And a deeper dive into how a script sold for 2 million dollars
Note: If you want to read the script I refer to today (Love of Your Life) for more context, ask for it in the comments section. Someone will send it to you. Otherwise, you can check out my review of it (which has a plot synopsis) here.
I was thinking about yesterday’s big script sale and trying to derive meaning from it. It may be a fruitless venture since it’s difficult to deduce anything from a single data point. But 2 million dollars for a script in a landscape that barely likes to write six-figure checks is worth looking into.
The first thing I noticed is that this script was not a previously set up deal. Sometimes what happens is a studio will have a meeting with a writer and/or a producer they’re working with and say, “We want this kind of movie. We can’t put the money up front. But we basically promise that if you deliver what we want, we’ll buy it on the back end.”
These types of script sales are deceiving because they don’t reflect what the industry is looking for. They reflect what one specific person at a studio is looking for. Love of Your Life was more of a traditional spec sale in that it was sent out on the town and everybody liked it so they started bidding on it.
The reason that matters is that it means the script sold on merit alone. Which means we know the writing is good. Back in the old days, a script went out on the town and, because lines of communication were still in the stone ages, studios would read the first act and, if they liked it, start bidding in order to beat out the other studios, who they assumed were bidding as well. Hence, a lot of scripts that became garbage in act 2 and 3 were purchased. And I mean A LOT.
These days, studios don’t make that mistake. They will read the entire script. They will pass the script on to other people in the studio and have them read it. They will get their opinions. They will ask for honesty. If they’re going to pay for anything, they want to make sure it’s a quality screenplay. That was the case with Love of Your Life. It won over everyone who read it.
That’s the first big lesson to come out of this sale and it’s a lesson I’ve been preaching since I started this website: If you write something good, good things will happen.
But, of course, that advice reads hollow since every screenwriter who finishes a screenplay believes they’ve written something good. But how do we know if something we’ve written is actually good? The only true way to know is if you get at least ten people to read it and give you their opinion. One person’s opinion can be a fluke. So can two, three, even four people, if they’re not the right audience for your script. Case in point, a few of you have read this script and thought it was weak. Had you been the primary studio reader in charge of evaluating scripts, the studio would’ve passed.
But once you get up to 10 people, it’s hard not to see a trend in the responses. You’ll know if you’ve written something bad, good, or something that’s not quite there yet but has the potential to be good with more rewrites.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t help you when you BEGIN writing your screenplay. So, what are some specific ways in which we can write something good? Funny enough, after this script sold, my answer to that question changed. Well, maybe not changed. But it reminded me that the bells and whistles of a spec script (sexy concept, GSU, bankable genre) aren’t as important as what’s underneath the hood.
Which leads me to the premise of today’s article.
Every genre is a drama in disguise.
Therefore, if you want to write a good script in any genre, you must first understand the basic tenets of dramatic writing. Dare I say, you should even write a drama. Just so you understand how to entertain people without any tricks. With the drama genre, you entertain readers through the simple act of character exploration.
With that in mind, the number one thing you want to do is anchor your screenplay with someone we want to root for. I would even say, 90% of the time, you want to anchor it with someone we like. Because the second we like someone, we’re willing to go with that person wherever they take us.
And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to achieve this. The main character in Love of Your Life, Maya, is just a nice person. Not to mention, she’s an ER doctor. So her job is to literally save people. It’s hard not to like someone like that.
Imagine if screenwriter Julia Cox, instead of going the ER nurse route, made her main character a selfish drug addict. I want you to sit in that for a moment. Consider how differently you would feel about this character (a character built around negativity). It would be much harder for you to instantly start rooting for her.
Now, ironically, Maya becomes more prickly as the story goes on. But it works because it’s a result of progressive character development. She was a happy in-love person. Something terrible happened to her. So we understand why she’s shifted from the positive end of the spectrum to the negative.
This leads to the next dramatic lesson of this article, which is that you can always do things to STRENGTHEN THE BOND between the reader and the main character. The stronger you make that bond, the more connected we are to that character. Seeing a character lose the love of their life takes a character we already like and makes us care for them EVEN MORE. That’s because we sympathize with them. And for anybody who’s lost a loved one, we empathize with them. These are two incredibly strong tools that, along with likability, make the bond between us and the hero elevate to nuclear levels.
But Cox takes that development to an even HIGHER level. Let me explain. Normally, you don’t have time to show the bond between two characters in a screenplay where one is going to die. Scripts move too fast. This forces the writer to kill off someone we barely know 10-15 pages into the script. In some cases, the script will even start right after a death.
Note how different the effect of death is on the reader if it’s done before the screenplay starts versus watching two people fall in love for 20 pages. That’s what Cox opted to do. So this wasn’t some random person our protagonist loved. This was a character WE OURSELVES GREW TO KNOW AND LIKE. To see Maya lose him hurt us almost as much as it hurt her. Which means that now we are connected to Maya EVEN MORE. We already like her. We sympathize and empathize with her. But by allowing us to get to know the character before they die, we have so much more attachment to Maya and what she’s going through.
Moving on, any good dramatic script takes their protagonist through a range of experiences. This makes the character stereo as opposed to mono. We like contrast in characters. We like depth. But there’s a way to do it and a way not to do it. Cox shows you the right way. First establish who Maya is (good, positive, happy) and then throw something devastating at her. This takes her to a dark place where she lives in the opposite of the above emotions.
The way NOT to do this, which I see all the time, is to smash all these conflicting emotions into the protagonist right away. They’re happy one second. They’re angry for no reason a second later. They’re cool as a cucumber. Then they’re a bull in a china shop. This may create contrast within your character, which technically makes them “complex,” but the chaotic nature of it leaves readers confused rather than intrigued.
From that point on, Love of Your Life is driven by two dramatic factors. And these are the factors that will power any dramatic screenplay. One: resolution from within – Your hero must resolve that which is broken inside of them. Two: relationship resolution – Your hero must resolve all unresolved relationships in the story.
Note how I’m not saying anything about plot. That’s because plotting is not as important in a dramatic screenplay. The “plot” is essentially the main character’s arc. We’re there to see them resolve their brokenness. This is why it’s so important to establish the likability and sympathy early on. Because the less we like the hero and the less with sympathize with the hero, the less we’ll care about them resolving their internal issue. On the flip side, if you create amazing likability and sympathy (and, in this case, empathy), then we’re with you hook, line, and sinker. We’ll be dying to see your hero resolve their issue (in Maya’s case, to get past her grief and move on from the death of her husband).
However, when it comes to the drama genre, a single internal arc for your protagonist isn’t enough to power the entire screenplay. Remember, you often don’t have a strong plot in these dramas. So, you need more.
You get that from UNRESOLVED RELATIONSHIPS between your hero and other characters. The cool thing about this aspect of drama is that you can add as many of these unresolved relationships as you want. For Love of Your Life, the two main unresolved relationships are her best friend, Jason, who she ran away from the second her husband died. And Ruth, the mother of her dead husband, who she also abandoned.
There is also another man Maya falls in love with that acts as a bridge between her husband’s death and those later character resolutions. Any interaction with another character that contains an unresolved element counts. So, in this case, the unresolved element is whether the two will remain casual lovers or become official.
The point is, we will keep turning the pages to see how those relationships get resolved.
It’s important to note that relationship exploration is not just about checking boxes. You still have to be creative in the way you explore these resolutions. For example, the conclusion of the Jason relationship could’ve gone in a much more conservative direction. It could’ve just been the two reestablishing their friendship.
But, instead, it veers into the potentially dangerous territory of a romantic relationship. There’s so much baggage here and these two both loved her husband so much, that getting together probably isn’t the best idea. But it’s that creativity in the exploration of the storyline that makes this relationship exciting to read. If it was a nuts and bolts resolution, it wouldn’t have been as compelling.
It’s a funny thing, screenwriting. Cause when you break it down – when you look at all of the individual components that make a script work – it seems obvious. But, of course, it never is. Coming up with this stuff requires taking a lot of risks, getting a lot of feedback, and receiving a lot of rewriting based on that feedback.
But I stand by what I said. If you can make a script work just on drama and character, you are so much better equipped to go into the sexier genres of action, horror, thriller, and sci-fi because those scripts will always take you to moments where you don’t have any fireworks to light to keep the reader invested. In those quieter moments, it is your dramatic writing skills that will get you through. So, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to write your own “Love of Your Life.” If only to sharpen your dramatic writing skills. :)
