How Story Maps Can Fix a Broken Horror Screenplay [Podcast]

Every great horror story runs on a hidden engine: a primal fear, a wish that curdles, a choice that comes back to haunt the hero. In this episode of the Kinolime Podcast , John sits down with screenplay doctor, writing coach, and Story Maps author Daniel Calvisi to take that engine apart. From his years as a script reader in New York to the four-act map he now uses to diagnose struggling drafts, Dan breaks down the beats that keep audiences on the edge of their seats, and why the midpoint is almost always where the trouble starts. Then the two put a lineup of horror classics head to head in a bracket that ends in a few surprises. Grab a notebook, because by the final round you may be rethinking what fear looks like on the page.

Full Transcript: Kinolime Podcast Episode 59: How Story Maps Can Fix a Broken Horror Screenplay

Participants

• John Schramm - Head of Development, Kinolime

• Daniel Calvisi - Screenwriting Coach and Author

John: All right, everybody, welcome to the Kinolime podcast. I’m John Schramm, and I’m so pumped to have our next guest here today. I’ve known Daniel Calvisi for, we were just talking off air, 11 years. I went to Dan as a client. I was looking for help with screenwriting. He’s the screenplay doctor, writing coach, and author of Story Maps. Dan Calvisi is coming in from San Pedro, California. How are you doing, Dan? It’s been about 11 years, but like I said, you haven’t aged a bit. How have you been?

Dan: I know. Thanks, you haven’t either. It’s great to see you. It’s great to see what you’re doing with Kinolime. I’ve followed you for a while, on Instagram and YouTube and stuff, so it’s great to talk to you again.

John: I’m so happy we connected. When we were talking about horror as a theme for our next set of videos, I follow you and saw your horror webinar coming up, and it just looks so cool. I can’t wait to get into it. I’m going to show everyone at home something. I remember when I found you in 2015. I didn’t even know how I found you, but I was so obsessed. This was when I first started in the business and was learning screenwriting, and I said, “Where do I start?” You came up with something so cool. You had your story maps. It’s on my iPad, and I still have it in my Kindle. Here are the story maps. Wow, awesome. I don’t even know how to get back to the original part, but anyway, it was so cool. I would study this over and over again. You had all these amazing films broken down, like Juno, The Social Network, Hustle & Flow, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Black Swan, Sex and the City, Meet the Parents, The Matrix, Rain Man, Rocky, Up, and X-Men. You had a different genre for each one. I’d go in and think, “All right, I’m writing a drama, I’m going to click on Rain Man,” and you’d break down the story with your map. It was incredibly helpful.

But let’s talk about how you created story maps. Let’s hear about that journey, because it really helped me in my career.

From NYU to Reader

Dan: I went to NYU for film and originally wanted to be a big, famous director. Oliver Stone is one of my big inspirations, and he went to NYU too. Of course he did. I wanted to be a big director, and I thought I’d win Best Picture by the time I was 25. But in film school I had a lot of technical problems, because someone on my crew wasn’t paying as much attention as I was. That’s when I realized how expensive films are, and I didn’t have any money. I discovered screenwriting. I took a story analysis class where we broke down the structure of The Silence of the Lambs and Sunset Boulevard and all these great films. I really discovered structure, and I loved it.

After NYU, I became a reader. I pursued a reader job and freelanced for Miramax, Dimension, Jonathan Demme’s company, Fox, New Line, and a lot of different companies. As a reader in New York, I was reading scripts, books, treatments, and all sorts of material. I learned just as much from the bad ones as from the good ones. You realize what not to do, and that’s important. I also started seeing patterns, because my job was to evaluate submissions as potential movies for specific companies. I knew what they were looking for, what budget ranges they worked in, and who their audiences were. Even if something was rough in structure, an early draft, a book, or a graphic novel, I was still looking to fit it into the three-act structure, or what I break into four acts, because I have the midpoint and I go Act 2A and Act 2B.

Creating the Story Map

Dan: You’re still trying to fit it into that classic structure. On the job, I saw certain paradigms, like Syd Field and Save the Cat, but I was seeing more specific beats that nobody else was talking about. So I wanted to make my own beat sheet, and I did. I was hitting points that other people weren’t hitting, stuff around page 38, 40, 45, and 75.

I got really into that. I started teaching, then coaching, and I put the story maps out there. Eventually I published a book on it. I focused on film for many years, and then TV got hot and I got obsessed with it. There was no TV beat sheet out there, so I made one for one-hour television, and now I have one for half-hours as well.

John: One-hour television pilots, yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Now I’m coming back to features, because it’s all about features again. It’s such a hot market right now. The box office is hot. I’ll tell you one interesting thing that shows why I’ve been focusing on horror lately and why it’s a great genre to focus on. I just got a new coaching client, a super successful TV writer and showrunner. She’s been a showrunner on two shows and still has a TV deal with a major network. Her agent asked, “What else do you have? Show me your ideas.” She sent him a list of loglines, and the one he picked was a horror feature. Everyone has a horror project right now. But she’s never been a feature writer and has never written horror in her life, which is why she’s hiring me. Could there be any other sign that TV is contracting and features are booming?

Why Features Are Back

John: When we met in 2015, that was really the rise of TV, right? Game of Thrones was in full swing, and Breaking Bad was hitting. Now film has swung back. There’s a thirst for film, and people are going to the box office again. I’m so happy you’re back into feature films, because that’s the one I work in.

Syd Field and the Four-Act Structure

John: When you were telling your story, it was very similar to Syd Field. For anyone who doesn’t know him, I’m going to put up a graphic of his book, Screenplay. It’s a great book to start learning about structure. He was a reader, reading so much that he had to distill a methodology for discerning which screenplays were good. He focused on the first 30 pages and broke things into three acts. What you do, which I use today, is something I’ve taught my team: Act 2A and 2B. I’m a four-act guy because of you. It widens things out. I find the three-act structure a bit suffocating. It’s also a big landscape.

I don’t think you should write to each beat specifically, but what you provided is a roadmap, like a tent pole. We have to go here, and this is where great films go. Go download the story maps and see how the actual films operate. I want to get into the story maps, because we’ll segue into the horror material. Tell us the basic structure or tenets of your story maps. Everyone knows the traditional Act One: you have your setup, then the refusal of the call. Then Act 2A, where people don’t really know what to do. There’s a midpoint. 2B is a landscape, and in Act Three everything converges. Dan, what have you discovered in your countless hours of research about story structure?

The Basic Story Map

Dan: In my story map, I break it into two parts: the basic story map and the full story map. The basic map covers the main dramatic elements: the characteristics of your protagonist, your theme, their goals, and the conflicts. You have to establish that first. It’s the foundation of the house, and everything flows from it. The full story map contains the story engines for each act, the plot beats, and what actually happens. Over the years I’ve realized you can’t do anything without the basic story map. When I see a film or read a script that has a problem, it usually goes back to the basic map. There are little things, like, you probably want something to happen around page 40. They need some kind of crucible, some kind of test.

But I’m not telling you exactly what to do. I give you some characteristics and the form, and you pour your story into it. It’s form, not format, of course. It doesn’t dictate your choices. They’re still your choices. But if I see a structural problem, I’ll say, “You’re not exploring your theme. I’m on page 57 and I still don’t know what this is about.” So let’s go back to your basic map.

John: What are some examples of basic story maps for those who don’t know?

Dan: Two examples I’ve been using a lot are Get Out and The Substance, two famous horror movies that were also critically acclaimed.

John: Yeah.

Dan: In horror, I have you define the primal fear, because the story needs to hit a primal fear in the audience. It needs to tap something: fear of drowning, fear of the dark, fear of irrelevance or aging. In The Substance, it’s aging into irrelevance. If you can define those general factors and characteristics, everything else will flow from that. Black Swan is about obsession. The Sixth Sense is about communication within families.

This year we had two huge hits, Obsession and Backrooms.

Obsession is about sometimes what you wish for being your biggest nightmare. And ultimately, that guy was trying to manipulate this girl. He was trying to use magic to make her love him, and that is a road to disaster.

John: For y’all at home, what Dan describes in his basic story map are the things to think about when you’re looking at your draft. We can get into Act Two turns and what’s missing, but I think Dan did an amazing job distilling it. I still use it. For example, you need an external goal and an internal goal. Dan talks about this a lot. In Obsession, the internal goal is stopping the wish from destroying my life. The main dramatic conflict is another layer. I’m looking at The Matrix right now: it’s Neo’s own self-doubt, and Agent Smith. It sounds rudimentary, but it really helps you think and distill, because our heads get so messy about story and where to go. What Dan does, and why I recommend his book and courses, is help you break it down into sections, like theme or central dramatic question. That’s what Dan’s map is: a roadmap to achieve what you’re ultimately trying to say in the best story possible. Dan, is that fair to say?

Dan: Yeah, definitely. Those main characteristics are your theme and your protagonist. I like to break out the protagonist’s characteristics: their misbehavior, which is a quirky trait that’s either comic relief or constantly causes conflict; their Achilles’ heel or main flaw, which could potentially destroy them and is always hanging out there, maybe a ghost or a cardinal sin from their past. The external goal is their action goal: to save the princess, get the gold, win the job. It’s the central engine. Then they need an internal goal, a dramatic need, something emotional, like the love story or getting over past trauma. And of course you need conflict, an obstacle standing in their way. That could be a villain, factors in their life, or society. You want to escalate conflict as you go. You keep putting them up a tree and throwing stones at them, making it tougher and tougher.

Structure as a Tool, Not a Crutch

John: What I love about it is that it gives you roadmaps. But some people tend to treat structure as paint-by-numbers. How do you view structure as a tool without it becoming a crutch that makes films and screenplays feel predictable?

Dan: Yeah, they can definitely feel that way. I’m a “know the rules before you break the rules” person. There’s a big trend now where people say there are no rules, you don’t even need to know format, and you can just make up your own stuff. Maybe once every five years someone turns in a crazy script that sells and becomes a movie. But in general, as a reader, I have to be clear on where I am and know what I’m reading. I want a slug line. It doesn’t have to be “INT. CLASSROOM - DAY” every time. You can vary it a little. But I’d really like the classic interior and exterior.

Clarity is a fine line. There’s a difference between “I’m glad they nailed the inciting incident around page 10” and “Oh my God, I saw that coming on page 10.” You still want to surprise me on page 10 with that inciting incident. Then I want strong forward movement around page 18 to 20. It can be 22, it can be 23, it can be 16. That’s okay. I just want to move forward.

John: He’s not telling you to write it exactly that way, but there has to be an essence pushing your character. I used to struggle with this. How I got out of it was to stop thinking externally, like “I have to hit the inciting incident,” and instead write from the inside out. I’d think about my character and let them breathe and live. It may take you 20 pages in the first draft to reach your inciting incident, but you’ll find the character moving organically. That’s how you surprise readers: the story feels organic, not predictable. If you think, “By page 10 I have to hit it,” you end up walking through the motions. So use the story map, but know the rules, then break them. Learn the system, then let it flow out of you and see where it takes you.

Common Mistakes in Opening Pages

John: You’ve been doing this for many years, as an author and script doctor, and you get hundreds of clients. What are the major mistakes you see writers making that almost everyone commits?

Dan: The first one is always flat opening pages that aren’t dynamic and don’t express any theme. Nothing is worse than opening on a seven-page dialogue scene between two characters we just met, where they just keep giving exposition. You want—

John: Would you still use this for horror, or does horror have its own rules for the first pages?

Dan: The dynamic opening is the same for any genre. In horror, I have my fear map, and I call the opening “opening dread,” because it has to give the audience a sense of unease. In Get Out, Chris is walking around at night, he’s being followed, and then he gets attacked. I think we see him get thrown into the trunk of a car. So we know something evil is going on. It doesn’t have to be that intense, but in a slasher movie, maybe it’s the first kill, even if we don’t know who the victim is or who the slasher is yet. You do want to open on that.

Another thing is the big turn, which generally comes around page 25 to 30. Blake Snyder came along and said, “You’ve got to have that end-of-Act-One turn on page 25.” I see that in a lot of movies now, but I’m still a page 27 or 28 guy, because when I was first reading, that’s where all the pros put it. In The Silence of the Lambs, written by Ted Tally, it’s right on page 27. It’s that “oh, shit” moment where something major shifts the story in a new direction. It has to be a new direction. It can’t just be that something happens. There has to be a shift into Act Two where we feel a difference, and story engines are key. We always want to know what the protagonist needs at this point, what they want, and what they’re pursuing. If we don’t know that, we’re like, “What do they need to do now? Where are they going?” You don’t want to lose momentum.

John: Is that a common mistake you see from writers, specifically in horror? Not only a flat opening, but not having that true turn, or what I call the break into Two?

Dan: Yes. They haven’t established a central engine. Ideally you establish that by about 20 minutes in, or page 20. Then you need the big turn at the end of Act One. In my regular story map, I call it “end of Act One turn and decision.” It should be followed by the protagonist making a conscious decision to enter that gateway. Or they decide they’re scared and don’t want to enter it, but that still sends the story in a new direction.

John: For those out there, we’ve probably heard of the call to adventure and the refusal of the call, which is the same material Dan is talking about.

Dan: Yes. When I was coming up, the hero’s journey was huge, with the call to adventure and meeting the mentor, like Gandalf giving Frodo his task, or Obi-Wan giving Luke what he needs. But in a lot of the examples and screenwriting books, the beats were broken down in different places and different orders. Even Star Wars was always cited as the example of the hero’s journey, but those beats were out of order compared to what I was seeing. So I wanted to make a story map that always followed the same order. I looked at hundreds of movies and figured out that these beats always come in the same order, no matter the genre, whether it’s a romantic comedy, horror, or action.

Does Every Film Follow the Map?

John: Some would say the more successful films have a cadence or structure that we as storytelling lovers devour. But there will always be people who say, “Screw structure, it doesn’t mean anything,” and they make good movies. What do you attribute that to? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to story. Did you take your favorite movies and find a common pattern, or do you think most successful films follow a story map? Or do you truly believe every story follows it in some way?

Dan: I think every film follows most of it. I know that sounds crazy, but even an experimental movie like I Saw the TV Glow, or an indie like Obsession, as well as a big commercial movie like Barbie, generally follows the same characteristics. They don’t have to, of course. And there’s breaking the rules. If you read a A Quiet Place script, it breaks some format rules, with a lot more white space than other scripts. But that made sense for that material. It’s about people who can’t make any sound, or the monsters will get them, so the format matched the material. If you’re writing a courtroom drama with a lot of dialogue, you don’t want tons of white space on the page.

So yes, some movies and scripts completely break the rules, but everyone is still looking for the story. After 30 pages, the reader wants to know what the story is. It’s the same as sitting in a theater half an hour in and thinking, “What is this about?” Or watching a TV show for half an hour and thinking the same thing. You still need an engine, whether it’s an experimental French film at the Venice Film Festival or a blockbuster.

John: I use that word all the time with my team. “Engine.” When we analyze screenplays, whether for investment or to study the competition, we ask, “What’s missing? Where’s the engine?” Nine times out of ten, most writers don’t have a strong enough engine to propel us into the second act. So we’ve gone over the first act.

Act Two-A: First Casualty and the Midpoint

John: I think most writers have a fairly strong first act, because it’s the setup. But what I find personally is that the dreaded Act Two is where writers struggle. Well, let’s talk about 2A specifically. We have 2A, the midpoint, and 2B. Do you find 2A to be an area of concern for writers, and if so, what does your map bring out in that 2A journey?

Dan: You definitely want a central engine. The protagonist has made a decision and is pursuing a goal. Then there needs to be a first test, a first crucible. I call it the first trial, or first casualty, because they can’t win yet. They’re early in their challenge and journey. Something has to go wrong. There needs to be a casualty. In Saving Private Ryan, it’s literally the first guy or guys in the platoon who die. It can also be figurative: a loss of innocence, or a kid who fails the test he was preparing for in high school. Something needs to be lost.

John: Is it the same in horror?

Dan: Yes, but in horror I have different terms. You have atonement and punishment.

Dan: Right. In my fear map, I call it atonement and punishment, and it’s the crucible. I use “atonement” for horror because it’s often very character-based. They made a decision, they built a world around themselves, and now they have to account for it. They have to atone. In Obsession, the guy made a wish to get this girl without her consent, and now he must atone for that sin. Then there has to be some kind of punishment, some kind of casualty. I found that directly after that, around page 40, or usually around page 45, or minute 45 in a movie, there’s a face-to-face confrontation. I call it combat. They had their first test and failed. Now they’re angry, and they find someone to face off with.

It makes sense if you look at a film. The best way to describe it is that you come face-to-face with someone. There was a threat, and now it has a face. There’s an actual villain. They’re facing off with someone. And then everything builds to what could be the most important beat in your screenplay.

John: Let’s talk about it. I know what you’re going to say. Say it.

Dan: The midpoint. It’s always a disaster.

John: Yep.

Dan: In the fear map, I call it the disaster. It’s usually on page 55 to 60, around 50 to 60 minutes into a feature. A disaster happens with heavy consequences for the protagonist. It reveals how deep and dark the threat goes. The worst happens, it turns the story in a new direction, and ideally it creates a ticking clock. Now they only have 24 hours to solve the problem, whereas before they had no time clock. It can seem like a win at the time, but it’s actually a false win. It has to create a lot of conflict.

Say two lovers get together in the middle of the story, whether it’s Romeo and Juliet or The Notebook. They get together, it’s a great moment, and they kiss. But those two are usually betrothed to other people. She’s engaged to the rich guy, and he’s from the other side of the tracks. It’s great that they got together, but it’s not going to be a walk in the park. All that conflict is still ahead.

John: I have to pause here, because I say this all the time about midpoints. Dan talked about needing a strong engine in the first act and gripping us in the first five pages or so. Great, you’ve done that. To me, one of the biggest beats, if not the biggest, is the midpoint. Every screenplay we get that needs work has a midpoint problem. Always. Maybe it isn’t taught, or it isn’t hammered home enough, but you have to build to the midpoint. If you picture a tent, the midpoint is the center pole holding it up. There are several theories about it. One is the mirror moment, where the protagonist looks in the mirror and talks to themselves, like, “Oh, I’m such a piece of... “ Dan’s suggestion for horror is one you can use and be inspired by, but you have to build to it, and it has to twist the story on its head. There needs to be a new revelation that turns the protagonist around and jolts the story somewhere else. What Dan said is fantastic for horror writers. Think about what your midpoint will be, because every great film has a great midpoint.

Dan: Definitely. In horror there’s usually a huge reveal. In The Sixth Sense, the kid doesn’t say “I see dead people” until the midpoint. He doesn’t tell Bruce Willis until the middle of the movie. A lot of great horror movies don’t show us the threat until an hour in, so you get that slow burn.

It’s a risk in today’s market. If you’re a new writer submitting to someone who has never heard of you, and you wait 60 pages to reveal that this is a creature feature, you’d better have 60 great pages that keep us engaged. You still need an A story. Maybe this guy just lost his job at the steel mill and is struggling with his wife and kids. We need to stay engaged before the 60-minute mark, when we realize there are werewolves outside town. That’s a bit of a risk, and it happens more in horror than in any other genre. But I like what you said about conflict peaking at that point. You want a line of conflict that peaks at each key beat: the end of Act One, the first trial and first casualty, and then way up at the disaster. It might dip for a while, but then it keeps peaking. Ironically, their situation is going down. By the end of Act Two, they’re hitting bottom while the conflict is at its peak. You don’t have to get out a whiteboard for that, but that’s the general idea.

John: It’s another guidepost for you at home. If you’re outlining and thinking about your draft, you know what you’re doing in Act One. Now Dan has given you 2A: trials, and then it peaks at the midpoint. These are guideposts to write toward. Francis Ford Coppola said he can only write 15 pages at a time, because that’s all he can see ahead, and at every 15 pages he’s thinking about how to twist and move the story or reveal something more. I think all great authors say the same thing. It’s about moving this way and that, conflict going up and down. It makes us comfortable, then uncomfortable, then scares us, then lets us breathe, but it’s always building toward something. So you have your 2A, test, and midpoint. Now let’s talk about 2B.

Act Two-B: Fun and Games, the Turn Toward Victory, and the Low Point

Dan: Can I say one thing about the beginning of 2A, the beginning of Act Two? Blake Snyder called it “fun and games,” the trailer moments. It’s the promise of the premise.

John: Promise of the premise, yep.

Dan: In Get Out, Chris has been hypnotized by the mom, and he goes into the dark place, or whatever they call it. Now we really know where we stand. In a comedy like Groundhog Day, this is where we see those trailer moments, and the movie really lives up to what it promised.

John: In Obsession, she’s changed, and the wish has come true. Now it’s all that. There’s a reason filmmakers and trailer editors use that material. It’s the thing that grips you. That’s your 2A: the trailer moments, the promise of the premise. Good point, Dan. Thanks for bringing that up. Now, in your opinion, what should 2B be doing?

Dan: 2B is the characters struggling more and more as conflict and stakes heighten. They eventually strike their strongest blow yet. They have their strongest flex, which I call the assumption of power moment, or the declaration of war. They feel themselves getting stronger and make a conscious, forward strike against the threat. But they’re not going to totally win. They’re going to hit bottom 10 or 15 pages later, at the end of Act Two, when the conflict and stakes are highest and the consequences hit them the hardest.

This is one place where my story map always stood out. I looked at tons of movies and saw that the minute 75 or page 75 moment was usually more of a triumph, a positive for the character. In The Karate Kid, this is when he finally realizes he knows karate. There’s the “show me how to paint the fence, show me how to sand the floor” training, and then that amazing scene where you think, “Oh my God, he’s been learning karate the whole time, and he could do this.” It’s immediately followed by the declaration of war, when he walks into Cobra Kai and says, “We’ll see you at the All Valley Karate Tournament.” That’s a textbook example.

John: It’s amazing, even for that film. It’s an ’80s movie, and it holds up. Structurally you’d think it’s too long. If you rewrote it now, he’d know karate much earlier. But they delay it a bit longer, and it’s all character-based, so it builds to that moment. There’s a ton of conflict in The Karate Kid. It’s another great film to study.

Now, with horror specifically, what should people think about in 2B? What stands out in great horror movies that excel in 2B?

Dan: At the beginning of 2B, you have what I call the aftermath. It’s a check-in. The disaster happened at the midpoint, and now it’s time to regroup and take stock. It can also help to bring the reader or viewer up to speed on what happened.

Then it builds to the assumption of power moment, which in horror I call “throwing down the gauntlet.” It’s saying, “I’m sick of being a victim. I’m sick of being on my back foot. I’m going to strike, and I’m going to try to take this thing down.” The protagonist experiences a surge of strength. They realize their true power, and they either initiate a direct attack on the antagonist or they prepare, like the Rocky training montage. They’re training for the inevitable showdown, but it’s their biggest flex yet. It should be satisfying for the audience, but they don’t win yet.

John: And the end of 2B is the lowest moment. Is that the same in horror?

Dan: Yes, it’s the lowest moment. In horror, it can be built more around the big reveal, which is usually the hitting-bottom moment too. Something like the big reveal that the mother is the devil, or something that pulls the rug out from under them, like in The Substance, where they’re now separated, they’re two people, and they’re fighting. In horror I call it the new nightmare. But whatever you do, it needs to be another turn in direction. As we said about the end of Act One, it can’t just be another beat or another thing that happens. We need to arrive at a new dramatic landscape for Act Three. They’ve hit bottom, there are dire consequences, and those consequences usually have to do with their decision at the end of Act One.

Act Three in Horror

John: Let’s pause right there, because I love talking about the reverberation of a character’s choices. It brings us back to an original point in the film. The character made a choice, a decision, especially in horror, and in the early days of the story it comes back. The chickens come home to roost, or whatever the saying is.

Dan: That’s a good saying for that.

John: It reverberates later in your screenplay. I love that. Anytime you can set up a callback or a payoff, it’s rewarding for the audience. You’re planting seeds that grow and eventually fill out that part of the screenplay, for better or worse. Dan highlights that decisions made earlier have consequences later on.

Dan: Here are a couple of examples from Get Out. By the end of Act One, Chris knows something crazy is going on, but he decides to stay. He decides to trust his girlfriend and her family, and he’s going to stick it out. He calls his friend and says there’s some weird stuff going on, but he decides to stay. Then at the end of Act Two, the chickens come home to roost. He’s knocked out, and he wakes up in the basement, strapped to a chair. Now we find out the real turn: they’re going to put an old white man’s brain into his body, because that’s what they do in this house. It’s crazy. Before, the turn was “Oh my God, the mom just hypnotized him with the teacup.” Now it’s “Oh my God, he’s fighting for his life.” It’s almost a sci-fi twist.

John: So that’s your low point. Now, Dan, for horror specifically, what is the most important thing your map helps with in Act Three when you’re writing the screenplay?

Dan: In horror, the consequences are usually life or death. The stakes are life or death. More than ever, their life is in danger, or the life of a kid is in danger, or someone innocent is in danger.

There needs to be another shocking reveal, what I call escalation, around the 95 to 100 minute mark. Shortly after entering Act Three, we think all the craziness is over. Well, now an even bigger craziness happens. That’s probably the thing with horror. You want a few more scary revelations, scary moments.

John: The poop has to hit the fan at this point.

Dan: Yeah, and you still need to surprise us. “Oh my God, she just killed the guy’s best friend.” You still want that. Then you have what I call strategy, or method of defeat. The protagonist hatches a plan and figures out how to defeat the villain. In my regular map, that’s the point of no return, around page 100. In the fear map, it’s strategy or method of defeat. They come up with a strategy to fight the villain. In The Substance, she finally decides to kill Sue, and she puts the termination shot in Sue’s heart. But she instantly regrets it and tries to take it back, and that’s when Sue wakes up and beats her to death. Then craziness happens. She goes on live TV, blood is everywhere, and it’s all chaos.

John: That’s fantastic. You have a horror webinar, private coaching, and the story map books. For everyone at home, check out what I think is ActForScreenplays.com. Is that correct?

Dan: Yeah, A-C-T-F-O-U-R Screenplays dot com. That’s it.

The Horror Webinar

John: Specifically for the horror webinar, if you’re interested in horror, this is the one. Dan, is it a prerecorded webinar? How does it work?

Dan: It’s prerecorded, and it’s called How to Write a Hit Horror Movie. It comes with some extras. It comes with your own fear map worksheet, so you can fill out and map your own story. It also includes two sample maps, for Get Out and The Substance. The video is 80 minutes, and in it I talk about countless films, the classics like The Exorcist and The Sixth Sense, and more modern films, including indies.

What I think is special about this moment is that we’re seeing more filmmakers express themselves in horror or dark thrillers than we did before. Christopher Nolan said he wants his next film to be a horror movie.

John: That’s crazy. If he says that’s what he’s going to do, then yes, it’s going to be a horror film.

Dan: It’s amazing. Ryan Coogler, who made Black Panther and some of the biggest films of all time, could have made another Marvel movie or another commercial film, but he made Sinners, which we talk about a lot in the webinar.

John: There’s so much expression in horror. You can go into so many themes. It’s a treasure trove of a genre to explore. It was always so one-dimensional, I think, leading up to this, but there’s so much you can do now. If you’re interested in writing horror, Dan has a great webinar and great material. Go check out ActFourScreenplays.com. That’s A-C-T-F-O-U-R, actfourscreenplays.com.

Before I let you go, Dan, we’re going to play a game: which one moves on? We’ll start in the twenties and thirties. I’ll name a few films, and you pick one. That film moves on and goes all the way down to the present day if it beats everyone else. In the twenties and thirties, we have Nosferatu, Dracula, and Frankenstein. Which one’s winning?

Dan: I’ll say Nosferatu.

John: All right, Nosferatu is moving on. Now we go to the sixties: Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead. Out of those three, which one moves on?

Dan: I’ll say Rosemary’s Baby.

John: Okay, this is tough. You have Rosemary’s Baby against The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Jaws, Halloween, and Alien from the seventies. Which one moves on?

Dan: Wow.

Dan: I’d say Rosemary’s Baby, because I think that conspiracy engine has been used the most. It’s echoed enough across film history.

John: That’s a great decade, and it just beat out Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Evil Dead, The Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th from the eighties. Which one moves on? Oh my gosh.

Dan: All right, I’m going to throw a curveball and say A Nightmare on Elm Street. Great villain, a new spin on teen horror, and a lot of influential stuff.

John: Love it. A Nightmare on Elm Street versus Scream, The Blair Witch Project, and The Silence of the Lambs from the nineties. Which one moves on?

Dan: I love The Silence of the Lambs. It’s one of my favorite films of all time. I know you can see it as horror, but I don’t see it as horror. I think I’ll say The Blair Witch Project, because it absolutely blew the doors off format and budget. These guys shot it almost with video cameras.

John: For about $200,000.

John: So The Blair Witch Project moves on to the 2000s, against Saw, 28 Days Later, or Paranormal Activity. Which of those four moves on? Man.

Dan: I’ll say The Blair Witch Project. Wow, I love it. This is weird. I didn’t think it would make it this far. I love it.

John: So now The Blair Witch Project faces The Conjuring, The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, A Quiet Place, and It.

Dan: Oh my gosh. All good stuff. I love Get Out so much, and it’s also the twisted stepchild of Rosemary’s Baby, because it is the conspiracy engine. So I’ll say Get Out.

John: Get Out, okay. Now here’s the final round: Get Out versus Sinners, Backrooms, Obsession, Weapons, or Smile.

Dan: Oh my gosh. Is this really for all time?

John: This is what happened. Get Out is here now, Dan. We can’t go back. Your decisions in Act One have reverberated to where you are now. The hammer has fallen. So: Get Out versus Sinners, Backrooms, Obsession, Weapons, or Smile.

Dan: Okay. I’m going with the one that excites me most on this list, which is Weapons. I read the script before I saw the movie, and I thought it was a great script. Even if that guy hadn’t directed it, it would still have been a great movie. But the fact that he directed it, Zach Cregger, I think is very impressive.

John: If you can name two of my five favorite horror movies of all time, Dan has been so gracious. We’re going to send you either the Get Out or The Substance story map, right, Dan?

Dan: Yes, you’ll get the full breakdown.

John: Put it in the comments: two of my five favorite horror movies. If you get two of them, we’ll send you the Get Out or The Substance map, your choice, courtesy of Dan. Dan, we’ll see you soon. Appreciate it.

Dan: All right, see you too. Take care.

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