The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is the story marketable without revealing the surprise?

It’s great to have a big surprise up your sleeve, but beware of a common mistake: The twist is not the concept. The concept is the compelling idea that sells the story. The twist is what wakes up the story once the original concept starts to run out of steam. 

There was a TV show a few years ago called The 4400. The creators pitched it to the networks like this: All of these people have been abducted over the years by lights in the sky, and one day they all return at the same time with superpowers. At first, it seems like a standard alien abduction story, but then we get to the big twist: They weren’t abducted by aliens. They were abducted through time travel by postapocalyptic humans who have given them these powers to prevent the apocalypse from happening!

Wow, what a pitch! Every network got excited. Then the network execs asked when the truth would be revealed. The writers got big grins on their faces and said, “That’s the great part: We don’t find this out until the end of season five!” Suddenly, all of the joy went out of the room.

The writers hadn’t thought this through. By their own admission, it seemed like a generic X-Files knockoff until they revealed the twist. They knew that they’d never sell it to the network without revealing the big twist, but they somehow expected the network to be able to sell the generic version to the audience for five years. It gradually sunk in to the writers that their plan made no sense. They hastily came up with a better plan, in which the twist is revealed at the end of the original miniseries.

The makers of The 4400 belatedly realized that “time travel” wasn’t the twist but the concept, so it had to be set up before the actual series began.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES.
Alien	YES.
An Education	YES. Somewhat. It’s heavily implied.
The Babadook	YES.
Blazing Saddles	YES.
Blue Velvet	YES.
The Bourne Identity	YES.
Bridesmaids	NA
Casablanca	YES.
Chinatown	YES.
Donnie Brasco	NA.
Do the Right Thing	YES.
The Farewell	YES.
The Fighter	YES.
Frozen	YES. It’s actually really concerting to see the promotional materials in which Hans is smiling as part of the gang.
The Fugitive	YES.
Get Out	YES. Blumhouse did an amazing job marketing without revealing the twist.  (The biggest spoiler was the title)
Groundhog Day	Sure.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES.
In a Lonely Place	YES.
Iron Man	YES.
Lady Bird	N/A
Raising Arizona	YES.
Rushmore	YES.
Selma	YES.
The Shining	NA
Sideways	NA
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Mostly. They marketing did hint at the escape.
Star Wars	YES.
Sunset Boulevard	YES.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the story contain a surprise that is not obvious from the beginning?

This is often called the twist, but it’s a word so abused that writers are tempted to shun it. We all know who’s to blame: M. Night Shyamalan, master of the “everything you know is wrong” twist. But when it comes to twists, smaller is usually better. Don’t shock your audience; astonish them. Instead of you, the writer, surprising the audience, let your characters surprise the audience. 

Much worse is the story with no surprises at all. Young Adult is a very funny movie. Charlize Theron gives a great performance as a failed children’s author slinking back home to pick up where she left off. Writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman both know how to deliver incisive satire, skewering shallow city dwellers and banal exurbanites with equal relish.

There’s just one big problem with this movie: If you were to stop the projector halfway in and poll the audience about what’s going to happen next, all of them would guess correctly. Once the major characters are introduced, this whole movie rolls downhill. It’s painfully obvious what’s going to happen every step of the way.

Compare this to The Color of Money. This is hardly a twist-driven story, but nevertheless, it takes an astonishing turn in the third quarter. If you turned off the projector halfway through, most of the audience would guess that naïve young pool player Tom Cruise was going to eventually reject the corrupting ways of veteran hustler Paul Newman, and find a way to succeed in the world of professional pool playing without compromising his integrity. Instead it’s Newman who discovers his conscience and confronts an increasingly sociopathic Cruise. When this plot turn happens, we’re astonished but not baffled. In retrospect, the signs were there, but we didn’t notice them before. That’s a great twist.

The ending of Young Adult certainly seemed inevitable but not at all surprising. It felt as if the writer was determined to condemn her own main character, and so she didn’t allow the character to surprise her or us. If you set out to “nail” your main character, you’ll need to use a hammer, and after you use that hammer, she's going to end up flattened. Let your characters surprise you, and they’ll surprise the audience, too.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. He falls for a grandmother.
Alien	YES. Ash is a robot.
An Education	YES. We know it’s coming, but we haven’t guessed how bad it’ll be.
The Babadook	YES. The Babadook is essentially the father’s “join me in death” ghost.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Many.  Especially the bizarre ending.
Blue Velvet	YES. Jeffrey hitting her, her showing up at his house, Frank being the well-dressed man, Gordon being a cop, etc…
The Bourne Identity	YES. we discover he didn’t just have his break from being shot, it was because he balked at his assignment.
Bridesmaids	NO.
Casablanca	YES. see above.
Chinatown	YES. That’s not Mrs. Mulwray, the incest.
Donnie Brasco	NO. Not really.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Just the climax.
The Farewell	YES. Well, the big surprise is that the dam never breaks.
The Fighter	YES. Very much so: Micky needs Dicky after all.
Frozen	YES. Hans is evil.
The Fugitive	YES. His friend is the real villain, the marshal is his real ally.
Get Out	YES. To put it mildly.  We know some shit will go down, but don’t guess what.
Groundhog Day	Sort of: it turns out that it’s not really about getting the girl.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. The dragons have an evil overlord forcing them to attack the village.
In a Lonely Place	Sort of: by that point we’re half convinced that he did it, but he didn’t.
Iron Man	YES. Stane hired the terrorists.
Lady Bird	Not really.  A bit with Danny turning out to be gay.
Raising Arizona	YES. The escapees taking the baby, etc.
Rushmore	YES. Blume and Cross get together, Max ends up helping them.
Selma	Not really.  Sort of, when King turns back from the second march.   The movie really captures how baffling and disappointing that was, and even when it works out, leaves us wondering if King was playing chess when everybody else was playing checkers, or if he just wussed out and let everyone down.
The Shining	Not really.  We see where it’s going early on.
Sideways	NO. Not really. It’s pretty obvious that the truth is going to come out.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. The escape
Star Wars	Somewhat: Obi Wan is killed.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. the fact that he agrees to be a gigolo, which was totally shocking at the time.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is there at least one “Holy Crap!” scene (to create word of mouth)?

What’s the one moment that will make readers perk up and go, “Whoa! I’ve never seen that before. This story actually went there! I’m out of my comfort zone now!” This is especially important for these three genres: 

• Comedy: American Pie famously revived a dead genre by showing a kid violating a pie in the trailer (a gag so funny they named the movie after it). 
• Thriller: People flocked to see The Grey because the trailer implied that Liam Neeson was going to get in a fistfight with a wolf. (Only later did they discover the movie ends with his preparation for that fight. The filmmakers did shoot the fight, but it looked too silly. Because of course it did.) 
• Action: Everybody went out and saw Independence Day because of the shot where the aliens blew up the White House. 

Obviously, it’s easy to get cynical about such scenes. When I was writing a broad comedy, I watched twenty recent comedy trailers and jotted down the biggest laugh in each one. A shocking number involved raccoon attacks, or head injuries, or both. But these scenes can actually make your story better.

Your story needs a reason to exist. It has to be the story that did that thing that nobody else would do. “But wait,” you say, “I don’t want to write an outrageous, over-the-top story!” Okay, let’s look at the value such scenes can have for quieter stories.

Sideways is a much gentler movie than the two listed above, but it has not one but two “Holy Crap!” scenes: the one where pretentious wine connoisseur Miles drinks an entire bucket of wine-spit at a vineyard, and the one where Miles has to retrieve his friend’s wallet from a couple having enthusiastic post-cuckold sex.

Writer-director Alexander Payne excels at little subtle jokes, such as when Miles holds his ear so he can better smell a glass of wine. We find these moments inherently funny, but we aren’t sure that we have permission to laugh at them because they’re so muted.

The value of “Holy Crap!” scenes is that they tell us, “Yes, this is definitely supposed to be a comedy. This is all funny. Laugh.” The two “Holy Crap!” scenes in Sideways shatter the movie’s gentleness (and, one might argue, realism), and the viewer feels liberated. We’re shocked out of our happy mellowness to finally enjoy a gut-busting laugh with the rest of the audience, which creates a moment of communal joy and bonding.

And part of that joy is that we now have a scene that we can tell our friends about to get them to see the movie (or read the book). What if these scenes hadn’t been there? You’d have to say, “He holds his ear to smell wine!” and they wouldn’t get the big deal. Your “Holy Crap!” scene is your calling card and your cultural currency.

Rulebook Casefile: The Crucial Use of a “Holy Crap” Moment in “Lady Bird”

Wow, so right away, this movie “fails” the first three questions on our checklist:

• Is the one sentence description uniquely appealing? No, there’s no hook. It had to depend entirely on reviews and a funny trailer. 
• Does the concept contain an intriguing ironic contradiction? Not really. The cover image is very slightly incongruous: a girl with colored hair at a catholic school, but that doesn’t really rise to the level of irony. 
• Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto a bigger canvas, with higher stakes?No, this is just the writer/director’s life story, faithfully recreated with its original place and time, with the same stakes as the true story. 

This is the quintessential “small movie,” and it’s a perfect example of how to do it right. Writer / director Greta Gerwig knows exactly what she’s doing, and she knows the risk of not meeting those expectations.

She could have generated some sort of hook, but chose not to. She could have amplified the irony of her real life memories. She could have transposed her own coming of age story into some bigger setting with bigger stakes (Post-apocalyptic! Learning how to overcome dragon overloads!), but she very faithfully stuck to the true story, right down to the year and city: Sacramento in 2002.

So how do you sell such a movie? Obviously, a big part of it is waiting to see if you get good reviews and them quoting them in the press materials. But Gerwig didn’t wait for that: She knew she had to add one moment that almost certainly didn’t happen in real life.* An outrageous moment. A moment that maybe no one would actually do, but we all remember feeling like doing it, and so it’ll delight audiences to see someone actually do it. A moment that would get a big laugh in the movie, and more importantly, in the trailer. A “Holy Crap” moment, in which Lady Bird jumps out of a moving car to get away from her mom’s criticism.

(In the script, she waits until her mom is slowing down at a light, but in the film they decided to push it farther and put them going full speed on a rural highway.)

Somewhat unusually, the “Holy Crap” scene here is the first one. This works well, as it also serves at the “problem becomes untenable” moment, which is always a good place to start this kind of movie. Obviously, her problems with her mother have been building for years, but this is the moment the movie begins because those problems have now entered the “life threatening” zone. It’s now an untenable situation. Something must be done.

* I wanted to confirm this, so I looked up and found this article, which confirms my assumption and backs up what I’m saying here:

Greta Gerwig wants it to be known that she’s never leapt out of a speeding car, even if the protagonist does so in Lady Bird, her acclaimed new film.

Why would anybody think she’d do such a thing? Well, maybe it’s because Saoirse Ronan, the Irish actor who plays the rebellious teen title star, does such a grand job of making us think of Gerwig, the popular comic actor (Frances Ha, Mistress America) who remained behind the camera this time as writer/director of her debut feature.

Lady Bird lives in Sacramento, Gerwig’s hometown. Her mom’s a nurse, she goes to an all-girls Catholic school and she embraces life with a unique sense of cockeyed optimism. Ditto, likewise, for Gerwig’s past and current life.

So the Oscar-buzzed film, which opened Friday in Toronto, is at least semi-autobiographical. But let’s clarify the car incident, which happens when Lady Bird is having one of her many “discussions” with her mother, played by Laurie Metcalf.

“I never jumped out of a moving car,” says Gerwig, 34, during a recent Toronto promotional visit.

“I did get out of a vehicle once (during a dispute), but it was a stopped car. The car scene in the movie felt like, emotionally, completely realistic. Everybody knows the feeling of when you’re in a car and you’re fighting, and you want to push them out or you want to jump out, or some combination of the two. You’re literally trapped with the person in the space . . . I just always knew that’s how I wanted to start the movie.”

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. Erection scenes, thrown up on, waxing, etc.
Alien	Oh hell yes: the chest-bursting scene (and also later when the “hero” dies)
An Education	NO. Not really. Somewhat, where he wants to deflower her with fruit.
The Babadook	YES. The scary book, trying to kill her kid, killing the dog.
Blazing Saddles	YES. So many!  Punching out the horse!  The flatulence!  Almost every scene, really.
Blue Velvet	YES. many.  Almost every scene, in fact.
The Bourne Identity	YES. the car chase, jumping down the stairwell with the body.
Bridesmaids	YES. The vomit and diarrhea-filled dress-fitting scene.
Casablanca	YES. the shocking decision at the end.
Chinatown	YES. The nose-cutting, the mother-sister scene.
Donnie Brasco	NO. This movie had a hard time generating word of mouth.
Do the Right Thing	YES. The racial slur montage, the riot, etc.
The Farewell	NO. Not really.  The crazy-wedding-seated-dance-game thing is great trailer-fodder though.
The Fighter	Sort of.  Amy Adams cursing like a sailor.  Dicky jumping out the window.
Frozen	YES. The Hans reveal.
The Fugitive	YES. The waterfall jump, the train hitting the bus.
Get Out	YES. So many!  The sunken place! The auction! The killings!
Groundhog Day	YES. Punching Ned, killing the groundhog, the suicides, the ice sculptures.
How to Train Your Dragon	NO. Not really.
In a Lonely Place	NO. Not really, but the level of darkness Bogart taps into must have been shocking at the time.
Iron Man	YES. The first fight in Afghanistan in the new armor. The first flight. Her removing his heart is harrowing. Post-credits scene with Sam Jackson.
Lady Bird	YES. Very much so.  The way they sold this movie was by showing her jump out of the car in the middle of the argument with her mom in the opening scene.  It adds a “Holy Crap” moment to a subdued movie and makes you want to see it.
Raising Arizona	YES. The prison escape, the baby on the roof of the car, etc.
Rushmore	YES. The bees.  The war in general.
Selma	Sort of.  The violence, and the revelation of King’s adultery, which most viewers assumed they wouldn’t touch.
The Shining	YES. Very much so: “Here’s Johnny”, all work and no play, etc.
Sideways	YES. Drinking the spit bucket, interrupting the post-cuckold sex
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. The escape, the fava beans, the pit, the dress-up session
Star Wars	YES. See above.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. many.  The floating corpse, the monkey funeral, the whole set-up, the final scene.