When I read a script (or watch a movie or TV episode), there is one question running through my mind, which forms the foundation of my reaction to it:

“Do I care?”

And if I’m evaluating someone’s work, I’m asking, “Do I think audience members in general will care?”

This is really what they pay us writers to do, when you get down to it, beyond everything else. We are supposed to grab people, to make them emotionally invest in the character(s) and situation(s), so they’ll want to keep watching/reading.

If we don’t, it doesn’t matter how well we execute on the page. Not really. We have to convince them to want to be there, to want to stay. And that’s about how it feels for them to be a part of the story.

Most of my notes on most scripts point to this central need. Writers sometimes lose sight of this as the goal, and don’t realize just how challenging it is to make millions of strangers engage and feel something about a story and characters. It’s hard! But it’s maybe the most valuable thing we do as writers — give the audience something to care about, to connect with, to lose themselves in. They want to experience the events of the story as if they were happening to them — to feel a part of it, and so connected that it really MATTERS how everything turns out. Almost like it’s their favorite sports team playing for the championship. And it’s our job to make that happen.

There are two aspects to emotional engagement. Both are important.

The first is about making them care about the predicament(s) of the main character(s) — to feel for the people and what they’re going through and trying to achieve. So many of my blog posts are about different ways to try to ensure this happens: by seducing them into some connection in the opening pages, by making sure the main character has one big problem they will actively focus on throughout, and that it has high enough stakes, and that the story is told subjectively through their point-of-view. Achieving a kind of emotional oneness with the main character(s) is something we take for granted, as viewers. But as writers, we have to strategize and work hard to make this happen.

The other way to engage audience emotions is through entertaining them. That is, we lead them into experiencing pleasurable emotions, that they chose to watch the movie/show because they’re hoping to feel. Different genres do this differently — depending on whether their audience showed up to laugh, to be scared, to experience romantic love, etc.

It’s not easy to achieve high entertainment value if you’re not also making them care about the characters and strongly bond with them. But occasionally it happens. If a comedy is funny enough, or a horror film scary enough, or an action-adventure has big enough spectacle, bonding with the characters can sometimes be slightly less crucial. With some movies, the audience just wants to laugh really hard, see awesome eye candy, etc., and they may or may not be quite as connected with the people. These kinds of movies are like amusement park attractions, to me. Sometimes they can be big successes. And a writer who can entertain this hugely can definitely find work. They just might not stick with you as much.

Most writers I work with aren’t focused in that direction. If anything, “entertainment” seems to be a lower priority. They’re not actively going for a particular genre, other than perhaps “drama,” which can be the hardest to make “entertaining” (and can sometimes become bleak, or boring). With this kind of script, it’s that much more important that the audience have strong emotional investment in the characters and their problems, and what they’re doing in the face of conflicts and complications they encounter to try to reach their goals.

In my view, most writers could stand to focus on both of these ways to engage audience emotion more, as the one-two punch of what makes a script really “work” — assuming it also has a strong enough original premise. And when you come right down to it, virtually every other screenwriting trick of the trade ultimately works in service to one or both of these goals. 

Glen Powell and Zoey Deutch in Netflix’s SET IT UP

The new Netflix romantic comedy Set it Up is as good example as any, of a movie that makes both ways of engaging emotion a priority. I’m a fan of the genre, and it’s one the major studios don’t tend to make as much anymore — this gentler, pleasing kind of story of how two people come together (as opposed to more raucous comedies that might also have a romantic subplot). This movie presses a lot of the traditional buttons that you would see twenty years ago in studio rom-coms, and though I thought it took a while to really kick into gear, once it did, I found myself caring more and more about the two leads, enjoying the chemistry between them, and wanting to see each of them grow into their best selves, and end up together. And like the best versions of this genre (what Save the Cat would classify under “Buddy Love”), these two ultimately seem like they could be each other’s “perfect counterpart” — the person best suited to help them to find that best self.

If you watch it, notice all the things they do to make the two leads lovable, and growingly so. The more we watch them both be abused at work (and later in relationships), the more we can’t help but feel for both of them, and want them to find some escape (which they seek to achieve by secretly setting their terrible bosses up with each other). But once we get past that initial premise, it starts to be about something more — we want them to find personal fulfillment, and even love. 

In terms of entertainment value, there is plenty of comedy throughout, as well as a chance for the audience to vicariously enjoy the experience of love blossoming, between two people they come to care about — one of the most time-tested kinds of “entertainment emotions” that audiences will pay to experience.  

Whether you enjoy the movie or not, it’s trying to do what movies do best, when they are as successful: which is to entertain people, while making them care.