Elf Analysis: Buddy’s Internal Journey

(SPOILERS: Elf)

 Last post I discussed the external journey of Buddy the elf in Elf (written by David Berenbaum). Today I want to discuss Buddy’s internal journey, often referred to as the character arc. It is a little difficult to identify Buddy’s arc in Elf because his personality at the end of the movie is much the same as it was in the beginning. In fact, it took me a little thought to identify the internal journey.

I’ve made the point in the past that good stories should change the character internally – if not, they aren’t really very significant in the character’s life, and if that’s the case why are watching the movie? So is Elf not a good movie? Or does it work in some other non-traditional way?

The internal journey grows out of the character’s need, and last post I said Buddy’s need is to believe in himself. That’s set up in the beginning when he can’t meet the work demands of the other elves and judges himself “a cotton-headed ninny-muggins.” And it pays off in the end when Buddy is the only one who can fix Santa’s sleigh. But perhaps “believe in himself” was not the best way to phrase what Buddy needs. More useful is to say that Buddy needs to accept himself. In essence, Buddy needs to not change.

This is a bit unusual, but if you think about it, it’s really just an example of one of the three forms I’ve identified of the interplay between want and need: Buddy’s need is to realize he has the wrong want. He wants to fit in. He needs to accept that it’s okay that he’s different.

So though it may not be immediately obvious, Buddy is changed by the story. He goes from wanting to be like everyone else to accepting that he can fit in by being who he is. And that is, in fact, dramatized in the story.

The not-fitting-in part is obvious during the status quo section – Buddy is too big for the elf world, he can’t work as fast as the real elves, etc. In the first half of Act Two, Buddy finds he doesn’t fit in well in New York. In the second half he has trouble fitting in with his family. He even tries to change to make Walter happy – donning a suit, for example. All without success, leading to Walter kicking him out at the Act Two Turning Point.

In the aftermath of the Act Two Turning Point, Buddy says, “I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.” But then at the Epiphany Santa tells Buddy he’s the only one who can save Christmas (by fixing the sleigh) and Walter finally tells Buddy he loves him. Buddy realizes he is valuable just as he is. And then in the denouement we see Buddy happily married to Jovie and with a baby, interacting warmly both with his adoptive father at the North Pole and his biological family in New York.

So Buddy does have an internal journey. But I would also say the movie gets more of its emotional depth out of how Buddy changes others with his unique spirit.

This is particularly true of Walter. He goes from a workaholic who ignores his family and doesn’t care about anyone to a loving father who sacrifices his job to keep his family together. Walter has the biggest arc of the movie.

Jovie, Buddy’s love interest, also has an arc. At the beginning of the film she tells Buddy she’s just trying to get through the holiday season. Later we learn she’s showering at the store because her water has been shut off. We also see her spending Christmas Eve by herself watching TV.

We don’t actually know that much about Jovie, but we can infer from these clues that she is beaten down and having a rough time in life. And we see how Buddy’s unfettered joy and wonder cheers her up. At the end of the movie, she’s the one who takes it upon herself to revive the Christmas spirit in the crowd of New Yorkers – something we couldn’t imagine her doing when we first meet her.

This story matters to Buddy because he starts out unhappy and ends happy. But perhaps in this case the real reason the story is worth our time is not so much how the main character changes but how he changes the other characters.

In the next post in this analysis I’ll dig a little deeper into how the internal states of the characters and their arcs are dramatized, one of the biggest challenges for a writer of film.

The Structure of Elf

(Spoilers: Elf)

Last post I looked at the conceptual decisions writer David Berenbaum made when scripting the movie Elf. Now I want to explore the structure of the movie, but from the point of view of how it grows out of these conceptual decisions.

The main character of Elf is Buddy. This may seem obvious in hindsight, but there was actually another potential choice: Buddy’s biological father, Walter. Walter goes through the biggest arc of the movie and makes several critical decisions. And Elf is similar to a type of movie where a seemingly crazy outsider comes in and disrupts the main character’s life, ultimately causing them to be a better person. (Examples would include Anger Management, written by David Dorfman, and What About Bob, Story by Alvin Sargent & Laura Ziskin, screenplay by Tom Schulman.)

So actually making Buddy the main character is a bit unusual. But it’s a smart choice because Buddy is the one who’s a fish-out-of-water in this premise. I’ll take a more full look at Buddy’s character in the next post. For structural purposes, though, the important thing is that we identify Buddy’s want and need within this story. These will determine the external and internal storylines respectively and keep Buddy as the main character.

We should first look to the premise: this is the story of Buddy the elf looking for his father in New York. Ah ha – he wants to find his father. Not bad, but Mr. Berenbaum decided this is a story about family, not a search. So it’s not about finding his father, but rather winning his father’s love. (His need is to believe in himself, but I’ll deal with that more in my next post when I discuss the internal journey.)

For a story to be dramatic the character needs big obstacles. If Buddy finds his father and his father is happy to see him, then it’s all a little too easy, isn’t it? So Mr. Berenbaum decided that Walter should be an unloving guy, a bad father even to the son he does know – in the language of Christmas, he’s on the naughty list. That’s the primary obstacle.

(The major secondary obstacle also grows naturally from the premise: Buddy is a fish-out-of-water. He will have difficulty navigating New York. But this is secondary and we want our structure to come from the main character facing the primary obstacle.)

So given this conceptual foundation we should be able to determine organic structural beats. Buddy is a Christmas elf so his status quo is living in Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. We know Buddy wants to fit in so his dilemma must be that he doesn’t fit in. The Catalyst is when this dilemma is crystallized for the audience.

Q: What would best crystallize this dilemma for the audience?

A: Buddy learning that he’s actually human. And that happens about twelve minutes into the movie.

The Act One Turning Point may be a little trickier. It should be when our character is locked into the story, the point of no return. They must resolve their dilemma or suffer the consequences. In Elf, Buddy sets out to find his biological father, expecting to find a home where he will be accepted for who he is. The Act One Turning Point could have been when he sets out on his journey, but remember, this isn’t the story of a search, it’s the story of winning his father’s love.

Q: What would lock Buddy into the story of winning his father’s love?

A: His father refusing to accept that Buddy is his son. And sure enough, when Buddy shows up at Walter’s office around twenty-five minutes in, Walter thinks he’s crazy and kicks him out. Buddy now has to win over Walter or be doomed to unhappiness.

Next comes the fun and games section of the script. This is where the premise of an elf in New York is explored, with all the action at Gimbles. The next big structural beat we need is the Midpoint, a high point that should mirror the ending. Since, based on the conceptual decisions, we know the ending ought to be happy, we should ask:

Q: What victory could Buddy achieve that brings him part way toward his goal?

A: Walter could accept the fact that Buddy is his biological son. And this is what happens about halfway into the movie.

Mr. Berenbaum also wisely raises the stakes here by having Walter’s wife invite Buddy to stay with them, and by having Walter get in trouble at work. This gives him new material to develop as we approach the Act Two turning point. And we determine that beat by asking…

Q: What’s the worst thing that could happen to Buddy in the context of this story?

A: He’s kicked out of his human family. And sure enough, after Buddy ruins Walter’s meeting, Walter tells him to get out, that he wants nothing more to do with him.

Now we’re in Act Three. We see the aftermath of this event – Buddy loses hope. Now we need the epiphany, the thing that will show Buddy how to ultimately succeed.

Q: What does Buddy need to succeed?

A: He needs to believe in himself. And this happens when Santa tells Buddy that he trusts him to fix the sleigh. And shortly thereafter Walter finds Buddy and apologizes and tells him he loves him.

But we still need the big climactic resolution. We’ve already determined we want a happy ending. And since this is a Christmas movie, someone really ought to save Christmas, and that someone should be our main character. But we also need this resolution to relate to our main storyline. The way we find the resolution is to ask:

Q: How is Buddy’s dilemma resolved?

A: Walter accepts him.

But what represents acceptance? Walter’s already said he loves Buddy. But actions speak louder than words. Mr. Berenbaum wisely uses the Christmas spirit to test Walter’s acceptance and dramatize that it is real.

Buddy is full of Christmas spirit; Walter consistently rejects it. So the way we know Walter really accepts Buddy is when he sings along with the crowd at the end. And Mr. Berenbaum then found a way to have this action save Christmas by establishing that Santa’s sleigh is powered by Christmas spirit. Walter’s transformation gets Santa flying again. This is a good example of how it’s not just a matter of figuring out the correct structural beat, but figuring out how you’re going to dramatize that beat.

There you go, the structure of Elf. Not terribly complex, but it does have a nice cohesiveness that comes from the fact Mr. Berenbaum grew his structure organically from his underlying conceptual decisions.

Here’s an interesting thought experiment: what would Elf's structural beats be if Walter was the main character? Do you think that movie would work as well as the one they made?

By the way, I’m curious what people think of this approach to analyzing structure. Was it helpful? Informative? Confusing? Please let me know in the comments section.

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Conceptual Decisions in Elf

(Spoilers: Elf)

In the spirit of the season, I’ve decided to spend a few posts analyzing Elf (written by David Berenbaum).

Normally when I – or most other screenwriter guru types – analyze a movie, we start by diving right into the structure. However, lately several of my students have been struggling with structuring their screenplays because they haven’t really figured out the bigger conceptual ideas.

It’s really hard to know what the story structure should be until you know what the story is really about. How do you make the decisions as to what the Act One Turning Point or Midpoint are? Too often we begin the discussion of how-to-write assuming that the writer has a fully fleshed out story concept. But seldom do stories just spring to mind fully formed.

So I want to start by looking at some of the big conceptual decisions Mr. Berenbaum made. Of course I have no idea how he went about his idea development process. But even if we can’t say exactly how he made his conceptual choices, identifying those choices will demonstrate the kind of things you need to figure out in your story before you can properly break the structure.

Let’s start with the logline: Elf is the story of a human raised as an elf in Santa’s workshop who goes to New York to seek his biological father. That’s the high concept idea, the thing that sells the movie. And it suggests a lot – it gives us a good sense of the character’s external journey and a hint at where the internal journey may lie.

Again, I don’t know how Mr. Berenbaum developed the story. Perhaps he first had the idea of an elf in the city. Or a human raised by elves. Or maybe the whole premise came to him all at once. Regardless, it’s important to note that there are actually two big ideas here: 1) a human raised by elves, and 2) that character searching for his father. I find that most really good concepts are actually two big ideas put together.

Here’s an interesting thought experiment: What if the story was simply about a human raised by elves – if it left out the part about going to New York. Imagine what that movie might be. Can you imagine a good version? Did you have to add a different second idea?

Let’s consider what underlying concepts Elf’s logline suggests. First, it’s a fish-out-of-water-story times two. We have a human who is out of place in the elf world, and then an elf who is out of place in the human world.

Second, it’s about family. Buddy (the human/elf in question) is looking for his father. This dovetails nicely with the fish-out-of-water idea. Buddy doesn’t feel like he belongs at the North Pole, so he’s seeking out his human family. And, given our fish-out-of-water angle, he shouldn’t fit in well there, either.

Third, this is a Christmas story, so it ought to take advantage of the mythology of Christmas.

Now may be a good time to bring up genre, tone and rating. There are several ways one could take this concept. It could have been done as a raunchy, R-rated, anti-Christmas comedy (like Bad Santa). Or it could have been done as a G-rated, sentimental children’s adventure (like the Rudolph TV special). It might have even worked as a straight-up romantic comedy, but that would be fighting the concept. The filmmakers of Elf chose to do a PG-13 all-audience broad comedy.

So that decision influenced how they addressed the underlying conceptual elements. The fish-out-of-water element obviously has great potential for humor, and based on the tone/genre/rating choice, that humor ought to be broad, goofy and largely inoffensive. In terms of the family element, the tone would suggest a happy ending where Buddy finds a family. And in terms of the Christmas element, we would expect a positive angle celebrating Christmas as a time of love, joy, optimism and hope.

And sure enough the movie delivers exactly those things, achieving a tonal and thematic consistency. Now the structure should start to grow organically out of these conceptual decisions. I’ll look at how that happens in my next post.

Note that these conceptual decisions are the ones I encouraged writers to make in my post titled, “What Kind of Movie Is It?”

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Not According to Plan

SPOILERS: (Aliens, Little Miss Sunshine)

What are your plans for the weekend? What are your plans for the holidays? What are your plans for the script you’re currently writing?

Chances are you have an answer to those questions. We make plans all the time. It’s the only way we get anything done! Your characters should be making plans as well.

Over the last month I’ve read several scripts that suffered from lethargy and/or a feeling they were too episodic. The underlying cause was that the main characters were failing to make plans. They were reactive to events rather than driving the story. Giving the character plans keeps them active and gives the story forward momentum.

But remember, things should never go according to plan.

That’s one of the key ways to create drama and twists. The character makes a plan but then something goes wrong. In fact, often it can help to work backwards. If you have an idea of something befalling the character to make their situation worse, have them plan on a completely different future. Often this means creating a scene of preparation.

For example, in the middle of Aliens (story by James Cameron and David Giler & Walter Hill, screenplay by James Cameron) Ripley and the soldiers discover all the colonists have been killed by the aliens. After they fight their way out of the alien hive, they stop for a scene of aftermath that becomes a scene of preparation. In this scene, Ripley suggests they just nuke the entire installation from orbit – “It’s the only way to be sure.” After some debate, the soldiers decide to do just that and summon their shuttle to return to the ship.

However an alien has climbed abord that shuttle and it immediately crashes, derailing the characters’ plans before they even begin. Time to make a new plan. They head to safety in the housing complex.

So why devote screen time to a debate over a plan that doesn’t even make it to the first step? Why not just have them move to the housing complex? Besides revealing things about the various characters through debate, the nuke-them-from-orbit plan sets the audience up for the twist of the shuttle crash. We’re pointed in one direction and then blindsided by the turn of events. This is an example of the preparation-in-opposition technique of heightening drama.

If things do go according to plan then it will seem too easy. We want to see our beloved characters struggle to achieve their goals. That’s what makes good drama. Consider Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) – how interesting would the movie be if the family just hopped in the car and drove to California as they planned? What makes that movie dramatic is the car breaking down and grandpa dying and the cop pulling them over with time running out. In fact, it’s when things don’t go according to plan that the character is forced to grow.

If I might humbly suggest an exercise: Consider your current script. What are your character’s plans at the beginning? When do those plans go awry? What are their new plans? When do those go awry? If you find a spot where you can’t identify your character’s plan, maybe you should have them make one. If you find things going according to the character’s plan for more than ten pages, maybe you need to have something go awry to heighten the drama and force character change.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what the character’s plans should be, consider what they want. What’s their goal in this story? If you have trouble identifying that, stop what you’re doing and figure that out immediately!

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How to Write Love Stories

(Minor spoilers: Along Came Polly, Sleepless in Seattle, Notorious, The Fighter, Sweet Home Alabama, 50 First Dates, Wedding Crashers)

Love stories are common in film. They are the A plot in romantic comedies, romantic dramas, and often in melodrama. They are the B story in many films in other genres. And they are surprisingly difficult to do well. But there are some principles that you can use to make sure your love stories are strong and dramatic.

They’re Meant to be Together

The first thing you need to do is get the audience rooting for the two characters to be together. We need to understand why this particular person is right for our hero and vice versa or it won’t feel like there’s much at stake in the romance. Too often movies rely on the fact there will be two attractive movie stars in the roles. Or in an action movie with a romantic subplot, the love interest may be the only female in the film so of course the hero will fall for her. But that’s hardly compelling.

The trick here is that each character should fulfill something the other character needs on a psychological level. One common version of this in romantic comedies is the uptight guy who needs to loosen up and the free spirited woman who needs someone to ground her (Along Came Polly (written by John Hamburg) would be a good example).

The deeper these psychological needs, the better in my opinion. Though it’s very popular, I’m not a big fan of Sleepless in Seattle (story by Jeff Arch, screenplay by Nora Ephron and David S. Ward and Jeff Arch) largely because the reasons given for the characters to be together are pretty superficial. We’re to believe Annie is meant for Sam mainly because she peels an apple the same way his deceased wife did? The devices used to indicate the romantic rivals are wrong for our movie stars are similarly shallow: one has allergies and the other has an annoying laugh.

On the other hand in the classic Notorious (written by Ben Hecht), Alicia needs someone to believe she’s good at heart while Devlin needs someone to awaken his dormant emotional side. Devlin sees Alicia for who she really is – someone with a strong moral core despite her reputation, and Alicia’s passion brings out Devlin’s emotions. The result is one of the most romantic movies ever.

But Something Stands in the Way

In real life when two people are attracted to each other they generally start dating and are very happy. But for drama we need obstacles. This can take two forms: internal and external.

External obstacles are things like a rival suitor (see below), social convention and competing interests. Social convention is a tried and true obstacle but is getting harder as society becomes more progressive. These days mixed race and mixed class romances are more accepted - good for humanity, bad for screenwriters. Arthur (written by Steve Gordon) is an example of a movie that uses class differences as an obstacle to the romance. Going the Distance (written by Geoff LaTulippe) uses competing interests as an obstacle – in this case career goals that force a long distance relationship.

The Fighter (story by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson & Keith Dorrington, screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson) demonstrates a more unique external obstacle. In this case, Micky’s mother fears losing influence over him. She opposes his romance with Charlene because Charlene encourages Micky to do what’s right for him even if it means disappointing his family (his need). So the family fights back.

Internal obstacles come from the character needing to overcome a psychological flaw to have a successful relationship. Maybe it’s the womanizing hero who needs to give up his bad boy ways, or the workaholic who has to get his priorities straight. In Notorious it’s Devlin’s stubbornness and loyalty to his job.

You can have multiple obstacles to the romance, but it’s usually smart to have one primary obstacle so the movie stays focused. If you’re working in a romantic genre, often the external obstacle is the A story and an internal obstacle will be the B story or vice versa. This adds complexity without diluting the focus. For example, in 50 First Dates (written by George Wing) the A obstacle is Lucy’s unusual form of amnesia, while the B story is Henry’s fear of commitment.

The Love Triangle Problem

One of the most common obstacles is the alternate suitor – often known as a love triangle. But there’s a pitfall here. You want to have the audience rooting for one suitor over another so many writers make one good and the other bad. But if the choice is obvious and our hero or heroine doesn’t see that, we start to lose respect for them. In Wedding Crashers (written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher) for example, Claire is with Sack who is such a jerk we start to wonder about Claire. Do we really want John to end up with a woman who would date a guy like that?

One solution that has become cliché is the rival cheating on the love interest. In this case the hero and audience learns of this but the love interest is oblivious. This can work, but if the rival isn’t really good at hiding his philandering we’ll again wonder about the love interest’s intelligence.

This is where using the character’s need can solve your problem. This is what we did in Sweet Home Alabama: Melanie needs to reconcile with her past to be truly happy. Andrew represents a fantasy life that ignores her roots. Jake represents her roots but also her aspiration to something more. Jake is the right person for her, but first she will have to overcome the guilt and fear she has about her past. She will have to be honest with herself. Neither guy is “bad,” but one is right for her and the other is not.

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Find the Drama

One of the most important things you need to do when developing your story is to locate where the drama of the idea is. This can sometimes be harder than it seems.

First, I should probably define what I mean by drama. There’s an old saying: “Drama is conflict.” This is true – people getting along and being successful isn’t very dramatic.

Therefore, movies with villains have an obvious source of drama. Much of the conflict is going to come from the battle between the hero and the villain. But if that’s all you do the movie will be superficial and uninvolving. It could even get boring – despite intense action scenes!

So drama has to be more than just conflict. It has to affect character. This is part of what I’m getting at when I discuss the need to tie the internal and external character journeys together. Conflict only becomes dramatic when it affects a character we care about on an emotional/psychological level. Therefore I think it’s better to define drama as the emotional compelling conflict in your story.

Look at this summer’s biggest hit: The Avengers (story by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon, screenplay by Joss Whedon). The obvious conflict is between the Avengers and Loki. Structurally, the dramatic question is, “Can the Avengers defeat Loki?” That’s important, but it’s not why this was one of the most well-liked superhero movies.

The filmmakers realized that the real drama of the movie was between the superheroes themselves. The richest emotional conflict came from the clashes between the self-involved, arrogant Iron Man and the selfless, self-righteous Captain America. Then they added the paternalistic, stubborn Thor and Bruce Banner’s reluctance and suspicion. The more compelling question for the audience was whether these characters could overcome their differences to defeat a common enemy.

Writers most often fail to identify drama when they get seduced by an arena, a character or a theme. An arena is a story world that may be inherently interesting, at least to the writer – a post-apocalyptic future, the fire department, illegal immigration. These are good arenas to find a dramatic story, but they are actually not in themselves dramatic. The same is true when you come up with an interesting character – it’s a good starting point, but you need to place that character in a dramatic story. Theme usually becomes a problem when the writer feels passionate about a specific idea – faith, the environment, the nature of power – but hasn’t found the proper story to explore that theme.

True stories can provide particular pitfalls. Real life is messy and disorganized. When you hear a true story that interests you, it’s important to be able to locate the drama so you can organize the story in a way that’s narratively compelling. This will make it easier to cut out those details that don’t support the drama.

Take the semi-autobiographical movie Almost Famous (written by Cameron Crowe) about a high school kid who gets the opportunity to go on the road with a rock band. It has a great arena – rock and roll. It has an interesting character (William) – a sheltered, exceptionally intelligent kid with a passion for music. And it has a tried and true theme – coming-of-age. But none of that guarantees drama. It would be possible to write a very boring version of this movie where William just follows the band from town to town observing their shenanigans.

Fortunately Cameron Crowe is a talented writer and located the drama in his own experience. First of all, William has a job to do – write a story for Rolling Stone – and the most important member of the band is not cooperative. Ah, conflict! Plus, in order to write a good story, William has to be “truthful and merciless,” but he worships these rock stars. Internal conflict! The drama of the story is whether William will overcome his hero worship, crack his unwilling subject, and deliver a successful article.

Identifying the drama is particularly important to the pitching process. I often hammer home the idea that “plot is the enemy of pitching.” One of the problems writers often have in a pitch is that they treat every plot beat as equal. As a result, they end up burying the drama under piles of minor detail. Or, they spend an inordinate amount of time describing their arena or their theme without locating the dramatic elements that make any of it matter.

Once you’ve identified the drama inherent in your story, you next have to figure out how to show it to the audience. In other words, you have to dramatize the drama. This requires creating scenes of conflict between characters where the outcome determines the direction of the story. It’s not enough to have the characters simply talk about the conflict. We have to see it. (Read my post on Show, Don’t Tell for more thoughts on how to do that.)

So whether you’re developing a pitch or a screenplay, spend some time locating the drama of your story. Where does the conflict come from? How does it affect your character? Most importantly, what are the scenes that are going to show this to the audience? Make sure you keep these things front and center.

Twists and Turns

(SPOILERS –The Crying Game, Psycho, The Empire Strikes Back, Little Miss Sunshine, E.T., Alien, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Up in the Air)

I once got feedback on a spec that, “Acts two and three don’t deliver on the promise of act one.” This is a common issue for writers at all levels. A producer I know frequently says that the biggest problem in the specs he sees is the lack of real twists after act one.

The reason is that often we have a great idea for a story. In act one we set up and reveal our cool idea. It gets the reader excited. And then we simply play out that idea to its expected conclusion. Sure, we may have solid structure, complex character and great scene writing techniques. It all works… but there’s a sense of diminishing returns. There’s nothing new added to the mix that’s really cool and surprising. Nothing that reignites the thrill of our initial premise.

There are plenty of obvious examples of big mid-movie twists: the big gender reveal in The Crying Game (written by Neil Jordan), the shower murder in Psycho (screenplay by Joseph Stefano) and the “I am your father,” moment in The Empire Strikes Back (story by George Lucas, screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan). (Many of you will probably be thinking of the finale of The Sixth Sense (written by M. Night Shyamalan). That’s a great twist but it comes so late it doesn’t really have the effect of reenergizing the story the way I’m talking about.)

Twists like these that turn the whole story on its head can be great, obviously, but not every movie can or should deliver that effect. So let’s look at a few examples that don’t have quite the shock value but do reenergize the story by delivering a truly unexpected new element.

Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) is about a dysfunctional family coming together to get their youngest daughter to a beauty pageant. The primary drama is whether they will get there in time. But when they do, there’s a great twist: the pageant turns out to be creepy. It’s something we weren’t expecting based on the story up to that point and it gives a whole new narrative arena to explore in the last quarter of the movie.

Little Miss Sunshine is a road movie and in most good road movies when the characters arrive at their destination things are not what they (or the audience) expected. In National Lampoon’s Vacation (screenplay by John Hughes), for example, Wally World is closed.

E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial (written by Melissa Mathison) has a good midpoint twist – E.T. starts to get sick from Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a completely plausible event but something that we weren’t expecting. And it reenergizes the story by injecting urgency and higher stakes. Prior to this moment the story was about Elliot hiding E.T. After this point it’s about saving E.T.’s life.

Alien (story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, screenplay by Dan O’Bannon) is full of great twists. Many of them relate to the alien itself. We are all very familiar now with the biology of the aliens, but when that movie came out the audience didn’t know how the aliens worked and the screenplay played with that.

So when the face-hugger drops off Kane we don’t know that there’s an embryo inside him waiting to burst out. And when we see the baby alien we don’t know it’ll grow to be bigger than a human. There’s a great bit where the crew is trying to catch the baby with nets. Brett walks into a room looking down toward the floor. Then he sees something and his head slowly cranes upwards as terror fills his expression.

Those revelations were all fantastic but perhaps not exactly unexpected in a horror movie about an alien. The two really important story twists in Alien are the discovery that they were sent to the planet on purpose and that Ash is a robot. These revelations expand the story world for the audience.

So how do you find these kinds of twists? When you’re developing your story, play this game: Given your premise, what will the audience expect to happen in acts two and three? What could you do to surprise them? Look particularly at your midpoint and act two turning point. You’ve probably figured out something that works… now ask yourself what else could happen there? You might find something that works and will also blow the audience’s mind. Look for places where you just plugged in a standard movie trope and brainstorm how you might turn that on its head.

Up In the Air (screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner) provides a great example of using the audience’s expectations against them. Structurally it looks like a romantic comedy about a playboy, Ryan, who will come to find true love. A love interest is introduced in the form of Alex, his casual sex partner on the road. As Ryan starts to rethink his values, he makes a beeline for Alex’s home to profess his feelings… we think we know where this is going… then Ryan discovers Alex is happily married. Wow, did not see that coming!

Once you know what your twist is going to be, you need to set the audience up to expect something else, while planting enough disguised clues that the surprise doesn’t seem unbelievable. This is a delicate balance.

In Alien there’s lots of discussion early on about the company, salvage policies, etc. And Ash is the one who violates quarantine by letting Kane back into the ship. Plus, he’s fascinated by the alien’s anatomy. All of this seems to be simply background to the main storyline – it’s never overemphasized – but it serves to make the mid-movie twists plausible.

I never embark on a first draft now without figuring out at least one big twist that will energize and expand the story in the second half. Knowing what I’m building towards allows me to guide audience expectations in the opposite direction to emphasize the surprise while laying the groundwork to keep it believable.