Genre: Drama
Premise: A former Navy SEAL and his retired combat dog attempt to return to civilization after a catastrophic accident deep in the Alaskan wilderness.
About: Today’s script comes from Cameron Alexander. It finished on last year’s Black List with 9 votes. The script sold to the producer of Beasts of No Nation, who, I guess, is cornering the market on scripts with ‘beast’ in the title. This is not Alexander’s first sale. He also sold a sci-fi spec back in 2013 called Omega Point. Alexander used to hang out on these boards before his success. Great motivation for those of you wondering when your shot is coming. :)
Writer: Cameron Alexander
Details: 100 pages

If you’re having trouble keeping your writing lean, stop what you’re doing right now and read this script. It’s a great example of lean to-the-point writing that isn’t SO lean that it lacks substance.

One of you brought up in the comments section the other day that producers only wanted to read super-lean screenplays, scripts they could shoot through in 30 minutes. I don’t think that’s true. One look at the Black List and you’ll see that there’s all sorts of writing.

Also, a good writer can make a dense story read lightning fast while a bad writer can make a balls-to-the-wall thriller read like molasses. In the end, it’s the writer’s skill that matters most.

With that said, when it comes to screenwriting, you should always err on the side of less, not more. And today’s script is perfect for getting you into that mindset. Let’s take a look.

James is a former Navy SEAL who’s had such a rough go of it that all he wants to do is get away. So he straps his combat dog, Odin, into his Cessna, and flies off to the last place in America totally free of people – Alaska.

These two frazzled vets can’t knock the military out of them. They still look around every corner as if it’s a potential threat. But, for the most part, they’re happy. They catch a couple of salmon, drink a couple of beers (well, James does anyway) and celebrate the last great frontier.

The next morning, after they hop in the Cessna and lift off, James starts feeling a pain in his arm. The pain gets more intense until he realizes what it is – A HEART ATTACK. James does his best to fight through it before falling on the yoke, sending the plane down.

The plane crashes into a lake, Odin is thrown into the forest, and James only barely makes it out alive. Convinced Odin is dead, James is ecstatic to find that he’s hanging on. James knows that he must quickly build shelter from the cold or the two will die, a task complicated by the fact that if he works too intensely, he’ll have another heart attack.

The two make it through the night. But now the real shit begins. James looks at his Alaska map to find that they’re 50+ miles from the nearest highway. They will need to traverse difficult terrain on limited rations, both in sub-optimal health, if they’re going to see anything other than pine trees and mountain tops again. Let the journey begin.

As a writer, I’m terrified of these premises. When all you have is one person and a basic survival story, there aren’t a whole lot of things to draw from that the average audience member hasn’t seen before. In Cast Away, you had the added hook of a deserted island and the help of the FedEx boxes. In The Martian, you had Mars. Here, you have trees and bears. Not to mention, you’re competing against movies with 50 superheroes in them.

So how do you combat that? Well, you start by asking what you can give the audience that movies like The Avengers can’t. You don’t have gimmicks. But you do have universal themes. Love. Survival. Never giving up. So you lean into those. There’s never going to be a moment as heartfelt in Avengers: Infinity War, for example, as the moment James realizes Odin is still alive after the plane crash.

Here’s a screenwriting trick that everyone should keep in the back of their mind. We’re always going to root more for somebody if there’s another character who loves them. The reason for this is that we see the character through that second character’s eyes. So we don’t just see James. We see James through the eyes of this dog who loves him more than anything. And vice versa. If either one of these two die, it’s not that we ourselves will be sad. We’ve only known these characters for 80 minutes. It’s that we’ll be sad for the character who lost them, since they’ve known them their whole life.

With that said, as I was reading through Heart of the Beast, I kept saying to myself, “This isn’t enough. This isn’t enough.” Audiences these days have so many options. How is a movie about a guy and a dog walking through Alaska going to compete?

And then I read the ending.

Holy. Shit.

Wow. Right after I read it, I knew: OHHHHH! THIS is why this sold.

It was no longer even a question.

If you’re interested in what that ending is, I beg of you not to jump right to it. It’s NOT a fancy twist ending. It’s just an intense one. And it only works if you’ve read the script all the way through. Which isn’t a chore at all. This script is one of the faster reads you’ll read this year.

Check it out and share your thoughts in the comments.

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

What I learned: In any sort of survival story, you want to CONSTANTLY THROW OBSTACLES in your hero’s way and CONTINUALLY REINFORCE THAT THE JOURNEY IS IMPOSSIBLE. If you nail those two things, we’ll stay riveted.