THE SECRET OF SEQUENCES
BY
CHRISTOPHER KEANE
How do I write thee? Let me count the ways.
Yeah, well, I’d rather write them than count them. But unfortunately some things take study and time and laborious exercise in the art of looking at a screenplay from different angles.
Three of them.
1. Angle One: You can look at the screenplay from the broad perspective: the story itself, the whole shebang, the biog noodle. From beginning to end. You can write it in a four-page mini-treatment, the four most exasperating, and necessary, four pages you’ll write ever.
Page One is the action of Act 1, down to and including Plot Point 1, on page 25, more or less.
Pages Two and Three hold the action of Act II, down to and including Plot Point II, in which the central character is at his or her lowest point in the story.
Page Four is action of Act III, down to and including the climax.
This is the overview.
2. Angle Two: You can look at a screenplay from a narrower perspective, the scene-by-scene movement from beginning to end. How one scene folds into the next, carrying with each scene emotion, motivaton, conflict, tension. Each scene is like a little screenplay.
It has a beginning, middle and end. The characters that walk into the scene carry with them agendas that do not match up with or agree with the others characters and their agendas. Thus we have conflict and tension.
So we’re moving from Angle One, the general, to Angle Two, the Specific.
3. Angle Three is where I wanted to get to in this long, roundabout way. Angle three is the in between angle. It’s not as broad as One or as narrow as Two. Angle Three has to do with The Sequence.
A lot of screenwriters write their screenplays using sequences right from the start. A Sequence is a cluster of scenes that usually take place in one general location, or area. The scenes all have to do with a specific event. Or place. Or moment.
Sequences are like strings of interconnected floating barges sailing across the sea of your story.
Each sequence has a beginning, middle or end. The sequence has a specific purpose. Like the opening Wedding Sequence in The Godfather. This sequence sets up the entire movie. We meet just about everybody we need to meet. The Family.
There are chase sequences, and more chase sequences.
In your screenplay you have a number of sequences. Watch out for them. They will save you so much time, make your work so much better. Learn the secret of sequences.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
ARC, WHO GOES THERE
ARC, WHO GOES THERE?
By Christopher Keane
Let me try to clear up for some of you out there what a CHARACTER ARC is. Everybody bandies about character arcs as if they know what they’re talking about, and some of them do. Some of them don’t.
One of the best definitions I’ve heard is this: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story.
That’s all well and good. He decides to take a bath. She decides to kill her mother-in-law. He decides to kill her mother-in-law. She decides to run a bath to drown out the sound of murder.
Lets narrow down that definition: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act high stakes decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story. A decision making process that involves the choice between two very different and equally balanced options. About five of them per script.
That’s better. It’s the toughest decisions a character has to make, the ones that will give the character his or her character. The decisions that are not overloaded on one side or the other that the writer makes so obvious and predictable that the story flattens out and the character becomes a vehicle for the writer’s lazy half-assed attempt to get across a point.
That leads to the question: What is character?
Character is the behavior that a character shows as a result of his decisions over the course of the story. It’s the writer’s job, let’s call obligation, to balance the choices in such a way that the character, at the most critical moment under pressure, has to make.
Let’s say that the character has five such high stakes, high-pressured decisions during the course of the story. And if one were to study the progression of these decision one might see that the character has, during this time and under these given set of circumstances, significantly changed his or her way of thinking and acting.
A weak woman becomes strong; a confident man turns to jelly.
For instance let’s say a Seattle brain surgeon is rushing to a hospital where he has to perform emergency surgery on, say, a South African heart surgeon who is world renowned for his medical breakthroughs. The South African will not survive unless our Seattle doc operates within the next hour.
Our Seattle brain surgeon is the only man alive who can possibly save this South African, and let’s face it, if successful, which the brain surgeon believes he will be, his own reputation will be greatly enhanced.
Native American tribes inhabit many areas of the Great Pacific Northwest. It just so happens that as the Seattle brain surgeon speeds along a remote highway towards the hospital to perform his emergency operation he spies a couple of Native American women in an old sedan by the side of the road. The sedan is on fire. The Native American women are trapped inside, hands pressed against the glass, crying out.
It won’t be long before they’re engulfed in flames and perish. The brain surgeon is the only one around and he knows it. The question is: will he stop to save the women and certainly lose the famous doctor, or will he push on to the hospital and leave the women to die.
He has a split second to decide.
These are the kind of critical decisions that your character must face in order to show what she’s made of. If her decision comes in the beginning of the story and she chooses to leave the women and go to the hospital, she has room to become someone else by the end of the story. Or if she stops to save the women and the famous doctor dies, she has room to grow and become a different woman by the end of the story.
It’s your decision, your character. Look at the pressure this woman is under. Look at the elements inherent in each decision, the prejudices, the self-interest to consider, the consequences. And they all roll through her in no time at all.
Hit the break or hit the accelerator. These character elements can, and will, turn a mediocre story into a memorable one.
It’s called the character arc. Try it. It should improve your script
===============================================
Chris Keane has written many books, originals and adaptations of others’ books and his own into movies and TV series. Among his books are three on screenwriting. His latest – ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make – will be published in April 2008.
Chris is also a script consultant. See his website – Keanewords.com – for more information.
By Christopher Keane
Let me try to clear up for some of you out there what a CHARACTER ARC is. Everybody bandies about character arcs as if they know what they’re talking about, and some of them do. Some of them don’t.
One of the best definitions I’ve heard is this: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story.
That’s all well and good. He decides to take a bath. She decides to kill her mother-in-law. He decides to kill her mother-in-law. She decides to run a bath to drown out the sound of murder.
Lets narrow down that definition: the moment by moment, scene by scene, act by act high stakes decision-making process a character goes through during the course of the story. A decision making process that involves the choice between two very different and equally balanced options. About five of them per script.
That’s better. It’s the toughest decisions a character has to make, the ones that will give the character his or her character. The decisions that are not overloaded on one side or the other that the writer makes so obvious and predictable that the story flattens out and the character becomes a vehicle for the writer’s lazy half-assed attempt to get across a point.
That leads to the question: What is character?
Character is the behavior that a character shows as a result of his decisions over the course of the story. It’s the writer’s job, let’s call obligation, to balance the choices in such a way that the character, at the most critical moment under pressure, has to make.
Let’s say that the character has five such high stakes, high-pressured decisions during the course of the story. And if one were to study the progression of these decision one might see that the character has, during this time and under these given set of circumstances, significantly changed his or her way of thinking and acting.
A weak woman becomes strong; a confident man turns to jelly.
For instance let’s say a Seattle brain surgeon is rushing to a hospital where he has to perform emergency surgery on, say, a South African heart surgeon who is world renowned for his medical breakthroughs. The South African will not survive unless our Seattle doc operates within the next hour.
Our Seattle brain surgeon is the only man alive who can possibly save this South African, and let’s face it, if successful, which the brain surgeon believes he will be, his own reputation will be greatly enhanced.
Native American tribes inhabit many areas of the Great Pacific Northwest. It just so happens that as the Seattle brain surgeon speeds along a remote highway towards the hospital to perform his emergency operation he spies a couple of Native American women in an old sedan by the side of the road. The sedan is on fire. The Native American women are trapped inside, hands pressed against the glass, crying out.
It won’t be long before they’re engulfed in flames and perish. The brain surgeon is the only one around and he knows it. The question is: will he stop to save the women and certainly lose the famous doctor, or will he push on to the hospital and leave the women to die.
He has a split second to decide.
These are the kind of critical decisions that your character must face in order to show what she’s made of. If her decision comes in the beginning of the story and she chooses to leave the women and go to the hospital, she has room to become someone else by the end of the story. Or if she stops to save the women and the famous doctor dies, she has room to grow and become a different woman by the end of the story.
It’s your decision, your character. Look at the pressure this woman is under. Look at the elements inherent in each decision, the prejudices, the self-interest to consider, the consequences. And they all roll through her in no time at all.
Hit the break or hit the accelerator. These character elements can, and will, turn a mediocre story into a memorable one.
It’s called the character arc. Try it. It should improve your script
===============================================
Chris Keane has written many books, originals and adaptations of others’ books and his own into movies and TV series. Among his books are three on screenwriting. His latest – ROMANCING THE A-LIST: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make – will be published in April 2008.
Chris is also a script consultant. See his website – Keanewords.com – for more information.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Impatience Kills
Impatience Kills!
Christopher Keane
Impatience is a virus, a plague among writers. It crawls into writers'
brains and screams: Hurry Up! If you don't send the script off NOW, they
won't want it. They’ll forget it’s coming. They won’t remember me.
So what if it needs another pass. So what if I haven’t gone deep with
the characters and the story has a couple of holes - the sheer
brilliance of it will override those minor discrepancies.
Or there’s this one: It's been two weeks and I haven’t heard from them.
Hell, call them up, everyday. Bug them. You're a star; they just don't
know it yet. Bugging them will make them pay attention. Don't hesitate!
Pick up the phone, dammit! Crank up the e-mail. Make yourself known!
What are impatient people called? I mean, besides that. Yes! The big
three: Arrogant, Insensitive and Overbearing. Impatience is a huge
career stopper. What causes it: usually, stress. How to stop it: walk
away, or count to ten, or lower your voice.
Impatience has been my plague. I have hounded agents. One of them
actually bought me a plane ticket to Mexico City just to get me out of
town while he negotiated my deal. Funny story? Not from the agent’s POV.
I was a major pain in the ass, to him and to me, and to the process. I
chalked up one more notch in my reputation as being “difficult.” I left
the top agency in town because the agents were not getting it done fast
enough. On /my/ time.
Of course when I think back they were moving at ram speed, but I was at
double ram. I expected their work on my behalf to catch up to my
expectations. This particular agent was probably glad to see me go.
I have also committed impatience’s greatest crime:
Welcome to a horror story: I have a friend, an MD who teaches at
Harvard. He had been working on a novel for three years, for at least
three hours every day. One day he calls me up and asks me to read the
manuscript quickly, again. Why?
His brother is a very good friend of Random House’s Sonny Mehta, one of the publishing industry’s handful of most powerful people. Sonny Mehta has promised to read my friend’s book, as a personal favor to his brother.
I say I will read it over the weekend and give notes. My MD friend
brings me the book Thursday. I go to work. By Sunday I have read it and
call my friend. I tell him it’s excellent, which it is, but that he
has places that need to be fixed.
They will take some time but they will make the book what it should and can be - an excellent literary effort to which anyone, I felt, would give substantial consideration. And he has Sonny Mehta who will, if he likes it, get it published.
To make these changes, I felt, would take, at the
clip my friend works, perhaps two months. There is a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, I hear, “Ah, Chris, when I brought you the book on Thursday I had another copy, which I took to the Federal Express and sent off to Sonny Mehta.”
Now there was a pause on my end, during which I tried to calm mysell. I say, “It’s not bad enough that I spent three days working on this for nothing, but you might have killed your big goose.”
Sonny Mehta read the book over the weekend and in a short conciliatory
note stated that the book was indeed promising but not far enough along
to justify him passing it along to one of his hard working editors.
Would Sonny Mehta have published it after my friend spent two more
months on it? That’s not the point. My friend will never know,
because in this writing business, as they say, you only really get one
shot at the top. For a time my friend was paralyzed by the rejection.
Then he abandoned the work totally because it reminded him of his own
terrible failure.
We’ve all heard the reasons behind why people are impatient.
Self-righteousness. Fear of being taken advantage of. Hysterical
childhoods brought forward. Extremely low esteem. Egoism leading to
unwarranted self-worth. Unworthiness leading to self-sabotage. All true.
So what? If you’ve got it, you need to lose it.
I have tried to learn to wait. I have occupied myself with other things
so that I don’t check my messages and e-mail every two minutes. It’s not
easy. I have hyperventilated over what I imagine others are doing with
my script, when it fact they have fifty other things to do before they
get to it, including taking out the garbage.
I have driven myself crazy imagining every bad scenario imaginable and
linking them all to the fate of my screenplay.
I have been constantly shocked when someone tells me she is sorry she
didn’t call me back yesterday but _she was out sick_. She might have
added; and I’m _really_ sorry that it had nothing to do with your
script. Impatience as paranoia.
I have been convinced that the agent or producer is literally checking
the mail room at ten minute intervals looking for my script, and getting
pissed off at me, thus ruining my career forever, for my not having
delivered it as promised.
If I send it, driven by some fear or other, it usually means that I have
sent work with undernourished characters and flimsily plot lines running
through derivative stories. And I wonder why it hasn’t been picked up?
It’s all about impatience.
What’s the hurry? Why can’t you stand delay? What are you going to do
for yourself? Use patience in all things. Why?
Because *impatience kills*!
Chris Keane has a new screenwriting book coming in April, 2008: Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), Dangerous Company (CBS)
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, Emerson College, NYU, Smithsonian Institution.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
Current Projects: Lost Light, feature for producer Peter Janney.
Divine Justice TV series pilot.
Antinous Feature
Christopher Keane
Impatience is a virus, a plague among writers. It crawls into writers'
brains and screams: Hurry Up! If you don't send the script off NOW, they
won't want it. They’ll forget it’s coming. They won’t remember me.
So what if it needs another pass. So what if I haven’t gone deep with
the characters and the story has a couple of holes - the sheer
brilliance of it will override those minor discrepancies.
Or there’s this one: It's been two weeks and I haven’t heard from them.
Hell, call them up, everyday. Bug them. You're a star; they just don't
know it yet. Bugging them will make them pay attention. Don't hesitate!
Pick up the phone, dammit! Crank up the e-mail. Make yourself known!
What are impatient people called? I mean, besides that. Yes! The big
three: Arrogant, Insensitive and Overbearing. Impatience is a huge
career stopper. What causes it: usually, stress. How to stop it: walk
away, or count to ten, or lower your voice.
Impatience has been my plague. I have hounded agents. One of them
actually bought me a plane ticket to Mexico City just to get me out of
town while he negotiated my deal. Funny story? Not from the agent’s POV.
I was a major pain in the ass, to him and to me, and to the process. I
chalked up one more notch in my reputation as being “difficult.” I left
the top agency in town because the agents were not getting it done fast
enough. On /my/ time.
Of course when I think back they were moving at ram speed, but I was at
double ram. I expected their work on my behalf to catch up to my
expectations. This particular agent was probably glad to see me go.
I have also committed impatience’s greatest crime:
Welcome to a horror story: I have a friend, an MD who teaches at
Harvard. He had been working on a novel for three years, for at least
three hours every day. One day he calls me up and asks me to read the
manuscript quickly, again. Why?
His brother is a very good friend of Random House’s Sonny Mehta, one of the publishing industry’s handful of most powerful people. Sonny Mehta has promised to read my friend’s book, as a personal favor to his brother.
I say I will read it over the weekend and give notes. My MD friend
brings me the book Thursday. I go to work. By Sunday I have read it and
call my friend. I tell him it’s excellent, which it is, but that he
has places that need to be fixed.
They will take some time but they will make the book what it should and can be - an excellent literary effort to which anyone, I felt, would give substantial consideration. And he has Sonny Mehta who will, if he likes it, get it published.
To make these changes, I felt, would take, at the
clip my friend works, perhaps two months. There is a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, I hear, “Ah, Chris, when I brought you the book on Thursday I had another copy, which I took to the Federal Express and sent off to Sonny Mehta.”
Now there was a pause on my end, during which I tried to calm mysell. I say, “It’s not bad enough that I spent three days working on this for nothing, but you might have killed your big goose.”
Sonny Mehta read the book over the weekend and in a short conciliatory
note stated that the book was indeed promising but not far enough along
to justify him passing it along to one of his hard working editors.
Would Sonny Mehta have published it after my friend spent two more
months on it? That’s not the point. My friend will never know,
because in this writing business, as they say, you only really get one
shot at the top. For a time my friend was paralyzed by the rejection.
Then he abandoned the work totally because it reminded him of his own
terrible failure.
We’ve all heard the reasons behind why people are impatient.
Self-righteousness. Fear of being taken advantage of. Hysterical
childhoods brought forward. Extremely low esteem. Egoism leading to
unwarranted self-worth. Unworthiness leading to self-sabotage. All true.
So what? If you’ve got it, you need to lose it.
I have tried to learn to wait. I have occupied myself with other things
so that I don’t check my messages and e-mail every two minutes. It’s not
easy. I have hyperventilated over what I imagine others are doing with
my script, when it fact they have fifty other things to do before they
get to it, including taking out the garbage.
I have driven myself crazy imagining every bad scenario imaginable and
linking them all to the fate of my screenplay.
I have been constantly shocked when someone tells me she is sorry she
didn’t call me back yesterday but _she was out sick_. She might have
added; and I’m _really_ sorry that it had nothing to do with your
script. Impatience as paranoia.
I have been convinced that the agent or producer is literally checking
the mail room at ten minute intervals looking for my script, and getting
pissed off at me, thus ruining my career forever, for my not having
delivered it as promised.
If I send it, driven by some fear or other, it usually means that I have
sent work with undernourished characters and flimsily plot lines running
through derivative stories. And I wonder why it hasn’t been picked up?
It’s all about impatience.
What’s the hurry? Why can’t you stand delay? What are you going to do
for yourself? Use patience in all things. Why?
Because *impatience kills*!
Chris Keane has a new screenwriting book coming in April, 2008: Romancing the A-List: Writing the Script the Big Stars Want to Make. He has also written The Hunter (Paramount), Dangerous Company (CBS)
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, Emerson College, NYU, Smithsonian Institution.
Christopher Keane
1137 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
10525 Selkirk Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90077
310.474.1951
617.283.6161 cell
Lectured on the businesses of film and publishing and promotional aspects of each (with self-help, How To Communicate, How to Build and to Avoid Storytelling Techniques in the Workplace - at The Smithsonian Institution, Harvard, Emerson College Graduate School. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Press Club, Ministre de Culture, Paris; Rhode Island School of Design; Brown University; NYU Tisch School., Lions Clubs, Maui Writers Conference/ 10 years) and at The Los Angeles Expo (Star-Speaker), and various libraries, writers conferences, universities and colleges throughout the US, Europe, and SA
Memberships: Writers Guild of America, PEN, Authors Guild
Publications & Film Credits:
Film and TV: The Hunter (Paramount feature)
Dangerous Company (WB/CBS)
The Huntress (USA hour long series)
Books on Screenwriting:
How to Write A Selling Screenplay (Random House)
Hot Property (Penguin)
Romancing the A-List (Michael Weise Productions) (Apr. 2008)
Books: Lynda (Harcourt Brace)
The Maximus Zone (Harcourt Brace)
The Tour (Free Press)
The Heir (William Morrow)
The Hunter (Bantam)
The Huntress (William Morrow)
Christmas Babies (Pocket)
Current Projects: Lost Light, feature for producer Peter Janney.
Divine Justice TV series pilot.
Antinous Feature
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