The Ultimate Story Checklist: Iron Man

Updated to the sixth and final checklist!

Tony Stark is a reckless billionaire arms manufacturer who gets kidnapped by Afghan terrorists that are using his own weapons. They force him to build them a new weapon, but instead he creates high-tech armor for himself. After he gets away, he perfects the armor with the help of his loyal assistant, Pepper, just in time to fight his own partner, Stane, who hired the terrorists in the first place and still wants him out of the way.

PART #1: CONCEPT 19/19
The Pitch: Does this concept excite everyone who hears about it?
Is the one sentence description uniquely appealing?	A humbled arms dealer becomes a high-tech armored superhero to confront the enemies foreign and domestic that he himself has armed.
Does the concept contain an intriguing ironic contradiction?	Many: He thinks his products are making everyone free, but they’re in the hands of his evil captors. He has an impervious shell but a weak heart. An arms merchant wants to disarm the world.
Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto a bigger canvas, with higher stakes?	A universal tale of overcoming hypocrisy and taking responsibility for one’s actions, but with lives on the line.
Story Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a strong story?
Is the concept simple enough to spend more time on character than plot?	There’s actually relatively little plot, especially for a super-hero movie.
Is there one character that the audience will choose to be their “hero”?	Tony.
Does the story follow the progress of the hero’s problem, not the hero’s daily life?	Yes. We zip through a lot of story quickly.
Does the story present a unique relationship?	An arms dealing billionaire and his military liaison
Is at least one actual human being opposed to what the hero is doing?	First the warlord, then Stane. Sometimes Pepper as well.
Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or an ironic answer to the hero’s question?	Greatest fear, and ironic answer to rhetorical questions he asks about when he’d stop making weapons.
Does something inside the hero have a particularly volatile reaction to the challenge?	Everybody is shocked by how strongly he reacts to his captivity.
Does this challenge become something that is the not just hard for the hero to do (an obstacle) but hard for the hero to want to do (a conflict)?	He has to endanger everything he has, put his fortune, company and friends at risk, go against his lifelong philosophy.
In the end, is the hero the only one who can solve the problem?	Sure. Pepper and SHIELD are helping, but they’re overpowered by Stane.
Does the hero permanently transform the situation and vice versa?	He can’t go back to his comfortable life at the end.
The Hook: Will this be marketable and generate word of mouth?
Does the story satisfy the basic human urges that get people to buy and recommend this genre?	Very much so.
Does this story show us at least one image we haven’t seen before (that can be used to promote the final product)?	Very much so.
Is there at least one “Holy Crap!” scene (to create word of mouth)?	The first fight in Afghanistan in the new armor. The first flight. Her removing his heart is harrowing. Post-credits scene with Sam Jackson.
Does the story contain a surprise that is not obvious from the beginning?	Stane hired the terrorists.
Is the story marketable without revealing the surprise?	Yes.
Is the conflict compelling and ironic both before and after the surprise?	Yes.
PART #2: CHARACTER 20/22
Believe: Do we recognize the hero as a human being?
Does the hero have a moment of humanity early on? (A funny, or kind, or oddball, or out-of-character, or comically vain, or unique-but-universal “I thought I was the only one who did that!” moment?)	Funny and kind: he cracks jokes in the jeep with the soldiers, knows their names, jokes about them throwing up gang signs in pictures. (In on the joke despite high status)
Is the hero defined by ongoing actions and attitudes, not by backstory?	We meet him in Afghanistan and love his behavior there before we get any history, which is then dealt with quickly. No flashbacks, no baggage. Compare to the sequel.
Does the hero have a well-defined public identity?	Maverick billionaire playboy
Does the surface characterization ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?	Somewhat: people pretty much have his number, but he’s more down to earth than you would think. You could argue that he always had a conflicted guilty conscience underneath, but you could also make the case that he hasn’t had any qualms until this disaster.
Does the hero have a consistent metaphor family (drawn from his or her job, background, or developmental state)?	Developmental state: friendly-frat. “Is that so hard? That was fun, right?” Talking to his machines: “Dummy, you’re on standby for fire safety, you: roll it.” “Thrill me.” To himself: “Yeah, I can fly.”
Does the hero have a default personality trait?	Cockiness, charm
Does the hero have a default argument tactic?	Sarcastic direct assault, “what are you going to do about it”-style. Cuts the other person off with a quick, witty, withering line, then smirks while they try to answer.
Is the hero’s primary motivation for tackling this challenge strong, simple, and revealed early on?	Just trying to stay alive at first, then trying to get his weaponry away from his captors.
Care: Do we feel for the hero?
Does the hero start out with a shortsighted or wrongheaded philosophy (or accept a false piece of advice early on)?	“My old man had a philosophy: Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.”
Does the hero have a false or shortsighted goal in the first half?	Sell the missiles to the army.
Does the hero have an open fear or anxiety about his or her future, as well as a hidden, private fear?	Open, only slightly: that he won’t close this deal. Hidden: That he’s a death merchant.
Is the hero physically and emotionally vulnerable?	A literal weak heart and a figurative weak heart.
Does the hero have at least one untenable great flaw we empathize with? (but…)	He’s arrogant, sleazy, naïve, etc.
Invest: Can we trust the hero to tackle this challenge?
…Is that great flaw (ironically) the natural flip-side of a great strength we admire?	He’s brilliant, charming, ultimately principled.
Is the hero curious?	About scientific things, but not enough about his own life until it’s almost too late.
Is the hero generally resourceful?	Very much so.
Does the hero have rules he or she lives by (either stated or implied)?	Live well, be smarter, be cool
Is the hero surrounded by people who sorely lack his or her most valuable quality?	Nobody is as laid back as him. They’re all somewhat uptight, even Pepper and Rhodey.
…And is the hero willing to let them know that, subtly or directly?	Very much so. He verbally humiliates friends and enemies alike.
Is the hero already doing something active when we first meet him or her?	Yeah, he gives a great presentation.
Does the hero have (or claim) decision-making authority?	Very much so.
Does the hero use pre-established special skills from his or her past to solve problems (rather than doing what anybody would do)?	Very much so. Even in the final fight, he uses his engineering skills to figure out the right part to rip out of Stane’s suit (“that looks important”)
PART #3: STRUCTURE (If the story is about the solving of a large problem) 20/21
1st Quarter: Is the challenge laid out in the first quarter?
When the story begins, is the hero becoming increasingly irritated about his or her longstanding social problem (while still in denial about an internal flaw)?	If we ignore the flashforward and take things in order, then not really, or at least Tony pretends not to be troubled by the criticisms he gets, or to have any qualms. His protests to the reporter seem genuine, but we and he realize that, deep down, he really knew better when…
Does this problem become undeniable due to a social humiliation at the beginning of the story?	He gets blown up by one of his own bombs in the hands of terrorists, almost killed, finds out his bombs kill kids frequently in the same way, forced to make more weapons for evildoers. (Notably, this guy was so arrogant that they had to use a flashforward structure to preview the humiliation before we get an in-depth look at his personality, pre-assuring us that, don’t worry, he’ll get his comeuppance)
Does the hero discover an intimidating opportunity to fix the problem?	He builds the armor.
Does the hero hesitate until the stakes are raised?	He wants to just die, but Yinsen convinces him to do it.
Does the hero commit to pursuing the opportunity by the end of the first quarter?	He builds the armor and escapes.
2nd Quarter: Does the hero try the easy way in the second quarter?
Does the hero’s pursuit of the opportunity quickly lead to an unforeseen conflict with another person?	Stane isn’t happy about his new direction. For that matter, neither are Pepper or Rhodey.
Does the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?	He lets Stane play interference with the company, waits for Pepper and Rhodey to come around.
Does the hero have a little fun and get excited about the possibility of success?	He loves flying around with the armor. He goes to the party, hits on Pepper, starts to boast again.
Does the easy way lead to a big crash around the midpoint, resulting in the loss of a safe space and/or sheltering relationship?	He finds out that his weapons have been used again, Stane comes out against him. Then Stane takes his company, invades his house.
3rd Quarter: Does the hero try the hard way in the third quarter?
Does the hero try the hard way from this point on?	Goes and disarms the guys himself, then comes to deal with Stane, but it’s too late.
Does the hero find out who his or her real friends and real enemies are?	Stane tries to kill him, Pepper and Rhodey back him up, Agent Coulson goes from annoyance to ally.
Do the stakes, pace, and motivation all escalate at this point?	Yes.
Does the hero learn from mistakes in a painful way?	He literally has his heart ripped out by Stane, has to put in the heart that Pepper gave him.
Does a further setback lead to a spiritual crisis?	He has several spiritual crises in this movie, but yes, he does have an ultimate one here when he has to crawl to claim his old heart back.
4th Quarter: Does the challenge climax in the fourth quarter?
Does the hero adopt a corrected philosophy after the spiritual crisis?	“I’m going to find my weapons and destroy them. I’m not crazy, Pepper, I just finally know what I have to do, and I know in my heart that it’s right.”
After that crisis, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal, which still seems far away?	Defeat Stane, save Pepper.
Before the final quarter of the story begins, (if not long before) has your hero switched to being proactive, instead of reactive?	Finally cares where Stane is and what he’s up to.
Despite these proactive steps, is the timeline unexpectedly moved up, forcing the hero to improvise for the finale?	Pepper is already confronting Stane when he finds out.
Do all strands of the story and most of the characters come together for the climactic confrontation?	Only Rhodey isn’t there, but that’s fine (there’s a deleted scene where he shows up to help and it’s ridiculous)
Does the hero’s inner struggle climax shortly after (or possible at the same time as) his or her outer struggle?	Afterwards, when he finally decides who he is.
Is there an epilogue/ aftermath/ denouement in which the challenge is finally resolved (or succumbed to), and we see how much the hero has changed (possibly through reversible behavior)	He tries again with Pepper, but fails, and then tells the world who he is.
PART #4: SCENEWORK (Random example: Tony has built a better chest-device to keep shrapnel out of his heart, so he calls Pepper in to reach into his chest and replace the old one with a new one.) 17/20
The Set-Up: Does this scene begin with the essential elements it needs?
Were tense and/or hopeful (and usually false) expectations for this interaction established beforehand?	She’s just been watching Jim Cramer talking about his business tanking, so she’s worried about her job, so she feels she has to do this.
Does the scene eliminate small talk and repeated beats by cutting out the beginning (or possibly even the middle)?	Sort of, it goes from her entrance to her exit, but he’s already very far along before he invites her down.
Is this an intimidating setting that keeps characters active?	Somewhat, she’s been told she’s not welcome there before.
Is one of the scene partners not planning to have this conversation (and quite possibly has something better to do)?	Yes, she was otherwise occupied before he called her in.
Is there at least one non-plot element complicating the scene?	He yells at his robots about his desk
Does the scene establish its own mini-ticking-clock (if only through subconscious anticipation)?	She pulls out the magnet and he starts to go into cardiac arrest.
The Conflict: Do the conflicts play out in a lively manner?
Does this scene both advance the plot and reveal character through emotional reactions?	Seems entirely like a character scene at the time, later we realize that it serves the plot. This is a classic example of a small scene that generates an unexpectedly volatile amount of emotion for both parties.
Does the audience have (or develop) a rooting interest in this scene (which may sometimes shift)?	We’re on her side: we don’t know what’s going on, feel this is too much to ask. (later, when she gets too grossed, out, we switch to his side somewhat, and share his lack of patience.)
Are two agendas genuinely clashing (rather than merely two personalities)?	She wants him to get medical help but he just wants to rely on her.
Does the scene have both a surface conflict and a suppressed conflict (one of which is the primary conflict in this scene)?	Surface: he needs her to replace his heart, Suppressed, they each want to admit that they’re in love.
Is the suppressed conflict (which may or may not come to the surface) implied through subtext (and/or called out by the other character)?	Very much so.
Are the characters cagy (or in denial) about their own feelings?	He finally admits “I don’t have anyone but you.” But she doesn’t respond and he quickly says “Anyway.”
Do characters use verbal tricks and traps to get what they want, not just direct confrontation?	He suddenly gives her much-needed compliments to get her to do it, playing on her suppressed feelings.
Is there re-blocking, including literal push and pull between the scene partners (often resulting in just one touch)?	She actually reaches into him, after barely having touched him before this.
Are objects given or taken, representing larger values?	His old heart, his new heart.
The Outcome: Does this scene change the story going forward?
As a result of this scene, does at least one of the scene partners end up doing something that he or she didn’t intend to do when the scene began?	He gets her to take his heart out, she gets him to he admits his feelings for her briefly.
Does the outcome of the scene ironically reverse (and/or ironically fulfill) the original intention?	He saves his heart and loses it.
Are previously-asked questions answered and new questions posed?	Previous: How does the device work? New: What will she do with the old heart? (We see a thought occur to her.)
Does the scene cut out early, on a question (possibly to be answered instantly by the circumstances of the next scene)?	No. The transition to the next scene is actually really abrupt and awkward.
Is the audience left with a growing hope and/or fear for what might happen next? (Not just in the next scene, but generally)	Not really. Things haven’t gotten much better or worse for the hero in this scene.
PART #5: DIALOGUE 16/16
Empathetic: Is the dialogue true to human nature?
Does the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?	Very much so. The army guys who are about to be killed are nicely humanized. The air force guys aren’t buffoons just because they oppose Tony. When Tony sleeps with the reporter and Pepper sneers at her, we’re on Pepper’s side, but the reporter gets to come back and prove herself right all along! We actually agree with Stane for most of the movie. We see how the terrorists feel justified.
Does each of the characters, including the hero, have a limited perspective?	Very much so. Even Pepper has moral blind spots, and everybody else has tons.
Do the characters consciously and unconsciously prioritize their own wants, rather than the wants of others?	Very much so. Everyone’s motivation tracks.
Are the characters resistant to openly admitting their feelings (to others and even to themselves)?	Very much so. It takes huge events to get Pepper and Tony to admit how much they need each other, and then they won’t admit they’ve said it later.
Do the characters avoid saying things they wouldn’t say and doing things they wouldn’t do?	Stane never boasts about his plans, nor do the terrorists. There’s no awkward exposition.
Do the characters interrupt each other often?	Very much so. Tony never listens, period.
Specific: Is the dialogue specific to this world and each personality?
Does the dialogue capture the jargon and tradecraft of the profession and/or setting?	Both the military setting and the tech company setting. A good portrayal of how research and development of new technology actually works, and how corporate takeovers happen.
Are there additional characters with distinct metaphor families, default personality traits, and default argument strategies from the hero’s?	Metaphor family: Rhodey: military, Pepper: a gently scolding mom, Stane: CEO Boosterism, Default personality trait: Pepper is professional. Stane is phony concern (“He left part of himself back in that cave. Breaks my heart.” “I wish you had left Pepper out of this. I would have liked to let her live”), Argument strategy: Pepper: nail you with one surgical question that will shut down your argument. (“What’s your social security number?”)
Heightened: Is the dialogue more pointed and dynamic than real talk?
Is the dialogue more concise than real talk?	Exchange with reporter outside his car packs a huge amount of character work and big theme ideas into quick sexy banter.
Does the dialogue have more personality than real talk?	Very much so. “I also take out his trash,” Pepper says to the reporter.
Are there minimal commas in the dialogue (the lines are not prefaced with Yes, No, Well, Look, or the other character’s name)?	Yes.
Do non-professor characters speak without dependent clauses, conditionals, or parallel construction?	Even the over-educated ones.
Are the non-3-dimensional characters impartially polarized into head, heart and gut?	Partial polarization: Tony is head and gut, no heart. Pepper is head and heart, no gut. Jarvis is all-head, obviously.
Strategic: Are certain dialogue scenes withheld until necessary?
Does the hero have at least one big “I understand you” moment with a love interest or primary emotional partner?	At the party
Is exposition withheld until the hero and the audience are both demanding to know it?	We’ve gotten to like him and then seen him suffer before we find out who he is, so now we care enough to find out.
Is there one gutpunch scene, where the subtext falls away and the characters really lay into each other?	Late at night with Tony and Pepper.
PART #6: TONE 9/10
Genre: Does the story tap into pre-established expectations?
Is the story limited to one genre (or multiple genres that are merged from the beginning?)	Consistently mixes action and conspiracy.
Is the story limited to sub-genres that are compatible with each other, without mixing metaphors?	Super-hero and terrorism-thriller, mixed well.
Does the ending satisfy most of the expectations of the genre, and defy a few others?	Villain is defeated, girl is lost (which is common for this genre), but secret identity is rejected, which is shockingly new.
Separate from the genre, is a consistent mood (goofy, grim, ‘fairy tale’, etc.) established early and maintained throughout?	Light (even in terrorist captivity), zippy, brash.
Framing: Does the story set, reset, upset and ultimately exceed its own expectations?
Is there a dramatic question posed early on, which will establish in the audience’s mind which moment will mark the end of the story?	Not really. The movie kind of ends halfway through, then fires back up again. Finally, it becomes, “Can Stane be stopped?”
Does the story use framing devices to establish genre, mood and expectations?	A flashforward establishes the genre and assures us that we can like this jerk we’re about to meet because he’ll soon get his comeuppance.
Are there characters whose situations prefigure various fates that might await the hero?	Co-inventor who dies shows him that he will eventually have to choose, Stane represents what he’s afraid he’ll become.
Does foreshadowing create anticipation and suspense (and refocus the audience’s attention on what’s important)?	We keep cutting back to Ten Rings, getting us wondering when they’ll come back, and distracting us from Stane as the big bad.
Are reversible behaviors used to foreshadow and then confirm change?	Encases his heart in glass, then smashes the glass. He keeps lying when he’s supposed to tell the truth, then finally tells the truth when he’s supposed to lie.
Is the dramatic question answered at the very end of the story?	Yes, Stane is stopped.
PART 7: THEME 14/14
Difficult: Is the meaning of the story derived from a fundamental moral dilemma?
Can the overall theme be stated in the form of an irreconcilable good vs. good (or evil vs. evil) dilemma?	Individual achievement vs. societal responsibility.
Is a thematic question asked out loud (or clearly implied) in the first half, and left open?	“A lot of people would call that being a hero.” “And a lot of people would also call that war profiteering.” Of course, the slideshow begins “Who is Tony Stark”, which is answered by the final line, when he announces, “I am Iron Man”
Do the characters consistently have to choose between goods, or between evils, instead of choosing between good and evil?	He escapes even though it means his mentor will be killed, destroys his own business even though his friends depend on it.
Grounded: Do the stakes ring true to the world of the audience?
Does the story reflect the way the world works?	The army isn’t happy about the idea of a super-hero, terrorists have believable motivations and economics. Compare to Nolan’s Batman movies where terrorism is merely motivated by a love of chaos, and billionaires are an abstract ideal.
Does the story have something authentic to say about this type of setting (Is it based more on observations of this type of setting than ideas about it)?	Believable portrayal of an inventor’s rhythms, thought process. The firefight feels like a real firefight.
Does the story include twinges of real life national pain?	Very much so: America’s corrupt adventure in Afghanistan, war profiteering.
Are these issues and the overall dilemma addressed in a way that avoids moral hypocrisy?	Tony doesn’t come up with some clever guarantee that makes sure that his arms won’t go to bad guys. The thorniness remains.
Do all of the actions have real consequences?	Lots of suffering on Tony’s part, women and friends truly resent his treatment of them even though they find him charming.
Subtle: Is the theme interwoven throughout so that it need not be discussed often?
Do many small details throughout subtly and/or ironically tie into the thematic dilemma?	Relationship with reporter ties his treatment of the third world to his treatment of women.
Are one or more objects representing larger ideas exchanged throughout the story, growing in meaning each time?	The exchange of the heart devices tell the whole story.
Untidy: Is the dilemma ultimately irresolvable?
Does the ending tip towards one side of the thematic dilemma without resolving it entirely?	Societal responsibility is clearly better, but Individual achievement is still pretty cool.
Does the story’s outcome ironically contrast with the initial goal?	He earns the right to be a super-hero and then immediately breaks the first rule.
In the end, is the plot not entirely tidy (some small plot threads left unresolved, some answers left vague)?	In the truly terrible deleted scenes, everything is explained in much more details, and as a result the story feels leaden and meaningless.
Do the characters refuse (or fail) to synthesize the meaning of the story, forcing the audience to do that?	Stane isn’t mentioned again after he’s killed.

Final Score: 115 out of 122

Storyteller's Rulebook #194: Take a Moment to Establish the Mood (And the Nature of the Jeopardy)

Hi gang! I’m becoming a unreliable blogger, aren’t I? Again, I’m doing the work, but it’s taking longer, so you guys get to see it less often.

I’ve been running more roadtests on the new checklist, but as I do so, I feel the need to tweak questions, which means I don’t want to run them until I’m done with that (because every time I change one, I have to change it retroactively in the ones I’ve already done.) I think that process is almost done, though.

Here’s a preview of one of the changes. I’ve decided to break the mood question into three.

1. Separate from the genre, does the story have a consistent mood?
2. Is there a moment early on that establishes the mood (and type of jeopardy)?
3. Is the mood maintained throughout?

The second refers to what I talked about here: the seemingly innocuous moment at the beginning of Back to the Future where Marty grabs onto the back of a police car while skateboarding, which establishes that the rules of physics are a little gentler in this universe and the consequences of pissing off authority are less.

The third refers more to what I refer to here: how Hancock, Superman Returns, and others shot themselves in the foot by failing to maintain their mood.

I’ve resisted the urge to go back and re-do the eight roadtests I’ve already done to make them conform to the new checklist, but let’s go back now and test these new questions: (Actually, I’ll skip the third question, because the answer in each is a simple “yes”)

• Bridesmaids: Mood: Gently sarcastic. Established by: Getting chased out of park for stealing exercise motivations.  Big scary trainer pitifully guilt-trips them instead of chasing.  Consequences are embarrassment and guilt, not physical danger.
• Silence of the Lambs: Mood: Sprightly, not-gritty, smart, slight black comedy. Established by : The briefing with Chilton. We know not to worry too much for Clarice after this: she’s our point-of-view, not a sexualized potential victim, as a female investigator would usually be in this type of movie. As she makes clear to Chilton, this is a movie about her mind, not her body.
• Donnie Brasco: Mood: Tense but cold, more threatening to the villains than the heroes. Established by: The fugazi scene. Donnie is in danger for her life, but he has all the power, and dominates Lefty. Donnie already casually endangers an innocent to serve his purpose, implying danger is more to his soul than body.
• How to Train Your Dragon: Mood: Bitterly droll and sarcastic despite harrowing life-and-death stakes. Established by: Contrast between dark, violent imagery of first scene and kid-friendly voice-over. People will die violently, but maybe not people we care about. (though they may be maimed)
• Alien: Mood: Cold, clammy creeping terror. Established by: The cold is there right away, (The beginning with the empty helmets having a conversation sets the sense of alienation nicely, before anybody wakes up) but the fear takes a while…not until the egg scene, really.
• The Shining: Mood: Cold, clinical, dehumanized creeping horror. Established by: Scene with Danny looking in mirror, seeing blood, then mom describing his abuse in a detached way.
• Casablanca: Mood: Sophisticated, witty and bemused on the surface, cold and deadly underneath. Established by: Man is shot dead in streets, but locals don’t lose their good-humor with the aghast tourists.
• In a Lonely Place: Mood: witty, detached, sarcasm on the surface, the possibility of brutal violence underneath. Established by: The almost fight in the street. Dix almost beats the man up, then satisfies himself with a humiliating aside to the man’s wife: “You shouldn’t have done it, honey, no matter how much money he has” The whole movie is about that tension between physical and verbal abuse (and the question of which is worse)

Storyteller's Rulebook #193: Ignore the Dialect, Master the Syntax

We’ve talked before about the danger of writing street slang: you don’t want to sound racist or judgmental, but you know that you can’t use the Queen’s English and sound authentic. In that earlier post, I talked about the importance of giving each character within the setting a unique voice, which is essential, but this time let’s talk about the dialogue itself, and how to include cultural signifiers that don’t sound insulting.

If you’re white and writing black street slang, the danger is that you’re going to be tempted to write something like “I ain’t goin’ to no jail, you got dat?” That sounds awful, of course, and one reason is that it’s based on how it would sound to you, and not on how the speaker would choose to say that.

Instead, on “The Wire”, we get, “I don’t plan on knowing shit about jail, you feel me?” This is the difference between dialect and syntax. In the “Wire” version, other than the expletive, it’s normal English, except with a different syntax. There’s no need to drop the “g” in “knowing”, because the unique syntax makes it inevitable that the line will be read in a certain way.

To go with another example from that series, a white writer’s first instinct might be to write, “Dat’s true”, but that sounds inauthentic, and reads as if the writer is judging the speaker. “True that,” conveys the same cultural connotation in a way that more authentic, sounds more respectful, and has more personality.

You don’t want to say, “Hey this character wouldn’t use the my kind of English, so I’ll have them use my kind of English poorly, with abbreviations, mispronunciations and grammatical errors.” Subcultures don’t try to use your syntax and fail, they develop parallel systems of syntax and they obey those rules as much as Oxford dons obey theirs.

With working class British dialogue, in a situation where we would say “That’s right,” the first instinct of an American writer is to have a British character say “’at’s right!”, because that’s how it would sound to us if they tried to say it the same way. But you need not resort to dialect if you focus on their syntax: If you want it to “sound British” on the page, then have the Brit say “Too right” instead. You don’t need to indicate a British pronunciation, because you’re using an inherently British phrase.

Let’s look at the southern/western dialogue used by Charles Portis for his novel “True Grit”, (dialogue that the Coen brothers transcribed wholesale for their adaptation) Far too many Westerns would include a clichéd line like “He wuz a lyin’ sack a’trash!” but Portis uses the far more authentic-sounding and delightful, “There is trash for you.”  Too many writer associate “southern” or “western” with a lazy drawl, but Portis knew how to capture the unique syntax respectfully, without casting aspersions on the character of the speakers.

Storyteller's Rulebook #192: Tap Into Real Life National Pain

The first of many pieces based on the brand new checklist.

It was 1977, and America was depressed. We’d just lost a war, and, even worse, deep down where we wouldn’t even admit it, we suspected that we had deserved to lose...that we had been the bad guys. As widespread as this suspicion was, few felt that they could say it out loud, for fear of plunging the country deeper into acrimony.

Then an amazing thing happened: a great work of art came along that began the process of healing that wound...a movie called Star Wars. In the movie, three American movie stars played scrappy young rebels taking on a massive empire. The empire kept using its advanced technology to track and slaughter the rebels, leaving smoking villages filled with charred corpses...but a rag-tag band of farmers and outlaws won out by hiding in jungles, infiltrating the enemy army, striking fast and scattering quickly, all the while drawing strength from a meditative, church-less spiritual force.

George Lucas was giving America a chance to empathize with our victims, and refight the war on their side. Years later, when America had swung back in a more reactionary direction, Rambo would return to Vietnam and famously ask, “Do we get to win this time?” But George Lucas had already given us a chance to win...provided we were willing to switch sides. As they watched Star Wars, Americans happily made that switch, and felt that their souls were a little bit cleaner.

Now let’s jump ahead a few years: it was 1984 and America seemed to be on the edge of nuclear war. Few could imagine a bright future. In The Terminator, the Soviets became giant robots, and nuclear war became a robot apocalypse, but the implications were clear: we were caught in closed loop that only had one end. “A storm’s coming.” “I know.” There was nothing left to do but ride off into a sun-drenched desert to prepare.

Cut to eight years later, and writer/director James Cameron updated his fable in Terminator 2. The big, scary, deep-accented robot broke out of his programming, now determined to destroy his own side’s weapons and break the loop, even if it meant destroying himself in the process. In the end, we are back on the highway, but now it is dark, and we have no idea what awaits us down the road: We’ve been sure of the coming doom for so long, can we handle the freedom of not knowing what the future brings?

Nobody walked into these movies expecting any political content, and even afterwards most remained blissfully unaware of the movie’s deeper implications...all they knew was that these movies had resonated with them on a much deeper level than many other blockbusters.

Those movies were all science fiction, which is the most allegorical of genres, but all movies become more meaningful when they include twinges of real-life national pain. Let’s look at the eight movies that I evaluated with the last checklist:

• Bridesmaids: The Great Recession
• Silence of the Lambs: Ted Bundy’s rampage
• Donnie Brasco: 70s government overreach
• How to Train Your Dragon: The “war on terror”.
• Alien: The rise of corporate sovereignty
• The Shining: Domestic violence, racism, and the backlash of the AWM
• Casablanca: The concentration camps
• In a Lonely Place: Domestic violence and postwar PTSD

I’ve said before that you can’t count on your audience to bring their sense of morality into the theater with them, but you can count on them bring their fears, pain, and doubts. They don’t want to think directly about those things, but you can add great resonance to an otherwise apolitical (or lightly-political) story by indirectly referencing them.  This is true even for comedies, because comedy requires pain.

The trick, of course, is to avoid hypocrisy. As I pointed out before, The Avengers tacks on a subplot in which the Avengers protest the fact that SHIELD is using an alien device to make weapons instead of clean energy...but the team members all love their own weapons, and nuke their enemies out of existence at the end without an ounce of compunction. By contrast, each of the eight movies listed above, though very entertaining, deals with its painful national wound in a serious, non-hypocritical manner.

If you want your story to be more meaningful, you should feel your country’s pain...but don’t exploit it.

The New Ultimate Story Checklist is Up!

The last update wasn’t so long ago, so why the new one? Because in the meantime I wrote the first 2/3 or my book, which culminates in the checklist!  (The last 1/3 is about re-writing, etc.)

For the book, I started out with the blog material, but I wound up totally re-writing most of it and reshaping it into something very new. As a result, the checklist was totally rewritten based on how the book chapters organize the material.

Long-time readers will notice that many questions have moved into different sections, some have been added, and some have gone away. Hopefully, each section now has more logical coherence and more of a shape to it, as I progress from the general concept through ways in which that concept plays out over the course of the story. (The Q-and-A session I did after the last checklist was also extremely helpful, so thanks again to those in-depth commenters!)

Here are two reasons I’m doing this now:

• I want to have more sample checklists in the back of the book, so I want to start running new movies through it and generating those.
• As I edit the book, I get tired of seeing the same examples over and over, so I want to use those new movies to find new ones.

So look forward to more Checklist Roadtests, coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

Narrative Breakdown Podcast on Character Flaws

Here we are again, folks, I’ve co-hosted another episode of James Monohan and Cheryl Klein’s storytelling podcast “The Narrative Breakdown”.

This time, we’re talking about character flaws, and I think we came to some excellent conclusions by mixing together out different perspectives. And guess what, there’s a lot more “Breaking Bad” talk, in case you haven’t heard enough of that!

(Including talk of the dear, departed Gale, who manages to cook meth in a much less flawed way.)

Here are some past posts on flaws that I touch on: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Download it here or subscribe on iTunes here!

Also, this is awesome:
 
"El Paso" scene in Breaking Bad plus the rest of it from Bonnie Rose on Vimeo.

Rulebook Casefile: The Demands of Genre on "Breaking Bad"

Well, guys, I said I was ready to move on, but everything else is taking too long, so let’s derive one more rule from that “Breaking Bad” finale, shall we?

Why was the final season so much more satisfying than other acclaimed shows? The most obvious answer is that it wanted to be satisfying. That may not seem exceptional, but there’s actually a lot of pressure on these shows not to satisfy.  In fact, my main fear going into the final seasons was that all those Emmys would finally go to creator Vince Gilligan’s head and the show would catch “prestige drama disease”. *

In later seasons of “The Sopranos”, for instance, you could practically hear David Chase saying to his audience, “I’m not going to wrap things up all neat and tidy for you— what do you think this is, ‘Diff’rent Strokes’?” He let all those awards convince him that he was making “Scenes from a Marriage”, not “The Godfather”.

The gangster genre is synonymous with “rise and fall”, but Chase refused to satisfy those genre cravings because he decided that, no, it was a show about the mobster in all of us, and once he switched to the retribution phase of the story, then the audience would get to divorce themselves from identifying with Tony and suddenly adopt a smug condemnation of him, as if they weren’t enjoying his actions all along.

I sympathize with this concern. It is annoying that audiences get to have it both ways: first getting joy from living vicariously through an antihero’s transgressions, then getting just as much enjoyment from watching those transgression be harshly punished. Chase must have known that Tony’s arrest and trial would make for a great story, but he was unwilling to flip that switch.

But “Breaking Bad” never found itself caught up in that kind of antagonistic relationship with its audience, perhaps because it always put genre first, and drama second. Gilligan knew that Bryan Cranston count inject powerfully-real human emotion into even the most over-the-top situations, so they could continue having fun without losing the gravity.

Even more impressively, Gilligan managed to straddle two genres and totally satisfy both: the Crime Saga and the Western. It’s amazing that the most heartbreaking episode of this critically beloved show still managed to include an old-fashioned desert shoot-out. In fact, Gilligan has made it clear in interviews that the finale was heavily influenced by The Searchers, and it shows.

Rather than chafing under the strain of his genre obligations, as Chase did, Gilligan decided to dance with who brung him and deliver a delightfully pulpy final season, even going so far as to include a great train robbery!

Gilligan cut his audience some slack: we had come with him this far, stuck with his hero though some very alienating periods, and let him put us though a lot of twist-the-knife moral queasiness, and now we had earned a cathartic blaze-of-glory finale. He trusted the earlier darkness to stay with us, long after the catharsis had faded.

In the finale, as in the whole series, he was more than willing to offer a heaping spoonful of genre delights to help the audience swallow a very bitter pill: the show’s bleak diagnosis of America’s sick soul.

* I would say that the only overly-arty episode was “Fly”, about Walt’s allegorical hunt for a fly in his lab, though I know it has big fans.

Tired of Waiting?

Where have I been all week?  Well, blogging, believe it or not, working on the all-new totally rewritten checklist...but now I have to try it out before I commit...so that'll have to wait until next week.  In the meantime, I'll try to get a post up tonight...

How to Create a TV Show, Addendum: Your Show Must Have Appeal

Okay, guys, I think this is my last piece of TV backfill, and then we can get back to other stories…hopefully I’ll get that new Ultimate Checklist up this week!

So I was writing the last piece, about how the pilot must capture the appeal of the show, and it occurred to me that there was something more elemental that hadn’t been said… Your show must have appeal.

This may seem perfectly obvious…After all, doesn’t every story need to have appeal? Well, no. Every story must satisfy the urges that get attract people to that genre, but some genres don’t promise “appeal” per se.

This is true of very serious dramas, bleak crime movies, and dystopian movies. In a stand-alone story, if you’re willing to limit yourself to a very grim-minded audience, then you can simply present a story that goes from bad to worse and then ends, and that’s perfectly legitimate. This is because you’re not asking anybody to come back next week. Nobody would come back for week two of The Silence, or Mystic River, or Clockwork Orange, and that’s fine.

Of course, we now have a lot of seemingly bleak shows on TV, where the viewers are encouraged to think of themselves as very serious people without any desire for emotional gratification, but this is just an illusion. TV shows (and other continuing stories) have to work much harder than movies (and other stand-alone stories) to assure the viewer that it won’t all be downhill.

In a TV pilot, no matter how bleak, there needs to be a moment that makes the audience say, “That’s appealing. I want to see that happen every week.”  To a certain extent, this can merely be base appeal (sex, violence, death), but it almost always has some positive element as well, no matter how small.

Since it’s all any of us are thinking about right now, let’s once again turn to “Breaking Bad.” What was the moment in the pilot that sold that very challenging show to the network? It’s not hard to guess: The scene where Walt, now that he’s cooking meth, suddenly decides to stand up to the kids bullying his disabled son.

The point was clear: yes, this show is going to be about a self-destructive downward spiral, but along the way, our hero will feel empowered to do macho stuff that you’ll think is awesome, and if you come on this journey with us, we’ll give at least one thing to cheer for every week.

That moment was copied fairly shamelessly by the pilot for “The Americans”: the Soviet spy pretending to be a milquetoast American dad sees his tween daughter being hit on by an adult in the mall, then follows the guy home and delivers an old-school Bolshevik beatdown. The point was the same: Don’t worry, this guy’s horrible secret will occasionally have an upside. Set your DVR.

How to Create a TV Show, Addendum: The Pilot Must Showcase the Appeal of the Show

I included this one on the checklist earlier this week, but it never got a piece of its own, so here you go…

As I’ve hinted before, I’m not a fan of something that the rest of the internet really loves: Joss Whedon starship saga “Firefly”. I gave it a shot when it first came on, but gave up quickly…then I gave it another shot later on DVD, got about five episodes in, and gave up again. I know I’m in the minority here, but the show just left me cold.

What I did find fascinating were the DVD commentaries. Though recorded long after the cancellation, Whedon was still bristling with rage about the fact that his two-hour pilot was aired out of order, in favor of starting with a train-robbery episode. He kept derisively quoting from the network notes about how the pilot was nothing but exposition, while the train robbery was fun, and if viewers couldn’t get caught up while starting with the second episode, then the show was never going to work anyway. The problem was that I found myself agreeing with each note.

That pilot is indeed a long, hard slog, as we gradually get to know this bizarre universe and meet a huge case of stowaways, all with massive backstories of their own. Even though we have two hours, by the time we’ve got all the players in place, there’s barely time for an actual story. It’s only in second episode that we really get it: Oh, okay, this is really an outer space Western. There are going to be train robberies, but with cool sci-fi gadgetry. This looks fun.

The problem, in the end, was that neither episode made for a good introduction to the show: the first was all set-up and no fun, and the second was all fun and no set-up. It was too hard to figure out what was going on. But when the network had to choose, I still think they made the right choice in starting with the second.

A pilot needs to move like lightning, because in much less screentime than a movie, it’s got to establish a fascinating new environment, set up a whole ensemble (who all need to have more long-term potential than movie characters) and then it’s got to cram in a whole plot with a beginning middle and end…and that plot has to be appealing.

Think of how tempting it must have been to spend the whole “Breaking Bad” pilot just getting Walt to the point where he’s ready to cook. It’s amazing enough that creator Vince Gilligan manages to get this meek little chemistry teacher through an epic journey from milquetoast to drug cook in one episode…but then he goes much further, getting Walt all the way through his first botched drug deal and murder by the end of the one-hour pilot!

Gilligan knew that he didn’t just need to establish his world and his character, he needed to show what was going to happen every week: Crime! Desert showdowns! Frantic improvisation! Chemistry-related killings!

Now is the perfect time to rewatch that pilot: How quickly are Walt, Skylar, Walt Jr., Hank and Marie established, including the flaws and strengths of each one?  How well are Walt’s problems established? What about this week's plot? And how it all goes wrong?  They couldn’t have pulled that all off if any of those scenes had an ounce worth of fat.  That's how fast a pilot has to be.

Rulebook Casefile: Polarization Meets Reality in "Deliverance"

I’ve written before about how James Dickey’s book (and later screenplay) “Deliverance” was based on a real canoe trip he took with three other businessmen from Atlanta…but in real life the mountain folk who found the men just gave them a nice meal and a lift back to town. Dickey didn’t base the story on the worst thing that had happened to him, but on the worst thing that could have happened to him.

I was aware of that story because the Burt Reynolds character was based on Lewis King, a great guy who died last month, after a long, good life.

I knew Lewis because my mom was his friend and financial advisor, and now she’s helping handle his estate. While getting his papers on order, she was shocked to discover that Lewis had no insurance on any of the commercial real estate that he owned, but I reminded her that in the very first scene of Deliverance, Reynolds finds out that Ned Beatty’s character Bobby is an insurance agent, and snaps: “I’ve never had insurance and I never will…There’s no risk!”

Anyone who knew Lew and watches the movie can see that Dickey copied his friend’s persona very faithfully…but wait just a second—the fourth member of the ensemble, Drew, was played by Ronnie Cox, who had this to say:

• I mean, we used to joke about it, because the four characters are all these four aspects of Jim Dickey. There’s a lot about him as that sort of “outdoors macho-man challenging everybody, and everything’s a competition” in Burt’s character. And there’s the thoughtful, almost timid advertising man, the everyman that was Jon Voight’s character at the beginning of the film. And then there’s the buffoonish, klutzy Bobby. But then Jim Dickey was also a poet and a guitar player who loved to play music, and all of his artistic aspects were in Drew.

So which is it? Is “Lew” based on the real Lew or on Dickey? We need not resolve this, because there is no contradiction. It’s always a good idea to base a character on someone you know, but that character must also be based on yourself, because that’s a well that you can peer much deeper into. Lew had the sort of larger-than-life personality that writers love to appropriate, but Dickey could not have written him well without finding part of Lew in himself.

Deliverance has the sort of four-part polarization that you see here: Head (Voigt), Heart (Cox) Stomach (Beatty) and Crotch (Reynolds): when you add them up, you get a complete human being, as Cox observed. But each character must also be a believable human being in his own right.

“Deliverance” works as both an inter-personal drama, creating a harrowing conflict between four believable characters, and an intra-personal drama, dramatizing the internal debate a person goes through when faced with a traumatic situation. To do so, Dickey combined specific details from the lives of his friends (such as Lewis never buying insurance) with the polarized aspects of his own personality.

The results are tremendously powerful: We utterly believe in the reality of this situation, and yet we also feel that the work has invaded our psyche, exposing our innermost fears and insecurities.

Storyteller's Rulebook #191: Process Vs. Revelation

I recently had to cut ten pages out of an old script, and one thing I found myself doing seemed counterintuitive, since it meant abandoning one of the strengths of the film medium. I realized that, in order to keep things moving, I had to think more like a playwright, and replace process with revelation.

When your heroes unravel mysteries (and almost every type of story has a mystery element, even if the question is just “why doesn’t he/she like me?”), you can either show your heroes visiting a bunch of places and having a bunch of conversations and see the truth dawning on their faces, or you can allow your heroes to get ahead of the audience, confront their antagonist with a bunch of facts they gathered, then have them reveal to both their antagonist and the audience where they went, what they did, and how they figured it out.

Playwrights, for a number of reasons, must do this:

• They can’t afford to have actors who show up every night just to do one scene
• And besides, it’s almost impossible to show “process” on stage, so they train themselves to write these scenes from day one.
• It’s also hard to show silent moment of revelation on stage, where the hero discovers some clue and then we see the truth dawn on his or her face.

Screenwriters, on the other hand, would seem to have none of these problems:

• We can have lots of one-scene actors show up once to shoot their short scenes.
• Film is great at showing process: collapsing time and space to watch a long series of actions and consequences proceed in one montage.
• Film is great at showing close-ups on important objects and then a dawning light in the hero’s eyes.

Nevertheless, screenwriters are wise to learn this trick. This is part of every event being a character event. Yes, it can be emotionally powerful to show characters discover a piece of information, but it’s more emotionally powerful to show them confront others with that information.

So why not show both? Because If you show both the discovery of the information, and the confrontation with the information, then that’s going to feel like a repeated beat for the audience. They just want to find it out once, so they get bored if they have to see multiple characters discover the same information at different times.

Of course, in order to pull this off, you must let your character temporarily get ahead of your audience until the confrontation happens. This is a risk, because it breaks the audience’s identification with the hero, but the reward is worth it.

You’ll notice that this almost always happens with the final reveal in a drawing room murder mystery: even if we’ve been right there on the hero’s shoulder the whole time, playing along with solving the mystery, the hero collects the final clue without us there, so that we can be in suspense until the more important moment, when the hero confronts the villain (surprising us just as much as the villain, if we weren’t able to figure it out without the final clue.)

Process is great too, and I love a good montage, but sometimes you must deny yourself that ability and think like a playwright.

The Ultimate TV Pilot Checklist!

Okay, folks, here we go again. You all know and love the Ultimate Story Checklist, right? That was originally written for screenplays, then expanded to include all types of stand-alone stories. But what about TV shows (and other forms of ongoing stories)? More than ever before, would-be TV writers are required to write “spec pilots”: the first episodes for shows that will probably never exist. We’ve examined “How to Create a TV Show”, so let’s now create the first ever expansion pack for the Ultimate Checklist! (This is, of course, only Version 1, so feel free to kibitz!)

Part 1: Concept (in addition to the questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist)

1. Is your show set in an unsafe space?
2. Do you establish a unique point of view for entering this world every week?
3. Will trouble walk in the door on a regular basis?
4. Does the ongoing situation produce goals or mini-goals that can be achieved on a regular basis?
5. Have you established big stakes that will persist week after week?
6. Do the heroes engage in both physical and cerebral activity?
7. Have you chosen serialized or procedural and accepted the limitations of your choice?
8. Does your pilot build up potential energy (secrets that will come out, potential romances, etc.)?

Part 2: Character (in addition to the questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist)

1. Do you have at least one role that’s strong enough to get a movie actor to come work in TV, and sign a five-year contract before shooting the pilot?
2. Are there at least two more roles that are strong enough to get TV veterans to sign their own five-year contracts?
3. Are all of the other regular roles strong enough in the pilot to attract great actors?
4. Do your characters have irreconcilable problems and flaws (unlike heroes in stand-alone stories, who should have reconcilable problems and flaws)?
5. Does your hero’s big flaw relate to the concept of the show?
6. Does your ensemble have a unique philosophy about how to fill their role (and competition from an allied force with a different philosophy)?
7. Are your characters good at their jobs (or family roles, if that’s how they’re defined)?
8. Do your main characters have decision-making power?
9. Have you polarized your ensemble impartially?
10. Does each member of your ensemble have a different metaphor family (even if they have the same job)?
11. Does each member of your ensemble have a different default personality trait?
12. Does each member of your ensemble have a different default argument tactic?

Part 3: Structure (in addition to the questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist)

1. Have you chosen premise pilot or center-cut, and accepted the limitations of that choice?
2. Does your pilot have the average page-length for its format?
3. If your show is for network or basic cable, do you have the right number of commercial breaks for your format?
4. And if so, do you end every act on a cliffhanger or escalation, especially the middle one?
5. Do all of your storylines believably occur (and climax) within the same time frame?
6. Do your storylines have a variety of tones?
7. Does at least one character, (either a cast member or the guest star) go through all the steps (practical and emotional) for solving a large problem?
8. Does your pilot end with a twist or escalation that will kick future episodes into high gear?

Part 4: Scenework: Use all the same questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist

Part 5: Dialogue: Use all the same questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist

Part 6: Theme (in addition to the questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist)

1. If your show is not a naturalistic slice-of-life show, is it a metaphor for a universal human emotional dilemma?
2. Does your pilot begin with a statement of philosophy and/or theme?
3. Will the heroes grapple with new moral gray areas on a weekly basis?
4. Does your world bring rich and poor together on a regular basis?
5. Have you decided if your stories will generally be about intended or unintended consequences?
6. Are the storylines in your pilot thematically linked in an indirect way?

Part 7: Tone (in addition to the questions from the Ultimate Story Checklist)

1. Have you chosen whether this should air on network, basic cable, pay cable, or streaming, and are you meeting the expectations of those buyers (For instance, if this is for pay cable, have you included the nudity and/or violence those networks want)?
2. Does your pilot ask more questions that it answers, but still provide a satisfactory stand-alone story (even if that story is just the accomplishment of a mini-goal)?
3. Is there something bold, weird, and/or never-before-seen about this pilot?
4. Does your pilot contain all of the entertainment value inherent in your premise (rather than just setting everything up and promising that the fun will start next week)?

So that’s it.  What do you think?  (And if you’re wondering why the categories are in a different order than the original checklist, it’s because these conform to Checklist v4, which hasn’t gone up yet, but it’s coming soon!)

How to Create a TV Show, Addendum: Give Your Main Hero a Flaw That Resonates With the Setting and Theme of the Show

TV heroes are more flawed than ever these days, and I’m totally cool with that. Dr. Kildare is our and Dr. House is in. But some shows seem to have missed the point. You can’t just reach blindly into a grab bag of flaws and randomly apply one to your hero. The most egregious offender is the disappointing FX series “The Bridge”.

Lots of people have tried to get shows about the border going for years, and this one looked like it had a winning formula, but I found the show to be grating, largely because of the tick-driven performance of the Diane Kruger, who plays a detective with a pretty series case of Asperger’s.

There are a couple of problems with this:

First of all, it literally makes no sense that she would keep her job. This is post-employment America, where people get fired at the first hint of a problem and replaced immediately from an ocean of the overqualified. Increasingly heartless employers have zero tolerance for any sort of abnormal behavior. We no longer live in a world where people shrug and say “Whatcha gonna do, we can’t fire ‘em.”*

But more importantly, it makes no sense thematically. Yes, it’s great when TV heroes have flaws, but those flaws should resonate with the setting and the theme.

They should have problems that are inherent to their role in life:

• Walt the chemist on “Breaking Bad” is, as the tagline says, “extremely volatile”.
• Don the ad man of “Man Men” is a manipulative liar.
• Ted on “How I Met Your Mother” has an overly romanticized view of life.

It’s even better when their flaw makes their workplace an especially unsafe space for them:

• Dr. House and Nurse Jackie both  have pill additions.
• Sam the bar-owner on “Cheers” is a recovering alcoholic.
• Carrie on “Homeland” is fighting a particularly paranoid case of bipolar disorder, but she has a job that requires her to suspect everybody.

There are lots of interesting flaws that Kruger’s character on “The Bridge” could have had:

• It could be a problem specific to the setting, such as a secret lover on the other side, a hidden family history, or a sideline in smuggling...
• It could be a general issue we associate with the border: bigotry, violence, drug addiction, drug dealing, rage, corruption, blind obedience to unjust laws, refusal to accept change, a cowboy mentality, etc.
• Or if you wanted to get more abstract, you could even say “lack of boundaries”, or “slipperiness”…

There were dozens to choose from. But Asperger’s? That’s just random. Asperger’s + the border = nothing. The internal struggle doesn’t relate to the external struggle, the plot never collides with character, and the show never comes alive.

Unless your show is on CBS, your main character needs a big flaw, but please to make sure to choose a flaw that resonates with (and is magnified by) the setting of the show.

* But wait, what about Monk and Sherlock Holmes, who were just as twitchy?  Didn’t they get to solve crimes? Yes, but they weren’t police employees.  They were specialists who were brought in on hopeless cases where the value of their insights outweighs the liability of their neuroses.  The heroine on “The Bridge” is full-time and taking any call that comes in!

What’s the Matter With Hollywood: Hair Edition

So I watched the pilot for “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, which was so-so. There were various problematic things about it, but nothing moreso than this:

That hair! I am so sick of that damn hairstyle! To a certain extent it’s always been the case that every actress on TV has the same hairstyle, and I understand that hairstyle fashions come and go, but what makes this style so bad is that it’s particularly unrealistic, and it’s been the universal default actress haircut for almost ten years.

Now please understand, I’m a manly-man catch-bullets-in-my-teeth tough guy, so I’m not supposed to know or care about hairstyles, and I don’t, I promise… That’s why it took me years to notice how omnipresent this damn thing was, and why it bothered me so much.

I first noticed it in the ads for “Rizolli and Isles”. The whole point of this show is that these women have nothing in common. One is tough, butch and no-nonsense, while the other one is feminine, fancy, and stylish. But just look at the damn ads:

They’re clones! The “tough” one has the exact same super-girly hairstyle as the girly one! The problem is that no woman who isn’t paid to be pretty has ever woken up in the morning and given herself this hairstyle. It takes about half an hour. Stylists pride themselves on this hairstyle because it’s hard to create.

In real life, if you’ve got really long hair, you have limited options for keeping it out of your face: bangs, barrettes, ponytails, or product. Women with serious jobs only have time for the first three, but every career woman on TV or in movies somehow has time for the fourth. Here’s another example of two women who are supposed to be very different, and in this case they’re both supposed to be super tough: the remake of Total Recall...

How different can they be? They have the same damn hairstyle! And how tough can they be? They’ve both spent all morning with their stylist!

But “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is a new low, because in this version, the character is a radical revolutionary who specifically explains in her very first scene that she lives in her van. This is not just a throwaway line. We see the van. There’s no shower. And she goes on constant rants against the government and conformity! And she’s got that goddamn hairstyle!  I can’t take it anymore!  I can’t take it!

That is all. I just had to get that out of my system.  Back to real content tomorrow.

Storyteller's Rulebook #190: Limit Yourself

PIXAR had a problem. They had pioneered the idea of computer animation and made some very appealing short films featuring a jumping desk lamp, so they were eager to move into features ...but their technology seemed to have huge limitations.  

There was a reason that they had been anthropomorphizing lamps: they just couldn’t get the hang of creating hair or warm-looking skin, which seemed to mean that they would never be able to feature human characters.

They parleyed their short Tin Toy into a first feature called Toy Story. While that was in production, they sat down for a now-legendary lunch in where they tried to figure out the future of the company: they couldn’t make movies about toys forever, but how many movies they could make about heroes without hair or warm skin?

In addition to more Toy movies, they wound up brainstorming a list of five more ideas, all of which eventually got made:

• Ants: A Bug’s Life 
• Monsters: Monsters Inc. (They didn’t know at the time that by the time they got to this movie, they would finally master hair, and be eager to show it off) 
• Fish: Finding Nemo 
• Cars: Cars 
• Robots: WALL-E

Once they had their list, they realized that had a really hard job ahead of them. The problem was that all of these potential heroes would be hard for audiences to identify with…in large part because they lacked hair and warm skin!

So was it worth doing? Was there any point in making movies about such unlikely subjects? Yes, but they’d have to make up for the inherent liabilities with extra assets: they would have to create heroes that were extra-lovable, extra-compelling, extra-human.

Faced with such a daunting task, they had to admit something that no one else in town was willing to say out loud: the Hollywood way of crafting stories was broken.

In the heyday of the studio system, as historian Thomas Schatz famously described in his book “The Genius of the System”, the studios managed to closely manage their artists in a way that unleashed creativity instead of stifling it. During the system’s peak, from the mid-‘30s to the mid-‘40s, they somehow created something unprecedented and never again replicated: quality and quality control at the same time.

PIXAR realized that, if they were going to create five very expensive movies about five different types of hard-to-like creatures, they were going to have bring back that studio spirit. This meant that they had to bring back the idea of the “story department”. Egos had to go out the window, replaced with rigorous group critiques. Everything was constantly second-guessed by their “braintrust” and whole movies were sometimes sent back to the digital-drawing-board.

The results, as you probably know, were stunning. They were creating characters that were so lovable, even people who disliked computer animation were flocking to the theater every year. More than any other studio name in town, “PIXAR” came to mean quality.

And then a funny thing happened: they ran out of limitations. Now that they can tell any type of story, the PIXAR name has started diminish in the public’s eyes. They aren’t bending over backwards to make us fall in love anymore, because they seem to feel like their new human characters should be inherently likable.

But no character is inherently likeable. Even if you’re making a live-action movie, your character are just cold constructs until you hook them up to a lightning bolt and jolt them to life. Every character starts off as a bug, a fish, a car, a robot… they only have as much life as you give them. I wish that every studio would take PIXAR’s lead and bring back story departments, but unfortunately, it seems PIXAR is joining their competitors instead of beating them.

Meanwhile, if you don’t run a studio, what lesson can be learned from this? Limit yourself. Put yourself in a box and try to figure out how to do great work inside of it. Can you write a great thriller set entirely in two apartments, like Bound? Can you make people cheer for a love affair between a teenage boy and an eighty-year-old woman, like Harold and Maude? Can you make an entire super-hero movie out of found footage, like Chronicle? Can you write a silent movie, like The Artist?

Hold your own feet over the fire. Create a situation where you find yourself saying “This will only work if I do everything right.” Because guess what? That’s always true.