10 Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn From Something Wild

9. Grab Your Audience In The First 10 Minutes

Any script reader will tell you the same thing: "I know if I've got a good script in the first ten pages." Meaning if the writing is bad in the first ten pages, 99.9% of the time, it's not getting any better. So how does a screenwriter get a reader past those first ten pages? Apart from writing clearly with no glaring punctuation or grammar mistakes, they must give the reader something they've never "seen" before. When audiences buy a ticket to a movie, they are looking to get pulled away into a fantasy world. The same goes for script readers. They want your script to be good. Given the chance between having to read a good script or a bad script, who would chose the bad one? Okay, maybe a masochist. And that might explain why they're working a script-reader to begin with, but I digress... The point is, people want a story to succeed, but the writer has to work for that. The audience won't give it away for free. What makes Something Wild such a good example of success in this field is that the film depends on those first ten minutes to sell you its premise. Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye must make their audience believe this uptight businessman would really run away with this strange woman for a weekend on a whim. And for every reveal after reveal, the script is successful. The resistance of the Jeff Daniels character almost mirrors the skepticism of the audience. After Lulu turns a small confrontation into the promise of a short lift back to his office, then into a trip to Jersey down the Holland tunnel, Daniels' Charles character pleads to be taken back. He needs to be won over by these events just as the audience does. By page 9, the car has finally stopped and Charles is at a pay phone calling in his absence to his office. Unbeknownst to him, Lulu is inside the liquor store grabbing four bottles of whiskey and all the cash in the register. When she returns to Charles and the car, she hangs up the phone in the middle of his call. What is brilliant about this exchange is the small moment given for Daniels' protest, just before she lays the first big kiss of the film on him. The audience can only wonder, along with Daniels, how he could say no. Every instance of the script has been leading to this page 10 moment. Then: Boom. Welcome to the movie.