MOST - this word should describe everything you do with your screenplay - it has to be the MOST interesting hero, MOST exciting moment, MOST funny moment, MOST thrilling action, etc. I call this making it “Bigger and Better.” We’ve all heard “It’s all be done before.” Well I didn’t really think much about this until I started to look at the action in one of my scripts and thought well I’ve seen car chases before, what will make mine stand out? That’s when I came up with the concept that you have to make it bigger and better than what we’ve seen before in the movies.
Try this exercise - make a list of things in your movie that
you've seen before in other movies and then write down
next to them how you plan to make them Bigger and Better.
One illustration of this that pop's into my head is from the movie Terminator 3.
There's a car chase scene in it that is really spectacular - wait how can a car chase
scene in a sequel be bigger and better?
Well the writers were really creative - they had the robot control the police cars
and ambulance with electicity so that they drove on their own, then they had her
drive a huge oversize crane type truck down the middle of a city knocking out
powerlines and hanging the terminator (Arnold) off the hook and dragging
him through buildings! Pretty exciting never seen before stuff! I haven't seen the movie in a while and those images are still vivid in my mind - unforgettable.
It's that "unexpected factor" - that there's something new in this movie
that gets people to pile into the theaters. And when your script calls for
something mundane - make it bigger and better.
Anything can be spiced up with a little brainstorming.
There's a technique I learned from Mel Helitzer who wrote
Comedy Writing Secrets - called "What if?"
You take your idea and begin a line of questioning that leads you to new places
you hadn't thought of simply by asking "What if?"
He says "Don't worry if your ideas seem absurd or silly, the idea now
is to get your imagination in gear."
Say your original idea was: A guy who falls off a horse and breaks his back
and can't go on to reach his dream of becoming a rodeo star.
You might think hmm that sounds pretty interesting but try out "What if" and you'll see how much more interesting it can become:
What if the guy is one legged and he's already gone through many obstacles in his life to get as far as he has in the rodeo circle?
What if there's an experimental back surgery available but if it doesn't work he'll be paralyzed for life?
What if he can't afford the surgery and has to convince his father the reigning rodeo champion to pay for his surgery even though they haven't been on speaking terms for 8 years?
What if the reason they haven't been speaking is that the dad was the one responsible for him losing his leg? And now he has to forgive him and beg him for money for a surgery that may cripple him even worse!
What if the father is also mad at his son for not going to his mother's funeral when she died 4 years ago?
What if the father is afraid to lose his only son too and won't fund his surgery?
I could go on and on - that's the point - to let your creative mind take you places you wouldn't have first thought of. And that only took me five minutes to create those questions which took a simple story idea and brought out the complexity in it from the character's emotional experiences. One way to create a character we care about is by having him experience some form of suffering - because pretty much every person has had some type of suffering in his/her life and in a sense can relate to his story even though they've never lost a leg or ridden in a rodeo - it's the emotional storyline that captures the audience's sentiments.
So try out this "What if" technique and you'll find yourself besting even your "best"
ideas. Keep going until you've got one that feels right.
And remember the level of believability depends upon the emotional storyline
you've created for your character - it's what allows him to have specific reactions
that are justifiable.
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