Adam Savage, one of the hosts of Mythbusters, shares his insights into colossal failure. He shares 2 great stories that are crucial to who he is and his career.
Aside from the moral of the story, that failure is ok and to ask for help, is Adam’s storytelling. At every turn, there’s an obstacle that he over comes. But the triumph is short lived when his success turns into another obstacle. And so it goes, that by the end of the story, you desperately want him to succeed. But he doesn’t. That’s good storytelling.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Isabel Allende talks about truth. “What is truer than truth? The story.” As writers and filmmakers, our task is entwined with story and story telling. If we want to convince someone, if we want to convey some truth that we believe, what better way than through the art of the story? Jesus understood this when he used parables to expound on Kingdom truths.
In each story, there are characters. Each one of your characters needs to have passion. They have to have a heart to drive them. That desire, that want that propels them forward through your story. No one wants to see a story about a boring person. Unless that boring person becomes extraordinary through their circumstances.
As with your characters, you, as the creator, need passion too. More than training and luck, is your passion. The passion for your characters. Your passion for your stories. The passion for your art.
Billy Ray, best known for writing Flightplan talks about screenwriting. He talks about the virtue of reading bad scripts, mainly to learn what not to do.
Subtext. Most writers have their characters say what they’re thinking. I think this stems from two things. First, the fear that the audience or the reader doesn’t get it. Two, that you, as the writer, have spent all this time coming up with the character’s back story, you want to show it off. A lot of times, this back story is for you and the actor. Have it come out in the parentheticals; give your actors something to work with.
Dilemma. A lot of characters don’t have a dilemma, a difficult decision they have to make. Where, no matter what they choose, things may turn out badly. This adds drama and conflict. Everyone can relate to this. Characters are keys for the audience to hook into your story. They empathize with them and relate to them. They can appreciate the difficulty that they’re being put through. Even with action movies, it’s really the characters that draw you in and make the action engaging.
JJ Abrams, creator of Alias, Lost, and Cloverfield gave a talk at TED. It’s a great talk and inspiration to budding filmmakers.
He started filmmaking when he was 10, when he got a Super8 camera. When he was 12, he bought a magic box which said it had $50 worth of magic for $15 dollars. He has never opened that box. The box represents potential and infinite possibility. Until that box is opened, it could be anything and your mind runs wild. That mystery is the catalyst for imagination. And sometimes, mystery is more important than knowledge. In a similar manner, the blank page is a magic box.
Stories are mystery boxes. They have that infinite potential of being anything and everything. Until you write it down, anything can happen. Even in the story, there are tons of mystery boxes. Abrams uses Star Wars as an example. We see a space ship. What’s it being shot by? Star Destroyer! Soldiers are lining up to protect a door. What’s going to come through? Stormtroopers! Darth Vader! Who’s that girl with the droid? It was a hologram! It’s Princess Leia! Who’s Obi Wan Kenobi? Ben Kenobi! And it goes on. In the first 10 to 20 minutes of Star Wars, we’re inexplicably drawn into that universe. We want to know more and more until we’re hooked. Intentionally withholding information generates that hook and spurs the imagination. We keep watching in hopes of having our questions answered.
Schoolhouse rocks is an edutainment series of animated shorts originally made in the 70s. This may date me, but I remember growing up with “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” on Saturday mornings.
Looking back, these shorts were incredibly well done. The animation is quirky and fun with a lot of visual gags that do the unexpected. For example, there’s one in “Interjection!” where a snake slithers up to a girl and the snake shouts, “Eeek!”.
As a writer, I like to think that I know a little bit about grammar. I just don’t know all the names for a lot of them. Enjoy your education!
