And what can you do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you?

During yesterday’s read of the first Blood & Ink script, a question burrowed into my mind. And it’s not a new question. It’s one of those screenwriting questions that never fully goes away because nobody seems to have a definitive answer for it. But it’s worth continuing to explore because it’s such a pervasive problem in the craft.

How come so many screenplays fall apart?

Yesterday’s script started strong. It was setting up this potential romance, this weird subject matter, this fun little town, this wacky space mold. You could feel the potential. But as each subsequent five pages passed, the script became messier and messier.

And I’m not picking on the writer, Eric. I see this all the time. I see it in scripts I consult on. I see it in Black List scripts. I occasionally even see it from high earning professional screenwriters.

So let’s figure out why this happens and what you can do to avoid it.

The first problem is that when writers come up with an idea, they usually only come up with the beginning of the idea. If you create a body switch concept like Freaky Friday, you’re almost exclusively focused on the switch itself and the two or three funny scenes that immediately come after it. You’re thinking about the fun. The irony. The hook.

But you’re not thinking beyond that.

Which leads us to our first mistake.

1) Starting too soon

If you start writing your script days, or even weeks, after coming up with the idea, you’re putting yourself in a very weak position. Because all you really know is the inciting incident, a few fun scenes after it, and maybe the climax. Everything in between is a giant question mark.

You are writing blind.

That’s not to say you can’t eventually find your way through the valley. Plenty of writers do. But the odds are stacked against you. You have no idea where you’re going and eventually that lack of direction catches up to you.

Treat a script idea like an expensive jacket you want to buy. Don’t buy it immediately. Let it sit for three months. If, after three months, you still desperately want that jacket, then you know it means something to you. Same with scripts. If the idea is still burning inside you months later, there’s probably enough depth there to sustain 110 pages.

Because a screenplay is not built on excitement alone. It’s built on depth.

Which brings us to the second mistake.

2) Weak concepts run out of gas

Think of a screenplay like a rocket. It needs enough propellant to break through the atmosphere. Weak concepts have less propellant.

And by “weak,” I mean concepts that don’t contain a strong character pursuing a strong goal.
In Project Hail Mary, Grace and Rocky desperately need to figure out what’s killing the stars or the galaxy is doomed. That objective powers the story forward. It gives every scene urgency and direction.

When you get into those later second act scenes, scenes 30 through 45, you need a protagonist who’s still aggressively pursuing something important. Because that pursuit is what keeps the screenplay alive. It creates momentum. It pulls the reader through the story.

Without that engine, scripts start wandering. Scenes become repetitive. Characters start talking in circles. The screenplay loses shape.

Okay, time to move into controversial territory.

3) Outline

You could argue that the entire purpose of outlining is to make sure the back half of your screenplay actually works.

Outlining is your chance to test drive the story before spending months writing it. It allows you to sketch out the second half and see if there’s actually enough material there to sustain a movie.

Even if you hate outlining, you should still spend a week imagining what scenes occur after the midpoint. Because when writers first conceive of an idea, they naturally imagine scenes anyway. Usually early scenes. Sometimes the climax.

But what about the middle?

Do you actually have scenes there?

Because if you’re struggling to imagine scenes in the second act, that’s a warning sign. Either the concept isn’t strong enough yet or you’re approaching it from the wrong angle.

And if you truly can’t imagine scenes there, you definitely need to outline. Because it means you don’t yet understand the specificity of your movie. Outlining forces you to engage with the execution in a concrete way.

One thing writers consistently underestimate is how much real estate a screenplay takes up. We think we’ve figured out 100% of the movie. Then we start writing and realize we’ve only figured out 25%.
That’s when the immensity of a screenplay hits you.

The more prep work you do, the more land you’ve mapped out before the journey begins. But if you’re staring at 100 miles of uncharted territory, eventually you’re going to get lost.

4) Very few writers understand how to navigate Act 2, especially the back half

There are three things that need to be firing on all cylinders throughout your second act.

Your hero must be pursuing a goal they desperately want to achieve.

Your characters must constantly be running into conflict, both internally and externally.

And you must continue throwing obstacles at your hero that make achieving the goal difficult.

I thought Project Hail Mary did an amazing job with this. The goal remains pervasive throughout the second act (solve the astrophage problem to save the stars). We always know what needs to be accomplished.

Meanwhile, Grace is battling his own self doubt. We see this in the present but mainly in the flashbacks, where he’s constantly signaling that he doesn’t believe in himself.

For the relationships, there’s conflict with Rocky, particularly in their inability to communicate at first. A big chunk of the second act is solving that problem.

And the obstacles continue to be thrown at our heroes. I mean how’s this for an obstacle: At one point, Rocky dies.

This relationship-conflict map applies to character pieces as well. In Poor Things, the conflict comes from Duncan constantly trying to control Bella, somebody who is fundamentally uncontrollable.

But both movies understand the same principle. Conflict pushes the second act forward.

We know Grace and Rocky cannot save the galaxy unless they learn to communicate. Therefore we are deeply invested in them learning how to communicate.

That’s where yesterday’s script, The Mold, really fell apart. The central conflict between Bri and Mac remained unclear for far too long. We know they used to be together, but we’re fuzzy on who broke up with who and why. We’re also unclear on the role of Bri’s ex and why he matters.

Once conflict within a character AND BETWEEN CHARACTERS becomes muddy, a screenplay can unravel surprisingly fast.

5) You’re probably putting in less effort than necessary

I’ve gotten to the point where, when I read a script, I can teleport into the writer’s mind and see what they were thinking.

A screenplay is not just a story. It’s a breadcrumb trail of the effort the writer put into it.

A lazy sentence tells me the writer doesn’t care about details. And if they don’t care about details at the sentence level, that laziness usually extends into the plotting and character work as well.

A generic scene halfway through the screenplay (some paint by numbers car chase or argument scene) tells me the writer is tiring out. They’re no longer pushing themselves creatively.

Writers think they’re getting away with this stuff.

They’re not.

Readers can feel when the effort level drops. And eventually that drop catches up to the screenplay.
One trick you can use is to rank every scene on a scale from 1 to 10. Be brutally honest. Are those late second act scenes scoring 7s and 8s? Or are they scoring 3s and 4s?

If the scenes are weak, figure out why.

Sometimes you were simply lazy in your scene choice. Other times the issue is structural. Maybe your protagonist no longer wants the goal badly enough. And once that desire weakens, every subsequent scene suffers.

6) Finishing the script is not the prize

I remember when I used to finish writing scripts and feel this huge sense of accomplishment.
But all I’d really accomplished was typing “The End.”

Anybody can reach The End weakly. Anybody can stumble there with half baked scenes and no structure.

The real accomplishment is getting there while giving the screenplay everything you possibly had.
Newer writers especially tend to celebrate completion instead of execution.

So let’s summarize.

Let your idea sit long enough to prove it has staying power. Make sure the concept has enough fuel to sustain an entire screenplay. Outline as much as possible, especially the second half. Build characters whose internal and external conflicts can generate scenes all the way through the ending. Be honest about your effort level. And don’t celebrate simply finishing the screenplay. Celebrate finishing it well.

A couple of final thoughts.

I understand that everybody has time limitations. We don’t all have endless months to work on a screenplay. I get that. All I’m asking is that you put forth the maximum amount of effort with the time you do have. If you can honestly say you did that, then you’ve done your job. After that, it’s up to the script gods.

And if you’re not an outline person, that’s okay. But then you need to become a draft demon. Your early drafts will be about discovery. Figuring out what the movie actually is. Then you refine and sharpen it through subsequent drafts.

But understand that you will probably need more drafts overall than someone who outlines. And if that process works better for you creatively, great. You just need to give yourself the time to do it.

What about you guys? Where do you think screenplays fall apart? And how do you fix the problem?

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. :)