Genre: Horror
Premise: A troubled young surgeon travels to a desolate peak to climb the mountain where her father suffered a mental breakdown years earlier, only to realize halfway up the rock wall that she might be subject to the same fate.
About: This one was on last year’s Black List. Another brand new writer!
Writer: Arthur Hills
Details: 104 pages
Readability: Fast

You guys know how much I love Free Solo. So it’s time to Free Solo ourselves a mountain climbing script review! Join me! Oh, and if you think you can write a better horror script than today’s, make sure you enter the Halloween Horror Showdown!

28 year old Sloane is just about ready to become a surgeon. In fact, we see her operate on one of her first patients, under the watchful eye of a veteran surgeon, only to accidentally let the blade slip and paralyze the guy she’s cutting open. Oops!

Sloane goes home to her boyfriend, Stephen, and laments about paralyzing this guy. We also learn, during this time, that the anniversary of Sloane’s father’s death is coming up. Her father used to be a great climber until one day when he climbed a mountain called Lytta’s Peak and went crazy on it.

Sloane thinks it’d be a good idea to climb the peak herself and finally face the trauma of her father’s death. Sort of like what Reese Witherspoon did in that movie about the girl who walked a 500 mile trail. But unlike Reese, Sloane isn’t going by herself. She’ll be joined by her boyfriend, Stephen, Stephen’s attractive friend, Mia, and the youngster of the group, 24 year old sexual dynamo, Luna.

Off they go to Lytta’s Peak, where Sloane immediately starts seeing things. She sees people in white clothes walking through the forest (but not appearing on her iPhone screen). She sees Mia and Stephen kiss, even though a second later they’re not there. She keeps finding these circles everywhere with a bunch of random designs carved inside.

But things really get nuts when they’re on the side of the cliff and Mia goes plunging to the forest floor. Hashtag Mia’s dead. Around this time, we learn that both Sloane’s dad AND Sloane have SHADOWS that are on the mountain with them. And their plan is to kill everyone climbing the mountain. Including Sloane herself! The only way to defeat them is to get to the top.

“Peak” started out strong and is a good example of how to set up character while keeping things entertaining. The script begins with a teaser. We see a person falling from a mountain. But we don’t know who they are. We’re not close enough to identify them. This creates an immediate mystery that we want answered (and that keeps us reading!).

This is followed by Sloane visiting her father at the psychiatric hospital. One of the best ways to set up characters is through SHOWING. You show us he’s at a psychiatric hospital. You show us that he’s emaciated and worn down. We immediately know where this character is at. Ditto Sloane who’s developing as a character by the writer simply showing us what her family situation is. She has a dad who’s in a psychiatric hospital. That takes a huge toll on someone which creates a richer deeper character in the eyes of the reader. On top of that, the scene is filled with the conflict of the dad not quite being “all there,” despite Sloane desperately wishing he was. It’s heartbreaking.

The next scene happens four years later where Sloane is getting her first chance to operate under the eye of an experienced surgeon. We see how exhausted she is beforehand. So she crushes and snorts some adderall to get her adrenaline pumping for the surgery. Again, another SHOWING moment.

We then watch her operate on this guy and the surgery is the best scene in the script, easily, because she starts bleeding from her nose because of the adderall, which is dripping into her mask, all while she’s making an incision right next to the guy’s spine. Any sudden move could paralyze him for life. It’s an intense scene that really draws you in. Again, this is the goal with writing. You want to set up WHILE entertaining. You don’t just want to set things up and that’s it.

A couple of scenes later we’re driving to the mountain. This section is entertaining as well because the writer sets up that Stephen and Mia are really close. To the point where Sloane is suspicious of their relationship. This creates a ‘dramatic irony’ situation within the car where Mia playfully chats away with Stephen with Sloane watching on, trying to pick up cues if there’s more there than friendship.

In that case, it’s the CONFLICT – Sloane disliking and being suspicious of Mia – that keeps the reader entertained. If you don’t think that’s worthy of mentioning, let me just say that I read tons of scenes like this where the writer doesn’t make any attempt to create conflict within the ride, so all the characters are doing is babbling on, setting up exposition, trying to be funny. These are always less entertaining than scenes where the writer is actively looking to inject conflict into the conversation.

So I was encouraged after those first 20 pages.

And then the writer made the same mistake so many writers writing “Is my protagonist going crazy” storylines make. Which is to start injecting that classic repeated beat of something weird happening (sees someone dressed in white walking through the forest, sees Mia and Stephen kiss) only for it to be in her head. And it just ruined the story for me.

I don’t know why writers think this is interesting. Once you establish the character is seeing things that aren’t there, we know every weird thing that happens from now on is going to be another hallucination. Where’s the suspense in that? The mystery? We, the reader, are now ahead of you, since we can predict these things. And the second the reader gets ahead of the writer, the script is cooked.

I don’t want to completely undersell the story because this idea of peoples’ shadows orchestrating death and mayhem is kind of cool. And it does get rid of some of the story’s predictability. But it wasn’t cool enough to win me over.

There’s a broader topic to explore here about first and second acts. There are writers who are good at first acts and bad at second acts. There are writers who are good at second acts and bad at first acts. But there aren’t a lot of writers who are good at both. And that’s because the requirements for each are so different.

The first act is about setting up the plot and characters then sending your hero off on their journey. The second act is double the length and about pushing your hero towards their goal, throwing obstacles at them, giving us compelling twists and turns, and, of course, exploring all of the relationships in a compelling way, including the main character’s relationship with himself.

To nail that second act, you have to stay away from repeated beats as much as possible. Once you establish a pattern, you risk boring the reader. That happened here with all the, “What’s that! Did you see that!???” fakeouts.

Look, I’m not saying that any script about going crazy is going to suck. I loved Black Swan. I liked Taxi Driver. I like The Shining. But it’s a pretty short list from there on out of ‘going crazy’ movies that are good. And I think that’s because, ironically, ‘going crazy’ movies need a higher level of SOPHISTICATION to be convincing compared to other genres. And all three of those movies showed a lot of sophistication in the way the craziness was built into the story.

Mileage may vary here if you’re into ‘going crazy’ narratives. You might like this because it’s kinda fun. But once I figured out the story’s pattern, I got bored. So it wasn’t for me. P.S. I feel VERY confident that we can find a better horror script than this for Halloween Horror Showdown. Which would mean we’d find ourselves a Black List script. So get writing!

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

What I learned: I would strongly suggest that you never end your movie with your character waking up strapped to a bed in a psychiatric hospital. It’s just so obscenely cliche at this point. I’ve read that ending more times than I can count.

Genre: Drama/Serial Killer (loosely based on true events)
Premise: A struggling single mother must confront dangerous forces – and sins of her past – when her world collides with that of a serial killer. Inspired by the true story of Delaware’s only serial murderer, the Route 40 killer.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. Brand new writer.
Writer: Erin Kathleen
Details: 117 pages
Readability: Medium

Yesterday, we had a main character with a prosthetic leg. Today we have a main character with a severe limp. What is it with writers and legs??? They’re obsessed! Wasn’t it Billy Bob Thorton who said that he wasn’t going to play the Control Room Director in Armageddon until they gave him a gimp foot? People in this business are passionate about legs, I guess.

The year is 1987. We’re in Delaware. A woman named Diane, who used to be a prostitute but who’s finally getting her life back on track, hitchhikes at night. A guy in a van picks her up. When has that ever ended well? He immediately attacks her with a hammer. She’s able to fend him off, burst out the door, and run into the forest. But he chases her and brutally murders her.

Cut to an hour ago where we meet our heroine, 40-something Pam Spinelli. Pam is the manager of a nice restaurant on the Route 40 highway there. Pam is giving some leftovers to Diane out the back door. We get the sense that Pam helps Diane out whenever she can. There might have been a close friendship here once.

Obviously, when they find Diane’s body the next week, Pam’s devastated. That’s the fourth murder along the highway in the past several months. She worries for her 16 year old daughter, Nikki, who works at a donut shop on the highway. Nikki usually gets a ride home but sometimes she has to walk. What if this monster picks her up?

When local cop Miles (he who has the limp), comes around to ask Pam questions about Diane, Pam says she wants to help find the killer. There’s a truck stop down the road where a lot of prostitutes work. They won’t talk to cops but they will talk to her. Miles is reluctant. He’s not supposed to put pedestrians in danger. But this psycho killer is on the loose and the pressure to catch him is high. So he okays it.

At first Pam just talks to hookers to get info. But soon she’s profiling truckers, trying to figure out which one of them is the killer. Things get dicey when she starts riding with them. As Pam tries to work things through with her daughter (so her daughter doesn’t end up like her) and Miles (who she wants but can’t be with since she no longer trusts men) she takes riskier and riskier chances with these truck drivers until she finally finds herself in the company of the killer. Will she survive????

Today I’d like to talk about the balance between character and plot because this balance is something you’re going to be faced with in every movie you write. On the one hand you have character development. That’s characters battling internal demons, characters battling trauma from their pasts, characters battling broken relationships. Whenever you have two characters in a scene and neither of them are trying to forward the plot, they are likely dealing with character related issues.

Conversely, you have plot development and that’s when you’re hitting the reader with new story developments, surprising twists, new information that helps them “solve the case” – anything that pushes your characters closer to the story’s ultimate resolution.

For a point of reference, let’s look at two extreme examples. Raiders of the Lost Ark is, I’d say, the ultimate plot-driven movie. Every scene is shoving the plot forward. Manchester by the Sea may be the best example of a pure character driven movie. I don’t remember any plot beats from that movie at all.

Why am I bringing this all up? Well, it’s because as I read today’s script, I felt like it put the majority of its eggs in the wrong basket, which was the character-development basket. “What’s wrong with character development, Carson? Don’t you tell us all the time that character is everything?”

Yes, character is everything. But, usually, when I say that, I’m talking about creating a really interesting character or a really likable character that we’ll want to follow. Not necessarily writing a ton of character development scenes. For example, Nightcrawler. Gilroy created a really cool character and then mostly left the script in the hands of the plot. He didn’t have fifty scenes of Louis Bloom introspectively trying to overcome himself.

The Women of Route 40 leans HARD into character development and the problem I had with that was when you write in this genre (the serial killer genre), there’s an expectation. People want to see the plot develop in interesting ways and they want those plot beats to come every 10-12 pages. I kept waiting for stuff to happen here and it just didn’t. And even when it did – when someone would be murdered for example – it was covered quickly before pushing on to the next thoughtful character interaction.

And look, I get that the balance between plot and character is going to affect everyone differently. There’s something to be said for taking traditionally plot-fueled narratives and making them character pieces, and vice versa. But you’ve got a really fertile serial killer garden here to grow plot in. So it just seems strange that you only planted a few vegetables.

Here’s what I think happened. The writer wanted to tell an emotional story about the victims of Route 40. And I get that. It’s based on real events so you want to focus on that emotional component and give those victims their due. But I think a time comes with every script where we have to let go of the reason we originally wanted to write it, and we have to embrace what the story needs in order to be entertaining.

We all get wrapped up in that initial reasoning for writing our story. For example, I once wrote a script about the dissolution of the American dream. And I tried to show this through a character doing everything he was supposed to do to make it in America, but it still not working out in the end. And I showed the script to a few people and they were bored. I said, “But don’t you see! This is about America! And how it’s a lie! And he represents the average American!” And one reader just looked at me and said, “Yeah but it was boring.”

Ouch.

But he was right!

I’d gotten so wrapped up in trying to get that emotional point across that I forgot about what the audience needed in order to enjoy the story. That’s all I’m saying here. I don’t know if the script cared enough about keeping the audience engaged. It was more about hitting those character beats that honored the women who died.

For me, at least, that wasn’t enough. You had a unique serial killer. It felt like we could’ve explored him for some bigger plot moments.

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

What I learned: Here’s a line from the script: “It’s sleeting now, the heavens spitting on her.” While a fun line, this is more of a novel description than a screenplay description. With screenplays, you want to write descriptions that create an image in the reader’s head, not descriptions that will win you an analogy contest. The name of the game is always to paint a picture in the reader’s head. You want them to feel like they’re in the theater looking up at the screen, watching the movie. So come up with descriptions that support that. I’d focus this description more on the violence of the sleet, that it’s “slamming” into her. Something along those lines. Create that image!

Is La Brea the new Lost?

Genre: TV Pilot/Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) A massive sinkhole mysteriously opens up in Los Angeles, separating part of a family in an unexplainable primeval world, alongside a disparate group of strangers.
About: Here’s series creator David Applebaum on his high concept show: “The genesis of the idea was just an image of a sinkhole opening in the middle of Los Angeles, and it was just an image that I couldn’t shake. I had never seen a show open that way with something so dramatic and I knew I wanted that to start the story, but didn’t know anything else. But started asking so many questions about why does the sinkhole open? Where does it go? Who are the people that fall in? And then, once you’re starting with those questions, you start to create a world of characters in situations. And then from there, a thousand other things happen, but it really just started with an image.”
Writer: David Applebaum
Details: 60 min

If you’re anything like me – and you probably aren’t but let’s just pretend for a second you are – you miss “Lost.” That show took over my life. For a good five years, everything was built around Wednesday’s at 8 o’clock. I couldn’t get enough of that show. Even when the Lost backlash began and everybody started piling on JJ (“HE ONLY KNOWS HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS! NOT ANSWER THEM!”), I was still Team Lost. Even detractors have to admit that there was something magical about that show. And if you disagree, I have the ultimate argument to prove you wrong.

For the next five years, all anybody did was try to recreate Lost. AND FAILED. Here are just some of the shows that attempted to become “the next Lost.” Flash-Forward, Threshold, V, The Event, Invasion, and the most successful of the failures, Heroes. People think Lost was a bad show? No no no no no. THOSE were bad shows.

It turns out Lost was lightning in a bottle, the perfect TV idea, never to be repeated again.

Or maybe not.

Recently, there’s been a resurgence in trying to recreate Lost, probably because writers who loved the show and were in that target demographic (18-25) when it aired have now become seasoned enough to be able to pitch their own shows. Westworld sort of re-started the “Lost” like formula. A couple of years back there was Manifest, which is now in its final Season on Netflix. And today we get La Brea, which is the most Lost-y show yet. Hell, one of the characters in the pilot literally says, “Or maybe we’re just stuck in an episode of Lost.”

The reason I even gave La Brea a chance at becoming the next Lost is because it has a genuinely cool premise. Let’s take a look at how the pilot shakes out.

Set in Los Angeles, the show starts off with mother, Eve Harris, driving her teenaged kids, Josh and Izzy (who has a prosthetic right leg), across town somewhere, when, all of a sudden, a giant sinkhole appears near La Brea and 3rd Street, swallowing up five square blocks of real estate. Everyone in their cars and inside of buildings fall into the hole of death, including Eve and her son (Izzy and her prosthetic leg are able to outrun the hole).

After the government sets up a perimeter around the hole and begins a clean-up process, Eve’s husband and former Air Force pilot, Gavin, swoops into town. But he’s not just here to hug his daughter with the prosthetic leg. No. You see, several years ago, Gavin had strange visions which got him kicked out of the military. He’s having those visions again, but this time they’re more specific: he can see his ex-wife and a bunch of other people STILL ALIVE.

Cut to a hilly tree-lined rural land and a giant piece of building in the middle of it, along with a bunch of cars and dazed people stumbling around. I’ll save you the mystery. Eve and everyone else on La Brea are a few hundred thousand years in the past, in Los Angeles BEFORE it was Los Angeles. “Those are the Hollywood Hills,” someone points out. The show then sets up a scenario where we will jump back and forth between the past and the present until somebody figures out the mystery of how they ended up here and, hopefully, a way to get home.

Let me just go ahead and say that, so far, I like this show.

At times the writing is juvenile. Frustratingly so. Yet it’s a really cool premise with all sorts of possibilities. I mean, towards the end of the pilot, a group of our time-traveling characters get into a standoff with a saber-tooth tiger. Count me in on that!

But I am oh so worried. This show is already exposing weaknesses and we’re only in the pilot episode. As a means of comparison, Lost didn’t show any cracks until its third season, a full 50 episodes in. Let’s go over a few of these concerns.

The dad had visions – This is extremely concerning. Just going off the odds, what are the chances that someone who has special visionary powers will have a wife that, three years later, will be involved in the single most unique event in the history of humanity? Clearly, the only reason he has this power is that the writers needed a way to bring the husband into the military mix. So they gave him this special power that the military needs. It’s a lazy juvenile coincidental choice that makes me think more choices like it are coming. Although I hope I’m wrong!

The default is melodrama – One of the reasons that cable has usurped the buzzy one-hour drama from networks is because they leaned into more realistic interactions between people. Meanwhile, the network shows are still stuck in melodrama. When your big opening scene turns ultra slow motion while focusing on a prosthetic leg JUST BARELY pushing away from the final crumbling concrete of a giant sinkhole, that’s melodrama. Even Lost knew this. Whenever Jack was saving someone, it felt genuine. It didn’t feel like this over-acted silliness that networks seem to think audiences still like, and which we’re seeing here.

The cars and buildings didn’t survive the fall from the sky but, somehow, all humans did – This is something one of the characters even says. “How are all the cars damaged but we’re okay?” “I don’t know,” another person says. I know they’re going to try and answer this question at some point but it’s clear that the reason the people survived the fall is that they wouldn’t have a show if they didn’t. There is no answer down the road that will adequately explain this, which means they’ll have to construct some nonsensical answer that will ultimately disappoint us.

There are a couple of things going on here. First, the pilot is the foundation for your story. If it’s not solid, the episodes that follow it are going to be even less solid. To make matters worse, each subsequent episode will display the law of diminishing returns. This is why bad shows seem to get worse with every episode. I’m hoping La Brea is an exception to the rule but I’m not optimistic.

Second, a good mystery isn’t built off of a coincidence you need for your story to work. A good mystery is something you create for the sole purpose of the mystery alone. So everyone surviving a fall from 30,000 feet in the air in order for you to have a show isn’t a designed mystery. It’s more of a “paint yourself into a corner” mystery. Polar bears on a tropical island. THAT’S a good mystery because it was specifically designed into the show.

Despite all this, I was into all the stuff that was happening in the pre-historic era. I love the idea of a technology-dependent people being thrust into a past where they’ll be tasked with surviving giant wolves, saber-tooth tigers, cave men, and who the hell knows what else. The power of any show basically comes down to its ideas. Are the ideas imaginative and dramatically compelling? So far, La Brea has that going for it.

I’m just worried they’re going to get in their own way. Will the sloppy conveniences continue? Will the melodrama continue to be laid on too thick? I hope not. Because I would love more than anything to finally be able to watch the next “Lost.”

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

What I learned: David Applebaum got his first job as a P.A. in the writer’s room of the O.C. Desperate to become a writer on the show, David pushed to move up, eventually becoming a script coordinator (in charge of reading and distributing scripts to everyone on the production and cast) but they wouldn’t give him a writing job. Applebaum said that was his first big lesson learned in Hollywood. “Don’t stay anywhere just because it’s comfortable. Keep your end goal in mind and make choices that help you achieve that goal.” Because they clearly weren’t going to let him write on the O.C., Applebaum quit. He finally got his first paid writing job several years later on a pilot that didn’t get picked up called King’s English. A couple of years after that, he started writing on The Mentalist.

Got a horror script? Good news! Scriptshadow has a screenwriting competition for you. And it’s absolutely free! Send your horror script to me by October 21st and I’ll pick the best five concepts to compete for the Halloween Horror Showdown title, which will take place that very weekend! The winning script will get reviewed here the following Friday, just three days from Halloween!

What: Halloween Horror Showdown
Genre: Horror
When: Entries are due Thursday, October 21st, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
How: Include title, genre, logline, Why We Should Read, and a PDF of your script
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Can’t wait to see what you horror mavens have cooked up this time!

P.S. I decided not to review Turnpike Jackknife for reasons I’ll get into in the comments. Sorry about the tease!

An exposition trick that’s guaranteed to make you a better screenwriter.

The other day we talked about story ideas so steeped in information, they just aren’t worth writing. Because doing so would amount to 120 straight minutes of exposition dumps. My contention in that review was that these scripts are difficult even for professionals to write, writers who’ve spent countless hours throughout multiple screenplays learning to dispense exposition in a covert and seamless way. To a writer who’s only written a couple of scripts to have to handle that amount of exposition? Forget about it.

So today I thought I’d help those aspiring writers get a little closer to becoming exposition ninjas by teaching them an exposition trick, which I call “Dessert Exposition.” It’s a very simple concept. I want you to imagine that you and I are sitting at a table and I’m telling you about my day. Now, my day today was boring. I didn’t hit a last second shot to win the game. I didn’t shoot any zombies who were trying to bite me. It was one long list of mundane tasks. How long before you think you’ll be bored listening to me? I’m guessing it’s going to be fast.

However, I want you to imagine the same scenario except, this time, I reveal a plate with your favorite dessert on it. Maybe it’s chocolate chip cookies. Maybe it’s salted caramel cheesecake. Maybe it’s Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. I’ll let you guys debate the best dessert in the comments. I then say to you, “You can have this. But first I want to tell you about my day.” I know, I’m an evil person. But guess what? Your interest in my day just went up x100. You are going to be much more willing to listen to me drone on about how mad I was that Doordash wouldn’t accept my PayPal account now that you know, when I’m finished, you get to have your favorite dessert.

In today’s exposition lesson…

My day = the exposition.

Dessert = a valued story beat that the reader is looking forward to.

One of the most famous examples of this is the “Doc explains time travel to Marty” scene at the Twin Pines Mall in Back to the Future. There is a ton of important exposition that needs to be conveyed in this scene (car only works on nuclear power, 88 miles per hour, 1.21 gigawatts, the flux capacitor, how to program the time machine). It’s a bit of a screenwriting nightmare, to be honest, having to convey that much information in a single scene.

But, Zemeckis and Gale overcome that by using Dessert Exposition. The dessert, in this case, is seeing the actual time traveling in action. That is the salted caramel cheesecake Zemeckis is holding up on the plate to get all of us effortlessly through the scene. Just to be clear, there are other methods being used to make the exposition work in this scene, but I don’t want to confuse you. The point is, we’re willing to listen to all of this exposition, in large part, because of the dessert at the end of the scene.

Now, what an amateur might’ve done with this scene is place it in, say, Doc’s garage (the one that opens the movie with the Rube Goldberg dog food device) and have Doc explain, with no dessert in sight, how time travel works. I read similar scenes like this all the time in amateur scripts and they rarely work because the exposition gets too technical or too boring, and there’s no reward for getting through it.

The goal with exposition is always the same. You’re trying to make it sound like it’s not exposition at all, but rather just people talking. That’s what dessert exposition does. When people watch that Back to the Future scene, they’re not thinking, “This information is being meticulously doled out to me.” They’re thinking that Doc’s just explaining to Marty how this really cool thing works.

Let’s look at how we can use this tool more practically. Let’s say you’re writing a serial killer script in the vein of Zodiac and you have a pair of detectives working the case. Now, let’s say that Detective A had a father who was also a detective who worked the case 25 years ago and you need a scene where Detective A gives Detective B all this exposition about what his father found in the case, because you’re going to pay some of that exposition off later in the story.

How can we use Dessert Exposition in this scenario?

Well, one way is for Detective A to call Detective B and tell him he “found something big.” Come over right away. So Detective B hurries over to Detective A’s place. Now, what is the amateur screenwriter going to do here? He’s probably going to jump right into what Detective A found, right? That’s not how you do it. You’re ruining a great opportunity to utilize the audience’s anticipation for learning this new info.

So what the pro screenwriter does is he has Detective A sit Detective B down. Detective B says, “Well, what is it? What did you find?!” And Detective A says, “Did I ever tell you what my dad found in Montana?” Which leads to a long exposition-heavy monologue where Detective A lays out all that exposition he needed to lay out about the dad. However, since he first presented the dessert (“I found something big”), we’re willing to sit through it. Maybe even excited to hear it! Because we know we’ll be rewarded in the end. That’s the power of good dessert exposition.

The cool thing about this device is that it’s not limited to exposition. If you want to have a fun playful dialogue scene that doesn’t necessarily move the story forward, you can use dessert exposition to do it. The opening scene in Inglorious Basterds is a good example. Tarantino gives us a valued story beat to look forward to (that Jews are hiding under the house) allowing Hans Landa to riff on all sorts of things, like how he got his nickname, the origin of rats, even how yummy milk is.

To summarize, dessert is the scene’s oxygen. If you try to pull off extensive exposition without it, there’s a high probability the scene will suffocate.

Try it out in your script now. It’s fun!