How to Write a Short Film: An Analysis

Last summer, a filmmaker friend asked me to write a short film for her to direct. Her only guidelines were that she wanted it to be filmable on a shoestring budget in a single weekend (one location, no more than 2-3 actors, no special effects or period costumes) and she wanted it to be no longer than about 8 minutes (because films under 10 minutes have a much greater chance of making it onto festival programs).

This turned out to be incredibly hard! Every idea I came up with either had too many characters or unusual locations or required complicated effects or was just too complex of a story to tell in eight minutes. I’d also never written a short film before and hadn’t even really watched that many, so I was really starting from zero.

I started by watching 40 or 50 successful short films that were under 10 minutes. I define “successful” here as getting into well-regarded festivals, making it onto “best of” lists, or achieving some level of viral popularity online. I took notes on how each film was structured and any similarities and differences I noted between them.

The short film I wrote is in post-production now and the screenplay placed in several contests and even won first place in one! I’ve written another short screenplay since then which also won and placed in a few contests and now I’m working on a third.

Elements Almost All Shorts Had in Common:

  1. A memorable ending. Pretty much all of the shorts I watched had a similar structure of being a fairly simple story with a surprising twist or “punchline” at the end. I’m actually not sure if I saw a single short film that didn’t end that way, even if the story overall had a pretty loose narrative. Maybe one or two.

    A good way of thinking about a short film ending is to ask yourself how an audience might expect your story to end and then ask yourself what would be the opposite of that. What would be an ironic ending given your setup? What would be a shocking ending? Is there an assumption the audience would likely have made that you can subvert?

  2. A distinct midpoint. Nearly every short I watched had a three-point structure of setup, midpoint escalation or reversal, and satisfying conclusion. The midpoint is especially worth thinking about. At pretty much the exact midpoint of nearly every short, there was some sort of major escalation or reversal that took the story in a new or more extreme direction.

    Even if your short doesn’t have a midpoint bisecting it, it’s useful to think in terms of reversals or escalations that divide the story into sections. This is useful because even eight minutes can feel interminably long without a sense of progress or surprise.

  3. A three-act structure. Beyond the midpoint, which is where the story often completely flips, most shorts I watched also had a more subtle reversal or escalation around the 25% and 75% mark. These points don’t need to land mathematically perfectly, but I was surprised how often they fell right around those timestamps.

    A loose structure that most shorts seemed to follow was about 25% setup (introduction of the characters and situation), then an introduction of a new problem around the 25% mark, then a major reversal around the midpoint, then a surprising twist introduced around the 75% mark.

    It’s better not to get too hung up on those exact timestamps because not every short followed that exactly, but that general structure was very common in these shorts and might be a good general map to try to hang your idea on. It’s probably less important that your reversals/escalations fall at those exact timestamps and more important that you have them built into your story somewhere.

    Without reversals or escalations or surprising reveals built into your story, even a 3-minute short can feel like it’s dragging on forever.

Elements That Varied Between Shorts:

  1. Diegetic sound vs. non-diegetic. Sound is one of the hardest things to get right in filmmaking and is probably the #1 thing that makes a film seem unprofessional or hard to watch. One way some filmmakers get around this is by not using diegetic sound! Diegetic sound means sound that originates from the story world of the film: dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, etc.

    While many short films I watched had normal dialogue or recorded sound in the environment of the film, quite a few of them didn’t have any sound at all except for music or a recorded voiceover narration. This can be a really smart way of making your short look and sound more professional on a budget.

    A good example of a short with non-diegetic sound is “August” by Caitlyn Greene.

  2. Atmospheric vs. narrative. Most short films I watched had a very clearly structured story but there were a couple that were more atmospheric than rigidly structured. It’s tough to make an atmospheric short film work. Most filmmakers fall back on “atmospheric” shorts because they don’t want to put in the work to tell a great story and it ends up feeling boring and trite, but when shorts like this work they really work. The trick seems to be having very strong visuals and often an unusual setting or characters.

    A good example of a short I’d consider more atmospheric than rigidly structured is “The Masterchef” by Ritesh Batra.

  3. Visual vs. non-visual. Obviously film is a visual medium so you’d rightly expect most short films to take advantage of strong visuals, but I found a few shorts that were actually more dependent on dialogue than visuals. If you’re a strong writer and you have strong actors, this can be another way to cut down on costs.

    A good example of a short film that relied more on language than on complicated sets or cinematography is “Operator” by Yann Heckmann.

Ordered by length, here are some short films under 10 minutes that I thought were worth watching. The ones in bold were my favorites. Some of these are a bit “adult” in nature, so FYI if you’re watching in a public place, especially without headphones.

  1. FOURTEEN // 5.5 minutes: limited locations, a small story with a twist ending, no dialogue
  2. OPERATOR // 5.5 minutes: 2 actors but one is voice only, 1 location, lots of rapid fire dialogue, clear story with beginning/middle/end and a small twist
  3. HELLION // 6 minutes: short and simple story with a twist ending, a few characters, a few locations in and around one house
  4. CARGO // 6.5 minutes: clear story with beginning/middle/end, no dialogue, 6 actors including a baby, a few outside locations — this one was recently turned into a feature-length film on Netflix!
  5. QUEEN // 6.5 minutes: super short, cute, 4 characters, one location, very small and simple story
  6. A SONG FOR YOUR MIXTAPE // 6.5 minutes: long voiceover monologue like a poem but with a story with a protagonist and a twist at the end, 3 main characters + background, a few locations, no diegetic sound
  7. GOGURT // 6.5 minutes: a few locations, several characters, mostly sort of atmospheric with a little bit of story, not much structure to it
  8. NEVER HAPPENED // 7 minutes: 3 actors, 5 or 6 locations, very clear story with beginning/middle/end
  9. AUGUST // 7.5 minutes: long voiceover monologue like a poem but with a story with a protagonist and a midpoint and an arc, no dialogue
  10. EMILY // 7.5 minutes: one long monologue with a tiny scene at the end – one location, two actors – strong story but not visual at all, it’s all told through monologue
  11. MASTERCHEF // 7.5 minutes: 4 or 5 actors, a few locations, dialogue and diegetic sound, very small and simple story with only a subtle beginning/middle/end but beautiful details
  12. SNAKE BITE // 8 minutes: one long scene in one location with 4 child actors — crazy intense story with incredible tension and a very clear arc
  13. CRACKED SCREEN // 8 minutes: entirely filmed as snapchat stories on a phone – mostly just one actor with a few background actors and a few locations – VERY dramatic story with a clear arc, totally gripping and horrifying
  14. A REASONABLE REQUEST // 8 minutes: two characters, one location, very clear story structure
  15. THE TALK // 8.5 minutes: two characters, one location, very clear story structure
  16. MOTHERF*CKER // 8.5 minutes: 2 actors, 1 location, lots of rapid fire dialogue, all filmed in one shot, clear story with beginning/middle/end and midpoint
  17. PRONOUNS // 9 minutes: several speaking characters + background, 3 or 4 locations
  18. SPIDER // 9.5 minutes: a handful of characters, a few locations including driving in a car, very clear story structure, very tense

Thanks to Nathalie Sejean of Mentorless for sending me a few of these and for the great email conversation about short films!

 

The 3-Point Escalation: What “Heat” Teaches Us About Character Introductions

I’m interested lately in learning how to quickly establish distinct and intriguing or empathetic characters. I’ve been getting feedback that my screenplays dive into plot too quickly without giving the reader a chance to understand the world and care about the people in it. This is an unusual note since usually writers err on the side of taking too long to get to the plot!

My challenge now is to not overcorrect and create the more common problem: stories that are too chatty and lack forward motion (keeping in mind that “forward motion” doesn’t have to mean shootouts and car chases; it just means that something changes, however subtle).

The goal is to get into the plot quickly but to do so while setting up a rich world and introducing distinct, memorable characters. One way to do this is to show what the character is like through their actions that are part of the plot. As I’m watching movies and TV shows lately, I’m paying special attention to how the writers do this.

Heat (1995)

Heat (1995)

This week I watched Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), a movie that’s full of heists, bank robberies, and action-packed shootouts, but is also very long, very slow, very moody, and very character-driven. It’s also a movie that’s widely referenced by film buffs as one of the best crime movies of all time.

There’s a lot that can be said about this film, but what I want to write about today is how Mann introduces characters. Each character has a distinct personality that will bear relevance for the plot later, so it’s important that the audience gets the gist of them quickly. One tool Mann uses to accomplish this is what I’ve decided to refer to as the “three-point escalation.”

Each character has a moment pretty much immediately upon meeting them that gives a subtle indication of their personality. It’s enough to make us, as the audience, sit up and think, “This person seems like they might be <character trait>. I wonder if I’m right.”

Then, either later in the same scene or in that character’s next scene, they have a moment that’s a slightly bigger version of that. Now we’re putting the pieces together and we’re invested in solving the mystery of what this character is like. We now have a second clue that we’re on the right track. We’re paying attention.

Finally, either later in the same scene or in that character’s next scene, there’s a third moment that is much more dramatic and makes it unmistakably clear that we were right. We’re now fully invested in this character (even if we hate them) because we’ve solved the mystery of what makes them tick.

Mann does this to varying degrees with several characters, but I’m going to walk through the clearest example of this escalation with Waingro, the movie’s primary villain.

Step 1: When we first meet Waingro, he’s coming out of the outdoor bathroom of a cheap Mexican fast food place. He’s pulling on a shirt as though he’d changed clothes in the bathroom, or maybe bathed at the bathroom sink. He’s moving quickly, like a bull in a china shop. He shakes the liquid out of a to go cup he’s carrying and pokes his head and arm fully through the takeout window and demands “another” refill.

Waingro wants a refill

“Now he wants a refill,” one employee says to another, implying this guy was already a pain in the ass before we even got here. They take the cup. But instead of waiting for the refill, Waingro notices a semi-truck idling at the corner and he takes off without explanation.

This is a seemingly odd moment to include in the film but despite what a long movie this is, it doesn’t waste space on moments that don’t serve a purpose. Think about how differently this tiny interaction could have gone if Waingro was a different person. He could have come out of the bathroom fastidiously cleaning his hands, disgusted by the facilities. He could have asked for a refill apologetically and then told them to cancel it when he realized he needed to leave. He could spoken fluent Spanish to the cashier or flirted with him.

Instead, based on this very quick interaction, we already get the idea that Waingro is sloppy, impulsive, wired, and inconsiderate. But it’s not enough information for us to be sure we understand him.

Step 2:  Waingro approaches the passenger window of the semi-truck and knocks. He tries to jump in, but the driver stops him and asks his name. The driver looks him up and down, clearly skeptical. Waingro introduces himself enthusiastically, but the driver is standoffish.

On the drive, Waingro chats loudly about the job they’re on their way to, constantly moving in his seat, asking too many questions. Finally the driver says, “Stop talking, ok, Slick?” After being so gregarious, Waingro now whips off his sunglasses and gives the driver a shockingly murderous glare.

Waingro glares menacingly at Cerrito

This is an escalation of what we saw in the previous beat. It’s further confirmation that Waingro is sloppy, impulsive, wired, and inconsiderate. Now he also seems dangerous.

Step 3: During the heist, it’s clear to the audience which of the masked robbers is Waingro due to his signature long hair. It’s Waingro’s job to hold the three security guards at gun point while the robbery is completed, but he gets it in his head that one of the guards is looking at him funny, though the guard is clearly just in shock and has lost his hearing from the explosion. Waingro attacks the guard, and Cerrito (the driver from the truck) tells him to “cool it, Slick.”

Waingro kills the guard

Waingro begins breathing heavily, losing his cool, and finally kills the offending guard, turning this heist into a murder charge instead of just armed robbery. This forces the team to kill all three guards so as not to leave witnesses. Not part of the plan.

This third beat is a dramatic escalation that cements our understanding of Waingro: he’s a loose cannon who can’t tolerate any perceived slight and he doesn’t clear the bar of this highly disciplined and talented team.

If this third step (the killing of the guard) had been our first encounter with Waingro, we probably would have gotten the same general idea that he’s a loose cannon, but it would have felt out of nowhere and we might not have been sure how to interpret the scene. Maybe the guard was looking at him funny?

But by having those two previous beats first, we’re actively engaged in understanding his character, rather than passively observing him, and when this final escalation occurs, his character’s identity is now completely distinct to us from the others, which will be important for following the rest of the story.

I suspect that a lot of stories do a similar three-point escalation when introducing important characters. I’m going to be on the lookout for it.

The Secret to Writing Great Scenes

Over the past several years, I’ve read a lot of television scripts of both the sold and the unsold variety and I’ve come across one feature that I think is the most common differentiator between the two.

It’s missing in most unsold scripts I read and it’s often missing in even my own writing, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a scene in a critically acclaimed TV show that doesn’t have it.

It’s not about formatting. It’s not about whitespace. It’s not about voiceovers or scene description or how many pages long it is.

It’s about reversals.

The Wire (2002), “Middle Ground”

When I say “reversal” I’m talking about a power shift that results in a reversal of fortune for a character. The best scenes often have several reversals but pretty much any scene of substance needs at least one.

It’s impossible to completely avoid spoilers while discussing this topic so while I avoid sharing unnecessary information, there are mild spoilers below for:

  • Game of Thrones (2011), Season 7, Episode 5, “Eastwatch”
  • The Sopranos (1999), Season 4, Episode 12, “Eloise”
  • The Wire (2002), Season 3, Episode 11, “Middle Ground”

I’ve included Youtube embeds below, but the full episodes are available from HBO. If you have Amazon Prime and you’ve never subscribed to HBO through Amazon before, you can get a one-week free trial.

Reversals aren’t only for big, meaty, important scenes. The scenes below aren’t climactic scenes in their respective episodes. They didn’t win anyone an Emmy1. In fact, the scene I chose from The Sopranos didn’t even merit a mention in the A.V. Club review of the episode.

These scenes are table-setting for more substantial meals to come, but even so, the writers took the time to craft real drama, moving the story forward by reversing the fortunes of its characters, sometimes multiple times in a single 2-3 minute scene.

I sometimes use terms like “act three” and “midpoint” and “inciting incident” to describe the structure of the scenes below, but it’s very unlikely the writers outlined these scenes with act breaks when writing them.

I note these structural beats because most great scenes have a beginning, middle, and end — a setup, a rising action (complication), and a climax/resolution (payoff). That’s a helpful thing to keep in mind.

The goal is not to pull out a calculator and make the setup exactly 25%, the rising action exactly 50%, and the climax/resolution the last 25%. You might find that a well-paced scene ends up close to that naturally, but the scenes below don’t match up perfectly to those percentages, nor should they.

Instead, the concept of a beginning, middle, and end to a scene is something to consider if a scene you wrote feels weak. Weak scenes often lack a real setup, complication, or payoff. Is there a power shift in the scene? Does a character experience a reversal of fortune, however small and subtle?

Game of Thrones (2011)

Season 7, Episode 5, “Eastwatch”
Written by: Dave Hill

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Davos and Tyrion have secretly come to King’s Landing. Davos is attempting to sneak Gendry (a man he doesn’t think can fight but who he’d like to protect) back to Dragonstone with them. Tyrion is a wanted man in King’s Landing but he’s there for a secret meeting.

Goal: Davos, Gendry, and Tyrion want to escape King’s Landing unnoticed and unharmed. At the start of this scene, they’re very close to achieving this goal.

Intro/Setup: This part is cut out of the Youtube embed above, but the first ten seconds or so of the scene is Davos and Gendry preparing to sail as Davos tells Gendry not to tell anyone back on Dragonstone who his real father is.

First Reversal: The first reversal, which acts as the inciting incident of the scene, is when two guards happen upon Davos and Gendry and wonder why they’re boarding a boat on a hidden beach instead of at the docks.

Davos immediately launches his first tactic, which is to pretend that he and Gendry are traders trying to avoid high tariffs at the dock. He gives the guards a bribe. This seems like it’s going to work.

The guards demand a higher bribe. Davos pretends to be annoyed by this, but it’s actually part of his plan to make the guards feel like they won so they’ll leave them alone.

Second Reversal: It seems like Davos and Gendry are going to be able to escape, but then at almost exactly the 25% mark (the beginning of “act two” of the scene) one of the guards asks: “What’s in the boat?” They’re not going to let Davos and Gendry leave that easily.

Midpoint Reversal: Fortunately, Davos is an experienced smuggler so he has a backup plan for this too. He has fermented crab stowed in the boat under blankets and tells the guards it’s an aphrodisiac. He gives them a sample and encourages them to go to a brothel.

Third Act Reversal: The guards are leaving and it looks like everything’s going to work out, but at about the 75% mark, the beginning of act three, Tyrion returns from his meeting just in time for the guards to see him. They recognize him. Davos tries to offer them more gold but they refuse.

Final Reversal: In a final twist, Gendry kills both guards with the hammer he packed earlier that Davos was skeptical he’d be able to fight with, thus proving his value as a fighter and securing their freedom from King’s Landing.

Total Reversals: There are at least five reversals in this three-minute scene.

  1. Davos and Gendry think they’re going to easily escape, but then guards happen upon them. Davos offers them a bribe. They demand a higher bribe and he agrees.
  2. Davos and Gendry once again think they’re safe, but then the guards want to see what’s in the boat.
  3. It seems like Davos and Gendry are done for, but then Davos shows the guards some decoy fermented crab and convinces them that it’s an aphrodisiac, sending them off to the brothels.
  4. Davos and Gendry once again think they’re going to escape, but then the guards see Tyrion and recognize him from his description as a wanted man.
  5. It for sure seems like they’re toast this time, but then Gendry kills both guards with his hammer. They are finally able to escape.

Change of Fortune: This scene begins with the characters thinking they’re going to successfully escape and it ends with them successfully escaping, so from that perspective, there’s no change at all. But the larger change is that Davos and Tyrion now see that Gendry is a worthy fighter.

The Sopranos (1999)

Season 4, Episode 12, “Eloise”
Written by: Terence Winter

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Little Carmine has come back to New Jersey from Miami to meet with his mob boss father and underboss Johnny Sack over a game of golf. At Johnny’s request, Little Carmine has come to convince his father to back down on a dispute he’s having with Tony Soprano over a HUD scam.

Goal: Our point of view character in this scene is Johnny Sack (we open and close on his emotional state), who’s done a lot of political maneuvering to make this conversation happen and whose goal is for Little Carmine to stay on script and convince his father to back off the conflict with Tony.

Intro/Setup: The first 25% of this scene is a friendly chat between Johnny and Little Carmine that drops a little exposition and setup. They seem to be on the same page about this upcoming conversation and Johnny is relieved that it’s all so close to being resolved.

Johnny: “Anything you can do to change your father’s mind.”
Little Carmine: “I’m going to try, John. I came all the way up here for that.”

First Reversal: The first reversal, which kicks off “act two” of the scene, is that Carmine Sr. immediately takes power in the conversation, belittling his son in small ways (“You put your sunblock on?” “I’m taking a mulligan.”).

For the first half of act two (approximately the next 25% of the scene), Little Carmine is staying on script, but Carmine Sr.’s bullying makes Johnny nervous. Johnny likes to be in control, but his tactic here is to hang back and give Little Carmine space to do what he promised to do, but he can’t resist overstepping a bit when he says, “Even from the beginning I thought forty was a tad steep,” which leads to —

Midpoint Reversal: The big reversal comes at the midpoint when Carmine Sr. says of Tony Soprano: “I’d have been proud to call him my own son.” Little Carmine is desperate for his father’s approval so this line is a blow to his ego and Johnny knows it.

In the second half of act two of this scene, Johnny sees what’s happened and quickly changes tactics, taking over the conversation to try to smooth things over himself with Carmine Sr. (“Maybe there’s a compromise here then.”) It seems like this might work. (“There’s always a compromise.”)

Third Act Reversal: But at the 75% mark (the beginning of “act three” of this scene), Little Carmine can’t resist the urge to take a dig at Tony, though he came all the way from Miami to advocate for him. “He’s a bit of a poseur, you ask me.” Now he’s aligning himself with his father, sucking up to him and throwing Tony under the bus.

At this point, Johnny has to change tactics yet again, dropping the charm and stating his feelings baldly. “Whatever they are, Carmine, the Sopranos bring in a lot of cash. I’ve been close with Tony for a lot of years.”

Now Little Carmine turns on Johnny too. “Maybe… Tony feels like you’re friends and not business associates.” Johnny was so close to getting what he wanted, but now he’s lost.

Total Reversals: There are at least three reversals in this two-minute scene.

  1. Johnny and Little Carmine think this intervention is going to be a success, but Carmine Sr. shows up and makes a power move by belittling his son, setting the meeting off on the wrong foot. But Little Carmine sticks to the script and continues making his case with Johnny playing a supporting role.
  2. It seems like maybe Little Carmine is going to overcome his father’s bullying, but then Johnny oversteps. In retaliation, Carmine Sr. says he’d have been proud to call Tony Soprano his son, which throws Little Carmine off his game. Johnny Sack jumps in to try to smooth things over.
  3. It seems like Johnny might get through to Carmine Sr., but Little Carmine switches allegiances and takes his father’s side against Johnny and Tony.

Change of Fortune: Our POV character, Johnny Sack, starts out the scene hopeful that his work has paid off and this problem is about to be peaceably resolved, but by the end of the scene he’s frustrated and pessimistic about his ability to solve this conflict without bloodshed.

His fortune really only changes once in this scene, but his misfortune escalates with each reversal throughout the scene.

The Wire (2002)

Season 3, Episode 11, “Middle Ground”
Written by: George Pelecanos

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Omar Little, a notorious stick-up man, is walking home with his laundry when he’s stopped at gunpoint by Brother Mouzone, a hitman from New York. They have a violent history but also a grudging respect for each other, and they are each pretty much the only person the other has reason to fear.

Goal: Omar’s external goal is to escape this encounter alive, killing Brother Mouzone if he has to, but his internal goal is to find out what the other man wants. He could probably kill him if he wanted to, just as Brother Mouzone could probably kill Omar, but they’re as intrigued by each other as they are wary.

Brother Mouzone’s goal in this scene is to make an important proposition to Omar without being killed before he can do it.

Intro/Setup: Omar is walking home with his laundry, whistling his trademark tune.

First Reversal: The inciting incident comes about 20% into the scene when Brother Mouzone stops him at gunpoint. Omar’s first tactic is to threaten Mouzone (“I need to remind you who I am?” and “I ain’t tossing nothing.”) even though he’s at the clear disadvantage. He slowly reaches for his gun and it seems like he’s going to get to it in time when —

Midpoint Reversal: At the midpoint of this scene, Omar asks how he found him and Brother Mouzone tells Omar that his boyfriend gave him up. “He didn’t give you up easily.” Omar is afraid now that Brother Mouzone killed his boyfriend. Now he’s angry and he has his gun in his hand though it’s not pointed at the other man. (“Even if I miss I can’t miss.”) Brother Mouzone seems confident Omar won’t shoot when —

Third Act Reversal: At the 80% mark, Omar levels the gun fully at Brother Mouzone. Now any advantage of surprise Brother Mouzone originally had is gone. They are on equal footing. Either could kill the other at any moment. Instead —

Final Reversal: Brother Mouzone lowers his weapon. “I want to ask you something, brother.” Omar lowers his as well. “Omar listening.”

Total Reversals: There are at least four reversals in this 2.5-minute scene.

  1. Omar is having a pleasant night before he’s unexpectedly stopped at gunpoint by Brother Mouzone.
  2. It seems like Omar is going to get to his gun in time to shoot Brother Mouzone when the hitman tells him that his boyfriend gave him up and that he still has him captured.
  3. Angry, Omar still slowly moves for his gun as the two men talk. Brother Mouzone seems confident Omar won’t shoot, but then Omar does turn it on him.
  4. They’re trapped in an old Western style stand-off, when Brother Mouzone decides to lower his own gun even though Omar could easily kill him. He surprises Omar one more time: “I want to ask you something.” Omar lowers his gun to listen.

Change of Fortune: At the beginning of this scene, Omar and Brother Mouzone are on opposing sides but they share a wary respect for each other and they have a shared enemy. During this scene, they nearly kill each other, but by the end of the scene they are entering into a partnership.

***

Note: I chose these three scenes pretty much at random based on what was available on YouTube, trusting that any scene from a critically acclaimed series would be a good example for this post. I chose shows that are widely watched among people who care about TV writing so that it would be more likely that readers had seen the episode.

What’s funny is that without meaning to, I somehow chose three scenes that are not only written by men, but all the actors in the scenes are men! I’ll make an effort in future posts to choose more balanced examples.

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The 5 Types of Opening Scenes: An Analysis of 80 Films

The opening scene of a screenplay is a sales pitch to convince the reader to stick around for the rest of the script. Is there a formula to writing a great one? Are there common elements they all share? Are they usually a particular length?

To answer these questions, I watched the opening scenes of 80 movies from a wide variety of genres. Most of these films are critically-acclaimed. Some were recommended by friends because their first scene was especially memorable.

What I learned was interesting. Of course there isn’t a single unifying formula for a great opening scene, and length varied a lot more than I expected, but almost every opening scene I watched did fall into one of five categories and almost all opening scenes shared several common elements.

What is a Scene?

Before we can talk about great opening scenes, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what a scene is.

A scene is the smallest unit of story2 in a script. Here are some common elements often used to define a scene:

  • It takes place in a single location
  • It takes place in a single block of time
  • It represents a single problem with a beginning, middle, and end that can stand alone as its own understandable mini-story

But there are many counterexamples to these definitions.

For example, you could have a single conversation start in a parking lot, continue in the car on a drive, and resolve when the characters arrive at their destination. It’s a single block of time and a single problem with a beginning, middle, and end, but it takes place across multiple locations.

Similarly, you could have two unrelated conversations taking place in a single room at a party. It’s a single location and a single block of time, but it’s two unrelated problems with their own beginnings, middles, and ends.

Last, you could have a conversation that starts in bed, then the characters fall asleep, eight hours pass, and we come back to them in the morning as they wake and finish their conversation. It’s a single location and a single problem with a beginning, middle, and end, but it takes place over two blocks of time.

In each of these examples you’d need to call these separate scenes in a script for production purposes, but for storytelling purposes, you might think of them as a single scene. This gets even more complicated with montages, which we’ll see below are a surprisingly common form of opening scene in movies.

Scene vs. Sequence: What’s the Difference?

Beyond a scene, we also have something called a sequence. Again, this gets muddy, but a sequence is a slightly larger unit of story, composed of multiple scenes that link together continuously to show the introduction and resolution of a problem before the story cuts away to a new problem. (Note that when I say “resolution,” I don’t mean that the problem is solved, just that the question the problem raised now has at least a tentative answer.)

You could argue that a montage is really a sequence not a scene, or that some of my examples above of rule-breaking scenes are actually sequences. It’s all semantics, so define these terms in the way that’s most useful for you. At the end of the day, we’re trying to tell a good story, not pass a pop quiz.

The Godfather Part II (1974)

For an example of what I would call a sequence, look at the beginning of The Godfather Part II (1974). The first scene of the movie is a very short, almost wordless scene in which young Vito’s brother is killed by a local mafia lord during his father’s funeral in Sicily. In the next scene, Vito’s mother brings him to Don Ciccio, the mafia lord who killed Vito’s father and brother, to beg for mercy. Don Ciccio refuses, Vito’s mother attempts to take him hostage, she is killed, and Vito escapes.

This entire sequence is only about four minutes long. It’s two separate scenes because the events take place in two separate locations and some time has passed offscreen between them (though maybe only an hour or so). But most importantly, it’s two separate scenes because each scene has its own beginning, middle, and end. The first scene starts with a funeral procession and ends with Vito’s brother being killed by Don Ciccio. The second scene begins with Vito’s mother begging Don Ciccio for mercy and ends with her being killed as Vito escapes.

But together these two scenes make up a larger sequence that involves the introduction and resolution of a single question. The question is: “Will Don Ciccio spare Vito’s life?” The first scene introduces the question when Vito’s brother is killed by Don Ciccio at his father’s funeral; the sequel answers the question when Vito’s mother begs Don Ciccio for mercy and he refuses. The problem isn’t solved, but it’s resolved — we now have an answer to the question. The answer is no.

You could argue that the section after these two scenes (Vito escaping Corleone with the help of townspeople) is part of the same sequence, but to me that’s a new sequence with a new question that was not introduced in the previous sequence. The question the second sequence asks is: “Will Vito successfully escape Corleone?”

Who Cares?

Does it matter how we define a scene or a sequence? In a way, no, it doesn’t matter at all. If you’re telling a great story, it doesn’t matter if the whole movie is a single scene or five acts or a hundred sequences or however you want to think of it.

But it can be helpful to think about these things if part of your story feels unsatisfying and you can’t figure out why. You can ask yourself: does this scene have a beginning, middle, and end? Is it part of a larger sequence that asks and answers a question? Does the end of my scene or sequence pose a new question to pull us into the next scene or sequence? If the answer to any of these questions is no, that might be the problem.

It’s particularly important if the scene or sequence that feels unsatisfying is the very first one of your script.

Types of Opening Scenes

After analyzing the opening scenes of 80 movies, I found they all (with just five exceptions) fit into one of the following categories:

  1. Prologue (32%)
    • Prologue montage with voiceover (16%)
    • Prologue scene without voiceover (16%)
  2. Inciting incident (25%)
  3. Day in the life (24%)
    • Exciting day in the life (13%)
    • Uneventful day in the life (11%)
  4. Cold open (11%)
  5. Flash forward (8%)

Note: almost every movie I watched had a long string of wordless shots that ran under the opening credits. I did not count this section of the film as part of the opening scene.

Prologues

For this purpose, I define a prologue as a montage or scene that’s meant to succinctly communicate important backstory that occurred before the events of the film.

Prologue Montage with Voiceover

Sometimes this prologue is a montage with voiceover narration that dumps a ton of exposition on the audience at once. Just about every screenwriting guru on Earth will tell you to avoid voiceover like the plague, but it’s surprisingly common even in critically-acclaimed films and can be effective when used thoughtfully.

Prologue montages with voiceover are especially common in fantasy movies and epics because there’s so much complicated history and world-building that the audience needs to understand, but they’re also common in films that hinge on the unique voice and point of view of the main character, especially if the main character will turn out to be a somewhat unreliable narrator.

Raising Arizona (1987)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of Raising Arizona (1987). This montage is entertaining due to the unique style and character voice. This opening makes it very clear what kind of movie you’re about to watch and it really adds something to the film instead of just feeling like a lazy way to dump a bunch of info on the audience.

Interesting side note: Ready Player One (2018) begins with a 10-minute prologue montage with voiceover, but I read an earlier draft of the screenplay a few years ago that opened with an inciting incident scene instead, which I liked so much better.

Examples: Raising Arizona (1987), Legends of the Fall (1994), Clueless (1995), A Simple Plan (1998), American Beauty (1999), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Amélie (2001), Love Actually (2003), The World’s End (2013), Arrival (2016), Love, Simon (2018), Ready Player One (2018)

Prologue Scene without Voiceover

Prologues don’t always have voiceover. Sometimes instead it’s a flashback scene that reveals a pivotal moment in the past (usually childhood) of an important character.

Flashbacks, like voiceover, are dangerous territory — they almost always lack tension because the events of the scene have already transpired so the outcome has no sense of immediacy. They also often involve characters that won’t be present in the rest of the story (or are played by different, younger actors), which can be confusing to the audience.

But when done well, these types of prologues can be very effective at catching us up on important backstory and building sympathy (or lack thereof) for a character.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds (2009). It’s an incredibly long scene, but it’s extremely tense from start to finish. This scene introduces the antagonist, sets up the motivation of a main character, situates you in the world and tone of the movie, and expertly wields subtext to create suspense and interest.

Examples: The Godfather Part II (1974), The Sixth Sense (1999), Capote (2005), Zodiac (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Star Trek (2009), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Lion (2016), Manchester By The Sea (2016), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), and Black Panther (2018)

Inciting Incident

In many movies, there are about ten minutes or so of setup before the movie’s inciting incident (the first event that kicks off a profound change in the protagonist’s life), but in some movies (more than a quarter of the ones I watched), the inciting incident happens on practically the first page.

This type of opening scene introduces the inciting incident that sets the story into motion. It could be a wedding, a funeral, or an apocalypse. Maybe the main character is released from prison, they start a new job, they move to a new house, or they learn about an opportunity. Maybe they win the lottery or meet the love of their life. I was actually surprised how often this inciting incident happened in the very first scene of a movie without any setup before it.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of There Will Be Blood (2007). In the first minute of the film, the main character discovers silver in his mine, which leads to everything else that happens in the film, but there are a few special things about this scene:

  • It sets up the plot of the movie very efficiently and everything is communicated visually, not through dialogue.
  • It’s incredibly tense. There’s a part in the scene in which a literal stick of dynamite is counting down to an explosion. There are also elements of mystery and surprise.
  • Though there is almost no dialogue (he says a few words out loud to himself at one point), by the end of this scene you understand exactly who this character is, including his strengths and weaknesses that will drive the rest of the story.

Examples: Back to the Future (1985), Aliens (1986), Die Hard (1988), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Se7en (1995), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Training Day (2001), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Gift (2015), Moonlight (2016), The Witch (2016), Nerve (2016), Hello, My Name is Doris (2016), The Big Sick (2017), The Florida Project (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017)

A Day in the Life

A “Day in the Life” opening scene is a scene that introduces the main character — usually revealing a key strength and key liability — and shows what their life is like before it’s changed by the events of the film.

Like prologues, there are two subtypes within this category.

Exciting Day in the Life

Some movies open with our main character or characters in media res in an exciting situation that is typical for them before the events of the film change their life forever. But when I say it’s a “typical day,”  I don’t mean a scene of them eating cereal in front of the TV. It’s an especially exciting or dramatic moment in their everyday life. Sometimes this scene will turn out to tie in with the larger plot of the movie but often it has no relation to the main plot, or has only a tangential connection.

You most often see these types of scenes when the main character has an exciting job: a spy, a cop, an assassin, a bank robber, etc., but not always.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Offensive stereotypes of indigenous people notwithstanding (yikes), this is one of the greatest opening scenes in the history of cinema. It sets up the tone and genre of the movie beautifully, tells you just about everything you need to know about the main character, and is very exciting and well paced. You know Indy survives the ordeal because there’s an entire film franchise about him but even still you’re on the edge of your seat worrying whether he’ll make it out alive.

Examples: The Wizard of Oz (1939), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Men in Black (1997), Out of Sight (1998),  Bad Boys II (2003), Spectre (2015) (in fact, pretty much any Bond movie), Green Room (2016), Baby Driver (2017), Lady Bird (2017), Logan (2017)

Uneventful Day in the Life

Other times, a movie opens with a “day in the life” scene that’s not that dramatic or exciting at all. It’s difficult to pull off an uneventful scene like this in a way that’s interesting and suitable for the movie. Many writers open their stories this way by default (a screenplay starting with a character waking up in bed is overdone to the point of cliché) but it’s better when chosen with intention.

The key to making these scenes work is to have something fresh and unusual about the setting, situation, dialogue, or characters. The scene usually introduces one or more main characters in a way that makes them sympathetic or at least intriguing. Scenes like this usually (but not always) establish the tone and genre of the movie and illustrate the overall theme of the film.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

I didn’t especially love any of the opening scenes I screened in this category, but if I had to choose one it would be The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). This is almost a cheat because this scene proves the distinction between “exciting slice of life” and “uneventful slice of life” can be blurry. The movie begins with a closeup of a real open heart surgery, which is shocking to the audience and has life or death stakes for the patient, but it’s not presented as suspenseful in the movie. In the context of this story, it’s just a day at the office for the main character. We don’t even find out if the surgery was successful, and the scene ends with the surgeon having an intentionally mundane conversation with the anesthesiologist about watchbands. The scene isn’t about stakes; it’s about theme and character and setting an expectation of tone for the movie.

Examples: Gone with the Wind (1939), Carrie (1976), Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), Fences (2016), Logan Lucky (2017), Landline (2017), A Ghost Story (2017), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Cold Opens

When we think of cold opens, we usually think of television. A cold open in television, sometimes called a teaser, is the section of an episode that’s shown before the opening credits. (Not all episodes have a cold open; some start with Act 1.)

Most common in horror movies, crime thrillers, and action flicks, the main purpose of a cold open is to grab the audience’s attention and establish genre elements before beginning Act 1, which will be a “before picture” of the characters’ lives and therefore the least exciting part of the film. But even outside of these genres, a cold open can demonstrate the strength of a powerful antagonistic force, as it does in Spotlight (2015).

A cold open in film almost never involves the movie’s main characters; this scene is narratively separate from the events of the story, though it provides important context.

The Lobster (2016)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of The Lobster (2016). It’s unique, it’s surprising, it sets the tone of the movie, and it creates a question in the audience’s mind that will be answered later.

Examples: Jaws (1975), The Last Boy Scout (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Scream (1996), The Fast and the Furious (2001), Spotlight (2015), The Lobster (2016), Get Out (2016)

Flash Forward

A “flash forward” opening is when a movie starts with a scene in the present (or at least the “present” in the timeline of the film) and then the rest of the movie (or most of it) takes place in the past leading up to that opening moment.

This has become common to the point of cliché in television pilots, though it’s a gimmick I personally enjoy. It was probably made most famous on television by the pilot of Breaking Bad (2008). These flash forward openings often have voiceover narration, but not always.

The Prestige (2006)

My favorite example of this type is the opening scene of The Prestige (2006). That scene makes great use of voiceover narration to establish a theme of the film, while also teasing the audience for an exciting climax and presenting some mysteries to be solved later (like what’s the deal with all the hats).

Examples: Titanic (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), The Prestige (2006), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Carol (2015), Wonder Woman (2017)

Elements of an Opening Scene

There is no set length for an opening scene. Of the scenes I watched for this analysis, the shortest was about 30 seconds and the longest was 19 minutes. The median length was three minutes and 70% of them were five minutes or shorter.

Almost half of the scenes I watched were structured like a short film, by which I mean they had a setup in the beginning, a middle with rising tension or complications, and at the end usually some sort of twist, surprise, or reversal.

The first scene usually introduces at least one main character, but sometimes the characters in the first scene aren’t in the rest of the movie at all.

Common elements in most opening scenes (this isn’t a checklist — every opening scene doesn’t have to have all of them):

  1. Introduces the protagonist in a way that communicates their main skills, qualities, quirks, and weaknesses efficiently and visually.

    This one is very common for scenes that feature the protagonist. By the end of the first scene, the audience can often see the good and bad of this character and is already getting an inkling for how they are going to screw things up and why they need so badly to change (which they may or may not ever successfully do, depending on what kind of story you’re telling).

  2. Introduces the world.

    Where are we? When are we? If it’s a period piece, indications of the time period are introduced in the first scene. If the world has a geography that the viewer needs to understand (even if it’s just the hallways of a high school), the first scene will sometimes intentionally orient the audience to this map. If there’s magic in the world or strange rules or customs, we’ll likely see those right away too.

  3. Offers audiences a “before” picture to later compare with the “after.”

    Some screenwriting gurus will tell you this is required, but it’s not. It is common though. Very often the first and last scene of a movie will mirror each other in some way to illustrate how the protagonist has changed. So if you know how your movie is going to end, that might give you an idea for how it should start.

  4. Presents a “save the cat” moment for the protagonist, even if it’s very subtle.

    You’re probably familiar with the concept of “saving the cat,” which comes from the late Blake Snyder. It refers to a moment in many movies in which the protagonist does something kind or selfless (like saving a cat) to show the audience that they are a good person, even if they otherwise act like an entitled jerk. About 27% of the opening scenes I watched had a moment like this, even if it was very subtle.

    For example, in the opening scene of Baby Driver, Baby is literally a getaway driver for a bank heist — not a noble occupation — but there’s a brief moment when he lowers his sunglasses to get a better look through the window at the heist because Griff is waving his gun around and you get the sense from Baby’s expression that he might be concerned about the hostages. It’s quick and subtle but it’s enough.

  5. Tense and suspenseful.

    Over half of the opening scenes I watched (even some quiet indie dramas) were tense, suspenseful, or dramatic, but what’s really surprising is that almost half of the scenes were not tense and suspenseful! Opening with a scene of conflict or danger can suck people into your story quickly, but it’s not the right start to every movie.

  6. A surprise or big reversal.

    It’s common for opening scenes to contain at least one surprising revelation or an unexpected reversal of fortunes — a character isn’t what she seems, a character seems like he’s going to get what he wants but then he doesn’t, etc.

  7. Sets the tone and genre of the film.

    Almost all opening scenes I watched established the tone and genre of their film but occasionally you’ll see one that doesn’t. Two examples I can think of off the top of my head are Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Logan Lucky (2017), both of which have opening scenes that don’t really reflect the genre and tone of the rest of the film.

Cliché Ways to Begin a Screenplay

  • Main character waking up in bed
  • Main character having breakfast with their family and/or getting the kids off to school
  • Main character jogging
  • A fake-out (we think something serious is happening but it turns out to be a dream or a drill or a scene from a movie-within-the-movie)
  • A therapy appointment, a job interview, a parole hearing or some other similar way of getting across a bunch of exposition through dialogue
  • A newscast, an office PowerPoint, a debriefing, or some other similar way of getting across a bunch of exposition through a presentation
  • Childhood flashback
  • Voiceover narration

It’s not that any of these are inherently bad and should never be done. There are great movies that use each of them. Just make sure it’s really serving your story and isn’t just the first cliché idea that popped into your mind.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

For example, a “main character waking up in bed” opening can be a good choice for a movie that’s about sleep or waking up or monotonous routines. The key is to choose it thoughtfully.

As another example, nine out of ten screenwriting gurus will tell you to never open a script with voiceover narration because it’s lazy, but it’s surprisingly common in commercially-successful and critically-acclaimed movies. There was voiceover narration in the first scene of more than 20% of the movies I watched. That’s more than 1 out of every 5 movies!

I still don’t recommend it because so many readers have a knee-jerk negative reaction to it and most of the time it really is being used out of laziness. Find a more creative way to communicate your exposition (or question if it really needs to be communicated at all), and let the studio convince you to add in voiceover later, after they’ve given you lots of money.

What to Do With This Information

If you’re struggling with the first scene of a script you’re writing, go through each of the types of opening scenes above and brainstorm one for your script that would fit in that category. Go ahead and list the most cliché ideas first, but then try to push yourself to think of a few more that are more surprising. You might come up with something interesting that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought to do.

Also, remember that you can always go back and write a new opening scene later. It might be easier to see what that opening scene needs to be after you’ve finished a first draft of the entire screenplay.

Finally, if your first scene doesn’t fit any of the categories above but it’s working for you and your readers, that’s great. Out of the 80 films I watched for this analysis, I came across five opening scenes that didn’t neatly fit any of the above categories. Those movies were The Karate Kid (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Schindler’s List (1993), Election (1999), and The Truman Show (1998), and three of those movies had an over 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so though it may be rare, it’s definitely possible to write an opening scene that doesn’t fit in any of the above categories and still have a great script.

6 Surprising Ways to Make Better Use of Your Villains

It’s a lot of work to craft a compelling, complex, and truly formidable antagonist, so once we’ve put in that time, it makes sense to wring as much value out of those characters as possible. Here are six surprising ways I’ve found to make effective use of an antagonist:

  1. Use delayed gratification of an antagonist’s punishment to increase narrative tension.

    The more your villain wins, and the more he deserves to lose, the more desperately we’ll be turning every page (or hitting that “next episode” button) to see him finally get his comeuppance. This is especially effective if the villain is pretending to be a good guy and some of your protagonists haven’t figured it out yet.

    The first time I realized the power of this dynamic was while watching The Sopranos. In the third season, there’s a character that everyone on the show loves but who the audience knows is terrible. It is enraging to watch this character be coddled and cheered in every episode when you know he’s secretly a villain. I was glued to my screen that entire season, desperate for the satisfaction of seeing this character be found out and brought to justice.

    Similarly, I’m watching Game of Thrones now for the first time and this line in a season 1 episode recap, referring to Joffrey, sums it up perfectly: “I will watch this show even if it goes on for a hundred seasons if they promise me gruesome violence against that little kid.”

    Joffrey is another great example of a character who continually gets what he wants when he doesn’t deserve it while doing increasingly despicable things, building narrative tension in the audience as we froth at the mouth to see him get what’s coming to him.

    Are there ways you can ratchet up the tension in your story by making things easier and easier for your terrible antagonist, delaying our gratification in seeing his eventual punishment?

  2. Use lesser antagonists to take some of the load off your Big Bad.

    Whether you’re writing a TV show or a feature film, you almost certainly have multiple layers of antagonists, not just a single villain. And I don’t just mean a “Big Bad” and his three henchmen, I mean other types of antagonists who are causing problems for our hero on all sides.

    Some of those antagonists are mere nuisances or even well-meaning characters who are nevertheless blocking your heroes from doing what needs to be done, but others are more serious threats that will help the hero train for her eventual climactic fight against the Big Bad.

    You can find examples of this in pretty much any movie or TV show, but one great example you’ve probably seen is Die Hard (1988). Of course Hans Gruber is the Big Bad and John McClane will have to defeat many henchmen before he can fight Hans, but there are several other antagonists to contend with as well: Harry Ellis (John’s wife’s arrogant coworker who reveals John’s identity to Hans), Dick Thorburg (the irresponsible reporter who carelessly exposes the identity of John’s wife and children), and Dwayne Robinson (the police chief who doesn’t believe John that the building is under siege or that John is a cop).

    Hans Gruber

    These “lesser” antagonists can do some of the dirty work of your Big Bad, which helps your main villain retain an aura of mystery while still keeping your heroes under constant threat.

    One of the movies most famous for a mysterious antagonist is Jaws (1975) — so much of what made that shark terrifying is that we rarely actually see it. If every time something bad happened in that movie it had to be the shark eating someone, that would get old very quickly and the shark would lose his power to frighten. By having other, lesser antagonists in the movie, we were able to have continuous conflict and obstacles without getting burned out on shark attacks.

    Is your Big Bad doing dirty work in your story that steals some of her menace? Can you farm out those conflicts to lesser antagonists instead?

  3. Use a lesser antagonist as a more narratively satisfying deus ex machina to save your hero from another, worse villain.

    You’ve probably heard this famous writing advice from Pixar story artist Emma Coats: “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”

    But sometimes you really do need a satisfying way to get a hero out of an impossible jam. Even the best stories need an occasional deus ex machina, but we’ve all felt that disappointment when a sidekick just happens to ride up at the exact moment a hero needs help. We wanted them to get out of trouble, but not like that!

    Another benefit of having multiple layers of antagonists is that you can have a lesser antagonist be the deus ex machina that saves our hero from a much deadlier one.

    A movie that does this to great effect is Attack the Block (2011) which has its heroes running scared from cops, a murderous drug dealer, and aliens all at the same time. There is at least one moment when a well-timed attack from one antagonist gives our heroes a means to escape another.

    This is much more narratively satisfying because it’s not completely fixing the hero’s problem — they still have to deal with this new problem, it just saves them from a truly impossible one.

    Do you have an unsatisfying deus ex machina in your story that you could make more satisfying by having an antagonist come to the rescue instead of a helper?

  4. Use an antagonist to make a challenging protagonist more palatable.

    Your protagonists don’t have to be innocent Pollyannas for the audience to care about them, they just have to be not as bad as the antagonistic forces against them.

    On another series, a conceited mean girl would be the antagonist, but because Sansa Stark is the victim of much crueler characters on Game of Thrones, we empathize with her. You can make even the most horrible character empathetic by putting them at odds with someone even worse.

    This is a good opportunity for those smaller antagonists who aren’t quite to the level of Big Bad Villain, but are thorns in the side of your hero.

    In your story, is there an opportunity to make an unlikable character more empathetic by giving them an even more unlikable opponent?

  5. Use your villain to help the hero see her own dark side.

    Someone told me once in a job interview, when I’d failed to find a satisfactory answer to the question “what is your greatest weakness,” that weaknesses are usually the excess of our strengths.

    Often, a great villain is simply the hero run amok; it’s someone with the qualities of the hero taken to their terrible logical extreme. This can create a great opportunity for your hero to look inside herself and see her own flaws and the danger that awaits her if she doesn’t change, as it does in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) and in The Last Jedi (2017).

    Is there a way you can make your Big Bad a better “upside down” reflection of your hero, or make better use of that reflection?

  6. Use a secret antagonist to upend the audience’s expectations.

    I can’t give examples of this without spoiling the stories, but there are several extremely successful movies and TV shows in recent years that involved an antagonist initially posing (to the hero and to the audience) as someone who was on the protagonist’s side.

    This is tricky to pull off without pulling the rug so hard out from under the audience’s feet that they have nothing left to stand on, but when this works for a story, it really, really works. Is there an antagonist in your story who you could initially portray as good? Or a protagonist in your story who you could make secretly bad?

 

“It’s Basically a Soap Opera.”

“It’s basically a soap opera” is an accusation I’ve seen hurled at shows as disparate as Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead — and it is almost always framed as an accusation or a dismissal, not merely a description. I just started watching Game of Thrones (I know) and last night I described the notoriously violent fantasy series just that way, and then wondered what I’d meant by it.

So now I’m wondering: what is it that makes a show “like a soap opera?” Are there shows that aren’t like a soap opera? And is being like a soap opera inherently a bad thing?

I definitely need to do some more thinking on this so I welcome your comments if you disagree, but here is a list of qualities that I think are what people are referring to when they say that a show is like a soap opera:

  1. The show is almost entirely about interpersonal relationships.

    Almost all TV shows have important relationships at their core (except maybe some procedurals at the extreme end of the episodic-serialized spectrum, like the original Law & Order), but on some shows the relationships are the music underscoring the plot and on other shows the relationships are the plot.

    For example, I would not describe The Americans as a soap opera because though Philip and Elizabeth’s relationship is absolutely central to the show and is in fact in many ways what the show is “about” in a thematic sense, the plot rarely revolves around it, but on Game of Thrones pretty much everything that happens is driven by someone’s relationship with someone else.

    Is this a bad thing? I would definitely say no, but I do think it might be sometimes described as a bad thing because talking about relationships is something that’s traditionally thought of as “chick flick” stuff and is therefore devalued by a society that devalues most things feminine.

  2. The show has a lot of “talking head” scenes in which two people just have a conversation about their relationship with each other, about their relationship with someone else, or about someone else’s relationship with someone else.

    The Walking Dead is famous for relying on these types of scenes more heavily than its zombie-craving audience would prefer. I think it especially starts feeling “like a soap opera” when characters seem to be having the same conversation over and over, or start dissecting the inner workings of each other’s relationships more often than they ever would in real life.

    Is this a bad thing? Yes, sometimes. Television is a visual medium, though maybe less so than film, and while talking head scenes can keep your budget down, they can get stale after awhile to viewers.

    HBO is famous for putting naked women in the background of scenes like this to make the scene more visually interesting (a move perfected on The Sopranos, another show I would describe as “basically a soap opera” — think about how much of the plot on that show was driven by someone essentially hurting Tony’s feelings).

  3. The show has a sprawling cast and a plot that’s heavily reliant on complicated histories between characters, often requiring lengthy “Previously Ons” before each episode.

    Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, but be wary of it in your own work if you’re a new writer.

  4. The show’s plot revolves around a lot of extremely dramatic and dysfunctional relationships full of secrets, lies, and misunderstandings. A surprising number of plots hinge on someone happening to be outside a door in time to overhear a private conversation.

    I’m not as confident about this one because it doesn’t describe The Walking Dead (a show that is constantly described as a soap opera by its detractors) or The Sopranos, but it certainly describes Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey.

    Is this a bad thing? I don’t think a secret baby plot is any more ridiculous than a “zombie virus outbreak threatens humanity” plot, so no.

What do you think? What did I miss? What did I get wrong?

Are there other shows you think are secretly “basically a soap opera” or shows that are definitely not a soap opera?

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Does My Pilot Have Too Many Characters?

Five times in the past week I’ve either given someone feedback or heard someone else give feedback that a writer’s pilot script had too many characters.

This is obviously a common note, but many writers are resistant to this feedback and I understand why. These characters are our babies! And frankly, cutting entire character arcs is a lot of work.

So the question is: does your pilot really have too many characters or — as one writer suggested — is that just feedback people give when they can’t think of anything more insightful to say?

This post is divided into three parts:

  1. How many characters do “real” (produced by a major broadcast, cable or streaming network) pilots have? I analyzed 30 recent pilot scripts to find out. I’ve divided speaking parts into major characters, minor characters, and walk-ons, and I give you both an average and a range. I’ve separated half-hour pilots from one hours (I analyzed 15 of each).
  2. If it turns out your character count isn’t higher than average, then why are people giving you the note that you have too many? I’ll explore some possible explanations for the “note behind the note.”
  3. If it turns out you do have too many characters, how can you cut them down?

How Many Characters Does an Average Pilot Have?

Let’s start by getting some definitions out of the way.

I define major character as a character who appears in a large number of scenes, has an important goal, and/or has some sort of emotional arc in the episode.

Possible examples: the protagonist, the antagonist, the protagonist’s love interest, the protagonist’s sidekick, the protagonist’s mentor

I define minor character as a character who doesn’t have that many lines or only appears in one or two scenes, but who has a name (usually) and it’s clear this character will be back in future episodes.

Note that sometimes these characters will become major characters later in the series, but I base my categorization on their function in the pilot.

Possible examples: the protagonist’s mother-in-law, the protagonist’s neighbor, the protagonist’s roommate

Sometimes walk-on characters can play a substantial part in the pilot while still not being a character we need to keep track of for future episodes. I refer to these as walk-on characters with substance, meaning they aren’t a recurring character, but they have a memorable scene or they play a larger role in the episode.

Possible examples: a failed Tinder date, a mean bartender, an interviewer for a job the protagonist doesn’t get

I define walk-on character without substance as a character we’ll probably never see again after this episode. They are likely only in one scene and have at most a handful of lines. In most cases they don’t even have a real name.

Possible examples: Cute Barista, Drunk Guy, Uber Driver, Guard #2

I define half-hour pilot as a pilot between 20-40 pages, whether it’s a multi-cam network sitcom or a single-cam streaming dramedy.

I define hour-long pilot as a pilot between 50-70 pages, whether it’s a 6-act network police procedural or a streaming family drama with no act breaks at all.

All of the scripts I used are for pilot episodes of shows produced by a major broadcast network, cable network, or streaming platform in the past three years. The 30 scripts I analyzed were chosen basically at random from a file of recently produced pilots.

Half-Hour Pilots

The average length of these scripts was 33 pages.

Major Characters
Average: 3
Range: 1-6

Minor Characters
Average: 5
Range: 1-10

Walk-on Characters with Substance
Average: 3
Range: 0-9

Walk-on Characters without Substance
Average: 4
Range: 1-11

Total Speaking Parts
Average: 15 (of which only 3 are major characters)
Range: 9-25 (of which only 1-6 are major characters)

One Hour Pilots

The average length of these scripts was 60 pages.

Major Characters
Average: 5
Range: 3-10

Minor Characters
Average: 12
Range: 5-17

Walk-on Characters with Substance
Average: 4
Range: 1-13

Walk-on Characters without Substance
Average: 9
Range: 1-17

Total Speaking Parts
Average: 30 (of which only 5 are major characters)
Range: 24-40 (of which only 3-10 are major characters)

Summary

It’s interesting that the average number of characters in a one hour pilot is literally double the number in a half-hour. I actually wouldn’t have expected that.

The average number of speaking parts, particularly for one hours, is much higher than I expected. I’m guessing a lot of writers who have gotten the feedback that their pilot has “too many characters” actually have fewer speaking parts than that! If that’s you, read on…

Why Do People Think My Pilot Has Too Many Characters?

There are two possibilities: (a) your pilot does have too many characters, or (b) your pilot doesn’t have too many characters but it feels like it does.

The first possibility is easy to diagnose. Just look at the numbers above and compare to your script. If your number of speaking parts is at the high end of the range above (or even beyond the range), then you probably really do have too many characters.

The second possibility is a little tougher. If your script doesn’t actually have too many characters but people keep telling you it does, there are a few explanations that are pretty common. Read through them below and see if one or more resonates with you (or echoes feedback you’ve gotten from readers).

Too Many of Your Characters Are “Important”

Maybe the total speaking parts in your half-hour pilot is within a normal range (let’s say you have 14), but if you’d consider eight of them to be major characters, you’re probably asking too much of them. It’s hard for a reader to identify with any one character if they’re all spread so thin, let alone keep them straight. Your job will be to downgrade some of them to minor status or cut them entirely.

One way to do this is to ask yourself: How many of your characters have at least one scene by themselves or with only one other character?

Monica Beletsky had another great Twitter thread this week, this time pointing out the importance of 1- and 2-person scenes in pilots. Intimate scenes like this are a signal to the reader that this is a character we should care about, and they give us an opportunity to connect more with that character’s thoughts and feelings. You probably can’t manage scenes like that for more than a handful of characters in 30-60 pages without losing story momentum, so choose wisely.

Your Characters Aren’t Distinct Enough

This is a common one and there are several underlying issues that could cause it:

  1. Their names are too similar.

    This might sound dumb to you but it’s a real problem. If you have one character named Max and another named Matt, readers will probably struggle to keep them straight.

    It’s not just about names that start with the same letter. It can also be that too many of your characters have the same kind of name. If all of your characters have common “middle-class white American who was born in the 1990s” names, readers may still get them confused.

    If Max and Matt are the only two characters in your pilot, we might be ok because we’ll get to know each of them really well, but if there are six main characters and 5 minor characters and another five walk-ons? We’re going to forget who’s who.

    The good news? This is probably the easiest fix on this list. In Final Draft, just go to Edit > Replace Character and swap some names. (If you switch a short name to a longer name, watch out for a possible increase to your page count.)

  2. Their voices are too similar.

    I’m not suggesting you give each character a different accent or a weird speech pattern (though that’s one approach). I’m suggesting you get clear on who each character is, and make sure that information is on the page.

    And I’m not talking about writing lengthy character bios. It’s much simpler than that.

    Immediately after reading your pilot, a reader should be able to pass the following pop quiz: for any major character in your script (and most minor characters), the reader should be able to name — off the top of her head — at least one adjective that describes that character’s personality.

    Can your readers do that? Or do they say: “She’s… a lawyer?”

    Or worse: “Which one was that again?”

    You don’t need to worry about a lot of nuance at this stage, except maybe for the protagonist. This is only the first episode! You have to cover a lot of ground in very few pages. There will be time for nuance later.

    At this stage, you just need to communicate one adjective about each minor character (e.g. status-conscious, hyper-analytical, grumpy, easily scared), and for major characters, you might aim for two adjectives (e.g. dumb but kind, generous but passive-aggressive, anxious but intelligent, irritable but brave).

    This might sound like oversimplifying but if you read just about any successful, critically-acclaimed pilot, it really is this simple. Think about Tahani on The Good Place. Think about Jesse on Breaking Bad. Think about Josh on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Think about Princess Carolyn on BoJack Horseman. These characters gained nuance later in the series, but in the pilot? You could probably sum them up in one or two clearly-indicated adjectives.

    At the very least, if the feedback you’re getting on your script is that people can’t tell your characters apart, this can be a first step on the path to fixing that.

    Make a list of adjectives like the ones above and try them out on your characters. How might it strengthen your characters if you assigned one or two of these adjectives to each and rewrote their scenes accordingly? (Note: beware of playing into stereotypes or cliché tropes.)

  3. Their purposes are too similar.

    For this one, you need to understand the point of your story. What is the theme your series is going to explore?

    Each major and minor character should be serving a different purpose in your series by exploring a different angle of your theme. It’s like each character is making an argument for the audience, and over the course of the series the culmination of all of those arguments will present a unifying idea to the viewer.

    If you have two characters that are presenting the same argument, that’s going to feel redundant.

    (Keep in mind that when I say “present an argument,” I don’t mean that the character actually speaks this argument in dialogue, though sometimes that might happen. More often it’s that her worldview, choices, and experiences make the argument for her. To understand what I mean, think about the ensemble on a show like The Wire or The Good Place.)

    As an example, let’s say you’re writing a legal procedural that explores the theme: “Is it more important to follow the letter of the law or the spirit of it?”

    Your protagonist is a by-the-books prosecuting attorney who pulled herself through law school by her own bootstraps and as a result believes in the beauty of the letter of the law, however flawed it may be.

    Her boyfriend is the anxiety-prone defense attorney she often goes up against, who also believes in the beauty of the letter of the law because he worked hard to put himself through law school and thus has a romanticized idea of the legal profession.

    These characters have different jobs and personalities, but their function in the series is the same. They’re both making the same argument in the series’ conversation about theme.

  4. Their roles in the story are too similar.

    Let’s say you have two antagonists. It’s not uncommon for a story to have two or more antagonists but they should be distinct from each other and they shouldn’t have the same level of menace. One can be the evil overlord who lurks in the shadows, but they can’t both be that. The other should be the blustery bully or the passive-aggressive meddler. They should play different antagonistic roles in the story.

    Another example is if you have two characters who are the “bad boy with a heart of gold” or two characters who are the “goofy comic relief.” LOST didn’t need two Sawyers. Seinfeld didn’t need two Kramers.

Your Characters Aren’t Memorable Enough

Maybe your characters are all different, and you don’t have too many of them, but when you quiz readers on which character they liked best, they struggle to remember any of them specifically.

Or, more likely, one or two characters stick out memorably but the others melt into a pile of mush.

There are a few ways to fix this problem:

  1. Give your characters goals.

    Even if it’s a minor character, they probably have something they care about in life, or at least that they care about for the next 30 minutes of this episode, or the next 30 seconds of their scene.

    Maybe they want to escape. Maybe they want to avenge a loved one’s death. Maybe they want someone to notice their haircut. Maybe they want to get high. Maybe they want to be left alone. Maybe they want the waiter to refill their glass of water.

    It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic and you don’t need to spend more than a line or two on it, but if you give a character something to want, that will make them more memorable.

  2. Give your characters a great intro.

    Maybe they enter the scene covered in blood. Maybe their first line is a non-sequitur. Maybe they’re only wearing a towel. Or maybe you just give them a really insightful and hilarious introduction in the scene description.

    If you just describe them as “JOHN, 32” and their first line is “Hi, how are you?” we are not off to a memorable start.

How Do I Reduce the Number of Characters in My Pilot?

Okay, so you’ve decided that you really do have too many characters. It may seem like they’re all crucial, but that’s pretty unlikely! Other pilots have clearly gotten by with fewer characters and you probably can too.

Ask yourself what narrative purpose each major and minor character serves in your story:

  1. What is the primary adjective or adjectives a reader would use to describe this character after reading the pilot (based on the actual text of the script)? Would they describe any other characters similarly?
  2. What does this character do that’s necessary for the plot to move forward? Could someone else do it? Does it absolutely have to be done?
  3. What thematic argument does this character make? Does your story need this argument? Is another character making the same argument?
  4. What role does the character serve in the story? (e.g. goofy comic relief, unstoppable antagonist, etc.) Does your story need someone to fill that role? Is anyone else already filling it?

This will illuminate a lot. After you’re done answering those questions for all major and minor characters (but not walk-ons), you will probably have ideas for who to cut and who to combine.

Another thing to consider: if there are any characters you introduce in the pilot who won’t be important until a later episode, consider cutting them unless they serve another important purpose. The harsh truth is there will probably never be a second episode. These scripts are usually just writing samples. Even if we do sell our pilot script, it’s unlikely it will ever make it to air, let alone get a full season.

But if by some miracle all of that does happen, we can bring those deleted characters to the writers’ room and add them back in.

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The Art of Writing Great Fight Scenes

I asked my friend Rick Stemm, a playwright and game designer who also happens to be a kickass fight choreographer, to write a guest post on how to construct awesome fight scenes on the page. Rick’s guest post below is full of concepts and tactics I’m excited to use in my next action sequence.

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Crafting fight scenes, whether on the page or in the moment with actors, is one of my single favorite things to do. A well-crafted action scene can not only be that exciting setpiece that makes your show worth talking about, it can reveal truths about your characters and convey volumes of information in a satisfying way. Writing a good literal gut punch should cause a good figurative gut punch in your audience.

Like anything, this takes craft and practice. I am both a produced writer and certified Kungfu instructor and fight choreographer. That combo gives me some experience and perspective I hope you find helpful. The tips here are for writers, but I am also considering what I want to see as a choreographer to make my life fun and easy when I look at the script I need to bring to life.

Full disclosure – most of my writing of the last few years has been for theater and video games, so don’t worry too hard about this conflicting with any screenwriting rules. It’s not meant to be prescriptivist anyway, just some things to think about.

What Does Your Fight Need to Accomplish?

This is the first question you should ask of yourself when writing an action scene (I am going to say “fight” but it applies to chases and whatnot as well). And this question is really two questions:

  • What does your fight need to accomplish for your plot?
  • What does your fight need to accomplish for your characters?

The best fight scenes follow that old Kurt Vonnegut gem that every scene needs to move the plot along, reveal information about the characters, or both.

If you’ve outlined your story and are ready to write a fight, hopefully the plot needs should already be obvious. It can be active — Neo and Trinity fight their way through an army of security to rescue Morpheus. It can be reactive — just as the Terminator finds John Connor, the T-1000 shows up and they must escape. It can be purposeful — The Bride can’t get to Bill until she kills the other Deadly Vipers. It can be accidental — Simon Pegg & co. brawl with some teens in a pub bathroom and stumble into the terrible secret of the world’s end. Regardless, it moves the plot along.

But it can also reveal character. Likewise this can be done to more deliberately introduce a character — Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock (which hey I love the books but this movie is fun)) notices details and visualizes taking advantage of them before actually fighting. Or it can be a sudden reversal or growth at a key moment — Boromir fights off corruption and sacrifices himself to save the hobbits.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

Extra credit — there are questions I ask myself as a fight director that scripts don’t always answer, so I do in choreography. So bonus points if your script establishes the fighting style and skill of any characters involved in a fight. Are they badasses or pushovers? What weapons do they use — or does it matter? I don’t care what specific style of Kungfu a character knows (though I may borrow moves from a particular style when crafting that character’s moves), but it helps me to know how they mentally and physically approach a fight based on their background, as established in the story.

Here’s an example of a fight that pulls together all these things, from Pirates of the Caribbean:

Jack is in the blacksmith shop to break his manacles, Will is there to cover for his drunken boss. Plot established. We also see Jack’s resourcefulness and humor, and Will’s attention to detail and honor. All before the fight even properly begins. We also see their styles when the fight actually happens – Will’s intensely practiced swordsmanship, and Jack’s trickery.

Later:

What is the Tone?

Tone is a hard enough thing to master in your story, but it applies to fight scenes as well. It’s important to understand both the tone of the movie as a whole, and the tone of your fight scene. They don’t always match!

Kung Fu Hustle is a silly movie. A crazy good movie, but a very silly movie. All of its fight scenes are silly, even the ones invested with emotion. It’s consistent throughout. The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly is an epic adventure. Everything is on a grand scale and peppered with humor and twists. But its final showdown is anything but. Personal, patient, deadly serious, this contrast is deliberate and works to its advantage.

The tone applies to how you write a fight scene as well. Your descriptions and word choices are going to inform the action and choreography, even if they don’t describe the actual moves of the fight. Consider this example from possibly the greatest swordfight in all of cinema, in The Princess Bride:

The Princess Bride (1987)

Before it was released and became the greatest swordfight in modern movies, the script goes and calls it that in the description. Holy shit. And later:

It tells us nothing about the specific moves but everything about what is at stake, what we are supposed to see and feel. Sure, William Goldman might have a little more creative license, but even if you’re worried you don’t have that same kind of leeway, at least look to this for inspiration. (It is worth noting that it’s generally not recommended to have large blocks of text like this when describing stage directions, which includes fight scenes. Goldman has earned the right to get away with these things!)

Create an Arc

This should maybe have the sub-heading “Ok So How Much Detail Do I Actually Write In” because I’ll cover that too.

Movies have arcs. Scenes have arcs. Characters have arcs. Fights have arcs. There may be multiple beats to it, changes of dynamics of who is in control, attempting different tactics, learning, evolving. You don’t need to write down every move they use, but you need to make this flow clear.

Jackie Chan does this better than anyone. Hong Kong scripts are hard to come by, and even with an actual script it’d be hard to pull rules from it because Jackie often acts, directs, and choreographs, so who knows how much or little detail he wants. But even without the specific writing, I can tell you the arc of pretty much every Jackie Chan fight scene:

  1. Jackie is caught off guard, and not able to fight on ideal terms. He starts as the underdog and is just fighting to survive. We empathize with him.
  2. Jackie uses the environment in some creative way to get the upper hand. He begins to win and we’re rooting for him.
  3. Jackie gets beat on. It’s not enough, the enemies are too many or strong. He’s hurt, we see him bleed. We fear for him.
  4. Jackie remembers something he learned earlier in the movie and finds the strength or cleverness to eke out a victory. We feel he earns it.

I didn’t mention a single prop or Kungfu move here while breaking down a Jackie Chan fight. Even though those are used brilliantly, you don’t need to come up with them to have a brilliant fight. Humanize it. Give us the beats that make the fight a story itself.

Though if you have specific ideas for really great visual gags, or specific plot or character-critical moments that lead to these reversals, go ahead and write those in! A trick I use in a lot of my scripts is to put directions like “they fight until…” The ‘they fight’ is the job of the choreographer, with the ‘until’ followed by a great visual gag, a plot point that arrives to turn the tide of battle, a character defining moment that needs to happen — jobs for a writer.

A great example of just enough direction, that also has excellent tone, and is highly plot-and-character motivated comes from arguably the single most important piece of pop culture in modern history — Star Wars. Here is the final fight between Luke and Vader in Return of the Jedi:

We understand the stakes – Luke and the Emperor battling over his very soul, light or dark, which we have come to believe is the key to the whole war between Rebellion and Empire. We are given the key moments of how the fight starts. But the fight itself doesn’t require a lot of detail:

The description is mostly Luke’s emotional state — starting from hatred, using it to win, realizing his hatred, pulling back.

Apart from the emotion, the detail focus on plot needs — Luke winning the fight, the fight moving toward the elevator shaft — which comes into play later —  and the final, key moment. Why does it ignore all the sword-swinging and only specifically mention the cutting off the hand part?

Because that bit is the key to stopping the fight, connecting Luke and Vader, giving motivation to his final decision. That moment needs to be written because that moment drives the plot and character progression.

The cool part about all of this is you don’t need to be a martial artist to write great fight scenes — you just need to take your non-martial art skills of plot and character, tone and progression, and apply them to fight scenes as well. Us Kungfu guys will do the rest.

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Rick Stemm is a playwright and game designer based in San Antonio, TX. Check out his project Heroes Must Die which combines video games and live theater.

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Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It: Complicating Your Plot

About a year and a half ago, I started writing a blog post called “Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It.” In that post, I looked at three popular and acclaimed movies that I chose basically at random from IMDB and examined how in each movie the protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the story is actually achieved fairly early in the film, at which point a complication sends the protagonist on a new mission which they pursue for the rest of the movie.

This is interesting because often when we’re plotting a story, we pick a goal for the hero and then assume they’ll spend three acts pursuing that goal and that they’ll achieve it (or in some cases emphatically fail to achieve it) at the denouement. But that actually isn’t how most successful stories work.

I never finished writing that post.

Flash forward to this week. I’m working on a new feature and I’m head over heels in heart-eyes-emoji love with it but I have this nagging feeling that something is off about the structure. It feels a little… thin. Like, it’s a cool idea, it has a meaningful theme, I love the characters, and I found a powerful resolution to the plot, but there’s some part of me that keeps thinking… is that really it?

That’s the whole movie?

And then this morning, Monica Beletsky (a writer/producer of many beloved TV shows such as Fargo and The Leftovers, and someone you should follow on Twitter because she posts awesome tweet threads like this) posted this tweet thread:

And oh man, it sucks how right she is, because it means that the kick ass Act 3 climax I just wrote? Is probably actually my midpoint. Or even the end of Act 1! Crap.

What’s funny is this is probably the most common feedback I give people when I read their scripts — this awesome ending you just wrote? I hate to tell you this, but it’s your midpoint. It’s your end of Act 1. Sometimes it’s even your inciting incident! (Sorry.)

Let’s think about Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which is a movie I use a lot as an example because it’s so satisfying and well-structured and it was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.

(Some spoilers will follow if you somehow still haven’t seen that movie. I will also talk about Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) with some spoilers for the first half of the film. I later reference Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Annihilation (2018) but don’t reveal any big spoilers for either.)

In Guardians, Peter Quill’s initial goal is to sell the stolen Orb (aka the Infinity Stone) for money. He already has this goal when the story starts (after the quick childhood flashback) and he pursues it relentlessly through the first half of the movie.

But that is not the goal he achieves at the end of the movie.

He actually achieves this initial goal (with the help of his new friends) at the midpoint, but it turns out this was the wrong goal for him to pursue because the Infinity Stone is incredibly destructive (he and his friends learn this the hard way when it blows up The Collector’s lab). They learn that Ronan plans to use the Orb to destroy the planet Xandar, so now their goal is to get the Orb back from Ronan and save Xandar.

This becomes their true goal and the one they pursue for the rest of the film.

Imagine if the entire movie had just been about Peter trying to sell the Orb. That’s an interesting enough problem for the first half of the movie, but having that goal turn out to be the wrong goal is a huge complication that makes the story more interesting and creates an opportunity for each of the main characters to grow as they learn from their mistakes.

Alternately, imagine if Peter’s goal the entire movie had been to stop Ronan from blowing up Xandar. A worthy goal and one that could probably string together enough action set pieces to fill two hours, but it would be very one-note. And where’s the growth then for Peter? In this version, he would have already been pursuing a noble goal from page 1.

This isn’t only true for commercial blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy. Another movie I analyzed that follows this pattern is Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963). The protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the movie is to assemble enough money to buy majority control of his company to save it from ruin. This could be a whole movie in itself (maybe not a terribly interesting one), but then his son is kidnapped and he must use the money he’s accumulated as ransom instead of using it to buy stock. New goal: get his son back.

But the real twist comes when he finds out that the kidnappers took the wrong boy — it’s not his son they have, it’s his chauffeur’s. So now he has to decide whether to use the money he needs for his company to pay the ransom for a son that isn’t even his. The protagonist’s goal was originally control of his company, but now it’s about something much more primal and forces him to confront and reveal the person he really is.

This is definitely more interesting than 140 minutes of a guy trying to raise funds to take control of his shoe company!

That said, I’m not sure that every movie follows this pattern, even though all the thrillers Monica Beletsky analyzed did. For example, I recently watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) in theaters, which I (in perhaps slight exaggeration) called last year’s “best movie of the year.” I’d have to rewatch it to be sure, but I think the goal in that movie is the same from the inciting incident (when they get sucked into the game) as it is at the climax, though there is a major complication introduced at the midpoint which shifts their approach.

Another counter example is Annihilation (2018), which I also just watched in theaters. The goal in that movie is introduced in Act 1 (enter the Shimmer and make it to the lighthouse) and though there are several complications along the way that change our understanding of the problem, that goal remains the same for the entire movie through Act 3.

I’ll have to think more about this to decide if it’s true, but my hypothesis is that movies like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Annihilation are actually a different kind of story with their own separate structure.

Something those two movies have in common is that they both have an ultra-clear goal from pretty much the start of Act 2 (if not a bit earlier) with a literal map to get there. Like, an actual, literal map! In both cases, if the story is working well, we’re so oriented to the journey that we understand at any given moment exactly where we are on our path to the final goal.

Annihilation goes so far as to have actual title cards delineating each story beat. We get an “Area X” title card at the inciting incident, a title card that says “The Shimmer” at the start of Act 2, and a title card labeled “The Lighthouse” at the start of Act 3.

In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the characters continually refer back to the map of the game world so that we always understand how far we’ve come and how much of the journey is left.

So maybe these movies have a different structure because they’re almost their own separate type of story.

So, like most writing tips, this is less of a Rule and more of a Tool. If your story feels a little thin, like it would be a better episode of a TV show than a full movie people pay $16 to watch in a theater, maybe the answer is taking your Act 3 climax and making it your midpoint, or even the end of Act 1.

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How to Avoid Plot Twist Fatigue

Plot twists in a movie are great. There are few greater joys in a film than that moment when you are truly, satisfyingly surprised by a twist you never saw coming, but in retrospect realize was inevitable.

But sometimes… there’s too much of a good thing.

We’ve all seen a movie like this. There are so many plot twists and reversals that after awhile, you’re not so much surprised as you are confused, and not so much on-the-edge-of-your-seat as you are put at a distance. The spy wasn’t just a spy, she was a double agent! Actually, she was a triple agent! Actually, she’s been dead the whole time! Actually, the whole movie was a dream! It’s not fun, it’s annoying.

I don’t ever like to name and shame movies on this blog, but I will say that I saw a movie in theaters recently that had so many never-saw-’em-coming twists and turns that by the end of the film, there was nothing left in the story to believe in or care about. Nothing could be trusted, nothing was real. Every aspect of that story I’d invested in had been a lie, from the big, important themes down to the smallest, stupidest facts. It made me feel cheated and like I’d wasted my time.

Here are two ways to avoid that:

  1. Keep your big reversals to the ends of acts. End of Act 1, midpoint (end of Act 2a), end of Act 2, and probably one more at the end of the movie, depending on what kind of movie it is. That’s it. If you have giant twists happening in every scene, the audience will get confused and exhausted. (If you’re writing for TV, then it’s even more straightforward because it is probably unmistakable where your acts end.)

    If you must do the thing where there’s a twist at the end of the movie and then there’s a second twist the audience didn’t see coming because they were still reeling from the first, I would not deprive you of that. Those can be fun. BUT YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE EXTRA TWIST. Don’t then have a third twist and a fourth, unless you’re writing a parody because that might actually be really funny.

    This is not one of those things where one twist is great so fourteen must be amazing. More is not better. Better is better.

    Also, when I say a reversal at the end of each act, I don’t mean that each of those reversals is an M. Night Shyamalan style shocker. They can’t all have been dead the whole time. When I say a reversal or a twist, I just mean something that changes the audience’s understanding of the situation and spins the story in a new direction.

    I think sometimes writers are afraid to put reversals at the end of an act because that’s where the audience expects it. But it’s actually satisfying when a story delivers what you expect! The key is to deliver it in a way that’s unexpected. So, yes, do put a big twist at the end of the act (or a small reversal if it’s a quiet, contemplative story), just don’t make it the first, most obvious idea that popped in your head.

  2. Have a few things in your script that you keep sacred and do not let any reversals undo those things. A classic example of this would be a primary relationship if your story has one (and it almost certainly does). It could be your protagonist’s love for her daughter, or it could be a romantic relationship you want to hold sacred in your story. You may want to make that bond untouchable by plot twists so the audience has something to hold onto throughout all the twists and turns of the story.

    Or, if you do want your primary relationship to be undone by a twist because that’s what your whole movie is about (you lovable cynic), then have something else be your Untouchable Truth — maybe it’s your protagonist’s loyalty to his country. Maybe it’s your mentor’s inherent goodness. Maybe it’s the way your magic system works. Whatever it is, have a few important things in your film that are core to what the movie is about and make sure those things are never upended in a twist.

    In fact, if anything, any twists should cement those things. Underline, not strikethrough.

What else am I missing? What makes for an especially good or bad twist? How much is too much?

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