Thursday, April 10, 2003
Lesson 9: change the pace
How fast do your characters or your scenes move?
Do you have "insert high speed chase here" installed as a macro on your screenwriting software?'
Or, conversely, are you fond of long, slow, leisurely conversations?
If you don't know, notice what kind of films you're drawn to. Are you in love with quick-cut action films? Fond of chick flickus talkusalotus?
You know who you are.
So, just as an athlete profits by changing her pace, so can a writer. Consider taking one of your blow-em-up good scenes and 1) slowing it down and/or 2) inserting a "relationship talk" into the middle of it.
That's what made DIE HARD the first such a wonderful movie. It managed to combine two very disparate stories and make them work. Bruce Willis isn't just a guy rescuing a building from elegant terrorists. He's a guy rescuing his ex-wife for whom he still has feelings. It's a chick film with explosives...
EXERCISE
Take your talkiest scene and put the characters underwater. Force them to communicate by gesture and action. Now: make a shark chase them.
Take your most DIE HARD blow em up scene and give one of the characters a monologue about the first time he had bad sex.
How fast do your characters or your scenes move?
Do you have "insert high speed chase here" installed as a macro on your screenwriting software?'
Or, conversely, are you fond of long, slow, leisurely conversations?
If you don't know, notice what kind of films you're drawn to. Are you in love with quick-cut action films? Fond of chick flickus talkusalotus?
You know who you are.
So, just as an athlete profits by changing her pace, so can a writer. Consider taking one of your blow-em-up good scenes and 1) slowing it down and/or 2) inserting a "relationship talk" into the middle of it.
That's what made DIE HARD the first such a wonderful movie. It managed to combine two very disparate stories and make them work. Bruce Willis isn't just a guy rescuing a building from elegant terrorists. He's a guy rescuing his ex-wife for whom he still has feelings. It's a chick film with explosives...
EXERCISE
Take your talkiest scene and put the characters underwater. Force them to communicate by gesture and action. Now: make a shark chase them.
Take your most DIE HARD blow em up scene and give one of the characters a monologue about the first time he had bad sex.
