Burn it down
You wouldn’t splash gasoline on the walls of your home, then toss a few matches while strolling out the door. In real life, this kind of willful destruction is criminal.
In fiction, it’s crucial.
As the writer, you need to burn down houses. You need to push characters out of their safe places into the big scary world — and make sure they can never get back. Sure, their stated quest might be to get home, but your job is to make sure that wherever they end up is a new and different place.
Writers tend towards benevolence. We love our characters, and want to see them thrive. So it can be hard to accept that what our hero actually needs is to have everything taken away, be it by fire, flood, divorce or zombie uprising. No matter the story, no matter the genre, we need to find ways to strip characters of their insulating bubbles of normalcy.
The Fire (or other catastrophe) often occurs as an inciting incident, setting the wheels of plot in motion. In The House Bunny, Anna Faris’s character is kicked out of the Playboy Mansion by page 10. In Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s family is killed.
Just as often, The Fire signals the end of the first act. In Star Wars, Luke returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead. In 9 to 5, the trio of secretaries has inadvertently kidnapped their boss. There’s no going back to the way things were.
But The Fire can work just as well later in the story, effectively burning bridges characters have just crossed. Three of my upcoming projects feature second-act or third-act Fires that not only keep the momentum going, but also remind the audience of the scale and stakes. 1 Late fires ward off complacency in everything from The Dark Knight to Revenge of the Nerds.
It’s easy to think of dozens of great movies that never really burn the house down. But the better exercise is to look at your own scripts and ask, (a) what could burn, and (b) why haven’t I lit it on fire?
- There’s something uniquely cinematic about destroying a giant set. A TV show, no matter its ambitions, generally has to protect its standing sets until at least the end of a season. ↩
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November 10th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Great post! I was just thinking about this in relation to real life recently, hadn’t made the leap to my writing yet. But certainly a timely post based on my recent experiences.
I was facing a relational situation and trying to decide how to proceed. I realized I was truly at a crossroads, because once this step was taken there was never any way of going back to “the way things were”.
I need to really apply this concept to my writing, I think this will take me to a new level. And having the recent real life experience will give some reality and understanding to the writing rather than simply trying to manufacture it, even if I use some other means to “burn the house down”.
Thanks for the great blog .. I am continually learning important things here!
November 10th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Great post. But I wonder how you could not mention the Atlanta fire in how was it again ?
November 10th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
So true! In novels too. Ugh, I hate being the meanie, even to fake people…
November 10th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
No screenplay is complete without some form of meltdown, whether of the nuclear, mental, or other variety–I think it comes from so many screenwriters living in LA, the land of earthquakes, forest fires, and other forms of mass destruction.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Thanks so much, John. That really shook things up for me and gave me the ‘big picture’ perspective that I’ve been lacking as of late (as opposed to the navel-gazing perspective I’ve adopted recently). God, I love this site, and your tips and insights (both practical and creative) have had a wondrous impact on me. Thank you again.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:17 am
What Tim said. Thanks!
November 11th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Great tip. This might actually be exactly what my current script needs!
Reminded me of a section in Stephen King’s excellent “On Writing” where he explains how he was stuck while writing “The Stand” and an explosion helped him get the story in the right direction.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Love this post! Couldn’t agree more!
November 11th, 2009 at 7:06 am
I really, really love your advice, John. Every time you post these snippets, I think onto my scripts and make sure that a) it’s included in some format and b) if not, why not, and whether it should be.
Best advice you mentioned was the “writer’s write” piece a few weeks ago. That propelled me so much to JUST WRITE no matter what. I know I sound like I’m brown-nosing, but I’m pretty serious. Thank you.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Tangentially, this relates to the process of writing as well.
Someone (Faulkner?) said that as a writer you must “Kill all your darlings,” meaning that if you’re in love with a line/scene/plot point, so much so that the thought of removing it makes you shudder, you should probably remove it. Why? Because it’s likely overwrought. The jokes you love will be a little too clever. The drama you find powerful will be a little too melodramatic. Things like that will stand out from the page/screen as out of place and hokey.
Maybe it’s because as the writer, knowing a story intimately, and from the inside out, it’s hard for one to see the best humor, or the most moving drama in it. Because it’s all too familiar, it’s all so mundane to us. Except that one darling scene. THAT stands out. But that means it doesn’t fit — it breaks continuity. Cut it. Burn it. Make it so you can’t go back.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:21 am
More great fires: The Sacrifice, Bambi, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:25 am
:) – My problem is… I’ve clearly become an arsonist.
…with a party hat and a kazoo.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Or a TV show has to protect its standing set until the feature film version comes out, then they can destroy it (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Firefly/Serenity).
November 11th, 2009 at 9:32 am
See also the finale of “Mad Men.” Talk about burning it down! Here’s the writer/producer on why it was “scary” but necessary:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-09/mad-men-laid-bare/
November 11th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hey John,
Great post!
I have a question: What about in a horror movie, such as a zombie apocalypse? It’s easy to set a fire in the first ten pages, but what about a second act fire? They have already lost their homes, their families, and their friends, and they are barely holding onto what other humans they can grasp at. They have their goals in place, rescue (insert important person here).
I’m not writing a zombie movie, but the analogy fits with what I am writing. What can I burn down now? I can kill off everyone else in the film except for the main character. I can make the invasion seem even more dire. But what else is there to burn? I can even kill off the people they had intended to rescue.
-Josh
November 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Generally in Zombie movies, the second “fire” is after the survivors have found some sort of place to hide or hold of the zombies for awhile. Then that starts to break down (often times with one of their own becoming infected). Eventually, the whole thing comes crashing down and the heroes are forced to move or do make a last stand.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Of all the examples I can think of, it’s hard to trump blowing up the planet Vulcan.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
great heads-up. i usually get strange looks when i say that i want to put my protagonists through the wringer in my scripts – they think i’m a closet sadist. but i’m only thinking ahead to how sweet the protagonist’s victory (or survival) will be in the end.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Thrusting the hero out of his or her ordinary world is as old as literature itself. I think John’s lesson is spot-on about pulling the rug out from under your hero, and how it doesn’t always have to happen precisely at the end of Act One.
Odysseus–and that classic 2-part tale known as “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”–is a case in point. O gets thrust out of his ordinary world (Ithica) as a result of a foolish abduction of Helen by the Trojan Paris. Odysseus doesn’t want to have anything to do with some massive Greek journey to retrieve Helen from the far-away walled cit of Troy, so he acts crazy, plowing his field in all directions, until some Greek grabs his kid and thrusts the child directly in front of O’s plow. The guise is up.
Later in the journey, much later, the equivalent of Act Two or beyond, after Troy is sacked and Helen is returned, O blinds the Cyclops’s eye in a fantastic scene in a cave, which soon causes Poseiden (C’s father) to really “burn O’s house down” and send him on a 10-year circuitous journey to find his way back home to his faithful wife Penelope. The point is: Classic stories are rife with these burning-down-the-house elements, and they continue to occur throughout the story, some burning right up to the very climax. I wish screenwriters would experiment more with the hero’s-journey elements–mix them up, break them down, reconstitute them. Surprise us more.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
A friend once told me that every story can be summarized as either “Someone leaves their town” or “A stranger comes to town.” I think the essence of that lesson is the same here: Change, and stakes.
As you say, it’s easy to think up some great movies that don’t have “fires” – but it’s a lot harder to think up many great movies that don’t have a key situation which forces the characters into a crucial decision, and that’s the same thing.
(Sometimes the most compelling tragedy a movie can deliver is to return to the way things were – in this case, it’s the audience that can’t “return,” because over the course of the movie we’ve seen alternatives that have changed our perspective. Same thing.)
Ultimately, we are trying to challenge our characters (otherwise, we’re masturbating with them) – the “fire” is just another way to frame or phrase a larger principle in a practical step people can grok and get comfortable with, before taking the next one.
I might be even harsher.
I wouldn’t even encourage people to ask “Why haven’t I lit it on fire?” I would have them just burn it down, and run with it then. If it doesn’t work, then you’ve proven why the character needs it. If it does, you’ve dodged an opening for rationalizing keeping the training wheels on.
Joshua Skurtu – I would point you to “Night of the Living Dead,” in which there is a “fire” (arguably) at the very end, as an example of how far you can really go. Horror’s great like that; it’s a genre propelled by violating what’s sacred. Go nuts. There is always something else you can take away. Hate to use a common example, but “Psycho” takes away an entire protagonist halfway through. There’s really no limit. Burn it all down.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hell yes.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Fire also makes a great climax, viz Inglourious Basterds
November 12th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Needed to hear this bit of advice. Cheers!
November 12th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Also – and implied in your very phrase, “The Fire” – is that it has to come out of nowhere and really shock the audience. A friend of mine is always griping about what he calls “running along corridors” climaxes. The hero has to get to the bank vault, so he runs along, encounters a few obstacles, gets there in the nick of time. Then he has to open the vault before his girl suffocates – tense, but he does it. Trouble is, the audience could see all that coming, so it’s a pretty diluted kind of excitement. “The Fire” in this context might be: the girl is already dead – or she’s the arch mastermind who’s been against him all along – or she isn’t in the vault, that was just a trick to get him to betray his principles. A Fire throws everything up in the air, and when the audience are wrong-footed you can really start getting them worked up.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Good advice. Thank ye, Mr August.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Awesome post. Burned down everything in two small scenes today. Exelent excersise! -one more please-
November 12th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I find myself considering that the last ep of MAD MEN kinda did this. God, that was great.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
@DaveMorris: “Also – and implied in your very phrase, “The Fire” – is that it has to come out of nowhere and really shock the audience.”
Not really. I mean that does and can work. It’s always better when it seems like it comes out of nowhere, but really has been there all along. Which shouldn’t be too difficult as characters have a huge capacity for deceit and opposing goals. Let’s face it, people lie, especially to themselves, so burning the house down personally, emotionally, and psychologically should not only be easy, but also fun.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:05 am
The Mad Men finale did NOT create such great fire: Don left the agency, yes, but along with all the main players there and with enought accounts to have a more than decent shot at it. And as for his divorce, his family was pretty much accessory to the story and to his life. I don’t doubt he loves his kids, but it’s not like he’s never going to see them again. I did like the finale, though: it’s good to have a little more plot and a little less self-indulgence.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:42 am
@John Jackson: You’re right. I wasn’t being clear, in that I meant a development that astounds us with good “showmanship”. So a plane suddenly crashing on the courthouse in the middle of a trial would be bad (unless played for black comedy effect, maybe). The Fire needs to shock like a magic trick: we’re watching one hand when something appears unexpectedly in the other. Ideally we’d been shown it earlier but had forgotten all about it. That way it meets the “surprising but inevitable” criterion.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Dousing the place in gas and then throwing a match on the fire is a sure fire way to get yourself killed. The fumes will ignite as soon as the match is lit causing the house to essentially explode and burn down before you can get to safety.
It’s a helluva mess.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I love the way, do you guys watch movies from Denmark? Maybe half the effect goes away when you don`t speak the native language. I want to learn french:=) But Danish flicks are really good. Look them up. -Explotions or fires are essential to make the plot super exiting. No blockbuster has no drama-fire. The 2012 has to blow up. Burn down the terminator. etc. -As a routine, it may be used as a plow in the plot, as the story has the explotion to move it on. I dig the way Morris and Jackson talks about the comedy of a fire! In the nines it never gets visualized, and that effect really holds the movie true out. Awesome.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
@ Jason:
I’m glad to see someone knows what they’re talking about.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I disagree with the inflammable TV show set. “The Wire” did this relentlessly in every damned episode.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Lol, don’t take me wrong, I actually enjoy Emmerich’s work. Btw, there is a wall with newspaper clippings in 2012.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:12 am
There is a basic plot, which goes “the genie is let out of the bottle, and at the finale is put back in the bottle”. Michael Crichton was accused of writing those. And therefore, it was said, he wasn’t writing science fiction, where the genie does not go back in the bottle.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:38 am
This is a great post. I never thought of it that way, but you are so right!
November 17th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Very good advice; I find that I do this in most of my work already. I’m a right bastard to my characters at the best of times, and have said many times that if they were to animate suddenly, the first thing they’d all do is line up at my door to punch me in the mouth.
A good “fire” is certainly necessary to keep things moving, to give the reader or audience some tension, and to build sympathy with the characters. It’s not very exciting to watch a character sit at the kitchen table and discuss how everything was perfect today.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Almost every season ender of Buffy involved them destroying/burning down one of their standing sets.
Always a good time.
November 18th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Burning it down is the only way making money in the industry these days.
But burning it down never ment the same after Michael and Jerry broke up. Can
t wait for the only movie this year, and it is Alice. Just a shame Burton is using Depp once again. He is killing him. Ok, this went kinda personal. But the industry has changed in terms of A-list films. They simply dont make them anymore. Avatar you say. I cant wait to state im right about that one too. Btw, loving these facts coming out about alot of things. I hope I can write this shit without hurting anyone. pieceDecember 8th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
John, if you ever write a book on screenwriting then “Burn it Down” would be an excellent title. (But better check with legal first.) I keep coming back to this post after thinking about it a couple of days. Love the simplicity.
I find myself looking at a small stack of scripts and DVDs next to me from “Castaway”, to “African Queen,” to “Braveheart” and now seeing a lot of ashes.
“We need to find ways to strip characters of their insulating bubbles of normalcy.” Great line. Makes me think of not only the big events, but also the simple act of Rocky having to give up his locker.
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Great post, thanks!
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Great post, thanks!