Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from me – based on limited info) A group of shuttle astronauts find the world scorched and dangerous upon returning home.
The setup: The year is 2045. The space shuttle Excalibur has completed its routine satellite conservation mission only to find that the Earth has perished overnight- crystal blue waters replaced by dark crimson, white clouds now a gory hue, continents indiscernible. After much debate, and resources depleting, they have no choice but to go down. They arrive and
find themselves in a deserted wasteland, dead and burnt cities, a graveyard civilization. Lifeless.
Writer: Rzwan Cabani
Details: 7 pages
I think one of the hardest things about scenes is that, if you’re doing your job right, you’re trying to cram key information into every one of them, as you want each scene to push the story forward and tell us a little bit about your characters. The problem is, when writers do this, they often go overboard with this information, or they convey it in the wrong way, stilting the scene and making it more about information and character development than pushing the story forward.
And that’s the trick. First and foremost, every scene should be about PUSHING THE STORY FORWARD. All the other stuff should be hidden inside of that, instead of taking precedence. There are exceptions of course, and this approach will be treated differently in an action movie than, say, an indie character piece. But for the most part, it doesn’t matter what kind of movie you’re writing. The scene should exist primarily to push your characters towards their current objective, not bore us with information.
This happened with the most recent amateur script I read. A large number of scenes existed only to show two characters in a room talking about things that did happen, were happening, or were GOING to happen. Information-heavy scenes like this can be the death of a screenplay (and one of the easiest ways to spot amateur writers). In general, you want your characters chasing goals or leads or objectives that have them moving towards the next plot point. Along the way then, you cleverly drop in that information (what’s often called “exposition”), so it’s not the focus of the scene, but rather a secondary aspect of it.
I’d say a good 50% of the scenes sent in were dismissed for this reason. Characters weren’t going after anything (like yesterday, where our character was trying to get his girlfriend back) or reacting to anything (like Monday, where our characters had to avoid a swarm of aliens). They were just talking about other characters, or about the plot. And unless there’s something compelling that needs to be hashed out between the characters, or just a ton of conflict, talking scenes are borrrrrring. Never forget that.
Today’s script follows astronauts, Max, his love interest Amanda, Russian Sven, and the grizzled vet, Berkely. The four have just landed back on earth after being in orbit for awhile and boy, are things different. The planet’s been scorched. It doesn’t look like there’s any more water. After looking around from the safety of the ship, they spot a man sitting in this barren field, facing away from them. They leave the ship and go to him, only to find out he’s a decoy. It’s a trap. They hear something big and angry emerge out of nowhere and they start running. They get back inside the ship, only to be repeatedly rammed by whatever this is. Just as it looks like their ship is about to break, the banging stops, and a man in a cloak emerges from the shadows, beckoning them to open the door. He can help.
There were a few things I liked about this scene. First, there’s suspense. What the hell happened to the earth? Next, there’s this guy just sitting out there in the desert. Who is he? Why is he facing away from them? More suspense! They approach the guy. What’s going to happen?? We don’t know but we want to find out!
And what we find out is that he’s a decoy. They’ve been lead out here on purpose. Knowing they’re in trouble, they run back. And what I loved is that Rzwan did NOT SHOW the huge monster chasing them. We only HEARD it. This is an indication to me of a writer who knows what he’s doing. Amateur writers tend to blow their load and be completely obvious with every situation they write. They would’ve shown this monster in an instant, erasing all the mystery behind it. Because we don’t know what it is, we must imagine the monster ourselves, just like our characters. And just like our characters, our assumption is probably a lot scarier than whatever the writer could’ve come up with.
This is followed by the arrival of the man in the cloak, which creates another “mystery box” that is intriguing enough to get us to the next scene. Add all that to some really slick writing (Rzwan’s prose is lean, crisp and quite descriptive) and you have yourself a nice little scene.
Frustratingly, despite it being better than the majority of scenes that were sent in, it wasn’t perfect. The arrival of the cloaked “person” in the chair wasn’t introduced clearly enough. I’m presuming we landed here in this huge barren landscape where we can see all around us. Nobody saw anything then?? Their first look around once they’d landed produced the same result. Nothing.
Then, all of a sudden, there’s just some guy sitting in a chair? How did they miss that?? Even worse, we’re never told how far away he actually is. Is he 10 feet away? Is he 500 feet? These things matter, particularly when we’re trying to figure how this figure who’s sitting on a chair in the middle of the desert can be missed.
Remember, one clarity error in a scene can KILL that scene. Every single little thing you were trying to accomplish, from the location to the setup to the characters, can be capsized by a single clarity error. And the truth is, we can’t always catch these. In our minds, because we can see the whole thing in our head, the setting is clear as day. So of course we’re likely to under-describe. On the flip side, if we over-describe the scenario and get TOO detailed, the scene gets bogged down in text and reads like molasses.
So you have to find that balance. All you can do is ask, “Have I made all the key elements to this scene clear to my reader?” And then, of course, before you send it out officially, you get a few people to read it and see if they understood it as well.
As for the rest of the scene, I like the mystery of Max (the cloaked man who approaches at the end), but a) I’m wondering how yet another character could’ve just appeared out of nowhere in this endless barren desert, and b) When I see cloaked people in deserts (which believe it or not I’ve seen a few of in the last few weeks via script reads), I immediately think of Star Wars. And when you’re writing sci-fi, you want to avoid stuff feeling too similar to the most popular films in that genre.
So to summarize, I liked the machinations of this scene. I liked what Rzwan was doing to create anticipation and suspense. I love how he didn’t show us his monster. But some of the details needed more explaining, like how people in chairs can just appear out of nowhere. And maybe we could’ve milked that build-up a little bit more. More discussion/arguments before going out to look at Chair Guy. More description of the eerie landscape. When you have a suspenseful situation like that set up, you want to milk the suspense!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (just barely)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Information (exposition) should never be the focus of the scene. It should be a secondary directive only.
What I learned 2: If you can’t come up with a creature scary enough, don’t show it! Or only show pieces of it. Let the reader imagine what it is himself. The version in his head is probably a lot more freaky!
