The most recent batch of screenplays I’ve read have ranged from average to decent. But nothing’s broken out and got me excited. And that got me thinking, “Carson, what *does* get you excited?”
I asked Scripty about it and he said, “Cocoa Krispies?” Horentia kept telling me I needed to write an article about the moment that led to the downfall of cinema. “Great Grandma, I’ve already written about how Marvel ruined moviegoing.” “Not Marvel ya cornsquabble. I’m talking about when they allowed them talkies in the theaters.” I quickly realized that neither of these two were going to be any help.
But that got me thinking. We spend so much time talking about screenwriting from the writer’s perspective. So I thought today, we’d talk about it from the reader’s perspective. Specifically, I would identify the key checkpoints that a reader encounters in a script and go over what’s going on in my head during those checkpoints.
Are you ready?
Let’s begin.
Checkpoint #1: The First 3 Lines
The first thing I’m judging when I open a screenplay is the first few sentences. Are they clean? Is the writing confident? Does the writer know which details matter? Can they create an image in my head clearly?
I was reading a script the other day where I was struggling to understand what I was looking at with almost every sentence. The writer would describe something, I’d have to stop and figure out what they meant. Then I’d read another sentence and have to do the same thing all over again. It was exhausting.
Compare these two sentences from a “Scream” like script.
The house is located in a suburban neighborhood where there are several other houses nearby, all middle class, although none are particularly close to the ones next to them. The lights are on inside, illuminating the windows, while the surrounding area is shadowy and dark.
And…
An isolated suburban house. Every window blazing with light. Beyond the driveway, nothing but darkness.
Both descriptions are giving me the same information. But the second one is much cleaner and more visual. That’s what I’m looking for. A writer who can put an image in my head quickly and effortlessly.
Checkpoint #2: Page 1
Once I get through the first page, there’s one very specific question that goes through my mind. Do I want to turn the page?
Screenwriters are so focused on setting up their story, introducing their protagonist, establishing the world, and getting all their pieces into place that they forget the most important thing. Somebody has to want to read this!
I’m going to shock you with this next statement. Screenplays aren’t written to be enjoyed. Indirectly they may be. But the primary reason they’re written is to pitch a movie. That’s the only reason the person reading it is reading.
So the bar for turning the page is tied to that mission. What makes someone want to turn the page? It could be an intriguing situation like a wife revealing to her husband that she wants a divorce. It could be an unusual character, like Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. It could be a mystery, like a perfectly happy person jumping out of their hotel room to their death.
There are a million ways to do it yet you’d be surprised at how often writers sabotage themselves by starting with mundane first pages. If I’m not itching to turn to page 2, I won’t give up on the script right then and there. But it’s an indication that a positive reading experience is in jeopardy.
Checkpoint #3: Page 5
Page 5 isn’t an official screenplay marker for me. It’s just roughly around when the first scene ends. And that leads to what I’m evaluating in this moment, which is: Does the writer know how to write a scene?
Do they know how to enter a scene as late as possible and leave it as early as possible? Do their scenes have a setup, conflict, and resolution? Or a setup, conflict, and cliffhanger that propels us into the next scene?
Is there conflict at all? You’d be surprised how many writers construct scenes where two characters simply talk to each other, exchange information, then leave. Nothing is being fought for. Nothing is being challenged. Nothing is changing. It’s as if the writer has never heard of the word “drama” before.
I’m also starting to evaluate the characters at this stage. By page 5, we’ve usually met one or two important people. One of the easiest ways to spot a weak writer is through how they introduce characters.
“DON, 32, well-groomed, walks across the university campus toward the student commons.”
Well groomed?? That’s all you’re telling me?? When I see a character description like that for a main character, the chances shoot up that I’m about to read a stinker.
Checkpoint # 4: Page 10
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I held a big screenplay contest and the only way I could hold it for free was that I reserved the right to stop reading after ten pages if the script sucked. So, if your script wasn’t interesting after ten pages, I was out.
It was an unexpectedly difficult task because I didn’t want to potentially overlook a good script and I realized that if I solely went on technicalities (good character set up, strong prose, clear scenes) that wasn’t the best criteria for whether the script would be good. A lot of the early scripts that passed that test went on to be terrible.
But I eventually found a magical question that solved it for me. I simply asked: Would it bother me if I had to stop reading this right now?
Would I think about it later? Would I say, “Man, I want to go back and figure out where that was going?” At ten pages, if the answer to that above question is no, I’ve learned with almost 100% certainty, the script isn’t good enough.
I’ll give you a recent example of this. I reviewed this script Canopy a couple of weeks ago and, roughly 10 pages in, I forgot that I had a consultation call that I had to jump onto.
Up until that point, the script was building towards this dangerous mission into the depths of the Amazon jungle. And during that call, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about what awaited those people on that expedition. I wanted to find out. I was excited to get back into the script and see what came next. And it was because the writer did a great job setting up his world and hinting at the danger to come.
Checkpoint #5: Page 25
For the purposes of this article, let’s assume we’re writing a 100-page screenplay. That puts the end of the first act at around page 25. I don’t actually use this moment to make some grand statement about the script. But because this is a key structural point in the screenplay, that’s where my mind goes.
I do a quick evaluation of how well the writer understands structure. Did they establish a hero who’s stuck in their life? Did they include an inciting incident that all of a sudden challenged them? Were they called to action and, if so, did they resist that call at first, only to be dragged into it afterwards? Then, on page 26 (or whatever page is after the end of your first act) are they thrust out onto their journey?
Now, let me be clear. I am not using this to evaluate whether I like the screenplay. I may like the screenplay independent of these things. But a writer who not only knows how to navigate through these structural points, but navigate through them invisibly, is a highly skilled and rare screenwriter. It means they’ve not only studied the craft, but that they have talent as well. And it gives me an immense amount of confidence when I find a writer who’s capable of these things.
Checkpoint #6: Page 40 – 45
Between the pages of 25 and 40 is when your script enters its most promising section, which is where you deliver what your concept promised.
If you’re writing Jurassic Park, this is where we get to first experience the dinosaurs. If you’re writing The Hangover, this is where the guys first wake up and stumble around, trying to figure out what the hell happened last night, encountering random babies and tigers in their hotel room.
This is the section that most delivers on the promise of the premise. So, if these scenes don’t give us that excited feeling of not just experiencing what you promised from your logline, but give it in a way that’s even BETTER than what we expected (cooler, funnier, more creative), then that’s a huge letdown for me. Because this is what I’ve been looking forward to the whole script. And if you let me down in this area, I’m depressed.
What does that let down look like? The most insidious version of it is bland cliche scenes. For example, if you write the 10,000th home invasion thriller I’ve read this year and you give me a break in and a series of standard ‘tie the homeowners up’ and start asking standard questions scenes, that tells me you’re not being creative enough. You’re not pushing yourself enough.
So this section is really key because it should be the section where I’m getting the most excited as a reader.
Checkpoint #7: Page 50 – 55
This is where things get interesting. And by interesting, I mean this is where an enormous number of screenplays go straight to the graveyard.
Because here’s what happens. A writer comes up with a cool concept. They know how to introduce their protagonist. They understand the inciting incident. They know how to send their hero off on their journey. And they even have a handful of fun scenes planned for the beginning of that adventure. But once they’ve written those scenes, they realize something terrifying.
They’re out of ideas.
They’ve got another fifty pages to write and they have no idea what to do with them. Congratulations, you’ve entered the Second Act Black Hole.
And it’s one of the biggest separators between writers who only know how to set up a screenplay and writers who can actually write a full one.
So what am I looking for here? An engine that’s running red hot. Go watch Star Wars. There isn’t a single moment in that film where the engine isn’t running red hot. It’s always pushing the characters forward. It’s always forcing them into the next situation.
I’m also looking for a screenplay that pushes back. I want to introduce a new concept to you here: SCREENPLAY MAN. Screenplay Man is your screenplay. Screenplay Man SHOULD HATE THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR CHARACTERS. Like literally hate them.
And so Screenplay Man should be throwing all sorts of dirty dangerous evil terrible shit at them. Wanna go to Alderran to deliver your precious little droid message? Too bad says Screenplay Man, I just blew Alderran up. Wanna go to the Rebel Base instead? Too bad says Screenplay Man, a giant fucking space station is pulling you in. Wanna save the princess? Too bad says Screenplay Man. I’m going to dump you into a trash compactor and squeeze you into human ketchup. Wanna escape and plan an attack on us? No problem, says Screenplay Man, but first I’m going to take the smartest dude on your team and put a lightsaber through his stomach.
Screenplay Man is no joke. And the best scripts allow Screenplay Man to go hog wild in the second act. A hot revving engine combined with a psychopathic Screenplay Man is the ultimate combination to keep your second act humming.
Final Checkpoint: Everything After
Here’s where my evaluation process changes. After the midpoint, I’m no longer consciously checking markers. I’m not thinking, “Okay, where’s the next plot point? Has the writer escalated the stakes? Are we setting up the third act properly?”
If the script is working, I’m past all that. At this point, I should be completely and utterly hooked. And there’s a specific way I can tell that that’s happened.
When I consult, I take detailed notes. I’ll write things like, “Page 54 — this line of dialogue doesn’t feel realistic.” Or, “Page 72 — this character is behaving inconsistently.” Or, “Page 81 — this action sequence needs to be described more clearly.”
But when I’m reading a really good screenplay, I’ll look at my document and realize that I’m on page 79 and my last note was on page 47.
I’ve completely forgotten to do my job! And that’s when I know I’m reading something special. Because the screenplay has stopped being a screenplay. It’s now a movie playing in my head where the suspension of disbelief is so strong that I actually believe that what I’m reading is real.
—
That’s how I experience a screenplay, from the first three lines to the end.
The big lesson to take away here is that you all spend so much time thinking about what you need to do and not enough time thinking about the person you’re writing the script for. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? A good writer is a master at understanding his audience and is constantly asking this question: “What is the reader thinking/feeling in this particular moment?” And if they’re not feeling the way the writer wants them to feel, then they change that moment until they achieve the feeling they’re trying to get across.
Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of the other side of the writer-reader contract. Screenwriting comes down to one simple question: Do they want to turn the page? And if at any point the answer is no, well, that’s when Screenplay Man comes knocking.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: When his criminal mother returns after a decade, a timid teenage dishwasher who competes as an underground mascot fighter must choose between the biological mother who abandoned him and the controlling, delusional bar owner who raised him.
About: A few weeks ago, I held an Amateur Showdown for all you aspiring screenwriters out there. The voting was really close. Two weeks ago, I reviewed the winning script. But today’s script was just one vote away from winning. And ever since The Ballad of the Ember Knight lost on an Amateur Showdown, resulting in me only finding out about it when the writers hired me for a consultation a year later, I’m a bit more curious about the scripts that don’t win these things. Hence, we get today’s review…
Writer: Jamie Porter
Details: 95 pages
I always like to give unique scripts a shot. So, when I was picking screenplays to compete in the Amateur Showdown, I was excited to find this one. It scratched that “weird” itch that makes me think of movies like Being Charlie Kaufman and The Squid and the Whale. Those scripts can turn into really good indie movies. Do we have another one of those today? Let’s find out…
17 year old beanpole Cornelius competes in an underground fighting league where grown men dress up in animal mascot costumes and beat the crap out of each other. Cornelius fights as a dolphin and is one of the league’s rising stars.
Greg, who’s obsessed with bleak sad Hungarian films, is officially Cornelius’s coach and unofficially his father. The two are also close with Halpert, a 72-year-old widower who’s barely hanging onto his life and runs the fighting league. Before he dies, Halpert wants to expand the league.
One day, Cornelius’s estranged mother, Sanni, shows up. Sanni is a very unhappy miserable woman so it’s not clear why she wants to reconnect with Cornelius. But it may have something to do with her ex-boyfriend. If she comes to him with Cornelius, maybe he’ll want her back.
Eventually, Cornelius meets Milky, a weird young girl who seems to understand him in a way no one else does. The two begin hanging out and, all of a sudden, Cornelius isn’t as interested in mascot fighting so much.
As the championship nears, Sanni does something catastrophic to destroy the league, leaving Greg and Halpert scrambling to save it. But will Cornelius even want to fight if they do?
The character study.
It’s when you strip away the big, sexy concept, the exciting plot, and you tell a slow, mostly intimate, story that focuses on the characters themselves.
So it goes without saying that if you’re going to write a character study, as is the case with Cornelius, you gotta give me some great character development.
I believe that Jamie believed he was giving us that. But I would argue that he didn’t get there. And it’s a rather involved explanation as to why so hang with me and I’ll do my best to explain it.
Let’s start with Cornelius himself.
He is the titular character.
But he’s not the main character.
That’s not unheard of for a movie. But it’s frustrating if you’re the reader. Cause you go in assuming that’s the case and then all of these other characters are getting way more attention and you’re thinking, “Well, wait a minute. Who’s the main character exactly?”
At first, it appears to be Greg. He’s taken Cornelius in. He’s pushing him to be this great fighter. Readers gravitate towards characters who are ACTIVE. And let me explain why. Because screenwriters hear that advice a lot: “Make your character ACTIVE!” But I’m not sure they understand why it’s important.
It’s important because active characters are PUSHING THE STORY FORWARD. Let’s take Jeff Lebowski. The fact that he has to go out and try to get the money back for his ruined rug FORCES THINGS TO HAPPEN IN THE STORY that push it forward.
Now imagine that nobody had pissed on Jeff Lebowski’s rug. He wouldn’t have to do anything. He wouldn’t have to go anywhere. And what would that result in? No story. No plot. A character hanging around his apartment all day.
So that’s why you want active characters.
Unfortunately, Greg is active in name only. He wants Cornelius to win. He wants to make a small fighting league a little bigger. But that’s pretty much it. That’s the extent of this character’s contribution to the story. Outside of that and his love for Hungarian movies, he’s too thin.
Then we have Sanni. I don’t know if I’d call Sanni the best character in the script because she’s unlikable in God-like proportions. But she disrupts a lot of things and, therefore, is the main source of drama in the story. Character studies NEED DRAMA. Too many screenwriters don’t know this. They think: Just create interesting characters. No. You need some sort of plot where dramatic events unfold.
My issue is that she doesn’t feel truly connected to Cornelius in any real-world convincing way. We later find out they’re not even related. She adopted him. Which makes it confusing why she would’ve abandoned him. I just never got the feeling that Jamie understood this character other than that she was a disruptor.
Eventually, Cornelius begins to break away from what everyone else wants for him when Milky comes along. But even as he starts making his own decisions, he still comes off as thin. Because when you strip everything away, what’s really happening here? A horny 17-year-old boy meets the first girl who wants to have sex with him, and suddenly he doesn’t want to fight anymore.
Is that a deep exploration of character? What are we learning about Cornelius beyond the fact that he’d rather have sex than fight? What deeper part of himself is being challenged? We get this late-arriving art storyline that seems designed to give Cornelius some of that missing depth. But rather than growing organically out of who he is and what he’s been through, it feels like another funky idea the writer has thrown into an already overcrowded script full of funky ideas.
And I kept coming back to: Who is the main character here? Cornelius starts to emerge as the main character as we near the finish line. But for the first half of the script, I don’t know if I knew a single thing about Cornelius. You can’t develop a character ONLY in the second half of the screenplay.
All of these characters need more depth. A tragic childhood backstory and one quirky characteristic each is not enough development. Real character depth comes from establishing who a person is, identifying the thing that’s holding them back in life, then putting them through a journey that forces them to confront that thing.
I just watched Coyote vs. Acme, and Will Forte plays this bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer who’s given up on life. He’s a coward who’s known for settling every case that comes to him. Then he’s dragged into this ridiculous case where he can’t settle. And over the course of his journey, he has to decide if he’s going to continue being this guy who rolls over and accepts defeat or if he’s finally going to stand up and fight for something.
THAT’S character depth because we understand what the character needs to improve then we build a story around repeatedly testing him in that area. You want to introduce your character at a point in their life where, if they keep going down the road they’re on, they’re killing their own soul. And the movie is their last-ditch chance to change that.
That’s what makes a character journey compelling. We’re watching someone fight for their soul!
Nobody in this script really cares all that much about anything. Greg cares the most but what he’s fighting for is thinner than the pancakes I made this morning. And everyone else is just depressed and dying. Cornelius is the closest we get to a character transformation but he was set up so poorly – so passively – that we never, or I should say I never, cared about him.
Part of the problem is Jamie focused on the wrong thing. He put too much importance on the quirkiness. Giving Greg a backstory where he was left at a baby giraffe zoo as a child. Sanni almost ran away with a circus musician. Cornelius and Milky make art with blood. Backstories that all have some insanely unique element (your wife didn’t just die. She died climbing Mount Kilimanjaro).
These things may feel like good writing choices because they’re unique. But they’re also insanely unrelatable. To get the audience to understand your characters, they have to relate to what they’re going through. Nobody can relate to being 7 years old, told to swim under the ice in a lake, then come out the other side to find out that your parents have left you there. That doesn’t happen in the real world.
Generally speaking, you get one wild creative choice in a script (a kid fights in an underground animal mascot league) and that’s it. With everything else, try to keep it realistic.
I’m not going to lie. This one was frustrating. I kept waiting for it to find its footing. But there was never a moment in the script where I wasn’t aware that it was being written. With that said, if you are a fan of movies like The Squid and the Whale or, even, Little Miss Sunshine, you might like this one. Check it out, form your own opinion, and tell us what you think in the comments.
Script link: Cornelius
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If weirdness could be measured on a 1-10 scale and you’re naturally a 6, don’t try to write a Level 9 Weirdness script. Stick closer to your natural level. Maybe push yourself to a 7 or 8. But the further you stray from your natural sensibility, the more inauthentic your writing will feel. Because at a certain point, you’re no longer drawing from your own imagination. You’re drawing from what you think a weirder person’s imagination looks like. And that’s the difference between being genuinely weird and trying to convince everyone you’re weird.
I dropped more screenwriting knowledge in this newsletter than probably any newsletter ever. There are some whopper lessons here that could literally change the entire trajectory of your screenwriting life. We talk about the hottest director in Hollywood. We talk about what the heck is going on over at Netflix. We talk about how Quentin Tarantino may hold the secret to you cracking your latest screenplay. My great grandmother makes her Scriptshadow debut. I review another huge short story sale that I got so worked up about, I had to go buy 20 pounds of ice over at 7-11 so I could create a cold plunge in my bathtub just to cool down. If you’re not signed up for my newsletter, I want to get you better health care because there’s clearly something wrong with your brain.
If you’re signed up but did not receive my newsletter, e-mail me. And if you want to sign up, e-mail me. All of you can reach me here: carsonreeves1@gmail.com
DC falling, documentaries rising, ancient characters coming back from the dead, and two Hollywood superstars bombing like it’s 1941
How crazy is it that a documentary is doing this well at the box office. You Can See Everything is continuing to break records. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what records are being broken, but I keep seeing that people say that on the internet, so I’m assuming it must be true.
So, what’s happening here? Why is this movie in the weakest performing genre almost beating DC movies with 100 times their marketing budget?
Well, one of the things co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim said is they would shoot a scene, then afterwards everybody, them and the crew, would discuss it, and every single person had a different opinion on what had happened in the scene.
That’s when Nathan realized that there might be something to this. Because when he went into shooting, he wasn’t sure if there was a movie here. And even as he talks about it now, he says, “Even after we shot, we didn’t know if we had a film.”
But the film appears to be about the different perspectives people take from it. Because everybody’s having the same experience that Nathan and Lance and the crew had, where they watch a scene and they come away with two completely different perspectives on it.
Like in my review, I point out that Amanda Seyfried comes off as completely awful, and someone comments she comes off as the best thing in the movie. And people think that Elizabeth Holmes is lying a scene, then other people think she’s absolutely telling the truth.
The famous Who’s on First scene, people think she’s a master manipulator as she says that she has no idea why it’s funny, and I think it’s obvious she’s not hip to that kind of humor and just doesn’t get it.
But what’s happening is that the fact that people have such differing perspectives is creating conversation outside the movie, and that is extremely rare nowadays, that people really talk about movies after watching them.
Another neat aspect about the film is people believe there are all these hidden Easter Eggs that are telling you the truth about Elizabeth Holmes. They think that Nathan has hidden the answer of the film, because the film leaves you with no clear answer, but people now think Nathan has left these Easter eggs in the film and in the marketing that are revealing what he knows.
One Easter Egg I found, and I haven’t seen anything about this, so I’m actually very proud of myself for discovering it, is I looked at the poster up above and I was wondering why they decided to choose it. Cause I don’t think it’s a very good poster. Then I looked closer and I realized that a big part of the movie is Elizabeth Holmes’ big, bright, blue eyes. But when you zoom in on her eye there, you see that she’s wearing a contact lens, and the implication is that it’s a color-corrective lens to make her eyes very, very blue.
If she’s doing that, if she’s lying about the color of her eyes, then what else is she lying about? She’s probably lying about everything.
The funny thing is I don’t think she’s a liar at all. I think she’s no different from any other CEO of any other company. No CEO is going to walk into a financier meeting and say, “Oh, these are all the things that are wrong with my product.”
No, they’re going to hype the product. They’re going to tell you why it’s awesome and oversell it. That’s literally what all CEOs do all the time. And that’s all she was doing. And to claim that she was deceiving anyone, well then you got to put every single CEO on earth in prison, because all of them do the exact same thing for a literal living.
I think the movie’s great, though, and it’s really cool that this non-traditional movie is getting so much attention. It’s rare that this happens, and it’s fun to watch.
On the flip side, we have Klara and the Sun and the now confirmed completed downfall of Taika Waititi. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who was so high fall so far so fast. I mean, one day, he had all of Hollywood wanting to do whatever he wanted to do, and the next, he had Klara and the Sun.
I don’t think it helped his cause that he cast Jenna Ortega, who also flew too close to the sun and, like Icarus, fell to Earth. They both made their big mistakes that led to their downfalls around the same time. For Taika, it was Thor: Love and Thunder.
Which was, I mean, if you want to see a movie that shows why screenwriting matters and why you can’t just make shit up as you go along, go watch that movie, because it’s the perfect exemplification of very poor writing and a lack of structure and a lack of a plan and a lack of a foundation in the screenplay that you’ll ever see.
Jenna Ortega’s downfall was more self-inflicted. She had that press tour where she told everybody that she did everything. She did the writing, she did the choreographing, she told the cinematographer where to put the camera, she ran craft services. Queen of all Movies Ortega.
That is one of the fastest ways to make every single person who works on movies hate you. Because if you’re going to take credit for everybody else’s work, they will hate you.
And it used to be in Hollywood that you could get away with this because stars were so important to movies that the on-set people just had to shut up and take it.
But nowadays, with social media and the fact that stars aren’t as big as they used to be, they don’t have the power anymore. Your every move on set is being watched and potentially reported on. And your star power alone, your fanbase, can’t shield you from all of that. So that trickles down from your jobs to the internet and people stop going to see you.
And it’s too bad because I read Klara and the Sun and it was a good book, and it had this perfect balance of sweetness and sadness. Which used to be Taika’s brand. JoJo Rabbit is an excellent script and an even better movie. But the guy has lost his confidence or his mojo or something because all you need to do is watch 10 seconds of that trailer to know that they screwed it up. You can tell the movie doesn’t work immediately.
There are actually two movies I wanted to see this weekend but wasn’t able to. I wanted to laugh, so I wanted to see the Ali G movie. I realize we’re 20 years late on this movie having any buzz at all but I still think that the Ali G character is hilarious. And even if Sacha Baron Cohen is probably just doing it for a paycheck, it’s hard to find movies that make me laugh, and I knew this movie would. I mean, this jacket alone makes me laugh.
But it’s playing in barely any theaters! Luckily, I heard it’s coming out on Amazon Prime quickly, so I’ll be looking forward to that.
The other movie I wanted to see was Wildwood, which is the only movie out there that’s actually got better critic and audience scores than You Can See Everything, which is not an easy task.
But I had trouble finding this one as well. The only place it was playing near me, at the Grove, had very strange showtimes, to the point where I thought there was something wrong with the AMC website. But I double and triple checked, and, nope, it was just weird showtimes. I guess this is the side of Hollywood they never talk about. When you have the tiny distribution company, you don’t get any of the good theaters, any of the good showtimes.
But this one, I mean, if you haven’t seen the trailer, the trailer’s amazing. It looks like the modern-day version of The Chronicles of Narnia, a real adventure.
And then finally you have Clayface, which made $24 million this weekend. It’s not looking good for WB or DC or James Gunn. Because he chose these movies. He chose these characters. And they’re not doing well.
You can see what Gunn’s vision was for the DC universe. It was, A, Superman – just get the Superman movie right. And then he asked the question, “What are the most interesting characters that I can build a movie around?” And let’s not go to the obvious candidates. Let’s find those comics that have the most interesting characters.
And when you look at Clayface, it’s no doubt a very interesting character on the surface. It’s Vanilla Sky, the Tom Cruise film from 2o01. You’re beautiful, and then you get this terrible face, and you fix it, but then it’s unpredictable when the ugliness is going to come back. That’s a very compelling character. So I understand what he was thinking.
Then Supergirl as well! Supergirl was all about this drunk woman who lost her family and stewed in her own misery and in her own substance abuse as she ignored the world, and then she’s tasked with saving it. And that too is objectively an interesting character. So I can see where he was coming from, from a screenwriting perspective.
But his whole thing was: ”We’re not making movies until the scripts are great.”
And both of these scripts don’t look to be great. Clayface got a 75% Rotten Tomatoes score. And that’s what it looks like. It looks like an average ass movie.
And the problem here is that, and what a lot of people who are playing defense for Clayface are saying is, “Well, it’s not a superhero movie. It’s a horror movie.” Well, okay. That’s fine. But if you’re going to be judged by the horror movie space, well, guess what? Resident Evil made $60 million its opening weekend. Backrooms made $80 million its first weekend. So you don’t really have an excuse here, because you’re not even scoring well in the horror department.
The reason I have no interest in seeing it is two-fold. And I sense that a lot of people feel the same way. One, the actor has a fairly weird face. It’s not a face I want to watch for 2 hours. And two, the movie looks off-putting. I don’t know how else to explain it. So, why would I want to feel put-off for 2 hours?
It sucks because if you take away the Hollywood gossip factory and all the typical BS internet chatter, I think you’re looking at a man in James Gunn who’s honestly looking for good stories to tell, for good characters to build movies around.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just about finding a great character and a great plot. You got to – and I talked about this in an article recently – you got to connect it together in a way where it feels like this well-constructed living breathing organism, rather than just something you plot out the beats for and then make your character change over the course of the story. That’s not enough. You got to make it something that we feel.
I know this because the script I get emailed about the most, by far, is Osculum Infame, and people are constantly asking me about it. They’re just obsessed with it and it’s because Bernd, the writer, he just… he wrote something special, and it just all connected, and it just all did everything it was supposed to do, and it found that way to not just be something on paper, but reach out and pull the reader into its world.
It’s so hard to do that.
Have you guys seen any of these films? What are your thoughts? In the meantime, I may just check out the first episode of Carrie tonight. Why not? It’s free on Amazon. The TV pickings have been so slim that if this doesn’t work, I’m stuck waiting another year for White Lotus Season 4 to come out!
An advanced screenwriting method that takes your screenplays to the next level!
When I first started writing screenplays, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when it came to writing scenes. I mean, I knew what a scene was in the abstract. I knew that characters were supposed to talk to each other and things were supposed to happen. But as far as how to actually construct a scene? It was total guesswork and I mainly operated on feel.
Then, somewhere along the way, I read a screenwriting book that said every scene should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or, in storytelling parlance, a first act, a second act, and a third act. And that was a revelation to me. A scene should be its own miniature movie!
Suddenly, I had a system. I had rules. I had something I could actually apply when I sat down to write a scene. There was only one problem. When I went back and started studying some of my favorite movies, I noticed that a whole bunch of their scenes didn’t follow this rule.
Some scenes were only half a minute long. Some were nothing more than a character walking into a room, learning a piece of information, and leaving. Some started right in the middle of a conversation. Others ended before the characters had resolved anything. Where were the three acts in those scenes?
And the more I studied them, the more I realized that the advice itself seemed to contradict another famous piece of advice: Enter a scene as late as possible and leave as early as possible.
Wait, hold on a second. If I’m supposed to enter a scene as late as possible, doesn’t that sometimes mean skipping the beginning? Let’s say two characters are meeting at a coffee shop. The beginning of the scene might be them arriving, ordering coffee, sitting down, and getting comfortable. The middle might be them discussing the problem they’re there to solve. And the end might be them finally reaching a decision.
But what if the only thing I need from that scene is the decision? Why would I waste two pages setting everything up when I could start right before the decision is made, get the information I need, and move on?
And what about those tiny scenes whose only purpose is to get us from one part of the story to another? Am I really supposed to give every one of those scenes its own three-act structure? It didn’t make sense. So, for a while, I was stuck.
I still believed in the beginning-middle-end approach. I liked how it forced you to think of a scene as a complete dramatic unit instead of just a bunch of people talking. But I couldn’t reconcile that belief with what I was seeing in actual movies.
Then, eventually, I realized something. The beginning-middle-end rule was right. I was just applying it to the wrong thing. See, sometimes a scene really is its own miniature movie. It has a setup, a development, and a resolution. Everything happens in one location during one continuous stretch of time.
But other times, that miniature movie is spread across multiple scenes. Maybe three scenes. Maybe four. Maybe five. And when you combine those scenes, something interesting happens. They form a complete story.
The first scene sets up a problem. The next couple of scenes develop that problem, complicate it, make things worse. And the final scene brings everything to a head. Beginning. Middle. End. It’s the exact same principle! The only difference is that instead of applying it to one scene, you’re applying it to a sequence of scenes.
And that’s when everything clicked for me. I didn’t need every individual scene to have three acts. I needed every dramatic unit to have three acts. Sometimes that unit was a single scene. Sometimes it was five scenes working together.
Suddenly, all those movies I’d been studying made sense. The short scenes weren’t breaking the rules. They were parts of larger dramatic units. They didn’t need to be complete stories because they were contributing to a complete story. Once I understood that, I had a much more flexible way of constructing screenplays. Instead of forcing every scene into the same rigid structure, I could move back and forth between two approaches.
And the best part was that I no longer had to sacrifice pacing to satisfy some arbitrary structural requirement. If a scene only needed to be ten seconds long, it could be ten seconds long. If a scene needed to be eight pages long, it could be eight pages long. The only thing that mattered was whether the larger dramatic unit was doing its job. And that brings us to the screenwriting approach I want to talk about today, which I call…
THE ACCORDION METHOD
The Accordion Method is a way of constructing scenes where you can either compress your beginning, middle, and end into a single scene or stretch them out across several scenes. Just like a real accordion, you can push it all the way in or pull it all the way out, depending on how much room you need.
So let’s start with the accordion pushed all the way in. A great example of this is the first time Clarice meets Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
The scene starts with Clarice approaching Lecter in his cell, hoping to persuade him to complete a questionnaire. She has a clear goal. Which is important to point out. Scenes that have a beginning, middle, and end are stronger when a character enters them with a goal. We know what the character wants and we can measure everything that happens against whether they’re getting closer to or further away from that goal.
Next comes the middle of the scene, which is where the conflict takes place. Clarice tries to get Lecter to cooperate, but Lecter has other plans. He starts probing her insecurities, analyzing her background, and psychologically turning the interrogation around on her. This is the meat of the scene. It’s where the resistance (the conflict) comes from. Clarice wants something and Lecter isn’t going to make it easy for her.
Finally, we get our ending. After their unpleasant exchange, Clarice walks away, seemingly having failed in her mission. But then Lecter calls her back and gives her a clue that could help with the Buffalo Bill investigation. And that’s our climax! Clarice came in wanting something from Lecter. Lecter resisted her, creating conflict. And in the end, despite all that resistance, she walks away with a valuable key to the next stage of the story.
Beginning. Middle. End.
Now, when I was coming up with the Accordion Method, a question I asked myself was, “Why can’t you just make every scene have a beginning, middle, and end?” And the most obvious answer I could come up with was: Some scenes are too short for a beginning, middle, and end.
But after doing some research, I realized that just isn’t true. I bring this up because I think every writer should go into every scene with the intention of giving it a beginning, middle, and end. If the story doesn’t allow for it, I’m okay with that. But one thing you cannot blame is a lack of time. You’d be surprised at how much story you can stuff into a small amount of space.
A great example of that is a scene from Jaws that occurs 12 minutes into the movie. Chief Brody is on a car ferry when Mayor Vaughn approaches him, along with a couple of other local officials.
The setup is simple. Brody wants to close the beaches because a young woman has just been killed in what he believes was a shark attack.
Next comes the middle of the scene, where we introduce our conflict. Mayor Vaughn doesn’t want the beaches closed. It’s a summer tourist town. Closing the beaches would be disastrous for business. So he and the other officials push back against Brody, suggesting that maybe the girl wasn’t killed by a shark at all. Maybe it was a boating accident.
This is what you’re doing in the middle of your scenes. You’re introducing obstacles that prevent your character from achieving their goal. Brody wants to close the beaches. The mayor and his buddies don’t want him to. So we have conflict.
Finally, we get our climax. The mayor effectively overrules Brody. The beaches are staying open. Brody is frustrated, but there’s nothing he can do about it.
And that’s it!
Beginning. Middle. End.
And you know how long the scene is? Just one minute and forty seconds long.
So don’t tell me your scene is too short to have a beginning, middle, and end. If it’s good enough for Jaws, it’s good enough for you.
Okay, so now that we’ve learned how to write a scene with the accordion pushed all the way in, let’s learn how to write one with the accordion extended out. All that means is that instead of giving our beginning, middle, and end to a single scene, we’re going to spread them out over several scenes.
For this example, we’re going to go back to the OT trilogy and look at Return of the Jedi.
Five minutes into the movie, we see R2-D2 and C-3PO walking through the desert on Tatooine. We learn that they’re on their way to Jabba the Hutt’s palace to deliver a message.
Right away, we have a goal: Deliver the message.
Again, just like with individual scenes, when you’re writing a sequence of scenes, it’s always helpful to start with a character who has a goal. That goal gives the sequence purpose. It gives us something to follow.
Now, there’s something important I want you to notice about this scene. It’s almost entirely expositional. R2-D2 and C-3PO are walking through the desert, talking about Jabba the Hutt, how dangerous he is, and what they’re getting themselves into.
This is where a lot of amateur writers get into trouble. They need to convey exposition so they write a scene where two characters walk around talking about stuff the audience needs to know. But because there’s no dramatic purpose behind the scene, it feels like exactly what it is: an exposition dump.
Here, however, that exposition is being delivered in the midst of a pursuit – the characters’ ultimate goal. These two droids are on a mission. They’re trying to get somewhere. So even though the scene itself is two characters talking, there’s forward momentum. And just to convey how this fits into the accordion method, the scene itself DOES NOT HAVE REAL CONFLICT. IT DOESN’T HAVE A CLIMAX. But that’s okay! Because this scene is the beginning of our larger dramatic unit.
Next, the droids arrive at Jabba’s palace where they’re confronted by a giant metal door. A little gatekeeper droid pops out, and they have to convince it to let them inside. Now we’re in our second act – the conflict portion of our story. Our characters have a goal, but we’re going to start putting obstacles in their way. The gatekeeper droid is our first obstacle.
Eventually, they’re allowed inside, but they’re not out of the woods yet. They encounter Jabba’s right-hand man, Bib Fortuna, who isn’t particularly interested in letting them see his boss. Another obstacle!
Then they face their biggest obstacle yet. Jabba the Hutt himself! Jabba is this giant, disgusting, intimidating creature surrounded by criminals and henchmen. He’s the embodiment of conflict.
The droids deliver their message, which turns out to be a hologram of Luke Skywalker offering to negotiate for the release of Han Solo. And as a gesture of goodwill, Luke offers the two droids as gifts. Which comes as a surprise to C-3PO, who had no idea he was part of the deal!
That brings us to our final scene, where R2-D2 and C-3PO are taken into the back of the palace and handed over to the droid supervisor, who assigns them their new jobs as servants. And that’s the ending to our sequence!
Our characters started out with a simple goal: deliver a message to Jabba the Hutt. They encountered a series of obstacles along the way, each one bringing them closer to their objective. And finally, they delivered the message, only to discover that they’d been given away as part of the deal. Beginning. Middle. End. And that’s the Accordion Method!
Notice how much freedom that gives us. That opening desert scene doesn’t need its own three-act structure. It doesn’t need some artificial conflict where C-3PO and R2-D2 get into an argument that has to be resolved before they reach the palace. Its job is simply to establish the mission and provide some exposition. The subsequent scenes then build on that mission, introducing obstacles and moving us toward the resolution.
So what are the rules of the Accordion Method? There are really only three.
1-Give your dramatic unit a goal – Whether that unit is one scene or five scenes, we should understand what the character is trying to accomplish.
2-Create conflict, build toward a resolution – Introduce obstacles, create conflict, and eventually bring the situation to some kind of resolution. Success or failure, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the dramatic unit feels complete.
3-Don’t force every individual scene to be complete. – This is the whole point of the method! Sometimes a scene’s only job is to introduce a problem, deliver a piece of information, or create a complication. It doesn’t need its own beginning, middle, and end as long as it’s contributing to a larger dramatic unit that has one.
I know that once I learned this method, it became easier for me to see where writers were losing readers. Because bad writing includes a lot of these scenes that don’t have any structure around them. They’re just empty scenes that the writer has some small individual purpose for (stick in some exposition, establish camaraderie between characters, introduce a new character). The Accordion Method allows you to make those scenes part of a larger sequence that keeps your reader entertained. It’s very powerful when you master it so start giving it a shot right now!
