In 2010, Marvel asked Joss Whedon to look at an existing Avengers script by Zak Penn and give notes. He read it once. “There was no character connection,” he’d later say. “I was like, ‘Nope. There’s nothing here.’” Instead of supplying notes, he wrote a five-page memo of his own — a rough story created around the phrase “Some Assembly Required.” Marvel liked it enough to hand him the whole movie.

That’s where the real process started: with a known ending and no idea yet on how to get there.

The skeleton arrived first

Whedon said Marvel gave him the three-act shape and a climax — the team, fighting together, at last. That was the destination. His job was to explain how six people with almost nothing in common could plausibly end up there.

Rather than starting at a literal first page, he described his thought process: Marvel had given him a basic skeleton, after which he repeatedly asked himself:

“How do I get there? How do I earn that? What moments would cause these people to be in that situation?“

And honestly, those might be three of the most useful questions you can ask when you’re writing toward a scene you need.

You know the hero betrays her commander.

How do I get there?

You know two characters kiss.

How do I earn that?

You know your mild-mannered botanist eventually attacks someone with a chair.

What moments would cause this person to be in that situation?

Excellent. Now you have the makings of a story. Dare I say it? Perhaps even a great story. Because all great stories are driven by the questions that were asked.

He disappeared for two weeks and wrote garbage on purpose

Once he had the job, Whedon spent two weeks in Australia generating what can only be described as professionally sanctioned nonsense. He wasn’t drafting the movie. He was just generating noise — imagined speeches, scenes that would never survive, dialogue written just to hear how a character sounded. He wrote more Captain-America “St. Crispin’s Day” speeches than anyone needed (none of which made it into the film). Plus long monologues for every other character, fragments of which did end up in the script.

From the outside looking in, it looked like waste. But it wasn’t. Long monologues helped him figure out what Steve sounded like when nobody interrupted him. Other exploratory scenes helped establish how characters thought, argued, joked and responded to pressure. Some pieces survived. Most didn’t.

But by his account, it “informed the characters”. Which means three pages of completely unusable dialogue might eventually produce one excellent sentence.

This is an important distinction because writers have a terrible habit of assuming that if something gets deleted, the time spent writing it was wasted.

Incorrect.

Sometimes you need to write three pages to discover the sentence hiding underneath them.

Sometimes you need to write a scene to realize the character would never behave that way. (Good. Now you know.)

Sometimes you need to let Captain America deliver 17 motivational speeches into the void. FOR RESEARCH.

He started smashing characters together

One of Whedon’s favorite parts of the process was pairing characters who wouldn’t normally share scenes and seeing what happened.

Tony and Steve.

Natasha and Loki.

Banner and Tony.

Thor and basically anybody unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.

This wasn’t just fun dialogue. It became the structural solution to the movie.

Because The Avengers had a gigantic problem: How do you turn six protagonists from separate stories into one believable team? You can’t simply put them in a room together and announce that friendship has occurred.

TEAMWORK!

✨ sparkles ✨

No.

Relationships need history. So the movie gradually creates that history through smaller combinations.

Character A interacts with Character B.

B interacts with C.

C clashes with D.

A begins understanding D.

Someone annoys Tony.

Tony annoys everybody.

Progress!

By the time everyone finally landed in the same room, most of them had already been alone together once.

The connective tissue had to be causal, never coincidental

Whedon was apparently very fierce about avoiding coincidence, misunderstandings and convenient plot mechanics.

If characters fought, the fight needed to emerge from who they were.

Not:

Someone misunderstands something
    ↓
Everyone gets angry
    ↓
SUPERHERO PUNCHING

Because that is not conflict. That is the writer standing behind the characters with two action figures going:

NOW KISS—

Sorry, wrong genre.

NOW FIGHT.

Instead, you want something closer to:

Character A believes x because of earlier experience 
	→ Character B's plan violates x 
		→ A acts accordingly 
			→ B interprets that action through belief y 
				→ concealed tensions become explicit 
					→ someone utters an unforgiveable curse
						→ OH NO

(That last step is very important.)

The conflict feels inevitable because everyone is behaving logically from their own perspective. Nobody needs to become temporarily stupid so the plot can continue. This connects beautifully to the famous because / but / therefore approach to story structure:

• Harry discovers he’s a wizard.
• Because of this, he goes to learn magic at Hogwarts.
• But Voldemort wants to kill him.
• Therefore, Harry must respond.

Each event changes conditions in a manner that makes the final event inevitable.

Compare that with:

• Harry discovers he’s a wizard.
• And then he goes to Hogwarts.
• And then Voldemort appears.
• And then there is a problem.

And then I quietly close the document and go make oatmeal because apparently I have written a grocery list.

Cause and effect gives the story propulsion. Something happens because something else happened. But something goes wrong. Therefore, somebody must act. But then, their action causes another problem. Therefore—congratulations. You have accidentally written a plot.

Then the actors arrived and ruined everything

I keeed. HOLD your eye patches.

The screenplay wasn’t locked by the time actors arrived — Whedon called it “very fluid” on set. He sat down individually with the cast, asked what they wanted to explore and what they wanted to avoid, and revised based on the answers.

Samuel L. Jackson’s famous request was beautifully simple: Don’t make Nick Fury run everywhere.

Honestly?

Correct.

Nick Fury does not run.

Nick Fury stands somewhere ominously until the plot comes to him.

Ultimately, the brainstorming never really stopped. The screenplay wasn’t a sacred artifact descended from the heavens. The two weeks in Australia had been solo generation. Now the actors became a third input, occasionally reopening scenes he thought were settled. They were one more way of enriching the story.

And then he murdered his darlings

We have now reached the horror portion of today’s program. Reader discretion is advised. If you suffer from heart problems, the next few paragraphs may not be for you. You have been forewarned.

Whedon’s first assembly cut ran three hours. He trimmed it to under two and a half — and some of what went was material he genuinely liked. He specifically said he regretted losing a quiet scene between Steve Rogers and a waitress, and a scene between Steve and Peggy Carter, calling the choice necessary but painful: “I hated cutting the Captain America stuff with the waitress.” He also cut an alternate opening that leaned harder into the film’s echoes of real-world disaster, because test audiences weren’t yet invested enough in the character to care.

This matters because Whedon has talked elsewhere about essentially eating dessert first when he writes. Write the scenes you’re excited about. The moments you can already see. Write the delicious thing. Then give yourself a chocolate, you’ve earned it. Which sounds wonderful until you realize there is a second half to this philosophy:

Sometimes you eat dessert first and then BARF THE DESSERT AND FLUSH IT DOWN THE TOILET.

(I am in no way endorsing binge eating. I prefer pooping out the chocolate as the good Lord above had intended. Poop the chocolate, folks.)

As horrifying as that is, it’s necessary.

(The pooping?)

No—but yes. I mean—yes healthy bowl movements is necessary. But right now, we’re talking about writing techniques.

Oh. How disappointing.

It’s NECCESSARY because there are two completely different questions:

Do I love this scene?

and

Does this scene belong in this story?

Unfortunately, the universe has allowed the answer to be:

Yes.

No.

At the same time. And that 2nd question gets dibs.

Jerk.

Everything that happened, in order

If we strip away the superhero punching, inspirational monologues and tragic loss of beloved Captain America scenes (and perhaps some good posterior angle shots), Whedon’s process looks something like this:

1. He consulted on an existing script and rejected it
2. Wrote a five-page memo that got him hired
3. Was given a three-act skeleton and a climax to work backward from
4. Spent two weeks on undisciplined, mostly disposable writing
   1. Discovered pairing-driven scenes through that process
5. Built causal, belief-driven connective work to link the anchors
6. Let actor conversations reopen material on set
7. Assembled a three hour first cut
8. Deliberately removed scenes he cared about, because the whole mattered more than any one part. Rude. Effective. But rude.

What Whedon’s process teaches us

Strip away all the details and Whedon’s approach comes down to five moves, done in a specific order:

1. Have a structure and destination

You don’t necessarily need to know everything. Whedon got lucky with being handed a skeleton and an ending. (Though I’m sure he could’ve thought it all up on his own, he is the creator of Buffy after all.)

If you don’t have an idea yet of how your story might end, here are some ideas:

• just think of the next scene you’re dying to write and treat that as your destination (for now)
• consider what kind of transformation you’re interested in exploration (e.g., “These two hate each other → they would die for each other.” “She trusts nobody → she voluntarily puts her life in someone else’s hands.” )
• or my personal favorite: what impossible situation sounds fun? (e.g., “I want all six characters trapped in the same room, each secretly wanting a different person dead.”)

Knowing where you’re headed gives you something to interrogate. Don’t just ask: What happens next?

Ask: What has to happen for THAT to become inevitable?

2. Write the fun stuff

Write the confrontation. The confession. The bizarre conversation you can’t stop thinking about. Write your equivalent of 32 (64?) unnecessary Captain America speeches.

Some of it will survive. Some of it will teach you something. Some of it will be absolute garbage. WE HONOR ITS SACRIFICE.

3. Put the exciting pieces in order

Now you have islands. Excellent. Do not panic about the ocean. We’ll take care of that.

But once those anchor scenes exist, place them in sequence.

4. Connect them with consequence

Build the connective tissue between them out of belief and consequence never coincidence. Think in terms of because/but/therefore, not “and then”.

Eventually the connective scenes stop feeling like hallways between the rooms you actually care about. They become the machinery making those rooms possible.

5. Be willing to destroy everything you just lovingly created

Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Whedon wrote scenes he loved. He filmed scenes he loved. Actors performed them. Editors assembled them. Music may have existed. People probably spent thousands of dollars making sure somebody’s hair looked juuuust right.

And then…

DELETE.

Because the story mattered more than the scene.

Which might actually be the thing that makes the “dessert first” method work.

You can write recklessly at the beginning because you’re willing to become ruthless at the end. When a draft is finished, cut things that doesn’t serve the whole.

Sacrifices must be made to the Story Gods

This is why I find studying writing methods so fascinating. The end result of The Avengers looks pristine, perfectly engineered.

Six heroes.

Multiple existing franchises.

Different personalities.

Different powers.

Different emotional arcs.

One villain.

One climax.

One enormous spinning camera shot where everybody finally stands together and the audience goes:

YESSSSSSSSS.

But the writing process that produced it wasn’t remotely tidy.

It involved:

• A discarded screenplay.
• A five-page alternative.
• A predetermined ending.
• Two weeks of exploratory nonsense.
• Unnecessary speeches.
• Character experiments.
• Actor conversations.
• Rewrites.
• A three-hour cut.
• And scenes Whedon loved enough to write, shoot and then remove.

Coherence came after the chaos.

Which means that: maybe writing the exciting scenes first isn’t irresponsible at all.

Maybe you can eat dessert first. You just need to eventually figure out why dessert caused Act Two. And occasionally throw dessert in the garbage.

THE STORY GODS DEMAND SACRIFICES.

That’s how you earn it.