The Craft of Scene Writing

by Jim Mercurio

  Let’s see how simple contrast between two characters impacts their voice and approach to the world.

  Thinking, needs data: “I don’t see the necessary fixed asset numbers in this report… You’re not making sense, quit making up garbage.”

  Feeling, uses intuition: “Something’s not right about this… It feels off.”

  Even with this minimum amount of characterization, the characters’ psychological perspectives begin to creep in. With these characters, notice the contrast of the concrete words “see” and “necessary” versus the more vague “something” and “feel”? You could easily extrapolate these differences in manner of speaking into a clash of perspectives and eventually conflict.

  It doesn’t take much to make a character’s voice unique. The Star Wars character Yoda, possibly the most readily identifiable “voice” in cinema, distinguishes itself with the most basic of quirks, the inversion of sentence structure:

  YODA

  Unique, my voice is.

  Rewriting by focusing on one character at a time has its drawbacks. When characters are attuned to each other, sometimes the smallest tweak impacts a preceding or superseding line, creating the previously discussed ripple effect. Eventually, do a final pass on all of the dialogue in chronological order to consider character interactions in the overall rhythm and flow.

  Wrestling with a Single Word

  Sometimes word choice can make or break a scene.

  Let’s jump into a film idea that we will create on the fly and explore here and in the next chapter. For now, here’s what you need to know about this broad comedy: our protagonist, Fredo, is cursed and he is transforming into a penguin. Let’s imagine the moment when he wakes up and first discovers evidence of his metamorphosis.

  The scene begins with Fredo in bed sleeping, covered by a blanket. The room is dark, but we can discern the contour of his bulging stomach and the obscured movement of fluttering flippers, which creates intrigue and foreshadows the surprise.

  As he steps out of bed and the covers fall from him, we are a step ahead of him because we see the evidence of his burgeoning transformation. He blinks to orient himself. He senses something is wrong and uses his flippers to touch his body but does not get all of the information he needs.

  I want to hold off revealing the surprise to him for another few seconds so we can process it completely and build to a stronger reversal. My first draft is a genius line of eminent depth to be captured in illustrious 12-point Courier font:

  He walks to the mirror.

  At the mirror, he would be able to see what is happening to him, and we might get our first wide shot to (excuse the pun) mirror his emotions of his first complete view of himself.

  Later in the rewriting process, I switch gears into closed mode and begin to look for cuts. I am judging everything. I ask myself… Is the walk to the mirror necessary? Is it an escalation? Not really. Why not just look into the mirror? Hmm.

  I don’t know if I know the answer. I feel that a short delay, a sort of calm before the storm, enhances the moment. But I don’t like to use the antiquated cheat “beat” to create a pause because I think it’s a wasted opportunity.

  So now I upshift back to open mode and apply more “expansive” thought to the sentence.

  What about a motivation to go to the mirror? What if he needed to “flip on” the light to see more clearly or to get a better look at himself? Some potential. But then why not have the light switch be within reach?

  I guess we could just cut it. But when I go to cut the five words, I feel an indescribable pang.

  Although there is no clear-cut evidence, I feel that I am losing something funny. And by the way, this is a common occurrence during rewriting. You don’t have a definite answer of what you are looking for or whether it’s worth pursuing. But you have to trust your hunches and persevere.

  Sit with it. I close my eyes and picture the scene in my head. He is walking, but that’s static. And it’s not funny. And there is no obstacle. When is walking funny and an obstacle?

  An imperceptible faint image in my head becomes clearer and clearer, and I start swaying back and forth in anticipation of the answer revealing itself. Obstacle to walking… swaying back and forth…

  Aha! An epiphany.

  He waddles to the mirror.

  A bit of visual conflict, some humor, a slight escalation, and even a touch of concept. All for the price of a few letters: walks turns to waddles. The exact word reveals the essence of the moment and improves the audience’s experience.

  The struggle to find the perfect word ends up being an attempt to find the perfect action or describe the perfect image. The process subtly sublimes. We find the pursuit of banal efficiency and clarity leads to something magical—character, obstacles, meaningful images, conflict, humor, and ultimately…

  Storytelling.

  Balancing Modes

  In the example that opened the chapter involving the woman who discovers the idea of using a cage to hold humans, we realized that we needed to revert to open mode. Instead of nitpicking word choice, we were better off staying open to finding a completely new way through the scene. The results were a visual expansion that created suspense, externalized her thought process, and delivered a much clearer turning point to the audience.

  On the other hand, in the example from the penguin movie, it was appropriate to wage the productive war over a single verb that could improve the scene and story. Most likely, this struggle would have begun during a late draft or final polish while in closed mode, but remember the solution came while in an open-mode mind-set.

  Even during the final polish as you get most left-brained, judgmental, and fastidious in nitpicking over individual words, you sometimes have to interrupt the “narrowing in” of closed mode and embrace open mode to explore potential expansion. The process we used to pull the new verb “waddles” out of thin air is an exemplary use of open mode.

  Until you find your own personal workflow, beware of rigidly committing to one mode without exhausting your options with the other.

  Before you abandon or give up on open mode, go through your script several times and sit with scenes, description, and dialogue and just ask yourself, “What if?” Could this be stretched out? What would an expansion look like? Am I missing an opportunity to dig deeper or to show off my voice?

  When you are sure it’s time for closed mode and narrowing in on your final polish, be stubborn. With the mantra “less is more,” challenge yourself to cut twelve pages that no one will miss. Grab on to the smallest detail and don’t let it go until it’s just right: the right noun, the right verb, or the right line of dialogue.

  Mastering the rewriting process requires a sense of how to shift between open and closed modes. Once you see the goal of rewriting more clearly, you will have more flexibility to create the process that works best for you.

  Magic in the Minutia

  Most screenwriters never get to the point of rewriting a script with the level of nuance explored in these last two chapters, and that can prevent them from ever writing a great script.

  That’s why your first script doesn’t necessarily have to be commercial. Write what you are passionate enough about that will drive you to take the story “all the way” through several drafts of rewriting. You learn certain concepts, including many discussed in this chapter, only by delving deeply into this process and wrestling with minute nuances and subtlety.

  In addition to these craft principles, I want to encourage you to adopt a mind-set. If you can throw away a scene and find a better approach, savor the small victory. If you make a half-page cut that creates a stunning juxtaposition or suspenseful ellipsis, be excited. If chopping away nothing other than useless words eliminates three pages in and of itself, celebrate.

  Feel the emotional reward you get from finding magic in the minutia so that you desire to do it again and again. Remember how we wrestled with a single word? Obsess over the details of every line in your script w
ith the same fervor and make hundreds of tiny, magical discoveries.

  Go beyond just reshaping what you have. Often when you feel that a scene or moment does not live up to your expectations, there is no clear-cut path to improving it. Have the tenacity, courage, and heart to persevere against this nebulous opponent, and find the as-yet-unknown creative tweak or discovery that will transform your moment, your scene, and ultimately your script. Trust yourself and have the faith to keep searching for a shrouded solution and drag it out into the light. That is the heart of rewriting.

  13

  A TALE OF TWO VOICES: THE VOICE OF THE SCRIPT

  In Annie Hall, a cute scene between Alvy and Annie in which lobsters “escape” onto the floor puts them both into a crazed frenzy. A later scene pays off this shared moment when Alvy is with another romantic interest in the same kitchen, again with lobsters. Alvy re-creates the same frenetic state, but in contrast, the nonneurotic woman isn’t flustered in the least.

  Intellectually, we can look at the craft of contrast (stillness versus chaos), the foil characters (stoic versus neurotic), theme (how we recreate the past or carry baggage into relationships or force others into our old habits), and several other deft touches. However, emotionally, something bigger is in play. It’s not just setups and payoffs. It’s something more… It’s magic.

  As you grow as a writer, you will discover these wondrous and transcendent moments—a harmonious symbiosis of interdependence in which everything connects, derives from something, foretells or heralds something else, and usually does both—more frequently and earlier in your process. Eventually you will internalize the way the greatest storytellers regard their screenplays in terms of cinematic language—setups, payoffs, juxtapositions, ironies, and visuals—that rhymes with itself.

  There are essentially two voices a script can have. There is the romantic and often undisciplined notion associated with pure artistry and magic, i.e., your personal voice. In contrast, the sense of voice we are discussing in this chapter is about a script’s inner consistency and unity in tone and style. Let’s call it the voice of the script.

  You will draw from the foundation of your script to organically derive every surprise and reversal—no matter how big or small. This fidelity, your ability to make a script faithful to itself, creates the voice of the script. Although it’s not your personal voice, it’s still an opportunity to create something surprisingly unique. Before you give the script your personal voice, you must learn how to give it its own voice.

  To cultivate the voice of the script, start by mining each draft to unearth seeds that can blossom into new and inspired surprises. Why is it so important to mine what has come before? The answer lies in the question itself: because what you mine is yours.

  What’s Mined Is Yours

  You must honor the untapped potential of all that you have written. Pore over even your roughest drafts, and take your best reversals, character insights, motifs, and reframes and use them as the basis for surprises of their own. What you are doing is mining your work, finding pieces of your script from which to create more of itself.

  An essential tool for this process is specificity. The more specific you are with setups, the more opportunities you have to create payoffs. Vagueness gives you precious little to cling to and few options to build upon. Specificity breeds specificity.

  Consider a line spoken by a character about his daughter.

  FATHER

  She’s a tough cookie.

  This reminds me of the awful cliché in which a character makes a nebulous statement such as, “I’ve been through some tough times lately,” and the screenwriter expects this powerful “share” to resonate with the audience. However, what has the character actually shared?

  Consider the pop psychology notion that when people make a judgment on someone, they are actually revealing something about themselves. If we know that the father character values toughness (or “tough-cookieness”), then let’s be more specific.

  FATHER

  Janey won’t let down her guard.

  This line reveals his values more specifically. His idea of toughness means to avoid showing emotion, but it still describes a general attitude, not a specific behavior or action. Let’s be even more specific and also find dialogue that evokes an image:

  FATHER

  My Janey hasn’t cried in fifteen years.

  This concrete line delivers insight into the values of both the father and the daughter. It suggests three tangible scenarios we can visualize: Janey crying fifteen years ago, her not crying in the future, and her crying in the future. This charges the action of crying as significant for the character. The line therefore creates a vivid expectation that can pay off effortlessly and organically.

  Consider the two possible setups of why Janey might cry. Without the specific alley-oop, the setup comes from the general understanding of human nature: people cry when they are sad. With the setup of “My Janey hasn’t cried in fifteen years,” later in the story, all you have to do is show her cry (“A tear runs down her cheek”), and those few words help you unleash fifteen years of accumulated emotional power.

  Do you see the immense improvement in craft and emotion between the specific setup and the general one?

  In Moneyball, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) clash over Billy’s new approach to baseball, which diminishes Art’s value as manager. At the end of the scene, Billy storms out in a fit of frustration. If his parting shot is a vague utterance such as “awesome” or “great talk,” it merely communicates that Beane is capable of elementary-school-level sarcasm. However, Beane is smarter than that, and baseball is more than just a job to him. It’s personal. He has a lifelong, emotional stake in the game.

  Here’s the line that Beane utters as he leaves the room:

  BILLY

  Good meeting, Art. Every time we talk, I’m reinvigorated by my love for the game.

  The subtext, “This game gives me joy and you kill that,” trumps “our meeting sucked.”

  Use an opportunity like this to either define the character for the first time or draw from within his personality. In real life, your sassy attitude or rolling your eyes might be enough to get a laugh at a party, but on the page, you must follow through with craft.

  In The Last Boy Scout, one of the henchmen holding Joe (Bruce Willis) and Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) at gunpoint uses long and complex words while antagonizing them. An awfully vague and specifically awful first attempt at a smart-ass retort might be “Really?” Sarcasm and attitude can be part of the equation, but comedy writing actually entails crafting the humor and joke. A slight improvement might be “Thanks, Einstein,” but even that is low-hanging fruit and doesn’t make Jimmy or the scene memorable.

  So what does the movie do? It follows through with a creative spin on the insult and makes the intention of the joke clear:

  JIMMY

  I am getting my ass kicked by the guy who invented Scrabble.

  The subtext is more specific: “You’re a jackass for using unnecessarily big words,” as opposed to “You’re annoying.”

  A generic joke, dismissive look, or flat sarcastic remark isn’t enough. To elevate a scene, take it all the way. Make a joke your own and your intentions clear.

  Coming or Going

  You can make something special by where you begin or end. Setup and payoff. Expectation and frustration/surprise.

  Let’s stick with baseball movies for a moment. No one walks out of Moneyball or For Love of the Game talking about baseball, and you don’t need to know anything about baseball to appreciate them. That’s because those filmmakers are not relying merely on outside expectations—what everyone knows about baseball—as the source of inspiration for the story.

  If your baseball story draws solely from the rules and common knowledge of baseball history, you are restricting yourself and your story to the same “surprises” available to anyone else: a good hitter has a slump, a slumping hitter ma
kes a comeback, the underdog team wins in the bottom of the ninth, or our hero makes a great catch (or strikes out the best hitter in the league) to win the World Series.

  For Love of the Game is infused with just enough specificity in its setups to avoid these clichés. It deftly incorporates flashbacks to tell the story. As we saw in the last chapter, “Rewriting II,” the story relies on a theme about being needed whose reframes we looked at closely. Also, its romantic subplot explores a surprisingly mature, complex, adult relationship.

  The more your setups rely on familiar common ground or the status quo, the more novel and surprising your payoffs need to be. Either way, specificity still works in your favor.

  Look at how Scream efficiently and specifically establishes familiar horror genre tropes so it can move on to turn them into something unfamiliar, new, and special.

  Scene Analysis:

  Scream

  The movie Scream, because it exploits a number of overused conventions within the horror genre, works on an additional level for horror fans who know these conventions inside and out. One of the movie’s most memorable scenes spoofs the clichéd convention in which tension is created by allowing the audience to see a dangerous threat that the character does not.

  INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

  Randy continues to watch TV. He is now sloppy drunk, completely involved in the movie on the screen.

  SCARY MUSIC SWELLS, filling the room.

  RANDY

  (to TV)

  No, Jamie. Look behind you! Watch out! Behind you!

  (This is almost like exposition that is buried with humor and a bit of comically exaggerated importance. It serves to remind the audience of the genre convention and to demonstrate the cliché as it is being spoofed in real time.)

  And if he followed his own advice, he would see the Ghost Masked Figure that stands directly behind him… knife poised.

  (Notice how the filmmakers don’t count on the entire audience to immediately recognize the horror film convention. In telling stories for millions of eyeballs, there is no such thing as an inside joke.)