One of the misconceptions I had when I first started sending my screenplays out was that they were special. That the endless months of hard work and care I put into creating them would be celebrated by those who read them – like the way an Olympic judge would lock in to a figure skating routine, marking scores for every little spin and jump. Now that I’ve been on the other side, I realize just how many scripts are being read, and for that reason, how quickly a reader can tune out if your script isn’t grabbing them.

I was talking about this very issue today with a manager, which led to a debate on what makes a script stand out from the pack. The first answer we agreed on was “voice.” But that’s become such a watered down buzzword at this point that further examination was required. We moved on to other topics before we could come to a consensus, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the question on the way home, especially with all the scripts I’ve been reading for the Scriptshadow 250. I can tell with 99% certainty if a script isn’t going to deliver by page 5. But then, every 20 scripts or so, a script will grab me. Just like that. BAM! I’m in it. I can’t wait to find out what happens next. How did this happen? How is this script so much better than the other ones?

Today, I want to identify that secret sauce, that difference between “stand out” and “standard.” You’re probably thinking there’s no way to determine this. The process of creating art is like magic. It arrives at the crossroads between talent and inspiration. But I refuse to believe that. Even the least talented writers can be taught to identify when they’re making bad choices. And if you can identify that, there’s no reason you can’t start making original choices. And original choices are the heart of what makes a screenplay stand out. Let’s see what some of the other ingredients are.

CONCEPT

A stand-out screenplay usually has a concept that’s a little weird, a little “off.” “Bubbles,” the number 1 script on last year’s Black List comes to mind (A biopic of Michael Jackson told through the eyes of his pet monkey, Bubbles). Fight Club is another one (who makes a movie about bored people fighting??). Stand-out writers tend to stand out because they do things differently. If they were doing things the same, then by definition, they wouldn’t be standing out. So while a unique concept isn’t required for stand-out material, it’s an indication that the writer enjoys exploring the less-traveled path.

SPECIFICITY

One of the things I’ve noticed with stand-out writers is that there’s a specificity to their writing. They don’t describe things in generalities. They add detail to better bring you into their world. Here’s a line I recently read from a generic amateur script: “Joe changes into his uniform. That of a chef. The head chef.” Then here’s a professional writer describing a similar moment in his script: “Now dressed in a puffy black snow jacket, Rose steps into a pair of snow boots, pulling on a pair of mittens.” It’s so much easier to see what’s going on in the second example, because of the detail. There’s a ceiling to this, of course. You can’t write too much description or you’ll gum up the read. But specific writers also tend to abide by one of the core rules of screenwriting: Say as much as possible in as few words as possible. They just do so with more detail.

POINT-OF-VIEW

The first two elements I mentioned are icing, but point-of-view is cake. “Point-of-view” is how you see the world, and is one of the most important factors in standing out. A unique point of view takes any situation and finds a new way to look at it. So for example, if I asked you what “romance” looked like in your head, you might answer, “When a man and a woman are deeply in love with each other.” When Spike Jonez is asked that question, though, he’d answer, “When a man and a computer are in love with each other,” as explored in his movie, “Her.” Or if I asked you to write a story about a woman and her son being held hostage by a man, your first instinct would probably be to tell the story through the mother’s eyes. Emma Donahue, the author of “Room,” however, decided to explore the situation through the eyes of the small child. Point of view isn’t just about concept. It extends to any choice you make in the story. If I told you to write a story about stock traders, your instinct would probably be to make all your characters overgrown frat boys with perfectly tailored suits and a penchant for swearing. The architect in The Big Short, Christian Bale’s character, however, has one glass eye, wears jeans and a t-shirt, is anti-social, and holds meetings in his office with heavy metal music blasting. Your point-of-view must be unique if you want your script to stand out in any way.

DO THE UNEXPECTED

I want to bring up a common misconception. That “instinct” is a good thing. Instinct is the unintentional repetition of an expected outcome. For example, say you have a scene with a guy and a girl in the rain. Your “instinct” may be to have those characters kiss. But the only reason your instinct is telling you that is because you’ve seen dozens of movies where a guy and a girl in the rain kiss. The stand-out writer, however, will show our awkward male character struggling to open an umbrella. As the girl waits impatiently, getting colder and wetter by the second, the guy can’t seem to trip the click device above the handle. As the girl starts to get pissed, the umbrella pops up, hitting the girl in the face. She grabs her nose, which is now bleeding. And the guy steps forward to help her only to have the umbrella get struck by lightning. That’s a more unexpected choice, and one that only comes to you if you greet instinct with skepticism. Here’s where things get tricky though. There are two types of writers. Writers who are truly original. Charlie Kaufman is the prototype for this group. Then there are the rest of us – people who see the world at face value. For the truly original, their instincts ARE unique, and therefore should be followed as-is. For the rest of us, we must learn to challenge our instincts. Every choice must be accompanied by a question: “Is this what usually happens?” Because if it is, then you probably shouldn’t write it. This is a long-winded way of saying that the stand-out scripts always keep me guessing. The writer is always ahead of me because he’s making unexpected choices.

UNIQUE PRESENTATION
To best understand what unique presentation looks like, I’ll present you with the opposite: Taken. “Taken” follows a single guy on a single mission to get his daughter back. It’s a straight-forward first person story. A unique presentation, on the other hand, changes things up in one of two categories: character or structure. Pulp Fiction’s structure jumps back and forth in time. Gone Girl’s first half tells the story through our protagonist’s eyes, but then switches over to its antagonist for the second half. Steve Jobs tells three 40 minute contained stories. As for character, the idea is to use your characters to help the reader experience the story in a unique way. The most recent example of this was Deadpool – our fourth-wall breaking never-stops-narrating main character. That character was partially inspired by another fourth-wall breaker, Ferris Bueller. “Bubbles” uses an animal to narrate its story. The Big Short uses celebrity cutaways to convey complex exposition. You never want to use these tools just to use them. They need to make sense within the story you’re telling. But an offbeat presentation is an easy way to make your script stand out.

DIALOGUE

The dialogue in a stand-out script tends to be more inspired than in lesser scripts. There’s a pop to it. And it’s hard to quantify what that pop is made up of. But for starters, the dialogue should be clever. You get the sense the writer really thought about each response. The vocabulary is more extensive than your average screenwriter. The writer must have a unique sense of humor, whether it’s dry, morbid, over-the-top, or just plain weird. There’s a specificity to the dialogue. “You get drunk at the bar last night again?” probably reads better as, “You chuggin Mai Tais at Finnegans all night again?” There’s a naturalism to the way characters speak. They use contractions. They use slang. They use nicknames. Words come out fast and loose instead of stilted and robotic (unless the script calls for a robotic character). Mostly there’s a freedom to the dialogue that mirrors the way we speak in real life, but at the same time, the wisecracks are wiser, the comebacks are sharper, and the vocabulary is more advanced.

EMBRACE THE WEIRD

Finally, embrace the weird, the offbeat, the macabre. If you want to stand out, you have to remove yourself from group-think and explore the oddities of life. I just heard about a script where a guy sheds his skin every day and turns into a different person. Those are the kinds of scripts people remember. What are you writing that will stand out?

Get those pilots ready for Pilot Amateur Offerings Week (March 12th). To get your script into the competition, e-mail me the title, genre, logline, and why you think it deserves a read to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Drama
Logline: A tech billionaire purchases a troubled police precinct in the wake of a loved one’s murder. The series will explore if the eccentric and enigmatic figure’s cutting-edge approach can fix the broken ways of the blue blood veterans.
About: This script was sent to me with some high praise. It comes from David Slack, who was one of the primary writers on CBS’s “Person of Interest.” David’s been writing professionally for over a decade, starting off in children’s television before moving on to more adult fare like Person of Interest, Law & Order, and Lie to Me. The show will air on Fox later this year.
Writer: David Slack
Details: 60 pages – revised network draft – (January 22, 2016)

Out-of-the-box thinking here. What about Elijah Wood for Gideon?

Cop pilots are funny. Everybody’s trying to find that angle that’ll allow them to explore this stale format in a fresh way. Last year we had Vince Gilligan’s Battle Creek which asked the question, “What if you worked in a precinct with no technology?” Fox tried out Minority Report, which asked, among other things, “What does crime-fighting look like with near-future technology?” And now APB comes in and asks, “What if you had an unlimited budget and could use any technology?”

It’s a cool setup. An Elon Musk-like cocky billionaire figures he knows how to fight crime better than the government and puts his money where his mouth is. But the more you think about it, the less convincing the concept becomes. It’s not like our billionaire is saying he knows how to do it better. He’s just saying he could do better since he has more money. But wouldn’t the government do better if they had more money also? That’s one of many questions this pilot had me asking.

APB starts off with a couple waking up to a home invasion. As the woman slips into a back room, she brings up an Uber-like app called “APB” that, just like Uber, shows you all the cop cars driving through streets in your area. She texts that she’s under attack, clicks the button, and immediately all cars on the map turn and start driving towards her. Within seconds (as opposed to the 15 minutes you usually have to wait for cops) police drones AND real cops are there to save the day. Welcome to the next level of crime-fighting.

Jump back a few months where we meet Murphy, the “female version of John McClane.” Murphy is the best cop in the worst precinct in the city. But that’s all about to change. Billionaire Gideon Reed, motivated by the system’s failure to save his wife, decides to buy his own precinct, privatize it, and turn it into the most technologically sophisticated precinct in the U.S. They’ll have drones, they’ll have Teslas, they’ll have body armor, they’ll have apps. And in a Bernsandersion move, everyone gets paid 40% more!

For some reason, Murphy isn’t having this (because an overfunded precinct and higher pay are bad things??) and wants a transfer. Despite their huge pay-raise, the rest of the cops don’t like it either. Everybody thinks this madman and his weird ideas are going to fail so they’re waiting for him to get bored and go back to launching rockets into space.

But Gideon not only believes in his system, he’s going to stay here and run it! That’s right. He sets up an office right here in the 13th precinct. As pressure mounts, Gideon sees that he can win over the team by stopping a band of home invasion murderers. Using his 24/7 5K video drones, he monitors the city until he finds out the bad guys’ identities. But he’ll need the cooperation of his reluctant team to put them away. And to ensure the future of his new system: APB.

I don’t know about this one. I feel like Olivia Wilde going up to present an Oscar only to see that my co-presenter has secretly transformed into Ali-G and may potentially say something insensitive (it’s true: Sasha-Baron Coen was not supposed to present as Ali-G!).

My issue here is that I don’t know what this show is. At first I thought it was about a rich guy proving to the government that he could do their job better. But then it morphed into a sort of “Minority Report” show that focused on next-level technology in the police force. That was until a key scene where Gideon insisted they switch their guns from lethal to non-lethal. So was this now a political statement show about policemen and gun control? As I settled into that mindset, Gideon starts doing all these zany things (shooting himself with a tazer to see how it feels). So is this now the cop version of House M.D.?

Not only do I not know what this show is about, but its entire foundation is built on a questionable conceit. It tries to make you believe that throwing an extra billion dollars at policing a precinct ISN’T GOING TO WORK. That using better computers, better gear, better cars, better weapons, and, oh yeah, crime-fighting drones, is going to fail when compared to… an understaffed underfunded uninspired badly run precinct. Am I missing something here? Explain to me how the latter option could be better.

Now I admit, I’ve never been a fan of this “one bad guy a week” cop-show format. It’s too generic for me, too restrictive. I’m such a “Lost” and “Breaking Bad” guy, I keep waiting for the story to bust out of its chains and go off into new unexpected directions. But I don’t think David Slack (or Fox) is interested in that. And I think that’s why the networks are dying. They’re terrified of trying anything unconventional. I can’t imagine how many meetings they needed over at NBC just to agree that Ray Liotta’s character in Shades of Blue could be gay. And Fox used to be the outlier of the networks. They used to take chances. I’m not seeing that anymore.

Even some of the basic TV stuff here was uninspired. When we cut to commercial (the end of an act break), you better leave us with a question we want answered. The question we were left with at the end of Act 2 was, “Will Murphy leave the precinct?” No. She won’t. We all know she won’t because then there won’t be a show. Not only that, but there’s no reason for her to leave. She’s now working at the most high-tech police precinct in the country. Why would you leave that?

I’m not saying every commercial break has to come with a Lost-level mystery-box question (why are there polar bears on a tropical island?). Character-driven questions are fine. But they have to leave us genuinely uncertain about the answer. I’ll copy and paste something MulesandMud said the other day that applies:

So many scripts that I read never bother to create a real sense of uncertainty for the future, and so I never actually wonder what happens next. Without that curiosity, I have no reason to read further.

A dramatic question should never be rhetorical. There should be a real possibility of a different outcome than the way your scene eventually turns out. If readers can’t see a spectrum of possibilities, they have no reason to read further. You, as the writer, need to show us those possibilities.

Say your characters are rushing to diffuse a bomb in your opening scene. For that to be interesting, I need to believe that they might not actually succeed. That means I need to see how the story could keep going if that bomb actually does go off. If I can’t see other outcomes, then it’s obvious they’re going to diffuse the bomb, and all of your suspense reads false.

For example, maybe it’s not the hero who’s diffusing the bomb; maybe it’s his brother, and our hero is feeding him instructions over the phone. Now I’m thinking about what life would be like for this dude if he gets his brother killed, and how brutal that would be, and I’m genuinely relieved when they both survive. A question with only one answer isn’t a real question. Your story path needs to constantly arrive at forks in the road, and you need to show us both paths, then prove to us that you’ve chosen the more interesting direction every single time.

I was thinking that a lot during APB. None of the questions had me uncertain. I was always ahead of the writer. The plot went according to plan. Even the obstacles (an angry sergeant who says Gideon has 24 hours left to prove himself or else) were expected. I was really hoping for something more here. We live in the age of 500 television shows. You can’t get away with decent anymore. You have to push yourself. You have to take chances. You have to do things that are unexpected. Or else you’re going to get swallowed up. Hopefully David Slack and Fox course-correct here. There’s something in this idea. It just hasn’t materialized yet.

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

What I learned: You are playing with fire when you cut to commercial after a soft question. You can get away with soft questions in episode 8, when your show has established itself. But not in your pilot, when trigger-happy viewers with a million choices are looking for any reason to watch something else. Think long and hard about every act break in your script. Make sure to put something there that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for your viewer to not stick around and find out the answer.

Let me start off by saying I have no problem with Spotlight winning the Best Picture Oscar. I believe the movie works and the true best movie of the nominees (Room) was too small to give the big award to. Where I get upset is that Spotlight won best original screenplay for a screenplay that wasn’t difficult to write. It’s the most straight-forward narrative of all straight-forward narratives. “Go… get… bad guys.” It’s almost “Taken” but with reporters instead of an ex-CIA agent (and somehow less character development).

And the reason it won despite this continues to be one of the Academy’s biggest weaknesses. They will always weight social issues and a “message” over skill. Always. Inside Out was a kid’s movie. It’s message was “people aren’t always happy.” That doesn’t have the same weight as, “Priests are raping children.” So even though Inside Out, as a screenplay, was 100 times more complicated to write, it lost out to an issue. And I think that sucks. Because I thought the whole idea of an Oscar was to give it to the people who were the most deserving. And instead it was given to the people who performed a straight-forward transcription of an important story.

Luckily, the Academy made up for this mistake by awarding The Big Short Best Adapted Screenplay. And the great thing about that movie was it had both of these things. It was an important social issue and an incredibly complicated and skillful display of writing. It did not have a single protagonist. It didn’t even have a single group protagonist. It had multiple group protagonists. It also had multiple narrators. Multiple narratives. It also broke the fourth wall, and not with one character, like Deadpool or Ferris Bueller, but with multiple characters, which is, like, the “do not do this under any circumstances” rule of all screenwriting rules. It was a script that broke so many rules, I lost count. But it also anchored its narrative so strongly in tried-and-true storytelling techniques (underdog protags, an evil entity that we had to see go down) that it worked. A truly great script.

Okay, feel free to discuss all the Oscar winners and losers, as well as the show itself. Oh, and kudos to the Academy for putting screenwriting awards first and foremost. That was a nice surprise. :)

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Horror
Logline: When Emma’s sister Sadie is kidnapped by a witch and hidden in an abandoned mine, Emma must search the witch’s lair in an attempt to save Sadie’s life.
Why you should read: If you enjoy horror then I have a treat for you… This Amateur Offering comes paired with a 5-minute award-winning short film based on the feature I wrote. The script itself has received two 7’s on The Black List and has been read by respected agents and studios around town (my witch script is among Alex Ross’ HEXEN on TBL, it’s cool to be among fellow SS readers. I don’t feel so lonely). Alas, I have yet to reach the level we all hope to be apart of, “produced writer.” So please, watch and read and give me your thoughts on what more I have to do to sell my first screenplay. I’d really appreciate it.
Writer: Joseph I. Martinez
Details: 103 pages

Up-and-comer Sarah Gadon for Emma?

Well last week sure got testy, didn’t it? But in the end, traditionalists prevailed, as American Witch won over what some referred to as a screenplay abomination – a direct attack on the very foundation of the craft!

All kidding aside, a “get noticed” script is a legitimate strategy for breaking in. And if you’re going to write one, you might as well go all out. I mean what would be the point of writing one otherwise?

I will say that you should use your creativity to connect in clever unexpected ways, rather than resort to swear-laden first-person attacks on the reader. There’s a fine line that exists between fun and annoying, and that choice usually goes on to offend a hefty percentage of the readers. So you’re playing with fire, brother.

Also, “Get noticed” scripts have become cliches in and of themselves. Patterns have been established. So if you’re going to tackle a genre that thrives on originality, it’s paramount that you find new avenues to explore. Don’t do what the “Get Noticed” scripts did before you. Show us how you’re unique.

Okay, onto American Witch. Wow, what an opening scene, amirite!? I can see why you guys voted for this. One of the quickest ways to identify a good writer is if they can take me out of my apartment and into another world.

When this crazy motherfucking woman was being buried in a hole with hot tar and she sticks a walnut into her vagina and we time-lapse to see a Walnut Tree grow out of it, taking us to the present day… I WAS FUCKING IN IT, MAN! I was planning to send this to a studio.

But then the script slows down (we were just discussing this last week!) and becomes Setup Castle. Here we meet the fam, which includes 18 year-old Emma Ore, her single mother, Amanda, and her little sis, Sadie.

Amanda’s found a male suitor in Dr. Burns, and with Emma making it into the college of her dreams, the family’s fortunes are looking up. But then that very night, Amanda sleepwalks out of her bed into the stormy night, never to be seen again.

Cut to a year later where poor Emma, who never ended up going to college, has weird panic attacks where she sees her dead mom. Dr. Burns has provided her with some time-sensitive medication as well as a calming-phase (“Cashmere roses, wicker shakes, twenty-two”) to repeat so that Scary Maggot-Infested Version of Mom disappears.

No later than a day after we re-join Emma, her sister, Sadie, disappears just like mom did! We seem to have terrible timing popping into this girl’s life. Soon after, Emma gets word from the voices that Sadie’s being held in the local mine, so she takes her controlling boyfriend, Cole, to go look for her.

The rest of the script plays out exactly the way the logline says. We creep around this rickety abandoned mine, peeking around corners with our cell phone light, looking for sis. Occasionally, we run into the ghosts of unfortunate miners who died down here as well as a few souls dumb enough to cross paths with a badass witch named Icka Crombie. In the end, Emma will have to make some tough decisions in regards to how far she’s willing to go to save her sister. Will she kill to do so????

American Witch has some nice moments. The aforementioned opening. There’s also a scene where a little ghost boy who died in a cart asks to be pushed (with his one stipulation being that Emma CANNOT LOOK AT HIM). So she’s pushing him, looking away, but she wants to look and we want to look and we’re all terrified at what we might see, and when we do end up seeing him, he lives up to the curiosity.

But American Witch suffers from one of those annoying little things that, if gone unchecked, can kill a script. I’m talking about LACK OF CLARITY. The writer, Joseph, keeps things clear 75% of the time. But the other 25% we’re on our own to wonder what the heck is going on.

For example, I didn’t understand the family dynamic. Was Dr. Burns Amanda’s lover? The step-dad? A family friend? Your guess is as good as mine (get it!). And then I couldn’t understand the prescription pill chant combo. Emma was taking a pill that was time-sensitive down to the second (do those exist?)?? And in addition to taking the pills, she had to repeat a random phrase? How did those two things connect exactly??

It seems like a minor criticism. They’re such small details. But the whole point of writing is to have the reader exactly where you want them to be. You want to be in control of their emotions and feelings and interest at all times. And if they’re gradually wandering off a few degrees here and a few degrees there because you’re not making the details clear enough, they’re now experiencing a different story than the one you’re writing in your head, and who the hell knows what that story is?

This is a common problem, guys. I literally just gave notes on a script I read two days ago on the exact same issue. You have to be clear.

Moving forward, Joe should spend more time figuring out how to incorporate the mythology of his opening scene into the present-day storyline. That opening scene was awesome. It was rich with detail. It was unexpected. It dug into you a Hilton bed bug. But once we get to the present, we’re listening to borderline dopey scenes of characters saying things like, “Did you get into college??!” It was like going from watching The Godfather to Anchorman. The shift in sophistication was too drastic.

But the script shined in the moments where it did connect the mythology. We saw the witches dump severed heads into the cave in that opening scene. It’s no surprise then, that one of the best scenes has Emma checking in that cart to see the little boy… only to see that he’s a severed head.

That’s where this script is going to come together. And Joseph can pull it off. We’ve seen he’s capable of writing some great scenes. Let’s write more of them then. It’s a matter of pushing yourself to be better. Of not being satisfied with “okay.” This one had potential. But it’s not quite there yet.

Screenplay link: American Witch

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn’t for me 

[ ] worth the read

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: If you have a non-traditional family dynamic, don’t assume the reader will just understand it. You have to explain it to us. I read a script not long ago where I thought I was watching a traditional nuclear family. Then 40 pages in, I learn that the “dad” was actually the “uncle,” who had come in to help the family out when their father died. How the hell was I supposed to know this if you didn’t tell me? Never assume, guys. Especially with things that are easy to misunderstand.

Vincent Vega wants to fuck Mia Wallace. Does he ever say that to her on their date? Of course not. #onthenose

One of the unfortunate things I’ve run into from reading tons of amateur screenplays is that screenwriters rarely practice specific skills. Their only practice comes from writing entire scripts and while that’s better than not writing anything, it doesn’t improve the dozens of specific skills you need in order to become a master screenwriter.

When I used to teach tennis, I didn’t just hit balls back and forth with my students and say “Good luck” in their next tournament. We identified specific weaknesss and then drilled those weaknesss. If a player’s backhand sucked, I wouldn’t let him leave the court until he made 50 backhands in a row. If they were double-faulting in their last match, we’d spend an entire lesson hitting second serves.

Writing isn’t any different. If you suck at suspense, you need to practice writing suspenseful scenes. You’re not going to magically get better through writing a bunch of screenplays. You need to target the problem.

One of the best ways to do this is through writing scenes and short scripts. Whatever you’re lousy at, pick a scenario, write a short about it, and practice that weakness. That’s what I want to do with this practice series. Give you a common weak point in amateur writing and have you guys write a scene practicing it. You can link to your scene in the comments and the user who gets the most up-votes wins. Not sure what they win yet, but we can come up with something. If you guys like this series, we’ll continue it. If not, it will go the way of the Sunday Obscure Movie Recommendation.

We’re going to start off big. One of the most egregious mistakes I see amateur screenwriters make is on-the-nose dialogue. This just came up in a script I consulted on two weeks ago (actually, if I’m being honest, it comes up in 70% of the scripts I consult on). The writer had written a funeral scene. And at the wake, the mother and son talked about how much they loved the dead father, how important he was to their lives, the wonderful things he had done in life, how they were upset he didn’t keep in better shape, because maybe then he wouldn’t have died. It was ON THE NOSE to the max.

On-the-nose dialogue is two things. It’s characters saying exactly what they feel. And it’s characters saying what’s already obvious. We’re at a funeral where dad just died. We don’t need three pages of dialogue where mom and son talk about how sad they are that dad died. We already know that because we’re at a funeral and the characters look sad!

So one of the best ways to cure on-the-nose sickness, is with something I call “off-the-nose” dialogue. To practice this, set up an extreme emotional situation. Maybe it’s a funeral. Maybe it’s a break-up. Maybe it’s a promotion. Then write dialogue where the characters are allowed to talk about anything BUT their feelings OR what happened. What you’ll find is that your dialogue comes alive.

So let’s go back to that funeral scene. Instead of the son saying, “Man, I’m so bummed that dad is dead,” have him say, “What’s for dinner tonight?” And go from there. One of the most powerful things you can do in dialogue is to play AGAINST the emotion. So if someone’s died, have your characters joking around. If someone just won the 180 million Powerball, have him complain that now he has to get a new place and he hates the stress of moving.

Now I’m aware that in some cases, your characters WILL say what they’re thinking. And even sometimes in off-the-nose dialogue, you’ll allude to what happened (as our Powerball winner just did with his comment). This isn’t a black and white thing. It has some grey area. But overall, dialogue works best when you stay away from the obvious. And that’s what today’s practice series is about. So remember: Don’t allow the characters to discuss what they’re feeling and don’t allow them to comment on what’s already obvious.

Best short script and/or scene wins. Upvote your faves! Good luck!