Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Black List) A mistreated elderly Inuit (Eskimo) woman is forced out of her village to survive alone on the savage arctic tundra.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on the 2015 Black List. This is a huge accomplishment when you consider the writer didn’t even have an agent. The Black List is dominated almost exclusively by writers repped at WME, CAA, and UTA because those scripts get sent out the most. Any script not from one of those companies has had maybe a fifth of the exposure. So for those scripts to get enough votes to make the vaunted list is an enormous accomplishment.
Writer: Michael Lee Barlin
Details: 97 pages
So I picked today’s script for a specific reason.
I was reading through loglines for potential scripts to review and I came across this one and I thought: That has to be the single most boring-sounding idea for a movie I’ve ever read. Therefore, if the writer can make THIS script good, that’s going to make me reevaluate how every writer should approach concept creation.
Truth be told, I’ve been thinking a lot about the changing landscape of concepts. It used to be “high concept high concept high concept.” But since all the “high concept” slots have been taken up by franchise films, it’s sorta forced spec writers in the other direction – to come up with a good dramatic idea with some meat to it. The plan, then, is to get on the Black List and get noticed that way.
But man, I don’t know. If THIS idea turns out to be great, it will probably be the most surprised I’ll have ever been reading a script. I don’t see how an idea this benign can be good. But you never know until you read. So let’s read!
Final Journey introduces us to 86 year-old Isha. Isha lives in a tribe of eskimos who aren’t exactly sentimental. That’s because when you get so old you can’t sew blankets, they tell you to walk out into the arctic tundra until you die of cold or starvation.
And I always thought killing baby seals were the eskimos best quality.
So this cold-ass eskimo tribe deems Isha unworthy of hanging around, and have a fake “We loved ya why u were around” ceremony, kicking Isha out of town, not sticking around long enough to see her past the horizon, since, you know, it’s fucking cold out and they need to get back to their igloos to warm up!
Isha is ready for death, even though the people she spent the last 86 years of her life with and who she loved more than anything just told her she was useless and to scram.
However, before nature can take its course, Isha runs into 14 year old Tato. Tato’s a cool little teenager who’s been sent out by his own tribe. Except at least he gets to come back home. IF he kills a polar bear that is. Which will officially make him a man.
At first, Tato’s annoyed by Isha. But when Isha starts stitching his clothes back together and giving him moral support, he starts to like her.
While the two speak different dialects and therefore can’t understand one another, they’re able to draw images to each other in the snow, and this rudimentary form of pictionary allows them to communicate.
When the polar bear finally comes around, Tato goes out to perform his duty. But things don’t go as planned, with Tato nearly getting ripped to shreds. It will be up to Isha to save Tato and get him home. But that job is a double-edged spear. If she gets her new friend home, it will mean completing her own mission, that being dying of starvation like her tribe so lovingly ordered her to do. That is unless Tato’s people find value in Isha in a way her tribe never could.
I’m going to start by saying the first words that came to mind after reading this.
Fuck eskimos.
Seriously. If this is what they do or ever did – they are some terrible people. Who the heck came up with this “tradition” anyway, the eskimo version of L. Ron Hubbard?
Getting back to the script, I’ll say this. This is the best execution you could’ve possibly pulled off for a movie about a woman who walks into the arctic tundra to die.
We’ve got a buddy-movie on display. Isha and Tato may not be Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. But they’re still pretty fun to watch. And unpredictable! I bet you didn’t see an 86 year old woman jacking off a 14 year old boy, did you? Yup, well, we get that scene in Final Journey.
We’ve also got a GOAL driving the story – something you might not expect to find in an artsy drama about eskimos. Tato needs to kill the polar bear (goal) before he can come home. And that goal gets us through the rest of the narrative, which covers the growing friendship between Isha and Tato.
And the script is pretty clever as well. At the beginning, we’re informed that even though the characters will be speaking throughout the film, that there will be NO subtitles. So how do you convey what the characters are saying to each other without subtitles?
Well, what Barlin did was he had Isha and Tato speak different dialects. So they couldn’t understand each other. This forced them to draw pictures in the snow to communicate. And because the audience can also see those pictures, THAT’S how we understood what they were saying to each other.
A lesser writer may have made the dialects the same and therefore missed out on this opportunity.
But let’s be honest here. How does a movie like this get made? I mean… it’s different, that’s for sure. So it’s going to look unique. It’s going to take us to a place we’ve never been before. But our leads are an 86 year old woman and a 14 year old boy. Both of these demos are squarely outside the studio friendly 18-34 year old white male.
With that said, this story does hit you on an emotional level. Especially the ending (spoiler), where Isha is welcomed into Tato’s tribe with loving arms, but she chooses to complete her mission anyway, only this time with the support and love of people who care about her instead of those who cast her off like a loaf of moldy bread.
I have to give it to the writer. He went against every rule in the book in writing this, found a way to keep us interested, and made the Black List. Even if the film doesn’t get made, that feat alone is worth a read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re going to write something really artsy? At the very least, make the situation life-or-death. Because if it’s just characters waltzing around doing shit with no consequences, those are the scripts that are truly the most boring. This script may have been about a grandma eskimo, but the stakes were life and death for both our main characters, and that provided the script with the weight it needed for us to care about the characters’ journey.
Scriptshadow Reader Question of the Day: What is the most unmarketable idea you’ve ever written? And where does that screenplay rank in your slate of finished screenplays?
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) Four dysfunctional coworkers get lost in the wilderness during a team-building trip and must work together in order to survive.
About: April Prosser broke onto the scene a couple of years ago with the big spec sale, Plus One, about a newly divorced woman who’s only got one option for a wingwoman, a loud sexually-oversharing wild card. That film will star Cecily Strong from SNL as the wild card and Jessica Chastain as the divorcee. This is Prosser’s follow-up script.
Writer: April Prosser
Details: 112 pages
Today, I want to ask the question: What makes a good comedy?
Because every time I read a comedy where I don’t laugh enough, I find myself asking that question. And since comedy is the hardest genre to get right, I ask that question a lot.
I can tell you what a good comedy isn’t. A good comedy isn’t one long script where the writer looks to insert funny dialogue lines. And I think that’s how most writers approach this genre. They come up with a concept, they get their 3 acts in order, then they make their characters say funny things every once in awhile.
This results in a lot of “unfunny laughs.” We’re laughing. But we’re not really laughing. We’re reacting to a pre-established paradigm that makes us feel like we should laugh, so we do.
And therein lies the challenge. How do we build real laughs? How do we create those moments where audiences are literally holding their stomachs because they’re laughing so hard?
That’s something we’ll get to in a second. But first, let’s hike through the plot of Rugged.
“Rugged” starts out, uniquely enough, with a montage. In it, Kate, a VP of Sales for a tech company, voice overs the evolution of her three-woman team. There’s Blair, the one who routinely heads to the bathroom to sneak a sip of vodka (or two). There’s Anne, the cold bitchy one who doubles as a professional eye-roller. And there’s Cassie, naive and, some may argue, dumb.
Things started out well enough. But over time, this team has mastered the art of getting on each other’s nerves. Anne is furious that Blair always comes in late. Blair is pissed that Cassidy keeps sending her bad leads. And Cassidy… well Cassidy doesn’t realize where she is half the time. Finally, there’s Kate herself, who’s so bad at disciplining her subordinates that you could say she’s the main reason for all their dysfunction.
Things come to a head when the team goes nuclear just as a major client shows up, screaming and yelling at each other while the client looks on. The CEO has had it and tells Kate to go hike a mountain with her team and work out their issues. Oh, and if they don’t get a picture on top of the mountain, they’re all fired.
Things go about as well as you’d think. None of the girls know a lick about camping. So the bitching and moaning begins the second they begin elevating. On the first night, their unsecured tent goes flying away in the wind, forcing them to cozy up with four male hikers, something no one’s complaining about.
But the next day, they get lost. They realize that when they shacked up with the dudes, they moved off their trail. Which means they could be anywhere on this mountain. And since none of their phones have a signal, of course, they’re going to have to figure this out on their own. Dare I say, they’re going to have to become a TEAM to make it out alive. Are these girls rugged enough? Hold on tight to your bear spray to find out.
The answer to how do we write truly hilarious comedy is complicated. For starters, you have to give us characters we like and care about. If we don’t care about what happens to these people, it’s hard to draw laughs at their expense.
Also, you need to set up clearly-defined conflict in each relationship because you’ll be exploiting that conflict throughout the script for laughs. For example, if a man is hated by his girlfriend’s father, you can play with that, making it so every time the man tries to impress the father, it backfires.
That’s the basics.
Once you have those, there are two main components that will generate gut-busting laughter.
The first is set pieces. And you’re only going to find funny set pieces if you have the kind of concept that generates funny set pieces. For example, a concept where a bunch of drunk dudes wake up with no idea where the groom is the day before he gets married is going to yield a lot more funny set pieces than, say, a concept where an accountant gets fired and has to look for a new job.
So follow along here. Good concept = good set pieces = lots of laughter.
So what is a set piece? A set piece is any moment in a script that contains an important objective that has a big impact on your hero’s overall pursuit. Believe it or not, a set piece doesn’t need to be some giant scenario. It can be, and usually is. But read that definition again. Any moment in the script that contains an important objective that has a big impact on your hero’s overall pursuit.
One of the best comedic set pieces in history was the “answering machine” set piece in Jon Favereau’s Swingers. And all that scene had was a guy in a small room with a phone. However, it met the criteria for a set piece. Mikey’s pursuit was getting over his girlfriend by finally finding someone new. He met a great girl earlier that night. He’d been told, whatever you do, don’t call her for two days. But when he gets home, he can’t help himself, so he calls her. He gets her answering machine. He leaves her a message that he enjoyed their time together and can’t wait to see her, but he gets cut off during the message by the beep.
So he calls again. And he again says he can’t wait to meet. But then starts getting insecure, and starts sounding needy, and tries to talk himself out of it, but gets cut off by the beep. So he calls again. And he tries explain away his neediness and not sound desperate while doing so. But the more he tries to not sound desperate, the more desperate he sounds. And he gets cut off again. So he calls again. You get the idea.
These are the scenes – these cleverly constructed set-pieces – that generate the biggest laughs. Because they build. And while they build, they take you with them. And the higher up the mountain they go, the more that’s on the line, so the more you laugh.
To bring this back to Rugged, it never had any of these scenes. Well, I guess the last third of the script had some. But there weren’t any in the first 2/3. The humor depended more on the “keep writing until I find a funny line for one of the girls to say” approach. And that manner is so tiring to read. Because when someone reads or watches a comedy, all they want to do is laugh. So they’re waiting for you to bring them those laughs. And when all you give them are these tiny dialogue breadcrumb jokes every once in awhile, you feel gypped.
The only other way to get genuine gut-busting laughs is to come up with a great hilarious character who, just by existing, is funny. So if you’re not a set-piece writer, you better be a comedic character creator. Like Melissa McCarthy’s breakout role in Bridesmaids. That character was so weird and so funny. When she stole those puppies, I was on the floor, rolling in artificial popcorn butter, laughing my ass off.
And, unfortunately, there weren’t any super-funny characters here. Everyone was pretty basic. You’ve got the drunk, the bitch, the naive girl, and the overly nice girl. And there’s actually a lesson to learn from this. All of these characters make sense within the construct of the story. You want these people to be real so that you can arc them over the course of the story.
But you then have to find a wild-card super-weirdo character somewhere. It could’ve been a guide. It could’ve been some Old Man Jones they run into while up on the mountain. Because if you don’t have the set-pieces, you need a character who’s their own set-piece. And we didn’t have that.
Anyways, I’m curious to know what you guys think of this and would love to get your thoughts on what makes a good comedy. I have mad respect for everyone who takes on this genre because it’s so damn hard. But I couldn’t get into this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In coming up with a comedy idea, all you should care about is finding the idea that contains the most comedic potential. It doesn’t have to be a super clever premise, like The Hangover. It could be something simple, like Meet the Parents. As long as you can imagine a haul of funny set-pieces, you’ve probably got a good comedy idea.
Genre: Drama (1 hour pilot)
Premise: A young ex-con, desperate for an honest life, takes a job at a local dealership, unknowingly entering the mob-run underworld of the car business. Based on actual events.
Why You Should Read: This story takes place behind all the headlines that came out a few years back involving Chrysler reporting thousands of ‘fake sales’ in order to inflate sales reports for investors. As an ex con, recently released from federal prison for marijuana trafficking, I took a job at the only place that would hire a felon and still be able to make a decent living. As I soon learned, being a criminal didn’t hurt my chances starting a new life with a career, it actually opened the doors to even bigger money-making opportunities, unfortunately still on the wrong side of the law. This pilot was also given an 8/10 on The BLACKLIST for CHARACTERS, and we all know how important that is on Scriptshadow… Thank you for any consideration!
Writer: Ricky Young
Details: 61 pages
This script has a couple of good things going for it. For starters, it’s written by an ex-con familiar with this side of the world. As a writer, you should always be thinking about how you can market your script once you’re finished with it. Marketing isn’t as important as writing a great script with great characters. But if you don’t have an interesting concept or a clever way to market it, you’re leaving reads on the table. And since this business is a numbers game, you want as many reads as you can get.
Take the other criminal entry from last week’s Amateur Offerings, “Fighting Irish.” Here’s the logline for that one: “Two gypsy fighters from Dublin have lived lives of violence since they were young. When one decides he wants out, what will he do when his father is released from prison and gets entangled in the criminal world of the other?” This is not a bad logline. But there’s nothing that stands out about it. The only element that could be construed as unique is the gypsy aspect, and that’s pushing it.
When you come back to Car God, I’ve got this: “the mob-run underworld of the car business,” and, “as an ex-con released from federal prison…I took a job at the only place that would hire a felon…” A unique attractor (I’ve never heard anything about the mob run car business) AND the author really lived it?? That’s a powerful combination.
And it’s a reminder to you guys that you’ve got to think about this stuff before you put pen to pixel. Imagine yourself in 6 months when your script is done and you have to start telling people about it. Does any part of your pitch (a clever concept, the story behind the script, your own connection to it) sound exciting? Guys – getting people to read your script is one of the hardest things to do in this business. Who wants to read yet another script that, in their experience, is probably going to be terrible? So there’s got to be something in your pitch that moves the needle.
Okay, let’s see if Car God lives up to its pitch.
27 year-old Ricky Young has just finished a stint in prison. He’s eager to get back to his wife, Brooke, and his young son. But, see, getting out of prison doesn’t work like it does in the movies. Ricky first has to find a job. And once he finds a job, his parole officer has to approve a “home pass.” So the tortured Ricky is finally back in the real world, yet he can’t see the only people in the world he cares about.
Ricky applies everywhere (even Taco Bell), but as you’d expect, no one’s eager to hire an ex-con. So Ricky gets a job in job hell – a call center. Meanwhile, across town we meet 63 year-old Carl Montana, a mobbish car dealer who runs his dealership like Mussolini. If you’re a salesman for Carl and you don’t close your deals? Carl is going to make you regret it.
We get a first-hand taste of this when Carl plunges a screwdriver into the neck of a former employee who tried to get out. I guess that lucky fellow won’t be getting his year-end bonus.
Ricky eventually gets fired from the call center, putting his family reunion in jeopardy. And if that’s not bad enough, Ricky’s parole officer is secretly fucking his wife. Yikes.
In the end, Ricky stumbles into Carl’s dealership and Carl gives him a shot to close a deal. If he succeeds, he’s got the job. If not, he’s back out on the streets. Will Ricky pull it off? And even if he does, is he really going to be happy once he finds out what his wife has been up to?
I agree that the character work is strong here (with one exception that I’ll get to in a bit). The biggest accomplishment is how real Ricky feels. And a lot of that comes from the writer being able to draw from real-life experience. I say this all the time but it’s true – when you’ve lived it or you’ve researched the hell out of it, it makes a difference on the page. There’s more detail to every moment, and that detail goes a long way towards suspending our disbelief.
However, I’d be curious to know what the Black List rated Car God in terms of plot. Because that’s the pilot’s big weakness. Here’s my main gripe: We do in 62 pages what we probably could have done in 32.
A pilot is supposed to be exciting and unpredictable. Car God is anything but. By page 20, I realized that everything in the story was pushing towards a “Carl hires Ricky” ending. And for that reason, the script took on this inevitability where it felt like I was in a screenplay elevator, an instrumental version of Sussudio playing in the background, me desperately wondering how much longer it would take before I got to my floor.
One option to fix these “inevitability problems” is to take what was originally your ending and make it your midpoint. Not only does that speed the plot up, but it forces you to get more creative with your storytelling. Now you have to come up with an entire second half. And if you’re not quite sure where that’s going to go, then neither will your reader be. Advantage: you.
Another note. You need to push your scenes more. The big moments here weren’t big enough, clever enough, inspired enough. For example, you set up this whole sinister call center with their sketchy signing mandate and weirdo boss. But then Ricky gets fired for… going to the bathroom?? It was weak sauce. A firing is a big scene. Get more creative. Have fun with it. I don’t know, have him figure out one of his co-workers is stealing money and he tries to do the right thing but ends up getting blamed for it (or something). But going to the bathroom is way too boring for a moment that big.
Ditto when Ricky closes the deal at the dealership. He walks into a room and… gets a guy to sign papers?? The big payoff being that he learned how to make people sign papers from signing them himself when accepting the call center job?
Umm… you don’t need to learn how to sign papers yourself to teach other people how to sign papers. I’m pretty sure paper-signing is self-explanatory. And yes, I know the signer was blind but that was immaterial.
This spoke to something bigger about Ricky, which is that he’s too passive. I’ll get into that more in “What I Learned.” But for right now, we need more variety in the plotting. The story can’t feel inevitable. The big scenes need to be more imaginative. And, finally, Ricky has to have a little more backbone.
Despite this critique, I would DEFINITELY encourage Ricky to keep writing. All of the stuff that I’ve mentioned here can be learned.
:)
Script link: Car God
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Your main character has to be good at something. Ricky pretty much stumbles through this story, riding shotgun, displaying no noticeable skills. That’s fine if that’s his character TO AN EXTENT. But here’s a guy who’s in prison. So I’m guessing he’s been active in some area of his life (selling drugs maybe?). We have to see some of that hustle, that activity, come out somewhere. Because main characters who are along for the ride can’t anchor major TV shows. They’ve got to be good at something and they’ve got to be active. Even the wimpy Walter White was a chemistry god.
I used to play tennis competitively growing up. For awhile, it was the only thing I cared about. I played as much as I could. I would routinely stay after practice after everybody else went home, either practicing against the wall or practicing my serve. I used to set up five cones in each service box and I wouldn’t leave until I’d hit them all down.
I worked my way up through the tournament system. I got a city ranking, then a regional ranking, then a national ranking. Then I graduated college. After college, the only way to keep playing is to play amateur tournaments and work your way up into the pros. It’s extremely competitive.
As I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life – was I really going to try and pursue a professional tennis career? – I attended a professional tournament (as a spectator, not a player). Off near the food court was a serve booth with a radar gun. This allowed them to measure your serve speed. I was curious to see how fast my serve was so I went to try it out.
Keep in mind, I’d hit half a million serves by that point in my life. I’d mastered everything from the deep leg bend, to tossing the ball out in front, to left arm up, to rotating your hips, to pronating your wrist. To give you some perspective here, the fastest servers in the world can hit 145 mph. I went up there, put everything into it, and I hit… a 117 mph serve.
While this was happening, there was a group of guys off to the side making fun of their friend. He was a tall guy, kind of muscular, and they were trying to get him to serve because he’d never touched a racket in his life. He finally relents, grabs a racket, and prepares to serve. Whereas I had had perfect technique, this guy clearly had no idea what he was doing. He wasn’t even holding the racket properly!
As his friends cracked up off to the side, this guy managed to toss the ball up and…
I’ll get to what happened next in a second.
First I want to talk about how long it takes to make it as a screenwriter. Because my opinion is that ANYBODY can become a professional screenwriter. Yes, you read that right. I think anybody can become a professional screenwriter. However, how long it takes will depend on two main variables – how much talent you have and how hard you work.
10 YEARS
10 years is how long it’s going to take most screenwriters to make it. That may sound like a long time. But let me ask you this. In what other field does it take less than 10 years to become one of the best 10,000 people in the world at something? You have to do your bachelors, your masters, your doctorate, and your internship. That will take a decade for most of you. However, it’s possible to make it sooner.
7 YEARS
The 7 year plan requires that you’ve taken writing seriously before you got into screenwriting. A lot of people who get into screenwriting do so simply because they like movies. But people who have been writing short stories and reading lots of books and who have taken an interest in the craft of writing before they ever wrote a screenplay are going to have a head start. But 7 years still sounds like a long time to you. How can we get there sooner?
5 YEARS
If you make it as a professional screenwriter within 5 years of starting, you’re a legitimate superstar. These writers are like the 7 yearsers, but on steroids. They’ve not only been writing since they were young, they’ve probably had things published in local newspapers or on popular niche websites. They probably worked at their school paper. They may have written a couple of self-published books that did okay on Amazon. This is also where the importance of talent starts creeping in. These people seem to have an accelerated understanding of the English language and how words are put together. They also inherently understand how to hold readers’ attention. That’s what gets them to the finish line faster. But 5 years is, like, so long. How can we get there sooner?
Before we get to the 3 year example, I want to share with you what happened with that first-time-ever server from the tennis tournament. So yeah, as his friends were laughing away, the guy awkwardly tosses the ball up and, out of nowhere – BAM! – he just freaking clocks the thing. Everybody looked to the radar gun. The verdict? – 135 mph.
A snapshot of his friends showed 5 guys with their jaws dropped. But their jaws were nowhere near as close to the ground as mine. This guy had clearly never played tennis before and he had just hit a serve that was 20 mph faster than the accumulation of my 15 years of tennis experience.
Something about this moment woke me up. I realized that I didn’t have an inherent talent to play this sport. If some bozo off the street could whack a serve faster than anything I could dream of, maybe it was best to move my pursuits to another endeavor. So I moved away from trying to play competitive tennis. How is this in any way inspiring? Stay tuned. There may be a silver lining to this story yet.
3 YEARS
The people who make it in three years are true wunderkinds. These tend to be people who were in all the advanced English classes growing up and likely went to Ivy League schools – not because their daddies got them in. But because they genuinely displayed a talent for the written word. These people are vociferous readers and respect the process of writing and pick everything up lightning fast. They’ve likely already been successful in a parallel writing industry before they came to screenwriting (journalism, novels, writing for a major online publication). 3 yearsers rarely come out of nowhere. They’ve been primed to be successful at this. And, of course, they’re extremely talented.
1 YEAR
At this point you’re talking about the elite of the elite. This happens maybe once every few years? Personally, I think 1 yearsers are pocket 3 yearses. They’re everything the 3 yearsers are, plus they had a major contact in the industry and they got lucky (maybe a producer was looking for that exact type of script they wrote at that exact time). However, these people are still super talented. I know Dan Fogelman (This is Us) told me he broke in off his very first script. So it can be done. But I wouldn’t count on this.
This leads us to the question that everybody wants to know. Which is: How do I get there faster? I want to be a 5 year, not a 7 or a 10. And my answer to that is, you only have control over one thing: how hard you work at it. If you write, say, 4 hours a day, you’re going to get there twice as fast as if you write 2 hours a day.
And, on top of that, you want to work smart. You don’t want to blindly write as much as possible. You want to get feedback, you want to find out what you’re doing wrong, you want to be working on improving weaknesses in your writing with every new script, every new draft. Talent is going to affect your half-life, but hard work is going to be the ultimate difference-maker.
Going back to our never-played-tennis-before 135 mph server. Here’s the thing with that guy. If you would have put him on the court with me? I would’ve destroyed him. Sure, he has his 135 mph an hour serve. But he would’ve gotten maybe two of them in the whole match. And because of all the hard work I’d put in, I would’ve known exactly how to beat the guy (basically, if I just kicked up every shot to his backhand with a ton of topspin, I would’ve made him look like a fool). The point being, talent is important. But hard work can get you past the talented people.
One last thing. For everyone who’s been at this for more than 10 years and they still haven’t made it, I can tell you exactly why that’s the case. You’re doing one of four things wrong. You either haven’t been writing enough, are too closed off in your thinking, haven’t gotten enough consistent quality feedback, or haven’t gotten your writing out there enough. And you guys know exactly which of these you’re doing. So make that change and, I promise you, good things will start happening.
Now get to work!
I want to apologize in advance. I have a huge day ahead of me so I don’t have time to do a full screenplay review. Plus I’m still basking in the wonderful light of yesterday’s great screenplay. I don’t want to ruin that buzz by injecting some Max Landis script into my brain about time-traveling clowns that attack a skyscraper.
But I still want to leave you guys with a screenwriting tip.
So, I’ve been watching the second season of Aziz Ansari’s Master Of None. I’m four episodes in. For those who aren’t fans of Ansari, you should at least check out Episode 4, “First Date.” It’s a great example of what I tell you to do every day – find a fresh take on an old idea. Aziz and co-creator Alan Yang take the time worn cliche of a first date and infuse a modern spin into it. It was great.
However, the three episodes that preceded First Date weren’t very good. And as I was watching them, I was trying to figure out why. Aziz and Yang had set the first two episodes in Italy and the third, which deals with religion, back home. A common problem I noticed was that everything in these episodes felt staged. You could feel the actors reading their lines. You could see them trying to hit their marks.
For example, there’s a moment where Dev’s friend Alan comes to visit him, and the two go to the grocery store to talk. The scene was so staged and so artificial, they might as well have shown the entire production team behind them. Or there was a scene where Dev’s entire family goes out to eat at a restaurant. You could practically see the actors waiting for their turn to say their line.
At first I thought they may not have had the locations for long and had to cover everything in one take. Or the actors were still getting warmed up for the new season. But then I realized the problem wasn’t either of these things. The problem was in the writing. And it’s actually a mistake every writer makes multiple times in a screenplay.
What is it?
They hang their characters out to dry.
Hanging your characters out to dry means placing them in a scene with no purpose. No one is trying to get anything (a goal), and therefore the only thing driving the scene is dialogue. Now Master of None gets away with this better than others because Aziz and Yang write funny dialogue. But even if you’re funny, leaving your characters out to dry kills the scene.
The reason your actors’ movements and lines are so staged is because the characters don’t have any purpose in the scene. They’re literally at a supermarket, as actors, to film a scene. They’re not at the supermarket, as characters, to get anything.
The simple solution to this is to always have some kind of goal driving the scene. It could be the overall goal of the story that’s brought them to that location. Or it could be a more immediate goal that’s brought them there. The idea, then, is to have them attempt to achieve their objective, then make their dialogue secondary.
For example, there’s a later plot point where someone steals Dev’s wallet. Had you taken Dev and Alan and placed them in that same supermarket because they think the man who stole Dev’s wallet works there, now you’ve given the characters an objective in the scene. They can exchange virtually the same dialogue as they did before, but with this added element of snooping around, trying to find their man.
The thing with TV, however, is that it’s not as plot-heavy as features. So you’re not always going to have juicy plot points to play with. However, if you don’t have plot pushing the scene, make sure you have conflict. Which leads us to a second option to save your scenes: Add an issue between the two characters.
You’ll actually see this in reality TV a lot. Whenever they put two (or more) characters in a scene, they always make sure they have an issue to settle. Maybe one of them was spreading rumors. Maybe they got in a fight last night. Maybe there’s some unrequited romantic interest. Or maybe they just don’t like the way their friendship is going at the moment and want to address it. An issue gives a scene a point, as the drive to address the issue will create conflict and compel us, the audience, to see it resolved.
You never want to hang your characters out to dry. You can’t place them in a scene with no purpose. And no, exposition doesn’t count as “purpose.” Having characters talk about the big wedding that weekend isn’t entertaining. Make sure the characters either have a goal for being where they are or they have an issue to resolve. There ARE other ways to make scenes work, but these two options should take care of the majority of your scenes.
