Yeah, I know. I’m breaking the first rule of Fight Club by writing this article. But I thought it was time to dissect a screenplay that wasn’t like anything I’ve dissected before. Fight Club was one of the biggest gambles of the decade. The movie was not traditional in any way. You could argue that there isn’t a single scene in the first 60 minutes that pushes the story forward. Heck, you could make the argument that there isn’t even a plot. But that’s exactly why I wanted to break it down. We look at a lot of conventional stories here. But there are a lot of you who hate the Hollywood formula, who are looking to do things differently. I thought it’d be fun, then, to feature a script that ignores almost every rule in the book. Maybe we can find a baseline for writing one of these screenplays ourselves.

1) If you’re going to ignore structure, embrace theme – I’ve found that these formless, structure-less scripts work best when the theme is strong. That’s because when you don’t have a traditional plot, you need something else to link everything together. Theme becomes that link. Fight Club has a very strong theme. It’s about the frustration of growing up and not getting what the world promised us. It’s about the empty angry feelings that drive us as a result. Have a weak plot? Incorporate a strong theme.

2) Voice over is your friend in non-traditional scripts – Again, when you don’t have a clean plot, a clean structure, you need a way to link everything together. Fight Club jumps forward, backward, backward even more, forward again. There’s no clear goal, no plot. BUT, Jack’s constant voice over guides us through this rocky terrain effortlessly. We’re not really lost because he’s holding our hand. Keep this in mind if you’re writing a plot that’s all over the place.

3) In non-traditional scripts, character is king – Characters are important no matter what. But strong characters become imperative when you don’t have a traditional plot. Since there’s no clear goal driving us forward, the characters become the only reason to watch. So they have to be FASCINATING. At least one has to be SUPER BIG AND MEMORABLE (in this case, Tyler). But even your straight man (main character) needs to be unique somehow. Jack, with his constant rambling and philosophizing, with his insomnia, with his dependence on group therapy, is almost as interesting to watch as Tyler.

4) Use ACTION in dialogue scenes to reveal character – Avoid characters standing around when talking/arguing if possible. Instead, have them (or one of them) doing something that reveals something new about their character. Instead of Jack and Marla (the love interest) arguing over who gets what support groups in a single room, we’re following Marla as she walks across the street, steals clothes from a dryer, then walks over to a thrift shop and sells them. This way, we achieve the characters’ goals (hashing out who gets what support group) WHILE revealing something about Marla (that she’s a thief with no morals who will do anything to get by).

5) Utilize callbacks to initiate consistency throughout your unconventional screenplay — Remember, if you don’t have as clear of a plot, you need to create the illusion of connectivity wherever you can. You do this by bringing up something, then calling back to it throughout the screenplay. So early on we see that Jack’s become a slave to IKEA. It’s a nice funny moment. And that could’ve been it. But later we see Jack sitting on his bedroom floor, assembling IKEA furniture. It’s a callback that creates connectivity – desperately needed when your plot is nonexistent or unclear.

6) No matter how unconventional your script is, make sure it still contains CONFLICT – Even in non-traditional indie cult classics like Fight Club, you’ll see that one of the most important storytelling tools is still utilized – conflict. Our two main characters here are polar opposites. Jack is reserved and careful. Tyler is aggressive and careless. This leads to a lot of fun conflict-filled conversations and scenes. Never underestimate how important of a device this is.

7) Be imaginative – If you’re writing an unconventional screenplay, you gotta go all out. You have to eliminate those filters that tell you “this is right” and “this is wrong.” If we’re going to endure a plot-less story, we have to be rewarded with lots of shit we haven’t seen before. So have fun. Do the opposite of what you’d normally do. We have a 300 pound man with bitch tits. We have characters stealing cellulite out of trash bins. We have Jack chilling out with penguins in a cave. “Different” scripts are your opportunity to highlight your imagination. Don’t disappoint us by putting limitations on that imagination.

8) Your character’s job should sync up with the tone of the film – Fight Club is dark and disturbing. So Jack’s job, naturally, should be dark and disturbing. Jack isn’t a lawyer. He’s a recall coordinator. He decides after a deadly horrifying car crash where teenagers and babies have died, whether that car should be recalled or not. That fits perfectly with the dark tone of Fight Club.

9) Formal sentences are not required in screenplays – As crazy as it sounds, you can use sentence fragments when writing a screenplay, as long as they’re clear. For example, to indicate that Jack is on a street, the paragraph under the slugline begins, “Along a residential street.” That’s the sentence. Would it work in an English class? No. But screenplays aren’t about perfect grammar. They’re about saying as much as possible in as few words as possible. You could’ve used the more robotic: “We are standing on a residential street.” But it doesn’t sound as smooth or free-flowing.

10) These kinds of scripts are nearly impossible to write – I don’t want to end this on a negative note but it’s important you know that I read tons of scripts from writers trying to “break the rules” and “do something different” and they’re usually the worst scripts I read. That’s because it’s hard to write something that doesn’t have a goal, that doesn’t have a conventional purpose, and keep it interesting for 110 pages. It takes an amazing amount of skill and a ton of talent. So I just want you to know what you’re getting into. You’re basically counting on yourself to be one of those one-in-a-billion brilliant writers. But hey, if you believe in yourself that much and want to take a chance? Go for it. ☺

These are 10 tips from the movie “Fight Club.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Netflix throws their hat in the ring for original programming. But is this Spacey and Fincher f*cking around with a desperate new company’s money? Or is this show actually good?

Genre: Political Drama (TV)
Premise: (from IMDB) Francis Underwood is Majority Whip. He has his hands on every secret in politics – and is willing to betray them all to become President.
About: David Fincher went looking for a writer for this project 3 years ago. He came upon “Ides of March” scribe Beau Willimon, who excited him with his desire to cherry-pick the best parts of the original UK show then reinvent everything else for the American audience. This is Netflix’s first original show, a show that bucked the traditional TV release model and released all 13 episodes at once.
Creator: Beau Willimon
Writer of pilot: Beau Willimon (based on the 1990 TV series by Andrew Davies and Michael Dobbs)
Details: 60 minutes long

Kevin Spacey. David Fincher. How bad can it be? As bad as the writer allows it to be. So who wrote it? Beau Willimon. Wait a minute? Beau WHO?? Chances are, you don’t know that name. Well, I can tell you he wrote a hell of a screenplay (Farragut North – which ended up becoming “The Ides Of March”) that made the Black List in 2007 and which I reviewed a couple of years ago. Outside of that, I don’t think Beau’s done much. In that sense, he’s really lucky that Ides got made (for five years it was deader than Hugo Chavez) because if it didn’t, he would’ve never got an opportunity like this, which appears to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

You get to write a show that has the biggest budget on television (over 4 million bucks an episode) for a new network that’s spending outrageous money solely to make a splash in an industry that’s kicking every other industry’s ass. Yup. That’s why I’m reviewing a TV pilot today (and plan to review more). Everyone wants to get into TV. All my writer friends are ditching the pie in the sky spec sale scenario and moving into television. Like it or not – this is where all the writing heat is these days.

And what better way to celebrate that than by checking out the pilot for House of Cards, a project that probably would’ve never been made if it wasn’t for Netflix. The show is different. It’s risky. And it takes on subject matter that’s typically ignored unless your name’s Aaron Sorkin (people don’t like to see their politics dramatized. They prefer the real-life stuff.  Case in point – check out how Ides of March did, despite great writing and a high profile cast).

If you’re like me, you might’ve been worried about a couple of other things, as well. First, that this was a Kevin Spacey vanity project. We all know how those turn out (Beyond The Sea). Fincher directing alleviated some of that, but I was also worried about this being something every other network passed on but Netflix was so desperate to work with some top names that they let Spacey and Fincher come in with their garbage and use them to make a weird show nobody wanted to see. “Ha ha” they’d say, as they stole 50 million dollars from this clueless video rental company.

Anyway, House of Cards follows Francis Underwood, a congressman who’s been cleaning up messes for his party for 30 years. He’s paid his dues. He’s done his time. And now he’s backed the perfect candidate, who’s gone ahead and become president. His reward for all this? Secretary of State, a position he’ll surely get as he’s responsible for everyone on the president’s team (including the president himself) having a job.

But things don’t go as planned. When Francis takes his first meeting with the president to start game-planning, he’s met instead with the prez’s right-hand woman, Linda Vasquez. Vasquez has some bad news for Francis. They’ve decided against making him Secretary of State. They need him, instead, to stay in Congress. Francis. Is. PISSED. But he holds it together. He plays the roll of the good son. He nods, says he’ll do his best, and Vasquez is thrilled. She knew that would be a toughy.

Well Vasquez shouldn’t be too thrilled. Francis doesn’t spend 30 years of careful maneuvering to get to this point only to have his dream position snatched away and NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. NO no no. Francis decides to become the nastiest dirtiest politician in Washington. Now we don’t quite know what this means yet, but when he blackmails a senator and starts dishing dirt to a hot new Washington Post blogger, we get an idea. This guy wants to either puppeteer the presidential office or destroy it entirely.

Okay, there are a lot of factors in play here for this analysis. First off, I’m dissecting a pilot as opposed to a film. I don’t know as much about TV, so that’s going to be a challenge. On top of this, we’re breaking down a show that got carte blanche from Neflix to do whatever the hell it wanted. According to Beau, Netflix never gave a single note. What that likely resulted in was a lot of experimenting, a lot of rule-breaking. It’s always fascinating to watch people break rules because there’s an inherent part of us that believes rules are bullshit. That if we stopped being a slave to them, we’d actually write something original and exciting and different and great (for once). Of course, there’s also the analyst side of me who’s endured the 3000 scripts that you guys never see, the ones where writers are always trying to break the rules. And every single one of them is a disaster.

Fincher and Willimon don’t disappoint. They break two major rules within the first few minutes. Are you ready for this? The show opens with our main character KILLING A DOG. There’s an old joke in Hollywood that you never have your main character kill an animal because the audience will hate him. As almost a way to say “FUCK YOU” to convention, Willimon and Fincher literally start their show with Francis killing a dog. Wow.

The second thing? They have Francis break the fourth wall. Yes, he talks directly to the audience. Talking directly to the audience is almost always a disastrous move. It’s just really hard to get right. For every Ferris Bueller, there are a thousand….well, movies you’ve forgotten because they had a character talking to the audience. And then of course, I’ve never seen this device used in a DRAMA before. When a character like this is funny, talking to us doesn’t seem so strange. We’re laughing! But to use this device in a DRAMA?? Wow, that’s chance-taking right there.

My first reaction to this? NOOOOOOOOO. Gag me with a moldy plastic spoon. But here’s the funny thing. This second rule-breaking stunt actually fixed the first one. Who doesn’t hate a character after they’ve killed a dog? Raise your hand. But when Francis starts talking to us, we feel connected to him. That’s the one big advantage with breaking the fourth wall. You create a direct connection between the audience and the character that you can’t get through any other device. So we start to feel like this guy’s friend, like his accomplice, and for that reason, we kind of forgive him for killing that doggy, just like we’d forgive one of our own friends for doing something terrible.

Another reason why we’re able to overlook the pooch-killing? Ironically, the answer lies within the canine family.  Because Fincher and Willimon turn Francis into the world’s biggest underdog. This guy helped a nobody become the president of the United States. And then that president fucks him over and doesn’t reward him, basically relegating him to cleaning the shit out of the company toilets? How can we not root for Francis after that?

This leads me to one of the cooler devices Willimon used throughout the script, which is that he’d set up the stakes for many of his scenes ahead of time, giving later scenes added pop. For example, Francis spends the first 10 minutes of the episode basically telling us how hard he’s worked to get to this point. We can see the relief in his eyes, the thankfulness that after 30 years, everything’s finally going to pay off. In other words, we’ve established his STAKES. Getting here is everything to him.

This is why the later scene where Vasquez tells him they’re going with someone else is so powerful – BECAUSE WE KNOW HOW MUCH THIS MEANS TO HIM. We set up those stakes earlier so that the audience would be devastated when he received the heartbreaking news. Had Willimon not dedicated those first few scenes to setting up Francis’ excitement for becoming Secretary of State, the rejection scene would have been 1/10 as powerful. We see this device being utilized several times during the episode to great effect.

I also found it interesting how much this felt like a feature. There were none of those gimmicky cliffhangers you’d typically find right before the commercial breaks in a “normal” TV show. Everything unraveled slowly and meticulously. It was like they weren’t afraid not to grab you. And it worked, mainly because of those differences (the breaking of the 4th wall) and the strong characters. If that’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that TV has to have strong characters. Because even the lesser guys are going to be on dozens of episodes. So you have to make them all compelling. That can’t be easy.

I feel like I could keep talking about this medium forever because there’s so much about it I don’t know yet. Instead, I’ll just say to check out House of Cards on Netflix if you get a chance. It’s definitely worth it.

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth watching
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: To create sympathy for your main character, have someone screw him over. But if you want to add an extra dose of sympathy, have them screw him over AFTER he’s done something nice for them. This is why we sympathize with Francis so much even though he’s a manipulative dog killer.

Would it be blasphemous to admit that I don’t hold Jaws in the same high regard as the majority of the cinema-going public? That’s not to say I don’t like it. I actually enjoy the movie whenever I watch it. I just don’t think it’s AMAAAA-ZING. When you break it down, it’s actually a strange little screenplay. The goal here is to get rid of the shark. However, we have to wait for the final third of the film for the characters to physically go after that goal. I’m not sure we’d be able to wait that long in today’s market. As a result, a lot of the film takes place back in the town, where our police chief (Martin Brody) goes toe to toe with the Mayor on whether to close down the beach or not due to the attacks. While the characters ARE actively trying to solve the problem, they’re basically relegated to waiting for the next shark attack to happen. – The script itself has about as “Hollywood” a path as they come. Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, was brought on to write the screenplay. Spielberg didn’t love his draft and hired numerous writers to punch it up, basically changing everything that comes before the final shark hunt. He also brought in comedy writers to make it funnier. Even Robert Shaw, who played Quint, rewrote a lot of dialogue. In the end, Carl Gottlieb got the “official” nod, punching up scenes daily on the set throughout the shoot. – The draft I’m reading is the “final” shooting draft, credited to Peter Benchley. Although much of it is what you see in the film, there are some differences here and there, which I may decide to include in the lessons.

1) Bonus points if your character’s fear is the opposite of his goal – Whatever your character’s goal is, make his fear the opposite of that. Here, Brody’s goal is to kill the shark. Therefore, his fear is that he’s afraid of water. It’s a simple yet effective way to create conflict within your hero’s pursuit.

2) I’ve never seen a perfect marriage in a movie – Marriages are wrought with issues. Something’s always pulling on them, creating a problem that needs to be resolved. These problems usually fester underneath the relationship, un-talked about, creating subtext throughout the characters’ conversations. Here, Brody’s wife wants to leave this town. She wants a better life for them in a nicer place. But he wants to stay. And that grinds on their marriage. Always try and add some sort of issue to your hero’s marriage.

3) Use suspense to drive your story – As you know, I prefer a character goal to drive a story. Get the hero out there and after an objective and he’ll take the story with him. While it means a slower story, you can use suspense to drive your story as well. One way to do this is to link together a series of looming disasters. That’s essentially what drives the first 2 acts of Jaws. True, our characters are trying to find the shark and stop it, but what we’re really waiting for is that next shark kill.

4) Conflict is good. Forced conflict is bad. – Conflict is good, WHEN IT’S NATURAL. Audiences can feel when you’re trying too hard though – when you’re pushing some artificial conflict in there to juice up the story. In the book, Benchley had Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) have an affair with Brody’s wife. Everyone felt that would be too much and nixed it for the screenplay. Good choice. It would have detracted from the story instead of added to it. Any conflict that you add should feel organic and natural. If it feels like you’re adding conflict just to add conflict, you probably shouldn’t do it.

5) URGENCY ALERT – It’s a SIN not to include urgency in a blockbuster (popcorn) film. So in Jaws, our ticking time bomb is the 4th of July weekend. That’s the biggest weekend of the year, the weekend all the tourists show up. And it’s coming soon! Therefore, the film’s urgency comes from Brody needing to find and kill the shark before that weekend (even though he eventually fails to do so).

6) Where’s your Quint? – The more scripts I read, the more I realize that the best scripts have one extremely memorable character. Someone who stands out because he acts different, talks different, does his own thing – a character who sort lives in his own world as opposed to the one you’ve created. A character like Quint, or Hannibal, or Han Solo, or Lloyd Dobler, or Clementine, or Rod Tidwell or Jack Sparrow or Alonzo Harris. This character is almost always a secondary character. Find him and put everything you have into making him as unique as possible.

7) Prevent your hero’s task (goal) from being easy – A common mistake new writers make is allowing their heroes to do what they want unimpeded. As a writer, your job is to do the opposite. Look for ways to make your hero’s job tougher. So here, Brody learns that there’s a shark attack. Okay, simple solution. Close down the beach. The bad writer allows this to happen. The good writer introduces the mayor character, who tells our hero, “You can’t do that. That beach is our income.” Now our hero’s job becomes tougher. He can’t just close down the beach. He has to find and kill a shark.

8) “DON’T GO IN THERE!” – Again, dramatic irony is when we know something the characters do not. Any time you can create a scenario where the audience wants to get up and scream, “No, don’t go there!” Or “Get out of there!” or “Don’t do that!” to warn the characters, you’ve essentially created a great dramatic irony situation. The reason Jaws is inherently dramatic is because it’s driven by dramatic irony. We know the shark is coming to kill these unsuspecting beachgoers, but they have no idea.

9) Always place your problem at the worst possible time it could be – These shark attacks aren’t happening at the tail end of summer with a few scraggly beach-goers getting a last-second tan. It’s happening at THE BUSIEST TIME OF THE YEAR, making it the worst time this problem could’ve happened.

10) If a character is going to tell a story, it better be one hell of a story – Movies are about characters DOING THINGS. They’re not about characters TALKING ABOUT DOING THINGS. Therefore, don’t have your characters tell stories. I see so many amateur writers have characters tell stories that are so boring I want to cut my eyes out. So if you dare to bring your screenplay to a grinding halt while a character tells a story, it better be the best f&*%ing story in the universe! Quint’s famous monologue here about sitting in shark infested waters for 110 hours while everyone around him was eaten by sharks worked because it was a damn good story. Please don’t bother having your character tell their own story unless it’s as good as this one.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Jaws.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

They are as elusive as Adele snacking on carrots. And yet, they’re probably the most important part of your script. As you all know, a bad ending cancels out a good movie. And a bad movie can actually be saved by a good ending. That’s because the ending is the last thing the reader (or audience) leaves with. It’s the feeling they will take with them when talking to friends, when talking to co-workers, when going online. If you write a great ending, people will tell other people about your movie, and word-of-mouth will turn your film into a box office star. I still remember when The Sixth Sense came out. The ending of that film was so strong, the movie had virtually ZERO fall-off from week to week at the box office, which is basically unheard of for a wide-release.

So what’s the secret to these stress-inducing third act monsters? Gosh, I wish I knew. Then I could write an article about it and we could all become millionaires. While I may not have all the answers, I’ve got a pretty solid understanding of what makes an ending stick. And while it’s more difficult than following an IKEA instruction booklet, it isn’t as complex as one might think.

Basically, great endings can be broken down into two categories.

1) Something unexpected happens.
2) Our protagonist (or one of the other main characters) overcomes his flaw.

If you go back through your favorite endings, you will inevitably see the incorporation of one of these two techniques. The Sixth Sense – we find out that our hero is dead (unexpected). Star Wars – while trying to destroy the Death Star, Luke learns to believe in himself as Han learns to be selfless (overcoming flaws). The Shawshank Redemption – Our protagonist breaks out of prison (unexpected). In When Harry Met Sally, Harry realizes that the love of one woman is more rewarding than being with many women (overcoming flaw). In Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal escapes (unexpected).

Now if you’re ambitious, you can try to do both of these things and get a real killer ending. Back To The Future has George McFly learning to stand up for himself (overcoming flaw) as well as Doc dying…then coming back to life (unexpected). That one-two punch of an emotional catharsis stacked on top of a “Holy shit!” surprise leaves us feeling about as charged as a human being can feel leaving a movie theater.

However, those are just the broad strokes. When you get into the nitty gritty, there’s a lot more you have to plan for. First and foremost, you want to know your ending before you start writing your script. Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Star Wars VII) says he never writes a script without knowing his ending beforehand and I agree that that’s the way to go. The reason for this is that everything in your script should be pushing us towards our ending. And you can’t write that way if you don’t know what your ending is. Essentially, an ending is a series of payoffs for everything that’s come before it. So we need to know how it all concludes before we can set the stage for that moment.

In addition to this, you must understand the structure of the third act, as it is basically the container for your climax. In most scripts, your character is at his lowest point going into the third act. Whatever he’s been trying to do (his goal), he’s failed spectacularly at it. In other words, everything he’s been chasing has ended in disaster. So in Apollo 13, they’re stuck in this tiny capsule with barely any oxygen and all their controls destroyed. It’s as low as it can get. In that sense, you should look at the third act as a rebirth. It’s an opportunity for your character to regroup from his “lowest point” and give it one last shot.

As you may have expected, it’s also important that you have a strong character goal driving your story. And you’d like for that goal to be stated in the first act. In Indiana Jones, we establish in the first act that the goal is to get the Ark. In The King’s Speech, we establish in the first act that the goal for Birdy is to overcome his stutter so he can speak to his nation. Once you establish a strong character goal, an audience will be interested in seeing if your character can achieve that goal. But the real power in this is that a strong goal maps out your ending for you. That’s because the ending is the conclusion to the question: Does he achieve his goal or not? This is extremely important to understand. Strong character goals lead to the best endings.

Whenever you don’t have a clear goal driving your story, you won’t know what to do with your third act. That’s because nobody’s going after anything. And if nobody’s going after anything, it isn’t clear how the journey is supposed to resolve. Miss Scriptshadow and I rented “Liberal Arts” the other night and it was the perfect example of this. There was no goal in the movie. It was just characters talking to each other. So the writer, Josh Radnor, had no idea what to do with the ending. As a result, it just kind of petered out. That’s not the case with ALL goal-less scripts. When Harry Met Sally is a notable exception. But typically, without that clear goal, you’re not going to have a clue what to do with your climax.

Another important reason to incorporate a goal is that it allows you to place obstacles in front of it. These obstacles make the ending more interesting because they put our hero’s success in doubt. For example, in The Karate Kid, Daniel’s goal is to win the tournament. In the semi-finals, one of the Cobra contestants takes out his leg. This way, in the finals, he must fight on only one leg! That’s an obstacle! You’ll want to throw a few big whopper obstacles at your characters during the climax. The more you can put our hero’s success in doubt, the more entertaining the ending will be.

In addition to this, you’ll want to build an ending that specifically challenges your hero’s flaw. So if your hero’s flaw is that he’s a coward, build an ending where he’s challenged by a bully. If your hero’s flaw is that he’s selfish, build an ending where he can either save himself or save others. This is really important. If your ending doesn’t in some way challenge your hero’s fatal flaw, it will feel random. And if you don’t have a fatal flaw for your hero in the first place, your ending will feel empty. This of course requires that you know how to give your main character a flaw in the first place. There’s not enough room to go into that here, but I’m sure somebody will explain how to do it in the comments section if asked.

From there, as stated earlier, you’d like to come up with that one final unexpected surprise in your climax. This is something I can’t teach you. It’ll come down to you making a unique and interesting choice that the audience didn’t see coming. It doesn’t have to be a twist ending like The Sixth Sense. But SOMETHING unexpected should happen. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters wasn’t a twist ending. But it was definitely unexpected and fun. Your ending should never be exactly what your audience expects. Even if they know your hero will win in the end, you should add something unique that makes getting to that point a surprise.

So let’s summarize the keys to writing a great ending.

1) Know your ending before you start.
2) Understand where your character’s at at the beginning of the third act (he should be at his lowest point).
3) Write a strong character goal into your central plot.
4) Introduce tons of obstacles into the climax.
5) Make sure your character has a fatal flaw.
6) Build in an ending that specifically challenges that fatal flaw.
7) Add something into the climax that the audience isn’t expecting.

There you have it. Now go write your kick-ass ending!

Pick up a copy of my book Scriptshadow Secrets for more structural breakdowns and over 500 screenwriting tips!

Almost all of my “10 Lessons You Can Learn From” posts have dealt with classic, or at the very least, well-respected films. I’m not sure I’d put The Avengers on that list. It was a fun movie. But like a lot of summer movies, it was meant to be viewed once on a Saturday night with a theater full of teenagers. I don’t believe it’s meant to go toe-to-toe with any “respected” film. Having said that, I’m always breaking down films that are critically loved, with the film’s commercial success being secondary. As a commenter brought up the other day, “Why are you always knocking Transformers? It made a billion dollars worldwide. People saw it and enjoyed it.” It’s hard for me to quantify that statement. Yeah, people are going to see the movie, but they’re all 14 years old. I don’t know anyone over the age of 23 who actually enjoyed Transformers. But the commenter was right about one thing. SOMEONE is going to see these movies and enjoying them. So almost as a challenge, I thought it would be fun to look at the highest grossing movie of 2012 (by almost 200 million dollars) and see if we couldn’t extract 10 screenwriting tips from it – maybe figure out some screenwriting tips for the summer blockbuster writer. Here we go!

1) What’s your problem? – In most big budget movies, you want to introduce the problem in your story right away. Once you have a problem, you can begin introducing characters who are going to solve that problem. So here, that problem is the Tesseract. It opens up. Loki (the villain) comes through it. Now we got a problem.

2) Set-pieces are driven by URGENCY – Whenever you write a big action set-piece, you have to incorporate urgency in some way – preferably via a ticking time bomb. So here, after Loki arrives, the Tesseract’s lack of stability causes the building to start imploding, giving them only 2 minutes to get out. This makes the impending chase of Loki even more intense, as they must also escape the area before they’re destroyed along with it.

3) Refocus your script after set-pieces – Set pieces are fun and wild and crazy. But a mistake I find a lot of amateur writers making is that AFTER their set-piece, they don’t re-orient the reader. Remember, we were just in action mode. Enjoying explosions. Enjoying super-heroes fighting. Now that that’s over, we need to be re-briefed on our character goals. So immediately after that first set-piece in Avengers, Nick Fury gets on the phone and says, “The Tesseract’s been stolen by a hostile force. Everybody we know, I want them after it.” The goal has been established. We now know what we’re doing. This may SEEM obvious, but rarely do I see the new writer do it. They often assume you know what the goal is or, in drastic cases, don’t establish a goal at all.

4) Don’t get bogged down in exposition – You should always try to limit your exposition. That’s because exposition is boring. No matter how you dress it up, we’ll be bored by it. If there’s one major fault in The Avengers, it’s that once we get to the airship, we get about six or seven scenes of exposition and discussion. The film slows to a crawl as a result. Remember that your primary focus in any screenplay is to keep the story moving. Don’t get bogged down in exposition. One – or in drastic cases a maximum of two – scenes is enough.

5) Capture your villain – It’s hard to maintain a single unchanged plotline for an entire screenplay. If something’s unchanged for that long, there’s a good chance we’ll get bored with it. To keep things fresh, you want to “interrupt” that plotline with something unexpected. A perfect example is here with Loki. The plot COULD HAVE HAD the Avengers trying to find and destroy Loki the entire time. But Whedon switches things up by having us actually CAPTURE Loki, which adds a fresh new dynamic to the story. In general, you’re always looking to keep things fresh in your scripts, so you want to make unexpected choices whenever possible.

6) Once again, the best dialogue often results from conflict – Some of the best dialogue in Avengers is when Stark is battling it out with Captain America. Why? Because they’re on completely opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Stark is carefree and does whatever he wants. Captain America is uptight and follows orders. If you put any characters like that in a room together, the dialogue’s probably going to be good, so it’s not surprising it works here. Contrast this with the dialogue between Banner and Stark, who both respect each other. It’s not bad, but it’s not nearly as alive and fun as when Stark and Captain America talk.

7) If two characters don’t get along or don’t like each other, put them around each other a lot! – This is an extension of the last tip, and an important one. If you have two characters who don’t like each other, keep them around each other as much as possible. Make them work together! Note that when the airship loses an engine, Whedon doesn’t have Stark and Banner work on it together (they like each other!). He has Stark and Captain America work on it together.

8) Fights and battles must have high stakes or we won’t care – A lot of people complained that the Thor Iron Man fight in the forest was pointless, just an excuse to have Iron Man fight Thor. To a certain extent this was true. I mean, Thor did want to take Loki back to be tried on his planet and Iron Man refused to allow that unless Loki gave them the Tesseract. So there was SOME motivation to the fight. But let’s face it. It was weak. We didn’t really feel the stakes of the fight. So it was nice eye candy, but left us feeling empty. To fix this, always keep the stakes high in every fight/battle. In The Matrix, when Neo fights Smith in the subway, we know that if Smith kills him, the world is doomed. Neo is THE ONE, the only hope mankind has. So the impact of that fight hits us much harder and we’re therefore way more invested.

9) Set-pieces are about BUILDING – You don’t want to throw the kitchen sink at your characters right away during a set-piece. You want to slowly build it up. The set piece should feel like things are getting worse and worse for your heroes at every turn. So in that final battle in Avengers, where the portal opens up and the aliens arrive, first the small guys on speeders show up. When they’re handled, the big worm thing shows up. When they defeat that, MULTIPLE worms show up. There’s something about struggling to defeat something only to see it get much worse that really pulls an audience in.

10) Yup, even big summer movies (minus Transformers) have character arcs – Not everyone has to arc, but a couple of your characters should. Here, Stark needs to learn to buy into the team as opposed to only care about himself. Bruce Banner must learn to embrace his dark side instead of focusing his entire life on avoiding it. When these characters learn to overcome these issues, that’s how the Avengers win in the end.

These are 10 tips from the movie “The Avengers.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!