In the immortal words of LL Cool J, “DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK!”

Or maybe do!

The box office is firing on all cylinders as it hits the home stretch of 2025. First Wicked For Good killed it. And now Zootopia makes a half-a-billion dollars worldwide in a single weekend!

Oh, and if you think that’s all, I hear there’s a new James Cameron movie coming out. Those calling for the end of Hollywood are, all of a sudden, scrambling to rewrite their headlines.

It seems like there was something for everyone this weekend.

The musical theater crowd went to see Wicked for the 46th time. Young families went to see Zootopia. Millennials and Gen X binged part 1 of 7 of the final season of Stranger Things.

I’d say it’s a pretty good time to be a content lover.

And me? Well, I didn’t watch any of that stuff. I plugged in Bugonia and got my brain warped. I know indie films aren’t interested in becoming box office titans. But do you think that they could’ve chosen ANY TITLE IN EXISTENCE that had less appeal than “Bugonia?” Just hearing that title makes me never wanna watch a movie again, much less this movie! Sometimes I think these indie outfits go too far in their indie-ness. Just give your movie a fucking normal title!!! You could’ve made another 5 million bucks had you just done that. More on Bugonia in a bit.

Let’s handle Wicked first. Do you know that the author of the Wicked books just announced a prequel to Wicked, titled, “Galinda: A Charmed Childhood?” And you KNOW they’re greenlighting that movie in the next 48 hours. Lol. I love how shameless Hollywood is.

But can you blame them??

Nobody knows where the next hit is coming from. Like Steven Spielberg famously said: The only sure thing in Hollywood is a sequel.

Or, apparently, a prequel to a prequel.

As for Zootopia, trying to figure out which of these Disney movies is going to be the next Finding Dory and which is going to be the next Buzz Lightyear is like trying to predict who’s going to win the Super Bowl. You have no idea. Or at least I don’t.

But I will say this about the Zootopia formula. It has two big things going for it that increase the likelihood of ADULTS wanting to take their kids to the movie. Cause that’s part of the deal when you write animation. If you write it like too much of a kiddie flick — think Transylvania — then you limit how many adults want to suffer through that. So if you can sneak in some successful adult movie tropes, you can change that.

Here we have a 2-hander. 2 people teaming up for the same goal. This is every cop movie ever. It can be used in other genres as well. We love a great pairing, which we get with Judy (the bunny) and Nick (the fox). It’s a little more exciting than going with a single hero. Also, the right pairing ensures you’ll have conflict in every single scene, since the characters in these 2-handers are always at odds with each other.

Secondly, we have AN IRONIC pairing. The irony is what gets the adults interested. Sure, you could have paired a bunny with a badger and kids still would’ve come. You could’ve paired a fox with a horse and kids still would’ve come. But neither of those pairings would’ve been intriguing to adults. It’s the irony of pairing a fox with an animal that foxes usually eat that intrigues adults.

Finally, you have a good old-fashioned investigation mystery storyline. Which is no different than Knives Out, or any number of crime mysteries. So that’s a bonus THIRD THING that brings in the adults.

If you do that right, you can pull in 100, 200, even 300 million dollars more than if your animated film was a straight kiddie movie.

So, if you factor all that in, it’s not a surprise at all that the film did gangbusters business. So, good for Zootopia. There are some Disney franchises I wish could be publicly executed but Zootopia is the epitome of what a Disney animated film should be. It’s pure entertainment. No overt messaging. All about the fun. I will see it the second it hits Disney Plus.

Okay, let’s get into what I really want to talk about, which is ALIENS.

Let’s start with the documentary, Age of Disclosure. If you’re on the fence about whether aliens have visited earth, this documentary pretty much erases all doubt. 37 high-ranking government officials come clean and say they know there’s some sort of intelligent species on earth. Why they’re here is still unclear. But they’re definitely here, and this documentary exposes that. If you’re new to the topic, this movie will literally blow your mind.

Speaking of movies about aliens, guess what Bugonia is about? ALIENS! It’s about these two small-town beekeepers, one of them mentally retarded, who kidnap the CEO of a bio-industrial corporation that plagues our food with countless chemicals and, our lead kidnapper believes, is responsible for giving the rest of his family cancer and killing them.

The lead character, Teddy, played by Jesse Plemons, has kidnapped Michelle, played by Emma Stone, because he believes she’s an alien and wants her to introduce him to her leader so he can demand that they stop poisoning their food.

The best way I can describe this movie, which I’m only halfway through (I’m going to finish it tonight), is that it’s uncomfortable. In particular, you feel very uncomfortable about Don, Teddy’s cousin, who’s retarded. And Teddy is manipulating him to believe all this and Don knows it’s not right and keeps asking if they can stop but Teddy manipulates him with love and false morality, essentially forcing this retarded cousin to help him do this thing that will ruin his life. It’s highly uncomfortable, which is why I needed to split it into a 2-night viewing experience.

On the screenwriting side, if you’re going to write a movie like this, you have to have a theme. You have to have a message. And this movie has one. It’s demonstrating how the abundance of media can prey on our propensity to latch onto conspiracy theories.

It used to be, back in the day, if you had an offbeat conspiracy theory, you would read about it in some alternative magazine, read a book about it, talk to a couple of friends about it who think you’re a little nuts, and then you were done. There was nowhere else to look to indulge that addiction.

But nowadays? The rabbit hole of even the rarest conspiracy theory is endless. There’s always another Reddit thread about it, always another Youtube video, always another podcast. We see that here with Teddy, who indulges in this very specific alien conspiracy theory about Andromedans coming to earth and infecting the food supply to control the people.

There’s this one scene where he’s riding his bike to work and listening to this podcast about Andromeda, and you can just tell that this is his whole life. He doesn’t spend a single moment not studying this. And it’s made him crazy.

So, the point is, if you’re going to go away from writing something commercial, your movie has to say something. Because, otherwise, why wouldn’t you write a movie that had a much better chance of making money?

What I will say about this script is that they were smart in how they set the plot up. With these weird indie movies, it’s tempting to leave all structure and form behind and just write whatever weird shit you come up with. But, if you do that, you write a movie like Under the Skin. Which is an experimental film.

Here, we have a kidnapping at the center of the story. Which makes the movie part crime genre. Which is a familiar genre. It’s a familiar setup. That increases the likelihood of the movie connecting with a broader audience. In this case, that didn’t happen. I think the marketing made it look too weird. But if they had cut a trailer focusing on the kidnapping crime aspect, and built the marketing around that alone, it would’ve done much better than it’s doing.

Okay, on to Pluribus!

I’m still on the Pluri-bus! HONK HONK!

I’m so freaking fascinated by this show. But not for the same reasons as everyone else. I’m definitely still into the mystery of what’s going on.

But I’m way more into the mystery of how the writers are going to manage this highly nontraditional story. Gilligan has created one of the most inert story engines ever.

The show is basically about a woman hanging out at her house and being frustrated.

You know how you can tell a script has a weak story engine? They use a lot of “bump in the night” plot beats. “Bump in the night” plot beats are when the story is moving at such a slow pace that the only way to create any excitement is to have something go bump in the night. This is metaphorical, of course, and just means anything that pops up out of nowhere to jolt the story. But I’m shocked at how many literal times in this show Gilligan has used “bump in the night” plot beats.

One happens in this episode! Carol is going to bed and hears a bump outside. She gets up and runs outside to see wolves eating her trash. In a previous episode, the lights in the city go off (bump in the night). In another episode, someone unexpectedly arrives (bump in the night).  I believe there are two more literal bumps in the night in episode 2.

There’s so little for your hero to do that the only thing to get them to do something, is to bring in a bump from outside.

So, if you’re bringing in a lot of bumps in the night to your script, that’s typically a sign that your plot is weak. You need a more active story engine.

Having said that, I have a theory that Gilligan, who’s a very good writer, knows this, and enjoys the challenge. He’s already conquered this realm of TV storytelling so he’s decided to see if he can win it on hard mode. He created this deliberately slow plot and now he’s challenging himself to make super slow plots entertaining.

For the most part, he’s succeeded. Like I said, I’m still into the mystery. But the show does feel like it’s teetering on the edge of a cliff and, at any second, could fall into the valley of boredom. I applaud him for taking that risk though and hope he keeps the show teetering rather than falling. Cause, ironically, the teetering is where the fun is at, as it’s the definition of unsafe.

Oh, and one final thing: TROLL 2 COMES OUT ON NETFLIX MONDAY! If you haven’t seen the first one, treat yourself to it now! I guarantee you’ll love it.

I am thankful for all of you guys and, therefore, on Black Friday, I’m offering a 50% discount on screenplay consultations. If you want one, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. Your script doesn’t have to be ready yet.

I am thankful that the central actors on Stranger Things are going to be getting an extra salary bump now that they’re eligible for Social Security.

I am thankful that my plan to clean my place until it’s spotless is still on for its completion date of December 31st and that I am going to begin any day now.

I am thankful for each and every meme that’s come out of the Ariande Grande and Cynthia Erivo Wicked For Good press tour.

I am thankful that writing remains the cheapest of all the artistic endeavors and all we need to write a screenplay is a 99 cent notebook and a 10 cent pencil.

I am thankful that, on the writing front, AI turned out to be a flash in the pan, and hasn’t advanced to the point everyone thought it would by now, which is writing half the movies in Hollywood.

I am thankful that I live in a city where I can go outside and play tennis on Thanksgiving Day, something I could not do when I lived back in Chicago.

I am thankful that they are making a Gremlins sequel with the original director and that Key and Peele are writing it.

I am thankful that I have held out for an entire six months so far to watch F1 for free, on Apple TV, because when I originally heard it was being produced by Apple TV, I assumed it was going to premiere on the service and, each subsequent weekend since it hit theaters, I had continued to assume it would be coming out on the service since, again, it was an Apple TV production AND I HAD APPLE TV. I am determined to wait through the next two months while it’s a $19.99 rental, and then the subsequent two months, when it’s a $5.99 rental, until it is finally available for free, on Apple TV, where I assumed it would be this whole time.

I am thankful for Jeff Goldblum singing “Popular.”

 

 

 

 

 

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And I am thankful that Sidney Sweeney’s Christie bombed so she can now go back to making movies where she’s hot again.

What are you thankful for!!!???

Carson hacks the Black List to find the best scripts!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: When a deadbeat son hires his friends to rob his own mother and father in order
to pay an outstanding debt to a local drug dealer, things don’t go as planned, and
family bonds are stretched to their furthest extremes.
About: Justin Varava has had a bit of success as a writer, scoring the occasional TV staffing gig. His most high profile job was writing for Wizards of Waverly Place. This script landed on the most recent Black List with 12 votes.
Writer: Justin Varava
Details: 105 pages

Harris Dickenson for Duane?

With the Black List falling to catastrophically bad levels, it’s become very hard to find good scripts from there.

But I’ve discovered a new approach!

Here’s what I do. I pick two scripts from the list and read the first two pages of each. Then, whichever has the better writing, that’s the one I go with.

The other script in play today was “Trapped,” about a woman who gets trapped in a cave with rising water. The opening of the script is pretty good. We jump right into it. A car is racing through the jungle at night with rain coming down hard. It emerges into an open section and two people are screaming and pointing towards a cave filling up with water.

So, why did I pick this script over that one?

Because this one had the better character moment. It opens with a woman painting herself. The painting is of her smiling. Whereas the real life version of her is the opposite.

Now you may be baffled right now, as you look at that first page and you think, “Wow, that is a wall of text! And right there on the first page! Carson always tells us never to do that so why would he choose this one over the other fast lean script?”

Two reasons. One, the writing here within this “wall” of text is strong. If it was weak then, yes, I would go with the other script. Two, when you read a lot of scripts, you get tired of anything that’s too familiar. And these very lean simplistic concepts all feel familiar to me. If the lean writing had a stronger more unique voice, though, I probably would’ve chosen it.

The hardest thing to do in writing is create interesting characters. Varava has proven in one page that he can create a character I want to know more about. And I was rewarded immediately with a great second scene that I’ll tell you about in a minute.

First, let’s dig into Turpentine’s plot.

Turpentine follows a 20-something burn out in a small town named Duane. Duane owes 8 grand to a bad dude for a long running drug tab, and the bad dude isn’t waiting any longer for his payment.

So Duane recruits his two dumb work buddies, Rodney and Billy, and asks them to rob his father, who has a very rare gun collection. So Rodney and Billy head over to the house one night, with masks, and ask Duane’s father, the very selfish Gene, where the guns are. Gene says he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

So Billy puts a gun to the head of Helen, Duane’s mom, who, by the way, is extremely unhappy in her marriage due to the fact that Gene won’t even look at her anymore. Billy begins counting to 3. If Gene doesn’t tell him where the guns are, he’ll kill his wife. Gene doesn’t even flinch when Billy counts down. At the end of the count, Billy drops his arm, too afraid to do it. The two then run out. Helen stares at her husband, realizing that he was perfectly okay with them killing her.

Meanwhile Rodney and Billy are so emotionally traumatized from the experience that they demand Duane still pay them for the job. So in addition to Duane owing the criminal boss money, he also owes these two money.

A couple of days later, when Helen goes into town, she spots Rodney, and due to an exposed tattoo, recognizes him from that night. He sees her immediately and tries to run away but she corners him in his car. But Rodney is not ready for what Helen has to say next. She’s not mad at him. She wants him to finish the job and kill her husband.

So while Duane attempts to find other ways to erase his debt, Helen keys in on eliminating the demon she lives with. But let’s just say that Gene isn’t the easiest target and that once you’ve shown your hand to someone, they’re going to be waiting for you the next time.

Let’s talk about the second scene in the script that I teased above.

Cause it’s the scene that solidified that I was going to read something good. It’s a simple dinner scene. Helen cooks chicken fried steak for her and Gene. But as Gene cuts and chews each piece, he’s clearly disappointed with the food.

He finally asks her what she did differently. She says nothing. He’s still suspicious. Slowly eats some more. Looks at her suspiciously. And finally asks the question again. Helen then confesses that she wanted to try something different, so she added a new spice. Gene nods like a cop who’s just caught a murder suspect in a lie and says, very seriously, that his wife should’ve informed him that it was now okay to lie in their marriage. He then goes back to eating in silence.

The reason I liked this scene is because it took a very simple premise — eating dinner — and it used that moment to tell me more about the marriage than the last 50 scripts with marriages combined.

And it wasn’t in this obvious way where they argue about wanting different temperatures on the thermostat. It was this very passive aggressive interrogation into something as simple as: what’s different with my food? It told us that these two have been together long enough that he knows every single little minor change in their routine. It shows that he has disdain for his wife. It shows she walks on eggshells around her husband. All wrapped up in two people eating dinner.

There was another scene a little later that confirmed this writer was the real deal. In it, a woman, Minnie, shows up at an elementary school for a parent-teacher conference with her son’s teacher.

Just as the teacher begins the meeting, the door opens and Duane emerges. Minnie stares at him with rage and says, “What are you doing here?” He says that he was on the e-mail chain that told him about this meeting. Minnie immediately looks to the teacher and says, “Get him off the chain. He doesn’t have custody anymore.”

Duane then proceeds to defend himself to the teacher, explaining that the things that lost him custody of his son were not exactly his fault, which Minnie then disputes, and Duane then defends the dispute.

This is such a clever setup for a scene. Every other writer in existence would’ve had these two come to the parent teacher conference separately but knowingly (Minnie would’ve known Duane was coming). This way is SO MUCH BETTER because it creates conflict from the start. And ALSO it allows the writer to plug in a ton of backstory about Duane and Minnie and their son without it feeling like backstory at all. Cause all of Duane’s backstory is him defending himself.

It takes real thought and skill to write a scene like this. I don’t encounter it often.

Varava makes a lot of great creative choices here. My favorite was when Rodney and Billy broke into the house and demanded Gene’s rare guns. Remember, as a writer, you have a choice about who Billy points the gun at. He could’ve had Billy point the gun at Gene. And I think most writers would’ve done that because it’s Gene who knows where the guns are.

But it’s SOOOOO much more interesting to have him point the gun at Helen because it exposes that Gene doesn’t care about his wife. He doesn’t care if she dies. And you only find that out if Billy points the gun at her. Not only that, but it tells us a lot about Helen as well. Helen knows where the guns are. She could’ve given them up. But she’s so terrified of her husband – he gives her a look that says, ‘don’t even think about it’ – that she chooses to risk death over his ire.

That’s really strong character development there.

Pretty much all the character work here is 5-star. Every character has been well developed. When a character speaks, they have really relatable takes on the human condition. Here’s Duane rationalizing his drug habit that’s left him 8 grand in debt to his work friends: “Well, I been coping. You know? Ever since Minnie threw me out, been trying to get my head straight. My mom was helping me for a bit, giving me some money. Then my dad found out and he cut me off. So, I’d become accustomed to a particular lifestyle, you know? Then, suddenly, through no fault of my own, I was no longer able to afford that lifestyle. And the uncertain feeling of not bein’ able to afford it made me need it even more. Ya know? So it was, like, this real unhealthy cycle.”

My extended family are all small-town folk, and I’ve had conversations that sound exactly like this. Every line feels so authentic. If I had read Trapped, I have no doubt that any of the characters would’ve come even close to the authenticity of these characters.

The only thing holding the script back is its ‘sleepy town’ ball and chain. It’s hard for small stories to elevate up to an impressive level. There’s just something about the tiny scope that limits the height of the ceiling. But boy is this some great character work. That helped it achieve the impossible and move up to an impressive.  That rarely happens!

Script link: Turpentine

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

What I learned: Everyday moments have powerful scenes hidden within them. A dinner. Pumping gas. Picking up your kid at school. Doing laundry. Standing in line at the store. Take two characters, a little imagination, and a desire to show the reader who your characters are, and you can use any one of these moments to write an informative entertaining scene.

Let’s be honest.

The Hollywood box office hasn’t exactly been on fire lately.

Pretty much everything is landing in “average” to “bomb” territory.

It’s led to a lot of people predicting the end of the movie business.

Except that Wicked Part 2 just made 150 million dollars.

This leaves Hollywood in a collective state of, ‘What the hell just happened?!?’

For an industry that’s been desperately trying to find its identity all year, Wicked’s success is going to create more questions than answers.

Because, while the news is awesome for Hollywood, it doesn’t exactly give it a roadmap moving forward. Big flamboyant musicals are not going to be the next superheroes. You probably can get one more big musical event movie out of this trend – and it will be Grease – but after that, you’re right back to square one. You need to figure out what’s going to replace the dying superhero genre.

What I can say about Wicked is that it may have cemented “event films” replacing “high concept films.” What’s the difference? High concept films are films where all the fun is on the screen. It’s Jurassic Park. It’s Fast and Furious. It’s Mission Impossible.

In contrast, event films are films where the fun is on the screen AND IN THE AUDIENCE. Event films are films you can dress up for. Event films are films you can be loud and celebratory during. Wicked, Minecraft, Barbie. These are event films.

They create this big fun atmosphere that people want to be a part of. Which makes sense when you think about it. It’s been so difficult for the movie business to pry eyeballs away from all the other types of media – TV, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram – that the films that were finally able to do it were the ones that added that extra element. It’s not just fun on the screen. It’s fun in the audience as well.

What does this mean for screenwriters?

Basically nothing.

It’s almost impossible to create an event from a spec script. There needs to be an element of pre-existence to the property. If you want to get into a more nuanced conversation, then, sure, you could game-plan your next spec to show that you’d be a good hire to write one of these films.

So, you could write something like Street Allie Punches Her Ticket and you would definitely get in the kinds of rooms that would allow you to pitch your take on Minecraft.

By the way – pro tip. If you want to prove that you can write for a franchise, write a spec script that’s a little bit darker than the franchise you want to write for. So, if you wanted to write Minecraft, you wouldn’t write a tone that exactly matches Minecraft. I promise you executives will think you’re too safe of a choice if you do that. They like to hire the writer who’s got a little more edge to him, even though, ironically, they’re going to sanitize that edge once you actually start writing for them.

Okay, moving on to what I really want to talk about today, which is Pluribus, episode 4.

I am happy to say that I’m officially on board for the rest of the season. For some of you, this might be boring news. But I consider it a very big deal. My bar for TV gets higher every year. I am having to MUSCLE my way through The Beast Within Me, barely getting through 20 minutes a night before I turn it off.

But Pluribus is shaping up to be the antidote to all these samey shows. I watch every episode start to finish. Probably because it’s a show that challenges a lot of screenwriting norms.

In the most recent episode, Zosia (Carol’s concierge) is recovering at the hospital from the grenade blast in the previous episode.

Carol heads home to see a bunch of people cleaning up around her house (from the grenade blast) and gets an idea. She invites one of them inside (biker guy) and asks him what he thinks of her books (Carol is a writer).

The biker guy says they love her books. They genuinely think they’re amazing. So Carol next asks what Helen (her dead girlfriend) thought of her books. Biker Guy is much more hesitant. She has to poke and prod him but he eventually admits that she didn’t like them.

From this, Carol gathers some valuable intel. These people cannot lie.

So Carol heads off to see Zosia and asks her: Is there a way to reverse this virus taking over the world? Zosia gets very uncomfortable and says that is an answer she cannot provide. From this, Carol deduces the answer is yes. But she must figure out a way to get that information out of Zosia.

Her plan? Heroin.

Carol requests heroin, injects herself with it and records the results at her home. Afterwards, she watches the recording, where she sees herself confessing every bit of truth in her brain (including that she wants to bang Zosia) and decides that, yup, this is going to work.

She then heads back to the hospital, covertly escorts Zosia outside while secretly dumping the heroin into her saline drip. Zosia proceeds to get very high and Carol asks her the question again: “How do I reverse your takeover of our planet?”

Zosia struggles to resist and gets close to giving her the answer but then everyone at the hospital comes out and surrounds Carol and Zosia, trying to convince Carol to stop. The heroin then throws Zosia into cardiac arrest and that’s the end of the episode.

One of the more interesting things about Gilligan’s post Breaking Bad career is that he places his storytelling within these very slow narratives. And this is the most dangerous area to be in as a screenwriter because you really need to know what you’re doing to keep a slow story entertaining.

It’s almost like you’re playing with a handicap.

But, this episode shows us how to do it well. Just like any good story, you want to set up a goal. In this case, the goal is: find out how to reverse the virus takeover of humanity.

Now, the thing with goals is they are only as powerful as the stakes attached to them. And, lucky for Gilligan, the stakes of this goal are enormous. Carol is literally trying to save every person on the planet. Those are bigger stakes than the Avengers trying to defeat Thanos.

That’s a big part of what’s driving the interest behind this show. Is that the stakes are so so high. But if you want to turbocharge a character with a goal and stakes, you can take it one step further and make the goal as hard as it can possibly be.

Which is what Gilligan has done. We do not see any scenario by which our heroine can save these 8 billion people.

And guess what: THAT’S EXACTLY WHY WE KEEP WATCHING.

If the goal were easy, we wouldn’t need to watch. Because we’d know that our hero would eventually figure it out.

This trio – A goal, that the goal is impossible, and high stakes – is what makes this incredibly simple episode compelling. All that’s happening here is someone is asking another person questions. It’s as simple a plan you’re going ot find. But, if those above factors are in place, Carol’s plan is exciting. A lot of writers forget that.

I also want to note that Gilligan solved the problem I brought up after episode 1, which is that there was no clear unresolved relationship we needed to tune in for every week.

Since then, it’s very clear that Carol and Zosia are the unresolved relationship that will drive the character part of the story.

A question you might ask is, “Can I do what Gilligan did and wait until episode 2 to bring in my central unresolved relationship?” The answer is no. Gilligan can do this because Apple TV promised him 2 seasons. He doesn’t need to worry about winning over a reader with his first episode. Because of his success, he gets to think of his show as a whole rather than nailing episode 1.

You, on the other hand, need to write the perfect pilot. Which means setting up the plot of your show. And setting up at least one (but preferably multiple) unresolved relationships. For example, Succession sets up the intense, complicated relationship between Logan and Kendall immediately in that first episode. It’s just a better practice as a screenwriter. It’s actually lazy to kick that can down the road to episode 2. But Gilligan can get away with it cause of his success.

What I also like about this show is that it poses a lot of weird questions that you can’t get from any other TV show, past or present. Carol is attracted to Zosia. But Zosia is the culmination of 8 billion other people. So, if Carol were to, say, kiss Zosia, she’s kissing everyone.

So, you’re thinking, “How is that going to work?” It’s not exactly the simple situation that was Jim and Pam on The Office. So it’s like adding an atom bomb to a traditional TV writing practice, which I love.

The show is still clumsy. There’s no doubt about it. I’m not convinced you need to write a 10 minute record-and-playback sequence of Carol doing heroin to determine that heroin will make Zosia tell her the truth. Definitely a weird scene.

But every good TV show or movie has a little weirdness to it. There are imperfect things about it. As long as the core components of the story are in place, you can get away with a lot. And the core of Pluribus is working.

Don’t you agree?

Hep beats out the competition with his digital possession tale. The scene takes place in the aftermath of neuroscientist Richard’s successful simulated demonic possession.

Today’s breakdown includes a long scene. The art of writing long scenes has been lost. In our determination to edit and chop and condense every single aspect of storytelling, we’ve created a series of mini-scenes instead of good old fashioned long scenes.

The big benefit of writing long scenes is that they can be stories unto themselves. And you can tell those stories not unlike the story of your script. Just like a script has a beginning, a middle, and an end, a long scene has the requisite real estate to do that as well.

But here’s the real proof that we should be writing longer scenes: All my favorite scenes in movies are long. As I’m guessing yours are too.

So then why don’t we write long scenes these days? Simple. Because nobody knows how to do it anymore. It’s easy to write a 2 page scene because you don’t have to come up with much of a scene idea to write two pages of text. But a longer scene requires you to plan something out. And that’s harder.

With that in mind, let’s check out Hep’s winning scene for his Blood & Ink entry, Transcranial.

Download full scene here: Transcranial

In horror, the formula you want to go back to again and again when it comes to scene-writing is this: Imply that there is potential danger close by, and with every 30 seconds that passes, that danger should feel a little closer than it was before.

That’s what these first two pages are setting up. Daniel is the potential danger. We don’t know how bad it will be. But we know something isn’t right here, and that’s what motivates us to keep reading.

That’s the important part of the equation. If you don’t imply that the danger is close, then we don’t have as much of an incentive to keep reading. That’s why this setup is so powerful.

And when you do it right, it allows you to play around as a writer. It allows you to sit in the anticipation of what’s coming and make the reader earn it. “Moving on to the hard questions already. What’s 2+2? Now that’s a question for the ages. Do you want to know the right answer? The real answer?”

This is a response that can only work within this type of setup. If the same line is used between two friends catching up at a coffee shop, it’s white noise dialogue. It’s wasted script space. It’s unneeded. But here, because we sense that Daniel is not okay, a line like this almost comes off as a threat, which deepens our curiosity and makes us want to find out what happens next even more.

As Hep moves into this second set of pages, he has a choice to make. He can keep creating this sense of mystery, and slowly pull you deeper and deeper into the web of the scene. Or he can ramp things up and be more up front with his horror.

He chooses the latter. Daniel starts quoting lines from the Bible. There’s some fervor to the way he quotes the book, implying he’s passionate about the passage. There is no pretense anymore. At this point, we know he’s possessed. But Sarah doesn’t know that yet.

I personally feel that Hep jumped the gun here – he went too fast into “Daniel is possessed.” But, again, these are the creative choices that every writer must make. You’re never going to please everyone but you have to be okay with that. If you’re trying to please everyone, you’ll please no one. In other words, Hep doesn’t owe me the version of the scene I would’ve preferred.

Also, there’s a small mistake I want to note. This line: “Sarah cannot fully hide being slightly taken aback by Daniel’s response.” Avoid overuse of adverbs in general. But definitely avoid two of them in the same sentence. “Fully” and “Slightly.” I am guilty of this myself so I’m quick to recognize it. In many cases, adverbs cancel each other out. “Fully” means the opposite of “slightly.”

One of the things I’m very attuned to when I read a script is truth. Is the writer writing the truth of the situation (how it would actually go down if this were real life) or are they manipulating the truth because they prefer it for their story?

Here, I don’t feel that Hep is being truthful. This woman is in a room, alone, with a man, who’s acting weird, and who starts making sexual noises. You’re getting into some risky territory there. Someone (Sarah) could get hurt. So, the truth of this scenario is more likely to be Richard sending people in to protect Sarah. The safety of one’s employees is always the most important thing.

So, then, if you wanted to continue this scene as is, how would you address that issue? Well, it would be easy. You’d make it so that Richard wants to shut down the interview but Sarah is the one insisting that they keep going. She’s the one who wants to get to the bottom of what Daniel is going through.

With that said, I haven’t read the whole script. We do get a line from Richard here, where he lies to Sarah, which implies that he’s snakey. If that’s set up appropriately before this scene – that he will sacrifice anything for this experiment – then I might change my tune. But it did feel false in the moment, as I was reading it.

On the plus side, Hep is doing what I said these scenes should do. Which is, with each passing 30 seconds, the situation has become more dangerous than it was before. Daniel may be able to read minds now.

That’s how good scenes operate. They keep BUILDING. Where long scenes die is when they either stay stagnant or they recede. But here, so far, things are getting more dangerous by the minute. The scene is BUILDING. I’m going to say this again because it’s important. It is very hard for readers to stop reading if a scene is building towards something.

Another strong choice that Hep made here was to add a third entity to the scene – Richard and James in the control room. Most of these types of scenes play out with one person talking to another. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Clarice and Hannibal Lecter turned that type of scene into an art.

But having a third entity there creates a more complex dynamic that makes the scene less predictable. That’s important because a big reason why scenes become boring to readers is that the reader’s seen them before. So anything you can use to throw off the traditional rhythm can take an average scene and elevate it to a higher level.

The best thing to come out of these last two pages is Sarah going off-book. She ditches the plan and starts asking her own questions. I LOVE when characters go away from the plan because, again, it creates uncertainty. We live in a collective media that is way too predictable. It’s the same setups. The same motivations. The same words. It’s your job, as a writer, to find those less certain avenues in a scene and exploit them.

My only problem with this move by Sarah is that she didn’t get enough time to explore her off-book curiosity. I wish she had time to cook before James and Richard came in.

When it comes to the moments where the possessed try and psychologically manipulate those attempting to stop it, that dialogue tells you a lot about if the writer is up to the challenge of writing a possession script.

What I usually read is a lot of “generic evilness” from the possessed. “Do you remember, Jane, when you didn’t stop Darla from cutting her wrists?” This dialogue needs to be original, it’s need to be thoughtful, it needs to be specific, and it needs to cut in a way that takes the reader’s breath away.

Daniel’s final takedowns were a mixed bag. Sarah, you think about killing yourself. That’s weak-sauce. It’s lazy. It’s not specific enough. It feels like a filler line for someone who is supposed to be true evil embodied.

The takedown of Richard was much better. It was more specific. And it truly was cutting. To tell someone that they were happy that their infant child died and be right about it is going to take the breath away from some audience members. So that was good.

But you do have to be aware of the fact that the demon-possession sandbox requires you to recruit the most evil thoughts within you. Cause PG-13 possession dialogue doesn’t cut it.

Overall, I thought the scene was pretty good. I do have an idea I wanted to throw at Hep for the rewrite. The only thing that nagged me was the lack of a true goal in this scene. The approach to this interview was loosey-goosey. It was very, “Err, let’s see what happens when we talk to him.”

I would prefer a little bit more form. So, what if they’re trying to find out something specific from him? That’s the goal of the interview. But they can’t just ask the question right away. They have to work their way up to it. Make sure he’s comfortable first. So that’s the plan.

Also, they should know that, sometimes, after these intense experiences, there is a possibility of random anger or violence in the subject. So they should either arm Sarah with a syringe with a sedative in it. And if Daniel gets too riled up, she’s supposed to inject him with it to knock him out. Or, they can have an IV prepped and connected right to his arm and Richard has the power to press a button and the sedative will be injected directly into his blood and he’ll pass out.

This gives this scene more form — since there’s a plan in place. And it gives you more to play with. Clearly, what we’re going to do, is have them inject Daniel towards the end of the scene and become shocked when it has no effect on him at all. And Richard can keep pumping more and more of the sedative in him. But it’s not affecting him.

And maybe that even ends up killing him later. Or putting him in a coma. And now Richard is in some deep shit from the medical board.

It was fun breaking down something from Hep finally. Good job, buddy. What did the rest of you think? Gimme the good and bad of this scene.