Sometimes, you have to get dirty to convey a great sceenwriting lesson.
Before I get into what I mean, let me share with you the impetus behind today’s article.
I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately and many of them have this “tame” feel. They’re pleasantly executed stories that never push the hero beyond mild irritability.
The truth is, most scripts are tame. This is because most writers treat their main characters like friends. Cause if they do that, writing the script is like going on a journey with your best friend. And that sounds a lot more fun than going on a journey with your enemy.
Yet, that’s how you should be seeing your hero – as the enemy. Your job, as the writer, is to try and destroy them.
Now, I’ve written several articles about this. And yet I continue to receive these pleasant casual stories where the main character is never pushed far enough. So I’m obviously not doing my job.
I think I finally found a video that can effectively get my point across.
Now, if you’re afraid of flying, I STRONGLY recommend avoiding this video and the remainder of this article. Cause things get dark. There is no happy ending here.
But, if you can stomach it, it’s one of the most valuable lessons you will ever learn in regards to how to write a great screenplay. So, with that in mind, go ahead and watch it.
Now, before I get into today’s lesson, let’s take note of how perfectly this situation mimics a screenplay. It has the ultimate GSU. A problem arises (a fire), which creates the story’s goal: Get the plane back on the ground. The stakes are enormous (they will definitely die if they fail). And then you’ve got extreme urgency (Estimates are that a plane has roughly 17 minutes to get on the ground once a fire starts before the plane becomes unflyable).
But, there’s a key difference in this story compared to the stories you write. In this story, which is based on a real life event, the heroes do not win. This is not Apollo 13. The two pilots flying the plane die. But not before enduring a harrowing and heroic attempt at survival.
One of the things that struck me while I was watching this story was the number of times the narrator would say something akin to, “But a new problem emerged.” Or, “But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.” These phrases kept coming again and again.
It started with the fire alarm. That was the first moment when the pilots realized they were in trouble.
“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”
Three minutes later is when smoke first enters the cabin, making it difficult for them to see and forcing them to put their oxygen masks on.
“But a new problem emerged.”
The captain realizes that his control column no longer controls the pitch. Which means he can’t steer the plane up or down.
“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”
The smoke in the cockpit starts getting thicker and thicker, making even small tasks overwhelmingly difficult. Because now they can barely see the control panel in front of them.
“But a new problem emerged.”
The fire has become so bad that it has eaten through the captain’s oxygen tank line, cutting off his oxygen supply. The captain has no choice but to head to the back of the cockpit to get the supplementary oxygen tank. But the toxic black smoke has gotten so thick that he can’t find it and, within seconds, he dies of smoke inhalation.
“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”
The communications go down. So, the first officer can’t talk to the Dubai control tower to find out where he is. This forces him to call another nearby plane, to relay his messages to a second control tower, which then manually calls the Dubai control tower to ask the question the first officer needs to ask. And then this whole process is reversed to get the information back to the first officer. This, for a situation where every second is precious.
“But a new problem emerged.”
The first officer can’t see out the window or see the instrumentation due to the black smoke and learns, too late, that he’s way too high up to land at Dubai. So he begins a desperate process of getting the plane lower.
“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”
When he gets the latest info from his wacky communication process, he learns that he is directly over the airport, still at 4000 feet. And he doesn’t have time to loop around and try again. Which means he’ll have to try and land at a nearby secondary airport 10 miles away. The controller gives him the coordinates to put into his plane to get to that airport.
“But a new problem emerged.”
After putting the new heading in, the co-pilot watches, horrifically, as his plane turns in the opposite direction of the second airport. In all the chaos, and because he could barely see the control panel, he accidentally put in the wrong heading, sending the plane in the wrong direction.
And then the final problem emerges. The plane gave out on him, plunging into the desert sand.
Okay, so why am I going into the gory details of this event here? Because here’s the truth of the matter. There were eight “things got worse” moments here, all of which placed our pilots in a more precarious position than they were in before.
In fictional screenplays, the average screenwriter may include ONE “things got worse” moment. The more experienced screenwriter might have TWO. But EIGHT??? Nobody includes eight. Why? Let me explain.
In this recreation, the writer/narrator knows the pilots are going to die. Because of this, he doesn’t have to worry about saving them. All he has to worry about is telling the audience what happened. This allows him to write in as many “things get worse” moments as showed up that day.
If, however, our narrator was creating a *fictional* version of this story, where the pilots had to survive at the end, he probably never would’ve went past the third “things got worse” moment because, the more dire the predicament you place your characters in, the more you have to work, as the screenwriter, to figure out how to get them out of it.
In other words, most screenwriters are terrified of painting their characters into a corner. And, therefore, they make sure to leave a big unpainted trail that allows them to walk to the exit.
What’s the lesson here?
WRITE YOUR MOMENTS LIKE YOUR CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO FAIL AS OPPOSED TO WRITING THEM LIKE THEY’RE GOING TO SUCCEED.
If you have a “characters must succeed” mindset while writing, you subconsciously place protective armor around them to make sure that they can get out of any bad situation they’re in. You mainly do this by limiting the number of bad things that happen to them, or, if there are bad things, you make sure they’re only kind of bad.
But if you write sequences like your characters are going to fail, or, in this case, die, then you’ll keep adding more and more “things get worse” moments. Which digs your characters into deeper and deeper holes. The deeper those holes get, the more captivated the reader gets. Readers are never captivated by a 10 foot hole. They figure the character is going to figure out *some way* to scale those 10 feet. But if you put them in a 100 foot hole?? Now they have NO IDEA how that character is going to succeed.
This will create more work for you on the back end to get them out of that hole. But I promise you, it’ll be more dramatically captivating for the audience.
From now on, when you write your characters into tough situations, which you should be doing many times throughout your screenplay, I want you to remember this video. And ask yourself, “How can I make things even worse for my hero here?” Smoke in the cabin? Let’s make that smoke so thick he can’t see three inches in front of his face. Need to get the plane down? Let’s take his controls away from him. Needs oxygen? Let’s have the fire burn through his oxygen mask.
The more peril you put your hero through, the more captivated we’ll be. :)
Carson gives notes on just about everything related to screenwriting – feature scripts, pilot scripts, first acts, first ten pages, first scenes, loglines, outlines, and e-mail queries. If you’re interested in getting some help with your writing, shoot him an e-mail at carsonreeves1@gmail.com
