Screenwriter Oath

Guest post from screenwriter Tom Benedek (Cocoon).

SCREENWRITER OATH

1. Break Rules.

2. Establish large measures of discomfort.

3. Introduce intriguing people.

4. Offer love in all its forms.

5. Provide a few laughs.

6. Disturb the norms.

7. Take it all in for a hazardous, but eventually safe landing. Or a fatal crash, if it has to be that way.

Audiences want to be teased, worried. They want to empathize, understand new things. To be shocked, turned around. To reject what they can’t abide. Eventually, they hope to be comforted, reassured. And they will go back for more of the same.

Even though structure speaks to most screen stories like the laws of gravity, movies we appreciate often consist of pieces that shouldn’t fit together: A Black man weekending at the house of crazy racists. A fish man out of the ocean. A Sacramento kid with New York on her mind. Little boats in a giant war. A woman alone forcing courage on a company of men. On and on. The human condition arrives on the screen when things don’t fit, when characters struggle and recalibrate.

It’s a tough job. But somebody has to do it. And screenwriters are the chosen. No chance for anything good on the screen without heroic effort on the page.

It doesn’t matter to audiences where the story was born. They don’t care which came first, the desire to write or the idea. Pre-existing material. Straight from the unconscious of the writer. Or from out in the ether, channeled to the writer in some kind of immaculate Final Draft conception. That seems to happen once in a while.

You have those principles of dramatic structure. They are not rules. Just guidelines. Characters don’t fit into scenes like bricks. We have to shape and hone to fit things together, taking stories through beginning, middle and end.

Audiences seem to carry those principles of dramatic structure in their DNA. Audiences like to sense what might happen next and in the end. But they don’t have to know.

And they can live with some discomfort. Shock. They crave the form. Not the formula.

It helps to think the structure through before writing pages. And not be a slave to structure.

Throw bedlam at your characters. Provide them with the means to inspire us with their way forward, up and out of the jaws of defeat or whatever difficulties you burden them with.

Soldiering forward from idea to script. Armed with creative chops, a bag full of writing craft tools. Screenwriting is a process of discovery, creation, observation, contemplation and assembly. Things must be fit together. Scenes. Acts. Character arcs. Subplots. But there are no instructions. No numbered parts. Legos offer real closure. Not screenwriting. Damn you, screenwriting. I love you, screenwriting.

Prep: From Concept to Outline
six-week online workshop
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Begins Monday February 26

COMING SOON:

FREE CLASS ON STORY STRUCTURE

presented by Tom Benedek

NAIL YOUR PIVOT

includes THE SHAPE OF WATER ANALYSIS

Saturday, March 4, 12PM PST

RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Watch and participate live or catch the replay on your own schedule.
You will be emailed a free replay link.

Stories existed long before anyone wrote about their structure. Their natural forms have inevitable turning points, curves, zig zags.The rules of dramatic structure are not laws that must be obeyed but guidelines that suggest points of emphasis and help draw a map.