My (Scary!) Personal Story

I am writing a small, personal drama about a lonely poet in New York City who discovers that she is dying of cancer. Inoperable. In her final days, she and her cat are alone in the big city... until she meets a lonely low-level executive who was recently transferred to New York City and doesn't know a single person here. Both have built up protective "armor" to deal with living in a city that doesn't really give a damn about them. As they spend a day exploring the city together, they eventually become tentative friends... sharing things they have never shared with anyone else. Then the poet dies. The story is about being alone in the big city, and is guaranteed to make you cry.

I also have a small, personal story about a teenage girl with divorced parents who is forced to spend her summer vacation with her father and stepmother plus her five-year-old half-sister who has a strange illness. She hates her father for abandoning her mother for this wicked stepmother, and her father pays more attention to her half-sister. That vacation? A remote European ski lodge during summer where her father and that wicked stepmother spent their honeymoon and conceived that half-sister years ago. There is nothing to do and no one to hang out with. By the end of this long summer she ends up bonding with her half-sister and learning to take control of her own life. A heartwarming feel-good story about accepting big changes in your family.

OK, let's look at these two stories with our "real world" eyes - what do you think the odds are of selling either of them? Movies are a business, and the last time the MPA released the statistics, the average (theatrical) cost $107 million by the time it reached your local cinema screen. It needs to make twice that to break even... and three times that for a reasonable profit. $321 million! Our screenplays are an investment to a production company, and probably the least expensive part of the film. If they have a choice between buying that small personal drama that needs a $20 million star to attract an audience, or some horror script where the horror is the star? There's a big audience for horror movies (so it will appeal to a much larger audience and make more money... while costing less money)! They will buy that horror script, not our small personal drama.

Do you find that depressing?

You shouldn’t.

Instead, you should be thinking about taking your small personal story and slipping it into the "envelope" of genre. Take your two lonely people in New York City or your teenage girl spending the summer with her divorced dad and wicked stepmother and half-sister and setting your personal stories against a background of horror. You might have recognized the first story as A Quiet Place: Day One, and that small story takes place during the background of an alien attack. There's no shortage of scares and suspense scenes, but that personal story grounds it and makes us care about the characters' emotional struggles as well as their alien attack struggles.

The second is Cuckoo, and that daughter spends the summer in that (mostly abandoned) ski lodge with her father, stepmother, and half-sister. She's bored and takes a job as the night clerk at the lodge... where a crazy woman who escaped from the nearby mental institution kills a lodge guest... and chases her! Lots of scares! Our protagonist has to deal with her emotional problems, plus deal with an escaped killer... who is part of some weird "Boys From Brazil" genetic experiment! Plus the escaped killer has a direct connection to her family, so even the horror element is personal... leading to that big emotional moment where she accepts her half-sister.

Two summer horror success stories, that are also small personal dramas. How do you do that? Let’s look at the “Five Es Of Horror” (and any other genre)...

ELEVATED

You may have heard the term "Elevated Horror" or "Elevated Thriller" or "Elevated Action" or "Elevated Comedy" or "Elevated" used to describe some movie or screenplay and wondered what it means. Well "Elevated" is Hollywood talk for "good". This is where I say that it's really more complicated than that... but it really isn't. Genre is all about delivering the feelings associated with that genre to the audience, so on a basic level a horror movie needs to scare the audience, and maybe repulse/horrify them. Part of the "fun" of a horror movie is that you survived.

There are "basic " horror movies like Stalk & Slash Films where the story is just a serial killer stalking victims (suspense & scares) and then killing them in bizarre ways (repulsion & revulsion). Body Horror where a mutation or surgery makes our protagonist into the repulsive creature killing people. Monster Movies where some creature kills a bunch of people. Ghost stories where it's the dead scaring the living. Every year there are hundreds of "disposable" low-budget horror flicks made that don't aspire to anything more than scaring you - and that's OK. There's a "horror hound" audience for those films.

But what if we write smart horror? Emotional horror? Horror that is more than the basic adult minimum requirements of scary stuff? Characters that we actually care about? Maybe even a larger issue at the heart of the story? A horror movie that people might want to watch again and again? Buy the Special Edition 4K version? Horror films that make 100 Best Films lists?

Though I’m sure someone owns the steel book of “Blood Of The Naked Mutilators”, something like A Quiet Place: Day One is not just a Horror Movie, it’s a good Horror Movie! We screamed and were scared, but we also felt big emotions and thought about the character’s lives and our own lives. Day One really is a story about loneliness in the big city... and an alien invasion. So using our personal stories as the basis for a Horror Movie or some other popular genre will not only make it easier to get reads and sell, it will make it a better genre story than the typical Stalk & Slash film. We are using our personal story, or our small emotional story as the dramatic core of a screenplay in a popular genre. A good horror movie. Elevated!

Character Based Horror Movies.

Horror Movies that explore an Emotional Issue or a Social Issue.

Horror movies which have more on their minds than the scares.

Horror Movies (or any other genre) that make your 100 Best Films list.

ENVELOPE

I like to think of Genre as an envelope. You can take any type of story, and place it in the “envelope” of horror or action or romantic comedy or thriller and you can send it to a larger audience. We have our personal story that we need to tell, and use the genre to deliver it to the audience.

When we put our story about two lonely, damaged, people in NYC having a couple of days learning to open up to each other into the envelope of a scary alien invasion movie? If you are just lonely in the big city, that loneliness is internal. But the alien invasion? That's life or death. These two people might not want to be together, but each needs the other to survive. They are forced to depend on each other when each is used to being self-reliant. With every minute possibly their last? These two people who wouldn't feel comfortable sharing a seat on the subway, peel back their armor and share things that they never expected to share with anyone.

Most of my 20 produced scripts were either spec scripts or my pitches, and are my personal stories that I have slipped into the envelope of genre. My horror flick for HBO/CineMax, Night Hunter, began with an event in my life. Black Thunder for Showtime (remade a decade later by Sony/Columbia as a Steven Seagal flick) was a big action film about the ultimate Stealth Fighter plane being stolen and used against us... But it was really exploring my personal issues with sibling rivalry. Instead of two brothers trying to earn the love of a stern father, it was about two top fighter pilots trying to earn the love of their legendary test pilot commander. Not only did this make the script something personal for me, it helped me at every point in the story when I got stuck - I could find a way to make the scene explore that personal story hidden in the background. I could draw on my feelings and experiences in a script about Stealth Fighter Pilots (where I have zero experience) and make the emotions authentic.

So start by taking your personal story and figuring out the emotional conflict at the core. This requires self-honesty, but that's writing! "Open a vein and bleed". Make that emotional situation the core of your genre story, and find a story that really explores that situation... but as Horror or Action or Romantic Comedy or Thriller.

EXAGGERATION

Let's say you have had your heart broken, and you meet someone who seems to share many of your interests and is attractive to you. But you have been hurt before and don't want to be hurt again... and know when you are on a date you show your best side and hide your flaws, and so do they. You have to commit before they drop that dating facade and you see the real version of them. Will you just get hurt again?

So let’s amplify those emotions and turn this into a horror story...

"Are you a serial killer?"

Strange Darling is about a man and woman who meet in a bar, really hit it off, but don't really know each other. They drive to a nearby motel, then talk to each other in the car - trying to find out more about this stranger they are about to sleep with. Both have been hurt in relationships and worried about going into that motel room together. Both try to reassure the other that they can be trusted...

Except the film begins with this opening crawl: "Between 2018 and 2020, the most prolific and unique American serial killer of the 21^st century went on a calculated, multi-state killing spree..." So we know that one of these two people is a serial killer. This first date isn't going to end well for one of them. Instead of a standard Stalk & Slash horror movie, this film focuses on Sexual Politics. That's what "elevates" it. Behind the "first date facade" one of these two is a serial killer, but what further elevates this film is: we don't know which one until close to the end. The story is told in Six Chapters... and we begin with Chapter Three. Because the story is told out of order, we don't know who we can trust in this relationship.

Instead of the stakes being a broken heart, they have been amplified to survival.

All of those first-date fears have been exaggerated into life-and-death situations. When they withhold negative information about themselves (both do - which keeps us guessing), it creates a scary situation in addition to any broken heart issues. The balance of power is always shifting. We get to explore relationship issues in scenes where one of them has a gun and the other has a knife.

You want to find an organic way to exaggerate your story into the genre. Your personal story's stakes are a great place to start. The emotional conflict is another possibility. You don't want to force a story into the genre, you want it to fit naturally. Our two lonely people in the big city spending a couple of days together makes more sense if there's an alien attack that forces them to be together... and makes those big emotional scenes like when the dying poet takes the businessman to the jazz bar where her father used to play, have more impact. 

Imagine all of the scenes from your small personal story... and find the best "envelope" in horror (or whatever genre) that all of those scenes fit in. The goal isn't to ruin your personal story by placing it in a genre, but to find a better way to explore it. To keep that scene in the jazz bar, but now it's in a story where aliens might attack at any minute... and those aliens are attracted by sound (like music!). You want your story to actually be better in the genre than it would be in a straight drama.

EMOTIONAL

I think of Genre as Emotions. Our job as screenwriters is to transfer emotions to the audience, As Frank Capra said, "I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.” Our job is to write in a way that makes the audience cry, or laugh, or sit on the edge of their seats in suspense, or are excited by an action scene, or are scared. Really scared.

When we use the envelope of genre, there are two big emotional elements to be aware of: Your character’s emotional journey, and the emotions of the audience. Your character’s emotional journey is your “doorway” into the story - that personal story about loneliness or fear of a broken heart or that you are no longer part of your father’s family or the fear that people see you as old and useless. So we want to find the best “envelope” to explore those emotions... where the scenes in the emotional journey will create those “genre juice” scenes that create emotions in the audience.

The Substance is a horror movie about aging. A twist on "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" about an aging Jane Fonda-like actress with a hit TV fitness show, Elizabeth Sparkle, whose ratings have begun to slump. On her birthday the head of the network fires her because she's too old, and searches for a replacement between 18 and 30. No one over 30 need apply. When Elizabeth is offered an illegal experimental drug that will make her young again for 7 days at a time (then she must return to her old self for 7 days) she hesitates... but who wants to be a retired old woman? So she goes through a complicated (and gross) injection process and "Sue" is born. Late 20s, full of energy and ambition, "Sue" auditions for Elizabeth's old job... and she's perfect!

However, the drug has side effects. When you are a hot woman in her 20s you don't want to go back to being 60. That creates a great deal of body horror that will make the audience cover their eyes (like I did) and feel the horror of aging. One of the great emotional scenes in the story has old Elizabeth preparing for a date with a guy she went to school with decades ago, trying to use makeup to look younger... and still looking old. This is a big heartbreaking scene. This film does a great job of making us understand the character's emotional journey and scaring us in the process. Most of the scares are about aging... and trying to hide or disguise how old are.

EXCITING

Just because it's an Elevated Horror Movie (or whatever the genre envelope) doesn't mean you can have fewer scares. We aren't adding the emotional drama or social issue instead of the "genre juice", but in addition to it. You need a bunch of big scare scenes plus an Act Three that is wall-to-wall horror. Just like there are "comedies with heart" that have characters we care about saying and doing really funny things, our Horror With Heart will still have lots of horror scenes, and all of the scares of those non-Elevated horror movies. If that "horror hound" audience that just wants blood and guts buys a ticket, we want them to be happy, too!

So A Quiet Place: Day One delivers on the creature attacks, delivers on the suspense of trying to be quiet when the creatures are nearby. That scene in the jazz bar is a big emotional scene about her father's music - a sound that will attract the creatures!  Cuckoo has that escaped mental patient killing some of the Lodge guests (in the honeymoon cabin!), and when we get to that mental hospital just outside of town for Act 3? It's a crazy rollercoaster of scares and stabbings and secrets revealed. 

The great thing about Strange Darling's mixed-up chronology is that someone is always chasing someone with a knife or a gun and supporting characters (other examples of romantic couples with a secret or two) get killed in frightening and shocking ways. For a film about two people on a first date, there's a big body count! The Substance has no shortage of shocks and body horror! But when we come to Act Three? It's non-stop horror with elements of Society" (1989) and Carrie (1976) and Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I watched it through the gaps between my fingers while covering my eyes!

Even “Elevated Horror” is horror. The great part of each of these four movies is how they take the “personal, emotional story” and find the intersection between the character story and the genre story. The horror grows out of the personal story, and the personal story becomes more dramatic due to the horror. Each part feeds on the other. You get to tell your small personal story... and the audience gets to scream when the aliens attack.

THE END.

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