Awesome news. I have a JULY 4TH WEEKEND NEWSLETTER coming out later today. I review a top secret script (no, you’ll never guess what it is in a million years) that attempts one of the toughest structural approaches in screenwriting. I then give you a super-hack on an easier rewrite style than the one I laid out for you yesterday. You won’t want to miss it. Check your Promotions Folder if you don’t receive it. I’ll post here on the site once it’s sent. If you’re not already on my list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER.”
Genre: Kids/Adventure
Premise: A trio of misfit kids must work together to protect a supernatural baby sloth from a deranged ex-child star and return it to the Oregon Zoo.
Why you should read (from writer): This is my first script. Awhile back, Carson talked about how we should write what we know. I spent the majority of my childhood outdoors — building forts, climbing trees and catching frogs. I wanted to write a fun live action kids script that captures what it was like growing up in a small town. Also, it’s got a sloth that shoots FRICKIN’ LASER BEAMS from its eyes!
Writer: Alison Parker
Details: 91 pages
From the site that brought you Time Shark and Dude, Where’s My Ferret, comes… LAZER SLOTH! Scriptshadow is definitely addressing the bad concept problem in Hollywood. The town just doesn’t seem to be listening. But that’s okay. If they don’t bite this time, I’m turning the Amateur Friday entries into an Amateur Friday Universe.
That’s right. We’re going to write cross-over scripts, cameos, team-ups. It’s only a matter of time before the ferret in Dude, Where’s my Ferret, and Lazer Sloth team up to ride a time shark into the future, where they’ll hop on a shuttle and visit Orbital, our Amateur Friday space station that only allows families who’ve watched The Shining in its entirety (deep deep inside joke only long-time Scriptshadow readers will understand). All we need now is casting ideas. I’m thinking Jackie Chan for Ferret and Rhianna for the shark.
9 year-old Logan Murphy and his best buddies, Hailey the Tomboy and Goose the UFO enthusiast, are about to experience the strangest day of their young lives. What starts out as your typical 9 year-old lizard-hunting expedition, turns into our crew finding an abandoned crate containing a sloth that shoots lazers out of its eyes. Score!
The group takes the sloth with them, having no idea said sloth was stolen from the local zoo and was to be delivered to Hans Offa, an animal-obsessed evildoer who’s been trying to weasel his way back into the limelight ever since his child star career ended with the cancellation of his show, Adventure Boy.
Hans really needs that lazer-shooting sloth so he can get back on television. So he sends his goons, Max and Toby, who lost the thing in the first place, to get it back. When Max and Toby learn that these grade-schoolers have their job security in their possession, they chase them all over town, even through the local UFO convention, which may or may not have a connection to why our mysterious sloth can shoot lasers out of his eyes.
When you’re writing a kid’s flick, you want to keep the bar in mind. And the bar is Pixar, with Disney Animation not far behind. True, this isn’t an animated film, but you’re competing for the same audience, so a lot of the same rules apply. And these movies require you to nail three things.
Be Clever
You can’t just put cute animals onscreen and call it a day. You have to take it a step further. Since we’re talking about sloths, in Zootopia, the highlight reel scene includes a trip to the DMV where all the tellers are, you guessed it, SLOTHS! Consider that for a moment. Could the tellers have been giraffes and still work? Sure. But would it have been clever? No.
Be Imaginative
Imagination is paramount in kid’s movies. You’re going up against the most active imaginations in the world – children. So the bar is set high. If kids are out-imagining you, you’ve failed. I loved the chase scene in Zootopia that went through Rodentia, a miniaturized city where our characters are running over rooftops that are 1 foot tall.
Character Exploration
Originally, when Pixar surpassed Disney as the top animation studio in the world, people thought it was because of the digital graphics. That wasn’t it at all. It was because Pixar upped the emphasis on character development while Disney was still focusing on witty banter and musical numbers. The reason Pixar films resonated with people was because you left the theater feeling like you’d met a new group of friends. That’s how powerful good character development is.
So how did Lazer Sloth fair in these three categories? Not terrible. But I’d be lying if I said better than average. I judge cleverness and imagination on, “Did the writer think of something I couldn’t have thought of?” And there was nothing here that surprised me. The villain who used to be a child star on an adventure show was fun. But there’s a similar plotline in “Up.”
This is where a lot of beginner writers run into trouble. They set the bar too low. And it’s not their fault. They haven’t written enough scripts and gotten enough rejections to know that the next time they submit something, they have to do better. If you’ve never been rejected before, you don’t have a baseline for what you need to exceed.
As for character development, that’s usually the last thing a writer figures out before he/she makes it, not the first. And there just wasn’t enough focus placed on the characters’ internal struggles here (or there struggles with one another). There was some okay stuff with Logan’s dad, but it felt perfunctory, like the writer was adding it more because she was told to rather than because she wanted to. And that never works.
Even in a movie like Finding Dory, which I didn’t like, I can say that their “bad” character stuff is better than the best character stuff on the amateur level. Dory is going through some tough shit. She’s plagued by this terrible affliction. She can barely function in everyday life. And on top of that, we really feel how the loss of her parents weighs on her.
What I mean by “really feel” is that it’s not just a box you check on some Screenwriting Instruction Manual (“If you want to create audience sympathy, hero should lose family member”). It’s integrated into the very fiber of the character. Dory’s every choice in the story is influenced by her desire to be with her parents again. They’re not perfunctory backstory. They’re her everything.
And a lot of screenwriters will say, “Well I just want to write something fun and silly.” That’s fine. But if you’re not moving us in some way, we’re going to tire of the fun and the silly. It’s the emotional peaks and valleys that allow the fun and the silly to stay fresh.
Don’t get me wrong. Lazer Sloth is fun. It’s driven by a tight structure. The combination of the sparse writing style and the chase plot kept it moving. The villain is funny. The lazer sloth itself is adorable. I’m just not sure things got crazy enough to live up to the title, “Lazer Sloth.” For comparison’s sake, one of the splashiest spec sales of all time, “Dude, Where’s My Car?” had people growing into giants. That script lived up to the craziness of its title! So while this was a solid effort for a first script, the laser feature faltered before it could inscribe a “worth the read.”
Screenplay Link: Lazer Sloth
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Understand the expectation your title or logline sets, and make sure your script lives up to that expectation. If your script is titled, “Wacky Jacky and the Curse of the Hackey Sackey,” and it’s a slow-paced drama, you’re going to have one frustrated reader on your hands.
What I learned 2: With every choice you make in an imagination-heavy concept, ask yourself, “Could someone else have thought of this choice?” Be 100% honest with yourself. If the answer is yes, go back and think of something more imaginative. The imagination bar is SUPER HIGH in kids movies.
