[No pretty picture for you]

Title: The Hard Way Out

Writer: Brad Mirman, @BradMirman

Logline: A wrongfully convicted man returns to his small town in Texas and gets involved with a vulnerable, free spirit.

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Brad Mirman.  Why do I know that name?  Oh yeah: KNIGHT MOVES and BODY OF EVIDENCE.  I have hazy but fond memories of finding and reading those screenplays back in the day.

Sadly, this logline is terrible.  The only intriguing element is the "wrongfully convicted" bit.  "Gets involved with" is a middle finger in the reader's face: "Fuck you, dear reader.  I don't want you to read this and I don't need you to read this."  "Gets involved with" is one rung above "then stuff happens."

And in that same spirit of No Fucks Given, let's jump right ahead...

Title: Reckless

Writer: John Swetnam

Logline: When a legendary retired assassin is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, she must return to the life she left behind and complete one final job in order to secure a future for her young daughter.

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You could almost shoehorn that into the John Wick mythology: a prequel starring his wife.  All you gotta do is retcon the daughter.

What's fresh about this premise?  Zero and zip, with a splash of zilch.  Retired assassin forced back into service for one last selfless job: it's so safely high concept it should come with a side-effects label about the nosebleeds.  Understandably, risk-averse execs love this stuff.  Who knows, maybe Swetnam gets a new dance out of this tattered old pair of blue suede shoes.

The ironic thing is, the LL ticks most of the boxes: protag, inciting incident, goal, stakes, ticking clock.  We could squeeze in the antag, but the LL bulges precariously as is.  Honestly, stuffing opposition in there is probably a bad idea.  But, seeing how Bad Idea are my two middle names, let's first tidy the LL to make room for our reckless addition. (Now do you believe me?)

Logline: Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, a legendary retired assassin returns for one final job to secure her young daughter's future.

Too easy.  35 words crushed down to 20.  Zipped that sucker with brutal efficiency.  Let's hit the slow-mo button and review how we compressed the LL by removing redundant information:

1. We restructured to lose the passive "... is diagnosed with..."

2. We saved a big chunk by reducing "... she must return to the life she left behind... " to just "returns."  It all hinges on the preceding use of "retired."  That's the only word we need to understand, in context, that "returns" means she's going back to her old job.  The "must" we intuit from the inescapable bookends of "terminal brain cancer" and "secure her daughter's future."  We understand without elaboration that the clock is ticking.

3. We simplified the bejesus out of lots of stuff: "... and complete one final job..." becomes "... for one final job..."; "... in order to..." shrivels to "... to..."; "... a future for her young daughter" packs neatly into "... her young daughter's future."

That's how we shaved 43% off the original length, without losing any substance.  The edits do nothing to make the LL more original, but at least it really zings now and doesn't overstay its welcome.

[EDIT] Um, did I forget something?  Rereading this post some days later, why yes, yes I did.  I promised to wedge a little opposition in there, and never mind how the LL is already packed tighter than a Japanese commuter train.  Let me get right on that now.

Logline: Dying from brain cancer, a legendary retired assassin takes one last job to secure her young daughter's future: kill the Russian spy she once married.

Wait!  Hey, you can't stop there!  The Russian guy, the target -- if she married him and she's got a daughter, does that mean what I think it means?  She's going after the man who fathered her daughter?

Ambiguity ain't all bad -- when used deliberately.

Title: The New Neighbors

Writers: Leslye Headland, David Schickler

Logline: A couple moves into an affluent suburban community only to find out that their enclave is filled with dirty secrets.

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Feels.  Very.  Lazy.  Don't blink or you'll miss the tiny quiver this LL registers on the excite-o-meter.  "Dirty secrets" promise none of the intense "psychological thriller" genre this script purports to be -- not the way the logline's fashioned now.  I think we can goose it, bring more substance to those inceptive dirty secrets.

Starkly missing is a sense of who this couple is.  Why are they the perfect foil for this story?  What qualities do they bring that will create a fascinating mix with the stakes, goals, and opposition?

Logline: A soon-to-divorce couple moves into an affluent suburban community and learns their new religious neighbours strictly enforce the "till death do us part" part.

Ah, no.  That's a comedy.  Especially with that clownish "part part" part [giggle].  I'll try again...

Logline: After a couple with a three-year-old son moves to an affluent suburban community, their strange new neighbours start to worship the boy as if he's Satan reincarnated.

Still reeks of comedy, but could be interpreted as a thriller?  Let's circle back to the "dirty secrets" hook...

Logline: When a notorious blogging couple moves into an affluent suburban community to dig for dirty secrets among the rich and famous, the first thing they unearth is the dead girl in their basement.

Only a faint whiff of comedy now.  "Dead girl" is too sobering to be played for laughs.  Had I used "dead body" the logline would still have one tongue firmly planted in cheek, and the other tongue -- wait, there's another tongue?

The point is, this logline needs to dance more keenly and sincerely if it wants to earn the reader's attention.

Fun fact: Headland and Schickler are industry pros.  (The jaded Me thinks that's why it feels like the lackluster LL didn't have to compete in the marketplace.   Shutup now, jaded Me, and back in the cage with you!)  Headland to direct this one.

Title: /reddoor

Writers: Teddy Tenenbaum, Minsun Park

Logline: A journalist discovers a new game app can kill people in real life once they enter the game. He then needs to race to save both he and his sister before they meet their demise.

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Simple high concept.  Clearly written.  No challenging aspects.  An easy LL win -- and there's no disgrace in that.  I have three comments:

"... a new game app... once they enter the game..." -- 10PTT readers know I dislike repetition.  "Don't tell us something we already know" is my mantra.  Furthermore, don't tell us something we'll very likely assume or figure out ourselves.  Doing so wastes valuable LL length.

"... race to save..." is one of those vague "insert your imagination here" phrases I really don't like.  Why be vague when explaining your through-line?  Sure, sometimes you need to hide key story developments.  You can reveal too much in a LL, leave no intrigue, no reason for the reader to scream "I gotta know what happens next!"  But let me tell you, being vague will hurt all but the craftiest loglines.

"... before they meet their demise."  There's a time to be cute and play with words.  This is not the time.  What's at stake is Death.  Let it hit hard like a slap, not like a cluster of colorful balloons gently bumping into the reader.

BONUS: "... to save both he and his sister..." -- ugh, just no.  "He and his sister" is correct for the subject of a subject-verb-object sentence.  I would argue the correct grammar in this case as written is "... to save both himself and his sister..."  In any case it feels clunky, so let's write around it.

Logline: When a  journalist discovers the hot new app he's playing with his sister kills in real life, he has 60 minutes to beat the game or they both die.

Boom.  35 words down to 29.  Protag, antag, stakes -- and we added a ticking clock for urgency.  Despite this being a fairly rote high concept, punching up the LL gives it a delicious sting.  The LL promises a fast, thrilling, zig-zagging story.  The script sold, so Teddy and Minsun must've delivered the goods.  Great job!

Title: Unfit

Writer: Melissa London Hilfers, @melissahilfers

Logline: The shocking true story of Carrie Buck, a young Virginia woman who became a lightning rod for that movement and was forced to singlehandedly fight against it for the one thing she desperately wanted — to be a mother.

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Until now I've skipped the list's "true story" loglines.  These are tricky to compose, and this one proves it.  This one I don't like at all.  The GITS entry says it sparked a bidding war, so my antipathy for the LL has no bearing on the screenplay.  I expect the screenplay is very good.

My first problem is "that movement."  The LL assumes the reader knows about Carrie Buck and her movement.  I am familiar with neither.  So this logline makes very little sense to me.  Rereading it a few times, it seems to say Carrie conceived a Movement, but then Carrie had to fight that same Movement to become a mother.  But I'm not sure.  Confusion and frustration are not emotions your logline should arouse in the reader.

Can we rewrite for clarity and ditch the confusion?  Sure, after some googling to fill in the parts the LL leaves out.

Okay.  Hooboy, that's a story, and an important one -- culturally and politically.  Bidding war?  I get it now.  Total Oscar bait, and I say that without sarcasm.  But wow, does this logline do a disservice to the true story.  I find it hard to reconcile this bizarre, nebulous logline with Carrie's true-life story.  I see now that "the movement" probably means the State of Virginia's eugenics movement of the 1920s.

Anyhow, having studied the story's essence, we can now compose a logline that provokes curiosity rather than confusion...

Logline: The shocking true story of Carrie Buck and her desperate fight to be a mother after the State of Virginia and the U.S. Supreme Court order her sterilized for the crime of being 'feeble-minded.'

Something like that.  Something to make us go "What the hell?" instead of "What the hell is going on with this logline!"  Probably I would omit "shocking" and instead let the reader grasp that outrage on their own.  There's no need to promise a shocking story after introducing the shocking facts into the LL itself.

Title: Little America

Writer: Rowan Athale, @RowanAthale

Logline: In a dystopian future, a former American Force Recon member is hired by a Chinese billionaire to go into an American ghetto and rescue his daughter.

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This LL is okay.  Not awful, not good.  We've got period, protag, and goal.  No sense of opposition or stakes.  Passive "is hired" needs justification.  Before we attempt to fill in the gaps, let's strip the LL to its essentials...

Logline: In a dystopian future, a former U.S. SpecOps soldier infiltrates an American ghetto to rescue a Chinese billionaire's daughter.

Now we can think about introducing opposition, aka the Bad Guys.  "American ghetto."  Okay, that paints some broad beige strokes.  What color can we add?  Drug king is too easy.  How about...  

Logline: In a dystopian future, an ex-U.S. SpecOps soldier infiltrates an American ghetto to rescue a Chinese billionaire's daughter from a charismatic doomsday survivalist.

How about that: we add an antagonist and yet we save two words in LL length (26 to 24).  "Charismatic doomsday survivalist" hints that the daughter might be there of her own volition, under the spell of our charming, apocalyptic antagonist.  In the original LL we don't learn the circumstances that led to her situation.  Kidnapped for ransom?  I would guess so.  But rescuing her against her will creates a more interesting extraction.  Now the protag will be tangling with her as well as the ghetto thugs.  I've no clue who Rowan's on-the-page bad guy is, but including the antag in the logline really makes it pop by establishing clear lines of conflict, I reckon.

We could go a small step further and color our protag with a trait, to better help the reader feel the shape of the story.

Logline: In a dystopian future, a mute ex-U.S. SpecOps soldier infiltrates an American ghetto to rescue a Chinese billionaire's daughter from a charismatic doomsday survivalist.

Silent and inscrutable protag versus chatty and charismatic antag.  Not bad, not bad.  Not revolutionary, but it does seed the reader's imagination with story possibilities.

Scott Myers at Go Into the Story posted his regular spec deals summary for January through June, 2017.  Let's take a look.  I'll cherry-pick the ones I think are terrific and the ones I think need work.  I won't review all 34, but I will slowly chip away at the list for a couple days, see how far we get.

Kicking off with...



Title: Slayer

Writer: Joel Dorland, @joeldorland

Logline: A simple fisherman who, when his wife is kidnapped and his village slaughtered, trains for 20 years to become the greatest warrior alive in order to wreak vengeance on the four demonic knights responsible.

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It's a crisp, black-and-white LL.  Overall, I love it.  It promises popcorn action from FADE IN to OUT.

There are things about the LL structure that make me itch.  "... who, when..., trains..." feels like unnecessarily convoluted grammar, ducking and weaving to get from A to B.  The passive "is kidnapped" warrants scrutiny -- always take a second look at passive language to make sure it's there for a purpose.  And "in order to" always gives me a sense of cold, mechanical efficiency.  The shorter "to" and "so" do a perfectly fine job without the sterility.

I wonder about the setting.  The only indicators are "demon knights" and the title itself.  These tilt toward fantasy, maybe folklore, or likely medieval.  The possibility of Modern-day ignites my imagination more than the other settings, being harder to pull off.  A sense of setting/period here could help the LL.

The story's not really about getting revenge on the demonic knights, right?  I mean, yes, that's what happens at the end, and that's what motivates the protag from start to finish, same as STAR WARS is all about blowing up the Death Star.  But this logline suggests the real story -- the journey, not the destination -- is all about the protag fighting worthy and increasingly challenging opponents across those 20 years of training.  That's what we'll see on screen for most of those 90+ minutes, I'm guessing.  The battle with the demonic knights will come in the final Act.  We probably won't see them much during the middle.

So, let's experiment with placing more focus on the journey rather than the destination...

Logline: A simple fisherman trains 20 years and fights 20 enemies to become the greatest warrior alive before seeking vengeance on the demonic knights who kidnapped his wife.

(Reduced by seven words)

That's what he'll be doing across the movie: fighting, fighting, and more fighting.  It's implied in the original LL, of course, but diluted, I think, because of "trains" with no mention of "fights."  Conceivably, he could train with little actual fighting, which could be a dull and tedious affair.

For me, the added detail of "trains 20 years, fights 20 opponents" brings structure and order to that long training period.  It gives the reader an expectation, a road map, something to muse over: these 20 enemies, presumably all unique and uniquely dangerous.  And the implied cadence of a fight capping each year of training: an annual test of worthiness before he can start training for the next unique confrontation.  That's pretty good scaffolding around this "hero undergoes extreme training for revenge" story.

I omitted "slaughtered village" for brevity and because it's secondary to the overshadowing and more personal "wife kidnapped" motivation.

I've not read Joel's screenplay.  My extrapolation could be muddy boots tracking across his pristine as-is story.  Nevertheless, if the movie is about the journey then I'd like to get a taste of that in the logline.

Rakan posted this 90-page dystopian SF screenplay to Reddit.  I quite like the writing, but right from the first page I was compelled to "fix" something I knew would bug me more and more with each page turn.

Read for yourself the opening page, then I'll tell you what bugged me.


FADE IN on action and conflict -- good stuff.  This hook will keep readers reading.

But...

The pacing and focus are muddy as hell.  For me, the words do not create a fully coherent sequence of images and events.  I found myself halting several times to make sense of the narrative's handling of time and space.

The layout of the stairs, for example.  It takes a moment to realize we're in a stairwell.  The girl whips by, and we're told dogs are chasing her.  The way it's written, it feels like the dogs are nipping at her heels, but then we learn the dogs are still a couple floors down.  We learn the girl's destination is five floors up and, after that quick moment to catch her breath, she's off again.  We briefly cut to the dogs, then we're back with the girl and she's already at the blue door.  It feels like she covered those five floors in a crazy short amount of time.  Not only that but the dogs have caught up too.

I figured this page would read better by shot-slugging the action and adding some narrative glue.  Also, I sprinkled some figurative language here and there.  This page, as written, has none.  To add color, energy, and humanity to your writing, every screenplay page should include some figurative language.

Here's my revision.  I use about 40 words more, but I think it's worth it.

Josh's screenplay DEAD SEA popped up on Reddit today.  Let's feed the first page through the 01PTT grinder.

One major problem is a lack of figurative language.  We're evaluating a single page, sure, but I'd expect to see at least one metaphor, one bit of connotative language on each page.  Not using figurative language is like playing poker without the royalty cards.  Screenwriting is chiefly about putting evocative images in your audience's head, and the best tool to craft written images is figurative language.  Hopefully Josh will begin exploring the power of figurative language during his next rewrite.

DEAD SEA opens with a decent hook.  Coupled with the logline, you can figure out much of what's going on.  Here's my revision for Josh's posted logline:

"To get a passing grade on her literature report, a high-school student uses an undiscovered novel by a prophet who hid it to keep its contents from coming true."

It doesn't feel quite there yet, and I'm not sure it captures everything Josh intended -- see the Reddit link above to read his original logline.  While I'm here I'll take another pass:

"To pass her literature class, a high-school student uses an unpublished novel written by a prophet who hid it believing its contents would come true."

A little better.  Now the 01PTT can begin.





NOTES:

1.
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EXT. THE LAKE - 1963 - DAY

It's small.  Man-made perhaps.  Smooth and glassy.

DANIEL GARNER, 35, in tweed jacket and khaki pants, stares across the water.
-----

Maybe opening tight on Daniel captures the right tone for this story's first shot.  Maybe starting with the lake is right.  Only Josh can say.  What I like about the revision is how we hook into the slug, piggyback on it for context: "It's small" (THE LAKE).  That opening sentence is contemplative, as if we're already inside the protag's POV.

2.
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Nearby is a picturesque house with a rusty mailbox.
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"Just a few yards away" is a wordy way of saying "nearby."  Is it important we know the lake shore is only yards away from the lake house?  We're talking maybe six feet.  I don't see the need to be precise here.  We have three key elements to arrange spatially in the reader's mind: the lake, Daniel, and the lake house.

Before we rearrange the flow, read the scene to the end.  Can you tell me where Daniel stands in relation to the house?  We were told roughly six feet divides the house and the lake edge.  Is Daniel standing on the lake edge?  Doubtful.  "He JUMPS into the lake, typewriter in hand."  Lake shores typically slope gradually into the depths.  So his jump will put him in -- being generous here -- three feet of water.  So he won't be drowning today.

No, if he's standing there ready to jump, clutching his metaphorical anchor, he's already well beyond the shore, seemingly poised over the lake's dark depths.  Which means he must be standing on a jetty/pier -- or perhaps on the lake house's deck which hangs over the water.  Both setups eliminate this scene's vague character staging.  So let's also add those spatial cues to make this scene flow without gaps.  I'm going to omit the "rusty mailbox" for now, because I'm guessing it's an unimportant detail.  I could be wrong.  If the mailbox turns up later, we'll know.

Here we go: rewriting the rest of the scene, then I'll swing back and explain the whys and wherefores.

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EXT. THE LAKE - 1963 - DAY

It's small.  Man-made perhaps.  Smooth and glassy.

Alone on a wooden jetty, DANIEL GARNER, 35, in tweed jacket and khaki pants, stares across the water, a picturesque lake house at his back.

He writes on a scrap of paper.

Beside him sits a heavy vintage typewriter attached to rope.

Daniel inhales deeply.  Folds the paper, seals it in an envelope.

He removes his shoes.  Places the envelope in one -- it says "TO EMILY."

He knots the typewriter to his ankles.

He looks relaxed now.  Tranquil.  He hefts the typewriter, hugs it tight.

And JUMPS into the lake.
-----

3.
"He writes on a scrap of paper."  We compressed the original two sentences into a single efficient one.

4.
Here, we're told the typewriter "sits at the edge of the lake."  There's our confirmation that the author imagined Daniel leaping into the lake from the shoreline.  See my earlier comment for why I call Nope on that.  Had this been a quarry lake, yes, leaping from the "shore" would land you in deep and deathly waters.  But this is not a quarry lake.  Who builds a picturesque house in a disused quarry?

My  revision snips away unneeded words and words that are at odds with our understanding of the scene.  "A bit of rope" understates the reality of how much rope is required to securely bind the typewriter to Daniel's ankles.

5.
Again, we combine two sentences into one -- "folds the paper," "seals it" -- compressing the amount of text the reader must parse to arrive at the same understanding.

6.
"We see" isn't such a big deal.  "We see 'TO EMILY' written there."  It's fine.  But can we do it without breaking the fourth wall?  Of course.

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He removes his shoes.  Puts the envelope in one -- it says "TO EMILY."
-----

or how about:

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He removes his shoes and presses the envelope ("TO EMILY") into one.
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or with em-dashes (pick your poison):

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He removes his shoes and presses the envelope -- "TO EMILY" -- into one.
-----

There we go: letting grammar and context do the work of "we see."

7.
It irked me to think Daniel might cheat by shackling just one leg, leaving the other free to join an escape attempt if he changed his mind on the way to the lake floor.  

Wait, did I just spoiler myself?  Perhaps Daniel survives this attempt, and we are at the mercy of an unreliable narrator?

8.
"A look of tranquility washes across his face."  Look around: lake, water.  Yes, "washes" is a nice active verb.  But in this context of water all around it feels jarring and misplaced, and far too florid.

"His face becomes tranquil."  That's the gist of it.  We might say, "A tranquility fills him."  But these seem perfunctory and far from show-don't-tell.  Let's give Daniel his moment, and instead of focusing on his expression let's describe what he's doing.

-----
Daniel knots the typewriter to his ankles.  Hoists the dead weight to his chest.

For a heartbeat he savors the warm sun and the cool breeze -- for a heartbeat, and another, and one more.

He JUMPS into the lake.
-----

Cranking the feels there -- for better or worse!

9.
"We get the sense she's been waiting a while."  How?

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DAD: It won't come any faster if you're watching!
-----

Bingo.  She's waiting for mail.  Dad's line is key.  So if Dad's line tells us all we need to know about what she's doing and for how long, can we trim the "we get the sense..." sentence?  Because it feels a bit cart-before-horse-ish.

-----
CASSIE WILLIAMS, 16, in sweatpants and a Plumtree t-shirt, looks out her window at the mailbox outside.
-----

Day'um, we sneakily melded two sentences again, saving words and whitespace.

10.
"She disregards this."

A fine, dandy, and suitably droll sentence.  Gets the job done.  But I couldn't resist adding some sassy POV:

-----
She disagrees.
-----

Disregard is about the same as ignore.  But "disagrees" -- without having to spell it out -- implies an exaggerated eye-roll or an annoyed gritting of teeth or one of many other signifiers angsty teens deploy to silently convey OMG, DAD, SERIOUSLY?!

That the mail truck arrives two seconds after Dad hollers his wisdom about how a watched pot never boils is too delicious to ignore.

-----
Her Dad yells from the kitchen.

DAD: It won't come any faster if you're watching!

She disagrees.  What she needs to do is stare HARDER.

And -- what? -- the mail truck arrives!  Cassie hoots with joy.  Runs --

KITCHEN

past her Dad --

DAD (not looking): Slow down.

CASSIE:  Suck it, Dad!

EXT. CASSIE'S HOUSE

out onto the lawn.  She grabs the mail out of the mailman's hands.
-----


And we're done.  This opening page performs two jobs pretty well: hook the audience with the strange suicide opener, and introduce Cassie in a way that quickly gets the audience on her side.  Having Cassie keenly awaiting a delivery is a clever way to involve the audience from the get-go.  I'm going to grab a fistful of stolen glory and say I marginally boosted Cassie's appeal on the first page with that "Suck it, Dad" line, seeded from the delightful father-daughter exchange Josh planted.

The flight-sim recreation above is based on this episode of AIR DISASTERS.  More info at Wikipedia.

It's more than images.  It's more than words on a page.  It happened.  It's horrible.  And it can teach us about storytelling.



ACT ONE

"July 19, 1989"

The WHERE and the WHEN.  Establish without delay.

"United Airlines Flight 232, a DC-10, en route from Denver to Philly, stopping in Chicago"

THE PLAN: fly safely from Denver to Philly.  This sets the audience's expectations.  We understand what will happen if everything goes to plan.  But if all goes to plan, and the end result is the expected result, what we have is not a story but a non-story.

OUR HEROES.  The captain.  The co-pilot.  The flight engineer.  All veterans of the flight cockpit.  The lives of these passengers could not be in better hands.

THE STAKES.  Almost 300 passengers.  But here's the kicker: it's Children's Day at United Airlines.  Today, kids fly for a penny.  So there's an unusually high proportion of children on board: 52.  A lot of these kids are traveling alone.  Please keep that in mind while you watch the flight-sim recreation.

CATASTROPHE.  In script terms, we hit the INCITING INCIDENT and we hit it HARD.  That plan we all agreed on?  Forget about it.  Flying to Philly would've been nice, but you know what's better?  NOT DYING.  In a heartbeat the needle tracking the fortune of our crew and passengers plunges from positive to deeply negative.

COPING.  Our heroes reel from the unforeseen event: a tail engine failure has knocked out the hydraulics — all hydraulics, including the backup systems.  Not supposed to happen but — That.  Just.  Happened.

IMMEDIATE THREAT.  Now impossible to steer, the plane twists to the right, shedding altitude.  The crew must get the wings level and do it NOW.  If they don't, the plane will turn turtle.  This is the first of several TICKING CLOCKS our heroes must race to beat.  The captain shuts off the wrecked tail engine.  They quickly consult the manuals.  Nothing.  Nobody planned for this impossibility.

SOLUTION.  If they can't steer with flaps and hydraulics, maybe they can steer with the healthy engines.  It's called differential thrust: throttle up on the dipping right-wing engine and throttle down on the left-wing engine.  It's crazy.  It's dangerous.  And it works.  The pilots nudge the plane level.  The immediate threat is over.  Now they can deal with the ultimate problem: how to land this plane and save lives.

NEW STORY QUESTION: Will everybody die?  The crew earned our trust, respect, and empathy by responding smartly and selflessly to the sudden, overwhelming threat.  Most importantly, these heroes have given the passengers (and us) hope.  We believe they have a chance to save the day.  Now we really care.  Hope and love are the twin elixirs that hold back the eternal black nothing.  Will this story end in light or darkness?

ACT TWO

IMMEDIATE THREAT.  The plane starts to pitch down.  Without any stick control the only way to lift the nose is apply more engine thrust.

SOLUTION.  So that's what the pilots do.  It solves the dive problem but creates a new one: how can the plane land if the only thing keeping the nose up is speed?  When building story, most of the time you'll want to deploy a solution that works but creates a new, worse problem, like here.

NEW PLAN.  The crew know they must land, and soon, before they run out of altitude.  They call in their emergency and head for the nearest airport: Sioux City, Iowa.  The flight attendants prepare the cabin for a crash landing.

IMMEDIATE THREAT.  The plane starts to climb.  It will stall if this continues.  The two good wing engines are keeping the plane aloft.  If they stop it's game over.  The captain knows what to do: he eases the throttle.  The plane slows.  The nose dips.  And dips.  Now they're diving again.  He throttles up carefully.  The plane straightens.  Another crisis over, at the cost of too much altitude.  If this happens again they won't make it to the airport 55 miles away.

EXECUTING THE NEW PLAN.  The radio tower instructs them to turn left on a new vector.  They can't do that.  The plane only wants to go right, which they continuously counter with differential thrust.  But they must turn left to have any chance of reaching the runway.

SOLUTION.  Using the two good engines, the pilots relent and allow the aircraft to twist to the right.  They figure a full circle going right is less risky than fighting the plane to force it left.  As they turn and lose speed the nose pitches down again, complicating the maneuver and spending more precious altitude.  Sioux City is still 40 miles away.

ACT THREE (midpoint)

NEW DEVELOPMENT.  A flight attendant informs the captain about a DC-10 flight instructor on board who wants to help.  The instructor joins the crew and takes on the delicate job of working the engine controls.

EXECUTING THE PLAN.  Sioux City crawls into sight.  This is it.  Ten minutes and 9,000 feet of altitude until they attempt to land.  They can't cut engine power or the plane will nose dive.  But the plane can't land safely at this ridiculous speed.  All the captain can do is connect the plane with the ground and hope for the best.  As they approach death, the men joke among themselves.  It's not the joking you and I indulge in daily.  It's the camaraderie of men who together face the unthinkable and give their all only to learn their all is not enough.

There is no panic here.  Everything that could be done has been done.  There will be no new development, no new plan.  There will be only an ending.  In script terms we have reached the end of Act 3: the moment of greatest despair.

The captain decides to tell the passengers the truth about what's happening:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Al Haynes speaking.  As you are probably aware right now, we are having some control difficulties with the plane.  We're attempting an emergency landing in Sioux City.  We'll be landing in approximately eight minutes.  We've got about as much control over the plane as we can get.  But I need you to understand that this is going to be a crash landing.  Please review your emergency procedures.  This is going to be worse than anything you have been through before.  You need to be ready.  We will do everything within our power to get everybody to the ground.  But we need your cooperation."

ACT FOUR

EXECUTING THE PLAN.  Speed remains everyone's biggest concern.  To bleed some of it, the pilots decide to manually lower the landing gear.  Without the hydraulics there's no way to tell if the gear will lock into place.  From here on it's entirely up to gravity.  If the gear doesn't lock then the plane will inevitably disintegrate on landing.  It works.  The gear deploys successfully and creates enough drag to slow the plane marginally.  They're still going 70 knots faster than any safe landing speed.  The plane is 16 miles from the terminal.  Passengers have just a few more minutes to come to terms with the probable end of their lives.

Remember now the 52 children.  Remember those among the 52 children travelling alone.  If you do — if you truly do — this is the moment when, as a writer, you roll your chair back from your desk and you sit there quietly and you think long and hard about life and literature, art and artifice, about entertainment and experience, and joy and pain.  This is a true story.  No writer will ever capture on that page and no director will ever capture on that screen one tiny sliver of truth about how 52 children faced death on that day in that sky.  Frankly, that's a relief.  A truth like that would irreparably break the best of us.

Back in the cockpit, the crew strap themselves in.  There's one more circling maneuver to make to align the plane with the runway.  Then it's full throttle again to keep the nose up and the plane in the air.  Despite the plane's frightening airspeed, it's dropping 1,600 feet per minute.

TWO MINUTES UNTIL TOUCHDOWN.  In their final moments, the crew manage a chuckle when the tower clears them for any runway — as if choice of runway was something up for consideration!

They're coming in too fast but they can't delay.  They'll get one chance to land.  Even if they do manage to land, how will they stop?  Yes, they'll attempt to brake and apply reverse thrust, but without steering and without hydraulics how effective will that be?  No pilot has ever landed a DC-10 at this speed or without flight controls.

THIRTY SECONDS FROM TOUCHDOWN.  As the runway rushes up at them, Captain Haynes yells, "Brace, brace, brace!"  The nose dips again and the plane collects more unwanted speed.

TOUCHDOWN.  The plane shears and crumples with the force of a hundred high-speed train wrecks.  Choking black smoke and white-hot flames erupt from the shattering, cartwheeling fuselage.  After the ground has swallowed the tumbling wreckage's massive energy, more than a third of the occupants are dead.  But almost two-thirds are alive.  Somehow this wonderful crew of flight professionals shielded 185 men, women, and children from certain death.

THE END.  What final note do we pluck?  Triumph or tragedy?  Hope or despair?  Here, the best of life and the best of fiction come together.  The answer: a bit of both.  In tragedy lies comfort and connection.  In hope we find power and purpose.  Done right, movies give us all that and more.

This 13-minute flight-sim recreation delivers, with its cartoonish computer graphics and its plain subtitles, all the elements of great storytelling.  Okay, maybe not ALL, but certainly everything necessary for a compelling story.  High stakes.  Ticking clocks.  Overwhelming misfortune fringed with a glimmer of hope.  Relationships forged in the heat of conflict.  Constant escalating problems beyond those our heroes trained for and the clever solutions the heroes concoct.  A hopeful ending that comes at a heavy price.  There's more to it, yes, but give me a movie with these things and I'll walk away satisfied.