How easy character wins are killing modern screenwriting
So I was watching 90 Day Fiancé the other day. For those who don’t know the premise, this is a reality show where people from different countries meet online, form a relationship, then move to the other person’s country to be with them.
In this particular season, one of the cast members was a woman in her late 20s who was a homebody. She meets this guy in England, they engage with each other for a year online, and she decides to upend her whole life, along with her career, to go live with him in the English countryside.
Around Episode 3 is when she finally gets to England. They meet at the airport, go back to his home, put all her stuff away, and prepare for the long “happily ever after” journey they’re about to enjoy together.
Except that three days later, the girl decides that she was wrong. Once she met the guy in actuality, there wasn’t any chemistry there. So she told him she was moving out, stayed in a hotel for a few days, then flew back home.
Great story right before Valentine’s Day, huh!!
There’s a purpose to me telling you this, I promise. I’ll explain what that is in a minute.
As I continue to read screenplays, read pilots, watch movies, and watch TV shows, there’s an issue with the large majority of these stories in these different mediums that is causing people to tune out. Or at least be less excited about what’s out there.
And that is: the lack of uncertainty in today’s stories.
I’m not going to pretend like the structure of storytelling isn’t antithetical to creating doubt. When we watch Die Hard, we know that there’s going to be a confrontation between John and Hans at the end. We know he’s going to save his wife. We know he’s going to save everybody. All of that is working against the creation of doubt within the story.
But that’s where the real screenwriters step up. They know that you know what’s coming. And yet they still create scenarios that instill doubt in you. It’s magical stuff when you think about it. You know how this will end yet you’re still unsure the hero can pull it off. That’s because writers, back in the day, worked their asses off at constructing scenarios in a fashion where you were always unsure if or how the hero was going to overcome them.
These days, it doesn’t even feel like writers are pretending anymore. It’s as if they’re saying, “We know that you know what’s coming next. So why do this song and dance where I try and deny it? Let’s give you exactly what you think is going to happen.”
The problem is, that’s exactly what’s made so many shows and movies so boring. Is that writers aren’t trying to create doubt about what’s going to happen next. In their scripts, in their acts, in their scenes, in the very next moment.
Without doubt, there is no anxiety in the audience’s brain. There is no worry. There is only a calm assured demeanor. And if the audience is calm and assured for any length of time, they grow bored and give up on the story.
The reason I brought up a reality show on a screenwriting website was not to troll you. It was to point out that an episode of 90 Fcuking Day Fiance is able to create more doubt in its narrative than the last 10 things out of Hollywood I watched combined.
Believe me, it was not in the producers’ plans for that woman to get to England and immediately decide she was leaving. They put a ton of money into a months’ long production schedule that was there to follow that relationship. And then it’s just… over. The production didn’t expect it. The boyfriend didn’t expect it. We didn’t expect it.
And once that happens in a story, even on reality TV, we’re suddenly awake. Because now anything can happen. That’s the whole engine of storytelling. The unknown. The instability. The risk. We keep watching to find out what happens next. If we already know, there’s no tension. No anxiety. No urgency. Just inevitability. And inevitability is death on screen.
But there’s a more sinister component to all this. A lot of writers are manufacturing doubt. But it’s Milli Vanilli doubt. It’s lip syncing. The hero “might” fail, except we know they won’t. The relationship “might” fall apart, except we know it won’t. It’s the appearance of instability without the conviction that it’s really going to happen. And audiences can smell that.
Let’s stop speaking theoretically and give you the best recent example of doubt I’ve seen. Granted, this isn’t a 10 out of 10 execution of doubt. But it’s stronger than what most shows are giving us, that’s for sure.
In the latest Game of Thrones show, Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, the main character, Dunk, a large oaf of a young man, is headed to Ashford Meadow to compete in a knights skills competition in hopes of winning and becoming an official knight of the kingdom.
Note what the goal is here: Win the tournament.
The character goal is the beginning of the process by which the writer either creates certainty or uncertainty. I was fully expecting certainty – the opposite of doubt. In which case, I would’ve probably turned the series off.
But instead, the writers do something interesting. Dunk goes to the tournament head and asks for instatement into the tournament. And the head says no. You can’t prove you’re a real knight so I can’t let you into the competition. This is the first step towards creating doubt. Cause now we’re thinking, “Okay, well, how is he going to get in the tournament then?”
Dunk then goes to one of the wily but powerful people in town to try and get into the tournament through the back door. He parties all night with the guy. But the guy tells him, “No, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Now my doubt is fully activated. We’re already into episode 2. Forget about winning the tournament. We can’t even get into the tournament! Those are the seeds that create doubt within the reader. And now we’re genuinely wondering how the character is going to achieve their goal.
But that’s not even the best thing about creating doubt. When you create doubt, you make your hero have to work harder. You make them have to be more clever. You make them have to outthink everybody else. And it’s when your character does this that we truly start to like them.
Think about it. Why would we like somebody who has everything handed to them? We like characters who must overcome obstacle after obstacle – GENUINE OBSTACLES, NOT LIP-SYCHED ONES – because that means they’ve EARNED our admiration.
And I just gave you the secret sauce to creating doubt : OBSTACLES. You want to put obstacles in front of your hero. The bigger those obstacles are, the better. The more formidable those obstacles are, the better. The more GENUINE those obstacles are, the better.
So why is this so prevalent? How has doubt been quietly erased from dramatic writing?
Because it’s easier.
The harder you make things for your hero, the harder you make things for yourself, the writer. If you send a crew into a bank robbery, it’s much easier to post one sleepy security guard at the door than five former black ops soldiers guarding the vault. So you go with the crappy guard. The scene writes itself. You might even finish it in an hour.
But figuring out how your team outsmarts trained killers? That’s going to cost you days. You’ll hit walls. You’ll have to rethink the plan. You’ll have to earn the outcome. And that’s exactly why it works. The struggle on your end translates into struggle on the page.
So moving forward, hunt for doubt in your screenplays. Make the goal feel impossible. Then make it worse. And worse again. Not cosmetic obstacles. Not limp setbacks. Real ones. The kind that, if you were in that position, you genuinely wouldn’t know what to do.
Because if you don’t know what happens next, the reader definitely won’t.
That’s doubt.
