by Blake Snyder
Special effects are fine, great set pieces are wonderful, funny jokes and unique characters are vital. But if you take me to the divine in your story, I will tell all my friends about it.
That's what storytelling is really about.
And that kind of magic is as far from formula as it gets.
LET'S REVIEW
My goal is much simpler, however: to help you avoid feeling stuck. Between the ease of the BS2, the visual clarity of The Board, and this latest structure map, you should feel fully empowered. You now have the Wurlitzer keyboard at your command. You can set the tempo, rhythm, and structure for every story! Using these tools, you can finesse your way through any structure snag. And though we'll get into all new monkey wrenches in the next chapters as we deal with actual notes from executives and others, for now you can feel good. You have all kinds of new ways to throw your curveballs, spitballs, sliders, and fastballs.
But perhaps you're still feeling penned in?
If you can't shake the feeling that structure isn't helping you feel “free,” I understand. It's a common hesitation. Using the BS2 and working out the 15 beats, then going to The Board, you may still think it's all too easy, too mechanical, too formulaic. You are “All Beat Out… with Nowhere to Go” — dressed to the nines, picture perfect, but unmotivated to continue on to the show. Well, if that's the case, you have to shake it up. You have to get out of the structure and tell the story in a new way. I have used these tactics to do so:
► My movie: the one page – This is the trick famed screenwriter William Goldman uses. He will not start writing his screenplay until he can tell his story in one page; he gives himself 300 words and no more to tell the tale. This forces him to get to the crux of his story.
► My movie: the tone poem – I'm not kidding. I have often retold my story as a poem. In rhyming couplets, with all brand new challenges to get across what my story is, sometimes I have had all new breakthroughs, and sometimes all new story ideas!
► My movie: the comedy – Perhaps you're too wrapped up in tone? Is your story overly dramatic, overly comic? Try pitching the opposite. If a drama, try the comedic take to shake it up.
► My movie: the Rubik's Cube – One of the nice aspects of the STC! software is the ability to move scenes around at will. Try it. Take them off the board, shuffle, and randomly put them back up out of order. You never know what insights will be realized.
Anything you can do to free your story, frees you too. It lets you deal with the continuing elasticity of your tale. All the way through, from the first Save the Cat! to this chapter, I hope I've stressed the nimbleness required, the talent to — at any minute — throw away everything you hold near and dear, and try something brand new. And nowhere is this particular challenge greater than when we have actually executed a script and are now staring at the result. Panic. Self-Recrimination. Grief. These are just some of the emotional candy we snack on when we know something's wrong — and we don't know how to solve it.
But fear not.
The Script Doctor is in!
chapter 4
STRAIGHTENING
YOUR SPINE
Blake's Blog /June 23, 2008
“Story is a puzzle. And getting all the pieces to fit just right… is the point of the job.”
As much as I enjoy teaching classes and responding to your email, one of the most delightful experiences I've had since writing Save the Cat! is working with you one-on-one. Though I have written or co-written 78 scripts, there is nothing I like more than reading and reviewing your screenplay — primarily due to one simple fact:
It's not my script!
Yes, just like in class, as I so pleasantly rip your Fun and Games to shreds, or bluntly say “No, that doesn't work,” or smile while you are seemingly lost, it's so much easier to see a problem when I'm not emotionally involved. But whether it's me, or the writers in your writing group, or your agent, or a civilian with no vested interest, someone has to read your screenplay. Bringing your idea to its final form is perilous, but a must.
It's like The Wages of Fear. Ever see this? French film. Two truck drivers have to deliver a load of nitroglycerin — very slowly — through an obstacle course of rope bridges and quicksand. And they're French, so there's all that Gauloises smoke.
Well that's us, minus the Turkish cigarettes hopefully, assigned to transport this wonderful little flicker of inspiration across the finish line by extrapolating just the right story from it. Yet the highway is riddled with warnings of what happens when we fail to heed the laws of sound storytelling.
One of the movies I mentioned earlier as a great example of a title that grabs us is Snakes on a Plane. Yes, great title, great concept! But I bet even those connected with the film feel they never quite delivered on the promise of the premise.
Booooooom!
It just shows what can happen.
A great title and logline are vital, for without attracting attention to our story with a concept that grabs us, we will not get the chance we deserve to have our screenplay bought and made. But we still have to ex-e-cute. And that means nailing down the sto-ry.
And that means checking out something called “the spine.”
SCRATCHING YOUR SPINE
What is the so-called spine of the story?
That's simple. The spine is how we track what happens to the hero or heroes from the beginning to the end. It's that thing we follow, the rail we keep tabs on with our toe in the dark, as we watch a hero we love, or at least understand, grow and change.
And that change must be big!
Heroes start off one way and end up another. In the comedy Liar Liar, Jim Carrey is a liar when we start that movie and by the end he's not. What happened? The spine of the story shows Jim's “milestones of growth” as he goes from one polar extreme to its opposite. And the bigger the change for any hero, the better.
The problem for us is that anything that doesn't add to the spine, doesn't belong. And that's when the trouble starts.
Great stories come about only with a lot of banging away on the story spine to make sure it's straight — and stays straight — because the temptation to veer off the path is tremendous. We're writers! We are lured away by flashes of light in the bushes that take us off the road and into the brambles. And the harder we try to incorporate these misadventures — the more we justify mistakes and convince ourselves inspiration trumps all — the faster we find ourselves with story scoliosis, a crooked spine of a tale chock full of half-steps, missteps, off-ramps, U-turns, and curlicues.
And that's when you come to me.
I love working with writers, and I love pounding on your spine to make sure it's straight. I have objectivity. So when I say your whole Act One has gotta go because it doesn't set up what the hero learns by the end, you think: “What are you, insane!? You mean that part I slaved over for two months, and even got the punctuation marks in the right places?”
That's right. Gone-o.
Or when I tell you your Opening Image is wrong, you are dumbfounded. That's the initial scene you think is soooooooooo brilliant because it matches up with the Final Image perfectly. So you say: “That's stupid, you're stupid. You don't get it!”
And I have to tell you something that may sound odd:
You're better than this!
You're clinging to stuff not because it's brilliant but because you think, secretly, you can't come up with something else. Deep down you protect these scenes and images because you think they're your best work, and you can't do it any better.
Well, I'm saying you can.
You can come up with a hundred better Opening Images.
You can write a brand spanking new Act One.
In your sleep.
As long as you stick to the one job that is the one thing any one really cares about: telling a story with a spine.
And cutting out anything that doesn't service that mission.
WHO'S THE HERO?
One of the first things to figure out in
any story, and one of the fastest ways to get taken off the rails if we don't, is to discover whom this is about. When you give me your script and I have a problem with it, this is the first question I usually ask:
Who's the hero?
Because what I'm really asking is: Are you sure?
In class, I talk about this as it relates to my script, Granny. Ask anyone; this is a screenplay I'd been working on for years. I had 10 drafts of Granny that did not sell. And one of the reasons it didn't was… I had the wrong hero.
Granny, you'll recall, is the story of a senior serial killer who arrives on a family's doorstep claiming to be the recently dead wife's mother, and here's the scene: It's a dark and stormy night. (Sorry) There's a knock at the door. Standing there is a sweet old lady (and recent escapee from St. Vitus Center for the Criminally Insane). Who answers the door? Dad. Because in the early drafts, Dad was the hero. The story was about the head of the house, wife dead, children out of control, who needs lots of help.
So when Granny shows up, he says come on in!
Well, for target market reasons, that was really a bad idea. Men over 40 don't see these slasher flicks; teenagers do!
So how does the scene play now?
Same dark and stormy night. Same stranger on the stoop.
But now it's Amber, the 16-year-old, who answers the door.
Now it's her story. And that's the draft that sold.
You may have different problems finding your hero that aren't related to figuring out the target market. Sometimes, there are two people we need to track, so whom are we tracking most? Take Lethal Weapon. Like most buddy movies, this is what we call a “two-hander” because both Danny Glover and Mel Gibson change. But the way to find the spine is to see it as Danny's story; he's the one with the case, and the problem — and he's the one who'll be most affected by his time spent with suicidal Mel.
There are also films with three heroes. Examples of expertise in dealing with these can be found in the work of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who apparently like this dynamic. Check out Aladdin, then compare and contrast with the first Pirates of the Caribbean and realize these are both brilliant examples of a “three-hander.” But Terry will tell you while Aladdin is the title character's movie, Pirates is really Keira Knightley's story; that's how they charted the spine. By zeroing in on one hero, and tracking events through her, these two screenwriting greats got a handle on “Who's the hero?” — and as a result found their spine.
But the fun doesn't end there.
If yours is an ensemble piece, like Crash or Babel, who's the hero then? Well in those cases, it's several people with several story arcs. But we still have to find the spine — and that is found in the issue of each movie. Crash is about isolation. Babel is about global interconnectedness. And each has an “entry-point character” (Don Cheadle in Crash, Brad Pitt in Babel) who's “us” and who, slightly above the fray, has his eyes opened the most.
If you're having a hard time finding your hero, try this handy guide to figuring out who it is, and whose story you must follow as he goes from beginning to end. The hero is the one who:
► is most like “us”
► has the biggest “arc”
► learns the greatest lesson
► least wants to change, yet…
► has the most need to do so
And the only reason to figure this out is so we can keep our story spine straight. Knowing the “who” tells us how to demarcate the “milestones of growth” and the change the hero makes from beginning to end.
So how do we show that change?
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
How you show the change is by asking, What's the problem? This is the second question I pose to struggling writers about their scripts, after we've established whom their movie concerns. A hero has to have a problem that this movie will fix, so if your movie doesn't start out with a hero and a world with problems, I see it. But you don't. Yet! So I am usually smiling — evilly — when I ask:
Why is having no problem a problem?
The short answer is: If there's no problem, you have nowhere to go. If there's nothing wrong, why take this trip?
Keep in mind my most brilliant piece of advice to writers and the thing that brings us all back to square one — and back down to earth: Any story you tell is about “the most important event that ever happened to the hero of that story.” It is the most life-altering, most paradigm-shifting, most enlightening or crucial episode — and this story causes that change to occur. The problems we set these heroes up with, and resolve in the course of the tale, trump all. Forget all the car crashes, and the set pieces, and the Fun and Games that have drawn us to see this movie; they are only in the service of transforming the hero.
And us.
If you don't see this as your spine; if, at base, you aren't tracking this change, and showing how the change occurs from scene to scene, you will not have a story that matters.
There, I said it!
And let me tell you, it feels good to get it off my chest!
If this declaration is true, and you have every reason to believe it is, then figuring out “the problem” is how you will track “the transformation.” If someone is going from Point A to Point B, then you must start your hero off with a problem that's so big and so all-encompassing, it makes the trip worthwhile.
And if not, you have to make it so.
You'll note in the first chapter, when dealing with the logline for Quickie — about the banker who goes to Las Vegas and wakes up with a penniless waitress (yay Vegas!) — when breaking down that story we must be able to see more than its poster, we have to see what the movie's “about.” And guess what? It's not about the hero's bender, or his job, or his boss; it's the fact he's about to marry the wrong girl. The way to make that point clearer is to show us up front that our hero's soon-to-be future-altering choice will lead to a dead end in all aspects of his life. Yet while even that is true, it's still not the problem.
The problem is: Our hero doesn't know it!
And the story spine will track how our hero figures it out.
Stories are about problem solving, and the slow coming to consciousness by our hero that he a) has a deficit and b) needs to fix it. If you don't have a hero with a problem, find one — and make it clear. The bigger the problem, the stronger the spine.
In the three loglines pitched in that first chapter, we can see who the hero is in each, but “what's the problem?” One way to solve broken concepts like these is to ask this question, and be ready to change the concept entirely when we find the answer.
► In Quickie, the problem is our hero's marriage will lead to a dead-end life; thus, the spine should track how he discovers this and gives up his old ways to embrace the new. And now maybe it's better to describe the waitress he marries as “vivacious” rather than “penniless.” That simple adjective switch suddenly makes me see where this might go.
► In Partly Cloudy, according to the logline, the problem is our TV weatherman is bored, but really it's a story about a coward: A passive man wants to be a hero. That's the “problem” we'll track. So now maybe he should be “on the verge of” hurricane season, and we need to “set up” the idea that saving his town is part of the Act Three finale.
► In Dark Streets, the problem is he's a down-and-out cop, full of existential angst about his job — and his life, who will learn life's real meaning as he actively solves the mystery. And if the writer can give up “hiding the ball” and tell us this, the real drama might come out!
But it all comes back to finding “the problem.”
Having established a problem, anything that is NOT will have to be carefully weighed in each of these concepts. If a story point doesn't directly relate to the spine, out it goes!
And if you can't find the problem, try harder! In truth we, the audience, don't care what you pick. The hero's deficit doesn't matter as long as you set it up and show the problem evolve through the movie. This is why I'm so c
avalier when I read your script. I know that as an audience what I'm really looking for is not your brilliant imagery, but a character with a problem, who changes. Together we'll find it; we just have to look.
I have a wonderful little motto that I use with writers: Force it. You can apply this to any screenwriting dilemma, for it forces you to make changes you may not think you need. If you don't feel like figuring it out, or have no idea, make it up! This is the joy of “forcing it” — and it works.
I also have another great troubleshooting slogan I'll introduce at this point. It's something I like to call Here's the bad way to do this. Like the beautiful simplicity of “force it,” this lets us recalcitrant writers off the hook. Can't come up with a problem for the hero of your movie? Say: “Here's the bad way to do this” and proceed to tell us something dumb.
It takes the pressure off.
And it very often is not only not dumb, it's the solution.
SNIPPING THE ENDS
How does the hero begin this movie and how does he end up? This is the third question I always pose when dealing with story scoliosis, especially when I am not seeing the hero change. I've suggested you know who the hero is, and also tell us his problem. And make sure that problem is huge! But I need to know more.
Most stories are about an underdog, and establishing the world he lives in is part of explaining why he's the way he is. The hero is an underdog because he has defects of character that cause him to be so, fear mostly — and any number of behaviors masquerading as fear. But his “world” is also deficient. It's a world where they pray to the sun every day, and when the sun rises, all hail the king who organized this ritual. Only we the audience, and our hero, suspect the king is a sham. By story's end, the hero's life must be turned upside-down. It's not enough for him to win; he must expose the king — and transform the kingdom! — to truly succeed.
