Zach Cregger wrote Weapons. He also directed it, produced it, and composed the soundtrack. This blog is about writing, so let’s stay with that. In a recent interview with Perri Nemiroff at Fandango, he described how the story emerged almost by accident:
Perri asks Zach how he got the idea for the story:
I didn’t have an idea for the movie when I started writing
— Zach Cregger
I was like, “Okay, little girl telling a story— takes place at a school. Kids go to school. Follow a teacher. Class is empty. Why? I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
And then two sentences later – because the kids all ran out the night before.
Okay, that’s a hook I like. So, I knew… I have a good question. So then, I probably wrote 50 pages before I even knew what the answer was going to be, honestly.
So, you know, I got the teacher, I got the angry dad, and they’re kind of doing their cat and mouse sort of a thing, and then… I got this cop, and… it wasn’t until about the midpoint where I had… what it was.
And that was a really good moment for me because I was like, “This might not ever be a thing. I might not have anything here.”
You know, if I don’t have a good answer, there’s no reason to watch this movie.
That’s pantsing in its purest form — starting with a question and running fifty pages before you even know if there’s an answer. Discovery writing at its most precarious: equal parts exhilaration and existential dread.
Personally, I lean hybrid. Sometimes I pants a draft until it coughs up a structure; other times I start with scaffolding and let the innards misbehave. But the dead ends always loom. I’ve euthanised countless ideas that failed to evolve, rather than stitching them together with some lazy deus ex contrivance. (Television thrives on that sort of duct-taped plotting, which is precisely why I don’t bother with it.)
Anyway, I have not seen this movie. I am not a fan of horror, but every now and then I sample what’s out there. I might check this out to see how well it delivers.
Ridley Park 