Would it be blasphemous to admit that I don’t hold Jaws in the same high regard as the majority of the cinema-going public? That’s not to say I don’t like it. I actually enjoy the movie whenever I watch it. I just don’t think it’s AMAAAA-ZING. When you break it down, it’s actually a strange little screenplay. The goal here is to get rid of the shark. However, we have to wait for the final third of the film for the characters to physically go after that goal. I’m not sure we’d be able to wait that long in today’s market. As a result, a lot of the film takes place back in the town, where our police chief (Martin Brody) goes toe to toe with the Mayor on whether to close down the beach or not due to the attacks. While the characters ARE actively trying to solve the problem, they’re basically relegated to waiting for the next shark attack to happen. – The script itself has about as “Hollywood” a path as they come. Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, was brought on to write the screenplay. Spielberg didn’t love his draft and hired numerous writers to punch it up, basically changing everything that comes before the final shark hunt. He also brought in comedy writers to make it funnier. Even Robert Shaw, who played Quint, rewrote a lot of dialogue. In the end, Carl Gottlieb got the “official” nod, punching up scenes daily on the set throughout the shoot. – The draft I’m reading is the “final” shooting draft, credited to Peter Benchley. Although much of it is what you see in the film, there are some differences here and there, which I may decide to include in the lessons.

1) Bonus points if your character’s fear is the opposite of his goal – Whatever your character’s goal is, make his fear the opposite of that. Here, Brody’s goal is to kill the shark. Therefore, his fear is that he’s afraid of water. It’s a simple yet effective way to create conflict within your hero’s pursuit.

2) I’ve never seen a perfect marriage in a movie – Marriages are wrought with issues. Something’s always pulling on them, creating a problem that needs to be resolved. These problems usually fester underneath the relationship, un-talked about, creating subtext throughout the characters’ conversations. Here, Brody’s wife wants to leave this town. She wants a better life for them in a nicer place. But he wants to stay. And that grinds on their marriage. Always try and add some sort of issue to your hero’s marriage.

3) Use suspense to drive your story – As you know, I prefer a character goal to drive a story. Get the hero out there and after an objective and he’ll take the story with him. While it means a slower story, you can use suspense to drive your story as well. One way to do this is to link together a series of looming disasters. That’s essentially what drives the first 2 acts of Jaws. True, our characters are trying to find the shark and stop it, but what we’re really waiting for is that next shark kill.

4) Conflict is good. Forced conflict is bad. – Conflict is good, WHEN IT’S NATURAL. Audiences can feel when you’re trying too hard though – when you’re pushing some artificial conflict in there to juice up the story. In the book, Benchley had Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) have an affair with Brody’s wife. Everyone felt that would be too much and nixed it for the screenplay. Good choice. It would have detracted from the story instead of added to it. Any conflict that you add should feel organic and natural. If it feels like you’re adding conflict just to add conflict, you probably shouldn’t do it.

5) URGENCY ALERT – It’s a SIN not to include urgency in a blockbuster (popcorn) film. So in Jaws, our ticking time bomb is the 4th of July weekend. That’s the biggest weekend of the year, the weekend all the tourists show up. And it’s coming soon! Therefore, the film’s urgency comes from Brody needing to find and kill the shark before that weekend (even though he eventually fails to do so).

6) Where’s your Quint? – The more scripts I read, the more I realize that the best scripts have one extremely memorable character. Someone who stands out because he acts different, talks different, does his own thing – a character who sort lives in his own world as opposed to the one you’ve created. A character like Quint, or Hannibal, or Han Solo, or Lloyd Dobler, or Clementine, or Rod Tidwell or Jack Sparrow or Alonzo Harris. This character is almost always a secondary character. Find him and put everything you have into making him as unique as possible.

7) Prevent your hero’s task (goal) from being easy – A common mistake new writers make is allowing their heroes to do what they want unimpeded. As a writer, your job is to do the opposite. Look for ways to make your hero’s job tougher. So here, Brody learns that there’s a shark attack. Okay, simple solution. Close down the beach. The bad writer allows this to happen. The good writer introduces the mayor character, who tells our hero, “You can’t do that. That beach is our income.” Now our hero’s job becomes tougher. He can’t just close down the beach. He has to find and kill a shark.

8) “DON’T GO IN THERE!” – Again, dramatic irony is when we know something the characters do not. Any time you can create a scenario where the audience wants to get up and scream, “No, don’t go there!” Or “Get out of there!” or “Don’t do that!” to warn the characters, you’ve essentially created a great dramatic irony situation. The reason Jaws is inherently dramatic is because it’s driven by dramatic irony. We know the shark is coming to kill these unsuspecting beachgoers, but they have no idea.

9) Always place your problem at the worst possible time it could be – These shark attacks aren’t happening at the tail end of summer with a few scraggly beach-goers getting a last-second tan. It’s happening at THE BUSIEST TIME OF THE YEAR, making it the worst time this problem could’ve happened.

10) If a character is going to tell a story, it better be one hell of a story – Movies are about characters DOING THINGS. They’re not about characters TALKING ABOUT DOING THINGS. Therefore, don’t have your characters tell stories. I see so many amateur writers have characters tell stories that are so boring I want to cut my eyes out. So if you dare to bring your screenplay to a grinding halt while a character tells a story, it better be the best f&*%ing story in the universe! Quint’s famous monologue here about sitting in shark infested waters for 110 hours while everyone around him was eaten by sharks worked because it was a damn good story. Please don’t bother having your character tell their own story unless it’s as good as this one.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Jaws.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Almost all of my “10 Lessons You Can Learn From” posts have dealt with classic, or at the very least, well-respected films. I’m not sure I’d put The Avengers on that list. It was a fun movie. But like a lot of summer movies, it was meant to be viewed once on a Saturday night with a theater full of teenagers. I don’t believe it’s meant to go toe-to-toe with any “respected” film. Having said that, I’m always breaking down films that are critically loved, with the film’s commercial success being secondary. As a commenter brought up the other day, “Why are you always knocking Transformers? It made a billion dollars worldwide. People saw it and enjoyed it.” It’s hard for me to quantify that statement. Yeah, people are going to see the movie, but they’re all 14 years old. I don’t know anyone over the age of 23 who actually enjoyed Transformers. But the commenter was right about one thing. SOMEONE is going to see these movies and enjoying them. So almost as a challenge, I thought it would be fun to look at the highest grossing movie of 2012 (by almost 200 million dollars) and see if we couldn’t extract 10 screenwriting tips from it – maybe figure out some screenwriting tips for the summer blockbuster writer. Here we go!

1) What’s your problem? – In most big budget movies, you want to introduce the problem in your story right away. Once you have a problem, you can begin introducing characters who are going to solve that problem. So here, that problem is the Tesseract. It opens up. Loki (the villain) comes through it. Now we got a problem.

2) Set-pieces are driven by URGENCY – Whenever you write a big action set-piece, you have to incorporate urgency in some way – preferably via a ticking time bomb. So here, after Loki arrives, the Tesseract’s lack of stability causes the building to start imploding, giving them only 2 minutes to get out. This makes the impending chase of Loki even more intense, as they must also escape the area before they’re destroyed along with it.

3) Refocus your script after set-pieces – Set pieces are fun and wild and crazy. But a mistake I find a lot of amateur writers making is that AFTER their set-piece, they don’t re-orient the reader. Remember, we were just in action mode. Enjoying explosions. Enjoying super-heroes fighting. Now that that’s over, we need to be re-briefed on our character goals. So immediately after that first set-piece in Avengers, Nick Fury gets on the phone and says, “The Tesseract’s been stolen by a hostile force. Everybody we know, I want them after it.” The goal has been established. We now know what we’re doing. This may SEEM obvious, but rarely do I see the new writer do it. They often assume you know what the goal is or, in drastic cases, don’t establish a goal at all.

4) Don’t get bogged down in exposition – You should always try to limit your exposition. That’s because exposition is boring. No matter how you dress it up, we’ll be bored by it. If there’s one major fault in The Avengers, it’s that once we get to the airship, we get about six or seven scenes of exposition and discussion. The film slows to a crawl as a result. Remember that your primary focus in any screenplay is to keep the story moving. Don’t get bogged down in exposition. One – or in drastic cases a maximum of two – scenes is enough.

5) Capture your villain – It’s hard to maintain a single unchanged plotline for an entire screenplay. If something’s unchanged for that long, there’s a good chance we’ll get bored with it. To keep things fresh, you want to “interrupt” that plotline with something unexpected. A perfect example is here with Loki. The plot COULD HAVE HAD the Avengers trying to find and destroy Loki the entire time. But Whedon switches things up by having us actually CAPTURE Loki, which adds a fresh new dynamic to the story. In general, you’re always looking to keep things fresh in your scripts, so you want to make unexpected choices whenever possible.

6) Once again, the best dialogue often results from conflict – Some of the best dialogue in Avengers is when Stark is battling it out with Captain America. Why? Because they’re on completely opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Stark is carefree and does whatever he wants. Captain America is uptight and follows orders. If you put any characters like that in a room together, the dialogue’s probably going to be good, so it’s not surprising it works here. Contrast this with the dialogue between Banner and Stark, who both respect each other. It’s not bad, but it’s not nearly as alive and fun as when Stark and Captain America talk.

7) If two characters don’t get along or don’t like each other, put them around each other a lot! – This is an extension of the last tip, and an important one. If you have two characters who don’t like each other, keep them around each other as much as possible. Make them work together! Note that when the airship loses an engine, Whedon doesn’t have Stark and Banner work on it together (they like each other!). He has Stark and Captain America work on it together.

8) Fights and battles must have high stakes or we won’t care – A lot of people complained that the Thor Iron Man fight in the forest was pointless, just an excuse to have Iron Man fight Thor. To a certain extent this was true. I mean, Thor did want to take Loki back to be tried on his planet and Iron Man refused to allow that unless Loki gave them the Tesseract. So there was SOME motivation to the fight. But let’s face it. It was weak. We didn’t really feel the stakes of the fight. So it was nice eye candy, but left us feeling empty. To fix this, always keep the stakes high in every fight/battle. In The Matrix, when Neo fights Smith in the subway, we know that if Smith kills him, the world is doomed. Neo is THE ONE, the only hope mankind has. So the impact of that fight hits us much harder and we’re therefore way more invested.

9) Set-pieces are about BUILDING – You don’t want to throw the kitchen sink at your characters right away during a set-piece. You want to slowly build it up. The set piece should feel like things are getting worse and worse for your heroes at every turn. So in that final battle in Avengers, where the portal opens up and the aliens arrive, first the small guys on speeders show up. When they’re handled, the big worm thing shows up. When they defeat that, MULTIPLE worms show up. There’s something about struggling to defeat something only to see it get much worse that really pulls an audience in.

10) Yup, even big summer movies (minus Transformers) have character arcs – Not everyone has to arc, but a couple of your characters should. Here, Stark needs to learn to buy into the team as opposed to only care about himself. Bruce Banner must learn to embrace his dark side instead of focusing his entire life on avoiding it. When these characters learn to overcome these issues, that’s how the Avengers win in the end.

These are 10 tips from the movie “The Avengers.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

It took Tarantino ten years to finish Inglourious Basterds, mainly because he couldn’t figure out the ending or how to spell his title. The story grew in scope so much during that time that at one point he considered scrapping the movie and turning it into a TV show. After many “almosts,” he finally shot the film in 2008. The casting of Tarantino’s films is always a fun topic of conversation and Basterds was no different. Quentin originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the career-making part of Hans Landa, which eventually went to Christoph Waltz. Of course, Tarantino would later come back to DiCaprio to play his big baddie in Django Unchained. Landa was a huge problem for Tarantino during writing. He feared that the part was “unplayable.” He often mentions Waltz saving his film due to his unique interpretation of the part, a performance that would later win him an Academy Award. Tarantino was always careful with Basterds because he considered it to be his masterpiece. He wanted it to be perfect. I don’t know if I’d call it perfect, but it certainly is a great screenplay/movie worth studying.

1) Defy character type if possible (Make your villain polite) – You shouldn’t ALWAYS do this, but a common amateur mistake is to make your villain a really mean asshole of a guy. What a boring on-the-nose interpretation that is! Tarantino goes the opposite direction and makes his villain, Hans Landa, the most polite person in the story. Since we’re not used to this, it unnerves us, makes us feel uncomfortable, and therefore makes his presence way more interesting.

2) For the love of all that is holy, cut out scenes you don’t need! – If you read Tarantino’s widely circulated almost-shooting draft, you see a lot of scenes that were cut. For example, there’s a scene where Hans Landa explains to an officer why he let Shosanna go. It was unnecessary and therefore cut. There’s a scene where Shosanna is taken in by the owner of the cinema she ends up running. Tarantino realized he could move the story along quicker if they start with Shosanna already owning the cinema. You should always be looking for ways to move your story along and cutting out unnecessary scenes is one of the easiest ways to do this!

3) The more doom you imply, the longer your scene can be (or “The Impending Doom Tool”) – One of the reasons Tarantino gets away with writing such long scenes is because of the impending doom he sets up at the beginning of them. Because we know something terrible is going to happen, we’ll stick around to see it. Look at the opening scene of Basterds. From the very first moment Hans walks in that house, we know this is going to end badly. We see this in Pulp Fiction as well, when Jules and Vincent (after discussing the sexual nature of foot rubs) go to Brett’s apartment to retrieve the briefcase. To demonstrate how powerful this tool is, note what happens when Tarantino doesn’t use it. One of the most boring scenes in the film is when Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is briefed by General Ed Fenech (Michael Meyers) about connecting with one of the Allies’ contacts. The scene is incredibly boring, and a big reason for that is that it’s one of the few scenes in the film where doom isn’t implied. It’s just two guys discussing exposition.

4) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Tarantino LOVES dramatic irony. In fact, the bulk of his storytelling power comes from the impending doom tool and his use of dramatic irony. We see it in the first scene, when Tarantino reveals that there are, indeed, Jews under the floor. We know this but Hans Landa does not. Then later when Shosanna is called to lunch with the Germans, Hans shows up to talk with her. We know she’s the one who escaped the house that day. But Hans does not. We see it in the pub scene, where the Allies are posing as German soldiers. A German lieutenant starts asking probing questions. We know they’re not really Germans, but this German soldier does not. You’ll see some form of dramatic irony in almost all of Tarantino’s scenes.

5) Look for unique ways to stage your characters during dialogue – One of the most interesting scenes in the script occurs after the shootout at the pub. One of the Germans has survived and must negotiate with Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) the life of Bridget von Hammersmark. The entirety of the scene occurs with us never seeing Aldo Raine. He’s upstairs, yelling down to the soldier the whole time. There’s something about Aldo’s disembodied voice that brings the scene to life.

6) The Red Herring – Another really cool thing Tarantino does is introduce red herrings into his scenes – people or things we assume will be relevant, but turn out not to be. You see this in the opening scene with the dairy farmer’s three beautiful daughters. As Hans approaches them, we’re terrified of what’s going to happen to them. Is he going to rape them? Is he going to let his men rape them? Will he use their lives to get the truth of the farmer? In the end, they weren’t relevant, but we feared they were. Tarantino is always looking for ways to build tension into his scenes and this tool is a sly way of doing so.

7) Reverse Save The Cat – Remember that just as a hero should have a “Save The Cat” moment, your bad guy should have a reverse-save-the-cat moment. Who doesn’t hate Hans after that opening scene where he orders half a dozen helpless Jews to be murdered underneath the floor?

8) Always look for different ways to say things – This is one of the easiest ways to spice up your dialogue. Just take a few moments and come up with a more unique way for your characters to say what they’re going to say. When Aldo Raine orders The Bear Jew to kill a German soldier, he doesn’t use the amateurish line: “Kill this asshole.” He says, “German wants to die for his country. Obliiiiige him.”

9) The “Tell Me About Myself” tool – You never want a character to start talking about his own backstory. It never sounds right. (i.e. “I’m a killer. I like to kill Jews.”) So Tarantino’s developed this clever trick where he has the character whose backstory he wants to unveil say to another character, “Tell me what you know about me,” as Hans does in the opening scene to the dairy farmer. This way, the character isn’t talking about himself. Someone is telling him about himself. For whatever reason, this always feels more realistic.

10) Place your scene in an original (but organic) location – The other day I talked about putting your scenes in unique locations to add more pop. However, it’s important to note that those locations must still make sense, must still be organic to the story. There’s a great example of this in Basterds. It’s the scene where Fredrick Zoller hits on Shosanna for the first time. Shosanna works in a movie theater, so an amateur writer may have put her behind the candy display and had Zoller walk in and make his move. To make things more interesting, Tarantino puts Shosanna up on a ladder changing the marquee with Zoller on the ground, semi-shouting up to her. The distance between them adds a charge and uniqueness to the scene that you never would’ve gotten had they had a conventional conversation in the lobby.

BONUS TIP – Find humor in the non-humorous – This is one of the tools that has made Tarantino famous. He always mines humor from situations that aren’t typically humorous. We saw it in Django when all the men put on Klan masks but start freaking out because they can’t see out of them. And we see it here too, with scenes like Hitler going bonkers when he hears about the Basterds. The reason it works is because it’s unexpected. We’re not USED to laughing at the Klan or at Hitler.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Inglourious Basterds.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Swingers is a fascinating pastiche of a movie. Its well-chronicled history includes the actors doing years of table reads to drum up interest and funding for the movie. It was eventually shot on the tip of a shoestring with Doug Liman (The Bourne Identify) directing the film. It was a box-office dud, but word-of-mouth made it a DVD sensation. It started Vince Vaughn’s career and eventually led to John Favreau becoming one of the top directors in Hollywood. Script-wise, it’s basically a laundry list of things I tell you NOT to do. You know I hate scripts with “guys talking in rooms.” Well, this script is basically one revolving room with characters talking in it. Goal-wise, there isn’t much there. I guess you could say the goal is for Mike (Favreau) to get over his ex-girlfriend. The script sends its characters off to Vegas, where we assume the remainder of the story will take place, only to send them back to LA twenty minutes later – leaving us confused and disoriented. You know how I hate Woe-Is-Me characters? Well Mikey is the quintessential woe-is-me protag. On top of this, the script is one long string of dialogue. It’s a non-stop talkfest. So why does it all work? Well, that’s hard to say. I have a saying: “Funny trumps everything.” Even if you break every rule in the book, if the audience is laughing, they’ll stick with you. And the dialogue in Swingers is realllllyyyyy funny. Still, this is one of the trickiest scripts I’ve ever broken down. It shouldn’t work. It has no business working. And yet it does. Let’s see if we can’t find out why.

1) The Sympathy Card – One of the reasons we love Mike despite how pathetic and depressed he is (Woe-is-me!), is because he’s earned his “sympathy card.” Give your protag a sympathy card by having something bad happen to him. Two of the most popular ways to do this are through the death of a loved one or getting dumped by your significant other. If you show how devastated your protag is, we’ll have sympathy for him and follow him through anything. Mike’s obsessive yet honest depression resulting from his girlfriend leaving him ensures we’ll be Team Mikey all the way.

2) For good dialogue, give each character a directive in the scene – When bad writers try to ape a movie like Swingers, they focus their scenes on “humorous” observations about life with no real focus or structure (i.e. they’ll have their characters discuss for seven minutes why they believe Dr. Seuss was gay). For dialogue to work, the scene needs to have direction. You achieve this by giving each character a directive they’re trying to achieve. You then look for humor within the evolution of that discussion, as opposed to trying to find the comedy first and building a scene on top of that. Look no further than the very first scene in Swingers to see this in action. Mike is talking to his friend Rob. His directive is to figure out if it’s okay to call his ex. Rob’s directive is get Mike to stop thinking about his ex. It’s a simple and humorous discussion, anchored by both characters having clear directives in the conversation.

3) CONFLICT ALERT – Remember guys, movies rarely work unless there’s some element of conflict between the two leads. If the characters are always on the same page, we’re going to be bored! Mike is all about respecting girls and being honest. Trent is about telling girls whatever he needs to to get them in bed. He has no respect for them. This is the basis for 75% of their conversations. They always butt heads on this issue. That push and pull is what makes their dialogue so fun.

4) Disagreement Is A Comedy’s Best Friend – There isn’t a single scene in Swingers where characters agree. Every scene is two people disagreeing about something. It’s that simple. The intensity of these disagreements varies. But it’s always there. The first scene has Mike and Rob disagreeing about whether he should call his ex. The second scene has Trent and Mike disagreeing on whether to go to Vegas. The blackjack scene has Trent and Mike disagreeing on whether to double down. Then Mike and Trent disagree on how to treat a waitress. In the girls’ trailer, Trent wants to hook up with a girl while Mike wants to check his voicemail to see if his ex called. It’s one of the simplest ways to create comedy people. Just have people disagree.

5) If your plot is all over the place, make sure your protag’s throughline is strong – Like I mentioned in the setup, this plot (when there is one) is all over the place. We start in LA, then Trent convinces Mike to come to Vegas, then we come back to LA, then we start randomly going to clubs and parties, then there’s a weird showdown with a group of gangbangers, then we go back to the bar scene. There’s virtually no plot here! However, the reason the movie’s able to stay together is because Mikey’s throughline is so strong. He is OBSESSED with his ex. He’s obsessed with if she called. He’s obsessed with whether he should call her. The first two scenes (the first with Rob and the second checking his answering machine) barrel home the issue that Mike is not over his girlfriend. This issue is a part of every single scene, which saves this script from wandering aimlessly into the Nevada desert.

6) STAKES ALERT – Remember guys, heighten scenes by setting up the stakes AHEAD OF TIME. One of the reasons the classic blackjack scene works so well is because we establish beforehand (in the car ride) that Mike only has $300 bucks to his name. Therefore, when he accidentally gets stuck at the high roller table (100 dollar minimum), and has to double down (so the bet is $200), we know this is 2/3 of all the money he has. The stakes for winning this hand are now HUGE. Had we not established this beforehand, this scene wouldn’t have played nearly as well.

7) SMASH CUT TO – The “Smash Cut To” has sort of been forgotten but is still a viable alternative to “Cut To” that can be used for comedic effect. Use it any time you’re cutting to another scene that’s the payoff of a joke. For example, when Mike and Trent are arguing on the phone about going to Vegas and Mike keeps saying, “I’m not going to Vegas.” “We’re going to Vegas.” “I’m not going to Vegas.” “We’re going to Vegas.” “I’m not going to Vegas.” “SMASH CUT TO: Mike and Trent in car going to Vegas.” Or after Mike’s been wiped out at the high stakes blackjack table. “SMASH CUT TO: Mike and Trent are wedged between the BLUEHAIR and the BIKER at the FIVE DOLLAR TABLE.”

8) Use friendship to make an asshole character likable – Trent is a huge asshole. He’s selfish. He’s a dick. He has zero respect for women. He makes jokes at others’ expense. So why do we like him? Because Trent would take a bullet for Mike, our protag. You have no doubt, in any scene, how much Trent loves Mike. It’s that love, that friendship, that helps us overlook all those negative traits. If Trent was as much of a jerk to Mikey as he was to everyone else? We’d hate him.

9) Milk your characters’ dominant traits for better dialogue – Whoever your characters are, particularly in comedy, look for any way to milk their dominant traits within the dialogue. Mike’s dominant traits are his lack of confidence, his nervousness, his indecisiveness. So whenever Mike talks, he’s always stuttering, repeating things, overcompensating (He bumbles to the dealer at the high stakes table. He bumbles to the girls they meet at the Vegas bar). Trent, on the other hand, loves himself. So a lot of his dialogue is in the third person (“Daddy’s going to get the Rainman suite.” “Now listen to Tee. We’ll stop at a gas station right away.”). So many writers write friends who sound the same. This is one of the easiest ways to make them sound different.

10) The Choice – Remember, the most emotionally gripping scripts have “The Choice” at the end. That’s when your main character has a choice he must make near the end which is directly related to his flaw. Swingers does a great job of this. Mike’s flaw is that he can’t move on from his girlfriend. So in the end, his ex-girlfriend calls, and then on the other line, the girl he met the previous night calls. He literally has the choice of a) talking to the new girl (and therefore overcoming his flaw), or b) talking to his ex (failing to overcome his flaw). He of course chooses A and we’re happy because Mike has finally changed!

These are 10 tips from the movie “Swingers.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

The Thing is probably one of the scariest movies ever made. People haven’t always seen it that way since it’s not set strictly in the horror genre. But man, I remember watching this film as a kid and being freaked the hell out. When the spider-legs grew out of that man’s decapitated head and began walking around? That image is still burned into my brain. The screenwriting situation behind “The Thing” is kinda interesting. Bill Lancaster, the writer, is Burt Lancaster’s son. His credits include only 2 other movies, “The Bad News Bears” (the original), and “The Bad News Bears Go To Japan.” He also wrote the Bad News Bears TV series. That was back in 1979. He didn’t write anything after that and died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1997. I’m baffled as to why Bill didn’t write anything else when he showed a clear mastery in two completely different genres. Was this his choice? Hollywood’s choice? Did the pressures of having a famous Hollywood father play into it? I’d love to know more. But since I don’t want to depress the hell out of all of you, I’m going to break down The Thing.

1) Use Clip-Writing to spice up action sequences – Clip-Writing is when you write in clips, highlighting primary visual queues. Clip-Writing can be very effective in action scenes as it helps the reader focus on the centerpieces of the battle, fight, or chase. We see it in The Thing when a Scandinavian crew has followed an infected dog into an American base.

CLOSE ON A .357 MAGNUM

As it efficiently breaks through a windowpane and into the cold. A steady hand grips it firmly.

THE SCANDINAVIAN

Getting closer. Kablam! Suddenly, his head jerks back. He falls to his knees and then face down into the snow.

NORRIS AND BENNINGS

Stare blankly, but relievedly at the fallen man. The dog whimpers in pain.

2) If Dialogue isn’t your strong suit, look to show more than tell – There’s actually some good news if you’re not a great dialogue writer. It means you’ll be forced to SHOW rather than TELL us things, which is really what you should be doing anyway. I noticed from reading and watching “The Thing” that a lot of the dialogue from the script was cut. Carpenter chose instead to focus on the visuals and the actions. For example, there was a scene early in the script where they’re walking to the helicopter and there’s a lot of explanation going on of what they’re doing. Carpenter cut a lot of that out, focusing instead on them simply getting in the helicopter and leaving. We know what’s going on. We don’t need a big long talky scene to explain it.

3) Only have your characters speak if they have something to say – This is an extension of the previous tip, and an important one. Your characters should be talking because they have something to say, not because you (the writer) have something to say. You might want to write a big monologue about how your character lost his sister or your opinion on the earth’s eroding ecosystem. That’s great. But would YOUR CHARACTER say that? I don’t think enough writers really ask that question. There’s nothing worse than reading a bunch of words coming out of a character’s mouth that you know are only there because the writer wanted to include them.

4) ALWAYS WORKS “There’s something else you should see” – I don’t care how bad of a movie or script it is, variations of this line ALWAYS work: “There’s something I need to show you.” You will have the audience in the palm of your hand until you show them what that character is referring to.  With The Thing, that line brings us to a giant mutated gnarled mass of a body. If you can milk the time after the statement until the actual reveal, even better, as our anticipation will grow.

5) MID-POINT SHIFT ALERT – The Thing has a great midpoint shift. The first half of the script is about the discovery of this alien organism invading the base. Remember, a good midpoint shift ups the stakes. So the shift here is when they learn that any one of them could be the alien entity. It’s no coincidence that this is when The Thing really gets good. A great mid-point shift will do that.

6) Carefully plot how you reveal information – Always be aware of what order you reveal your information in and how that affects the reader. One omission or one addition can completely change the way the next 30 pages reads. For example, here, the movie starts with an alien ship crashing. This gives us, the audience, superior knowledge over the characters. We know they’re dealing with an alien. This means we’re waiting for them to catch up. Now imagine had Lancaster NOT included this opening shot. Then, everything that happens is just as much a mystery to us as it is the characters. I don’t want to rewrite a classic, but the opening act may have been a little more exciting had we not received the spaceship information. We’d be equal amounts as baffled and curious as the characters.

7) SHOW DON’T TELL ARLERT – In the script, the characters have about a page and a half dialogue scene talking about how if the alien makes it to civilization, it could destroy the entire world. It’s not a bad scene. But they replaced it in the movie with a simple shot – Blair staring grimly at a computer chart that states: If the organism reaches one of the other continents, the entire world population will be contaminated within 27,000 hours.

8) Foreplays not Climaxes (Aka Don’t reveal all your fun stuff right away) – I see this all the time with amateur writers. They’re so excited about the cool parts of their script that they can’t wait to write them! So when it’s time, they drop all their reveals on you simultaneously, like a giddy kid who’s been waiting to tell you about his trip to Six Flags all day. For example, the Americans find the Norwegian crew’s video tapes from their destroyed camp and start watching them to figure out what happened. An amateur writer might have slammed us with all the crazy reveals immediately (alien ship, alien body). But Lancaster takes his time with it, showing the Norwegians having fun on the tapes, basically being boring. It isn’t until a handful of scenes pass that we see the Norwegians blow up the ice and discover the alien ship. If you throw all your climaxes at us at once, we get bored. Give us some foreplays beforehand.

9) Lack of Trust = Great Drama! – Once characters stop trusting each other, the drama in your story is upped ten-fold. You now have characters who are guarded, suspicious, not saying what they mean, probing. This ESPECIALLY helps dialogue, since it’ll create a lot of subtext. Whether it’s because they think another person is secretly a shape-shifting alien or because they think their husband cheated on them with their best friend, it’s always good to look for situations where characters don’t trust one another.

10) Use Cost/Value Ratio to determine whether a scene is necessary – There was an entire cut sequence in The Thing where the dogs escaped the compound and MacReady went after them with a snowmobile. It was a nice scene but it wasn’t exactly necessary. Producers HATE cutting these sequences after they’ve been shot because it’s cost them millions of dollars. Which is why they try to cut them at the script stage. This is where you can benefit from pretending you’re a producer. Simply ask yourself, “Is the VALUE of this sequence worth the COST of what it would take to shoot?” But Carson, you say, why should I care about the budget? I’m not the director or producer. That’s not the point. The point is, you’ll start to see what is and isn’t necessary for your script. If you say, “Hmm, would I really pay 5 million bucks to shoot this chase scene that doesn’t even need to happen?” you’ll probably get rid of it, and your script will be tighter for it.

These are 10 tips from the movie “The Thing.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!