Therefore, in order to find success in screenwriting, it is necessary to understand how audiences work. And your first audience is your reader. I don’t mean reader in the sense of a particular Hollywood industry professional, though winning over such readers is critical to a writer’s success. By reader I mean a typical human being who can read.

Believe it or not, but even veteran Hollywood readers are typical human beings, and they are looking for scripts they think will please other typical human beings.

Here are a few things about audiences that may help start you on your screenwriting journey:

1. Audiences follow action

Audiences follow action: somebody doing something. This goes for a story as a whole (e.g., Mark wants to build a social network online and pursues this goal), a sequence within the story (e.g., Mark goes about trying to find an investor), and a scene (e.g., Mark persuades a financier to back him). When you write scene description, likewise keep this in mind. Audiences follow action. Don’t list items in a scene, the way you might in a stage play. For example, instead of starting a scene:

INT. OFFICE – DAY

A dark dusty office with a pile of papers on the desk and a poster that reads “READ” on the wall. Jonathan enters and sits down.

It’s better to render it like this:

INT. OFFICE – DAY

Jonathan enters a dark dusty office, walks past a poster on the wall that reads “READ,” and sits down at a desk with a pile of papers on it.

Rendered the second way, the audience does what comes naturally—following action—and along the way makes discoveries about a location. And they’re much more likely to actually remember the details.

2. Audience like clear motivation

Audiences like to know why people are doing the things they’re doing. It may be useful to introduce a character who exhibits puzzling behaviour as an attention-grabber, but audiences will tune out pretty quickly unless they discover the reason for the behaviour (see the opening of Silver Linings Playbook—at first Pat seems to be muttering incoherently, but very quickly, the gaps in this puzzling behaviour are filled in).

Salient information that helps audiences understand onscreen behaviour and action is called exposition.

3. Audiences love anticipation

Audiences are constantly trying to figure out where you’re leading them.

We are all blessed (or cursed?) with frontal lobes, which are the place where we ruminate about the things we observe and try to anticipate future events based on clues in the present.

Thus:

4. Audiences like (authentic) details

Your job as a writer is to turn the audience into keen observers of detail.

The audience is watching for clues it can use to piece together where the story is going; it’s your job to provide those clues and make sure they notice them, and that the clues lead them where you want to lead them.

For example, A husband buys candy and flowers on his way home from work. Meanwhile, his wife places a gun in the nightstand drawer. We know what these mean: the husband plans to make love while his wife is planning to make war.

Of course, it may be that the gun is a birthday present for the husband, and the husband, meanwhile, has poisoned the candy to kill his wife. If so, congratulations: you’ve exploited the audience’s propensity to piece together clues and anticipate the future in order to throw them a surprise twist, which is something audiences love.

5. Audiences hate data dumps

Audiences like their exposition in bits and pieces.

They won’t remember information that is delivered without any context.

Instead, following #3 and #4, it’s best to reveal information in digestible pieces, clues that the audience can then piece together to arrive at an understanding of the background of the story.

Note that these clues have to be visual or aural, since movies convey sight and sound only.

6. Audiences look for cause-and-effect

Audiences respond to cause-and-effect patterns.

Again with our frontal lobes: when we observe the world, we have an irresistible tendency to seek cause and effect relationships in the phenomena we see.

This propensity is so strong, we sometimes create cause-and-effect relationships where there are none (“The Green Bay Packers lost the game because I didn’t wear my lucky cheesehead hat.”) Audiences will respond readily when the events and scenes you present have a cause-and-effect connection.

If there is no such connection, audiences will tend to tune out (or, possibly worse, impose cause-and-effect connections where they are not intended).

7. Audiences latch on to characters

Audiences respond best when they can identify with a character.

It has been argued (for example, in Edward Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth) that storytelling confers a practical advantage on the human species: by listening to a storyteller describe the dangerous adventures of a character, we can experience that adventure emotionally—and learn from it—without having to expose ourselves to danger.

Thus audiences will not respond readily to a story in which they can’t connect emotionally with—empathize with—a main character.

8. Audiences hope… or fear

Suspense keeps audiences paying attention.

If a character we empathize with (see #7) pursues a clearly defined goal (see #2) and runs into obstacles to that goal, the audience will stay interested (and keep turning your script pages) because it is suspended between hope and fear.

They will hope the character achieves the goal, and fear that he or she won’t.

9. Audiences need structure…

The “three act structure” is the instrument for creating suspense.

In order to create suspense, the audience 1. needs to get to know a character and learn what the goal of the character is, 2. watch the character pursue that goal despite obstacles. These two steps create and sustain the suspense.

To end or resolve the suspense, the audience needs to 3. learn if the character achieves the goal or not. These three pieces are the three acts in the three act structure.

10. … On every level

The “three-act structure” applies to scenes and sequences as well as the movie as a whole.

Each scene arguably can have its own three-act structure: a character wants something, tries to get it and encounters obstacles, then gets what he wants or doesn’t. E.g., Will Pat persuade Tiffany to give a letter to Nikki? That’s not the main question in Silver Linings Playbook; it occurs in just one scene.

But the question keeps the audience in suspense for that one scene.

Writing your scenes this way will ensure audiences won’t be able to put your screenplay down: they’re going to be too busy wondering what happens next.

Now go on and do good work!

-Paul Gulino

(This article was first published on Writers & Artists)

Paul Gulino

Paul Gulino is Associate Professor of Screenwriting at Chapman University, USA. View his Chapman University page here and his Storytelling Strategies column here. You can purchase a copy of Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach here.

Such a structure, executed successfully, keeps the audience at the edge of its seat. It also serves to inform the audience when the movie will be over, namely, when we learn if the main character will get what he or she wants. This is a crucial element of cinematic storytelling; we have all had the unfortunate experience of believing a film is over, only to have it drag on and on.

Enter The Deadline

There are a fair number of successful films, though, that do not use the engine of dramatic tension. Yet, they are successful with audiences. Often described as “character-driven” movies, in these, a loosely presented exploration of characters and relationships takes the place of relentlessly forward-moving dramatic tension.

A slew of recent films fit this category – Julie and Julia, (500) Days of Summer, Juno, Waitress.

Absent the mechanics of drama, what is it about these films that serves to keep the audience interested? And what signals when the film will be over?

The answer is telegraphing.  Specifically: a deadline.

Both Waitress and Juno are framed by pregnancy. A character discovers she is pregnant in the opening few scenes… This signals to the audience that the movie will, most likely, take place over the course of nine months, culminating in a birth.

Nine Months

The expectation of the birth serves as the deadline, toward which the story moves. Aware of this framing, the audience is now free to enjoy the ups and downs. They roll with the tensions of the relationships, without wondering where the movie is “going.” And it will know when the movie will be over: soon after the main character gives birth.

The main plot in Julie and Julia has a specific deadline: Julie has 365 days to cook every recipe in Julie Childs’ cookbook. The progress we are making in the movie can be readily marked by Julie’s frequent references to how many days she has left.

Tension builds as the final day gets closer. Although one may regard Julie’s desire to cook these dishes as the “want” that traditionally powers dramatic tension, the film itself does not exploit this aspect of the premise: there are no major obstacles, and many of the scenes focus on her relationship with her husband.

The audience is now free to enjoy the ups and downs and tensions of the relationships without being distracted by the question of where the movie is “going.”

In the same film, the Julia Childs subplot employs the deadline of her eventual success, which is telegraphed early in the film by the fact that Julie is using her cookbook. Julia Childs is at best a laid-back protagonist, searching for something interesting to do. There is no life or death situation here. There is, though, the expectation that she will eventually find success, and that, once the success is realized, the film will be over.

500 Days

500 Days of Summer has its deadline built right into the title. Although the scenes in the film are largely out of sequence, the voiceover narration and the constant reminders about which day in the relationship the current scene is keeps the audience oriented. And as we approach Day 500, we expect the film will soon be over.

Once the success is realized, the film will be over.

Another recent film, The Hurt Locker, has action elements but is, like the others described herein, episodic in nature. There is much use of high stakes/big desire dramatic tension within the sequences of the film, but not in the film as a whole. Instead, the film plays out as a countdown to the end of the tour of duty of the main characters.

To a lesser extent, The Hangover exploits a deadline: the boys have one day to find the groom before the wedding. Although this film has a traditional dramatic action—the main characters must find the groom and get him home—the fact that they have just one day to accomplish their mission intensifies the drama.

Effective use of the deadline can give a screenwriter remarkable flexibility in approaching material that does not lend itself easily to a traditional dramatic structure.

(c)2009 Paul Gulino

Paul Gulino

Paul Gulino is Associate Professor of Screenwriting at Chapman University, USA. View his Chapman University page here and his Storytelling Strategies column here. You can purchase a copy of Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach here.