Voice gets discussed frequently in screenwriting circles. Tough to define, hard to cultivate, it can make the difference in a writer’s success. Related to but not identical with your brand, your voice is the unique way you express yourself on the page.
your voice can take many forms. But it most often gets noticed when showy and attention stealing – the Shane Blacks and Brian Duffields of the screenwriting world. And in honor of an impending Halloween I wanted to highlight one of my favorite instances of voice, from Duffield’s The Babysitter.
The Script
Appearing on the 2014 Black List and eventually released on Netflix in 2017, The Babysitter takes the Home Alone format and marries it to a grisly tale of teens selling their souls to the devil. And the core of what makes this work is Duffield’s voice – fun, playful, and over the top. This permeates the characters, the plotting, and even the action lines in the script. A script, by the way, which you can read in the Screenwriters Network Script Hub.
One moment in particular felt revelatory for me when I read it. At the break to Act 2, our intrepid kid hero sneaks downstairs after bedtime to find out what his babysitter does when he’s asleep. And instead of discovering her making out with a boyfriend, he ends up witnessing a human sacrifice.
The moment is meant to land hard, a big surprise for both the character and the audience. Duffield knows he wants to take a beat there, slow things down a moment. A lot of tools in the writer’s toolbox can achieve that, but Duffield went big. Because that’s his voice, and that’s the kind of story he’s telling. And as a result, I still think about that moment in that script six years later.
At the bottom of the page, we see this babysitter, the platonic ideal of the cool teen girl, stab a dude in the head. And on the next page we get —
That’s it. That’s the page. Cole’s reaction. Our reaction. The downbeat the movie should take to make it land. All rolled up into one big, attention-grabbing, stylish choice.
The Execution
I can already hear the complaints that it’s not standard formatting, or that Duffield is a pro so he can get away with that stuff. But that critique is backwards – Duffield is a pro because he writes like that, not the other way around. He understands story and audience experience and when to break out of convention in order to support the script.
If Duffield had dropped this on page 1, it would seem a little less supported and haphazard. But by waiting 30 pages and deploying this move at a particularly heightened moment, he shows how he’s masterfully playing the tune we’re all dancing to.
Now this is just one example in one script of how voice can pop and make you memorable. This might not be the right fit for you, and that’s okay. The important thing is to start thinking about how you express yourself on the page and if you’re looking for every opportunity to make your script unique while also still supporting the story.