Let me expand a bit on this good Instagram list of nine screenwriting tips supposedly from Billy Wilder.1. THE AUDIENCE IS FICKLE.
This does not mean, as Will Goldman famously wrote, "NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING" on page 39 of his "Adventures in the Screen Trade." (BTW: the all caps is Goldman's, not mine.) I don't agree with Goldman on this, but it's instructive. A drive through parts of Los Angeles or an invite to a home or two will tell you that quite a number of individuals KNOW ALOT. But back to the "instructive" part. Reminding us that the audience is fickle means that you have to stay one step ahead of your audience. Like a good horror script, there should be a surprise (a LOGICAL surprise) at least every five pages, if not three. "Fickle" could mean the audience doesn't know what it likes, but it's more reasonable to understand that the audience comes to be entertained, and that they bore easily. Don't bore. Surprise.
2. GRAB 'EM BY THE THROAT AND NEVER LET 'EM GO.
This goes along with No. 1. Another way of saying this is to put your protagonist in jeopardy at the beginning and keep him there until the last frame of the movie. But of course, knowing that the audience is fickle means the jeopardy can rarely be the same from scene to scene. Mary Alice Moore Connealy is the author of over 70 Christian fiction novels. She specializes in romantic comedy set in the cowboy era of the American west. Mary and I were engaged in an email exchange in 2010 that I was careful to save. In it she revealed how she kills off villains. I wrote a blog HERE about it. Her Rule No. 2 is this: "You can judge how bad a bad guy is by the number of times he dies." We see this is popular movies—the bad guy keeps resurrecting only to be killed in a more horrific way. Aside from the catharsis rush this gives the audience/reader, it is a perfect example of how not to bore your audience (Wilder No. 1) and how to constantly keep your protagonist is danger (Wilder No. 2).
3. DEVELOP A CLEAN LINE OF ACTION FOR YOUR LEADING CHARACTER.
This is often the difference between a story that involves the audience intellectually vs. emotionally. When intelligent writers send me a script to critique I can easily get caught up in the obscure philosophical quest of the protagonist. But when emotional writers send me a script I don't have time to analyze the scenes, I'm too busy turning pages. Guess which movies get made? General audiences aren't looking for intellectual, philosophical, or spiritual quests (at least not explicitly). General audiences want a story that will carry them away emotionally, which means visceral, physical danger to a likable protagonist. This is why Mission Impossible and James Bond stories are always hits. [The special effects and practical stunts are not just eye candy, but rather reinforce the visceral danger as our hero tries, against all odds, to recover the hard-drive (or similar MacGuffin) with the list of MI6 secret agents (Sky Fall)]. Bond is always in danger, and his goal is one thing only...to get the hard-drive back or stop the release of its secret list of agents. When we send a protagonist on a philosophical, introspective journey, it's much harder to keep the story emotionally involving. Action is clean. Philosophy is obscure.
4. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE THIRD ACT, THE REAL PROBLEM IS IN THE FIRST ACT.
This is the ultimate issue involving foreshadowing. Everything that happens in Act 3 needs to be set up in Act 1. Everything in Act 3 is the effect of the Act 1 cause. My friend Drew Yanno wrote a good book on this titled, as you might expect, "The 3rd Act." It is evidently now out of print since I can't find it or him on the Internet anymore. It's a bright red cover, 175 pages recommended by Will Smith. If your hero is afraid of heights which hinders his capture of the bad guy in Act 3, then his vertigo is revealed in Act 1. If your heroine has a problem with commitment in Act 3, then the wound that caused her fear of commitment needs to be shown in Act 1. If the protagonist risks his life to save a child in Act 3, then in Act 1 he saves a cat. (e.g. Blake Snyder's book, SAVE THE CAT). Yes, it's often the case that when you're writing Act 3 and inventing all kinds of cliff hangers, you are simultaneously revising Act 1. If you don't do this you risk the disastrous anti-plot point called "Deus ex machina" (link Wikipedia). Deus ex machina is the opposite of the MacGuffin. Use the latter not the former.
5. THE MORE SUBTLE AND ELEGANT YOU ARE IN HIDING YOUR PLOT POINTS, THE BETTER YOU ARE AS A WRITER.
This does not translate well, but here's what it means. Narrative is better than didactic. Narrative shows what happens when a protagonist makes a moral decisions and acts on it. A protagonist can make any decision and take any action he wants. But the consequences of that decision and action are always the result of natural law, and totally out of the hands and control of the protagonist. I have written much on this topic...some blog posts are here. This process in storytelling is much like real life. We lean lessons by such a decision-action-consequence paradigm. We learn by experience, or by the stories told of the experience of others. WE DO NOT LEARN HOW TO LIVE A BETTER LIFE BY ARBITRARY RULES, which is what didactic storytelling suffers from. You may think the Bible is full of didactic rules (e.g. The Ten Commandments). But in reality the Bible is 75% Narrative, which reveals the consequence of not following the rules. Rules shortcut your learning, but you really only learn from experience or stories. This is why Stories are the Crux of Civilization.
A bit more of a didactic (😟) explanation is needed here. Narrative shows what happens and requires the audience in figure out the rule involved (or the moral premise at work). A didactic story reveals the rule but does not necessarily demonstrate the natural law consequence of following the rule or not. NOT HIDING YOUR PLOT POINTS is didactic. HIDING YOUR PLOT POINTS is narrative. The rule here is "Make your audience work. Do not tell them. Show them. Let them figure it out." Audiences love intrigue even if it means trying to figure out what the movie is really about. (Hopefully it's about something like a true, and consistently applied moral premise.)
6. A TIP FROM LUBITSCH: LET THE AUDIENCE ADD UP TWO PLUS TWO. THEY'LL LOVE YOU FOREVER.
This is actually a repeat of No. 5. 'Nuff said.
By the way, Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born American film director et al. He co-wrote the Greta Garbo film Ninotchka with Billy Wilder. I'm sorry I don't know anything about this movie, but I will shortly when I screen it. What I do know about Lubitsch is that he made the audience work to figure out what was going on in the character's heart and head. This no doubt came about because Lubitsch's career began in the silent film era when directors were required to SHOW and dialogue was limited to a few dialogue cards.
7. IN DOING VOICE-OVERS, BE CAREFUL NOT TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE AUDIENCE ALREADY SEES. ADD TO WHAT THEY'RE SEEING.
At the risk of repeating perhaps the best known Hollywood adage, SHOW DON'T TELL. Movies are not novels, but even novel writers know how to show and not didactically tell what's happening. The study of non-verbal communication suggests that 80% of the message is communicated non-verbally, not with the actual words. Thus ,"I could kill you," has many different meanings.
But back to No. 7.
I would add that you don't just want to add to what is being seen, but describe something ironic and quite different from what is being seen. This is also the role of subtext in dialogue. Subtext, of course, is ironic in that it communicates what is not being literally heard, or it is the opposite of the literal words being used. (See this blog post on "Borders and Quarantines, the Essence of Successful Stories", and Lesson 12 of my on-line Storycraft Training Series on "Writing Convincing Movie Dialogue." for examples.) But back to the V.O. point: While we see a protagonist courageously and fearlessly rescue a child from a raging river, the voice over might add an ironic and intriguing twist if we hear the hero's retrospective thoughts of fear and cowardice. This adds dimension and depth to the character and makes him more believable and real like us.
A similar occurrence takes place when you write a "Pope in the Pool" scene (see Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT.) A critical aspect of a Pope in the Pool scene is that the background action (the Pope trying to swim in a pool dressed in his vestments), metaphors what is being didactically discussed in the foreground dialogue. The background action ADDS TO WHAT WE'RE HEARING, or the foreground dialogue can be considered V.O. that explains didactically what is happening in the background.
Every element adds to the narrative or its meaning.
8. THE EVENT THAT OCCURS AT THE SECOND ACT CURTAIN TRIGGERS THE END OF THE MOVIE.
The end of Act 2 plot point is also known as "NEAR DEATH," "FAUX ENDING," "NO GOING BACK," "ACT 2 CLIMAX," and "ALL IS LOST." (Here is a link to ten (10) blog posts that describe the classical major beats of a story as diagramed on The Story Diamond.) The Story Diamond simply overlays multiple story structures, paralleling the labels to reveal that all successful story structures are simply different ways to describe the same thing. Thus, the second act curtain (or Act 2 Climax) is a critical and very important turning point beat that converts our warrior protagonist/hero into a martyr, who is willing to die for the noble cause, thus endearing the audience to him. The "end of the movie" is all of Act 3, which is 25% of the story. Structure is important here. Audiences love never ending stories...that is a story that seems to have multiple endings, and the Act 2 curtain is the FIRST of multiple endings that come at the audience rapid fire and give catharsis its due. Also related to the importance of the ending is Michael Arndt's Insanely Great Endings in a guest post by The Other Chris Pratt, followed by my analysis of Arndt's "Little Miss Sunshine."
9. THE THIRD ACT MUST BUILD, BUILD, BUILD IN TEMPO AND ACTION UNTIL THE LAST EVENT, AND THEN—THAT'S IT. DON'T HANG AROUND.
I've written enough about Act 3 so 'nuff said about that.
But "don't hang around," is the Denouement (or "Life After") and it should be very short. Use Act 3 to tie up loose narrative ends in dramatic fashion before you get to the Denouement. See again Michael Arndt's Insanely Great Endings, and my notes on the structure of Act 3. Lesson 9 of my Storycraft Training also covers the important and fast occurring beats of Act 3.
