Tweetstorm: On Story Notes

“The unknowable will always feel more interesting/unsettling. Because we’re programmed to want to know.”

If you are an aspiring screenwriter, Twitter is an amazing resource. Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Lights Out, Hours) is probably the Hollywood screenwriter most willing to go online and provide a tweetstorm on a specific subject related to the craft.

Last week, Eric shared some thoughts on story notes. Reprinted by permission.

Eric followed up the next day with a few more tweets:

This is a really interesting thread because so much of a writer’s energy is spent gaining a sense of clarity about our characters — their wants, needs, fears, motivations, backstory. But as Eric points out, sometimes it’s best NOT to know the answer to certain aspects of who a character is, how they act, why they do what they do.

One of the all-time great characters is Hannibal Lecter. In two books and movies, Lecter dominates the story, especially The Silence of the Lambs, even though his screen time is extremely limited. Why does the character make such an impact on us? Because he is a complex psychopath who’s particularly scary because of what we DO NOT KNOW about him: Why the fuck does he kill and cannibalize people?

That’s why I regretted reading the Thomas Harris novel “Hannibal” because he provided a specific backstory to explain Lecter’s malevolence. It let me down in a huge way because without the mystery of who and why Lecter was who he was, the character became demythologized in my mind, turned into just another psycho killer.

So yes, we DO have to concern ourselves with clarity in our stories and this is a type of note we can expect from producers or studio execs on virtually any script project. However, there are times when we need to leave room for shadows… darkness… obscurity… to give the people who read our scripts room to fill that void with ideas emerging from their own imaginations, arising from wanting... needing to provide an answer.

You may follow Eric on Twitter: @HIGHzurrer.

Eric has put together a book that arose from his Twitter exchanges: “150 Screenwriting Challenges” which is available for Kindle here.

You may read my April 2013 interview with Eric here.

You may see all of the Screenwriting Tweetstorms archived on the site here.