Top 3 Screenwriting Techniques to Hook Your Audience
LEARN THE 3Es OF MASTER STORYTELLING
Any kind of movie-genre will be entertaining, exciting, and engaging if the effect of drama of your story is unpredictable but guess work should be made available to the audience minds so that they engage in your story. Any story could be well made if and only the audience’s guess work will happen contrary to your screenplay. A hint of what happens next and showing exactly opposite is the real trick of the movie business or simply called master storytelling — the crafts man punch.
The 3Es are achieved in 3 ways: one is killing external or supernatural aid to the protagonist or character’s actions — entertaining. The second one is most exciting if it is executed well, which is called suspension of disbelief. The final one but very handy one like magicians sleight of hand work — the effect of inevitability. These three techniques will sure affect the audience’s minds if it is crafted carefully in your story.
The fun and stakes of your screenplay will be much greater if you employ these techniques precisely and at the end of the day, movies are all about selling emotions. Emotions are not quantified but they are fathomable only through the audience’s reactions towards the dramatic effect of your story narration — they cry, laugh, love, hate, and feel whatever your character and protagonist goes through. The ultimate measurement of your story success or failure depends only if your character’s emotions are felt by the audience.
First things first — entertainment. How to make your story and screenplay entertaining? The answer is pretty simple: killing external or super natural aid. Every story has a problem and it is solved by a hero, who has to face obstacles in order to solve problem or achieving goal. The hero must face hurdles to challenge the problem of his life. It means the hero must make choices that are difficult to him and those choices must have grown organically from his actions to solve the problems or achieve his goal. To simply put he has to take actions to solve his problems — active protagonist. If some external aid like friends helps him to clear protagonist’s debt or problems or God intervenes in hero’s life and wishing him, ‘Son, don’t worry…all is well in the morning…so better take care of the water leaks from the kitchen…’Jeez! Who would like to watch such inactive hero, who has got problem and is solved in the morning by God himself!
Bottom line is every choices of the hero must grow organically from his thought and actions to entertain the audience otherwise it would be dull, bland, and boring. You name an adjective, it would be apt to that hero.
Movie example — the Iron Man.
In this movie, the hero is a play boy and runs Ammunitions Company called stark industries, which is a multibillion dollar company.
In a scene, where our hero is supposed to exhibit Jerikho missiles to a group of military people in a dessert, unfortunately kidnapped by a group of Muslim faction and play boy hero survives near death. A doctor keeps him alive from not allowing the shrapnel touching his heart — with the help of battery that which is fixed at the center of his chest. If the battery is removed, hero will die instantly but he is not feared and prayed for God to keep him alive. Instead he takes the advantage of the situation and build a small arc-reactor (the future of weapons industry) and fixes it at the centre of his heart that makes his heart beats for so many life times and escapes from the clutches of Muslim terrorists eventually becomes the Iron Man — the savior of mankind.
The second technique is suspension of disbelief — when the screenwriter shows the audience which is beyond existential reality (that which is not real), it’s like asking us to believe in their story worlds — a day repetition in Goundhog day and Edge of tomorrow; A small boy becomes suddenly Big fellow in the morning in a movie called Big starring Tom Hanks; Defying time by travelling through worm holes and entering into black holes in the movie, The interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan. In all these movies the director wants us to believe something that is not at all possible in reality, almost. Once the audience believes of that unreal-reality like day repetition; a kid becomes adult; defying time, there will be no turning back. The audience will totally engage in the movie suspending disbelief about the movie’s world automatically from their minds and thought process of the unrealistic world and goes on thinking what happens to him next. This is proved many instances and gives the audience excitement by taking them into the world of unreal (alien world) and engaging them totally into the movies.
Movie example — the Iron Man
Who would have believed that an Arc-reactor can be made and fixed in the dying man’s chest to run the heart for many life times and eventually becomes the savior of mankind — the Iron Man. This is called suspension of disbelief — unreal things that happens to a hero on the screen and makes us believe of whatever our hero does to save him and exciting us without distraction is a multibillion dollar game.
The last one but it shouldn’t be inevitable. How to engage the audience without distraction in your story? It’s called the effect of inevitability — the dramatization of events in your story depends on probability (50–50 chances of what may or may not happen next) but not on possible events (which is a sure guess). The apt prediction of your of what happens next will disengage the audience from watching movie and becomes predictable boring story. So the important technique a screenwriter should employ is the effect of inevitability like in all love stories — Boy meets Girl and Girl meets Boy. They fell in love and problem arises and finally unites in the end (whether dead or alive). But the events that happens in the due course of time in their love relation shouldn’t be a possible guess work of what happens next, which is disengaging and boring ; but rather be probable events, which is contrary to our guess work. Since the time of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the recent past classic movie Titanic, we all know something might happen to the lives of Romeo and Juliet, and Jack and Rose but not sure until finale arrives — the climax of the story.
Movie example — the Iron Man
Now the play boy, Tony stark becomes the Iron man, which is a boon for him and mankind but it is also a curse for him because the palladium chip inserted in the mini arc reactor that keeps him alive is poisoning his body and the terrorist and American government is looking to capture Iron man desperately.
Will his body survives from being poisoning? Will he survives from the hands of terrorists and government? Will he ever reveal his true identity? These are all inevitable questions and events that makes the audience keep guessing and engages totally into the film without second guessing of what happens to our unrealistic super hero next…next…next…and next!
Bottom line is employing these 3 techniques is not discovered recently but rather exists from the birth of storytelling — from plays to movies; from Aristotle to James Cameron to Stephen Spielberg and the list goes on. These are not hard and fast rules; you can break it and defy any time only if you are capable of engaging the audience emotionally by discovering new techniques and can sail ahead in these changing times of digital cinema.
Ramu Maddy
Newlight Cinemas
