Showing posts with label Action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Action. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration Part 12 - Tom Clancy Action-Romance Formula

Theme-Plot Integration Part 12 - Tom Clancy Action-Romance Formula
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

---------Just a quick commercial first ----

Learn about weaponry to be included in the story-driven, cross platform, science fiction RPG Ambrov-X, taking my Sime~Gen Universe ahead into the Space Age.  Click this link to see an image.



http://www.ambrovx.com/article-01-blasters.html#heading

You can sign up for the Newsletter on that page, or just "Like" the Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/ambrovx

News is posted on Facebook every week, and there will be more news in September.


Meanwhile, it's very instructive to watch how a project like this game (which incorporates many aspects of film writing) is created. I expect it will have nuances of Action-Romance, but keep in mind, as one of the authors of the novels (with Jean Lorrah), I have little to do with the real work.  Others are playing in my universe -- eerie feeling!

----------end commercial-------------

Previous entries in the Theme-Plot Integration series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

So I re-watched the famous Harrison Ford movie based on the Tom Clancy novel, PATRIOT GAMES.



That's free to Amazon Prime customers, so go watch it.

There's a principle in skills acquisition as old as the Hippocratic Oath: "See One; Do One; Teach One" -- but works the other way around, too, Teach, Do, then SEE!!! 

When you've attempted to teach something, then after that DONE it again yourself, suddenly you SEE things you'd never seen before, or had seen but not understood exactly.

Here's what I learned from an old movie.

There is a whole NOVEL tucked up between the scenes of a Movie!

And in fact, that's actually how life works.  There are lots and lots of things going on between the things that happen, and when you assemble all the details of your life, you can find a pattern.

There's research that shows that people see patterns where there are none -- that randomized dots are assembled into patterns by the human brain just because we are pattern seekers.  We are emotionally invested in, and predisposed by survival lessons, to seek meaning in things, even where there is no meaning.

In other words, we impose meaningfulness on randomness because we prefer meaning.

With that clue in mind, a writer can arrange the PLOT EVENTS of a story (or more likely re-arrange them, during a heavy re-writing session) into a PATTERN that will convey a different meaning to each reader/viewer.

Or think of it this way.  We use fiction to project our inner preferences for meaning (theme = meaning; the moral of the story) onto what seem to be events in a "real" life.

Tom Clancy novels sold like crazy and all got made into top drawer, big budget, feature films because he found a way to arrange the events in his stories that allowed the books to be made into films, and even more people saw the films than read the books.

His method is an old, tried and true, tread-worn method that even you can learn and use, and if you do use it, you will eventually be stunned by seeing it in other people's works.

It works for readers and viewers because it does replicate real life.  See my posts on Astrology, especially the ones involving PLUTO TRANSITS.  Pluto transits are drama, and the events of Patriot Games are arranged to replicate Pluto transits.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

METHOD: "rising action" is the technical name for this pattern.  Each bit of "Action/Violence" is bigger, louder, more personal or intimate than the last, all the way to the Resolution/Climax action.

In Patriot Games, it starts with Witnessing a drive-by assassination attempt. 

Then the principle action/hero (Harrison Ford, who else?) takes a hand in preventing the assassination.  But this first violent event is a Co-incidence.

 (see the correct use of co-incidence discussion

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

The loving couple with one child on vacation in London just HAPPENS to be on ground-zero of an attempted royal family assassination by the IRA. 

You can kick off a plot with a co-incidence, but you can't resolve it with a co-incidence.

So this first meeting of the two elements that will conflict to generate the plot is a co-incidence.

However, the THEME is revealed as we discover why this co-incidence is somehow providential or karmic.  Paul Ryan (Ford's character) is a teacher now, but he was a CIA analyst.  He retired, and is glad to be shut of the CIA.  He's happy and wants to get on with living a normal life.

But, as he says later, he just got MAD, angry -- field operatives aren't supposed to do that.  Bad form.  But he got mad, and dove into a situation he didn't comprehend.  He tackled one of the assassins, grabbed his gun and shot another assassin dead.  One got away in a getaway car driven by a long-haired redheaded woman.  The police rushing into the scene seeing Paul Ryan with a gun in his hand and a guy dead make the obvious assumption.

The royals in the car (there was also a bomb that blew up one car) obviously come down on Ryan's side of the story. 

SKIP.

At the trial, we find out that Ryan is getting a Knighthood out of his rescue.  And we find out that the guy who got put away in jail is the brother of the guy he killed.  These are tough-guys.  Ryan knows he's not shut of them. 

But he takes his family home, and goes on with his teaching life until, on TV, he sees that the guy who got put away in jail has escaped from a transport (we see first hand the tough-guys breaking the brother out of the transport Van and executing the escort - flames and blood.)

FOREBODING -- but SKIP. 

Going home from work, the IRA guys attack him, but he gets away after a fist fight.  He twigs to the danger his wife and child must be in, and frantically drives across town to catch up to them.

BUT - Paul Ryan is caught in traffic when a plume of smoke goes up in front of him.  HE KNOWS -- but he's at a distance from that action, after his minor, personal skirmish.  We saw the violence -- he didn't.

SKIP - wife and child in hospital -- skipping through most of the worry-scenes that most writers would make a novel out of.

OK, that's the last straw.  He goes back to his CIA job as an analyst working on catching these guys.

He twigs to the red-headed getaway driver woman being the key to catching these people.

STATE OF THE ART (at that time) gadgets and orbital photos let him launch a commando attack on a LIBYA training camp (Syria is mentioned - you should watch this movie and remember those years).

They get all but one of the bad guys.

The Royals that Ryan saved get invited to his house for a party celebrating his daughter getting out of the hospital.  HIGH POINT emotionally, all's good.  (Clancy signature for the turn into Act 3)

There's a rat in the house, and an attack from outside takes out all the security guards accompanying the royals while a murder happens inside the house. 

Paul Ryan's MONSTER IN THE HOUSE climax (see the SAVE THE CAT! books for the genre "Monster In The House") -- it's the hair-raising personal-space invasion element -- note how this movie goes from the distance of something happening to someone else that the hero voluntarily involves himself in all the way to his own house being invaded.  Clancy's formula is to start at a distance and approach the personal. 

But this isn't horror.  Ryan is an action/hero protecting those he LOVES.

The romance is happening outside the action here -- he was "courting" his wife in London, there's a scene where she tells him she's pregnant just before the attack that puts her in the hospital but she doesn't lose the baby, she hated the CIA gig and won't stay with him if he goes back, he goes back, NOW when the bastards invade her house she tells her husband/lover who has wooed her back into love that he should do anything he has to to get those bastards, and he does exactly that.

In the best action-romance the romance is the action.  Here they are separate but entwined, which is a Clancy formula.  The Romance is the sub-plot that adds emotional dimension and makes the bad guys misdeeds "personal" bringing out the heroism.

So the final action sequence is all about sneaking around a dark coastal mansion-sized house on a "dark and stormy night" -- climbing up into the attic and out a window and down sloping roofs, running for your life from a monster in the house. 

Meanwhile, the royal is trapped in the cellar and fighting more bad guys.

Paul Ryan fakes a getaway in one of the two (nice white against the dark waves) boats brought by the assault-group's, and the bad guys chase him as he drives the boat out alone, his family "safe" on shore. 

The bad guys Group is after the royal, to kidnap and hold for ransom, but the brother of the guy Ryan killed is after Ryan.  After a fight, Ryan kills the bad guy.

POETIC JUSTICE

Remember we looked at dramatic use for Poetic Justice here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_22.html

In the hand-to-hand fight on one boat (which is on fire), the bad guy attacks Ryan with a zig-zag bladed boat implement, probably an anchor.  Ryan knocks it out of his hands.  They fight all over the burning boat, in the lightening lit rain, racing over the waves with nobody at the helm.  Then without Ryan's actually seeming to plan it, he finally hits the bad guy and the bad guy falls on the points of the anchor and is impaled -- hoist on his own petard -- poetic justice.

Meanwhile, the boat runs aground and the rescue helicopter (sent when the security guys with the royals didn't check in) spots the boat which runs aground.

SKIP

House full of police and security, with Ryan, wife and kid wrapped in a blanket -- safe.  Bad guys all gone. 


Actually, that's a great place to start a Romance since he's got to woo and win his wife all over again.  She has to come to trust that he won't do this again -- next time coincidence makes him mad.

Watch that movie again, and note the CUTS -- and what you assume is happening between scene.

On a screenwriting Group on Facebook, I was in a discussion of methods a writer uses to CUT A SCENE -- scenes should be about 3 pages max. 

This movie is a great example of how to cut scenes to size.  SKIP!!!  Let what happens between be implied, imagined. 

Remember, above I mentioned that research on how humans project patterns onto random fields of dots?
The action-scenes in this movie are 'dots' - the SKIPS spaces between.  They aren't random or intended to be random.  If you're following the story, you know what happens between a car crash and the pacing the waiting room floor in the hospital scene.  But you know all that because you expect there to be a pattern to these events, and you know the template of that pattern (ambulance, police, etc).


But none of that "stuff" is actually there on the screen.  It's the pattern you are imagining and imposing on the dots.  Likewise, the pattern of dots I've shown you here, from distant and impersonal 'action' to up-close-monster-in-the-house-very-personal 'action' -- an ordered sequence -- is imagined.

Look at the movie and see what pattern you see in those dots.  But be especially aware of the spaces between the dots.  There are whole novels tucked up in there. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration Part 9 - Use of Co-incidence in Plot

Here is a link to Part 8 of this Series and to the index to previous Theme-Plot Integration posts:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

On Google+, I belong to a "Community" run by Deborah Teramis Christian for people who "write" (build) Games that people play in alternate universes, created worlds.

As you know from my long, involved discussions of worldbuilding, it is a topic that I think Romance Writers haven't approached with enough focused concentration until just recently.

As Science Fiction and Paranormal Romance blend, writers have had to pay more attention to the process of how science fiction "worlds" are created.

Until recently, only Historical Romance delved deep into the details -- such as the names of articles of clothing, the years different historical characters spent in the same city (where there might have been an illegitimate child conceived who might have affected events later).

Today, Romance writers are exploring the stars, meeting alien species, finding interesting relationships and might-have-beens.  And so the process of extrapolating our current world into the future has become of great interest to Romance writers.

I have three huge series -- huge in the size of the books, huge in the size of the sales, and huge in the importance of what they say -- to point you to as we launch into a contrast/compare and reverse-engineering exercise. 

But first, here's a beginner's work on Worldbuilding you should take a look at. 



Next we come to a 5 book series by Anne Aguirre, titled the Corine Solomon Novels:

Blue Diablo, Hell Fire, Shady Lady, Devil's Punch, and Agave Kiss are the titles.

Corine Solomon

I talked about Anne Aguirre here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/doubleblind-by-ann-aquirre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-egypt-steampunk.html

You might call the Corine Solomon novels "Urban Fantasy" -- but there is an excursion into another dimension (or two), many mysteries, and a gorgeous Love Triangle involving not-quite-human and Magically Gifted human.  The 5 novels form one long story told from a nice, tight single point of view, that of Corine Solomon.  And it is her story. 

I highly recommend all of Anne Aguirre's titles because she has a firm grip on how to structure this kind of novel, and an ability to portray the extremely "dark" without forcing you to accept a world view where there is absolutely no light. 

I particularly love Aguirre's Sirantha Jax Series.

Look over the Corine Solomon novels and if you've read them, view them as a whole, integrated "work."  Note how it is one character's "story."  Note the beginning, middle, and end "beats" of each novel -- then the overall structure of the set taken together.  Note the pacing.  Now particularly note how Aguirre replicates The Hero's Journey for Corine Solomon.  Then note how Corine has, by the end of the first quarter of each novel, four or five (sometimes 6) problems to solve.  Then note what Aguirre reveals about Corine's thinking about solving those problems. 

Note the inner dialogue Corine holds with herself about her problems.  See where she's focusing her attention, and how she defines the problems.  Each novel starts with a list of problems, and ends with those problems solved -- giving rise to more problems, true, but for the moment, a triumph.  Note how those problem-sets are constructed at the beginning to appear insoluble, and how each problem when solved brings in the tools to solve the next.

Note what Corine Solomon is thinking when she picks out a problem to tackle first.

It's always a decision made on the basis of what is RIGHT -- what's the right thing to do, or at the very least, what is the least-wrong choice.  What problem has to wait (and get worse) while this more urgent one is tackled?  And there is always the possibility that Corine will not survive to tackle the next problem on her list, but she doesn't dwell on that.  She throws all her personal resources into doing the right thing right now.  That is the essence of the Hero who goes on a Hero's Journey. 

Blake Snyder in SAVE THE CAT! has analyzed vast numbers of blockbuster films showing you how the Hero has to acquire about 6 problems as you lay pipe into the story.  Aguirre uses that structure, and it's one reason she can turn out so many novels so quickly, and all of them resonate with her readers.  She knows the structure, she knows the story she wants to tell, and she just plows on through arranging the details of her world to support that story. 

Now consider Gini Koch's Action-SF-Romance Urban Fantasy (sort of) series ALIEN.

ALIEN is much more precisely Romance, but has a lot of combat and battle scenes.  The problems that come at the Hero (Kitty-Kat) on the Hero's Journey to an HEA are more of the Enemy Aliens Attacking and Alien-Allies Need Help type.  The motivation that energizes Kitty-Kat most often is to attain and preserve a loving, peaceful and happy environment.  She takes the role of a warrior protecting her world. 

Remember, in my previous mentions of Gini's ALIEN SERIES I've pointed out that they need line-cutting.  That's a process of eliminating the words that don't say anything, don't advance the plot or explicate the theme.  Usually that's about 20% of the words in a semi-final draft.  Very often, at least for me when I do it on my own work, the manuscript doesn't get any shorter, but the end result is that all the words say something.  This is a stylistic thing.

You can see the style difference by comparing a chapter of one of the Aguirre novels with one of the Koch novels.  It's not that one is "superior" to the other, but that a professional writer should have mastery of all styles and techniques, and choose the one appropriate to the Art behind the work. 

The titles are Touched by an Alien, Alien Tango, Alien in the Family, Alien Proliferation, Alien Diplomacy, Alien vs Alien, and Alien in the House (May 2013). 

Alien Series

I talked a bit about Gini Koch's Alien Series in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-3.html

Both these series focus on Romance disrupted by Action, where the Action is the obstacle to be overcome and the Relationship is the goal. 

Because this is our kind of stuff, we have a hard time seeing how it's put together so we can replicate the effect.  So to find out how to do this, we should look at something that does the same thing, but in another way -- that tells a different story from a different standpoint. 

So, 5 Corine Solomon novels, 7 ALIEN novels, and 8 STEN SERIES novels, 20 novels all together, taken as a whole, contrast/compare, and extract theme, plot, and discover how the two elements become integrated. 

First, on identifying THEME. 

I can't assert "the" theme of each of these 3 series is something specific.  I'm sure each of the writers has their own idea of what they were saying (or perhaps have no idea, just wanted to say it!  Marion Zimmer Bradley worked that way - not knowing the theme until 20 years later!).

I'm pretty sure you will find your own idea of the theme as you read these series.

My overall "take" on the Corine Solomon Novels, and the Alien Series Novels is that they are essentially Romance, and so the overall theme is Love Conquers All.  Each novel individually has a specific sub-set of that overall theme brought to the fore. 

The Sten Series is not Romance, and it's a collaboration between two exemplary writers with disparate backgrounds.  The 8 novels have one Hero, and he is definitely on a Hero's Journey.  But the series taken as a whole has a much bigger theme worked out on a much larger canvass that spreads over several galaxies. 

So the Sten Series has several points of view, each carefully related to Sten's point of view.  When we visit the events other characters are involved in, we see Sten's life from outside.  We sometimes see Sten being moved about on the chessboard of inter-galactic politics.  We find out what problems other characters face - only to understand that Sten himself hasn't defined the problem he faces in a complete way. 

While the overall theme of Corine Solomon and Alien Series novels is Happily Ever After, with the caveat that such an idealic life comes only at great price, and after stringent testing of the moral fiber of the Hero, the Sten Series might be said to have the overall theme of All Is Not As It Seems. 

It's very hard to separate these 3 series though.  Sten has a Happily Ever After thread, and the other two are definitely structured on the "Great Reveal" - the "All Is Not As It Seems" theme.

What a reader sees in each of these series depends more on the reader than on the material because these 20 novels are Art. 

While Corinne Solomon and Kitty-Kat are living their own lives, Sten is living a Destiny. 

Sten's Destiny is not at all what it seems -- and with each novel, Sten progresses to what seems to be a New Destiny earned at great price.  But all he thinks he's doing is what you and I do everyday, just survive another day, survive another threat, beat off the Bad Guys, get out of a tight spot, finesse and clever yourself into a better position. 

Sten set out to survive and mind his own business.  But he got "rescued" and cast in the role of Warrior because he has a talent for surviving and minding his own business.

But what is a Talent?  That's a profound question we've discussed previously:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/talent-mystique-or-mistake.html

Maybe writing isn't a Talent, but we often write about characters who have a Talent. 

Corine Solomon is in love with a guy whose Talent is "Luck."  That has a whole backstory having to do with his parentage, but the point is that Talent and Luck (co-incidence) drives the plot of all 5 of the Corine Solomon novels. 

Kitty-Kat has a Talent for organizing other Talents, for leading a group of talented warriors while Luck sweeps her through personal combat, chase scenes and armed combat.  She remembers what's worked before and uses it to good effect again.  But her real Talent is for asking Question -- yes, capital Q questions, such as Kirk's "What does God need a spaceship for?"  Those are the obvious questions nobody else ever thinks of because people rely on assumptions they haven't tested when trying to solve a problem. 

Sten has a Talent for surviving.  He learns the Art of War, but it isn't inherent in him.  He finally grows up enough that all he wants is to stay out of combat situations.  But he's living a Destiny, so the harder he tries to avoid combat, the worse the combat gets.  His Talent doesn't help him get out of his Destiny, which he can't even see coming -- any more than you can see a tornado coming until it's too late. 

Perhaps the overall theme of the Sten Series is that forging the path to your destiny must inevitably affect, deflect, or inflect the paths of others toward their destinies. 

I classify all three series as Art. 

I've held forth here on the nature of Art and how a writer uses that essential nature here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

When you start to talk about creating Art about Destiny, you are dipping into the realm of the Supernatural, the Paranormal, the Divine, the Magical, -- or God. 

Corine Solomon deals head-on with Hell, gods, demons, angels -- and what happens when the categories get confused.  She has to sort out Good from Evil, and taken her personal choice, then stick to that choice. 

Kitty-Kat tries to ignore the whole issue of Divine Intervention, of a world Created by God.  She pretty much succeeds, as she discovers more and more about how things are just not what they seem.  She gets used to being shocked when a new aspect of Reality is revealed.  But she avoids the issue of God. 

Sten would fall down laughing or kick you out an airlock if you started prattling on about a Benevolent God.  His life provides no evidence for such an interpretation of Reality.  In other words, his life exists in the kind of world you and I live in -- where there is no evidence supporting any theory of Divine Creation. 

And yet, our whole world can be viewed -- taken as a whole -- as a Work of Art. 

Here's a little lesson from the Bible about the artisans chosen by God to create the Tent in which God revealed himself to the High Priests, the Mishkan.  The blueprint for that tent was given to Moses at Mount Sinai -- you may have seen the recent History Channel series, "The Bible" and noted the extraordinary ratings it pulled. 

By all accounts, the Tent these artisans built was a spectacular Work of Art.  I can envision it as a minature replica of the entire World that God Built.  The blueprint and the people chosen to execute that blueprint very closely resembles the process of writing a novel. 


--------QUOTE-------------

FROM CHABAD RABBI NEWSLETTER:

....

In describing the people qualified to construct the Sanctuary and its instruments, the Torah repeatedly calls them "wise-in-heart" in referring to their skill. The craftsmanship these artisans possessed was more than technical, their wisdom was a special sort -- that of the heart.

Some people are brilliant intellectually, their gifted minds master sciences, their logic and reasoning are unimpeachable. Despite these mind-gifts they may be cold, unsympathetic, unmoved by suffering. Others are kindlier, charitable, more emotional by nature, not particularly given to analysis and profound understanding. They may also be overindulgent, gullible, suspicious of or impatient with reasoning. While each sort has qualities, in extremes, or rather without tempering the initial and dominant characteristic, their deficiencies are grave.

The ideal is the wise-in-heart, proper balance between emotion and thought, feeling and reason. The qualities of learning and study, intellectual vigor, the scholar ideal, have always been glorified by our people. No matter how sincere the heart's emotions, they must be channeled, harnessed, and used. Torah inspires the heart in its search. Without Torah the most sublime emotion may degenerate into bathos or sentimental banality.

Similarly, exalted as the intellect may be, it cannot exclusively express the fullness of man. Emotional balance gives warmth and human substance to the mind's achievements. In Jewish terms it means that the true scholar, the disciple of Torah, is endowed with the emotions of love and awe of the Creator, sympathy for the lowly, affection for mankind. Such a person, the wise-in-heart, is qualified to create a Sanctuary for G-dliness wherever he goes.

------------END QUOTE-------------

Now think about Destiny, Fate, and the Happily Ever After.  Think about THEME and the world you are building for your characters, choosing and inspiring your artisans.

Think about the writing rule that the author must not stand up on the page, blow a whistle to get attention, and start shouting at the reader about all the wonderful things in the world that this story is not about. 

Reading a book is an intellectual exercise of emotional sensitivity.  The closer the balance between emotion and intellect in the novel, the greater the reader's enjoyment. 

The THEME is the intellectual part -- the PLOT is the emotional part.  The PLOT shows the THEME -- the emotions reveal the knowledge, the lesson to be learned. 

Think about THEME and we'll discuss Co-incident in Plot. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Conversation on Twitter

If you've been following my entries on the blog, you know I'm examining the rising phenomenon of "social networking" as part of the way "publishing" is changing under the impact of the Web and e-book. Those changes are re-shaping Genre, and allowing for the explosion of Cross Genre novels, mixed Genre novels, and mashed universes where characters by one author meet characters from another author's series.

Here is a scattered sample of some of my posts here on social networking.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

and the attempt by "marketers" to use the social networks to promote their products, many of them bewildered why it doesn't "work."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

Twitter has rapidly become one of my favorite social networks because I keep discovering people, and finding links to things I want to know about but had no clue that I was interested in (and thus would not have googled for the subject).

Here is a conversational exchange with a person I follow, who follows me so that I can hear what they're saying and they can hear what I'm saying.

scripteach I greatly enjoyed #TheHurtLocker, but thought the direction rocked, not the script. It felt like it drifted off the rails in 3rd Act.

jlichtenberg @scripteach "It felt like it drifted off the rails" doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why and how to fix pls

scripteach @jlichtenberg doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why & how to fix pls In less than 140 characters is hard!

scripteach @JLichtenberg I'll try to blog about #TheHurtLocker soon. For now, the protag's unauthorized mission into city & return home felt false.

jlichtenberg @scripteach Good point about "unauthorized mission" motivation failing. How do you spot that in your own work? #scriptchat

scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: How do you spot in your own work? #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do

jlichtenberg @scripteach Ur nutshell " #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do" ROCKS!!! @susansizemore

I flagged Susan Sizemore on that because she and I exchanged tweets about staying with POV character. She tweeted that she'd made herself a problem by following too many minor characters, and that made me think (but not tweet) the complex relationship between following minor character's pov and using minor characters to reveal major character's motivations.

And @scripteach was talking really about a MOTIVATION problem in this very prominent film.

The #scriptchat hashtag can be searched on to produce all the tweets by everyone on twitter who inserts #scriptchat into a tweet -- regardless of whether you're following them or not.

People (ppl) discussing The Hurt Locker use the hashtag #TheHurtLocker and see each other's posts.

Anyone searching on a hashtag may (not will; may) see your tweet if you include that tag.

And they may, not will, follow you to see what else you say.

Having conversational exchanges like this is one the most rewarding and instructive functions of social networking.

Now of course I should write one of my humongous posts on what @scripteach has said and what it means and how you can use it.

For the time being, though, memorize and think about

"Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do"

I'm not good at nutshells. It would probably take me 2500 words to sketch a means of employing that bit of wisdom.

If you want to research it - check out the writing error technically termed "contrived."

-------
I also found via twitter that the SHOOTING SCRIPT of this film has been released in print with additional pages of illustrations etc. at 160 pages --
----------
FROM AMAZON:
In addition to the complete shooting script, this Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes an exclusive introduction by Kathyrn Bigelow, a 16-page color photo section, production notes, storyboards, and complete cast and crew credits.
-----------

And here's more about it on Amazon:
The Hurt Locker: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)

This is indeed a strange new world where to get a story out printed on paper it must first become a major motion picture winning awards right and left.

The alternative is to become a TV commentator.

I ReTweeted (RT) the tweet that alerted me to The Hurt Locker as a script on paper and flagged @scripteach thusly:

jlichtenberg RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay (and the party last night celebrating it): http://bit.ly/baTR84 @scripteach

And @scripteach answered that he would read the script thusly:

scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay): http://bit.ly/baTR84 I'll read script & see what I think

That's why it's called "social networking" -- and that's why marketers can't afford to do it. At no time did the publisher of the shooting script participate in this exchange. I don't even know if they're on twitter. I didn't go out to sell a copy of the script. I was just curious how a screenwriting teacher would explain a script's hole to writing students on #scriptchat so I asked, and got a great answer, and picked up on someone else mentioning a blog about the film's success which has on it a link to the shooting script published as a book on paper.

That's a "net" and it got "worked."  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com