Here we go again. Feedback time. When you’re writing a script, you need to maintain your belief that it’s good. If you didn’t, you’d be crippled by doubt about what you’re doing and never actually get it done. But once that first draft is done, and you’ve justifiably rewarded yourself for completing it, the journey recommences.

At this point what you need could usefully be called Wise Counsel. People to send your script to who will read it intelligently, whether they’re writers or filmmakers or whatever they are, and offer constructive feedback. It’s that bit of the process when, having sent off your child’s photo to the local paper for the Bonnie Baby Competition, readers send in letters suggesting that your baby is in fact the most pug-ugly creature they’ve laid eyes on.

Well, that’s how it can seem. But feedback always offers something of value, if only confirmation of the wisdom of sending the script to that particular person. Where my recently completed script The Devil You Know is concerned, I’ve in fact received very valuable and high quality notes from two sources: a filmmaker I’ve been helping to develop a feature script, and a producer who’s worked on some notable features and has more in her future.

Having sent the script to those two in particular, I’m in no position to complain about what they might have to say. But thankfully they agree that my script has considerable potential, even if it’s not attained it yet. Bloody hell — all these years later, and it’s school reports all over again.

More than that, both suggest that upping the thriller aspect of the story can only be a good thing. Which was a slightly contentious issue for me initially. The story draws from my experiences of a mental hospital stay, and as such is very personal. All very well, but I also want it to be a commercially viable feature film, and not a piece of self-involved drek. Moreover, both filmmaker and producer agree that there’s a rich story in there. And I can’t help but agree. Looked at again, I can see that there needs to be more work done on developing the crime aspect of the story. Currently everything is wrapped up neatly and it all resolves in a nice way for the protagonist.

At which point I’m thinking ‘how could I have not spotted that before?’. An easier question to ask than to answer. I like a degree of messiness in a story, and at the moment mine is too neat. It needs to be kicked about and scuffed, some of the existing plot elements developed further, and integrated with new ones that will confuse the situation the protagonist is in, making it even more appropriate that he spends most of the story in a mental hospital.

But of course, we all have 20/20 hindsight. Especially when we’ve been given notes by sussed people whose opinions count. So…back to the drawing board? Not quite. I can see the faultlines in the script more clearly now, and that makes it easier to work with them. There are a couple of minor characters in the busy scene that opens the story who could valuably play a bit of a role in making the scenario more complex, less black and white. Just the sort of thing I need to make the world that bit murkier for a protagonist who’s already going through hell. Poor bastard.

That said, the more he suffers in the story, the bigger the emotional payoff will be when his situation is resolved. When I stop tormenting him and let him finish the story with a metaphorical spring in his step, knowing that whatever happens in his life from now, it can never be as bad as what he’s just been through.

Unless the film does well. And someone suggests a sequel.

So, we’ve had a brief look at stories that stress the individual versus the collective, and the individual against the state. Another class of interactions is all to do with the individual who makes their own way in the world — and may be inclined to toss you a bone if you fall in line with their goals. This is the domain of the deal maker, the hustler, the mercurial figure who always seems to come out on top, even if they’re hankering after an even bigger score.

It’s an archetype that has a particular appeal to filmmakers, since it’s the one that has most resonance with what it’s like to conjure a film into existence. I got an insight into how this worked with a director I worked with years ago, who — when I commented that he must be tempted to shout at people sometimes — confidently stated that he got what he wanted without raising his voice. He did too, pulling off all manner of deals from getting a modestly budgeted short shot on 35mm to persuading a well known actor to play a key role in it in his days off from a feature being shot 200 miles away. I spent a day in the production office, stacked full of cans of fizzy drink and crisps as the result of some or other sponsorship arrangement. Sponsoring who, for what, I wondered…a question that was never truly resolved — but the food and drink was welcome on set.

It’s not far from such shenanigans to the heist movie, which I’m convinced filmmakers like because pulling off a heist is an artform close to their own. Look at what’s going on in Ocean’s Eleven and there’s an aura of smugness that comes from people being selfconsciously hip — the same toecurling vibe that afflicts some of the scenes in Swingers, itself all to do with wannabe-cool dudes getting what they want in their very narrow version of life.

In a more mature form, this world of deals and getting ahead is examined in Michael Clayton, Up In The Air and Glengarry Glen Ross. Those stories explore the personal cost of looking to be one up all the time, of edging forward without having a more holistic view of the world that helps characters realise the essential poverty of what they’re engaged in. You could say it’s a theme of Clooney’s, who features in the first two of those films — it’s a dilemma he recognises personally, and has resolved by investing in socially conscious projects like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck alongside those that make the most of his matinee idol looks.

Not that such characters and stories are restricted to the here and now. Where would Star Wars be without the swagger that Han Solo brings to the story? He’s the urban fox to Luke’s farm boy, and that dynamic is a powerful one — especially when you slap an impressionable young princess in the middle of it. Legal dramas occupy this space to some extent too, at least where the wiliness of the law professionals is emphasised. And there are, of course, hybrids with the other templates we’ve looked at: Phil Silvers as Sgt Bilko up against the rigid rules of the army makes me laugh like few other tv comedies, and some of Woody Allen’s work is about what happens when fast talkers come up against more rooted family structures.

Whatever permutations you can think of, someone will have got there first. But that’s not the point. The idea is that these archetypes can help you develop your story to get the most out of it. To exploit the potential of a religious community setting, a character who likes to get her own way and now inhabits a situation where those impulses have legal consequences…whatever the dynamic, thinking about the way it plays out in the framework explored in these last three posts will — hopefully — be of benefit.

Last time, the focus was on how an individual deals with tribal groups. And that covers a lot of drama — where would soap operas be without conflict between individual and family? It’s a theme that goes back deep in world literature, and no wonder.

A more recent development is a function of industrial society: the rise of the regulated state. Kafka wouldn’t have been able to spin his tales of the machinations of the state without working for an insurance company. The Trial and The Castle are idea-led stories, but there are more visceral narratives to come out of the conflict between individual and government.

Where would your average urban police thriller be without a shouty black captain trying to keep a maverick cop in line, said line being drawn by the assholes in City Hall? There’s a fundamental distinction between community and society, and it’s all about size. A community can regulate itself through subtle influence from its members against those who would take advantage of it. A society consists of communities rubbing alongside one another, needing a consistent regulatory framework to control the behaviour of all.

It’s an impossible task, of course. The subtleties with which a family or religious group deals with wayward members cannot possibly be codified into black and white. But that’s what happens, and the consequence is the emergence of narratives which celebrate the triumph of the individual against the system. Catch-22 is one famous example, and rightly so, Heller’s novel outlining how individuals can triumph against the insanity of the rules that seek to contain them in times of war.

In film, Cool Hand Luke is a classic story about a rebel with a cause, one man up against the bullshit that society throws his way. As societies develop, become more sophisticated, it’s no surprise that there’s a place for a new breed of hero who can stand up to the system. The rise of hackers as heroes is one interesting example — where they were baddies in an earlier generation of thrillers, and then edgy renegade characters akin to the counterculture good guys of Easy Rider, by the time of Firewall even respectable geezers like Harrison Ford get to defend their families by using hacking skills to turn the tables on the badasses who threaten his nearest and dearest.

Project that forward into science fiction movies, and the central metaphor of The Matrix is one of hacking: reality itself is a programme that the savvy can turn to their advantage. Hot damn: bet you wish you’d paid more attention to computing at school, especially since you can’t even use your iPhone properly. In the future then, you can play the system against itself — a trick exploited beautifully in Robocop when one of the bad guys is sacked from the board, so that the Ed-209 robot which has been protecting him can now make him eat hot lead death.

Alternately, you can learn to ignore the rigid strictures of The Man and just, you know, do your own thing. Which is where the ending of the original Star Wars film comes from: Luke eschews the use of the computer mounted in his helmet to take the Death Star down guided by The Force, mysticism trumping rules-based thinking. (At least until the second trilogy, with its turgid revelation that The Force is associated with midichlorians, which takes us all the way back to school biology lessons and rules-based guff.)

Thankfully, humans seem to win in these showdowns with the overly programmed. Another example comes in the interaction of the astronaut Dave Bowman with computer HAL in 2001. When HAL turns on the people it’s meant to serve, Bowman has to act against the machine in order to achieve a mystical union at the climax of the film. All of which confirms that, cool as machines are, you need your heroes to be even cooler for an audience to really be moved by your story.

There’s a school of thought that says much of what we get up to has its roots in different stages of humanity as a species. Rewind way back and you’ve got two currents. One is all about individual expression and winning through. Your fundamental instinct to survive and make your mark, manifested in everything from a caveman wrestling a sabretooth tiger to Tiger Woods scoring a hole in one more beautiful woman. Alongside this, the need for the tribe to prosper as a group, which calls for individual welfare to be subordinated to the collective, be that a genteel family in a Victorian novel or a Los Angeles street gang.

A lot of drama has its roots in this individual v tribe dynamic. It’s there in Romeo & Juliet, where the hero falls in love with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and it runs through a whole bunch of manly films. Gangster films often focus on the pull between a hotheaded youngster wanting to make a name for himself and the loyalty that’s necessary to progress in a crime family. Kill by all means — but only kill the people your superiors tell you too.

One contemporary take on such a theme was presented in the superb ITV drama Father & Son, the first part of which ran this evening. ‘Torn from the headlines’ is the expression some papers use for drama like this, inspired by real life gangland shootings in Manchester. Writer Frank Deasy has done wonders with that exceptionally raw material, translating it into a gripping, moving, and powerful tragedy about families and violence.

Teenager Sean O’Connor is the son of a killer, and in taking a gun from his girlfriend’s hand and holding it himself, seems to have inherited the title himself. Claimed almost as a trophy by an old ally of his dad’s in prison, Sean is under the older man’s wing — but that isn’t to say he’s safe. The ally wants out of prison, and realises Sean is a valuable piece on a chess board that also includes teenage gang members, the aunt who’s brought Sean up and works for the police, and fellow cops who view Sean as nothing more than the latest in the line of murderous O’Connors.

There are strands of tension accreting throughout the story. Sean wants to do right by his aunt, a positive role model, and steer clear of his dad. He loves his girlfriend, and goes to prison rather than allow her to face a murder charge. His cellmate professes allegiance to Sean’s dad — but will sacrifice Sean to get what he wants. And the murder happened in the first place in self defence as response to a friend of Sean’s being shot by gang members.

It’s potent and beautifully played stuff, and though the future looks bleak for Sean O’Connor, there are three episodes to come, and in them the certainty of further twists on the theme of individual will and its relation to collective experience.

These dynamics are at the heart of many a martial arts film. David Mamet’s Redbelt is about a martial arts tutor loyal to his lineage who ends up caught in a fixed tv tournament and fighting against its corruption, in the process winning the heartfelt thanks of his school’s grand master. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai are honorable warriors prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of a defenceless farming community. And so on.

You can find variations on the theme in westerns, and in any film where a new recruit is initiated into a service and needs some of their maverick qualities sanding down — though inevitably it’s the utilisation of same that saves the day and for which the initiate is rewarded by the elders of the tribe. All of which is to suggest that this is a theme as old as civilisation itself — and Father & Son an excellent example of a modern take on it with more of a socially relevant than a mythic interpretation of it.

I spent a while on the phone with a good friend who is confused and tearful because of a learning process she’s going through. In acquiring the skills she wants to help her develop as a person and succeed in the next chapter of her professional life, she’s increasingly aware of a tension between how she feels, and how she thinks she’s supposed to feel. According, that is, to the stuff she’s learning. To which there’s an answer, of course…the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory works. In practice, it doesn’t.

As in life, so in screenplays. Having waded through Syd Field and Robert McKee and Phil Parker and concluding that John Truby offers the most useful frameworks for tackling scriptwriting, I’m increasingly inclined to ignore the guidance of such gurus and set out in pursuit of my own truths.

Of course, I have a sound theoretical basis for such a stance. You may or may not be familiar with Alfred Korzybski. He was a very smart fellow who through studying the slippage between reality and representations of it coined the phrase ‘The map is not the territory’. Meaning, among other things, that words are not which they describe, and that however accurate a map is, it will inevitably miss details that would be pertinent to some observer or other.

As all this relates to screenwriting, Korzybski’s notion could be expressed thus: ‘the script is not the film’. How could it be? A script is a thing of around 100 pages. A film exists in time, and supposedly that time is linked to the number of those pages. I am less convinced of that linkage than I ever was, especially as I write my current script. After the opening sequence, the action moves to a mental hospital. The protagonist is passive, the camera showing us what he sees from a wheelchair as he’s pushed from the back of an ambulance into the lobby, and from there up to his ward. The journey happens in real time, and I know in my head that it takes longer than the pagecount suggests it should. The same applies to other sequences in the script, which are written concisely but I know to have the intended effect would take a longer time on screen.

That’s just one example of the disconnect between what’s on the page and what I hope to see on a screen one day. It’s also impossible to get across just how I want the sound design of the film to work. When the protagonist is in hospital, the building is having work done on it, and he interprets the sound of the construction as his psyche being drilled into and restored. I can point to that, but I know my description is only a very binary version of what I want to see and hear — if the effect is achieved as I’d like it to be, it will be a synaesthetic link between what the character perceives and what it means to him.

Structure is another area that’s mutable, never mind what McKee and the others say. Oh, there has to be a structure, there’s no doubting it. But it should flow from the natural shape of the story, rather than being a cookie cutter to pour a story into. Some stories are cookie shaped, and that’s fine. Not all of them are. And remember how arbitrary some of this stuff is — structure for tv writers is determined in large part by whether there are ad breaks in the show you’re writing. A straightforward commercial consideration dictates how you exercise your craft. Simple as.

Really, all structure is about is ensuring that the turning points in your story work effectively and build up to a satisfactory resolution. There may be three acts. But why not five? Or instead shape your story into ten minute sequences. There’s a way that will work for your story. Mine too. And my increasing suspicion is that the longer writers dwell on the formalities of all this, the less creating they get round to.

I’m reminded of an acquaintance, a talented musician who somehow never gets round to creating any actual music. First it was because he needed a bass guitar. Then because he needed a five string one. Then because he lacked home recording equipment. Finally, he has a studio of his own, with more kit than The Beatles had. And hasn’t produced a sound.

In assessing a script, how do you know what criteria to apply? Obviously a comedy should make you laugh, a thriller get the pulse racing, and a horror make you unwilling to put the lights out. But beyond that, what do you look for?

Some people will answer ’structure’ at that point, but I believe that’s a question of mistaken priorities. Thing being, that a satisfying structure is one that delivers a sequence of emotions in an effective manner. It follows then, that it might be more useful to concentrate on your emotional response to a script than trace its resemblance to a particular structural template.

OK, so emotions count. They’re what draws an audience into a cinema, after all. And the effective control of emotions within the film will determine how successful it is — it’s no accident that people have tears in their eyes in the climactic scenes of many movies. So, tracking your emotional response to a script can prove very useful — I’d say more so than picking up on McKeeisms like ‘the reversal of the reversal’ or whatnot.

Emotions come in a variety of flavours, and it can help to have some way of knowing what you’re looking for when you seek to pay attention to them in a script. At which point an ancient tool has new utility. Way back when, some people believed there were four elements rather than the hundred-odd found in the modern Periodic Table. Comparing them isn’t fair in fact: the latter is very much a function of a scientific worldview, whereas the classical take on elements is far removed from test tubes and microscopes.

As it goes, the elemental perspective isn’t limited to emotions. That’s within its remit, but so are other ways of understanding and interacting with the world. Air is associated with the intellect, with concepts and ideas. Any screenplay needs to be well aspected in air since a large part of the pull of a film is the idea behind it. The business of straplines is very much to do with air.

Earth is to do with practicalities, making things happen effectively. Which could be one way to describe the need for a script to be plotted well. More, it’s to do with the story — however unlikely — being grounded in some emotionally credible reality. The stuff that George Lucas got right in the first Star Wars trilogy, but messed up with the second.

Fire is connected with the intuitive aspects of storytelling. It’s there in symbol systems that work their way through a film that bring out aspects of its meaning without being so crass as to describe them. It’s to do with what drives characters when they’re facing overwhelming odds, just as caterpillars must be traumatised midway through their transition to being a butterfly.

Water is all about emotions. They have depth, can be reflected on, or splashed about in for the sheer thrill of it. It’s an element that’s represented literally in many films: John Boorman loves his waterfalls, and the Bourne series is not unique in having characters reborn in water — it happens in The Descent too, to name but one example.

All this has been going through my mind since it came to my attention that the script I’m writing at the moment lacks earthy aspects. And now I’ll be incorporating them, to ensure that the film ends on a note of emotional and practical credibility rather than whizzbang symbolism. The latter is necessary to provide a platform for the former.Without it, there’s a danger that the film could culminate in fireworks that don’t have an impact on the protagonist. That follow through is vital, ensures the whole functions as a mandala, a visual meditation tool which itself is a demonstration of elemental balance.

I tend to have a problem with antagonists in my stories. Often as not, the protagonist is his/her own worst enemy, which I guess expresses my belief that if you’re not getting what you want from life, odds are it’s because of you messing up, and not because some villain is cackling stage left as the latest phase of his dastardly plan clicks into place.

Only, in many mainstream films — and I’d very much like to be involved with such — there really are baddies with black hats out to get the good guy. And I need and want to be able to create such fiends for some of the projects I’ve got in mind.

All of which helps explain why I was so happy with Iron Man 2. Particularly after being disappointed by the resolution of the first Iron Man film, which was yet another variation on the theme of taking on a level boss, to use computer game terminology. There was a baddy conceptually similar to the hero, only bigger and scary, and it was all a bit trite compared to the skilfully written stuff that preceded it, brought to glorious life by Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, the gazillionaire technocrat who wears the Iron Man armour.

This time round though, it all worked a lot better. Stark’s problems were multifaceted. Ivan Vanko, a Russian with a historic beef against him, had worked out how to copy some of Stark’s technology, and used it to intelligent effect, attacking the industrialist in the full glare of the world media at a Grand Prix event. As Vanko (another comeback kid in the form of Mickey Rourke) knew full well, the effect of the attack was to chip away at Stark’s image as the provider of a privatised world peace. A genuinely smart move, as well as a great set piece action sequence.

Stark isn’t about 1:1 conflict though, at least when he’s written intelligently. His true arena is the military-industrial complex, and his real enemy comes from within it: rival industrialist Justin Hammer. Perenially second string to the charismatic Stark, Hammer couldn’t be more of a beta male if he tried. He wants what Stark has, and is aided and abetted by the military, who are angry at Stark’s refusal to share his Iron Man technology.

That sets the tone for what’s to come, as Hammer hires Vanko to develop a new generation of armoured suits for use by the American military. Only, Vanko instead comes up with robot drones, which are under his control — and he uses them to continue his vendetta against Stark. Which is one way of getting across the nature of retribution while saying something about government contracts for good measure.

All of this falls into line with advice from screenwriting gurus to have your baddies have intelligent and evolving plans to tackle your hero. In this case, one villain is working against another while apparently being his ally. Good stuff, and cleanly executed. And there’s another layer of opposition between Stark and his right hand man Lt. Col. James Rhodes, whose loyalties are torn between his buddy and his employers. It’s dramatised perfectly when the battle armour he’s wearing is controlled by Vanko and targets Iron Man, and Rhodes gives Stark a heads up about the assault coming his way.

It all adds up to a highly enjoyable movie, with the same kind of zing that its predecessor had, and a smarter and more character-based script by Justin Theroux for good measure. How director Jon Favreau got here from his somewhat smug debut with hipster drama Swingers I couldn’t tell you — but he does a fine job, and I look forward to a third installment of the series.

Someone who’s seen a film treatment I’ve co-developed said that they very much like it, but were concerned about some predictable elements. The tone of their communication suggested that they felt this was a problem, and I can see where they’re coming from. After all, you don’t want to second guess a story…do you?

I saw How To Train Your Dragon earlier, and predicted much of what was to come. And you know what? It didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the film one iota. And it wasn’t predictable because of being a film primarily for children. Not at all. It’s just that, once you set up the characters and plot and world they inhabit, there are only so many ways it can plausibly go and hold your interest at the same time.

Sure, the dragons in the film could have torched the village and dropped the Vikings into a volcano. But that would have lent the story an unnecessarily apocalyptic tone for an audience of a tender age. And yeah, the hero — Hiccup — could have used his dragon-friendly ways to rule the Vikings by fear as their despotic leader. You know what though? Those would have been pretty shitty stories for a bunch of highly talented writers and animators to turn their attentions to.

So, How To Train Your Dragon is kind of predictable. Guess what though? The story is delivered with such relish, such panache, such joie de vivre, that it matters not a jot. What counts is how enjoyable the experience was, and let me tell you it was a hootenanny compared to the smartarse games played in Shutter Island. If Scorsese’s looking for a real challenge, I’d recommend he makes a film for a young audience, and find out whether his Hitchcock riffs and colour schemes pull the wool over young eyes as well as those routines lull his adult viewers.

Imagine a friend is telling you a story. Maybe you were at the event that the tale relates. Do you interrupt her as, laughing aloud, she sandpapers actuality and introduces other elements to tell a yarn that gets you feeling as good as she clearly does? Or do you pull her monologue apart for inconsistencies and contrivances that push it closer to a three act structure than what ‘really’ happened?

Being unpredictable for its own sake only goes so far if you’re interested in engaging an audience. It might fascinate David Lynch, but you’ll note his work rarely troubles the box office and that he helps fund himself through his online presence. That’s far from a criticism: it’s a good business model…at least for someone who has dabbled with something like the mainstream from time to time and profited from it.

Brains like patterns. Can’t get enough of them. So if anything, they’ll tend to find evidence of coherence even when there isn’t any — which explains the attraction of conspiracy theory. Work with that tendency — there’s a whole industry devoted to helping you to do so, with the likes of Syd Field and Robert McKee offering their versions of how film structure really works.

Thing being, it’s not the structure that people go and see films for. They go to be moved, to laugh and cry and empathise with people going through journeys analogous to their own, even if those journeys involve spaceships and spies and Eddie Murphy in a fatsuit.

If a friend asked for a fiver and then cleared off, never to be seen again, you’d be understandably annoyed. And confused. As with friends, so with films. A trailer helps create a contract in the viewer’s mind. One that tells them what sort of film they can reasonably expect for their money, and what kind of emotions will be involved in its realisation. You can honour that agreement, and ideally do so with some wit and style, throw some curveballs in to keep them on their toes. Or you can run off with their money. Only, do that, and they won’t be coming back to see anything of yours again — and they’ll make sure their friends know you ripped them off.

Have a look at this, the script for The Losers. Based on the excellent comics series by Andy Diggle and Jock, this adaptation by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt is a great model for anyone keen on the kind of high octane action fun that tends to do so well at the box office worldwide when it’s done properly.

In particular, let’s look at the first eleven pages. There’s a masterful job of tension and release done from the off. Opening on what seems to be a scene of someone suffering in a desert setting, a lightning reframe reveals that the anguish was bogus, one of a small group of friends goofing around over a game of cards. Which in turn acclimatises us to the tone of what’s to come: already we have experience of tension being turned into laughter.

The game isn’t played for money, but for weapons. Deadly sexy weapons. Owned by deadly sexy guys, described with magnificent economy: Cougar being a ‘Sniper Rock-God’ is a particular favourite. They’re passing the time while on their way in a truck to a mission, effortlessly swapping the kind of snidely funny lines that men everywhere wished they exchanged with their buddies.

That mission? To use a laser device to target an Afghan prison for destruction from the air. Only, there’s a complication. Kids. And having seen one of our heroes with a tattoo of his own child, it’s reassuring to know that these guys have standards where this killing people business is concerned: they have no intention of letting children die.

Only, there’s a lethal air barrage on the way to the target. And our heroes decide with barely a pause that they’re going to get in there before it arrives, and save the kids. Which counts as a good indicator of their convictions and cojones — and provides the audience with a glimpse of the mad killing skillz that these guys have.

In short order, the guys off the forces guarding the prison, and discover a group of abused children. To underline the fact, a pervert is caught in the act of readying himself to sexually assault one of the kids, which means it’s ok to kill these bastards, and confirms that our guys — and by implication the audience — are on the side of the angels.

But wait, there’s something more. In one of the prison cells, an unspeakably tortured American asks if the newcomers will off him. And reveals that he knows the badass who’s sent them on this mission, and refused to rescind the order just because there are kids on the premises. In fact, this whole operation is about designating the prison a target so this guy — an American behind enemy lines, betrayed by his commander — can be killed.

Naturally, our guys put the poor sod out of his misery, before heading out of the prison complex at speed — because of course the airstrike is on its way, raining death and destruction on anyone the gang haven’t already disposed of. Meaning an opportunity for some high speed driving, barely in time to escape destruction from above.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhilerated. And massively impressed. In just a few pages a worldview has been created, and characters who articulate different aspects of it through their solid teamwork. Prowess has been shown, with weapons ranging from old fashioned knives to the newest of guns. Camaraderie has been displayed, in a way that musketeers of old would applaud. And a sinister enemy has been identified, who we strongly suspect will turn up in the story again, and whose corrupt and cowardly actions provide motivation for the band of brothers to take action against.

What more could you want? Frankly, if this doesn’t impress you, nothing will. This is an excellent adaptation of very strong source material, translating Diggle and Jock’s comics creation into mainstream cinema with finesse. I was already looking forward to the film. This screenplay will give me plenty to think about before that happens, not least because I’ve got my own action-thriller-with-a-twist I want to write, one of these days.

There’s an exercise I sometimes get people to do in writing classes, to do with status. It’s inspired by a scene in Fargo, in which protagonist William H. Macy goes to visit criminals to ask them to kidnap his wife, a course of action he’s sure will set things to rights but which of course has the opposite effect.

Things start badly when Macy turns up an hour late, which has made the bad guys annoyed, a point that they come back to much to Macy’s chagrin. It also transpires that the kidnappers want a $40,000 upfront payment, which Macy’s character hadn’t bargained for. On top of which, they’re — reasonably enough — confused about why he’d want his own wife kidnapped.

Each of the beats in the scene contributes to the overall sense that Macy is out of his depth. The fact that he does a lot of umming and aahing is a further indicator of his bewilderment. All of this occurs, by the way, in the context of Macy being in a liminal zone. That is, space that his character is not familiar with, which he does not know the rules for. His actions here will determine much of consequence — and it’s no surprise that having fluffed things this early on, they only get worse when the kidnapping actually commences.

Anyway, I use that scene to get people to look at what constitutes status, and then to demonstrate that understanding by having them reverse the situation. That is, have Macy be the high status character, and the kidnappers low. It can happen all kinds of ways. If the kidnappers are broke, then the offer of work puts them on the back foot. If the client has the power to blackmail the kidnappers into committing the crime, then once again s/he has greater status. Size tends to be a clear indicator, at least in some contexts: a big bruiser of a doorman clearly controls the entrance to a nighclub in a way that Charles Hawtrey would find it hard to.

There are more subtle signifiers too. If you go to someone else’s place, as host they have higher status — unless you bring with you the attitude you have in your own larger more expensive residence. Clothes traditionally indicate status in some circumstances — hence judges wearing wigs, and graduating students hiring mortar boards. And language is important: if asking for a favour, you’re probably best off beseeching the person with the authority to confer it rather than telling them what to do.

All these facets of status are considered and weighed up when we interact with people, and are therefore useful to take on board when writing a scene. At the moment I’m writing a few sample pages of script for a play I want to be commissioned, and have spent some time considering the respective statuses of the three characters.

The protagonist begins with high status as he has something — a highly marketable true story — that a publishing agent wants. But at the same time, the publishing agent has the ability to say yes or no to that story, which gives her considerable power: she has the keys to the kingdom. And her assistant, new to the job, apparently has low status — but for reasons central to the plot ultimately has the highest status of all the characters.

Working that dynamic out helps me decide how to play the story. Who has the opening gambit, how it might be responded to, and countered, and so on. And then how the whole situation changes when the agent’s assistant reveals her hand. Status alone doesn’t determine what unfolds, but it’s a key tool in keeping track of what’s going on for each of the characters — and that goes for any story you’re working on.