We take our amazing logline from yesterday and turn it into a movie!
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Yesterday, I came up with one heck of a cool movie idea. Here’s the preliminary pitch…
Title: The Lawless Dozen
Genre: Western
Logline: In the untamed Old West, a train carrying a dozen of the nation’s most ruthless criminals derails, setting the outlaws free to wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting populace.
Most of you agree this could be an awesome movie.
But coming up with a fun movie idea is only the beginning. The real battle begins when you try and flesh out an entire screenplay from that idea.
One of the most common stumbling blocks in screenwriting is turning an idea into an actual movie. Most ideas consist of the first act and that’s it. Today’s idea is no exception. Our first scene is probably going to be the train crash scene. Now what?
“Now what” is the thing that actually matters.
So today I want to do something we’ve never talked about on the site, which is taking an idea and turning into a full screenplay. And we’re going to do it… with The Lawless 12 (temporary title, feel free to offer better alternatives).
The opening of our movie is pretty much set. We’ll probably start in the prisoner train car and introduce the reader to a few of the gnarlier criminals. Let’s be clear, this idea is going to live or die on how cool the characters are. You have to come up with at least five game-changing criminals in the category of Hannibal Lecter. The more inventive/odd/terrifying/scary/badass these villains are, the better.
The best way I’ve found to create villains is through history. You look through history at someone who would’ve been present in that same time and build your character around them.
If you can’t find anyone there, you can look elsewhere in history, find the villain you want, then adjust them so that they fit in your story. A quick Google search led me to Fred and Rosemary West, an English couple who used to abduct and kill women in the Gloucestershire area of England. That immediately gave me a cool idea – Two of the prisoners will be a sadistic married couple.
As someone pointed out in yesterday’s post, it might be fun to have one of these criminals be innocent. I’m a little weary of the idea only because I think it’s kind of obvious. But I’m open to it. I think that, because this is the Old West, we’d want to stay true to the ugliness of the era. Therefore, nobody’s hands should be clean. If we have an “innocent” man, they should be more of an anti-hero than hero. I’m not interested in having Andy Dufrensne in this story. Although, I’m willing to hear people out on this point.
Moving onto the plot, the first thing we’d have to figure out is, where were they going? They’re obviously being transferred somewhere. So, where? A lot of writers wouldn’t care about this because they don’t have to deal with it. The characters never get to that destination so why does it matter?
It matters because it’ll provide context. Context helps inform other story points. Oftentimes when you’re at the beginning of figuring out your story, you go with a lot of the most obvious creative choices. You should look to avoid this as best as possible. But the reality is, you tend not to find the deeper cooler more original creative choices until your later drafts.
That happens because you start to get sick of your script and you’re looking for ways to spice it up. You’re no longer precious about anything. That’s when you start challenging your earlier choices.
For right now, I’m assuming they’re being transferred to a new remote high security prison (or as “high security” as they made them back then). Maybe it’s in the middle of nowhere so, even if they escaped, they’d die trying to walk to freedom. If you wanted to get fancy, maybe they’re being transferred to an island facility off the coast of California or Oregon.
To give you an idea of how these ‘irrelevant’ details provide context, my mind is already coming up with new ideas as I think of these destinations. If we’re on the Oregon trail, they could be up in the mountains. That changes how I imagined things. Also, it got me thinking of the Donner Party, where the entire party froze to death. Originally, I had this story operating in the summer. But now I’m wondering how it would look in the winter. But, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say they’re headed to a California facility.
Now comes the most important creative choice we have outside of the characters – what do they do after they crash? The answer is the whole movie. If there’s just some small town nearby that they terrorize, I don’t think that takes advantage of the premise enough. We’ve got 12 of the WORST CRIMINALS IN OLD WEST HISTORY on our hands. Do we really want to waste them on a small helpless town?
Hmmm…
Let’s think about that for a second.
My mind is cycling.
Maybe there is a story there.
What if this small town is led by the prototype for the perfect nice “does things the right way” sheriff? One thing you’re always looking for with movie ideas is CONTRAST. Or, to go a little further, IRONY. But contrast for sure. So this squeaky clean sheriff juxtaposed against 12 of the worst human beings on the planet is a fun dynamic to imagine.
So let’s say these 12 criminals descend upon this helpless town and take it over. The worst of the criminals start doing terrible unspeakable things to the townspeople. But what the criminals realize is that the cavalry is coming to get them. The government is sending Rangers, maybe even soldiers, and whoever else, to come take them out. So their plan is to hole up at this place for the oncoming battle, defeat the cavalry, and then they go off and escape to whether they want to go.
Meanwhile, our good guy sheriff is stuck in the middle of it, probably thrown in prison after being beaten to within an inch of his life by the Lawless 12, and he has to escape and help whoever he’s able to help.
That’s an okay direction. But as I was coming up with it, I didn’t love the idea of the bad guys waiting around. It doesn’t seem very bad-guyish.
Something tells me the Lawless 12 needs a bigger playground to truly take advantage of their status. I’d still prefer that contrast so I’d like a safer city, a city more unprepared for this level of mayhem. Maybe somewhere like Santa Fe, New Mexico (Population: 5000) or Fort Smith, Arkansas (Population: 10,000). It would allow them to descend upon the city in a more unsuspecting way, where they could begin to wreak havoc.
But with this option, we don’t have a story engine. They get to the city… and then what? Typically when you have a gang, they have an objective, like to rob a bank. But that’s not this kind of gang. This gang’s objective was freedom. And they already achieved that.
So I’m starting to think that we need a secondary storyline, maybe led by a Texas Ranger. Let’s say that the government obviously wants to get to Fort Smith as soon as possible, but they have to gather up the necessary calvary (up to 100 lawmen) then travel to Fort Smith, which is going to take a week or two. Meanwhile, our Texas Ranger and his tiny posse (maybe three other guys) are one town over. They’re specifically told, whatever you do, do not go to Fort Smith and engage with these men. They’re too dangerous. Wait for us to get there.
But our Texas Ranger hero (he could be an aging cowboy on a redemption tour, or a young buck eager to prove himself) can’t stomach the idea of standing by while these men kill innocent people. So he and his tiny gang, against better judgment, go over there and it becomes a David vs. Goliath situation. He’s the ultimate underdog against these guys but he tries to take them out one by one.
I would still prefer that the criminal gang had a plan, or at least the core group within the criminals had a plan. Cause if their only purpose is to cause chaos, that’s going to be fun for about 15 pages. At a certain point, the reader wants direction from their characters, villains as well as heroes.
So I don’t know if the criminals would try and take over the town? Maybe that’s why the government wants to get there as soon as possible, because if the criminals get a foothold in the city, it may be impossible to take it back. But that feels like a first draft choice to me. I’d prefer if there was a bigger goal they were after.
The reason you want characters with big objectives is that those objectives will tell you how to write your ending. If characters don’t want anything, how do you construct a conclusion to their storylines? So, if our criminals wanted to take over this town, that allows us to construct a plotline where the government wants to come in to prevent that and now we’ve got our big 3rd Act shootout.
Updated Logline: In the untamed Old West, a train carrying a dozen of the nation’s most ruthless criminals derails, allowing the newly freed outlaws to descend upon Fort Smith, Arkansas, the safest city in the Western frontier.
But hey, like I said, this is just the beginning stages of writing the screenplay. I know there are more exotic and unexpected ways to execute this story. As my mind wanders, I’d definitely want to find some ways to pull in the Apache or the Comanche. I’m also open to getting weirder with the execution. I don’t want the movie to feel too standard. I’m curious to hear what you guys think of this setup and how you would improve it. Or maybe you’ve got a completely different execution of the logline you think would work.
Share it in the comments section! This could end up becoming a Scriptshadow Productions movie. You never know.
And a reminder if you missed yesterday’s post: You are free to take this idea and write it! The idea is for anyone who wants it.
