Re-writing

This post is a rip-off rewrite mash-up of several online articles and posts.  At the end is a link to Terry Rossio's original post I scavenged for this.  Other bits and pieces are from notes I've made over the months. 

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1 - BEATS

Quite often the first draft of something has the right beats in the right place ... but it's easy for them to be too subtly played or too quickly played. Do ... interesting, juicy bits flash by too quickly, leaving you wanting more?  Some story elements are just blossoming, and need to be allowed to expand; others are dying on the vine and need to be pruned away.

Are some beats are just plain missing?  Do you need backstory to help motivations, plot events to help justify action? Or is the goal in a script to explore as many of the permutations of the topic or theme as possible?  

2  - PACING

That sense of being motivated to go on to the next scene, and spinning out of that scene to the next. Look out for the 'unmotivated cut'; when a scene ends, taking us away from a place we wanted to be, sending us to a place we don't want to be. One of the tricks is to have stuff happening off screen that is not so interesting we feel we missed out on seeing it ... but have enough happening off screen that we still feel like 'stuffs going on' and the film is doing the best it can to keep up. That's one way to give a film pace, and momentum.

Make a script a page-turner by:

The careful, premeditated disclosure of information while always promising new information.

3 - SCENES

 Often scenes exist, or sections of scenes, that are the result of the writer 'writing' his way into the story. They're needed for the writer to ramp up into the scene ... but ultimately, you want to cut the 'ramp.' 

Every scene should have some kind of major or minor objective, or imperative, danger, something at issue; a threat or concern, or secret, or conflict.

Every scene should move the story forward by conveying at least one of these things:

• new information
• new story beat
• evolution of a relationship
• play out a story thread

Many, many scenes can be pushed. They're fine scenes ... but can the conflict be greater, the clash more intense, the argument stronger? First drafts are sometimes correct, but polite.

4 - DIALOGUE

Every spoken word of a script should be said out loud. Take out those unnecessary words and ellipses and dashes and wrylies. Put in great lines that depend on subtext, even if they are only one word. There is a place for the great actor-attracting speech or the Oscar-winning monologue. 

5 - ACTION

Every descriptive passage in a script should be read out loud, to make sure it lands on the brain in a good way.  This is pruning time. This is finding the evocative single word. 

6 - TRANSITIONS

Track your transitions from scene to scene.  Does the audience have a second to adjust?  Is there contrast or continuity? If the next scene is supposed to shock or startle, are you dulling it with too much lead-in?

7 - SLUGLINES

Are they formatted consistently relative to one another?  Did you change the time and forget to make NIGHT into DAY?  Are they clear enough for the reader to know where they are?  Do they actually match what is below them?

Did you change scenes and forget to include a slugline to indicate that? 

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Rossio on rewriting.

Notes from the Masters

This post, long enough on it's own, comprises excerpts from a wonderful longer post (We're Not Worthy) by Terry Rossio at Wordplayer.com.  You'll want to read that post, I didn't even include the Steven Spielberg section here.

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RON CLEMENTS:  Ron would make a distinction by asking the question: is the idea itself bad, or is the execution of the idea bad? Very often, poor execution can cause an essentially good idea to be missed. On the other hand, sparkling execution can cause you to hang onto a something that is essentially wrong (another version of 'kill your babies.') Ron also spoke of the necessity in a film for quiet, for scenes that are purely visual -- they allow the audience to process the information given, which helps them buy into the story more fully. Wall-to-wall exposition and action can leave an audience reeling, and exhausted.

JOHN MUSKER: there is a relationship between the simplicity of the intent of a scene, and the amount of fun you can have telling it. Simple scenes and plot moves are valuable, because it allows more freedom for characterization, more 'elbow room' in the telling. Complex story points eat up space, and can limit a sequence's entertainment value (unless the complexity itself is the attraction).  Sometimes it's better to choose a simple, clear story and tell it fully, than a complex story which forces the storytelling to be sparse.

SANDRA BULLOCK:  Sandra was insistent that every character in the script have weight, have a point of view, some clear attitude to give the actor something to play. As writers, we may look at minor characters as functional chess pieces, aids in getting the story to happen. Sandra came to even the most minor characters from the point of view of the actors -- who would have to breath life into the role, make them unique, make them believable, make them real.

JOHN McTIERNAN: McTiernan's rule for exposition is so good it bears repeating: solve exposition problems by making the audience curious about your story. Once the audience is intrigued, you're no longer giving them exposition -- you're answering their questions.

NEIL GAIMAN: he made an important distinction between 'plot' (what happens) and 'story' (the way you tell the audience what happens).

JAN De BONT:  he worked with a story element I'd never considered, yet important when you think about it. Call it 'off screen movie time.' Jan paid close attention to what you could imply had just happened before the scene started, or was going to happen after the scene ended -- or what had taken place somewhere else while the scene you were watching was going on. He was very aware of what sort of events could be allowed to happen 'off screen' (important sections of the story that the audience didn't really care to see) and what things you had to show, or the audience would feel gypped. ...

As a storyteller and director, Jan was concerned with filming just enough of the tips of the icebergs to convey the greater story underneath. It's almost as if an entire second movie takes place 'in between' the scenes you show -- like in prose writing, the unwritten meaning between the lines. The mark of a good movie is when as much happens off-screen as on-screen... and you don't miss it.

DEAN DEVLIN: My favorite quote from Dean: "In this town, the ability to read a script well is as rare as the ability to write a script well."


TED ELLIOTT: It's crucial to keep character dilemmas unresolved all the way through to the end of the movie, along with the unresolved plot. There's such a temptation when you set up a character issue to resolve it too early. You want to see those people reconcile, to solve their internal dilemmas; but you have to keep pushing yourself to not play that card (and it's a fun card to play!). You have to hold back. If you resolve the character stuff too early, the plot stuff at the end turns to just be plot, usually action without meaning. And that's boring. Hold back, hold back, and resolve character issues at the same time you resolve the plot, and keep your audience interested till the end.

ROBIN WILLIAMS:  In recording sessions you could see Williams had the ability to 'hold' one series of ideas in his head (the main dialog of the story) while another part of his brain played riffs and variations, different each time through.

It was oddly reassuring for me to realize that in some cases there is just simple raw ability -- and since there's nothing to be done about it, it's nothing to worry about. "Don't let what you can't do stand in the way of what you can," John Wooden said, and it's true. And it was good to see that not everything Williams tried worked -- and after playing with it a while, if he couldn't make it happen, he'd move on, confident in his talent, confident that he could find something else great down the line.

WALTER PARKES: ... one way that Walter looks at a scene -- whether or not, aside from all the other concerns, it has story momentum. Until we worked with Walter, I'd never considered momentum as an important element, in there with theme, plot, and characterization. Momentum is a tricky thing to design into a story -- you need just enough information to build curiosity, not so much as to bog down the pace.

TERRY ROSSIO: You can become your own hero!

Insanely Great Endings: Michael Arndt

There's a rumor that a PDF file exists somewhere of Michael Arndt's "Insanely Great Endings" lecture.

It really doesn't, as of this writing.  I have spent some time lately trying to collect the bits and pieces that can be found from those who've heard him speak. Excerpts below, use the links for the full articles:

From Screenwriting from Iowa:

Here’s what Shelley Matsutani wrote six years ago after seeing Arndt give the talk in Los Angeles at the Screenwriting Expo 2006.

ARNDT’S RUBRIC FOR ENDINGS:

Bad = positive & predictable
Good = positive & surprising
Insanely Great = positive & surprising and meaningful

*Emotion is supercharged with meaning, meaning = emotion

Keep in mind that this was year’s before the 2010 release of Toy Story 3 (which Arndt received another Oscar-nomination) which has an insanely great ending.

In recent years at the Austin Film Festival Arndt has given the talk or been on panels twice giving examples of insanely great endings which include:
Star Wars 
The Graduate
Little Miss Sunshine
Rocky
Casablanca

Jessee Ferreras heard Arndt’s talk this year at the Vancouver International Film Festival and quotes Arndt saying:

“An ending has to wrap not only the narrative logic of the story —it also has to be emotionally fulfilling. It has to wrap up the emotional logic of the story…What you want to do is to make the story’s ending meaningful but in a surprising way.”

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From Deliberate Productions.com

"... Arndt analyzes three very different films, STAR WARS, THE GRADUATE, and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, and posits why their endings can be considered insanely great. (Granted, his discussion on LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE was lined with humility since he’s a genuinely sweet and humble guy.)  He touches on a lot of vernacular familiar to writers, namely the idea of external and internal stakes for your main character.  For example, in ROCKY the external goal for Rocky Balboa is to go the distance with Apollo Creed.  His internal goal in accomplishing this is to prove that he’s not a bum.  But Arndt also introduces the idea of philosophical stakes, which speak to the larger themes of a film.  Rocky versus Apollo Creed is the universal David versus Goliath story ... "

"... in Arndt’s point of view, it is when the external/internal/philosophical stakes have all failed – creating the hopeless feeling that there is no possibility of a positive outcome – that you are poised for an insanely great ending.  For out of that moment of despair comes the main character’s DECISIVE ACT: Luke forgoes the technology available to him and uses “the force” to land that final bulls-eye in the Death Star ..."

" ...  All of these films show their main characters going head-to-head with the “universe” that must be overturned.  And overturning the moral order of the main character’s universe is the key to an insanely great ending. ..."

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BUT - all this misses the Insanely Great Video Arndt made:

Arndt on BEGINNINGS

Great Beginnings: Michael Arndt

Insanely Great Endings notes.

What Beginners Need to Know 1

The Rasa Approach Part 3: FIND THE PAIN

1. The most basic level is the seed or the germ, which to translate into concrete terms, would be the concept of the story. The very concept must contain the potential to develop into a screenplay that can have various sentiments in an organic mix. 
2. The second level is that of character: who are the people that inhabit the story? Do they represent a cross-section of the society in which the story is set? 
3. The third level is that of the sequences or the incidents that are used to tell the story. As we know, the story in a film unfolds via incidents and a screenplay is nothing but a series of incidents strung together to make a whole. The very choice of these incidents must be such that they are able to capture the essence of life via a variety of sentiments. 
4. The fourth level is that of the scene. The scene is the smallest unit of a screenplay and can be seen as akin to a moment in the script. The moments that a screenwriter chooses to tell the story must be exactly appropriate, ones that, when seen together, reflect a variety of sentiments.

from The Rasa Approach Part  2

Level 1: The Seed

There are two aspects to the seed. The first thing we need to look at is the feeling or emotion that is powering the screenplay. Is it deep enough and strong enough that the exploration of it will inevitably cover a gamut of sentiments? Like for example, the pain of betrayal and love that torments Rick in Casablanca. Or, the intense love and pain afflicting Tomek in A Short Film about Love. Or, Phil Connors’s frustration at being stuck in Groundhog Day. Or Charu’s intense loneliness in Charulata. 

If one looks closely at films that have connected, one will note that a profound pain powers each of those films, because, when it comes right down to it, it is pain that is the essence of life. In every phase of life, even in apparently ‘happy’ ones, the overwhelming feeling is that of life being a ‘pain’. Even if it’s simply a matter of traveling from one place to another, the traffic or the hurry or a rash driver will make the journey painful. And if the journey is not a pain then the pain will begin when the purpose of the journey starts unfolding. 

If we’ve gone to discuss a deal – business deal, property deal, any deal – there’s the pain of negotiating and putting up with an unpleasant or manipulative person. If we get the deal, there’s the pain of fulfilling the deal in a world designed to make things difficult. If one is in a situation of romance, of course, the pain becomes especially deep and delicious. In short, one is always struggling, some of us more than others, but no one is not struggling. 

Of course the struggle of maneuvering through a traffic jam is unlikely to power a hundred-minute screenplay but it certainly does contribute to the overall feeling of life being a struggle. Since cinema is limited in terms of time and cannot possibly show all our small and big struggles that give life an overall sense of struggle, a story zeroes in on a core of pain. Pain, therefore, is good for a script. Pain is what a script needs. Pain is what a script demands. 

The pain that Eva feels due to her mother’s neglect in Autumn Sonata is so deep and fierce that just a mother and daughter going at each other verbally makes for a riveting viewing experience. The pain of jealousy felt by Salieri in Amadeus is enough to power a play and a film to success and glory. Michael Corleone being forced to join the family business because of his father’s death leads to such anguish that we’re mesmerized as we watch his intelligence and charisma find an outlet in ruthlessness and extreme brutality. Malcolm Crowe’s pain at not being able to save his patient resulting in his life and marriage coming apart makes him a compelling protagonist. Alvy Singer’s pain at not being able to make his relationship work. The little boy’s pain at losing his sister’s shoes in Children of Heaven. The pain that women are going through to survive in the oppression of Iran in Jafar Panahi’s The Circle. I can go on…. 

No matter what genre a writer is working in, the core power of the story emerges from the pain or suffering that torment the protagonist or protagonists. If we can tap into this core it will give us a whole universe, which is exactly what each story needs. To put it bluntly: FIND THE PAIN!

The Rasa Approach Part 2

The Navras (nine Rasas)

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erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrifying, odious, marvelous - and peace

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What the movie must accomplish:

The viewer wants to be engaged, entertained, stimulated, enlightened, occasionally challenged and provoked and disturbed, but finally, satisfied. How does one do this? By creating an experience on screen that is, a) interesting, b) convincing, and c) complete.

• An experience will be interesting if it is unusual and/or dramatic. 
• An experience will be convincing if it unfolds plausibly (and the viewer is happy to suspend his disbelief for an experience if it’s interesting enough). 
• Finally, an experience will appear complete to a viewer only if it is meaningful in some way, either by giving him an insight into life or simply the general feeling that he is better off for having seen the film. 

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The Four Layers of the Screenplay:

1. The most basic level is the seed or the germ, which to translate into concrete terms, would be the concept of the story. The very concept must contain the potential to develop into a screenplay that can have various sentiments in an organic mix. 
2. The second level is that of character: who are the people that inhabit the story? Do they represent a cross-section of the society in which the story is set? 
3. The third level is that of the sequences or the incidents that are used to tell the story. As we know, the story in a film unfolds via incidents and a screenplay is nothing but a series of incidents strung together to make a whole. The very choice of these incidents must be such that they are able to capture the essence of life via a variety of sentiments. 
4. The fourth level is that of the scene. The scene is the smallest unit of a screenplay and can be seen as akin to a moment in the script. The moments that a screenwriter chooses to tell the story must be exactly appropriate, ones that, when seen together, reflect a variety of sentiments.

The rasas in more American understanding:

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sexuality, comedy, pathos, fury, heroism, terror, disgust, wonder

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• Does the concept feature one of the rasas? 
• Does the Protagonist display all of the rasas? Do minor characters embody at least one of them?
• Do the incidents serve one of the rasas?
• Do the scenes evoke one or more one of them? 

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Re: The Scene

If the first 3 levels are in place, the scene can become the difference between a good and a great script. In fact, several films become popular primarily on the strength of their scenes, because even when the story and characters are less than compelling, absorbing scenes can give the viewer an entertaining enough experience. With the first 3 levels in place, a brilliant script can use the scene to great effect. Let’s look at the first sequence – the entire wedding sequence – from The Godfather.* 

The first scene itself seems almost consciously to be following the tenets of the rasa theory, in the way the sentiments are evoked. The erotic sentiment is evoked via Bonasera’s description of his daughter’s experience with her boyfriend, where he tried to take advantage of her. (Yes, the image is not a pleasant one, but unfortunately, even rape holds an erotic fascination for human beings.) Also evoking the erotic is Don Corleone’s reference to his daughter’s wedding. The comic sentiment is evoked by the way Don Corleone toys with Bonasera, finally bullying him into accepting Don Corleone as godfather. The pathetic sentiment is evoked via the experience of Bonasera’s daughter. The furious sentiment via Bonasera’s anger, as well Corleone’s at what he perceives as Bonasera’s insults. There’s the heroic sentiment in Corleone’s love for justice, albeit of a primitive kind. His persona, emphasized by the respect that he is shown by other men in the room, too drips heroism. Corleone’s power and manner evoke terror and the act of Bonasera’s daughter’s assaulters is odious. Other than astonishment, all the other seven sentiments are evoked in the first scene itself! 

Now let’s look at the rest of the twenty-six minute sequence, sentiment-wise.

• Erotic: The conversation between Michael and Kay; Sonny and his girlfriend making out against a door; the wedding itself.

• Comic: The mirth of the wedding; Johnny Fontane’s song; Luca Brasi and his fumbling dialogue with Don Corleone.

• Pathetic: Sonny’s wife’s sorrow; Kay’s situation on discovering Michael’s family; Johnny’s situation vis-à-vis his sinking career.

• Furious: Sonny and the FBI; Sonny and the photographer; Don’s reaction to Johnny’s situation.

• Heroic: Michael’s uniform; Don’s dispensing of justice; Michael telling Kay that he is not like his family; Michael pulling Kay into the photograph.

• Terrifying: Don’s power as a criminal who controls judges and politicians; the realization that a criminal can be so powerful, charismatic, and ‘respectable’.

• Odious: Sonny thrusting in a vulgar manner, as he has sex with a woman against a door; vulgar dancing and drinking; Michael’s story about brains on a contract and the offer that cannot be refused.

• Marvellous: The astonishing cake and the general spectacle of the wedding.

 As is obvious from the above, the sentiments have been given a glorious opportunity for display by a seed (a combination of the pain of a man forced by circumstances into joining the mafia and the saga of a powerful criminal family) that has given rise to a world peopled by varied and interesting characters. 

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more complete version here
original article here

*("The Godfather," 1972; directed by Francis Ford Coppola; written by Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola; based on the novel, ‘The Godfather’, by Mario Puzo).

The Rasa Approach to Structure

The rasa theory, in brief, states that for a viewing experience to be complete and satisfying, a play must evoke in the viewer a variety of rasas or flavors or sentiments (from the following 8: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrifying, odious, marvelous). Of these 8, a play may have one ‘dominant’ sentiment, with several others present in smaller, varying quantities. (The original Natyashastra* mentions only eight rasas. The ninth – shanti or peace – was added later, thus leading to the term Navras, meaning ‘nine rasas’. ...)

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Western screenwriters spend a lot of time and energy making charts and diagrams to define structure.

But movies are made all over the world. And there are other ways of looking at structure.

Beyond Craft: The Rasa Approach to Screenwriting at the Lights Filmscool blog, reproduces Ashwini Malik's complete essay on the topic. 

"I had written an essay attacking screenwriting manuals that went hoarse advocating rules and principles governing screenwriting. I have always felt that such manuals tend to reduce screenwriting to a formula and lead to predictable, formulaic films, which are churned out by the dozen every month in Hollywood. And yet, here I was, awed by what is essentially a manual, with rules, formulae, principles and divisions and sub-divisions!"

The Purpose of Cinema

Let’s start with a fundamental, though regrettably pretentious, question: what is the purpose of cinema? For a moment, let’s put all the exalted purposes aside and look at it purely from the point of view of the viewer. The viewer wants to be engaged, entertained, stimulated, enlightened, occasionally challenged and provoked and disturbed, but finally, satisfied. How does one do this? By creating an experience on screen that is, a) interesting, b) convincing, and c) complete.

An experience will be interesting if it is unusual and/or dramatic. An experience will be convincing if it unfolds plausibly (and the viewer is happy to suspend his disbelief for an experience if it’s interesting enough). Finally, an experience will appear complete to a viewer only if it is meaningful in some way, either by giving him an insight into life or simply the general feeling that he is better off for having seen the film. 

So, to narrow it down a bit, for a viewer to be engaged, entertained, stimulated, enlightened, occasionally challenged and provoked and disturbed, what is needed is an experience that not only echoes life, but also makes sense of its seeming pointlessness and randomness. An experience that strives to capture the essence of life. But how does one capture this essence of life? Life itself is the product of all kinds of things, with a multitude of happenings and emotions jostling about in a manner that seems totally random. How then, does one make sense of life? Perhaps an understanding of the rasa theory can help us.

The Natyashastra often gives the analogy of a fulfilling meal that has several spices and other ingredients expertly mixed. In other words, the essence of life can be captured if the viewer is given an experience that contains an organic mix of several sentiments. The operative term here is ‘organic mix’. How does one create an organic mix, where different ingredients don’t stick out awkwardly because they have simply been forced into a work? The answer might lie, perhaps, in fusing the rasa theory with the very form of the screenplay.

There are 4 levels at which a screenplay is put together. (I’m proposing 4, in order to put forth my argument. Someone else might say 3 or 17 or whatever. It doesn’t matter.) 

The most basic level is the seed or the germ, which to translate into concrete terms, would be the concept of the story. The very concept must contain the potential to develop into a screenplay that can have various sentiments in an organic mix. The second level is that of character: who are the people that inhabit the story? Do they represent a cross-section of the society in which the story is set? The third level is that of the sequences or the incidents that are used to tell the story. As we know, the story in a film unfolds via incidents and a screenplay is nothing but a series of incidents strung together to make a whole. The very choice of these incidents must be such that they are able to capture the essence of life via a variety of sentiments. The fourth level is that of the scene. The scene is the smallest unit of a screenplay and can be seen as akin to a moment in the script. The moments that a screenwriter chooses to tell the story must be exactly appropriate, ones that, when seen together, reflect a variety of sentiments.

Again, the full essay is here.

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*Natyashastra is an ancient Indian text in Sanskrit language, written between 200 BC and 200 AD. It is attributed to the sage Bharata, although it is likely that it was the work of several persons, and was written over centuries. This text encompasses all Indian performing arts – theatre, dance, music. Written in Sanskrit verse

Writing Women

profound__whatever reader graphic detail

There's a thread on Done Deal forums right now: Intro of a Female Character.  It started out as a writer asking for feedback on his character description and turned into a debate over ... hell, I don't know.  Does misogyny exist?  Are women only interested in money?  What's wrong with a stereotype?  But I think the point comes from profound_whatever's reader graphic under the section titled "Recurring Problems in Scripts."

Another reader who did an AMA on Reddit, also commented on the stereotypical way women are presented and mentioned they are frequently killed within a page or two of their introduction.

 Lately, there seems to be an influx of misogynistic scripts that come across a lot of our desks, too. I've heard everyone from us readers to large network executives complaining about this. I think a good idea to avoid pitfalls of this nature is to make sure you have a wide range of demos reading your script.
...what qualifies as misogyny in this context? thanks
... without getting into details of a script I recently read, I will just say that every woman in the script is portrayed as a weak sex object. Most were killed within 2 pages of their intro. So not cool. That's just one example.

THIS IS NOT A FEMINIST ISSUE

The concern of the screenwriter is writing a great story and a great script and then selling that.  Shallow stereotypes of any kind do not make for either great stories or great scripts.  And these days, your script can easily get a pass just for this reason. 

In a related thread, Small Note for Women TV Writers, the OP makes the point that women seem to be writing about some fantasy uber-woman and always making her the Hero of the series.

It's so refreshing to see a woman writer who doesn't have a woman as the main character, I can't even tell you.

Everyone needs to write people.  I think that's the lesson here.  This isn't about gender.  It's just about good writing.