The Story and Plot Weekly Email is just the start.
While the Weekly Email is designed to help your screenwriting, the Story and Plot courses are designed to transform it.
Here is a personal recommendation for Stu:
Your next course with me should be Mastering Structure.
Do you want more confidence in your writing? This is how you do it.
Learn to attack your structure by making strong choices that generate great scenes that advance your story.
Stop floundering, wondering if you’re making the right move. Write with purpose instead.
There is no better story structure course out there.
Now, this week's email...
|
Deliver what you promise.
A giant challenge for any new screenwriter is learning how to keep a screenplay focused.
This is true whether it’s a drama, comedy, or thriller.
We’ve got some great, high-concept projects in Story and Plot Pro. These can be extremely fun to develop because the project tells you what it wants to be right out of the gate.
It gives you clear guard rails to work in.
But they’re also challenging.
Because the project tells you what it wants to be right out of the gate!
And sometimes you want to smash through those guard rails!
But those rails are there for a reason, and it’s pretty glaring when they’re ignored.
This means staying on-story.
Protecting the narrative from tangents.
And giving us what we’re there to see.
I want to focus on that last one this week: “Giving us what we’re there to see.”
A consistent note for any commercial project is “I want less of that and more of what you promised me.”
This is a different kind of promise than what I talked about a few weeks ago. This isn’t a promise of what the protagonist’s outcome could be.
This is a promise about the fun.
Blake Snyder called it the “promise of the premise,” and while I don’t love that term for breaking the story, I do love it to describe what that story should include.
You promise this to the reader (and audience) twice.
You promise them first in the logline.
While you can’t pitch the whole movie in a logline, you can pitch the promise of the movie in a logline, and that means the promise of great scenes.
When you hear what JURASSIC PARK is about, you are promised scary dinosaurs. When you hear what BARBIE is about, you are promised the fun of Barbie being real and being in the real world.
When you hear what ZOOTOPIA is about, you are promised all kinds of family-friendly animated animals living together and a cute bunny as a cop among the meanest, toughest mammals in the animal kingdom.
This logline is what people want to see and what the reader wants to read. This is what you promised, and they’re excited about it.
You need to deliver.
Now, of course, not everyone knows what a movie is about going in. This is its own special kind of joy (one we did often before streaming.)
In this case, the promise is made by the end of Act 1.
By the Act 1 break, we know the genre, the tone, and concept.
The audience should enter Act 2 compelled to keep watching. They don’t know what’s going to happen, but they know the world, the stakes, and what characters are trying to do.
(As always, there are exceptions, but those go beyond the scope of this email.)
I didn’t know much about THE MATRIX going in, but after Neo wakes up from his sleep, I knew we were in for some very cool ideas, very cool physics-defying fights, and some very cool, sexy outfits.
I was in, and I wanted MORE.
It’s not about the plot.
This was one of my biggest lessons in screenwriting.
Stop worrying about the plot.
Great screenwriting is about great characters and great scenes.
Plot has no value by itself. It is simply information. What generates value from the plot is our emotional reaction to it.
And you create that emotional reaction with great characters and great scenes.
The plot’s job, therefore, is to put those great characters into those great scenes so we can have those emotional reactions.
Too much plot kills.
The plot just needs to put those characters into those scenes and make emotional sense when it does it.
I understand the temptation. We’re told that drama is conflict and we need stakes. And this is true!
So we figure out ways for stuff to happen. Stuff has to happen, right? So let’s add more stuff!
And we fill up those pages. Filling up pages feels good. It feels like we accomplished something. Something tangible. Something real.
We create more conflict. We add additional characters and plot lines to make things HARDER.
And maybe it’s not bad!
But it’s not great either. And it’s likely even disappointing.
Why?
Because it’s not what we promised.
It’s not the fun we promised in the logline, and it’s not the fun we promised coming out of Act 1.
We added stuff. But we didn’t add value because we didn’t add to the fun.
Look at the corporate subplot in ALIEN and ALIENS.
Both have corporate greed subplots, and both do a phenomenal job of keeping that subplot limited to getting characters in trouble.
These movies are “about” a lot of things, but the fun is in the Alien. That is what we are there for.
The rest adds layers of emotion but never takes over the movie.
Contrast that with PROMETHEUS and ALIEN: COVENANT.
And now we’re watching a movie about artificial intelligence, the creation of life, and all kinds of stuff. All interesting! Perhaps more interesting to Ridley Scott than to us, but still… worth exploring.
The problem is that we’re not there for that. We’re there for the damn alien. And when we don’t get that, we’re disappointed.
Then comes ALIEN: ROMULUS.
And we’re back to being all about the alien. Are we happy?
Damn right we are! We’re getting what we came for!
Beware “The Lords.”
This was a plot device a Pro member used to find an ending to their comedy. A street gang called The Lords popped up in the second half of the movie and even took over Act 3.
They were the final obstacle that the hero had to overcome to finish the story.
The problem was that this gang was ALL plot. It really had nothing to do with the top-notch, very sellable concept of the movie!
It was off-story.
It was off-concept.
And drifted way too far from the fun.
It was obvious when it was pointed out, and became a lesson for all of us. Give us less plot and more of what you promised us.
I had a similar challenge in my first big studio sale.
I had a great premise, a great character, but no idea how to finish the story!
I did not know then what I know now, so like we often do, I brainstormed plot.
“What PLOT STUFF could happen that could get this story to the finish line?”
Sometimes you can stumble on a solution this way, but mostly, plot-driven problem-solving fails.
Instead, go back to your story and your fun.
The answer will be there.
Define the fun.
Know what you’re promising. Know what makes your story unique from an audience engagement perspective.
In Concept is King, I define “The Fun” as:
- Concept
- Genre
- Tone
Sometimes this is obvious, especially in high-concept projects. But you need to know what it is even in smaller character pieces as well.
DIRTY DANCING has come up in class lately.
The fun of DIRTY DANCING is the class conflict, the romance, and of course, the dancing.
Especially the dancing.
THE IRON CLAW is a character drama. What makes the film compelling is the brutal emotional dynamics inside a 70s and 80s professional wrestling family generated from an abusive father.
This movie’s currency is wrestling, relationships, and raw emotion.
And it delivers. (I loved it.)
It is a tragic story and the type of movie that forces me to explain that “the fun” isn’t literal. Nothing about this movie is “fun.”
Fun is just a way to describe the movie’s unique advantage that it’s going to trade on to satisfy the audience.
Once you have defined it, protect it.
Make sure you find different ways to trade on it, explore it, and heighten it.
Go through your scenes and your sequences.
- Are you trading on what makes your story unique? (Yes is good.)
- When you generate “great scenes” for your story, do those great scenes specifically exploit the fun? (Yes is good.)
- As you add bits of plot, can that plot be lifted from your movie and dropped in another and add the same value to that movie? (Yes is bad.)
“It doesn’t live up to its potential” is a better comment than you think.
Sure, we are sensitive and creative people, so we are more likely to hear “doesn’t live up to” and focus on that.
We tried. We failed. We suck.
But that’s temporary. And our execution can change. We can work on that.
What’s good about this remark is that the potential was clear.
A good idea for a movie presented itself and made a promise of what it could be.
That is more than most screenplays do. So many are based on ideas that don’t lend themselves to a movie, and no amount of execution will change that.
(It’s also true that some ideas are just plain tougher to execute well than others. It may be a good idea but may require a higher skill level than you have at the time.)
Yes, ideas are a dime a dozen. But good ideas are not.
Good ideas are valuable.
A good idea can be rewritten.
It can be reworked. It can be massaged. You can unpack that story more and more and eventually deliver on its promise.
And a great idea? That is as valuable as great execution.
Combine the two, and you have a very good shot at selling the damn thing.
Stay focused on what makes your screenplay special.
That promise should be in the logline.
That promise should declare itself by the end of Act 1.
It should shift into high gear in Act 2A.
Create more problems, deeper stakes, and higher emotions in Act 2B.
And be at the center of the story’s resolution in Act 3.
Never lose what makes your screenplay fun.
That's a wrap for this week!
I am trying to take some time off this holiday. I don't do time off well. I like working. But I am determined to get a break in.
I hate that me taking a break requires me to learn a new skill on how to do it, but I am up for the challenge! :)
I hope you get that chance, too.
We all need to re-energize.
See you next week!
Tom
To read or share online, click here.
