The most exciting scene to write in a script? The inciting incident!

Day 1: Writing a Teaser
Day 2: Introducing Your Hero
Day 3: Setting up Your Hero’s Life
Day 8: Keeping Your Scenes Entertaining

Okay, let’s summarize where we are. So far, this is our page count…

Pages 1-5 — Teaser.
Pages 6-8 — Introduce your main character.
Page 9-14 — Set up your hero’s work life, family life, and social life.

A couple of notes here. You want to combine setup wherever possible. Therefore, when I say pages 6-8 are where you want to introduce your hero, that doesn’t mean you only have to introduce your hero in that scene. You can also introduce a second big character. Likewise, you don’t have to wait until page 9 to start setting up your hero’s work life. You can set up their work life when you introduce them.

Also, if you don’t use a teaser, this allows you 5 extra pages to play with in the opening act. Therefore, you can use those pages to more extensively set up your hero’s life. That’s the only downside of teasers, is they limit the amount of time you have to set things up. So be judicious about what kind of story you’re writing and decide if it’s the kind of movie that’s right for a teaser. If you have a ton to set up and, therefore, need pages, a teaser might not be for you.

This brings us to today’s topic, the inciting incident, which will usually occur between pages 12-15. This is assuming you’re using the traditional Hero’s Journey model. There’s no reason you can’t place your inciting incident on page 5, or even page 1. It all depends on what kind of movie you’re writing. However, for now, we’ll look at the inciting incident as it pertains to traditional structure.

So what is an inciting incident? The way I see it, the inciting incident is the beginning of the plot. Up until this point, your character has been existing in their world, oblivious to the machinations of what’s happening around them. But the inciting incident comes to their doorstep and says, “Here I am. You have to deal with me.”

This creates a situation where you hero must ACT. Which is a good thing when it comes to storytelling because the more active your hero is, the more exciting the story tends to be.

The wonderful thing about the inciting incident is that it sets up your GSU. It gives your hero his goal (solve the problem) which allows you to add some stakes (if he doesn’t, something bad happens to him) as well as some urgency (he must complete the task by [x many minutes/hours/days]).

I saw Shrek trending on Netflix yesterday. That movie has one of the clearest examples of an inciting incident. Shrek is minding his own business, living his best life in his swamp house. He’s got peace. He’s got quiet. Then – BAM! – he walks outside one evening to see his entire swamp invaded by fairy tale creatures. A gigantic problem has literally been dropped at his feet.

Mind you, this is another way to look at the inciting incident. It’s a PROBLEM. But not your everyday problem. It’s, up until this point in your hero’s life, the biggest problem they’ve ever had to deal with. If that isn’t the case, you’re probably focusing on the wrong moment in your hero’s life.

I rewatched Shang-Chi recently. That movie’s inciting incident occurs on the famous bus-attack scene. Shaun and Katy are minding their own business, heading to work, when some dudes try to steal the pendant around Shaun’s neck. Shaun beats everyone up and concludes that if bad guys are trying to steal his pendant, they’ll be trying to steal his sister’s pendant as well. So off he goes to warn her.

In the Netflix movie, “The Guilty,” starring Jake Gylenhaall as an emergency operator, the inciting incident is when he gets a strange call from a woman acting cagey. He eventually realizes she’s been kidnapped by her dangerous ex-husband and is pretending to call her daughter. A gigantic problem has been established. Jake now needs to figure out where this car is and get some cops to save her.

In It Follows, the inciting incident occurs after our lead, Jay (female), wakes up tied to a chair in a parking lot after having had sex with her date. Her date informs her of the rules. That she has to pass the curse on to the next person or else the previous curse-holders will come after her.

In Bird Box, we have Malorie (Sandra Bullock) going to the hospital with her friend, Jessica, for a pregnancy checkup. Afterwards, Jessica drives Malorie home. As she drives, Jessica starts freaking out then tries to kill them both in a crash. Talk about an intense inciting incident!

In Argo, the inciting incident occurs when there’s an uprising in Iran. A group of American governmental workers are stranded there and must hide out . This problem is dropped at the feet of our protagonists, back in America, who now must figure out a way to rescue them.

What’s interesting about this inciting incident is that it doesn’t so much happen to a single protagonist as it does an entire group of protagonists, as it’s going to take a team of Americans to get them out. I bring this up for anyone wondering if inciting incidents only work when there’s a single protagonist. No. An inciting incident is a giant problem introduced into the story. That problem could require one person to solve it or an entire group of people (see also: Avengers).

As I alluded to above, not every screenplay has to abide by the “inciting incident on page 12-15” rule. Believe it or not, The Hangover’s inciting incident occurs at the exact same moment we transition into the second act – the guys all wake up after a crazy night out with no recollection of what happened and a groom who’s disappeared.

The whole reason an inciting incident comes when it does is because the audience’s expectations are for something interesting to happen in those first 15 minutes. If you go 30 minutes without anything interesting happening, most modern audiences will tune you out. So it’s a big risk whenever you extend the inciting incident beyond page 15. The reason that The Hangover gets away with it (their inciting incident occurs on page 24) is because listening to our three leads squabble in the lead-up to the incident is so darn funny.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Cloverfield Lane. That movie starts out with its protagonist, Michelle, leaving her fiance, getting in her car, and driving back to her home state. While driving, her car is struck, she flips off the road, and wakes up in a cold dark room, chained to the wall. We have reached the problem, aka “the inciting incident,” just four pages into the story!

I have no issues with early inciting incidents. They work well in tense thrillers or horror script when you want to pull the reader in immediately. Just make sure you have enough “Richter scale” plot moments to balance out the rest of the screenplay. One of the reasons you typically wait until page 15 to introduce the inciting incident is because the reader knows you’re building up to a big moment and are willing to wait for it. If you go to that moment immediately, it’s the equivalent of bribing your kids with candy five minutes into a road trip. You’ve sort of used up your ‘ace in the hole.’

To me, the inciting incident is one of the most exciting scenes to write because it’s the whole reason you wrote the script in the first place. It introduces the plot, the concept, everything. And now we get to see how our hero deals with the problem. We’ll get into that (dealing with the problem) more in a bit. But this would be a good time to remind new writers that, as fun as the inciting incident is to write, it is not the end of your screenplay. It’s the beginning.

The inciting incident scene should not be the pinnacle of your screenplay because that means the pinnacle of your screenplay is happening on page 15. A good example of this is Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I’m sure you remember the inciting incident in that film, where Tom Cruise and his family run down the street while a highway overpass crumbles behind them. After some cool shots of Tri-Pod aliens killing people, do you remember any imagery or scenes from the movie after that? I’m guessing you don’t. That’s because they made the inciting incident the pinnacle of the movie.

To summarize, the inciting incident occurs after you’ve set up your hero’s normal life, typically between pages 12-15, although that may change depending on the kind of movie you’re writing. The inciting incident creates a big problem in your hero’s life that he must deal with. It should be one of the biggest and most memorable scenes in the movie. But make sure not to make it the best scene. For every big scene that follows, use your inciting incident as the bar you’re trying to beat. That way your script gets better as it goes on as opposed to worse.

Next First Act Post: Thursday, March 10
Pages to write until next post: 2
Pages you should have completed after today’s assignment: 15

Today’s script is what would happen if Christopher Nolan wrote a script like Time Crimes. Or Primer.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A man wakes up trapped in a mysterious hotel room. All alone in a mind-bending prison, his only chance for escape is through teamwork… with himself.
About: Michael Shanks and his script finished Top 20 on the most recent Black List. The script seems to be the result of him once getting stuck in a hotel room for 19 hours straight during a layover. Classic screenwriting lesson: Use real life to inspire your ideas!
Writer: Michael Shanks
Details: 102 pages

In many ways, the contained mystery thriller set in a single room is the holy grail of ideas. The mystery along with the contained location provides you with the hook you need to get reads. And the single room means you can shoot it for an insanely low amount of money. I mean what does a hotel room cost these days? 50 bucks a night? Talk about a cheap set.

For that very reason, I read a lot of these scripts, some from really good writers. And they typically suffer the same fate. There’s only so much you can do in one room. Only so much mystery you can unspool, people your character can call on the phone, only so much sinister laughing you can hear from just outside the door. Only so much talking to yourself.

It’s a reminder that one must start strong and never let go. The second you forget that the reader is capable of becoming bored within a matter of seconds, is the second you get lazy and let your guard down. That’s when scripts fall apart. Always respect the reader. Always!

Middle-aged Ben wakes up in a hotel room with a bag over his head and his hands tied behind his back. This means he has to bite through the bag to breathe. Once he does that, he unties himself and tries to figure out what’s happened. He quickly transitions into “get the hell out of here” mode but neither the door or window will oblige. This place is a prison.

Ben passes out and wakes up the next day. After more exploring, he bangs a hole in the side of his hotel room where he sees an adjacent hotel room. This one with ANOTHER BEN INSIDE. And this Ben is going through the exact same motions he was going through yesterday. Hmmm…. When Ben breaks through the wall and tries to team up with Ben-1, he realizes Ben-1 can’t see him. Double hmmm…

The next day, Ben breaks through the wall again to see that Ben-1 has broken through the wall of his own room where he’s now realizing what Ben already realized. That there’s yet another Ben. His Ben-1. But our Ben-2. Getting confused? Oh, we’re just getting started.

Ben eventually realizes that, by himself, there is nothing he can accomplish. But with the help of the other Bens, there are potential opportunities for escape, even though he can’t communicate with the other Bens. For example, on day 1, Ben tried to bash the room door open but wasn’t strong enough. Therefore, on day 2, when Ben-1 is trying to bash the door just like he did yesterday, Ben can help him, using double-the-Ben.

This tactic eventually gets him outside into the hallway, where Ben heads to the hotel lobby. Figuring he’s free, he heads out the front door only to walk into the exact same lobby. And when he tries this again, he walks into a third hotel lobby. It’s starting to look like Ben – like ALL the Bens – are trapped here for good.

That is until Ben notices a trap door all the way up the side of the wall in the lobby. There’s no way to get up there, though. Unless! Unless he uses the help of the other Bens. So Ben stands by the wall and positions himself as if he’s holding someone else up for 30 minutes. The next day, he comes back, where Ben-1 is now positioned like he was a day ago, which means Ben can climb on top of him and create the second rung of a human ladder. The next day he has three Ben-rungs. Then four. Ben figures it will take 15 Bens to get him into that doorway and out of his nightmare forever. That’s assuming, of course, that nothing else unexpected happens in this weirdo hotel fantasyland…

Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel is one of the trippiest scripts I’ve ever read. About midway through, I had to stop, regroup, get my brain centered again, before going back into the story. The rules here are so extensive that brain naps are a requirement.

But I learned something today. Which is that the reader will go with an extensive rule-set if your world is cool. Usually I roll my eyes at too many rules and chastise the writer for being too complicated. But, in the case of Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel, the rules were like this grandiose puzzle that was fun to solve.

There are a lot of genius moments here, such as the human ladder sequence. I always say that your set pieces need to be direct expressions of your unique concept. Or else they’re scenes that can be in any movie.

I can’t think of a set piece in recent memory that’s more a representation of its concept than the Ben human ladder. It’s a glorious extension of this weird idea. Even the details of the idea are fun. We remember that the original Ben stood in that first position for 30 minutes, in order to ensure that all 15 future Bens would have time to stand on top of him. As we’re getting to days 13, 14, and 15, though, we’re realizing that that might not be enough time. So it adds an urgency element to the set piece in a unique way.

I also liked the problems that Shanks came up with. You need to add problems in your screenplay because problems need to be solved. Problems needing to be solved require action. And action moves the plot forward. Shanks’s first problem for Ben is a simple one – starvation. There is no food anywhere in the hotel. So as Ben gets into that third, fourth, and fifth day, he’s starving to death. If he doesn’t find food soon, he’ll be a goner.

He eventually realizes that he can cut flesh off of the other versions of himself and they won’t notice. That’s when I said to myself, “Okay, this writer is a step above most writers who write these movies.” Because that’s just trippy stuff there. In order to survive, you have to eat yourself. That’s not a plot line you usually come across in a screenplay.

The script also does some interesting stuff with dialogue. For example, Ben tries to figure out how he got to this place. So he’s talking out loud about what he does for a living (structural engineer), the mistakes he made that put him in debt, and how that might have led to someone placing him here. It’s a big long monologue. The next day, Ben-1 goes through the same monologue and, as Ben listens to him, he sometimes interjects. So Ben-1 will say, “Mum always insisted, I had to get a degree even though we couldn’t afford it.” And before Ben-1 says the next line, Ben points out, “Maybe she saw it as the best chance to break the chain of bastards you come from…”

I always like when writers find interesting ways to do dialogue and I’m not sure I’ve ever come across this exact type of dialogue exchange. Where you’re having a conversation with your past self despite the fact that only one of you could hear the other. It was stuff like that that set this script apart.

If the script has a weakness, it would be that it gets very heady towards the end. When all of Ben’s plans fail, he has to go back through 30-plus Ben days and look for little clues of how the rules work in an attempt to find the secret to escaping. And I’m not going to lie. I was not always able to follow the logic. But here’s where I say something that I rarely say in these instances: I believe it was my fault that I couldn’t follow along. Not the writer’s. If there’s one thing I know here, it’s that Shanks understands his world. He writes with a level of confidence where you can tell he’s thought everything through, left and right, back and forth, a million different ways, to make sure this all make sense. It’s just one of those Christopher Nolan type scripts where it’s impossible to get everything the first time through. You gotta read it a few times. If that sounds like your jam, you’ll like this a lot.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This script taught me that it may be impossible to write a movie these days that only takes place in one room. Even Shanks realized, at a certain point, that he wasn’t going to be able to keep our attention if this whole movie only took place in a hotel room. I know adding rooms ups the budget considerably, but if you’re these scripts, you’re probably going to have to bring the outside world in at some point.

The Amityville Horror meets The Orphanage

Genre: Horror
Premise: A blind mother moves into a remote farmhouse with her young daughter, but the mystery of the home’s previous inhabitants intrudes upon her attempts to repair their relationship.
About: Today’s script finished number 2 on the 2021 Black List and comes from Lily Hollander, who was one of the writers of the 2016 movie, Mother’s Day.
Writer: Lily Hollander
Details: 107 pages

Emilia Clarke blinded by the light?

HORROR!

Horror is back, baby.

And combining horror with blindness has proven to be lucrative. There’s the Don’t Breathe franchise. There’s Bird Box, which I’m sure we’ll be getting 15 sequels for. As I’ll talk about in a bit, blindness provides a unique opportunity for the viewer to have an extremely superior point of view of events, which ratchets up the dramatic irony to level 60.

Let’s *see* if the script is any good. Wow, my pun game is on point today.

30-something Elsa, who’s blind, has just moved into a remote house with her 9 year old daughter, Sasha. Elsa picked this particular house because it’s been outfitted for blind people (for example, the wallpaper in every room has a different tactile feel so you know what room you’re in).

What Elsa doesn’t know is that that this house used to be an orphanage for blind children. And something really nasty happened here a century ago. We don’t know what that nasty thing was. But since we’ve seen movies before, we assume it involved lots of nutritionally deprived blind orphans being murdered.

Elsa is fighting a battle on two fronts. She just ran away from her abusive husband, who’s hired a P.I. to find her. And her daughter hates her for sticking her in this big empty scary house. The latter is alleviated somewhat when oddball neighbor, Opal, shows up and says she wants to help them move in. Elsa doesn’t like Opal but Sasha does, so Elsa lets her hang around.

Almost immediately, Sasha starts seeing things. She sees an old woman dragging a fire poker around. She sees little ghost children playing in the chimney. Naturally, she freaks the hell out. Problem is, Elsa doesn’t believe in ghosts. So Sasha can’t share these sightings with her. Luckily, Opal believes her and tells Sasha she’ll protect her. But when nobody’s around, we get the sense that Opal isn’t the nice helpful neighbor she says she is.

Things go from bad to worse when one of these ghosts seemingly possesses Sasha. When Opal recognizes this, she takes steps to stop it. But it may be too late. Sasha is determined to keep the bloody reputation of this house going, even if she needs to murder her mother to do so.

See How They Run is the ultimate dramatically ironic situation. We can see the ghosts. We know they’re there, watching Elsa. But Elsa can’t. So every scene Elsa is in, we’re in a superior position to her. We know she’s in danger when she doesn’t. You know how back in the day at horror movies, the audience would yell out, “DON’T GO UP THE STAIRS!” because they knew the monster was up there. The blind angle creates that same energy but on steroids.

Unfortunately, the script suffers from my least favorite screenwriting misstep – The “Waiting Around” narrative. The Waiting Around narrative is when you place your characters in a static space and don’t give them anything to do other than wait for scary things to happen.

It’s preferable that your characters have an active goal – something they’re trying to accomplish. When the scares come, they interrupt that activity as opposed to being the sole reason for the story to exist. For example, in The Exorcist, the mother has an active goal – to cure her daughter. So she does everything in her power to save her daughter’s life.

With that said, it *is* possible to write a Waiting Around narrative that works. Poltergeist is a well-known example. It’s just harder to do it, is all. It’s always going to be harder when you take out the component of an active main character. Without that activity, the story never feels like it’s going anywhere.

See How They Run almost solves this problem by giving us bits and pieces of plot development that provide just enough entertainment to keep us turning the pages. For example, we learn that Elsa’s abusive husband is trying to find her. We’ve got weirdo Opal who keeps forcing her way into the house. She’s got a secret and we want to find out what it is. We also have the mystery within the house itself. Something tragic happened here a long time ago and we want to know what it is.

And Hollander is good at creating scares, even from the smallest moments. There’s a scene when they first move in where Elsa is walking around with her cane, getting a feel for the house, and someone – it’s unclear who – has left a small box right in front of an old rickety railing. We see Elsa swiping her cane back and forth as she walks, unknowingly heading straight for the box.

If she trips on this thing, she will go head first into the railing, break through it, and tumble to a serious injury or even death. Our heart skips a beat when, by pure coincidence, her cane misses the box as it swipes, and she trips and tumbles, only barely avoiding a more serious injury. It was such a small scene yet it was incredibly effective at building tension and suspense.

There was another cool screenwriting trick Hollander used that’s worth mentioning. She reminded me that you can create interesting dynamics with three people that you can’t create with two. I would argue that one of the toughest things to do in screenwriting is make a two-person dynamic interesting. That’s because there are only so many of them to choose from. For example, here, we have the mother and the daughter who hates her. I mean, how many times have we seen that? A million? A billion? For that reason, it’s hard to make these 1-on-1 relationships fresh.

However, when Opal comes in, the dynamic shifts because Elsa doesn’t like Opal. However, Sasha does. This places Elsa in a tough spot. This woman makes her uncomfortable. Not to mention, she’s potentially unstable. But Sasha hates Elsa for moving her out into the middle of nowhere with no friends. So when Sasha likes Opal, it’s an opportunity for Elsa to give Sasha a friend and also curry favor with her daughter.

Just like that, a stereotypical two-person dynamic becomes a complex three-person dynamic.

The issue I couldn’t get past with See How They Run was that, no matter what happened with the bare-bones plot, we’d always go back to two people waiting around in a house for ghosts to scare them. There’s a bit of a mystery to it, sure. But the mystery wasn’t captivating enough to keep me excited.

I was watching another horror movie the other day called The Night House that covered some similar ground. It was about a woman living in a secluded house after her husband committed suicide. Her goal was to investigate her husband’s secret life. I was way more captivated by the mystery in that script because I had *NO* idea where it was going. Whereas with See How They Run, you always had a good idea of where things were headed because you’ve seen this movie before.

Again, this isn’t a bad script. I just feel like I’ve seen it in several iterations. The blind angle gave it a slightly fresh angle. It just wasn’t enough for me.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: It remains extremely hard to write a compelling script where your hero is reactive the whole time. The better option is to make them active. And yes, it’s possible to give characters active goals in static settings like this one. One of the most common ways is to have your hero investigate some mystery that has to do with the haunting at the center of the story. They should start investigating this early, by the way. 15 pages into the second act at the latest. That’ll keep them active enough.

Does the ballsiest franchise sequel since Fury Road deliver on the wild chances it takes?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: 50-something game developer Thomas Anderson starts to believe that the game he’s developed, “The Matrix,” may be rooted in reality.
About: Pretty much every major creative in town has come to WB with a Matrix pitch over the past decade and a half. But it took Keanu Reeves becoming an action star again with John Wick for WB to finally greenlight the fourth film in the series. The movie’s production was suspended when Covid hit and Lana Wachowski seriously considered scrapping the sequel. The cast, however, desperate to see it completed, convinced her to keep going. The script was written by Lana and her Sense 8 writers, David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon.
Writer: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksander Hemon
Details: 2 hours and 27 minutes

Let’s be real.

When you’re showing up for a Matrix review, you’re showing up to either hear, “GREATEST MOVIE EVER” or “WORST MOVIE EVER.” Anything in between is an insignificant opinion.

Well, if that’s what you’re hoping for, you’ll be disappointed in this review. Because Matrix Resurrections takes some chances that are so wild, you can’t help but admire them, even if the end result isn’t as good as you want it to be.

This is a spoiler heavy review. You’ve been warned.

Our movie starts inside a new version of the Matrix where a fresh-faced female character, Bugs, runs into a sleeker younger copy of Morpheus. They watch a familiar scene from the original Matrix, where Trinity beats up a bunch of cops then runs for her life. But there’s something off about the scene. Trinity isn’t quite… Trinity.

Cut to the real world, where we meet an older Thomas Anderson (Neo), who’s a rich game developer. The game that made him rich? The Matrix. Thomas Anderson has no idea where these ideas and concepts for “The Matrix” came from. But he’s created a trilogy of games based around a trio of characters – Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity.

After a suicide attempt, Mr. Anderson has been seeing a therapist and is starting to believe this therapist is manipulating him. So when Bugs comes to him and tells him that his game is based on something that really happened, it’s like Thomas knew it all along.

Bugs releases him from the Matrix, where we learn that both Neo and Trinity are being kept in special isolated containment units. Their pairing seems to be the central force behind the new Matrix code.

Bugs brings Neo back to the newest underground city, Io, where we meet Nairobi (from the Matrix Sequels) who’s now 80 years old. Nairobi is upset that Neo is here because she’s worked hard to keep peace with the machines. His arrival puts everyone at risk.

Meanwhile, Neo becomes determined to release Trinity (“Tiffany” in the real world) from the Matrix, so the team forms a plan. Bugs and Morpheus will handle the physical side of getting Trinity. But it will be up to Neo to convince Trinity/Tiffany to take the red pill. That won’t be an easy task considering Tiffany doesn’t know Neo, doesn’t believe in the Matrix, and has a husband and two children.

Yet when Neo arrives, Tiffany finds herself drawn to him and finally gives in. Once the Matrix realizes the power couple have teamed up, it initiates its “swarm” protocol, whereby every single person on the planet becomes a kamikaze killer. It’ll be up to Neo and Trinity to escape a city where the entire population is after them.

When you first realize what The Matrix has done with Neo, you become giddy. “They’re not really going to go through with this, are they?” you wonder, excited. And when you realize that that’s exactly what they’re going to do, your expectations for Resurrections rise from a 5 to a 50.

I never would’ve guessed in a million years that they’d build a Matrix sequel around the meta concept of Neo making a Matrix video game. Not only was it a bold choice, but it made sense. Thomas Anderson used to be a coder. He’s had these intense dreams all his life about this “Matrix” world. Naturally, he would capitalize on that, making a game out of the concept.

The addition adds some new ideas to the mythology. Was the original Matrix ever the Matrix at all? Or was it only a video game modern day Thomas Anderson created? That was what was so great about the Matrix. It was such a head-trip that, afterwards, you and your friends would discuss what it all meant, putting forth various theories that ranged from dumb to downright ridiculous.

It was the early section of this movie that held so much promise. You got the sense that Lana actually had something to say.

The problem with most sequels is that they’re conceived through a faulty process. The lens through which every movie should be conceived is that a writer has something they want to say. For example, James Cameron really wanted to say something about humanity destroying the planet in Avatar. It’s the need to get this view out there that gives the story the necessary energy to keep an audience invested.

When there isn’t a *need* to tell a story – when instead you’re just doing it for money, or because your career is in a slump, or because the studio won’t stop bothering you about it – the script exhibits a decidedly less energetic pulse. We can tell that it isn’t a life or death desire from the artist to get this story out there.

So I was encouraged by this seeming desire to say something. The story felt original. The dialogue purposeful. I had no idea where the story was going but I was excited to find out.

However, the second we get to the underground city of Io, I knew Resurrections was as dead as Dozer. Zion was a movie killer in the sequels. As was Nairobi. Yet you’re bringing both those elements back in major forms? I don’t want to turn this into a “why the Matrix sequels were terrible” thread because I’ve already written about that ad nauseam. But the brilliance of the Matrix were the scenes that took place inside the Matrix, not in the muddy CGI infested underworld.

The unfortunate reality of Resurrections is that every 15 minutes of Resurrections is worse than the previous 15 minutes. The story builds (we’re moving towards the extraction of Trinity). But the energy and the momentum fade. The Wachowskis are masters at undercutting their own narratives.

A narrative needs to move, especially a sci-fi narrative. The pacing of the original Matrix was relentless. There wasn’t a single moment that could’ve been cut. Here, with the Io stuff and some of the talkier scenes, like when The Analyst plays a game of bullet slo-mo with Trinity’s life — they dragged on, killing any momentum the story had.

Another issue is that Resurrections has a huge character problem. Bugs, the franchise’s flashy new toy, has very little to do other than verbally facilitate Neo’s second emergence from the Matrix. I don’t know what the heck they were doing with Morpheus, who is some sort of half-Morpheus who isn’t really Morpheus but he’s trying to emulate Morpheus. So he does a lot of dancing and irreverent joke-telling. It’s bizarre.

Agent Smith is now some dude who kinda dislikes Neo but also kinda likes him. At one point, they even team up. I don’t profess to know what Lana had in mind with him but he didn’t work. Maybe that’s because they wanted Hugo Weaving in the movie but couldn’t get him at the last second so they had to adjust the storyline.

Neo, meanwhile, says very little throughout the movie. Not only doesn’t he say much. But apparently, Neo only has a single power now. To hold his hands up and blast energy away from his body. I waited the entire movie for badass Neo to show up and and start doing crazy Neo sh#t. Bu it never happened. It was reminiscent of another failed sequel that I shall not mention the name of. Only that it rhymes with “Duh Blast Redeye.”

And Trinity, who arguably gets the most exciting storyline here, is absent for the majority of the second act. She really only shows up in the third act. And since, like Neo, she hasn’t said a whole lot, we don’t feel close enough to her. That’s something that really bothers me about the Wachowskis in general. They give these stupid side characters 18 page monologues. Yet their main characters can go a dozen scenes and barely utter 10 words.

It’s pretty clear that Lana didn’t get enough money to make this movie. The one great thing about those Matrix sequels is the extremes they went through to create set pieces that nobody had seen before. I mean, they built their own highway! They spent 40 days shooting a single scene (the Neo vs. 100 Smiths fight). There’s none of that insane dedication here.

The train scene was sloppy. The fixed set piece scenes (like the warehouse) felt rushed with little attention to detail. The swarm motorcycle chase was so dark you could barely tell what was going on.

While I can blame some of this on a less-than-adequate budget, Lana could’ve ditched Io and spent that money on cooler fight scenes inside The Matrix. That’s exactly what they did in the original film. The original Matrix script featured a trip to Zion but WB wouldn’t pay for it. So they had to ditch it. Should’ve done the same thing here.

There’s a lot to learn here if you’re a screenwriter. The biggest lesson one should take is that what happened in The Matrix Resurrections is the same thing that happens to almost every amateur screenplay. Which is that the writer comes in with a head of steam, spends a ton of time getting that first act right, then gives 80% of that energy to the next 15 pages. Then 60% to the next 15. Then 40% to the next 15. So the script keeps getting… not necessarily weaker. But it doesn’t have the same energy that it started with. So, if you’re a screenwriter, make sure you’ve put just as much time into what happens on page 70 as you did on page 10. Cause there’s nothing worse than watching a movie getting more and more boring as it goes on.

I don’t know what history will say about Resurrections. It seems to have some champions out there. I do commend them for trying something different. Not many franchises will take the big swing Lana did. But just because you go for the home run doesn’t mean you’re going to hit it over the wall. Sometimes you barely make contact and the ball dribbles out to third base. That’s probably the best way to describe this movie – bullet-time dribbling down the 3rd base line.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The original Matrix proves the value of combining multiple purposes into a single character. In the original movie, Trinity both recruits Neo and is his love interest. She has two purposes. In Resurrections, Bugs recruits Neo and that’s it. She doesn’t have any other purpose. As a result, she gets lost in the story once that purpose is fulfilled. The lesson here is that when you have a character, give them multiple story purposes if you can. It’ll give them more to do and make them feel more integrated into the story.

It’s the Thanksgiving weekend which means I will be gone for the next four days! OR WILL I? Cough cough. Is someone sending a newsletter out on Thanksgiving? Cough cough. Maybe. #Keepaneyeout.

As we all know, Thanksgiving is a time where we willingly endure a nightmarish travel experience to reconnect with our families, to watch the Cowboys and the Lions while we drink cheap beer, and to participate in a meal that’s never as good as advertised. I mean, seriously, does anyone on the planet really like pumpkin pie? I’m talking even one person?? Can I have the phone number for whoever invented pumpkin pie please so I can give him a proper scolding?

Now, if you’re anything like me, you see the holidays as a sneaky secret time to get some writing done. After all the hugs and hellos and chuckles and uncomfortable political discourse, I burrow into a tiny room that nobody knows about and I start writing. You see, one of the underrated aspects about Thanksgiving is that it’s a highly emotional time. It’s not just the family stuff. It’s the travel. It’s the end of the year. It’s the reminder of previous holidays. Of old friends, old relationships. You don’t want to let all that juicy emotion go to waste. Highly emotional times tend to generate great material.

Which is why I thought I’d remind you that every screenplay requires two things in order to work. Without these two things, a script will die on the vine. They are the oxygen to your script’s lungs. What are they?

1) Give your characters non-stop things to do.
2) Have those things matter.

There is no good script in the history of screenwriting that doesn’t do these things. So let’s look at what they mean.

One of the most common mistakes writers make is they start off strong, with an aggressive first act, then as they make their way into the second act, they can’t think of stuff for their characters to do. They know the characters have to do something. But it isn’t clear what. So they write a bunch of “filler” scenes with characters sitting around talking or going places they don’t need to go. Eventually, they can’t even think of filler scenes anymore and they give up.

The way to avoid this is to make sure your character has a strong goal pushing him forward. This is true for big movies. This is true for small movies. But it’s far more common for the small movies to fail at this. That’s because with big movies, big goals are baked into the concept. Whether it’s the Avengers going after Thanos or The Rock and Ryan Reynolds trying to steal Cleopatra’s bejeweled eggs in Red Notice. The logline itself seems to tell you what the character’s going to be doing for the next two hours.

But what if you’re writing a character piece about a guy whose wife just divorced him and he doesn’t know what to do with his life? In these cases, the goal isn’t as clear. Which means you’ll likely violate rule #1: Give your character non-stop things to do. After Divorced Dan decides what to eat that first night and maybe after he does his laundry, what does Divorced Dan do?

Well, smaller movies typically use one of two things to drive the narrative. The first is a character who’s trying to get his or her life back on track. A good example of this is The Wrestler. The Wrestler is both trying to repair the broken relationship with his daughter as well as get ready for the big wrestling rematch with his nemesis. These two things always give him something to do. Each scene can push one or the other storyline forward.

The second thing small movies use to drive the narrative is money. This is why you see all these small town Coen Brothers films being about money. It’s to make sure the characters always have something to do (get the money). Hell or High Water is another recent example of small-town characters needing money.

But money doesn’t have to be a brief case with 100,000 dollars in it. Or a giant score from a bank robbery. It could be as simple as your hero isn’t able to pay his mortgage at the end of the month, which means he’s going to get kicked out. Once a character’s back is up against the wall, they have no choice but to act. Which means – you guessed it – they now have non-stop things to do. Every scene is going to be about getting that money.

So, to summarize, give your character a goal and they will always have something to do.

This leads us to the second rule, which is: THE THINGS THEY DO MUST MATTER. Let me paint a slightly adjusted scenario of the above movie idea. In our new movie, the hero doesn’t need money by the end of the month to pay his mortgage. He’s going to be fine either way. But let’s say he still wants money. So you put him through the exact same paces as the other character. He asks his friends and family for money. He asks for an advance at work. Maybe he tries to rob someone.


In every one of these scenarios our character is abiding by the first rule – he has “non-stop things to do.” However, there’s one major difference: those things don’t matter. How do we feel if his friend turns him down for money? We don’t feel anything because we know he doesn’t need the money. It’s got to matter for us to care.

Take one of my recent favorite films, Good Time. Brothers Connie and Nick try to rob a bank and Nick gets caught while Connie escapes. Connie has to bail out his brother within 24 hours or his brother gets sent to one of the most dangerous prisons in the state, where he’s not likely to survive. The next several scenes follow Connie trying to scrounge up the money to bail his brother out.

In one intense scene, he goes to his ex-girlfriend, who he recently ghosted, and convinces her to come with him to pay for his brother. It’s a great scene because he doesn’t like this girl anymore but she still likes him. So she’s asking him if this means they’re back together and he has to lie to her and say yes in order to save his brother. But the main reason the scene works is because THE SCENE MATTERS. We know that if he fails to get the money out of her, his brother could die.

That’s not to say all stakes must be life or death. But something has to be on the line in a scene for the scene to work. In my new favorite show, “You,” the main character, Joe, meets with his girlfriend’s best friend at a coffee shop. The best friend hates Joe and wants the girlfriend to dump him. Joe has to make nice with the best friend so that that doesn’t happen. There may not be a big chunk of money involved in this scene but the scene STILL MATTERS. If Joe fails to win over the friend, he could lose his girlfriend.

It’s really as simple as that. If you want to write a good screenplay, give your characters non-stop things to do and have those things matter.

Thanksgiving To-Do List: Get some writing done over the holiday weekend! We’ve got an ANYTHING GOES Amateur Showdown coming up in February so you’re going to want to be ready for that. I’ll be talking about that more as the year winds down. We’ve got a new Black List in a couple of weeks. We’ve got a maybe possibly probably newsletter hitting your inboxes in the next couple of days. And finally, whatever you do, do not – I repeat DO NOT – eat any pumpkin pie this weekend. We must stop the proliferation of this vile dessert. It starts with you.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY! Gobble-gobble.