An excerpt from my upcoming book, “The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written”

There was a time when I didn’t think I was ever going to finish this book. There were too many technical obstacles (mainly regarding how ebooks interpret screenplay-formatted text) that required endless troubleshooting. But I’m SOOO excited that I’m finally about to release the book because I truly believe it will be the seminal book on dialogue for the next 50+ years.

It’s a book with 250 dialogue tips. This in an industry where you’re lucky to find someone who can give you 10 dialogue tips. And I just can’t contain how thrilled I am that I can finally share it with you. I already posted the opening of the book the other week. In today’s post, I’m including a segment from the “Conflict” chapter. This is arguably the most important chapter in the book and it contains 21 tips total.

TIP 121 – Make sure there’s conflict built into the relationship of the two characters who are around each other the most in your movie/show – Who are the two characters who will be around each other the most in your script? You need to build conflict into the DNA of that relationship specifically. That way, almost every scene in your movie is guaranteed to have conflict. John and Jane in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in Civil War, Allie and Noah in The Notebook, Lee and Carter in Rush Hour, Danny and Amy in the Netflix show, “Beef.”

TIP 122 – Using worldviews to create conflict – Okay, but how do you build conflict into the DNA of a relationship? One way is to give characters different worldviews. Have them see the world differently. If you do this, your characters will be at odds with each other for an entire movie as opposed to one or two scenes. In the Avengers movies, Tony Stark’s worldview is he’s willing to get dirty to protect the universe. Steve Rogers’ worldview is governed by honesty. He wants to play by the rules. That difference in their worldviews is why the two butt heads so much.

TIP 123 – Embrace the word “NO” – “No” is the OG conflict word. Without it, most conversations become boring. Let’s say your hero tells his wife, “I’m going to the store,” and she replies, “Okay.” How is that going to result in an interesting conversation? Or your assassin asks his handler, “Is it okay if I skip this assassination? I don’t think it’s safe enough.” And the handler replies, “Sure, no problem.” When people agree with people, the conversation immediately stops. This is why you want to integrate “No” (and all forms of it) into your dialogue. Here’s an example from the HBO show, White Lotus. In it, 23 year old Albie has fallen in love with a local Italian prostitute who owes her pimp money. Albie wants to help pay her pimp off, so he comes to his rich father to ask for money.

TIP 124 – Make them work for their meal – The reason “No” is so great for dialogue is that it forces your character to work for their meal. They don’t get a free pass. The above scene goes on for another three minutes and Albie has to resort to offering something to his father to get the money. That’s what makes the scene entertaining – that he has to work so hard for his meal. And he wouldn’t have had to do it if his dad had said, “Yes.”

The Scriptshadow Dialogue Book will be out within the next two weeks. But there’s a chance it could be out A LOT SOONER. So keep checking the site every day!  In the meantime, I do feature script consultations, pilot script consultations, short story consultations, logline consultations.  If you’ve written something, I can help you make it better, whether your issues involve dialogue or anything else.  Mention this post and I will give you 100 dollars off a feature or pilot set of notes!  Carsonreeves1@gmail.com

How to immediately gain 50% more interest in your script

Genre: Crime/FBI
Premise: Two FBI agents are pitted against a crew of bank robbers–and each other–as they grapple with order and chaos inside their department and home lives.
About: This script finished with 11 votes on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Will Hettinger wrote on the series, Painkiller, last year.
Writer: Will Hettinger
Details: 115 pages

Jon Hamm for Gamen?

I’m gonna jump right into it.

How do you gain 50% more interest in your screenplay?

Four words.

“Inspired by True Events.”

That’s what today’s script says on its title page and the best thing about it is that it only needs to be barely true. You can have the smallest most smidgeon-ish tiniest teeniest connection to a true story but if there’s a thread you can pull on, you damn well better say your script is inspired by true events.

Cause when you hand those four words over to a movie exec, dollar signs start appearing over their heads accompanied by the “ding ding ding ding” sounds of hundreds of slot machines.

50-something Robert Gamen is a tough FBI vet who lives to work in the gray. He likes mixing it up, crossing lines, crossing back, pushing the envelope. And right now he’s determined to take down the Armenian mob based up in Glendale, Los Angeles.

Assistant Senior Agent in Charge Katie Martin is in charge of Gamen’s crew and realizes that, in order to get the most out of the operation, she needs a translator. So she recruits the nerdy Andy Walsh, a former Air Force soldier who left the nitty gritty action of the Middle East to work as a translator at a desk.

Gamen and Andy seem to like each other all right. Gamen is more of a ladies man whereas Andy is dedicated to his wife. The two spend many nights hanging out outside Armenian bars and clubs listening in on bugged Armenian thugs in the hopes of figuring out where all their money is going.

But Gamen has a secret. He uses his Armenian operation as a cover to go rob banks with a crew of fellow agents. Andy is the only one inside Gamen’s crew who doesn’t know about the bank-robbing thing. But over time, he senses there’s more going on under the surface. Eventually, he’ll be thrown into opposition with his own group, and must decide whether to take out the partner he’s become so close to.

I have a question for you guys.

I know a lot of you don’t like romantic comedies. So, when you are forced to watch a romantic comedy (after your girlfriend mercilessly hassles you for two years), can you tell a good one from a bad one? Or are they all equally bad to you?

I ask this because these crime scripts all read the same to me. They all have the same perceived problems.

They’re either not covering a unique enough angle or the characters feel like the exact same characters I see in all of these movies.

But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I don’t understand these films.

All the crime films I have understood: Godfather, Goodfellas, Training Day, Heat…

They all had one thing in common: BIG MEMORABLE CHARACTERS.

You know what’s great about having big memorable characters? EVERY ONE OF YOUR SCENES IMPROVES. Because your scenes all have the benefit of operating with these big personalities.

When Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) in Goodfellas says, “Funny like how? Like I’m a clown? I amuse you?” That scene is amazing because that character is so amazing.

With Final Score… Gamen is fine. Andy is fine.

But do either of them have personalities that pop off the page? Do they say things that are memorable? Do they have backstories or internal conflicts that make them compelling?

There’s a bigger question at stake here… are screenwriters okay with writing an approximation of the types of movies they like? Are they happy with merely giving you a taste of what it’s like to read a good script in this genre? Or do they want to give you the full meal?

Most screenwriters are perfectly fine giving you a taste. And that’s not enough for me.

You also have to be aware of what genre you’re writing in and meet the bar of that genre. Yesterday, I covered Road House. I said I didn’t mind that the villain was one-dimensional. But there’s a reason for that. Road House is silly fun. Nobody’s going into that genre expecting to be moved or learn something about life. They just want to have fun.

But a movie like Final Score has a higher bar because it’s aiming at a higher-IQ audience. Therefore, you can’t get away with straight-forward obvious facsimiles of characters we’ve already seen in this genre. We need more.

I’m going to keep saying this until the end of time: 95% of screenwriters vastly underestimate how high the bar is.

And I get it!

I get that you see trash in theaters and on TV all the time. The Marvels. Citadel. Ricky Stanicky. The 6000th Walking Dead spinoff.

And that makes you think the bar is low. But the bar is always higher than you think it is. Which means, when you’ve come with a solid character, you’re not done. You have to figure out how to push that character and make them good. And then, once you’ve done that, you’ve got to push that character and make them great.

Cause the difference between that effort is the difference between Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things and Dakota Johnson’s character in Madame Webb.

THE READER KNOWS WHEN YOU DIDN’T PUT IN ENOUGH EFFORT.  You cannot and will not EVER FOOL THEM.

I’m mad about this because I see it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Reading one script after another. I can tell the writer didn’t put all of themselves into the characters or the script. And look, sometimes you get that rare newbie writer who puts every ounce of their being on the page but they don’t yet understand the craft enough to make it work.

Still, I’d much rather read that than yet another one of these “lottery” scripts. I call them lottery scripts because they’re not good enough to sell on their own. They’re good enough to go into the big Hollywood Lottery slush pile where their success will be determined by luck.

Don’t you want to write a script that doesn’t depend on luck?

Pick a unique and marketable concept. Outline a plot that moves all the way through the story. Come up with at least one extremely memorable character. If you do those three things, you’re ahead of almost everyone you’re competing against.

I’ll give you one snippet of the dozens of red flags that signaled to me I was reading a script that didn’t meet the bar. About halfway through the script, the boss woman asks Andy, “How’re you finding SA Gamen? You’ve been with him for months. What’s your impression?”

There are two MAJOR things wrong with this line. One, I had no idea it had been months since they were together in the first place. If you questioned me on their time spent together, I may have guessed a week or two. The fact that you’re not clear to the reader about how much time has passed is a major red flag. Cause it means time doesn’t matter in your script.

But also, it’s a red flag that your story is taking that long in the first place! And that we don’t have any clear ticking time bombs guiding the story. I’m not saying every movie needs a deadline and tons of urgency. But this is a movie with guns and crime. These movies need urgency!!!

Or, if they don’t have overarching urgency, you need each individual timeline within the story to have urgency. For example, your story may cover an entire year. But pages 30-50 need to cover the gearing up for a specific heist. Or bust. “We’ve got one week to pull this off.”  Now you’ve developed urgency for the next 20 pages.

Or else your story is just floating in the ether. We don’t feel any need for the characters to achieve anything. And if that’s where you are, your story’s dead. We need a reason to keep turning the pages. Urgency is a huge reason.

It’s funny, I threw on Next Goal Wins on Hulu the other day cause it was free. By the way, I had to scour the service to find it. That’s how much it didn’t want anyone to watch it. It’s about this Samoan soccer team that’s terrible. Then a new coach comes in and tries to teach them the game.

There’s an early practice session where the players are all haphazardly stumbling around the field randomly kicking balls in any direction they see fit. There’s no effort. There’s no purpose. Sometimes I feel like 95% of screenwriters approach screenwriting the same way. They don’t take it seriously enough.

The funniest thing about this rant is that today’s script is not a bad script. It’s fine. BUT ALL THAT FINE DOES IS PUT YOU IN THE LOTTERY. You have no agency over your career with fine. You’re dependent on everyone else. But when you put your heart and soul into a good idea and you have a strong enough understanding of the craft to execute a good story and you make it a priority to hold the bar up high and surpass that bar?

You’re unstoppable.

You’re literally unstoppable because so few other writers are doing that.

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

What I learned: Direct subtext – I see writers do this every so often. They’ll use their parentheticals to directly tell you what the subtext of the dialogue is. In this case, we’re just meeting the characters so we don’t yet know who’s sarcastic, who lies, who says one thing but means another. In that case, the writer has to directly tell the reader what the subtext is for them to get it. Here, we’re seeing Gamen and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Katie together for the first time…

Genre: Action
Premise: When a Florida Keys bar starts attracting the wrong crowd, they hire a reclusive ex-UFC fighter who had a traumatic exit from the sport, to get things back in order.
About: Based on the original film from 1989. This is the movie that director Doug Liman fought the evil Jeff Bezos over. Liman made the movie for MGM right before Amazon bought MGM. So the film went from a theatrical release to a streaming release in a heartbeat. Which destroyed Liman. You can watch a fun little vignette of the story over on Casey Neistat’s channel. Fun note here. The script was written by two guys with almost no credits. Anthony Bagarozzi only has one other credit in The Nice Guys and Chuck Mondry is credit-free. I point this out because it means that YOU could be the next writer of an 80 million dollar film. You just have to write a great spec script that impresses folks like Doug Liman. Now if only there was someone out there helping you write a great screenplay…
Writer: Anthony Bagarozzi & Chuck Mondry
Details: 120 minutes

Best casting of the year?

I know I’ve demolished The 3-Body Problem enough already. But I just saw the latest promo picture for the ill-fated show: a woman with a sword.

Isn’t this a movie about aliens coming to earth?? What is even going on with this show!!??

Anyway, let’s come back to the present. Or should I say, the past. That’s because today’s movie might as well be set in 1989, when the original movie debuted. This is a throwback if I’ve ever seen one, which is ironic to say, since I never saw the first film.

Alas, that made this movie fresh to my eyes and I couldn’t be happier, cause it was like getting to see a 1989 movie made in 2024 for the first time, if that makes sense.

I get Doug Liman’s frustration with this film being released on streaming. It’s not an ego thing like it is with most filmmakers. This film was genuinely made to play in front of an audience. It’s got a lot of those silly lines that work well in a theater (Dalton crawls into Knox’s boat and Knox squares up against him. Knox: “Looks like we’ve got our own little octagon.” Dalton: “What?? Who taught you shapes?”).

And then it has these big fun fights in the bar that are practically begging for audiences to “oof” and “ohhhhh” while watching. It also has way bigger production value than your typical “dudes fighting” movie. It truly feels like something that was meant to be seen in the theater. And it would’ve crushed Ghostbusters Afterlife if it went theatrical. I’m guessing it would’ve had a 75 million dollar opening.

Alas. I’m sure everyone involved in the film will be just fine.

A woman who’s inherited a Florida Keys bar called The Road House shows up at some back door fighting bar in the middle of nowhere where she watches a fighter walk away when he realizes his next opponent is Dalton (Jake Gylenhaall). Wherever Dalton goes to fight, potential fighters walk away. As for why, we’ll find out later.

She recruits the reluctant Dalton with hard cash to come protect The Road House against its increasingly violent clientele. Long story short, a local jerk face named Ben Brandt is trying to scare the owner off so he can destroy the bar and develop the land into something more profitable.

Dalton shows up and immediately makes his mark, taking down five of the town’s toughest thugs while barely breaking a sweat. When this gets back to Ben, he isn’t sure what to do. But then the choice is made for him. His super-thug father, from behind bars, hires a guy even more dangerous than Dalton, Knox (Connor McGregor), to come in and take Dalton down.

Knox shows up and challenges Dalton immediately. The two fight to a stalemate but you get the sense that Knox was only in third gear. The promise is that another fight is coming. And when it happens, Knox is going to go all out. Along the way we learn that the reason everyone’s afraid of Dalton is that he willingly killed his best friend in the ring. So if he can do that, what can he do to someone he *doesn’t* know? We’ll see when these two psychopaths square off in a final battle.

GOOD MOVIE!

Good. Movie.

As I watched Road House, it occurred to me that the movie was quite different than a lot of Hollywood films I watch these days – the main difference being: it was stationary.

We’re not going anywhere. We’re stuck in one location. The reason that’s relevant for screenwriters is because it can be difficult to power a narrative that stays in one place.

But there is one tried and true way to do so. And that’s through CONFLICT.

For stories that stay in one place, you need to pack them with more conflict than your average script. Because, otherwise, where is the entertainment going to come from? In a movie like The Beekeeper, we’re always going somewhere. In a movie like Wonka, we’re constantly traveling around the city.

But The Road House takes place… AT THE ROAD HOUSE. So there isn’t as much to work with.

Therefore, the writers pack the script with conflict. When Dalton comes in, he immediately has to clean up the thugs that have infected the bar. Once he does that, Big Bad Ben comes in and threatens him. After that happens, a local mobster comes in and tries to kill him. After that happens, Knox comes in and starts threatening him.

And then, of course, Dalton has his own inner conflict to deal with. He killed his best friend in the ring and it haunts him every second of his life. It’s the reason he hates fighting, he hates doing this. Because every time he beats someone up, he has to be reminded that he killed his own friend in the same way.

Dalton’s entire character journey is resisting going “over the top.” He knows if he gets pushed too far, he will crack, and turn into the same guy that killed his best friend. There’s a great moment later in the movie where Dalton finally admits to the bad guys that “he’s afraid.” We’re sitting there thinking, “Oh no. Dalton’s given up??” But then he finishes the thought. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do to you now that you’ve pushed me too far.” It is the culmination of his inner conflict. He has no choice but to give into it if he’s going to save The Road House.

That’s the reason this movie works. The main character works and the writers pummel him with conflict. Things are never easy for Dalton, even as the best fighter in the world.

You know what else I liked about this movie? It harkened back to a time when bad guys were just bad because they were bad. Knox is such an over-the-top villain with no other motivation than he wants to crack some skulls and I loved him for it. It was total 1980s villain energy.

There’s a moment (mini-spoiler) where Knox has essentially defeated Dalton in the final fight and Ben Brandt, who’s injured, stumbles up and screams, “Finish him! Take him out!” You might as well have just copy and pasted the final tournament battle in The Karate Kid. It was the epitome of 1980s one-dimensional villainy.

You may be thinking, “But Carson, don’t you like complexity in villains? Shouldn’t screenwriting purists be promoting depth and motivation in their antagonists?” Sure. IF THE MOVIE CALLS FOR IT. Every movie is different. This is a movie about protecting a bar. It’s not that deep, nor is it trying to be. When you write something like that, you don’t need outrageous character arcs for your villains.

In fact, they can hurt your script if you’re not careful. I’ve seen writers try to imprint elaborate character arcs onto characters in simplistic stories and it’s like dressing up in a tuxedo for dinner at McDonald’s.

The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was that some of the fighting mechanics felt fake. It’s funny because, back in the 80s, the fighting was fake as well. The actors swung, purposefully missed, and we used camera angles and punching sound effects to make it look like a real punch.

Nowadays they’re doing this weird thing where it looks like they’re punching the air and then they’re retroactively digitally placing the actors faces in the punching line so it, theoretically, looks like a real hit. The problem is that the actors who are hit aren’t reacting to being hit properly. That’s the fake part.

To be fair, sometimes this was less apparent than others. But they need to perfect this technology if these fights are going to resonate.  We have all this technology.  The fighting in movies can’t be going backwards.

All in all, a VERY fun viewing experience. I say you all check it out.

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

What I learned: To create a character that pops, contrast their external with their internal. Dalton is the most dangerous man in the world. Yet he walks around smiling and being nice to everyone. Before he beats up the five thugs in his opening scene at The Road House, he pauses and asks them, “Does everybody here have health insurance?” He wants to know that they’ll be okay once he beats them up. He even drives them to the ER afterward!

Tis here!

Movie Crossover Showdown, baby!

We learned that just this weekend, the seemingly impossible-to-please Lucasfilm head, Kathleen Kennedy, greenlit The Acolyte based almost entirely on this movie-crossover pitch: “Frozen meets Kill Bill.”

It goes to show just how powerful movie crossover pitches can be in this business. Something about the right one CLICKS with readers. There have, for sure, been instances when I was on the fence with a logline and a cool movie-crossover pitch sold it for me.

Alas, I quickly learned from the entries that movie-crossover pitches aren’t as easy as they seem. I got a lot of entries where one of the movies in the pitch WAS A BOX OFFICE FAILURE. Never ever pitch movies that did poorly at the box office. Or even neutral. They have to be big box office winners or major awards winners.

Also, I got a lot of movie crossovers that were basically the same movie! I.E. “Joker meets Taxi Driver.” The power of the crossover is that you’re pitching two movies that aren’t the same, however, when combined, create something that sounds exciting.

I also encountered several entries that included very obscure movies. You might get some points in your film school class for including “Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?” in your pitch. But it’s not going to get anyone to read your script.

With that said, there were some really fun entries! The hardest part was when someone had a strong crossover pitch but the logline itself didn’t hold up. One of my favorites was, “THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS meets THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW.” That was great.  And there were others.  So I want to thank everyone who took the time to send their pitches in.  If you didn’t make the cut, feel free to offer your pitch in the comments for feedback.

Again, guys, when you’re cold-querying people, a great movie-crossover pitch could be the difference between them requesting the script and not requesting it. So this is important!

We have some very movie-friendly ideas this month. Maybe more so than ever before in Logline Showdown. These ideas are big and they’re sexy.

As far as how you should vote, I want you to vote on the whole package! The logline should still be the focal point of your vote. But if a movie-crossover pitch helps elevate that logline, that should factor into your vote!

If you haven’t played Logline Showdown before, read all the entries below and then, in the comment section, vote for your favorite. The entry that gets the most votes receives a script review next Friday. If you have extra time, tell us why you voted and why you didn’t vote for the others.

You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time Monday Night to vote.

May the best logline win!!!

ENTRIES

Title: Recursion
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline:  A female reporter desperate to rescue her kidnapped friend from a Tijuana drug cartel, teams up with a mysterious man who claims to be stuck in a time-loop – where every day ends in his death.
Movie-Crossover: Sicario meets Edge of Tomorrow

Title: Goblin In Love
Genre: Family/Animation
Logline: A young goblin travels with his friends across a suburban fantasy world to meet the love of his life – a fairy who’s he only ever seen in one social media post.
Movie-Crossover: ONWARD for the TikTok generation.

Title: INHUMAN
Genre: Sci fi Horror
Logline: An estranged married couple get attacked by three psychotic men who claim the wife has been replaced with an alien clone and they must kill her to prove it…
Movie-Crossover: The Strangers meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Title: Lockdown at Hell High
Genre: Horror
Logline: Twenty years after a tragic shooting, a high school reopens with state-of-the-art security, only to find history repeating itself when students are “locked down” with a sadistic killer using the technology against them.
Movie-Crossover: Riverdale meets “Saw.

Title: ECSTATIC
Genre: Drug Dramedy
Logline: In 1985 Dallas, a young psychotherapist discovers a new drug that could be a life-saving treatment for PTSD, but she falls for the DEA Agent tasked with finding evidence to ban this abused club drug nicknamed “Ecstasy.”
Movie Crossover: What if TRAINSPOTTING partied with ERIN BROCKOVICH?

I said I would include one entry this week SOLELY on the movie-crossover pitch, regardless of the logline.  Here is that winner.  And to be honest, it wasn’t close!

Title: She’s Got Claws
Genre: SUPERNATURAL THRILLER
Logline: A young war widow awakens naked on an Alaskan military base and fights for survival as she’s hunted by her father’s vengeful soldiers after a whole platoon was ripped apart overnight.
Movie-Crossover: American Werewolf In London eats Memento

A reminder that you have until 10pm Pacific Time tonight to get your entries in for March Logline Showdown, aka “Movie Crossover Showdown.” If you need to know how to enter, here is the post that gives you the instructions!

Week 11 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

As a reminder, we are writing a screenplay! That is correct. Over the first six months of the year, I am helping you write an entire screenplay. We are over halfway done. Don’t worry. If you missed out, you can go write your screenplay right now because I’ve included every article on the timeline right here.

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint

Today, we are taking on one of the least defined areas of the screenplay: The section of the screenplay that follows the midpoint. I believe “Save The Cat” calls this the “Bad Guys Close In” section. However, when I looked through a bunch of movies, I didn’t see a whole lot of bad guys closing in.

Instead, I saw one of three things happening. Either the characters chilled out, things ramped up, or we cut to subplots.

Let’s start with Zombieland. They finally get to California at the midpoint, which is a big accomplishment. The writers follow this by placing their four main characters at Bill Murray’s house and having them get to know each other. We get several scenes of the characters splitting up and chatting.

This happens in Leave The World Behind as well. We get the big Teslas Gone Wild midpoint scene, then we spend the night with everyone at the house. The dad gets to know the house owner’s daughter. And the mom gets to know the house owner. Each scene has a deeper dialogue-driven focus.

I get the sense that the writers of these movies know they’re going to ramp things up soon and build toward a rousing climax. So they treat this section as the “calm before the storm.” It’s the final attempt by the writer to do some real character work before the sh*t hits the fan.

The next option is to Ramp Up. This is the one I like best because it keeps the narrative moving and it focuses on the primary goal. In Back to the Future, the midpoint is Doc and Marty realizing, when they go to the high school, that Marty’s mom has fallen in love with him.

Notice how this gives us the opportunity to create an INTENSE GOAL that will be used to propel the story to the endpoint. The overarching goal in Back to the Future is for Marty to get back to the future. Duh. But now he can’t do that until he makes sure his mom falls in love with his dad as opposed to himself. THAT’S THE GOAL THAT GETS US TO THE GOAL.

So the very next scene after the midpoint is Marty approaching his dad at the cafeteria during lunch and trying to convince him to ask Lorraine to the dance. Notice how we’re jumping right back into the story after the midpoint. We’re not screwing around. We’re getting to the goal.

In my experience, the best screenplays are the ones where there isn’t a whole lot of dilly-dallying. Meaning, there aren’t a lot of scenes that aren’t pushing the story forward. When I look at Zombieland and Leave The World Behind, I find them both to be strong movies. But they are definitely not as good as they could be. And the reason for that is they have dilly-dallying scenes, scenes of the dad and the owner’s daughter smoking pot and discussing life (funny enough, Zombieland inserts a pot-smoking scene after the midpoint as well). Neither scene pushes anything forward. So why include it?

Whereas, with Back to the Future, which is arguably the tightest screenplay ever written, we see that there is zero dilly-dallying after the midpoint. We’re right back in the plot. And we’re back in it because they have a story to tell and they don’t have time to waste.

By the way, this is why, when you have plot issues later in your script, it’s usually because of mistakes you made earlier in the script. If you didn’t do a great job establishing a big goal with huge stakes and a lot of urgency, don’t be surprised when, later in your script, you’re struggling to figure out exactly what your characters need to do, to give those actions consequences, and to insert urgency.

Finally, you have subplots. All this option means is that, in stories where there are multiple plotlines going on separate from your main plot, this is a good time to cut to those subplots. You just showed us a major scene with your main characters via the midpoint. Give those characters a quick break to recharge and, in the meantime, get us up to date on the other storylines.

I suspect this is where Save The Cat’s “Bad Guys Close In” beat makes sense. Cause I pulled up Empire Strikes Back. The midpoint has Han Solo escaping an attack from an Imperial Star Destroyer. And then we cut to the main subplot, Darth Vader’s pursuit of them, and he angrily tells the ship’s captain to find Solo immediately.

I don’t remember exactly how No Country For Old Men was structured, but I would guess that that would also fall under “Bad Guys Close In.” We cut away from Llweyn Moss to see that Anton Chigurh is getting closer.

But you can also cut to other subplots. Jurassic Park actually does the opposite of Bad Guys Close In. Nedry (gotta love that name), the guy who steals the embryos, makes a run for it in his jeep, only to crash and get attacked by a mini-dinosaur. In that case, Bad Guys Run Away!

So there are plenty of options to work with here. It’s yet another reminder that screenplays are complex. There is no one-size-fits-all template. Nor should there be. Anyone But You is trying to do something different from The Beekeeper which is doing something different from American Fiction which is doing something different from Oppenheimer.

Despite that, I always find that it’s advantageous to have guidelines to work within. If you’re out there blind in the dark waving your hands around, it will show in the script. I read amateur scripts every single day and it’s one of the most common things I see. You can tell the writer isn’t sure where to go in the latter stages of their story.

I was just reading an amateur script the other day with this problem and the writer made up some side-quest that had no basis whatsoever in what had been set up previously. We do that when we don’t have a clear plan. No goals, no stakes, no urgency.

So figure out which of these options best fits YOUR script, and then have a plan. As long as you have a plan to keep pushing your story forward, you should be okay.

Once again, write 2 pages today, 2 pages tomorrow, 2 pages each Saturday and Sunday, 2 pages Monday, and then you get Tuesday and Wednesday to rewrite or catch up.

What are some of your strategies when writing directly after your midpoint?  Do you have a plan or do you just wing it?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Seeya next week when we take on pages 71-80.