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There are some
scripting tricks you won’t find in the screenwriting books. Here are three things I learned about setups
and payoffs after years of writing and reading others’ work.
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Are readers not
getting your big payoff? That can be
really frustrating. I’ve seen it happen
many times. A writer believes a huge
payoff moment is built into Act 3, but nobody seems to respond to it.
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The problem may be
in the setup. Often when this happens,
when people aren’t “getting” a writer’s big payoff moment, I look back at the
setup, and the issue is this:
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The setup consists
of a single moment or line of dialogue. Even
if that single line is well written, that may not be enough to stick in the
minds of your readers.
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If people aren’t
getting your payoff, try using an entire scene instead of a single moment to
set the payoff up. Readers rarely forget
whole scenes, but they often forget single lines – or worse, miss them
entirely. Build a strong full-scene
foundation for your set-up, and you’ll see those Act 3 payoffs paying off.
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Yes, payoffs work
very well in the climactic moments of a story, and that’s where many well-seeded
payoffs will have the greatest impact.
But you don’t have to wait until the end of a story to pay off a good
setup. It can happen just about anywhere.
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One caveat on
this: Placing a setup and its payoff too
close together can hurt your script. It
can feel poorly paced and contrived. How
close can they be? Good writers have a
feel for it. A rule of thumb: Enough “script time” should pass so that the
setup, while remembered, is no longer fresh in your reader’s mind.
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A really smart
producer, one of the brightest, most story-savvy individuals I ever worked
with, taught me this about setups and payoffs:
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She taught me that,
ideally, your whole story should be made up of setups and payoffs. This forms a web of interconnecting moments
that give a script momentum and coherence.
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Some new writers
imagine a single setup leading to a single climactic payoff. Seasoned writers imagine the power of two,
three or four well-orchestrated setup-payoff combinations. The expert producer I mentioned above
imagines dozens of interconnecting moments laced into a truly professional,
engaging screenplay. The more we can
push toward that ideal, the better our writing will be.
I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with Gary Goldstein, a billion-in-revenues producer with a unique perspective on networking in Hollywood. Like me, he was once a lawyer who wanted a more fulfilling life. He found himself in L.A. with no idea how the film biz ticked, and yet he somehow networked…
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