Today I share with you the single best way to write a great ending to your script. And barely anybody knows it.
Genre: Rom-Com (Friend-Com)
Premise: When her best friend since childhood falls in love and starts spending all her time with her new boyfriend, a selfish codependent career woman will do anything to get her back.
About: This script finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. The writer, Gaelyn Golde, has one produced credit for an episode of the animated TV show, Praise Petey.
Writer: Gaelyn Golde
Details: 98 pages
Alison Brie for Bridget (since Sydney Sweeney is too young to play the part)?
I’m going to take you into the mind of someone who has to read a lot of scripts for a second.
Most people in this town – at least the ones who matter – are super busy.
They’ve got calls to make. They’ve got e-mails to return. They have meetings they have to go to that they don’t want to be in. And they probably have 3 or 4 fires they have to put out that day.
That speaks nothing to their personal lives, which also take up a lot of time, especially if they’re married with kids.
These people have a pile of scripts to read.
When that is the case, the script they will most commonly seek out is the one that’s under 100 pages with a simple concept. Why? Because they know the read isn’t going to take up their entire night. They know they’re going to be able to get through it easily.
You know how I know this? Cause it’s how I picked today’s script. I was running around town all day, having to do a bunch of things. And by the time I was able to sit down and work on today’s post, it was 8pm.
Do you think I’m going to open the equivalent of Dune: Messiah under those circumstances? A 145 page tome of a gigantic universe with a million characters and a ton of mythology to learn before I can accurately understand what’s going on in the story? No way.
I’m going to pick the script that I know is going to go down easy.
Don’t worry. I’m not saying you can never write your version of Dune. I’m only saying, these variables factor into how people choose to read scripts.
Okay, let’s rock!
Bridget is in her 30s, lives in New York, and works at a publishing house. Uh oh. Uhhhhhh ohhhhhh. Did I just summarize the single biggest movie character cliche in history? Not a good start!
Bridget is best friends with Rae, whom she’s known since they’ve been in diapers. The two are so inseparable, they even have a rule whereby they have to kick guys to the curb after having sex with them three times. That way they don’t get attached.
But Bridget is noticing that Rae’s latest guy, Hank, has been over at the apartment, err, MORE THAN THREE TIMES. She shrugs it off, uses some denial logic, and continues to spend every waking second with her best friend. That is until she goes to the bathroom one morning and HANK IS TAKING A SHOWER!
Taking a shower is NEVER allowed, which is how Bridget knows this is serious. She attempts to talk some logic to her friend but that’s when Rae hits her with a terrifying truth-bomb. She LIKES Hank. This liking thing has never happened before so it’s the equivalent of an atom bomb going on inside Bridget’s diaphragm.
As Rae starts spending more and more time with Hank, Bridget is forced to find her own friends, a couple of co-workers at the publishing house, player Adam and defiant lesbian Monica. But they’re not really Bridget’s friends, as she uses them as chess pieces to try and make Rae jealous so she’ll understand how she feels and dump Hank.
Predictably, that doesn’t work. Rae only ends up liking Hank more, which means she spends less time with Bridget. In a last desperate attempt, Bridget destroys everything about Hank in front of Rae, hoping she’ll realize Hank can’t give her what Bridget can. When that doesn’t work, Bridget must face reality: that her best friend is gone for good. But can she grow enough to figure out a way to live in a world without her life muse?
Today, I want to talk about the power of 3.
It took me a long time as a writer to figure out the power of 3. In fact, I don’t think I truly understood its power until I started reading tons of scripts.
When I wrote, I focused very heavily on binary conversations. Character 1 talks to Character 2. Character 2 talks back. Then Character 1 speaks again.
I did that because it was easy.
But one of the themes of this review is that: If it’s easy, it’s probably the wrong thing to do.
We see the value of that here when Hank enters the equation. When it was just Bridget and Rae, sure, they had a fun back-and-forth. They said some funny things. But their interactions became infinitely more interesting when Hank entered the equation.
Why?
Because Hank forces the characters TO THINK WHEN THEY SPEAK. And when you have to start thinking, that’s when conversation gets fun.
Just today I was at a lunch with a friend and we were talking about some fairly risqué subject matter when the waiter showed up. He took the plates away and cleaned the table for way too long and, the whole time he was there, our conversation changed. We had to avoid what we wanted to talk about, which is how you create subtext. That’s a huge benefit that comes from the power of 3.
Now, the trick to get the most out of this is to make the third character as intense a force of conflict as possible. That’s why Hank’s arrival into the story is so fun. He is literally a wall in this friendship. He is preventing it from thriving. So, whenever he’s around, we feel that tension.
Therefore, whenever you yourself can add a third character to one of your scenes, do it. Watch how the scene comes alive in a way that it never could have with just two people.
Another thing that caught my eye here was the ending. I’m going to spoil this so feel free to skip to the What I Learned. This ending had the opportunity to be very good but it dropped the ball. Bridget and Rae hadn’t talked for a week after their big fight. So then Bridget runs into Hank on the street. Hank tells her that Rae dumped him.
Now, this might seem like an innocuous plot beat to the seasoned moviegoer. A moment like this always happens. But what you have to understand is that, THIS MOMENT IS THE ENTIRE MOVIE. This is where the movie either WORKS or DOESN’T WORK. It’s where your hero must make their final ULTIMATE CHOICE.
The whole movie, Bridget has wanted her best friend back. She’s wanted Hank out of the picture. What screenwriter Golde did was perfect. She gave Bridget a REALLY REALLY HARD CHOICE. Most writers screw this up. They give their hero a choice that *seems* hard but that we all know is easy. In this case, the choice is actually hard.
Bridget can do what she wants – finally have her friend back. Or do what’s right – help Hank get Rae back.
But for some reason, Golde didn’t seem to realize that this moment is the entire movie! It’s her protagonist being confronted with succumbing to her flaw or changing. And Golde rushes through it. Bridget doesn’t think twice. “Let’s go get Rae back!” No! This moment needs to breathe. You need to milk this moment as a writer. Again, THIS IS THE WHOLE MOVIE. For everyone writing screenplays, this is often the most important moment in your script. So don’t rush it. And Golde rushed it.
The final thing I want to say about this script is that it does something I see a lot of rom-com writers do. Which is, they write the “run through the airport” climax but they do so in a slightly different way so as to convince themselves (and the audience) that they’re not actually being cliche.
So, here, both Hank and Bridget run to the airport together to stop Rae from getting on the plane. First, Hank stops her and they have a moment. But then Rae spots Bridget and runs over and talks to her.
So, technically, is it different from your typical rom-com airport ending? Yeah, a little bit. The fact that the guy stopping her wasn’t the big focus, but rather the scene with the best friend AFTER that was the big focus. Yeah, you can convince yourself of that as a writer.
But dude come on. Do you want to write something that’s a little different or do you want to exercise some actual creative muscles and try something new? This is your ending. This is what you’re leaving your audience with. If 95% of it is familiar and only 5% is original, how do you think audiences are going to remember that moment? The barely original part or the mostly cliche part?
I’ll give you the solution to this problem in the What I Learned section in a second.
I thought that, for the most part, this script was solid. It didn’t blow me away. But the dialogue was fun and I found the character of Bridget compelling enough that I wanted to see where she ended up. For that reason, this gets a ‘worth the read,’ but it’s one of those hanging-by-a-thread ‘worth the reads.’ Like, if there was a 2.9 magnitude earthquake before I finished this review, it would fall down to a ‘wasn’t for me.’ So, I’ll wrap this up before that can happen! :)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: How do you avoid ‘run to the airport’ endings in romantic comedies? The way you do this is to LEAN INTO YOUR CONCEPT. What’s unique about your concept? That will give you your ending. Look at one of the greatest rom-coms of all time: Notting Hill. In that movie, Anna (Julia Roberts) is a movie star. All she DOES is fly around the world. There would’ve been no easier ending for writer Richard Curtis than to write a cliched ‘run to the airport’ ending. But because Curtis always pushes himself creatively, he leaned into his concept to find his ending. Anna is a movie star. What does a movie star do? A movie star does a lot of press junkets. So that’s the final scene. Anna is speaking in front of the British press about her latest movie and William is forced to get her back imitating one of the reporters and asking her questions in front of everyone. It’s very clever. And it shows you what the possibilities are if you push past the obvious.
