GET AN AGENT or GO VIRAL!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make it as a screenwriter today.

It’s so different than it was 20 years ago. It’s different than it was 10 years ago! You talk to a dozen different dealmakers in Hollywood and ask them how they got their last streaming movie greenlit, you’ll get a dozen different answers. There’s so much information that’s shrouded in mystery these days that it can seem daunting to a screenwriter.

Heck, it’s daunting to EVERYONE trying to get a job in Hollywood these days. Are visual effects artists even going to exist in five years? Everything is up in the air.

That confusion extends to the people in charge as well. I’ve learned that almost every successful person in Hollywood is successful at ONE SPECIFIC THING. There’s the person who’s successful at making low-budget horror movies. There’s the person who’s successful at getting dramedy TV shows on air. There’s the person who’s successful at limited series.

But if you ask any of those people how to do anything else, like get an action movie made? They look at you sideways.

Which is frustrating because you assume success = expertise. But it turns out everybody’s expertise is so narrow, the original equation no longer applies. Honestly, if you asked James Cameron how to get a TV show on air, I don’t think he’d know the answer. Sure, he’d be able to call a friend. But *he* wouldn’t know because he’s never had to do it.

So, I thought, “Who are the people most knowledgeable about getting feature film deals done?” That answer is agents. And to a slightly lesser degree, managers. It is their job to understand how to navigate this Gen Z iteration of Hollywoodland. So they truly have become the gatekeepers to the new system, a system that seems to have 10,000 entry points, yet not a single one visible.

So, if you’re trying to break in as a screenwriter in 2025, one of your best options is to secure an agent (or manager). Which begs the question, how do you do that?

The answer is simple: You must query agents and managers. Or query agents and managers’ assistants. The best way to do this is to give your script to everyone you know who’s even tangentially involved in Hollywood and, if they like your script, ask them if they know any agents or anyone who might know an agent, and if they can send it to them.

If you don’t know anyone – and I know a lot of you don’t – you need to get that 1 month subscription to IMDB Pro and you need to get the e-mails of every single agent and manager in the system. If you have time, you want to narrow those contacts down by the types of writers they represent. You can do this by looking at movies similar to your script, clicking the writer on IMDB, and then clicking the writer’s agent and/or manager.

You then need to come up with a good e-mail query and query these agents. I can help you with this. I do both logline and query consultations. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. The point here is that e-mail queries are important. I receive more of them than probably anyone in town and I can dismiss 90% of them right off the bat due to sloppiness, bad grammar, being too long, etc. If you don’t have a good query, nothing else you’ve read in this post will matter.

I know this stuff isn’t fun, guys. But this is one of the necessary tests in Hollywood that eliminates people who aren’t serious. If you aren’t willing to do everything at your disposal to find success, then do you deserve success? I would argue you don’t.

This is the stuff writers like TJ Newman did – getting rejected query after query after query – until she finally found someone who believed in her manuscript. You’ll never feel more lost than when you’re in the middle of this process. But if you’ve done the work on the writing end and written something good, this part of the process will eventually pay off.

As for what agents respond to, it comes down to two things. Either MARKETABILITY or VOICE. Literary agents don’t make a ton of money. So they’re looking for writers WHO CAN MAKE THEM MONEY. Therefore, you want to write a marketable script. That means keeping tabs on what’s selling (or what’s always sold) and writing that kind of script. If you can find a fresh way into the guy-with-a-gun genre, for example, you’ll have a lot of agents eager to read your screenplay.

The other option is to have a unique voice. There are a lot of agents out there who subscribe to the theory that if you give them a good writer, it’ll be easy to find jobs for them. By “voice” I mean you have your own unique style, so much so that, when someone reads your script, they know it’s you without having to check. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Taika Waititi, Brian Duffield, John Hughes, etc.

The tricky thing about a “voice” script is that, technically, the concept doesn’t have to be marketable. You’re not promoting your script. You’re promoting your writing ability. However, since you’ll still have to query agents to get them to request the script, you probably still want to pick a premise that has some pop to it.  Think more along the lines of “Blink Twice,” “Civil War,” and “The Substance,” rather than, “The Iron Claw,” “Thelma,” and “Conclave.”

Now, let’s say that you’ve tried to query people and you’re not very good at it. Or you’ve been down that query road enough times to feel like it never works for you. If you don’t believe that’s your avenue forward, then the only other option for you in 2025 is to go viral with your screenplay.

I use the term “viral” loosely. Cause I’m not asking you to post your script on Instagram and get 20 million likes. What I mean is that you use the power of the internet and screenwriting competitions to build as much buzz around your script as possible.

Try to get your script reviewed on this site. Pay for a couple of reviews on The Black List site. If you get two 8’s, you’ll get featured. Do this new “Gauntlet” challenge I keep hearing about. And if you do have social media, promote your script, promote your logline, and ask people if they want to read it. Tell them you’ll read their script in return.

What you’re trying to do is get as many eyes on your script as possible. The more people who see your script, the better chance it has at being given to someone who can change your life.

You also want to enter as many of the major screenplay contests as you can afford. If it’s a big contest and you finish in the finals (top 5 or top 10), your chances of getting representation off your script skyrocket. For the smaller contests, you’ll have to win them to get any capital with agents. But it’s still worth it because you’re trying to create some buzz around your screenplay. You’re trying to be that script that is known amongst a relevant group of people.

If you do those three things – get featured online somewhere, promote your work through social media, enter a lot of contests – you have a chance of going “script viral.” And if you have any doubts that this can work, ask Elad Ziv (Court 17) or David L. Williams (Clementine), or our own Joseph Fattal (Bedford). Elad won a small contest, which got him his manager, which helped him get on the Black List. David got two 8’s on the Black List, turning Clementine into a highly desired screenplay around town. Joseph made several strong contacts off of Bedford.  Oh, and just today the writer of The Best and the Brightest, Michael Wightman, e-mailed to let me know that he’s teamed up with a producer to produce his script. So, it can happen.

While every successful writer has a different “break in” story, the “break in” story I hear the most is that a writer kept sending his scripts out until someone finally said yes. You need lots of eyes on your screenplay. Even good writers will not get that automatic yes by sending their script out to 5 people. You have to get a lot of people reading your script to get that yes.

Some of you may be wondering about the official Black List.  Should getting on that list be a strategy?  Honestly, I look at the Black List like I do a major screenwriting competition these days.  If you make the Top 5, that’s worth something.  But the quality of Black List scripts has plummeted so severely in the last five years that most people in town just make fun of it.  So I still think it’s an avenue but getting 10 votes isn’t going to cut it anymore.  You gotta be one of the top five vote-getters.

If all else fails, BE ACTIVE.  You should always be working on a screenplay WHILE promoting another screenplay.  It’s impossible to score unless you take a shot.  And I want you taking a lot of shots!  :)

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: A grieving woman goes to an Icelandic “end of life” resort to kill herself while also looking into the surprise suicide of her girlfriend, who killed herself here several months prior.
About: This script finished with 11 votes on last year’s Black List. Laura Stoltz worked as an associate producer on a project called Shang-Gri La Suite, which was written by a couple of writers I really like, Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe. She has since gone on to associate produce Ant-Man and the Wasp and co-produce Quantumania.
Writer: Laura Stoltz
Details: 114 pages

It’s “Finish Up The Black List Scripts Month” at Scriptshadow. I need to finish every one so I can appropriately reorganize the list into what the ACTUAL best scripts are.

I picked today’s script because I love the inherent structure of these “resort” setups. It’s one of the reasons I love White Lotus so much. You’ve got this clearly structured setup (limited place, limited time). It’s a great sandbox to drop a story into.

However, I didn’t know this was a comedy going in. I thought it was going to be more of a thriller. The main character was going to get here and find out something nefarious was going on. But it wasn’t that. So that disappointment definitely colored my reading experience.

It’s why The Black List needs to work on presenting these scripts better. Giving us a genre would be a great start. But let’s see what writer Laura Stoltz came up with.

Georgia, Jared, and six others, are on a private plane to Iceland. Specifically, they’re going to an “end of life” resort. You spend two weeks living it up then they assist you with your death. Fun!

Both Georgia and Jared are gay. Georgia is here because her girlfriend, Ruby, secretly came here two months ago and killed herself. Georgia has wanted to know why ever since and so she came here to investigate as well as use the facilities on herself.

But the place is really mysterious. There’s some area called “The Orchard” where everyone is buried but nobody will allow you to go until the end. So Georgia makes Jared help her find The Orchard so she can figure out what the hell happened to Ruby.

Whatever they do doesn’t work. Georgia’s going to have to go through the whole 2-week process. In the interim, Jared confesses why he’s here. He was drunk driving when he hit and killed a kid on a skateboard. The whole world hates him so he wants to off himself. The problem is he’s a coward and he’s actually been here several times and chickened out.

Eventually, Georgia finds out that all of the therapy sessions are recorded. Which means Ruby’s sessions were recorded as well. Which means if she can get her hands on those tapes, she can finally find out why Ruby did this. With some last minute help from Jared, she gets the tapes. But then (spoiler) she receives some shocking news linking Jared and Ruby that changes everything.

I call these scripts “Bummer Scripts” because there’s no other way to put it. They’re big fat bummers. I watched a Bummer Script last night – A Quiet Place: Day One. It’s about a hospice patient who wants a slice of Brooklyn Pizza during the end of the world. The entire thing was a big fat bummer.

With that said, I know that there’s an audience for these scripts. I believe the angle Laura took in telling this story was the right one. This is a comedic take. The idea is that the two ends (humor, suicide) balance each other out.

And, to be fair, (spoiler) you could kinda tell that Georgia wasn’t going to commit suicide anyway. She didn’t seem suicidal. So it was more like an investigation movie with suicide as the subject matter.

Still, when I read these scripts, they bum me out. And I don’t want to be bummed out at the end of a script. You have a much better chance of people recommending your script to others if it’s hopeful, or upbeat, or optimistic. I see viewers watching this trailer and thinking, “Why would I go see that?” “Why go see a movie about people killing themselves?”

I also think there was a lot more plot potential here.

There’s a big reveal late (spoiler) in the script where Georgia sees old security footage of the resort and Ruby and Jared are walking together.

I want to sit in that reveal for a second because its fallout is an important lesson for screenwriters. It’s HARD AS HELL to write anything that captivates a reader. If you’ve captivated anybody with your script, even if it was just for a moment, you’ve done something incredible.

That moment – seeing Jared and Ruby on tape – was the only part of the script that I was captivated by. My thought was, “Ooooh… I wonder what happened there.” For the first time, I leaned in. But then, when Georgia confronts Jared about it, it amounts to, “Oh, I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d be upset.” There was nothing to the reveal. It was almost an anti-reveal in how unimportant the plot beat was.

If you can create a captivating moment in a script, you want to MINE THE HECK OUT OF IT. Cause that thing’s like gold. The majority of your script is rocks. So if you can create gold, you want to get the most money you can for that gold.

I would’ve created a much a bigger reveal out of Jared and Ruby knowing each other. I’m not saying I would’ve made them lovers. That’s kind of an obvious choice. But you could’ve done something way more interesting than Jared shrugging it off and saying, “Yeah, we hung out a bit.” You’re getting nothing for your gold with that.

And let’s be honest. This is a bummer script. You already risk people being emotionally sad leaving this screenplay. But if you can leave them with a shocking reveal, that ups the reader’s final emotional state considerably.

This one just wasn’t my jam. With that said, if you liked the movie, “The Lobster,” I could see you maybe liking this as well. It’s supposed to be kinda quirky and “voicy.” But the downbeat subject matter really kept me from connecting with it.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the most dependable rules in screenwriting is that if the writer makes a reference that you, the reader, don’t understand, there’s a good chance you won’t like the screenplay. Jared is described as a “Jonathen Van Ness” type. But I don’t know who that is. What that typically means is that the writer lives a life that is unfamiliar to mine and, therefore, they will likely write a story that I don’t relate to. It’s something to keep in mind when you’re thinking of making your own references. Personally, I stay away from references for that reason. Why potentially alienate a reader if you don’t have to?

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When Tom Hanks, the nicest guy in Hollywood (and arguably the world), finds his life stolen by a Tom Hanks impersonator, the only way to get it back is to do the one thing he’s never been able to: stop being nice.
About: This script finished with a respectable 12 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writers: Kirill Baru & Eric Zimmerman
Details: 111 pages

One of the co-writers of today’s script is a Scriptshadow fan which always makes my job harder. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like giving negative reviews. I want to prop up everything I read because I know how hard writing is.

One of the main reasons screenwriters give up on their dream is the emotional component. You spend a lot of emotional capital when you write a screenplay. You’re putting a big piece of yourself into a story that takes 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, or longer to tell. It’s hard to spend that amount of energy on something and not be destroyed when people don’t like it.

So I root for every script I read. The only time I truly dump on a screenplay is when I feel that the writer didn’t try. The second I sense creative laziness, I’ll turn on a script faster than it takes Rachel Zeigler to bash the latest movie she’s in.

In “The Great Pretender’s” opening scene, we watch Tom Hanks go to Starbucks, spend half an hour taking pictures with everyone, then, after getting his coffee, head back to his car where he hands the drink to… his assistant. This is Tom Hanks. He’s so nice, HE GETS HIS ASSISTANT coffee.

But one day Tom runs into the wrong person. Tom Hanks! Or, at least, a Tom Hanks impersonator named Gene. Gene asks Tom to come back to his hotel to do a quick viral video and because Tom can’t say no to anyone, he obliges. But not long after he walks inside Gene’s room (and sees the giant piano from “Big”) he wakes up with the top of his head shaved and a snake tattoo on his back. What the heck just happened?

It turns out that Gene is now living in Tom Hanks’ house with his wife. And when the real Tom Hanks tries to come back home, he’s labeled as a crazy stalker. They even prove he’s “Gene” because the perenially incarcerated Gene’s records show he has a snake tattoo on his back.

Tom is forced to go to Gene’s apartment where he meets Gene’s pregnant girlfriend, Connie. After some persuasion, she finally believes he’s the real Tom Hanks and reluctantly decides to help him. Their initial plan is to get Connie into Tom’s house where she will relay to his wife Rita things that only the real Tom Hanks would know. But Rita doesn’t buy it and they’re back to square one.

Things get more complicated when Gene heads to Fiji to film Cast Away 2. Tom and Connie must find a way to the island to finally expose the evil impersonator. But shenanigans keep getting in the way and it looks like Tom Hanks may have to accept being Gene forever.

A decade ago, I was reading an article that covered longtime CBS and Paramount head Sumner Redstone, who competitively challenged an exec to pitch him an idea he hadn’t heard before. “I’ve literally been pitched every movie idea ever. There’s nothing you can pitch me that I haven’t heard.” And he was right. Neither the exec nor anyone else could surprise him with a fresh movie idea.

I feel like I’ve gotten to that place myself. Nobody can pitch me an idea I haven’t heard before. Case in point, I’ve read somewhere around a dozen of today’s idea, where some famous person or political figure is swapped out for an imposter who has to take their place and pretend to be them.

For a while, I thought similar ideas were a problem. But it turns out the opposite is true. It’s the execution that matters. So even though I’ve read versions of this story before, the job of the writer is still the same – execute the best version of this story possible. Did The Great Pretender achieve that?

Well, I believe Baru and Zimmerman gave their best effort.

However, they made a slight miscalculation in that execution and it sent them down the wrong path. Something I continue telling you guys is to mine what’s unique about your script. The less you’re mining the unique components of your script, the more generic your script will be.

This script is built on one major factor: Tom Hanks being too nice.

So, that’s what you want to build your characters and plot around. In order to succeed in this story, Tom Hanks must learn to be mean. The opposite is true for his doppelganger, Gene.  Gene is too mean. So, in order to succeed, he must learn to be nice. If your story beats exploit these two things, you’re going to get lots of laughs.

But the script doesn’t do that. Instead, Tom Hanks has to learn to be… “tough” I guess? For example, Tom and Connie need money to execute their plan. So they go to a drug dealer Connie knows for help. This is one of the major set pieces in the script and it’s not about being nice at all. It’s more that Tom Hanks must act ‘rough around the edges’ so that the dealer believes he’s Gene.  That’s not the same as needing to be mean.

I wanted way more instances of Tom Hanks having to be mean. That’s where your humor’s going to come from: The nicest man in the world having to be an a-hole.

Ditto with Gene. Gene is an asshole. So, to convince others that he’s Tom Hanks, his comedic journey as a character should be that he has to be nice to everyone despite it being so hard for him.

For example, maybe one of the plot lines is that China is starting a new movie studio in Hollywood and they’ve hired Tom Hanks to be the frontman. They know they have a sketchy public image in the U.S., which is why they hire Tom. Cause he’s the nicest guy in the world. The American public trusts him.

So there’s a huge final meeting involved where all the big Chinese players are coming to the U.S. to finalize the deal with Tom. And it’s Gene who has to put on his nice guy act to get the deal done. But, during the sequence, some people are pissing him off. The Chinese CEO is being a dick to him. He’s getting angrier and angrier yet has to continue to be nice. There are many humorous opportunities there.

Instead, we get a Cast Away 2 production storyline. It’s not bad. Gene has to act out a few scenes as Tom Hanks in this silly sequel idea. But it has nothing to do with the theme of the movie! Which is the contrast between being nice and being mean.

That’s the thing about writing comedies.  Oftentimes, you’ll look at the end result and say it’s either “funny” or “not funny.” Which is all that matters when it comes to comedy. However, there are choices you make long before you get to your scenes that will have a big impact on whether they’re funny or not.

Leaning into the unique setup of your concept (Tom Hanks, the nicest guy in the world, is forced to be mean) is one of those choices that, if you don’t do it, you’re not getting the most out of your idea.

One of the most successful comedies ever is Liar Liar, about a lawyer who, in order to win his cases, always lies. He is then forced, for one day, to only tell the truth. Imagine if you wrote that movie and had the major scenes deal with Jim Carrey trying to be more respectful to people.

If you do that, you are not taking advantage of what’s unique about your concept. What’s unique about your concept is that a pathological liar is forced to tell the truth. So, every major comedic scene should put your protagonist in a position where telling the truth makes his situation worse. That’s where the comedy is going to come from.

I don’t want to paint an entirely bad picture here. There were definitely some funny lines. Two of my favorites subscribe to the above-mentioned formula. At one point, Gene gets frustrated and blurts out, “I’m Tom FUCKING Hanks. A NATIONAL GODDAMN TREASURE. You can’t find a remote island on this planet where people don’t know who I am. Remember Covid? Nobody gave a shit about that until I got it.”

And one of the funniest running gags in the film is that Connie isn’t a fan of Tom Hanks’ movies and takes every opportunity to tell him so. TOM: “Connie, have you ever thought about forgiving your Mom?” CONNIE: “Hey, we’re not talking about my Mom. We’re talking about movies and why yours all suck.” Again, this joke stems from not being afraid to be mean. Not being afraid to say what you really think.

We do finally get a legitimate moment like that from Tom, where he’s torturing Gene at the end. But it’s something that should’ve been explored throughout. Not just at the end.

“The Great Pretender” has some shades of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” in it.  So, if you liked that movie, you might like this. But, personally, I thought we could’ve gotten a lot more laughs out of the premise, specifically by forcing Tom Hanks to be meaner.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Even if I thought this could’ve been executed better, I give props to Baru and Zimmerman for their 4-dimensional thinking. This isn’t just a fun concept. It’s a clever pitch to someone who has repeatedly said in interviews that he’s wanted to play bad guys but that studios won’t let him. This is an inventive way to allow Tom Hanks to play that bad guy (Hanks would play both parts).

A lot of people are going to look at Red One’s box office this weekend and categorize it as a failure.

The film cost 250 million dollars and made only 34 million this weekend.

But whether this movie is a failure or not depends on your perspective. As a movie that needs to make money, yes, it is a failure.

But as a screenplay, this script is beyond a success. That’s because IT GOT MADE. This is something a lot of screenwriters either don’t know or forget. Sure, we all want the glory of that box office hit. But when only 1 of every 10 purchased screenplays/concepts makes it to the big screen, you’ve won the lottery JUST BY GETTING MADE.

So the question to screenwriters shouldn’t be, why did this fail? It should be, why did this succeed? It succeeded because it was a big concept that came at the genre in a fresh way, utilizing an “IP Adjacent” strategy.

Let’s break that down.

The big concept is Santa’s been kidnapped and they hire a real life secret service agent tracker to rescue him. The fresh angle is that they position it like a superhero movie, complete with superheroes Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. And since they don’t have actual IP (Marvel, Star Wars, etc.) they lean into Christmas IP (characters like Santa Claus and Krampus).

I don’t want to undersell the value of the CIA tracker angle. I read a lot of “Santa Claus gets kidnapped” scripts. More than you could ever imagine. But no one’s ever come to me with that tracker angle. It’s almost always some little kid and one of the reindeer who have to rescue Santa. By turning the protagonists into Jason Bourne and Batman, it gave the overused concept a fresh feel.

If I were a producer, I would’ve bought this pitch 10 out of 10 times in the room. It’s not Marvel but what is? Marvel isn’t even Marvel anymore so you need to take chances on projects. This project had way more good going for it than bad so I don’t fault the movie at all.

The only change I might’ve made was to go with more of a comedic actor in the Chris Evans role. Chris Evans and The Rock often play the same role in movies. They’re both big tough guys. You probably needed more contrast there. But, with that said, the two looked to have pretty good chemistry.

Speaking of becoming a screenwriting success, it’s important to remember that, for most writers, success is not a linear journey. It may appear that way to anyone who came into the business between the years of 1998-2008. You get that big sale, you get the follow-up story in the trades, and your career is launched “overnight.”

But, more often than not, your ascension is a series of smaller less visible steps. Look no further than Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. The two were unknown screenwriters when they wrote A Quiet Place. Even after selling it, nobody talked about the film until it became an unexpected hit. Only then did their profiles rise, allowing them to direct their first film in the sci-fi thriller, “65.”

That movie didn’t have enough money to live up to its high concept premise but it established the two as legitimate writer-directors and now they just came out with Heretic, which has a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score and has banked a respectable 20 million dollars in 10 days.

Once again, this all started because they wrote a really good high-concept script in A Quiet Place. What’s the theme today? High concept. Red One is a huge concept. A Quiet Place was a high concept. It’s not that you have to write high concept every time out. But, as you can see, if you want to be the 1 out of 10 purchased projects that actually gets made, high-concept material is often the factor that gets you past the finish line.

The other theme of the day is IP-adjacent subject matter. You don’t have the rights to gigantic IP. So you have to look in the public domain and get creative. Red One may not technically be IP. But it feels like IP. Because who doesn’t know Santa Claus?

Next weekend, we get more IP-adjacent subject matter in Gladiator 2, which is projected to dominate the box office. A big reason for that domination is the Roman Empire. Who hasn’t heard of the Roman Empire? So by setting a movie there, you get the advantages of IP without actually having to foot the bill for IP. These are the things that smart screenwriters think about. Any one of you could write a script about Caesar or Tiberius or Caligula or Constantine tomorrow and wouldn’t have to pay a dime for the rights.

You can still write smaller scripts but, if you do, you have to be a lot more strategic about it. If you want Hollywood people to buy your script, you probably need to write in the horror, thriller, or sci-fi genre, and keep the budget under 5 million (which means a somewhat contained story). If you want to write character-driven material, you have to have a great main character (Nightcrawler, Promising Young Woman, The Whale, Wolf of Wall Street).

But let me be very clear about something: The lower the concept, the more it becomes a writer-director project. I loved Anora. It will probably be my favorite movie of the year. But if it came to me as a script? To buy? I’m not buying it. It’s so character-driven, non-traditional, and execution-dependent that I wouldn’t know what to do with it once I got it. That kind of script needs a writer-director.

Of course, nobody knows anything. All of this can change tomorrow. Someone could sell something that doesn’t fit any Hollywood formula.  Heck, that just happened.  That big 2 million dollar spec that sold bucked every trend in the business by being a character-driven love story.  So you could just go by the strategy of: Write whatever movie you would want to see (the Jordan Peele method of writing).  But if you’ve been in this racket for a long time, I find it silly not to strategize what script you’re going to write next.  Writing a script always takes longer than you think it’s going to take and one of the biggest mistakes writers make is starting a script without thinking about how easy it will be to sell when it’s finished.  In other words, strategize however you want to strategize.  As long as you strategize. :)

What’d you see this week? Anything good?

There is an ebb and a flow to what I obsess over in the screenwriting space. Sometimes I’m obsessed with high concepts. Sometimes I’m obsessed with a great opening page. Sometimes I’m obsessed with second acts.

But as time has passed, there is one obsession that seems to keep coming back to the forefront again and again. Wanna take a guess what it is? While you rack your brain, let me explain WHY I continue to be obsessed with this particular element. It’s because if you are good at this thing, it is one of (if not the) biggest indicator that you are good at writing screenplays.

Wanna know what it is?

Scene writing.

I know, I know. I talk about this all the time. But that’s the point! It’s so important that I keep coming back to it.

The reason it got triggered this time is that I was doing a script consultation while I was in a pretty lousy mood. In script-reading parlance, I was a “tough crowd.” Since my baseline is “tough crowd,” this made me an extremely tough crowd. Despite that, I was pulled into this screenplay immediately. I can’t give you the opening scene for privacy reasons but it amounted to a woman letting a stranger in need of help into her home and the stranger being suspicious. In other words, we know bad things are coming. And if the reader knows bad things are coming, they have no choice but to keep reading.

But if that’s all the scene is, it won’t be enough. You have to build, you have to create conflict, you have to deliver a satisfying resolution, maybe do something unexpected along the way. That’s writing. You’re TELLING A STORY in that scene. Which seems like such an obvious point to make but it should shock you when I tell you I read entire screenplays (a lot of them!) that don’t have a single entertaining scene within them. They’re all scene fragments or exposition or setup for later scenes or a bunch of crap the writer stuffs into the scene to get it out of the way.

Let me make this clear: If you are incapable of consistently writing compelling scenes, you will never advance anywhere as a screenwriter.

In other words, stop focusing on the bigger picture of finishing your scripts if you haven’t even been able to write good scenes yet. How do you know you’ve written a good scene? The reader brings it up! “Oh man. The house invasion where they try and tie Anora up (in the movie, “Anora”). That was a crazy scene!”

Now… does the ability to write a good scene mean the writer will write a good script? Of course not. This is because someone can get lucky. Which I see happen all the time. See, there are these things called “dramatic situations.” These are naturally compelling situations that effortlessly keep a reader’s interest. In the example I used above, a potentially dangerous man alone with a woman in her home… that’s a dramatic situation. Conversely, if those same two people, under the same pretense (he’s a dangerous person), started talking in the middle of Times Square? The scene would lose much of its dramatic punch.

What I’ve learned is that writers can stumble into dramatic situations accidentally. There was never a plan to find the situation. They just got lucky and picked one that was naturally dramatic. Therefore, when you have that writer extrapolate that scene into an entire script, they will rarely, if ever, include a dramatic situation again. And even if they do, it *too* will be an accident.

Once you become a writer who has accumulated enough experience that you have a breadth of dramatic situations to choose from, you will increase the number of dramatically compelling scenes you write, which, in turn, vastly improves the chances that the totality of your script will be good.

Now, does it GUARANTEE it will be good? No. Because writing a series of individually compelling scenes does not equate to telling a story. The challenge with writing full scripts is connecting those scenes together in a story that, like the scenes themselves, builds, then conflicts, then resolves.

The reason that’s so challenging is that a script is long. And there’s a pacing element to all of this. A storyteller needs to know when they’ve been on a road for too long. They must know when to deviate onto a new road – maybe smaller, maybe bigger – that has new things to see, new things to throw at the driver. Learning how to bob and weave and twist and turn to always stay on the road that best maximizes your story takes a lot of trial and error.

Once you become good at scene-writing, you want to become good at SEQUENCE WRITING. That may sound fancy but it isn’t. It’s just the next measurement up from scene-writing. If scene-writing is a teaspoon, sequence writing is a tablespoon (and a script is the entire bowl).

It just means that several scenes will be strung together to create their own story. Let’s say a married couple trying to repair their marriage is having dinner at a restaurant. The act of driving to the restaurant, getting their table, ordering their food, and then eating – that’s technically four scenes. But it’s one sequence that all relates to the same thing (going out for dinner).

Do you need to write four individual dramatically compelling scenes there IN ADDITION TO a dramatically compelling sequence? No, you do not. I would encourage you to try. But I get that sometimes, due to the nature of the script, it doesn’t make sense. Maybe this is a section of the script that needs to move quickly. In that case, staying too long in a couple of these scenes is going to hurt the pacing.

However, let me make something very clear. If you are not including a dramatic situation in each individual scene, you BETTER be creating a dramatic situation with the sequence those scenes reside in. Cause if you’re doing neither, I GUARANTEE you the reader will not make it past that sequence. They WILL stop reading.

The simplest way to create dramatic situations is to introduce a problem to your character, either one that requires a physical solution or a conversational one, try to have them solve it, but put things in the way that make solving the problem uncertain. That’s a key word: UNCERTAIN. If we are uncertain that they will be able to solve the problem, we need to keep reading. But if we’re REASONABLY CERTAIN they’ll figure it out, that scene or sequence loses any trace of drama and we don’t need to keep reading to know what happens.

The best scene in the movie Civil War operates under this formula. A rogue soldier is casually murdering people. He has two of our protagonists with him. The rest of our protagonists have the problem: Their co-workers are about to be assassinated by this dude. They need to convince him not to. Their attempts to persuade him and the uncertainty of his response are what make the scene a dramatic tour de force.

This is NOT the only formula for creating dramatic situations. Just the most used one. In fact, I would love it if you guys shared some of your favorite go-to dramatic situations you pull from when writing your scenes. Together, maybe we can come up with a big enough list that nobody from this site will ever write a boring scene again. :)

If you mention this article, I will give you $100 off a screenplay consultation and $5 off a logline consultation.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested!