A question of tone

Chad writes in with a question:

Recently, I got a review from a reputable website where they said that my script was "tonally muddled" because many of the characters were kids, the beginning is about the main character as a child, so it starts out with a family friendly vibe--but they have to fight (presumably CG?) giant insects and this reader thought that I was mixing family-friendly with horror and that I should tone down the violence. 

This same reviewer admitted that MIB (one of my influences) combined these elements successfully, but said the difference was that MIB used practical effects for the aliens and mine would have to be more photo-realistic CG. This brought to mind the obviously CG cockroach that explodes at the end of MIB. "Got some entrails on you there..." I don't want to be one of those writers who gets offended at a critique. This same reviewer gave me some constructive criticism on my dialogue. 

My question is, how to I write non-human "monster" characters getting blasted without pro script readers getting an R-rated image in their heads that conflicts with the family-friendly stuff in this script? Eight-Legged Freaks with David Arquette is an example of what I am talking about as well.

Okay, this is a good question.  First, I want to say that I don't think it really matters if we're talking about CG monsters or practical monsters.  It's not really accurate to say that any single approach is more "family-friendly" than the other.  So let's set that aspect of the question aside entirely.  That's a debate that's more appropriate once a director's attached and he's figuring out the best way to bring the tone of your script to the screen.

Without reading the script, I can't be too specific about what might have set this reader off about the violence.  Perhaps you wrote the violence a little too vividly, or brutally.  It's one thing to say "The giant cockroach explodes in a fountain of puss and entrails! Gross!"  It's quite another to write something like "The motherfucker gets shot to pieces.  Blood. Guts. Gore. It's all over the place, painting the walls and coating the ground with a slimy secretion. You can almost smell the death."

A sanitized version might even just say: "The blast blows up the giant cockroach. Who needs Raid when you've got a big gun?"

But there are a lot of things that can contribute to tone beyond just the words in your description.  MEN IN BLACK can play that violent moment for laughs because it's crystal-clear from everything else in the film that we're in a universe that applies a light touch to everything.  It's been ages since I've seen the film, so I don't remember too many specifics in terms of how that tone is introduced.  But think about the overly-serious deadpan dialogue give to Tommy Lee Jones, or the background gag of Will Smith being tossed around by an alien about to give birth.

For crying out loud, MEN IN BLACK is a movie with a talking dog!

Everything from plot, to characters, to dialogue in MEN IN BLACK sets the tone that this is a broad comedy. A more serious movie might have played Edgar's possession for the horror of it, but here it's handled with a comedic touch. We're allowed to laugh about how gross it is instead of focusing on what a violation it could be.

So the way you keep the monster deaths from feeling like it's an R-rated scene is to make sure that the rest of the film reinforces that.  The fact that they say it's muddled suggests to me that there are scenes where you probably get the tone right, but that any of that lighter feeling is completely absent in scenes that get violent.  As you point out, the MIB cockroach death is instantly undercut by the "you've got entrails on you" joke.

If there ARE moments that are brutal, you've gotta be willing to take the piss out of them.  GHOSTBUSTERS achieves this often through Venkman's snappy lines, using his quips to cut the tension.  Really, I can only think of two moments in the entire film that might veer towards the intense.  The first is Dana's possession, which was pretty damn scary as a kid.  She's grabbed by one dog through her chair and pulled into her bedroom where another dog waits.  The film actually lets that tension hang until Peter shows up and it's clear that Dana has been taken over.  Fortunately, a side effect of the transformation is that she can't stop feeding Peter straight lines, thus letting us know it's okay to still laugh at the film.

The other horror moment is when Louis is pursued and attacked by one of the terror dogs.  Even then, before the attack we get the sight gag of the dog hit with a coat, plus Louis's "Who brought the dog?" line.  The scene concludes not by showing us the attack, but by giving us the perspective of the people inside the restaurant where he's banging on the glass for help.  Thus, our reaction is more about the amusement over how crazy he seems to those diners who go right back to their meals without missing a beat.

Use comedy to thin out the tension and make sure your script doesn't play like a silly script and a dark script that keep alternating scenes.  I'm not saying every scene has to be pure slapstick, but give your reader transitions from the silly to the straight moments.  If you do it right, we'll accept the shifts as merely the variations in a melody rather than a mash-up of two completely different songs.

Why is Revenge kicking Ringer's ass? A lesson in tonal consistency

As the new fall season approached, there were few shows I was more eager to see than Ringer and Revenge.  Both promised to be the sort of drama that I usually sink my teeth into - more serious than something like Melrose Place and Desperate Housewives, but more escapist than The Sopranos or The Good Wife.  As an added bonus, each one starred one of my favorite "former girls of the WB."  Revenge was headlined by former Everwood ingenue Emily VanCamp, while Ringer was the comeback vehicle for onetime Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Interestingly, both series featured the lead characters passing themselves off as someone they were not.  In Revenge, Amanda Clarke returns to the Hamptons for revenge on the people who destroyed her father's life and reputation 17 years earlier.  Having assumed the name "Emily Thorne," Amanda uses her amassed fortune and insanely detailed plans to take down her father's betrayers one-by-one. 

Ringer, on the other hand, as Gellar playing identical twins.  One has married into wealth, while naturally the other one is a stripper on the run from the mob boss she was meant to testify against.  The wealthy twin Siobhan disappears soon after meeting with her sister - a sister none of her friends know about.  Thus, the poor sister, Bridget, decides to take her place, only to find that her sister's seemingly envious life is full of its own tension and drama.

Now that we're about a half-dozen or so episodes into each series, it's clear that Revenge has pulled way ahead of Ringer, not just in the ratings, but in critical buzz and in fan reaction.  Revenge has been one of the better received new shows this year, while Ringer is viewed mostly as a disappointment.  To be fair, Ringer has shown incremental improvement creatively week-to-week, even if it still clearly has a way to go.

But what is Revenge doing right that Ringer is doing wrong?

One thing that strikes me about the two shows is that Revenge employs a greater variance of tone.  I know I've spoken in the past about the value of tonal consistency, lest your script feels disjointed or unbalanced.  Still, there's something to be said for a little variety in tone.  Think of it like how a counter-harmony compliments the lead singer in a song, or how a song's bridge offers some relief from the main verses of the melody.  (And as I know very little about music, that's how far I'll take that analogy.)

Ringer is so tonally consistent that it's almost a mono-tone.  The show seems to be striving for a noir tone, but it takes itself so damn seriously that it sucks any potential fun out of the premise.  As the concept has the potential to be goofy, I can almost understand why the producers would work so hard to ground it.  The problem is that it leaves the actors with only a few notes they can play.  Gellar, Ioan Gruffudd, and Kristopher Polaha have all shown their range on past projects, and there's ample evidence that they've got a gift for comic timing.  Unfortunately, there's no chance for any of them to have any fun with the morose characters and the situations they find themselves in.

Contrast that with Revenge.  Though Emily's mission of vengeance provides the show with its spine, there's been a bit of levity in pretty much every episode.  Gabriel Mann's Nolan character is an effective sidekick for Emily, being the only one who knows who she is.  He's eager to help out, but at least at first, she resents his butting in.  His snide, sarcastic attitude tends to steal nearly every scene he's in and he's often used to puncture the pretension of some of the other characters.

It doesn't stop there.  Both Revenge and Ringer feature storylines focused on teen characters.  In Ringer, the story of Siobhan's step-daughter so far has ended up being an excuse for greater melodrama.  She's been thrown out of her prep school over drug use and has some trouble fitting in at public school.  Tonally, it's no relief from the melodrama of Bridget's life.

In contrast, Revenge treats its two teenage characters - Charlotte (Krista B. Allen) and Declan (Conor Paolo) - as the two innocents in the next of vipers that is the Hamptons.  She's the rich girl and he's the working class guy from the wrong side of the tracks.  While that's hardly a dynamic dripping with originality, the two actors manage to make the budding romance a bit cute and endearing.  It works because it doesn't feel like everything else in the show - and it rarely takes up a disproportionate part of the episode.

The other difference in tone is that Revenge is often all about how Emily gets the upper hand and takes someone down.  There's a vicarious thrill for the audience in seeing someone get what's coming to them.  Ringer never has that release.  Bridget never gets to win - nothing EVER seems to go right for her.  Week after week, the show seems to be an exercise in making Bridget miserable.

From a dramatic standpoint it makes sense to continually challenge your character.  There's that old saw about the way to write good drama is "Act One - get your character stuck up in a tree.  Act Two - Throw rocks at them."  If the rocks seem to be unrelenting, there's the risk that the audience will become numb to the blows.  Apathy is the real enemy of drama.  Revenge makes excellent use of shifts in momentum by letting Emily win, and then throwing her a few setbacks now and then.

Certainly these aren't the only reasons for the gulf in quality between the two shows.  I don't think it's possible to underestimate the importance of tone, though.