Alfred Hitchcock entered a train compartment, struggling with a strangely shaped package. \"Excuse me,\" said a fellow traveler, \"what in the world is that?\" Hitchcock replied, \"A McGuffin.\" \"And what is a McGuffin?\" asked the inquisitive traveler. Hitchcock thought for a moment, then explained: \"A McGuffin kills lions in Scotland.\" \"But, my good fellow, there are no lions in Scotland.\" \"Then\", said Hitchcock, \"it is not a McGuffin.\"
This story is not a joke; it’s Hitchcock’s way of explaining the item in a movie that attracts interest and propels action forward; it’s also one of Hitchcock’s pet terms. Writers of books and writers of screenplays need McGuffins; without them, readers would give up on the book, and moviegoers would walk out of the cinema.Writing a story to be read, however, is not the same as writing a screenplay. They may seem similar, but to some screenwriters, it’s comparing a coconut to a cow. They both contain milk, but the similarity ends there. I looked at Syd Field’s Screenplay, a highly regarded manual for screenwriters, to see what he thought. It’s not a novel, he claimed, "and it’s certainly not a play." Robert Altman agreed: it’s more like an architect’s blueprint of a building.
Nevertheless, three elements of screenwriting can provide insight into our own writing: grabbing the attention of the audience; handling dialogue; and the value or need for compactness. Field believes we know, consciously or unconsciously, if we will like or dislike a film in the first ten minutes; if the movie starts with an action scene, then it takes only eight minutes. Experienced writers know this; inexperienced writers often fail to "grab" the reader’s interest. You don’t know about those writers because they are never published.
Field’s advice on starting a screenplay might surprise: KNOW YOUR ENDING! Writers must know where they’re going when they start out. Field compares it to cooking. A cook doesn’t throw whatever is within reach into a pot and then pray for something eatable. The cook and the writer must know what they are "cooking up" before they start. The first ten minutes of a screenplay, he says, must answer these three questions: (1) Who is the main character? (2) What is the story about? (3) What is the dramatic situation? [that’s usually where the McGuffin is]. That’s unquestionably good advice to any writer; and the answers to those questions won’t be difficult if the writer knows how the story ends.
Dialogue provides life in a book or movie – right? What characters say in a book lets us know what they’re like – right? Watch out! In a movie, Field says, "What a person does is what he is, not what he says!" It’s not surprising then that Fred Zimmerman relegates dialogue to "a necessary evil." That’s probably why we rarely see long scenes of dialogue. Field cautions that there’s no room in a script to be "cute," "clever" or "gimmicky." That’s always good advice, but many writers rely on the verbal exchanges between characters. For them, dialogue is not a necessary evil; it’s just plain necessary.
A 100–120-minute film demands compactness. It’s got to be tight. Every scene must move towards the ending: no empty moments, no fluff. A reader might spread a novel over a month – that’s impossible for a movie. "The challenge of screenwriting," says Raymond Chandler, "is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and movement." All right, Mr. Chandler, writers like to say that all writing can benefit from judicious cutting, and so compactness is a virtue, but aren’t you asking for a bit much?
I’ve often thought about writing a screenplay, but I think I’ll think about it again.
RICHARD HAAS,
Kabinet studia jazyků ÚJČ AV ČR, v. v. i.
English
