Screenwriting structure Part 10 your first 10 pages and the hook
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and here’s hoping that you have an outstanding and prosperous 2008! I sincerely mean that…
Jesus, I am in a great fucking mood today. Lots of energy… Accomplishing a lot. So I figured while I’m on this natural high, it be the perfect time to post another post to the series.
Not even my hate mail is pissing me off today…
Unk
Who the fuck do you think you are?
Jack S.
Jack, Jack, Jack… Jack off.
Unk,
How’s it hanging? Oh sorry. You’re probably a woman.
Maria
Maria,
I see from your email header info along with just a little research that you’re from Texas. All is forgiven.
Unk
Why don’t you write more about the srike (yes it was misspelled)? Don’t you care about your fellow writers? I don’t hear anything about you walking the picket line. Why is that? Because you’re really a punk, Unk?
jaz
jaz, jaz, jaz… jaz off.
See? Nothing’s getting me down. To be honest, I have more and some of them are downright nasty and full of nastiness. I like that. And to Mr. Picket… Don’t worry, I’m not sweatin’ you at all my friend. LOL.
It’s hard to fuck with somebody who doesn’t give a shit… And with that, let’s get started.
You got that hook, right? You know… That thing that happens somewhere in the first ten pages that makes me wonder if I turned the oven off? Closed the garage door? Put the cats out? Fed the dogs? Locked the car?
Why does your hook make me wonder about all these things? Because I don’t want to be fucking interrupted as I read through the rest of your screenplay. I want to unplug my fucking phone so that everyone who wants to borrow money from me can’t get through.
Your hook did that to me. It gave me goosebumps. It made me settle myself down and get really really comfortable in preparation for the rest of the ride.
You got that hook right? That something that I can immediately understand and captures my interest… Your hook doesn’t have to be anything other than something that gets me interested in going on with your screenplay or movie. It should be commensurate with your genre and story but it doesn’t necessarily have to be about your story.
It could be something that your Protagonist just completed from another adventure. It could be your Antagonist doing something we’ve never seen before. It could be a minor character that exposes themselves to some vague obstacle that you’ll flesh out to us later on. It could be an arrival. Somebody or something comes to town. How about a death? What about your theme? What about your Protagonist’s flaw? Hell, maybe you just want to introduce your Protagonist…
It’s all good.
Can you hook us in ten pages? How about five? The sooner the better?
Your hook doesn’t have to scare me. Doesn’t have to abhor me. Doesn’t have to surprise me. Doesn’t have to make me fall in love. Doesn’t have to make me feel happy or sad.
It just has to hook me.
Make me turn the page but be careful… Lots of specs are written (today) to be read and not made into a film. Don’t do that. Don’t write a book. Don’t watch your characters in your mind’s eye and then relay that information to us. Relaying information is passing that information along. Past tense. He is doing this or she is doing that…
Tell me what’s happening right now — as it happens. He does or she does. I want to be there with your character. I want to observe him or her through my very own reality television camera. Mine’s set up on a Steadicam and I’m the operator. Make me use it. Make me do things with that Steadicam that I’ve never done before… See things I’ve never seen before.
Write visually. Write it to be filmed. Write it to play.
Maybe your hook brings up some question that I know I have to have answered by the end of your movie. That question could be about your Protagonist, Antagonist, theme, or even be the central question that needs to be resolved by the end of your movie.
Don’t want to give too much away? Hook me with a visual. Some image that makes me question the universe of your story. Spoon feed me just enough information to make me lean forward for another bite and pull it away. Force me to follow. Give me no other choice.
Hook me.
Is your hook some kind of backstory? Some piece of relevant information that we can’t do without? Maybe it’s just the introduction of your Protagonist’s status quo. His or her ordinary world… What is there about their world that will hook me?
Find it.
Maybe you want to set up a few things that you’ll pay off later on down the road. I can get behind that. Just be sure you do in fact pay them off. Is your hook something that one of your lead characters want? Or, is it something that keeps them from getting what they want?
Hmmm.
Maybe you need to show us how your Protagonist or some other lead character is quintessential. Maybe he or she is the quintessential cop, private detective, drunk private detective, homeless, student, cheating spouse, car mechanic, soldier, sailor, marine, teacher, doctor, janitor, spy…
Get it?
Don’t start your ten pages off with talking heads… Don’t show me two characters standing in frame just shooting the shit. I don’t give a shit what you got’em talkin’ about — I promise you that’s not gonna hook me. If you must have two heads talking, please, please give them something else to do while they talk… I don’t care if one of ‘em is just swatting flies — just give ‘em something to do. This is such a pet peeve of mine but really… Don’t do it. LOL. The more visual the something you give them to do, the better.
I’ve agreed to read your screenplay or watch your movie. You’ve agreed to give me something worth my investment. We’ve struck a deal. Don’t welsh on our deal. Stick to the deal. Suspend my disbelief… Use subtext. Show me something that requires me to think about what you just showed me. When your characters speak, don’t let me just hear their words and think their words…
Let me hear their words and think to myself, he or she is really telling me something else… Something not on the surface… Something not on the nose… Something deeper.
Reveal character through your character’s dialogue. Maybe he’s an asshole. Reveal that. Maybe she’s a romantic. Reveal that. Maybe he’s a republican like Josh… LOL. Reveal it.
Your hook helps kick your story into motion… Reveals conflict — can be fun — generates interest in your premise.
Hook me with two characters that are the exact opposite of each other. That’s always interesting and catches our interest especially if you can really figure out a couple of opposites we’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s just one character who is opposite of his or her current self.
Put familiar against unfamiliar and you have instant conflict every time. Conflict is interesting. It’s why we take an interest. It’s why we watch.
Try to release your hook as early as possible to grab us… We want you to do that. That’s our deal. I invest, you pay off…
With interest.
No not all movies have that hook but you’re trying to sell a script, right?
Hook me.
Unk
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28 Responses to “Screenwriting structure Part 10 your first 10 pages and the hook”
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Republican!
Aw man, that’s a low blow!
Josh,
You’re not republican? I thought all Mac users were republican… LOL.
My mistake.
Unk
Two times!
TWICE!
Two low blows inna row!
Oh me oh my.
Republicans aside, I don’t understand why anyone would send you hate mail . . . I mean, no offense, but what are you doing here that’s so radical it generates hate mail?
I get some, but I go out of my way to trash folks of a certain political persuasion, so I expect it (and if I don’t get it, I ain’t doing enough of the right kinda writing) but . . . here, we’re talking about screenwriting, right?
We’re not even talking about different kinds of classic, cult films . . . we’re talking about a craft toward writing for film . . . is it really that troubling for people?
I mean, I can get worked up on some subjects, but not so much I’d send someone hate mail . . . life is too short for that shit.
Why hate mail? What up, haters?
Josh,
It’s mostly about the cussing and fly by night visitors who’ve read some old post and instead of leaving a comment that nobody will likely read, they go ahead and send me an email.
It’s all about opinions.
What’s interesting about this is when I don’t like a site — I vote with my mouse i.e., I never go back. I have a script running on this site that tracks IP addresses. I use it mainly for hackers but it’s interesting to see these people keep coming back for more.
God forbid they actually tell me they learned something. LOL.
Now that’s just the pissy email… Then of course I get email from screenwriters who want to debate me on some minute detail that I could care less about but sometimes, I go ahead and debate… Like an idiot.
Then there’s the email with attached screenplays in every format you can think of… LOL.
DELETE.
It’s all fun. Most of the shitty email are usually one or two sentences… Somebody gets worked up about something and half the time I don’t even think it was me who got them worked up.
But that happens with a lot of traffic… The crazies are out there just waiting for a piece of the action.
Unk
A great hook was the intro to this post. I just had to see if you would talk about the craft. :-)
I agree about the hook. I also agree that the hook doesn’t have to be anything in particular, just something that gets the ball rolling.
I usually go the quintessential character route for dramas and sometimes thrillers. Unfortunately, right now I am working on Sequence Maps for about 10 scripts so I haven’t seen Final Draft in weeks.
It’s cool though because of the strike, but right now I wish I had started on my Tom Cruise vehicle since UA has supposedly settled with the WGA.
Swatting flies. Wish I’d thought of that.
Christian…
Just as long as it hooks me…
MaryAnita,
Feel free to use it. LOL.
Unk
EDIT: MaryAn… On second thought… I’ve never seen a conversation where one of the characters is cleaning up all the dead rats out of a house… LOL. Two characters travel from room to room while one of them searches for dead rats that were obviously poisoned within the last couple of days. The trick to hook me would be to somehow have that character get the other character to volunteer to lend a hand…
Against his or her will of course…
What do you think?
Unk
Unk,
Really a lot of thesis here on your site that I for one hope a lot of your readers are taking heed about. I’m an ex-reader now turned producer and I can’t tell you how many scripts I used to read and still do read that are not nearly visual enough and were written to be read.
So we read them and bin them.
Russ
But what if someone writes their screenplay like a goddamn novel, and they think they’re so witty they put in lines like:
JOE walks into the bar. He’s in his late 20’s with an amazing body. A Fuck-Me body if there ever was one.
…I shit you not. I read that the other day. I wanted to put it in the “pass” pile just because it was the creepiest thing I’ve ever read.
But what do I know? I’m just an intern.
long time reader, really interesting blog. i’ve never heard anything about the hook put quite like this before as far as its importance. all this time i thought i had decent hooks for my scripts. not now.
thanx
steve
Shit! No talking heads? What about in an elevator? What about on a long elevator ride? What about on a long long elevator ride?
How about a long elevator ride in which two characters are picking up poisoned rats while swatting at the gathered flies?
I do have to say my favorite scene from 2006 was in an elevator…
“Just fucking kill me…”
Talking heads, witty action asides, directing the shots with your script, using more than three lines in your description, none of that bothers me as long as it’s WELL-WRITTEN.
Therein lies the rub, right?
Paula,
Well I suppose you could just have them stand there and discuss some topic. How long of an elevator ride? If what they say has nothing to do with moving the story forward, maybe you can use it for exposition… All depends on how you do it. But just two people droning on for a page while they ride up or down? What purpose does this scene serve? What are YOU trying to get across to us in this scene? Is one of the characters a monster? A pedophile? A hit man? A cop? See where we’re going? Reveal character. Maybe they don’t even know each other but one of them suspects the other is after him or her… Maybe one of them gets increasingly nervous and begins scratching… It starts off as a little itch and by the end of the ride, this character is going to explode from nervous itching. Who knows? You really don’t give me enough to go on. Just be sure the dialogue reveals some character and provides some exposition and or moves the story forward even if it’s just a hair.
Thanks for playin’… LOL.
Tom,
Now that’s a fuckin’ ride… I’d watch it. It’d hook me.
Joshua James,
As long as it IS well written — no worries.
Unk
Perhaps one of the problems is that folks see trailers for flicks and make the assumption that when their movie is made, the trailer will incite the audience. Not realizing that somebody has to read it before it’s made.
Some simple examples that come to mind (since we’re discussing, right?):
I really enjoy this movie, but it’s been slammed by so many, Two Weeks Notice. Setup/hook is to show the zealot Sandra Bullock and you figure, “wow, is she a candidate for spinster, or what?” and then a few minutes later, you see Hugh Grant and he’s got to hire a “real lawyer” for his firm. You know right then that these two will clash and the hook has been set.
Lethal Weapon – an all time favorite, has Danny Glover celebrating his pending retirement with his family. Only to discover a few pages later that his new partner is on a suicide mission because of his depression. Hook, set, match.
Ordinary People – Going from memory here, but I believe it starts off with a flashback to the accident, then comes into the Doctor’s office where you meet the kid who survived – who has tried to commit suicide. The hook? Why does a survivor commit suicide?
The latest National Treasure – starts out with a class speech and is interrupted by a character who claims that all they’ve said is basically, a lie. Hook set.
The hook isn’t what makes the audience come to see the film or makes the script great to read, it’s what makes the reader think, “Aha… now what’s going to happen?” and the audience think, “now we’re onto something…”.
As for the talking heads, Quentin repeatedly does that – but at least the conversations are entertaining. However, not everybody is Quentin.
Dave,
Could be. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Quentin gets it done as well as he used to. Don’t get me wrong — I think RD and PF were genius and you can’t argue that he’s a hell of a director/filmmaker. He even knows how to market.
But the writing seems to (in my humble opinion) have slipped in recent years.
Here’s hoping that INGLORIOUS BASTARDS isn’t just a DIRTY DOZEN rip off.
Unk
Honestly, I haven’t seen much from him since his glory days (RD & PF). I was referring specifically to RD in the post.
Crap. I read my long long elevator ride over. It is crap. Boring as hell and definitely just a couple of talking heads. I see what you mean. It just happens to be the beginning of my script too. Ugh! So what do you charge to look at someone’s script?
Dave,
KILL BILL 1 & 2 — DEATH PROOF. Not quite there although I liked KB 1&2 and liked it a hell of a lot more than I liked DP.
Paula,
What do I charge? You can’t afford me.
Unk
Ouch! That hurt. Deeply. Do you take credit cards? I have one with a very high limit.
Paula,
As long as your limit is $350K, no problem.
Unk
Unk,
I’m glad you wrote that about QT – I hated DP, and thought it was just a real wasted opportunity (loved the car chase, Zoi and friends, hated most of the set up and the ending) . . . I don’t mind dialogue, as you well know, but this was just ridiculous and unnecessary to the story, to me.
But that’s me, hey. What the hell do I know?
$350K? As in dollars? Youre right, I can’t afford you. Do you take payments?
Paula,
I take ALL KINDS of payments…
Unk
Do you accept empty coffee cups as payment? ’cause I have like 10,000 of them, seriously.
spat,
You know I look at all your stuff for free…
Unk
Ahhh, the hook. My favorite part of the script. I love to lay the bait, watch them creep on up, check it out and snap! I got a live one.
Dave, those were some nice notations of great hooks.
To me, when a script opens up its first ten pages and something doesn’t happen to make me think, “hmmmm, this is going to be interesting”, or , “now that’s something I’ve never seen before, let’s see where this takes me”, I don’t really care to read the rest of it.
So I agree with Unk that those first ten pages need to be stellar and some kind of a hook needs to happen. Not just a hook of plot, or of character, but every aspect on those pages needs to draw me in and hook me to see where this story is going, and is this character original enough and have enough conflict with the situation to make this interesting? As per Martin Riggs, if he was just some suicidal cliche he wouldn’t have hooked us, but it’s the intensity he has, the contrasts he presents and the conflict inside that sets him off on the page.
And when it comes to QT, now that his talking heads have been so great in the past, it’s hard to top those and make a talking head scene original enough that someone doesn’t think, okay, here’s another hack trying to be Tarantino. But that’s the competitive challenge right?
Also remember, those scenes where they are talking heads like in Pulp, there is always more to it than talking heads. It’s what they are doing, pulling guns out of the trunk, heading into the building, loading ammo, all that makes the talking heads come alive because they are not just sitting there talking, they are egtting ready to do something… rob someplace, kill someone, attack some people? We don’t know, and that’s what pulls us in, that’s the hook, not just talking about foot rubs and the holiest of holies. That just makes it more enjoyable to watch.
My two cents…
Scottie screenwriter.