Genre: Drama
Premise: A socially deprived teen, unable to feel pain, lives vicariously through a dominatrix named Agony on the night of his 18th birthday.
About: Today’s script is an amateur script that was highly recommended to me by a trusted source. Hoping to find that great unknown script, I cleared my Wednesday slot and made it today’s script review.
Writer: Michael Kospiah
Details: 93 pages

Freddie Highmore for Early?

It’s rare that I get an e-mail from someone saying “You have to read this right away,” when that person is not…

a) the writer
b) the writer’s mother

…so when it does happen, I always take it seriously. I sent the script out in my newsletter this week and I’ve already been getting a lot of responses from it. Some have been good, some have been bad. But the most important thing is that all of them have been passionate. That tells me the writer is striking a chord with readers. So I knew there was something here. However, I don’t think I was properly prepared for what I was about to read.

4 year old Early has not had an easy life. In fact, in one of the most intense opening scenes I’ve ever read, the boy is tossed into the lake to drown by his father, who raises a gun to his own head and blows his brains out. Uhhhhh… I think you now have my full attention, Morphine script.

We later find out that his father did this because Early’s mother died during childbirth. So he blames Early for that. This means Early has no parents, which leads to him getting adopted. As Early grows up, he encounters another curve ball to his unique life: he can’t feel pain. So he’ll often just bang his head as hard as he can on doors and tables just to try and feel something. Understandably, people around him are a little freaked out.

Eventually, after Early grows up, he meets Agony, a dominatrix whose full-time job is distributing pain. While at first he wants to hire her, he instead becomes friends with her and follows her to a few of her jobs. He’s quickly fascinated by both Agony and her unique career.

Meanwhile, we meet a guy named Winston, who saved Early the day his father tried to drown him. Winston has since hit on some hard times, and he seems to think it’s all because he saved Early that day – that he tempted fate. So he’s got himself a gun and is now out there searching for Early, supposedly to kill him and even fate’s score.

Someone else might beat him to it, though. Agony’s exponentially fucked-up brother comes out of nowhere and starts attacking her, forcing Agony and Early on the run. It appears that Agony has had a childhood that makes Early’s look like he grew up with the Cleavers. To put it simply, she has a kid, and the father of her kid is either her own father or brother.

They eventually get caught, ending up in a motel with Agony’s dad furiously demanding to know where his daughter (and granddaughter) is. If she doesn’t bleed out, Early will need to find a way to get her out of this mess, a path that’s looking less and less likely as the night goes on.

Morphine.

Man, this script was a mixed bag for me. I think the writing is really strong at times, but really raw at others. It feels to me like a young writer with a big voice who hasn’t quite mastered the craft yet. The first clue is that there are a lot of emotional moments that are way over-the-top, bordering on cliché. I mean we even have Early stumbling into the night, looking up to the sky, and screaming as loud as he possibly can. That particular situation and shot have been done so many times in movies that they parody it more than they shoot it these days.

And then there was just a lot of crying, a lot of screaming, a lot of overly intense moments. At a certain point, we were parked squarely in the middle of Melodrama Lane, and we hadn’t even hit the 30 page mark yet. So I was worried.

However, the script sort of reinvents itself when Early meets Agony. It latches onto some kind of direction, and it really saved the story in my opinion. A few people who e-mailed me about their Morphine read noted that their big problem with it was that no story emerged, forcing them to give up before the halfway point. I agree with that, thus I wouldn’t mind if we got to the love story a lot sooner.

Another issue Morphine runs into is that it depends a little too heavily on shock-value. The father shooting himself while his son is drowning, a little boy banging his head repeatedly against the table until it bleeds, a dominatrix screaming at her client to “shit on the newspaper!”, a father who fucks his daughter, tazers to people’s genitals. I learned a few years into my own writing that shock value works like a drug. The audience gets really high off of it, but also comes down really fast. To satisfy them then, you then need to give them another hit. But they come down off that next hit even faster, so they need another one. And on and on, with each hit offering diminishing returns. At a certain point, you don’t have any shocks left to offer.

Now, Morphine wasn’t purely shock-driven. We do find out WHY, for instance, Early’s father tries to drown him then blows his brains out (Early was born premature – that’s why he’s named “Early” – and his mother died during childbirth. Early’s father blames Early for that). So there’s some depth and reasoning behind some of these shocks. But I still got the feeling that Michael was more concerned with shocking me than telling me a story.

On the character front, I’m not sure I ever felt that the Winston character was necessary. This idea that he interrupted fate and now he’s gotta reverse it (by killing Early) didn’t quite work for me. I was way more interested in Early’s relationship with Agony. I think that’s the selling point of this script and if Winston isn’t involved, we could’ve spent more time with that (and got to that storyline sooner – which is what a lot of people complained about).

Now I don’t want to make a blanket statement here, but I’ve found that, on the whole, over-emphasis on fate as a theme tends to indicate a younger less-experienced writer. It’s an easy theme to play with and allows for a lot of wiggle-room. You just have a lot of characters pontificating “Is fate real? Is it not real?” and it gives the illusion that the script is really deep, when in fact it’s only pretending to be.

I say this not from a place of judgment but from experience. I remember being obsessed with that theme myself when I first started writing. But looking back on those scripts, they all feel thin and “wanna-be-taken-seriously.” And it’s not that fate can’t be explored on a more serious level, but I don’t know if that should be the focus here. You have an interesting ironic setup between a man who can’t feel pain and a woman who administers it. You then have her fucked-up family coming after her. I think there’s enough meat there for a story. I don’t think you need to worry about if fate intervened on that day Early was drowning. Maybe he simply dog-paddled to the pier and was able to survive. But I was never able to connect that moment with his “inability to feel” problem.  Maybe if his inability to feel was the result of that moment?  Like the lack of oxygen from drowning is what destroyed the part of his brain that registers pain?  Then the connection is there.  Otherwise, it feels like two different subject matters.

Now despite it seeming like I’m not a fan of Morphine, I’m glad I read the script. I think what we have here is a script that we’re going to look back on and say, “Hey, that’s the first script Michael Kospiah wrote. You can see the potential dripping off the page.” But the potential isn’t fully realized yet. I think a little more emphasis needs to be put on story as opposed to shock-value. I think the story itself needs to start sooner. I think certain subplots could be sacrificed in order to spend more time with our main characters. And I would’ve liked to have seen more scenes where Early used his unique “power” to get out of situations. If your main character can’t feel pain, you need to exploit that to its fullest, and I don’t think Michael’s done that yet. But I do think big things are ahead for Michael. He has a unique voice and that’s one of the most important skills a writer can possess. This is probably the highest “wasn’t for me” I can give, but the story itself didn’t quite get there for me.

Script link: Morphine

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

What I learned: Be careful about depending too much on shock scenarios! Ultimately, they’re fool’s gold unless you can naturally embed them into the story.

It doesn’t get much better than Goodfellas, a script based on the non-fiction book “Wiseguy” by Nicholas Pileggi (who shares writing credit with Martin Scorsese on the film). The film came out in 1990 and got nominated for six Academy Awards. Joe Pesci, in a role he’s still getting mileage out of, won for best supporting actor. While the story structure was put in place by the writers, much of the great dialogue was discovered through rehearsals, where Scorsese let his actors roam free, then wrote into the script many of the lines they came up with. While Pileggi wanted to follow a traditional narrative, Scorcese didn’t think it was necessary, believing the film was more a combination of episodes, and those episodes could be told out of order. It’s this and a few other non-traditional choices that make Goodfellas so interesting to study as a screenplay. As the story goes, after reading the book, which Scorsese thought was the best book on the mob ever written, he called Pileggi and said, “I’ve been waiting to direct this book my whole life,” to which Pileggi responded, “I’ve been waiting for this phone call my whole life.”

1) The tragedy script – The tragedy script does not follow the traditional three-act structure (setup, conflict, resolution). It works more in two halves. You build up the hero’s success in the first half, then have them fall apart in the second. That second half fall should be dictated by the hero’s flaw, which can be anything, but is most often greed.

2) The cool thing about tragedies is that you can have your main character do some pretty horrible things – The audience understands this isn’t a romantic comedy. They don’t need their main character to be a saint. They get that bad things are going to happen and that our protagonist is going to be unsavory. Embrace that. I mean, despite all of us falling in love with Henry’s (Ray Liotta) first love, Karen, he starts having an affair with another woman on the side. You can’t do that in a traditional film without the audience turning on the protag. The one caveat to all of this, is that we must START OUT loving our main character. We’ll only go down the dark path with him if we liked him before he got there. So it’s no coincidence that Scorsese and Pileggi used one of the most common tools available to make us fall in love with Henry – they made him an underdog – the little nobody kid from the streets who worked his way up the system.

3) Give ’em something to talk about – What I learned about voice over during Goodfellas (which is used practically non-stop) is that if you have a fascinating subject matter and you’ve researched the hell out of it, the device is a great way to give us all of that information. What sets movies like Goodfellas and, say, Casino apart is those “behind the curtain” details we learn about the subject matter. You walk away knowing exactly what it was like to be a wiseguy (or what it was like working in a Casino) after watching these films. But extensive voice over like this ONLY WORKS if the subject matter is fascinating, if you’ve researched the shit out of it, and if you’re telling us stuff we don’t already know. Break one of those three rules, and the voice over will probably get tiresome.

4) We’re more likely to go along with a character’s suspect choices if we’re inside his head (listening to his voice over) – There’s something about hearing a character’s play-by-play of his life that makes us more tolerant of the terrible things he does. If Henry is robbing people and cheating on people and killing people without him ever telling us why, there’s a good chance we’ll turn on the character. But because he’s explaining it to us as he goes along via voice over, we understand his choices. It’s kind of like hearing that some random person you don’t know is cheating on their spouse. You immediately conclude that they’re a terrible person. But when your best friend cheats on their spouse, and they explain to you why they’re doing it and what went into the choice, you’re more okay with it. Voice-over can be very powerful that way.

5) Research research research – I’ve read a LOT of amateur scripts about the mob over the years and none of them ever come close to Scorsese’s films. Why? Research. Nothing feels original or unique. These writers fail to understand that Scorcese is using material that has been meticulously researched. I mean, authors like Pileggi have spent hundreds of hours talking to the REAL PEOPLE involved in these crime magnets. He’s getting the stories that REALLY happened. Whereas with amateurs, they’re making up stories based on their favorite movies. Therefore they read like badly made copies. So if you’re going to jump into this space, you better have at least a hundred hours of research to base your story on. Or else forget about it.

6) Start your script with a bang – Goodfellas starts with a bang and never lets go. And that got me thinking. In the comments section of the Amateur Offerings post this weekend, a commenter said he stopped reading one of the entries after page one because it was boring. A debate then began on whether the first page of a script should always be exciting. Some believed it should, and others said the writer should be afforded more time. The actual answer to this question is complicated. In the spec world, yes, the first page should immediately grab the reader. However, your first scene should also be dictated by the genre and story. If you’re telling a slow-burn story, for example, then a slower opening makes sense. But the definitive answer probably lies within what happens BEFORE you write the first page. You should choose the type of story that would have an exciting opening page in the first place, since it IS so important to grab that reader from page one. Once you’re established and people will read your scripts no matter what, THEN you can afford to take your time getting into your story.

7) Always look to complicate your scenes – Driving a dead guy into the woods to bury him isn’t a very interesting scene. Driving a “dead guy” who all of a sudden starts banging on the inside of the trunk (Oh no, he’s still alive), is. And it leads to one of the most memorable moments in Goodfellas, when Tommy starts bashing the still-moving bloody mattress cover over and over again. Try not to allow your scenes to move along too smoothly. Always complicate them somehow. It usually results in something more interesting.

8) Beware the mob/gangster screenplay naming conundrum – One of the biggest assumptions young writers make is that readers will remember however many characters they introduce, be it 5 or 500. I can’t stress enough that too many characters leads to character mix-up which leads to story confusion. Mob movies are particularly susceptible to this problem for two reasons. One, they naturally have a lot of characters. And two, most of the character names sound the same, ending in “-y” or “-ie” (Jonny, Billy, Tommy, Frankie) making it particularly easy to mix characters up. For this reason, whenever you write one of these scripts, it is essential that you make everybody memorable and distinctive. Here are a few tips to achieve this (note that these will work for any script with a lot of characters):
a. Only create characters if they’re absolutely essential to the story (less characters equals less of a chance the reader will forget who’s who).
b. Differentiate names as much as possible (don’t use “-y” and “-ie” names if you can avoid it). If you have to do this, consider using a nickname or their last name to identify them by.
c. Describe each character succinctly. No bare-bones “fat and awkward” descriptions.
d. Give each character their own unique quirks. Anything to make them stand out from the other characters.
e. Open up with a memorable character-specific scene for each of your big characters. So if you have a character who has a temper, open up with a unique compelling introductory scene that shows him losing his temper (like how we introduce Tommy in Goodfellas, who gets so mad at Billy for insulting him that he kills him).

9) Bounce around a large location easily by using mini-slugs – A mini-slug is basically a quick identifier of where we are inside a larger location. Since a full slug line indicates a more severe location change, it can ruin the flow of a scene if used often. For example, say two characters are bouncing around multiple rooms in a house. You don’t have to write, “INT. KITCHEN – SECOND FLOOR – DAY” every time you come back to the kitchen. Just say, in capital letters, and on their own line: “THE KITCHEN” or “THE BASEMENT” or “THE LIVING ROOM” or wherever the sub-location might be. These are mini-slugs.

10) The “powder keg” character – To me, these characters always work. If you write a slightly crazy character who could blow up at any second, then any scene you put them is instantly tension-filled. It’s like the character brings with him a floor full of pins and needles wherever he goes. It’s why Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) is such a classic character. We’re terrified of what he’s capable of. We’re worried that anyone at any moment could say the wrong thing and BOOM! – our powder keg blows up. If you can find a way to weave a powder keg character into your script (and it fits the story), do it. These characters always bring the goods.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Goodfellas.” To get 500 more of the most helpful screenwriting tips you’ll ever find, mined from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Will Smith experiences some less-than-stellar box office returns. Was it the script’s fault, the director’s fault, or a certain casting choice?

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) A crash landing leaves Kitai Raige and his father Cypher stranded on Earth, 1,000 years after events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help.
About: After Earth has a story created by Will Smith in order to work with his son, Jaden. The script was penned by Gary Whitta, who five years ago broke in with his hot spec, “Book Of Eli.” Smith hired M. Night to direct the film, who did enough script work to garner a co-credit on the writing. The film underperformed at the box office this weekend, and critics gave it some of the worst reviews of any Smith film (it is currently at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes). This isn’t the first time Smith has worked with his son, who he teamed up with five years ago for The Pursuit of Happyness.
Writer: Gary Whitta and M. Night (story by Will Smith)
Details: 100 minutes

After Earth has had an interesting journey leading up to its release. It started out with a surprisingly cool trailer that everyone was abuzz over, but then, over the subsequent weeks, those same people began to rebel against it.  I’m guessing this has something to do with the nepotism involved here.  I understand why Smith wants to work with his son in his movies. If I were a giant movie star, I would want to work with my son too! But I’m not sure he considered how the pairing might be perceived. In America, we like and respect people who earn their way. In fact, that’s why we supported Smith’s ascent into the biggest movie star in the world. He embodied the American dream, coming from nothing, working his butt off, and becoming something.

So for him to just hand out film roles to his son, it looks bad. And I know Karate Kid did well and they did Pursuit of Happyness together, but Jayden Smith is not yet seen as someone who can do it on his own. He didn’t have to fight his way up the ladder like every other actor in Hollywood. It was handed to him. And there is something about him now being anointed as an action star just because his dad decided he could be one that’s annoying – and it probably had something to do with the movie underperforming this weekend.

When you then throw M. Night into the mix, it takes the bizarreness to a new level. What a strange choice, to pick a director who’s so vigorously alienated his audience. Personally, I think Night is a good director (just a bad writer). But to bring him in on a project like this, where you’re already gambling, feels like – I don’t know – almost like you want to prove you can do anything. You can make your son an action star and save a flailing director’s career all in one swoop.

All of this factors into the finished product in a fascinating way. If you strip away all these variables and just judge the script by itself, it’s actually pretty good. It has a clear goal, urgency, high stakes, character development. But it becomes very hard to see all of this when you’re so focused on the fact that Will Smith and his son are on the screen (as opposed to Cypher and Kitai, the characters the father-son duo are playing).

It’s 1000 years in the future. Humans have moved off the dying Earth to a much fresher planet. But on this planet are a lot of large, nasty alien creatures who are always giving them shit. These creatures can physically smell fear, which is how they take down their human prey. Cypher (Will Smith) is one of the few soldiers who have no fear (known as “ghosting” in this universe) and can therefore fight these creatures without them even knowing he’s there.

Teenager Kitai, Cypher’s son, is the opposite of his father. He’s racked with fear. He can’t fear enough. So (and this is where the story got a little confusing so bear with me) I think Cypher decides to take a ship and his son to another planet, along with one of these super-creatures, to train him on how to ghost. Why they don’t just do this on the planet they’re on is anyone’s guess. Along the way, the ship encounters a meteor shower and they crash-land on the planet humanity left 1000 years ago, Earth.

Everyone dies in the crash except for Cypher and Kitai, but Cypher is hurt badly, with a broken leg. If they don’t send a beacon back home for help, Cypher will most certainly die. So Kitai has to send the beacon. Here’s the rub. The beacon is in the tail section, which has crashed a hundred kilometers away. Kitai will have to travel there to get it. The problem, as Cypher points out, is that everything on Earth since they left has evolved into killing machines. So it looks like poor Kitai is going to have to have a crash-course in facing his fears.

The story consists, then, of Kitai traversing through the jungle to get to the tail section, all while Cypher guides him via a video and audio link. Throwing a huge wrench into this plan, finally, is the fact that that damn creature has survived the crash too, and humans are its favorite meal. So if Kitai is going to get past it and save his father, he’s going to have to learn how to ghost, a talent that will require him to overcome his flaw.

Okay, so like I said, the screenplay here was pretty well-plotted. We have a clear goal: Get to the tail section. We also have tons of urgency: Cypher is getting worse by the minute, and needs help immediately. And Whitta cleverly adds oxygen packets to the mix – little packets Kitai must take to be able to breathe on earth, where the atmosphere has worsened since we left. When two of these packets break, Kitai doesn’t have enough to get to the tail, adding even more urgency to his journey. And of course, the stakes are their lives. Dad’s dead if he doesn’t do this, and Kitai’s probably dead too. So the structure to this story is in place.

We also have some character development in the mix. Kitai’s flaw is clearly his fear, something he must overcome by the end of this journey if he’s to succeed. And we also have a somewhat broken relationship with his father that needs fixing. Along with Cypher’s lack of fear comes lack of emotion. He treats his son like a fellow soldier as opposed to a son, something that clearly affects Kitai, and something that will also need to be resolved before the journey is over. I don’t think Whitta and Night nailed either of these, but they did a pretty decent job with them.

In my opinion, the script has two major problems and a few minor ones. The opening was confusing. I didn’t understand why they were transporting this monster or where they were going exactly (I just kinda guessed). Part of that confusion stemmed from a choppy flash-forward flash-back opening that made following the story more difficult than it needed to be. You can’t have confusing openings because openings are what set up everything that comes after them. If there are confused questions there, those questions will linger in the back of the audience’s mind for the rest of the film.

I also thought it was strange that Cypher kept saying “Everything on Earth has evolved to kill humans” when the only thing that was truly dangerous was the thing that they brought there. But neither of those were script killers. The major issues boiled down to flashbacks and too simple of a story. It’s why I remind you guys whenever possible not to mess with flashbacks. They’re so hard to get right and even when they’re used correctly, the chances of them hurting your script are far greater than them helping it. Here we get endless repetitive flashback scenes where we see Kitai, as a young kid, watching his sister being mauled by the creature. I understood its intent (it established Kitai’s flaw – his fear – it built more of a rift between him and his father, who’s resentful that Kitai didn’t do more to stop the creature, and it made his final battle with the creature more personal), but it took a story that couldn’t afford to slow down and stopped it cold every ten minutes.

The reason the story couldn’t afford to slow down was because the story itself was too simple. It wasn’t complex enough with enough threads going on to earn the right to slow down.  I liked the goal, the urgency, and the stakes, but GSU or no GSU, the story has to keep you guessing or else you get bored. And we were way ahead of the story here the entire time. There were no surprises, no twists, and I think that’s ultimately (story-wise) what critics and audiences are responding so negatively to: there just wasn’t enough happening in After Earth.

When you combine that with Smith anointing his son an action hero and us not feeling like he’s earned it, you get Smith’s poorest reception ever. Personally, I don’t think this movie is nearly as bad as people are saying it is. I think a couple of script mistakes and one casting choice hurt it. But it’s certainly better than some of the other, more heralded, summer movies I saw this year.

Script Review

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

Movie Review

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Flashbacks are tough. There are certain things they can add – like giving us key backstory on a character, but what you lose through using them is often more than what you gain. The biggest downside to their use is that they slow your story to a crawl. The reason this is an issue is that the vast majority of scripts out there move too slow. To STOP the story so you can GO BACKWARDS is basically like saying to your audience, “You can go to sleep now.” I’m not saying you should never use flashbacks. What I’m saying is that because they usually do more bad than good, you should seriously weigh your options before including them and make sure you believe that there’s no other way to tell your story.

This week is a bit special: below are FOUR of the ‘almost’ picks for Amateur Friday from the last several weeks, the ones that got a lot of buzz but didn’t quite get to the review stage. I’m reposting them to see which of these can beat out the rest in an “Almost Amateur Friday Deathmatch.” The last script is a wildcard.

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: Pâtisserie
GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE: A young Jewish woman in occupied France escapes the Nazis by changing places with a shop owner. But as her love grows for the other woman’s husband and child, so does her guilt.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): My screenplay finished in the top 6% of last year’s Nicholls, perhaps you can tell me why it didn’t crack the top 5. It was also the Screenplay of the Month on both Zoetrope and TriggerStreet.

TITLE: Ship Of The Dead
GENRE: Vampire/Thriller
LOGLINE: After their medical rescue aircraft crash lands above the Arctic Circle, a terminally ill flight navigator must lead the crew to survival in the face of plunging temperatures, the impending arrival of 6 months of permanent darkness – and a horde of vampires taking refuge in a nearby shipwreck.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Finalist in the Peachtree Village International Film Festival.

TITLE: Observation Car
GENRE: Sci-Fi / Suspense-Thriller
LOGLINE: After witnessing UFOs and other strange phenomena, an insomniac on a cross country train trip suspects an alien invasion is underway, beginning with his fellow passengers, but when no one believes him, he must team with a fugitive stowaway to unravel the sinister agenda.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: In an unfortunate newsletter mixup, this one didn’t get its official Amateur Friday ‘win.’ It got a lot of attention in the comments a few weeks ago and even “Rose in the Darkness” writer Joe Marino was impressed: “Just a fun, fast read with lots of professionalism and class. Great genre piece. Brefni is a very talented, ambitious writer and this script really shows off his strengths.”

TITLE: Fortune Cookie
GENRE: Contained-Dark Comedy/Suspense
LOGLINE: A young woman opens a fortune cookie with the prophecy that she will die if anyone leaves the restaurant. When the fortunes of her dinner companions come true, she takes the restaurant hostage.

TITLE: In Lieu of Flowers
GENRE: Dark Comedy
LOGLINE: A man sets out to to plan himself an epic funeral, only to find himself falling for the woman he hires to plan it.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): It received a couple of favorable reviews from Blacklist readers (two 8’s), and was referred by the Blacklist folks to the Sundance Institute for possible consideration in the January Screenwriter Lab. Also? There are jokes, and I’ve been told they don’t altogether suck. So that’s nice.

Whenever I’m not totally 100% sure about something, I write an article about it. It forces me to do what I’m scared to do – explore the subject and find an answer, despite the possibility that that answer might not be found. So it’s scary writing these articles. I mean, what if I can’t figure it out? What if this aspect of writing will always elude me? I can’t have that. I must know everything!

Clichés, in particular, have always baffled me. You’d think it’d be as simple as, “Don’t use cliches,” but it isn’t. I’ve fallen in love with plenty of great movies that others have insisted were riddled with clichés. Many times I have to admit they’re correct, and yet I still love the movie. This implies that there are actually plenty of instances where you want to use clichés. But where, why, and how are never as clear as you’d like them to be. So it’s frustrating.

I guess the first thing we should do is define cliché. The wonderful bastion of knowledge known as “Wikipedia” defines them as, “an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, or effect, and even, to the point of being trite or irritating.” Okay, sounds simple enough. But it doesn’t explain how something that’s “overused” to the point of being “irritating” can still work.

I pointed this out in an article awhile back. The ending of Die Hard has Bruce Willis limping up to the bad guy with a gun, who’s holding his wife hostage. It’s the most cliché of cliché situations. And yet I’m riveted. I am riveted by a classic cliché. And I can go back to that scene again and again and still be riveted. I asked the Scriptshadow faithful about this, and while I received a lot of interesting feedback, nobody could definitively tell me why it worked, despite its cliché nature. I’m not sure I’m ever going to find that out. But I can tell you what I do know about clichés and maybe that will get us a little closer to the answer.

1) Cliches are more evident when they’re surrounded by bad writing – This may seem obvious, but it’s something I don’t hear very often. When a plot is cleverly constructed, when characters are deep and compelling, when a strong theme is incorporated and the dialogue is sharp and witty, audiences give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you the occasional cliché. In fact, they probably won’t even notice it because it’s buried inside an otherwise riveting story. But when your plot feels slapped together, your characters are thin, and you seem to be making things up as you go along, clichés pop out like weeds in a rose garden. Construct a meaningful well-thought-out story and clichés feel more like honest choices than clichés.

2) The good and the bad cliche – Cliches have two sub-sets, one negative and one positive. The first subset consists of lazy predictable choices. The second is a commonly used story choice brought back again and again because it’s been found to work. Understanding the fine line between these two sub-sets is often what separates the good writers from the bad. Bad writers use clichés because they’re lazy and don’t want to spend the time coming up with a more original choice. Good writers recognize that they’re about to use a cliché and weigh the options of that versus something more original. They know that if they do choose the cliché, it’s because it works best for that particular moment in the story. Batman and the Joker hanging off a building at the end of The Dark Knight is a pretty cliché choice, but it fit the story, it fit the characters, it felt right for that particular moment, so Nolan went with it. As long as you weigh your options and legitimately feel like the cliché choice is your best way to go, you should be okay.

3) If you explore something honestly, it’s less likely to feel like a cliché – Building on that, clichés feel more like clichés when they’re surface level. If all you’re giving us is a quick and dirty examination of the choice, it will scream “cliché.” On the flip side, they feel less like clichés if you dig into and explore them. Take a common cliché story situation – a son who lives in the shadow of his father, or a son who’s always pining for his father’s approval. We’ve seen this hundreds of times before. However, it’s still a relatable situation to a lot of people, and therefore has the potential to be quite powerful. But you have to explore it honestly. You have to go back and write an entire backstory (to yourself, not in your script) of what happened between these two characters to get them to this point. The more specific you can make it, the more real it will feel on the page, and if something feels real, cliché or not, it will probably work.

4) Archetypes – Character clichés are one of the most abused types of clichés out there. Boy, do I see a lot of cliché characters when I read scripts. And yet, these clichés are practically promoted. Character archetypes (the Jester, the Sage, the Rebel, the Romantic Interest) are taught fairly early on in writing classes. And you see them everywhere (Obi-Wan Kenobi is the Sage. Han Solo is the Rebel). So with these cliché character types being so ubiquitous (and promoted), how are we supposed we make them original? The answer is to always add a twist. It’s okay to write “The Rebel” into your story, but give him a twist that doesn’t exactly fall in line with the cliché. So Rocky Balboa would probably be considered “The Rebel,” but he’s got a little bit of “The Jester” in him. He likes to make jokes. He’s got a sense of humor, something you don’t usually see in other Rebel characters. So always look to add that twist.

5) The more familiar the premise, the more likely the clichés – Remember that the premise is what builds up, holds to together, and ultimately defines your story. So if it’s too familiar, so likely will be the variables within it. In other words, a cliché premise is going to result in a lot of clichés. To that end, you really really really want to come up with an original premise. Look at romantic comedies, for example, one of the most cliché-ridden genres out there. A couple of writers decided to turn that formula on its head and wrote “500 Days Of Summer.” Because we weren’t going down that traditional path, the story choices that presented themselves weren’t traditional. When agents and producers talk about wanting something “fresh,” what they don’t realize they’re asking for is a script devoid of all the clichés they’re used to. And this can be achieved simply by coming up with something unique at the concept stage.

I think, in the end, if you can pull us into your story, if you can make us care for your characters and their predicament, the clichés in your script will fade into the background. They won’t feel like clichés so much as pieces of a story. Having said that, I think that you should always be asking, “Have I seen this in a movie before?” If the answer is “Yes,” or worse, “Yes, I’ve seen it a lot,” then you owe it to yourself to come up with some other options. You might not end up using those options, but you should at least consider them.

Also, whatever cliché you use, whether it be in a premise, a character, a scene, a twist, a line – try to add a new angle to it, even if it’s subtle. That twist is what’s going to obliterate the cliché. So if you have a pirate, don’t make him a big fat cliché jerk, make him funny and goofy and bumbling, like Jack Sparrow.

And finally, recognize that “cliché” is not always a bad word. Familiar story beats and characters keep showing up in movies because they’ve been proven to work. As long as those cliches are the best options available, you should be fine. Now whether this answers the question of why that scene with Bruce Willis at the end of Die Hard works, I don’t know, but I think it’s a good start to figuring it out. What about you guys? What’s your take on clichés? Why do you think they work sometimes and don’t work other times?