How to Write an Action-Thriller Screenplay That Escalates

It’s hard to pigeonhole myself as an Action-Thriller Screenwriter, but if I look at the stories I write that resonate most with my readers, it’s this genre. For most of my career, I’ve worked on comedy and respect that craft; however, the majority of my peers and friends who have read my writing agree that although my comedy is good, my drama is great. So, what is one to do?

A couple of years ago, I gave my friend Kevin Lewandowski a script, Ripple. He said he sat down, opened his beer, and started reading. When he finished, he said he forgot to even drink the beer. That’s when I knew I had something truly great. To this day, that’s the best compliment I’ve ever been given and when I realized, it’s time to just pick my niche. That’s what landed you here, to read this long article, from someone you likely don’t know. But, I promise, it will be informative!

What is an Action-Thriller Screenplay?

Most writers would agree that writing falls into two genres: comedy and drama. As my friend and Showrunner, Michael Jamin, would say, “We’re all just writing dramas. Comedies are just dramas with jokes.” Within that larger bifurcation of screenplays, we can see even more granularity (think rom-com, dramedy, chick-flick, etc.). In the drama world, Action is its own subset of drama, and within that, a Thriller is an even more specific type of Action film.

My fondest memories of my father was sitting with him watching his favorite movies: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Terminator, Rambo, and more. My dad had a broad taste for cinema, but the ones that stood out to me were the action films. My favorite was Rambo III for some reason.

So, what is an action-thriller? Action is what happens; the thrill is the pressure created by what could happen next. It’s the palpable discomfort or excitement forcing you to turn the page or see what happens next. It’s an action film that has promised the audience a payoff, and we’re bringing them along on an unforgettable ride that keeps them waiting on the edge of their seats until we get there. It has to pay off, obviously, but it’s also important that the reader/audience understands the promise you’re making to them early.

Your Premise Must Escalate

A premise is the building block of your story. It’s what establishes context for the characters, the world, and your next steps. Without a good premise, your story will crumble, and you’ll be left facing the blank page, wondering why you even started. We’ve all been there: it’s not a fun place to go.

In an Action-thriller, you must start with a premise that escalates. What does that mean? It means that your story has a built-in source of worsening problems, not merely a cool hero, villain, or situation. Every choice your hero makes must heighten the stakes.

One important note: there’s a massive misunderstanding amongst new writers about the difference between plot and story. Brandon Sanderson, one of my favorite Science-Fiction Fantasy writers call is Plot (big p plot) and plot (little p plot).

• Big Plot is the main story or overarching conflict, which you can summarize in one or two sentences.
• Little plot is the chapter-by-chapter events, small obstacles, and immediate problems that keep the reader turning pages.

Big plot is story. Little plot is plot. Michael Jamin would say that plot is what your screenplay is about and story is what it is really about.

You must have a great story to tell. That’s your premise. If you don’t have a good story, no one will care to watch it. It’s a waste of time.

Thrillers live or die on their plot. If you have a boring plot, no one will be thrilled.

Build a Protagonist with a Problem Action Cannot Solve

A protagonist, your hero, is the person we are following on this journey. We’re introduced to them in the world they already inhabit. Next, something happens that disrupts that world and forces them to identify two different objectives: what they want and what they need.

This was one of the most important lessons I learned in my screenwriting study. This really clicked for me about 12 years ago, and when it did, my stories all started to click. In an action-thriller, we’re following our hero as they pursue something. Maybe it’s revenge, a bad guy, a daring rescue, or some pending doom.

Through most of the screenplay, they’re chasing what they want at the cost of what they need. The action-thriller scripts that resonate with me are always character-based, not event-based. Even in something as big as the rebooted Star Trek franchise, it’s about Kirk sacrificing what he wants for what he needs, and often at a tremendous cost.

Very often, the thing they’re best at is the thing causing conflict, making things worse, or forcing them to suffer. That type of hero is someone I want to watch as they fight their way toward growth, and it’s the character arc your audience wants to see.

You Need An Antagonist with Moral Logic

In many of my first screenplays, the feedback was universal: you antagonist, the bad guy, is evil. That’s not real. Now, of course there are truly evil people in this world. We know that to be a fact, but that doesn’t mean every antagonist in every action-thriller needs to be evil incarnate.

I’m a religious person. Even in the archetype of Satan himself, we see a child of God who had a desire. God presented a plan, and Christ said, “Send me and let the glory be thine.” Satan said, “Send me and give me the glory.” Because God chose Christ, Satan rebelled and was cast out of heaven.

What most religious people (or anyone familiar with a Christian culture) would presume to be the most evil being in the universe had a want and a desire. His plan was frustrated, so now he’s trying to frustrate God’s plan. It’s not evil for evil’s sake; he’s mad, he’s hurt, he’s angry, and he’s petty.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” When I was a missionary for my church, my Mission President told me that. That really stuck with me. Your bad guy is just someone trying to do good. They may be misguided, but their lived experience tells them this is the best course of action. Your antagonist needs moral logic. They can’t just be a bad guy doing bad. We need to look at Thanos and say, “Yeah, I get why he wants to kill half the people in existence. He has a righteous crusade.”

Stakes, Urgency, and Dwindling Options

In an action-thriller the stakes matter. This is where plot helps drive the story. Every decision our hero makes, every cause and effect, every new reveal must raise the stakes. It’s a perpetual escalation that makes is uncomfortable, hopefuly, dreadful and so on. If we force our hero into a situation where they must make a decision and the decision forces them into a tighter spot, presents them with no problems, or escalated the dramatic tension, your audience will scoot closer and closer to the edge of their seat in anticipation.

Another key thing to consider is urgency. Very often a ticking clock helps drive anticipation, dread, and a healthy dose of anxiety. If we know there’s a looming deadline, we sweat for our audience. If our hero is working to solve the big stake sin our plot, and they keep ending up further and further away from their goal, we start to stress for them. That’s our goal.

In the great documentary Showrunners: The Art of Running a Show, one of the writers said, ” You have to force your character to make choices until the audience says, ‘I’d be damned if I wouldn’t do the same thing in that situation.'” That’s expert screenwriting craftsmanship, and every action-thriller screenwriter must master that skill set.

The Escalation Ladder

Imagine you’re on the side of a cliff. There’s a flash flood below you, and the only thing saving you is a ladder bolted to the wall. You have no choice but to keep climbing. Now, imagine with every step you take you feel the ladder shaking loose from the bolts at the top of the wall. What do you do?

You can’t go down, and there’s nowhere to go but up, so you start climbing faster; however, because you’re moving faster, you can feel the ladder coming loose faster, so you slow down. But the water is still rising faster than you’re climbing. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, so you just have to keep moving up and up and up with a little prayer in your heart that everything’s going to work out.

An escalation ladder is the plot engine in your story that squeezes your hero like a pressure cooker. I hate torturing my characters, but that is the job. You must force them into increasingly difficult situations. The stakes need to change and escalate. The hero must lose friends, allies, skills, health, time, or any other number of assets they’re using to win. When you do this, your character suffers, and guess what: your story gets better.

Think of Your Act Two as a Sequence

I’ve read dozens of books, have a bachelor’s degree in screenwriting, and worked in professional writers’ rooms in Hollywood. We all talk about stories in three act structure, even if you have five acts in a TV drama, we still break the stories like three acts. For most writers, figuring out what the heck happens in Act Two is one of the most difficult things we can do.

When I first started writing screenplays, I’d get to Act Two and wonder what even happens. I understood Act One and Act Three, but what does my character do when they’ve ‘crossed the threshold’ or ‘entered the new world’? Understanding story structure is a must for you as a screenwriter. That’s the job. If you don’t, you will flounder and suffer.

Many screenwriting books will teach you that the middle of Act Two is where we raise the stakes. Well, how do we do that in an action-thriller screenplay? Sequences. A sequence is a grouping of scenes that tie together. Sequences can force your hero to make a choice, follow them through that choice, see a reversal, their response to that reversal, and the inevitable tightening of the noose around their neck. Sequences help us stay on track with our plot and guide us through the story.

Plant and Payoff: How to Make Your Story Feel Inevitable

Plant and payoff are vital to storytelling. A plant is something that happens earlier in the script that pays off later in the script. I’m not a big horror fan, but back when I just graduated from high school, my friends wanted to watch the movie Saw. I wasn’t that excited because I’m a big baby and don’t like to be scared. Fast forward a hundred or so minutes later and I was blown away. Not because I cared for the content of the film; no, it was the storytelling. James Wan and Leigh Whannell broke my brain.

The fact that Jigsaw, the evil architect of this whole scheme, was in the room with our hero the entire time shook me. The fact that the opening shot shows the key to the lock around his ankle was accidentally flushed down the drain at the beginning is devastating. Say what you will about the franchise as a whole, but man… they know who to raise the stakes, build pressure, and plant and pay off like pros. I’m still blown away by their masterful storytelling to this day.

Plant and payoff are required, but when you can plant something in a way that, when it pays off, we are kicking ourselves for not remembering it, you will make the audience love you. When you plant something in a way that your audience can guess it’s coming, they feel smart. You win either way.

Design Sets that Challenge Our Hero

In an online writing course I was taking, I joined a conference call with a Hollywood literary agent. It was an interview about what they look for in a screenplay when signing writers. I’ll never forget the agent saying, “Every good script has three unique set pieces.” I thought about that a lot over the next few weeks. In some screenplays I’d done that intuitively. In others, I missed the mark.

My opinion is that very often, screenwriting gurus and industry people (who are not actually professional writers) speak in rules and exacts. I’ve found in every professional aspect of my life that rules and exacts are for beginners, and the more you master your craft, the more freedom you get to explore. The note from that agent isn’t wrong, but I don’t know that there’s anything magic about the number three. In multi-cam sitcoms, they typically have three main sets, but that’s a function of space limitations. I think the agent is saying your screenplay needs to place us in unique spaces or set pieces.

These spaces inform the reader of the character, the world, the stakes, the tension, etc. In film school, we learn about mise-en-scène, or everything in the scene. Set decoration, props, and art- they all focus their craft on building your world, and everything in that scene is designed to inform what is happening in the story. So, you might have two, you might have four (budget considerations aside), but the point is this world should be unique to your story and your characters. In an action-thriller, they should raise the stakes, make us sweat, or force your hero into tougher and tougher situations and thus tougher and tougher decisions.

Write Action That Read Fast On The Page

I’ve heard many Hollywood writers comment, “No one will read your scene descriptions!” I’ve always found that upsetting. For me, a strong action-thriller can work with very little dialogue. The movie Drive with Ryan Gosling comes to mind. I saw that movie seven times in the theater and have watched it about a dozen more. In film school, I studied that screenplay meticulously. What Hossein Amini wrote is an intense action film where our hero barely speaks.

All we do is read the scene descriptions. The descriptions are quick. They’re spaced. It bleeds the intensity Hossein sets up in the opening scene. There’s a game happening in the background. Driver sets his watch. We hold our breath. It’s masterful work and I encourage anyone looking to master the action-thriller screenplay to read it for themselves.

My marketing background informs my writing style. Headlines do one job: get the reader to read the next thing. Website visitors rarely read all of the text, they skim the page. Bullet points, short paragraphs, judicious use of negative space, and a focus on benefits all help a user read the words you want them to, find the answers they’re looking for, and take the action you want them to take.

We may not have bullets, captions, or headlines in our screenplays, but we can keep our scene descriptions tight (think less than three lines). Our sentences can be short and punchy. Each sentence can read like a shot in the film. We can use text styling like full caps and bolded words with precision. You are a craftsman. It is your job to craft a screenplay that gets the reader to take the action you want them to take: gasp, shout, sweat, worry, breathe out in relief, etc.

Be Brave: Stick The Landing

It takes about two hours to read a feature screenplay from front to back, if it’s good. If it’s bad, you might get three pages before they stop reading. If you’re asking someone to invest a few hours away from their friends, family, work, or life to read your screenplay, you have to nail the ending.

I firmly believe that the best films resolve when our hero makes a brave choice. That doesn’t mean diving off the cliff to save the pomchi; very often it means our hero sets aside what they want for what they need. They make the hard choice. They set aside their childish ways and make the big boy (or girl) decisions.

Brave is the abused woman who stands up to her abusive partner. Brave is the kid, obsessed with winning, who tells the ref he stepped out of bounds, giving up the game-winning shot to the disappointment of his coach and family. Brave is our hero making a tough choice that forces them to do the thing they never wanted to do, but the thing they needed to do. Sometimes, being brave is just getting back up again no matter how many times you’ve been kicked down.

Why Do We Watch Action-Thrillers?

For me, action-thrillers provide more than just fast cuts and action. They allow us to imagine ourselves in a world where we are driven by something beyond ourselves. They are opportunities for us to live in a way where good does triumph over evil (not the evil evil, but the right thing works out). Action-thriller screenplays work because we go to the movies to feel something. Many of us are fedup with our jobs, our lives, and need an escape. Action-thrillers allow us to feel danger without actually having to experience it.

We watch action-thrillers because we can leave our mundane lives and experience what it would be like to do fantastical things in fantastical settings where every choice comes with consequences and we can watch the ultimate bravery: triumph of the human will.

If you’re looking to hire an action-thriller screenwriter, contact me. If you’re looking to learn how to write an action-thriller for yourself, check out the other articles in this series below. Now, what thriller are you going to watch this weekend?