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The Craft of Writing: Externalizing the Internal, Part 1

By Jacob Krueger

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The lesson we take from it is actually going to be a different lesson than what we usually take from this podcast. Rather than looking at the structure of There Will Be Blood we're actually going to be looking at There Will Be Blood in terms of a concept called externalizing the internal.

So, what the heck does that mean?

We work in this really exciting medium called film. What’s the exciting thing about working in film? We tell stories with images. And the challenging thing about working in film is that half of the things that exist in the world, we can't see. We can't see thoughts and we can't see feelings.

And that means, as screenwriters, our job is to externalize these internal things. To take them outside of the mind and put them into the body and the action of our screenplay. To translate the emotional language of our writing into action.

You Can’t Rely On Great Actors

The way I like to know if I've externalized the internal, in my screenplay, is I like to think of my least favorite actor. If I’ve written a line of action and my least favorite actor can't act it, I have not externalized the internal. In other words, if my writing requires my least favorite actor to show disappointment, surprise, shock, sadness, or just to be able to act in general, then I have not externalized the internal.

If I am lucky enough to have great actors such as Meryl Streep and Daniel Day Lewis, I don't need to externalize the internal because they will do it for me. A great actor will deliver what you have failed to deliver. A great actor will look at the line and find the action underneath. They will look at the emotion and translate that emotion into action.

If I happen to be lucky enough to get a great director, that director will look underneath my crappy explanation and find the beautiful image or the brilliant action. If I'm lucky enough to get a great actor or director, they will make me look good.

But the fact of the matter is: I can't depend on that.

You Can’t Rely On Great Directors

A lot of working directors are not that good and many Hollywood stars are completely untrained as actors. You go to a theater and you've got trained actors. But many of these Hollywood stars -- as compelling as they are -- are not trained in acting; they're trained in being celebrities. And sometimes you need one of those celebrities because you won’t get your movie made without one.

So, on a practical level, we need to externalize the internal so that our moderately talented director can look at our work and say, "You know, I know exactly how to shoot this.” But even if you have a hugely talented director, you would like your movie to somewhat resemble the thing you imagined when you sat down to write it.

As one of my great mentors, Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili, who is a world-renowned set designer, used to say, “If you want a director to do what you want, you must make him think it is his idea." And one of the ways we allow directors to do what we want (by thinking it's their idea) is by externalizing the internal. We must capture our story in images the way that we are seeing it in our heads, so that we can director-proof our films without ever calling a single shot.

We must able to actor-proof our films so that even if you had Keanu Reeves instead of Daniel Day Lewis trying to play Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, the director knows to say “Ok, Keanu, grab for that shovel,” as opposed to "look angry.