Screenwriting Tip : “Earn this.”

When it comes to a scene where a character makes a critical choice, it’s imperative that you — as the writer — have earned that moment.

I’ve been paid to write 30+ movie and television projects for every major Hollywood studio and broadcast TV network except ABC… which is why I do not watch ABC.

[Rim shot]

Over the years, I have participated in hundreds of script notes meetings. During that time, I’ve noticed how certain buzz phrases make the rounds of the Hollywood development community.

For example, a Warner Bros. executive once began a meeting with this comment about my latest script draft: “I like the melody, it’s just some of the notes which need work.”

Clearly something she picked up along the way over cocktails with some of her fellow execs. It comes off as a cool way to make the writer feel good before ripping the script apart.

Another time in a meeting at Paramount, an exec said of a scene in my script, “I like it, but could you make it 30% funnier?”

I blinked and thought, “30%? Not 35%? Not 40. Just 30%.”

So much development jargon and catch phrases, many of them with little value to the story-crafting process.

But there is one which absolutely is worthy its weight in virtual goal.

At a meeting with a Disney exec, he said of a key moment in my script, “The character, what he does here… I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense for the character. You haven’t earned it.”

In drilling down into the scene in question, I saw it was a solid note. The Protagonist had been given a choice, but the decision they made did not have sufficient motivation to make the scene land.

Good development note: Have you earned it?

This is a critical question we have to ask about any scene… any moment in which a character makes a choice and acts on that choice.

Is that choice authentic to who the character is and where they are relative to their psychological state of being? Have we laid the emotional groundwork so that the character’s actions feel true to who they are?

If not, the scene will suffer from what I call writer’s convenience. That is, instead of feeling like it’s the character making the decision, it will come off as something which the writer made happen in order to move the plot forward.

THIS IS A HUGE STUMBLING BLOCK!

For if a character acts in a way to cause a script reader to say, “I don’t buy it,” that stops the story dead in its tracks.

Nothing which comes afterward means anything because you will have lost the reader.

In other words, you haven’t earned it.

Do you remember this scene from Saving Private Ryan? After surviving the Normandy invasion, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) had received orders from United States Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall no less to take eight men, locate Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), and bring him back to safety. Why? Because Ryan’s three siblings had all been killed in action. Ryan, the only remaining child in the family, was to be shipped home to console a grieving mother.

The journey of Miller and his troops is a harrowing one in which each man risks his life to another man’s life. The squad is pissed at having been assigned this errand as it has nothing to do with defeating the enemy, to them a seemingly meaningless gesture which only serves to put them in harm’s way.

It all leads up to the big Act Three set piece in which Miller is mortally wounded in an engagement with German soldiers just before a squadron of P-51 “tank busters” arrives to wipe out the enemy forces.

There is a moment where Miller lies dying. Private Ryan is there with him. Miller pulls Ryan close and says this:

Earn this, James. Earn it.

Every single time a character makes a choice in a script you write, you should hear the dramatic voice of Captain Miller a k a Tom Hanks in your mind as a reminder that you must have done sufficient character work to justify the character making the choice they do.

Otherwise… writer’s convenience.

This is a development catch phrase which has real merit. Make sure whenever you work with your characters in a scene that you’ve earned what they do and how they act.

Earn this.