Villain (convincingly): “You and I are not so different, eh?” Hero (less convincingly) “I’m nothing like you!” (Variation: “I am your father, Luke.” “NOOOOOO!”)

We’ve all seen variations on this little pas de deux in countless films, particularly of the action or thriller variety. But why? The answer has to do with who your protagonist is, and why he or she is exactly the right character to be caught up in this exact plot or dilemma. Because whoever the antagonist turns out to be has to be our own character’s “shadow.” This is a Jungian prototype. All of us contain our opposite, the crazy uncle we hide in the attic or the femme fatale who internally threatens our own sense of manhood (or the reverse, the predator male who threatens our female identity). Our protagonist, including whatever internal doubts or flaws he or she possesses, must be compelled by his or her very nature into opposition with the antagonist, because the antagonist represents an opposite force, which is paradoxically also a mirror image in some way, the yin to his yang, just as our own image is reversed in a mirror. Evil twin movies are of course all about this, but there is an element of the doppelganger in most good protagonist-antagonist relationships. They are after the same thing, from opposing motives. In an action movie, say, both want to get the bomb: one to explode it, one to stop it from being exploded. These stories work best when we have what I call the “intimate enemy” - both have a history with one another, are brothers on opposite sides of the law, or one was a student of the other, or was the mentor of the other, or both were in the same Special Ops unit together, or both came up in the CIA together, etc. They KNOW each other, because in some fundamental way they are the same character. The difference is, one went over to the Dark Side of the Force - literally becoming the other’s shadow. And because that shadow character is what we (our protagonists) fear about ourselves - our own ability to betray our better natures, the possibility that we might fail to be who we want ourselves to be and succeed - the shadow character has power over us, and puts the protagonist in an underdog position. This is necessary because the protagonist must seem at first to be facing an uphill struggle to defeat the forces of opposition, or the story will go nowhere, it’ll be over before it begins: I’m more powerful, bam, I win. The end. But the paralyzing realization that the protagonist has, that he or she is up against a more powerful version of him or herself, but bent on opposite goals, is a powerful tool for the writer, because it gives our characters depth, and can raise a popcorn, comic-book movie like “Iron Man” or “Batman Begins” to a higher level than most in the genre.

In love stories, it’s slightly different: characters who seem nothing alike turn out to be peas from the same pod, and their journey is to overcome the misleading surface characteristics or internal self-sabotage that prevents them from seeing their own, and each other’s, true identities - which make them a perfect match. But the goal is not to destroy the shadow, but to recognize that this opposite character actually fulfills what’s missing from the protagonist’s life: “You complete me,” as Jerry Maguire famously pleaded. The shadow here is really just another form of light. Interestingly, sometimes the love story is actually the subplot, as it is in “Witness,” where the plot involves fleeing from a corrupt police force, or even “Jerry Maguire,” where the plot involves succeeding in spite of a ruthless competitor (played by Jay Mohr). Here the main plot’s antagonist falls more into the previous category, of our protagonist’s worst version of himself, the Hyde to his Jekyll, while it’s the subplot antagonist who, by reinforcing and completing his own better nature, allows our protagonist to succeed against the main plot’s antagonist.

At the end of a long form project like a screenplay, there’s always a point at which I consider giving up. From the writers I’ve worked with and am friends with, I’ve gathered that it’s a common feeling: right when you think you’ve finally succeeded in beating down self-doubt, it comes back with a vengeance.

The problem is always the same. No matter how good you are, as you get close to the end of your first draft, it’s usually craptastic. And once you realize that (for me the thought always begins to creep in when its cloudy or I’ve had a bad day), you start to think “Why am I even bothering to finish this crap? It’s not worth it! I should give this crap up and start over on something that isn’t crap!”

Consider this your intervention for that moment.

First, lie down on the floor, and take some time to stare at the ceiling and breathe while you think about this. It is always crap. The first draft is always crap, and will always be crap, and that is the nature of the first draft. (Cough, that’s also an aside for those delusional enough to believe that their first draft is not crap. It is. Deal.)

Writing a first draft is an entirely different process than writing a second, third, or umpteenth draft. All you have to do in writing a first draft is finish. The process of writing a first draft is like giving birth to a lump of clay. Sure, it’s shapeless and gooey, and quite frankly, disgusting. But you need that first draft to shape. If you have no clay, there’s nothing for you to work with.

In the second draft, you can carve and mold and stick it on a wheel to perfect. You may mush it up and start over a couple times. That’s okay. You have the clay to work with. From here on out, it’s a hundred times easier than the first time. From here, you don’t have to make anything from scratch. It’s all refinement.

Now, I won’t lie to you: you’ll have problems and difficulties in your next draft. But the key to moving forwards is finishing the first one.

Then, hand a friend your manuscript to guard from you for a few weeks and do nothing. When you’re ready, take it up again, and it won’t seem as impossible a task to conquer.

Just remember to finish. I can’t tell you how many half-written scripts I’ve read that would have been really great if their authors hadn’t been quite so aware of how bad they were.

Screenwriting is a performative act; that is to say that it is a matter of performance, and not of intent.  There are a lot of screenwriters that think of themselves as artists.  What becomes important to them as a product of this belief is focusing on artistic sensibilities and inspiration.  Horse twaddle.

Whether you’re a screenwriter cannot be decided by whether you write a screenplay, sell a screenplay, or loftily pursue the elevation of the art.  Being a screenwriter is about one thing, and that’s what you’ve got to prioritize over absolutely everything else: communicating with the audience.

“Oh, I knew that,” you’re thinking.

Well, hold on to your fancy leather pants, because I’m about to throw you for a loop. Communicating with the audience is SO vital to real screenwriting that it is more important to focus on whether and how you’re communicating with the audience than what you’re communicating to the audience.  The method is more important than the message.
“What?” You grab your chest – don’t think I can’t see the heart attack from here.

That’s right, I said it.  Stop being an Academy snob.  It doesn’t matter what you write.  It only matters how you write it.  A screenwriter ought to be able to write any story.  If you just “feel certain stories more than others,” is it wrong to write them?  No, absolutely not.  I would never discourage someone from writing something they’re passionate about.  I would, however, warn them that if they want it to sell, what they have to keep in mind AT ALL TIMES is that they cannot leave the audience behind.  Does the genre, in the end, really matter?  Only to the extent that some genres are easier than others to master.

Sometimes, when you’re writing a passion project, there’s a desire to take the audience somewhere they wouldn’t normally go.  You want to take them to the world you inhabit.  When properly done, this can be beautiful and moving.  But if you’re not paying attention to what you’re making the audience think and feel, it can be disastrous – they can simply refuse to go there with you.

Let’s take “Hound Dog” as an example.  I haven’t seen it.  I don’t want to see it.  I am solely going to judge this movie based on what I’ve heard about it (Referee says, “Fair play, since audiences do this, too”). The audience didn’t want to go see Dakota Fanning get raped.  They didn’t want to go there.  Why?  Because they had an intimation that it would make them feel party to child pornography.  The audience doesn’t want to feel like child pornographers.  Even child pornographers don’t want to feel like child pornographers.

What’s the problem? Graphic scenes, the kind that get Oscars for actors, have to have a certain element of nobility to them.  That’s all.  The audience is perfectly willing to go down in the gutter with you, but only if they’ll come up smelling like a rose.  “Crash” exemplifies this: it contains scenes of violent racism, but the point of the picture is that we cannot pretend racism no longer exists, thus it is an act of art to force us to confront them head on, and we can revel in our superiority for participating in such an act.

My point here is in saying, “Pay attention!” If you want to create a moving script, you must absolutely know it to be moving.  There can be no part which you are uncertain about whether it might be boring or not possess the effect you intended it to.  It is easy to know this in say, a horror movie; it is more difficult in a drama or a comedy. But it’s absolutely impossible to know if you’re only concerned about the idea of screenplay as Art.

Writing groups are something every screenwriter will be tempted to become a part of, since they promise a sense that you are not alone in your struggle.  However, they are also something to be wary of, since they can significantly alter your path without your knowledge.

There are professional, amateur and semi-professional groups.  And there are classes that are basically just groups but you’re getting graded.

I think there is really thing that really matters: is the situation toxic or non-toxic?

You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.  There are groups where your desire to write will slowly be drained out of you.  There are groups where your desire to LIVE will slowly be drained out of you.  There are groups where every single point of your style will slowly be eroded.  It’s possible to learn in these groups, but it’s not pleasant, or even very likely.

How do you identify the toxic? (Which, by the way, includes producers and development types as well as writing groups).  It’s simple.  Toxic people will tell you that it’s important to identify what is wrong, and will disallow the words “I like” or “it’s interesting.”  It sounds like a solid philosophy that cuts out all the crap that usually ends up being difficult and confusing.  In practice, it becomes an exercise in humility.  You will feel like you are learning a lot.  But the quality of your writing won’t get any better.

What screenwriters (and occasionally producers and D-girls) don’t realize is that it’s important to acknowledge what IS working, and what is close to working, as well as what is not working.  You have to ground your criticism, because the person who’s hearing it has no idea what the problem is (if they did, they’d fix it).  You have to suggest methods by which something can be fixed, and not just point out what is wrong.

It’s tempting to say that a script has nothing good about it; that it can’t be fixed.  This is untrue.  For one thing, even one hundred and twenty pages of dreck is words on a page in approximately the correct amount.  For another, all scripts can be fixed–it’s just a matter of time and energy.  You might recommend that a writer abandon a script, but even that should be out of the idea that they’ve learned enough from writing it that the next will be significantly better and give them a better place to start from.

If you find yourself in a scenario where there is nothing positive to be said about your script…RUN. I’m not saying a toxic group could never help you get your script to where you want it to be, but it’s going to take more time and psychologists visits to get your script perfected that way than it would if you stayed on your own and waited to meet some non-toxic people.

(Note: Toxic can also be identified as people who tell you nothing but good stuff.  Actually, those people are beyond toxic.  They’re setting you up for something).

“Does this town need a hug?” quipped Oscar host Jon Stewart in response to the darkness of such Best Picture nominees as the Coen brothers’ “No Country For Old Men,” a writer’s movie with an award-winning screenplay by two writers’ writers, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy.  Whether Hollywood needs a hug or not, Joel and Ethan Coen need nothing but their own talent to turn a novel with only a literary following into the best picture of the year.

Writing is not all the Coen brothers do.  They also produce and direct, together and separately.  But on this writing-for-writers blog, I think it’s a good idea to celebrate their love of words, their writing talent, and their glorification of all things literary.  Although they captivate mainstream audiences, there’s always a little something extra in Coen brothers’ movies for those who take a special interest in great writing and illustrious authors.

The brothers’ brilliance first came to my attention two decades ago with “Blood Simple.”  It had a screenplay that was at once character driven, suspenseful, brutally violent, and heartbreakingly literary.  It was as quotable as anything by Billy Wilder, Herman or Joseph Mankiewicz, or Phillip and/or Julius Epstein.  It stands as a masterpiece of Texas Noir, as good as anything Jim Thompson ever wrote.

“Miller’s Crossing” is a fun movie to watch.  But it’s full of extra fun for anybody who has read and loved Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key.”  Just about every character has a counterpart in that classic, and every scene a send up of one of that novel’s many plot strands.  The hat that blows in the wind for no apparent reason refers to the clue that brought down the killer in “The Glass Key.”

A decade ago, the Coens’ “Fargo” netted them the Oscar for best original screenplay.  The dialogue in that movie dares to offer special thrills to anyone who has ever listened to the speech patterns of North and South Dakotans.

Perhaps the greatest film on writers and writing ever made was the Coen brothers’ “Barton Fink.”  Fink himself was based on the great American playwright Clifford Odets.  John Mahoney’s character was based on the great American novelist William Faulkner, whose long-time mistress and muse, Meta Carpenter, was represented by Judy Davis’ character.  John Goodman’s character was named after a character in a spy novel by John leCarre.  The movie ends with Barton Fink carrying his own personal writer’s block to the beach, where he meets his own muse, a woman in a swimsuit he had previously seen on a calendar in his hotel room.  He has stared at her, both on the calendar and in person, when he was supposed to be writing.

Writers are always wondering why someone can love their script and then turn around and demand changes to it.  It’s nonsensical, right?  If you read the script and loved it enough to option it, it’s probably good as it is.

But that’s not always true, and the reason for that is because a producer reads a script differently before and after he options or buy it.

There are two ways to read a script, which means that you’re never really writing one script.  It’s always two, because in order to work as a film, you as the screenwriter need to have prepared it for both reads.  You can be completely prepared for the first kind of read and not for the second (or on occasion, prepared for the second kind, and not the first). The first kinds of reads you encounter are usually development reads – that analyze for your talent and skill.  No script can be considered unfixable or unworkable when written by someone whose talent is detectable, unless it’s going to take too much time or money to fix it.

These reads look to locate a solid structure and character development, but on top of that, these are the only people who are really going to pay attention to the description you write.  Why?  Because it’s an indicator.  If your description reads like a description of a series of images, and not like mere stage instructions, usually the plot will hold up – because much of the plot will be in those descriptions.  If the description starts off okay in the first few pages and peters out, the plot will usually go quickly too.  If the description is not more than stage instructions from the beginning, then it’s not really worth reading the script, because the plot is never really going to show up.

But that’s when you’re reading for a producer or production company.

When someone reads for an actor, the read is entirely different.  The focus is on the character the actor might play, and is definitely off the description, because what the viewer sees is not as important as how the character can be played. This means that your plot should also exist in your dialogue – so that if one were to read only the dialogue (if you were only to listen, as though it was a radio show) than you could get most of the plot that way. The dialogue has to be interesting to say and act – which is one of the reasons writers are always being encouraged to take an acting class.

The dialogue is also a key part to getting your script made into a movie, but for different reasons: it’s not about your talent; it’s about the relative amount of talented actors your script can attract.

So, to sum up: 1) Description, despite that its usually seen as a way to describe the actors that will eventually play the characters, is actually all about you and your ability to write.  Don’t write weak stage instructions or mimic some of the gimmicky things you’ve read before.  The description is your one shot to be seen for the talented person you are; and 2) Dialogue is all about the actors.  You’re not writing for you, you’re writing for them.  These are the parts where, if you aren’t writing well, either the film won’t get made or a critic will review it and say “Who’s writing this crap?”
 

I’ve often heard it said (mostly by playwriting teachers) that playwriting is all structure.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Playwriting is language and conflict, and a lot of freedom to experiment and explore either or both.  As long as there is ample talent pushing the pencil, a play can simply be like a John Coltrane solo.  But a screenplay, that’s different.

In a movie, the primary art is photographic.  Language is less important in screenplays than in plays.  Conflict remains important, but the conflict must be both specific and specifically progressive.  The conflict that is essential to story can meander in literary forms, such as novels or plays — as long as the language is vibrant.  But a movie is primarily visual art and has the word “move” in it.  A screenplay is there to provide structure, order, and ultimately, meaning, to the images in motion.

If I get stuck on a play, I just write reams of dialogue and allow the characters to define themselves through talking (using language) and eventually they find themselves and I just go back and cut the slow stuff.  But a screenplay is not going to find itself through talking or language.  A screenplay has to mean something from the first page on.  It has to be specifically progressive (one thing leads to the next, set-up, pay-off, topper) in order to do its job, which is to send a director, actors, and a film crew out to a series of locations where they might come back with a collection of moving images that, when strung together, pack a theater with an audience full of people waiting for a boring part so they can run to the rest room.  And if you do your job well, it never arrives.

Structure is simply a way to guarantee meaning.  The beginning doesn’t prepare the audience for the ending so much as set the audience up to have a set of expectations that will provide suspense when those expectations might be in danger of not being fulfilled or, worse, having no meaning.  The middle of a movie has to threaten the expectations than have been set up.  The end has to provide a surprise about the expectations that still fulfills them in a believable yet unpredictable way.  And the final line, the last moment, the freeze frame, whatever you want to call it, has to be the answer to the math problem, the sum of the expectations fulfilled, the punch line, the final surprise, and the kicker, all in one instant.

Whatever the writer does in a film will be trumped (or destroyed) by the photographic art (or lack thereof).  What you want to do is provide meaning.  Whatever technical craft a screenwriter brings to the fore (character, dialogue, pace, atmosphere) is a help and a definite plus, but without meaning none of it ever leaves the gate.  Meaning has to exist first, then comes the structure that provides the delivery system for the meaning.  Then come the words.  Take it in that order, and the words will serve the structure, which will serve the images, which is as it should be.

I’m a really judgmental person.  I’m not proud of it.  But it happens to be one of the things that make me very effective at telling good writing from bad.

If you’re a decent writer, you’re probably this way too.  I sympathize.  It’s rotten being hard on yourself.

But the absolutely worst thing is that sometimes being judgmental stops me in my tracks, and I can’t write, can’t read, and can’t research.  It’s the Ninth Circle of Hell, maybe even the Twelfth. (Just kidding, I know there’s only nine.)

I can’t look at someone else’s writing, and I can’t look at my own writing, because just contemplating the act of writing makes me paranoid and jumpy, and I start looking around to see if anyone’s figured out that I’m a complete fraud and have no idea what I’m talking about.  (Note: I’m in the process of getting a master’s degree in English Lit, so the odds are that I have a clue about storytelling.  At least that’s what everyone tells me.)

If I’ve done a really good number on myself, I can work my way up to anxiety attacks where I start coughing and clutching at my chest (I’m 24, guys, so I’m pretty sure these aren’t heart attacks, but by golly do they make me wonder.)  I have a whole host of psychosomatic
symptoms that make an appearance from time to time – they’re truly delightful.  I know some of you are out there nodding your heads…

Aha!  Okay, you recognize the problem.  And the usual solution to writer’s block: read more research, doesn’t apply in this scenario.

But here’s what I’ve found… when I feel like a fraud, usually the problem is that I AM ONE!  I’ll find that I’m talking about something I don’t know, or can’t know, and can’t legitimately make up and get away with.  The problem is that sometimes you’re trying to write from a point of view you don’t have and don’t understand – and everyone can sense it.  Frequently, I find this problem with writers who really want to prove how smart they are, and as a result, abandon the stuff of their everyday lives.  Guys who write detailed scenes about space exploration when they couldn’t care less about it, just because they want to write a sci-fi action thriller.

It’s not that you can’t write about things you’re not an expert on, it’s that you should be writing about them without pretending to be an expert!  Your characters don’t have to be perfect stereotypes, they have to be believable.

In a perfect world, we’d all be able to read about a topic and write knowledgably on it.  But this isn’t a perfect world.  You’re not perfect, and I’m not perfect.  Sometimes we have opinions that are flawed, and sometimes we think we know more than we do, and sometimes we even deserve to be taken down a rung (like I find myself doing to myself so often).

So take a big bite of humble pie and get back to writing.

(Hey, this tastes sorta chocolaty.  I hope it’s not fattening.)

Ah, the “mentor” we keep hearing about–who is this character anyway, and why does he or she pop up in almost every movie, almost always just as the protagonist is deciding on whether or not to take up the challenge presented? Why is this character usually older, a “wise old man” or “wise old woman,” or at any rate more experienced? And why the hell, if he or she knows so much, doesn’t he or she take up the challenge him or herself? And why, you may ask, do I keep saying he or she—is it just nauseating political correctness?

The answers to all these things, as Wise Old Woman Maria Portakalos might have told her daughter Toula in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” goes back to the ancient Greeks—as do most of the rules and roles of dramatic writing. Mentor was an old former warrior in whose care Odysseus put his infant son Telemachos when he went off to fight in Troy.  As Telemachos became a young man and Odysseus made his way home, Athena—the goddess of both war and wisdom—impersonated Mentor in order to help father and son reunite and dispose of the otherwise overwhelming enemy force who had taken over Odysseus’ home in his absence. So Mentor was both male and female, both human and divine. And, because he was too old to fight, or because according to the Greek concept of fate, Athena had to let the human beings work out their own destiny—although with her divine guidance—“Mentor” could not actually do what had to be done. That was up to Odysseus and Telemachos—just as it’s up to your protagonists.

The mentor usually appears when the protagonist is either first presented with—and often reluctant to face—the challenge presented by the antagonist, or else later when the protagonist feels all is nearly lost, and needs a shot of wisdom. The mentor is often a character who has faced a similar, if not the exact same, challenge in the past, has failed, but has lived to pass on wisdom as to how the battle can be won by a better man or woman than he was. The obvious and often referenced mentor example is Obi Wan in “Star Wars,” but look at almost any movie and you’ll find one. In “Stardust,” it’s De Niro’s gay pirate, who urges the hero to be true to himself, even as he himself is unable to “come out” for fear of loss of reputation. In “Dodgeball,” it’s Patches O’Houlihan, the insane, crippled coach. In “When Harry Met Sally,” the mentors are externalized into interviews with old, happily married couples. In “While You Were Sleeping,” it’s Saul, the old Jewish friend of the family who knows the lie Lucy is living but can keep a secret—yet who is clearly single and who, like her, has no other family or true love of his own. In “Knocked Up,” it’s Ben’s dad, who has been a failure as a father and husband, but is happy and knows enough to tell his son to do what makes him happy.  In “Little Miss Sunshine,” it’s the drug-using Grandpa, whose obscene advice to his granddaughter leads to the family’s liberation from the burden of their own misguided expectations for themselves.

There are also false or dark mentors who instruct by counter-example, as with those who created the Treadstone project in the “Bourne” movies, the Oracle sages in “300,” program director Lamar Burgess in “Minority Report” or Darth Vader and Senator Palpatine in the “Star Wars” series. These can be shape-shifters, who seem at first glance to be either overly hostile to our character, only to ally with them in the end (Vader) or who seem allies at first, only to betray them (Burgess).  In “The Da Vinci Code” — whatever you thought of it—there are both types: Sophie’s dad, Jacques Saunière, from whom she’s alienated, and is now dead, but who has left her a series of clues that help her solve the puzzle of the movie and of her own identity, and Robert’s old friend Leigh, a wise old man who seems to the perfect mentor until it turns out he’s actually the villain. And the murderous Silas has his own mentor, Bishop Aringarosa, who is both a genuine mentor to him and yet false or dark because he is on the side of evil and ends up causing Silas’ death.

The crucial point is that the mentor knows the challenges the hero must face, knows enough to help, and yet is not up to the task himself—and may even have been defeated by the same antagonist in the past–meaning that only the protagonist has what it takes, which is why it’s his or her story. And precisely because the protagonist must, in the end, win the day on his own, the mentor often will die before the final battle (Vader, Patches O’Houlihan, Grandpa, Obi Wan, Jacques Saunière, etc.). This is sometimes motivated by having the mentor feel he must step one more time into battle, if only to gain time for the hero, and the death then provides pathos and motivation for the hero to do what needs to be done.  And the character can sometimes be made fresh and unusual by reversing roles: the old man who learns how to live again from having to take care of a child (who is, in fact, the mentor) as in “Kolya,” or who is forced to face the dark reality of the life he’s lead by the death of a young person he thought he was mentoring, but who turned out to be his own mentor, as in “Million Dollar Baby.” And sometimes it is the echo of the dead mentor’s words, or the memory of his actions, that provides the final key to the problem the hero faces.

The mentor is, then, a special and essential character, by origin both male and female, human and divine, representing the internal angel that insists to our hero that he not only can, but must, do what needs to be done in order to put the disturbed world back in order. So now that you see how this character works, go back to your story—and use the Force, Luke!