Film Courage: Can you think back to one of your first scripts and when you look at now
where you are and having critiqued people’s work and rewritten it and all of the things
that you’ve done in your career, what was wrong with your first script?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: I had the chronic problem that is the whole
reason I created my method, the whole thing that is behind The Nutshell Technique.
So everybody thinks they have a great idea for a movie, right?
They don’t.
What you might have is the great idea for one, you don’t have a story though?
You have what I would call a situation.
And I would identify that in my work as a script consultant 99% of the time that’s
what writers are writing.
They are failing to write a story.
Instead they are creating a situation.
Life is a situation, right?
Life is…this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens.
That’s not a story.
Story is this happens which leads to that happening which makes it ironic when this
other thing happens.
There’s this connection between the parts.
That’s the problem I’m seeing in 99% of writers that they are creating a situation
not a story and that was exactly my problem.
I thought I had a great idea (this would make a great movie) and I couldn’t understand
why I was feeling so blocked and why I was having a hard time writing it.
I thought it was me.
I thought I must not be a good enough writer or I must not be talented enough.
No, the problem was…well that might be true too…but the other problem was I didn’t
have technique basically and technique and technique to understand the difference between
what a situation is and what a story is.
If you just have a situation you are going to be laboring to get from moment to moment
to moment and there’s not going to be a natural connection and a natural progression
and so it’s going to feel stilted, it’s going to feel unnatural.
It’s going to feel like bad writing.
But with technique, that’s the secret to making something feel like an organic story
that has resonance and has power.
It’s not just reading somebody’s diary of unconnected events, these different events
that happen to somebody.
There’s that glue that is existing behind them that makes them coherent.
So I absolutely suffered from the same problem that I’ve been addressing, that’s the
whole reason I created my method.
Film Courage: Do you remember where you were or what was going on when you had that ‘aha’
moment about this?
Were you watching something?
Jill: I was getting kind of a similar note to the one I described that people were saying
things like (they were using different words) but they were saying essentially this isn’t
really a story, it’s a situation.
The only thing was no one could explain to me the difference.
I had a sense of what the difference was.
I had good training.
I had studied at Columbia University.
I’d also studied with some private screenwriting programs in New York City and learned a lot
of good things in these different programs but no one was bringing it all together and
I could sense in this note, I knew there was truth in what I was hearing even though no
one could explain to me how to transform it.
I got what they were saying and I had a sense that there are (if I’m going to make a huge
generalization) two approaches out there.
One is a linear approach, a strictly three-act structure, beat method kind of approach to
screenwriting.
And the other is a more character based, character arc approach.
The problem I was having (and the problem that 99% of writers are having) I could tell
belonged somewhere in the interaction between these methods.
That these methods do not exist, if a story is functioning properly, these are not separate
things.
Character arc in three act story structure.
They are actually very specific points where they need to intersect and if you fail to
hit those intersections you are going to end up with a situation but not a story.
So with this note I was getting, I started analyzing movies, I started deconstructing
movies.
And I deconstructed hundreds of them, just kind of obsessively taking notes and trying
to find these moments.
It took a little while and right off the bat I could identify essentially eight elements
that are required to tell the story and my method and these are interconnected elements
these are not beats, these are not moments in time, these are elements of the story.
I’d say right off of the bat I knew what five of them were but it took a little while
of analyzing movies and then it did happen.
It was kind of this breakthrough moment on the last movie that I deconstructed in this
period where I was like “Boom!
The Eight Method.”
And I was like “Oh my gosh.
This actually works.
I can’t believe it?”
Film Courage: What movie was it?
I’m just curious.
Jill: You know…I don’t know that I can identify the movie.
I had notebooks full of them at that time.
But it was kind of like Holy Cow…this actually works once that last one dropped.
And then I could use those eight things and apply it against every movie from then on.
I was like “Oh my gosh, they’re there, they’re there.
I can’t believe it’s there in every single movie.”
Film Courage: Well you go into several movies in your book [The Nutshell Technique]?
Jill: Yes, I do.
Film Courage: From CHINATOWN to SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, you run the gamut.
Jill: Yes, I made a point of doing that.
So the book…I’ll show you the back.
Film Courage: Please hold it up.
Beautiful cover by the way.
Jill: Yes, thank you.
So it’s a nice lovely large format book and I recommend people get the paperback not
the kindle for that reason because it’s just a beautifully designed large format book
and one of the big features of the book is the last section I have in it 30 different
movies.
So it’s all in my one nutshell form (one form), 30 different movies.
And so the book is designed for you to flip back and forth when you’re reading.
I mention a movie so you can look and feel how it fits in the alphabetical listing of
movies in the back you can see how that element fits into the whole picture.
I have everything in the back from CASABLANCA to PULP FICTION to AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY.
Movies that are different time periods, different genres, movies that you probably think almost
had nothing in common structure wise otherwise maybe 3-acts (maybe).
I can identify these three elements in all of these different ones.
So I just wanted to illustrate that this is not formulaic, it’s not a formula, right?
We are talking about very, very different movies that are not following one template.
No one would say that the template to PULP FICTION and CASABLANCA are anything alike.
But underlying it at the very basis they have the same structural that we are looking at
that are required for making them the great movies that they are, they are the same right
things going on.
Film Courage: And you can send an email if someone would like a graph?
Jill: Yes, so my nutshell form, the central tenet of my method is my Nutshell Technique
form.
Basically I drew up these eight elements that are required to tell a story and put it on
a one-page form for my clients and my students and I rather glibly wrote on the first one
“Screenplay In A Nutshell” and that’s how the name was born.
With this form, it’s a visual method, we can see right on the piece of paper what’s
working and what is not working.
Anyone can download it.
My website is Jill Chamberlain (dot) com.
You can download free versions of these worksheets for your own use.
You can take the Nutshell Technique and start playing around with it using it for your own
stories.
What’s important (I want to emphasize) is that it’s not just…it’s different than
the beat sheets methods.
These are not beats in time.
Four of these are moments in time.
What’s really different is the inner connection between the parts.
I don’t know any other method in the 3,000 books on screenwriting that are on Amazon,
none of the ones that I’m aware of explains the connection to between the parts.
Most of the books that you find on Amazon that deal with structure they do what I call
a beat sheet method where they tell you you are supposed to hit these pre-prescribed fifteen
or twenty two or however many beats that happen in a typical Hollywood.
I’m throwing all of that out.
These are not moments in time other than a first scene, a last scene, identifying things
like that.
These are other structural elements to the story other than moments in time.
What’s important is the connection between the parts, the glue that is going to hold
them together.
Film Courage: I’m wondering what a movie looks like when it’s just a bunch of situations
strung together?
How does this look?
Let’s suppose a screenwriter has done this, they haven’t fixed [their script], now the
film is out there.
What does that look like?
Jill: It feels episodic, that’s another way to put it, where it’s kind of one moment
after moment.
It’s almost like we’re seeing separate short films strung together, instead of one
coherent story.
And by the way, not every movie tells a story.
I’m talking about movies that tell a story.
Actually some of the films Richard Linklater famously (and he has said this quite a bit)
that movies like SLACKER and BOYHOOD are great movies, they’re not telling a story though
right?
It’s not one coherent story.
It’s looking at a slice of life, it’s looking at different…it’s following a
character.
There might be some things thematically pulling them in common but it’s not a story.
So not every movie tells a story.
I have to say that it’s extremely rate to find a movie in theaters that doesn’t tell
a story.
It’s pretty unusual that Richard Linklater is the exception to the rule where we see
something that is successful that we can be moved by that actually isn’t telling a story.
The vast majority of the time movies need to tell a story for us to feel satisfied.
We’re going to get restless.
It’s going to feel episodic.
We’re going to get lost on tangents.
Why are we following this character?
What did that moment have to do with that moment?
There are going to be things that happen where you are setting plants but you’re not paying
off.
And it’s a chronic problem that I see in screenwriters that they are failing to tell
a story.