The Blood & Ink Horror Script Contest is a unique screenplay contest where you had to earn your way into the contest with a good enough concept. I accepted just under 100 entries. Those writers had half a year to write their scripts. And now, the judging begins!

Genre: Horror/Comedy
Premise: A killer space mold terrorizes a small town during their local cheese festival and threatens the lives of a food journalism intern and her cheesemonger-in-training ex-boyfriend.
About: You have until 11:59pm tonight (Tuesday) to get your Blood & Ink entry in. Now, let me remind you how this contest will work going forward. I’m going to read all the Blood & Ink scripts and then I’m going to review the Top 10, starting at 10 and working my way up, over the course of two weeks. When will this start? Optimistically, in 1 month. More realistically? 2 months. In the meantime, I may review a Blood & Ink script here and there on the site. I’m too excited not to! If these early reviews end up being Top 10 Worthy, the reviews will reappear during the Top 10 Review fortnight.
Writer: Eric Levin
Details: 85 pages

The Blood & Ink Contest is off and running!

Actually, some of these entries are running faster than I can keep up with. Which is a problem because they were never accepted in the first place!

Let me remind everyone that your concept needed to be accepted into the contest. It’s not an “anyone can enter” situation. That’s probably my fault for not being clearer about that but now it’s going to take some work to figure out and remember which concepts got accepted and which didn’t.

Because I know there were a good dozen or so concepts that I would not have accepted but they did get voted in via one of the other secret ways into the contest.

Okay, moving on to today’s script. This was one of the loglines that made me smile the brightest so I thought it would be a good one to start with.

20-something Bri and her ex-boyfriend, 20-something Mac, are headed to upstate New York because Bri is writing an article about the Finger Lakes Cheese Festival. She’s brought her ex along because he is a cheesemonger apprentice and can help her understand this world. If the article is good, she’ll be promoted to an official journalist at the paper.

What neither of them know yet is, not far from the festival, an alien meteorite has crashed into a farm and has started spreading killer mold. The only thing we know about this mold, early on, is that light kills it.

Bri and Mac immediately visit one of the many cheese farms in the area. That’s where they meet 20-something Lyla, who is excited that two big New Yorkers have come up to write about their little cheese festival. Later, they will run into Jason, Bri’s bad boy ex-boyfriend.

They get to the festival just as a lunar eclipse occurs and that gives the alien mold exactly three minutes to wreak its havoc. And boy does it take advantage. It eats up a good dozen people at the festival. Bri and Mac are able to escape to her farm. But the night is fast approaching. So, even though the eclipse is over, it’s only a matter of time before the mold strikes again.

Eventually, the mold is able to take form into an alien creature. The only way to stop this creature, apparently, is by singing to it. So Mac is able to save himself repeatedly by singing to mold monster just before he attacks. Meanwhile, Bri gets beamed up to an alien spaceship and learns from the piloting alien that he loves coming to planets and destroying them with his pet mold.

Somehow, Bri is going to have to escape this ship if she’s to save Mac, who’s been placed in a mold web by the mold monster. Apparently, Mac’s singing is only going to save him for so long. And it’s a long ways away from sunrise…

So??

How was our first Blood & Ink entry???

Here’s what I liked about The Mold. It’s an old school premise that delivers in an old school way. And it’s something you could see becoming a movie. These types of horror-comedy setups are perfect. They never die. And this is an original enough take on the sub-genre to stand out.

I loved the cheese stuff.

There’s something in screenwriting I like to call “doggy bag” moments. They are things you can teach the audience about your subject matter for them to “take home in a doggy bag.” There’s a lot of that here with the cheese. We go really in depth with how to make cheese early on and I felt like I learned a bunch.

I loved how Eric SHOWED instead of TOLD when it came to his mold rules. For example, when we see the mold first spread through the shade and see it hit a patch of sunlight, it instantly dies. Now we know that rule: the mold dies by sunlight.

A lot of times writers will get lazy and try to fit those rules in via dialogue. It’s always better if you show as opposed to tell. The reader understands the rules 100x better that way.

I also thought the setup was strong. I was gearing up for this cheese festival. I was curious what was going to happen. The script almost had this “Sideways” vibe to it, except that, instead of wine, we were dealing with cheese.

However, once the mold became a focus for the screenplay, the script lost something. All the specificity (about cheeses) was gone. A lot of what made the story feel original was gone. It essentially became “People run away from mold.”

And I know that’s the point. But that’s the challenge with writing a screenplay. You don’t just give us the obvious execution of the idea. You gotta figure out ways to make it exciting and dramatic and scary and entertaining. And not enough effort was put into making that happen.

There isn’t a single great mold kill in this movie. And there needs to be about five of them. They’re all pretty bland. Mold approaches. Person tries to get away from it. They fail. Mold overcomes them. That can’t be every single kill. There’s got to be more variety. There’s got to be more imagination.

But the real problem with the script is the main core of characters. No character had a flaw that was explored well. Brie kind of had this flaw where she leaves when things get tough. But, unlike the mold rules, this is told to us rather than shown to us, and therefore, it doesn’t stick.

The miss here was the Brie, Mac, and Lyla triangle. The way the dynamic should’ve been written is that Brie left Mac. She broke up with him for whatever reason you want to use. And the two are friends now but Mac is clearly still in love with her. And, originally, he’s hoping this trip will allow him to get her back.

But then they meet Lyla and Brie watches in dismay as Mac and Lyla have amazing chemistry together and, all of a sudden, she realizes she lost the prize. Now she’s trying to get him back but maybe Mac has finally moved on. What’s going to happen here?? That’s a much stronger character dynamic to play with.

The Jason stuff was weak and barely explained. A lot of it didn’t even make sense (Brie broke up with Mac because Jason destroyed her confidence several years earlier???). I don’t even know why you’d want Jason in this movie unless he’s a complete asshole who we’re rooting for to die.

The second half of the script shows a pretty steep dive in quality and, unfortunately, I’m expecting a lot of that from these entries. I talked about this in an article recently. We over-focus on our first acts and don’t put the same amount of time into the later parts of the script.

The stuff with the mold turning into a monster isn’t bad but needed a more natural build-up. The alien character felt like he was from a totally different movie. He was too wacky. He didn’t feel calibrated or tonally consistent with everything else.

Another big missing opportunity was the cheese! We spend the entire first 30 pages hyping up cheese. But then cheese never appears in the script again. It’s odd. I think that cheese should somehow be the only weapon to defeat the mold. Certain cheeses do better than others at holding it back. That way, all that setup can actually be paid off.

And I would’ve loved more time at the festival. More time meeting some of the wacky people who inhabit this cheese universe. I felt like we rushed past that.

But hey! That’s the great thing about screenwriting. You can rewrite and make the script better. Hopefully, Eric sees some value in the problems I’ve identified. If you want to prioritize, start with the characters. Nothing matters until that’s squared away. Better flaws for Brie and Mac and work that new love triangle. It’s going to make this so much better!

Script Link: The Mold

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

What I learned: If you’re going to kill a bad person, get the most out of it by setting up that they’re a bad person! That’s half the fun! There’s a scene in the grocery store where the customers don’t know about the mold yet. And this woman comes rushing in and slams the door shut. When a customer wants to leave, she won’t let him go out there. He says, “I have places to be you crazy bitch,” pushes past her, goes outside, and is dead ten seconds later. You could’ve spent a page building this character up as an asshole. He’s being a dick to one of the workers. He’s calling the checker stupid for a mistake she made. NOW when that guy gets killed, we’re going to FEEL SOMETHING.  That’s what you’re trying to do in scripts. Is make people feel something. If you rush past the setup of any character, even small ones, we won’t feel anything when they engage with your story.

For the first person who e-mails me the answer to this trivia question, I will give them super-discounted $199 script notes. What is the most famous spec script ever sold that had a strong focus on cheese?? E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you know the answer. Put “TRIVIA” in the subject line. NOBODY WRITE THE ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS UNTIL 2PM PACIFIC WEDNESDAY!

Is it possible to write something great with only strong plotting or only strong character creation? Or do you need both?

Devil Wears Prada 2. 77 million bucks. That’s a great haul! It’s about what everyone’s expecting the new Star Wars movie to make. At a cost of one-third that production. So, I’d say that’s a pretty sweet performance.

Here’s what I’ll say about the success of this movie. It’s nice to see that Hollywood has gone back to embracing genres geared towards women as opposed to trying to make women like everything men like. Devil Wears Prada, Wicked, Wuthering Heights, The Housemaid, It Ends With Us.

Hollywood damn near lost their minds for a while, determined to make women like Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and every single comedy released. It’s okay to gear stuff towards men and gear stuff towards women. We’re different and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So, thank God the adults are back in the room making these decisions. They’re paying off big time.

Okay, moving on.

Baby Reindeer was awesome.

No lies detected.

But one of the most fascinating low-key stories in Hollywood has been that Richard Gadd, one of a tiny group of people in this day and age to break out amongst the new-school fractured media landscape, had built almost his entire breakout show around his real life, and would now have to create a new show without that crutch.

Basing things on your real life makes writing stories a lot easier because, with writing, one of the hardest things to do is create characters that feel like real people doing real things. It takes countless drafts to move away from the generic placeholders we inject into those early drafts. “This happened to me” stories don’t have to go through that process. The characters feel real right away. The situations feel real immediately.

For example, the trans stuff in Baby Reindeer would’ve never worked if it weren’t a part of Gadd’s own life. Not that you can’t put trans characters into a script but, if you’re constructing Baby Reindeer as a fictional stalking thriller, it wouldn’t make sense to go in that direction. It was only because Gadd had experienced that during his life, that the wild left turn still felt organic to the story.

Even the title itself, “Baby Reindeer” made no sense. It was used strictly because the real life person who that stalking character was based on used to call Richard Gadd that name. That’s the power of basing something on your real life. You will write way more originally because everything you write will be specific to what you experienced. And your experience is always going to be different than everyone else’s.

This is why I encourage writers to look for the truth in a moment. Because that’s where you’re going to find the most authentic (and therefore original) stuff. For example, if you’re writing a scene about your characters fighting while doing the dishes, you want to try and think back to a moment in your own life that was as similar to that moment as possible. You then want to identify what was said and what was done and try to bring as much of it to the scene as possible.

These days, the times I struggle the most to write are the times when I can’t find a real-life equivalent that I can draw upon to help me connect with the scene in an authentic way. If I’m just making it all up in my mind, I know I’m subconsciously drawing upon familiar tropes from other stories that I’ve watched or read. So I know the scene isn’t going to be true.

I resisted watching Half Man for a couple of weeks because it just looked too damn serious. And it didn’t have the hook of Baby Reindeer. The hook of Baby Reindeer was, “Woman becomes obsessed with you and starts stalking you.” That’s a scenario that everybody is familiar with. Half Man is a lot less clear. I guess it’s about two brothers who hate each other but also love each other? Ehh. Not as sexy of a hook, that’s for sure.

What ultimately got me to watch the pilot episode was that curiosity of whether Gadd would be able to create something out of nothing. Cause that’s a whole different ball of wax from what he did before. And, to me, it’s true writing. When you’re creating something out of nothing, it is the most challenging yet beautiful exploration of the medium. I have immense respect for anyone who does it well.

So, how did he do?

Half Man begins with a mild mannered guy named Niall about to get married. At his wedding, his “friend,” slash “brother,” Ruben, takes him to a private room and starts beating the shit out of him.

We then cut back to 20 years ago, where teenage Ruben moves into teenage Niall’s apartment because their moms are having a secret relationship. Ruben also joins Niall at his high school, helping scare away all the bullies who used to tee off on Niall.

But there’s a price that comes with that. Ruben is a constant ticking time bomb. He’s not only physically explosive, but seems to have some deep set sexual deviancy in him as well. So the fact that he sleeps in the same room as Niall creates a constant need for Niall to be on guard.

If there’s a “plot” to the episode, it’s that Ruben isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and is in danger of being kicked out of school. It will be up to Niall to keep him from failing out.

I’ll start by answering my earlier question. Halfway through the pilot, I asked myself, “What is this show about?” Sure, it’s about two half-brothers who have conflict with each other. But, that’s not a story. That’s character work. Where’s the story?

For example, I was watching the big new buzzy show over on Apple TV, Widow’s Bay. THAT has a story. A slew of ghosts and creatures move in on sleepy island town forcing its skeptical mayor to cover up the supernatural visitations so that he can finally turn the town into a top tourist destination. THAT’S a story.

It’s not that you can’t build a show around a plotless narrative. But it sure as hell makes it more difficult. Because without a story to push things forward, the only scenes that can shine are the scenes with the brothers in conflict. Over 8 episodes and 25 scenes per episode, that’s 200 scenes you have to write. Are you going to write 200 scenes of brothers in conflict?

Here’s what I’ll give creator Gadd. He has a killer ability to create discomfort. Every single scene, I can feel myself tensing up. I’m not sure that I enjoy that feeling. And I’m not sure I want to keep feeling that every single week. But the large majority of the stuff I read makes me feel nothing because it’s either safe or predictable. To make the viewer feel something is a key component of being a good writer.

The pilot’s best scene has Niall asleep one night and Ruben brings a girl home and they start going at it in the bed next to Niall. When they sense Niall is awake, Ruben has the girl get up and straddle him, ultimately resulting in Niall’s first sexual experience.

Everything about the scene is uncomfortable. From the way they tease Niall’s inexperience, to the way that Ruben helps the experience along. It’s a scene that reminded me of what made Baby Reindeer so great.

But a non-negotiable with me is story. And, quite frankly, this show doesn’t have one. The art of great storytelling is a marriage of both character AND plot. If you only have one, it feels like something’s missing. The show can only move at a certain pace. And I’m not sure I’m willing to spend 7 more hours watching uncomfortable tension for one great scene per episode. If there were a larger story being built here, that may be different. But there isn’t. And so, Half Man probably won’t get a second viewing from me.

That image there represents the screenplay I reviewed in this month’s newsletter. That script comes from the hottest writer-director in Hollywood at the moment. The man is single-handedly setting up project after project. And this is his buzzy ascension into a brand new genre. To give you some insight into my reaction, I gave this script a rating I’VE NEVER GIVEN BEFORE. So, you’re definitely going to want to check this out.

Other topics in this month’s newsletter include me admitting I was wrong about something. I know. Shocker of the century. Some new writing insights into the future of AI (writing scripts is going to radically change). An update on that buzzy new 180 page hero’s journey amateur screenplay I read, now with more story detail! Timothee Chalamet (of course). How to actually write flashbacks that work. And my final thoughts on the run-up to the May release of Mandalorian and Grogu.

If you are not on my newsletter list or you just want me to send you the newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “NEWSLETTER” and I’ll send it to you. According to my mailing program, everyone on the list should receive the newsletter by 7pm pacific time. So if you don’t get it by then (check your spam!) go ahead and e-mail me.

Once you read it, share your thoughts below!

Best comedy script of the year??

Genre: Comedy/Action
Premise: After his beloved cow is senselessly killed, a peaceful dairy farmer becomes a vengeance-obsessed one-man wrecking crew, setting out through our modern, curdled world to take on a corrupt conglomerate and the violent enforcers who protect it.
About: This script was optioned by super production company, Davis Entertainment. They most recently produced Predator: Badlands. On the comedy side, they produced Game Night.
Writers: Lucas Kavner & Dylan Dawson
Details: 109 pages

Driver for the Milkman?

Subconsciously, I’m always tracking HOW HARD THE WRITER’S WORKING.

Are they doing everything within their power to entertain you? Or are they taking large chunks of screenplay space for granted? Putting in a bunch of filler until they get to their next funny scene idea?

You know that, when a writer is working BEFORE HIS SCRIPT EVEN STARTS, that’s a writer you want to read. And here, we get the best use of the title page I’ve seen in years. Never have I seen a title page so accurately prepare you for the screenplay you’re about to read than this one.

That made me smile. But what I was desperately hoping was that this title page wasn’t the best thing about the script. Let’s find out!

The Milkman is a pure soul in a dying age. He doesn’t know what TikTok is. He knows how to extract milk and deliver it. At that, he’s an expert.

But one day, when he’s delivering milk to a local diner, a giant influencer, Scronk, shows up and starts making fun of the diner’s waitress. The Milkman can’t take it and proceeds to beat the living hell out of the influencer’s posse. Then he utilizes a humiliating ritual, forcing Scronk to drink an entire glass of milk like a good boy.

A couple of days later, Scronk shows up to his farm with goons and they try to kill him. While the fight rages on inside, Scronk goes to the cow barn and kills the Milkman’s favorite cow, Dina! She’s named Dina after the Milkman’s dead wife. In many ways, the cow serves as his current wife. But now she’s dead too!

When the Milkman learns that Scronk is on his way to a big influencer conference in the city, he visits his old stew-obsessed mentor, Creech, and prepares for revenge. Going incognito as a Gez Z “wood milk” influencer at the conference, the Milkman inadvertently becomes the hit of the conference, with former music icon Moby offering 30 million dollars to buy the wood milk brand.

Milkman eventually locates Scronk and chases him through the conference. A misstep throws Scronk into a vegan shark tank. But the sharks break their vegan diet to devour poor Scronk straight into his expiration date.

Seemingly, this chapter in the Milkman’s life is over. But what we learn is that Scronk is the son of multi-billionaire online retailer, Benedict Valabont, THE ORIGINAL CREATOR OF THE MILKMAN DIRECTIVE. Benedict is determined to get revenge. So the Milkman goes on the run with the mysterious Cassie, a bean bag influencer, and try to hide from Benedict’s men. But that isn’t going to last long. Whether you like your milk straight, chocolate, or strawberry, there’s going to be a milk showdown. And only one man’s milkshake is going to bring all the boys to the yard!

This is how you write a parody script.

This was really funny. Right from the start, it had these little moments that made me giggle, such as the Milkman first revealing his shrine room to his dead wife.

There’s also this hilarious moment where he runs to the dying cow after Scronk has attacked it and takes it in his arms. The cow’s face turns into his dead wife’s face briefly and she apologizes that she’s dying. And the Milkman starts making out with her and we briefly flash back to reality to show that he’s making out with a dying cow.

And yes, I know that some people will find that stupid. But what’s actually quite clever about it is that it’s a parody of the motivation in the original John Wick movie. The whole reason John Wick went after the Russian mob was not because they killed his dog. It’s because they killed the dog that his wife gave him before she died. And so these writers take that to the next level. So there’s some meta comedy going on here.

I always love when writers milk their concept for scenes and jokes, no pun intended. Later in the script, the Milkman meets Cassie. And there are clearly sparks flying. But then, a couple of scenes later, Cassie casually tells the Milkman that she’s lactose intolerant and you’ve never seen someone so devastated in his life, lol.

And then these writers go to town on all this acronym stuff. It’s one of the best running jokes in the script. Milkman and Cassie run into the “DELIVERY MAN,” (Deep Extraction Logistics, Intellect, Vigilance, Elimination, Reconnaissance, Yield – Mobile Assault Node). They run into ELEVATOR GUY (Elite Level Enhanced Vanguard Agent Trained for Operations, Recon, Guerrilla Undertakings, Yields). They run into a lady named DIANE who swears she’s innocent. BUT SHE’S NOT. She turns out to be D.I.A.N.E. (Distractingly Innocent And Normal, Evil).

They even make fun of those epigraph quotes writers put after their title pages. In this one we get, “Sometimes what I actually love to do is go to a farm and get fresh milk.” – Jake Gyllenhaal.

And then there’s just totally crazy batshit out there stuff that is hilarious.  Like when Milkman goes to his old mentor’s excessively booby-trapped house in the forest and must navigate ten thousand traps before finally getting to Creech.

And it’s all done with love and humor. I thought The Beekeeper script was great. This totally makes fun of it. And I’m sure Kurt Wimmer, the writer of Beekeeper, who I’m friendly with, would think it’s hilarious as well. That’s the key with these scripts. If you write them with hate in your veins, they come off as bitter and unfunny. You gotta have that love if you’re going to write a comedy that actually makes the reader feel good.

And I loved the little touches here. As I noted above, at the influencer conference, Moby approaches the Milkman and tells him he wants to buy the wood milk brand. Milkman couldn’t care less. He’s trying to follow Scronk but the “surprisingly agile” Moby keeps getting in his way. It’s a fun little scene.

And then, later, when the Milkman almost gets to Scronk but has to battle a bunch of his bodyguards, we break into Moby’s big 2003 hit, “Porcelain,” and in this slow motion operatic ballet of a fight, we watch the Milkman take down the goons one by one.

That may seem like a small thing. But you have to understand that when I read scripts, I almost always read the most basic version of any scene that can happen. So, if a weaker writer is writing this scene, they’re just writing the Milkman fighting a bunch of goons. They’ll add some funny little moments in the fight here and there. But nothing about the sequence stands out.

When writers do little payoffs like this, it elevates the scene. It makes it different from what the reader usually reads. And that helps separate you, the writer, from everyone else. If you want to separate yourself, you gotta do something that other people don’t do!! And, often, that’s just taking a little extra time and trying to be creative. Like today’s writers did.

With comedy scripts, one of the big questions I ask is, “Do they understand the assignment?” Or, in other words, do the writers understand what their premise is and how to get the most out of it? And these writers ace that test. I mean, they freaking ace it.

This is a definite recommend. It didn’t quite get to “impressive” status mainly because the first half is funnier than the second half. If they would’ve kept up that same level of laughs throughout the whole thing, this becomes the best comedy script in the last five years. It may not be that but it’s still really funny.

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

What I learned: If you divide a script into four quarters, the quarter that writers have the most trouble with, by far, is the third quarter. It’s the quarter of the script that is least defined in the teachings of screenwriting. And there are legitimate reasons for that. The further into a script the story unfolds, the more unique to that specific story it is. So to try and turn that section into some “must follow” set of story beats would hurt more than it would help the screenplay. The way this bleeds into comedy screenplays is that this is always the section with the least amount of laughs. And I think that may be because the writers are so focused on plotting the story towards its climax. Just remember that if you’re writing a comedy, laughs are always the priority. They’re the priority over character. They’re the priority over plot. Never forget that you have to make people continually laugh in a comedy. If you go three or four scenes where there isn’t a good laugh, you’re going to lose the audience. I saw that a little bit here in Milkman’s third quarter. But, that’s what they made rewriting for. :)

Understanding this one TV writing trick gives you a gigantic advantage in feature writing

I’m confused by Hollywood’s shock that “Michael” is doing so well at the box office. He’s literally the most popular pop star in history. And he had one of the most interesting lives ever. Of course a movie about him is going to do well. Especially when you consider how great his songs are. That alone gets people to the theater.

I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about this on the site, but I was briefly involved in developing a musical biopic. I know, I know. Ironic with how much I hate them. But the opportunity arose and I saw it as a fun challenge.

What I learned is that these movies are all slam dunks. They always make money. But the reason why you don’t see them getting made that much is because they’re so hard to get made. Especially if it’s a band. Because the band always ends up hating each other (don’t expect music biopics of The Police or Pink Floyd anytime soon). There’s always one band member who refuses to have his likeness used. It’s incredibly hard to get everyone on board.

Which was the case with the project I was on. It was a two-member band and the two hated each other. And don’t even get me started on what writing the script looks like. Each member of the band is, obviously, going to want their character to look as good as possible, get a ton of attention, have the best lines, have the best moments, etc.

On top of that, if you wait for your solo singers or your band members to die, now you’re dealing with the estates. Which can be even worse. Cause they may be controlled by multiple people (the five kids of the singer), and all of those people are going to have different opinions. So getting everybody to sign off is near impossible.

This is also why, when these movies do get made, they’re so vanilla. Because the people involved, whether it be the living singers or the estates of those singers, can veto the script. So, if you put anything even mildly negative in there, it gets vetoed. Which is why you’re seeing all this talk over the weekend about how sanitized “Michael” is. Of course it’s sanitized! They wouldn’t have approved it otherwise.

Whenever you see one of these movies get made, it really is a miracle.

So, how did this get made? My guess is that they needed the money. The Michael Jackson estate is notorious for being in debt. That’s usually the only way that you can get these things made. If all the people involved are really hurting for money. And this looks like it’s going to make them PLENTY OF MONEY.

I opted not to see the Michael Jackson biopic mainly because the movie I’m imagining in my head is the exact same movie that I would’ve seen if I bought a ticket. So why go see the movie if I’ve already seen it?

It is a case study in the paradox of concept-generation. On the professional side of Hollywood, everyone’s looking for the fresh new thing. But on the consumer side, a large portion of the world is okay with going to see exactly what they expect to see. There are people just like me who already know what this movie is going to be and that’s exactly why they go. It’s strange because those two approaches don’t line up and I’m not sure how to reconcile them. I just know that TO GET SOMETHING MADE, because you have to push it through the professional side of Hollywood first, you should be trying to write something fresh.

Okay, let’s move on to my current TV obsession, the second season of Beef. Beef follows the manager, Joshua, of a ritzy country club, and his strained relationship with his wife, Lindsay, who wants him to quit and focus on the Air BnB project they’d agreed to make their business when they got married.

It also follows a young naive couple who work at the club, Austin and Ashley, who have used a violent argument video they secretly recorded of Joshua and Lindsay, to blackmail themselves into better jobs at the club.

In episode 3, Ashley learns that Austin, whom she helped con his way into a physical therapy job at the club, may be giving physical therapy lessons to the attractive Korean assistant of the club’s Korean owner. Freaked out, she manically charges down the street, and accidentally falls down a steep hidden hill where she gets badly injured. This leads us into episode 4, where Austin takes her to the ER. The entire episode takes place in the ER, as they wait to get Ashley into a room.

For those unfamiliar with TV writing parlance, this is called a “bottle episode.” This is an age old practice whereby, to save money, the show writes an episode that is limited to a single location. The reasoning is not dissimilar from why I advocate writing contained horror or thriller scripts. Because it’s cheaper!

The reason I bring up the bottle episode is because bottle episodes are rarely designed to move the plot forward. Their job is to create as entertaining an episode as possible under the less-than-ideal circumstances, allowing the production to extend its season out to the full number of episodes contracted, while saving money for the bigger flashier episodes.

In almost every form of storytelling, the most prioritized directive is TO MOVE THE STORY FORWARD. Each scene must move the story closer to its destination. In feature writing, this is a must. In TV writing, it’s “do as well as you can.” And in bottle episode writing, it’s “if you can push any of the story forward great, but if not, that’s okay too.”

This is where you’re challenged the most as a writer. How do you keep things entertaining if you aren’t moving the story forward? If you can learn to do this, you are a major force in the feature screenwriting world. Because it means that, should the thrust of the story be taken away from you, you can still make things entertaining. For example, if Indiana Jones isn’t allowed to search for the Ark of the Covenant for a scene, you would be able to make that scene entertaining still. And TV is where you get to practice this skill.

How do you do it? I’m going to tell you right now. So take notes!

If you don’t have forward story momentum in a scene, you must move to your second most dependable dramatic option: CONFLICT. You must make sure there is conflict in the scene. By conflict, I do not mean characters yelling at each other (although that is an option). By conflict, I mean anything that’s out of balance between the characters in the scene.

What happens is a sort of “pseudo-forward-momentum” is created by the characters speaking to each other, since it creates the hope that they will figure things out and everything will come back into balance.

Let’s say fictional couple Dan and Shelly are at a dinner party. Dan doesn’t like that his wife drinks a lot at these parties. So, during the party, he publicly makes passive aggressive comments about her drinking. Shelly is embarrassed. After the night is over, they drive home and that’s where we write a scene. We write the scene of these two getting ready for bed.

Notice how, technically, there is no overarching goal for either character that’s pushing the story forward in this scene. Indiana Jones is not trying to find the Ark. And yet, you can still write an entertaining scene. You achieve this through imbalance.

Shelly is upset about Dan embarrassing her at the party. Dan is upset because she always drinks too much. These two are living in imbalance in this scene. So maybe Shelly brings it up. Or Dan brings it up. Or maybe neither brings it up. They just go about their nightly routine. Just the fact that there is imbalance in their relationship in this moment creates forward momentum. Because we want to see if (we are hoping) they can bring their problem back into balance.

And that’s pretty much all there is to it. The caveat I’d add is that you do the work to get these scenes WAY BEFORE THE SCENES. So, ideally, you want to create an imbalance in the relationship early on, and then that way, whenever you need a scene, you can put those two in a situation and we’re going to feel that imbalance start to move. It might move in a negative direction. It might move in a positive direction. But it’s going to move itself regardless. And the entertainment comes from us hoping that the imbalance is resolved.

So, in Beef’s fourth episode, the primary unresolved issue is that Austin has been secretly giving physical therapy to the Korean assistant at work. Ashley knows there’s some romantic interest on the assistant’s end. And it’s starting to seem like there’s interest on Austin’s end as well.

This gives us our imbalance and the majority of the episode’s entertainment structure is built around this imbalance. For example, Austin goes to the vending machines, leaving his phone with Ashley. The assistant happens to text Austin at that moment, except Ashley has his phone. So Ashley starts texting “as Austin” to try and extract information of any wrongdoing from the assistant.

There’s a lot more that goes on than that. But most of the interactions are built around that issue getting resolved. And since getting anything resolved feels like progress, it creates the illusion of a “forward-moving” story even if the plot itself hasn’t moved forward at all.

To be clear, when you’re writing a feature script, you should be trying to move your story forward in every single scene. So, for example, in Star Wars, every scene ends with characters a little closer to their goal (get to Alderran for the good guys, find those droids for the bad guys) than they were before.

If you can’t do that for whatever reason, then you can use what they do in TV writing as a substitute. Make sure there is conflict in the scene between your characters. And then, simply play out their interaction in a way where we, the reader, can hope that we’re getting closer to bringing things back in balance.  And, by the way, it rarely does come back into balance.  That’s what keeps us watching: The hope that this time will be different.

All right, folks. Get back into those scripts and keep writing because the Blood & Ink Showdown deadline is Cinco de Mayo!