Reader questions: defining unknown words and turning screenplays into graphic novels.

Nicole asks:

My question is regarding whether or not to define potentially unknown words in a script.

My screenplay involves a scientist working with electrical equipment. In lines of action to describe calculations/diagrams around his lab, I've been trying to be as simple with the terms as possible (volts, watts, etc), but there are a few instances where I need to be more specific to convey the actual experiment the scientist is working on, so I've written it with: equation for inductance, equation for capacitance, etc.

I doubt most people understand what those terms mean without doing a Google search, so for the reader/agent/manager who might be reading the script, do I need to put a small definition next to those types of terms so they have a basic understanding of what it refers to? Right now I have a brief definition in parentheses besides each, to err on the side of caution, but I feel like that might be odd...

I was hoping you had any kind of insight on this. I prefer not to have the scientist character spew off all of his methods in a heinous exposition monologue, so if there's a better way to keep this in the action lines, I'm open to any suggestions.

 I don't think I've gotten one like this before.  I'd say that the most important thing to remember is that you're writing a document that represents what we will see on screen.  The most important thing to convey to the reader is what the action will look like.  Is there a reason you can't just tell us what his methods look like?  Is it the sort of experiment we can follow visually or is there a narrative-important reason that we be able to actually understand the finer details of what he's doing?

Think of Breaking Bad.  We've seen Walter White cook up a number of meth batches, but at no point are we given a straight-up recipe for his meth, nor does the visual action spell out every detail.  We see only what is necessary for the story to advance.

Hope that helps.

Kevin asks:


I've been hearing for a while that it might be worthwhile to adapt your screenplay into a comic book as a means of getting your story picked up by a manager, agent, and/or production company. Now, I have the means to be able to create a graphic novel, then through Amazon's Createspace, I could easily print out a number of cheap copies. 

The questions I have are 

1. What would I do with the finished graphic novel once I have printed copies of it? Submit it directly to managers/agents? Submit it with a copy of my screenplay? 

Then, 2. Have you heard of their even being an interest and/or market for screenplays turned into graphic novels?

This was a hot trend about ten or so years ago, and there's at least one success story that people can point to in 30 Days of Night, which was written as a screenplay, then adapted to graphic novel and then adapted back.

The intel I have is that this trend is over and done.  If you've got an idea that works as a graphic novel, then great, pursue it.  Don't invest your time and energy in this if you're just doing it in the hopes of selling it as a screenplay.  Graphic novels and screenplays are different mediums entirely, even though they both have a focus on visual storytelling.

A quickie graphic novel will do you no favors.  If you're gonna go through with it, you'll probably want to get an artist who understands the nature of comic book storytelling, as well as some solid colorists and letterers.  A slap-dash comic book isn't going to excite anyone.

The only real value a graphic novel would have is if it was published and actually had a following of it's own.  Then it's an existing intellectual property that studios might have an interest in because they can point to preawareness with an audience.  A graphic novel without a fan base is as unattractive as a naked spec.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST - Making continuity accessible to new viewers through character

Here is possibly the most important thing you can know about X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST - my wife's only exposure to the X-MEN at all is a viewing of about half of FIRST CLASS and she really loved the film.  For a story that spans two incarnations of the franchise and touches on storylines that encompass not only the original three films but the WOLVERINE spinoff and the FIRST CLASS prequel, it's nothing short of a miracle that the film works almost as well for the uninitiated as it does for the faithful.

(HOW uninitiated was my wife? Afterwards, she said that when the film started, she was surprised to discover that "Captain Picard" was in this and then remarked how cool it was that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were cast "as the older versions" considering how notable and adorable their real-life friendship is.  So anyone telling you that someone can't walk into this movie cold and understand it really isn't giving the average viewer much credit.)

Before we saw the film, I expressed concern to my wife that she might be a little lost.  She brushed that off, saying, "They always make these movies so you can follow along even if you've never seen the others."  In an ideal world, she'd be right but many a franchise has come undone when its focus becomes too insular. Actually, I can even envision another version of this film that ends up being total "continuity porn" with the references to Trask from X2 and WOLVERINE, Jean Gray's death in X3, and many other grace notes in the epilogue.

By the way, massive spoilers follow, so steer clear until you've seen the film...

Everything one needs to appreciate DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is contained within the text of the film itself.  That means that the film carries the burden of not just the history I've alluded to, but even further connections, all of which must somehow be incorporated into the film as exposition without feeling like exposition.

We begin a few years in the future, where mutants wage a war against futuristic Sentinels who are capable of adapting and overpowering any mutant attack.  It's a devastating post-apocalyptic time, with only a few surviving mutants that include Professor Charles Xavier, Storm, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde and (surprisingly allied with our heroes) Magneto.  The war is all but lost, but Xavier and Magneto have hatched a plan to use Kitty Pryde's powers to send Wolverine's mind back in time 50 years into his old body.  There he'll have a chance at stopping this war before it starts.

One of my few issues with the film is how Kitty suddenly has the power to project minds back in time.  This ability is new to this version on film and the movie doesn't really dwell on how she's able to do this.  In any event, she's able to project Logan/Wolverine back, but the catch is that they have to stay alive long enough in their present for him to complete his mission.  If the Sentinels find them and kill them all, future Logan's mind will die and 70s Logan will wake up with no idea what he's been up to.  This neatly establishes some urgency and a ticking clock

In 1973, Logan needs to convinces a broken and reluctant Charles to rejoin the fray so he can stop Mystique from assassinating Bolivar Trask, the head of Trask Industries and the man who designed the Sentinels in the hopes of convincing the U.S. Government to purchase them as weapons against the mutant population.  In the original history, Mystique's mission has unexpected results.  She kills Trask, but is taken prisoner herself and experimented on. With access to her shapeshifter DNA, scientists are eventually able to develop that ability as a feature in later versions of the Sentinels, allowing them to counter any mutant attack with ease.

Of course it's not that easy.  Not only is the younger Charles a broken recluse, but he's also sacrificed his mental powers as a side effect of the drug that lets him defeat his paralysis.  And even once Wolverine gets him in the game, they have to collect the younger Magneto... who's currently held in a prison 100 feet below the center of the Pentagon.

The solution to breaking a man out of the most heavily fortified prison known to exist turns out to be a speedster named Quicksilver.  The prison break might be one of the most inventive set pieces in any of the X-MEN films and I say that as someone who was blown away by several of the action scenes in X2.  There are some clever moments where we experience things along with Quicksilver, who's moving so fast that everything around him appears to be standing still.  (This is also doubly amusing to anyone who remembers that the internet reaction to the first Quicksilver still and the Carl's Jr. commercial was certainty that the character would ruin the film.)

If that set-piece is a fun moment of levity, several others are squeezed for maximum tension, particularly the third act set-piece that involves Magneto lifting up a baseball stadium and dropping it around the White House while manipulating Sentinels to do his bidding.  The eyes of the world are watching as President Nixon is about to announce the Sentinel program and by this point Charles, Logan and Beast know that Mystique is going to make another attempt on Trask's life (following the failure of the attempt that succeeded in the original history)  If Mystique kills Trask - and possibly the President for authorizing the program, all it will do is inflame mutant/human tensions and give humans even more reason to fear the mutants.

This is brilliantly cross-cut with what's happening concurrently in the future timeframe, as the Sentinels have found the citadel where our last few heroes are hiding out.  The mutants need to make one last stand in order to buy Wolverine enough time to secure a better future.

In a particularly elegant bit of writing, the climax comes down not so much to whose powers are stronger or who can hit harder. No, the axis of the future revolves around Mystique's choice.  Can she choose the path Charles advocates?  Or will she surrender to the desire for revenge and justice that fueled her initial attempt and now has only become stronger?  Magneto's involvement raises the stakes even higher, but even if he's dealt with, the most critical moment in the film hinges on the action she'll take with the eyes of the world on her.  Charles can try to appeal to her soul, but in the end, she defines mutant/human relations forever with her decision.

Charles gets a fair amount of character development as this younger version is a far cry from the serene wise man of the first three films and the mentor/older brother figure of FIRST CLASS.  Seeing the professor in this new circumstance also forces Logan into a bit of a role reversal.  Suddenly he's the seasoned veteran who has to help his former mentor find himself.  Magento is largely the same man he always is, but the script and Michael Fassbender give the character a lot of dimension.  He might not undergo much change, but this isn't a film that treats it's human characters like chess pieces to be moved through action beats.

And then there's the ending.  I've made no secret of my feeling that X3: THE LAST STAND is possibly one of the worst comic book movies ever made.  Recently I've seen some rumblings on the internet from people who claim that it only takes a lot of heat because people think it's fashionable to hate its director Brett Ratner.  I still contend that it's an awful film that makes horrible choices with its characters and then doesn't even have the balls to stand by those choices, immediately introducing the trapdoors that can undo them. (Except for the really terrible deaths of Scott Summers and Jean Grey.)  The reset button is so primed by the end of that film that it renders most of the events of the movie utterly pointless and a waste of time.

The ending of this film seems like an apology of sorts for X3, as all the timeline shenanigans lead Logan to wake up in a reconfigured present where the Sentinel war never happened.  As he wanders the halls of Xavier's School for the Gifted, he sees several of his old friends, alive and happy: Rogue, Iceman, Kitty.  And then, in a doorway, he sees her... Jean Grey, the woman he loved and killed.

Of course, this is no longer THAT Jean Grey.  The implication is that X3 never happened (and probably not her death in X2 either.)  Then, as Logan is still reeling from this return, an old rival steps into the reunion - Scott Summers.  And why wouldn't he be? If Jean never went bad, then she certainly never would have killed him.  If this really is the last time we see the cast that launched this franchise 14 years ago, it's hard to think of a better way to tie things up than with the promise that all of these X-MEN are still alive, still out there, and are living on just as they have in the comics.

The amazing thing is how much impact this sequence has for someone who didn't see the earlier X-MEN films.  There's an earlier exchange between Wolverine and the younger Beast where Logan mentions that Beast isn't still alive in his future (having died off-screen between X3 and this film.) Thus, the brief cameo of the older Beast in the rebooted timeline allowed my wife to get that "aw, Logan saved his friend."

The Jean Grey resurrection was easily appreciated via a flashback to Logan having to kill her, which is slid into the film within a scene where Logan urges the younger Charles to look into his mind.  In that scene, the flashback's apparent purpose is to show us all the horror Logan has lived through as a way of leading up to how Logan has gained much from his friendship with the older Xavier.  It's not bald exposition - it's organic to the scene in the moment, even as it sets up a more impactful payoff later.

Am I saying that that wonderful final sequence played as emotionally for my wife as it did for someone like me?  No, I doubt it hit quite THAT hard.  But it certainly works as a denouement to aspects of this film itself.  For that reason, it transcends just being a convenient way to ignore unpopular sequels and their elements.  

X3's teased resets were infuriating because they were unearned emotionally.  DAYS OF FUTURE PAST makes the reset a feature, not a bug, and the justified payoff of everything the film builds to. This isn't just a great comic book movie, it might just be the best X-MEN movie yet.

Webshow: Bad Newscast Exposition

In this week's video, I take on a writing trick that is rarely used all that well - using a newscast scene to fill in exposition.

Midi-Chlorian: An unnecessary explanation

 Midi-Chlorian: (noun) 

1. intelligent microscopic life forms that lived symbiotically inside the cells of all living things. When present in sufficient numbers, they could allow their symbiont to detect the pervasive energy field known as the Force. 

2. An unnecessary explanation for something best left ambiguous.

With the re-release of The Phantom Menace, I've seen a lot of people dredging up their old issues with the film.  Jar-Jar Binks, of course, is a popular target, but I think the issue that really rankles people to this day is the fact that George Lucas took something as mystical and spiritual as the Force and reduced it to (as Robot Chicken joked) "tiny bacteria swimming in your bloodstream" aka midi-chlorians.

Even in the original trilogy, there was always assumed to be some kind of biological component to the Force.  It's intimated several times that a big reason Luke has the potential to be strong in the Force is because he's the son of a powerful Jedi.  Return of the Jedi made this even clearer by revealing the significance of Leia being Luke's sister.  In a way, that biological element has always been present.

However... it seems pretty clear to me that Lucas introduced the midi-chlorians to facilitate a particular plot point.  He wanted Qui-Gon Jinn to have conclusive proof that Anakin was not only strong with the Force but had the potential to be greater than all of the Jedi.  Thus, not only does he introduce a prophecy about "the one who will bring balance to the Force" he also makes checking for Force potential as easy and mechanical as checking one's sperm count.  It's so when the Jedi Council says, "We're not taking this boy," Qui-Gon has a case that's hard to rebut and Lucas needs to make the Jedi Council indisputably wrong.

Or to put it in screenwriting terms - Lucas tells and doesn't show.

In the first trilogy, we SAW Luke's potential as a Jedi, proven in that moment where he opens his mind and makes the impossible shot to destroy the Death Star.  The kicker about The Phantom Menace is that young Anakin is already displaying Force-potential through the mere fact he's able to compete in the pod race.  There is the "show, don't tell" of that film - the entire set-piece devoted to showing off what Anakin can do!  I think every audience member would have accepted Anakin's Force potential based on that sequence alone.

That's why the midi-chlorian thing rankles - it's unnecessary.  Lucas already has a way of accomplishing what he needs.  Why do we need proof that Anakin isn't the one?  Sure, the offspring of Jedi could be biologically predisposed to be Force-sensitive, but surely it's not impossible that one might be born into a family like that which remains unaware of their potential?  Making it so iron-clad eliminates the wonder, the hope that all one might need to be a Jedi is to find the way to embrace the Force.  That sense of magic is key to the appeal of the first trilogy.

When you explain something, you rob it of its mystique.  Isn't the Force more powerful when we don't know where it comes from?  Aren't Hannibal Lector and Michael Myers scarier when we don't know their backstories?  Why provide answers when ambiguity is more tantilizing?

Not everything needs to be explained.  Let the audience infer some things.  They need to be able to bring their own magic to the film.  This isn't a pass to leave in inexplicable elements.  The next time you're writing exposition, or crafting a scene to answer a question you think the audience will have, ask yourself...

"Is this necessary, or is this a midi-chlorian?"

Reader mail: Exposition - how much is too much?

Mike says:

I recently watched Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger for the first time in years. All three spend a HUGE amount of time on exposition, but arguably it pays off with the impact of the thrilling conclusions. Do you think a spec with that kind of extensive, intrigue-based exposition could ever sell in today's market? More to the point and your expertise, what kind of reaction/impression/coverage would you have for such a thing, if it crossed your desk? (Supposing that formatting, grammar, and the story's internal logic were sound. It just spends a LONG time setting a LOT up.)

The sheer amount of exposition might be cause for concern, but having seen Goldfinger recently, I'd say the thing that really sets it apart more than the exposition is the pacing. Thunderball is even worse in that regard, with its sluggish underwater fights. At the end of the day, I think audiences are used to having a lot of exposition in things like the Bond series or Mission: Impossible. It's an accepted part of the genre and so long as there's a way for the viewer to understand what's going on in the broad sense it's not an issue.

When you get down to it, is Goldfinger really any more exposition-heavy than either of the two Daniel Craig Bond films?

I think the thing to remember is that most of the time, the exposition gets the story rolling, and then it largely gets out of the way. Sure, there's always a scene or two in the middle where Bond regroups, touches base with M or his CIA contact and learns something new, but that often comes at a point when the movie and the audience are ready to catch their breath. Those movies never go long without Bond doing something cool.

The thing to be on guard for is if you're writing a screenplay where every scene or every other scene has to stop and re-explain the plot for the audience. That's where you're telling the story more than showing it. In Bond, you can usually help disguise this by having fun with the characters. You know how this works - Bond tries to seduce the girl and in doing so drops a few details that move the story forward, or perhaps Bond matches wits with the villain in a way that makes the scene as much about each man marking his territory as it is about setting up the evil plot.

Basically, the trick is to not have the plot be the only interesting thing in the script. Take a story like Goldfinger or Casino Royale and fill it with bland boring characters who are only there to get the story from point A to point B and you probably have an instant pass on your hands.

What does the audience take away from Goldfinger? Well, there's a bad guy who's going to rob Fort Knox - that's not terribly hard to set up. There's a cool car with gadgets that liven the chase scenes in an unexpected way - also not hard to set up. There's a very attractive woman who has a name that likely insured she was either very popular in school or got teased mercilessly. Oh, and there's the coolest secret agent ever, who gets to drive the awesome car, bag the hot chick and thwart the bad guy, all without ever being at a loss for a cool line.

If the broad strokes of your plot are basic enough that I can reduce it to a quick summary without confusing myself, then you're probably on safe ground. If you want to see an example of an exposition story that's way to complicated for its own good, check out Southland Tales and then try to explain the plot of that story to me in three sentences or less.

Cliches I'm Tired of Seeing - Part Seven - Newscaster exposition

My writing group will find this ironic considering I used this very trope in a recent script, but I really don't like when writers resort to using the tried-and-true expositional approach of the TV newscaster. It often feels lazy, like the writer couldn't think of a better way to introduce his world.

But the real problem is that most of these newscasts seem to have been written by writers who apparently have never watched the news in their life. If you want to see an example of this expositional trick employed correctly, watch the beginning of Tropic Thunder. After the long battle sequence, the film transitions into an Access Hollywood segment that drops a truckload of backstory on the audience. Why does it work? Because the scene in question sounds exactly like an Access Hollywood story, down to the bad puns and weak transitions. The writers absolutely nailed the tone and the cadence of that show and how it incorporates clips.

Bad newscast scenes feature things like remote reporters doing long live interviews for segments that would likely have been pre-taped and edited into soundbites on a real newscast. You'll also see things like two local news anchors discussing the issues of the day in a back-and-forth conversation more akin to Meet the Press than the 6pm affiliate news in Jersey.

There's also usually a lot of "As you know, Bob" type narration in these reports. True, the local news might recap some events for views unfamiliar with what happened, but it's unlikely they'd go into deep detail reminding the audience of the very specific circumstance two weeks ago that led to the mayor being arrested on charges of solicitation and drunk driving. In all likelihood, that would have been such a big local story that everyone in town would be aware of it. Thus, only a brief recap would be necessary.

So the next time you have the urge to write a newscast scene, don't. And if you're determined to ignore me, please at least spend a full week watching your local news so you get a flavor for how the pros do it.