One of the big complaints with last Friday’s amateur screenplay was that it started too slow. In response to this criticism, the writers, Greg and David, turned it around on the readers. In their opinion, it was the reader’s fault for being so impatient. They were going with a “slow burn” and if people couldn’t handle that, they weren’t reading the script properly.
I’ve encountered this reaction from a lot of writers over the years. If I point out that something’s too slow, they say they’re going for a “slow burn,” as if that phrase is a magical suit of armor that allows anything that’s slow or boring a free pass. It’s as if they believe they’ve earned some right (maybe because they’ve been at this screenwriting game for a while?) to drag us through forty minutes of plot and character set-up before they get to the “good stuff.”
Unfortunately, that’s not how a “slow-burn” works. Slow-burn is a technique. Its purpose is to build a slow and steady interest, using each scene to pull the reader further into the story. As opposed to, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which yanks you in right from the start, a slow-burn is more like a seduction. You’re not even aware it’s happening until you’re abolustely infatuated with the person.
So what’s the key to a good slow-burn? It’s pretty simple actually. SUSPENSE. If you can imply or outright tell the reader that something intriguing is coming down the pipeline, they’ll stick around to find out what it is, regardless of how slow your script is. If there are no hints at an exciting future at all – if you’re, once again, just setting up characters and only covering the present moment of your story, your reader is likely to get bored.
Suspense is sort of like making a promise. You tell your reader, “I’ve got something cool coming around the corner. Stick around to find out what it is.” And this is where, probably, the biggest mistake is made in terms of writing a slow burn. You see, in order for that promise to work, THAT PROMISE HAS TO BE GOOD.
For example, if my mom said to my friends and I, “Okay, everyone, if you’re patient until I finish my work, you all get an apple,” that’s not exactly an exciting promise. I’ll be easily distracted, looking for ways to get into trouble. But if she says, “If everyone waits until mommy finishes work, I’ll take you all out for ice cream,” that’s a promise that resonates. I fucking like ice cream.
So let’s go back to last Friday’s script. My guess is that Greg and David would’ve pointed out that the early scene where their political figure being murdered and replaced by a doppleganger was their “promise” – that’s the suspenseful story point that allowed them to take their time going forward. They’re right in saying it was a promise. But the promise was more of an apple than it was ice cream. We didn’t know this political figure. The act itself was kind of cliché (we’d seen this sort of thing happen in Mission Impossible movies and the like hundreds of times before). Just like any screenwriting technique, a slow burn must be pulled off originally, creatively, and with imagination. If your promise is an uninspired one, you can expect an uninspired reaction.
And this extends beyond the world of slow burns to choices in general. If your choice is standard or cliché or not nearly as exciting as you think it is, it’s going to land with a thud. And worse, a bad choice causes the elements around it to fall apart as well. It creates a domino effect. For example, we talk about conflict a lot. You want to inject some form of conflict into every scene to give it life. But let’s say, 30 pages previous to that conflict-laden scene, you created a cliché unlikable main character. Well, 30 pages later, putting that character in a conflict-heavy scene won’t matter, no matter how well the conflict is written. Because we already don’t like this character. We don’t care about their journey. Therefore, everything around that character crumbles as well.
And I think this is one of the biggest learning curves in screenwriting. Is finding out what’s a compelling choice and what isn’t. If something feels too familiar, too cliché, too unimaginative, it doesn’t matter what device you’re using to try and keep the reader’s attention. It probably won’t work. That’s why people who stick with screenwriting tend to be better than people just starting out. Their bar is higher. They’ve already tried all those boring choices. They learned what doesn’t work. Therefore, when they write a script now, they challenge themselves to come up with fresher more interesting ideas.
Getting back to slow burns, one of the most famous slow burns is The Sixth Sense. Some might even argue that the entire movie was a slow burn. The film never really accelerates its pace. But it worked because the elements included in the burn were compelling ones – namely the mystery behind this child. That was a cool promise. This kid could see ghosts that no one else could. Was he seeing things? Were they real? Could this man help him? The promise (as well as the elements SURROUNDING the promise – like good characters) was very compelling.
Another thing with slow burns is you want to hedge your bets. Try not to give us just one promise (unless that promise is gigantic), but rather a handful of them. And suspense shouldn’t be the only tool you use. You can also, for example, use something called “leading.” This is where you literally tell us something is coming down the pipeline. This creates a natural desire in the audience to stick around until we get there.
So let’s say you’re writing a small town drama and want to start with a slow burn. You might “lead” the audience by mentioning an upcoming fair. Just have your characters talk about “the big fair” that’s coming up this weekend. It doesn’t have to be a mystery or some huge plot point. But just the fact that we know the fair is coming is going to create a desire to get there. This is preferable to implying that nothing is coming. Because then there’s nothing for the reader to look forward to.
And you can use multiple leads, small and large, to create little checkpoints the audience will want to get to. For example, if your script starts with a married couple who clearly aren’t happy with each other, you could lead by having the wife call the husband at work and say she needs to talk to him about something important tonight. This is a conversation that sounds like it’ll be interesting, so we’ll want to stick around until it happens. And again, a lead doesn’t have to be singular. Who’s to say you can’t have the fair lead and the “we need to talk” lead in the same screenplay?
Another way to make a slow-burn work is mystery. A murder has been committed. A child has gone missing. The power has gone out in town. Every dog in town has run away. Someone comes home to find that their bedroom has been ransacked. Mysteries are one of the most powerful tools (and another type of PROMISE) in keeping the reader’s interest. Much like leading, they create a desire to find out what’s going to happen. If you’re going to have a really slow burn for the first 40 pages of your script, starting out with a good mystery can go a long way.
Another good “slow burn” tool is a looming sense of dread. If we get the feeling that something bad is just over the horizon, we’re likely to stick around. This approach actually works hand-in-hand with a slow burn – since the very nature of “looming” is deliberate. Once horror sensation “It Follows,” establishes the rules of its universe, it rests very comfortably on the “looming sense of dread” approach. Anybody anywhere could be one of these demons. So we fear it’s only a matter of time before one of them comes along. Most people who watch that film will tell you it was slow. But they still loved it. Why? Because the entire story was built around this looming sense of dread.
Now that we have a sense of what TO do to create a good slow burn, let’s talk about what not to do. When I first started reading scripts, I was shocked by just how SLOW most of them were. And so I was giving readers a lot of this note: CUT OUT ALL THESE USELES SCENES! GET TO THE STORY FASTER! And on a certain level, that’s good advice. Screenwriting is about cutting out the unnecessary – getting to the meat as soon as possible.
But a lot of times, that note wasn’t addressing the underlying problem. It wasn’t so much that we were taking too long to get to the story. It was that the writer wasn’t doing anything to make the lead-up to the story interesting. Again, the writer was just setting characters up, setting plot up, conveying exposition. All of these things are necessary, of course. But what’s required (which most writers don’t do) is to do all that IN AN ENTERTAINING WAY.
So they weren’t setting up mysteries, they weren’t leading, there was no impending sense of doom, there was no suspense, no promises. Or if there were any of these things, they were cliché or obvious versions of them, which, while better than nothing, still ineffective. So it’s important to recognize that when someone says your script is “too slow” or not getting to the story fast enough, it might not be the actual number of pages that’s the problem. It may be HOW YOU’RE WRITING THOSE PAGES. It may be the fact that you haven’t used any tools to give us a reason to keep reading.
Another common ineffective solution to a slow script is the classic, “Start with a big flashy action scene.” Writers think that if they blow us away with some super-awesome action scene to start off, it will allow them to take their time for the next 30-40 pages and slowly set up their story.
This is faulty logic for a couple of reasons. First, a big action scene can be just as boring as a small talky scene. In fact, action scenes can be some of the most boring to read in the entire script. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read, “And then the car CRASHES into the pole, spins, then REVS up again, NEARLY GETTING CLIPPED by a TRAILING COP CAR, before RACING OFF.” You know how boring it is to read 10 pages of that?! So don’t think of these scenes as magic beans by any stretch of the imagination.
And second, it still doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Let’s say you have a slow burn where you aren’t leading, setting up mysteries, creating any suspense, or injecting an impending sense of doom. That doesn’t just magically get fixed because you placed an action scene before it. You still need to address the real problem – which is offering the reader a series of promises. Letting them know that good things are coming around the corner.
I guess the final question here is: When does the slow burn end and the story begin? And I think the answer to that question is: WHEN THE GOAL OF THE MAIN CHARACTER IS INTRODUCED. Once you give us that goal, you’ve shifted over from “slow burn setup” to “full-fledged story.” Take the recent hot spec sale, Collateral Beauty. We start by seeing this CEO who mopes around his office all day building giant domino trails. That’s the first mystery to keep us hooked during the slow-burn phase (Why is he doing this? What happened to this man?). Then we learn that his employees are going to try and oust him so they can sell the company. That becomes the MAIN GOAL that drives the story. We’re no longer in “slow burn” phase from that moment on.
I know this is a lot to take in so let me just finish with this. In order for a slow burn to work, THERE HAS TO BE A BURN. Too many writers – especially writers just starting out – only give us the “slow.” And that’s where they run into trouble. Slow-burns are actually one of the most nuanced forms of storytelling there is. It takes a lot of skill to pull them off. Start by mastering the basics first (introduce a strong goal for your main character quickly) and once you’ve figured that out, you can play with suspending that main story and adding some slow-burn elements before we get there. It can be done. It just takes practice. Good luck!
