The creator of HBO’s hit, “The Night Of,” sets his sights on a famous serial killer in an attempt to finally give the best selling series of “Ripley” novels the adaptation they deserve.
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A young frustrated con artist barely making ends meet in New York City is given the opportunity to seek out an old friend in Italy, an old friend who gives him an opportunity to step into the high life.
About: This is Steve Zallian’s big new project. He’s writing and directing many of the episodes in the first season. Zallian most recently penned The Irishman script. — A bit of an aside here. I am not a lover of biopics by any means, especially biopics about writers (I find the act of writing cinematically boring). But if you’re someone who likes that sort of thing, consider writing your next biopic on author Patricia Highsmith, as she was a fascinating figure. Early on in life, her mom told her that she’d tried to chemically abort her. This led to a lifetime of depression and alcoholism, and informs a lot of Highsmith’s writing, particularly with Ripley, who is detached from the world and mostly detests humanity. She was a lesbian who, at one point, fell in love with and had a relationship with a gay man. She seemed to have inherited many of her mother’s worst traits as she got older, and was said by many to be intolerable. An interesting character study for sure.
Writer: Steve Zallian – Based on the novels by Patricia Highsmith
Details: 58 pages (EP 1, Draft 5, June 20, 2019)
Do you remember 1999’s Talented Mr. Ripley? If so, pat yourself on the back as you’re one of a dozen people. The underwhelming film was known more for its hair, makeup, and costuming than its story. In fact, 20 years later and the only thing I can remember about it is Matt Damon standing on the beach wearing shorts that were too tight. Not sure what that says about me but luckily this isn’t about me.
It’s about trying to achieve one of the hardest tricks in screenwriting: writing inaccessible characters that audiences want to follow.
Tom Ripley is a cold friend-less angry individual. The closest thing 1961 had to an incel. Except, back then, there was no internet. There wasn’t a security camera poking outside every New York pizza joint. That meant you could hide a lot easier. And that’s what Tom Ripley does best. He hides.
That’s because Tom rips off old people with his “overdo bill notice” scam, an elaborate concoction that involves stealing mail so that old people don’t get bill notices, then calling them and demanding they send the overdue money now. Of course, the address they send them to is his own. Yeah, back in the 60s you could get away with all sorts of crap.
But Tom hates his life. He hates piecing together this pitiful existence. He hates the inexpensive clothes he wears. His weak-sauce haircut. His poor man’s shoes.
One day, one of the many people looking for Tom finally finds him. But they don’t want to beat him up or put him in jail. They have a message for him. A man named Herbert Greenleaf wants to meet you. He wants to offer you a job.
Tom goes and meets the surprisingly rich Herbert, who informs him that Tom is a friend of his son, Dickie. Tom barely knows Dickie but nods anyways cause this sounds like it’s going to be lucrative. Herbert explains that Dickie has become a trust fund baby, doing nothing with his life but enjoying himself on the beaches of Italy. Dickie is easily influenced by his friends so he thinks if one of his friends goes to talk to him, they could convince him of coming back to the States.
Tom is paid handsomely for the job, given 1500 dollars plus expenses! Unfortunately, Tom has to take a boat to get there. And Tom’s biggest fear is drowning. But he makes it across the Atlantic in one piece and soon he finds the small beautiful seaside Italian town where Dickie is staying.
And what do you know! There he is, right on the beach, easy to spot as the lone American with the American girlfriend. Tom walks up to Dickie. “Dickie!? Is that you?” Dickie has no idea who Tom is. But, you see, in the 60s, when someone says they know you, you nod and start talking to him. Which Dickie does, albeit reluctantly.
During their interaction, Tom realizes that Dickie detests him. Not just detests him, but believes he’s beneath him. Which is the thing that Tom hates most about being Tom Ripley. Being a nobody. But that’s okay. Because there’s something Tom really likes about Dickie. And that’s the power of being a rich American without any responsibilities. Tom makes the decision right then and there – He wants to be Dickie Greenleaf. End of pilot.
The problem with serial killer main characters is most people can’t sympathize with them. Especially characters like Tom Ripley. This guy hates everyone. He rips off old people. He does reprehensible things yet believes he’s above others. How do we get on board with that?
Well, one of the reasons the novels were able to make that work is that novels allow you to get inside the head of the main character. You can hear his rationalizations. You can hear his moment to moment thought-process for why he does what he does. You might not agree with what he does. But at least you’re given an entry-point into why this person acts the way they do.
You don’t see that in screenplays or movies where we aren’t privy to the internal monologue. All we know about Tom is through what he says and what he does. And since Tom is a duplicitous person, he rarely says what he’s thinking to people. Instead, he says whatever he needs to say to manipulate them. That means trying to find any reason to like this character is difficult.
And you can see Zallian struggling with that. He spends most of the time writing his action lines like a novel. For example, here’s what he says when Tom is on the ship to Italy: “He passes people reclined on deck chairs, reading, others playing shuffleboard, others strolling past him. In truth, he doesn’t really want to meet any of them. Who he might be in their imaginations is more satisfying to him than who they might discover him actually to be.”
That’s some great character insight. Unfortunately, it ain’t going to be there when this scene plays on screen.
Despite this, Zallian figures out a way to keep us invested.
In the very first scene, Tom is sitting on a subway car, hating his life: “As the train pitches through its tunnel under the city, light bulbs overhead blink off and on taking photographs, as it were, of his fellow passengers on their hopeless journey in this carriage to hell. Most repulse him. The rest bore him. People, okay, with lives and ancestries, perhaps even interesting ones, though Tom doubts it.”
Then, their train car starts running parallel with another train car. And, in that train car is a large man with a big bushy mustache who seems to be staring straight at Tom. It unnerves him so Tom gets up to walk to the next car. But as he does this, the mustached man follows. The man has an uncanny ability to stay with Tom, no matter how hard he tries to ditch him. And the next stop is coming up quickly. Which means he’ll have to make a run for it.
The reason I bring this up is because most writers would’ve stopped at the “observing the world” part. They would have bathed the scene in more passages about how awful the train car and people were. But Zallian understands that the reader demands SOMETHING HAPPEN. Drama is like air to stories. You can hold your breath for a while. But sooner or later, if you want to live, you have to breathe. Stories need drama constantly popping up.
Zallian is really talented in that area. He knows how to move stories forward. And this was one of his biggest challenges. If you zoom out of this pilot, not a whole lot “happens.” We establish Tom’s life in New York. He goes on a long boat trip. He gets a room in a small Italian town. And only in the last ten pages does he speak to the person who’s going to kick-start the series.
However, Zallian cleverly squeezes in small dramatic beats that keep us alert, keep us wondering what’ll happen. Tom Ripley doesn’t just go to the bar and have a drink. He goes to the bar and notices a couple of men at the end of the bar looking his way. What are they looking his way for? Do they want something? Are they one of the many people looking for him due to a scam he pulled? This creates conflict, tension, suspense. So we’re willing to stick with the story even if it’s devoid of major plot beats.
“Ripley” will be a huge challenge for Zallian – there’s no doubt about that. He’ll be able to dangle little carrots at us for a while. But sooner or later, we’re going to need a reason to want a follow an inaccessible depressing sociopathic serial killer. The good news is, if there’s anyone who can pull that off, it’s this writer.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you want to write a scene that doesn’t move the story forward, it only informs us about the character, then make sure we’re PHYSICALLY MOVING SOMEWHERE. I noticed when Tom Ripley got on the boat to Italy that we stayed with him during the entire boat ride even though we didn’t have to. A lot of writers would cut to Italy. But Zallian wanted to use that time to tell us about the character. The way he saw rich people. How Ripley, himself, wanted to be rich. Normally, when you’re writing scenes that only inform the reader about character, they’re boring. The reader says, “What’s the point?” However, you can get away with this if we’re physically moving towards the next goal post. This wouldn’t have worked had Ripley been walking around New York noticing people. It works because we know we’re physically on our way to Italy where the next plot point is.
–
A seven figure movie deal with Edgar Wright directing!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A suburban mother’s life is upended when her daughter is kidnapped. But it’s the demand of the kidnapper that’s the real head-scratcher — to get her daughter back she must kidnap someone else’s child.
About: Today we’ve got a review of a high-profile project. This recent best-seller went up for a bidding war that Paramount won, paying seven figures for the movie rights. But what’s more impressive is that they somehow got high-profile and artistically demanding director Edgar Wright to helm the movie. Oh, and here’s another fun tidbit. The writer, Adrian McKinty, was an Uber driver. So the next time you’re feeling hopeless working in that mindless low-paying job you detest, remember that success is always just around the corner as long as you’re willing to work for it. And by work for it, I mean, MAKE SURE YOU’RE WRITING EVERY DAY.
Writer: Adrian McKinty
Details: 370 pages
Make good people do bad things.
Or make bad people do good things.
The contrast of either of those setups is going to yield strong results.
The Chain takes that first premise and jabs 5000 ml of horse steroids into it. Our heroine, Rachel, is the goodest of the good. A single mother who loves her daughter more than anything. And, oh, she’s a cancer survivor! How pure and lovable can one person get?
But today’s story tests the limits of suspension of disbelief.
You guys remember what that is, right? Everybody goes into a book or a screenplay or a movie understanding that what they’re watching isn’t real. We know, for example, that when Spider-Man is swinging from building to building in downtown Manhattan, that isn’t really happening. And yet we’re engaged. Yet we care. Yet we’re invested in how he’s going to stop the Vulture. That’s suspension of disbelief. It’s creating a, sort of, magical cloud around your story that’s convincing enough that, even though you know you’re watching something made-up, you still believe it’s real.
The Chain tries, at every turn, to obliterate that cloud. The aforementioned Rachel is minding her own business in suburbia when, one day, a woman calls her and tells her that she’s kidnapped Rachel’s 13 year old daughter, Kylie. She gives Rachel instructions. Send 25k to this bank account AND THEN go kidnap another child, after which you will convince their family to do the same. Fail to abide by the rules and your kid will be killed. We know this because every family has the ultimate motivation. If they don’t do what they’re told, their own kidnapped child will be killed. If you try to call the police or anyone not approved, they will kill you.
Rachel has become a link in The Chain, a sophisticated operation whereby the regular people are forced to do the kidnapping so the bad guys don’t have to. All they do is collect the money. The chain is everywhere. Always watching. On your phone, on your computer. The people you walk past at the bank could be part of the chain. So you must do what the chain tells you to do.
Rachel doesn’t have to be told twice. After she pays the ransom, she recruits her ex-husband’s brother, who used to be in the military, and the two research five candidate kids to kidnap. Rachel, who lives in a beautiful seaside summer town, recruits one of the empty houses to stuff the kidnapped kid in and off they go. But the kidnapping goes wrong and they’re forced to kidnap a sister of the target, who just happens to be a walking allergy. Get anything funky near her and she goes into convulsions. This isn’t going to be easy.
But through hard work and perseverance, they follow the chain’s rules and actually get Kylie back! As a bonus, Rachel and her ex’s brother fall in love. It seems like the nightmare is over. But guess what, we’re only at the midpoint!
In the second half of the book, we meet the chain’s weirdo CEOs, a couple of kooky twins, boy and girl, who grew up in a commune. We see how their bizarre childhood led to their idea for the chain. Meanwhile, Rachel is having nightmares and Kylie is googling how to kill herself. Rachel realizes that the only way these things go away is if they take down the chain!
Through some reconnaissance, Rachel and Paul find an old victim of the chain, a mathematician, who’s just like Rachel. The nightmares won’t end until he gets justice. So the three of them design a program to find the chain. And after much research, they learn that the chainys are not far from here. Off they go to confront the bastards. But everything is thrown for a loop when they realize that they’ve got Kylie once again!
The Chain is kooky sillyville 9000 for the majority of its running time.
Like I said, it’s practically begging you to point out the holes.
The real problem is that The Chain’s rules are too complicated.
The more moving parts there are to your story rules, the more work you’re going to have to do plugging the plot holes up. Take Double Jeopardy, for example. It’s by no means a great movie. But the rules were insanely simple. You can’t be convicted of the same murder twice. Which means you’re allowed to kill the person a second time and get away with it.
The Chain is way way way way way more complicated. Your kid is kidnapped and to get them back, you need to kidnap someone else and pay a ransom. Then convince someone else to kidnap someone else and pay a ransom. Only then do you get your kid back. But then you still keep the kid you’ve kidnapped until the next family sets up the next family in the chain, I think. Even though you already have your kid back?
And, oh yeah, if someone screws up three links down the chain long after you’re finished, you’re brought back into the chain and must perform random jobs like convincing other people not to call the cops or else The Chain people will kill you and your family. The lesson here is to keep the rules of your concept simple. Otherwise you’re going to be spending endless nights trying to cobble together a cohesive storyline.
Where I do give credit to McKinty is that he doesn’t end the story where we think he will. I was genuinely surprised that they got the daughter back by the midpoint. It was then that I realized this wasn’t about this family’s ordeal. The concept was “the chain.” So McKinty wanted to explore the chain and how it originated and how it worked. And I admit I was into it enough that I wanted Rachel to take them down. They were such evil people that I had to see them get served a heaping of justice.
Unfortunately, the bad guys turned out to be weak sauce. It was basically two weirdo kids (or kids-turned-adults). They weren’t menacing at all. I don’t know if that was the point. They created a facade where they were this powerful organization when, in reality, they were just a couple of socially awkward 20-somethings. But that begged several other questions, such as how they had this endless network of people willing to do highly criminal things at the drop of a hat. Either you have to be a legit huge operation or you have to convince me how a couple of doofuses pulled this off.
I’m curious why Edgar Wright signed onto this. Here’s a guy who worked on Ant-Man for a decade but dramatically marched out due to “artistic integrity” yet he’s directing a movie about a nearly impossible to buy into kidnapping chain?
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this project. Is it a throwback 1990s high-concept thriller? Is it trying to be the next Gone Girl?
It’s mildly entertaining but it’s so fluffy and filled with plot holes that it’s hard for me to imagine any sophisticated filmmaker wanting to do this. I’m seeing this more as a “debuts #5 on Netflix’s Top 10 List,” right behind “Drunk Parents.” I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Padding your stats. In sports, there’s something known as padding your stats. It’s when you take extra shots or throw extra passes in the hopes of improving your yardage, assists, goals, points, despite the fact that the game has already been decided. On my football team, the Bears, our lousy QB, Mitch Trubisky routinely throws 50 yard passes at the end of already decided games in the hopes of padding up his stats and looking better than he actually is. I see writers doing this as well. They add things onto their characters because they think it’s going to make them look better or more complex or more interesting, despite the fact that it doesn’t affect the story at all. There’s this whole character backstory here where Rachel is a cancer survivor and she’s worried the cancer has come back that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the story. The novel didn’t need it. But a writer was trying to pad their character, make them more “interesting” and “complex.” Avoid this if you can. The only time you should add anything significant to your character is if it’s going to be relevant to the story.
Your nights have been lonely. Your days? A pastiche of whimsical memories fading into each other like snowflakes drifting down to their sad thawed demise. Am I talking about your life since Covid? Nope. I’m talking about your life since Amateur Showdown.
But that changes today because AMATEUR SHOWDOWN IS BACK!
Like an old friend you’ve lost touch with who calls and screams, “I’m in town for one weekend. Let’s get wild!” That’s what Amateur Showdown has done. “Oh, don’t you worry. We’re going to get wild, Amateur Showdown. We’re going to get wild in ways that aren’t allowed on television!” That’s because this Amateur Showdown is the craziest of them all.
Character Piece Showdown.
Uh-huh. You read that right. How much more juicy does it get than introspective character exploration? Not even The Daily Mail will touch this it’s so risque.
I’ve been on the phone all week talking with frustrated advertisers. “Carson,” the CEO of Coca-Cola, Jerod Moss, said to me. “How can I post ads on your site when you’re talking about character flaws, inner conflict, the Hero’s Journey for God’s sake, Carson. The Hero’s Journey! How do I spin that to board members!?”
Believe me, it hasn’t been easy. I nearly canceled. I can’t have this kind of controversy following me around. But unlike Rick, I do stick my neck out. And despite the rabid protests outside my place demanding I not mention “character” and “piece” in the same sentence or I will face consequences, I’m moving forward. And I hope that you move forward with me. Cause I can’t do this alone.
That reminds me. The next Amateur Showdown will be October 16th and it will be a HORROR SHOWDOWN. Yes. We’re going to drape ourselves in the color of blood and indulge our inner freak show, all in time for Halloween. And don’t forget, you can enter SHORT HORROR STORIES as well as Horror scripts. So, if you’re going to enter, send me a title, logline, genre, why we should read your script/story, and a PDF of the story/screenplay to carsonreeves3@gmail.com any time before Thursday, October 15th, 8pm Pacific Time.
Now on to today’s scripts. If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, this is how it’s done. I pick five screenplays that were submitted to me and then you, the readers of the site, read as much of each script as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments. The winner will receive a review the following Friday that could result in props from your peers, representation, a spot on one of the big end-of-the-year screenwriting lists, and in rare cases, a SALE!
One last thing. This was one of the harder Showdowns to choose contestants for. A lot of you took the term “character piece” very liberally. The generes for these scripts were all over the map. I had to make some tough decisions on if picks were right for the showdown, but if you didn’t get picked, it was probably because I didn’t consider your entry “character piece” enough.
Anyway, good luck to all!
Title: The Wallace Web
Genre: Drama
Logline: When Eric’s business partner confesses that Eric’s dad has been paying him to ruin their company, Eric enlists the help of his estranged brother to confront their overbearing father.
Why you should read: When I was 18, my first job was the receptionist at a property management company. One of my many responsibilities was to accept contractor bids, log them in, and make sure they went into the correct job basket. One day a contractor handed me his bid proposal and asked that I pull his son’s bid for the same construction job. I politely told him no. He came back the next day with flowers, trying to bribe me to take his son out of the running! Who does that? I lied and told him the bids were already collected. His nice demeanor turned angry in an instant. I always wondered what the story was behind that family. Family and business are always good drama. I’ve had feedback from readers including “best dialogue ever” and another one called it the next “Warrior”. Thanks for reading my submission. I’m grateful for all the comments and suggestions.
Title: Dog Sled Patrol
Genre: Thriller, Period drama
Logline: In 1942, the sole survivor of an u-boat-destroyed British arctic convoy is paired with a native Inuit hunter on a months-long journey across the frozen wasteland of Northern Greenland. Before reaching civilization, they must survive the unforgiving conditions, an outside threat lurking in the dark — and the fact that one of them is not the person he says he is.
Why you should read: It’s World War 2, and you and your partner are on a patrol in one of the coldest, remotest, most desolate parts of the world — months of travel from the nearest outpost, in the deadly cold of a polar night, with only your 13 dogs for company.
To survive on the ice riddled with deadly traps of open-water “leads”, with white-coated terrors stalking just out of the view of your fading headlamp and the constant threat of a submarine Nazi incursion looming behind the icebergs, every “day” of the endless night you put your life in your partner’s hands — and him in yours. You get to know the other man closer than your own brother or a lover. One night, in your tent… he starts speaking German in his sleep.
Title: Few Die Well
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a homeless veteran murders a banker in self-defence, he impersonates the dead man in an effort to land his dream job and lift himself out of poverty.
Why you should read: I’ve always been fascinated by stories of conmen and imposters, individuals for whom every word is fraught with the risk of discovery. Few Die Well charts the consequences of one penniless outsider’s attempts to claw his way up to the top through an elaborate lie of his own. He enters a world of staggering wealth and savage violence as he finds himself drawn into the orbit of scheming grifters, crooked cops and ambitious politicians. Its inspirations are myriad, the film noirs of the 1940s and 50s, the gritty crime dramas of the 1970s and the recent spate of intelligent thrillers like Nightcrawler and Parasite. In writing this screenplay, I set out to craft a character piece that has GSU at its core, that moved at a rapid pace without sacrificing development and depth. It comes in at a slim 87 pages and it ends with a bang.
Title: Love Sick
Genre: Character Piece / Romance
Logline: A door-to-door saleswoman struggles to keep her new relationship with a young journalist alive when she is forced to medically quarantine.
Why you should read: You may have noticed there was a quarantine going on for a while a few months ago. That’s to say that this script is insanely topical. Probably almost too much so. But maybe, just maybe… it’s also exactly the type of script that needs to be read right now: An introspective look at what it means to be human when the world goes to shit around you.
Title: Fever Dream
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: After being assaulted, a struggling actress with a traumatic past gives a riveting audition, landing the lead role in a film. But the more she delves into the dark mind of the character, the more her dream becomes a nightmare.
Why you should read: Let’s face it, you gotta be pretty crazy to try and have a career in this industry. Most of us spend all our time working for free just in the hopes of one day getting a job that actually pays us. Well, after writing and directing my first feature (which landed a distributor, had a theatrical release, and even sold to Showtime), I actually thought I was on my way. And then… crickets. As far as the industry was concerned, no one f-ing cared. It was back to staring at the blank page all over again, hoping this time things would somehow be different. That’s when I realized how crazy this whole thing is, and when the idea for my new film was born.
Fever Dream is a timely, taut thriller that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. It’s a wild cross between Black Swan and Mulholland Drive that forces you to question how far you’re willing to go to achieve your dream, and at what price, and has an ending that will leave you breathless and wanting to go back and experience it all over again. Thanks for giving it a shot!
Conquer exposition once and for all!!!
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about exposition. The reason for that is, most writers who’ve broken into the professional ranks don’t have exposition issues. They might be struggling with other aspects of storytelling. But exposition is, for the most part, a beginner and intermediate problem. Therefore, I’m not running into tons of exposition issues in the pro scripts I review.
But when I’m reading the Last Great Screenplay Contest entries, I’m seeing exposition problems all over the place.
Why is exposition a problem? Well, the number one reason exposition is problematic is that it’s a dialogue killer. You can’t focus on the more advanced things that make dialogue work if you haven’t mastered exposition.
So what is exposition? Exposition is any information about your characters or plot that you’re trying to fit into your dialogue. So, for example, if it’s important that the reader know your character was a former karate champion (because, later in the movie, he uses karate to beat someone up), exposition would be two characters mentioning, early on in the screenplay, that this character used to be a former karate champion.
The super beginner screenwriter might formulate the conversation like this…
DOUG: Hey, how’s the karate coming along?
FRANK: Oh, I haven’t done that in years.
DOUG: But you used to be a champion, right?
FRANK: That was a long time ago.
Extremely on the nose, right? A more experienced beginner might tackle it this way…
DOUG: Guess who I ran into today? Bill Lane. He mentioned that old karate tournament you used to compete in. We were trying to remember where it was.
FRANK: Encino.
DOUG: Right. Encino. Anyway, he was telling me he just got divorced…
A teensy bit better. But still bad.
What I’m going to do today is cover two strategies you should always consider before using exposition. Then I’ll go into the two main approaches I endorse for writing exposition.
Let’s start with the strategies. The first strategy you should consider when facing exposition is not including it at all. Most of the time we THINK we need exposition when we don’t. Let’s say you’re writing a Fast and the Furious type script and you feel like you need to establish that your hero, MIKE, has an extensive history with a character who will be appearing in the story later, DERONIS. Maybe they sold drugs together, raced cars together, STOLE cars together. Whatever.
So you include a scene early on where Mike is talking to his wife and says, “I’m going to have to see Deronis this weekend.” We can tell his wife isn’t happy about this. “When was the last time you talked to him?” “Barbados. ’04. When he was running Kamikaze’s business.” “When he ratted you out.” “Yeah.”
This isn’t the worst dialogue but you have to ask yourself, do you really need it? Consider the alternative. Don’t mention any history between the two of them and then, when they meet, Deronis says, “Hey Mike.” “Hey.” “Haven’t seen you since Barbados.” Mike offers a tight smile. And that’s it. Or, you don’t even need the Barbados part. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” followed by a tight smile. That gives us all the information we need. These guys have a history and it isn’t all good. This should always be your first weapon against exposition. Cause the best exposition is no exposition.
Strategy number 2 is show us rather than tell us. If you have to use exposition, come up with a visual way to do so. And no, that does not mean cut to a karate champion trophy to convey that the character is a karate champion. Or, one of my favorites, the “series of pictures” to show what’s gone on in the family. The first picture is a happy family of four. In the second picture, placed next to it, the mother is bald and pale. And in the third picture, it’s just three family members, the mom dramatically gone (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered this). Sure, these are viable ways to convey information in a pinch. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about if you’re writing Star Wars and you want to convey that Darth Vader is the most feared man in the galaxy, you don’t have two characters discussing all of the awful things that Darth Vader has done in the past. You simply show Vader demanding information from a Rebel soldier and when the soldier doesn’t reply, Darth Vader lift him up off the ground and crack his neck. Showing us that is better than anything you can tell us about Vader.
But let’s say there’s information you really feel that the reader needs to know. And there isn’t any natural way you can provide the information by showing. In that case, you want to use the “Spotlight and Shadow” approach. The big mistake newbie writers make when writing exposition is that the exposition becomes the reason to write the scene. As a result, the scene feels utterly unnatural. The reader senses that the only reason the characters are talking is to give information to them. In this case, you are spotlighting the exposition.
What you want to do instead is play exposition out IN THE SHADOWS. The thing you should be spotlighting is the ENTERTAINMENT. A character wants something in the conversation. That something has stakes attached to it so it feels important. There’s conflict. There’s drama. And for those reasons, the scene is fun to read. What the reader doesn’t realize, however, because you’ve put the spotlight on the entertainment, is that IN THE SHADOWS you’re disseminating exposition.
The example I always love to use is the scene in Ferris Bueller when he calls his sick friend, Cameron, and tries to convince him to ditch school with him. The spotlight is 100% on the entertainment. Ferris has a clear goal. Convince his friend to ditch school. His friend doesn’t want to, which creates conflict. And so all we’re focused on is whether Ferris is going to convince his friend or not. Meanwhile, we get exchanges like this: “If you’re not over here in 15 minutes, you can find a new best friend.” “Ehh! You’ve been saying that since the fifth grade.”
That line is exposition. It just told the audience that these two have been best friends at least since the fifth grade. But even the keenest moviegoer probably wouldn’t have identified that moment as exposition. It’s just a natural extension of the conversation they’re having. AND THAT’S THE POWER of the spotlight and shadow approach. The spotlight is so far over here on whether Ferris is going to achieve his goal or not that all exposition is happening in the shadows.
The beginner writer would’ve made Ferris and Cameron’s backstory the spotlight of the scene. Ferris might’ve called Cameron just to see what he was doing. And now, the beginning screenwriter thinks, I can get them talking about their past. So Badly Written Ferris says something like, “Do you remember when we first met?” Badly Written Cameron replies, “Of course. Fifth grade English class.” “Missus Baxter.” “Oh, she was the worst!” “She smelled like fungus. And what did I say to you after you failed that test?”
Is that the worst dialogue? I don’t know. I guess it’s not bad. But what is bad is that all we’re focusing on here is learning things about the characters that the writer wants us to know. That’s what you’re doing wrong. The spotlight is on the wrong thing. You need to spotlight an entertaining scene and then hide your exposition in the shadows of their conversation.
Okay, but what happens when you need to convey SO MUCH EXPOSITION that there’s no shadow big enough to hide all of it? You usually run into this problem in heavily plotted movies where you need to tell the audience a bunch of information about the plot so that they understand what’s going on.
An obvious example would be a heist movie where the group has to explain to the audience things like what time the bank closes, what the group has to do once they’re inside the bank, what each individual person’s job is. If you don’t tell us these things and just jump to this heist, we’ll likely be confused about what’s going on. You see these scenes all the time in the Mission Impossible movies.
If you’re in this situation, I want you to use a device similar to the spotlight and shadow approach. I call it the ‘balancing scale.’ You know what a balancing scale looks like. It’s got two plates, one on each side. We’re going to call the left side the ‘entertainment’ side and the right side the ‘exposition’ side. Whenever you’re writing one of these scenes, make sure that the entertainment side is always more weighed down than the exposition side.
Where writers make the mistake is that they pile too much exposition onto the right side of the scale. Writers will use the term, “exposition dump.’ It’s a term I detest. Never ever write a scene whose only purpose is to dump exposition. EVER! You can always make a scene entertaining. Even ones with lots of exposition. And the more the left side of the scale (the entertainment side) can outweigh the right side, the less people are going to realize the exposition.
Unfortunately, it’s never clear how to create the entertainment side of these scenes. You have to be creative. One trick I like to use is to see the scene as its own little movie. And how do I tell a story (that has a beginning, middle, and end) within this scene. The scene where Doc teaches Marty about his time machine could’ve easily been an exposition dump scene. A bad writer would’ve had Doc call Marty over to his garage where he very casually showed him the time machine and explained how it worked.
Instead, the writers start the scene off with a mystery component. What is Doc going to show Marty (the beginning of our mini-movie)? Then, instead of Marty being a passive participant, the writers make him active. Doc has him record the demonstration for historic purposes. Then, we do a test run. So there’s an exciting element to whether the test will be successful or not. The focus at every point is on the entertainment.
In the meantime, the writers are slipping exposition into the crevices of the scene. One of the most important pieces of exposition in the movie is how the time traveling works, from the three separate timing displays to the 88 miles per hour. Again, the scene is designed so that Doc is making Marty tape all of this for prosperity’s sake. The reason he’s showing him these displays is not because he wants to. It’s because he has to. The time travel needs to be documented.
That scene has more exposition in it than any scene you will ever write. So if they can do it, you can do it too. It just takes work. Believe me, I know it’s easier to sit two characters down in a chair and have one reel off the 20 time traveling rules to the other. It takes zero thought. But if you want the reader to actually enjoy themselves, you need to do the hard work of entertaining them as opposed to educating them.
Now get back into your screenplays and banish all that exposition!
Good luck!
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Period/50s
Premise: The controversial relationship between Sammy Davis Jr. and movie star Kim Novak, an interracial celebrity pairing at a time when interracial relationships were outlawed in half of America.
About: This script won the Austin Film Festival screenplay contest. It also finished in the finals of the Nicholl Fellowship (but was not one of the winners). This draft of the script (which was in the contests) was written by Matthew Fantaci but is currently being rewritten by Janet Mock, who wrote on “Pose,” the Ryan Murphy show that chronicles the downtown social and literary scene in 1987 New York.
Writer: Matthew Fantaci
Details: 95 pages
I’ve always seen Sammy Davis Jr. as a curiosity. He was so unique that at times, he appeared cartoonish. Maybe that’s why I was never into him. But there’s no denying that the Rat Pack days were unlike anything we’ve seen before or since in Hollywood. Here in the 21st century, you get more of the Entourage approach. One famous guy and a lot of Turtles.
So I popped this one open with a doubtful click, hoping it would win me over.
It’s 1950s Vegas. Sammy Davis Jr. is one of the most popular entertainers on the planet. Black, Jewish, and Puerto-Rican, he was truly one of a kind. And boy could he light up a room. Ironically, back then, Sammy couldn’t even stay at the hotels he performed at. Black people weren’t allowed rooms.
Meanwhile, Kim Novak had become one of the biggest movie stars in the world. But unlike other stars, Novak was rebellious. You see, back then, everything about your person was crafted by studio heads. Novak was known by the world as “The Lavender Girl.” Yet she hated lavender. And the fact that she openly rejected the label infuriated her handlers.
One day, after a Sammy performance, he bumps into an exhausted Kim, who’s just finished a long photo shoot. Kim doesn’t have the strength to bullshit and falls into a natural friendly conversation with Sammy. It goes so well that the two start hanging out regularly. And then sleeping together. Which normally would be great. Except that in 1950s America, nobody accepted interracial relationships, especially one between a black man and a white woman.
When Columbia studio head and evil bully Harry Cohn gets word of this, he calls Kim in and tells her that if she doesn’t end this before the gossip columnists get hold of it, he’s going to ruin her life. Although I have not wikipedia searched Harry Cohn, the script paints him as some combination of Harvey Weinstein and Hitler. So when he says he’s going to ruin someone’s life, you get the impression he means it.
Despite that, Sammy and Kim decide to take their romance semi-public, appearing at friends’ parties together. There’s only one step left to go and that’s to date in public. The two discuss what this step means and concede that there’s no coming back from it. So if they’re going to do this, they have to make sure they REALLY want to do it.
The pressure eventually overwhelms them, however, and they give in to the threats (even coming from Sammy’s friend Frank Sinatra), splitting up. It’s a decision that will leave both sides wondering “what if” for the rest of their lives.
If you’re going to make a commentary on a hot button social issue, I think this is the way to go. You don’t give us a non-fiction retelling of whatever’s been popping up on our news feeds for the last 83 days. You explore a story that has similar themes and overlap with the hot button issue, but because it’s not the exact same, it forces the reader to think to make the connections. It makes the audience feel like they’ve solved a puzzle, which is more fun than having someone place a Rubik’s Cube in front of your face that’s already completed.
But I can never discuss these scripts without going back to my frustrations with the biopic format. While I like that this isn’t a cradle to grave Sammy Davis Jr. story and that, instead, we’re seeing this specific charged section of his life, I still spent half the read wondering, “What is the point of this? Where are we going? Where’s the goal?”
The only thing pushing the story along is “Will they or won’t they?” And while it’s certainly more charged than the storylines we typically get in “will they or won’t they?” (romantic comedies), I still felt a slow narrative that left me wanting more. I need that character goal. I needed Sammy to be going after something.
Since he’s not going after anything, all his scenes are some variation of waiting for when he’s going to see Kim next.
And don’t get me wrong. It’s possible to make these narratives work. The script is packed with conflict. And it has one of the better villains I’ve read in a while in Harry Cohn. But it’s still anchored down by that dull rickety story engine known as “Will they or won’t they?”
Getting back to Sammy, he’s a real tough guy to take seriously. He was such a character in real life that I found myself struggling to see him as a romantic man trying to engage in a relationship. It’s like trying to imagine Charlie Chaplin in a relationship after watching Modern Times. Or David Blaine confessing his love without eating a live frog and then having it jump out of his ear.
But if you’re into this era, into old Hollywood, into the Rat Pack, you’ll probably love this. It even feels like an old fashioned movie, with the quick witty dialogue banter between Sammy and Kim that was popular in movies at the time. The combination of an era I was never a huge fan of with the evil genre known as “biopic” prevented me from ever getting into this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One plotline too few. Sometimes a screenplay feels thin. One of the reasons may be that you’re one plotline too thin. You needed an extra plot engine going on, possibly with work/career. Or you needed an extra relationship to explore, something that gave you five more scenes throughout the script. That’s what Scandalous felt like to me. It needeed one more plotline to fill it out. Even the main relationship here didn’t have as many scenes as you’d expect it to have. And that left the storyline feeling thin.
