Another early feature on the blog was "Clichés I'm Tired of Seeing." When you're reading 15 scripts a week for five years, you start becoming nauseous at the signs that always accompany the least satisfying scripts to read. Most of these could be easily evaded, but too many writers fell into the most unimaginative ways of using them.
The first cliché I targeted was a resolution I'd seen in many rom-coms and dramas - where the "surprise" visual reveal of a woman's new baby bump at the climax was used as shorthand for "and they lived happily ever after." I started with that because it's not a BAD way to communicate the strength of the relationship, it's just a technique that's been done so many times that the impact it carries is usually outweighed by the audience feeling it coming.
I also took writers to task who ended their scripts with "To Be Continued." This was less common then and hopefully is non-existent now. I detested this the most when I could feel writers holding back from giving a story proper resolution solely so they could justify a sequel.
Later posts addressed:
- a struggle between two people for a gun that ends with a BANG while the gun itself is off-screen. After a moment of "suspense," one of the two combatants falls, revealing the other to be the winner.
- the old "start with the climax to get the audience hooked and then flashback to reveal how they got there" trick.
- racing to the airport to stop the love of your life from leaving.
- "It was all a dream!"
- The newscaster as an exposition delivery system.
- The use of "Get me a beer" as a universal indicator that a male character is an asshole.
- Using a bet as the catalyst for a premise that would never happen otherwise.
Looking at this list, I can see why I moved away from this series. The clichés it called out were becoming so cliché that even pointing them out was tired. It was a little like a stand-up comedian with a Jack Nicholson impression or a tight five on how white people and black people dance differently.
Somewhat concurrently, I started a series of posts I called "Quick Tips." In all candor, this was so I could get away with putting up shorter posts just to build up content. The practice ended mostly because I'm so goddamn wordy that my attempts to be "quick" soon dragged out too long.
1. First Impressions
2. Brainstorming by imagining your movie's trailer
3. Knowing your title should be catchy
4. Character names
5. Don't try to solve a note about "this character seems thin" with a one-scene dumb of emotion and backstory.
Reading these early posts, I'm very aware that I was still clearly trying to find my voice. While all of these tips come from experience, they seem somewhat generic to me. They don't even come from the affected voice of a weary, bitter reader. I figured out early on that writing every post from the point of view of someone bitching would be exhausting. I mean, I love Lewis Black, but there's a reason The Daily Show didn't need him on every night.
It's all basic, 101 level blogging. Today, I wouldn't write some of these because I don't think I'd have any new way to say them. Part of why my presence has been less and less over the years is that I realized it shouldn't feel like an obligation to have an opinion about a particular facet of writing. I can just blog when I have something to say.
But I know people found these early posts useful, and so I try to remember that I have a lot of readers who might still be contemplating writing their very first script. For them, these early posts will always be there.
Showing posts with label cliches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cliches. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Monday, September 25, 2017
Writing a season of television using only the most time-tested tropes
A new fall season is upon us, and with it comes many new (and returning shows) that have to fill 22-24 episodes. It's a heavy chore and you can't help but notice that there are plenty of familiar tropes that shows rest on while finding their way. Plenty of these also bubble to the surface as the staff's energy might be spent enough for them to need an easy week to recharge.
As a public service not just to the viewer, but to those beleaguered writing staffs, I've complied a list of some of the most common ways these trope can be deployed throughout the first season. I came up with nineteen, so long as the show's a genre show that can take advantage of all of them. (In other words, some of these won't work on NCIS.)
With everything below, you could write almost an entire season of TV. I just don't promise it would be a GOOD season. And without further ado, an episode guide composed entirely of these tropes:
1. Pilot - You're in luck! This one's already done if you're a first season show! For later season shows, this is basically a reset ep. Standard case of the week, dressed up with explanations for character arrivals/departures, hairstyle changes, new sets, and foreshadowing the big plots of the season.
2. Do the Pilot Again - On a first year show, you're gonna be repeating the pilot dynamics for the first few eps, only with less money. If you have ANY kind of procedural element to your series, this is gonna be a case-of-the-week thing.
3. The Naked Time riff -This is mostly a convention of genre TV. The entire cast gets hit with a drug or a spell that removes inhibitions. I've named this one for a classic episode of Star Trek, which used this concept to get at the core of several characters. Most uses since then have been about getting the characters to act drunk and horny with each other. (TNG's "The Naked Now," Lois & Clark's "Pheromone, My Lovely," Buffy's "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.") So pick your poison - hint at buried depths to your characters, or get them mostly naked and send them to bone town.
4. Shady Character Loyalty Tested by Crooked Friend from the Past - You don't have a character with a shady, possibly illegal past? Get one! Every show needs at least one morally ambiguous player. This is the ep where you hit and their past sins while they get a chance to affirm to the team that they're on the side of angels now.
5. The Undercover episode - Your lead actors are getting bored of playing the same beats every week, so this week's caper has them assuming new identities to go undercover.
6. The Pre-Pilot Flashback - We all know how it started on your show, but what about before it started? If your characters knew each other in the pilot, what was their first meeting? Since most pilots are about a shake-up in a character's life that disrupts the status quo, what was the previous status quo? Frasier has one of the best ones of these, showing Frasier's earliest days in Seattle before his father moves in with him. Friends went to this well several times, most notably in "The One With the Prom Video." This Is Us did one of these last year too.
7. The Body Swap ep -There are few things more fun that watching one actor have to imitate another. It's another trick that helps alleviate actor boredom and gives the straight-up good guy get to play bad in most cases. (When you're in genre TV, these kind of personality-altering tricks are a regularly deployed tool. I think there was a season of Smallville with more episodes where someone acts out of character than ones when everyone was IN it.)
8. Bottle Show I: Interrogation - "Uh, guys... we spent a lot of money on the season premiere then really blew our wad on Episodes 3 and 6. Gonna have to be a cheap one just to to get us back on track. Whatta ya got?" Yep, you're gonna have to do the "bottle show," a cost saving episode that takes place 80%-90% in one location - preferably an existing set or a cheap/easily redressed set. Here's the good part - with the right actors and story, the interrogation show can be an intense pressure cooker of an ep that lets your best performers act their pants off. One character has something the other character wants, and it becomes a psychological chess match to get them to break. Two gold standards: Homicide's "Three Men and Adena" and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Duet."
9. The Fight Club - this is a less successful genre stable where your characters are captured and forced to fight in gladiator fight club-type settings. I'll never forget the season where Angel and Voyager both aired similar eps within weeks of each other and neither one was all that good. Last season, Supergirl did one, proving the trope is alive and well.
10. The Character-Driven Road Trip Episode - ER did this a lot, usually to good effect. Doug and Mark took a road trip to handle Doug's father's funeral and the story detoured into visiting Mark's family.The result illuminated a lot about the characters that wouldn't have been revealed within the confines of the ER. It also works as a fish-out-of-water way to throw different challenges at your characters.
11. Bottle Show II: Real-time in one location - Usually a hostage ep. It's a cousin to the interrogation bottle show, as you're still putting a few actors into one location for the duration. The extra wrinkles are the time pressure added, by real time. This is a pretty easy ep for genre and procedural alike. Comedy versions of this usually drop the jeopardy aspect and just tell a story in one space. Seinfeld's "The Chinese Restaurant" probably is the most notable, but there's also a Mad About You shot in real time about trying to sleep-train the baby. The dramatic version of this is not to be confused with....
12. The Die Hard episode - What makes this different from the Bottle Show version? You usually have a higher budget for stunts and gags. The previous version is designed to be fast and cheap to shoot while this is all about being an action episode. Sometimes it's a trade-off, "We get the action, but we're staying on-pattern by only shooting on a few sets."
13. The Evil Twin Ep - Like the body swap ep, it lets one of your actors stretch. (Note: if making ORPHAN BLACK, this is basically every episode.) The fun part of evil twin shows? You get to put your actor side-by-side with themselves, i.e. every actor's dream scene partner. Again, my favorite part of these is when the actor playing the evil twin has to play that character imitating their normal version of the character. This is where you separate the pikers from the pros. Tatiana Maslany could give a master class on this, as she's had episodes where, say, Allison has to pretend to be Cosima, forcing her to nail the nuances of how Allison would embody that imitation, not how Tatiana usually plays Cosima. She's usually good enough that even if we haven't been explicitly told about a switch, her performance has a small tell. Another great example of this fun: Williow having to pretend to be Vamp Willow in Buffy's "Dopplegangland."
14. The Alternate Timeline Ep - Another "out of character" concept favored by genre shows, but also finds its way into sitcoms. In genre, the change is usually the result of characters messing with history and needing to put it back (TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise," Buffy's "The Wish.") while in comedy, it's more likely you'll get a dream/fantasy explanation, such as when Friends explored alternate histories for the gang
15. The Rashomon Ep - Something happens and each act of the show is another character's version of how events came together. I've seen versions that are just a Tarantino-esqe non-linear way of telling the story (though Quentin is really ripping off Kubrick's THE KILLING), but to be totally true to the concept, the action should be presented in subjective flashbacks that reveal how each narrator is coloring the story. (I maintain there will be no funnier example of this trope than The X-Files's "Bad Blood.")
16. A Day in the Life ep - For some series, this is baked into the premise. Most early ER episodes all take place in one day, though it was rare that the experience would be filtered through one character's POV. A good way to do this is to pick a second-tier character and follow them for the day. Not to be confused with...
17. The "Lower Decks" ep - Named for a 7th season TNG episode where the focus is on the lowest-level officers on the ship, giving us an outsider's perspective on what it would be like to work for our heroes. Crucial point here is that most of these characters are new, previously unestablished characters. Part of the thrill of this is that they don't know the main characters well and we're placed at something of a distance from them.
18. The Dream Sequence ep - Can your actors sing, but have no credible reason to do so on the show? Put it in a dream. Have you wondered what it would be like to take your workplace show and set it on a spaceship? Put it in a dream.
19. Bottle Show III: Therapy Ep - Then after you spent all that money on an episode that technically doesn't "count" in terms of the story, you'll need to save some with another bottle show. The therapy ep is a cousin to the interrogation episode, but with (slightly) less confrontation. Still, it has the same virtues, particularly being a dialogue-heavy actors' showcase that lets them emote rather than run around with gun, or play out the same old rhythms of the show.
As a public service not just to the viewer, but to those beleaguered writing staffs, I've complied a list of some of the most common ways these trope can be deployed throughout the first season. I came up with nineteen, so long as the show's a genre show that can take advantage of all of them. (In other words, some of these won't work on NCIS.)
With everything below, you could write almost an entire season of TV. I just don't promise it would be a GOOD season. And without further ado, an episode guide composed entirely of these tropes:
1. Pilot - You're in luck! This one's already done if you're a first season show! For later season shows, this is basically a reset ep. Standard case of the week, dressed up with explanations for character arrivals/departures, hairstyle changes, new sets, and foreshadowing the big plots of the season.
2. Do the Pilot Again - On a first year show, you're gonna be repeating the pilot dynamics for the first few eps, only with less money. If you have ANY kind of procedural element to your series, this is gonna be a case-of-the-week thing.
3. The Naked Time riff -This is mostly a convention of genre TV. The entire cast gets hit with a drug or a spell that removes inhibitions. I've named this one for a classic episode of Star Trek, which used this concept to get at the core of several characters. Most uses since then have been about getting the characters to act drunk and horny with each other. (TNG's "The Naked Now," Lois & Clark's "Pheromone, My Lovely," Buffy's "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.") So pick your poison - hint at buried depths to your characters, or get them mostly naked and send them to bone town.
4. Shady Character Loyalty Tested by Crooked Friend from the Past - You don't have a character with a shady, possibly illegal past? Get one! Every show needs at least one morally ambiguous player. This is the ep where you hit and their past sins while they get a chance to affirm to the team that they're on the side of angels now.
5. The Undercover episode - Your lead actors are getting bored of playing the same beats every week, so this week's caper has them assuming new identities to go undercover.
6. The Pre-Pilot Flashback - We all know how it started on your show, but what about before it started? If your characters knew each other in the pilot, what was their first meeting? Since most pilots are about a shake-up in a character's life that disrupts the status quo, what was the previous status quo? Frasier has one of the best ones of these, showing Frasier's earliest days in Seattle before his father moves in with him. Friends went to this well several times, most notably in "The One With the Prom Video." This Is Us did one of these last year too.
7. The Body Swap ep -There are few things more fun that watching one actor have to imitate another. It's another trick that helps alleviate actor boredom and gives the straight-up good guy get to play bad in most cases. (When you're in genre TV, these kind of personality-altering tricks are a regularly deployed tool. I think there was a season of Smallville with more episodes where someone acts out of character than ones when everyone was IN it.)
8. Bottle Show I: Interrogation - "Uh, guys... we spent a lot of money on the season premiere then really blew our wad on Episodes 3 and 6. Gonna have to be a cheap one just to to get us back on track. Whatta ya got?" Yep, you're gonna have to do the "bottle show," a cost saving episode that takes place 80%-90% in one location - preferably an existing set or a cheap/easily redressed set. Here's the good part - with the right actors and story, the interrogation show can be an intense pressure cooker of an ep that lets your best performers act their pants off. One character has something the other character wants, and it becomes a psychological chess match to get them to break. Two gold standards: Homicide's "Three Men and Adena" and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Duet."
9. The Fight Club - this is a less successful genre stable where your characters are captured and forced to fight in gladiator fight club-type settings. I'll never forget the season where Angel and Voyager both aired similar eps within weeks of each other and neither one was all that good. Last season, Supergirl did one, proving the trope is alive and well.
10. The Character-Driven Road Trip Episode - ER did this a lot, usually to good effect. Doug and Mark took a road trip to handle Doug's father's funeral and the story detoured into visiting Mark's family.The result illuminated a lot about the characters that wouldn't have been revealed within the confines of the ER. It also works as a fish-out-of-water way to throw different challenges at your characters.
11. Bottle Show II: Real-time in one location - Usually a hostage ep. It's a cousin to the interrogation bottle show, as you're still putting a few actors into one location for the duration. The extra wrinkles are the time pressure added, by real time. This is a pretty easy ep for genre and procedural alike. Comedy versions of this usually drop the jeopardy aspect and just tell a story in one space. Seinfeld's "The Chinese Restaurant" probably is the most notable, but there's also a Mad About You shot in real time about trying to sleep-train the baby. The dramatic version of this is not to be confused with....
12. The Die Hard episode - What makes this different from the Bottle Show version? You usually have a higher budget for stunts and gags. The previous version is designed to be fast and cheap to shoot while this is all about being an action episode. Sometimes it's a trade-off, "We get the action, but we're staying on-pattern by only shooting on a few sets."
13. The Evil Twin Ep - Like the body swap ep, it lets one of your actors stretch. (Note: if making ORPHAN BLACK, this is basically every episode.) The fun part of evil twin shows? You get to put your actor side-by-side with themselves, i.e. every actor's dream scene partner. Again, my favorite part of these is when the actor playing the evil twin has to play that character imitating their normal version of the character. This is where you separate the pikers from the pros. Tatiana Maslany could give a master class on this, as she's had episodes where, say, Allison has to pretend to be Cosima, forcing her to nail the nuances of how Allison would embody that imitation, not how Tatiana usually plays Cosima. She's usually good enough that even if we haven't been explicitly told about a switch, her performance has a small tell. Another great example of this fun: Williow having to pretend to be Vamp Willow in Buffy's "Dopplegangland."
14. The Alternate Timeline Ep - Another "out of character" concept favored by genre shows, but also finds its way into sitcoms. In genre, the change is usually the result of characters messing with history and needing to put it back (TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise," Buffy's "The Wish.") while in comedy, it's more likely you'll get a dream/fantasy explanation, such as when Friends explored alternate histories for the gang
15. The Rashomon Ep - Something happens and each act of the show is another character's version of how events came together. I've seen versions that are just a Tarantino-esqe non-linear way of telling the story (though Quentin is really ripping off Kubrick's THE KILLING), but to be totally true to the concept, the action should be presented in subjective flashbacks that reveal how each narrator is coloring the story. (I maintain there will be no funnier example of this trope than The X-Files's "Bad Blood.")
16. A Day in the Life ep - For some series, this is baked into the premise. Most early ER episodes all take place in one day, though it was rare that the experience would be filtered through one character's POV. A good way to do this is to pick a second-tier character and follow them for the day. Not to be confused with...
17. The "Lower Decks" ep - Named for a 7th season TNG episode where the focus is on the lowest-level officers on the ship, giving us an outsider's perspective on what it would be like to work for our heroes. Crucial point here is that most of these characters are new, previously unestablished characters. Part of the thrill of this is that they don't know the main characters well and we're placed at something of a distance from them.
18. The Dream Sequence ep - Can your actors sing, but have no credible reason to do so on the show? Put it in a dream. Have you wondered what it would be like to take your workplace show and set it on a spaceship? Put it in a dream.
19. Bottle Show III: Therapy Ep - Then after you spent all that money on an episode that technically doesn't "count" in terms of the story, you'll need to save some with another bottle show. The therapy ep is a cousin to the interrogation episode, but with (slightly) less confrontation. Still, it has the same virtues, particularly being a dialogue-heavy actors' showcase that lets them emote rather than run around with gun, or play out the same old rhythms of the show.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Reader questions - Overdone concepts and integrity in "true stories"
Lamtim had a few good questions. I'll tackle the first bunch.
How about a blog about how you'd approach tackling a really hoary old story? If you were well-paid by a company (and let's assume you need the gig) to adapt or develop material that felt played-out?
I've thought about doing something like this, but the problem is that any time I've started, I've fallen so in love with the idea that I feel like I'd rather develop it in private. And when I haven't fallen in love with the concept, I find that I don't have much enthusiasm for spending a blog post or several going through the motions.
On a related note, it'd be great to see a list from you on the top ten overdone stories you see in specs. Which ideas land on the readers' desks over and over again?
I feel like I've touched on this before. Overdone cliches tend to bug me more than overdone stories, though I have really hit my limit on the following:
1) Morally-conflicted hitman has to pull one last job.
2) Teenage guys are determined to lose their virginity before Prom/Homecoming/Graduation only to get into a lot of gross, bodily humor-driven conflict. (An inventive way to flip this that I really can't recall seeing? Make the protagonists teenage girls!)
3) Dramas where the long suffering lead character is a martyr dealing with an aged parent with Alzheimer's/Cancer while dealing with their own terminal illness/evil spouse/hellion of a spawn.
4) Slasher scripts that don't bring anything new to the table.
5) Scripts where an uber-straight male is forced to "act gay." The motivation is always forced and implausible. This is the updated version of "I have to pretend to be married so I can get that big promotion" and it's not any more inventive here.
6) Plotless stories where a bunch of guys in their early 20s sit around talking about their lives, drinking, and getting laid by insanely hot but insanely stupid women.
Next question. "Based on a true story." How faithful to actual events/people do you think a movie carrying this description needs to be... or is it nothing but a marketing hook?
Honestly, I struggle with this one. If we're talking about an incredibly well-known event, then I think the filmmaker has a responsibility not to take too many liberties. If I was working on something like this, I'd never forget that this film could be how an entire generation remembers the events depicted therein. I'd want to be able to look at the finished project and feel like I maintained my integrity in telling that story.
With something like The Social Network, I get the sense that most of the events happen in a way close to the truth, though they take some liberties with regard to Mark Zuckerberg. There's no mention made of the woman he was seeing at the time, who eventually became his wife. There's also a sense that Jesse Eisenberg plays him with a demeanor rather unlike how he is in real life.
The thing is, The Social Network is a great movie, so I'm more willing to overlook some of the changes made for the sake of drama. On the other hand, if Apollo 13 had been less faithful, my appreciation of it would probably be diminished.
And yet, it doesn't really bother me at all that A Beautiful Mind took so many apparent liberties with regard to its protagonist. JFK is another film that brings up this conflict. Compelling as a film, but historically dubious.
Better example - I loved The Hoax (see it if you haven't) and when I bought the book detailing the true story, I discovered that I think there's a limit to what the audience will accept. Mess with a history they know, and they'll approach the whole thing with skepticism. Give them an "untold" story, and you might have more leeway in how loose you can play with the truth.
How about a blog about how you'd approach tackling a really hoary old story? If you were well-paid by a company (and let's assume you need the gig) to adapt or develop material that felt played-out?
I've thought about doing something like this, but the problem is that any time I've started, I've fallen so in love with the idea that I feel like I'd rather develop it in private. And when I haven't fallen in love with the concept, I find that I don't have much enthusiasm for spending a blog post or several going through the motions.
On a related note, it'd be great to see a list from you on the top ten overdone stories you see in specs. Which ideas land on the readers' desks over and over again?
I feel like I've touched on this before. Overdone cliches tend to bug me more than overdone stories, though I have really hit my limit on the following:
1) Morally-conflicted hitman has to pull one last job.
2) Teenage guys are determined to lose their virginity before Prom/Homecoming/Graduation only to get into a lot of gross, bodily humor-driven conflict. (An inventive way to flip this that I really can't recall seeing? Make the protagonists teenage girls!)
3) Dramas where the long suffering lead character is a martyr dealing with an aged parent with Alzheimer's/Cancer while dealing with their own terminal illness/evil spouse/hellion of a spawn.
4) Slasher scripts that don't bring anything new to the table.
5) Scripts where an uber-straight male is forced to "act gay." The motivation is always forced and implausible. This is the updated version of "I have to pretend to be married so I can get that big promotion" and it's not any more inventive here.
6) Plotless stories where a bunch of guys in their early 20s sit around talking about their lives, drinking, and getting laid by insanely hot but insanely stupid women.
Next question. "Based on a true story." How faithful to actual events/people do you think a movie carrying this description needs to be... or is it nothing but a marketing hook?
Honestly, I struggle with this one. If we're talking about an incredibly well-known event, then I think the filmmaker has a responsibility not to take too many liberties. If I was working on something like this, I'd never forget that this film could be how an entire generation remembers the events depicted therein. I'd want to be able to look at the finished project and feel like I maintained my integrity in telling that story.
With something like The Social Network, I get the sense that most of the events happen in a way close to the truth, though they take some liberties with regard to Mark Zuckerberg. There's no mention made of the woman he was seeing at the time, who eventually became his wife. There's also a sense that Jesse Eisenberg plays him with a demeanor rather unlike how he is in real life.
The thing is, The Social Network is a great movie, so I'm more willing to overlook some of the changes made for the sake of drama. On the other hand, if Apollo 13 had been less faithful, my appreciation of it would probably be diminished.
And yet, it doesn't really bother me at all that A Beautiful Mind took so many apparent liberties with regard to its protagonist. JFK is another film that brings up this conflict. Compelling as a film, but historically dubious.
Better example - I loved The Hoax (see it if you haven't) and when I bought the book detailing the true story, I discovered that I think there's a limit to what the audience will accept. Mess with a history they know, and they'll approach the whole thing with skepticism. Give them an "untold" story, and you might have more leeway in how loose you can play with the truth.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Tuesday Talkback: Cliches you're sick of
If you come here regularly, you're pretty familiar with this blog being a sounding board for the bad writing cliches that I encounter daily. What are your least favorite cliches?
Writers who only seem to tell stories to get on their particular hobby horse?
Gratuitious gross-out gags?
Gratuitious sex scenes?
Sex scenes that aren't gratuitious enough?
Protagonists who are irritatingly flawed?
Protagonists who are irritatingly perfect?
Weak female characters?
Strong female characters?
Airhead bimbo characters?
Panelists from Chelsea Lately selling sitcom pilots at an alarming rate?
People who use the comment sections on blogs to either shamelessly plug their 50 unsold scripts or state their personal pet peeves as if something that offends them was put there as a direct attack on their values?
Writers who only seem to tell stories to get on their particular hobby horse?
Gratuitious gross-out gags?
Gratuitious sex scenes?
Sex scenes that aren't gratuitious enough?
Protagonists who are irritatingly flawed?
Protagonists who are irritatingly perfect?
Weak female characters?
Strong female characters?
Airhead bimbo characters?
Panelists from Chelsea Lately selling sitcom pilots at an alarming rate?
People who use the comment sections on blogs to either shamelessly plug their 50 unsold scripts or state their personal pet peeves as if something that offends them was put there as a direct attack on their values?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Cliches I'm Tired of Seeing - Part Eight - Bets as a catalyst
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to get your story going. And I get it, if you know all the fun and games you want to have with your premise, it can be tedious to line up the dominoes to get to that result in a plausible way. So the lazy screenwriter opts to artificially motivate some implausible behavior with that tried and true method - the bet.
The terms could be anything from the hero having six weeks to turn a outcast girl into the prom queen (She's All That, brilliantly parodied in Not Another Teen Movie) or a ridiculously convoluted story where the male bets that he can get any girl to fall in love with him in ten days, only to be set up with a woman tasked with alienating a guy within ten days (How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days). It almost always feels contrived and artificial. If you find yourself using a bet to get the action going, please give serious thought to any other way to get your characters to interact.
One of the big problems I have with this is that it not only makes the set-up contrived, but in romantic comedies involving bets, it all but ensures that the turning point at the end of Act Two will find the object of the bet finding out about the terms of the wager. Thus, they'll feel used and lash out at the person who was using them. However, this won't happen until just after the film's protagonist has expressed either misgivings about collecting on the bet, or has affirmed that the experience has caused them to develop genuine feelings for the other person. Thus, even though the whole relationship is built on a lie, genuine feelings have resulted, thus creating emotional stakes for the protagonist when the other character predictably says "I never want to see you again."
Then the third act becomes all about the protagonist winning back their former mark, usually by appealing to some emotional tie that was established during a bonding moment between the two midway through the story.
I'm sure there's an argument to be made that such premises are high concept and easy to promote, but I feel the predictability of such a story is likely to work against the script. If by page ten I can already guess exactly where the story is going to go, it's going to be a boring read. Never forget the First Commandment of Screenwriting - "Thou shalt not bore the reader."
The terms could be anything from the hero having six weeks to turn a outcast girl into the prom queen (She's All That, brilliantly parodied in Not Another Teen Movie) or a ridiculously convoluted story where the male bets that he can get any girl to fall in love with him in ten days, only to be set up with a woman tasked with alienating a guy within ten days (How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days). It almost always feels contrived and artificial. If you find yourself using a bet to get the action going, please give serious thought to any other way to get your characters to interact.
One of the big problems I have with this is that it not only makes the set-up contrived, but in romantic comedies involving bets, it all but ensures that the turning point at the end of Act Two will find the object of the bet finding out about the terms of the wager. Thus, they'll feel used and lash out at the person who was using them. However, this won't happen until just after the film's protagonist has expressed either misgivings about collecting on the bet, or has affirmed that the experience has caused them to develop genuine feelings for the other person. Thus, even though the whole relationship is built on a lie, genuine feelings have resulted, thus creating emotional stakes for the protagonist when the other character predictably says "I never want to see you again."
Then the third act becomes all about the protagonist winning back their former mark, usually by appealing to some emotional tie that was established during a bonding moment between the two midway through the story.
I'm sure there's an argument to be made that such premises are high concept and easy to promote, but I feel the predictability of such a story is likely to work against the script. If by page ten I can already guess exactly where the story is going to go, it's going to be a boring read. Never forget the First Commandment of Screenwriting - "Thou shalt not bore the reader."
Monday, January 18, 2010
"Get me a beer"
Stereotypical characters annoy the hell out of me, but stereotypical dialogues for stereotypical characters is worse. Let's try an experiment. I'll say a line, and you see if you can get an image in your head of the character and scene it's likely to appear in.
"Get me a beer."
Innocuous? Not if you read the scripts I do, for if you did you would know that a man asking a woman to get him an alcoholic beverage is perhaps one of the most unspeakably evil things he can ask her to do. If you see this line in a script, and it comes from a man to a woman who is not a bartender, then you can safely assume the writer wants you to know that this man is SCUM. Utter evil. He might as well have shot a dog, smothered a baby and killed someone for their ethnicity/sexual orientation.
"Get me a beer."
One of two things will happen. The woman will give in, which shows that she's a broken, submissive frail woman stuck in a loveless marriage she desperately needs to escape. OR she'll resist, at which point the man will backhand her and call her a misogynistic slur just so we get that he has no respect for her.
If the woman brings the man a beer, it's never because it's no big deal for her to do a favor for her husband, and if she turns him down, the man never takes it maturely. But let's face it, the mere fact that he asks is iron clad evidence he's a cad.
Note this - an abusive husband never asks for something non-alcoholic. The scene never plays out like this:
HUSBAND: Get me the apple cider.
WIFE: Sorry honey, I'm eating. Can't you get it yourself?
HUSBAND: CUNT!
Husband backhands Wife, then shoves her into a wall.
Yet if you replace "apple cider" with "beer" I've read that scene a hundred times.
I can feel some of you retreating because of my use of the "c word." (No, not "cider" you morons!) I assure you it was only for education purposes.
The worst was a script I read where an entire scene hinged on if the woman was going to give in and get the beer. It starts with some social worker waiting for the woman to get back to her trailer. As that woman gets home, her husband sticks his head out of the trailer and shouts at her, "Where the hell have you been? Get yer ass in here and get me a beer!"
The social worker tells the woman that she doesn't have to live like this, remaining stuck in an abusive relationship, that she can help her. The man shouts to his wife, "Well? You comin'?" The wife's shoulders slump and she looks back and forth between the husband and the social worker, eventually turning towards the trailer with a sad look at the social worker and then telling her husband, "I'll get you your beer." And then we're all supposed to feel sad for this poor abused woman.
So think about that the next time you ask your wife to bring you a frosty beverage simply because she's in closer proximity to the fridge.
"Get me a beer."
Innocuous? Not if you read the scripts I do, for if you did you would know that a man asking a woman to get him an alcoholic beverage is perhaps one of the most unspeakably evil things he can ask her to do. If you see this line in a script, and it comes from a man to a woman who is not a bartender, then you can safely assume the writer wants you to know that this man is SCUM. Utter evil. He might as well have shot a dog, smothered a baby and killed someone for their ethnicity/sexual orientation.
"Get me a beer."
One of two things will happen. The woman will give in, which shows that she's a broken, submissive frail woman stuck in a loveless marriage she desperately needs to escape. OR she'll resist, at which point the man will backhand her and call her a misogynistic slur just so we get that he has no respect for her.
If the woman brings the man a beer, it's never because it's no big deal for her to do a favor for her husband, and if she turns him down, the man never takes it maturely. But let's face it, the mere fact that he asks is iron clad evidence he's a cad.
Note this - an abusive husband never asks for something non-alcoholic. The scene never plays out like this:
HUSBAND: Get me the apple cider.
WIFE: Sorry honey, I'm eating. Can't you get it yourself?
HUSBAND: CUNT!
Husband backhands Wife, then shoves her into a wall.
Yet if you replace "apple cider" with "beer" I've read that scene a hundred times.
I can feel some of you retreating because of my use of the "c word." (No, not "cider" you morons!) I assure you it was only for education purposes.
The worst was a script I read where an entire scene hinged on if the woman was going to give in and get the beer. It starts with some social worker waiting for the woman to get back to her trailer. As that woman gets home, her husband sticks his head out of the trailer and shouts at her, "Where the hell have you been? Get yer ass in here and get me a beer!"
The social worker tells the woman that she doesn't have to live like this, remaining stuck in an abusive relationship, that she can help her. The man shouts to his wife, "Well? You comin'?" The wife's shoulders slump and she looks back and forth between the husband and the social worker, eventually turning towards the trailer with a sad look at the social worker and then telling her husband, "I'll get you your beer." And then we're all supposed to feel sad for this poor abused woman.
So think about that the next time you ask your wife to bring you a frosty beverage simply because she's in closer proximity to the fridge.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Lazy writer shorthand
You know what really annoys me when I read a script? Laziness. Every now and then a writer might need to take a shortcut in order to get the story going, but there are limits. I'd explain all this in greater depth, but it would take too much time.
Annnywaaay... one shortcut that almost always earns a script a PASS from me comes in the form of this simple phrase in the description: "They instantly fall in love."
I pause because I hope that 99% of you are able to tell where I'm going with this just by being presented with this evidence. Are you all at least half a rant ahead of me? Good.
For the slower kids in the class (Hi Robotard and Paul Haggis!), the reason this is lazy screenwriting is that it doesn't require any work on the part of the writer to do any of the following:
1) create believable chemistry between the characters.
2) show the growth of a romance through several stages: attraction, infatuation, and so on.
3) develop the characters and their dynamic through that growth.
4) reveal things about the characters through the ways their feelings become known. (i.e. what is it that turns them on initially? Do they try to hide their feelings from the other or do they boldly declare them? Why does this attraction exist? How do they attempt to figure out the other partner is interested in them?)
See all the great things a writer misses out on by typing "They instantly fall in love?" No, check that, see all the great things the audience misses out on through that shortcut?
Try to avoid taking the easy way out - at least when it's as blatant as this bit of corner-cutting is.
Annnywaaay... one shortcut that almost always earns a script a PASS from me comes in the form of this simple phrase in the description: "They instantly fall in love."
I pause because I hope that 99% of you are able to tell where I'm going with this just by being presented with this evidence. Are you all at least half a rant ahead of me? Good.
For the slower kids in the class (Hi Robotard and Paul Haggis!), the reason this is lazy screenwriting is that it doesn't require any work on the part of the writer to do any of the following:
1) create believable chemistry between the characters.
2) show the growth of a romance through several stages: attraction, infatuation, and so on.
3) develop the characters and their dynamic through that growth.
4) reveal things about the characters through the ways their feelings become known. (i.e. what is it that turns them on initially? Do they try to hide their feelings from the other or do they boldly declare them? Why does this attraction exist? How do they attempt to figure out the other partner is interested in them?)
See all the great things a writer misses out on by typing "They instantly fall in love?" No, check that, see all the great things the audience misses out on through that shortcut?
Try to avoid taking the easy way out - at least when it's as blatant as this bit of corner-cutting is.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Cliches I'm Tired of Seeing - Part Seven - Newscaster exposition
My writing group will find this ironic considering I used this very trope in a recent script, but I really don't like when writers resort to using the tried-and-true expositional approach of the TV newscaster. It often feels lazy, like the writer couldn't think of a better way to introduce his world.
But the real problem is that most of these newscasts seem to have been written by writers who apparently have never watched the news in their life. If you want to see an example of this expositional trick employed correctly, watch the beginning of Tropic Thunder. After the long battle sequence, the film transitions into an Access Hollywood segment that drops a truckload of backstory on the audience. Why does it work? Because the scene in question sounds exactly like an Access Hollywood story, down to the bad puns and weak transitions. The writers absolutely nailed the tone and the cadence of that show and how it incorporates clips.
Bad newscast scenes feature things like remote reporters doing long live interviews for segments that would likely have been pre-taped and edited into soundbites on a real newscast. You'll also see things like two local news anchors discussing the issues of the day in a back-and-forth conversation more akin to Meet the Press than the 6pm affiliate news in Jersey.
There's also usually a lot of "As you know, Bob" type narration in these reports. True, the local news might recap some events for views unfamiliar with what happened, but it's unlikely they'd go into deep detail reminding the audience of the very specific circumstance two weeks ago that led to the mayor being arrested on charges of solicitation and drunk driving. In all likelihood, that would have been such a big local story that everyone in town would be aware of it. Thus, only a brief recap would be necessary.
So the next time you have the urge to write a newscast scene, don't. And if you're determined to ignore me, please at least spend a full week watching your local news so you get a flavor for how the pros do it.
But the real problem is that most of these newscasts seem to have been written by writers who apparently have never watched the news in their life. If you want to see an example of this expositional trick employed correctly, watch the beginning of Tropic Thunder. After the long battle sequence, the film transitions into an Access Hollywood segment that drops a truckload of backstory on the audience. Why does it work? Because the scene in question sounds exactly like an Access Hollywood story, down to the bad puns and weak transitions. The writers absolutely nailed the tone and the cadence of that show and how it incorporates clips.
Bad newscast scenes feature things like remote reporters doing long live interviews for segments that would likely have been pre-taped and edited into soundbites on a real newscast. You'll also see things like two local news anchors discussing the issues of the day in a back-and-forth conversation more akin to Meet the Press than the 6pm affiliate news in Jersey.
There's also usually a lot of "As you know, Bob" type narration in these reports. True, the local news might recap some events for views unfamiliar with what happened, but it's unlikely they'd go into deep detail reminding the audience of the very specific circumstance two weeks ago that led to the mayor being arrested on charges of solicitation and drunk driving. In all likelihood, that would have been such a big local story that everyone in town would be aware of it. Thus, only a brief recap would be necessary.
So the next time you have the urge to write a newscast scene, don't. And if you're determined to ignore me, please at least spend a full week watching your local news so you get a flavor for how the pros do it.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Cliches I'm Tired of Seeing - Part Six - It was all a dream!
Take note, writers. There are few things you could do that convince me more of your hackitude than having a cop-out ending where everything is revealed as "just a dream." From where I sit, it completely guts the story on an emotional level because then nothing that happened in the movie "mattered." There were no rules for anything that happened. Plus, it's often a cheap out for a writer trying to surprise the audience.
Yes, The Wizard of Oz reveals that all of Dorothy's adventure in Oz was a dream. But that was 70 years ago, and done that way because the studio feared the audience wouldn't accept the fantasy any other way. If the movie was made today with that ending, it would be more critically derided than the endings of any M. Night movie post-Unbreakable.
And to tell you the truth, I'm not terribly fond of dream sequences within the film either. Slasher horrors tend to be the worst here (excluding the Nightmare on Elm Street series, where it has a context) because scary dreams are an easy way to get in some gore and perhaps even rough up or kill the main character without having to make it count or affect the plot. I've read many a horror film where the writer tried to compensate a dead Act Two by tossing in a few scary dreams in order to up the violence without actually advancing anything in the story.
Aside from violence, fantasy sex scenes also tend to be popular among writers for similar reasons. It's a good way to get a prudish female character gratuitously naked without compromising her character. Either that, or it's done to get your virginal male lead into a threesome without instantly resolving the main plot of him trying to get laid for the first time. In any event, the cheap trick is usually transparent from a mile off.
The worst use of a dream sequence that I ever read had to be a script I read for Big Deal Agency a few years back. I probably am legally bound from even giving the premise, but the whole story was built around a totally ludicrous conceit. It was ridiculous on the level of the world suddenly switching to a swatch-based economy. The most absurd thing was that the writer treated this premise with the utmost seriousness, as if the events in the film were even remotely plausible. Well, in my coverage I pointed out just how utterly unbelievable the premise was and how the way the writer chose to introduce that premise only enhanced its implausibility.
About a month later, the script was resubmitted and it again landed on my desk. Comparison coverage is always a great gig because usually all you have to do is read the script and if there aren't any major changes, just affirm your original notes. Most of the time, you'll only have to tweak your original synopsis and notes, getting the same pay for a fraction of the work.
By p. 30, I had yet to notice anything different, including the implausible premise and inciting incident. Ditto p. 60, and then p. 90. With only five pages left in the script, I noticed nothing different, and was perplexed that the writer had resubmitted the same draft with all the aforementioned weaknesses. And then, right at the very end a new scene emerged. The main character wakes up on a bus, right back at the point we last saw them on p. 12. Almost everything in the movie was a dream. That was their out for why things didn't make sense. You could almost hear them say, "See? Now it doesn't HAVE to make sense! It was all a dream!"
All this did was made me think the writer was even more of a hack than I had originally given them credit for. It's already difficult to get an audience to sympathize with a fictional character within the construct of a fictional story. Once the script adds another layer of fiction within that fiction, it takes the film to a whole new level of unreality. Often the audience says, "Well if none of this matters, why should I care?"
At the start of the film, the creators are essentially entering into a contract with the audience. The first act sets the tone and establishes the boundaries of that particular film. Basically, it shows the audience what's in-bounds and makes an implicit promise not to cheat by stepping outside those bounds. "It was all a dream" breaks that contract with the audience. It's not clever - it's a cheat, it's lazy, and good writers don't have to resort to it.
Yes, The Wizard of Oz reveals that all of Dorothy's adventure in Oz was a dream. But that was 70 years ago, and done that way because the studio feared the audience wouldn't accept the fantasy any other way. If the movie was made today with that ending, it would be more critically derided than the endings of any M. Night movie post-Unbreakable.
And to tell you the truth, I'm not terribly fond of dream sequences within the film either. Slasher horrors tend to be the worst here (excluding the Nightmare on Elm Street series, where it has a context) because scary dreams are an easy way to get in some gore and perhaps even rough up or kill the main character without having to make it count or affect the plot. I've read many a horror film where the writer tried to compensate a dead Act Two by tossing in a few scary dreams in order to up the violence without actually advancing anything in the story.
Aside from violence, fantasy sex scenes also tend to be popular among writers for similar reasons. It's a good way to get a prudish female character gratuitously naked without compromising her character. Either that, or it's done to get your virginal male lead into a threesome without instantly resolving the main plot of him trying to get laid for the first time. In any event, the cheap trick is usually transparent from a mile off.
The worst use of a dream sequence that I ever read had to be a script I read for Big Deal Agency a few years back. I probably am legally bound from even giving the premise, but the whole story was built around a totally ludicrous conceit. It was ridiculous on the level of the world suddenly switching to a swatch-based economy. The most absurd thing was that the writer treated this premise with the utmost seriousness, as if the events in the film were even remotely plausible. Well, in my coverage I pointed out just how utterly unbelievable the premise was and how the way the writer chose to introduce that premise only enhanced its implausibility.
About a month later, the script was resubmitted and it again landed on my desk. Comparison coverage is always a great gig because usually all you have to do is read the script and if there aren't any major changes, just affirm your original notes. Most of the time, you'll only have to tweak your original synopsis and notes, getting the same pay for a fraction of the work.
By p. 30, I had yet to notice anything different, including the implausible premise and inciting incident. Ditto p. 60, and then p. 90. With only five pages left in the script, I noticed nothing different, and was perplexed that the writer had resubmitted the same draft with all the aforementioned weaknesses. And then, right at the very end a new scene emerged. The main character wakes up on a bus, right back at the point we last saw them on p. 12. Almost everything in the movie was a dream. That was their out for why things didn't make sense. You could almost hear them say, "See? Now it doesn't HAVE to make sense! It was all a dream!"
All this did was made me think the writer was even more of a hack than I had originally given them credit for. It's already difficult to get an audience to sympathize with a fictional character within the construct of a fictional story. Once the script adds another layer of fiction within that fiction, it takes the film to a whole new level of unreality. Often the audience says, "Well if none of this matters, why should I care?"
At the start of the film, the creators are essentially entering into a contract with the audience. The first act sets the tone and establishes the boundaries of that particular film. Basically, it shows the audience what's in-bounds and makes an implicit promise not to cheat by stepping outside those bounds. "It was all a dream" breaks that contract with the audience. It's not clever - it's a cheat, it's lazy, and good writers don't have to resort to it.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Cliches I'm Tired of Seeing - Part Five - Racing to the airport...
There are some tropes that are so overused that it's pretty much impossible to use them effectively unless they are intended ironically. Recently, I read a script that used one of these and immediately tripped my "HACK ALERT." In the script, the central couple had experienced rocky times, and when the last straw came, the woman decided to pursue a job opportunity in Paris, which naturally meant she was flying out that very night.
I think you can guess where this is going - her ex-boyfriend, having realized the error of his ways is forced to race to the airport at the eleventh hour. With time ticking away as the woman is about to get on the plane he has to push his way past security, buy a ticket, and then race to the gate and deliver a big speech, winning her back.
Gag.
For me, this particular gimmick passed its expiration date immediately after Not Another Teen Movie so brilliantly made fun of this sort of scene. Off the top of my head, I can't come up with where I saw this sort of scene first, but I know variations of it have been used in Love, Actually, Dawson's Creek, Three Men & a Baby.... where else? (Readers, that's your cue to comment below.) Unless the point of the scene is to make a joke of how cliched the plot twist is, steer clear of this.
And if you MUST do this, for the love of William Goldman, please don't make Paris the destination! That's about as unoriginal as you can get.
I think you can guess where this is going - her ex-boyfriend, having realized the error of his ways is forced to race to the airport at the eleventh hour. With time ticking away as the woman is about to get on the plane he has to push his way past security, buy a ticket, and then race to the gate and deliver a big speech, winning her back.
Gag.
For me, this particular gimmick passed its expiration date immediately after Not Another Teen Movie so brilliantly made fun of this sort of scene. Off the top of my head, I can't come up with where I saw this sort of scene first, but I know variations of it have been used in Love, Actually, Dawson's Creek, Three Men & a Baby.... where else? (Readers, that's your cue to comment below.) Unless the point of the scene is to make a joke of how cliched the plot twist is, steer clear of this.
And if you MUST do this, for the love of William Goldman, please don't make Paris the destination! That's about as unoriginal as you can get.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Cliches I'm tired of seeing - Part Four
There's a tendency among first-time screenwriters to not have faith in the openings of their scripts. They're told to grab the audience from the start, but often first-time writers have a hard time beginning their story with an strong opening scene. My gut is that a lot of this has to do with early writers placing too much emphasis on backstory and exposition. Usually the audience needs a lot less exposition than the writer assumes.
In any event, it seems like an unwinable paradox to Mr. First Timer. They wonder,"How can I write an opening scene that will get an audience excited if they don't know anything about these characters?" Often, they'll go for a trick that J.J. Abrams both used effectively and beat into the ground - open the script with a scene from the climax, then flashback and tell the story of how things got to this high point.
As a reader, I find this trick usually has the opposite effect. When I see it deployed, I heave a heavy sigh because I now know exactly where this script is going and usually I'm going to have to sit through another 100 pages before the characters catch up to me. A good writer might be able to make the journey to this point interesting... but I think you can guess how often Mr. First Timer makes that work.
I'm sorry to say that even Abrams overindulged in this gag. It was a trick that was really effective once on Alias, during the Super Bowl episode. At the time, the low-rated show was hoping to pull in viewers who felt that the show's plots were often too complicated and inaccessible. So what did they do? They put Jennifer Garner in black lingerie and had her strut in front of the camera. It was a typical set-up for the show. She had to go undercover as a prostitute in order to get access to a crucial agent in the enemy camp. After a scene showcasing Garner in two separate sexy outfits, which lead to an action scene where the plane she's in loses pressure, the episode flashed back 24 hours.
The trick here is that despite the eye candy both Garner and the action provided, there were very few plot twists exposed in this opening scene. The audience didn't know why Garner was on this mission, what she was after, who this guy was, or really anything. As the episode progresses, it's soon exposed that this mission is the key to bringing down the entire enemy agency. However, J.J. didn't give that twist away in the opening. There was still something for the audience to be surprised by later. Jennifer Garner in lingerie was just the bait.
In other words, if you're using a non-chronological structure to get the audience hooked early on, make sure you're just baiting the hook - not dumping your whole supply of worms into the lake. I feel this sort of gimmick is overused anyway, but if you're determined to use it, use it well.
But before you open your film with a scene from late in the story, ask yourself it is absolutely necessary and if it's an asset to the story you're telling.
In any event, it seems like an unwinable paradox to Mr. First Timer. They wonder,"How can I write an opening scene that will get an audience excited if they don't know anything about these characters?" Often, they'll go for a trick that J.J. Abrams both used effectively and beat into the ground - open the script with a scene from the climax, then flashback and tell the story of how things got to this high point.
As a reader, I find this trick usually has the opposite effect. When I see it deployed, I heave a heavy sigh because I now know exactly where this script is going and usually I'm going to have to sit through another 100 pages before the characters catch up to me. A good writer might be able to make the journey to this point interesting... but I think you can guess how often Mr. First Timer makes that work.
I'm sorry to say that even Abrams overindulged in this gag. It was a trick that was really effective once on Alias, during the Super Bowl episode. At the time, the low-rated show was hoping to pull in viewers who felt that the show's plots were often too complicated and inaccessible. So what did they do? They put Jennifer Garner in black lingerie and had her strut in front of the camera. It was a typical set-up for the show. She had to go undercover as a prostitute in order to get access to a crucial agent in the enemy camp. After a scene showcasing Garner in two separate sexy outfits, which lead to an action scene where the plane she's in loses pressure, the episode flashed back 24 hours.
The trick here is that despite the eye candy both Garner and the action provided, there were very few plot twists exposed in this opening scene. The audience didn't know why Garner was on this mission, what she was after, who this guy was, or really anything. As the episode progresses, it's soon exposed that this mission is the key to bringing down the entire enemy agency. However, J.J. didn't give that twist away in the opening. There was still something for the audience to be surprised by later. Jennifer Garner in lingerie was just the bait.
In other words, if you're using a non-chronological structure to get the audience hooked early on, make sure you're just baiting the hook - not dumping your whole supply of worms into the lake. I feel this sort of gimmick is overused anyway, but if you're determined to use it, use it well.
But before you open your film with a scene from late in the story, ask yourself it is absolutely necessary and if it's an asset to the story you're telling.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Cliches I'm tired of seeing - Part Three
This week's cliche alert is a public service to every writer who thinks they're being clever when they stage a dramatic gunpoint confrontation between their protagonist and their antagonist. One of the most overused tropes plays out as follows:
Two combatants, one gun. Usually one character draws and the other one lunges at them, setting off the attack.
A brief hand-to-hand struggle ensues. The characters wrestle, each one trying to get the upper hand and the gun.
Two shot. The characters inevitably end up framed in a profile shot towards the climax of this fight.
BANG! The gun goes off. Both men look shocked.
DRAMATIC PAUSE. OMG?!!!! Who took the bullet?
Fake out. the hero seems to wince.
Victory. the bad guy falls down dead. The hero breathes a sigh of relief.
At that point, I groan and roll my eyes at the hundredth use of this cliche, wondering how anyone found it original to begin with. Take note, it's no longer clever to use the dramatic device of the gun going off with the actual victim being unclear initially.
An alternate version of the same trope has the bad guy getting the draw on the good guy and just about to pull the trigger. If this happens with the bad guy moving closer to the foreground, thus blocking out a decent section of the background, get ready. It means that the hero is about to be saved when his buddy (who will be revealed when the villain falls down) gets off a fatal shot from behind the bad guy.
Two combatants, one gun. Usually one character draws and the other one lunges at them, setting off the attack.
A brief hand-to-hand struggle ensues. The characters wrestle, each one trying to get the upper hand and the gun.
Two shot. The characters inevitably end up framed in a profile shot towards the climax of this fight.
BANG! The gun goes off. Both men look shocked.
DRAMATIC PAUSE. OMG?!!!! Who took the bullet?
Fake out. the hero seems to wince.
Victory. the bad guy falls down dead. The hero breathes a sigh of relief.
At that point, I groan and roll my eyes at the hundredth use of this cliche, wondering how anyone found it original to begin with. Take note, it's no longer clever to use the dramatic device of the gun going off with the actual victim being unclear initially.
An alternate version of the same trope has the bad guy getting the draw on the good guy and just about to pull the trigger. If this happens with the bad guy moving closer to the foreground, thus blocking out a decent section of the background, get ready. It means that the hero is about to be saved when his buddy (who will be revealed when the villain falls down) gets off a fatal shot from behind the bad guy.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Cliches I'm tired of seeing - Part Two - "To Be Continued"
At last we’re going to get to discuss one of my biggest pet peeves as a reader. I’ve mentioned before that readers invariably will flip to the back page once they get a script so they can see how long it is. What I didn’t mention is that a page number above 120 is only the second worst thing they could hope to see there.
The worst: three little words at the bottom – “To Be Continued.”
A sure way to get a pass is to hold off resolving the central question of your story in the script, but crafting a final scene that promises all will be revealed in the sequel. Never, EVER, do this. It’s certainly fair to leave a few minor things unresolved at the end of the movie, plot points that could be expounded upon in future films – but if the whole movie is building up to something it’s idiotic to slap a cliffhanger on the film and push the resolution into the next movie. When you’re trying to sell your first script, make sure your story stands on its own with a beginning, middle and end. No one pays $14 a ticket to see just a beginning and a middle.
Look at Star Wars. Despite the fact that it spawned five sequels and a host of spin-offs and tie-ins, the first movie works as a standalone film on its own. In 1977, the only really loose thread at the end is Darth Vader spinning off into nowhere – and the central question of Star Wars isn’t Darth Vader’s fate. Had the movie stopped just as the X-Wings moved in to attack the Death Star and George Lucas flashed text saying “To Be Continued in The Empire Strikes Back” I doubt the film would have been even a fraction as successful.
Who am I kidding? Had Lucas done that in the screenplay, it never would have been made. Look at the first films in any franchise and you’ll see that all of them work as standalone films and none of them have To Be Continueds that leave major story points unresolved.
It’s not that I don’t understand the motivation here. If there’s one thing that Hollywood seems to be hungry for more than anything else, it’s a franchise that they can strip mine to death until everyone wonders what they ever liked about the original film in the first place. So I can certainly see how a writer might think that it’s a great selling point to their script if they come in with a trilogy. “You get to make three movies about these characters! Isn’t that great?” says the desperate writer.
No, genius, because someone has to SEE the first movie first – and there has to be enough of a return on the initial investment to justify the expense of making another one. No one sets out to make a bomb, but you can never predict what films will get accepted and what will get rejected by the marketplace. After Speed Racer tanked last summer, I guarantee that the Wachowski brothers are glad they didn’t sink a lot of capital into shooting two movies at once. And I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the sequel to The Golden Compass either.
The worst: three little words at the bottom – “To Be Continued.”
A sure way to get a pass is to hold off resolving the central question of your story in the script, but crafting a final scene that promises all will be revealed in the sequel. Never, EVER, do this. It’s certainly fair to leave a few minor things unresolved at the end of the movie, plot points that could be expounded upon in future films – but if the whole movie is building up to something it’s idiotic to slap a cliffhanger on the film and push the resolution into the next movie. When you’re trying to sell your first script, make sure your story stands on its own with a beginning, middle and end. No one pays $14 a ticket to see just a beginning and a middle.
Look at Star Wars. Despite the fact that it spawned five sequels and a host of spin-offs and tie-ins, the first movie works as a standalone film on its own. In 1977, the only really loose thread at the end is Darth Vader spinning off into nowhere – and the central question of Star Wars isn’t Darth Vader’s fate. Had the movie stopped just as the X-Wings moved in to attack the Death Star and George Lucas flashed text saying “To Be Continued in The Empire Strikes Back” I doubt the film would have been even a fraction as successful.
Who am I kidding? Had Lucas done that in the screenplay, it never would have been made. Look at the first films in any franchise and you’ll see that all of them work as standalone films and none of them have To Be Continueds that leave major story points unresolved.
It’s not that I don’t understand the motivation here. If there’s one thing that Hollywood seems to be hungry for more than anything else, it’s a franchise that they can strip mine to death until everyone wonders what they ever liked about the original film in the first place. So I can certainly see how a writer might think that it’s a great selling point to their script if they come in with a trilogy. “You get to make three movies about these characters! Isn’t that great?” says the desperate writer.
No, genius, because someone has to SEE the first movie first – and there has to be enough of a return on the initial investment to justify the expense of making another one. No one sets out to make a bomb, but you can never predict what films will get accepted and what will get rejected by the marketplace. After Speed Racer tanked last summer, I guarantee that the Wachowski brothers are glad they didn’t sink a lot of capital into shooting two movies at once. And I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the sequel to The Golden Compass either.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Clichés I’m tired of seeing – Part I
Screenwriters are often advised to “Show, don’t tell” and I’m a big believer in that advice. Film is a visual medium, and it’s always best to take advantage of that rather than simply spelling something out through dialogue. Still, when doing this, show some imagination in your “showing.” If you come up with the same visual cue as a hundred other screenwriters, you run the risk of the reader reacting “Not again!”
I wish I had kept a running tally of how many times I’ve seen some version of the following scene. It usually happens in a romantic comedy, though often it pops up in dramas centered on relationships. Usually, the core romance has landed on the rocks at the end of Act Two, thus forcing the protagonist to fight to save the relationship in Act Three. The penultimate scene typically plays out one of two ways – the characters confront each other and the relationship is either explicitly mended, or there’s an emotional catharsis that ends ambiguously. Are the couple still together or aren’t they?
And then comes “the scene.” Four times out of five it will be a montage without dialogue, and almost always is set “One Year Later.” Carefully, each character is revealed in this coda, culminating with….
Come on now, dear reader… surely I’ve given enough set up for you to guess?
… the woman of the couple. And guess what?
Please, people. This isn’t hard. Speak up, now.
That’s right! She’s pregnant! The guy and the girl are going to live happily ever after and the proof is in the belly! And the scene is totally showing, not telling! Isn’t that cool?
To be blunt, not really. Too often I’ve seen writers use this as an out to show that the couple’s together without doing any of the work to really make it feel like the couple is together. It’s a cheap “out.” I admire what the writers are going for, but the next time you have the urge to end your movie this way, take another day or two and see if there’s a more original way of showing the couple is going to turn out all right.
I wish I had kept a running tally of how many times I’ve seen some version of the following scene. It usually happens in a romantic comedy, though often it pops up in dramas centered on relationships. Usually, the core romance has landed on the rocks at the end of Act Two, thus forcing the protagonist to fight to save the relationship in Act Three. The penultimate scene typically plays out one of two ways – the characters confront each other and the relationship is either explicitly mended, or there’s an emotional catharsis that ends ambiguously. Are the couple still together or aren’t they?
And then comes “the scene.” Four times out of five it will be a montage without dialogue, and almost always is set “One Year Later.” Carefully, each character is revealed in this coda, culminating with….
Come on now, dear reader… surely I’ve given enough set up for you to guess?
… the woman of the couple. And guess what?
Please, people. This isn’t hard. Speak up, now.
That’s right! She’s pregnant! The guy and the girl are going to live happily ever after and the proof is in the belly! And the scene is totally showing, not telling! Isn’t that cool?
To be blunt, not really. Too often I’ve seen writers use this as an out to show that the couple’s together without doing any of the work to really make it feel like the couple is together. It’s a cheap “out.” I admire what the writers are going for, but the next time you have the urge to end your movie this way, take another day or two and see if there’s a more original way of showing the couple is going to turn out all right.
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