Story and Plot

I often find myself writing
half of a screenplay, and then throwing it on the scrapheap because my characters
have totally lost their direction. How do I build on my characters to help
me, by taking the story in their own direction?

–Colin

In your case, I would urge you to really figure out the end of your story
before you begin writing. Otherwise, it’s very easy to keep writing scene after
scene and end up with interesting characters in a mess of a story.

One trap that many beginning writers encounter – especially those who’ve read
some of the more notorious screenwriting books – is taking the truism "character-driven
story" too literally. Yes, the most successful and engaging movies are
those where the characters seem to be in control of their own destiny, where
every turn of the plot seems to derive from an element of their personality.

But it’s naïve to think that all a writer has to do is come up with amazing
characters and watch them go to work. The truth is, great characters are useless
unless we see them doing interesting things – and coming up with those things
is the screenwriter’s job. Don’t start writing until you know both who your
characters are and what they’ll be doing.

After viewing many films and reading many books on the craft of screenwriting
one of the most important aspects of film seems to be theme. I’m sorry, I’m
starting to ramble. My question is this: is it bad to formulate an entire screenplay
on the basis of a theme, or does that get in the way of creativity? Should
an idea stem from a theme, or should the idea produce the theme, or can it
work both ways? I thank you in advance for reading this, I know that you have
a tumultuous schedule.

–Brian Formo

"Theme" is one of those words that’s thrown around a lot without
any consensus about what it’s supposed to mean. Here’s my definition to add
the to mix:

Theme is the emotional, intellectual or spiritual issue at the core of the
story. It is the "dark matter" that gives a movie weight – you don’t
notice it directly, but when its missing, the movie seems frivolous and disconnected.

Sometimes, it can be summarized in a word. In X-MEN, the theme is mutation,
and all aspects of the story radiate around this word. The heroes and villains
are all "mutants," different than normal people. The villain wants
to change – mutate – all the world’s leaders. Rogue and the others suffer prejudice
and persecution because of their "otherness." In crafting the story,
the writers focussed on parallels in the real world: particularly Martin Luther
King versus Malcolm X, and the controversy over gay rights.

In ALIENS (the sequel), the theme is motherhood. Almost asexual at the start
of the movie, Ripley adopts a surrogate child in Newt. When Newt is kidnapped,
Ripley must face off against the alien mother, resulting in one of the best
lines of dialogue ever shouted: "Get away from her, you BITCH!" (Interestingly,
in Cameron’s original script we learn that Ripley did have a child of her own
once, but after all these years asleep in space, Ripley
has outlived her.)

In GO, the theme is shouted by several characters in crucial moments: "GO!" Which
means, "I don’t care which way you go, you have to go now!" In each
of the three stories, characters get in way over their heads, but there’s never
time to stop and think through to the best answer. You’ve made a mistake, but
you have to keep going.

Which comes first, idea or theme? Ultimately, I think they’re too inter-related
to divide. When I was brought in to work on TITAN A.E., I explained to the
studio executives that I loved how the Earth was blown up in the first three
minutes, but that the only way to thematically balance the Earth’s destruction
was to create a new world at the end. The story, which had previously been "Treasure
Island in Space," with the Titan holding the Earth’s fortune, became a
Genesis allegory, albeit with a lot of laser blasting and cartoon cleavage.
Thematically, it was now a movie about Home, and every beat of the story focussed
on some aspect of it, from the initial destruction, to the derelict station,
the drifter colony, and finally the Titan itself.

The movie tanked, but how ’bout those themes?
In your own work, it’s definitely worth sitting down and looking at whether
you’ve really explored the idea-within-the-idea. The world doesn’t need another
hollow action movie, but it could use another SPEED (you can’t slow down),
MATRIX (reality is an illusion), or RUN LOLA RUN (what if you could do it again).
It’s no coincidence that the best movies of a category generally have the best-explored
themes.

These days, first time filmmakers are making works of true
strength and originality. The music video school of direction is making movies
so stylish that surpassing
them would lead to incomprehensability. It seams as though tomorrow’s writers
and directors have very little chance to distinguish themselves from the masses
of post-Tarantino, super-fancy movies. Is there any way to be something new
without reinventing the entire film industry? Must we make avant-garde insanity
just to stand out?

–REJ Bach

At first, I thought you were being sarcastic, but on second reading I guess
you really are a fan of current cinema. I am too. I think it’s an exciting
time to be making, and watching, movies.

Every few months I find myself sitting on panels where an audience member
asks a "question" that is really just an excuse to say that nobody
knows how to make movies anymore. (Hint to future audience members: just because
you say "Don’t you agree?" at the end doesn’t turn a polemic into
a question.) I try to be polite and talk about how a younger generation is
used to an accellerated speed of storytelling, and doesn’t need to have the
dots connected as much, but my true instinct is to tell them to shove it. Yes,
Hollywood is making a lot of bad movies, but Hollywood has always made bad
movies. You’re just remembering the CITIZEN KANE’s and forgetting the TARZAN
AND THE TROLL PEOPLE’s.

Where I disagree with you, REJ, is whether we’ve reached any kind of zenith
in storytelling or stylishness. For all the flashy techniques we’ve seen, there’s
a thousand more that haven’t been invented, and the backlash against some of
the current trends will likely lead to other new ideas. For example, the bullet-time
effect in THE MATRIX has been played to death, but in fact it was only one
application of a much more important concept: camera movement doesn’t need
to be constrained to temporal reality. The next wave of filmmakers will be
able to take the concept further, and find new ways to visualize impossible
things.

In terms of writing, "post-Tarantino" is a poor catch-all for storytelling
that seems to break the normal mold. While it’s true that PULP FICTION had
a big influence on a generation of young filmmakers, a lot of the ideas we
credit to Tarantino had been percolating for years in less commercially successful
films. I believe they would have found their way into a hit sooner or later.
(And if I were Tarantino, I’d hate to hear that we were living in a post-Tarantino
era. Come on. The guy’s still in his 30’s.)

I’m not a gambler, but I’ll bet every cent I have that some enterprising writer/director
will be able to identify the new ideas bubbling under the surface and incorporate
them into the next revolutionary mega-blockbuster. It’s the safest wager I
could make.