by Jim Hodge


Writing a screenplay is a more difficult and disciplined activity than most beginning writers might anticipate. This is because storytelling is more difficult than most of us comprehend, but also because scriptwriting has a number of built in obstacles. For one thing there is a ferocious time restraint that must be met. A screenplay for a feature film is only about 120 minutes long and every second of that 120 minutes counts. Every scene, every element of a scene, and every word of dialogue must move the story along. There's no time for anything else. George Bernard Shaw once wrote at the end of a long letter to a friend that he would have written a shorter letter but he didn't have the time. Scriptwriting is like that. It is much easier to say something in five sentences than in one.

Character development is particularly difficult given the time restraint of film. A scriptwriter must reveal multidimensional characters within the natural working out of the story. A scriptwriter can't write a paragraph or two describing a character, nor can a scriptwriter have another character describing a character surreptitiously in dialogue. A character must come alive in the process of the unfolding drama of the screenplay. Not an easy thing to pull off as any scriptwriter will readily admit.

Of course character development can be enhanced through the writing of dialogue, but good dialogue is also hard to come by. In a good screenplay, dialogue is short and concise ( the way most people actually speak), it moves the story along, and most importantly, it reveals character. Good dialogue almost always has a subtext--that which is being said between-the-lines. For example, in the dialogue for a scene in which a middle-aged couple is planning a vacation, we might hear them discuss their plans of where to go and what to take, but we must learn so much more than that. Is the couple excited about the vacation or jaded? Is the wife steering the conversation or is the husband, or are they both strong personalities with strong opinions? Is there tension or conflict between them? Do they look forward to a vacation together or are they bored with each other? In good dialogue writing, this kind of information is given between-the-lines. "On-the-nose" dialogue--dialogue which explicitly tells the audience what the characters are feeling and thinking makes for simplistic, uncomplicated and boring characters, boring scenes, and by extension, boring scripts.

A thorough knowledge of the characters is required in writing dialogue and a thorough knowledge of the story they are in is also required if the dialogue is to move the story along. Before a writer can know the story, however, he must know something of how film scripts are structured. A film story must fit the rigid structure of a screenplay.

It is safe to say that most Hollywood films stay predictably close to this structure and for some good reasons. It is a well established storytelling structure for the medium of film in which each written page corresponds to one minute of running time in a produced film. There is not much time and the audience needs to know quickly who the main character is and what he or she is about if the audience is to care about what happens in the next act. Paying attention to structure certainly helps here and can also be a useful tool a beginning writer can rely on to avoid common pitfalls such as not knowing who's story is being told or not knowing the story at all.

Most writers agree that it is necessary to know what the "set up" is going to be, how the "confrontation" will take place, how the story will end, what has to happen by page 30, page 60, page 90, and so on before a single word can be written. A writer who doesn't know the story will find it difficult to keep within the time restraints of a screenplay. Writing a novel may be different. Many novelists say they create characters and then let the characters lead them through the story. That method won't work well for a screenwriter even though there is a sense in which some of that methodology is used. Characters, for example, may come into difficulty or enormous change in their lives because of a weakness, strength or some other character trait, but the writer already knows the story and has placed characters into the story who can tell it. This does not mean a writer might not have to back off from the story when it starts to feel contrived from time to time and let the characters take over. In general, however, an experienced writer works from the outset to blend story, character, and structure and thus avoid the need for page after page, scene after scene of rewrites trying to work it out.

Another difficulty of scriptwriting is dealing with the visual aspect. A script is a visual story, whereas writers are often literary types who enjoy words and how words can convey meaning and subtleties. The trouble is that on the screen the only words, and therefore the only chance for written verbal subtleties, are in dialogue. Everything else is visual and so a writer must always be writing visually. Every scene has to give clear understanding to what's going on, and visual subtleties are not within the jurisdiction of a screenwriter who must describe in straight forward terms what is going on in each scene and in each segment of a scene so that at the very least it can be acted out. Visual imagery is provided when it can enhance the meaning of that action, but it is elusive. Calling for the use of lighting, for example, to set a specific mood should best be left to the director to decide.

A good story entertains us and we learn from it because it touches us at some human level. It arouses our curiosity, defines our humanity, invites us to remember, gives us hope. All these characteristics of a story are as elusive as artistic achievement itself. But all writers write from a particular perspective of life, and this always comes through in their work. Multidimensional characters always have a point of view--something they believe in or don't believe in, something that puts them in conflict, something that forces them to make a decision. Multidimensional characters have values in other words and portraying these values is a tool a writer can use to flesh out a character and give him/her life. What a character believes in also gives understanding to his motivations. We see this all the time in films. In action films the main character believes problems can be resolved with a gun or with his fists or perhaps is forced to resolve them that way. In detective films the main character is always suspicious of and on the wrong side of authority. In romantic films the main characters believe in the power of love to solve all the problems of the universe.

Using the values of a character to flesh out that character, to motivate, create conflict and move the story along is necessary in scriptwriting. For those of you writing, however, who want to go further, who have a need or opportunity because of your material to make a statement, keep in mind that you should not say anything within the structure of your story. In other words, don't use the plot of your story to make a point or send a message. The plot should be unencumbered and move the story along. If you think you are skilled enough, the place to make a point is in a subplot. Many writers use the technique of setting up a subplot for the purpose of making a point. The subplot is skillfully woven into the fabric of the story but never interferes or slows down the action. Writing in this way takes skill and practice. Say what you want to say in a subplot and make the subplot work for the story. If you can do that you will have mastered an important writing skill. Supporting characters can play a key role here by, at the very least, stating your ideas in dialogue, and at the most, by offering character studies of what you might be trying to say.

Making a statement in a subplot, however, is not the same as making a statement in a theme. A statement in a subplot is an idea within the story. "Theme" is the idea behind the story. "Concept" is the idea of the story. Sometimes the theme of a film is not an idea at all but more a mood or atmosphere. Romantic films are often written with a mood/theme in mind, but for many writers, however, theme is just not that critical. In one scriptwriter's group I was involved with, writers who were on the "hot seat" on a given night were always asked to tell how they came to write their script and its theme. I am always surprised by the number of writers who present credible first drafts of a screenplay but can't tell what the theme is and are surprised when they discover what the theme is later in the discussion. They don't think about theme as they write and often only end up thinking about it when it becomes problematic to the story or to selling the script. One script put through our group, for example, was an extremely well written story about smuggling alcohol across the Canadian/Vermont border during prohibition. The theme seemed to be saying that it was alright to smuggle as long as it was for a good reason. The writers had inadvertently fallen into an untenable theme for the family market they were aiming for and the discussion that night centered around how to change the theme without losing the story. That's one extreme. The other extreme is thinking too much about theme. A writer who starts the process of writing a screenplay by thinking of a theme and how to incorporate it into a story is usually a writer in trouble because a screenplay written from that perspective will feel contrived and stiff unless the writer is very skilled. Write your story, create your characters, and be aware as you go along what your theme is, but also be aware that your view of the world will come through anyway. Whether you believe we are created or a cosmic accident, whether you believe our wills are free or determined, will matter a great deal in the stories you write, in how you treat your characters and in what your stories say thematically.