I give this note to writers all the time in consultations, because very few amateurs know how important it is. YOUR OPENING SCENE HAS TO BE AWESOME. The opening scene is the scene readers use to decide a) if they’re going to like you as a writer, b) if your writing is any good, and c) if this script has any shot at being good. Bore us with an opening scene and you’ve essentially lost your reader before your script’s started.
How should you approach opening scenes so that this doesn’t occur? It just so happens there’s a trick to ENSURE your reader will be roped into your script immediately. And that trick is to start your script with a dramatic question. Something should be happening. Something that has a goal, that has stakes, that has some urgency, and that puts your hero in a position where he has to make choices, preferably important ones.
Here’s why this works. Whenever you pose a question, the audience wants to know the answer. So if you start your script off a minute before your hero, an Olympic sprinter, is about to run the 40 yard dash, who in their right mind is going to STOP READING before they find out if the character wins the race? Nobody. It’s literally impossible to stop reading.
Assuming that we’re intrigued by the characters you’ve introduced AND the question you’ve posed is compelling, this approach works every time. Because we have to find out what happens! Raiders of the Lost Ark is the perfect example of this. We have to see if Indiana Jones gets the gold idol and gets out of the cave in one piece!
But it doesn’t have to be a big action scene. Remember Titanic? That script opens with a slow crawling scene under the ocean. But there’s a question. They’re trying to find a piece of treasure, and we want to know if they can find it.
And it doesn’t even have to be a big movie to open with a dramatic question. I read a script about teenagers recently and the script opened with the teens trying to get up the courage to go inside and buy beer with a fake ID. It was a simple question but it still fell under the blanket of “dramatic question” and I wanted to know the answer. Would they score the beer or not?
Remember, the more compelling the characters, the more interesting the question, the higher the stakes, and the more unexpected the execution, the more the scene will work. But the principles are always the same. Ask a dramatic question. We’ll keep reading til we get the answer.
So that’s today’s challenge. Write us an opening scene that hooks us, that makes us want to keep reading your script. You could write it right into the comments below, or provide a link to a PDF download of your scene. Upvote your favorite scenes and we’ll give props to the winner in tomorrow’s amateur friday review. Good luck!
p.s. If you have the extra time, let the scene-writers know if you’d continue reading their script after that first scene or put it down. If you’d put it down, let them know why. Remember, most writers rarely get feedback, so it’s hard for them to ever know what they’re doing wrong.
