A million buckaroos for this sale!

Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Premise: An out-of-work American actor takes a mysterious acting job in Korea where he’s paid to perform increasingly violent scenes with actors he’s forbidden from meeting beforehand.
About: This is that big Lord & Miller Steven Yeun collaboration short story that sold for a million bucks to Netflix. The writer, Nicholas Binge, is a sci-fi and horror author. He has a book of his, Dissolution, set up at Sony with Eric Heisserer (Arrival) adapting. (correction: below I say this is a movie. It’s a series)
Writer: Nicholas Binge
Details: 22 pages

You’re probably wondering, “Wait, you mean these short story things are still selling?? But none of them are being made into movies except for that disastrous action film, ‘Love Hurts.’”

You know what they say. “If it’s broke, don’t fix it.” Pretty sure that’s how the saying goes, anyway.

Cal Morrow is a 31 year old actor in London trying to make ends meet. He’s a good actor but not good enough to get consistent work. Even his agent, who was once his biggest cheerleader, is struggling to be supportive these days. How can you be supportive when your actor doesn’t work? And no, Sunday Shakespeare at the park doesn’t count.

But Cal runs into an old acting friend who tells him about this job she did in Korea that changed her life. She’s short on details but gives Cal the website and tells him to check it out. Cal checks it out, sees the whole thing as a bit too wacky, but when his apartment manager reminds him he’s gonna be kicked out soon for late payments, Cal contacts the company and immediately receives a 3 month offer. Off to Korea he goes.

Once he arrives in Seoul, an incredibly charming Korean man, Derek, meets him at the airport and helps him get set up in the city. After a few days, Cal receives his first job. But it’s just the sides for his scene. And the other parts are all blacked out. When he arrives on location, in the city, the small filmmaking team assures him that’s their secret sauce. You don’t know what the other person is going to say, which makes your reaction authentic.

Cal’s scene requires that he hold a man up. But he doesn’t get to meet the actor beforehand. That actor is on the street already. Very cinema verite. Cal indeed holds him up. The guy seems genuinely terrified. A great actor, Cal assumes. And then the scene is over. Cal is told to go home. That night, Cal feels like something is off. But he’s in a strange land with zero friends. What can he do about it?

The next scene Cal is asked to perform is much more intense. Cal plays a heavy who has to intimidate a guy into paying. The guy will argue with him, and Cal is told to shoot him. With a fake gun of course. But that shot ends up feeling very real. And now Cal is questioning everything.

Cal confronts Derek who tries to calm him down. He says all of this is on the up and up. But Cal isn’t so sure. So that day, he follows Derek home. He gets to Derek’s place and is able to break in after Derek heads out. What he finds in Derek’s sparse apartment are tons of folders with tons of scripts in them. But one catches his eye. It’s a scene of Cal getting picked up from the airport. But it’s from Derek’s side. Only Derek’s lines. And that’s when Cal realizes Derek is just an actor too. And just as he’s processing that information, Derek walks in. The End.

I can see why this short story sold. It has two things going for it. First, it’s very well written. And second, it has a genuinely intriguing hook.

When I say “well written,” I don’t just mean that the prose is clean and crisp. The writer understands how to pull you into a character quickly. Give us someone we like, then show them struggling.

Cal is an actor who’s trying his best and getting nowhere. He goes into an audition, does a great job, and still doesn’t get the part. What I particularly liked about this scene is how easily the writer could’ve gone with the cliché version of it. The casting director could’ve been some dismissive asshole who barely looked at him. Instead, she’s just a person. She’s busy. She’s hungry. She’s seen a million actors. And Cal actually gets her attention for a few seconds. She likes him. Just not enough.

There’s a nuance to that which immediately tells me I’m dealing with a writer who isn’t automatically reaching for the most obvious version of a scene. Once a reader senses that you’re not going to give them exactly what they expect, they start paying closer attention.

From there, the writer gives Cal a simple, effective problem. His roommate is moving out, he’s already behind on rent, the auditions are drying up, and suddenly he needs money badly. So when this strange acting opportunity comes along, we understand why he takes it. That’s basic storytelling, but it’s basic storytelling done well.

Then we get the second thing the story has going for it: the strange attractor.

We enter this bizarre acting world where Cal is given only his own lines, with everything else in the script blacked out. He doesn’t know what the other actors are going to say. He doesn’t really know what the scenes are about. He doesn’t even know exactly who he’s working for.

That creates mystery. And mystery creates questions. And questions make you turn pages.

I also think the writer understands exactly how long he can play this game. We basically get two major performances: the mugging and the shooting. Had we gotten another 15 pages of Cal being sent out to perform increasingly strange scenes, the device probably would’ve worn thin. Instead, right when we’re ready for an answer, Cal follows Derek home and we get the reveal.

And that reveal is the thing that probably sold the story.

Derek is an actor too. Every “hey buddy,” every reassuring conversation, every gesture, every supposedly spontaneous interaction between him and Cal has been scripted. And suddenly you realize that this may apply to everybody. The director could be an actor. The costume designer could be an actor. Everyone involved may simply be receiving their individual pages, performing their tiny part of some enormous production without having any idea what the production is.

Which leaves us with the big question:

Who’s writing the scripts?

And maybe more importantly, what are they trying to accomplish?

That’s the movie hook.

Now, it’s also where things get tricky. Whoever adapts this is eventually going to have to answer those questions, and coming up with an answer that’s as interesting as the mystery is going to be difficult. But that’s a good problem to have. Because at the short-story stage, you’ve already got the two hardest things taken care of: a character we want to follow and a concept we want explained.

That’s why this works. Good writing gets us into the story. The strange attractor keeps us turning the pages. And the final reveal invites us into a larger world we’re excited to explore.

I always wish these short stories had a little more meat to their endings. But I guess that’s a part of why they sell. They’re using the cliffhanger to make you want to make the movie so we can find out what happens next.

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

What I learned: I think one of the easiest ways to make the reader instantly care about a protagonist is to show them fail in something that they really want. Writing characters is often about connecting with these universal life experiences people go through. And all of us have failed at things we really wanted. And so when we see someone else go through that, we instantly sympathize with them. Here, we see this guy who really wants an acting job. Just one. JUST ONE. And, once again, despite doing a great job, he doesn’t get it. That’s it. That’s all we need. Now we’re eager to turn the page and see what happens with this guy.

I wanted to do something different today. For those unaware, I did a pitch contest recently called the High Concept Club Contest. You pitched me ideas for four weeks and I picked the best ones. These writers then had six months to go write their script.

For my favorite ten ideas, I offered to look at the outlines of the scripts so I could provide some guidance and help the writers know if they were on the right path. I think everybody agrees that Dragonvault (formerly Wyvern) was one of the scripts people were looking forward to the most. Here is that logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.

So I was looking forward to this outline. Cause I wanted to make sure Finn was on the right path. So, what I’m going to do today is give you the outline he sent me and then my response. That way, you can see how I see screenplays and the ways in which I think the writers should direct their story. This doesn’t mean I’m right. Only that I’m hoping some of these thoughts inspire the writer in ways they would not have been inspired without the notes.

So, with that in mind, here is Finn’s outline…

Dragonvault (formerly known as Wyvern)

Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of
their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the
Hobbit.

Protagonist: George Larsen- a high-class professional thief, a planner and organizer for
cash and jewelry heists in London. Raised in a bleak industrial town in Wales, he is
motivated to amass a fortune, seeking the security and respect wealth brings. He is
professionally successful but socially isolated, without family or friends.

Character Arc/theme: from thief (greed, isolation) to knight (human connection, self-
sacrifice)

Outline

Act 1
Teaser
1980. In an isolated mountain range in North Wales, a speeding car veers off the road.
Inside, a married couple fight to the death over a lump of gold marked with the symbol
of a dragon.

Sequence 1- the Mountain
The present. The mountain rage is under the ownership of American fracking firm
HarCor. Professional thief George Larsen infiltrates the firm’s security perimeter around
the mountains by hijacking a HarCor truck. With him is disgruntled fracking surveyor
Daniel Rayburn.

As they scale the tallest mountain in the range, Cromen Draig, they encounter their first
obstacle. A “galley trap”, a magic circle around the mountain that disorientates and
causes hallucinations in any who cross it, like the worst drug trip of your life. Larsen
almost falls to his death. By lashing themselves together with a rope and rigging up a
GPS tracker, they are able to reach the summit alive.

At the top, they use a tomography ground radar to reveal a vast maze of tunnels and
vaults beneath the mountain.

Rayburn explains that three thousand years before, a great Welsh sorcerer-king lured a
horrifying dragon into the deepest vault beneath the mountain with an immense hoard
of gold as bait. It has been trapped inside ever since. Dragon’s gold is highly addictive.
Those who come in contact with it risk becoming psychotically obsessed.

In seven days, HarCor will begin exploration of the mountain and reveal the hoard
within. Larsen will have a week to break into the vault and claim the treasure for himself.
Larsen is skeptical but agrees to organize the heist.At the HarCor office, the firm’s psychotic fixer, Billy Vaspall, kills an antique dealer with a broadsword for a fragment of dragon’s gold in the dealer’s possession.

Sequence 2- the Crew
Larsen recruits a crew of specialist criminals. We get a glimpse into the lives of each:

• Irene Montpellier- an ageing aristocratic safecracker. Larsen’s former mentor.
She lives alone in a house filled with stolen art

• Katya Al-Pashia- a Kurdish gunwoman stuck in her Northern English hometown,
torn between her beloved family and a desire to escape.

• Yehor Zarofsky- a Ukrainian drone pilot living in a tiny apartment in Manchester
with his wife and daughters, desperate to provide for them.

Brian Kerry- a motor-mouthed miner turned bank robber from Ireland.

• Niamh Ferguson- a disgraced Scottish mountaineer, recently released from
prison after the murder of her rival in the Alps. A cold-blooded sociopath.

Act 2
Sequence 3- Preparation
The crew set up base in an abandoned farmhouse near the mountain. Unbeknownst to
them, their arrival has been spotted by HarCor. Vaspall puts surveillance on the crew.
The crew race against the clock to prepare for the heist. The legend tells of three deadly
barriers intended to keep the dragon trapped; the Maw, the Hand and the Eye.

Al-Pashia purchases high powered rifles from a dealer in Amsterdam. Kerry steals
mining equipment.

The night before the heist, the crew carry out final preparations. Al-Pashia and Larsen
have an intimate scene testing the rifles, there is a clear connection, but no time.
The heist begins the next night. The crew scale the mountain, under a barrage of heavy
snow. Vaspall leads a team of mercenaries in pursuit.

Sequence 4- Traps
Zarofsky uses his drones to find the concealed entrance, an impenetrable living door
built into the summit of the mountain, the Maw. Montpellier sets to work on the intricate
lock. But the door fights back. The door’s “jaw” bites off her hand. Bleeding out, she
must direct Larsen to finish breaking the lock before she dies.

The tension within the crew rises. Al-Pashia suggests retreating. But Larsen is
committed, and they continue on.

Through the mountain door, the crew narrowly avoid plummeting to their deaths down
the sheer thousand-foot drop on the other side. As they attempt the perilous climbdown, the wall is revealed to be a mass of horrific grasping hands. Ferguson is almost
dragged to her death by them. The crew must climb down without touching the wall.
After barely surviving the climb down, the crew venture into the maze of tunnels,
heading for the main vault. Al-Pashia and Zarofksy try to leave but Larsen convinces
them to forge on.

The crew, tensions fraying, face the final trap, The Eye. A passageway lined with cursed
mirrors. Kerry is trapped in the mirror world when he makes eye-contact with his
reflection. In doing so, he unleashes a monstrous version of himself in his place.
The crew must defeat the Kerry-thing without looking at their own reflections. Larsen
saves the heist but permanently traps Kerry by shattering the mirrors with an explosive,
leading to a brutal falling out with Al-Pashia.

Midpoint
Sequence 5- the Hoard
The crew open the gate at the end of the passageway and at last they are into the vault
itself. A vast and cavernous hall, with the only illumination coming from their flashlights.
Everywhere are towering mountains of treasure. Here sleeps the dragon itself, a huge,
grotesque creature, pallid from a thousand years without light.

The crew must silently begin transporting the gold out of the mountain without making
any noise that could wake the dragon. They nervously track the dragon’s heartbeat with
a sensor for early warning of it awakening. Ferguson almost brings one of the hills of
gold tumbling down, trying to hoard some for herself, and the dragon stirs.
Slowly but surely, they ferry the gold out onto the mountainside in strict silence. For a
brief moment, success seems within reach.

As the final load of gold is stowed for transport out, Vaspall’s mercenaries attack the
vault wearing night vision goggles. Not only is Rayburn wounded but their gunfire
awakens the dragon.

Sequence 6- the Attack
The dragon incinerates the mercenaries. The heist crew attempt to hide in the
cavernous vault as the dragon hunts them. A tense experience in the complete
darkness of the vault as they can hear the dragon approach their hiding place.

In the pitch black, they attempt to sneak out. But Ferguson betrays them. She calls out
to the dragon and offers it the intruders in return for a share of the gold. The dragon tears Ferguson apart. Zarofsky pilots his drones directly into the dragon’s mouth and sacrifices himself in theensuing explosion. It delays the dragon enough for Larsen, Al-Pashia and the wounded Rayburn to escape back through the tunnels, with the dragon in pursuit.

When the crew reach the mountainside, they plant explosives around the door and plan
to bring the mountain crashing down on the dragon as it pursues them. They have the
explosives rigged and are ready to trigger the trap when Vaspall attacks, beheading
Rayburn.

Act 3
Sequence 7- the Getaway
There is a brutal close combat fight which ends with Vaspall falling to his doom and
Larsen only narrowly avoiding the same fate.

But the battle with Vaspall has slowed them down. The dragon breaks out of the
mountain and attacks. Only Larsen and Al-Pashia left.

They race down the mountain. Larsen is seized in the dragon’s claws. Al-Pashia must
use her rifle to snipe him free, firing on the dragon’s claws to force it to drop him. He
survives the fall to the ground, battered but alive.

Together they reach the woods at the bottom of the mountain and attempt to hide. But
the dragon unleashes its flaming attack. The whole forest burns. Larsen and Al-Pashia
must escape.

In the escape, Larsen is separated from Al-Pashia. He makes it back to the farmhouse.
There is a car waiting. He could get away now with enough gold in his backpack to make him a rich man.

Sequence 8- Dragonslayer
But he cannot abandon Al-Pashia. He prepares hidden spike traps in front of the
farmhouse and lures the dragon towards it with the gold he has left. The dragon attacks,
almost burning Larsen to death.

But Larsen succeeds at luring it onto the hidden spikes. The dragon crashes to the
ground but it is still alive. Larsen must avoid the acid blood spraying from the dying
beast in a final brutal battle at close quarters. Finally, he beheads the dragon.
We end with Larsen and Al-Pashia, together, wounded but alive.

CARSON’S NOTES TO FINN

I think we need to start with a heist.  Something really clever where we show why Larsen is top tier. But maybe the take ends up being much smaller than expected.  The whole crew is pissed. They were promised more.  Larsen is starting to come face to face with reality, that this modern world doesn’t reward real heists anymore.  Everything is virtual.  Online.  Crypto.  He’s becoming extinct (not unlike dragons).

Then someone comes to him with this crazy tale about a dragon and gold in a mountain.  This is key.  Nobody really thinks a dragon is involved.  And they certainly don’t believe that a dragon is still there now.  Although the buried gold is old enough that a lot of ancient approaches to guarding it were used.  The kinds of things you could imagine (certain vaults) were created by people who believed in dragons.  But again, nobody actually thinks there’s a dragon.  Larsen most of all.  He’s Sculley.  I think a character like that would be fun.

But to be clear, the gold haul is supposed to be LARGE.  That’s all that Larsen cares about.  He’s still skeptical that this gold would even be there.  But he needs a big score (for some reason – his last heist cost him a fortune to research and prepare for and it gave him back barely half that).

He hires someone who knows the mountain and studies it.  Finds out about the fracking somewhere in here, which obviously complicates the plan.  Especially when they hear that the fracking team is going to go into the mountain soon. Ticking clock.  They have to move faster than they thought.

They have to put together a team.  And I want one addition.  A knight.  Or someone who was once related to a knight.  The guy who originally tells Larsen about the mountain suggests it.  Basically, they need his knowledge, especially if there’s going to be a dragon.  Again, Larsen scoffs.  A dragon?  Seriously?  He thinks that part is utter bullshit.  But he agrees to employ the knight. Also, I think you should create a slightly bigger crew.  I want a few people to die on the way in.  Just to show how high stakes this is.  Make it like Aliens.  There will be lots of casualties.

I do not like that the gold casts a spell on you and makes you greedy.  I think that’s silly.  Besides, they’re all greedy anyway!  They’re going after dragon gold! They don’t need cursed gold to make them more greedy.

I like the idea of three major obstacles they must pass.

Something needs to happen to accelerate the job.  The fracking company needs to move in three days ahead of schedule instead of their original seven.  So the whole plan is accelerated.   Which of course makes it prone to more mistakes.

I don’t like a living door.  First, I think it’s kinda silly. Second, I want us to be unsure of if dragons are real until we get into the lair.  So if we’re showing magical doors first, we give that away.  Also, that makes me think of Harry Potter.  I want to think of Heat.

I don’t like grasping hands.  Again, too magical.  Too Harry Potter

People wanting to quit.  I like that.  It creates a harder and harder situation if they lose people.  But the quitting needs to directly affect the mission.  The person who quits or dies, for example, is the one who was needed to open the vault.  Something like that.  You may say, ‘Then how do they open the vault???’  GOOD!  Cause that means the audience is wondering that too.

Transporting this much treasure is logistically the hardest part of the deal.  So how the hell do they plan to do that?  Nothing in the outline seems to indicate they’re prepared for that.  Gold is heavy as shit so what’s the plan here?

I love a Heat-like firefight in a dragon lair.  This should be the second best set piece in the movie (after the dragon chasing ending).  I want a scene that will eclipse the firefight in Heat.  Which will be difficult.  You can’t just have peopel hiding behind stone colums and stacks of gold shooting guns.  You must make it a really well thought out firefight with multiple stages and unique ways in which they’re fighting each other.  For example, maybe to start, when they first sense people are coming, they have to hide. And the only place to hide is on the dragon, who’s still sleeping. The whole team having to hide on the dragon and not wake it up could be a great precursor to the set piece itself.

An overall note for you is that, throughout the script, make things TEN TIMES MORE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE CHARACTERS THAN YOU ORIGINALLY PLANNED TO DO.

Even if you have no idea how you’re going to get your characters out of these problems.  Key guy is needed for a key action?  Kill him before he gets there.  We should be doubting they have any chance to achieve this at literally every stage of their mission.  This is the stategy that made me fall in love with Osculum Infame.  Apply it to your story.

“But Ferguson betrays them. She calls out to the dragon and offers it the intruders in return for a share of the gold.” – not sure I like this. Unless this is your Burke from Aliens character?  That wasn’t clear.  But I don’t like magical gold is my point.

How does one behead a dragon?  I would be open to allowing the dragon to escape.  Sequel.  But I’m not saying it’s necessary.

Additional Note Just For This Scriptshadow Post: As I’m looking over these notes, I’m realizing that pretending there’s no dragon may not be possible. The whole point of a heist is that you’re stealing something from someone. If there’s nobody preventing you from taking the money, then there’s no heist. So my idea about ‘maybe there isn’t a dragon’ doesn’t make complete sense. Unless we can straddle the line maybe? They plan for a dragon but Larsen never truly believes there’s a dragon. Also, I suppose, we could make the inside of the mountain itself extremely challenging, which would imply you need someone good with heists. Curious about others’ thoughts on this.

And any of you have any great ideas for this script, share them with Finn here! Let’s help him make this script amazing!

It’s all about the style baby!

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Premise: A cocky corporate fixer’s last day turns into a nightmare when he’s locked in a remote exit interview with an HR rep whose questions strip away his lies, his dignity, and — piece by piece — his chances of leaving alive.
About: Last year I did a pitch contest called Blood & Ink where anyone could pitch me movie ideas. I accepted the best 100 of those ideas. The writers then wrote those scripts. Ever since, I’ve been reviewing them on the site, looking for the best one. Already, one script, Wildman, written by Jacob Rainer, sold!
Writer: Branko Maksic
Details: 97 pages

Today we’re going to talk about voice. We’re going to talk about writing style. We’re going to get into when this is an asset for your writing and when it’s a detriment. Let’s jump into it, shall we!?

Martin Crow Roberts could probably best be described as a fixer. Although his official title is Senior Vice President of Risk Management and Corporate Affairs.

While it’s all a little complicated, and I’m not sure I ever completely understood what his job entailed, when the enormous company he worked for screwed up and killed someone, Martin would come in and make it all go away. And not in the good cute nice way either.

If you tried to go to the press because your husband got chewed up by one of the company’s industrial-sized baler machines, Martin would literally ruin your life to the point where you couldn’t even pay your phone bill. Oh, and for those few who kept defying the company even then, Martin could make you disappear.

Now, Martin’s 37-year career is over and for his services, he is getting a retirement send-off of 13 million dollars. But there’s one final thing he has to do: his exit interview. Oddly, the interview is offsite, in some industrial building on the outskirts of the city, where nobody lives.

Martin enters this cavernous building and meets Evelyn, the woman conducting his interview. And it doesn’t take long for Martin to realize this isn’t your standard HR exit interview.

Evelyn starts bringing up all those old cases Martin made disappear, and immediately he realizes what she (and the company) are doing. They’re trying to prove malice so they can strip away his exit package, a million bucks at a time. In particular, Evelyn seems very interested in Dean Calloway, a worker who was crushed by an enormous industrial baler twenty years ago.

There’s a reason for that. Dean was Evelyn’s father.

And that baler? EVELYN HAD IT SHIPPED IN. It’s in the next room.

Which is when Martin begins to understand that this interview isn’t really about his retirement package at all. Evelyn has spent years waiting for this moment. She’s finally got Martin alone, miles from anyone who can help him, standing in the same building as the machine that killed her father.

Suddenly, getting that 13 million dollars is the least of Martin’s problems. Can the world’s ultimate fixer fix this?

I’m going to go off on an aside here and I can’t promise I’ll come back from it. But this was heavily on my mind when I was reading Exit Interview so I want to talk about it.

One of the relationships at play during a read is the relationship between voice and story. Every writer has a voice. But there’s a choice in how much you push that voice into the foreground.

Some writers want you to feel them on every page (the unusual phrasing, the clever observations, the specific way they describe things). Other writers disappear behind the story. Their primary goal is to make you forget that someone is writing the script so you can simply experience what’s happening.

Neither approach is right or wrong. There are scripts where a strong voice is a part of the appeal.

Something like The Menu benefits from a voice on the page. But imagine Jurassic Park being written with a strong voice. If every description of the T-Rex came with some clever observation or unexpected turn of phrase, at a certain point you’d become aware of the writer when what you really want is to be terrified by the fucking dinosaur.

That’s the risk of pushing your voice to the forefront. The story is no longer the only thing the reader is experiencing. They’re also experiencing you telling them the story.

I really battling that throughout this script. There were many times where I saw Branko as opposed to being lost in the story he was telling. Describing a character as “a heart attack in a Tom Ford.” Or how a character “pours two fingers of something older than both of them.”

I want to be clear about the fact some readers like this writing. I do not. I like when the story is the star. The hardest thing in the world for a storyteller to do is to create that suspension of disbelief in the reader. Make them actually forget that they’re reading a story and are, instead, experiencing it. Every time you write a “too clever by half” line of a prose, you break that suspension of disbelief.

EVELYN
The official report says Dean Calloway was crushed by an industrial baler during routine maintenance.

MARTIN
Official reports are wedding photos. Everyone’s smiling. Nobody mentions the affair.

This exchange gets to the heart of what I’m talking about. This is a good WRITER’S LINE. But it isn’t a particularly good HUMAN-BEING LINE.

Imagine somebody actually saying this after Evelyn tells him a man was crushed by an industrial baler. Wouldn’t the more accurate reaction be something like, “That’s what the report says. Doesn’t mean that’s what happened.” Instead, Martin apparently has an elegant three-part metaphor ready to go involving wedding photography and marital infidelity.

Look, I know that my good buddy John August (extreme sarcasm for those new to the site) is on record as saying “Movie dialogue is how characters would speak if they had a few extra seconds to compose their thoughts between lines.” But even if you use that as your guiding principle, Martin’s line about wedding photos feels more like he had three months to compose it.

None of this is to knock Branko. I’m not criticizing the dialogue. I’m noting that myself and people like me prefer more truth to the lines of dialogue and more invisibility in terms of telling the story. And to Branko’s credit. He does occasionally give us that.

MARTIN (CO NT’D)
Did you know him? Work with him?

Beat. Evelyn’s jaw tightens.

MARTIN
Fuck him?

EVELYN
(ice cold)
He was my father.

MARTIN
Oh, fuck off.

Not angry. Tired. The way you’d swat a fly that’s been circling your drink.

MARTIN (CONT’D)
The dead father. Really? That’s what we’re doing?

That’s an honest line. There’s no cleverness there. It feels innately “Martin.” That’s the stuff I like. I wanted more of that.

Okay, let’s talk about the actual story, shall we. I really like this setup.

This guy comes in. He’s ready to collect his 13 million bucks and head off into the sunset, only to encounter someone determined to make sure he gets nothing. The guy who screwed everyone else over is now the one getting screwed. Can he overcome it? Has he met his match? We’ve got a movie here.

Why?

Because we’ve got a goal (get the 13 million). We’ve got the stakes (if this woman bulldozes him, he gets nothing). We’ve got urgency (the exit interview is contained to this one day). And we got conflict (these two absolutely despise each other as well as want completely opposite things). That’s exactly what you’re trying to do when you come up with a movie idea. Is to create those four elements. Cause if you have those, there’s a very good chance you have a movie.

Once we get into the warehouse with Evelyn, that’s where the script hits its stride. I would say this is one of the best second acts in the Blood & Ink Contest. I love the reveal of the baler.

Because one of the big things we talk about when it comes to horror is giving the readers something they haven’t seen before. How do you create scares when the audience has seen every scare in the book? Branko does it with the reveal of the baler. I saw that thing like it was in front of me in my place. And it terrified the hell out of me.

Everything leading up to Martin having to decide whether to sign his sole responsibility for killing all these people or partake in the baler had me on the edge of my seat. I had no idea what was going to happen next. Which is the advantage of writing something this dark. You get the sense that the darkest option IS ON THE TABLE. And you’re wondering if the writer is going to go there.

But the second we cut to a time gap and Martin’s had his arm amputated and he’s in a hospital room, the script lost all momentum. All of a sudden, we’re talking about new time frames. 48 hours. 4 days. All that contained-ness is scrapped.

Then Evelyn comes in and says, “you can even call your daughter.” Now Evelyn is nice????? When did that happen?? And then we have an endless father-daughter discussion that plays out very predictably and it just kept sucking momentum out of the screenplay.

That baler is the boogeyman. And the boogeyman stops being scary after he’s already hurt you. I was just pointing this out to another writer during a consultation. The more information you give us about something, the less scary it becomes. And once that baler took out Martin’s arm, I thought, “I understand this thing now.” Something about that information torpedoed my fear. I wasn’t as afraid anymore.

So instead of taking his arm and then creating this kumbaya section between him and Evelyn, let’s keep escalating things. Let’s create another story beat. Make things nastier. And then let’s use the climax for the big baler. That’s how I would do it.

All in all, this was close to a “worth the read.” But my personal preferences surrounding aggressive writing voices along with the creative choice to take off Martin’s arm and slow the pacing to a crawl really hurt the script in my opinion. Address these things and this script gets better.

Script link: Exit Interview

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

What I learned: Here is a useful test for whether your voice is becoming too dominant on the page. Simply ask yourself, “Is this sentence making me notice the story more, or making me notice the writer more?” That’s it. And if it’s making you notice the writer but you’re okay with that, that’s your artistic right. But for readers like me, I like to get lost in the story. So I don’t like when the voice takes precedence.

And let the power of possibility motivate you.

Ever since The Ballad of the Ember Knight and Wildman sold, I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from writers new to Scriptshadow. Which I love. Come on in, the water’s warm.

But because these writers are new to the site, they don’t yet know how Scriptshadow works. I think some of them believe it’s like the Black List, where you send your screenplay in and it enters some giant system where, theoretically, someone important might find it. Except nobody’s sending me any money. Apparently, I’m the Black List’s new nonprofit division.

As a result, I’ve been getting pitched A LOT of movie ideas lately. And reading through a lot of these weak ideas, combined with the fact that Ember Knight and Wildman just sold, has gotten me thinking that if you want to write a script that has a shot at selling, there are two viable routes you should focus on.

You can write a GREAT STORY.

Or you can write a GREAT CONCEPT.

Let’s start with The Ballad of the Ember Knight.

Ember Knight is almost the anti-high-concept. It’s a giant medieval period piece written by two unknown writers. The draft I originally read was 185 pages long. I’m not sure you could construct a screenplay more hostile to the spec market if you limited your subject matter to parking regulations and probate law. And yet the script sold. Why? Because Kieran and Brennan did something that sounds ridiculously obvious but that a surprising number of writers don’t do.

They wrote a GREAT STORY.

What does ‘great story’ mean? Let’s get specific.

In Ember Knight, we have a disgraced knight traveling through 14th-century France who must protect the murdered king’s son and get him to the city where he can eventually take the throne. Right there, we’ve got a strong narrative spine.

I had lunch with one of my brothers the other day and he hasn’t seen a movie in 5 years. He has zero interest in them. When I told him about the Ember Knight sale and then told him the plot, I was shocked when his face lit up and he said, “That sounds like it could be good.”  This is a guy who falls asleep if I even mention the word “Godfather.”

We have a destination. We have a goal. We have stakes. We have danger. We have people trying to stop them.

But that’s only the beginning. The Ember Knight is hiding a gigantic secret. HE’S THE ONE WHO KILLED THE BOY’S FATHER. We know that. The boy doesn’t. Which means that in addition to wondering whether these guys are going to make it across France alive, I’m wondering when this kid is going to find out who the man protecting him really is. And, more importantly, WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN WHEN HE DOES?

That’s what I mean when I say STORY. You’re creating reasons for me to keep reading.

You’ve got a destination I want the characters to reach. You’ve got a secret which I’m waiting for to explode. You’ve got mysteries I want answers to. You’ve got relationships whose dynamics are changing. You’ve got characters I’m interested in. You’ve got danger closing in. You’ve got reveals that change my understanding of what I thought was happening.

And, most importantly, the story BUILDS.

That last one is important. A lot of writers mistake “things happening” for story. Somebody gets attacked. Then they go somewhere. Somebody else attacks them. Then they go somewhere else. Then another problem occurs. Technically, stuff is happening. But the story isn’t BUILDING.

So if you want to take the Ember Knight route, here’s a simple exercise. Before you start writing, write down five reasons why someone will want to keep reading your script. And “to see what happens” doesn’t count. Be specific. “I want to know if Michael discovers that Sarah killed his brother.” “I want to know if they reach the border before midnight.” “I want to know what’s inside the red door nobody is allowed to enter.” “I want to know whether Bill finally gets together with his Tess after 20 years.”

If you can’t come up with five strong answers, I’d be worried. Because your screenplay should be a machine that’s constantly generating reasons for the reader to turn the page.

But before any of that matters, you have to give them a reason to turn the very first page of your script and start reading.

And that’s where a great concept comes in.

Here’s the Wildman logline: “When his brother is gunned down by a murderous gang, reclusive Joel must leave his hidden mountain home to get revenge. His quest for justice sets him on a collision course with a homicidal cop, stone-cold psychopaths, and a bloodthirsty militia, but Joel won’t stop until he’s torn them all limb from limb. Also, Joel is a Bigfoot.”

Come on.

You hear that last part and you immediately want to read the script. That’s what a great concept does. It gets you to turn that very first page. After that, it’s the story’s job to keep you turning the rest of them.

Now I know there’s a cabal of you who think starting with concept is evil. To you guys, screenwriting should be more pure than that. Write what moves you. Write what you care about. Write the story you desperately need to tell.

And you know what? I don’t disagree with that! Ember Knight just proved that route can work.

But you also have to acknowledge reality. A great concept makes everything that happens AFTER YOU FINISH THE SCRIPT easier. Mainly, it gets you more fucking reads. A LOT MORE.

Let’s say you write this beautiful deeply personal screenplay about agricultural studies in Sudan and five people read it. All five say, “Wow, this is really good.” But none of them can figure out how to turn it into a movie, so that’s where your journey ends.

Meanwhile, the guy who came up with a fire hurricane headed towards Miami is getting 50 reads. Maybe his script isn’t as good as yours (hypothetically speaking). But he has ten times as many people reading his screenplay. That’s ten times as many opportunities for somebody to fall in love with it, ten times as many opportunities for somebody to pass it to someone else, ten times as many opportunities to get that script into the hands of someone who can actually do something with it.

And let’s not forget about the little cheat code that comes with high concept: AN ERROR MARGIN.

Let’s say the reader gets to page 45 and there’s a sequence that isn’t working. In Ember Knight, if that happened, a reader is looking at that page count and all of a sudden wondering if continuing on is worth it. With Wildman, there’s something sitting in the back of their head saying, “Yeah, but it’s a Bigfoot revenge movie.” They can still see the poster. They can still see the trailer. They can still imagine THE MOVIE.

And this brings me to the thing I’ve really been thinking about these last couple of weeks. When you choose your next screenplay idea, you aren’t just choosing what you’re going to spend the next six months writing.

YOU’RE CHOOSING THE ROAD YOU’LL HAVE TO TRAVEL AFTER YOU WRITE IT.

If you write Wildman, you know when you’re finished, the logline’s going to open doors. If you write Ember Knight, you’re accepting that you’ll have to fight harder. You’ll have to enter a lot of contests. You’ll have to query more people. You may have to pay for professional feedback just to get the script in front of somebody who recognizes how good it is.

That road can absolutely work. It just did.

But know what you’re signing up for. And make sure it factors into what your writing life looks like right now. If you’re 23 years old and you’ve got all the time in the world, write your Ember Knight. Spend a year on it. Obsess over the characters. Obsess over the story. Obsess over every twist and turn.

But let’s say you’ve been writing for 15 years. You’ve written twelve screenplays. Every new screenplay takes six months out of your life and you’re still having trouble getting people to read them. At some point, I think you have to ask yourself: Why am I playing on hard mode?

Why not write something where, when you tell somebody the idea, they immediately say, “SEND ME THAT!” That’s the direction I would lean. Cause I’ve seen too many writers send me their versions of Ember Knight, and even though they were good, they weren’t good enough to overcome how difficult the scripts were to market.  Ember Knight was that rare 98th percentile script that was good enough to overcome its extracurricular shortcomings.

The good news is, you get to choose which avenue you want to go down. So pick one and give it everything you’ve got. That’s all we can do as screenwriters. :)

I’ve been so busy this week I haven’t been able to post but when this hit the Hollywood Reporter today, I couldn’t not use the opportunity to congratulate Jacob Rainer, whose Bigfoot spec, “Wildman,” born out of the Blood & Ink Screenplay Contest, sold.

To give you a little background on this one, earlier this year, Jake Wagner, from Alibi management, called me and said, “Carson, we have to meet. We haven’t talked in forever.” I’ve known Jake all the way back since The Disciple Program, believe it or not. He was one of the first industry people to read that script and say, “This is awesome.”

So we had lunch at Superba on Sunset. Great spot. And he said, “I want to sign some people. I want some fresh writers.” What I knew about Jake was he loves genre stuff. He loves horror. And I said, it just so happens that I’m doing this horror contest called Blood & Ink. I’ll slip you any scripts that I read that are good. As soon as I read Wildman I said, “You may want to check this one out.”

What I didn’t know about Jake is that he LOVES Bigfoot. So he was stoked. He immediately signed Jacob and he gave him the same mission I talked about in the review, which was to streamline the script and just focus on Bigfoot. I came in for a quick set of eyes on the new draft, offered some notes, and credit to Jacob. He wrote another draft FAST.

Jake then went out to about 8 people. And Badlands loved it. And we liked them. Wildman was always, “John Wick with a Bigfoot,” and Badlands is an arm of Thunder Road, who made John Wick. So it was a perfect marriage. Also, they’re about actually making movies. They’re not interested in buying a bunch of projects and letting them linger in development hell. If they buy something, they want to make it. Which means not only is this script getting purchased. There’s a very good chance it will get made!

Dreams do come true!

So keep writing!

And if you need script notes, let me know (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com). I’m busy but I’ll try to fit you in.