Okay, today’s going to be an informal day off. But because I’ve seen so many comments asking, “what the hell does Carson’s response mean?”, I’ve decided to decode some of my more common replies for you.
Keep in mind that I’m very rushed when I analyze each logline so if I don’t like something, I’m typically spending less than 10 seconds coming up with a reason why. For that reason, I’m going to screw up sometimes. There are often times when I write a response and think, “I probably could’ve said that better.” But I have to keep moving cause there are so many loglines.
If you really want to know why I didn’t like something. Or you think us working on it together could bring out a movie you truly believe in (which actually just happened this evening with one reader), get a logline consult. 25 bucks for 1 e-mail and 1 reply. 50 bucks for unlimited back-and-forth where we get the logline in the best shape possible.
carsonsreeves1@gmail.com – e-mail me!
Okay, now for the replies.
“Mythology heavy, I want concepts” – What this means is that you’re creating entire worlds and rules instead of actual story ideas. A dinosaur theme park gone bad is a story idea. A trip to the mythical land of Booshalius, where vampires feast on possum-walkers, and a young fairy must learn the value of the “cocopasada” in order to evolve to the next phase of existence — that’s all mythology. There’s no clever story idea in there.
“Need to learn how to simplify loglines” – Once you go over 35 words, you’re probably in logline danger. The whole point of loglining a movie concept is to help yourself get to the core of the idea. That helps you write it. And it helps everyone else understand it. There are so many loglines being pitched where the writer just babbles on. Or they try to fit in every single little detail. Ironically, the more you try and tell everyone what your movie is, the less clear the movie idea gets. Instead, create the simplest version possible so that we get it immediately.
“Not big enough” – It means that there’s something in the main character and the story he’s in that feels small. “Years after a female serial killer spared his life and then turned herself in, a reclusive ex-journalist must confront the enigmatic woman’s cultish fans drawn to his hometown by a copycat murder… and the killer’s request for one final interview.” You may think just adding a serial killer here is enough to make it big and high concept. It isn’t. Or that there’s a copycat murder. It isn’t. Because there are a million serial killer ideas. And the ending: get an interview. Who cares? An interview is only big if it’s the most important interview in the world, like getting the president’s interview at the end of Civil War. This is a high concept contest. The ideas have to feel BIG.
“Not buying into the setup” – “When the deciding task in the Guardian Angel Selection Course is to help a human charge to experience the full gamut of emotions…” Every idea requires buy-in from the reader. If you present them with a setup that seems overly manufactured or forced or too complex, the reader simply isn’t going to buy in. So I don’t even need to read beyond the beginning of this logline. I’m already out because I don’t buy into the setup. Guardian Angel Selection Course? I don’t believe that that exists no matter how hard you try and convince me it does.
“A lot of build up for not a lot of payoff” – This is when loglines go on for way too long and set up way too many things and then instead of giving us a big climax to excite us, end with a whimper or end with something vague. “Joe must learn x and y and then he goes to a, before conquering b, and before he climbs up the ladder at company c, he must complete a set of challenges from s, t, u, and v. And then when an earthquake hits and w, x, y, and z happen… he must learn what’s truly in his heart.”
“Not clever enough” – This gets to the heart of what I’m really looking for in these concepts. I’m looking for ideas that are clever. Where the first half of the logline connects to the second half in that special way that makes you go, “Oooh, cool.” We see it in the only ‘yes’ from this week: “When treasure hunters search the Bermuda Triangle for a legendary pirate ship that disappeared, they’re swept back in time and hunted by the very ship they came to find.” Perfect. Now, notice what happens when you change the second half: “When treasure hunters search the Bermuda Triangle for a legendary pirate ship that disappeared, they must deal with the National Coast Guard, an angry clan of Bermuda nationals, and the captain’s ex-wife.” You see how easy it is to un-cleverize an idea?
“Seen too many variations of this” – This is a nice way of me telling you, you’re not being original enough. Too many writers assume they’re competing against 27 other people in Hollywood. You’re literally competing against hundreds of thousands. Millions if you consider everyone all over the world. There has to be something in your logline that is truly special to stand out against all those other pitches Hollywood is getting. Whether it’s a subject matter we’ve never seen before. Or a new twist on a genre we’ve never seen before. Or some clever take on an idea we’ve never seen before. If you’re just putting serial killers and vampires in your logline and creating one slightly new angle, such as being in a coma, that’s not enough.
“Feels lazy” – I can tell when a writer has spent a long time with an idea. You can see it in the pride behind the logline. That they believe in this idea because they’ve thought about it a lot. And because of that, they’ve made the wording as perfect as they can make it. And it just has this glossy sheen on it that communicates: “I tried a bunch of different ways to express this idea and this is the best one I came up with.” Meanwhile, when you slap an idea together that you’ve thought about for 30 minutes and you barely think about how to write it up, I’m going to call you out on it. It’s lazy. You’re being lazy. Which is the second worst thing you can be as a writer. Anybody know the first?
“Too simple”/“Too simplistic” – What this means is that the idea’s missing that thing that turns it into a bigger story or a more high stakes situation or makes you contemplate something you haven’t contemplated before. Instead of that, it’s just a regular normal obvious idea: “After suffering a nervous breakdown and losing her job, Celia returns home during her high-school reunion only to discover a childhood friend is missing and her three ex boyfriends still hold a grudge.”
“Too much going on here” – Writer adds too many variables to his pitch, to the point where they start stepping on each other or obscuring what the movie is. “After a billionaire obsessed with Ancient Egypt dies, his wife and his two lovers wake up buried in his mausoleum and must work together to escape the sadistic AI hologram of the deceased and its deadly games determining who is worthy of becoming its queen of the afterlife.”
“You hint at the concept but stop before telling us what it is”/“Ending too vague!” – This is one of my biggest pet peeves. The writer hides the actual movie. Instead, they use their ending to hint at it. “After a husband gaslights his wife into believing he’s not having an affair with her best friend, she books a weekend cabin retreat with the friend, unaware that the husband’s machinations have awakened something primal and unhinged in the jilted lover.” The “primal” and “Unhinged” part are the movie. Tell us what has been awakened. I understand what these writers think they’re doing. They think they’re creating mystery that will result in readers requesting the script. But it actually achieves the opposite. Because you don’t tell us what the antagonist is, we’re not interested! Because without that, we can’t envision the poster, the trailer, the freaking movie itself! Nobody wrote the logline for Jurassic Park and didn’t include dinosaurs.
“Execution dependent” – This means that you’ve chosen the kind of idea that is going to require an extremely high writing skill level to pull off. “Seeking a fresh start, a traumatized Indigenous woman enters a mysterious escape room, only to discover it’s a living labyrinth that builds itself from each victim’s deepest trauma. To escape alive, she must survive a series of deadly puzzles that weaponize the abuse, fear and cultural disconnection she’s spent years trying to bury before the maze consumes her identity forever.” The second you make this a metaphor and it’s about trauma and cultural disconnection and abuse… integrating it through simile and hiding it inside of scenes through subtext and carefully constructed character relationships, that’s the highest difficulty of writing there is. I wouldn’t trust any writer with that. Meanwhile, three loglines previous to that pitch, I’m getting a group of characters in the Amazon who are stuck in a giant web with a giant spider chasing them. I’m way more confident that a writer can pull that idea off.
