The Craft of Scene Writing

by Jim Mercurio

  Advance Praise For

  The Craft of Scene Writing

  “The thing I love most about The Craft of Scene Writing is that Jim Mercurio treats writers as filmmakers. Jim understands that it is our job as writers to obsess over each and every word and action to ensure that each beat is clear, concise, dramatic and surprising. Easier said than done, but Jim gives us the tools to chop, mold and sharpen these beats to gleaming bits of perfection.”

  —Mike Blum, owner and creative director of the LA-based animation studio Pipsqueak Films, Emmy-nominated and award winning director, writer and producer, and creator and showrunner of Get My Goat (DreamWorksTV), Fifi: Cat Therapist (DreamWorksTV), and Samurai! Daycare, (Defy Media)

  “The first time you read Jim Mercurio’s outstanding book, you’ll be as astonished as I was at his ability to reveal and explain every conceivable element of an emotionally captivating scene. The next hundred times will be when you use it to make certain that every single scene in every rewrite of your screenplay or novel is entertaining, compelling and memorable.”

  —Michael Hauge, consultant and story expert, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell, Selling Your Story in 60 Second, and Storytelling Made Easy

  “This book may well change the way screenwriting is taught. While most courses focus on the big picture, Jim Mercurio gives invaluable step-by-step advice about individually crafting each scene in a screenplay. It’s an eye-opening approach to storytelling, which will greatly benefit aspiring screenwriters, game writers, and novelists alike.”

  —Heidi McDonald, award-winning writer, game designer and author of Digital Love: Romance and Sexuality in Games

  “A must-read for the novice and expert filmmaker and a “Bible” for the multicultural storytellers at DreamGalaxy. I am glad I waited to read it before finishing my first feature script.”

  —Brian Asingia, CEO of DreamGalaxy and DreamAfrica Consulting, author of The One Who Lives Forever series, The Last Digital Frontier, and feature script Middle Ground

  “Jim Mercurio has given us an excellent guide to writing scenes that are narratively tight, emotionally engaging, and thematically resonant. He assiduously avoids tired, old school truisms to give us a thoroughly useful, contemporary road map to better writing.”

  —Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, Professor, Film & Media Department, Hunter College-CUNY

  “The Craft of Scene Writing is an invaluable guide for aspiring screenwriters, practicing screenwriters, and anyone else interested in learning more about the creative art of storytelling. As a longtime professor of screenwriting I must say that I was inspired by Jim Mercurio’s book.”

  —Frank E. Beaver, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emeritus Department of Film, Television and Media, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

  “Utilizing engaging language, Jim Mercurio explores the shape of individual scenes within screenplays, probing the parallels between micro- and macro story structures, and providing keen insights into the nature of storytelling that should prove useful to creators of dramatic narratives not only in film and TV but in all platforms and media.”

  —Prof. Richard Walter, Former Screenwriting Area Head, and Associate and Acting Dean, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

  THE

  CRAFT

  OF

  SCENE WRITING

  BEAT BY BEAT TO A BETTER SCRIPT

  Jim Mercurio

  Fresno, California

  The Craft of Scene Writing

  Copyright © 2019 by Jim Mercurio. All rights reserved.

  Published by Quill Driver Books

  An imprint of Linden Publishing

  2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721

  (559) 233-6633 / (800) 345-4447

  QuillDriverBooks.com

  Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-61035-330-4

  135798642

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  For my parents, sisters, and forever friends.

  “First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.”

  —Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Quick Note from the Author

  Introduction

  Part One: Fundamentals

  1: The Story of a Scene: Beat by Beat

  2: Reversals: The Essence of Surprise

  3: Dialogue: The Beats of a Missing Horse

  4: Non-Dialogue: Using Visuals

  5: Exposition: Backdoor Drama

  Part Two: Advanced Topics

  6: Dilemma: Importance and Digging Deep

  7: Exploiting Concept: From Inspiration to Surprise

  8: Theme: Building Your Case

  9: Advanced Scene Writing: Breaking the Rules with Style

  10: Cinematic Writing: The Language of Visuals

  Part Three: The Home Stretch

  11: Rewriting I: The Big Picture

  12: Rewriting II: The Small Picture

  13: A Tale of Two Voices: The Voice of the Script

  14: Personal Voice

  Appendix: 14 Steps to a Better Screenplay

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  PREFACE

  Of course, it all starts with a story.

  A few years ago, a daunting challenge turned into a surprising opportunity. The South Dakota Film Festival invited me to Aberdeen, South Dakota, as a judge and to give a screenwriting talk. The good news was that I was going to share the stage with Kevin Costner. The bad news was that I was slated to follow him.

  It’s not self-deprecating to acknowledge that Costner would be the climax of the show and that, from a storytelling perspective, to follow him would have been a nightmare.

  But the gods of storytelling prevailed, and I was able to go first.

  With the pressure off, I relaxed and was able to attend an event the night before where Costner was being interviewed.

  To a packed auditorium of over a thousand people, Costner walked out on an empty stage furnished with only two chairs, one for him and one for the interviewer. Two talking heads in a static environment. Really?

  That night, Costner proved he is a storyteller to the core by bringing to life what seemed like a storytelling dead end. His interview and resulting performance validated my own storytelling credo and became one of the inspirations for this book.

  It was as if he were channeling my not-yet-written screenwriting book one chapter at a time.

  Costner had been invited to the festival to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Dances with Wolves. Upon expressing his sincere reverence and appreciation for the experience and his time spent in South Dakota while shooting the film, he then bluntly confessed something that made the audience roar with laughter. It was the last thing you would expect Costner to say about his costars, the wolves: he hated them.

  Opposites. Reversal.

  The event didn’t turn into an anti-PETA rally, but Costner carried on about how the wolves weren’t behaving as the trainer had promised. In fact, the trainer himself had to jump in as a stunt double in the long shot in which Costner’s Dunbar character “dances” with the wolf.

  Conflict.

  Costner pops out of his chair and runs back and forth along the stage to act out the scene.

  Blocking.

  And then, in character, he suddenly runs backstage.

  Setting. Location.

  Where did he go? What the hell is he doing?

  Suspense.

  Thirty seconds later, Costner walks back onstage as himself.

  Pacing. Role-playing.

&nb
sp; Costner plays out his conversation with the trainer. Costner asks, “Why’d you run off?” The trainer replies, “He bit me.”

  Surprise.

  And that memorable shot where he had to dance with the wolf himself? Well, Costner goes on to explain that in order to get the wolf to follow him, he had to fill his pockets with meat. He has already run back and forth, so now he adds a twist.

  He acts out his important discovery of how to direct the wolf to go away from him: he tosses an imaginary piece of meat over his head to keep the imaginary beast at bay.

  As a storyteller, Costner understands the power of a prop.

  Props.

  He wants the audience to know how it felt to be duped by the trainer. So he embraces a new tack. He takes the idea of the wolf trainer as a door-to-door salesman overhyping his product (in this case, the wolves) and brings it to life.

  Metaphor.

  Suddenly, Costner is a door-to-door vacuum salesman in the middle of his sales pitch. He begins pushing and pulling an imaginary vacuum back and forth on stage. He throws imaginary dirt, dust, jelly, and syrup on the floor and “shows” how the vacuum sucks it up.

  Once the imaginary salesman convinces him that he can’t live without the imaginary vacuum, Costner steps out of character and sets up the audience for the next “scene.” His friends are at his house watching a football game and he calls them over to show off his new vacuum. He eagerly throws the same imaginary goop on the floor.

  Setup. Payoff.

  He moves the vacuum back and forth, but this time to no imaginary avail. He looks perturbed as he speeds up the vacuuming motion. It’s clear that it’s not working for him as it did for the salesman.

  And then he does something sublime that sets A-list actors apart: Costner plops down on his hands and knees on the stage to investigate what the hell is going on with the imaginary goop. He is completely absorbed and truly invested in this moment.

  Importance.

  Costner illustrated a textbook example of one of the fundamental tenets of screenwriting and visual storytelling.

  Show, don’t tell.

  Of course, Costner could have told the audience all about how he made a work of great cinematic storytelling, as he sat gabbing away in a chair opposite his interviewer. Instead, Kevin Costner showed us what a consummate storyteller he is.

  That night, I had two epiphanies that encouraged me to write this book. First, I am a filmmaker at heart, and whether I am teaching screenwriting or directing, I always incorporate the principles of other filmmaking artisans.

  However, in the screenwriting education niche, there is a constant debate over where the job of the screenwriter ends and the jobs of the other artists—actor, director, editor—begin.

  Costner demonstrated that this debate is well worth having.

  The advanced storytelling skills of the screenwriter, director, and actor blur and overlap. And that’s a good thing. A screenplay can incorporate everything we see or hear. Lighting, props, locations, composition, setting, and actor blocking—the entire mise-en-scène—are all part of the writer’s repertoire.

  That Costner is an Academy Award-winning director is not a coincidence.

  Costner validated my belief that to become fluent in the language of cinematic storytelling, screenwriters must embrace and learn this language from the inside out. It is absolutely imperative for screenwriters to grasp and appreciate fully the other skills required to bring their story forth as a finished film.

  Before I get to my second epiphany, let me tell you a bit about myself. While making five feature films, I have stumbled upon numerous peculiar experiences. Whether a blessing or curse, I have watched the same scene in auditions performed 500 times by 250 different actors in a weekend. I have raised money to re-create a set from scratch, a year later, to reshoot a scene. I have read more than five thousand feature scripts as a development executive, teacher, and filmmaker.

  For the most part, the effort that goes into making a $200 million film also goes into making a $200,000 film. When there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line—money from investors, friends, family members—and I am leading an army of fifty into a two-month battle, I make a commitment to follow through that transcends practicality. I spent two thousand hours each on two of my projects.

  Many subtle and advanced screenwriting skills become evident only when you are utterly engulfed in the deepest trenches of the filmmaking or writing process. Many screenwriters never even get close to this irrationally deep stage of script development, where this important, esoteric knowledge is discovered naturally.

  In the midst of battle, I have developed wisdom that I couldn’t have learned any other way. It’s not just craft that I’m willing to share from my 6,000+ hours of filmmaking. Yes, I want to create a shortcut for you to many of these principles, but the most important element I can impart to you as a writer is not craft, but mind-set.

  My passion for filmmaking and over-the-top zeal for screenwriting craft developed while making films. Embrace the same kind of viral devotion that this process truly requires, and your growth as a writer and your new, higher standards will boost your shot at selling a screenplay.

  Does that sound crazy? If so, then let’s call it enthusiasm.

  This is why you don’t have to be practical when you select the concept or premise for your first script. I am less worried about it being commercial than I am for it to be a script you are passionate enough about that you’re willing to walk with it through the fire and take your story “all the way.”

  Every moment you spend perfecting your script is a moment that pays off in the filmmaking process, not because everything you write will end up on screen, but because your level of craftsmanship and commitment set the stage for those who follow you in the storytelling process. Your craft and passion on the page attract like-minded, talented allies, because they know that your excellence can also elevate their own craft.

  When you look at the success of someone like Kevin Costner, whose storytelling instincts have coalesced into seasoned craft, it’s difficult to argue against instinct.

  And that’s my second epiphany that inspired this book. I want writers to be able to rely on more than just instinct as they work to develop their craft. My constant inspiration over more than a half decade has been to reconcile intuition, which is both essential and elusive, with better-understood storytelling concepts to achieve something concrete and functional: clear craft principles.

  That’s where this book can help you.

  Screenwriters, welcome to your first-ever book on scene writing.

  QUICK NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  In this book, I gather craft examples and derive inspiration from many different formats: drafts of scripts, transcripts, translations from film, and others. They may come from an uncredited rewriter, a ghostwriter, a non-final or incorrectly attributed draft of a script, a manual transcription of the final film, or a scene that was ad-libbed or improvised by the actors. Because it’s rarely clear how an individual line or scene came to be, I often omit the names of the writers.

  Instead, I have chosen to use the term filmmaker to encompass all of the writers (screenwriters, original novelists, and playwrights), producers, directors, actors, and all other film artisans and technicians, including directors of photography (DP), editors, and any creative entities and on-set collaborators who contributed, or might have contributed, to how a line of dialogue, action, or scene played out in the finished film.

  Fair use and the limitations of copyright prevent me from including scenes in their entirety. I have tried to provide ample context for scenes so that the lesson is clear to all readers. However, I encourage you to use some of the tools I used in writing the book: Google (and other search engines), Netflix (and similar services), Amazon Prime, and YouTube to, yes, look for entire movies, but more importantly, to look for some of the specific, well-known scenes I reference.

  Experimenting with similar search engine combinatio
ns will yield fruitful results:

  “Jaws monologue Robert Shaw”

  “Interrogation scene True Romance”

  “Brando taxi contender”

  “Departed realtor Damon”

  “Other Guys tuna shark”

  Also, don’t forget the most ubiquitous Google search for screenwriters:

  “