The Craft of Scene Writing

by Jim Mercurio

  If dozens of recurring details in the film intersect and overlap with a given notion, thematic intention begins to gel. A mountain of circumstantial evidence corroborates the idea that Woody Allen intends for us to view his entire film through this particular magic spell:

  • Gil writes about a character who owns a nostalgia shop. Inez’s father describes nostalgia this way: “Nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present.” This spurs Inez’s summation of Gil: “He’s a romantic. Gil would be just fine living in a perpetual state of denial.”

  • When the opening sentence from his novel is revealed in the story, it seems to adhere to my edict about opening images: “‘Out Of the Past’ was the name of the store, and its products consist of memories. What was prosaic and even vulgar to one generation had been transmuted by the mere passing of years to a status at once magical and also camp.”

  • He stumbles upon a magical portal that transports him to Paris in the 1920s, where he falls in love with the era and a woman from that time period, Adriana (Marion Cotillard).

  • Eventually, they find a way to magically transport themselves from the 1920s to what Adriana considers the most magnificent era and Paris’ Golden Age, the Belle Epoque of the 1890s.

  • Only by seeing her obsess over her past does Gil understand his own flaw of clinging to his past.

  The meaning of your thematic touches might not be immediately apparent, but hopefully you can see how several rhyming ideas accumulate and gain power and coherence. Through these rhymes and repetitions you can make a setting your own.

  Gil rejects his “in the past” lover, Adriana, but also his modern-day fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams). Inez is another permutation of “the past” because she is in love with an older version of him, someone whom he doesn’t want to be anymore, not his present self.

  Back to the ending. Gil is strolling along the Seine, living in the moment when he happens into Gabrielle. As it begins to rain, she says, “Paris is the most beautiful in the rain,” and he agrees. They walk off together in the rain, wholeheartedly embracing the perfect present moment.

  The Eiffel Tower and its multifaceted relationship with the past and present, old and new, helps to synthesize the story’s ultimate meaning. Without any words or explanation, the constant reframes and rhymes convey the intended idea that the future, past, and present are all embroiled, yet love and happiness are found by living in the moment and shedding the weight of useless nostalgia.

  Motifs and Props

  A motif is a dominant idea in your script.

  For a given motif, there will be images, ideas, techniques, props, sounds, or structural patterns whose recurrence have a cumulative effect in creating mood, reframing ideas, or organizing the information presented to the audience. Sometimes the individual iterations of a larger motif will be described as motifs, too. Motifs almost always relate to theme.

  In effect, the rhyming or overlap in meaning of the smaller elements will support the ideas embedded in the overall motif. For instance, in Chinatown, the idea of lack of sight and inability to see clearly is a motif and is supported by several small iterations that include:

  • Evelyn’s flawed eye

  • Noah Cross’s broken glasses

  • Evelyn being shot through the eye

  • Jake breaking a taillight on Evelyn’s car so he can follow her

  • Several suggestions of spying via binoculars, photos, and images of people as seen through windows

  A prop is a physical object in a scene with which the characters can interact. Motifs add an extra layer of meaning, irony, or stakes for us, the viewer and reader. They aren’t there for the characters in the story.

  A rule of thumb: A prop is more about an item’s physical function, and a motif is more about its metaphysical function.

  An object’s role as a prop or motif can overlap. A chain-link fence is a perfect example that illustrates how an object functions simultaneously as a practical prop and a motif. The fence is a physical obstacle for two characters on opposite sides. They might reach fingers through to touch or have to climb over it. However, the fence might echo other images of constriction and relate to something bigger in the story: separation, being trapped, or even the nature of the relationship.

  A scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds illustrates the fine line between a motif and a prop and shows how you can get double duty from them. In the opening scene, Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz), the “Jew hunter,” orders the slaughter of the Dreyfus family, who happen to be dairy farmers. The daughter Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) escapes, and later in the film, Landa meets with her under her new identity to vet her for the movie premiere at her theater. Notice the multiple references to milk, dairy, and cream in the scene:

  COL LANDA

  Yes, two strudels, one for myself and one for the Mademoiselle. A cup of Espresso, with a container of steamed milk, on the side. For the Mademoiselle, a glass of milk.

  Considering Shosanna grew up on a dairy farm, and the last time she was on a dairy farm, her strudel companion murdered her entire family, his ordering her milk is, to say the least… disconcerting.

  The last words in the final sentence do not answer the important question: to whom is this disconcerting? The reader or viewer? The character? Or both? It does act as a contextual cheat—a reminder that privileges only the reader to connect the milk and cream to her family. However, I think this is a missed opportunity to allow a motif to function as a prop, also.

  Tarantino creates a visually interesting sequence of the two eating the strudel and drinking the milk, which helps the viewer to make the association and appreciate the additional layer of meaning. However, Shosanna never reacts to or interacts with any of the dairy items in a way that suggests she is aware of their significance.

  Shosanna is a smart and sensitive enough character to recognize the cruel irony of the situation. The milk and strudel could have easily become an obstacle for her in the scene, where she might have become flustered and distracted, possibly knocking over her glass. It could have made things harder for her and added dramatic tension.

  Breaking Away

  In Breaking Away, each character struggles with his own version of “breaking away,” whether it’s escaping the past, accepting it, or integrating it with their future. Despite the protagonist’s proclivity for racing, Dave’s (Dennis Christopher) ultimate act of “breaking away” is to become the first person in his family to attend college.

  His father (Paul Dooley) “breaks away” from his blue-collar work as a stone “cutter” and now runs his own business, a used car lot. A subplot that acts as comic relief and supports the idea of breaking away from old habits involves his wife (Barbara Barrie) pressuring him to stick to a new and healthy diet.

  Setting and location often belong to an overarching image system—a collection of visuals, props, and motifs that work together—and Breaking Away contains my favorite thematically related visuals in any film, that of rocks. Rocks become a constant reminder of not only where the characters are coming from but also where they are headed.

  Dave and his father stroll along on the Indiana University campus, and the dialogue reframes and establishes the context of the stones so efficiently that it speaks for itself:

  EXT. CAMPUS - NIGHT

  The campus is deserted. Dave and Mr. Blase are walking slowly outside a huge classroom building. Mr. Blase lights a cigarette.

  MR. BLASE

  Just one. Don’t tell mother.

  (looking at the building)

  You know, I do this every now and then. Come here at night and… I cut the stone for that building over there…

  (Mr. Blase takes solace in visiting and wallowing in the past. Even the action of sneaking in a smoke shows a reluctance to break away to the healthier life that his wife advocates.)

  DAVE

  Yes, I know, Dad.

  MR. BLASE

  I was one fine stonecutter… Mike’s dad… Moocher’s,
Cyril’s… we all were. Well, Cyril’s dad… Ah, never mind. The thing is. I loved it. I was young, slim and strong and damn proud of my work… and the buildings went up… and when they were finished… damnedest thing happened… It was like the buildings were too good for us. Nobody told us that. But we just felt uncomfortable. Even now. I’d like to be able to stroll through the campus and look at the limestone but I feel out of place. I suppose you guys still go swimming in the quarries.

  DAVE

  Sure.

  The boys do still swim in the quarry and sunbathe there. The stones bring them comfort. It grounds them, and it has provided a blue-collar stability for them growing up.

  Their walk ends on a bench beside the library. Mr. Blase asks Dave about how he did on a college exam. Dave is embarrassed to admit that he did well. He doesn’t want to show up his father or admit his, albeit ambiguous, ambitions to “break away” in his own way by going to college.

  MR. BLASE

  So, all you get from my twenty years of work is the holes we left behind.

  DAVE

  I don’t mind.

  MR. BLASE

  I didn’t either when I was your age. But… Eh, Cyril’s dad says he took that college exam.

  DAVE

  Yeah, both of us did.

  MR. BLASE

  So, how did… how did both of you do?

  DAVE

  Well, I think, eh, one of us… eh… I won’t go, Dad. The hell with them. I’m not ashamed of being a cutter.

  As a way to honor his dad and demonstrate his reluctance to admit his desire to surpass his father, Dave clings to the notion that he is a cutter, but in his idiosyncratic way of supporting him and pushing him to “break away,” Mr. Blase quickly reminds him that he is not a cutter and his father’s past is not his destiny.

  What’s so amazing about the moment is that they are literally framed by the stone of the building and the source of light that is directly behind them is from the inside of the library, where we see shelves of books and a myriad of college students milling about. It is a magical doorway to the future literally framed by Dave’s father’s fine craftsmanship as well as a perfect visual manifestation of Dave’s dilemma.

  The stones that brought Mr. Blase pride and bring his son comfort now represent something that is overwhelming for both of them. The established motif contributes to one of the most beautiful and powerful moments in the film.

  Many of the craft topics in this chapter coalesce here. A verbal reframe establishes a context for a motif and related images that can effortlessly propagate throughout the entire script and story. Once you set an idea like this in motion, it allows you to draw on it to handily create complex scenes with sublime touches.

  Nitty-Gritty

  Even the smallest and most subtle of elements, including casting, character names, titles, wardrobe, and style, can work toward building thematic coherence.

  Consider casting. Unless you write a script like Being John Malkovich, casting will be out of your hands, but let’s quickly explore how choices can transform your script. Think about what you expect from a “John Wayne film” or how the suspension of disbelief in Gran Torino—that an elderly unarmed man can stand up by himself against a violent gang—relies on the casting of Clint Eastwood, whose presence invokes a litany of his previous film roles as a mysterious western loner and antihero.

  In Gattaca, several casting choices resonate with theme. In its world, where genetic superiority is highly valued, Gabrielle Reece, a real-life former world-class athlete, plays a Gattaca trainer whose job it is to evaluate the biological superiority of its cadets.

  The film wryly casts Ernest Borgnine as Caesar, the aging head janitor who is Vincent’s (Ethan Hawke) boss. When Caesar catches Vincent watching a rocket take off, daydreaming about his desire to become an astronaut, Caesar brings him back to earth by reminding him that his lot in life as a biologically flawed “In-Valid” is set. Despite his decidedly non-Hollywood looks, Borgnine enjoyed a stellar and celebrated career, so it’s ironic that he plays the character who espouses that only perfect people can succeed.

  It’s also no coincidence that in Avatar, a movie about ignoring differences in races and species that the romance characters Jake and Neytiri, underneath the blue tint of CGI, are played by a Caucasian man and an African American woman, respectively.

  Here is a quick list of other nitty-gritty nuances that can be sources of inspiration to help you augment or clarify meaning:

  • Costume and Wardrobe: The “getup” from Midnight Cowboy or the overly gaudy costumes that Effie Trinket creates for Katniss in The Hunger Games.

  • Transitions: Surprising juxtapositions and associations. Think about the meaning of the most famous match cut in cinema in 2001: A Space Odyssey from the fateful, weaponized bone to the space station.

  • Names: Names can evoke emotional associations such as Rocky, or they can have obvious thematic intent such as Gattaca’s Eugene Morrow (eugenics of tomorrow) or the full name of the title character in Django Unchained: Django Freeman.

  • Titles: Consider that so many films referred to in this chapter have titles that are integrated, organic, and meaningful, including Midnight Cowboy, Breaking Away, and Se7en.

  As we get into smaller and more subtle elements, some of these will fall out of a screenwriter’s purview; nevertheless, this overview might inspire you to co-opt these finer tools, which can help you express your theme.

  What We Hear

  Dialogue can be a tool to corroborate your case for the audience. However, avoid making your setups and reframes too obvious, i.e., on the nose. One way to make a setup feel innocuous is to plant it as far away in the script as you can from when you actually need it. You don’t want it to seem like a contrived last-minute cover-up. Another way is to bury the line as conflict or within another context.

  Let’s begin with the least subtle of lines and see what we can do to make them appear ephemeral, throwaway, or spontaneous.

  Theme Lines, Double Entendres, and Summations

  Although it’s a screenwriting sin to have characters explain the story’s meaning with a long diatribe imbued with importance, many movies—even great ones—are able to announce their theme. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch’s (Gregory Peck) line, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” is what I would call a theme line, an explicit statement of the theme or of significant meaning.

  The line comes organically from Atticus’s nature, and Atticus’s actions throughout the film illustrate the principles the line embodies. However, the most important reason it’s acceptable, from a craft standpoint, is that it’s not buttressed against the ending as a preachy explanation but is delivered at a teachable moment for his young daughter, Scout (Mary Badham).

  Dramatic subtext allows seemingly banal lines to have deep and resonant meaning, and with theme lines, we adhere to a converse logic. Ironically, what usually allows you to slip in an on-the-nose theme line is a context where it doesn’t seem overly important. That’s the surprise: something that we would expect to be announced with bombastic fanfare is given little prominence.

  For all of the supposed life-affirming wisdom doled out in the voice-over for American Beauty, the seemingly throwaway line “Never underestimate the power of denial,” is probably the most on-point summation of the film.

  In The Imitation Game, it was as if a trumpet were blaring and flags were unfurled to announce the importance of the recurring mouthful: “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” Rather than lavishing attention on itself, a theme line should go over the heads of most viewers. We want it to disappear in the context of the moment.

  Aim for a more muted and organic line like White Men Can’t Jump’s “Sometimes when you win, you actually lose.”

  Ironically, dialogue in direct counterpoint to the theme has
a similar impact to that of a theme line. When a character makes a contradictory statement to the actual theme in your story, the contrast accentuates the actual thesis by clarifying what the theme is not.

  Here, Citizen Kane lets a countertheme line spur a theme line in response, which organically emanates from the character. The touch of conflict obscures the potential directness of the second line:

  FEMALE REPORTER

  If you could’ve found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would’ve explained everything.

  JERRY THOMPSON

  … I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a… piece in a jigsaw puzzle… a missing piece.

  Another time we use this strategy of deemphasizing importance is with lines that resonate deeply, work on multiple levels, or are keen summations of character. We want to avoid gilding the lily by giving “heavy” lines a disruptive overemphasis.

  In Dead Poets Society, when Neil’s father (Kurtwood Smith) demands that he drop some of his extracurricular activities, Neil (Robert Sean Leonard) responds with what seems like a throwaway line, “You know me, always taking on too much.” This is a resounding summary of the character, foreshadowing his inability to cope with the pressure his parents apply that leads to him taking his life. On repeat viewings, the line might resonate with viewers at the conscious level, but here it should work just on the subconscious level.

  In Memento, a moment of self-reflexivity has Leonard chastising his wife for rereading a book: “Doesn’t it ruin the fun to know what happened?” Although the line ironically refers to itself, since this is a movie that is told in reverse order and thereby has already revealed to the audience everything that has happened, the remark is light and completely divorced from a sense of importance.

  There are exceptions to every rule. In Gladiator, Maximus (Russell Crowe) gets away with grandiose proclamations such as “What we do in life echoes in eternity,” because he is a general in the Roman army. His speeches are expected to be full of meaningful and inspiring rhetoric.

  Alley-Oops

  In basketball, an alley-oop is when a player assists the shooter by passing the ball in an ideal situation that allows the shooter to make an easy slam dunk. I’ve co-opted the term to refer to a verbal reframe—dialogue planted earlier in the film—that creates or provides context that illuminates the meaning or amplifies the emotional power of a later action.