Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Dramatic Psychological Thriller
Premise (from writer): After a traumatic experience places them together, a young woman, fearful of large dogs, agrees to watch a stranger’s aged dog. When she tries to find the stranger to give it back, her search becomes a dangerous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I lost a pet recently. I went to a local pound to maybe adopt another. They say don’t look the dogs in the eyes at first. They may take it as a threat. Just stand close, let them feel you out. If the body language appears relaxed, then meet eyes with them. But it’s almost impossible. We communicate so much by meeting eyes. I could not do it. Besides, the looks from the dogs, one after the other, resigned to their fate, checked out totally or gone looney. So little hope. It was just overwhelming. So, I gravitated to those dogs who were blind. Found comfort in them. — And that day, with that experience, this story came to me. — It’s short for the time crunched AOW reader. It’s sweet. It has a girl and a boy who are meant to be together and life is cruel but does give them their moment. — It has a girl and a dog instead of a boy and a dog. It has grit and fight from both of them. — I did some cover art for it because I just couldn’t get that damn title centered on the page.
Writer: Randolph Scott Williams
Details: 85 pages
Thanks for all the help you guys gave the amateur writers last week. That’s what I love about this community. When you’re called upon to help your peers, you do so with gusto. I also want to congratulate yesterday’s “Off-The-Nose Dialogue” winner, Zadora, who took the day’s lesson and ran with it. He/She did everything I hoped for. Make sure to read Zadora’s scene (it’s about 6-7 comments down if you filter comments by “Top.”) to see how to pull off “off-the-nose” dialogue with ease.
Okay, on to today’s script. As I mentioned last week, this edition of Amateur Offerings included submissions I had problems with. With Minder, there were a couple of problems. First, the logline was a mess. “After a traumatic experience places them together, a young woman, fearful of large dogs, agrees to watch a stranger’s aged dog. When she tries to find the stranger to give it back, her search becomes a dangerous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.” There are a million things going on in this logline. It’s too big (two sentences?), too scattered, and not very well written (“fearful of large dogs?”).
Remember, loglines should be simple and to the point. I liked Scott Crawford’s suggestion: “After a young woman is rescued by a dog, she embarks on an epic journey to return the animal to its owner.” Blueblossom also made a good point on why this logline was so confusing: “When I read it, the genre and the logline didn’t seem to complement one another very well. Like, I suppose I don’t generally think of psychological thrillers as involving heartbreaking journeys of self-discovery.”
With that said, the “Why You Should Read,” indicated a script with potential. We’re all trying to move people with our stories, and this suggested a moving experience for the writer. Could he transfer that to the page? Let’s find out.
24 year old Thera is a bit of a shut-in. She’s happiest when inside her apartment, avoiding any and all who threaten the sanctity of her introverted utopia. On one of the few days she ventures into the world, she has the misfortune of losing her phone.
Lucky for her, a mysterious gentleman snatches it up and returns it to her. Thera is so thankful, she asks the man if he needs anything. Yes, actually. He’s going away for the weekend. He needs somebody to take care of his dog.
Thera doesn’t like dogs. But this gentleman’s gesture was so kind, she figures she’ll suck it up for the weekend. What she doesn’t know is that the dog is on its last legs. It’s blind. It’s sick. It’s dying. And to add insult to injury, it’s huge! Not exactly the cute little cuddle-machine Thera had in mind.
The man leaves Thera with a list of places the dog likes to visit and goes on his merry way. One problem: He doesn’t come back. The weekend passes and Thera’s still stuck with this big lug of a dog. So she opens an impromptu investigation, using the clues of these visitation spots to find out where the man lives so she can return the dog!
One thing leads to another and Thera finds out this dog used to be a fighting dog. But by that time, it’s too late. The dog-fighting criminals lock her up in a room and bring the dog out for one last fight. What Thera doesn’t know is that this mystery goes much deeper than dog-fighting, and that there’s a bigger reason she was chosen to take care of this dog in the first place.
I’m no stranger to loving dog-centric screenplays. One of my favorite scripts is Dogs of Babel. So while my first instinct was to say Minder was too off-kilter to work, I had to remind myself that I’d fallen in love with, if not a similar premise, one that covered much of the same ground.
That led to the obvious question: Why did I like Dogs of Babel so much better than Minder? For starters, Dogs of Babel was CLEARER. A man’s wife had taken her life, and in a desperate attempt to find out why, he developed a relationship with her dog. I don’t know. It just made more sense to me.
Minder feels more scattered, and it starts with the logline. Actually, I take that back. It starts with the genre. “Dramatic Psychological Thriller” screams, “I have no idea what my genre is.” And if you don’t know what your genre is, it’s going to show up in your writing. Screenwriting is all about being clear. And I was never clear on what this was.
The truth is, genres never cover one thing. Just because you’re writing a drama doesn’t mean you can’t include comedy. And just because you’re writing a thriller, it doesn’t mean you can’t include drama. BUT! You need to understand your dominant genre – the one that dictates 90% of the tone. That’s why I like single-denomination genres. DRAMA. COMEDY. THRILLER.
The next step in genre-assignment is combos (Dramedy, Sci-fi Horror), and those can work. But you still need to understand what the dominant genre is. Once we get into triple-combos, that’s when I know the writer doesn’t know what kind of movie he’s writing. And I think that’s the issue here. Is this a mystery? A thriller? A drama? A coming-of-age movie? I’m not saying you can’t include all of these in a single movie. You can do anything you want! There are no rules! BUT. Know that’s it’s insanely hard to balance all of these in a single script. Most of the time, you’re going to leave your reader confused.
If all that’s got your head on a top, here’s a simpler way to look at it. Is there a movie out there like the one you’re writing? Not the exact same thing. But something that could be presented in the same manner. If there isn’t, you’re probably writing something too weird. Now, of course, you may have stumbled upon the holy grail of unmade ideas (Being John Malkovich). But it’s more likely you’ve written a script without a clear identity.
Despite all of this, Minder is not a bad screenplay. There’s enough of a mystery here to keep you curious. There’s some very thoughtful character development that went into Thera. I liked the potential love story with the upstairs neighbor. And the writing (save for some occasional sloppy formatting) was thoughtful and painted a clear picture.
I just think this is a movie that only gets made if the writer makes it himself. And that’s not a bad thing. Most movies get made with passion. But this is a hard area to produce a movie in. One of the best scripts ever written, which is now six years old, is still looking for financing. So it’s an uphill battle. I wish Randy luck though. ☺
Script link: Minder
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Understand your dominant genre. It’s okay to create a hybrid, but know the genre that’s going to be carrying the majority of the genre load.
