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INT. UWM FILM DEPARTMENT CLASSROOM – NIGHT
Three weeks later. The same seminar table, but the mood is distinctly less hopeful. A half-eaten bag of stale chips sits beside a whiteboard covered in cryptic notes about “Externalizing Internal Conflict.”
The group is engaged in peer review. Each student has received copies of the first ten pages of everyone else’s screenplay. DR. SHARP is absent tonight, leaving them to the tender mercies of their classmates. STANLEY looks deflated. LEONARD is twitching nervously. MARVIN and DEBORAH sit side-by-side, their knees occasionally bumping – a small, grounding reassurance. CYNTHIA silently glares at Leonard’s script, marking the margins with a vicious, determined hand.
JEFF (O.S.) Peer review is where filmmaking dreams go to die. Or, at least, get a severe reality check. We were learning the cruel truth of screenwriting: A good story requires conflict, and more often than not, conflict involves making your characters, the ones you love, miserable. For Marvin and Deborah, the lesson was doubly painful. They were being told their real-life romance, the one they’d been building since the hardware store, wasn’t dramatic enough for the page.
LEONARD (Critiquing ‘Fast Track to Fame!’) (Carefully pushing Stanley’s script back across the table) Stanley, while your dialogue is… energetic, I must point out a fundamental flaw in your protagonist’s desire. You claim he wants fame, but his actions are all geared toward avoiding work. This undermines the authenticity of his struggle. He is not a flawed hero. He is merely lazy.
STANLEY (His voice tight) Leonard, he is resourceful! He is operating on pure cinematic chutzpah!
CYNTHIA (Without looking up) Stanley, your protagonist’s main conflict in the first ten pages is deciding which brand of organic coffee to buy for his boss’s assistant. This is not dramatic irony. It is the narrative equivalent of white noise. Where is the existential terror? Where is the social commentary?
STANLEY The terror is realizing you’ve spent thirty dollars on a single cup of artisanal coffee!
DEBORAH (Trying to be helpful) Stanley, I agree with Leonard that the goal needs to feel higher stakes immediately. But I love the way you described the agency lobby. That detail is very visual. Maybe the inciting incident needs to happen faster. Like… he gets fired on page two.
MARVIN (Holding up Stanley’s script) You spent two full pages describing his shoes. Unless the shoes are important to the plot. Like they contain a hidden rare washer…it’s just padding. Kill the shoes.
STANLEY (Clutching his chest) They were Italian leather! They were his symbol of aspiration!
STANLEY (Critiquing ‘The Ovoid Obsession’) Leonard, I read your first ten pages of your script. Nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. Your main character sits on a stool, staring at a potato for seven pages. That is not a film. That is a still life.
LEONARD (Defensive) It is an exploration of stasis! The tension is unmoving. The internal monologue is rich with philosophical anguish!
CYNTHIA The anguish doesn’t translate to the screen, Leonard. The reader needs something to see. Even profound emptiness requires a dramatic backdrop. Try setting his internal conflict against something louder. A children’s birthday party. A monster truck rally. Something that highlights the absurdity of his inferiority.
MARVIN (Reading a line from Leonard’s script) “He considered the potato’s curvature, realizing it was a microcosm of the universe’s inherent imperfection.” That’s why they mash potatoes Leonard! Action is reaction. Give the main character something to react to besides his own brain.
DEBORAH What if the potato is owned by someone? And he has to steal it, or convince them to let him study it? That would immediately create external conflict and raise the stakes.
LEONARD (Eyes widening behind his glasses) Steal it? That’s… terribly unethical. But it does create a plot point.
The group exchanges Marvin and Deborah’s ten pages. A noticeable silence falls over the table.
CYNTHIA Deborah, Marvin. I hate to admit it, but these ten pages are competently written. The dialogue feels real, and I actually care about the characters. It’s sickening. However, the stakes are far too low. Your biggest conflict on page ten is whether to order deep dish or thin crust pizza. This is not cinema. This is a date night.
STANLEY I agree with Cynthia. Where is the grand gesture? Where is the sweeping climax? Marvin, in your script, why don’t the bad guys chasing the washer try to bomb the hardware store?
MARVIN Because it’s a local crime. They want the washer, not the insurance money.
LEONARD Deborah, your script is charming, but the character representing Marvin is already too well-adjusted by page ten. Where is the neurotic pain? The fear of genuine connection should be a gaping chasm, not a small puddle they step over.
DEBORAH (Frowning slightly) We wanted it to feel realistic. Real romance often happens in small moments.
CYNTHIA Realism is the enemy of drama, Deborah. Take a cue from your script. The antique washer is a great McGuffin. It gives the relationship a tangible external reason to interact. You need your love story to feel like it could fail at any minute due to outside pressure.
MARVIN (Looks at Deborah, a flicker of concern in his eyes) Maybe Cynthia is correct. The tension has to come from somewhere else, not just the pizza toppings. The antique washer gives my character a desperate need. Deborah’s character needs a desperate need, too.
JEFF (O.S.) The class was doing its job. They were tearing down the abstract and revealing the weak scaffolding of our first attempts at structure. Stanley learned his shoes weren’t a plot. Leonard learned that a potato is not an antagonist. And Marvin and Deborah learned that even the most solid real-life relationship needed manufactured drama or a fabricated crisis to work on the screen. The biggest challenge wasn’t writing about conflict. It was finding the courage to inject real pain into their own safe little story.
(SFX: The sound of a heavy textbook closing with a THUD.)
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