15 Screenplay Points to Engage Your Audience When You Have No Stars

15 Screenplay Points to Engage Your Audience by the writer / director of the award-winning Forbidden Power I’ve written six out of the seven movies I directed. Four of those movies I produced myself. I don’t write scripts to sell because the competition is keen and usually writers are commissioned to write for producers via who they already know. So, the chance of selling a script is small.

I do, however, write scripts for movies that I want to make. Must make.

Movies I will raise the money for and direct. Stories that I’m so passionate about that I’ll take the financial responsibility to see them to the end.

Wish the exception of Omega Cop, which had three name actors; Adam West, Troy Donahue and Stuart Whitman, my movies have no stars as do most of the independent movies made. And that’s the fly in the buttermilk. How do you hold a viewer’s attention with no stars? A viewer that has his hand on the TV remote control, ready to turn off your movie if ten seconds go by without holding his interest.

If the viewer was watching a movie that had Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio in it, he’ll give it five minutes. But he won’t give more than 10 seconds on a movie with no stars. The same goes for judges at film festivals that you’ll pay money to enter. The same goes to buyers you’re trying to sell you movie to. (For cash I hope.)

What follows are the techniques I used to have my 7th feature film, Forbidden Power, hold the viewer’s attention and win seven awards (so far) including Best Picture at the Hollywood BIB Film Competition.

And Best Science Fiction Feature Film at the International BB Oklahoma Film Festival. Both IMDB sanctioned.

1 - Chose an exciting story that can continue to unfold over 90 minutes. The biggest decision you'll make about your movie is the subject, your story. Will the tagline on your poster have enough energy to attract a viewer and enough story possibility to expand its ideas?

Many people write about Hitchcock's Psycho; it's dialogue, editing, sound effects, music its many symbols and the idea of killing off the lead star at

the 50-minute mark. (Yes, 50 not 30 as most write). But the main thing is that Hitchcock chose to do that story in the first place.

Once you decide on the story you which to make a movie about, you're stuck with that story for the duration. And so is the viewer holding that TV remote control. So, before you start writing, take your time and make a story choice that will have a great tagline to attract and engage the viewer.

2 - The first scene of your story should be a grabber, (an obvious technique) a teaser of things to come. Something that will make Mr. Remote-Control say, “Okay, I’ll watch this for a few more minutes.”

3 - Most of your scenes should be no more than two minutes long and should force the curiosity of Mr. Remote to watch ‘Just one more scene.’

4 - Have a least sixty scenes in your script. This has double power: One: It ensures that the average running time of your scenes will be ninety seconds, signaling the viewer that the story will be told quickly.

Two: It will give your story more ‘bits of entertainment’, as in; the more entertaining scenes there are, the more entertaining the movie.

Also: Be sure to act out your script to time it. Make sure you have at least 90 minutes of screen time, so your movie looks like 'a movie'.

5 - Be ambitions. Remember this is about writing a story that YOU will produce and direct, not sell to someone else. When you browse the internet searching for advice on independent filmmaking you will see many saying: Make your movie in one or two locations and keep your cast small. However, new locations and introducing new characters, especially female characters, will keep Mr. Remote from turning your movie off. So: 6 - Have many locations and a large cast of interesting characters. How you find the actors and how much you pay them is another subject.

7 - Beware the 50-minute mark. This is where even large-scale movies tend to bog down and make the viewer give up. So, either introduced an

exciting, new character there or have a big action or suspense scene.

Or, best of all, introduce a story twist that takes the viewer into a new aspect of your story.

8 - Have at least five great scenes. Director Howard Hawks said, “If you have five good scenes in your movie that people talk about, you'll have a hit.” You can see those scenes in Hawks' movies: The Thing From Another World, Rio Bravo and Hatari.

9 - End each scene with a promise of something exciting or suspenseful coming up in the next scene, such as a character saying, “What will he find out there, Dr. Zeus?” “His destiny.” Planet of the Apes The audience never went for popcorn because they had to see what Charlton Heston would find ‘out there’.

10 - Have a great ending. An ending should be both surprising and inevitable. We are surprised when Heston finds the Statue of Liberty ‘out there’, yet when we think about it, it all makes sense. Many surprising, but inevitable endings, can be seen in the original Twilight Zone episodes. Rod Serling wrote the Apes screenplay along with Michael Wilson, the writer of Place in the Sun and Bridge on the River Kwai, both of which had surprising, but inevitable conclusions.

11 - Romance and irony make it interesting. Director Sam Pechinpah told actor Robert Culp: “All movies should be about the man-woman relationship and have a sense of irony.” A debatable point, but that’s why I made Forbidden Power the story of a young man who is infected with sexually-transmitted-power and must choose between the woman he’s addicted to and the woman who loves him.

12 - Freeze your scenes, so you can move on to adding bonuses. Yes, you can re-write forever, but at some point, you must say to yourself, “That’s the movie,” and stop adding scenes. (Unless you get a brainstorm).

13 - Keep repacking your snowball. Screenplay writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, Hot Rock, Marathon Man) said, “A story is like a snow-ball rolling down the hill. It gets bigger as it keeps rolling. If the only thing that is going on in your movie is what’s going on, then repack your snowball.”

To me this means; Once you have your scenes frozen into a story you find powerful, then go back and within those scenes add more of what I call ‘bonuses’ or what Walt Disney called ‘plussing’. Make your characters richer by adding some verbal back-story and visual props to amplify your story.

In Forbidden Power I added the little girl’s doll long after I had frozen the scenes. This became a character of its own which made me add dialogue referring to it and gave me something to cut to as if the doll may become alive at any moment. All because I was repacking my snowball.

14 - You don’t have to use a script program. I’ve used Final Draft for a few screenplays, but for my last movie, I used Microsoft Word. It was faster and easier to control for me. And since it was for a movie I would produce and send to the actors in PDF form, it didn’t need to be in any script program. But it’s up to you how you want to type it.

15 - Write the script for yourself or Mr. Remote-Control? I say, write for both. But always keep in mind, if you don’t hold their attention, the audience will make a popcorn run, Mr. Remote will turn off your DVD and judges won’t select your movie at festivals. Worst, your friends will say, “Pretty good, but your next one should be better.”

Okay. I wish you great passion while typing and watch out for Mr. Remote. Oh, and take a look at Forbidden Power on Amazon to see if I practice what I preach.

Paul Kyriazi – Writer / Director Forbidden Power festival wins: Best Picture – Hollywood BITB Festival 2018 Best Science Fiction Film – Oklahoma BB Festival 2019 Best Thriller – London Flicks Festival 2019