Today I will share the single most important screenwriting tip you will ever learn
A little update.
Technically, I’m supposed to be on vacation for two weeks but that vacation fell apart for a couple of frustrating reasons. The problem is, my mind hasn’t accepted this yet and, therefore, I’m in denial. My brain is in vacation mode.
However, I have been doing consultations. And an issue keeps popping up in these consultations that I need to share with you guys so you don’t make the same mistake.
But before we go there, we’ve got to talk about Troll 2 (on Netflix). Because Troll 2 makes this same mistake in its very first scene. Which means that the lack of understanding in this key area of screenwriting is ubiquitous. It’s even happening in Norway!
I loved the first Troll and I just wanted to have a good time with the sequel. I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking. Just entertain me.
And Troll 2 tries to do that. It lives inside that 1997-1999 Hollywood box office era where you had these big ideas with lavish production with things just getting destroyed! Does it give the film a dated feel? Sure. But I was open to time-traveling back to that era, as long as I enjoyed myself.
The story follows this scientist lady, Nora, who is sort of like Ripley in Aliens in that she’s had experience with trolls before. So the Norway government hires her because they’re having trouble understanding this (currently solidified) troll that they captured. They need her insight.
What they were not expecting was that Nora, in her first opportunity at being alone with the troll, would sing it a troll lullaby favorite, which then WAKES UP THE TROLL. The troll then struggles free and bursts out of the secret underground hideout, where it goes racing across the land and wreaking havoc.
Nora and a team consisting of soldiers and scientists hop in a helicopter and begin chasing this thing around. But I guess the troll’s presence signals some other hibernating troll that it’s time to wake up, because another troll, this one angrier than the first, emerges and makes it his mission to beat up Troll 1! So now the humans are chasing two trolls!
This culminates in the two trolls fighting each other in a Mano a Mano battle in the city canal. And only one troll is going to make it out alive. Once that happens, the humans are going to have to decide whether they need to eliminate that survivor or coexist with him. The end.
Okay, so what’s this magical piece of advice that very few screenwriters are aware of? Pay close attention because this might be the single most important screenwriting tip you ever learn.
Here it is…
When writers sit down to write a scene, 90% of them look at that scene THE WRONG WAY. What they do is they say to themselves some combination of the following…
“I need to set up this character here.”
“I need to set up this plot point.”
“I need to make sure that the reader understands this key piece of information.”
“I have to hint to the audience that this character could be the killer.”
“I need to establish the chemistry between these two characters.”
“I need to hint at this backstory.”
“I have to remind the reader of that story thread I haven’t mentioned in a while.”
The writer has this list of things he wants to do in the scene he needs to write… and then he writes it. And he makes sure that he gets all of those things in. Once he does this, he then spends every subsequent rewrite of that scene trying to make it a little more entertaining. He tries to make it the best it can possibly be.
And because he approaches things in this way, his scenes are never good.
You want to approach your scenes IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE MANNER.
The first thing you should do before thinking of ANYTHING ELSE about your scene is ask: “How can I write the most entertaining scene possible?” That’s it. Figure THAT OUT first AND THEN once you’ve come up with a scene design that leads to an entertaining scene THEN you can inject your laundry list of needs into the scene. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
This will ensure that you always have an entertaining scene. Period.
The opening scene of Troll 2 is the perfect example of a writer doing this the wrong way. The scene, for some stupid reason, is set 30 years before the main timeline and takes place in a small Norway home with a father reading his daughter a book about trolls.
And you can feel the writer approaching this scene with Method 1 (the incorrect way). “I need to set up that trolls have always been a part of this woman’s life.” “I need to set up that the mom has cancer.” “I need to set up that she has lived in this house her whole life.”
The words “I need to set up…” are the devil in screenwriting. They are legit evil.
UNLESS!
Unless they come after you orchestrating an entertaining scene idea! Then it’s okay. But here, it’s this boring scene we’ve seen a million times in a million movies that doesn’t have any dramatically compelling moments. It is literally allll setup, and therefore boring as shit.
So, how would you create an entertaining scene here, Carson? I don’t know! Get creative. What kind of scene would entertain *you*?
It doesn’t need to be World War 3 levels of entertainment. The level of entertainment you can offer is always relative to the situation. We’re in a small home in the middle of nowhere. What can we do with that?
Maybe someone knocks on the door, late, when nobody should be around for miles. That sounds like it could lead to an interesting scene. And in just two seconds I’ve already come up with a more entertaining idea for a scene than this bore-fest of a father reading his daughter a book before she goes to bed.
Again, if you go into every single scene starting with this question: “What situation can I create to come up with the most entertaining scene possible?” your scripts are going to be MILES AHEAD of 99% of screenwriters. Seriously! Because even professionals don’t know this advice. They set up all this stuff in a scene then retroactively come up with just enough entertainment surrounding it to get by.
Congratulations, you are now a very good screenwriter. Just by reading this article.
Certainly, armed with his knowledge, you could’ve written a better version of Troll 2.
How was the rest of the movie?
It was pretty bad.
Honestly? The script made no sense. Who was this other troll? Why was he around? It was clearly just to create another troll for the first one to fight with.
But you know what? I already knew it wasn’t going to work. How? Because of that first scene. If you prove to me in your first scene that you don’t know how to prioritize entertaining the viewer, then I know you won’t be able to properly entertain me later.
Which is too bad because Troll 1 rocked!
Maybe I’ll go watch that again.
Genre: Drama
Premise: Recently dumped Ezra Green accidentally brings a terminally ill woman home to Bridgehampton for a long weekend with his eccentric family. Don’t judge–he needs to cope with his estranged father who just got out of white-collar prison.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Jeremy Leder
Details: 105 pages
Logan Lerman for Ezra?
How’s my new Black List script-picking strategy going? For those who didn’t read last week’s review, I have a new strategy for taking on the highly uncertain quality of Black List scripts. I read the first page of two scripts and go with whichever one has the better writing.
Today’s two scripts are A Band of Wolves, about a rival tribe’s raid and a woman who must befriend a wolf to survive the aftermath, and this script, Bridgehampton.
I was hoping that Wolves would win, cause it sounded more like a movie than Bridgehampton, but then I read Wolves’ first page
One of the clearest indicators of a weak script is a cold open presented as a major event, despite being entirely ordinary. It’s made worse when the writer slaps on the movie title immediately after, as though emphasizing the significance the scene failed to earn.
When I see the above in a script, the script will be bad 99.9% of the time. That made choosing between the two easy. But now it’s up to Bridgehampton to prove I made the right choice.
30-something Manhattanite, Ezra, just got dumped by his girlfriend and is in relationship mourning. His sister, Stella, is dealing with the fact that she’s fallen out of love with her husband, Brooks, who’s so much of a dummy, maybe she never loved him in the first place.
The two are heading back to their mother’s giant mansion for the weekend because their father is getting out of prison after engaging in some Bernie Madoff scam that lost thousands of people their life savings.
A day before heading there, Ezra meets a pretty girl named Harper at the coffee shop and she tells him straight up she wants to have sex as soon as possible. So they go back to his place and have sex. Afterwards, he asks her to be his date for the weekend. She reluctantly says yes. Not long after, he learns about her secret, which is that she’s dying.
Once everybody gets to the mansion, it’s really about the unhealed breach of trust between Ezra and his father. We find out that Ezra worked for his dad and that the dad had secretly used Ezra’s name to put together a lot of shady deals, which nearly got him sent to prison as well.
Since that happened, Ezra has been steadfast in that he’ll never talk to his father again. It takes Harper, who has more perspective, since she’s at the end of her life, to convince him that holding grudges is stupid. (spoiler) But before Ezra can have the big conversation, someone attacks his dad. And now the family must spend the end of their weekend praying that daddy makes it through.
Noooooooo…
My perfect undefeated streak for how to pick good Black List scripts has ended.
The streak ends at 1.
:(
Bridgehampton, unfortunately, fell victim to the old “crazy family” series of tropes that focuses on a family so wacky ya just can’t get enuf of’em! Except, you can. And by page 30, you do.
These types of scripts are a trap. You need to be one of those Level 6000 “super-amazing-voice” screenwriters to pull them off. You need to have that “once in a generation” thing going for you.
The story’s structure works like this: you introduce a family loaded with unresolved issues, place them inside an artificially compressed timeframe, then give them no real goals. Instead, we’re simply waiting for their broken relationships to sort themselves out.
When you use this kind of structure, all the pressure shifts to the dialogue and moment-to-moment scene writing. There’s no suspense, no mystery, no plot movement. The script ends up building set pieces out of the family walk, the trip to the store, the night out. Ordinary activities that aren’t inherently dramatic.
These scenes can only entertain if the writer’s talent elevates them, because there’s not enough natural dramatic tension to make them compelling on their own.
In case you were wondering, here’s the first page of Bridgehampton…
Ironically, I liked that we jumped into the plot right away. Someone’s getting dumped. And then in the next scene, we’ve got conflict between a couple. There’s actually a ton happening in this one page, which is why I chose it.
As for the selling point of the screenplay, which is terminal Harper, I don’t think that aspect of the script worked. In many ways, it’s a red herring. This isn’t about Ezra and Harper at all. It’s about Ezra and his family, specifically his father. Harper just operates as a wild card, a “larger than life” element who’s supposed to give the script some edge. But she never quite fits into the story in an organic way.
This issue was telegraphed early on. We meet Harper on a train giving out pre-created post-it notes to random men with her number on them.
Let’s think about that for a second. Cause if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of screenwriting, this is a topic where you can do so.
On the one hand, the act creates mystery and then, later, we see it as a setup for the eventual payoff that she’s terminal.
BUT – let’s ask the tough question here. Would someone do this in real life? Would any woman, cancer-stricken or not, fill up a stack of post-it notes with her number and hand it out to men throughout the day?
No.
Never.
Her entire character begins with an inauthentic action. And because readers put so much weight on how they first meet a character, we immediately see her for what she is: a mystical falsehood. She doesn’t feel like a real person.
Now, you might argue, “But this is the movies. You’re allowed to create bigger, more fantastical actions than in real life.” And that’s true. You are. In Being John Malkovich, there’s a 7½th floor in the protagonist’s office building. Do 7½th floors exist in real life? No they do not.
But this is where writing becomes tricky. You have to understand the tone of your screenplay and make sure every creative choice stays within that tonal boundary. Being John Malkovich literally takes us inside a man’s head, so a 7½th floor doesn’t feel out of place. Here, we’re watching a real family spending a real weekend together. In that world, a terminally ill girl whimsically handing out “fuck me” cards just doesn’t fit the tone.
If I were guiding this script, the first thing I would do is get rid of Harper. She’s not necessary for the story AT ALL. In fact, if you took her out of the story, it’s exactly the same. Literally nothing changes.
I would also change the dad’s situation so he’s going to prison rather than coming back from it. A character returning from prison in this scenario isn’t inherently interesting. Good stories emerge from things that go wrong, not things that go right. Him coming home is something going right. Also, if he’s about to go to prison, the family gathering suddenly has purpose.
The kids, all of whom rely on the family money, come home for the weekend so everyone can confront what’s about to happen to the family fortune. Their lives are on the verge of a major shift.
It’s still not a premise I’d personally write, but it’s stronger than what we have now. As written, the story is basically: “Dad’s back from prison, so let’s get drunk and argue for three days.” There’s no purpose to it because there’s no actual goal. Changing the dad’s circumstance would at least give the story that clear driving goal.
As I sit here, I wonder how good that Wolves script was.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You don’t need to be a once-in-a-generation writer to write a good thriller script, a good action script, a good horror script, a good adventure script. You need three things. You need a good concept. You need enough experience to know what you’re doing (have written at least 5 scripts). And you need to be willing to work harder than the next writer. That’s it! With scripts like this, you need to be extremely talented (top .1% of professional writers) to make them work.
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.
