John August

QandA

Never Gonna Not Dance Again could have been bigger

Words on the page

This morning, Apple Music surfaced a song I hadn’t thought about in years: Pink’s “Never Gonna Not Dance Again,” written by Pink (Alecia Moore), Shellback and Max Martin. The song was released in 2022 and reached No. 99 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

I like the song! I think the song could have been a bigger hit. It has a helluva hook:

never gonna not dance musical notation, version 1

The stop-start phrasing on the descent gives it a surprising staggered rhythm, with little nooks and handholds. Then it jumps back up for the landing, with “dance” taking the stress. That’s good prosody.

When the hook repeats for the third time, we simplify down to sixteenth notes. The different texture keeps it feeling fresh.

never gonna not dance musical notation, version 2

(Both snippets from the official sheet music.)

Lyrically, the double negative takes a beat to parse. Does “never gonna not” mean she is or isn’t gonna dance? It’s a tiny puzzle for your brain to unscramble. The final “again” is a nice surprise that makes you re-parse the phrase.

Altogether, I think it’s a terrific hook. I just wonder if it could be better supported by the song around it.

“I’m never gonna not dance again” suggests that at one point the singer stopped dancing — and she now realizes that was a mistake. With this lyric, she’s making a promise to keep dancing.

This idea feels like the payoff to a setup that the song never delivers. Instead, the opening verse describes a hypothetical bad situation:

If someone told me that the world would end tonight
You could take all that I got, for once I wouldn’t start a fight
You could have my liquor, take my dinner, take my fun
My birthday cake, my soul, my dog, take everything I love

There’s nothing wrong with this verse. It’s a good setup for the idea of “despite these bad things, I’m choosing joy.” That’s an attitude, a swagger, completely in keeping with Pink’s persona.

But the hook is specifically “I’m never gonna not dance again.” To get there, one can imagine lyrics about the before-times, when she was living in her head, worrying and holding back. Maybe insecurity had stopped her. The hook is her vow to stop doing that, and instead return to her earlier enthusiasm for dancing and having fun.

Once the hook-chorus has done its job, we can stay in the present. The existing verses serve us well, including:

I want my life to be a Whitney Houston song (I wanna dance)
I got all good luck and zero fucks, don’t care if I belong

Here the song is specifically referencing Whitney Houston’s 1987 “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” which feels instructive. That song’s verse does what I’m suggesting:

I’ve been in love and lost my senses
Spinning through the town
Sooner or later, the fever ends
And I wind up feeling down

The singer recognizes a pattern: love burns burns hot, fades, and leaves her feeling lonely. But she knows what she needs:

I need a man who’ll take the chance
On a love that burns hot enough to last
So when the night falls
My lonely heart calls

It’s a setup that lands perfectly on the hook: “I wanna dance with somebody.”

I don’t mean to pretend songwriting is the only reason songs perform well on the charts. But I suspect that if “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” embraced that problem/solution structure, it could have been a bigger hit, or at least found a larger place in the pop songbook.

Of course, writers should write what they want! I don’t know anything about the specific process of crafting this song. It’s entirely possible that the verses came first and the hook arrived later. Pink and her collaborators may have delivered exactly the song they intended.

But as someone who’s written a few songs (and thousands of scenes), had I come upon this hook, I would have gladly rebuilt the scaffolding to support it. It’s just such a great central idea.

The finished song works. I just keep imagining the version that might have worked even better.

Writing for microdramas, aka verticals

Film Industry, Follow Up, Los Angeles, Television

Over the last six months, we’ve discussed microdramas (aka verticals) several times on Scriptnotes. For readers who don’t know, microdramas are a format originating in Asia in which a filmed narrative is broken into very short episodes intended to be watched on your phone. They’re often called verticals because they’re shot to be watched on a phone held vertically.

Typically, the first few episodes are free, and then each subsequent episode requires an in-app purchase. The overwhelming majority of microdramas are romances, often feeling like a heightened soap opera.

They’ve recently hit American shores, with U.S. productions shooting in Los Angeles, largely using non-union crews. They have provided work for underemployed actors and crew members — particularly recent film school graduates — and have some experienced producers kicking the tires.

Here’s an example from the ReelShort series The Hidden Billionaire in First Class.

Note that the WGA contract does cover this type of work. Guild writers should not be working on these productions unless they’re under a Guild contract.

We asked listeners who have written on these productions to share their experiences. Several wrote in. Here are two examples.

Risky Business writes:

I spent six months writing for Reelshorts. As a writer, it was terrible.

The first 10 chapters were pored over with repeated rewrites until all the joy was taken out of them, then pretty much they didn’t care. The rest of the story had little oversight as they didn’t expect people to watch.

The CEO repeatedly criticized the writers in company wide messages, while giving 100% of the credit for successes to the editors.

All while paying $22 an hour, with ‘no work’ orders between feedback cycles, and a constant “your contract can be cancelled at any time” hanging over your head, and expectation that you’d be immediately available the second they had feedback, which sometimes took over a week to receive. It ended up being less than minimum wage to basically hold all the blame for a possible failure poured on you from the entire company.

Creative decisions were entirely made by algorithms based on what was selling. The whole prediction model that hollywood is always trying to master contracted by the short production schedule.

I have not had the pleasure of joining any union, but the success of reelshorts definitely scares me. If the model succeeds, AI will definitely be writing the scripts, and the CEO can have his dream of never having to rely on a writer’s creativity again

Another listener wrote in with their experience:

In episode 693, Risky Business shared about his negative experience writing for verticals. I recently started as a screenwriter for one of the larger vertical drama companies as well, and I wanted to offer my perspective since I’ve had a more positive experience.

My salary is about $1540 a week–about $40/hr–with benefits. My lawyer also negotiated that my agreement be non-exclusive, so I am free to keep developing and writing non-vertical projects. Since I’m staffed, I still get paid when I’m waiting for feedback.

For sure, figuring out the soapy, melodramatic tone and structure of verticals has been a tough nut to crack. Even though there’s some room for innovation and creativity, at their core verticals are reverse-engineered around data-driven formulas. It’s kind of like doing a fill-in-the-blanks puzzle. It can be fun and even playful, but it’s a very different process from anything else I’ve done.

Because writing verticals often feels more like solving a puzzle than writing from scratch, I usually have a lot of creative energy left over to keep working on my own projects. I’m also able to write remotely outside LA, which has been a godsend for family reasons.

As a non-WGA writer, I’d love to see verticals get WGA coverage. But at this point, especially with the current state of the industry, I’m grateful for a screenwriting gig that pays the bills while leaving space for my own stuff.

To clarify, verticals already do have WGA coverage. WGA writers shouldn’t be writing on them, just as they shouldn’t be writing any film and television that’s produced without a Guild contract.

Constructing a great action sequence

Formatting, Video, Words on the page

On Scriptnotes, we often explore craft topics, looking at the specific choices writers make on the page. But there’s an obvious challenge when discussing visual storytelling in an audio medium.

That’s why for the most recent Scripnotes video, I wanted to revisit my conversation with Christina Hodson on writing action sequences. In this new format, we can see both the finished scene and the script pages behind it:

Thanks to Sam Shapson and producer Drew Marquardt for putting this together!

Writing while the World is on Fire

Episode - 676

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Psych 101, Scriptnotes

How do you keep doing creative work when the world is falling apart around you? To sift through the despair and doubt, John welcomes back legendary Scriptnotes guest, writer-turned-psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo. They discuss the many feelings that catastrophic events can bring up in artists, the personal narratives that often inform those feelings, and how to keep moving forward when you feel like the band on the Titanic.

We also follow up on AI, and answer listener questions on competing with brain trusts and how to support a friend embroiled in controversy.

In our bonus segment for premium members, Dennis guides us through the best examples and worst mistakes of portraying therapists on screen.

Links:

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

UPDATE 2-19-25: The transcript for this episode can be found here.