By Tom Vaughan in Scene Work — Jan 20, 2026

How to have fun with the moment.

Don't skip past the moment. Stop. Explore. Have fun with it.

Few know how to create more fun out of a moment than Brad Bird.

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There was a running joke in my old screenwriting class of how often I would give the note, "Just have fun with it."

I gave it all the time (And I still do!)

It means you've created a scene or moment, whether deliberately or accidentally, and you should exploit it.

Don't skip past it. Stop. Explore. Create tension, create laughs, create romance. Create emotion.

But have fun with that moment.

Great screenwriting is made of these moments because these moments create great scenes.

At its simplest level, that's all great screenwriting is:

Great characters.
Great scenes.
The order in which we put them.

Of course, how we execute all of this will get more complicated, but it always comes down to those three things.

Great scenes are not created by information.

They are created by the emotional reaction to information. Both the character's reaction and the audience's reaction.

I would hear something similar from my improv teachers, "Make a meal of it!" or "Follow the fun."

So, what is your fun?

I define the fun in Concept is King.

Concept + Genre + Tone = The Fun.

But let's keep it simple here. Let's keep fun more generic.

What emotion does your story want to generate?

Is it comedy? Tension? Romance? Thrills? Horror?

Your job is to find the moments that offer that, or generate moments that do.

Don't hurry past the true currency of your story to push plot or share information. No one is there for the plot.

We are there to feel something.

A student example.

Last fall at UH, we formed a writers' room to generate short screenplays to shoot in the Spring. We came up with three outlines, and for reasons too complicated to get into, we ended up giving one outline to a playwriting student who wasn't in the writer's room!

She wrote a draft of the screenplay from an outline she had nothing to do with, which was a fun challenge in itself.

I want to take you through the development of a scene as I gave her notes to have "more fun with it."

The story.

Very simple. A college-age woman suspects something terrible happened at her house between her own boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend. Like violence, terrible.

She wasn't there for it; she didn't see it; she actually doesn't know if anything happened at all, but she suspects it did. Finally, she wants to make sure the girl (Darcy) is okay just to put her mind at ease.

The original outline reads like this:

Amy looks up Darcy's parents' number. Calls them. It turns out that Darcy has been missing for two days now. She went out the other night and never came home.

That's it! That's all the outline says.

With her permission, I am going to share what the first draft of the screenplay looked like:

Now, again, this is someone who has never written a screenplay before and was given no more information than you were from the original outline.

So, she's doing great.

But this is just an event happening. It's information. It's just data. It doesn't move us.

Our job, as storytellers, is to find the fun.

What needs to happen in the scene?

The point of the scene is that Amy discovers Darcy is missing. That is what needs to happen. This is what is true at the end of the scene that was not true at the beginning.

Darcy has been missing for days.

But again, we are not here for information. We are here for emotion.

What emotion are we trying to evoke?

This is a thriller. We want grueling, uncomfortable tension. That's the fun.

Our job is to know what the audience hopes will happen and pin it up against what it fears will happen.

This is the emotion we want to generate.

Does this structure generate it?

Right now, no. We're not getting the most from hearing the news, trying to get the news, or what happens after she hears the news.

Our goal should be to maximize the pain of discovering the girl is missing, and we want to draw that pain out as much as possible to exploit the tension before and after.

Giving us matter-of-fact data rarely does that.

Don't forget POV.

We discussed the importance of POV and how it affects our emotions just a few weeks ago.

This is a somewhat mixed POV. We picture a close-up of her face to empathize with her, but we're not sharing her POV because she hears information we don't.

Now, we have all seen very effective scenes where someone gets news on the phone. We can't hear what's being said, but we can tell what it is by their reaction.

This can work, no doubt.

And we do have the option to really draw out the tension until we get the answer.

Two things I don't love about this:

In this case, the tension is binary. Either yes or no. The girl is okay, or she isn't. But the reality is that there are many possibilities in between!
We are actually creating distance between us and Amy. We are waiting to see how she reacts before we know the answer. That's not wrong, it's more of a question of whether that's how we want to do it. I'd argue there's a more fun way to exploit this.

The character's disposition.

She's confident! She has a plan, and she says a lot. Again, information. It's a lot of talking that doesn't generate an emotional response.

Because of the magic of POV, we often feel the same way a character does, and we have to decide whether that disposition helps us generate the emotion we want.

Obviously, reversals can be fun. A character comes in confident, then gets hit with something that reverses that.

But is that what this scene is? No.

This is not a confident moment for the character. It's the opposite. She is fearing and hoping just as we are, and we should exploit that.

My notes to her:

Let's embrace all of her POV and hear the girl's mother on the other end of the phone.
Have Amy less prepared for the conversation.
Make the mother less cooperative with the plot.
Draw out the tension and… have fun with it.

The second draft came in.

Here is the entire page:

This goes on for another half page!

As you can see, this is now a very different scene!

I still have notes; there's plenty of meat left on this bone. But now we have a scene.

David is going to arrive home and interrupt. Amy is going to hang up, deny she is doing what she is doing, and then Darcy's mother will call back.

We then jump immediately into a tension-filled scene with her and David.

Even when this scene is finally finished, the actors and director will find new moments as well.

All because we saw an opportunity for emotion, and we didn't zip by it.

Doesn't this add to the page count?

Yes, but scenes like these are why we are here!

You must know your job. And your job is an emotionally satisfying story, and this means emotionally satisfying moments.

A shorter page count is a tactic. It is not the goal. It's an important tactic when writing on spec, but never at the expense of a less emotionally engaging screenplay.

Not ever.

Don't be afraid to add length if it enhances the emotional experience. Look for other places to cut instead.

Know your fun.

I can't express to you how important this is. Whether it's a character drama about relationships or intimacy, whether the tension is comedic, romantic, or suspenseful, know what emotion is your story's currency.

This is what the audience wants to experience. This is why they're there.

And yes, there is usually a mix, but know what to expand and what to avoid.

Always know why a scene is compelling to watch.

What needs to happen in a scene is not the same as why a scene is fun to watch.

What is the big idea behind the action? What is the tension, conflict, and emotion?
If it's not there immediately, find it. If you can't find it, generate it.
Once you have it, do you maximize its potential? (And yes, of course, you can draw it out for too long.)

As always, follow the fun.

It's not about the plot.

Early in our writing, we tend to think in terms of plot. But more plot will not help you. No one really cares about the plot.

We think we do because of the language we use, but what we really care about is the emotional reaction to the plot.

We care about the great scenes that the plot generates.

So, if you're ever tempted to add more plot…

Pause. Take a breath. Ask yourself if you've fully explored the plot you already have. Are you leaving moments on the table?

Remember, the audience is never asking for more plot.

They want more emotion.

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