SCI-FI SHOWDOWN REMINDER
What: Sci-fi Showdown
When: Entries due by Thursday, September 16th, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
How: Include title, genre, logline, Why We Should Read, and a PDF of your script
Where: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com
In honor of Neil Blomkamp’s newest movie trailer and Sci-Fi Showdown, we are going back to one of the best science-fiction movies of the 21st century. Here’s what I wrote back in 2009 after I saw District 9: “Today, I went to see District 9. Even after all the hype, I still walked out amazed. We’re looking at the next James Cameron here. Sci-fi like this has never been done before. Within two minutes I actually believed this was happening – that aliens had landed on our planet.”
I think I may have invented the phrase, “This didn’t age well” with that take. It’s hard to put your finger on why Blomkamp fizzled. There’s no question he’s an insanely talented guy. I think part of the problem was that he never put as much effort into the mythology of his subsequent films as he did District 9. The guy is a director, through and through. But he’s never been a great writer.
District 9 feels like a dozen people sat around a room for a year and discussed every single detail about what this world would be like. You need that with science-fiction. You try to cut corners on mythology and your movie can go from deep to thin in a millisecond. We saw that with his follow-up film, Elysium, where you got the sense that Blomkamp wrote the script in a weekend.
But we still have District 9, which is a sci-fi classic. And Blomkamp is even talking about a District 10, which I’ll be first in line for. In honor of everything Blomkamp, here are 10 screenwriting tips from District 9!
1) The hunter becomes the hunted – One of the best ironic situations to place your hero in is to start him off as the hunter and then turn him into the hunted. Audiences LOOOOOOVE that. Why? Because everybody loves irony. To emphasize how effective this is, imagine if Wikus doesn’t work for the organization moving the prawns out of their homes. Imagine if he’s just some street food vendor who turns into an alien. It’s not nearly as exciting of an idea, is it? That’s the power of irony.
2) The Goal Before The Goal – A lot of writers make this mistake. They focus on the main character’s primary goal only. In this case, it’s for Wikus to figure out how to turn back into a human. But there’s often a period of time in your story before the main character is presented with a goal. In that case, if possible, you want to insert a goal BEFORE the goal. That way, your movie gets going right away. What Blomkamp does is he creates this storyline where South Africa has decided to move all of the aliens to a new location. This act of moving them creates a purpose for the story before our real plot begins.
3) Characters should always have something to do – When characters don’t have something to do, the story comes to a standstill. But it’s important to know the difference between the good something to do and the bad something to do. That difference lies in the goal being PLOT RELEVANT. A hero who’s going to get a coffee is NOT DOING ANYTHING. A hero meeting a hitman at the coffee shop to discuss killing his boss – THAT’S DOING SOMETHING. Whenever your character is doing something that’s pushing the plot forward, they’re doing something. Otherwise, nothing’s happening in your screenplay.
4) Don’t roll out the red carpet for your hero. Put up a barbed wire fence instead!!! – A classic beginner mistake is rolling out the red carpet for your hero’s interactions. Whatever he needs to do, it goes off without a hitch. It should be the opposite. You want to put up a barbed wire fence. Make it difficult. Especially in sci-fi movies where the stakes are high. Go and watch the sequence where Wikus tries to move the prawns from their homes. Literally every prawn gives him trouble. There isn’t a single house where the process goes smoothly. Fences create conflict. Red carpets create boredom.
5) Documentary/fiction hybrids are a cheat-code for exposition – One of the hardest things to do in sci-fi is manage all the exposition and convey it to the reader. Any sort of story with an interview component, such as a documentary, lets you bypass that. District 9 may be the most exposition heavy science fiction movie ever. But I bet you never thought about that until I just mentioned it. That’s because its exposition is hidden inside documentary interviews, so we never consider it exposition.
6) A line of suspense can add an extra level of intrigue to your story – All suspense is is hinting that something bad is going to happen in the future. You can use it, then, to increase the level of interest from the audience. All throughout the opening of District 9, we get these interviews of people talking about Wikus, but they’re doing so as if something terrible has happened to him. “Wikus was always such a kind boy,” his mother tells us. We now know that something bad is going to happen to Wikus, which increases our interest in sticking around. You could, of course, not have shown any of those interviews. But, by omitting them, you also omit a line of suspense that’s driving the reader’s interest.
7) Use language differences to create more interesting dialogue – All of the dialogue between Wikus and the aliens – whether he was trying to evict them or, later, when he’s asking them for help – was charged. It had a heightened unpredictable quality to it. I finally realized it was because Wikus never entirely understood the alien language. He grasped pieces of it, enough so that he could communicate with them. But because he couldn’t speak it fluently, he was always playing catch up. It was a major reason why all the scenes with him and the aliens were so good, that struggle to understand each other and the messiness that brings. I’m thinking you can do the same with any two characters who don’t speak the same language. You can use their misunderstandings and assumptions to create a more interesting interaction than if the two are able to communicate exactly what they’re thinking. Remember, with screenwriting, you’re always looking for ways to make things harder on the characters. Not being able to understand one another is a simple way to make things harder. And, as a bonus, it makes the dialogue better.
8) Your story’s theme and your main character’s flaw are almost always tied together – District 9’s theme is: don’t treat people differently just because they don’t look like you. And Wickus’s flaw is that he doesn’t treat the aliens like real “people” because he doesn’t see the aliens as real “people.” We see this when he’s tossing cat food at them and talking to them like babies. Only when he becomes an alien and sees others treating him the same way he treated the aliens, does he realize his mistake and change.
9) What’s the worst thing you can do to your character right now? – This is a great question that can lead to some great moments in your script. It’s not something you want to use in every scene. But it’s definitely something you want to use occasionally. When Wikus gets home after his long day at work where he’s ingested some strange chemical and has been throwing up the rest of the day, feeling sicker and sicker by the minute, Blomkamp could’ve easily had his wife waiting for him, notice that he’s acting strange, ask him what’s wrong. But that would’ve been a forgettable scene. Instead, Blomkamp asks, “What’s the worst thing I can do to Wikus right now?” And the answer was… give him a surprise birthday party! All Wikus wants to do is rest. He’s sick and getting sicker by the minute. Instead, he has to be happy and peppy and act like nothing’s wrong for the next couple of hours – his worst nightmare.
10) 99% of thriller scripts fall apart when they devolve into an “on the run” story – This is because most scripts go from a STRUCTURED STORY to, all of a sudden, the main character is running around like a chicken with his head cut off, his only goal to stay a step ahead of the bad guys. This trope is boring to watch because all ‘on the run’ stuff feels the same. To combat this, give your character targeted clear goals they’re trying to accomplish. These goals will bring structure back into the story and give it purpose. You can have them run for a few scenes. But then it’s time for them to come up with a plan. Wikus goes back into the Prawn Camp because it’s the only place where he can hide from the authorities. He then agrees to help the alien get his ship operational with the understanding that, when he does, he’ll turn Wikus back into a human. This is a way more interesting storyline than had Wikus just run around Johannesburg for two hours.
Hold on. Don’t tell me you’re sending your script out there without getting professional feedback first. You only get one shot with these industry contacts, my friend. Don’t screw it up by sending them the 10,000th average screenplay they’ve read this year! I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested. Use code phrase ‘WARM IN JULY’ and I’ll take a hundred bucks off a pilot or feature consultation. As long as you pay in July, you can send the script to me whenever it’s finished. Chat soon!
