Top Three Sailor/Pirate Loglines

Okay Wavers, it's the moment you've been waiting for. I received TONS of loglines. Everything from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again. I received loglines that really, really don't work but that made me laugh very hard. I received loglines that were quite sober and dramatic but not particularly unique. So I came up with these three top nominees based on inventiveness, entertainment factor and well - I just liked these three the best. They stood out from the crowd. There were about three others besides these that I had to carefully consider but at the end of the day, this is what I chose:

Yellow Fever by Audrey McKenzie

When a notorious pirate seeks revenge on the Port of Savannah for the outbreak of yellow fever that decimated his crew, a sailor recuperating from the disease struggles to mount a defense and protect a young woman the frightened townspeople blame for the epidemic.

The Sailor by Michael Perri

After an extraterrestrial war forces a impotent human race to seek refuge in space, a rag tag ship and its crew attempts to evade a Pirate overlord bent on recapturing a stow away simply known as the “Sailor” with the ability to regenerate the human race.

The Entertainer by Elizabeth Ditty

When a Somali pirate with a secret fantasy of becoming an entertainer is sent onto a cruise ship disguised as a sailor, hijinks ensue on the high seas as he attempts to serve two masters: his duty and his dream.

Cast your votes by end of day, Monday February 9th.

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Diagnosing Your Script: The Charmin Effect

So I have read - oh gosh - a thousand scripts? Fifteen hundred? I have no idea anymore, I've stopped counting. These days I take it easy; I don't read all that much, maybe 3 to 4 scripts a week. And more than ever, I realize the value of having another pair of eyes on a script. What to me is obvious - a weak complication, two-dimensional character or front-loaded script - to you is a nagging mystery until I point it out. Because after spending so much time with one script, you can't see the forest for the trees. And I don't blame you.

The only thing I have that you don't have is perspective and a thousand scripts under my belt. I have not stared at your script day in and day out for six months. I have not lived with your characters. I am like a doctor. I sit your script down on the exam table and I look at what's there in the here and now. And it might hurt juuuust a little. Close your eyes if you don't like needles or a whack on the knee. But I always send my patients back home with a lollypop and a smile.

It takes a lot of courage to go to the doctor. We all want to get a clean bill of health. But people come to The Script Department because they have a weird itch, limp or rash and they don't know why. We all want to hear we're going to be fine and that there's nothing we have to change or worry about. We all want to hear that if we take the doctor's advice, we WILL win the marathon or gold medal. But the doctor can make no guarantees. Only diagnose and send you home with a prescription.

If I had to name the most common script problems I see, the problems I point out over and over and over each week, I would have to say The Charmin Effect.

DIAGNOSIS of the CHARMIN EFFECT
Soft character arcs, soft premise and soft structure.

What does "soft" mean, exactly? It means that there's too much subtlety in whichever element. As we are all aware, in real life, things are often complex and multi-layered and things almost never resolve neatly. Complications and reversals can land on us like a ton of bricks or they can accrete over time. In real life we muddle through our problems and we are quite good at not allowing anything to force us to change. Some of us literally never change.

In the movies, however, audiences crave resolution, for one thing, and they need to see things writ large. Now, of course there is a difference between character arc in a movie like THE SAVAGES and in a movie like THE MUMMY; you have to service your genre appropriately.

Soft premise, soft character and soft structure - these things are all related. It's all the same problem. Not going BIG enough. Put it another way: not enough going on in the premise to warrant a whole feature script, passive main character and complications and act breaks which don't move the story forward in a significant way. This all combines to create a boring script, or the BOSH script - bunch of stuff happens. Kiss of death, my friends. Flat line on the monitor.

CAUSE
A soft premise is the result of fear of conflict not really thinking the premise all the way through. Writers get stuck in their heads sometimes and tell a story which has mild emotional and usually autobiographical interest to them but not to anyone else. A woman inherits a house from her grandmother and learns that like her grandmother, she loves photography. Wha-? Movies are about conflict. Major conflict. Movies are uncomfortable and filled with tension. In real life most of us avoid conflict like the plague. But the movies are centered on it. Writing a script is a time to scrap being polite, proper or careful. Movies are conflict.

Newer writers are too easy on their characters because they model them too closely after themselves or people they know. But your character is not you or a friend - a character is a symbol that represents Jealousy, Power, Innocence, Betrayal, Justice or Heartbreak. Writers are often loathe to be too hard on their characters. They like them too much to give them a meaningful, active flaw. They start them out pretty nice and they wind up nicer. Characters must have an arc of change and they can't wind up changed if they started out pretty okay in the first place. Something has to be majorly amiss in your character on page one. Not a little amiss like they are shy and want a date. That's boring. We all want a date. Go. Bigger.

Soft structure is bound, hand and foot to soft premise and soft character arcs. You cannot separate these three elements. If you're too soft on your characters, the turning points and complications will be soft too. Your pages will just blur in to one another with nothing significant moving the story forward. And you wind up with a script with the consistency, color and flavor of oatmeal instead of a script with the consistency, color and flavor of paella.

THE CURE
Don't avoid conflict - seek it out. Take the gloves off. Don't be so polite and so careful. Writing is a down and dirty occupation and don't let anybody tell you any different.

Write down your premise line. Do you have an antagonist? A crux of CONFLICT, major turning points and a big sacrifice or choice the main character will have to make? Stare at your premise line. Is it going to get anyone outside your immediate family excited? Does it have a hook and a unique concept?

It takes courage to Go Big in your script. Writers are afraid to really think bigger and sometimes they are too lazy to do the work. That's right, I said it. Too lazy. Where is the backstory for your character? Where is the outline for your script? Where is the killer logline that you should have worked out before you started writing the script? Laziness, timidity and a loathing to really put your characters through the wringer is the reason that the word "soft" would apply to so many scripts.

I know most writers don't have the access to read a thousand scripts in order to gain the perspective that lends a person. But you have the Rouge Wave and a million other resources. Ask yourself if you're really writing about conflict, change and catharsis. Not kind of - but truly.

Watch movies that are in any way similar to your script idea. Push the pause button when you think you spot a major complication. Look at the timer on your dvd player - notice that it's right about 10, 25 and 50 minutes into the movie that these things happen? Gain some cajones, Wavers - are you writing about conflict or are you writing about CONFLICT? Are you being too easy on your main character? Is your premise SERIOUSLY worth several million dollars to make? Who would the audience be for this movie? You and your family? Or millions of people all around the world?

Writers who are unafraid to really go there - whether in the premise and in the execution or whether that means going to the doctor to find out how they did - are writers who have a million times more chance of actually having a writing career than a writer who is stuck in his or her head, too timid and too vacuum-sealed to get outside perspective and to push their characters harder and further than they thought possible - or nice - or convenient.

It's up to you whether you take the cure. We are not all getting in shape for a sprint here, that's the good news. This is a marathon. So you've made some mistakes. So what. It's never too late to get it together so you can really compete with the thousands of scripts that flood into Hollywood every single day.

Bigger, better, faster, more. It's the way of the movies.

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That's Entertainment

Sometimes it's very clear to the Wave-iantrix exactly what I'm going to post on the Rouge Wave and other times I stare at the flotsam and jetsam on my desk until inspiration strikes. But you don't want to hear about the coffee rings, highlighters, books and scripts lying all over my desk. Oh but wait, what's this?

This week the Wave-inatrix had to cover a book for an A-list actor and his production company for whom I read. And the book is a ridiculous bodice-ripper. Which is, incidentally, one of the, if not THE highest selling paperback genre in human history. So I'm thinking - oh god, kill me now - I'm a Dorothy Parker adoring, F. Scott Fitzgerald worshipping, John Irving, Michael Chabon, Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, Joan Didion loving literary fan girl. A bodice ripper? Really? Why me, god? Why?

So two days later, as I'm reviewing this book for potential movie adaptation, I find myself reading the pages. I mean reading the pages. I'm not supposed to do that. I can't - it takes too long. Usually when you cover a book, you skimmy mcskimmerson as fast as you can, only noting the major plot points and general vibe so you can summarize it quickly and make a decision about whether it's cinematic, commercial and appropriate for the actor or production company in question.

But this Dorothy Parker adoring, F. Scott Fitzgerald worshipping, John Irving, Michael Chabon, Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, Joan Didion loving literary fan girl finds herself - the shame - responding to the romantic through-line like nobody's business. Oh, don't get me wrong, this is a big fat PASS for a lot of reasons (repeated beats, archaic, outdated themes, thin subplots) but I once again find myself in awe of the power of the primal, archetypal emotion to sway even the snarkiest of us. In this case - romance.

He loves her! He will not ever leave her! He's so strong - oh, his rippling muscles and sad blue eyes - I mean, this is treacle. But I'm responding to it like a freaking Jungian experiment. Sure, I could be embarrassed. But if you know the Wave-inatrix, you know I can find a lesson in just about everything.

When writing a screenplay, recognize the power of the primal core of your story. Which is to be found in your...wait for it...THEME. Love, death, fear, lust, revenge, redemption, triumph, tragedy - these are some of the most deeply rooted human emotions which are literally encoded into our genes. It's hardwiring, people. We're stuck with it. Emotional response to primal archetypes and fears.

Shakespeare knew it. So did Milton. And Tolstoy. And James Joyce. And Euripides. Every truly great writer knows that we must tap into that deep well of primal human emotions to really hook the reader. It's why JAWS - a silly (but great) movie about a giant shark scared us out of the water for decades. It's why we cried so hard watching ORDINARY PEOPLE or TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. Or why we laughed so hard at most any Monty Python movie and our hearts broke for the two cowboys in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. It's why we rooted so passionately for Christian Bale in 3:10 to YUMA and Viggo Mortensen in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. Because we are deeply drawn to the themes of dignity and redemption. We're not ranchers or crazy mob killer guys - we never have been, we live in a three floor walkup in Brooklyn - but that hardwired instinct is alive and well in all of us.

So ask yourself - what is the primal emotion that is the foundation of your script? Your reader, even the snarkiest, most jaded Hollywood reader is a human being susceptible to having that hard wiring light up like a switchboard. Push the reader's (and ultimately viewer's) buttons, Wavers. Push them hard but not obviously. Sneak in and leave them secretly lusting after the revenge the antagonist deserves. Or the cojoining of the two leads in your romcom. Leave them wanting resolution and satisfaction on a level so deep they can't quite articulate it.

Push those buttons, Wavers. Push them wantonly. Readers love it.

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What We Have Here, Son, is a Situation

What is the difference between a situation and a story - that is to say, a compelling crux of conflict big enough to cover three acts of your feature film?

A situation is that I walk into a bank and it gets robbed. A story is it is being robbed by an inept man who needs the money for his lover's sex-change operation. A situation is I cover for my dragon-lady boss while she's away. A story is I cover for her, I do better than her, her boyfriend takes a shine to me and then she comes back, furious. A situation is I decide to put my child up for adoption. A story is that the couple adopting starts to fall apart from the inside out and meanwhile my due date is coming up fast. A situation is I decide to escort a criminal to the train station. A story is when his gang is close on my heels and then he escapes.

So we could say that the central difference between a situation and a story is that a story is a situation which has a set of growing, causal complications. Kind of like a Rube Goldberg machine, right? Not just the marble rolls down the chute and plonks into a cup - but then the cup tips, the marble rolls down another chute and then makes a gear turn which lifts another chute which takes the marble on a hard right turn and the journey continues...

So how do you know whether you have a situation with the potential to really grow complex and interesting? It's all about what happens before and after that situation. And it's all driven by character. That's where the real work of being a writer comes in. Most anyone can come up with a situation - what if you woke up in the morning after a one-night stand and the person you were with was dead? Yeah - that would be pretty weird. But what if he turns out to be a senator. With enemies? What if you start getting phone calls late at night? What if it turns out, he had just announced his candidacy for the presidential race? Now we have a lot more than a situation - we have a story to play out.

Make sure that you aren't just writing a finite situation but rather that that situation, the one you first dreamt up over that second mocha frappuccino has the potential for Rube Goldberg-ness. Complications - unexpected turns - a causal, domino effect that sets other things in motion. You know, sort of like a nightmare - this happens BUT THEN that happens and you can't get out because now THIS happens, you know that funhouse-nightmare you have sometimes? Where things just keep getting worse? That's what I'm talking about. It can be funny-worse or scary-worse or dramatically-worse, but it's all going to feel completely inevitable.

A situation has an easy, predictable way out. A story takes us on a journey.

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The Hook

In yesterday's Rouge Wave, my colleague PJ answered a question about hooks, catalysts and inciting incidents. I just wanted to add my two cents. First, we have to acknowledge that there are some terms that get bandied about in Hollywood and in screenwriting that are assigned different meanings. Some screenwriting books call the inciting incident the "catalyst" others call it the "call to adventure". Kids, it's the same thing: it's your page ten(ish) moment in which the world you've quickly, cinematically and compellingly set up, gets a stick in the eye. Uh oh, as PJ's mom astutely says. What's wrong? What will they do? The apple cart is upset.

In YUMA, Christian Bale's barn is burned down.
In JAWS it's on page one, actually, the night-swimmer gets chomped.
In JUNO, it's the positive pregnancy test.
In NORTH BY NORTHWEST it's Cary Grant's abduction when he's confused with the wrong guy
In RAIN MAN it's when Tom Cruise finds out his father died.
In THE SIXTH SENSE it's when Bruce Willis gets shot.
In JERRY MAGUIRE it's when Tom Cruise gets fired.
In PIRATE OF THE CARIBBEAN it's when the necklace hits the water.
In INDIANA JONES THE LAST CRUSADE it's when the archeologist says he's found the holy grail.

The hook, however, is related to the inciting incident but actually, is a stand alone term. I wrote something about the hook almost exactly one year ago on the RW and I am reprinting it here. I just don't think I can top the way I explained it before.

***

One of the first things an agent, manager or executive will ask of your material is “what’s the hook”? You may have wondered what the heck that is. The definition seems to vary by person but the upshot is that the hook is something about the script that is centrally very simple, very cool and very original. There are many different types of hooks but here are some likely suspects:

Character hook: James Bond, Shrek, Austin Powers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Bonnie & Clyde, Psycho, Batman, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, When Harry met Sally, Clueless. Think of this as the "you talkin' to me?" category. Movies that carry a character hook are movies in which the central character is so unique that movie-goers remember that particular character for a long time, quoting him or her, etc.

Plot hook: The 6th Sense, Identity, Gattica, Jaws, Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Saw, Speed, Terminator, The Island, Jurrasic Park, The Ring, Purple Rose of Cairo, 28 Days. Think of this as the "I see dead people" category. Movies that have a plot hook are movies that have a central plot or plot twist that we have literally not seen before; a giant shark terrorizes a town, two gay cowboys have a love affair, a bus that will explode if it goes under 60mph, a video tape that if you watch, you'll die 7 days later.

Cinematic and craft hooks: Memento, the Matrix, Crouching tiger, Jesus' Son, Trainspotting, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, The Ring, The 5th Dimension. Think of this as the "bullet time" category. These are movies that have a really unique look or narrative methodology that we have not seen before. A stylized look, CG effects, super-saturated footage, jumps in time; but more than simply a look or a narrative style, the execution is intrinsic to telling the story. It's not frosting; it is a delivery system without which the story wouldn't be the same.

…You'll notice some titles appear under more than one category. True enough. If you can get your script to carry all three hooks? You are golden. But that's hard to do. That said, writers should strive to come up with a hook, that I can tell you. Because having a hook is golden, my friends, it will move your script from the bottom to the top of the stack, it will get you meetings and it might even get you sold.

Don’t despair if you don’t feel as if your current script has a hook. Don’t shoehorn absurd hooks into your coming-of-age drama by making the main character a Siamese twin – just to be different. Let the hook come to you in an organic way. But remember this: coming-of-age, romcom, horror, thriller, fantasy – whatever the genre is, seriously every story has already been told. So how can you set your script apart? By lending to it your unique voice and by looking for creative opportunities to make a familiar story paradigm different enough in its details to provide unique entertainment. Audiences crave that which they are familiar with – there are genre expectations without which your movie will not succeed. It’s not always the what – it’s the how.

As you work through your idea, ask yourself: when an agent, manager or executive asks you what the hook is – what will you say? If right at the moment, the answer is a fish-eye stare, that’s okay. What opportunities lie within your story to create a unique hook? You may have to cast about for awhile to find something that really works but the rewards for you and for your script can be huge; fish or cut bait, Wavers. Aspire to create a hook that will net you one big, drooling executive - and a WGA membership card.

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Another Great Question

Our very own Rouge Waver of the Month, Geena writes:

...of the five areas Premise, Structure, Storyline, Character, Dialogue, which do you think is the biggest shortcoming for a new screenwriter? I'll guess and say storyline - structure. I think most of us come up with a decent ideas, then fail getting substance and flow to our stories.

Actually, Geena, total newbie writers tend to fall down in both areas and primarily in premise. Most new writers do not have the tools to test whether their premise is unique, original, compelling entertainment. Well - let me rephrase that - they either don't have the tools to test the premise or they just can't imagine that their idea would NOT be entertaining to someone else. So you get these self-referential, navel-gazing stories about coming of age or partying or the girl who falls for the rock star.

Most premises from new writers are too small and too "soft". Remember, last week when I included two "vague dramas" in what I had read that week? I see TONS of those. Just sort of soft, vague stories with few exciting or memorable moments because the whole idea is just not that compelling. It's not enough to sustain a three-act feature film. Writers get an idea that is actually more a situation than a premise which suggests enough entertaining conflict to draw out over 100+ pages. And it follows that if your premise is weak, no structure in the world can save it.

Geena had another question:

...also I come across mixed comments on dialogue. The keep it four lines max [rule]. But then folks who want the whole grammatical sentence in there, like " I am never going to return to that cave again", and I get jumped for this "Not going back --" as being on the nose.

I've never heard specifically to limit dialogue to four lines but yes, you do want to avoid big chunks of dialogue. It gets tedious to read, it loses that kinetic quality of the cinema and it can also be an exposition trap for the writer. As for full, grammatical sentences - that sounds crazy to me. The character should speak in the way that is totally natural and organic for them! Just bear in mind that writers, especially screenwriters, are always looking for the perfect mixture of economy and impact - whether that's in dialogue, action lines or anywhere else.

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Subjectivity

Let’s say you’ve executed your script perfectly – you have an original premise, your scenes are tight, characters are three-dimensional and organic, dialogue rocks and structure is perfect. But a reader picks up your script for a read and still doesn’t like it. Why? Because they just don’t like bears. Because they hate sports. Because they hate princess stories or science fiction or because they were mugged in Tijuana once.

Can that happen? Well – yes. Readers are paid to be professional and as professionals, we are making objective judgments about your script. Is the premise fresh? Is the writing good? Is the execution top notch? Was the set up compelling? Did the ending satisfy? But after we make those objective decisions, we have to make some subjective ones. Is this the kind of project the production company is looking for? Is the subject matter in keeping with the mandates of the company? Will this subject matter light up the particular executive I’m reading for? And then, try as readers might, after all the other considerations are made, a more personal kind of subjectivity does enter into the decision, usually subconsciously.

And Rouge Wavers – we just can’t control that subjectivity. While the thriller my writing partner and I wrote was making the rounds, we had some initial passes that went something like: love the writing, good story – but it involves bad things happening to children and I just had a baby, so – no. We had that reaction and variations on it from a few execs. Like the script but the subject matter creeped me out. What do you do with that? You just move on.

I read a script just yesterday that was not perfect but it had potential and I liked it. The writers have no idea how lucky they got. It was set in Memphis – I love Memphis! It was set in the 1950s and involved Elvis and Sun Studios – I love Elvis and Sun Studios, I’ve been to Graceland! In fact, I love the South and I love Tennessee and I love bluegrass and Mississippi Delta Blues and I love bbq and – these writers had no idea that their script happened to go to the perfect reader for them. No idea. But the opposite could have just as easily been true. And yes, it would have affected the read. That’s the ugly, little hidden truth about getting your script read.

For most writers starting out, the most important thing is to come up with a fresh premise and execute it well. And that is huge and can take years to nail. Even if you’re more experienced and execution is not a challenge for you – finding a really fresh premise with a great hook is never easy.

The more experienced you get as a writer, the more you understand that Subjectivity is out there and there’s just no avoiding it. Your work will not be for everybody. Because they just had a baby. Because they got a parking ticket in Memphis and then burnt their tongue on bbq. Because they failed history in college. Who the heck knows? As the writer all you can do is your best and if you’ve done that much, subjectivity or not – your script will eventually find its way into the hands of someone who happens to love that particular subject, setting or character type.

The only defense writers have against subjectivity is to know it’s out there and get okay with it and to compartmentalize a little bit; just keep writing more material and don’t get too caught up in who is reading your script and what they think. Good scripts will out and there are legendary stories of scripts that got turned down over and over again only to become great movies.

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The Title

Choosing a title for your script can be tricky. Often something just sort of flies into our minds and it sticks by default. Some writers come up with the title first and inspired by that, write the script. Some script titles reflect a line of significant dialogue or an important plot twist, either directly or as an allusion.
I do know this: when a reader or exec picks up your script, naturally the first thing we read is the title. And based on that alone, we make a couple of assumptions. If your script is a comedy, the title should sound a bit funny. Owen Wilson has a movie in development called Stalker: A Love Story. If your script is a horror or thriller, the title should sound a little creepy. The title is a hint of what’s to come. Sometimes a title will simply be a bit intriguing; I’m not quite sure what to make of it. But I know that at some point in the script it will become clear to me what it means.

Titles can be poetic allusions, clever word plays or fairly straight up descriptors. Make sure when you title your script that you cover as many bases as you can:

Does the title hint at the genre?
Is the title as succinct as possible?
Does the title in some way embody the theme or dna of your script?
Will the title look good on a poster and will it intrigue passersby?
If the title isn’t clear immediately, will it rise to the surface within the script?

The title is the shingle you hang on your script’s cover. It says: Read me, I am a terrific romantic comedy. It says: Wow am I gonna look great on a movie poster – can’t you picture Halle Berry? It says: Check me out – I am epic. It says: I am a clever writer and this is a great script.

What if a title has been used before? Well, movie titles aren’t copyrighted but still, unless the movie was a million years ago and grossed $25 at the box office, you probably want to come up with your own title. Look up the title in the IMDB and see when the last time it was used and in what context. If you are really attached to the title and it was a TV movie in 1978, go for it. But if you have a moving family drama do not title it ORDINARY PEOPLE because that’s just dumb. Or even WILD AT HEART – audiences have long memories and so do execs. Come up with a variation of a title you love.

Make a list of the themes within your script and then brainstorm offshoots of those themes. Go through your script pages and look for significant dialogue that you love – can you pluck that dialogue out and use it? Think of AMERICAN BEAUTY – the way Alan Ball used the imagery of the rose throughout the movie but also the perfect, beautiful way it alludes to the plot from a thematic point of view.

A few great titles I have read at production companies:

Twice the Hero
Slanted and Enchanted
Napster: Downloaded
The Last Duel

Of course I have read spec scripts with terrible, clumsy, long titles that didn’t make sense. Or titles that just lie there limply and don’t tell me anything about the script and don’t even make me care.

But actually for the most part, I think you guys are doing okay. You may have never given much thought to the role your title plays but I encourage you to do so. Here are just a few titles off the top of my head that do a great job of describing the movie.

Pillow Talk
Operation Petticoat
How to Marry a Millionaire
Adaptation
Psycho
The Exorcist
Red River
A Bridge Too Far
Toto the Hero
Au Revoir, les Enfants
Fun With Dick and Jane
Being John Malkovich
Elf
Blades of Glory
Saw
American Beauty
North Country

Can Rouge Wavers send in movie titles that remain absolutely baffling even if you loved the movie? That should make a fun list.

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The Hook

One of the first things an agent, manager or executive will ask of your material is “what’s the hook”? You may have wondered what the heck that is. The definition seems to vary by person but the upshot is that the hook is something about the script that is centrally very simple, very cool and very original. There are many different types of hooks but here are some likely suspects:


Character hook: James Bond, Shrek, Austin Powers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Bonnie & Clyde, Psycho, Batman, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, When Harry met Sally, Clueless. Think of this as the "you talkin' to me?" category. Movies that carry a character hook are movies in which the central character is so unique that movie-goers remember that particular character for a long time, quoting him or her, etc.

Plot hook: The 6th Sense, Identity, Gattica, Jaws, Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Saw, Speed, Terminator, The Island, Jurrasic Park, The Ring, Purple Rose of Cairo, 28 Days. Think of this as the "I see dead people" category. Movies that have a plot hook are movies that have a central plot or plot twist that we have literally not seen before; a giant shark terrorizes a town, two gay cowboys have a love affair, a bus that will explode if it goes under 60mph, a video tape that if you watch, you'll die 7 days later.

Cinematic and craft hooks: Memento, the Matrix, Crouching tiger, Jesus' Son, Trainspotting, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, The Ring, The 5th Dimension. Think of this as the "bullet time" category. These are movies that have a really unique look or narrative methodology that we have not seen before. A stylized look, CG effects, super-saturated footage, jumps in time; but more than simply a look or a narrative style, the execution is intrinsic to telling the story. It's not frosting; it is a delivery system without which the story wouldn't be the same.

…You'll notice some titles appear under more than one category. True enough. If you can get your script to carry all three hooks? You are golden. But that's hard to do. That said, writers should strive to come up with a hook, that I can tell you. Because having a hook is golden, my friends, it will move your script from the bottom to the top of the stack, it will get you meetings and it might even get you sold.

Don’t despair if you don’t feel as if your current script has a hook. Don’t shoehorn absurd hooks into your coming-of-age drama by making the main character a Siamese twin – just to be different. Let the hook come to you in an organic way. But remember this: coming-of-age, romcom, horror, thriller, fantasy – whatever the genre is, seriously every story has already been told. So how can you set your script apart? By lending to it your unique voice and by looking for creative opportunities to make a familiar story paradigm different enough in its details to provide unique entertainment. Audiences crave that which they are familiar with – there are genre expectations without which your movie will not succeed. It’s not always the what – it’s the how.

As you work through your idea, ask yourself: when an agent, manager or executive asks you what the hook is – what will you say? If right at the moment, the answer is a fish-eye stare, that’s okay. What opportunities lie within your story to create a unique hook? You may have to cast about for awhile to find something that really works but the rewards for you and for your script can be huge; fish or cut bait, Wavers. Aspire to create a hook that will net you one big, drooling executive - and a WGA membership card.

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World

What exactly does “world” mean when we talk about scripts? Well, world means the environment, physically, tonally, logically and otherwise, that holds the events in your story. PLEASANTVILLE, for example, is a script in which we are to believe you could possibly walk right through the television and enter a fictional, black and white town. We buy it because the tone and trimmings of the script make it something we can be comfortable with. How about BIG? Zoltar literally spits out the fortune that will enable the little boy to wake up looking like Tom Hanks the next day. How are we to buy that a carnival fortune telling machine could do this? Because Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg set up the world of that carnival such that we bought that brief moment of illogical magic. We not only bought it, we loved it.

In JURRASSIC PARK we are in a world in which DNA can be used to recreate prehistoric creatures. Sure, it was a lot of blah blah Ginger science but Spielberg set it up so beautifully that we bought it hook, line and sinker. Because, Rouge Wavers, audiences want to buy your world. That suspension of disbelief kicks in almost immediately when the lights go down. Going to the movies is wish-fulfillment; audiences are begging you to take them on an entertaining journey – in fact, they’re paying for it like an E ticket ride. We only need to give the audience one convincing poke and they’re off – fallen over the edge of suspended disbelief, believing that animals can talk, that cars and buildings can explode and Tom Cruise won’t get hurt, that there are Oompa Loompas behind those factory walls!

However, if the backdrop, dialogue, characters and tone of a script is say, very RESEVOIR DOGS in nature, then you give the audience chocolate rivers and Oompa Loompas – you run the risk of creating a schism in expectations and putting a major crack in your world through which the audience can see the parking lot which leads them to think about what’s for dinner.

It’s psychology, really. The reason we wake up in the morning and put our feet on the carpet and not into a pool of hot lava is that we expect the floor to be there. If we woke up to strobe lights and carnival music, we really wouldn’t be sure what our feet would land in but the environment would give us a strong sense that it wouldn’t be the carpet.

So what writers need to do is prime the reader (and ultimately audience) to buy what you are going to throw at them. To prepare your audience, on some level, for the magic or illogic, violence, passion or whatever will follow. I have a dear friend who has a lovely family comedy set in a quirky, slightly surreal world. Not totally surreal, just ever so slightly Tim Burton-esque. She made sure that from page one on, evidence of that quirkiness was there so that when we see on page six that champagne flows from the town’s city park fountain, we buy it.

In BLUE VELVET, David Lynch sets up the tone and world immediately with the uncomfortable close up of the human ear in the lawn. But not before he showed us the white picket fence and cute neighborhood. The tone shifts artfully and quickly. Lynch set up his world so that we know when we watch BLUE VELVET that very very bad things are going to happen – human ear bad. Had Lynch made that shift on page twenty-three he would have left us on the side of the road.

Normally a reader won’t really say anything about how well you set up your world unless you blow it. Blowing it takes the reader right out of the moment.
Contextualize your story within the environment you create, don’t shift gears on us suddenly because you’ll leave us behind. Make sure to imbue your world with the tone, images and sense of what’s to come. If one of your characters has a face which is a bunch of writhing tentacles and he simply goes to work at his law office and grabs a doughnut in the breakroom before he argues a case, I’m completely thrown – how do I contextualize Tentacle-Face? The entire time I'm watching your movie or reading your script my mind is racing - why does he have tentacles? Will other characters have tentacles? And I'm not listening to his court case and I don't care because I am irritated that I don't get the tentacle thing until or unless you contextualize it for me. And STAT. The Neanderthal in the Geico commercials makes sense and very quickly because it's a context I can grasp quickly - irony.

Setting up your world enables us to flip the switch that says: in this 2 hours, talking elephants, flying pigs or chocolate rivers are normal. World, in essence, is one big buy for the audience. If you don’t set up the world, then the audience won’t buy a thing in the store.

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Know your Genre

Drum roll, please…This is the moment you’ve been waiting for…the number one thing that annoys this reader:

A writer who has no idea what he or she is doing. By that I mean, a writer who thinks they understand a genre (or even the craft in general) but is woefully, horribly mistaken. I worked with a writer recently who had written a “comedy”. That actually translated to over one hundred pages of what I can only assume were highlights of a drunken evening back in college. From what I read, I can only thank the Goddess I was not there. I asked the writer – what are you satirizing, exactly? And she said: What do you mean? What bothered me about that is the cavalier attitude that writing comedy is easy. As if Judd Apatow just sits down and writes this stuff and therefore so can you. As if that were true of Larry Gelbart, Nora Ephron, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and too many others to name. It is a lack of respect for the craft that I must admit gets me very, very cranky.

Each genre has a history with high and low points, with expectations, transmutations and sub-genres. But let’s back up. Each genre has expectations. The thing is, you already know this. Because when we see movies, a primal part of us takes over. We await the romance to come to fruition just as much as we pleasantly dread the dissembling of the same romance – because it must be. We expect it. When we sit in the dark with our malted milk balls watching a horror movie, we cringe pleasurably as we wait for the…..JUMP OUT. But it can’t just be a jump out. It has to happen like this: Huh, what was that sound in the basement? Should I go look in the basement? I go down the stairs. I WHIRL AROUND. It’s just the cat. Phew, now I’m safe. I head back up the stairs. A HAND GRABS MY LEG.

In comedy, we expect to see set pieces highlighting the kind of comedy we’re watching. I could write a whole column about the kinds of comedy: satire, farce, slapstick, romantic verbal, black, political, parody and gross-out to name only a few. When you are writing a comedy, firstly it is critical that you know what kind of comedy and then from that decision, do your homework both in watching other movies in the genre and also studying up a little on comedy. Mel Brooks once said: Tragedy is when I get a hangnail. Comedy is when you fall down the staircase. Understand what “the topper” is in comedy. Understand the number of comic beats necessary to deliver the comedy most hilariously. Understand comedy from different eras. Watch the greats. And just as importantly – what makes you laugh? If you aren’t laughing when you write comedy, something is wrong.

Something newer writers don’t understand is that funny isn’t funny without the quiet moments in-between. And scary isn’t scary without the quiet bits either. A constant stream of action, horror or comedy disallows us from relating to the character these things are happening to.

In thriller the expectations will be centered around building dread, suspense, scares, thrills, chills and a helluva mind-bending, exciting showdown in the end. Here again, it depends on what kind of thriller you are writing: action-thriller, political-thriller, supernatural-thriller, horror-thriller and so forth.

Drama naturally has a million subsets because the word “drama’ in and of itself isn’t all that descriptive from the point of view of an executive. To name only a few subsets we might have sports-drama, historical-drama, political-drama or coming-of-age drama. If I’m going to the movies to see WE ARE MARSHALL, a sports-drama (and true story) you better believe I will expect to see moments of triumph, heartbreak, setbacks and victories. If I see a historical epic, I know I am going to see some really huge battle sequences. And in those sequences I will probably see that soldier who has a pregnant wife back home get killed. But he’ll die a martyr, he won’t be forgotten!

In each genre, set pieces highlighting and embodying the expectations of that genre should be plentiful and satisfying.

The first thing you need to do after you’ve come up with an idea is to ask yourself which genre you are in. It shouldn’t be difficult to figure it out. Once you’ve done that, go rent several movies in that genre and particularly movies that bear any resemblance to your idea whatsoever. Go see a movie in current release that is in your genre as well. Take notes and pay special attention. What beats are present, regardless of differences in story, in each movie? And very importantly, what pattern are the beats in?

I am not suggesting that writers attempt to cookie-cutter their writing to be completely derivative of pre-existing movies. Why was JUON so much better than THE GRUDGE? Because THE GRUDGE got put through the cookie-cutter and wound up limp and average. Derivative or imitative is not what I am suggesting here but rather an awareness of what makes certain genres work on that ancient, universal level. Lajos Egri’s book The Art of Dramatic Writing is a great resource for getting down to the fundamentals of drama. Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human is not only a great reference book for the work of Shakespeare but a tremendous lesson for any and all writers who wish to understand what moves audiences. Donald Spoto’s book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock is a fascinating read. I’m sure others can name many more great references.

Whether you read scripts professionally, or for a friend you will notice the genre expectations – or lack of them – in your bones. You will find yourself losing interest because you haven’t had a nice, scary set piece in a few pages. Or because the romantic relationship has hit a plateau with no misunderstandings or fights. Or because no bad guy has entered, stage left, to challenge the sheriff of the town. As he should. As we expect.

Movies have been around as popular entertainment for less than a century. Yet collectively, Americans have consumed countless movies over our lifetimes. Part of the pleasure of seeing a movie is having a primal itch scratched. I feel like seeing a horror movie tonight. Not me, I want to see a romcom. No way, give me an action picture. I’m in the mood for a war movie. While audiences enjoy a good twist, a surprise ending or an unexpected development, they also look forward to, and in fact expect, certain notes to be hit.

The truth is that audiences are moved by very elemental emotions: being heartbroken, being chased, being lonely, laughter, joy, birth, death, mothers, fathers, growing up and too many others to name. And audiences pay for the privilege of being taken on a journey of both pleasurable familiarity and thrilling surprises.

Get to know your genre and the expectations of that genre so that while the story will be totally unique, the underlying, universally resonant moments are there for the reader. And ultimately, the viewer. And bear in mind, no matter which genre, this story is happening to and about a character. If we can’t relate to the character, the funny won’t be funny, the scary won’t be scary and the horror might even be funny.

Give the people what they want. Be it thriller, drama, comedy, western or romantic comedy. As Donald O’Connor sang so memorably: Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh!

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