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.
Expanding Your Setups
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.
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:
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.
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.
Payoffs Don’t Have To Take Place In Act 3
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.
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.
The Setup/Payoff Web
A really smart
producer, one of the brightest, most story-savvy individuals I ever worked
with, taught me this about setups and payoffs:
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.
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.
