Film Courage: I have a William Goldman quote here and one of his quotes reads “Screenplays
are structure and that’s all they are.”
Do you agree with this quote and why do you think so many screenwriters argue about structure?
Scott Myers, DePaul University Professor/Screenwriter/Creator Gointothestory.blcklst(dot)com: Well first
of all…it’s hard to not agree with William Goldman who was arguably the dean of contemporary
American screenwriters.
I mean an amazing legacy and I never met him but people who had just said that he was the
greatest guy.
And so the idea that screenplays are structure, there is a very real way in which that is
true I think.
Ultimately a screenplay is a pre-movie.
It’s a template and a guide to make a movie and so there is a structural component just
like that where it gets budgeted and they do everything that they have to do with their
pre-production or production.
From a writing standpoint it’s also true because beginning, middle and end and subplot
and all of that stuff too.
Why people argue about it?
I think that a lot of it is people want or are inclined to think about screenplays at
a surface level like page counts and act breaks and that sort of thing (stylistic thing).
You can’t have any un-filmables or flashbacks or voiceover narration, weak writing.
Because that puts the conversation in a realm where it is pretty easy and in reality to
write a great script, it’s none of that.
It’s all about immersing yourself in the lives of your characters and seeing what emerges
from that process and that is not easy.
And there is no golden parachute, secret way of doing that.
Characters are slippery and many of them are hard to know and figuring out the relationships
and what they need and what they want, their conscious goal, unconscious goal, examining
their personal history which is everything that has happened to them to find our their
backstory elements which are the key elements that come forward into the story.
That is hard work and that requires trust and faith that the characters exist and that
is a conversation that I think people are afraid of.
And so they will argue about story structure and I’ve seen this flame wars.
I wrote a series of blog articles on these “so-called screenwriting rules.”
They want to talk about these rules.
There are no rules.
If there were rules, there would be rule books.
There are conventions, there are expectations, there are even paradigms, but not rules.
And so people want to reduce it to rules, they want to reduce it to formula, they want
to reduce it to specific paradigms, to structure as plot.
When structure is not just plot.
There is the external world of action and dialogue which I call the plot line.
That is the realm of the psychical journey.
That is only half the story.
There is the internal world so where there is dialogue there is subtext.
And where there is action there is intention of the character (the character’s intentions
behind their actions).
And where there is the plot line there is the theme line.
So the plot line answers the question “What is the story about?”
The theme line answers the question “What does the story mean?”
And that is the psychological journey compared to the psychical journey.
And so that conversation that is constantly floating around that is up there in that top
realm and plot line, structure as plot.
You need to get down in that other part.
That is where the conversation needs to be having.
Moreover (as I said upfront), I think that is where you start the conversation.
That is your dialogue with the story is with the characters.
I don’t care what paradigm they use.
If they started with the characters and immersed themselves in the lives of those characters
more often than not they are going to come up with the story structure out of that and
those characters are going to be alive and vibrant.
So again the answer I think is that people are not comfortable with that sort of engagement
with characters on an existential level where you believe they exist and now I am asking
you to get inside their heads and talk to them or engage them in conversation.
I think for many people that is something they feel uncomfortable with.
If they can say “Oh yeah, they need to have the break in Act 2 on page 25.
It can’t be between page 23.
It can’t be page 29.
It’s got to be 25.”
They are more comfortable with that because it makes it simpler.
Film Courage: So are there no great writers, just great rewriters?
I’m sure sure of that is one of your quotes?
Scott: No…it’s writing is rewriting.
That’s probably more true of screenwriting than maybe any other narrative form because
there are so many layers to get it movie made.
There is You as the writer and so you get feedback from your writer friends (you know,
the writers’ group).
You are represented, you get feedback from your managers and sometimes your agents depending
upon what your relationship is with your agents.
Then if you’re working with a producer, you get feedback from the producer.
And if you’ve got it set up at a studio or production company or financier, you get
feedback from them.
Then if the thing gets green lit, now you’ve got actors and directors attached.
Well now you’re going to have feedback from the director, feedback from each of the individual
actors, sometimes they have their own writers and then you have to synthesize what the other
writers have done to their characters.
And so for example I know Eric Heisserer quite well and he wrote ARRIVAL which is absolutely
one of the all time fantastic scripts.
And I asked him, I said “How many drafts did you do?”
And he said “One hundred.”
Now most of those were like changing a line but he would codify each one just so he knew.
Or dropping a scene or adding to scenes or whatever.
So I think probably out of that I think 10 or 15 drafts.
But yes, I tell my University students when they’ve gone through all of the work of
developing a story and then they sit down and write a draft of it I say “Okay, you
just have to understand it’s not going to be perfect.
You’re going to have to rewrite it.”
And they go “Oh really?”
They are not used to that.
Talk to them two or three years later, they completely understand.
But yes, writing is rewriting.