Genre: Thriller
Premise: A slave woman runs away from her secluded plantation only to discover a shocking reality that lies beyond the tree line.
About: A Tarantino disciple, Krystin Ver Linden worked with the legend for seven years. This spec finished in the top ten of last year’s Hit List. Ver Linden’s got a biopic set up (who doesn’t!) at Lionsgate about astronaut Sally Ride. This script is being developed at Imperative. Joel Silver is one of the producers.
Writer: Krystin Ver Linden
Details: 113 pages
Are pre-pages the new First 10 Pages? Screenwriters seem to be set on hooking readers BEFORE hooking readers. Head’em off at the pass!
Chirsty Hall’s now infamous scrawl has appeared to start a trend. Except I actually liked this pre-page. Here’s all it said: INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS… (scroll down)… SERIOUSLY…(scroll down)… THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
When you start your script off with a statement this bold, it acts as its own line of suspense. Before we’ve even begun, we know we at least have to get to the “actually happened” part. Any tool you can think of to keep the reader invested is fair game. Even if it’s pre-story.
When we meet 26 year old slave, Alice, she is secretly marrying another slave, 30 year old Joseph. But then house owner Paul busts in and breaks it up. Cut to the next day where we see the daily activities on this house plantation. Joseph is out picking cotton while Alice works around the house.
Paul has a thing for Alice and takes advantage of her whenever he can. The only way she’s able to pass time is wondering what’s beyond those weeping willow trees in the distance. The entire plantation is surrounded by them, and there are rumors that something special can be found for anyone brave enough to escape.
Alice convinces Joseph to escape with her but Paul finds out beforehand and has Joseph killed. With no reason to stick around anymore, Alice finally makes a break for it (MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD) and when she gets past the trees she finds… a highway??? Well, to us it’s a highway. To her, she doesn’t know what it is. Nor does she understand the giant speeding machines that are racing back and forth on it. The decade, it turns out, is not the early 1800s. But rather the 1970s.
A kind trucker, Frank, spots Alice, stops to pick her up, and takes her to the hospital. When the doctors hear her story (“I’m a slave who escaped a plantation”) they think she’s a delusional nutbag and plan to send her to a psychiatric hospital. So Frank sneaks her out and brings her to his place, where she experiences modern amenities, like refrigerators and television, for the first time.
Alice decides she wants to confront Paul’s ex-wife, who left the plantation years ago. With Frank’s help, she tracks her down, and the two meet. Paul’s ex apologizes, explaining that she was tricked as well. But Alice isn’t buying it. Hell bent on getting proper revenge, Alice constructs a much bigger plan, one that will let the world know what happened to her in that house. And she’s going to do it in the most dramatic way possible.
Today we need to talk about an important screenwriting topic – THE TWIST.
The twist is, in many ways, a trap.
It forces you, as the writer, to lie, to hide, to manipulate, all so that you can pull a ‘gotcha’ moment at the end. I often tell screenwriters that you’re writing two screenplays every time you have a twist. The story that the reader sees, and the real story.
Now this doesn’t mean that a twist is bad. The reveal of a great twist is one of the most exhilarating feelings you can have watching a movie. I still remember the shock I experienced at the end of Oldboy, my mouth hitting the sticky theater floor during The Sixth Sense, or the helplessness I felt at the end of The Wicker Man. But it’s one of the most difficult assignments to pull off, and most writers fail in one key way.
That way is that the twist is obvious well before it arrives. The writer telegraphs it so blatantly, everyone knows it’s coming. Ego secretly being a bad guy in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is a prime example. But mostly you see this mistake in amateur screenplays. In fact I just read a consultation script that had this problem. And it’s one that I thought was going to do “Alice” in as well.
“Alice” spends so much time asking what could be on the other side of those trees that you know a twist is coming. And the options for this twist are limited. We know this is a true story so she’s not going to walk out into a spaceport on Mars. It’s probably going to be that we’re in modern day, or at least close to it.
But here’s where aspiring screenwriters can learn something. Ver Linen didn’t wait until the end to give us the twist. She revealed it at the midpoint. Most writers are afraid to do this. They want their big “Sixth Sense” moment. But if all you’re doing is writing towards an ending twist, your script is doomed to fail. If Ver Linen had spent another 50 pages talking about what’s beyond those trees, I would’ve died of boredom. By executing the twist at the midpoint, the reader not only gets that shocking twist, but they now have no idea where the story is going next.
Before you go off and write a midpoint twist into every one of your screenplays, understand that it comes with its own set of pitfalls, the biggest of which is that once you’ve executed the twist, you must start the story over. Once Alice gets out of the farm, it’s a whole new movie. So if you don’t have a plan for how to re-start the narrative, a midpoint twist is pointless. What a lot of writers will do is rest on the laurels of that twist and fumble their way through the rest of the story. And, unfortunately, there’s some of that going on here. It’s not that Alice’s pursuit of justice is uninteresting, but it’s underpowered in comparison to the first half of the script.
So which of these – endpoint or midpoint twist – is the best option for you? It comes down to your story. If you have a fully fleshed out story that’s interesting regardless of whether there’s a twist or not, an ending twist works great. The Wicker Man has a compelling investigation that can easily withstand 100 minutes of viewing. Even if he doesn’t get burned at the end, we still would’ve been satisfied. If your narrative is less potent (there isn’t a whole lot for your characters to do), however, you should consider a midpoint twist. Cause there’s nothing more boring than an already weak narrative that’s drawn out. Just make sure you have a plan on the backside of that twist.
Alice is a wonky imperfect screenplay. But it’s an entertaining screenplay. I like that somebody found a true story and turned it into an accessible genre piece as opposed to yet another desperate bid for Oscar attention. People respect that. It’s how Jordon Peele won an Oscar. It probably needs a few more drafts though, especially in regards to its second half.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A lot of you ask whether you should include your big twist in the logline. The answer to this is “Probably.” But, if you don’t want to, you should create a sense of curiosity the way Ver Linden does with this logline. She doesn’t give anything away, yet we still get a sense of what we’re in for, which is what a good logline should do. “A slave woman runs away from her secluded plantation only to discover a shocking reality that lies beyond the tree line.”
