Film Courage: You say the writing process is about tools and skills not theory, but let's
go with theory for one moment. What theories are stopping a writer before they even start?
Glenn Gers, Screenwriter: That's actually a really good question because I believe that the theories
are tools. I believe that all the rules I'm not saying there are no rules there are plenty of
rules there are a lot of rules what there are not is a single set of rules that always works
and so what you need to do is know every possible theory you can cram into your head. You should
watch all sorts of different types of stories. You should watch outside-in genres outside of
the ones you like. You should specifically try to watch things that are things you don't think you'd
be interested in and you should definitely try to read those screenwriting books or listen to
screenwriting teachers who are teaching very very different ideas because there are so many
out there now and the answer is each one of them will have very valuable parts, very valuable
tools that you can use and the only thing that you need to have is a really big toolbox as big
as you can get with every possible theory so that when you're approaching your work which is really
what it's always going to be about you can say I have seen a story like this or I have seen a story
like this but this other story had a different form for it or this person said I should always
have my transitions in the middle of the story or this one said I should always have a conflict at
the end of the story. There's so many theories, none of them is wrong, they’re all right, they're
all there to be used in different circumstances depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
The more that you can learn all the different theories and all the different paradigms and story
archetypes that's all good but nothing will help until you actually sit down and say I am making
the choice to write this particular story and this story needs this set of rules maybe another story
needs another set. Maybe I need to pick one rule from this one and one rule from that one. Maybe
somebody says you know Save The Cat [book by author Blake Snyder] I happen to believe
that there are certain parts of Save the Cat the book that are very valuable, other parts I can't
make head or tail of and I don't think that you should not read it. I think you should read it
and take the pieces that you need. I'm not sure you should alway save the cat but it's good to
know that saving the cat is a thing you can do and I believe that that goes for every screenwriting
theory out there and the best thing that you can do is know all of them so that you can say
in this one is this type of character best revealed by saving a cat or
is this one somebody who's going to walk away and leave the cat there and now we know a
different thing about them. How do we still like them? So really the most important thing is to
take whatever these rules are and apply them to your particular goals because that's the thing
not every story has the same goals some are trying to amuse you, some are trying to scare, you some
are trying to make you think they're going to have very different ways of approaching storytelling.
The important thing is that you have as many tools as you can, as many skills you know how
to make something funny if you need to or how to make somebody like a character. By the way
my theory on liking a character is the way that we like a character is that we know
what they want. I believe we can really get with a character who wants something horrible they're
not saving any cats they're murderers or they're trying to take over the world and we can still
really care about them because we are understand that they want this thing for their reason
and very often that's something that we can care about even though we don't honestly want them to
hurt all those people but we get engaged in the story and we follow the characters because we know
what they want. My theory so if we don't know what they what they want then somehow
do we not trust the character I personally think we just don't think of them as a character
I think if you if you start to pay attention to how you watch characters I think you'll
find out that you're always thinking what do they want what are they trying to do
there'll be some form of that you don't just want to watch someone say oh they have nice clothes I
mean you'll watch that for a few minutes but after a while that person in the cool outfit had better
be trying to do something and people don't try to do something if they don't want something
because it takes effort to do stuff and we only do that when we have something we want
if we have that toolbox let's let's say we put aside the save the cat
tool what's one of the most overused whether it's good or bad tool one or two from this toolbox.
We're going to pull it out and make room for other stuff.
I think the three-act structure it's tricky. There is a world where there's units of entertainment
which you watch in one dose call them features now doesn't matter it could be a short but but there's
a type of story that you watch in one dose and that does have a three-act structure in the sense
that it has a beginning middle and end but the whole set of rules about turning points happening
at a certain point in a three-act structure is simply an overused tool it came about because
movies were in movie theaters and that was about as long as a person could sit in a movie theater
and also movie theaters wanted to sell a certain number of tickets so they wanted movies to be of
a certain length a lot of this comes down to business and honestly we shouldn't be making
our artistic decisions based on the fact that movie theaters want to turn over the seats every
90 minutes now we have some stories that are not three acts we have some stories that are 30
acts we have some stories that are one act every story though will have a beginning middle and end
so in a way the three act structure will apply even an episode of a larger thing has a beginning
middle and end I think that's where the three act thing came from because truthfully even in
theater they didn't always have three acts a lot of plays before the 19th the 20th century had
four acts or five acts so three act Save the Cat possibly doesn't mean they're bad or wrong but
it's just they're over used a lot. I'm saying that you need to choose your form you need to say I am
going to watch a thousand stories and I'm going to break some down I strongly suggest that if there's
something you like watch it like five times watch it until you're not enjoying it anymore so you can
start to watch it mechanically and say how do they do this and when you do that stop like pause and
write an outline of the thing you're watching that you like and learn how it's structured
and then do that with a bunch of other things because you'll find out there's nothing consistent
the rules are all over the place and furthermore a lot of these rules are like well you have your
inciting incident or your you know beginning twist or whatever they everybody has names for them
none of that really matters because then you get into an activity which is an academic
activity of a find the part I'm going to name the inciting incident what really matters is how the
audience feels as they're following the story the audience is not looking for an inciting incident
they're not looking for a second act reversal they don't care they care about the characters and if
you break down the things you love and reverse engineer them and outline them you'll begin to
get a sense of how they do it how many beats does it take before you are worn out of this thing how
long does it go before there's a twist or a turn the only way you can really become skilled
is by breaking down the work and doing it yourself you know you can study how to build a car
until the end of time but you need to actually put together a car and make it run
and you probably have to do that a bunch of times before you can make a really great car.
Questions For The Viewers:
What is
your favorite screenwriting theory?