I'm trying to grasp this whole positive/negative thing I keep hearing about (mostly from McKee, but others as well).

I tried to watch a few films to see if I could see a positive/negative balance, but most of the films I watched didn't really have any real pattern going on.

What I did notice was that yes, positive and negative things happen and that keeps the story moving and interesting.... but does the story need to have a pattern? Does it need to have any kind of balance at the end? Like, you can do +/+ but at some point int he scene you have to have -/-?

For example, and I use this because it was what was in my PS3 at the time, Alice in Wonderland by John August/Tim Burton...

The first 12 minutes are almost all negative. She is late to this party (negative), she is greeted by a snobby mother (negative) she meets Hamish (positive), he's annoying and she doesn't like him (negative), she finds out he is going to ask her to marry him (positive), she doesnt want to marry him (negative), she see's her sisters husband cheating (negative), she is asked to marry hamish (positive) but she runs off (negative) and falls down the rabbit hole (negative).

You can see how it's mostly dominated by negative charges, which is kind of the point... she doesn't want to be there, or marry him, or be part of this snobby lifestyle. But there are a few positives.

tl;dr: My real question is, does a scene have to have any kind of pattern or balance? Or can you overload it with a positive or negative charge as long as you throw in reversals to keep the story interesting? Or am I just being a slave to this paradigm too much?

That’s a bit more sophisticated than I or others use.

Each scene is like a mini-movie and as such should have a conflict for us to see otherwise, what’s the point? No conflict = boring.

You can also keep track of the emotional change for that scene to help make sure there is a change. If a scene starts out with a calm couple in a restaurant make sure something happens to disrupt that calm.

I haven’t heard anyone one around here say that a story has too much negative or positive balance. Nor I have I heard anyone else mention it until you. It might be applied subconsciously but it’s not a tool used much around here.

Hope this helps.

Gary

Seems like you're pretty well versed in how to, try reading Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. He addresses the +/- issue and throws in a conflict shorthand ><.

Don't worry. Write.

Quoted from tleisher I tried to watch a few films to see if I could see a positive/negative balance, but most of the films I watched didn't really have any real pattern going on.

There is a pattern, you just have to learn to recognize what they are when you see it. I think the problem you might be having is your looking at the smallest piece of a picture and hoping to be able to see it all. It's like your looking at a piece of art in a museum and you have your face an inch from the painting. Looking that closely you won't see any patterns, just seemingly unrelated blobs of color.

The positive/negative that you are talking about occur within each scene, and each scene that fills a sequence, and each sequence that fills a beat, and each beat that fills an act, and each act that makes the movie. Try pulling your view back and first get used to recognizing what the major beats are in the movie your watching. When I first start I couldn't see anything either so I decided to just looks for one or two things at a time during a viewing.

I started with plot points or turning points because those are the easiest to see. From there you can see the three acts and all you have to do then is find the beats in between. Once you see the broad strokes you can zoom in, get closer and look for the finer details that make up the ups and downs your looking for.

Hope that helps.

Peace.