Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When stranded on the far end of Manhattan by a mysterious city-wide blackout, a group of inner-city middle schoolers must fight through seemingly supernatural forces to make their way back to their parents in the Bronx.
About: Today’s writer, Chad Handley, did a little TV writing, mostly story editing, on The Righteous Gemstones. This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Chad Handley
Details: 125 pages (!!)
Seems like Caleb McLaughlin would be a slam dunk choice for the lead here.
Whenever I see a Black List script at 120+ pages from a writer not named Aaron Sorkin, I get worried. But, as we’re going to talk about today, page length isn’t as important as “page quality.”
“Page quality” is the concept of making sure your pages are entertaining. If you do that, it does not matter how many pages your script is. The irony is that writers who write over 120 pages tend to be the writers who believe that anything they write is must-see screenwriting. They don’t have that inner editor who’s able to say, “This doesn’t move the story forward,” or “This isn’t entertaining enough to warrant its inclusion.” So their 120+ scripts perpetuate the rule that all long screenplays are bad, as opposed to change the narrative.
We saw this just this weekend with Thor Love and Thunder. Taika had a 4 hour cut. He realized that two of those hours were neither relevant or entertaining enough. So he cut them out.
Okay, onto the plot!
For what it’s worth, I believe everyone in this story is a minority. David Wei is the CEO of a giant mysterious particle physics company and he’s built this thing called the “Inflation Reactor,” which sounds like something that’s responsible for my recent 90 dollar trip to the gas station.
Let’s meet our kids. There’s 15 year old Amir, who’s always stealing things. There’s his twin sister, Seneca, who also likes to get into trouble. They have their little brother, Isaac, who’s obsessed with science. Then have a dad, Seth, who’s never around.
We also have Kale, Amir’s football player best friend, and other friend Chance, who’s a loudmouth. We’ve got Parker, a hot rich girl Amir is in love with. And then Lily, Parker’s 8 year old sister.
The group all meet at the Science Museum because Isaac has to study something there for a school assignment. Then, on their way home on the subway, there’s an explosion, and they have to climb out of the wreckage and get back to the surface. Along the way, they lose their father, which, if we’re being honest, isn’t that different from their everyday life.
After stumbling around the city looking for him, they learn of these alien beings who have made it to earth through that Gas Hike machine David Wei built. These beings have stopped the planet from spinning and also stop random people in time and space, so random New Yorkers will be straight up frozen. Will our Goonies-esque team find their dad? And what about destroying these alien creatures? Can they use science to send them home? We’ll find out.
One of the most difficult things to explain in regards to “good screenwriting” is this concept of looseness. One of the biggest differences between really good screenwriters and really green screenwriters is that the good screenwriters have a tightness to their writing.
They can set up a character in just three lines who feels like you’ve known him your whole life. Then can craft a single scene that sets up a character, moves the plot forward, and is highly entertaining in under 2 pages. And their ability to pace the story so that it never feels slow is second nature.
Whereas, green screenwriters sort of ramble on unnecessarily. Scenes don’t alway have a purpose. They’ll take four scenes to set up a group of characters they could’ve set up in two. There’s a lackadaisical approach to exposition so that it takes way too many scenes to get relevant information across.
That’s the feeling I got while reading The Dark. The first 30 pages were SET-UP CENTRAL. Setting up characters. Setting up mythology. Setting up family relationships. Setting up birthdays. Setting up homework that’s due. Setting up friendships.
And I know that you have to set stuff up somewhere. It’s not like you can just skip all this. But this is where the good screenwriters prove their worth. They can move faster through this stuff. And they make it a lot more entertaining.
Which, by the way, is a secret way to speed up a story. Two screenwriters can be tasked with writing the same scene. Both scenes are exactly the same length – 4 pages. But, somehow, one feels WAAAAAAY faster than the other.
That’s typically because one screenwriter knows how to make a scene entertaining. They know how to use suspense or drama or anticipation or surprise or conflict to make the scene fun. And when we, the reader, are having fun, time doesn’t exist. When we’re not having fun, every line feels like a page.
To be fair, it’s always going to be harder to move an ensemble of characters along. You can’t just cut to the main character, show him experiencing an issue with his dad, then send him off on his adventure. You have to do that for ALL THE CHARACTERS IN YOUR ENSEMBLE. Which is why you want to think hard about if you can handle an ensemble script.
It’s hard enough creating one compelling main character. Imagine that job getting multiplied by eight. It’s why people have been trying to remake The Goonies for 30 years unsuccessfully. Because it turns out it’s hard to write a bunch of strong memorable kid characters.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. Screenwriting will never be a safe space. It’s more like a “drive you insane space.” But just know that the work LITERALLY gets eight times as hard when you have 8 main characters. Sure, you COULD be lazy and not develop half of them. Or make them stereotypes. But it will show. I guarantee you it will show.
Now, whenever I talk about moving the story along faster, I’ll occasionally get someone asking the legit question of, “If you cut out all the setup and only concentrate on moving the story forward, you’re going to get to your second act break by page 10. And the middle of the second act by page 30.”
“You have to add meat somewhere.”
Fair point. So let me try and come up with an analogy for you.
Let’s say you’re writing a story about a cat trapped in a tree. Your main character, Joe, comes out of his house, spots the cat, and decides to rescue it. How would you write a story like this that doesn’t end in ten seconds?
Because you could easily have Joe climb the tree and save the cat. Story over. Which seems to be in line with the note I’m giving today. That the writer should’ve ditched all this never-ending setup and gotten to the actual story.
No.
What you want to do is create entertaining obstacles and then use the time that your character is trying to overcome those obstacles to tell us about the character, or to provide exposition. In other words, you’re hiding the boring stuff inside the actual entertainment.
Let’s see what that looks like in action.
But first, let’s add a couple of scene boosters. 8 year old Jessica, the cat’s owner, is crying off to the side. This is her favorite cat in the world and she’s desperate to see it safe. This ups the pressure on Joe.
Also, we learned in the previous scene that Joe is on his way to a very important job interview that he cannot be late for. He’s dressed up considerably for this interview in a nice white pressed button down shirt and pants.
You can already see that saving this cat is becoming a bigger and more complicated ordeal.
Now, our cat is about ten feet up the tree. Joe knows he can comfortably climb up ten feet. So that’s what he does. But just as he’s reaching out for Scratchers, our annoying black cat, the cat freaks out, scratching Joe’s hand, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground, right on the freshly watered grass, which heavily imprints a lot of green on his white shirt. And meanwhile, the cat has climbed up another ten feet and is therefore, even higher on the tree.
Joe checks his watch. His important interview starts in less than 15 minutes. He’s got to go. He apologizes to the girl. She pleads with him. Please save my cat. “I can’t. I have to go to this interview.” “For what?” the girl cries. “It’s for a rare engineering job. This type of job never comes up.” Jessica pleads with him. Joe checks his watch. Checks his shirt. What does he do??
The point here is that you can extend any part of your story out for as long as you want. You can give us any amount of exposition (what job interview our character is going to) AS LONG AS YOU ARE ENTERTAINING US IN THE MEANTIME.
If you entertain, perfectionist readers like myself won’t even realize that your first act was 15 pages too long.
I know I didn’t really talk about today’s script. Which seems unfair since, once we hit the second act, that’s where all the action starts.
But therein lies the problem. If you put me through 35 pages of setup hell, I am no longer mentally invested in your story. I checked out a long time ago when I decided that I didn’t want to be subjected to setup torture. You could give me Avengers Endgame level action scenes at this point but it won’t matter. I’m already mentally checked out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Page Quality.” Are your pages as entertaining as they can possibly be? Or are they merely setting up future entertaining scenes down the line? If all you’re doing with a scene is setting up a future good scene, that scene needs to be rewritten. I’m going to give you some homework. Go watch the first act of Back to the Future. Notice how there isn’t a SINGLE SCENE in the first act that isn’t entertaining. And that movie has more exposition and setup requiremnts than your last ten screenplays combined. So having to set lots of stuff up is not an excuse to write boring scenes.
