Games Writers Play — Screenwriting Breakdowns

“Write dialogue the way people really talk.”

Some writers swear by recording real conversations. Others stylize the shit out of every line.

But which approach actually makes dialogue feel real? And what does the research have to say about it?

This week, we're putting another piece of screenwriting wisdom to the test.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

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Every Sunday, I take apart a great scene or a piece of writing advice to see what psychological mechanism actually makes it work — and what’s just writers’ folklore. Steal what survives.

“Make your protagonist relatable.”

Sounds obvious. But does making a character more like us actually make us care more?

This week, I’m putting one of screenwriting’s most common notes up against the research.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

—Every Sunday, I take apart a great scene or a piece of writing advice to see what psychological mechanism actually makes it work — and what’s just writers’ folklore. Steal what survives.

Shosanna barely does anything. There’s no dramatic irony. She knows exactly who’s sitting across the table, and we don’t know a single thing she doesn’t. And it’s one of the tensest scenes Tarantino ever made.

Because the engine isn’t what we know. It’s what nobody knows.

Does Landa remember her family’s farm, or is the glass of milk just a coincidence?

Every line nudges the answer toward yes, then pulls it back toward no. And research on anticipatory stress helps explain why that’s so unbearable: a fifty-fifty chance of a shock can produce more stress than knowing the shock is definitely coming.

Landa never lets the needle settle. Shosanna is just as in the dark as we are. And that shared not-knowing is what welds us to her.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

No Country for Old Men article – here.

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Every Sunday, I take apart a great scene or a piece of writing advice to see what psychological mechanism actually makes it work — and what’s just writers’ folklore. Steal what survives.

New format, first outing: instead of just breaking down the final scene, I'm putting an early script draft side by side with what actually made it to screen — same story beat, two versions, wildly different effect. I'll do these occasionally when the "why" behind a rewrite is too good to pass up.

This one's Obsession. Same character, same desperation, two completely different openings. Version one: a guy slumped in front of the TV next to his dead cat. Version two: that same guy, rehearsing a love confession in a diner, getting mocked by his own best friend.

One reads as a psychopath. The other, we root for. Here's why the exact same information lands as sympathy in one version and dread in the other.

This is the companion piece to my original Obsession breakdown — the full scene analysis, if you haven't heard it: How to Set Up Throughlines

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

—I take one scene apart and find the psychological mechanism that makes it work. Then I show you how to steal it.

A naked man walks into a bar and puts half the regulars in the hospital. It should be horrifying. It's one of the funniest scenes in the film.

Because the movie gives you two seats at once: the god seat (you know it's a machine, the bar doesn't) and, periodically, the machine's own eyes. This one's on why that combination reads as comedy — plus the honest, messy science on whether the trailers spoiling "he's the good guy" cost the film anything. Spoiler: the research can't say.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

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I take one scene apart and find the psychological mechanism that makes it work. Then I show you how to steal it.

The betrayal we've waited the whole film for lands — and watch what Eduardo does with it. He smashes one laptop, then recites the number that ruins him, point-zero-three percent, with a level voice. A man refusing to react. And we're the ones sweating.

This one's on expressive suppression: a character clamps down on everything he feels, and the pressure crosses the table to us. Then the payoff — not a punch that connects, but a fake one. Because if Eduardo actually hit Sean, we'd have a bleeding man and a hero who assaulted him. Keep the harm at zero and the moral ledger still settles clean. What we're enjoying isn't damage — it's the books being balanced.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

—Every week, I take one scene apart and find the psychological mechanism that makes it work. Then I show you how to steal it.

Rust and Marty, in a car, discussing the futility of human consciousness. On paper that's a philosophy lecture — the scene we've all written once and watched die on the page. Pizzolatto's version grips you. Here's the trick.

Watch where your attention actually goes. Not Rust — you can't read him. Ask about the cross on his wall and you get "I contemplate the moment in the garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion." Sad? Showing off? Winding you up? Zero read. A closed door with no lockpick. So your mind latches onto the one face you can read: Marty, watching Rust. This one's on Social Appraisal. When you can't file a situation yourself, you outsource the feeling to someone who can. And the kicker: it only fires because Rust is radical. A moderate Rust needs no interpreter. His extremity manufactures the ambiguity that makes Marty load-bearing.

Prefer to read? Full written version here:

—Every week, I take one scene apart and find the psychological mechanism that makes it work. Then I show you how to steal it.

Badger's on a bench selling blue meth to the shrimpiest undercover cop you've ever seen. Count the real jokes in the scene — there's the garbage-truck bit, and… that's about it. The rest is two guys haggling. And it plays like a sketch.

This one's on Benign Violation. The scene runs the undercover-buy script you've seen a thousand times — cop plays casual, dealer sniffs him out — then flips it: now the cop is pleading to buy, and the dealer is playing hard to get. It's wrong, and you know exactly what's wrong, which is the whole engine. But wrong alone is just alarming; it's funny because it's also harmless — Badger's a side character we're not gripping the armrest for, so an arrest that would be dread with Walt or Jesse lands as farce with him. And no, it isn't surprise doing the work: you know the cuffs are coming, and it's still funny on the tenth rewatch.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.Want to read up on visual comedy – check out my breakdown of a scene from One Battle After Another

—Every week, I take one scene apart and find the psychological mechanism that makes it work. Then I show you how to steal it.

On paper, this scene is an exposition dump — Bear's history with Nikki, the old bullying, the whole social map of the friend group, all unloaded in four minutes of diner banter. It should play like a lecture. It doesn't. You walk out feeling like nothing happened.

Everything did. This one's on Spontaneous Trait Inference: the second you watch someone act, your brain staples a trait onto them, and you can't switch it off. So while you're chuckling at Bear rehearsing a love confession to the wrong person, the film is quietly getting you to tag his "friend" Ian as not on his side — a verdict you never consciously reach. Then the betrayal reveal lands later and barely shocks you, because your brain already filed it. That's a throughline planted below the waterline, and it's how you smuggle a page of backstory past a bored audience.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.

The Narrator’s apartment has just exploded. Everything he owned is on the sidewalk, on fire. And the voiceover says: “I suppose these things happen.”

Visually, a life destroyed. Auditorily, a shrug — and your brain can’t leave that gap alone. Is he numb? In denial? Dissociated? You start solving him without noticing you’ve started. This one’s on why voiceover works when it’s doing more than narrating: it grants privileged access to a character’s head (which reads as intimacy), and it creates cognitive tension by contradicting what we see instead of repeating it. Watch what “How embarrassing. A house full of condiments and no food.” tells you about a man more ashamed of his fridge than afraid of the fire.

Prefer to read? Full written version here.