Film Courage: What are three rules someone needs to know about screenwriting?
Dr. Ken Atchity, Producer/Author: Well three rules, that’s just an arbitrary number but
let’s go with it.
I think the first thing that a screenwriter needs to know is that everything has to be
connected to everything else.
That’s the biggest difference between a screenplay and a novel in my mind.
In a novel you can get away with saying something on page one that doesn’t connect directly
to something on page 158 and so on.
Anything you say in a screenplay has to connect to anything else you say in a screenplay.
If it doesn’t, the audience is going to go “You know what I don’t get is why that
guy is wearing a red baseball cap in the first scene and then in the fourth scene he was
wearing a blue baseball cap.
And then after that he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap.”
Honestly, that’s the kind of thing people say when they are having a drink or coffee
after a movie right?
So every single thing has to connect with everything else.
It’s much more challenging because it’s almost like building a building where if one
thing isn’t connected properly the whole building can collapse.
So I think that’s the first thing a screenwriter has to know.
And I think the second thing a screenwriter should know is chronological order and logical
order and psychological order have absolutely nothing to do with it.
The only thing that matters is dramatic order.
That’s all the audience cares about.
If you hook us properly, it doesn’t matter where we go in the story after that hook because
we will figure it out.
We will be so hooked that we’ll figure it out.
You don’t have to even say 10 years later or 5 years earlier or whatever.
You can help to say that maybe but you don’t have to because we’re not stupid.
And that’s the third thing, the audience is the main character in the story not the
characters and pleasing the audience is what makes the great directors great is they know
what the audience is waiting for.
In THE BIRDS, what of my favorite examples Alfred Hitchcock has Tippi Hendren walking
up the creaky wooden steps to the attic because she hears a noise in the attic.
And she is wearing underwear because women are always wearing underwear in the last scenes
of a horror film like Sigourney Weaver in ALIEN.
So she’s going up there despite the fact that she’s locked in this house alone because
she’s afraid of the birds who have tried to get in through the windows so why in the
world would she go up those steps?
Why would she do that?
So if you start thinking about the character logic or psychological order, you don’t
get the whole thing.
What is wrong with her?
This is what you are thinking, you the audience as you are watching this.
And she gets half way up the steps and the noise gets worse and she stops and listens
to the noise.
And why is she stopping?
Well she’s stopping because we need time, the audience needs time to catch up with the
story because we need to remind ourself…we need to first say all of these things about
how stupid she is and why isn’t she wearing clothes and why doesn’t she test the flashlight
that she got from behind the couch (she doesn’t even turn it on, she’s just got it) and
of course at the top of the steps it’s not going to work but that’s typical and we’re
going through all of this in our heads.
But when she stops on the last step before she goes to the door we are suddenly…all
of our inner dialogue has stopped.
And we’re going “Okay, I paid actually $22.00 to get scared out of my mind and that’s
where we are now.”
She’s going to open the door and I’m going to be scared.
And when you are ready for that, then she can open the door.
A person who didn’t understand that the audience is the most important character in
the story would have her walk up the steps, would maybe have her test the flashlight,
would have a whole different way of doing it.
Everything that a good director does is based on the audience, not based on the characters
or what happens logically in the next order.
It’s based on what the audience has paid for.
What are you hear for?
And am I going to lose you or not?
Because on that middle step where she stops “Do you want to leave the theater?
This is the last time we go to one of these stupid movies…it’s really…”
Okay but get up and leave.
But if you are still there then she goes up another couple steps because he knows exactly
what is going through your mind and his job is to get you to the point where your mind
is blank and you are just waiting to be scared because that is what you paid for.
That’s what I mean by the psychology of the audience.
That is I think the most of screenwriting is knowing that.
What does the audience ant to see here.
Not what do I have to do first and what do I have to expose first, what kind of exposition
do I need.
It’s like how can I grab the audience by the throat and never let go of it?