Note: The winner of the Sci-Fi Showdown Tournament will be reviewed on the Friday AFTER the 2 Week Screenplay Challenge

If you’re late to the party, we’re writing a screenplay in two weeks starting this Monday. Here are the previous links: Day 1 – Get ready. Day 2 – Pick a concept. Day 3 – Checkpoints.

California just closed down.

I know that’s freaking some of you out. But I’m a cup half full guy and the way I see it is THAT’S MORE TIME TO WRITE. All this time, the world seemed confused by the writer’s lifestyle. We’re introverted. We stay at home as much as possible. We get lost in a world we’ve created for hours at a time. Finally, our lifestyle has become an asset. This is what we do! Which is why the 2 Week Screenplay Challenge rages on.

Okay, we’ve got a LOT of work to do before we start Monday so let’s not waste any more time. Today we have TWO tasks. The first is to finish our final five checkpoints. If you don’t know what a checkpoint is, I explain it in yesterday’s article. My main concern is that you won’t be prepared for the second half of your screenplay. That’s the part that’s least shaped in your head and, for that reason, it’s where a lot of writers give up. They get to that post mid-point section and because they’ve thought so little about it, they feel lost and eventually lose confidence that they have enough story to finish.

So here are a couple of things to remember. An active protagonist will solve many of your plot problems because an active protagonist will need to pursue their goal/objective/solution. However, if your hero is less active, it can be hard to come up with ideas, since you have to come up with things that happen TO your hero as opposed to things your hero does TO the environment.

For example, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a tough movie to write because the characters aren’t pursuing any overt goal. They’re going about their day and reacting to the elements as they come in. Contrast that with something like, say, “I Am Legend,” where our protagonist, a doctor, is trying to come up with a cure. This ensures that he always has a goal, a task that must be accomplished. This allows for a lot more plot ideas.

So unless your story dictates a passive or reactive protagonist, I strongly recommend your hero be active. You’ll thank me later.

Okay now let’s talk about the second half of the movie in general. The second half of your second act (roughly pages 51-75 in a 100 page script) is the section of the script where things should be getting REALLY HARD for your hero. The obstacles will get much bigger than they were in the first half of the second act (in Invisible Man, our heroine gets thrown in a mental hospital). The things that are taken from your hero will be much more significant (the end of a relationship, the death of a friend).

What you’re trying to do with the second half of the second act is create a scenario under which success seems impossible for your hero. So whatever you can put in front of them, whatever you can take away from them, do it. This is the section where your hero is tested beyond anything they’ve ever endured before. Remember that that’s what all scripts are about – testing the characters – seeing if they’re strong enough to obtain the prize, whether it be mentally, physically, or (preferably) both.

If you want to watch a movie that exemplifies escalation throughout its second act, go rent Uncut Gems now. Every five minutes is more intense than the previous five minutes because the writers throw bigger and tougher issues at the hero.

Hopefully, that helps you come up with five more checkpoints.

Your second objective for today is to write down a 1-2 page “essence sheet” for your hero. I use the term “essence sheet” as opposed to “character biography” because I don’t want to know that daddy touched Jimmy when he was five. I’m more interested in how your character moves through the world today. What is their job? Are they married? What does their day-to-day life look like? What’s important to them? For some people peace and happiness is what’s important. For others, it’s having that pint of ice cream at the end of the day.

Of specific importance is the lens through which they approach life. I was just watching the Pauly Shore podcast with Adam Corolla and Pauly asked him if he was scared of getting the coronavirus. Corolla said, “I’m an Atheist, I’m either going to get it or I’m not, so in the meantime, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.” That’s the perfect kind of thing to put in a character essence sheet. That sentence tells us so much about who Adam Corolla is. Try to find mantras like that that define your own hero.

And, finally, the most important thing of all is how you see your hero’s internal STARTING POINT and ENDING POINT in the movie. This is how your hero changes over the course of the story. Or, a better way to look at it may be, how the story changes your hero. In The Invisible Man, Cecilia starts off as a meek victim. Yet she ends up decisive and confident. In the film “Yesterday,” all our hero wants is to be famous. Then by the end of the story, he realizes that fame is a lot more complicated than he realized. Just like your plot has a starting point and an ending point that are different, your main character should have a starting point and ending point that are different.

You probably won’t ever want to look at this document again. Nor do you need to. Just the act of writing it is going to help you understand the character better. It also helps you understand what you need to establish early on in the script. You have to convey the essence of your character in those first few scenes. That then sets up how your character needs to transform by the end of the film.

Of course, there’s no law that states a character needs to arc in a story. But I find that trying to add a character arc is better than not trying to. If the arc doesn’t work, you can always eliminate it or downplay it in future drafts. But it’s hard to add a character transformation after the dye has been cast on the rest of the story.

So there we go. Five more checkpoints and a 1-2 page essence sheet for your hero. Get to it and I’ll be back tomorrow to help you outline!

You can find Day 1 of Prep here and Day 2 of Prep here.

When Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus sat down to write the gigantic two-part Avengers finale, they admitted they were overwhelmed by the task. Filling up a six hour screenplay is a daunting experience. So how did they overcome the fear?

They started writing down CHECKPOINTS – major moments in the script.

For example, the scene where Captain America fights himself. They figured out, “Okay, we’re going to have that happen around page X in the story.” Once they were able to lay these checkpoints down on a timeline, they no longer had to write from page 1 to page 300. They only had to write to Page 25, when Tony Stark, Dr. Strange, and Spider-Man fight Thanos’s goons in New York City. And then to page 40, when the Guardians of the Galaxy rescue Thor.

Checkpoints give you smaller chunks of screenplay to conquer. The more of them you have, the smaller those gaps of blank pages become. All of a sudden the screenplay you’re writing doesn’t seem so big and scary anymore.

That’s tomorrow’s goal. I want you to come up with five checkpoints in your script. And then Friday’s goal is going to be to come up with five more, for a total of ten. I’m going to make it easy for you by providing you with the four most common checkpoints.

The first is the inciting incident, which tends to happen somewhere between page 5-12. Depending on your script, it could come sooner or later. All the inciting incident is is the introduction of the major problem your hero faces in the movie. So if it’s Avengers, it’s that Thanos is trying to get the Infinity Stones so he can snap away half the universe. If it’s John Wick, it’s when they kill his dog. If it’s Ad Astra, it’s when Brad Pitt is told his dad is still alive and missing and they need Mr. Pitt to find him.

Not all inciting incidents fall perfectly into the “major problem” category. For example, Uncut Gems. I’m not entirely sure what the inciting incident there is. Maybe it’s when Kevin Garnett won’t give him back the gem right away? Or is it when Sandler initially receives the gem? Not sure. Parasite as well. No real problem enters our poor family’s existence in the first act because the infiltration of the rich family’s home was the poor family’s idea to begin with. I suppose you could say that the inciting incident is when the family friend comes to the son of the poor family and tells him about the tutoring job.

In these cases, think of the inciting incident as any plot moment that jumpstarts the story. So Adam Sandler receiving the gem in the mail jumpstarts Uncut Gems. The son being alerted to the tutoring job jumpstarts Parasite.

The second checkpoint is the end of the first act, which is when your character commits to the journey. After the inciting incident, there is often a “refusal of the call” or a “delay in action.” But, eventually, our hero decides to go on the journey because there wouldn’t be a movie if he didn’t. This occurs around page 25-27 in a 100-110 page screenplay.

You see this in just about every Pixar and Disney movie. Most recently, Onward. Ian and Barley head off in search of their father. Inception when they head into Robert Fischer’s mind. Every Mission Impossible movie when they actually go off on the mission. This is where your movie officially begins.

Of course, just like the inciting incident, this doesn’t fit perfectly into every movie, particularly ones where the hero doesn’t go on a journey. Sometimes your hero is stuck in a house, like Michelle in Cloverfield Lane. If your script is non-traditional, look for something that approximates a first act turn. In Cloverfield Lane, for example, I might classify the first act turn as the moment Michelle DECIDES she’s going to try and get out of here. That switch in her demeanor from reactive to active signifies a new energy in the story.

Next we have the midpoint shift. Or the midpoint escalation. The best midpoint shifts transform the story. Make it feel different from the first half of the movie. You do this so your movie doesn’t have the same energy and feel the entire way through. Remember that predictability eventually equals boredom. So you want to use your midpoint shift to change things up a bit. A good example would be the midpoint shift of The Invisible Man. That happens when Cecilia gets booted out of her friend’s house and decides to prove this man is after her instead of allowing him to do what he was doing through the first half of the movie, which was torture her.

Or Parasite. That film had one of the most daring midpoint shifts I’ve ever seen, when they introduce a secret basement floor where a third family is hiding.

Finally we have the LOWEST POINT, which will take place at the end of your second act (between the pages of 78 and 90). Lowest Points are easy to come up with because it’s always some connection to death. Either literally or symbolically. It could be our hero’s friend died. If the main hero is a chef, maybe his restaurant closes down for good (dies). To use Invisible Man again, Cecilia is in a nut house, she’s tired of fighting, so she slits her wrists. In Parasite, it’s when the poor family’s house is flooded, destroying everything (their house literally dies).

So there you have it. Four checkpoints to get you started.

How do you come up with six more? That’s up to you. It could be one of the first scenes you imagined when you came up with your idea. Like the hilarious scene when all the human characters meet the game versions of each other in Jumanji. Or the convenience store scene in The Hunt. It could be something visual, like the famous giant piano playing scene in Big.

It may be a plot twist that happens, like the reveal of the girl in JoJo Rabbit. Or the surprise death of one of your characters. It could be a major monologue from one of the characters (Jules’ Big Kahuna burger monologue scene in Pulp Fiction) or a killer dialogue scene (DeNiro and Pacino in Heat) showdown. If you can envision it, it can be a checkpoint.

Some final thoughts. It’s important that you do this because we’re going to be making a mini-outline over the weekend and the more of these you have, the easier it will be to construct your outline.

Also, if you can, try and balance your checkpoints out so that you have roughly the same amount in the second half as you have the first. It’s easier to come up with first-half checkpoints because that part of the story is clearer in your head at the moment. But one of the big challenges of finishing a screenplay is that back half of the second act. It’s the section of the script we know the least about before we write. So if you can throw a couple of solid checkpoints in there, you’re going to be ahead of the game.

Now get to it!

Today is Day 2 of Prep to write a screenplay in 2 weeks. You can read the announcement for the 2 Week Screenplay Challenge here.

We’re five days away from FADE IN and we’ve got a ton of work to do. By this time tomorrow, you need to know what script you’re writing.

Yesterday, I told you to prepare 5 loglines for scripts you want to write. Then, either e-mail five friends of yours and ask them to rank the ideas from best to worst. Or post the loglines right here in the comment section and have the Scriptshadow community rank them for you. Whatever gets the most votes, I’d suggest you write that idea.

If you want my personal opinion, my logline service is still cheap. $25 for a rating, a 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I will reintroduce the 5 loglines for $75 deal through the weekend. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Like I said yesterday, committing to an idea will be the most important decision you make in this challenge by far. Good ideas inspire exciting stories. Weak ideas are like swimming with cinder blocks tied to your feet. Every scene is a chore. Finding the next plot beat is akin to finding toilet paper at the supermarket.

How do we define a good idea versus a bad one? While it may seem like how good an idea is is in the eye of the beholder, there are things you can do to improve an idea’s potency. A good idea is one that does a lot of the writing for you. Common factors include a strong main character goal, a heavy dose of conflict in the way of your hero’s journey, and the stakes feel big. That’s important – that this story feel like major consequences are involved. If you want to add even more charge to the idea, contain the time frame. Create a sense of urgency (the goal must be achieved soon or else…).

I would also like to introduce a new concept that has a major effect on how appealing your idea is to others. It’s called CREATIVE POTENTIAL and you want your ideas to have it. Sure, you can put a John Wick like character in your lead role and say he has to kill the evil bad guy within 28 hours or his family will be executed. That hits all the beats I mentioned above. But with zero creativity behind the setup, it doesn’t leave a lot of openings to give the story anything people haven’t seen before. Nor does it offer opportunities for surprising plot revelations. It’s a bland straightforward idea that lacks anything to distinguish it from the pack.

So what’s a good idea that contains all these things?

Jurassic Park, duh. I know it’s an oldie, but it’s a goodie. A group of people gets stuck on an island of dinosaurs. Goal = escape. Stakes = their lives. Urgency = they’re being chased so they have to achieve the goal NOW. Conflict = dinosaurs are trying to kill them. Creative Potential = a freaking island of dinosaurs. There are so many fun creative plot things you can do with this setup.

Okay, what about a bad idea? An idea that doesn’t “write itself.”

I’m going to say Marriage Story. I know I just used that as an example yesterday of an easy script to write but now I’m having second thoughts. The idea doesn’t have a goal. It doesn’t have any stakes really. The damage to this couple is already done at the start of the story. The narrative is used to get us to the legal finish line of the divorce. There’s clearly no urgency here. The script’s sole dramatic engine is the conflict between the central characters, which admittedly works well. But because you don’t have any real goal pushing the narrative, coming up with scene ideas for this must have been a nightmare. It’s always easy to see how they got there in the rear-view mirror, but I suspect there were a lot of long nights of Noah Baumbach staring at the blank page not knowing what to write next. Goal-less characters are responsible for driving many a writer insane.

And here’s another good idea…

This one a longtime Scriptshadow reader alerted me to from a previous contest – “It’s Christmas time in Berlin, 1944. A serial murderer is on the loose, and a confounded police detective springs a famed Jewish psychologist from Auschwitz to help him profile and catch the killer.” – The script would go on to sell to Fox. We’ve got our goal – catch the killer. We’ve got stakes – people are dying. We’ve got urgency – the longer it takes to catch him, the more people die. We’ve got some great conflict at the center of the story – A German police officer and a Jewish psychologist working together during one of the most tense times in history. And the creative potential of this idea is off the charts. You know you have a good idea when anybody who reads it can start thinking up fun scenes to write.

Finally, here’s one of Magga’s loglines from yesterday, which I had issues with. I hope Magga is okay with me critiquing it because your other idea, Shalloween, sounds great.

LIVE FOREVER – At the height of the britpop craze, demand for the Oasis live experience was so high that several cover bands got national reputations in England. This is the story of a fictional one.

Where is the goal in this idea? I suppose it’s for this fictional cover band to perform live? Okay. I guess that’s not terrible. But if I have to dig to understand the goal, then I don’t know what the stakes are. I can’t find the urgency. I’m not seeing any conflict in this logline, which gives me no sense of what the second act is going to be about. It also feels weird that the first half of this idea is about a real time and real people and the second half introduces a fictional element. Who cares if some fictional Oasis cover band gets to play live? This would be so so so much better if this was a true story.

But look, don’t feel bad if your idea isn’t loved. Picking ideas is an inexact science. The reasons we fall in love with an idea don’t always match up with how the rest of the world perceives them. Our hero may remind us of a fresh take on our favorite movie character of all time, “John Smith” from the movie “Takedown.” Meanwhile, everybody else just sees a generic straight-to-video action thriller. This logic can be applied to Live Forever. Magga may love Oasis and that’s why they’re passionate about writing a movie about them. But all we see is a confused story with a weak narrative.

That’s why I want you to share five movie ideas instead of one. At the very least, you’ll be working with an idea that beat out four others. So, if you want to participate, post your five movie ideas below in the comment sections. Please include titles and genres.

You must pick a movie idea by tomorrow because tomorrow we have to start prepping to write the script. We only have five days for prep. So let’s get to it!

What’s that old saying?

Turn lemons into lemonade?

Well by gosh, that’s what we’re going to do here at Scriptshadow.

We’re indoors for the next few weeks. Let’s make the best of it.

I know a lot of you are hard at work on your Last Great Screenplay Contest entries. So feel free to follow this journey for fun. But for the rest of you, we’re going to write a screenplay…

IN TWO WEEKS!

I know, I know. Sounds impossible, right?

Don’t worry. I’m going to guide you through every step. I’ll be here for the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. Trust me, it won’t be as hard as you think.

And just to be clear – I know that nobody’s going to write the next Citizen Kane in two weeks. But what you can do is write a first draft that contains the bones for a great screenplay. We’ve heard tons of successful writers tell this exact story. Jon Favreau wrote the first draft of Swingers in a few days. Sylvester Stallone wrote the first draft of Rocky in what? A week?

And with me by your side, I’m going to make sure you don’t make any of the classic mistakes writers make when writing quickly.

Now the actual writing doesn’t start until Monday. But we’re going to get started right now.

“Whoa, Carson. Give me time to… like… breathe. You’re throwing a lot at me here.”

Good. This process is going to feel a little uncomfortable and that’s a good thing. The only way this is going to work is if you push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

We need to come up with a concept.

Maybe you already have an idea you’ve been sitting on for a while, itching to write. Maybe it’s an offbeat concept that’s always scared you a little bit. This is the perfect opportunity to bust that idea out and write it because what’s the downside if it’s bad? You lost two weeks. No biggie.

But for those of you hoping to write something specifically marketable, you’re going to come up with five loglines for potential screenplays… BY TOMORROW.

“But… but Carson… writing… takes… time. Come up with five ideas in one day?? That’s impossible!!!”

Stop.

Just stop.

One of the primary directives of this experiment is to eliminate negative thinking. Eliminate doubt. Doubt slows you down. We don’t have time for it. We have to write a script in two weeks.

You’re going to come up with five loglines and then, tomorrow, you’re going to e-mail five of your friends OR five people on Scriptshadow OR post your loglines in the comments section and you’re going to get a consensus on which is the best idea. That’s the idea you’re going to write.

One of the BIGGEST mistakes screenwriters make is starting with a weak idea. It’s hard for even the best screenwriters to make a weak concept work. You want to give yourself the best chance to succeed. This, more than any other decision you make, is going to have the biggest impact on whether your script is good or not.

A word of advice. Don’t pick ideas that have too much mythology, require too much research, or have too many characters or storylines. While it’s possible to write one of those scripts in two weeks, they tend to take longer than that.

So any fantasy concepts like Lord of The Rings – throw them out. The Big Short, a script that would require extensive research about the 90s stock market – throw it out. The Godfather, Gladiator, World War Z, Avengers. These will be tough scripts to write in two weeks.

Simple concepts with low character counts will be the easiest to write. Rocky. Get Out. A Quiet Place. Ladybird. Parasite. Marriage Story. Joker. Swingers.

I don’t want to stifle creativity so if you have an idea that doesn’t fit this mould and it still appeals to you, by all means, write it. Just be aware that the more characters there are to track, the more time it will take to work out the plotting. And the more complex your plot, the more likely it is you’re going to run into walls. Walls are where screenplays become tough. You hit a thick one you don’t have answers for and that can keep you away from the computer for days. We’re only going to finish a script in two weeks if we’re writing EVERY SINGLE DAY so keep that in mind.

One of the themes you’re going to hear me hit again and again these two weeks is LACK OF JUDGEMENT. Judgement is the main reason for writer’s block. For those of you who struggle with that, these two weeks are going to be a revelation. Because it’s not about writing something great. It’s about writing something period. And then, when it’s over, we can look back at what we’ve written and decide if it has potential to keep working on. If it doesn’t, that’s okay. We only lost two weeks. And we didn’t even lose much because we were going to be home with nothing to do anyway.

So that’s all you have to worry about today. Either pick some idea you’ve been sitting on for a while or come up with five loglines. Tomorrow’s comment section will be dedicated to sharing your loglines so that fellow writers can give you feedback on which one is best. However, if you want to get a head start, feel free to post your loglines in this comment section. I only ask that you post all five of your loglines in a single comment. Don’t keep gumming up the comments section every time you come up with a new idea. “Is this good?” 30 minutes later. “What about this one??” Let’s avoid that.

Another theme you’re going to hear me hitting over and over again is: Let’s have fun. A lot of times we get bogged down in the frustrations that come with writing. We’re throwing that to the wayside here. We originally got into writing because we enjoyed it. And these next two weeks, we’re going to get back to that mindset. Let’s have some fun and write a script! It’s not going to be any more complicated than that.

I already know some of you are itching to leave a comment about how this is bad for screenwriting. Nothing good is ever written in two weeks. You’re going to come up with reasons why you’re different and why you can’t do this. That’s fine. I will give you one day, here in this comment section, to get those thoughts out. Cause I get it. Writers are often pessimistic creatures. But after today, those comments won’t be allowed. I will delete them.

Moving forward, it’s going to be about staying positive so that we can get a screenplay written. It’s going to be a blast. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. :)

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: When a young genius Russian programmer is accepted into a tech company’s top secret program, codenamed “Devs,” he ends up getting more than he bargained for.
About: It’s so like Alex Garland to put his show on Hulu. I mean, who puts any show on Hulu?? They produce 3 shows a year and all of them blow. Garland is one of my favorite writers. He wrote the novel, The Beach, which still holds up today. He wrote and directed Ex Machina. He made the trippy sci-fi flick, Annihilation. He wrote 28 Days Later. Sunshine. Like a lot of creators, Garland is finally making the jump to television with his new show, Devs.
Writer: Alex Garland
Details: 1 hour

One of my favorite quotes came from Alex Garland when he was on the interview circuit for his first directing effort, Ex Machina. The journalist asked him, “You’ve been a writer for so long and here you’ve finally gotten behind the camera. I’d imagine it’s an invigorating change, being able to take your words and translate them to the images you had in you head. What is it you like about directing?” Garland’s response: “Nothing.”

I don’t know if Garland isn’t aware of how the promotional game works or if he just doesn’t care. Either way, I’ll follow him because, the way I see it, Garland is one of the top 5 writers in the business. He has an intrinsic understanding of what a hook is. But he never explores them in obvious ways. He’s like a non-smiling JJ Abrams. Literally. There is a GIANT LITERAL MYSTERY BOX in the show – the Devs building, a building that’s about to change the life of the man who’s been accepted into its program.

(SPOILERS)

Sergei works for a San Francisco tech company led by Forest, a reclusive tech CEO. After Sergei demonstrates to Forest that he is able to predict the movements of a single-celled organism seven seconds into the future, Forest informs Sergie he wants him to join Devs, his mysterious passion project.

Sergei and his girlfriend, Lily, are besides themselves. It’s impossible to get into Devs. That night, Forest takes Sergei to the Devs building, a giant oddly-shaped box in the middle of the forest surrounded by large gold pillars being used as shields to ensure that nothing can be digitally transmitted out of the building.

The inside is even more impressive, with an electromagnetic floating people mover that takes you to the inner offices of the building. There, Sergei is given his computer station and when he looks at the Devs code, he stares up at Forest in shock. “This can’t be real,” he says. Forest assures him that it is.

After Forest leaves, Sergei starts acting strange. He seems to be having an internal breakdown. Finally, we see him position his watch to face the screen. Sergei is digitally recording the code! Late that night, when Sergei leaves the building, he finds Forest waiting for him with his head of security, Kenton. After Forest tells Sergei he knows exactly what he did, it’s lights out for Serge. Kenton throws a bag over his head and suffocates him.

The next day, Lily, who also works at the company, comes looking for her boyfriend. She meets with Kenton, who tells her they’re lucky they have so many cameras all over the place as it will be easy to find out where he went. Sure enough, the cameras show Sergei leaving Devs, coming to the main campus, then simply heading off into the city. Kenton assures Lily that he’ll pop up sooner or later.

Later, Lily finds a strange game on Sergei’s phone. When she clicks it, it becomes clear it’s not a game at all, but rather a covert messaging system. Sergei, it turns out, was working for the Russians. Before Lily can process that, she’s called in to see Kenton again, who shows her a disturbing video. It’s Sergei. He came back, headed straight to one of the on-campus parks, then poured gasoline on himself and lit himself on fire. Lily can only watch with horror as her boyfriend commits suicide.

Garland is a writer who understands screenwriting. Period. He just gets it, man.

I want to draw your attention to two scenes in particular.

The first occurs after Forest’s head of security, Kenton, kills Sergei. The next day Lily comes to Kenton’s office asking if he knows anything about Sergei’s disappearance. Now we watched Kenton kill Sergei. But Lily doesn’t know that, of course. Garland has prepped the perfect scenario for dramatic irony.

As a reminder, dramatic irony is when we know something that a key character, many times the hero, does not. We know this dude killed Sergei but Lily does not, creating an underlying sense of anger and frustration that our hero, this person we care about, is being lied to. Any time you can get the reader feeling emotion – good or bad – you are doing something right. Because the main source of boredom is having zero emotional reaction to what you’re reading.

But Garland doesn’t stop there. He DOUBLES DOWN on the dramatic irony. During their conversation, Forest comes into the office. Kenton “informs” Forest that Sergei, Lily’s boyfriend, went missing after he left Devs last night. Forest feigns concern and asks what happened. Forest and Kenton then go through a little performance whereby they pretend to figure out where he might be. It’s like taking dramatic irony and hooking it up directly to a nuclear reactor.

For all you TV writers out there, dramatic irony is one of the most important skills you’ll draw upon. The reason for this is that there are lots more talking heads scenes in TV shows than features and dramatic irony is one of the easiest ways to make a talking heads scene interesting.

The next scene I want to draw your attention to is the scene where Sergei is killed. Sergei has just finished his shift in the Devs building, using much of that time to record the code via his secret watch-recorder. Sergei exits the building, which is in the middle of a forest, and is surprised when Forest emerges from the shadows (yes, Forest emerges from the forest).

Now Forest already knows he’s going to kill Sergei (or have Kenton kill him). When he reveals to Sergei that he knows Sergei recorded the code on his watch, it’s pretty much a done deal that Sergei’s going to die.

But where’s the fun in killing off a character the second we learn they’re going to be killed? Screenwriting is about suspending. You want to imply that something bad is going to happen and then you want to draw it out. The fun occurs in the audience squirming around during the ‘drawing out’ process. Which is exactly what happens here. Forest goes on an extensive monologue about how human lives are on rails and that they’re pre-determined to do what they do. Only after finishing his point does he order Kenton to kill Sergei.

But I’m not done documenting Garland’s genius. Garland uses a scene in the second episode to establish a pattern-disruption which ensures that audiences have no idea what to expect moving forward. That’s not talked about enough in dramatic TV writing. Most shows are predictable. The way you hook people is by taking major plot beats and mixing up the pattern of expectation. Sometimes you give them what they expect. Other times you don’t. This ensures that they never know what’s coming, which is key in one’s enjoyment of any story.

(spoiler) In episode 2, Kenton confronts Sergei’s Russian contact, Anton, in a parking garage at night. Kenton informs Anton that he knows he’s trying to get Lily to complete Sergei’s job and he wants him to stop. But unlike Sergei, Anton is not afraid of Kenton, and as the two continue their tense interaction, it’s clear that Anton has done his homework and knows everything about Kenton. By the end of their conversation, you’d think Anton even knew Kenton had followed him here. Then, in a flash, Anton whips out a knife and stabs Kenton in the gut. Shocked, all Kenton can do is flail. In that moment, we know that Kenton is going to die.

Sticking with the mantra that drawing big moments out is one of the keys to good writing, Garland milks the fight for all it is worth. As it teeters back and forth, Kenton surprisingly fights his way back to even ground. Anton is younger and stronger, but Kenton won’t go down easily. When it’s all said and done, Kenton surprisingly emerges as the winner, a bet we wouldn’t have taken at the beginning of the fight.

Why am I telling you all this? Because now Garland has established that you DO NOT KNOW what’s going to happen going forward. Sure, we knew Sergei was a goner. But with this fight, the winner wasn’t who we thought it would be. This means that every tense moment moving forward in the show, you’re going to be anxious. You’re going to be unsure. It can go either way. And that’s what makes any story exciting – the unknown. The main reason why there’s so much boring stuff out there is the predictability of the storytelling. You don’t get that here.

Notice none of what I’ve discussed even includes one of the coolest things about this show – the Devs project! What is it? What is it going to be used for? Is it just a camera into the past? Or can it do the same for the future? Is the goal to be able to travel into other time periods? Another mistake TV writers make is that they only focus on this plot stuff. But the cool plot stuff becomes a lot cooler when you have cool characters moving within it. That’s why this show is so great.

TV feels like the perfect landing spot for Garland. This guy explores complex themes. Complex people. Complex ideas. Film doesn’t do any of that well. Film is more about the ride. Even character pieces can only focus on one or two aspects of character growth in a film. TV allows you to take all those things and dig into them. And whereas many feature writers moving into TV give us shows that burn bright early but die after a few episodes, Garland is ready for this drawn out format. Remember that he started off writing novels. So he understands long-form storytelling better than most.

My only worry with Garland is that his stuff is a little TOO heady at times. Whereas JJ Abrams could learn a thing or two from Garland about sophistication in theme and character development, Garland could learn a thing or two from Abrams about embracing the fun parts of your idea more. The good news is, this show is on Hulu and Hulu has nothing going on so you’d think they’d greenlight a second season just based on that. You have a cool hip cinephile-loved director making a show for you. Keep him happy.

I know I was happy watching this. So much so, I can’t wait for the rest of the season.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the most misunderstood aspects of screenwriting is when to write monologues. There are two assumed places where one must do so. The first is when a character explains some deep affecting story from their past that shaped them. These monologues tend to start like this: “When I was a kid, my dad used to say…”. The second occurs near the end of the movie where the main character says to either the co-lead or a group of people what they learned and try to encapsulate the message of the movie in one big speech. While the latter is preferable to the former, I’d advise avoiding both. They’re cliche-traps that scream “Newbie writer here!” The best time to use monologues is in the example I used above. Create a sense of impending doom then draw the scene out. Whatever you want to say, have the controlling character (in this case, Forest) deliver it in a monologue during that moment. The issue with monologues is that they are inherently inorganic. People rarely stop and give some grand sweeping speech about something. The impending sense of doom hides that inorganic component better so you don’t notice it as much.