As you guys know since I constantly talk about it on the site, one of my screenwriting obsessions is scene-writing.
The reason for that is, I have a theory that everything in screenwriting comes down to writing good scenes. If a scene is entertaining, we’re going to want to read til the end of it. And if the next scene is entertaining, we’re going to want to read til the end of that. And so on and so forth.
The fastest way to me bailing on a script is three boring scenes in a row. If I read three boring scenes in a row, there’s a 99% chance that I’ll dislike the script. I know that from experience. And, again, that’s because good writers know how to write good scenes. Bad or new writers don’t.
That’s why I always talk about making every scene as entertaining as you can make it.
More recently, I was working on a theory that there are roughly two dozen types of scenes that work. And I wanted to give a name to all of them. The idea would be that when you were about to write a scene, you could cross-check it against this list of 24 Scene Types and make sure you were using one of them. If you weren’t, there’s a good chance the scene would be boring.
Some examples…
Dramatic Irony Scene – A girl walks into a room with a killer hiding in a closet. The audience knows the killer is there. The girl does not.
Straight Conflict Scene – Two characters don’t see eye to eye about something and hash it out until a resolution is found (or not).
Subtext Conflict Scene – A married couple is having dinner, talking about normal things, when, in actuality, one or both of them is frustrated with the other, creating an underlying current of subtext in the conversation.
Sexual Tension Scene – Two characters who clearly like each other but who haven’t yet been together stuck in a situation with one another. The sexual tension tends to give the dialogue in these scenes a spark (assuming we actually like the two characters and want them to be together, of course).
Straight Suspense Scene – Two detectives arrive at a murder scene and a cop comes out of the house looking like they’ve seen a ghost. “That’s the most horrifying murder scene I’ve ever encountered,” he says, stumbling away. For the next however many minutes our detectives talk before seeing the death scene, the reader is under the spell of suspense. They must find out what that horrifying murder looks like.
Problem Needs To Be Resolved Scene – Rocky shows up at his gym only to find out his locker has been cleaned out. Furious, he darts out to confront the gym manager, determined to get his locker back.
Straight Mystery Scene – Why is this man running like a crazed psycho in the back yard in the middle of the night (Get Out)?
While I do believe that knowing these scene types will make you a better writer, I stumbled upon the Safdie Brothers, “Good Time” again recently, and I noticed that while the scene-writing didn’t always utilize one of my “Scene Types,” they were always good. In fact, if you’re struggling with writing entertaining scenes, The Safdie Brothers “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems” are great movies to watch and learn from. Virtually every scene in those movies is entertaining.
But it became clear to me that something else was going on in this movie and it didn’t take me long to figure out what it was.
PURPOSE
At least one character in every scene of Good Time had a strong purpose in the scene. But it went beyond even that. It wasn’t like the Safdie Brothers sat there desperately looking for ways to make all 40 scenes in their movie amazing and therefore found 40 different ways to create purpose in each of those scenes. It turns out they didn’t have to. And this, I believe, is the secret sauce for writing good scenes and a good script. Are you ready for it?
PURPOSE IS BAKED INTO THE CONCEPT
Good Time is built around Connie, the main character, needing to do very important things right now. Mostly, rescue his brother or protect his brother from being taken. Because Connie’s purpose is baked into the concept, it means every scene will automatically have purpose.
Connie needs to get his brother out of the mental institution.
Connie needs to convince his ex-girlfriend to give him money to bail his brother out of jail.
Connie and his brother need to rob a bank to pay off a debt.
Connie needs to convince a girl to let him stay at her place until the cops leave the area.
Connie needs to bust his brother out of the hospital.
If your concept organically creates purpose for your character throughout the story, like Good Time, scene-writing is easy. Where scene-writing gets hard is when you have more passive concepts. Or inert concepts. Concepts where characters don’t need things as much or don’t need them right away.
Look at Juno for example.
Juno is about a girl who gets pregnant and has to make a decision of what she’s going to do with the baby. Pregnancy is a 9 month process. So, already, we know she doesn’t need to make a decision RIGHT AWAY. And just the nature of a nine month timeline allows for purpose to dissolve away.
However, Juno is still a good movie. Why?
Well, I didn’t say it was impossible to write a movie without purpose baked into the concept. Just that it’s more challenging. The reason for that is you now have to find individual purpose for each individual scene. Whereas Good Time has purpose already set up for every scene before you write it, Juno does not. So you have to figure all those purposes out.
One strong scene that comes to mind is when Juno first meets the Jennifer Garner Jason Bateman family to decide if she wants to give her baby to them. There’s a lot of purpose in that scene. There’s purpose from Juno who must decide if this is a good couple for her child and from Jennifer Garner, who desperately wants a child. Which is why it’s one of the better scenes in the movie.
A couple of other strong purpose scenes from that movie are Juno has to go to the convenience store to take a pregnancy test to see if she’s pregnant. And Juno has to tell her parents that she’s pregnant.
Almost always, when a character has strong purpose in a scene, the scene will work. If they don’t, that doesn’t mean the scene *can’t* work. It just means you need to recognize the lack of purpose and understand that you need to bring something else to the table to make the scene entertaining.
And look, I understand that there is no perfect formula. Not every good idea takes care of purpose all the time. So there are going to be scenes that lack purpose in them. I was just rewatching Groundhog Day and there’s a scene where Phil is with his producing team driving to Puxatawny and there isn’t a lot of purpose in the scene. They’re just chatting. But the sexual tension with Rita and Phil’s dislike of cameraman Larry allow for just enough conflict to make the dialogue fun.
The purpose (pun intended) for this article is two-fold. One, it’s to encourage you to choose concepts that have purpose built into them. By doing so, you’re making your scene-writing a million times easier. And two, if you don’t choose a purpose-driven concept, understand the challenge that’s ahead of you and have a plan for it. Know that the scenes will be harder to write and that you’ll have to keep coming up with new ways to inject purpose. As long as you know that, you’ll be good.
Tomorrow is Amateur Showdown Review Day. Hopefully, we’ve found another great script. Seeya then!
