THE AUTHOR

Yves Lavandier took a degree in Civil Engineering, then studied film at Columbia University, New York, between 1983 and 1985. One of his tutors was Frantisek (Frank) Daniel, the same teacher who inspired Paul Gulino, author of “Screenwriting, the Sequence Approach”. During this time he wrote and directed a number of shorts, then returned to France and embarked on a full time screenwriting career, mainly for television.

In 1987 he established a number of writing workshops, and produced a 12 page handout on the theory of screenwriting. When the handout grew to 100 pages he decided it was time to write a book. His 2005 screenwriting guide “Writing Drama” was the result of twenty years of film study, writing and teaching.

TRIED AND TESTED

“Constructing a Story” is based on chapters 16 and 17 of “Writing Drama”. It develops and extends into 240 pages the ideas raised in the original 40 pages.

All recommendations in the book have been tested in his own writing and in the workshops he teaches, and are supported by references to over 500 films, television shows, plays and novels.

It is, therefore, a very thoughtful book and one that presents rules, guidelines and precepts that will be of interest to all thoughtful screenwriters.

CONTROVERSY

Lavandier does not shy away from controversy. He criticises the “one model fits all” approach taken by Hollywood as a reaction to Syd Field’s “Screenplay”.

Many other screenwriting manuals regard the Field structure as sacrosanct. He tells us that protagonists do not need to be virtuous or likable, and cites films from the 70’s such as “Midnight Cowboy”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Taxi Driver”.

Many other manual writers agonise over making the protagonist likeable, resulting in devices such as “save the cat”, which are excellent when cleverly employed, but in many modern films, heavy-handed and obvious.

LOGLINE SECOND

While most theorists advise starting with a logline, Lavandier suggests that is the second step. The initial step is “intention”. Writers should first consider the meaning they wish to convey through their story. This can often be summed up in a key phrase or key scene.

His discussion of the character arc in Chapter 4 extends the idea of a straightforward change and highlights the four narrative moments essential to the conveyance of the arc. He also points out that not all characters change, and while Hollywood producers seem to revel in arcs, the protagonists in “North by Northwest”, “Amadeus”, “Some Like it Hot” and “Fargo” are the same at the beginning and end of their stories.

FUNDAMENTALS

Chapter 11, “Fundamental Requirements” lists “a few precepts that you should keep in the back of your mind at all times as you write.” They include be clear, be ferocious to your protagonist, make the audience participate, enter other peoples’ minds, use powerful language and create connections. The twenty suggestions in this chapter should not be left lingering in the back of the writer’s mind – they should be nailed to his or her computer.

Of course, it is not always possible to agree with everything in a book that is packed with such great advice, and there were two areas that I found difficult to accept.

THREE TRAITS MAX

Lavandier suggests that a character should have a maximum of three traits, and that any more and “the audience will either drown in too many details and the character will seem two-dimensional and incoherent, or you’ll only end up keeping two or three and ignoring the rest.”

When I read this I thought immediately of “Erin Brockovich”, and began to list the protagonist’s traits. Erin is intelligent, has a great memory, is passionate about her work and the people she is helping, is vulnerable, scared of commitment, strong, but also sorry for herself, wants respect, knows she is sexy and knows how to use her sexuality, will not be intimidated, has difficulty relating to other women and uses profanities, often on the wrong occasion.

All these traits result in a rich, well rounded and fascinating character, and I doubt whether many audience members found themselves drowning in detail.

DIALOGUE

My second criticism is his treatment of dialogue. “Dialogue,” he says, “needs to come across as realistic… People in real life hesitate, search for their words or repeat themselves.” I agree that people do this, but it is not entertaining on the screen, and if this advice is followed a lot of unnecessary and tedious pages will be produced by budding screenwriters. The first duty of a screenwriter is to entertain. “Um’s”, “ah’s” and “let me rephrase that” are not entertaining.

He also suggests that dialogue “should resemble everyday speech.” If screenwriters adhered to this advice we would never have heard some of cinema’s best lines. When a robber holds a gun to a woman’s head and threatens to shoot her, a detective on the scene would most likely say something like, “Put down your weapon”, or “Don’t do it, let’s talk about this.” Instead, Harry Callaghan in “Sudden Impact” says, “Go ahead. Make my day.”

A criminal watching one of his henchmen beat up two men would be unlikely to say, “Jake attacks his job with a certain exuberance”. And one of his victims would be unlikely to counter with, “Shit. We’re being beat up by the inventor of scrabble.” But these totally unrealistic lines assist in making “The Last Boy Scout” a very entertaining movie.

CONCLUSION

These two minor criticisms are directed at less than 2% of the book. The remaining 98% I found thoroughly enlightening, with ideas and suggestions that made a lot of sense.

Many lesser screenwriting manuals are little more McKee, Field, Vogler, Snyder and Seger repackaged. Lavandier’s “Constructing a Story”, like his previous work, “Writing Drama”, is an original, erudite work, packed with helpful ideas based on the author’s many years of research, teaching and writing.

I would recommend it to all screenwriters.

– Jack Brislee

Jack Brislee

Jack Brislee is a business broker and property developer by day and a screenwriter by night.

He has written dozens of scripts, including the Travis Fimmel vehicle Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan, which he co-wrote with Stuart Beattie and The Story Shop.

He collects and dissects books on screenwriting.

This book is exactly what the screenwriting community needs right now.

If you’ve read every book under the sun about storytelling and how to write a screenplay, then Jennifer’s your girl. She will take you to the next level, because her book is about how to render your story cinematically.

Jennifer offers you 100 non-dialogue techniques to convey ideas in film. It’s great. On the left page, she’ll give the technique, and on the right page, she’ll give screencaps and show you how it was written in the script. Writers are filmmakers, too, ya know, and this is quite literally an encyclopedia of “show, don’t tell.”

And yes, Jennifer’s qualified to write this book. She teaches screenwriting at San Francisco State. She has an MFA from USC’s Department of Cinema-Television. She’s worked as a script analyst for Universal Pictures (Hey, Billy, Jenn’s a cutie. Can you hook me up? Hehehe…). She’s also been an analyst for independent producers and pay television. In 1994, she won the Panavision New Filmmaker Award. In 1995, she was named honorary Gilliland Chair at San Jose State for teaching excellence. She’s taught intensive weekend scriptwriting courses for UC Berkeley for six years.

Get this – Section 1 (the first 16 pages of her book) are available for free in .pdf form right here. (There are about 250 pages in all.)

Have you downloaded her sample chapter yet?

Good.

Turn to page 4 (page 7 of the .pdf document).

You will notice that this first free section talks about SPACE: 2-D & 3-D SCREEN DIRECTION. She explains things that should be common knowledge for every screenwriter – 2-D Space: the X-Axis (horizontal line), the Y-Axis (vertical line), and 3-D space: the Z-Axis (foreground to background).

Now consider this video:

From page 4 to page 7, she covers this opening sequence in Hitchcock’s classic Strangers on a Train. First, this sequence is just plain fun. I love it. Consider how much information we learn about these two characters just by looking at their shoes and pants. One is a bit of a dandy with his two-tone shoes and fancy pants and the other has an every-man quality to him with his conservative lace-ups. Also, notice how the protagonist walks from left-to-right on the screen and the antagonist walks from right-to-left. To quote Jennifer:

Left-to-Right

As Westerners we read left-to-right. If you rented fifty studio-made movies, there’s a good chance that the “good guy” will enter screen left every time. When the “good guy” moves left-to-right our eyes moves comfortably. Subconsciously, we begin to make positive inferences.

Right-to-Left

Conversely, the antagonist usually enters from the right. Since our eyes aren’t used to moving from right-to-left, the antagonist’s entrance makes us uncomfortable. The screenwriter exploits this by transferring our learned discomfort to the character. The subtle irritant directs the audiences to see the character negatively. In the same way, we code a black hat as a negative symbol, we can also code screen direction negatively.

Now watching these two characters walk toward each other on the screen along the X-Axis like this implies an impending collision, and indeed, when they finally sit down, one shoe knocks the other one. As Jennifer says, “Visually, their meeting has already implied collision. This makes us lean in all the more as we suspect it is all going to be bad –very bad.”

So what’s been accomplished here? What’s the “Dramatic Value?” “By using screen direction to graphically suggest a pending collision, the film has set up conflict and character, and peaked our fears – all in under sixty seconds.”

There’s another shot in this clip I’d like to point out. At :58 seconds we are shown a variety of train tracks along the Y-Axis, which is covered on page 6 of her book. To quote Jennifer:

“After already graphically suggesting that the meeting of the men will result in collision, Hitchcock cuts to an exterior shot. Hitchcock takes us to the train tracks upon which their train is traveling. At first, we see only clean linear lines of the track. The train is “on course.” It moves smoothly with a fixed speed and an unobstructed route ahead. Now we come upon an exchange of tracks.

The lines are a mess of competing directions. Then – suddenly the train veers off. It heads toward the right side of the frame. This is the same side previously occupied by the antagonist. The graphics suggest that the protagonist has abandoned his true course and moved to the world of the antagonist.”

What’s the “Dramatic Value” of this shot? “By using the Y-Axis to set up a linear established route, one that represents safety and normalcy, Hitchcock could also establish its opposite – the dangerous detour. The metaphor is also a succinct synopsis of the plot: What happens to a good man when his path is suddenly diverted?”

I love it.

This really helps aspiring screenwriters to think more visually and consider what information certain visuals conveys to the audience and empowers them to exploit that effectively. Every writer should have these techniques in the back of his/her mind when he/she writes in order to avoid excessive dialogue and verbal exposition.

My only complaint about this book (beyond the few minor grammatical errors I noticed) would be the screenplay insertions, because so many examples are very dated format techniques. We know from Dave Trottier, author of the Screenwriter’s Bible, that contemporary specs cannot have camera angles or big, overwritten blocks of action lines as we see in so many of those examples. (This book was, in part, what inspired the Psycho Shower Scene post.)

But I look at those techniques and feel inspired and wonder how we would write those techniques today and how I can incorporate those examples into my own stories and well, that should make Jennifer very happy.

Her book also reminded me again how Citizen Kane is so masterful in terms of cinematic techniques. You should turn to page 10 (page 13 of the .pdf document) where Kane paces along the Z-Axis and walks from the foreground to the background and back to the foreground again. Without a word of dialogue, Orson Welles communicates to the audience that Kane has returned to a state of boyhood.

Brilliant.

(Continued)

– Mystery Man

In his own words, Mystery Man was “famous yet anonymous, failed yet accomplished, brilliant yet semi-brilliant. A homebody jetsetting around the world. Brash and daring yet chilled with a twist.”

MM blogged for nearly 4 years and tweeted for only 4 months, then disappeared – mysteriously.

The Story Department continues to republish his best articles on Monday.

Here, you’ll also be informed about the release of his screenwriting book.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

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Excess is undoubtedly one of the secrets of the success of American cinema— the other secrets, in my view, are that they have a much developed Free Child and the fact that very early on they understood and assimilated two things about cinema: one, that it is about story-telling, and two, that it is also an industry.

Excess is undoubtedly one of the secrets
of the success of American cinema.

Excess was not something that the Americans decided on consciously; simply, excess is part of their culture. Everything in the United States is on a large scale: canyons the size of the Grand Canyon in Colorado, waterfalls the size of Niagara. Streets, buildings and motor cars are all larger than life.

The Americans do not do things by halves: when they are racist, they create the Ku Klux Klan, when their police want to stake out and raid a drug trafficker’s home, it is a whole Washington district that goes up in flames. Militants against abortion do not stop at murder. There are psychoanalysts for dogs, clinics for plants and kindergartens for adults.

Only in the United States are the preachers so crazy, the television reality shows so mindless, the criminals so monstrous, the creationists so utterly convinced they are right, the rallies so over-the-top, the believers in political correctness so unbending. But what is a deficiency in other areas can be a huge advantage in cinema. François Truffaut for one understood this, observing that, despite his natural inclination to realism, he wanted to film extreme situations.

What is a deficiency in other areas
can be a huge advantage in cinema.

There are of course writers who are resolutely down-to-earth in manner, for example Anton Chekhov, Eric Rohmer and Nathalie Sarraute, though they are few in number; they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Moreover their moderation in tone is perhaps deceptive: can we really say that characters who are incapable of living in the present time (The Three Sisters), or who are at daggers drawn over a matter of intonation (For No Good Reason) or over a white painting (Art) are really so moderate?

Comedy, as we have seen,
is largely a matter of excess.

Excessive does not necessarily mean spectacular. And character traits can be as exaggerated as any situation. Comedy, as we have seen, is largely a matter of excess. Not just that of Jerry Lewis, for example, but also that of Jacques Tati or Eduardo De Filippo.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Nothing succeeds like excess

A writer must not be afraid of excess, of taking things too far. There are those who say that excess in all things is meaningless. This may be true in life, where the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle ground, in moderation—even though, when it comes to excess, reality often outdoes fiction (I shall return to this point). However it is manifestly untrue in art.

A writer must not be afraid of excess.

The great writers of drama, from William Shakespeare to Jean-Michel Charlier and from Molière to Alfred Hitchcock, via Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Lubitsch and Ingmar Bergman, all went to excessive lengths. And it clearly brought results.

In Wise Blood and Oedipus Rex, the protagonist tears his eyes out.

In The Unknown, Alonzo (Lon Chaney) has both his arms amputated in order to be able to marry the woman he loves.

In Ballad of Narayama, Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) does not flinch at breaking her own teeth in order to appear older than she really is.

In Counter Tenors, Meo (Paolo Ferrari) agrees to be castrated.

In Desire Under the Elms, a mother murders her infant child.

The list is endless, particularly when it comes to comedy which of all the genres goes furthest in stretching reality to the limit and beyond. When it comes down to it, who really is going to change their sexual identity just to get a job (cf. Some Like It Hot, Tootsie or Victor/Victoria)? Or act in any way at all like the protagonists of To Be or Not to Be?

The writer must not resort to excess as a matter of course

While on the one hand one should not hesitate to be excessive when the situation calls for it, the writer must not resort to excess as a matter of course. Going to excessive lengths implies setting out from one point, generally some kind of norm, and ending up at another, considered beyond the bounds of reasonable behaviour.

Works of drama that deal only in excess lack the shading that the norm provides by contrast, and tend to be overheated and hysterical.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Jack Brislee

Jack Brislee is a business broker and property developer by day and a screenwriter by night.

He has written dozens of scripts, including the Travis Fimmel vehicle Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan, which he co-wrote with Stuart Beattie and The Story Shop.

He collects and dissects books on screenwriting.

iv) the spectator feels that the writer is taking a sadistic pleasure in burdening the character with ever greater obstacles.

He will regard the character as being victimised, pitted against impossible odds, and suspect the writer’s motives for making life so difficult for him.

The rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange, the chainsaw scene in Scarface (the 1983 version) and the torture scenes in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction fall into this category, in my view. Tarantino, the writer-director of these last two movies, has defended himself vigourously against charges of sadism, saying that his only responsibility is of an artistic nature and consists of being consistent in his treatment of the characters.

If a character is an odious criminal, it is normal, he said, that the character should be seen acting odiously. That’s a fine excuse! In Die Hard 2 and 24, a particularly unscrupulous villain blows up an airliner in midflight.

If a character is an odious criminal, it is normal […]
that the character should be seen acting odiously.

In King Lear, Cornwall gouges out Gloucester’s eyes. In Psycho, a mysterious killer carries out a sudden, brutal murder.

In Misery, Annie (Kathy Bates) cripples Paul (James Caan) by breaking his ankles. In each of these cases we may feel that these are abusive acts, that there was no need to go so far, but we do not suspect the writers of self-indulgence. They leave the spectator little time to draw any satisfaction from the crime and its representation even if he should be inclined to do so. In fact, the violence in the screen version of Misery is watered down compared with the violence in the novel in which the nurse actually hacks off the protagonist’s feet. As William Goldman [83b] notes of the film’s audience: “They hated her but they loved the movie. If she had cut his feet off the audience would have hated her and hated the movie.”

Take two other famous examples: the dentist’s drill scene in Marathon Man and the rape scene in Deliverance. They leave us feeling queasy, to be sure. But in the first case, the violence is suggested rather than shown, conveyed in a preparatory scene and through the words of Szell (Laurence Olivier). The actual torture is never seen.

It is not simply a matter of artistic coherence,
it also has to do with dramatisation, with duration,
with the way a given act is represented.

In Deliverance there is a kind of trade-off insofar as we know that the victim (Ned Beatty) may pull through: two of his companions, Lewis (Burt Reynolds) and Drew (Ronny Cox), are absent but could return at any moment and put an end to the rape. In short, and notwithstanding Tarantino’s views on the matter, it is not simply a matter of artistic coherence, it also has to do with dramatisation, with duration, with the way a given act is represented. It is not enough to say simply that human barbarism exists, I’m doing no more that showing it. Broadly speaking, we can say that there are two ways of representing human barbarism: the humanist way and the barbaric way. Writers—and, incidentally, spectators—should have the courage of their convictions, even if these are very often (to a large extent) unconscious.

There are two ways of representing human barbarism:
the humanist way and the barbaric way

Note too that there is a significant difference between the examples of Scarface and Reservoir Dogs and those of Misery, Deliverance and Marathon Man. In the latter three cases, the victims are the story’s protagonists. When a writer wishes to indulge his sadistic tendencies, it is better that he should do so on a secondary character rather than the protagonist.

When a writer wishes to indulge his sadistic tendencies,
it is better that he should do so on a secondary character
rather than the protagonist.

The issue of obstacles—getting the right balance between the difficulties the protagonist faces and his ability to overcome them—is one of the most crucial for the writer of drama to resolve. These obstacles should be as forbidding as possible, and yet not too much so. There is one work in which the obstacles are too strong, and where it is precisely the insolubility of the problem—the writer having refused to resort to any miraculous outside intervention—that lends meaning and power to the story. This is No Man‘s Land. I shall refrain from discussing the film here so as not to spoil the pleasure for anyone who has not seen it, but clearly it provides an exception to the above rule.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Too many obstacles (1)

A perfectly legitimate wish to confront a protagonist with a series of strong obstacles and to place him in extreme situations can in some cases lead to an excess of obstacles. Four possible problems may result.

DEUS EX MACHINA

i) the writer is obliged to resort to a deus ex machina (see below) to save the protagonist from his predicament.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

ii) the problem is inherently insoluble, and the spectator realises this early on.

This is the case with Uncontrollable Circumstances. In this movie, the protagonists are two young men (Patrick Bruel, François Cluzet) who have returned to France from an unnamed Asian country not unlike Malaysia or Thailand where they have left their stash of hashish with a friend who has stayed behind. They then learn that their friend has been arrested and faces a possible death sentence because he was carrying a certain amount of drugs.

drama is not real life, it is not God or chance
who intervenes to save the situation

They are faced with this dilemma: should they return to the country in question to tell the authorities there that two-thirds of the quantity of drugs found on their friend belonged to them, and thus face the prospect of several years in prison, or should they simply leave their friend to meet his fate? Clearly in either case they face a significant degree of conflict. There can be no happy outcome to the situation.

No wonder that the film ends with a cop-out, a frustrating deus ex machina: just as they are preparing to fly back to Asia, they learn that their friend has died in jail—an extremely convenient death. True, it can happen in real life that a timely event occurs and solves our problems at a stroke. But drama is not real life, it is not God or chance who intervenes to save the situation but the writer, and the spectator knows this.

a solution can always be envisaged as coming from the protagonist

Obviously the problems are only insoluble because of the external obstacles that have created them (in this case, the harsh Asian anti-drugs legislation). When the problems are internal, peculiar to the protagonist—a Cornelian choice, so to speak—a solution can always be envisaged as coming from the protagonist and we are no longer faced with an insurmountable obstacle.

ANTICIPATED FAILURE

iii) the spectator realises too soon that the protagonist is not going to achieve his objective.

This is what happens in In the Eyes of the World in which the protagonist (Yvan Attal) is determined to impress his girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg). To achieve this objective he decides to hijack a school bus. We soon see that this is an entirely unsuitable means, and that the objective simply cannot be achieved this way. This is so not because the hijacking is doomed to failure but because his girlfriend is more appalled than won over by the hijacking. Note too that this is not the only problem the film raises. As I shall show later, it also lacks an inciting incident (see page 159).

Jake La Motta is so odious and jealous
that it is difficult to empathise with him.

For some spectators a similar problem arises with Raging Bull. The boxer Jake La Motta (Robert de Niro) is so odious and jealous that it is difficult to empathise with him. This is because his jealousy is too strong, too pathological. We sense from the start that he will never overcome it. In other words that he will never achieve his objective, or at least that part of it which is related to his jealousy.

For a spectator to be interested in a character, he has to be able to look forward to a positive outcome. We come back to that balancing act between fear and hope. In Othello, the protagonist’s jealousy is extreme too, but it is caused in part by Iago, and Othello does not know this. If he were only to realise what was happening, he could break out of his jealous frenzy. The situation leaves grounds for hope. Thus the obstacle is not too strong.

a spectator […] interested in a character […] has to be able
to look forward to a positive outcome.

The case of Raging Bull, like that of The Lost Weekend, in which the protagonist (Ray Milland) is an alcoholic, is admittedly borderline. The issue is not clearcut and each spectator will respond differently.

Those who cannot believe that La Motta or Don Birnam (in The Lost Weekend) will ever overcome their problems will lose interest (without necessarily realising it, as the phenomenon is often unconscious); others may find much to appreciate in these works.

Next week: (iv) Ever greater obstacles

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

To give you the opportunity to delve into Lavandier’s amazing knowledge and insight, we will be publishing a weekly excerpt from the book.

Justifying external obstacles

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” sighs Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca. It is indeed highly inconvenient for Rick, but if Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) were not to turn up in his gin joint, there would simply be no story.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,
she walks into mine

In The Great Escape, just as they are about to make good their escape, the protagonists notice that their tunnel has fallen 20 feet short of their objective. “How could that happen?” asks MacDonald (Gordon Jackson). He is right to ask the question since, given all detailed planning that has gone into the operation, it is indeed incredible that they could have made such a gross error of calculation. However it provides another obstacle for the would-be escapees to overcome. So Bartlett (Richard Attenborough) replies: “What the hell difference does it make? It’s happened!” and they get on with getting round it. We may wonder why the spectator is so prepared to accept these coincidences or strokes of misfortune. But there is no mystery.

anything that hinders the protagonist’s progress
is considered acceptable

As a rule, anything that hinders the protagonist’s progress is considered acceptable since the spectator is always pleased to see the conflict pile up. However this does not mean that the writer has a free hand to invent obstacles randomly and gratuitously.

Most obstacles require a minimum of justification.

Most obstacles require a minimum of justification. It is better that their appearance should appear probable rather than merely possible, though their preparation need not be overdone.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

To give you the opportunity to delve into Lavandier’s amazing knowledge and insight, we will be publishing a weekly excerpt from the book.

Measuring up the obstacles

If the obstacles are too weak, the protagonist will be able to achieve his objective too easily, we will rapidly become bored and the story will not be credible. If they are too strong, the protagonist will be helpless and the story pointless.

Who needs to go to the cinema or the theatre to learn that a five-year-old child cannot repair a computer? Or that, as in Reservoir Dogs, a policeman who is bound to a chair, tortured and drenched in kerosene is powerless to escape? In short, the obstacles must be such that the protagonist can realistically hope to overcome them.

the spectator should be torn between hope and fear:
hope that the protagonist will succeed, fear that he will fail.

If we compare the obstacle with a wall, it must be as high as possible while leaving open the possibility of being scaled.

The point is that the spectator should be torn between hope and fear: hope that the protagonist will succeed, fear that he will fail.

The series 24 provides a good example of this balancing act. The protagonist, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), has to overcome a forbidding series of obstacles but succeeds thanks to his own resourcefulness.

The long climax of Lagaan, presenting a cricket match between Indian farmworkers and British soldiers, also swings brilliantly between success and failure, now giving rise to hope, now to fear.

Numerous other examples could be cited, both at the general and the local level, since one of the most basic characteristics of any successful work of drama is that it achieves a correct balance between the strength of the obstacles and the ability of the protagonist to overcome them.

successful drama achieves a balance between the strength of the
obstacles and the ability of the protagonist to overcome them.

This is why it would be wrong to suppose that this is an issue only in thrillers. A chamber movie, Take My Eyes, alternates superbly between hope and anguish in its story about a couple faced with the problem of domestic violence. Moreover it does so with hardly an ounce of violence, a considerable achievement at a time when more and more films resemble snuff movies.

Similarly, in Hotel Rwanda, the protagonist (Don Cheadle) does everything he can to save a thousand Tutsis who have sought refuge in his hotel, the scales tipping back and forth constantly between hope and fear.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

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The Objective’s Effectiveness

It is not enough, if you want to write a story successfully, simply to set your protagonist an objective. The writer must also make sure his story meets the following four conditions.

• Firstly, the objective must be known by the spectator, or at least perceptible to him, early on in the story. The narrative does not really begin until the spectator has worked out, more or less consciously, what the protagonist wants, and until that happens the spectator will be unsure of what he is being told. After a while, the spectator will find this disagreeable. In order to avoid this, the writer must himself be sure in his mind what his protagonist’s objective is. Only then can he make sure his story is rigourously constructed.

the objective must be known by the spectator

• Secondly, the motive for the protagonist’s objective must be clearly indicated so that the spectator can share it. If the spectator does not understand (let alone approve of) the protagonist’s objective, he will have no sense of there being anything at stake.

the motive for the protagonist’s objective
must be clearly indicated

• Thirdly, the objective must be particularly difficult for the protagonist to achieve. This does not mean the writer should make it too hard or, what is worse, impossible to achieve: one of the hardest skills for writers of drama to master is getting the right balance between difficulty and ease in overcoming obstacles. I shall discuss this more fully in the next chapter.

the objective must be particularly difficult

• Fourthly, the spectator must feel that the protagonist is utterly and irrevocably committed to achieving his objective. The protagonist must on no account give the impression that it would not matter too much to him if he had to give up en route. The more the protagonist is pledged body and soul to getting what he wants, the more the spectator will become involved in the story.

he protagonist is utterly and irrevocably committed

Consider:

1. Antigone (Antigone) who is prepared to risk death in order to give her brother a decent burial;
2. Galileo (The Life of Galileo) who takes on the whole world, and even risks catching the plague, in his determination to discover, and prove to others, new truths about the Earth’s place in the universe;
3. Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) in Children of Paradise who is thrown out of a window by Avril (Fabien Loris) and who comes back in through the door—usually, with people who strongly want something, it is the other way round: they leave through the door and come back in through the window;
4. Hildy (Rosalind Russell), in His Girl Friday, who to obtain a scoop chases after a witness, even though she is wearing her business clothes, and brings him down with a rugby tackle;
5. Ethan (John Wayne) in The Searchers, who spends 15 years scouring the vast expanses of the American West to track down his niece;
6. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who is so determined to see a baseball match that he invents one on a blank television screen, commentating on it as if he can actually see it (see analysis page 519);
7. Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor) in Where Is the Friend’s Home? who pesters his mother (Iran Outari) for permission to go out until at last she gives way;
8. Krimo (Osman Elkharraz) in Games of Love and Chance, who gives everything he owns (roller-blades, trainers, video-player,etc) to Rachid (Rachid Hami) for the right to play the role of Arlequin, enabling him to be with the girl he wants to impress;
9. Gabrielle (Eva Longoria), in the very first episode of Desperate Housewives, who mows the lawn at midnight, in an evening gown, to prevent her husband finding out that she’s having an affair with the gardener.

If the protagonist does not show that he is doing everything he can to achieve his objective, the spectator will feel cheated. In The Freshman, for instance, the protagonist (Matthew Broderick) is duped on innumerable occasions—even getting himself forcibly married—but does little more than protest vaguely. Ineffectual in his efforts to save himself, he allows himself to be swept along by events.

How can the spectator be expected to side with the protagonist if he is indifferent, fails to take action or even refuses to act? This is the reason for the failure of Secret Agent, as Hitchcock himself clearly understood [92]: “It didn’t really succeed, and I think I know why. In an adventure drama your central figure must have a purpose. That’s vital for the progression of the film, and it’s also a key factor in audience participation. The public must be rooting for the character; they should almost be helping him to achieve his goal. John Gielgud, the hero of Secret Agent, has an assignment (ie. to kill someone), but the job is distasteful and he is reluctant to do it.”

your central figure must have a purpose.

In fact, it could be argued that the protagonist of Secret Agent has two contradictory objectives: the first, to kill someone, has been supplied by his superiors; the second is to get out of having to achieve the first. Unfortunately for the quality of the film, the protagonist does not really get to grips with the first, and the second is simply not dealt with. Secret Agent is one of those works based on the premiss that the protagonist, often a soldier, a policeman, a spy or a detective, is given a mission to accomplish. For a drama of this kind to work, the protagonist has to believe in the importance of his mission and commit himself fully to achieving the objective he has been set.

protagonist has to believe in the importance of his mission

To conclude, a protagonist must be active; at the very least he can be reactive, but not passive. And he must appear utterly obsessed with pursuing his objective.

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

To give you the opportunity to delve into Lavandier’s amazing knowledge and insight, we will be publishing a weekly excerpt from the book.

A precise objective

-Yves Lavandier

If this excerpt has whetted your appetite and you would like to own this book, don’t fork out the $150 or so Amazon is charging.

Instead, send an email to the publisher contact@clown-enfant.com with subject ‘the story department referral’ and you will be eligible for the super-discounted price of 30 Euros (i.e. only $37 at the time of writing). This saves you $113 (or 75%) off the Amazon cost.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!