7 Screenwriting Lessons from Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance

Before he was a household name and by-word for action-packed cinema, Quentin Tarantino used the $50,000 he received for his True Romance screenplay to pay for his feature directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs. While Tony Scott’s direction makes True Romance arguably less of a ‘Tarantino film’, in many ways Tarantino’s writing is given even more of an opportunity to shine in the hands of someone else.

A short breakdown of the screenplay’s structure will help to reveal the best seven screenwriting lessons that True Romance has to offer.

Our two protagonists are Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette). Clarence is a loner who works for a Detroit comic-book store, obsesses over Elvis and spends his birthdays alone at the cinema watching Kung-Fu movies. Alabama is a call-girl, paid by Clarence’s boss to 'run into' Clarence and get him laid. She eventually admits the setup, and Clarence responds not by rejecting her, but by marrying her. So far it could almost be Pretty Woman.

Clarence finds Alabama’s ex-pimp Drexl (Gary Oldman), shoots him and his henchmen, and makes off with what he believes to be a suitcase of Alabama’s belongings. In fact, the suitcase is packed with cocaine, and Clarence has inexpertly left his driver’s license in the hand of the murdered Drexl. What ensues is a whirlwind of shoot-outs, rollercoaster drug deals, bright Hollywood sun, and Alabama and Clarence’s growing love, culminating in a three-way shoot out at the Ambassador Hotel. Battered and bloodied, the two protagonists drive their purple Cadillac off into the sunset with a suitcase of money (a contrast to Tarantino’s original ending, which saw Clarence dead).

1. Write who you know.

Before Tarantino was a writer, he worked in a video store - studying his craft there, rather than at film school. Clarence works in a comic book store, not a video store, but it is not difficult to see how Tarantino put some of himself into the geeky but likeable character. In an interview, Tarantino remarked how “for most first-time writers, the lead character is your stand-in. Clarence was me”, admitting in the DVD commentary that the character is the most autobiographical he has made. Clarence goes to the movies to live in his own fantasy world; Tarantino writes those movies. The ‘raisonneur’ (the character who embodies the author or their viewpoint) is a common trope in screenwriting and literature; utilizing a character whose strengths and flaws you know oh-so-well can help ensure that your protagonist (or antagonist) is complex, multi-faceted, and realistic. Clarence isn't the only example of Tarantino’s writing who he knew: Floyd (Brad Pitt) was based on the auteur’s previous roommates.

2. Maintain a continuous dramatic need.

The dramatic need of the two protagonists, Alabama and Clarence, never changes. Their desire is to be together and live happily by any means. While circumstances may change, there is a level of continuity which allows us to follow and relate to a need, rather than playing catch-up with their changing whims. The film is not about pimps, cocaine or violence; it's about a whirlwind romance and the consequences of mutual love and respect. A quotation at the start of the original script reads: “When you’re tired of relationships, try a romance”. The film’s name signals the building blocks of the story - the early-career Tarantino focuses on directing creators and actors towards the crux of the narrative.

3. Vary the pace.

Dialogue between Drexl and Clarence, in the lead-up to Drexl’s death, provides a masterclass in increasing the pace and tension of a film’s crucial first plot-point. Even seen on the page rather than the screen, the scene clearly utilizes the alternation of short lines and longer speeches, and increasing interruptions of the action sequence.

As the scene speeds up, the directions gain ground from the dialogue, and the struggle between speech and action parallels that between Clarence and Drexl. A page of almost pure action signifies the scene’s accelerated pace, marking Drexl’s success; when Clarence recovers the advantage, the scene slows down again, to savor the death of the film’s first antagonist. What could be a confusing whirlwind of blood and violence is coherent: when there’s faster action, Drexl is winning and when the action slows, Clarence is winning. By varying the pace, clarity is maintained in the chaos.

4. If there is an A-plot and a B-plot, there must be an A-plot-point and a B-plot-point.

There are two major plot-points in True Romance. The first occurs when Clarence murders Drexl, leaving his driver’s license and accidentally stealing half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine. The second plot-point comprises two occurrences, each a turning point in their respective plot-lines. In A-plot, the cocaine buyer, Lee Donowitz’s PA Eliot is pulled over by the police with a bag of uncut cocaine showered over his face; in the B-plot, Alabama and Virgil have a violent and bloody fight that results in the latter’s death and Alabama retaining the cocaine. The result of these two events is the shoot-out between the police, the Sicilians, and our main characters in Lee’s hotel room. With so many events occurring, the narrative could become too complicated to follow; however, Tarantino ensures that the two plot-points occur one right after the other, around page 90. We cut from Clarence and Alabama straight to Eliot driving down Mulholland Drive, and the viewer can understand that these two consecutive events occasioned a turning point in the film’s resolution.

5. Show, don’t tell (and know your characters).

There is no dialogue in the screenplay that tells us that Alabama is a particularly strong woman (with the exception, perhaps, of Virgil’s line: “Kid, you gotta lot a heart”). Instead, that notion of Alabama is gradually communicated throughout the film. Alabama’s physicality is not specified in the script, but her actions and obvious determination are conveyed to director and viewer through her actions, in the face of what she thinks to be certain death.

The Virgil-Alabama fight scene has another small moments of brilliant exposition: Alabama hits Virgil over the head with ‘an Elvis Presley whiskey decanter’; this is a visual representation of Alabama’s continuous dramatic need, since Elvis refers to Clarence helping her through her fight. Elvis is the name of their son, the final product of the protagonists’ continuous passion for one another.

6. Find dialogue inspiration from around you.

Arguably the best scene in True Romance – one that Tarantino himself has claimed to be some of his finest writing – is that between Coccotti and Clifford Worley, now dubbed ‘The Sicilian Scene’. In the Director’s Cut, Tarantino remarks how Clifford’s memorable speech about the ancestors of Sicilians was in fact something he had heard from his housemate, perhaps the same ones who inspired Floyd. This is a superb reminder that dialogue found in real life can be some of the best inspiration, or word-for-word goldmine, for screenwriters. Giving some of the best dialogue to his side-characters is also a master move from Tarantino. Each individual - Coccotti, Clifford, Marty, Drexl, all the way down to Floyd - is easily definable in their roles; exhibits realistic flaws; offers moments of supreme comedy, and vitally contributes to the action and drama.

7. Play to your strengths.

If you watch the Sicilian Scene and read the screenplay side-by-side, Walken and Hopper have barely altered the original text at all. Tarantino’s love for his writing shown in this scene shines through the dialogue. It is not altogether essential to the plot; Coccotti could have killed Clifford, found Clarence’s address on the fridge, and that would have been that. However, Clifford receives a tense and darkly humorous death scene. It rounds him out as an individual in his own right, resigned to the inevitability of the fatal outcome but finding some humor in it. Note how similar this is to Alabama’s laughter during her showdown in Virgil. Clifford’s joy in the darkness marks out Tarantino’s screenwriting style as a whole. He finds humor, color, and excitement in the darkest situations.

Bea Ralston is a recent Oxford graduate and London-based screenwriter due to attend the New York Film Academy in 2021.