This week’s rebroadcast includes two posts answering questions from 2003 looking at what’s important about originality and novelty in storytelling.
When you are writing a screenplay, how do you manage to focus on originality and avoid a multitude of clichés just slipping into the story some how?
–Christian
In the writer’s ongoing battle against clichés, they find two basic enemies: verbal clichés ("as easy as taking candy from a baby"), and story clichés (the explosive with a count-down LED timer).
Eliminating the first kind is simply a matter of recognizing them and finding something better to replace them. I work incredibly hard on the narrative description in my scripts, tweaking it at least as much as the dialogue. With vigilance, the night never has to be "as black as coal" or "as cold as a witch’s tit."
The story clichés are harder to deal with, because certain genres carry them along like parasites. Action movies sometimes have the ticking time bomb, or mismatched partners, or heroes who somehow avoid being hit when a hundred bullets are flying their direction.
The key — and this starts in the conception phase of the script — is recognizing the inherent clichés in a genre, and figuring out how you’re going to handle them. Scream did a masterful job pointing out, subverting, and ultimately fulfilling teen-slasher clichés.
Sometimes, the best way to avoid story clichés is to look at the reality behind every character, every setting, every decision made in your story. Is Carla Ann really "a hooker with a heart of gold?" On closer inspection, she might be a nervous, self-deprecating dreamer.
Does the police station need a squad room full of desks and detectives milling about? Maybe your scene could take place in a courtyard, or by the photocopier, or in the cafeteria.
Clichés are shortcuts. The more you avoid taking them, the more interesting the places you’ll end up.
These days, first time filmmakers are making works of true strength and originality. The music video school of direction is making movies so stylish that surpassing them would lead to incomprehensability. It seams as though tomorrow’s writers and directors have very little chance to distinguish themselves from the masses of post-Tarantino, super-fancy movies. Is there any way to be something new without reinventing the entire film industry? Must we make avant-garde insanity just to stand out?
–REJ Bach
At first, I thought you were being sarcastic, but on second reading I guess you really are a fan of current cinema. I am too. I think it’s an exciting time to be making, and watching, movies.
Every few months I find myself sitting on panels where an audience member asks a "question" that is really just an excuse to say that nobody knows how to make movies anymore.1 I try to be polite and talk about how a younger generation is used to an accellerated speed of storytelling, and doesn’t need to have the dots connected as much, but my true instinct is to tell them to shove it. Yes, Hollywood is making a lot of bad movies, but Hollywood has always made bad movies. You’re just remembering the Citizen Kane’s and forgetting the Tarzan’s New York Adventure’s.
Where I disagree with you, REJ, is whether we’ve reached any kind of zenith in storytelling or stylishness. For all the flashy techniques we’ve seen, there’s a thousand more that haven’t been invented, and the backlash against some of the current trends will likely lead to other new ideas. For example, the bullet-time effect in The Matrix has been played to death, but in fact it was only one application of a much more important concept: camera movement doesn’t need to be constrained to temporal reality. The next wave of filmmakers will be able to take the concept further, and find new ways to visualize impossible things.
In terms of writing, "post-Tarantino" is a poor catch-all for storytelling that seems to break the normal mold. While it’s true that Pulp Fiction had a big influence on a generation of young filmmakers, a lot of the ideas we credit to Tarantino had been percolating for years in less commercially successful films. I believe they would have found their way into a hit sooner or later.
I’m not a gambler, but I’ll bet every cent I have that some enterprising writer/director will be able to identify the new ideas bubbling under the surface and incorporate them into the next revolutionary mega-blockbuster. It’s the safest wager I could make.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art
What are you reading this weekend?
Just released from Quote-Unquote Apps, Weekend Read 2 is your app for reading, listening to and taking notes on screenplays.
Weekend Read 2 makes it easy to import your own files, or discover something new in our curated collections of screenplays and books.
Plus, it helps keep your library organized with Lists, multiple sort options, and pinning items to the top of your library. You’ll never have to worry about losing track of your favorite scripts again.
And every Friday this summer, we’re featuring a new script collection in Weekend Read.
Find out more at the App Store!
Hint to future audience members: just because you say "Don’t you agree?" at the end doesn’t turn a polemic into a question.