The Craft of Scene Writing by Jim Mercurio

Author:Jim Mercurio [Mercurio, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610353304
Publisher: Linden Publishing
Published: 2018-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

9

ADVANCED SCENE WRITING: BREAKING THE RULES WITH STYLE

Ambitious scenes that are lengthy, rely heavily on dialogue, or involve subtle and surprising conflict sometimes cause problems for writers. Instead of looking at the underlying issues and empowering writers to overcome the challenge, many books and resources create arbitrary rules that encourage them to skip these types of scenes altogether.

An old screenwriting adage says, “There are no rules, but break them at your peril.” As you master the subtleties of the screenwriting craft, you will discover that almost every great scene that “breaks the rules” obeys every principle we have discussed, and, if anything, follows additional implicit rules.

All of the skills needed to write a short, simple scene are relevant when writing a longer, more complex one. However, in the latter, mistakes are less forgivable, and additional skills can help you to overcome some of the intrinsic challenges.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, his adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal opens with eight pages of verbal sparring. It’s mostly dialogue, and Sorkin knows the rules he’s breaking. The “opening image” isn’t an image at all, but the scene does everything an opening image and introduction should do. It sets up the main character, his way of talking, and some of the rules in the story’s peculiar world, and it foreshadows theme.

However, Sorkin immediately follows up his opening with this short quarter-page scene:

As Mark continues, he passes a group of people heading in the opposite direction for a party.

As Mark’s steady and determined stride continues he’ll pass by all kinds of (seemingly) happy, well-adjusted socially adept people.

The filmmakers turn these few lines into one of the most expensive and elaborate sequences in the entire film. It visually clarifies everything for us. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) walks in the opposite direction of people who are together, socializing, and having fun. A moment later, he sits down on his computer to use the internet as a weapon of revenge against his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) who just broke up with him. Closing the short sequence is a tiny little contextual cheat that feels earned: “This is the only place he’s comfortable.”

What The Social Network did wasn’t so much break the rules as bend or rearrange them. Sorkin opens with a dialogue-heavy scene but then doubles back and reinforces everything with a clear and telling visual. That’s the essence of getting away with breaking the rules with style.

Anytime a movie or scene transcends expectations, it almost always does so by adding something. If you look closely, you’ll usually see that anything subtracted will be replaced with something that equals or exceeds what you would normally expect to find.

Even in Robert Altman’s films, which offer brilliant, clinical deconstructions, i.e., methodical explorations and breakdowns of popular genres—M*A*S*H (war movie), The Long Goodbye (detective movie), Nashville (musical), or McCabe & Mrs. Miller (western)—I would argue, add more than they subtract.

If the nonexistent rules apply to Aaron Sorkin, then they most likely apply to us, too.

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