Mysticism vs. Structure in Screenwriting
The paint-by-numbers approach just kills the wonder, doesn’t it?
Let it all hang out when you’re writing, and apply structure when you’re editing. Just go for it, balls to the wall. Clean up the mess later. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Get it yet?
The fact of the matter is that we really don’t have a great idea of where ideas truly come from. However, I can attest to the fact that they have a tendency to come in the shower. Why, anyone can speculate: feeling relaxed, being fairly soon after waking, rubbing things on naked skin, physical activity, who knows.
Whatever the case, there’s no excuse not to acknowledge that there’s a bit of the untamed mystical about writing. Often the best ideas are the ones that come “out of nowhere.” A flash or insight that needs to be struck upon, yet often needing the training to do so. The Archimedes in the bath moment—because (obviously) the shower wasn’t invented yet.
It would be chauvinistically stupid for us to discount these simply because they didn’t come from structure. Mercifully, most don’t, but most of us still make the mistake of giving such ideas shorter shrift than they might warrant simply because they’re incomplete. Those crazy, weird dreams or moments that seem to pop out of nowhere really are often the interesting things about our work, the things that make us unique.
Once upon a time, I was told by the then-director of my film school that he can only watch a movie as entertainment once, and that upon any subsequent viewing, he’s trying to break down the writing, the camera work, the lighting, the costumes, etc. Still, I can’t help but feel that he’s doing himself a disservice by not being able to appreciate a film for the message and the feeling that it can bring across, multiple times.
To me, it’s not an issue of being able to understand how a camera trick was done, or even why Don Draper defending the porter in the first episode of Mad Men excuses him once we learn that he’s a shameless philanderer in the end of the same episode. Rather, it’s an issue of losing the joy of the medium.
Being able to sink into the experience of a film even upon multiple viewings–to allow it to hypnotize–is part of the true cinematic world. To me, the competent artist can watch, love, and enjoy, but have such a grasp of structure and technique to be able to rattle off the main points of the film in conversation later without really having to think it through deeply: “oh, that’s refusing the call, that’s the break into two, that’s the midpoint, that’s the all is lost…” etc., etc., etc.
That’s not to say that I can’t watch a film for structure; every time I break down a script I take notes on the computer throughout and pause at the end of each scene to make sure that I have the flow of the scenes correct so that I can beat them out later. That’s the genesis of the analyses you see here at Goat Among Sheep.
Rather, I would argue that the ability to watch, enjoy, and love cinema for what it is is actually the same as the love required to channel these brilliant ideas from wherever in the ether they come from.
Let technique do the heavy lifting of editing, not of storytelling. They’re two different animals. The story might come to you all as a flash if you’re really lucky, but more likely it will come in bits and pieces that you write down and unconsciously link together until something useful pops out. Once it does–that link is made–then it’s time to write that all down, glossing over the parts that aren’t working: “I need X to happen here for it all to make sense.”
Only then do you begin to get a rough idea of where your story and your characters are living, working, shitting, fucking. Then you can step back and tune it according to classical structure.
Remember, the idea is your brilliance, and the structure is at its service, not the other way around.