"In [a script], when a character is going to succeed, he doesn't tell you his plan. When a character is going to fail, he tells you his plan from beginning to end."("you" being the audience or the reader or whatever)
After thinking about it for while, you know what?
It's totally true!
And as with everything there are exceptions, but for the most part anytime your hero/heroine is going succeed in anything, you have no clue what that actual plan is and when they fail, they tell you about it.
In detail.
Hamlet goes on a massive monologue about how he's going to take revenge on his uncle for killing his father. Two and a half hours later, Hamlet is dead (I know he succeeds in killing Claudius, but he still lost his life).
The original Danny Ocean(Frank Sinatra--swoon!) gets his guys together and tells them the heist plan--in detail, so even the dumdums in the audience get it--and they fail to get the money.
But in the George Clooney re-boot sequels(not the first one) we only know half the plan, and they get away with it.
In Man on a Ledge, we spend the first like twenty minutes trying to figure out exactly what is going on, and while that's the case, our hero is succeeding. However, once we know the entire plan, it starts to unravel and things get bad---only to find out that there was a part of the plan that no one except the hero knew and because of that he manages to succeed.
Side note: Man on a Ledge is one of my favorite films. So good, and so underrated.
Fellowship of the Ring: nine people are supposed to help take the One Ring to Mordor to be destroyed; we are told that verbatim. By the end, the Fellowship is scattered and one is dead.
In half of the umpteen adaptions of Robin Hood and King Arthur if Robin/King Arthur plans an attack or an escape or whatever and we know the hows and whys and wherefores--he is always caught!
And in those same Robin Hood/King Arthur films/stories, if the villain monologues about how awesome he is and what his Grand Master Plan to Take Down the Hero happens to be, then--even if Robin/King Arthur is temporarily captured/defeated--you know the Villain's gonna fail. And not just cause he's the Villain😛
I went back through some of my scripts to see if this was true in things that I wrote.
Guess what?
Every time my hero failed I told the audience exactly what was supposed to happen.
Every time he succeeded, I didn't say a word.
Then, being a film fanatic(aka a cinephile, yes, that is actually a word), I "tested" it on films from other genres, not just heist movies.
1917 passed the test.
Little Women passed the test.
Just Mercy past the test.
Both Creed movies past the test.
So did Crazy Rich Asians, Spies in Disguise, and Dolittle.
I even "tested" television episodes: Supernatural, Downton Abbey, The Flash, Arrow, Call the Midwife, Boy Meets World, and even Friends and Speechless. They all passed!
So apparently, no matter the genre, this...I'm going to call it a Writer Plot Clue...happens in all sorts of plots, and it's almost a subconscious action that writer's take.
Which is kind of cool, right?
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