Today we talk about the scariest word in the world: EXPOSITION

Day 1: Writing a Teaser
Day 2: Introducing Your Hero
Day 3: Setting up Your Hero’s Life
Day 8: Keeping Your Scenes Entertaining
Day 9: The Inciting Incident
Day 10: Refusal of the Call

I don’t talk about exposition nearly as much as I used to. The reason for that is, I find exposition to be very “Screenwriting 101.” It’s one of those things you obsess over as a beginner. And everyone is bad at it for their first five screenplays. But then, a lot like loglines, it’s one of those things where, if you stick around long enough, you figure it out, you know what I mean?

But today we’re going to forgo my reluctance because the first act is all about SETTING UP THE REST OF YOUR MOVIE and that means using a lot of exposition. For those of you new to the medium, exposition is defined as “relevant information about the characters and plot.” If you’re writing a heist movie, like Mission Impossible, all the scenes where the Mission Impossible team discuss how they’re going to break into the computer room – that’s exposition.

Or, if your character needs to pilot a jet in act 3 but there’s nowhere else in the script to fit in any jet-flying scenes, you’ll need some dialogue somewhere that lets your reader know your hero can do this. Han Solo: “And who’s going to fly it kid, you?” Luke Skywalker: “You bet I could! I’m not such a bad pilot myself.” That’s exposition.

You also may need to tell us about where your hero came from and what their current internal situation is, if they’ve had any traumatic experiences recently, like a death in the family, or if they have a drug problem, like Rue in Euphoria.  This all falls under the umbrella of exposition.  The good news is, you don’t always have to use dialogue to deliver exposition.  You can show-don’t-tell.  For example, if your hero is an alcoholic, show them drinking a lot in some non-cliche way and we’ll get that they’re an alcoholic.

The reason exposition is such a major focus in the first act is because when a reader comes into a story, they know nothing.  You may know everything about your hero and the plot.  But the reader doesn’t yet.  So everything you tell them is going to be new information. Which means you’re going to have to explain some things. If you introduce a new character, you’re going to have to tell us who they are, what they do, who else they know in the script, how they know them, how they’re relevant to the plot. All of those things require exposition.

Likewise, when the inciting incident occurs in your script, your plot will form. And when your plot forms, you have to disseminate how it forms to the reader. When the Avengers learn that Thanos is going after all the Infinity Stones to snap half of life out of existence, they need to figure out how to stop him. That conversation is all exposition.

One of the things that’s critical to remember is that the story you choose will have a singificant effect on how much exposition you’ll write. If you’re writing a well-known template where the audience knows the rules already and you keep it simple, like, say, “Friends with Benefits,” you’ll have barely any exposition to write. But if you’re writing Lord of the Rings, you’re going to have to explain Middle Earth, 30 characters, what “the ring” is, why it needs to be destroyed, the plan for destroying it, who’s going to try and stop you, all the rules of this world, how the magic works — the amount of exposition is endless.

Another example of a heavy-exposition concept would be Moneyball. You have to explain the rules of baseball. What a general manager does. Who our general manager is. What his specific circumstances are (why is it that his team, the Oakland A’s, is so different from all the other teams in the league?). You have to explain the concept of moneyball (a complicated breakdown of players and stats and how it’s not about flashy stars but rather who gets on base the most). Anybody who’s written one of these scripts will tell you: it’s no picnic.

That’s something you need to take into consideration when you come up with an idea – is how much exposition you’ll be tasked with writing. The more plot, the more characters, and the more world-building there is in your idea, the more exposition-heavy your first act will be.

Okay, sure, we get it, Carson. Exposition is hard. What do we do about it?

What most writers do is take the path of least resistance. They lazily insert the exposition into the first act in a “workmanlike” way, taking the approach of, “Just get it out of the way.” I’m going to anger some readers here, but Christopher Nolan has become famous for this. Between Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet, the man has made an art out of long lazy expository scenes that set up his plot (and world). He didn’t used to do this, by the way. Memento deals with exposition quite elegantly.

The strategy for exposition should be the opposite of this.  It should be: Make it as entertaining as you can.

Every time you’re faced with an exposition-heavy scene, ask yourself, “How can I make this as entertaining as possible?” That doesn’t mean you have to stick your lead characters in a car chase and have them dole out important plot points while they’re trying to catch the bad guys (although that’s an option). It just means make the exposition enjoyable instead of boring.

Let’s take Moneyball as an example. Because it has a tall task. It has to explain how the process of moneyball works, which involves the current state of baseball and how moneyball is different and stats and players and blah blah blah. Before I show you how they tackled this, I want you to imagine how you’d write this exposition scene. Because I can tell you how most people would write it.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) would be in another GM’s office, and the GM (general manager) would say something like, “Hey, have you heard of this new thing people are doing? They’re using computers to track players now and they’re learning that all the previous stats don’t matter as much as they used to and here’s the stats they do care about, let me list them for you so you understand this new concept of moneyball.”  Somebody telling somebody else exposition, unprompted, is one of the worst ways to deliver exposition.

Instead, screenwriting masters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zallian craft a mystery in regards to moneyball. Billy Beane is in a fellow General Manger’s office where he tries to get the GM to trade him a relatively unknown player, thinking it will be easy. The GM agrees at first, until some nerdy assistant in the corner shakes his head ‘no,’ and the GM goes back on the agreement, telling Billy he can’t trade him. It’s all rather hush-hush and mysterious.

WE’VE GOT OURSELVES A MYSTERY! That’s a great place to be when you need to dole out exposition. Because the reader is curious. “Hmm, what’s going on here?” they think.  “I want to know what all the secrecy is about.”

So Billy hunts this nerdy assistant down and says, “Why didn’t you trade me that player?” What I’m about to tell you next is one of the top 5 rules when dealing with exposition: THE ASSISTANT DOESN’T WANT TO TELL HIM. There’s something about a character not wanting to give out the releveant information that cloaks the exposition, making it feel like it’s not exposition. So, here, the assistant can’t tell him because it’s trade secrets. But Billy keeps pushing and pushing until the assistant can’t hold it in anymore. And that’s when he explains how moneyball works.

Never once does the scene feel like exposition because, a) there’s a mystery involved, and b) the assistant only gives out the information reluctantly. Here’s the office scene…

And here’s the big exposition scene that follows…

Note the clever twist in the middle of the scene, where he takes him to a more private place. This conveys to the reader that the information he’s about to tell him is secret and valuable. It also adds a little suspense. That’s good writing! I understand that this is a fairly specific example because it’s a sports drama, which not many people are writing. But the approach Steve Zallian uses is the same one you should be using. Which is: “I’ve got a bunch of potentially boring stuff I have to convey to the reader. How do I do so in a dramatically entertaining way?”

More recently, Spider-Man No Way Home dealt with this issue. The film needed to open up the multiverse, a complex concept that needed a lot of explanation, while also explaining that, by doing so, nobody would remember Peter Parker was Spider-Man. I can’t imagine having to come up with a scene that required as much exposition as this one. But the writers did exactly what they were supposed to do: Figure out how to convey this information in an entertaining matter. They do so by having Peter ask Dr. Strange all these questions about what’s going on and how this will affect him WHILE DR. STRANGE IS IN THE PROCESS of executing his spell.  Conveying exposition during an exciting moment is a time-tested way to tackle the exposition problem.

As I pointed out in my review of the film, though, the scene didn’t work. It was too jumbled and tried to do too many things at once. But the spirit of what the writers did was correct. They’re giving the viewer exposition through a dramatically entertaining scenario.

In summary, whenever you write a first act, most of your scenes will contain exposition. If it’s a little exposition – try to contain it to as few lines as possible. If it’s a lot of exposition, try to come up with a scene that delivers that exposition in a fun way.  Feel free to share your own exposition tricks in the comments!  And keep writing those pages!

Next First Act Post: Thursday, March 17
Pages to write until next post: 4
Pages you should have completed by Thursday: 24

Today we discuss the most important scene you will write in your entire script.

Yesterday, we discussed the teaser scene and talked about whether you should include one in your script or not. Now that you’ve decided, we can move on to either the first scene of the script (if you didn’t include a teaser) or the second scene (if you did). This is going to be your main character’s introductory scene. It is not hyperbole to say this is the most important scene in your script.

The reason for that is the same reason I bring up in half the script reviews I do. Just like nobody in real life wants to hang out with an unlikable person, no audience wants to hang around an unlikable character.  So the scene must make us like the hero on some level.  I know this word “like” is heavily debated amongst the screenwriting community.  The way I define it – insofar as what we’re trying to do – is that you must make us care about the main character enough that we want to root for him.

What’s tricky about this scene is that introducing your hero is only one piece of the puzzle. You also want to introduce their flaw. This is because there are two journeys going on in a screenplay. There’s the external journey, which entails all the physical things we see our hero do to achieve their goal. And there’s the internal journey, which is how your hero changes on the inside while all these external things are happening.

In order for a character to change, you will need to lay out what their starting point is. If they are a selfish person, and their inner journey will show them transform into a selfless person, then it’s imperative you let us know right off the bat that they’re selfish.

On top of establishing likability and a flaw, you will also need to make the scene where they’re being introduced entertaining. A critical mistake a lot of writers make is writing stillborn hero introductory scenes. It’s as if they believe that as long as they set up the character, they’ve done their job. No no no no no no. On top of everything else, the introductory scene itself needs to be entertaining.

This is going to be a theme throughout this month. You don’t get gold stars for setting up characters, setting up plot, or establishing backstory. You only get gold stars when you do all of that stuff IN ADDITION TO entertaining the reader.

So how does one do all of these things in a single scene? The most common way is to show your hero at their job encountering a relatively high-stakes problem. The reason you do this is because a problem necessitates choice and action. Your hero will have to make decisions, which will help us get to know him, and he will need to take action, which gives the scene life.

You see this in a lot of procedurals, cop movies, and serial killer flicks. We meet our hero detective as he arrives at the murder scene. The murder is the “problem.” We need to find out who did it. Or at least find a solid clue that will set us on the right path.

There are a lot of things you can in this scenario to achieve your goals. You can make our detective charming to everyone he encounters, which makes him likable. Or we can make him an underdog. He’s the low guy on the totem pole. Nobody wants him here (everybody likes an underdog so we’re immediately rooting for him). And, of course, he can outsmart the other, more seasoned, detectives, finding the clue that everyone else missed. Since audiences love smart protagonists who are great at their jobs, they immediately like this guy.

These scenes also tend to be entertaining because there’s a mystery component to them. When someone’s been murdered, audiences are curious to find out who did it. They like following someone around who’s trying to answer these questions.

The great thing about generating a problem your hero must solve is that it’s a setup that works for virtually any scenario. If your hero is an office worker, maybe they accidentally deleted their speech and have to give the big boardroom presentation from memory. If they’re a sniper, maybe they’ve been ordered to kill a madman but when they get the target in their sites, there are children in the way, which means they will have to kill the children before they kill the target. If they’re a high school teacher, maybe they’re told by the football coach that they have to reverse a failed test score so that the school’s star player can play in the championship game this weekend.

You’re just looking to put your hero in an unfavorable predicament and see how they respond. That’s the opening to everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark (must escape a crumbling cave) to Toy Story (new Christmas toys arrive to potentially replace the current ones) to The Invisible Man (must escape her evil husband’s home before he wakes up) to The Bourne Identity (a bullet-riddled man is rescued at sea but he has no idea who he is).

Introducing some sort of problem your hero has to face is one of the easiest ways to achieve all the things I talk about in this post.

In order to convey what we’re going for, I’ll highlight the best character introduction I’ve seen in the last five years. That would be the introduction of Arthur Fleck, aka The Joker, in the movie, “Joker.”

The reason I liked this intro so much is because the writer had one hell of an obstacle in front of him. He had to take a psychotic weird unpleasant man and somehow make us root for him. Or at least care about him for the next two hours. Therefore, he constructed this clever opening scene that has our hero getting attacked and humiliated. Remember that audiences will always like characters who are bullied, ganged up on, or taken advantage of.  So after this scene, we’re Team Arthur all the way.

I’ve noticed some people online point to this scene as over-the-top and trying too hard to make us like Arthur. I vehemently disagree. This character was going to be so unpleasant for such an extended period of time that the writers had to go big with his introduction. They had to make us really really really care for him. This wasn’t some Adam Sandler movie. This was a disturbed character. We had to massively tip the ‘likability’ scales early on to get people on board.

For those who haven’t seen Joker, here’s the opening scene:

I don’t want to pretend like this is easy. Screenplays are weird in that, sometimes, a story works against what the writer wants to do. For example, maybe your hero is a bank robber. What better way to introduce them than robbing a bank? But what if our bank robber also has a wife and a kid who are going to be a major part of the story? And you start thinking, “I can make my hero a lot more likable if I introduce him around his wife and kid first. And the bank robbery will have higher stakes if we know the hero has a wife and kid waiting at home. So why don’t I set the three of them up in a scene at home first, then send him off to rob the bank.”

In other words, you sacrifice the more entertaining scene – the bank robbery – for a family set-up scene. Is that the right call? Maybe. Maybe not. Funny enough, this is exactly the dilemma Joker faced. In the original script, the opening scene was Arthur meeting with a social worker. The scene did a good job getting into Arthur’s head, making him sympathetic because he obviously has mental issues. But the scene wasn’t entertaining enough to open the movie on. Which is why director Todd Phillips opted to go with the sign-stealing scene instead. It was more entertaining AND it made Arthur sympathetic.

If you can do everything in one scene, you should do it. If not, here’s how I would prioritize the three requirements of an introductory scene.

1. MAKE US LIKE HIM! – If we love your hero, we’ll be a lot less finicky about plot and story issues.
2. MAKE THE SCENE ENTERTAINING – It’s still early enough in the screenplay that a reader is ready to give up on you. So don’t just introduce your hero. Make sure the scene itself is entertaining.
3. INTRODUCE YOUR HERO’S FLAW – While I would prefer to know your hero’s flaw immediately, I don’t think it’s as important as making us like him and making the scene entertaining. If you must hold off on one of these three, you can push the introduction of the hero’s flaw back a scene or two.

Join me back here tomorrow when we talk about secondary characters as well as the scenes you’ll write before the inciting incident.

Next Post: Tomorrow (Thursday, March 3)
Pages to write until next post: 1.5

Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: A young woman and her devoted boyfriend’s lives are dramatically altered by a medical procedure that could potentially quadruple their lifespans.
About: Clearly, Matt Kic and Mike Sorce have a love for weird life-extending dramatic sci-fi ideas. They sold a script to Netflix in 2019 called, The Second Life of Ben Haskins, about a guy who gets cancer then goes into stasis until they can transfer his brain into a new body. So this is well-tread territory for them. By the way, these two loved contests before they sold their first screenplay, and the good news for all you aspiring screenwriters out there is, THEY NEVER WON! They semi-finaled a lot. But that’s as far as they got. To be honest, semi-finaling is usually a good sign in contests because often contests want to celebrate an artsy or profound script, which leaves the Hollywood scripts – the cool higher concept ideas – back in the semi-final round. So next time you semi-final in a contest, start looking for houses in the hills cause you’re about to hit it big!
Writers: Matthew Kic & Mike Sorce
Details: 118 pages

Today’s screenplay has a whopper of a twist. But does that twist result in a script worth reading? Let’s find out!

Maddie and Julian, both eight years old, are inseparable ballet dancers. They’re best buddies times a million. After a strenuous day of practice, Maddie gets word that her father is in the hospital. Her mother races Maddie there and her dying dad cryptically tells her not to screw up her life like he did.

Twenty years later, Maddie is still dancing and STILL with Julian. The two are so in love they got matching birdcage tattoos on their wrists. Maddie is a nurse at a place called Dohrnii Medical where she changes bed pans for a guy known as “Gramps,” and has daily battles with protesters, who are mad that Dohrnii offers a new medical procedure to increase your lifespan four-fold.

Maddie, who is still shaken by her father’s death, wants to get the procedure. But to do so would mean becoming sterile. This is something Julian does not accept. He wants to have many kids with Maddie. Maddie is so mad about Julian not wanting the procedure that she goes and bangs her new 40-something dance teacher, Mr. Ford. I’ve seen some rash decisions in my life but that was a little extra, Maddie.

When Julian next leaves town, Maddie secretly gets the procedure, which effectively ends their relationship. Before Maddie can process this, she finds out that her mom is dying. A week later, we’re at the funeral. Right before it starts, Mr. Ford shows up. After exchanging pleasantries, Maddie checks Mr. Ford’s wrist where we see… a birdcage tattoo?

Wait, wtf is going on here? Maddie gets birdcage tattoos with every guy she sleeps with? No. Actually. This is where we learn that Julian, Mr. Ford, and Gramps…. ARE THE SAME PERSON! We’ve been unknowingly jumping back and forth in time throughout the first 30 pages. Since Maddie doesn’t age, we just assumed all of this was happening in the present.

The rest of the script linearly follows Maddie in the year 2025, when she’s a hot mess alcoholic, in 2051, when she tries to conquer her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, and in 2083, where she looks back at all the dumb choices she made, particularly the one where she screwed over Julian. In the end, Maddie will learn whether becoming a “jellyfish” was worth it or not.

I think I would’ve titled this, “Hot Mess Jellyfish.” Cause it’s really about a character who is a total mess and has no idea what she wants, navigating her never-ending 20s over the course of 60 years.

I’m not sure how I feel about Jellyfish Days because it’s such a weird script. On the plus side, it’s not like anything else out there. On the minus side, it’s messier than my bedroom all throughout high school. It has these great moments, such as when we realize these three men we’ve been seeing have all been the same guy (Julian). And then it has silly moments, like this whole ‘follow your dream’ ballet storyline, which feels too lightweight for a movie tackling themes as heady as time and aging.

I do like that the script follows my advice of figuring out what’s unique about your concept and building your story around that. Because that’s going to be what separates your script from every other script. What’s unique about this story is that the main character lives for 300 years. So the writers smartly built in this storyline whereby we see all these aspects of Maddie’s life only to later learn they were happening in different time periods. That is a choice SPECIFIC to this concept.

I also thought it was a bold choice to drop that twist on page 30. Most writers would be tempted to save the twist til the end. The problem with saving twists for that long is that you have to lie for too long. You must strategically keep things out of the story that would normally be there. And if you do that enough, the story starts to feel distant, vague.

I’ll give you an example. Early in the script, Maddie and Julian have a fight about her getting the de-aging procedure. The next scene is her running through the rain to Mr. Ford’s house, ringing the doorbell, and when he answers, banging him. When I read that, I hated Maddie. She’s spent her whole life with Julian and all it takes is one argument to send her off having sex with her teacher?? Talk about a cold hearted b-word.

Of course, when we learn Julian and Mr. Ford are the same person, it makes sense. But had they waited until page 120 to tell us that, we would’ve hated her that whole time. And we would’ve been confused. There was nothing between her and Mr. Ford, up until that point in the movie, that would make you think she’d want to be with him. Of course, that’s because the writers can’t tell us too much lest we be onto them.

So it becomes this dance of lies you’re building and building for one shining moment at the end of the film. And while we’ve seen it work – The Sixth Sense – it more often than not doesn’t. So I like that these guys understood that and told us earlier.

I also like that the writers made some bold choices. For example, at first, I was annoyed by all the melodrama. Dad is dying of liver failure. Mom is dying of cancer. Big dramatic divorces are happening. These are the kinds of things you typically see in daytime soap operas. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all of this stuff fit the themes of the movie, which came down to the question, “What are the unique things you encounter when you live forever?” And experiencing a lot more heartache than the average person was a logical extension of that theme.

Still, the script is so freaking messy, it’s frustrating. Following your dreams is a subplot for an Addison Rae Netflix movie. It shouldn’t be part of a story trying to make this big profound statement. And then there’s this weird “secret son” storyline that pops up late. Apparently Maddie and Julian had a kid and she gave him up for adoption. But I thought the whole reason they broke up was because she wouldn’t have his kid. I had no idea what was going on there.

With that said, the script is one of those rare instances of something that’s discussion worthy. Yesterday’s script was the anti-discussion worthy script. But this actually has some stuff in it to talk about. And, for that reason, I’d say it’s worth checking out.

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

What I learned: This script could’ve used one more plot point. We coasted after page 30, patiently moving through each of the three time periods Maddie lived in. And it got a little boring. An easy place to find a plot point in these high-concept scripts is to use the “and then sh#t goes wrong” tool. If your hero gains the ability to fly, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong as a result of that power. If your hero gets into Harvard, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong. If your hero wins the lottery, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong. Sh#t going wrong is where all the fun is. The writers were so focused on the character side of this equation, they overlooked a potential ‘sh#t goes wrong’ plot point in Jellyfish Days that could’ve spiced up a slow narrative.

Genre: Art Heist/Thriller
Premise: An art thief who takes priceless objects from museums and private collections and redistributes them to their original countries of ownership is tracked by a dogged FBI Agent across the globe.
About: This script finished top 30 on last year’s Black List. Writer Ola Shokumbi recently adapted a book for the upcoming animated movie, “Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun,” that will appear on Netflix. Will Smith is producing. She also wrote one episode of the show, “The Fix.”
Writer: Ola Shokunbi
Details: 109 pages

Can today’s script reinstate confidence in the Black List?

If not, can we at least find a new writer with a fresh voice? Someone to get excited about?

I’m always down for a cool art heist script but these are tricky. The genre is well-traveled and, therefore, difficult to be original in.

Let’s see if today’s writer has come up with something cool.

The art thief known as “Ghost” steals art from random museums across the world. But unlike these greedy bastards who sell their stolen art to the highest bidder, Ghost sends the art right back to its country of origin. I’m not clear on how she makes enough money to, you know, fund this expensive hobby. But maybe she gets paid in moral superiority.

Halfway across the world, at an FBI office in America, is Ghost’s rival, Pire. Well, she doesn’t know he’s her rival yet. But she’s about to. You see, Pire has been tracking Ghost’s European museum escapades and he’s come up with a theory. She’s coming to America! Or *he* is coming to America. Nobody yet knows that Ghost is female. They merely assume she’s male cause of their internal patriarchal biases.

Long story short, Pire blows catching her, and Ghost, who we’re now told has instituted a name change (you can call her “Indigo”), flies a plane to France because I guess in between late night museum robbings, she learned how to become a pilot. Once back in Europe, her true plan is revealed. She’s trying to find a mythical lamp that is said to have the power to “raise an army.”

Her mark is a man named Walter, a sort of “sinister Indiana Jones” type, who is said to have the lamp. But Ghost – I mean Indigo – falls in BFF love with Walter’s assistant, Nooria. Nooria, you see, is Walter’s operations manager. She makes it so Walter can easily rob all these caves around the world.

Indigo points out to Nooria that she’s a prisoner, much like how art is a prisoner when it is inside the museums of a country where it did not originate. From here, “Indigo” turns into a full-on globetrotting action movie with vespa chases through the streets of Milan. We will find out, when this is all over, that Indigo played everyone like a fiddle, executing the most intricate plan in the history of the world, which should set her up for 20+ years of additional adventures.

One thing I can never forgive, no matter how hard I try, is when the concept itself is faulty. Work through this with me because I’m struggling to understand it. Let’s say you steal a painting from an American museum that originally came from an Italian painter from the 1700s. So you then “give it back” to Italy.

Who, in Italy, takes responsibility for this painting that was stolen and then “returned” to them? The Italian president? The Commissioner of Art? And what do they do with it when they get it? Do they send an “lol” tweet to the US government then put the painting up in one of their own museums?

We are operating under reality here, are we not? If so, doesn’t that mean the painting will have been the property of that museum? In which case lawyers are going to get involved and eventually litigate that painting back to the United States. That’s assuming Italy didn’t just send the painting right back to the museum in the first place. No government is going to publicly accept a stolen piece of art.

This is why in all the art-theft movies preceding this one, it’s a criminal stealing the art. Or a thief stealing art for a crime lord type. Because that avoids the problem “Indigo” has. If you’re a criminal, you can hide your act of crime. There isn’t a scenario where a government is going to have to publicly accept a stolen museum piece unless we’re talking two countries that specifically hate each other, which wasn’t the case with this movie.

It sounds pretty when you say it – a thief who steals art from museums and returns it to their country of origin – but it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Strangely, just as you’re wrapping your head around that and deciding if you can buy into it enough to mentally commit to the screenplay, the movie changes gears and becomes James Bond. None of it is bad. I could imagine this movie looking pretty good if someone spent 150 million dollars on it.

But my criteria for any action movie is: Are you giving me things I haven’t seen before? Because when you’re writing a movie that costs this much money, you are placing your film in one of the most high-stakes competitive spaces in all of art – the blockbuster film. To stand out in that arena, you have to show us stuff we haven’t seen before.

For example, there’s a scene where Indigo is on a moving train and the cops are closing in on her and she heads up to the top of the train, activates a parachute on her back, that then extends backwards due to the wind, lifting her up into the air to safety. I don’t know if I’ve seen that exact scene before. But I’ve seen a thousand moments that are achingly similar to it.

I will cut action films some slack in this area if they give me a great hero. Like I always say, you should be spending tons of time on creating a great protagonist because they’re going to be in every scene. Therefore, if we like them, we’re going to like every scene. But I found Indigo to be arrogant and too cool for school. She was always 15 steps ahead of everyone so she never sweat. Therefore we were never worried for her.

Go through that opening scene in Indiana Jones and tell me that Indiana didn’t sweat. Literally every single obstacles nearly killed him. Yet Indigo could’ve touched up her make-half the times she was pursued. That’s how little danger she was in.

The Black List needs to be careful. When you hear those words – The Black List – you now associate them with “competent” rather than the word you used to use, which was “good.” It’s not the worst thing in the world to be competent. Competency is still hard to achieve in screenwriting. But a list’s job should be to get you excited about the items that are on that list. And The Black List isn’t doing that at the moment.

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

What I learned: Dramatic irony is when the audience has more information than at least one of the characters on screen. Usually, that information will imply a negative outcome for that character. There are two common ways you can use this. You can use it so that we have more information than OUR HERO. Or you can use it so that we have more information than OUR BAD GUY. Dramatic irony will always be more effective when the audience has more information than OUR HERO. Because it puts us in a state where we want to help our hero, want to scream to them to watch out, that there’s a bad guy around the corner, or that the person they’re talking to is dangerous. Early on in Indigo, Pire goes to a museum that was recently robbed by Ghost and meets with the curator, who we find out is Ghost in disguise. It’s a fairly decent dramatic irony scene, but because the scene is set up so that we have more information than OUR BAD GUY (Pire) as opposed to more information than OUR HERO (Ghost), it never gets to that next level of dramatic irony that grabs the audience by the neck. Compare it to the dramatic irony scene in Die Hard where John meets Hans on the roof, as Hans is pretending to be a hostage. In that case, we have more information than OUR HERO and that’s why the scene is more riveting. We want to scream to John, “THAT’S THE BAD GUY!” That’s why this version is always the more effective dramatic irony.

What I learned 2: I keep telling people – UPDATE THIS GENRE. Any movie idea that could’ve been written 100 years ago is going up against too much competition. It’s too hard to come up with fresh ideas in that space. Art heist movies should now be focusing on NFTs. I’ve given you your concept prompt. Now run with it!

I’ve spent so much time analyzing bad screenplays lately that it’s gotten a little depressing. This would be a good time to remind everyone that I *HATE* giving negative reviews. There are so many more benefits to reviewing good scripts. For starters, I get to read something I actually like. Which is way more enjoyable than trudging through yet another average screenplay.

But I also think you get more out of a good script than a bad one. Sure, it’s great to point out a bunch of things that aren’t working in a screenplay. But all that’s really giving you guys is stuff to avoid. And nobody writes a great script if their only focus is avoiding bad screenwriting practices.

You write great scripts because you’re inspired. And there’s nothing more inspiring than reading a great story. You also get a bunch of actionable tips you can add to your screenplay. Instead of avoiding stuff, you’re implementing new character tips, new plot tips, new scene tips, new dialogue tips, all of which you know work since you’ve seen the proof of concept with your own eyes.

So I’m glad that, at least for a day, we get to celebrate writing. I watched two great shows this weekend. The first was the finale for “Peacemaker” and the second was the new Ben Stiller-directed show on Apple TV called “Severance.” Severance follows a worker, Mark, who agrees to split his consciousness in two halves. The first half exists at work. This version of him knows nothing about his normal life. The second half exists outside of work and knows nothing about his work life.

By the way, what’s cool about this show is that it comes from a first time writer, Dan Erickson. Something I love about Red Hour Productions – Ben Stiller’s company – is that they’re open to anyone who’s got a good concept. You don’t need to be Aaron Sorkin to win them over. Them taking a chance on this neophyte writer is proof of that.

Erickson’s script actually first gained attention when it appeared on the 2016 Blood List. From there, it somehow got to Red Hour. And when Ben Stiller read it, he loved it. Stiller is always looking for things that bring both incredible comedy and incredible sadness and this script had both. Still, it took five years from when Stiller first read the script to make it to air.

Imagine waiting for that as an unknown writer. You’ve got nothing else going on. A major director loves your script but, because he’s so popular, he’s getting pitched new projects every day and, at any moment, one of those projects could catch his interest and become his priority. To wait all that time and see his show come to fruition? That’s the dream we all live for, baby!

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s one hell of a trippy show. For example, at one point, a new worker at the company says she wants to quit. The place is too damn weird. Mark points out that if she does that, it will essentially mean she’s killing herself. “How so?” She asks. “Well, since this version of you only knows this world (the work world), once you quit, everything that’s ever happened to you here disappears from existence. That version of you would, essentially, be dead.” Chew on that for a while.

Erickson’s rise to produced writer is not what I’m here to talk about, though. I’m here to talk about what makes the show so good. And, more specifically, what makes both Severance AND Peacemaker so good. There’s got to be commonality there, right? Something that explains why these two shows were so much better than all the other trash on TV?

The answer, not surprisingly, is character. But I’m not talking character in an abstract way. I’m talking about a specific type of character. And that is the character who is built around CONTRAST.

While adding contrast to a character does not guarantee that the character will be memorable, or awesome, or compelling, it exponentially increases the chances that those three things will happen.

Let’s look at why. When you have contrast in your character, it means that the character is out of balance. And because they’re out of balance, there’s always going to be conflict within them. That conflict is going to be what makes them interesting.

Let’s say you have a devoted priest who also happens to be a serial killer. For the sake of this argument, we’ll say that he only kills bad people. Think about what this character wakes up to every morning. He has to share the word of God with his followers, despite knowing that he just brutally murdered someone last night. You can’t square that away without being in extreme conflict with yourself.

Peacemaker has a similar issue. His job is to kill people. And yet, in his heart, he’s the kindest guy in the world. This means, like the priest, he’s in constant conflict with himself. It’s never as easy as point and shoot.

You can see the value of this contrast when you compare Peacemaker to his best friend, Vigilante. Vigilante is a fun character. But he’s not compelling enough to be a lead character. “Why?” you ask. Well, Vigilante, like Peacemaker, has one job – to kill. But unlike Peacemaker, he doesn’t care that he kills. He has no resistance to it whatsoever. Without that contrast, the character is fairly one-dimensional and, therefore, only mildly compelling.

Meanwhile, what’s so fascinating about Severance, is that it builds its character around the same concept – contrast – but does so under completely different rules. Mark’s contrast comes from the fact that he’s living two separate lives. The “extremes” come in the form of his home life, where he’s a sad lonely widow, and his work life, where he’s a happy and content company man.

Just to emphasize the importance of contrast, imagine this same setup but Mark was happy at both his home and work life. Or sad at both his home and work life. You need the contrast in order to create the conflict. That’s what creates dramatic questions such as, “Which one is going to win out here? The happy Mark or the sad Mark? Who is going to win out on the tug-of-war for Mark’s consciousness?”

When you don’t apply this contrast to your main character, you get characters like Nathan Drake in Uncharted. To Uncharted’s credit, it did better than expected at the box office this weekend (50 mil if you include President’s Day). But the knock on Uncharted is its excruciatingly vanilla. And “vanilla” is always what you get when you have a hero with no contrast. The fact that nothing’s rubbing up against anything else inside of this person is what’s providing a friction-free journey.

I’m sure some of you are wondering if your screenplay is doomed without contrast. Of course not. Does John McClane have contrast? He wishes he’d worked harder to keep his marriage stable but that’s not contrast. That’s personal family issues. Contrast is easier to avoid in features because you’re only with the characters for two hours and there are other ways to make characters interesting for two hours (such as giving them family issues).

However, it is essential in television that your hero contain contrast because not only are we going to be with your story a lot longer than two hours, but TV shows rely a lot more on character than spectacle, meaning the characters must be more captivating. And one way you ensure that a character is captivating is to give them that contrast. Peacemaker will always struggle with killing. Mark will always be changing back and forth between his happy work life and sad home life.

This is one of the most valuable tools you’ll ever use as a writer and if you can effortlessly integrate it into a character so that the contrast feels organic, you’re going to create a character for the ages.