I know you guys are dying to know my prediction for how I thought this weekend’s voting would play out. I boldly proclaimed that one of the scenes was a clear winner. Did that scene win? I’ll tell you right now.
Here’s how I suspected the voting would turn out. I thought Bite to Bite would run away with the weekend. I thought Karoshi would be number 2. I thought Devil in 5D would be number 3. So, I was right in that sense that those did turn out to be the top 3.
I think people slept on Cleave. There was some good writing on display there. But I knew that a therapy scene was a tough sell. The reason I knew The Zakim wouldn’t win was because it was the exact opening scene you would expect. It was well-written but when you give the reader something they could’ve written themselves, they don’t see it as special. And then Immolation had that one great image but didn’t offer enough in the scene beyond that.
I might review a few of these scenes this week, depending on how today goes. If you like getting into the nitty-gritty of scene-writing, let me know in the comments, and I’ll review one or two more. Maybe I’ll even review Eldave’s scene, which I know some of you preferred over the scenes offered.
If there’s one thing we learned, it’s that writing first scenes is hard. I’d say that of the 62 writers that entered, 50 of them didn’t have nearly a big enough dramatic engine to push their scenes along. I can help you if you want to get better there. As I stated in the newsletter, I’m doing one page of notes on First Scenes for just $75. 2 pages of notes for $125. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want help.
Okay, let’s take a look at Karoshi: The Drive, which pulled in 18 votes for the win. What I’m going to do here is post half a page at a time then give my thoughts as we read.
The thing to take note of here is that the script starts in motion. There’s movement. Something is happening. And there’s an urgency to the proceedings, even if it’s just driven by the weather.
A lot of writers start their scripts off too casually and, in the process, lose the reader before they ever got them.
A smaller thing to point out is the sound. Movies have sound (newsflash, I know) and you want to mimic that where you can. Michael didn’t have to focus on the click-clack of footsteps but he did because that’s the sort of thing that brings you into the movie theater and it makes it feel like you’re watching a movie.
Here, we get our first glimpse into something being wrong. And we’re only halfway through the first page! That’s good.
Remember, there’s this game you’re playing when you write a screenplay. Which is: How do I keep this person, who doesn’t want to read my screenplay, interested? And the answer is, you gotta move fast.
You don’t have to do something crazy. But you have to include little moments like this that require the reader to keep reading to find out more. By posing a simple, small mystery, “why are the driver’s eyes so sunken, sallow, and blood shot?” you create just enough suspense to make the reader have to read more.
The good news is, you don’t have to do this for every single page for the rest of the script. Hooking a reader is similar to hooking someone you’re talking to for the first time. If you get past those first couple of minutes and they like you, they’ll spend another half an hour chatting with you. That’s why this first scene is so important.
Things then escalate quickly. We go from ‘this guy is having a rough day’ to ‘this guy seems very off.’ But our hero is late to wherever she’s going so she doesn’t have the luxury of jumping out and grabbing another cab.
What’s happening now is escalation. Things are not staying the same. The same is boring. We’ve gone from sunken bloodshot eyes to “the DRIVER’s face, so, so, so, so tired, wan, pale, sickly…”
This is accompanied by our now being in danger on two fronts. Whatever’s going on with this guy, it seems like he could be dangerous. And then you have this out of control car. We’re in legitimate peril.
What you want to be doing with your first scene in particular is to ask yourself, after every quarter page, “If a reader reads this, would they have to keep reading?” Notice how I used the words “have to” instead of “want to.” You want to write pages that make readers HAVE TO keep reading.
And here, we pretty much have to keep reading. We’re helpless inside of a speeding car with something creepy going on with the driver. Even if you didn’t like this scene, you’re probably going to keep reading it because you have to find out how it ends.
I want you to note the style of writing here. Two line and one line paragraphs all the way down. Which means our eyes are moving down the page quickly. Also, the writer is matching the pace of the story with the writing.
You shouldn’t be writing 3 line paragraphs when things are moving this fast.
Also, the writing is strong enough that we don’t notice it. I can’t emphasize this enough. I read so many amateur scripts where something as simple as sentence structure gets butchered. So now, I’m focusing on a bad sentence instead of being wrapped up in the story.
“The air becomes a deafening cacophony of BLASTING HORNS.”
“And SUSAN sees, in that horrific instant, the true state of the DRIVER — half-dead, bone-thin, clad in filthy clothes…”
These are great, clear, descriptive sentences.
We never have any questions about what we’re seeing and what we’re experiencing.
For example, a lesser writer may have written that last line as, “The driver in the mirror now looks even worse than before.”
But how does he look? That weaker version of the line doesn’t tell us much. The image we’re getting is vague. That’s the difference between good and bad writing.
I saw some of you discussing the choice to CAPITALIZE certain words in your scene, and not knowing exactly when to do so.
The capitalization effect is one of the only screenwriting tools you can use to, sort of, mimic the intensity of watching something on screen, which is why it’s often used for sound effects. But there is no defined rulebook for how or when to use it anymore.
I suggest using it to emphasize intense beats within a scene. I like Michael using it for moments like “SWERVE,” and especially “CLIPPED.” You’re drawing attention to the moments that are going to pop onscreen.
The one beat I think Michael missed – and it was a big one – was “CRACKS.” When Susan’s head hits the window. You know that crack is going to bring out that, half-look-away audience moment where they all wince. And you can somewhat mimic that on the page by emphasizing the sound of the “CRACK.”
If I had one critique for this scene, it would be that I don’t like how passive our heroine is. On the one hand, I like that Michael’s playing into the terror and helplessness of being a passenger in a car we have no control over. It taps into that nightmare we’ve all had before.
But also, protagonists should never be passive. Good heroes always insert themselves into the problem to try and fix it. In other words, they are ACTIVE. Susan only does that here at the very end when she has to. I would’ve liked to have seen her try and stop this earlier. Try to be more involved.
You might say, “Do we really have time for that?” Of course you do. You could’ve easily added one more page in the middle of this car sequence. When you have an exciting situation like you do here, you don’t have to worry about condensing it. There’s enough drama and suspense to lengthen a scene like this.
And it isn’t just about making the hero active. As it turns out, Susan isn’t the script’s protagonist. But it creates more drama and uncertainty when you tease the possibility of fixing the problem, only to then see the protagonist fail, the situation get worse, and THEN (after all that drama) end up in a crash.
That creates more of that “roller coaster” emotional effect for the reader, which is always more satisfying and memorable.
The first four paragraphs here are REALLY GOOD WRITING. They give us total clarity over a very intense violent moment. The detail. The specificity. The sentence structure. All of it is very strong and a big reason why this scene won the showdown. The writing was a step above everyone else.
By the way, when I say “writing,” I’m referring to the actual writing – the words, the sentences, the description. That’s different from when I’m complimenting the storytelling, which is also good here, but I want to make sure you know that there’s a difference between the two.
Cause I know some really good writers who aren’t that great with telling stories, and vice versa.
Finally, we have the ending of the scene. Another reason I think this won was because it was an ending we were not anticipating. We weren’t anticipating that Susan would die. So it’s a shock. Any little thing you can do to throw the reader off of their expectations is good because the vast majority of writers write scenes that go exactly how you expect them to go.
Not only that but the visceral violence involved in the way that Michael killed off Susan made it THAT MUCH MORE impactful, leaving you in a state of shock. You’re not even sure what to do now. But one thing is definitely true, you’re going to read the next scene. Which is exactly what a first scene should accomplish.
I want to emphasize that. Instead of thinking of your first scene as 1 of 50. Think of it as a pilot script. A pilot script has to have a great cliffhanger at the end so that you want to see episode 2. Do the same thing here. Give them an ending that makes them have to read “the next episode,” aka, the next scene.
