Genre: Period
Premise: A look at the regiment led by Colonel Custer in the days leading up to the disastrous fight at Little Bighorn against Sitting Bull.
About: This script finished high on last year’s Black List, snagging 18 votes. Reiss Clauson-Wolf and Julian Silver went to school together at Wesleyan University. Julian originally came out to LA to be an actor, and has appeared in numerous TV shows. The two would eventually team up to write on CBS’s Seal Team. This is their first big break in the feature script world.
Writers: Reiss Clauson-Wolf and Julian Silver
Details: 115 pages

I’m often taken to task here for my lack of history knowledge (no idea what Dunkirk was before Nolan’s movie) and geography (where’s Tonga again?). So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that while I’ve heard of Custer’s Last Stand, I don’t know what actually happened during it. Lucky for me, the script starts with a title card that answers all my questions. Here’s what it said….

In 1876, the government of the recently reunified United States sends word to the Lakota Sioux Nation, demanding the Sioux retreat to the agreed-upon reservation boundaries.

…So what happened?

That’s a good question. What did happen? And if the whole battle was lost to history, how do these writers know what happened? That’s the real mystery.

While The Seventh teases a mini-biopic about Colonel Custer, it turns out he’s barely in the script. The Seventh instead focuses on all the men in his regiment, the most prominent of whom is William Harrow, a company man determined to do Custer’s bidding, even though Custer’s bending his orders in the most uncool of ways (he’s supposed to make sure the Sioux have retreated to the agreed upon land. Instead he’s slaughtering them).

Things get interesting when Captain Michael Vincent Sheridan shows up with orders from his famous brother, General Phillip Sheridan. Everyone is to get on their horses and come home. But Custer tosses the orders in the fire. He’s determined to take down the legendary Sitting Bull. That isn’t going to be easy, with every one of the men in the Seventh Regiment reluctant to be here. Will Custer’s ego get them all killed? Uh, yeah. It says so in the opening title card. But how will Custer himself die? The answer, according to the writers, will shock you.

Let me start this analysis by saying there is no wrong way to tell a story. None of the issues I’m about to mention are script-killers in their own right. For every problem I’m about to highlight, cinephiles can point to another movie that worked in spite of that problem. HOWEVER. Each of these issues are handicaps that saddle your screenplay, making it harder for the story to work. Again, it doesn’t mean it won’t work. Only that you’re making things harder on yourself.

Problem number one is that this is a “sitting around” narrative. The characters spend the entirety of the script sitting around waiting. And that’s the true bad word here. “Waiting.” The majority of our cinematic heroes GO AFTER things. Whether it’s John Cho’s character going after his daughter in Searching or the Avengers going after Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War (or Alex Honnold climbing El Cap in Free Solo!!!). We like people who are active and on the move. The second you sit your characters down and make them wait, you are writing a passive movie. And it’s hard to make passive movies entertaining.

Problem number two is that none of the characters want to be here. Well, Custer does. But he’s barely in the script. Nobody else wants to be here. And while there’s something to be said for conflict within your character (these characters don’t want to fight but they have to), movies don’t work well when the characters aren’t interested in accomplishing the goal. One of the reasons Searching and Avengers were so strong was because the characters wanted to achieve their goal more than anything. Everyone in Custer’s Last Stand wants to leave.

The final big problem is that there isn’t a main character in the script. I was hoping Custer would be our main character. He seems the most interesting. But instead we’re given a protagonist-by-committee situation. It’s up to us to figure out who’s driving the narrative. Harrow has enough scenes that we figure he’s as close to a hero as we’re going to get. But then Sheridan comes in and he gets a lot of time too. So take your pick on which one is the hero. Again, there’s no rule that says you need a lone protagonist. It just makes writing the script easier. The advantage to having a lone hero is that their objective can drive the story. That makes it easy to understand what’s going on. An unclear hero means an unclear objective means it’s harder to keep up with what’s going on.

So does that mean The Seventh sucks?

No.

The writers are good at one of the most important tools in the writer’s arsenal – conflict. There’s conflict in virtually every scene here. Either Harrow doesn’t agree with Sheridan. Or Custer doesn’t believe in Harrow. Or Lord must defend secretly nursing a Sioux woman back to health. Or several men desert the regiment to sneak home (and later get caught). There’s so much consternation about being here that every scene contains tons of conflict.

The question then becomes, is that enough for the reader? Can they overlook the “waiting around” narrative, the unmotivated characters, and the lack of a true hero, as long as they get a healthy dose of conflict in each scene? For me, it wasn’t enough. For you, it might be.

The one other thing the script has going for it is its famous ending. I could see the readers who voted for this making the argument that the story doesn’t need a big goal. It doesn’t matter if characters are waiting around. When you have a third act as famous as Custer’s last stand, the reader’s going to keep reading no matter what. And that’s true. I did want to get to the end to see what happened.

I’ll finish up by reminding everyone that your script takes on the personality of your setup. If it’s a sitting around script, the story will feel lazy, stuck in neutral. You have to decide if the rest of your script has enough going on to offset this issue, or whatever big issue is hampering your narrative. No script is perfect. So you’ll always have to make sacrifices. But, personally, I wouldn’t write a movie with characters waiting around this much.

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

What I learned: Character reminders. Custer’s Last Stand gave us another tip for bulk introductions. If you bulk intro characters, consider REMINDING us who they are later on. Here’s what Reiss Clauson-Wolf and Julian Silver do when four characters we haven’t seen for awhile are reintroduced: “We come onto a game of poker being played between Porter (”injured” leg), Patton (trumpeter), Schmidt (thirsty horse), Dorman (translator).” I immediately remembered who these characters were because of those reminders.

Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: A dedicated social worker enters the home of an adoptive father of six children to check on their well-being, only to learn that the family is keeping a deadly secret. Based on actual events.
About: This script made last year’s Hit List and Blood List. Skylar James has been writing for quite some time, penning the 2010 script for Mortal Kombat.
Writer: Skylar James
Details: 117 pages

If God said he was ending your life in six months unless you sold a screenplay, your best bet would be to write a contained thriller. Or, better yet, a contained horror. You probably won’t get a huge paycheck. But you’d sell your script and still be alive. Skylar James knows this formula. So much so that she’s turbo-boosted it with the old “based on actual events,” tag. If you can’t sell a contained horror that’s based on actual events, well then my friend, you are not a real screenwriter (I’m only joking, of course. Well, half-joking anyway).

Anthony Minchin, an obituary writer, is a weird middle-aged man who lives up on 29 Mole Street with his six adopted children, Christopher, Tallulah, William, Irena, Gideon, and Juniper. Anthony loves his kids more than anything and they love him back. Every day Anthony comes home with a new toy and plays games with them. Outside of not having a mother, the children are happy beyond their wildest dreams.

One day there’s an unexpected knock at the door. Hannah, from social services, is here to check on the adopted children to make sure they’re okay. A victim of abuse, Hannah is immediately concerned when she notices bruises on the children. She investigates each of them, but they only speak glowingly of their father. Still, something doesn’t add up.

Hannah’s spidey-sense spikes when she speaks with William. There’s something about him that’s familiar. Was he previously at another adopted home she was assigned to? Hannah shifts her focus from the children to the house, which she investigates with growing curiosity. Anthony has all these rules about what rooms you’re allowed to go in. And nobody, not even the children, is allowed in the basement.

As soon as Anthony is busy, that’s where Hannah goes. After snooping around, she finds a hollow floorboard, which contains an old laptop. She boots it up and finds obituaries for hundreds of children. But more concerning is the police file she finds on her abusive old boyfriend. Why would that be in here? When Hannah goes upstairs to confront Anthony, she realizes that neither this house nor these children are what they seem, and that she could be stuck here forever.

The problem with 29 Mole Street is that I predicted the twist a quarter of the way in (spoilers follow). There were too many red flags pointing to it. He writes obituaries. The kids are never allowed to go outside. The curtains must always stay closed so the neighbors can’t see in. It was pretty obvious they were dead. And if they were dead, she probably was too. So I spent the rest of the script waiting for the writer to catch up to me.

With that said, I had previous movies like The Others and The Orphanage to guide me towards that conclusion. If you haven’t seen those films, maybe the ending to 29 Mole Street is a surprise to you. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to discuss bulk character descriptions, since this is something that keeps coming up.

Mole Street is a good example of why you don’t want to introduce a bunch of characters at the same time. When you introduce characters in bulk, it is HIGHLY LIKELY the reader will forget most of them. This problem usually comes up with writers who don’t read a lot of scripts. Because they don’t read, they’re unaware of how difficult it is to memorize a group of people.

Mole Street introduces us to six children in the worst way possible: “The children (CHRISTOPHER (4), TALLULAH (5), WILLIAM (5), IRENA (7), GIDEON (8), and JUNIPER (10)) sit side by side in a line on the sofa watching cartoons when Minchin walks in.”

How long do you think it will take before the reader forgets who’s who here? I can tell you how long it took me. A page. From that point on, I was guessing who was who. The good news is, there’s a simple set of rules you can follow to make sure that if you’re introducing a group of characters, the reader will remember them.

1) Don’t do it – It’s virtually impossible to introduce characters in bulk and not have the reader forget some of them. So only do it if you have no other option. If you must bulk intro, try to move some of the intros – hell, even if it’s just one intro – to another scene. The fewer characters you’re introducing in bulk, the better the chance we’ll remember them.

2) Introduce the most important characters first – Generally speaking, readers assume that whoever’s important will be introduced first. So if you’re introducing a group of characters, create a hierarchy of importance and introduce them in top-down order.

3) Write a killer description – Character descriptions become infinitely more important when introducing in bulk. Therefore, you should dedicate lots of time to writing highly memorable character descriptions for everyone. Here’s how Soderbergh described Erin Brokovich: “ERIN BROCKOVICH. How to describe her? A beauty queen would come to mind – which, in fact, she was. Tall in a mini skirt, legs crossed, tight top, beautiful – but clearly from a social class and geographic orientation whose standards for displaying beauty are not based on subtlety.” That’s a tad long, but you get the point.

4) Immediately have them do or say something that tells us more about them – When introducing in bulk, action becomes even more important than normal. The right action can be the difference between us remembering and not remembering someone. So if they’re a dummy, have them do something dumb. If they’re funny, have them say something funny.

5) Intersperse some nicknames – Anything you can do to help us remember who’s who should be used. A little trick is to give at least one character an on-the-nose nickname. I read a war script not long ago with a bulk character intro and one of the characters was named “Sideburns” cause of his insanely long sideburns. I never forgot that character. In general, names that sound like their characters can be helpful in these situations (if you have a character known for her virginity, naming her “Mary” might help).

6) Don’t dine and dash – Whatever you do, don’t abandon bulk intro’d characters right after introducing them. In other words, don’t introduce the characters then cut to some other scene or sequence that lasts ten pages, before coming back to them. I guarantee you we will forget almost all of them if you do this. Stay with the characters as long as you can so we can get to know them and define who’s who.

You follow these six rules, you should be fine.

As for the rest of the script, I don’t know if the reason I picked up on the twist early was because I read so many scripts or if it’s genuinely too obvious. Nor do I know how to judge the overall script in spite of this. It’s not a bad story. But just like anything that depends so heavily on the twist, it’s screwed once you figure that twist out. For that reason, I can’t recommend this.

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

What I learned: When writing scripts that have a big final twist, err on the side of LESS setup for the twist rather than MORE. Audiences are always smarter than you think so you don’t want to make it too obvious. If readers later tell you that your twist “came out of nowhere,” you can add more setup. But I’d always start with less.

Genre: Period Drama (although the filmmakers swear it’s a comedy)
Premise: (from IMDB) In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.
About: They say it takes forever to get a movie made. The Favourite proves that’s no joke of a statement. The first draft of this script was written in 1998. Deborah Davis, the writer, admits she was so green at the time that she had to go to night school to learn how to screenwrite. Even then, the script caught the interest of producer Ceci Dempsey. Almost a decade later, Dempsey got the script into Yorgos Lanthimos’s hands (Yorgos’s film, Dogtooth, had just been nominated for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards), who brought in another screenwriter, Tony McNamara, to improve the script. At that point, financiers were reluctant to fund the film because there was no male lead. Flash-forward to present day, where having three female leads gets your project greenlit faster than a Mission Impossible sequel. After Davis passed the torch to McNamara, he and Yorgos began a 7 year process where McNamara would write a draft, Yorgos would read it, they’d meet for 2 weeks, Yorgos would give notes, and McNamara would go back and write another draft, and so on and so forth.
Writers: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
Details: 2 hours long

For those of you keeping track, I’m not the biggest Yorgos fan. Reading The Lobster is still one of the most unpleasant reading experiences of my life, akin to doing my taxes while standing in line at the DMV while someone peels my eyelashes off one by one. Yorgos tackling a walk-and-talk dress-up drama didn’t inspire confidence that things had changed. But so many of you have asked for my thoughts on The Favourite, I thought I’d give it a try. I super-promise I’m going to give the movie a fair shot.

Since most of you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll break it down for you. It’s 1708. Britain is without a king. So Queen Anne sits on the throne free solo (sorry, I’ve watched five dozen Alex Honnald Youtube videos since Wednesday). Anne is sick from a debilitating disease, meaning her top general, Sarah, who is also her secret lover, is covertly running the country. This perfect dynamic is thrown into disarray when Sara’s younger prettier cousin, Abigail, shows up looking for a job. Abigail’s once high-ranking family has fallen on hard times, meaning she’s now a nobody.

Abigail uses her charm to weasel her way into Sarah’s graces, then uses her new access to the queen to weasel her her way into Anne’s graces. It works. The temper-tantrum prone Anne starts requesting Abigail instead of Sarah, which pisses Sarah off. Sarah tries to get rid of Abigail, but Abigail is too smart. She executes a plan to get rid of Sarah, which works for awhile, until Sarah finds her way back. As war rages between Britain and France, it becomes clear that these three ladies won’t be settling their drama any time soon.

Well, this is a lot better than that Lobster script, I’ll give it that. Probably because Yorgos wisely passed writing duties on to actual writers this time around. It’s also better than Roma, although all you have to do to achieve that is film your movie in color and not include 10 minute shots of water flowing down a drain.

Like a lot of these movies, The Favourite lacks an overarching plot. It’s a character piece through and through. And if you’re going to go that route, instituting a well-understood story device helps a ton. In this case, they use a love triangle. A love triangle isn’t a plot (there isn’t a goal inside of it). However, the unresolved nature of a love triangle can be enough to keep the reader reading. That’s because human beings inherently want to stick around until something is resolved. And a love triangle is kind of like a regular love story on steroids. There’s only so much you can do with two people. But with three people, a lot of new avenues open up, especially in a setting like this, where immense power is a part of the equation. That’s why this film works – because we have to see how this love triangle ends.

Something I’ve found (generally speaking) with character-driven material is that their second acts are better than traditional plot-based screenplays. That’s because the second act is the character conflict act. It’s not only about getting the MacGuffin. It’s about hashing out all of the issues. Plot based material always starts out strong. It sets up a cool situation where terrorists have taken over a building or the hero has to recover the nukes. But it’s for this very reason that when it’s time to slow down and explore the relationships in the story, the script seems confused, like a Ferrari being asked to use a Camry engine.

Meanwhile, the character-driven film thrives in this section because it’s what the story’s all about. Once we’ve set up who these women are, what they want, and how they plan on getting it, we can sit back and enjoy the complex dynamic and all the conflict that comes along with it. One of my favorite moments in the film is when Sarah and Abigail are off shooting and a squire (?) runs up and says that the Queen is requiring “your” presence. Sarah steps forward but is told, “Um, not you. She requested her,” and he points to Abigail. It’s a pivotal moment that ups the ante considerably between the three women.

But therein lies my first issue with the film. Things never get that bad. I wanted at least one of these women to be relentless – go full Machiavelli. But it never happens. There’s a politeness to the jockeying that always left me wanting more. This extended into the story itself, which pulled way too many punches. There’s a moment where Sarah is drugged by Abigail, falls off her horse, and is found by prostitutes at a brothel. I was expecting the film to go super dark here. This esteemed hand of the Queen is now relegated to pulling tricks for the rest of her life. But no. She doesn’t have to prostitute herself at all. And within a few days, she’s back at the castle.

The script also suffers from a weak third act. McNamara says that he and Yorgos struggled with the ending, and you can see that plain as day. This is always always ALWAYS the problem when you write a script that isn’t GSU centric. Without a destination (an overarching goal guiding your hero towards a specific situation), you will never have a concise way to end things. This almost always results in a fizzling third act.

Think about it. When you’re on a road trip, when is the most exciting part? It’s those last 20 minutes. You’re finally getting close to your destination. Well imagine if there was no destination. How would you know when to get excited? I’m not even sure what the ending here was. It was a sad close up. Par for the course with these plotless movies.

With that said, I didn’t dislike the movie. The woman who played the Queen did an amazing job. The overall production was impressive. And the second act, as I pointed out, was strong. But outside of that, I couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to give this movie a pass.

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

What I learned: I would’ve made the war a bigger component of the plot and not just a meaningless background story. When you’re writing a character driven screenplay, you have to find ways to give the story structure. Outside plots (a war, in this case) can do that for you. But only if you fully embrace them. If you deal with them halfheartedly, we won’t take them seriously, and, as a result, they won’t add the structure the script so desperately needs.

Genre: Dramedy
Logline: A blackballed entertainment lawyer puts her negotiation skills to the test when her beloved oldest daughter announces that she’s putting off college to become a feminist porn star.
Writer’s Pitch: This script examines just how messy and complicated modern feminism can be when ideals get translated to real life. The story is personal and timely and incredibly important to me. I think it will elicit strong reactions — both positive and negative — and it would be invaluable as I continue to develop this story to hear a variety of takes from readers male and female, young and old — not just Carson. (I’m saving my cash for a private consultation on my next script :) ) Bonus: At 89 pages with a lot of white space and humor, it’s a very fast read.
Writer: Angela Bourassa
Details: 89 pages

Last week’s Amateur Showdown comments section got a little messy, as it does whenever a writer attempts something different. Bourassa wrote her script in first-person, a huge no-no when it comes to screenwriting. Why is it a no-no? Because screenplays are supposed to act as instructional manuals for another group of people to go off and make the movie you’ve written. You’re writing to them. Under that logic, it doesn’t make sense to write in first person.

But as screenwriting has evolved into a more personal relationship between writer and reader, there’s been some flexibility in that rule. Screenplays have arguably become pseudo-noevellas, and, in the process, lost a lot of their strictness. While a first person screenplay is the most extreme version of this, it’s not the first time I’ve encountered it. However, if you’re going to use it, two things must be in order. One, you should have a good reason for doing it. And two, since the device will lead to more scrutinization, your script will have to be better than most.

Jenny, a proud 40-something black entertainment lawyer, is being handed a couple of pills in the doctor’s office when we meet her. We don’t know what those pills are for yet, only that Jenny looks stressed out about what the doctor’s just told her. From there, Jenny heads to middle school to pick up her 14 year old mixed-race daughter, Priya, who she spots making out with a 16 year old white boy.

Immediately, we sense that Jenny is fighting a daily battle – a battle to be progressive and supportive of her family, despite the permissive narrative in her head to be traditional and protective. So Jenny tries to smile about her daughter’s new boyfriend who, no doubt, will be pushing to have sex soon. Even if she’d do anything in this moment to make him disappear forever.

It turns out Priya is the least of her worries, though. When she gets home, her 19 year old super-cool beautiful perfect daughter, Indiga, informs her and Jenny’s husband, Amit, that she has something to tell them. She’s a) queer (they’re thrilled), b) wants to take a year off of college (sounds reasonable) and c) wants to make porn.

I’m sorry say what?

Indiga assures her mother that this isn’t “porn” porn, but rather porn for women. It will be feminine centric, body positive, instructional, and fill a market need. What Jenny isn’t yet aware of, is that she’s just been given the BAR exam for feminism. She should support her daughter if she wants to get into the sex industry. It’s what an empowering feminist would do. But she’s still this girl’s mother. And it’s porn!

Jenny huddles with Amit and the two discuss a plan to talk their daughter out of this. This problem is compounded by the fact that whatever Jenny was at the doctor for is eating at her, her professional career is floundering, her other daughter, Priya, wants to get an IUD, her husband’s artistic pursuits don’t bring in enough money, and her other child, Zack, is having trouble attracting girls. It will be up to Jenny to sort all this out in a way that makes both herself and Indiga happy, a task that will put her feminist ideals to the test.

Let’s begin with this first-person thing since I know it will be a hotly debated issue in the comments. While the first-person angle grabs our attention right away and makes the script different, I don’t see it as necessary for this story. Angela mentions the Pruss Passengers script, which also had a first-person perspective, but if I remember correctly, the first person there was relevant to the story. Aliens were “riding” human beings, and that allowed us, the first person narrator, to occasionally become an alien, which was crucial to the experience.

With The Dirty Work, I could see this being written in 3rd person and nothing changing. Maybe we don’t know Jenny as well, but there are tell-tale actions you can use to make up for us not being in her head. With that said, it does help the script stand out. So I’ll leave it up to Angela on whether she wants to keep it or not.

As for the script itself, it feels a bit thin to me. I liked the hook a lot. You set up the most progressive feminist mother ever and then give her the ultimate test – her daughter wants to become a porn actress – and see if she’ll stay true to her feminist ideals. But the script doesn’t really know where to go after the hook. There’s no narrative drive.

I know that yesterday’s film was as different from today’s as could be. But the narrative drive was always clear – climb the mountain. Here, the goal is to, I guess, stop her daughter from being in porn. But it’s dealt with in too casual a manner. One of the issues I had with the script was that I knew what the end result would be. I knew Jenny would support her daughter. So the goal is more symbolic than actual. She’s not REALLY trying to stop her. And we feel that in their scenes together. Jenny will make a point, but then immediately feel wrong about that point. This created an overall lack of suspense and the rest of the plot suffered as a result.

A good script problem has to have an uncertain answer in order to keep the reader engaged. Since this is Oscars weekend, we’ll use a famous Oscar winning script as an example. In Good Will Hunting, the question dictating the story is whether Will Hunting will remain a “nobody” working blue-collar jobs the rest of his life, or go off and use his talent to do something special with his life. The movie does an excellent job making you wonder which way he’ll go. The best stories ride that line the whole way through.

Part of the reason The Dirty Work is predictable is because of the type of porn Indiga is doing. She’s doing the nicest most pleasant most neutral form of porn possible. If your daughter did porn, this is literally the form of porn you’d choose for them. That was a major factor in me being able to predict what Jenny would do. This got me wondering, if you changed this to a more severe form of porn (regular male-female porn) would we be less certain what Jenny would do. I think we would. Then again, that alters the tone somewhat, so you’d have to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages.

As for the rest of the script, I felt the male characters were underwritten. Indiga and Priya have legitimate problems whereas Zack’s biggest issue is relegated to will he ask a girl out or not. And I definitely think we could do more with Amit. From my understanding, Indians have a very complex relationship with porn. The traditional culture out there looks down on it. That seems like the perfect opportunity to create more conflict between both Amit and Indiga and Amit and Jenny.

Finally, the script had a weak climax, no pun intended. The big final scene has Jenny negotiating Indiga’s porn contract. The idea behind this isn’t bad. Jenny’s entertainment law business has struggled. This is her “opportunity” to show that she’s still got it. But there are too many things hurting the scene, the biggest of which is that if she loses, she wins. If she loses this negotiation, it means her daughter doesn’t do porn. So why wouldn’t she lose on purpose? To be honest, it feels like this ending was rushed and that there’s a better ending out there.

Moving forward, I would dial everything up in this script. There’s not enough conflict. We never truly feel there are any problems between Jenny and Indiga. Even when they get mad at each other, it’s a polite mad. The more conflict you create in this relationship, the more doubt we’ll have that things are going to end well. And that’s what you want every story to feel like right up til the end – that things aren’t going to end well.

But I think this idea has potential. It has something to say in this day and age, and the hook is a strong one. A few more drafts and this feels like something that could make the Black List. It’s just not there yet.

Script link: The Dirty Work

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

What I learned: Scene Agitator Deluxe – A scene agitator is an outside force that repeatedly bumps against your characters while they’re trying to do something else in a scene. Say your characters are having a fight. Well what if, during the fight, the fire alarm keeps going off, forcing them to pause the fight while one of the characters deals with it. They fix it, go back to the fight, then a few moments later, it goes off again. That’s a scene agitator. Today taught me that there’s a deluxe version of this. This is when you add a scene agitator during a pivotal scene, allowing that scene to level up even higher. During the pivotal moment when Indiga tells her parents that she wants to do porn, Priya has just come home and the car pool parent who drove her is outside waiting for gas money he’s owed. So Priya keeps asking her mom for the money (the agitation) while Indiga is dropping this bomb on her. Clever move! You can read more about scene agitators in my book.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, Free Solo is a documentary about a climber, Alex Honnold, who engages in the most difficult and dangerous version of climbing that exists – free solo’ing. This is when you climb mountains without the help of ropes or partners. One mistake and it’s a 2000 foot drop to your death, where you’ll have about 30 seconds to wonder, “Why did I get into this sport again?”

Alex is considered the best free soloer in the world. But despite climbing hundreds of mountains, there’s one he can’t get out of his head – Yosemite’s El Capitan, a sheet of rock that goes straight up for 3000 feet. It is considered the most dangerous free solo ascent in the world. So much so that nobody’s even attempted to climb it. Alex has spent the last eight years gearing up for this climb. This movie documents him finally achieving the feat.

As soon as I finished the movie, I thought of screenwriting. This is one of the best templates for how to write a screenplay I’ve seen in years. That’s because climbing a mountain is the perfect metaphor for the hero’s journey. In the GSU (Goals, Stakes, Urgency) model, climbing the mountain is the story’s “G.”

But what Free Solo reminded me was that it can’t just be any mountain that the hero climbs. Is has to be the most impossible mountain. This film doesn’t work without the phrase, “the most dangerous free solo ascent ever attempted.” You sub in, “one of the harder free solo attempts in the world” and the movie loses its spine. Who cares about conquering a “sort of difficult” mountain?

Free Solo also reminded me just how big of a deal stakes are (the “S” in GSU). We’re always told that the stakes of our hero’s journey must be huge. Well what’s bigger than you slip and you die? I’d say the stakes of this movie are 75% of the reason it’s become a sensation. It just so happens there’s another climbing documentary out right now called The Dawn Wall that follows a climber climbing an impossible wall. The difference? He’s using ropes. He can slip 100 times and it doesn’t matter. Is it a coincidence that Free Solo is blowing that documentary out of the water?

But the great thing about Free Solo is that it doesn’t just explore the outer journey. Like any good screenplay, it focuses on the inner journey as well. Alex has a classic fatal flaw. He’s unable to connect with others. There’s an early scene where he’s dragged to a party and you can see how uncomfortable he is around others. Alex, it turns out, feels best when he’s by himself… when he’s solo.

What do you do once you establish your hero’s flaw? You place something in front of them that challenges that flaw. In this case, Alex gets the first serious girlfriend of his life, Sanni. Throughout the film, Alex talks about how, normally, he doesn’t tell anybody when he’s soloing. He just goes and does it. He isn’t afraid to die because… well, if you die you die. So what? But Sanni throws a wrench into that equation. Now, if Alex dies, he leaves pain and suffering. He emotionally destroys someone who loves him. Alex attempts to dismiss this, saying Sanni will be upset for awhile but eventually find someone else and move on. But when Sanni fights him on this, we get the sense that Alex is saying this to rationalize his solo’ing. If he’s forced to connect with others, it could mean the death of what he loves.

Bringing it back to screenwriting, a battle with one’s flaw creates conflict inside the hero just as compelling as the conflict on that mountain journey. Will Alex back down now that he has someone who cares about him? Or will he continue to put himself first? Continue to ride solo?

This brings up another thing Free Solo does well, which is incorporate Alex’s friends into the movie, all of whom have deep reservations about Alex free soloing El Cap. The director of the movie is one of Alex’s best friends. He’s conflicted about the project because he could be documenting his friend’s death. Alex’s mentor (who, coincidentally, is the star of that other climbing movie I mentioned above) thinks Alex is in over his head with this one. He’d be happy if Alex let it go.

The reason bringing these characters in is important is that they act as emotional multipliers. The more people who care about our hero’s success, the more people we’ll be happy for when the character “wins.” It isn’t just Alex we’re ecstatic for. It’s his girlfriend. It’s his mentor. It’s his best friend. Ironically, we don’t feel that same level of emotion if Alex has no one in his life and does this alone.

As I close this out, you’re probably wondering about Urgency. Free Solo’s got a great G. It’s got an even better S. But what about the U? They focus on urgency a little bit in the film. If Alex doesn’t climb El Cap by the end of the season, it’ll be winter and they’ll have to wait until next year. But the truth is, if you have a goal and stakes that are THIS STRONG, the urgency doesn’t have to be perfect. Especially if you’ve also got a compelling character at the center of the story, which Free Solo does.

If you haven’t seen this film, I recommend it. Let it become the metaphor that drives all of your screenplays moving forward. An impossible mountain to climb where the stakes are sky high.