Book to Screen

by Frank Catalano

Now when you are working within the literary medium, you can take all the time and all the words you need to describe to the reader about your character and what is going on in your narrative. The words you use are directly aimed at creating the idea in your imagination in the reader’s imagination. It’s a one on one relationship. When you move over to scriptwriting, you are now describing what is in your imagination to any number of people (producers, directors, scene designers, costume designers, actors) with the tacit understanding that these individuals will add their own interpretation to what you have created. So, think of your three elements description, action and dialogue as a starting point (not and ending point). You have to give them just enough to understand your vision, but leave them enough room to add their own. And that is why in screenwriting, we cut to the chase quickly. We use our words with a sense of economy. Adding all sorts of intricate camera angles is for example is not a good idea because it limits the Director of Photography’s creative participation in the film. Just give them enough so that they know what’s going on and then they will add their piece to the creation.

  Take the example we just went through with the older male painter and his young female lover. Do we describe that scene with an entire paragraph? No. Just a couple of lines which will give who ever is reading it a clear cut idea of what scene should look like, who the characters are and what is going on.

  INT. ARTISTS STUDIO – DAY

  John looking worn and disheveled from sleeping in his clothes the night before jabs his brush into the canvass Julia naked except for a thin robe waits to begin her sitting. His brush strokes are agitated and jagged as she quietly turns the pages of a magazine.

  Now I just made that up and it probably should have more economy of word and also include a bit of description for the studio. You shouldn’t do an extensive description of the scene and then explain in detail what’s going on in each characters mind as live out the scene. The characters through action and dialogue will do that for you. If you get too specific, you will lose the reader.

  John using magenta #17 spills the oil on his new shoes he had specially shipped from Italy. As he move to clean them, the paint splattered even more and spread on his red and tan all wool carpet which he purchased on his last trip to Bangladesh. The camera pans slowly up John’s shoe to his right corduroy pant leg now spattered with paint up to his unshaven face and open shirt and Ralph Lauren tie.

  (Audience laughter)

  This might work in the literary medium but long-winded description and detailed camera angles and director’s notes won’t work in a screenplay. The dog won’t hunt. You have got the let everyone have a creative piece within the puzzle. Theatre and film are by their very nature collaborative arts. Now getting back to improvisation.

  It’s okay to sometimes play the “opposite” within a given improvisation. Assuming that an improvisation, in your case is a scene from your book… you can from time to time make the physicality and the dialogue contrast one another. What I mean here is… that the dialogue might say one thing but the physicality says something quite different. This is a similar approach to the example we just did a moment ago.

  For example, if I said to you that I was going to beat you to a pulp.

  (Catalano looks at one man in the audience.)

  I don’t really mean that… I mean if we were improvising and I said that I was going to beat you to a pulp but my physical gestures were the opposite. I keep saying that I will beat you to a pulp but I keep backing away from you. This is an example of contrasting the physicality with the dialogue. So if you get tossed into an improvisation and the situation that is given to you is “you’re are breaking up with your girlfriend… go!” You don’t have to cut to the immediate chase, “I’m leaving you! It’s just not working out!”

  Instead, you can try the opposite:

  “Hi honey, sorry I’m late.”

  Now you do something very strange – you tie your shoe and now you intently look at your shoe as you tie the lace very slowly.

  “I’m really sorry I’m late. I had to work late at the office… and it looks like I’m going to be doing this every night. I was thinking…

  Still focusing on the shoelace.

  … that we should take a break from one another for a while.

  The shoe is tied.

  I need to make some money now so I can get out of debt.

  It’s really not you… it’s me.”

  Suddenly the guy’s shoe is the most important thing to him. Why? So he can hide there. He can focus his energy on the shoe rather than looking his girlfriend in the eye. Why can’t he look her in the eye? It could be any number of reasons—but probably because he is not telling the truth. It’s actually called “creative hiding” and is a great way to tell if someone is not telling you the truth. Please don’t try this at home without supervision.

  (Audience laughter)

  Guys here… don’t do the shoe now… because they know it.

  (Audience laughter)

  It could be anything to take the focus off of you. It could be the moon in the sky, a spot on the wall or (a little more risky) focus on a body part. When they ask you a question, you can say before you answer:

  “Your hair… it looks great. Did you get it done today… it looks really great.”

  (Audience laughter)

  So even though the purpose or outcome of the scene is to break up… you play the opposite but you still complete the objective. What about listening?

  So improvisation, should not be literal – you can and should take whatever idea you begin with and then let it evolve on its own. Also, don’t forget physicality is a great way to create character and situation. You can go a long way in creating story and character without ever saying a word. But I also want you think again about the “spontaneous” part of the definition. You have to create elements of character and story on the spot. To do that you have to be a good… no a great listener.

  Being a great listener when doing an improvisation is essential. If another actor gives you something within an improvisation you have to acknowledge it. If they say they were late because the trolley was late… don’t reply and say all the planes were late at the airport.

  This tells the audience that you are not listening to what’s going on. Also, listen to what your characters say about themselves and what other characters say about them. Sometimes characters like people don’t tell the truth. That can also be revealing. There may be some “code” words imbedded within what the characters say. For example, we all know that our parents love us and when we see them, no matter how old we are, they still look at us at their child. They can say one word to us (that’s a code word) and suddenly we are ten years old all over again.

  (Audience laughter)

  Or pre set patterns.

  Catalano: Hi Mom, how are you?

  Mom: Just sitting here alone like a dog.

  Catalano: A dog?

  Mom: Yes, alone just like a dog… an abandoned dog.

  Catalano: Alone?

  Mom: Like a dog…

  Catalano: What are you doing?

  Mom: Waiting.

  Catalano: Waiting for what?

  Mom: Waiting to die.

  Catalano: Why is that?

  Mom: Because you never call…

  Catalano: Mom, I call you every day… I just called you yesterday!

  (Audience laughter)

  You can use these kinds of pre set patterns or code words within a given improvisation.

  Accept what you are given (whatever the reality is) within a given improvisation. This is an acting note as much as it is a writing note. If two characters step into a space and it goes something like this:

  Character 1: Good morning.

  Character 2: Morning.

  Character 1: Nice day…

  Character 2: I guess.

  Character 1: Could you push the 14th floor for me please?

  Character 2: 14? I don’t know what you’re talking about – the
re are no buttons here…we’re on a bus stop!

  In this case where are they?

  (Audience – “On an elevator.”)

  How do we know that?

  (Audience – “Their physicality – the way they are standing.”)

  (Audience - “He asked him to press an elevator button.”)

  Right, but character #2, decided to create their own reality and violated the reality set up by character #1. Here’s another example.

  Character 1: I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after you. You always leave your socks on the floor. I’m out of here!

  Character 2: Excuse me? Is that paper or plastic or did you bring your own bags?

  (Audience laughter)

  You may get that once in a while… and what you can do is try to bring it back to the original reality or go with the new reality. But there needs to be only one reality or the audience will get confused.

  Character 1: I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after you. You always leave your socks on the floor. I’m out of here!

  Character 2: Excuse me? Is that paper or plastic or did you bring your own bags?

  Character 1: Very funny… I’ll take plastic… and while you’re at it… throw out the garbage.

  Character 2: Okay…

  Character 1: This is the last time I’m doing this. Clean up after yourself!

  The whole idea about improvisation and even writing for that matter is to “give and take.” Especially if you are writing characters and you are in the zone – you have no idea what will come out of your character’s mouths. So whatever they say, you should listen to it and somehow react. Otherwise, why is it written for someone to read? If it’s not important, doesn’t help your story evolve and further develop your character, why should a reader or an audience sitting in a theatre bother to listen to it? You can have your characters “not listen” to one another but whatever they say should be of interest to an audience.

  42

  LET YOUR CHARACTERS EXPERIENCE YOUR STORY THROUGH THEIR FIVE SENSES

  Acting it out

  WE ARE ALL people who experience the world (our characters are the same way) through our five senses – sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing. You might be writing characters with six senses – that can see dead people or aliens…

  (Audience laughter)

  I’m saying for most of us, five senses. But our senses are not all the same are they? Think about this as a hot spot for a character that they can use one of their senses more because they are better at it. They could be “visual” so that they react to and remember everything the see in vivid detail. They could be “auditory” where they react more effectively to everything they hear. We have talked about his in other workshops. Think about this kind of attribute, if your character is not working for you. You feel they are cliché’ or an off the shelf grocery store type of character. Change they way they perceive their universe through one of their senses. Try that and see what happens to them and your story. You could also improvise off of this concept.

  Character 1: You never tell me that you love me…

  Character 2: What are you talking about? I washed your car yesterday…look at it!

  Character #1 is auditory – they need to hear the words I love you. Character #2 is visual – washing the car is a visual way of saying I love you.

  Character 2: I love you baby…

  Character 1: Don’t tell me you love me… show me! going out drinking with your friends night. Stop every

  Character #2 is auditory – they are telling them something they think they want to hear.

  Character #1 is visual – they want to see something happen.

  How does your character perceive their universe? Utilize an improvisation to illustrate the best way to show it. If you think about characters such as Sherlock Holmes – his whole thing was observation. I’m not saying he wasn’t an auditory person as well. But his major quality was to utilize visual observation to deduce the reality of the situation.

  Holmes says in A Scandal in Bohemia: “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is s clear.” He reacts to the world around him intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually using his five senses. But, I would think his visual sense leads the way. Notice I also mentioned three words intellectual, emotional and physical. What’s that?

  Think about when you are telling a story and your characters enter into it at various points of the narrative. Now we have talked about their sensory strengths and weakness. But what is your character’s state of being within the narrative that you have created? Let’s define this by the three terms I just mentioned.

  Intellectually: This is your character’s mental state. What do they think about the universe they live in? What is their place in it? What is their intellectual opinion about a given topic? Are they Republican or Democrat or anarchist? What do your characters think about things?

  Emotionally: This is self-explanatory. How do they feel about the universe this live in? What is their emotional state within their universe or moment we see them in? If they were on vacation and sitting on the water’s edge on a beautiful tropical island what would their emotional state be? A moment later, a tsunami alarm goes off and they see tidal wave heading toward the beach they are sitting on – what is their emotional state then?

  Physically: Again, this is self-explanatory. How doe your character physically interact with the universe you have provided for them. What is their physical state? The physical state of a character can be different within certain cultural settings. For example, we discussed Sherlock Holmes who lived during the Victorian era. What was the physical norm then? How is it different then now? Perhaps the physical state of a character might be different from culture to culture. Their physical state might be different in India than in Japan.

  Spiritually: Lastly, how do their core beliefs about the nature of their universe govern the way the move through it, think about it and feel about it. Their core beliefs act as a framework for the other three. Often in stories, the spiritual nature of a character changes as they progress through the story. The characters evolve as the story progresses.

  Now that we have discussed how your characters perceive their universe, let’s look at ways to assign specific attributes to each character – that can help us and an audience define who they are.

  43

  DEVELOPING CHARACTER - THE THREE “P’S”

  Acting it out

  IMPROVISATION CAN HELP us discover then show all of these character elements. So ask yourself, where your characters fall within these four areas. Also on a more elementary level, when a reader or audience member first meets your character within your work, it’s like meeting a person for the first time. The audience wants to know something about them, so they can comfortably follow them through the rest of your narrative. Within your improvisation, when we say find the Who, What, When, Where and Why… this would be the “who.” What is the sub set of “Who” that you could communicate clearly to your reader or audience? What does the “who” actually mean? We could be simplistic and say our character is an astronaut in space. But is that enough to grab the reader’s or audience attention? Think of it this way, when you meet a new person at a party or dinner – what are the things you often want to know so that you can then start a conversation? Also, by extension, you want to know these things so that you can make a decision to continue the conversation or move on to another person. Here they are:

  Professional:

  We all want to know what the person does. Are they a student, an astronaut, a soldier or doctor? Also, where and how do they exercise this professional description? If someone tells you they are a writer, but they haven’t published or produced anything you might think that they are not a writer. When someone in Hollywood, says they are an actor, you invariably ask them what they did. Knowing they are an actor is not enough – you want to know more. My wife once met the late actor Donald O’Conner – the actor who played the scarecrow in the Wizard of
Oz what he did as his profession. We met at a party and he said to my wife:

  O’Connor: Hello, I’m Donald O’Connor

  Wife: Hello Donald! Please to meet you. So, Donald what do you do?

  So we always want to know more when we meet someone for the first time. We want to know what they do. Why? Because it tells us something about who they are and whether or not we want to know more about them. We may not ask them outright as soon as we say hello but eventually we get around to it. Do you agree?

  (Audience member: “Yes…”)

  Personal:

  The second thing we all want to know when we first meet someone is his or her personal state or situation. Are they married, single, in a relationship, not in a relationship, divorced, straight, gay, widowed and we find this out through the conversation. Think of the character Mel Gibson played in Lethal Weapon (1987) - he was widowed but in a very violent way. We learn that he had lost his whole family. We don’t expect them to say: “Hello, I’m Mel and my family was murdered. We find these things out through conversation. But we still want to know. Why? Because we color everything they do or say through their personal state or situation. There are no blanket rules here but we want to put the people we meet in a box and define them in a way that we can understand. Characters are people and while we want to write complex characters, we have to give the audience something that they can hold onto. As you evolved your story and characters, you can further define their personal state so that each character is unique.

  Private:

  This one is really a process of deduction and can be something only your character knows. Maybe they are considered a “war hero” but really they are a coward. It is some deeply held private element of your character that they want to keep unknown. It’s their secret that the audience may know at the start but it is not apparent to other characters in your story. If the audience, does not know this secret about them at the start it should be revealed as the story progresses or at the ending.