Film Courage: What are the three most important words for every screenwriter?
Andy Guerdat, Television Writer, Producer, Instructor, and Podcaster: What happens next
for every Storyteller what happens next if the audience stops asking those three words
that three-word question you are dead you're dead in the water it's surprising how often it
happens that they do stop that and often it's because they're ahead of the story probably
usually it's because they're ahead of the story and the reason they're ahead of the story often
is because the screenwriter has been following a template that tells them I have to be here
by page so and so I have to be here by page so and so the character must always do this
the villain must always do that and the audience instinctively knows it they've seen the movies
they've seen most people by the time they're in their 20s have seen hundreds if not thousands of
movies or certainly thousands of TV shows so they start to instinctively know when you're
following a formula when the when the the story is not surprising and delighting and amazing and
interesting and they know it and so they stop asking what happens next because they know what
happens next we've all had that experience where you're sitting in a movie theater and you see a
oh God here comes the part where the best friends where the protagonist best friend is going to get
killed so that he's motivated to want to exact revenge and then you see it happen or some other
plot turn oh God here comes the part where and the audience is instinctively feeling let down
and they stop asking the question we know what happens next I don't care anymore that's when
you've lost them forever and at that point it's almost impossible to get them back by the way
it's harder to get an audience back than it is to win them over in the first place it's like trying
to win back an ex-wife or something they already know you're I'm not going back down that road so
that should be always in the back of your head is is the audience still with me is the audience
still asking that question I call it it by the way an audience antenna and that's something
that I developed of necessity writing multi-camera sitcoms in front of a live audience you learn real
quickly what an audience likes what they don't like I shouldn't I went down that road I'm not
going down that road again let's try it this way and you just start to feel it's like a tuning fork
where I'm in I'm in instinctively sensing if I do this the audience's response will be that and the
better your audience intent is the more accurate is the the better your work is going to be much
of the difficulty that people have when they're trying to write is that they're not they haven't
had an opportunity as I did to develop that to be forced to develop it and so they don't and
so they stop checking in with the audience so as you're writing I advise people to keep checking
in with this mythical audience write the script as if you were sitting in the theater seat or sitting
on your sofa in front of your big screen and that's where you are when you're writing how do
I feel when I see that on the screen how will the audience feel when they see that on the screen do
I need to adjust it did I deliver the information too late did I not set it up properly with enough
information did I over set it up so that the audience anticipates too quickly what's going
to happen always be checking in with that audience to make sure you're with them so that that's part
of that you're with them on the journey instead instead of just with yourself on the Journey
you're writing for them you're asking them to pay you money for the privilege of watching your
movie so that's the least they can expect is that you're you have their their concerns in mind and
their major concern is that they never want you to be behind them they want they want you to be
ahead of them you want they want to be surprised they want to be shocked they want to be amazed
what happens next so with Michael Clayton you felt that at so many different points absolutely
never stopped and I was dazzled by it because you don't often see a script as well written as that
and something for grown-ups as well written as that I never knew where the story was going to
go I had no idea and it was a but everything made sense but the screenwriter was always a
one step ahead of me one step ahead of me great writers do that instinctively they're checking
in with that audience all the time how can we add suspense to a story but not confuse the viewer or
the reader well that's yeah that's a that's a major question that everybody has to confront
and part of the one of the things you need to do is to make sure you're clear you the writer are
clear on what it is you want the audience to feel again the audience antenna your audience antenna
do I want them to feel shocked do I want them to be feel suspense do I want them to laugh do I want
them to feel tragedy and the way you dispense the information of your story will to a large
degree determine those things so for example if you deliver too much information let's say
you're writing a drama and you deliver too much information so that the audience knows too much
about these characters and what they're heading into that it the scenes that follow will tend to
become comic because the audience is ahead of them so they'll tend to be saying oh you idiot
can't you see that that the monsters behind the door you dummy now it doesn't automatically mean
it's comic but it will tend to lean that way if you're not careful if you want uh the audience
to feel suspense you want to in if somebody's walking into the dark room and you want the
audience to feel suspense it helps if they have some idea of what's there that there's something
scary so that as the character's walking into the dark room right they're we the audience are
feeling that the suspense that something may happen but if I don't do that if I just have
the the character walk into a brightly lit room and there's no suggestion that there's a monster
there and the monster suddenly jumps out and eats them that might be very effective as a shock but
it's going to be a shock it's not going to be suspense Hitchcock used to talk about this all
the time about you put a a couple having lunch at a cafe if you cut underneath the table and
you show show a ticking bomb everything after that becomes suspenseful but if I don't cut under there
and show the ticking bomb they're just chatting away and suddenly it blows up then the audience
is just shocked and they say what what happened sometimes you want to shock the audience sometimes
you want them to feel suspense so what you're really talking about is how much information do
you dispense and when do you dispense it and it it's determined by what you want the audience to
feel if you want the audience to feel suspense they need to know something out there right is
moving a conflict of some sort is moving toward my protagonist right but if and if I don't let them
know that they're not going to feel suspense they're just going to be shocked when the bad
thing happens why is it important for a writer to withhold information because he pauses and when I
pause that makes makes you theoretically lean in to hear the rest of my sentence that's why
because when I deliver when I withhold information it instinctively makes the audience lean forward
to try to find out what that next piece of information is it's astounding how much you
can get away with as long as you've hooked the audience with the protagonist journey in some
way you can get away with an enormous amount of withholding of information because the audience
desperately lean in and we wait and wait and wait to try to get that information obviously that's
not the preferable way to structure a movie story is nothing but withheld information although as I
say in in my video series The Lost in Translation the movie from a few years ago with Bill Murray
and Scarlet Johansson comes surprisingly close to doing that it it almost nothing is revealed and
the audience stayed with it most of the audience stayed with it it is not a well-written script
it's barely a script at all but because of the leads and because of the production values it
was it was least fairly successful but it was an interesting exercise in how much you could get
away with by not telling the audience anything not giving them almost gave them almost nothing it was
just two people flirting for an hour and a half and then they left so and even at the end Bill
Murray whispers something to Scarlet hands and we never know what it was it's just nothing but
withheld information you can do it for quite some time usually writers if if even if their instinct
is good on how to dispense information information and when very often your notes are going to be
from Agents managers producers Executives who are not the not the people who should be giving notes
to storytellers but nonetheless if you want to make a living and get your movie made you have
to deal with them and their notes are often going to be explain more tell more tell way the audience
needs to know where they went to school no the audience doesn't need to know why they went to
school they're always going to giving be giving you notes about explaining more stuff and uh so
that that that's a note that usually needs to be resisted if possible you want to you want to
only dispense the information that's useful to moving the story forward the rest of it I mean
in a limited series or something where you where you're taking 8-10 hours in order to tell a story
that probably could be told in two a lot of times yeah they're going to wind up filling up those
hours with some sidetracks about the information about the Char it isn't really necessary but for
to tell your story in the tightest most effective way withholding information is
more powerful than just blurting out a bunch of stuff and if you are going to reveal information
make sure it's useful information and by useful I mean advancing the central conflict of the story.