The Danger Of Committing Too Soon To An Idea For A Film

Sometimes, what initially seems like a great premise for a film, might actually only be part of a great premise for a film, or even not great at all.

Like any self-respecting screenwriter I’m always on the lookout for good ideas for spec screenplays. I love books like Bill Martell’s Your Idea Machine because they remind me how essential it is to always keep your eyes and ears tuned to the ideas ether. That means not just keeping up with the news, both global and local, staying abreast of developments in hard science, social science (and even pseudo-science), skimming magazines, but also eavesdropping on gossip, catching snippets of conversation, etc. Anything that might contain the germ of a film premise when prodded by a “What if…?” or when otherwise treated as a jumping off point for fantasy.

It’s A Premise Captain, But Not As We Know It
However, sometimes I’ll come up with an idea and mistakenly see it as a premise for a story, when actually it might function much better as a section of something larger. In other words, I might have “merely” thought of a scene, a sequence, or a sub-plot, or even a minor character’s story, but I’ve latched onto it too soon and given it the status of story premise. I find a really good way to play with the ideas I come up with, is to ask myself things like:

• Imagine this is a sub-plot. What is the main story?
• Imagine this is just one sequence. What happened before? What happens afterwards?
• Imagine this is only a scene. Where, chronologically, in the story does it take place?
• Imagine this character is a minor character. Who is the main character, and what is their story?
• Imagine this character is the antagonist. What’s he after?
• Imagine this is just the backstory.
• What if this were a major turning point somewhere late in the story?

Obsessive Logline Syndrome (OLS)
I guess the art of generating good film ideas also requires being able to tolerate a degree of uncertainty. Because ideas morph and evolve while you think about them. Some aspect of an idea may seem self-evident one day, only to fall by the wayside the next day as a result of a new twist or insight. This is something that has always bothered me about the notion that you must have a logline first, and only then start brainstorming scenes, sequences, etc. To me this is completely counter-intuitive. Sure, once you start writing a treatment or a first draft, it’s useful to have a good logline to hand in case anyone wants to know what you’re up to. In fact it’s always useful to use the logline format to check if your story still ticks the necessary screenplay boxes. But the logline evolves in tandem with the writing. So if I come up with something during the writing that makes the story better but, say, changes the main character from a man into a woman, then I go with that and adapt the logline accordingly.

Recognizing A Dead Horse
Clearly, you need to know when the idea isn’t big enough to carry an entire screenplay. Sometimes that’s obvious right away when you try and imagine a pitchable storyline with a main character who has a goal, and so on. Other times it might only become obvious after you’ve finished writing a two-page outline. It’s a matter of practice too, I suppose. But I know for sure that my own worst pitfall is committing to an idea too soon. I’m doing it less and less these days, but I’ve done it in the past. I once even found myself half way through a first draft before realizing the idea wasn’t sound as a film premise. I’m never doing that again, I can tell you!

My New Ideas Rule For 2012
I’ve instigated a new rule for myself for 2012: Whenever I think I’ve found a great idea for a screenplay, I have to brainstorm versions of the idea in as many different genres as possible, with different endings and beginnings, and other variations, before I settle on whether it really is worth pursuing to, say, a one-page synopsis. Plus this: If the synopsis doesn’t grab me, I’m allowed to admit the idea wasn’t as good as it first appeared.

Good raving writing to you all in 2012!

Does Your Screenplay Have A Unique Selling Point?

One glance at the most successful films at the box office these days, shows that reality as we know it isn’t a big seller. So what to do if your story is set in the real world?

I’ve never been a big fan of supernatural stories. Despite some great scenes in movies like The Sixth Sense, I usually can’t get beyond the wet blanket of a sceptic in me, who knows the difference between superstition and science. It just spoils the story for me. Or otherwise, it’s just too scary for me, and I don’t like being scared. But the truth of the box office is, that a lot more people will pay to see vampires and werewolves, the tooth fairy, pirates, ghost stories, comic book heroes, outrageous comedy worlds, Father Christmas, sci-fi and animation, than plain old drama. Which means that the chances of finding funding for a spec screenplay based in reality are minimal compared to a story with a supernatural or fantasy element. Unless…

Reality, But Not As We Know It
I love watching trailers. Partly because I’ve got too little time to go and watch all the movies I’d love to see, and partly because they are such a good guide to what’s unique about a film. Two current trailers, Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method made me realize that a screenplay can have a unique selling point without necessarily having to pander to superstition. What these films share, as far as I can see, is a reference to a real-world phenomenon that everyone is familiar with, or at least familiar enough to be able to engage with, without the film having to explain anything. It’s this that elevates the stories beyond their basic plots, and gives them that something extra: a unique selling point.

Example: Habemus Papam – The Pope
Whether you’re a Catholic or not, the figure of The Pope is something that automatically evokes all sorts of associations to do with religion, tradition, history, celibacy, men in dresses, and so on. A bit like Father Christmas, but then… real. As far as I can tell from the trailer, the film does an excellent job of playing with these familiar aspects, while telling a really funny story. Because the starting point is something that most people have some kind of idea about, the film doesn’t have to do any explaining for it to work.

Example: A Dangerous Method - Psychoanalysis
Whether you’ve been in psychoanalysis or not (the vast majority of the world’s population hasn’t), the name Sigmund Freud is likely to ring a bell and evoke some associations with therapy, Freudian slips, the unconscious, a long cylindrical object a hairy orifice (Freud’s cigar), Vienna, etc. A bit like Sherlock Holmes, but then… real. Starting from that more or less familiar arena, David Cronenberg weaves a dramatic tale based on real events, about lust, unconscious desires, challenging authority and so on. Here too, because many people have a pre-existing idea about who Freud was and what psychoanalysis is, the arena is already there in the audience’s mind before the start of the film.

Tapping Into The Collective Unconscious
To me, this is one of the most difficult aspects of screenwriting. But I can see why it makes perfect sense. All the aspects of screenwriting craft, such as conflict, character flaw, character arc, sequences, three act structure, and so on, are all well and good. There’s no doubt that being able to write well and according to industry standards, is necessary. But perhaps not sufficient. What really makes a screenplay stand out from the crowd, is something at the centre of the story world, that goes beyond the familiar world we inhabit, while touching on something that lives in everyone’s mind, in the collective unconscious. Something original that has universal resonance. It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Very few people are intimate with The Pope, but billions of people have an idea of The Pope in their mind. The same is true of fantastic and supernatural concepts such as vampires, angels, werewolves and fairy tale characters. But also of familiar, real-world phenomena, such as historical figures (monarchs, dictators, politicians, artists, biblical characters, etc,) famous sporting events, battles, illnesses (mental or physical), festivals (national, religious, etc.), inventions, and so the list goes on.

Any one of these phenomena integrated into an otherwise "merely" dramatic or funny story, can elevate it to a level that makes it accessible and interesting to a much wider audience. It’s not a guarantee for success, because if the story isn’t emotionally engaging anyway, then nothing will help. But it certainly increases the chances of a screenplay getting attention, which is what a unique selling point is supposed to do.

Cognitive Dissonance As Inner Conflict: Part 1

All mainstream movies are about characters struggling with personal transformation. The concept of cognitive dissonance offers insight into why a character might resist change.

A while ago I read a wonderful book called Mistakes Were made, But Not By Me, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It’s full of eye-opening insights about how people go about convincing themselves they are doing the right thing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The human mind has evolved to be able to cope with two contradictory thoughts, by reasoning away the contradiction. Thought A is, say, a positive thought about oneself, and thought B is a negative thought about your choice or your actions. The underlying idea is that once you commit to a position, however seemingly insignificant, your (unconscious) priority becomes to justify that position by selectively noticing things that support it and ignoring things that don’t. The authors call this “self-justification.”

A simple example might be the decision to buy a certain kind of car. Before you decide which make or model, you shop around, weigh up pros and cons of various types of cars, etc. But after you’ve signed the deal, you only pick up new information that confirms your choice of new car and proves that other cars are inferior. Even if this isn’t correct.

Bad Choices Lead To Cognitive Dissonance
However, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the purchase of consumer goods. It applies to any choice a person makes. How you vote, who you marry, where you choose to live, what school you send your kids to, career choices, and so on. And what’s most important in terms of writing a screenplay is, it also applies to decisions you have secret doubts about or even deeply regret… In other words: Inner conflict.

Here’s how a character’s cognitive dissonance could be relevant to the beginning of a screenplay, where the story world is being established, as are the main character’s goal and weakness. Remember, for our purposes, cognitive dissonance means reconciling two contradictory thoughts by (unconsciously) reasoning away the contradiction. This leads to the denial of a problem, rationalizations that cover up the problem, avoidance of the problem altogether, etc. This is precisely the kind of unfulfilled state you want your main character in at the beginning of your story, in order to create both inner and outer conflict and to create the potential for emotional growth—at a price.

Rationalizing Away Cognitive Dissonance
We all know her: The neighbour who’s all smiles and cheerfulness, but who’s married to a scumbag. Everyone knows he treats her like dirt, but the more people urge her to consider a life away from him, in which she’ll find real love and affection, the more she insists that she’s really very happy with the scumbag. The cognitive dissonance here is this: Thought A = I’m an intelligent, loving woman. Thought B = I’m married to an abusive bully. Those two thoughts are dissonant, they contradict each other. The coping strategy here, is self-justification through rationalization: My husband’s under a lot of pressure, he’s not good at expressing his feelings, he’s such a good lover… and so on. What does that set up in terms of story? It promises the audience that a character who rationalizes away a problem like this, is going to be confronted with what they’re denying, later in the story.

A classic movie example is Bruce Willis’s character in Die Hard, who after six months is still angry at his estranged wife for choosing her career above their marriage. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = She makes me feel like a loser; thought B = I’m lonely, I miss her. His rationalization for not praising her achievements and showing her affection: I’m a tough guy, I don’t need her, I can manage fine on my own, she’ll realize she needs me sooner or later, etc.

Another example might be Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in 500 Days of Summer, who hangs on to the delusion that the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, feels the same way about him, despite plenty of clues to contradict this. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = This girl is the best thing that’s ever happened to me; thought B = This girl is totally unwilling to commit to me. His rationalizations for not heeding his 12-year old half-sister’s advice to forget the girl and move on: But we like the same music; this isn’t what women are really like; she just hasn’t realize yet that wants to be more than just friends, etc.



Cognitive Dissonance Questionnaire
Here are a few questions that might help bring this concept into focus for the beginning of your own screenplay, or at any other point where it feels relevant:

• What dissonance between contradictory thoughts does your character reason away?
• How is this self-justification visible in their actions and choices?
• What other character benefits from the contradiction?
• What evidence is the character (deliberately) ignoring?
• Which of the character’s contradictory thoughts do they really need to reject?
• What is the character afraid will happen if they resolve the dissonance?
• What does the character stand to gain if they resolve the dissonance?

Theses are just some suggestions. There are inevitably lots of other ways to explore this aspect of a character. But part of the fun of writing, I find, is discovering your own way.

Next time, I’ll have a look at how cognitive dissonance manifests when a character is confronted with their dissonance, but continues to resist change.

Five Ways To Think About Your Screenplay’s Arena

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of when and where a story is set, but arena is an integral part of every screenplay.

Here’s what set me thinking about this: I wrote a short screenplay, which I hope to get up and running with my director brother Jonathan (check out his impressive showreel here). He read the script, liked it, had a few notes and then said, deadpan, “I’d like to set it in the 1970s, that would be visually really cool!” I swear, the first thing that came to my mind was: how is this relevant to the story? The second thing was, budget. Then all the beats with mobile phones and other 21st century tech stuff flashed in front of my eyes. Then I realized, okay, my brother’s used to directing big commercials, with budgets you could shoot three indie features for. But I’m a struggling screenwriter, happy if something of mine is shot for nothing, so I’m used to weighing every detail very carefully. One such ‘detail’ is arena.

Era As Arena
The time in which a story is set, determines a lot more than just wardrobe and props. Just think of the difference in attitudes to sex, authority, or religion in, say, 1550, 1850 and 1950. It’s not just impossible to ignore these differences in values, it’s a real waste! Using the arena to add a layer of meaning to a story can be really effective. For example, imagine a story about an unintended pregnancy, like Knocked Up or Juno, set in the 1950s. The story would be much more about the taboo and shame of pregnancy out of wedlock, rather than about the difficult personal choices facing the main characters. A story is set in a particular era for a reason, both to comment on that era and as a way of reflecting the personal dilemmas of the main characters in the social events of that time.

Geographical Location As Arena
Similarly, where a story is situated determines a lot more than the palette and soundtrack of a film. The local culture (which can even differ within a single city) is the context within which a story plays out. It has values and social conflicts which offer specific potential for conflict, metaphor, action, etc., which if related to what the story is about, can infuse a screenplay with more meaning. Plus, contrasting locations within a story can emphasize thematic or narrative developments in the story, too. A classical contrast is city-countryside, in which the urban environment represents modern values and the rural setting represents traditional values. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, the emphasis depends on what argument the film is trying to make. Similarly, the nature of the terrain can be very expressive too. There’s a big difference between action set in a isolated, physically demanding location such as a desert or a mountain, and action set in a luxurious tourist resort or a crowded slum.

Fantasy World As Arena

Science fiction and animation (or a combination of both) offer the opportunity to specifically design a story world to explore a particular thematic issue, or philosophical question. By stepping outside normal reality, the film can explore big questions in a very focused way. Questions about ethics, free will, about artificial intelligence, life on other planets, and so on. What would it be like if the police could see a future crime happening and still have time to prevent it (Minority Report)? Or: what would it be like if humans were raised like livestock to harvest their organs (Never Let Me Go)?

Limited Physical Location As Arena
Setting a story in one building, or on a ship, or some other location with clear boundaries and a specific character, is a great way to create a microcosm in which differing world views battle it out. A classic example is Twelve Angry Men, in which almost the entire film plays out in one room, where a jury sweats over a case they’ve heard. But a limited location can also be a source of great suspense, like in films such as Die Hard, Titanic, Alien, and plenty more, where the viewer is constantly aware that “there’s no way out.” But it’s not just a source of cinematic tension, it’s also a metaphor for life’s limitations, for our awareness of our own mortality and how we deal with that.

Organization As Arena

Whether the story is set within an official institute (e.g., a prison, a psychiatric hospital, the army, a school), an informal organization (e.g., the mafia), a small or large business, a sports team, or even a family, all of these groupings represent certain values. All types of organizations suggest some degree of required conformity to the system and its values, so there’s an inherent potential for conflict there. The story might be about a conflict between an individual within the organization trying to get out, an outsider trying to get in, a faction trying to bring about change from the inside, or some other variation. Whatever the specifics of the conflict, the organization itself offers a great opportunity to establish a clear set of values as a backdrop for the narrative. There are countless examples of prison, mafia, army, sports and family drama movies that use this kind of construct.

I’m sure there are plenty of additional ways to think about arena, but what’s clear is that arena is an integral part of what a film is about. It expresses something about the challenges the main characters face, both in terms of the concrete goal they have to achieve and the underlying, internal flaw they have to confront. Sometimes, a thought experiment in which you change the arena of your story, can be a great way to prize out what the story is about. Kind of similar to imagining the story being told from the point of view of a different character. Even if you decide not to change the arena, just imagining the change can reveal aspects of the story or characters you were missing. You quickly see whether the change would add a layer to the story or just distract from what it’s really about.

And my short? All the 1970s historical circumstances that I came up with were interesting, but essentially distracting. So for the time being, anyway, the short is still set in the present.

Three Great Ways To Find Your Main Character’s Flaw

In mainstream cinema, the main character’s flaw is the key to their transformation, or arc. So a well-defined flaw is an invaluable guide during the writing process.

I’ve recently been inspired and helped by Pilar Alessandra’s wonderful book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter. Written for screenwriters juggling day jobs, kids and other time-consuming distractions, the book consists of a series of brief questionnaires, each designed to focus your mind on one aspect of your screenplay for ten minutes. I find it a great way to make optimal use of a limited amount of time. However, the main character’s flaw as a basic story element isn’t really treated separately in the book, so I’ve come up with my own coffee break questionnaire…

The main character’s flaw is an essential ingredient in a screenplay, because it’s what stops the them from achieving their goal. It’s the thing they’re most reluctant to face up to, because of the pain or loss involved in really acknowledging the flaw and then changing. It’s also what the antagonist latches onto and uses to make things increasingly difficult for the main character. But the flaw isn’t just important for writing the story, it’s also an essential ingredient in a good logline. It’s the essence of the description of the main character, and as such it indicates what kind of arc the main character will have to go through for there to be a satisfactory resolution to the story, regardless of genre.

So, without further ado, here are three questions which can easily be brainstormed during a ten minute window in between the ironing and the washing-up, or while waiting for an appointment or a meeting, or while your daughter has her ballet lesson… Oh, and here’s my disclaimer: I’m only saying this kind of brainstorming is useful, because I’ve found it useful. As always, my motto is: whatever works for you. Feel free to vary or ignore these questions at will.

How Does The Story End?
If you know how you want your story to end, where does that leave the main character? What are they capable of (physically, emotionally, spiritually, morally, etc.) at the end of the story, that they weren’t capable of at the beginning? Here are some examples. Not from Jaws, Tootsie, The Wizard of Oz, or even Casablanca, though...

By the end of Hallum Foe Jamie Bell’s character is capable of real intimacy. That’s a satisfying ending, because his flaw to begin with is his inability to grieve his mother’s suicide, a psychological obstacle which manifests in his bizarre and anti-social behaviour, and results in his alienation and loneliness.

Here’s another: By the end of Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg’s character is vindicated in his ruthless commitment to justice, which is precisely the ‘flaw’ that gets him demoted to a seemingly uneventful village in the first place. In this story, the main character’s unwillingness to ‘play the game’ (i.e., he works too diligently, making his police colleagues look bad) remains steadfast, but turns from a flaw into a strength.

So, knowing how your story ends allows you to ‘reverse engineer’ the main character’s arc, and determine what the most appropriate flaw is to start with.

What Is The Antagonist’s Goal?
Every great antagonist has their own story, something they are trying to achieve which is being obstructed by the main character. So the main character is going to battle it out with a force that knows them well and is hell-bent on stopping them, particularly by hitting them where it hurts most. Often, the antagonist essentially wants the same thing as the main character, but has a diametrically opposed moral worldview.

In John Patrick Stanley´s Doubt both Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have the best interests of the pupils at their Catholic school at heart. However, they differ in their ideas about how to achieve this. Meryl Streep’s character is an old-fashioned disciplinarian, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is an open-minded liberal. She will do anything to prevent him from introducing a more tolerant, lenient culture into her Catholic school, including fabricating an ‘incident’ to justify firing him. Hoffman’s flaw is his belief that being open about his doubts will bring about positive change. By the end of the story, however, Hoffman is able to accept that there are some things he can’t change. This insight is the direct result of the intense and ultimately successful attack on him by Meryl Streep.

So, if it’s clear what the antagonist wants, then the main character’s flaw is going to be just what they need to get the job done.

What makes the main character’s goal so hard to achieve?
What specific thing does the main character have to achieve for us to know the story is over? What do they have to win, conquer, escape from, retrieve, deliver, refrain from… etc.? And what makes it so much harder for them to achieve this than for anyone else? Why is this the worst possible situation for this character to have to deal with? I mean, none of us wants to be buried alive or stuck on a hijacked plane, so that level of generic, primal emotion works on a plot level. But what specific difficulty does this particular goal raise for the main character in this particular story?

In Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan Nathalie Portman’s character finally achieves the lead role in a major ballet production, after years of hard graft and numerous disappointments. However, this achievement turns out to be the beginning, not the end of her story, because in order to dance the part to the director’s satisfaction, she must unleash the dark side of her psyche, which she has kept hermetically sealed away. What makes this task so hard for her to fulfil, is her extreme emotional and sexual repression and its manifestation in her ruthless perfectionism. Her flaw is her inability to let go without losing control, which ultimately proves fatal.

Here’s another example: In Tangled the main character Rapunzel wants to go to the beguiling lanterns that float in the distant sky once every year, but she’s locked in a tower by her wicked stepmother, Gothel. In order to achieve her goal she must escape, but in order escape she needs to lose her innocence, her naivety, and to rebel against her stepmother. This is particularly hard for Rapunzel, because she has been kept completely ignorant of the outside world. She wouldn’t know where to start. Rapunzel’s flaw is her innocence and ignorance, which is precisely why her goal seems so impossible to achieve.

So, the specific reason why achieving the goal is difficult for the main character, is intimately linked with their flaw.

These are three questions I’ve found useful, but I’m sure there are others. In any case, being as clear as possible about the main character’s flaw is a powerful way to focus on what obstacles to put in their way, it helps to crystallize thematic issues and it’s a hugely important component for a good logline… in short, well worth spending ten minutes on!

Are You Writing A Film Or A Screenplay?

Here’s a question script readers, producers and directors all have in mind when they finally read your material: Is this a film?

We writers love to write. Words are our raw material, just like sounds and rhythms are to composers. But there’s a big difference between being able to write well and being able to write a great film. Sure, it’s essential to know how to construct a coherent, engaging narrative, populated by intriguing characters for whom something important is at stake. You also need to be able to express characters’ emotional struggles through visual action, locations, props and so on, as well as through dialogue. But a screenplay that reads like a film, makes effective use of cinematic language too, such as image systems, scene transitions, pacing, and so on. So that while you read, you’re seeing the film in your mind.

Cinematic Conventions
There are only so many stories or plots the human mind has come up with so far. We’ve all seen them countless times in different guises. So when a screenwriter sits down to write, say, a coming of age film, or an impossible romance, or a revenge-driven thriller, there are certain storytelling and genre conventions which need to be respected. Even to cleverly subvert these conventions you need to be aware of them first. Check out Jennifer van Sijll’s article for some specific examples. But besides knowing story per se, a screenwriter has to be well-versed in cinematic conventions too, for a screenplay to really read like a film.

Think Like a Director

When a director reads a script, they’re not interested in a writer’s flair with words. They’re focused on what’s going to happen on the screen. It’s all about images, and what story the images are telling, rather than what the characters are saying. It’s the screenwriter’s responsibility to tell a visual story, using only words. Which is far more involved than it sounds. One book I’ve recently found inspiring in this respect, is Gustavo Mercado’s beautiful tome, The Filmmaker’s Eye. This kind of material really helps me understand more profoundly what it means to write a film rather than a screenplay. It’s not achieved by cramming a script full of camera angles and technical terms, but rather by familiarizing yourself with and understanding how different shots and images affect the audience, mostly at an unconscious level. For example, repeating a similar visual composition at different points in the story, can suggest different characters experiencing the same emotion. Also interesting, is a recent episode of Pilar Alessandra’s On The Page audio podcast, entitled Production Weighs In On Screenwriting, which addresses some nuts and bolts issues about writing in a way that helps set and costume designers.

Scene Transitions
Another specific aspect of screenwriting that can distinguish a screenplay from a film, is how scenes follow on from other scenes. Here’s a useful article by Janice Hally, which sums up some of the ways scenes can dovetail effectively. But a more practical way to become fluent in this aspect of visual storytelling, is to simply pay more attention to how it’s done in films you really love. Check out how a transition that worked well, was written in the script. Watch and re-watch films by directors who have a very distinct visual style, such as Edgar Wright (e.g., Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim), Darren Aronofsky (e.g., The Fountain, Black Swan) or Quentin Tarantino (e.g., Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction), and check out how they use transitions to tell their stories visually.

So, yes, writing a screenplay is all about breaking the story, getting its structure right, delving into the characters and their emotional dilemmas, and so on. But writing a film means screening the film in your mind’s eye while you write, and writing in such a way that everyone who reads the screenplay will know: This is a film.

Why Real Life Isn’t The Same As Drama

It’s one thing to experience or read about a dramatic event. It’s quite another thing to construct a screenplay with dramatic tension at its heart.

I just returned from a two-week family camping holiday in France. Along with my suntan, mounds of dirty washing, and a very crumpled tent, I also brought home a notebook bulging with new ideas for stories, inspired by things I witnessed along the way. I’m certain most of these ideas won’t survive closer scrutiny, but then again, one or two might turn out to be worth expanding into a synopsis or an outline. But besides reminding me that the supply of story ideas is more or less infinite, another thing this experience brought home to me again, is that there’s a big difference between ‘dramatic’ in its casual everyday sense, and Dramatic in terms of screenwriting.

Slices Of Life

During the course of the holiday, I drove a couple of thousand miles, stayed at five different locations, and encountered countless different people and situations. Too many experiences to remember. Which is what life is like. We don’t even consciously register most of what we experience, it just goes in one sense and comes out another. It’s events that cause an emotional stir that make an impression. Things that make you laugh, cry, shake with fear or anger. Like my encounter with an initially genial and helpful, ex-pat manager of a depressing camp site who, when I inadvertently disturbed him during his lunch hour to check out, turned out to be a sadistic psychopath, from whom I barely managed to escape with my life. In retrospect an amusing, if unnerving incident. ‘Dramatic’ in the everyday sense of involving fear, and perhaps even material for a scene. But not a screenplay, or even a premise for one, per se.

Real Life As A Starting Point For Drama
Observing the goings-on around me, say, at a swimming pool packed with sunburned tourists or in a huge French hypermarché teeming with gesticulating Gauls, I found myself fantasizing about who various people were, what their relationships were with people they were with, what would happen if… Which is where the writing starts. Simply transcribing reality into script format doesn’t make for a great screenplay. Just try it. At best, what you end up with is an interesting starting point from which to brainstorm a dramatic premise. Even reality–based films like Social Network, or biopics like The King’s Speech, are all carefully crafted dramatic works. Which means they engage the audience’s emotions, by putting characters in situations where they stand to lose something of great value to them personally.

What’s The Risk? What’s At Stake?

Most people’s lives (at least ordinary lives like mine, and most people I know), aren’t particularly dramatic, let alone cinematic. Take my encounter with the obnoxious camp site manager. We had an exchange of words, he pedantically tried to make me wait until his lunch hour was over before opening the gate and letting me drive out. We had something of a stand-off, in which I managed to stay calm because he was behaving like an indignant toddler, and then… yawn. It fizzled out, like most real-life encounters do. The worst that could have happened, was that I would have had to wait. But what if he had had my passport locked in his safe? Or what if he had been brandishing a knife? Or what if we were the only family there and the site were on an island? Or what if he had one of my kids locked in his house? Everyone experiences big emotions at some point in their life, and there’s a well-known list of 20 most stressful life events to prove it. However, for an emotional experience to become an dramatic premise, the character has to be forced to choose between losing something important to them or taking some sort of risk. In real life, most people will avoid taking risks if at all possible. In drama, the audience is engaged by the character’s decision to take the risk that they, the audience, would avoid at all cost, whether it makes them cringe, cry, laugh or shiver.

A Dramatic Event Isn’t A Screenplay
So, my experience reminded me that as a screenwriter, I need to be aware which sense of ‘dramatic’ applies to an idea for a story. When the news media refer to an incident as dramatic, they mean it’s fraught with emotion (usually fear of one sort or another, followed by relief or grief). But when you refer to a story idea as dramatic, you mean it’s constructed deliberately in a way that creates tension, poses a dramatic question, and makes you want to know what happens next. The bad news is that it takes a lot of hard graft to turn a real-life event into a workable premise for a screenplay. Which you then still have to write. The good news, though, is that you are surrounded by a potentially endless supply of events and characters, each of which could be the seed of a wonderful new story idea.

And no, my encounter with the narky proprietor didn’t yield any particularly great story ideas for me, although I can well imagine aficionados of the horror or thriller genres wanting to pick up the ball and run with it…