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How to explain quantum mechanics

One of the more common challenges faced by a screenwriter is how to explain a difficult concept that’s important to your plot. For instance, in Jurassic Park, we need to understand how the dinosaurs came to be living on that island, so that when they start running amok, we’ll feel like we’re grounded in some sense of reality.

I haven’t read Michael Crichton’s novel for Jurassic Park, but if it’s anything like his others, I suspect he spent five or more pages detailing the cloning process in exhaustive detail. You can get away with that in a book. If a reader becomes bored, she can skim ahead a few paragraphs until the story begins again. But the movie viewer is hostage,¹ forced to endure whatever information is presented, whether interesting or not.

Since the boring bits of a movie are generally the first things to get trimmed out in an edit, these crucial explanatory moments are likely to get dropped unless they’re written extremely carefully, in the (often misguided) theory that no information is better than boring information. So let’s look at some Best Practices when explaining something in a script.

Keep it short. No, even shorter than that.

As the writer, you may know exactly how the Thessalactan Grid enables transdimensional travel, and why there’s a 34-second delay before the Quantifier engages. I’m sure it’s fascinating and well-reasoned. But the audience doesn’t care. Or, more precisely, the audience doesn’t need to care, because all that really matters to them is how the hero is going to get off the space station before it blows up.

• HERO
• How does it work?
• SCIENTIST WOMAN
• It creates a well in time-space that bends…
• HERO
• WHICH BUTTON DO I PUSH?!

Give them a guide…

While the cliché of a wise old man (think Obi-Wan or Gandalf) is rightly avoided,² there are smart ways to use a supporting character as explainer-of-things.

For starters, make sure the character has a function beyond exposition. The Day After Tomorrow was frustrating on many levels, but I liked that Dennis Quaid was both hero and explainer. (You could say the same about Jeff Goldblum in just about every movie.) A villain is another classic choice: since he knows what he’s trying to do, he’ll likely have a concise way of explaining it. Just avoid mustache-twirling, and “before I kill you, let me just explain…”

When possible, let the hero pursue the Answer Man, rather than vice-versa. Nothing screams exposition more than a character showing up simply to explain something. If getting an answer is an explicit goal for your hero, we at least have a sense of forward progress.

…or just let the characters figure it out for themselves

No one teaches Spider-Man how to use his powers. A large chunk of the first movie is spent watching Peter Parker explore his strength and web-shooting prowess. Similarly — but less successfully — the hero of Jumper finds he’s able to teleport, and receives no training or guidance until quite late in the movie.³

If characters need to learn something for themselves, try to build situations that are both organic and progressive: you want to build upon simple, relatable discoveries. A great recent example is the videogame Portal (from the Orange Box), in which the player has to learn how to control a physics-defying device. While there’s a disembodied voice who seems to be offering guidance, she’s actually just a comedic menace. The real learning comes from carefully-designed levels, each with a specific (but unstated) teaching objective.⁴

In screenplay terms, this means letting the characters experiment. The first Narnia movie would have played very differently if the children had landed in the snowy woods without any sense of how to get back; the quest to return home would have felt obligatory. By letting them cross back and forth, the movie silently sets up its rule system, and lets the story chart a different path.

Take away the questions

Often, the best way to answer questions is to remove them from consideration. For instance, the make-believe science of precognition in Minority Report raised a huge number of causality issues, which you could easily spend the whole movie trying to address.

But it was meant to be a thriller, not a head-scratcher, so I added a scene in which a skeptic (Witwer) catches a glass ball just as it rolls off a table.

• KNOTT
• Why did you catch that?
• WITWER
• Because it was going to fall.
• FLETCHER
• You’re certain?
• WITWER
• Yes.
• JAD
• But it didn’t fall. You caught it.
• Witwer smiles a little, starting to catch on.
• JAD (CONT’D)
• The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.
• WITWER
• It’s the same with the murders.
• FLETCHER
• The precogs are showing us what’s going to happen unless we stop it.

Like time travel, foreknowledge of the future is always going to involve paradoxes and gotchas. But by showing it as something visual and physical, we’ve preempted endless questions about the physics and ethics of their legal system. While we’ll learn more about how it works (by meeting the precogs), the ontological overhead has been reduced to a ball rolling across a table.

It’s like…

Such similes and metaphors can be a screenwriter’s best friends. How do you explain a margin call? “It’s like you’ve been buying stock with a credit card, and suddenly you have to pay the bill.” How are you going to catch the subatomic weapon? “Picture a net, but made of magnetic waves.” Does a clone have a soul? “Absolutely. It’s an identical twin, just born later.” Or, “No. It’s like a bad photocopy.”

Roll tape

Speaking of clones, in David Koepp’s script for Jurassic Park, he packaged all the how-we-did-it information in an animated film strip. In Dodgeball, the rules of the game are established in a black-and-white educational film about the history of the sport. And in Lost, the Dharma Initiative’s training films provide both crucial information (”keep entering the code”) and intriguing clues about what’s really going on.

Obviously, it’s not always possible or appropriate for your characters to stop what they’re doing to watch a film. But if it makes sense in context, it’s worth considering. Just keep it entertaining, and brief.

“Entertaining and brief” is good advice no matter which method you choose for presenting difficult information. Done artfully, the reader should never sense that he’s being told anything. It was just story. To that end, avoid scenes which could be summarized, “Hero learns…” That’s a tip-off that your character is listening rather seeking, observing rather than participating. “Discovering” is an action. So are “confronting,” “exploring,” and “testing.” Put your characters to work, and the audience will never realize they’re getting an explanation.

1. More specifically, someone watching a movie in a theater is hostage. On video, there’s nothing to stop a viewer from zipping ahead during dull explanations. ↩
2. One of the appeals of the Captain Marvel mythology is that the first thing Billy Batson’s wizardly mentor does is die. ↩
3. The lack of any instructor or context-setting becomes a real problem once the villains are introduced. Poor Samuel L. Jackson is forced to announce his motivations, but they’re so nonsensical that we’re forced to conclude he’s either (a) lying or (b) bat-shit crazy. ↩
4. The game is worth it just for the developer commentary. And the cake. ↩

Failed his last saving throw

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died this morning at age 69.

I haven’t played the game in 15 years, but it remains the single biggest influence in my career as a screenwriter. And I’m not alone: a quick poll of my writer friends revealed a huge number of teenage rangers and magic-users. That’s no coincidence. Building an adventure in D&D requires the same imagination as constructing a screenplay. Running a campaign is like running a TV show, with weekly sessions at the ping-pong table in the basement.

D&D isn’t where we learned to write, but where we learned to think epic. A game could last all night. Or all year. By the time my friends and I stopped playing, our characters had three generations of mythology behind them, with family trees that would bewilder Faulkner.

The game is also where future accountants learned to obsess over convoluted rules. Particularly in the early editions, there were more charts and figures than you’d think a seventh-grader could handle. But we ate it up. In a pre-internet age, a few hundred pages of dense data on mistletoe-gathering and the restrictions on Limited Wish spells was like info-crack. Even when you weren’t playing D&D, you were thinking about the next character you wanted to roll. The next adventure you wanted to build.

I’m sure I’ve read Gygax’s AD&D books — notably, the original Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide — more than any other printed matter I’ve owned, probably by a factor of 10. It’s where I learned what c.f., i.e. and e.g. meant.

I’ve moved 10 times since college, but the crate of D&D books has always come with me, unopened but somehow indispensable.

So, my sincere thanks to Mr. Gygax for what he brought into the world. We live on after death by creating things that outlast us. By that metric, Gygax is nearly immortal.

Test screening questionnaires

We have the first cut on a historical drama we eventually want to try to get on History Channel or Lifetime. It’s about a group of young Quaker Girls who create an anti-Rebel/Pro-Abolutionist Newspaper in the middle of Confederate Virginia.

We want to have a test screening to determine plot comprehension, pace, etc. Where do we find an example of a test screening card or form we can “borrow?”

– Drew
Virginia

There are several companies that do paid test screenings, and I’m sure each has a template and a standardized methodology. But you’re not interested in statistics, and don’t need to compare your movie with other historical dramas of the last five years. You just want to make your movie better. So you can safely make up a sheet of your own.

Here’s what you want to include:

1. First question: How did they like it? You want to get a sense of (a) what changes the people who liked it feel are necessary, and (b) whether there are any changes that could win over the people who didn’t really like it.¹

2. A space to list the things they liked most.

3. A space to list the things they liked least.

4. A space to list any moments they felt it lagged.

5. Ask if they ever got confused — and when, and why.

6. If you have specific areas of concern (music, narration, whatever), you can either make those open answer questions, or give some sort of 1-5 grid for circling.

7. A big thank you at the end, because they are doing you a huge favor watching your in-progress project.

You want your viewer to be able to fill this all out in less than five minutes, so that means no more than two pages. Your best bet is to photocopy it on card stock, two sides.

In the Downloads section, I’ve included the form we used for our second test screening of The Nines. Feel free to use it as a template. ²

Because you’ll ask: Yes, it was strange test screening a movie in which a significant plot point concerns the test screening process. But it was a big help.

Ultimately, you may still want or need to do a more professional test screening. For instance, if you sold it to Lifetime, they might need to know how their audience responds to it, so they can tailor their advertising appropriately. But for the early stages you’re in, I’d save your money and do it yourself.

1. Often, the folks who don’t like it will never like it, but it’s worth hearing their opinion so you’ll know what to expect. ↩
2. The second question, “Given a pair of magical scissors, is there anything you’d snip out?” is the one I always wished people would ask me. ↩

Post-strike update

Last night I went out for beers with my picketing team from the Van Ness gate. I hadn’t spoken with any of them since the end of the strike, so it was nice to catch up, and see them in clothes not specifically chosen for walking in the cold.

Remarkably, it was the first conversation I’d had about the strike in over a week. After three months of talking (and blogging) about nothing other than the AMPTP, the NegComm and picketing schedules, it’s surprising how completely the strike has vanished off the radar.

With the official contract ratification results due today, it feels like a good time to take stock of where various projects have ended up in a post-strike universe.

The web series

We’re finishing editing on the web pilot I shot at the start of the month. Once it’s done, the financiers will go off and look for distribution and advertising partners. If we can find the right combination, we’ll aim to shoot a block of episodes this summer.

Shazam!

I spent the weekend barricaded at the Disney Grand Californian working on the next draft of Shazam! I’d gotten the studio and producer notes just before the strike, so this was my first chance to address them. It was great having a three-month break from the script, because it meant I could look at it with fresh eyes.

There are some web reports out of WonderCon about a possible title change to something longer and more Harry Potter-ish. Nothing’s decided yet. Obviously, one of the challenges with the property is that an audience will automatically assume that the hero’s name is Shazam, when it’s not.¹

Dreamworks project

When the strike began, I was halfway through the first draft of an unannounced project for Dreamworks, with a major star and director involved. Without being too specific, Something Happened unrelated to the strike which made it very unlikely that our movie could (or should) get made. So one of the first conversations I had after the strike was with the producer and director to figure out whether or not to proceed. After about 15 phone calls, many involving agents and executives, the decision was made to kill the project.

It was the right choice. While it’s hard to walk away from 55 pages, finishing the next 55 while almost certain that they could never be filmed would be even more dispiriting. As I write this, it’s not clear whether I’ll segue into a different project for the studio, or just write them a check for the money they’ve already paid me. Either way, I feel better getting to work on a script that is much likelier to become a movie.

Heroes: Origins

My hunch is that this spin-off series will stay in the deep-freeze for a while, maybe never to be thawed out. Tim Kring has said in interviews that the priority is getting next season’s plotline (”Villains”) ready for launch, as it should be. If Origins is resurrected at some point, I’d be happy to direct my episode.

1. Shazam is the wizard who bestows his powers; the guy in the cape is Captain Marvel. For legal reasons, the movie can’t be called Captain Marvel. ↩

Scripting a short film

I’m about to get cracking on my submission for a prestigious short screenplay competition. I wondered if you had any advice specific to writing shorts? If you were judging a shorts competition, what would you be looking for?

– Kirsty
York, UK

A short film, like a short story, can’t waste any time. You need to give us your principal characters and establish their motivations immediately. There’s very little stage-setting before you get to the inciting incident and the ensuing complications.

The hero’s fundamental problem/challenge/obstacle needs to occur by the time you get to the 1/3rd mark. So, if your short is meant to be three minutes long, the big event needs to happen on page one. If it’s a 10-minute short, it happens around page three. It’s not that you’re worried about your reader getting bored before then — if you can’t entertain us for three pages, there’s a problem — but rather that if you delay any longer, your story is going to feel lopsided: too much setup for what was accomplished.

Beyond that, I wouldn’t worry much about traditional structural expectations. Funny almost always works better than serious for a short, because there’s not enough time to create the narrative movement you expect in drama. But there are exceptions. The Red Balloon for example. And I loved Walter Salles’ chapter in Paris, je t’aime, which was simply a sad rhyme.¹

So think funny, or poignant — but only if French.

I’ve put the script for my 1998 short film God up in the Downloads section.² It’s 30 scenes in 11 pages. A lot of story happens, quickly. But many successful shorts take the opposite tack: they’re essentially just one joke, fully exploited. Todd Strauss-Schulson’s Jagg Off is that kind of short, as are most of the SNL and Will Ferrell videos you’ve seen.

For the competition you’re entering, however, I’d be careful not to submit anything that felt too much like a comedy sketch. If I were a judge, I’d be looking for a script that doesn’t seem like it could end up on Saturday Night Live. (Or the British equivalent.)

Good luck!

1. That said, it probably wouldn’t have stood out in a script competition. ↩
2. The short is a bonus feature on The Nines DVD. ↩

When a character has two names

I have a character that appears midway through the script, but is never introduced by name and the reader should not know who he is at this point. So, let’s call him something descriptive: ONE-LEGGED MAN. All the while, in other scenes, his actual name is being mentioned. Let’s say: KEVIN SUGARMAN. Towards the end of the script he introduces himself to a character and it becomes important that the reader understands that ONE-LEGGED MAN is KEVIN SUGARMAN.

From this point out what do you think would make for the smoothest read:

1. Continue calling him ONE-LEGGED MAN
2. Call him ONE-LEGGED MAN/KEVIN SUGARMAN
3. Or start calling him KEVIN SUGARMAN

– Ruckus
Atlanta, GA

This happens in scripts all the time. There’s no perfect solution, but your general goal should be to confuse the reader as little as possible for the fewest number of pages.

If One-Legged Man has dialogue as “ONE-LEGGED MAN,” keep using that name through to the end. It’s confusing to have dialogue blocks with differing names.

If One-Legged Man has no dialogue (or very little dialogue) before he becomes Kevin Sugarman, it may be worth swapping his name, particularly if he hasn’t been prominently featured in a lot of other scenes. The slash technique (One-Legged Man/Kevin Sugarman) works best in scene description, and then only as a reminder to the reader. The guy’s name shouldn’t be 25 characters long every time you use it.

Finally, there are times when the best solution is to simply tell the reader that the character’s name is Kevin Sugarman from the time he’s first introduced. From what you’ve described, it sounds like the reveal is very important to your story — it a key joke or plot point. But in many cases, it may not be worth the trouble and possible confusion.

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