From: johna@intacc.uucp (John Allen)
Subject: Re: Any Screenwriters out there?
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 15:48:42 GMT
Organization: Inter/Access' Matrix BBS

In article <1992Aug29.102427.27254@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale) writes:
>
>References: <1992Aug26.180443.25983@intacc.uucp> <1992Aug22.001433.10551@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <jjonsson.112@alexandria.lib.utah.edu>
>
>
>In a previous article, johna@intacc.uucp (John Allen) says:
>
>>Time and time again I have
>>seen three act structure screenplays filled with plot points and inciting
>>incidents but no moment to reality.
>
>Could you explain this further?  I don't understand what it means.
>
>Bonita Kale



Sure. There's a guy floating around who teaches screenwriting by the name of
McGee. He charges a fortune never written a screenplay and basically what he
teaches is what you see from Hollywood every day. Most scripts are written off
a treatment that is pitched so the story and characters have to be broken down
into a fairly short easy to understand form. Mcgee and others have spawned a
cottage industry out of selling: How to write a Screenplay. The reason I know
this is because I was seeing the same stuff over and again from students. i
finally asked what was going on and after a lot of discussion it turned out
either someone had the read this book or gone to that workshop. 

Anyway here it is in a nutshell. Three acts. First act sets up charcters and
story. Something big has to happen in the first five pages to the majour
character that proels him into action. TRhis is called the inciting incident.
Almost every bad movie has one. I just saw Single White Female for example and
presto there it is Girl gets dumped by boyfriend and is forced to go out and
look for a roomate.

In this first act we also meet minor characters: Best friend, husband,old cop
who is going to get shot etc,

Second Act what's called in the trade the conflcit act. Inciting incident Plot
point one moves to plot point two. IE Roomate turns out to not be everything
she says she is....

Sorry I'm to bored to do this. the problem with this thing is that because the
story and characters are created before any dialogue is actually written its
all arbitrary. None of it happens for an internal reason. Moment to moment
reality comes from a writer asking questions of his characters. How does the
guy feel? What does it mean to Frank to be a policemen? What's it like to have
thios happen or this said? If questions like this are asked if the moment is
true then the story and character take twists and turns that do not follow a
formula. What most "hacks" have failed to learn is that action is
character.People are what they do in drama not what you the writer say they
are. 

If you write the outline of the story before you've written anything you're
going to be hanging one arbitrary scene on the line after another. Its the
internal mechanics of each moment,scene, acvt which dictate what comes
after...

Yes its a good idea to know where you're going but a) sometimes that's not
possible and B) the thrill is the trip there....

Plot points is writing from the fill in the dots school.There is a reason that
its called the film industry. The idea is to knock off as much product as you
can. have a lot of things in development and hope that one catches.

However the great scripts ChinaTown. The Godfather. Mean Streets etc do not
follow this formula school. What is the inciting incident at the beginning of
the Godfather? Michaels return? the wedding? the undertakers request? the
setup for the meeting with the turK? Answer all of the above and none of them.
You see you can look at Shakespeare's plays like a lot of this people have and
say: AAha this is what he's doing and break it down but it still won't help. 

The craft of writing is like all crafts based on work. A lot of it.There are
no shortcuts. Once you have a draft of something and have a rough idea of what
it is that you want to write about then one can worry about whether all the
subway stops( inportant story moments: a lot of writers have all the most
important moments happen off stage or screen and wonder why everybody says
their script is a yawner) are clearly delineated but those m,ajour story
moments will only happen if they have naturally grown from the characters
relationship. Basically in a film that's what you got people relating to
something;one another their environment. ....

Ooops going on a bit long here... Sorry. John
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