Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy.  That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice.  Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.

KILL YOUR BABIES

Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.

NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY

There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.

ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS

As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!

USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME

Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).

GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE

Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.

MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG

Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).

THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE

You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.

STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE

What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.

SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE

One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)

Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT

I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.

People have been e-mailing me asking me what I thought of Everything Must Go.  To be honest, I’m terrified to see it.  The movie is already perfect in my head, and I’m scared to ruin that by watching the film.  But I’ll probably force myself to do it in the next couple of weeks.  Also, for those following me on Facebook, I ended up seeing Fast Five instead of Thor.  It was WAY better than 4, but what the hell?  That Vin-Rock fight was weak as hell.  That thing should’ve been epic!

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: Imagine if the Mean Girls from high school grew up and became your bridesmaids.
About: Bachelorette started out as a play, which writer Leslye Headland turned into a screenplay, which made it onto the 2008 Black List. It was subsequently forgotten about, until the recent buzz surrounding Bridesmaids, when Will Ferrell and his team came on as producers (incidentally, I had always assumed that Bridesmaids, was, in fact, a retitled “Bachelorette”). Headland went to school at NYU, where she studied directing, then got a personal assistant job at Miramax. “I learned a lot,” she recalls. “Harvey was a great boss. He read my stuff and said, ‘Why aren’t you pursuing writing?’ It gave me the balls to go out and do it.” In 2007, she moved to California. “I thought that doing low-budget, independent theater would be easier in Los Angeles because it’s a little cheaper there,” she explains, adding: “And it’s not a theater town, so I thought, if I fail miserably, no one will notice!” The opportunity eventually led to a writing gig on the FX show, Terriers.
Writer: Leslye Headland
Details: 95 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I like the story behind Leslye’s success. It’s a great reminder that becoming a successful writer (or filmmaker or anything in this business) never happens how you think it’s going to happen. It’s not this straightforward linear journey where you send a script out, someone buys it for half a million, then you live happily ever after. It usually takes work, some diversions, different jobs, building contacts, and maybe a little luck here and there. When things didn’t happen for Lesyle right away, she said, “You know what? I’m not going to wait for my break here in New York, I’ll go produce this play in L.A.” It got her Bachelorette project noticed, which allowed her to get the screenplay version of her play out there, which ended up on the Black List, which got her notoriety. And eventually, a few years later, when another Bridesmaids flick gained some buzz, she got her shot. You just gotta keep plugging away, trying different things, until you reach your goal. You can’t sit in your basement and hope for the best.

Anyway, on to Bachelorette, which is a very…….(I’m going to choose my words carefully here) different screenplay. I say “different” because there are some great things about it, but also some really amateur things. I’ll get to those in a moment. But let’s start with the plot.

Gena Myers is a borderline waste of a human being. She’s 29 years old and she still goes out every night, drinks til she blacks out, and always wakes up with some piece of shit random dude in her bed. Her life is ten shades of pathetic, and yet she has no plans to change.

Her partner in crime is Katie Neuberg, her bff since high school. While she’s not as pathetic as Gena, she does spend a couple of hours a day on the treadmill and will throw up everything she eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in order to stay thin and perfect.

Rounding out the trio is Regan, the “Stepford Wife” of the clan. She’s snobby, elitist, and like the other two girls, incredibly selfish. Yup, these three are real winners. And they’re all reuniting in order to be bridesmaids for an old high school acquaintance’s wedding. “Pigface Becky,” as they remember her, is finally getting married. And she doesn’t have any bridesmaids, so she’s given Regan power of attorney to find some for her. Regan, of course, picks her two buddies, both of whom spent the majority of high school making fun of the pigster.

Everyone flies to New York, and even though Becky’s not pigfaced anymore, that doesn’t prevent them from starting up the fat jokes as soon as she turns her back. There’s obviously tension here, but the girls do their best to eliminate it, and the next thing you know, it’s prep time. We have a wedding tomorrow!

Complicating things is three men from the bridesmaids’ pasts. For Gena, it’s Clyde (“John Cusack meets Vince Vaughn”), her high school sweetheart. For Katie it’s Joe, the geeky computer dork who’s always been in love with her. And for Regan, it’s Jeff, the hottie who she’s wildly attracted to but whom she must deny since she’s engaged.

When the guys go to a strip club, the girls decide to join them, and that’s when all hell breaks loose. The girls do a flour bag sized mountain of coke, drink more alcohol than is imported to the state of Utah, and engage in every unspeakable activity one can think of. It all comes to a crashing halt though when they accidentally rip Pigface Becky’s wedding dress and drip blood all over it. Instead of fixing the dress, however, they decide to party instead, and naturally, this has major implications the next morning, when the wedding finally takes place.

Bachelorette should lead to some interesting discussion. Just the other day I was talking about Jimmy’s asshole character in the Mighty Flynn, and how his assholeness didn’t turn me off. Well here, we have three of the nastiest meanest most horrible women you can imagine. They’re inappropriate (going into the gory details of giving guys blowjobs to complete strangers). They’re cruel (openly making fun of Pigface Becky at every turn). They’re off-putting (nothing like watching a bunch of slutty whores dive head first into a mountain of coke). But most of all they’re just bad people.

Someone brought this up a few months ago – how audiences will accept a male asshole protagonist but they won’t accept a female asshole protagonist. I don’t know how true that is (I liked Bad Teacher), but it sure was true in this case. As much as I tried, I couldn’t root for these characters, or care about them, or support them. They didn’t possess a single redeemable trait, and almost everything that came out of their mouths was heartless, hurtful, or disgusting. As they pull out Becky’s wedding dress while coked up to Scarface proportions, rip it, laugh, and then decide to go out instead of fix it, all I could think was, “God do I hate all of you.”

Also, the script has a huge logic hump the audience has to get over. Why the hell would our sweet innocent pleasant bride agree to have the three bitchiest most terrible popular girls who haunted her in high school as her bridesmaids??? In comedy, we’re supposed to be more forgiving of logic holes, but as I’ve pointed out before, you want to keep those holes as far away from your premise as possible. And this hole is smack dab in the middle of the premise. This movie is about three bitches becoming a woman’s bridesmaids. So it should make sense why they’re her bridesmaids. There’s an attempt at an explanation later on (Regan was given carte blanche to pick the bridesmaids so she picked Gena and Katie). But come on. I refuse to accept that Becky has no real friends in life. It’s just impossible to buy into.

There are some other things that bothered me as well. Remember, you want every scene you write to push the story forward. But scenes in Bachelorette would appear for no reason. For example, we have this totally needless scene with Gena flying to New York where she gives a 5 minute monologue about how to give a great blowjob to the random guy sitting next to her. There is not only no reason to include this scene (the movie wouldn’t have changed had they just cut to her landing in New York) but there’s no logical reason for why she even talks to this guy. It’s clearly there just to squeeze in the blowjob monologue.

What saves this script though, and what makes you battle with whether you like it or not, is that the writing and the dialogue are really strong. As I open the script now to a random page, I read, “Text me later. I bet you could take a poke at one of the bridemaids. They’re easy like Sunday morning.” Or on another page I found this description, where Katie is wearing a green face mask, “Katie, on the treadmill, looking like an out-of-breath Gremlin after midnight.” That descriptive imaginative writing can be found on almost every page. There’s definitely a manic energy here, even if it’s being siphoned through these three nasty human beings, that you have no choice but to admire.

But the reason I can’t recommend this is best described by my mood afterwards. After finishing Bachelorette I felt spent, dirty, sad, and depressed. There’s so much bitterness in the writing, so much hate, that I just wanted to get away from this script and forget about it. It had nothing to do with talent, as the writer clearly has plenty. It was just my personal reaction to the characters, the kind of people I would cut my arm off for to avoid in real life. It bothers me, however, that I can’t articulate why I liked reading Jimmy Flynn or why I liked reading the main character in Bad Teacher, yet hated these three. Maybe it’s because they’re ten times worse than either of those characters? I don’t know. If anyone feels the same way, I’d be interested to hear your opinion. Anyway, I’m going to go take a bath. After this review, I need one.

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

What I learned: Another reminder to stay away from current events/popular references in your screenplays. References to Zach Braff and Lost are all but meaningless now (though they probably read like gangbusters back in 2007). You never know how many years down the line someone might read your script. Best to stay away from these time-capsule references.

Because my original Aliens post is still somewhere in Blogger’s belly, I’m reposting it until they belch it back up.  Unfortunately, that means that the previous comments won’t show up here, and any new comments you post won’t show up when I bring back the original post.  But for reading purposes, here you go. :)  (thank Clint Clark for getting this for me)

Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy. That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice. Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.

KILL YOUR BABIES
Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.

NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY
There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.

ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!

USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME
Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).

GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE
Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.

MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG
Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).

THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE
You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.

STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE
What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.

SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE
One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)
Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT
I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.

Because my original Aliens post is still somewhere in Blogger’s belly, I’m reposting it until they belch it back up.  Unfortunately, that means that the previous comments won’t show up here, and any new comments you post won’t show up when I bring back the original post.  But for reading purposes, here you go. :)  (thank Clint Clark for getting this for me)

Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy. That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice. Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.

KILL YOUR BABIES
Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.

NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY
There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.

ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!

USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME
Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).

GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE
Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.

MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG
Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).

THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE
You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.

STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE
What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.

SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE
One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)
Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT
I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.

The word “rules” stirs up a lot of debate in the University of Screenwriting. Some believe there should be no rules when you write. Others believe rules are the lifeblood of a screenplay. I fall somewhere in between. You definitely need to know the rules. Whether you choose to use them, however, is up to you. The thing is, most great scripts break at least a couple of rules. Why? Because if you follow ALL the rules then your story will be predictable, average, and boring. You need to take those chances in order to stand out. The problem is when these deviations get celebrated and writers erroneously believe that that’s proof rules aren’t important (“Quentin Tarantino writes 10 page dialogue scenes, so why can’t I!”). Rules are extremely important. David Mamet uses them. Aaron Sorkin uses them. Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) lives by them. The key is knowing what rules you’re breaking so you can adapt your screenplay to absorb the breakage. Here are 7 memorable movies, the major screenwriting rules they break, and why they still worked.

The Social Network
Rule Broken: Page Count 162 pages
Why It Didn’t Matter: 162 pages! I get mad at people who write 122 pages. Who in the world gets to write 40 more pages than THAT and still get a pass? Why Aaron Sorkin of course! The man who could write a script in comic sans on discarded wallpaper and still get away with it. Well, before you think about reinstating that 30 page subplot about your hero’s blind Nazi mistress who’s just come down with a bout of scurvy, let’s take a look at the content of this behemoth. Go ahead and open up The Social Network right now. What I’m betting you’ll find is dialogue. Lots of dialogue. I’d go as far as to say that The Social Network is 95% dialogue. That’s important for two reasons. One, dialogue reads a LOT faster than action, making a 162 page script fly by like it’s 110 pages (Fincher actually shot the draft word for word and it ended up being under 2 hours). And two, dialogue is this particular writer’s biggest strength. If the reason your script is too long is because you have a lot of dialogue and you’re a dialogue master, then it’s not going to read like a script that’s too long. Now does this mean you get to write a 160 page script if it’s all dialogue? Hell no. Learn to be great with dialogue, put a few hit shows on the air famous for their dialogue, get a dialogue driven-script near the top of the Black List, THEN maybe you can write that 160 pager. But I’d still stick with the good old 110 page rule. That’ll force you to learn one of the most important skills in screenwriting, cutting out the pieces of the story that don’t matter.

Titanic
Rule Broken: The inciting incident doesn’t happen until 2 hours into the story.
Why It Didn’t Matter: The inciting incident is the incident that throws your hero into peril, that forces him or her to go on their journey. It usually happens around 15 minutes into the story (In Shrek, it’s when his swamp is invaded). Some might say that the inciting incident in Titanic is Jack meeting Rose. Some might say it’s Rose meeting Jack. And you can probably make a good case for either of those. But to me, what really incites this story is when the ship hits the iceberg. And that doesn’t happen until a full 2 hours into the movie. That means we’re stuck watching two people diddle around a ship and fall in love for two hours! Doesn’t that sound boring to you? And yet it works. You want to know why? Because Titanic has one of the most unique and powerful story advantages in the history of cinema – a built in super-dose of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we the audience know something about the characters and their situation before they do, preferably something that puts them in danger. Remember in Die Hard when McClane gets stuck up on the roof with Hanz, who pretends to be a hostage but WE KNOW he’s the villain? That scene is exciting because of the dramatic irony. *We* know McClane is in trouble. But he doesn’t. Well Titanic has the mother of all dramatic ironies. We know that the Titanic is going to sink, and our poor characters don’t. So we watch for 2 hours with baited breath, wondering how they’re going to handle it, what they’re going to do when it happens, and specifically what will happen to Jack, since he’s unrepresented in the modern day storyline. Cameron could’ve added a whole extra hour in front of the iceberg collision if he wanted to because he had the single biggest case of dramatic irony on his side during the story. I don’t know if there can ever be another movie with this advantage. But I do know that a solid dose of dramatic irony will allow you to push key story points back if need be.

Lost In Translation
Rule Broken: No character goal
Why It Didn’t Matter: Lost In Translation is a story that wanders. Which makes sense because it’s about a girl stuck in a city where she doesn’t understand the language or know anyone. So the fact that she doesn’t have a goal stems organically from the situation. But make no mistake, if you’d had Scarlett Johanson, voluptuous as she is, wandering around Tokyo and riding trains for 2 straight hours, we would’ve killed ourselves by minute 40. If you don’t have a goal, you need to create a dramatic question that will drive the story. That question almost always comes in the form of a romantic interest. Bring in another character and now your dramatic question is posed: “Will these two end up together?” Or “What will happen between these two?” But Coppola takes it a step further. Had the person our protagonist met been some suave-ish good-looking 20-something who’s also stuck in Tokyo for a few weeks, that would’ve been a boring question. Because we’d already know the answer (“Yes, of course they’ll end up together”). Instead, she introduces an offbeat, older, weird guy who’s about as opposite from her as they come. Now that question has some real meat to it, some real uncertainty.  I still recommend giving your characters a goal AND adding a dramatic question (in the recently discussed spec, “Seeking A Friend At the End Of The World,” about two people who meet a few days before the earth is to be struck by an asteroid, the couple is trying to reach a certain location (goal) and we’re wondering if they’re going to end up together (question)). But if you can’t add that goal, like Lost In Translation, you better add an interesting question to the mix or else there’s no reason for us to watch.

Apollo 13
Rule Broken: Audience already knows how the story ends.
Why It Didn’t Matter: I don’t’ know if I’d call this a broken rule per se, but it is something that a lot of famous real-life stories have to deal with, and Apollo 13 was one of the more famous ones so it’s worth exploring. How do you make a disaster movie work when everybody who sees it knows that your main characters get out alive? If dramatic irony is the audience being ahead of the characters in knowing something bad is going to happen to them, isn’t this the opposite? Which would then create the opposite effect? “Oh, well we know they’re going to be okay, so who cares?” Writers Broyles Jr. and Reinert, under Ron Howard’s direction, did two things to combat this problem. First, they made sure you loved these characters more than anything. That was key. Once we love the characters, we’re going to care about any threatening situation they’re in. And second, they always kept the focus on THE HERE AND NOW. Apollo 13 hits its characters with one obstacle after another, each one bigger and with larger implications than the last, sometimes compounding these obstacles on top of each other (they need to get the navigation data while coming up with a way to conserve air). Their journey is so battered with obstacles that all we’re focusing on is the RIGHT NOW. They’re so focused on surviving that so are we. If they didn’t have all these things to do up there. Had the obstacles been less challenging or not as many, there’s a good chance we would’ve seen through the charade and said, “Hey, don’t these guys all live? Who gives a shit?”

Rush Hour
Rule Broken: Derivative story execution
Why It Didn’t Matter: Being derivative is one of those mistakes that 99.999% of scripts can’t overcome. If we’ve seen it before, we will not want to see it again. Yet Rush Hour has one of the most derivative stories you can imagine and still works. This script is 48 Hours. This script is Lethal Weapon. This script is Beverly Hills Cop. It doesn’t even try to be anything else. So then why does it still work? Because the central relationship/dynamic is unique. We’ve never quite seen the pairing of an African American and a Chinese cop before. And so while everything that’s going on around them is shit we’ve seen a thousand times before, we excuse it because we’ve never seen this particular dynamic before. Now the screenwriting purist in me will beg you to write an original story AS WELL as have an original central relationship. However, if your buddy cop film (or romantic comedy, or road trip comedy) has a ho-hum storyline, make sure your central relationship is new/interesting/fresh/exciting in some way. You just might be able to cover-up the fact that your story is been-there-done-that.

Big
Rule Broken: No urgency (no ticking time bomb)
Why It Didn’t Matter: On its surface, Big is one of those scripts that seems like it follows the Hollywood formula to a tee. Well, yeah, concept-wise, it does. But the next time Big is on, fire up some popcorn and pay attention to the plot. What you’ll see is that there’s no urgency to the story at all. There *is* a time frame (I believe it’s six weeks until the wish-machine shows up again) but Hanks isn’t in a hurry to accomplish anything in the story. Contrast this with another high-concept comedy, Liar Liar, where Jim Carrey must figure out how to lie again before the big trial that night. So why does Big still work even though Tom Hanks’ character isn’t in a hurry to achieve anything? Because Big exploits its high concept premise better than almost every high concept comedy in history. From him playing on the giant piano with the boss to becoming a top toy company executive to being with a woman for the first time. Big gives you everything you want to see when you think of a kid getting stuck in a man’s body, and that helps us forget the fact that Hanks doesn’t have anything to actually do in this world.

Star Wars
Rule Broken: Main character isn’t introduced until 15 minutes into the story.
Why It Didn’t Matter: These days, if you’re not introducing your main character in the very first scene, then you sure as hell better be introducing him in the second one. Anything beyond that, and it’s no soup for you. The hero is the person the audience identifies with. We want to meet him as soon as possible. So then how does one of the greatest movies in history introduce its main character fifteen minutes into the story and get away with it? The answer is simpler than you think. It doesn’t matter that it takes so long for our hero to arrive because AN EXCITING STORY IS HAPPENING IN THE MEANTIME. Characters with immediate wants are tracking down characters with harmful plans. People are being killed to retrieve information. There’s mystery. Excitement. High stakes. Why would we be thinking about our main character when so much story awesomeness is going on? Had we started with Darth Vader chilling out on his throne back on Coruscant casually inquiring if his cronies had located the Death Star plans yet… Had we cut to R2 and C3PO casually landing on Tantooine, in no rush to find Obi-Wan… then yeah, we probably would’ve been like, dude, where the fuck is the main character?? But the intensity of the story, the immediacy of everyone’s actions, the mystery behind why it was all happening, kept us engaged to the point where we just weren’t thinking about it.

And there you go. Seven movies. Seven broken rules. Seven reasons why those movies still worked. Remember, no rule is carved in stone. Any rule can be broken. But if you’re going to break it, know why you’re breaking it and make sure it’s for a good reason. Otherwise, you’re flying by the seat of your pants. I’m still waiting for the first great script that isn’t built on a foundation of solid storytelling. I don’t think that script is coming any time soon so best to stick with what’s worked for thousands of years.