At a Crossroads... Help Me Decide...

K

KeithK

Active member
OK, I am torn on this latest re-write... give me some ideas folks. Make the case for or against for me so I can decide.

I am debating yet another rewrite for my feature. Its been re-written plenty of times before and probably will suffer several more. I have gone back and forth between two sequences of my opening few scenes.

In one version, one of my main characters gets diagnosed with a terminal disease as the first scene, then the story line proceeds in a manner that allows me to work in the content of two "setup scenes" into the next four scenes - without having setup scenes and while advancing the story further (which I think adds to the suspense and helps create edge of your seatness). By the time Scene 5 comes along, the audience has connected the dots and has a clear picture.

In the other version, I put in two "setup scenes" then the terminal diagnosis scenes. The setup scenes are then laid out beforehand. But it shoves the terminal scene onto page 4, which is later than I wanted for the hook as I know most readers will not read past page 5 and most audiences form their opinions about the movie within the first few minutes on screen.


  1. Is one of my main characters getting diagnosed with a terminal disease compelling enough of a hook for Act I?
  2. Is it critical to have the hook in the very first scene, or can there safely be a couple of setup scenes first and then the hook?
  3. Do I benefit that much from having a hook right there, as soon as they open the cover, right on the first page?
  4. Is having a "lost" audience through scenes 1-3 dangerous? If it is dangerous, does the hook then make up for it?
  5. Is it off putting to open the movie with a somber/depressing scene?
Please give me some ideas as I am literally finding myself flip-flopping between these two versions literally in a cut and paste manner. Everytime I do it, I decide the story is better/more sellable with that version, but I always manage to back it out later on and convince myself that somehow its better the other way.
 
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I don't think there's a simple answer to your questions, Keith. It all depends on your script as a whole, and the scenes themselves in particular. To respond to your questions:

1. It could be.
2. Critical? No. It depends on the story.
3. Hard to say. Depends on what comes after the hook.
4. It's not dangerous if it's done well. Whether or not the hook makes up for it depends on how everything is handled.
5. Not necessarily.

Not trying to be vague. But without knowing a LOT more about the story and the scenes, I personally wouldn't know where to begin to answer these questions. Maybe someone else would.

One thing I will say. Usually it's better to have the audience connect with a character and bond with him before putting that character in the peril of a terminal illness. If the audience CARES about the character, then the death sentence has a more profound impact on them. Usually -- not always.
 
David is correct, until you lay down the material for me [the audience] to emotionally identify with the hero, I won't care, and if I don't care then what ever terrible scene you throw at the hero won't mean much to me. If I don't care then you haven't done your job.

The first 10 pages needs to ease the reader/viewer into the movie world you're introducing us to. Right now I'm sitting here in my world, now you need to seduce me into your world so my world dissolve away, not too abruptly either -- and don't drag it out on the other hand!

If I care about the hero, then you can do all sorts of things because I'm interested in the hero's situation and really want to see him succeed, afterall, he's someone I recently bonded to.
 
Well, having been agreed with :) , let me say that it certainly CAN work to lead off with the terminal illness diagnosis first, without first making the audience care about the character. As long as you then build a character that the audience does care about, and the more they care about him, the more tragic it is that he's going to die. It's sort of the 'Memento' approach -- opposite of the way it's 'normally' done. It can work, but it's not easy.
 
Not to sound like a girly man, but one film that really brought me to tears was "Fine Things" (Made for TV, novel by Danielle Steele). First we emotionally identify with the character played by Traci Pollack (married to Michael J. Fox in real life), who then succumbs to terminal cancer. On her death bed-- death scene, a real tear jerker. Talking to her new husband and the daughter she leaves to him. Really drives home the point about showing us a char we care about before putting the char in peril. And in this case we also cry for the little daughter, in peril by losing her mother.
 
Well, it seems like this where good movie vs. sellable movie are conflicting. Do we all agree that most readers do not read beyond the first few pages? That's my personal opinion but I suppose it could be wrong. That was my main reason for trying to force the hook as far forward as possible in my storylin, though I can see how the storyline might suffer from doing so. So what I am hearing is that I can have 10 pages of setup scenes and still get by? Well, I need to change my storyline again then, as I can make it even more seductive if I have that much to play with.
 
KeithK said:
So what I am hearing is that I can have 10 pages of setup scenes and still get by? Well, I need to change my storyline again then, as I can make it even more seductive if I have that much to play with.
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Well yes and no. The common theory is that you have 10 pages to convince, or as you say, seduce the reader into sticking with your script. You will need to have something interesting happen in those 10 pages. It can't just be arbitrary character backstory and introduction, but must be something that hooks and introduces the reader to the plot. If nothing important happens before page 10 then a lot of professional readers, agents, and studio executives will toss the script and move on to another. Now obviously some will read a few more pages, but I guess it pays to cover yourself and hook 'em as early as you can. You never know who will end up reading your script.

A famous example is the script for The Matrix. The opening 10 pages consists of the Agents pursuing Trinity until the phone booth escape. A very cool and exciting introduction for an action film, however, most of the people who read it at the time were like "WTF?"... they didn't read on any further and passed on it because they didn't give it a chance to get into the meat of the story.
 
You can hook the reader in the first 10 pages without that hook being the main hook of your story. It just has to be interesting, imaginative, creative, and a page-turner -- it doesn't have to be the central core of your main character's motivation. It can, however, foreshadow the coming events.

Watch the first 10 minutes of several of your favorite movies, and see if you can figure out how they hooked the readers -- and how those hooks related to the main conflict of the story.
 
Citing The Matrix is a great example of this and I find it astonishing that it had any difficulties with people not being intrigued enough to continue reading... IF that is true then it really is an up hill battle and you have to kick some serious ass in those first 10.

I often look at it similarly to a 'teaser' for the rest of the movie, or look at it as the teaser in an hour long drama. Is there an aspect of the story that you can exploit that will serve as baiting the reader's interest that can play out or be hinted at right in the beginning? Pose a question in the reader's mind that will prompt the promise of your premise or the first turning point. It's crucial to mix introductions to characters, the overall hook of the story, and action in these first pages...
 
Well, I should say that the terminal disease diagnosis is not my only hook, but it is the first and it does need to last me a while, because its a little bit of time before we get to the next exciting thing. However, the terminal disease hook creates several other hooks later on. I cannot eliminate it, my storyline depends on it. My worry is that if I put the hook 10 pages in and its another 7-10 pages before we get to the next one, is a terminal disease exciting enough to keep the reader's interest through 20 pages of stuff?

Or maybe I should not use a terminal disease and I don't want to use a car wreck, I need a slow death to exploit for Act III (and some in Act II) and while I know I could have a car wreck with a coma and then he dies, thats not what I want to do. The entire store is predicated on my dead/dying character being kept out of commission until Act III. The dead guy is my Hero's father, so I really need to use that. Maybe terminal disease is not the best, what else could I use to keep a character out of action and still have him available for putting an emotional toll on my hero and characters surrounding him?

Do I dare use something as lame as a random drive-by shooting or mugging or some other lame brain thing with a shot to the head, a fight for survival and finally buying the farm?

---

Look at Lucky Number Slevin. In the first minute of that film, somebody takes a dirt nap. I like that movie, even though I realize it probably was not considered a huge box office success at only $7 million on opening weekend (don't know what it cost to produce it, so if it was low budget all things are relative and $7 million might have been earth-shattering). I am sure that the hit in the first few scenes got the reader's attention. It sure didn't put them to sleep, that's for sure. I wasn't expecting it when I first saw the film. I am sure the next four assassinations (which happen prolly not a minute later) also were unexpected.
 
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To add a bit of anxiety and ticking time bomb to your terminal illness...my Aunt had a heart condition ( I believe similar to a leaking valve/artery) that could not be operated on. They told her she would die, but could not say when within a year time frame. Imagine knowing that you have something like that and that any second you could go. You will not feel any different from one day to the next, but that it will happen at any second. That is worse then a slow-degradation type terminal illness...where you tend to know when it is getting close to the end. She could not do anything. She made it quite a while and then one day it happened. That would put a ton of fear in that person living like that.
 
Kess said:
To add a bit of anxiety and ticking time bomb to your terminal illness...my Aunt had a heart condition ( I believe similar to a leaking valve/artery) that could not be operated on. They told her she would die, but could not say when within a year time frame. Imagine knowing that you have something like that and that any second you could go. You will not feel any different from one day to the next, but that it will happen at any second. That is worse then a slow-degradation type terminal illness...where you tend to know when it is getting close to the end. She could not do anything. She made it quite a while and then one day it happened. That would put a ton of fear in that person living like that.
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Oh, I like that... that could actually work very well for what I need. :dankk2:

And sorry to hear about your Aunt.
 
According to Blake Snyder (Save the Cat) and Syd Field (too many to list), you have the first ten minutes to introduce the bulk of the cast, make the protagonist likeable, and then reveal the first plot point. If the rest of the story is dealing with the illness then you should reveal it on page 10(ish) of a 110 page script. If the rest of the story is something else then the diagnosis of he illness is not the first plot point, so you have to ask yourself: what is the balance of the film really about?

110 pages is a good target because it sets up a 110 minute design that can be cut down to a 90~100 minute film. If you write it properly the editor will tighten up the rest of the story but leave act one alone. This is because there is so much to do in the first ten minutes that it will be tough to remove anything you have in there.

Good Luck,

Bob
 
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