Obsession is goooooooood.

I wish I could remember where I read this but I thought I’d share it with you all anyway. Ready? Here it is:

Obsession is a good quality in your protagonist.

I’m not sure about all of you out there but this simple piece of advice is something I actually overlooked when rebuilding my protagonist. Cool set pieces, throw in a cool car chase or martial arts showdown and voila….instant hit. Right? Guess not. Apparently my hero has to actually want something so bad that it’s an obsession.

We’re all writers here, but some of you might like a visual aid.

Not very exciting is it. I mean, while the guy is actually in the rapids it’s kinda interesting, but once the rapids calm down there isn’t much else propelling the guy along in his little innertube. Right now, my hero is that tuber. I’m relying on all sorts of cool ’stuff’ in the script to propel the action along. This approach can even work sometimes, but let up for even a second and the audience will doze off.

Just now the film ‘Van Helsing’ popped up in my head as an example of this. Granted, I only saw the movie once when it first came out, but I remember thinking as I walked out that the movie was just go-go-go all the time. An example of the plot driving the character instead of the other way around?

Ok, now in the interest of equal time, I present to you a clip representing what happens when the character is obsessively driving forward the story.

I’m not sure about anyone else, but stairwells have never been more exciting. The most ordinary settings become extraordinary because some guy is throwing his body about like some ragdoll ninja.

This is what my protagonist needs to be doing….and he’s not. He’s a passive little twerp being caught up in the events around him. Not somebody people are going to want to cheer on and hope he succeeds.

Back to the ol’ drawing board.

The Beat Sheet – Part 2: Theme Stated

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Just rereading my last post covering Part 1 of the Beat Sheet and it already seemed that I was bleeding the opening image and the theme into one confusing post. My opening image was ok, though I’m still uncertain whether or not I’m going to keep it even remotely the same as I wrote it.  My problem was including this:

‘Hell is all around us, it’s of our own creation, and our apathy doesn’t make it go away’.

That’s the theme, and hence it belongs here, not with the opening image.

Ok. *takes deep breath* I got that off my chest now.

The theme as stated above will come into play around page 5 of the screenplay, when the protagonist is brought in off the city streets into a research facility hidden behind one of the old sandstone tenement buildings. Greeted by the research team, made up of the leader and a handful of grad students, they apologize that he had to come into this part of town to meet with them.

“It’s hell out there isn’t it?”

“That was your choice.”

Not the exact dialogue I want, but it conveys the theme of the film rather nicely. To confirm this whole 5 page = stated theme theory I pulled out a few of the movies I had laying around my computer and checked out what was said around the 5 minute mark. I might be grasping at straws for some of them.

I started out with The Saint starring Val Kilmer. Five minutes into the movie we are still in a flashback to the Saints youth in a Catholic orphanage. He’s talking to the girl he loves, mentioning that he is leaving on a crusade. Is the crusade the theme? That we all want to do something worthwhile, even if it means sacrificing our material comforts? If you are a bit looser with the time frame you could go back a bit to where the young Saint if being forced to name himself John Rossi which he refuses. The theme in this case could be that nobody can be told who they are…it is something that we all have to learn on our own. And perhaps that pretending to be someone we’re not can be dangerous.

After the 8 minute mark of Alien Vs. Predator I haven’t got much. Some talk about the PSR (Point of Safe Return) is ominous, but hardly a thematic statement. A few minutes later (11ism minutes) the grandpooba who’s put this whole expedition together talks about this journey being worth the risk. That fits better with being a theme…is the pursuit of knowledge worth the risk….any risk? At what point is it better to back off and place personal safety over personal gain? However, this is almost twice the distance from the beginning as one would think to find the theme stated.

Of course, both these movies didn’t do great at the box office which could lead me to believe that by missing this beat the audience is confused. We’ve spent so much time waiting to find out what this movie is ‘about’ that we’ve given up on it already. Somehow I doubt that’s the case, but lets look at one more film.

The Maltese Falcon. I bought it awhile ago and still haven’t watched it. How sad is that? I must admit to thinking that there would be some statement of theme right at the five minute mark on the nose. Maybe it’s because the movie is from Hollywoods golden era where everyone seemed to be craftsman at their respective trade. Anyhoo, the only statement of theme I could come up with came around the 8 minute mark, when Spade is at the crime scene watching his partners body being bundled up. The inspector mentions that Miles had his faults but he must have had some good points too. Looks can be deceiving? Everyone is good and bad? You can’t trust anyone? Those are themes which could be explored in the movie.

Now I’ll just have to watch it to see if they pan out.

In the meantime….on to Beat number 3….The Set-Up

The Beat Sheet – Part 1: Opening Image

Well, having settled upon a logline (for now anyway) it is time to move on to the Beat Sheet. For those of you just joining this blog then you should know that I’m following along with Blake Snyders book Save the Cat.

The Beat Sheet serves to create signpost for the script, and for those of us (like myself) who find themselves easily sidetracked then this is very important to establish before writing another draft.

Which brings us to the first beat…the opening image.

The opening image of the film should almost be a graphical representation of the entire film itself. Not the resolution of the film, but the set up. Of course, these are my thoughts regarding what an opening image should be, not necessarily Mr. Snyders.

Want an example of what I mean? Of course you do.

One of the best opening images EVER, and one that I think encapsulates Star Wars into a few minutes quite nicely. A small ship, out manned and out gunned, being pursued by an enormous and heavily armed warship. The Rebels against the Empire, Luke against Darth Vadar. The whole movie seems to be about the small at the mercy of the large. The weak being pursued by the strong. This is the universe in which the movie takes place, and the opening image sums up all of this in one shot.

Pretty impressive eh?

So what is the universe that Inferno is taking place in like? What is my protagonist like and how does he function in this universe? These are things I’ve got to think about when I create my opening image.

‘Hell is all around us, it’s of our own creation, and our apathy doesn’t make it go away’.

I think that simple phrase sums up what I want the opening image to convey, but how to go about it? If you head here then you’ll see the Beat Sheet as it applies to the movie The Wedding Crashers, and reading it leads me to believe that I’ve got a short paragraph to sum it all up. Wee.

As a quick aside, I think the Wedding Crashers beat sheet is written up from an instruction point of view, not from the writers perspective, so don’t try and copy it exactly.

Since this is the first beat though, I figure I should at least write this one down and start getting feedback on it. It probably won’t be a regular thing though, as I want to keep some of the script to myself. It would suck to actually sell the script but have no one come to see it because they can just come here and know all about it *grin*. Here it goes:

[The Hero] walks down the city street, briefcase in hand, repeatedly checking a small crumpled post-it note in his hand and the addresses on the buildings. Around him, filling the streets of this decaying neighborhood, the dregs of society. People are busy getting high, getting drunk, yelling and abusing their spouses, committing the oldest sins in the newest ways. [The Hero], dressed smartly in a suit, dismisses them all without a glance. They do not matter to him.

This opening image is just something I came up with on the spot and I’ll have to put a lot more thought into it. Is this where I want to open the film? In previous drafts I’ve had the film opening with the protagonist driving alone into the mountains, hinting at the isolation he himself feels from others and society as well. While that works if that’s what I want to do, the opening scene almost demands a change if I want to set up the universe so as to match what I wrote earlier about Hell being all around us.

Needs more thought. Will get back to you all later.

How to Write a Great Logline….and stopping once you’ve found it.

Well, if you’re read my previous post you know that I was heading on over to Blake Snyders website to post this logline:

After discovering a cover-up, a detached auditor becomes the unwilling test subject for an experiment that has him retrace Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hades, where he must struggle between saving the very world he loathes or letting all Hell break lose.

I’ve gotten a few replies on the post (which you can find here) and I think I’ve gotten something I can work with. What to hear it? Of course you do, that’s why you’ve come here.

When a disillusioned auditor unearths a cover-up at a military research facility, he is forced to participate as the next test subject in an experiment that propels him into the nine circles of Hell… unaware his return could lead to the freeing of an evil older then the world itself.

It’s about the same length of my original logline but I think it’s a lot better. The protagonist is better described…using the word ‘disillusioned’ which I think better conveys his apathy and perhaps a little bit of disgust with the world around him.

I’ve also added more information about the forces he’s up against, which in this case is an ancient evil and the military research team that started the whole thing.

One of the replies at the forum did mention Black Snyder’s Double Mumbo Jumbo rule and that I was breaking it. For those not familiar with the rule, it basically states that audiences will accept one piece of magic in a script but not two. In my case, I was mixing the supernatural realm of Hell with the more concrete idea of technology capable of sending someone there.

It’s something I wasn’t even thinking of when I was writing the script and I can see the truth to this rule. That’s not to say that movies that break the rule can’t be successful, but that you’ve got to be very careful in laying these things out.

Just as an aside, Spider-Man is used as an example of this rule being broken which I’m not sure I agree with. The rule is invoked because two different people (Spider-Man and the Green Goblin) got superpowers from two different methods (radiation and chemicals). The reason I don’t agree that this is Double Mumbo Jumbo is that the whole universe that Spider-Man inhabits, and indeed all superhero movies, is a world where people can gain superpowers at all. Some by radiation, some by alien technology, some by supernatural means. I think if Spider-Man failed in this regard it was that it didn’t establish this over-arching rule to begin with. Perhaps if the movie made mention of other superheros earlier on?

Ok..back to my own logline journey. I don’t want to break the DMJ rule, but I think what I have now works and I’ll tell you why. In my script, the supernatural realm will be given a scientific explanation for it’s existence. I will not use some scientific experiment, governed by the laws of nature, to propel the protagonist into a realm where the laws of nature do not apply. By cloaking Hell in a pseudo-scientific cloak, I believe the reader will accept Hell as simply an extension of our own universe that science has yet to discover.

Am I making sense? I hope so, though I am very tired:)

I’ve read that the best protagonist for a story is the one that has to take the longest journey to reach the end. When I read that last sentence, the first thing that comes to mind is the television show Seinfeld. In pretty much every episode, the whole thing could be resolved in the first couple minutes if any of the main characters were mature, emotionally responsible adults. They aren’t..and so they inevitably make some minor mistake or situation a hundred times worse by their immature attempts to avoid dealing with it.

I think this is what I need to make sure is the case with my own logline. If the end of the script results in the protagonist having to decide whether to sacrifice himself to save countless others, the best person to have to make that choice is someone who is completely wrapped up in their own pain/life/world and could care less about everyone else.

This is something I have to focus on as I continue. For now though, I will post the logline I’ve got (with the help of the fine posters over at Blake Snyder’s forum) on my monitor and move on to the next step….The Beat Sheet!

How to Write a Great Logline….still working on it.

It’s been awhile since I last posted anything. Sometimes life interferes and writing has to take a back seat for a bit.

When I last left you I had constructed a horrible logline that went like this…

When an auditor with the military discovers something suspicious regarding one of their research teams, he becomes yet another unwillingly test subject for an experiment that sends him to the very depths of Hell itself. He has to free himself and the others, as their very presence opens up the chance that Hell could literally break lose.

Why is it awful? Well, lets look shall we?

1) The protagonist isn’t described. Sure we know he’s an auditor but that’s it. Is he suicidal? Manic depressive? Suffers from chronic fatigue? Obviously I can’t lay out his entire backstory in the logline, but I can dig up some sort of adjective to describe the character. Ideally, the adjective should be in contrast to what is going on in the rest of the logline. For instance, JAWS might have a logline like this:

After a series of grisly shark attacks, an aquaphobic sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce.

I stole the logline from this site which has some more great information on logline construction. Head on over now to fill your head with yummy, delicious knowledge. And just for the record, the logline for Jaws I used up top didn’t include the word ‘aquaphobic’ in it. I added that in as an example for the point I was making. A sheriff fighting against a monster shark is one thing….a sheriff who must confront his fear of the ocean to fight a monster that hides within it is even better.

My protagonist is an emotionally withdrawn and repressed man. He experienced a tragedy in his life not that long ago and does not allow himself to feel anymore. While this has prevented the outpouring of grief he wants to avoid, it has also caused him to cut himself off from everyone around him. He thinks of all others as dead to him. I think a good word to describe him would be ‘detached‘.

2) The protagonist’s main goal is not stated. My logline does contain the tidbit that he must safe others and prevent Hell from breaking lose, but is that his main goal? Is it more simply to get back home? Is his main goal more internal such as reconnecting to those around him and his own pain?

Hell in my script is a very real place, a place which is Hell to it’s inhabitants simply because they are forced to act out the desires they had in life with no chance of rest or hope of ending. For instance, in the original Dante’s Divine Comedy those who acted on their lusts in life are condemned in Hell to be blown about by howling winds. Just has they give up control of their bodies to it’s natural urges, they no longer have any control over their bodies in Hell. Ironic punishment eh?

Ok, I’m getting a little off topic with that above paragraph, but I wanted to work out my protangonist’s goal, which has to do with letting go of the rage and sadness that he has held on to so long and which will consume him (literally) if he doesn’t. I’m thinking that his goal is leaning towards something like ‘forgiveness’ and/or ‘acceptance’. I don’t want to lose sight of the ‘prison break’ scenario of hell either though, so I’ll see if I can incorporate both parts.

It should be worth noting though that internal goals don’t seem to translate well into loglines, so I should focus on the external…letting the adjective describing the character hint at the internal struggle at work.

3) The antagonistic forces or stakes are missing. Since my protagonist’s goal isn’t stated, it’s not surprising that I forgot to include what is working against his goals, though I do think I included the stakes. Since ‘antagonistic’ is another way of saying contrary, I think this goal has to be contrary to the very nature of the protagonist. Since he is detached he must come up against something that forces him to ‘reattach’. And just from my point of view, I’m thinking that this goal should be contrary to his internal goal…that is to say this antagonistic goal is external.

4) The protagonist should be active. In my logline I stated that he must…

…free himself and the others.

Don’t think that is quite ‘active’ enough. The website I mentioned earlier (this one) uses ‘The Fugitive’ to show an example of a passive and active protagonist.

Passive:

A doctor falsely accused of murder flees a relentless federal agent who is in hot pursuit.

Active:

A doctor – falsely accused of murdering his wife – struggles on the lam as he desperately searches for the killer with a relentless federal agent hot on his trail.

I’m thinking that he must struggle to save a world of people he cares nothing about from unleashing Hell upon them. How’s that sound? Just to give some backstory on this guy, he wife and little daughter were killed in a plane crash due to the pilot being drunk. This event has made it impossible for him to see the good in pretty much everything. According to him, everyone is hurting everyone else in pursuit of their own pleasures. That clear anything up? No? Um…ok.

Let’s see if I can rearrange my logline a little and shorten it into something more readable….

After discovering a cover-up, a detached auditor becomes the unwilling test subject for an experiment that has him retrace Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hades, where he must struggle between saving the very world he loathes or letting all Hell break lose.

There’s lots not to like in this logline either. If he hates the world so much then I probably should use a better adjective then ‘detached’. What if I used the word which explains why he is so detached…’widowed’? Would it be better to break this into two sentences or can I leave it at just one?

Well, it is suggested after you have the basis of a logline, you need to go out and pitch it and get feedback on it. Well, that’s just what I’m going to do.

I’m posting it in the forums at Blake Snyder’s website here in hopes that a few people will comment on it in the next few days.

Well see if that happens and what things are exposed as needed more work.