After yesterday’s review of an older (better) draft of I Am Legend, it became clear to me just how few writers understand suspense. And by that I mean REALLY UNDERSTAND IT. Not understand it in an abstract sense, which I think most writers do. But understand it in a way where they can draw upon the technique when needed to keep a reader’s attention. I find this frightening as the more I study screenwriting, the more I believe that suspense is the gas that keeps the car moving.
My big issue yesterday came when the writers replaced the “capture the creature” storyline with Robert (our hero) finding more survivors (a woman and her son). In the first case, we have suspense up the ying-yang. We’re not sure what the creatures look like yet since they’re hidden under wrappings. We’re unsure what’s going to happen when Robert tries to nurse it back to health. When it starts to become human, we’re curious whether Robert will be able to change it all the way back. We’re curious if the two will build a trusting relationship. We don’t know if Richard’s blood will run out before he can save the creature.
On the flip side, with the woman and her son, the level of suspense amounted to: “Yeah, we survived just like you did. Cool.” We know everything about their situation within a scene or two. That’s not to say the writers couldn’t have created suspense with the mom-son characters. Maybe we imply that she’s dodgy, or that there’s something off about the kid. Could she be hiding something about him? Those are elements of suspense that [maybe] would’ve kept us interested in that storyline. But again, the re-writers clearly didn’t understand the technique and therefore were incapable of using it.
So to help you guys avoid the disastrous trap that the I Am Legend re-writers found themselves in, I’ve come up with a different way to look at suspense. It requires that you see a movie not as one giant story, but rather a series of smaller sections.
The goal is to make the audience want to keep getting to the next section. I refer to this approach as “pay-as-you-go.”
I want you to imagine you’re going to see a movie, but instead of plopping down 20 freaking hard-earned dollars to get in the theater, you only have to pay 2 dollars to get in. Then, if you still want to watch after 15 minutes, you have to pay 2 more dollars. Then 15 minutes later 2 more dollars. And so on and so forth until the movie ends. So under this scenario, if at the end of the first 15 minutes you’re bored as shit, you can leave the theater and save 18 dollars! Ditto at any point in the movie. If you’re halfway in and bored, you can leave and still keep 10 bucks.
Now I want you to imagine someone watching YOUR movie under this pay-as-you-go system. Be honest. Would people for sure, without question, pay 2 bucks after your first 15 minutes to keep watching? “Maybe” doesn’t count. “Maybe” is always “no.” I’m asking if they’d pay to keep watching without even hesitating.
While this may sound like a hypothetical scenario, it’s the scenario hundreds of producers/agents/managers/readers go through every day. Because while they may not be investing money for every 15 pages they read, they’re investing TIME, which to them is more valuable. Hence, “pay-as-you-go” still applies. You must be able to hook them from section to section all the way until the end.
But Carson, you say, how can you possibly create a screenplay that does this? Screenplays are complicated. They ebb and they flow and what happens on page 15 is 180 degrees different from what happens on page 75. How in the world can anyone design a script to make sure that a reader always wants to read the next 15 pages?
I’ll tell you exactly how.
Suspense.
Inside of every 15 pages, you introduce a question and then withhold the answer to that question until the next 15 pages (or the 15 pages after that, or the 15 pages after that). As long as the question you introduce is intriguing, and as long as you don’t tell us what it is right away, the reader won’t have any choice but to keep reading into the next section. And yes, if you’re doing this right, they’ll pay you 2 extra dollars for access to those next 15 minutes every time.
Whether it’s the uncertainty brought about by Robert Nelville capturing and nursing back to health a zombie, the curiosity of whether Matt Damon is going to solve his food problem in “The Martian,” or the mystery of why the grandparents are acting so bizarre in M. Night’s, “The Visit.” Set up a question, wait to give the answer.
You’ll usually create one giant question (Will the groomsmen find the missing groom in The Hangover?) that drives the entire script and then a series of smaller to medium questions that drive the scene-to-scene interest of the reader. These are the elements you use to keep the reader reading from one section to the next. Drop the ball on one section by not including any suspense? The reader gets bored and stops paying.
Now when I trumpet this method to writers, there’s invariably a group that cry foul. “But Carson,” they argue, “There are some sections of a script that are designed to be slow. Not every section can be entertaining. Sometimes you have to be boring now in order to be exciting later. You know, cause of set-ups and payoffs and what not.” Um, to put it bluntly. NO. No no no nonnononononono. nO. nooo. Nononononoo NOOOOOOO. No nononononoonononoon. NonnONOnonOno.
And no.
While the intensity of your script’s entertainment level will vary over the course of the screenplay, the reader MUST ALWAYS BE ENTERTAINED, including during the “slow” sections. I’ll give you an example of exactly this since I just finished an amateur script which contained no suspense.
The script followed a group of backpackers into a mountain looking for a sasquatch-like creature. The group was being led by a local Sherpa. The first 50 pages of this script were slow as molasses dipped in peanut butter. We meet all these characters but nothing interesting is happening. We’re just getting to know them and their situations as they climb higher and higher into the mountain. This ended up being my biggest note on the script, and I made it clear that if the writer didn’t address the issue, the script was doomed.
The writer adamantly defended his work, saying he wanted to make the first half of the script a slow-burn and more “realistic.” I mentally winced. Whenever I hear someone say they’re going for a ‘slow-burn’ under the pretense that it’s okay to be boring, I want to jump out of my skin. I explained that that’s not how slow-burns work. Slow-burns ONLY WORK if the writer is actively injecting suspense along the way (read that five times before ever writing a slow-burn script again).
So I said to him, start with this. Early on in the mission, after they’ve set up camp, have your main character go to ask the Sherpa something. When he comes up to the Sherpa’s tent, have him hear the Sherpa talking to someone. He gets closer and listens. He hears bits and pieces of a phone call. “…don’t worry, they have no idea…” And “…yeah, the youngest is going to go first.” The Sherpa then senses someone outside and quickly hangs up.
This is the perfect example of “pay-as-you-go” writing. Our screenwriter is still able to set everyone up nice and slowly like before. But now he’s injected some questions into the story that the audience needs answered (susssspensssse!!!). Who is the Sherpa talking to? What does our group have “no idea” about? And what does he mean the youngest is going to go first? Go first into what? The only way for us to find out is read the next 15 pages. So we pay to move on.
That’s an admittedly simplistic example but I’m trying to make the point as simply as possible. And once you get good at this stuff, you can start adding more complex versions of suspense. That’s what I liked about Logan’s draft of I Am Legend. Robert capturing one of the creatures wasn’t a simple question-and-answer version of suspense. It led to multiple questions (can he save this creature? Who did it used to be? Will he make a connection with it?) all of which could only be answered after spending numerous scenes with the creature.
So to summarize: Every 15 pages of your script should pose at least one question that will not be answered within those 15 pages. This is the pay-as-you-go approach. If you’re not utilizing the pay-as-you-go format and are, instead, answering every question right there in the moment (or worse, not posing any questions at all), readers will have no incentive to keep reading and audience members will have no incentive to keep watching.
You’ve just leveled up as a screenwriter.
I beg of you to only use this new power for good.
