Scriptwrangler

Foot-Foot and Butt-Butt

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:25:00 +0000

I was exercising my god-given right as a writer to eavesdrop the other day when I stumbled upon a conversation. It made me think of a quote from Mark Twain:

"The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it."

I actually remembered the quote as its converse: that a grave tale is best told with humor. That's just me.

As I sipped my coffee, a laid back Californian-style hipster chatted with his very east coast fiancee. His dog, Foot-Foot, had eaten the strap off her handbag. It was a disaster. Foot-Foot was a terror, and clearly jealous of the hold the fiancee had on her master. The young man was of the no-problem-without-a-solution type. They spend Saturday finding a new handbag, make an adventure of it. She'd be happy. I think he was stoned.

She was not convinced. There seemed to be a bigger problem in general: dogs. She would brook no opposition, least of all from canines. Failure to prosecute Foot-Foot for his crime was a serious issue. Just as serious: the very name of the young man's second dog: Butt-Butt.

Now, these are great dog names, if you ask me. You can see Foot-Foot, Butt-Butt, and the young man having a great time, making a mess of the kitchen, chasing slobber-covered tennis balls, barking at passing fire engines. It all makes sense.

But she was putting her foot down. She doesn't like slobber-covered tennis balls, or scratches on the door, or midnight pee runs. The man tried to lighten the moment by joking that he planned to get a third dog and call it Nut-Nut.

Like I said, I think he was stoned.

Was she expected to call out to Nut-Nut in public? What about when her parents came to visit? You sensed that Nut-Nut would have complete power to chew up any accessory. She wasn't about to shout Nut-Nut out loud. It was completely unacceptable.

Nut-Nut quickly rose up, like a scowling head of Putin in the airspace over Alaska. The issue of Nut-Nut became, you sensed, the main conflict that would either break this relationship, or test it for many years to come. The young man had never realized just how serious this was. It was incomprehensible to him. But it was becoming very clear now. The plot was moving forward. We'd learned more about the characters. More importantly, the characters were learning more about each other.

Many new writers of drama do their best to shove as much drama as possible into a dramatic scene. It's as if the presence of a joke (or, god forbid, a humorous premise) will shake the scene's gravitas to its core. Scripts move from unrelenting conflict to unrelenting conflict... that's what the screenwriting books tell you to do, right? Never let up? It can very quickly become unrelentingly monotonous.

You'll find higher highs to contrast with your lower lows if you allow your audience to breathe, to laugh, to enter the situation. Tell a story, enjoy yourself, and find what sounds true.

Thought for the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:38:00 +0000

"Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions -- what we do -- that we are happy or the reverse. All human happiness and misery take the form of action."

Aristotle

Misbehavior and Desire

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:33:00 +0000

There's a basic structure to almost every movie you've ever seen. It doesn't matter if the movie you're watching is Killer Klowns from Outer Space or 3:10 to Yuma or Kung Fu Panda. It doesn't actually matter if it's The Godfather or a commercial for laundry detergent. There's a common structure there. It's present in 'serious' indie stuff and Disney films (and their spoofs).

Why is the structure there? Because people expect it. It's a chicken and egg thing. It's vaguely disturbing how prevalent the three-act structure is. If I were in a better mood, I'd find it endlessly fascinating just how productive this structure is. I'd wonder if humans weren't hard-wired for this story structure. I'd go on and on about how formulaic films do everything they can to fit into the structure, while more challenging films merely use the structure to help create new and better story. But it's been a long week, so it's just vaguely disturbing right now.

What is this structure, exactly? You can find a description of it in Aristotle's Poetics. You can find reams of paper written on the hero's journey, the writer's journey, George Lucas' journey. Syd Field will bisect the middle act, and make three acts into four. Individuals throughout history have produced incredibly insightful and careful analyses of the basic story structure that has fueled drama and literature for as long as we've existed.

If you're not up for a big research project right now, let me sum it up for you. Your hero walks carefree and/or miserable through the equilibrium of his life until wham -- something throws everything out of balance. The hero reacts indignantly -- as any of us would. But things get worse -- he can't get away from the plot. Just has to power through. Things start looking up -- our guy even learns a bit about himself -- but it lasts just long enough to find a bigger problem. "Hey -- here's something I didn't know I could do!" he thinks. And of course, he can't actually do it. It's all going to hell now. The train's riding down the tracks, the alien forces are massing overhead, or you find yourself facing a debate in front of 100 million people right after humiliating yourself with a transparent political stunt. But lo and behold, you learn how to escape what got you into trouble in the first place. You overcome it. You gain knowledge. You gain love. You gain That Which Means Most to You. Or, in some dreadful cases, you don't.

How does this all fit together? Well, the character is usually constructed from two main elements: the goal of the story and the inability to reach that goal. That inability is usually neatly summarized as a flaw or misbehavior. Even in fairly complex characters there's one main defining trait because it helps the audience recognize the character.

Now why on earth would that appeal to human beings? Like it or not, we're all tied up with our own misbehaviors and desires. We're tied up in our own cycles. We usually are responsible for these cycles because of some behavior we can't get past. We drink too much. We surf the web too much. We avoid conflict, or race toward it. We're bullies, or we're wimps. We've got a basic nature, and that means the stories we experience tend to repeat themselves. Every Tuesday afternoon I teach for six hours. Every Tuesday morning about 10 AM I'm frantic with worry about what I forgot to do. Every Tuesday at 10:15 I remember it's eating and bathing that I've forgotten. At 10:45 I'm running out the door to catch the train. It doesn't matter how much I plan. I'm bound to do it.

Think about it.

There's something hugely cathartic about people escaping their cycles. Watching others do it is powerful. It's rare in real life. But it's a gorgeous thing when it does. Maybe that's all movies are really about.

Prodigal Sons

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:25:00 +0000

A few years ago I met Kim Reed at a screenwriters' conference. She was working on a story about three siblings: a high school football star and class president who underwent a sex change, a gay man, and an adopted brother who found out he was the son of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Naturally, I assumed this was a rather far-fetched feature.

It's not. Prodigal Sons is a documentary about the true story of Kim's family, and it's bursting onto the indie documentary scene after an incredibly successful debut at the Telluride Film Festival.

Here's what Variety had to say. If you get a chance, check it out.

Getting Unreasonable with 'em

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:19:00 +0000

I was rooting around this morning for pithy online resources for my Creative Writing students. This is the kind of activity which engenders far more ambivalence in me than you might expect. I'm not down with pithy advice to writers. I'm firmly of a mind that writing is more or less like teaching a rider to become the horse. You have to learn to to let the animal take the reins. But that's much too frightening a reality to teach new writers, and so I spent the morning looking for comforting baby steps that'll keep them writing long enough to find out the dirty bits themselves. And I stumbled upon this in an article entitled Five Tips to Avoiding Total Disaster as a Novelist:

Tip #5. Ignore all reasonable sounding advice like “write about what you know,” “read as much as you can,” or “try to write every day.” If you need to hear this advice you are in the wrong game. But more importantly, reasonableness won’t get the job done. One day in an ice-stricken back alley in Boston I saw a fat little Irishman beat the daylights out of four larger, stronger assailants. When it was over, and it was over astonishingly quickly, he brushed himself off and said simply, “I had to get unreasonable with ‘em.” Unless you are willing to face the unreasonable in yourself -- unless you are willing to entertain some strange notions (and deal with them when they stick around) -- unless you are willing to get lost, confused and even terrified -- then what you’re doing won’t have any meaning. The famous device of conflict upon which all stories are supposed to hinge starts within the writer. You are all the characters in your dreams and so too with a novel. You can’t put your creations into jeopardy or into embarrassing or miraculous situations without going there yourself, and that is not a sensible ambition for a grown person to have. As a writer who has made more mistakes than most, my goal above all else is to be very, very unreasonable.

I'm less than convinced about some of his other tips. As he says, spending years collecting odd material and playing with weird writing styles is absolutely a waste of time. He's entirely correct. I just wish it wasn't entirely necessary to the development of a writing style. I nevertheless hold author Kris Saknussemm in a high regard. You can find out more about his novel Zanesville here.

Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Mr. Gary is playing in the ATA Film and Video Festival Friday, October 3. If you're in San Francisco, check it out! It's in a pretty decent line up of underground and indie films. Well worth a day away from the multiplex, if I do say so myself.

Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show is the story of Flora, an elderly shut in who calls in to a surreal Dr. Phil-like radio personality and ends up controlling the universe. It's shot in a set designed by Megan Wilson.

Immediate and Real, like a Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Writing is one of those things nobody really understands. We can build devices that shoot our thoughts and words off across great distances. But we can't really understand how we form those thoughts, or how they're rebuilt in the mind of the listener. We're in the middle of some information age -- be it evolution, revolution or death spiral -- and somehow we still dawdle around wondering if words came first or images or meaning. Sooner or later you're right back praying to the muses, just like the Greeks a couple millenia ago.

Things get no easier when you try to build a life around writing. You think you get your head around it, then it humbles you again. You dare to 'teach' it -- and wham, there's always something more. You foolishly rush into the profession of writing, and there you are with your toolbox full of plot and character and elements of drama, standing dumbfounded by the monster in front of you. Writing is like love. It pays to recognize ahead of time that you'll be regularly dumbfounded.

I've settled on the comfortingly obtuse idea that our brains are basically quantum machines. We bring things into being by observing them, by making choices about them, by pointing our intention at them. It explains to me why a character that I've constructed roughly out of a couple basic elements can just start chattering back at me one day. There's a real act of creation here. It doesn't matter that the character isn't standing there in front of you. Apparently we can't directly experience seven of the ten major dimensions anyway. What's another protagonist or two?

There's a lot of research implying that as far as the brain is concerned, dreams and memory are pretty much the same as actual experience. "Show, don't tell" indeed.

Play/Work/Screenplay/Scene Work

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:28:00 +0000

I'm of the belief that you're not truly a writer until you've been dumped for shouting "I'm working!" at a loved one through a door as you stare at an empty page one time too many. Writing is work.

I won't bore you with the old chestnut that writing is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, because you've heard it before. But it is true.

I know that writing is several kinds of work. From planning it out to developing characters to revising and editing to ruthless self-examination to god-knows-what the next script will demand of me. Few jobs require as many different skills as writing does. And I'm not even counting the business end here.

Writing is work. Writing wears you out. Writing builds muscles. Writing is The Man. Some days you need a few beers and burgers just to feel normal again afterward. I've done every imaginable job from Fedex courier to cab driver to teacher to manager to waiter at snotty, understaffed restaurants. Writing is the hardest.

So don't look at me funny when I tell you that writing is play.

Writing is play. Writing has to be play. To wit:

You can plan a screenplay to within an inch of its life. I mean this. While you must plan out your script if you hope to get anywhere, you can also kill a script by overplanning it. Where's the balance?

I know I've hit the limit on planning when I stop finding toys to play with. I plan to increase my enjoyment. I plan to find scenes I want to write and characters that will surprise me. I plan to take a trip that I want to take. I plan ahead. I plan to be surprised. I plan to be happy.

I used to plan for careful symmetry. I used to plan for Syd Field. I used to plan for meaning, for significance, for something literary.

Now I plan to tell stories. In a shockingly straightforward kind of way, that's all most storytellers really want to do.

Last night I was watching The Seventh Seal. For those of you not familiar with Ingmar Bergman's opus, it's the story of a crusader's return to a Sweden ravaged by the Black Death. I didn't actually choose to watch it. The boyfriend wanted to, and it seemed like a reasonable alternative to the unbearable pathos that Brooke Knows Best inevitably brings on.

What caught me up was the scene where the traveling band of actors is singing this very silly song about sheep laying eggs and hens meowing while Death goes for a walk on the beach. Off behind the stage, the actor who plays Death is busy seducing an entirely willing milkmaid. And I realized just how much fun Bergman -- yes, Bergman -- must have gotten from putting this all together. The Seventh Seal stopped being something you're supposed to watch. Something very heavy became very light.

How do you apply something like this to the work you've got in front of you?

I was coaching a student on building climaxes before the all-too-numerous act breaks in a Movie of the Week script the other day. It's one of those things that seems terribly complex until you get the hang of it. (Then it's a bit too boring/restrictive for words). And I remember back -- way, way back -- to when I was a grad student, and a friend visited me from the Soviet Union. He'd never seen a commercial in his life.

We were watching a movie of the week. He didn't speak English, and I was providing a kind of running translation. Just as we reached the first act break, the movie of course went to commercial. What? "What the $%^$?! Who is this woman on the TV? And why is she having an orgasm folding her laundry?!" How could anyone do something so mean-spirited, so tricky, so evil as to build the tension then try to sell you detergent?

I still don't have a good answer to those questions. But I don't think I could write an MOW without thinking of him.

Changing "The Narrative"

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:57:00 +0000

I do my best to avoid topics that will likely turn off readers. I want everyone to feel welcome here, whether we agree or disagree. It's nothing more than a screenwriting blog, yo. My politics aren't the issue.

I have been thinking about starting a blog about how the fundamentals of drama are moving out into the broader world. Now that we're all connected by intertubes, it seems only natural that this tendency will grow. You can control how people see events and characters by framing their context. There are some extremely effective strategies for doing this, and they've been around for thousands of years. Who wouldn't access this knowledge?

This is why Republicans and Democrats are constantly screwing with each other's back stories. This is why they're always muddying each other's inciting events. On and on. And this is the only conceivable reason I can think for McCain choosing Sarah Palin.

Unless you're staunchly anti-abortion, you were probably scratching your head on this one. Google got a bit of a headache from everyone trying to figure out who she was. Apparently McCain met her once before this week, so he wasn't exactly sure who she was either. For that matter, she wasn't too clear on what the VP job entailed.

So even if you think she's a great pick, you have to ask yourself how she got picked.

From a screenwriting standpoint it does make sense.

Old screenwriters love to sit around and talk about 'setting traps'. How do you do this? McCain's rewriting the narrative to make it more difficult for Obama. He's setting traps. It's not how well known she is, or what she stands for. Her main asset as a trap has more to do with how powerless and out of her element she is, in a way.

To wit: Obama attacks her for being inexperienced. McCain keeps the 'inexperienced' meme in the narrative. Obama's slogging through sand here. It's not so much that he's defeating his own argument as making it harder for Obama to make his.

The Obama camp attacks her for getting her ex-brother-in-law fired -- i.e. allegations of corruption. McCain keeps the Tony Rezko issue in the debate.

Whenever Obama's surrogates reference the excitement at a first black president, they're now cutting against the excitement about a woman in the White House.

In other words, all the obvious attacks backfire. In other words, this is not a stupid or reckless choice. It's not a choice made from a position of power. But it is a crafty choice. When does a screenwriter make a choice like this?

A screenwriter builds a trap by giving the trap a number of analogous traits to the hero. And they give the trap to the opponent. The hero can't really attack the opponent without damaging someone like themselves. They have to find a way to get to their goal without endangering this person like them.

The trap is a hostage. And I think this may well lay at the base of McCain's thinking. This is Princess Leia captured by Darth Vader, in a way. It's Saddamn Hussein's 'human shields'.

Yes, I know. She's a gun-toting Christian hockey mom who appeals to the Republican base. I know. Could he really not come up with someone better to make his point? I don't think he's interested in having someone he views as an equal on the ticket. Yeah, she'll pull a couple Clinton voters. But I can't see them really crossing over in droves. No one can.

In my view, McCain's probably made a mistake here. He's basically reacting to the hero's plot. He's thinking like a villain. He's casting himself as the villain in Obama's narrative. And villains have a knack for not winning in the end.

Or maybe that's just in the movies.

Film Arts Finally Goes Under

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:46:00 +0000

Film Arts Foundation, after a long history of supporting the creation of independent film in San Francisco, has officially gone under. This is a surprise to no one. It's been hobbling along for years now. It was always one of those organizations that you felt should be and do more than it is. But, as a friend of mine put it, there's no 'there' there. You tried to be good and faithful member. You'd try to see how you could access them for help making a film. But they weren't as relevant as they could have been.

The news is that the SF Film Society is taking over their filmmaker services. This seems a bit of a stretch. SFFS puts on the San Francisco International Film Festival. They have fancy screenings and the like. But their mandate has been about bringing independent film to viewers, rather than working with the film community here. That's a real shift in culture for any organization, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

Why? There are a huge number of filmmakers in this town, with a great deal of energy. Most of them had run up against the limitations of FAF shortly after signing up for fiscal sponsorship. They ALL want a more vibrant center for filmmaking. I think most of them will give SFFS a shot.

Here's hoping, in any case. If you're interested in reading more, check out this article. It's well worth your time even if you aren't in San Francisco. There are a lot of changes going on in indie film. Some are great, some are not. The pattern is the same all over the country.

Immanuel Kant and Why You're Procrastinating

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:49:00 +0000

... or why we're both procrastinating, actually.

This is a posting about two of the most central elements to any rewarding writing life: intention and concentration. Just want to lay that out there before I crawl out onto a limb and hang myself.

Back in the 1700's The Enlightenment was in full swing. More happened to shape who we are in this century than most people realize. The arts, philosophy, science all snapped the tether that had leashed them to the church for over a millenium. Reason took hold and life in many ways became what we know today. This was the time of "I think therefore I am". It was the time of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the scientific method. It let Mozart write Don Giovanni one day and a mass the next. Isaac Newton and the apple. It was an astonishing time. Humanity saw itself in an entirely new light. Not all of it was good, of course. The French Revolution comes to mind.

There was an explosion of philosophers. Most of them can be seen as engaging in the untethering of thought from the church. It's like they're figuring out how to untie the boat from the dock. Some are cautious. Others not so much. 'I think therefore I am' replaces 'God made me, and therefore I am'. The Enlightenment allowed us to measure and manipulate knowledge without falling back on some mystical unknowable relying on faith.

Immanuel Kant was at the head of the pack. He came up with a couple swell ideas. We can't truly know the reality of other individuals -- only our perception of them. And we can't act on objects across a distance.

This adds up to a couple problems. First, well, you can't really know anyone else. There's a loneliness there. We're all separated out. It's depressing. This has been sinking in for a few centuries now.

Second, it makes no difference what we intend. By intention, I mean things like prayer. We can pray, but we're not affecting anything. Some supreme being may observe it, but we're not really doing anything but bouncing thoughts off our own craniums.

Like I said, it's depressing. (And by the way, I don't think he really even believed it. He just had to say it in order to win an argument.)

Frankly, I think Kant was dead wrong on this one. If he was right, we wouldn't be praying anymore. We'd probably distantly remember religion at best. We'd have truly outgrown it. If Kant was right, then quantum physics wouldn't exist. But it does.

If you have a positive mental attitude, you know the power of intention. If you meditate, you know the power of intention. If you worship in a church, you know the power of intention. If you psych yourself up before the big game, you're using intention. We all use intention in some way.

And of course, if you write, you know the power of intention. You can bring a world into being. You can create characters that breathe and act and doubt in the existence of their creator. Writing exercises that same capacity -- that muscle of thought. We all settle into cliches of 'being creative' and forget that we are truly creating something. And we're creating it out of pure intention. Readers recreate that world out of their own intention. So screw Kant.

Of course, intention requires concentration. And why is it so damn hard to concentrate? Why are you surfing the internets right now instead of writing that story? To my eyes, we're busy 'pinging'. We're putting out beacons, seeing if the real world is out there. We're fighting that loneliness. And most of the time we're losing. We're confirming everthing Kant

Writing is requires more concentration than the average individual has anymore. It works a capacity that our culture has largely forgotten we have. It takes work and practice to learn it again. So pray, intend, meditate, wish well, whatever it takes. Do it every day. And get writing.

The Dark Knight

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:55:00 +0000

I'm a little late out of the blocks on this one, so I'll keep it short. This is one of the films that managed to catch me up as a screenwriter and scare the pants off me. And it does it while largely centering on some fairly heady thematics about the nature of a hero in a society governed by random acts and raw power, an effective response to nihilism, America's deepening fear that it's about to eat itself, and, well... I'll stop now. The film searches for meaning in a way that few indie films dare without diminishing the blockbuster impact in the slightest. If you've got a budget of $185M, you can do both! It seems there are more and more big movies willing to mean something these days. It's a very good thing.

I'm overcoming my kneejerk reaction to John Truby here and linking to his post on The Dark Knight. I'd post a spoiler alert, but I think everybody's seen the movie anyway..

Check out Truby's article in Storylink.

Saturday Morning Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:38:00 +0000

I was thinking I'd make this somehow screenwriting-relevant with some comment about planning being a boon to creativity or the like, but I'll pass. Living in a head full of visions is always better than a head full of nuthin. Next time you grimace at revision, think of this video and how much beauty there is in erasing it all and starting again.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

For more on the artist, check out the website.

Finding Perspective and Clarity

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:42:00 +0000

One of the best screenwriting tips I ever heard was this: write your synopsis for a distracted teenager. And, if you're lucky enough to have a distracted teenager at your disposal, test it out on them.

Why is this valuable advice? Studio readers aren't distracted teenagers (we hope). Big producers, directors, and agents don't watch TV while simultaneously playing Nintendo, texting friends, and updating their myspace page.

But they are busy, distracted people. They live in the 21st century, and therefore have short attention spans and an unquenchable need for constant information input. This makes them anxious and lazy at the same time.

Writing for your probable reader, rather than your optimal reader, forces you to be incredibly clear about your story. It requires you to think it through so it

1. makes sense and

2. is something other people care about.

(I forgot about #2 for the first decade of my writing career. But enough about me.)

This is very difficult, of course. Many (mostly new) writers punt on the whole synopsis issue, and wait to write it only after they've written the script. I'm not sure why they do this. Why wouldn't you want to sort out story problems on one page instead of spending months writing and rewriting a hundred or more just to get it to make sense?

But if writing for a difficult teen just isn't your bag, then consider some other options.

I'm working on a script that's aimed at an adult audience. It's about family and loneliness and all that good stuff. I tried writing it for a child. I made it a fairy tale.

What happens? The same thing that happens when you talk to a child: you break things down into simpler and simpler chunks. Often there's no way around the honesty that arises out of that process. You have to explain things carefully, and lay them out gently. My boyfriend's 6-year-old niece once froze me with the question, "Why do you and he sleep in the same bed?" Then I got on the kid level and answered, "Because he's my favorite person in the whole world." And she smiles and runs off to play. It's that simple. And it's true.

Do that with your synopsis and you're liable to find what you're really writing about, and why it matters. Your characters hew to type a bit. All your three-act gobbledygook transforms into some beautiful archetype.

Next I tried imagining the story from the perspective of my main character. He's a fifty-year-old functional drug addict who's shut himself off from the planet. It's a daydream as he glazes over in front of the computer. Some more issues come into focus: why he'd suddenly sacrifice his safe existence; what he truly cares about and won't let himself have; what he WOULDN'T do that I've been trying to make him do.

It's a worthwhile exercise. It's also very close to what professional writers do regularly when they tailor their synopses, treatments, and query letters to specific individuals.

But for now, realize that this is a tooling for *creating* your story, rather than selling it. These shifts in contexts remind us just how infinite stories are. One slight shift in perspective, and it's all new again.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:25:00 +0000

Have you ever written a beautiful scene that mysteriously turns to nonsense overnight? Have you ever found a brilliant solution to a story problem one day, only to find it unbearably ridiculous the next?

If you have, you're in very good company. If you haven't, well -- the rest of us don't like you very much.

Insecurity it a part of writing, of course. But why does it happen so often? Why must it happen so often? My theory is that we go to bed as writers and wake up as editors. With the glow of inspiration behind you and a long slog ahead things start to look very different.

Getting past this unfortunate phenomenon is part of becoming a professional writer. Embracing this phenomenon is the mark of a happy writer.

Let me explain. When you wrote the scene or reworked the synopsis last night and all was light and brilliance, you were discovering something about your story. This morning when you were trying to re-enter writing head, you'd changed. You'd acquired the knowledge already. You assimilated it last night in a sea of beautiful, technicolor, exquisitely structured dreams. And this morning you woke a new person. You had new eyes. You had new knowledge. You had a new perspective. You woke a little bit smarter.

And it hurts. Thank god it's exactly where you want to be. You never would have had the opportunity to look down your nose at this brilliant idea otherwise.

Writing is all about gaining knowledge. It's about incremental gains and the occasional giant leap. When your inner editor puts down his coffee, gazes wearily out over his bifocals and asks, "What were you thinking," you need to answer honestly and fearlessly. There's a dialectic at work here. You need to respond. How do you respond?

When I'm developing a story, I work and rework synopses and loglines. I'll scratch out back stories and then slowly, maybe fiddle with some scene work. Somewhere along the line the synopses and so on start to build up on top of each other. One document decides to become the story encyclopedia. Things start to take on their own weight. I get away from my structure. I let things fall where they may. It starts to feel organic. I am enjoying the process.

But as I prepare to actually write the script, I see all the things that I've stepped away from. The SIMPLE structure. The conceit that conveys itself in a few words. The careful and straightforward construction of the main characters. Minor characters have stepped out of their place, and are mucking up the garden, building digressions and gossiping away about back story. It's a mess. The editor is asking unavoidable questions, and the writer is terrified.

But you pick yourself up and respond. You go back to your ideas about character -- the misbehavior and the goal -- and you start to apply it. You look at your 4.5-act mess through the eyes of your three-act model. You relax. You embrace the art. There's something speaking here, and it's not your conscious mind. The story is more important than your structure. The story had better be more than you had in your conscious mind.

I've wanted to write a posting like this for a while. I hit my readers over the head with the need for structure even when I don't remotely believe they somehow always magically hold the answers. Structure and careful back story development and good character hygiene and all that can make you productive, aware, even professional. They're a pretty good way of telling you when you're screwing up. But don't expect them to write the story for you.

Thought for the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:12:00 +0000

"As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."

William S. Burroughs
The Adding Machine

Half Nelson

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:09:00 +0000

I finally saw Half Nelson last night. A tremendous film about a white progressive teacher teaching black youth at an inner city school. As he devolves into a serious crack addiction, he clings to the only thing that won't die -- his unlikely friendship with a female student.

I'd actively avoided the film. When your main character is a white, well-meaning liberal teaching history in an inner city school, you're going to get preachy sooner or later. Add drugs and you'll have difficulty not sailing that ship into the shoals of escapism from white guilt. No matter how sensitive and well-drawn the characters, I just knew that sooner or later he'd be busting down a door and saving her from an evil drug lord.

But it wasn't like that. Not at all. It's a beautiful, well-written film. It can teach us a lot.

This movie had to deal with some heavy expectations (see above). The filmmakers clearly didn't want to make that film. So a lot of making it was AVOIDING that easy, hackneyed interpretation. I want to point to three issues here.

First, structure. The white liberal drug movie set in the inner city makes fairly straightforward use of the three-act structure. In other words, it's predictable. You'll see the well-meaning liberal teacher. You'll get a nice inciting event, act break, midpoint, blah blah blah. It'll be darkest before the dawn -- his students reecting him and running off to a life of crime and inhumanity. And he'll save the day. Yada yada.

So the writers had a task here. Subvert that. Subvert it quick. And keep subverting it. And use it too.

What do I mean?

The audience is EXPECTING these beats. You're expecting a high point, where it looks like the teacher might get off drugs and make things work. It doesn't come -- and so your pulled into the character. The events of the script are open: you can't necessarily predict where the plot is going, because it's more of a life shape. Things fall into place as they go. It's open to interpretation. When we see the teacher stepping over the line physically with the student at the dance, we learn to watch the moment, rather than check the mental box for midpoint.

The teacher will likely get fired. We know that. It isn't the point. The viewer is still cradled in the plot, but not as a passive observer. You need to watch carefully since you have no idea what's coming next.

Second, character. One of the most interesting moments for me was when the teacher DOES have the face off with the drug dealer over the fate of his friend and student. He knows he has no moral ground to stand on. But he's got to do something. And he says that: "I'm supposed to do something, right?!"

What happens? The drug dealer is also a complex character. He's not just evil. He is -- in his own way -- looking out for her when he brings her into his business. And when the teacher keeps fighting his losing battle to stop him, he realizes that they do share something. They both want what's best for her. He invites him into his house (and yeah, gets him high).

It's an incredibly dramatic shift. And while you'll find evidence of it on the written script page, it's really the hard work of some determined screenwriters to produce this set up in the script *up to* that moment.

Third, dialogue. How do a teacher and student speak about the teacher's drug habit in real life? They don't. And virtually none of the dialogue in this movie is driven by the screenwriter's desire to get the issue down on the page. It's driven by the set up. There's not a single moment of 'stop doing the drugs or you'll die'.

Many screenwriters would insist on that scene, or at least not see a way around it. What happens when you do away with it? The audience member wonders what's going on with the kid. They remember that fear of seeing your teacher in a non-school environment. They remember the first time they really saw into the world of adults. They remember when they lost a friend to something they couldn't stop. They remember feeling powerless in their own environment.

It's an astonishing thing when a movie can have us both dig that deep into our own past AND get us that involved in a character.

And isn't that why we go to see movies?

What's a Beat?

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:13:00 +0000

I apologize for jumping around a bit with my blogging. One week I'm dwelling on my own fairly esoteric musings, then switching over to very basic stuff the next. I'm sure I'm boring the working screenwriters and confusing the beginners. So, apologies to all.

Today's a day for the beginners with maybe a warm fuzzy moment of recognition for the more advanced readers as well.

What's a beat? Virtually anyone new to dramatic writing asks this question. And there are many answers. A beat is first and foremost a unit of drama. It's a pearl in the necklace. It's a step forward.

It's scalable. When talking about structure, screenwriters are talking about 'big' beats -- your act breaks and midpoint and low point and so on. When you're deep in scene work, a beat means the same thing it does to an actor. It's a shift in action, objective, or circumstance. It's the moment to moment shifts, the step by step modulations that make a scene work or fall flat.

A beat is universal. Everyone involved in drama talks about beats. It's a way of connecting your work to other people's efforts. You learn to find the beats very quickly. You know a beat when you see one.

It's a beat, as in music. Beats have to line up correctly. Beats define pacing. Beats create tension or excitement. Beats invite the audience into the song of your story.

A beat might be a line of dialogue. A beat can be a new shot. A beat can be action, or a simple, intuitive shift in a character's objective. A beat is what makes the story make sense moment to moment.

It's the hard stuff. Beats will always call bulls*** on what seemed like a good idea when you were working out your synopsis. Beats are what sell or sink your scene. If the reader just doesn't believe what's going on (or even if she isn't particularly engaged), there's usually a problem with the beats.

What's that problem? Usually the writer is forgetting (or ignoring) something that's perfectly obvious a beat or two before. A character is on the verge of starvation one moment, then chatting amicably about Augustine's use of Aristotle the next. Or a character's bent on wooing a beautiful girl one moment, then when given the perfect opportunity a few beats later, steals a car instead. We've all done it. It's inevitable. Reality is slippery. Stories are slippery. It's always more complex than we know starting out.

For me, screenwriting is about working out the big beats first -- in a careful synopsis I write and rewrite until I'm happy. Then I move down into smaller beats: getting each 'big' beat to work. And after I'm happy at that level, I'll get into the really tiny beats that make a script sing. It takes a lot of work. But it keeps you focused on where the audience is. It keeps you locked into a couple absolutely central issues that are too easily forgotten.

CHARACTER. Who is the character? How does he or she react? What's his misbehavior? Her overall goal?

RELATIONSHIP. What's the power dynamic between the characters? What's really going on beneath the words on the page? How well do they know each other? How do I communicate this to an audience?

OBJECTIVE. In almost every good scene, the characters' objectives are in conflict. Frequently one character doesn't understand the other character's objective. But you do. Write to make it clear.

WHERE. Where are they? Do you REALLY know where they are? What's going on? Work hard to make that space less cloudy. Make some good choices. You'll find the beats you're looking for in the comforts and obstacles inherent in the location. And you'll be grounding the audience in the space too. They'll feel it. They'll buy it. And that'll do more to sell your script than you expect.

You've no doubt heard a million times that a winning script reads quickly. Readers will read the entire thing in a couple houra. They'll eat it up, take it in, absorb it, and remember everything. Yeah, you need a brilliant idea to start. But you also need to get everything working beat to beat.

You can lose a reader in a moment. There's always a distraction. The moment something doesn't ring true they'll be up checking their email or putting on the stereo. The moment the action feels guided by the writer's objectives rather than the characters', the reader's thinking about their aching back, or the fact that they haven't been to the gym all week. One beat out of tune can do that.

And the moment they're thinking about that stuff, you're sunk.

Shameless Plugs

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:48:00 +0000

I'm consulting on a couple projects, and both are highlighted in the latest edition of SF 360. I'm on board as a script/creative consultant for Lise Swensons's Saltwater, which goes into production next February. And I've been helping out unofficially on Laura Lukitsch's Beard Club also.

Check out the article here.

Narration

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:31:00 +0000

It's hard to go to a movie these days without Morgan Freeman dropping in on the experience to tell you all about what the characters are thinking. While he's at it, he might be framing the audience question oh-so-neatly for us. Or priming the pump for the next big plot point. It's a drag.

Many, if not most, screenwriting classes harp away on how our art is visual storytelling, and that narration is really a crutch for weak and half-baked stories. It's having Morgan Freeman do the audience's job of exploring the characters. If screenwriting teachers are to be believed, Morgan Freeman would be better off reading his lines back to the screenwriter, rather than the audience. They're notes on what's not clear, and therefore what the screenwriter hasn't accomplished yet.

So why the heck is Morgan Freeman so busy these days?

There are many reasons. Many of the reasons have not so much to do with the screenwriter's choices. Producers risking bazillions of dollars on these mere words like to see the careful framing of the plot on the page they're betting on. They want to dumb it down. It's safer.

But that's not what this post is about.

What are the positives and negatives of narration in your script?

I've laid out the basic argument against. Narrators ARE a crutch for lazy writers (and early drafts). It's simply easier to tell the audience whats going on than to work up a really compelling set up and conflict that would affect them more deeply. I've critiqued hundreds of scripts with this problem.

To look at the same problem another way, a narrator just adds another level of mediation between the audience and the story. If Morgan's been busy through the first act, we won't quite buy into the action on the screen until he's added his two cents. Morgan always points to the right way to view the action on screen. And so there's less to explore.

So why would any self-respecting screenwriter include a narrator?

Narration is an extremely economical device. You can accomplish very cumbersome narrative tasks in a quarter page. You can set up hundreds of years of galactic history. You can make sure that the audience is all on board, even if any number might have missed a very clever act of deceit on your protagonist's part. You can recap and add something while doing it. You can, yes, frame the all important audience question of What Happens Next.

Good narration works hard to not merely shape, but to be a real contribution to the story. When the narrator comes into play in Magnolia, it deepens our understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of the story while keeping us on track with the multiple storylines. The audience has been moving along with a whirlwind of developments. Anything less clever would insult and bore them.

Some great narrators are characters in the movie. They offer a point of view on the material. They aren't necessarily credible. But you do have a clearer view on what's going on in at least one character's head -- and therefore a better betting angle on what might happen in the future. In other words, the narration becomes more a way to explore assumptions and objectives than it is to accomplish the ostensible task of keeping us up to date. The writer is doing a sleight of hand here. Nothing fancy here. Move along. But human beings pick up on this stuff. Evolution and entertainment rely on it. We're walking social calculators.

Sometimes a narrator is just dead wrong about events. This can be entertaining for an audience. No less a figure than Lev Tolstoy introduced this little trick when he had a little girl describe a ballet for us.

What happens if a little girl narrates the story of her parents' divorce? What happens if a little boy narrates the tale of his teacher's work travails? Or a gullible young man tells the story of his first coke deal? When narrators understand less about the plot than the audience, there's great potential for building emotional depth into the story. This requires that narrators do their narrating in the moment, of course.

In all these strategies, the writer chooses to add something to the story with a narrator, rather than simply relying on him to do the dirty work. Writing a good narrator isn't easy. It doesn't save work, but it can take you deep into a story if you're lucky enough to find one. And if you've got a crummy narrator in your script right now, listen to him or her too. There are probably some great notes in there on what your script is missing.

Lantana

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Just watched Lantana again. It's a tremendous Australian film starring Anthony Lapaglia. The plot revolves around the disappearance of a woman and how it reverberates through the lives of everyone from the detectives to her husband to her clients. It's one of those smart films we're always complaining don't get made anymore.

I like to watch movies a couple times. Even if I don't enjoy a film the second time, I get to learn something from it. It struck me halfway through that Lantana almost had to be based on a play. The characters all seem to be hanging out in the wings, ready to walk on stage in combinations you hadn't considered. There's an economy to it that allows you to believe that the cop's wife's shrink might run across his mistress's awkward fascination one night. And there's an awful lot of what I call 'pearly' dialogue: dialogue that's been worked and reworked until it shines with its own light. You see it in plays more than movies. Both the unlikely combinations and the unnatural pearliness of the dialogue can turn a viewer off in a movie. But the writer Andrew Bovell (who did in fact base the script on a play of his own) turns both to his advantage.

Not a lot of scripts really survive the transition from stage to screen. The two arts are much more different than they appear. One big difference, among many, is the audience. We too often assume movie audiences aren't that smart. We play down to them. We give them too much of a hand in understanding exactly how we want them to see the action. Genius can work there too, of course -- I've certainly marveled at it in this blog. But there's something incredibly refreshing about a playwright who intelligently and respectfully retunes his devices to work for film.

One thing to always watch for in ensemble pieces is transitions. Andrew Bovell does them remarkably well. You'll watch a scene coming to a head, a character coming to an unavoidable decision. And then you cut out and over to a new scene, and you see the *results* of that decision. The writer is employing dramatic lift -- and the audience lifts with him. The writer employs metonymy. One character walks alone at the end of a scene, her high heels clicking against the concrete. The next scene begins with a woman in heels walking down a road. Nothing said -- and everything explained. The audience naturally and unconsciously compares and contrasts the two characters. What affinity is there? Now the action is taking place in the viewer's head as much as anywhere.

We talk so much about drawing viewers in. Pages and pages are written about it. I've lectured about it. But when you get right down to it, it's really the simple, practical choices that come out of our *own* absorption in our work. Writers right now, all over the world, are overwriting scenes to express an affinity between two characters in opposite scenes. Don't be one of them. Stop, listen, remember why you're writing. And never assume the audience is dumber than you are.

Growing and Knowing Characters

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:44:00 +0000

I'm taking an acting class this summer. I did some acting once many years ago, but I'll always be an amateur. It's more or less a chance to challenge myself. I've been a little too complacent about writing and creation and drama. Too much teacher, not enough student.

Actors and writers come to know characters in very similar ways. You listen. You create. Actors, especially stage actors, spend a great deal of time working up back story. It helps them to find something analogous in themselves -- a hook to attach their own psyches to the character's. It's important to figure out if a character is, say, telling a joke to lob something over another character's head, or to entertain him, or to entertain himself, or...whatever. It's not always a simple answer. It's like life. There's usually several answers at the same time. Back story lets an actor engage that complexity in a visceral way.

Writers create back story too, of course. I've known writers who go through very organized processes to find it: writing out lists of the contents of pockets and carefully constructed childhood memories, and comprehensive psychologies and all that. I've never gotten that far with those methods. Yes, they can help. But I usually find my characters' back stories in my own journal. When I'm coming up with a new story, the journal shifts back and forth between me and my characters. It's messy. It takes more time. But it feels more organic to me. I can rely on what I've learned rather than consulting my notes.

If you've read my blog before, there's a good chance you've heard me go on and on about the value of a structured process to capture and streamline the chaos of creation.

And as I'd worked up this new story, I'd been following my own structured process very carefully. Each day I work up a new synopsis and logline from scratch. Each day I take what's in me, add a good night's sleep, and try to refine the conceit into something more compelling. Some days you make a lot of progress. Some days you make none.

After three or four weeks, I'll usually start building a kind of miniscript. I won't write dialogue. I won't write what I don't know. I'll concentrate on getting good, strong set ups down on the page. I'll make the conflict clear. I'll make the characters' objectives clear. I'll make my own goal clear. I'll work through an entire script that way.

But this time it didn't quite work that way. I kept writing and rewriting the synopsis. I kept wriggling around through back story in my journal. The characters, who *should* be leaping off the page (if I say so myself), just weren't.

I took the leap, and just decided to write. And while the characters did follow the basic shape of the synopsis, they inevitably had better ways of getting themselves in trouble than I'd found on my own. They spoke more sharply. They acted from their own problems.

And there were more problems than I counted on. I found myself writing quickly. But then I've been going back, more like an actor than a writer, and finding more back story. More ways of looking at them. Finding what's true.

And here I am, more student than teacher, humbled by what these characters have to offer me and the story. So much more than I imagined. I'm humble again. And I'm happier writing than I have been in a long time.

And yeah, I'll probably end up chucking out months of work. So what? It's a first draft. And I'm happy.

Ira Glass on Storytelling #3

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:58:00 +0000

Ira Glass of This American Life talks about starting out in radio storytelling. It's good advice for anybody still maturing as a writer. By the way, this is one of several youtube posts he made about storytelling. Check him out..

Wall-E

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:35:00 +0000

It's summertime, and that means I've been slacking off on the blog lately. Summer means a couple things in San Francisco: barbecues, swimming pools, oh wait. Summer means a couple things in San Francisco: fog, the smoke of distant forest fires, and the painful, self-loathing early stages of a new script. We're still looking at an ugly duckling this morning, but no doubt it'll turn into a beautiful swan later this afternoon. Summertime means crappy movies -- big, obvious Hollywood fare that makes you feel used as the multiplex spits you back out onto the street. And my partner has devoted all three Netflix films to the execrable work of French director Catherine Breillat. Sadistic, poorly written, egotistical stuff, if you ask me.

So naturally I was looking for a mindless little kids' movie, preferably in primary colors, to cheer myself up. Wall-E fit the bill. Right? Something simple. Rehashed. Safe. I mean we've all seen this plot a million times: a trash compacting robot still functioning 700 years after humans have abandoned a decimated Earth falls in love with a probe, finds a living plant, and pulls humanity's head out of its collectively obese ass. Not again! Ah, Pixar!

I want you to put your screenwriting cap on for a second and think about that. How easy would it be to make this script a complete and utter disaster? Forget about Wall-E for a moment, and ask yourself how YOU would approach the idea. And remember, it's for kids. Now try it with a main character that can't speak. On a barren landscape that looks like Wall-Mart exploded, with no one to communicate with except a cockroach for the first half of the movie. For the second half of the movie, we'll move the action to a giant space ship that looks like a multiplex, and attack consumerist culture for destroying the earth. And remember your prime directive -- entertain those kids!

Now take your hat off, and bow to the writer-director, Andrew Stanton. He's had his hand in most Pixar successes, from Finding Nemo to Monster's Inc. to Toy Story and Toy Story 2. He's a pretty smart guy.

How does he do it? How does this story not fall apart, drift into unbearable longing for the end of time, leave the kids wailing uncontrollably five minutes into the film?

Very, very careful application of some very clear rules of screenwriting. That's how. There are very few things that are 'proven' about writing. And half of them are in screenwriting. Take advantage of them. And don't tell the novelists!

You can map out the beats of the three-act structure with a remarkable degree of accuracy with this film. Wall-E meets the unachievable girl of his dreams right on time. She's a 42nd generation iPod, and she fires a death ray at him. Take that, Pretty Woman. Wanna lock your characters into the second act: she shuts down and awaits transport when he gives her the living plant. Want a big frying-pan-into-the-fire midpoint? Holding onto the OUTSIDE of a shuttle in outer space, he finds himself on the space cruiser that houses what's left of humanity. Want to see how all is lost at the end of the second act? Want to learn how to speed up the action as you approach the climax? Yep. It's all there.

Think about character. Wall-E can't really say much beyond an approximation fo his own name and his girlfriend's. But his misbehavior is incredibly clear. He's a roving trash collector. He collects. His problem? He's lonely. How does Stanton communicate that? Well, he's alone on a toxic earth. Sounds like a problem to me.

I could go on, but I won't. I usually grimace my way through a couple blockbusters a year, trying to allow myself to be somewhat surprised by the almost mathematically predictable story. Wall-E gave me hope. It fits the algorithm. But it *exploits* the algorithm, rather than playing safe slave to it. And guess what:

The movie actually has deep meaning.

And guess what:

There wasn't one unruly kid in that audience. No questions for mom. Total, rapt attention. The kids knew what was going on. And they listened.

Central Station

noreply@blogger.com (Scriptwrangler) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:36:00 +0000

I've been studying the Brazilian film Central Station this week. It's always been a favorite of mine, but I never looked at the mechanics too closely.

I'm studying it because I am working out a story idea with a similar main character. Dora, the lead in Central Station, is a bitter old woman who makes money writing letters for illiterate people at the bus station. She's a liar and a cheat. She usually doesn't bother to mail the letters and just pockets the money.

One day a mother with a young son is run over by a bus and killed right after paying for a letter. Unmoved, she refuses to help the boy with a new letter. She refuses to help for days as the boy sits helpless and alone in the bus station.

But slowly she cannot help but care, and there the story begins. Most of her attempts at help are more or less ways of assuaging her guilt as cheaply and easily as possible. But there's really no way to dump the boy off on someone else. Every time he calls her on her lies and cruel behavior, and slowly she's drawn in. They begin a bus journey together halfway across Brazil to find a father who seems to either not exist or to have nothing to do with the boy.

The script is based on a story idea by the director, Walter Salles. This is not an American movie. Dora lies, cheats and shirks her duty practically up to the climax. She's no Julia Roberts. Rene Zellweger would run screaming from this script. Meryl Streep's agent would hide this script from her.

I'd started studying the movie by looking for how the writers maintain character sympathy for this tough old broad. They employ a couple strategies. Dora's punished every time she lies or cheats, and usually by the boy. So her amoral behavior moves the plot forward (and it's often very entertaining).

Her best friend functions as a kind of Greek chorus with an on/off switch. She's brought a voice of conscience into her life, even if she has no conscience of her own.

When she's faced with her own cruelty, she reacts and moves to fix the situation -- very quickly. We're not allowed to think she's abysmally bad for more than a scene. There's always hope for redemption, no matter how unlikely.

But I realized that all these are more or less strategies for keeping Dora in the ballpark with character sympathy. Why is it so deeply moving?

Dora crosses an astonishing dramatic distance, from unfeeling, dishonest and selfish to someone who sacrifices herself completely to find this boy's family. It's much more moving than if she'd been plucky, with a heart of gold, slightly obscured by the fig leaf of some tepid misbehavior. The writers found the heart of the story. They knew why they were writing it. They aimed straight at it, rather than at carefully balanced character palettes and all that. They saw the big picture, and the mechanics fell into line.

There's a lot I could say here, but I won't go on. If you read this blog regularly, you might want to think about the movie in terms of the quantum theory mumbo jumbo I was going on about: each beat somehow recapitulates the overall structure. On a more mainstream level, the structure of the script clearly lays out the standard 12 beats of the three acts. The writers are true professionals who are clearly profoundly aware of theory and practice of screenwriting.

But what's important is that they clearly wanted to write the story on a deep and personal level.