Comments on: Are you worried?

By: Chris Soth

Chris Soth — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:09:42 +0000

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.

By: caroline

caroline — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 02:20:30 +0000

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 ;-)

By: spatula

spatula — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:22:39 +0000

Great post. Don’t worry, be happy.

By: MaryAn

MaryAn — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:12:29 +0000

You rock. I pebbles.

By: Miriam Paschal

Miriam Paschal — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:47:07 +0000

Awesome. Another post to send to my partners. Woo Hoo!

By: Joshua James

Joshua James — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:23:06 +0000

Unk,

You ROCK. You rock most excellent.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled rewriting.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:41:26 +0000

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,

By: Unknown Screenwriter - Scribosphere - All Good Stuff at $1000 Spielberg

Unknown Screenwriter - Scribosphere - All Good Stuff at $1000 Spielberg — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:22:02 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: Clive

Clive — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:07:49 +0000

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.