Specific Genre Structures, Part 1: Comedy

Just to review, the general arc of classical structure, as I identify it, can be boiled down to four quarters separated by three turning points:

1. First quarter: Longstanding problem becomes acute through a humiliation and a new opportunity to solve that problem is identified.
2. ¼ point: Hero commits to the opportunity.
3. Second quarter: Hero tries to solve the problem the easy way.
4. Midpoint: Disaster and loss of safe space
5. Third quarter: Hero tries to solve the problem the hard way.
6. ¾ point: Spiritual crisis
7. Final quarter: Wiser hero solves or succumbs to problem.

For now, let’s just focus on the four quarters. The essential quartet of Problem / Easy Way / Hard Way / Resolution is vague enough to apply to just about any story about a large problem, but eventually you get tired of having to squint all the time. When we opened our eyes all the way and tested this structure against some actual movies, we found that different genres tended to have very different takes on that quartet. This week, we’ll look at hour several different genres tend to define those four quarters.

Surprisingly, although there are many profoundly different subgenres of comedy, I was able to identify on more-specific quartet that applied to almost all of them:

Discontent / Transgression with Mask / Deal with Consequences / Growth Without Mask:

• Easy Living (mask = false identity that is thrust upon her)
• The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday (mask = pretend to no longer to be in love)
• Sullivan’s Travels (mask = phony poverty)
• Some Like It Hot (mask = drag)
• The Apartment (transgression has already begun, then escalates, mask is unwanted but adopted to get ahead at work and explain strange goings on to his neighbor)
• The Producers (mask = scam)
• Breaking Away (mask = Italian accent)
• Risky Business (mask = sunglasses)
• Tootsie (mask = drag)
• Raising Arizona (literally with and without masks)
• Swingers (mask = phony pick-up persona)
• Rushmore (he’s been wearing the mask for years, but now it escalates)
• Wedding Crashers (mask = fake identities)
• The 40 Year Old Virgin (mask = fake confidence)
• Juno (first transgression has already happened, second transgression happens late)
• Superbad (mask = fake ID)
• Mean Girls (mask = fake personality)
• The Hangover (transgressions not seen, revealed as part of lengthened consequences section)

Even the exceptions I identified were slight:

• In Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant has no mask but it doesn’t matter because Hepburn insists on treating him as something he isn’t, so he gets the same benefit, in that he gets to flee his responsibilities for a time.
• I was surprised that Bridesmaids, which feels like a very classical comedy, is the most atypical of the comedies I looked at, since our hero engages in almost no transgression, but merely attempts to be dutiful. She does wear a mask, however, to the extent that she pretends not to be broke and not to be horribly depressed about friend’s wedding and life in general.

Though, as we’ll see throughout the series, some movies end up jumping into other categories altogether:

• Dr. Strangelove didn’t fit at all, but I think that that’s because it’s a conspiracy movie that’s played as a comedy and thus fits the “mystery” arc that we’ll look at tomorrow. (It was adapted from a dead serious novel)
• Annie Hall, likewise, doesn’t fit, because it’s really a drama arc played for laughs.

Tomorrow: Thriller, Action and Mystery

How to Structure a Story Around a Big Problem, Introduction

Okay folks, we’ve tried this before:

• First I spent most of The Hero Project rethinking the conventional wisdom on structure.
• Then I conducted The Great Guru Showdown, where I pitted previous structure gurus against each other.
• Then I did a quick rundown of How to Structure a Movie, but I didn’t go into much detail about each step.
• Then I did a week on the idea that “inciting incident” wasn’t a very useful concept, so it should be replaced by three ideas: Problem-Opportunity-Conflict.

Now we’re back to make more sense of it all.  First of all, as you can see, I’ve changed the title.  For the purposes of the upcoming book, I’ve been expanding my definitions to apply to different storytelling media, but I also want to make it clear that there’s lots of stories that these steps don’t apply to, such as long-form TV or comic book serials, and also movies with atypical ambitions.

I don’t want to imply that beloved movies like Weekend or Slacker or Pulp Fiction are doing anything wrong simply because they’re not about the solving of a large problem.  This structure doesn’t describe some sort of “inherent nature of celluloid”, it merely describes the natural progress that most humans go through when we try to solve a large problem, which is why, if you’re writing that kind of story, in whatever media, you should probably hit most of these steps in roughly this order.

In this series, we’re going to walk through the steps of the most common structure, but that will actually start next week.  First we’re going to spend a week expanding my previous thoughts about specific genre structures.  Over the course of the Checklist Road Tests, it seemed that the concept of “the promise of the premise” was unclear, partially because I borrowed it from Blake Snyder.

It emerged that this could mean very different things depending on the genre.  In some genres, such as comedy and thrillers the audience and the hero are having fun together, but we also saw that in horror movies such as Alien, the audience is having fun because the heroes are suffering.  So this week we’ll tackle…

• Mon: Comedy
• Tues: Thriller, Action, Mystery
• Wed: Horror
• Thurs: Drama, Tragedy 

Let’s get to it!

What I Wish I'd Heard at Graduation, Addendum: Don't Blow It

To paraphrase Rick’s description of Renault in Casablanca, filmmaking is like any other job, only moreso.  Did you choose this job because you don’t want to have a boss?  Well I have bad news for you, you won’t have one boss, you’ll have dozens, and many of them will be ten times as arrogant, exploitative and contemptuous as the worst boss you’ve ever had.

Above all else, beware of this: Hollywood producers, agents, stars, directors, etc., are some of the most thin-skinned people in the world.  On those lucky occasions that one of them offers you an opportunity, it’s ridiculously easy to blow it.  They have a lot of unspoken rules, and it’s not hard to break one, which will be the last you ever hear from them. The sense of entitlement these people have is overwhelming.

Remember, these people are constantly pestered by job-hopefuls who have memorized everything about them and are desperate to be part of their world.  On one level they find these people really annoying and try to avoid them, but on the other hand, they also come to take them for granted…they have unconsciously concluded that there must be a good reason why all these people are obsessed with them.

Inevitably, they internalize the assumption that everybody out there on the street knows everything about them, including their tastes and preferences, their contact info, where they hang out, etc, which helps explain why power-people are so bizarrely uncommunicative.  It takes a Herculean effort to get them to confirm the day, date, time, place and address of a meet-up.  If they mention the name of a restaurant to meet, you’re just supposed to know where that is, and if there’s more than one location, you’re supposed to be able to guess which one they prefer.  If you don’t, you’ll have to badger their assistant to get that information, and the assistant will be even more contemptuous.  They know everything about their boss, so why don’t you??

And by the way, the super-hip places they want to meet invariably have no street signs whatsoever—restaurants without signs, private clubs without signs, even hotels without signs.  They don’t even notice that these elite places are designed to be completely invisible from the street and it would never occur them that this might not be the best place to meet someone for the first time.  You’ve been there before, right?  Everybody goes there.

Most of all, these people assume that everybody will be agog when hearing their voice on the phone.  They’ve gotten so used to hushed awe that anything else seems downright contemptuous.  The last three people they spoke to were in awe of them, so who the hell are you to act differently?

The trick is to always be deferential, but never dazzled.  Profoundly respect their power and their peculiarities, but don’t surrender your self-respect. Yes, you should be grateful these power-people are giving you some of their genuinely valuable time, but keep looking for the opportunity to quietly prove you’re good enough to be there.  The trick is to prove your excellence in a way that doesn’t even remotely smell like insolence.

What I Wish I’d Heard at Graduation, Addendum: You Sometime Have to Work on Projects You Hate (And it Might Be “Your” Project)

In the comments on this post, we debated about whether it ever makes sense to work on projects you hate.  Ultimately, I would say that my answer is a sad yes, in some bad situations.

No, you probably should knock yourself out trying to get hired for an opening writing assignment you hate, for several reasons:

• It’ll be hard to crack the story if you don’t have a healthy respect for it.
• You’ll be unlikely to get the job because they’ll detect your lack of enthusiasm.
• You don’t want to be miserable while you’re writing it, because you’ll get bogged down over and over.

But you do have to at least be able to write projects you hate.  Why?  Because of this very unfortunate fact: in the years between the sale and the finished movie, every script you sell will at some point become a project you hate, even if only for a while.

Simon Kinberg has seemingly spent his whole career living the dream.  He sold his film school thesis screenplay Mr. and Mrs. Smith to Hollywood, then made millions rewriting other people’s projects while his own script attracted every big name in town.  (For a long time, it was supposed to star Will Smith and Nicole Kidman!)

Even more impressive, by the time the finished movie came out, he was still the only listed screenwriter, which is almost unheard of.  Now, in point of fact, he had been fired several times, and other writers had re-written it a dozen different ways, but each time the studio changed their minds and reverted back to his latest version.

As hard as that was to take, it was even worse when he didn’t get fired, because each new director demanded he re-write his script to fit their vision, even when he wildly disagreed with their take.

One of the most acclaimed directors in town decided that the story should be a metaphor for domestic violence, and the spies should keep sending each other to the emergency room where they could make mirthless jokes about how the other ran into a doorknob.  It turned Kinberg’s stomach to write these scenes, but he did it anyway, because, by this point, he knew that this director would inevitably pass and he would soon be working for someone else, and he just wanted to stay attached until that happened.  In the end, he was glad he did.

This is a job.  Like any other job, you do better work when you believe in what you do, but you can’t demand the right to be gung ho about every assignment every day.  Sometimes, you just have to keep your head down, do it their way, and trust that, somehow, everything will work out alright.

(...But whatever you do, don’t say, “Okay then, I’ll write it in a way that shows them how bad their idea is.”  Inevitably, one of two things will happen:

• They’ll instantly detect that you tanked it, then fire and bad-mouth you.
• Or, even worse, they’ll love your purposely-bad version, and you’ll be stuck with it.

Instead, you really have to try your best to make their bad idea work.  Ironically, if they can tell that you really tried, they’ll be far more like to admit that their version just doesn't work.)

Storyteller's Rulebook #187: Own It (But Don’t Let It Own You)

We finally got around to watching Whale Rider the other day, which was great, and one thought I had while watching it was how much the New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro and novelist Witi Ihimaera owned the material.  They were telling their land’s story, one that no outsider had.  The emotions were universal, but, to a non-Maori audience, all of the details were wonderfully exotic and unique.  There is real power in that authenticity.

I made a fundamental mistake when pitching my Alan Turing script around town.  They would all ask me how I found this story and I gave the wrong answer: “I randomly ran across it in a book, liked it, read a bunch more books, and decided to write it.”  They would look a little uncomfortable and ask me what my connection to the material was, and I would blithely blabber, “Funny you should ask: absolutely none!  He’s a gay British mathematician, and I’m not any of those things!”  I didn’t realize that I was killing my sale.

Instead, when you’re pitching, you need to play up your authenticity, establish your connection to the material.   Even if you don’t “own” any source material involved, you have to own it.  Be necessary.  Prove that you’re the one writer who is perfect for this material.  Assure them that, if they had been the one to have this idea, and they could have hired any writer in the world to write it, you’re the writer they would have hired. 

After all, as soon as they buy it from you, it is their idea, in every sense of the word, and you’re their employee.  You don’t want them to suddenly wonder, “Why did I hire this guy?”

But be aware that there’s a tipping point at which your connection to the material stops being an asset and starts being a liability.  It’s one thing to say, “I’m the perfect guy to write this, because I’m a gay British mathematician myself” (in fact, Turing’s most in-depth biographer was all three), but the fear is that you’ll then say, “And I’m gonna tell the real story, instead of all that phony Hollywood crap!”  Suddenly, all of the enthusiasm will drain out of producers’ faces. 

You have to own it without letting it own you.  You have to have a deep reservoir of unique real-world knowledge, but then you have use it or discard it as necessary in the service of a great story.  

Look at “The Americans”: creator Joe Weisberg sold that show based on his own experience as a CIA officer, and indeed the show offers many real-world aspects of spy work that you rarely see onscreen, such as the recruiting and handling of long-term assets, but it also exaggerates and re-writes the facts at will. The details are authentic, but the story is pure fiction. 

In this excellent AV Club interview, Weisberg makes it clear that the spy stuff was always restricted to being a metaphor for the family stuff, and never the other way around.  He uses all of his spy knowledge, but he doesn’t let it take over the show. In the end, he’s not even writing about spies, he’s just using his authentic tradecraft knowledge as a source of unique details to enrich a universal story of family strife. 

Storyteller’s Rulebook #186: It’s Your Job To Attract Great Talent

I didn’t need to see the remake of Total Recall to know it was bad.  All I had to do was look at the cast.  Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel were on nobody’s A-List in 2012.  The producers probably wanted Brad and Angelina, until they read the script and passed on it.

At least Farrell has talent, despite being box-office poison, but Biel has now made dozens of movies without ever having a single hit, or a single good review of her performances in those movies, as far as I know.  She’s a place-holder, not an asset. Her presence tells you that every bankable and/or talented actress in town turned down the part. There’s probably a good reason for that.

It’s tempting to say, “They ruined my script with bad actors!”  But actually, you ruined your movie with bad actors.  You wrote a script that was good enough to attract a producer and director, but not good enough to attract excellent onscreen talent.  If Jessica Biel is in your movie, then you wrote it wrong.

When you revise, you need to ask yourself: Do each of the top five parts have satisfying and original character arcs?  Of course, for the fifth-billed character, it might be a very lightly-sketched arc, but a little goes a long way. Likewise for every scene: Is that going to be a fully-engaged day on set for each actor?  Or are they going to be rolling their eyes and sleep-walking through it?  Is this something they’ve already done before in other movies, or is it something that nobody has done before in any movie.

It’s okay to introduce each character from the hero’s point of view, and even to sacrifice their likability to the hero’s in the early scenes, but you should quickly elevate several of them to the status of fully-compelling characters, and eventually you should let each have his or her own moment in the sun.

For as many parts as possible, write dialogue they’ll be excited to say, scenes that activate their imaginations, and parts they’ve always wanted to play.  You’ll have your pick of the best talent in town.

How to Build a Scene, Addendum: Do You Have a Surface Conflict and a Suppressed Conflict?

As I’ve been running movies through the checklist, and your helpful suggestions, certain questions seem to me to be less than useful.  I’ve stated before that one of my goals is to never ask a question that always gets a “yes” (This is one reason I don’t like the terminology “inciting incident”, because it’s impossible to write a story that doesn’t have one, in on form or another.)  Writers seek out these lists because they need something proscriptive, not merely descriptive.  Every rule needs to be breakable.

One question that hasn’t seemed very useful on the checklist so far is under “How to Build a Scene”: “Do they confront each other through sub-text moreso than through text?”  I generally answer “yes”, but the question is too vague to demand more explanation. Instead, let’s switch to this: “Do you have a surface conflict and an suppressed conflict?”  This forces the writer to identify both, which will help identify which one might be missing.

Now let’s look back at the eight scenes we’ve examined so far and identify the surface conflict / suppressed conflict.

• Bridesmaids: Over whether or not she’ll get a ticket / Over whether they should date, why she’s a failure
• Silence of the Lambs: Over filling out the questionnaire / Over her desire to catch Buffalo Bill, over his desire to dissect her and to escape.
• Donnie Brasco: Over who tipped off Sonny Black / Over their friendship, over Donnie’s splintering loyalties.
• How to Train Your Dragon: Over how the students should kill this new type of dragon / Over crushes, over how to befriend the Night Fury.
• Alien: Over whether or not to kill the Alien / Over Ash’s true motives.
• The Shining: Over the stain, over whether or not he’s seen the butler before / Over the nature of the house, over whether or not he should kill his family
• Casablanca: Over whether Rick will take custody of the letters / Over the murder, who Rick is, whether Ugarte is worthy of respect
• In a Lonely Place: Over lots of little things / Over whether or not Laurel will leave, whether or not any of them can trust Dix anymore.

So, in each case, the answer is “yes”, but I think we’ve uncovered a lot more useful information, and a more useful thing to consider in advance when crafting a scene from scratch.

In each of these cases, it would have been so much easier for the writer to simply have the characters walk right up to each other and confront each other about what’s really bothering them.  Such scenes are tempting, because they’re big, bold, packed with attitude and full of conflict.  But they ring false, and lack multiple layers, so they’re flat.

People avoid conflict, and use tricks and traps to get what they want.  It’s usually in the best interest of both parties to keep the suppressed conflict suppressed, and stay focused on the surface conflict.  It spares both parties pain, allows each to keep his or her own goals hidden, and gives each an excuse to ignore the other’s ploy to force them to do something they don’t want to do.

Your Help Needed!

So now that you’ve seen me run through the checklist several times, I have some questions for you:

• Were there any surprises in the movies I evaluated?  Did I evaluate them fairly? 
• Do all of the questions make sense to you? 
• Do any of the questions seem useless? Superfluous? Redundant? 
• Are there any that you fear would do more harm than good? 
• Are there any concepts that I’ve talked about on this blog that aren’t on the checklist but should be? 
• In general, is the list too long? Too short? 
• Is the phrasing clear or confusing? 
• Most importantly, would you use this checklist as-is? Would you skip over any questions or sections? 

Thanks so much!

Straying From the Party Line # 8: In a Lonely Place

There seem to be two huge problems here…

• Deviation #1: The hero’s goals aren’t clear and he’s not the person working the hardest to solve the problem.
• The Potential Problem: Like Casablanca, Bogart once again plays his cards close to the chest, coyly prevaricating about what his character’s goals are. Does he want this adaptation job or not? Does he just want quick cash or is he determined to make art? Does he want to clear his name or does he actually want to implicate himself (out of a perverse impulse for self-destruction)? We never know for sure. And of course we aren’t sure until the end whether or not he killed one of our characters! 
• Does the Movie Get Away With It? Yes. Like The Shining (also about a potentially-homicidal author), this movie pulls off a tricky relay-race. Dix is only occasionally interested in solving his own problem, and when he loses interest, Laurel and his detective friend Frank take up the slack, trying to solve his problems for him (Laurel tries to get Dix to face his anger issues, Frank tries to clear Dix’s name). Writer Andrew Solt and director Nicholas Ray deftly bounce our identification back and forth between Dix and Laurel, symbolizing her vacillating loyalty and his faltering sense of self-preservation. 

But wait, here’s another problem:

• Deviation #2: The movie doesn’t show us any images we haven’t seen before and doesn’t satisfy the urges that get people to buy and recommend this kind of movie. 
•  The Potential Problem: This movie has never been as well-known as it ought to be. This might be because, like Donnie Brasco, it has no unique imagery with which to promote it. Just look at their DVD covers--Would you rent either of these movies if you knew nothing about them?
  
  And even when people see this, they don’t know quite how to describe it. It’s almost perversely frustrating to noir fans: we don’t see the crime, don’t see the arrest, don’t hear the confession, don’t get a physical showdown between Dix and Laurel… It’s sort of an anti-noir. 
• Does the Movie Get Away With It? Yes and no. It’s hard to blame the movie for its failure to satisfy the urges or noir or thriller fans, since that denial supports the theme: this is a feminist movie (albeit not as much as Dorothy Hughes’s excellent but very different novel, in which Dix turns out to be very, very guilty) It indicts the viewers for our desire to see independent desirable women disempowered and chopped up. The movie intentionally frustrates us by denying those urges in order to make us confront and question those urges. The downside is that the movie is hard to market, and it’s never achieved the household-name status it deserves, alongside The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca as one of Bogart’s greatest movies.