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Something I go on about all the time on the site is this concept of “creative choices.” But I’ve never directly written an article about what that means and why it’s so important. Because it is important. In fact, it may be the most important thing of all.
That’s because, when you write a script, you’re constantly making choices throughout the process. If I had to guess, I’d say there are probably somewhere between 75-100 key choices you’re making per script. If the quality level of those choices is low, the script will suck. If it’s high, the script will rock.
What is a “creative choice” exactly? Every time you have a decision to make in the writing of your screenplay, you are making a creative choice. For example, if you’re introducing a new character, you can make that character overweight and annoying, fit and charming, tall and neurotic, stout and fragile. Whichever direction you choose to go, you’ve just made a key creative choice in your screenplay.
Same thing goes for the process of writing a new scene. If you’re writing a scene where a character gets fired by his boss, you can make that scene intense and fiery or reserved and calm. You can make it a surprise that the character is fired. Or maybe the character gets a heads up before it happens, giving them an opportunity to prepare a rebuttal when the firing happens.
You could change the location. Make it happen in an elevator. Make it happen at drinks after work. Make it happen over the phone, minutes before they’re headed to work.
You have an infinite amount of choice every time you introduce a new element into your story. And those choices are where you show JUST HOW CREATIVE YOU ARE. The bad writers don’t put a ton of effort into these choices. They choose something. But they forget the creative part. They forget that, as writers, the main way you differentiate yourself from every other writer is IN YOUR UNIQUE CREATIVE VISION.
I’ll give you an example from last night. I rented a movie called Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley. It’s like a cheap Die Hard by way of a window cleaner. One of the big creative choices the writer made was to give Daisy’s character an adult autistic brother. You could tell INSTANTLY that it didn’t work. For starters, we didn’t rent this movie for an autistic brother subplot. We rented it to see a window cleaner 40 stories up dealing with death and chaos.
Everything about the brother was annoying. Everything about their relationship was forced. It was one of those things a writer feels like they’re supposed to write in order to make their script “deeper” and contain more “character development.” It was such an awful creative choice that it destroyed the movie before it got started.
So, what does a good creative choice look like? Well, I just talked about one on Monday, in the movie Novocaine. Spoilers if you haven’t watched the film. In that script, the highest profile creative choice was, later in the script, revealing the love interest to be a bad guy. It was shocking. And we didn’t see it coming due to the fact that their love was so convincing.
The key creative choices that come up in a script are:
- Coming up with the concept of the movie itself.
- Every time you create a new character.
- Every time you write a new scene.
- Every time you introduce a new plot development.
The first is obvious. You have to come up with an interesting idea. When you have an interesting idea at the heart of your story, it’s much easier to make good creative choices because the characters and scenes will stem from an already creative premise.
Take Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a very interesting premise. What if you could erase the memories of your previous relationships so you didn’t have to feel the pain of that loss? That gives you all sorts of opportunities to be creative with your characters and scenes.
Next, we have characters. Look, not every lead character is going to be László Tóth in The Brutalist. You can’t write that kind of complexity into, say, the next Mission Impossible movie (and yes, there WILL BE more Mission Impossible movies).
But you should be trying to create compelling characters that are either likable or interesting that we want to root for. I don’t care how you get there but that should be the goal. And even within that narrow highway of choice, there are still lots of fresh things you can do with your leads. Look at Ken in Barbie. That’s a next-level creative choice — the creation of that character.
Where the rubber really meets the creative choice road in character creation is with the secondary characters. That’s where you need to go hog wild. That’s where you can show off just how unique and original you are. That’s how you come up with characters like Alan in The Hangover, Mark Ruffalo’s character in Poor Things, or Sam Rockwell’s character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.
I know that a writer isn’t ready for the big show when their secondary characters are all boring.
Next up we have scene-writing. This is the most laborious of the creative choice options. Because you’re going to have 30-50 scenes in a script. My feeling is that you should be rating your creativity in your scene choices on a 1-10 scale. And you should be aiming for at least an 8 out of 10 with every scene.
To give you some perspective, on an average amateur screenplay that I read, 90% of the creative choices in regards to the scenes are at a 4 out of 10. Maybe a few are a 5 out of 10. And then maybe one or two scenes are above that.
What frustrates me so much about this is that it all comes down to effort. Creative choices, when it comes to character, are actually quite complex. Because a character must be woven into many aspects of the story and work within all of them. But a scene is a scene. It’s one unit, typically between 1.5 to 4 pages long. So, with a little effort, you can consistently create strong scenes.
The error I see a lot of writers make is that they go into the scene with a weak creative choice then spend tireless rewrites trying to make that scene as good as possible. But it never gets anywhere because the original creative choice behind the scene was weak to begin with.
By the way, when I say, “creative choice,” that doesn’t mean you have to write something wildly original or crazy, like the now famous scene in White Lotus Season 3 where Saxson and his brother get busy with each other. As long as you’re coming up with a scene that maximizes whatever it is you’re trying to do in the moment, that’s a success.
Using White Lotus again as an example, there’s a scene late in the season where Belinda and her son attempt to make a business deal with Greg. Belinda knows Greg killed his wife. She says, give me 5 million bucks and I’ll leave and never bring this up again. It’s an intense scene because we don’t know what Greg’s going to do. He’s unpredictable and dangerous. But the scene itself is not that original. It’s just maximizing the impact of the moment. There’s even a great creative choice within the scene itself. Originally, Belinda wanted to ask Greg for 1 million dollars. But, in the moment, her son shockingly asks Greg for 5, instead, upping the stakes considerably.
If you want to go old school, one of the best creative choices for a scene ever was when Clarice Starling went to check on a final lead for her case and, unknowingly, knocks on Buffalo Bill’s door (in Silence of the Lambs). We know this is Buffalo Bill. She does not. As a result, it’s one of the most tense scenes ever.
Think about how a poorly conceived creative choice could’ve affected that scene. A bad writer may have had Clarice’s boss call her and say, “Clarice! We just realized Buffalo Bill’s house is two blocks away from you! You’re the closest person we’ve got. Go there now and save the girl!” And Clarice charges into the house like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I read scenes like that all the time. It goes to show that when you really think it through, you can probably come up with a better creative choice for most of the scenes in your script.
Finally, we have plot developments. This is any major development in your script that has larger ramifications for the story. Twists, turns, reveals, new information. If you don’t have 2 to 3 big plot developments stemming from smart creative choices, your script is too tame.
Have you ever read a script and thought, “Eh, that was okay?” That’s typically a script with no creativity in the plot developments.
If you want to go old school, Darth Vader and Moff Tarkin blowing up Princess Leia’s planet before Luke, Han, and Obi-Wan get to it. That forces them onto the Death Star instead of the planet they were heading to, leading to a whole series of fun and memorable scenes. I don’t think Star Wars would’ve found anything as fun as the trash compactor scene had those characters made it to Alderaan.
More recently, I love the plot development in The Killer when our assassin misses his shot in the opening scene. I liked the plot development in Wonka where Willy gets imprisoned in the hotel. And I liked the plot development in Spider-Man: Homecoming when Peter’s Homecoming date ends up being the Vulture’s daughter.
As I wrap this up, the main takeaway I want you to have from today is to constantly ask yourself when you’re writing your scripts, “Am I making the best creative choice I can in this moment?” Don’t settle for weak choices. Cause they add up. Instead, push yourself and come up with as many strong choices as possible. It makes a difference. Trust me.
Good luck!
