A case study in how to create a sympathetic protagonist.

Genre: True Story/Sports
Premise: Set in the 50s, a young orphan girl must rise out of the confines of her orphanage to realize her unparalleled talent in the sport of chess.
About: If we are all looking at the best case scenario for what our proposed screenwriting career looks like, Scott Frank is a great comp. He wrote Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, and, most recently, Logan. He’s now teamed up with Allan Scott to adapt the 1984 Walter Tevis novel, The Queen’s Gambit, for Netflix.
Writer (pilot episode): Scott Frank
Details: 60 minutes

Here’s the rule.

If there is a Netflix show or movie that makes it to #1, which then gets dethroned due to some other new Netflix entry, but then makes it BACK to #1? It’s always a great show or movie.

This rule stands until it can be disproven!

That’s exactly what we have today. We have The Queen’s Gambit shooting up to #1 early, getting dethroned by some new Netflix drivel, then charging back to take the top spot again. Check mate, my dear.

Check. Mate.

I didn’t have a lot of interest in this show until I found out Scott Frank was involved (and heard a few of you championing it in the comments section). Frank is a hell of a writer. And now that I’ve seen the pilot, you get a really clear look at what good writing does for a show. Cause everything else at Netflix is so far down the ladder, Queen’s Gambit is looking like Chinatown. If you’re a writer, you’ll definitely want to check it out. Especially if you struggle with writing compelling characters that readers root for.

Beth Harmon is 9 years old when her parents die in a car crash. Beth was in the car too but miraculously survived without a scratch. It’s not clear whether that’s a blessing or a curse. The next thing she knows, she’s thrust into an orphanage that has a pretty good vibe going. Oh, except for the fact that they force their girls to take tranquilizers every day. 1950s America had some radical ideas on how to raise our youth, that’s for sure.

Because Beth is high all the time, she stumbles around the grounds in a spaced out state. But she eventually finds her way to the basement where the janitor, an introspective sad man named Mr. Shaibel, plays chess games against himself. Beth asks him to teach her and while he’s reluctant at first, he soon realizes she has a generational talent for the game.

While Beth struggles to feel emotion after the loss of her parents, it’s clear she enjoys learning the game. Every night before bed, she takes a couple of the tranquilizers she hid, gets high, and envisions a chess board on her ceiling so she can go through all the possible game scenarios. It isn’t long before she’s easily beating Mr. Shaibel. This leads to Shaibel connecting Beth with a chess club friend who works at the high school. That friend asks Beth if she’d like to come play against some new competition. Sure, she says, and promptly beats the school’s ten best players… all at the same time.

Meanwhile, the state suddenly decommissions the use of tranquilizers on children, and Beth is besides herself. She’s come to depend on those pills and now she’s forced to be stone cold sober. Determined to keep her high going, Beth sneaks into the back room where the pills are kept, and jams a large handful of them down her throat. Just as the headmaster reaches the room, Beth OD’s. End of episode.

If there is a super-hack to screenwriting – a singular element that ensures screenplay success – it is a sympathetic protagonist, someone we care about and who we want to see succeed.

If you do that right, it feels to the reader like they know the person. Which means you’ve broken the 4th wall. Of course we want to see them succeed. We feel like we know them!

Unfortunately, the formula for writing that character is elusive. Making your hero funny and giving them a ‘save the cat’ moment will make us care about them, yes. But it’s the degree to which we care about them that matters. If we only “kind of” care, then we’re only “kind of” interested in what happens to them.

And since we’re all so movie savvy, we don’t react well to cliche versions of these constructions. For example, everybody can tell you the reasons why Indiana Jones is [arguably] the most popular movie hero ever. Yet every time someone tries to clone those aspects of his character (charismatic, sarcastic, rebellious, roguish), it doesn’t work.

So how do we create a hero that audiences truly care about? The Queen’s Gambit is a great example of how to pull it off. First, Scott Frank creates a sympathetic situation. Beth loses both of her parents in a car crash. I’m going to come back to that car crash in a minute because I find car crash backstories to be cliche. But Frank does something to make it work which I’ll explain.

In regards to the sympathetic situation of losing your parents, there’s one extra thing you need to do if you want us to really care about that character. Which is this: SHE DOESN’T FEEL SORRY FOR HERSELF. That is so pivotal, I can’t emphasize it enough. Where so many writers get it wrong is they create a character who has experienced trauma or loss… and then they double down and have them feel sorry for themselves. The secret ingredient to creating a sympathetic protagonist through trauma/loss is making sure they don’t lean into that loss and play the victim. We don’t root for those people. I don’t know the science behind it but we just don’t.

And it doesn’t have to be exactly like Beth. Beth isn’t the most joyous person. She’s pretty even keel. But you can have your character be more joyous, depending on the genre and story. The main thing is don’t allow them to be sorry for themselves. We like people who fall down but keep getting up and trying. Not people who fall down and start crying and say they can’t do it anymore.

There’s one more thing you need to do to really kick your character into high gear. It’s not easy to define but I’ll try. You need to introduce one (although more than one is fine) extra element into your character that is offbeat in some way – that takes the character further away from the generic version that everybody else writes. Cause I’ve read a ton of “prodigy” scripts and, trust me, 99% of the time, everybody writes the same prodigy character. You need a mutation if they’re going to feel real.

That comes in The Queen’s Gambit when a fellow orphan asks Beth what the last words her mom said to her were. We then do a brief flashback from within the car, right before it crashes, and the mom says to Beth in a sad defeated tone, “Close your eyes.” Right then we realize the crash wasn’t an accident. It was a full blown murder-suicide attempt.

Before this revelation, it was just another “parents die in a car accident” backstory. But when we see that the mom was actually trying to kill them all, then it becomes a lot more sinister, and creates feelings from the daughter that are way more complicated. A single feeling (sadness) is often boring. But two conflicting feelings (sadness and anger) can ignite a character, since it places them in a constant state of conflict. This was the thing that elevated the character, in my eyes. She truly felt different after that.

In addition to that, Frank does what I tell you guys to do all the time – make unconventional choices throughout your story. Turning your 9 year old heroine into a full-blown drug addict was very much an unexpected choice. And even the orphanage itself – which was a safe and loving place, for the most part – was an unconventional choice, seeing as 9 out of 10 writers would’ve turned the headmistress into Miss Hannigan.

My only issue with the show so far is that it isn’t clear if the drugs help her play chess better or she’s just hooked on them and needs them to feel good. I’ll be disappointed if she needs them in order to play well.

But regardless, I thought this was strong! Nice to see a good show on Netflix again!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Is there better actor catnip than the tortured genius? There isn’t an actor in the world who doesn’t want to play that role. So if you’ve got an idea with a tortured genius in it? Go ahead and write it. You’ll have WME, CAA, and UTA kicking down your door to get their client attached.

I spent the last couple of days almost exclusively reading contest submissions. They’re never-ending! Sometimes I ask myself, “Why did you sign up for this again?” But then a good script will come along and the negative voices quiet down and I remember exactly why I signed up for this, praise the lord, Hallelujah. Today, I thought I’d dedicate an article to some of my most recent contest submission observations. Hopefully, these help a few people out.

1 – The best reads are the ones where I forget I’m reading something because I’m so into what’s happening. I rarely encounter this, though, since, at the beginning of a screenplay, most writers are focused on setting things up (the characters, the setting, the plot). I’ve beaten this horse to death but it’s clearly not getting through so I’ll say it again. When you start writing your script, start from a place of, ‘I’m going to hook the reader,” not from a place of, “I’ve got to set everything up.” The former is the only chance you have at keeping the reader around.

2 – There is one exception to this rule. If you’re not writing an entertaining scene, you must be building towards an entertaining scene and the reader has to know it. Let’s say you’re writing a sports movie. You don’t have to start with an entertaining game. But you should start with a buildup towards that game. Mention the game. Convey how important it is. Introduce the quarterback who’s injured. The doctor tells him he won’t be able to play. If you do this well, the reader will want to stick around to see the game. This is relevant not just for the beginning of your script, but for the whole thing. You don’t have to entertain the reader every second of your story. But if you’re not entertaining them, you have to be building towards the next entertaining sequence.

3 – If I’m not allowed to set anything up, how do I set everything up? – I didn’t say you couldn’t set up your story. Only that entertaining the reader must take priority over set up. I would suggest coming up with a great scene idea irregardless of whether it’s an ideal scene to set everything up in. Your only focus in coming up with that scene should be in entertaining the reader. Once you’ve done the important part – written an entertaining scene – then go back and figure out how to work in your set up.

4 – What if I have a lot of set up? – Then maybe you should think about simplifying your plot. Lots of set up means lots of exposition. The more exposition there is in your script, the bigger the chance of boring the reader. All this stuff is interconnected, guys. You simplify your story so you don’t need a lot of set up so you don’t need a lot of exposition so your story is more focused on entertainment.

5 – What’s wrong with set up exactly? – The problem with set up is that it FEELS LIKE SET UP. When a writer is in “set up this character” mode, it feels to the reader like you’re setting up a character. If it feels that way, we’re not inside your story. We’re outside of it, watching you set up your character. Newsflash. You want us INSIDE your story. The more entertaining the scene, the less likely we’re going to notice that you’re setting up your character. It’s easier to hide that stuff if we’re enamored with your wonderfully entertaining scene. But if you start a scene off with the goal of “setting up my hero,” there’s a good chance we’re going to realize that that’s exactly what you’re doing. Go watch the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Probably one of the best scenes ever at setting up a character. But do you ever notice he’s being set up. Of course not. Because the scene’s so darn entertaining!

Note: I changed my approach and started reading loglines before reading entries.
6 – Loglines tell me if someone is a serious screenwriter or not – Loglines suck. There’s no two ways about. How do you condense an entire movie down to a single sentence? It’s impossible. However, what I’ve found, with 99% accuracy, is that the good writers know how to write a logline and the bad writers do not. I think what’s going on here is that the people who are dedicated to mastering this craft and putting in the time required to do so, eventually learn how to write a logline by necessity. They don’t like it. But they realize it’s a tool that helps other people get a sense of their script and therefore they must figure it out. I can’t tell you how many loglines I read and say, “This script is going to be bad.” Then I open the script and, what do you know, it’s bad. Get help on your loglines, guys. From me or a writer friend or someone around here. A lot of you are hanging yourselves before the reader has even opened the script.

7 – Utilize everything at your disposal to create memorable characters – Most writers do the bare minimum when introducing a character. Heck, out of every 10 scripts I read, half of them will describe a character in less than one word (i.e. skittish). There are lots of options you can use to introduce a character in an interesting way. The trick is to focus on the things your character HAS CONTROL OVER. These were choices they made. And we can get a good sense of a character by their choices. Their posture. Their clothing. Their hairstyle. Their car. Their mannerisms. If we’re in their home when we meet them, the way they’ve decorated the room. “JOHN, 55, dressed head-to-toe in Gucci, his thinning black-dyed hair slicked back with too much product, answers his bedazzled phone.” See how much you can convey about a person with this strategy?

8 – Nothing should ever go according to plan in a screenplay – There are a lot of scripts out there written by writers who’ve been writing for 5, 6, 7, even 10 years that are pretty good but not good enough. These writers know everything that they’re “supposed to do.” So their scripts have a professional sheen to them. But what I’ve found with a lot of these scripts is that the writers have story tunnel vision. They know where their character has to start. They know where their character has to end. So there’s this inevitability to everything that happens in between. Nothing comes up that’s truly a problem for the characters. What you should be doing is making sure the plan is constantly being interrupted. Things are popping up that zig and zag the story in ways that weren’t originally intended. I’ll give you an example from Star Wars. The whole Luke Skywalker Obi-Wan Kenobi Han Solo objective is to get to Alderran. So they get there and… it’s gone. Talk about things not going according to plan. Now what? There needs to be a part of your brain dedicated to repeatedly asking the question, “What if this crazy thing happened here?” That should give you a steady stream of interruptions that will keep your story fresh.

9 – Multiple character arcs – I notice that a lot of writers create one character arc in their entire script. It’s like, “Phew, I’m glad I’m done with that.” But if you want to add some turbo to your script, arc several characters. I’ll never forget listening to the Notting Hill (a movie with 7 or 8 character arcs) director’s commentary and whoever was on there with the writer, Richard Curtis, gasped at one point late and said, “Jesus, Richard. You even gave the restaurant a bloody character arc!” That’s what good writers do. Movies are vehicles to explore change. So don’t limit yourself to your hero.

10 – Don’t despair if your script isn’t loved by a reader – It’s important to remember that when a reader dislikes your script, it isn’t always your fault. The writing may not be that writer’s thing. The reader might even think that the concept is good and the writing is solid. But that doesn’t matter if it’s not their thing. I’m going to use a weird analogy to make my point. I once dated a girl who had this friend who didn’t like me. She didn’t have a reason not to like me. I tried everything in my power to make her like me. Nothing worked. One day I finally confronted her and I said, “Why do you hate me so much?” She said, “I don’t hate you. I just don’t get you.” There will always be people who don’t get you just as there will always be people who don’t get your writing. It makes sense when you think about it. All writing has personality baked into it. Your voice is in there. So if someone doesn’t like that voice, they’re not going to like your script. I say this because every twenty entries, I’ll come across a script that’s well-written and has a good concept, yet the personality of the writing is sooooo not my thing (for example, there are virtually zero Scorsese clones that I’m going to like – I dislike that writing style so much). So don’t get down if your script isn’t beloved by someone. Keep sending it out and you’ll eventually find that person who gets you.

Jesse and Walter White had lots of great free-flowing conversations with each other.

In my attempts to finish all the Last Great Screenplay Contest entries by my target date of October 31st, I’ve found myself reading a lot of bad dialogue lately. But not normal bad. Bad in a specific way. A lot of the dialogue I read in amateur work is STILTED. There’s no life to it. It reads rote, logical, robotic.

Which makes sense if you understand screenwriting.

When a writer goes into a dialogue scene, they often have a preconceived notion of how the dialogue is going to go. For example, if Margaret and her husband, Darryl, need to discuss selling the house, you have a sense of what that conversation is going to look like before you’ve written it. Therefore, the dialogue is just a matter of dictation. You place down on the page what’s in your head. “We need to get the house up on the MLS before the end of the month.” “I know.” “Well, then we need to take pictures.” “We have pictures.” “The ones that Joan took? She took those on her iPhone. We need professional pictures.”

Notice how this is logical information being exchanged (and bland information at that). There’s a reason for that. As a writer, you see the scene BEFORE IT’S HAPPENED. But real people experience moments AS THEY’RE HAPPENING. This fundamentally changes how words come out of peoples’ mouths.

As a writer, all you’re thinking about is conveying the information properly so you can get from point A to point B. As such, your dialogue will reflect this. It will almost feel like Character B knows what Character A is going to say before he says it. And that’s because she does. You, the writer, are Character A and B so you’re subconsciously setting up questions and answers that the other character already knows.

Meanwhile, in real life, Character A doesn’t know what Character B is going to say. They might have an idea. But they don’t know exactly what they’re going to say. This is why real-life conversation tends to have more energy than movie dialogue. It’s alive. It’s evolving second by second. Therefore, you want to try and capture truthful exchange in your dialogue by any means possible.

One of the ways to do this is through a “free dialogue pass.” This is where you erase all of the artificial motivations that you, the writer, are imposing on the scene, and think of the scene more as how it would occur in real life. In other words, Character A doesn’t need an overt goal going into the scene. There shouldn’t be any time restriction on the scene (most dialogue scenes are about 2 and a half pages long. You’d get rid of that). And, most importantly, don’t have any preconceived notions about what the characters need to say to each other or where the scene needs to go. It’s going to go WHEREVER THE CHARACTERS TAKE IT. That’s a scary thought for a lot of writers. They want to control what the characters say. But your need to control the dialogue is what’s resulting in it being so stilted. I mean, when has anything that’s overtly controlled ended up feeling natural?

Your “free dialogue pass” can last as long as you want it to. It can last 20 pages. The idea is to get a natural flow of dialogue that you can then mold into something more structured. If you find a six-line exchange between two characters that’s really clever in your “free dialogue pass,” and that’s the only part of the exercise that makes it into the final scene? That’s a win. Because the other option is only having the boring structured exchange of information that comes from controlled dialogue.

In order to get the most out of this exercise, I want you to understand just how many options are open to you when Character A says something to Character B. Because I think that most writers believe there are only a couple of responses. And, usually, those responses are responses they’ve seen characters say in other movies. If you really want your dialogue to feel fresh, you need to open your mind to the fact that there are thousands of potential responses to every line of dialogue. And if you’re only going with the two or three most obvious ones, I got bad news. Readers think your dialogue sucks. You need to get out of your comfort zone. You need to take more chances.

So, I’m going to give you a single line of dialogue. Character A says to Character B, “What’s your favorite color?” Okay. Now. What’s the first response that comes to mind for that question? Well, let’s see just how many ways another character can respond to this.

1 – The character can simply answer the question. “Blue.” This is usually the least interesting answer.

2 – They can reject the question. “None of your business.”

3 – They can respond with a question of their own. “What if I like more than one?”

4 – They can ignore the rules. “Blue, Yellow, Aqua Green, and the Rainbow.”

5 – They can flirt. “The color of your eyes.”

6 – They can flirt better. “That’s personal information you’re requesting. What do I get if I tell you?”

7 – They can choose not to answer at all.

8 – They can lie. “Orange.” (Knowing that the other person’s favorite color is orange)

9 – They can make an assumption about why the other character is asking the question. “Ooh, are you psychologically evaluating me? You want to know my sign next?”

10 – They can call the other person out. “Really? That’s the best question you can come up with?”

11 – They can answer with a song. “Blue mooooooooon. You saw me standing alooooone.”

12 – They can get irrationally upset. “Why the f%#@ would you ask me that?”

13 – They can be playful. “Well that’s offensive.” “Why?” “Cause I’m colorblind.”

14 – They can make a demand. “You tell me first.”

15 – They can tell a story that leads to their answer. “Earlier this year I was driving up PCH at sunset and it had just rained. The clouds were parting right as the sun was setting and it caused this filtered orange-purple glow to settle over the coast for all of 30 seconds. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Whatever that color was? That’s my favorite color.”

16 – They can make a joke. “The color of money, of course.”

17 – They can be preoccupied with something else. “Did I leave my wallet in the car?”

18 – They can misunderstand. “Your favorite color? Why would I know your favorite color?” “No, YOUR favorite color.”

19 – They can opt out of the conversation. “Can we talk about something else?”

20 – They can become Movie Trailer Voice Guy. “IN A WORLD OF ENDLESS COLOR, ONE WOMAN MUST KNOW HER DATE’S FAVORITE FOR SOME REASON.”

The idea here is to break out of the logical thinking trap that is required to map out a screenplay. We’re often in “structure” mode when screenwriting and that’s the last place you want to be with dialogue. Allow yourself to be free. And when you’re inside of those scenes, stay away from common answers. Dialogue tends to get the most interesting when something unexpected is said. I’ll give you the perfect example because it happened last night on The Bachelorette.

It’s early on in the season so the Bachelorette, Clare, doesn’t know anybody yet and one of the guys, Brandon, sits down with her for the first time. These carefully orchestrated sit-downs are usually boring because the conversations are decided upon ahead of time. So I was falling asleep, not really paying attention. Then Clare asks, “So why did you want to meet me?” And Brandon says, in a completely sweet and innocent manner, blushing as he says it, “Well, I thought you were gorgeous.” And there’s this pause before Clare’s eyebrows furl and she says, “That’s the only thing you’re interested in? How I look?” In a split second, a boring conversation became contentious, with Brandon trying to dig himself out of the hole he’d just dug.

That’s what you’re trying to do with dialogue. You’re trying to find those lines and those moments that bring an energy to the conversation. You can’t do that if you already have pre-established conversations in your head or your characters are always responding to each other with expected responses. Dialogue will always be difficult. But it becomes less so when you stop trying to control it. Try these suggestions out and watch your dialogue come alive!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: The leaders of a planet journey to a new planet in a quest to gain control of a rare powerful substance called “spice.”
About: Dune is one of the biggest gambles in movie history. A 250+ million dollar production based on a 50 year old novel catered heavily to adults. It is dense and heady, two words studios detest. Nevertheless, they gave the film to “Blade Runner: 2049” director Denis Villeneuve and stacked it with the best cast this side of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Oscar Isaac, Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Mamoa, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista. The film was supposed to come out next month. But they were forced to push it to next fall due to the Corona virus. The original adaptation was done by screenwriting superstar Eric Roth. In a strange Hollywood twist, Jon Spaihts left a separate Dune TV series to write the final draft of the feature film.
Writer: Eric Roth and Denis Villeneuve (current revisions by Jon Spaihts) (based on the novel by Frank Herbert)
Details: 134 pages

My oh so conflicted Dune heart.

There isn’t a property I haven’t wanted to like more than Dune. A serious sprawling sci-fi fantasy story is something I should theoretically love. And yet every time I’ve tried to read the novels, I fantasize about getting a lobotomy.

But here’s what I’m hoping with the Dune script. I’m hoping that Roth and Spaihts have stripped away all of that boring muckety muck from the novel so that we get a cool stripped down enjoyable story. I don’t need 50 pages of backstory on how Greta Mogf’flox came to find her love for the art of noxela, that of the space ballet.

Give me a clear story, make it entertaining, and I’m in. Did that happen?

16 year old Paul belongs to a House that, I think, runs his planet. But Paul, along with his father, Duke Leto, and his mother, the prostitute Lady Jessica, only care about one thing – the SPICE! The spice is, essentially, a drug that allows for you to live a heightened life. It makes you healthier, smarter, even supernatural, since some people can use it to see into the future.

The problem is that the spice only grows on one planet – Arrakis. So all the surrounding planets come there to mine it. This is where things get confusing so I apologize if I get this wrong. I believe the people of Arrakis extend an invite to Duke and Paul, to come have a bigger controlling interest in the spice. They’re actually inviting a lot of Houses from neighboring planets there, including the House of Harkonnen, led by Duke’s rival, the 600 pound BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN.

Once they get to the planet, everything seems cool, if a little tense. When Duke and Paul learn that some spice miners are stranded in the desert with a potential giant Dune worm after them, they grab a hover ship and go save them. This is where they learn that mining spice is dangerous. At any moment a super worm can eat you up. I guess they like spice too!

Eventually, Paul, Duke, and Lady Jessica, learn that they’re being played by Baron Harkonnen! Harkonnen throws Paul and Jessica out in the middle of the desert while torturing Duke. He wants Duke to know that he’s eliminating his bloodline so that the Harkonnen can be the sole rulers of the spice! Talk about a spicy offer.

Back in the desert, Paul and his mom must avoid giant worms in the middle of the night. They barely survive until their clan’s top warrior, Duncan Idaho (Jason Mamoa), rescues them. They must get back to the city to stop the Harkonnen (along with the evil Emperor’s bloodthirsty army) from turning the planet of Dune into their own personal spice playground. Will they succeed? No one knows except for Timothee Chalamet!!!

I’m going to be straightforward with you here. This movie is in a LOT of trouble.

The issue is simple. It’s boring. At least for the first half of the movie it is. From there, it has some moments but mostly stays boring.

This was always my worry with Dune. I could never get into the book because I’d get bored quickly. The 1984 movie version of Dune was also boring. And now we have this film, which, even with the talent in front of and behind the camera, is stuck drawing from the same source material. So you have to wonder, is this story just boring?

Maybe we can answer that by asking what the screenwriting definition of boring is. Well, boring is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But there are certain concepts and setups and narrative choices that lend themselves to a more objectively boring experience. And Dune checks a lot of those boxes.

One, you have a ton of mythology and world-building. The more mythology there is, the more exposition you’re going to need. That means characters explaining things. The more your characters are explaining things, the less they’re ACTING UPON THINGS. Movies are about character ACTIONS. Not about WHAT THEY SAY. So if you’re doing something that’s keeping your characters from acting upon the world, you’re keeping them from engaging in a good story.

Next, you have a plot that moves slowly. There aren’t a lot of significant plot beats in your script. We cut from scene to scene without much forward movement in plot. Another way to put it is, after reading the tenth scene, a reader shouldn’t feel like they’re no closer to the purpose of the story than after reading the first scene.

Next, you have a lot of SAT scenes (Standing Around Talking). You guys know much I hate SAT scenes. It’s nearly impossible to keep an audience engaged when the only thing characters are doing is standing around talking to each other. And that’s the first 15 scenes of this script. It’s one SAT scene after another.

The only way this is going to work for audiences is if you’re one of those people who really loves deep rich mythologies. To you, it’s fun learning about this world. You don’t need a story to keep you engaged. But that’s a small percentage of moviegoers. Most moviegoers want a story.

Look no further than Dune’s fantasy movie cousin, Lord of the Rings. That film does it right. It sets up the mythology but it establishes the stakes, what the goal is, the journey ahead, how dangerous it would be, who needs to be involved, all very quickly. We then move into the journey, which ensures that the plot is always bopping along.

The first action scene in Dune doesn’t happen until the mid-point and I couldn’t even tell you what it was about. They hear some miners are in trouble. So they race out and save them. Encounter a sand worm. And survive.

Um, okay. That’s a scene. But here’s the problem. When they come back from that scene, EVERYTHING IS EXACTLY THE SAME. The story hasn’t moved forward. All that’s happened is they went off on this little side quest to save some people and now it’s back to bickering with the bureaucrats. Why am I 65 pages in to a 130 page script and I still don’t know the goal of our main characters??

Once Barron Von Fatso starts deceiving Paul and his family, things get a *little* more interesting. But not much. At least someone is finally acting (it’s a villain instead of a hero but, hey, something is better than nothing). But this plotline had its own issues. For example, we’re told from the start that Barron is up to something. So his deception was the most predictable twist ever.

Then, the plot is still static. Everything is happening in this one 50 mile range. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all standing around, ordering things, yelling at each other, people are sent out to the desert, they come back in from the desert. Contrast this with Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or even yesterday’s film, Love and Monsters. We’re moving forward in these movies. Dune, this purportedly giant universe, keeps all its characters in this tiny little area and has them play hide and seek with each other.

Ultimately, Dune is doomed by an old Scriptshadow mainstay. Burden of Investment. A high Burden of Investment is when the amount of information the reader is required to remember so outweighs the reward of remembering that information, that the experience doesn’t feel worth it. Or a more simplistic way to put it is, when a screenplay feels more like work than play, you’ve failed.

I will always respect the world-building that Frank Herbert did. I know how long that takes. But you still have to know how to tell a story. I’m not convinced that Herbert knew how to do that. Which is why everyone has such a tough time adapting this material.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Side-quests. Avoid “side-quests” in screenplays. They may be fun to do in video games. But if you’re sending your characters off on a 15 page sequence (12% of your entire movie), it better move the story forward. Here, we get Paul and his father going to save some stranded miners. Sure, it’s an okay scene. Yay for our heroes being heroic. But it didn’t move the plot along one inch. Contrast this with Obi-Wan and Luke going to Mos Eisley. That sequence moves the story forward because they’re trying to find a pilot in order to get to Alderaan. It actually gets them one step closer to their final goal. Maybe that’s why this script is a big fat fail. There’s no goal!!! Or, if there is, it’s buried underneath so much gobbledy-gook that only hardcore Dune lovers have put in enough effort to figure it out.

Genre: Period/Supernatural
Premise: (from Black List) A young slave girl named Lena has telekinetic powers she cannot yet control on a plantation in the 1800s.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. The writer, Sontenish Myers, an NYU grad, received the Tribeca Film Grant to make the film. The Tribeca Film Grant provides film budget grants for under-represented groups.
Writer: Sontenish Myers
Details: 114 pages

The other day I was talking to someone who is not in the screenwriting world. They like movies but they’re by no means obsessed with them like you and I are. Anyway, she was curious about my job, particularly when it came to deciphering the difference between a good script and a bad script.

“It’s all subjective, right?” She said.

This is not the first person I’ve run into who believed that the only difference between one script and another is the subjective nature of who reads it. The variable these people never consider is that a script must meet a basic standard of quality before it can be judged subjectively against other scripts. If it has not met that standard, then it is objectively not as good as other professional screenplays.

I don’t know if everyone here remembers Trajent Future and his bullet time dreams. But that classically bad amateur script was objectively worse than its professional brethren.

The question I then get is, how do you objectively know the difference between a beginner script and a professional script? Well, that answer is long and varied because there are a lot of things one must learn to write a professional-level script. But we’re going to go over a couple of ways to spot a problem script today to give you a feel for how readers assess these things. Let’s take a look.

The year is 1802 and 11 year old Lena is a slave on a cotton plantation with her mother, Alice. We learn early on that Lena can make things levitate. Like bottles or buckets of water. As a kid, she has fun with the power despite the fact that her mother keeps reminding her that if anybody finds out about this, they’re dead meat.

One day the decision is made to bring Lena inside and make her a house slave. So she and her mother are split up. Lena then tries to befriend all the other house slaves (all of whom are older) to mixed results. She also struggles to keep her telekinesis under control.

Then, one day, when she’s out getting water, a mysterious black woman approaches her and takes her back to her secret underground home. She’s seen Lena use her powers and wants to help her hone them. This interaction leads to the best exchange in the script. “Why do you live down here?” “Down here I’m free, up there I ain’t.” “Freedom is a lot smaller than I thought.”

In addition to Lena’s weekly telekinesis lessons, she also finds a 14 year old slave – Koi – who ran away from a neighboring plantation. Lena introduces Koi to the mysterious underground witch woman who feeds him and prepares him for his next journey.

After weeks of daily chores and strengthening friendships with the other house slaves, Lena’s worst nightmare comes true – her mother is sold. Lena slips away to Koi and the Telekinesis Witch and demands that they do something – use their powers to get her back. But will the two help Lena? Or do they consider the task too risky?

“Stampede” is an example of a common beginner concept mistake. A writer will give a character a power and believe that that power has given them their story. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Giving Lena telekinesis doesn’t give you a screenplay. All you’ve done is give your character a trait, not unlike the ability to play baseball or be a really good businesswoman. What about your story? What is going to happen that will make that trait interesting? That will put that trait to the test? Most beginner writers don’t know the difference between the two and therefore cobble together a disjointed narrative while occasionally going back to the power in the hopes that it will do some heavy story lifting.

Look at Get Out. The beginner screenwriter version of that is a black man dating a white woman. That’s it. The writer hasn’t thought beyond that. But the veteran screenwriter knows that all he’s done is set up the characters. He still has to come up with a story. So he adds that the girl is taking the boyfriend to meet her parents for the weekend and something bad is going on at their home. We never get anything like that in Stampede. It’s a narrative with no singular focus.

To be honest, I think this script would’ve been a thousand times better without telekinesis. The telekineses only serves to distract from the more poignant story about a young slave. It also makes the reader keep waiting for the telekinesis to become a bigger part of the story. And since it’s only a minor component, we never get that payoff. That makes the power a story distraction rather than a story ally.

Also, it seemed like there were better directions to take the story. But, in another common beginner mistake, the writer always took the path of least resistance – the path that made it easiest to write. You want to do the opposite. You want to go in those directions that are scary for you and harder on your character. If the slave owners would’ve discovered Lena’s powers, for example, maybe they try to use them for their own nefarious goals. Teaming up a slave and slave owners is where you’re going to find those messy but more interesting storylines.

But the biggest problem with the script is that the narrative isn’t purposeful. There is no goal. There are little, if any, stakes. And there’s definitely no urgency. Combined with the fact that the hero is stuck in one location, the story feels passive. There’s nothing for the characters to do. This leads to the writer coming up with all these small side stories, like the witch, like the 14 year old slave boy, like the friendships with the other slaves, that have no narrative thrust. There are no engines beneath these stories so whenever we’re participating in them, we’re asking ourselves what the point is.

How do you give a script narrative thrust? Simple. You create a big goal with high stakes attached. At around page 90 in this script, Lena’s mother gets bought by another slave owner and taken away. I’m not going go into some of the ancillary problems with this plot choice (we hadn’t seen the mom for 65 pages so we didn’t feel anything when she was sold). But what you could’ve done that would’ve been a lot better for the plot is to have the mother bought on page 25, the event that forces Lena to be moved into the house. Now you have a clear goal – Find and reunite with her mother again. It really is as simple as that. And that doesn’t mean you have to send her off on the journey. The entire movie can be her planning her escape and how she’s going to get to her mother and then the final act is her executing the plan.

Finally, you need your super-power to connect to your story better. Or else it just feels random. And that’s how this power felt. What does lifting bottles up have to do with anything in this subject matter? There’s literally zero connection – plot wise or theme wise. This tends to be another beginner mistake. The young screenwriter gets so hung up on the thing that they personally think is cool (in this case, telekinesis), that they never consider whether it’s relevant to the story they’re actually telling.

Last week, with The Paper Menagerie, the mother character had the power to make origami animals that came alive. That power had a ton to do with the story. It was cultural. It was the only way she knew how to connect with her son. They were a poor family so those animals were the only toys he had. They were also his only friends. And the animals ended up having messages within them that gave us our surprise ending. In other words, the power was organically connected to the story. We never got that here.

This script was just way too messy for me. I’m kinda shocked it made The Black List.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Period stories tend to work best when they’re set during a time of transition. All I could think while reading this was how much more intense it would’ve been had it been set in the months leading up to the end of slavery. The slave owners would’ve been more on edge. There’s uncertainty in the air. There’s more anger and, therefore, more potential for violence. This script was definitely missing an edge. That could’ve provided it.