(Maybe this should be on the page up from this, and each bullet-point becomes another wiki page.)

 

A checklist:

 

    * What’s the scene about: Define Stakes and Conflicts.

    * What’s the scene really about: Subtext.

    * What else is going on: background stories – and secondary characters.

    * Off-screen stories: (see the sound design commentary track on the Se7en DVD for many examples of this).

    * How should the scene make us feel: Emotion

 

2. Building up motivations at a beat by beat level.

 

3. Reaching a point where those feel artificial, where I’m bored with them.

 

What does each character want? These motivations need to naturally come out of each character’s previous scene.

 

 

Next I either brainstorm 20 things that could happen in the scene – issues, cool moments, motivations, lines of dialogue, things I want to see, random oddball ideas – in no particular order. It’s just stuff to inspire me.

 

Then I reorder that stuff into rough chronological order.

 

Otherwise, if I’ve got a clear idea of where the scene’s going I brainstorm a starting point, and then brainstorm again – what’s the worst they could do, to trigger a response from the other person in the scene? I keep swapping through each character’s perspective, trying to continually increase the tension in the scene.

 

I think I have to write the scene out first, then figure out what it’s about – and how that adds to the About of the film (‘2 dads vying for the love of their son’), and then simplify the scene down.

 

4. Building a Step Diagram and keeping the idea of Bangs in mind.

 

Think of each character’s input into the scene as a Bang (I’ll provide a link to a fuller definition of this later), something that must provoke a reaction from at least one of the other characters. Obviously this is simplest when there’s only 2 people around.

 

What I’m doing is drawing a step diagram down the page, taking it very methodically and asking “If Forster does this, what is Peter’s reaction? Okay, if Peter reacts like that, what would Forster say?”

 

Seems obvious. Except that the reactions have to be big and personalised and surprising. My intention is to keep all the characters in a scene off-balance. Force them to respond to things they’re not expecting. Trap them in a rapidly evolving situation that’s at least partly out of their control. Kind of like life. 

 

 

Before I begin (to B20 a line or beat):

 

Read the previous line(s). Bear in mind that the line doesn’t exist in isolation. It needs to flow from what has come before.

 

Imagine the actor who’s saying the line.

 

Then:

 

   1. First off, write down the obvious lines.

   2. Then spell out the subtext behind the beat, and play around with that.

   3. Once those lines dry up, try another subtext. Feel free to write down random lines, as they occur to me.

   4. Then re-read it all. Jot down any lines that occur to me from that.

   5. I always get a fresh insight (or two) towards the end.

   6. Finish off with some arbitrary stuff.

 

Then I go through the list of 20 options, circling the ones that appeal to me. Create a separate list of those options and choose the one that most appeals. The point is not to get it perfect; it’s to get it done. This is the point to trust my instinct and save ‘perfection’ for the rewrite, once I see how the line plays in the context of the whole show.

 

Finally, I need to know the resolution to the scene. That means at some point, there needs to be a turning point in the scene where things head towards that resolution. And I need to bear in mind that that has an effect on the person who didn’t get their way.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stakes and Conflict

 

To write a scene, I – repeat, ‘I’ – need to set some stakes (What’s the question this scene’s going to answer? What do we

 

care about?).

 

Then know what’s the conflict (If the question has 2 possible answers, then I need 2 characters/forces fighting or

 

advocating for each side). As soon as one side’s one, it’s time to wrap up the scene. If at all possible, the sides of the

 

conflict have something to do with the thematic conflict at the heart of the story. In The Limit, that’s Law vs Vigilantism

 

(vs. Criminality). It’s all very Story by Bob McKee (c.f. Adapatation by Charlie Kaufmann).

 

 

 

 

 

I brainstorm 20 things because I read a book that recommended doing that.

 

I am a drone.

 

 

Seriously, I’ve always brainstormed multiple options for moments in my script. Off my own back though, I used to only devise

 

about 7 different options for things – like punchlines when I was writing eps of lovebites. With 7, I found I came up with

 

something that worked.

 

But with 20, I start getting oddball and insightful ideas towards the end of the process. If I don’t, I take a break and

 

then keep going. I want to get the 'right' idea by the end of this process. Not some idealised 'perfect idea' - just have a

 

decent range of good options to choose from, so I can move on.

 

 

 

Not so much procrastination in the re-starting of the writing this time. Maybe because I’m already three-quarters of the way

 

through the script – because it’s in media res, I’m immediately interested, whereas starting from the beginning involves

 

slowly relearning why I like the characters and then building up interesting situations for them.

 

Anyway, I took a crack at the confrontation scene between Tracy and Forster on Tuesday. By about halfway through Draft 1, I

 

stopped. Here’s what I wrote about that:

 

    Fuck, I really want to mine the subtext – but I think I have to write the scene out first, then figure out what it’s

 

about – and how that adds to the About of the film (‘2 dads vying for the love of their son’), and then simplify the scene

 

down. I’m talking about writing and editing, really … and then re-reading the whole thing in sequence, so I can see how it

 

all fits together. So … no need to panic about ‘getting it right’.

 

 

All I was doing here was taking the pressure off myself - to remind myself that while I was doing the best I could with the

 

scene, there were going to be plenty more opportunities before the script was finished to judge how it worked.

 

So I backed up, started a Draft 2, and stalled again.

 

 

Time to take a break, think through it again. In the middle of doing dishes, I realised what each character wanted, that it

 

was actually a pretty simple conflict (and that I’d been circling around articulating it that simply for about 2 years).

 

Tracy wants Forster to live and face justice, while Forster wants to die, in a very specific way.

 

 

I also realised that I wanted to create a connection between the 2 of them, to show that they had common ground, having been

 

through the same stuff. It’s a technique I admired in Lost, in the Sayid/AnaLucia conversations after Shannon’s death.

 

So, I worked yesterday, mulled over the scene and came back to it this morning after a bit of internet procrastination.

 

 

First things first, what’s at stake? Well, I know that the lead character will live, and I know that she’s going to ‘get’

 

Forster. What’s at stake is how she’ll do it: will she use the law and reason, or anger and brute force. It help, having

 

already written the brute force scene that I know I can make that plausible.

 

 

 

The dialogue came easily to start with, because the characters’ Wants are so diametrically opposed. I was handwriting

 

everything, and if I couldn’t get an exact phrasing, then I just jotted down the idea behind the dialogue – to work it up

 

later.

 

I came across a couple of things repeatedly:

 

1. An impression that some lines were either clichéd, or contained a repetitive subtext. (Have I talked before about how

 

(for me) subtext has to be deliberately constructed and hammered into a scene? That was certainly the case here, with

 

Tracy’s concern for her Dad.) Anyway, I decided to leave judging all that to the next readthrough.

 

2. If the audience knows some information is coming, withhold it. Create tension. It’s very natural to pop that stuff too

 

early.

 

Toward the end of the scene's second act, Tracy learns some bad news. It's a Bang - I'm fascinated in how she'll react

 

because I have no idea what she'll do. So I start brainstorming 20 ideas. At #8, I get to one I like - that she confronts

 

the situation. I'm able to write out two or three more lines between Tracy and Forster, and then the dialogue dries up.

 

After half an hour, I admit that to myself & back up, brainstorm some more ideas and adopt a subtler, softer approach. The

 

scene flows pretty easily from that point to its end.

 

I wasn't sure exactly how Tracy would subdue Forster, so when I reached that moment I wrote from the heart. The end result

 

is probably way over-long, but I was really INTO it while writing.

 

 

Anyway, I’ve roughed out the scene, I’m ready to move on now. Tracy has a real hero moment; I understand the characters

 

better; their conversation NEEDED to happen; and it’s probably made the remainder of the film about 70% to 240% more

 

interesting than it was before.

 

 

 

***

 

 

Sometimes the writing of a scene just flows – every line clicks into place; it’s easy to visualise the action – and that is

 

awesome.

 

Other times, not so easy. That’s when I have to get a bit mechanical. I roughly outline the beats that I know will be in a

 

scene, and then I B20 (brainstorm 20 options) for each character in the scene – for their overall motivation, all their

 

reactions, and every line of dialogue.

 

When I do that, I’m looking to find truth about the characters, insight into them, and either originality or authenticity.

 

Every time I go through the B20 process, I tend to got through the same emotions and reactions. What I’m trying to do here

 

is describe that pattern and then (hopefully) isolate some key questions to ask, that’ll speed up the whole thing up.

 

   1. First off, the obvious lines are the ones I write down.

   2. Then variations (sometimes very slight) on those obvious lines.

   3. Random lines, as they occur to me.

   4. Come up with a few arbitrary lines, that don’t really fit with what the beat’s trying to do.

   5. Write a line that hits the mark. Experience satisfaction, then slack off / consider giving up or settling. This (and

 

every point here) can happen multiple times during a B20.

   6. Spell out the subtext behind the line.

   7. Play around with that.

   8. Try another subtext. Every subtext I find is a different area to explore and mine for possibilities.

   9. Realise that the line doesn’t exist in isolation and link it back to the previous one(s), so it flows.

  10. Imagine the actor who’s saying the line.

  11. I get exhausted towards the end, and struggle to come up with lines.

  12. That’s when I re-read it all and jot down any lines that occur to me from reading all the others.

  13. Towards the end, I almost always get a fresh insight (or two) into what’s really going on.

  14. And I usually write down some crazy, usually rude or sociopathic stuff just to get the thing finished off.

 

So, what can I distil from that?

 

 

 

If, at any point, the scene just completely tries up for me, I use the Brian Johnson trick of tracking back a few lines or a

 

page and seeing where it all started to go wrong. It’s usually quite obvious in hindsight.

 

I don’t get the scenes completely right using this process, but so far every time I’ve re-read one it’s been obvious where

 

it works and where it doesn’t.

 

 

***

 

With our recent changes this whole sequence has to be reconsidered. 50% of what’s there has to be scrapped. It has to be

 

rebuilt at a motivational level, starting with what Peter and Forster want. Then moving between their heads, asking “What do

 

I think he should do if I were him?”. The goal is to make each reaction something that boggles the other character. 

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