ADVANCED SCRIPTWRITING - THE BIBLE OF STORYTELLING PART 002

1. INTRODUCTION CHARACTER-SPECIFIC: Welcome to the second part of this tri-part series in screenwriting. In the first part, we've talked about all the aspects that are common to all the characters. We addressed your story from the helicopter perspective. In this part, the second part of the series, we are addressing your story from within each individual characters, from each individual player. We're talking about what's the goal, what's the objective? What's the opposition? What is the motivation? What's the time pressure? What kind of actions, what kind of business or your characters pursuing in order to get to your objective. Without much further ado. Let's get started. 2. Chapter 13: Objective: Welcome to Chapter 13, objective. What is a character's objective? It's a solve his or her problem. The problem can also be a longing that is unfulfilled, desire to become the best jazz musician in the world. That is also a problem because there's a difference between what you want to happen and where you are right now. And that gap. Difference is your problem, and that is what your story is about. If your character is completely content with everything in her life, we have no basis for his story. So some form of discontent. This the part that basis part of a character and the story. Constantin Stanislavski lived between 18631938 in Russia. And he formed the Moscow artistic theatre with the playwright Anton Chekhov and others. And he is the father of modern day acting, which we call psychological realism, which is everything or almost everything you see in the movies or television. And in the theater. Most of the theater is psychological realism. We're trying to, actors are trying to play what happens as if it happened for real. There are other forms of acting in Japan. They have the Kabuki theater. In India, they have the Bollywood tradition. But in the West, the predominant tradition of acting storytelling is psychological realism. Stanislavski, along would find the founding the theatre. He founded an acting school theatre and he has written several books on the subject of acting. An extra prepares being the most famous one. And then you have building a role, creating a character. And I would highly advise you to read those, especially the first one, an accurate prepares. Because as mentioned, all the things that we'll be talking about in this part of the course, this second installment of the series are questions that are specific to each character and these are the questions that every good actor asks him or herself. So the difference in this perspective in writing from acting is very small. You could say that writing, when we start talking about writing from the character's point of view, is acting with a pen and hat. Almost. You're not maybe saying the lines out loud. You'll maybe not enacting it physically. But you are, if you're writing well, acting it inside, but it's just emerges through your fingers instead of for your voice and your body. Now Stanislavski, he says that every character has a super objective through the entire story. That is the overarching goal that your character wants to reach. For instance, what is the super objective for Hamlet? Well, he wants to find out a does was my father murder, and if so, wasn't murdered by my uncle claudius. And if so, how should I eventually, that is his super objective. What is the super objective for Luke Skywalker? Well, the character can have super objective on different layers. It's like an origin. You have different layers as peg against us in absence drama. So the character can have the big super objective, the world that has to do with the entire world and the problem for the entire world. Then he or she can have a personal goal and he or she can have an inner goal and in their problem that she's trying to solve, and they should all be related. If we look at Star Wars episode for a New Hope, we see that the big problem is of course that there are fader and the evil empire is trying to rule the galaxy to have captured layer and when she must be saved. Alright, that looks personal goal is that he wants to become a pilot. He wants to leave the farm. He doesn't want to be in a farm boy anymore. He wants to become a pilot, is inner problem, which he isn't aware of in the beginning. But still there, He's, he's emotionally aware but not the intellectual aware is that he's trying to find some purpose and meaning. He has a spiritual longing which is unfilled, unfulfilled. And that is shown very powerful scene. If you remember the movie where late one night, Luke walks up and sees the two setting sun and the music, the Jedi theme swells. So here's aware that he's lacking something in his life and he's not aware of what, what it is. During the course of the story, he will fight the big problem, trying to say princess Leah, trying to defeat the evil empire. He will address the problem of becoming a pilot, and he will address the problem of his spiritual longing of the Jedi force. All these three lines will converge in the climax. Wade becomes a pilot where who becomes a Jedi and where he's able to defeat Darth Vader and evil empire. They all come together in many stories, many good stories. This is the way it works that in order for your character to win this goal, he or she has to win this goal at the same time. In order to win this goal, he or she has the wind that goal as well. In the climax of Star Wars, which is so brilliant is that he cannot become a true Jedi if it fails in destroying the Death Star. And he cannot, cannot store the Death Star unless he becomes the true Jedi. And also excellent fighter pilot. If you can accomplish a climax like that, you're, you're on, the good, good chance of creating a story which will come, will become very impactful with the audience. Now, there are other kinds of stories where the character, instead of having the goals converge, have to give up one goal for the other. For instance, Legally Blonde with responds character. She loses her boyfriend who enters, I think is Harvard. Then she decides in order to win him back. She has, she has a hard word and become a scholar in order to win this respect and win them back. Then she Thus as Stuart Hall word and becomes a brilliant student. And in the end, who are former boyfriend comes groveling and asking her to take him back. And now she realizes she doesn't want him anymore. So wanting to get her boyfriend back was instrumental in her starting the other projects are becoming a scholar herself, which ultimately meant that she had to or wanted to leave that old gold behind. That can happen in the story that, so either at the different objectives are dependent on one another or your character's forced to choose one of these objectives over the other. Alright, so this is the most important aspect in writing and creating a character. What is her problem and what is her overarching desire? What is her super objective? And if there are several layers to the super objective, how do they relate to one another? Then do they converge? Or is your character forced to relinquish one of these layers for another? Now, this is the goal, JOB active. Now, moving on, let's see. It's not enough with your character having an objective. He or she must want that with a burning desire. It must be he or she must be passionately trying to reach that goal. It must be in some way, shape or form, life and death to her to attain her objective. And this we'll talk about in the next chapter about motivation. 3. Chapter 14: Motivation: Welcome to Chapter 14, motivation. Motivation. What is that? Motivation is the answer to the question, why is it a matter of life and death for your character to solve his or her problem. It has to be about life and death. All good drama is bad law for life and death. Does it always have to be fiscal, life-and-death? Know, it can be sociological, life and death, economic life and death, emotional life and death, spiritual life and death, life and death for relationships, for something that we love, but in some way, shape, or form. Every story has to be about life and death. And why is that? Well, that's because the reason we started telling stories is because they gave us, in comparison to all other animals, an evolutionary advantage. As far as we know, no other animals are telling stories. There are communicating, but they're not telling stories. As far as we know. As far as we know, Weird only ones telling intricate and complex stories to one another. And why do we do that? As we all know, nature is where economic nature doesn't waste her resources. We try to conserve our energy at all costs. So why is the human species spending tons or millions of dollars creating these movies and magazines and books and place that there are dealing mostly with things that are never have happened. Why did we do that? Well, because it's not superficial, because it's highly instrumental to our survival. The reason why the human animal exist on five out of six continents, except Antarctica, is that we can adapt. If you take a polar bear and put him in the Sahara, he's going to die because he can't adapt. If you take a desert lizard and put her at Iceland or Greenland, it'll die because it can't adapt. But we can. So we exist in Greenland, Iceland, we exist in the deserts, we exist in the rain forest because we can adapt and how do we adapt? Well, learning information. And how do we learn information by stories and even information on the most, in the most simplest form. For instance, Eric eighth that mushroom with the Red Hat. Now Eric is dead. So conclusion, don't eat the mushrooms with a rather hat. That is a story unto itself for the beginning, middle, and end. It was an initial situation or equals to live than something happened. And then there was consequences. And there's a learning, there's a takeaway from this story. Hamlet is the same way, just more, infinitely more complex. That's the same thing. Hamlet deals about something that's vital to our survival as individuals and as a species. Namely, revenge. Revenge always good, is it always bad? How do we do revenge? These, we all come across the feelings of revenge at one time or another and we have to deal with that. Now. We have to deal with that in a way that is hopefully as non-destructive through us, as individuals and as collective members of society. Because we don't, maybe we'll kill, kill ourselves. So it's vital that we come to grips with revenge. And that is what a story of Hamlet it's about, it's about life and death for the individual and the collective. And you can say, well, what about the silly high-school common it take for instance, American Pie about some nerds are trying to get laid. I mean, that's not about survival. Of course it is. Nothing is more about survival than that. If we, humans would stop mating. Well, all the human race will be dead in a couple of decades. So we'll, most stories are about or about the most basic parameters of survival. Many times, for instance, in action movies, it's about fiscal survival and the survival that your stories above with defined a John Ray, for instance, if it's fiscal survival, it will be a joint action or horror, thriller. Maybe if it's emotional survival, it will be a drama or a rom com. If it's social survival, it will be a comedy. Maybe, maybe risk being made a fool in front of the entire school and so forth. So it's always, even if it's a comedy or drama, even if they just think it's a silly, just comedy about some nerds. If it, if it makes you laugh, it in some way, shape or form engages you, it is about life and death. The stakes have to be as high as possible and they have to continuously be erased throughout the entire story. If for instance, now I would start to play poker here with my partner here, Eric, who's behind the camera. If he will come in and we play poker, and I will put ten Swedish crowns on table and he would do likewise. Would you be interested? Of course not. But if I were to put my apartment on a table and he were to put his apartment or his house here. Now you'd be interested because it's the same darn poker game. The game hasn't changed, but the stakes have changed. You know that at the end of this game, either he or I will be homeless. Now we are interested. This is super important when you create your story and when you design your characters, they have to have a lot at stake. In life. We will always want a situation that if I win, then as good, if I lose, that's good as well. Of course, that's what we all want. That is death. To a fictional character. We want to push them up against the wall where it's do or die. It's swim or sick. Either you win and then you go to paradise, so to speak. And if you lose, you go to ****, metaphorically or literally, there are no other options. You want to put your character between a rock and a hard place. Imagine that you're putting your character in martial arts cage, you locking the door. And on the other side you have Mike Tyson. And he has been chewing tramadol for the entire night is like his eyes are big as saucers. He just completely wild and the associated punch your character until he's a piece of pulp. Now there are two options. Either your character defeats Mike Tyson. Where are you guys? Can, can you run away? No. Can you climb vote? No. So what you always want to do is box in your characters. Your character has no other option than to fight Mike Tyson or die. Do you and me want to be in that situation? Of course not, but that is why we want to watch it. We as an audience are in some way, perverts were sadists. We want to see people in situations we would not want to be in. The more your characters enjoy themselves in life, the less interests that we are. We want to see your characters be put through the ringer. Alexander, the mom, the French writer, said, the way to engage the audience is make your heroin suffer, make your characters struggle and suffer. Now, talking about suffering, it's important to note that if people, a person sitting in a chair crying and bemoaning their fate, that will not create sympathy in the audience. What creates sympathy is someone struggling to get out of their suffering. For instance, take for instance titanic. If you'd have Jack and Rose sitting on the deck and crying and say, Oh, it's so sad that we're going to die. Would I turn off and said, Oh, you can don't carry. I mean, you can drown. But due to the fact that they are fighting and fighting and struggling to not drown, that engages us. So they're super important. This is a thing that a common mistake in novice writers is that he or she writes a character who's sitting and crying and being sad and crying and being sad and crying and being sad and very sad and hoping that that will engage your audience. It doesn't, it bores us to tears. The only thing that will engage us is that, oh, I see that she suffers. And what does she do to mitigate that? That is what I was. That will create sympathy. And you could also say, if I were to sit here with my hand in a pot with boiling water and I will say, oh, it's so painful. It's so painful. Would you be engaged? No. Because, you know, that is lie, right? Because if it's really was boiling water, I would do anything in my power to try to bring my handout or that boiling water. So if your character doesn't do everything she can to get out of her suffering. She's not suffering, right? So that is what creates empathy, not the suffering itself. That the characters struggle to get out of the suffering. Alright, so the stakes have to be as high as possible and after continues to be raised throughout the story. Because the higher the stakes are, the more I have to lose, the more desperate I will be, the more desperate I will be, the hard-drive of struggle. And the harder I struggle, the more interesting I am to watch. You always want your character to be desperate in dire straits because then they will perform actions that are interesting to watch. So the question you should always ask your characters is, what's, is the disaster that will befall you if you fail? It always has to be. It. Disaster. If you say Well, if he or she loses, then she'll be okay. You don't have a character, you don't have a setup for character will be interesting. He or she has. It will be complete disaster. It will be in some way, shape, or form, **** for her. If she fails, if she succeeds, it will be in some way, shape or form, paradise. Alright? Second aspect of motivation that is crucial is time pressure. Good, drama is always in a hurry. Take for instance, you know, the classic Western movie. You have the heroine tied to the rails by the bad guy, and the train is approaching one. Our hero is galloping and clopidogrel particular, particularly in trying to get in time to save his lady. Now, what happens if we remove the train? There is no train are here in this tight to the railroad tracks. And R here is coming. He can take all the time in the world. He can stop by and have a drink in it. You can have two drinks. It can play a game, poker or two game and slowly getting time and save as his lady. Is that drama? No. So what makes drama the time pressure? You always, always, always want to have a ticking clock. You always want to have a bomb that's fuse burning. Of course it doesn't always have to be a physical bump, literal bump. It can be a metaphorical bomb. For instance, in a family drama, you'd sell them, have a fiscal bump. Although it might be interesting to have that, but seldom you do, but you have an emotional bond. For instance, a classic setup for family drama is the funeral of the mother and the three sisters that are living in separate places in the country that reunite for the funeral and try to work out their differences. And the implicit bomb is of course, that if they leave now, returned to their usual lives without having resolve the conflicts, they will be estranged for the rest of their lives. So that is what is at stake. You always wanted the time pressure. You want that at time pressure as tight as possible. And if possible you want to tighten it even further. The classic action movie you have the action here are running to stop the bomb, t minus two minutes. And the or here is running in order to save the world. Take away the ticking clock. And when he can take it all the time, it's world and it's the same danger. But without the time pressure, we don't have any drama. You should start your time pressure as soon as possible in the story, but no later than the midpoint. The midpoint. That's what a ticking clock starts. For instance, in Titanic, the midpoint when they have hit the iceberg. They know that it's a matter of hours before she's going down. The ticking clock I started in the film Aliens. They're looking at the outburst and the saying that in a couple of hours because there are some ventilation has been damaged. So the whole nuclear facility on this tastes will, will load two pieces. So there's a ticking clock. They only have a couple of hours. I'm in Romeo Juliet, in a couple of days. Juliet's parents will force Julia to be married to Paris. And if that happens, of course, you can never married Romeo. So it's a ticking clock. Always, always, always. You need a ticking clock and you need that. And that is what forces your characters into desperate actions. And that is what we want to watch. We want to see desperate characters in dire straits. There's a saying, you know, desperate times call for desperate measures. And that is a very good recipe for a story. Putting your characters in desperate times and enjoying them. Undertake the desperate measures that need to take in order to get out of there conundrum. Another aspect that's super-important to, to ask yourself when talking about the motivation of each character is why, now, why here? Why candid weight? And that has to do with the time pressure we've talked about that. But it also has to do with why didn't your character to try to solve the problem before? So you need to have created something that has happened or that that now makes it impossible to wait. He or she can't wait anymore, but he or she couldn't do it before either. So this is the only time it's now or never that your character can solve this problem. And most of the time, of course, it will be that the problem at hand maybe emerged just recently. So there wasn't any way of solving it before, but nevertheless, it cannot wait. Another aspect of motivation is that all the actions that your characters perform have to be a 100% logical from his perspective, his or her perspective. It doesn't have to be logical from our perspective, but it has to be logical from their perspective. And this brings us to a point that is super-important for actors and writers alike, is that when you create a character. Don't, the more you create the character from the outside and in the worst creation you will make. The more you create the character from the inside out, the better a character you will create, the more you talk about your character in the terms of he or she or he or she or he or she. The, the worst character you will create, and the more you can invest yourself in the character. And Toba I, this is, this is how I would have felt. Stanislavski talks about the magic if Constantin Stanislavski, we've talked about them in the previous chapter. Who was the founder of psychological realism? Just as Sigmund Freud as the founder of psychotherapy. He said that every actor should ask him or herself the question, what if, what if I were this character in these circumstances? What would make me say this? What would make me do this? The more you inject yourself and try to put yourself in the character's shoes. And so how would I react in this kind of situation? Would either what would be real for me? The more real your story will feel to the audience. And this is something that there's just a certain, you notice when you have seen something that made you feel at this feels real. And that's because it was real to the rider and real to the actors as well. So for instance, if you're trying to create a character that is insecure, the more you are looking at this character from the outside saying, Oh, here's an insecure character. The more you will create a stereotype, a dead stereotype. But the more you addressed this character from the inside and out, the more interesting we'll count, for instance, if I am to portray an insecure character, do not think about how the world sees this character. Think about how does this character view the world in a way that makes a world view me as insecure. For instance. I cannot play in secure, but I can play that. I'm really, really anxious on. Older people are sitting here. What do they feel about me? Maybe they are highly critical of me. I think they all look really scary. You know, i then I'm becoming secure, but I didn't play insecure. I was just transforming you, so to speak. I had a teacher in drama school. This is very politically incorrect, but his, his words, not mine. And he said, but acting that it's much easier to rape yourself, to rip others and rape yourself. What he meant by that is that transforming oneself is hard, but if I transform my view of you, then I will have transform myself. For instance, how do you play arrogant? Well, you can't play arrogant, but I can play that. I think that all of you looked like nerds, you look like geeks. And in so doing, you will interpret me as arrogant. So this is super important when you create your characters, create them from the inside out. No character, no person has ever lived that saw themselves as evil. There has never been an evil person in the history of mankind from their own perspective, Hitler wasn't evil from his perspective. Styling wasn't evil from his perspective. They probably saw themselves as heroes. And so the more you can write the character from inside the character's mind and find logic. That is logic to you that you feel this, this feels real. The more interesting your characters will become. And say for instance, that you have conceived a character who, who's going to do something which you personally feel is totally strange. For instance, your written character who takes an heir, an ax, and kills two young boys. Hopefully, you will feel as I do, that's totally strange. And the thing that these boys did, they trashed the old man's boat, rowing boats. And now his response was killing them with an ax. To me, that's totally disproportionate. Insane response. Now, if you go about the bad way, you'd say, well, he's a crazy old ****. And let's write them like that. There will not be, something doesn't engage with an audience. It will leave the audience cold. But if you tried to get inside the mind of this guy and say, what would make me killed two people? Because they trashed my vote? If you can find that answer, then you will create a very compelling character and you will. Interest and engage the audience. Because then it will be true to you. And the only truth that is interesting for us as artists is our personal truth. What do you feel to be true? And if the audience agrees, they will laugh, cry, or bite their nails. And if they don't agree, they won't. But that's the only thing we can offer to the world apart from our artisanship, is that our personal, honest truth, feelings about how the world works. So now there are two ways that actors go about this and that you can go about as a writer trying to find this. One way is to build the background, build the backstory. What has happened that make me feel that killing those two boys are logical and morally right? Because everything Hitler did was morally right from his perspective. So everything you have ever done in your life has been a 100% logical and more to the correct from your perspective, maybe not always from others, but from your perspective, it has always been right? Sometimes maybe you have, as I have looked back in the life, as they're, how they're, how could a been such a fool? But at the time, you thought that was the best way forward is the same thing with your characters. Everything your characters are doing are from their perspective, the best thing they could possibly do from a logical and moral perspective. Alright, so you build the background and try to find what kind of experiences do I have had to have in order to make this a 100% logical and mortar, correct? Or you can substitute. What happens here for something in your life. For instance, substitute, if I were to write or play this character who killed these two boys with an x because they trashed my boat. Maybe I could substitute my children for the boat and say that this character values this boat just as much as I value my children. And if someone would trust my children, I would kill them. I'm not saying that it's right. I'm not saying I will to prison and rightfully so, but I would do it. That would be true to me, might not be true to you, but it was true to me. Then I can write the character because that is what it means to him. Going back to the first method, building the background, for instance, what happens if I decide that these two guys, they are really rich. Fathers have rich, and they basically runs the community here. And he has his factory and my father worked in the factory and busted his balls. And their father is, he is, he has a bad human being. He terrorize us and crushes people. And this boat I'm very for my family has always been really poor. The only thing we had was this boat that my grandfather we couldn't afford buying a boat. My grandfather built this bolt, his own hands. Plank by Planck, stitching to both together. And my father, you know, the only time of the year that he didn't drink was that week in the summer we were out on this boat. That's the only time in our lives that we were real family. That's not just a boat. It's my grandfather. It's his legacy. And it's a time with my father and I was real family. And now those *************, they're basically killed my grandfather. So now I'm starting to feel that maybe it's not such a bad thing to pick up that access to all. And maybe you're not there, but then you have to find something that's lucky for you that fields that killing these two boys are morally right. Until you find that it will the US be a construction that will leave the audience dead. But if you find that in yourself, as a writer, just as you do as an actor, then you can portray something that will engage the audience. Because in the final analysis, what we're doing as writers or artists or actors is that we're trying to tell something That's deeply, deeply personal, that we don't dare tell. Maybe we can tell it. It's not socially acceptable. We can't, we can't admit to this. We know that everyone feels this way, but we can't say it because it's not socially acceptable. But we need this release. And that is one of the reasons we have fiction. Because here we can say, in the cloak of fiction, say, I wanted to kill people. And so have you. But we will never admit it. But we can do it here now. Shielded by fiction. Then we can't go out afterwards and say, Oh, I don't understand how people can feel that it must be sick people, deranged people. But for one moment in time, we got to acknowledge in ourselves and in others that we all have felt that same way. That if we do that, we can feel less alone, which I see as Louis, the writer of the books of Narnia. He says that why do we read and write or tell stories to feel less alone? And you know, when you have seen a film or theater production or read a book that in some way engage you, you felt less alone, at least for the duration of the story. And that is what R does for us when it's good. It makes us feel less alone. But if you write your character says, I have no connection to that character, altered those feelings. Or here's just an insane man, man. And I have never felt like that. Then we feel more alone. And that is detrimental than we leave the audience cold. And they will not like it. And they know it's a lie. At least intuitively denotes lie. So what we want the audio, We want the truth, but we can't handle the truth, as Jack Nicholson's character says in a Few Good Men. So we have to dress it. There's an old story I love who says that truth is a naked lady. She came to the village and she was shunned everywhere. Next day she came back dressed in stories. She was welcome everywhere. So we can't handle the truth, but we want the truth. So what do we do? Well, we conveyed through stories. Okay, so to recap, motivation, it has to be life and death for your characters. When they're objective in some way, shape, or form. The stakes have to be super high and they have to continuously be erased. A poker game, you want, if your character loses, she's going to **** literally or metaphorically, if she wins, She's going to paradise literally or metaphorically. You have to address time pressure that you have to have a ticking clock. And the tighter the deadline and the more desperate your character will become and the more desperate actions she will take in the more interesting. Come, you have to ask yourself, why here, Why now? Why not earlier? Why not later? And you want all your actions to be a 100% logical and morally correct. No one act immorally from their own perspective, not even a pedophile. I saw a documentary about priests who were pedophiles. And it was so interesting because one of these priest finally said that to me was that's the, that's the key to being able to do that. He said that, of course, I mean, everyone, everyone is attracted to children. Of course. It's just that we're the only ones that are emitted. That's the way, that's the way you have to think. So, of course, in his eyes, he was not immoral. We are the ones that are immoral because we're hypocrites in his eyes. So yet again, super-important to create a character that feels real, is that everything they do is a 100% right and morally correct from their perspective. Okay? So we've talked about your character needing a goal, super objective. And that's super objective has different sub-goals. Every scene that your character is in, he or she has a sub-goal that will lead to the completion of the super objective. You can have no scenes in the story where the character has gone off on a tangent. If that doesn't in some way, shape or form relate to the solution of the main problem. And that solution of that problem has to be a matter of life and death. Now, what stands in the way of our character reaching her goal? Well, that is the opposition, which is the object of our next chapter. 4. Chapter 15: Opposition: Welcome to Chapter 15, opposition. Opposition is what stands in the way of our character reaching her goal. And the opposition can take three forms. The first one is fiscal opposition, and then we have antagonists, which is other people. And then we have the most interesting of them all, namely in there. Our position starting with the physical oppositions was that, well, that can be a storm, it can be a shark's, it can be dinosaurs. It can be a volcano erupting. What have you. And this is more than the opposition story can never only be fiscal. For instance, in the movie Jaws, the sharks is not the only opposition. And it cannot be in Jurassic parks, the dinosaurs, it's not the only opposition. We always need human. Humans as well to serve as opposition in aliens, for instance, it's not only the masters who are opposing us. If that would be the case, the story would be hollow. Because ultimately a story is about human, humans motivation as human interaction. Alright, so the physical obstacles, usually the backdrop for the drama that is played out between the different characters. Then we have antagonists. Antagonists are other people that are standing in our way. For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, we have the parents. In Star Wars. We have Darth Vader, so on so forth. And these antagonists, of course, view the character that you're currently writing as their opponent. For instance, Darth Vader is, Luke Skywalker is opponent. But of course, from Darth Vader's perspective, luke Skywalker is his opponents. Going back to what we talked about in the previous chapter. But trying to write your character as much from inside their heads as possible. Then we have the most interesting obstacle of them all, namely the inner obstacle. And this goes back to when we talked about in the previous section of this series. We talked about harmonic DEA, which is the flaw, the sin of the character that he or she needs to overcome in order to defeat the outer problem. In a good story, The problem is always a mirror image of the outer problem. The inner fo represents the outer fault. For instance, Star Wars. Darth Vader is an external representation of Luke Skywalker's in there for his inner Darth Vader, so to speak. That is clear. If you watch the series, the second movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Luke walks in its training with Joe data, become a Jedi warrior. He walks into a cave, Myths Dorf way their fight. A duel with him with lightsabers, cuts his head off. When the head rolls off, he sees behind a mask, he sees his own face. So that of course a metaphor. He knows that in order to defeat that guy, I have to defeat this guy first. So that is, the inner foe is a representation of the altar fall and vice versa. So what you can say is any good story is that the story of venture that befalls the hero, how horrendous it might be. At the end of the day, it's the best thing that can happen to your character. Because without adventure and all its toils and struggles, he or she would never been able to defeat his or her own in their fall. Okay. So this is the classic setup for a story. We have the the case, the courtroom drama, and we have the lawyer who he's the only one who dares take on the big corporation is problem is that he's an alcoholic. And now can he stay sober for the duration of the trial? Because otherwise you won't be able to win the case and so forth. Without a compelling inner problem, your story will not engage in the problem that engages us an audience. Another example, if you take your Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, the first movies will played by Orlando Bloom. His initial problem is that he's in love with Elizabeth, played by Carroll nightly. And of course he's, she's out of his league. He's just a blacksmith and she is a high-class society lady. He can never have her, although she likes him. But his inner problem is not that his inner problem is that he hates pirates more than anything else. Because his father, Bootstrap Bill, was a pirate and, and he just hates everything that has to do with pirates. Now, what happens, of course, is a one-quarter mark is that elicit of f gets captured by pirates. The immortal pirates. And wheels. Only chance of saving Elizabeth is by working together with Jack Sparrow, pirate. Now. So what a good story will do is to challenge your character's inner problem, is throw rocks at it. This, so this will, from his perspective, now, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to him at the level of his life is captured by pirates and he has to work with a pirate who she hates in order to save his girlfriend. But from a psychological perspective, which you will find out the noun, this was the best thing that could ever happen to it. Because this is the only thing that could make them reconcile his hatred for pirates. And we've talked about this in the first installment of this series that your character going through the adventure will learn from all the characters and the events that she faces, even the negative ones, or you can say especially the negative ones. She will incorporate that in her transformation from an old self to her new self. Her old self couldn't solve her problem. But her new self count. The external story. If it's a good story, the external story of how entertaining and engaging and then grossing it might be, still is only a vehicle for your characters in their transformation. You can say that we come to the movies for the external story, the lightsabers and the canons and all that's gunslinger and stuff. But we'll makes us engage. What makes us come moved and touched. There's the inner story. Okay? So in order to defeat the outer obstacle, your hero has the first defeat his or her in there obstacle and learning to do so, she learns that by fighting the outer obstacles. You see, this works in tandem if it's a good story. Take for instance, Oedipus Rex. Most classic of all Greek tragedies. The king Oedipus is external problem is that there's a plague in his kingdom in the city of Thebes and no one knows. The reason for the pay. His inner problem is that he is unaware that in trying to run away from what was preordained from him, The Curse. He actually fulfilled it. So he has killed his own father and brother, his own mother, and that is what has caused the plague. And in a good story, when we start out or character is to some degree this content and his or her world. It's to some degree this content. It can be to hideaway. For instance, take your Interstellar, the ordinary world where we meet our character or protagonist play my Matthew McConaughey. He's not in the best of places and the world is dying. The earth is dying. Or characters need to address that. And we've talked about that in the first installment and we talked about structure. We've talked about Joseph Campbell's theory about the monomyth that our hero, starting out an orphan, leaving her village, which has some defect. He or she has some defect. The village has some defect. In fighting the adventure coming back, he or she has, is transformed, is able to solve his or her prologue and the problem of the village, the tribe, the society where she originally came from. Okay? So these are the obstacles that are standing in their way and they need to be as powerful as possible. If we don't have a powerful opposition, we don't have a problem, right? We always need David versus Goliath, so you need your adversaries to appear insurmountable. We need them to appear that they can't be beaten. For instance, in the animated movie, Kung Fu Panda, you have a very fat, untrained pool ping, who now has to face the highly skilled warrior Tyler, who is, who would be worse than this fat panda bear and none, right? But he's the one who has to save the village from Thailand. Now, that's a problem. That's one **** of a journey that is fat panda has to make in order to end there and be able to save his village. And that's the kind of problems you want. For instance, Lord of the Rings, we have a couple of, I mean, there's nine people, right? Nine people. We're trying to oppose the entire forces or mortar and Sauron and Saruman. That's David versus Goliath. We know this is a big problem. If your opponents don't appear insurmountable or unbeatable the beginning, we don't have a problem for real and you will not engage your audience. You want to make us feel like How the heck is this going to happen? Then you got a good problem that will engage us. And as the story progresses, your adversary cannot stay the same as your protagonist. Your protagonist becomes increasingly stronger. Why, sir, more insightful, changes her way of solving things, changes her modus operandi. And at the same time the antagonist becomes stronger, more insightful, becoming closer and closer. So it's, it's a, it's a race to the end where. And then the climactic scene, we'll see who is the strongest, now, the protagonist or the antagonist. I, previously, I talked about some examples. For instance, the mommy where the mommy when a walk and he takes body parts from different victims. For each body part it takes becomes stronger and stronger. In the film Monster House, the monster becomes increasingly active, increasingly dangerous throughout the entire movie. If you're antagonists stays at the same level, your story becomes boring. Your antagonist has to, if it's not increases in number, he or she has to be coming closer and closer or know more about your hero, their whereabouts or grown string for growing numbers, what have you but the antagonist has to continuously escalate. Enforce just asked your protagonist, your heroes has to escalate as well. That is, we will want, we talked about that in the last chapter in the pre use installment about structure, about escalation. Alright, so now we have a goal and we have motivation. It's life and death for our characters to reach your goal. And now we have something standing in their way which appears in surmountable. So now, what do we do? Well, we must rally our resources. We must see what do we have that is to our advantage, and that is the subject of the next chapter. Allies. 5. Chapter 16: Allies: Welcome to Chapter 16, allies. So we decided that each character has a super objective, what he or she wants to accomplish in the story, we have the sudden motivation why it's a matter of life and death that she accomplishes this. And we've seen that there are forces, powerful forces standing in her away. Some of these forces are external. Sum of these four forces, the most interesting ones are internal now. So that is what our posting us, but we also have forces that are on our side, are helping us. And what are these forces? They are allies. And of course, these can be objects, that can be information. We have got a map, we got to weapons, and we got all sorts of fiscal stuff that are on our side to help us. But of course, the most important of these are the human allies, human capital that we have our aside. And probably the most important of our allies are the mentor. The mentor is the character dev guides us, that helps us, that bestows Boone's upon us. And the first function of the mentor is to bring the character, your protagonist, out of her original world into the special world to help her paths cross the threshold. For instance, in Star Wars Episode four, Obi-Wan Kenobi helps luke Skywalker leave his home planet and go to Mos Eisley and enter the adventure without Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker would never have done that. In Pirates of the Caribbean. The first movie, Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow helps. We'll leave Port Elizabeth and try to leave vertices and try to save her without Jack Sparrow will never have done that by himself. In Cinderella, the fairy godmother helps in the Rayleigh. Go to the ball. Without the fairy godmother, Cinderella would have stayed at home or wouldn't ever had married the prints. So that is the first and primary function of your mentor, helping your protagonist over the first threshold, a threshold to the adventure. Okay, So if the character, her mentors, they, they can be more than one mentor. They are on his side. If they are not false, mentors, the mantras can be false. They can appear as mentors, but they are really villains. There are wolf in sheep's clothing, for instance, Wall Street. Bad Fox has a couple of mentors, and then he acquires a new mentor, the highly successful businessman Gordon Gekko, who appears to be a mentor, but which we will find out later on, actually is his greatest foe. And of course, this is really interesting when this happens, the story, when you realize that this was, he was actually working against us. In the movie Aliens, we have Burke, the company man, who helps Ripley weavers character over the threshold to adventure. Without him, she would have never embarked upon adventure, but he turns out to be a false mentor. He's really one of the bad guys see. And as repossess, I think you were worse than them because they don't screw each other over for God, that percentage. We also have unreliable mentors. They're not bad. They're not villains as the false mentors, but they are unreliable. And the classic example of the unreliable mentor is Jack Sparrow. In parts of the Caribbean. He is on our side, so to speak. And sometimes he's not. He's trying to help will win back Elizabeth. And at the same time he's trying to when Elizabeth for himself. And that is of course, what makes him so fascinating a character, Joseph Campbell, it talks about these characters. He calls them the shapeshifters. We don't know what kind of shape or form they have. Precision in the drama is unclear. They moving between borders. And that makes them dangerous and fascinating as well. Assisted living. And the Swedish children's books author wrote a book called simple target chromosome on the roof. And Carlson, who is the mentor here is unreliable mentor his flies around would have held it caught with a propeller on his back. He is, he can be quite mean to our protagonist, but he's still his friend. So that makes him dangerous and alluring. At the same time. Then we have the allies who are on the same side as your character. They're not mentors. They don't bestowed the same kind of insights and wisdom as the mentors do. But they are lieutenants, they are with them, they are the confidence. For instance, in Star Wars Episode four, we have C3PO and the R2D2. They are the allies of Luke and you could say that Chewbacca, Han Solo, or his allies as well. They are not teaching him like Obi-Wan Kenobi is, but they are on this side. For instance, in Top Gun, who is tom Cruises character? Who is his ally was the character of goose. And the ally is almost all his second in command to your character. Justice. We have false mentors. We can have false allies. Allies that turn out to be villains, or they betray us down the line. For instance, in matrix the first movie, you have cypher who's an ally to Trinity and Neo and Morpheus, but who sells them out to Agent Smith. And then we also have the force enemy who turns out to be an ally. We thought he or she was an enemy, but in the end she wasn't. She was operating the corporate veil, will have it. Or she, she leaves the enemy camp and comes to our camp. So these are the forces that we have on our side. Now, knowing what we want, why it's a matter of life and death, what's standing between us and the goal? And what do we have on our side? What do we now do in order to beat the opposition and reach a goal? Well, that's the subject of the next chapter. Action. 6. Chapter 17: Action: Welcome to Chapter 17, action. Action is what your characters do in order to win. What do they do in order to gain their objective? Given what they want, what their motivation is, what is opposing them, and what do they have as allies? Will do they have on their hand in order to beat the opposition? There are three kinds of actions. There are physical actions, mental actions, and emotional actions. For instance, if I want Thomas order to give me a 100 kilo nerve, a 100 Swedish crowns. And I said, If you don't give them to me, I will punch you in the face. There is a fiscal action, not a nice one, but the physical one. If I say if you give me a 100 switchgrass today, I will give you 110 switchgrass next week. That is a mental action. There's something you can preserve that okay, that will be to my advantage. And thoroughly we have the emotional actions. For instance, if I throw myself down on the floor and start to cry, as they please, please, please give me the money. That's, that's an emotional action. Now, the way this usually works is not always, but mostly we start with the mental actions moving onto if you fail, which we will if it's a good scene, we move on to the emotional actions and if we fail, still, we will move on to the fiscal actions. Good scene doesn't start with people delivering blows. And if it comes to that, well, that happens in the end. Every good scene and every good story. It's like a Tom and Jerry movie. If you've seen the Tom and Jerry movie, you know that Tom the cat is trying to catch Jerry the mouse. And so he concocts a plan and which of course fails. Because otherwise, if he catches Jerry the movies over and on, only the movie, the entire movie series. So we know that he can never catch Tom. Sorry, Jerry. So that plan failed. Now, what does he do? Well, he concocts a new plan, tries a new way, and of course that ultimately face, and what does he do? Well, he concocts a new plan, so forth and so on, so forth and so on. That's the way story works. Your character is trying to win, concocts a plan which might either fail miserably or it might be a partial gain, but not complete. Because if it's a complete game, well in the story is over. So now, since there wasn't a complete gain or maybe it was a loss, your character has a reassess, has to come up with a new plan and then enact that one. We talked about that in the previous part of this series. When we talked about structure, we've talked about two kinds of scenes. The scenes, scenes and sequels scenes. And the scene is you have a goal, opposition, outcome. And then depending on the outcome, whether it's positive or negative, you have the reaction, the lemma, and the decision, reassessing the plan coming up. That think about the story like a Tom and Jerry movie. Constantly, we're trying something and it doesn't work out at least exactly the way we wanted it. Or is it brings about the new problem that which we didn't anticipate before. So we now need to reassess. We need to adjust our plan. So every scene that your characters in he or she has to readjust in some way, shape, or form her plan. Up until the very end. For instance, Hamlet starts with, he wants to know, what's my father killed by my uncle claudius? And if so, how can I eventually, he keeps that super objective through the entire story. But the way he goes about trying to bring that about changes for every scene because every scene causes new circumstances to be brought about. You're constantly trying new things and the different actions that your character use. What, what are they? Well, you can divide them into, we divide them into physical, mental, and emotional. You can also divide them into positive and negative incitements. For instance, when I threatened Thomas, if he didn't give me a 100 Swedish crowns, I would punch him in the face. That is is that a carrot or a stick? Was the stick. Right. So either you can threaten us. I want to say if you don't do what I wanted to do, I will take this from you. That is a stick, right? As a threat. Or you can use the keratin, say, if you do what I want you to do, I will give you this. And of course you can use them alternatively. And this is what we humans do all the time. Every human interaction is a, some form of bargain. You want something from another person. And in order to get that you have to give something. And, you know, this instinctively. I noticed when my kids were about two weeks old. I can I could see that they knew in order to get me to do what they want, that they had to do something. This is not an intellectual exercise, is a purely instinctual process. Pure mammal level. If you have ever had a pet. If you have a dog, you know that the dog knows if I want another biscuit, if I look as cute as I can be, the chances increase that I'm going to get another biscuit. And we operate the same way. Most of the time, we just need to say, Oh, could you please bring me that and we get it. And it's still a bargain still transaction. I offer you my gratitude for you to give me something and you just to see this clearly, you're trying to stamp tell someone bringing that and see if they will bring you up and problem most probably they will not. So you see, because you haven't held up your end of the bargain, I'm offering you this piece of gratitude for you to give me that. So you can see every functioning scene works like a transaction, works like a bargain. I'm trying to sell you something which you don't want. And you're trying to sell me something that I don't want. And we're bargaining and Haslett haggling back-and-forth in order to get what we want at as low cost as possible in a functioning story. So we can see we have positive or a negative incitement. And there are two ways that an action can transform in the scene. The first one is it can grow or it can change. Those are the two only options. For instance, if I walk up to Thomas and say, I started threatening, if you don't give me a 100 crowns today, I will punch you. Now of course he says no because otherwise you're seen as over. So he says No, no, no, I won't do that. Then I have two options. Either I increase my threads or I switch to another action. If it's a good story, if it's good written scene, I will increase that threat up until the point where it's no longer feasible and I have to change my action. So for instance, a threatened him more and more and more up until the point where I realized that I can't do it anymore. So I have to find a new way and then maybe I will start to beg for sympathy. Maybe I'll throw myself down on the floor and start to cry. Now we'll cry more and more crime more for each time he doesn't give me what I want. Up until the point where I feel that this is no longer feasible, I cannot vie for his sympathy anymore. I have to come up with something new. And maybe then I would start screaming, Oh, he's kicking me or something like that. So your characters pursuing your objective by performing an action and by the, by the opposition they meet, they're trying harder and harder, and harder and harder up until the point where it's no longer feasible that road. So they have to attack from another point, another strategy that is well-written scene, what becomes so exciting to see? I know what he wants from her and I know what she wants from him. And how are they what kind of actions will they use to get what they want? And the actions that you use are dependent on, on, on what kind of weapons do you have in your arsenal to speak? And it depends on the situation. It depends on the cost of the action because as in any transaction, you'll want to pay the least amount of money as possible. And it's the same thing here. You want to pay as cheap a price as possible to get what you want them doesn't have to be financially. It can be finite, cheap, emotionally. We want the least experience possible for what we want. For instance, if we have a mobster here who is threatening and Thomas, if a police officer passes by, of course, he has to switch his action right away because he can threaten them anymore. But as soon as the police officer has has passed the corner, he can go back to the threatening again. So the access your characters can use are dependent on the situation. It's also very much dependent on what does the opponent do. And in a good scene, what you're always trying to do is make those domino tiles for back-and-forth. So because he did that, now, she has to do that. And because she did that, now he has to do that. So what you're trying to do all the time is each character opponent is trying to take the other person's weapons and turn them against them. If you've seen that fantastic seen Saving Private Ryan the audit fighting with a knife. And slowly, slowly he turns the knife back on him and injects it in his heart. That is what all your characters trying to do. Take your opponents weapons and turn them against them. So for instance, if I'm threatening a Thomas here, if you don't give me a 100 Swedish crowns, will punch you in the face. He says, you're threatening me. I will call the police now. Oh, no, sorry. No, I didn't mean that. No, no, no. I was just kidding. I was kidding. You're kidding? Yes. Yes. Yes. I was kidding. I didn't mean that I have to change tax because he was calling me on that bluff. And now because I'm doing that and maybe I started cry. It gave me know. Now he has to change his action because I changed mine. So that's what you want in a good scene. The two and through because he did that, he is forced to do that. And because he did that, she is forced to do that. Ticket attack, always trying to get the upper hand. It's like a boxing. If I come in and punch, you hear while you're forced to lower your guard. And then I can maybe try for Africa, which forces you to lean back and so forth and so on, so forth and so on. It also has to do with the price. As I mentioned, we're always trying to pay as little as possible. And what is the cheapest, cheapest action? Well, that depends entirely on your character. For instance, my grandmother, the cheapest action for her in order to get whether one would probably be vie for sympathy. Oh, my leg hurts. Could you please get that for me? Threatening with fiscal violence would probably be her last resort. Wouldn't be that intimidating. But still, if she ever went there, that would be her last resort. Now, a guy who's member ****'s Angels. Maybe for him it would be opposite. Threatening with violence. Maybe that's the cheapest thing for him. Let's just in vying for sympathy, maybe that's the last resort for him. That's when all else have failed. So it's dependent on your character and your characters. What kind of weapons do they possess in their arsenal? How do these characters value these actions? What do they think is the most costly, the most cheap of these actions? And it depends on the situation, depends on what their opponent is doing. That is the dance that you want to create. And you want us an audience to feel that there was, there was no other way this could have happened in this song and dance. Okay? So now we have a desire, we have a problem, we have an objective. It's life or death for a character's to solve this, there are opposing forces inside and outside our character. There are forces inside and outside, okay, they're helping us. And making art characters perform actions in order to get what they want. Now, some of these actions are verbal, meaning, things we say, meaning dialogue. And dialogue is one of the primary pitfalls of the novice writer. This is where most novice writers go terribly wrong. And why is that? Because they lack what is called subtext. And more on that. In the next chapter. 7. Chapter 18: Subtext: Welcome to Chapter 18, subtext. What the character communicates nonverbally. It's only in bad dialogue that the characters say what they mean. In real life. We don't. In real life, there's always a discrepancy between what we say and what we mean. The greater the difference between, say, an amine, the more powerful the dialogue becomes. It's called on the nose writing. The nose writing is where your characters constantly are stating what they feel, what they think. And that is the best way to kill a scene, to kill the script. The bigger the discrepancy between what they say and mean, the more interesting it becomes. For instance, if you have a scene with a man and a woman or a woman, a woman or a man or man, what have you in the bar and they're trying to hit on it, starting to hit on one another. Very seldomly. When that happens in real life where you have lines like, I think you're attractive, should we go home to my place and rubber genitals towards one another? Yes, that sounds wonderful. And then he got very seldomly, does that happen? Most of the time they will talk about anything else than what the situation is. And that's what makes it interesting as well as a way for me to do and what goes on underneath the texts, what are called the sub texts. Beneath the texts, that is, do you want to come home with me and rubber genitals together? If they use for one moment in that scene, would say that, would say what the scene is about the same as that. So it's super important. Subtext is one of the most important aspects of script writing. It's not about storytelling per se, but when you have your story, you how your scenes, you have your characters, and then starting to decide the subtext. Talking about the dialogue, the subtext is the most important. The way to write good dialogue is to write good subtext. Would add some texts. Your dad. For instance, if I'm playing a mobster, threatening someone, if I'm saying say to that person, if you're not paying us the money on Friday, tony is going to kick your face. That's not that friendly. But if I'm telling you that if you're not paying us by Friday, Tony's going to want to talk to you. There's much more threatening. Why? Because I didn't say it out loud. And want to talk to you, meaning in the subtext. And that becomes much more scary than if we say, what's it all about? For instance, in The Godfather, when he says, How are you going to make him do that, he says, I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse, which we understand. If he doesn't do what we want, he'll kill them. Much more scarier and a much more interesting than had you said. If it doesn't do what I'll do, I'll kill him. That's alright. But I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. Really good, right? Because the message is in the subtext. So this is the hallmark of all great dialogue, is that it's endosome texts. And Albert Mehrabian was a researcher in Stanford in the 1960s. And he studied human communication to try to decide how big a portion of human communication consists of the words alone, the qualities of the voice and the body, and the gestures and facial expressions. And what he found it works just like an iceberg. You know, 90% of an iceberg is subdued under the water. And he found that 7% of human communication lies in the world. Words alone, 7%. 38% resides in the voice, not in the words, but in the quality of the voice. The melody, and the other qualities of the voice. And the rest of the fifty-five percent remaining are the body, the languages, the pasture, the position, the facial expressions. That means that as I'm talking to you now, the communication, what I'm sending to you, the words I'm saying to you, only 738% per cent is my voice, and fifty-five percent is my body and my gestures and so forth. And this is key to good writing. That this is super important when you write. This is a trick I would like to, to, to, to important new. When you written a script. If you're working final draft, it's really easy because you can do script report and you just remove all the lines. So with all that remains is a slug lines and the actions. Ideally, what you should be able to do is to understand what's going on without the dialogue. That is your ideal. The ideal it should be to write a silent movie. If you can understand what's happening and just from the actors facial expressions and their fiscal positions and also their voices than you have solved it. And if you've been on a vacation and the country where you don't understand the language, you have seen this for yourself. You pass someone, you don't understand what they're saying, but you always understand the situation. It's crystal clear. He's ****** at her and she's trying to get away from it. I don't know what they're talking about, but dynamics between these two people aren't crystal-clear. I don't need language to construe that. That is the goal. You should be able to watch your movie like this and understand everything. Understand all the dynamics between the characters. Of course, the specifics you want to understand, of course, because you need a dialogue for that. But the basic dynamics between the people should be crystal clear. If you need dialogue to convey the situation, your dad, then, then it's the scene is dead. Dialogue should only serve to tell what cannot be construed physically. From that scene. For instance, this out tomorrow, I'm going to give you the gun. Well, that can't be construed from physical actions, so you need dialogue to tell that, right? But you don't want the novice writers say, I'm really angry at you now, that you should never need dialogue to tell that that should be communicated non-verbally. So in bad writing, dialogue is the most important thing. In good writing. Ninety-three percent of the story is nonverbal. We're going to look at some examples here of brilliant use of subtext. And the first one is from the movie Gladiator. And in this scene, Commodus emperor Rome. He is fighting. Maximus, played by Russell Crowe. And he's starting to fear and insurgence that people are warming to maximise. And he is starting to suspect his sister Lucilla, for fraternizing with maximus. So now we take Lucilla son, Lucius, Lucius Verus. And at night his sits with Lucius Verus in his lap reading Roman history. And Lucilla counts, she's worried, where's Lucius? Where's my son? And he says, oh, he's with the Commodus. And it comes there and sees her son. Her with his uncle, has her brother. Now, what Commodus does is he threatens Lucilla. And what he wants her to realize is that if you don't stop plotting against me, if you don't give me the info that I want, I will kill your son. But he doesn't say this at all. He communicates this all and the subtext in the text. So what I would advise you to do is read the scene first and then you'll watch the clip. And when you read the scene, you will see that nowhere in the scene. Thus he say that I will kill your son. I am angry with you. I feared that you're plotting with maximus against me. He never, ever says that, but that is completely clear. When you see the clip. So start by reading it and you'll see that it's basically just the scene about someone he's telling me, telling me a Lucius were reading about this old emperor. And this old Emperor had people plotting against him. And then he, he took one of them, said that you need to tell me what you're doing. On the surface. It's just someone telling an anecdote from Roman history. But in the subtext is by using that to say that if you don't give me one-on-one or kill him. Without saying, that is what makes scenes so powerful. If Commodus had said out loud, I will kill your son, where I suspect you for plotting against me. Would it have been more dramatic? Know? Would have been asked dramatic, know, it would have been much less dramatic. So the drama comes from the discrepancy between what is said and what is Matt. This is the same goes for comedy. Comedy without subtexts is impossible. It's like a funny joke. It becomes funny because we supply the missing information that a punchline gives us. Alright, we're gonna look at another example. And this example from True Detective The first season. And we have a two police officers played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Hey, Matthew McConaughey, character rust. Here's what it has in his home, was talking to what Harrison's wife and son comes home and the rust and his partner woody, they have a really fraught relationship. And so now we're husband comes home, sees Rust talking to his wife. There's a vibe between them and of course, he can he can pick up on that. And yet again, read the scene first and you'll see on the surface, it's nothing. It's just two colleagues talking about dinner and then talking about mowing the lawn. But when you see the scene, you'll see that it's not about mowing the lawn. It's about Don't you ever talked to my wife again? Don't you ever do that? And there's a brilliant, actually two scenes here. And then first scene has his wife says that we're trying to get us to stay for dinner. Whereupon would it hasn't. Looks at Ross and says, Yeah, stay. Of course in the subtext, meaning get the **** out. The lesser rider with a written something to the effect though, no, I don t think you shouldn't be here for dinner. Which of course is so lame. But having him say, yes, Steve were done there amine, get the **** out. That that discrepancy creates drama and draw us a C. And it also forces us to supply the missing information we've forced. Okay. He said that but he meant that as I talked to you about before, the more you interact, the more we forced the audience to interact, the more strongly you communicate. Communication presuppose this interaction. The more you forced the audience to tell the story, the better you tell the story. It's like going to the gym, your PT, your personal trainer, your client is paying you not to do the exercises for them. They're paying you to coach them, but they wanna do the exercise of themselves. It same with the audience. The audience wants to tell the story. They wants to tell half the story. So they want you to supply them with a bits and pieces. They need to patch the story up. One of the ways we do that is via subtext. Because every time you use some texts, you force the audience in supplying, in filling out the gap between the text and some texts, what is said and what is math. Okay? Then I'm listing here a couple of more examples, brilliant examples of some text from the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Yet again, please do read the scene first and then you watch the clip. When you're a novice writer, if you notice right there and start out, you will feel the urge, feel the temptation to make the character say what they want because you want it to be clear. This, yet again, it's the best way to kill your dialogue and kill you ever seen a tip I would like to leave you with, is that when you write a scene, by all means, start by writing exactly what the character fields. Have them say what they feel, what they want. Have them stated. When you have that on paper, when it's out of your system. Then you ask yourself, now, how can I push the text? This is what my character wants to communicate. Now, how can I push the text as far away as possible from this some text? You can do that in many ways. For instance, if you look at the gladiator, maybe you're using an analogy you're talking about, oh, this reminds me of an old story or blah, blah, blah or something like that. And you use that story too to communicate the subtext. There's a TV series, The British scandal, where a woman is marrying a man of nobility who owns a castle in Scotland. They're meeting with his fire, her, the woman's father. And he says that, well, if she has really fond of your castle, implying of course that's she's not married you for use as many new for your assets. And they replaced that. Well, my castle is really follow her. Of course, implying that a part of him has a special liking for her. That's very, very elegant dialog because the subtext is communicated so beautifully. It's never stated out loud. It's in the subtext. And that's what makes us smile or, or, or, or shiver or laugh. So subtexts. The more subjects you can have, the bigger the difference you can have between the text and subtext, the more interesting engrossing your dialogue will be under more. And as consequence of which, the more interesting your scenes will be. And I would like you to tip when you write dialogue, by all means, write it out loud or write it on the nose. And then when it's out of your system, try to move your text as far away from the subtext as possible. So we've talked about some texts. Now, let's move on to the text. What is actually said, which is dialogue. 8. Chapter 19: Dialouge: Aaron's working says, I don t think dialogue is like music. I think it is music. Welcome to Chapter 19. Dialogue. In the previous chapter we're talking about subtext. And if you remember, subtext is absolutely most important part of human communication. We talked about that. Human communication is like an iceberg. Only the tip of the iceberg is visible above the waterline. It's the same thing with human communication. Only 7% of human communication constitutes, consists of the words that we speak. The rest of the 93% consists of the subtext or the quality of our voice. And our facial expressions or gestures are positions or actions and so forth. According to Albert Mehrabian, the scientists at Stanford. Now, in this chapter we're going to talk about those seven per cent that constitutes the verbal part of human communication. Writing good dialogue as an art form unto itself. In the house you and days of Hollywood. They had separate writers for dialogue. They had story writers, and then they had dialog writers because it is really its own art form. And dialogue has much more in common with poetry than prose. And it has much more common with joke writing and poetry. And, and it, it, it can take a long time to start a master the art of writing good dialogue. And we're going to talk about in this chapter some aspects of good dialogue. And the first one is the most important one. And that's the fact that dialogue is not information. This is the, this is the most common mistake that novice writers mistake. Do. They think that dialogue is inflammation? Uh-huh. The audience needs to notice. So how do I do that? Well, I let the characters say that in the dialogue. Dialogue is not information. Dialog is verbal, weaponry. Dialogue is yet another tool that the opponents in a scene use to win the scene. It's the same thing as in a boxing match. The Boxers delivering physical blows to one another in order to win the fight. It's the same thing with dialogue. It's verbal blows that the opponents delivered to one another in order to win the scene. So we say might be information. But most of the time it's not. Most of the time. What we say in life, as in a good scene is lice, have lice, smoke screens, flattery, threats, sales pitches. We say whatever we need to say in order to win the scene, which of course, has to be mitigated against our conscience. But what we say in every scene, in every human interaction, we say what we think we need to say in order to win, in order to get what we want. Because every scene, as every human interaction, should be about the characters wanting something from the other character, which they are not willing to give, at least not until day gets what they want in return. You can record every good seen as a transaction. Someone is trying to sell something. And of course this something doesn't need to be physical. It can be an idea. I want you to go out and kill that guy. That's what the idea I'm selling to you. I want you to do that. You don't wanna do that where at least you don't wanna do that until you get a good payment. And I don't want to pay you as much as you want. So we're haggling and we have a conflict. And we're using all the things that we say are the actions that we perform in order to win. Everything I say I do in order to get you to do what I want at the price that I think is fair. And you do, the sampling would mean, that means sometimes we might say things that are objectively true. Most of the time. It won't be. This is good dialogue. And the more you let your characters lie or use irony, the more interesting your dialogue becomes. For instance, it's impossible to play comedy. Lies. For instance, the classic farce is forest setup would be that I'm having my mistress over here. Why my wife is in Paris. Suddenly, when me and my mistress is about to get it on a corporal this up the driveway, which is a taxi with my wife in it because her flight was canceled. So now I'm stuffing my mistress into the bathroom. Anther, my wife, and everything I say and do from this point on is alive. And that's what makes it fun to watch for the audience. If I'd say, well, my master's is in there. It's game over, right? That my wife wants to enter the bathroom and I have to concoct lives after lives after lives in order for her not to do that. That's what makes it fun. So the sooner you can dispel the misconception that dialogue is information, the sooner you will begin to write good dialogue. Dialogue is not information. It's verbal weaponry in order to win. Another way that I'm good dialogue is not inflammation is the use of irony. For instance, you know, the real, they're really good friends you have. You could say to them stuff like hello ASL and something like that. And they laugh because they know that you don't mean it. So that's, that, that's a pejorative statement, becomes sign of intimacy. That's what we can do to our good friends. And of course, if you would read it on paper and say, Oh, that's a horrible thing to say that he must really hate them. Now, it's quite the opposite. And this is the way we use language. We don't use language as inflammation. And the more you study the way humans speak, the sooner you can write good dialogue, I would advise you to take upon yourself. Listen to the way humans speak when you're in a cafe, when you own a restaurant, eavesdropping on a couple of people talking or Threat to discern the way, what kind of cadence as do they use? What do they say to one another? How do they use irony? How do you smoke screens and subtext? And listen, watch documentaries and see how people speak. And you will see that we will talk about this later on in this chapter that we humans. A lot of the time we talk in incomplete sentences, we'll talk about that later. But for now, let's start number one. The paramount parameter in writing good dialogue is realizing it's not inflammation. It is verbal weaponry. If you need to convey information and the only way you can do that is through dialogue. Well, then you need to have it come out in conflict. Because then it will be verbal weaponry as well. For instance, in the opening of Moliere play, Tartuffe. He needs to convey a lot of information about the main character Tartuffe, which is a hypocrite. And he is, he has a gaining influence in this family trying to take you to take over and a family. And all that information is conveyed through conflict. It starts with mother, I'm perineal, the grandmother and their families storing out and saying You don't read Tartuffe as well as you should because she's really a fan of him. And her grandchildren are trying to persuade are now he's a hypocrite because he has done this and this and this and this and this. A brilliant way to convey information if you have to resort to dialogue to do it. So always, always, always treat inflammation. The story shall never be given and received freely. Information either. I want to force you to listen and you don't want to hear this, or I'm trying to make you tell something to me that you don't want to tell me. When you never want to have a situation where I tell you something that you are eager to hear. Because that's not a dramatic because then what we say is not verbal weaponry. So always, always, always let information be transferred in a struggle. Either you don't want to listen or you don't want to tell. Okay, So this is the pyramid parameter in Brighton, good dialogue. The second parameter which is very, very important than writing good dialogue, is to strive to write a silent film. The less dialog you write, the better dialogue you write. And this is one of the ways in which good dialogue is common to poetry. So what you're trying to do is convey as much information as possible within, with as few words as possible, you're trying to elevate the information density in the lines. So strive to write a silent film most of the time it's not possible, but that's a good discipline to strive for. How could I conveyed is without dialogue? And if I need dialogue, what's the least amount of dialogue that I would need to do so because as we've talked about in the previous chapter, the main part of human communication takes part in the subtext. You should always strive if you start writing a scene and when you start to rewrite it, try to see how much of this does the character really have to say in order to communicate it? The more you can text things that he or she says and put, push it down in the subtext or replace it with a facial expression or a gesture, the better your dialogue will be. A very good dialogue technique is to have unanswered questions. Does very powerful, or questions that are answered with a gesture or a facial expression. Bad dialogue usually takes the form of a Q&A question and answer. How are you? Not bad, How are you? Well, I'm okay. So what are we going to do today? Yeah, I'm thinking the more people answer each other's questions, the worst dialogue you have. Because as you know, politicians tend to do, they don't answer the questions that journalists post them. They just continued or on the agenda. And that's what your characters should do. Don't have them answer the other person's question. If that's not to their advantage. If you ask me what I did last night and I don't want to answer that. Let my character start talking about, oh, why has someone done the dishes? What did you do last night? It but seriously, why I'm someone down the dishes. That's good dialogue. I have no interests in answering that question. That's not to my advantage. So I'm trying to deflect defocus somewhere else. A good, a good technique is to have, as I mentioned, unanswered questions. For instance, asking you, How are you? Okay? Yeah, I've been there myself. That's much better dialogue done. How are you? Not that good? I've been there myself. It's much more powerful to right? How are you? Yeah, I've been there myself. Much more powerful. Try or try to take 50 per cent of dialogue and cut it. See if you can. When you have written a scene, try to cut half of the dialogue. Can you have unanswered questions? Can you push these things into the subtexts? Can you transform what he is saying into facial expression or a gesture that will make your dialogue enhance your story, much more powerful. Okay, moving on. Next thing to consider is try to strive to write as short as possible, a short sentences as possible. There's quite a difference between the way we humans read and the way we talk aloud. And if you read text that reads good on the page, it might read terrible. One rather loud. One of the main factors in this is the length of the sentences. Think about poetry. Poetry, that's good, that's meant to be read aloud, usually have very short sentences. For instance, are reading a paper which said that the average sentence length of a pair of blue collar person, of a person without higher education is six to eight words. And the average sentence length, the length of a white-collar person, a person who has a higher education is eight to ten words. There's not a lot. If I say to you, my name is Frederick Taylor and I live in Stockholm. My name is Frederick Hiller and I live in stock. That's ten words. That's a pretty long sentence. To read loud. If you read it on paper, it looks leopard, Derek. And I would urge you to read good dialogue. Dialogue from Aaron's working from David Mamet. And of course read the classics. Ibsen, Strindberg read Shakespeare. And you'll see that the sentences are really short. And on paper, good dialogue might look like bad dialogue in a sense because it's real epidemic that period, that adapt period that they did adapt period, it looks like this is not going to flow. And when you read it aloud, flows and vice versa. If you read a dialogue which reads good on the page that I don't know.com, I did it at a dark chroma data data that period. Oh, beautiful. And you read it aloud, you can feel that words clogging in your mouth. And this is why it's super important. When you have written your script. Read it aloud or better yet. Enlist your friends or even better yet. And list actors. Have, have them come and read your script aloud. Because this will make it so clear to you if the dialogue works and doesn't. And even more importantly, so and I talked about this in the third installment of our series. How you write a good script is that you will hear and feel right away what works and what doesn't. It's super important. It's key that you have your script rather loud. Because what Reid's good on the paper might not read good. When read aloud. And everything that we write, if we were at scripts is a different thing if you read the novel, of course. But if you write the script, the script is not a piece of art unto itself. The script is merely a brute blueprint. It's the same thing as if you're an architect. The blueprint that you make, that's not a finished product. And it's not even, you can show that to politicians or whatever people are financier's because they won't be able to read it. You need to make a CAD model or 3D model to show them. This is what this will look like, but you need, still need the drawing for all the people who built it, they are able to read it and comprehend it is the same thing with a script. This is not a finalized product, it's merely a, merely a blueprint for something else. So what we are doing when you're writing a script, you are writing written words that are supposed to be performed orally. And as that might sound strange, but language performs very differently when it's red on the paper and when it said aloud. And that is because the written language is very, very new invention. Here in Sweden. We only started writing as far as we know, a thousand years ago, the first Runestone, or 1200 years ago, really. But scientists believed that we humans have spoken for at least 600 thousand years. So convey thoughts in information onto paper or tablets or, or, or Runestone or what have you, is a very, very, very, very late in nation invention in human history. So they behave quite differently. This is important for you to be aware of when you write scripts, especially when you write dialogue, right? As short sentences as possible. If they look to you on paper to be leopard Derek, too short. They probably perfect to be read aloud. Alright, that is one way that good dialogue resembles poetry. Good dialogue also receptors rhetoric and I would advise you to study a rhetoric because there are a lot of rhetorical figures, figures of speech, that you might employ to write good dialogue. And I'm going to name just a few of them. And one of them is an a for. And what anaphoric means is when you start several sentences the same way, for instance, Martin Luther King's famous speech. I have a dream, that, I have a dream that one day I have a dream becomes very, very powerful. Another powerful way using repetition is epis throw a femme, and that is the opposite of the ulna fora. And now you're using the same word or words at the end of several consecutive sentences. For instance, I'm gonna do it, you're gonna do it, we're all gonna do it. That becomes powerful, the power of repetition, and at the same time, introducing a new element. Same thing. What I also did there was It, which is a very common technique and reference, is the power of three. You saying something three times, I'm gonna do it. You're gonna do it. We're all gonna do it. 123. That's much more powerful than saying, I'm gonna do it, we're all gonna do it. Or if I say four times, I'm going to do it, you're gonna do it, he's gonna do it. We're all gonna do it. Doesn't have the same ring to it. But if I use three, only three and no less than three times, I'm gonna do, you're gonna do it's, we're all going to do it. That's powerful. So use the power of three is very, very powerful. Oracle technique. Another work of figure is alliteration, and that is having several consecutive words or at least two consecutive words starting on the same letter. For instance, Fat Freddie, happy Harry. In the old viking poetry, they use alliteration and assonance all the time. And what is assonance? Well, that is when you have two or several consecutive vowels at the same time, for instance, the brand Fruit of the Loom. Loom. That makes it a rhyme with the vowels. That is very powerful. Another powerful rhetorical technique is the use of chiasmus. And that is, having a sentence with two parts were the first half and the second half mirror one another. For instance, you can take John F Kennedy's famous quote. Do not ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. That becomes very powerful. So study rhetoric because they will give you many insights and studied poetry, study good poetry. You can even write poetry. Whether you want to publish or not, or whether you want to consider yourself a career. And that's polar. But it's a very good discipline. It's a very good exercise to try to communicate as much as possible with as few words as possible. And that brings us to one of the classic, classic uses of dialogue, which of course is the one-liners, which is a staple in action movies and an action comedies especially, we all know famous ones. He had to split. I'll be back. Hasta la vista baby and so forth. They're they're a joy when you, when you nail it. And there are several collections, copulations on the Internet where you can find a plethora of these one-liners. If you manage to get one or a coupling near script, that, that's a treat for the audience. Another one of not a treat for the audience is a two liners. And a two liner is where one character says something which serves as a setup for the other characters, rapper TI, for instance. And you can take Winston Churchill and he was master both one-liners and two liners. For instance, at the dinner, he was seated next to Bessie Braddock, a society woman. And he was, he was really drunk. And Betty said, or Bessie, sorry, Betsy said to him with this stain that sir, you are drunk. To which Winston Churchill replied, yes. And you, Bessie, are ugly. And in the morning, I shall be sober. Very elegant. Of course. The more two liners and one learners, you can fit it into your script, the more your audience will enjoy it. Another literary technique to consider is to try to have, when you have a sentence, when you have a line, try to have the most important words at the beginning or at the end. Try to avoid having them in the middle of the sentence. For instance, if you take the classic line from The Godfather, I'm going to give him an offer. He can't refuse. If I were to phrase that, for instance, he's not going to be able to refuse to offer. I'm gonna give him That's so much weaker, right? Instead of I'm going to make him an offer. He can't refuse. Refuse is the is the most important word and you place it at the end or at the beginning. The word. For instance, if I say to you, Eric, true to form, were a spiky sweater. Now, what I'm saying to you is about mainly about Eric and in relationship to the spiky sweater. If I say to you, the spike, spike is sweater was something that Eric always used to where? Now this sentence is more about the spiky sweater, right? So when you have written your dialogue and your entire script, it go back. And look at every sentence and see how you can push the most important words to the beginning or at the end that will make your dialogue so much stronger. Another technique which is super-important to make your dialogue shine is to always try to emit the words, it or there is and was. So when you've written your script goal back and when you have sentences containing there it is was try to rephrase them. For instance, if I'm telling you it was raining, That's a very weak sentence. If I if I instead trying to transpose that to something else, for instance, it was raining, I'll say the rain was pouring down. That's infinitely much stronger. It was raining, the rain was pouring down. It was called the snow and ice were were invading the windows of the house much stronger. Excuse me. It was hot. The heat was burning. The asphalt on the road. Much, much, much, much stronger. And you will get this from and why is this? Because it's, I'm there. If the walls are abstractions, it is, doesn't exist in the physical universe. Rain does heat, that's called us. So try to omit and erase all. It's an us and replace them with the subject and an active verb. For instance, it was raining, the rain was pouring down, or the rain was whipping in his face, so much stronger. Another thing to consider, and I talked about this earlier, is the way we humans speak and we often, we speak in incomplete sentences. When you write a good dialogue, tried to forget all the things that your teachers in school told you about writing, correct? Because we as humans sell them the talk, correct? We often, not always, but often we speak in incomplete sentences, especially when we're upset, when we were insecure. We sell them, sell them speak in incomplete, neat synthesis for instance. If we don't say, now, I'm becoming insecure, I feel hesitant. Can you say that again? No, no assets that we might instead say, for instance. Now, I I feel that again, Can you please, you know, that's much more real. That's much more true to life with someone would say, in a moment like that, it's not correct use of language and your English teacher would be appalled. But that is good dialogue. That's, that's good writing. And yet again, as I told you earlier, listen to the way humans speak. Listen, eavesdrop when you're a cafe, when you own a restaurant, or when you're in the subway on the bus. Listen to the way humans speak, and listen to how many times we speak in incomplete sentences. And also, if I know that you know what I'm talking about, seldomly do we finished the sentence. If I know that you know, what Thomas did last night, I might say, you know, last night when Thomas Yeah. I thought I don't need to complete that sentence because I know that, you know, this is super-important in good dialogue. Never, ever in your script. Should your characters say something to another character that both know? That's very bad, that dialogue. And that is a sign of the writer. Having the misconception that the purpose of dialogue is conveying information. For instance, oh my characters, it needs to say, Well, as you know, when you were a kid, your father used to drive a truck, as you know, that that's super cilia and the rider thinks that all we need to convey that information, we'll use dialogue. Never, ever have them say anything. That's not new information to the other character. And we, as an audience, I love to try to catch up to two, and this is a common staple in action movies. We enter, there's the command central and you're, Oh, this is boogie 4729, blah, blah, blah, bye bye. And there's all technical lingo. And we don't get it, but we love it because we let in on a secret. We're letting behind the curtains and trying to decipher all of the things that they are saying. So never, ever that you character say something because you want the audience to understand. Now, only have them say what is new information. To, or at least what they think is new information to the one they are talking to. Okay, I'm going to conclude this chapter with talking about Aaron scorpions view and stroke in this fantastic writer who wrote The West Wing and the square root for the social network. Who has lauded for his, his prowess in writing dialogue. And he says, As I mentioned earlier, that he doesn't think that dialogue is like music. He thinks it is music. And good dialogue conveyed by good actors really is. It's a treat through here, good dialogue and vice versa. It's painful to listen to bad dialogue performed by bad actors. But good dialogue is one of the key aspects of good writing. So you need to consider it, as I talked about earlier, as a separate art form. First, you write the story. You write, you create your theme, your concept, your characters, your world, your world, and your story, your plot. And then you write your scenes from the individual, excuse me, the individual perspectives of the characters. Once you've done this. And this is why it's so important, which I'm going to talk about in the third installment, that you wait with writing dialogue as long as possible. What you tend to want to do when you start writing is to get to the fun part right away, writing the dialogue. So what novice writers tend to do, start writing away the dialogue. And this is at a moment in time where really you don't know a lot about the characters, you don't know a lot about the situation, you don't know a lot about the story. So that's the best way to make your dialogue bland. And this is the best way to fall into the trap of using dialogue as a means to convey information. The more you wait in writing dialogue, the more you put that off to a point where you know your story, you know your characters, you know the situations, and you know, or at least have a good inkling of what these characters would say in these different situations, then you're right, good dialogue. So the more you wait and writing dialogue, the dialogue you will write, lead dialog be the very last thing you do. And then I promise you, you will write the best dialogue you ever written. And it will be, it will sing. And also in addition, if you employ the techniques which I talked about in this chapter, you want your dialogue to sing, and you want it to be a tree. You want it to be feel to the audience, like reading good poetry or hearing or reading a good joke. Constantly entertaining us just with the pleasure of, of good, good language. So treated as an art from unto itself. And wait with writing dialogue. Do that as the very last thing. And then you will feel the dialogue flows onto the paper. And you will experience the wonderful, wonderful sensation of typing or writing as fast as you can, because you're trying to keep up with your characters speaking, giving you these words. And that's one of the best feelings that you can ever experience. And I really hope that you will experience that and I sincerely believe that you can do so following the techniques which we talked about in this course. Now, we've talked about some texts and dialogue. Another key aspect in writing from the perspective of the individual characters is exploring and knowing what are they feeling at any given moment in the scene. And that's a topic for the next chapter. Emotion. 9. Chapter 20: Emotion: Common watch and see how we make the audiences laugh, cry, and sit on the edge of their seats. That's the words of car Lumley who founded Universal Pictures in 1912. And that really sums up what is the purpose of storytelling to make the audience feel. If the audience doesn't feel something, then all we're doing is for not, Stanley Kubrick said that it's not a think of it. It's the feel of it. This doesn't mean that we don't want the audience to think or we were not trying to convey. Maybe really advanced intellectual understanding isn't more or less, it gives me all the world. But the most important thing, what's paramount is that you make the audience feel it's like in comedy. If you don't make the audience laugh, It's bad comedy. If you're making a romantic or a sad emotional drama and the audience doesn't weep. You'll fail. If the audience doesn't. If you're making a horror movie and the audience don't feel afraid you've failed, right? Number key thing and that's what you should. When you write your script, especially when you rewrite it, you should constantly ask yourself this, what emotion am I trying to elicit in the audience? And am I accomplishing that? And if not, how can I, what can I do in order to make them feel something? And how do we make the audience feel something? Well, everything that we've talked about so far in the first installment of the series, how you create a story. And the second part that we're now, how do you write a story from the individ, from the perspective of the individual characters, all has to do with eliciting an emotional response from the audience. And what makes us feel something? This is situation, sport in sport. And when we talk about emotions, that is, it's important to differentiate between what we want the audience to feel, what the characters are feeling. Sometimes they are the same. Most of the time. They are not. For instance, in comedy, most retirement comedy, the emotions of the audience, that the emotions of the characters are different. In comedy, the characters scream and cry and are upset, and the audience laughs. When the characters in a comedy laugh. Seldomly do we laugh. And unless they laugh at someone's expense. And then we laugh because that person is suffering. And comedy is releasing us from the plight of compassion. We need to be compassionate in order to be good people. But watching comedy for the duration of the time of that comedy, we are released from the burden of always needing to feel sympathy. We can laugh at people, we can laugh at their faults. We can laugh at their misfortunes for the duration that time. So comedy is a really good example where the feelings and emotions of the characters should be as different as possible from the feelings and emotions of the audience. But for instance, if you take horror, then of course, we want to feelings, emotions of the characters or the protagonist to be in line with the emotions of the audience. We, of course, there should be a difference between the emotion of the monster or the killer, or have you and the audience. So that brings us to the next point is that it's very important that you always in every scene try to differentiate feelings if all the press and characters in the scene are feeling the very same thing, you don't have a contrast. And we talked about in the previous installment, that contrast is one of the key aspects of storytelling, along with conflict, escalation and change. For instance, take Star Wars, C3PO one looks cow work in our heroes are facing a conflict. Never are they all experiencing the same emotion? For instance, C3PO is always panicking. Oh Master Luke most or Luke. And how solar is really cool. Luke is a bit more upset but still common collector, much more calm and collected than the C3PO is an order to do the tourism. So they all have, to some degree different emotions in that scene. And that's what creates part of the dynamic in the scene. So don't have all your characters sing in the choir, so to speak, try to differentiate the characters in as many ways as possible. One of the ways to do that is let them have different emotional responses to a situation, depending of course, their personalities and their objectives. In regards to the situation. The next thing to consider is that inosine in the situation, you want as much an emotional transformation as possible. If the characters are feeling the same thing throughout the scene, the scene becomes bland. So you want the characters to reverse as big as an emotional terrain as possible. Now why do the emotions change? Well, because the fate changes, that they have insights, the fortune changes. They're really happy and then something happens if you, the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is running away from that temple. And suddenly he sees his, thinks, he's all in the clear. And then he sees an entire tribe following and they said, Oh, that's usually in an action comedy. It's a classic comic moment where the emotions of the characters change abruptly from a positive to a negative emotion. So inosine, if you have all the characters feeling the same way from the beginning to doubt that you need to do something because otherwise, you're seeing it will become bland. And it might go from a more positive feeling to the more negative or vice versa. M, If you can have more than one transformation where information of emotion or the better. You'll want the characters to experience a strong emotions as possible. If you're debating whether he should dislike or, or Haider, you should always go with the latter alternative. Make the characters feel as strongly as possible. We've talked about that earlier. The kiss of death to a story is indifferent characters. If your characters doesn't care, why should we? I talked about that in the previous installment when we talked about characters. A character, you can say that the character is a care actor, someone who acts on his or her care. And the more your characters care about something, someone else or a cause or what have you, the more interesting they become, the less they care. Less interesting they become. In order for you to make me care about your characters, they need to care about some damping and something else. Then they, then themselves. If they only care about themselves. I'm not interested. Okay. Another thing to consider, when you're, when you're writing. We've talked about aesthetic, emotional, different, aesthetic difference. And that's the fact that your characters and the audience doesn't need to feel the same way. And even if they do feel the same way, you always need some form of aesthetic. Distance. Sentimentality occurs when we are trying to force the audience to feel something which the situation at hand doesn't really merit. And in a film that might be accomplished by heaping emotional, sentimental music on a situation which isn't really that emotional. And if you make a film and this is of course a different question in their writing a script. But when you're writing film and you have a sensitive moment, it's super-important that the music, if you are music, never overshadow the emotions in the scene, and never overshadow the emotion that the audience has. It's the same thing when you tell a joke. The best way to kill a joke is to oversell it. This is really funny. That's the best way to make the audience, oh God. The best way when you tell a joke to make audience laugh is to undersell it. Treated as it's, well, this is not such a big deal. And then if you have a job that's really funny, the audience were really, really mad. If you look at good stand-up comedians, you'll see that the really good ones always undersell their jokes. They might give a hint of a smile. Yeah, I think it's funny too. But they're not really laughing in the same way that the audience is there under selling their own response to it. And this is key, this is crucial. You should always be some form of aesthetic difference. You can regard as, as if you're an adult and you're accompanying a child to a funeral of a loved one with you and the kid loved, which was dear to you. You cannot break down during the funeral because you have to take care of this child. You need to show the child that it's okay to cry. I'm sad as well. But your emotional response during the funeral can never overshadow the kid because the kid has to take care of you, not the other way round. It's the same thing you as a storyteller. You can show. Tell the reader and tell the audience that. Yes, I think there's a sad too. Never overshadow, never overplay the emotional response that you hope to elicit from the audience. And another important aspect when we talk about emotions is to always try to employ what is called comic relief. If you have a longer period of time in your story, which is supposed to be dramatic or sad. After awhile, the audience might get tired, might get wary of experience that situation, and that might lead to them stop experiencing that emotion. For instance, if you tried to make the audience feel sad for a prolonged period of time. And you extend that beyond what the audience has, the power and capacity to feel, they might start to laugh. Your story might become involuntarily comic. So will you need to do with regular intervals is to offer them some form of relief. And usually that might be a comic relief. For instance, if you have, for instance, take Pixar and they are of course, brilliant in so many ways. But one of the ways in which they are brilliant is they always sort of punctuate, ah, the sad or an appointment and moments with comedy in order to not inflate it and make the, make the bubble burst it. Constantly. Keeping it in check and study it Pixar movies. And you'll see it as always that it doesn't have to be nice lab funny. It just needs that that little that little relief that just gives us a, gives us a counterpoint to the primary motion in the scene. One master of this was Hitchcock. And he said that always in suspenseful scenes, if, if it's a prolonged suspenseful scene, he said, You need to intersperse some small reliefs in order for the audience to continue feeling. Continue experience in the scene as suspenseful. Otherwise, they will stop feeling experiencing the senior suspenseful. And what's also interesting that these comic reliefs do not value the suspense of the scene. They actually increase the suspense of the scene. For instance, in the Hitchcock film, The Man Who knew too much, where Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart, they are waiting for the kidnappers of their son to call. They're sitting in their hotel room and waiting for the phone to ring. Suddenly the door knock on the door and the door opens and in bursts. The friends of doors days and they're happy because they don't know nothing about the kidnapping. And this is not yet again, a nice lab, funny, but it offers a relief which doesn't decrease the suspense, increases it because now there are also additional obstacle added to receive. They have to engage with the kidnapper. It's at the same time with her friends present. So this is super important. You can see William Shakespeare was a master at this in Romeo and Juliet. In the second part, around three-quarters into the story where Juliet is dead. They believe she's not really dead because she has taken this potion that the friar gave her that makes her appear dead. But she's really not in order for her family to bring her to the vault where Romeo supposed to meet her. And there's a long, there's long and painful scene where the parents discovered Juliet is dead. And they have, of course, a very strong emotional reaction to that. Now, shakespeare knows that. And then we're moving on to Romeo. Who gets the news that Juliet is dead because the letter to him saying that this is all Rous, he doesn't get it because there was a plague. It couldn't get him. Now he has a very powerful emotional reaction. And Shakespeare understands that if you play these very strong emotional reactions in consecutive order and the audience grow tire, and it might become involuntarily comic. So what he does is that intersperse interest versus between the death of Juliet and her parents emotional reaction. He interest versus a comic scene where to fool into play. Basically comes out and talk to the audience. And it's basically doing a stand up routine. And he's playing with the musicians. Babbitt abrupt but the bow. And after that moment, we move to Verona. Sorry, we move to mentor. Experienced Romeo. Emotional reaction to death of Juliet. This is important, and yet again, I mean standard in masters and started Pixar for instance. And you'll see these constant, constant, constant comic relief. And yet again, they don't need to be nice lab funny, just as small. It might be asked to comment. Comment. It might be a look, might be something that gives us a release. And yet again, that doesn't detract from the emotional experience. It actually enhances it. One mastery if you have read or seen a man called them. Thrilling background, the rider is, if you read that novel, He's just a master of getting the characters into really emotional scenes and then constantly, constantly poking at it. Weird comic relief, which not only gives us there's relief and makes our emotional reaction the more stronger. And this has to do with wood talks about earlier aesthetic distance. We need some form of aesthetic distance because otherwise, it's hard for us to enjoy the story. So to sum up, this should always be some form of distance between what your characters are feeling and what you want your audience to feel. And the more you can decide for yourself, what you want the audience to feel. Well, the better chances you have of actually accomplishing that. Your characters should differentiate the motions between the characters in the scene. Nevertheless, two primary characters experienced the same thing, or at least not the exact same thing in a scene. And you should have at least one character changing emotion at least one time during a scene. If, if not, you're seeing loop become bland. And always try to see how you can offer relief. Comic relief for a short while, at least in a scene that for a prolonged period of time is sad or suspenseful. Alright? One last thing to talk about in this installment of the series, when we're talking about writing from the individual perspective of the characters. And that is what's called business. And what is business? Well, we'll talk about that in the next chapter. 10. Summary Part 002: This wraps it up for the second part of the series. Everything we've talked about in this part has to do with aspects that are specific to each individual character. The first part, we've talked about what's common to all your characters. Now we've talked about everything that is specific to each individual character. Now, you know, everything that I know in regards to screenwriting, everything that I talked about, or stuff that I have worked with in my career as an actor, as a writer, director, and all the courses and books that I have read, all edifying that I have studied. And I know that I have benefited greatly from these parameters and these aspects I'm talking to you and I sincerely hope that you will ask, well, in the third and last part of this series, we'll talk about now, taking all this information and knowledge, how can we apply that into telling a story? And what modus operandi can we use to take a story from an idea into a full feature script? If you choose not to follow along, I will say, thank you so much for watching and I wish you the very best in all your endeavors. Thank you so much.