers need to know what’s going on and why, as soon as it happens. Most, if not all, of your expository detail should be placed in Act I, to set up the complications that occur in Act II.

 

That said, holding back a crucial element of exposition can maximize readers’ anticipation. In Jaws, a Great White shark is cruising around Amity Island, killing swimmers and ruining the tourist trade. Three disparate individuals join forces to hunt it. Chief Brody has a big city background and doesn’t even like water. Hooper is an ambitious but unproven marine biologist. Quint is an enigma because his backstory is deliberately delayed. He’s driven, abrasive and opinionated, but his past is an unknown quantity. He is the focus of the tensions between the three men as they hunt the killer shark, and of the crucial “drinking” scene after the shark first gets away. This memorable scene is multifunctional; it solves the problem of how to bond the men together to function as a unit, and culminates in Quint’s superb “USS Indianapolis” monologue which finally delivers his backstory (worth the wait), establishes his credentials, clarifies his motivation to kill the shark and brings the difficulty of their task into sharp relief.

 

Exercise: Watch one of your favorite films and write down a brief summary of the major plot events. Place the events in story (i.e. chronological) order. Observe how the main plot and sub-plots are arranged in relation to each other, and time. Write down the relevant events that took place before the film begins, and the characters’ backstories. How is this information given? Can you think of other ways the details could have been shown?

 

 

5 – Character & Dialogue

 

The Puppet Master

At the heart of your script are your characters, and you are God, with the power of life or death over them. It’s your choice to make their day or break their bones. You decide whether they: begin a beautiful friendship or end one in tears; do the decent thing or the lowdown dirty one; stand up and be counted or lie down and take what’s coming. That’s some responsibility. Your duty as a deity is to mould your characters in three dimensions, and project them alive and kicking into readers’ minds. If their construction is flawed, it is because your constructive powers are flawed.

 

Although you are the animator of your creations, it is important that you allow them to exist independently of you; to give them the freedom to grow and develop within your plot. If your characters’ traits are all facets of yourself, or if they all speak with your voice, then you will fail to convince readers that they are living, breathing people. It’s like parenthood: you bring them into the world, care for them and nurture them, but ultimately your greatest service is preparing them to exist on their own out there among them English.

 

Giving Characters Life

Characters are rarely presented from birth; usually they have lived for many years before we meet them, and have evolved complex individual personalities. Your job is to burrow as far inside their minds as possible. Write a profile for each character, a resume of their lives from birth until the opening of the narrative: their parents’ social class and circumstances, location and occupation(s),whether they stayed in one place or were frequently uprooted, whether they had a happy, sad or tragic childhood, whether or not they were popular with the opposite sex (or the same sex), whether they left school early or went to university, their political views, whether they married young or had a string of lovers or chose celibacy, whether they embarked on a successful career or drifted through meaningless jobs – all the major forces that have acted upon their personality to form them into the person the reader encounters. As you’ll see, this is also a potential short cut to their story.

 

Your characters must feel real. They can be odd as hell, operate on as skewed a logic as you care to invent, but they must be consistent within their own warped reality. Good recent examples of believable, rounded, interesting oddballs include Tracey Flick in Election, Max Fisher in Rushmore, James Leer in Wonder Boys and the strange but mesmerizing “romance” between Enid and Seymour in Ghost World.

 

Protagonist & Antagonist

Two characters have locked horns in the majority of fiction films since the early days of narrative cinema. These are the good guy and the bad guy; properly the protagonist and the Antagonist, popularly the Hero and the Villain. Most film narratives revolve around the actions of the Hero as he tries to achieve a personal goal and the efforts of the Villain to prevent him from doing so. According to Joseph Campbell there are three classic types of hero: Dramatic, Tragic, Comic. The dramatic hero succeeds due to his best efforts, the Tragic Hero fails despite his best efforts, and the Comic Hero succeeds despite his best efforts. The lot of the classic Villain is ultimately to become a Dead Villain, as long as he has given the Hero the absolute fight of his life.

 

Goal-Driven Protagonist

The goal-driven protagonist begins the narrative single-mindedly pursuing a specific set of personal goals, or at least with those wheels set in motion. We know at the outset, or soon after, what he wants, how he intends to get it and the essential problems he faces. The plot is formed by the actions he takes to achieve his goals or perform his tasks.

 

Passive Protagonist

Alternatively, the protagonist may begin as a passive character, but he must be quickly forced to become active by events beyond his control. There are two types of passive protagonist; those who are perfectly at home in their normal world (let’s call them “Insiders”) and those who are not at all comfortable in theirs (“Outsiders”).When displaced from the ordinary world into the extraordinary world, both have to figure a new set of rules as they go along, as they (and the reader) discover their limits when placed in extreme situations.

 

Insiders

Insiders are stable and/or happy when we meet them; they have what they want, and are oblivious to the explosion that’s about to blast them out of their normal world and into the “special” world. We then follow the actions they take to recover their former equilibrium or to explore and make the best of their new set of circumstances.

 

Outsiders

Outsiders are somehow different from those around them, they just don’t fit into their world; classic square pegs in round holes. This sense of being outside their lives can ease their transition to the special world, as they didn’t really belong in their own.

 

Empathy & Sympathy

As has oft been said, events on the page/screen are a mirror for the reader/audience to observe themselves. Make your protagonist empathetic by giving them qualities that allow readers maximum involvement in their predicament; to put themselves in their shoes for the duration. They should also be sympathetic. Not an all-round jolly good egg, but a complex, ambiguous character with shades of good and bad; in other words a believable, three-dimensional, flawed but intriguing human being, capable of doing the unexpected. There is more than a suspension of disbelief going on here; your characters are the audience’s avatars. If we always know what they’ll do, where is the suspense?

 

Don’t confuse sympathy with likeability. Many dislikeable protagonists about whom we feel ambivalent remain unforgettable anti-heroes: Charles Foster Kane is a temperamental megalomaniac; Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is a bitter, burned- out psychopath; Griffin Mill in The Player will tread on anyone to safeguard his own position and status; Johnny in Naked is a nihilistic egotist who uses his intellect as a weapon; Dennis Hopper in Paris Trout is a murderer, bigot and wife-torturer. Yet their charisma keeps our interest and their character flaws elicit our sympathy.

 

It’s a fine and subjective line. If your protagonist is a complete bastard with no redeeming qualities he’ll be unsympathetic, so your task is to make him truly memorable. If he is whiter than white, or lacking motivation, he’ll be boring. If he is a stereotype, he’ll be flat and two-dimensional. If he is invincible, the so-what factor kicks in. The danger in each case is that readers will neither root for your protagonist, nor care what happens to him.

 

Credibility

If readers do not believe your hero is capable of a particular action or of reaching his goal, they will suspend their suspension of disbelief and you’ll lose their attention. Characters are often pitched into incredible situations, but they must remain in character to negotiate them. If your characters perform extraordinary or inexplicable feats that you have failed to set upreaders won’t buy it.

 

In Kansas City, the character of Carolyn Stilton, stoned on opium for the entire narrative, suddenly shoots protagonist Blondie O’Hara. This provides an unsatisfactory resolution that rings completely false. There is no foreshadowing to suggest she is capable of doing this. In Casino, during the opening flashforward sequence we see De Niro’s character blown to smithereens by a car bomb. For emphasis, he floats through a sea of flames in a stylized title sequence. So when the big moment finally arrives and he crawls away from the inferno with only singed pride, it feels like what it is – a big cheat. In What Lies Beneath, the characters’ actions or choices are constantly baffling, and many character connections are set up only to remain frustratingly unresolved. I’m sure you can pick your own examples.

 

Hollywood science fiction has consistently lacked credibility and treated its audience as idiots. Since the advent of Lucas and Spielberg, even dying has been reduced to a minor inconvenience (Obi-Wan Kenobi, E.T.). Superman (Lois Lane) and the Star Trek franchise (Spock) followed suit. Don’t get suckered into this for your characters. Watch Bambi for the best example of the power of death, Run Lola Run and Vertigo for ingenious ways to cheat it, and The Sixth Sense and The Others for fresh and inventive treatments of it.

 

Fears

You need to know, and show, the thing your character fears most; their worst nightmare made manifest. Leon’s fear is change; the spanner in his well-oiled machine of personal control. Griffin Mill’s is losing his prestigious position and being convicted of murder. Lester Burnham’s is self-stagnation and inertia. Harold Shand’s is the failure of his big deal. Charles Morse’s is that people only like him because of his wealth; even his wife. Fears provide negative motivation for characters just as goals provide positive ones.

 

Protagonist & Structure

Character function is synergetic with structure. The rhythms of the plot are formed by the protagonist as he scrambles up ladders or slides down snakes, but (as you’ll see in chapter 8) this synergy is forged in a much deeper, complex and inter- twining matrix. Whether initially driven or passive, pursuing a new goal (Alvin’s crazy journey) or an old life (Louis’ quest to clear his name and regain his status), dragged into a fight to the death (Sarah striving first to escape and then defeat the Terminator) or a no-win scenario (Jimmy the Saint’s “choice” between a deadly job or losing his business), the protagonist is the vehicle that carries the reader through the narrative. Whether dramatic, tragic or comic, be sure to make him heroic (even if he’s an anti-hero, his major choice should be a heroic one; or if it isn’t, therein lies his downfall).

 

Antagonist

Like most protagonists, most antagonists are wilful, driven characters. The goals of the villain oppose those of the hero and the two will come into direct conflict over this polarity. Memorable villain roles offer actors a delicious opportunity to chew scenery and steal the picture from under the hero’s nose. Who watches Kevin Costner’s Robin when Alan Rickman’s reptilian Sheriff of Nardingham (sorry, Nottingham) is around in the otherwise forgettable Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves? Who doesn’t experience a thrill of horrified fascination at the sheer, er, alienness of the creature in Alien, and a secret desire to see it stalk its human prey? Who can take their eyes off Dennis Hopper’s definitive psycho Frank Booth in Blue Velvet? Who can shake the unforgettable moment when evil Barnes guns down fellow Sergeant Elias in Platoon? Memorable antagonists exert a powerfully intoxicating appeal to the bad guy in all of us.

 

Perhaps the major quality required of an antagonist is that he is in almost every respect at least the equal of the protagonist. This generates maximum tension and propels the narrative right down to the wire. In the archetypal Cops and Robbers conflict, Heat, protagonist Vincent Hanna is the SuperCop whose wired dedication to his job is consuming his life and wrecking his third marriage. Antagonist Neil McCauley is the SuperThief whose crew is taking down increasingly mammoth scores and needs just one last one before quitting. Hanna knows McCauley’s a real hot dog, and it’s imperative that he takes him down. McCauley knows Hanna has rumbled some of the best crews, but will not allow anything to get in his way. Their cat-and-mouse game is played for the highest possible stakes. Each is the very best at what he does and when they come face to face over a coffee like regular guys – volatile, passionate Hanna and ice cool, understated McCauley, Pacino and De Niro – it is electrifying cinema. The protagonist and antagonist should be so closely matched that the outcome is in doubt until the final moments: the Irresistible Force meets the Immovable Object.

 

The antagonist need not be a person, but there is usually a character that fulfils a major role of opposition for the protagonist; Michael Hauge refers to this as the nemesis. In Body Heat, Racine’s nemesis is Matty’s husband, but unknown to him, his real antagonist is Matty. Inspector Clouseau’s nemesis is not Charles Lytton, the Pink Panther, but his own superior, Dreyfus. Clarice Starling’s nemesis is not Buffalo Bill, but Hannibal Lecter. McCauley’s nemesis is not Hanna, but Waingro.

 

Character Arc

An overarching arc represents your protagonist’s journey through the narrative, from and to equilibrium (back in the normal world or a new one in the special world), with the turning point coming at the mid-point. It is a device to keep your focus on the essential elements of character – needs, wants, motivations, fears, problems. Writers constantly digress, so if you’ve written a scene which does not connect with the essential elements of the character, or does not move him forward, then cut it. No matter how much you may like the scene, the further it moves away from the character arc, the more important it is that you lose it.

 

True Character

We know characters by actions rather than words; most notably how they react under pressure. Anyone can be a saint when things are going well. True character is only revealed in adversity, so put your characters in danger, often. Different types of danger bring different kinds of response – how do they react to physical danger, or loss of status and career, or psychological pressure? As you’ve seen, credibility and consistency are also important factors here. When Harold Shand discovers the IRA are behind the campaign against him, his fighting character determines his actions – he refuses to accept the odds and takes the fight to them, with disastrous consequences.

 

DIALOGUE

First Things Last

Dialogue is one of the major blind alleys that fledgling screenwriters love to run headlong into. When asked how their script is going, they’ll say “Great.” When asked what they’ve got so far, they’ll say “A couple of good characters and lots of nice dialogue.” Translation: almost nothing. No beginning/middle/end story, no clearly defined needs/ wants/problems for their protagonist, no synopsis, just dialogue. Never begin by writing dialogue. How can you know what your characters will say to each other until you place them within a plot structure and know what they will be reacting to or setting up? Until you know their goals, their problems and their objectives in each scene?

 

Film is about action and visuals, theatre is about dialogue. Screenwriting is about showing, not telling. Students often find it hard to adjust to the fact that dialogue is edited to the bone, and the more action-based the premise, the more the dialogue is dictated by the demands of the plot. Even character-based scripts require no more dialogue than it takes to accomplish characters’ immediate objectives. Know your story events and build your plot outline first; think about dialogue last.

 

Less Is More

Dialogue is minimalist in nature. A question is often followed by a question, and tension is conveyed through the thrust and parry of pared-down, to-the-point argument and disagreement. Read a few scripts. You’ll notice that there are very few large blocks of dialogue. Mostly it is a line or two followed by a line or two, all the way down a page.

 

The first thing to ask yourself about each piece of dialogue is “Can I cut a word without losing anything?” Next question: “Can I cut a line?” Next: “Can I cut the whole piece and give the same information visually?” If yes, then do so. Visual before aural, every time.

 

Directness is often best. If your character Lisa’s new boyfriend Matt hasn’t called her for a while, and she sees him in the street, here’s what she shouldn’t say:

 

LISA: Er, hi Matt. Ah, look, I was just wondering why, you know, you haven’t contacted me and, well, I really miss you and—

 

To a reader her character appears weak and uninteresting, and your dialogue appalling. Think about her motivation in the scene.

 

LISA: So. Matthew. Where do I stand?

 

This is better. Simple and direct, in control, fulfilling her objective, putting the onus on Matt to find a good answer. Maybe better still would be:

 

Matt advances towards her, a big grin on his lips. As he reaches her, arms open wide, she...

neatly sidesteps him and strides past, without a backward glance.

 

There are many variations. She could slap him, grab and kiss an unsuspecting passer-by – anything is better than that first piece of dialogue. Positive action and decision-making endear characters to audiences.

 

No Conversation

Film writing excludes meandering, conversational dialogue. What may sound like conversation isn’t, unless you’re Quentin Tarantino and can get away with it because your ear for the rhythms of dialogue is so good. I’m assuming you’re not, so each line should add weight to your character and reflect their scene objectives. Make it intriguing, memorable and delicious.

 

6 – Structure & Format