10 Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn From Something Wild

7. Raise Your Stakes

Another common thread from script readers (that make it past page 10) is: "most scripts die in act II." In a way, it completely makes sense: A writer gets a great idea, spends the first act establishing the characters and the premise encapsulated in a great inciting incident that leads to a masterful first act turning point and then... Nothing. The genesis for the script has been completely worn out and the characters are standing on a cliff, staring out into an abyss that should be the next 60 to 90 pages of a script. The way to avoid this, to keep your audience engaged and with you until the climax, is to raise the stakes half-way through the second act, right at the mid-point of your story. In The Godfather, it's the point where Michael kills Sollozzo and McClusky at Loui's Restaurant, changing his character's entire life course and sparking a gang war that will occupy the rest of the film. Something Wild exhibits the midpoint in one of its clearest forms. At just under an hour into the movie, the lighting shifts from a warm yellow, to a dark and cold blue that introduces Ray Sinclair, a shady criminal portrayed in by Ray Liotta in his astonishing film debut. At this point, the film turns as though the driver threw the emergency break and tail spun into a 180. What makes this work is the way the filmmakers balance both tones, using the early comic elements to keep the audience guessing what will happen next to the point where the shift won't remove them from the narrative. Conversely, the comic elements keep the characters likable throughout the darker second half so that as the tone shifts, the audience remains invested in the story.