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AI be coming for our jobs.
Will it succeed?
I don’t know. I still don’t think it will ever grasp the kind of honest authentic character development that good scripts have. Then again, a lot of regular writers struggle with creating honest authentic characters as well.
Either way, it got me thinking, how do we defeat AI as screenwriters?
I think I know the answer.
You see, the reason AI is good at mimicking most of screenwriting is because a screenplay is the second most mathematical of the writing mediums (the first being poetry). And that’s what AI is good at. It’s good at recognizing patterns and structure and mimicking them.
However, what I’ve learned over time is that the scripts that stand out the most are the ones that have an X-FACTOR. They have some invisible secret sauce that CAN’T BE MEASURED, which makes them stand out in some way.
When a writer taps into an x-factor, the read stops feeling like a script and starts feeling like an experience. It’s like you’re really there, that you’re being taken on a journey that’s so unique, you know you’ll never be taken on that same journey again for as long as you live.
And if you want to take it to its logical conclusion, you can say that the x-factor is what gives your script a SOUL. Guess what? No matter how hard AI tries, it will never be able to inject a screenplay with a soul.
So, the trick, then, is to simply LEARN ALL OF THE X-FACTORS available to you and make sure you’re applying one of them to whatever script you’re currently working on. You can then sleep peacefully knowing that AI will never be able to replicate what you do.
Now, before I get into what those x-factors are, I want to highlight a recent example of an x-factor script. And by “x-factor script” I mean a script that cannot be replicated by AI. That script is “Goblin.” Goblin is a recent spec script sale that I reviewed in my newsletter about a young man who learns that his father has a goblin chained up in their basement.
Whether you liked this script or not, YOU WILL REMEMBER IT. You will remember it far more vividly than you’ll remember Monday’s script, Road Test. When you’re trying to quantify what an x-factor is, the differences between these two scripts – Goblin and Road Test – are the perfect example of the difference between what AI can replicate and what it can’t
With that in mind, let’s identify what all of the known x-factors are.
X-FACTOR #1 – IGNORANCE
Ever wonder why a lot of a screenwriter’s best work occurs early on in their career? A solid chunk of the reason is that they didn’t know what they were doing. And when you don’t know what you’re doing, you do things “the wrong way.” Ironically, when you do something the wrong way, it’s more original than doing it “the right way.”
Christopher McQuarrie famously said that he couldn’t write The Usual Suspects today because he was so new to screenwriting when he wrote it that he didn’t know the rules you were supposed to abide by. So he made “mistakes,” and some of those mistakes were heralded as what made the script so good. These days, he would follow the “proper” formula, and his screenplays are lesser for it.
Let’s not pretend that ignorance is the be-all end-all advantage, though. It mostly results in making your script worse. But it does occasionally send you down an “incorrect” path that leads to gold. Or, at the very least, originality.
There’s this old 90s romantic comedy called Say Anything (it’s the one where John Cusack holds the boom box over his head playing Peter Gabriel’s “Your Eyes”) and in that movie is this really weird subplot about the girl’s father stealing money from the old people’s home he runs. It’s odd. It’s miscalculated. Cameron Crowe never would’ve written it ten years later. But it’s also what helps make that movie unique and stand out.
Now, we cannot go back in time and become ignorant about screenwriting again. But we can retain the spirit of that approach and mimic ignorance in places. Stop holding your screenwriting “musts” so tightly. You don’t have to hit every single Blake Snyder beat at the pre-established page number. If you have an idea you want to explore in your story, but know that, in the past, it hasn’t worked, well, that may not be true for this script. You won’t know until you try. So don’t be such a stickler. You have to take risks somewhere in your scripts or else, I promise, your script will never be very good.
X-FACTOR #2 – VOICE
If you have an original voice, that is the most common x-factor that elevates your script above the competition. “Voice” is basically the unique way in which you see the world and your ability to capture that when you write.
The Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once), for example, run towards chaos when they write. They embrace absurdity and their scripts are often about the attempts to bring balance to that absurdity. It stands out because nobody else writes in that specific lane in that specific way.
But voice can be hard to manufacture if it doesn’t come naturally. I remember interviewing a writer once and I asked him how he came up with his writing voice. He said he didn’t know he had a voice until people told him he did. That’s voice. It’s so wrapped up in who you are that you’re not aware you sound different from others.
Voice can be found in THE WAY YOU WRITE as well as WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE ABOUT. If you write animated, conversational, rapid fire conversations, like Quentin Tarantino, that’s how you stand out through the written word. But you can also choose to write about something very specific, like having sex after car crashes, as David Cronenberg did in his 1996 film, Crash. Even if you didn’t infuse voice into the written word, that script will still have voice due to the fact that the subject matter the writer is writing about is so unique.
And to prove to you just how valuable voice is in its battle against AI, can you imagine any AI coming up with Pulp Fiction or Crash? You can’t. AI would never touch either of those stories nor would it know what to do if it were forced to write them.
X-FACTOR #3 – MESSINESS
Another part of this x-factor journey, I’m realizing, is messiness. Usually, the scripts that I celebrate the most are messy in places. As much as I love a strong structure, if you wring that structure too tightly around your story, it becomes a noose. It becomes this predictable formulaic drag that we feel like we’ve seen hundreds of times already.
It’s a slippery slope, I know. Cause I read plenty of scripts where the writers are too loose with their structure, and those scripts are terrible in their own way. But, usually, that’s because the writer did it by accident. They didn’t know what they were doing. If you’re a seasoned writer and understand the value of structure, I believe you can figure out just how loose you can make some of the sections so that the script breathes like a living beautiful thing.
X-FACTOR #4 – POINT-OF-VIEW
If you present a story idea to AI—let’s say it’s a procedural setup where someone has been murdered and a detective starts looking into it, AI is going to explore that setup through the most obvious point-of-view. It’s going to tell the story from the point of view of the cop, of the killer, or both. What AI is not going to do is tell the story from the point-of-view of the killer’s dog, which is the setup for the script at the top of the 2023 Black List, “Bad Boy.”
But point-of-view isn’t just about concept. It’s everything and everywhere. When you write a scene, you have the choice to write it from any point-of-view you want. When the Justice Gang takes on a giant monster in the middle of the city in “Superman,” 9 out of 10 writers are going to tell that scene through the point-of-view of the Justice Gang. But what does James Gunn do? He shows that fight through the point-of-view of Clark and Lois, who are in her apartment high-rise, casually chatting while the fight takes place in the window behind them.
Not enough writers utilize point-of-view in interesting ways. Yet it’s sitting there for each and every one of you to take advantage of.
X-FACTOR #5 – PASSION
Scott convinced me of this one in the comments yesterday. This specific line he wrote caught my attention: “Cause you can always tell when someone is not passionate about something. The utilitarian workmanship vibe is evident.” Nothing could be truer. When you’re not passionate about the script you’re writing, you are as close to mimicking AI as a human gets. All you care about is hitting the beats. Is putting the puzzle together so you can move on.
Meanwhile, if you’re extremely passionate about something, you will explore every little crevice of it and you will include every gold nugget you find during those explorations. Your script will sing in a different key than a script without passion. This is the best area to focus on if all of these other X-factors are beyond you. By simply loving your story, you will write something that’s more powerful than anything AI could. Even when I don’t like a passionate script, I’ve never not been able to feel the passion on the page. And, at the very least, the script resonates.
X-FACTOR #6 – A STRANGE HOOK
What you’re looking for here is a strange or offbeat idea that’s still accessible. The best example ever of this is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The idea is offbeat for sure – People get portions of their minds erased so they don’t have to remember the pain of having their hearts broken. And it’s accessible. I mean, who hasn’t had their heart broken?
A lesser known example would be Colossal, about a woman who discovers that, when she gets blackout drunk, she’s mysteriously controlling a giant monster wreaking havoc in Korea. It’s obviously an offbeat idea. But, at its core, it’s a movie about alcoholism and learning to control addiction. Trust me – AI will never be able to write either of these movies. Which is why you want to learn how to excavate those strange hooks from your subconscious. Just the other day I saw a trailer for a movie about a guy who lives next to this intersection that has an unusually high number of car crashes. That’s another strange hook there is no risk of AI stealing from you.
X-FACTOR #7 – GOING OFF THE RESERVATION
Finally, the last way to tap into your inner x-factor is to go completely off the reservation with your story. Whatever the setup is, take it as far as you can take it. Then, take it further. And when you get to the end of wherever that is, keep going. We just had one of these movies hit the theater – The Substance. Look at where that script began and where it ended. Coraline wrung every ounce of story out of that setup.
Another example would be the Black List script, Roses, about a guy who takes his girlfriend to a remote house with a swimming pool. He then learns that whenever you swim in the pool, you replicate, and what comes out is a copy of you, that’s a little messier than the original. Once the copies start playing in the pool, creating copies of copies, this script goes so far off the reservation, it’s no longer on the same continent.
These probably aren’t the only x-factors available to you. In fact, if you can think of any other x-factors, include them in the comments. The more of these we know, the more we’ll be able to combat the evil that is AI Screenwriter. :)
