For those of you who’ve been following the site for a long time now, you’ll remember when I first introduced the GSU model (Goal, stakes, urgency). And despite being subjective, I think it’s still a great model for writing a screenplay. You come up with a goal (Liam Neeson needs to rescue his daughter), make sure the stakes are high (his daughter’s life is on the line) and add some urgency (Neeson’s CIA buddies tell him he’s got 72 hours before she’s gone forever).
As some of you may have noticed, however, the “GSU” model doesn’t work as well when you’re writing a slow-building drama or a biopic or a period piece. In particular, the “goal” aspect isn’t as much of a priority. So if you look at something like American Sniper, what’s the main goal in that screenplay? It doesn’t really emerge until halfway through the story, where Chris Kyle heads up a team that’s trying to take down the number two man in Al-Qaeda.
Personally, I think goal-focused writing is great. You can use it for the whole meal (“You must find the Ark of the Covenant, Indiana Jones!”), or as an occasional snack (In Nightcrawler, one of Lou’s goals is to find his first footage and sell it).
And this leads into our topic of the day, which actually began last week, when I found myself on Youtube watching Vitaly TV at 3 in the morning, procrastinating my ass off. After watching Vitaly proposition a man to spread nutella on his butt, I noticed a recommended video on the side for ballroom dancing. Now I have about as much interest in ballroom dancing as Grendl has for complimenting screenwriters. But for that very reason, I clicked on it, wondering if Youtube knew something about me that I didn’t.
I started watching the clip, and, as I predicted, I was bored. But then something happened. I started to become mesmerized by the structure of this dance, specifically how commanding and powerful the man was in leading it. There was a moment, even, when the woman looked in his eyes, and she was swooning just because of his command. Whether he was pulling or twisting or charging, he led with a confidence that was, quite honestly, inspiring.
It just so happened that I was reading an amateur screenplay at the time. Like a lot of amateur screenplays, it was all over the place. The writer didn’t know how to focus our attention. And it was at that moment that I married these two observations. A screenplay is like dancing. As the writer, it’s your job to lead.
It was a light bulb moment for me because up until that point, I thought you could only pepper your screenplay with goals to keep it focused. But actually, as long as you lead the reader – as long as you let them know where you’re going – they’ll trust you and stay with you.
Let me give you an example of this. I was sent a romantic comedy script and the writer told me up front that the script was boring and he couldn’t figure out why. So I read it and he was right. It was boring. It just didn’t have any life to it. Generally speaking, it was about a self-help guru who falls in love with a woman.
So I put the script down and thought about why I was bored. And the main reason was, the characters just sort of wandered through their experiences together. There was no endgame to their interactions or their lives. Now, in the past, I might’ve told the writer, “Okay, there’s no clear GSU here. We need to give the main character a clear goal that lasts the entire narrative. Maybe he’s got a deadline for a book he’s writing or something.”
But after watching that ballroom video, I’d probably say to the writer, “You need to lead better. You need to let the reader know that we’re going somewhere important, even if it’s just for the time being.” So I asked the writer about the self-help universe and he mentioned that in his research, he found out about these big self-help expos, and I told him, “You have something there.”
What if we have our hero performing on a panel at an important self-help expo in the middle of the screenplay (we could even make it the mid-point)? Now, a scene like that could end up being good or it could end up being horrible. It’s up to the writer to deliver. However, the effect this had was way more far-reaching than the expo sequence itself. By mentioning near the beginning of the script that the expo was happening, the reader now felt like THEY WERE BEING LED. They trusted the writer because the writer was telling them that he had a plan for this journey. It was no longer just two people babbling to each other.
Leading can encompass all sorts of things. In fact, a goal like “finding the Ark of the Covenant” is leading in a sense. But leading can also be much more subtle. I remember in the movie Dazed and Confused – which is one of the looser narratives you’re ever going to find – Richard Linklater is constantly throwing in little leads here and there.
The football coach comes up to the quarterback and tells him he has to sign a “I won’t do drugs” form by the end of the day. We’re being LED because we want to see if he signs it. Mitch, the 8th grader, is told repeatedly by his friends that the high schoolers are going to paddle the shit out of him after the last day of school. So again, we’re being LED towards an event – Mitch getting paddled.
The idea behind leading is simply to indicate a future event with some importance behind it. You can lead within a scene, you can lead within a sequence (6-12 scenes), you can lead something that happens all the way at the end of the screenplay. As long as you’re giving us a future to look forward to.
So say your main character is in high school and he’s about to walk into class but the teacher stops him and says, sternly, “I need to talk to you after class.” That’s leading. During the entire classroom scene, we know that the teacher confrontation is coming. Or maybe two roommates are chatting and one mentions that his sister is coming to stay with them in a few days. Subconsciously, the reader is now thinking, “Well I at least have to read to find out about this sister.” If you don’t lead, they’d never know the sister was coming and they’d get bored.
But guess what, there’s more! I found an even more powerful way to lead, which I call LEADING WITH STEROIDS. It includes a familiar friend of ours – STAKES. If you want your leads to really hook the reader, raise the stakes on them. So in the example I just gave you about the roommate who said his sister was coming – Let’s say in the next scene, the roommate goes online to check what this sister looks like. And she’s GORGEOUS. Now he’s FREAKING out and for the next few days, ALL HE CAN THINK ABOUT is this sister and how she’s coming to stay with them. A simple curiosity about this sister now becomes a big event, because one of the characters is infatuated with her, so we can anticipate entertaining scenarios. If you don’t include this second scene, though, the lead isn’t going to be as powerful.
I always thought that a big goal was the only way to give a script focus. But as long as the writer is consistently and cleverly using leads to keep us invested, they don’t even need a giant goal dominating the story. Of course, studios are still going to prefer the big goals for their big movies. But when you’re writing something a little smaller or more experimental, leading is a great way to keep the reader invested. Use this new screenwriting power wisely. With great power comes great responsibility!!!
