Monthly Archives: March 2023

Start late, end early.

Akers on how to start late and leave early.

One of the most common errors inexperienced writers make is to write scenes that start early and end late. There’s just too much fat at both ends, especially in a screenplay, where every unnecessary line costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars to shoot.

One way to eliminate unnecessary material is to concentrate on the gist of your scene. What is it that you want to convey through your character actions and dialogue? Do so and move on!

In Your Screenplay Sucks, William M Akers provides this example of how to cut a scene to the bone. An earlier draft looked like this:

———————

INT. GRAHAM’S SEVEN PAINTINGS.

Huge, nearly abstract canvases of bloody, dead, eviscerated animals. Road kill under a layer of sloppy handwriting. Graham poses with Magda, more photos.

Magda departs. Camilla approaches.

CAMILLA: I’m Camilla Warren. Nice night.

They shake hands, slowly. She is very appealing.

GRAHAM: Buying, or watching?

CAMILLA: Watching.

She inspects him.

CAMILLA: Sold anything?

GRAHAM: I will.

CAMILLA: When you do, find me.

And she’s gone.

————————-

Here’s how the scene ended up:

INT. GRAHAM’S SEVEN~ PAINTINGS

Huge, nearly abstract canvases of bloody, dead, eviscerated animals. Road kill under a layer of sloppy handwriting. Graham poses with Magda, more photos.

Magda departs. Camilla approaches.

CAMILLA: Sold anything?

GRAHAM: I will.

CAMILLA: When you do, find me.

And she’s gone.

—————————

So, there you have it. To start late and end early means to get to the point. This entails getting rid of unnecessary diversions, greetings and niceties since they slow the pace and muddy the story.

Summary

Scenes should start late and end early. Your story will be more compelling and energetic for it.

Catch my latest YouTube video here!

Become a Master of Emotion in Writing

Throw Mama from the train showcases masterful emotion in writing.

Here is a masterful example, taken from William M. Akers’, Your Screenplay Sucks, of how to set up a scene in order to create genuine and powerful emotion—in this case, tear-jerking compassion!

In Throw Mama from the Train Larry Donner, played by Billy Crystal, is roped into attending dinner at Owen’s house. Owen (played by Danny DeVito) lives with his mother. He is Larry’s worst writing student at the community college where he teaches. Owen is a rather simple-minded, talentless, irritating imp of a man who lives with his mother, a cantankerous old woman with a painful voice and an even worse personality. We learn that Danny’s father is dead.

The dinner is terrible, Owen is as irritating as ever and his mother is just plain horrible. ‘Owen, you don’t have any friends,’ she rasps, stating the obvious. Larry desperately wants to leave, heck, we want him to leave, but he seems stuck there out of an abundance of politeness.

Up to now, the scene has made us uncomfortable, generated feelings of confinement, of being trapped in a hostile and hopeless environment. We shift in our seats and pray for it to end.

Finally the mother goes off to bed. Here is Larry’s chance to escape! But no. Owen asks Billy if wants to see his coin collection, and Billy is forced to say yes, again out of politeness.

“Knowing how to evoke emotion is the single most important skill to master in story-telling.”

Up to now, we have come to dislike Owen, well, for being Owen, and for putting Larry through such an excruciating evening. Not much to like here.

Then Owen dumps several coins on the floor—a few worn out quarters, some old dimes and nickels. So that’s it? This is his magnificent coin collection?

Then this happens: I’ll quote Akers who quotes Owen’s exact words from the scene: ‘ “This one here, I got in change, when my dad took me to see Peter, Paul, and Mary. And this one, I got in change when I bought a hot dog at the circus. My daddy let me keep the change. He always let me keep the change.” ‘

Wow! What a shift in our emotions—not a dry eye in the house! We’ve gone from loathing Owen to loving him through this sudden injection of feeling rooted in his nostalgia for his past life with his father. It explains why, in a certain sense, the child-like Owen stoped growing beyond the days spent with his father. He is still irritating, but now we understand him a little more, and we adore him for it; perhaps we even feel a little guilty for having loathed him in the first place.

This is masterful writing. Well done to the screenwriter, Mr Stu Silver!

Summary

Knowing how to evoke emotion in writing is the single most effective thing you can do to improve your stories.

Catch my latest YouTube video through this link.

Understanding the dual function of Archetypes

Christopher Vogler on the dual function of archetypes.

In a previous post I talked about the dual function of archetypes as presented by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writers Journey, namely a dramatic and a psychological function. This deserves further explaining.

The dramatic function of an archetype, such as the Hero, is to display behaviour in a way that drives the story forward, but also in a way that pulls readers and audiences into the drama.

Heroes finds themselves in a position where they have to solve a local or societal problem, and to do so in an intriguing and captivating way, if the tale is to succeed. This comes down to the writer employing good dramatic principles such generating suspense, placing the hero before a dilemma, having him or her struggle to master difficult skills, go on a journey of self-discovery, and the like.

“The dual function of archetypes offers the writer a complete system of managing character behaviour.”

The psychological function of an archetype, on the other hand, demonstrates how the hero can achieve success though a process of integration, to use Carl Jung’s term. But integration of what, you may well ask?

Simply stated, the integration of the remaining archetypes, or to put it in another way, through the integration of the energies that dwell within the Self, primarily the Shadow (the dark energy within us all), but also the Mentor, the Herald, the Threshold Guardian, the Shapeshifter, the Ally, and the Trickster. It is only when the Hero acknowledges these energies within, then manages to achieve a balance between them, that he can overcome the physical challenges in the world.

A story, then, can be seen as the projection on the pages of book or the surface of a screen of the energies struggling for balance within one’s self—as the externalisation, personification and hence dramatization of these forces. Understood in this way, Christopher Vogler’s archetypes offer a complete system of writing stories that arise from myth, our collective unconscious, and our deep literary traditions. They are about ourselves as much as they are about the world.

Summary

The dual function of archetypes includes not only the dramatic dimension of stories but the psychological remnants found in humanity’s collective unconscious that form the basis of our rich, mythic traditions.

Catch my latest YouTube video here!

How to introduce characters in a screenplay

In his book, Your Screenplay Sucks, William M Akers admonishes us to introduce characters in our screenplays in a concise but telling way. He provides the following counter example:

“MURIEL REED, a grounds Keeper, captivates Gary. She fills the sprayer with soda and mists brown over the grass.” This is perhaps a little too scanty. Akers suggests that you tell us about a character’s personality, their flaws or tics, but hold back on the smaller physical details until they are of importance. He suggests that specifying race and height, unless truly relevant, is best left out.

“When you introduce characters for the first time in the action block of a screenplay avoid superfluous physical details. Hone in only on details that provide a snapshot of personality.”

It is better to include physical detail that characterises—does double duty. Here’s an extract from Good Will Hunting:

“The guy holding court is CHUKIE SULLIVAN, 20, and the largest of the bunch. He is loud, boisterous, a born entertainer. Next to him is WILL HUNTING, 20, handsome and confident, a soft-spoken leader…”

From Ghostbusters:

“Venkman is an associate professor but his rumpled suit and manic gleam in his eyes indicate an underlying instability in his nature.”

This example, from The Big Lebowski, is Akers’ favourite:

“It is late, the supermarket all but deserted. We are tracking in on a fortyish man in Bermuda shirts and sunglasses at the dairy case. He is the Dude. His rumpled look and relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.”

There you have it. A no nonsense approach of how to introduce the characters in your screenplays from one of the best.

Summary

Introduce characters by highlighting some quintessential aspect of their identity. Avoid superfluous details.

Catch my latest YouTube video here!