I don’t have a ton of time so I’m writing this post off the cuff. Buyer beware. When I heard that James Gunn was gone just four years into his regime at DC, I was a little shocked. I mean, I knew with the barely acceptable box office of Clayface that something was coming. I’m not sure I knew they were going to completely destroy DC.

If you’re looking for a breakdown of how badly things went, Variety has an article on the implosion. But what interests me isn’t so much the business side of this disaster. It’s the writing side.

Because the more I look at what Gunn was trying to do, the more I realize that a lot of his instincts were good. So how did it all go wrong? More importantly, what can screenwriters learn from it?

Let’s start with something that made me laugh. After making Superman, Gunn said it was the greatest filmmaking experience of his life. And my immediate reaction was, “Well of course it was! For the first time in your career, you were making a movie with no oversight. You were the boss! I’d be pretty happy with that kind of freedom myself.”

After Gunn got fired, he immediately went to his favorite place, Twitter, to chat with the people. He talked about how much he hated the administrative side of running DC Studios. The meetings. The endless responsibilities that came with overseeing a studio.

Does that sound familiar?

It should. Because I would argue that WE’RE ALL JAMES GUNN.

Every aspiring screenwriter who works a job they don’t particularly love so they can pay the bills is dealing with this problem. You want to write. You want to create. You want to spend your day coming up with amazing characters and unforgettable scenes. But you can’t. Because you’ve got a job. And that job doesn’t give a shit about your dreams.

That job wants you there at 9 a.m. It wants you to answer emails. It wants you to deal with annoying customers and impossible deadlines and that coworker who somehow turned a five-minute minor issue into a three-hour meeting.

By the time you’re finished? You’re exhausted. Your brain is fried. The last thing you want to do is write. And this is where James Gunn gets a lot of credit.

THE MAN WRITES.

He wrote Superman. He wrote Man of Tomorrow. He’s probably rewriting all these other DC movies and shows. He recently wrote another secret project.

That’s the mentality you need. Because it’s easy to convince yourself that your circumstances are difficult. That nobody understands how draining your job is. That if you could just get six months off, you could finally write that screenplay. But the truth is, there’s never going to be a perfect time.

You’re always going to have responsibilities. You’re always going to have something competing for your attention. And if you’re waiting for the day when writing becomes convenient, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.

It reminds me of that one aspiring writer from the early days of Scriptshadow who some of you may remember. He sent me a screenplay and explained he’d written the entire thing on his phone. Every day, during his commute to work, he’d pull out his phone and write. I remember making fun of that script because, well, it definitely READ like it had been written on a phone.

But looking back, I realize I was focused on the wrong thing. The screenplay wasn’t bad because he’d written it on his phone. It was bad because he was a beginner screenwriter.

From a purely hustling standpoint, the fact that he wrote a screenplay on the way to work every day was fucking inspiring. I remember that he had a family and, technically, no time to write during the day. SO HE MADE TIME.

I read a similar story about a book editor, Gail Honeyman, who not-so-secretly wanted to be an author. But her day job of editing made it difficult. So she freaking got up 2 hours earlier every morning, at 5am, and wrote then. SHE MADE TIME. And she ended up writing a really great book called Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

These people get things done. And that’s the exact mentality you need. If you’ve got 30 minutes, write for 30 minutes. If you’ve got an hour, write for an hour. If you’ve got an electric car, set it to automatic drive on your commute and write then. Okay, maybe don’t do that. I don’t want to be sued if you plow into a Yum Yum donut shop. Unless it’s a really good scene. Then it may be worth it.

And that’s the big lesson I take away from James Gunn’s DC experience. No matter how busy you are, no matter how demanding your job is, no matter how mentally exhausted you feel, you have to figure out a way to write.

Now let’s talk about the actual DC movies, because one of the biggest criticisms of Gunn’s approach was that he kept focusing on characters who weren’t popular. Supergirl. Clayface. Green Lantern.

Meanwhile, the biggest character in the entire DC universe was sitting right there. Danuhnuhnuh Danuhnuhnuh BAAAATMAAAAAN!

And somehow, Gunn never got to use him. Somehow, Matt Reeves, who takes longer to make a movie than some ice ages, had veto power over Gunn, the head of the company, for using Robert Pattinson. And we’re not ever sure that Gunn liked Pattinson. As I’m writing this I’m realizing there’s a very good possibility that Gunn was fired because of Batman. Because if he got to make a Batman film, for sure he has a shot at a billion dollar gross. And if he has a billion dollar DC superhero movie on his resume, they ain’t firing him this week.

Despite that, I still get why Gunn was choosing the characters he chose. Supergirl was about a deeply troubled woman dealing with grief, trauma, and addiction. If we’re all being honest with ourselves, that’s a pretty interesting starting point for a superhero movie.

Then you have Clayface. A body-horror movie about a man whose identity is literally falling apart. That’s a potentially incredible vehicle for exploring identity, self-worth, and what happens when someone loses the thing that defines them.

Then there’s Lanterns. Gunn wanted to explore what happens when a superhero gets older. What happens when the excitement wears off? When a guy who’s spent his life being celebrated starts coasting on that reputation? Put that character alongside a younger, more idealistic Green Lantern, and suddenly you’ve got a slick sounding buddy-cop show.

Again, that’s a legitimate dramatic premise.

So why didn’t any of these ideas work? Well, because screenwriting is a very, very, very, VERY tricky thing. You see, a screenplay is, and will always be, a living breathing organism.

When you sit down to write one of these slippery suckers, you have an idea of what movie you’re going to write. You know the tone. You know the characters. You know what the story is supposed to be about. Then you start writing and somewhere along the way, the screenplay starts talking back to you.

It says, “You know that movie you wanted to write? Well, I actually think it’d be more interesting if we went in THIS direction.” And you think, “Huh. That’s actually a pretty good idea.” So you follow it. And since your plot starts changing, your characters have to change. Which means their arcs have to change. Which means the theme has to change.

Before you know it, you’re writing a different movie from the one you originally conceived. This happens ALL THE TIME in writing. And here’s the problem. Sometimes the new movie is better. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’ve followed a bunch of individually interesting ideas into a screenplay that no longer has an identity.

And I suspect something like that happened with Supergirl. My guess is that the original vision was a much more melancholy character in line with the Woman of Tomorrow comic it was based on. But somewhere during the development process, the movie started moving toward a conventional James Gunn-style space adventure. More humor. More colorful characters.

And the problem is that those two movies don’t necessarily fit together. One wants to be an introspective drama about grief and loss. The other wants to be a fun, irreverent space adventure. Can you combine those things? I guess. But it sure as hell ain’t easy.

Which brings us to one of the most ironic things about the DC Gunn experiment. When he first took over, one of his biggest promises was that he wasn’t going to make the mistake other superhero studios were making. He was going to make sure the scripts were GREAT before giving them a green light.

That sounds wonderful in theory. But in practice? It’s complicated. Because how do you know when a screenplay is great? What happens when you’ve spent two years developing a script, gone through eight drafts, followed all these interesting new directions, and you reach the end only to realize you’ve drifted away from the original movie that got you excited?

Do you start over? Do you throw away two years of work and go back to page one? Or do you convince yourself that your new “best of both worlds” version works? I actually think that if Gunn took a true risk with Supergirl and made the actual comic it was based on, which was much darker, that the movie would’ve done way better.

Which is something all of us writers battle with. Do we do that darker version that’s way riskier or do we do the safer version that’s been proven to work? Gunn ultimately leaned into the latter (“I know this world. It’s Guardians in the DC universe.”) and it was the wrong way to go.  Conversely, I would argue that the risky dark direction Curry Barker took Obsession in, which could have easily had a stock setup with characters doing microfiche investigations in the second act to find out how to stop the curse, is exactly what could happen when you follow a riskier instinct.

The place you really get to study character is in TV. But this is something that these giant franchises still haven’t figured out. Sure, you get to study character more in a TV show. But everybody watching these shows expects more from them since they’re superheroes. So you always end up leaving audiences disappointed.

Sure, every once in a blood red moon you get a Penguin. But those shows are exceptions. After that initial two year honeymoon period when us Star Wars and superhero fans got to see our favorite world on TV, 9 out of every 10 of these shows have been terrible. I still have nightmares about the Jack Black and Lizzo Mandalorian episode.

I think the lesson here is to identify early on the exact movie you want to make. For example, Todd Phillips knew from second one that he wanted his Joker to be The King of Comedy. And every creative decision he made was aligned with that inspiration. He never deviated. It’s okay to follow a screenplay down unexpected paths. But if you’re getting too far away from your original vision, you want to make deathly sure that that’s the direction you want to go.

A few weeks ago, I was getting hammered in the comments for dissing Coyote vs. Acme’s box office performance. I’d pointed out (rightly I may add) that, after all the hoopla and grandstanding about how amazing this canceled movie was, that it only made 15 million bucks when it finally came out.

A bunch of you buried me for it. But I’ve been around Hollywood long enough to know that whenever somebody starts telling you that there’s this AMAZING movie that Hollywood refuses to release, or this AMAZING screenplay that nobody will make, that 99% of the time it’s complete and utter bullshit.

I know this because I’m the guy who went back and read all those “legendary” unproduced screenplays. And what I learned was that nearly all of them sucked! They weren’t these misunderstood works of genius. There were extremely problematic at worst, and average at best.

I’ve always maintained that if something is genuinely good, Hollywood will figure out a way to get it made or release it. Trust me. And Coyote vs. Acme proves my point. It did not languish in obscurity. Somebody bought it and distributed it.

Well, I finally watched it. And while I wouldn’t call the movie great, I have to admit that it may contain the single greatest adaptation idea for difficult material that I’ve ever come across. I’m serious. I was blown away by how clever the entry point into this story was.

Imagine walking into a Hollywood producer’s office and the producer says, “There’s this coyote. And he chases this bird.” Silence. Then, “Go!”

THAT’S THE PREMISE YOU’RE BEING ASKED TO BUILD A MOVIE OUT OF!

These cartoons were designed to be two or three-minute little stories where a coyote sets up some elaborate trap, the trap backfires, and that’s it. See you next week. It’s arguably the most two-dimensional premise in the history of storytelling.

But here’s where the genius comes in. Somebody realized that all those Acme products Wile E. Coyote uses, the rockets, the explosives, the catapults, the whatever-the-hell-else-he’s ordering, NEVER WORK. They always malfunction. So what if they were defective? And what if Wile E. Coyote decided to SUE Acme?

I mean, come on. That’s brilliant! All of a sudden, you’ve got a legal thriller. You’ve got a giant corporation. You’ve got a little guy fighting against the system. You’ve got a mystery surrounding why these products keep failing. You’ve got an actual STORY. I cannot remember the last time I saw somebody find such a clever way into material that seemed impossible to adapt.

Naturally, I wanted to know who the screenwriter was because I was ready to declare him a genius. Well, it turns out the original idea wasn’t the screenwriter’s. It came from a 1990 New Yorker humor piece by Ian Frazier called “Coyote v. Acme,” which imagined Wile E. Coyote taking legal action against the company responsible for all his defective equipment. So Frazier deserves the bulk of the credit here.

But then James Gunn got involved and he came up with the idea to create a buddy comedy with a lawyer. Then screenwriter Samy Burch fleshed the whole thing out into a feature length story.

And I loved what they did with the lawyer, played by Will Forte. He’s this classic, almost “Hero’s Journey” type, protagonist who doesn’t believe in himself. He’s a settler. He’s somebody who’s spent his life backing down, accepting less, never fighting for what he wants.

And now he’s paired with a coyote whose entire existence is built around NEVER GIVING UP. That’s a great character pairing! The whole thing is just really cleverly conceived.

BUT HOW DO YOU FIND THAT ANGLE?

Hollywood is constantly buying up stuff that nobody knows how to turn into a movie. Books. Comics. Board games. Toys. Newspaper articles. Some obscure property from 1974 that a producer remembers loving when he was eight years old. But then once they have the rights, they realize, “Oh shit. How do we actually turn this into a movie???”

That’s where you come in. Once you start selling scripts and getting hired for jobs, a lot of your career is going to consist of walking into rooms and pitching your take on material that doesn’t naturally lend itself to a movie.

And you’re going to be competing against a bunch of other writers who are trying to figure out the exact same thing. Which means your job is to come up with a better angle than everybody else’s.

One of the most famous adaptation examples of all time is Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman, who was hired to adapt Susan Orlean’s book, The Orchid Thief, which was about an orchid collector. And he couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a movie. So what did he do? He wrote a movie about a screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman who couldn’t figure out how to adapt The Orchid Thief! And that’s how we got Adaptation.

I mean, that’s one way to solve your adaptation problem. Unfortunately, most of us would get blacklisted if we tried that stunt.

But the larger point remains. All adaptation is is trying to find the most interesting way into a story. And here’s the part I want you guys to understand. We’re actually all adapting our own material. Even when you’re writing your own original screenplay.

Let’s say you want to write a movie about an alien who shows up on Earth. Okay, great. But what movie are you going to make? Are you going to make E.T., where a little boy befriends the alien? Are you going to make Starman, where the alien takes the form of a woman’s dead husband and we get this romantic road movie? Are you going to make The Thing, where the alien can imitate anybody and suddenly you’ve got this terrifying horror mystery where nobody trusts anybody? Or maybe you’re going to make The Man Who Fell to Earth, where the alien becomes a wealthy businessman. Or Under the Skin, where the alien disguises itself as a beautiful woman and starts luring men to their deaths. Look at how DIFFERENT all those movies are. And yet they all started with essentially the same basic idea. One alien shows up on Earth. There are a MILLION ways into that idea. And your job as a screenwriter is to find the most interesting one.

Which brings me to a movie I was REALLY looking forward to.

ALI G: WHO IZ I?

I told you guys how excited I was to finally get an Ali G movie. I used to LOVE Ali G. Especially during those early internet days when people would post clips of him interviewing politicians and asking them the stupidest questions imaginable. Easily some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen.

I always found it strange that Sacha Baron Cohen chose Borat as his big breakout movie instead of Ali G. I always thought Ali G was funnier.

So when I heard we were finally getting an Ali G movie, I was pumped. So I fired the thing up this weekend and… Oh boy.

Oh my.

Oh heavens to Betsy.

The film is a complete and utter failure.

But it’s not all bad because watching this movie proves my very point! Sacha Baron Cohen chose the wrong way into this material.

He took Ali G, this wild, wacky, two-dimensional character whose entire appeal is that he says the most outrageous shit off the cuff, and turned him into a traditional, character-driven protagonist.

You know, the kind of character who has an internal struggle and needs to go on some big emotional journey. So now Ali G is about to become a father. And he’s got to figure out if he’s ready to be a father. And what kind of father he’s going to be. And whether he can handle the responsibility of raising a child. And I’m sitting there thinking…

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING????

This is ALI G! This is the guy who asks Buzz Aldrin if we’ll ever walk on the moon. And now, two minutes later, we’re supposed to sit there and watch him have some thoughtful, sincere moment about the responsibilities of fatherhood?? It doesn’t fit! It doesn’t fit!!!

What’s interesting about this is that, technically, Sacha Baron Cohen is ‘doing the right screenwriting thing.’ Give your character an internal struggle. Give him an emotional journey. Make him grow. Make him confront his fears. I tell you guys to do all the time!

But here’s the problem. Not every character is designed for that.

Ali G isn’t an inner-journey character. He’s an absurd character. His entire appeal is that he says the dumbest things imaginable to people who don’t know how to respond.

You know who understood this? Larry Charles. Charles directed Borat. And what I loved about Borat was that it was just wall-to-wall hijinks. Yes, there was a vague story connecting everything. But the story was there to facilitate the comedy. It wasn’t there to turn Borat into some deeply introspective character who spends half the movie contemplating his emotional shortcomings.

This actually brings us back to something else Coyote vs. Acme got right. They could’ve made Wile E. Coyote talk. Think about how tempting that must’ve been. You’ve got this lawyer who’s going to spend the entire movie with the coyote. Wouldn’t it be easier if they could talk to each other? I’m sure people at the studio pushed HARD for that.

But they didn’t do it. Because Wile E. Coyote DOESN’T TALK. That’s part of what makes him Wile E. Coyote! The second you give him a voice and have him start explaining his feelings, you change the character.

Meanwhile, Sacha Baron Cohen, who directed the new Ali G movie himself, decided to give Ali G this whole fatherhood journey. And point blank it ruined the film. There are still a few funny moments (The therapist character having sex with Ali G in order to steal his DNA – I couldn’t believe what I was watching but I was still laughing my ass off) but then we’d have a 10 minute scene of Ali G in a cab looking forlorn as he contemplated fatherhood.

Which is why I keep coming back to this idea that the most important decision you make as a screenwriter happens BEFORE you write the script. Are you even writing the right version of your movie? Because you can follow every screenwriting rule in the book but if you’re writing the wrong movie, it won’t matter.

THE BOX OFFICE!

Godzilla Minus Zero opened at number one, with an estimated $31 million weekend. Which is a remarkable start for a foreign langue movie. And I’m sure everybody is going to tell me how amazing it is. Just like everybody told me how amazing Godzilla Minus One was. You know what?

NOT GUNNA FALL FOR IT TWICE.

He’s even bigger this time around!

First of all, can we talk about these titles? Godzilla Minus One. Godzilla Minus Zero. WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH DOES THAT MEAN??? Why are we doing math in our titles????? I know somebody’s going to jump into the comments and explain it to me. I DON’T CARE. You cannot change my mind that these are some of the worst titles in movie history.

WORDS MATTER. We’re writers. And when you give me a title with integers in it, I’m out.

I ended up watching the first Godzilla cause of the great reviews and oh my God. That had to be one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. There were these endless stretches of basic, entry-level drama where I was sitting there waiting for Godzilla to show up. And waiting. And waiting.

“But Carson, the human drama is what makes the monster stuff meaningful!” Okay. Okay. But then here’s an idea. MAKE THE HUMAN DRAMA INTERESTING.

Just a thought.

Which brings me to the biggest cheat code in Hollywood: Big monsters sell tickets. If you’re struggling to come up with a movie idea that Hollywood might be interested in, put a giant monster in it and I GUARANTEE your chances of selling the script just went up 100 fold. I’m joking but I’m kinda not.

Now, to be fair, I haven’t seen Minus Zero. But that’s only because I’m still recovering from Long Boredom which I contracted from the first one.

WILD HORSE NINE

And finally, we have Wild Horse Nine. Apparently numbers are the new letters in titles? I don’t know what to say about this movie other than that it looks like somebody found a time machine, traveled back to 2004, grabbed a couple of random film reels, and brought them back to 2026. I mean, Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich? I feel like I should be watching the trailer on QuickTime.

And the funny thing is, it’s getting crazy good reviews! But let’s be real here. The reason this movie has great reviews is because the people seeing it are ALL THE SAME PEOPLE WHO WERE REVIEWING FILMS IN 2004.

I don’t think Diversity Debbie’s Cinema Corner is rushing out to see this flick. If she and her movie buddy critics were, this RT score would be a lottttttt lower I promise you that.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s movie-watching experiences. If there’s one thing I want you guys to take away from today, it’s don’t assume that the first version of the story you come up with is the right one. There may be a much better movie hiding inside that same concept, and it’s your job to find it.

Keep writing, people!

The most recent batch of screenplays I’ve read have ranged from average to decent. But nothing’s broken out and got me excited. And that got me thinking, “Carson, what *does* get you excited?”

I asked Scripty about it and he said, “Cocoa Krispies?” Horentia kept telling me I needed to write an article about the moment that led to the downfall of cinema. “Great Grandma, I’ve already written about how Marvel ruined moviegoing.” “Not Marvel ya cornsquabble. I’m talking about when they allowed them talkies in the theaters.” I quickly realized that neither of these two were going to be any help.

But that got me thinking. We spend so much time talking about screenwriting from the writer’s perspective. So I thought today, we’d talk about it from the reader’s perspective. Specifically, I would identify the key checkpoints that a reader encounters in a script and go over what’s going on in my head during those checkpoints.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

Checkpoint #1: The First 3 Lines

The first thing I’m judging when I open a screenplay is the first few sentences. Are they clean? Is the writing confident? Does the writer know which details matter? Can they create an image in my head clearly?

I was reading a script the other day where I was struggling to understand what I was looking at with almost every sentence. The writer would describe something, I’d have to stop and figure out what they meant. Then I’d read another sentence and have to do the same thing all over again. It was exhausting.

Compare these two sentences from a “Scream” like script.

The house is located in a suburban neighborhood where there are several other houses nearby, all middle class, although none are particularly close to the ones next to them. The lights are on inside, illuminating the windows, while the surrounding area is shadowy and dark.

And…

An isolated suburban house. Every window blazing with light. Beyond the driveway, nothing but darkness.

Both descriptions are giving me the same information. But the second one is much cleaner and more visual. That’s what I’m looking for. A writer who can put an image in my head quickly and effortlessly.

Checkpoint #2: Page 1

Once I get through the first page, there’s one very specific question that goes through my mind. Do I want to turn the page?

Screenwriters are so focused on setting up their story, introducing their protagonist, establishing the world, and getting all their pieces into place that they forget the most important thing. Somebody has to want to read this!

I’m going to shock you with this next statement. Screenplays aren’t written to be enjoyed. Indirectly they may be. But the primary reason they’re written is to pitch a movie. That’s the only reason the person reading it is reading.

So the bar for turning the page is tied to that mission. What makes someone want to turn the page? It could be an intriguing situation like a wife revealing to her husband that she wants a divorce. It could be an unusual character, like Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. It could be a mystery, like a perfectly happy person jumping out of their hotel room to their death.

There are a million ways to do it yet you’d be surprised at how often writers sabotage themselves by starting with mundane first pages. If I’m not itching to turn to page 2, I won’t give up on the script right then and there. But it’s an indication that a positive reading experience is in jeopardy.

Checkpoint #3: Page 5

Page 5 isn’t an official screenplay marker for me. It’s just roughly around when the first scene ends. And that leads to what I’m evaluating in this moment, which is: Does the writer know how to write a scene?

Do they know how to enter a scene as late as possible and leave it as early as possible? Do their scenes have a setup, conflict, and resolution? Or a setup, conflict, and cliffhanger that propels us into the next scene?

Is there conflict at all? You’d be surprised how many writers construct scenes where two characters simply talk to each other, exchange information, then leave. Nothing is being fought for. Nothing is being challenged. Nothing is changing. It’s as if the writer has never heard of the word “drama” before.

I’m also starting to evaluate the characters at this stage. By page 5, we’ve usually met one or two important people. One of the easiest ways to spot a weak writer is through how they introduce characters.

“DON, 32, well-groomed, walks across the university campus toward the student commons.”

Well groomed?? That’s all you’re telling me?? When I see a character description like that for a main character, the chances shoot up that I’m about to read a stinker.

Checkpoint # 4: Page 10

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I held a big screenplay contest and the only way I could hold it for free was that I reserved the right to stop reading after ten pages if the script sucked. So, if your script wasn’t interesting after ten pages, I was out.

It was an unexpectedly difficult task because I didn’t want to potentially overlook a good script and I realized that if I solely went on technicalities (good character set up, strong prose, clear scenes) that wasn’t the best criteria for whether the script would be good. A lot of the early scripts that passed that test went on to be terrible.

But I eventually found a magical question that solved it for me. I simply asked: Would it bother me if I had to stop reading this right now?

Would I think about it later? Would I say, “Man, I want to go back and figure out where that was going?” At ten pages, if the answer to that above question is no, I’ve learned with almost 100% certainty, the script isn’t good enough.

I’ll give you a recent example of this. I reviewed this script Canopy a couple of weeks ago and, roughly 10 pages in, I forgot that I had a consultation call that I had to jump onto.

Up until that point, the script was building towards this dangerous mission into the depths of the Amazon jungle. And during that call, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about what awaited those people on that expedition. I wanted to find out. I was excited to get back into the script and see what came next. And it was because the writer did a great job setting up his world and hinting at the danger to come.

Checkpoint #5: Page 25

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume we’re writing a 100-page screenplay. That puts the end of the first act at around page 25. I don’t actually use this moment to make some grand statement about the script. But because this is a key structural point in the screenplay, that’s where my mind goes.

I do a quick evaluation of how well the writer understands structure. Did they establish a hero who’s stuck in their life? Did they include an inciting incident that all of a sudden challenged them? Were they called to action and, if so, did they resist that call at first, only to be dragged into it afterwards? Then, on page 26 (or whatever page is after the end of your first act) are they thrust out onto their journey?

Now, let me be clear. I am not using this to evaluate whether I like the screenplay. I may like the screenplay independent of these things. But a writer who not only knows how to navigate through these structural points, but navigate through them invisibly, is a highly skilled and rare screenwriter. It means they’ve not only studied the craft, but that they have talent as well. And it gives me an immense amount of confidence when I find a writer who’s capable of these things.

Checkpoint #6: Page 40 – 45

Between the pages of 25 and 40 is when your script enters its most promising section, which is where you deliver what your concept promised.

If you’re writing Jurassic Park, this is where we get to first experience the dinosaurs. If you’re writing The Hangover, this is where the guys first wake up and stumble around, trying to figure out what the hell happened last night, encountering random babies and tigers in their hotel room.

This is the section that most delivers on the promise of the premise. So, if these scenes don’t give us that excited feeling of not just experiencing what you promised from your logline, but give it in a way that’s even BETTER than what we expected (cooler, funnier, more creative), then that’s a huge letdown for me. Because this is what I’ve been looking forward to the whole script. And if you let me down in this area, I’m depressed.

What does that let down look like? The most insidious version of it is bland cliche scenes. For example, if you write the 10,000th home invasion thriller I’ve read this year and you give me a break in and a series of standard ‘tie the homeowners up’ and start asking standard questions scenes, that tells me you’re not being creative enough. You’re not pushing yourself enough.

So this section is really key because it should be the section where I’m getting the most excited as a reader.

Checkpoint #7: Page 50 – 55

This is where things get interesting. And by interesting, I mean this is where an enormous number of screenplays go straight to the graveyard.

Because here’s what happens. A writer comes up with a cool concept. They know how to introduce their protagonist. They understand the inciting incident. They know how to send their hero off on their journey. And they even have a handful of fun scenes planned for the beginning of that adventure. But once they’ve written those scenes, they realize something terrifying.

They’re out of ideas.

They’ve got another fifty pages to write and they have no idea what to do with them. Congratulations, you’ve entered the Second Act Black Hole.

And it’s one of the biggest separators between writers who only know how to set up a screenplay and writers who can actually write a full one.

So what am I looking for here? An engine that’s running red hot. Go watch Star Wars. There isn’t a single moment in that film where the engine isn’t running red hot. It’s always pushing the characters forward. It’s always forcing them into the next situation.

I’m also looking for a screenplay that pushes back. I want to introduce a new concept to you here: SCREENPLAY MAN. Screenplay Man is your screenplay. Screenplay Man SHOULD HATE THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR CHARACTERS. Like literally hate them.

And so Screenplay Man should be throwing all sorts of dirty dangerous evil terrible shit at them. Wanna go to Alderran to deliver your precious little droid message? Too bad says Screenplay Man, I just blew Alderran up. Wanna go to the Rebel Base instead? Too bad says Screenplay Man, a giant fucking space station is pulling you in. Wanna save the princess? Too bad says Screenplay Man. I’m going to dump you into a trash compactor and squeeze you into human ketchup. Wanna escape and plan an attack on us? No problem, says Screenplay Man, but first I’m going to take the smartest dude on your team and put a lightsaber through his stomach.

Screenplay Man is no joke. And the best scripts allow Screenplay Man to go hog wild in the second act. A hot revving engine combined with a psychopathic Screenplay Man is the ultimate combination to keep your second act humming.

Final Checkpoint: Everything After

Here’s where my evaluation process changes. After the midpoint, I’m no longer consciously checking markers. I’m not thinking, “Okay, where’s the next plot point? Has the writer escalated the stakes? Are we setting up the third act properly?”

If the script is working, I’m past all that. At this point, I should be completely and utterly hooked. And there’s a specific way I can tell that that’s happened.

When I consult, I take detailed notes. I’ll write things like, “Page 54 — this line of dialogue doesn’t feel realistic.” Or, “Page 72 — this character is behaving inconsistently.” Or, “Page 81 — this action sequence needs to be described more clearly.”

But when I’m reading a really good screenplay, I’ll look at my document and realize that I’m on page 79 and my last note was on page 47.

I’ve completely forgotten to do my job! And that’s when I know I’m reading something special. Because the screenplay has stopped being a screenplay. It’s now a movie playing in my head where the suspension of disbelief is so strong that I actually believe that what I’m reading is real.

—

That’s how I experience a screenplay, from the first three lines to the end.

The big lesson to take away here is that you all spend so much time thinking about what you need to do and not enough time thinking about the person you’re writing the script for. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? A good writer is a master at understanding his audience and is constantly asking this question: “What is the reader thinking/feeling in this particular moment?” And if they’re not feeling the way the writer wants them to feel, then they change that moment until they achieve the feeling they’re trying to get across.

Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of the other side of the writer-reader contract. Screenwriting comes down to one simple question: Do they want to turn the page? And if at any point the answer is no, well, that’s when Screenplay Man comes knocking.

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: When his criminal mother returns after a decade, a timid teenage dishwasher who competes as an underground mascot fighter must choose between the biological mother who abandoned him and the controlling, delusional bar owner who raised him.
About: A few weeks ago, I held an Amateur Showdown for all you aspiring screenwriters out there. The voting was really close. Two weeks ago, I reviewed the winning script. But today’s script was just one vote away from winning. And ever since The Ballad of the Ember Knight lost on an Amateur Showdown, resulting in me only finding out about it when the writers hired me for a consultation a year later, I’m a bit more curious about the scripts that don’t win these things. Hence, we get today’s review…
Writer: Jamie Porter
Details: 95 pages

I always like to give unique scripts a shot. So, when I was picking screenplays to compete in the Amateur Showdown, I was excited to find this one. It scratched that “weird” itch that makes me think of movies like Being Charlie Kaufman and The Squid and the Whale. Those scripts can turn into really good indie movies. Do we have another one of those today? Let’s find out…

17 year old beanpole Cornelius competes in an underground fighting league where grown men dress up in animal mascot costumes and beat the crap out of each other. Cornelius fights as a dolphin and is one of the league’s rising stars.

Greg, who’s obsessed with bleak sad Hungarian films, is officially Cornelius’s coach and unofficially his father. The two are also close with Halpert, a 72-year-old widower who’s barely hanging onto his life and runs the fighting league. Before he dies, Halpert wants to expand the league.

One day, Cornelius’s estranged mother, Sanni, shows up. Sanni is a very unhappy miserable woman so it’s not clear why she wants to reconnect with Cornelius. But it may have something to do with her ex-boyfriend. If she comes to him with Cornelius, maybe he’ll want her back.

Eventually, Cornelius meets Milky, a weird young girl who seems to understand him in a way no one else does. The two begin hanging out and, all of a sudden, Cornelius isn’t as interested in mascot fighting so much.

As the championship nears, Sanni does something catastrophic to destroy the league, leaving Greg and Halpert scrambling to save it. But will Cornelius even want to fight if they do?

The character study.

It’s when you strip away the big, sexy concept, the exciting plot, and you tell a slow, mostly intimate, story that focuses on the characters themselves.

So it goes without saying that if you’re going to write a character study, as is the case with Cornelius, you gotta give me some great character development.

I believe that Jamie believed he was giving us that. But I would argue that he didn’t get there. And it’s a rather involved explanation as to why so hang with me and I’ll do my best to explain it.

Let’s start with Cornelius himself.

He is the titular character.

But he’s not the main character.

That’s not unheard of for a movie. But it’s frustrating if you’re the reader. Cause you go in assuming that’s the case and then all of these other characters are getting way more attention and you’re thinking, “Well, wait a minute. Who’s the main character exactly?”

At first, it appears to be Greg. He’s taken Cornelius in. He’s pushing him to be this great fighter. Readers gravitate towards characters who are ACTIVE. And let me explain why. Because screenwriters hear that advice a lot: “Make your character ACTIVE!” But I’m not sure they understand why it’s important.

It’s important because active characters are PUSHING THE STORY FORWARD. Let’s take Jeff Lebowski. The fact that he has to go out and try to get the money back for his ruined rug FORCES THINGS TO HAPPEN IN THE STORY that push it forward.

Now imagine that nobody had pissed on Jeff Lebowski’s rug. He wouldn’t have to do anything. He wouldn’t have to go anywhere. And what would that result in? No story. No plot.  A character hanging around his apartment all day.

So that’s why you want active characters.

Unfortunately, Greg is active in name only. He wants Cornelius to win. He wants to make a small fighting league a little bigger. But that’s pretty much it. That’s the extent of this character’s contribution to the story. Outside of that and his love for Hungarian movies, he’s too thin.

Then we have Sanni. I don’t know if I’d call Sanni the best character in the script because she’s unlikable in God-like proportions. But she disrupts a lot of things and, therefore, is the main source of drama in the story. Character studies NEED DRAMA. Too many screenwriters don’t know this. They think: Just create interesting characters. No. You need some sort of plot where dramatic events unfold.

My issue is that she doesn’t feel truly connected to Cornelius in any real-world convincing way. We later find out they’re not even related. She adopted him. Which makes it confusing why she would’ve abandoned him. I just never got the feeling that Jamie understood this character other than that she was a disruptor.

Eventually, Cornelius begins to break away from what everyone else wants for him when Milky comes along. But even as he starts making his own decisions, he still comes off as thin. Because when you strip everything away, what’s really happening here? A horny 17-year-old boy meets the first girl who wants to have sex with him, and suddenly he doesn’t want to fight anymore.

Is that a deep exploration of character? What are we learning about Cornelius beyond the fact that he’d rather have sex than fight? What deeper part of himself is being challenged? We get this late-arriving art storyline that seems designed to give Cornelius some of that missing depth. But rather than growing organically out of who he is and what he’s been through, it feels like another funky idea the writer has thrown into an already overcrowded script full of funky ideas.

And I kept coming back to: Who is the main character here? Cornelius starts to emerge as the main character as we near the finish line. But for the first half of the script, I don’t know if I knew a single thing about Cornelius. You can’t develop a character ONLY in the second half of the screenplay.

All of these characters need more depth. A tragic childhood backstory and one quirky characteristic each is not enough development. Real character depth comes from establishing who a person is, identifying the thing that’s holding them back in life, then putting them through a journey that forces them to confront that thing.

I just watched Coyote vs. Acme, and Will Forte plays this bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer who’s given up on life. He’s a coward who’s known for settling every case that comes to him. Then he’s dragged into this ridiculous case where he can’t settle. And over the course of his journey, he has to decide if he’s going to continue being this guy who rolls over and accepts defeat or if he’s finally going to stand up and fight for something.

THAT’S character depth because we understand what the character needs to improve then we build a story around repeatedly testing him in that area. You want to introduce your character at a point in their life where, if they keep going down the road they’re on, they’re killing their own soul. And the movie is their last-ditch chance to change that.

That’s what makes a character journey compelling. We’re watching someone fight for their soul!

Nobody in this script really cares all that much about anything. Greg cares the most but what he’s fighting for is thinner than the pancakes I made this morning. And everyone else is just depressed and dying. Cornelius is the closest we get to a character transformation but he was set up so poorly – so passively – that we never, or I should say I never, cared about him.

Part of the problem is Jamie focused on the wrong thing. He put too much importance on the quirkiness. Giving Greg a backstory where he was left at a baby giraffe zoo as a child. Sanni almost ran away with a circus musician. Cornelius and Milky make art with blood. Backstories that all have some insanely unique element (your wife didn’t just die. She died climbing Mount Kilimanjaro).

These things may feel like good writing choices because they’re unique. But they’re also insanely unrelatable. To get the audience to understand your characters, they have to relate to what they’re going through. Nobody can relate to being 7 years old, told to swim under the ice in a lake, then come out the other side to find out that your parents have left you there. That doesn’t happen in the real world.

Generally speaking, you get one wild creative choice in a script (a kid fights in an underground animal mascot league) and that’s it. With everything else, try to keep it realistic.

I’m not going to lie. This one was frustrating. I kept waiting for it to find its footing. But there was never a moment in the script where I wasn’t aware that it was being written. With that said, if you are a fan of movies like The Squid and the Whale or, even, Little Miss Sunshine, you might like this one. Check it out, form your own opinion, and tell us what you think in the comments.

Script link: Cornelius

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

What I learned: If weirdness could be measured on a 1-10 scale and you’re naturally a 6, don’t try to write a Level 9 Weirdness script. Stick closer to your natural level. Maybe push yourself to a 7 or 8. But the further you stray from your natural sensibility, the more inauthentic your writing will feel. Because at a certain point, you’re no longer drawing from your own imagination. You’re drawing from what you think a weirder person’s imagination looks like. And that’s the difference between being genuinely weird and trying to convince everyone you’re weird.

I dropped more screenwriting knowledge in this newsletter than probably any newsletter ever. There are some whopper lessons here that could literally change the entire trajectory of your screenwriting life. We talk about the hottest director in Hollywood. We talk about what the heck is going on over at Netflix. We talk about how Quentin Tarantino may hold the secret to you cracking your latest screenplay. My great grandmother makes her Scriptshadow debut. I review another huge short story sale that I got so worked up about, I had to go buy 20 pounds of ice over at 7-11 so I could create a cold plunge in my bathtub just to cool down. If you’re not signed up for my newsletter, I want to get you better health care because there’s clearly something wrong with your brain.

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