DUNE: SO MANY QUESTIONS

I watched DUNE over the weekend. I did it the wrong way--on my little laptop rather than in a movie theater. I went to see Bond in the theater a few weeks ago and was a little freaked out about how many people there were and how few masks. So I'm steering clear of the full on moviegoing experience for now--and this film definitely warrants that. It's pretty spectacular visually.

Here's the things about the movie that has thrown me--and I think for today anyway I'm just going to pose the issues, and then maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow. 

First, almost none of the characters has a real story. Paul, the future messiah, most def. His mom, who sort of genetically engineered him to be maybe the future messiah, sure. But beyond that, everyone else is kind of a thumbnail character -- one desire, and no real development. Paul's dad wants to connect with the Fremen. Baron Harkonen wants his planet back. Carmen Sandiego Duncan Idaho wants to protect Paul. Javier Bardem and Zendaya want to be cool enough that you're excited to get to know them in the sequel.

Actually, the Emperor, who we never meet, has a more interesting and complex story in this film than almost any of characters in it. This is not good. None of this is a recipe for great storytelling. 

Also, the movie has some action sequences, but not many, really. And there's something about them that's odd--they're quietly rendered, somehow. It's so different than a Marvel movie or a big blockbuster. It's almost like the action is not that important. Which is weird, because this is a 2 1/2 hour science fiction movie with a sort of the Bible meets Game of Thrones vibe. 

AND the main relationship that the film promises, that of Paul and Chani, doesn't even begin until the end of the film. Meaning, they don't even meet each other.  Meanwhile other relationships that seem central--like with Josh Brolin's trainer or Stephen McKinley Henderon's Thufir--end without even a moment to  say goodbye to them. THESE ARE WEIRD CHOICES. 

Again, not on the surface a great choice.

And yet here's the thing: it's a really enjoyable movie. Truly. I really liked it. 

How is that possible? 

Come back to tomorrow. Let's figure it out. 

MIDNIGHT MASS, DAY FOUR: PROTAGONISTS AND ANTAGONISTS

For me the MIDNIGHT MASS completely locked in that moment in episode two where Riley and Paul have the AA scene. Up until that point the two had been on parallel tracks. They've both just come to the island. They both have strong points of view on God/church, opposing ones. But they're not really in each other's spheres too much at the start. And to the extent they interact, Paul seems to have the upper hand in a way. He's the guy positioning himself to be mentor or helper to Riley, as he is to everyone else. 

But then we get to that AA scene. And it's just the two of them, facing each other, which in and of itself is a way of establishing that these two guys are equals and opposites. The camera work in that scene is fascinating, too--they are almost never in the shot together. It's Paul or it's Riley, but it's almost never the two of them after that initial "here they are, facing each other" opening moment.  (Even the set design of them sitting before the stage, the chessboard pattern on the floor suggests their conflict and its significance to this story. This is THE SEVENTH SEAL, the Knight is playing chess against Death.)

The other thing I love about that scene is that Flanagan has an ace card he hasn't shown before now, and that is that Riley is just as articulate and capable of making a persuasive argument against God's will as Paul has already proven of arguing for it. That's the moment it all locks in, really, when Riley faces Paul down with a counter argument to everything Paul has so persuasively said in the first two episodes. That's when Flanagan tells us, these are our protagonist and antagonist, and their points of view--that God can turn our hardship into blessing, or that we do harm that cannot be washed away--are the poles of our story. 

In a sense he gives Hassan and Bev a similar moment in the school. This time there are other people around, including Erin, who is trying to interrupt, but it's really this debate of two points of view between people literally staring at each other on separate ends of the room. 

It's not exactly rocket science on paper but it's so damn effective as a way of teaching us what we are watching and how to watch it. And for me what makes Flanagan's work with all this really next level is that in the end Riley and Paul will both prove right. People are fucked up, and do bad that cannot be fixed or wiped away. AND God can use our brokenness and our pain: Riley's distrust of Paul's message and confrontation with our capacity for horrors in fact becomes a path of grace enabling him to choose to die rather than harm more people after he's been turned. Which becomes the thing everyone will choose to do in the end. 

The classic good guy/bad guy has one of them right and one of them wrong, one of them good, one of them evil. Flanagan sets up like that, and so we move through the story wondering who will "win".

Knowing he's set us up that way, Flanagan is then able to surprise us. He kills Riley, but then also reveals he and Paul were both right and wrong, both bad and good, both winners and losers.

It's so great.

MIDNIGHT MASS, DAY THREE: HOW TO MONOLOGUE

About halfway through MIDNIGHT MASS--probably in the episode where Riley and Erin talk about death--I suddenly realized this show is FULL of what are effectively monologues. In fact every single major character gets at least one in the seven episodes, and some get three or four. It's CRAZY. Monologues are momentum killers. They're exposition that hasn't even been properly gussied up to look like something else. They undermine the realism of the piece--people do not monologue (or when they do, it is strange and it is NOTED).

Except these monologues didn't kill the show's momentum. They are not expositional (mostly). And they come off as perfectly natural (again, mostly). At the risk of repeating myself ad infinitum on this blog, How the hell does Mike Flanagan do that?

1) He Uses Conflict to Motivate the Monologues

This is the most obvious strategy when doing anything that even slightly resembles exposition--put in a context of conflict. The character has their back against the wall or is deeply provoked and this is them fighting back. It's Sheriff Hassan in the classroom or talking to his son about church. It's Leeza talking to Joe. It's Bev in the same classroom or responding to Fr. Paul's change of heart in the finale or acting really pretty much anywhere, God Bev is such a piece of work. 

It's also some of Fr. Paul and Riley's long responses to each other in the AA meetings--especially that first meeting, which does such a brilliant job of setting them up as the protagonist and antagonist of the piece. It's also his sermons, both in the sense that the later ones take place within the context of us knowing that he doin' bad things, and so there's internal conflict for us there, and in the broader sense that his preaching style is always about persuasion. I am here to overcome your disbelief. This is my argument. 

2) He Has People Talk About Stuff that is Meaningful Not Just to the Story but to Us

You think about the Riley/Erin scene. Yes, they have different points of view, but I wouldn't really say there's a lot of conflict there. They are much more Character Speaks Their Truth moments. And they are LONG, and there are two of them. 

In part I think the moment works as catharsis. We want to hear from Erin after she's lost her baby. We want her to have a moment to deal with that--which is also a moment for us to deal with that. You're much more likely to be able to get away with a monologue if you've previously created a sense of conflict or pressure in the audience that the monologue becomes a way of solving. (Think Riley's dad saying his peace to Riley; that character is so internally trapped any time he says anything we lean in.)

But also Erin and Riley end up talking about stuff that is deep and meaningful for us. God, Heaven, Death--these are topics that most if not all off us think about at some points in our lives. And so I think we're more open to moments where characters stop and do the same. In fact rather than breaking with the reality of the piece it actually fits it. When we have conversations about these topics, they are kind of monologue-y. They have to be. Sharing your point of view takes a sec. 

So many of the monologues in MIDNIGHT MASS are about these kinds of matters. 

3) He Calls on Our Imagination

Even if we both of the above, monologues can easily lose a viewer. They demand our constant attention. The longer you push that, the harder it is. I think of Erin's final monologue--it's her second take on death and the after life, topics I want to hear about; it's also occurring within the context of a conflict--her own death. And yet it's so long. I did drift off in fact. But weirdly that worked to the monologue's purpose, because what I found myself thinking about was that initial idea of the speech that our problem is that we remove ourselves from connection with everyone else, that we are not selves at all, but a part of something with everyone else. I found myself suddenly thinking about people and events in my life from the kind of position Erin invites, and it became a pretty powerful experience for me, even though it meant I checked out of her words for a bit. 

What Flanagan does in this monologue, in the Riley/Erin Talk About Each Other's Death scene, and in a couple others, is he makes sure the monologue includes ideas that provoke our imaginations in some way.  Riley and Erin both talk about their deaths in really specific, interesting and image-laden ways--which allows us to imagine the same.

Fr. Paul's homilies at times work like this, too, by way of scripture. Out of nowhere, really, he'll offer a take on scripture that you didn't see coming, on who Jesus is or what his people are called to, and it turns our heads just as hard as it does the characters in the series. He's kind of a Jedi master of inception; once he hits you with an idea, it's pretty hard to shake. Which keeps us locked in as he talks on. 

4) They Foreshadow What is to Come

This is still a horror series. And so ideally you want everything to somehow build out a sense of dread, anxiety or danger.  Fr. Paul's sermons become more and more terrifying precisely because we are both ahead of most of the characters, and so we know Fr. Paul is dangerous, and at the same time because we are not ahead of him, we're scared. 

Everything Bev says works effectively the same way. We know how freaking crazy she is, and so anything she says we read not as a statement of fact but of purpose and promise. And at the same time, we don't fully know what she's capable of. I think Flanagan was brilliant to have her kill Joe's dog in such an oblique way. By not showing her literally murder that dog--say, shoot it or drown it--Flanagan keeps enough of Bev hidden from us that we stay interested and anxious. 

Even Riley and Erin's conversations about death are these tremendous moments of foreshadowing. Flanagan does not lean into that. There's no spooky music or weird camera angles to alert us to the fact that Oh shit, this means something. He doesn't need to. We're smart enough as audience to either see that two characters talking about death in a horror series is probably going to have something to do with the way that they die; or, maybe better, to not think about their comments until they do die, at which point our minds get blown by how they each get the other person's death/afterlife. Erin becomes one with the universe, and Riley dies loved and not alone.

I feel like I could go on and on about Flanagan and monologues. Seriously, MIDNIGHT MASS is a dissertation on bold writing. 

I'll be back tomorrow with one more idea about MIDNIGHT MASS. 

MIDNIGHT MASS, DAY TWO: KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR CHARACTERS

There's no moment more surprising in MIDNIGHT MASS than the ending. In fact, suprising doesn't even begin to cover it. The ending of episode six, in which most of the entire literally drinks the Kool-Aid and kills themselves, then comes back to life and KILLS EVERYONE ELSE, IN A CHURCH, DURING THE EASTER VIGIL--no, that's not an inadvertent caps lock, I just still can't believe I watched that--is one of the most horrifying sequences I've ever seen on television. You don't come back from a moment like that. 

Except then Mike Flanagan and the cast of MIDNIGHT MASS did. How is that even possible? I'm honestly still wondering. And the fact that show dropped all at once, so viewers could literally go from the darkest of dark nights to a true and blessed resurrection in the course of just a couple hours and still not find it false in any way, only increases the challenge in doing so. 

Beyond all that, my own instinct watching was that the ending would be a more straightforward horror story, with the few survivors either trying to escape or trying to somehow kill 100 vampire Catholics before they could kill them and escape the island. Because that what third acts of horror stories are, right? They're the Chase and the Fight to Survive/Win and Final Girls. 

And honestly, the end result plotwise probably would have been the same as what we got: the two kids getting away while everyone else dies with the sun. 

What differentiates Flanagan's story is that he keeps the camera firmly focused on the journeys of the characters--and especially not "our heroes", who really do undertake a pretty traditional version of the horror third act--but our "villains", the Vampire Catholics. In a way the end of 106 is actually head fake, insofar as it seems like becoming the undead has turned them all into mindless eating machines. But then over the course of 107 we see them slowly slowly returning to themselves--which in a sense was set up in from the very start, with Fr. Paul, who is anything but a mindless beast. 

That journey of those characters from transformation to confronting the monstrosity within them is central to the themes of the series. It's the reason the series opens on Riley killing the woman rather than Fr. Paul coming to town, and also it lies at the heart of their conflict with each other, though we don't know that right away. The ending is a way of saying, Riley is not the exception, Fr. Paul is not the exception, we're all the same. And in facing not only our own capacity for the atrocious but our actual harm-filled deeds and making new choices we find a path to redemption. 

But it's also a choice borne of letting story emerge from character desires and choices, rather than being a thing that happens to characters. And that can be harder a lot harder commitment to keep to in any kind of action films, particularly horror films where the lure of the insane visual and scare jumps and masked mystery villains is just so strong. In fact I'd bet if you go back to just about any horror movie that disappointed you, on some level the problem is going to be that the action overwhelmed the characters, or just very straightforwardly ignored the villains as real characters at all.

For me the great lesson of Flanagan's writing is this: Everyone in a horror movie is on a personal journey, and that journey is not just about survival--or it shouldn't be anyway. And remembering that is the difference between a possibly really great scarefest and a story that rips your fucking heart out and makes you see things differently. 

I got a little behind this week, but I've got plenty more to say about MIDNIGHT MASS! I'll be posting again tomorrow and Saturday. See you then.

MIDNIGHT MASS, DAY ONE: GO WHERE THINGS ARE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE

This weekend I watched MIDNIGHT MASS. If you'd like to see how it affected me IRL, I did a tweet thread as the show basically ripped me apart. Suffice to say, I found it really challenging at times and really brilliant. There are so many things Mike Flanagan and his fellow writers do that just should not work and does. It's basically one long series of magic tricks, and so in this week of Halloween, oh hell yeah we are going to dig into it. 

I'm absolutely going to spoil the series, starting in about one sentence, so if you haven't watched it, you might tread carefully.  It's not a show you want to ruin for yourself, in my experience. 

Okay here we go: 

So the premise of MIDNIGHT MASS is basically that an old priest is willingly sired by a vampire, comes back to his community as a new, young man and secretly starts feeding everyone vampire blood during communion in order to heal and renew them as he has. 

Which is enormously messed up. Like, I've seen pretty normal Catholics worried that they're committing a sin by watching the series. And the reason is, the Eucharist--aka the consecrated bread and wine that Catholics consume during their services--is pretty much the most holy of holies. You do not #!#%! with the Eucharist, in any way. It is the one thing that is held as absolutely sacred. So to have someone substituting in this profoundly disgusting thing, and then on top of it arguing that it's only with that blood that it actually becomes what Jesus said it was supposed to be--it's just really really fucked up. 

And if that's not "bad" enough, the series culminates with an Easter Vigil--the day that Christians celebrate Jesus rising from the dead, again, one if not the most important celebration in the church--during which most of the Catholics in town commit mass suicide in the church, then rise as vampires and murder everyone else there. I don't know, that ending of 106 may be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in a TV show. It's just profoundly upsetting and uncomfortable. 

I'd say 99% of writers would NEVER go near any of that stuff, exactly because it is so sacrosanct, either for them or for others. But Flanagan does, and in a way that clearly understands the taboo and wrestles with it. And it just leads to incredibly thoughtful and provocative writing.

As far as I'm concerned one of the best pieces of advice about writing is to go to the places that make you uncomfortable. The places where you or others are uncomfortable or afraid are almost certainly some important places in your life. And so what you'll have to say will likely be a lot more meaningful, and not just to you. (There's that strange paradox--the more specifically you write about your own experience, the more relevant it becomes to other people.)

This is easier said than done. Even just considering what are the things that I'm afraid of or uncomfortable about can be hard--denial ain't just a river. 

One thing that I find can help is to Keep a running note on my phone listing moments that I feel uncomfortable. Like a running tally of nightmares--good times, clearly. :) But it's the kind of thing that can help you get in touch with where those uncomfortable or scary places are, and generate some new ideas. 

If you take nothing else from MIDNIGHT MASS, Be Brave. Walk into the Terror. 

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR STAR TREK, DAY FOUR: GASLIGHTERS

So on this last day of talking about techniques and writing moves that are characteristic of the STAR TREK franchise, I want to turn to something that they often do (and that drives me crazy), and that is the GASLIGHTER. 

A Gaslighter is an episode in which the protagonist is told by the ensemble that everything he believes is all wrong, or where suddenly everyone believes she is a villain. It's akin to the alternate universe kind of situation in that the normal world is suddenly radically different, with everyone behaving in ways that are so strange as to seem Not Them, but here they're insisting the protagonist is the one with the problem. 

 

They're JJs, really, that is mystery box episodes, where our hero has to figure out what has gone wrong, and we play along at home trying to do the same.

There are plenty of varieties--body snatching, duplicates, mind control, Matrix variations. But there's a lot of consistency in them: the main character is made to think they're crazy; at some point they start to wonder if this might not be true; but of course it's not; and they get pretty tedious to watch, because we know it's all nonsense anyway so there's no real stakes. (Plus, it just gets so old listening to people telling someone they're crazy over and over when we know they're not.)

 

They present as Spotlight episodes, episodes that can focus on just one character, but everything around the heroine is so false--and soon to be fixed--it's hard to take their journey at all seriously.

 

They're also just not great to do because gaslighting sucks. 

So don't do episodes like this, might be one takeaway. That'd be my recommendation.

 

Or the other is, since we know STAR TREK likes these stories, find a way to do one that innovates in some way and offers something that is not terrible. For instance, rather than some sort of scenario that involves alternate or drugged or in some other way Not Themselves versions of our cast, have it be the Real Them that is believing these terrible things now of their fellow crew member. Because that has the potential to have real effects on the ongoing story and relationships. If everyone suddenly believed you were a murderer, it would do huge damage to some of those friendships. How do you work together afterward? Are there some people that view you with suspicion going forward even though it was a lie? What underlying prejudices about race, orientation, gender, class could have allowed them to so totally turn on you in the first place? There's definitely stuff there to mine, stuff that has real world relevance. 

Another version that I've seen STAR TREK do is to have the twist be that really there is something wrong with the main character and they just don't know it. 

Now in general I think there's a lot of problems with this way of going at things. It tends to suggest some gaslighting is okay or justified.  No thank you. 

But here's a version that did kind of work: in DS9 214, O’Brien comes home from some mission and everyone on board seems strange. So of course he thinks they’ve been taken over by something, while they keep insisting everything’s fine. And then as he gets crazier and crazier in his attempts to figure this out,  it turns out he's not who he thinks he is, he's some kind of replicant that believes he's O'Brien. In the end he dies in front of the cast, calling out for Keiko. 

 

And even though the episode has been super annoying, that ending is really affecting. Because suddenly there are real stakes here; this is a lost soul, who no one but us understands. As he's dying the crew is watching and afterwards they're all like Huh, it’s weird, it’s like he had feelings. 

 

YES IT IS, YOU GUYS. 

 

So yeah, if you can find a take which finds a way to approach what seems incapable of real stakes and give it some, you might have yourself a pitch. 

A third idea, that is kind of related, is to have the episode focus on someone we don't know. It's a crew member we've never met, or someone on a planet who is meeting our cast for the first time. And let them either be gaslit by the crew or have them see the crew behaving in ways that we know to be not in character. I think in that situation the tropes that seem generally so tired can work, precisely because as it's all happening we're also learning about this new person and going on a journey with them. It's more compelling because the central character really is part of the mystery--who is this person, and what is their deal? And as an outsider they can also become a fresh perspective on the crew, either for fun or seriously. 

I feel like some of the Reginald Barclay episodes did something like this, and it was so successful he became a part of the bigger STAR TREK universe. 

So, if you're going to pitch a Gaslighter, here are three ideas: Find a Way to Have it Reflect Real Prejudices Among the Characters; Find a Way to Give the Protagonist Stakes; or Use a New Character.

 

NEXT WEEK: HORROR STORIES!

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR STAR TREK, DAY THREE: SPOCK'S BEARD

 
On Monday and Tuesday, I looked at some pretty broad stroke aspects to STAR TREK--character types and themes. 

Today and tomorrow I want to zoom in on two very specific kinds of stories STAR TREK shows love to tell. The first of which is the alternate universe story. In its most iconic format these are the Mirror Universe stories, where we meet other, usually darker versions of our characters. But there are some time travel episodes as well which end up presenting pretty similarly, insofar as the characters are thrown into a world that is not their own. And we have holodeck episodes that again work very similarly, just with the characters playing more specifically in new genres.

Most of these stories emerge out of the franchises's broader interest in social morality plays. Often the Mirror Universe stories come down to "There But for the Grace of God Go I", aka "If things had been just a little bit different I would have been such a different (and harsher) character." In season one of DISCOVERY they spent roughly half the season in the Mirror Universe, and the intriguing thing that came of it was that being there not only showed the characters who they could have become but that some of that was present in them, a great twist. And the universe they returned to ended up proving just as dark in other ways. 

If I'm being honest, in general I find the alternate universe stuff tends to be a bust when it comes to STAR TREK. And I think it's because those episodes try to do way too much in too short a time. Even if you get two episodes (and often they do), it's just very very hard to build a whole universe, develop the alternate history characters and create a compelling storyline that quickly. They can end up feeling a lot more moralizing and/or just plain forced.  

Which is why DISCOVERY gave its mirror universe so much more room to play. And I suspect it's why PICARD season two seems like it's going to be spending its entire second season hopping through time.  If you're going to make the effort to do an alternate universe bit, might as well take the time to do it right. 

If you want to pitch an alternate universe concept, a couple things to think about: 

1) What Can It Reveal About Our Characters: It's essential to these stories that the characters learn something about themselves. In early iterations of mirror universe eps this would come in the form of seeing their alts and how different they were. But for me the more interesting versions are the ones in which our characters themselves are forced to make difficult decisions or see in themselves troubling or surprising things. 

2) What's Something I Haven't Seen Already: STAR TREK really has done it all. So this is a challenge. But that's what makes it an opportunity too. Give me a twist I haven't seen and I'm going to be all in. 

One way to think about this is in terms of genre. Alternate universe stories are often a chance to play in story worlds away seemingly far from science fiction, like noir or romance. What might be some other genres that could be fun? 

How about fantasy--maybe a Harry Potteresque world with magic, or something with ogres, trolls, a quest? (STAR TREK seems so right for a quest story.)

What about an apocalypse or post-apocalypse story? It doesn't have to be the end of the world, either--could be just some sort of weather emergency adventure story.  

What about a James Bond-type--or even better, a John Le Carré--spy/realpolitik story? 

Family drama? Romcom? Conspiracy thriller? Children's story? Or some combination thereof? 

2.5) What's Something I Haven't Seen For My Characters: This is a twist on the last point: What's something  fun that I would like to see these characters/actors get to do that they can't normally do? Like a situation that allows the heroes to be villains, the smaller supporting characters to be put in charge, or the more intense characters to do comedy. 

Put another way: What is my Worf is Actually Funny? Picard in a Sleeveless Top? Or Michael's Mom Figure Wants to Murder the World?

3) Use Our World as a Point of Inspiration: If I were to go through the paper in recent days, what would I find? Stories about a political party and politicians that simply refuse to do the right thing for Americans no matter what, because they want to hurt the other party.  Stories about wealthy billionaires taking people into space. Stories of baseball teams trying to make it to the World Series. Stories of some people continuing to live in fear of a pandemic while others have been long since vaccinated. 

These are all possible topics for an alt universe ep. They're also potential topics for normal TREK episodes. Which highlights one other key element to the alt universe concept: It works on TREK because at its foundations it's still about the same thematic preoccupations. It's just a different way to play in that same field.

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR STAR TREK, DAY TWO: SOCIAL MORALITY PLAYS

The thing that Star Trek is most known for historically is its ready engagement with social issues. Whether it's race relations, colonialism or climate change, Star Trek has always seen itself as a sort of laboratory within which writers can explore modern day social problems. It's really built into the DNA of the franchise, with creator Gene Roddenberry's desire that the show would offer a truly hopeful vision of the future. 

At times it's also been one of the show's weakest links. It turns out, you can't solve racism in 50 minutes. And when you try to insist otherwise your show seems both preachy and naive. 

You can see the franchise slowly learning this lesson, first starting to consider ongoing interstellar storylines in TNG and then basically just creating one incredibly long story in DS9, which is really what you have to do if you're going to wrestle with something like Israel and Palestine or you know, war. 

Today Trek shows are on the surface a lot more fluid and nuanced; while DISCOVERY is clearly the child of the prior series and loves to sink its teeth into complex sociopolitical issues, PICARD can be more of a character study (see: The Title) with jazzy riffs and reexplorations of not just TNG but VOYAGER and potentially the entire pre-DISCOVERY Trek oeuvre.  But it's also clearly looking at things like race relations. 

Unlike its former iterations, it'd be very unusual today to get the chance to pitch an episode of TREK if you're not working on the show. But just for the sake of playing out the idea of writing for TREK, if I were to pitch a social issue-type episode, here's how I might do it: 

1) TOPIC: BRAINSTORM AROUND AN ISSUE

Take a big issue in our world today--say climate change or the pandemic--and then just create as long a list as you can of issues that spin out of it. Don't self-edit and try to fill a full page with simple ideas. 

Climate Change--The end of penguins; can't swim in the ocean; the air changes and makes pets feral; everyone has to take care of themselves; people fighting to live on mountains; bugs become deadly threats; societies purposely going to war or murdering some of their citizens to try and make the planet survivable for the rest. 

DS9 clearly did this with Israel/Palestine and got a ton of great stories out of it, many of which were not the typical stories you read in the newspaper at all, which is part of what made it so exciting to watch.

2) STORYLINE: THINK BABY STEPS

Picking a good idea isn't about finding the most massive one. Honestly from the list above right away I'm excited to write about the end of penguins, something that hasn't really been talked about at all and that doesn't seem particularly significant in terms of our survival on the planet. But to me it somehow seems even worse, it's like the death of simple beauty or hope or wonder. 

But of course you could swing for something much more massive, like societies at war to try and hold onto the resources they need to survive. But even if you do, you still want to think in terms of some one very small and specific result. Discovery is not going to show up and fix a climate change war in 60 minutes. It could very well try, but if it does it's either going to fail entirely (which can lead to some interesting stories about how they think about themselves and their mission), or there is going to be some one very small change. 

If you're truly dealing with an intractable problem, any progress at all should be very very hard. You want it to feel like walking against a stiff wind. And if you do, even just a tiny bit of movement will seem like a huge win.

3)  THEME: THE OLDIES ARE STILL GOODIES

Star Trek has some really fantastic themes that pop up again and again. The Needs of the Many vs. the Needs of the One. Encounters with the Other (and its fantastic sibling, Encounters with the Other You have Imagined as a Monster). Realizations of one's own Monstrosity. 

Those themes pop up again and again not only because they're preoccupations of Trek but because they're just evergreen topics and questions. And as we grow and change as a society, our very understandings of those questions change too. We see assumptions or ideas within them we didn't see before, and so there's new stuff to explore. 

So yeah, never a bad idea to see if you can match a problem you want to explore with a familiar Trek question. 

Another way to the same thing--rewatch some of your favorite Trek episodes, and see what issues they're wrestling with. You may very well find the thing you want to chew on yourself.

SHATNER WEEK!: SO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR STAR TREK

Hi everybody! I'm back after a week in which I kept thinking there's something I was forgetting to do and then having to tell myself, oh right, I took the week off to get other things done. 

I don't know if you caught the news but last week William Shatner went into space. I actually wrote about it for my day job.  And I thought this week I would do a set of posts about patterns/techniques you find in Star Trek shows. If you're as much of a fan of DISCOVERY or PICARD as I am and are dreaming of someday going with their writing staffs where no one has gone before, hopefully this will be for you!

PATTERN ONE: THE GAP CHARACTER

There are some patterns to the show's writing that are pretty obvious, like its interest in moral quandaries. We'll get to talking about them later in the week, but today I want to lay out what I think is the real secret sauce of Star Trek, the engine of story and interest. 

 

Here it is: Star Trek almost always has one or more characters who are either in between two worlds or a complete stranger to existence. Spock is the archetype of this—half human, half Vulcan; also the only Vulcan on a human spaceship, and so both strange to them in his ways and also puzzled and curious by the ways they proceed. There's a gap in other words, between him and them, and building a bridge to cross that gap provides an endless engine for storytelling. He's even given his own hand gesture, which both signals a desire to cross the gap--it's a gesture of blessing and peace--and by its nature as a thing only he does indicates the gap itself.  

 

(When you're thinking about working with or creating a Gap character, it can be useful to play with ways of metaphor-izing a character's gap.  If you can embody a gap, even in something as small as a  gesture, it can create a great shorthand (no pun intended but sure I'll take it). I think that's why Spock's gesture pops so hard for people, actually, i.e. why when you say Star Trek today people do that gesture. Gaps by their nature stand out.  

 

If you're looking for an exercise today, you might brainstorm some ways of embodying the gap in a character of your own. )

 

In TNG, we’ve got Data as the prime example of this, and I think he's perhaps the greatest example in the whole Trekverse. The metaphor behind him of course is Pinocchio, the robot who wants to be a real boy, and again the attempt to cross that gap provides endless story (and also heart) – at least until the movies, where he at times has emotions, and wow, that never seems to go well, perhaps because turning a switch on to let yourself feel things is not something you can easily explore in two hours while your ship is getting blown up. But also, I wonder if the problem is that gap characters NEED that gap. If you take it away by "completing it", they just don't make sense anymore. In fact in my experience they become really uncomfortable to watch, like suddenly we've stumbled into an Uncanny Valley.  

TNG also eventually discovers that Worf is another great vessel for these kinds of stories. In some ways he’s closer to Spock than Data, very much caught between two worlds and proceeding in ways that are absolutely different than everyone else. People like to say that TNG has no real conflict or stakes (and by people I also mean me until I started rewatching). It’s definitely not Picard or Discovery or DS9 in terms of its level of stakes, but there is conflict and risk, and Worf is a big part of it. He’s always caught, and unlike almost anyone else on the show he has lots to lose, pretty much constantly. 

 

The show even found a way to make Picard a Gap character, by having him get captured and changed by the Borg.  In some ways PICARD is able to explore that more than TNG, but it is present there, too, a gap created by what he’s been through that can never be repaired. He says as much in an episode of PICARD, talking to Seven, I think, and it’s quite a moment. One of my favorite parts of PICARD, in fact, is the many times they stop to explore the disconnects and gaps within Jean-Luc, the ways he’s not emotionally available or kind of running away. You would never see that in TNG, and yet it fits perfectly with what we’re shown there.

 

(How bold is it for a show to take the keystone character of the Federation, and turn him into this strange outsider? It's really something. I wish TNG had done more with it, but in some ways it took a more contemporary storytelling approach to allow for that. And PICARD really has done so well with it. Love that show.

 

DS9 had Odo, who ends up being pretty much central to the series as a whole, and also Kira, who has that Worf-like between two worlds thing going on. Sisko, too, will have that between two worlds idea going on with regard to the Prophets and consequently Bajor. Voyager has the Doctor at first--a smaller character plotwise--but then adds Seven of Nine, who immediately becomes central to everything.

Lastly we’ve got DISCOVERY. And at this point I think the metaphor is pretty clear, and as with PICARD, it's the series' protagonist that is the central Gap character. In fact she’s not only a sort of mirror image of our OG Gapper Spock, in between Vulcans and Humans, but she’s this whole retconned character, which means she’s in between two things in a meta sense too, the old Trek universe and the new. That ends up being one of the exciting things about DISCOVERY in general-- the spore drive, Pike and Spock and Number One in the second season – there’s just a lot here that’s half changed, half dancing between the raindrops of the original series. And unlike say the Star Wars prequels, here it’s done with a refreshing impunity. They even give our protagonist a name that itself creates that sense of dislocation – a traditionally man’s name on a female character. It’s brilliant. 

 

In the second season even more than the first, Saru becomes another place for these kinds of stories. The story of his people, oppressed to the point of not really even understanding who they are and what they’re capable of, is really interesting. In a sense the gap engine of his character is his relationship with himself. I’m sure there are plenty of characters in the past that people have looked to as metaphors for sexuality and self-acceptance, but I wonder if Saru isn’t the purest one.

 

Captain Georgiou has now become another fascinating gap character, someone from another universe with different morals and rules living in our own. In a sense so was Jason Isaacs’ Captain Lorca, we just didn’t know it. But in a sense that didn’t work as a gap character for exactly that reason. Rather than living a struggle – which might have been slightly more interesting in the end—he’s just a secret villain.

 

So if you want to write Star Trek, tell a story about a character trapped between two things, or on the outside. It doesn’t have to be one of the characters I’ve mentioned; really I think the best stories of most Trek characters end up built around some kind of issue of gap or Between Two Worlds conflict.  And it's eminently relatable: everyone is in between or out of sorts in some way, and that’s usually where things get interesting.

OFF WEEK

I'm off this week trying to finish up a script and some other stuff. Good luck with your writing. If you're looking for inspiration I highly recommend checking out the Twitter feeds of Jane Espenson--who often offers hour-long writing sprints; Gennifer Hutchison and John Rogers, who have some great threads about writing; and Javi Grillo-Marxuach, who has a link pinned at the top of his page to a TON of writing resources. 

I'll be back next week with more shows and more techniques. 

Write on!

BOND WEEK: DEVELOPING STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS

When I think of Bond movies, "Strong Female Character" is not a phrase that comes to mind. The series is rife with female characters who are only there to lust after Bond or for him to have sex with. In fact the very first Bond film begins with a woman at a poker game who is watching a mostly unseen Bond across the table. Soon after, she ends up in his bedroom, waiting for him, and the visual situation is reversed, everything but her leg hidden and the camera capturing him coming through the door across the room. 

Both these sequences are so visually interesting, they offer the impression that she must be important. But no, she's not. She's just there to show he's that attractive.  He has sex with her and then she's gone.

In other moments more significant female characters are introduced, but no matter whether they begin on Bond's side or against him, in the end they all end up having sex with him -- except for Moneypenny. Even the women who he assaults end up going from fighting him off to "enjoying it".  

But there are some great female characters in the Bond films--and not just in the Craig films, which are in general far better in their writing of female characters. In fact one of my favorite Bond characters is the horribly-named Pussy Galore from "Goldfinger". Yes, she's going to end up with him, and there's going to be a truly painful moment where Bond explains her betraying "Goldfinger" as him "having appealed to her maternal instinct." Ugh. 

But before that horrible but also status quo ending for the character, Galore is just tremendous. She has a great and interesting talent as a pilot, and also a flying business that employs other women. More than that she's got plans, things she intends to do. There's a great scene between her and Goldfinger where they talk casually about these things, and it's striking not only because it's this unexpected quiet moment between the villains, but because Goldfinger treats her as his equal. Just through that one choice, the film grants her a greater seriousness. It's a simple and yet very effective technique to have in your arsenal--Have others treat your character the way you want them to be seen by the audience. 

(Granted, the idea that a female character needs to be considered serious by a man for us to take them seriously is ridiculous. That's a quality of the era in which this movie was made, and also of the Bond series, especially at this time, but the writing technique works regardless. We love Chewbacca more because Han loves him and Hot Priest because Fleabag loves him.) 

Galore also has strong "Save the Cat, but for Villains" moments, like recapturing Bond after he's escaped, or organizing the attack with her pilots. Also, she is completely immune to his charm, nonsensical ending notwithstanding, which is another a fun technique to boost a character--Take your protagonist's compelling strengths and have your new character easily overcome them. It's a form of drafting on the audience's love of our protagonist, really--somehow because we love our hero, we will also love the person who is their true equal or better, even if they're a villain. 

Your Turn

Read through a screenplay, whether yours or someone else's, and just keep track of how other characters respond to one of the leads--and if you're looking a feature, maybe choose a character who isn't the protagonist. See how people respond to one of their allies or enemies instead. And if you find there's not much work being done in this regard, see if you can't find a couple places where that kind of technique could be used.

BOND WEEK: MAKING A COMPELLING VILLAIN

When people think Bond films, I think their standard image of the villains is somewhere along the lines of Dude Stroking a Cat (Blofeld). It's someone with gimmick--he's got an eye patch, or a massive scar, or something else that's kind of cartoonish. 

I get it, in a way--if Bond is your hero, and he's very not-kooky, a kind of Avatar of us, then making his villains pretty much the exact opposite seems like a strong choice. 

As it turns out, the more cartoonish they become--and Dude stroking Cat is very much Peak This for me--the less serious we take them. They undermine the potential intensity of the movie. Early Bond movies don't always care about that. But obviously in the modern era, with a Bond like Craig, that's important. 

(Actually the modern-day equivalent to the camp of earlier eras is once again the Blofeld character in SPECTRE. And he is a bit campy just in his delivery. But more than that he seems far more like a plot device than a believable character. Seriously, after all the investment made in this shadowy organization running everything in the Bond movies, the leader turns out to be a guy Bond grew up with, who's mad that Bond stole his daddy's affection? THAT is high camp. And it doesn't work.)

The best Bond villains, in my experience, seem to be quiet, focused characters on a mission. It's Dr. No, it's Goldfinger, it's Le Chiffre. They may still have some affectation, like Dr. No's weird plastic robot hands, sharks for pets or the nicknames all Bond villains seem to be given. But they are not about that. They have a goal and they are deliberate and patient in the pursuit of it.  

It's really that simple. When the villains are painted like that, undaunted and unphased by Bond, it puts him in the position of having to earn the win. In fact, they can make him seem a little bit foolish or over his head, so in addition to having to fight to save the day, he has to fight to regain or keep our respect. A villain who makes bold choices, is three steps ahead (without having to say so) and unafraid when the hero walks in the room is someone that turns the audience's head. 

These kind of moves are a sort of the villain version of the hero's "save the cat". And it's great to have them. Us kind of loving the villain makes the hero's journey that much harder. 

 YOUR TURN

Who's the antagonist in your script? What are his distinguishing characteristics? 

What about him is going to seduce us into rooting for him?

BOND WEEK: LET YOUR ACTION SEQUENCE REVEAL CHARACTER

The 25th James Bond film comes out this week, also the last film in Daniel Craig's historic 15 year run. And in celebration this week I'm going to look at some great storytelling techniques from Bond films over the years. 

This first one is one of my favorites, and it comes from the opening of the first Craig film, CASINO ROYALE. 

As with many if not all Bond films, CASINO starts in media res. After a brief black and white opening that establishes how James Bond actually became a "00", we cut to Uganda, where Bond is chasing a suspect of some kind. 

The chase has specific stages--really any good action sequence does. A good action sequence, whether a chase or just a fight, tells a story all its own. You can tell when the creative team doesn't understand that or doesn't care, as those are usually the sequences where your mind drifts or things start to feel repetitive. A great action sequence has to do more than just keep upping the level of challenge for the protagonist, though of course it has to do that. It has to vary the nature of the challenge, ideally as a result of the protagonist's own choices. 

I immediately think of Harrison Ford films like RAIDERS or STAR WARS. His characters tend to find themselves in a pickle, he makes some sort of bold response--like shouting and chasing stormtroopers to make them think they're up against superior forces, so as to distract them--and then eventually he finds himself confronted by them, and now he's being chased and fired against. And now he's also dealing with the fast-closing doors that could trap him with them. That's a story. 

One of the things that makes that action sequence so wonderful and endlessly rewatchable is that Han's choices do such a great job of revealing him character. He's crazy, he's bold, he's a little bit silly. 

In CASINO ROYALE's opening, the creative team accomplishes something by use of a combination of character choice and character contrast. In some ways the contrast is the most important part--the Bond chases is absolutely elegant in his actions, working with every possible obstacle to only increase his distance from Bond. He's leaping through window frames and pushing up and over things in his way, parkouring across rooftops and up the sides of buildings, and landing jumps across buildings with rolls that prevent injury and keep him from slowing down. 

Meanwhile, Bond runs through walls. He barely makes some of his jumps, and when he lands he lands HARD. 

And just those choices, especially placed alongside the other man's, tell us so much about Bond. He's not about looking pretty. He has no concern for his personal safety and much grace. He is a blunt instrument and he is 1000% determination. 

I tend to think most great action sequences are not worked out on the page in a script. They're worked out with a director and stunt coordinator in preproduction and in rehearsal.  Which is to say, as script writers I don't think we often need to go blow by blow through such scenes--though some do that very well. 

What's key is that we hit those essential elements, the overall journey and character arc of an action sequence. Just a few key beats like BAD GUY runs up the wall/Bond throws himself off a roof tell the director and actor what they need to know (and can also help them fall in love with your vision of that moment). 

YOUR TURN

Go through an action sequence in one of your scripts, with an eye specifically toward first labeling the key beats of the story--1. A stormtrooper stumbles onto Solo and his friends. 2. Solo creates a distraction, charging after him...etc. 

Then look at the choices your character or characters make in each beat. Do those choices reveal things about the character? Are there ways to polish those choices to make them reveal more?