Rule 3: Reality it aint

Rule 3 says : Your script is not reality and you should avoid your characters mentioning other films.

Here's the problem, you are watching a film and in the film they mention another film that you've seen. Where should the line of reality be drawn, should we assume that the characters in the film have seen that film and therefore other films? But, there must be other films these characters have seen except perhaps those films that their co-stars act in - because how could they see those - their co-stars would have to be celebrities in the film you're watching.. brain melting...universe imploding.... head hurts!

It's irksome, annoying and totally illogical that characters in one piece of fiction would have watched one other piece of fiction. To an audience it's really jarring. It's like the stars of Coronation Street (UK Soap opera) sitting down in an episode to watch Eastenders (a rival UK soap).

An audience can accept the world of the film but as it starts to eat into our reality we question the universe's logic (more on Universe Logic later).

My favourite example is the coffee maker advert starring George Clooney and John Malkovich as God. In the advert George appears to play himself, he goes to a store buys a coffee maker and then get squished by a piano. He arrives in heaven and tells god he's not ready can he be sent back. God sends him back in exchange for the coffee maker.

Hold on! Wait a moment! God is John Malkovich and George is himself.. how can that be.. doesn't George recognise his co-star of 'Burn After Reading'? What universe are we in where one actor exists but the other doesn't?

Okay maybe I'm taking adverts too seriously.

In conclusion : If your characters watch films, make them up (like Purple Rose of Cairo).

Rule 2 : It was all a dream

Wait a minute, I hear our singular reader cry, that's what you get taught in school, nobody does that anymore.

Well, that's not completely true. 'It was all a dream' is the bane of every english school teachers life, but why? Sure it's an escape clause for the kids, all they have to do is write those 5 sacred words at the end of their story and they've finished.

More than this the Dream Clause let's down the audience. It is they who have invested their time and emotion in a character and it is we the writer who must fulfil their expectations. But the biggest problem is that the reader will say 'what was the point in me reading that... none of it happened!'.

Rule 2 exists to say don't cheat the audience.

In 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time' Jake Gyllenhall's character Dastan comes into the possession of a dagger with magical time reversing properties. The sand within it's glass handle enables Dastan to reverse the time around him - great! what a fantastic plot device. Every time he's in trouble he can invoke the daggers power and get himself out of a situation.

SPOILER ALERT!!

The problem with the script is that near the end of the film Dastan battles with his nemesis Nizam and 90% of the story we've just watched is undone. Time is reversed and we are suddenly back at the start. 90 minutes of your life just went by.. but it means nothing!

As soon as I invest bum time in a movie, I want to know that those event are happening to our heroes, otherwise why should I care?

It also makes it too easy for the writers, knowing that they can kill anyone, say anything and by page 100 they can take it all back, it never happened. What a cheat.

In conclusion, cheating the audience is just BAD.

Rule 1 : Kill Em All

I've written this blog post as rule 1, this does not mean that it is the number 1 rule. It just means it's the first one I thought about, and it's a nice and simple one too.

There seems to be a trend in hollywood movies for violence, which is a debate in itself, but in particular there's a trend for the bad guy to just kill everyone who opposes them. Great! I hear you say 'kill em all'. Isn't that the the most threatening a bad guy can be?

Nope.

Bad guys need to threaten violence more than they dole it out. If we know that all a bad guy is going to do is kill someone when he finds they've failed or betrayed him then why should we care. We can't invest emotion in characters we know are just going to be killed. The threat of violence is far more exciting than the execution.

For evidence I invoke the 'RAIDERS CLAUSE' (and beware it will be used again). In Raiders of the Lost Ark Ronald Lacey plays Major Thot. He's a sleazy Nazi who leers rather than looks at people. He's definitely a bad character but the things he's remembered for are not randomly shooting his foes but more interestingly picking up a hot metal artefact that burn into his hand.

In this one act of insanity we understand his ruthlessness in getting what he wants. What would he do to our heroes if he's prepared to hold white metal antiquities for prolonged periods.

In conclusion, make villains interesting, killing for killings sake does not equal character, and the threat of violence will scare and entertain more than a thousand bullets.

What's it all about Alfie?

This blog is a lighthearted development of the 'rules of scriptwriting'.

Save the Cat is the fantastic scriptwriting book written by Blake Snyder. It has a whole host of useful information on script writing, which I love, and a section on the 'rules of scriptwriting'.

The rules include the classic 'Save the Cat' and others like 'The Pope and Pool'. This blog is a fun expansion of those rules.

Feel free to browse and comment to your hearts content.