The Beats Go On
Today’s guest blogger is Master Cat! Anne Lower. Anne has worked as a consultant for STC! and is a writer in Los Angeles. This is the first of a series of blogs in which Anne takes a look at some of the individual beats of the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet and shows you how to break them down, beat by beat. Check out Anne’s blogsite, Princess Scribe, or listen to her as next week’s guest on WriteOnOnline’s Blog Talk Radio on February 9 at 12 noon PST.
At Cat! Central, we’re dedicated to helping you perfect your craft. We want you to build powerful, resonant stories. The good stuff.
Blake created the BS2 as an indispensible tool for writers, a refreshing, no-nonsense way to architect your story — one beat at a time.
You’re familiar, of course, with the 15-beat BS2. You’ve expanded those 15 to 40 on The Board. Now, it’s time to write, right?
Not yet.
We’re going to examine examples of the individual beats – today the Catalyst, and show you how to break them down, beat by beat. For those beats don’t stop at 40. Oh no. The beats go on….
Catalyst
(cat·a·lyst)
noun
1) a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction;
2) a person or thing that precipitates an event
“I like the catalyst moment because – it’s life. Those moments happen to all of us. And life-changing events sometimes come disguised as bad news. Like many of the beats in the BS2, the catalyst is not what it seems. It’s the opposite of good news, and yet, by the time the adventure is over, it’s what leads the hero to happiness.” – Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!
Today, we’re going to take a look at a deeply complex and layered catalyst, one that sports not one bump but three. Poignant and haunting, here is the catalyst breakdown from a most elegant Golden Fleece film, under the category of Passage Fleece… (drumroll, please)
Road to Perdition (2002)
Screenplay by David Self
Based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rainer
The film opens with young Michael Sullivan (Tyler Hoechlin) at a beach.
CUT TO:
EXT. INDUSTRIAL AREA – ROCK ISLAND, ILL. 1931 – DAY
Michael, at play. A happy child with a loving family: father Mike (Tom Hanks), mother Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and younger brother Peter (Liam Aiken). The Sullivan family unit is strong — a firm father; nurturing mother; bright, inquisitive children.
Connor is a dangerous man. But Mike is dangerous...er.
The family attends a wake for one of Mike’s business associates. The wake is held in the house of Mike’s boss, John Rooney (played by Paul Newman). Although he has a son, Connor (Daniel Craig), it is in Mike that Newman places his trust — and his love.
Connor is a dangerous man. He’s quick to temper; he threatens young Michael, delighting in the child’s fear. He bears a not-too-veiled grudge against Mike. He despises his father for his lack of love.
At the party, the dead man’s brother, Finn McGovern (played by Ciarán Hinds), drinks a little too much, and, in a toast, reveals Rooney as a notorious mob boss and the mastermind behind his brother’s killing. Mike ushers him away. Later, Connor tells Rooney that he will pay McGovern a visit
ROONEY
All right. But take Mike with you.
CONNOR
No, Pa – I’ll be fine.
ROONEY
Take him with you. And talk to him. Nothing more.
Catalyst:
After school, Michael pedals his bicycle past the family garage. The doors to it are closed. He thinks.
Later, Michael places a black case on the rear seat and leaves for his meeting. He picks up Connor at his hotel. He drives to an old warehouse. As he does, he reminds Connor that they are “just talking” to McGovern. Nothing more.
CLOSE ON:
The BLACK CASE on the floor by the back seat.
Suddenly, the lid of the seat lifts, and we realize
MICHAEL IS INSIDE
The car pulls up to the building, and the two men go inside.
Michael follows them.
Through Michael’s POV, the meeting is viewed. He hides behind broken slats; he watches as McGovern and Connor argue. His father stands nearby, machine gun in hand.
Suddenly, Connor whips out a gun and shoots McGovern in the head. Mike is forced to kill McGovern’s men. (Bump 1)
Mike and Connor hear the boy flee. Mike follows in pursuit, only to discover that it is his own son. Connor catches up; Mike assures him that his son will be silent. Connor tells them to go home.
That night, Michael struggles with the realization that his idyllic, loving father is in fact a ruthless killer.
The following day, Mike leaves for work. As he does, Rooney pays a visit. He needs help protecting Connor. He asks Mike to attend a meeting of the mob bosses, to discuss the killings. Mike does — and he covers for Connor.
Later, Connor sends Mike on a job. He’s to hand a note to a deadbeat who owes Connor money. The man opens the note. It reads:
“KILL SULLIVAN AND ALL DEBTS ARE PAID.”
The man reaches for a gun; Mike grabs it and kills the man and his associate. He picks up the note and reads it. (Bump 2)
SULLIVAN
(sudden realization)
Michael.
CUT TO:
The Sullivan home, and the calm before the catalyst.
The Sullivan home. Night. Annie dries off her youngest son in the bathroom. A door flies open. A masked gunman aims a weapon. Annie flings her body around the child in a futile attempt to protect him.
Outside, Michael rides his bicycle. As he nears home, the sound of gunfire. Michael drops his bike and looks into a window. He sees Connor, staring at his reflection. As Connor leaves, Michael hides in shadow. He enters his home and walks into the bathroom.
Mike arrives to discover Michael, mute, at the dinner table. He walks upstairs and finds his wife and child dead. (Bump 3) He loads Michael into his car and drives away, in search of sanctuary.
That’s a doozy of a catalyst, isn’t it? Not one bump, but three! Woven like a fine tapestry, Perdition’s catalyst takes you through Debate and all the way to Break into Two. That, my fellow Cats, is what we call great writing.
How do I write this beat? Ah, the million-dollar question. This is where your Board comes to play.
When you conceived your 15 beats, you had one card: CATALYST. Right?
And when you went to 40, you probably had the same, didn’t you? One card. CATALYST.
Consider this: this singular beat — Catalyst — can contain within it up to 15 full beats! And, while it may begin around page 12 (for a 110-pg screenplay), it can last through the entire second half of Act 1. It can reappear — as bumps — to raise the stakes, and to force our protagonist(s) into the brave new world of Act 2. It can be singular. It can be linear. It can be simple: the kiss between Sarah and Brad in Little Children. It can be shared and layered: the double bump of Mikael’s visit to the Vanger estate, against Lisbeth’s reaching out to the disgraced journalist in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It can be a mind-bender, with one event leading to another and another, non-linear, flashing back and forward in time, as in The Social Network.
How the catalyst best serves the story is for you, as the writer, to decide. Be brave with your catalyst. Be bold! No wimpy beats here — your catalyst must be a force. It must turn the world of your protagonist upside down. Make it strong. Make it primal. For better or worse, this is the point in which the journey begins.
Next week’s blog: Michael Kurinsky on “4 Years, 3 Presidents, 2 Writers, and 1 Big Idea”
on February 4th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Excellent work, Anne! Thoughtful and inspiring.
on February 4th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Sweet! Thank you so much for sharing, Annie!
on February 4th, 2011 at 9:06 am
“The package that arrives in Romancing the Stone which will send Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) to South America; the telephone call that informs Tom Cruise his father has died in Rain Man; the dinner at which Reese Witherspoon’s fiancé announces he’s dumping her in Legally Blonde – these are the catalyst moments: telegrams, getting fired, catching the wife in bed with another man, news that you have three days to live, the knock at the door, the messenger. In the set-up you, the screenwriter, have told us what the world is like and now in the catalyst moment you knock it all down. Boom!” - Blake Snyder, SAVE THE CAT
This is the Call to Adventure that Joseph Campbell illustrated in his exploration of the monomyth, the Hero’s Journey. To my mind, it’s the first ESSENTIAL beat because it takes you out of the ORDINARY and into the STORY. It’s the first window into the new world — something’s out there and it’s coming in unless our hero chases it first.
EXCELLENT breakdown, Anne!
on February 4th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Eye-opening, Anne. Thank you! I’ve habitually looked at the Catalyst as a single moment, a defining “bump” that pitches the story of the edge and onto the roller coaster. You’ve now opened up the option of going deeper, and a bit longer…as long as in the process you go for primal. Love it!
on February 4th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Loved this, Anne. Very carefully and thoroughly analyzed. One question: what is your definition of the “Passage Fleece” — which is a new STC subgenre as far as I can tell. Is it a hybrid of Golden Fleece and ROP, where the passage is… well, I don’t know exactly how to describe it, because having one’s family murdered and protecting oneself and one’s son from pyschopathic killers isn’t exactly a universal ROP. So maybe you were thinking of something else? I’d love to know. I love discovering new genre hybrids that are helpful in illuminating underlying structures. Great work.
on February 4th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Hi Tom ~
It’s a bit of my own invention
You can look at this as a Buddy Fleece, but, with the ending as it is, PERDITION (to me) seems to have some ROP elements. What is really interesting, is that the passage can almost be seen ask backwards - Michael being thrust into this new world - a very adult one at that - and then returning to the sanctity of family and home at the end; however, we know that he will be forever changed.
Michael also is confronted with a *hard truth* that we find in most ROP tales - this truth being that good people can (and will) do Bad Things.
It’s not solid ROP - it is at its heart a Fleece… but there are elements of ROP shading it.
It does, of course, depend upon who you see as the protagonist. I believe it is Michael, not Mike, who has the ultimate arc in terms of character… Mike can be a shared protag, but his arc is one of revenge. Michael’s arc is a much more complex and layered one: discovering that his father is a killer, losing his mother and brother, blaming and hating his father for it, joining his father in crime, accepting at last that his father is a *good* man, and ultimately, rejecting a life of crime, and returning to the world of the child.
Ultimately, Blake created these tools as arsenal for the writer - as an active resource to help scribes build more resonant stories. It is fun, however, now and then, to use them as tools of analysis!
Thank you all for reading it!
on February 4th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Wonderful! As always, you have stoked a fire that can only be extinguished by diving into the page. Thanks so much for your inspiration!
on February 4th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Thanks for such a thorough explanation. Yes, everything hinges on who you see as the protag, and it’s much easier for me to detect the ROP elements seeing the story from Michael’s POV. Crystal clear, in fact. The more I work with the genres, the more I realize that often different main characters are in their own subgenre while simultaneously inhabiting the subgenre of the other characters, and the overarching (”master genre”?) of the story as a whole. So for instance, in my view, TITANIC
on February 4th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Whoops — hit send prematurely (and be accident). To continue, TITANIC has a master genre of EPIC LOVE, but Rose’s story, both in the framing story and the flashback, is unquestionably in an ROP story — where, as a youth, she’s growing from girl to woman (Adolescent Passage) and in the framing story she’s moving to her acceptance of death (Death Passage). In fact, you could argue that telling her story is what allows her to die at peace (or at all). Whereas Jack is clearly a Dude with a Problem — the problem of starving artist wooing rich girl — and Cal Hockley and all his cronies lives inside his uniquely insane “Institution” of gilded wealth. It’s a bit of a stretch to say he ultimately becomes the “Monster in the House”, but I’ve lived comfortably with further stretches… in any case, I find this a useful tool to view, or examine, elements of genre hybrids, as most complex stories are. Thanks again.
on February 4th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Tom,
Thanks for your thoughtful and eloquent response.
One of the reasons that I selected PERDITION is that I consider it a very complex, multi-layered script (and film). It’s a brilliant example of mastery of the craft.
In Fun and Games, the majority of the focus is on Mike, not Michael… the story also has the challenge (if you see it this way) of a child as protagonist. Michael’s a darker version of Lee’s Scout from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Children cannot always be the *active* protagonist that the adult is, for they are not in control of their destinies… but eventually, in these tales, they do so - at a price.
So PERDITION is (to me) very advanced writing. There’s an abstract quality to it; yet it is highly emotional. The word “primal” comes to play. Parent vs child. Parent protecting child. Child transitioning to adult.
And… in terms of the film… cinematography to die for.
I think that stretching is good - it’s an exercise for the writing muscles. STC! was developed to help writers master structure, but, like painters and musicians (and filmmakers), you study the masters, then play with the form. Which I’m pretty sure you’ve done.
So, STC seems to have touched you… and the work continues in BJ, Jose, Ben, Al (hello, Al! and thank you) and others…
What a tribute.
Ah. The Beats go on.
~ a
on February 4th, 2011 at 2:13 pm
I, too, suffer from premature Send.
Tom, you’ve brought up an interesting point - applying the genres as a way to identify CHARACTER. How the character genre may influence the individual journeys of all…. hmmmm
on February 4th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Annie, you’re awesome. Yeah, the cinematography of that film still lingers in my mind a decade later. Full-bodied and painterly, but clear and unfussy; illuminated from within by cold, true, chilling winter light. Like Owen Roizman’s work; or Sven Nykvist’s. I love that look…
T
on February 11th, 2011 at 9:08 am
Wow, thanks so much for this, Annie! This is a blog to savor and be inspired by!
on February 11th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Awesome! Thanks so much!
During a panel at AFF, Oscar winning screenwriter, Michael Ardnt, called it “The Bolt from the blue”…
on February 14th, 2011 at 11:00 am
Thank you Anne Lower! I had not seen this movie before you blogged about it. So I intentionally didn’t read the blog till after I watched it and beat-ed it out. I was close, but when I read your entry I had many an inspirational “aha” moments. Much appreciation herein!