Don't answer that question

Writing dialogue many writers have a habit of making their characters answer every question another character may ask. You'll also often see this habit in improvisation with actors. It's not a very good habit in a dramatic context.

I'm not saying questions shouldn't be answered at all, but often – also in real life – it becomes interesting, when questions are not answered – for the very simple reason, that it generates a conflict. 

Character A wants to know, what Character B had for dinner, but B ignores the question and talks about the weather. Even in this very ordinary situation, as an audience I will begin to wonder if B is hiding something, how A feels about getting the question ignored, and what A will do to get the answer; I'm engaged in the conflict and it's outcome.

This little trick is also something which could save any of the unbelieveable many exposition-scenes, where only information is being narrated. Come on, dear writers, it's easy to add a conflict. Just have A make a question, and then B doesn't answer, but delivers a bunch of information.

What was your question again? Well, see you later.

Picasso's Desire and Fear

”Then I understood what painting really meant. It’s not an aesthetic process, It’s a form of magic that interposes itself between us and the hostile universe, a means of seizing power by imposing form on our terrors as well as on our desires;” - Picasso

Picasso states clearly – not only what painting is about – but also what all art is about. Specifically we come to the drama to experience in action, the forms of those terrors and desires that cannot be expressed in plain words.

For some years now this has been one of my most precious quotes. We make drama out of conflicts. They arise from the clashes between fear and desire. It is where I turn to when I am stuck in my process. It is my constant touchstone, where I test my ideas. Are they born out of my desire? Out my fears?

This dichotomy of what we want and what we run away from is engraved in our two basic nervous systems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. They function in opposition to each other. This opposition can be understood as both complementary and antagonistic. The sympathetic system is responsible for our 'flight-or-fight'-reactions. When fear strikes us, it will pump out adrenalin, it will withdraw blood from the surface of our skin, it will accelerate our heart-rate and make us breathe quicker and more shallow. The parasympathetic system takes care of all things pleasurable. It will relax our muscles, send blood to the surface of our skin (making it more sensitive), make our breathing deeper, stimulate digestion and prepare our sexual organs for love-making.

This is our hard-wiring as organisms. Our ancient battlefield of internal conflicts and by proxy our external conflicts. Tune into it and let it be your guide to drama.

Bravo Bale!!

The internet toilet-tubes are overflowing with pro et contra Christian Bale's outburst (well, tirade is maybe more like it) against the DoP on set of Terminator. Here's my 7 and a half cent (not american cents, european cents, that is).

Caveat: No one really know the full context, except to a certain degree the involved persons.

Blame McG
Don't blame Bale, blame McG: Flaming Bale for this on the basis of the recording is ridiculous as the guy supposed to take responsibility for the situation, the director, clearly doesn't do it. On the the recording the director, McG, when asked by Bale to pitch in, just flummox out of being put on the spot by the time-honored "I didn't see it" (Like one of the famous three monkeys). Even very good and professional actors can loose it - and then you, the director, must pick up the ball. McG was even thrown the ball by Bale, but didn't want to catch it - "I didn't see it" - come on, McG.

Neurotic Numb-skull
Please, please, I beg you all, stop the neurotic I will never see a Christian Bale film again, he needs anger management, he is a psycho, he is unprofessional and whatever else scaredity-analysis and conclusion you believe is the truth. The thing here is that people are way too frightned of aggression and conflict. You know what? Film and theater - the dramatic arts - they are all about conflict. We love to watch them because most of us are such huge chickens in real life. In his outburst at the DoP, Bale is actually trying to achieve something, he is not just blowing off steam (but he is doing that too). All the answers of the DoP are vague, non-commital, responsibility-avoiding. Bale is trying to make him stand up and be a man about the situation - not to act like a typical neurotic conflict-suppressing, numb-skull. I've been in similar situations where the only tool to get through to some people is the sledgehammer - then later, when you have broken down the neurotic defences, you can have a nice, reasonable talk. Hell, I've even done the same to a producer who kept displacing her responsibility. Sometimes you just have to call people on their shit in a very loud way, or else they'll keep fucking you in their polite, smiling, nice-talking ways.

So long live Bale! Go see all his movies (if they are any good). Find your own balls.

(And what has this got to do with scriptwriting? Its all about conflict)

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The principle of uncertainty

“It is difficult to make accurate predictions, especially about the future” – Storm P.

Drama is exciting because we don’t know what will happen in the next moment. We are observing a conflict playing out in the moment, but we don’t know how the conflict will be resolved. Which one of the opposing forces win? Is the conflict of such a nature that only one of them can win? Or will they find a compromise, or maybe even the unknown, unexpected solution that will fully satisfy each of their wants or needs? As stated in the first principle this is the engine of drama, and the derived principle of uncertainty is a focus for one aspect of this. The uncertainty.
It is an evident fact of life that we can’t predict the future. The unexpected will happen, coming at us from an unseen direction. How we handle the unexpected when it arrives shows a lot about our character. It is the moment of truth, when we are taken by surprise and can’t easily hide behind careful laid plans or well-meaning attitudes. Do we run and hide? Do we face the difficult choice? Can we act with integrity?
Especially the main plot points of your drama should be dominated by the unexpected, because the plot points are there to dramatically change the direction, the stakes or the perception of what is going on. Nothing does this better than the unexpected. From all the plays and films we have watched these are the moments we remember. In Silence of the Lambs the initiating plot point happens when Clarice Starling for the first time is interviewing Hannibal Lecter, and we unexpectedly meet a highly intelligent and civilized serial killer, and at first she doesn’t succeed in getting information from him, but when the prisoner in the next cell, Multiple-Miggs, unexpected throws sperm at her, it also offends Hannibal and in return he gives her a clue to the Buffalo Bill-case. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeos aggressive monologue of despair as he kills Tybalt is the unexpected midpoint, which suddenly changes all plans and our sense of hope for the lovers. In Last Tango in Paris the Marlon Brando-characters confrontation with his dead wife, suddenly revealing to us the depth of his despair and the reason behind his almost nihilistic behaviour, is the point of no return. In The Sixth Sense the point of resolution comes with the unexpected realization that the main character has been dead throughout most of the movie.
How do we create the unexpected? First of all you have to constantly challenge your own confirmed beliefs. You think you know what will happen in the next scene. You think you know how your main character will convince his father to let him borrow the car. You think you know what is good and what is bad. You shouldn’t. Any kind of preconception you have about your drama should be open to a new interpretation, to taking a new direction and to reversals of beliefs. Challenge yourself by questioning these firm ideas. Play with them – the beautiful game of ‘what if…’
When you meet negative response to your script, maybe the real reason is that your script is too predictable. Mind you, I am not at all advocating for a haphazard story, because to surprise convincingly demands a lot of logic. You have to build an expectation and at the same time prepare for the ‘hidden’ logic of its reversal. See again the initiating plot point of Silence of the Lambs. In the previous scenes two clear and obvious expectations have been build up. Two men of authority have stated that Hannibal Lecter is impossible to get any information from. And one suggests that maybe Clarice can entice Hannibal because she is a woman. Clarice fails because he is too clever, but when Multiple-Miggs surprises Clarice (and us) with his sperm-assault, this unexpectedly offends Lecter’s sense of courtesy and manners and as a reparation he offers a clue. But it still seems convincing and believable that he would act like this, because we have just seen him as a man who values courtesy, who likes sophisticated behaviour, but it has been played out at a more subconscious level, and therefore still comes as a surprising turn.
If you always play on two horses, if you let interpretation remain open, if there is value on both sides, then you have a general approach to maintaining uncertainty and finding the unexpected. Even the most negative character has to have something positive, the most necessarily successful action needs a chance to go awry, or we will be bored, because as the Germans put it so well: “Mann merkt den Absicht und wird verstimmt” or in English: “You sense the intention and become resigned”.
I can recommend two ways to train your sense of scenario – that the characters and the action is a dynamic field in fluctuation, where we never know what happens next. It is all about playing. Get together with some actors and play around with some of your scenes, give changing directions about what could happen in the scenes, about the character’s intentions and also let the actors offer their take, their interpretations and improvisations. Or get together with some friends and play role-playing games, yes, that’s right, games like Dungeon&Dragons, only try and find some better ones than that old horse. There is a bunch of more dramatic, narrative, character-oriented rpg-games on the net, to be downloaded for free or bought cheaply. Play around with some stories in this form, and see how it is when you do storytelling with an interactive, participating audience.

OUT OF TWO OPPOSED, A THIRD WILL RISE

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

"Conflict is the beginning of consciousness" - M. Esther Harding

Before anything else, we need to understand who and what we are - ‘we’ being the drama. A way to understand yourself is to look at what separates you from the others – what separates drama from the other major genres – prose, poetry and music? Each major genre has a fundamental nature – the core strength – what it’s all about. I believe drama is about conflict, the moment – the stuff that makes us ask, “what will happen next?” This is the core value of film and theatre – the drama. Conflicts. Who will win the conflict? How? And what will then happen? This is obvious in mainstream films and theater, but it also goes for art house films and off-off Broadway productions – only maybe in a more subtle way.

The other major genres also make use of conflict, yes, that’s correct, but let’s take prose as an example. This is the most obvious mirror for drama as this genre also deals mainly with stories. What really makes a novel great is the reflection – it’s ability to take a step back and reflect upon the moment instead of being immersed in it. To go inside people’s heads and let us listen in on their thoughts. The ability – by reflection - to connect events in time and space that are not otherwise connected. And to give meaning to events, places and persons only by description (which is reflection) is the strength of prose. We can also use reflection in drama, but if we rely on it as a major quality, the audience seems to loose interest. This has something to do – I think – with the fact that the film or the play is taking place in front of our eyes right here and now. It is unfolding in time second by second – and we watch it almost as we would watch real life. We have no time or patience for too much reflection. It takes us out of the moment.

This blog is not about the other genres, and so the analysis of their basic nature is not that well developed – but let’s say poetry is about feeling and music is about emotion - the difference being that the feeling of poetry is about a state, where the emotion of music is about a flow. So if you want to give a word for the nature of drama in the same manner, it could be ‘will’. Drama is about the will, because a character’s will to achieve an objective eventually lead to conflict with other characters or the environment.

This is the first principle of drama. The will of the character leads to conflict. This is what creates drama. This is where it all begins. Don’t ever forget that. It will save you every time you are stuck with a problem. Every time. Don’t underestimate this. It is always about the will of the character and the conflict. This is the fundamental principle of drama, so this is the thing you should check every time you are stuck. Again: Every time. Yes, I repeat this because I have seen in workshops, as a consultant and in my own work, how easy it is to forget this very simple thing. To become entangled with more complex ideas, the models, the theory, the psychology or whatever else we may use as tools when we are stuck with a problem. Because the very nature of drama is about the will of the character and the derived conflicts, then more often than not, this is were the problem and solution is found.
By stating the first principle in this way, I also take side in the old question: What is most important, the plot or the characters? The logic answer to this question must be: The characters.

The plot, and the plotting you do when creating a script, is of course immensely important. But the moment you say that the plot is more important than the characters, you will end up – to some degree – making the characters behave like marionettes to suit the needs of the plot – and thereby bereaving them their true will – their autonomy. But if you go the other way, saying characters are the most important, then you are not necessarily endangering the plot – because the plot can spring from the will of the characters, in the actions and conflicts revolving around them. Now remember we are talking principles here. In my experience, when working, there’s nothing so black and white. At moments the plot is most important – when you do the plotting. But the principle matters, because it’s your touchstone. Even when you have a great plot-idea, you want to pull off; you have to be dead sure, that it can be generated by the will of your characters. But on the other hand if you have great characters, you can let the plot be formed by them. This question of character and plot will be re-visited several times later on, when discussing the principle of character and the principle of uncertainty.