Write Here, Write Now

Writing in my view is about consistency. While I've written before on this site about what I call "the blue brick" and how something "out there" can throw audience suspension of disbelief, I think it might be worth going over a few things, as they come up time and time again on blog sites, discussion forums, e-bulletins etc and I'm way too nosy not to throw in my two pence worth.

Things can happen in films just because they do. I've written before that people who question films for the sake of it get my goat (love that expression - I can imagine a little cartoon man riding a goat, bucking bronco style, complete with cowboy hat!), but if one IS going to include "out there" concepts (space aliens, monsters, haunted houses, etc), it helps for there to be a reason.

This does not mean every "out there" thing has to have its basis in reality, far from it. When a writer creates an "out there" world, anything can happen. Literally anything. In my latest spec, my protagonist talks to both representations of God and the Devil. Why? Because they exist in that world, regardless of an audience's opinion in this one. Some might even say the two characters in question are not God or The Devil, but my protagonist's conscience or even a psychosis as he struggles between notions of Good and Evil. Whatever. A reader should be able to see that this spec contains a supernatural/psychological element, largely because I have set it up from the start.

Set something up from the start, you can do anything. It's no good to start in the real world and introduce a supernatural element as an afterthought halfway through, the audience won't believe in it. Equally, starting a movie with werewolves and then having those creatures disappear and the rest of the movie play out as Ron Howard family-movie is no good either. Okay, I'm being massively facetious (and I can hear you say: do writers really do that at all? I can assure you, I've read them, they can). Consistency is everything in the spec script. You want supernatural, you need it from the start. You want horror, you need it from the start. You want thrills...You guessed it: you need it from the start.

This does not mean you can't "build up" to the supernatural element, to the horror part, to the thrills and spills. Of course you can. Ghost did not start with Patrick Swayze at Pearly Gates, Alien did not start with the chest burster, Enemy of The State did not start with Big Brother knocking on Will Smith's door out of nowhere. All those films established themselves first, not only in story, but in arena.

Arena is such an important part in the set up of the first act and so often overlooked by new writers. I find this is often because new writers believe arena is only about location. I describe it as "the feel of the piece incorporating location" as I feel it's a more helpful definition. In other words, arena describes not only WHERE the action is set, but HOW it plays out. For example, if you wanted to write a romantic comedy, you wouldn't set it in a Friday The Thirteenth-style woodland and somebody with a chainsaw wouldn't figure in it. Well, durr I hear you cry (and I can tell you I actually HAVEN'T had a script like this!) That's genre convention. Rom-Coms tend not to carve people up like Christmas turkeys and hack people to death with chainsaws. It's just the way of it. They carry storylines of boy-meets-girl, as we've discussed before.

So think about the movie YOU'RE writing now in terms of genre convention. Let's say it's a supernatural thriller, like mine. What kind of supernatural? Let's say religion. Okay. Let's think of the movies that have religious-supernatural elements: Angel Heart is one. Stigmata, another. Dust Devil, one of my all time faves. What types of things in these movies give us the "feel of the piece"? Well we have crucifixes. Shit loads of them in all three. Candle sticks, then altars, voodoo, knives, priests, blood juxtaposed with communion wine...the list goes on. All these items ADD to the premise behind eachmovie that religion harbours a secret, something that needs to untangled, something that threatens the protagonists of all three films. In addition, the protagonists suffer dreams and visions and all go on a quest, looking for an answer that only God or a representative of God (like a priest) can provide.

They are all pointers that add up to a massive game of Cluedo if you like. Each one adds to the feel of the piece and helps the audience believe in the world the screenwriter and then director have painted for them. Just placing characters in locations - churches and the like - does not do this. Churches are nice places - people get married and christened in them. But they are also dark places too for some people. It's that latter part then the script has to access for films like Angel Heart. From accessing it, it opens up that new sense of the world behind the story.

So access your arena: a reader wants to know the "feel" of your piece, not just where it is. If you can do this consistently, they will stay with you. If you do not, that's when the barrage of questions appear on your reader's report: why did your character do this? Why did this happen, it felt like it came out of nowhere? What was the point of this, that or this event in the plot? What are your characters' motivations, what is the significance of their actions or various things in the scene with them...

...I could go on, but consistency is key. Think about what pointers you can add to your story. And put them at the beginning and throughout, then the reader will stay with you.

Sounds so simple, doesn't it? ; )

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