Are you worried?
Posted on November 20, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized
As a matter of fact, I wasn’t worried ENOUGH.
Huh?
Well, I’ve been locked in an apartment in Phoenix for the last two weeks working on my rewrite and I thought I would be finished by now.
But I’m not.
Why?
Because I’m just not worried enough. I kind of finished the rewrite and then tried to sit on it for a day but the screenwriter inside just wouldn’t let me because both he and I knew I wasn’t worried enough.
What am I talking about?
Scenes.
I realized while going over the rewrite that certain scenes that read well and even have some pretty cool stuff in them just don’t EVOKE WORRY in me…
So that got me to thinking…
If some of these scenes don’t worry me, then they might not worry the audience either. It was like one of those little light bulb balloons in the comics when a character has an idea. BAM!
WORRY.
Let’s take a look at that word…
wor-ry [wur-ee, wuhr-ee] verb, -ried, -ry-ing, noun, plural -ries.
–verb (used without object)
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to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret.
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to move with effort: an old car worrying uphill.
–verb (used with object)
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to torment with cares, anxieties, etc.; trouble; plague.
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to seize, esp. by the throat, with the teeth and shake or mangle, as one animal does another.
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to harass by repeated biting, snapping, etc.
-noun
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a worried condition or feeling; uneasiness or anxiety.
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a cause of uneasiness or anxiety; trouble.
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act of worrying.
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Fox Hunting. the action of the hounds in tearing to pieces the carcass of a fox.
-Verb phrase
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worry along or through, Informal. to progress or succeed by constant effort, despite difficulty: to worry through an intolerable situation.
That’s right… Take a look at the above definition. I sure as hell did and when I did, I realized that I still had scenes in my rewrite that didn’t do the following…
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They didn’t torment me.
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They didn’t make me suffer.
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They didn’t make me fret.
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They didn’t cause me anxiety.
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They didn’t trouble me.
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They didn’t seize me by the throat.
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They didn’t shake me like an animal would when attacking another.
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They didn’t harass me.
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They didn’t give me a feeling of uneasiness.
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They didn’t make me WORRY.
Like a lot of screenwriters, I do put my scenes through the usual tests…
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Does a character have a goal in the scene?
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Is there rising conflict?
- Does one character WIN over another?
And yeah, I easily meet those tests and to be honest, I pretty much like this rewrite. It’s a lot different from the original spec but it’s also a lot better.
Better is GOOD but I still felt like something was missing from some of these scenes because I felt NOTHING.
Feeling NOTHING is BAD but I still couldn’t put my finger on the problem so I started back at the beginning.
I read.
Once I started reading and came to a scene that caused me to feel some emotion, I stopped after reading that scene and just sat there considering what I was actually feeling. Before today, it was always just some kind of emotion that I never really explored.
Till now.
It was worry. I was worried about the main character of that scene. I was worried for his or her physical well being. I was worried about their feelings. I was worried about them achieving their goal…
I was worried.
Some of these scenes didn’t cause me to worry. Sure there was conflict. Sure one character had a goal and either achieved it or NOT but even with these elements, I didn’t really give a shit.
NOT GOOD.
The rest of the scenes before and after the problem scenes are fine. They do what they need to do and they make me feel some kind of worry so I felt that the problem scenes were probably okay and simply existed to release a little tension.
And to be honest, I could probably leave these scenes as-is and everyone would still be happy…
Except me.
Contemplating this problem even more, I realized WHY I wasn’t feeling worry in some of these scenes… I wasn’t feeling worry because the main character of those scenes wasn’t feeling worry either!
Very interesting, I thought. So I went back to see if this held true with the other scenes and I would say, YEAH it did. When the main character of the scenes that worked felt worry, I also felt it in some way, shape, or form.
Wow! I might actually be on to something here, I thought. Now I apologize to those of you out there that already KNOW this stuff. Maybe this is old hat to you. To me, it was like winning the lottery.
Make somebody in the scene, WORRY.
Sound easy?
How the hell do you do that?
For your character to feel worry, there should probably be an OBSTACLE that threatens their current and future happiness.
Happiness is tricky… Your happiness probably ISN’T MY HAPPINESS. My happiness isn’t necessarily my character’s happiness. So you’ve got to do your homework on your characters so that you absolutely fucking KNOW what they yearn for to make them happy i.e., what kind of HAPPINESS do they want?
Create the RIGHT obstacle that gets in the way of that happiness and you should easily have the character(s) in your scenes feeling some kind of displeasing emotion that equals some kind of WORRY. Some displeasing or unpleasant emotions that come to mind are:
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fear
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anger
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loss
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hate
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loneliness
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worthlessness
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regret
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jealousy
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emptiness
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guilt
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doubt
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envy
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shame
I’m sure there’s more but you get the idea… All this brings us back to TENSION in more ways than one.
We go to the movies for that rollercoaster ride and manipulating the tension that the audience feels results in that rollercoaster ride.
You do remember the rollercoaster ride, don’t you? Sure you do… Remember how we mentally and physically prepare for the twists and turns by gripping a little tighter on the handrails as we approach a long drop? Maybe you close your eyes or hold your breath when you approach or go through a 360 degree loop? No matter how you prepare for the parts of the ride that scare you a little, what you’re feeling is tension right before and during. Then right after you’ve successfully completed that part of the ride, your tension is released a bit…
Just not for long.
That’s what you want to do with your screenplay. Your screenplay IS THE ROLLERCOASTER RIDE. It’s the tracks. It’s the twists. It’s the turns. It’s the 360s i.e., it’s the structure or plan that you implement to make us feel tension or WORRY, followed by a little release or emotions that cause us to feel happiness:
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acceptance
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love
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pride
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hope
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gratitude
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revelation
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enthusiasm
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ecstasy
Again, you get the idea so hopefully, your scenes evoke SOME KIND OF EMOTION. Some kind of WORRY because if they don’t, you might not be doing your job.
Unk
Comments
9 Responses to “Are you worried?”
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You know, one of these days I’m going read one of these posts that doesn’t require an entire rewrite of all of my current spec scripts! LOL
Great stuff as usual.
It occurred to me that one of the interesting ways to create both worry and tension in a scene is to have one character attempt to keep a secret from another.
What I like about this method is it means you can put any of your characters in micro-dilemmas — a situation where their objective of keeping the secret contradicts some other external objective.
This multi-layers the conflict in the scene — conflict between the characters — and, at the same time internal conflict for one or more of the participants within the scene.
[...] The Unknown Screenwriter has done it again! — an incredible post about increasing the drama in the scene, by increasing the degree of worry both for and about the character. [...]
Good stuff, Unk. There’s an interesting web site that discusses what makes a good, powerful scene. Although the web page belongs to a novelist (Randy Ingermanson) it is still pertinent to screenwriting in general and scene creation in particular.
Here is the URL: http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/perfect_scene.html
Regards,
Unk,
You ROCK. You rock most excellent.
I will now return to my regularly scheduled rewriting.
Awesome. Another post to send to my partners. Woo Hoo!
You rock. I pebbles.
Great post. Don’t worry, be happy.
Happy Thanksgiving, Unk and friends. Play nice with the relatives, and if you can’t play nice, at least record it for future writing reference ;-)
Well, I was going to chime in and offer TENSION as a synonym to WORRY, but you beat me to it in this complete and excellent post — that touches on something I’ve been thinking a lot about — which is that contrast between what our characters feel and what we want the VIEWER to feel. Usually we want them in our hero’s shoes…but not always…
Thanks A Million and happy turkey.