The Craft of Scene Writing: Beat by Beat to a Better Script

INTRODUCTION

Let’s be honest, no one comes out of a movie talking about structure. What audiences love and remember about a movie are great scenes. Marlon Brando in the back seat in On the Waterfront giving his I coulda been a contender speech. Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally with the climactic punch line: I’ll have what she’s having. In Superbad, Jonah Hill professing I love you to his friend Michael Cera by touching his nose with a boop.

Most of the canonical screenwriting instructional tomes emphasize structure and boil it down to a near-exact science that predicts with surprising accuracy where the handful of major plot points fall in any given 110-minute film. These paradigms track elements such as midpoint, stakes, reversals, allies turning into enemies, and the character’s darkest cave, across the span of the script.

Guess what? Every single one of these moments plays out as a scene. Story structure alone does not ensure a great screenplay.

Screenwriters also need to learn the nitty-gritty craft of scene writing to succeed both creatively and professionally. It’s a skill necessary not only for the journey toward becoming a great writer, but also for navigating your professional career, whether you’re trying to break into the Hollywood spec market or land write-for-hire gigs.

The increasing globalization of the movie marketplace and the plethora of $200 million film budgets based on preexisting franchises (Transformers, The Hunger Games, The Avengers, etc.) translate to shrinking film slates. Studios and independent companies have limited budgets to buy scripts or to put scripts in development, the process of improving a script with notes and rewrites.

Regardless of the specific state of the industry, the market always favors a script that is ready to go and always needs writers who can deliver a near-flawless, ready-to-shoot draft. It’s not enough to have a cool concept. A polished script with bulletproof execution allows a producer to submit it immediately to actors or directors who are usually the linchpin of the packaging process.

For example, Jack Nicholson says he won’t do a movie unless it has a handful of great scenes. Consider some of the many amazing scenes from his movies—the very moments that have made him a household name and a movie star. The dinner table scene in The Postman Always Rings Twice; the destruction of the art gallery in Batman; the ode to his penis in Carnal Knowledge; the terrifying Here’s Johnny scene in The Shining; and, of course, from Five Easy Pieces, the scene: his countercultural approach to ordering a chicken salad sandwich.

These scenes set the bar for which you must aim. If you want your script to gather the professional allies whose involvement gives your script a chance to be made, or if you hope one day to get paid to adapt your favorite book or comic book, write scenes that attract Jack Nicholson, this generation’s Nicholson, or the next generation’s. The legendary Howard Hawks said that a good movie is Three great scenes, no bad ones.

The principles in this book will help beginning writers to write great scripts and experienced writers to gain a more complete mastery of their craft.

This book pushes you closer to working as a professional screenwriter, not by teaching you how to network, maneuver the business, or predict the next shift in the commercial zeitgeist. What it will do is teach you to write the great scenes that will develop your voice and make your script (or novel or play) stand out from paint-by-number imitators.

As is true in life, if you focus on the craft of what you love to do, much of the business side takes care of itself.

Write an amazing, modestly budgeted script that is actor-bait (castable) and director-bait that adheres to its concept and tells the stories with vivid images clearly projected into the mind of the reader. This will open doors for you.

I’m not at all suggesting that you completely ignore the business side while you develop your craft. Prepare yourself by marketing yourself as a writer. Build your base of contacts, and research companies and producers for whom your script might be a good fit. However, I advise against making submissions until you’re confident and have confirmed with experienced readers or industry insiders that your script is as good as you can make it. You usually only have one chance with a company or professional. Reading this book will also recalibrate your expectations for great screenwriting and help you determine when your script is ready to hit the market.

Now let’s get back to craft.

Whereas most books look at turning points, reversals, and surprises at a big-picture, structural level—acts and sequences—this book examines them at the microscopic level of beats, scenes, dialogue, and even action description. It will help you understand story at a deeper level.

You will see how a scene is a story in and of itself. Even an individual line of dialogue has a story: it builds to a surprise reversal and then moves on.

Consider a line uttered by a woman in a screwball comedy or rom-com. She has her love interest cornered and says:

You’re not getting out of here until you kiss me tonight.

Do you see how this clearly reveals that a line of dialogue is a story? Until is the midpoint. It raises the stakes and creates suspense. The character is trapped. What happens next? The line continues to reveal the story, but let’s stop here.

You’re not getting out of here until you kiss me tonight.

The triangle at me represents the climax of the line, where the other character and the audience have complete comprehension of what’s going on. The setup of until pays off with the surprise reversal that the threat is a looming kiss. The word tonight is anticlimactic, so let’s move it so the line ends on its climax:

You’re not getting out of here tonight until you kiss me.

Although this is an improvement, this book will empower you to see that tonight is superfluous and it’s not even debatable that its elimination is an improvement:

You’re not getting out of here until you kiss me.

If you think I am nitpicking, consider this rewrite of a classic joke.

Q: Why’d the chicken cross the road?

A: To get to the other side of the road.

Of the road is obviously unnecessary. It weighs down the punch line and blunts the joke.

A line of dialogue is much like a joke. It’s a pithy statement that culminates in an engaging surprise. Ultimately, you will learn to approach every word, sentence, and line in your scene with this same regard and vigilance.

In my screenwriting workshops, when writers spend just twenty minutes merely applying the steps in the Appendix, 14 Steps to a Better Screenplay, which distill many of this book’s concepts, they are surprised by how thoroughly and immediately they are able to transform their scenes.

I will also encourage you to take craft tips from other film artisans to broaden your sense of the filmmaking process as a whole. It will help you understand the crafts of the actor, director, and editor in the context of scene writing.

My first draft of this introduction was defensive. I was certain this book would be helpful to short-form storytellers—writers of sketches, web series, and viral videos—but I somehow thought I had to sell screenwriters on scene writing as a special skill or niche that might have a subtle influence on their overall storytelling craft. But while writing the book, I had my own character arc as I discovered that scene writing is neither a specialty nor a niche.

Scene writing is storytelling in its purest form.

Of course, short-form writers will benefit from this book. However, every storyteller can improve his or her craft by understanding the principles of better scene writing. This book is for novelists, playwrights, comedians working on one-person shows, bloggers, graphic novel and comic book writers, speech writers, directors of films and stage plays, producers, actors, songwriters, and, of course, screenwriters.

This book won’t teach you some black magic that supersedes all that you have previously learned about screenwriting. Talent plus everything you already know are your foundation. We will build upon them. And we’ll go deeper.

Although my job here is to bring a systematic method to the madness of sorting ideas into story, I deeply respect and honor the intangible mysteries of the creative process. I will always encourage and support the madness in your method. It’s absolutely essential to the development of your unique voice.

Don’t rebel against craft. Incorporate it. Experience and craft strengthen your intuition. They empower you to use your innate abilities to solve and navigate new and more complex situations.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir said it best, First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.

As you incorporate the lessons in this book into your writing process, here’s a challenge: I want the screenplay you’re working on to be the one you’re not quite ready to write. Like your protagonist, you will not be the same person on page 100 as you are on page 1. She needs to grow before she can achieve her destiny and save the day. You, too, will have to grow and experience a personal character arc to nail your script and finish it.

As the writer, you are the most important hero in your story.

PART ONE

FUNDAMENTALS

1

THE STORY OF A SCENE: BEAT BY BEAT

Scenes are the building blocks of a screenplay. Whether this is your first screenwriting book or your last, you already have a sense of what a scene is. However, I want to bolster your instincts with concrete craft. Let’s look at a concise definition:

A scene is a small unit of story, unified by time and space, which encapsulates a single action and culminates in a change. The change should involve both the story and the character.

In the definition, small means brief, but it definitely does not mean unimportant or trivial. Yes, you will have some very long scenes, but there is only one unit of storytelling smaller than a scene. That is called, as we will see, a beat.

However, a scene is the smallest unit of story that is a story in and of itself.

This is why scene writing is so essential to you as a storyteller. A story for a screenplay is built with several smaller stories, i.e., your scenes. How can you expect to master the 100-page story form without mastering the three-page form?

You probably know a scene when you see one, but let’s jump into the nitty-gritty to augment your intuitive understanding. We will explore each of its aspects individually with the ultimate goal of pulling them all together to create a working definition.

Small Unit

In recent years, some modern movies have had scenes with average duration as short as a minute or so. However, scenes in today’s films average two to three minutes, which is a minute less than forty years ago. An average movie these days is 110 minutes. I’ll do the math for you. Most feature screenplays contain between thirty and fifty scenes, but don’t be surprised if your count is upwards of seventy.

Don’t get caught up in the habits of some of the greatest scene writers in the world and their fun in blasting this convention. I am talking about the eight-page opening of The Social Network, the twenty-minute tavern scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the tense I drink your milkshake scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, or even the multi-character talky scenes in several of Woody Allen’s films.

In general, a longer scene needs a stronger punch, a more powerful climactic twist. No one wants to watch a ten-minute scene in which a character waits for a blind date who never shows up and who never even appears in the movie. That scene should be quick and short. Notice, however, that no one complains about the length of the opening of Saving Private Ryan.

Hold tight. Later in the book, we cover principles that help you to successfully write longer scenes.

Short scenes can have subtle surprises, but a short scene can also culminate in the biggest surprise in your story. There is no rule or implicit decree that a powerfully impactful twist must be embedded in a long scene. If so, every surprise strong enough to turn an act would be telegraphed by its long and lingering scene.

How long should your scenes be? Even if there were an exact answer, it would be different for every scene and every movie. A fast-paced action or thriller franchise like Pirates of the Caribbean or The Bourne Identity might favor shorter scenes, whereas character-based dramas such as Moonlight or Network, or talky comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Superbad might favor slightly longer ones. Start with the goal of two to three minutes each, with a scattering of shorter ones and, if called for, longer scenes containing set-piece moments and emotional high points.

Ultimately the story you are telling, its genre, and your decision on how to tell it will dictate the length of a given scene. By the end of the book, you will have a more well-developed and finely tuned ability to answer this question yourself.

Unified by Time and Space

Scenes are where the story happens. The audience and characters always experience the events in real time, unlike in novels, which often summarize events or condense the passage of time. Past tense does not exist in screenwriting. Even in a flashback, scenes are written in the present tense.

A scene occurs in one place. Can characters move from one room to the next? Sure. In the middle of a bank robbery, a scene might incorporate the bank lobby, its offices, the safe deposit box area, and the vault. Compare this to the set-piece action segment from Heat in which Cheritto (Tom Sizemore) and his crew pull off the heist. Three separate locations and movements are featured: the bank with its inner sanctum, the car from the loading of the loot to the subsequent car chase and crash, and finally a foot chase, which ends with Hanna (Al Pacino) shooting Cheritto. This is more than an individual scene. This is a sequence of scenes.

A sequence is when a series of scenes string together to create the unit of storytelling that is slightly larger than a scene. In a feature screenplay, you will find nine to twelve of these major changes or twists. On average, the climax of a sequence will be more consequential than that of any given scene, especially for scenes within the sequence.

Sequences contain the so-called peaks and valleys that culminate in surprises of significant magnitude to drive the story forward. In Heat, the heist sequence begins when the crew enters the bank and ends the moment when Cheritto is shot and the tension that drives the sequence resolves. This action sequence sprawls across nine pages in the script.

How do you determine the difference between a scene and a sequence? Length is a good measure, but also consider the unity of the action or event. Usually, a sequence will have clearly defined subsections. A practical way to determine if a segment of story is a sequence is to try to identify a spot for a TV commercial break within the section. If there is a natural place for an interruption, you’re probably looking at a sequence. Generally, a scene is an indivisible unit, but a sequence is not.

Single Action

A scene focuses on a single action or event. Essentially, something new happens that pushes the story forward. To illustrate this, here are some examples of memorable scenes from a variety of movies:

•  The Hunger Games—Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers as tribute to protect her sister.

•  When Harry Met Sally—In Katz’s Deli, Sally (Meg Ryan) puts Harry (Billy Crystal) in his place by showing that men can’t always tell when women, ah, fake their pleasure.

•  Bicycle Thieves—Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) tries to steal a bike, and his son witnesses the crowd catching him.

These moments have a sense of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each contains a single, complete action. One thing happens that changes the story.

Imagine if a scene were to be about two things simultaneously. The protagonist learns that the villain is hiding out in an uptown warehouse. But he also discovers that his Aunt Myrtle—who raised him as her own—just passed away. As an actor, how do you play both things? As an audience, how do you feel? Which one takes precedence? Additionally, if a scene contains several actions, how do we know when it’s over? A scene usually ends with the character reaching his goal or accepting that it’s a temporary dead end.

Will there be exceptions and gray area here? Yes, but as a storyteller, look for a clear and dominant action that has an uncluttered impact on the progression of the narrative.

Climax

A climax, like a peak, is where we stop ascending. When we hit that pinnacle, we want to move on. Stories are ultimately about change. If a scene plateaus, i.e., stays at the same level of tension and doesn’t give the audience anything new, this is the opposite of change. There is a very sophisticated technical term in the industry for a scene that flatlines or overstays its welcome: boring.

The climactic moment should ideally take the form of a surprise or reversal, essentially a change. If the character gets what he wants, then he can head off in a new direction, armed with new information, tools, and purpose. If not, then he must find a new approach to pursuing the same goal.

To see how all-encompassing the climactic twist in a scene can be, let’s go to one of the biggest commercial successes of all time… the moment when Hollywood finally figured out the best way to use the Hulk and his alter ego Bruce Banner.

In the climactic showdown of The Avengers, a huge mechanical monster, the Chitauri Leviathan, seems to be more powerful than any of the Avengers. It’s in the distance and closing in on them. As Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) begins walking toward it, Captain America (Chris Evans) says what’s on the mind of everyone in the movie and in the theater:

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry.

BANNER

That’s my secret, Captain.

Of course, there is a pause in the delivery of the line. The suspense looms. What’s the secret? Can he turn into the Hulk fast enough? Is the approaching monster going to demolish him and his friends? And then the scene turns….

BANNER

I’m always angry.

Banner’s body starts to swell and stretch and harden. GREEN SHOOTS THROUGH HIS BODY. THE HULK.

The Hulk proceeds to smash the creature.

In addition to its triple duty as a reversal for the scene, the sequence, and the act, the line turns the entire legacy of the Hulk character beyond the border of this individual film. This is a reminder that there is no requirement that huge changes must happen only in long scenes.

It would be overkill and its own sort of noisy redundancy if every twist in your story were this big. However, we are going to constantly seek the biggest and sharpest turns appropriate for any given scene.

The biggest, best, and deepest climaxes involve character. A consistent thesis in this book is that a climax that incorporates a change in both story and character has the greatest potential to impact the audience.

Two Changes

In addition to the change in plot—the physical predicament of the protagonist as it relates to his goal—a change in the character’s internal state should also occur. This does not violate the principle of a single action because the two are intertwined.

The change, in the form of small-scale or large-scale growth, could lead to the goal’s attainment. For instance, a character’s patience might be the key to getting another character to share critical information.

Sometimes the character’s inability to attain what he came for alters his attitude or approach in the ensuing scene(s). Maybe his confidence gives way to desperation. Maybe a by-the-book character begins to break the rules. Or a character on the brink totally loses control.

Consider the imagined scene described above in which our protagonist is stood up by a blind date. From a story perspective, the change might be slight. Although the moment might not deliver a crushing blow to our protagonist’s ego, the action in the scene will affect our character’s internal state. Stay attuned to his mind-set and the subtle emotional consequences. Does he decide to be productive and go to the gym, or does he slip off his diet by drowning his sorrows in a pint of his favorite ice cream?

I am often asked: Does a scene have to involve a change in the character every time? My response: Why wouldn’t it? A scene’s climax is a twist that reveals insight into a character. If you have only thirty or so of these opportunities in a screenplay, how can you afford to pass up any of them?

The Hollywood paradigm of narrative filmmaking demands scenes containing both kinds of changes.

Notice that in defining a scene we haven’t yet said a single word about dialogue.

Since we’ll be looking at the work of great writers, we’ll be seeing a lot of great dialogue. Many of the all-time greatest scenes have memorable dialogue, which contributes to the misconception that dialogue is the be-all and end-all of great scene writing.

In reality, at the base of a great scene lies a well-defined structure.

Working Definition of a Scene

Mike Nichols found an intuitive working definition of a scene. He said all scenes were either a fight, a negotiation, or a seduction. Eventually, you will find your own definition that suits you, which might be as simple as a character, goal, and obstacle(s).

For now though, let’s explore a slightly more nuanced definition. The more obstacles in a scene, the more a character has to zigzag and change strategy to reach her goal. These ongoing adjustments are essentially small turning points and are the foundation and building blocks for a scene. They are called beats.

A scene is a series of zigzagging beats that culminates in a climax, which will be the biggest surprise in the scene. A series of scenes that ends in an even bigger change is a sequence. Sequences accumulate into a reversal and together make an act. A series of acts culminates with the biggest change, the climax of the overall story.

A beat is the smallest unit of dramatic action. Consider it a small change. If nothing changes in a moment, then there isn’t a beat. But when the character hits a wall, adjusts, and tries something new, that’s a beat. When another character reacts to an action, that’s a beat. These are the aforementioned zigzags.

If a person sits in a chair, the action is not, in and of itself, a beat. If a character waves to someone and the wave is reciprocated, that might not be a beat either. However, if that wave were not reciprocated, then that non-action could be a beat. If a student is told to sit and she refuses, then that’s a beat. There is the deliberate action of defying or disrespecting.

These changes keep the audience engaged by creating suspense and momentum. The bare skeleton of a scene may not look very compelling, but a series of compounding beats serves as the foundation for everything that follows.

Let’s see a scene develop beat by beat.

Scene Analysis:

Clear and Present Danger

Here is a short scene from the movie Clear and Present Danger, the adaptation of the third Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan book. Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) meets with Clark (Willem Dafoe), intent on gathering information that should put him one step closer to his ultimate goal of finding and defeating the villains.

The scene begins with Clark sitting in a hotel lobby as Jack Ryan enters. Clark approaches Ryan and tells him that he is late. Ryan apologizes, and Clark points to his watch and says, Ten minutes. Besides adding a dash of urgency to the scene, the gesture ushers in a sense of unease by making the tardy Jack Ryan start off on the wrong foot. He now must regain Clark’s respect and trust.

Transcription and Description of Scene from

Clear and Present Danger

RYAN

I can’t prove it but…

(This comes close to feeling like exposition, but there is a mild beat: persuading, convincing, or maybe even defending. However, the filmmakers don’t want to spend too much time with this low-level action, so they come in at the tail end of it. In general, informing is never really a beat. If the action is merely delivering information, then that is exposition in its worst connotation. Actors don’t want to deliver it, and audiences will be bored to tears.)

CLARK

Why are you coming to me? I have been out of the game for a long time.

(Clark shuts him down, exposes his shaky footing for what it is—scrambling in the dark—and challenges him.)

RYAN

Well, I was told you were the best, you were tied in.

(Notice the modifiers well and I was told. Without them, this comes off as a straight compliment, possibly even kissing his butt. With them, this becomes a back-handed compliment, with a touch of sarcasm. Harrison Ford and most A-list actors refuse to play characters who are weak or subservient.)

Clark laughs.

(Clark loosens up. He respects Ryan’s refusal to be frazzled or intimidated. Now, in retrospect, we can appreciate Ryan’s beat as cutting through the crap and establishing himself as an equal.)

CLARK

Who told you that?

(He opens up to a straightforward exchange and makes a simple, honest inquiry, which shows that he is taking Ryan seriously. The beat is probably respecting or engaging.)

RYAN

Jim Greer.

(He matches Clark’s directness with a simple, honest answer.)

Clark stares intently at Ryan. Ryan senses the shift to seriousness.

CLARK

How’s he doing?

(Clark poses a question that is part inquiry and part test.)

Look of concern on Ryan’s face.

RYAN

Not good.

CLARK

He’s a good man.

(Clark confides how he feels while the following description describes a sort of testing.)

Clark sees Ryan’s look of concern.

RYAN

The best.

(Ryan openly shares his true feelings and establishes common ground with Clark through their mutual respect for Jim Greer. Ryan passes muster. Clark deems him worthy of sharing information. The turning point is highlighted by a series of changes: in the music, the pacing, Clark’s blocking as he stands up, and his tone of voice.)

CLARK

(suddenly exuberant)

You a coffee drinker, Dr. Ryan?

(The tipping of the emotional scales toward the warmer and lighter side is apparent. And posing a question is a crafty way of grabbing Ryan’s and the viewer’s attention.)

RYAN

Coffee. Sure.

Clark stands up, offers hand.

CLARK

Try Lindo Brand. I think you’ll find what you are looking for.

(This cryptic and playful way of offering Ryan the tip rings true in the voice of a secret agent. Now that Clark trusts Ryan, he proceeds with confiding and helping.)

Notice how the climax culminates in a clear change in the story (a clue to investigate) and in their relationship (they bonded over a mutual friend). Perhaps it’s even the start of an alliance.

Beat Outline

A scene is a story in and of itself, and the beat outline tells it in its entirety. In the above scene, we don’t have to rely on a series of he said this or she said that to describe it.

Jack starts off on the wrong foot with Clark, whose mistrust and skepticism are the basis of their conflict. Jack risks offending him to establish equal footing, which leads them to common ground—their mutual affection for a shared friend. With a new sense of respect and trust for him, Clark chooses to share information that will help Jack.

The scene’s structure is the backbone that props up and supports everything in it. This spine consists of beats that provide twists and turns. A beat can play out as a line of dialogue or an action/inaction.

Notice how these simple beats are in constant escalation in the above scene:

•  Justifies, defends

•  Shuts him down

•  Insults/compliments

•  Loosens up, reveals himself

•  Tests him with question about Greer

•  Answers question with honesty, shows himself

•  Continues test

•  Shows sympathy, passes test

•  Finds common ground

•  Perceives the bond, decides to help

This scene is fairly subtle emotionally and is made up of only short one- and two-line dialogue exchanges. However, over-the-top scenes, marked by huge emotions, can also play out in a few simple beats, even if those beats seem quite plain at the outline level. Let’s look at a great scene—which also happens to be full of audacious dialogue—and x-ray it to reveal its backbone. Here are its first five beats:

•  Character A asks Character B where the stolen property is (Character B’s son has it).

•  Character B lies and says that he doesn’t know.

•  Character A calls him on the lie.

•  Character B tries a more elaborate lie.

•  Character A hurts him and convinces Character B that he knows he is lying.

Goons strong-arming a street thug? Retorting with an elaborate lie? Calling his bluff? Doesn’t this sound like a cliched scene from a bad eighties TV drama? It’s actually one of the most memorable scenes in modern cinema. It is the beginning of the interrogation scene between Cliff and Vincent from True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino.

The dialogue in this scene is purposefully incendiary and offensive because one character wants to incite the other into taking a violent impulsive action. This is an additional challenge for you. Don’t get caught up in the showy banter and miss the point of how the posturing serves the scene’s backbone: simple, clear-cut goals and beats.

Scene Analysis:

True Romance

The vicious Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) is described in the script as the Frank Nitti to Detroit mob leader Blue Lou Boyle. He and his henchmen, Virgil and Lenny, have ambushed Clifford (Dennis Hopper), a retired cop, in his trailer home. Clifford’s son Clarence has absconded with the mafia’s drugs, and Vincenzo interrogates Clifford in an effort to discover Clarence’s whereabouts.

Note: A wide ellipsis … on a line by itself represents an omission I am making in the material for the sake of brevity, when the excised part is not essential to the discussion.

INT. TRAILER DAY

…

COCCOTTI

Do you know who I am, Mr. Worley?

CLIFF

I give up. Who are you?

COCCOTTI

…

I work as a counsel for Mr. Blue Lou Boyle, the man your son stole from. I hear you were once a cop so I assume you’ve heard of us before. Am I correct?

(Coccotti is intimidating him, demanding respect.)

CLIFF

I’ve heard of Blue Lou Boyle.

(Cliff confirms but does it in a way that dismisses Coccotti.)

Coccotti establishes his mobster credentials and his goal of learning