The Craft of Scene Writing Read online

  In Jurassic Park, two young kids are chased by a pair of velociraptors. The only reason they have a chance to survive against these ruthless and cunning predators is because of the location. In describing the scene, Spielberg pointed out that the kitchen gives the kids, using a sports analogy, a home-field advantage.

  Grant (Sam Neill) expresses concern about the kids’ whereabouts by clarifying the number and status of the velociraptors: “You’re sure the third one’s contained.” The ominous response from Ellie (Laura Dern) cleverly foreshadows the importance of location in the scene:

  ELLIE

  Yes, unless they figured out how to open doors.

  Look for the role of the environment in these few excerpts.

  Scene Analysis:

  Jurassic Park

  OUTSIDE THE DOOR TO THE KITCHEN

  The raptor stares down at the door handle, cocking its head curiously. It SNARLS and bumps the door handle with its head, but that doesn’t do anything.

  It reaches out, toward the handle, with one clawed hand.

  …

  Timmy’s falling behind now, and he accidentally brushes against some hanging kitchen utensils.

  Both raptors turn. One jumps onto the counter, knocking more kitchen stuff to the floor. A ladle CLATTERS to a stop, and the strange metallic sounds confuse the raptors for a moment.

  …

  The raptor on the floor is just about to turn the corner to where Tim sits, exposed and exhausted, but both the raptors suddenly stop, hearing a CLICKING sound from the other end of the aisle.

  It’s Lex, TAPPING a spoon on the floor to distract them.

  …

  As Lex tries to pull the overhead door to the cabinet shut, one of the raptors rounds a corner and sees her reflection on a shiny cabinet front.

  …

  -- and Lex’s raptor THUDS into a shiny surface bearing her reflection. It chased the wrong image. It sags to the floor, semiconscious.

  The obstacles for the velociraptors and the surprises in the scene involve doorknobs, smooth (hard-to-navigate-with-claws) surfaces, reflective stainless steel, and noise made by the pots and pans. A walk-in freezer’s pin lock also plays a role in the kids’ escape. The nature of the kitchen and its props become the concept for the scene.

  There have been memorable kitchen scenes in horror movies such as The Brood, The Sixth Sense, and Paranormal Activity. In the original Ghostbusters, Dana (Sigourney Weaver) sees eggs popping out onto the counter by themselves in her rather mundane kitchen. Then, when she opens her refrigerator to investigate strange sounds, rather than groceries, she discovers that her fridge has become the doorway to a parallel world of demons. In fact, the horror genre relies on the contrast between familiar props/settings and uncommon supernatural events to create surprise and fear, and in the case of Ghostbusters, a comedy-horror, humor for the audience.

  Characters in Action

  When you choose specific locations, you create the opportunity to ponder how your characters might interact with them. Sometimes, a location will be your biggest resource in revealing layers of your characters. For instance, the best battle sequences in action movies should combine spectacle with insight into character.

  The 2007 Casino Royale reboot is the modern origin story for the James Bond character. He has the skill and determination but lacks charisma and the social and physical deftness that audiences associate with him. By opening with an action scene, Casino Royale reveals the essence of his character without betraying its genre roots.

  Casino Royale opens with Bond (Daniel Craig) pursuing Mollaka (Sébastien Foucan) in an elaborate chase scene through a construction site for a tall building. The scene exploits the location, which includes cranes, half-built walls, construction machinery and supplies, naked elevator shafts, steel girders, and hydraulic lifts.

  However, the real storytelling genius happens when they cast a traceur, a practitioner of parkour—a discipline that specializes in gracefully circumventing physical obstacles—as the man being chased. His graceful climbing skills become a perfect contrast for Bond, who is still rough around the edges. Here is how the traceur Mollaka and Bond deal with the same obstacles:

  Mollaka: Jumps through a van

  Bond: Goes around

  Mollaka: Effortlessly bounds over fence

  Bond: Stumbles over it

  Mollaka: Bounces down a couple levels in a vertical shaft

  Bond: Falls through a floor

  Mollaka: Shimmies down a structure

  Bond: Smashes the hoses on a hydraulic scissors lift, causing it to crash to the ground

  Mollaka: Leaps through a small window opening in a newly built wall, making a swoosh

  Bond: Crashes through the half-built wall

  Moments after the opening sequence, there is a conflict-filled scene with Bond and M (Judi Dench) in which she cuts him to the core. Her dialogue accentuates and bolsters the meaning of the action we have just seen. Here are some snippets from her criticism of him:

  You are supposed to display some sort of judgment.

  Bond, this may be too much for a blunt instrument to understand but arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand-in-hand.

  Any thug can kill. I need you to take your ego out of the equation and judge the situation dispassionately.

  “Blunt instrument” perfectly sums up this new Bond. As a writer, you can use words to inspire actions. Maybe this line of dialogue inspired the moment in the action sequence when Bond plows through the construction site atop a bulldozer. Forget simile or metaphor, in that moment he is a blunt instrument.

  One of my favorite action scenes is in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in which Legolas (Orlando Bloom) mounts an oliphaunt, defeats its riders as he climbs to the top, and ultimately stops the beast with—surprise, out of nowhere—three arrows from his bow. The scene is a textbook example of how to write an action sequence. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s full of twists. There is a clever surprise every few seconds. It also follows the rules of dramatic construction. The beats escalate and deftly avoid redundancy. Everything emanates from the nature of the character, but it is filtered through and expressed by his interaction with the environment—the protruding arrows, the ropes, the nature of the basket contraptions, and gravity—the physical challenge of boarding and climbing the oliphaunt.

  Nature of the Environment

  The visual nature of the environment, known as mise-en-scène, can be expressive, even when a character is not interacting with it. It can create mood and tone, and if it is a space the character inhabits frequently, it can shed light on her.

  Consider where your protagonist lives and works. What does the space look like? The office for a ruthless businessman might be cold, stainless steel with sharp, angular edges. If he is old money, his space will have dark wooden tones and mahogany. How much brown, green, sunlight, and plants are necessary to announce that a domicile belongs to an “earth-mother” character?

  Despite the clichéd nature of these examples, they trump having the wrong setting. Have you ever watched a low-budget film that could not afford an appropriate location or to dress the set properly? If the billionaire protagonist lives in a $200,000 town house or the office for his Fortune 100 company has wood paneling, rubber plants, and ugly drapes, your story immediately loses credibility with the audience.

  The good news is that your spec script does not have budgetary or logistical constraints. The only limitation is your imagination. Start with your main characters and give their home, and the spaces they frequent, a vibe that reflects their personality. As you narrow down your choices, you will inevitably find the setting that meaningfully interfaces with your character.

  Mood and Tone

  A location dominates what we see on the screen, so it has an overwhelming influence on the ambiance and vibe, which contributes to the mood. Essentially, mood is how the writer wants the audience to feel, and tone reveals how the writer feels about the material, i.e., his perspecti
ve on it.

  A rainy day at a graveyard for a funeral is mood. The same gloomy location as setting for a ten-year class reunion from Clown College is more a matter of tone.

  In 25th Hour, Frank (Barry Pepper) and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) discuss their childhood friend who is going to jail, while they stand at a window that just happens to overlook the recent remains of Ground Zero. The backdrop reinforces the feelings of loss and pain for the audience.

  Location choices in My Best Friend’s Wedding affect the mood. Michael (Dermot Mulroney) professes his platonic love for Julianne (Julia Roberts) under a romantic pattern of light and darkness created by their boat journey under the bridges of the Chicago River. Later, Julianne confesses her love for Michael on a sunny day amid wedding preparations under a gazebo. When he rejects her, if the audience recognizes the irony, this might touch on tone, too.

  Establishing mood and tone is one of the essential functions in a scene’s action description, especially in the scene setup. However, you are not afforded the luxury or word count of language whose sole purpose is to describe them. To find language that simultaneously orients the audience, tells the story, and just happens to sneak in mood and tone, it helps to put on your cinematographer hat and think like a director of photography.

  Often, the nature of light will be your most powerful tool to quickly capture mood and possibly tone. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a sparse light bulb in this scene in which Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has her first sexual encounter with The Vet deftly gives us a sense of how the filmmaker wants us to feel.

  INT. DUGOUT - NIGHT

  They sit side-by-side. Above them, a single light bulb shines a very private fifty watts on things.

  In Manhattan, there is a scene in which Woody Allen puts the tone and mood at odds with each other. A rainstorm forces Isaac (Woody Allen) and Mary (Diane Keaton) to take shelter in a museum. The characters are in silhouette, and her wet clothes cling to her and emphasize the contours of her body. The romantic mood is undercut with the dialogue. Mary reels off the satellites of Saturn, and Isaac stops her and says, “Nothing worth knowing is understood with the mind.” Their conversation devolves into a neurotic discussion about whether she is too cerebral. Setting their conversation against the backdrop of planets and an image of the Milky Way creates an ambiguous tone. Is the scene implying that the neurotic musings of these characters are dwarfed by the larger universe, or that the sweet connection they do make is one of the most powerful forces that exists?

  Whose Job Is It Anyway?

  All of the visual elements discussed in this chapter will hopefully blend and become a part of your palette, allowing you to tell your story with images. This should empower you to conquer clichés and find unique ways to express your character’s inner life.

  Your scene isn’t really done until you have set it in the right location and you have made your characters and their conflict interact with the immediate environment.

  Blocking is how you dictate changes in beats, and the setting becomes a tool to use specificity to create unique expression.

  Now, instead of relying on talky close-ups of the actors’ faces, limited vocabulary to describe facial expressions, or long-winded dialogue, you now have license to use locations, props, and blocking to build the action and conflict as it plays out in space.

  Don’t worry at this point about what part is the screenwriter’s job and what part is the director’s job. Why? Because screenwriters and directors have the same goal: to tell stories with sound and picture—to deliver images. The only difference is the medium.

  5

  EXPOSITION: BACKDOOR DRAMA

  Exposition is the information in your story that allows the audience to understand what’s going on. As necessary as these details are, don’t let the word information trick you into thinking that you can ever present them in a flat or static manner. Your exposition should be seamlessly woven into the story’s dramatic texture.

  Let’s say you have a scene in which a woman walks into a room and sees her boyfriend with embarrassing or incriminating photos. If she sees the photos and immediately recognizes them for what they are, you have already blown the best surprise in the scene. Exposition is not the only problem; we have come to a dramatic standstill.

  If a scene reveals necessary information in a boring way, organize the same material more dynamically. For the above scene, try this: The woman walks in and sees her boyfriend move to conceal the photos. If she is suspicious, now she has a goal, something to fight for. She wants to learn what he’s hiding or verify that they are indeed something troublesome.

  Now you have mystery, an opportunity for blocking as she tries to get past him to the items, and also conflict that can get at the nature of their relationship. The woman might wonder why he is so jumpy. Or she sees that he is hiding something, which spurs a conversation about trust. He may even dig a deeper hole for himself by lying.

  Depending on what the audience knows, you have either dramatic irony, in which we know more than she does, or a twist that surprises us and her equally. If the items in question turn out to be innocent or a sweet surprise, such as invitations to her surprise birthday party, the reversal also acts as her just deserts, an appropriate punishment for her initial mistrust.

  This scenario encapsulates your mission with exposition: to bury information in an orchestration of mystery, intrigue, or conflict. The various topics in this chapter encourage you to eliminate exposition by reorganizing static ideas and information into conflict and drama for maximum emotional impact.

  Just Say No

  Sometimes the best way to eliminate exposition is to, well, eliminate it. You can recraft your dialogue to avoid leaden exposition or simply use your delete key.

  Think about the rom-com convention in which on a first date, characters ask about each other’s past. Find a clever way to sidestep this cliché. Maybe there are reasons why the characters might not want to volunteer the information. “Explaining” and “informing” are not beats. Actors don’t want to present information or answer a yes-or-no question with a yes or no.

  Never make the audience watch characters explain something to another character that the audience already knows. Use some sort of shorthand to imply that the information has been conveyed. If a group of teenagers survives a zombie attack, and then finds the local sheriff, we don’t want to hear them recite the details of the encounter that we just witnessed. Here, we would welcome a well-placed ellipsis:

  An animated Fred sits in front of the wide-eyed local SHERIFF.

  FRED

  … then the zombies ate the last boy scout so we hightailed it out of there and here we are.

  Another clever way to avoid exposition is to show only the clear aftermath of the sharing of the information without showing the information itself. For example, in My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julianne tells a lie to Michael that she and her gay best friend, George (Rupert Everett), are engaged to be married. Michael’s confusion plays out as conflict as he assumes the role of skeptic to get clarity for himself and the audience and verify that it is true. Once Michael accepts the reality of the lie, so does the audience, and that sequence is over.

  The next scene is at a church where Michael’s fiancé, Kimmy (Cameron Diaz), and her family are preparing for the wedding. We know that the others must learn this information to complicate the story and that it will spread like wildfire through the family. However, we don’t want any more discussion about whether the lie is true, and we also do not want to hear the information being repeated.

  Where is the heart of the drama? Where is potential for conflict? Who is the most agitated? George. Because he has to live the stupid lie. There is a nice little craft touch of setting up the expectation when Julianne whispers “underplay” to George who—SURPRISE!—does the opposite and acts completely over the top as a way to punish her. He plays the part of her fiancée with ridiculous abandon to punish Julianne while Michael darts out of the frame.

/>   Moments later, a scream interrupts George abusing Julianne and prepares us for a surprise: Kimmy running toward them. In the guise of unadulterated happiness over their engagement, she is able to expresses her joy and relief that Julianne has been eliminated as a threat to her impending marriage.

  Can we believe that Michael relayed the facts to Kimmy? Yes. Is there any value in seeing it? No. It happens offscreen, and we get to see just the entertainingly brusque aftermath of Kimmy’s comically overzealous reaction.

  The light comedy The Intern chose a clever strategy for dealing with three what-would-have-been-mundane scenes. Jules (Anne Hathaway) has a series of interviews with potential CEOs for her company. The filmmakers purposefully keep the interactions offscreen. We learn what transpired only from Jules’s reaction. And that’s all we need.

  Make It Difficult

  Information that is essential to the story will always be difficult for someone to hear or say. If no one in your story cares about it, why is the information even there? Figure out who is impacted the most and use her as the focal point. Filter the elements through that character. If you can’t find that character, then you have to redefine or create a new one.

  If two cops at a crime scene are dispassionately discussing the murder, even if we are learning about their characters and how they do things, that’s too easy. Whom is it hard for? It could be as simple as having to make them break the news to the spouse of the victim. In fact, what if the victim’s spouse stumbles upon the scene and overhears the cops’ egregiously detached tone and calls them on it? Now, suddenly, the act of explaining the details or relaying information is fraught with tension and conflict.

  Again, no actor wants to answer a simple yes-or-no question. But in Liar Liar, the filmmakers use the concept to make answering a yes-or-no question hard. After the slapstick set-piece scene in which Fletcher (Jim Carrey) beats himself up to postpone the trial, the judge merely asks whether he can proceed. In this context, the curse makes it fun for us to watch him be forced to tell the truth: “Yes, I can.”