Guest Blogger: Barry Pearson of CreateYourScreenplay.com

For the next few weeks we'll be featuring a weekly guest post by Barry Pearson, a veteran writer/producer and screenwriting guru covering various topics to help you develop your writing skills. This week it's the last ten pages. Enjoy!

Barry Pearson has been in the business of writing and producing feature films, television series, and MOW's for over 20 years. He's written over 40 hours of television drama for major networks in North America, and produced three feature films and over 50 hours of television prime time drama. Visit his website at http://www.createyourscreenplay.com


"Writing The Last Ten Pages" By Barry Pearson

See, the irony is you can’t really talk about writing the last ten pages.

Not without talking about all the rest of the pages.

Let me illustrate. Some years back, I had a discussion with a successful screenwriter about his writing methods. “David,” I said, “I was told that you start a screenplay by writing the last ten pages first, is that true?”

“Sounds crazy,” he said, “but I do. I write it as big and dramatic as I can, giving myself lots of problems, then I go back to the beginning and start to solve them. I always have that big end scene driving me on through the script.”

Of course, he didn’t write the end of the screenplay off the top of his head. It was always my suspicion that he had most of the story worked out before he tackled those ten pages.

Other writers work in almost the opposite way. I attended a symposium at which the novelist Elmore Leonard (responsible for Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and many other movies) talked about his process. He described how he likes to start with a couple of characters, get them talking to each other and see what happens. He never plots from beginning to end before starting to write.

Some writers don’t live in the world of the "last ten pages.” I’ve read William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, and Which Lie Did I Tell? I’ve read his scripts. I’ve listened to him talk. I still have no idea what his process is.

And maybe I’m not meant to. Not in this life, anyway.

But then there are the rest of us. When we’re struck by the muse, we haul out our three by five cards and start creating the story until we’re confident that it works, and then we write the draft from FADE IN: to FADE OUT:.

So, methods are as varied as nature itself. But I believe that successful writers have one gift in common. They have the ability to create and develop human relationships (not necessarily in their own lives, but certainly in their art).

I believe that creating and developing human relationships is what gets them, directly, indirectly, or mystically, to those last ten pages.

Fine. What does that mean, specifically?

In my screenwriting seminars, I talk about three sets of relationships the screenwriter needs to create:

The first set is the relationships among the characters in the screen story. Let’s see how these relationships impact on the last ten pages.

In the most prevalent typical “Hollywood” movie there are three central characters, the Hero, the Bonding Character, and the Antagonist (or villain, if you like). For example, in Chinatown, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is the Hero, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is the Bonding Character, and Noah Cross (John Huston) is the Antagonist.

What are the profiles of these typical movie characters? The Hero and the Bonding Character are very unlike each other. They often dislike each other, or spar with each other when they first meet.

The Antagonist is the character who is most like the Hero, in as many respects as possible, except for one thing: their moral positions are diametrically opposed.

Typically, the Antagonist’s past pursuits and present goals cause the Hero and Bonding Character to meet.

In the majority of these mainstream movies the Hero and the Bonding Character have the bulk of the screen time, and this screen time is spent in two major ways: trying to thwart or defeat the Antagonist, and trying to build a closer and closer relationship with each other.

Both of these activities culminate in the last ten pages. On those pages the Hero either loses to the Antagonist or defeats the Antagonist. And the Hero and Bonding Character are brought into their final closeness with each other. Further on, I’ll elaborate on these events.

The second set of relationships is the relationship of the screenwriter with his or her characters. During the first three-quarters of the story, the writer needs to promote the fortunes and success of the Antagonist, and the writer needs to make things worse for the Hero in the following ways: provoke the Hero to accommodate, escape from, or defend against, the Antagonist so as to get into deeper and deeper jeopardy, plan to make the Hero face his or her worst nightmare,plan to make matters so intolerable for the Hero that the Hero is driven to say, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.”

When the Hero is mad as hell and planning to crush the Antagonist, then the Hero is worthy of the writer’s help, and the writer can promote the fortunes of the Hero, except that the writer must test the Hero, make the Hero’s first plan fail, thus setting the Hero up for the last ten pages.

In the last ten pages, it is your job as the writer to force the Hero to find and exploit a hidden weakness of the Antagonist in a final “battle” that will decide who will win and who will lose.

In Chinatown, Jake has a critical piece of evidence, Noah’s glasses, which prove that Noah murdered his son-in-law. This is the hidden weakness that Jake uses against Noah.

The third set of relationships is the relationship of the screenwriter with his or her audience.

In my most recent seminar, one of the members of the group asked if the writer should know about what the camera was doing. And my answer was an emphatic No. Outside of a relationship with the characters, the only relationship the writer should have is with the audience, its desires and what it is going to see and hear onscreen.

The writer needs to constantly ask what is the audience feeling at this moment, what is the audience thinking, desiring, expecting, fearing, etc. etc.

Movie audiences come into the theater with a great many desires and expectations. Here’s a list of some that relate to the last ten pages:

The audience wants the Hero to get together in some way with the Bonding Character, even if only to part.

The audience wants the Hero to defeat the Antagonist.

The audience wants the hero to believe in (and act according to) the basic set of values that they believe in.

The audience wants the hero to play for high stakes, some outcome, or ideal, or benefit that they believe is supremely important.

The audience wants the hero to escape death (literal or figurative) by means of strength of character, persistence, cleverness and courage, not raw strength.

The audience does not want the hero to be lucky, unless the luck is caused by the hero’s cunning or provident preparation.

The audience does not want to have its expectations fulfilled. It wants to be surprised. So go against the expectations of the audience, or have the expectation fulfilled but in a totally unexpected way.The audience wants the hero’s experiences to force him or her to change and become a better person.

The audience wants the hero to win the prize at the end.

To continue with the example of Chinatown you can see that not all of these audience desires are fulfilled, partly because Chinatown is on the dark or tragedic side. Jake does get together with Evelyn, but she is killed by the Antagonist’s minion at the end.

Jake fails to defeat Noah, except that indirectly he saves Evelyn’s daughter from Noah’s clutches.

Most of the other desires of the audience are fulfilled in this movie, except for the last one: There is no prize for Jake. He does not “get the girl” and he does not put Noah in jail. Noah’s evil proves to be too powerful for Jake.

What about the lighter side?

There is a second type of typical movie story in which only two central characters appear. This is the Romantic Comedy genre typified by movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding, Pretty Woman, As Good As It Gets, and When Harry Met Sally.

This type of story uses only a Hero and a Bonding Character, no Antagonist. As in the majority of mainstream movies, the Hero and Bonding Character are very unlike each other. But they spend their screen time slightly differently: trying to develop a closer relationship with each other, and trying to overcome each other’s differences in order so they can be together forever.

In the final ten pages, when it looks as if they will be forever parted, one of the characters sees new values in the other and re-connects with the other so they can be together.

Sound sappy? Yes, but...it’s the blueprint for a lot of successful movies.

And there is a third genre that uses only two characters: the Person-in-Peril Genre. Examples: Sleeping With the Enemy, The Net. In this genre, the Bonding Character and the Antagonist are bound into one character, whose sole objective is to destroy the hero. When this Bonding Character and Hero get together in the last ten pages, it is so that the Hero can defeat and destroy the Bonding Character. Otherwise all of the general characteristics of the story are similar to the other types.

The last ten pages of your screenplay is the outcome of the drama between the characters in the story. Mainly, the Hero and Bonding Character come together, and the Antagonist is defeated as a result of the Hero discovering and exploiting some hidden weakness.

A final note: quite often the last one or two pages dramatizes the new status of the Hero. In Chinatown, there is no new status for Jake. In Pretty Woman the Hero (Julia Roberts) goes off with her Prince Charming (Richard Gere). In Casablanca Rick goes off to be a freedom fighter against the Nazis. And in The Net, Angela (Sandra Bulloch) emerges from her cocoon-like bungalow to get in touch with the world outside. This is a deeply satisfying moment for the audience, so if your story has a new status for your Hero, dramatize it.