Tag Archives: emotion

My Story Theories, Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Is Your Protagonist an Attention-Hooker?

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If we contemplate all of the possible failings a story can have, it becomes clear that nearly every one of them is some permutation of “losing the audience.” Naturally, the surest way to lose them is to never have had them in the first place. Since the spine of most narratives entails a protagonist on a mission with some goal in mind, it’s often said that we have precious few pages to get the reader on board with our hero. If we don’t, then nothing – not the coolest action-packed scenes with the wittiest dialog, the sexiest character dynamics, or the trickiest twists and reversals – will save it from the deep clutching quagmire of audience disinterest. It’s not enough to give them pretty things to look at, they must be along for the ride, with some kind of emotional investment in where it’s all going. That’s what keeps them reading and watching.

So how do we accomplish this? What’s the “right” way to set up the protagonist to get the audience involved? There’s an entire school of screenwriting named after the idea of having your hero “save a cat” as an introduction, to get the reader on their side, but of course, there’s a lot more to this issue than that (which is duly acknowledged in the Save the Cat literature). We’re often told “he/she doesn’t have to be likable, just interesting,” but what does that really mean?

One important component is curiosity. The audience is sitting down to watch the movie after having a great deal of the plot leaked to them through the promotional materials, in addition to their general cinematic expertise of all the genre conventions and tropes. So in those first few minutes (pages), you must fight against this foreknowledge and create some questions in their minds as to how things will turn out for our hero. And their desire for answers should be emotional, not purely intellectual.

Again, how? Well, the good news is – it’s not a rigid rule, but a spectrum of emotional engagement. Your protag just has to be somewhere on it.

The Emotional Engagement Spectrum

This range of interest, to the best of my estimation, runs as follows. At one end is total sympathy, in which we genuinely feel for the protag and want them to beat the odds (another necessary ingredient) and achieve their goal. Toward the middle would be empathetic support, in which we have a fairly shady and corrupt anti-hero who is surrounded by much worse specimens who make him shine by comparison, and we want to see him defeat those whose wickedness outdoes his own and possibly achieve some kind of redemption in the process. At the “low” end would be morbid curiosity. Here we follow a despicable individual with no redeeming moral qualities, but there’s something intriguing about his/ her character in relation to the goal that makes us stick with them to see if they achieve it.

Let’s have a look at some examples:

Andy Dufresne

Why does The Shawshank Redemption – a prison movie with no gunfights, no car chases, and no romance; that was a box office failure – have such enduring appeal? There are many virtues here, not the least of which is Andy Dufresne. Has there ever been a more likable and sympathetic protagonist? Remember how he was set up? When we first lay eyes on Andy, he’s sitting in his car, on the verge of tears, swigging whiskey from the bottle, with a gun. Though an armed man clearly stalking someone, he has the look of prey more than predator. Through a purely visual presentation, we already get that he’s an underdog, pushed to desperate extremes, experiencing what is probably the worst night of his life. All of this is confirmed When we start intercutting with his wife and her lover, and his testimony as he’s tried for murdering them. Here he also shows great poise, earnestness, and even some cleverness as he professes his innocence to the prosecutor. Then he’s condemned to two life sentences. So we have an innocent man, sentenced to a literal lifetime (two!) of undeserved suffering, victimized by a ruthless system in a cruel and unfair world. In less than seven minutes of screentime, we’re on Andy’s side and want to see him get out of this.

Léon

In The Professional (entitled Léon outside the US), the titular assassin is set up with an oft-used (for good reason) technique of giving one impression of the protag, and then spinning it in a new direction to subvert the audience’s budding notions and add texture to the character. Léon is briefed on his next job by his employer Tony. A few seeds are dropped here that Léon isn’t your garden-variety scumbag hitman. While Tony has a bottle of hard stuff in front of him, Léon’s drinking milk, and being told that he’s to give an unreasonable gangster a talking-to on behalf of a more reasonable one. He delivers the message, with a blade to the guy’s throat, after unceremoniously wiping out his entire entourage of bodyguards. Afterward, this certified killing machine goes shopping for more milk, then home where he has an unexpected encounter. He meets his twelve-year-old neighbor Matilda, shows genuine concern for the bruises on her face that obviously came from her abusive father, then subtly agrees to keep her smoking a secret. So we have this fierce and able warrior with a soft spot for his weak, innocent, defenseless acquaintance, whose family, we soon find out, has mounting trouble with some very dangerous characters. Who wouldn’t want to stick around to see how this shakes out?

Louis Bloom

As we creep to the lower end of the spectrum, we come to Lou Bloom of Nightcrawler. His opening few minutes consist of him stealing materials from a construction site, trying to lie his way out of it when he’s caught by a security guard, and then assaulting and robbing the guard. For all we know at this point, we’re meeting the antagonist (which isn’t entirely untrue, I suppose, but that’s for another post). But, once again, things take a turn. When Lou sells his stolen goods to another construction company, he doesn’t just take the money and run. Lou applies for a job. He asks to be taken on as a construction worker right there on the spot, and he pitches himself pretty hard. He even offers to start as an unpaid intern! Of course, his sociopathic tendencies precluded him from spotting the imprudence of offering to work for someone you just sold stolen goods to, and Lou is turned out to seek employment elsewhere. But here we have an unstable criminal, but with a sincere desire to get a legitimate job and earn his keep. We may not particularly like the guy, but anyone can identify with the hopeless feeling that no one will give us a chance to show what we can do (aspiring screenwriters, anyone?), and from here we’re left wondering if Lew will get his chance, and what else he’s willing to do along the way.

Patrick Bateman

And now we come to the bottom of the barrel. How can you get any lower than a narcissistic, psychopathic, Wall Street executive serial killer? I give you Patrick Bateman of American Psycho. After a series of atmosphere shots around a trendy hipster restaurant to set up the world and introduce the theme of runaway shallow materialism, we settle on Patrick and his “friends” gossiping about colleagues, ribbing each other about their personal lives, and generally wallowing in their frivolity. But then we get the first hint of who this story is about when Patrick goes on a sarcastic rant about world social issues that’s ironically intriguing. It shows that he’s completely cognizant of mainstream moral values and willfully rejects them. His only goal seems to be “to fit in” (as he expresses later). Then he truly distinguishes himself among his superficial, borderline sociopathic cohorts when he goes to the bar and issues an extremely graphic death threat to the bartender for refusing his drink voucher and making him pay cash. Here it goes from a question of stability to one of self-control, and we hang with him out of pure morbid curiosity to see how long he can maintain it, what’ll happen when he loses it, and what the ramifications will be in this fairytale world of delusional excess.

Now let’s have a look at a few films that fail at this:

Patience Phillips

Who can forget that 2004 masterpiece known as Catwoman? Sure, it’s easy to scoff in hindsight, but this movie had quite a bit going for it when it was announced; One of the hottest actresses in Hollywood at the time, who had already proven she could blend sexy with badass, would be playing a beloved character from the Batman mythology with a built-in fanbase. What could go wrong? Let me count the ways. We first see Patience floating face-down in a stream, presumably dead. Not a bad opening image, but simultaneously the awfulness starts. We’re treated to a clunky, expository voiceover telling us how unremarkable, monotonous, lonely, and unfulfilled her life was to this point. And this voiceover follows us like a persistent mosquito as we cut back a few days, and Halle’s been outfitted with a painfully unconvincing costume of stringy hair and baggy clashing clothes to show us she’s “nerdy.” Her boss reprimands and nearly fires her, then issues her a tight deadline in a confusingly heavy-handed and unnatural exchange. From here, things really go off the rails. She fails to quiet her noisy neighbors (gee, I wonder if this is a setup for later), then there’s an extremely awkward scene where she climbs out her window to save a stray cat (must’ve read that book) and gets rescued by a handsome cop who thinks she’s a jumper. Then, as she races to meet her deadline, she stumbles into her boss’s secret shady meeting with criminals and “hears too much.” From here, she gets chased and shot at by guards and falls into the chemical waste-filled stream, and we’re back where we started. So, what can we make of this mess? Well, the character did encounter several hardships and misfortunes that put her in a precarious position, but the situations are so oddly illogical and unbelievable that they invoke the wrong kinds of questions from the audience, those dreaded ones that start with “Why would…?” It’s really difficult to develop an emotional connection to a character whose plight 1) is explained rather than shown, and 2) entails a stream of occurrences that defy all logic and aren’t in any way believable, even within the fantasy-based story world.

What? Bad example? Too easy a target? Okay, let’s look at a “film” that succeeded at the box office, but failed at engaging the audience with its protagonist…

Sam Witwicky

Once we finally meet Transformers‘s protagonist, after some prerequisite explosions, Sam is introduced as the quintessential high school geek whose classmates include the jock bully who’s inexplicably fixated on harassing Sam, and who’s dating the hottest girl in the class, who inexplicably can’t take her eyes off Sam. Yawn. Sam’s getting his first car and is upset that his dad’s about to buy him a used one instead of a new Porche. (His dad drives him past the Porsche dealership first as a joke that he totally falls for. Hilarious, right?) Then he “gets chosen” by the 1977 Camaro Transformer Bumblebee, which he drives to a lake party where he runs into Jock Bully and Hot Girl, who inexplicably breaks up with Jock Bully at a really convenient time and Sam is able to give her a ride home. Bumblebee tries to get him laid by breaking down and playing sexy music, Hot Girl offers to fix it, then just bails. That night Bumblebee starts and drives himself, and Sam chases after him, thinking his car’s being stolen, and we’re pretty much off to the races. Here we have a clear-cut case of failure to arouse any curiosity whatsoever. We may enjoy watching Sam’s adventures for the visual spectacle they deliver, but is there anything the least bit intriguing about him that we haven’t seen in a hundred other “high school geek” characters? Not only do we not wonder if he’ll get the girl and save the day, but we can confidently predict an awful lot about how he’ll go about it. So what’s there to care about?

By looking at these examples of failed protagonist setups, a few things become apparent. It’s obvious that these filmmakers understood the necessity and even the conventions of setting up the protagonist, as both of them “went through the motions” of endearing their main characters to the audience, but it takes more than a few cookie-cutter “good deeds” or “underdog” scenes to evoke any kind of emotional concern. We have to ride the line between enough uniqueness to make them feel like a person rather than a plot delivery device and enough relatability and logic to root them in our universal understanding of the human condition. Too easy, right?

So, hopefully, you gleaned something from this take on engaging the audience with the protagonist. As we can see from how these pros pulled it off, there are many ways to skin (or save) this cat. You can go about it by a variety of methods, but two things you can’t do are is skip it, or gloss over it! If you do, you have a dud on your hands (at least from a storytelling standpoint). So what do you think? Got any insights about how to get the reader hooked into the protag’s journey? Let us know below!

Movie Reviews

Halloween 2018 Review: Murder by Exposition

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(Spoiler-free)

Alright, this review is admittedly late to the party, but there is a method to the madness. I’ll get to it shortly…

First of all, this is a solid sequel and worthy addition to the series. It takes a purist approach by following the groundwork laid in Carpenter’s 1978 genre-creating classic; it doesn’t set arbitrary values for itself like “higher body count” or “more exotic killings,” it doesn’t add extraneous and tangential plot detours to desperately contrive enough story for a new movie, and it doesn’t eat up copious screen time pursuing answers to questions that nobody asked.

All in all, the plot, cinematography, score, and acting effectively elevate the film to such levels that they compensate for some of its lesser qualities and make for an enjoyable watch that’s uniquely worthy of a trip to the theater.

Big deal, you say. That reads like all the other reviews for this movie. So now we come to the reason for this one. There’s a screenwriting elephant in the room that no one seems to be talking about, and I think deserves some attention. Many of the script choices in this movie are highly questionable, and some are just plain weird. Some subplots don’t go anywhere, some “twists” are merely plot contrivances to serve convenient ends, etc. but these are relatively negligible and even forgivable as they tend to fall below the line of suspension of disbelief. My beef with the writing lies elsewhere.

More brutal than the stabs to heart or claw hammers to the skull is the dialog that lands squarely on the nose. And I mean RIGHT on it. Let’s look at one brief exchange from the trailer…

When protagonist Laurie confesses that she hoped spree killer Michael Myers would escape from prison, and she’s asked why; her stunning reply is “so I can kill him.” Now, trailer dialog always entails the caveat that we’re hearing it out of context, so we’re left to think that maybe there’s more to this conversation and it’ll play out much better in its totality. But, no. Like virtually everything from Halloween’s trailers, what we see is what we get.

As a friendly reminder, I liked this movie and Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance in it, but there is no measure for the awfulness of this line. The dramatic punch that the circumstances suggest it’s supposed to have falls miserably flat due to its blatancy, total lack of nuance, and utter failure to do its job of delivering the emotion of the character with a certain eloquent poetry that would never be uttered by a gruff old vigilante speaking of shooting a slasher in the face, but is called for in the name of satisfying storytelling.

In the words of Christopher McQuarrie, “think of what you want to say, and then don’t say it.” Dialog is never just a filmmaker-to-audience conduit for story information. It should be an ornament that adds flavor and style to the film, while covertly imparting exposition under the viewer’s nose. There is no more exigent situation for heeding this advice than this moment from Halloween. Countless preferable responses could have elevated that moment into something like what it was intended to be. Let’s explore a few…

Laurie: Do you know that I prayed every night that he would escape?
Hawkins: What the hell did you do that for?
Laurie: So I can kill him. So I can finish what Dr. Loomis started.

Or

Laurie: Because what he needs can’t be done while he’s locked up.

Or

Laurie: Some animals shouldn’t be caged. They have to be put down.

Or

Laurie: The cops and shrinks don’t know how to deal with him. I do.

Or

Laurie: Because he doesn’t deserve to die of old age.

See? None of these are great. They’re the product of about three minutes of brainstorming, but I’ll stand by any one of them as superior to that black hole of subtlety that made it into the film.

After really harping on that one line, I hate to say that it’s not the least bit rare among this film’s dialog. Every spoken word either serves to explain the plot to us or intimate precisely what the character is thinking, leaving absolutely nothing for us to decipher for ourselves. Need further evidence?

Martin: We’re here to investigate a patient that killed three innocent teenagers on Halloween, 1978. He was shot by his own psychiatrist and taken into custody that night, and has spent the last forty years in captivity.

Laurie: I need to protect my family. You have no security system, Karen.
Karen: Mom, you need help!
Laurie: Evil is real.

Laurie: He is a killer. But he will be killed tonight.

It is certainly true that Loomis had some musing monologues in the original that were borderline clunky (and would have been laughable if not delivered by the likes of Donald Pleasance), but that can be at least partially chalked up to breaking in a new kind of character in a new subgenre; and it doesn’t nearly approach the awkwardness with which the speech in the latest installment comes across.

What’s troubling here is that so many other features of the movie are so good, and this one is so easily fixed with some quick and easy tweaking. Oh well, perhaps this will be addressed in the inevitable sequel(s).

What do you think? How did you find the dialog; and the movie in general? Let us know!

Movie Reviews

The Predator Review: They Were Shooting In All Directions… and Hit Nothing

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(Spoiler-free)

There’s no need to go over the amount of anticipation that comes with this one, or the fact that comparisons to the first one are unavoidable. Let’s just get into whether it delivers or not…

Like the original, it opens with a Predator ship entering Earth’s orbit and delivering a creature to the surface. But this time, instead of just a quick shot to set up the premise that we’re dealing with an alien, it’s a more convoluted space chase that ends up being a significant setup for a later reveal. In this intro sequence, we get a lot of stuff happening, information thrown at us that we should store for later, and nothing too engaging in any of it. I’m sorry to say, this is an apt microcosm of the entire movie.

We’re soon introduced to protagonist McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), an Army Ranger sniper who is mid-op with his team, when they get attacked by the recently arrived Predator and we’re given another rushed and crammed sequence in which they essentially try to do the first movie in about two minutes or less. McKenna’s team gets wiped out, which he lets us know he’s upset about in a few lines of dialog, but we didn’t get to know them at all, so who cares?

This necessitates McKenna being brought to a secret government lab full of scientists and mercenaries who have been studying the Predators for years, want to maintain their secrecy, and are wondering why the visits are rising in frequency. He is transferred there with a group of combat-hardened misfit military prisoners that will become his new team, and this is where the wisecracks really start flying, the action set pieces start popping off, and one of the greatest flaws of the movie becomes glaringly obvious….

It’s packed with misfires. The humor doesn’t land, the spectacle doesn’t excite, and the characters don’t draw us in. What’s worse is that it’s made blatantly obvious what we’re supposed to be feeling and when, particularly in a few moments that are intended to be especially dramatic, but it just isn’t happening. Like the acquaintance constantly uttering bad jokes and leaving pauses where you’re expected to laugh, but it just isn’t in you.

The 1987 masterpiece got us attached to seven characters effortlessly in a short helicopter ride, with almost no talking among them. Here we’re introduced by a quick exchange of quips and a bit of clunky exposition, which is usually the kind of setup given to expendable fodder, but in this case we’re actually expected to care what happens to them without any proper emotional foundation.

We have McKenna. He’s tough, and everything he does and says reminds you of that. His kid is part of the story (who admittedly manages not to not be too annoying). He’s a genius, and everything he does and says reminds you of that. Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes is McKenna’s instant best buddy, who has his back, and everything he does and says reminds you of that. Thomas Jane (is wasted) as the crazy guy, and everything he does and says reminds you of that. See a pattern emerging here?

So then we’re onto the main conflict, which involves a Super Predator, because the regular one isn’t formidable enough, more one-liners, explosions, some disturbingly odd-looking CGI, awkward shots (the flat-angle medium shot used to introduce Olivia Munn, the hot, tough lady scientist, is laugh-out-loud-worthy), a lot of plot-convenient occurrences, choices and actions without clear motivations (from humans and extraterrestrials alike), and it all goes by at such breakneck speed that is easily outpaces the audience’s interest.

In the end, we’re left with a wholly unsatisfying mess of a movie, and they also hit us over the head with an asinine politically-charged theme to add insult to injury. However, a few witty digs inspire some chuckles (especially from Keegan-Michael Key), and some actions scenes rise to the level of “that was kinda cool, I guess,” but that’s about as good as it gets here. It’s not a pleasant things to report, but my bleak predictions from the trailer came true, and then some. This does more (or less) than not live up to the hype. It’s likely to disappoint committed fans and newcomers alike.

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Writer’s Bliss: The Creative Breakthrough

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Rewriting is, by and large, problem-solving. We clip the stuff that isn’t necessary, add the things that are missing, rearrange and refashion the ideas that aren’t being expressed with maximum clarity and effectiveness, and generally engineer a narrative that will hopefully instill in the reader/ audience the same roused fervor that incited us to write it in the first place.

This means a lot of whittling and fiddling. We spend hours contemplating solutions to ideas that aren’t working and sentiments that aren’t coming through. We list the alternatives, draw out mind maps, watch or read the greats, stare at the wall, etc. Maybe we get flustered and step away to reorganize the DVD collection, clean the bathroom, or think about starting another script. It’s a fight to push through all this resistance and commit to the trial and error of making those needed alterations and get the story going in a more cohesive and engaging direction.

I think the best of us revel in this process, regardless of the individual’s workflow. As exhausting as it is, the wherewithal to inflict this mental, emotional, and intellectual self-torture on a regular basis separates those who could have a career and those who become a statistic.

BUT…

There are also those moments that come along and remind us why we do it, and why we fancy this more than anything else. Those precious nuggets that make the process – not only not miserable – but a great pleasure in itself. The pinnacle of these is the creative breakthrough.

This is a different animal from the typical hard-won story fix that materializes from the aforementioned grind. These are those ideas that spring forth, maybe as a result of some serious brainstorming, perhaps after spending some much-needed time away from the piece, or most intriguing of all, without warning while we’re focused on something else. And they have some amazing attributes that truly set them apart…

They’re simple: So many story logic issues, overwritten tangents, flat sequences, disagreements between character or plot actions, etc. necessitate a bunch of explanatory fluff as a vain attempt to square those circles. When a breakthrough hits, it irons things out, streamlines the operation, obliterates the anomalies (and the fluff right along with them), leaving action and dialog that are more intuitive, coherent, visual, and concise, which brings me to my next point…

They’re economical: Early drafts (mine, anyway) carry a compulsion to explain every last feeling, motivation, gesture, and tick to combat the bugbear of “they won’t get it.” What’s left is a 145-page eulogy to the human imagination. But after one of these amazing boosts of inspiration, we’re left with a more intriguing sequence, with more for the reader to decipher, at a lower page count. It’s a fantastic moment for a fledgling writer when the true meaning of “say more with less” really hits home.

And coolest of all…

They fix other issues: This is the magic ingredient that let’s us know we’re really onto something. We get one idea out of the crapper and it touches on other story elements that were either missing or not doing their job, and sets off a chain reaction of plot repair.

I’ll use this example of a recent breakthrough I’ve had to illustrate my point:

Problem: I have a character in my script, a friend of a friend to the protagonist, who is a doctor, and ultimately ends up giving our hero the help he needs to fight his ailment, complete his arc, and achieve his goal. Since this doctor is a relatively small (but important) supporting character, she seemed to just show up when needed, do exactly what was required to progress the narrative, then disappear, rinse and repeat. So she wasn’t a character at all, but a flimsy plot device. I had developed her relationship with the hero’s friend, but the dynamic between her and the hero was an afterthought, and it showed. In trying to round her character out, I had fabricated a bunch of plot interruptions where he had to visit her for help, and attempted to justify it with convoluted discussions and circumstances.

Breakthrough: Turn her against the protagonist. Make her hate him and resist helping him at every turn.

Once I made this change, it did so much to straighten out my story. Now this character wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Their interactions have become terse, conflict-laden, and they keep things moving, because they come up much more organically as the consequences of various accidents and calamities that befall the main character, and neither of them is happy about it. These new hardships and obstacles subject him to a great deal more suffering through the middle of the movie, creating a much more interesting series of events.

Without my initially realizing it, this also filled in an element that was missing before. The main conflict of the piece arises from a mistake made by the protagonist, stemming from his main flaw. While a sense of guilt slowly builds in him throughout, there was no one to hold up a mirror to him, force him to take a hard look at himself, put him at a dramatic low, and make him realize he needs to change. But now there is. This character now dovetails so nicely into this task, it seems as if I’d planned it for her from the beginning.

Oh, and as a casual aside, she now feels like a real person that has a rightful purpose in the film. Her contentiousness toward the hero, contrasted with her protective affection for the friend, adds a realistic complexity to her that makes her someone the audience would (hopefully) like to get to know. It also allowed for a much-needed arc for their relationship, in that (you may have guessed) he manages to earn her respect and a certain amicable understanding develops between them. This, of course, also added another layer to him.

This kind of beneficial butterfly effect from one snap flash of inspiration can’t be expected to happen all the time. Perhaps even the opportunities for them recede over time as greater experience precludes one from leaving such gaping chasms in the story that require this type of drastic solution. Whatever the case, these occasions bring a true thrill to someone in the early stages of exploring their creativity.

How about you? Has something like this happened to you? What have been the biggest leaps, bounds, and setbacks in your process? Let us know below!

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Don’t Cross the Themes!

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There’s no point in writing if you have nothing to say. (It sounds self-evident, but a quick glance around at what’s being produced these days reveals that this mantra doesn’t stop a lot of aimless schlock from slipping through the cracks. Anyway, pre-success bitterness aside, let’s get into this…)

It’s all about the theme. What do you, as a writer, have to say to the rest of us about what we’re doing wrong (or right, but usually wrong)? Perhaps focusing on this aspect of the craft, rather than “ya know what would make a really cool movie?!…”is the mark of a mature writer. Maybe the ideal balance is “I believe I have a new take on this or that idea, and ya know what would be a really cool way to state it?!…”

There’s a lot of debate about where theme should rightfully come from. Is it the proper starting point of the whole process, or is it more creatively organic to just start vomiting narrative chunks and let the theme naturally unfold and present itself when everyone, especially the writer, least expects it? We all know the correct answer here, right? Who cares? The all-time greats are all over the map on this one, so there could never be a definitive key to how and why the theme(s) should emerge. I think the usefulness of this debate lies in the mind of the individual writer, as an introspective exercise.

But how about this…

As I’m rewriting and contemplating what comes out, I’m coming across numerous threads that point to multiple themes, on varying levels of complexity and consequentialism. This is bound to happen to some degree, but if I remain a little hazy as to whether my story is about my protagonist’s need to grow up and become self-reliant, the obligation we all have to fight an evil despotic force rather than wallow in apathy, or the idea that risking one’s life for someone they love is not a sacrifice at all, then is this an indicator of a confused and convoluted story in desperate need of being pared down?

Countless classic stories have multiple intertwined themes, but is it more than a new writer can chew? Is the thematic volume greater than the scope of my script? Is the effectiveness of one of my underlying statements undermined by interference from the others?

If all the themes are to stay in, how are they to be managed? I have some semi-educated guesses about this one:

  • There’s seems to be a natural hierarchy that’s conducive to their harmonious execution, with one over-arching theme that the others should serve in some way, or at least be subordinate to.
  • Multiple themes seem to work better when distributed over the story, residing within the choices and actions of different characters in separate story threads.
  • It feels ill-conceived to have a theme pop up once, never to be seen or heard from again. Each one should be interlaced through a substantial segment of the plot.
  • And what seems most important is that they compliment each other philosophically, so I shouldn’t cram “no man is an island” in the same yarn as “you can only rely on yourself,” even though they could each work quite well on their own.

Those were easy enough to write, but I’m still working on developing the sense to know if I’m following them. Also still struggling with this question: Is it possible to have “too much theme” and become preachy?

So what do you think? How do you manage the themes in your writing, and how many is too many? Let us know below!

Book Reviews

Review: Writing for Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias

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We as new screenwriters are filled to the brim with questions about how to do it “right.” Does my structure dovetail perfectly into the standard template? Do I have enough white space? Do I need this supporting character? How much back story is necessary for the protag’s mother?

As I learn more and more, and look back at my journey thus far, I find I’ve spent a lot of time asking the wrong questions. My greatest leaps in knowledge and craft have come when I made some major course correction regarding my approach to the writing process. Lately I’ve been lucky to experience several of these thanks to Karl Iglesias‘ Writing for emotional impact : advanced dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end.

If you’re someone who’s leafed all through the big-name how-to classics, and seemingly learned everything there is to know about story structure, character profiles, plot and subplot mapping, and genre conventions, then you’re exactly who this book was written for! It comes at the whole paradigm from a fresh new angle that’s the creative equivalent of nine hours’ sleep followed by a hot oil massage.

Right out of the gate, Iglesias‘ focus is on the step where the screenwriting rubber meets the road, the emotional effect of the script. Yeah, that’s not a mistake, and you read it right. I meant the script. The point is emphasized that, while it’s a blueprint for an eventual movie, the critical point in the process for us is how the words on the page strike that initial gatekeeper, the (probably assistant or intern to) the producer/ studio head/ financier/ whoever, and sway his/ her decision about whether it’s worthy of getting off the ground in the first place. It’s not good enough to spout, “Just wait till you see it on screen. It’ll knock your socks off!” It’s unlikely to get that far if the read was a lifeless chore to that first reader. His or hers are the socks that must be jettisoned. Pretty insightful perspective, huh? Maybe that revelation alone is worth the price of admission. But we’re just getting started here. The meat of the book consists of telling us how to do it.

As a script reader himself, Iglesias offers the candid inside word on their circumstances, mindset, approach and visceral reactions (which are the reactions that count) when they read our work. He then proceeds to lay out the emotional triggers that are tripped by the best of the best scripts, and how we may achieve them in our own writing.

In all of your reading, podcasts, webinars, seminars, courses, and meet-up groups; how much attention have you really placed on how your work will make the reader feel? What about how that will interact with the characters’ emotions? Do you know which emotional reactions are the most gripping and memorable, and will get your script noticed? Did you know that the simplest of edits and alterations can transform an empty, throw-away beat into something super-engaging that keeps them turning pages? Have you ever approached your writing or editing with these things in mind? This is what you’re going to get from this book.

Whether starting from the initial spark of an idea, or slogging through the rewrite process, there seems to be a certain hierarchy of script writing factors that, if followed in order of importance, can provide an extremely useful, time and grief-saving workflow for building or rebuilding your story. Iglesias’ book is laid out in an optimal flow for not only readability, but workability. It starts with the most broad strokes such as concept and overall story, then filters down to the later-stage fine-tuning of description, dialog, etc. It’s not something to be read, absorbed, and shelved. If you’re really serious, it’ll serve as a manual and roadmap, constantly at your side as you write.

Needless to say, I can’t recommend this book enough. My only caveat would be that, as the subtitle indicates, these are advanced techniques, and meant to be broached once you have a working understanding of the screenwriting basics. So, while I might (and only might) not make this my first book on the craft, my collection would be severely lacking without it.