Dexter: How to Write Action In A Screenplay

Dexter: How to Write Action Screenplay Season 9 of Dexter, New Blood, is premiering soon, so I think it’s about time we talked about Dexter on this podcast.  We’ll explore not only the engine of the Dexter series, but also do a deep script analysis of a very specific scene of Dexter to teach you how to create unforgettable images when writing action in a screenplay. I have to admit, when Dexter first came out, I was resistant to watching it. I thought, A serial killer who only kills bad people? Talk about taking the easy way out! Fortunately, I made the mistake of letting that perspective slip to my fiancé, who promptly sat me down and forced me to watch every single season. It turns out I was completely wrong.  This is a show that takes what could be a glossed over, super-palatable Hollywood take on serial killing, and turns it into a really deep exploration of something much more interesting: not what it means to be a serial killer, but what it means to be a human being.  It takes a deeply disconnected character, who desperately wants to feel human connection despite being biologically unable to do so, and takes him on a journey where, season after season, he becomes a little bit more human.  Along the way, Dexter shows how we all become disconnected as people and as writers. It shows how we all keep secrets that cut us off from other human beings, how we all hide ourselves from the people we love most, and how we can all be a little sociopathic at times. But Dexter also shows us how we all strive to feel connected. It shows both the beauty and the cost of longing for, and coming closer to, and missing out on opportunities for vulnerability and empathy. How this will play out in the new ninth season of Dexter: New Blood remains to be seen. But for the first three seasons, Dexter slices its way through those treacherous waters with a simple but really elegant series engine. And though Dexter may stumble a bit in its middle seasons, it finds its way back to what makes it great in a way that is valuable for anybody who wants to really understand how to write for television. Usually, when we're looking at a television series on this podcast, we talk about big complicated things like engine and structure and how they're put together. And we’re going to cover these concepts in Dexter today as well.   But then we're going to get really deep by looking at Dexter from a different angle, analyzing the way one very specific scene in Dexter was put together and what you can learn from it when it comes to writing action in a screenplay.  Through some deep script analysis of Dexter, you’ll  learn not only how to write better action in your screenplay, but also find that idiosyncratic, personal voice in your writing.    It’s a complicated thing to find your voice in screenwriting, especially when you're writing a scene in a familiar genre that we've seen a million times before, when you're writing within parameters that maybe seem a little too familiar. We’re going to dive deep into one very specific scene, a scene that in other hands could have been extremely boring. It's the kind of scene that we've seen many times before not only in Dexter, but in any show in the cop genre: The scene where the latest murder victim is found.  The scene we're going to look at is at the very beginning of the Season 3 finale, Episode 12: “Do You Take Dexter Morgan.” To catch you up on what’s happening up to this point in Dexter I’m going to talk a little bit about the engine of the Dexter series. Dexter is a serial killer. The engine of the show is that all Dexter wants is somebody who understands him because for his entire life he has had to keep a terrible secret: He is a sociopath who doesn't feel anything and carries a “dark passenger” th...