Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin March 2nd, 2008

You can’t tell your hero’s story unless you know who he is. You may have a great wound from the research you did, but if you don’t know anything else about him, he’ll end up being hollow and 1 dimensional.

You have to know everything about your hero. When and where he was born. His childhood. His teenage years. Where did he go to school? Who were his friends? What are his likes and dislikes? Most importantly, you need to know his psychological and moral wounds. You have to know how he thinks. What are your character’s values?

A hero can never be a coward. He may seem like a coward, but in the end, he can’t really be a coward. If he were, there would be no movie. He’d just stop trying at the first sign of adversity.

The backstory that you create for your character is used to turn the film. Think of it as a ghost or a skeleton in his closet, something that has yet to be resolved. Kinship is the key to great ghosts. An uncle dies, we feel bad. His wife dies, we feel worse. His uncle betrays him, we feel bad. His wife betrays him, we feel worse.

When it comes to backstory, less is more. You only need enough to drive the story. The backstory is only important if it generates conflicts, reveals something hidden, or illuminates the present.

Here are some good questions to ask your hero:

• What is the worst possible thing that could happen, short of death?
• How could this be the best thing that happened to him?
• What’s the best thing that could happen to him?
• How could this be the worst thing that’s happened?

-Penguin

• The Naked Screenplay: Why Should I Care? (1)
• The Naked Screenplay: Who is Driving the Story? (2)
• Redefining Motivation (0)
• Character Development Sheet (0)

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Penguin March 1st, 2008

We’re working our way backwards through 3 questions you should ask your screenplay. We’ve covered “Why should I care?” and now we’re going to ask “Who is driving the story?”

You’ll be surprised by the answer to this question. A lot of times, we think and hope it’s our hero, but that’s not always the case. You can ask the following questions determine who the protagonist really is.

• Who is making the choices?
• Who is taking action versus just reacting?
• Who has the wound?
• Who has the desire that drives the film?
• Who has the major self revelation at the end?

This is not to say you can’t make a great film if your hero doesn’t do this. But you have to understand that your hero is the character the audience has hooked on to. They’re the one they care about. They’ll be experiencing things through him.

-Penguin

• The Naked Screenplay: Why Should I Care? (1)
• The Naked Screenplay: Who is the Hero? (0)
• Redefining Motivation (0)
• Character Development Sheet (0)

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Penguin February 29th, 2008

Of the 3 questions: Who’s the hero? What does he want? Why should I care? This last one is the most important.

Why is it important? First, you need to understand why people go to the movies. Sure, they want to be educated, to be entertained, to laugh. But the major reason is to share emotions and experiences. There is an unspoken contract between the audience and the filmmaker: “I am coming to have these experiences, therefore, you must provide a vehicle for those experiences.” The gateway for those experiences is your hero or protagonist.

Your hero doesn’t have to be sympathetic or even likable. But your hero has to have enough interesting qualities that the audience will agree to follow his story. The audience needs to care what happens to your hero, otherwise, it’s going to be boring. Boredom is the greatest sin of all writing.

Whittled down to its essence, movies are all about values. The values of your hero, the values that you bring as a writer. As a writer, your duty is to reveal your values to the audience. Your values are revealed through your hero. If you have nothing to say, then the audience doesn’t care.

I said before that your hero doesn’t have to be likable, but he does have to be the “center of good”. Now, that’s not to say he has to be a good person. He just needs to be better than the world around him.

Your hero also has to have a wound. We talked about this a bit in research. Your hero needs an area where he can grow, whether physically, morally, or psychologically. It’s this wound that will hook the audience for the ride.

So, we finally get to the question: “Why should I care?” How do we answer that? With empathy. Our hero is the hook for the audience. Our hero is the vehicle for our values. How do we get them to ride along with the film? How do get the audience to care about the hero? Through empathy.

The audience needs to care about your hero. They need to be able to empathize with him. They need to relate to him.

Here’s some common ways to build empathy:

• Make your hero the victim of outrageous misfortune.
• Place your hero in danger.
• Look for empathetic traits to build into your hero: funny, good at what they do, nice

Along with those techniques, every reversal, every mishap, every obstacle that gets in the way of your hero’s progress, builds empathy.

Without empathy, you have no audience. Film is about hitting the emotions of your audience so they can experience something. If you hit the emotions, you can do whatever you like.

-Penguin

• The Naked Screenplay: Who is the Hero? (0)
• The Naked Screenplay: Who is Driving the Story? (2)
• Redefining Motivation (0)
• Character Development Sheet (0)

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Penguin February 28th, 2008

Every screenplay has a set of commonalities. They all have scene descriptions. They all have character descriptions. They all have dialogue. They’re all formatted. They all have interesting ideas or premises. But most screenplays, 98% of them, from the pros down to the noob, have the same problem. They don’t have a story or empathy.

When you’re writing, ask yourself 3 questions

Who’s story is this? Who’s the hero? Who’s driving the story forward?
What does he want? What is the compelling drive that forces the story to move forward? Why is the hero doing what he’s doing?
Why should I care?

There’s a place for dialogue, scene and character descriptions, but that’s at the end of your script. Not literally, but after the structure for your film works. Without that core structure, the frame, the architecture, your story will collapse. All the other stuff is just paneling. This isn’t to say that you can’t write any of that stuff. It just means they’re not as important as the structure.

If you listen to little kids tell stories, they’re full of exquisite details about everything. But they’re boring. Because they’re linear. Everything is, then and then and then. They tell you everything. Good stories are told on the cut. The go from high to low, positive to negative, good to bad, progress to reversal (or setback). Good stories leave out all the chaff.

-Penguin

• Why Are Your Plots Contrived? (0)
• The Formula for a Blockbuster (0)
• Short: Kirby and the Love Equation (0)
• Screenwriter: Billy Ray (0)
• Project: Butter Side Down (2)

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Penguin February 27th, 2008

I don’t know where the idea that the audience is dumb came from, but we see it everywhere. We see it when characters come out and say what they’re feeling or when they tell you the plot. Here’s what the audience already knows:

• They know story
• They know genre
• They are visually literate
• They have key expectations
• They understand subtext

They don’t know that they know this stuff, but they do. They know it because they have 5,000 years of story telling background. They’ll forgive your cliches and your mistakes as long as you don’t betray or cheat them with things that don’t make sense.

The trick is to give the audience what they want, but not in the way they’re expecting it. If you don’t give them what you want, you have no audience. If you give them what they want in the way they’re expecting it, you have cliche or boredom. If you give them what they want in an unexpected way, you have a great story.

-Penguin

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Penguin February 26th, 2008

In perspiration, we talked about pushing through to get more than one answer to the questions for your screenplay. How do you get those answers? Through research. Research is what gives you that position of choice between different answers. So, why isn’t this included in perspiration? Because it’s not something you do until you know what your story is. You don’t know what your story is until you have the structure in place.

What research does, is it gives you those details that make your story come to life. It makes your story real and credible. Without research, you’re just writing cliche.

At the heart of research is psychology. Every story is made up of characters. Even if it’s not a character driven story, in the traditional sense, the plot is still moved forward by your characters. Having a foundational grasp of psychology, why people do things, personality types, etc, will give you tremendous power in shaping your characters.

Your hero, or protagonist, has to grow and change through your story. Otherwise, what’s the point? Why put him through all that just to have him be the same at the end? It’s a waste of time. In order to know where he’s going to grow, you need to give him a wound. A major failing, if you will. This would could be psychological, sometimes physical, or moral. Without psychology, you won’t be able to write this.

At the heart of every story is a tiny intimate story about your hero.

Next: The Audience is Smart
-Penguin

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Penguin February 25th, 2008

Perspiration isn’t just working hard or spending a ton of time at the craft of screenwriting. That is a big portion, to write every day even if you don’t feel inspired. Rather, it’s a discipline to keep moving forward. Once you’ve answered the question that craft raises, work on it until you have 2 answers, than 3 if possible. The idea is that you want to be able to choose which answer is best for your screenplay.

The hardest part about inspiration is finding the story. That’s where perspiration comes in. There are stories all around you. You’re living stories every day. Your friends are living stories. Stories come from every day life. It’s just a matter of seeing them. The question is whether they’re big enough or interesting enough to tell others.

At any given time, you can only retain 9 major ideas in your head. Depending on your memory, sometimes more, sometimes less. Perspiration is maintaining a bank of stories. Those stories that come from life, they may not be big enough on their own, but they could possibly fit into another story. Or you can string them together to make one big story. That’s why it’s so important to maintain a bank of stories. No matter how silly, stupid, cliche, sophomoric, now isn’t the time for editing.

Next: Research

-Penguin

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Penguin February 24th, 2008

The biggest problem facing writers of all kinds is writer’s block. Writer’s block is a problem of craft. But can inspiration be taught?

For all you aspiring filmmakers, you are beginning to see the “magic” behind movies. From script to pre-production to production to post, that “magic” is really hard work and planning. In the same way you have been taught to see behind the veil, people who don’t have imagination have to be taught how to look at things in different ways. They just haven’t been taught how to see.

The key to imagination is empathy. Understanding and getting inside another person’s head. What they’re thinking, feeling, afraid of, wanting, memories and reasonings.

Your tools for inspiration are brainstorming and editing. When you’re writing, do one or the other, never both at the same time.

Brainstorming is the act of just writing down every idea, every spark of inspiration, no matter how terrible it may seem. And you never want to do this alone because, alone, you have that rubbish moment. That moment right after you finish the first draft where you think the whole thing is garbage. That’s because all those neat little surprises and clever jokes you written are no longer new or surprising anymore. You’ve written them! Having someone by your side keeps you from tossing out those chunks of goal which are really hiding gems.

Having another person also helps you stress test the idea. They’ll do their best to rip it apart while you fight valiantly to justify every turn and every aspect.

The best part is, if you have a brilliant spark of inspiration and get a fabulous idea, you can always find a way to make it work. Because there’s logic.

Next: Perspiration

- Penguin

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Penguin February 23rd, 2008

Screenwriting is the most difficult form of writing because it’s composed of hundreds of simple rules and principles. When taken together, the complexity of it all can be astounding. It’s like trying to eat an elephant. How would you eat an entire elephant? In little burgers, of course! The craft, and it is a craft, of screenwriting is learning how to eat all those littler burgers in the right order and pace.

The main craft of screenwriting is to “make the interior exterior” to “make inner feelings visible”. This will come out in visuals, actions, characters, but mostly in conflict.

It’s a craft, not a formula. Just like painting, dancing, or music are crafts, so is screenwriting. In order to be a good screenwriter, you need to know all the rules and principles essential to the craft. At that point, you can break the rules, as long as you know what you’re doing and you put something better in it place.

The essential craft of screenwriting is logic. If you can think, you can write. It as to do with architecture, not literary skill. Think back to all those terrible movies that didn’t make any sense because they lacked logic. Think of the great films that make instant sense. That logic is the structure of the screenplay. Screenplays ARE structure. The dialogue and everything is just paneling.

What will craft do for you?

It’ll maximize your talent. It won’t give you talent, but it will take the talent you do have and bring it to the fore. It’ll give you essential questions to ask about your screenplay, not the answers to those questions. The answers are up to you and come from inspiraton and perspiration. The questions stimulate your subconscious.

It’ll reduce your despair. How many times have you seen a bad movie and just beemed because you say to yourself, “I could do better than that!”? Or how many times have you seen a great movie and felt crushed because, “I could never do that.”? Understanding the craft behind screenwriting will expose those great films and the questions they had to wrestle with to make them great. It empowers you because greatness is no longer a mystery box.

It’ll reduce your writing time. Knowing the questions and how to solve the problems of your screenplay in a systematic manner will get you out of that rut. Just like how dancers practice over and over again to get that muscle memory, you’ll gain that same sort of mental muscle memory.

Next: Inspiration

- Penguin

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Penguin February 22nd, 2008

I have the tremendous opportunity to listen to a screen writing course taught by Bart Gavigan. For the uninitiated, Bart is one of the top script doctors in Hollywood.

What I will be doing, is taking notes as I listen and distilling the key points for your edification.

Next: What is Screenwriting?

Enjoy!
- Penguin

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