Not long ago I was reading a screenplay and I noticed that all of the scenes were average to boring. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t as if the writer was making any obvious mistakes. But the scenes lacked a clear punch, specifically the ones involving dialogue.
It wasn’t until later in the day, when I’d long since finished the script, that the answer came to me. The main character wasn’t going up against any problems he couldn’t handle. The reason it was hard to identify this was that, on the surface, the obstacles were there. Our hero would need to talk his way out of a tough situation, for example. And yet, I never doubted that the hero would be able to do it.
And that introduced me to a new term: THE FALSE OBSTACLE.
Obstacles are extremely important in screenwriting. The formula you want to follow is this: Hero goes after objective + an obstacle gets in their way = he either succeeds or fails. Afterwards, you start the formula over again. And you’re doing this again and again throughout the screenplay.
However, there’s a common mistake screenwriters make when applying this formula. And not just beginner screenwriters. It can happen to any writer regardless of their level. The mistake is that the writer will create an obstacle that they already know how to get their hero out of.
In order to explain this, let’s use one of the most famous scenes ever, the scene with Indiana Jones trying to escape the cave in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. There comes a moment late in the sequence where Indy reaches a pit that he isn’t able to jump across. On the other side of the pit is his assistant, who’s holding his whip. His assistant offers a trade. Toss me the gold idol and I’ll give you your whip so you can get across.
This is a common scenario for a writer to get tunnel-vision on. He believes that giving up the idol for survival is a strong enough trade-off for the audience to be okay with. So he knows how Indy is going to survive before he’s even started writing the scene. Is it good scene if they trade? It’s okay. But it’s not a true obstacle if the solution is that easy.
So what writer Lawrence Kasdan does is he has Indy toss over the idol but the assistant DOESN’T TOSS BACK THE WHIP. Now, it’s a REAL OBSTACLE. Because the writer’s lazy option is no longer available and he must figure out how Indy is going to get out of this. That’s how you want to approach obstacles. You want them to be legitimately hard to overcome and not just lip service that the audience already knows the hero can handle.
But this script I was reading wasn’t an action script. It was dialogue driven. The hero repeatedly needed things from other characters and had to convince/persuade them to get what he wanted. In some cases, his life was on the line. And yet, for some reason, the scenes weren’t compelling.
I knew they were false obstacles but because they weren’t physical, like Indy needing his whip, I didn’t know how to fix the problem
And then it hit me. The writer wasn’t seeing the scene through the other characters’ eyes. They were only seeing the scene through the hero’s eyes. When you only see a scenario through your hero’s eyes, all the dialogue you give to the other characters will be, intentional or not, crafted to make things easier for your hero.
Let’s say a fictional character named Henry has a dead body in his trunk and gets stopped by a policeman. It’s the ultimate obstacle. If Henry doesn’t convince this cop to let him go, he’s toast.
If you only write this scene through Henry’s point of view, you will write weak dialogue. You won’t make the cop as suspicious as he needs to be. You won’t have him ask tough enough questions. Chances are you won’t even know enough about this cop to understand WHAT he’d do in this scenario.
To you, the cop is a pawn who must put up enough resistance to create conflict, but not enough to make your job difficult as writer. And when you approach the scene that way, you will get a lot of false obstacle dialogue. It will never truly feel like your hero is in danger.
So here’s a hack to solve the problem. And it’s not easy. But if you want to become a better writer, this will do it.
Open a new document and write the scene FROM THE COP’S POINT OF VIEW. The cop is now YOUR HERO. The guy in the car – Henry – he’s just a guy to the cop. Have him suspect that Henry is acting skittish so he does everything in his power to figure out what he’s hiding. I guarantee – GUARANTEE – that the cop’s dialogue will improve by AT LEAST 200%. And that the scene will be a lot more intense in the process.
Afterwards, go back to the Henry scene – the one that’s actually in your script – and combine it with your new Cop scene. You’ll find that your crutch – being able to manipulate the cop’s dialogue in a way that makes it easier on your hero – is gone. The cop will be asking legitimately tough questions. He’ll be asking Henry to do things he doesn’t want to do. And while that may be scarier to write since you won’t know exactly how your hero will get out of the situation, I guarantee that your scene will be more riveting. Cause we’re not going to know how he gets out of this either. And that’s what’s exciting when you’re reading something – is the not knowing.
You can apply this to any scene with two or more characters. If your dialogue feels flat, first make sure that the basics are in place (one of the characters has a clear goal, someone else in the scene doesn’t want to give them that goal, and there are legitimate stakes involved in the hero achieving his goal) and then write the scene from the other characters’ points-of-view. If you do this for a scene and it doesn’t make the scene better? I give you full permission to come back to this post, tell me I’m an idiot, and that this was terrible advice.
But I’m confident that’s not going to happen. Now go write some great dialogue!
