Screenplay Writing Lessons from Hollywood Legend William Goldman*

So I've been writing my as-yet untitled screenplay now for two months and two days. So far, I think, it's been going pretty well. As of this minute I'm staring hard down on page 98 with the following staring back up at me. 

THIEF: 

Who are you?

BATMAN:

I'm Batman. 

No, wait. That's some other movie. Sorry about that. 

Anyhow, I'll have some title-less version of it finished in a week or two, ready for the vast and cool and unsympathetic rejection notices of Hollywood's crack talent scouts. But before all of that happens and just ruins the heck out of my day, I thought I would pass along a few things I've learned writing this fucker while it still at least sort-of looks like I know what I'm talking about. 

Lesson 1: Focus on what characters want, rather than on who they are. 

This is probably the most important thing about characterization that separates it from novel or short story writing. Whereas in a novel, the goal more often than not is to strip away layers until you reach the truth about a character or a situation, most movies (for better or worse) are by their nature superficial. 

For instance, what can we say about the essential character of someone as iconic as, say, James Bond? I mean, we know he's an orphan, and that he likes to chase a lot of tail. We know he's clever and can defend himself. But beyond that, uh... what? Do the movies ever reveal what Bond's birth parents did for a living, or where he was born? More specifically than an orphanage, where did he grow up? What was he like as a kid? Beyond being a somewhat amoral killing machine who is nonetheless loyal to England, what can we say about him? 

The answer, of course -- even after 22 movies -- is pretty much nothing. 

But what does James Bond want? Ah, that's much clearer. Bond wants women and martinis. He wants to stop Blofeld from, you know, blowing up the world. He wants information. He wants to break in to some kind of secret facility. He wants to break out of a holding cell. Etcetera etcetera. 

Bond makes a good example for this kind of thing because he's so straightforward in what he wants and so opaque about who he is. And the truth is, we don't really question it, because he's a spy, and we expect spies to be secretive. It's part of what in my opinion makes him to adaptable to the current age, since he hardly ever states his opinion about anything other than that bad guys should be stopped, whatever girl is standing in front of him should take off her clothes, and how his martinis should be served. It's part of why his line in Goldfinger about hating The Beatles is so out of place. Not only is it uncharacteristically opinionated, but we never imagine Bond just sitting around and listening to music for fun. 

This is not to say, of course, that movie characters can't have complicated backgrounds and character quirks. On the contrary, characters in movies should be interesting and conflicted and have both external and internal obstacles to overcome. But what a character wants is first and foremost the reason for them to go off and do the interesting things that we'll find worth watching. It can't be something like:

CHARACTER A:

My name is Alfred Derby Lepercolony. I was born in New Jersey in 1948 to Deborah and Scallawag Lepercolony. My childhood was very unhappy because I was born with only one leg. This led to the neighborhood children calling me "stumpy," but coincidentally made me an expert with a Pogo stick.

Uh, yeah. Don't do that. 

Lesson 2: Construct scenes so that the characters in them want different things. 

Aha! Here's where the fun begins. Let's say you've established that Character A really wants a piece of information in the possession of Character B, who really doesn't want to give it up.

Already, you've sown the seeds to an interesting scene. Every police drama, terrorist movie, mystery and courtroom movie is based on this kind of conflict. Character A will ideally have compelling reasons to want the piece of information (location of a bomb hidden somewhere in his scrotum) and Character B will have compelling reasons to want to avoid telling Character B (Character A's scrotum will one day lead the resistance to victory over Skynet). 

It sounds simple, but it's a very effective dramatic tool, and it always gives the characters something to talk about. Consider, for example, which of these scenes would be more interesting:

CHARACTER A:

I believe the Moon is made of cheese.

CHARACTER B:

Uh, I don't. 

Or,

CHARACTER A:

I want to convince you that the Moon is made of cheese. 

CHARACTER B:

I want to commit you to a mental hospital.  

The answer, sadly, is that neither of these scenes seem very interesting. But at least the second scene is going somewhere. The first one is just a set of declarative statements, which would probably be followed by Character B trying to sneak out of the room. In the second one, they would at least have a conversation.

In my own screenplay, I've written many scenes where, for one reason or another, characters are compelled to lie or deceive each other. I've found this a very effective device, as their reasons for doing so -- what they want -- becomes an effective dramatic underpinning to those scenes.  

Lesson 3: The rules of the universe of the movie can be whatever you want them to be, but once they're established, don't break them. 

In a world full of movies like Transformers, where by design nothing makes sense, it's hard to see this as a hard and fast rule, but to me it's ironclad. 

It basically works like this: Yes, you can have a movie where cars and trucks transform into sentient killer robots. But if you get to a point in the plot where a character needs money, you can't just have a transformer turn into a bank and start printing $100 bills. If you do, even good natured people will stomp on your face. 

By the same token, if you establish that your main character is a mild mannered chemical weapons expert, you can't have him kill a special forces guy in hand to hand combat in the third act. 

Movies don't have to make sense or even seem real in the context of actual life. Suspension of disbelief pretty much allows you to have any rules you want, but once you've established those rules, in the name of God: obey them. 

So with that, I bring this incredibly boring Syd Field impression to a close. Some other time, I'll get around to different little nuggets I've picked up on plot and structure matters. 

Or perhaps I'll do something a bit more interesting, like read you a bedtime story. 

Oh, well. How many celebrity birthdays in a row can one man do? 

*Note: Lessons not actually written by William Goldman, though he wishes.