THE EVOLVING SCRIPT PRINCIPLES

of Tony Tost

1. Suspense is tension. Surprise is release. Both are necessary, but suspense is more
fundamental -- it can provide structure and create momentum. Surprise weakens the more you
use it. Suspense can strengthen with use. (Hitchcock)

2. The drama is not in the dialogue being spoken. The drama is in the desires and goals
underneath the words. If the characters don't have specific desires or goals, they can say many
interesting things. But it won't be dramatic.

3. Drama in a nutshell: what happens next? (Mamet)

4. "This scene happens, and then this next scene happens, and then this next scene happens"
might work for a narrative. But “and then” doesn't work for drama. Instead, it needs to be either
"this scene happens, therefore this next scene happens" or "this scene happens, but then this
next scene happens to complicate it." (Every Frame a Painting)

5. Every scene is about one thing. A scene about two equal things will come across as a scene
about nothing. Other shit can happen in a scene, but it has to have one dramatic goal and drive.

6. Every scene should belong to one character and be felt through that perspective. The other
characters need to have goals and perspectives of their own, but a scene should have a single
point of view strong enough that the viewer can project him or herself into it (to experience it
viscerally and not just intellectually). A scene with two or more equal points of view will come
across as a scene with no point of view at all.

7. A dramatic scene has three acts: a beginning (the cause), a middle (the action), and an end
(the consequence). Except scenes usually work better when you take out acts one and three.
(In a properly structured script, those causes and consequences will end up being in the prior
and following dramatic scenes.)

8. The perfectly written dramatic scene can be told completely visually, without dialogue.
Screenwriting is telling stories in pictures, not filming dialogue. And even a well-written dialogue
scene should make dramatic sense even with the sound off. If the writer doesn't write drama
visually into the scene, no amount of camera positioning or heavy emoting can compensate for
it. (Gilligan, etc)

9. When possible, make the scene's protagonist's goal/desire/emotion be something physical

the protagonist’s scene partner can play. The husband doesn't just feel a desperate sadness: he
wants his wife to hold him. (They can play this.) The grandmother isn't just scared: she wants to
get the scary teens to get off her porch. The goodhearted deputy isn't just concerned: he wants
the scared girl to look elsewhere so she can't see her father's dead body. The protagonist's
words and actions (and the actor's performance) can then be directed at getting the other actors
in the scene to achieve that playable goal.
10. Don't mistake a character being victimized for that character somehow being interesting.
Pain by itself doesn't make a character dramatically compelling. But, what a character does with
that pain can be incredibly compelling.

11. An emotion gets more exciting when it gets more precise. General ecstatic joy or general
sadness or continuous anger is vague, often annoying. Joy about a cup of coffee (Twin Peaks)
or sadness about ducks leaving a swimming pool (The Sopranos) is very interesting.

12. The purpose of dialogue is not to be impressive, but to be revealing.

13. Lead characters need to appeal to both the understanding & the imagination. Their actions
and motivations should make sense, but they shouldn't only make sense. There needs to be
some core of mystery to them. Their inner life and drives shouldn’t be dictated only by their
present circumstance.

14. The characters should experience clear throughlines of desire (the sustained pursuit of
some exact goal). But for the audience, this throughline shouldn’t be a straight line, but instead
a roller coaster of anticipation, revelation, suspense, and (occasionally) surprise. Forget about
the audience's experience of the story and the script gets boring and muddled and self-
indulgent. Forget about the character's experience and inner integrity and the script gets
incoherent and cheap.

15. Sometimes the truth of an emotion can be expressed in its apparent opposition. If you want
to show that someone's alone, stick him in a crowd. If you want to show that someone has
murderous intents, have her speak politely.

16. Focus on moments, not moves. (Whedon)

17. For each episode, summarize the A and B and C stories accurately in a single sentence
apiece. If you can't, the storylines may be too vague to work dramatically. (They may move the
plot forward and/or have cool moments, but by the end their full shape won't be felt.)

18. People don't change. They get revealed. (Success doesn't change people. It reveals them.)
Create layers and masks for your main characters. What mask do they show their spouse?
Their coworkers? What happens when their spouse shows up at work and begins chatting with
those coworkers? What mask does your character wear then? What situations trigger forth
layers they want hidden from sight?

19. When planning stories keep two questions in mind: a) What's going on in this character's
mind right now? b) What is this character most afraid of happening? The more you can make b
happen, the more exciting and tense the story becomes. (Gilligan)

20. Raising the stakes doesn't mean shoehorning life-or-death situations into your script like a
deranged Michael Scott pulling out his gun over and over again in an improv class. The most
interesting dramatic stakes are when a character's self-identity is at stake in a story. These are
often life-or-death situations, but not always. Don't confuse one for the other.
21. Read your dialogue out loud. Repeatedly. What looks good on the page often sounds like
crap when said aloud. Your characters are composing at the point of utterance (i.e., talking), not
repeating something someone typed once upon a time. Simpler is usually better.

22. We tend to get invested in characters less if we like or sympathize with them than if we
understand them more fully than the other people in his or her life. We could forgive Tony
Soprano almost anything. Partially because Gandolfini was the greatest lead actor in TV history.
But also because we saw him at home, at work, and at therapy, we understood him better than
Carmela or Christopher or Dr. Melfi or even Tony himself. We saw every version of him and they
were all interesting and inter-connected.

23. The first draft is always bad. If possible, even if you have a draft you love, let it sit for 24 to
48 hours, then re-read it before sharing. (It's never as good as you think it is and you don't get
bonus points for how quickly you can produce mediocrity.)

24. Don't assume the audience or reader is invested in your characters, your writing, your story,
or you. Make the characters and story so inescapably gripping the audience can't resist them.
It's not enough for your script to be "good enough" or "professional quality." It has to be so
undeniably compelling that the people who read it want to attach themselves to it in order to see
their own careers and fortunes rise. If it's not compelling enough to do that, revise. Or, more
often, try again. (If the car doesn't have a badass engine, polishing it won't help.)

25. If Leigh doesn't love it, it's not good enough. But if Leigh does love it, stick to your guns.
(That one just applies to me.) (But find your Leigh.)

26. Stories ride on desires. Someone actively wants something. By and large, this can take
three forms: 1) someone is searching for something they don't have; 2) someone is trying to
keep or protect something they already have; 3) someone is trying to get back something
they've lost.

27. Don't tell variants of the same story in an episode. If a lead character is on a quest, don't
have the other lead characters be on quests. Give them a different kind of story, perhaps a more
contained or stationary story. If one lead character is trying to protect something, have the other
lead character try to acquire something. If one lead character is being external and violent, then
have the other be more internal and nuanced.

28. TV isn't a narrative art. It's dramatic. That means you're not just figuring out plot points of a
story. Instead, you're trying to create a feeling, the second-by-second sensation of being in the
grips of a great fucking story: “oh God, what’s going to happen next?" This means creating a
sense of suspense and anticipation in the viewer as soon as possible and purposefully
manipulating it until the episode or season or series is over.

29. The characters are arriving in every scene from somewhere else -- either physically or
emotionally or psychologically. And they should be propelled by the scene to somewhere they
wouldn’t be propelled by if the scene didn’t exist. If the scene doesn't propel the characters
forward in a specific new direction, it's probably not necessary.
30. A story can become monotonous if the tension is constant. (Mackendrick) So it's necessary
to find your script's rhythm of tension, build-up, suspense, surprise, and relief. But those
moments of relief need to deliver something new and essential. (Think of the four men in Rio
Bravo sharing a song while waiting for the inevitable gunfight, a moment’s camaraderie that lets
us experience the unspoken sense of community the men are fighting to protect.)

31. Every scene should be built around conflict. Most often, this is conflict between characters.
But very occasionally, it can also be conflict between a character and their outer environment.
Or their inner nature. Or even a conflict with the viewer's previous understanding of them.

32. End the scene when the impulse for the next consequential action is made clear. “The end
of a scene should include a clear pointer as to what the next scene is going to be,” Alexander
Mackendrick.

33. Network notes and the necessities of plot and backstory will all push you towards using
language as a window, revealing the clear contents of your characters’ hearts and minds. But
remember: language is very rarely used as a window. It’s usually used as a shield, or a weapon,
or a distraction, or a mask. Use language as an index of the character’s heart and mind in a
dramatic situation, not as simply a vehicle for his or her mere thoughts and facts.

34. On a page by page basis, a script isn’t a story. It’s drama. At its end, a script is a story and
has a shape. But as it unfolds, it’s drama, and drama is a feeling. “Drama is anticipation mingled
with uncertainty,” Alexander Mackendrick. Scene by scene, you need to create new things to
anticipate, and new causes of uncertainty.

35. TV budgets can’t afford spectacle and TV schedules can rarely pull off a convincing action
set-piece. But TV can provide characters, relationships, and great reveals. A great reveal can
drive an entire episode, or even a season, of TV. But they need to be built into the design, and
earned, and properly paced. When planning a season of TV, think about what 3 or 4 reveals
throughout the season will make a viewer think, “oh shit, this is a game changer.” Then structure
and build the season arcs around those reveals so they have integrity as well as surprise.

35. Triangles make for an interesting dramatic shape, even within a scene. If two characters are
having a conversation or an argument, what’s a third element that can be introduced to the
scene to provide tension and unpredictability? A sleeping baby? A mistress hiding in a closet
that the other character doesn’t know about? A laptop with incriminating evidence on its screen
just out of a character’s field of vision? (When Mangold was making COP LAND, the great “you
blew it!” scene b/w DeNiro and Stallone was flat while filming it. During a break, Mangold
decided to introduce the sandwich for DeNiro’s character to be fixated on while Stallone is trying
to talk to him. Suddenly, the scene had a new shape and came alive. If an essential scene is
flat, try to find its sandwich.)

36. Two monsters are less scary than one monster. Two big bads are less interesting than one.
“Two elements of suspense are half as suspenseful as one,” Alexander Mackendrick. Two
reveals and two cliffhangers are less exciting than one. Aristotle: one dramatic tension should
dominate the story. Other dramatic tensions should complement and inform the dominant one.