THE Secret To Screenwriting

I figured out a screenwriting secret no one ever pinpoints as THE MUST thing to do. It’s so ridiculously simple I’m fucking stupid it took me THIS long to put into words. And they never said a damn thing in film school about it. Suck it film school.

Anyway, wanna know what it is?

Have a time clock. Yes. A clock to show you urgency. An internal or external time clock. Sometimes really obvious, like even having a literal time clock (“Back To The Future” has one of the biggest ones I can remember). Every movie you can name has one.  Name one. Go ahead.

“Gone With The Wind”: save Tara within this time to stop foreclosure. OR starve to death (which is it’s own time clock). It’s so obvious, the movie even opens with a Ben Franklin quote about it…“Don’t squander time, it’s what stuff is made of”

“Road House”: Dalton has one more job before he gets out of the business. He’s so close.

“Out Of Africa”: Our girl Streep, stuck in the outskirts of Africa with money running out to get her coffee business going. A slow trickle of a time clock (more like an hour glass)

Any Bond movie does it with a ticking time bomb.

Any action movie from the 90’s starts with either “I’ve got one week to retirement” or “the killer is going to kill again ‘within this time’”

“RoboCop”: OCP is about to sign the paperwork on a massive contract to privatize law enforcement, tick tock…can Robo stop evil corporate scumbag from making it official.

“The Goonies”: One more adventure before they foreclose (apparently on the entire town).

“Driving Miss Daisy”: a great one…can miss Daisy & Hoke get along before one of them dies? Talk about slow trickle time clock.

“Stand By Me”: Gotta beat everyone to the dead body so we can be heroes.

Any serial killer movie: Before the next murder

"Ex Machina": You have seven days to evaluate if my robot can function as human

The simple answer is that time clocks makes us nervous. That’s a good thing. Since when we’re nervous we stay focused. And eat popcorn. It’s probably more accurate to say we are marking time in the movie. I think we all have an internal clock that runs with stories. And we GOTS to know. Tick…tick…tick. Wandering aimlessly is death.

I realize something…without a time clock, or sense of urgency…people stop reading your script. Almost immediately.

Here’s a trick…add that sense of urgency to any story you tell. Inject even the one you consider the dumbest one and see if that doesn’t boost the story by at least 10%.

Let’s try it with a story I typically saw from female film students (when I was in school):

Glenda, a homely wallflower, is debating whether or not to go out with her friends to a raging party.

Time clock version: Glenda, a homely wallflower, is debating whether or not to go out with her friends to a raging party…when she stumbles upon a potion that makes every guy want her. The potion only lasts until midnight.

A typical male film student story…

Charlie hates his parents for divorcing when he was young and lost faith in religion.

Time clock version: Charlie hates his parents for divorcing when he was young and lost faith in religion…but now he’s been diagnosed with nut cancer and has a month to live.

Cheap and lame, but it works.

The next time you watch a movie, see how well (or bad) they hide this. The better they hide it, the better the movie. In “Thelma & Louise” they have a destination (Mexico) but they mark the time by both their personality switch AND how tan and mussed up their hair get. Visually (and subconsciously), we may be thinking “get to Mexico before you get melanoma and split ends!”