Overwhelmed by all this First 10 Pages talk? Tell me about it. It’s a lot of pressure. Not to worry, though, as I have your perfect distraction. Amateur Offerings, baby! We’ve even got a special entry this week. Finally, E.C. gets his time to shine. HOWEVER, I am putting his script in here for one reason and one reason only. So that for the entirety of 2019, he is not allowed to complain that ANY script of his hasn’t been featured on Amateur Offerings. So E.C., enjoy this.

If you’ve never participated in Amateur Offerings, it’s a mini screenplay tournament where you read as much of each script as possible, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes gets a review next Friday. If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

A quick note. I’ll be reviewing M. Night’s “Glass” on Monday. So if you want to participate in the conversation, go out and see it!

Good luck everyone!

(note: E.C. included a lot of underlining, bolding, and different colored fonts for his pitch. I didn’t include that here as it would’ve taken me an extra half-hour to replicate. So you’ll just have to use your imagination)
Title: When the Motorcycle Calls
Genre: Heist
Logline: A motorcycle gang finds that their biggest obstacle in robbing a small town’s bank comes in the most unlikely of forms–a tobacco-chewing badass on a dirt bike!
Who am I: Longtime Scriptshadow regular, E.C. Henry. Past submission to Scriptshadow include: “A Heart Built on the Sand”, and “The Commune”. Carson has also given me notes on “The Chosen Redeemer of Thars”.
Why you should read this? “When the Motorcycle Calls” is a fun and entertaining read. It should high level discussion of how to write chase scenes. For those looking for a good laugh, hopefully I can pull that feat off too.

Story-wise there is more than just a heist going on. Lots of strong and varied characters. Plenty going on to keep things interesting. “When the Motorcycle Calls”has a “Dukes of Hazard” style vibe to it, and elements of a romantic comedy.

Also, I put some artist touches on this one that I’ve never done before, which were inspired by the script, “Meat”, which was one of Carson’s favorite scripts a while back.

Title: Eternal
Genre: Action Thriller
Logline: A bloody woman wakes up without memory and must uncover her shrouded past before she’s caught by shadowy pursuers because of her astounding ability — she can slow and stop time.
Why You Should Read: The benefit with girl-with-a-gun/female Bourne scripts is that every shop seems to want them. The problem is that every shop already seems to have one. Here’s my try at adding in a different spin on the genre, with a supernatural/sci-fi element I don’t think Hollywood has yet truly capitalized on. I can see why too — with a mega-powerful ability like time control, it’s very easy to get overpowered and boring. After a long while of mulling, though, I do believe I found just the right medium that utilizes the ability but still involves conflict and stakes. Interested to hear you guys’ thoughts on how to make this better!

Title: THE CAT, THE COUGAR, AND THE PUSSY
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Three stories about money, fame, and integrity weave together as the actions of disgruntled cops, struggling actors, a middle-aged housewife, a hitman, and a writer’s relationship with his agents, all lead to a bank heist gone wrong.
Why You Should Read: Setting aside my awesome title, I’ve attached the email from the most recent production company I submitted the script to. In it, their story editor/creative exec responded with the following: “Overall, I really loved the script, and you’ve got a fantastically unique voice and concept here. It really does come off as what would happen if Charlie Kaufmann were tasked with writing a film for Tarantino and ended up giving it the Adaptation treatment. It was fun, engaging, frenetic, and I never tired of being in this world or spending time with these characters.” If that’s not an endorsement to take a look, I don’t know what is. See the rest of the email below for your own convenience!

Title: IT DRINKS YOU
Genre: Horror
Logline: Trapped by a blizzard in a remote truck stop as it burns to the ground, a recovering addict and her young daughter must fight for survival against an alien horror.
Why You Should Read: I hope everyone has room for holiday leftovers as this is my version of a Christmas story. There are some holiday family film tropes, but with minor deviations. When some travelers get stranded at a mountain truck stop during a brutal blizzard, they don’t discover the real meaning of Christmas or the importance of family. There’s no time for any of that treacle when you’re cowering in pants-filling terror. Unfortunately, the nocturnal visitor isn’t Santa Claus. It’s a grotesque alien creature that interrupts the festivities in a grisly way. The young child isn’t slumbering with visions of dancing sugarplums in her head, the reality is that she’s doing something very disturbing in the storage room. There’s no Yuletide log burning, instead the whole damn place catches fire. A goodhearted mall Santa is present, but he dies a horrible death, poor bastard. Where eggnog is the disgusting holiday beverage that is typically consumed, in this story the monster liquifies the internal organs of its paralyzed prey and slurps the bloody puree like some ghastly smoothie. (which is nearly the same drink, in my opinion) I appreciate anyone who takes a peek at the script and am grateful for any comments/notes. Thanks.

Title: Roddenberry and Coon
Genre: Biopic
Logline: A story about the two men who created Star Trek and the one who took the credit.
Why You Should Read: Gene Roddenberry created the concepts that got Star Trek off the ground, his hands on involvement was very limited. Only the first two pilots and first ten regular episodes, often focusing on the supernatural being of the week. Creatively, the show REALLY took off with the involvement of Gene L. Coon! A lot of what Star Trek is today is because of him. He almost single handedly created The Klingons, had a hand in creating Khan for the episode ”Space Seed”. Any notion of Starfleet, The United Federation of Planets, and Warp Technology belongs to him. Last but not least, he also created the dynamic of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as a trio, possibly franchise’s most classic element! Much of the premise centers around Roddenberry appearing at a Star Trek convention and waxing his usual claim that Star Trek was his so called ”vision of the future”and how much of it he ”created”. It happens on July 8, 1973 — why is this date important? It is the very same day Coon died! A man who takes his final breaths while under an oxygen tent while on his deathbed. There are also flashbacks depicting how much Coon was involved, how much of the ideas he drew from his time as a Marine in Korea, and his working relationship with Gene Roddenberry!

How do I know all of this? Apart from some creative license, I wrote and published Gene L. Coon: The Unsung Hero of Star Trek. Possibly the only book on him, while there are at least five books on Roddenberry. I dug into newspaper archives no one had looked at in DECADES for the smallest bits of info on Coon’s life and career. Within six months, I researched and wrote a book that chronicled his life from singing opera on an Omaha, Nebraska radio station at four years old to the printing of his Obituary of his death from throat and lung cancer in July 1973. Thanks to this book, my sales recovered from a two year dry spell. It became #5 seller within a month of release and is still going strong a year and a half later! The script was requested by a low budget filmmaker, feeling it is very solid and could be made on a modest budget. Also resulting from this has been an article writing opportunity and the book was even on display at an event honoring Coon in his hometown of Beatrice, Nebraska earlier this year. The book is available on Amazon Kindle and Audible.com with the audiobook narrated by former Star Trek stand in and guest star Jack Nolan! Here’s hoping you find the screenplay as enjoyable and as informative as many have found the books!

Genre: Horror
Premise: Trapped in a strange house, a young woman with a phobia of dogs must escape the jaws of a bloodsucking hound and its master.
Why You Should Read:I find phobias fascinating. The crippling impact they can have on a person’s life. I wanted to take that fear to an extreme level. There seems to be room in the horror universe for an update on Cujo (other than a remake), pitting a protagonist against a vicious, bloodthirsty beast. I set out to write something simpler and more contained than my last work with 100x more blood. Hope you enjoy sinking your teeth into this one!
Writer: Katherine Botts
Details: 91 pages

Katherine is back. If my memory is correct, she’s 3 for 3 on winning Amateur Offerings. When a Katherine script comes in, a Katherine script tends to win. That’s my rhyme for the day. However, there’s some backstory here. Katherine’s been sending this script in for awhile and I wasn’t keen on featuring it. Not because I didn’t believe in her. But because the idea didn’t excite me. A mean dog after a person in a house? It sounded like the most straightforward predictable movie ever. I man Cujo is one of the only Stephen King books I haven’t read (for the same reason). Scary dogs don’t scare me. So I was going into this one with some prejudice. Would the script look up at me with puppy dog eyes and make me fall in love with it? Or would it bare its teeth and run away? Grab the leash and let’s walk this dog together to find out!

17 year old Blair is scarred for life – both literally and figuratively. When she was 7, a dog attacked her at a pool. She’s never been the same since. Also since that time, her father passed away. Her mom’s moved on with some lame-o named Nathanial. Blair’s plan is to save up enough money so she can fix her car and drive away from this place.

So when she gets a last second opportunity to house-sit for some richie riches, she grabs it. She arrives at the remote southern mansion where she meets the strange family – mother, father, son – who are leaving town because the mom’s father has fallen ill. Just before they’re about to leave, they blindside Blair by letting her know that, oh yeah, she has to take care of their new rescue dog, Jumper. Blair tries to back out of the job but gives in when they beg her.

As soon as they’re gone, Blair recruits her goofy boyfriend, Collin, to come keep her company. Collin, a dog lover, bonds with the rescue dog, encouraging Blair to give her a shot. No chance, Blair says. Dogs are evil. After the two raid the fridge, Collin falls asleep, and that’s when Blair sees it. Big scary eyes outside the window. A dog. And not just any dog. A huge beast of a dog.

Blair tries to shake Collin awake but there’s no response. She glances at the leftovers. Could they have been… drugged? As she yells at Collin to wake up, the beast-dog starts banging on the doors and windows. It’s only a matter of time before it gets in. She drags Collin to the old house elevator just as the dog breaks in, and they go up to the attic. It’s there where they meet old man Arthur. But wait, I thought the family was going to visit Arthur. What’s he doing here in the house?

It turns out Arthur is a vampire. That beast-dog thing is his servant. It finds him people, brings them to him, and he drinks their blood. Blair is able to escape this freakazoid, but now she’s right back in the bowels of the house, easy prey for Beast Dog. Blair will need to, ironically, depend on rescue dog, Jumper, to help her defeat this thing. But as the night unfolds, she realizes this entire family has planned everything to make sure she doesn’t leave alive.

First question that, no doubt, everyone will be asking after yesterday’s article. Does Blood Hound pass the First 10 Pages test? It’s hard for me to answer that because I knew I was reading this all the way through no matter what. So I was trying to imagine what I would’ve done if I had no obligation to the script. The answer is I probably would have stopped. But it wouldn’t have been an easy decision.

The opening scene is fun. Little girl at the pool. She wants a dog from her daddy. Sees a dog hiding in the bushes, goes to pet it. It attacks her. It was enough to keep me turning the pages. But I think the suspense could’ve been introduced earlier and drawn out more. The first part of the scene is her in a pool with her dad joking around. It’s not a bad scene at all. But if we’re grading the scene on the “Every word matters” curve, we could’ve hinted at danger earlier, which would’ve, in turn, allowed for Katherine to sneak in the character introductions via a more exciting scene wrapper.

The second scene (“10 Years Later”) is okay but it’s the very definition of “resting on your laurels.” You know you’ve started with this shocking opening scene. So you think, “I can relax now. They’ll allow me to be boring for a few pages while I set the characters up.” You can never rest on any laurels. I’m not asking for two teaser scenes in a row. But you should still be attempting to construct entertaining scenes after your first one.

But as the script goes on, it gets better. Katherine does a great job adding specificity to her world. Things happen because that’s how they would happen, not because the writer needs them to happen. An example would be the house-sitting. A lazy writer would make that a given. Blair’s housesitting tonight because she has to for the movie to exist. Katherine, however, explains that Blair wants out of this town. She needs money to fix dad’s car so she’s taking as many odd jobs as she can. The housesitting job, then, is a crucial step towards meeting that goal.

I also liked that the family had history. They were weird and mysterious. One of the things I worried about when I originally read the logline was that Blair would go to this house and then a dog would appear out of nowhere and start harassing her. It sounded too simplistic. But from the moment we get inside this house, the family seems interesting. There’s something odd going on with them and you want to keep reading to find out what it is.

The peak of the script for me was when I realized Jumper wasn’t the dog that was going to face off against Blair, but rather food for a bigger dog. That’s when I leaned in and really started reading with an invested eye. Once I figured out that she, too, was meant to be dog food, I was all in. At that point, the script was a double worth-the-read for me.

But then a controversial choice is made that people are either going to love or hate. I didn’t like it. And it comes down to “double mumbo-jumbo.” When I realized the old man, Arthur, was a vampire, my head fell. I thought I was reading a killer dog movie. Now it’d become a killer dog vampire movie. It was a bridge too far. After that, it was impossible for the script to win me back. I thought what Katherine had before this was plenty. It didn’t need a vampire kick.

With that said, I loved one other subplot in the script, which was Jumper going from enemy number one to best friend. I love any well-executed character arc. And Blair’s arc from being the last person in the world who would connect with a dog, to trusting her life to Jumper, was really heart-warming. Kudos to her for pulling that off.

But man, I really disliked the vampire thing. It felt like a writer who didn’t have the confidence that their idea was enough. So they had to add something extra. The irony is that I didn’t think the idea was enough when I started it either. But Katherine did such a good job building up this family and this house, that the original concept DID end up being enough. I mean, that’s some freaky shit. A family lures people into their house and then has their psycho dog eat them. That’s a movie right there.

Script link: Blood Hound

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

What I learned: Be careful with tropes, even if they’re well-regarded. An early scene has Young Blair crawling through the bushes to pet a dog. The dog growls at her. We sense the big attack coming. Then we cut to: “BLOOD flecks onto the old ball.” Yes, the cut away to blood splatter is a more “artful” way to express a violent attack than showing the violence. But if we’ve seen that trope a million times, is it any less lazy than showing the attack itself? I say this because I’ve read three scripts THIS WEEK that have used that trope. So push yourselves. Do something different. Maybe even show the attack. That might be the unexpected thing that makes the scene memorable.

It’s a new year. A new 365 days of possibility (well, 361 now). And what better way to break through than being endorsed by your own peers!? It’s the first Amateur Offerings of 2019, a bi-monthly tournament whereby five screenwriters square off against each other in a good old fashioned writing brawl. You, the readers, download and read as much of each script as possible, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes gets a review next Friday.

If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck to this week’s contestants!

Title: Insectum
Genre: Horror (subgenre: Slasher)
Logline: A group of high school girls and their teacher are taken in by twins with an obsession for insects after they are unexpectedly stranded on the way to an overnight field trip. There, they must fight for their lives as their teacher attempts to atone for a sin from her past.
Why You Should Read: Prom Night. The Prowler. Class Reunion Massacre. Tenebrae. City of the Living Dead. Old school slashers, giallo. Are you someone who wants to see more of a renaissance of these horror subgenres from the 1970s and early 80s, but with a sick feminine twist? We were influenced by these movies, and also wanted to write about people on the fringe…people whose inner secrets and desires and losses drive them in unexpected directions, both positive and negative. Insectum could be produced on a minimum budget, but to maximum effect, creating a unique female-centric slasher. Stephen King says to write the story you want to read. That’s exactly what we’ve done with Insectum.

Title: Rat Bastards
Genre: Crime
Logline: A mob enforcer escorts a nameless corpse to its final resting place with the help of a young recruit, tasked with eliminating the older mobster turned informant once the job’s done.
Why You Should Read: Earlier this year, the news dropped that the “company” I work for is being absorbed by the succubus of children’s programming. It got me thinking of some of my co-workers’ situations… Middle aged and suddenly without work once the guillotine falls. There’s an inherent terror in that idea, situation. And, like every writer, I thought about how I can exploit their impending misfortune for a story.

“RAT BASTARDS” is the product of that mental trek and a simple question – how the fuck would the mob lay you off? Well, they kill you, spoiler alert. At a certain age, that is what being fired/laid off becomes… Murder. Murdering whatever life you had known or future you had planned out. You’re too old to be desirable and too young/poor to retire. This script is my way of exercising that anxiety in a genre vein that hopefully comes off as entertaining.

The script is a smaller addition to the gangster genre; indie in scope and, as it currently exists, something within reach of getting made on the cheap. I like writing that kind of script. I feel like it gives me a fighter’s chance of reaching the screen.

I appreciate all notes, good and bad and everything in-between. Thank you for giving “RAT BASTARDS” the time of day.

Title: No Man’s Land
Genre: Drama
Logline: Disgraced tennis player Izzy Vardi must pause his comeback and move back to his homeland of Israel to take care of his catatonic father after a vicious suicide bombing.
Why You Should Read: There have been movies that involve tennis and there have been movies set in the Middle East, but there has never been a sports drama that looks into the tumultuous Israeli/Palestinian conflict while showcasing the struggle and loneliness that is tennis. I grew up both in Israel and America and played tennis at a high level in college and professional tournaments. The relationship between an athlete and tennis is a cinematic one that I look forward to sharing with readers while also painting a picture of the frustrating standstill happening in my homeland.

Title: Rival Cities
Genre: Adventure/Giant Monster
Logline: A young couple’s dreams to make it in the big city are put on hold when New York City literally stands and crosses the country to pick a fight with Los Angeles.
Why Should You Read: In the January 1st post “2019 is here!!! YAHOOOOOOO!!!”, Carson listed three problems on the way to a good screenplay, which led me to question if Rival Cities is a good screenplay or not. Let’s see. First, effort. Research was a problem, as I couldn’t find any city that has risen from the ground to kick another city’s ass, but that doesn’t mean there was no research, like the countless hours measuring stuff on Google Maps. Then, there’s the hard work in outlining, writing, rewriting. The struggle to find the perfect balance of how serious the story should be. Too serious and no one gets on board with the preposterous premise. Too goofy and people forget it as soon as the story is over. Second, “Is this a movie people would actually pay to see?” Hell yeah! Larger than life? Check! Heavy conflict? Check! Clever? Check, I guess! Ironic? Alanis would check! Taps into the zeitgeist? I don’t know! Controversial? Hardly! Finally, execution. Everyone who reads this not only “gets it,” but also enjoys it. It even got to the second round in the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition, which is a feat for an outrageous popcorn movie like this one. I tell ya, that’s not what a badly executed screenplay looks like. So. Is Rival Cities a good screenplay? I’m too biased to say. So crack it open and find out for yourself.

Title: Blood Hound
Genre: Horror
Logline: Trapped in a strange house, a young woman with a fear of dogs must escape the jaws of a bloodsucking hound and its master.
Why You Should Read: I find phobias fascinating. The crippling impact they can have on a person’s life. I wanted to take that fear to an extreme level. There seems to be room in the horror universe for an update on Cujo (other than a remake), pitting a protagonist against a vicious, bloodthirsty beast. I set out to write something simpler and more contained than my last work with 100x more blood. Hope you enjoy sinking your teeth into this one!

Genre: Holiday Comedy
Premise: When Santa Claus’ protégé is killed in an avalanche, the next relative in line, a New York cop with no holiday spirit, is taken to the North Pole for his training until he must save Christmas from the grinch-like Krampus.
Why You Should Read: Apart from this script placing in the finals of both the Fresh Voices and Studio 32 screenplay competitions. It is a fresh new take, from two hungry writers, into the mythology of how to become the father of Christmas. It’s nostalgic, comedic and downright magical.
Writers: Matt Ritchey & Michael Onofri
Details: 101 pages

Merrrrrry Christmas everybody! I hope you get everything under the tree you wished for. I hope you don’t have to spend much time in airports over the holiday, what with all the sniffly flu-ridden travelers looking to spread their disease like candy canes. I luckily don’t have to take the worst Christmas flight ever this year (that would be LAX to O’HARE), as I’ll be working on my tan in good old Los Angeles. Praise St. Nick.

Now to our Holiday Amateur Offerings Battle. As much as I was rooting for Droid Rage to win due to its zany premise, it received two late suspicious votes that did not seem to be in the Christmas spirit. That’s okay because Christmas Academy sounds funner than a sleigh ride after the season’s first snow, like something Bruce Willis would’ve made after Die Hard 3 to poke fun at the genre. I’m loving the energy of the premise already. Let’s hope it’s more of a Lego Millennium Falcon gift than a pair of socks (which my brother got me last year. His rationale: “Everybody needs socks.”).

Every 200 years, Santa Claus must pass the baton to a new Santa, which is exactly what St. Nick is doing when we meet him. However, an unexpected avalanche obliterates the poor successor, leaving Santa to improvise. He decides to hold a Santa-Off for three distant relatives with the winner awarded the “Santa” title. But he’s going to have to move fast. Christmas is in less than a month!

Cut to New York City where we meet beat cop Chris Kimble. Chris is a bull in a china shop with attitude to spare, the kind of guy who will run up thousands of dollars of damage for every perp he brings in. After Chris does just that in his introductory scene, leaving a trail of Christmas carnage to catch a thief who he has to let go due to not properly reading him his Miranda Rights, his Captain suspends him for one month without pay.

This forces Chris, a Christmas hater, to take a Santa Department Store gig to pay the rent. While there, he’s approached by two store elves with suspiciously nice costumes. They tell him to follow them, and after going through some Narnia back closet, Chris finds himself in the North Pole! It’s there where he’s told he’s a distant relative to the Claus family, and will be participating in a competition to become the next Santa.

It shouldn’t be difficult. His competition is Melvin, an old dude who can barely walk straight. And Sandy, a hard-as-nails chick who’s so obsessed with winning she can’t see the forest through the Christmas trees. The thing is, Chris doesn’t care about winning. The only reason he participates is because Santa pays him to stay and compete.

Then a couple of things change. Chris starts to fall for Sandy. And some dude named Krampus starts stealing toys from the factory! Chris springs into cop mode to eliminate the threat. But when Krampus gets his hooves on Santa’s magic cloak, the thing that powers Christmas Eve, there’s a high probability there won’t be any Christmas this year. Unless, of course, Chris can stop him!

This is going to sound corny but I love the spirit of this script. Christmas is about letting go and having fun with the people you love, and there’s something undeniably fun about this premise. Every time I read the logline, I see the potential in it.

But here’s the thing. It’s really hard to write screenplays where the main character doesn’t care about achieving his goal. It’s not impossible. But it’s hard. And Christmas Academy is built around a protagonist who doesn’t care if he achieves his goal (winning the title of Santa Claus) or not.

This hurts comedies in particular. Jokes aren’t as funny if the character doesn’t care about succeeding. That’s because the character’s desire to succeed is what adds the stakes. And with stakes, it actually means something if the character fails. And failure (or the potential for failure) is where the funny is.

Look at Elf. Will Ferrel wants his father’s love more than anything. We know if he screws up, he could lose his dad. That’s what makes all his ridiculous mistakes so hilarious. Kevin must keep the burglars out of his house at all costs in Home Alone. We laugh because we care. Once you add the element of not caring, there aren’t as many jokes to be had. Or maybe I should say, you have to find your comedy somewhere else.

That was the strange thing about Christmas Academy. It felt like a comedy. But there were never enough jokes. Part of this is due to what I outlined. The other part is that there wasn’t any structure to the comedy. It was more of a “let’s put our character in generally funny situations and hope that comedy evolves somehow” approach. Like Chris’s opening scene. He chases the thief. Yeah, throwing snow globes at the thief is kind of funny. Yeah, stealing a Christmas horse and buggy with a couple inside is funny. But none of these were hard jokes. It was more of a “comedy adjacent” situation.

Let me give you a more specific example. I was unlucky enough to catch one of the Meet The Parents sequels on TV the other day. The scene I landed on was Greg (Ben Stiller) and Jack (Robert DiNero) at a giant kid’s party. The writers decided that it would be funny if Greg and Jack got into a big fight during the party. And I agree that, in theory, this is funny. You have the irony of a couple of adults having a full out brawl at a kid’s party. But there was no structure to this sequence, nor was there structure to any of the jokes. It was more of, “We’ll take these guys through all the kid’s play stations and something funny will inevitably come from that.” So while the sequence was amusing. It wasn’t funny.

Contrast this against a more famous comedy scene, the dinner scene from the first Meet The Parents, and the difference is night and day. That scene was meticulously structured to mine the comedy built from Jack hating this dork who wasn’t good enough for his daughter, and Greg desperate to impress Jack in order to win his daughter. The conflict between the characters was so sharply crafted that the conceit of the scene – Greg was going to fail at every desperate attempt to get Jack to like him – essentially created a joke conveyer belt. It would’ve been hard to NOT write a funny scene here.

We don’t get anything like that in Christmas Academy. It’s more of a flow of humor-adjacent moments. Some of them are amusing. I liked Melvin’s bumbling around, for example. But there’s never enough scene structure to truly mine the kind of jokes that make us LOL.

I believe fixing the stakes will help this. If Chris wants to succeed, it makes every scene feel like it matters. If I were Matt and Michael, I would consider altering the concept. Someone’s been stealing Santa’s toys as Christmas approaches. This has never happened in the North Pole before so they don’t have a system in place to deal with it. So they recruit a real-life cop (Chris), to investigate. This way, Chris actually wants to achieve his goal.

Meanwhile, Krampus needs a bigger part. He can’t hide in the shadows for 70 pages and then become a semi-menace in the third act. We need to set him up sooner and establish that he’s going to stop Christmas this year. This ups the stakes considerably. Chris must first figure out who is stealing the presents, and then, of course, stop him.

You could still play up the contrast between character and setting here. Everybody in Christmas Land is happy and optimistic. Chris is serious and negative. He’s had a tough life and he sees this as a job. Not as saving Christmas. Of course, by the end, he will have found his Christmas spirit.

If you don’t want to do that, that’s understandable. But I would then look for another goal to drive Chris. We need him to care about whether he succeeds or not.

Hopefully this helps the writers and also some of you with similar script dilemmas. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAY WRITING!!!

Script link: Christmas Academy

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

What I learned: Use fear to mine humor. In The Death of Stalin, the opening scene has a music director finishing up a concert. As everyone’s leaving, he speaks to a couple of co-workers who gossip about the fact that Stalin’s assassinating anyone who even mildly annoys him these days. RING RING. It’s the phone. The director picks it up and it’s Stalin. Stalin says he wants a recording of that night’s concert. The director, of course, nods and says okay. He hangs up and asks the assistants if they recorded the concert. No, they say. The director hilariously darts out of the room and starts screaming at the crowd to get back into their seats. He then tells all the musicians to get back in their places. They’re going to perform the concert all over again. The reason this scene is funny is because of how much fear we have for the director. We know if he can’t get everyone to stay here for another two hours, he will die. Without that fear, there is no joke.

That most merry of times is finally here. I asked for your holiday scripts and YOU DELIVERED. While there weren’t as many entries as the Halloween Amateur Offerings, there were a lot more than I thought there’d be. Hell, I even received a script from a reindeer (no seriously, a reindeer submitted an autobiographical screenplay). This means, unfortunately, Ebereeveser Scrooge cannot post them all. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It doesn’t mean you aren’t in my Christmas dreams. Only that your holiday script must live to fight another Christmas. Hey, what did our parents used to tell us whenever we asked for that expensive present? “You don’t always get what you want.”

Not to worry, though! For those who didn’t make it, I have good news. One of the first contests of the new year will be the “First Ten Pages Challenge.” I was reading a script the other day and I realized something. Too many screenwriters take script pages for granted. They think that as long as there’s an approximation of a story moving forward, the reader “owes” it to them to keep reading until they get to “the good part.” That’s not how the real world works, homie. In the real screenwriting world, you have to write a script that if you were to rip that script away from the reader as they were reading it, they would become furious and demand the script back. I don’t think writers write like that. They write like, “Ohh, I’ll have my cool little plot point on page 20 and in the meantime I’ll do a slow burn and set things up…” The Ten Page Challenge is designed to make you write a first 10 pages SO GOOD, that the reader would get physical if you tried to stop them from reading. So get started. I’ll have more on this once the new year starts.

For those who don’t know how Amateur Offerings works, it’s as simple as hanging a stocking. All you have to do is read as much of the 5 screenplays below as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments section. Voting closes on Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

P.S. Review of Spiderverse on Monday. Go see it so you can participate in the discussion!

Title: TAKING XMAS
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: After bluffing her way into a repo job, a single girl must repossess the prized roadster of the town’s most eligible and dysfunctional bachelor before Christmas.
Why You Should Read: Since 2013, the Hallmark Channel has tripled the amount of original Christmas movies they produce each year (12 to 36). Couple this with the runaway success of “The Christmas Chronicles” on Netflix (20 million views opening week) and it’s clear there’s a family friendly holiday-themed path to breaking into the industry. Even one of our very own from Scriptshadow is a co-producer on “I’ll be Next Door for Christmas”, which is kicking butt on Amazon Prime as I type! It’s my Christmas wish to have the SS faithful help me and my co-writer thread this proverbial marketing needle with their insights. Thanks so much for taking any time you can spare during the busy holiday season to check out our script!

Title: SECRET SANTRESS
Genre: Comedy
Logline: The wife of a cop fears some conspiracy is brewing around the department’s “Secret Santa” gift exchange when her husband’s name is pulled by all his female co-workers.
Why You Should Read: It’s “Girls Gone Wild” meets “Murder She Wrote” meets every sappy Christmas movie you ever saw. In the spirit of Christmas we present this unabashedly irreverent and pull at the heartstrings swipe at all that embodies Christmas tradition, gift giving and grief. We’ve aimed for that vision of Christmas morning after the gifts have all be unwrapped. Just kick the trash under the tree and have another spiked eggnog. Hope you enjoy!

Title: NORTHERN LIGHTS
Genre: Science Fiction
Logline: When aliens attack a small town on Christmas Eve, a conservative yet strained family is forced to fight for their survival while also dealing with their different beliefs — or lack thereof — head on.
Why You Should Read: “INDEPENDENCE DAY” at Christmas time is the quick pitch… but beyond that, the heart of the story is inspired from my own childhood growing up in a conservative home that absolutely refused to accept the idea that aliens could be real as it would completely negate the “Nativity” message, yet the idea of believing in Santa Claus was joyfully encouraged. (An irony that I definitely didn’t understand as a child.) I wanted to create a potential family friendly holiday blockbuster that tackles how the “greatest time of the year” brings both discussions and family problems to the forefront, all while being backdrop to a simple story of a family trying to survive an alien invasion.

Title: Christmas Academy
Genre: Holiday Comedy
Logline: When Santa Claus’ protégé is killed in an avalanche, the next relative in line, a New York cop with no holiday spirit, is taken to the North Pole for his training until he must save Christmas from the grinch-like Krampus.
Why You Should Read: Apart from this script placing in the finals of both the Fresh Voices and Studio 32 screenplay competitions. It is a fresh new take, from two hungry writers, into the mythology of how to become the father of Christmas. It’s nostalgic, comedic and downright magical.

Title: Droid Rage
Genre: Holiday Action Comedy
Logline: A mild mannered android salesman is forced to team up with his trainwreck of a sister-in-law after they become the target of a top secret android killing machine.
Why You Should Read: Planes, Trains and Automobiles meets The Terminator, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Droid Rage has got it all, big set pieces, quirky characters, Santa, and a pregnant android killing machine. And the beauty is that it’s all wrapped up in an elegantly crafted three act structure. We’ve got big ass goals, huge stakes and shitload of urgency. Some people say Hollywood comedies are dead and those people can go suck a big long candy cane cause once Droid Rage hits the scene the only thing Hollywood will want to make are holiday themed action comedies. Here are some quotes from people that have read it, “twice as good as the bible” “you’ll never look at pregnant women the same again” “I shit my pants, but it had nothing to do with your script. I think it was from something I ate at Zankou Chicken.” Move over Die Hard cause there’s a new Christmas classic in town, and thy name be Droid Rage. So if you want to make $10,000 a month only working part time, if you want to meet that special someone, or if you’re just waiting for speed weed to drop off your dope and you’ve got an hour to kill this the script for you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, The motherfuckers that wrote Droid Rage.