In the previous post, I pointed you toward some great scriptwriting resources at John August’s blog. I also noticed his excellent comments on coincidence as a story device. He cites “Spiderman 3” as an example of what not to do but adds, “My point is not to rip on Spider-Man 3, but to urge readers to look at their own scripts with an eye towards coincidence. If you’ve written a treatment, search for the following phrases: “at the same time,” “accidentally,” “luckily,” “unfortunately,” and “meanwhile.” They’re often a tip-off that you have events happening by coincidence. There’s almost always a better alternative. Given a choice, try to find cause and effect. One event happens because of something else we’ve seen — ideally, something the hero himself has done.
Instead of having the hero accidentally overhear a key conversation, get him actively trying to listen. Or have an interested third party steer him in that direction — perhaps for his own reasons. At every juncture where a reader could ask “Why did that happen?”, try to have an answer that isn’t, “just because.”
He notes that it’s fine to start a story off with a coincidence, but to have one after another leaves your story without a solid foundation. To read his entire comments on this, go here.
I thought causality was also missing at times in “Tin Man,” the re-interpretation of “The Wizard of Oz” that was on TV recently. It held my attention for the first two hours, but then the story seemed to turn pretty arbitrary, with new mini-episodes driven by whatever the writers thought might make a good segment. Of course it’s hard to create a six-hour mini-series that doesn’t feel episodic. I think it would have been much stronger as a four-hour or two-hour project.
