The Toughest Scene I Wrote: “The Martian”

Once again, Vulture does screenwriters a solid:

Vulture is speaking to the screenwriters behind 2015’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack.

In an article about the movie The Martian, screenwriter Drew Goddard talks about the challenge of handling exposition in a key scene:

There’s one scene that stands out as being especially difficult. I essentially called it the “Matt sets up the third act” scene, and it’s just a monologue. We had this concept of what the third act is, which is that we’re going to launch Matt into space in a tin can. That’s it. When we explained that that was going to happen, we needed to explain why, and we needed to explain the velocity involved in what’s going to happen, because one of the things that’s hard about filmmaking is speed can be difficult. For example, if you look at race cars on tracks, you need to see them blowing past something to understand that they’re moving at a high rate. It’s perspective. The problem with launching off the surface of a planet is, we really wanted to sell how dangerous all of this was about to be. It was this exposition that I was struggling with, of just Matt Damon talking.

Writing exposition — data, information, backstory — is often one of the most vexing challenges facing a writer. That’s why I created the 1-week online class Handling Exposition. It starts Monday, February 22. In it, I present six key principles and a number of pro tips to help you deal with this tricky aspect of the craft. For information, go here.

For the rest of the article, go here. Kudos to Vulture for this annual series which puts the spotlight on screenwriters.