Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Jacob Krueger shows you how to adapt a true life story, without falling into the many pitfalls of adaptation, using both the strengths and weaknesses of BlacKkKlansman as a model.

Jacob Krueger does a deep analysis of a scene from Succession to show you how to create subtext in your dialogue.

Succession Part 2: How To Write Subtext In Your Dialogue

In the last podcast we looked at the engine of Succession. We looked at the way each episode was put together, and the way that all these characters come together in each episode to create the season.

So today, rather than thinking globally, we’re going to think locally. Rather than looking at the big structure of the piece, we’re going to look at one little teeny-tiny scene from episode 7.

And the scene starts, if you want to watch it, around 27:07 and ends at 28:20. So we’re talking about a scene that’s a total of one-minute thirteen seconds.

What’s really cool about this scene is that it features all the secondary characters of Succession.

These are secondary characters who are not only secondary characters for the audience but are also secondary characters within the social circles of their own family.

These are the boyfriends and girlfriends, and wives and fiancées: Marcia, Willa and Tom.

Marcia is the wife of Logan Roy, the Brian Cox character in this piece, the King Lear, the Rupert Murdoch, the great patriarch.

And Marcia is a highly intelligent, complicated woman, and it’s pretty clear that she loves her husband. But it’s not entirely clear if she can be trusted or not. She seems to have her own agenda, and it isn't clear how much of that agenda is about protecting the husband, and how much of that agenda is about solidifying her own power.

Willa is Connor Roy’s…well, let’s just call her a girlfriend.

Actually she’s his paid escort with whom he’s madly in love, and who is putting up with his affection and his desperate desire for her to play the role of his wife and move in with him in order to further her career as an actress and playwright.

Then you’ve got Tom, discussed in detail in last week’s podcast, who’s the trickster character, the fiancé and soon to be husband of Shiv Roy, the scheming and politically savvy daughter of Logan Roy.

And Tom isn't the greatest person in the world. In fact, he’s the worst possible version of new money. He’s a person obsessed with the power and ridiculousness of being rich. He’s a guy who’s small in the family, so he throws around his power in places where he has it.

But Tom is also deeply in love with Shiv, and deeply unaware that she might not be a person he can trust.

And what’s happened in this episode is that the entire Roy family has convened for therapy.

This meeting has been called by Logan, who has basically realized that if he doesn’t do something his share prices are going to fall. He needs to do something to create some kind of positive photo-op that suggests the family is coming back together after a big falling out between himself and Kendall that was way too public.

So Logan has called for this reconciliation, and with the exception of Kendall, all the children have come willingly, a bit curious, surprised, and maybe even hopeful that dad actually wants therapy.

And of course that isn't what’s really happening. What’s really happening is dad wants a photo op.

Even Kendall Roy shows up, and that’s a big deal because Logan just placed an article through his media sources suggesting that Kendall, who in the previous episode failed a vote of no confidence on his dad, was back on drugs. This article has not only cost Kendall his faith in his father, it has also cost him any chance of reconnecting with the one woman he loves, his ex-wife, who now thinks he’s back on drugs even though he isn't.

But Kendall Roy decides to show up, even though his plan to reconcile with his family doesn’t actually turn out well. He ends up at a bar instead, where he’s soon drinking and getting high with some locals.

Regardless, everyone has descended on Connor Roy’s beautiful mansion in the desert for this big moment of reconciliation that isn't going to happen.

And the secondary characters of Succession, Marcia, Willa and Tom, have all been kicked out.

Willa is used to this. Everybody plays status games with her. She’s used to getting kicked out of family pictures, kicked out of family meetings.

But this time, it isn't just Willa that has been kicked out. This time Marcia and Tom have been kicked out as well, and the family bloodline is being clearly enforced because who’s in that room and who’s out of that room really matters.

And so this is why we’re going to look not at what’s happening in the room where the big drama is happening, but at what’s happening outside of the room.

We’re going to use this scene from Succession to talk about a concept that’s extremely important to all screenwriters: subtext.

Part of what makes Succession such a powerful series, part of what makes the performances so incredible, is the use of subtext by the writers.

There’s a tremendous amount of subtext to almost every line in Succession.

Which raises the question, what the heck is subtext?

What does it actually do? How do you actually create it?

For a lot of writers, subtext is just a place of anxiety, wondering, “does my dialogue have enough subtext in it?” without actually having a clear understanding of what subtext is and what subtext does.

So let’s define subtext for a moment.

Subtext happens when there’s a slight difference between the primary objective and secondary objective of the character.

Primary objective is what the character is doing on the surface, and the secondary objective of the character is what the character is doing under the surface.

Sometimes this is a conscious disconnect, where the character is consciously talking about one thing in order to imply another.

Sometimes this is a subconscious disconnect, where the character truly believes they’re coming for one thing, truly believes they’re acting on one intention, when they’re actually acting on another.

We’ve all done this.

If you’ve ever broken up with somebody and decided that you have to return to their apartment and get your favorite pair of socks back so that you can finally have closure, you're consciously telling yourself the primary objective: “I’m going to go get closure.” What you aren't telling yourself is the secondary objective: “I’m going to try to get back together with my ex,” or, “I’m going to try to sleep with my ex.”

Sometimes the gap between primary and secondary objective is very conscious. Sometimes it’s under the surface and the character isn't even aware of the secondary objective. They’re only aware of the primary.

But what happens— when you can feel that secondary objective bubbling up underneath the primary objective, when you can feel that extra layer of pressure pushing up against what the character is doing on the surface— that’s subtext.

When you start to think about subtext in this way, you don’t have to think about subtext like a technique. Instead, you can use your intuition to guide your writing of subtext.

You can simply connect to the primary and secondary objective of the character. You can connect to, “What are they doing on the surface?” or, “What are they talking about on the surface?” And then you can feel the pressure between that and what’s bubbling up for them underneath the surface.

And there are lots of different things that can bubble up.

We already talked about objectives. I want to get closure: primary. I want to get back together with my ex: secondary.

But there are other kinds of secondary objectives as well.

There are emotional needs.  I want to get closure and get my socks back: primary objective. I want to feel love: secondary objective. I want justice: secondary objective.

So sometimes it is a disconnect between a tangible goal and a primal core need driving under the surface, and in order to get in touch with that, all you have to do is get in touch with that primal core need in yourself.

You want to feel those two things happening at the same time as you write the character, and just to look for the moment where—“Poof!”—that one thing bursts through the surface.

The third kind of difference between primary and secondary objective that can create subtext is something called status games.

And status games is something I would love to discuss a lot further in a future podcast. It’s also something that I cover in depth in my Write Your Screenplay classes.

Status games are about the dynamics between people as they try to raise or lower their own and each other’s status in order to feel better about themselves.

Status games happen all the time. They happen with every relationship, with every character. And I’m not going to go into all the different kinds of status game relationships because that’s a multiple hour lecture.

But, if you think about your relationships with your friends, sometimes you raise your friend’s status in order to raise your own.

And sometimes you raise your status in order to lower somebody else’s status: “Dude, you know that I know fashion, and that shirt…give me a break.”I’ll give you an example of this: “Hey, look man, you know that I know fashion, and, dude, that shirt looks awesome.”

And sometimes you lower your status in order to raise somebody’s status: “Dude, I don’t know a damn thing about fashion, but that shirt is freaking awesome.”

And sometimes you lower your status in order to lower somebody’s status: “Dude I don’t know anything about fashion, but that shirt… give me a break.”

So there are lots of different kinds of subtext. There’s subtext where it is primary objective versus secondary objective, where you have a conscious goal and an unconscious goal, or a conscious goal and a second conscious goal that are in tension with each other.

Sometimes it’s the tension between a primary objective— the conscious goal— and the emotional need underneath.

And sometimes it’s the pressure between what’s happening on the surface, which in this example is a little bit of a fashion critique,...

Learn how Succession and Arrested Development actually share the same foundational structure and series engine. Part 1.

Succession vs Arrested Development: The Series Engine

This week we’re going to be talking about Succession. If you haven't already seen the whole season, don’t worry. We aren't going to give away any major spoilers.

What we’re going to be looking at this week is the structure of Succession: the way that this piece is actually put together and the way the season is created so that every single episode can feel completely different but also deliver the same emotional experience to its audience.

If you haven't seen Succession, basically here’s the premise: What if Rupert Murdoch were King Lear?

 

That’s the structure of the piece. It’s looking at a modern day tycoon, a modern day king (in fact his last name is Roy, which means king). And this patriarch, Logan Roy, is sick and needs someone to take over the “throne”—to take over control of his company.

Like King Lear, he has some children.

Lear has three daughters; Logan Roy has four children. And he needs one of these children, or all of these children, to step up and take over the kingdom of his giant media empire.

And of course, the problem is that all of his children are spoiled and also hurt and broken. There’s nobody who’s actually ready to succeed him.

In many ways Succession is really a show about trust.

It’s a show about what happens when trust—between father and son, father and daughter, husband and wife—gets violated.

It’s about the kinds of choices people make in a world where they can’t trust each other—when the trust between corporations and people, between rich and poor, breaks down. It’s about what happens to our families, and what happens to our society.

And the painful thing about watching Succession is that, because nobody trusts anybody, no one can feel the love that actually exists.

All of these people are the product of a deeply dysfunctional family, run by a deeply dysfunctional patriarch, who of course has demons of his own and his own past that he’s wrestling with.

And what they do so beautifully in Succession is to fully dramatize these characters. Everybody in the show is awful. Everybody in this show is selfish, greedy. They’re the awful, entitled 1%—the worst possible version of those people. Everybody has some inner awfulness that they wreak upon the people around them.

And at the same time, every single character in Succession is totally human.

Every time you think that you're going to finally write somebody off, the show exposes some humanness in them, some little bit of love, some little flicker of what they could have been, some attempt to do the right thing... and suddenly your heart breaks for them again.

Sure it’s loosely inspired by Lear and loosely inspired by Rupert Murdoch, and as the show creator Jesse Armstrong has noted, loosely inspired by every succession story through the ages from Shakespeare all the way to the royal succession in England.

Even though it’s inspired by all these very serious stories, as a series, the engine of Succession is actually nearly the same as a series that you probably would never equate with it.

In fact, Succession, the series, actually has the same basic structure and the same basic engine as Arrested Development!

You could even pitch Succession as the black-comic-real-world version of Arrested Development.

Like Arrested Development, the engine of Succession is a bunch of maladjusted 1% kids, who are victims of their totally narcissistic father and mother, who are struggling to do their best but don’t have the emotional means to do so even though they have all the money in the world.

The main “kid” in Arrested Development is Michael Bluth, and in Succession it’s Kendall Roy. He’s the one kid who, in each episode, is trying his best to save the family business now that the “king” (that is, the dad) is deposed.

In Succession, Logan Roy is deposed in episode 1 by a stroke. And in Arrested Development, George Bluth is deposed in episode 1 by being arrested.

And what happens in Succession, just as happens in Arrested Development, is that in each episode Kendall has got to find another way of “saving” the family.

Now, Kendall in Succession is a lot less likeable than Michael in Arrested Development.

Kendall in Succession is a recovering drug addict—which we can all respect him for—but he’s also a narcissistic asshole who’s just not that bright, who blows every meeting, who has all the wrong instincts, and who’s always focused on himself rather than the people around him.

But nevertheless, Kendall has been working his whole life to take over this company. He has a vision of what the company should be (even though he may not actually be equipped to accomplish it). 

And he’s the only person in the family who’s really taking the company seriously.

And in episode 1 of Succession, just like in episode 1 of Arrested Development, Kendall is poised to take over.

It’s been the succession planning all along, just like Michael’s succession had been planned in Arrested Development.

In the first episode of Succession, Logan decides that his son isn’t ready and instead tries to give over the power to his wife. Just like, in Arrested Development, at the end of episode 1, George gives the company that’s supposed to go to Michael to his wife, Lucille.

And just like in Arrested Development, there are reasons for this that Kendall and Michael don’t completely understand—because both companies are involved in some pretty dark dealings of which their naïve inheritor sons aren't entirely aware.

But in both situations, the son feels screwed over by the father and trust is broken.

So the structure of each episode, the structure of the season—the way Succession works—is that in each episode Kendall comes up with some way of saving the business (sometimes at the expense of his family), and Logan and Marcia, who each have their own goals and their own intentions, will play and manipulate the children against each other until finally Kendall will compromise his own integrity trying to get what he wants.

And this is exactly the same structure of Arrested Development.

 

In Arrested Development, in each episode, George and Lucille will play the children against each other, until finally Michael makes a decision that compromises his own integrity and gets punished horrifically for it.

In Arrested Development, all of these machinations are played for comedy.

And in Succession we’re laughing too, but also a part of us is crying. Because in Succession all of these experiences are played with great, dramatic integrity.

What’s really interesting is that there are parallels for a lot of the other characters between Arrested Development and Succession as well.Succession we’re laughing too, but also a part of us is crying. Because in Succession all of these experiences are played with great, dramatic integrity.

 

We’ve already talked about the parallel between the Michael Bluth character and the Kendall Roy character, but there’s a “George Michael” character as well.

In Arrested Development, the George Michael character is Michael’s naïve son, who’s desperately in love with Maeby, his kind of twisted cousin, and who’s going to follow her around and try to please her doing all kinds of things that compromise his own values in order to get her approval.

In the structure of Succession, the George Michael character is Greg.

Greg is a young, down-on-his-luck kid, who’s related to the family even though he barely knows anybody. He’s sent by his mother, after losing his job at a theme park that’s owned by Logan Roy, to go see Logan and get a job. And Greg ends up under the tutelage of Tom.

Tom is the fiancé of Shiv Roy, who’s probably the smartest of the Roy children. She’s as close as we can get to the equivalent of the Portia de Rossi character, Lindsay, in Arrested Development.

And Tom is kind of like a mix between Tobias and their child Maeby in Arrested Development. He’s this goofy, weird guy.

(If you remember from Arrested Development Tobias is the "never-nude" and Maeby is the twisted cousin who always wants to push things a little bit, who always wants to corrupt George Michael a little bit).

And Tom ends up playing both of those roles in Succession.

Tom is both the odd mentor who is teaching Greg how to be rich, and he’s also the twisted guy who’s using and manipulating Greg in order to get his own desires met and advance his own career and feel more important in the world.

So, you’ve got Tom, who’s a Tobias/Maeby mashup, and you’ve got Greg, who’s the George Michael character—the wide-eyed innocent.

 

And just like in the structure of Arrested Development, those two usually form a B story in each episode. While the main story is happening, they’re off on their own doing a related story. So, you’ve got a parallel structure there as well.

And then you’ve got Connor Roy, played by Alan Ruck (who you may recognize as Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off). And Connor Roy is a little bit “off.”

His closest parallel in Arrested Development is the Buster character. He’s a slightly more real version of the Buster character. Like Buster, he isn't totally tied to reality, and like Buster, all he wants is to please.

Buster in Arrested Development wants to please his mother and is totally under the thumb of his mother. And Connor in Succession wants to please his dad and is totally under the thumb of his dad.

Connor has tried to reinvent himself as a relaxed hippie who kind of goes with the flow, but the truth is, like Buster, he’s so insecure that he just doesn’t know how to behave in any situation.

Connor, like Buster, is in a relationship that a lot of people would frown upon.

In Buster’s case he’s dating his mother’s best friend, Lucile 2, and in Connor’s case, he’s dating a prostitute with whom he’s desperately in love—and who doesn’t love him back.

And then you’ve got Roman,...

Hereditary: The Power of the First & Last Image

This week we’ll be talking about Hereditary written and directed by Ari Aster.

I want to start by talking about the first image of this film. So, if you're worried about spoilers, we will get to some spoilers later, but you can listen to the beginning of this podcast without concern.

The first image of Hereditary is the most important image of Hereditary.

That's because the first image of any screenplay is the most important image of the film.

It’s the most important image of your film creatively. It’s the most important image of your film structurally and it’s the most important image of your film commercially. So, it’s actually the most important image on three different levels.

I want to talk about how the first image functions on each of these levels. We’re going to start on the most external and then we’re going to work down to the most connected.

Externally, as a commercial device, the first image is the most important image of your film because the first image is the only image that everybody is actually going to read.

When your producer or agent or manager flips the script of the first page and takes a look, it’s actually that line that makes them decide, “You know what, I’m going to send this one out for coverage,” or, “Maybe I’ll read this myself.”

Similarly, if you think about the math of being a coverage reader, you as a consumer are likely going to pay about $150 for coverage, but they’re actually getting paid $50 a script. And, if you think of what it would take you to write a logline, a commentary, and a summary of a film, you’ll realize that if they were actually carefully reading each film, and carefully writing summaries, log lines and commentaries, that they would be working for about 32 cents an hour.

So that’s not possible. You can’t eat from that. Which means that coverage readers need to choose which scripts they’re going to fully read and which scripts they’re going to skim. And that’s true for festival readers and readers who read for production companies. They actually can’t afford to read every single script carefully.

And even if the economic reason for skimming didn’t exist, there’s an emotional reason that’s even more powerful, which is that almost everything they read is bad.

If you’re a coverage reader and you read a thousand screenplays and one of them is producible, you had a pretty good year.

Most of the scripts they’re reading—and I’m not talking about scripts by student writers or beginning writers or amateur writers, I’m talking about scripts by professional writers with agents—most of what they read isn't just bad, it’s actually un-producible.

Many of these professional writers are just slamming out ideas, playing within a formula, trying to get something to throw against the wall to see if it sticks, rather than doing the real work of carefully mining their subconscious for the real story they want to tell.

The downside of that is that there’s a lot of bad stuff that you’ve got to cut through in order to get your script noticed.

The good thing about that is that if you start to learn some of the things we talk about here, and you start to do this real work, your script really will stand out from the pack.

And that starts with the very first image.

If you’ve got a great first image in your screenplay, it will actually change the whole perspective of the person reading.

It will stop them from saying, “Oh... another bad script, okay let’s see if I can get through this,” and it will start them saying, “Oh wow! This is actually kind of cool!”

Because the secret of every coverage reader is that even though they dread reading another bad script, they’re desperately hoping to find that diamond in the rough.

So that first image is your place commercially to say, “You know what, pay attention. This one is going to be cool.”

I actually learned this lesson doing Off-Off Broadway theatre. If you’ve ever been to an Off-Off Broadway theatre piece, you probably went there supporting a friend. You didn’t go thinking, “Hmm, Off-Off Broadway theatre. I bet I’m going to have a great entertaining experience.” You probably went going, “Oh God, Jimmy is in another play. I hope it isn't terrible so I don’t have to confront him afterwards, but I’m going to show up and I’m going to support him.”

And so, as a producer of Off-Off Broadway and Off-Broadway Theater, I knew that my audience was going to come in often feeling like they were doing charity. And that isn't where you want someone coming in, just like if you’re working with a coverage reader you don’t want them coming in expecting to slog through another bad script by an amateur writer.

So, what I used to do—most Off-Off Broadway black box theatres don’t have a curtain—so what I used to do was invest real money in the set. I had a wonderful set designer, Niluka Hotaling, and we knew that as the audience filed in, their expectation was that they were going to see a bunch of tables and chairs and maybe some black boxes. And instead they would walk in and see a set that looked like it could be on a Broadway show.

Even though it cost me—Niluka was amazing and it cost me a few extra thousand dollars to do that that other Off-Off Broadway plays weren’t spending—the effect on the audience was huge. Because as they sat there waiting for the play to start, they realized, “Oh, maybe I’m going to see something entertaining, maybe I’m going to see something actually good.”

Their entire expectation changed, and by changing their expectations, I actually could change their experience of the play, just like when you’re really excited to go see a film it changes your experience.

So, from a commercial perspective your first image is the most important image, the first line of action is the most important line.

But, it’s also the most important image and the most important line from an artistic perspective.

Artistically, what the first image of your screenplay does is set the rules of the world for both you and your audience.

It sets the tone of the world, it sets the feeling of the script, it creates a window through which your audience can experience the story of your film—through which they can interpret it.

And it also creates a window through which you can interpret it.

It creates a feeling in you you can return to which can guide you as you write things—as you wonder, “Should I put this in or take things out?” It creates a feeling, a mise-en-scène, an atmosphere that shows you what this movie wants to be.

You can think of it like this, if you’ve ever had one of those terrible dreams where you are off to a job interview and you realize, “Oh my God, I’m not wearing pants!” If you’ve ever had that dream, you know why that dream is so terrifying.

That dream is so terrifying because you know that once they see you like that, there’s going to be no recovery. You know that that first image, the way you come in, whether you're wearing a beautiful suit or whether you’re wearing a worn out pair of track pants, is going to change the way they experience you and the way they interpret everything.

And it’s going to change also the way you feel about yourself in that meeting.

So artistically, the first image of your film gives you a window into the world of your movie, and reminds you what your movie is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to work. It points towards the themes of your movie and the things that really matter.

And what’s cool is that, oftentimes, when you first start writing, you aren't fully aware of your themes.

But, simply by pushing on that first image until you find something you haven't seen in a movie before—until you find something unexpected, and fresh, and new—you’ll start to learn, just through the action of closing your eyes and looking or pushing on that image, what your movie is really about.

So, the first image of your screenplay is incredibly important commercially, and the first image is incredibly important artistically. But the first image is also incredibly important structurally.

In fact, everything structurally in your film is going to build from that very first image.

In a well-structured film, if you take the first image and the last image of the film and you put them together, it should tell you the journey of the characters, at least metaphorically.

You should feel the journey of the character just by looking at that first image and that last image. So, let’s talk for a moment about the first image of Hereditary.

The first image of Hereditary could very well have been a cliché one.

In fact, we start out and we’re in a scene that’s very familiar if we’re used to horror movies: we’re in a creepy room and a kind of creepy house, and that creepy room is filled with dioramas, and there’s creepy music playing, and we’re kind of drifting with the camera among these dioramas.

And, if we watch a lot of horror movies we already recognize this image. We’ve seen this image in other films.

In fact, if you listen to my podcast on Annabelle: Creation you know this is essentially the first image of Annabelle: Creation: we’re in a creepy doll show filled with creepy dolls and a creepy doll’s eye.

And that isn't the only film that has done this; there are many horror movies that have done this.

So the good thing is that this familiar image is dropping us into a genre that we understand. We immediately know, “I get it. I’m in a horror movie. I get it. Dioramas are creepy.”

And, what a lot of us might do when we realize, “Oh my God, I’ve written a cliché image,” is freak out. We might think, “Oh my God, cut it, cut it, I’m wrong, I’m wrong, it’s a mistake!”

What great writers do, instead of throwing out that image, is look closer and keep looking closer, until they find something that they didn’t expect.

And what happens in Hereditary is that we get close

Hereditary script analysis podcast with Jacob Krueger. Learn from the movie Hereditary how the first and last image of your script relate to screenplay structure.

DEADPOOL 2: Where Tone Meets Genre in Screenwriting

This week, we are going to be looking at Deadpool 2 by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and a new addition to the writing team, Ryan Reynolds.

If you missed my podcast on the original Deadpool, you might want to check that out as well, because one of the things that is exciting about Deadpool 2 is the way it manages to maintain a consistent tone, even over the course of a very different film.

If you’ve studied TV writing in our  TV Drama Classes, TV Comedy Classes or Web Series Classes, you know that every episode of a TV show should feel the same, and also feel different. that it should deliver the same genre experience to the audience, the same tone, the same feeling, the same experience while taking them through a story that also feels very new, and very fresh, and very different.

But now, we’re seeing the same phenomenon in big action movie franchises, like Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers, where each installment needs deliver on those expectations of the audience.

So, setting aside the questions all over the internet about “which is better, Deadpool 1 or Deadpool 2?” -- rather than comparing these films in terms of which is a more successful movie, instead, what I want to do is I want to look at this question, which will be valuable for any writer, whether you’re working in features or TV.

How do you maintain that consistent tone?

How do you create one screenplay after another that has the same feeling that feels entirely fresh and also entirely consistent?”

Learning how to control tone in your screenplay will be valuable for you in many different ways.

If you are writing a TV Drama or a TV Comedy, or a Web Series, understanding how tone is handled in a script, how different elements can be brought together to replicate the same feeling for the audience, will be extraordinarily valuable for you, whether working on your own pilot, or replicating the voice of a showrunner as a staff writer on a series.

If you are writing for feature films this will help you in a couple of different ways.

First, a lot of the writing work out there right now is work-for-hire writing or rewriting, and to be a great work-for-hire writer, or to be a great rewriter or a great polisher of scripts, we need to do more than just create great stories and great characters-- that is just a given of the basics of what we need to be able to do.

We also need to be able to write characters that didn’t originate from us, we need to be able to create characters that fit effortlessly into a universe or a world created by other people, We need to be able to emulate the voices of other characters.

So learning to control tone will help you in your career if you are interested in rewriting, if you are interested in being able to take notes from a producer and adapt your work, if you are interested in having control over your gift rather than just letting anything that comes out onto the page be what you end up with.

And it will also be valuable for you even if you’re just working on your own script.

Oftentimes, there is a big gap between what we imagine our screenplay is going to be and what actually comes out on the page.

Many years ago, one of my very talented students was working on his first foray into comedy. He pulled me aside at one point and he said, “Jake, what do I do if I do all this work, and it comes out, and it isn't funny?”

And I said, “Well Bill, then you will have a really great drama.”

And ultimately that is still the answer I believe in.

As screenwriters, we really should worry a hell of a lot less about tone.

We should really worry a whole lot less about where we are going to end up, and we should really focus on what it is that we are writing, what the script wants to be.

At the same time, as writers, we often freak ourselves out, because we will write something that feels like it isn't coming out right.

We are writing a wonderful comedy and everything is really funny, and then here is this incredibly dark scene.

Or we are writing something that is incredibly dark, and then, suddenly, here is this goofy thing that dropped in.

Or, we are writing something that is set in a totally natural world, and then, suddenly, we see some expressionistic, or magical, or fantasy element comes in-- something that feels like it is from a different genre.

And oftentimes what we want to do when that happens is just shut it down!

“Oh my God what is wrong with me,? Why am I going off on this crazy tangent, or at this crazy angle?”

When really what we need to do is bring ourselves back to where we are, and say, “Okay let’s start by noticing what comes up, and then let’s start to adapt it to turn it into what it needs to be.”

Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes here has a quote that I really love. Jerry says, “first write it true, and then write it funny.”

But if you are studying TV Drama with Stephen Molton he would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the drama.”

If you are writing an action movie, I would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the action and the spectacle to build around it.”

As writers, our ultimate job is to tell the truth. But in our final drafts, we need that truth to take a form that fits with all the stuff around it.

If we are working on a film like Deadpool 2, where we are working with a character who is supposed to feel, and look, and be, and act a certain way, we need to fulfill the expectations that our audience had set up for them in the first episode, just like we need to fulfill the expectations that we set up for our audience on the first page, or the first act, or the first half of our script.

We have to give them what we promised, and then we have to outdo it.

If you look at Deadpool 2, it is an exciting film because, just like the original Deadpool, it deals with a lot of stuff that you aren't supposed to deal with in a comedy: suicide, death of a lover, child obesity and anger, child abuse, sexual abuse, murder.

And one of the fabulous things about Deadpool and Deadpool 2 is that even though the films are both chock full of violence, Deadpool the character shows a lot of awareness that those bullets hurt, that the actions he is taking aren't necessarily right, that the violence that we see in these films isn't really the society that we want to create for ourselves.

So you have this completely immoral character (or mostly immoral) character in a film that actually has a relatively moral message.

You have a completely irreverent action comedy that is actually dealing with some very, very, real issues.

And although you have a wise-cracking character who never seems to break a sweat, or never seems at loss for a joke, you also have a couple of moments of truly moving character-driven drama between him and his wife.

What’s really beautiful about Deadpool 2 that it is able to wrestle with very real, truthful, dark issues without losing that constant comic fun tone that categorizes who Deadpool is and how the series works.  

In the original Deadpool this was already hard to do, but in Episode 2 this was actually harder.

In the original Deadpool what we have is a creation myth. We have the journey of Wade Wilson to becoming Deadpool, and in that story, we have the story of a guy learning what really matters in life.

And even though, as I commented in my first podcast on Deadpool, it doesn’t draw to the traditional moralistic conclusion that you would expect in a superhero movie, Wade Wilson does go on a character-driven journey where he learns that it really isn't all about materialism, it really isn't all about looking good-- that he can actually believe in love.

A really beautiful love story grows between Deadpool and Vanessa--his stripper prostitute girlfriend--where these two very flawed people actually find real love together.

What that means is that by the beginning of Deadpool 2, we need a completely different kind of journey for the Deadpool character.

The first Deadpool is a journey about discovering that love can be real. But, you can’t just go do that again in Deadpool 2, because the character has already gone on that journey!

At the same time, if you have studied any TV writing-- and these big-budget action movies do work like TV in that each installment needs to feel the same but also be different-- you know that for the formula of Deadpool, for the engine to work, Deadpool has to go on another morality versus lack of morality kind of journey!

It can’t be the same as the first one because he has already learned what love it, it has to be something new.

So, Deadpool 2 hones in on a different theme.

If the first Deadpool was about appearance versus reality, about a character dealing with the ugliness of his face and learning that he can still be loved for who he is rather than what he looks like, Deadpool 2 is about something different.

Deadpool 2 is about family.

And Deadpool 2 starts, just like the first Deadpool, with a really beautifully shot, fun, funny action sequence.

Deadpool 1 begins with a visually spectacular sequence, but while in Deadpool 1 this was a fun action-fight sequence, in Deadpool 2 it is a suicide sequence.

What we watch is a guy who can’t die, doing his best to blow himself up.

We meet a Deadpool who is starting the film at a place of total despair.

And though he is still wisecracking and fun, we can feel the despair underneath his actions and we can feel the lengths he is going to, to try to end his life.

We then flashback to find out why.

And what we flashback to is a sequence between Deadpool and Vanessa that is a little bit surprising emotionally and tonally, if you are used to the Vanessa from the previous movie and the Deadpool from the previous movie, because,...

Jacob Krueger talks about the role of tone in genre, and how the writers of Deadpool controlled the tone to handle heavy topics in such a lighthearted way.

Jacob Krueger interviews head TV writer, screenwriter and director Katie Torpey