As "there" as much as I can be. haha
So, here's a writer topic:
How do you write a scene?
There are probably as many answers to this question as there are prospective writers. Different people find different entry points. Some outline the scene. Some write straight ahead and see where it goes. Others write fragments of action or dialog they know they want and then come back to it later. And many writers use different approaches for different scenes in the same script.
What I tell a lot of beginning or struggling writers is just to write
anything, get some momentum, push your way through what's hanging you up. It can be terrible, but that doesn't matter. You push through it and move on and come back later and revise the stuff that isn't working. "Like that, only good," is something my writing partner and I say all the time, acknowledging that.
My process has evolved a lot over the years. If nothing is coming out or nothing good is coming out I will shift tacks to break the logjam. I'll try different approaches to get into and break the scene. I've done complicated dialog scenes in a spreadsheet FFS so I could easily experiment with speaker-order just by swapping columns around. Other times when the dialog isn't flowing I just write something like this...
Disses Peter by showing off his sophistication
Tries to one-up Neil by showing him to be
pretentious
...which indicates what I
want to happen and lets me sketch out the subtext of the scene and what the lines mean and then try to write actual dialog.
So today I'm going to try something new here. I'm working on a scene rewrite and I'm going to do it
here, "live". Perhaps this will be of interest to some of you.
Context
I am rewriting a few scenes for
The Blue Mauritus feature screenplay.
In industry lingo this script is what is called a "selling script", which means it's designed to
sell the project to talent and backers. As such it puts more emphasis on the selling points than perhaps the final shooting script would. This is a heist/caper film and stuff like character motivations gets revealed as the onion layers are peeled back. But not everyone understands that, so we had a few notes where someone did not feel invested in the characters in the first half of the script. So, to help "sell" the script to people like that, I am revisiting a few key scenes to put what I call "fishhooks" in: stuff to catch the reader and reel them into the story.
The largest such scene I am tweaking is the one I call "Team Blue Assembles". This scene as previously written accomplished the following:
- Introduced the four thieves to each other (we've met them previously)
- Established some conflict amongst them, especially Peter and Neil
- Introduced Stephen the young hacker
- Established why the thieves have been brought together
- To deliver the goods they stole on a previous job, and...
- To be given an offer to team up to go after a riskier target (the titular Blue Mauritius stamp)
- Have them decide assess the job before making a decision
To add the aforementioned fishhooks I must now add the following:
- Set up the theme that these four thieves, each from a different country and background, are distrustful of one another due to various prejudices (which they will subsequently overcome)
- Better establish their personalities
- Hint at their individual motives here to get the reader invested in finding out the whole story
- Make it more fun and less expositional
Oh, and as the script is basically maxed out lengthwise, I need to do all this
without adding to the page count.
To do this requires rewriting the action and dialog to work on multiple levels. For instance, I need to establish that Neil (English) has rather refined tastes
and that he thinks Peter (American) is an unsophisticated rube...on sight. I need to
show that Neil fancies himself a sophisticate. I need to show that Peter is a bit of an ugly American and hint that he's attracted to Maria. I need to show that Maria (Brazlian) is all business and not a prize for the men to win. I also want to establish that Lucien (French) is used to being bullied and defends himself with cynical comments.
I set up the Neil-Peter dynamic in the immediately previous scene wherein Neil pulls up at this industrial loft in a luxury car and is cut off from a parking space by Peter on a motorcycle. I'll play off that by doing a reverse on the same action in the scene I'm about to start. Here goes...
INT. LOFT - DAY
The door opens and Peter finds himself face-to-face with STEPHEN (21), an adorable nerd who always wears vintage computer company tee shirts.
Oh, sorry. Must have the wrong place. Is this—
Peter. Hi. Come in!
Peter gets cut off by Neil, entering like he owns the place.
Interesting neighborhood.
(Peter)
If a little low rent.
Neil strolls directly for a table featuring spirits, beer and wine, making show of picking a fine wine. Peter, right on his heels, finds the corkscrew, feigns offering it to Neil...
psych! uses the end of it to open a bottle of beer, then drops it on the table where Neil has to reach for it.
So, kid, who're you and who are these cats?
FOLLOWING PETER to REVEAL Lucien sprawled on a sofa like a cat, and Maria, under a hat and behind dark glasses, standing aside,
hiding behind a large cocktail, tense as a wound spring. As Peter passes Maria he puts the open beer in her open hand. He winks. She frowns.
I'm Ste--
No names! That was my condition.
Whatever the lady wants, she gets.
And Neil puts a glass of the wine in her other hand. He holds his own glass and raises it in a toast. Maria considers the two drinks: which will she choose?
LUCIEN
(gestures open handed)
It's the 21st century and chivalry is dead.
What about what I want?
And suddenly finds in his hands the drinks Maria was given. He shrugs, happily alternates from one to the other: he's not proud.
Look, I don't care who these men are or why
they're here--
PETER
(plops down in a chair)
C'mon sistah. Two plus two. Four Blue Mauritius
stamps stolen, four of us here.
Stephen nods, grinning. Maria scowls. Neil turns to her.
Not quite as stupid as he looks.
LUCIEN
(makes face at the beer)
Let's not rush to judgement.
So, as I said I would above, I just wrote that, live in this post. I didn't even look at the old draft. I wanted to take a fresh stab at the scene. By not referencing the previous version I am ensuring that I am
writing and not
editing. Writing (creating) and editing (revising, correcting) are two different processes, and I advise writers to treat them as such wherever possible. When you're rewriting actually rewrite, all of it. The word flow when you write sentences is different than when you go back and start messing with wording or grammar.
The result above is rough
rough rough, but it's starting to do what I want. Notice how I'm keeping the dialog short and punchy and I'm letting the character's actions tell a lot of the story, i.e.:
- By having Stephen wear old computer company shirts I am visually indicating he is
- a computer guy
- likes "vintage" stuff (which makes it believable he knows a specific 80s song later)
- Neil indicates his opinion of Peter by commenting on the neighborhood (low rent)
- Peter counters by messing with Neil by faking him out with the corkscrew
- Now the alcohol. In the earlier drafts Neil had some wine and that was it. This time I am using wine and beer as visual shorthand for what "class" each character operates from, and...
- Neil goes for vintage wine
- Peter grabs a brew, but...he's getting the drink not for himself but for the beautiful lady in the room
- But Neil one-ups him with the wine
- Now we are left to wonder: is Maria a beer or a wine drinker? What class is she?
- But, psych! we don't find out because she's having none of it and passes the drinks off to Lucien, untouched
- And Lucien, being a bit of a street rat, is indiscriminate and drinks both... he's not passing up an easy score
Most of this I made up on the fly and then I jumped back to connect the dots as new connections occurred to me.
For instance, at first it was just Neil and the wine, but then I decided to keep playing the business of Neil cuts off Peter, Peter cuts off Neil, thus added Peter going for the beer. At first I revealed Maria already had a drink which she is hiding behind (I crossed that out) but then I realized it was more interesting to have Lucien and Maria revealed as Peter "finds" them. I also could continue Neil-Peter business by having Peter hand her the beer, then Neil one-up him with the wine. I first thought to have Maria hand the drinks back to them, swapping them, maybe suggesting neither was what they were pretending to be, but then I realized Lucien wasn't doing anything, and I could get a bit of visual comedy out of having her handing the drinks off to him, and then having him not be choosy, and not firmly in either "world" and drink both. This build worked nicely, but Maria had the least fun bit in the whole thing, so the penultimate addition was the moment where she considers both drinks, leaving us to wonder which one she'll drink, before rejecting both outright. Finally, I wanted a zinger from Lucien, and realized he could dis Peter by dissing the beer choice. This got all four characters involved in the business and the action had a "topper" to end it.
Now that the character tensions are set up, next it's time to reveal why they're there and what the job is.
Onward and forward. Hope that was helpful to someone.
