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)

Amerika Square

A new consultant job. I'm helping Yannis Sakaridis with the script for his first feature film. He made a successful short film, "The Truth", which he and the film company Argonauts are developing into a feature. They presented the project at Thessaloniki International Filmfestival's Crossroads - a forum for hooking up projects with international co-producers - and the project picked up interest as well as a prize (Yes, they also have festival prizes for projects in development).

So far we have had one real meeting (excluding the initial "to see if we can work together"-meeting) and we have covered the fundamentals: Type of film (thriller with a social aspect, realism, comedy=ends in harmony), Basic conflict (compassion vs. greed), the main character's core characteristics (wants justice, needs love, strong compassion, weakness short tempered).

Yannis is going to the Berlin festival next week to do the network-thing and follow up on the interest from European producers. So we are working intensely on getting him ready to present the story as clearly and convincingly as possible in all those meetings. I guess he will also be seeing a lot of films - and drink a lot of drinks - and wearing a lot of clothes as Berlin can get pretty cold in winter. Ah, Berlin is such a great city. Wish I was going.

A Four Act Structure

An entrance prayer: There are no golden standards and this model is by no means 'final'.
It is presented as a fairly basic model, from which variations can be extrapolated. It establishes a reference for talking and thinking about structure. It draws upon elements from Syd Field, The Danish Film School, Ingolf Gabold and Joseph Campbell.
Each act has a general purpose to play in the drama. As beginning and ending of acts, we have the major plot points, which creates essential developments for the main conflict and character(s) and the structural foundation of the drama, in terms of both rhythm and narrative logic. Each major plot point has a specific function to perform in the transition from act to act, propelling the drama towards its conclusion. The descriptions of these functions are approximations and you should feel free to re-think your perception of these functions for every drama. First a graphic representation:



Act One
The initial act serves to introduce conflicts, characters, locations and thematic elements. As a rule of thumb, by the end of first act all relevant components of the drama need to have been introduced in one way or the other. This act sets up the game and the basic rules of the drama and in the following acts you cannot change these or introduce new elements. Unless you have a very clever way to circumvent the rule, take it very literal. It can even become an extremely creative limitation and lead you to some real innovative plotting. The first act should build up, step by step, to the Initiating Plot Point, which is the 'real' beginning of the drama.

The Pitch
This plot point is also sometimes called The Hook and takes place in the very opening of a drama. The purpose is to pitch the whole drama in one scene or short sequence and to plant a hook of curiosity in the audience. 'To pitch' means to strike the basic tones (comedy/tragedy) of the drama, to lightly touch your main conflict, but in a discreet way so it doesn't come off as being forced upon the audience. Rather it should sneak in below the radar of consciousness. Really elegantly structured dramas are also able to hint at the eventual conclusion of the main conflict. There are countless ways to pitch your whole drama in one scene. In the opening of Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' the main character, Max von Sydow's religious knight, is confronted with Death, who has come to take his life, but the knight tempts Death into a game of chess - and if the knight wins, Death will let him free. At it's core the film is about faith and the search for a meaning in a life where the plague, religious zealots and the baser instincts rule. The use of Death personified as an unsentimental figure and the chess game as a central metaphor and plot device pitches this main conflict elegantly.
The hooking is perhaps of lesser importance, because, as the drama has just begun, the audience are naturally curious, but applying a hook further strengthens this. 'To hook' can be achieved by the surprising and unexpected nature of the opening. It could simply be the novelty of what we are seeing, like an odd pair of lovers sitting in a diner, with him reassuring his wide-eyed, nervous lover of the simplicity and brilliance of his plan to rob both customers and the diner, and just as they spring into action, we cut away from the scene - leaving the audience with the question of what the outcome will be - a prologue with a cliffhanger, brilliant plotting. An example of a very standardized 'hook' is the usual opening of a Bond movie, which always features an over-the-top action sequence, but exactly because we know what to expect, it doesn't really work properly as a hook.

The Call
The Call to Adventure is a concept from Joseph Campbell, who describes it as an early moment in countless myths and fairy-tales, where the hero has not yet begun his or her proper quest. An event takes places that eventually will make the hero leave the safety of home. It is an event that will lead more or less directly to the Initiating Plot Point. In 'Silence of the Lambs' the FBI-student Clarice Starling is sent on a small errant by her future FBI-boss, to conduct a standardized interview and observation of the jailed serial killer Hannibal Lecter. It seems no more than an interesting school-assignment for a talented student, but it leads to the Initiating Plot Point, when Clarice finds a clue to hunt for Buffalo Bill, the present serial killer at large. The Call can also more directly lead into the real drama, like in fairy-tales when a young man sets out to marry the princess early on, but then again, more often than not, there is a deeper mystery or challenge to be overcome, which is not revealed at the time of The Call. Nine minutes into Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' Jof, the traveling actor, has a vision of Virgin Mary with the Jesus child, and he hurries to tell his wife the good news, but she hardly believes him, but Jof nevertheless maintains an almost naive belief in the promise of a better future for their own son. This event is the film's Call to Adventure, in an almost classic mythical form, as it has the form of a vision - something which is not the adventure itself, but a promise of things to come.

After The Call the main character(s) will be involved with the activities set in motion by it. Often it takes the form of a new opportunity - a new job, a new person (to hate or fall in love with), a journey - something which alters the usual balance of things in the main character(s) world. Before The Call we might have been at 'Home', the initial location of the main character(s), but now we meet the real arena of the drama. Clarice Starling leaves the FBI-academy to seek out the truth about serial killers - and the prison dungeon where Hannibal Lecter is held, is just the first of such 'gothic' arenas in which she will confront him and later on, Buffalo Bill. In 'The Seventh Seal' the knight and his squire sets of on a journey through a swedish landscape plagued by death and religious madness - and we sense that this is 'the location' for the remainder of the drama - it is a 'road movie' and so we have an expectation of ever changing locations, but which are all essential the same: On the road in an existential emptiness.

The Initiating Plot Point
This is the transition between act one and two and initiates the real objective of the main character(s). Thelma and Louise left home for a road trip without any irritating men, but when they kill a man to prevent a rape, their real object becomes finding an escape from the punishment and tyranny of men, In this way the drama is transformed from being an ordinary story of two women looking for a little time off and into an existential struggle for freedom and survival. Campbell would call this plot point 'the threshold' because it leads the 'hero' from the world of the mundane and initiates them to the more mystical, unpredictable and dangerous regions of reality.
In 'The Seventh Seal' The Knight opens his heart to a robed figure, he believes to be a priest, and reveals that he is playing chess with Death, but with the only purpose of gaining enough time to do at least one single meaningful action in his otherwise meaningless life, and just as he has explained how he is planning his chess moves, the robed figure reveals himself to be Death. Cheated in this way, it becomes clear that The Knight is in for a very difficult game, but instead of losing faith, he realizes the miracle of being alive and able to challenge the meaningless of Death. This happens 21 minutes into the film and reveals the deeper level of the plot, not to cheat Death in a game of chess, but to defy Death by doing a meaningful action. In 'Silence of the Lambs' FBI-student Clarice Starling finds a clue to the identity of serial killer Buffalo Bill and becomes a part of the investigating team. In 'Thelma and Louise' the two women avert a rape by killing the man and now has to flee the law to find freedom.
So The Pitch and The Call hints at, or sets up a superficial version of the real plot, which will be revealed in the Initiating Plot Point, where the real objective has to be established.
This plot point sets the course directly for the conclusion of the drama - when the object has been obtained or lost, we know the drama has reached its end. It might sound simplistic, and it truly is, but simple is the greater art. Complexity is the multitude of simple things interconnected.

Act Two
In the second act we get into the conflicts of the drama, as well as nuances and new aspects of the elements presented in the first act. Because the main character(s) have found, realized and begun a quest for the true objective, they will now enter into conflicts with the forces standing in their way. Often they will work dedicated towards the objective, only meeting moderate opposition and making good progress - but only seemingly as they are only touching the surface of the real conflict, and hence the opposition is not strong, yet. We have left act one's introductions, but we might still be able to sneak in some additional introduction of elements, as we are still exploring the universe of the drama.
Especially throughout act two and three it can be useful to sequence the action and establish minor plot point as transitions for the sequences - depending on the type of drama. The idea is to establish a structural logic which work with the genre and content of your drama. For an externally plot driven crime mystery, the easy way to sequence and add additional plot points is to work along the lines of 'secrets' or 'clues' to be discovered. A fairy-tale-type of drama, the typical lay-out of act two could use the traditional series of tests to be passed - there would typically be three tests, so one could perhaps be the entrance to the Initiating Plot Point, one could fall midway through second act and the last would be give access to the Turning Point. Are we dealing with a theme-driven plot, like in The Seventh Seal, the plot points should relate more to the theme, than to strictly following the characters' external plot - although we still need the plot points for those, emphasis should be on the thematic conflict. Often a theme driven drama will have a broader circle of characters - and even though we want to follow all of them throughout the drama, the important plot points might be associated with different characters at different times.

Turning Point
This plot point has to make things drastically worse and more difficult for the main character(s). Often this is achieved by some kind of reversal (thus the name, turning point). In The Sixth Sense we learn that the child is really haunted by ghosts - they are real and not just his imagination. The world as we know it is turned upside down. Thelma and Louise gets robbed of all their money (by young and seemingly innocent Brad Pitt) and their plans of escaping to Mexico suffers a huge blow - but more importantly the event also reverses the balance between Thelma and Louise, where the older and more mature Louise so far has taken charge and responsibility, she now breaks down, and Thelma, realizing her responsibility for the theft, steps up and for the first time takes charge of her own (and Louise's) life.
The technical purpose of The Turning Point is to set the stage for the third act, which is characterized by serious complications to reaching the objective. The plot point can have a number of functions apart from introducing a new level of danger to the main objective. In general it is a good practice to examine in how many ways relations, perspectives, themes or any other element can be 'turned 180 degrees'.
Beyond the 'turn' there are other ways to think of this mid point of a drama. Personally I like to think of it as the beating heart of the drama. Even though the later climax and resolution is the most intense and important moment of the drama, at this mid point we could be closest to the emotional core. 'Silence of the Lambs' has a strong emotional moment right at the middle, when Clarice interviews Hannibal the last time, in secret, under time pressure, as she and her team has been taken of the case. In order to get the information from him, she so desperately needs, she has to subject to his psychoanalytic questioning, which leads her to reveal her inner, driving motive, a childhood experience of a deep existential nature: How she was not able to save a single lamb from the slaughter, the confrontation as an innocent child with the brutal realities of life. Hannibal savors her honesty and innocence, rewards her with a clue by handing her back the case file, and then, most importantly, for a moment their hands touch and his finger caress her hand, in a gesture bestowed with conflicting emotion - the love and approval of the father, the forbidden erotic love and innocence touched by corruption. This is a huge pay-off for which the drama has made a lot of set-ups - all the warnings against letting her guard down around Hannibal ("He'll get inside your head"), all the shots establishing Clarice as a lonely, single woman up against a world of men, the constant focus on sexual desire as the prime motivator for all behavior and her own childhood story of loosing her father.
Joseph Campbell refers to this moment as either 'world navel' or 'the belly of the beast', the place where the hero finds 'the elixir', the object which can restore balance to the world.

Act Three
The purpose of act three is to complicate the conflict to a point where it appears almost unsolvable. And that point is of course called Point of No Return. In act three there is absolutely no room and time for introduction or exploration. The pace has to pick up, the intensity must rise.
Going along with Campbell the job of the hero is to find the way of applying the elixir to restore balance to the world. This effort will be met by obstacles.
Usual this happens because the world around the main character(s) reacts. Things have been set in motion in the previous acts and are now being released into a re-action. Thelma and Louise are now not only wanted by the police, they are being hunted. Hannibal escapes captivity in an orgy of violence and the new serial killer, Buffalo Bill, is getting ready to skin his new victim - time is running out for Clarice.
As with act two, it can be a good idea to break down this act in shorter sequences, often two or three, each with their own mini-objective - a problem or conflict to be solved.
In conjunction with The Point of No Return there might often be one of two things happening. The False Harmony, in which something happens that makes things appear to be resolved without too much of a struggle. In 'Silence of the Lambs' a lucky break in the hunt for Buffalo Bill has given the FBI the identity and address of the killer - Clarice is not needed for the take down and is assigned to some routine task - everything seems back to normal. Or the opposite can happen, The Moment of Absolute Despair, in which it seems there is no way out of the mess and the hero might as well give up. In "The Sixth Sense" the child therapist has no luck in reaching the boy and he questions his own ability to the point where he is ready to give up.

The Point of No Return
Named so because this is when the main character(s) finally get it - they have to confront the dragon, there is no way around it - from now on everything leads directly towards the end. No time for deroutes, second-thoughts or anything but staying focused on the reaching the conclusion. In 'Last Tango in Paris' the Marlon Brando-character confronts his dead wife, which opens up the possibility for him to go after his real objective - a new love (and life). In the Sixth Sense, the therapist confronts his past in the form of audio tapes from the sessions with the boy he couldn't save and he finds a clue which convinces him that ghosts are real - and so now he can go after his real objective - to redeem himself by saving the haunted boy.

Act Four
The general purpose of act four is to quickly escalate the conflict until it reaches the fullest possible climax. This escalation often falls in a succession of quick steps of the protagonist(s) moves and the antagonist's counter-moves until they face each other. In Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling stumbles upon Buffalo Bill at his house, she tries to arrest him, but he escapes into his underground dungeon, where she has to follow alone and without back-up. She finds the abducted woman, but he cuts the lights. In the darkness, he closes in on her using his night-vision goggles, toys with her, decides to shoot her, but the sound of his gun cocking alerts her and she shoots him. In Last Tango in Paris the Brando-character spends a night wooing his lover into embracing a real relationship with him, to which she is tempted, but as the morning breaks, so does her courage and she runs away from him. He gives chase and catches up with her in her parent's apartment. Just as he thinks everything is OK, she turns on him with her father's gun and convincing herself of a story that he came to rape her, she shoots him dead.

The Main Scene.
This is the scene leading directly up to the conclusion of the drama. In this scene the basic conflict of the drama is exposed most clearly and strongly. In Last Tango we see how the Brandon-character reaches out for love without fear and how fear of love makes her invent a story of rape. In Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling fully becomes the object of a man's twisted desire, as Buffalo Bill toys with her in the dungeon, she is the lamb ready to be slaughtered, but exactly because the man believes himself to be superior and takes his time cocking his gun, she, not giving in to fear, has the time to shoot him. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest McMurphy, the Jack Nicholson character, confronts Sister Ratched as she shows her full demonic and manipulative powers over the patients, and he ends up trying to strangle her. The main scene often take the appearance of the major climax, but doesn't necessarily involve the real resolution of the conflict.

Resolution.
Here we get the consequences of the main scene, both relating to the fundamental conflict of the dramatic universe and the main character's conflict. McMurphy gets the electro-shock and is turned into a vegetable (tragedy), but Chief inspired by his example and sacrifice flees the institution to gain his freedom (comedy). Oh, and remember when I refer to tragedy it means disharmony and comedy means harmony, not necessarily funny. In Silence of the Lambs the girl is saved and Clarice graduates as an FBI-agent (comedy) ready to work for her mentor, but Hannibal is still free (tragedy) although he promises never to hurt Clarice (comedy), he will kill and eat Chilton, the obnoxious/narcissistic psychiatrist (comedy? Tragicomedy?).

Connecting the dots

Introduction to structure

David Mamet likens the well structured script to an airplane. If it has been constructed well, it will fly under the guidance of a pilot. If it hasn't, it will at one point or the other crash. This is what happens when we halfway through a film or play begin to loose interest, because the plot logic and/or emotional logic doesn't lead us on towards a satisfying conclusion. Because we get confused, irritated or in other words, we are simply not persuaded by the universe of the drama. This has a lot to do with structure.

There is no single way to structure your drama. Although Mamet's airplane metaphor is not wrong, it points too much in the direction of an exact science. Rather than linear engineering the structure of drama is more of an organic thing. It should change according to the purpose and material. Any idea of 'the ideal model' for structuring scripts is nonsenses. It is like in nature, where there is vast variety of living creatures, yet there are general principles and formative patterns which always apply. And as the first principle for life is the existence of carbon-oxide, the first principle for drama is the existence of conflict.

One of the reasons to work with structure is to have a way to simplify the complex universe of your drama. The most simple thing we can say about structure is: A drama has a beginning, a middle and an end. These three parts should be connected, so one leads to the next. It is like a fish, it has a head, body and tail. As with the fishes, you can find them in many different proportions and colours, yet like the fishes, if they don't fit well together, the drama will not swim well.

This leads us intuitively to a three-act structure. An opening act to introduce characters, conflicts, locations and themes. A middle act to further develop these with complications, nuances and additional layers to the point where everything is such as mess, that something needs to be done. The final act do exactly that: it cleans up the mess (more or less) and conclude the drama's fundamental conflict. The idea of the three-act structure is very strong and widely used, both in theater and film.

Famous script gurus like Syd Field have made their models based upon the classic three act-model, inspired especially by Henrik Ibsen, the grandfather of modern dramatic structure. I don't believe these structural models are artificial inventions per se. They try to sum up our experience of how the human mind understands and interprets events unfolding in time. As all attempts at summing up experience, they are however never complete. When you examine some of these contemporary film models, like Syd Fields, they are actually four-act models, because the middle act takes up double as much time as the first and last act. So it makes more sense to call it a four act model, at least to me.

The sense is that each act, as a unit of the drama, should be similar to the others in respect to length and the basic purpose of moving us from one point and to the next. The sense is not only logical, but has to do with a sense of rhythm. Drama is in its form strongly related to music, much more than it is to literature, because as with music, drama is played out in real time. It takes place in front of us, moment by moment. I cannot stress how important it is to grasp this difference, to understand the importance of structure.

Another way to think of structure is to compare it to the structure of language. When we form sentences, our language has structural rules which helps us understand the meaning of the sentence. These rules are more or less flexible. Even though it is normal in English to begin a sentence with a personal pronoun, followed by a verb and conclude with a noun, like He walked home, we can play around with these rules, using a poetic license, like Home he walked. Exactly because the last sentence varies from the standard rules, it gives us a different impression. The first sentence seems to simply state the fact. In the second, the words home and walked are lend more significance and could for example carry a meaning that he longed for home and it was a very long walk.

We also know from language that rhythm and length plays a vital role in conveying the sense of what is being said. Urgent or commanding communication needs short staccato-like sentences. Pleasant conversation relies on harmonic structure with longer, developed sentences and a mellow rhythm.
In the structure of a drama, these basic insights from language applies. The sequence, the lenght and the rhythm are as important for the perception of the drama, as the actions taking place are in themselves.

The point is to structure your drama in a way confluent with its nature. To select a number of acts by which you separate different parts of the drama. Depending on the length and nature of your material it can be any reasonable number of acts. A short film of 10-15 minutes or a short theater play of 20-30 minutes normally consist of only one act. Most feature films running 90 minutes or more usually have four acts. Each act should be like a drama unto itself, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The end of each act functions as the transition into the following act. The transition between acts should be major plot points, which reveal crucial new information, raise new questions and add another level of pressure to the main character(s) situation. The major plot points are of the greatest importance, as they give us the push forward, deeper into the drama, and they should always be integral with the drama's and the characters' main conflict.

Acts can also be broken down into separate units. If an act has a length of, say, 30 pages, then it could consist of three sequences of scenes. The sequences should more or less be of equal length and also have a beginning middle and an end, working as a mini-act in themselves. Scenes are the smallest dramatic unit and are of course also structured in the same way, beginning, middle and end, but unlike the act and the sequence, we get to play around with the length of the scenes. Normally they can be from just below half a page and up to around seven pages in an ordinary film script - with the standard lenght being around one to three pages for contemporary films.

The number of pages are crucial to the process of structuring a script and this is one of the reasons why the film industry is almost religious about using a standard lay-out format for scripts, making the page count reliable - and close to one minute of film per page. Before actually writing your script, when planning the acts and major plot points, as well as making an outline for the sequence of scenes within the acts, you can't be sure of the exact length, but you can, surprisingly well, make an estimate of how long each scene should be, giving you a total count that lets you affirm your structural ideas.

Some writers begin to feel mightily uncreative with all this talk of structure and page counting. That's perfectly understandable, but it is a very necessary discipline to master to create scripts, especially for a feature film script. The longer, the more need for structure. This is for example why comedians, making their first feature film, often fail as they don't haven't acquired the grasp of the feature films need for over-arching dramatic structure. A few writers have an innate sense of structure and need not think too much about it - the structure emerges by itself from their writing. Others need to do the math from the ground up, while most of us are somewhere in between, switching between the intuitive and planned.

In my experience, many writers of drama that have shortcomings, have them exactly because they haven't learned to love to play around with structure. We easily become too focused on the story itself, and forget the equally important part: How we tell it. Anyone who has ever failed in telling a joke knows exactly how important the 'how' is. The sequence of the information given, the tone and the timing. To master the structure of drama is not unlike mastering the structure of a joke. Its all about knowing what the joke is, how to build up expectation and then play against it. In postings to come, we'll take a look at the specifics of script structure.

One to One

The dead-end-argument called reality

Strangely enough, when discussing the construction of a script, you can often meet arguments based upon reality: "This would never happen in reality". Of course the argument is almost always right. It wouldn't happen, at least not in reality as we have experienced it. Maybe it could happen or maybe not. The argument is despite its relative correctness, more or less invalid when discussing the construction of a fictitious script.

We are not trying to construct reality. If we were scientists trying to construct a computer simulation of reality, it would be a valid argument. We are trying to represent reality in an artistic form (yes, even when making mainstream entertainment). 'Represent' means that we somehow translate our experience of reality into a different form than reality itself. It is not 1:1 - not even in so-called realistic films. If it were 1:1 it would actually be reality. And we, the creators, would be God.

The argument should be: "This is not convincing" or "The audience will be lost" or something similar. And the argument doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have a man falling 50 meters down to a concrete surface and survive. It all depends on how important that action is for you. If you as a creator want this to happen, then the only question should be, how do you pull it of in a convincing way. Not if it could happen or has ever happened in reality.

The question if something is convincing or not has a lot more to do with your plotting, structure and the fictional universe you are establishing than it has to do with reality. In a super-hero or a cartoon universe characters can easily fall extraordinary lengths and survive intact. In the seemingly realistic french film "Small Change" a child falls from the 4th or 5th floor of a building and survives without a scratch - and although the universe of the film seems realistic, this event is convincing, because the whole rhythmic build-up to the event and a certain lyrical tone underscoring the seemingly real world, allows us to experience the survival of the child as a poetic miracle.

Reality should never be a dead-end, a stone blocking your path to fulfilling your narrative and dramatic desire. It can be an inspiration. The reality of the audience is the reality you have to struggle with, because if you can't convince them of entering your dramatic universe, suspending belief and enjoying the dramatic events you have cooked up, then it is completely irrelevant how much you have researched and obeyed the real reality.

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.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

The principle of economics (unity+story)

This is about spending the least to gain the most. And this is a really beautiful principle, because it not only help you to increase the chances of your script being produced as it will be a more financial appealing project, but also because the construction and cohesiveness of the script will be more convincing.
It’s about using the same locations, characters and ideas over and over again, and thus it goes hand in hand with the principle of unity, if it’s not really just another way of looking at the same fundamental quality of drama.
It also relates to the principle of story, because you will focus on being economical in starting it, developing it and ending it, meaning that when you introduce a character, you have to ask where he is going and where he is ending up. Neither leaving him as an unfinished story or over-story him in different directions.
Every time we introduce something new in a script it will cost us – time, money and energy. We will spend an amount of the script’s time in presenting the location, character or idea. We will spend production money on moving to a new location/creating an extra set-piece, hiring another actor or simply shooting/rehearsing something extra. And even more importantly we will spend the audiences’ mental energy on grasping this new locale, person or idea. On the other hand when we are using the same characters, locations or ideas, by elaborating on them, extending them, we add to them, and thereby increase our investment in them. We will be able to develop and show new aspect or depths, without spending as much time, money or energy, as we would have by introducing a new. Unless you have good reason, you should never introduce a new character, location or idea. Always check your script – as you develop it – to see if you can merge characters, re-use locations and streamline or connect your ideas into one.
It is also beneficial for the director, especially when we talk films or TV, as he or she will save energy (by not spending it on moving to new locations, dealing with new characters/actors) and can focus on getting the most out of the script in terms of acting and staging.
Many scripts look good for the first 30-60 pages, but then when closing time begins after the mid-point, they fail to do so, and this problem be could solved if this principle was adhered to. It happens either because they have introduced too many elements and forget or are unable to finish them, or because they keep introducing new elements.