Believe it or not, I didn’t like this movie for a long time. I’m not really into the whole stoner culture and this film was basically a promotional tool for the Toke and Tug crowd. But I watched it again recently (sans the close-mindedness) and I was kind of blown away. The character work here is amazing (not that I should be surprised. It’s written by the Coens) and the dialogue is top-notch. And that’s the main reason I wanted to give it the Tuesday treatment.  I wanted to see if I could snag a few dialogue tips. You know, the more I study dialogue, the more I realize it’s less about the actual writing of the dialogue, and more about all the things you do before the dialogue. In other words, the characters, the relationships, the situation. If you get all those things right, the dialogue writes itself.  That observation is on full display here.

1) Introduce your hero in a way that tells us EXACTLY who he is – I know I put this tip in my book, but I couldn’t dissect this script without bringing up how perfectly it’s executed here. We meet “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges) at the grocery store, shopping in the middle of the night, wearing a bathrobe. I mean, how do you NOT know who this character is after this scene? And yet I continue to see writers introducing their characters in unimaginative situations that tell us little to nothing about them. Come on guys! This is a fairly simple tip to execute!

2) CONFLICT ALERT – You’ll notice that in pretty much the entire script for The Big Lebowski (almost every scene) people are in disagreement. Walter and The Dude have two completely different philosophies on life. Walter thinks Donny (Steve Buschemi) is a total moron and is always yelling at him. Walter pulls guns on bowlers who cheat. The Dude and Mr. Lebowski never agree. The Dude and the Nihilists don’t agree. The Dude and the thugs don’t agree. Since there’s zero agreement in every scene, there’s always conflict. And guess what conflict leads to? That’s right, good dialogue.

3) Use passionate characters to distract us from exposition-heavy locations/scenes – The bowling alley where our characters always meet up has NOTHING to do with the story. It’s merely there for expositional purposes.  Technically, our characters could be discussing this stuff anywhere (a coffee shop, a workplace, a restaurant). Here’s why the Coens are clever though. They know if the location is random, the exposition will stick out like a sore thumb.  So they create this bowling alley setting and have one of their characters be the most DIE HARD BOWLER EVER (Walter).  This is no longer a random setting.  It’s an institution.  Discussions here matter because this place matters to our trio (particularly Walter).  I see too many scripts where writers lazily place their characters at coffee shops to dish out exposition.  These scenes ALWAYS smell like exposition.  This tip is a great way to avoid this issue.

4) Give someone in a position of power a handicap – The irony behind this make-up always works. The extremely rich Mr. Lebowski is in a wheelchair.

5) (DIALOGUE) Conversation Diversion – An easy way to write some good dialogue is to create a diversion for one of the characters in the conversation, so that he’s dealing with someone else at the same time he’s dealing with the primary character. So in “Lebowski,” we’re at the bowling alley and the The Dude is asking Walter what the fuck they’re going to do about losing the money. At the same time, Donny informs Walter that the semifinals of the tournament are on the Sabbath. Walter freaks out because he’s not allowed to bowl on that day. So he’s yelling at Donny to change the day at the same time that he’s explaining to The Dude that they have nothing to worry about.  A conversation diversion is a great way to spice up dialogue.

6) Always try and escalate the stakes around the midpoint – Readers get bored quickly.  The key to preventing their boredom is to keep them on edge. A great way to do this is to make the second half of your story BIGGER than the first half. You do this by raising the stakes in the middle of the script. Here the stakes are raised when Mr. Lebowski tells The Dude that because The Dude took his money, he told the kidnappers to do whatever they wanted to to get it back from him. He then shows Dude a severed toe the kidnappers sent. This isn’t a game anymore. The stakes have been raised.

7) Give your character a plan then find a way to fuck it up. – Really, you should approach every story you tell this way. Give a character a plan (he has to achieve something) then fuck it up for him. The result is entertainment. This tool should not only be used for the macro, but for individual sequences as well. For example, The Dude plans to do a money drop with the guys who kidnapped Mr. Lebowski’s wife, Bonnie. Before you write that sequence, ask yourself, “How can I fuck this up?” Well, Walter asks The Dude if he can come along. He does, and halfway there, Walter says he’s got his own plan. He’s going to give them a fake suitcase of his dirty underwear and keep the ransom money for themselves. Adding Walter fucked things up.

8) (DIALOGUE) The One-Sided Conversation – This is another dialogue scene that always works. Create a “conversation” where only one person is talking the entire time. The audience is so used to a back and forth, that the lack of one is somewhat jarring and ignites the scene. Here we have the famous scene where Walter and The Dude go to the house of the guy they THINK stole their money. It turns out to be a 16 year old kid. Walter proceeds to grill the kid for the entire scene. The kid just looks back at him the whole time and does nothing (this is followed by the classic moment where Walter destroys his car).

9) Keep throwing shit at your protag – Just keep throwing terrible things at your protag. That’s all this movie is. Someone steals The Dude’s rug. Walter botches the drop, putting The Dude in danger. The Nihilists come after him. Mr. Lebowski comes after him. His car is taken. The suitcase is stolen. Hurl the worst things imaginable at your protag and watch him react. It’s always interesting.

10)  Do everything in your power to avoid writing two slow scenes in a row. ALWAYS KEEP THE STORY MOVING – The cool thing about this movie is that after every “slow” scene (which are usually the bowling scenes), something YANKS The Dude back into the story. In other words, there’s never two slow scenes in a row. All of these things happen after a slow scene: Mr. Lebowski wants to meet. Jackie Treehorn (the porn king) wants to meet. The Nihilists show up when he’s taking a bath. Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) needs him to come over right away. They walk out of the bowling alley and their car is on fire. Lots of young writers think they need three or four scenes of detox before throwing the reader back into the story. This script proves that you only need one.

Bonus tip – For good dialogue, create an opposite dynamic between your two main characters – Whichever two characters talk to each other the most in your script, create the most exaggerated dynamic between them possible.  Because at their very core, they will be the opposite, their conversations will be filled with conflict.  And conflict = good dialogue.  Walter is a war vet.  The Dude is a Pacifist. I mean, how can these two NOT have great dialogue together?

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

For the foreseeable future, every Tuesday will be a Scriptshadow Secrets type breakdown of a great movie, giving you 10-12 screenwriting lessons from some of the best movies of all time. Today will be the first entry, “The Graduate.” Next week will be The Big Lewbowski. And going forward from there, I’ll be taking suggestions. Feel free to offer potential films in the comments section, and if you like what someone’s suggested, make sure to “like” their comment so I know what the most popular requests are.

THE GRADUATE

Logline: A college graduate comes back home, where he’s pursued by one of his mother’s friends, a relationship that is tested when he falls in love with the woman’s daughter.

Writers: Calder Willingham and Buck Henry (based on the novel by Charles Webb)

The Graduate allllllmost made it into my book but, to be honest, I was a little scared of it. The movie is based around the one thing every single screenwriting book tells you not to do – include a passive protagonist. I thought, “What if I can’t figure out why it works? It’ll fly in the face of everything I’ve learned.” The good news is, I DID figure it out. What I realized was that the 3-Act structure is basically built around the idea of an active protagonist. Someone wants something (Act 1), they go after it, encountering obstacles along the way (Act 2), and they either get it or don’t (Act 3). If someone isn’t going after something, the 3 Act structure isn’t as relevant, which is why so many scripts that don’t have a goal-oriented hero fall apart. The solution then, is to offset this lack of action somehow. And you do it with one of the most common tools in the craft: CONFLICT – a central focus of this breakdown.  Read on!

1) To quickly convey who your protagonist is, introduce them around people who are the opposite – This is an age-old trick and it never fails. If your hero is crazy, introduce him around a bunch of normal people. If your hero’s too nice, introduce him around a bunch of assholes. The opposing characteristics of these characters will work to highlight your own hero’s traits. So in The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock is introverted and quiet. The writers then THRUST him into his graduation party, where everyone is loud and excited. We wouldn’t have captured Benjamin’s mood nearly as well if all the other characters were just as introverted and quiet as he was.

2) If your hero’s passive, one of the other main characters must be active – If all you have is passive people in your screenplay, then nobody’s going after anything, which means there will be ZERO happening in your script. Someone has to drive the story. In this case, because Ben isn’t active, Mrs. Robinson is. She’s the one who wants Ben, who wants the affair, who pursues Ben. This is why, even though Ben is such a reactive person, stuff is still happening in the story. We have someone pursuing a strong goal.

3) The Power Of Conflict – I realized that the main reason this story works despite its main character being so passive, is that every single scene is STUFFED with conflict. Every scene in The Graduate has either a) two characters who want completely different things, or b) One character keeping/hiding important information from another character.  There is just so much resistance in The Graduate.  Since each individual scene is so good (due to the intense amount of conflict), it distracts us from the fact that there’s no goal driving the story forward (until later, when Ben falls for Elaine).

4) Easiest Scene to Write – One of the easiest ways to make a scene fun is to give one character a SUPER STRONG GOAL and give another character the EXACT OPPOSITE GOAL. This creates conflict in its most potent form, which leads to a high level of drama. It’s no coincidence that this approach created one of the best scenes of all time, Mrs. Robinson trying to keep Ben at the house and seduce him (her goal) while Ben is trying desperately to escape and avoid her seduction (his goal).

5) STAKES ALERT – Notice how when Mr. Robinson invites Ben to a nightcap, he says, “How long have your dad and I been partners?” This is a HUGE piece of information as it raises the stakes in Ben and Mrs. Robinson’s relationship considerably. If the only thing at stake in this affair is Ben’s pride or emotions, that wouldn’t be enough to drive an entire movie. But screwing up his father’s business, that’s a whole different ballgame. You want to make sure the consequences for your characters’ actions are as big as they can possibly be.

6) MID-POINT SHIFT ALERT – The Graduate has one of the best mid-point shifts I’ve ever seen. Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, comes back from school. She and Ben are then set up. The whole second half of the movie now moves to Ben’s relationship with Elaine while he tries to fend off a scorned Mrs. Robinson. Like all good mid-point shifts, it adds a new wrinkle to the story that keeps it fresh. Had they stretched Ben’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson across the entire story all on its own, the movie likely would’ve run out of steam.

7) Cheating/Infidelity scripts must be PACKED with dramatic irony – When you have a character cheating or a couple hiding a relationship from others, you want to put them in as many situations as possible where there’s dramatic irony. For example, when Ben first meets Elaine before their date, Mrs. Robinson is in the room, leering at them from the corner. Same with an early scene where Mr. Robinson invites Ben for a nightcap and Mrs. Robinson (who just tried to seduce Ben moments ago) enters the room. We feel the tension because of the secrets Ben and Mrs. R share. These situations also lead to some great line opportunities, such as when Mr. Robinson says to his wife, “Doesn’t he look like he has to beat the girls off with a stick?” “Yes,” she replies. He does.

8) The “Bad Date” Scene – The Graduate did something really cool that I’ve never noticed before. The story needed to show Ben and Elaine fall in love quickly because Elaine had to go back to college and we had to believe Ben had fallen in love with her enough to chase her there. Normally, I see writers writing these “lovey-dovey” scenes to prove their leads’ love to the audience (see Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones). For whatever reason, these scenes often have the opposite effect, making us nauseous and annoyed by the couple. So The Graduate takes the COMPLETE OPPOSITE approach. Ben’s only going on a date with Elaine because his parents make him. In order not to piss off Mrs. Robinson, he’s a total bitch to Elaine all night, taking her to a strip club and embarrassing her on stage. It gets so bad that Elaine starts crying, making Ben realize how much of a jerk he’s been. He apologizes, which leads to their first kiss. Experiencing a traumatic night instead of an ideal one thrust them much deeper into their relationship, adding the kind of weight to their experience a “happy” date just wouldn’t have been able to achieve. So the next time you write a first-date scene or need to accelerate a relationship, consider your characters NOT getting along instead of getting along.

9) SCENE AGITATOR ALERT – Remember, you should always look for ways to make it difficult on your hero in a scene, especially when they want something badly. So when Ben finally gets to Elaine’s college and spots her getting on a bus, he follows her on in an attempt to win her back. Except Ben isn’t able to sit next to Elaine because someone’s already sitting there. He’s forced, instead, to sit diagonally behind her, meaning he has to lean forward at a weird angle to make his case. It’s awkward. It makes his task difficult. And that’s exactly what you want to do to your character. If it’s too easy, you probably aren’t getting enough drama out of the situation.

10) “Crash the Party” moment – Whenever something’s going too good for too long for your protagonist, “crash the party.” In other words, bring them back down to earth. So later in the movie, after Ben’s chased Elaine to her college and the two have spent multiple scenes having the time of their lives together, Ben arrives back at his hotel to find Mr. Robinson waiting for him. He crashes the party, informing Ben that he knows about the affair, and that there’s no way he’s letting Ben anywhere near his family from this point forward.

These are 10 tips from the movie “The Graduate.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Inception,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

So last week I gave you ten screenwriting tips to take away from Aliens, one of the best sci-fi action films ever. This week, we’re looking at the sequel to Aliens, Alien 3, which a young David Fincher directed. Now originally, I wrote this long impassioned opening about how terribly directed this movie was. The setting was beyond boring. The casting was uninspired. For some reason Fincher had every character whispering to each other. I’ve since done some research and learned that Alien 3 had an extremely complicated development period even by Hollywood standards. 30-some takes were written over the course of six years and when they finally hit production, they were still rewriting the script. Fincher was so upset about the experience that he parted ways with the project and left the studio to cut the film. Does this mean I’m going to take it easy on the script? Hell no. They had six years to write this thing. They made the choice to go ahead with it before it was ready. Casablanca was rewritten during production, right? No, I’m not going to be easy on it because even with these excuses, Alien 3 is still terrible beyond comprehension. With that in mind, here are ten mistakes to avoid when writing your next screenplay.

PASSIVE STORY
You’ve heard about passive heroes a lot – characters who let everything come to them, who let outside forces dictate their actions instead of taking charge and doing it themselves? Well there’s another passive activity you want to avoid – passive storylines! Alien 3 spends the first half of its running time with absolutely NOTHING going on. Where is the goal? Where is the story? Where is the DESIRE from any of the characters (alien included!) to do ANYTHING?? It’s just a bunch of people sitting around with occasional cuts to an alien growing up. Contrast this with Aliens where there’s always a strong goal for the characters (go in and kill the aliens). Or even in the first Alien, which is closer in spirit to this one, the alien itself was active (searching out and killing its prey). Here, no one’s pursuing anyone. Even when they decide to catch the alien, they do it in a passive way (they try to lure him to a spot on the base – forcing them to run away from it the whole time). Reflecting on this film, I can’t remember a single active pursuit by anyone. This alone killed any chances the movie had of being good.

ACTING OUT OF CHARACTER
In the real world, people act out of character all the time. In the movies, the rules are different. If someone who’s perennially shy busts out the Dougie on the 3rd Street Promenade, the audience is going to be really confused (unless it’s properly set up of course). One of the quickest ways to lose a reader is to have your character act completely out of character, as is the case here with Ripley. Let’s recap, shall we? Ripley survives her entire crew being killed by a crazy ass alien. Ripley goes into cryo-sleep for 57 years. Ripley is asked to come help some marines dispose of some more aliens. She does, kicking ass and being one of the only survivors. She again goes into cryo-sleep. Her ship crash lands on a prison planet, and everyone onboard besides her dies, including the little girl she’s unofficially adopted as a daughter. After a few minutes of crying, what does she say to the big creepy ugly personality-less weird dude taking care of her? “Are you attracted to me?” Yes, all of a sudden Ripley wants to fuck!!!! Despite us not seeing Ripley have a single sexual urge for two movies, now she’s a nymphomaniac! Seriously, who the hell wrote this?

YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY WITH LAZINESS
For some weird reason, certain writers believe they can skimp on the details and we’ll just go with it. We will not go with it. We will always spot when a writer is lazy. Let’s look at the prison here in Alien 3. This is supposed to be a maximum security prison right? So then why are there NO RULES!?? Why is there NO STRUCTURE!?? Prisoners can walk around wherever and whenever they want. There are no prison cells…IN A PRISON! There is no structure besides an occasional meal in the common area. It’s unclear who the warden is. It doesn’t even look like a prison. It looks like a series of interconnected tunnels. If you’re going to write a movie about a prison, learn how prisons operate so that your script will at least be somewhat plausible. Laziness gets you nowhere.

LOGIC MISTAKES EVERYWHERE
I’m always disappointed when writers ignore logic. But especially in a sci-fi movie. The rules are much more precarious in sci-fi because you’re already asking your audience to make a leap and believe in a world that doesn’t exist. Throwing a bunch of logic holes into that story is like shining multiple spotlights on the illusion. We are asked to believe, in Alien 3, that in a maximum security prison with the most lethal prisoners in the universe, that there isn’t a single weapon in the entire prison??? This is such a preposterous notion that it alone could be used as a legitimate excuse for hating the movie.

TRUST YOUR GUT
I have a theory I’ve formulated over time and I think it’s a solid one. When it comes to key decisions in your story, trust your gut. If your gut tells you it’s bad idea, it’s probably a bad idea. Even if it feels right from a logistical-standpoint. Even if it feels right from a character standpoint. If there’s that little voice in the back of your head saying, “This doesn’t feel right.” Trust it. To prove this theory, go back to all those reluctant choices you made in your previous screenplays. Chances are on an overwhelming percentage of them you turned out to be right. They didn’t work. I bring this up because while Ripley getting pregnant with an alien and having a special cross-species relationship with it may have sounded cool in the room, it’s one of those things that, at a gut level, you know isn’t right. Ignoring this gut feeling led to one of the dumber storylines we’ve seen in the franchise.

ALL THE CHARACTERS LOOK AND ACT EXACTLY THE SAME
There are a lot of reasons for you to differentiate your characters. One of the most important ones is that the more different your characters are, the more they bring out the differences in the other characters. If a person is nice, for example, we’ll obviously see that they’re nice. But we’ll see that niceness more clearly if we put them in a room with a mean person. Their qualities are exaggerated by being in proximity to their opposite. In Aliens, Burke’s sliminess is brought out in large part by what a good person Ripley is. In Alien 3, every single character looks the same and acts the same. They’re all a variation of annoyed, twitchy, and angry, except for maybe the doctor, who’s so boring in his own way that it doesn’t matter. You need variety in your characters. If you were to ask what’s the biggest reason for why Aliens is so great and Aliens 3 is so terrible, the unique cast of characters would likely come up as the top answer.

NO HUMOR
This is a common beginner mistake. Someone wants to make a dark film. So they make every single stinking frame as dark as humanly possible. Dumb move. Emotions are like anything in life. If you get too much of one, you’re going to get bored. I love cake. But that doesn’t mean I want to eat it three times a day. When it comes to emotions, you need to bring the audience to the other end of the spectrum every once in awhile to mix things up. Again, look at Aliens. There’s some bleak ass shit in that movie. But it’s peppered with a lot of humor (and plenty of hope as well). Alien 3 is one long bleak-fest. I counted a single joke, one joke!, in the entire movie (“No need to get sarcastic”). It could be as simple as adding a comedic relief character (Hudson) or throwing in a reasonable amount of gallows humor. Don’t think of it as selling out the darkness. Think of it as reminding the audience what darkness is.

IDENTIFY THE CENTRAL PROBLEMS – FIX THEM
At some point in the writing process, you should note the major problems in your script (the things that don’t quite make sense or aren’t yet working) and formulate a plan to fix them. Bad screenwriters allow many of these lingering issues to stay in the script, figuring they won’t be a big deal. If you aren’t striving for perfection, why even bother pursuing screenwriting? Let’s take a look at a really lazy mistake in Alien 3. In the final act, where they confront the alien, it’s established that the alien won’t hurt Ripley, because she’s impregnated with another alien. So let me get this straight. The only person on this entire base that we even halfway care about – your HERO no less – CAN’T BE HARMED BY THE ALIEN????? How stupid of a story decision is that? Identify your major problems and fix them. Or else you get ridiculous situations like this one.

WOE-IS-ME
Let me make something clear. Audiences hate woe-is-me characters. They hate them more than any other character you can possibly put in your screenplay. Whoever was dumb enough to turn Ripley from an active intelligent ass-kicking take-charge protagonist into a whispering, whiny, mousey annoying whisperer who can’t shut up about how awful she feels should never be allowed near a copy of Final Draft again. There are very VERY rare occasions where woe-is-me protagonists work (Mikey from Swingers comes to mind) but my suggestion would be to avoid them like the plague. The audience will hate your hero, and by association your movie.

BEWARE OF CLICHÉ/PREDICTABLE MOMENTS
Audiences are savvy. Many of them have seen enough television and film to have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen next. However, if your script is packed with scenarios where the audience can predict EXACTLY what’s going to happen next, chances are you’re being too cliché and need to make a better choice. There’s a moment deep in Alien 3 where Ripley asks Rock (I don’t even know his character name so I’m using his real life one) to chop off her head because she’s pregnant with an alien. She turns away and puts her hands up on the bars, waiting for him to do it. There is then a 60 second build-up where he brings the axe back and prepares to kill her. Oh no! Is he going to do it??? I’d say of the 5 million people who saw this film, 4,986,000 knew Rock would deliberately swing and miss, making the loud dramatic “THONK” on the bars, we’d stay on Rock’s face so as to momentarily wonder if he’d killed her, we’d show that Ripley was indeed still alive, then give Rock a rah-rah speech about how much he needs her. What do you know? That’s exactly what happened! You can’t always avoid your audience being ahead of you, but with a little effort, you can avoid cliché moments and at least keep them guessing.

IN SUMMARY
I don’t know what else to say. I guess if there are great screenplays like American Beauty and Dogs Of Babel out there where every single choice the writer makes is perfect, there can also be screenplays where every single choice the writer makes is disastrous. Such is the unlucky distinction of Alien 3. But maybe it was a nice reminder to the studios that you can’t fake it. That even the death of some of your biggest franchises is one bad script away. I’ll finish this breakdown with another question for all you Alien nerds. To this day, I’m still confused about the Alien 3 trailer that came out promising aliens coming to earth. What the hell was that? Why would they play a trailer that had nothing to do with the movie? I guess it’s just one more nonsensical thing associated with this catastrophe of a film.

Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy.  That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice.  Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.

KILL YOUR BABIES

Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.

NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY

There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.

ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS

As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!

USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME

Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).

GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE

Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.

MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG

Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).

THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE

You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.

STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE

What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.

SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE

One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)

Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT

I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Aliens.” To get 490 more tips from movies as varied as “Star Wars,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy.  That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice.  Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.

KILL YOUR BABIES

Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.

NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY

There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.

ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS

As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!

USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME

Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).

GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE

Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.

MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG

Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).

THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE

You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.

STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE

What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.

SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE

One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)

Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT

I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.