Five Step Finale

From the genius of Blake Snyder:

Step 1: The hero, and the hero team, come up with a plan to “storm the castle” and “free the princess” who is “trapped in the tower.”

Step 2: The plan begins. The wall of the castle is broached. The heroes enter the Bad Guys’ fort. All is going according to plan.

Step 3: Finally reaching the tower where the princess is being kept, the hero finds… she’s not there! And not only that, it’s a trap! It looks like the Bad Guy has won.

Step 4: The hero now has to come up with a new plan. And it’s all part and parcel of the overall transformation of the hero and his need to “dig deep down” to find that last ounce of strength (i.e., faith in an unseen power) to win the day.

Step 5: Thinking on the fly, and discovering his best self, the hero executes the new plan, and wins! Princess freed, friends avenged, Bad Guy sent back to wherever Bad Guys go when they are defeated (Two Bunch Palms?) — our hero has triumphed."

The Selling Script

Screenwriter Billy Mernit urges us to break some rules and make your story sell: "Making you turn the page is what a good spec script does, no matter the height of its writer's status. Your spec doesn't have to suck. But it helps to acknowledge that it is a sell. It's not a work of art, it's not a priceless pinnacle of writing perfection, it's a draft of a story that wants to be movie. And if letting go of some rules you were taught is what it takes, to get people to see the movie you see in your head... have at it, I say. You have nothing to fear but another rewrite.

The fundamental job of a selling screenplay is to get the reader to empathize with its protagonist.

Paraphrased for emphasis: The most important task a screenplay must accomplish is to get whoever is reading it to identify with the lead character. It's really that simple, although often tricky to pull off. If you can't get an executive, an actor, a whoever the hell is reading the thing to see the story through the eyes of its protagonist, to experience your story's emotions as they're experienced by the person in the starring role... then you are dead in the water."

Michael Arndt - On Screenwriting

Watched Michael Arndt, screenwriter for Little Miss Sunshine, give a presentation, here are some notes:

• Love your characters
• Don’t condescend to your character – As smart as you are – If not smarter
• Don’t give fake problem – give real problem
• Give them a real problem the audience can’t figure out ahead of time
• Push them into the most horrible corner you can, then give the audience a solution they couldn’t see
• Ending. Looks like going to be a huge disaster, then do something to flip it and make it be the best thing ever
• Preston Sturges. Billy Wilder. Everyone is funny. Not just one guy. Use ensemble. Bouncing off each other.
• If you’re stuck in script, don’t look for best thing. Make list of everything possible. Then choose the best thing.
• The solution is already in the script. You already thought of it, you’re just not aware. You don’t have to invent something new.
• Screenwriting is an endurance race. Assume 90% failure rate.
  
• You have to be doing it just for the pleasure of doing it.
• Story is about the ending. Reverse engineer story.
• What decisive action leads to climax? You have to know what’s at stake in that decisive action. External, internal and philosophical
• Little Miss Sunshine Structure:

• Exciting incident: Aunt Cindy Calls
• 1st Act Break. Richard slams fist on table, we’re going to California!
• Mid-point. Grandpa dies
• 2nd act break. Arrive California
• 3rd act. Achieve goal. Reveal much bigger problem. Reverse 2nd act.
• Climax. Super Freak

• Need an agenda to a comedy. Most comedies are not about anything.

Bookshelf

For how to structure your story:

• Save the Cat!
• Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies
• Your Screenplay Sucks! 100 Ways to Make it Great

Once you got structure, these will help breathe life into it:

• Writing for Emotional Impact
• Art of Dramatic Writing

From the trenches:

• 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters
• The Devil's Guide to Hollywood. The Screenwriter as God!
• Conversations with Wilder

Faulkner on Story

William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. Here is his speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm.

"Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."

READ ENTIRE SPEECH

Conflicting Dialog

Egri proposes that the reason we're drawn to conflict, is because it exposes character. No need to establish mood, atmosphere, background, before the action begins. It should happen throughout the story with conflict. Constantly. Without interruption. Every conflict exposes something about the character. If for any reason a character is NOT in conflict, the story stops, right then and there.

Dialog, then, grows from the character and the conflict, and, in its turn, reveals the character and carries the action. Good dialog is the product of characters carefully chosen and permitted to grow until the slowly rising conflict has proved the premise. No speeches. No Soapboxes.

Transitions

The real art to the story, Egri tells us, is how the writer handles transitions. No big jumps. Smooth transitions. Show how the character moves from one pole to the other. We are never, for any two successive moments the same. And transition is the element which keeps the story moving without any breaks, jumps or gaps. Transition connects seemingly unconnected elements, such as winter and summer, love and hate. Never oscillate between transitions, always move towards the goal. Building the conflict. Don't go back and forth. Once you've passed a threshold, move to the next level.

How to move from FRIENDSHIP to MURDER.

• Friendship-->Disappointment
• Disappointment-->Annoyance
• Annoyance-->Irritation
• Irritation-->Anger
• Anger-->Assault
• Assault-->Threat (to greater harm)
• Threat-->Premeditation
• Premeditation-->Murder