Talkin' 'Bout Structure, Part I

See, although we plan on writing a screenplay in front of the entire internet and his mom and everything, for me, this is the real screenwriting without a net. I'm going to expound on an issue of screenwriting technique -- structure -- without any sort of professional credit to my name. What's more, I'm going to be talking about a method of dealing with structure that's the focus of two pretty good books -- David Howard's How to Build a Great Screenplay and Paul Joseph Gulino's Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach -- without benefit of having the books on hand. Mistakes will be made, laughs will be had, cease-and-desists will be delivered.

But -- But! -- since, as mentioned earlier, we plan to use the sequence method in the writing of the Spitball! screenplay, some kind of introduction is necessary for those that don't know, won't show, or don't care what's going on in the hood.

What do we mean when we talk about structure? Good question, and there's probably a good answer for it, but for right now, we'll have to use my definition that I'm making up right now. What I mean by the word is simply how the various parts of a screenplay (usually meaning scenes) are put together into a whole, and how those parts do a number of things: how they tell a story that moves from event to event, generating a kind of momentum that (ideally) hooks a reader into the story; how the parts of a screenplay communicate ideas by virtue of how they are placed together; and how those parts are ultimately shaped to deliver some kind of effect -- usually a cathartic climax.

Why is this important? There are some who would say it isn't, and more importantly, would say the very idea of structure is a bane on screenwriting (conjured by an evil wizard, named either McKeedemort or Fieldemort, accounts vary) that has resulted in bland, stupid, predictable color-by-number scripts that's crippled both Hollywood and the indie scene -- and that screenwriters should abandon structure and "write from the heart" or "more organically" or "without boundaries" or the like, and the result will be better screenplays that are creative, profound and artistically successful.

There is some truth to this.

Any theory of structure, at least any that attempt to take into account 90% of the films Hollywood made from the beginning of the medium to today, will result in something that looks an awful lot like a formula. And anything that looks like a formula will be used as a formula. There are a lot of cookie-cutter scripts out there, both spec and produced, and I don't doubt for a second that the rise of Syd Field and Robert McKee empowered a lot of people, people who wouldn't otherwise bother, to try their hand at screenwriting. I mean, it's just three acts and an inciting incident and three (or is it four?) plot points -- just plug and play, right?

So I'm sympathetic. And, for the record, I definitely think there's no correct way to write, whether it be screenplay or novel or play or what have you. If it works, it works. But, ultimately, I'm going to side with the structuralists (no, not that kind of structuralism) and make a case for structure in screenplay, and this "sequence method" in particular.

Why?

Because I have to.

Some people are natural storytellers. They know just how to hook you, and how to keep reeling you in through the entire story, so that by the end of five minutes, twenty-two minutes, forty-five minutes, two hours, you clap and cry "more! more!" and yet at the same time, feel satisfied. They don't need no stinkin' plot points; they know that all they need to do is make you ask, "what happens next?"

I am not one of those people.

Although I graduated with a degree in theater and (while we technically didn't have specializations within the degree) considered myself a playwright, one thing that wasn't really taught was structure. No, that's not entirely true -- we did discuss it, but as a way of analyzing existing texts, and this was more for the directors. No, the writers were told to write, literally, whatever the fuck they wanted, however bizarre or nonsensical, and it was the director's responsibility to figure it out. (I shit you not.) If you know me, then you know that, if given the chance to be as ridiculous and absurd as possible, I'll return your investment 300%.

(Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get Todd Reidy to post on the forums about how he had to direct a scene I wrote -- a conversation between two cleaning ladies that was composed entirely of fragments from a dream journal I had, a scene that made Ionesco look like friggin' Miller. I thought it was hilarious, but no one who had to work on it was amused.)

And so, freed from the responsibility of constraining my off-the-wall ideas and experimental prose, I continued in this manner for my 4 years in the theater program. And while that seemed nice at the time, when I decided that film was the place to be and screenwriting was what I wanted to do, I found myself completely unprepared for the task at hand. I had stories I wanted to tell, but when I sat down to write them, they either meandered (and ungracefully so) or I was at a loss on how to fill 90 to 120 pages with content. What I was missing was structure. I didn't know, really, where to stop, because for years I was encouraged to stop whenever I felt like. Or I didn't know how to fill in spaces from point A to point B, because for years I was encouraged to go in any direction I wanted without a goal in mind.

I'm sure there are people out there who think this is exactly what Hollywood needs more of, and again, I'm sympathetic. I'm sure there are plenty of wannabes (and professionals) who could do with a bit of the ol' "hang loose" philosophy. (Sure didn't hurt Charlie Kaufman, who started in the very rigid, structurally-speaking, world of TV.) But frankly, I had been ingrained to take my creative freedom for granted, but the result of unfocused creative freedom is wank. I needed something to enforce some discipline. I needed to (as horrible as it sounds) constrain my freedom.

Because structure is, ultimately, something that constrains -- or, perhaps better put, contains. It's a vessel, it's a box, it's a scrapbook. It comes in all shapes and sizes (despite what you might've heard). The shape you choose influences what the content looks like, but you can still put any content you want into it, and it's naturally shaped to push your story along and help it achieve its aims. Inna final analysis, though, it's a tool. It's there for you to use. It's there to help you. And it can get the job done a lot faster. As long, of course, as you know how to use it, and more importantly, when to use it.

So, if you wonder why I'm pushing structure pretty hard during this Spitball! experiment -- well, you would too if you spent years trying to push nails into wooden planks with your thumb.

(Well, lookee that -- over a thousand words, and I never even got into the whole sequence method thing. Part II, coming soon!)