This week, let’s skip all the BS about screenwriting and explore an extremely actionable writing tip…
I don’t remember who said this advice originally, but it has stuck with me for years: Put your characters into situations that are impossible to get out of. Then it’s your job as the writer to find a way out. If you succeed, you’ll have a satisfying bit of drama.
Let’s give this idea a whirl with a fairly generic example, and see how much it holds up huh?
Trapped in a Trunk – Our Rules
Let’s say we’re writing a thriller, because this seems the most logical place to apply this idea. We’ll put the hero against insurmountable odds/danger, and let them thread the needle to emerge victorious.
What might that look like?
How about a story about a woman who’s been abducted by a serial killer?
He has the total upper hand – she’s already tied up, stuffed in his trunk, and he’s driving her out to the woods to do god-knows-what.
Let’s make it even more difficult for her. He’s armed with a shotgun, and he’s a hunter. She has only the clothes on her back.
We have our impossible-to-escape situation. Now if we can find a way for her to “win”, this could be the bones of a satisfying story.
But I’m going to add a couple of ground rules: She can’t win as the result of a coincidence. That’s a no-no.
As writers we can use a coincidence to get our characters INTO trouble, but not out of it (too lazy that way).
And one more rule: The killer is competent.
He’s done this successfully many times before. She knows this – she’s heard about the man-hunt for this killer on the news.
The only way she can escape is by being MORE competent than him, and in fact, more competent than the audience.
Who is She?
So, how do we do this? Well, it’s going to be hard to start writing because we know nothing about our heroine. Let’s give her some backstory.
She’s a detective who’s investigating this killer.
This already starts pointing towards possible methods of winning – like getting his shotgun somehow. But maybe that’s too easy. Let’s make it even harder for her…
She’s a bartender who was serving him drinks the whole night.
This makes her a little more relatable, as she probably doesn’t have any special skills that might help her escape her bindings or be comfortable with a gun – also making it more impossible to escape/win.
So let’s think. To survive this, she can either do something in the trunk, or at their destination, or both.
To make it dramatic and believable, whatever she does will have to be dangerous/difficult/painful/risky, but since she knows the alternative is a certain & gruesome death, she’s willing to do anything.
Let’s also rule out psychological methods of escape – aka talking her way out of it through manipulation. We don’t know enough about either character to write that kind of scene yet. So it has to be physical.
Here we go…
The Impossible Scenario
She looks around the trunk. There’s nothing back there she could use to escape her bindings or cut free.
She tries to wriggle free/bite them. No chance. Her limbs are tied so tight they’re turning blue, and her arms are tied behind her back. Her mouth is also bound, she can only make muffled screams.
The car coasts to a stop. Red light? She can bounce her body and try to scream through the gag, maybe another car will hear.
She starts kicking at the side of the car, screaming and bouncing, but it’s too late, he starts driving again and turns up the radio until it’s blaring.
She keeps yelling and wriggling, but now the sound of the road changes. He’s driving on gravel. They’re off-road. That means time is running out, and worse yet, nobody is going to see or hear her.
Truly this is looking impossible. Great. Let’s milk this moment for a while, really make people feel like all is lost for her.
Now that that’s done, we just have to get her free.
Uhh… How?
How? No idea. But it’s supposed to be hard to figure out. That’s a good thing.
Often you come up with a solution that requires you to go back to earlier in the film and plant the seeds for it. Those are great, and tend to be the most satisfying for the viewer, because it brings the story full circle.
For example, earlier when she was serving the killer drinks, she gave him the bill but he told her the pen was out of ink. So she pocketed that empty pen and gave him a fresh one. Now she pulls it out of her back pocket and uses it to break her wrist bindings.
But during that exchange of pens at the bar, we’d probably add him saying something creepy to her, or rub her finger as they trade pens. Then a little later we show her test out the old pen and realize it worked fine. That way this pen exchange is revealing character, not just a plot device to help her escape later.
But that sort of thing has been done 1000 times. What else can we do?
Another Way Out
Here’s another solution that doesn’t have that “full circle” feel, but at least it gets her free in an unexpected way…
She shimmies and twists her body until she’s finally facing the front of the car.
She carefully worms her body to push against the back seat. It slowly lowers… she can see the back of his head driving.
He didn’t hear the seat move because the radio is still blaring.
She has an idea but she knows she has only one shot.
She quietly wriggles into position, inching her body on top of the folded backseat, dripping sweat at the effort of being silent.
She finally gets her feet under her, toes wedged against a divot in the car floor.
She SCREAMS, LAUNCHING her body awkwardly towards the steering wheel, startling the killer.
The car SWERVES.
BOOM! They collide with a tree (or even better, an oncoming vehicle).
Later. She opens her eyes, bloodied and battered.
But so is he – and he’s still unconscious.
From here, she could find something in the car to escape her bindings, and she “wins” – she gets the shotgun for example.
Or we could continue the situation – the guy starts coming to, and she doesn’t have time to get the shotgun. She makes a run for it, now with freedom of movement, but the killer is hunting her through the woods – he’s in his element, she is not.
We’re basically rinse and repeating this idea of putting her in an impossible to escape scenario.
Other Uses
Of course, this idea doesn’t have to be for obvious thriller scenarios – you could apply the same principal to a grounded drama.
Shows like Succession are full of these kinds of impossible traps that characters have to wriggle their way out of through clever dialogue, cutthroat choices, etc.
If you can put your characters into impossibly difficult problems and have them find impossibly clever solutions, you’re probably creating a very compelling story, and endearing your audience to those characters.
Hope this technique helps you ramp up the stakes in your next project.
Let’s make some movies.
-Kent
PS – Thanks to everyone who registered for my live webinar, what a great turn out! Hope you all had as much fun as I did and learned some useful stuff in the process. If so let me know! Maybe I’ll host another in the future.
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