So I have read - oh gosh - a thousand scripts? Fifteen hundred? I have no idea anymore, I've stopped counting. These days I take it easy; I don't read all that much, maybe 3 to 4 scripts a week. And more than ever, I realize the value of having another pair of eyes on a script. What to me is obvious - a weak complication, two-dimensional character or front-loaded script - to you is a nagging mystery until I point it out. Because after spending so much time with one script, you can't see the forest for the trees. And I don't blame you.

The only thing I have that you don't have is perspective and a thousand scripts under my belt. I have not stared at your script day in and day out for six months. I have not lived with your characters. I am like a doctor. I sit your script down on the exam table and I look at what's there in the here and now. And it might hurt juuuust a little. Close your eyes if you don't like needles or a whack on the knee. But I always send my patients back home with a lollypop and a smile.

It takes a lot of courage to go to the doctor. We all want to get a clean bill of health. But people come to The Script Department because they have a weird itch, limp or rash and they don't know why. We all want to hear we're going to be fine and that there's nothing we have to change or worry about. We all want to hear that if we take the doctor's advice, we WILL win the marathon or gold medal. But the doctor can make no guarantees. Only diagnose and send you home with a prescription.

If I had to name the most common script problems I see, the problems I point out over and over and over each week, I would have to say The Charmin Effect.

DIAGNOSIS of the CHARMIN EFFECT
Soft character arcs, soft premise and soft structure.

What does "soft" mean, exactly? It means that there's too much subtlety in whichever element. As we are all aware, in real life, things are often complex and multi-layered and things almost never resolve neatly. Complications and reversals can land on us like a ton of bricks or they can accrete over time. In real life we muddle through our problems and we are quite good at not allowing anything to force us to change. Some of us literally never change.

In the movies, however, audiences crave resolution, for one thing, and they need to see things writ large. Now, of course there is a difference between character arc in a movie like THE SAVAGES and in a movie like THE MUMMY; you have to service your genre appropriately.

Soft premise, soft character and soft structure - these things are all related. It's all the same problem. Not going BIG enough. Put it another way: not enough going on in the premise to warrant a whole feature script, passive main character and complications and act breaks which don't move the story forward in a significant way. This all combines to create a boring script, or the BOSH script - bunch of stuff happens. Kiss of death, my friends. Flat line on the monitor.

CAUSE
A soft premise is the result of fear of conflict not really thinking the premise all the way through. Writers get stuck in their heads sometimes and tell a story which has mild emotional and usually autobiographical interest to them but not to anyone else. A woman inherits a house from her grandmother and learns that like her grandmother, she loves photography. Wha-? Movies are about conflict. Major conflict. Movies are uncomfortable and filled with tension. In real life most of us avoid conflict like the plague. But the movies are centered on it. Writing a script is a time to scrap being polite, proper or careful. Movies are conflict.

Newer writers are too easy on their characters because they model them too closely after themselves or people they know. But your character is not you or a friend - a character is a symbol that represents Jealousy, Power, Innocence, Betrayal, Justice or Heartbreak. Writers are often loathe to be too hard on their characters. They like them too much to give them a meaningful, active flaw. They start them out pretty nice and they wind up nicer. Characters must have an arc of change and they can't wind up changed if they started out pretty okay in the first place. Something has to be majorly amiss in your character on page one. Not a little amiss like they are shy and want a date. That's boring. We all want a date. Go. Bigger.

Soft structure is bound, hand and foot to soft premise and soft character arcs. You cannot separate these three elements. If you're too soft on your characters, the turning points and complications will be soft too. Your pages will just blur in to one another with nothing significant moving the story forward. And you wind up with a script with the consistency, color and flavor of oatmeal instead of a script with the consistency, color and flavor of paella.

THE CURE
Don't avoid conflict - seek it out. Take the gloves off. Don't be so polite and so careful. Writing is a down and dirty occupation and don't let anybody tell you any different.

Write down your premise line. Do you have an antagonist? A crux of CONFLICT, major turning points and a big sacrifice or choice the main character will have to make? Stare at your premise line. Is it going to get anyone outside your immediate family excited? Does it have a hook and a unique concept?

It takes courage to Go Big in your script. Writers are afraid to really think bigger and sometimes they are too lazy to do the work. That's right, I said it. Too lazy. Where is the backstory for your character? Where is the outline for your script? Where is the killer logline that you should have worked out before you started writing the script? Laziness, timidity and a loathing to really put your characters through the wringer is the reason that the word "soft" would apply to so many scripts.

I know most writers don't have the access to read a thousand scripts in order to gain the perspective that lends a person. But you have the Rouge Wave and a million other resources. Ask yourself if you're really writing about conflict, change and catharsis. Not kind of - but truly.

Watch movies that are in any way similar to your script idea. Push the pause button when you think you spot a major complication. Look at the timer on your dvd player - notice that it's right about 10, 25 and 50 minutes into the movie that these things happen? Gain some cajones, Wavers - are you writing about conflict or are you writing about CONFLICT? Are you being too easy on your main character? Is your premise SERIOUSLY worth several million dollars to make? Who would the audience be for this movie? You and your family? Or millions of people all around the world?

Writers who are unafraid to really go there - whether in the premise and in the execution or whether that means going to the doctor to find out how they did - are writers who have a million times more chance of actually having a writing career than a writer who is stuck in his or her head, too timid and too vacuum-sealed to get outside perspective and to push their characters harder and further than they thought possible - or nice - or convenient.

It's up to you whether you take the cure. We are not all getting in shape for a sprint here, that's the good news. This is a marathon. So you've made some mistakes. So what. It's never too late to get it together so you can really compete with the thousands of scripts that flood into Hollywood every single day.

Bigger, better, faster, more. It's the way of the movies.

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In yesterday's Rouge Wave, my colleague PJ answered a question about hooks, catalysts and inciting incidents. I just wanted to add my two cents. First, we have to acknowledge that there are some terms that get bandied about in Hollywood and in screenwriting that are assigned different meanings. Some screenwriting books call the inciting incident the "catalyst" others call it the "call to adventure". Kids, it's the same thing: it's your page ten(ish) moment in which the world you've quickly, cinematically and compellingly set up, gets a stick in the eye. Uh oh, as PJ's mom astutely says. What's wrong? What will they do? The apple cart is upset.

In YUMA, Christian Bale's barn is burned down.
In JAWS it's on page one, actually, the night-swimmer gets chomped.
In JUNO, it's the positive pregnancy test.
In NORTH BY NORTHWEST it's Cary Grant's abduction when he's confused with the wrong guy
In RAIN MAN it's when Tom Cruise finds out his father died.
In THE SIXTH SENSE it's when Bruce Willis gets shot.
In JERRY MAGUIRE it's when Tom Cruise gets fired.
In PIRATE OF THE CARIBBEAN it's when the necklace hits the water.
In INDIANA JONES THE LAST CRUSADE it's when the archeologist says he's found the holy grail.

The hook, however, is related to the inciting incident but actually, is a stand alone term. I wrote something about the hook almost exactly one year ago on the RW and I am reprinting it here. I just don't think I can top the way I explained it before.

***

One of the first things an agent, manager or executive will ask of your material is “what’s the hook”? You may have wondered what the heck that is. The definition seems to vary by person but the upshot is that the hook is something about the script that is centrally very simple, very cool and very original. There are many different types of hooks but here are some likely suspects:

Character hook: James Bond, Shrek, Austin Powers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Bonnie & Clyde, Psycho, Batman, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, When Harry met Sally, Clueless. Think of this as the "you talkin' to me?" category. Movies that carry a character hook are movies in which the central character is so unique that movie-goers remember that particular character for a long time, quoting him or her, etc.

Plot hook: The 6th Sense, Identity, Gattica, Jaws, Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Saw, Speed, Terminator, The Island, Jurrasic Park, The Ring, Purple Rose of Cairo, 28 Days. Think of this as the "I see dead people" category. Movies that have a plot hook are movies that have a central plot or plot twist that we have literally not seen before; a giant shark terrorizes a town, two gay cowboys have a love affair, a bus that will explode if it goes under 60mph, a video tape that if you watch, you'll die 7 days later.

Cinematic and craft hooks: Memento, the Matrix, Crouching tiger, Jesus' Son, Trainspotting, Sexy Beast, Pulp Fiction, The Ring, The 5th Dimension. Think of this as the "bullet time" category. These are movies that have a really unique look or narrative methodology that we have not seen before. A stylized look, CG effects, super-saturated footage, jumps in time; but more than simply a look or a narrative style, the execution is intrinsic to telling the story. It's not frosting; it is a delivery system without which the story wouldn't be the same.

…You'll notice some titles appear under more than one category. True enough. If you can get your script to carry all three hooks? You are golden. But that's hard to do. That said, writers should strive to come up with a hook, that I can tell you. Because having a hook is golden, my friends, it will move your script from the bottom to the top of the stack, it will get you meetings and it might even get you sold.

Don’t despair if you don’t feel as if your current script has a hook. Don’t shoehorn absurd hooks into your coming-of-age drama by making the main character a Siamese twin – just to be different. Let the hook come to you in an organic way. But remember this: coming-of-age, romcom, horror, thriller, fantasy – whatever the genre is, seriously every story has already been told. So how can you set your script apart? By lending to it your unique voice and by looking for creative opportunities to make a familiar story paradigm different enough in its details to provide unique entertainment. Audiences crave that which they are familiar with – there are genre expectations without which your movie will not succeed. It’s not always the what – it’s the how.

As you work through your idea, ask yourself: when an agent, manager or executive asks you what the hook is – what will you say? If right at the moment, the answer is a fish-eye stare, that’s okay. What opportunities lie within your story to create a unique hook? You may have to cast about for awhile to find something that really works but the rewards for you and for your script can be huge; fish or cut bait, Wavers. Aspire to create a hook that will net you one big, drooling executive - and a WGA membership card.

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