LESS IS ALWAYS MORE


Written by Judy Kellem

We’ve ranted and raved over plotless, storyless, material and all the hazards involved in writing a two hour movie around that three second scene you've just got to write, or hanging truckloads of characters off of a series of random events that have no narrative spine. But what’s often even worse are screenplays in which the writer has stuffed ten screenplays worth of plot into one "lowly" script. It’s the ole "everything thrown in the pot including the kitchen sink" syndrome, scripts that go from being about a woman’s fight against cancer, to her boyfriend’s outsmarting of the mob to his lover’s discovery of alien visitors.

Folks, just as it is essential to be sure your script "has legs" (i.e. a solid, viable, central story) it is as necessary to make sure you haven’t turned your movie into a story smorgasbord in which everything happens and then some!

Good scripts turn on clear, strong, singular plots that are moved along by well-developed characters and relevant, supportive subplots that ADD to the revealing of the main story without in any way eclipsing or interfering with its unfolding.

It is a true blessing to be bursting with ideas, to be filled to overflowing with script stories galore just clamoring to be written. But be sure not to bottleneck your pages. Don't allow all those plots to jump into one narrative pot! Writing is a lifelong practice and there will be plenty of time to exorcise all those incredible tales.

Best to make separate files for each idea you have. Flesh out each one separately and get clear on which files hold stories that are really strong enough to constitute the main arc of a single screenplay and which ones are more secondary, side bits to be developed and used as subplots. Then mix and match. Take a look and see if one of the subplot files is actually in concert story wise with one of the main arc ideas, if the two can be married into one script (without the subplot competing with or trying to overcast the main plot). If you find a good match eh voila! You’re on your way.

But as you go along, be sure too that you stay on stylistic track.

Though experimentation is a beautiful thing and should be encouraged in all forms of art, there are certain rules of convention in the art of screenplay writing, which I would argue, must be adhered to no matter what. MOST CENTRALLY is the rule of maintaining a consistent GENRE. I love and applaud works that are avant-garde, abstract, surreal, cubist, whatever you want to call it. Works that have unreliable narrators, that distort time passage and toy with our sense of realities. But when I read material that starts out as Space Odyssey 2001 and then morphs into Sleepless In Seattle, then further still into a Marx Brothers Comedy, I am pulled out from the pages and left utterly disengaged.

Why?

Because reading is an act of TRUST. Trust that you are being taken on a fictitious journey where anything is possible but will happen within a certain modicum of set parameters. It is a tacit agreement between writer and reader, this offering, and when it is exploited or disrupted the journey ends.

None of the parameters is as key as this promise of GENRE.

From the get go, the writer must provide some sense of tonality around the reality s/he is asking you to delve into. Are we moving through an eerie, scary, cold, serious space? Or is this a light, comedic setting where no matter what transpires storywise, the tale will never get too heavy handed? Is it possible that Dracula will appear? Or can we feel certain that he has no place in this particular dreamscape? The writer must be forthcoming and straight when it comes to this aspect of his or her material so that we will be willing to sink into the imaginary world s/he is asking us to believe for 120 pages. If we're riding horses with Johnny Depp, worried about sheriffs and outlaws stopping us on that dusty path and The Alien shows up, we feel betrayed, confused and put off (ONLY UNLESS OF COURSE THE WRITER HAS BEEN CLEAR FROM THE START THAT WE ARE READING SATIRE AND SPOOF, which is it’s own clearly demarcated GENRE!).

People have asked, well then why do writers like the Coen brothers work? They seem to meld for example, murder mystery with comedy. Indeed, they work because the humor and the seriousness are well calibrated to coexist in the same, dead pan, acerbic and sardonic tonality. Their movies don't

ask us to be overly intense and serious on the level of a Vanilla Sky, then switch gears mid movie and demand we have a slapstick funny bone the likes of Mel Brooks. The Coen brothers keep a steady tone and a steady mood wherein the drama is always handled with irony and a detectable underlying, poker faced humor; and in turn the humor is always delivered with a straight faced, ironic smirk that doesn’t overwhelm the pages and yank us out of the dramatic underpinnings. If they were instead, super heavy about dramatic moments, and then employed screwball comedy when they felt like being funny, the pages would fall apart, the reader alienated and annoyed.

Best to be very clear with yourself what genre you are writing in and then commit to this, don't change your tune or the lines will go off key and your audience will plug its ears. If you are writing romantic comedy, keep it light, romantic, comic. If you are creating the world’s scariest horror flick and you are drawing on a gothic template where horse drawn carriages

deliver hunch backs to dark, cob web covered castles, DON’T allow the Terminator to make a guest appearance. Keep a consistent style, a consistent look and a consistent genre so your reader can easily and willingly take that magic carpet ride on which you’ve worked so hard to host them.