Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem.

Assalam alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatahu!

So last night, me and the hubsters went to see Captain America: Winter Soldier. It struck me while I was watching it (among the many things that were striking but not hurting Captain America) was there was a formula (who woulda thunk it) to action movies.

1. Get yourself a superhuman hero. Only nominally human. Impenetrable by any substance, man or alien-made.
2. Set up a world-ending conspiracy theory. The perpetrators can be any of the Western world’s favorite bogies from the past century, ze Germans, ze Russians or ze Muslims.
3. Slap on an emotional arc for the character because heck, we do want the audience to ‘identify’ with him.
4. Sprinkle liberally with the stuff people come to the cinema for (according to the conventional wisdom) – explosions, spectacle, fight scenes, shoot-outs, running fast and getting away. Or not. I got no beef with that. This is after all an action movie.
5. Bonus points – people of colour, women kicking butt too. But not permitted to steer the ship!

As I was thinking about it, I also realized this formula could be applied to many genre movies and could guide my rewrite process on my upcoming comedy scripts.

Retooling it to be more appropriate to comedy and my humanist sensibilities:

1. Character arcs are always the first order of business. Refine and define those character arcs. The plot should be a chain of consequence that derives from the character’s actions. Flaw, goals, motivations, internal desire. However I want to slice it.
   1. People outside the mainstream – gosh, this is a tough one. Make my choices specific so that they can’t be man-washed or white-washed. I’m still grappling with this and how not to make it about how awful it is to be not a white straight young man.  As usual, I’ll share what I know when I know it God willing.
   2. Make villains textured. Identify with them. Even love them. Have an I-Thou relationship with them.
2. Genre elements then must arise organically from character. Make sure the comedy rings true for the characters and not just funny.
3. Do a pass for set pieces. What are the trailer moments?
4. Do a pass for reader reactions/expectations. How can I refine the experience of reading this script?
5. Do a pass of audience expectations. What would my target audience expect coming into one of my movies? This could extend beyond genre expectations. It might be fun to imagine what it would be like to actually already have a signature, much like superhero movies or Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky or Lena Dunham.

Of course, I have had to go over some of these steps more than once. Two comedy passes for example and a few readability passes, depending on where I am in the submission process.

A number of other passes might be added to the list above as well.

This are the passes I intended to do with Whose Wife is It Anyway. Though with the deadline fast approaching, I’ve only managed to do a few of them.

1. A number of character rewrites.
2. A number of structure rewrites – which became much easier once I had a firm handle on motivations, goals, unconscious desires, etc and therefore the point of the scene.
3. One last character pass for each character, from major to minor. This was mostly to polish their voices.
4. A comedy punch-up (what I’ve just completed now).

Now here follows what I wish I had time to do but might return to in the future:

5.  A visual pass.
6. A pass for each important element specific to my story:
   1. The progression of my main character’s illness.
   2. Culture – would it translate with someone who isn’t South East Asian?
   3. The reveals of the mystery threading through the screenplay.
7. First ten pages
8. Last ten pages – yeah I know these two are super important.
9. Theme.
10. Rhythm and pace.
11. A sense of place.
12. An emotional graph.
13. Audience expectations
14. A craft pass or final edit.

Hope  this has helped.

I really did like Captain America. The movie, that is. The dude is an insufferable martyr.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah. May God always give you a harbor in the storms of life.

The Happy Muslimah.