Over the next five Thursdays, I’m going to be talking dialogue with the Scriptshadow Community. We’re going to be exploring the five main factors that go into writing strong dialogue, and today we’re starting with scene prep. The objective of this post is to show you how to prep a scene in order to get the best dialogue out of it.

Before we get into what you should do, it’s important to understand what not to do. As a screenwriter, we’re taught to look at scenes as situations that move our story forward. For example, as you plan your scene, you may think, “I have to have Chloe tell Jack about the time machine glove here so that when they meet up with Dr. Frank after the graduation scene, they can go back in time that night.” In other words, you see the scene as a means to communicate information as opposed to an entertaining experience in itself.

That’s the switch I want you to make in your mind. Of course you want your scenes to push the story forward. But what’s more important is that each individual scene be entertaining. It may be scary to hear but three boring scenes in a row and the reader is out.

The most basic step in dialogue prep is making sure that one character in a scene WANTS SOMETHING. The reason for this is that it gives your character purpose. And when a character is purposeful, his words have meaning behind them. Words without purpose, without meaning, are lifeless. To see this in action, write up some dialogue where two characters don’t want anything from each other. See what comes out. I’m guessing a bunch of boring nonsense.

Here’s where things get fun. Once you have a character who wants something, you can set it up so that the other character in the scene doesn’t want to give it to them. Go write a scene right now where Nick wants to break up with Tara but Tara doesn’t let him. I guarantee that scene is going to have better dialogue than if Tara agrees with Nick that they should break up. By following this simple formula, you’ve added CONFLICT to your dialogue. And conflict is where most great dialogue lies.

While this setup works great, not all conversation is this cut and dry. To be honest, if you only wrote scenes where one character wanted something and another character didn’t want to give it to them, the script would get repetitive fast. Conversation is more varied and nuanced than that. However, I want you to master this basic setup, because we’re going to use it as a jumping off point for all the other dialogue situations.

A close cousin to the “want – don’t want” setup is the “talk – no talk” setup. This is where one character wants to talk about something and the other character doesn’t. How many times have you been in a relationship or a marriage where you came home and your spouse hits you with the last thing you want to talk about in that moment? That’s an ideal dialogue situation right there. I actually think one of the most fun types of scenes to write is a “talk – no talk” where the secondary character literally says nothing the whole scene. Character A is the only person who talks in the scene. These scenes are always good.

Because conversation is so complex, these two setups are not going to be enough to complete the 40 odd dialogue scenes you’ll write in a screenplay. There will be a number of scenarios where neither character wants something and where both characters want to talk to each other. How do we still make the dialogue pop in those situations? It’s called the “Tension Question.” When dialogue lacks bite, simply ask the question, “Where is the tension coming from?” If you don’t have any, the dialogue will lack spark.

An example of tension is sexual tension. I was watching The Office the other day and Michael Scott was talking to his female boss and neither of them wanted anything from each other. But the scene worked because there was sexual tension bubbling up underneath their conversation. You could even make the same scene work if the sexual tension was one-sided. AS LONG AS THERE’S TENSION. That’s how important the Tension Question is.

Yet another great dialogue setup is to introduce an external problem into the scene. A problem forces your characters to work the problem out. But wait. Doesn’t that violate our first dialogue commandment, which states that our characters can’t want the same thing in a scene? Actually, the tension comes from a slight adjustment. They may want the same thing, BUT THEY’LL HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS ON HOW TO GET IT. Have you ever tried to lift something really heavy with people you barely know? Within seconds, you’re getting wildly differing opinions on how to execute the task at hand: “No no no, you got to be in front.” “Wait, you should put your hands here, not there.” “You’re the tallest so you should be in back.” If characters want the same thing, they should have differing opinions on how to get it. That’s going to inject the necessary tension.

These final three structural tips aren’t required for great dialogue, but if your dialogue is lacking punch for some reason and you can’t figure out why, try throwing one of these in there. STAKES. The more that’s on the line, the more the words will matter. Think about a scenario where absolutely NOTHING is on the line. Say you’re meeting up with a friend for coffee. Neither of you want anything from each other. This is a zero stakes conversation which means it will be 100% boring. What if, however, using the same setup, Character A needed to borrow a large chunk of money from Character B to pay off his bookie, or else that bookie is going to break his jaw tonight? Granted, that’s an extreme scenario. But do you see how stakes increase the conversation’s worth? It doesn’t need to be this drastic every time. Just ask yourself, “What’s on the line in this scene?” If nothing is on the line, putting ANYTHING in there will improve the dialogue.

The second tip is URGENCY. A conversation where characters have all the time in the world to chat away is usually a boring conversation. For this reason, you want to put a time constraint on your conversation. I was watching a TV show not long ago and Character A needed to talk to Character B about something important. The writer didn’t have the two meet later for a beer to discuss the issue – a place where they would’ve had an endless amount of time. Instead, Character A came to Character B’s work. Character A spotted him in a meeting and waved him out. Annoyed, Character B came out and said, “What are you doing, I’m in the middle of an important meeting,” and Character A laid the issue on him. Of course, he had to hurry because Character B’s coworkers were waiting for him to come back into the meeting. Lack of time equals pressure. Pressure equals tension. Tension is conflict. Conflict is entertainment.

Finally, we have circumstance. When and where a conversation is had will have a major influence on what’s being said. The same conversation plays differently in a bedroom than it does in a plane than it does at a wedding than it does in the supermarket line than it does at a funeral. That’s because different circumstances create different levels of tension (not to mention different types of tension). A good rule of thumb is that if a conversation is going to be entertaining on its own, you don’t need to think too hard about circumstance. But if your conversation is weak, try altering the circumstance to a time and place that’s going to add more tension.

That’s all for today. Come back next week where we’ll talk about character. In the meantime, you better be writing a bunch of practice dialogue scenes with these tips in mind!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Drama/Period/Conspiracy
Premise: A young upstart at NASA suggests that in order to beat the Soviets to the moon, the US have Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing.
About: For those of you who caught yesterday’s post, Stephany Folsom is the co-writer of Toy Story 4. She got that job after writing this script, which made the 2013 Black List. Pixar is known for finding fresh writers who write darker/sophisticated material, presumably because they like themes that go further than skin deep. Folsom’s influences include Lou Reed, Steven Soderbergh, Kurt Vonnegut, Jean Renoir, and John Hughes.
Writer: Stephany Folsom
Details: 10/13 draft – 115 pages

One of the downsides of the Black List is that 70 scripts all get bunched up together with one big thumbs up and you don’t know which of them are actually good. The only way to find out is when they get written up on other sites and the only site that goes through them to find out is, well, this one. So until I read a Black List script myself, I never know what’s good. Apparently, this script was featured in several publications outside of the Black List and therefore was one of the few scripts getting legit endorsements (as opposed to making the list because an ambitious agent lobbied a bunch of development kids to vote for his client’s script). How I missed it? I don’t know. But, hey, better late than never.

It’s 1969 and two American spies in the Soviet Union have determined that rising leader Mikahil Suslov is less than a month away from launching a manned mission to the moon, three full months before the US will send their team. The American government believes that if the Soviets beat them to the moon, Suslov’s power will skyrocket and he will initiate an all-out nuclear attack on America.

A little known U.S. government NASA liaison named Barbara comes up with a solution for this: Fake the moon landing. Everyone ignores her until she gets an official government letter approving her request. Barbara believes there’s only one man for the job: eccentric director Stanley Kubrick. She practically barges into his home and makes her pitch. Kubrick declines until Barbara offers him an elusive government-made camera lens that can shoot in lower light than any other lens in the world. Kubrick is in.

The kooky Kubrick begins playing his games immediately, waiting until Barbara has driven him to the airport to tell her he doesn’t fly. She’s forced to drive him from New York to Florida. Once there, nobody at NASA seems to pay attention to Barbara and Stanley’s sideshow. I’m not sure why since I thought this was the key to saving the world. Kubrick busts out all the hits. He only communicates with Barbara via written notes. He shoots until the astronauts physically can’t move anymore. And after entire sets are built to his particularly stringent standards, he decides at the last second to tear them down and start over again.

At the last second, Kubrick decides to quit. Despite everything he shot being perfect, he never filmed the astronauts walking out of the module onto the moon – the most important part of the whole movie! So it will be up to Barbara to find Kubrick and convince him to come back, film the ending, and save the free world.

I’ll cut straight to the chase. Your reaction to this script will depend exclusively on whether you’re a Kubrick fan or not. If you love Kubrick’s movies and you love all the rumors surrounding his eccentric directing style, you’ll flip for this. Me, on the other hand, I’ve never connected with Kubrick’s work. It’s too dark and nihilistic for my taste. So while I love the stories about what a weirdo Kubrick was (i.e. doing 60 takes in a row and never asking for anything different from the actors), I’m far from what you’d call a Kubrick sycophant. Which is probably why I didn’t respond to this script the way others have.

My first issue with the script is that it’s too dry.

The characters only speak to say what the writer needs them to to move the plot forward. Outside of Kubrick, they don’t have a life of their own. They all sound exactly alike – government drones trying to do a job. Even Barbara. If you’re worried that your dialogue isn’t up to professional standards, this script should give you hope. The dialogue here is as standard as it gets and it made the Black List.

The bigger issue, however, is how unclear the overall goal is. While I knew they were filming a fake moon landing, it was never clear how it was going to be used. We’re being told that, concurrently with Kubrick shooting the landing, NASA is still going forward with the real trip to the moon. So was this a backup plan in case they didn’t launch in time? Was it to be used in conjunction with the launch (show the launch then cut to the fake moon landing footage)? Was NASA going to try a moon landing the legit way, and, if they didn’t make it, throw the fake footage up at the last second? Was the plan not to televise the launch and just say to the world that they’re at the moon then show the fake footage?

A big reason this was so hard to follow was because Barbara’s fake landing was a side hustle nobody in the White House or NASA cared about. It made the whole movie seem like it didn’t matter. Honestly, half the time we’re with Kubrick on set, it feels like play time. An excuse to get to the next Kubrick shenanigan.

That’s not to say there weren’t stakes. If Russia’s top engineer beats the U.S. to the moon, he would win the presidency and launch a nuclear war against America. But that only confused the narrative more. If it was so important that this fake landing work, how come nobody in government was paying attention to it?

If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think the writer thought about anything other than the Kubrick/Barbara scenes. These are the only scenes that pop. And I use that word generously. Outside of the scenes with Kubrick screwing around, we haven’t got one character who stands out. Not to mention a plot with an extremely hazy goal.

Here’s the thing with readers. Every time we see a script with a good concept, we prepare ourselves for one of two outcomes. Either the writer is going to give us exactly what we’re expecting from the concept. It will be serviceable and nothing more. Or the writer is going to elevate that concept into something way better than what we imagined. This script definitely lies in the former pile. There’s nothing here that a thousand other screenwriters wouldn’t have done with the same idea. It honestly seems like an excuse to write eight scenes where Kubrick is acting like a weirdo. Everything else is tossed in there to fill up space.

And that sucks because I was really looking forward to this script. I guess it goes to show that when you get to work with the Pixar storytelling team, you are getting the best screenwriting help in the world. So many characters fall flat on the page here whereas in Toy Story 4, they’re all fun and memorable.

All right you Kubrick nuts – feel free to tear me to pieces.

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

What I learned: That 2001 was originally deemed a failure. It only became cool when the hippie counter-culture began dropping acid and going to screenings. It then miraculously became a “masterpiece.” This helps explain why I never never saw what others saw in this film.

Due to a combination of movie economics and the audience’s desire for balance, you need to include “slow” scenes in your script. I put “slow” in quotes for a reason. As you’ll soon find out, “slow” is a relative term. However, I would argue that learning how to write entertaining slow scenes is one of the biggest steps to becoming an advanced writer. I say that as someone who’s read tens of thousands of slow scenes that were abysmally boring.

The reason beginner and intermediate writers struggle in this area is because they don’t have a plan when they’re writing these scenes. Their “plan” boils down to having characters talk and hopefully that talk will be interesting. If that’s your plan, you’re writing a lot of lousy scenes. And because readers have such a short leash (look no further than in the mirror – you guys give up on an Amateur Showdown script after one paragraph!), one boring scene could be what does your script in.

Before I explain how to make slow scenes entertaining, I must first explain what makes a scene boring. There are a few scene-types that are particularly crippling. The most common is the Coffee Shop Scene. The Coffee Shop Scene doesn’t need to take place in a coffee shop. It’s any stand-in scene where two characters get together to talk about stuff. We’re not moving the plot forward. We’re not solving any issues. The characters talk about or debate something. The scenes exist for no other reason than to hear the characters talk. In short, there’s no dramatic purpose to the scenes at all.

But there’s an even worse version of the Coffee Shop Scene, which is the Backstory Monologue Scene. This is that serious scene where the main character shares their traumatic backstory. Unless the backstory has a revelation in it that literally makes the reader gasp, these scenes are screenplay killers. Remember in Chinatown, there was originally a Backstory Monologue Scene about what happened to Jack Gittes in Chinatown. Robert Towne knew that 98% of Backstory Monologue Scenes put the audience to sleep, so he got rid of it. That’s how crippling these scenes are. The screenwriter thought it better to get rid of the scene that literally explained the title of the movie than keep it in.

Then we have the Chain Link Scenes. These are the 2-5 scene chunks (sometimes longer in dramatic films) that exist between the bigger plot points. Often times it’s a combination of Coffee Shop Scenes, exposition scenes, and scenes that reveal stuff about our characters but aren’t entertaining in and of themselves. Chain Link Scenes are an easy way to tell whether you’re dealing with an advanced or beginner writer. Beginner writers will expand their links out to 8-10 scenes before anything major happens in the story. And the scenes have next to ZERO dramatic value. In other words, NOTHING interesting or entertaining is happening in them. The writer believes that as long as they’re writing something down – anything – then the reader must be entertained by it. Figuring out how to tackle these scenes is the focus of this post.

The best way to keep a slow scene interesting is to have something dramatically interesting happen within the scene. Let’s take the famous scene of Luke Skywalker chatting with C-3PO and R2-D2 for the first time. This is a slow scene trap. A bad writer could’ve had Luke talk to the droids, learn a little about the Empire, and complain about his boring life on the farm. Instead, what Lucas does is, while Luke is cleaning R2-D2, have the famous recording of Princess Leia pop out, talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi. The revelation isn’t only exciting in itself, but it propels the story forward because now Luke has to get this message to Obi-Wan. So whenever you’re writing a scene that could be considered “slow,” throw a revelation in there that moves the story forward.

A big way to infuse a slow scene with some entertainment value is to up the conflict. I’m assuming that there’s already conflict in your scene. I hope so, at least. If there’s no conflict at all, there’s a good chance you’re boring your reader. I’m here to tell you that conflict is 1-10 scale. If your scene is boring, you may only have the conflict dialed up to 3. So look for ways to bring it to a 7. In Netflix’s Murder Mystery, there’s a scene where Jennifer Aniston sneaks into the bar lounge of the plane. The scene is purely plot setup. It’s where Aniston meets Charles Cavendish so he can invite her to the boat where the murder will take place. The scene is technically slow, but there’s a ton of sexual tension between Aniston and Cavendish, to the point where you wonder how far she’s going to take it. And that makes this exposition-laden scene move a lot quicker than its run-time would suggest. Had the writer sent Sandler in to meet Cavendish instead, there’d be no sexual tension, no conflict, and the scene would’ve moved a lot slower.

Another movie where we can see the power of conflict is The Dark Knight. There’s a moment about 15 minutes into the film where we get a series of weak scenes. First we have Commissioner Gordon asking Harvey Dent for a favor. It’s a dry scene with a teensy bit of conflict, but mostly boring stuff. This is followed by a board meeting for Wayne Enterprises to potentially buy another company. The scene has a nice little joke where Bruce is asleep the whole time, but again, it’s sort of boring. Then we have Bruce asking Lucious Fox for some adjustments to his bat suit. There’s no entertainment value to these scenes whatsoever. If there’s a lesson to learn from them, it’s that if you’re going to have a slow scene, try to keep it as short as possible. All of these scenes may be slow but they’re also short. Anyway, we then get to the scene where Bruce bumps into Rachel at a restaurant. Rachel is on a date with Harvey. Bruce, meanwhile, is on a date with a famous Russian ballerina. Now THIS is what you call a good slow scene. Technically, it’s just characters talking. But the tension and the conflict and subtext going on here is top notch – Bruce’s obvious attraction to Rachel, the dick-measuring contest between him and Harvey, Rachel’s jealousy over Bruce’s perfect 10 date. All of that leads to a big juicy fun scene.

Conflict Pro-tip here. If your script revolves around two main characters, make sure those characters are like oil and water. If you do that – and I’m going to put this in capital letters because that’s how important of a tip it is – YOU WON’T HAVE ANY SLOW SCENES. You have built in conflict in every scene in the movie without having to do anything. Go watch Zombieland. Tallahassee thinks Columbus is an annoying geek. Tallahassee will do anything to be Columbus’s friend. They’re never on the same page. Same thing with Hell or High Water. Those brothers see the world in completely opposite ways. This ensures that even though there’ll be numerous “slow” scenes, the scenes will always have some level of entertainment to them.

Yet another way to write a good slow scene is to not write the scene at all. Often, I’ll read a scene where two characters are talking to each other about, say, their day. One of them points out they got into a fight at work with someone and now they’re in a war with that person. Ask yourself this. What’s more interesting? Two people talking about a fight at work or the actual fight at work? In other words, the scene you should be writing is the one at work. That’s the scene with entertainment value in it. Two people talking about that is boring.

One more way to make a slow scene work is to place a problem at the center of the scene. This works especially well in exposition-heavy scenes. Naturally, the bigger the problem, the better the scene will play. In Infinity War, one of the early scenes has Dr. Strange, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner discussing the problem of the Infinity Stones and how they need to get them before Thanos does. It’s a lot of exposition and even more talking, but the scene plays well because the problem – obtaining the stones – is so big (the conflict between Stark and Strange also elevates the scene – power of conflict, baby!). But make no mistake, a problem can be just as powerful with personal stakes. For example, if a wife just got offered her dream job but it’s in another country and the husband doesn’t want to move the family there, the subsequent scene of them deciding what to do will be entertaining.

Finally, if all else is lost, make sure something is always PULLING at your character. Your character always has to be somewhere OTHER THAN THE SCENE THEY’RE IN. They’re only here because they have to deal with whatever issue has come up in the moment. But we always feel the PULL of needing to be elsewhere. What this does is create a unique form of conflict where both us and the character are on edge. And that’s a good thing. It means there’s always something that needs to be done. This makes sense when you consider the primary setup that leads to boredom, which is two characters with all the time in the world sitting down and talking about anything they want. That’s the ultimate boring slow scenario. If you want to watch a movie that does this “PULL” better than any movie in history, watch Back to the Future. Marty always needs to be somewhere else. And that tension makes even the movie’s slowest scenes move at a rocket-fast pace.

Genre: Whimsical Dramedy
Premise: A young man makes the all important second round of a mission to Mars contest, and begins his training, despite the fact that everyone in town thinks the contest is a scam.
About: This script snuck onto the 2016 Black List, grabbing 6 votes. The project, written by Rebecca Banner, got some initial heat, attaching newbie director Sam Boyd (In A Relationship), but struggled to get money in that all-important financing stage. Contrary to popular belief, Rebecca Banner is not the mother of Marvel cinematic hero, Bruce Banner.
Writer: Rebecca Banner
Details: 106 pages

Hoult for Alex?

Ah, the Delusional Adventurist sub-genre. One of the most beloved by writers, yet one of the hardest to execute.

From The Fisher King to Field of Dreams to Nebraska to K-Pax to Safety Not Guaranteed, the temptation of writing these movies is their adult fairy tale nature. We may have outgrown our knights and princesses saving the day. But boy would we like to write about a guy who puts an ad in the paper asking for a partner to go back in time with him.

I wrote a Delusional Adventurist script back in the day about a guy who believed he could use the junk in his dead father’s junk yard to build a satellite receiver that would allow him to talk to his father again. Yeah, um, that script didn’t go anywhere. But boy did I love writing it. This genre really allows you to use your imagination and have fun. And isn’t that what writing movies is all about?

27 year-old Alex lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere and has recently learned that he’s made the all-important second round of the Mission Mars Space Program Contest, which will put him in a ship with a group of fellow astronauts to fly to Mars where they’ll live the rest of their lives. Alex takes the mission very seriously and starts preparing immediately, even though they don’t leave for another 10 years.

Alex’s sister, Liz, considers Alex’s obsession with this Mars mission embarrassing. Everyone knows that the company is a scam. They’ll never be able to put this thing together. So Alex prancing around town telling anyone who will listen that he’s a Mars astronaut is not only making him look bad, but the rest of the family as well.

Alex decides that because a Mars trip is dangerous, he should probably take out a life insurance policy, so he heads into the local insurance office where he meets Daisy, who just moved into town. When Alex tells Daisy he’s going to Mars, she can’t stop laughing, until she realizes he’s serious. Um, okay, she says, I guess we’ll write up a policy for you.

Daisy takes a liking to Alex, but Alex makes it clear that they can’t get too close. He must put all of his focus into training. Even though, based on what’s in the script, Alex’s training amounts to walking around town aimlessly. Eventually, we learn that Alex and Liz had a brother, Christopher, who died last year, and that maybe this is playing into Alex’s Mars’ obsession. When you need a little extra drama, why not throw in a dead family member backstory, right? Will Alex finally face reality and be with this amazing girl? Or is he stuck living in a fantasy world the rest of his life?

So how do you make the Delusional Adventurist genre work? Well, for starters, you have to figure out if your hero is smart or dumb. For example, Ray (Kevin Costner) in Field of Dreams is smart. Kenneth, in Safety Not Guaranteed, is not smart. The story is completely different depending on which route you take. And this was Space Oddity’s biggest misstep. I had no idea who Alex was. At first I thought he was dumb. Then I thought he may have been on the spectrum. Then I thought he was of average intelligence but just in a daze since his brother died.

Let me make something clear to all writers out there. If the reader doesn’t understand who your hero is, you’re screwed. Nothing else you do in the screenplay will matter because we don’t have a handle on the person who’s taking us on the journey. This is why I PLEAD with screenwriters to spend more time on your hero’s introductory scene than any other scene in the script. I don’t care if it takes you THREE MONTHS, as long as, once you’ve figured out that scene, the audience is crystal clear on who your hero is.

Yes, there are times where you’ll obscure your hero for mystery purposes. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the 95% of screenplays where you introduce a hero and we know immediately who they are.

For that reason, it took me a good 60 pages until I had a reasonable feel for who Alex was. By that point, with half the script gone, there was only so much of myself I could invest. Truth be told, there were a number of newbie mistakes in the script. It’s a script based around dialogue but the dialogue is predictable and safe. It’s never bad. But it’s never good either. And if you’re writing a script where the dialogue is one of the main focuses, then the dialogue has to be exceptional.

I knew the script was in trouble when Daisy’s job had absolutely nothing to do with the story. Literally the only reason she holds this position is so Alex can walk into an insurance store and there’s a girl there he can start a relationship with. I can’t remember insurance coming up at all after that scene. Not only that, but the act of getting insurance didn’t make sense for the story! The one thing we know about Alex is that he only cares about going to Mars. He’s selfish. So why would he open a life insurance policy? Who does he care about after he dies? Nobody.

This is the kind of stuff that bothers because it’s an indication that the writer isn’t thinking through what they’re writing. They get an idea – “I know. I’ll have him fall in love with an insurance saleswoman.” But then they don’t think about what that means or why the character would hold that position or why that choice is best for the story. They think the initial inspiration is enough to justify the choice. And that is enough to justify the choice in a first draft. But then you have to challenge those choices and decide if they’re the right choices. In almost every case, they can be improved upon.

The original time machine in Back to the Future was a refrigerator. Had Zemeckis and Gale kept that idea, that movie would’ve been a hell of a lot less exciting.

Unfortunately I was too caught up in all the rookie mistakes to think about the bigger question here, which is how do you write a great Delusional Adventurist script? And I think the answer to that question is a boring one. Or, at least, not the one you’d expect. It’s to make the characters interesting regardless of the storyline. In other words, in the end, it doesn’t matter if the mission is real, if the field is real, if time travel is real. What matters is having a catch with your father. And that payoff only works if you’ve done the hard work on the characters. Like I said, I couldn’t tell you if Alex’s IQ was 90 or 160. That’s how clueless I was about this character. So of course I cared very little about his relationship with Daisy.

With all that said, I’m a sucker for a good Delusional Adventurist script so here’s hoping that the next one gets a worth the read.

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

What I learned: “A means to a monologue.” Too many writers treat dead family member backstories as a means to a final act monologue and nothing more. They don’t truly explore grief. They don’t truly explore pain. They don’t know who those characters were before and after their brother died. They merely see plot beats as chess pieces to move around until they can give that final monologue. Look, I get it. It’s a character piece. There’s probably going to be a big monologue at the end. But it needs to be earned! You actually have to feel the things the characters are feeling in order for it to land. Jason Bateman says that the only way he can cry on cue is if he imagines that his kids are dead. I know that’s drastic but who said the arts were easy? If you’re not feeling it when you write it, we’re not feeling it either.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A recovering alcoholic travels off to his dead uncle’s remote island to battle the disease, but ends up battling a deadly monster who lives in the surrounding water instead.
About: Hooray! A recent spec sale. A few weeks ago, actually. And high six figures even. Never say the dream is dead. However, if you’re going to live the spec sale dream, you probably want to get your script to David Boxerbaum, as he’s the only agent in town the studios go to for original material. Peter Joseph sold this script to Universal.
Writer: Peter Joseph
Details: 105 pages

I’m doing this review for one reason and one reason only. Because I know that Grendl will post a 5000 word essay in the comments section on why it can never live up to its inspiration, Jaws.

There is a specific movie that brings all of us into this bizarre frustrating addictive craft known as screenwriting. And while we fight against copying the films of our past, an argument can be made that all we’re really trying to do is rewrite our favorite movie ever. Grendl knows Jaws so well, he can probably tell you the name of Extra #482 on the beach. So he can tell you how this script fares much better than I can.

I, however, am not bound by these chains. I’m easily entertained when it comes to monster movies. I’ll be the casual fan here and Grendl can be the New York Times critic.

30 year old Henry Wabash just got out of rehab. His sister, Athena, is proud of him, but worried that if she leaves him alone, he’ll relapse. That’s exactly what happens. Henry ends up at a bar his first night back. And so Athena comes up with a plan. She’s going to drive them out to their Uncle Pat’s place, which is located on a tiny island in the middle of a river way out in the middle of nowhere. There, Henry can fix up the house of their recently deceased uncle and truly put this addiction behind him.

After Athena leaves, the only connection to the outside world Henry has is Maurice, a local caretaker. Maurice is going to motor out and deliver him groceries every week. That way Henry won’t have any access to booze at all. One day, while out on the lake in a canoe, a rogue wave knocks Henry out of his boat. While underwater, he spots an old military plane at the bottom of the lake. Later, when Maurice comes by, he explains that the crew got out fine and it’s nothing. But it sure didn’t seem like nothing to Henry.

The next day, while out near the shore, a giant tentacle slips out of the water and tries to yank Henry in! He’s able to chop it off with an axe, but that’s not the end of it! The tentacle turns into its own entity and continues to attack Henry, who’s only barely able to kill it. Henry sends up a flare to have Maurice get him out of here, but on the way back, the tentacle creature attacks them! Not only that, but it seems to have grown! Henry is somehow able to escape but can only get back to the private island.

But if he thought he was safe there, think again! The sea monster is growing so rapidly that it’s able to squirm its tentacles up to and even INSIDE the house. It really wants to kill Henry. Henry realizes that if he doesn’t come up with a plan pronto, he’s going to be sea food. Ironically, Henry’s lone stash of liquor allows him to McGruber together a Molotov cocktail, which, theoretically, he’ll be able to use as a weapon. But this giant sea thing is getting smarter by the second. So whatever Henry’s plan is, it better be foolproof.

Let’s start off by recognizing the EXTREME streamlined writing style here. Pop open the first scene in Don’t Go In The Water and you won’t even see the right side of the page. That’s because there are no words on it. This script is written to read fast. And while I’m not sure a script should be THIS sparse, there’s an argument to be made that it should. All of Max Landis’s scripts read like this and he sold a bunch of stuff as well. Readers like effortless reading experiences and this script selling is proof of that.

Another takeaway is that monster-on-an-island specs are gonna sell at a higher rate than other specs. I know it’s simplistic. It almost seems like cheating. But we saw this with last year’s spec sale of Beast, about a woman running around an island with a beast creature. We saw an extreme version of it with The Shallows. The reason it works is because it hits all the beats that make for a thrilling experience. You’ve got a character who’s trapped. You’ve got a mysterious monster. And you’ve got time ticking down. As crazy as it is for me to say, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to write one of these. It’s sort of like a sneaky loophole to a spec sale. Sure, two of them are now in development. But any studio would like to make one of these because they’re so cheap.

As for the quality of the story itself, it had its pros and cons. I liked that Joseph attempted to explore something real with this character by making him an alcoholic. And I liked how organically that played into the plot itself. He had to come out here because it was his only shot at beating this. But I’m not sure Joseph ever really committed to it. There were times where he did and other times where Henry seemed like he wouldn’t know what alcohol was if a Budweiser hit him in the face. You probably need a writer who really understands addiction to do a pass on this storyline. Cause you can’t just dabble in addiction when its convenient. It’s supposed to be who your character is.

For that reason, I was only casually interested in the story. It was all too simplistic for my taste. However, after Maurice is killed and Henry is forced to flee back to the island, things picked up considerably. In any monster movie, one of the primary variables that you have to nail is the threat level of your monster. This is why Aliens remains one of the greatest monster movies ever made. When we see those aliens first attack the Marines, and they’re so overmatched, we think our heroes are done for, no matter what they do from now on. That’s the threat level you want to bring to your story – if not early, then by the midpoint.

Once I felt that Henry wasn’t safe in his own house, that he didn’t have any way to communicate with the outside world, and that any attempt to use the water for escape was suicide, I became a lot more invested. That final 40 pages is when this script delivered. So it’s by no means a killer screenplay. But once it hits the home stretch, you leave feeling like you got your money’s worth.

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

What I learned: Alcoholism is everywhere in movies and TV. For this reason, it usually comes off as cliche. The reason for that is writers think that to convey alcoholism you have to show the character drinking. A lot. The more they’re drinking, the belief is, the more developed the character becomes. In actuality, they’re just feeding the cliche. To accurately convey alcoholism, focus more on NOT HAVING THE DRINK. It’s the moments between drinks – the struggle – that’s where you explore true addiction.