Concept in Screenwriting
- Define a Clear Concept: Establish a high-concept story that can be pitched in one or two sentences. This should highlight the central conflict and potential developments.
- Create a Strong Hook: Develop an immediate attention-grabber that distinguishes your story within its genre. This could be a unique premise, setting, or narrative twist.
- Reflect Concept in Every Scene: Ensure that each scene ties back to the central concept. Viewers should be able to understand the premise quickly, even if they join the story mid-way.
- Maintain Concept Consistency: Avoid scenes that don’t align with the concept. Every moment should exploit the unique elements of your premise to avoid becoming generic or confusing.
- Leverage Novel Expression: Characters should experience emotions and conflicts in ways that are consistent with the story’s tone and concept. This makes familiar tropes feel fresh and aligned with the narrative.
- Develop a Comprehensive Concept Logline: Craft a concise logline that includes all necessary elements to drive the story. This clarity will help generate scenes that fully exploit the concept.
- Craft Set-Piece Scenes: Create grand, memorable moments that encapsulate the story’s concept. These scenes should reflect the core elements and be pivotal points in the narrative.
- Utilize Concept to Solve Story Problems: Explore ways to address plot issues using the established concept. This keeps the story cohesive and avoids introducing extraneous elements.
- Balance Compactness and Completeness: Ensure your concept is both narrow enough to be clear and broad enough to be fully explored. Avoid adding unnecessary subpremises that dilute the main idea.
- Make the Script Smashable: Ensure that any part of the film leads back to the central concept. This consistency helps in creating a marketable and engaging script.
- Focus on Concept Execution: The strength of the concept lies in its execution. Every scene, character action, and piece of dialogue should be attuned to the overarching premise.
- Iterate and Refine: Continuously refine your concept and scenes to ensure they align perfectly. This iterative process will help in discovering the best ways to exploit the story’s unique elements.
Breaking rules
1. Understand and Manipulate Scene Length:
- Story Density: Ensure the amount of story, emotion, and thematic elements justifies the scene’s length.
- Structure: Treat each scene as a mini-story with clear turning points, stakes, and changes to maintain interest.
2. Use Dialogue Effectively:
- Avoid Static Dialogue: Ensure dialogue serves the story, reveals character, or advances the plot.
- Rhetoric and Monologues: When using long speeches or diatribes, ensure they add value by revealing character, foreshadowing themes, or creating irony.
3. Balance Subtlety and Clarity:
- Communication: Characters must listen and respond specifically, which helps clarify subtle intentions.
- Clarity: Subtle conflict or nuanced actions must be clearly understood by the audience without being overly explicit.
4. Incorporate Variety:
- Movements and Visuals: Break longer scenes into phases or movements, adding visual and emotional variety.
- Point of View: Shift between objective and subjective points of view to enhance emotional impact and keep the audience engaged.
5. Leverage Dramatic Techniques:
- Dramatic Irony: Reveal information to the audience that characters are unaware of, creating suspense and engagement.
- Mystery vs. Suspense: Decide whether to align the audience with a character’s incomplete knowledge (mystery) or give them privileged information (suspense).
6. Embrace Stumbles and Surprises:
- Stumbling: Use characters’ subconscious actions or coincidences to advance the plot or reveal deeper character traits.
- Subconscious and Surprise: Allow characters to act without full intention, revealing hidden aspects of their personality or moving the story forward unexpectedly.
7. Enhance Emotional Depth:
- Subtext: Infuse dialogue and actions with subtext to add layers of meaning and emotional depth.
- Emotional Range: Longer scenes should cover a wider emotional range, reflecting higher stakes and significant changes.
8. Maintain Engagement:
- Pacing and Rhythm: Vary the pacing within the scene to keep it dynamic and engaging.
- Conflict and Stakes: Ensure that every moment in the scene contributes to the overall conflict and raises the stakes for the characters.
Storytelling Based on Theme
- Define a Clear Theme: Your theme should convey a universal truth about the world. Ensure it is relatable and resonates more deeply than the plot or story.
- Integrate Theme into the Climax: The theme should solidify in the climax through the protagonist’s final choice and the resulting consequences. This forms a logical deduction about the world.
- Craft a Multi-Part Ending: An effective ending includes a crisis (impending choice), climax (choice made), and resolution (aftermath). This structure helps convey the theme.
- Subtlety in Theme Expression: Avoid didacticism. Instead, use subtle clues, rhymes, and hints throughout the film to support the theme without overtly stating it.
- Use Supporting Characters and Subplots: These should mirror or contrast the protagonist’s dilemma, offering different perspectives on the central theme.
- Visual and Setting Consistency: Utilize setting, props, and motifs to reinforce the theme. Consistent visual elements can subtly support the theme.
- Opening and Closing Images: These should encapsulate the entire movie’s meaning and relate directly to the theme.
- Charge Items with Meaning: Props and motifs should be imbued with additional meaning that supports the theme, creating deeper layers of understanding.
- Dialogue as a Tool: Use dialogue to subtly reframe and reinforce the theme. Avoid on-the-nose statements; instead, let theme lines and summations emerge naturally.
- Alley-Oops: Plant early setups or reframes that will pay off later in the story, providing context and emotional impact for significant moments.
- Character Arcs and Theme: The protagonist’s growth should embody the main theme. Ensure their decisions and transformations reflect the thematic message.
- Avoid Contradictory Messages: Ensure that the thematic message is coherent and not undermined by unintended subtext or late changes in the script.
- Reframe Perspectives: Use circumstantial evidence within scenes to shape the audience’s perspective, guiding them to the intended thematic understanding.
- Consistent Motifs: Recurring motifs should relate to the theme and appear throughout the film, reinforcing the central message.
- Creative Counterpoints: Embrace surprising perspectives and associations to present a complex, nuanced theme. This requires growth in wisdom, empathy, and compassion.
- Theme in Action and Visuals: Ensure that actions, settings, and visual details consistently support the theme, creating a coherent narrative experience.
Cinematic Writing
- Write What We See and Hear: Focus solely on describing visible and audible actions and events. This ensures the script simulates the film-watching experience for the reader.
- Prioritize Efficiency and Clarity: Every word should contribute to the story, avoiding redundancy and ensuring the reader can smoothly follow the narrative without stumbling over unclear phrases.
- Avoid Passive Voice: Use active voice to clearly indicate who is performing the action, making the description more dynamic and engaging.
- Use Specific Verbs and Avoid Adverbs: Choose precise verbs that convey clear images and character intentions. Replace adverbial phrases with stronger verbs.
- Strategic Use of Sentence Fragments: Utilize fragments to create a fast-paced, kinetic style, but avoid them when they cause ambiguity or confusion.
- Avoid Figurative Language: Use literal descriptions to avoid confusion. Screenwriting requires precise imagery that clearly conveys the intended visuals.
- Direct Without Directing: Imply camera angles and shots through descriptive language rather than explicitly stating them. This maintains the narrative flow and allows for more creative interpretation.
- Sequence Actions Carefully: Arrange actions and visuals in a logical, linear sequence to ensure clarity and enhance storytelling.
- Minimize Cheats: Avoid descriptions that convey information only readable on the page. Instead, find visual ways to express thoughts and emotions.
- Use Context to Your Advantage: Build on established context to avoid unnecessary descriptions and focus on elements that advance the story and enhance mood and tone.
- Detail with Purpose: Include details that are essential to the story and contribute to its clarity and impact. Avoid overloading with unnecessary specifics.
- Multitask with Language: Ensure your descriptions establish setting, convey character intentions, and set up future plot developments. Every sentence should serve multiple functions.
- Be Concise but Impactful: Strive for brevity without sacrificing the richness of the story. Each word should add value and drive the narrative forward.
- Enhance Emotional Impact: Use carefully chosen images and movements to evoke emotions and build suspense. This makes the script engaging and memorable.
- Think Like a Film Editor: Shape the script with an eye toward escalation, cutting out redundancy, and focusing on the most impactful visuals and actions.
- Capitalize on Accumulated Context: Use previously established elements to inform current scenes, allowing for expressive and efficient storytelling.