hey everyone and welcome to another video in this rewriting crash course series now if you're interested in working with me one-on-one to fix your screenplay there is a link below where you can book a call and talk to me about that without further ado let's get into the video here so last episode what i talked about was looking at your scenes on like the grander scale right what's the point of the scenes you know do they actually work in your structural flow do they work with the rest of the story and then we also looked
at pivotal scenes right like what actually is happening in your pivotal scenes like in the major shifting turning points in your story and so again we talked about sort of three levels of stakes here there's the external stakes there's the internal stakes and there is the philosophical stakes so what i want to talk about today is how these actually play out in the story and ask also want to talk about something that's essentially what i'm calling sort of scene energy flow right so like what is actually happening what are the small pieces that are turning
your scene and moving the conflict forward as we are going to the actual point of the scene you know at the end right this is kind of what i talked about in the previous episode you know what actually is taking place when we start here and actually get to the bottom here this is what we're going to be looking at today so i have some examples that we're going to be talking about and i'm going to specifically be talking about um some or an example that is you know not a pivotal scene kind of looking
at what does a non-pivotal scene look like and what elements of you know the three elements of conflict are actually in a non-pivotal scene and then i'm going to look at some more pivotal scenes and look at how they're actually looking at all three of these stakes within that now what i want you to also remember is so your external stakes are you know very much plot-based stakes right these are the character wants something some sort of external goal we're going after that and we're having conflict about getting that and that's what we're looking at
with extra mistakes internal is usually relationships um character emotions character feelings right so a character has a relationship with another character right that's that's you know more so internal stakes or a character is worried about you know that the other character respects them that's another element of internal stakes and then we have philosophical stakes which mean you know character beliefs about the world and how those are potentially challenged in a particular scene okay so i have a few different scenes that we're going to look at today that are going to be handling these ideas right
here and what we're going to be talking about is sort of the flow of the scene and what's actually happening as that scene is playing out so this first scene that i have here this is a scene from peaky blinders and this is between tommy and alfie sullivan's they are both uh sort of mob guys doing their own thing and um in this scene tommy is coming in because he wants to make an alliance with alfie that's the point of the scene that's what the character want is we're going to just kind of watch this
take place and hopefully not get copy struck on this video you want to take a look at my bakery we bake all sorts here mate yeah did you know we bake over 10 000 loaves a week can you believe it we like the white bread we bite the brown bread by all sorts you like to try some bread yeah all right what would you like right away try the brown brown not bad don't matter don't buy it [Music] okay so what has happened so far okay what's what's actually going on what is the story sort
of flow that's happening right essentially both of these characters are saying you know can we be honest with each other you know do you respect me this sort of thing right so what what tom hardy his character alfie just did here is see if tommy silly murphy's character would actually be honest with him right and this is you know essentially just them um you know understanding trying to set a certain element of respect right so what we're kind of seeing here is is the initial elements of the internal stakes with the internal conflict and what
we're looking at is the dynamic between these two characters right um let's go ahead and then we can get into the main scene i want to look at which well however very bad bad bad things about you birmingham fable all right okay so here tom hardy opens it up saying i've heard very bad things about you birmingham people right he's immediately what is he doing he's he is challenging tommy and this is this is again this is internal state this is uh respect right a lot of this conversation and this is not a pivotal scene
but a lot of this conversation comes down to the internal and the external stakes so what we're watching here is we're essentially the characters are asking can they respect each other to work together for an external goal which we will get into here in a second real gypsies right so would you leave me a [ __ ] tent for caravan okay again he's challenging him saying i don't respect you i'm here to discuss business with you mr solomon's whoa fine and [ __ ] so let's talk first right and again we're looking at dialogue here
we're looking at the purpose of dialogue in the actual scene flow that's going on here so when tommy says let's talk first again he's saying no you are going to respect me again this is this is a this whole scene is about respect right about do these care are these characters going to be able to respect one another and be able to form their uneasy alliance to actually get something external done in the plot so your lifestyle yourself a policeman half policeman on my payroll but i don't like policemen because police then they can't be
trusted mr sabini he's this policeman all the time that's why he's winning the war in london and now this this line by tommy mr zabini uses policemen all the time which is why he is winning the war in london is a stab at alfie's character he is saying you know how can i like your ass essentially he's saying like you're sitting here asking or seeing if you can respect me how can i respect you you're losing your war and you're losing it for my you know i once carried out my own personal full stigmata on
an italian i pushed his face up against the trench he shoved a six inch nail up his [ __ ] nose and i hammered it home with a duck board it was [ __ ] biblical man okay so what is he saying he is saying i am a person to be feared and respected um you know i am a monster too be careful what you say to me again this again so far we have we have not even gotten into the external stakes of this story or this scene really at all all we're doing is
focusing here right the characters are trying to decide whether or not they can respect each other so don't come in here and sit there in my chair and tell me that i'm losing my wall to a [ __ ] whop that was a long time ago you need to be more realistic really realistic but if you weren't losing the war then you wouldn't uh send me the telegram really you forget your [ __ ] telegram your telegram as you said hello very simple you want to sell me something okay so now we have our first
external conflict line of dialogue here where he says you want to sell me something what is it right so finally they have decided that at the very least they can respect each other enough to have a conversation about what they're actually here for and now we're talking about the external plot concept we join forces [ __ ] off we join forces this is the point of the scene tommy wants to ally with alfie [ __ ] you ridiculous this your is provides one tenth of your income protection is another ten percent of the rest you
make from the rice trucks i know you keep a gun on the jaw i know you keep it beside the whiskey i know you offered a deal or death i know what i'm saying makes you angry but i'm offering you a solution you say mr sabini is he running all your bookies off your courses and he's closing down premises that take you are wrong and people don't trust your protection anymore you're the blood will shock he came alright so what is tommy doing here he is continuing to convince alfie to ally with him it's really
that simple right and so then this comes into the dialogue element of how do you actually have this scene play out when you understand what the purpose of the scene is which is internally these characters must see if they can respect each other and then two externally tommy is here to make an alliance with somebody who does need his help uh but doesn't want to take his help then great now finally you can have fun as the writer and think about how does this scene actually play out what are the how does the dialogue flow
and stay on task but move the story forward and we can see and feel the characters right now we get to spend time with the characters now we get to see who alfie solomon's is in this scene how he reacts to things how he talks how he speaks what he's doing and the actors of course play into this too i mean these are two world class actors in this scene but ideally you have enough of this on the page that they actually understand what they're working with when they get into the scene and now they're
having this conversation and they understand the pieces of their lines of dialogue how they relate to the different levels of conflict in your story you did you [ __ ] shot you that's you you [ __ ] betrayed him mate sorry [ __ ] so this now obviously i can't trust you and now we're back to the internal stakes right he's saying look your idea for us to work externally may work but internally how do i know if i can trust you so now we've moved from respect to trust right again a lot of this
scene is internal stakes here entirely appropriate to do what i'm thinking in my head to you right now i can offer you 100 good men all with weapons and a new relationship with the place external intelligence intelligence is a very valuable thing in it my friend usually it comes far too [ __ ] loud they said i shot you already right in the [ __ ] face and the bullet closed by my cabinet so this is i mean obviously it seems like kind of external that he's pointing a gun at him but i think we
all know he's not going to shoot him so really what's happening here is internal stakes again how do you handle a gun being point in your face do you know are you somebody that scares easy or shakes easy right all these sorts of things is what's going on in this scene over there a minute because that cabinet's [ __ ] now and i got a good shot of it so what i'll do is this it's [ __ ] simple mate i'll cut that cabinet in after that i do i literally i just cut the cabinet
okay i cut the cabinet literally in half my hand went off the cabinet right and i put it into a barrel and i take the other half of the cabinet and all these pieces and i put that into another barrel right and i said this battle off to mandalay and you have a barrel after somewhere like i don't know about two you ever been would you like to go no yeah i always thought you'd have a great big [ __ ] gold ring in your nose so he's continuing to toy with him alfie is essentially
saying here that hey i can kill you when i want to and sure we can at the end we hear tell us your plan right so again we're back to external tell us your plan i agree to work with you right again this is the point of the scene you know and then also throughout this he's saying hey i'm still in charge just because we're working together does not mean you're running things so the end point right he says tell us your plan so the point of the scene is that they are going to work
together right externally boom that is the point we get to the end of it everything that was getting us there all this time right here this was you know can i trust you right do we have mutual respect right understanding how these play into the external conflict is what sets up the characters and builds this strong scene here right and so you you hear the dialogue and it is fantastic and it's it's fantastically acted as well right so there's a lot of a lot of great things going for this scene but what you need to
understand is that the reason that you can actually put this scene on the train tracks and send it in the right direction and it doesn't get lost is because we understand the point of the dialogue that's being said we understand the reason the characters are doing things and what and how it relates to the story so every piece of the dialogue all the way through is handling their internal relationship and the external plan and the internal relationship and the external plan back and forth and back and forth and this is why this scene works and
we never we never leave this right we never stop for characters to talk about nothing and that's really what happens with a lot of of scenes that don't work is that characters talk about nothing and there's no final point right the characters are always talking about one of these levels of conflict and there's a point to the scene tell us your plan they're going to work together right so the beginning of this beginning of the scene that was tommy's goal he comes in and alfie agrees okay we can work together right so this is how
this is how you want to be thinking about your scenes right so then the question is will people come into like dialogue it's like how do you actually write dialogue like this well first off what i would say is you know um understand how your dialogue relates to these ideas external internal philosophical and then from there it's going to be practice it's going to be really knowing your characters it's going to be more going to be getting more involved it's going to be about finding the fun it's also going to be about bringing the actors
into this and saying okay an actor that you can trust like celine murphy tom hardy having them bring dialogue and bring words to life is going to create a continually stronger scene and overall story that you're going to have now in the next episode what we're going to do is look at the exact same thing but we're going to be looking at pivotal scenes right so essentially looking at scenes that don't simply deal with external and internal stakes but deal with this right here deal with this right here the philosophical stakes in your story i'll
see you next time [Music] you
