Genre: Horror/Adventure
Premise: A former Hawaiian warrior turned werewolf is recruited to join a mysterious pack of werewolves.
About: It appears that Aaron Guzikowski really likes wolves. He created the show, Raised by Wolves. And it turns out, during the planned Monsterverse slate of horror movies, he wrote a draft of The Wolfman. Afterwards, Ryan Gosling would come to Universal and pitch his own version of The Wolfman, which had a Christopher Nolan approach to the property whereby he would treat it very realistically. “Nightcrawler” was given as a tonal comp. Yesterday’s writers, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, would go on to write that draft for Gosling. To be clear, today’s draft was written by Aaron Guizikowski (Prisoners, Raised by Wolves, Papillon).
Writer: Aaron Guizikowski
Details: 120 pages

Wolf Week continues here on Scriptshadow.

Monday, we looked at the classic horror film, An American Werewolf In London. Tuesday, we had that Big Mean Orange-Haired Wolf. And today, we have a reimagining of the classic film, The Wolfman.

So, as those who read my newsletter know (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to sign up), our first Monsterverse script, for Van Helsing, turned out to be pretty awesome! And so, can a full moon strike twice in the same month? I thought that was impossible.

Or, wait. A full moon actually stays full for two nights, right? So maybe it can strike twice! Unless the second night of the full moon is only like a 95% full moon. In that case, it’s not a real full moon. And since I don’t know much about werewolf mythology, I don’t know how much of an effect that has on werewolf changism.  Is a 95% werewolf still a werewolf.  Or is just a werewol?

The year is 1826. We’re on Molokai Island, Hawaii (I’m guessing they were targeting The Rock or Jason Mamoa for the role). The prince of this land, Deo Kekoa, is hanging with his homies when a fiery ship sails right up to the beach.

Deo and others try to break through the hull where they hear people screaming. But when they finally succeed, they’re attacked… by a werewolf. Deo is able to kill it but, unfortunately, he’s been bitten. And since his father has seen werewolves before, he knows Deo will turn into one. So he banishes Deo.

We then wake up in 2017 in Iceland, where Deo is now a bodyguard for high-profile clients. Over the years, Deo has learned how to turn into a werewolf on command. Unfortuantely, he still has no control over his true turning, which happens every full moon.

Deo is responsible for guarding a businessman named Edmund Razmus, who works for something called the “Frankenstein” Corporation. He takes Edmund out into the middle of nowhere in order to truly isolate them from threats but it isn’t long before a group of werewolves attack and kill Edmund. Deo does some research on these werewolves and learns that they live in Hamburg, Germany. So off he goes.

Once there, he meets with the alpha of the group, a steely wise businessman named Jacques Delancre, a billionaire shipper. Also, Deo realizes, Delancre is the man who owned the fiery ship that crashed on his shores that day.

At first, Deo wants to kill him. But there’s something magnetic about Delancre that Deo has never experienced before and he soon finds himself curious about this wolf pack. For so long, he’s been alone. It feels good to finally have a family. Delacre teaches Deo to stop resisting his animalistic urges and, instead, embrace them. He wants Deo to be more wolf than man.

The next thing you know Deo is helping Delancre with a heist. The Frankenstein Corp has a lab in the Swiss Alps and they’re doing tests on a former member of the pack. Because Deo has the special ability to turn into a werewolf whenever he wants, Delancre needs him for this rescue mission. Deo agrees, but in the process, worries about if he’s being seduced for, ultimately, nefarious purposes.

Um.

This script is awesome.

I mean, I don’t know what’s going on over at Universal. But they’ve gotten two of the best big-budget scripts I’ve read in a long time and they’re not going to do anything with them. It baffles me.

Cause this was a really cool script.

There were four things that stood out. One, the mythology. It’s really well-researched and constructed. Every werewolf here has a deep backstory as they come from a different time period and different part of the world.  And the stuff about the Wolfpack and who it operated was really cool. Two, the specificity. We start off on a gold-caped Hawaiin prince in the year 1826. I’ve never seen that before in film. When someone can give me that level of detail and uniqueness right away, the script that follows is almost always good.

The originality is strong as well. Going from 19th century Hawaii to 21st century Iceland. It feels like we’re in a totally different world than we’d usually be in with movies like this. 9 out of 10 writers would’ve started this movie in New York.

Finally, the way the story is constructed is really smart. It starts off with this 20 minute teaser. Then we move to a bodyguard story, where our hero has to protect someone. Then we move to a Matrix situation, where our hero joins this cult of werewolves and learns about their pack and powers. And then we’re performing a heist in Switzerland.

It was just really freaking cool!

You know what it felt like in a weird way? Like a werewolf version of James Bond, if that makes sense. And I would’ve never in a million years thought of combining those two worlds for a werewolf film. Yet here we are and Guzikowski hits it out of the park.

You guys know how much I love when I can’t predict what’s going to happen in a script. The problem I always run into when I finally encounter one of these scripts, is that the only reason I can’t predict anything is because the script is so sloppily written and the writer is making things up on the fly. Rarely do I encounter a screenplay where I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen ANNNNND what happens is still smart and calculated. Which is exactly how I would describe this script.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself, if this is so good, why didn’t they make it, Carson? This is where we get into how complicated Hollywood is today. Cause I think almost every genuinely good script has been made in Hollywood. Cream eventually rises to the top.

But we’re in a whole different era these days with all these extra factors in play. Nobody had done the interconnected “Universe” approach on a large scale before Marvel. So this was brand new territory. And the combination of The Mummy doing badly combined with The Invisible Man being a breakout hit changed the course of how Universal approached its monsterverse.

Big-budget was out. Low-budget was in. It’s why we’re going to get a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman. And I’ll be honest, I think a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman could be awesome. It just sucks that this movie is going to be left behind.

With that said, everything is cyclical. There will be a time in Universal’s future where big-budget monster movies make sense again. When that happens, they’re going to want to bring this script, and Van Helsing, back out, and make them. Cause these are really good screenplays. And it’d be a shame if nothing ever came of them.

Screenplay Link: The Wolfman

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

What I learned: A preview of one of my dialogue tips from the book. If you’re going to have people speak in a foreign language, yet present the dialogue in English, it’s imperative that you italicize the dialogue. If not, you’ll create a situation like the opening of today’s script where Deo seems to be speaking in English. And I’m thinking, “How does he know English?” The writer then tells us, in the description, that he’s speaking his local language and a translator is translating it. Problem solved right? No. Because as I continue to read Deo’s dialogue, I’m still seeing it as English and have to adjust, remembering he’s speaking in a different language. It’s an annoying hesitation-correction that occurs every time you read the dialogue. That visual cue of the italics immediately alerts the reader that it’s another language. Problem solved.

Today, instead of writing about scripts from Black List’s pasts, I write about a Black List script… from the fuuuuuuutttttuuurrrrrrrre.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of how independent right-wing media helped Donald Trump win the presidency.
About: Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum have been on a tear lately, landing every writing job in town. The “Orange is the New Black” writers got the Chippendales gig, the Wolfman project, and, most impressively, “Dumb Money,” about the Gamestop stock story.
Writer: Rebecca Angelo & Lauren Schuker Blum
Details: 113 pages

Jake Gyllenhaal for Cernovich?

There is a special kind of excitement that goes into opening a script that you have no information on, not even a logline. The storytelling possibilities are endless.  Who knows where you’re going to end up?  That’s where my head was today.

And then I opened the script.

After a page I mumbled, “Please no.” After two pages I said, a little louder, “Oh God please don’t do this.” After five pages, my head fell into my lap before I raised it to the sky and screamed…

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

But I committed to reading this script so I’m going to review it for you guys.

Our story starts back around 2015 when something called “Gamergate” was going on. I guess a popular online gamer was dumped by his gamer girlfriend and he complained about it online and this got a lot of male gamers angry at the ex and they wrote really mean online comments to her and I guess this was a metaphor, in the media’s eyes, for toxic masculinity.

A lawyer named Mike Cernovich, who lost his license because of a he-said/she-said date rape accusation in college began a legal blog and started writing about Gamergate, which was becoming a rallying cry for men who were looked down upon or something. Cernovich was quickly joined by a conservative gay man named Milo Yiannopoulos who started writing about Gamergate for Breitbart, an independent conservative news outlet.

During Gamergate, Mike and Milo (sounds like it could be a children’s game show) realized the power of conflict in regards to internet attention. Not sure why that would be surprising to anyone but apparently it had never been weaponized before like these two had done it. And they realized they could use that same conflict-based writing to help Donald Trump, whose ideals seemed aligned with Gamergate, to win the presidency.

And so the script is a trip through a bunch of internet conservative personalities – guys like Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec – who join this crusade and use a lot of toxic combative strategies to rile the troops. For example, Milo Yiannopoulos becomes obsessed with making fun of Leslie Jones from the Ghostbusters movie, painting her as the poster child for what’s wrong with political correctness. Blah blah blah. Because of their help, Trump wins the presidency.

Man, I have to say. Dropping this script into the middle of Hollywood must have been like dropping a 50 ton peanut into a cage of rabid elephants.

The reason I was so excited to read this was because I wanted to talk about something we rarely get to talk about on this site. Which is writing samples. The writing sample has become more important than ever due to scripts not selling like they used to.

These days you write a sample, blast it around town, get a lot of fans, get called in for meetings, then pitch for projects at each production house. Nobody represents this power strategy better than Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum. These two have been tearing it up, getting nearly every writing job they interview for.

So I wanted to see what was special about their writing sample that maybe you could learn from so that you could take it and apply it to your own writing samples.

Then I read this script and it turns out its success is only based on them writing about the Trump election. I just don’t think we can learn anything from that.  Except, maybe, that you should title your next script, “I hate Trump.” But it’s more than that.  I was hoping that, in spite of the subject matter, there would still be something to celebrate here.

I look at a script like Promising Young Woman, which covers a lot of the same ground as American Right. It’s about toxic masculinity, sexism, feminism. But it’s actually clever. And it doesn’t paint a black and white picture. The main character is just as flawed as the people she’s going after. So it’s easier for the audience to relate to her. I just re-watched that movie for my dialogue book and holy moly is it good.

Today’s script is just laying out a list of conservative personalities and doing the same tragedy bit with them you see with all these Black List scripts since The Social Network. The Drudge script. The Twitter one. There are several more I can’t remember the titles of.

I don’t know whether to criticize this strategy or celebrate it. Because it obviously worked. To me this genre may be old hat. But Hollywood still seems to lap it up.

I will say this. It does have one major attribute of a typical “writing sample” which is that it’s a hard sell as a movie. Writing samples usually are. As much as everyone likes to talk about politics online, politics don’t make good movies. People go to movies to forget about the politics buzzing in their ears all day. They don’t go to experience more of it.

Which tells me it was a strategic move by the writers from the start. They weren’t trying to make a movie here. They sat down and asked, what kind of script gets passed around Hollywood? Biopics, one. Anything that attacks conservative ideals, two. Combine those ingredients together and you have a nuclear script bomb. So maybe that is something you can learn from.

There are times when writing sample scripts get made but only when the writer goes on to have a couple of big movies in the marketplace. At that point, someone takes a gamble on their writing sample.

Ironically, it rarely ends well. It’s almost better for a writing sample to remain a writing sample because when you make the movie, you often find out there was a reason it was a writing sample. “Passengers” is a great example of this. That script was celebrated as the greatest script never made for eight years. That’s a sweet title to have on your resume. But then the movie gets made, ends up being bad, and now you’re just the writer of that bad movie.

If I can take my aggravated pants off for a just a minute and look at this script objectively, I guess it does a good job of conveying its theme. Which is this idea of weaponizing conflict and divisiveness for personal or political gain. A good writing sample tends to have a strong theme because writing samples are deeper than your typical Hollywood movie.

If they were surface level, like Taken, they’d get made right away. It’s the fact that they require you to think more that prevents producers from making them. Again, most people go to movies to be taken out of their brains. I know some of you hate to hear that but it’s true for mainstream moviegoing. When I watch Black Panther 2 a month from now, I don’t want to be thinking. I want to have fun.

I also give credit to the writers for coming up with this visual highway in their script that stood for the “information superhighway,” aka, the internet. I liked how when our characters would utilize social media and blogs to create divisiveness, that we’d cut to this actual highway and visually see the results – thousands of car pile-ups, for example. And the victims of these online attacks would be climbing out of cars, bloodied, barely alive. That was the one big creative idea they nailed.

Definitely not going to recommend this script, though. I understand why Hollywood likes it, of course. But this was not my jam. I have a crushing fear that it will be the number 1 script on the Black List in two months, and when that happens, it’s basically going to negate the last bit of confidence I have in the list. If you can write something that, this predictably, would be number one on the list, then you’re not celebrating creativity anymore.

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

What I learned: Brown-nose scripts. Brown-nose scripts are when you write about a particular subject or idea because you know the teacher specifically loves that subject or idea. Brown-nose scripts have infiltrated the Black List and, like weeds, are slowly destroying it from within.

Every Monday in October I’ll be reviewing a classic horror film!

Genre: Horror
Premise: After recovering from his friend being killed by a wolf, an American traveling in England heads back to his nurse’s London home, where he begins to suspect that he’s a werewolf.
About: The famous wolf transformation scene in this movie was so impactful that it forced the Academy to come up with a makeup Oscar. Director John Landis came up with the idea for the movie at 18. But no one wanted to make the script for a full 10 years.
Writer: John Landis
Details: 97 minutes

Do you feel that?

It’s the hair standing up on the back of your neck.

That’s because it’s October, the month of ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and zombies. “Smile’s” 22 million dollar box office proved just how much people love to be scared in October.

With horror opening weekends, I’ve learned, it’s not about how good the movie is. It’s about how good the marketing is. That means what does the poster look like? And what does the trailer look like? Smile has that in spades. And it’s something all of you horror writers should be thinking about BEFORE you write your horror scripts. Not after. This movie was marketed very simply on a sinister looking smile and boy did it work. Cause nobody expected this film to take in 22 million dollars.

The lesson Universal learned was a little more complex with “Bros” bombing. I think a lot of people are going to point to moviegoers not being ready to accept a mainstream LGBTQ movie. But I think if you put a real movie star in that role over Billy Eichner, the movie at least has a chance. Eichner is annoying. He built his comedy brand on negativity. He’s not a leading man and is, arguably, unlikable. He just wasn’t going to be the guy to break a gay romcom into the mainstream.

Not sure how we segue out of that into London circa 1981 so I’m not even going to try. I’ll just say that like a lot of you, I saw this movie as a kid, and that werewolf transformation scene blew me away. It was a part of my nightmares for years to come.

But the funny thing about that scene is that it was so good it overshadowed my memory of the rest of the film. I don’t remember anything about this movie other than that scene. So I was really looking forward to watching it again as it was basically like watching a brand new movie.

The film follows two Americans, David and Jack, just out of college, who are traveling around England. After visiting a weird Yorkshire pub, they’re attacked by a wolf and Jack is brutally killed. The Yorkshiremen from the bar shoot and kill the wolf before it can also kill David.

David then wakes up in a London hospital two weeks later where he learns that his best friend is dead. As David recovers, Nurse Alex gets a crush on him. And his doctor, Dr. Hirsch, believes David is suffering from a delusion that they were attacked by a wolf, as the Yorkshiremen claimed the two were attacked by a madman.

While at the hospital, David starts getting visits from his dead friend, Jack, who informs him that David’s a werewolf now and must kill himself because, if he doesn’t, he’s going to turn into a wolf at the next full moon and start killing people. David dismisses these visions as trauma. But in the back of his mind, he wonders if his dead friend is right.

Eventually David is released and he goes to stay with Nurse Alex. Meanwhile, Doctor Hirsch heads to that Yorkshire pub and believes that David might start to hurt people due to believing that he’s a werewolf. It’s too late, though. The full moon comes and – kazow – he finally turns into a werewolf. From that point forward, his killing spree begins.

First off, great movie.

I was starting to worry that I wasn’t capable of truly enjoying movies anymore because I’ve seen so many. But this proves that it’s not me. It’s the movies. The people making the movies have to do better. Cause this film was basically brand new to me and I thought it was great.

I noticed a lot of good choices here.

For starters, David and Jack were a lot goofier than I remember them being. And when Jack gets killed, I learned a valuable lesson. Which is that, these days, characters are goofy just to be goofy. But here, the goofiness and the jokiness serves a purpose. Which is that Jack’s shocking death hits you harder because of the fact that these two were such good friends. And that friendship was built in just 10 minutes by having these two be very comfortable and jokey around each other. In other words, the choice to make them jokey, was 100% story motivated.

Same thing for Jack’s transformation into a wolf. Of course I remember the actual transformation as a kid. But what I didn’t remember was how much pain Jack was in while it was happening. That’s what stayed with me this time. He was in immense pain as it was happening. And they really draw the transformation out so the pain we feel is extended. Again, it’s a STORY and CHARACTER related reason why the scene hits us so hard. Not just amazing special effects.

I also thought they did a great job with the exposition. I’m working on the exposition section of my dialogue book at the moment so this hit me especially hard. But every single exposition scene takes place when dead Jack comes back to explain to David how the werewolf thing works. The thing is, we’re so focused on the amazing special effects of Dead David (he becomes more disgusting with each visit) that we have no clue that massive exposition is being thrown at us.

And kudos to Landis because he created the biggest distraction of all for the biggest exposition scene of all – that being the porn movie where David and Jack talk in the back of the theater and Jack introduces David to all of his dead victims from last night. I can’t remember anything as creative as that to hide exposition.

Granted, this is more of a writer-director trick since it wouldn’t have worked as well on the page (we can’t see special effects on the page). But it was still genius.

The only thing that perplexed me was the structure. David stays in the hospital all the way until page 35. He doesn’t turn into the wolf until 60 pages in! They just wouldn’t do that today.

And I was really thrown by it because I didn’t think it was necessary. Every movie can benefit from urgency. Urgency keeps the plot zipping along. So why did Landis turn his back on urgency??

Finally, I realized what was going on. They didn’t have any choice but to wait an entire month. Obviously, on the day David and Jack were attacked, it had to be a full moon. So we were going to have to wait another month until the next full moon turned David into a werewolf.

That’s why the movie doesn’t seem interested in pushing anything forward. David has these bizarre extended, ultimately silly, nightmares while he’s in the hospital. When he gets back to the nurse’s place, there’s an entire day where he has nothing to do so he just hangs out. Typically, you want to avoid this in screenwriting. Your hero should never be in a position where they have nothing to do.

Ironically, the movie works in spite of this. And I think it’s because they had such a large carrot dangling in front of the audience (the coming full moon) that we didn’t care that we had to wait. We were so locked in by the suspense, that time didn’t really exist (that’s what good suspense does, by the way – eliminate time).

It seems as if Landis wasn’t ignorant to David’s lack of purpose. When one has a protagonist without a goal, it’s important that someone else in the story does have a goal. At least that way, we can cut back to them occasionally, to give the story some forward momentum. That character came in the package of Dr. Hirsch. He’s the one who starts getting concerned about David. Therefore, he goes out to the Yorkshire pub to see if he can get more answers. He’s the one who grabs Nurse Alex to head back to the city in an attempt to find David before he can hurt people.

That’s a little tip for you if you ever find yourself with an unmotivated main character. Make sure at least one other key character in the story is motivated with a strong goal.

I just thought this was a really good film. It still holds up today. Yes, there are some goofy parts (I could do without the killer Nazi ghosts and ghouls nightmares). But the core of the story works. We care about the main character. We like all the supporting characters. We want to see what happens to our hero. That’s really the only rule that matters in writing: The audience needs to want to see what happens to your hero. If you have that, you have a movie. If you don’t, you have Bros.

Movie is free to watch on Amazon Prime!

Screenplay Link: An American Werewolf In London

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

What I learned: Intense suspense. If you can’t have the urgency, replace it with VERY STRONG SUSPENSE. It can’t be rinky-dinky suspense. It’s got to be intense suspense, like the impending full moon in An American Werewolf in London.

The newsletter just hit your Inboxes! We have plenty of fun in store for you this month, including, wait, an IMPRESSIVE script review??? I thought you didn’t give those out anymore, Carson. Well surprise surprise. I guess I do. And it happens to be from two of the best screenwriters in Hollywood who inexplicably teamed up for this script. Oh, and you can download the script and read it yourself! We’ve also got my continued frustrations with Andor. We’ve got a cool Hollywood story about a creative team and what they did to win the next movie in a coveted franchise. We’ve got new Blade Runner news. We’ve got updates on the myriad of Scriptshadow things going on, like contests, showdowns, and my book. So you’ll DEFINITELY want to read this newsletter when you have a minute. E-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on the Scriptshadow Newsletter mailing list!

I continue to work hard on the Scriptshadow Dialogue Book. One of the most time-consuming parts of the process has been cross-checking all the tips against my favorite movies.

I’ll watch a favorite movie and, with each scene, make sure that the dialogue being spoken doesn’t contradict anything I’m saying in my book. For the most part, it’s gone great. Everything that I’ve watched lines up perfectly with the tips I’ve written.

And then I read Sideways.

For those of you who don’t know, Sideways is a movie that came out in 2005 about two friends in their 40s, eternal pessimist Miles and sex addict, Jack, who go on a wine-tasting weekend the week before Jack gets married. The screenplay, written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, won the Academy Award for best adaptation.

In order to understand why this script threw a wrench into my previously perfect book, you must first understand the principle tenets I’m building the book around. Namely that every dialogue scene needs to be motivated by a character who wants something.

Typically, that something is a goal – such as needing advice or needing to confess – or the need to solve a problem – such as a car breaks down on the side of a deserted road; what do you do? But, mainly, there needs to be purpose in the scene, and that purpose needs to be driven by the characters.

Then I read Sideways and in the first half of the screenplay, there were, at most, three scenes that abided by this rule. Characters were speaking to speak. Sometimes just to fill up time. And I’m thinking… wait a minute here. This goes against everything I believe.

Here’s a scene from early in the script, when Miles comes to pick up Jack.  Miles is thrust into a room with Jack, his fiancé, and his fiancé’s family.  Notice how there’s no one here with any real goal (the cake tasting gets them in here but it’s not a true goal since it’s inconsequential). Nobody really wants to talk to each other. They’re just talking cause they’re stuck in the same room for a moment.

Then here’s another scene where Miles and Jack are having dinner with two women they recently met. Note how nobody really has a goal here. Sure, Jack wants to get laid and Miles likes Maya. But nobody has a specific goal in the scene. It’s basically just chit-chat.

Some might say, “Well, the goal it to decide on what they’re going to eat.”  Yeah but that’s not a real scene goal. Ordering in movies is inconsequential, as is the case here as well.  Does it matter what they order?  No.  So it’s chit-chat.  It’s the stuff you usually leave out in screenplays.

Now, to be fair, Sideways is a high-brow movie written for well-educated folks 40+ years old who live on the Upper West Side or Beverly Hills. And it’s an indie film. It’s not meant to pull you in and bombard you with drama every five minutes like a big-budget Hollywood film. So the rules are a little different.

With that said, the dialogue does work. It’s fun listening to these friends banter back and forth for two hours. So what’s going on?  How is that happening?

There were a few things I learned.

First, I came to realize that the scene goals in indie films can be softer (or more subtle) than in mainstream films. They don’t need to be as big of a deal. So while in a Hollywood movie, the goal of a conversation might be to figure out how to defeat Vulture before he destroys the city, in an indie movie, the goal might simply be to teach another character how to taste wine.

I do think soft character goals in scenes are dangerous. They’re more likely to result in boring conversations. For example, go write your own scene where one character teaches another character how to taste wine. Just how entertaining can you make that dialogue?  Especially when nothing’s at stake in the scene.

But a skilled dialogue writer has tools in their toolbox that you don’t yet have and, therefore, know how to navigate these softer scenes to still make the dialogue work.

That leads me to the second thing I discovered, which is that Payne did something long before any of his scenes were written that ensured the dialogue would be entertaining. He made Miles and Jack the most opposite of opposites ever. Miles is a pessimist. Miles’ marriage fell apart. Miles’ book is never getting published. He’s a bitter shell of a man.  Jack, meanwhile, sees possibility in everything. He’s optimistic. He’s about to get married. He loves life and loves meeting people.  They are polar opposites.

This ensures that even if Payne never once comes up with a scene that has a strong character goal and actual consequences, that the scene is still going to be entertaining on some level due to the fact that these two will never see eye-to-eye. Every conversation they have is going to have a push and pull to it.

One of the key tenets of my book is, “Conflict solves all.” Because, if all else fails and you’re not doing many of the “proper” things needed to make your dialogue work, conflict can save you because when two people aren’t on the same page, there’s at least going to be some push and pull in the scene that will generate drama. And that’s what Payne so wisely does here. He bakes conflict into the Miles-Jack relationship from the start to ensure that, even when the plot isn’t humming, the conversations will still be entertaining.

Another thing I learned is that a character goal can be extended out beyond the immediate scene. So, in that scene above where the four characters are having dinner, Jack’s ultimate goal is to bed Stephanie. Originally, I was under the impression that dialogue goals needed to be scene specific. But, in this case, the goal is going to take several scenes and that’s okay. This is just the first of those scenes. Therefore Jack does, technically, have a goal.  It’s just softer. It’s to establish sexual chemistry in order to get laid later on.

Finally, I learned that there are actually scenarios where nobody having a goal helps the dialogue. In the first scene that I posted, Miles doesn’t want to be talking to Jack’s in-laws. Jack’s in-laws don’t necessarily want to be talking to Miles. I guess they might be a little curious about him but they seem more focused on being polite than anything.

But that’s the reason the scene works. Because dialogue can be fun under awkward circumstances. The fact that nobody actually wants to speak is what makes the speaking fun. Cause we’ve all been in those situations. We’re stuck in a conversation we don’t want to be in and we just try and survive it. The desperate attempts to survive the conversation, wondering when the misery will be over, are what make it funny.

The more I study dialogue, the more complex I realize it is. But it’s really fun to keep learning this stuff and I can’t wait to share the book with you guys.

Also, a new newsletter is hitting your Inboxes this weekend! I’ll be reviewing a big-bugdget screenplay written by two of the biggest sci-fi screenwriters in Hollywood. I never knew these two teamed up on a script so I’m really excited to read it. So if you’re not already on the list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on!

GET $100 OFF A SCRIPTSHADOW SCREENPLAY CONSULTATION! – I’ve read over 10,000 scripts.  Done over 1000 consultations.  I am the guy who can figure out the issues hampering your script AND HELP YOU FIX THEM so you can start doing better in contests, start getting more responses from queries, and start actually getting jobs in the industry!  I have a 4 page notes package or a more detailed 8 page option designed to improve every aspect of your script, from your plot to your characters to your dialogue.  I also give feedback on loglines (just $25!), outlines, synopses, first acts, or any aspect of screenwriting you need help with. If you’re interested, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and let’s set something up!