It’s when the hero tries to find the.... fuck, what is he trying to find? The thing. The flatbread. The flatbread sandwiches. That’s it. It’s when my assistant gets me a flatbread sandwich. That moment after he hands me the sandwich and before he demands I give him money for it, like the $6 a week I pay him isn’t enough for him to buy me a sandwich. That moment. That’s the hero right there.

....I’m kidding. You knew that. I knew that. Kidster. April Fool’s! He makes $7 a week. Big-time checks. Awyeah.

Look, the hero’s journey is their Arc. The Arc of the Cumberlands or something. Harrison Jones. That kinda thing. Come in one end, no girlfriend, BANG! Out the other, with the girlfriend. But not Short Round. That kid is weird.

And then there’s Last Crusade. If your dad is Sean Connery, BOOM! Automatic hero status. Fuck yeah. And if you ARE Sean Connery, fuck you give me your fortune and sign my left armpit. I’ll sell it, make millions. On an armpit. Fuck yes. That’s success, ladies and gent. (Just one gent.)

Besides, everyone knows heros bring paninis.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

What you do is, you shake the page while you’re writing on it. It’s way, way better with an old Smith-Corona, or even with a fucking pen -- remember pens? Fuck I miss pens -- because then the editor will SEE the drama. They’ll fight for you. They’ll make them shake the whole fucking printing press while they’re printing YOUR BOOK. Fuck yeah. Shaking laptops isn’t the same.

The other answer -- and I can’t stress this enough -- is Precious Bodily Fluids. Every fight scene’s gotta have them. Acid-spitters, shit-flingers, pissing robots, fuck, dude, you need it all. That one guy shitting blood in the corner. Makes the whole scene feel REAL, man. Like you’re IN it, like it’s POWERFUL.

Remember: shitting blood is the realest thing you’ll ever  write. You gotta respect it. Approach it with caution. Like a fucking moose.

Read action books. These are the best action books. Ready?

Fuck yeah! Bigly!

Oh shit that’s the wrong list.

Ummmmm.

Shit.

Shit BLOOD. And Gorgonzola. Fuck yeah.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

Pull over and ask for directions. What is this, 1985? You look. On a phone. With a map.

Mapphones. They have those now.  They call them... I forget. Arthur C Clarke invented them in a novel back in ‘43. Bet you didn’t know THAT, did you?

Okay, okay, I hear you. “Cut the crap” you say. “Fix my novel” you say. Well what about what I WANT?!

Look, check your act structure. Beginning, middle, end, THE END. Boom. Taco night. It’s perfect.

All honesty, keep doing what you’re doing. Tacos will come. You just gotta plow through the bucket of sour cream first, y’know what I mean? Even if you have the gallstones. Especially if you have the gallstones.

Because what’s going on is, your plot ARE the gallstones. And if you feed the plot sour cream, the gallstones, baby, either they’re gonna pass through or they’re gonna blow up your pancreas. Either way, EXCITEMENT. That’s ACTION baby. Pancreas! BOOM!

Remember Raymond Chandler: When the Plot Flags, Bring In a Man with Gallstones.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

You didn’t subject the publishing houses to your manuscript.

Look, your manuscript is hungry. It eats editors for lunch. You know why editors wear brown pants? Yeah. Yeah, you do. You know why.

So what you have to do is, stop the publishing houses from running away. Your manuscript is a freaking BEAST, with jaws of STEEL -- have you SEEN those staple removers? They look just like dragons, we cast one for Epic Fantasy Quest 7, worked like a charm, all we had to do was feed it  staples all day. Fuck yeah. Blockbuster. Made enough to eat my dinner and that’s a fact.

So what you do is, you do the classic train tracks scene, right? Some serious Dudly Do-Right shit. Tie the editor to the railroad tracks. Then you take a page from Misery and you force feed them your MS.

Fuck yeah, man. Works like a fucking charm, every time. Then, nine months later, BOOM! Blockbuster!!!

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

Supervillains. Oh man. Gotta love ‘em. Goldfinger? GoldFUCKER!!

Okay. Here’s  what you do. Your villain is who drives the story, right? We talked about this. BAM! Ferrari into the bridge. They’ve gotta be cool, they’ve gotta be sexy. I mean like whatshisfacefromDoctorWho sexy, paired with whatshernamefromTombRaider sexy. Like.... BAM! YOWZA!

Okay. So here’s what you do. Your villain has to mirror your protagonist, right? So what if the villain is--plot twist--THE MIRROR?! Like the mirror itself. Like the actual, physical mirror.

Or -- and this is new, I’ve never seen this before, cat’s outta the bag, don’t tell -- what you do is, you give your hero a twin sister. Give her a mustache so we can tell them apart. Identical twins, except chick’s got a mustache. Perfect. Love it.

And then what you do is, you have them fight about the mustache. The Hero wants it. The Villain has it. Fightfightfight. And then the hero becomes the villain and the villain becomes the hero and Spielberg can SUCK IT.

Only -- and I saw this on South Park -- make the hero the jerk. That’s High Fucking Drama right there. Who’s the villain? NO ONE KNOWS. The END.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

Hair. So important. Gotta have cool hair. Right? Slick. Sexy. Hair’s gotta be a thing.

You gotta pick carefully. Give them something contemporary but stylish. Or go anachronistic. Who’s gonna remember the character in the 1950s with a man bun? Everybody, that’s who. Best of the old with the best of the new. Perfect.

You know what you want to read for this? Reservoir Dogs. Not the movie, the screenplay. Such great hair, that whole movie. Harvey Keitel is a great drinking partner, by the way. Total madman. Literally drank the bar out of Scotch one night. 

Once you pick your hair, remember. Always talk about the hair. The hair is its own character. Give it an arc. Give it at least two pages of description so you’re sure everyone sees it perfect in their mind. Give it a story. A love story with a spray and a gel. A triangle. It’s brilliant. You’ll sell a million copies.

Jesus I’m good at this shit. Fuck yeah! Rock on, bestseller!!

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

I can’t figure out whether you wrote “untie” or “unite”. So there.

Here’s what you do. You take your manuscript. Print that bad boy right on out. Print it. Just hit “print”. Do it at school so you don’t waste your own ink. It’s school, who cares?

Then you throw the pages up in the air. They say when Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 he threw the pages in the air and whatever order they landed in he just threw a preposition in at the end, like an “of” or an “and” or a “bananarama”, and then he stapled it together and he published it just like that. That book starts on page 87, but only in the Big Print version. Trust me, it’s magic.

But that’s not what you should do. You’re not Joseph Heller. Get it? So that’s not what you need.

What YOU need are some Fiskars -- other scissors are shitty, steal the best. Steal them from school. It’s fine. It’s art, you’re learning, petty theft is okay. What you’re going to do is stab your manuscript over and over with the Fiskars. Okay? Got it? Stabbings. Go to town. Make murder until the ink runs red.

Now try to peel the pages apart. See? You can’t. The stabs – the hanging fucking chads – won’t let you separate them. THERE. You’ve united your plot points.

BAM! WHO’S NEXT!!?!?!

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctor™

Perfect example. Perfect. Love this question. Thanks. You’re pretty great for asking this.

What’s happening is, you’re afraid of pens. Or laptops. Or whatever. Like, physically afraid. Did a pen stab itself into your neck as a kid? Did a laptop eat your pet dog? I dunno. Those are personal questions. Ask @scriptshrink about those. None of my business. Just: you’re scared. I get it.

Writing is a car crash. You’re doing 80 down the I-5 in your , minding your own business, then BAM! Big fucking bridge, right in your way. Hit the bridge. The bridge is writing. That’s storytelling. When you get stuck, hit the bridge.

Fuck, I’m great at this. I should write a fucking book.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

Oxford. Great school. Great city. Lovely people. Bigly.

What Oxford’s problem was, is that they didn’t understand that the Spartans were coming for them. We set this up in Act 1 -- no Spartans, but then suddenly, Bam! Spartans. At the door. DEMANDING an education. Nevertheless, they persisted, that kind of thing. Sold it to Paramount for seventy mil. Writer retired to Cancun. Good shit.

So. How do you use commas? Here’s the secret. You don’t. Commas are the weaklings of the writer’s world, I never ever use them. I delete every comma I see. That’s how you make good stories, that’s how you make millions.

Read Faulkner. Read everything Faulkner. Perfect example of commas. Cut every comma he ever wrote. And the paragraph breaks, too, you don’t need them, they’re redundant.

You’re welcome.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD(TM)

Well, what you want to do with a journey story like this is, you want to keep them all in one place. What I mean by that is, think about the world moving around your characters, and through your characters.

You definitely want to keep a lot of rough, rocky terrain. Make them sweat a lot. Surprise point: have cars exist but don’t tell your characters. Increases suspense.

Take a pointer from Stieg Larson: have them eat lots and lots of finger sandwiches.

I’m gonna give you reading homework. It’s the best homework. You need to read some journey books. Read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and the book it inspired, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Then read Flowers for Algernon. It will tell you everything you need to know.

ScriptScriptDoctorDoctorMD™