Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: A little girl living in the wilderness with her parents has her life turned upside-down when a mysterious man shows up on something she’s never seen before – a snowmobile.
About: An interesting project today, guys. First off, we have a script by Mark L. Smith (and his wife!). Smith, the writer of Leo DiCaprio’s The Revenant, is one of the most coveted writers in town. The Smiths are adapting a novel that’s said to be the next “Room,” which, for those of you who remember, was my favorite movie of 2015. Also, this is one of the rare novels on Amazon that has over 1000 reviews and a 4 and 1/2 star rating or higher. So it’s supposed to be really good.
Writer: Elle Smith and Mark L Smith (based on the novel by Karen Dionne)
Details: 106 pages
There are so many common story scenarios that it’s easy to get discouraged. Why try to write another version of an idea when it’s been done so many times already? Luckily, there’s an answer to that. You simply look for a new angle.
Take a young girl being kidnapped. That’s as old a scenario as it gets. So how can you approach that angle differently? Well, you can approach it via a detective looking for the young girl. You can turn the missing girl into a cold case, so the detective is looking for her 30 years after she went missing. You can tell the story from the missing girl’s perspective. You can tell the story from the kidnapper’s perspective.
In the book, “Room,” (not the movie), a little boy tells the story about living in this room for his whole life with his mother, who, it turns out, was kidnapped by the man who’s now holding her captive here. He, the boy, happens to be the offspring of his mother and that man. That’s about as unique an angle as you can come up with for a kidnapping story.
Which brings to The Marsh King’s Daughter, a story that takes the same initial angle as Room but switches a few key variables. 12 year old Helena Holbrook lives in the middle of Northern Michigan in a settler’s cabin with her father, Jacob, and her mother. We’re initially led to believe that this is the 1800s. But then, after hunting with her father, Helena stumbles across a PEOPLE MAGAZINE with Princess Di on the cover. It turns out we’re a little closer to modern day than we thought.
We immediately get the sense that Helena’s mom isn’t the happiest person. While Jacob can’t wait to go out with his daughter and teach her about survival every day, Helena’s mom just stands around and scowls a lot. When Jacob heads out for a two day trip to get supplies, a lost man on a snowmobile zooms up to the house. Both Helena and her mom stare at it in shock. Helena has never seen a snowmobile in her life. She’s never seen any type of vehicle. Then, inexplicably, the mom charges the man and starts screaming, “Hurry! Get us out of here before he comes back!”
What we’re about to learn is that Jacob kidnapped the mom when she was 13, then brought her up here and had a child – Helena. This man is a kidnapping rapist. Which means Helena’s entire life has been a lie. No time to worry about that though as a hole appears in the snowmobiler’s head. Yup, he’s dead. The dad is sniping at them at getting closer. Helena’s mom grabs her and zooms off on the snowmobile. Helena wakes up in a modern day police precinct a few hours later. There she’s told the truth about her life, a truth she can’t accept.
That’s the end of the first act and we cut to modern day, where Helena is now married to a man named Stephen. They have a little girl of their own, Marigold, and live in a beautiful Ann Arbor, Michigan house. But their marriage is on the rocks due to the fact that Helena is a psychological mess, unable to trust anyone or anything. Compounding this daily trauma, she’s kept the truth of her former life a secret from her family.
Then the unthinkable happens. Jacob escapes from prison. It doesn’t take long for the FBI and media to descend upon Helena, as they suspect she’ll be the first one he contacts. Stephen feels like he’s been hit with an atom bomb as he realizes everything he thought he knew about his wife is a lie. All of a sudden, the family must prepare for the possibility that Jacob will come for them.
Helena is going insane. Even after they find a burned body in the woods they say is, 100%, Jacob’s dead body, she knows he’s still out there. So she heads to a secret waterfall that they used to talk about all the time, a place he said she could always find him. And he didn’t lie. She shows up and there he is. The question is, what does he want from her? Or, more appropriately, what does he plan to do to her?
Like I said, The Marsh King’s daughter takes a different angle from what we traditionally see in kidnapping movies. The kidnapping has already taken place well before the story started. We get a great early twist when the snowmobile man shows up and is subsequently killed. Talk about grabbing the reader. As a result, the first act is nearly perfect.
But then the story decides it’s going to be a PTSD movie based on how kidnapping affects the victim after they’ve grown up. I like that the writers approach yet another kidnapping movie from a fresh angle. But let’s get real here. Living a safe life with years of distance between you and your kidnapping is never going to be as intense as being inside the kidnapping story as it’s happening.
I think the writers sensed this and were looking for as many ways as possible to keep that setup interesting. First we get the prison escape. Which does add a more exciting element than had their not been an escape. Then we move into Michael Myers territory where Helena starts to think she sees Jacob around town.
The problem with that is that it was explicitly set up that Jacob loved Helena more than anything. He would never hurt her. So when I see Michael Myers in the downtown crowd of a Halloween party, I know my heroine is going to be in a life or death struggle within the next few scenes, seeing Jacob in a crowd means… what? He’s going to come over and say hi? They’re trying to present his presence as dangerous when it isn’t.
What this all means is that The Marsh King’s Daughter is more of a drama than a thriller. An if you’re looking at it through that lens, it does a solid job. I liked exploring the psychological trauma something like this would do to a person. I watched that Amanda Knox documentary on Netflix and there is nothing more haunting than that woman’s eyes. What she went through in Italy when she was accused of murder and subsequently went to prison – that still informs every single decision she makes during the day. And we get the sense that Helena is a similar position. How can she trust anyone when the one person she was supposed to able to trust turned out to be a monster?
But, in the end, this script struggles with structural problems. The best stuff, by far, occurs in the first quarter of the story. That cannot be the case. A script must get better as it goes on. It can never be NOT AS good as what preceded it. This happens whenever you create a narrative that has characters waiting for the plot to give them permission to act. This whole movie is built around Helena waiting for the plot to tell her what to do. Wait once the dad escapes prison. Wait to see if the DNA on the burned body matches her dad. Wait for the media and FBI to come to her. 75% of Helena’s journey is waiting. Like I always say, it’s not impossible to make “waiting around narratives” work. But it sure as heck isn’t easy.
Despite that, the script has a great first act and a good last act. And it’s written well. For those reasons, I think it’s worth reading.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Three variables you can use to find new angles on old ideas are PERSPECTIVE, TIME, and GENRE. Perspective refers to which character’s point of view you follow the story from. I just talked bout this in a recent review. The writer wrote a story about a teenage boy losing his virginity from the point of view of the condom. Time refers to when you cover the event. Today’s review was about the effects of a kidnapping 20 years later. Also, “time” is a shifting variable. Nobody says you can only cover one time period. Marsh King covers two. The kidnapping when it was going on and the kidnapping 20 years later. Finally, genre allows you to instantly change an idea. Marsh King is a different film if we make the dad a vampire. It’s also a different film if we make Helena a stand-up comedian who uses her unique kidnapping past to frame her stand-up routine (“So you guys thought you had a bad childhood cause Johnny didn’t ask you to prom? Check this out.”)… The important thing here is to never give us the most generic version of the idea. That’s usually the one that nobody’s going to care about. Playing with the variables is the key to making your idea stand out.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In a post-apocalyptic future, the passengers on a maglev train traveling from Los Angeles to London get more than they bargained for when an alien creature gets loose.
About: Giddy with excitement. I haven’t read the script yet. All I heard was aliens on a train and I was in. Jim Uhls (Fight Club) wrote the original spec script of this idea for Ridley Scott. Scott developed it for a while but eventually left and Roland Emmerich would come on. This draft, by Steven de Souza, was supposedly a bit of a departure from Uhls’ version.
Writer: Steven E. De Souza
Details: 133 pages (1990 draft)
Snakes on a Plane? PFFFT!
Please.
That is so 2003.
Try ALIENS ON A TRAIN!
Yeah, baby. Now you’re talking bout movies that get the adrenaline pumping. Me? Love aliens. Me? Kinda love trains. What do you get when you add love and kinda love? That’s more than double the love. Love and three-quarters. Think about the person you’ve fallen in love with most in your life. This is more than that. Well, it’s not more than that yet. I haven’t read the script. I’m about to. But I’m fully expecting that there’s no way I will not love and three-quarters this script. Its pedigree precedes it.
I mean how did this not get made?
There’s aliens!
On a train!
Not a steamboat.
Not a stagecoach.
Granted, those would be awesome too. But they’re nowhere near as cool as aliens on a train.
It’s the future: Los Angeles, 2015. Okay, it’s the future *for this script*. Obviously, the writers didn’t budget for a time machine to come to 2015 and realize that we weren’t yet apocalyptic. I mean do your homework, guys. Come on! Anyway, things are bad in their version of 2015. For starters, most of Los Angeles is covered in desert. On top of that, there’s barely any ozone left. So lots of sunburn and breathing issues.
But there is still a society and still a world economy. One of the most promising industries is maglev train travel. The world government outlawed planes due to ozone issues so trains have become the only way to travel long distances. One of those trains, the big maiden voyage from Los Angeles to London, is leaving today.
In the spirit of an Agatha Christie novel, we meet the many passengers who will be trekking on the luxurious train. There’s Hedda, who’s escorting her fertile 15 year old granddaughter, Lisa (fertility is a rarity in this future world). There’s suspicious doctors Scanlon and Ruby. There’s the rich a-hole, Reggie. There’s the train manager, always prickly Sari. And then there’s Russ Prine, who secretly works for the company and is taking the trip undercover to make sure everyone who works on the train is doing a good job.
Once the train gets going, we cut to Scanlon and Ruby’s room where we realize these two are not doctors. They’re escorting a big tube thing that happens to have an alien in it. Their only job is to inject it with some pain juice (that’s the only way I understood it) which would keep it from doing anything naughty.
Meanwhile, we have a little comedic subplot of Prine trying to make Sari’s life a living hell. He asks for numerous things he knows she doesn’t have (a certain meal cooked a certain way, for example) to see if she remains professional. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t.
As the conflict between them grows, Scanlon and Ruby forget to inject the pain juice and this tentacled scary alien creature breaks out of its coffin and begins killing people before disappearing into the train’s innards. Sari and Prine run into the creature, surviving it, and realize they need to do something FAST. Except they can’t because the train is currently in some section of the US that has no air due to ozone issues. Which means they’re going to have to find and kill this thing while the train is on the move.
Sari tells all the passengers to move up to the first two cars, giving her, Prine, and a handful of other volunteers, the rest of the cars to find and trap this thing. Of course, they have no idea what this thing is and therefore underestimate it. And when it damages the brakes, the train loses all ability to slow down. Which means they’re barreling towards London at 1200 miles per hour with no way to stop. What’s going to happen??? How are they going to get out of this??? ALIEN ON A TRAIN!
Just like I expected, this was a wild read.
It’s got something going on. I always wanted to turn the page. But it’s messy and my guess is that’s because it’s over-developed.
Over-development is a word of the past. It infamously resulted in a lot of bad films in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, places like Netflix laugh at development. “Why develop something when you can just greenlight it,” is their motto. As a result, we get paper-thin movies like Project Power.
But back then they had the opposite problem. They’d hire writer after writer and have all of them doing endless drafts. Which resulted in one of three scenarios. The best scenario was that they eliminated all the script’s weaknesses, the movie got made, and it turned out great. Think Good Will Hunting or Gladiator.
The second scenario was that each successive rewrite would beat the originality out of the screenplay, giving us something with zero unique characteristics that was utterly bland. Think 1998’s Godzilla.
The final scenario is what’s happened here. With so many writers and drafts packing so many things into the script, the elements start to impede upon each other, competing for plot real estate. Think about it. There’s two movies in this script. There’s the maiden voyage of some post-apocalyptic intercontinental train (think the train version of Titanic). And then there’s an alien that gets loose on a train. I’m not convinced these two ideas can share the same movie.
Usually, when you have a cool concept, you want to treat it like Michael Jordan. Give it the ball and tell everybody else on the court to get the f*%# out of the way (as coach Doug Collins once famously said). This is not that. This alien is not only secondary but it doesn’t fit into the mythology. You’ve established we live in this giant desert now. When the heck did aliens show up?
Now, as it so happens (spoiler), it turns out this isn’t an “aliens on a train” script. It’s a “monster on a train” script. The creature is man-made. I get why they did this. BUT IT’S NO ALIENS ON A TRAIN! And that’s why I showed up. To see aliens. On a train. Ripping organs out of human passengers.
I bet the original idea here by Jim Uhls had aliens. Somewhere along the way, it became a monster. And this is what happens in development all the time. It’s one of the hardest things to manage for a writer, producer, studio, or whoever. Stories take on a life of their own. They want to do things you didn’t originally expect. So you have to decide if you’re going to give in to the new direction or stick to your guns.
I’m guessing that they couldn’t figure out why the aliens were on the train or why they would go around killing people so they came up with this storyline that better connected with the mythology (the creature, it turns out, was man-made to replenish the ozone).
I dunno.
I’m torn on which is the right thing to do. One part of me says, stick with the original cool idea you had. The further away you go from the original idea, the further away you go from the coolness. But then you hear stories like M. Night’s, whose original idea for The Sixth Sense was a psychiatrist helping a kid who painted paintings of things that hadn’t happened yet. The kid didn’t see ghosts. Bruce Willis was not a ghost. M. Night followed the story through multiple drafts before incorporating those two things. And that ended with, arguably, the most successful spec sale of all time.
But.
But.
But.
Aliens on a train!
I wanted aliens on a train!
Can someone contact Jim Uhls and ask him for the original spec script where we had aliens on a train? Please. That’s what I want to read.
Despite all that, this is still wacky in a fun way so I recommend it. Especially if you loved the high concept era of spec scripts.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Steven de Souza has some wisdom for those wondering why some things get made and others don’t: “Movies get made not because the script is great, but because somebody likes the script at that point.”
Is Simon Rich the new Charlie Kaufman?
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A struggling Hollywood director who’s had minimal success gets his first opportunity to direct a studio film. The only problem is the stage where he has to shoot is haunted by an angry silent film actress ghost.
About: Amblin, along with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World director Edgar Wright, have purchased this short story from Simon Rich, who’s quickly becoming one of the hottest writers in town. Rich’s most recent effort teamed him up with Seth Rogen for HBO Max’s first big feature film, An American Pickle. Like today’s purchase, that too, was based on one of Rich’s short stories. Here’s some storytelling advice from Rich: “When I write a story, the main thing I’m thinking about is, will it be emotionally visceral? Will it grab the reader? Will it make them interested in the characters and make them want to turn the page? That’s the main thing I’m thinking about, more so, even, than whether or not it’s going to be funny.”
Writer: Simon Rich
Details: About 10,000 words. You can read the story yourself here.
What if I told you that Simon Rich is as close to early Charlie Kaufman as any writer has gotten yet? I’m not talking about the 2020 Charlie Kaufman, the guy who thinks characters mumbling to themselves about suicide is a movie concept. But the Charlie Kaufman who took over the independent scene for a good seven years back in the 2000s.
Between American Pickle and Stage 13, Rich has shown he has that particular brand of offbeat humor that echoes Kaufman. The only difference is that his stuff isn’t quite as weird as Kaufman’s was. He leans into the joke more than the weirdness, which makes his stories more funny than unique.
But, make no mistake, this is a weird idea. Rich isn’t writing Kevin Hart vehicles like the rest of the comedy industry (“DMV: Undercover cop David Winston becomes a teller at the DMV to stop a drivers test cheating scam that has allowed thousands of bad drivers to pass their drivers tests!”). He’s actually trying something different. And for that alone, I’m a fan.
By the way, let today’s “horror” short story review act as a reminder that the Horror Showdown deadline is coming up! I’m accepting both horror scripts AND horror short stories. If you want a chance at your script/story getting picked for the Friday, October 16th showdown, send your title, logline, genre (horror or horror adjacent), why we should read your script/story, and a PDF of the screenplay/story to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. All entries must be in by Thursday, October 15th, 8pm Pacific Time!
Yoni is a 30-something aspiring Hollywood director with 95,000 dollars worth of film school debt. Yoni’s been thinking about giving up on his dream for a while now but the one thing that stops him is showing up at his parents’ doorstep and admitting failure, since they told him never to chase the dream in the first place.
But then Yoni receives the call he’s been waiting for. A studio suit tells him they want him to direct their next project. For further details, let’s meet in person. Yoni hurries over to the studio where Nikki greets him. They golf cart their way through the exciting backlot until they make it all the way back to the final sound stage – Stage 13.
The stage looks old and run down because it hasn’t been used in 70 years. It’s actually a relic from the silent film days. When they get inside, Yoni is shocked to see a woman descend from the ceiling. “Who’s that??” Yoni asks. Oh, that’s Clara. She’s a ghost, Nikki says, then darts out, slamming the door behind her.
Long story short, Clara is a pissed off silent film actress who never became famous and has, therefore, been killing crew members who have worked in Stage 13 ever since. The studio believes that if they finally make Clara “a star,” that she’ll be satisfied and leave to heaven, giving them their stage back. So the plan is for Yoni to direct a fake “one-reel” silent film then show up a week later with an early 20th century Variety that says, “Clara becomes a breakout star!”
Yoni is bummed. He’s not even going to be shooting anything. It’s all play acting to trick this dead woman. The studio gives him a script and hires a bunch of actors to play the crew and off we go. But Clara has suspicions almost immediately and since she likes to murder people, Yoni fears for his life. This gives Yoni one last idea. What if they shot a REAL movie and tried to make Clara a REAL star? That would solve all the problems, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it…?
I can see why this short story was considered for a film adaptation. A lot of short stories are quick ideas that don’t fall into a typical 3-Act structure. But Stage 13 does. You have the setup. Our main character is thinking of giving up on his directing dream until an opportunity comes along. You have the conflict act, where Yoni doesn’t get to shoot a traditional movie and must deal with the ultimate temperamental actress. And finally, the resolution. Yoni decides to ignore the studio and shoot the movie his way, to disastrous consequences.
I’d say that the only thing different is that the story doesn’t have a “happy” ending. And if you’re a writer who wants to explore the “quirky” “alternative” indie storytelling space, mastery of offbeat endings is a requirement. Usually, counter-culture artists hate the happy ending so much that they give you the negative equivalent. But the negative equivalent is just as cliche. You want to find an ending that isn’t “happy” but is still interesting. And Rich achieves that here.
*spoiler* When Clara finds out that Yoni tricked her, she kills him. So now they’re both stuck in this stage. However, instead of it just being a sad ending, Yoni is now defiantly on board with Clara. He’s going to make it in Hollywood as well, dammit! So the two will work together to become stars. That’s one of the qualities you’re looking for in an offbeat ending. It should feel bittersweet.
Stage 13 is also a good example of how to use character to find your ending as opposed to using plot. With plot endings, it’s often about logistics. Character X has the money. Character Y needs the money. So Character Y comes up with a plan to take the money from Character X. You’ll notice that characters ARE INVOLVED in this scenario. But it’s not a character driven ending.
A character-driven ending is what Rich does in Stage 13. Rich establishes that his hero’s inner conflict is his lack of success and his obsession with finding that success. Ironically, this is the same problem Clara is dealing with. She’s determined to find success as well. So when the ending comes around, it’s not about logistics. Well, I guess there are always going to be logistics involved in an ending. But it’s more about these two characters needing to resolve that conflict within them. They need to show the world that they’re talented and can be successful at their chosen craft.
That’s how you create a character-driven ending. You focus on resolving something INSIDE the character as opposed to OUTSIDE them. And, by the way, character driven endings are almost always more impactful on an audience than plot-driven endings. So it’s worth it to use them if you can.
Like all weird ideas, tone is going to be paramount in making this movie work. But the humor is strong and you’ve got this star-making role in Clara the Angry Ghost. It should be fun. If I were Edgar Wright, this seems way more worthwhile than The Chain. I’d make this first.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In an article with Longreads, Rich was asked how he comes up with such original ideas: “It’s all about finding the right angle, right? Because none of the stories I tell are particularly original, and none of the themes I write about are new, and certainly, hopefully, none of the emotions I’m writing about are unique. So it’s just about coming up with an original creative angle. So with “Sell Out,” I don’t think I’m the first person to wonder what it would be like to meet their ancestors. I mean, there’s hundreds of works of art about it—everything from Back to the Future to Time and Again deals with those issues—so it was just about trial by error, systematically telling the story in every conceivable way until I found one that felt fresh and interesting and honest. Or the story, “Unprotected,” in my last book (note: Unprotected is told from the perspective of a condom). —I mean, how old of a story can you tell? A teenage boy who wants to lose his virginity: It’s the premise behind dozens of popular films. So it was just about, what’s an original, creative and visceral way to tell this old story of a teenage boy trying to get laid?”
I was thinking back to one my top 5 ever movie scenes, the opening scene in Fargo where Jerry meets the two criminals in the bar to solidify the job he’s hired them for – kidnap his wife.
The dialogue in that scene, while not as vibrant or quote-worthy as, say, a Tarantino scene, is still great. And the reason it’s awesome is because there’s so much tension in the interaction. Jerry wants something. The two kidnappers don’t like the way it’s being handled and are, therefore, putting up resistance. “Shep said you’d have the 40 thousand for us now.” “No,” Jerry says. “See, I’m going to give it to you later, in the ransom.”
More recently, I was watching a scene in the Amazon show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Midge’s mother had left the family to start a new life in Paris. Midge and her father go there to bring her back. They find her in a run-down apartment she rented. Similar to the scene in Fargo, the dialogue doesn’t have any lines the college crowd is going to be quoting. But the dialogue throughout the scene is strong because they’re trying to get her to come back with them and she’s having none of it.
Around this point I had a minor revelation. One of the keys to writing a good dialogue scene isn’t just establishing a character objective. Yes, that helps. If you *don’t* give your character an objective, the scene will feel pointless and your characters will prattle on like a couple of homeless people discussing the CIA. The key is that in addition to establishing the objective, YOU MUST THEN MAKE YOUR CHARACTER WORK FOR IT.
I used to make this mistake all the time without realizing it. I would put two characters in a scene. One (usually my hero) would have an objective. Technically, the scene should’ve worked. But so many of my scenes were still dull. Every once in a while one would work and I’d wonder, “Why is this one good and all the others suck?” I could never figure it out and began to chalk it up to luck.
I finally realized that I was never making my character work for their objective. Instead, my “objectives” were “objectives in name only.” I inserted them because the screenwriting books said it’s something I had to do. But I never saw any of these as “real” objectives. They were thrown in there to make things interesting, to give the scene some extra pop.
That’s actually one of the biggest violations I see writers make. They write what can technically be described as “resistance” to an objective. But it’s not true resistance. The reader doesn’t doubt for a second that the hero is going to get what he wants. This “false resistance” is why scenes that technically should work do not.
It happened in Tenet a lot, which is probably why so many people found the film boring. There’s a scene about 30 minutes into the movie that highlights one of the better attempts Nolan makes at true resistance to the hero’s objective.
It occurs when the Protagonist (that’s his name in the film) has to impress a woman named Kat in order to get an audience with the Russian oligarch he’s trying to take down (Kat is the Russian’s wife). Kat is an art connoisseur so he brings her a famous painting, parlaying that into a dinner where he makes his pitch to meet her husband.
Kat tells the Protagonist it ain’t going to happen (resistance!). Her husband is too big time and his men are going to beat the hell out of you just for meeting with me so… sorry. There is resistance here, obviously. But I didn’t doubt for a second that the Protagonist wasn’t going to meet the Russian.
That’s the difference between true resistance and false resistance. With true resistance, the reader will have legitimate doubt that the hero will be able to achieve his objective.
One of the better examples of this occurs in Return of the Jedi. Luke Skywalker comes in to retrieve his old buddy, Han Solo, from Jabba the Hut. Even though Luke is a freaking Master Jedi, we still doubt that he’s going to succeed. The pivotal moment when that doubt sets in is when Luke waves his hand to Jedi mind-trick Jabba into giving him his friends and Jabba LAUGHS. He doesn’t fall for Jedi nonsense.
If you think about it, that’s one of the more memorable scenes from the film and I believe that’s why. They conveyed genuine doubt that the hero was going to achieve his objective. And think about how much Luke had to do to eventually save his friends and escape Jabba. It was a huge ordeal. The resistance was real.
Which brings us back to topic of the article.
If you want a scene to shine, you must not only introduce a character objective. You must make them earn the objective. Or else what are we doing here? We’re just handing out lollipops to our hero whenever he needs one. Where’s the drama in that?
You should not only incorporate this tool into the entirety of the scene but within the scene, all the way down to individual questions. If your hero is a detective investigating a murder and he meets a person of interest and asks them the question he needs answered – Who do you think killed Frankie? – do not, under any circumstances, have that character answer the question right away.
MAKE YOUR HERO EARN IT.
“I’m going to cut straight to the chase. Who do you think killed Frankie?” “I just started a pot of coffee. Would you like some?” “No. I want to know who killed Frankie.” “Be back in a second. Sit down. Make yourself at home.” She disappears into the kitchen.
You see what’s going on here? We’re making the hero earn the answer to their question. And you better believe when this woman comes back with three cups of coffee that she’s going to bring up anything but Frankie. Which is exactly what you want. You want your hero to have to steer her on course and get the answer to that question. The more doubt you can inject into the scene that your hero is going to get his answer, the better.
Remember, if characters are constantly conversing freely, that’s not going to read well. Because all they’re doing, then, is exchanging information. “This is what I think.” “This is what I think.” “That’s an interesting perspective.” “So is your perspective.” There’s no drama in that type of exchange. There’s no uncertainty. And while there are situations where you can get away with it (in a comedy with two funny characters, for example) it’s usually a recipe for boredom.
One final point. Boring dialogue is rarely about the words themselves. Sure, interesting words, clever phrasing, strong anecdotes – these things can help dialogue. But the main reason a scene of dialogue doesn’t work is because you didn’t set up a scenario that allowed your characters to talk to each other in a way that’s entertaining to a third party. And that’s what “Make’em Earn It” is. You’re ensuring that every time your hero goes into a conversation, they’re going to have to earn the outcome they want. It’s never going to be handed to them. That alone is going to improve your dialogue dramatically.
Give it a shot in your latest script and let me know how it goes in the comments!
Genre: Spy/Thriller
Premise: Two CIA operative former lovers meet for dinner and try to figure out what happened five years ago with a complicated hostage plane takeover in Vienna they were involved in.
About: Olen Steinhauer adapted this script from his own novel. The script just sold to Netflix with Chris Pine and Thandie Newton attached to star. Steinhauer has been writing novels since 2003. In 2011, he sold the rights to his “Tourist” novels to Sony.
Writer: Olen Steinhauer
Details: 124 pages
I knew absolutely nothing about this one other than when I saw “knives” in the title I wondered if Netflix was jumping on the Rian Johnson “Knives Out” trend. You know Netflix. They have all that behind-the-scenes algorithmining going on so it wouldn’t surprise me if they greenlit something based on the title’s similarity to another successful title.
More optimistically, I am a Chris Pine enthusiast. I love the guy. I think we would be best friends if we ever met. And check out this curiosity. Who would’ve thought, ten years after the Star Trek reboot, that it would be Pine with the big career and Zachary Quinto struggling?
Not me! I’ve heard some stuff about Quinto having an ego the size of the sun which he uses to club people he works with into submission so maybe that has something to do with it. It’s a reminder for when you hit it big to always be nice to people! Cause unless you’re kicking box office ass, Hollywood has no issue kicking you to the curb.
No idea what to expect from this, which is kinda exciting. Can Netflix totally redeem itself after The Devil Hates Your Pajamas? God, I hope so.
It’s 2009. We’re in a plane parked on a runway in Vienna. A raging lunatic Pakastani terrorist is taking a cell phone video demanding that prisoners from his country be freed. If they don’t, he’s going to kill the people behind him. Pan back to see an entire first class filled with children. The terrorists have brought them up here and told the adults back in coach that for every one of them who tries something funny, a child will be killed.
Cut to the American Embassy in Vienna where we meet Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison. They’re both horrified by the video of the terrorist they’re watching. But before we see the rest of this play out, we cut back a few days ago to see the two in bed together. They’re lovers. What they don’t know yet is that how this terrorist attack ends will split them apart forever.
Well, maybe forever is an exaggeration. More like five years (by the way, this script was written in 2014, so five years puts them in “present day”). Celia has since retired, marrying an older gentleman and spitting out two kids. Henry still works for the CIA and he’s looking to finally close the book on that attack. But first, he wants to ask Celia a couple of questions regarding what happened that have never been answered.
So the two meet at a restaurant near Celia’s home, in Carmel, California. There’s clearly still a spark between the two. But Henry isn’t here for sparks. Or, at least, he doesn’t think he is. There were a number of choices made that day that escalated a manageable situation into a catastrophe.
The main question is it’s suspected someone in that Embassy was feeding the terrorists information. Who might it have been? Where “All The Old Knives” gets interesting is that when each person talks about the past, we cut to the past and see it. However, what we see isn’t always what the two former lovers say to one another.
For example, we’ll see a flashback of Celia being told by one of her bosses that her handler that day, Bill, is selling secrets to the terrorists. But Celia doesn’t tell this to Henry at the table. This initiates a series of dual-but-opposing-clues that leave us wondering who’s telling the truth. Or why one of the parties is withholding the information that they are.
(spoiler) But things get real crusty when we realize these two didn’t come here to get back together. They came here to kill each other. Each of them believes that the other one is responsible for what happened that day. The only question left is which one of them is right. Oh, and will they be able to go on with their life knowing that there’s a chance, however slim, that their belief that the other did it is wrong?
This one did not start well. We begin with the dreaded bulk intro page (that’s when you introduce five or more characters on a single page – it’s literally impossible for a reader to remember who’s who) and followed that up with the triple time jump. 2009, now 2008, now 2014 – all within two pages!
But once I realized what the script was trying to do, I settled in and enjoyed myself.
That’s because Steinhauer makes the clever choice of using the dinner as a framing device around which everything else orbits. This decision grounds the story and makes, what is normally, a hard to follow spy narrative with lots of characters and reveals, a simple “Which one of them is lying?” plot.
All of a sudden jumping back in time worked great because we knew why we were jumping and that we were always coming back to that restaurant.
I love when sophisticated storylines like this one wrap things around a simple construct. Sure, we could run all over the world like a James Bond movie. But this is so much more interesting.
Another thing I loved was that, while it’s one long conversation between two people, the flashbacks keep injecting new information into that conversation. For example, we’ll flash back to Celia talking with her handler, Bill, who warns her about Henry, who is up to something.
Or Henry goes to the bathroom where we reveal that he’s secretly recording this conversation. Then, later still, we learn that Bill was the one communicating with the terrorists. This ensures that what is, basically, a two hour long dialogue scene, never gets tiring. Things are always changing.
It’s like this giant pot of dramatic irony soup. We know something about Henry that Celia doesn’t know. Then we know something about Celia that Henry doesn’t know.
And all of this is wrapped around two additional elements that keep the read really exciting. The first is that these two are clearly still in love with each other. So we have this additional layer of complexity running underneath their terrorist conversation.
Then, on top of that, Steinhauer makes a really good decision not to give away what happened on the plane til the very end. We know something terrible happened. But we don’t know what or how bad it was. So, of course, we want to read til the end to find out.
The only reason this doesn’t rate as an “impressive” is the final reveal. It *does work.*. The script holds together. But for all the secrets and double-crossing we experience, I was hoping for something a little craftier or a little more exciting.
That’s the danger with having any twisty narrative. It’s great to have all these twists in the moment because they keep the reader entertained. But, whether you know it or not, you’re setting up an expectation for an all-time great shocking final twist. And, of course, how many times in history have we had one of those? Ten? Fifteen? In other words, the odds are not in your favor that you’re going to win the twist ending lottery.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s dramatic irony – the act of telling us, the reader, something that our hero does not know. And then there’s dramatic irony with high stakes, which is a whole different ballgame. If we know that Celia cheated on Henry but he doesn’t, that’s fun dramatic irony. But fun dramatic irony doesn’t write memorable scenes. It’s just fun. But if we know that Celia plans to kill Henry and he doesn’t know this, now we have dramatic irony with some real stakes. That tends to lead to great scenes.
What I learned 2: This is, maybe, the best example of how influential information is to a conversation. A conversation where two people are having a straight-forward conversation with each other is boring 99% of the time. It’s the information the reader takes into each conversation that makes said conversation entertaining. You have control of that information so use it. Before Ray talks to Stan, tell us that Stan has owed Ray money for over a year that he still hasn’t paid back. You can then have them talk about anything you want and I guarantee you their conversation will be more interesting than had you not revealed that information to us.
