Drama with a capital “D.” The screenwriter’s enemy.

Today we’re doing something different. One of the biggest problems I see in amateur scripts is bad scene writing. The scenes don’t build, they don’t have any conflict, there’s no inherent drama in the scene. They just kind of lay there like a blanket. They’re forgettable. Which is the worst mistake you can make as a writer.

So the other day, we reviewed a script for Amateur Friday called, “The Cloud Factory.” I was trying to explain to the writer, Angela, in the comments that there wasn’t enough drama in the script. That everything the characters were going through was fairly routine, fairly tame, that nothing was making their journey difficult. She replied that she didn’t want to include over-the-top conflict and was trying for something “subtle.”

Whenever I run into a writer who says this in the absence of conflict, I cringe. While it’s true that there are times when you want to be subtle, in order to keep a reader/audience engaged, you need things to HAPPEN in your script. You need elements pushing and pulling at your characters. You need things to be hard for them in pretty much every scene, although how hard varies per situation. When a writer strips away conflict, they often think they have a delicate, subtle, reserved piece of material, unaware that the reader experiences it as a flat lifeless string of non-events where very little happens.

I speak from experience. I used to do the same thing. I wanted to be reserved. I wanted to be SUBTLE.  And yet I was confused every time someone responded to my script with: “Nothing happens here. There’s nothing engaging about the story.” But but but… my characters are on a road trip together, and they both like each other but they’re both afraid to say it, and and and… I don’t want to overburden the story with too much drama cause it will be too on the nose and and and…” Ugh, gag me with a spoon.

Here’s what I think the problem is.  Angela, as well as all the writers in her position, are railing against the wrong thing. It’s not that they don’t want drama in their stories. It’s that they don’t want artificial ON-THE-NOSE drama. The kind of capital-D Drama that a writer clumsily jams into the story because the screenwriting books told him to. Inserting drama into your screenplay, into all of your scenes, is like anything else you put into your screenplay. You not only have to do it, you have to do it artfully.

So there are really two skills at work here. First, there’s learning what drama is. And then there’s infusing it into the screenplay in a natural way.  Now as I discuss drama here, I’m going to be using the words “conflict” and “drama” interchangeably, as there’s a lot of crossover in the two definitions.  But, essentially, conflict creates drama.  Now, for the sake of argument, let’s look at a scene that Angela might call too “overly-dramatic,” and see how we can fix it.

Let’s say I have a brother and sister in their 40s who haven’t seen each other (they live on opposite sides of the country) in over a decade.  They’re reuniting because their mother just died and they’re home for the funeral. Jacob, the brother, arrives at their parent’s house and walks into the kitchen where his sister, Marla, is doing dishes. Now if you’re subscribing to the “THERE MUST BE DRAMA IN THIS SCENE!” theory that all the screenwriting books tell you to apply, you’re likely to go straight into an argument. “Nice, only a day late to your own mother’s funeral,” Marla says. “Fuck off, Marla! The only reason you came back early is so you could get it in with that loser you’re still obsessed with from high school!” “That ‘loser’ used to be your best friend! And at least I’m DOING something! Have you taken care of any of the arrangements! NO, I didn’t think so!” Etc. Etc.

Yeah, sure, we technically have drama here. But it’s over the top and obnoxious. Drama shouldn’t be thought of as constant yelling or giant obstacles always getting in your characters’ way. Think of it more as a push-pull, an imbalance in the scene between the characters involved. Yes, that will sometimes result in screaming, but more times than not, it’s a tension that hangs in the air, maybe due to a disagreement, or maybe because the characters don’t see things the same way.  And if there isn’t that disagreement or issue between the characters, the conflict and drama will come from an exterior source, something pushing on the characters from the outside. This exterior variable won’t always be available to you on a scene-by-scene basis, so you’ll have to set it up earlier in the script. With this knowledge, let’s go back to the above scene and figure out how we can improve it.

Instead of putting Marla at the house, let’s put her at the funeral services for their mother. It’s five minutes before the service starts and lots of people are approaching Marla and offering their condolences. At that moment, Jacob bursts in, sweaty and ruffled. Marla is SHOCKED. Her brother dares to show up five minutes before their mother’s funeral! But, of course, she can’t yell at him. Not with all these people around. Jacob approaches. “Hey, sis.” “Hey, Jake.” She waits until they’re clear for a half second. With clenched teeth, “Nice of you to show up.” “Sorry, I missed my connection.” An old woman approaches: “I’m so sorry about your mother.” Marla puts the fake smile back on. “Thank you, Mrs. Buckley.” Jacob leans in, “Hey, I had to park in a handicapped spot. That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” She glares at him as the priest announces that they’re going to start the procession.

This is just one of many ways you could write the scene. If, for some reason, you need to have them back at the house, maybe Marla has a newborn who’s sleeping in the other room. She can’t wake him, so she must keep her anger in check while discussing Jacob’s tardiness. Or if you don’t want a baby involved, maybe Marla has a husband. And her husband loooooovvves Jacob. Jacob is like the coolest dude to him. So he’s stoked to see Jacob, and after the obligatory “I’m sorry about your mom,” he starts talking about them going hunting tother, wanting to know all about Jacob’s cool job. In the meantime, Marla is boiling, but doesn’t want to ruin her husband’s excitement, so she keeps it cordial. OR if you don’t want a third character to interrupt the scene, maybe these two are just not confrontational types. They keep everything buried – always have. So they have a very normal conversation, but the subtext runs deep.  The two attack each other in more passive aggressive ways, despite the surface level conversation being cordial.

I think my problem with The Cloud Factory, was that the version of this scene that would’ve appeared in that script wouldn’t have had any issues or conflict at all. Marla and Jacob would’ve been on solid terms. They both cared a lot about their mom. Maybe Jacob was a little late showing up, but it wasn’t his fault, so Marla forgave him. Sure, a writer could argue, “Well I didn’t want any tension here. I just wanted a normal scene.” To that I say, okay. That’s fine. Every once in awhile, if it’s right for the story, there’s no conflict. But if  you string together a BUNCH of these scenes, then it becomes a problem. Long passages of no drama – a drama drought – is the surest way to bore a reader.

With that in mind, let’s look at one of the scenes in The Cloud Factory. In the scene, Jenny, our hero, is grounded in Edinbergh. The other women in her group are taking a flight to the nearest base, but they don’t have room for Jenny (I’ve forgotten why Jenny is being singled out as having to stay, but we’ll assume it’s for a logically explained reason). Here’s the scene as written:

This is a scene that’s easy to screw up. It’s a short scene that’s all exposition, but necessary. We need to explain that they don’t have room for Jenny and then explain what she’s going to do next. Writers often see this and think, “Well, it’s short, so I’ll just throw it in there, even though it’s boring and all exposition.” You NEVER want to include a drama-less scene, especially one that’s all exposition, if you can write a more interesting dramatized scene instead. The first thing I noticed here is how passive the setup is to the scene. We’re getting information about Jenny not making the flight after the fact. You could try to force some conflict into this scene, like one of the girls not liking Jenny and therefore enjoying the fact that she can’t come, but it would feel false, like a scene out of Mean Girls.

The issue is that the scene isn’t taking place at the right spot.  We need a scene setup that invites more conflict.  If I were developing this with Angela, I’d have Jenny thinking she’s on the next plane going out with the three other girls. So she’s all packed up and ready to go. She goes to the plane with the others, and the pilot pops out. “Hold up hold up. What’s going on here?” They explain who they are. “No, I was told only three were coming. That’s all I have room for.” Now the girls are stuck in the precarious position of having to leave someone. It’s an awkward moment, but it creates conflict. Who’s worthy of going and who isn’t? Everybody makes their case. In the end, Jenny loses out (maybe gets screwed over). “I’m sorry, Jen. What are you gonna do?” “I guess I could take a train to London…” (etc. etc., this is where you put your exposition in). As you can see, we created drama in two places. First, with the pilot not letting all of them on, and then between the girls, who have to decide who’s staying.  Way better scene, right?

Now I’m not saying there will never be quick exposition-only scenes in your script. I’m saying that you should always try to dramatize them if you can. Look at all your scenes on an individual basis, like I did above, and ask if there’s any drama/conflict there. If not, ask yourself if there’s another way you can do it. How bout you guys?  How would you rewrite the above scene?

I should point out that conflict isn’t the only thing that creates drama. It’s just the main thing.  But urgency creates drama (have you ever noticed that when you’re running out of time, nerves get nervier, patience gets thinner?). Stakes create a lot of drama (if someone’s job is on the line in a scene, the scene is going to have a lot more drama than if everyone’s job is safe). How personal the issue is creates drama (I care a lot less if somebody I barely know tells me they’re never going to talk to me again than if it’s my own sister). In general, with every scene, you’re trying to make things hard on your characters. The intensity of that pressure will vary depending on the scene, the situation, and the characters involved. But like I said above, if everything’s going well for your characters the majority of the time – that means long stretches of no tension, no pressure, no consequences, no issues, no subtext – you’re looking at an increasingly bored reader. You need to add drama to your scenes and to your script in general.

Genre: TV Pilot – Paranormal/Procedural
Premise: When the FBI and CIA can’t figure it out, they send their cases to “Weird Desk,” a super secret organization dedicated to explaining the unexplainable.
About: Weird Desk was heading towards a 13-episode order last year on ABC when it was surprisingly derailed. For awhile, nobody knew why until word surfaced that Joss Whedon’s S.H.I.E.L.D. killed it. Although not exactly alike, there were some crossover elements that may have been too similar for the network’s taste. Writer David Titcher has been around for a long time, writing for shows like Punky Brewster and Who’s The Boss. More recently he scripted a couple of the Noah Wylie TV films, The Librarian. His biggest credit to date is probably 2004’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” which starred Jackie Chan.
Writer: David Titcher (rewrite by Carl Binder)
Details: 62 pages – 1st Revision, January 20, 2012

Like a lot of TV series, this one seemed to be flying towards the air when, out of nowhere, an evil obstacle intercepted it, killing the series as quickly as it was birthed. There are so many possibilities for why things get cancelled, and one of the main culprits is that your show is too similar to something else.

The thing is, people say Weird Desk got the boot because of Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D. But this has way more in common with The X-Files and Fringe, with a little Men in Black thrown in for good measure. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, “Man, this is a LOT like these shows.” So much so that I couldn’t imagine it getting on the air without a lawsuit. So maybe that’s the real reason behind its death? No way to know for sure. But what about the script itself? SHOULD it have been on TV? Did we miss out on some super amazing series? Was it at least better than S.H.I.E.L.D.? Let’s find out!

I get the feeling that Titcher is a big Indiana Jones fan. Morgan Tuttle is like an autistic lab version of Indiana Jones – the man is willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to get the job done, as long as it adheres to the laws of science. Weird Desk starts off with a rather wild teaser that has Morgan exploring the backyard of Albert Einstein’s last residence.

He’s looking for Einstein’s diary, which supposedly has the schematics to create a bomb so powerful it would make nuclear bombs look “like firecrackers.” He eventually finds some underground tunnel, goes inside, leaps into a bottomless pit, doesn’t die due to an Einstein anti-gravity floor, and finds the diary. What’s inside is so devastating, however, that he burns it on the spot.

Morgan then heads back to “Weird Desk,” a top-secret United States agency that investigates the paranormal, the extraterrestrial, the weird. Upon his arrival, however, Morgan is shocked to learn that he’s been assigned a PARTNER!

(cue record scratch)

Rosetta Stone (yes, Rosetta Stone), informs Morgan she isn’t thrilled about this either, but the only way they’d make her an agent is if she partnered with the guy nobody wants to partner with. Whereas Morgan believes in science, Rosetta believes in weird. Not everything can be explained with a mathematical proof, dammit!

So the two rush out to take on their first case. Up in a Washington suburb, a number of people are seeing “shadow entities,” shadows of people that whip by in someone’s peripheral vision.

They meet with Sara, someone who’s been seeing the shadows. Morgan thinks it’s all in her head. But then Rosetta starts seeing these entities too!!! Eventually the two determine that the combination of a rare gene that enables certain people to see beyond the normal spectrum combined with our dimension intersecting with another dimension is what’s causing these sightings. Uhhh, wha?? Yeah, that’s what I said. And that was the end of the pilot!

I read this before I researched the writer. When I finally did that research and found out that Titcher wrote for 80s sitcoms and scribbled out The Librarian movies, a lot of what I’d read made sense. Weird Desk has an extremely 80s feel to it; that safe, comedic “everything’s going to be okay” gloss that you’d find in 80s classics like, say, Teen Wolf.

Even the subject matter of the first show was kind of tame. Shadow entities? That sounds like the least frightening thing to explore in a crucial make-or-break pilot episode of a series where you can literally use ANYTHING as your antagonist. Although don’t tell that to Miss Scriptshadow. She thinks shadow people are terrifying.

Still, when you break down the evolution of this TYPE of show, you see that they’ve gotten edgier, not less edgy. Just watch the pilot of Fringe, with all those ooey gooey dead passengers in the plane, to see what I mean. I understand that if you’re writing for one of the Big 3 networks, you have to be a little more mainstream, but you’re talking about the network who brought us Lost, one of the more thought-provoking shows ever put on television. There isn’t anything thought-provoking about Weird Desk. It’s just rehashing stuff we’ve already seen from The X-Files and Fringe, in less intense fashion.

Then there were little things here that didn’t add up. For example, the first scene shows Morgan going after Einstein’s diary. He succeeds, goes back to base, and finds out he’s being forced to take on a partner. There’s no cause and effect to that. If you’re going to be forced to take a partner, don’t you want the previous scene to show the hero nearly dying or screwing up BECAUSE HE DIDN’T HAVE A PARTNER?

That way, when a partner is pushed on him, it makes sense. “Oh yeah, he almost died cause no one was there to help him. Obviously, he needs a partner.” We got nothing like that here. So the partner thing came out of nowhere.

Then I couldn’t really figure out Morgan. This is a guy who claims to only believe in science, setting him up as the guy who thinks there’s a rational explanation for everything, but he solves this case by stating we’re intersecting with another dimension. True, he explains this via a bunch of gobbledy-gook that sounds like science, but it’s hardly “rational” sounding to us.

You can’t be mushy on your character beliefs. You can’t say a character sorta maybe is an alcoholic. They either are or they aren’t, or else we’re going to be confused.

But honestly, none of that stuff really mattered. Weird Desk’s biggest weakness is how safe it is. I don’t think you can write things this safe anymore. It’s gotten too competitive and audiences are expecting edgier fare. Look at shows like Extant, which has a woman coming back from space, pregnant, even though there was no one else in space with her. Or The Black List, on NBC, which has a dark anti-hero driving the story.

I hate to use the word “cheesy,” but this did feel a little bit like The Librarian 3. I think we will come back to a day where idealized 80s fare is in. The entertainment business has proven that it’s cyclical. But right now this feels too light for prime time TV.

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

What I learned: For the most part, your scenes should follow “cause and effect” logic. Because Thing A happens (cause), then Thing B happens (effect). Early on in Weird Desk, we get an effect (Morgan is assigned a partner) that didn’t have a cause. We never saw Morgan do anything that warranted him needing a partner. I don’t want to say that every single moment in a script should follow this logic because some narratives aren’t linear, and there are times where you want to withhold the cause for storytelling purposes. But for the most part, if shit just happens without a clear cause, the reader’s going to get frustrated and give up on you.

 

We’re going to do something a little different in today’s article. We’re going to talk about the actual PRESENTATION of a screenplay. The way it’s written, the way it looks to a reader on the page. While not as important as story, the choices in how one presents his work can have a big influence on how the reader interprets it. The theme you’ll find here is that while some approaches are preferable to others, every writing choice you make should be made for one reason: it’s the best way to tell the story at that particular moment. With that said, here are some common issues I run into when I read scripts.

CLIPPED WRITING

Clipped writing is something I see a fair amount of.  The idea behind this is that traditional writing is too long-winded for screenplays, which require a more “to the point” approach.   The problem is, some people have taken this so far that it’s unclear what’s being said.  After awhile, the reader starts to feel like they’re reading an illiterate robot.  For that reason, this style probably shouldn’t be used outside of special situations.  Maybe, for example, a character wakes up at the beginning of the script and is confused. So the confused stutter-pattern of clipped writing helps convey the character’s confusion.  There are also times when it works in action sequences.  But for the most part, try to write full sentences.

BOLDED SLUGS (or BOLDED UNDERLINED SLUGS)

Bolded slugs (or bolded underline slugs) have become in fashion lately.  And to a certain extent, they make sense, as they visually signify a new location or scene, which can be helpful to the reader.  Where bolded slugs get annoying is when there are a lot of short scenes or the writer is a slug-lover, so that four times a page, we’re stuck staring at big chunky ugly disruptive lines of text.  My suggestion would be this.  If you write a lot of long scenes, like, say, Tarantino, you can use bolded slugs.  But if you’re constantly jumping from one place to the next, step away from the bold.  It’ll shift the reader’s attention away from what really matters, which is the action and the dialogue.

THE ‘GET INSIDE THE CHARACTER’S HEAD’ ACTION LINE

Using your description to tell us what a character is thinking is considered shoddy writing.  However, I do see it quite a bit (there was a decent amount of it in “The Fault In Our Stars.”).  Where it becomes problematic is when a writer gets carried away with it and starts using it for things we already know.  As you can see above, we can tell from the dialogue that Miss Scriptshadow doesn’t want to see X-Men, so using description to tell the reader afterwards feels like overkill.  If you want to make sure the reader gets the point, there are other options, like using an action.  So you might cut to Miss Scriptshadow’s computer, see that she’s looking at a trailer for “The Other Woman,” longingly, then click it closed with a sigh.  I’m telling you: Only use this device sparingly.  It can get annoying quickly.

LOVE OF ADVERBS

Forget the dialogue here.  Look at the action text.  Carson “walks aggressively.”  He “angrily opens it.”  Adverbs make your writing look weak and indecisive.  Instead, try to find a verb that says the same thing.  You’ll notice that your sentence all of a sudden looks manly and strong!  “Carson barges towards the fridge.”  “He whips it open.”  Just make sure that you have the right verb for the action.  Don’t put in a verb that doesn’t fit just to avoid the adverb. In other words, don’t say Carson “dances over to the fridge” just because I said you had to verb it.

SIMPLIFY YOUR WRITING WHENEVER POSSIBLE

Readers don’t want to have to work for basic information.  Screenwriting should be simple and to the point (most novelists will actually tell you the same thing).  The above is a really clunky sentence, the kind a man could get lost in and never come back.  If I had to read a whole script of that, I’d swallow a box of brads and die by internal bleeding first.  To simplify this, focus on two things.  First, figure out how to turn useless segments into actions, then figure out what’s redundant or isn’t needed.  For example, there’s no need to say “wound up,” since we already know he’s wound up and it interrupts the flow of the sentence anyway.  So we’ll drop that.  “Clicking and clacking” does add some sound to the scene, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.  “Disastrously fighting this war-like mess with an ever-deepening desperation” is redundant.  If we really want to convey Carson’s anger, we can add an action, like him shouting in frustration at the end.  So the new simpler text would look like this:

I’m not saying you should NEVER offer detail in your writing.  You just only do it when it’s important.  Like if a detective walks into a crime scene where very specific things will be important to know later on – then go for it – describe away.  But a guy looking for munchables?  We don’t need to get into any detail with that, unless you’ve got some amazing jokes you can weave into his search (even then, it’s probably not worth it – simplicity should usually win out).

SUBSEQUENT ACTION LINES (NO SPACES IN BETWEEN)

While I can’t speak for everybody, this practice drives me CRAAAA-ZY.  I don’t know who came up with it, but the sooner it goes away, the better.  First of all, you want to be weary of any writing device that goes against what readers are used to unless you’re positive it makes the script better.  The above looks so odd to a reader, they’ll probably stop for a second and wonder if it’s a formatting error before moving on.  I’m not even sure of this device’s intention.  I just know that it looks and feels odd.

THE BEAT SHOULD NOT GO ON

There was a time and place for “beat” when the screenplay was a technical blueprint.  But these days, it’s more about making the screenplay readable.  Anything that breaks the suspension of disbelief is our enemy.  So when you say “beat,” what does that mean?  It means fake-ish artificial term that has no organic reason to be in your story.  Whenever you can, replace “beat” with something more natural so as not to draw attention to its technical-ness.  For example, I’d probably write this instead…

THE DREADED ‘WALL OF TEXT’

Okay, this above scene is kind of funny, but that’s not what we’re looking at.  When a reader turns the page, they immediately see a general snapshot of said page.  The last thing they want to see during this moment is a “WALL OF TEXT.” At least three paragraphs with five lines or more.  At least one character who talks forever (or two characters who exchange 6-7 line chunks of dialogue each time they speak).  There’s no doubt that there will be times in your script where you’ll need to write a lot.  Characters do occasionally have monologues (even those should be rare though).

But if there are a lot of pages that look like this?  With big huge paragraphs and character exchanges where both characters are taking forever to say shit?  The reader has given up on you.  The correct way to write is to rarely go over 3 lines per paragraph, and your characters shouldn’t exchange more than 2-3 lines at a time (this will differ depending on character and scene, but it’s an average to keep in mind).  Also, it should be noted that the WORST place this can happen is on your first page.  I see a LOT of amateur writers open with that wall of text and I just know the script is going to be bad. :(

IN SUMMARY
A good reader – and I’m talking about the reader who you’ll eventually have to get past to sell your script – takes his reading job just as seriously as you take your writing job.  So he’s going to have his set of reading quirks, things he can’t stand.  The last thing you want is to trigger any of those annoyances, because then the reader is judging you on something other than what they should be – the story.  Like that wall of text.  Again, when I see that, I know it’s over.  I know it’s over right away.  Sure, there are like 2 exceptions in the last 10 years of scripts overcoming this, but for the most part, readers know it’s a disaster.  Just remember that your job is to make things as easy as humanly possible for the reader.  You want their read to be effortless.  So don’t do anything weird or annoying unless you’re absolutely sure it makes the reading experience and your story better.

What about you guys?  What are some things that drive you nuts when you read?

 

Genre: Romance/Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) A cancer-stricken teenager falls in love with a young man who inspires her to seek answers about a mystery she’s been dying to figure out.
About: You gotta give it to Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. These guys have found their niche, and they’re pretty darn good at it. That’s really all you can ask for as a professional screenwriter, to be the ‘go-to’ guys in a particular genre. Starting with 500 Days of Summer, about the realities of relationships, they moved to The Spectacular Now, which was about alcoholism, then this, which is about cancer, and next will be a another high school movie, about suicide. Young demo fare that has a little extra kick to it. And “Stars” looks like it’s going to be their biggest hit to date. As I noted in my newsletter, the book the script is based on has over 15,000 reviews on Amazon. The Holy Bible has 11,000 reviews. Hallelujah, John Green.
Writers: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by John Green)
Details: 115 pages (second draft – June 11, 2012)

How this freaking screenplay got me, I have no idea. I went into this fully expecting to hate it. Cancer never works in movie form. It just doesn’t. It’s too depressing. I think that’s why it took people so long to jump on the Breaking Bad bandwagon. They had to hear from at least 5 people that it was an awesome show before they finally, begrudgingly said, “Okay! I’ll watch your freaking cancer show!”

The number of cancer scripts that are written despite this is staggeringly high. People like to write about cancer! There were like 8 Black List scripts covering the C word last year. I think it’s because writers assume their script is “deep” if it’s about cancer. Their script is going to be taken seriously because it’s, like, tackling serious stuff ‘n shit.

This always backfires though. That’s because cancer is, almost by definition, melodramatic. And nearly every one of these movies hits a tired formula: A guy hates his life, meets a cancer chick. She shows him how to live every day to its fullest. Then the cancer hits her hard. Man Cry. Then she dies. But it’s okay because he’s learned something from her. Ahhh! Kill me now (no pun intended). That’s what I thought I was up for here.

But damn you, novelist John Green. You got me. You got me good.

16 year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster has had cancer since she was 13. Luckily, one of the 1 in a million experimental drugs worked on her and is currently keeping her cancer at bay. The problem is, the cancer has decimated her lungs and she requires oxygen tanks wherever she goes or else she faints.

Hazel has a pretty good attitude about the whole thing, but it isn’t until she meets Augustus that she realizes how much better it can be. Augustus comes to a cancer support group to support his buddy Isaac, and that’s where he sees Hazel and instantly falls in love with her.

Augustus is no stranger to this ugly disease though. He once had cancer himself and they ended up having to chop his leg off in the process. Now if you’re anything like me, you’re looking at this and going, “Who the f*ck doesn’t have cancer in this story? Does the dog have cancer?  Does the goldfish have cancer?” Guys, I don’t know how they did it. But despite all the coincidences, they somehow make all of this feel natural. And while it was never specifically stated that the goldfish didn’t have cancer, I’m pretty sure he’s cancer-free.

After getting to know each other, Hazel and Gus get onto the topic of their favorite books. Whereas Augustus, being a 17 year old guy, loves the adapted novella of his favorite video game, Hazel likes some obscure book about a girl dying with cancer. Augustus rolls his eyes at this. Really?? But she insists it’s good. And when he reads it, he agrees, except for the ending, which ends in mid-sentence! Since it’s from the point of view of the girl, it ends when her life ends.

He’s furious and desperate to know what happened to all the other characters. She says it’s pointless. She’s written to the author numerous times but he lives in Amsterdam and is a recluse. Augustus is one determined dude though, and somehow gets through to the guy. When the author invites them to his home, Hazel is floating on air. She gets to go to another country with a guy she’s falling in love with AND get the answers to her favorite novel of all time from the author himself!

However, as you might expect, the trip to Amsterdam doesn’t go as planned, and it gets even worse when they come back. Something truly shocking throws Hazel’s life into disarray. And it’s not that her cancer’s back. It’s much worse.

(huge spoilers to follow) When you look at The Fault In Our Stars from the outside, there’s no way it should have worked. It’s a story about two people with cancer falling in love. There are more schlocky melodrama pitfalls in that idea than any other story idea I can come up with. I mean it’s bad enough that ONE person has cancer. But two???

But here’s how John Green and the Neustadter/Weber team got it right. They focus on making these characters “people” first. They strip away the cancer and ask who they are. What they like, what they hate, what they fear, what they dream, their personalities (basically the exact opposite of what Godzilla did with any of its characters).

I think that’s where everybody gets it wrong with cancer stories. They try and define the characters by their cancer, which is not only depressing, but disingenuous. These people had lives before they got diagnosed, and by seeing that, we start to connect with them like we would connect with any character.

Hazel and Augustus are fun. They don’t sit around and discuss how shitty their lives have been. They laugh. They joke around. They enjoy each others’ company.

Also, The Fault In Our Stars did something really clever. They created an actual story here. We have a mystery and a big goal for our characters (get in touch with the author and find out what happened at the end of that book). Sure, we could’ve watched these misfits fall for each other within the confines of a high school that ostracizes them. I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere. But the book goal made this feel bigger. It gave the story a sense of adventure.

I also learned something really powerful while reading this script. When you’re dealing with these really overly-emotional subjects (it doesn’t have to just be cancer – it can be depression, suicide, addiction, whatever), the best way to do it is to make the reader laugh at first. And make them laugh for awhile.

The first half of “Stars” is a lot of fun. And we love that because we go into this expecting the opposite – a lot of “the cancer is back” lines or really depressing trips to the hospital. “Stars” just shows these two characters having fun and falling in love, ingeniously baiting us into a false sense of security.

Then, when we get to the final act, and you DO start bringing out all the heavy-handed stuff, you’ve got us so far wrapped around your finger that it works. These are things (the cancer being back) that would never work if you heavy-handedly dropped them into the first act. They only work once you’ve made us feel good for a really long time.

About the only thing I didn’t love in “The Fault In Our Stars” is when they met Van Houten (the author) in Amsterdam. This is always a tricky screenwriting thing to pull off. You’ve built the whole story up to this meeting. And you can’t just give the characters what they want. You can’t have them walk in there and the author go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened in the novel.” That would be too easy. There’s no conflict in that, no drama.

So I get why Green had the author be a jerk. But for me, it was too much. It wasn’t just the opposite of what we were expecting, it was the EXTREME opposite, and whenever you use extremes in writing, you’re treading on dangerous waters because you risk the reader seeing through the illusion.

With that said, Green redeemed himself with the author’s surprise reappearance at the ending. It’s a testament to how good of a writer he is. Even with the character I hated most, he still arced him, still changed him, allowing me to feel better about how he treated our protagonists earlier.

The Fault In Our Stars is one hell of a miracle. It manages to find the humanity in a story that’s so often oversaturated with drama. The character work here is great. The story is really really good. I did not expect this at all. But this was a really good script.

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

What I learned: Undercut dark moments with unexpected humor. This is the best way to write these types of movies. The audience is expecting lots of depressing talk, so you can have fun with that and play with their expectations. At one point, Hazel is in her back yard, on the phone with Augustus, and everything just sort of hits her at once. The doctors won’t let her go to Amsterdam. She’s got another test tomorrow. Her father is depressed. She’s staring out at this swing set that her father made her when she was a little girl, when she didn’t have cancer and there was actual hope in the world. It’s so depressing. So how does Augustus respond to this? Does he go into some deep monologue about the philosophical meaning of life and all that dreck. No. He pauses and then says, “I demand to see this swing set of tears.” He later comes over. The two agree they have to get rid of this depressing ass swing set and sell it on Craigslist. With these movies, you can’t strangle us with insufferable depression. You have to have fun. And this is a great way to do it.

Genre: Action/Adventure
About: The stars aligned for Gareth Edwards, a man who made the micro-budgeted “Monsters” a few years ago to show off his proficiency with special effects. The unscripted film followed a couple into a quarantined jungle where giant monsters lived. Naturally, when Godzilla execs saw what this man could do for 20 grand, they imagined pure movie-going nirvana at 200 million, resulting in the single biggest budget jump for a director in Hollywood history. The writer of Godzilla had his own megawatt rise to fame. Max Borenstein, a Yale alum, wrote and directed his first film back in 2003, called “Swordswallowers and Thin Man.” But it wasn’t until 5 years later that he was heard from again, when he landed on the Black List adapting Kenneth Feinberg’s memoir, “What is Life Worth?” He apparently landed on Legendary’s radar (the producers of Godzilla) writing the 2009 screenplay, Jimi, which chronicled Jimi Hendrix’s life.
Writer: Max Borenstein (story by Dave Callaham)
Details: 123 minutes

Gareth and Bryan

Gareth Edwards is one of the most exciting young directors out there. He’s got a directing street pass for his next five films as far as I’m concerned (I’ll be there opening day no matter what he makes).

What’s not exciting is the script he had to work with for Godzilla. Now, look – I don’t claim to know what it’s like to work on something with 30 chefs in the kitchen. There may be 3 or 4 people in that group tops who’ve actually read a screenplay before. So I get it. Script-by-committee, and an ignorant committee at that. But you’d figure someone with some knowledge of this stuff would’ve stepped in and said, “Hold up a second. This is spinning out of control here.”

Godzilla tries to show us that it’s more than just a monster flick right out of the gate, saturating the opening act with tons of “emotional” scenes. Even with Bryan Cranston acting in them, these scenes fall disastrously short of any emotion whatsoever. They actually exemplify one of the most misunderstood notions in screenwriting: that if you write people crying, then audiences will cry too.

Uhh, no. Except for rare occasions, that’s not how it works at all. Do you laugh when characters onscreen laugh? Of course not. You laugh when the characters find themselves in awkward or difficult situations, and struggle to get out of them. Watch the “answering machine” scene in Swingers, where you laugh uncomfortably for five straight minutes. Is Mikey laughing in that scene? I don’t think so.

So when we see Bryan Cranston’s character crying as his wife gets stuck inside a contaminated bay, do we cry? No. I mean, why would we? WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THESE PEOPLE! We met them three minutes ago. Why would I cry for someone I met three minutes ago?

This is only part of the problem though. The bigger issue is, why are Bryan Cranston and his wife in this movie in the first place??? (spoiler) They add zero value to the story, have less than 2% of an effect on the plot, and don’t even make it through the first act! Why are we spending so much time with people who aren’t even important enough to make it to Act 2????

Okay, breathe Carson. Breeeeathe. I’m sorry but the clumsiness of this script got to me. I mean, the trailers for this movie were awesome. I thought I was going to see a great Godzilla movie. Instead, we endure mistake after mistake that would’ve been spotted in a Screenwriting 101 class.

But I have to remember it wasn’t one writer sitting in a room with total control. It was the director, the producers, the actors, the testers, the actors’ agents, the executives, the toy people. All of these people had an effect on the script in some way. So my real beef is with that committee. But it doesn’t make what I saw any easier.

To give you a little background, here’s Godzilla’s plot: “Bryan Cranston’s Character” is a crazy scientist who works in Japan and is convinced that recent earthquakes aren’t actually earthquakes, but rather a sign that some monsters are living underground. But because he’s a kooky scientist, no one believes him.

He works at a nuclear facility, and one day there’s a meltdown which kills his wife (in a scene so melodramatic Tommy Wiseau, from “The Room,” would’ve chuckled). Cut to 15 years later and Bryan’s son is trying to distance himself from his increasingly erratic father, who’s still convinced that there are monsters under the earth.

Spoiler alert. There ARE monsters under the earth. And Bryan ends up dying when one of these monsters – a giant insect-like thing – emerges. Bryan’s son, a soldier with the U.S. army who now has his own wife and kid, tries to come to peace with never believing his father. But it doesn’t last long since a SECOND monster escapes the underground and the two start wandering about the planet, inadvertently creating destruction in their wake.

So you’re probably saying, why can’t we just blow these things up? Because they actually feed on nuclear energy. They also have an EMP bubble surrounding them wherever they go, shutting down all military equipment that comes close enough. Bryan’s son, essentially, then hitchhikes from one state to another (by boat, plane, car, train) following these beasts, as the writers desperately try and figure out a way to keep him involved in the story.

Eventually, the army realizes that the two giant insect things are trying to mate and they have no way to stop them. Enter Godzilla, whose desire to stop them is explained away in a single line: “He is trying to bring balance.” Trying to bring balance? Why? What does he care if these insects bang or not?  Government needs to stay out of the bedroom.

After that, there’s something about setting up an analog nuclear bomb (that’s different from normal nuclear bombs) to lure all three monsters into the ocean and blow them all up. But before that can happen, Godzilla will try and “bring balance,” lizard style, to these pesky oversized mosquitos. Will he be overmatched, or become the mega-monster we all know him to be?

All dressed up and nothing to do.  

Seriously though, what was the point of the first 20 pages of this story??? (Spoiler) A wife we don’t know is killed, leaving us with a husband who jaunts around for another 15 pages before he’s killed too???? I’ve never seen that before. Giving an emotional “death of a loved one” scene to a character who won’t even be around past page 30? You do that for your hero, not a one-and-done character! It’d be like giving a day player a major love interest.

As far as I can tell, the only necessary piece of information in the first 20 pages was the discovery of strange signals underneath the earth, which is something that literally could’ve been told in 30 seconds. Why not start the film with Bryan Cranston’s kid at his father’s funeral? Afterwards, he goes through his father’s old work, and finds the old recorded signal. This reduces twenty minutes down to five and gets rid of gobs of clunky insignificant nonsense in the process.

If only that were the only problem. What really killed this script was the exposition. There are certain stories that require tons of exposition, and either you figure out a way to minimize it ahead of time, or if it’s a script that requires non-stop explanation all the way through, you don’t write it. Because nobody wants to suffer through a story that’s 80% explanation.

That’s what Godzilla was to me. 80% explaining. And what happens when there’s more explanation than story in a movie?  It feels lifeless. Because it’s never allowed to breathe! The majority of Godzilla’s scenes can be broken down into 5 categories. A) Explaining what these giant animals were. B) Explaining what they were doing (where they were going and why). C) Explaining how they operated (able to use EMP and nuclear energy). D) How the army would react to whatever current thing the monsters were doing. And finally E) How to get Bryan Cranston’s son from territory to territory.

Poor Bryan Cranston’s son. This guy had NOTHING to do but wait for the plot to figure out a way to get him to the next location. “Oh, hey, uhhh. He’s our… last nuclear tech engineer… so that’s why we need him to come with us!” Never have I seen a character so clearly a pawn of the plot rather than a real live human being before. He had no life because nobody wrote him any life. Calling home to the wife doesn’t make us care about someone. Or make them feel real. How about giving this character wants, needs, a flaw, secrets, a backstory (not his dad’s backstory – HIS backstory), a PERSONALITY!. He was so generic it was embarrassing to everyone involved. This is your hero! And he’s the most forgettable thing about the film! Even his dad, who died 100 minutes ago and wasn’t even needed for the story was more memorable.

So you might say, “Yeah, but Carson, the humans aren’t the real stars here. The monsters were.” Except that was a problem too! Godzilla was barely in the movie! This should’ve been called “Giant Insect Nuclear Lovebirds” because it was more about them than Godzilla. Granted, the moments where Godzilla did appear were badass (loved the blue fire), but they weren’t enough. This is supposed to be Godzilla’s movie, but there’s nary a Godzilla sighting.

Again, Gareth is an awesome director. The eye this guy has is insane. Every shot feels iconic. But if he’s going to become a great director, he needs to explore humanity more. He needs to care about his characters as much as he cares about his next shot. Or else he’s going to fall into that trap of making empty blockbusters that are all the rage for 1 week, and then forgotten forever.

Godzilla was a real disappointment. I was hoping for more. ☹

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If every other scene in your script is centered on explaining something, you have too much exposition in your script. You need to step back, figure out what the source of all this exposition is, and find a way to simplify it. If you don’t, your script is going to read like a “How to” manual instead of an entertaining movie.