Talk to Me, Part 2: World Building & Structure

In Part One of the Talk to Me Podcast, we talked about the first 10 pages of Talk to Me and how the first 10 pages of your script work on three different levels. 

On the writing level, they allow you to find your voice and the images that you're going to build from.

On the structural level, they allow you to have a strong foundation that you're going to "yes, and..." as you build your character’s journey. 

And finally on the commercial level, they grab your audience right away to say, “Hey, pay attention! This is going to be cool.” 

In this podcast, we're going to do some deep script analysis of the structure and theme and world-building of Talk to Me.

We’re going to learn how to build structure organically in your own screenplay through a simple concept called mirrors and foils. 

We’re going to talk about how to intuitively build structure in your screenplay in relation to theme. 

We’re going to be learning a new approach to creating the rules of your world and allowing your audience to discover them without exposition dumps.And we’re going to be exploring the essential human drama that we actually connect to underneath all those exciting horror genre elements. 

There are going to be a ton of spoilers ahead… so, if you haven’t seen Talk to Me yet, you might want to before listening to the podcast. 

Talk to Me is a great example of what's beautiful about genre movies. 

Sure, a horror genre movie can be just a bunch of blood and gore (and Talk to Me certainly has enough blood and gore for years of nightmares). 

But great horror movies are not just about blood and gore.

These elevated horror films are not about the horror of monsters. They're about the horror of families, of relationships, of the personal challenges the audience is actually dealing with. 

They're just personal dramas, blown up in an expressionistic, symbolic way. 

Spoiler Alert: There are going to be a bunch of spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen Talk to Me yet, this is a good time to go watch this film. (But be prepared to be scared). Or if you're not into scary then just read on, because you’re going to learn a ton about how to write in any genre… 

When we look underneath the surface at the structure of Mia’s journey in Talk to Me, it’s about so much more than being possessed by a bunch of monsters. 

The truth is, (most likely) nobody in your audience has ever been possessed by a monster or shaken hands with a creepy hand that might have been lopped off an actual psychic. No one in the audience is going to live a horror movie. 

And at the same time, all of us are living horror movies in some way, because we're all human beings and life is frickin’ hard and scary and sad.

If you've listened to my podcasts on A Quiet Place or Hereditary, you understand how these elevated horror movies are really family stories. And Talk to Me is no exception.

What we're watching in Talk to Me is a family story about a girl who lost her mom. 

As she tries to deal with this incomprehensible situation, Mia has two competing stories in her head.