Thread by @bryanedwardhill

Just finished a conversation with the director of a feature I'm producing, and here's a perspective from it that I've shared before. It might be useful for your genre #writing so I'll share it again for those that might have missed my earlier thread. It returns often in my work.

Often the problem of genre writing, especially in film, is that the stories are DEPENDENT on the genre elements for any dramatic impetus or conflict.

Great genre movies are dramas INTERRUPTED by genre elements, around the first act break. I'll explain.

DIE HARD is a drama about a marriage suffering from the imbalance of success for each partner and the cultural differences in relocation. John could just be in a drama about changing himself to fix his marriage -- but then Hans shows up and we're in an action film.

THE EXORCIST is about a child suffering from her parents' bitter divorce and a priest dealing with his lack of faith due to his mother's illness -- and then "Captain Howdy" shows up and we're in a horror film.

ROBOCOP is a story about a good man, good cop transferred to a terrible precinct suffering authoritarian corruption and his battle to keep his ethics in tact. It's SERPICO until Alex Murphy is blown apart and turned into a cyborg.

So often the problem with a genre script (and I get hired to rewrite a lot of them) is that there's NOTHING going on in the script without the genre stuff. There's no interesting dramatic paradigm in the first act so it all feels incredibly thin and "b-movie."

Many times, I'll have an executive or producer think the problem of a script they're giving me is in the second or third act. "The ending needs a punch" "The midpoint isn't there."

95% of the time the problem is the FIRST act. There's not enough foundation for dramatic impact.

A clever midpoint or a twisty-wisty third act climax (or worse just a louder, bigger set piece) never matters if the first act doesn't build dramatic conflict and stakes BEFORE genre shows up. All the genre elements do is revolve the dramatic conflict. That's ALL they do. So...

...you need the strong dramatic conflict PRE-genre introduction in order to have anything worth resolving.

So if you're writing that spec script, ask yourself "Is this interesting without the genre stuff? Is this a story without it?"

If not, make sure it is.

It doesn't have to be the best drama in the world. It can even be a well-worn dramatic paradigm, but ideally, you shouldn't need the monster, the thief, the robot, etc., to have dramatic conflict. There should be dramatic conflict in your world before those elements enter it.

It's especially important when you get into the weeds of pre-production because most actors aren't drawn to the genre stuff, just because it's there.

Actors are human beings who have to PLAY a character in a dramatic situation. Having clarity beyond genre stuff helps them.

It can also help YOU because when you're trying to get an actor to be in your project, you don't have to pitch them dragons and evil robots. You can pitch them a clear character arc, with dramatic and relatable stakes aside from the genre...and then share the cool of the genre.

Just something to consider if you're looking at your work, or a potential rewrite job and you're trying to put your finger on what's missing.

The drama. The drama, especially in the first act, might be missing.

Happy #writing

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