If there is an unwritten rule about screenwriting that every writer needs to follow, it’s this:
Push it.
Push what? you ask. Push everything, I say.
This is especially true if you’re an aspiring writer trying to sell your first spec. This is true if you’re an established writer working on your 50th job. Everything needs to be pushed.
What do I mean when I say push it?
I mean push the drama farther. I mean push the humor funnier. I mean give me everything that you’re already giving me, but give me more of it. Most screenplays are works of fiction, so you’re transporting an audience to a world of make-believe, whether that world is the inside of a video game or a New York City police precinct. You owe it to your audience to give them something more than they would see in real life.
So push it.
There are no limits to what you can write about, so you need to throw them off like shackles. I was reading a script for a client recently, and the main character put herself in an awkward situation, but the writer didn’t do a whole lot with it until the end of the next scene. It was almost like a plant and then a payoff, but I encouraged the writer to exploit the situation more completely and base the whole scene around this issue. The script is a comedy, so pushing this issue increases the potential for humor. It also increases the dramatic potential because the audience is going to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, so they’ll be more engaged in what’s happening. That will increase the level of care in the story and in the characters that the audience has, and will lead to a more successful effort in your writing.
So your next question might be, “How do I push it?”
I’m glad you asked. You know the phrase, “take it to its logical conclusion”. Pushing these moments in your screenplay does that. If you have a character who picks up the gun that was used to murder his wife, then naturally his finger prints are on the gun, and now he’s a prime suspect. If you have a character who is investigating a family member over crimes he may have committed, you need to do everything you can to make it look like that character is guilty. If you have a character that is so stressed about impressing her boss at a lunchtime meeting, you need to make sure that the stain on her shirt can’t be hidden, but she’s going to do every ridiculous thing she can think of to make it unnoticeable, thus drawing everyone’s attention to it.
Mainly when talking about pushing it, I’m talking about individual moments in screenplays that need to be pushed to their maximum level of comedy or drama in order to give the audience a chance to become more engaged in the story. However, pushing it is not limited to that. Look at your premise. Look at the personality characteristics of your characters. What about them could be made bigger, more important or pushed farther. Do you have a story about a guy trying to choose between his girlfriend and his job? What’s the most important thing about each of them, and what will he really lose once he chooses one over the other? Pushing it is about maximizing the stakes, not only at any given moment in the script, but over the whole story in general.
Drama is always about high stakes so push it.
Again, it needs to be logical. Not every story has life and death as the stakes, but at a minimum there needs to be a choice between something good and something bad. Pushing it takes that to something better vs. something worse.
The number one most important job of a screenwriter is to engage the audience in the story. Pushing the drama, the comedy and the characters to their logical limits is the best way to accomplish that goal.
Do you have a script that you think you’ve pushed as far as you can push it, but it might need another set of eyes to determine if it can be pushed even farther? At Monument Scripts, we specialize in finding moments and concepts in any story that can be pushed more in order to get the maximum emotional response from your audience. Go to the following link to see how we can help you.