Last month, we had Sci-Fi Showdown. The voting was too close to call so last week I reviewed one of the top vote getters. That script didn’t quite hit the mark for me and, as it happens, I’d read Nowhere Girl a long time ago and liked it. Since I wanted a script that celebrated all the hard work people put into submitting to Sci-Fi Showdown, I decided to review Nowhere Girl this week.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A remorseless killer is given the death penalty, only to wake up 1,000 years later in a spacecraft built for one, with an artificial conscience implanted into her nervous system and a life sentence to serve out.
Why You Should Read: I wanted to write a character who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the most horrible monster I could imagine, and still somehow make her worth rooting for. Since my wife is a schoolteacher, and I have received that dreaded text that her school is on active shooter lockdown a couple of times, I knew who that character would be. So now I’d love to know if my fellow writers think I pulled it off.
Writer: Chris Cobb
Details: 113 pages
When it comes to script-reading, the only thing that truly matters is, does the script stay with you?
I’ve read plenty of what I’d call “good” screenplays that people have later reminded me about and I had no idea what they’re talking about. On the flip side, I’ve read some scripts that I didn’t like at all but they’ve remained seared into my brain years later (Christy Hall’s, “Get Home Safe” for example).
I’ve come to the conclusion that if a script stays with you, good or bad, it has something going for it.
I read Nowhere Girl over a year ago as a consultation script and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s such a weird premise. It’s something that shouldn’t work at all. And yet it digs into you in a way other scripts don’t.
There were some issues with it but I don’t remember what those issues were so I’m excited to read this new draft and, hopefully, whatever problems I had with the script will have been solved. Let’s take a look!
We don’t meet 19 year old Sara under the best circumstances seeing as she’s mowing down anyone she sees at her university with a sub-automatic machine gun. After Sara kills a good chunk of people, a classmate of hers, Amber, pleads for her to stop the killing. She even offers to be Sara’s friend. But Sara wants none of it, gunning down Amber as well.
When a SWAT team rushes in, Sara tosses a bomb at them but it blows up too quickly, the blast hitting her. Cut to months later as a disfigured Sara informs a courtroom that she wants the death sentence. A year later, she gets her wish to die.
Only to wake up in a strange room. Sara learns that she’s on a spaceship far far away from earth. Andrew, an A.I. chip inside of Sara, explains what’s going on. It’s been one thousand years since that fateful day and her job is now to help facilitate an intricate bot delivery system (they drop off bots to bigger bots which then deliver those bots to planets or outposts) in the middle of nowhere.
As time goes on, Sara learns how the system works. She must routinely report to her local outpost (to a man named “The Warden”) and assure him that all systems are running smoothly, while managing the biggest threat to the ship, ion storms, each of which have the capacity to destroy her.
Just as Sara is starting to get the hang of things, Andrew takes on the identity of a familiar voice. It’s Amber, the girl who tried to stop her that fateful day. Sara finds herself drawn to Amber, ultimately befriending her. But when the Warden threatens to shut Amber off forever, Sara will do anything to save the girl whose life she took.
Let me start off by saying I’m a big fan of this script (in case I didn’t already make that clear).
It’s so bold. It’s so unexpected. It’s so different.
You’re not going to have a script experience like Nowhere Girl anytime soon.
I also put a premium on scripts that don’t go where I think they’re going to go. I love turning the page and having no idea what comes next. That’s Nowhere Girl in a nutshell. I mean how do you predict a story that starts off with a teenage female school shooter who then ends up on a ship a thousand years in the future? It’s just such an odd cool setup.
Ironically, Nowhere Girl’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. The reason you don’t know where it’s going is because there’s not a lot of structure. Neither Sara nor Andrew have a clear goal. That allows Chris to take the story in a lot of different directions. But it also risks those directions feeling pointless and unfocused.
A loose plot is fine if the character development is stellar but when it comes to Nowhere Girl, it felt like we were always flirting with good character development but never quite getting there. That’s because I don’t know what flaw Sara is trying to overcome and I’m not sure how Amber solves that flaw.
We know Sara doesn’t feel anything. She’s been diagnosed a psychopath. Andrew later shows Sara a replay of the shooting but forces her to feel what Amber felt during the exchange. This allows Sara to feel for the first time but the second the experience is over, Andrew erases the feeling so Sara is back to normal.
In other words, Sara learns how to feel in the first third of the movie. So doesn’t that mean she’s overcome her flaw? She’s learned what feeling is? Or was that meant to warn her up to the sensation of feeling? The real lessons are ahead of her. I’m not entirely sure.
Then when Amber replaces Andrew, she literally becomes Sara’s conscience. Amber actually says that (“I’m your conscience.”). That means that she’s not Amber. She’s Sara’s conscience. So as Sara and Amber build their friendship over the course of the second act, it would seem we’re further exploring the character arc of Sara being able to “feel.” Except we’re not. Because the person she’s befriending isn’t Amber. It’s her own conscience.
I don’t know. It was confusing. No matter how many times I tried to make sense of it in my head, it didn’t work. It seems like Chris is overcomplicating this. Maybe he can shed some light on what he was attempting to do so we can help him.
If you ask me, a better plot would be a good starting point. Plot equals structure and structure helps dictate where your characters need to go, both internally and externally.
You have these remote delivery vessels scattered throughout the sector to play with. And we know about these outposts where there are physical human beings. If Sara and Amber could get to a delivery vessel which, in turn, could get them to an outpost, with the ultimate plan being to escape or convince the bureaucrats to let them go, that could give you the strong goal this story needs.
I could imagine an ending where Sara gets to the outpost, is escaping in the halls, guns at her side, being pursued by others. And she essentially has the same choice she had at the beginning of the story. She can kill or she can stand down. And this time she chooses to stand down.
Another option is that maybe the goal is rehabilitation, plain and simple. Sara has two jobs. Job 1 is to perform the deliveries. Job 2 is she has to do her rehabilitation exercises for hours every day, which amount to Andrew helping her learn how to feel. That will be done through reliving certain life experiences. And it will also be providing lessons that challenge one to to feel emotion. At the end of a certain time period, she will get an audience with the Warden to prove she’s changed. If she has, she wins back her freedom. If she hasn’t, she’s got to wait another (5? 10? 30? years?) for her next chance.
Neither of these suggestions are perfect but the point is they provide structure. So if not them, find something else that can give this script a plot. Because it can’t be a character floating in space talking to herself the whole time. There has to be more to it.
With that said, Nowhere Girl was unlike anything I’ve ever read. There’s a movie in here somewhere and I think if we all gave Chris our suggestions, it would help him find that movie. Intrigued to hear what all of you thought cause I enjoyed this!
Script link: Nowhere Girl
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whenever I encounter a script issue, the best solution is usually the simplest one. So when I look at Nowhere Girl’s issue of Sara’s conscience being an AI chip inside her body who later takes on the form of Amber and it being confusing what Sara is really bonding with in her pursuit to change (befriending Amber or befriending her conscience) my solution is to massively simplify it. Why can’t Andrew be the ship’s AI? Not a chip inside Sara. He creates a digital replica of Amber and Sara must learn how to feel through the friendship she builds with this entity? That’s a lot simpler, isn’t it?
If you asked 100 of Hollywood’s top producers, directors, actors, and writers, who the hottest screenwriter in the world was at the moment, the majority of them would say Phoebe Waller Bridge.
Bridge is killing it all areas of screenwriting but the thing she’s best known for is her dialogue. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a screenwriter whose dialogue was this celebrated, so I thought, why don’t we break some of her dialogue down?
And what better scene to dissect than the opening scene of the Fleabag pilot. Do not worry if you’ve never seen the show. I’m going to include the pages here for you to read.
The first lesson for why this dialogue is so great is our most important one. Fleabag is a talker. She’s the definition of a dialogue-friendly character. One of the biggest mistakes writers make is they try and inject punchy dialogue onto characters who wouldn’t say those things. Imagine putting John Wick in this scene. He’s not going to give you anything close to what Fleabag is saying because John Wick operates with his gun, not his tongue.
So if you’re ever anxious about writing good dialogue in your script, the job starts long before you’ve written a word. You want to conceive of a primary character – it doesn’t have to be your hero but it does have to be a key charcter – who likes to talk or who says interesting things or who says controversial things or who’s clever or who’s funny or who’s weird or who talks first and thinks later. This decision will dictate 90% of the quality of your dialogue.
The next thing we’ve got going here is that Fleabag talks directly to the viewer. Now some people hate characters who do this. I get it. My feeling has always been, if you’re going to do something that ballsy, you better have the skills to back it up. There’s nothing worse than a “clever” character talking to the camera who’s a big fat ball of lame.
But assuming you’re good at breaking the 4th wall, doing so achieves a unique effect. It both breaks the monotony and it breaks up the predictability of the conversational flow. You’re no longer dependent on His Turn to Talk, Her Turn to Talk, His Turn to Talk, Her Turn to Talk.
This is why I’ll tell writers that just because Character A asks a question, that doesn’t mean Character B has to answer. They can say nothing and Character A can move on to the next line. At least that way, you’re breaking up SOME of the monotony of the conversation. But outside of a few other tricks, you’re relegated to His Turn, Her Turn, His Turn, Her Turn.
Once you throw this new option into the mix of your protagonist talking to a third person that the second character can’t see, that gives you a rare opportunity to do all sorts of creative things with the dialogue, which is exactly what Bridge does here. I mean you have two characters exchanging dialogue who aren’t even talking to each other. He’s talking to her. She’s talking to us. It’s creativity like this that opens the door for a slew of new options.
The next thing Fleabag does is she talks about things you’re not supposed talk about. Again, this doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s baked into the character so you have to make that choice early on. But once it’s there, it’s powerful because there are very few things left that are taboo. And the fact that Fleabag consistently finds the taboo subject and talks about it so openly provides something very rare in movie and TV dialogue, which is that you don’t know what the character is going to say next.
You know how in 90% of movie conversations, you can approximately predict what the next line is going to be? Those moments never happen on Fleabag. You’re always unsure of what she’s going to say next and that’s a major key to keeping people watching. As soon as audiences figure out what’s coming next, what’s their incentive to continue?
I don’t want to overlook the technical side of dialogue here so I want you to go back to the first page and reread Fleabag’s opening monologue. Notice that IT’S ONLY ONE SENTENCE. It’s not grammatically correct. It’s not aesthetically perfect. It’s a big messy run-on sentence. However, it fits the character and it fits the situation. She’s someone who rambles on, especially when she’s drunk and horny. If this monologue had been broken into four proper sentences, it wouldn’t have felt right.
Finally, the dialogue is honest and authentic to the character who’s speaking. It isn’t movie-logic dialogue where the writer is attempting to imprint their cool lines or relevant thoughts onto the character. “But you’re drunk, and he made the effort to come all the way here so, you let him.” I don’t know a lot of writers who would be willing to go to this place. It’s borderline uncomfortable to hear. But that rawness, that realness, is what makes it authentic.
One of the best ways to study dialogue is to find a scene that has good dialogue then imagine what the scene would’ve been if written by an average writer. Because those are the scenes I read thousands of times over and have become bored by.
I mean think about how many scenes have been written where a guy or girl comes over for a booty call. Now try and think of any that are as good as this scene. Go ahead. I’ll wait. It doesn’t matter. You won’t find one.
I bet you the scenes you tried to find have the obvious funny initial text exchange. Maybe some clever quip about boning. Cut to the guy showing up. There’s some drunk dialogue. Then they smash. It’s just so… predictable.
When you can take that common of a scenario and twist it into something we’ve never seen before, that’s what’s going to set the stage for a good dialogue exchange. Because you can only do so much with the standard setup.
To summarize everything: First we have a dialogue-friendly character. Fleabag says whatever she’s thinking. She has zero tact. Next, the fourth wall option provides an opportunity for dialogue creativity. This makes the scene read different from what we’re used to. The dialogue is risky in places. It’s authentic to the main character. And, overall, there’s a desire to explore and be playful. You’re not going to find good dialogue the way you find a good plot. You have to be more open and relaxed and allow the words to flow through you. If you try to control them or you try and logically build a great dialogue exchange, it’s not going to work. Conversation is often illogical.
It’s funny. Despite Hollywood universally agreeing that Bridge is an amazing dialogue writer, whenever I post one of these breakdowns, there are always commenters who scream out, ‘THIS IS THE WORST DIALOGUE EVER, CARSON! YOU’RE WRONG.’ I welcome these comments. I only ask that you back up your claim. Give us some analysis on why the dialogue is bad. Dialogue is always one of the more polarizing screenwriting topics so I expect some fiery debates.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a handsome stranger leaves a struggling single mother a $10,000 tip and welcomes himself into her life, she is left to wonder if this is the man of her dreams or her nightmares.
About: This script finished in the top 25% of last year’s Hit List. The spec sold to Tristar (Sony) last October in a competitive situation. The writer, Cooper McCains, has done some TV writing, most notably on the show, “Castle.”
Writer: Cooper McMains
Details: 93 pages
We’re going to talk about concepts for a second because with a little imagination, you can take an average concept, give it a bright shiny paint job, and charge three times the price for it.
Let’s be honest. This is a familiar concept. “Creepy dude starts stalking waitress.” However, if your logline is, “A creepy dude starts stalking a waitress,” that’s not going to get anyone’s attention.
The only thing the writer changed with “The Tip” was the manner in which the two parties met. The stalker gives the waitress 10,000 dollars. From a reader’s perspective, that’s sexier than just ‘Dude stalks waitress.’ It gives the concept a little extra kick. And when you’re trying to get people to read your script, that extra kick might make the difference.
I’m just telling you because I encounter a lot of unsexy loglines. Especially with familiar stories like this one. So if you can find an angle that gives your logline more pop? Use it.
28 year-old Katie Lawson works at a remote diner in the Sedona Desert (Arizona). A single mother who lives with her son in a trailer, Katie is struggling. So much so that she finally works up the courage to ask her boss for a raise, a request she’s been nervously prepping for weeks.
Unfortunately, her request is denied and Katie has a big fat breakdown in the hallway. That’s when she looks up and sees an attractive but awkward man staring at her. This is Patrick, and he asks if she’s okay. Embarrassed, she rambles on about having a rough day and darts off. And then, as luck would have it, he takes a table in her section.
The rest of the shift is uneventful but when Katie goes to pick up the check, she notices an envelope with $10,000 in it. “Hope this helps,” it says. Katie is uncomfortable with the tip but she has so many money problems that she’s got no choice but to take it.
A couple of days later, Katie is (but we aren’t) shocked to see that Patrick’s back! Creeped out, Katie says hello and Patrick gives her a special card that will allow her to claim the tip as a gift so she doesn’t have to pay taxes on it. Relieved, she thanks him, leading to her mentioning something about her son, to which Patrick replies he would love to meet him. Cornered, Katie says, sure.
The next day, Patrick comes by and the two get to know each other. Patrick actually seems like a good guy, despite his awkwardness. Katie ends up confiding in him what happened to her husband, who got addicted to pain killers after a car accident and became emotionally abusive. It forced her and her son to leave.
Coincidentally, a couple of days later, the husband returns with a “1 year of sobriety” certificate. He wants to get the family back together. Katie is confused and “dumps” Patrick so she can focus on this new challenge. But Patrick doesn’t take the news well. He’s suspicious of the husband’s intentions.
We sense that there may be more to the Patrick-Husband relationship than we’re being told. And that, maybe, neither one of them are telling Katie the truth. Chances are not everyone in this weird love triangle is making it out alive.
The Tip was solid.
It’s not perfect but it further bolsters the cache of The Hit List over The Black List. So far, the 2019 Hit List has a better track record than Franklin Leonard’s agent-less accumulation of concepts. Does The Black List not work without agents? It’s a legit question to ask.
The Tip taught me that real-life character problems told through an honest lens can do wonders for your screenplay. This is a simple plot. The only way simple plots work are if you’re 100% on board with the main character. You achieve that by making them relatable and likable.
However, if it becomes obvious that you’re trying to make the character relatable or likable, it won’t work. It has to be HONEST. For example, if your hero gives a homeless person ten bucks early on, that’s dishonest. We know it isn’t the character who’s giving the homeless man the money. It’s, you, the writer. And along with that ten dollars, you’re handing the audience a note that says, “Please like my main character.”
The Tip shows you how to do it right by placing Katie in tough situations that feel real and relatable. First, we show her gearing up to ask for a raise. Most of us know what that feeling is like. We need more money. It’s an important moment, not just for the raise, but because it takes courage to walk in your boss’s office and ask for a raise. So when Katie gives it her best and fails, we’re sympathetic towards her.
Meanwhile, her young son calls her from home and begs her to rent a movie online. But Katie doesn’t even have enough money for that and tells him no. That’s another thing that any parent who’s struggled with money can relate to. You don’t want to constantly disappoint your child. You wish you had the money to provide them with stuff beyond basic needs.
These two honest moments combined to make Katie extremely sympathetic. And once you have that, it’s hard to screw your script up. There were a couple of slow points in this story and I didn’t mind because I wanted to see this character succeed.
Also, do you remember in yesterday’s review when I pointed out I’d bet my family’s life on the fact that the plot would go a certain way and I was dead right? Well, had I done that here, I’d be the last remaining survivor of the Scriptshadow Clan. The Tip does not go where you think it will. The last 40 pages, in particular, have several twists and turns that will keep you guessing.
(sorta spoilers) Imagine bombarding yourself in a safe house with your son and husband from a serial killer with nothing to lose… only to realize that the man you’re in the house with is the real danger? That’s a great setup for a final act and that’s what The Tip pulls off.
It still felt like it needed a couple of drafts, though. Plot points were crammed together too closely in places. For example, right after Katie tells Patrick the backstory about how her husband became an addict and destroyed the family, the husband shows up at Katie’s house in the next scene. You need your setups to simmer for a while before you pay them off. And this one didn’t even have a chance to get on the stove before the payoff came.
The ending also felt rushed. At some point during every script, you want to do a pacing pass. You need to figure where your story is moving too fast, where it’s moving too slow, and make adjustments. Cause sometimes you don’t want to jump to the next plot point immediately. You want to build some suspense.
But even with its flaws, this was a quick enjoyable read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “After a moment, she notices something out of the corner of her eye – a well put together, but off putting man, PATRICK TRESDEN (30) enters and takes a seat at an open booth.” This is Patrick’s introduction. It’s not bad. But it’s preferable that you SHOW US why Patrick is off-putting as opposed to literally telling us he’s “off-putting.” “Off-putting” works. Most of us understand what that looks like. But it works better if you key in on some visual tic or some manner in which he says something that conveys to the reader he’s off-putting. That’s always preferable to literal description. I mean, you’d never describe a funny character as “funny,” right? You’d have them do something funny! Same idea here.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: When old college friends on a trip to Mexico get trapped in an underwater cave system with a bull shark, old tensions and power struggles resurface as they fight to survive.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List!
Writers: Aja Gabel & Myung Joh Wesner
Details: 100 pages
After yesterday, I was ready to have some fun.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Unorthodox. But had you told me that the most celebrated piece of writing I reviewed all month would’ve been a character piece about an Orthodox Jew searching for the meaning of life with Yiddish to English subtitles, I probably would’ve told you to move a few inches to the left while attaching the noose to my neck to ensure that it killed me instantly after I kicked the chair over.
Shark.
Caves.
Entitled 20-somethings.
Carnage.
That’s the kind of entertainment I need during Day #107 of Quarantine. Let’s get to it.
27-year-old Kate is a worrywart who over-plans everything to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Whatever your definition of spontaneous, she’s not that. Meanwhile, her frenemy, Charlie, is the opposite. She shoots first and asks questions later. She’s also been with the object of Kate’s desire, James, for five years.
Kate, James, and Charlie team up with oversexed Adrienne and her dumb but pretty new boyfriend, Greg, to go to Aguas Serenas Eco-Resort where there’s a cave system called “Ojos Rojos” that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world. The group goes over the game plan with their guide, Miguel, and into the caves they go.
The “system” has six caves and the most impressive cave is, of course, the last one. So when things start to go wrong (something scratches Adrienne’s leg, Greg reveals he has asthma), they push forward cause they really really want to see that last cave. Even when Kate swears she sees something big lurking below the water, they continue on.
Once they make it the final cave, it’s as advertised. Truly magnificent. There’s only one problem. A shark has followed them in here. Some of you may already be crying foul. “Sharks can’t survive in fresh water, Carson!” But according to this script, and why would I doubt them, bull sharks can survive in both salt and fresh water! And that happens to be the shark that’s after them.
The bull shark takes out poor Greg first before setting its sights on Adrienne. She puts up a fight (punching the shark in the nose) but it ultimately takes her down to Death Town. Despite his experience, Miguel also gets chomped into pieces, which leaves our love triangle – Kate, Charlie, and James – all by themselves. Will they get out alive? Or will their contentious history and subsequent spatting do them in?
All right.
Real talk.
I could go into a detailed breakdown of all of the issues in this script but the reality is, I’ve already talked about these things. I mean, when you name a character “Charlie” and automatically assume we’ll know it’s a girl, that tells me you haven’t read enough screenplays to understand why that might be confusing to a reader.
When I saw that inside the first five pages, I knew I was in for a rough ride.
But there’s a bigger problem here. Which is that something is missing in screenwriting lately. I’ve reviewed lots of the so called “most celebrated” screenplays of the past year and time after time, they’ve disappointed.
What’s going on?
Cause a script like this should be fun. It has the makings of a good movie. We’ve seen a lot of shark movies before. But we’ve never seen one where they’re blocking the only path out of a submerged cave system. There’s a lot of potential in that idea.
Why did it, then, fail to meet its potential? And why is that happening time and time again lately?
While there’s no catch-all answer to this question, I’ve noticed one thing that’s doing writers in. And that’s that they’re using their premise as a crutch.
They believe the premise is going to do the work for them so they don’t have to try that hard. When it comes to writing a screenplay, you have to do something special in one of two areas – the plot or the characters.
The reason for this is we need something beyond what we’ve seen before to excite us. If your execution is the same as every other similar movie we’ve seen, we’re going to get bored. For example, if you would’ve told me that I had to bet my family’s life on who was going to die first in this script, I would’ve said, “Greg,” and then taken the most peaceful nap of my life because that’s how sure I was that my family would be safe.
It cannot be the case where your execution is so predictable that I can take a nap when my family is in danger.
Now let’s say that you’re not good with plot. You’re lousy at coming up with creative story ideas. Are you screwed?
No.
You can still excel if you can create compelling characters. If I like a character and relate to the issues they’re going through and you present that character to me in a way that is both honest and unpredictable, I don’t need a great plot. I’m fine watching the story of that person.
Look no further than yesterday’s review of Unorthodox.
There is more entertaining character exploration in the first 3 minutes of a movie about an Orthodox Jewish Woman that there is about all of the characters in Apex FOR THE FIRST 40 PAGES.
All that happens in the first 40 pages here is characters talking to each other. There isn’t a single dramatic event that occurs like there is in Orthodox, where the first scene is a woman escaping her community.
So here’s how to combat this.
When you come up with an idea – and hopefully it’s a strong idea like Apex – imagine in your head what that movie looks like. Think about all the scenes that might happen. Chances are, you’ll come up some good ones. Write those down because those are the scenes that the audience is looking forward to.
But when it comes to everything else, you should be questioning it. Cause a lot of those ideas you’re having come from other films. They seem inspired when you’re thinking about them. But, in reality, you’re just recalling characters and plot beats from movies you’re familiar with.
From there, you want to ask, “How am I going to make the execution of this story different from what people have seen before?” And I’m not going to lie to you. This will be one of the hardest questions you’ll have to answer. You’ve got a hundred years of cinema and TV to compete with so pretty much everything has been done before.
However, just the act of ASKING THE QUESTION improves the chances that you’re going to give us something fresh. And it may just be one revelation. It might be the act of Annie Wilkes bludgeoning Paul’s feet so he can never leave the house in “Misery.” That creative decision was so controversial, the screenwriter begged the director not to include it. That’s how sure he was that they’d gone too far. And it ended up being the most talked about scene of the year. You have to be willing to go down that road as a writer.
I always try to remind writers to get inside their readers’ heads and ask, “What are they expecting me to do?” And then make sure you give them anything but that. Not always. But enough to keep them off balance.
That’s today’s lesson. Coming up with the concept is half the battle. You then have to push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of if you truly want to impress us.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The personal stakes have to line up with the situation. A movie about the impending demise of the planet is going to have higher personal stakes than the trials and tribulations of fitting in at high school. The personal stakes in Apex are that James cheated on Charlie once with Kate. While cheating may feel like the end of the world in a high school movie, it doesn’t have the same cache in a movie where everyone is being killed one by one. The personal stakes here needed an upgrade. There was one moment where it seemed like the time James cheated with Kate resulted in her getting pregnant and having an abortion. But that turned out not to be the case. However, the stakes of that choice lined up a lot better with this concept than just someone who cheated on his girlfriend once. (note: This is, of course, assuming you’re treating the deaths in your movie seriously. If this was The Meg, which obviously has a tongue-in-cheek approach to death, it’s okay to lighten the personal stakes)
Genre: TV Drama (but sort of a movie, since it’s only 4 episodes)
Premise: A young woman in an orthodox Jewish community in New York escapes to Berlin to pursue a new life.
About: This series is based on the real-life story of Deborah Feldman, who chronicled her exploits in the 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Interestingly, the writers used Feldman’s book verbatim for the “past” storyline but made up a lot of the stuff that happens in Berlin (the present) for dramatic purposes.
Writers: Deborah Feldman, Daniel Handler, Alexa Karolinski, Eli Rosen, Anna Winger
Details: 4 hour-long episodes (I’ve watched the first 2)
So I’m sitting there watching Unorthodox, the sleeper show on Netflix that has no business being in a Netflix Top 10 that favors such frivalous entertainment as murderous lion tamers and something called “Coffee and Kareem.” Yet as of Friday, five separate people had recommended the show to me so I thought, “Okay, I have to check this out.”
While watching the first two episodes, an age-old screenwriting tale began to rear its head: Most screenwriters have no idea how to write engaging character pieces. There are plenty of screenwriters who know how to write boring character pieces. Believe me, I’ve read them all. But there are very few writers who, without gun fights and super powers and end-of-the-world stakes, know how to keep audiences engaged.
Unorthodox reminds us that it can be done.
Esty is a young woman who’s grown up in an orthodox Jewish community inside of New York. But when we meet her, she’s fleeing this world. You’d think she’d been continuously beaten and tortured the way she runs for her life and jets off to Berlin.
Esty seems to be searching for something in Berlin but we’re not told what. In the meantime, she befriends a group of musicians she meets at a coffee shop. Before Esty left New York, she’d been secretly taking piano lessons (in this particular orthodox Jewish community, you are not allowed to play music). Might Esty be able to parlay those talents into a position at their elite school?
Unorthodox institutes a 3-pronged interweaving plot. In addition to following Esty in the present, we also go back in time to observe the events that led to her departure. We start right before the courting process with her soon-to-be fiancé, Yakov. Yakov is so shy and so constricted by this culture that he can’t even look Esty in the eyes.
The third plotline is also set in the present and follows Yakov and his community’s head “fixer,” the ironically unorthodox Moische, as they’re tasked with flying to Berlin and bringing Esty back. The deeply flawed Moische was chosen because he knows the outside world best. Heck, he even has a smart phone. With internet!
We eventually learn that the reason Esty came to Berlin is because her mother ALSO fled the community years back and took up residence here. Esty is hoping to reconnect with her but gets distracted when the music opportunity arises. Will her new music career work out for her? Will she and her mom reunite? Or will everything go back to normal when Esty is captured and pulled back to New York by her husband and Moische? We shall see!
There’s this sort of weird belief among writers that character pieces mean that a certain level of boredom is acceptable. There’s almost an arrogance to it, the attitude being, “Well if you want to enjoy deep thoughtful stories that those big Hollywood movies aren’t giving you, you have to suffer through some slow meticulous setup that isn’t always going to be entertaining.”
To this I say: Hogwash.
It’s possible to make a character piece just as entertaining as a “Hollywood” movie. It’s just more difficult. The trick is a) be a little inventive, b) use time-tested storytelling devices, and c) be unafraid to recruit some “Hollywood” tricks of the trade.
Let’s start off with the inventiveness. Unorthodox jumps back and forth between the present and the past to create a 2-for-the-price-of-1 experience. This results in a constantly changing storyline that keeps you on your toes. Had Unorthodox told its story as a straightforward sequential narrative, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.
But it’s important to keep in mind that just adding a second narrative isn’t enough. You have to do something with it. Its existence must be justified. What Unorthodox does is it creates questions in its present that can only be answered by watching the past.
For example, one of the first things Esty does when she gets to Berlin is find a woman. We see her waiting for the woman. We see the woman arrive from afar. We see Esty about to approach her. But then the woman is met by another woman, who kisses her, Esty is shocked and confused and runs off.
At the time, we have no idea what just happened. But later, during the “past” narrative, we learn that that woman is her mother.
This is something Unorthodox is good at. It doesn’t give anything away upfront. This forces you to keep watching to find things out. This is one of the most basic tenets of writing. If you don’t provide us with any unanswered questions, why do we need to stick around?
Moving forward, let’s talk about time-tested storytelling techniques. And I’m going to give you one that you have to master if you’re going to write a good character piece. It’s a little something called STAKES. But I’m not talking about the stakes of the entire story. I’m talking about takes INSIDE INDIVIDUAL SCENES.
You see, when you don’t have two people pointing guns at each other, you need to find other ways to raise the stakes. And you do this through a) setting up the importance of something, b) taking your time to build it up, and c) paying it off in as big of a way as possible.
In Unorthodox, we’re given multiple references to the fact that Esty is a pianist. We don’t see her play. But her love for it is carefully woven into the story (for example, the person who helps her escape New York is her piano teacher).
When she gets in with the musicians, a new storyline builds where she wants to audition to get into the school. After multiple scenes of watching them play and conversing about music, they’re all together at a dinner party and someone finally says, “Hey Esty, there’s a piano. Why don’t you play for us?”
The mood all of a sudden becomes serious. We’re going to find out after all this time if Etsy is actually good or not. And not only is this her first time playing onscreen. But she has to do it in front of a dozen musicians who have all been playing music since they were in diapers. These are the best of the best.
This is how you create stakes in a scene. It’s a careful process of setting things up and then coming up with a scenario where the moment has major consequences. A lesser writer might’ve had Esty play in front of her best friend in the group. That would’ve lowered the stakes considerably. It needed to happen in front of this group to truly feel big.
Finally, when you’re writing character pieces, don’t be afraid to borrow from Hollywood storytelling. Unorthodox does that in two ways. The first is it creates a PURSUIT STORYLINE. You usually see pursuit storylines in big crime movies. Our murderers have escaped but we keep cutting back to the cop who’s close on their tail. This creates a sense of urgency in the story since we know that the antagonist is always closing in (you can also use Darth Vader closing in on Luke in Empire Strikes Back as an example).
Unorthodox does this with the husband and Moische. This was the best storytelling choice the writers made because one of the biggest reasons character pieces are so boring is because they’re so slow. Creating a storyline that adds urgency to the proceedings fixes that problem.
Another way Unorthodox borrows from Hollywood is the “buddy cop” trope. The buddy cop trope is when you pair up two opposing characters to ensure that whenever we cut to them, there’s always conflict. Yakov and Moische could not be more different. One is naive and meek and close-minded. The other is aggressive and intense and world-traveled.
This would’ve been a less interesting story if Yakov and Moische were equally timid and close-minded.
If you’re writing a low-concept character piece or a low-concept TV show, you’re going to want to check out Unorthodox. It understands where the pitfalls of this genre are and makes sure it has solutions to them. It knows that unless it entertains you, you won’t give a damn. So it always keeps entertainment at the forefront.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Treat your key story threads like sex. DON’T GIVE IT UP RIGHT AWAY! The reason that piano scene plays so well is because they built it up over a long period of time. There was a moment early in the story where Esty sits down at a piano in an empty room. She places her fingers on the keys. Weak writers would’ve had her play something amazing right then and there. “Oh,” they would’ve said to themselves while writing the scene, “she’s playing this beautiful piece to an empty room! It’s so powerful!!” No. No no, no no, and no again. What Unorthodox does is it cuts out before she plays anything, further building up the suspense of the piano storyline. This ensures that when she finally does play in front of all those people, the tension and suspense are at an all time high.
What I learned 2: Combine characters when possible! It always makes your script smoother. This script needed someone to teach Esty piano. The script also needed someone to help Esty escape. Of course you could’ve had two separate characters for each need. But why not combine them into a single character like Unorthodox did? — Incidentally, one of the easiest ways for me to spot a newbie writer is someone who adds a new character for every single task in the script. They never look to combine characters.
What I learned 3: Never limit yourself when adapting material. You have to think outside the box, even when the story you’re adapting is true. I find it fascinating that the writers here decided the stuff about the escape wasn’t enough and created this whole fictional present-day storyline as a way to add an extra, more accessible, layer to the story.
