And remember that the First Page Showdown is next weekend! If you want to submit, details are below!
Just a reminder, next Thursday is the deadline for First Page Showdown! And then, over the weekend, the top 5 submissions will compete for your votes. Here’s how to submit…
What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, now it’s time to prepare you!
A lot of screenwriting people will tell you to write a great first scene due to the fact that you want to grab the reader. But, actually, you want to start even earlier. You want to write a great first page.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much the reader is judging the script during that first page. And it’s not that they’re doing it overtly. They do it subconsciously because they’ve read so many scripts and the large majority of those scripts are bad. They’re hoping and praying that this is the one that’s going to be good.
So, actually, they’re picking up on the bad things reluctantly. They’re hoping they don’t pop up. Cause if they encounter 2-3 red flags on the first page, it’s a 99% probability that the script will be bad.
What is it they’re judging? They’re judging if the writing itself is good (the sentences are pleasing to read). They’re judging if they like the writer’s voice (is it strong and assured). They’re judging if the page is building towards something. They’re judging if they like the scene you’ve started off with. They’re assessing whether you’re a storyteller, someone who understands the tools required to tell a good story. They’re assessing your confidence. They’re assessing what level you’re at.
I know. All of that is overwhelming. To be honest, if you tried to check all of those boxes, you’d probably write a bad scene. So, today, I want to give you a simple template that gets you the best chance to hit all those beats. Actually, with this template, you don’t even need to hit all the beats. You only need to hit the most important one, which is to be a good storyteller.
We’re going to do that with an example from the first page of one of the Oscar-nominated scripts, Conclave. It’s not perfect, which proves my point. You don’t have to be perfect to write a strong first page. Let’s take a look at the page and then we’ll discuss what it does well.
Before we get into the analysis, let me ask you a question. What is the most important aspect of a first page?
Anyone?
Here’s the answer: That it makes you want to turn the page.
Nobody can read the rest of your script if they don’t read page 2.
Now that you know that, what do you see within the first page of Conclave? Hopefully, I don’t have to point it out to you.
For the people in the back, the scene starts WITH SOMETHING HAPPENING. Actually, let me recontextualize that. It starts with something OUT OF THE ORDINARY happening.
If something was just “happening,” like a man eating dinner, that’s not enough to get people’s eyes to move down the page. It has to be something that doesn’t happen often. That’s what makes “the happening” unique and worthy of reading.
In this case, a man is sleeping, his window cracks, waking him up. Then he gets a phone call. We then cut to him walking through Rome. And there’s a key word there that you need to include on a first page – “QUICKLY.”
He’s walking “quickly.” That tells us something about that phone call was important. Especially because he left his home in the middle of the night. Something big has happened.
Another key word occurs in the slugline: “VATICAN.”
He’s not quickly walking through Costco. He’s walking through the Vatican.
Not to get sidetracked but this is where concept comes into play. You want your movie ideas to feel big. That way, you have more to work with on the page. If your script includes the Vatican, that’s going to feel bigger than if your script includes Costco. And I’m not saying you can’t write a great script about Costco. There are probably several hilarious comedies you could write with the store as a backdrop.
But in this game where you’re trying to keep peoples’ attention for 2 hours, the more high-powered your weapons are, the better the chance you have of striking your target.
The main reason this page works is because we’ve been thrust into a big situation where we want to find out what happens next.
Now that we know that, let’s look at the scene more specifically. Cause what you’re going to find is that it’s imperfect. But I’ll remind you why that doesn’t matter.
We start in a quiet neighborhood in an apartment, with a window pane that cracks. Now, on the surface, I like this. It creates curiosity. Again, something is HAPPENING. The sooner you can make something happen on your first page, the better. Cause readers then have to figure out why the pane cracked.
The thing is, I don’t think we ever learn why it cracks. So it’s a bit of a cheat. Yeah, I guess it could be “God,” but if it is, the script does a very poor job at making that argument, especially because there isn’t a single other act of God in the script.
From there, the phone rings. That’s another good beat. Phones that ring in the middle of the night usually don’t bring good news. So, again, something is HAPPENING. Something out of the ordinary.
The writer then takes a unique approach to the call – he doesn’t show the character answer the phone. This is a small thing but it’s something that tells me I’m dealing with, at the very least, an above-average screenwriter.
The beginner screenwriter probably includes the conversation from that call. The advanced writer says, “I don’t need it.” Or, he says, “It creates more mystery if I don’t include it.” But even the fact that he didn’t have the character pick up the phone tells me this screenwriter doesn’t waste ink. And that’s usually a good sign.
From there, we have the character speeding down the tunnel in the Vatican and now, as a reader, I don’t have any choice but to turn the page. Seriously. How can I NOT read the next page? It would be stupid to not at least check it out. Cause I want to know who called him and why he’s felt it important to get up in the middle of the night and run to the Vatican.
That’s the big tip that I want to get across to you here with first pages. You want to create a question within that first page that doesn’t just make the reader curious, but makes it impossible for them not to read the second page.
And you do that by throwing us into the mix of something happening that’s out of the ordinary. It’s very hard to screw up a scene like that.
By no means is this the only way to write a first page. I went through the opening pages of all the Oscar screenplay nominees and nearly all of them approach their first pages differently. But if you want to get the best bang for your buck, do it like Conclave.
Can’t wait to see what your first pages have to offer! :)
