squeezeIT

SQUEEZE IT, BABY: Compression Will Set You Free by Christopher Keane


This is a compressed piece on compression, one of the most overlooked and least understood screenwriting art.

In screenwriting compression comes in three major flavors: Time, Space and Language.

Compression of Time

In the compression of Time, the question you want to ask yourself is this: can this screenplay of mine that, in movie time, takes place over a seven-month period, be told over a weekend?

The answer, in almost all cases, should be a resounding YES.

If it’s a NO then ask your self why? And list the reasons. Why does your story have to take place in seven months? If a pregnancy gets in the way, she should have the baby before the story begins, or at the beginning. If it’s about a year in college, what’s wrong with a couple of weeks toward the end?

Movies are usually about a rapid series of events swirling around the main character in a very short period of time, especially in certain genres: comedies, thrillers, and action pictures.

Compression of Space

Never let the characters get too far away from one another. Don’t do what they did in The Color of Money where two-thirds of the way through the picture Tom Cruise and Paul Newman split up and went their separate ways. What!

It was as if a balloon had its air let out. Tension seeped out, conflict vanished. Story disappeared. We’re left with a flaccid leftover.

If the writer of The Graduate had decided to put Ben Braddock’s house down the street from Mrs. Robinson’s house, instead of next door, there would have been no movie. Or if the writer of American Beauty had decided to put the two houses down the street from one another, there would have been no movie.

In Hollywood they say the best movies are the ones in which the characters are pressed so close together that there’s hardly any breathing room.

Compression of Language

Always try to use active sentences. “Batman whacked the Joker across the street” instead of The Joker was whacked by Batman. This is a movie you’re writing, a motion picture.

The language should reflect the form.

Eliminate as many adverbs as you can, replacing them with colorful, energetic verbs. The sentences themselves should be descriptive but compressed.

NO: Matt turns the corner. Before him he sees a large three-storey home built around 1850, with gables and a window’s walk. Many windows peer out over a lawn that hasn’t been mowed in months, a haggard tree with a rubber tire hanging from a branch. Broken bicycles are sprawled on a broken sidewalk. The house needs paint. Panes on the lower floors have been broken. Dirty white pillars hold up the porch.

YES: Matt turned the corner. He has arrived at his destination, a dilapidated Victorian mansion.

It’s that simple. Compression works. Try it. It will give your script a tempo and pace and a sharper sense of its world.

Christopher Keane

Chris Keane new screenwriting book, Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make debuts April 2008. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), The Crossing (WB) The Huntress (USA Network series) plus screenwriting books: How to
Write A Selling Screenplay & Hot Property. He is also a script consultant.
Contact Chris at Keanewords.com or email him at Keanewords@aol.com
He teaches and lectures at Harvard, LMU, Emerson College, Harvard, NYU, and Smithsonian Institution.