Genre: TV/One-hour Drama
Premise: A low-level MI5 operative is tasked with looking into a murder orchestrated by a female assassin.
About: Today’s show has an unexpected Star Wars connection. It was created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who many people know as the voice of the doomed L3-37, Lando’s favorite droid, in the movie, “Solo.” Killing Eve has become one of the few shows to rise above the tens of millions of shows being produced, and I plan to find out why. The show has been such a hit that it landed Waller-Bridge a rewrite gig on, get this, the latest Bond film! How many female writers can say they’ve written a Bond film? My guess is not a lot. The second season of Killing Eve debuted a couple of weeks ago. But because I’m behind the times, I’ll be reviewing the pilot episode for the series.
Writer: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Who knows what TV is anymore??

I don’t.

Mini-series, short seasons, limited engagements, anthologies.

The format seems to be getting less defined by the day.

For awhile, that was exciting. And yet with more TV show choices than ever before, I can’t find a single show to watch.

I stopped watching Game of Thrones a few seasons ago. One too many serious talking scenes in small rooms for my taste. Although I enjoyed looking at the pretty costumes.

While a couple of shows have caught my interest since then, The Bodyguard and Escape at Dannemora being the two most memorable, I lost interest during the second episodes. The prospect of settling in for an endless second act felt more like an exercise in masochism than entertainment.

The last two shows I watched where I genuinely had to see the next episode as soon as the current episode was over, were 13 Reasons Why and The Karate Kid. That’s a whole year without a show to get hooked on!

What’s going on? Has spreading the TV writing industry so thin destroyed any chance at getting quality written episodes anymore? You figure that has to play a part in at least some of this.

The only TV series I’m looking forward to at the moment is The Mandalorian. And that has less to do with how the show looks than it does it being Star Wars.

One show that keeps needling me to watch it is Killing Eve. I gave it a shot a few months back but I fell asleep during the pilot. Not a good sign. But there’s no denying the show has become a legitimate hit. And there’s one particular screenwriting lesson Killing Eve teaches that’s so important, I decided to watch it again, if only to share this lesson with you! We’ll cover that in a minute. But first, let’s break down the plot for the pilot.

Eve is a low-level American MI5 agent working in London whose loosey-goosey approach to her job doesn’t jibe well with her uptight British counterparts. During an important meeting about an assassination in Vienna, Eve offers her opinion on the situation without being asked. Her take is that whoever killed this dude must’ve been a woman because she was able to get close without him suspecting anything. Their response: Thanks but we got this covered.

Eve, convinced she’s right, seeks to talk with the only witness to the murder, the victim’s Polish girlfriend. Unfortunately, because the woman is Polish, she’s wasted, and therefore unintelligible. Meanwhile, we meet Villanelle, the assassin who took out the dude in Vienna. After she kills a poor old man in Italy who I’m assuming did something bad, her handler informs her that the Vienna assassination witness (the girlfriend) could cause trouble down the line. So Villanelle must kill her, too.

Back to Eve, who’s informed by her co-workers that they screwed up. New evidence proves it WAS a woman, and that she’ll probably come after the Polish girlfriend, who’s currently in the hospital. So Eve goes to watch over her, but while she’s in the bathroom, Villanelle comes out of one of the stalls in a nurse’s outfit! She has no idea this is the killer and watches as she leaves. Minutes later, when she returns to the girlfriend’s room, she, along with several other hospital workers, have been brutally murdered! Game on!

So what is this mythical screenwriting lesson you cannot succeed without?

It’s something we’ve talked about before. And yet, there probably isn’t a more commonly made mistake in screenwriting.

Are you ready?

WHAT ARE YOU BRINGING TO YOUR CONCEPT THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WE’VE SEEN BEFORE?

That’s it. That question can save you years of heartache. I see so many writers, especially young writers, make this mistake over and over again, even after I’ve brought it to their attention. I suspect part of it isn’t their fault. When you’re young, you haven’t watched as many movies and shows. So you’re not even aware when you’re giving us something familiar.

But it’s getting harder to use that defense. We live in a time when you can easily look up if someone has written a movie/show similar to your idea.

Assuming a writer does their due diligence, knows their film history, has researched to make sure no one else has done their idea (at least not how they plan to do it), yet their idea STILL isn’t fresh, it’s an issue of not understanding how to tweak ideas to bring something new to them. Their “something new” is too lateral. It needs to be elevated.

For example, if you’d just seen John Wick and you went and wrote a screenplay about a hitman who takes down a Russian mob cell… but unlike John Wick, your hero was more of a joke-cracker, like John McClane, would that be enough of a change to warrant a “fresh” stamp? I would say no.

With that said, the line where “stale” ends and “fresh” begins is admittedly hard to nail down. If it were clear, we’d all be millionaires. There is an art to finding that line. Ideally, you want to be just far enough over where what you’ve given us is familiar, but not so far that it’s inaccessible. Sense 8, the Wachowski show on Netflix, was certainly unique. But it was so far over that comfort line that general audiences didn’t know what to do with it.

Killing Eve gives us the familiar, a tag-team assassin vs. agent concept, but places two women in the lead roles. Normally, I don’t think gender-swapping roles is enough. But in this case, it’s clever in that both parts have been given to women in an arena that has never seen that before. Like, ever. We’ve had female assassins and female agents, but never as the principle characters in the same show. A big reason I became curious about the show is that I saw a poster with both of them on it and instantly thought, “I haven’t seen that before.”

I admit there’s no way to measure exactly where that conceptual sweet spot lies. But just by asking yourself the question, you are a million times more likely to create something fresh. Because the large majority of writers out there are rewriting their favorite shows/movies and slapping a new title on them.

Obviously, getting the concept right is only half battle. You still have to execute it. And this is where Killing Eve really shines.

Waller-Bridge gets all the important things right. When we meet our characters, they perform actions that immediately tell us who they are. If you’re not doing this in a TV show, stop writing and go read a screenwriting book. This is Screenwriting 101 here, folks. When we meet Villanelle, she’s in an ice cream shop, she smiles at a little 10 year old girl who’s eating ice cream across from her, and then, when she leaves, she discreetly slaps the bowl of ice cream onto the girl’s lap. We know who Villanelle is within 90 seconds.

Ditto with Eve. One of the easiest ways to convey who someone is quickly, is to contrast their actions with other characters in the scene. So Eve comes to a meeting. Everyone is uptight and methodically going through the day’s schedule. Meanwhile, Eve is leaned back, loudly unpacking a croissant from a bag that she then chows down on.

Some writers frown upon this over-the-top introduction of characters but, I’m telling you, if you try to be too clever and subtle, we’re not going to know who your characters are. I’ll prove this to you once and for all. Think about your favorite characters of all time in movies or TV shows. The ones that left a huge impact. Got it? Okay, now go back to their introductory scene in that movie/show. I’m betting they did something pretty powerful right away that established them as a memorable character, right?

Another key thing you want to do, especially in TV shows, is create contrast between your main pairing. If your two leads are too alike, you’re screwed. You’re better off leaning towards polar opposites than slightly different. Villanelle is an icy sociopath. Eve is a goofy ball of fun. The only time I’ve ever seen the “too alike” thing work was in the sitcom, Frasier. Frasier and Niles were very similar. So I guess it can be done. But I wouldn’t go there.

I liked Killing Eve. I don’t know if it impressed me enough to seek out a paid second episode. I would probably keep watching if it was on Netflix though. Maybe that should be a new selection in my rating options. “Would keep watching if it was on Netflix.” Anyway, if you’ve seen the show, be sure to share your thoughts!

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

What I learned: I think it’s important in TV to establish right away that you’re willing to go to places other shows aren’t. The worst thing you can do is create a comfortable story. Comfortable is boring. So by throwing something harsh at the reader right away, you let them know that things aren’t going to be business as usual. At the beginning of Killing Eve, Villanelle slaps a bowl of ice cream on a little girl. It’s jarring. It’s unexpected. It puts us on notice that the unexpected could happen at any moment in the next hour. That makes us want to keep watching.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa

Whoa whoa whoawhoawhoa whoa

Whoa whoa whoa whoawhoa whoa whoa

What did I just watch?

I’m trying to process this. Lots of internal whoa-ness happing.

Happing? Happening? What’s the difference at this point?

Why is JJ shooting this in 3.75 to 1 aspect ratio? Did Tarantino get to him???

Was that the best thing I’ve ever seen or am I mistaken that a snowy lair from an excised Harry Potter motive made its way into the Episode 9 trailer.

I LOVE BB-1. Or whoever BB-8’s new best friend is. I will have six BB-1s of varying sizes as soon as they come out. We all need a BB-1 in our lives.

I LOOOOOOOOOVE the fixing of the helmet. I love this story beneath the story of JJ fixing Rian’s mess. What a great metaphor, JJ. I love you.

I have no idea what the heck was going on in that opening shot but I’ll say this. Starting in the desert on a close-up of one of the principles was JJ saying, “We’re going back to Force Awakens territory here,” since Finn popping up in a desert close-up was the very first look we had of this new trilogy in that famous Thanksgiving teaser.

JJ seems to like smashed broken big things. He had a bunch of Star Destroyers smashed up in Episode 7. Now a smashed Death Star in Ep 9.

I absolutely LOVE Lando being back. The great thing about Lando is that it’s exciting for Billy Dee to be back in Star Wars. For Harrison it was more of a job. So I think we’re going to see someone who really brings love and excitement to the hole that Han Solo left. It looks like they de-aged him a little too.

I LOVE shots of everyone together again, like Chewbacca and R2 and Threepio. JJ knows how to make us feel good.

But the biggest takeaway from this BY FAR is Luke saying we’re never really gone and the movie being titled The Rise of Skywalker. If JJ brings Luke back so he can finally have his big wipe out 25 AT-ATs with the flip of his wrist moment, I will legally change my last name to JJ.

No idea what’s going on with the Emperor stuff. I don’t know if I want him back or not because I’m not sure he brings anything relevant to the table. But Luke? Yeah, bring Luke back.

Signing off. In JJ we trust.

Hail BB-1.

We are reaching an epidemic in bad set-piece writing. For those of you who don’t know what set pieces are, they’re the big featured action scenes in a script, your Indiana Jones runs through a cave, your airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, that scene in every Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise races a motorcycle through a city at 200 miles per hour. The term “set piece” refers to the olden days when the scene was such a major part of the movie, it needed its own special set. Over time, the term “set piece” has evolved to include any featured extended scene in a movie. A group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse walking into a creepy “vacant” supermarket is a set piece, for example.

We used to have tons of great set pieces in movies. You can count a half-dozen in Raiders of the Lost Ark alone. But over time, something funny happened. In the pursuit to one-up the past, writers and directors erroneously believed that bigger was better. I blame the Lord of the Rings trilogy for this. Those movies had some solid set-pieces. But the war scenes kept getting bigger and more cumbersome with each passing film, until at a certain point you had no idea what was happening onscreen. The person who drove the set-piece off a cliff, though, was Michael Bay. Don’t get me wrong. Michael Bay is a great action director, but his set-piece writing sucks. It’s a bunch of outlandish craziness thrown at you from every angle. Of the five Transformers movies, can you name two memorable set-pieces? I can’t.

The thing is, directors have good intentions. You can’t give the audience the same thing they’ve always had. You need something new. But this notion that bigger is better is plain wrong. Bigger is what got us into this mess. There’s a scene in Valerian where Luc Besson has our hero running through a virtual world as well as the real world at the same time that’s so confusing, we can’t enjoy a second of it. Which is too bad because you can tell he was trying to do something innovative. Even the best overly-complex set-piece I’ve seen this decade – the Captain America: Civil War airport battle – is one I barely remember. I don’t remember why they were fighting, why it had to be at an airport, what the ultimate objective was. It was cool to watch but ultimately empty. Just like everything in screenwriting, the answer is rarely to be more complex. Rather, you want to simplify. And today, I want to give you a formula for achieving that.

I call it: TSDD

And here’s what it stands for…

Time
Space
Distance
Directive

Let’s start with the simplest one, time. A good set piece has urgency. A character has to do something within an uncomfortable amount of time. In Spider Man 2 (the Toby Maguire version), that famous runaway train set piece is made all the more exciting by the fact that he’s running out of time to save the train. Very simple rule to follow. This is the easiest way to turbocharge a set piece.

Next we have space. Space, in this context, refers to the overall space involved in the set piece. The better defined your space is, the more focus your set piece will have. The best way to explain the power of space is in highly contained set pieces. The trash-compacter scene in Star Wars. Or the elevator fight in Captain America: Winter Soldier. But it’s not only getting locked in rooms. It’s any situation where there’s structure to the space. Shazam running over and trying to save a bus that’s about to fall off a bridge. The whole scene takes place inside 80 square feet. Neo and Agent Smith fighting in an underground subway stop. John Wick stalking his prey through an active nightclub. The reason you don’t want the space to be vague is that it’s unclear where characters are, where they can escape to, and what the rules of the environment are. This is what Michael Bay is so guilty of in his Transformers movies. We don’t know where the set starts and where it ends. So it’s just a bunch of characters crashing into each other randomly out of nowhere without purpose.

Moving on, we have distance. Distance refers mainly to chase or running scenes. And, like space, it requires you to let us know what the distance is that the character is attempting to travel. The clearer we are on that, the more invested we’ll be. I’m going to use Raiders because it’s one everyone knows. That opening scene has the best use of distance in any set piece ever. We’ve just traveled down that same straight path into the cave, so we know the exact distance (as well as all the little traps along the way) Indiana must run through in order to get out alive. The climax to Star Wars is another great use of distance. We set up that trench and how long you need to fly down it in order to launch your torpedoes at the exhaust pipe. At the end of The Martian, Matt Damon has to go the distance of the ground up to the ship that’s come to rescue him.

The important thing with distance is that we know where we’re going. If you have a group of characters in a zombie apocalypse movie and they’re minutes away from the zombies breaking into their house, and so they have to make a run for it, it’s always better if they say, “We have to make it to the bell tower” – and we know that the bell tower is 5 blocks away – than if they’re like, “Just run.” It might seem like the chaotic nature of “just run” is better, but I’m telling you, we’re more invested if we know where the destination is. An injured girl stumbling through the woods being pursued by a serial killer is a million times better scene if we know her car is parked on the road just up the trail. If she can only get to that car, she’ll survive!

Finally, we have directive. The cool thing about this one is that even if you’re not strictly following the time/space/distance rule-set, you can still manage to write a good set piece AS LONG AS THE DIRECTIVE IS SUPER STRONG. Directive supersedes time, space, and distance because we’re so focused on the character achieving his directive that we’ll go anywhere with him. “Directive” refers to the directive of the principle character(s) in the scene. So in Pulp Fiction, when Mia’s heart stops, the directive is clear: THE OTHER CHARACTERS NEED TO SAVE HER! So the set piece is kind of all over the place with them driving around and then crashing into the drug dealer’s place who pulls out the famous adrenaline needle and plunges it in her heart. But it works because the directive of saving Mia is so strong.

A couple of final things. You can use ALL of these in a single set piece, or you can pick and choose. The Star Wars trench run uses all of them. Time, space, distance, and directive are incredibly clear. Coincidence it’s considered the best action climax ever? You decide. Also, it’s different writing a set piece on spec than it is writing one for a greenlit movie. If a movie is already being made, the director and writer can visualize a set piece in more of an abstract fashion since the concept doesn’t have to make sense to a reader. But with a spec script, your set piece needs to be clear on paper – all the more reason to go with TSDD.

And that’s it. Now go out and write some killer set pieces. Good luck!

Genre: Horror/Comedy
Premise: (from Hit List) A couple leaves city life behind them for a simpler life in a tiny house. But this idyllic paradise is not all it seems when paranormal activity starts to occur.
About: This script made last year’s Hit List with 8 votes. It was co-written by Paul Soter, a member of the Broken Lizard collective, the guys who made the cult classic comedy, Super Troopers. He teamed up to write this with The Gracias Brothers, who operate a small production company in Culver City (Culver City is where Sony Pictures is located, for those outside of LA).
Writers: Paul Soter & The Gracias Brothers
Details: 104 pages

Tiny House Theme Week continues! And yes, if you’re wondering, I did consider writing this entire review in size 8 pt. font. Assuming you made it out of yesterday’s tiny house alive, you won’t find today’s story any easier to escape, and that’s because we’re not just dealing with any tiny house… but a HAUNTED tiny house.

Before we get to the script, let me take you into the mind of a reader who’s seen every idea under the sun. The concept a reader most fears is an inert one. He reads the idea and he doesn’t see a story. Why doesn’t he see a story? Because there’s no clear engine that’s going to push the narrative forward.

Here, we have this couple who moves into a tiny house, and who we know, at some point, is going to be haunted. That’s fine. Characters being haunted is entertaining when done well. But where is the narrative thrust here? What are the characters going to do in the meantime? That’s what scares me most about an idea – characters sitting around not doing anything. Waiting for the story to happen to them.

Another thing you want in your idea is POP. There’s gotta be that element that pops out and gets you excited about the story. When it comes to comedy, the easiest way to do this is through irony. When I read this logline, I didn’t see any irony whatsoever. A tiny house and ghosts are two random things. When you hear them together, you don’t think, “movie.”

Here’s another logline for you: “A star sumo wrestler’s life is turned upside-down when his minimalist wife convinces him to buy and live in a tiny house.” Yes, I know that’s a dumb idea. No need to point it out. However, can you at least see there’s a sense of irony now? We “get” the conflict.

Needless to say, I saw choppy waters ahead for Tiny Haunted House. But plenty of scripts have surprised me before. Maybe this will be another one.

Uly is a famous pickler living in the weirdest city in the United States, Portland. Well, maybe “famous” is pushing it. He has a steady flow of 10-12 customers who like his pickled products. He’s married to Nan, who looks like she should be in a picture of women eagerly awaiting soldiers retuning from World War 2. Nan is a writer who isn’t a fan of the digitized word. If everything could go back to print, she’d be ecstatic.

The couple is the epitome of happy until tragedy strikes. Their pride and joy, Fillmore the Parrot, is boiled to death during a kitchen accident. Uly and Nan can’t stay here any longer. The memories of their time spent with Filmore would make it impossible. So they decide to move across the country to a place in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, they don’t have a lot of money. So they need to downsize. Using an online real estate service, they buy a cozy little house with cute pictures sight unseen. When they get there, however, they’re shocked to find that it’s a LOT smaller than they thought it was. Ever the optimists, they make the best of the situation, and within a week, they’re living… if not comfortably, manageably.

Then one day a squirrel leads Uly out into the forest (Uly loves animals – he names the squirrel, “Mr. Nutso.”) and digs up an arrowhead. It’s a little spooky but kinda cool! However then strange things start happening in the house. Like the magnet board keeps unmagnetizing. And a stuffed baby goat animal keeps moving around. And the wood beam at the top of the house drips. But the scariest thing is that a disembodied voice keeps whispering to Uly, “PIIIIIIIICCCKKKLLLLLEEE ITTTTTT.” This places Uly and Nan in the age-old predicament: “What do you do when your tiny house is haunted?”

So was this one of those surprise scripts?

I’ll say this. It’s been a while since I’ve read a script that was written this lovingly. I mean that. This wasn’t something these guys whipped together over a couple of months. Every single line has been pored over to make sure it’s perfect. It was a little jarring, to be honest, cause I’m not used to it. Especially in a script like this, which is basically a goofy comedy. That loving quality infuses the script with a pleasant charm.

But just like I suspected from the logline – there isn’t a whole lot of story here. Once the characters get to the house, there’s no inertia at all. I’m ALWAYS wary when a movie is designed for the characters to wait around for the story to come to them. As I’ve said numerous times on this site, movies work best when heroes are active – are going after things. The ‘waiting around’ effect is multiplied if you plop your characters down into a single location. I mean you can argue that “It” is a movie where we’re waiting around for the clown to do his thing. But in the meantime, the characters are out living their lives, meeting each other, growing their friendship. There’s still a sense that the story is moving forward.

Tiny Haunted House starts to pick up when Nan and Uly realize the house is haunted and start to troubleshoot the problem. For those new to screenwriting, there’s a reason for this. This is the first moment where the characters ACT, as opposed to being acted upon. It shows just how powerful the nature of active characters is. I was bored to tears for 50 pages. And then at least when they call a priest to see if the place was haunted, I was curious what would happen.

The script jumps up another peg when the couple begins to look into the history of the house. Not only are the characters being active but these writers are EXTREMELY original and it’s a backstory unlike anything any other writer would come up with. It’s too bad, really. There’s talent and care and originality put into this script but the first half of it so mind-numbingly slow that it killed the script for me. I couldn’t get back into it no matter how hard I tried.

I’m not going to write this script off. I think some people might like it. But when it comes to tiny houses, I think I’ll stick to Youtube videos. :)

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

What I learned: Use comparison to give perspective when describing size. Saying, “The room is small,” does nothing for the reader. Small means different things to different people. Instead, give us a comparison that puts an image in our head. Here’s the writers describing the bathroom: “Nan and Uly peek into a facility where sink, toilet, and shower all insanely share the same square footage as your average airplane lavatory.” You now know EXACTLY how big the bathroom is.

Genre: Tiny House/Documentation
Premise: After meeting through an online dating app, a young woman convinces her new beau to help realize her dream – build and live in a tiny house.
About: This video debuted on the Youtube show “Living Big in a Tiny House” and in just four days has become the fifth most viewed video on the long running series, tallying over 5 million views. While the focus was seemingly on the striking tiny house the couple built, it became evident from the 10,000 plus comments that the video’s quick rise to viral status was due to the odd relationship between the two owners.
Writer: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home & Studio
Details: 18 minutes, 39 seconds (4th draft)

I’m obsessed with this video.

And I’m fine if you think that’s weird.

There’s just so much going on here, I can’t look away.

To give you a little background, I love the Tiny House movement. I love the idea of going off the grid, finding a beautiful piece of land for cheap, then building a home that is both beautiful and basic. There’s something romantic about going off and living in nature.

I also know I’d never do it. I’m someone who needs people around me, a city of swirling insects above and below me at all hours of the day. Being in a city that’s always alive makes me feel alive. I could manage living in a tiny house for a month, maybe two. But I know I’d eventually crave the electricity that only a city full of millions can provide. And in that sense, Youtube has filled a nice hole in the market – which is to allow people to escape for 20 minutes into fantasies like tiny homes before returning back to real life.

This Tiny House video is unlike any I’ve seen before, though. Sure, the house itself is awesome. But as the video pushes forward, an underlying tension between the two principle characters begins to emerge. On the one hand, you have the overly excited host, doing his best to be upbeat and cheery. And on the other you have this girl who we’re learning has an unhealthy obsession with tiny houses. In fact, when the couple tells the story of how they met (through a dating app), the guy explains that the entire date consisted of her talking about how she wanted to live in a tiny house.

Mind you, THIS IS THEIR FIRST DATE.

Now I’m not going to make any assumptions here. But I’m going to make some assumptions here. This guy clearly saw a proposition in his head – I can be with this attractive girl… but it’s going to cost me moving out of my place, with my cats, and building and then moving into a tiny house. Beauty is man’s achilles heel. It causes him to lose all rationale and thought.

Flash forward to now where we have this woman’s crowning moment. The whole reason she wanted a tiny house was because of this show. Now she was getting to show her own tiny house to them. This may explain why she’s so happy during the tour. All of this is captured in one of the most shocking exchanges I’ve ever seen in a show like this. When the tour is all over and the girl is beaming, claiming that her “dream” has finally “come true,” the dead-inside house builder replies, “It’s a dream come true for you… it’s an achievement for me.”

Ouch.

So why am I reviewing this video today?

The first reason is because the idea of reading another Black List script about clickbait social issues makes me nauseous. But I actually believe there are a lot of lessons in this video about character and dialogue.

For starters, I love the relationship from a screenwriting point of view. When you’re coming up with your characters in a story, one of the first questions you should ask is, “Where’s the conflict?” Every relationship in your script should have some level of conflict, and the more prominent the relationship is in the story, the more important identifying that conflict is. The last thing you want is two agreeable characters who see everything the same way. That’s going to lead to a lot of boring conversations. If you’ve ever felt that every dialogue scene you’re writing lacks spark, this is often the reason. You didn’t do the work ahead of time to make sure there was an adequate amount of conflict between the characters.

Take yesterday’s script, for example. Billy and Freddy’s relationship started with a clear line of conflict. He wants nothing to do with Freddy while Freddy wants a friend more than anything. He doesn’t quite know how to get one, but that’s what feeds the conflict in their early interactions. The conflict changes when Billy becomes Shazam, and that’s okay. Relationship conflict can shift as the story evolves.

Getting back to today’s couple, you can see why there’s so much conflict. They have completely different world views. She’s active, takes charge and is used to controlling the relationship, whereas he’s passive and weak and doesn’t stand up for what he wants. This creates the key conflict within the relationship – resentment. You can see it in every glance. You can hear it in every response. He regrets this and he blames her for it. Now if you want to get deep, who he’s really mad at is himself for not having the balls to say no. This is a quagmire of his making. And he’s taking that out on her.

But what’s so insane about this relationship is that she’s completely oblivious to this resentment. She’s not picking up on his frustration at all. And so you have this weird tension whenever they interact, where he’s passive-aggressively responding to every question, and she’s echoing him, but in an euphoric manner. It reminds me a lot of the Jason Bateman – Jennifer Gardner marriage in Juno. He was clearly unhappy, being pushed into an adoption he didn’t want, yet she assumed that because she was ecstatic, he was as well. You see the exact same type of conflict when you watch the scenes with those two as you do here.

And the best thing about getting that conflict right is that the dialogue writes itself. You won’t even have to think because the dynamic has already been set up for you. The reason so much of the dialogue we write is bad is because we don’t yet understand the dynamic of the characters. We don’t know where each character is coming from. When you find yourself in that “no man’s land,” every line is forced. Every line feels written as opposed to said. So get that conflict figured out and a lot of your dialogue problems disappear.

“Sooo… we met online. It was one evening at the pub with my best friend and she wanted to play with my phone and my online dating apps and it sort of sparked from there. We had a date at a very seedy pub.”

“That was her idea.”

“Yeah, I needed a getaway plan.”

“Yeah, it was close to the station.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, just in case.”

“Yeah, annnnnnd… yeah, she really just wouldn’t shut up about these tiny houses and I really hadn’t seen much about them and she’s showing me all these Instagram accounts and I sort of really didn’t think much of it at the time but, yeah, she kept on about it so…”

The level of subtext in this exchange is nuclear. She didn’t choose him. Her friend did, possibly as a joke. She talks about meeting at a ratty pub, which he quickly makes sure to say was not his idea. She then tries to make a joke about bailing but he doesn’t laugh at it.

“Yeah, so I guess I convinced you to build a tiny house… to build me a tiny house actually.”

He grunts non-committedly

“Yep.”

“She did give me full disclosure.”

“I even gave him points and time to bail out. I was laying in bed and I was saying, are you SURE you want to do this?”

He puts on a clenched smile.

“Are you absolutely positive you want to do this?”

“After the trailer was bought,” he clarifies.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

I mean, you can cut the tension with a knife. I haven’t seen this much subtext since the Crane-Merry book burying movement of 1873. It’s like a 90 Day Fiance episode without someone trying to move to America.

What I want you to take away from this is the importance of character creation. Both these “characters” are incredibly well-defined. From there, ask yourself where the conflict in the relationship is coming from. If you can’t come up with that, you probably don’t want to use those characters. You’re going to be pulling your hair out trying to make their scenes interesting. And the dialogue will blow. Most of the time, when there’s a “perfect” relationship in a movie, one of them dies within three scenes. That’s not a coincidence. Had they kept those characters together the whole movie, we’d be bored out of our minds.

I hope this offbeat post was useful. Now who wants to buy a tiny house?

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

What I learned: A fun exercise to help your dialogue is to play real conversations from Youtube videos and write them down as they’re being said. When you write your own dialogue, your fingers are habitual. They work in conjunction with a stubborn mind that wants to go to the same places, type the same words. For this reason, your dialogue always sounds similar. When you do this exercise, you’re forced to write dialogue you wouldn’t normally write, and it’s an eye-opener in that you see you have the potential to create voices you never knew you had in you.

What I learned 2: While you can do this same exercise with actual movies, it’s not as effective. All you’re doing is writing down finely crafted rewritten-to-death fake conversations. The reason I advise using real life videos is because you’re writing own what people actually say, as opposed to a writer’s interpretation of what people say.