Story comes from character. Not the other way around. This is a golden concept every writer must learn if he or she ever wishes to create stories that connect with their audiences.
There seems to be two approaches to the Hollywood screenplay: those where the storyteller begins with a character and then creates a story around that character's needs; and those which someone first comes up with a “cool concept” and then later dumps in a bunch of people to carry it out.
The stories invented in the latter concept-first, outside-in manner invariably wind up with characters who are flat, stereotypical, or emotionally superficial. This is because these characters are wholly defined by the function they play in relation to an already-constructed plot, rather than the internal needs, emotions, and impulses that drive natural human behavior. “Concept-first” characters are little more than warm bodies used to connect the story’s dots. This is why most of them cannot help but become – to one degree or another – stereotypes. Quite often these characters are defined solely by their occupation. How many movies have we seen with a police officer as the protagonist, even though the movie it is not a police drama? How many scientists have we seen in movies that have nothing to do with science? How many generic reporters, lawyers, and businesspeople have been littered through the thousands upon thousands of average-to-subpar movies throughout the years?
A true story begins with the creation of a character-
-a character with a strong INTERNAL NEED.
The “internal need” is something important missing from the character’s life -- whether the character realizes it or not. It is the thing that keeps the protagonist from being a complete, emotionally satisfied human being. It could be a need for self-worth (Rocky), a need to grow up and learn your place in the universe (Luke in Star Wars), a need to recognize and appreciate the value of family and home (Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz). This need could be anything -- as long as it is: 1) authentically human, and 2) strong enough to influence the character's behavior. The storyteller performs his/her craft by first inventing a character with this need... and then placing the character into a dramatic situation where he or she is FORCED to pursue that need.
In his book STORY, Robert McKee presents a concept from Renaissance philosophy known as of the “Mind Worm.”
“Suppose a creature had the power to burrow into the brain and come to know an individual completely – dreams, fears, strengths, weaknesses. Suppose that this Mind Worm also had the power to cause events in the world. It could create a specific happening geared to the unique nature of that person that would trigger a one of a kind adventure, a quest that would force him to the limit, to live his deepest and fullest. Whether a tragedy or fulfillment, this quest would reveal his humanity absolutely.”
It would be hard to find a better way to describe the creation of a character-centered story then the Mind Worm. However, I am going to give it a shot.
I prefer to think of the storyteller as the god of his or her story's world. The storyteller has absolute control, absolute power, and absolute knowledge over every single thing within that world. As the creator of the protagonist, the storyteller knows him or her down the smallest detail. The storyteller-god knows the character's strengths, and more importantly, knows his or her weaknesses. The storyteller-god is a benevolent god. He or she wishes the character to rise above his or her flaws and become a better, happier person. The storyteller-god knows exactly what the character needs in order to do this. However, the storyteller must be harsh, even cruel, in the methods he or she uses to bring this change about. After all, this great personal need cannot be simply given to the character. It must be earned. So, like the Olympian gods of myth, the storyteller inflicts a drastic change upon the protagonist’s world. Conflicts and overwhelming problems rise up to meet the character. This is all a test, one designed specifically for the purpose of giving the protagonist exactly what he or she needs through struggle and conflict. This way, the adventure causes the character to grow into a fuller, better person. However, though the protagonist did not chose to go on this adventure, success or failure is in the protagonist's hands. The protagonist can either gain the need and find victory, or refuse the need and meet defeat.
A character's struggle for his or her internal need must not be confused with the Story Spine. The Story Spine is composed up of the physical elements which make up the protagonist's adventure. The Story Spine follows a character's struggle against an external conflict through physical action after a tangible goal. The Story Spine represents the storyteller-god's test. The character's pursuit of his or her inner need is an internal struggle -- a non-literal journey of change from a flawed, incomplete human being to a better, more complete person at the story's end. This secondary journey is known as the CHARACTER ARC.
The Story Spine and Character Arc are not two separate, divided lines of action. They are instead simultaneous journeys that not only interconnect and influence each other, but are dependent on each other for success.
To explain: In any given story, a character's personal traits influence how that character reacts to the situations presented by the Story Spine. A character's negative traits (lack of self-esteem, a bad attitude, an inability to connect with others, etc) will have a limiting effect on the character's success. As long as the character continues to have such traits, all of the story's obstacles cannot be overcome and the character will never reach the final goal. However, as the protagonist struggles against the Story Spine’s conflicts, the gradual and cumulative force of these events motivate the character to change internally. External conflict forces the protagonist to rise to the occasion and improve their flawed selves. As a character begins to change, he or she becomes better equipped to handle the conflicts he or she faces. Now new and improved, the protagonist gains the ability to overcome all obstacles, reach the story's goal, and complete the Story Spine.
To understand this better, it is necessary to look further into just where the “internal need” comes from and how story events force character change to occur.
If we look at any protagonist, we will find that all characters possess two types of personality traits: CONSTANT traits, and traits that undergo CHANGE.
CONSTANT traits are traits a character possesses at the beginning of the story and maintain through the story's end. These traits are usually positive or neutral in nature, many of which are found beneficial to the character’s struggle. Examples would be James Bond's cool confidence in the face of danger, John McClane's sarcastic humor, or Rick's strong silent nature in Casablanca. These traits make up the items in the character's personal toolbox – they are the means through which the character has gotten what he or she needs in the past and how he or she will continue get what he or she needs in the future. These traits help define a character from your average, nondescript stranger, and will not change simply because there is no need for them to change.
Then we have traits that undergo CHANGE. This is the stuff character arcs are made of. At the beginning of most stories (I should say all stories, but there will always be exceptions to every rule) the protagonist owns a collection of negative traits – traits that create adverse effects on the person's life. These negative traits are usually related, a bundle of traits that originate from a single, psychological FATAL FLAW. For example, if a character is flawed deep down by an unwillingness to connect with other people, this flaw will manifest itself as a collection of observable traits such as reclusiveness, loneliness, bitterness, or coarse and unfriendly behaviors toward others. If character's fatal flaw is a fear of taking chances in life, this will result in timidness, indecisiveness, or a hard time dealing with people who see the character as dull, weak, or cowardly.
A character’s fatal flaw blocks the way to his or her internal need. To become happy and healthy, the character must learn to abandon the flaw and become its opposite. Once this happens, all the negative traits that impede the character's life will reverse one by one and the door will open to success and a greater well-being.
However, one important thing must be realized about character change: the character's fatal flaw is always the character's OWN DAMN FAULT. Unlike a character's constant traits, negative traits are not the result of the real, physical world as it exists around the the character – but rather the result of the character's flawed PERCEPTION of the world.
Most therapists will agree that a majority of the emotional problems they see every day come not from their patients' actual reality, but from false perceptions of reality. Negative past experiences cause human beings to develop false sets of beliefs about their world, which in turn have negative effects on their behavior. A depressed person may in reality have plenty of friends, yet for whatever reason he honestly believes everyone hates him. A person suffering suffering a nervous breakdown may feel that her world is filled with insurmountable problems, yet in objective reality, this is not true.
In story, a character's fatal flaw comes from a deficiency in the way they view themselves, their world, or their place within it. Casablanca's Rick (Humphrey Bogart) treats everyone with a cold, self-centered detachment because he has been led to believe that if he allows himself to care about someone, he will get hurt. The Matrix's Neo (Keanu Reeves) is reluctant to become humanity’s savior because he honestly believes he is an insignificant person. Goodfellas's Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) digs himself deeper and deeper into the world of organized crime because he believes that satisfaction can only come with hoarding more, more, and more.
But all of these problems are just in the character's heads.
So, here is how Character Arc works:
At the beginning of a story, a character's ability is limited by a defective view of themselves and/or the world around them. When that character comes face-to-face with a Story Problem and the conflict that comes with it, that character is FORCED to reevaluate this view. Pressured by the conflict, the character chooses to CHANGE. He or she then acquires a more positive, truthful perception of his or her universe. Through this change, the character is able to overcome the Story Problem and bring the story to an end.
The whole of “plotting” - and by extension, the whole of “storytelling” - is simply finding a course of events that causes this change to happen.
Posted above are two popular movie characters. One is Cole, played by Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. The other is Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. One is a vulnerable little boy. The other is a psychopath of the purest evil.
Now, a question: between these two characters, which one qualifies as the ANTAGONIST of their story? One character definitely is their story's antagonist, the other clearly isn't.
The answer? Cole. Little rosy-cheeked, moppet-headed Cole.
Surprised? To understand why, we must clear up a common misconception on what exactly “antagonist” means.
Many people, writers among them, seem to believe that the word antagonist is synonymous with “bad guy.” This character must, in whatever story he or she occupies, be some villainous persona wishing harm upon the story's hero. In a lot of stories, this is more or less true. We have all watched thousands of stories – from the subtly realistic to the cartoonishly melodramatic -- where the antagonist is some despicable fiend, wringing their hands with glee over the hero's demise. The antagonist as “villain” is the most obvious choice for storytellers because it easily splits the story's conflict into a simple black-and-white situation, making it no challenge for the audience to decide to whom to give their sympathies. However, villainy is certainly NOT a requirement when it comes to an antagonist.
The true meaning of “antagonist” is buried in its name. “Antagonist,” like “protagonist,” is a Greek word made of two parts. “Protagonist” is made up of “protos,” meaning “first,” and “agonistes,” meaning actor. The protagonist is the “first actor.” The “anti-” in “antagonist” means “against.” The antagonist is the character who works against the “first” actor. Whatever the protagonist is trying to achieve in the story, the antagonist provides the force pushing against it.
This “pushing against” essential when it comes to making a story a STORY. It is what comprises the fourth element of the Story Spine, CONFLICT. Let's briefly review the elements of the Story Spine (because they can never be reviewed enough). They are:
The Main Story Problem.
The Main Story Goal.
The protagonist's Path of Action.
The Main Conflict
The Stakes.
A story begins with a hero encountering a PROBLEM. In order to overcome this problem, the hero decides on a GOAL. The hero then sets out on a PATH OF ACTIONS to get to that goal. However, for a story to be dramatic, or at all interesting to an audience, that path must be made difficult and the goal very hard to achieve. There must some force that creates CONFLICT. (The word “dramatic” itself means “full of conflict.”) The antagonist is the embodiment of that force. It is a person who does not want the hero to achieve his or her goal and is willing to take action to stop the hero.
But, that is not enough. Great antagonists do not only want to stop the protagonist from achieving his or her goal, but they possess a goal of their own which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the protagonist's goal, creating Aristotle's classic “unity of opposites.”
In The Matrix, the goal of Neo and his friends is to free humanity from the machines. The antagonist Agent Smith's goal is not only to stop Neo, but to destroy the entire human resistance in the process. Detective Jake Gittes in Chinatown wishes to expose the corrupt conspiracy behind Hollis Mulwray's death. The shadowy antagonist pulling the strings behind the scenes (later revealed to be Noah Cross) wishes not only to prevent Gittes from doing this, but to also carry out his conspiracy to it ultimate end.
A good protagonist/antagonist relationship creates a dichotomous story situation where the victory of one must mean the failure of the other. It is impossible for both sides to get what they want. The only way for the conflict to be resolved, and for the story to reach its end, is by the complete victory of one side, and the simultaneous defeat of the other.
With this in mind, let's return to our two examples, Cole and Dr. Lecter.
The Silence of the Lambs's protagonist is FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster). Clarice's main story goal is “to find serial killer Buffalo Bill before he can claim his next victim.” Clarice's Path of Action takes her to Hannibal Lecter. It is believed that Lecter has knowledge of Bill's identity. But, unlike an antagonist, Lecter does not wish to stop Clarice from achieving her goal. In fact, he is willing to help her- and ultimately does give her enough information to catch Bill. Much of the confusion over Hannibal Lecter comes from the fact that, even though he is willing to help, there is still much conflict between Clarice and Lecter. However, this conflict comes not from a desire to stop Clarice, but to help her on his own terms-- to manipulate the situation in order to achieve his own personal goal. In fact, Hannibal Lecter's story role could not be further from that of an antagonist. Lecter is the story's mentor character. He tests Clarice, training her with the wits and wisdom she will ultimately need to find and defeat the story's real antagonist Buffalo Bill.
Now compare this to the Story Spine of The Sixth Sense. This film's protagonist is child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis). Malcolm encounters his main story problem when he takes on a new patient, a seemingly disturbed little boy named Cole. Malcolm's goal is “to help Cole by learning his secret.” Now, no human being with a soul would wish to stop Malcolm from achieving this goal. It would be impossible to find anyone who would not want Malcolm to help a little boy – except the little boy himself. Cole does not WANT to be helped. Cole believes that no one, not even Malcolm, can help him. All of the external conflict that Malcolm encounters in the main storyline comes directly from Cole. This is because Cole has a personal goal which is the opposite of Malcolm's, “to hide his secret.” This creates a unity of opposites. Cole is Malcolm's antagonist. And just like any protagonist/antagonist relationship, the story ends with Malcolm “defeating” Cole. Malcolm achieves his main story goal by finally convincing Cole to abandon his own.
Conclusion:
Antagonists are not always “bad guys.” Likewise, protagonists are not always “good guys.” Sometimes, both sides of the conflict are “bad.” In some films, both sides are “good.” Don't let moral judgments confuse basic dramatic principles. (Structure, after all, is as morally-neutral as mathematics.) The only mandatory principle of antagonism is that, whenever the protagonist pushes forward, the antagonist must push back. Great conflict occurs when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Whether one considers that object to be morally “good” or “bad” is immaterial. What is important is the explosion that occurs when they meet.
Back in the late 80's-early 90's, there was a software company called Sierra Online that produced these great text-based adventure games with titles such as “Space Quest,” “Kings Quest,” and “Leisure Suit Larry.” These games all ran on the same simple concept. The player would be a small animated character, and each screen would be a “room” of sorts-- and environment limited by the edges of the computer screen. The player would move the character about, explore the environment, and figure out how to advance further into the game by typing simple commands such as “look at table,” or “open door."
But sometimes, the game would allow you to pick up items and take them with you. The items would be put into an “Inventory” where the player could use them later. But the game wouldn't let you pick up just anything. The player was only capable of taking specific items that had a use later in the game. If you tried to pick up something that did not have a future use, the game would give you a message explaining why you can't or shouldn't waste your time with that.
This trait was mostly due to the limited memory of computer systems at the time, but however, it had the side effect of creating a gamer who could predict where the game was going. IF the game allowed you to pick up something, the player KNEW that that item was needed in order to overcome an obstacle later in the game. Even if the item made no sense at the time, the simple fact that they could take it communicated that it held SOME sort of importance. For example, in Sierra's “Space Quest 2”, the player is able to open a gym locker on the second screen and finds a rubix cube and a jock strap. Now, at this early point in the game, the player has no clue what possible use either of these items could have. But, the mere fact that the game allows the items to be picked up communicates that these things will eventually come in handy.
When it comes to being a cinematic storyteller, the way you give information to the audience should be handled in much the same way. You do not want your audience to pick up and carry anything and everything unimportant- something they do not need to take with them.
Audiences are far more savvy than they are given credit for. After years of watching hundreds of well-produced movies and TV shows, audiences come to innately understand that, if the camera pays particular attention to something, then that something must have importance. They might not know its import at the moment, but they know it WILL become important later on. Same thing if an actor makes an effort to communicate a piece of information in their actions or dialogue. So the main character announces that he's a former world-champion boomerang thrower. Okay, this info may not be relevant to anything in the story at the moment, but the audience instinctively understands that they should hold on to this information because SOMETHING will happen later that makes this knowledge worth knowing. So the audience picks it up, puts it in its mental inventory, and continues on.
This, I should say, is what happens when a competent and experienced storyteller is at the helm. With a skilled storyteller, the audience can relax with the confidence that they are in good hands. The storyteller will only steer them towards essential info -- lead them along in a straight line like a trail of informational bread crumbs-- and never astray into murky, confusing territory.
But inexperienced storytellers tend to lack this steady hand. Instead of sticking to communicating only what is essential and spinning a story with a clear focus, instead of leading the audience down a marked trail, they throw whole clouds of info at the audience, stuff both important and unimportant, with no way for the audience to tell which is which.
Why do beginning writers do this? I believe it is because they feel they are supposed to. Misguided by a shelf full of bad screenwriting books, they feel the need to “flush out” their script, so they add unnecessary dialogue and action to scenes that should be kept tight. In an attempt to “develop character” they make the person state their backstory-- how they grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, like bowling, and had the measles when they were nine-- even though none of this info will have any relevance to the story as it unfolds. They tack on subplots because they feel they must. And draft after draft, they hold on to scenes that do nothing to advance the story situation just because the scene is “funny” or “develops character” or is “cool,” when it reality it just hangs there like a useless piece of flesh.
The danger of unfocused writing of this sort is that, even though the storyteller knows that this extra bit of information is not important, the audience thinks it IS! Years of experience watching well-written movies has taught them so. The audience continues to hold this item in their mental inventory, expecting it to find a use somewhere. No matter what you put on screen, the audience will scoop it up like a net.
If the storyteller is not conscious of the audience's mental inventory, the audience's mind will soon become clogged with useless crap, their pockets weighed down with pointless items. The audience becomes distracted by the clutter, and confused over what really is important and what is not. Then, they become annoyed or upset because the storyteller asked them to give their attention to something and then never backs it up. The audience has been given keys to a door that doesn't exist-- but they don't know that. They are going to continue jiggling doorknobs until they find it.
Worse yet, the information that IS important to the story starts to get lost. It gets diluted by the clutter and fails to stand out in the audience's mind so they can recall it when the story demands it. The audience has limited space in their mental inventory. They may forget the good stuff in order to make room for the clutter.
Most well-told cinematic stories feel “light” to the viewer. The story seems to unfold effortlessly as the plot breezes along from one event to the next. The audience needs only to relax and enjoy the trip. This sensation occurs because the storyteller has kept the audience's load light. You don't ask someone to take a parka to the beach, or a blender to a business meeting. Only ask the audience to carry with them what they absolutely need.
The bottom line of all of this is that, unless a piece of information is absolutely important to understand the story, LEAVE IT OUT.
The flip side, of course, is that if something IS important for the story to work, a writer must make sure to PUT IT IN!
I recently re-watched the original Back to the Future for the first time in years. The strongest thing that strikes me about 1980's family-adventure movies is how contrived their stories are. But, the contrivances never have a negative effect on the movie experience because these movies are so incredibly well-planned! Watching Back to the Future, I can't help but imagine a roomful of writers poring over a mapped-out diagram of every moment like Churchill planning the invasion of Europe. The dispersal of information is absolutely spot-on. Pieces of info are never ambiguous, never unnecessary, but delivered in a manner so clear that it would be impossible for the audience to miss their importance.
Back to the Future's biggest structural flaw is undoubtedly its long opening setup sequence. It lasts so long that it pushes the story's inciting incident (the moment Marty escapes in the time machine and finds himself trapped in the year 1955) back to the thirty-minute mark, creating a sort of abnormal combined inciting incident/first act turning point. Although its writers ran the risk of losing the audience's interest early in the movie, this long setup was necessary in order to communicate all the information needed for their story's premise to work. Most of Back to the Future's story development -- as well as much of its humor -- comes from creating parallels between Marty's world of 1985 and that of 1955. This means that all the setup information necessary for the later three-quarters of the film needed to be communicated BEFORE Marty travels back in time.
There are very few wasted moments in this thirty-minute setup. Nearly everything we see or hear communicates information we will need to know later on. From Marty's skateboard running into a case of plutonium under Doc's bed, to the breakfast-making machine that communicates the character of a man who won't be seen for another twenty minutes, to the clock tower, to Marty's dad, to Biff Tannen. There are incidents of back-planting (see the April 4, 2010 article on Back-Planting). The audience must see how Marty skateboards to school in order to make the later 1955 skateboarding sequence plausible. We must know that Marty is a wannabe rock star in order for us the believe his guitar-shredding at the 1955 prom.
(However, I must mention, in the spirit of the first half of this article (though I know it may weaken my argument), Future's setup could have been tightened up by some judicious cutting. There are a couple moments -- namely, Marty's run-in with the school principal, and Marty's band audition for the 1985 school prom -- that give info which is not entirely necessary for the audience to know. Sure, both incidents have their parallels in 1955, but their significance is so small that the audience would have accepted their implied meaning even without any set-up.)
In conclusion, when a skilled storyteller presents anything to the audience, it should never be casual. It's not, “Check this out, isn't this interesting? You can do whatever you want with this.” Instead it is: “Here. Take this with you. You WILL need it later.” And if you load that item into the audience's backpack, they better be able to find a use for it later down the road.
In the past, I have expresses my admiration for Academy-Award winning screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, the Bourne Trilogy, etc) In my opinion, he is hands-down the most talented screenwriter working today. But my admiration is not just for what he writes, but far more importantly, HOW he writes. What makes Gilroy's writing great is his rock-solid understanding of the key differences between just being a writer, and writing for the screen.
The great advantage held by literary authors is that time is on their side. An author has the freedom to use entire pages to communicate a single action. An author can digress for thick, flowing paragraphs at a time and use the most beautiful, ornate language to express infinite details about simple things such as the look of an old house, the expression on a character's face, or the flow every every single unseen thought that runs through the hero's mind. Authors are armed with a literary machine gun. They have unlimited ammo to mow down their targets. They can pump out language with power and fury for endless lengths of time until their objective is completely and exhaustively achieved.
But such a method of writing, though it may be beautiful and captivating in a book, lacks any point or use in screenplays. Writing in a literary style -no manner how intricate, clever, or poetic the words- is inappropriate to screenwriting simply because you are writing words that will never be READ. Your words - with the exception of dialogue, of course- will never reach the audience. The viewers will not have the script in their laps. All the audience has in order to enjoy a movie are the images on the screen and the audio on the soundtrack. No matter how much cleverness you use to describe your protagonist's dog, the audience will only see-- just a dog. No matter how breathtakingly poetic your words to describe the farmhouse by the lake, the audience will only see – just a farmhouse by a lake. Anything in a screenwriter's action and description paragraphs that cannot be translated directly into visuals or sound is lost as noninformation- information that cannot be relayed to the audience.
Overwritten screenplays will also have a negative effect on those people who DO read screenplays word-for-word: readers, producers, agents, talent, etc. A screenplay may have an excellent story and the potential to become a good movie, but how the writer uses language may threaten to warp the reader's perceptions, often leading to unfair or erroneous conclusions. Ornate writing forces the reader to read slower that usual, making them feel that the work is ponderous and slow-paced. Thick block paragraphs might make the reader believe that the script is inactive, too complex, or much longer than its page count suggests. Poorly written language, vague language, ambiguous language (which usually results from a writer attempting to become too poetic) disallows the reader from visualizing how the script will play out on screen, misleading the reader to believe that the work is “dull,” or “thin,” or “uncinematic”- a story that is alright on paper, but just will not work on screen. When readers, already weighed down with an inbox full of scripts, open your screenplay, they want a quick, breezy ninety-minute to two-hour read – something that imitates on paper the experience of watching a movie for that same length of time. They do not want to curl up for hours on end with a War and Peace.
Which brings us to our point. Half of the storyteller's art is not in the story they tell, but HOW THEY TELL IT. The ultimate goal of screenwriting style should be to write in a way that guides the reader to SEE the movie playing in their head, scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot, as if the script has already been produced, edited, and shown to them on screen. Now, this does NOT mean that you should fill your scripts with camera angles and instructions to the editor. This means that you should wield your language so that it communicates information in a manner that mimics the audio-visual movie experience. To achieve this, a writer must:
1. write with clear, concrete, visually-oriented language.
2. use strong, active language, with precisely-chosen nouns and adjectives, and action-orientated verbs.
3. and above all, the writer must do this in as a concise and efficient manner possible, so that the writer accurately communicates the exact information they wish the audience to see and hear while at the same time using as few words as possible.
This seems like a difficult contradiction. To be both detailed and concise at the same time. But let's take a look at the opening scene from The Bourne Identity to see how it's done.
DARKNESS. THE SOUND OF WIND AND SPRAY.
MUSIC. TITLES.
EXT. OCEAN -- NIGHT
The darkness is actually water. A SEARCHLIGHT arcs across heavy ocean swells. Half-a-dozen flashlights -- weaker beams -- racing along what we can see is the deck of an aging FISHING TRAWLER.
FISHERMEN struggling with a gaff -- something in the water --
A HUMAN CORPSE.
EXT. FISHING BOAT DECK -- NIGHT
THE BODY sprawled there. The Sailors all talking at once -- three languages going -- brave chatter to mask the presence of death --
SAILOR #1 -- Jesus, look at him --
The literary masters of novels may decimate their targets by shooting their words out of machine guns, but not Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy is an Academy Award winning writer because he has armed himself with a sniper rifle. He gets maximum impact with minimal ammo. Every sentence fragment is a bullet of information straight to the head.
Here is another sequence, this one from Michael Clayton.
INT. FARMHOUSE KITCHEN -- DAY
Cold, rural Wisconsin. A tired old room in a tired old house. A WALL PHONE RINGING. BIG SISTER, the Farmer’s Wife, hauling a baby on her hip as she moves to answer it. THE FARMER and YOUNG DAUGHTER sitting over breakfast in the BG.
BIG SISTER (grabbing the phone) Hello?
ARTHUR/PHONE Is Anna there?
BIG SISTER Hang on... (calling into the house) Where’s Anna? (continuing, as--)
EXT. TRIBECA STREET -- DAY (CONT)
Same time. A PANEL TRUCK parked here. It’s a scuffed-up, late model vehicle. Some half-assed electrical supply logo buried beneath the graffiti. About as anonymous as it gets.
BIG SISTER (PHONE/OVER) “...Anna! Where is she? ANNA!”
INT. THE PANEL TRUCK -- DAY (CONT)
Surprise. Welcome to a perfect mobile, urban surveillance HQ. Ugly and state-of-the-art. Purely functional. Nothing Gucci about it. A cot. Tool cases. Cooler. Folding table. Couple laptops. Space heater. IKER just now clambering in the back door. VERNE wearing headphones, already plugged in, waving for him to hurry up --
To me, the most interesting thing about Gilroy's style is that it achieves such success in spite of-- and possibly because of-- breaking nearly every one of the quote-unquote “rules” laid out in the several dozen copy-cat screenwriting books out there. If one were to post something written in this style on a messageboard where wanna-be writers like to gather, every nerd with a Syd Field book would rise up as if heresy has been committed. But god-damn if you can't see the movie happening right there on the page.
Most screenwriters, as well as cinematographers and editors, generally approach a script with the idea that each sentence on the page should equal one shot on screen – or one edit in the finalized film. The opening scene of Bourne suggests only four shots. One of the dark water. A shot of the searchlight over the ocean waves. Another shot of the fisherman searching with flashlights. And then cut to a body being dragged in with a gaff. Gilroy's penchant for punchy, verb-free sentence fragments work to emulate the final shot-and-edited movie experience. Their simple job is to communicate that THIS is what is on screen at the moment. THIS is what you are looking at.
“This is happening now.” Gilroy's language tells the story with a voice of authority. He is not describing to the reader what he wishes to happen. He is TELLING the reader what IS happening. Believe it or get out.
COMPACT EXPANSION
When it comes to communicating something a little more than what is merely on the screen at the moment, when the writer needs to communicate something more complicated-- not only get across what is happening, but how it is happening, how people behave while doing it, and how the audience is expected to feel about it-- while not slowing down the pace of the story, a well-chosen metaphor or simile can work wonders. A smart literary comparison in the description can accurately communicate an exact visual in a few words where long paragraphs of description cannot.
Observe how Gilroy communicates this scene, in which the failed restaurant that Michael Clayton had put his life's savings into is being auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. This information is an important detail for Clayton's character background, yet it is mostly irrelevant to the action of the main plot, and thus should not slow down the story by taking up too much time.
INT. “TIM’S” KITCHEN – DAY
FIFTEEN BUYERS bunched like starlings around the AUCTIONEER. Men with clipboards. Equipment all tagged and stacked and ready to roll.
AUCTIONEER ...five hundred, I’ve got five -- five-fifty. Six. This is two units, folks. Six, I see six-fifty. Seven...
INT. “TIM’S” BAR/DINING ROOM – DAY
Dark. Stripped down. Stools, blenders, cash registers -- everything stacked and tagged. MICHAEL alone at a table. Sounds of the carcass being picked over in the BG. GABE ZABEL, loanshark, enters from the kitchen.
ZABEL He says you’re still gonna be short.
First off, notice how Gilroy sticks strictly to communicating visuals. In sentence fragments. What the audience will see. Telling visuals. That work together to communicate a more important meaning. Visuals are all you have to communicate.
Secondly, check out the two literary devices Gilroy uses to describe the scene; first a simile, then a metaphor. He starts the scene by saying the buyers are “bunched like starlings.” The phrase instantly gives us a vivid visual about these people's behavior-- we can imagine them sitting bunched together in anticipation like birds on a wire. The second device occurs when Gilroy describes the events in the other room as “the carcass being picked over.” Until now, all we have seen is an auction. In reality, an auction is a pretty neutral event. It could be a good thing, a bad thing, or neither. But with the help of this four-word shorthand, this visual of a dead animal being stripped by scavengers, the reader is led to understand what is going on, how the people behave while doing it, the intended tone of the scene, and how we the audience are supposed to feel about it.
Good visual shorthands like this can also work wonders to communicate subtleties in character behavior that would be difficult, if not next to impossible, to describe in plain English -- slight shadings of action, essential for an actor to understand the scene and prepare an appropriate performance. Observe:
This awful pause. MICHAEL wielding the silence like a club. ... ARTHUR marching through the night. Same glorious smile. Just another madman loose in Manhattan. ...A ratty old espresso machine. THE MAN standing there, staring at the thing like it's a test. ... THE MAN. Holding these objects close -- as if by holding them he might absorb their essence.
However, a writer must not overuse these devices. The more a reader sees them, the less effective they become. The use of a simile where one is not required will take you back to the purposely ornate, overwritten style discussed at the start of this article. Metaphors and similes should only be used to communicate a SPECIFIC VISUAL that simple language cannot efficiently do otherwise.
COMMUNICATING SUBTEXT
Michael Clayton begins at its ending (or close to it). We see a man who has been worn down by the stress of events that we, the audience, still know nothing about. Since the audience does not yet know what has happened to Clayton, it is impossible for them to understand Clayton in these opening moments or why he is acting the way he is. However, it is still the writer's responsibility to convey that something is going on beneath the surface, to let them know that something is wrong, without giving away too much information too early and ruining the mystery. Here is a piece of how Gilroy handles it:
EXT. MANSION DRIVEWAY/COUNTRY ROAD – NIGHT
THE MERCEDES speeding away from the house --
INT. THE MERCEDES -- NIGHT
MICHAEL driving. Escaping. Running from more than Mr. Greer and Jerry Dante. More than just a bad night boiling behind his eyes. Driving hard and wild. Turning suddenly and --
EXT. WESTCHESTER COUNTRY ROAD -- NIGHT
THE MERCEDES racing along.
INT. THE MERCEDES -- NIGHT/PRE-DAWN
MICHAEL -- turning again -- aimless -- windows open -- cold air whipping through -- braking suddenly -- impulsive -- turning -- suddenly -- faster now and --
Clayton's subtext-- the thing the audience cannot see or understand at the moment-- is that Clayton is a man at the end of his ethical rope. He is mired in a network of corruption and is incapable of freeing himself. However, the writer works to communicate this through something the audience CAN see and understand-- how Clayton is driving. In order for subtext to work, it must first be anchored to something physical and active. Something that can physically exist on screen. The only way to get across ideas that cannot be directly communicated to the audience is through something that can be communicated directly – visuals, sounds, and actions. Neglect to do that and the idea is lost into the ether.
Subtext cannot exist on its own. The writer must first create the text, and then place the subtext behind it. Do it right, and it's a sniper's bullet. Maximum impact with minimal ammo.
This text-subtext execution also works well for introducing characters for the first time. When a new character arrives, the writer must take one or two short sentences in order to describe this new person in a way that allows the reader to visualize the character in their head. For important characters, the writer should want to go beyond a flat, physical description, yet avoid vague, generalized descriptors of the person's personality or general character that are not filmmable and thus will not be communicated to an audience. To achieve this balance, a writer should start with something visual, and then anchor to it a shade of subtext to give a hint of what lies underneath. Some examples:
IVY, Michael’s exwife. She is 38. Her youthful beauty perhaps a bit too delicate for life’s perpetual harassments.
HENRY CLAYTON is ten -- small for ten -- all bones and intelligence. TED CONKLIN. Ivy League Ollie North. Buttoned down. Square jaw. Everything tucked away.
Meet MARIE KREUTZ. German. Big energy. Real beauty hidden beneath the armor. And armor it is, because this is a warrior in full, crisis battlemode.
Each one of these descriptions starts with something physical, something easy to imagine: Ivy has youthful beauty, Henry is small, Marie is pretty, German, and energetic, Ted looks like Oliver North. And then behind that concrete, physical anchor some subtext is shaded in. Something that makes their physical appearance a little more than meets the eye. Something that is intangible, hard to put into words, yet is still there on screen. Something that turns them from just images into real, living people.
So, in conclusion...I never know the best way to conclude these things, so I will try to follow the advice I have given in this article and be concise:
Stop writing with words, and start writing with images.
There is a concept mentioned in a number of books on screenwriting called “Plant & Payoff.” The thing that makes the concept hard for beginning screenwriters to understand is that these books seem to present this tool as something the writer should apply superficially onto his or her storytelling as a way of “spicing things up,”or perhaps as a way to impress the audience with what wonderful intelligence and foresight the storyteller had to hide clues throughout the script like easter eggs. These books seem to imply that when constructing a story, the writers should already have this collection of marvelous plants in their heads ahead of time, mapped out in a linear fashion, “I'm going to plant some information in Scene 12, and then pay it off in Scene 33.” This approach not only doesn't work, but it is not what the device is intended for.
Plants can be a marvelous tool for screenwriters, but they do not work in this way. The writer should not create them in a forward-moving manner where the writer comes up with a planting device and then later in the story comes up with a way to pay it off. Real plant and payoff works by moving backwards.
Planting comes into play when the storyteller has managed to paint the character into a corner, putting him or her into a situation where the only way out would be for something to happen that would be arbitrary, implausible, or come right out of the blue. The only way the storyteller can create a solution that seems natural and organic is by going BACK to an earlier point in the script and setting up information (the “plant”) that will make the solution to the character's current problem not only seem plausible, but logically inevitable.
This process is called back-planting. It is not a way to spice things up; it is not a way to make your storytelling seem clever; it is instead the cinematic storytellers' #1 tool to working a way out of impossible jams and dead-ends. One good back-plant can save an entire stymied storyline and allow the storyteller to keep moving forward to the story's end.
BACK-PLANTING
In the process of creating the storyline for Die Hard, the script's writers Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza (working separately) no doubt ran into some difficult problems. They had plenty of great ideas, scenes they wanted to happen, action stunts they wanted to see on screen, but the problem was to set up these ideas in a way that would make them believable. True, the writers wanted some amazing, unbelievable things to happen, but in order for them to work on screen, each unbelievable thing must make logical sense. The audience must be able to see that, in the context of the story and all that has happened up to that point, this bizarre event makes perfect sense.
Usually when a writer gets “stuck” in their storyline, it happens because they have painted their character into a corner and the only way out is to have something implausible happen. Audiences cry 'bullcrap' when storytellers pull solutions out of thin air. There cannot be any deus ex machina, the character cannot be wearing a Batman utility belt with 1001 devices for every possible situation, and help cannot magically arrive from nowhere.
I have never met Stuart or de Souza, so I have no idea how smoothly Die Hard's writing process went. But in my imagination, here are two examples of story problems the writers might have struggled with:
(NOTE: For the sake of accuracy, I must acknowledge that the script for Die Hard was adapted from the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with the novel, so I cannot know how much of the story was adapted from the original source and how much was the invention of the screenwriters. However, for learning purposes, I am going to portray the writing process as if the script were a completely original work.)
*The writer has just envisioned the thrilling sequence where John McClane escapes from the homicidal Karl by climbing down an elevator shaft and sliding into an air vent. He wants to continue the sequence. He wants Karl to know McClane is in the vent and hunt him down, leaving our hero trapped like a sardine in a can. There is only one problem: HOW DOES KARL KNOW THAT MCCLANE IS IN THE VENT?
* Late in the writing process, the writer thought it would be great to make John McClane's life suck even worse by having him run barefoot over broken glass. The writer perhaps became excited over the prospect of creating the scene where McClane has a serious, character-revealing talk with Sgt Powell to distract him from pulling the broken glass from his feet. But there's a problem: WHY THE HECK WOULD MCCLANE BE BAREFOOT?
The writers could not move forward as long as these problems existed. The only solution was to go backwards.
Do you remember the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, (1989)? Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter play two boneheaded high school seniors who get caught up in a ridiculous adventure through space and time. Bill & Ted don't have many brains to help them out of the problems they encounter, but they do have – a time machine. Whenever the two find themselves stuck in a dead-end situation: a door is locked and they have no key, a bad guy has them cornered with no way of escape; their solution is simple: they merely make a mental note to, once everything is over, get into the time machine, travel back in time, and set up a way to get around the obstacle. They decide to go back into the past, steal the key, and hide it under a rock by the door. They decide to rig a bucket so it will fall on the head of the bad guy when he has them cornered. And viola! Suddenly, everything is solved. They look under the rock and find the key already there. The bucket falls on the bad guy like they just planned. Bill & Ted get around the obstacle and continue toward their goal.
This is what back-planting is. It is the writer's time machine. It allows the writer to travel backwards in their story to set up information at an earlier time in order to solve a later problem in a way that is not only logical, but makes perfect sense.
HOW DOES KARL KNOW MCCLANE IS IN THE VENT? The writer decided to have McClane ignite a zippo lighter in order to see where he is going. Karl then sees the light flickering from the vent's hole in the elevator shaft. But how did McClane get the zippo in the first place? Did he pull it out of his Batman utility belt? To solve this problem, the writers went BACK in time, twelve minutes back in the story, to the scene where McClane searches the first dead terrorist and finds the radio. Only this time, McClane finds the zippo as well. When the movie plays forward, the audience sees John take the zippo and stores that information away. When they see McClane use the lighter to see in the vent, they remember where it came from, and now it makes sense why and how Karl figures out McClane's location.
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WHY THE HECK WOULD MCCLANE BE BAREFOOT? It would make no sense to have McClane, in the midst of running for his life, take the time to stop and remove his shoes. The only thing that would make sense is that McClane had taken off his shoes BEFORE the terrorists invaded and wasn't able to put them back on. So, the writers traveled backwards, all the way to the middle of the first act and had McClane take off his shoes and socks. But for what reason would he do this? Why would he go barefoot at a fancy corporate party? McClane is supposed to be a tough guy. I don't think he would bother to do that no matter how bad his feet might be hurting him. Again, the writers needed to plant a reason. Travel backwards in time again, to the very first scene in the movie. The writers planted a seemingly innocuous line which at the time the audience heard and quickly disregarded. Here, the traveler sitting next to McClane on the airplane sees how tense McClane is and comments that the best way to relieve the stress of air travel is to take off your shoes and socks and “make fists with your toes.”
Play the line of action forward and it all makes perfect sense. The traveler gives McClane some advice. McClane tries that advice just as the terrorists invade. Therefore, McClane is barefoot when he must escape over broken glass. As a result of that, McClane forces Sgt Powell to talk to him to distract him from the pain of digging the glass out of his feet, resulting in Powell revealing his big secret. The writers traveled all the way back to Scene 1 to make Scene 154 work.
DOUBLE-PRONGED PLANTS
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Hans and his team do not show up until minute 17 of the story. Until then, Die Hard's story is driven by the subplot: the conflict between John and Holly. John and Holly's marriage has not been going well. John is upset to find that Holly is now going by her maiden name Gennaro. When Holly telephones home and learns that John hasn't yet bothered to call, she turns down the family photo by her desk in anger. To the audience, both of these behaviors make perfect sense. They are both the natural outcome of an endangered marriage. And, as far as the audience knows, both of these actions have no meaning beyond John & Holly's marriage. But it is not until Hans and his men invade that we learn their REAL story importance.
The big question is, how does a writer plant story information without it looking like a plant? How can you set up information without the audience recognizing the set up and predicting what will happen ahead of time? How does one hide the plant to keep it from being obvious?
In early drafts, the writers most likely encountered a problem that went something like this: Holly is one of Hans' hostages. Hans is willing to do anything to stop John. At a certain point in the story, Hans learns John's name and identity from Ellis. Once Hans knows John's last name is McClane, what is to stop him from instantly realizing that this Holly McClane is John's wife? What is to keep Holly safe? Hans couldn't just not notice. He's supposed to be too smart for that.
So the writer came up with a solution that is entirely plausible, because it has already been established in a pre-existing character conflict. Holly's use of her maiden name isn't just a cause for friction between her and John. It also coincidentally turns out to be the one thing that helps hide Holly's identity and keep her alive.
John and Holly's argument over the use of her maiden name in Act One, along with Holly turning over the family photograph, isn't just the execution of inter-character conflict. It isn't just a device to communicate character information. It is more importantly two perfect examples of a DOUBLE-PRONGED PLANT. “Double-pronged” because it is information that has dual significance in two unrelated contexts: one here in the present, and a far more important one in the future.
A double-pronged plant works to invisibly set up a piece of information that will become very important later in the story (but not now) by masking it as something IMMEDIATELY relevant to the current context at hand. The audience does not see the plant and never suspects they are being “set up,” because they believe that the information's only use is the current one, the conflict going on in the present scene. Then, later in the story, that piece of information-- info that may have been lying dormant for quite some time-- is revealed to have far more significance than the audience first imagined. The audience is shocked and delighted as they are finally allowed to put two and two together- not so much by the plot twist itself, but because the information has been lying right under their noses the whole time.
After Hans the the terrorists invade Nakatomi Tower, the audience all but forgets John & Holly's arguments. That is until the Act Two scene where we find that Hans has taken residence in Holly's office. We see Holly's nervous glance to the overturned photo behind her desk. We hear Hans ask her name and she responds with Holly Gennaro. Suddenly, it all comes back to the audience. The plant is paid off, not only with a revelation, but with SUSPENSE. Suspense, because the payoff's revelation raises questions: Will Hans find out the truth? What will happen when he does? For every scene with Hans seated at that desk, that overturned photograph becomes a ticking timebomb waiting to blow everything apart. And it all started with a simple, logical action that happened only because it was true to Holly's character and the conflict at hand.
CONCLUSION
This has been the fifth and final article in my “Things I Learned from Die Hard” series. As of this date, I have spent something close to eight months watching DH, analyzing DH, and writing about DH. I have probably put more thought into this movie than anyone since the movie was originally made. And as said before, I have probably learned more through the process than I ever did in four years of film school. But the things I have learned are in no way exclusive to this movie, or solely to movies in its genre. The lessons learned from this tightly constructed, entertaining action flick can be applied to any story anywhere. It is just good craft.
Die Hard is a testament that brilliance in writing can be found even in the most mass-audience pleasing, explosion filled, genre movie you can find. Excellent writing and summer blockbusters do not have to be mutually exclusive. Die Hard became an icon of its genre because it worked. Its plot worked. Its characters worked. The way its scenes were constructed worked. The relationship it forged and maintained with its audience worked. All of Hollywood's ensuing attempts to imitate Die Hard came up short because they tried to copy Die Hard's content, but not its form. Its form is universal. It can be applied to any story. Hollywood, in its attempt to print off carbon copies, failed because it did not realize one simple fact; writers Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza, as well as director John McTiernan, found success because they knew how to CREATIVELY COMMUNICATE story information in a way that served the audience's needs. When it came to the atoms of cinema, they were master chemists. They knew how to arrange their atoms to excite the audience, arouse their curiosity, fear, and desire, and manipulate the audience's mind on a fantastic emotional journey. And that is what ANY movie needs to do.
Though this article is officially #4 in my “What I Learned from Die Hard” series, I have decided to fold it in with a much larger, more important article I have planned for some time since both articles cover similar ground.
A few months ago, I was having a heated IM conversation with a writer friend of mine. The difference between this writer and myself is that, far unlike me, my friend angrily eschews any sort of analysis, theory, or critical thought when it comes to writing. He is the type who would rather shut his eyes and try to write by “The Force” or some crap like that. In fact, merely mentioning the word “craft” makes him raise his hackles and plug his ears.
In our conversation, I took him to task for refusing to learn the rules that govern his chosen field, comparing it to a physicist who refuses to learn about gravity. My friend, misunderstanding my point, responded with anger, “Schock, this is nonsense! You can't approach writing like mathematics!” He then abruptly ended the conversation.
My friend, that wasn't what I was trying to say, but just for the hell of it, I will take up this argument. You are wrong. Storytelling CAN be understood in the same way. And I will prove it.
Not mathematics in general. I don't mean arithmetic where you add and multiply cold hard figures. Cinematic storytelling is more like algebra. So dust off your high school math book. We're going to learn to construct some badass cinematic scenes.
But before proceeding, it is important to first establish some simple truths about our craft.
The first is that “story-telling” consists of two halves. The first is the “story.” The second is the “TELLING” – how one chooses to communicate that story to the audience. The same storyline in the hands of two different writers can have drastically different results. The first may end up with a dull, boring experience that fails to hold the audience's attention, while the second may be tense, exciting, the most thrilling movie experience ever written-- even though it is the exact same story. The difference is that the second writer possesses the skill and understanding needed to communicate the story in a manner that grabs the audience's interest and appeals to their emotions.
The true art of storytelling is not in the story itself, but how that story is TOLD. (The Russian Formalists called this the difference between the fabula and the syuzhet, but I digress.) When a story begins, all the cards are already out on the table. It is the storyteller's job to decide when to turn each card over and reveal to the audience the information underneath. A novice storyteller reveals the entire hand right away whether he/she needs to or not and ends up ruining the game. An expert storyteller is like the cagiest of riverboat gamblers. He/she knows what card to play when, how to keep the hand hidden until the right time, and when to go all in. So with that said,
GOOD STORYTELLING IS ALL ABOUT CREATIVE CONTROL OF INFORMATION. KNOWING WHAT TO GIVE, AND WHAT TO WITHHOLD.
In other words, to craft an audience-pleasing story, a storyteller must always be conscious of what to allow the audience to know, and what to keep unknown. It is the art of keeping people in the dark and seeing their pleasure when you turn on a light.
(These ideas are closely related to my “Atoms of Information” theory. See the February, 2009 article.)
Now, back to the algebra.
Here is a simple algebraic equation:
6 – x = 2 (Six minus “x” equals two.)
Every algebraic equation contains two things:
Constants. Constants are numbers whose values are known. The number six means exactly “six.” It can be nothing but six, never more or less. The same thing goes for the number two. Two can be nothing but “two,” and nothing else.
Variables. Variables are also numbers, but numbers whose value are not yet known. “x” is the variable in this equation. “x” could represent any possible number. However, its value is currently unknown. The whole goal behind an algebraic equation is to discover the value of the mystery number “x”.
In the worlds of business or sports, you sometimes hear a person or thing labeled as an “X-factor.” An X-factor refers to someone or something whose real worth or abilities are not yet known. When the Los Angeles Clippers chose the University of Oklahoma's Blake Griffin as their #1 Pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, Blake Griffin was an X-factor. Griffin was an incredible college player, but no one knew how well he would do in the NBA. He could be the next LeBron James, or he could be a disappointment.
Great cinematic storytelling is all about creating sequences and scenes that make ample use of an X-factor. An audience is watching a scene. There is information that they definitely know and understand about the story, the characters, and what is going on in the scene. These are constants – information that is already known. But somewhere in that scene is a big, gaping black hole of uncertainty. Something is left unknown, and all there is for the audience to confront is a big X that could be anything. This unknown element is what creates the much mentioned “need to know” in the audience. The audience is presented with an unsolved equation. And they want to know the answer! As long as the question still hangs in the air, as long as X is unknown, a storyteller has the audience in the palm of their hand because the audience desperately wants to SOLVE the equation.
One thing that must be present in any great movie scene, no matter if it be in romantic comedy or horror, is DRAMATIC TENSION. Dramatic tension is created when the audience has unanswered questions. And a writer creates unanswered questions by withholding important information as X-factors.
There are three ways a storyteller can use this X-factor to his or her benefit, each with different results. These are: Mystery, Surprise, and Suspense.
MYSTERY
mystery: n. 1. Something unexplained or secret. 2. A story involving unknown persons, facts, etc.
When something is a “mystery,” it simply means a piece of important information is missing. A big piece of the puzzle is gone, and we are unable to see the whole picture.
The natural outcome of mystery is CURIOSITY. Curiosity is defined as “a desire to learn.” Someone sees the available information, notices that they are unable to understand everything due to what is missing, and feels an urge to know more. Curiosity causes people to actively seek out information, to try to solve the mystery.
Never just GIVE your audience information. Don't just drop facts into their lap. They won't want them because they were never asked for. Have you ever dangled a string in front of a cat? The cat will be fascinated for hours by the string as long as it is just out of its grasp. But if you just give it the string, the cat will simply look at it for a moment, then walk away.
They key to a great movie experience is to turn the audience into ACTIVE participants in the story. Instead of the storyteller just giving information, and the audience passively accepting it, a storyteller must give the audience a reason to WANT the information, and then motivate them to seek it out on their own.
A storyteller creates mystery by providing a bit of information to the audience- but only enough to arouse curiosity. The most important piece of this information- the thing that solves the mystery and allows everything to make sense- is purposely withheld. (The Formalists called this retardation.) To use an example from Die Hard, late in the first act we are repeatedly shown a large truck approaching Nakatomi Tower accompanied with ominous music. Nothing else is explained. Each time the audience sees the truck, they wonder, what is in the truck? Why is this truck important? In terms of algebra, the truck, the tower, and the ominous music are the constants. They are what we know as facts. The X-factor, the unknown thing the audience wishes to know, is the contents of the truck. It could be anything. Packages, exercise equipment, kangaroos. The X-factor arouses the audience's interest and turns them into them active viewers.
Unanswered questions create tension. If the creators of Die Hard had chosen to follow the shot of the truck with a shot of what was inside, all tension would have been lost. The audience would no longer be curious, and would have been robbed of the PLEASURE OF DISCOVERY when the truck's doors finally open to reveal Hans and his men armed with machine guns.
The “pleasure of discovery” is the audience's reward for their curiosity. Discovering an answer to unanswered questions gives the audience a unique self-satisfaction, a feeling just like when one solves a difficult puzzle or gains sudden insight into a bothersome problem. When you encourage an audience to become active viewers through curiosity, the audience gains pleasure from the experience. When they finally learn important information, they subconsciously pat themselves on the back, feeling good about the fact that they were smart enough to piece together the bits of information on their own rather than having it spelled out to them like children.
Imagine a room full of schoolchildren and you as the teacher. There are two ways you could approach the lesson. The easiest, most obvious way is to simply lecture the children and expect them to sit there and pay attention. But a better way to teach is to get them involved. Ask them questions, start a dialogue, guide them to figure out the lesson on their own. By leading the students to pursue questions on their own, by guiding them bit-by-bit to the solution, not only will the students pay attention, not only will they enjoy the learning experience more, but they will feel proud of themselves out of the belief that they figured things out all by themselves! You will teach them without them knowing they have been taught.
In storytelling, the answer to the mystery is always right there in plain sight. It already exists, it is just kept hidden from the audience. Much of Hans' master plan is kept secret throughout Die Hard. Hans' goal is to get into the vault, but several times throughout the second act Hans' computer expert Theo tells him that it will be impossible to break through the vault's seventh lock. Hans' only reaction is a self-assured smile as he tells Theo not to worry about it. Hans' plan to get past the seventh lock already exists. He knows what he is going to do when the time comes. But it is kept hidden from the audience. This seventh lock becomes an X-factor. How does Hans plan to get into the vault? Just why is he so confident? The audience wonders about these questions until the right moment comes and we receive the pleasure to discover how Hans' brilliant plan has fallen into place. The result is an “ah-ha!” moment where everything finally makes sense.
Die Hard's writers do an amazing job of creating mystery out of even the smallest pieces of information, often arousing curiosity with a single line of dialogue or action, and then answering it with the next:
195 EXT. POLICE BARRICADES - ON MITCHELL AND ROBINSON 195
Suddenly rifle fire sounds from the building.
ROBINSON
They're shooting at them!
MITCHELL
(calmly)
It's panic fire...they can't see anything.
POWELL
(under breath)
They're shooting at the lights.
More shots ring out from the building going over the SWAT officers' heads. Suddenly the huge dome of one of the spotlights shatters behind Mitchell and Robinson's head.
ROBINSON
They're going after the lights!
But, the more important a piece of information, the longer you can (and should) withhold it from the audience. The final phase of Hans' plan is to blow up the roof of the building, killing all the hostages and the FBI helicopter with it in order to escape in the ensuing chaos. This bombshell of information is kept hidden until very late in the film. But if one backtracks, they will find small pieces of this information scattered throughout the story from its very beginning. Soon after the terrorists first arrive, we see them doing some sort of work on the top floor. We have no idea what they are doing, only that they are doing something mysterious. Hans and his men make several mentions of “the roof.” John finds a bag full of detonators- something Hans wants to kill John to get back- which begs the question, what does Hans need all those detonators for? Little by little, small pieces of information are added to the story, just like a jigsaw puzzle where you begin with the edges and slowly add more as you move closer to discovering the whole picture. Yet the biggest piece that makes the picture clear, the X-factor, is still unknown. The longer the audience is allowed to wonder, the bigger the payoff when it is finally revealed. The audience gets the maximum pleasure of discovery, a big “ah-ha” as they look back and find that all the clues made sense.
(Just make sure that this big, important piece of information really is big and important enough to be worth the wait. Anything less will come off as a letdown. There seems to be a direct relationship between the importance of a piece of information and the length of time you're allowed to keep the audience waiting before giving it to them.)
Well-crafted mystery can drive an audience crazy with anxiety. But the good type of anxiety. The immensely pleasurable anxiety that you felt as a kid at Christmastime when you looked at those presents under the tree. You were dying to rip them open and see what was inside – but you couldn't. Not just yet. A storyteller pleasures the audience by teasing them. By chanting, “I got a secret! I got a secret!” and then making the audience twitch in their seats with the desire to know.
SURPRISE
surprise: n. 1. to come on suddenly or unexpectedly. 2. to attack without warning.
Where mystery fosters an audience's interest by giving small clues and keeping important information hidden, surprise abruptly seizes the audience's interest by doing the near opposite.
Surprise withholds ALL clues from the audience. Something important is occurring, but the audience is given no indication of its existence. Then, without warning, information is shoved in the audience's faces, a big, important piece thrown at them, and they never saw it coming.
The audience reaction to surprise is SHOCK. They are thrown aback, momentarily disorientated, as their minds scramble to understand the sudden onslaught of action. Surprise, like mystery, forces the audience to ask questions. But whereas mystery makes the audience wonder “What is going to happen?”, surprise hits the audience like a panic attack and makes them ask, “Why did that happen just now?” Surprise is like a backwards-mystery. Mystery gives clues and leaves the important info unknown, but surprise gives the important info up front and keeps the clues unknown. Without the clues, the audience is left scrambling after the initial shock to put together an explanation. This is why after the dead body falls onto Powell's police car--after the initial shock and confusion, after Powell's fear and the cacophony of gunfire--it was necessary for the audience to see the shot of John McClane through the broken window. This piece of additional information answered the audience's questions and solved the backwards-mystery. The body landed on the car because Jon threw it out the window. This information was the scene's X-factor.
A great surprise is like an explosion. Extremely powerful, but short-lived. If someone jumps out of a closet and yells “boo!” you receive intense emotional excitement – but your heart continues to race for only as long as it takes discover there is nothing to be afraid of. A shock given to an audience lasts only a few seconds as well – the amount of time it takes for the audience to understand what just happened and regain their senses. For this reason, surprise should not be used as the writer's primary storytelling tool. Surprises should be used sparingly, and only in moments where the writer feels that a sudden shocking reveal of information will be the most dramatically effective. The problem with surprise is that once the shock has worn off, the dramatic tension will soon go dead. A story with nothing but surprising moments will be one that constantly alternates between heart attack and boredom. As the story continues onward, each surprise will become less and less shocking as the audience becomes desensitized to the device and will eventually start to expect surprises to happen. Another thing that makes surprise weaker than the other two dramatic devices is that, unlike mystery and suspense, there is no slow build of tension that proceeds the device's payoff. Instead, surprise gives its payoff immediately. This means that moments before surprise can sometimes be dramatically dead, allowing the audience an opportunity to slip back into becoming passive, disinterested viewers. Alfred Hitchcock famously spoke of his preference for suspense over surprise. He would rather see the time bomb hidden beneath the desk, silently ticking down, than the shock of an uneventful scene interrupted by a surprise explosion.
Surprise definitely has its place in the storyteller's arsenal. When well used, it can be the atomic bomb of storytelling. But use it wisely. It is always far less fun to throw something in the audience's face than to make them squirm as you hold it out of their reach.
SUSPENSE
suspense: n. 1. a state of uncertainty. 2. the growing excitement felt while awaiting a climax.
Out of the three storytelling devices discussed in this article, suspense is by far the most effective when it comes to seizing and holding the audience's attentions. Suspense uniquely combines the curiosity of mystery with the fear of surprise. The audience has a question that they are dying to know, but they are afraid of what will happen when it is answered.
The primary differences between mystery, surprise, and suspense is easy to understand. In mystery, important information is withheld from the audience, to be revealed at a later time. Usually a character or characters already know what the audience does not. The characters have a position of advantage on the audience.
In surprise, the important information is suddenly revealed right as it happens with no clues beforehand. Characters learn this information at the same time the audience does. Character and audience are on equal footing.
Suspense, on the other hand, gives the audience story information in advance. Suspense clues the audience in on something unwanted that is sure to happen in the immediate future that will have a negative effect upon the story situation. Suspense gets its power from the audience's feeling of anticipation- and fearful anticipation at that. Disaster is waiting to strike, and the audience both knows and fears it. The X-factor of suspense, that one piece of unknown information that the audience is dying to know, it not WHAT will happen, but WHEN it will happen and WHAT will be the outcome. For example, early in the Third Act both John McClane and the audience discover that Hans plans to blow up the roof with the hostages on it. At this point, the mystery over Han's final plan turns into suspense. The question is no longer, “What is Hans' plan?” it is, “When will Hans do it, and can John save everyone in time?” The audience is on the edge of their seats for the rest of this sequence awaiting an answer to this question.
Suspense can be broken down into two types: standard suspense and heightened suspense.
Standard suspense occurs when both the audience and the protagonist know of the impending danger. The audience is with the character every step of the way, getting information as soon as the character does. The unwanted event could be something waiting to happen in the immediate future, such as in a classic ticking clock scenario, or it could be happening in the present moment. Whenever John McClane is engaged in battle with Hans' henchmen, standard suspense is at play. The audience's question is not “What is going on?” it is “What will be the result?” -- will John McClane escape this fight alive?
Heightened suspense occurs when the audience is given information on an impending event, but the character is NOT. The audience is informed that danger or misfortune is rushing the protagonist's way, but the character is ignorant of this, a sitting duck waiting to get ambushed. In heightened suspense, the audience has a position of advantage over the characters. Early in the second act, John McClane goes to the rooftop to radio the police for help. But what John doesn't know (and what the audience does) is that Hans has heard the transmission and sent Karl and two others to kill him. We see Karl and the two others riding in the elevator, readying their weapons. Then cut to John continuing to argue with the police dispatcher, completely oblivious to the danger. Likewise, in the third act, the audience is allowed to know that the FBI agents Johnson & Johnson plan to land their helicopter on the roof with guns blazing, killing anyone suspicious-- something that comes as a surprise to John when he must suddenly run for his life. These scenarios of heightened suspense create a slow build of tension with each second that passes between the moment the audience learns the information to the time when the protagonist has this information thrust upon him, ending in a climax of audience anxiety.
The most fascinating thing about heightened suspense is that its immense power, the great emotional pleasure it can give an audience, comes directly from a feeling of helplessness! The helplessness of the audience is what heightened suspense is all about. Have you ever been in a movie theater and heard someone literally yell at the characters on on screen? “Don't go in there!” or “Look out behind you!” Of course, it seems silly to do this. The people on screen obviously can't hear you. But these people in the audience have been led to feel so burdened by their privileged information that they cannot stand to see the characters stumble into danger. Despite all common sense, are compelled to try and help them! The audience cares about the character. The audience knows that the character is in danger. The audience knows information that could save the character's life. If they could only tell it to them the character would be safe. But they can't! They can only sit in fear as they watch the character do something they KNOW they shouldn't do.
There is something known as the “Cassandra complex.” The idea originates from Greek mythology. Cassandra was the beautiful daughter of Priam, the king of Troy. The sun god Apollo became smitten with her and gave her the gift of prophesy to convince her to be his bride. However, Cassandra rejected his proposal. Angry, Apollo allowed her to continue to prophesy, but cursed her so that no one would ever believe her visions. Cassandra continued to foresee disasters, accidents, death and destruction, but she could never do anything to prevent them from happening. Cassandra eventually went mad from her helplessness, from the hundreds of horrible events she could do nothing to stop. This, in a nutshell, is what heightened suspense is all about. The storyteller-god is giving the audience their own little Cassandra complexes, driving them just a little nuts, one scene at a time.
Heightened suspense sequences usually operate under a sort of hunter/hunted dynamic. John McClane is usually the one who is being hunted, and he is usually the one in the dark. But a heightened suspense sequence can work just as well if the dynamic is reversed with the hunter deprived of information rather than the character who is hunted. Just before the mid-point there is a scene sequence that finds John McClane hiding in a ventilation duct. John wound up there in order to escape from the homicidal Karl. However, Karl has figured out that John is hiding in the ducts. He just doesn't know where. So we have John stuck in the duct, unable to escape, unable to move without giving away his location, and Karl down below poking around with his machine gun. The audience knows where John is and where Karl is. John knows where Karl is. Karl is the one in the dark. We see Karl getting closer and closer to discovering John. The audience wishes to help John out of this situation, but they are just as helpless as he is. The question, the X-factor that winds the tension of this scene so very tight, is “Will Karl find John? What will happen when he does?”
The audience feels this sensation of helplessness because the audience cares about the characters and does not want to see them come to harm. This shows a direct connection between good suspense and empathetic, identifiable characters. Character identification is a prerequisite for good suspense. If the audience does not yet care about your characters, if they don't like them or cannot at least care whether the character lives or dies, any attempt at suspense will fall flat. Suspense, especially heightened suspense, works by creating a DILEMMA in the mind of the audience. The audience WANTS to see what is going to happen when the danger strikes, yet at the same time they FEAR what will happen to the character. They are torn between curiosity and compassion – in an emotional panic where they proceed with one eye open and one closed. If the audience does not care about the characters in the first place, that dilemma never forms and the feeling of suspense will fail to materialize.
COMPLICATE YOUR ALGEBRA
Mystery, surprise, and suspense work well on their own, but they work even better when combined. Watch this clip from Die Hard and try to count how many times mystery, surprise, and suspense are used in a single scene.
Mix. Match. Every moment has the potential to engage its audience through the creative giving and withholding of information through our cinematic algebra. Become its master and you can easily turn this:
