WHAT MAKES A GOOD STORY?

I was wondering what makes a good story. Because I feel if you can’t write a good story, your movie is just another movie.

Jon from Haydenville Massachusetts

That’s a very big question. Many of us spend our entire careers answering it over and over, hoping each time to get it right.

I will give you my answer, but ultimately, you have to create your own. How you answer it defines you as a writer and, as I’ve said many times, your individual voice is one of your most important assets.

The other important limitation on giving an answer is that, no matter what the answer, there are always stories that match none of the criteria that are excellent and broadly recognized to be so. With those caveats, these are the characteristics which, to me, make a good story:

1. Remarkability.

2. A central theme arising out of an important moral conflict that is symbolic of a conflict we all face. For example, in Jerry McGuire, the central conflict was how to stand up for the values that brought him into the business in the first place and how to deal with the cost of standing up. The values at the heart of the story were important to its audience. A substantial number of middle class employees face this question daily. They are not top sports agents, but even as mid-level insurance executives, they wonder whether they will ever escape the grind.

3. Excellent craftsmanship. Writing is a craft as much as anything else. Well-crafted scenes, dialogue and structure mean a great deal to me.

4. A story tightly wound around the important thematic questions the story is intended to explore. No waste – nothing superfluous. Every scene is an interesting exploration and deepening of the theme. A few examples of this kind of story are “Pleasantville”, “High Noon” and “Casablanca”.

5. Intelligent and witty writing. A good story expresses itself in ways the average audience member recognizes he or she could not do if he or she sat down to write a movie. Audiences recognize exceptional storytelling and respond to it.

I am personally less interested in whether the story has a traditional resolution. For example, I enjoy tragedies and non-conventional stories. Examples include “The Perfect Storm”, “Confessions of A Dangerous Mind” and “Barton Fink”.

But, that’s just me.

LONELY WRITERS. . . .

Squirreled away in your apartment, typing all night, sleeping all day. Go out once in a while to stock up on groceries, then back to the grind. You are creating genius work. You are the stoic writer, alone in your world of insight and creativity. Who needs friends? When you are done, your work will shine above all others.

In your dreams….

In the real world, successful writers are part of a community. They meet other writers, develop support networks to help them through the struggle that is each screenplay, maintain healthy relationships to provide balance and perspective on their work. As their careers begin to develop, they befriend development execs and other professionals. In short, they are part of the world of writers.

Why?

Because you can’t create a writing career in a vacuum.

Even in the writing process, professional writers rely on substantial support networks they have developed over the years – trusted friends with whom they can discuss ideas, trusted readers to critique work as it is being developed, other trusted colleagues. This is a huge advantage over you, writing alone in your apartment.

Once the script is completed, these same writers have still more people to rely on – fans they have made around town, executives they have befriended, producers, managers, agents, and on and on. Another huge advantage they have over you.

They also live in the real world – friends to hang out with, interests outside writing, some writers even have spouses and children – yes, just like real people. Yet another advantage over you.

Developing a community that supports you as a writer is not just a lifestyle choice. It is necessary to the work. It makes you a stronger writer, substantially increases the chance of any script you write actually meeting the needs of the motion picture industry, and helps you through the many low points every writer faces.

To develop your own network, you must reach out, hold yourself out openly as a writer, celebrate your chosen path, and draw to you people who support that part of who you are. You must align your universe to your goal of advancing your writing career. Nothing less will get you there.

It can take a long time to develop your network. But it doesn’t happen alone, in your apartment, with a bag of groceries rotting on the counter, while you create genius inside your head. Tomorrow, why not write in the coffee shop? And take a break to introduce yourself to the person writing on the laptop next to you.

CLICHÉ, ANYONE?

You, (yes, I mean you), think in terms of clichés. You create wholly cliché concepts; you fill your scripts with clichés and you take a huge beating in coverage because of your clichés. Don’t you know? Specs filled with clichés do not sell; cliché pitches do not interest producers; cliché writers do not get assignments or careers.

“Thanks, jerk,” you say, “but how can you help me?”

By admitting that I do it, too. I can’t help it. When I begin writing, everything that falls out of my head is well-trodden drivel. But I get beyond it, as all writers must. This may come as no surprise, but I have a method for doing so which I will share with you.

But, first, what is a cliché? Dictionary.com defines “cliché” as:

A trite or overused expression or idea.

The dictionary loaded into MS Word defines “cliché” as:

A phrase or word that has lost its original effectiveness or power from overuse.

My old yellowed 1988 Random House College Dictionary defines it as:

A trite or hackneyed plot, character development, use of form, musical expression, etc.

We could look up “hackneyed” and “trite”, but I think you get the idea. Any element of your story that is so overused that it has lost its effectiveness must go. And here’s why they are in all our writing. Because we study film, watch film, love film. Our heads are filled with what’s already been done. When we go to write about baseball, the first thing that comes into our heads is not baseball, but everything we’ve ever seen in film about baseball. The more we’ve seen it, the quicker it pops into our heads. We are programmed to spit out clichés. (Okay, I’ll admit that a very few of you are wired differently, but it’s one out of a thousand – so don’t count yourself out yet.)

Here’s my program for fighting clichés:

1. I read good literature – lots of it from diverse areas. It broadens my references, takes me out of the same old ways of seeing things.

2. I research my subjects from sources other than fiction. Personal interviews and observation are always the best. Next to that, I read interviews, technical manuals, whatever source material gets me as close to the real subject matter as possible – not close to what’s already been told in stories, but close to the real thing. What I’m searching for is what is real and authentic about the subject, the things I did not expect to find, the things that really move me. “Write what I know” doesn’t mean write only about my own life. It means, get to know my subject for real, not just from what I’ve seen on television. Do my homework.

3. Make notes in life. When I see something real and interesting, jot it down. I build a library of real experiences to draw from. I rarely actually use any of them, but it trains me to view the world in original ways.

4. When I write, I reject the first thought that comes into my head about everything in my story. Nine times out of ten, it is a cliché. I may eventually decide it was the right thought and come back to it, but in the meantime, I try hard to find something more concrete, more authentic, fresher, and more unique.

5. I do constant cliché checks as I move forward. Sometimes, I need to share an idea. Others close to me often spot clichés with ease. Not that they could do better – but it is easier to see someone else’s use of clichés than it is to see your own.

6. I care about this issue a lot. My burning desire to be original and genuinely creative (eventually) carries me beyond the clichés.

Last word. I am not suggesting that anyone write in a vacuum without reference to what has been written or filmed before. On the contrary. I always ask myself, what am I adding to the body of film on this subject. If there is not some profound difference, addition, or new perspective, then I know my work is doomed before I even get started. Why? Because it will be cliché.

REMARKABLE IDEAS

If your story idea is not sufficiently remarkable, it really doesn’t matter how well you write it. The story will not sell.

That’s nothing new, yet it is the costliest mistake a spec screenwriter can make – especially writers that have developed some writing chops but have yet to make a sale. It is costly because it leads to months and months of useless work.

At one point in my producing duties, I ran across an excellent writer who had ten completed scripts, no sales. I requested one script after the other, looking for something our company could use – really wanting to give the guy a break because he wrote incredibly well. I really liked his scripts – but one after the next, they were not remarkable. We had to pass. It is impossible for almost any producer to get a story made – no matter how well written – that is not remarkable. It was a valuable lesson and one I take to heart every time I start to write a new project.

The question I ask myself is, “If this script is written very, very well, will it make a great motion picture?” The answer is “NO” unless the story idea is remarkable.

So what does that mean – “remarkable”?

Dictionary.com defines “remarkable” as:

1. Worthy of notice.
2. Attracting notice as being unusual or extraordinary.

These are good definitions – only make the standard even higher. A remarkable idea demands notice. The best way to explain it is by example. Here are three recent spec or pitch sales (as reported by Done Deal), all of which are remarkable:

A SWAT team’s top cop, who is incapable of feeling emotional or physical pain and is thereby revered for his fearlessness, undergoes surgery that will allow him to feel everything he’s missed in life. (“No Pain, No Gain”)

The chief executive of a company is demoted to the mailroom and has to work his way back up. (“CEO”)

A man learns to appreciate his life when everything in it is suddenly the opposite of what it normally is. (“Opposite Day”)

Whatever you think of the film that may ultimately result, what there is to learn is that these concepts are (a) highly focused, (b) fresh, (c) whole and complete in themselves, and (d) engender emotional values that are familiar and known.

So how do you create a remarkable concept? People do it differently. There is no one right way.

Here’s how I do it. I think of interesting ideas, write them down, then from the list, pick the one that most interests me. Now the real work starts. I write the idea usually as a single sentence in the form:

When a ______ does _______, he or she _________(active verb) in order to ___________.

Then I begin to hone the idea, sometimes for hours at a time, day after day, removing the clichés (we all write in clichés until we force them out), changing concepts that are not particularly interesting to ones that are more interesting, changing general ideas to specific ones. I write one version after the next, resulting in pages of versions of the concept. I usually arrive at more than one version that suggests a remarkable idea. When I get to one, I check it against what I thought I wanted to write – see if this version is still something I want to write (just because it is a remarkable concept does not mean it is for me), and either stop if all is good, or keep going. Sometimes I back up, if it has gone off track, and take it in a different direction.

I keep going either until the versions lead me in hopeless circles and collapse or until I get to a finely polished concept that excites me and will now lead me through outlining and writing the script. This process involves a great deal of thinking ahead – looking at where the concept will lead me in the writing – and stepping back and looking at just the concept as a producer or agent or audience member would look at it. I try to be very hard on myself and say, “Would I go see that? Would my friends go see that?” I do not cheat on the answers. Unless the answers are both a LOUD yes, I keep developing.

If you don’t create your own process for getting to remarkable concepts, you are likely to create your own mountain of well-written unmarketable scripts.

Enough. Now go write.

WRITING ACTION SEQUENCES

A question from a viewer:

In writing action sequences as part of scenes, do you really have to break down every camera angle and shot, or can you leave some things up to the reader’s imagination?

Reason I ask is, after reading various books, (Syd Field and others, as well as numerous screenplays), I’ve seen different ways to handle the description of a scene with regard to actual format.

It seems one school of thought advocates cutting to a new shot and mentioning it via format every time there is a camera change:

1. INT. INSIDE CAR – DAY
(SFX) BANG!
JANE DOE and JOHN DOE both run and jump in the car. JOHN drives off quickly.

2. EXT. STREET CORNER-DAY
The victim lays motionless in the street.

The other way seems to say let the action be described in the writing, without all the shot descriptions. Such as:

BANG!

They both jump into the car and drive off quickly, leaving their partner to die in the street.

To me, it seems that describing EVERY camera cut and shot change breaks up the flow of the read and tips off the reader as to what will come next, rather than having them be surprised.

What is the preferred method for first-time writers?

Thanks in advance,

Bill/NJ

Within certain parameters, it’s really up to you. Here are some guidelines:

1. Do not over cut any sequence. Anything that distracts from the narrative is a very bad thing.

2. Do not use scene numbers. You’ve used them above in one example, and it may have simply been to illustrate that you were referring to two scenes or shots. In your actual script, scene numbers are unnecessary, distracting and unprofessional. Numbering scenes is a tool strictly for production drafts to help Assistant Directors and others break down the script for shooting purposes.

3. Shots within a scene usually have a shorter form than a full location slug. For example – the full slug, which is usually conceived of as THE MASTER SHOT, might be: EXT. FREEWAY – DAY

The shots in that scene, also sometimes called MINOR SLUGS, would not be a full slug. Things like:

BILL’S CAR

slams into the guardrail. Sparks fly as it scrapes along.

DEBBIE’S CAR

skids into the opposite embankment, takes to the air, and
lands in a crumpled wreck on the other side.

4. Think more about directing the mind’s eye. You are trying to create a visual experience through writing and you can do whatever you need to in order to create the image and feel you want. Notice that in the example you use above, “BANG!” is not really a shot at all. It is a sound. Yet, it has a visual impact on the page and does the job.

5. Look at the tone of the overall screenplay. Keep the tone of the slugs in the action sequence consistent, even if more demonstrative. Hard action picture specs frequently have somewhat of a comic book feel. If that is what you are going for, you might have lots of MAJOR and MINOR SLUGS throughout your screenplay.

Most importantly, read lots of action scripts. Look at what works for you, what doesn’t and come up with your own way of expressing action sequences. It should be clear, concise, easy to follow, and fully convey the excitement of the sequence. Remember, any studio can hire any professional writer to write a sequence like one already written. Your job is to develop and express your unique voice and vision for the picture. Think about how the scene you are writing will excite you on the page. That’s how you should write it.

WHAT IS A SCENE?

Here’s an article from the old website. It’s long and dense, so read slow and enjoy. It’s good stuff. I promise not to post stuff this dense again.

(Please excuse any formatting problems. It didn’t quite translate from the old HTML.)

A scene is an expression of essential conflict that advances the story. By adhering slavishly to this principle at all times, you will never have a flat or dull scene, nor will you ever have a scene which is merely expository. To understand the power of this statement, we must start with the essence of character – the forces that drive the character. These are the essential forces that shape the character’s choices. In screenwriting, choices are the only means of displaying character. Each character has a number of driving forces, often conflicting with each other. Various writers and commentators classify these forces differently. For our purposes, we will use the terms super-objective, story objective, scene objective and point of
view
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