The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.
John: You’re listening to Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, today’s episode is a flashback to when we were at the Austin Film Festival this year in 2025. We did another Three Page Challenge. This was at the church in Austin. It was a great crowd and we had just a really great time doing it. We love doing a Three Page Challenge where we can have those participants come up on stage with us and talk through what they were doing.
Craig: Yes, it was great. They did a great job. Anybody who agrees to do this is very brave. Anybody who agrees to do this live in front of a lot of people under the watchful eyes of Jesus is particularly brave. Thumbs up to these three. They were very courageous and I hope that we help them as we try.
John: As always, if you want to read along with these samples, you can pause this and we’ll have links in the show notes to the PDF. You can read those PDFs before we get into it. Before you do that, Craig, today, the day this episode drops, the Scriptnotes book is out in the world in physical form, in hardcover.
Craig: Oh my God, this is it.
John: It is. Apparently, Australia is not till January 4th, but the rest of the world gets it today. The audiobook, we had Graham Rowat on recently to talk through, narrate an audiobook. Please, if you have the book and it comes to you, post on Instagram, post on TikTok, tag Scriptnotes Podcast and we will repost you. We will hype you up. I will hype you up. If you do so, we can also send you the bonus chapter that we sent to all the pre-orders. If you haven’t gotten that yet, Drew can send that to you, because I’m just so excited that the book is finally out there in the world.
Craig: Yes. I got to say, if you waited, I get it. Now you got to actually start thinking about Christmas gifts for your stupid friends. This is a great Christmas gift for your stupid friends.
John: 100%.
Craig: You should go to a party and everyone should give each other this big orange book. It just smells like Christmas. I love it.
John: Also, if you have parents who can never figure out what to get you, just get yourself the Scriptnotes book and bill them. It’s $33.
Craig: Exactly. They’ll be thrilled that it’s under $5,000. They’ll be so happy.
John: Exactly. Absolutely. With all the tuition you’ve saved them, it makes it absolutely completely worthwhile.
Craig: Bingo.
John: Enjoy this trip back to the Austin Film Festival and our live Three Page Challenge. For our premium listeners, stick around because we will have some bonus questions from that session where we answered questions from the audience that were actually really good. We had good questions overall at Austin. Enjoy.
[music]
John: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.
John: This is a Three Page Challenge for Scriptnotes. For folks who are not aware, every once in a while, we ask our listeners if they would like to send in the first three pages of their screenplay, of their pilot, and we will talk about it on the air. It’s a very brave thing for people to do because we’re honest with our criticism. We’re not harsh, but we’re very honest.
Craig: I’m a little harsh.
John: You’re a little harsh. Drew, who’s our producer, diligently reads through all the entries and picks ones that he thinks will be good to talk about on the air. Sometimes they’re the best, but sometimes they’re the things with the most interesting stuff to talk about.
That’s really an example of what we have here today because we asked, specifically, people who were going to be coming to AFF if we could look at the first three pages of their script. A bunch of people sent through their samples, which is really nice. What’s great about doing it here at Austin is that we can then bring the person up and actually talk to them about the script they wrote.
Craig: Which forces us to be even more concerned about being harsh, and yet, I will do it.
John: We’ll try to be honest. You can find these samples, PDFs, at johnaugust.com. It’s the first blog post you’re going to see there. You can open these up, and so you can read along with us as we’re looking at these samples. Some of what we’re talking about is literally how it’s laid out on the page, so some stuff is– We’re going to be talking story and character and everything else, but it’s also what it looks like, what it feels like. Craig, talk to me about the Three Page Challenge, because the idea of three pages came from stuff you were doing.
Craig: Yes. There was a theory that I had, that you could probably tell if a script was going to be theoretically good or absolutely never good from reading three pages. The truth is, you learn a lot in three pages. There are fundamental things that we see people do well, and there are fundamental things that we see people not doing well.
If the three pages aren’t working in and of themselves, it doesn’t mean that it’s not fixable. Everything’s fixable, and we’re all working and constantly revising and doing things and getting better. This focus that we put on these is the way it works in the business. This is a good colonoscopy.
John: The first three pages are really the first impression. As we’ve had guests on the show who are showrunners who are looking to staff a room or producers or agents or managers, we talk to them about, “You get a script, how far are you reading into it?” Some will say, “Oh, the first 10 pages,” but a lot of people will say the first three or four pages. You get a sense of, does this person have a voice that’s interesting and I want to keep following? They’re looking for an excuse to set the script down. If those first three pages give them that excuse, they might set the script down.
Craig: They’ll take it.
John: They’ll take it.
Craig: It’s been really interesting over the years to see how some of these do grab you. It’s like there’s this thing that happens where your eyeballs– Sometimes words are sticky. Your eyeballs stick on them and it’s good. Then sometimes the pages are slippery and your eyes just– Part of the question is, why do these things happen?
John: I’m also contractually obligated to tell you that we’ve been doing the show for 14 years. We’ve come to the Austin Film Festival for 11 years. It’s the first year we’re here to hype up our book. We have a book coming out December 2nd.
The Scriptnotes book is basically a collection, a compendium of everything we’ve talked about over the course of 11 years about screenwriting, intercut with chapters from many of the amazing guests we’ve had on the show. Show of hands, who in this room has already pre-ordered the book? That’s a good number. Thank you very much for that.
Craig: Thank you, guys.
John: Last night at the live show, I was strongly urging people to pre-order the book. Craig, do you remember the reasons why people need to pre-order the book rather than just getting it on December 2nd?
Craig: As I recall, what you said is that pre-orders are how bookstores know whether or not they should stock the book, whether libraries know whether they should have the book available for lending, and also in theory, it’s how bestseller lists are put together. You aim much higher than I do.
John: The reality is that bestseller lists are based on first week sales, but all the pre-orders are counted as the first week sales. If we can get a big number for that, it’s fantastic. Our publisher at Crown sent an email saying, “A month out, it’s looking good.” As we all know, good is–
Craig: Yes. As the people who wrote these will find out, good is not great.
John: No, good is not great. If you’re enjoying the Scriptnotes Podcast, if you’re enjoying what we’re doing today, and you want to pre-order the book, we would much appreciate it because it’s going to be a good resource for you all the times. We have a podcast you can listen to every week, but this is a podcast in book form, which is good and useful. Let us tackle our first Three Page Challenge.
Craig: Let’s dig in.
John: Our first Three Page Challenge is called Ancient Grains. It is by–
Craig: Michael Warnecke.
John: Michael Warnecke. Great. We have a synopsis here. “In a barn, on a barren field with starving animals, a group of drunk teens accidentally knock over a space heater, burning down a barn and killing all the animals inside. We then cut to those same teens standing before the town in the village center being reprimanded by a man named Faucher for using ‘ancient machines.’
As punishment, he sentences the teens to being blinded. As they force the teens to drink a poison, Ruth marches forward and begs Faucher not to blind both of her sons, as she’ll have no one left to work the farm. Faucher agrees and forces Ruth to choose which of her children will be blinded. When she finally does, her other son cries in anguish as he’s forced to drink the poison. Ruth bitterly thanks Faucher and the weeping parents gather their blinded children.” That’s what happens at the first three pages here. Craig, talk to us about this. This is some sort of post-apocalyptic situation. It seems like we’re in the future-
Craig: It could be.
John: -but there’s old technologies.
Craig: It could be. It could be some super culty, hyper Amish sort of thing. A lot of times we’ll get into the granularity of how people have actually written this out, but I want to start with a big logic question. In this scenario, teens are partying in a barn and they’ve got the space heater. Side note, I didn’t feel cold, so the space heater didn’t feel super motivated. We want to make sure if a space heater is important, show that it’s cold outside.
Then they get caught because they burned the thing down and they get blinded. It seems like they’re all very aware, because it surely has happened before, that the punishment for using new machinery is getting blinded. They seem really fine as they’re using the space heater. If the punishment for using a space heater is getting blinded, I’d probably just put a coat on.
The thing is, what do they need to use? How can we show that it is something that they absolutely needed to use to get to something they really wanted, knowing what the risk was, and then they get caught? That feels stronger to me.
John: I’m excited to have Michael here because so often we’re doing this on the podcast, and we really don’t have a good sense of what the whole script is or what this is leading to. We can ask Michael when he comes up, why starting here? What is it about this scenario that is the best way to get into what his story is?
We don’t have a clear sense about the story. We’re seeing a mother having to make a terrible choice between her two sons at the end of the three pages. We as the reader don’t know, is Ruth really an important character? Is this high official an important character that’s going to be coming back? It feels like we’re establishing the feel of the world, but I don’t have a good sense of quite what the movie is yet. I’m glad to be able to talk to Michael about this.
Craig: The idea that you’re going to go down the line of these teenagers, and each one of them has to drink the stuff knowing full well that it’ll make them blind. Again, slight logic point. Not sure how you can instantly go blind from drinking something, but let’s just say you can. That’s terrifying if I weren’t asking a lot of questions.
One thing to consider is that this scene maybe happens too soon. If you are in a community and you know what the rules are right up front, and you also see that, weirdly, a couple of people are blind, more than you would imagine would be blind in a small group, and that’s an interesting– that’s curious. Then these kids get together and say, “We’re going to do this and break the rules.” Now I’m invested because I understand the rules. Then I see, oh, the punishment is they made these kids blind.
What happens here is there’s a lot of stuff that happens really fast. Then on top of it, we have Sophie’s Choice occurring. It’s always tricky when you have Sophie’s Choice because Sophie’s Choice did Sophie’s Choice. When a mother has to choose between two kids, it can feel a little bit familiar in that regard. This may be a case where what we often prescribe, which is get into it faster, we might want to delay this and get into it slower.
John: I would agree, too. Let’s focus in on how we’re encountering what is here on the page and talk about what’s working on the page and what we need to amplify or rearrange to make this work a little bit better. I think my biggest macro concern of what I was actually seeing on the page is things felt vague.
In this second block where we’re in this ramshackle barn, there’s a group of teens, but they’re not differentiated. There’s seven of them, but I don’t know what’s the split of male and female. Who are they? What are they like? Ultimately, two of these kids are going to become important because they’re Ruth’s sons, but they’re not distinguished in this first scene. We’re not following them separately or better.
It’s described as they are doing typical teenage things. Well, you got to be specific here. We need to see what exactly they’re doing and how the space heater fits into all of this. The fact that we don’t have any dialogue, we don’t have any specific actions for them, we don’t have a sense of– There’s probably not music playing if there’s nothing else, but what is actually happening in here feels important. Right now, it just reads as being very vague.
The people in here, they’re not even uppercase to let us know that they’re someone we need to follow. They don’t have names. This is a real challenge. That’s coming off of an establishing shot, which is just showing us that it is bleak and barren fields, even the weeds seem to struggle. We have scrawny cows poking at the dirt for food, and then we’re moving into dusk. We’re getting a lot of vague setup that’s not being very specific to where we’re encountering this story.
Craig: A lot of things happen very quickly. Normally, efficiency is terrific, but sometimes it can come with a cost. Here, I think we do have a cost because we see that the world is barren. There isn’t much food. There’s a pasture that’s blighted. The cows are skinny. When you see skinny cows, it’s trouble.
John: Bad stuff.
Craig: Then we hear laughter, and we meet all these kids who don’t seem to realize that they’re living in a world without food and people that can blind them. There’s this confusion that immediately happens. Then John’s absolutely right. For instance, the heater tips over and a burlap bag catches fire. No one notices. Now, this is exciting. Fire is exciting to shoot on film. What happens here is that little flicker spreads to surround hay and blossoms. Someone grabs a stable blanket, like a horse blanket.
John: Who is someone? Someone is not a great term for this.
Craig: Someone grabs a blanket, tosses it onto the flames, but it’s already too late. What was everybody else doing? Is there panic? Is there fear? Does somebody freeze? Is somebody trying to be a hero? Fire. Do you know how many meetings you have to have if you’re going to have fire? Oh my God. It’s got to be worth it. You’ve got to figure out exactly where everyone is relative to it. I think here it just feels a little abrupt.
John: We’re coming off the barn is going to burn down. This is at dusk. Then we’re cutting to village center, day. We’re not cutting to, or there’s not a transition to. This is a big change in where we were versus where we’re going to.
For the reader, that’s where you put a transition line in there. It could be literally transition to, colon, or cut to, just to get a sense of, this was the big panorama we were seeing of the barn burning. Probably smash cut to the village the next day or however many days later, and we’re up on this stage where this Faucher is going through, “This is the process that’s going to happen to these teens.” I guess they’re all culpable equally. That’s a thing that is also worthy to be addressed.
Craig: I guess because they were all benefiting from the heater. We do talk a lot about transitions and how to use our medium visually to get from one scene to the next. Here’s something that you generally want to avoid. We go from this visual, “The startled teens watch in horror as fire engulfs the barn.” That’s dusk.
Then the next thing is day. The next day, “These teens now stand in a row.” That’s a hard thing to cut from. From those teens to those teens, it’s going to be a bit jarring.
If you went from those teens to close up of a jug of liquid and we hear sniffling and we hear the creek and somebody breathing and then we reveal these kids are now on their knees or something, then there’s a reveal. You want to always think in terms of big to small, alive to object, loud to quiet. Contrasts are what help us get between places.
John: Make that cut. As we come to this stage where Faucher’s going to give his speech, we hear that members of the community, many of whom are weeping, are gathered there. Members of the community, I don’t know how many. Is it five people? Is it 50 people? I don’t have a sense of the scale. Because this is all new to us, we really want to know how large is this group. It’s going to feel very different if it’s 100 people or if it’s five people.
Next, we’re going to meet Ruth, who is the mother of two of these boys. Again, we don’t know these boys specifically. We don’t know what they’re like. We don’t know which one’s older, which one’s younger. It feels like they should have names. Most crucially, Ruth is going to be doing a lot of talking here and we don’t get anything about her. We do get an age. We get 36, but we don’t have a sense of what kind of woman she is.
Craig: Wardrobe, hair, makeup. What is she wearing? Is she dirty? Do they have makeup? Is she tired? Hair, because honestly, it’s a huge thing. What is their hair like? Bedraggled, dirty?
John: All we’re going to know about her is that she’s a member of this community and she’s the boys’ mother, but because we don’t know anything about the boys, we don’t know anything about Ruth specifically, it’s really tough.
I guess a question we’ll ask Michael when he gets up here is, how important is it that we have all the other seven teens there also? Right now, they’re extras. They’re featured extras who are going to be drinking this poison and reacting, but it’s really about these two boys. If they are the instigators, they should be the ones who are taking the punishment there.
Craig: One thing that happens here is these other kids are getting blinded and mom, Ruth, is just worried about her two kids. I think the other people in the community might be like, “Hey, Ruth, did you not notice that Dylan just got turned blind? That’s my kid. What about my kid?”
They’re in a village center. Describe the village. What is in the village? We do not know anything. There is no further description of the village beyond the fact that there’s an elevated wood platform where these kids are standing, waiting to be blinded.
John: As we wrap up this analysis here, I do like the idea of quickly getting to a Sophie’s Choice. It is a Sophie’s Choice, but if I knew who these two boys were and the– Our first exposure to Ruth is this mother having to make this choice. That’s really compelling if I already got a better sense of what this world is like and who she is in it. I think we could probably get to here in not many more pages than this, but we’re just very rushed to get to where we are right now.
Craig: Setup. Some good logic questions. Let’s ask ourselves, truly, how would this go? If you were a kid living in this town and you knew what the deal is, what would lead you to violate the rules, et cetera?
John: Because Michael’s actually here, we can ask him these questions. Michael, please come on up.
Craig: Come on up.
[applause]
Nice to meet you.
John: Thank you so much for sending in your pages. It’s really great to have you here to be able to talk to.
Michael: Good for another 10 years then.
Craig: Yes, exactly. You don’t have to do that again for another 10 years.
John: Michael, we’re only reading three pages, but have you written the whole thing? What’s actually happening in this world?
Michael: Yes, sure. I’ve completed a first draft. I’m in the process of doing a rewrite right now. I chose to open the script with introducing the antagonist and try to establish the rules of this world where they have very harsh rules, where human life isn’t valued the same way, and the punishment’s very high. The only person that’s really important long-term is Faucher. The others are more just stand-ins for the rules of this world.
Craig: Okay. Now we have a perspective question. We like to talk about, whose perspective is this scene from? If he is the important one, there’s also a world where this begins with, we meet a guy, and he’s standing there looking at the ruins of a barn, and he finds what caused it, a heater, and who was here and who was it.
Then he goes, and then he metes out justice. We would go, “Oh, God, this guy that we were identifying with is a nightmare,” because the perspective here feels like it’s mom. Depending on who is important, we have to think about how we want to go in and whose shoulder is the camera over, if that makes sense.
John: That’s so helpful to know that this is meant to introduce him as the villain antagonist at the very start, because a lot of the choices you’re making make so much more sense knowing that now. The reason why the teens are non-descript and we don’t care and individualize them is because they are not the focus. The challenge is, reading through these pages, it looked like the camera was aimed at them rather than Faucher who is the person we really want to be exploring here. Craig’s suggestion is a good way to do it where we’re really encountering this world and entering this world from his point of view and him dealing with the aftermath of this rather than the setup of this.
Craig: Character. I would love to know, does this guy enjoy this? Does he like pouring this liquid down their throats? Is he a sadist?
Michael: No. He has a perspective that’s been informed by his own life where someone very close to him died because of exposure to an old technology that ended up killing his daughter. I don’t get into it a lot in the story because I don’t want to go off on the rails on this direction. There’s a religious order that’s developed where technology is banned and they have a hold of the power structure.
Craig: Got it. In a circumstance like that, what I want to see is humanity first. This is a man whose grief has damaged him and he is trying to keep people safe. He’s trying to keep them from dying. When he administers this, people beat their children out of rage. People also hit their children out of this measured, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.”
I personally never hit my kids. You don’t need to. You just have to have a very stern voice. That said, I would love to see what he’s feeling. If he is a father and somebody that had a child and he’s doing this to children, does this hurt his soul to do, and he’s just that– He has to? These are the questions that I have about him as a person. Villains who are human are always more interesting.
John: A question we asked about weather and cold and this kind of stuff, where is this set for you? If you were to shoot this tomorrow, where would this be set?
Michael: The idea is that this takes place maybe 400 or 500 years in the future in rural Wisconsin.
John: That feels right. Again, the dusting of snow or something else like that might also help us there get a sense of the specificity of this place, because right now it’s just reading as post-apocalyptic anywhere. Grounding in a place could really help us out.
Craig: A little something about the apocalypse. One thing that you get to do, it’s fun when you’re doing something apocalyptic, is show what’s left over that has been grown over, abandoned, things that used to be valuable to us that mean nothing now.
Wisconsin, a lot of farms, tons of farms. Maybe in 400, 500 years, most of them have fallen apart, burnt down, whatever. Then I want to see that. I also want to see, in the distance, there’s a mobile sign. There was something.
John: A water tower.
Craig: The world has not been scraped clean. It just stopped. When things stop, nobody really goes around cleaning it up. Vehicles, planes, all that good stuff. Think about the opportunities that you have there.
John: Michael, thank you so much for sending this in.
Michael: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
Craig: Thank you. That wasn’t too bad. I think it wasn’t too bad. He’s probably like, “Jesus.” All right, sorry, I’m going to church.
John: Lightning bolts come down. The next script we’re going to be talking about is High North by Teddy Johnson. Teddy, raise your hand if you’re out here.
Craig: There, Teddy.
John: Thank you very much for sending this through. Here is what’s happening in these three pages. “A black cargo ship drifts in the ice of the Arctic Circle. A Coast Guard ship attempts to make contact with the cargo ship, but when there’s no answer, Captain Alamos and three other officers board the dark and seemingly empty cargo ship.
Inside, they find dozens of dead bodies, all frostbitten black and decomposing. One shackled corpse holding a stuffed polar bear startles the men when it springs to life and screams at them, while begging them not to take us back, before an officer knocks him out with a flashlight. When he does, hundreds more corpses are discovered. The next sequence begins with a montage of news footage on unrest over skyrocketing energy costs.” That’s where we are at the bottom of three pages.
Craig: Okay. I love a good scary thing set in an Arctic area.
John: I love the Arctic setting. I’ll say cover page looks great. The only thing I would ask for is a date. A date on a cover page is just a thing you look for and to see how recent it is. Everything else here, flawless and great.
Craig: You can always lie about the date.
John: Yes, just make it more recent. Craig, talk to us about your exposure here. Really, we should talk about what kind of scene this is, because it’s very classically a setup. It’s a cold open.
Craig: This is a good, old-fashioned cold open. The job really is, how do I do this scene in a way that hasn’t been done before? I’m not sure this gets to that. It is somewhat following the formula, but it does the formula fairly well. A couple of things that stopped me as I was going through, there’s lots of good visuals here.
John: There are.
Craig: Sometimes people are talking when they wouldn’t normally talk. I think there’s just a lot of extra dialogue we don’t need. It’s scarier when it’s quieter. Generally, when people work together, they don’t need to talk unless it’s important, especially in a situation like this, which is pretty grim.
They get into this room and there’s this big reveal, which is the big reveal. Dead bodies, dozen or so, men all ages, ethnicities, floor awash in a GRAYISH SLURRY. Now, GRAYISH SLURRY is capitalized. It’s the Arctic. Everything’s frozen.
John: Yes, so why is it not frozen?
Craig: Why is it a slurry?
John: That may be important.
Craig: It might be, but then I want to know more about the GRAYISH SLURRY. I want them to note that there’s a– Nobody seems to care about the liquid that’s not frozen. If it is frozen, I still want them to– if it’s important to me, it should be important to them. They’re looking around.
John: Yes, agreed.
Craig: Then a guy trips over a corpse, which is actually awesome. I love that.
John: We should say that you hear a thump before this and our attention turns to it.
Craig: So we get a little jump scare.
John: Love it.
Craig: Great. Then the captain looks at him and goes, “We good?” The guy says, “Yes, fine.” Then he looks at something else and goes, “What the hell is this?” If one of your underlings trips over a corpse and you turn back and you see that, you’re just glaring, and he’s like– it’s undermining the vibe you want to get.
I got pretty confused. I’m curious to see what you thought about this. When they get to a teenager and he’s gripping a polar bear in his fist and they’re all like, “Hmm,” and Captain Alamos says, “Call the medic. Though I doubt we’ll–” as if to say, “Maybe this kid’s alive,” and then, ah, the kid’s alive.
John: Part of your reason for your confusion is, he’s identified as a teen, but then the dialogue is for shackled man, and so I was thinking, “Wait, is this the same person?” I’m looking for teen in the dialogue.
Craig: Yes. It seemed to me, jump scare wise, we all know it’s coming, but I think that they would just be like, “Wow, this is sad. We’re going to have to report this.” Mundane sort of stuff. One of them touches the polar bear and then the guy– Again, the dialogue felt a little bit, I don’t know, low stakes kind of talking, as if you weren’t in a room full of frozen bodies. That’s totally really what I want to see if we can achieve here, but the scenario was fun.
John: Yes. You’re reading through the three pages and you get what this setup is. I understood why I saw that, that it was setting this thing up, and then as we get to the news footage, I was like, “Okay, this is all going to be related. I can see how these two things can plausibly fit together.”
Let’s talk about the very opening here. Right now, we’re starting with Super, 157 miles north of the Arctic Circle, “A black cargo ship drifts amid cracked tapestry of ice,” but then in the next block, it’s unusual, flat, no bridge, no flag and listing on its side. That belongs up with the description of the ship in that first section. Right now, it’s after Captain Alamos, so you think it’s part of his description, because it’s really what he’s seeing. What I’m saying is, I have no idea if Captain Alamos is a man or is a woman. I have no idea what the age is.
Craig: True.
John: This is probably a disposable character, but give us something to anchor our–
Craig: Casting people have to cast somebody. They’re like, “Help.”
John: “Help us. Help us,” desperately. That’s why giving him or her a first name and just some sense of what kind of person this is, is a godsend. It helps everybody in production, but also just a reader to form some image in our head. Is it a Sam Neill that I’m looking at?
Craig: Also, USS Healy, what kind of boat is that?
John: I don’t know.
Craig: We don’t know.
John: These are things we’ll want to know, so we get a sense of what kind of space we’re in for this. We’re going from the big ship onto a small craft, navigating the ice-strewn waters. Tell us how this feels. Give me a line to put me in this space because I don’t know how cold this is. I don’t know what this is actually really like.
Craig: I don’t know how close are we to them. Is it a motorized boat? Are we looking at the outrigger? Are we looking at an oar? Are we looking at this guy’s face shivering? I want to feel all that because it’s such an evocative idea, this boat clacking its way through these chunks of ice that are floating in water. I think you’re absolutely right, by the way, to get the description of the boat together, and then I would actually put the Super after that.
John: I would agree.
Craig: Let us look at some stuff, wonder where we are, and then you give us 157 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
John: On page two, things are just feeling a little too empty. It’s a little bit of a stock scene. We can fill in some details ourselves, but give us a little bit more about what the inside of the ship feels like. What does it sound like, if the boat is listing? You’ve said that it’s sloping. That’s a great detail.
It’s the whole thing. Is it canted so you’re having to walk up slopes? That could be cool. Do you hear it creaking? Is ice banging against it? All these things are suspenseful and will create the mood you probably are looking for here.
The officer trips on a corpse. That is a guy who is singled out and he needs to be uppercased because he’s going to be saying a line or– This needs to be singled out as a person who is useful. Tell us something about him or her so we get some sense of what the dynamic is.
Craig: This is a choice. The shackled man/teen yells in French. Now, if the idea is that the people he’s speaking French to don’t speak French and it doesn’t seem like they do, they seem like Americans, it might be better to just put this in French so that we understand that they don’t understand. You’re not going to be subtitling it because it’s more like he’s alive is the point and later we’ll find out what he said.
John: Either choice could work. You could subtitle it, but if it is subtitled, then I’d say put it in subtitle so we know what the intention is behind that.
Craig: It’s hard to subtitle a jump scare moment. It’s really hard. It feels like what’s scary is that this guy is suddenly alive and he’s curiously speaking French and he’s holding a polar bear, all good mysteries, so might as well just keep them mysterious.
John: Yes, keep them mysterious, but we don’t have to leave it as mystery because we have Teddy right here. Teddy, come on up and let’s talk about this. Teddy, tell us about this script. Is the whole thing written? Is it just these three pages? What have you written of this?
Teddy: This has been through a few drafts. It’s all written. The main reason I thought I’d toss this into the mix here was because this opening is brand new and it was based on notes I got from a random blacklist reviewer and also a friend of mine who occasionally reads my stuff.
They both had a similar note about the previous opening, which was actually just the news montage thing. Then later on, 10, 11 pages in, they mentioned this ghost ship that’s disappeared in the Arctic. They were like, “That seems cool. Why don’t you play with that?” I played with that and that’s what you’re looking at.
John: Great.
Craig: That’s good advice. I think the opening with the ghost ship almost always works. 50% of the time, or is it 100% of the time?
John: Of the characters we meet in this opening, are any of them important? This is just setting up the world, correct?
Teddy: This is all set up. We never see any of these people– That’s not technically true, but they’re not– None of these people are the antagonists or protagonists. That all comes on page four.
John: Are we guessing the tone right, that this a– To me, this feels like a scary world-threatening thing is happening. Is that correct?
Teddy: The vibe here, I think the idea is this is a dated comp, but like Three Days of the Condor, paranoid government conspiracy thriller. That’s what we’re aiming at. I realized that the ghost ship jump scare thing might seem a little bit too much.
John: From a horror movie?
Teddy: Yes. It’s not a horror movie. Like I said, I know that’s a dated comp, but that’s the vibe we’re looking for.
Craig: I can see that completely. Yes, this feels like the sort of thing that Tony Scott would have done an incredible job with.
John: Exactly, yes.
Craig: Yes, rest in peace.
John: As you were sitting in the audience and we’re talking through your pages–
Craig: How much did you hate it?
John: How much, like, “Oh my God, I’m so angry.” Did they make sense? Were we misreading things you were intending to do?
Teddy: No, you keyed in on, I would say, three or four things that I’ve also gone back and forth on. For example, the kid versus the shackled man. We’re obviously going to discover, why is there a ghost ship with a bunch of people shackled in the middle of the Arctic Circle? That’s the big mystery we’re going to resolve.
I don’t know why I changed– I went back and forth on the person who wakes up and does the jump scare thing. Why is it a boy? There’s a reason why there’s all these different ages of men in this ship and all different ethnicities. I think that was a place where I was just going fast.
Again, it was the second time I wrote this opening. I think I got caught off on the consistency there. Also, this is a personal thing, but I just try to write very spare. I see why you would want to describe Captain Alamos, give it an adjective, something. Also, I just want to move fast through the first thing.
John: I want to underline, I really liked that it was moving quickly. There were times where I felt like you could have even moved a little more quickly. They’re circling the boat and there’s a ladder bolted to the side. I don’t even need the ladder bolt on the side as long as I see them climbing off the ladder on to the deck. You could probably do some things even a little bit faster than that because as an audience and as readers, we have a sense of what you’re doing and that this is compelling quickly and we want to get on that boat.
Craig: I think you did a really good job. This should be spare. It doesn’t take many words to go, “She’s 40, weathered, tired, cold.” That’s it. It’s barely anything. It just helps us fill it in because honestly, in my head, he turned into like– you know the boat guy from Tintin with the beard and the corn? That’s what he was in my head. He literally was Captain whatever his name was.
Speaker: Captain Haddock.
Craig: Yes, Captain Haddock, which is not what you wanted.
Teddy: No, that’s not the vibe.
Craig: Speaking of consistency, tell us about this GRAYISH SLURRY.
Teddy: Again, I have gone back and forth on, do we draw more attention to that or not? What that GRAYISH SLURRY is is hyper relevant to the ultimate story. Again, one of the things that I’m trying to do over the course of the script is just build an incredible sense of mystery that builds a huge reveal. I didn’t want to go into that too much because at this point–
Craig: This is all it says, “Floor awash in a GRAYISH SLURRY.” No one comments on it, which means no one’s looking at it, which means the camera’s– If he walks in and we hear squish and he looks down and he’s confused because in this room of ice and everything, there’s this stuff that isn’t solid, that is weird and melted, and then he moves on, I’m like, “Okay, well, that’s relevant.” Otherwise, it’s just going to be a GRAYISH SLURRY no one will notice.
Teddy: Yes. Sorry. No, I live in fear of more than two lines of description and narrative.
Craig: Do not. They’re to give you a Kathryn Bigelow script where it’s 12 lines in a row.
John: Absolutely. A thing we often talk about in Three Page Challenges is how things feel on the page. It’s how much white space there is on the page. I’ll say in these pages, it’s very spare and the paragraphs are short. It invites you to read down the page and actually read every word on the page. You can break things up a little bit more. The extra few words or sentences we’re asking in a few places, I really don’t think will slow your read, and will just anchor people, make them feel like, “Oh, I’m glad I read that because I understand this moment, this beat, this visual better.”
Craig: Yes. Three lines is– you can start worrying after three. Two is a little severe.
Teddy: I appreciate the permission.
Craig: I’m rolling with that. Permission granted.
John: Teddy, you’ve written a couple drafts of this script. How many other scripts have you written?
Teddy: This is the third or fourth feature script I’ve written.
John: Has it gotten easier or harder with each script?
Teddy: I don’t know that it ever gets easier. I think I just am more comfortable with just messing stuff up and iterating and trying and just going. You go a little bit faster because you know– That’s all. I wouldn’t say it’s easier. You just fail faster.
John: That’s a crucial thing Teddy has learned. Nicely done.
Craig: Just describe my career.
John: Teddy, thank you very much for doing this. Thank you.
Craig: Thank you, Teddy.
John: All right.
Craig: Zeroing in on number three.
John: Number three. All right. Number three is Tall Poppies by Becca Hurd. “A woman named Teddi sits at a pub in Sydney, Australia during a rowdy Australian football game. She buys a pub-branded T-shirt and, pretending to be an employee, tells a group of customers they need one of their cars moved. The customers are too wrapped up in the football game, so she offers to move the car for them. Teddi takes the man’s keys and drives off and away.
We are then acquainted with the oceanside town of Edith Beach where Zoe, in her early 30s, Indian Australian, and muscular, surfs with her dog, Rosie, on the front of her surfboard. We then see Zoe working at her food truck. That’s what we’ve accomplished in three pages of Tall Poppies.
Craig: Fun cover page.
John: A fun cover page. Let’s hold on to show the audience because they may not be able to see it on their smartphone.
Craig: I’m not sure they’re going to be able to see that either.
John: It has a nice typeface for Tall Poppies, which is good and so distinctive. There’s a gun shooting a flower. It says, “Pilot, written by Becca Hurd.” It’s good for us to know that this is a pilot, not a feature. It has her email address, which is perfect. It has the date. I love everything on this cover page.
Craig: No, it’s grabby. Also, the other stuff is like, “Oh, it has to be all courier.” No, it doesn’t. We don’t care. Nobody cares. I really enjoyed this. What I particularly enjoyed was that I was confused until I got it, which was great. Now, there are a couple of things that, early, probably was not good confusion. Interior, The Waddle Seat Hotel, Sydney night.
Now, when I think of the interior of a hotel, I don’t think of a rowdy bar full of sports watchers. Here is, having just come back from Sydney, Australia, hotel means bar, and it’s confusing in Sydney, but it’s actually true. Everything is. This would be a problem because we’re not in Sydney, so you’re going to have to do a little bit of tailoring there just for Americans, so that they don’t-
John: Honestly, if we scratch out the word hotel, the Waddle Seat, we would get it as a bar.
Craig: We would get it. Here she is, small, unassuming, and she’s alone, which is terrific. The first thing we see is that she’s not really there. We’re looking at a woman with her eyes closed, and we’re hearing beautiful violin. Then as we pull out, we realize she’s in this bedlam, and she’s in her own head. This is very evocative, and I can do it. If I had to direct this, I could direct it. I know what to do. That’s super helpful. I love the way the sound comes in.
I have really one question. I honestly have one question, and that is, her plan relies on something that I’m not sure is a reliable thing, even much, because she’s like, “Hey, can you move your car?” I think a lot of people would be like, “Okay.” It’s a little bit of a stretch to think, hey, they’re going to give me their keys and let me move the car for them.
John: I bought it. I feel like she, Teddy, was making, it was a reach, but also felt like I was impressed by her, and then she pulled it off. I bought it the course of this movie. There’s refrigerated logic like, wait, would you actually do that? It worked for me in the moment really well.
One thing, I liked how this all started on the page. This all reads really well. There’s a good variation of paragraph sizes. One thing I would ask, though, here’s how we’re starting. We’re in close on Teddy, eyes closed. All we hear is beautiful violin. As we zoom out, we see that she sits at a pub high top. Two paragraphs later, we’re seeing Teddy is small, I’m assuming she wears a cast on her left hand. That’s information that goes back up in that top part, so we can see that, because it’s not new information when we’re seeing that there.
Then as we’re, you’re saying, zooming out, it’s really pulling out or whatever you want to say here. Teddy’s not given an age. I’d love an age, tell us an age. Tell an age, that she’s small and I’m assuming-
Craig: I mean, even bloke with a mullet gets an age.
John: Yes, see?
Craig: All we hear is beautiful violin. Yes, beautiful violin music or beautiful classical violin music. Something that’s telling us specifically what it is that we’re hearing, because I really like everything that’s happening here. I just want it to be a little brighter here.
The other thing I did notice is that we’re doing her pronoun a lot with actually not using her name. Look at the cases where you’re saying she, and see if there’s some places where you want to put Teddy back in there, so it’s just top of our mind who this is that we’re talking about. I believed most of the guys with the football game. I believed the sports bar space, the main guy we’re talking to, his name is Mase, M-A-S-E. I was wondering whether if we’re going to meet him again, we might meet him again, but I didn’t know at the moment whether it was important or not.
This is more of a question for you because we can’t ask you, because he’s given sort of individual thing rather than just being placeholder person. He’s given an actual character name.
Craig: If there was any way for us to see her making a choice as to which person to prey upon, now she’s sort of going for a car first, I think, instead of a person. That also is a little tricky because if she’s like, “Hey, who has this?” and somebody who’s just not that drunk is like, “I do.” Now what do you do? There’s just still a little bit of, I just want to think through the con artist logic because con artists, I’m not suggesting she’s, but somebody who’s committing con artistry, they’re always in control. They always are one step ahead. They’re the magicians who have the backup plan in case you pick the wrong card. I just want to get that feeling.
Then, when we shift away, good news is I wanted to stay with her, so that’s always good, but we get to this other place, then it’s connected through with her drive, and we meet an entirely different person who has a dog on her surfboard. This was adorable. We meet this cool person. She’s got a dog on her surfboard, she’s surfing. This is cool. A little bit earlier, an old man pulls his lazy dog along the sidewalk. That’s two dogs right in a row, and I want to keep my dog special. Then, after we see her surfing with her dog, she’s in the counter of her food truck. That was a little bit of a gear grind for me.
John: It was a gear grind for me, too. Part of it is that we see Teddy driving away. This is night as she’s driving away, and then we’re coming to dusk. There’s not a transition put here between these two things, but I think our natural assumption is we’re going to keep following Teddy, and we’re going to see Teddy the next day. Instead, we’re meeting a whole new character doing a whole new thing, which can absolutely work, but it was just a weird vibe for me. I couldn’t tell who I was supposed to be following. I keep expecting, Teddy has to meet this new character, Rosie, very soon.
Craig: I’m sure she will.
John: She will. It’s only three pages.
Craig: They may already know each other.
John: You like the dog on the surfboard. The dog on the surfboard felt a little dizzy for me.
Craig: I guess my question is, and we’ll find out, can dogs do that?
John: I’m sure dogs do that.
Craig: Because if a dog can do it-
John: That’s just a sore, I think. I think it really do it.
Craig: – then you can do it. If they can do it, then it’ll look like it’s doing it. You’re going to have to find a dog that can actually do it. I think maybe all we really needed here was to see her getting out of the water. He’s going, and she’s dragging your surfboard. The next thing we see is a food truck, and she’s walking up and unlocking it. Then, the next thing is, and so we go, okay, that’s her job, she goes there.
John: That’s her thing. It’s her truck.
Craig: Yes.
John: The last thing I want us to talk about is, at the end of the bar sequence, The Waddell Seat, the last line she says is, “I’ll sort you boys some free ones when I get back.” I wanted to cut that line, and then you pay it off where later on, it’s like, she gives some free ones. Okay, if you want to hold on that line, great. It does work, but if you could cut that line and find a different way for this guy, Mace, to be asking, like, “Hey, this girl has my keys. Where’s the blonde girl with my keys?” Like, “Which blonde girl?” would be another way to do it. Because I think you have a better out of that first scene without that extra line.
Craig: Yes, it’s a little bit tricky because we know that she won. I guess the thing is, do we even care about this drunk guy finding out that he got swindled? He got swindled. Unless he matters.
John: He may matter.
Craig: That’s the thing. He may matter, we don’t know.
John: Becca, could you please come up?
Craig: Come on.
[applause]
All right, tell us about Tall Poppies. What have we got here?
Becca: This is sort of an Australian nod to Thelma and Louise, but gayer.
[laughter]
Craig: Good. Why not? Gayer.
Becca: It’s two women who don’t currently know each other. They meet each other in the pilot. Then incidentally, they kill a man together. He’s a bikeym he’s in a bikey gang. They end up going on the run together. They have bikeys after them. They both are running from their past, so their past is chasing them as well. They start to fall in love with each other as they fall into a heroin empire.
[laughter]
Craig: Oh, and it’s poppies.
John: That’s Tall Poppy.
Craig: Poppies.
Becca: It’s Tall Poppy, yes.
Craig: Tall poppy syndrome.
John: For folks who don’t know Tall Poppy Syndrome is a down-under situation where they cut you down if you get too big. If you get too successful, they cut you down. Rebel Wilson was on, and we were talking about Tall Poppy Syndrome.
Craig: Tall poppy.
John: This is all really fun. Tonally, when I said that the dog on the surfboard felt Disney to it, is it comedic? What is the thing you’re going for? Is it cute?
Becca: My tonal comp would be Killing Eve. It’s a 60-minute crime drama, but there’s some comedy in there.
Craig: Now that I know what’s going on, when you have a movie, and there are some great ones, it’s funny. For whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind after you described the Thelma and Louise and all the rest of it was White Men Can’t Jump, where you meet two people. One of them hasn’t dealt with the other one yet, but they’re going to. Then, there’s the joining of con artists, just people on the run, falling in love, bromances, or romances.
When you do meet that second person, so much of what that scene has to be is, this is a different person than that person because you want the contrast. You want to go from somebody impeccably neat to somebody who’s a slob. It doesn’t have to be that broad, but your choice of what to do next does have to feel like, oh, these two people, I would like to see what happens if they get stuck together for a bit, if that makes sense.
John: The woman she’s going on the run with, ultimately, is this other–
Craig: Zoe.
Becca: Yes.
John: We don’t have an extra page to get to know her better, but tell us more about her and what their interaction is. Because last night on Scriveners Live, we were talking about relationships. Different characters need different things out of a relationship. What is the nature of their relationship?
Becca: Zoe is actually Laws. This is an alias. She comes from a criminal family. They are the biggest legal growers of poppies in Australia. Australia actually does grow a lot of poppies, but they also have an underground heroin industry as well. She’s trying to get away from her family, so she’s changed her name and is just in this beach town, nomadic life, surfing. Teddy is running away from an abusive relationship.
Craig: Now, here’s what I get. Teddy has no problem doing something that’s criminal. She’s actually rather good at it. It’s not a violent thing, so we love her for it. Now, Zoe is running from a criminal past. What I kind of want in some way or another is to meet somebody who is very definitely not breaking the law. Because she knows that she would get in trouble. She doesn’t want to get back on a radar. How you imply that, there’s a thousand ways. I don’t know if you agree with this, but the surfing itself only tells us that she surfs and that her dog is awesome. It’s not telling me any little tiny thing about her that may make me go, oh, these two might not like each other, or these two might be, we were talking about planes, trains, and automobiles, Steve Martin and John Candy, an odd couple of some sort.
You’re good. You’re a good writer. You laid these out great. You could see it. You could hear it. I love the way you sound. There were transitions. The good news is you can do it. This is what we do when we can do it. Just do it.
John: Becca, question for you. Is Mace going to come back?
Becca: He’s not.
John: He’s not going to come back. You understand the note that it feels like he’s a more important character than he is because he’s given a name and because he’s given a recall scene. Giving him a generic descriptor would probably help.
Becca: My one question, actually, for that is because I have another character refer to him like, “Oy, Mace, she’s talking to you.” Do you have to use the name?
Craig: You kind of don’t. In a situation like this, what you can do is you can say, mullet bloke, and then whatever. What is that?
John: Moustache.
Craig: Undercut bloke. Just two different haircuts. The fact that one of them says the other one’s name doesn’t really matter. This is great. It was just cinematic. I was watching it and it was having fun, so really good.
John: Becca, I was talking to you at the opening night party. We did this here, but you actually had a script that was also here in competition?
Becca: Yes, and I found out today that it won.
John: Congratulations.
[applause]
Craig: I saw that happen. She’s not lying. I was there.
John: What was that script? That’s not this script that we read. It’s a different thing.
Becca: That is not the script. No, that’s a feature called The Other Side of 25. It’s about a young stand-up comic in Chicago who becomes the surrogate for her older sister.
Craig: I’m not surprised. You can do this. Keep doing it. It’s going well. Congratulations. I was happy to see you win, and I was happy to see you here with these three pages.
Becca: Great.
John: Becca, thank you so much.
Becca: Thank you so much. Thank you.
John: We have a little boilerplate here. The Scriptnotes, all of Scriptnotes, is produced by Drew Marquardt, who’s here. Drew is the person who reads all these three-page challenges. Drew Marquardt, you’re the best. This show will also be edited by Matthew Chilleli, who’s our incredible editor. We want to thank Emily Locke and everyone here at Austin Film Festival. This has been a fantastic festival this year. Thank you to our room sponsors, all our volunteers, incredible.
Who here in this room is a Scriptnotes premium subscriber? Oh, we’ve got some hands here.
Craig: Oh, thank you, guys.
John: Every week, we do an episode for everyone in the whole wide world. We also do a bonus segment for our premium members. Thank you for the premium members, because they keep the lights on. A final check, who in this room has ordered the Scriptnotes book? [chuckles] All right. I need to sell those books. Thank you so much.
Craig: Thank you, guys.
[Bonus Segment]
John: Let’s try to get three or four questions. If people have questions about the kinds of things we talked about on the page here today, we can also ask general Script Note-y kind of answers of questions. If you have a question, raise your hand. I’ll call on you, and I’ll repeat the question. Right here.
Member of Audience 1: You were talking a little bit about how many lines, there’s too many lines. You’re talking about transitions. You’re talking about dressing the characters and things like that. I guess my question is, I know what scene heading is and things like that, but how do I know that my script looks right?
John: I think the thing that we come back to again and again on the Script Notes is that we will keep reading long paragraphs if it feels like it’s worth our time. If we’re engaged and those words are pulling us through, we’ll do it. Sometimes you turn a page, and it’s like a dense block of text, and you’re like, oh, God, I have to commit to this long paragraph. That’s why small paragraphs, short paragraphs, three lines, four lines, two lines, are great. Breaking them up, it feels so good because it invites you to come down the page.
The best advice I can really give you is you need to read a bunch of screenplays, a bunch of produced screenplays to see what they actually look like on the page. We make a weekend read, which every week we have a whole bunch of really good published scripts that we put up in there. Read those.
What other general advice would we offer?
Craig: Like anything else, you get better at it as you do it. You get a sense for these things as you approach your mythical 10,000 hours and so forth. Right off the bat, you probably don’t know until you do. Some people will get there quicker than others. That’s just the way it goes with everything.
Guitar, painting, writing screenplays, there’s certain innate stuff. Give yourself a break and make sure that you understand you’re going to grow and get there. It’s not possible for you to have the same innate sense of how a page should feel, and where you should slow, and where you should speed compared to people that have been doing it for 30 years. Give yourself time to grow.
John: The other thing, over time, you’ll internalize rules, but also just a sense of how things feel on the page, and you’ll develop a voice that is uniquely your voice. Craig and I were talking last night, there’s things, I think this was backstage, there are scripts that we wrote, and it’s like 10 years later you read it, it’s like, I know I wrote this, I don’t remember a damn thing about it, but it feels like me. Ultimately, your stuff will feel like you because you just make certain choices, you just do certain things on the page, and that only comes with just doing a lot of work.
It’s sitting down in the chair every day and writing, and writing a lot. It’s, yes, you’re going to go back through and refine and revise, but also you’re going to write new things, so you can get the sense of, what does it feel like when I write action? What does it feel like when I’m writing an intense dialogue scene? Those are the experiences that get the words feeling better on the page.
Another question I see right there. All right, I’m repeating here. Here with some students, what three things we really want to see in those first three pages, Craig?
Craig: The first is inspiration, creativity. I always think of the first five pages, but three, it doesn’t matter, are absolutely precious. You can do anything there because you are, as we’re in church, as the prime mover, began everything. That is the moment where you set it all in motion, and the moment you set it in motion, your choices begin to narrow, narrow until you reach the end when the thing that had to happen happens. Those first three pages, show creativity, surprise me.
You know. You’ve all seen movies, you’ve all seen TV shows. What have I not seen that I can then use in service of something that is somewhat conventional, that is a story that then connects to all of us? Inspiration slash creativity, give me somebody that I know I’m supposed to be identifying with, even if it turns out to be the bad guy and I have to change, that’s fine, but give me somebody that I’m connected to and make sure that something happens. One thing, doesn’t have to be the inciting incident, but it’s got to be something that helps me learn about the world, the characters, a relationship, something.
John: In those first three pages, I want to know what world I’m in. The setting, sure, but what kind of movie am I in? That’s the sense of, it’s the tone, it’s the feeling of. I want to feel that I’m watching a movie or watching a TV show, and that means I should hopefully forget that I’m reading something. I should feel like I’m seeing it, I’m feeling myself in it. Those are crucial things. That I’m with an actual person because we have to know who those people are. It doesn’t have to be our hero necessarily. Sometimes you start with somebody else, but that there’s anchored, interesting people that I’m curious about because what it comes down to is we could set down the script at any time, but if I’m curious, I’m going to keep reading the rest.
The thing we often talk about on Three Page Challenge is, was I curious to read page four? That’s ultimately what it is. Can you just keep pulling me along into the story? Great question. Thank you.
Another question out there. Somebody, I want to know something. Right here in front.
Member of Audience 2: Since you’re talking about character descriptions and even just being really quick with them, do you have any words of advice for or against if you use a really popular actor as a way to get me to the description, or do you think it’s not a good idea?
John: If you refer to a popular person, yes or no. Craig, what’s your instinct there?
Craig: You can. I’ve never done it. It’s probably best to say sort of like or ish. You don’t want to go, it’s Brad Pitt. If you don’t have Brad Pitt, stop reading. I do think it’s a little bit of a cheat. It feels a little bit sloppy. Rather than building a human for me, you’re asking me to just put the human I already know into that. You’re robbing me of a chance to build my Captain Haddock in my head.
John: I would agree with you. One of the real challenges is if you’re aiming for Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington, the minute you say that, every other actor is going to be like, “I don’t want to take Denzel Washington’s leftovers.” I don’t think I’ve ever done it, but if you have a character who models themselves after some famous person, that might be a way to do it, like sees herself as Taylor Swift. That could be a way to do it, but it’s unlikely to be the thing.
Just figure out what is it about the actual actor or person or personality that you can find words to describe that evokes that feeling is the best way to do it.
Another question right here.
Their question is, in dramas, you obviously want to establish something that’s gripping right in those first three pages, the opening setup. What is the equivalent thing we’re looking for in a comedy?
Craig: Funny.
[laughter]
John: We got to laugh.
Craig: There’s also tone. For comedies, we all have a general sense in our head of the different kinds. I want to know which kind I’m in, and I want something funny to happen, and I want it to involve the person that I am going to care about or get to know. That’s really it. In comedies, we often think about, rather than the first three pages, we think about what’s the opening bit.
I watched the opening of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective the other day. I don’t know why, I just did. The entire opening, it’s all under credits. It’s an open credit sequence. He is pretending to be a UPS package deliverer, and he’s got a package and it says fragile, and he is kicking it down the street. He’s throwing it against walls. He’s walking like Jim Carrey does, and eventually gets to this guy’s door and smashes it a few times. You get a sense like, okay, this is the bit. I’m learning about what kind of comedy this is and who I’m supposed to be identifying with.
It’s pretty comedic. You get to actually be somewhat formulaic. Unfortunately, you have to also be funny, so it’s such a problem.
John: In a comedy, you have to land something in those first pages, and really, you need a setup and a laugh that really nails it and that lets us know what kind of comedy this is. In your description of that, I get the tone of what that comedy is, and that’s going to be our expectation for everything after that. It needs to really establish, these are the kinds of jokes we’re going to see in this, but not those kinds of jokes, and that’s a tough thing to do.
There are a lot of really, really funny people in the world and really funny writers, but they have different lanes, and they couldn’t write the same thing. Nora Ephron is not writing Ace Ventura. I love her to death, but she would not have written Ace Ventura.
Craig: I wouldn’t say I love her to death, I mean, she is dead.
John: I know. I can still love her. I love her deeply.
Craig: You continue to love her as she is.
John: Absolutely. I love her after death. She’s great. A question over there.
[laughter]
Great. Let me restate this. She says she’s a very visual person, and she can see everything in the scene, but she’s having a hard time sometimes translating everything she’s seeing down to, these are the words that are going to create the same vision for the reader, and that’s our job.
Craig: That’s the job.
John: That’s the hardest thing about it.
Craig: That’s the job. Now, the good news is you can see it. A lot of people can’t. You can. That’s a huge advantage. Now, be a camera. Rather than just thinking about it all at once, be a camera and think about what the slices that you’re looking at. How close are you, how far are you, and why? In short, be a director. Think about where the camera should be, and think about what you want the Member of Audience to see and feel in that moment, or smell or hear. Then, you might start to be able to relay to us something that helps us recreate it as you want us to see it. It’s very important.
If I’m describing this room, and I know everything in it, I still need to go, I’m going to start on, actually, it says, “Pure as a pearl and as perfect.” If I start on those words, that’s intentional, that means something, and then I cut to somebody who’s eating a tuna sandwich and spilling it on their lap back there, not at all pure as a pearl and perfect, and I understand why. Then, I can see, oh, behind that person, there’s this huge room, and there’s the vault.
You begin to think the order, how you reveal it, what, why, all those good questions. The fact that you can see it is great. Now you just have to actually weirdly decide how to show us less.
John: My answer is probably a little bit different. I’ve written a bunch of screenplays, but I’ve also written books. The great thing about writing a novel is that you are in a space, and you can talk about anything. You can move through time within a paragraph, characters can smell things, you can get inside characters’ heads. In both cases, writing a chapter of a book or writing a scene for a movie, I’m landing myself in their space and I’m seeing what’s around you. At the same time, I’m now in a movie, sitting back, and I’m putting myself in a movie theater watching this thing.
That’s what Craig is saying about being a camera. It’s like, what I’m actually seeing on screen at a time, and that is probably where you need to focus next is, if I was watching this sitting in a theater, what would I be seeing on screen? What things would be coming to me? Because the camera is attention, and where is it directing the reader’s attention, which will ultimately become the camera.
Craig: I think that’s a great final question. Thank you. Thank you all.
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