Week 13 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
As I was ramping up to write today’s screenplay lesson, I stumbled upon a recent quote from Jonathan Nolan, who’s going through the press tour in the leadup to his new Amazon show, “Fallout.”
Nolan is the writer-director who made HBO’s Westworld.
A big topic of discussion around town is the condensing of television writing jobs because there have been too many shows and nobody’s watching most of them. So they’re cutting down shows and that means less jobs.
So everyone’s trying to learn LESSONS from this “Peak TV” period that just passed. And here’s what Jonathan Nolan had to say about it: “If the lesson was to ease back on complexity or weirdness, I don’t want to learn that lesson.”
I can’t emphasize how angry this quote makes me. Because Jonathan clearly doesn’t understand the difference between complexity/weirdness and making weak creative choices. He thinks, as long as he’s not making the obvious choice, that’s “good.”
But that’s only the first half of the equation. The second half is the quality of the choice itself. The choice actually has to be strong enough to create good story threads! It can’t just be different for different’s sake. The reason Westworld became unwatchable was not because it was too complex or too weird for the average viewer.
People stopped watching that show because the writers, which included Nolan’s wife, repeatedly made weak creative choices that turned the narrative into a slog.
Every story has a “work/reward” ratio to it. As long as the rewards are bigger than the work, we’ll keep watching. But the second the work we have to do becomes bigger than the rewards? That’s when we say ‘seeya.’ Which is exactly what happened with that show.
And this is when it struck me that there’s really only one lesson in the entire screenwriting skillset that matters. There’s only one thing you have to do. What is that thing?
MAKE THEM CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
That’s all that matters. The second the reader no longer cares about WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, they’re out. Whether they physically stop reading or mentally stop investing, they’re no longer interested in your story.
Therefore, every creative choice you make in screenwriting should revolve around that rule: “Does this make the reader care about what happens next?”
Cause if it does, THEY WILL WANT TO KEEP TURNING THE PAGES.
That’s what we want them to do, right? We want them to keep turning the pages.
I’m sorry for being rude but when you’re talking about nepotism, a strong argument can be made that Jonathan Nolan is the biggest beneficiary of nepotism in all of Hollywood. And if I’m wrong? Prove me wrong. Who’s gotten more from less talent out of their Hollywood family connection?
But let’s get back to this concept because I want this to be flashing in your head whenever you’re writing. Whether it be now, in pages 81-90, or any section of the screenplay.
Does what I’m writing make people want to find out what happens next?
Obviously, there’s subjectivity at play here. But you’re better at evaluating weak creative choices than you think. One of the most common things that happens when I do screenplay consultations is I’ll send the notes back to the writer and they’ll say to me, “I had a nagging feeling that this was a problem but I needed to hear it from someone else.”
You know. You always know when you make a weak choice.
What do I mean by weak choices? Well, let’s talk about a key choice that affects the end of a classic script, since that’s what we’re talking about today. Did you know that in the original Back to the Future script, the time machine was a stationary refrigerator in a junkyard?
In subsequent drafts, they turned it into a car.
I want you to think about those two creative choices for a second. Because each version leads to vastly different story endings.
In one, our characters have to run back to a junkyard. How interesting is that?
In another, they have to meticulously time a time machine on wheels to hit 88 miles per hour at the very second that a lightning strike occurs.
It’s the creative difference between night and day.
That’s what strong creative choices can do for your screenplay.
I was just talking to a screenwriter about this. Their ending was pretty good. But it didn’t push the envelope enough. The stakes didn’t feel big enough. The obstacles didn’t feel insurmountable enough. The goals felt sufficient but far from exciting.
The ending is where you have a chance to create MAGIC. You’ve been writing this entire story for this moment so don’t get careless here. This is where you have to land that triple axel. And it starts with writing creative choices that make your ending EXCITING and not just a copy of the endings you’ve seen before.
Cause when I look back at Back to the Future, I never saw an ending like that BEFORE. And I’ve never seen an ending like it SINCE.
All of this is to say that you’re trying to come up with bold exciting creative choices that MAKE US WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
So what does happen next in pages 81-90, since those are the pages we’re on now? As we discussed last week, this is your MOMENT OF DEATH.
In a 110 page script, somewhere between pages 82-86, THERE MUST BE DEATH. I think Blake Snyder’s beat sheet calls this the Dark Night of the Soul? Whatever you call it, it’s got to be the second lowest moment in the character’s entire journey. The lowest moment will come just 15 pages later when they take on the bad guy and the bad guy seemingly defeats them. That will be their ACTUAL lowest point in the story.
But this one’s pretty darn close. The way you want to look at it is, this is the moment where the reader should feel like, “That’s it.” There are no other options. The hero has lost. This should be so convincing that EVEN THOUGH the reader knows there are 25 pages left, EVEN THOUGH seasoned moviegoers sense there are still 25 minutes left, you’re SO CONVINCING in this moment, that we truly think it’s over. If you can achieve that, you have NO IDEA how exciting your ending will be.
Because one of the secret tricks of screenwriting that makes readers feel something deep, is when you bring them ALL THE WAY DOWN and then you bring them ALL THE WAY BACK UP AGAIN.
I remember the moment I learned this lesson – although I didn’t understand it at the time. But when I first watched E.T. as a kid, and E.T. dies in that end of the second act moment… I don’t know if I’ve ever been more devastated in a theater. I was a wreck. So when they then brought him back to life??? That rush I got from going all the way from the depths of story misery to the peak of story euphoria – I wouldn’t be surprised if that feeling I had that day had something to do with me pursuing this art of storytelling. Because I wanted to learn how to make other people feel that way.
So figure out how to bring your hero down to his lowest low. It could be the death of a close family member or friend. It could be their own death. Or it could just feel like there are no other options left. I highlighted Life of Pi last week and that’s a good one. There’s this moment late in that movie where their sails are broken and they’re in the middle of the sea and they’re starving and they’re dehydrated and it’s clear that there’s no one who’s going to save them.
You kind of have to be a sadist in this moment. You have to be cruel to your heroes. To TRULY set the tone of how destitute they were, the writers of Life of Pi added a distant cargo ship. Their LAST HOPE. And they watch helplessly as it chugs on, never seeing them. Think about how hopeless you would feel after that moment.
That’s what you want to do to your heroes at the end of the second act. And that’s the same feeling you want the reader to have. That’s your pages 81-90 homework. :)
JUST TWO MORE WEEKS LEFT!
And then we move on to our rewrite strategy. :)
