The Secrets Are Out... Bill Martell's 'Act Two Secrets' Blue Book Reveals All!

When Bill Martell finally gets around to finishing his last Blue Book on screenwriting, he will have completed the most exhaustive, practical, inspiring and fun-to-read body of material on our noble profession/calling the world has ever seen. (And at the lowest price, too) In fact, if he's up for it he should then edit the whole bunch of them into one mammoth Ultimate Encyclopedia of Screenwriting.

Act Two Secrets helps the screenwriter navigate the treacherous rapids (or still waters, more often) of the 'middle part' of the script. It's very easy to lose the plot (literally), fail to build the intensity, use too little (or too much) content... But whatever the possible difficulty you are facing as a writer, Bill has solutions for you. So many solutions, in fact, you may even regret not being able to use all of them at once!

The emphasis is, as in all of these books, on tools you can use, not rules. This means that no matter what your personal preference, whether you like to follow a structural model very closely or you prefer to fly by the seat of your pants, you will be able to get the maximum out of this book. Topics covered at length include pacing, creating strong emotional conflicts by using the 4 D's, genre-specific ways of increasing tension and audience involvement, plot devices to keep your story moving, the proper use of subplots, mysteries and macguffins... It's all great and inspiring stuff. And written in that inimitable Martell manner, combining wit, passion and insight in an irresistible package.

A pleasant surprise is that the examples quoted in the book (often at length) do not stick to the 'classics' we've all seen and had analyzed dozens of times before. Here, a number of entries from a recent edition of the Raindance festival are examined in depth. They cover a wide spectrum of genres and countries, proving just how universal these tools are. And it's also a great way to help the reader discover new films to seek out and writing and directing talent to watch out for.

If you've ever needed help on a second act, get this book. If you want to avoid problems in your second acts, get this book. If you like to read screenwriting manuals for fun (with or without the profit), get this book. It's that simple.

And you can get it here:

Act Two Secrets (Screenwriting Blue Books)

3-Act Structure Has Been Declared Dead - Once Again

Tom Lazarus has a new book out, The Last Word: Definitive Answers To All Your Screenwriting Questions. Just got my hands on it, so it's too soon for a review, but while browsing through my copy I stumbled upon the section called 'Rising Action'.

In this chapter, Mr. Lazarus claims that Three Act Structure is dead. Instead, it has been superseded by the Rising Action principle - which is exactly what the name implies. You hit the ground running and things keep building from the word go. In the past, the argument goes, writers were taught to slowly build their world, revealing characters one step at a time, and only getting to the meat of the story's developments in act 2. For contemporary audiences, that's just too slow.

I have absolutely no problem with Rising Action as a screenwriting concept. But it is not a substitute for TAS (cool, I invented an acronym!), or any other story structure. And TAS (ooh, I like the sound of this!) was never intended as a 'slow burn' approach to storytelling. Sure, some people will take a lot of time to put all their pieces on the board. And some teachers or manuals may have advocated or at least presented this slow introduction as the best way to write a screenplay. But mostly, people have been told to get their story up and running as quickly as possible. The very fact that the usual 'place' for the inciting incident is within the first 10 to 15 minutes of the narrative is proof enough of this. As is the fact that the usual 'script graph' always portrays a steeply rising line of action, and that more current depictions of the model point out that every act ends on a climax. What this means, is that every act (whether you have one, two, three, four or maybe more) is structured in a similar way to the entire screenplay. And will, of necessity, consist of rising action all the way.

So, no, I do not agree that 3 act structure has gone the way of the dodo. What IS true (as explained in the Thor-post), is that the structure is mutating, and not in a way which is necessarily conducive to good screenwriting and storytelling. And what is also true, is that the field of screenwriting structure should be opened up to include far more models, to suit different types of story. But that's a topic for another post.

In the meantime, if you'd like to read Tom Lazarus' take on this and dozens of other topics, you can get the book here:

Mighty Thor or mighty bore?

  

   Though a seminal movie in the run-up to Joss Whedon's The Avengers, Kenneth Branagh's Thor isn't exactly going to knock your socks off. The reason why is a perfect lesson for screenwriters everywhere. We're not going to cast blame on anyone here, because there were at least 5 writers involved, and it's impossible to know who finally decided on the definitive version of the storyline. But whoever did, made an almost rookie mistake.

   Basically, there's nothing at stake.

   I know, I know. Thor wants to get his powers back. And his jealous brother Loki tries to have him killed after a while and take the throne of Asgard for his own. And there are evil Frost Giants, who work together with Loki in order to kill Odin, king of the Norse gods.

   But none of this really matters. (Spoilers will abound from now on, so I say thee: be forewarned!)

   In Act 1, we witness how Thor causes a major diplomatic incident between the gods and the frost giants. As punishment, he is cast out of Asgard by  Odin and robbed of his powers.

   In Act 2, Thor is now powerless and trapped on Earth, and tries to regain his mystic hammer Mjolnir, now in the possession of secretive task force SHIELD. When he finds his hammer, he discovers he's no longer worthy of it. Oh my! What is a thunder god to do?

    Meanwhile in Asgard, Odin has fallen into the possibly eternal Odinsleep,  Loki takes over the rulership of Asgard (as he should, being the remaining heir), and conspires with the king of the frost giants to let them regain their magic doodah which gave them unlimited power in the past.

    Thor doesn't factor into these events at all.  Only when Thor's Asgardian friends, the Warriors Three and Lady Sif, come to Earth to save their pal, Loki decides to kill his brother by sending the magical Destroyer armour after him. Thor sacrifices himself for his human friends, and immediately regains his powers. He demolishes the Destroyer, and whizzes back to Asgard.

  Act 3 has arrived, and Loki lets his frost giant co-conspirators into Asgard to kill the helpless Odin. Except, when they arrive, he turns on them and kills them. And then he starts his big plan to destroy all the frost giants in order to win the love of his dad.

   Which is exactly what Thor wanted to do in act 1, and which caused his banishment in the first place. Loki wants to gain his father's love by doing something his father is utterly opposed to.

   Dumbest Evil Plan Ever, anyone?

   And what's at stake here? The fate of the evil frost giants, a blueskinned race of monsters we don't care about? Thor's life? Hardly - he's so much more powerful than Loki that it's no contest.

   The love of a comatose father who may never regain conciousness??
   And even if this fatherly love is the driving force behind everything, it's a lousy dramatic goal. Because a parent can love a multitude of children. It's not a binary thing - either he loves ME or someone else. Love can grow and expand indefinitely. And a good dramatic goal is something exclusive; something only one character (or group) can have or achieve.

   Net result: there's nothing at stake for the audience to care about. And when the stakes are non-existent, it's impossible to come up with the correct motivations for your characters to do (or not) what they do. It doesn't matter whether you have good performances, effective individual scenes, great art direction, plentiful CGI effects - a conflict without anything worthwhile at stake is ultimately meaningless.

   Witness what Thor tries to do in act 3. He now desperately wants to save the frost giants from Loki's machinations - but why? They're still evil, they haven't changed, he's had no contact with them whatsoever. Answer: it's because your hero and your villain have to have opposing goals. After all, that's what it says in the screenwriting manuals. It doesn't really matter what these goals are, as long as they oppose each other, I guess... His character arc is already complete (he learned humility in the second half of Act 2 and thus is once again worthy of his powers), so there's nothing to be achieved on that level.
   And for the people on Earth, where most of the film takes place, none of these events have the slightest importance. We're all unaware of them, and if the frost giants are exterminated - who cares? If Loki gains the love of Odin - so what?

   Logically speaking, the film's plot should have been about the relationship between the gods and the giants. Thor should have been exiled to the giants' realm in order to make amends for his crime. Getting to know the frost giants better, he might gain sympathy for them (or some of them), and thus have a personal stake in saving them from destruction.
   Or the giants, together with Loki, should have been the prime movers of the conflict, waging war on Asgard on an unprecedented scale. But that would have made it extremely hard for audiences not yet familiar with the character and his corner of the Marvel Multiverse to care about these events and characters.

  So putting Thor on Midgard (our world) is not a bad decision with regards to audience identification. But keeping Thor isolated from the main narrative thrust of the movie certainly is.

   And it wouldn't have been difficult to put Earth in peril. Have the frost giants decide to invade Midgard in order to get to Asgard. Have the destruction of Earth be a key component for the success of Loki's plan. Hey, if everything else fails, take your mortal friends and lovers along with you to your magical divine realm, and put them in danger there. Or - for a stronger Norse mythology feel - have the war with the frost giants be the first step towards Ragnarok, the end of everything - the final battle between the gods and their enemies, where Loki will betray his kinfolk and side with the Very Big Bad Evil Guys, and the entire universe will be shattered - and yes, that includes all of us, folks.

   Now, I don't think that no one ever brought up these points during development. I'm pretty sure they must have been . But somewhere along the way the decision was made to go for this 'low impact' version of cosmic superhero storytelling. We'll probably never know why - but I'm willing to bet budget concerns were involved.
At least The Avengers got it right.  But Thor, Captain America and Iron Man 2 should and could have got it right too.



 



  

The paradigm is a-changing - and not for the better

  More and more screenwriting experts are claiming that 3-Act Structure is dead, and/or that the original Field-inspired paradigm is no longer valid. Rumors of the 3-Act Structure's demise have been greatly exaggerated. But the way the paradigm is being implemented in many mainstream blockbusters has changed, indubitably.

   Unfortunately this change is not resulting in better storytelling. Quite the contrary. What's happening nowadays? Films, on average, are shorter than say ten years ago. They used to be 120 minutes, while now 100 minutes seems to be the new norm.

  This change in length means that the original distribution of major turning points (all together now: end of Act 1 page 30, midpoint page 60, end of Act 2 p. 90, focus points on pages 45 and 75, thirty pages for your third act which includes the crisis, its aftermath and the climax and resolution) is no longer valid. As we're now working with 100 instead of 120 pages. However, act 1 still takes 30 pages. The midpoint, which should now be around page 50, is still firmly ensconced on page 60. Focus point 2 (which coincides with the Dark Night Of The Soul-segment from the Save The Cat-model) is still at page 75.

  But that's when things start to give way. The third act is of necessity shorter than it used to be. Which is fairly weird because this is where we want to provide the biggest oomphs, the most powerful emotional impact, the most riveting revelations. Yet there's simply not enough time to actually give these essential elements their due.

  The second half of act two has also been truncated. You no longer have the 'luxury' of 15 pages to take you from page 75 to the act break. So you're forced to compress your storytelling so you can get to the act 2 break quicker (I would guesstimate that the break now often falls between page 80 to 85). Which means your entire Act 2 climax needs to be rushed.

  The problem we see more and more nowadays is that writers tell more than half of their story at the 'traditional' pace, intended to provide enough story material for a two-hour film. And then they have to rush through what should be the most impressive and memorable parts of the script(and the film) in order to get everything finished on time.

  The saddest thing is that this changing structure is not something discovered and developed by writers in order to improve the quality of their storytelling. It's mandated by economic concerns - shorter movies mean more showings a day and thus more dollars flowing in per diem.

   If you want to see this structure in action, watch Thor (2011). End of act One (exactly after thirty minutes): Thor is banished from Asgard and stripped of his might by Odin. Midpoint (60 minutes): Thor gets his hands on his hammer, but he hasn't yet learned his lesson, and remains powerless. Focus point 2: Thor's Asgardian friends reach him on Earth but his evil brother Loki sends The Destroyer to kill Thor. And then, things get hazy - Thor dies, Thor is resurrected, defeats The Destroyer, zips back to Asgard to defeat Loki and stop his utterly pointless Evil Plan, reunites with his father, and mourns the loss of his whiny Midgard-bound lady love Jane Foster - all in roughly twenty minutes. Which in practice means that none of the Big Moments have any real impact on the viewer, because there's  not enough time to set them up and to have them resound with the audience.

   Perhaps we should redraw the Post-Field Paradigm (Field's paradigm augmented with various and sundry elements from other major dramatic writing theorists) so that it now consists of two thirty minute acts, and two twenty minute acts (and yes, this would kill the three-act model if it were to become dominant in the marketplace). Or, perhaps, a 30 minute first act, a 40 minute second act and a 30 minute third act to cap things off. Which means that the middle of the story would lose importance, and story density would inevitably be reduced. But structural points could be redistributed in such a way that this new paradigm might start to deliver satisfactory screen stories on a regular basis.

   Or we could just go for a 25/50/25-page 3-act model instead of a 30/60/30-page one, and keep everything as it is. Only told faster.

  For the moment, everything is up in the air. Until the next guru comes along...

Why Green Lantern's Light Sputtered And Died...

A looooong time ago I gave a glowing review to the screenplay of Green Lantern, by Berlanti, Green and Guggenheim. It seemed to be an almost perfect translation of the source material to the big screen. This was a superhero movie I was really looking forward to see.

Then it was released. And the reviews came in.

And I only got around to watching it yesterday. And every negative review was richly deserved.

What happened?

Well, at least one new version of the screenplay happened. I say 'at least one' because who knows how many people were involved with retooling the BGG-draft, and how many times was changed? Only those people in charge of the development process, I guess. And somehow, though many elements were retained, the final, filmed version manages to demonstrate most of the major screenwriting mistakes gurus, teachers, writers and bloggers warn against. Time and time again.

Now, I'm not saying that the flaws in the screenplay are the only reason for Green Lantern's failure to shine his light across the world-wide box office. Production design wasn't always succesful - the dark, murky world of Oa looks awful compared to the high-tech bright and shiny Oa of the comics, the GL costume didn't impress much (especially the face mask), the special effects were 'obviously' CGI and failed to excite, and maybe the whole Green Lantern power set doesn't end itself to live action too well.

Nevertheless, the shot version of the film is overloaded with basic storytelling mistakes.

Such as:

1) An exposition-heavy opening sequence which doesn't affect the audience in the least. We are told the history of the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps, and their biggest enemy Parallax, who was imprisoned by one of the Lanterns. Fine. We're TOLD, not SHOWN any of this, and for people who know nothing of the GL mythology, the effect is bewilderment instead of excitement or being intrigued.

2) A lack of a central conflict which drives the narrative. Yes, there is a Parallax entity, and yes, there is a man called Hector Hammond who turns into a powerful, freaky telepath/telekinetic. But neither of them are after Hal Jordan's hide for most of the film. And Hal Jordan isn't hunting for them either, or preparing to defend his world, or trying to achieve a goal which the villains can thwart (unless his goal is to simply keep breathing. And even then, they only try to eliminate him in act 3). Only during act 3 do all the threads come together, but it's far too little far too late.

Obviously there is conflict in the movie, and the Parallax entity wants to destroy the Guardians and the Corps, but instead of gunning for their base planet of Oa, it decides to take a leasurely detour to Earth first (because, you know, what do we care if some far away planet we never heard of gets blown up?)because Hal Jordan got the ring of the Green Lantern who imprisoned Parallax before - but it isn't the ring, it's the willpower of the wearer which is essential.

3) Lack of a goal for the protagonist: Hal Jordan is a test pilot who gets fired and then is kidnapped by a green ring which is bequeathed to him by its alien wearer, Abin Sur. Jordan is then taken to Oa by the ring (against his will) for Green Lantern training. He doesn't do so well, and the scorn of lead Lantern Sinestro (well on his way to becoming the biggest Lantern villain ever)is enough to send Jordan packing back to Earth, basically quitting the Corps. For some reason the ring still works for him and he becomes an Earthbound superhero when Hector Hammond starts causing havoc - but there's nothing he wants to accomplish or achieve. He's either dragged around against his will, mopes around or jumps into the fray because that's what the audience knows heroes do.

4)A flawed, unclear character arc. Hal Jordan saw his test pilot father die when he was a child. Now, as an adult, he's a daredevil test pilot too, taking crazy risks and never obeying orders. Not exactly someone paralyzed by fear, rather someone who has conquered it by overcompensating. The only level on which Jordan is hampered by fear is when it comes to relationships - he runs away whenever things might get serious.

But that's in no way an issue when it comes to being a part of the Corps, or in standing up to Parallax. So when Jordan has to 'conquer his fear', the script cannot provide the necessary steps to make that evolution tangible. Basically, the hero 'learns' what he already knows how to do, and it's unclear why or how he learns it.
The biggest setback in the film comes when Jordan is defeated in training by Sinestro, who scorns him as being weak - and instead of fighting back, getting angry, or taking this as a motivation to change, Jordan meekly agrees with his trainer and flees back to Earth. But if he's such a wimp - how did he become an ace jet pilot who takes insane risks every day? By quitting at the first sign of trouble?

5) Pointless secondary characters. Jordan's buddy Tom is just there to serve as a sprechhund when necessary. Senator Hammond provides a chance to cast a familiar face (Tim Robbins) but the Senator has no impact on Hal's life, really. Carol Ferris, the great love of Jordan's life, is just that, a pretty girl who is there to nag at him in order to remind us just how screwed-up he is (as opposed to, you know, showing us how screwed-up he is). There's even a Jordan family reunion which turns out to be wholly incosnequential, because none of his family members are involved with the plot as it develops.

Nor are the other Green Lanterns particularly interesting: Sinestro is opposed to Jordan being a member, Kilowog's just a drill sergeant and Tamar-Re is just there to explain things to Jordan. None of these get any depth, or play off Jordan as a character in any interesting, non-clichéed way.

6) This one may be due to cutting out an essential bit of information from the script or in the editing room - When Hector Hammond develops his powers, he's captured by the secret government organization Checkmate and his father. They intend to experiment on him and either remove his powers or find a way to neutralize them. Hammond takes control of the lab telekinetically, disables the soldiers and straps his father to the examination table, in order to kill him. Suddenly, Green Lantern bursts through a wall and the fight is on!

Except - there's no reason for him to be there. He doesn't know about Hammond being captured, nor about him going berserk. He's just there because otherwise the bad guy will get away with his dastardly actions. It's not even a coincidence - which happens all the time in the comics - where the hero just happens to notice dodgy activity and decides to investigate because that's what heroes do.

The result is that the audience doesn't get caught up in an exciting action scene, but that the audience is going 'Whoa! Where did HE come from!!??' Which means you're losing your audience right at the time you want them to get maximally invested in your movie, because they're wondering about the cause-and-effect logic of what they're watching.

Is it all bad, then? Well... pretty much yes. The final shooting script does solve the one structural problem I had with the BGG script - there, the outer space action was resolved on Oa, after which Green Lantern returns to Earth and has to fight Hector Hammond. In the final film, Hammond gets taken care of before Jordan has to face Parallax (who doesn't get to Oa and doesn't have to face the entire Corps). So in this version, the third act does build more logically to a Big Climax. Too bad, then, that neither third act confrontation is truly memorable...

So, to sum up: a very good script got turned into a bad script, which led to a crappy movie and, more importantly, a stillborn movie franchise. There's a lesson here for you, Hollywood. If only you would learn it...

Review: Blue Book #8:Visual Storytelling by William C. Martell (Kindle, Nook)

The latest Blue Book is the biggest yet and also the... well, 'best' is such a difficult term to apply because all of the Blue Books have been amazing value and packed to the gills with excellent and essential information. But this latest one is really something special... So let's call it 'First Among Equals'.

Visual storytelling is an essential skill to master, yet something many screenwriters (especially those aong us who haven't had a film school education) often struggle with. So look to this e-book for inspiration, for hundreds of examples, and for some fundamental principles to help you think creatively about getting information across in a purely visual way.

Visual storytelling was at its most sophisticated during the silent film era, and the book starts off with analyzing two films by Murnau (The Last Laugh - no title cards! - and Sunrise, which won the first Oscar for best artistic achievement in 1927) and one by Buster Keaton (The General). And it immediately becomes clear just how much one can communicate to the audience without relying on dialogue - and how many options we have as screenwriters to achieve this. And we're also reminded just how much we can all learn from studying the history of the art form.

But it's not all a trip to the distant cinematographic past. Films examined here range right up to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and even this year's Academy Award winner The Artist. Another film getting the in-depth treatment is Pixar's Up!, which seems to be the most popular animated film for analysis purposes right now. I've read at least three manuals in the last month in which it was examined in detail.

Specific topics include telling us about your characters by showing them in action (in a screenplay, a character isn't what he or she thinks, but does), and especially by letting them make decisions; the importance of locations and how to contrast them with your characters; making goals visible; using time as a visual element; symbolism, metaphors and leitmotifs; and various and sundry screenwriter's tricks to make your scenes and characters come alive.

And at the end of the book, we discover which Blue Books will be updated next, and what other book projects mr. Martell has lined up. Nice to know there's still so much to look forward to.

So - the best written workshop on visual storytelling you can imagine, at a crazy low price. Every screenwriter and film student should read this.

You can get the book here:



And you can get Murnau movies from here:







And Buster Keaton's The General from here:

Review: Writing The Pilot by William Rabkin (moon&sun&whiskey Incorporated, paperback and kindle version)

If you've ever considered writing a TV pilot, get this book.

If you're an executive or development person who want to be able to communicate in a sensible and effective way with writers developing a pilot for you, get this book.

If you've written TV pilots and want to make sure your next pilot contains all the essential elements for a succesful run, or you want to find out more about the potential pitfalls of some ostensibly powerful high concept ideas, get this book.

And if you just want to find out more about what makes TV pilots tick -- well, you know the drill by now.

William Rabkin, writer/producer of over 300 hours of television (including Diagnosis Murder, Monk and Psych) has written the definiive tract on television pilots.

You will learn what the most important elements of a good pilot are (some you will beforehand, some may surprise you), and how it differs from a feature script or from an 'ordinary' episode. What may surprise many, is that certain extremely cool and powerful high concept pilots, which may be very rewarding on their own terms, are actually fundamentally and fatally flawed when it comes to building an entire series off them - especially in the American, 22 episodes/year network environment. Rabkin proves this quite convincingly by analysing and dissecting the concepts behind Life On Mars (American version, which failed miserably) and Flashforward. This section of the book is an eye-opener both for writers and for execs, because a strong high concept can 'blind' the audience to the flaws or weaknesses which will become clearer as the series progresses. I, for one, am pretty apprehensive about Awake, which has a universally praised pilot epispode, but a high concept at its core which makes it hard to predict which way they're going to take the series over (hopefully) many, many episodes.

The strength of the essential building blocks of the pilot is also one of the deciding factors in whether a show keeps going from strength to strength (The Shield was as good in season 7 as it had ever been and the series could easily have continued for a couple of seasons more), whereas others visibly dwindle in quality, though not necessarily in popularity (Nip/Tuck, for instance).

Rabkin also provides an in-depth look at the creation process of two pilots he developed with Lee Goldberg (both of which were ultimately passed on), as well as instruction on how to craft the script for the pilot, and what to do with your spec pilot once you've finished it. Because although the situation has changed since the early 2000's, when spec pilots were a waste of paper, it's still a fact that the doors of Hollywood will remain closed to outsiders who come bearing gifts (i.e. a pilot + bible) unless they can somehow prove it will be a worthwhile and relatively safe investment. Rabkin suggests a strategy to gain access - it's difficult and time-consuming, and not everyone will be able to implement it, but if you do, the rewards can be enormous.

You can get the paperback here:



and the Kindle option is right here:

Review: The Inner Game of Screenwriting: Twenty Winning Story-Forms (Sandy Frank, Michael Wiese Press)

The Inner Game of Screenwriting promises to teach screenwriters the single biggest thing a screenplay needs to be succesful. The secret of this success is a 'relentless focus on the inner game'. And what is this inner game? Well, it's no spoiler to reveal it, really, as it's explained in the first pages of the book.

The Inner Game is the transformational arc of the main character.

So you might be thinking - didn't I know this already?

Well, yes and no. Author Sandy Frank (who used to work for a Wall Street law firm before changing careers) admits that the concept has been around for a while.

But the subtitle of the book reads '20 Winning Storyforms'. And that's definitely something new.

The unique approach of The Inner Game of Screenwriting is that it takes a thorough and varied look at the concept of the transformational arc.

Mr. Frank distinguishes between two types of inner games: morph and myth. Each type has a number of archetypes attached to it, which are the storyforms of the subtitle. A morph inner game shows the main character going through an outer game (the plot) which causes a transformation on the psychological level (the inner game). A myth inner game shows a character going through an outer game which symbolizes the inner game. This may sound somewhat confusing but the book makes everything clear. It's also worth noting that the myth archetypes discussed here really have nothing to do with the Hero's Journey approach.

The morph archetypes describe all manners of variations on the theme of inner change: for the better, for the worse, or even those instances where the hero is incapable of change.

An extremely interesting chapter is the one about using the enneagram to define your main character's psyche and tailor inner flaws and problems which are real and relevant to this personality type. The enneagram is a personality profilling method, and even if you don't subscribe to its spiritual aspect, it provides you with very complete and multi-dimensional personality descriptions which can be applied to your characters. (One could also use the personality descriptions of astrological star signs to this effect)
What's also interesting about the enneagram types is that each has several subtypes, showing the personality type at its best, 'medium' and worst. So you can use these different aspects of the same type in deciding how you're going to let your character transform, which changes actually make sense with regards to the personality type.
Of course the enneagram is a huge subject which is barely touched upon here (only two of the types are examined in any detail), but Sandy Frank does provide links to resources in order to deepen your knowledge of this

The rest of the book examines structuring your screenplay to maximize the inner game,
the inner game and sequels, remakes and adaptations, and there's also a chapter on writing for television and how the inner game relates to that. There are a few chapters on exceptions to the inner game-rule, and you're also taught how to x-ray a screenplay in order to evaluate its inner game.

One aspect of the book which raised my eyebrows was the insistence on commercial success - as if quality and commercial success are somehow linked. Many movie classics did less than brilliant business when they were first released (look at Citizen Kane for one), so that's a approach to the art and craft I'm not very comfortable with. Your mileage obviously may and will vary.

I'm also not quite sure the list of myth archetypes is all-encompassing - I get the feeling a few more options exist. The archetypes which are presented, are interesting and useful, however, and certainly can get you started.

To sum up: The Inner Game provides you with several ways to implement the transformational arc to your characters and story, and because it does cast its net quite wide, it manages to avoid the trap of promoting just one type of transformational story. It's a 'big picture' book, basically helping the writer develop the overarching story, and as such it needs to be supplemented by more practical manuals for beginning writers. But it is very succesful at providing the screenwriter with a wide array of tools and options for strengthening and deepening the transformational arc.

The paperback can be found here:




And the kindle option is available here:

Review: Secrets of Action Screenwriting by William C. Martell (Kindle, Nook)

Over a decade ago, William C. Martell published the first edition of Secrets of Action Screenwriting to great success. The book sold out - became a collector's item, even, commanding impressive prices from used book sellers - and was truly innovative. This was the first time a working screenwriter revealed his personal tricks, rules, and insights for writing screenplays in his favorite genre - and in which he had known a lot of success. Never before had a screenwriting manual focused on one genre alone. And never before had a screenwriting manual gone in for a toolbox approach.

When we learned in the past few years that a second edition of Action Screenwriting was in the works, excitement ran high. And around Christmas 2011, the perfect present for screenwriters everywhere was released in electronic book format. Yes, it's too bad we can't hold the second edition in our hands and smother its blue cover with hugs and kisses, but on the positive side, the book is not hindered by page limitations (it's over twice the size of the original) and it can be updated by the author. In fact, it already has been. Your book will only get better and better over the years.

So what riches hide between these electronic covers? I'm not going to do a comparison review, as that's fairly pointless- much of the original material has been revised or tweaked. So we're getting both a thorough revision of the original and a book's worth of new material in one tidy package.

Bill Martell's main emphasis is that action movies are all about characters first, and big set-pieces second. It's something that Hollywood - both big- and low-budget Hollywood - tends to forget to it's own detriment, because all of the classic action movies have a strong emotional/character driven component to put all the pyrotechnics and brawling in context. There are many good examples from the author's own screenplays - many of which unfortunately were cut out by idiot directors, producers and/or actors.

Secondly, the most important thing for an action movie story to work is the villain's plan. Unlike 'normal' screenwriting theory tells us, the villain is the most active character in an action movie and the hero is reactive, trying to stop the villain from achieving his/her dastardly goal. Time spent on devising a good 'bad' plan for an action screenplay is time very well spent.

Apart from the literally hundreds of suggestions and examples for tweaking clichés, piling up the suspense and tension, and getting character across without dialogue (among many, many others), this is also the first time Bill Martell reveals his relatively new concept of 'The thematic'. Useful for every type of screenplay, it's a unifying element of the script and probably the closest Martell has gotten to a 'high concept screenwriting theory', like Field's Paradigm and Snyder's Save The Cat structure. The concept is very well illustrated here in an in-depth examination of Minority Report, but personally I hope it'll be the subject of a future Blue Book, or heck, an entire real-world dead tree book even, as it's a very deep subject which can be explored even further.

The book is extremely up to date, going right up to MI:4 Ghost Protocol, though to be honest many of the best examples come from older films, with Die Hard still taking the top spot.

We're also introduced to a very good technique for understanding screenplay construction: Bill Martell advises the reader to do a timeline for their favourite films. This means dividing the film in 5 minute increments, and noting what story beat occurs on those minutes. In the supplimental section, Martell includes scans of several timelines he made long ago, some of films he analyzed to get a grip on their inner workings, some of his own screenplays. It's extremely rare we get to see actual work-in-progress documents from working screenwriters, so make the most of this golden opportunity.

It should be clear by now that if you're in the least bit interested in writing an action screenplay, you NEED this book. And even if you're not, there's so much good, common sense advice within these pages you'll be glad you read them.
There were quite a few typos when the e-book was first released, but it has been regularly updated since then, so the majority of them - if not all - have already been corrected. In any case: my highest recommendation.

You can get the Kindle version here:



And if you're feeling nostalgic and want to splurge on a collector's item:

Review: Blue Book #10 : Dialogue Secrets by William Martell

Great dialogue is one of the best weapons in a screenwriter's armory to seduce actors into wanting to play a role. So it's imperative that you master this skill. Plus - writing great dialogue, though often hard work, is also just plain fun. Run-of-the-mill or bad dialogue? Not so much.

So Bill Martell's third Blue Book to be converted into Kindle- and Nookdom, is just what the doctor ordered if you're trying to improve your dialogue writing. Now consisting of 40 tips (almost double the amount of the print version), the book also has a few extra dialogue-related essays as well as a detailed look at some brilliantly written scenes, to show you how it is done by the masters.

If you want to write great dialogue, you must of course know how to distinguish it from bad dialogue. Dialogue Secrets has you covered. Several of the tips examine the most current mistakes writers make when writing dialogue - as well as a few more esoteric ones.

The biggest problems you're usually faced with are exposition in dialogue, and making sure the individual voice of the character comes through. Exposition can be a hassle in many ways - characters explaining who they are and what the situation is to each other (when they both already know), or being used as an infodump to reveal the research which the writer has painstakingly assembled to name but two. But rest assured, there are many strategies on offer to avoid these pitfalls, and each chapter comes with an exercise in order to help you actually acquire the necesary skill set.

As for making the characters sound like the individuals they are, this is illustrated beautifully in my favourite tip. Bill describes a couple of dozen barista's he knows in LA. All doing the same job, all having a totally different outlook and personality. What's so good about this section, is that it becomes clear how easily you can paint a portrait of a character in one or two sentences. And if you do the exercise (writing a very short conversation with each of the individuals described in the tip, in such a way that their personality shines through), you will be doing yourself and your writing a world of good.

You'll also learn aout the importance of vocabulary, bumper sticker lines, nexus words, the three-line rule, and much, much more. Subtext in dialogue is also discussed several times, and Bill provides a perfect example to illustrate just how subtext works. Unfortunately (one of the very few flaws of the book), the example is repeated verbatim at least three times.

There's also a section on cursing - definitely the first time that's been given a chapter of its own in a screenwriting manual!

And finally, there are dialogue excerpts from Notorious, Psycho, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and, for a more modern approach, Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count On Me. All of these are discussed in depth.

Bottom line: you get almost 200 pages of practical and often surprising advice, for a measly $2.99. That must be one of the best deals on the internet right now. And you can get it right here:



(Although as I post this today, November 17 2011, there's no pricing information up at the Amazon site. Go figure...)

Review: The Story Book by David Baboulene (Dream Engine Media/Kindle)

A second UK offering up for review now: David Baboulene's The Story Book. Mr. Baboulene is a writer of novels, children's books, scripts - and he's actually doing a PhD. on subtext in storytelling as well!

So how does this book stack up against other story-centered tomes?

First, you need to know the book isn't specifically about screenwriting, but talks about story in all (or most) forms of fiction. However, screenwriting is a very big part of the equation, as the central example used to illustrate the theoretical principles is Back To The Future. And that's a very good choice - though as mainstream Hollywood as you can get, BTTF is extremely well-constructed and has many different levels which all influence each other constantly.

Second, mr. Baboulene throws a big frag grenade at the beginning, causing shock and awe no doubt, when he states that you need to disregard structure when you're creating your story. For starting out with a set structural model may be like forcing a square peg in a round hole. It limits your creativity and may 'disfigure' your story from the start.

Wow, heady stuff. I can hear a bunch of writers whooping with glee and another bunch raging in disbelief.

Do not despair, fellow structuralists - story structure still has a very important part to play and the book also spends a lot of time discussing it in detail. However, in the author's view, the structural model should be applied after the fact of story creation, in order to make sure you tell the story as well as possible, hit all your emotional moments with maximum efficiency, and engage your audience to the utmost. So in fact you get the best of both worlds.

Another crucial point in this approach to story us the use of subtext. Subtext, the story underneath the story, is a crucial element for telling a great story, as mr. Baboulene sees it. And the way to achieve subtext is to work with knowledge gaps - which can operate on several levels. Between the characters, between the audience and the characters, the audience and the writer... all is examined in depth and eminently practical. The research Mr. Baboulene has done for his PhD thesis suggests that the more subtext is present in a story, the higher it is rated by the public. So if you ever needed any encouragement to start mastering subtext...

Other chapters consider the plot vs. character divide (hint: there isn't one), dialogue, the story development process (which offers a way of working any writer can adopt), story analysis, and the commercial realities facing authors and screenwriters today.

To round things off, you get six interviews with professional writers (screenwriter Bob Gale, dramatist Willy Russell, novelist Lee Child and the late, lamented sitcom god John Sullivan), actor Mark Williams (best known internationally for his role of Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) and publisher Stewart Ferris. Each interview is in-depth and first-rate, and together they provide a wonderful spectrum of approaches to storytelling. Often the advice is totally contradictory - and totally correct in each case.

One of the high points of the book for me is the analysis of one very short scene from Back To The Future. It's barely one minute of screen time, but as David Baboulene conclusively proves in analyzing it, it's chock-full of layers, subtext and has a very strong dramatic structure as well. This is exactly the kind of analysis which students of writing need.

The book is available in hardcopy here:



or at a ridiulously low price for the Kindle version here:



So you basically can't go wrong, and have no reason not to check this book out. As for me, I'm eagerly awaiting the results of mr. Baboulene's PhD thesis. An understanding of story theory that moves beyond Aristotle, Propp and McKee... Sounds good to me!

Review: Scriptwriting - The Mechanics by Guy Meredith

Guy Meredith has earned his screenwriting and script doctoring spurs both in the UK and abroad. Apart from writing everything under the dramatic sun (radio scripts, TV drama and comedy, features, documentaries, stage plaus), he's also been an educator, giving seminars at the BBC, several universities and all across Europe (he was attached to the late and lamented Pilots program). And he's been nominated for a slew of awards.

In Scriptwriting: The Mechanics, Meredith has committed his hard-earned writing wisdom to E-paper for all eternity. It's a relatively short book, coming in at just over 140 pages, at a relatively high price for an 'e-book only' release. But as there's no filler and quite a few topics are examined which show up only rarely in most other screenwriting one-stop manuals, you don't have to worry about getting a bad deal. On the contrary, for new writers especially the information provided in here will allow you to make giant steps forward in your understanding of the art and craft of good (and preferably great) screenwriting.

So, what does the book cover? Well, starting out with the age-old question 'what should I write about', it goes on to define the four story elements (world, characters, plot and tone of the story).
This is followed by an extensive section on character, where special attention is paid to image - self-image, the image presented to others, and the image the character projects unconciously. This is really excellent stuff, and one of the reasons that the work of great British TV screenwriters (Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern, Andrew Davies...) comes across as so rich and true to life in the depiction of the characters.
The chapter about inner contradictions in your characters is also pure gold, as is the material about motive and motivation. Essential concepts which are all too often ignored or handled badly, sometimes even by professional writers.

Structure is examined at length. Yes, it's the three-act structure again, but mr. Meredith puts a number of plot points in each act which are different from but comparable to those you'll find in Save The Cat!. It's another good variation on the theme, which will be of great help to new writers and offers an interesting alternative option to more experienced writers looking for some new wrinkles.

And you also get chapters voice-over and flashback, scene construction dialogue, misundertanding and deception, superior and inferior position (of the audience and the characters among each other), and - a first, I think - there's a whole chapter devoted to URST! And if you don't know what URST is - go and buy the e-book, already! It'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

So, in short, a first-rate British contribution to screenwriting literature, and especially worthwhile for new and intermediate screenwriters. And you can get it right here:

Point Blank (A Bout Portant): Life's Full of Consequence, That Ol' Devil Consequence...

Point Blank has nothing to do with the Lee Marvin cult classic. It's an action-thriller (with the emphasis on the action) with a very strong premise: a male nurse's pregnant wife is kidnapped, and he has to free a mysterious wounded patient from hospital or his spouse and child will die. The nurse liberates the patient (a professional thief), committing several crimes in the process, and finds himself hunted by the police and by hitmen who desperately want to eliminate the thief. Together, both wanted men must find the evidence that will exonerate the thief from a murder charge (though he slaughters several people in the course of the movie) and reunite the nurse with his beloved.

So far, so good. The film starts off very well, has a fast pace, effective performances, and good editing - despite lots of hand-held camera-work, the action is hard-hitting and easy to follow.So why isn't this an all-time genre classic?

Ta-daa... it's all in the writing.

So what goes wrong? After all, the basic set-up is effective, and the first act (this is a French movie with a very clear traditional structure) expertly cuts between the criminal elements, the blissful domesticity of the hero and the traumatic results of the inciting incident (the kidnapping of the wife).

One big reason. But I'll have to SPOIL some elements of the film to illustrate my point. So - SPOILERS AHEAD!


Deep in the second act, our protagonists find the snitch who has set up the thief. A vigorous torture session later, the (grotesquely obese and nearly naked) snitch has spilled the beans and explained the plot. The thief wants to kill the snitch for revenge, and the nurse intervenes. 'You don't have to do this!' - you know the drill. The thief lets himself be convinced, turns away - only to turn back before leaving the room and firing several bullets into the snitch's head and gut. The nurse shakes his head in desperate disgust...... and that's it.

It's not referred to again, the relationship doesn't change, there's no confrontation about the thief's way of handling things or the morality of the act. An empty effect. Yes, it's true that the thief is a hardened and cruel criminal who is supposed to be hypercool, and the nurse is a carer and not a killer, so the actions of both men are true to their characters. But it's a moment which loses all emotional resonance when you realize the matter is dropped as soon as we hit the next scene.

What is the net result? Writer-director Fred Cavayé & writer Guillaume Lemans show that they're dragging their characters through the plot without it impacting them on a fundamental psychological level. By which I mean that in order to truly engage your audience with your main characters, you have to be aware of how events will impact them beyond their surface level. How their emotions are triggered, how these influence their behaviour... Probably the only time you can get away safely with ignoring this is if your character is a cool, dispassionate professional who remains calm and methodical under the most extreme circumstances.

On the other hand, if you are ignoring the emotional impact on your characters of the events that take place, you are basically sending a subliminal message that your story isn't grounded in psychological reality.

On to the next major script problem.

Our protagonists discover that the needed evidence and the pregnant wife are stashed within a police station (the villains are murderous corrupt cops on the take). They need to get into the police station but can't just walk in there. So they need a cunning plan. Cut to our thief visiting every ethnic crime lord in Paris, and getting their co-operation. All criminal organizations launch a crime wave which completely swamps the police. Hundreds of thefts, assaults, robberies, sackjackings and carjackings are pulled off simultaneously, and in the resulting chaos, our 'heroes' sneak into the police station where much mayhem ensues.

Excuse me? You cause havoc and rioting throughout a major city (or part of it), claiming hundreds of innocent victims, just so you can sneak into police headquarters to save your own butt? And our hero nurse just goes along with this outlandish and fairly ridiculous scheme, without even putting up token resistance??

What's happening here is that the writers come up with an original and inventive idea, that's never or rarely been seen before. But there's a reason why this is so.

It's highly unlikely that anything like this could ever work in reality, so there's a credibility gap you have to bridge. But there's also the question of the moral implications of the act, and the way in which it impacts the audience. In order for both 'heroes' to reach their goal, they unleash suffering on a mass of innocent people, who correspond with a part of the demographic of the target audience of the film. (it aims both at the general, middle class audience and at urban youths).

This means a part of your audience is no longer enjoying the ride, carefree, but suddenly realizes that they are considered as acceptable collateral damage by the protagonists and the filmmakers. Making it very hard to empathize with your protagonists, just before you enter the climactic sequence.

It is, once again, a lack of paying attention to consequence. This time, not to the way the events in the movie should impact and shape the evolution of the characters, but to the way plot events impact the emotions of a part of the audience.

Of course, wild, unpredictable, somewhat controversial or shocking plot developments are often beneficial to a movie. They keep things fresh (a rare commodity these days) and open up new possibilities for storytelling in general. But if you alienate part of your core audience in a resolutely commercial movie, (note I do mean alienate, not challenge) you are behaving irresponsibly as a storyteller. And you flirt with disaster, as chances are that your film will take a major beating at the box office.

So - be aware that actions have consequences. Realize what these consequences are, and implement them in the script in order to increase its verisimilitude. And realize what the emotional consequences arefor your intended audience, and that these consequences are what you intend to achieve. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience forever. As a consequence.

Swooni: Q&A with screenwriter Michel Sabbe

The Flemish movie Swooni, directed by Kate Beels and written by Michel Sabbe (and, in earlier drafts, novelist Annelies Verbeke), is doing the rounds of the festival ciruit right now and garnering quite a lot of praise. A multiplot movie telling the stories of six people (three couples) whose fates intersect on a sweltering summer's day in a luxurious hotel in Brussels, Swooni boasts a very smartly constructed screenplay which manages to combine a lot of very disparate story strands and themes into a satisfying, emotionally affecting and accesible whole. I sat down with screenwriter Michel Sabbe to ask him about the writing of the film, and he gave one of the most detailed and insightful interviews on the writing of a particular movie I've ever been privileged to read. Hope you enjoy it too - there's a lot of great material here. SPOILERS AHEAD - but in any discussion of a screenplay, that can't be avoided.


How did 'Swooni' come to be, and at what time did you get involved with the project?

‘Swooni’ came to be at the initiative of its producer, Peter Bouckaert. He had read ‘Slaap’, Annelies Verbeke’s debut novel and at about the same time (this must have been around 2004-5) Kaat Beels had directed ‘Cologne’, a short that did very well on the festival circuit. Peter thought Annelies and Kaat shared a certain sensibility and he believed that if he put the two together, something surprising might happen. They ultimately came up with the six characters which form the backbone of the film. I became involved in late 2008, after Annelies had left the project to pursue writing her next novel. Kaat and I had worked together on a tv-series called ‘Jes’ and we clicked so she asked me to have a look at the screenplay. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What changes did you propose to the script? What were the main problems which you had to solve?

Annelies had already written a number of drafts and I could immediately see that she and Kaat had created some very rich characters. Characters good actors could really sink their teeth in. They all had clear dramatic goals which grabbed your interest as a reader: two refugees, a father and a son, separated on their perilous journey to Belgium, now searching for each other; a woman, desperate for a child of her own; her mother, desperate to reconnect with her daughter; and a middle-aged woman trying to decide whether or not to leave her loving husband.

Any multiplot-movie faces the same kind of problems:
1) how to keep all the balls in the air simultaneously. The trick is to make sure all of the stories have equal weight. One should not dominate the others, otherwise you’ll end up with an unbalanced piece and the loyalties of the audience will not be equally divided between the stories (which will translate to people telling you they liked one story far more than the others).
2) how to interlock the storylines without it seeming arbitrary and built on that dreaded word: ‘coincidence’. Or rather: coincidences that would seem all too convenient.
3) thematic unity. If you present several stories together, the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts. Through contrast or similarity or simply by interlocking, the stories must present you with a theme. And that theme must be clear, it can’t just be intuitive.

Upon reading two of the existing drafts, I made a couple of recommendations. First, to set all of the action in the hotel (which was already a location in some of the later scenes in the script). If we gave all the characters a reason to be in the hotel at the beginning of the movie, then they could run into each other without anyone questioning it. Because running into people you don’t know is exactly what happens in a hotel. From that I also suggested the action take no longer than 24 hours. I reasoned that keeping all of these very different people together in this one spot for longer than that would be stretching credulity. Also, telescoping the action like this would put the characters in a pressure cooker – which is always interesting. These seem like simple suggestions, but they would have great consequences (the occupation of some of the characters would have to be changed and it also meant that some of the story material could no longer be told and would have to move to the backstory). I also felt that one of the stories – Anna and Hendrik’s marital problems – lacked some urgency compared to the others. This was later solved by having Anna’s lover present her with an ultimatum.

I have to stress that Annelies had done a stellar job of getting the screenplay to where it was when I became involved. It’s a rare gift to be able to work with material this rich. I feel very privileged Annelies, Kaat and Peter allowed me to fool around with it. (And Annelies hasn’t run me over yet )

Who came up with the title Swooni, and why? (I used to think it was the name of the African boy when the film was first announced)

I don’t know whether Annelies or Kaat came up with the title, but as far as I know, the piece was always called ‘Swooni’. It means ‘land of milk and honey’ in one of the Bantu languages, which is exactly what Joyeux and Amadou hope to find in Western Europe. In the film of course, the title comes from Joyeux’ misreading of the name of the hotel on the postcard his father shows him.

What method did you use to structure the screenplay, as it's a multi-plot film focusing on adventures of six characters?

Let’s issue a SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t seen the film yet (shame on you!), because talking structure will inevitably lead to giving away some of the plot.

Structuring a multi-plot is a major pain, because you have to do the work x times (x being the number of stories you have) and then you still have to provide a sort of super-structure to fit them in. You don’t have to be crazy to attempt this, but it certainly helps! There’s three main stories in ‘Swooni’ (we’re not counting subplots), so that means having to break down all three of them into acts and sequences. As to the super-structure: I always knew Amadou’s arrival in the hotel would bring things to the boil and give me a third act. Having set the whole thing in the hotel also meant that I wouldn’t be able to show the second act of the father-son story. In Annelies’ version there were sequences showing Amadou’s escape from a detention centre and Joyeux roaming the streets of Brussels looking for his father. I would still love to see that movie some day, but we simply didn’t have the space for it here. (The first act of the father-son story is told in flash backs, of which more later). So that left me with two stories to structure. The first sequence of these was easy: everybody needs to arrive at the hotel. (Well, I say ‘easy’ – you try introducing a dozen or so distinct characters in the space of 10 minutes! This was probably the sequence that got rewritten the most…)

Then it struck me that the starting points of the two stories were in opposition to each other. Whereas Hendrik and Anna enter the hotel ‘together’, Violette and Vicky haven’t seen each other for 10 years and couldn’t be further apart. It just felt very natural for the two stories to progress ‘in opposition’ as well. So, in the first half of the second act, while Vicky and Violette slowly come closer together (with Joyeux acting as a catalyst), Hendrik and Anna drift further and further apart. Once you reach the middle of the movie, Vicky, Violette and Joyeux have formed a sort of surrogate (albeit doomed) family unit playing puzzles together. Meanwhile, Anna has abandoned Hendrik at the wedding reception to go knock on the door of room 105 (I refrained from calling it room 101, but only just…) In the second half of act 2, you have the opposite movement. By the second act climax, the precarious bond between Vicky and her mother has been broken while Hendrik and Anna find themselves spooning each other on the bed. Both are of course what you would call ‘false endings’. In the case of Anna and Hendrik you get a ‘false dawn’, suggesting all’s well that ends well. While it seems like an ‘apparent death’ for the relationship between Violette and her daughter Vicky. Those false endings get turned on their head again in the third act, using the resolution of the Amadou-Joyeux story as a catalyst. Is that technical enough for you, Wout?

When structuring a multi-plot, the notion of a ‘controlling idea’ becomes – to my mind at least – even more important. This of course goes to the question of ‘theme’. ‘Swooni’ was structured around the notion of the ‘pyramid of needs’. At the bottom of said pyramid you will find the people whose basic needs – food, water, shelter – have not been met. These would include Joyeux and Amadou. Above them, you’ll find the people who are lacking in affection and human warmth. You could put Vicky and Violette into this bracket. You could say they are lonely people. At the very top of the pyramid, you’ll find people whose every need has been met, but who still struggle with something which we could summarize as: ‘is that all there is?’-syndrome. That’s where we’d put Anna and Hendrik. They ‘enjoy’ the luxury of an existential crisis. By putting all three levels together and by showing that - to the characters at least – the problems on each level feel every bit as acute or urgent, hopefully some interesting questions will be raised in the mind of the audience.

How closely did you work with director Kaat Beels, both during the writing process and once shooting had started?

Kaat and I had worked closely before on ‘Jes’, so we had already established a relationship of mutual trust before embarking on this venture. So it was a pretty easygoing relationship. Whenever I turned in a draft, we got together, usually with Peter, and discussed what was working and what was not. I can’t really recall any major disagreements along the way. It was clear we were all heading in the same direction and it was just a case of getting the script to where it had to be.

Kaat is pretty open as a director. She knows what she wants, but she’ll always invite people’s opinions. So I found myself consulted and kept abreast pretty much throughout the process (which is a surefire way to stroke a writer’s ego!). I visited the set a couple of times and saw some of the rushes – even from a couple of shots I could tell that Kaat and her D.O.P. (Frank van den Eeden) had managed to put a lot of emotion in their images. I was present at the test-screenings and I got invited into the editing room, which is still an all too rare privilege for writers. (And it shouldn’t be, as editing is the final stage of the writing process and one that I personally am fascinated with).

What (major) differences are there between the shooting script and the final released movie? Why were these changes made?

Other than the usual trimming of scenes, there’s only a couple of minor changes and one big one. Some changes had practical reasons. For instance, Vicky pretending to herself that she’s pregnant and then pulling a cushion from under her frock just proved impossibly cumbersome. So a different approach was sought to key us in to her ‘want’.
The scene in which Vicky calls to inquire whether uncle Joseph works at the hotel or not was moved forward – it now happens before she puts Joyeux to bed. This had the crucial effect of making her look less calculated. Because of that, the effect of a later scene in which she tells Joyeux a truly horrible lie is much bigger – and the audience doesn’t feel alienated from her.
One scene in which Hendrik tried to seduce Anna donning a traditional Greek outfit was cut – it just slowed things down and wasn’t needed. Then we come to the major change, which we’ll deal with below.

I found the scene in the script with the tramp to be quite risky, starting out as a cliché and then being succesfully turned on its head a few scenes later. Who thought of this idea? Was it always the intention to play with the audiences' expectations here, or did this approach grow gradually?

For those who have seen the film but haven’t read the screenplay, this will be an odd question as there is no ‘tramp’-scene in the movie. It stayed in until quite late in the game, but ultimately it was cut. So let me describe what happens in the scene. We’re at the wedding and the film has gone deeper and deeper into a dreamlike state as the afternoon and the night progress. Anna smoked some dope earlier and now notices a tramp, scrounging food off the tables. She sits down next to the man and, needing someone to talk to, she makes what amounts to a full confession to this stranger. He looks a little non-plussed and tells her to go back to the party and to enjoy herself. She feels this is wise advise and gives him 50 euros. Later, the tramp drinks form someone’s glass and a scuffle ensues. The bride intervenes and reveals the tramp to be an actor whose presence is meant to make the guests reflect upon their good fortune. Anna realizes she has just made her confession to a fraud and flees the party followed by Hendrik.

The origins of the scene are quite simple: I once attended a wedding where something very similar transpired. So I used it. The scene was rewritten a couple of times, mainly trying to find the correct way of introducing the tramp, and it was shot and edited into the movie. At the test screenings, the scene worked just fine. Anna’s punchline – complaining that she’d given the guy 50 euros – got a big laugh. Even the fact that we were introducing a new character this late in the game (near the end of act 2) didn’t seem to be a problem. But we could feel the film dragged a little when really it should have been accelerating towards its second act climax. The problem turned out to be the confession scene. It was perfectly acted, perfectly fine as a scene. But it was also superfluous. Everything in it had already been told by the scene on the dancefloor between Hendrik and Anna, a scene without any dialogue. It was possible to ‘read over’ that scene in the script, but it certainly isn’t possible to deny its impact when you see it come alive with the actors (stellar performances by Sara Deroo and Geert van Rampelberg) and the music (Melody Gardot crooning ‘Our love is Easy’). So we had to kill this particular ‘darling’ (both Kaat and I were fans of the scene). Cutting the tramp-scene out meant the other scenes in the final sequence of act 2 needed some rearranging. I feel we should credit editor Philippe Ravoet for finding the solution which so effortlessly brings us from the wedding to the heartbreaking bedroom scene between Hendrik and Anna. (You see? Editing = rewriting).

What was/were the biggest lesson(s) you learned as a screenwriter on this project?

Patience? And that the check will have run out long before the movie ever hits the screen?  On a more serious note: I’ve learned that the movie on the screen will always be different from the movie you see in your head while you’re writing and that that’s a good thing. You WANT the director to put his or her interpretation on the piece. It’s part of what breathes life into what are in effect only words on a page. (Of course, you also want it to be the RIGHT interpretation )

Did you put this screenplay through any European development programmes? If so, what was your experience?

As you know, I’m a big fan of development programmes (full disclosure: Wout and I met a decade ago on the now sadly defunct North by North West workshop). ‘Swooni’ didn’t go through the traditional screenplay development workshops such as the Mediterranean Film Institute (to which I am devoted), but it did go through the EAVE-workshop. EAVE is a workshop geared towards producers, but it does have a story-development segment. Which means producer Peter Bouckaert and myself had a couple of meetings with script-doctor Martin Daniel. Even though these were short meetings (an hour and a half or so each), they were very useful. For instance: in my first draft, all the refugee scenes in the container were front loaded. They opened the movie. That wrongfooted the reader into thinking this was going to be a movie about two refugees. It was Martin’s idea to use them as flashbacks throughout the movie which works very well (and it also serves to keep the Amadou-character alive in the mind of the audience during the second act). Perhaps controversially for a writer, attending a producer’s workshop meant I also gained some sympathy for the plight of the producer!

Review: Blue Book #7: Creating strong Protagonists by Willial C. Martell (Kindle)

The second in the long line of Bill Martell's legendary blue books to be transposed to the e-book medium, Creating Strong Protagonists tells you everything you need to know about - well, creating strong protagonists. Luckily, you won't find anything as sheepish as that previous sentence in the book. On the contrary, Martell digs deep into how to make your protagonist come alive, be (and remain) active and, very importantly, be unique. And Martell's central message is that how deeper you look into yourself, your own traits, strengths, weaknesses and fears, the more real and convincing your characters will be. You really need to be able to take a long, hard look at yourself in order to create characters which resonate and transcend the archetype or the cliché, and whose behaviour, no matter how off-the-wall at times, will strike an audience as real. Martell provides many examples, techniques and insights to help writers (both beginners and veterans, because just about every screenwriter on the planet can benefit from this material) achieve these goals. And there is also a good helping of assignments to get you to practice these concepts and use them in your writing. There's also a lot of great advice on keeping the protagonist active throughout the story. And for those of us who find this occasionally difficult to accomplish, the in-depth investigation of the main reasons for protagonist passivity will prove to be very helpful and inspiring. Some readers might take umbrage (love that word) with Bill Martell's strong insistence on there only being one protagonist in a movie, and come up with examples where this is not the case. Not to worry - in the supplemental material, you will find a lot of tips about writing about group protagonists. There are far fewer typos in this Blue Book than in its predecessor, and only one instance of material being repeated verbatim. Extremely small niggles which do not distract from the value of the book in the slightest. All I can say is - get this book NOW and let's hope the other Blue Books get converted to e-book format as quickly as humanly possible! You can get it here: