THE LAST SEASON OF OZARK CONTINUES TO DO CRAZY

Yesterday I was talking about how one of the strengths of the first half of the final season of OZARK is the big bold choices that it gives Jonah, and how those choices end up making us understand him and root for him and also draw out bigger, bolder versions of the other characters as well.

There is one proviso in this way of thinking about character, as far as I can tell. And that is that the big, bold choices need to be justified in some way. Another way of putting it is, they need to be grounded in who the character is and our history with them. Wendy can make the incredible leap of deciding to try and set Jonah up because we've walked with her for three years and seen what she is capable of to protect her interests. Also--and I think this is equally important--the early part of the new season gave us moments where on her own she was struggling to deal with what she had done to Ben. Jonah throwing that in her face is allowed a different level of reaction given what we know is going on with her in private. 

Similarly Ruth's mid-season decision to basically kill everyone (it's the cartel now, but let's just wait and see) is absolutely justified by the fact that her most fundamental drive the entire show has been to protect Wyatt (and also Three, sort of). With him murdered all bets are definitely off when it comes to what Ruth is capable of.

(At this point I'm rooting for her, Jonah and Charlotte to get away while everyone else lies bleeding out. And honestly, I suspect that's Marty's hope too.)

OZARK loves a good crazy character. And when those characters' craziness is justified, it's all good.  But usually there's at least one character that is just plain insane. Darlene in the early going, who said she would do everything in her power to stop the cartel from encroaching on their business and then just keeps creating the circumstances that led to their problems with the cartel. We also had the FBI agent chasing Marty and Wendy and the cartel, who once again kept doing insanely self-destructive things.

This season we've introduced two wholly new characters who are once again batshit crazy in one way or another. We've got Javi, who wants to run the cartel, who once again does just ridiculous things for no good or smart reason, like killing the sheriff or persistently getting in the way of the very drug sales he insists on running. And we've got Detective Rando, who says he's just here to find out what happened to Helen but is clearly there from a story point of view to fuck with everyone and everything. 

Part of the problem with these characters is they're both brand new this season. There is no history within which to ground their big, bold choices. This is especially true with the detective, who comes so totally out of left field. It's very hard in the late innings to justify adding someone that has nothing to do with the ongoing story. It just smacks of writer convenience. A hotheaded young drug dealer who is related to Navarro at least fits into the world of the show. And the show tries to ground some of his craziness in the fact that he seems to have loved Helen and thought Navarro should have killed the Byrdes instead. It doesn't totally work; we've just seen the show pull the Here's a New Crazy Person magic trick too many times. But it's an attempt.  

But the bigger issue is always do the choices seem justified? Do they factor into the characters' desires and interests? And also, how do others deal with the choices? Javi makes a ton of mess and he's never in danger of getting killed by Navarro. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't square with Navarro and more than that it just feels really convenient. Big bold choices that don't create new problems for that character, that aren't genuinely risky, are not actually bold choices at all. They're just obstacles the writers want to set for the main characters. 

Which I get--that's the writer's job, after all. Get the characters up a tree and then throw everything you can at them. But the magic trick is to do that without letting the audience see that's what you're doing. And that's all about justifying choices in the life and intentions of the antagonists doing the throwing. 

(By the way, OZARK has plenty of characters and situations who are great examples of doing this well. Maya's choices in the finale are a case in point. The FBI fucks with her, and she's been completely uncomfortable all along, so she decides to blow the whole thing up and live by her own moral code. It's shocking and enormously risky for the Byrdes, but also for her. And it builds pretty naturally from what we've seen of her relationship with this case and also the FBI.)

OZARK KNOWS HOW TO DO BOLD CHOICES

Last week I finished the first part of the final season of OZARK. And I was immediately struck by one of the show's greatest innovations--it gives Jonah a real story. 

Jonah and Charlotte both have always been sitting there in the background waiting for their moment. Between his relationship with Buddy (and everything that brought) and his tech prowess, Jonah has gotten a lot more time than Charlotte, and I hope the final 7 episodes do for her what these 7 have done for him, because at this point I think of her as almost the show's secret weapon. NO ONE would see her coming. 

But I'm not sure anything has really prepared us for what we've seen in the first 7 episodes of the season, in which he's basically become Wendy's nemesis and the family truth teller. And the way the show has done that so quickly is by allowing him really clear and bold choices right from the jump. 

Consider the things he does in 401: 

1) He gives Ben's ashes to Ruth without telling Wendy.

2) He tells Wendy he knows she killed Ben. 

3) He suggests the crazy new detective character talk to Lisa, Helen's daughter, about what happened to Helen, creating the possibility he will find out the truth. And he does it in front of his family. 

4) He gives Ruth the software she needs to launder the money in her new business, which will directly compete with the cartel. 

5) He tells his parents trying to launder Navarro is ridiculous. 

6) He asks Charlotte to confirm that she would never kill him the way Wendy killed Ben. Charlotte says he needs to grow up. 

7) He agrees to launder Ruth's money. 

It's really amazing how many big choices he makes. And each is a choice that has risks to it, and one that involves standing up to others (mostly his family). And as a result each choice gives us a very clear sense of his desires and a clear direction. This is why big bold choices is so important in a script: it tells your audience who your character is. And the bolder they are, the more committed we as audience become to them. We love the people that really put themselves out there, that put themselves on the line. 

It's also worth noting his choices' variety. Some are physical actions, while others are things he says. Some are very direct and obvious, while others are more slow burns (like giving the ashes away, which Wendy won't discover until the next episode). Many are very much about opposing Wendy; but sounding out Charlotte is also about trying to learn if he's all alone in this family or not. And helping Ruth, while definitely going to piss off Wendy, is also about his feelings for her and Ben. Even while his actions have one pretty clear motive, there's room for other layers, too.

The other thing to notice is how his strong choices actually help not only him but everyone else. When one character makes a strong choice, it can call forth that in others, too. Ruth asks him to join her. Charlotte stands up to him. And most importantly, Wendy more or less loses her mind. The rest of this first half of the season will doing a whole series of things first to try and win him back and then, shockingly, to destroy him. 

Obviously, a character's choices have to be motivated by their situation and desires, or they seem crazy and unrelatable (a problem I'm going to talk about with regard in OZARK tomorrow). But in general, when we can give our characters those big swings, it elevates everything. And most importantly, it tells us who they really are.

ABBOTT ELEMENTARY KNOWS HOW TO RUN MULTIPLE STORIES

Are you on the ABBOTT ELEMENTARY bandwagon yet? If not, you should be. It's a mockumentary-style show set at a poor elementary school in inner Philadelphia, and even though the single cam talk-to-the-camera bit has been done quite a bit at this point, it still feels very fresh. 

(If you're looking for a comparison, think the U.S. OFFICE, but where the protagonist is actually Pam or Jim and everyone else is just as wonderful but generally less insane.)

It's also has some great examples of structuring a sitcom. For instance episode 103, "Wishlist" written by Morgan Murphy, is just 22 minutes long--this is an ABC sitcom. And its main premise is that all of the teachers have been asked to submit wishlists of things they need for their classroom. (Right away, note how strong a premise this is: it gives all five of our teachers a potential story of their own.)

The idea of the wishlist is that local community members will donate what they need, but that does not really work--which leads to our C-story, in which All-Causes-and-No-Common-Sense JACOB is confronted with an awful old printer that is going to be thrown out after it has been donated/dumped. Jacob's story is all about trying to get it to work or have value. It's a perfect story line for him, as it emerges from his central desire to be 100% woke. And it gives Mr. Johnson the janitor room to play, too, as he watches and waits for Jacob's efforts to inevitably fail. 

The fact that this community wishlist idea doesn't really work, our hero second grade teacher JANINE TEAGUES, has decided to try and create a viral video that will turn to the much broader internet community to provide her with what she needs. But she's terrible at it, which gives PRINCIPAL AVA, who has already been established as a communication god, a great supporting role. This is our A-story, and as with Jacob, Ava and Janine's stories once again fall along their main desire: Janine wants to believe she can overcome the deficits of this school and make everything better. Ava wants to be great with all forms of media.

Janine's story dovetails with that of BARBARA HOWARD, who opposes any attempt to go begging for handouts, insisting instead that she'll make do with whatever she gets. Some might call this the B-story, but really there's no quest on Barbara's part. Her story ends up dovetailing into and speaking to Janine's; once Ava succeeds in getting her what she wants, Janine wants to help Barbara too. Again, she's all about trying to make things better.  But now that desire leads to the great further beat in that story where Ava's method involves problematic tactics like emphasizing how old Barbara is and how poor her students are. And then Janine has to fight to pull the video down and try and keep that information from Barbara, which gets harder and harder. Note how her problems are all rooted in her own choices. That's just perfect writing. 

And it leads to this incredibly powerful moment with Barbara which speaks directly to Janine's desire. It's great to get things, Barbara says, but we're here to teach our kids to be strong, to live with they have, not to be embarrassed about what they don't. Again, if you were wondering whether this is the B-story, note that the end of it is really focused on Janine's desire. That's a pretty clear sign really this is all part of the A-story. 

There is B-story, though. Janine notices that substitute teacher GREGORY's classroom has nothing on the walls. This is spooky and weird. She challenges him to do better. 

Gregory's story is interesting. First of all, it's unrelated to the wishlists. It's a smart move; it allows for a completely different kind of story, avoiding any sense of repetition. Also this premise creates the opportunity for lots of gags--each new time we come back to Gregory's room we get the opportunity of a new punchline, as he tries different things. If it didn't end in a deeper and heartfelt place I'd almost call it a second C-story, a runner that's just there for laughs.

And speaking of the ending, it's notable that the resolution is not Gregory doing well as a teacher or realizing he's liked by his students. No it's Janine's affirmation that brings resolution. Because that's his real story in the series: he talks a good game about how long he wants to stay a sub at Abbott, but his answer keeps hinging on his experiences with Janine.  

A couple principles you might draw from this: 

1) As you're thinking of the different stories in an episode, you want to be sure that each character's initial problem speaks to some aspect of their core desire. The failed wishlist campaign brings out Janine's desire to overcome and save (and Jacob's, too).

2) Let the obstacles your characters face be generated by their own choices. It's way more organic and also raises the stakes for them.

3) Having characters be forced to respond to a common situation is a nice way of establishing both their differences and their desires. 

4) At the same time, it's also nice to have an arc in there that's completely unrelated.

5) If you can, try and fool the audience a bit. It's not until the end that we really see that Gregory's story was about Janine not his classroom. Which creates a nice sense of surprise at the end. It's like there was a little gift bag we didn't know we were going to get waiting for us at the end.

RYAN NORTH ALSO KNOWS HOW TO CREATE A WRITING PROMPT

 Saw this online over the weekend from comics writer Ryan North:

It's a great tip. There's nothing like a ticking clock to create a sense of urgency. 

It's well worth reading the thread  that commented on North's tip. Lots of great (and of course funny) examples of watching it play out. One of my favorites: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, but time was running out." Tell me you don't want to read that story right this second. 

Fun writing exercise to start our shorter week (which always somehow seems longer to me): write out the loglines of three projects you're either considering or have already done. And then see what happens if you add North's prompt to the end. See if it gives you any fresh ideas...

SCOTT SNYDER KNOWS HOW TO CREATE A WRITING PROMPT

Scott Snyder is another comic book legend with a newsletter I recommend. He's very invested in the craft of writing; in fact for a fee you can "join" him in a series of classes on writing. I haven't done that as of yet, but I suspect it would be well worth the $7 or whatever that you pay. 

I guess some of his subscribers have been asking him for writing prompts. And so in this issue, he gave one. And I just think it is outstanding. It's all about starting from your fears. 

Here's what he has to say: 

I think the best kind of prompt is to say to you, pick one of your deepest fears. Think of something that really keeps you up at night, whether it's something everyday like public speaking, or it's something deeper, like fear that we're in the last stages of civilization. But something that you worry about for yourself, for your kids, whether it's a fear of heights, a fear of getting murdered, to something like a fear that that you'll never get to say the things that you want to your parents, of fear that there's no afterlife. Whatever it is that you're afraid of in a really poignant acute way, find something that you said, these are my top three biggest fears. And then what I want you to do is try and write a story with that fear realized.

So, for example, if you're afraid of heights, I want you to write a story or start to construct a story about being trapped in the tallest building in the world and the only way out of that is to go even higher or something like that. Or if your your fear is not being able to communicate something to your parents before they die, then I want you to write or start or begin to construct a story about getting a call that your mother, your father, whoever it's about, or both, are in critical condition or are about to pass away and you have to travel to this place or your character has to travel to wherever it is they are to help them or to say goodbye or that kind of thing. And that might be just too right up the middle for you, but it's a start.

What I'm saying is, what I want you to start with is the core heart. I want you to start with the thing that's the hardest, to start with the thing that is purest, start with the thing that you're afraid to look at in some way. Because your process might wind up being different than this, your process might be something where you more slowly wind your way in. And you start with a premise or a plot and you discover what it's about for you as you go. And if that's the way it is for you, that's totally cool, you should do that. But if you're asking me (and I've gotten like at least two dozen requests) for a prompt and you want to see how I think of them, I think of them this way.

I think of prompts starting not from way outside the Venn diagram of what you want to write about premise or plot engine. Instead, I think about it as starting right at the center of that Venn diagram and working outward. What is the thing you want to write about right now? What is the thing that matters to you? What is the fear you have? Things won't change, they can be political fears, they can be personal fears, they can be giant, expansive fears about the future. Whatever it is, try and figure out a way to make your main character confront that thing so that what you're working with is stuff that resonates for you off the page and feels energized, okay? That's sort of a quick version of a prompt in my world.

Snyder's entire run on Batman, in fact, was built from this exercise; he's talked about that a lot, including here. And the run was pretty fantastic.

If you're looking for some motivation during this three day weekend, why not try  Snyder's idea of listing some of your deepest fears and then write a short story that forces a character to confront one of them. I'm going to try and do the same. 

Going where you feel uncomfortable--it's never easy, but often leads to some great stuff.

Have a great weekend. I'll be back Tuesday with more!

 

 

TOM KING KNOWS HOW TO PITCH A PROJECT

Tom King is a major player in the world of comic books. He's written for DC and Marvel and pretty much everything he writes has ended up being a sensation of one kind or another. While he's done ongoing series, most especially Batman, his specialty is 8-12 issue runs that focus on seeming minor characters -- The Vision; Adam Strange; the Human Target; Mister Miracle. And his storytelling with his cocreator artists is always really interesting. 

King and brilliant artist Elsa Charretier recently announced a new comic they're creating on Substack called LOVE EVERLASTING. And as part of the roll out King did an entry about his pitch for the series. It's well worth reading.

Here's his general strategy for pitching: 

My basic structure is always lead with a story: tell the reader what your first issue is, how it sets up a world, how that world gets twisted in a way that demands attention, that hangs off a cliff. Once they’ve (hopefully) bought into that, pull the camera way back and give them a few paragraphs where you talk about your ambitions for the whole thing. That’s it. It’s not rocket science. Hook them with a hook, tell them why the hook is awesome, and get out fast—never more than a page.  

And if you go to the link, you can read the actual pitch, which is astonishingly short, and definitely worth aspiring to. Short and sweet (and clear)--it wins the day. 

(If you go to the site you can find some other pitches, too. I see one for a Loki series King didn't end up doing that's somewhat related to the LOKI TV show.

KING RICHARD KNOWS HOW TO GIVE YOU A SURPRISE ENDING

I've been off this week tapping away on this and that. I should be posting for the rest of the week and then back to normal come Monday. 

Tonight I watched KING RICHARD, the Will Smith-led biopic of Venus and Serena Williams' dad. It's very worth watching just as an example of how to do a biopic. The craft is really clean. 

But the thing that really leapt out to me was the way it ends. Of course there's going to be a big match: this is a sports movie, that's what you do. In this case, Act III is Venus' first professional tournament. She won the first game, and so now she's up against the world champion. 

And there's a sort of twist in that Venus is way ahead when her opponent calls a timeout (or whatever they do in tennis) and just walks off the court for like ten minutes or more. It's clearly in part a maneuver meant to mess with Venus' head (and give Act III some bigger stakes). And it totally works; Venus is completely off her game once they resume, loses the second set and struggles in the third. 

As I'm watching it, I'm assuming of course she's going to win in the end. That's how Richard's whole plan-for-the-girls strategy is validated, after all. If she loses, what was it all for? 

But then, SHE DOES LOSE. And yet it still works--in fact, it works better--because while Richard did have this 78 page plan for the girls' training, as the movie has gone on what we've learned is that the plan is not just about becoming great tennis players but about becoming happy human beings. Time and again we see Richard refusing opportunities for the girls specifically because he's trying to protect them. 

So Venus losing is actually not the worst thing that can happen. In fact, as Richard and Oracene comfort Venus, they provide this entirely different take on the game. This was not a failure, but a massive and incredible success. In her first professional tournament she took the world champion to the final set, and she did it with incredible poise. They've never been prouder, Richard tells Venus. 

It's a fantastic example of that Holy Grail of screenwriting, an ending that is completely unexpected and yet in its own inevitable. From a script perspective it's Venus winning that would fail to validate Richard's system. It's in her failure that we see what's actually important. (By the way, Saniyya Sidney as Venus is just fantastic. She and Demi Singleton and the three other women playing their sisters are all marvelous.)

And the thing that makes it especially stand out is that writer Zach Baylin has found a way to separate the unexpected and inevitable into two separate moments. It makes the a-ha we get from the parents' scene with Venus so much more thrilling because we didn't see it coming.

I take these three questions as takeaways from KING RICHARD: 1) What is my character's ultimate goal? Richard's is not tennis. It's happiness for his kids. Tennis is actually in a way the distraction, the thing Baylin wants our eye on so he can surprise us. 2) How does the ending of my feature answer that ultimate goal? 3) Is there a way to put a twist on that ending so that the answer is somehow a surprise?

Not every script can land as well as KING RICHARD does. But the biggest part of the challenge of that is not coming up with a big twist at the end. No, it's about sanding away at our sense of our character's ultimate goal--the thing that's guiding them from the beginning--until it's as clean and clear as possible. 

When that's the case, their choices all along the way and the options for the ending become so much clearer.

ENCANTO KNOWS HOW TO PIVOT THE STORY

I find the midpoint of a script is a hard nut to crack. Getting to it in a timely fashion can be hard--that first half of act two can go SO long. And once you're there, I find it can be hard to pivot correctly. 

For me, that's a big part of what the midpoint is: a pivot. Something very significant happens which takes the character's journey and quest in a direction that feels distinctively new. In a lot of my scripts, what comes after the pivot can seem a lot like what came before. And that's a big problem. It means I'm probably getting repetitive and losing the audience. When you change direction, if it feels organic to the story it can be a real jump start for the audience, something new and also hopefully something unexpected, something that shakes them free of whatever confidence they have about where things are going. 

So yeah, you want that midpoint to really mark a new endeavor. In ENCANTO, this is the moment where Mirabel learns that Bruno had a vision of her destroying the family. She spent the prior half of the act just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and now it's gotten much more personal and worrisome. Having the midpoint become a more specific problem/dilemma for Mirabal, it's such a great choice. The stakes are higher and more personal. In a sense that's the trick of the midpoint; you want to shift gears, but you don't want to lose focus on your protagonist. That's how it's different than the start of the act, really; here you want to zero in harder on them. You want it all to get even more personal. 

But ENCANTO is the rare film that figures out how to use that idea of a pivot not just at the midpoint of the act, but at the start of what I'd call each of the four main units, which are. 

MIRABEL INVESTIGATES WHAT IS UP WITH THE HOUSE; FROM LUISA SHE LEARNS ABOUT LUISA'S SECRET FEARS (CREATING PROBLEMS) AND ALSO GETS TOLD TO CHECK OUT BRUNO'S TOWER.

MIRABEL INVESTIGATES THE TOWER THEN HER FAMILY'S EXPERIENCES WITH HIM AND LEARNS HE PREDICTED SHE WOULD RUIN EVERYTHING.

MIRABEL TRIES TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP THE PREDICTION AND ENDS UP LEARNING FROM BRUNO THAT SHE CAN ALSO SAVE THE FAMILY IF SHE HUGS IT OUT WITH ISABELA.

MIRABEL FIXES THINGS WITH ISABELLA BUT ENDS UP FREEING HER IN WAYS THAT ENRAGE HER GRANDMOTHER, WHICH CAUSES THE HOUSE TO SHATTER AND SHE CAN'T SAVE THE MAGIC CANDLE. 

Each of those units follows from the last, but at the same time they're each pretty different--in the first Mirabel is like a detective with her family; in the second she's like an archaeologist (and also again with her family, but different family members); in the third she meets the infamous Bruno and fights to convince him to tell her a way to save everything; in the fourth she's on her quest proper to save everything. There's very much a sense of the story constantly changing; just as you pin it down it becomes something else. 

In fact at times you almost feel like you'd like to spend more time in a unit, particularly for me the quest proper. It all moves along so briskly. But leaving them wanting more or not quite being able to pin the script down, these are good things. Far better that than the opposite.  

For me being able to do this is a lot about having a great outline, and thinking of the script in terms of distinct chunks of which each act is made, the kind of thing I laid out yesterday.

Not every script can pivot quite so much between units, have that shaggy dog sense a bit without the audience going what exactly is this I'm watching. But when you see someone nail it like ENCANTO does, man it is satisfying.

 

 

 

ENCANTO LETS ITS PROTAGONIST MAKE BIG, RISKY CHOICES THAT HAVE CONSEQUENCES

Today's piece on ENCANTO is about two of the most rules of good writing. First, your protagonist has to make choices. I can't tell you how many scripts I read (okay, and write) where the protagonist doesn't ever really do anything. They react perhaps, but they don't  make significant choices. Compelling stories are like ping pong; you cannot just volley. You have to take chances. 

It's not just about keeping our attention either. We learn who a character really is and what they really want through their choices they make. If they don't make choices, we can't connect with them. We can't understand them. 

Mirabel is constantly making choices. Some of them are small--I'm going to set up these little decorations outside all the doors. Some of them are large--I'm going to go into Bruno's Forbidden Tower of Scary. Every time, they tell us something about her. She needs to tell people she's fine with what happened. She wants to help her family. And every time, they make us invest in her again. The bigger the choice, the more we root for the character (assuming the choice makes sense for who they are). 

But the other half is equally important: The choices need to have consequences (which lead to new choices). In the very best scripts, in my opinion, characters make choices which lead to new problems which lead to new choices. And ENCANTO really fits the bill here, too. Think of Mirabel's journey--her desire to figure out what's going on with the house leads to her interrogating her sister Luisa. And that conversation allows Luisa to share burdens she's told no one about, which is great. But it also shakes her up, such that she starts to lose the ability to access her physical strength, which gets Mirabel into further trouble. Similarly, going into Bruno's tower leads to her discover the prediction about her, which leads her to question her family about Bruno, which leads to more complications, including meeting Bruno himself. 

When I'm writing a feature length piece I like to break down the script into roughly six or seven 15 minute units.  I try to figure out what does my protagonist want at the start of each unit; what choice will they make to reach that goal; what complications will ensue, and then what new problem or goal do they have, which becomes the start of the next unit. It definitely helps me to think through a script in these terms of choice and consequence. 

ENCANTO ALSO KNOWS HOW TO HIT A LOW POINT

At the end of the second act of a script, you want to hit that low point as hard as you can. You want to have that sense that all is lost. 

("And then," one of my favorite screenwriting teachers used to say, with a big evil smile on his face, "at the top of Act III you want things to get even worse." It's actually a great piece of advice.)

ENCANTO does the low point really well--the spirit candle goes out, the family all lose their powers and the house literally collapses on top of Mirabel. Literally the last act of sentience of the building is to save her life. 

But the thing I really love about the film's low point, the thing that makes it so horribly low, is that it happens despite the fact that Mirabel succeeds at what Bruno's prediction demanded. She actually did forge a genuine moment of connection with her sister Isabela, by giving Isabela the chance to finally share the burden she has lived under her own life. The moment is actually the crystallization of Mirabel's "power" per se, which is to help her siblings confront their burdens and lay them down. 

The sisters hug, as Bruno predicted they needed to, the house gets better--it's all good. Then Abuela shows up and shatters everything. 

In part the low point is so effective because we don't see it coming. We've been told it'll all be fine if Mirabel connects with Isabela and then it isn't. In other hands that could seem like a cheat on the writers' part, but we've already seen that Abuela is a huge problem in this family, so the fact that she would show up here and ruin everything actually makes sense. In fact it seems necessary; the only route to fixing this family goes through her. 

Also, we've seen that Bruno's predictions tend to have a dark twist to them. Even the good predictions, such as that Isabela will get everything she dreams of, is really her nightmare scenario. So it has that unexpected and yet inevitable sense that you always aim for.

Mirabel also fights so hard to stop everything from falling apart once it's begun. And at every step once again the script gives us the sense that she just might succeed. She's able to climb Casita as it collapses. She grabs the candle as it's about to go out. As the house collapses around her it also saves her and the still-lit candle. And then despite all that, it still goes out. 

The harder a character fights for something, the more invested we are in their success, and the more crushed we are by their failure.

Instinctively as audience we know that all has to be lost before things can get better. But even so, ENCANTO does such a great job of continuing to make us think she can pull it off, has her fight so hard and continue to succeed despite the odds, when it does all go south we really are right there with her in the ruins.

ENCANTO KNOWS HOW TO INCEPT ITS AUDIENCE

I watched ENCANTO over the weekend. There's some really great story techniques to talk about.

Right at the start, our protagonist Mirabel has her coming of age ceremony, which in her family is the time she's supposed to get a magic power to help them help their community of refugees who have found a haven in the mountains of Central America.

But it turns out she got diddly and squat. And now it's years later and the next member of her family, her little cousin Antonio, is having his ceremony. And she's this very upbeat, generous character who is absolutely fighting every instinct in her toward self-pity or self-recrimination--which is super winning. Having your character behave in a way contrary to what they think or feel is so often a compelling choice.

And we've got this slow build to Antonio's big moment, over the course of which we get to see lots of people in the family nervous and worried, including little Antonio himself. And Mirabel is very much in the mix of it all, wearing that brave face of hers so well. 

But then when Antonio goes to his magic door and opens it, in fact it glows just like it's supposed to and it turns out he's been given the power to be friends with animals. And we get this super fun extended sequence where the whole community comes into his room, which is like a whole kingdom on the inside, and he's riding a tiger and there are toucans and a million other animals, and it's all super cool. 

Not once in that sequence do we cut back to Mirabel, to see how she's "dealing with this." And it turns out we don't need to. The film has done such a great job of making us feel for her--again, by having her be so upbeat and brave--that we carry her with us into that moment. Everything we see Antonio able to do is  tinged with the sadness we feel for Mirabel. 

There's a lot of things you can pull from this, but I think the main one is that as writers we are Inceptors, planting ideas in the audience's head. If we do that task well early on, they will take those ideas and run with them (aka do our work for us).

STATION ELEVEN KEEPS ITS TRICKS FRESH AND ITS CONFLICTS STRONG

 

Episode 107, written by Kim Steele: Kirsten, who in the present day has been poisoned, travels in her delirium back to the beginning weeks of the pandemic and living with Jeevan and Frank. It's a way of telling the Whatever Happened to Frank story in a different way--which is interesting, in that the series already cuts back and forth between past and present in a meaningful way. We don't need Adult Kirsten in the past. 

But what that moment gives us is a chance to meet an adult Kirsten that is not FIGHTING FOR/IN CHARGE OF/PROTECTING THINGS. For one hour she just gets to sit and hang out with her younger self as things happen and enjoy the time she had with Jeevan and Frank. The two watch, they give each other advice. The show has serious conflicts underlying both Kirstens' stories--we know at some point Frank is going to somehow die, and Big Kirsten wants to help Li'l Kirsten avoid it; meanwhile Big Kirsten is nearing death herself. Those conflicts are important; they keep the episode from going flabby or flat. This is not just Fun with Kirstens; there's stuff at stake. 

There's a great insight there. Fun with Kirstens is a super fun idea, and really emotionally satisfying in and of itself. But an ep without significant ongoing conflict and stakes is like dough without yeast. It may rise for a while, but inevitably it's going to cave in on itself. 

Having said that, the other lesson that I really take from the episode is about consciously working to put a character in situations that allow other sides of them to emerge. You've got a type A go getting hero character? Great. What's a situation where they can't be that, or where they might behave differently? I know, let's put her in a situation where she has to let her younger self take care of her, where there's no work to be done, and she can just delight in the life she had.

In part this is about deepening or leavening the character. In part it's about keeping the audience engaged. You keep playing the same trick and the show gets old. You need to mix things up. And in both cases, the end result is us loving the character even more. 

It's interesting, it also changes how Big Kirsten proceeds going forward. When she wakes up she stops trying to fight or outwit the Prophet and becomes his ally. It still entails all her Type A hero skills, but used totally differently. Really, she becomes for him what Li'l Kirsten was for her. 

I could go on and on about that episode. Maybe it's just me but I love a moment where an adult and younger version of a character get to interact. There can be great comedy, but there's also an opportunity for such healing and reconciliation. Our future self can become the sibling or parent we needed. And we get to see our past in a new way. It can be so beautiful.

STATION ELEVEN CRACKS SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare is like screenwriter catnip. We all want to find a way to weave his stories or even his language into our work. And for good reason; guy's got chops. 

But a lot of the time, especially on TV, it comes off pretty clunky. Your best bet is to use Shakespearean plots and themes, but definitely stay away from the language. And even then...I think the problem is, how do you do in a way that isn't just a stunt? That's the thing, right? I love the Episode that Is Unlike any of the Other Episodes episodes. I think a lot of viewers do; they often end up being some of the boldest and most memorable episodes of a show. 

But the only way they work is if they stay grounded in the rules and characters already established. TED LASSO can have a Coach Beard episode that is completely weird and crazy because they've established that is who he is. Yes, it's not normally how the show works, but it's okay, because it still fits. 

How do you do that with Shakespeare? It's not easy. The clearest way, which STATION ELEVEN sets up from the beginning, is to have a troupe of actors. So the performance is actually a performance. 

But then the question is, so what? Why am I watching Shakespeare in a show about wandering a post apocalypse? What's the relevance? And it's really interesting to watch what the show does with that. The first time, in episode 102, Kristen is doing Hamlet and as she's delivering this grief-stricken monologue, we see remember how she learned as a child that her parents had died. So the present performance becomes a way of expressing the pain of her past. 

The finale is even more interesting, and the scenes are absolutely a must see. Both before the Prophet agrees to perform the role of Hamlet, when he's with his mother, and then again on stage with his mother and Clark, the situations are perfectly matched. The Prophet absolutely is Hamlet mourning his father, his mother desperate to reconnect with him, and Clark as Claudius understood as the villain who betrayed them. And part of what makes it so brilliant is that until then we were never fully let in on the fact that Tyler (the Prophet) is grieving his father. So not only do the scenes lock into place emotionally, they add an element that is new to us. 

What makes them sing, though, is that they express exactly what each of these characters is feeling and has been unable to say. If I had to offer one sentence about how to do Shakespeare well in a TV show or movie, it would be that: Have the emotions and situation of the play enable the characters to express things that they have been unable to do. It's just exquisite writing from Patrick Somerville.