Screenwriting : What's the stupidest 'rule' you've heard on writing from a great writer? by Gen Vardo

You could build that over ninety minutes.

Hey, Gen Vardo. Anton's advice is actually really useful. He's talking about setups and payoffs. His advice and your example are similar: "Off the top of my head you can have a gun on the wall (setup) in the beginning and a group of people in a conversation (payoff) that turns to an escalating argument that becomes violent." The gun isn't used physically, but it's still used.

Yeah I totally get the advice's format. It's just the 'If you have it in the first act, you need it fired in the second'

You don't even need it fired, just use it to unnerve the audience.

My main point was just the rules thing. There are so many amazing movies/plays that break a great deal of them.

"You don't even need it fired, just use it to unnerve the audience." You're right, Gen Vardo. As long as it's used in some way.

Yeah, a lot of great movies, plays, shows, etc. break rules. If you break rules in a great, entertaining way, people will love the script, movie, etc.

What's the best way you've broken a rule Maurice Vaughan ?

I'm not sure, Gen Vardo. I don't know if I've broken any rules. I might have. I probably have. :) I just try to write entertaining scripts.

That's all I aim for too.

I think I would have left off the second clause in your question. Great writers don’t talk about rules. They know “rules” don’t exist.

If we look at the gun metaphor you mentioned. Shaking the gun in someone face, holding in menacingly, or having it as a point of tension, is all “firing it”. The idea is “if you highlight something, you have to use it”.

If you ask the audience to remember something and then don’t use that thing, the audience will be confused, annoyed or think you don’t know what you are doing.

Screenwriting is an economical craft. Every detail matters. If you write in your script that a gun hangs on the wall, everyone with an once of brains will wonder why the gun is on the wall. After all, why would you mention it if it doesn't matter? (As the screenwriter, you're not the art director, so you should avoid set dressing details.) The writer's job is to tell us everything we need to know to understand the story and characters. Nothing else matters. Chekhov's advice is about creating expectations. If you hang a gun on the wall, the audience is going to expect the gun to come into play. And when it doesn't - because you merely mentioned it as set dressing - an expectation will be unfulfilled. And that's not good writing.

If I hang a picture on the wall, does that mean somebody has to look at it in the next scene? Or, is decor? After all, it's a house, right? How about hanging curtains (which is what Loretta Young is doing in The Stranger) ....those curtains didn't do anything but hang and look nice.

Some pros gave their opinions about including songs.

https://twitter.com/musezack/status/1629703647507677185?s=46&t=5y4q7C4H9...

As a wise commander going into WWI said... "every tactic must serve the strategy" which in screen terms means every object, item and thing seen in the frame must have a purpose (tactic) serving the story (strategy) otherwise why clog up the viewers brain with superfluous stuff?

you are mistaken. the gun should go off in the finale, not in the next act. someone thinks this is good advice. I have heard the opinion that this was a reproach to the stamp of the time when many plays used this technique.

examples of Chekhov's gun rule:

Fast N Furious 1: Dom talks about never driving his dead father's car, but he drives car to save Brian from bad guys in last act.

Signs: Phoenix's character is an ex-baseball player haunted by his career. But he grabs a baseball bat hung on a wall and beats up a space alien and saves his family.

Good points. Again I was just saying you don't need it literally fired, it could just be a tool for tension. Interesting to find these rules and abuse them to come up with stories.

Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype.