Simple Screenwriting Tricks: Paired, Contrasting Scenes

A technique for highlighting a significant change

As I work to write my nonfiction book that will share a simple process for creating entertaining, meaningful stories, I thought I’d re-publish an old blog post from my no-longer-active site Chasing MacGuffins. I’ve added some new content to the end of this old post.

I’ve noticed a simple technique a lot of movies employ to show change: paired, contrasting scenes. The first scene introduces an idea in a memorable way, and the second scene echoes the scene but also contrasts with it to show a specific change, either in character or circumstances.

The technique seems to be a good one to employ to clearly and visually convey an important change or thematic idea. And although it comes from the world of film, you can just as easily use it in a novel — more about that below.

The five examples below, coming from very different movies, show this technique in action.

Bridge of Spies

This movie, which is set in the late 50s, has a scene in the middle of the movie where Tom Hanks’s character is traveling by train from East Germany to West Germany and witnesses outside the train a man trying to climb over the wall from East Germany to freedom in West Germany. Before the man can make it over the wall, though, the East Germans shoot and kill him. 

The horror of this moment is paired and contrasted with a scene after Hanks has returned home to America. Once again, he is riding a train, this time as he commutes from the suburbs to New York. On the train, he looks out the window and sees some neighborhood boys running and jumping a fence between two yards. Of course, the boys are not shot or harmed in any way. They are just boys playing. This scene, in echoing the earlier scene, clearly shows the differences between America and Germany at that time. Together, the two scenes seem to represent a commentary celebrating American freedoms.

La La Land

There is a scene early in the movie where Emma Stone’s character, a struggling, aspiring actress, is working as a coffee shop barista on a studio lot. A famous actress enters the shop, with all eyes turning to the actress, and the manager gives her coffee for free, but the actress insists on paying.

This scene is echoed by a later scene in which Stone is now a famous actress and enters the same coffee shop, where now she is the woman upon whom all eyes turn. The new manager doesn’t want her to pay, but she insists, just like the other actress. Together, these paired, contrasting scenes quickly and clearly show how much Emma Stone’s circumstances have changed. 

Crazy, Stupid, Love

There are several early scenes establishing Steve Carell as an ill-dressed, out-of-place, middle-aged male in a sleek, young, and hip lounge bar.

A later scene echoes this moment when, after Carell’s character has been transformed by Ryan Gosling into a smooth, well-dressed lady’s man, Carell enters the bar in slow motion in a sleek outfit, passing a sad sack, ill-dressed guy that is just like Carell used to be. 

Together, these two scenes show just how much Carell has changed from when he started.

How to Train Your Dragon

The film opens with a voiceover narration in which Hiccup says, “This is Berk . . .” and then proceeds to describe his home village, including its pest problem: dragons. The voiceover includes a number of visuals establishing Berk, including scenes showing the dragons stealing sheep. 

This sequence is paired and contrasted with a similar voiceover at the end of the movie that begins “This is Berk . . .” We again get visuals of the town as Hiccup narrates, but the difference, of course, is that Hiccup refers to the dragons this time not as pests, but as pets.

Together, these two scenes show just how much things have changed for Hiccup and all of Berk.

If I’m not mistaken, all three films in the series open and close with “This is Berk” narration that establishes changes in the community.

The Shawshank Redemption

A sequence toward the end of the movie shows Brooks outside of prison, working at a grocery store, living in an apartment, and ultimately killing himself just after he writes, “Brooks was here” on a beam in his apartment.

This sequence is paired and contrasted with Red outside of prison. He too works at the same grocery stone and lives in the same apartment. He too writes on the beam to show that he lived in the apartment. But, unlike Brooks, Red doesn’t kill himself.

The two sequences serve to illustrate the different choice Red makes and how he lives the theme of the story by choosing to get busy living.

Adapting this technique to novel writing

How would you use this technique in a novel? There are a number of ways.

Let’s say you’re writing a novel with a first-person POV. You could echo certain narration from earlier in the book (similar to what happens in How to Train Your Dragon), changing it to show how the character and/or story world has changed.

Or, if you’re writing from an objective-camera, cinematic POV, something I think makes novel writing much easier, you could simply echo a scene from earlier in your book. With a cinematic POV, you describe your scenes in a very visual way, and you can write the same scene later in the book while noting how things have changed.

In my book The Snow Games, I create paired, contrasting scenes through two communications the main character of Francesca writes to Tyler Young, the organizer of The Snow Games. One of these communications (an essay) comes close to the beginning of the story, while other other (a letter) comes at the end.

So, there are multiple ways to employ this technique.