Sunday, April 06, 2003
Lesson 6: Rules: The rule of three
We’ve all seen the movie trailer with the big action hero who…drum roll, please, “BREAKS ALL THE RULES.”
Which is one of those little paradoxes, because, of course, the big action hero has CREATE one big rule for himself: he breaks all the rules.
Good movies are a lot of things: in William Goldman’s word, they are architecture. They are characters we care about. They are, sometimes, dialogue we won’t forget, music we’ll always remember.
And somewhere in the mechanics of a good script are just enough rules. Not too many, not too few.
Some movies, especially science fiction, horror, or fantasy movies, are quite explicit about their rules. Don’t feed a gremlin after midnight, or it turns into a fiend. Don’t go into the basement alone. Show a vampire a cross, and he’ll shrink from you. They are rooted in the first stories we heard—fairy tales and myths. Think of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. All he had to do to retrieve his wife from hell was to lead her from Hades without looking back. All Icarus had to do to enjoy the gift of flight was not fly too close to the sun.
It’s my humble opinion that a single rule in a movie isn’t enough—and ten is too many. Three feels about right, for a lot of reasons. Wire a movie to a single rule, and it feels thin, too rigid to really be fun. Give a movie two rules, and it becomes a kind of ping pong, and the movie bounces side to side. Three feels good. The audience can remember them easily…and not feel overwhelmed by choices. Yet the number three provides wonderful complications, and it’s a number we know in our dramatic and comic bones. Think of romantic triangles. Think of baseball. Think of the Three Stooges, or the Marx Brothers (the ones you can remember!).
Exercise
If you have not begun your screenplay, write down at least one rule you intend to have one of your characters live by.
If you are in the midst of your screenplay, review the plot and the characters for rules, explicit and implicit. They are usually easy to find. Your statuesque heroine swears, “I’ll never date a man under six feet.” Or whenever a character eats a banana in your action-packed fruit adventure movie, he explodes.
If you have trouble identifying the rules in your own work, rent your favorite movie. Pick one character, and write down three rules he or she CLAIMS to live by, and the ones he or she actually does. Now, write down three rules the movie lives by.
We’ve all seen the movie trailer with the big action hero who…drum roll, please, “BREAKS ALL THE RULES.”
Which is one of those little paradoxes, because, of course, the big action hero has CREATE one big rule for himself: he breaks all the rules.
Good movies are a lot of things: in William Goldman’s word, they are architecture. They are characters we care about. They are, sometimes, dialogue we won’t forget, music we’ll always remember.
And somewhere in the mechanics of a good script are just enough rules. Not too many, not too few.
Some movies, especially science fiction, horror, or fantasy movies, are quite explicit about their rules. Don’t feed a gremlin after midnight, or it turns into a fiend. Don’t go into the basement alone. Show a vampire a cross, and he’ll shrink from you. They are rooted in the first stories we heard—fairy tales and myths. Think of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. All he had to do to retrieve his wife from hell was to lead her from Hades without looking back. All Icarus had to do to enjoy the gift of flight was not fly too close to the sun.
It’s my humble opinion that a single rule in a movie isn’t enough—and ten is too many. Three feels about right, for a lot of reasons. Wire a movie to a single rule, and it feels thin, too rigid to really be fun. Give a movie two rules, and it becomes a kind of ping pong, and the movie bounces side to side. Three feels good. The audience can remember them easily…and not feel overwhelmed by choices. Yet the number three provides wonderful complications, and it’s a number we know in our dramatic and comic bones. Think of romantic triangles. Think of baseball. Think of the Three Stooges, or the Marx Brothers (the ones you can remember!).
Exercise
If you have not begun your screenplay, write down at least one rule you intend to have one of your characters live by.
If you are in the midst of your screenplay, review the plot and the characters for rules, explicit and implicit. They are usually easy to find. Your statuesque heroine swears, “I’ll never date a man under six feet.” Or whenever a character eats a banana in your action-packed fruit adventure movie, he explodes.
If you have trouble identifying the rules in your own work, rent your favorite movie. Pick one character, and write down three rules he or she CLAIMS to live by, and the ones he or she actually does. Now, write down three rules the movie lives by.
