Last week we talked about establishing conflict through characters, relationships, and external forces. During the article, I casually mentioned the importance of conflict within scenes as well. Many of you expressed interest in hearing more about that, so I decided to expand my conflict ramblings to a second week.

Indeed, virtually every scene in your screenplay should have some element of conflict if it’s going to entertain an audience. I cannot stress this enough. One of the biggest mistakes I see in screenplays is boring scenes. Scenes that only exist for characters to spout exposition, to reveal backstory, or to wax philosophic. I’ve referred to these scenes before as “scenes of death.” The quickest way to make these scenes interesting is to add conflict.

The basis for all conflict comes from an imbalance – two forces opposed to one another (wanting different things), or even one force wanting something it can’t have. Usually these forces are represented by your characters. But they can be external as well (if our character is racing towards the airport to tell his girlfriend he loves her, the opposing force might be a traffic jam). So when you sit down to write a scene, you’re always looking to create that imbalance, that unresolved issue, to add an entertainment factor to the sequence.

Having said that, it should be noted that in rare circumstances, you can get away with no conflict. For example, in order for the scene in Notting Hill to work where Anna invites William up to her hotel only to find her boyfriend there (a scene heavy with conflict), we needed a few scenes with the two having a great time together. So eliminating the conflict in those previous scenes actually made the conflict stronger in this one. So as long as you have a purpose for not using conflict, it’s okay (however I would always err on the side of adding conflict).

In true Scriptshadow form, I’ve decided to highlight 10 movies and look at how they create conflict within their scenes. This should give you a clearer picture on how to apply conflict to scenes in your own screenplays.

Meet The Parents
Scene: The Dinner Scene
Conflict: The conflict here is simple. Greg wants to impress Jack so he’ll approve of him marrying his daughter. Jack wants to expose Greg as the inadequate choice for his daughter that he is (two opposing forces – a clear imbalance). This is a great reminder that the best conflict has usually been set up beforehand. So we’ve already established in Greg’s earlier scenes how important getting married to Jack’s daughter is (testing his proposal on one of his patients, organizing her preschool class to help him propose). We’ve also established how reluctant Jack is to accept Greg (when he first shows up, Jack disagrees with him on almost everything). This is the most basic application of conflict in a scene, but as you can see, even the most basic conflict can make a scene highly entertaining.

The Sixth Sense
Scene: Malcolm tries to get Cole to talk to him.
Conflict: This is a very understated scene, but the conflict is well-crafted. Malcolm wants Cole to trust him. Cole is resistant to trusting Malcolm. Again, a simple imbalance. One person wants one thing. Another person wants the opposite. Night cleverly draws the scene out by building a game around it – if Malcolm guesses something right about Cole, he has to take a step forward. If he guesses wrong, Cole gets to take a step back. So you actually feel the conflict with every question.

Back To The Future
Scene: Marty asks Doc to get him back to the future.
Conflict: Once Marty convinces 1950s Doc that he’s from the future, Doc lets him inside. Now at this point, the two are on the same page. They both want to get Marty back to the future. So there’s no conflict between the characters. Instead, the conflict comes from the fact that Doc doesn’t believe it’s possible. So again, two forces are colliding with one another and need to be resolved. At the end of the scene, they realize that the lightning can send him back to the future, and the conflict is resolved (sometimes conflict will be resolved by the end of a scene and sometimes not – it depends on the story and what you’re trying to do).

Rocky
Scene: Multiple scenes.
Conflict: One of the reasons Rocky is so great is because almost every single scene is packed with conflict. Whether it’s Rocky trying to get a resistant Adrian to go out with him. Whether it’s Rocky getting kicked out of his gym. Whether it’s Mick begging Rocky to let him coach him. Whether it’s his constant clashes with Paulie (and his destructive behavior). Whether it’s him telling a resistant girl to stop hanging around thugs and do something with her life. If you want to know how to create conflict within scenes, pop this movie in your DVD player right now.

Toy Story
Scene: Birthday scene.
Conflict: In this scene, the army men sneak down to Andy’s birthday to report what the new presents are. The conflict stems from trying to report the presents without getting caught. Remember, if it didn’t matter whether the army men were discovered or not, there would be no conflict (and therefore no drama) in this scene. The conflict comes from the fact that if they’re seen, they’re screwed. This is actually one of the reasons the Toy Story franchise is so successful. Because nearly every scene is built around this imbalance. The toys have to pretend to be inanimate whenever humans are around. That means every scene is packed with conflict.

The Wrestler
Scene: Deli scene
Conflict: In this famous scene, the conflict comes from the fact that everything in The Ram’s life is falling apart – his health, his family, his profession – and the last place he wants to be is at his $10 an hour deli job. So there’s conflict within the character before the scene even begins. But when his boss starts getting on his nerves, when customers start pushing him, when someone recognizes him, he starts losing it. Those multiple forces pushing up against him are the conflict that makes this scene so great. It’s also another reminder that the best conflict is usually set up ahead of time. This scene doesn’t work if it’s the first scene in the movie. It works because we’ve experienced the downfall of this character. We know what he’s been through. Therefore we understand why he doesn’t want to be here.

Pretty Woman
Scene: Vivian comes back to his hotel.
Conflict: In this scene, Edward picks up Vivian on the streets and brings her back to his hotel. I specifically picked this scene because it’s a scene that amateur writers always screw up. What’s the purpose of this scene? The purpose is for these two characters to get to know each other. A very common scene in a romantic comedy or any “guy meets girl” movie. However, bad writers will take this scene and try to fill it with a bunch of clever dialogue, exposition, and backstory. If you go that route, at best you’ll have an average scene, and more likely a terrible one. Here’s the thing. This scene *does* have clever dialogue, exposition, and back story. So then why does it work? Because the writer added an element of conflict. Edward wants to talk whereas Vivian wants to get down to business. He wants to get to know her. She wants to collect her money and run. So there’s this little dance going on during the scene – the two characters wanting different things – that allows the writer to slip in clever dialogue, exposition, and backstory, without us realizing it. We’re so entertained/distracted by that dance, that all the story machinations slip under the radar. This is why conflict is so powerful. The right dose can turn an otherwise boring scene into an entertaining one.

The Other Guys
Scenes: All of them.
Conflict: One of the easiest genres to write conflict in is the buddy comedy. That’s because every single scene will have your characters clashing with each other. This is why The Hangover was so popular. This is why Rush Hour was so big. The conflict is definitely artificial, however because it’s a comedy, it works. The trick with these films is to vary the conflict from scene to scene so we don’t tire of it. For example, in an early scene at the office, Mark Wahlberg yells at Will Ferrell for being a pussy. It’s an intense scene with a lot of conflict. However later on, when Mark has dinner with Will’s wife, the conflict is more subtle. Mark keeps bothering him about the fact that there’s no way this could really be his wife. Not every scene needs to be nuclear charged with conflict. You need to mix it up just like you need to mix up any aspect of your screenplay.

Pulp Fiction
Scene: Jack Rabbit Slims
Conflict: The uninitiated screenwriter will look at this scene between Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace and think it’s just a bunch of cool dialogue. Don’t be fooled. This scene’s awesomeness is based entirely on its conflict. Vincent Vega wants something he can’t have – Mia Wallace. Why? Because Mia Wallace is the wife of his boss. What’s so great about this scene though is how hard Tarantino pushes the conflict. If all that was going on here was Vincent wanting Mia, there would be conflict, but not that much. It’s the fact that Mia is throwing herself at him that’s making this so difficult. The more tempted Vincent is, the more difficult his choice becomes. Another lesson here is that the conflict doesn’t only have to come from the characters inside the scene. It’s not Mia who doesn’t want Vincent here. It’s her husband who’s preventing her from being with Vincent. So the conflict in this scene is a little trickier than normal, but it shows that if you think outside the box, you can find conflict through other avenues.

No Country For Old Men
Scene: Anton and the gas station attendant.
Conflict: In this scene, which is probably one of the best scenes of the last decade, Anton pays for gas but gets annoyed when the attendant makes an offhanded remark about where he’s from. The conflict here comes from two places. The first is through dramatic irony. We know how dangerous Anton is. We know what he’s capable of. So we fear what he’s going to do to this man. Dramatic irony is basically conflict between the character and the audience member. It’s usually us not wanting a character to do something. So the imbalance has actually broken the fourth wall. The other conflict here is basic. Anton refuses to let the attendant off for anything he says. Every sentence is shot back in his face. The longer the conversation goes, the more dangerous (and more conflict filled) the scene becomes.

The idea is you want to look at every scene and ask the question, “Where is the conflict here?” Where are the opposing forces? Where is the imbalance? If everything is too easy for the characters in your screenplay – if everybody agrees on everything or the characters don’t face any resistance – there’s a good chance your scene is boring. There are instances where it’s okay (such as the Notting Hill example) but for the most part, you want some conflict in your scene. So get back to that script you’re working on and start making all those scenes more interesting by adding conflict. Good luck! :-)

Before you start this review, I’m going to need you to do something. Go to your kitchen, grab yourself a large Tupperware container, and place it under your computer screen. You’re going to need that to collect all my drool, because even though we’re entering the best time of year for movies, I’m pretty positive I just found my number one, and it’s Drive baby. It’s all Drive.

Now this movie isn’t going to be for everyone. As someone noted in the comments section the other day, there’s an article out there about how disappointed audiences have been with this film. The reason for this seems to be the age-old marketing dilemma of trying to bring in the widest audience possible – even if it means misleading your customers. So they sell this as Fast Six, and you get Fast Six, but the way a 25-year-old Terrence Malick would direct Fast Six. The thing is, that’s why I loved it so much.

And this is coming from somebody who was expecting the worst. I finally saw Everything Must Go the other day, which you may remember was my favorite script at one point. Watching that movie was an exercise in futility. What seemed so alive on the page felt dead on the screen. And I’m not even sure why. My guess is the casting of Will Ferrell. I just kept waiting for the guy to say something funny and he never did. I’m not sure he’s interesting as an unfunny person. And since the whole movie was based around him, I guess that’s why I was so bored.

Drive was the opposite. As you know, I loved the script. I gave it an impressive and put it in my top 10. But after hearing such mixed reactions about the film, revolving around all the cutting and the minimalism, I was expecting some weird control freak European director who thought it was more important to impose his vision on a film than tell the great story he’d been given. Man was I wrong.

Somehow, Refn figured out a way to take a script that was already great, pare it down to its bare essence, and in the process make it better. This guy is just an amazingly talented director with such a unique voice. You can’t write the way it feels to watch Gosling drive through the neon lighted nighttime streets of LA with a soft focus lens and an errie techno pop song playing over the radio. It conveys the loneliness and isolation of this character within 5 seconds, something that might take three or four scenes in a screenplay. 

And Gosling – I’ve had my problems with this guy in the past. I mean, I wanted to slit my wrists during Lars And The Real Girl. And I’m not sure I like how seriously he takes himself. But man, did that come in handy here. This guy has moments where he conveys the same screen presence as a young DeNiro. When that guy approaches him in the bar and asks him about doing another job, and Ryan turns to him and says if he doesn’t walk away he’s going to kick his teeth in, I mean, I don’t think I’ve been more convinced by a performance this year. He just embodied that character- and that wasn’t easy to do since so much of his performance was internal and restrained. Brad Pitt is getting all this credit for his restrained performance in Moneyball. But Gosling’s performance puts him to shame.

Gosling’s character is not an easy character to get the audience to like either. He doesn’t say a whole lot. We don’t know much about his past. So the writer and director look for little moments here and there to build that trust between you and the character. We see the way he looks at Carey Mulligan’s son for example. We see him smile whenever she comes around. And of course, we see that he cares so much for this family, that he actually puts his own life in danger to help the husband pay back the money he owes, so the family will be safe. That’s another thing I loved about this script so much. There were so many layers going on. You’re saving the two people you love, but in the process you’re creating a scenario where those two people can never be yours.

It was interesting to see how much they carved out of the original screenplay (namely the dialogue), and how much it actually helped. Dialogue can become a writer’s own worst enemy. It’s so much easier to tell the audience something than it is to show it. It takes time to think of the “show.” And writers are lazy when it comes to that stuff. Why try to think of a clever way of one person showing another person how much they love them when they can just say “I love you?” Never forget that filmmaking is a visual medium. Try to tell your story as visually as possible. And if you have any questions on how to do that, watch this movie.

And the strange thing about the dialogue is if I showed it to you in a vacuum, you’d probably think it was pretty bad. Or at the very least, boring. For example, we get a scene where Ryan comes into Carey’s apartment for the first time, and the extent of the conversation is that she asks him if he wants some water. Not exactly Academy award-winning banter here. But you have to remember, it’s not the dialogue itself that matters, but everything surrounding it that adds context and subtext to it. So in this case, we feel Gosling’s restraint. He doesn’t usually get close to people. Being in this room, enjoying a moment with another human being, goes against everything he’s about. And yet there’s a part of him that’s attracted to this girl. So, “Do you want a glass of water?” takes on a whole other context. Because saying yes means he’s going to stay here a little longer, something he’d normally never do. This is screenplay 401 stuff here – the kind of things you should be ingesting into your very screenwriting soul. It’s just really good writing.

Probably the biggest shocker, and the biggest difference from the script, was the violence. I’m not sure how I would’ve felt if I hadn’t been prepped for it. But I thought it was great. I remember these same complaints were coming out of A History Of Violence – that we had these needless graphic violent moments that added nothing to the film. But with all that quiet in Drive, with Refn ’s minimalist approach, the violence jumped out at you in a way that it doesn’t jump out at you in other movies. These days, you see these movies with mindless violence from the first frame to the last. After a while, the violence doesn’t mean anything to you, because you get used to it. Here it’s the exact opposite. Refn sets you up with these long flowing sequences of restraint, and then the next thing you know Christina Hendricks’s brain is being splattered across the bathroom wall.

The other huge addition was the music. I’ve said this before, but it doesn’t matter how elegantly you convey music in your screenplay. If the reader isn’t listening to it, he’s not going to feel the same way he’s going to feel in the theater. This was a huge gamble by Refn . There was a lot more dialogue in the script – a lot of which was built around Ryan and Carey’s relationship. Here, it’s all looks against music. It’s a drive down the Los Angeles River against music. It’s him hanging out with the family against music. This is one of those areas where the director – as long as he knows what he’s doing – can change entire scenes because he knows he can convey the exact same emotion that the scene in the script conveyed, but through images and sound, as opposed to two people talking to each other.

Another smart move was keeping the film short. It’s under 100 minutes. Whenever you write a movie where there’s little dialogue, you have to keep it short. Audiences aren’t used to silence. They aren’t used to characters not talking. So you’re already making them uncomfortable. If you try to extend that out to two full hours, you’re going to have a lot of inpatient people on your hands. Just with the length of the movie now, you have people who feel that way. So when you take chances like this, it’s a really good idea to keep the story as clean and quick as possible.

Speaking of that, I’m shocked with just how much plot they were able to put into this movie with so little dialogue. Actually, maybe that’s the reason why they were able to get so much plot in. Because we didn’t have these three or four min. scenes with people talking, Refn was able to throw a lot more plot in. I remember reading the original script, which was over 120 pages, and I don’t think they lost a single plot point in this 97 page version. That’s really impressive, and proof that you don’t always need characters explaining things to get your plot across. Maybe I’m looking at this through rose colored glasses, but I can’t remember a single line of obvious exposition in the film. I mean you have to give it up to any writer and director who are able to pull that off.

I don’t really know what else to say about this movie. I just loved every single second of it. As a fan of movies, I loved how different it was, how much restraint was used, how the writer and the director were constantly looking for different ways to convey the story. I mean, tell me you weren’t affected by that elevator scene.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this film come Oscar time. Will it disappear? Will someone get behind it? It seems like the perfect kind of contender because people have such strong feelings about it one way or the other. But I’ll tell you what. I love this movie. I think right now it’s the best film of the year. As I look back on it, I can’t think of anything I would change. This is pure filmmaking and pure storytelling. It’s films like this that make me proud I’m a small part of this amazing medium.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[x] genius

What I learned: This reminded me to always look for a visual solution to a problem as opposed to a dialogue solution to a problem. One of my very first film school teachers made us write a scene where one person broke up with another, but we weren’t allowed to use dialogue. It’s a great way to look at your scene. Maybe dialogue is still the best way. But the right visual solution always makes the scene so much better.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young woman at a care facility for at-risk teenagers deals with an unexpected pregnancy.
About: One of the winners of the 2010 Nicholl Fellowship.
Writer: Destin Daniel Cretton
Details: 121 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Well, we have another Nicholl winner here, which means we’re probably jumping into a character development sandwich with a healthy dose of thematic honey mustard. Gone are plot mechanics and the kind of poster that will bring the teenagers in in droves. But in their place is hopefully something that hits a little deeper and stays with you a little longer. And hey, it’s about teenagers. So maybe those mini versions of ourselves will show up.

Short Term 12 is a short term foster care facility for at-risk teenagers. 20-something Grace, one of the head counselors at the facility, has just learned of some unfortunate news – she’s pregnant. Now Grace is in a happy loving relationship with fellow counselor Mason, so that’s not the problem. The problem is that, like a lot of these kids she takes care of, she had a horrible childhood, and isn’t keen on bringing another child into the world. So she doesn’t tell her boyfriend, and sets up plans for an abortion.

But in the meantime, she’s got a job to do. Over at Short Term 12 we meet the major players. There’s 14-year-old Sammy, small for his age and someone who loves to run around without any clothes on screaming at the top of his lungs (for a similar story, see Carson’s childhood). There’s 17-year-old Mark, a beast of a teenager who rarely talks to anyone. There’s 15-year-old sex-obsessed Kendra. And then there’s the new girl, Jayden, a small girl with a big chip on her shoulder who reminds Grace of herself when she was younger.

Short Term 12 doesn’t really have a plot. It’s more about the day-to-day happenings of this facility. And it’s quite a facility. All of these kids are here for a reason, that reason being that they don’t fit into the confines of “normal” society. They’ve been left here mainly because they’re considered rejects, and most of them are aware of this label and seem to live up to it if only because the world expects them to. A normal day might have one kid trying to escape, another kid trying to kill himself, and a third kid beating the hell out of his roommate. Being a counselor here and dealing with this stuff isn’t easy, but most of the people who work here work here because they were at-risk kids themselves, and feel it’s only appropriate that they give back.

The bulk of the story focuses on Grace and the new girl Jayden. We eventually learn that Grace was abused by her father when she was a kid and that Jayden is currently going through the same thing. The problem is that Jayden is afraid to admit it because she knows it means losing her father and being stuck in a place like this forever. So as Grace tries to save her, she’s constantly running up against a wall. And of course, there’s the reality that she’s approaching this from a slightly selfish perspective. She feels that if she can help this girl, she can find closure in her own relationship with her father.

And then of course there’s the whole pregnancy thing. She knows that if Mason were to find out, he would be thrilled, want to get married, and want to have the kid. But even though Grace knows she would never be the way her parent was with her, she’s terrified of just how cruel this world can be to children and she doesn’t want to put any human being through that, especially one she brings into the world herself. So the ultimate question, I suppose, is will Grace come around and want to have her child?

You know, this was a tough one to judge, especially after reading yesterday’s script. Because yesterday’s script was so full of fluff and so devoid of any real…well…anything, this script feels like reading American Beauty in comparison. It’s all character development all the time. But even though it was nice to just experience the inner battles people go through every day, especially people like this who are so damaged, I was still craving some sort of story, some sort of wrapper, to bring it all together. I’m a greedy reader. I don’t want all of one thing or all of another. I want everything. So even though this script had so much more depth and richness and passion than yesterday’s offering, I still found myself moving my hand in a circular motion and subconsciously saying, “Okay, but where’s the plot?”

But the script does teach some good lessons. I think the most obvious one is that you’re able to bring more to the table if you write what you know (I would be shocked if the writer, Destin, didn’t work at one of these facilities himself). What that affords you is specificity. Now it by no means guarantees a good story. Sometimes you can write what you know, yet only seem to find the most mundane boring parts of what you know. Believe me, I’ve read plenty of those scripts. But as long as you channel in on something that has dramatic potential, you can bring specific things in that nobody else who doesn’t know that subject matter can, and the reader feels that. For example, Sammy running around naked. That feels very much like something that happened in real life that only someone who worked at a place like Short Term 12 would experience.

I also think the character development here is pretty good, especially for the character of Grace. When you don’t have a plot driving your story, you need your characters to develop in an interesting way. You need interesting things about their backstory to come up (we find out some disturbing things about her father from early on in her life). You need interesting choices that cut to the core of the issues they’re having (she has to deal with whether or not to have her baby). You need to put them in positions that force them to think about their point of view (she meets someone who reminds her of herself when she was a kid). That’s how you develop an interesting character. I don’t think that this is ever going to be as compelling as if you have a story driving things forward, but if you don’t have that story, you better have an interesting character. And I think Short Term 12 does.

There were also a couple of signals that this writer had studied his craft. Destin knew he would be constantly explaining how the facility worked, so he brought in the “question character,” a new counselor who would constantly be asking questions so that the other characters could explain things to him (and by association, to us). This is a tool that every writer should have in their tool shed.

I also liked how Destin used the pregnancy as a soft ticking time bomb. Again, we have a story here without any real form so it’s important to frame it in any way possible so that the audience has some sense of when it’s going to end. The decision on whether or not to have the abortion was a great way to do that. Incidentally, I would’ve liked if it would’ve been highlighted more, such as a specific day that was coming up, or maybe just have the characters talk about it more (it seemed to be forgotten a tad in the second act), but I still thought it was well executed.

You know, I wish this script would’ve had more story, but when I’m taking everything into account, I would have to say that it does a lot more good than bad. Destin did a great job with character development here, much better than most scripts I read, and to that end this is deserving of a “worth the read.”

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Writing what you know does not guarantee a good script. What it does guarantee is knowledge. You know that subject matter better than 99% of the people out there and that’s what you want to take advantage of. The reason David Seidler was able to write that memorable scene in The King’s Speech where Birdy reads while listening to music was because Seidler himself was a stutterer and was taught the exact same thing. Those are the kinds of memorable moments that only come from experiencing that stuff yourself (or through heavy research). Still, no matter how well you know a particular subject matter, no matter how much you’ve lived it, it’s always best to wrap that subject matter in an entertaining concept/story. Don’t get me wrong, Short Term 12 was a solid script, but this is a script that never would have been heard of without the Nicholl Fellowship, as it’s the only place that really celebrates these kinds of screenplays.

And you thought yesterday was the apocalypse…

For those fans of Jersey Shore, you know the term “GTL” well. Of course, I don’t watch Jersey Shore so I had to get my “GTL” definition from someone else. But from what I understand, it means “Gym, tan, laundry.” These are the things your average Guido (their word, not mine) needs to survive on a day-to-day basis. Food? Not important. Tanning though? That’s a life or death situation. Now of course, not knowing anything about Jersey Shore, I haven’t heard that The Situation is claiming to have knocked boots with Snooki, who is steadfastly denying the claim, but if I did watch the show – and I don’t – I would probably side with Team Situation on this one. I don’t know why he put Snooki on blast, but everybody knows The Situation don’t lie.

Now, what the hell does this have to do with today’s article? Well, there’s another acronym you should always be pumping your fist to as a screenwriter, and that acronym is “GSU”. GSU stands for “goal, stakes, urgency.” Every single one of your screenplays should have goals, stakes, and urgency. So before you go online to see if the rumors are true that Jwow had some work done to her face, let’s take a look at GSU in action.

Goal – The character goal is the heart of your story. A character must be going after something or else that character is doing nothing. And a character who does nothing is inactive and inactive people are borrrrrrrrrrrr-ing. You think Pauly D sits at home every night reading War And Peace? No! He has a goal – to get as many female numbers at the club as possible! Characters in movies should have the same devoted drive as Pauly D. So in The King’s Speech, the goal is to conquer his stutter. In Black Swan, it’s to conquer the dark half of her performance before the show. Now every once in a while, things get tricky and writers try to incorporate negative or benign goals. In Good Will Hunting, the goal is pretty much to endure the court mandated punishment. That doesn’t allow our character to be very active, so it’s a dangerous road to take. As that movie shows, it can be done, but you need advanced screenwriting skills to pull it off. And very few writers out there have those skills.

Stakes – Once you have a character goal, you can establish your stakes. You do this by asking two very simple questions: “What does my character gain if he achieves his goal?” And “What does my character lose if he fails to achieve his goal?” The bigger the gains and losses, the higher the stakes. Now don’t throw in your hair extensions just yet. Before you lose yourself to the beat, remember this. The stakes only need to be high relative to the character’s situation. So in Star Wars the stakes are the safety of the entire galaxy. That’s pretty high. In Black Swan, the stakes are the lead role in a ballet performance. Which in comparison, seems really low. But because that role is so important to our heroine, the stakes actually feel just as high.

Urgency – I don’t think I need to tell you how important urgency is. It could be the difference between getting to the Smush Room first or getting to the Smush Room second. And as everyone knows, you don’t want to use the Smush Room second. One of the biggest problems I see in amateur screenplays is glacial pacing. The writers don’t understand how to infuse urgency into their story. The most common way to do this is via a ticking time bomb, that point of no return by when your character needs to achieve his goal. You can throw ticking time bombs all over your screenplay so that the pace is always quick. For example, if Sammy and Ronnie meet for coffee and they talk and talk and talk and talk, it’s going to be boring. But if Sammy tells Ronnie at the beginning of the scene that she has to leave in 5 minutes, the scene’s going to have more pep. Also, like stakes, urgency is relative. If I told you I needed to get my wallet back from Snooki’s place, who’s leaving for Vegas at 6 AM, the ticking time bomb is going to be somewhere in the eight hour range. But, if I told you that you needed to trick Snooki into falling in love with you so we could start hanging out with the Jersey Shore crowd, the ticking time bomb would be longer – maybe two or three weeks. The idea is to make the time frame as short as you possibly can relative to the situation.

Now, let’s look at five movies and see how they GSU. Get ready to pump those fists!

BACK TO THE FUTURE

G – The great thing about Back To The Future is that the story is so basic. Therefore it’s a great template for learning screenwriting. The goal here is simple. Marty needs to get back to the future.

S – Back To The Future also does one of the better jobs setting up its stakes, as they’re entirely specific to the situation. What’s at stake is Marty’s existence. If he doesn’t succeed, he will cease to exist. Notice how organic that is to the story. Marty doesn’t just die because they needed high-stakes. He dies because he himself screwed up his mother and father meeting, and now must get them back together so that he can be born. There’s a beautiful irony to that. The more you can tie your stakes into the fabric of the story, the better off you’ll be.

U – I don’t remember the exact time frame here. But I think it’s one week. This is the perfect amount of urgency since it gives Marty and Doc a believable amount of time to take care of the problem but not so much time that it feels easy. This is a problem a lot of beginner writers make. They set the time frame so far ahead that it feels like the main character has forever to solve the problem.

THE GOONIES

G –The Goonies is a great reminder that when you’re writing a high concept idea meant for a mass audience, you want to keep the goal simple. The goal here is to find the secret hidden treasure. That’s it. We’re now on our way.

S – The Goonies also reminds us to push ourselves a little harder when it comes to key story decisions, such as creating the stakes for your story. I think if I were developing this back in the day, I would’ve been fine limiting the stakes to Sean Astin losing his house. But The Goonies did something really clever. They came up with a scenario – a golf course – that made it so everybody was losing their houses. That meant that every single kid on this journey had something at stake. So when you think you’ve figured your stakes out, always go that extra mile and come up with something even bigger.

U – Goonies shows us the power of the super urgent ticking time bomb. We’re not talking a week here. We’re not talking a few days. We’re talking less than a day until the house is signed away. This is why I always recommend condensing your time frame to something as short as possible. Having a week to save the house is still pretty compelling. But it’s not as compelling as only having a day to save your house.

INCEPTION

G – The goal in Inception is to plant an idea into rival Robert Fisher’s mind so that he’s no longer a threat to Saito.

S – The stakes here are Cobb seeing his children again. If he succeeds, he gets to be with them. If not, he’ll probably never see them again (or at least that’s what we’re led to believe). Inception spends a lot of time showing us visions of the kids as a reminder of the stakes but I’d argue that Inception was pretty weak in this category. It’s still not clear why he can’t have his father fly them over to him. And I’m not sure we really believe that if he doesn’t do this now, he’ll never see them again. But if you’re looking at it from a technical standpoint, Inception does have stakes in place.

U – There wasn’t a lot of urgency throughout the first half of the movie, which is why it played out so damn slowly. But once we get into the dreams, Nolan makes sure that the urgency is high. He achieves this mainly with a visual ticking time bomb – the van falling. We know that when that van hits the water, everybody is going to wake up. So if they haven’t achieved their goal by that time, that’s it. Now I still think that Inception fudges the rules in that three levels down they’re supposed to have months to pull off their plan. But since they’re always being pursued, and because Nolan introduces so many visual cues that the dream states in all three levels are becoming unstable, there’s a sense that if they don’t get this done now, they’re going to run out of time. It’s a little bit shaky but it still works. Having said that, if you’re one of the many people who felt like Inception was sloppy, there’s a good chance that the vague stakes and the vague urgency contributed to that.

UP

G – The goal is for Carl to get to Paradise Falls.

S – This is the first of the movies where you can technically argue that the stakes aren’t high. If Carl doesn’t get to Paradise Falls, what happens? Technically nothing. It’s not like he dies. It’s not like anybody loses anything. However, if you look closer, you’ll notice that Up decides to sacrifice physical stakes for emotional stakes. We’ve established that the one thing Carl and his wife were never able to do was to go to Paradise Falls. The point of this journey then is to take his wife to the place she always wanted to go. That’s why the stakes are still high. The trick to making that work is similar to what they had to do in Inception. Whenever you create emotional stakes, you have to do the legwork ahead of time and establish that bond so that we care. How well you pull  that off will determine how invested your audience will be. You’ll notice that, emotionally, we’re much more invested in Carl achieving his goal than Cobb , and that’s because that opening sequence did such an amazing job establishing the love between these two. We never really feel that in Inception, which is why the stakes seem so low. Who cares if Cobb is able to see his two kids if we don’t even know them? We never even see their damn faces!

U – The urgency here comes from two different areas, one of which is quite clever. Instead of having a stock timer counting down, Up uses the rapidly depleting hydrogen supply in the balloons as the ticking time bomb. If he doesn’t get to the cliff within a couple of days, he will not be able to get his wife (represented by the house) to the place she always wanted to go. The other is the bad guys (Charles and his dogs) chasing them. Remember that incorporating a chase is a cheap but solid way to up the urgency in any story.

AMERICAN BEAUTY

G – I purposely chose this one as the last example because it doesn’t easily fit the GSU mold. It’s kind of like Sammy Sweetheart in that sense. She’s on the show but she never gyms, tans or laundrys. So I’ll just repeat this warning. If an idea doesn’t fit easily into the GSU mold, be aware that you are now writing in unchartered waters. Good luck. Now let’s see how GSU applies to American Beauty. The goal in American beauty is open ended. It isn’t a tangible objective. Lester’s goal is to get his life back on track (however misguided his belief of what that means is). The reason it still works as a goal though is that it keeps our main character active. Lester goes out and gets a job at the local drive-through. Lester starts working out more. Lester makes friends with people he would never make friends with. Lester buys the car he always wanted to buy. Even though it’s unclear when the goal will be achieved, because it keeps our character doing things, it works.

S – Remember that whenever the goal is murky, both your stakes and your urgency will also suffer, since those variables are direct offshoots of the goal. In this case, the stakes are our hero’s happiness. If Lester is to continue down this path of letting the world push him around, he’s going to be miserable for the rest of his life. For that reason, failure to push forward means accepting defeat. Lester must succeed at obtaining this new life or else he’ll be miserable forever. I’d say avoiding being miserable forever would classify as high-stakes.

U – The truth is, there isn’t a lot of urgency in American Beauty. The official ticking time bomb is one year. We find that out at the beginning, when Lester tells us, via voiceover, that he’ll be dead in a year. This does create urgency later on when we feel his impending death approaching (and the mystery kicks in of who’s going to kill him). But the pace throughout the first half of this script is relatively slow. The question is, why does it still work? The simple answer is that the character work in American beauty is the best of any script written during the entire decade when this movie came out. Most of the relationships here are so volatile or so destructive (Ricky and his dad, Lester and his wife, Lester and Angela) that there is an invisible ticking time bomb ticking away above each of them. We know that sooner or later each of these relationships is going to go boom, and that alone creates the illusion of urgency, even though the physical countdown is relatively slow. I guess the lesson here is that not every movie needs urgency, but you better have the toolset and a damn good plan if you don’t plan to incorporate urgency.

My suggestion to you, after you GTL, is to open up your current screenplay and ask if it has strong GSU. If it’s lacking in any of the three areas, see if you can come up with a solution. Oh, and make sure to check out Jersey Shore tonight to see who’s lying, Snooki or The Situation. Then e-mail me and tell me what happened because I don’t watch the show.

 

Genre: Drama
Premise: A war photographer is the only witness to a huge massacre in Pakistan. An ex special ops soldier with ties to the massacred party hires him to travel to Afghanistan and enact revenge on the men responsible.
About: This script came together as an idea by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, upcoming Superman movie) who hired the writer, Kurt Johnston, to write it for him. The script has been in development for a while and this is one of the early drafts. Christian Bale and Sean Penn recently signed on to play the lead roles and the director of the Swedish version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is set to direct.
Writers: Kurt Johnstad (story by Zack Snyder)
Details: 112 pages – 1.5 draft – October 10, 2008 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

So I wasn’t going to review this one because it’s an early draft and the movie Sean Penn and Christian Bale signed on to was a more recent draft. But I’ve gotten enough people to recommend it to me that I decided it was worth taking a look at.

Joe Wallace is an American war photographer in Pakistan who’s been relegated to snapping photos of diplomats’ birthday parties. I guess America isn’t the only place where the economy sucks. But what Joe is about to realize is that the war is a lot closer than he thinks. A group of men storm the party and massacre everyone there, except for Joe, who escapes by the skin of his teeth. But the event scars him deeply and when we meet him again a few weeks later, he’s a full-blown heroin addict.

Ethan Black, an older ex-special ops soldier, had family killed in that massacre, and when he finds out Joe was the only witness, he seeks him out and hires him to help him find the warlord responsible.

So away they go, heading to Afghanistan at a time when you definitely do not want to be traveling through Afghanistan, meeting old friends and trying to piece together where this warlord might be hiding. Eventually they find out that his brother’s wife was building schools to educate females, and we all know how the Taliban feels about educating females. So a statement had to be made.

The movie is a down and dirty look at what it would really be like traveling through Afghanistan at this time. They have to con their way through roadblocks, they have to maneuver their way through unfriendly towns, they have to figure out who to trust and who not to trust. There’s no glamour here. It was almost like Zack and Kurt decided they wanted to make the most un-Hollywood movie possible. It’s dark and it’s depressing and it’s probably exactly how it would really be if you tried this yourself.

One of the big changes made to the newer drafts is that it’s now a kidnapping movie as opposed to a revenge movie. This is a really important distinction I’ve talked about before because it changes the tone of the story and it changes the pace of the story. When you’re talking about a revenge film, the person is already dead. For that reason the pace is more leisurely. You’re not in a hurry to take somebody down because they’ve already done their damage. That slower pace usually ends up hurting the screenplay because the urgency factor (UF) goes way down. And when you lose urgency, you lose a lot of what makes a story work.

If it’s a kidnapping scenario, urgency is at the forefront. Every second lost is a potential second that the kidnapped party could be lost forever. Look no further than Taken to see how that plays out. In addition, the entire tone of the piece changes. Whereas with revenge, the tone is sad and fatalistic and hopeless, with kidnapping, it’s hopeful and optimistic and exciting. There’s always a chance that you could still find that person alive.

Now I’m not going to tell you that revenge is always the lesser of the two choices. The Brigands of Rattleborge is one of my favorite scripts and that movie is pure revenge. But it becomes a lot harder to make the movie work because you need to supplement your story with things to make up for the lack of urgency and hope. Rattleborge had amazing characters for example. It also did a top-notch job making you hate the villains so that you couldn’t wait to see them go down. Unfortunately, I don’t see either of those things in this early draft of “The Last Photograph.” Not only did I never meet the bad guys, but I never knew the people who were killed either. I mean, if I don’t know the bad guy and I never cared about the people killed, why would I be invested in this story?

From the opening page, every action is coated with despair. I’ve read scripts that are more depressing than The Last Photograph, but I’m not sure I’ve read a script that became so lost in its own hopelessness. Every line sounds like a line you’d hear from somebody right before they committed suicide. One of our heroes is a heroin addict who has no hope of ever being happy again. And the other is an introverted Bounty Hunter who’s never allowed himself to feel anything.

That was another issue I had. Whenever you pair two people together, they need to be different in some way. These characters were almost exactly the same. The only difference I could see between them was that one had a drug problem and the other didn’t. Since their interactions are the centerpiece of the story, you can imagine why it didn’t work. They never really clash about anything. There are no real differences here. It’s just a couple of guys who realize that life sucks and then you die. I think that some people gravitate towards that fatalistic mentality but I’m not one of them.

Having said that, I cannot think of two better actors to play these parts. Sean Penn loves these miserable 50 something types. And giving Christian Bale a heroin addict to play is probably more addictive to him then heroin itself.

But I’m trying to figure out what it is people liked about this so much. I imagine we’re just into different films. I see them liking Biutiful and The House Of Sand And Fog and 21 Grams. Those films are too depressing for me. The only movie that’s really depressing that I love is The Sweet Hereafter and the reason for that is that it’s not just an exercise in hopelessness. There’s actually a clever story being told. And while the narrative in The Last Photograph is clean and easy to follow, it seems like that story is secondary to showing how miserable two people can be.

But there are some things that worked. I thought the writer did a good job with imagery. One of the challenges of writing a screenplay is trying to get the reader to see what you see, using only words. That’s not easy to do. There were many times where I felt like I was there in Afghanistan with these guys. Joey Ramon covering What A Wonderful World while Hindu porn is pumping away on the TV and our character is injecting Brown heroine into his veins is a powerful sensory filled image. And while I know some readers hate music cues, I like them, because they help me understand the tone the writer is going for. There were a lot of music cues that put me right in the heart of the moment here.

Unfortunately, the characters were too cliché (to be honest I don’t know how you write a heroin addict that doesn’t feel cliché these days) and the story too depressing for my taste. I also wouldn’t have minded a few more surprises along the way. As we’ve talked about before, it’s easy for a road trip movie to become monotonous. It’s up to the writer to infuse it with surprises and twists, anything to place us on the less traveled path. I felt like we were too often on the traveled path, which is kind of ironic considering the subject matter. But hey, that’s just me. If you love serious fare – if Babel is in your top five – you might want to check this out.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This screenplay was a good example of a term Stacy Menear (writer of Mixtape) taught me. Monodrama. The entire screenplay hits only one emotion. And if you stick with one emotion for too long, that emotion loses its magical effect. People are more likely to respond when you take them through a range of emotions. Unfortunately, we don’t get that here. I’m really hoping they addressed this in future drafts.