Explosions are basically a waste of energy in space. On the ground, these are devastating because of the shock wave that goes along with them. But in the vacuum of space, an explosion just creates some tenuous, expanding gases that would be easily dissipated by a hull.

Better choices for weapons include radiation, lasers and old-fashioned bullets. But don’t expect fast-and-nimble dogfights, because steering a ship in space is laborious. With no atmosphere to cut against, changing directions takes time and lots of fuel.

The z-axis fighting we’ve recently come to embrace — the new Star Trek did it a lot — only makes sense in certain circumstances. Orbiting a planet, things get flat again:

The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics -– not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets’ orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we’ll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets [...] So, it would actually make sense to build space defense platforms in certain orbits, to point high-power radar-reflection surveillance satellites at certain empty reaches of space, or even to mine parts of the void. It also means that strategy is not as hopeless when we finally get to the Bugger homeworld: the enemy ships will be concentrated into certain orbits, leaving some avenues of attack guarded and some open.

In writing your space epic, do you even need to worry about any of this?

Only to the degree your viewers will.

Each movie and TV series establishes its own level of plausibility, and as long as it plays within that range, audiences are largely satisfied. Space in Apollo 13 is nothing like space in Star Wars. A viewer who complains too much about the Millennium Falcon’s propulsion system will be justifiably shunned.

A general rule for screenwriters is to stick with genre conventions unless there is a story benefit to changing them. For example, in modern space adventure movies you get artificial gravity, warp drive, and shields for free. You can roll your own if it suits your story, but that screen time is likely better used in service of your characters and plot.

(Thanks to Nima for the link.)

I’m currently on my third (Frankenweenie), and while the words on the page are the same as any other feature, the process is completely different. And frustrating, honestly, until you get used to it. Rob’s post walks newcomers through some of the biggest hurdles.

(Thanks to Barrett for the link.)

Whenever your hero is facing off against a system or mob rather than an individual, that’s potentially a zombie-class situation. Any given opponent isn’t necessarily that formidable; it’s the sheer numbers that make it so difficult for the hero.

War movies are frequently zombie-class, as are comedies about plucky outsiders. Science-fiction and horror revel in zombie-class situations, from the Borg to the Visitors to those troublesome tribbles.

If you find yourself writing a zombie-class situation, here are some helpful class features to keep in mind:

• You can’t fight the ocean. In a zombie-class situation, heroes ultimately won’t get far trying to defeat their opponents, who have the advantage of both numbers and replaceability. Rather, your hero must set an achievable goal such as escape, survival, or retrieval of a key asset.

• Ants vs. Elephants. It’s great to be big, but it’s better to be numerous. Just as heroes will often rally a crowd, opponents can do the same — popular opinion is a hard thing to fight. And look for ways to use your hero’s size (or reputation) against him.

• Zombie processes. In programming, zombies are bits of code that unintentionally keep running in the background, sucking cycles and threatening a crash. That’s a useful framework for many stories: noble intentions run amok. Just as every villain is a hero, every zombie was somebody’s baby.

• One of us. In the Romero tradition, zombies eat brains. But this can be generalized to assimilation: your hero has something the opponents need. Can your hero figure out what they’re after — what makes the hero special — before it’s too late?

A zombie-class situation is a key difference between Alien and Aliens.

In the former, Ripley and company mostly battle a single creature. Survival means killing it, so that’s pretty much the only goal.

In the sequel, the aliens are so numerous that there is no hope of defeating them. Rather, Ripley’s goal is simply escape. Once Newt is captured, Ripley must face off against the Queen, but defeating her in no way impacts the hordes of aliens left behind.

That’s how zombie-class situations often end: the hero’s victory leaves the world just as dangerous as before.

I am new to all of this and just finished up a treatment for a Christian movie. I have been doing some research now on a few specific things and trying to read as much as I can on screenwriting. I just wonder if given the climate we are all living in if this is a good genre to focus on?

– Kimberlee
Denver, CO

It’s absolutely a valid niche/scene. Every year a few capital-c Christian movies — some starring Kirk Cameron — do serious business both theatrically and on video. But there are many more Christian films made that find an audience, even if they don’t make millions. So if that segment appeals to you, go for it.

A few points of advice — which could apply to almost any specially-targeted film:

1. Pick your sweet spot. A “Christian audience” is too broad a category. Are you making a film for teenage youth groups, or moms who sing in choir? Both are valid, but there’s not a lot of overlap. Know your target viewer precisely.

2. Follow the examples. Christian films are notable both for their themes and their omissions (sex, profanity, drug use). Study the successful movies of the past few years and figure out what your audience expects from this category — and just as importantly, which elements are deal-killers.

3. Figure out the players. Specialty films have specialty distributors. In the case of Christian films, you’ll likely find companies with a track record of marketing films through religious channels. They’re the people you’re going to want to release your film. You may even find a specific director just right for your script.

4. Aspire to be the best in your category. Films targeted at specialty audiences — Christian tweens, Latina lesbians, extreme skiers — can sometimes find success simply because they exist. These audiences seek them out, even if they’re not particularly good, because they want to see their lives and values portrayed on screen. But don’t let that be an excuse for making a mediocre movie. In the long run, quality always counts.

You want this to be your first movie, not your last. Be sincere and smart. You never want it to seem like a stepping stone to “real” movies — but of course, with success, those opportunities could come.

I plead guilty, having used the “signal goes away” variation as a major element in Part Three of The Nines. (I feel both disappointment and relief to have not made the cut.)

Unlike the air duct cliché, the cell phone problem can’t be solved by a simple vow of chastity. Cell phones are real things people use every day, so ignoring them is rarely an option for a movie set present day.

Don’t write movies in which characters would call for help. That’s probably the best advice I can offer.

Yes, the emotional reason is clear: he’s a selfish asshole, and needs to learn to be less of one. But the actual supernatural mechanism is never part of the movie. There’s not a magic clock, or a nuclear wristwatch. Punxsutawney Phil isn’t secretly a wizard.

Rather, weatherman Phil Connors is stuck in a time loop because, well, he is. We buy it, and we don’t demand further explanation.¹

Most movies would make a point of singling out some physical object or act that brought about the situation. The hero would find something, break something or do something (an accidental birthday wish, pissing off a witch) as an inciting incident. It wouldn’t just happen.

But maybe it should.

You can often get rid of magic items and explicit wishes/curses, even in stories that seem to require them.

• Dorothy doesn’t do anything to summon the tornado that takes her from Kansas.

• Clark Kent doesn’t wish he could fly; he can fly because the story says he can.²

• The Connor family is marked for death not because of something they did or said, but because evil computers from the future worry about a threat. (Ditto for Neo in the Matrix.)

As the audience, we don’t demand proof. We accept the magic as part of the premise, and don’t require a prop to ground it.

To be clear: I’m not arguing to ban all magic props. Let Frodo have his ring. The Pevensie children can climb through a wardrobe into Narnia. And once in Oz, Dorothy should feel free to grab some dead woman’s shoes.

But when developing a story with a supernatural premise, fight the temptation to embody it in a thing. These MacGuffins³ get added with the aim of keeping things simple, but too often distract from the character’s real journey.

In your romantic comedy, Misfire, does your hero need to break up two ill-suited lovers, or get Cupid’s bow and arrow back? The former is funnier. The latter has more props and rules.

Always explore doing it the way Groundhog Day did: by letting magic questions go unasked and unanswered.

1. According to Wikipedia, at least one draft of Groundhog Day did include an explicit reason for the time loop — a voodoo spell cast by a coworker. Not only did the movie not need it; I’d argue that being so specific would have hurt the premise by focusing attention on her rather than him.
2. Or more broadly, the universe put baby Kal-El on a world with a certain color of sun.
3. A MacGuffin is a thing or idea that serves as a focal point to the plot, but is not what the movie is really about, and could easily be substituted with something else. TV Tropes has a long list of MacGuffins, which it considers “plot coupons.”

Pagasa may be a 75-acre speck of sand and rock, but that hasn’t stopped a swarm of countries from battling over the hundreds of specks of sand and rock that make up the Spratlys, which may be the most disputed island chain on Earth.

So, in 2002, the Philippines decided to establish a small colony of hardy civilian settlers on the island, augmenting the two dozen military workers who earn special “loneliness pay” to live on the far-off spot — and bolstering its claim that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

The result is sort of “Cast Away” meets Plymouth Rock.

It’s worth reading John Glionna’s entire article, because it’s quickly clear that Cast Away is only one of many different kinds of movies you could set on the island.

Here are some elements I found compelling:

• Isolated, together. The “volunteers” are far from home, but never alone. In fact, the island is so tiny you can’t get away from someone.

• Primitive and modern. Despite the airstrip, most of their food comes from fishing. A bad typhoon can destroy them. Yet they keep blogs.

• An international dispute over an unimportant piece of dirt. Is it really the airstrip the Philippines wants to protect, or its ego?

What is a Pagasa movie?

Is it a thriller? Most thrillers rely on something to isolate the protagonist, either literally (Panic Room) or figuratively (The Bourne Identity). Islands work well for this. In 2002, I pitched a version of Alien v. Predator set on an island in Maine during a massive storm; Pagasa could work similarly.

Is it a comedy? Pagasa is a military installation, so it’s not hard to envision a version of Stripes, cast with a bunch of funny younger actors.

Is it a romantic comedy? Given its isolation and lop-sided male-female ratio, it’s a natural and cinematic setting.

My point is that there’s a big difference between the world of a movie (the setting, the rules, the background color) and the movie itself. And that bridging that gap is what screenwriters do.

When you’re a newish-but-working writer in Hollywood, you get sent articles like this all the time. The producer or creative exec will say, “We think there’s a movie here. Come in and pitch your take.” Generally, they’ll give you some kind of direction, like, “We see it as The Piano, but, you know, funnier.”

As the screenwriter, your job is to come up with the characters, conflicts, goals, themes, reversals and set pieces that make the story worthwhile. (In TV, you call this breaking a story.) You’re not getting paid for this, even though it may take a week of your time. Rather, you’re auditioning for a job. You want them to hire you to write it.

Most of the time, you won’t get the job. But breaking story after story is amazing practice, and each pitch helps you figure out not only how plot works, but how the movie industry works.

There were 145 entries for the Superheroic Scene Challenge, and some of them were looooong. Printed out, they totaled 406 pages. Going side-by-side shrunk it to a still-ridiculous 203.

My assistant Matt and I read every one. We have a lot of honorable mentions.

Favorite hero names include Trilobyte, Mighty Mandi, The Level, Harico Ver, and The Endurist.

I enjoyed seeing the wide range of possible interpretations on villain Brickhouse. Given the name, there were a slew of German/Austrian variants, but it was nice to see the occasional Victorian spin, the blaxpoitation vixen, and the villain who could become the entire building. (Appropriately, his nemesis was Breckin Wall, a.k.a. Wreckin’ Ball.)

The challenge was to write an action scene, so I couldn’t give the gold medal to entries that were more talk than walk. But I enjoyed the non-action of this diner conversation, this con game, and this riff on nanotechnology and bio-bots.

And you can’t get more non-action than an excellent Buddhist superhero.

Finally, there were some that made the short list. Nima (he made Scrippets!) combined robots with a Buffy-esque heroine. The Divide combined robots with golems. Chip Street kept the action tight, as did Bill K.. Ryan Jackson explored the implications of Dora’s magic backpack, while DougJ went the teddy bear route.

The winner actually came quite early in the stack: #7 by Spenturion, in which hero Azure battles Brickhouse while coaching a group of pre-teens in proper quips. It’s light on action, but keeps a nice tempo. And it’s short, which is no small victory.

Congrats to Spenturion, and to all the entrants for making the Best Challenge Ever. The next one will be limited to three sentences.

Surrounded by ardent fans, it’s easy to get sucked into Comic-Con’s vortex of enthusiasm, forgetting that even with 120,000 people descending on the convention center, that’s still a very, very self-selected group.

The same thing happens at Sundance: films that get a rapturous response in Park City often underwhelm at lower altitudes. Everything plays better to a hungry crowd, particularly one that has trekked a long way just to see what you’ve got.

But that’s not a reason to avoid either festival. If you can’t play to the base, you’re unlikely to push beyond it, either. A movie like Iron Man wants its geek bona fides before pushing further towards the mainstream. Where it gets trickier is a show like Pushing Daisies. Winning a small, ardent fan base can be self-limiting, particularly if it sets you off as a niche program out of the gate.

None of my projects are directly featured this year, though Jordan Mechner will be on a panel about his Prince of Persia graphic novel — a prequel to the movie — and Tim Burton will inevitably get questions about our next two movies.

I got a lot of replies, but one name that kept coming up was Michael Mann. He consistently finds ways to send thousands of bullets flying while acknowledging the rules of physics.¹

I haven’t seen Public Enemies yet, but this clip shows the feeling he creates:

But when you’re talking about Michael Mann gunfights, you really have to discuss Heat. Here’s the showstopper:

I looked up Mann’s screenplay for Heat, to see what that looked like on the page.

Mann uses a lot of sluglines and short sentences to create the tempo of the fight. It’s chaos, and that’s reflected in the writing. He’s inconsistent with scene headers, and not especially concerned with establishing geography.

It doesn’t matter: action writing needs to create the feeling of an action sequence, not choreograph each bullet.

For another example of scripting a gunfight, I’d point you back to the Alaska pilot. You can see the gunfight here, and read the script in the Library.

1. I have nothing against impossible gunfights like in The Matrix, Equilibrium or Wanted, but I’m trying to keep to keep this one a bit more grounded.

– Brett

I really had no idea what people were getting paid for short stories, so I asked Matt to dig up some numbers based on The Variant’s 7,123-word length.

These are rough and gathered from feedback writers give to duotrope.com and various publication websites. If any short story writers have more firsthand information, please share.

Matt chose a range of literary and genre magazines — but to be honest, I’m not sure The Variant would have found a home in any of them, with or without my name value.

Literary magazines

• The New Yorker: $7,500 (estimate based on Dan Baum’s tweets)

• Kenyon Review: $356 ($.05 per word)

• New England Review: $230 ($10 per page)

• Ploughshares: $575 ($25 per page)

Genre magazines

• Asimov’s Science Fiction: $427 ($.06 per word)

• Strange Horizons: $356 ($.05 per word)

• Carve (Raymond Carver): $20-50

Given these numbers, I doubt I would have been better off trying to get The Variant into a printed magazine. It made less than $1,000 in its first week, but it will be available online — and earning money — for at least the next few years. And if a reader likes the short story, it’s much easier to send a link to a friend than a printed story.