the Essential Caesura

Caesura is a literary term, referring, in poetry, to a pause that occurs naturally when a line is spoken. It is used purposefully, using the rhythms of speech to make it fall in a specific place, to create a desired effect, and can be soft (barely noticeable) or hard (as in a full stop, such as a period.) Without these little pauses, the words all run together an become meaningless. When used skillfully, they can not only add to the flow of a piece, but can actually create implied meaning. (For example, when I sing White Christmas, when I get to the line, "everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe," I like to pause after "turkey". That pause give a whole new meaning to the line.)

What I've noticed recently, is that there is some equivalent to the caesura in all art forms.

On Dancing with the Stars, one of the judges is fond of saying that a good dance needs "light and shade," by which he means aggressive or flashy moments should be punctuated by quiet ones in order to have the most impact. A dance that is all "pow" simply isn't as interesting.

In advertising and print design, we talk about "white space." The page needs to have a certain amount of white space in order to look like something meaningful, or it all bleeds together. A page of advertising that's full of exclamation points and neon lettering and bright photos might as well be a black and white list of dense text - when everything is loud nothing stands out. High end advertising often contains a large amount of white space, and may be a single large object on a white or other simple background, with little more than a short slogan and a logo.

Examples:
3G
VW
Coke
Dove

as opposed to something busy like this, where the message gets lost


This one is interesting because it effectively blends the background details so that they appear monochromatic, and then it also echoes for emphasis and to play on the message. This kind of echo, or refrain, is used in music and poetry in a similar manner.


In visual art, we talk about "negative space," which is, simply, the space not used. It applies not only to painting and photography, but to three-dimensional and functional arts such as sculpture, architecture, furniture, and even jewelry.

Negative space is used to create optical illusions, where we focus on one image, and only when we shift our perception do we see another image as well. Perhaps in a similar manner, in a story what seemed like the background, or what seemed like the pauses between action, could suddenly pop to the forefront, while the the other story becomes backgrounded.

Which brings me to screenwriting and film. The caesura is used here as well.

Visually - framing, focus, and light are used to direct the eye. Where the eye is not directed is the negative space. Look at the use of negative space in these filmic images, and the way they dramatize the actor, make them seem bigger than life, or overwhelmed by their environment:
Pirates of the Caribbean
7-Year Itch
Platoon
Sound of Music
Serenity

Without the negative space surrounding them, these moments in the film would feel smaller, less important. The negative space sets them apart, sets the actors apart.

Here's a great image from Lord of the Rings, where the actor becomes part of the negative space, a shade lighter than the background, and the focus is on an object in the foreground.

These things might be implied in a script by describing the big sky behind the character, or the tight box enclosing them. The focus on an object could be highlighted by describing the character matching the background: grey, more than white, as the tower was a grey of a darker shade - and the red eye of the orb glowed before him (OK, that sucks, but you get the idea.)

But film is not static, and negative space can be manipulated to create meaning and moods in movies through movement - whether it's as simple as pulling back to increase the volume of negative space, or pulling in to tighten on an actor. Changing the color, texture, and location. Changing the focus, sharp on one actor or object, then switching focus to another.

What I'm most interested in right now, however, is the use of the caesura in screenwriting. Pauses in the story. Quiet moments. Or, as Mystery Man put it in a recent post, breathing room.

The most straightforward use is perhaps to modulate pacing. A few movies have come out recently that are non-stop go-go-go, and while Crank and others like it are fun, I wonder if they would have been improved by a little breathing space. The pace goes from 0 to 60 very quickly, and to maintain the feeling of speed, needs to keep getting faster. When you're driving at 70mph, it stops feeling fast after just a few minutes. To keep feeling the speed, you need to slow down a bit at regular intervals. It also gives the character a chance to believably rest and have the energy to go hard again.


Another use of slow moments is to build suspense and tension. The calm before the storm (in a natural disaster movie, this might be literal.) It's suspense, rather than surprise. Hitchcock said it best.

There is a clear difference between surprise and suspense […]. We are sitting here and having an innocent conversation. Let us assume that there is a bomb under this table between us. […] suddenly there is a loud boom and the bomb goes off. The audience is surprised, but before this surprise they have only seen a very ordinary scene without any significance. Let us instead look at suspense scene. The bomb is under the table and the audience is aware of this because they have seen the anarchist plant it there. They also know that the bomb will go off at one o’clock, and up on the wall is a clock showing that the time is now quarter to one […]. In the first scene we have given the audience 15 seconds of surprise […] but in the last scene we have given them fifteen minutes of suspense.

Those moments of suspense are when an audience becomes invested in the result, and those moments are the ones they remember. Surprise may get their heart rate up, but nothing's been invested, so without another surprise immediately after the moment passes and is soon forgotten.


Another use of the caesura, or dramatic pause, is to emphasize the importance of a moment. This can be a small one, and need not even be a full scene. A pause can simply underline whatever occurred right before, or let us know that what we see next is something to pay attention to.

If a character simply walks by our protagonist on the street, stops and looks in a window, and moves on, the audience is unlikely to even take note. That's just an extra, a passerby. If, however, the protagonist has just stopped to, say, check at their watch or look at the sky and are essentially doing nothing for a moment before that other person passes them, and as that other person stops and looks in the window, then the audience is likely to take note of them and wonder what their significance is. You can bring this character back, and many audience members will remember them.

It can also underline theme. A moment that is quiet will give the audience time to reflect, and think about what's happened and why. Small moments, with small reactions from the characters, are ones the audience can fill with their own meaning. If these come right after a significant thematic moment, then it will serve to underscore that idea. Say, the character looks at a photo - and then sits back on the couch for a minute, and gets up and starts straightening the room. Whatever was in that photo becomes more important than if they look at it, put it down, and move on. If they look at it, then rush out the door - the photo may be important to the plot, but with the quiet moment, it's likely to speak more to either theme or character.

Which brings me to the final use of quiet moments in a film: character development. Whether they highlight some element of the character's background or history, or show something about their nature, or give them time to process an emotion - this is a challenging way to use the filmic caesura, but may be the most rewarding for the writer. Well, if you like focusing on your characters, that is. Which I'd say most of us screenwriters do.

Examples:

A man goes to a park, and walk around. Maybe he kicks the leaves, or stops at a particular bench, smells the flowers on a particular rosebush. You know he is remembering this place, or one very much like it.

Or - she folds laundry. Every shirt is military-precise. Items are separated, socks are paired, things are hung or put into drawers right away. Then imagine, against this quiet background, she comes across an unmatched sock - a man's sock - and sits down with it, on the bed, sighs, and fights back tears as she strokes the pillow on the opposite side of the bed. This is a much more dramatic and memorable way to tell us her husband is missing (dead? at war? run off?) than if we caught the news through dialogue. If it hadn't been a quiet scene, it would not have been pregnant with implied meaning. Such a small thing as a sock, and touching a pillow, would get lost in a busier, faster scene. The questions about exactly what happened can be answered later, with a close up of an object or a single line of dialogue that wouldn't have had meaning unless the audience was already looking for answers. (When she goes to the post office, someone stops and puts their hand on her arm and says, I'm sorry. She nods and thanks them.)



The caesura is an essential building block of the art of the screenplay, just as any other art, and I'm sure there are many other uses for it.

Write What You Know

Imagination is a powerful tool. It can carry us into areas that no one before has ever conceived of, it can solve problems, it can pull beauty from nearly nothing. Imagination is essential to a writer. So why then, are new writers so often admonished to "write what you know?"

The truth is, for a writer who knows themselves, there is no contradiction.

Our imaginings are the product, just as everything else about us, of a combination of genetics and instinct with experience. It serves a function in our personal cognitive and social development (and in our development as a society, allowing humanity the diversity and adaptability that makes us so distinct from other species...even our ability to communicate with one another through language involves a level of abstraction that's greater than most species and thus an imagination to interpret - but that's another topic.)

In short, even the most grandiose or unusual imaginings are founded on things we know. But for most writers, imagination is not a problem. Those of us who are driven to create are more likely to have an active imagination that tends to wheel off in its own direction, that becomes it's own incentive to create. Thus, the admonition "write what you know" is a way to help ground our work.

It can function in the basic sense of knowing your material. Do research, character background studies, and know the reality behind the story.

It can function to encourage writers to experience life, to have a broader range to draw from.

But I think that the most useful and powerful function of writing what you know is specificity. The more specific and personal a work, the greater the likelihood that it will transcend itself and become universal.

It becomes "real" in ways we can't anticipate when we know that a brand of tennis shoes that were popular in a time a place our characters occupy, when we know that a certain carpet color is common to cheap motels built in the 80's, when we know how you hold a fishing line and how much room you need to cast a fly. Because when we know these things, our audience has a point of reference, and it becomes real to them.

Humans are social. We desire belonging, we are constantly (usually unconsciously) searching for connection. When a writer provides points of connection by giving specific, clear details, then the audience will join them.

It becomes "real" in ways that are surprising when we talk about our bi-racial friend who buys giant dubs to prove he's black while bragging about "sounding" white on the phone. Or about the dweeb who tells us for weeks how beautiful and sexy we are, turning up when we're out for coffee or at the grocery store, but the minute we say clearly that we're not interested pointedly calls us a fat bitch, and then whines because being a "nice guy" gets them nowhere. And the feeling of helplessness as we watch our mother on life support, surrounded by plastic tubes and wires that seem to hold a once-dynamic woman in stasis. The more specific you are about your experiences, the more likely you are to have people tell you they understand, and that it's "just like" something they've gone through.

So that feeling of helplessness gets attached to an image of an astronaut, so dependent on the tubes that connect her to life. Or the dweeb backs up their aggressive response to rejection with a knife. And bi-racial guy becomes a human raised in an alien environment. Focus on the specifics, and these situations will become familiar not only to us, but to an audience.

Thus, a writer must know themselves, so that when they do imagine flying, they can place the sensation of the rush as they dive through the air as something akin to riding a roller coaster. So that when feel a rush as they ride a roller coaster, they can think: this is what superman feels like when he's flying.

Know yourself. Pay attention. And then write what you know.

Science Fiction is Alive and Kicking

Sometimes a film writer pens something dumb enough it makes me wanna smack 'em. This article in EW is one of those.

I do agree, there are a lot of science fiction movies that seem to lack an original take on the future, that seem to dig up the same old ideas that have been fueling the genre since the '40s, that are re-makes and adaptations... of course, that is true for most of the movies being made today, regardless of genre. A lack of originality in this season's blockbusters is only evidence of the cowardice of studios and producers, of the general trend for big money to play things safe and forget that what made Movie X a hit wasn't that it had such and such special effect, or a particular concept - but that it was a great story with engaging characters told in a fresh yet engaging manner.

Of course, it's clear that Mark Harris is not a huge fan of the genre, or he never would have called it sci-fi, which is pronounced "skiffy" by the fans, and considered a sneering and marginalizing abbreviation. The correct term is "SF." At least, that's what my friends in the 90's said when I was in a writer's group with some serious aficionados and players in the field (including the then editor of F& SF.) I admit that my own leanings are more toward horror and fantasy, in particular magical realism along the lines of John Crowley - but I am familiar with Science Fiction enough to know the conventions of the genre.

The author points to 2001 as re-defining the genre, as if a movie of that caliber gets made more than once in a generation - but also ignoring the fact that there have been genre-definers made since then, in particular the Matrix Trilogy.

Yes, it's been a while since AI, ExistenZ, and Dark City. But what about V for Vendetta? Not good enough? Serenity and Children of Men are among the best SF films ever made. And before you dismiss those because one was based on a TV series (but a recent one) and the other on a book (though loosely) note that the author of the article lists 3:10 to Yuma and No Country as evidence of great and fresh things happening in the Western genre.

How about something completely original? Take a look at Paprika, a great piece of anime. If you want interesting and unique ideas about the future, anime is a good place to look. Then there's Jathia’s Wager, a fascinating concept that seems to be a sort of choose your own adventure for the digital age. I am sure there are also original ideas being made cheaply and shown online for free, as fans of SF tend to be drawn to new technologies.

Mr. Harris also makes the mistake of limiting SF to films depicting the future. Some consider Donnie Darko an SF film. Then there's Eternal Sunshine, which, since the plot relies on a new technology is indisputably science fiction... and how about The Prestige? Not ground-breaking, but a decent movie certainly, and despite being set in the past, again, the centrality if science to the plot makes it SF.

I do agree, that more originality is needed. That new ideas that derive from someplace besides old books, TV shows and movies are essential not only to science fiction, but to film in general. I just think that those things are out there - and as DVDs and the internet continue to erode the success of the 80's style blockbuster, film companies will seek them out - just as they had to when television threatened the movie business.