Playing by his rules…
Just finished reading a nice article about Billy Wilder and thought I would share…
Unk
Please don’t be PREDICTABLE…
Pretty please?
It’s true… Basically speaking, we all think in clichés but the trick in screenwriting is to NOT write a cliché. Even in current A-List screenplays, I can end up reading a resounding cliché or two.
It’s your job… Nay, YOUR DUTY to set fire to that cliché you’re just about ready to type and watch it burn…
Enjoy it burning. We don’t need any more cliché screenplays and movies.
Predictability is already a problem before you even sit down and outline the damn story! You’re probably going to have a good guy… You’re probably going to have a bad guy. With that ALONE, we are already about to enter “The Cliché Zone.”
Hey, that rhymes!
Sorry.
We’re pretty sure that the good guy is gonna win and the bad guy is gonna lose. Whew! More clichés to deal with.
Real quick, let’s take a look at SE7EN. The good guys win in that movie… OR DO THEY? I bring up SE7EN to illustrate the obvious… The writer took the cliché and TURNED IT UPSIDE DOWN without ruining the story.
YOU MUST DO THE SAME!
Why do you think box office is down? Predictability and cliché characters and stories. We, as an audience are DYING to watch something different. Something that’s not predictable or cliché and guess what will happen when we do finally see that movie?
We will RUN, not walk to tell our friends, family, and associates about how great the movie is and they will in turn do the same thing… i.e., BLOCKBUSTER.
Have I killed the dead horse? Good. It needed it.
KEEP THE AUDIENCE GUESSING…
Here’s some ways to keep us guessing all the way to the end…
1) Kill off one of the good guys that we really, really like. Yeah, it sucks but wow… It really makes the audience sit up and take notice! They are now thinking, “What the FUCK is the hero gonna do NOW?”
2) Beat the hell out of your Protagonist. Not just physically but mentally, financially, emotionally, socially, etc. As stated in a previous post… DRAG HIS OR HER ASS THROUGH THE MUD! Make us wonder how in the hell he or she is going to win out by the end of the movie.
3) Don’t let your Protagonist know everything. There’s two ways to handle this and you really have to perform quite a balancing act to get it right but when you do… BAM! You got us HOOKED! One way is to feed the audience a little information that your Protagonist is not privy to… This helps create more suspense in the audience’s minds because they know something is right around the corner that your Protagonist does not. At the same time, you need to keep both the audience AND your Protagonist in the dark for certain plot elements so that as soon as your Protagonist gets it, WE DO TOO! Use both techniques to foreshadow your plot and we will thank you by telling everyone how great your film is.
4) Crank up the heat at your MIDPOINT. Make your Protagonist think he’s achieved his goal by the midpoint of your screenplay only to YANK THE RUG OUT from under him that reveals a bigger, darker, deeper, more dangerous problem than he ever thought possible. As soon as your Protagonist realizes that he’s only halfway home, we’ll lean forward in our seats and think, “Holy shit! What now?”
5) End with a REVERSAL. Just like I pointed out in SE7EN, the audience just knows what’s going to happen at the end. Sure, they might know that your Protagonist will win but you gotta yank the rug out from under both your Protagonist AND the audience one last time. Think THE SIXTH SENSE. Think THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Think AMERICAN HISTORY X. Think ARLINGTON ROAD. Think THE CRYING GAME. Think FALLEN. Think THE EXORCIST. Think FIGHT CLUB. Think WILD THINGS.
You got that?
Good.
Now go write it.
Unk
Drag your Hero through the mud…
The Protagonist…
Also referred to as the “Hero†of your screenplay or film… As I read a number of screenplays throughout the month, I keep noticing what I feel is an essential yet often lacking trait of the story’s Hero.
It is, in my opinion, this lacking trait that can seriously influence the marketability of your screenplay and maybe even your film.
What the hell is it?
Your Protagonist’s character flaw — also known as your Protagonist’s INNER or FATAL FLAW.
There, I said it.
A character flaw can be just about anything that has a negative impact on your Protagonist. Could be a fear, a hate, a prejudice, an anger, an obsession, an addiction, an inability to express one’s self…
Whatever.
I keep reading screenplays where the Protagonist starts out as a fairly capable person. Sometimes, almost perfect. This happens for a number of reasons but for the most part, it almost seems to me that the screenwriter subconsciously LIKES his or her Hero way too much to put him or her through complete HELL, let alone give him or her a serious character flaw.
In your screenplay or film, your Protagonist normally has a goal. Of course you throw in all kinds of physical obstacles to keep him or her from reaching this outer/tangible goal and that’s definitely good to do but don’t forget the ‘internal barriers or obstacles’ that also keep your Protagonist from accomplishing his or her goal.
For a compelling screenplay and successful film, the audience WANTS to identify and empathize with your Protagonist. That’s why they go to the theater and rent the DVD.
They want to temporarily BECOME YOUR PROTAGONIST. Hell, maybe they want to actually BE YOUR PROTAGONIST! If that’s the case, then you probably penned one hell of a screenplay…
The audience wants to take the ride your Protagonist is taking! Let’s face it… As much as we would like to… We’re not able to exact revenge, save the girl, find the treasure, etc…
Instead, we watch movies.
However, when we, as screenwriters and filmmakers, make things too easy for our Hero, the audience walks… If not in person, definitely in their minds which in turn, translates to ZERO word of mouth referrals and advertising.
This inner/character/fatal flaw should be immediately recognizable to the audience. This inner/character/fatal flaw should be something general enough that the audience is readily able to identify with it… They should have experienced it themselves or it should remind them of someone they know that has or IS experiencing a similar type flaw.
When I say “general” — I’m referring to the daily life emotions that we ALL go through… Jealousy, greed, anger, love, obsession, addiction, etc. Getting TOO SPECIFIC on something not so general could confuse your audience.
So as you take (or PUSH) your Protagonist through your story, this person should, by the end of the story, overcome his or her inner/character/fatal flaw… It should be this flaw that keeps your Protagonist from accomplishing the physical goal of the story until the end when your Protagonist finally realizes that he or she must overcome this flaw to succeed i.e., the CHARACTER ARC you hear so much about.
This ‘end of the story’ event that finally enables your Protagonist to pull his or her head out of their ass should be a culminating event… Everything prior leads up this one event. This one event is what sparks your Hero’s realization that they’ve had an inner problem all along that’s totally stood in their way from accomplishing their outer or physical goal of the story.
Pick a flaw… Any flaw.
Often, picking a flaw and threading it through the story so the audience identifies with it can be difficult at best… This is where reverse engineering comes in.
Hopefully, you have a basic idea of how your story ends. You might not have the culminating event figured out but you know the outer or physical goal you want your Hero to achieve.
Work backwards from this point. If your Protagonist ends up being strong and powerful in the end, maybe he should be weak and helpless in the beginning. This way we, the audience, actually see the character’s ARC.
That’s a pretty obvious example but I make it strictly for illustration. If your story is about jealousy and your Hero overcomes his or her jealousy at the end of the story, then it only makes sense to make this character extremely jealous in the beginning.
Working backwards or reverse engineering should easily plot out your Protagonist’s arc…
So to summarize…
Take a look at the end of your story. What does your Protagonist physically achieve?
It’s okay if he or she takes out all the bad guys and wins the girl or the boy. We like that! That’s what we go to the movies for! Just don’t make it easy on him. Don’t just let him kick everybody’s ass and get the girl. Work backwards. If he ends up being courageous, work backwards and make him cowardly in the beginning. If she ends up being honest and forthright, make her dishonest and a cheat in the beginning.
Go for a completely opposite internal turn-around and you’ll go a long way towards us loving and identifying with your Protagonist.
No… This isn’t a hard and fast rule. No, not every Protagonist has done this in every movie. Remember, we’re talking about writing and selling spec scripts…
*NOTE: I apologize for this post being similar to the AUDIENCE INDENTIFICATION post but I felt that this subject needed clarification.
Unk