A case study in how to create a sympathetic protagonist.
Genre: True Story/Sports
Premise: Set in the 50s, a young orphan girl must rise out of the confines of her orphanage to realize her unparalleled talent in the sport of chess.
About: If we are all looking at the best case scenario for what our proposed screenwriting career looks like, Scott Frank is a great comp. He wrote Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, and, most recently, Logan. He’s now teamed up with Allan Scott to adapt the 1984 Walter Tevis novel, The Queen’s Gambit, for Netflix.
Writer (pilot episode): Scott Frank
Details: 60 minutes
Here’s the rule.
If there is a Netflix show or movie that makes it to #1, which then gets dethroned due to some other new Netflix entry, but then makes it BACK to #1? It’s always a great show or movie.
This rule stands until it can be disproven!
That’s exactly what we have today. We have The Queen’s Gambit shooting up to #1 early, getting dethroned by some new Netflix drivel, then charging back to take the top spot again. Check mate, my dear.
Check. Mate.
I didn’t have a lot of interest in this show until I found out Scott Frank was involved (and heard a few of you championing it in the comments section). Frank is a hell of a writer. And now that I’ve seen the pilot, you get a really clear look at what good writing does for a show. Cause everything else at Netflix is so far down the ladder, Queen’s Gambit is looking like Chinatown. If you’re a writer, you’ll definitely want to check it out. Especially if you struggle with writing compelling characters that readers root for.
Beth Harmon is 9 years old when her parents die in a car crash. Beth was in the car too but miraculously survived without a scratch. It’s not clear whether that’s a blessing or a curse. The next thing she knows, she’s thrust into an orphanage that has a pretty good vibe going. Oh, except for the fact that they force their girls to take tranquilizers every day. 1950s America had some radical ideas on how to raise our youth, that’s for sure.
Because Beth is high all the time, she stumbles around the grounds in a spaced out state. But she eventually finds her way to the basement where the janitor, an introspective sad man named Mr. Shaibel, plays chess games against himself. Beth asks him to teach her and while he’s reluctant at first, he soon realizes she has a generational talent for the game.
While Beth struggles to feel emotion after the loss of her parents, it’s clear she enjoys learning the game. Every night before bed, she takes a couple of the tranquilizers she hid, gets high, and envisions a chess board on her ceiling so she can go through all the possible game scenarios. It isn’t long before she’s easily beating Mr. Shaibel. This leads to Shaibel connecting Beth with a chess club friend who works at the high school. That friend asks Beth if she’d like to come play against some new competition. Sure, she says, and promptly beats the school’s ten best players… all at the same time.
Meanwhile, the state suddenly decommissions the use of tranquilizers on children, and Beth is besides herself. She’s come to depend on those pills and now she’s forced to be stone cold sober. Determined to keep her high going, Beth sneaks into the back room where the pills are kept, and jams a large handful of them down her throat. Just as the headmaster reaches the room, Beth OD’s. End of episode.
If there is a super-hack to screenwriting – a singular element that ensures screenplay success – it is a sympathetic protagonist, someone we care about and who we want to see succeed.
If you do that right, it feels to the reader like they know the person. Which means you’ve broken the 4th wall. Of course we want to see them succeed. We feel like we know them!
Unfortunately, the formula for writing that character is elusive. Making your hero funny and giving them a ‘save the cat’ moment will make us care about them, yes. But it’s the degree to which we care about them that matters. If we only “kind of” care, then we’re only “kind of” interested in what happens to them.
And since we’re all so movie savvy, we don’t react well to cliche versions of these constructions. For example, everybody can tell you the reasons why Indiana Jones is [arguably] the most popular movie hero ever. Yet every time someone tries to clone those aspects of his character (charismatic, sarcastic, rebellious, roguish), it doesn’t work.
So how do we create a hero that audiences truly care about? The Queen’s Gambit is a great example of how to pull it off. First, Scott Frank creates a sympathetic situation. Beth loses both of her parents in a car crash. I’m going to come back to that car crash in a minute because I find car crash backstories to be cliche. But Frank does something to make it work which I’ll explain.
In regards to the sympathetic situation of losing your parents, there’s one extra thing you need to do if you want us to really care about that character. Which is this: SHE DOESN’T FEEL SORRY FOR HERSELF. That is so pivotal, I can’t emphasize it enough. Where so many writers get it wrong is they create a character who has experienced trauma or loss… and then they double down and have them feel sorry for themselves. The secret ingredient to creating a sympathetic protagonist through trauma/loss is making sure they don’t lean into that loss and play the victim. We don’t root for those people. I don’t know the science behind it but we just don’t.
And it doesn’t have to be exactly like Beth. Beth isn’t the most joyous person. She’s pretty even keel. But you can have your character be more joyous, depending on the genre and story. The main thing is don’t allow them to be sorry for themselves. We like people who fall down but keep getting up and trying. Not people who fall down and start crying and say they can’t do it anymore.
There’s one more thing you need to do to really kick your character into high gear. It’s not easy to define but I’ll try. You need to introduce one (although more than one is fine) extra element into your character that is offbeat in some way – that takes the character further away from the generic version that everybody else writes. Cause I’ve read a ton of “prodigy” scripts and, trust me, 99% of the time, everybody writes the same prodigy character. You need a mutation if they’re going to feel real.
That comes in The Queen’s Gambit when a fellow orphan asks Beth what the last words her mom said to her were. We then do a brief flashback from within the car, right before it crashes, and the mom says to Beth in a sad defeated tone, “Close your eyes.” Right then we realize the crash wasn’t an accident. It was a full blown murder-suicide attempt.
Before this revelation, it was just another “parents die in a car accident” backstory. But when we see that the mom was actually trying to kill them all, then it becomes a lot more sinister, and creates feelings from the daughter that are way more complicated. A single feeling (sadness) is often boring. But two conflicting feelings (sadness and anger) can ignite a character, since it places them in a constant state of conflict. This was the thing that elevated the character, in my eyes. She truly felt different after that.
In addition to that, Frank does what I tell you guys to do all the time – make unconventional choices throughout your story. Turning your 9 year old heroine into a full-blown drug addict was very much an unexpected choice. And even the orphanage itself – which was a safe and loving place, for the most part – was an unconventional choice, seeing as 9 out of 10 writers would’ve turned the headmistress into Miss Hannigan.
My only issue with the show so far is that it isn’t clear if the drugs help her play chess better or she’s just hooked on them and needs them to feel good. I’ll be disappointed if she needs them in order to play well.
But regardless, I thought this was strong! Nice to see a good show on Netflix again!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Is there better actor catnip than the tortured genius? There isn’t an actor in the world who doesn’t want to play that role. So if you’ve got an idea with a tortured genius in it? Go ahead and write it. You’ll have WME, CAA, and UTA kicking down your door to get their client attached.
I thought I’d bust out a new post for the weekend. It’s an excuse to talk about the latest Mandalorian episode since I won’t be reviewing them officially anymore.
Here’s the good news. This episode, directed by Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed (and written by Favreau), was MUCH BETTER than the premiere. It’s relevant to what I talked about in yesterday’s article in that nothing goes according to plan. Mando has to escort this fish creature and her eggs to another planet… but they’re not allowed to travel light speed because the eggs will explode. This leaves them open to attack. Two X-wings (unexpected cause X-wings are good guys) want to confirm their beacon signal. Mando is forced to flee. Get to an ice planet, crash. One scene after they crash, the ice cracks and they fall into the depths of the icy planet. Nothing was going according to plan.
When you do this, it becomes harder and harder for the reader to gauge how they’re going to get out of this. Which is EXACTLY where you want the reader to be. Most writers create minor problems for their heroes where it doesn’t take any thought to figure out how they’re going to escape. This episode genuinely had me thinking, “Hmmm, I don’t see how they’re going to get out of this.”
Another thing I picked up from this episode is to mix up the episode (or movie) goal. The problem with last week’s goal (kill a monster that’s terrorizing a town) is that it was tired and overused. Another often-used goal is to find something (the Ark of the Covenant) or someone. Keep in mind that there are other goal types available to you and today’s Mandalorian episode proves that. The goal of this episode was to escort important cargo from Point A to Point B.
Don’t get predictable. Always look to add variety to your plots.
There is now news coming out that there’s a Boba Fett spin-off series in the works. Sounds cool although I don’t know how they would make that different from Mando. One thing I know is that this series is in desperate need of a villain. Their current ultra-villain, Breaking Bad Guy, is both non-existent and uninteresting. It’d be cool if they set up Boba to be Mando’s nemesis. Always flying around the same circles but never quite meeting. Then finally they have to face each other. I’d sign up for that!
I spent the last couple of days almost exclusively reading contest submissions. They’re never-ending! Sometimes I ask myself, “Why did you sign up for this again?” But then a good script will come along and the negative voices quiet down and I remember exactly why I signed up for this, praise the lord, Hallelujah. Today, I thought I’d dedicate an article to some of my most recent contest submission observations. Hopefully, these help a few people out.
1 – The best reads are the ones where I forget I’m reading something because I’m so into what’s happening. I rarely encounter this, though, since, at the beginning of a screenplay, most writers are focused on setting things up (the characters, the setting, the plot). I’ve beaten this horse to death but it’s clearly not getting through so I’ll say it again. When you start writing your script, start from a place of, ‘I’m going to hook the reader,” not from a place of, “I’ve got to set everything up.” The former is the only chance you have at keeping the reader around.
2 – There is one exception to this rule. If you’re not writing an entertaining scene, you must be building towards an entertaining scene and the reader has to know it. Let’s say you’re writing a sports movie. You don’t have to start with an entertaining game. But you should start with a buildup towards that game. Mention the game. Convey how important it is. Introduce the quarterback who’s injured. The doctor tells him he won’t be able to play. If you do this well, the reader will want to stick around to see the game. This is relevant not just for the beginning of your script, but for the whole thing. You don’t have to entertain the reader every second of your story. But if you’re not entertaining them, you have to be building towards the next entertaining sequence.
3 – If I’m not allowed to set anything up, how do I set everything up? – I didn’t say you couldn’t set up your story. Only that entertaining the reader must take priority over set up. I would suggest coming up with a great scene idea irregardless of whether it’s an ideal scene to set everything up in. Your only focus in coming up with that scene should be in entertaining the reader. Once you’ve done the important part – written an entertaining scene – then go back and figure out how to work in your set up.
4 – What if I have a lot of set up? – Then maybe you should think about simplifying your plot. Lots of set up means lots of exposition. The more exposition there is in your script, the bigger the chance of boring the reader. All this stuff is interconnected, guys. You simplify your story so you don’t need a lot of set up so you don’t need a lot of exposition so your story is more focused on entertainment.
5 – What’s wrong with set up exactly? – The problem with set up is that it FEELS LIKE SET UP. When a writer is in “set up this character” mode, it feels to the reader like you’re setting up a character. If it feels that way, we’re not inside your story. We’re outside of it, watching you set up your character. Newsflash. You want us INSIDE your story. The more entertaining the scene, the less likely we’re going to notice that you’re setting up your character. It’s easier to hide that stuff if we’re enamored with your wonderfully entertaining scene. But if you start a scene off with the goal of “setting up my hero,” there’s a good chance we’re going to realize that that’s exactly what you’re doing. Go watch the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Probably one of the best scenes ever at setting up a character. But do you ever notice he’s being set up. Of course not. Because the scene’s so darn entertaining!
Note: I changed my approach and started reading loglines before reading entries.
6 – Loglines tell me if someone is a serious screenwriter or not – Loglines suck. There’s no two ways about. How do you condense an entire movie down to a single sentence? It’s impossible. However, what I’ve found, with 99% accuracy, is that the good writers know how to write a logline and the bad writers do not. I think what’s going on here is that the people who are dedicated to mastering this craft and putting in the time required to do so, eventually learn how to write a logline by necessity. They don’t like it. But they realize it’s a tool that helps other people get a sense of their script and therefore they must figure it out. I can’t tell you how many loglines I read and say, “This script is going to be bad.” Then I open the script and, what do you know, it’s bad. Get help on your loglines, guys. From me or a writer friend or someone around here. A lot of you are hanging yourselves before the reader has even opened the script.
7 – Utilize everything at your disposal to create memorable characters – Most writers do the bare minimum when introducing a character. Heck, out of every 10 scripts I read, half of them will describe a character in less than one word (i.e. skittish). There are lots of options you can use to introduce a character in an interesting way. The trick is to focus on the things your character HAS CONTROL OVER. These were choices they made. And we can get a good sense of a character by their choices. Their posture. Their clothing. Their hairstyle. Their car. Their mannerisms. If we’re in their home when we meet them, the way they’ve decorated the room. “JOHN, 55, dressed head-to-toe in Gucci, his thinning black-dyed hair slicked back with too much product, answers his bedazzled phone.” See how much you can convey about a person with this strategy?
8 – Nothing should ever go according to plan in a screenplay – There are a lot of scripts out there written by writers who’ve been writing for 5, 6, 7, even 10 years that are pretty good but not good enough. These writers know everything that they’re “supposed to do.” So their scripts have a professional sheen to them. But what I’ve found with a lot of these scripts is that the writers have story tunnel vision. They know where their character has to start. They know where their character has to end. So there’s this inevitability to everything that happens in between. Nothing comes up that’s truly a problem for the characters. What you should be doing is making sure the plan is constantly being interrupted. Things are popping up that zig and zag the story in ways that weren’t originally intended. I’ll give you an example from Star Wars. The whole Luke Skywalker Obi-Wan Kenobi Han Solo objective is to get to Alderran. So they get there and… it’s gone. Talk about things not going according to plan. Now what? There needs to be a part of your brain dedicated to repeatedly asking the question, “What if this crazy thing happened here?” That should give you a steady stream of interruptions that will keep your story fresh.
9 – Multiple character arcs – I notice that a lot of writers create one character arc in their entire script. It’s like, “Phew, I’m glad I’m done with that.” But if you want to add some turbo to your script, arc several characters. I’ll never forget listening to the Notting Hill (a movie with 7 or 8 character arcs) director’s commentary and whoever was on there with the writer, Richard Curtis, gasped at one point late and said, “Jesus, Richard. You even gave the restaurant a bloody character arc!” That’s what good writers do. Movies are vehicles to explore change. So don’t limit yourself to your hero.
10 – Don’t despair if your script isn’t loved by a reader – It’s important to remember that when a reader dislikes your script, it isn’t always your fault. The writing may not be that writer’s thing. The reader might even think that the concept is good and the writing is solid. But that doesn’t matter if it’s not their thing. I’m going to use a weird analogy to make my point. I once dated a girl who had this friend who didn’t like me. She didn’t have a reason not to like me. I tried everything in my power to make her like me. Nothing worked. One day I finally confronted her and I said, “Why do you hate me so much?” She said, “I don’t hate you. I just don’t get you.” There will always be people who don’t get you just as there will always be people who don’t get your writing. It makes sense when you think about it. All writing has personality baked into it. Your voice is in there. So if someone doesn’t like that voice, they’re not going to like your script. I say this because every twenty entries, I’ll come across a script that’s well-written and has a good concept, yet the personality of the writing is sooooo not my thing (for example, there are virtually zero Scorsese clones that I’m going to like – I dislike that writing style so much). So don’t get down if your script isn’t beloved by someone. Keep sending it out and you’ll eventually find that person who gets you.
UFOs, hermaphrodites, lizard monks, and just about anything else your mind can dream up appear in today’s screenplay, written by the co-writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark!
Genre: Adventure
Premise: When a movie exec goes missing in the mountains of Tibet, a British agent named Jimgrim teams up with the exec’s wife to find him.
About: Today’s script, written by the co-writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark, was based on a series of 1920s pulp novels by Talbot Mundy and is said to have inspired the character of Indiana Jones. Some even say Spielberg and Lucas – gasp – STOLE! – the idea. I don’t know if I’d go that far. But they were definitely inspired by the novels.
Writer: Philip Kaufman, based on the novel by Talbot Mundy
Details: written in the 80s, 134 pages
I’ll be honest. I chose this script for one reason and one reason only. The title! I like this title so much that if the script isn’t good, I suggest someone get the rights to the title and write their own version of it. Cause there aren’t too many titles that can imply an interesting story all by themselves.
Now, the timing behind Kaufman’s script is a little strange so let me explain. Indiana Jones came out in 1981. This script was written AFTER that. However, I suspect that after Raiders became a hit, Kaufman decided to use the original source material that inspired the idea to create a separate franchise. No idea if this is correct. If there are google sleuths out there who can clear this up, have at it.
Elmer Rait is a movie exec. Or, he once was. These days he spends his time traveling to remote places all over the world. He spends much of his time in Kathmandu, as he’s searching for a fabled group of people known as the “Nine Unknown.” We watch him trekking at the top of a mountain when he sees… A UFO! And then he passes out and wakes up in a cave with a bunch of monks, one of them a lizard man.
Cut to Erika showing up in Kathmandu. Erika is a movie director and Rait’s ex-wife. Rait used to send her movie ideas during his travels and told her about the nine unknown. She suspects that he may have found them, or died trying.
I guess you can’t just waltz up mountains in Tibet on your own so Erika is forced to hire a guide. And that guide is… you guessed it, Jimgrim! Jimgrim is a British agent and actually friends with Rait. So he should theoretically be helpful. OT: That’s how I think of myself, by the way. That I’m “theoretically helpful.”
After we spend way too much time in Kathmandu, Jimgrim discovers that Rait is in a secret town called Shambhala. Which is going to take them to India! How we went from Rait getting lost in Tibet to India, I have no idea. But, anyway, Jimgrim and Erika recruit seven other trekkers to help them. I don’t know if you do math, but that means there are NINE of them. Nine people searching for the Nine unknowns.
After a very long time (the margins on this script are VERY wide – I wouldn’t be surprised if its true page count is somewhere closer to 200) and a side journey to a town full of hermaphrodites, we find the secret city and Rait. There, Rait explains that he’s infiltrated the “nine unknown” and that their job is to recruit all the knowledge on the planet and use it to rule the world or something. Rait is hoping to take over the group and be the ultimate ruler. Which means Jimgrim and Erika will have to do the unthinkable – stop Rait. Even if it means killing him!
First off, let me say that there is DEFINITELY a movie in here somewhere. This world is exquisitely rich with character and place, moreso than 99% of the adventure scripts I read. I think these pulp novels are in the public domain now. Which means anyone can adapt them. But in order to do that correctly, they need to study how this script got it wrong. TimSlim gets so lost in all of its ideas that it isn’t clear what it wants to be.
Problem 1 occurs after the setup. The setup itself is a little long because there are a lot of characters. But I was intrigued enough to want to keep reading. Then, however, Erika shows up and we just chill out in Kathmandu for 45 freaking pages! That’s half a 90 page script. I mean for crying out loud. Move your story along. This is where the script died for me.
Story momentum is important. Once you lose it, it’s almost impossible to get it back. Especially when the setting and genre imply a movie that moves. This is an adventure movie! Why are we chilling out in rooms for 45 minutes?
The other problem is going to be harder to fix for future adapters. You probably shouldn’t put the name of your main character in the title if your main character is boring as f%$@#. Yes, Jimgrim is boring.
I’m actually excited to analyze this with you today because these novels inspired Indiana Jones, who is considered to be one of the top five movie heroes ever. So we can directly compare the two and, hopefully, learn how to construct a compelling hero in the process. A boring hero is a script killer. This is something you have to get right. So what happened here?
The answer is simple. Indiana Jones is a superhero. He’s a mild-mannered professor during the “day” and a reckless treasure hunter at “night.” We love the duality of the character, not to mention that he’s cool, funny, sarcastic, a rogue, a badass, and lots of other things audiences gravitate to. Meanwhile, Jimgrim is just a guy! He’s a British agent. There’s literally nothing more to him than that. THAT is how you create a boring character, folks.
That’s not to say an agent can’t be interesting. Last time I checked, the James Bond franchise is doing all right. But you have to infuse your hero with some other component if they’re going to be compelling. Bourne figured it out with the amnesia stuff. Which is kind of cliche but it’s better than nothing. The point is, you need to include SOMETHING. I would rank Jimgrim as the 4th or 5th most interesting character in this script. Even Erika is more interesting and she’s just some clueless chick.
Ultimately, this script falls victim to something a lot of big Hollywood adventure scripts fall victim to which is that they think they need to be huge, and in the process of trying to be huge, it becomes impossible to keep the story moving. They’re covering too many people, too many bases.
The beginning of this script had someone killing a man for a map (that Rait used to find the Nine). 80 pages later, that man returns and all I’m thinking to myself is, “Dude, why??” I’m trying to keep track of nine major characters right now. Why are you bringing this guy back? His story is over.
There’s something called SCRIPT MOMENTUM that you must monitor at all times. The more information that needs to be injected into your script, the more you’re impeding on your script’s momentum. Sometimes it’s worth it. Most times it isn’t. If we’re sitting around for too long or sticking with a stagnant plot point for too long, that is often where you’ll lose a reader. Keep things moving. Keep the characters’ eyes on the ball.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: 8 key characters. Assuming you introduce them all in memorable ways – 8 key characters is how many the average reader can remember without keeping notes. I would suggest staying under this number but I realize with some movie ideas, it’s not possible. In those cases, tread carefully. Know that every extra character you include makes it harder for the reader to remember everyone. So make sure those characters are a) necessary and b) extremely extremely memorable. Otherwise, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
p.s. Notice how I said “if they’re all memorable.” We won’t remember a character introduced this way: JANE, 19, dirty blond, walks into the room.
Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: When an assassin who works from home discovers that a secret organization is killing all the assassins from *her* secret organization, she must find out who’s in charge and stop them.
About: Amazon just bought this script for low six figures. This is not Kat Wood’s first sale. She sold a couple of scripts to Amy Pascal, one called Envoy and the other, Genus. Born in England, Wood is a former BBC broadcast journalist. David Leitch will be producing “Ruby.” Carson will be retitling the script. It should be titled, “Ruby Tuesday.” Sequels can then be titled, “Ruby Wednesday,” “Ruby Thursday,” etc.
Writer: Kat Wood
Details: 103 pages
Guess what?
The girl-with-a-gun genre is not dead! We’ve got yet another sale in the genre. I’m a little surprised since, of the girl-with-a-gun flicks that have gotten produced so far, none of them have done that well. Heck, Angelina Jolie’s “Salt” did better than all of them and that movie came around long before this trend started. I’m interested in today’s sale because I want to see how this genre is evolving. Because, make no mistake, it’s going to need to evolve if it wants to stick around. Let’s get into it.
Ruby is a Gemstone, an agent for a secret agency. And Ruby is a special type of agent. She works from home. In the opening scene, we watch Ruby assassinate another man — WHO’S CURRENTLY IN INDIA. That’s right, Ruby tracks him and communicates with him via a series of hacks, sending him into the warehouse he owns, which was laced with explosives. Boom!
In her spare time, Ruby does something kind of weird. She stalks her ex-boyfriend, Scott. Now before you judge, you have to understand that Ruby’s handler, Mellor, told her she had to leave her boyfriend because it increased the chances that her identity would be discovered. Ruby then argued for a compromise. She’d still be able to monitor Scott (via phone, webcams and security cameras) so that if anyone came to hurt him, she’d know.
And that’s exactly what happens. Two intruders invade Scott’s place. Ruby immediately races across town to stop them but by the time she gets there, Scott’s been stabbed and the second intruder has escaped. Ruby races Scott to the hospital and then, in a savage move, locates the intruder online and lures him to a building pretending to be his employer. There, she traps him in an elevator, which she’s remotely controlling, and forces him to tell her what the plan was. After she finds out, she slams the elevator into the ground at a hundred miles an hour.
The intel was that somebody named Atlas is going after all the Gemstones. Mellor says he already knew this. But that there is new information. A former Gemstone named Sapphire is selling all the Gemstones out! Ruby will have to find Sapphire and figure out who these Atlas folks are, all while making sure they don’t invade Scott’s hospital and kill him. Can Ruby do it? What do you think?
So, yesterday, I pointed out how Jon Favreau gave us a Western bar showdown scene that was so cliche a six year old could’ve predicted what happened. I said if you’re going to include cliche situations, you need to find a fresh angle. “Ruby” shows us how to do this with its first scene. How many assassination scenes have we seen in movies? 50,000? 100,000? There are only so many ways you can have one person assassinate another. So the average writer is going to do what? Do it the way it’s always been done. I mean, there’s no possible way to create a new assassination scene, right? And even if there was, it would take too long to come up with. Much easier to surrender to the trope. NOPE! Kat Wood’s main character executes her assassination from 8000 miles away. Remotely. That’s how you do something differently, folks. That’s how you catch a reader’s attention.
To achieve this, you must go against traditional screenwriting teachings, which tell you that if there’s going to be an interaction between your hero and someone else, it should happen face to face! You would never want your hero interacting with someone on a phone or a computer. And yet the entire scene in Ruby is constructed around that conceit. This is the thing with fresh ideas. They’re often hidden in the things you’ve been told not to do. That’s why people rarely think of them. They’ve been brainwashed to never consider such ideas. This is also why, every once in a while, you’ll see a really original scene from a beginner. It’s because they’ve never been taught not to do these things. Of course, they don’t know anything else about writing either so despite the occasional original scene, their screenplay is a giant mess.
For about forty pages of Ruby, I had my fist raised in triumph. I liked the remote assassination scene. I loved the elevator torture scene. I was in! This is exactly what I needed out of my agent action movies. Fresh ideas. Fresh set-pieces. However, every ten pages after the elevator scene, Ruby got more and more generic. It was literally as if Wood decided to put away her “originality” magic wand. Because literally everything that happened next was textbook girl-with-a-gun secret agent storytelling. The mysterious secret organization – Atlas. The one-on-one kick-punch-pow fights with the other agents. We even – gasp – have her handler turn on her. Literally the same thing that happens in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE MOVIES.
I don’t get it.
I honestly don’t get it.
And I’m not talking to just Wood here because I see this in every script. It’s like the writer reaches this point after which they stop being creative. They stop caring about making interesting choices. And they just follow the handbook. Whatever the handbook says should happen here, that’s what they’re going to do.
I think I at least kind of know why this happens. The first half of your script is operating under a different set of rules. Things don’t need to be explained anytime soon. This allows for more freedom in the storytelling. You can write in crazy things and, for the most part, not worry about the consequences. But the closer you get to the end, the more everything needs to make sense. This limits the number of creative options you have because if you decide to, say, kill off the main character at the end of the second act, you have to confront questions like, “Well then who’s going to take over the story? And why would we still care?” It’s much easier to toe the company line and do it the way everybody else did it.
I think writers are also scared of coming up with an ending like Tenet. Sure, it’s unpredictable and weird, two things I’m advocating for here. But it doesn’t make sense. What more writers need to get used to is writing a lot of drafts where they play with different endings. It takes longer but you’re more likely to notice just how generic your script is if you’re writing a lot of drafts of it. That’s how they came up with the Delorean in Back to the Future. Remember that, for a lot of drafts, the time machine in that film was a refrigerator. It takes longer but it’s worth it. Cause the last thing you want your reader thinking when they finish your script is, “Wow, those last 50 pages felt exactly like 20 other movies I’ve seen.” You’re better than that.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m willing to bet that the reason this script got purchased was because of the first 40 pages. Not the last 60. It should not surprise you, then, that the first 40 pages were when Wood was giving us scenes we hadn’t seen before. I mean, I just read an amateur script EXACTLY LIKE THIS two weeks ago. Literally, the writing is the exact same. The only difference is those first 40 pages of Ruby were more unique. Now imagine if you did that FOR AN ENTIRE SCRIPT. You wouldn’t be getting low six-figure offers from Amazon. You’d be getting low seven-figure offers form Paramount or Sony.
