Note: I screwed up with the Scriptshadow 250 Top 5 Announcement. Monday, as we Americans know, is a major holiday (Memorial Day). So we’re going to move that announcement to Wednesday instead. Sorry about that!

Genre: Somnium
Logline (from writer): A loyal astronaut, scheduled to be on the first mission to Mars, begins having terrifying dreams of the mission going wrong. Then, when the mission is sabotaged, he finds himself the prime suspect.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I’ve been writing for three years now, my script Jack Curious is in the Scriptshadow top 25 at the moment. This script is the script I wrote to teach myself the craft, and while it made the quarterfinals of the Big Break Contest and connected me with some cool people, it’s been sitting on the shelf for the last two years. I’d love the opportunity, with the help of the SS community, to pull it apart and work out how to make it better. I also have most of the budget together to make my narrative feature directing debut (I’ve only done docos so far), and I’m wondering if this could be the script to do it with.
Writer: Bryce McLellan
Details: 109 pages

We’re seeing a lot of Mars projects these days. We had The Martian. There’s that new weird Mars teenage love story (that I reviewed a few years back and was convinced would never see the light of day). There’s a Zachary Quinto movie I just learned about called Passage to Mars that for some reason takes place in Antarctica. There’s the Deadpool writers next sorta-Mars movie called “Life.” There’s “Approach The Unknown,” about a single manned Mars Mission. There’s one of my favorite amateur scripts submitted to the site, The Only Lemon Tree on Mars. And if you want to get really technical, they’re thinking about making a sequel to Veronica Mars.

What does this mean?

Hell if I know.

People have a galactic hard-on for red dirt?

I guess if we want to get into it, there’s something to be said for understanding where the hot topics are. Because once you know you’re playing in the same sandbox as everyone else, you have to decide if you can build a better sandcastle than them. If all you’re going to do is fill up your Big Gulp cup with goopy sand and flip it around four times and call it a day, your sandcastle probably won’t be able to compete with the next guy’s.

That’s why I recommend staying away from the hot subject matter. If everyone’s writing about Mars, write about Neptune. Or Uranus. Heh heh. Heh heh. “Uranus.” However, since we can’t go back in time and warn Bryce about this, we’ll have to see if he’s pulled off Plan B: finding a new angle into a Mars story.

The year is 2050 or so. Sam obtained the Mars Mission astronaut job when one of the other astronauts went crazy. I guess being picked for the first mission to Mars can be a bit anxiety-inducing for some. Joining Sam will be the Buzz Aldrin-like Jack and the smart-as-a-whip, Connie.

The American-led launch is competing against a similarly constructed Chinese launch, and just like when two Hollywood studios get the same idea at the same time, instead of joining forces and creating the best launch possible, they waste a lot of money to win the race by a few weeks!

And then Sam starts experiencing nightmares. They’re flying to Mars, their ship disintegrates, he lands on the surface with a thud. And then there are the winds. Sam can’t stop having nightmares about those horrifying 200 mile an hour Mars windstorms.

Meanwhile, as we move closer to launch, we cut back in time six months, where we learn that Sam’s wife, Kate, was pregnant. Since she’s not pregnant in the present, and we don’t see any kids around, we get the sense that that situation didn’t end well. And subsequent flashbacks will confirm that.

When a fire on the shuttle sets the launch date back a few months, people within this NASA-like operation begin to suspect that someone’s working for the Chinese, possibly sabotaging the mission so that China can launch first.

The big question is: Is it Sam? A lot of people think so. And with Sam’s nightmares getting worse, with his brain starting to break down, not even he’s sure anymore.

Let’s start with the good news. This is NOT like other sandcastles. And I should’ve known that since Jack Curious, Bryce’s Top 25 Scriptshadow 250 script, is anything but normal.

However, I think Somnium suffers from the flip side of things. Have we deconstructed storytelling TOO MUCH here? Is this “too indie?” Is “too indie” even a thing? I think so. But I know a lot of you don’t.

Let’s start with the flashbacks. Whenever I look at flashbacks, I ask the question, “Are they necessary?” 99% of the time, they’re not. But when they are, they’re usually used in a pattern. And that’s because the writer is using them to tell a separate story in the past, that, if told well, can actually be as interesting as the present story.

I’m not sure this flashback story passed that test. It’s about a woman losing her child. And the thing was, we already knew she lost the child. Like I pointed out, we didn’t see any kid in the present. And she wasn’t pregnant in the present. So obviously she had to have lost the baby.

So why is it important that I see that for myself? Why can’t that just be backstory and not a series of flashbacks? I don’t have a good answer for that, and therefore I’d argue the flashbacks weren’t necessary.

Next up is the way the plot was designed. And Bryce takes a HUGE chance here. I give him credit for that. But let’s look at this logically…

Remember the movie, National Lampoon’s Vacation? The original one with Chevy Chase? Remember what they were trying to do? Get to Wally World, right? Well imagine if that movie wasn’t about actually going to Wally World, but rather about getting in the car that would take them to Wally World.

That’s kind of what this felt like to me. And I’m not saying that the destination has to always be the biggest thing possible. But when you dangle something as exciting as Mars in front of the viewer, and then you tell them we’re not even going to see Mars in the movie…it’s kind of like a literary version of blueballs. We feel cheated, right?

Now, to Bryce’s credit, Somnium starts to get a lot better in its second half. The main reason for that is the China mystery. Are they sabotaging the launch? And if they are, is Sam involved? That was the plot point that drew me back into the story after I got pissed when I realized we wouldn’t be going to Mars.

I also liked the mystery of Sam getting fed these suspicious pills. It added another layer to the sabotage mystery. Maybe someone was manipulating Sam to sabotage the launch without his knowledge?

Unfortunately, none of this stuff gets paid off in a satisfying way. It was paid off in that vague “you decide” way. And I’ve never been a fan of that.

If I were Bryce, I would introduce the Chinese sabotage mystery much earlier in the script. Make it a major plot point. Because if there’s one thing this script lacks, it’s structure. It’s plot. It’s built on this wishy-washy foundation of flashbacks and character uncertainty. It needs a plot that’s more definable.

Then use the flashbacks as a decoy. We think they’re about Kate losing the baby. But through them, we reveal that Sam IS actually involved with the Chinese, therefore making the past plot an official part of the story as opposed to just character backstory.

The more you structure Somnium, the better it’s going to be. And I think Bryce is a good writer. So he can pull it off. But it’s going to require work.

Script link: Somnium

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Flashbacks JUST FOR CHARACTER BACKSTORY are usually a bad idea. If you’re going to use flashbacks, use them to ADD TO THE PLOT. We should learn cool things in the flashback that we couldn’t have learned in the present. And these things need to AFFECT THE PLOT. That’s one of the only times flashbacks can be an asset.

The box office is chirping, people.

It’s chirping at you now. Hopefully, you’re paying attention.

The top movie of the weekend was Angry Birds, which took in 39 million worms. This film represents everything that Hollywood wants in a project. Established IP. Something that can sell toys. Something that plays to all audiences.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t help the average screenwriter understand what they should be writing, since established IP is off-limits. If pushed for a lesson here, I’d say that the more age groups your screenplay plays to, the more appealing it will be to a producer, assuming it’s a good idea and well-written.

But what multi-demo genres are left that aren’t dominated by the IP market? I can think of three. Studios will always be looking for a good adventure script along the lines of Raiders of the Lost Ark. They’re always looking for that supernatural or sci-fi comedy type script (think MIB or Ghostbusters). And everyone’s STILL looking for the next Goonies, 25 years later. Kathleen Kennedy says that of the 30 huge movies she’s made, that’s still the one she gets asked about the most. So something in that vein is still available to spec writers. I would caution though that you better bring your A-Game cause I’ve read all the attempts from writers of these scripts and outside of Roundtable, they’re painfully generic. You have to find a new way into these ideas.

The second big release of the weekend is Neighbors 2, which brought in 21 million, along with some more relevant advice for screenwriters. Comedy still represents one of the best chances for an unknown screenwriter to break into the industry and earn millions of dollars quickly. Come up with a smart (preferably ironic) comedy idea, sell it, and when it does well, reap the benefits of its subsequent sequels.

That brings us to the most complicated major release of the weekend, The Nice Guys. The Nice Guys is the screenplay that serious screenwriters believe there should be more of. It doesn’t fit into any genre or even sub-genre. It’s unique. It’s fresh. But nobody went to see it, including, I’m betting, a lot of the screenwriters who say there need to be more movies like it.

This is the hypocrisy that bothers me about the anti-Hollywood crowd. They cry foul when their weird anti-narrative screenplay doesn’t get noticed. I then ask them if they’ve seen [latest low-profile indie movie] and their answer is almost universally “no.”

So if they’re not paying to see the few anti-Hollywood movies that DO make it through the system, why in the world would they expect anyone to do the same for their movie? It becomes painfully clear that they’re not supporting unique films. They’re supporting THEIR unique film.

This problem permeates a huge swath of the screenwriting community. They think they’re different, that they’re special, that their weird little script is somehow going to be the one that everybody goes to see. When a movie that has one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Ryan Gosling, promoting the hell out of it, and was still barely able to make 10 million dollars, you have to understand that THAT’S why studios are so terrified to take chances on offbeat little films like this.

I mean answer this question seriously. Would you have put up your money for The Nice Guys?

Another major spec release was last weekend’s Money Monster, a film that represents a key issue with the spec market at the moment, and why fewer and fewer of these movies are doing well. A spec script is meant to keep a reader’s attention from start to finish. There can’t be any slow parts.

This necessitates such things as a HUGE idea, tons of urgency, and heightened variables – all things designed to keep a bored reader awake. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily a recipe for a great film. A great film creates some sort of emotional connection with the audience.

And emotion requires things that lie in opposition to a reader-friendly script: Character development, relationship development, the occasional slowing down of the narrative. None of those things play well on the page unless you really know what you’re doing.

As a result, we get movies like Money Monster, which at one point in time would’ve had a 30 million dollar opening. Now, with a major effects-driven film to compete with every week, the script needs to do more than merely move. It needs to move the audience. And the “Max Landising” of this craft discourages against that.

The most successful spec story of the year is Cloverfield Lane (remember that it was originally a spec script before they turned it into a Cloverfield film). The 70 million dollar grossing contained horror flick managed to strike the perfect balance between a tight urgent story and characters with some actual meat to them. This allowed us to feel some emotion, which helped strike the perfect balance between “event” and “experience” so many spec screenplays lack these days.

Look, moving fast to please a reader while slowing down to move a reader is always going to be a challenge. You’re literally incorporating things that work in direct opposition to one another. But that’s why the screenwriters who carve out careers in this industry get paid so much, because they’re able to find that balance. Keep that in mind as you’re writing your “Scriptshadow Write a F%$&ing Screenplay” scripts.

Make sure to tune in next Monday as we’ll be revealing the Top 5 scripts in the Scriptshadow 250 Screenwriting Contest, held in conjunction with Grey Matter. We’ve already begun to contact the finalists. And for the winner, it’s probably going to change their lives. So can’t wait to finally share!

Sorry for the late post. I was just at Grey Matter and we’re finalizing everything for the Top 5 Scriptshadow 250 Announcement. It’s going to be a big deal. I can’t wait. We’ll be making that announcement here on Monday, May 30th. It’s a tight race too. We had a lot of discussion on who should be the winner and it was freaking close. So mark your calendars folks!

Genre: Comedy/Romance
Premise: When a broke kingdom gets a second chance with a sponsored contest to find the “next Cinderella,” a common girl who competes to help her family must decide if all the drama and a charmless prince are really worth it.
About: A while ago, I was watching Shrek with my toddler niece, and thinking “I would’ve loved a whole movie on the funny fairy tale kingdom stuff.” That thought led to: “imagine if after the Cinderella story, Fairy Godmother became a washed up drunk”…and “imagine if another kingdom tried to find the next Cinderella through a “Bachelor” like competition”…those were just a couple of the “imagines” that resulted in this script, and if it’s something that might appeal to you, I hope you enjoy whatever you have time to read! (as for me: my background began in narrative fiction, and after publishing 3 novels, I started learning all I could about screenplays, as it seemed natural given my love of writing dialogue. A previous script was a top 20 finalist with Script Pipeline in 2014, and with this new one I’m just trying to see if readers find it interesting and fun!)
Writer:Romi Moondi
Details: 103 pages

Every once in awhile I’ll read a comment here that states something like, “If you have this kind of script, don’t put it on Scriptshadow. The community doesn’t like those types of scripts.” Today is the perfect example of that simply not being true. The LAST genres we tend to celebrate around here are comedy and romance, and yet that’s the script that beat out the competition last week. It just goes to show that as long as you’re a good writer with a solid concept and a strong take on that concept, you can write a script that people will notice.

Speaking of good, Cyrielle isn’t doing so good. She’s got a name that sounds like breakfast, she’s on the wrong side of 20 for the Middle Ages, and since it’s the Middle Ages, we’re about 500 years from female empowerment. Which means if you aren’t married by 18, you’re an old maid.

If that isn’t sucky enough, Cyrielle lives in the Enraptured Kingdom, a kingdom so racked by debt that they can barely afford food. That’s not to say King Gastronso isn’t getting his daily share of carbs. In fact, if you judged this kingdom by him alone, you’d think they were doing quite well.

But when King Gastronso is told that a revolt is coming, he teams with celebrity author, Gianni, that of the recent non-fiction bestseller, Cinderella, and a drunken Fairy Godmother, both of whom represent the Enchanted Kingdom.

Gianni’s idea is this. Why not hold a Cinderella Contest, just like his book, to marry off the king’s handsome but arrogant son? With a princess, the spirits of the kingdom will be lifted, which will boost tourism, and the Enraptured Kingdom will be up and running again in no time.

At the announcement ceremony, Cyrielle and her younger siblings sneak in to steal a bunch of food, only to be spotted by the prince, which results, somehow, in Cyrielle being added to the competition. The thing is, nobody believes Cyrielle can win – not even Cyrielle! Yet week after week, in this “Bachelor” like competition (you need to earn a lily to stay another week), the bumbling Cyrielle keeps on keeping on, always barely making the cut. This is ironic since her and the prince appear to have no chemistry whatsoever.

Will Cyrielle win the competition, become the princess, save her family and the kingdom? We’ll find out after this commercial break. I’m Chris Harrison.

I find fairy tales to be the perfect genre to play with. As I like to constantly sear into your eyeballs, every idea has been done before, but not every angle of every idea has been done before. That’s where you earn your mettle as a writer. You find new angles into old ideas.

Since fairy tales have been around for so long, you really have no choice but to find a new angle into them. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to play against the formula. Do what Shrek did. However, because Shrek exists, you need to find an even more disruptive angle, less you look like you’re copying.

Does The Other Princess achieve this?

Sorta.

I liked the reality show stuff. My problem with The Other Princess is more with the nuts and bolts of the story – the motivations of the characters themselves.

For example, I couldn’t figure out why this asshole Prince who despised Cyrielle kept bringing her along. We’re repeatedly told she’s too old. She keeps screwing up in the challenges, looking like a bumbling idiot. And every interaction the Prince has with her goes badly. For the first 70 pages, he appears borderline disgusted with her.

Whenever this sort of thing happens, I’m pulled out of the story because I’m thinking, “This isn’t happening because it’s logical. It’s happening because the writer needs it to happen to move the story forward.” If Cyrielle falls out of the competition, the movie is over.

But that doesn’t mean you can advance her because you need her to be moved forward. There have to be reasons behind it. This is something so many writers get wrong. They have something happen because they want it to happen, not because it would happen.

Yes, there is creative license in storytelling. You do get to do things that people wouldn’t normally do in real life. But it’s a slippery slope. The more severely or frequently you do it, the more you risk the audience calling you out.

Also, while I can forgive the writer for fudging the fringe parts of the story, you can’t fudge anything that’s a part of the story’s engine. This is what’s making the story go. If even one cylinder collapses, everything collapses. And her being chosen to continue is smack dab in the middle of the engine.

Still, I liked certain aspects of the script. As long as we’re talking about finding new angles, don’t just do it for the story, do it for the characters as well. Ask, “What has this character always been, and how can I change that?” I’ve never seen a bumbling drunk fairy godmother with no powers before, and that incarnation of the character was hilarious. Probably the best part of the script.

I also liked how Gianni was secretly listening to every conversation in the competition (like cameras in a reality TV show), writing it down, sending it back to the Enchanted Kingdom, where it was then copied onto numerous scrolls and sent out to everybody in the land, effectively creating the world’s first reality show. That was clever.

However, this should serve as a warning that scripts aren’t just about ideas. Ideas like the above are the fun part. We all love writing them. But once you have that down, you need to make sure the structure is sound, the character arcs are sound, the character motivations are sound. That’s the hard stuff, the boring stuff, but the stuff that brings it all together, that makes your story seamless.

I thought The Other Princess was a solid Amateur Friday entry. It just needs a bit more craft and technique to tidy up those edges. I hope Romi works on it because I think it has potential.

Screenplay Link: The Other Princess

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Creativity is just one part of screenwriting. You can come up with a great character, a clever scene, or a hilarious joke, but if the craft side isn’t there, your script isn’t going to pop. So just keep working on the craft (structure, GSU, suspense, plotting, pacing). And the reverse is true as well. There are a lot of great craft screenwriters out there who aren’t being creative enough, who aren’t pushing the limits of their imagination or trying unique things. So it goes both ways. You have to be proficient at both.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When her Mother goes missing on Black Friday, a strong-willed Teen is forced to quest into the shopping chaos with the person whose company she enjoys least – her perpetually immature and inebriated Uncle.
Why You Should Read: Why should you read My Druncle Kevin? I can sit here and make bold, downright blasphemous claims about my script being “Hughes-ian” or in the vein of a “Family Style Hangover,” but no one wants to hear that. Instead, here are ten stone cold bullet points…
1. It’s a comedy with heart for days.
2. It’s a script set during a time of year that is oddly underrepresented in movies.
3. It centers on a refreshing “buddy coppy” duo not often seen in film.
4. It’s all about family at its core.
5. It features the best dopey small car action since “The Italian Job.”
6. It cracked the ScriptShadow 250!
7. Too much pressure, skip to #8.
8. It’ll make you appreciate your mother.
9. My friend Joe said it was “pretty good,” and he doesn’t even read scripts!
10. It will put you in the holiday spirit just in time for… Spring. I’m nothing if not topical.
Writer: Vin Conzo
Details: 102 pages

It was nice to see those two Uber projects (one a spec script) sell last week. There was a time when comedy used to rule the spec roost, the sales vastly outnumbering the number of specs sold in any other genre.

But that’s not the case anymore, and it’s no surprise why. Comedy doesn’t travel well internationally, so studios are less excited about the genre in this new global-driven marketplace.

Because of that, there are less comedy slots open. The problem is that the average comedy writer hasn’t adjusted to that. They’re still writing like all you have to do is come up with a half-baked premise and a semi-funny hero and you’re good. Remember how there were like 8 bro-mance specs sold when “bro-mance” was a thing? Yeah, that ain’t reality anymore, bro.

These days, if you want a shot as a comedy writer, you either have to grab onto a trend right when Hollywood wants it, like the Uber thing, or you have to be on point in all three key areas: Great marketable premise, great main character(s), great execution. To me, the gold standard is still The Hangover.

Does Druncle Kevin pass this test?

32 year-old Kevin Stanley is the loser uncle of the year. Hell, he’s the loser uncle of the millennium. His older brother-in-law died awhile back, and the addiction-challenged Kevin freeloads off his widowed sister, Sarah, sleeping in her basement while she desperately tries to raise a family of two children and an aging father.

On this particular Thanksgiving evening, Sarah is heading off to pre-Black Friday sales madness, and gives Kevin one task. Hold down the fort. He’ll have to do so with a father who despises him and a 16 year-old niece, Paula, who used to love her uncle until he turned into the most unreliable loser in history.

Well, breakfast comes around the next morning and Sarah is nowhere to be found. When a good samaritan shows up at their door soon-after, saying she found Sarah’s purse in the Target parking lot, Kevin and Paula start freaking out. Could something have happened to Sarah?

Paula reluctantly teams up with her druncle, and the two head to a Black Friday crazed mall to put together the pieces of what happened. What they eventually find is that Sarah, who was planning to surprise her daughter with a new car for Christmas, accidentally stumbled upon two Black Market car criminals, who subsequently kidnap her, and who are probably going to kill her.

Will the inadequate and irresponsible Kevin be able to save his sister in time? Or will his contentious deteriorating relationship with his niece sabotage any shot at a Black Friday miracle?

So I can tell you why I didn’t advance My Druncle Kevin past the top 250. And most of it has to do with the opening scene. We’re immediately thrown into this chaos that is a Thanksgiving dinner, which is supposed to be humorous, but isn’t due to one problem: I don’t know anybody yet.

I don’t know these characters. I don’t know whose house we’re in. There’s an empty chair that’s supposed to represent a recently deceased person. But I don’t know who that person is/was. I’m able to piece together some things – this is called “My Druncle Kevin” so I figure Kevin is the drunk uncle. But I don’t even know which side of the family he’s on.

And that may not sound like a big deal but it’s a HUGE deal. If Kevin was the dead husband’s brother, that’s a whole different story than if he’s Sarah’s brother. If he’s the dead husband’s brother, he represents him. The dynamic between him and the others would be more complex. But if he’s Sarah’s brother, that’s more of an “annoying brother” type of thing and way more simplistic.

Not that one is better than the other. The point was, I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know any of the characters yet. And therefore it was more an exercise in my trying to figure out who was who and what was going on as opposed to enjoying and laughing at the scene.

In one of my favorite comedy dinner scenes of all time, the famous dinner in the original Meet The Parents, the reason that scene works so well is because we’ve established not only the characters, but the relationship DYNAMICS.

Relationship dynamics are crucial to comedy. We need to know what’s going on between people before we can laugh at what’s going on between people.

So in that Meet The Parents scene, we know that the father doesn’t think Ben Stiller’s character is good enough for his daughter. That allows us to play with that dynamic. We can have Ben Stiller desperately try and impress the father. In doing so, we can have him repeatedly screw up. And with each successive screw-up, he can dig himself a deeper hole. And as that hole grows deeper, we can laugh while he tries to pull himself out.

When we don’t know the relationship dynamics yet – and this isn’t just in regards to dinner scenes but ANY scenes – it’s hard to find comedy outside of broad random humor. It’s what I call “clown comedy.” Because basically the only comedy that can work in a scene without context is a character acting like a clown. They can say and do wacky crazy things for laughs. And that’s basically what Kevin’s comedy amounts to in this opening. He drifts from wacky line to goofy impression to silly screw-up.

We talk about structure in relation to screenplays all the time. But structure is required in character. It’s required in jokes. You need that form to give the moment context. When you don’t have structure, you’re leaving your story or your character off on an island and you’re saying, “I’m not going to give you anything to work with. But be entertaining.”

So really, My Druncle Kevin was screwed (contest-wise) before it even got out of its first scene. Now once it did get out of that scene, it got better. A story began to emerge. There was a mystery there. There were personal stakes involved. So I did become engaged.

But here’s another reason why those opening pages are so important. They color the reader’s opinion on everything moving forward. Since I was confused by Kevin in that opening scene, even when the story gained form, I still never felt connected to him. That first scene always lingered.

It’s no different from real life, guys. A first impression is always the strongest impression. Characters are the same deal. We form strong opinions on them when we meet them and carry those opinions forward, even if the character evolves or becomes more interesting in some way. We never forget that first meeting.

And I’m not saying a character can’t start in a negative place. I’m saying you need to know EXACTLY how you want your character to be perceived and you need to be super-diligent in clearly conveying that. Like I said, I didn’t even know if Kevin was Sarah’s brother or the dead husband’s brother in that opener. And to me, that’s crucial.

I still love this title. That’s a huge reason why it advanced into the 250. And I think this is a premise worth working on. But I don’t feel like I know Kevin well enough after reading this. Comedy characters need to be clear. Say what you want about the recent hit, Daddy’s Home, but I knew who Will Ferrel’s character was in that movie after his very first scene. He’s an overly-sensitive “nice guy” desperate to be respected as a father. Who’s Kevin? He’s a drunk. He’s a clown. What else? That needs to be figured out.

Script link: My Druncle Kevin

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Build your comedy characters from a place of humanity, not a place of comedy. Let’s look at Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in The Hagover for this lesson. When building the character of Alan, instead of saying to yourself, “I’m going to create this zany guy who says the weirdest things at the most inappropriate moments,” say, “I’m going to create this guy who has no friends and is babied by his family, and because of that, he’s painfully socially unaware.” This way, the comedy is coming from a place of truth as opposed to a place of “Let’s see how wacky I can be!” Big difference.

Congrats to yesterday’s “worth the read” amateur script. Lawrence e-mailed me to let me know he’s slogging through a particularly rough time in his life and this review helped him remember what he was doing this for. Let’s give more writers that moment. Bring your best stuff, guys. And if you’re new to Amateur Offerings and want a shot at getting your script reviewed, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, logline, and why you think your script deserves a shot. Don’t forget to include a PDF of your script. Now on to today. Read as much as you can from each script and cast your vote in the comments section (leave a comment with your pick). Let’s find an IMPRESSIVE! :)

Title: Vampire United
Genre: Comedy Horror Action.
Logline: A shamed ex-soccer pro must rise up against the new owner of his local team when he discovers he’s an Eastern European vampire bent on destroying the beautiful game.
Why You Should Read: I’m an English screenwriter living in Berlin aspiring to have a career in LA and would love to have my script reviewed to know if the script is ready to present to the industry, or not. I’m aware the story and its execution have to be amazing and I’m submitting the script in the hope I get notes to help reach that goal. The script is in the vein of Shaun Of The Dead, and The World’s End but with the heart of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot. I spent months in Whitby researching/writing the script. And for that I deserve good things to happen! Whitby is a small seaside town in North Yorkshire where Bram Stoker wrote and set much of Dracula. A goal I have is to make the association between Whitby and Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel more known. Why? Because despite there being 300 + movies, TV series, etc. made from the novel none have ever mentioned the location of Whitby, which I find incredible. Whitby is the place where Dracula landed in the UK from Transylvania on the Russian Schooner ship the Demeter to curse the nation with vampirism. Vampire United is inspired by that set up. I have an MA in screenwriting and attended the UCLA professional Program in screenwriting some years back. My previous script was a top 13 finalist of 4000 entries in the Scriptapalooza competition and Vampire United recently received three high grades on the Black List. I see this script as a perfect fit for Ben Wheatley and plan to get it to him when it’s ready.

Title: My Druncle Kevin
Comedy: Family Comedy
Logline: When her Mother goes missing on Black Friday, a strong-willed Teen is forced to quest into the shopping chaos with the person whose company she enjoys least – her perpetually immature and inebriated Uncle.
Why You Should Read: Why should you read My Druncle Kevin? I can sit here and make bold, downright blasphemous claims about my script being “Hughes-ian” or in the vein of a “Family Style Hangover,” but no one wants to hear that. Instead, here are ten stone cold bullet points…

1. It’s a comedy with heart for days.
2. It’s a script set during a time of year that is oddly underrepresented in movies.
3. It centers on a refreshing “buddy coppy” duo not often seen in film.
4. It’s all about family at its core.
5. It features the best dopey small car action since “The Italian Job.”
6. It cracked the ScriptShadow 250!
7. Too much pressure, skip to #8.
8. It’ll make you appreciate your mother.
9. My friend Joe said it was “pretty good,” and he doesn’t even read scripts!
10. It will put you in the holiday spirit just in time for… Spring. I’m nothing if not topical.

Title: The Mars Exploit
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: After telepathic extremists seize control of the Solar system, an elite programmer must sneak onto occupied Mars and subvert the enemy’s communications network, or say goodbye to freedom of thought forever.
Why You Should Read: When Alex told me this story, I don’t think he had any idea what it would do to me. How I’d be up until three in the morning writing down every word he’d said, because I was too excited about it to sleep. After he graciously gave me permission to turn it into a screenplay, I spent many more sleepless nights, first teaching myself screenplay format (which, as a novelist, I hadn’t touched since college), then working out each new plot twist and character – because I just couldn’t wait to share this amazing story with everyone else. I hope I’ve done it justice!

Title: Refugee
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: A dishonorably discharged Marine breaks a stalemate between the US military and the gangs that inhabit what’s left of a flooded New York City.
Why You Should Read: I’m a Sydney based writer with a mixed background. With an Iraqi father and an Algerian mother, I was born in Poland, grew up in Australia, lived in Italy and the Netherlands and traveled most of the world. I’ve been held up at gunpoint, jumped from 70 foot cliffs and out of aeroplanes. I don’t say it to boast, but to show how varied my experiences have been. Refugee was written with input from actual US Marines and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it. If it doesn’t get reviewed, I at least hope you enjoy the ride.

Title: Punks
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Four friends try to have a normal day, until everything starts going wrong.
Why You Should Read: My name is Ty Brantley. I am 15 years old and I am also an aspiring writer just trying to get his script read. I think you should read my script because of my age and this will most likely help get my name out there. Also, most people who have read it say it’s pretty good.