My New Vlog

Hi Let's Schmooze fans. I wanted to let you know about a new project I'm working on that might be of interest to you: my Let's Schmooze Vlog. Once a month I will gather two or three guests to discuss writing for film, television, and other media. In the premiere episode, my guests were Matt Federman, co-showrunner of the CBS show Blood and Treasure, and Jill Blotevogel who was show runner on the Scream television show.

Here is the episode:


Next month I'll be doing an episode themed to Comic-Con. My guests will include television writer Spiro Skentzos (Arrow, Grimm) and Eugene Son, animation writer (Avengers Assemble, Star Wars Resistance) and comic book writer (Ultimate Spider-Man). Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see it!

What else have I been up to? Well, I have a project I'm very excited about. I co-wrote with my sister, Kris Bock, a prequel novel to Sweet Home Alabama called Felony Melanie in Pageant Pandemonium. It tells of the teenage adventures of Melanie and Jake. Here's a summary:

Before Melanie Smooter became hot fashion designer Melanie Carmichael, she was known as Felony Melanie, the teenage troublemaker of Pigeon Creek, Alabama. Aching to escape the boredom of small-town life, she gets into many reckless adventures. Her boyfriend, Jake, is always by her side – and the local sheriff is usually close behind.

Melanie’s mother has been shoving her into every beauty pageant within twenty miles since Melanie was a toddler. Melanie is getting a little sick of it. She’s on the verge of quitting when she qualifies for the Miss Alabama Princess Pageant in the big city of Mobile. The first prize scholarship could be her ticket out of Pigeon Creek, not to mention that one of the judges is a real, live New York fashion designer. The competition will be fierce. Can a "trailer trash" girl outshine the snooty debutantes?

Meanwhile, Jake and his friends go to Mobile to support Melanie – and to party in the big city. But when strange disasters befall pageant events, the gang suspects someone is sabotaging the contest. They try to figure who’s behind it and why, but it isn't easy when everyone dismisses you as redneck kids.

Melanie needs to prove herself on stage. Jake and the gang need to make sure she gets the chance. Can they show they're more than what people see on the surface? 

We did a virtual book launch party featuring several special guests, including a couple of the cast members from the movie: Courtney Gaines (Wade) and Fleet Cooper (Clinton). You can watch it here:



If you want to read a free preview story, sign up for our newsletter at: https://sendfox.com/lp/1rpny3 

You can buy the book on Amazon.

Hope you enjoy!

Icebox Questions

(SPOILERS: Sweet Home Alabama, The Matrix)

When I was doing rewrites on Sweet Home Alabama, I got into an argument with the producers about a point of story logic. In the story, Melanie goes back to Alabama to secure a divorce from her estranged husband Jake. In my original spec script, Jake signs the divorce papers at the end of Act Two. The producers wanted to move that to the midpoint for valid reasons of character arc.

The only problem was, once Melanie has the divorce papers she has no reason to stay in Alabama. Her fiancé, friends, and business associates in New York are already pressuring her to get back home. Yet in the producers’ version, she would hang out in Alabama for the next couple of days for no apparent reason. The producers argued that the audience won’t notice or care. I wasn’t so sure.

The producers won the battle on the script, as they usually seem to do. And it turns out they were right about the audience: I’ve heard a lot of criticism of the movie over the years, but nobody has questioned why Melanie doesn’t hop the first plane home after getting the divorce papers. (We did try to sell the idea that she sticks around because she feels she needs to apologize to all of her friends for her bad behavior before she leaves. If you have to make a change, you ought to do it the best way you can!)

I still think this is a bit of a logic problem in the movie, but I now realize it’s what Alfred Hitchcock called an “icebox question.” An icebox question is a logic flaw that the audience doesn’t think about until they’ve gone home and are getting a snack from the icebox (refrigerator for us Americans). Hitchcock’s theory was that by then the audience has already firmly decided whether they liked the movie or not, and belated recognition of logic holes wouldn’t change their mind.

I think this is also related to the saying that “The only rule in screenwriting is don’t be boring.” (Not sure who coined that one.) Audiences want to be entertained, and as long as they’re entertained, they won’t start picking too hard at the story. Stories have an emotional logic that trumps plot logic. The audience doesn’t question Melanie sticking around Alabama for a couple more days because they want her to stick around Alabama for a couple more days.

The Matrix (written by Lilly & Lana Wachowski) also demonstrates this theory in action. Toward the end, Neo is shot inside the Matrix and therefore dying in the real world, according to the well-established rules of the story. But then Trinity tells him he can’t die because the Oracle prophesied that the person she loved would be The One and she loves Neo. She kisses him and he comes back to life.

There is no narrative logic as to why Trinity’s kiss has the power to resurrect. It’s a logic hole. But it is absolutely right in terms of emotional logic. It’s the culmination of Trinity’s emotional journey, the culmination of Neo’s internal journey, it plays off classic fairy tale mythology, and most of all, it’s what we want to happen. I think it also matters that it occurs late in the movie when the audience is deeply invested in the story. Once we have bought into the story, it takes bigger logic bumps to knock us out.

So as a writer, it’s important not to let plot logic trump emotional logic. The trouble is, how do you tell the difference between a serious logic hole that will take the audience out of the story and an icebox question? Because serious logic holes can absolutely ruin your movie.

In my experience, audiences don’t generally get too hung up on timeline issues like the one in Sweet Home Alabama. They don’t calculate how long it would really take to get from point A to point B or to write a computer program or for wet clothes to dry, as long as it's not blatantly unrealistic. They also don’t get overly concerned about things like how long a character’s been awake or whether they had a chance to go to the bathroom or if they’ve eaten recently (unless you explicitly make those things part of the story). They usually don’t track the ammunition in guns or the amount of gas in a car’s tank. In real life these kinds of limits are annoying and we're happy to look the other way if the movie ignores those annoyances for the sake of fun.

But probably the most important thing is to test your screenplay with a selection of friendly readers who will give you brutal and honest feedback. If those readers don’t notice a logic hole, then you might be safe ignoring it. If someone does point it out, though, you better figure out a way to fix it. It isn’t an icebox question if it occurs to the reader during the read.

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Check out my book, The Three Stages of Screenwriting.

“In the crowded field of scriptwriting how-to books, Doug Eboch’s Three Stages of Screenwriting is a standout and a must-read. Why? Three solid reasons: He really, truly knows what he’s talking about. It will help everyone, from novice to pro, become a better writer. And, most impressive of all, it is entertaining as hell - as engaging and fun to read as one of Doug’s scripts.”
-Ross LaManna (Rush Hour)

How I Broke In

Today I thought I would share the story of how I got my start as a professional screenwriter, along with some of the lessons I learned along the way.

When I was a kid I saw Star Wars. I was so blown away by this movie that I read everything I could get my hands on about it – which wasn’t easy back then. This was before DVD commentary tracks and shows like Extra. As my young mind was devouring articles in Time magazine and the like, I kept reading about this guy named George Lucas who had a job called director. Sounds like a fun job, I thought. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I grow up.

When I was growing up I didn’t know anybody in the movie business. In fact, I was so far removed from Hollywood that when I told friends, family, and guidance counselors that I wanted to be a movie director, they all thought that sounded pretty great. Nobody knew how insanely competitive the field was or how many very talented people utterly failed in the business. I pursued directing the same way a high school student in Juneau, Alaska (where I lived) would pursue engineering. I researched what colleges were the best in the field and sent off my applications. I ended up at George Lucas’s alma mater: The University of Southern California.

As an undergrad I was in the production program. That is essentially a program to teach directing, though most people unofficially emphasized one technical area or another. I emphasized cinematography. When I graduated I worked back-breaking, low paying jobs doing such high tech tasks as coiling cable and hauling gear on music video shoots, or holding the boom on public service announcement shoots.

“At least you’re working on film sets,” people would say. It didn’t make me feel better. Turns out, having any job in film wasn’t enough for me. I had been working on screenplays on those days when I wasn’t working on set (there were a lot of those days), and I’d completed three of them. None were very good, but I enjoyed writing and at least one of my ideas felt like it could maybe be a movie if it was better.

So I decided to go back to USC to study screenwriting in their graduate program. Fortunately, they let me. The program taught me an enormous amount about the craft of screenwriting, and once I’d learned those skills, I discovered I was actually a pretty good writer. For my thesis, I wrote a romantic comedy script called “Melanie’s Getting Married” about a sophisticated woman from New York who must return to her small hometown to convince her estranged white trash husband to give her a divorce so she can marry someone else. It was very loosely based on one of the scripts I’d written before going to school.

Lesson 1: Learn your craft.

When I graduated, USC sent out a list of all the graduating students’ thesis script log lines to producers and studios around town. From that I got a few dozen calls requesting to read the script. I guess that was a little unusual – the power of a good log line. From there, I met with half a dozen producers who liked the script. Half of those were actually real producers with offices and everything.

Lesson 2: Create a good log line.

One of the companies I met with was MBST. The intern, a woman named Emily, had read my script – because interns are the people who read film student scripts – and recommended it to her boss. The boss liked it and they brought me in for a very nice meeting. “Send us your next script,” they said. Which is pretty much what everyone said.

So I started temping. And at night, I worked on another script, one I’d started in school, an action adventure called “Undertow.” I didn’t know at the time you were supposed to stick with one genre early in your career. (Note: “Undertow” has not been produced yet, though another movie with a similar title has since been released.)

I sent “Undertow” to the people who liked “Melanie.” When I called MBST, I discovered Emily was now head of development. She really liked “Undertow,” but the company didn’t do action movies (thus the advantage of sticking to one genre). However she thought I should have an agent and offered to make some recommendations for me.

Her assistant, Aghi, had a friend who had just been made an agent at a large boutique literary agency. She asked if she could send the script to him. “Of course,” I said. That turned out to be the agent I signed with. (And Aghi became head of development at MBST a short time later.)

Lesson 3: Be nice to the interns and assistants. They control your fate.

The agent sent out “Undertow” and Neal Moritz at Original Films liked it. We let him take it to three studios, all of whom also liked it. But all of them decided it was just too expensive. The project died, but Neal was pleased with the reaction and asked me to come in for a meeting. They asked what else I had and I gave them “Melanie’s Getting Married.” Neal didn’t go for it - not his genre - but a protégé producer named Stokely Chaffin really liked it.

Stokely gave me some feedback on the script and I did a rewrite, but she was not able to get Original to buy it at the time. I went on to other spec scripts and got a permanent job at Disney Feature Animation to pay the bills. I won a screenwriting contest with a science fiction thriller script called “Overload” (also still unproduced) but otherwise wasn’t having much success. Eventually I parted ways with my agent.

Then one day my phone rang. It was Stokely. I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly two years but it turns out she’d been pushing my “Melanie’s Getting Married” script the whole time and finally convinced Original to option it. We did the deal and I took the small option payment and bought a brand new china hutch to replace the cheap shelving that held my liquor supply (hey, I’m a writer). And then I went back to the day job.

A couple years passed. Other writers were hired to rewrite my script. Actors and directors came and went on the project. I would get phone calls from Stokely telling me the good or bad news and learned not to invest too much emotion into any of it. But they kept renewing the option and I kept cashing the checks and buying myself little presents. I also kept writing and got a new agent based on another script, this one a broad comedy (I still hadn’t learned to stick with one genre).

Lesson 4: Always keep writing.

Then one day Disney and Original actually made the movie. Nobody was as surprised as me. It had been re-titled Sweet Home Alabama and starred Reese Witherspoon. It resembled my original script more than I might have guessed after all that time, and I was awarded “Story by” credit after a brutal Writers Guild arbitration process. The movie set a record for biggest September opening ($38 million) and went on to earn over $100 million domestically. I made enough to pay off my student loans and quit my day job.

People called me an overnight success.

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Want to learn your craft? Check out my book: The Three Stages of Screenwriting.

Three Traps to Avoid in Love Stories

(Minor spoilers: The Theory of Everything, Along Came Polly, 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; and they are often the B story in other genres. But romantic storylines can be tricky. Here are three common flaws to watch out for – and ways to fix them.

1. The characters love each other because it’s a movie.

Too often filmmakers assume that if they cast two attractive movie stars, we will believe they are in love. 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, right? But neither of those scenarios makes the romance truly compelling. You want the audience rooting for the two characters to be together, and for that to happen we need to understand why these people need each other. Otherwise it won’t feel like there’s much at stake in the romance.

Try asking yourself how each character makes the other better. Ideally, the characters fulfill some psychological or emotional need of their partner. One common approach 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).

In The Theory of Everything (screenplay by Anthony McCarten), Jane gives the shiftless Stephen ambition – at first to take physics seriously and later to fight his disease. In return, Stephen opens Jane’s eyes to the wonder and beauty of the universe. He’s drawn to her inner strength and she’s drawn to his brilliance.

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.

Be sure to do this for both sides of the love story. I’ve seen some stories where it’s obvious why the main character would fall for the love interest, but not so clear why the love interest would reciprocate.

2. We spend Act Two watching them be happy.

There’s an old writing adage: Happy people are boring. For drama we need obstacles to the romance. This can take two forms: internal and external.

External obstacles are things like a rival suitor, 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 managed to use class differences as an obstacle to the romance.

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. 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.

In The Theory of Everything, the obstacle may appear to be Stephen’s disease (external), and that’s part of it, but the bigger challenge to the relationship is Stephen taking Jane for granted and not recognizing how much she’s sacrificing for him. Ultimately it’s not the disease that sends Jane away, it’s the lack of emotional fulfillment.

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.

3. The obviously bad romantic rival.

One of the most common obstacles is the alternate suitor – known as a love triangle. But there’s a pitfall here. In order to get the audience rooting for one suitor over another, 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 learn of the infidelity 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 it becomes important to show why two characters are right for each other. You can have one suitor help the character be a better person, while the other suitor encourages their less desirable behavior. Neither suitor needs to be bad per se, but one is right for the character while the other is not.

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.

Great romances can draw out powerful emotion in the audience – as long as you avoid these traps.

Avoid My Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes and I’ve made my share when it comes to the screenwriting business. One of the useful things about a blog is I can share them with you so, if you listen to me, you can avoid making the same ones. At least that’s useful to you. Unfortunately I can’t change my past!

I’ve made so many mistakes it’ll probably take a few posts to cover them all, but let me get started with a couple biggies.

Mistake #1: I didn’t stick to one genre.

The problem with this is that when you are successful at something, people will want you to do it again. In Hollywood this is partly tied to genre. If you write a successful romantic comedy (as I did) they will want you to write more romantic comedies. If you want to write horror films instead, you can… but you will be seen as a beginner again. You won’t be able to capitalize on your previous success. It’s hard to get established in Hollywood, if you get a break you don’t want to throw it away!

I have a good excuse for my failure. I didn’t set out to write romantic comedies, I set out to write adventure and sci-fi movies. And in fact it was a big action-adventure script that got me my first agent. And it was that same script that got me into Original Films. But Original Films wasn’t able to set up that script, so they asked what else I had. All I had was a sci-fi script and Sweet Home Alabama – the script I’d written for my Master’s thesis.

They liked Sweet Home Alabama and started developing it. Meanwhile I continued to write adventure and sci-fi. Then Sweet Home Alabama got made and was a big hit. And all I had to show people were adventure and sci-fi scripts. I was unable to piggyback off of the success of the movie as much as I should have.

Not that I’m complaining – that movie really launched my career. It was, however, a bit of random chance that it was that script that got produced first. I don’t know that I would have done things differently if I could do them again – other than writing at least ONE other romantic comedy!

But the lesson is, try to figure out what genre you most want to do and focus on doing that. You can work in multiple genres in Hollywood, but wait until you’re well established in one before branching out.

Mistake #2: I didn’t keep in touch with people I met.

When my agent first sent my script around (the aforementioned action-adventure script), a lot of people didn’t buy it but liked it enough they wanted to meet with me. This was true of the next two or three as well. I met with a lot of good, high-level producers and executives. And many of them I only met with one time.

It’s not that the meetings went badly, it’s that I didn’t follow up. You need to nurture relationships in this business. You want to build a base of fans who will be excited to see new material or to hear a pitch. (You’ll rarely sell a pitch to someone the first time you meet them.) You want to stay on their radar for when they have open assignments. You also may want them to refer you to an agent one day.

Email makes it pretty easy to stay in touch with people. You don’t want to harass them, but I like to touch base with my contacts every three or four months. Don’t just drop them a “hi, what’s happening?” note. They’re busy and don’t have time for that. But perhaps offer up a few loglines you’re kicking around and ask if they’d be interested in hearing a pitch on any of them. Even if they aren’t, you’ve kept yourself on their radar.

You can also send them bits of news, but try to keep it relevant. Think about the junk email you get cluttering up your inbox. If you made a short film, go ahead and send them a link. If you wrote a play that’s premiering locally, invite them. But don’t send them newsletters about your life.

And of course if you write a new spec, send it to them. All of this assumes that you are constantly creating new material. You should be. That’s one mistake I didn’t make – I wrote three spec scripts per year the first few years after I graduated college.

There were so many more mistakes I made, though. Mistakes I’ll discuss in future posts.

Cutting and Combining Characters

One of the problems that effects many screenplays is too many characters. Even in stories with a strong main character there can be a small army of minor characters cluttering up the action. Good writers will make an attempt to cut and combine characters whenever possible.

Why is having a lot of characters bad? Well, for one thing it can be hard for the audience to keep track of who is who. Also, when you have a lot of minor characters it gets difficult to fully develop any of them. You have a lot of one-dimensional pawns running around instead of living, breathing people that you can use to expand the ideas and themes of your story.

This isn’t to say fewer is always better. Would The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie) have been better with a gang of three criminals instead of five? Most certainly not. But I thought Contagion (written by Scott Z. Burns) and Love Actually (written by Richard Curtis) suffered from too many characters. You didn’t have any time to get to know or care about many of the characters.

I am not immune to this. In the draft of Sweet Home Alabama that I originally sold, the character of Andrew (played by Patrick Dempsey) had two parents – a politician father and an overprotective mother. Those parents were combined into a single character – his mother (played by Candice Bergen) in the movie. I don’t miss the character of the father at all, and the result is a stronger, more dimensional supporting character that was juicier and attracted a star.

Most of the time you don’t want more than one character performing the same plot/story function. You probably don’t need two mentors advising your hero, or two friends to serve as sounding boards – though if each of those friends also serves another purpose that could justify their presence. Redundant characters can usually be combined into a single person.

Ideally each significant character will represent some alternate viewpoint on the theme. In Up In the Air (screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner) Ryan has two sisters – one who demonstrates the upside of marriage and one the downside. Natalie shows an idealized vision of love and Alex a more cynical version. There are no duplicate points of view, no third sister who also has a failing marriage.

True stories can present a particular challenge because it can be hard to let go of someone who was really involved. But many historical movies combine multiple people who each performed one small role in an event into a single person who is more involved throughout the story. Also, they often cut out people who were present but not actively involved. Sometimes five children become three, for example. It makes for a better movie and as long as it doesn’t radically misrepresent events, few people will mind.

I always take a look at my list of significant minor characters in the outline phase and consider whether any can be cut or combined. This exercise can produce surprising benefits. In my latest script, for example, I needed the main character’s best friend to have a troubled marriage and I needed the main character to have a business rival. The best friend’s husband was active mostly in the first half of the story, the rival in the second half. Then I asked myself, what if I combined them?

It was hard to get my head around it at first, but once I did the resulting character became exponentially richer and more complex. Plus, suddenly there was a whole other layer of subtext to the scenes – the best friend’s loyalty. If her husband is also her friend’s business rival, then she’s caught between two loyalties. Combining those two characters added unexpected dimension to a third.

And that’s a good thing because after doing some research I realized there are other people that would have to be involved in the main character’s business. Suddenly I have several new characters I have to work into my outline. I’m going to look at where I can combine those roles with existing characters, and where I can’t, I’ll look for how I can have those characters offer a distinct point of view on some element of the story.

That’s another good thing to think about – if a character simply has to be present in the movie for logic or plot mechanics, give them an individual take on a thematic element of the story. You might have them represent a potential future for the character if they make a certain choice, for example.

I mentioned I go through this analysis in the outline phase. There is a good chance you'll have to go through it again in the rewrite phase. Things change as you write and you may end up with redundant characters despite your best efforts. It's always wise to consider whether every character is really pulling their weight when you rewrite.

The goal here is not to write screenplays with as few characters as possible. The goal is to make sure that every character performs a vital role in the story. You have such limited time in a movie that you don’t want to waste any of it.

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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By the way, Sweet Home Alabama is now available on Blu-Ray! It's a special 10th Anniversary Edition.

Sweet Home Alabama and the Love Triangle Problem

(SPOILERS: Sweet Home Alabama, Wedding Crashers)

One of the tools we use as screenwriters is "Hope and Fear." As in, what is the audience hoping will happen? What are they fearing will happen? This is a powerful tool.

One of the common devices in a romantic comedy is a love triangle. Love triangles are an example of "mutually exclusive goals." There is inherent conflict in a love triangle because you have two characters who each one something (the third character) and they can't both have it.

When we combine these two ideas, as we often do in romantic comedies, we run into a problem. Let's assume our love triangle involves Man 1 and Man 2 who are both after Woman. In order to create hope and fear, we have to make the audience hope Woman ends up with Man 1 and fear she'll end up with Man 2. Usually this is done by making Man 2 out to be a real cad.

However, we risk making Woman unsympathetic for not immediately being able to see that Man 2 is a cad. Wedding Crashers had this problem. Owen Wilson's character is after Rachel McAdams, but she has a boyfriend. A boyfriend who's such a jerk we quickly wonder what she could possibly see in him.

Sweet Home Alabama is a love triangle story but we tried to make both guys good guys. The real question is which one is right for Melanie, and the dramatic tension comes from her figuring out who she is at heart. We hope she'll figure it out in time. And fear that she won't.

But it was risky. From time to time, people still tell me Melanie chose the wrong guy. I suspect it's because Andrew would be the right choice for them. I think the movie makes clear Melanie really belongs with Jake. But I suppose I could be wrong.

It was interesting that the audience is so conditioned to the good guy/bad guy approach, they look for it even when it wasn't intended. One of the ways writers deal with the love triangle challenge is to have the bad guy cheating on the woman. We don't blame her because she doesn't know.

When we did the test screening for Sweet Home Alabama, we discovered the audience thought Andrew was sleeping with Melanie's assistant! Nowhere in the movie do we see this, nor do we see him hit on her, sneak off with her, etc. But the audience was trying to figure out "what was wrong with him" and when we didn't give them anything, they imagined something. So the director had to cut out all the scenes with Andrew and the assistant to avoid the confusion.

Ultimately I think the movie is more sophisticated for making the choice internal rather than external. It turns out romantic comedies are harder than they look!

The Structure of Sweet Home Alabama

(SPOILERS: Sweet Home Alabama)

Okay, time to put my money where my mouth is. I will now analyze the three act structure of Sweet Home Alabama. I will also tell you the big structural flaw I think the movie has and why it seems to survive it.

There is a brief prologue with the young Melanie and Jake on the beach. It serves to set up the “lightning striking twice” theme, establish the romantic tone of the story and give a little foreshadow of the Alabama environment to come.

Domino and Catalyst: A little tricky. Is the catalyst the moment where Andrew proposes to Melanie in Tiffany & Co.? That’s the point where the character has the problem. However the audience does not yet know what the problem is. To solve this, my original draft had Melanie tell her best friend she’s already married immediately after the proposal. Not as dramatic a reveal, I will admit, as the scene where Melanie appears on Jake’s doorstep and demands a divorce. So one might argue that the proposal is the domino and the doorstep scene is the catalyst. I do not agree, however. I think the catalyst is the proposal because we have character and dilemma. It’s risky not letting the audience in on the dilemma, but we did drop lots of hints that something’s amiss even if it’s not clear what that something is for a few more minutes.

The important thing, though, is that in the period between 12 minutes and 15 minutes into the movie, we establish the Main Tension: Will Melanie marry Andrew? We do an unusual thing with the tension. At first, the audience is hoping that the answer to the question will be yes. But as the movie goes along, they discover that she should actually be with Jake instead, so by the end they are rooting for the answer to be “no.”

Act One Break: Act one ends and act two begins when Melanie learns she still has access to the joint checking account with Jake. This gives her the idea to try to get the divorce by becoming the most annoying version of a wife he can imagine. Until now, she was simply making a quick swing down to Alabama to get a paper signed. But that has proven impossible, so she now embarks on a mission to achieve her goal.

Midpoint: Jake and Melanie kiss in the pet cemetery. This is the up moment when Jake and Melanie are closest together, a reflection of the resolution and the opposite of the Act Two Break. We’ve also twisted the tension. From this point forward, it should be clear Melanie belongs with Jake.

Act Two Break: After Andrew breaks up with Melanie over her lies, Act Two ends when he forgives her and the marriage is back on. Melanie now has what she wants – Andrew. But, in one of the common romantic comedy forms, she’s not sure she wants him anymore. She just can’t admit that fact to herself.

Twist: As she walks up the aisle, Melanie learns she forgot to sign the divorce papers herself. This is the wake-up call that makes her realize she’s marrying the wrong guy. It’s the thing she needs to solve her dilemma happily – by calling off the wedding with Andrew and going after Jake.

And the resolution, of course, is that she and Jake get back together.

So where do I think the movie went wrong? Look back at the Act One Break. Melanie sets about trying to get Jake to sign the divorce papers. In my draft, Jake doesn’t actually sign until the end of act two, when Andrew’s come to town and Jake realizes how miserable he’s been making Melanie. But in the finished movie he signs before the midpoint. This causes the story to lose some of its momentum and begin to meander. In fact, if you watch it and work out the timeline, there’s a bit of a logic flaw. Melanie gets what she wants – Jake’s signature on the divorce papers – and then hangs out in Alabama for at least 24 hours for no apparent reason.

So how does the movie survive this? Mainly by introducing several other tensions. By the time Jake signs the divorce papers, the audience is beginning to think maybe Melanie’s making a mistake going for Andrew instead of Jake. That new emotional tension carries us forward. We also have a subplot about Andrew’s mother trying to dig up the truth about Melanie, and then the moment where Andrew comes down to Alabama, discovers Melanie’s lies, and calls off the wedding. These conflicts all have crucial forward motion which pulls the audience along. Plus, there are a few secrets about Melanie’s past which we reveal to keep things interesting. And don’t underestimate how much charming actors can do for a film.

However, I still think the movie would have been better if Jake didn’t sign those papers until the end of Act Two.