|
ButtonsCynthia's Column January 2003Buttons Whether you are writing the ending of a novel, a screenplay, a scene, or a chapter, a button can give it just the lift it needs to make it snap, crackle and pop. Buttons make endings crisp, give the readers a lift and move them into the next section with a surge of new energy and interest. In screenwriting agents and producers say that they can recognize talent by spotting the writers who know when to get out of a scene and how to button one. In a novel, a button at the end of a chapter can be a cliff hanger or an open question. Novels with many short chapters, all with buttons, tend to be page turners. We find ourselves starting the next chapter without realizing it, and before we know it, we've read many more chapters than we'd planned to. Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) is a novelist I am very fond of and he buttons every chapter. Here are two examples of chapters ending with buttons concering young Marcus, 11, one of the two protagonists in About A Boy. A chapter ending button that's a joke: "I think I've killed a duck," he said. And one that proposes a new problem: He was calling from a police station in a place called Royston, and he sounded little and frightened and lonely. Some buttons at the end of books become classics remembered by all of us. The double button at the end of Gone With The Wind for example."Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" and "Tomorrow is another day." are a one-two punch of a closing button. Buttons serve primarily an emotional function. They help put the reader into a different place emotionally than he/she would be without it. The story in the movie Erin Brockovich is really over at the climactic scene when we learn that the family we've been tracking will get a $5 million settlement. And it is a win. We are happy about it. But it's still kind of a downer. Erin is hugging Donna, but they are crying and the family is still dying of cancer, and it's happy laid over tragedy. So they added the button. Erin gets a big office and a $2 million check of her own, followed by the punchline from her boss: "Don't they teach beauty queens how to apologize, because you suck at it."So we go out on a second win and a laugh. This sends an audience out of the theatre in an emotional state that the movie meant to achieve, feeling good about an underdog overcoming great odds. This also creates good "word of mouth."It's not enough for us to understand intellectually that the good guys won in Erin Brockovich. We have to feel the win. Feel the victory. So when an audience pours out of the theater, they are saying, "That was great!" Which comes from the emotional high provided by the button. Without the button, they wouldn't have been saying it. They might have been thinking it was a great movie, but they'd still be busy shoving down the tears and feeling bad for the poor citizens of Hinkley. In theatre it's the same situation. Take the musical Oliver. Sure, Oliver is returned to his real family, but he doesn't know them. Has never seen them, so he is essentially getting handed over to total strangers. Nancy is dead and so is Bill Sykes. Fagin has fled and lost the boys. It may be the "right" ending for the story but it is a depressing. How does the theatre solve this? By having three or four encores during the cuirtain call, all of them happy, toe-tapping numbers. In the movie they went so far as to add a moment where Fagin and the Artful Dodger are reunited and we know that they will go on to gather the boys together again. How did Dickens button up the book of Oliver Twist? He goes for the pathos. Brings on the tears as good melodramas of that period were wont to do. Describing Oliver's poor mother's grave. But well, he was Dickens. He was trying to incite social change and didn't want us to feel good. In television movies, we write for the commercials, so every fifteen minutes (pages) there is a cliff-hanger written into the script. It is the writer's job to keep the audience from changing the channel during the commercial. If the piece is a comedy, it is best to button it with a laugh. Many comedies don't end with a laugh. Romantic comedies for instance, often end with a kiss. If you can find a way to make the audience/reader laugh at the last minute, you win. If an agent/ producer/publisher closes the manuscript while he's still laughing, there's a good chance a sale is not far off. Some Like It Hot is a good example of finding the big button laugh. Yes, we have the romantic clinch between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis, but the button is provided by Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown. And the punchline "Nobody's perfect" lifted a cute movie into the category of Comedy Classic. That is what a button can do. Casablanca delivered a one two punch of a button ending:"Round up the usual suspects" followed by "Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The sad, tearful parting was immediately followed by the joke, and then the surprising new partnership. Which made us feel that "they lived happily ever after" after all. Some writers intuitively use buttons. Some dislike them. They think they're manipulative. They can be contrived. But they can also keep your readers button-hooked. As you reach the end of the next scene/chapter/script/novel think about a button. It can help to keep those pages turning. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |