Last week, a commenter brought up a concern that I hear a lot from screenwriters. He was upset that A Quiet Place did so well at the box office when it so clearly cheated its way through its second half.

For starters, a noise-making machine (a newborn baby) was thrown into the mix with zero consequence. Also, there was no reason to go save the kids at the end. They’d been trained to deal with this situation and knew what to do. Or someone brought up (spoiler) that the dad sacrifices himself by screaming when he could’ve easily hurled his axe at the nearby tool shed, which would’ve made just as much noise, and gotten all three family members out of there safely.

The writer was making the argument that Hollywood allows professional writers way more rope than amateurs. Huge gaps in logic are overlooked if you’ve got an IMDB page. Whereas if you’re an amateur, you get points docked if your slugline isn’t formatted properly. I’m sure all of you have felt this way at one point or another: “Why do they get to get away with it but I don’t?”

Before I answer that, I want to say that this is a terrible attitude to have in general. You’re playing the victim. And when you play the victim, you subconsciously build a narrative where success is unlikely. You’ve convinced yourself that an evil system is keeping you down. And therefore, you will do your best to live up to that scenario. So my first piece of advice would be to NEVER blame anyone for your lack of success other than yourself. If it’s all you, that means you have the power to fix the problem and change your circumstances. If it’s all on the system, there’s nothing you can do so you might as well quit.

Now, I can unequivocally say that nobody in Hollywood is personally targeting you. Nobody says, “Oh, they’re just Amateur Screenwriter X. Therefore, nothing they ever write is good enough.” Hollywood doesn’t care about who you are. All they care about is making money or winning awards. That’s it. If your script can bring them one of those two things, you could be the homeless man who stands outside my supermarket every morning asking me if I want to join him on a trip to Neptune and they will still buy your screenplay.

As for the technical answer to your question, I want you to write down this mathematical formula: Scripts are graded on the INVERSE RELATIONSHIP between the quality of the concept and the quality of the execution. What that means is that the less impressive a concept is, the more impressive the execution needs to be.

So if you’re not getting good reactions, you’re probably failing in one of those two areas. In other words, your “A Quiet Place” equivalent concept didn’t sink because readers are judging your mistakes more harshly than they do professionals. It sunk because your concept was inferior to A Quiet Place, and therefore your execution (plot holes and such) was being graded more harshly.

This leads us into a larger conversation about concept. Concept, while not as big as it used to be, is still king in the spec world. I’m not talking about the adaptation world, where writers are getting paid before they write the script. I’m talking about the spec world, where the idea alone must stand out enough to get the attention of people with money to spend. And this is where things get a little confusing. If a concept is super-awesome – there’s something clearly special about it – that is the one time a producer will abandon their concern about subpar execution and take a chance on the material, as they believe they’ll be able to hire their writers to fix it.

This is why, sometimes, you’ll read a script with a big flashy concept that’s poorly executed and wonder why someone bought it. It’s because a producer loved the idea, knew they could market it, and figured they’d fix the script problems along the way. These are the sales that confuse aspiring screenwriters the most because they can’t understand how a script that’s so poorly executed sold. Well, now you know.

But getting back to what we can control, if your script isn’t clicking with people, either the concept is lame or the execution is bad. And if you want to know which of these two is more important, it’s the concept. That’s because you don’t need to nail the execution to get people in the theater on that critical first weekend.

Now, let’s assume that your concept is decent but not great. This means you have to nail your execution to have a shot. But what does “execution” mean? That’s a pretty broad term. Execution includes everything from plot to theme to dialogue to structure. However, the number 1 thing producers and agents are talking about when they mention “execution” is the characters and the relationships.

Do we feel something for these people? That’s the big one. Because if we do, that acts as a deodorant for plot and logic holes. Keep in mind that while we assess screenwriting daily here, the average audience member has no idea how screenplays work. All they know is how the script makes them feel. And if they feel positively towards the characters, they won’t notice plot holes as much.

Nowhere is this more evident than in A Quiet Place. The writers and Krasinski made us fall in love with that family early on using a combination of intense loss (losing their son) and intense conflict (how that loss has driven a wedge between key members of the family).

We’ve gone through such a range of emotions by the end of that movie that unless you’re a screenwriting geek who visits Scriptshadow, you don’t consider the fact that the dad could’ve thrown the axe at the shed and stayed alive in the process. All you’re thinking is, “How is everyone going to make it out of this okay?” And that’s what your job is as a screenwriter. It isn’t to create the PERFECT illusion. That’s not possible. It’s to create just enough of an illusion that the audience buys into the moment. And nailing the characters is the secret to covering up plot and logic holes.

So don’t whine. Don’t blame others. Don’t be a victim. If you want to sell a script, control what you can control. Get better at concept creation. Get better at character development. And get better at relationship development. If you get those three things right, you don’t have to be perfect with the other stuff. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I’m not advocating writing a sloppy script. But if you can get those three things right, that’s what’s most important. Good luck and happy writing!

Genre: Contained Thriller/Drama + Mystery Genre
Premise: (from Black List) A seemingly progressive suburban husband and wife renting their garage through AirBnB become suspicious of their Muslim guests. As they investigate their visitors, they unwittingly trigger events that will forever change the course of human history.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 8 votes. The co-writers, Travis Betz and Kevin Hamedani, have both written and directed their own work. However it’s mostly low-budget stuff you haven’t heard of before.
Writers: Travis Betz & Kevin Hamedani
Details: 113 pages

Zoe Kravitz for Kim?

When you get to the bottom of the Black List, you start encountering some dicey material. I mean, there is actually a script called, “Jihotties.” Want to know what it’s about? Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s about two women who catfish ISIS to “fund their startup” but get “more than they bargained for” when they’re recruited by the CIA as spies. Yeah, I don’t see myself reading that one anytime soon.

It’s always a risk when you get to the bottom of the barrel. But The Saviors sounded like it maybe possibly wasn’t bad.

Sean and Kim Harrison (a mixed couple, him white, her black) may still be living under the same roof. But their marriage is over. It’s gotten so ugly that every night Sean goes to sleep, he has weird nightmares of his wife divorcing him then walking outside into a desert wasteland.

A big problem is that Sean doesn’t have a job. That financial stress has widened cracks that already existed in the relationship. Luckily, he has a temporary idea. Turn the garage into an AirBnB!

This leads to their first tenants, Jahan and Amir Razi, muslim siblings who need a place to stay for 10 days while the house they’re moving into is being cleaned. Amir seems like a totally cool guy whereas Jahan is deaf and therefore stays in the background.

Right away, things get weird. Late at night a loud rumbling comes from the garage followed by a giant flash of blue light. This makes Sean curious, and because he doesn’t have anything else to do during the day, he does his best impression of Jimmy Stewart and starts watching the Razis.

Later, he accidentally opens up a package sent to Amir (he thought it was his) and finds blueprints to something. With the Vice-President doing a high-profile deal in the Seattle Space Needle next week, Sean becomes convinced that these AirB&B’ers are actually AirB&T’ers. As in T stands for Terrorists!

When he comes to Kim with his findings, she’s furious with him. She’s spent much of her life being discriminated against because of the color of her skin. She’s not going to do the same to other people.

But when Sean brings Kim evidence that the two lied about their future home, Kim starts to come around. The act of teaming up even puts a spark back into their marriage. But as the Razis start acting weirder and weirder, the two begin to wonder if this is a terrorist act or… god forbid… something worse.

I liked how this script started out, particularly after yesterday’s stinker, which took ages for anything to happen. This script is written more traditionally, with Jahan and Amir acting strange from the drop. Which means we’re pretty much hooked by page 10.

And I loved the choice to make this a broken marriage. If Sean and Kim had a perfect marriage, there’s no conflict in their interactions, and there’s no subtext either. That last one’s an advanced tip for you aspiring screenwriters. Because Sean and Kim have a broken marriage, when Sean brings to Kim his suspicions about the tenants, it’s not just some surface level disagreement. Each argument contains within it an unspoken argument about their marriage. That makes their conversations way more interesting.

There’s also POPULATION going on here. Populating your script is the act of adding subplots or extra characters or detail that FILLS UP YOUR SCRIPT. Yesterday’s script was the anti-population script. Absolutely NOTHING was going on other than advertised (the house being haunted), leaving the story feeling incredibly thin.

These two are getting divorced, which means they’re selling the house. The problem is, the basement ceiling has major water damage. Which means they need a quote. And once they get the quote, they find out it’s too much. And now they need to find a solution. So Sean is always consumed by that problem. It seems minor, but populating your script with these extra elements is what makes it feel like a FULLY REALIZED movie, and not just a one-sentence idea that’s been padded to death.

Everything was going so well on my Saviors flight that I didn’t even consider we might hit turbulence.

And then we hit turbulence.

The script started to get goofy. For example, Kim, who’s frustrated that Sean is acting so racist, decides to go to a bar to blow off steam. When she gets there, she sees that Amir is also there, in the corner! But not only that, he’s stolen and is reading her diary!

I’m sorry but diary-reading twists should not be present in a movie about terrorism. Save that one for the next Parent Trap remake.

Then, when Kim gets hard evidence that the people renting their garage are terrorists who are going to blow up the Seattle Needle, she reacts by excitedly telling her husband, “We should order pizza.”

The thing with this script is that it’s trying to comment on something very serious. Racism. Prejudice. Stereotyping. But it never stays sophisticated enough to make you believe it’s worthy of exploring those topics. If I find out that my neighbors are terrorists, I don’t order pizza.

I mean, well, maybe if I still lived in Chicago I would. But that’s besides the point.

You can’t really discuss this script in whole without discussing the ending. Unfortunately, the ending is a huge spoiler and I don’t want to put in the review. I will say that it’s a surprise. And it manages to add a lot to the themes explored in the film.

I’m just not sure it all comes together. It feels very, uh, forced. In other words, when it comes, you can feel the writers writing it. But hey, maybe it will fool people who haven’t read thousands of scripts before.

If you have a couple of hours to waste or you want to see how to update a classic idea (Rear Window), you could do worse. But things got too goofy for me to officially endorse this.

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

What I learned: It’s always more interesting in a two-hander mystery if the two characters disagree. It allows for conflict, which makes their scenes more entertaining. But it also allows the writer to play both sides of the fence, and by doing so, keep the reader off-balance. In other words, Sean can make a great point and we think, “Yes, they’re definitely terrorists.” But then Kim can make a point and it’s like, “Oh yeah, maybe she’s right.” If both characters are on the same page, you don’t get that.

What I learned 2: When presented with a situation where it doesn’t make sense why your characters wouldn’t just go to the cops, you can use this cheap trick. You have them go to the cops, but the cops are so busy, and the evidence is so weak, that they shrug you off. So that’s what happens here. When they think the Razis are terrorists for sure, they go to the FBI, and the FBI is like, “Right, so they light up the garage sometimes and they stole your diary. Come back to us when you have some real info.” I don’t love this solution, but it’s better than the characters not going to the cops (or in this case the FBI) at all.

Genre: Drama-Horror
Premise: A married pair of Sudanese refugees are granted a temporary stay in the UK that can become permanent if they can only avoid trouble, a task that becomes problematic when they move into a haunted house.
About: This project was held up for awhile due to a snafu with The Weinstein Company. But since there is no Weinstein Company anymore, they can finally make their film! Remi Weekes is a first time writer-director who’s made some noise around the UK with a couple of short films. This script made the Blood List last year.
Writer: Remi Weekes
Details: 93 pages

This one came recommended from a couple of sources so I was eager to check it out. I like scripts – especially genre scripts – that are able to take me to places I’ve never been before. This story about Sudanese refugees stuck in a haunted house felt refreshingly original. So all the arrows were pointing up on this one. Let’s find out if those arrows didn’t die of a heart attack due to a Scriptshadow jump scare.

When we meet Sudanese married couple Bol and Zainab, both 28, they’re sleeping in a detention center with hundreds of other refugees, all from different countries. The couple has escaped unimaginable horror in their home-country, Sudan, where villagers were being hacked to pieces on a daily basis.

The two win the equivalent of the lottery when they’re chosen for a six-month program to live in the UK. It’s made clear to them that they are not citizens until they finish the program without causing any trouble. They’re ecstatic. Being good for 6 months? A piece of cake.

The two are moved into a house in a blue-collar neighborhood and while the neighbors don’t seem very friendly, they feel lucky to have a home. And everything goes well for awhile. That is until Zainab starts seeing something around the house. A… creature. A creature that lives in the walls.

At first, Bol tells Zainab to tough it out. She can’t be going crazy on him. They could lose the house and get sent back to the hostels. But the truth is, Bol has begun seeing the creature as well. He keeps telling himself it’s a part of his imagination but deep down he knows it’s not.

During this time, we learn that the couple lost a daughter on the journey out of Sudan. The loss haunts Zainab. But Bol is over it. And he wants his wife to get over it too. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to link the creature living in the house with their lost daughter. The two are obviously connected. But if you dare think you know what the creature wants, guess again.

His House is the kind of script you get when you have a writer-director who’s better at the directing side than the writing side. Clearly, Weekes has a vision for this film, some of which he charts specifically in the script, as he tells you exactly where the camera will be placed and how it moves.

We also get plenty of amazing visuals here, such as Bol walking across the ocean in a dream, and then when we pan up and look down to see that the ocean is filled with billions of dead bodies to signify his countryman lost in the war.

But when it comes to the writing, there are a lot of problems with His House, the biggest of which is that very little happens. That’s because the story is thinner than a Blumhouse budget breakdown. And a lot of basic screenwriting mistakes are made.

For example, the characters have nothing to do. They just hang around the house waiting for the writer to come up with the next scary scene for them to participate in. Occasionally, Bol will leave for the day, but we have no idea where he goes. In any script, you want your characters to be active. You want them doing things, affecting the outside world. Both of these characters are passive and it makes for a very bland experience.

The dialogue is frustrating. There are no conversations in this script. Only conversation fragments. If two people speak, it’s for less than 30 seconds. And when characters do speak, they often use as few words as possible. “What is this?” “It’s the best I can do.” “This is wonderful.” “Wonderful.” “But maybe next time we can use the table.”

The reason this is problematic is because we leave tons of conversations feeling like nothing was accomplished, nothing was said. It’s as if conversations are only there to fill up space. I understand being understated and avoiding on-the-nose conversation. But you can go too far in the opposite direction, to the extent that words are noise. They mean nothing. And there were too many times here where that happened.

It’s also important to remember that there are two kinds of “not a lot happens” stories. There’s the good kind. And there’s the boring kind. You have to know the difference. Just putting two characters in a quiet scene to pass the time isn’t going to keep readers invested. Contrast this with A Quiet Place, whose concept is so powerful that even a quiet family game of monopoly can be heart-pounding, since we know that, at any second, someone can make a mistake and they’ll all be dead.

To be honest, I had so given up on this script by the time it hit the third act that I had to prop my head up with a series of pillows. But then something crazy happens. His House becomes a movie.

And what do you know? It’s because we leave that boring house and jump back to the Sudan run, where Bol and Zainab escape the country. It’s a harrowing sequence and all I could think about while reading it was, “Why isn’t THIS the movie?”

It also leads us to the big twist in the film (spoilers moving forward), where we’re watching these two make a run for it and we’re wondering, where is this daughter they kept crying about? She’s nowhere to be found. Then, as they’re approaching the last UN bus, which won’t let them on, Bol sees an abandoned little girl nearby, grabs her, and uses her to convince the bus to take them.

Later on, during a difficult part of the journey, they don’t really need the girl anymore and so they kind of let her go, which they suspect will lead to her death. So that’s the reason there’s this devil creature in the house. It’s punishing them for what they’ve done.

It’s a nice twist and a strong ending. Unfortunately, no matter how much I liked it, it couldn’t make up for the 70 prior pages where I could barely stay awake. It’ll be interesting to see how this movie does and if the director’s vision can blind audiences to the script’s problems. Then again, maybe they’ve improved the script since then. I hope so because this idea is unique and has potential.

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

What I learned: I know a script is in trouble when storylines are introduced then forgotten. That tells me the writer isn’t committed to his ideas. The script starts out with the neighbors bothering our couple, but then that gets kicked to the background before never being mentioned agin. Ultimately, it had nothing to do with the story anyway. So if you’re thinking about introducing a subplot into your script, either commit to it, or get rid of it completely. There’s nothing worse than a subplot stuck in no-man’s-land.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A PTSD-afflicted Marine must fight for his own survival when he finds himself held captive in the Alaskan wilds by a family with a horrifying secret.
Why You Should Read: This script has done well in some notable contests and I’d like to see how it fares in the AOW battlezone. Clocking in at a lean and mean ninety pages, Greenhorn is crammed with GSU, moves at a swift pace and has the kind of deeply flawed hero an audience wants to root for. Thanks in advance for the reads.
Writer: Ryan Lee
Details: 90 pages

Joe Keery for Cody??

It’s always fun talking about what you thought you were walking into before you read a script, especially in the context of Amateur Offerings. Because if I’m being honest, I thought 1500 Degrees Fahrenheit was going to win. It was a fresh take on a thriller as opposed to being yet another monster or contained thing. And it had that emotional element built right into its DNA with the family struggling for survival. Yet poor 1500 barely managed 2 votes, giving it a paltry 1502 degrees.

In the case of Greenhorn, I thought it would finish near the bottom. I actually threw it in the mix as an afterthought, figuring it’d be lucky to get one vote. Why? A couple of reasons. For starters, whenever I see “PTSD-afflicted” anything, I groan. But I groan twice if it’s a marine. Can’t we have one marine come out of a war who ISN’T afflicted with PTSD? Just one? As for the rest of the logline, it’s a mish-mash of generalities. “Fight for his own survival.” “Held captive.” “A family with a horrifying secret.” The ONLY specific element in the entire logline is the word “Alaskan.” That’s the only thing that differentiates it from other ideas.

And here’s the irony about that. The script is one of the more unique amateur thrillers I’ve read in years. It just goes to show that you can be a good script writer but a terrible logline writer. You have to work on both, guys. Your logline is your movie equivalent of a billboard. It’s your sales’ pitch. This logline could’ve been so much better. And if Ryan would’ve contacted me, I could’ve helped. Here’s a quick rewrite that would’ve been way more effective (and accurate): After a cash-strapped ex-Marine is forced to take a dangerous job on a mysterious crabbing vessel, he learns that the Nordic crew has ties to an ancient pagan religion that worships a Norse Sea God.

30 year old former marine Sam Brennan is trying to make some money for his growing family. That’s right. In addition to having the perfect wife, Sam’s going to be having a baby soon. One of the only things he knows how to do is crab, so he’s in Alaska for one of those month-long sea trips where you fish a bunch of crab and come away with enough money to get you through the year.

Unfortunately, the captain of Sam’s crab boat tells him at the last second that they’re fully staffed, and Sam is stuck searching for a job. As luck would have it, he meets a Nordic guy named Henrik in a bar, who says they’re short one spot on their boat. Sam jumps at the chance, even though the boat and the men on it are all a bit, shall we say, fucking weird.

Sam is joined by one other newbie, a tough-talking 19 year old named Cody. Cody is so brash, so cocky, that the crew expects him to be the ringer and Sam to be the bust. But right from the start, Sam proves himself to be an all-star crabber. Cody, meanwhile, starts to have second thoughts about the job, to the point where he asks the Captain if they can leave him off at the nearest island. The Captain laughs and tells him to suck it up. As time goes on, we find out Cody has no idea what he’s doing and thought he could con his way into some easy cash.

While the crabbing is going great, Sam’s starting to sense that something ain’t right between the bows. That’s confirmed when, after Cody goes apeshit, the Captain chops his hand up in one of those fish shredders. When the crew senses that Sam may be encouraging Cody to hold out til they can get to land and call the cops, they head to a tiny remote island where we learn that these guys are part of one big Nordic chainsaw massacre family… THAT SACRIFICES PEOPLE TO THE NORSE SEA GOD.

The wimpy Cody doesn’t last long on the island. And Sam doesn’t look like he’ll fare much better. But he’s able to escape, running around the island Rambo-style, killing the chasing crew members one by one. But the island’s small. The only way Sam’s going to survive is if he finds a way off. And that option is anything but guaranteed.

Greenhorn is a good script. I’m not surprised it’s done well in competitions. But everybody who does well in competitions wants to know, “Why doesn’t it do BETTER in competitions?” Or if it does better in small competitions, “Why doesn’t it do better in BIG competitions?”

I can tell you exactly why Greenhorn is capping out in its competition run. Its second half isn’t as good as its first.

The first half of Greenhorn is great. It was hovering around a double worth the read or impressive for me. I especially liked Cody’s story. The writer could’ve easily brought only Sam onto the ship. But I think if he did, the story wouldn’t have had legs (or “sea legs”). By adding Cody, you get this whole fun storyline where Cody starts off as a cocky asshole, falters when it comes to work, is revealed to be a fraud, and then is brutally maimed. It was the perfect way into this creepy crew. And it set up a situation where it was now: Okay, so how is Sam going to handle this?

One of my favorite scenes was when the coast guard boarded the boat and the crew hid Sam and Cody inside the walls of the engine room. The suspense of whether they were going to find our heroes or not made for… while not a “Quiet Place” level labor scene… something that was almost as fun.

Then we get to this island and something about the choice is… off. I don’t know what exactly. But I immediately felt safer. When you’re in a boat out in the middle of the ocean… there’s nowhere to run. Now we’re on land. You have options. I wasn’t as afraid.

But the bigger problem is that the boat added structure. The island turned the story into this all-or-nothing chicken-with-its-head-cut-off mess. You don’t get scenes like the coast guard scene because there’s no form. It’s just a guy running around trying to survive. It was messy and not nearly as compelling.

After thinking about it, I believe the problem is that we get to the island too soon. I think it’s at the midpoint? That’s too long of a time to be on the island. And it’s one of the reasons the script’s pacing gets all wonky. We’re used to the island within 20 pages yet we still have 25 to go. I would take a page out of sister movie’s “The Ritual’s” book. Save the island for the last act. That’s going to mean packing more story into the ship, but I think that’s the more interesting stuff anyway.

This one has a lot of potential for sure. I would keep working on it. In addition to shifting the structure, I would keep populating the characters, Sam included. He’s a little thin. Everybody here needs about 20-25% more depth (save for maybe the Captain). Spend as much time figuring these characters out as you do describing this boat.

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

What I learned: I would only include PTSD-afflicted marines in your story if they’re absolutely ESSENTIAL and ORGANIC to the situation. Otherwise, these guys are at the top of the cliche food chain. Why not make Sam a former Navy officer? Wouldn’t that make more sense anyway?

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of 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!

Type 1 On-the-nose
On-the-nose dialogue comes in two flavors. Type 1 is where characters say exactly what they’re thinking. The reason it reads false is because, in real life, people hold back on what they’re thinking. They talk around things instead of about them. If you want to see the truest form of this dialogue, watch an episode of The Bachelor. Notice that the contestants say things like, “I have really deep feelings for you.” “I have really deep feelings for you, too.” “Are you ready for marriage though?” “I want to be. It’s tough though. With my mom’s death last year I’ve been in a bad place.” The reason these conversations are so on-the-nose is because the producers have spent 200 grand on the date. They need the characters to talk about real shit for that kind of money. So before the characters sit down, they tell them, “Make sure to talk about how much you like her.” Or, “Remember, we really want people to understand how difficult your mom’s death has been for you.” The Bachelor wouldn’t work if the two characters sat around all night and talked about their pets. To defeat the evil known as on-the-nose dialogue, have your characters talk around things instead of about them. If Mark cheated on Lucy, don’t have Lucy ask, “Why did you cheat on me?” the next time they meet. Have her ask, “How was your day?” This way, the real conversation happens underneath the dialogue (what’s referred to as “subtext,”) which is way more interesting. It should be noted that on-the-nose dialogue is okay in some scenes. Characters have to confront each other and say what’s on their mind at some point. But those moments should be few and far between.

Type 2 On-the-nose
Type 2 is where characters say exactly what the movie needs them to say in that moment.
This can best be summarized by the mother’s line in A Quiet Place when she says to the dad late in the story, “Who are we if we can’t protect our children?” Then, in the very next scene, the dad runs off to protect his children! Clearly, the only reason for that line was to motivate the father to go save the children. Had they approached this moment more naturally, they wouldn’t have had to resort to on-the-nose dialogue. “Where are the kids?” “I don’t know. I thought they were with you.” “I haven’t seen them.” Then they work through the options of where the kids might be and off they go. This mistake is made when writers throw out the truth of a situation to talk directly to the audience. And it’s almost always because there’s something wrong with your story. So you have to pause it to remind the audience why you’re doing what you’re doing. To avoid this mistake, stay away from any situation where characters are only saying something for the benefit of the audience. As hard as it sounds, you have to “hide” all motivations within the natural conversations that occur between your characters.

Exposition
Exposition is when your characters set up the plot or explain things. One of the most blatant examples of exposition occurs in Inception when Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s character explains to Ellen Page’s character how the inception process works. It’s question after question. Answer after answer. And it goes on forever. No matter how cool your concept is, audiences can only take so much of characters explaining things. They want conflict. They want drama. They want sexual tension. They want characters trying to figure things out. Not explain stuff. With that said, explaining things is a necessary evil in movies. And the more elaborate your story (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings) the more exposition is going to be required. The trick with tackling exposition is two-fold. First, cut all exposition down to its bare bones. There shouldn’t be a single extra word. We didn’t need Neo and the Manager discussing how the machines work in Zion for 5 minutes. You could’ve cut out every word there and nothing about the movie would’ve suffered. And second, be clever or fun or dramatic in how you convey exposition. For example, in Back to the Future (the best movie ever at handling exposition), before Marty goes back in time, we have to explain the fate of the Clock Tower. A bad writer would’ve had Marty sitting in his bedroom and his mom walk in and say, “Hey, I was downtown today and they’re still trying to resurrect that old Clock Tower. It’s been 30 years since that thing went kaput. I can’t believe it. I still remember when the bolt of lightning hit that thing and put it out of commission.” Instead, we have Marty trying to steal a kiss from his girlfriend downtown and then a crazed woman shoves a jar in front of him and screams, “Save the clock tower!” Because she’s crazy, we can’t help but laugh as she goes into her spiel about how the Clock Tower was destroyed. Just remember that there’s usually a more clever way to dish out exposition than two people talking in a room.

Melodrama
Melodrama is when you take emotional beats – positive or negative – and dial them up to inauthentic levels. One of the more famous examples of this is the Anakin and Padme dialogue in Attack of the Clones. “I love you.” “No, not as much as I love you.” “But I love you more.” Notice that there’s some crossover here with on-the-nose dialogue. But the point is, the writer goes overboard in trying to convey the emotions of the characters, which, ironically, achieves the opposite effect. But where melodrama really gets writers in trouble is on the negative side. Characters exist in an alternate universe where every moment of their lives has been miserable. “My dad was never around much. After he beat my mom for 20 years, he decided to turn the old Winchester on himself.” “I’m sorry.” “That wasn’t even the worst part. He left a letter for me with his lawyer. The letter said, ‘I never considered you my son. In fact, I wished you were never born.’ “That’s terrible.” “So if you want to know why I think of suicide every day, now you know.” And the whole scene takes place while the two are doing meth, of course. Again, there’s some crossover with on-the-nose dialogue here. But the main point is that the character is hitting us with numerous over-the-top dramatic beats. And because they’re so extreme, we don’t believe them for a second. Now there will be a couple of moments in your script where extreme emotion is required. But treat it like a newborn kitten. Only let it out of the box for a few minutes during the day. Otherwise, it should stay out of sight. And here’s one last tip to avoid melodrama. Never have your character openly offer intense emotional details about their life. Always build the scene around someone pulling it out of them. It takes Sean the whole movie of pulling and pulling and pulling to get Will Hunting to finally break down about his abusive father. Imagine how awful that movie would’ve been if Will had come in the first day and said, “The abuse started when I was five years old and here’s what happened for the next 20 years…” Reluctant admission is a nuclear weapon to combat melodrama.

Cheesy
Cheesiness is a tough one because every reader has a different tolerance for cheese. Keeping that in mind, cheesy dialogue is a result of two things. It’s a tonal miscalculation and it’s a genre miscalculation. I have this writer I give notes to who writes serious thrillers, like Sicario. However, every time he writes a scene between a man and a woman, he switches into romantic comedy mode. What was once serious morphs into exchanges like, “What are you doing here?” “I could’ve asked you the same thing.” “Truth?” “I expect nothing less.” “Cinnamon.” “Cinnamon?” “When I saw you last, you smelled like cinnamon. And I remembered this bakery because they’re famous for their cinnamon buns.” “Ah, so you’re obsessing over my buns now?” “I don’t know about obsessing. Intrigued maybe.” “So what’s next?” “I add some sugar to that cinnamon.” Now granted, this is cheesy no matter what movie it’s in. But it’s much more comfortable in a movie like The Wedding Planner than it is Sicario. Cheesiness is the result of overly cute dialogue packaged inside a genre meant for more serious exchanges. So if you understand the tone of the genre you’re writing in, you should know what constitutes as “too cheesy” for that tone.

Bland/Lifeless
This is the worst kind of dialogue you can write. And it’s unfortunately the most common. Characters speak, but it’s the dialogue equivalent of a gray room with gray furniture and gray fixtures. It’s functional. But it’s so lifeless that even if your plot and characters are strong, you risk boring the reader to death. As bad as my above example of cheesy dialogue is, it at least had personality. Let’s examine how that dialogue changes if we apply the bland filter to it. “Oh, hey. What are you doing here?” “I eat breakfast here every morning.” “I wouldn’t have guessed.” “Yeah, I only started a few weeks ago. What about you? Are you here for breakfast?” “No, just picking up pastries for the office.” “It’s a good choice. I love this place.” “Are you going to be around this week?” “I’m busy working but if you want to talk you can call me.” “Okay, that would be fun. Do you still have the same number?” “I do.” Bland dialogue stems from two places. Boring characters and a lack of creativity. If characters say boring things a lot, chances are you’re constructed a boring character. Every character needs an element of personality. Their dominant personality trait, then, will dictate what they say. I’ve been watching Silicon Valley lately. One character is overtly nervous and anxious. So he speaks in a bumbling nervous manner. Another character believes he’s better than everybody else. So he speaks in a pompous cocky manner. Another character is consumed by negativity and frustration, so he makes a lot of snarky negative comments. Granted this is a comedy where character personalities are more exaggerated. But even if you’re writing a drama, look to define every character’s main personality trait to figure out how they’re going to speak. In Three Billboards, Deputy Dixon never grew up. So he speaks like an 8th grader. As for creativity, that should be self-explanatory. Dress up your dialogue a little bit. You have a choice between, “How are you?” and “Wussup, kemosabe?” You have a choice between, “I like your tie” and “Killer threads.” You have a choice between, “I’m hungry” and “I could devour a herd of buffalo right now.” As long as it’s organic to what that character would say, you should be dressing up the majority of your dialogue.

And finally, remember, the starting point for good dialogue in any scene is a character who wants something, and some sort of tension or conflict that’s present. Whether that be from another character or external forces (weather, a time crunch), find the conflict and you’ll find your characters saying much more interesting things.