Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: The adoptive daughter of a legendary assassin returns home for his funeral… and finds herself in the crosshairs of her four highly trained, highly dangerous siblings.
About: This script has one of the flashier loglines on the Black List. The writer, Ryan Hooper, is just starting his career. The project is set up at Thunder Road, the production company responsible for John Wick, which implies this could be another project they’re looking to integrate into the John Wick universe.
Writer: Ryan Hooper
Details: 104 pages

Based on the main character’s name, I’m guessing it was written for Kravitz.

First off, good title.

Titles are always tricky and one way to stand out is to do a riff on a previous well-known title. Four Weddings and a Funeral is a well-known movie with one of the better titles in history. Take note that when you are riffing on other titles, it tends to work best when your movie is a comedy.

As for the concept itself, I think it’s pretty sexy. It’s a mix between Knives Out and Ready or Not. I could see a lot of executives flipping for that kind of pitch in the room.

But there is something about the idea that worries me. I’ll share that after the plot summary and let you know if the writer was able to overcome this issue.

Joel Ferrier is a legendary assassin who is part of a board of assassins who perform high level hit jobs around the globe. So it should be no surprise that he trains his four children to be hit men as well. There’s the oldest, image-is-everything Todd, then feisty Violet, then loving Dominic, then snazzy Portia.

And finally, there’s the mixed race youngest of the clan, Zoe. Zoe is adopted and, therefore, not treated equally by her brothers and sisters. In fact, they barely pay attention to her at all. So when they grow up and get a call that their dad died in Vegas of a heart attack, they’re actually kind of surprised to see Zoe show up for the funeral.

But what really surprises them is when the lawyer reads the will. All the money goes to Zoe’s mother. And since Zoe’s mother is dead, all the money goes to Zoe. Violet becomes enraged and decides right then and there, she’s going to kill Zoe. She lets the others know you’re either with me or against me. They decide they’re with her.

Zoe runs for her life and starts hiding around her family’s giant estate, eventually getting her hands on a jump drive. Zoe becomes convince that there’s more to this story of her father’s death and tries to find her way to a computer where she can look at what’s on that drive before Violet kills her.

She eventually finds out that her father, along with two other board members, were murdered by a stealth group of assassins led by Violet, who disguised the killings as suicides. Which means, of course, that Violet can’t allow Zoe to escape the estate. If she does, the other board members will know what she’s done, and kill her before she can complete her takeover. Can Zoe escape four of the most highly trained assassins in the world? I guess we’ll find out!

Today I want to talk about how some loglines can sound really good as loglines yet be really tricky to turn into screenplays. And Four Assassins is that kind of screenplay.

I love this logline. It’s fun. Kind of like a higher-stakes version of Knives Out.

But think about sitting down to expand this idea. For starters, you have to convincingly come up with a scenario where four siblings want to kill a fifth sibling. Since siblings don’t tend to want to kill each other, most of the motivations you come up with are going to feel forced.

Hooper began solving this issue right away by making Zoe adopted. She was never really a member of the family. But how do we go from that to: the four people you grew up with want to kill you?

It’s a huge leap and one that will determine the amount of buy-in necessary for the audience to suspend disbelief.

What Hooper ended up doing is making Violet the only true sibling who wants to kill Zoe (because Zoe has info about what she did to their father). For this reason, I can buy into Violet’s motivation. Her life is on the line if she doesn’t kill Zoe. But I’m not sure I ever bought into why the rest of the siblings agreed to kill Zoe.

They don’t have anything to protect. So, therefore, the only reason they’re going after Zoe is because the script needs them to, because the logline says that’s what happens. Which is a dangerous game to play as a screenwriter. You want your motivations to be strong for every character involved.

However, if you can get past that, it’s a solid script.

I liked that Zoe had her own goal. Because that made her active. I recently did a consultation that was set up in a similar fashion. The main character was bouncing around, running from the bad guys. But because she never had a goal of her own, she came off as reactive the whole time. The antagonist was the one driving the story. And while it’s not impossible to build narratives around the antagonist driving the narrative, you have to note that whenever you do so, your hero will suffer a bit. Cause ACTIVENESS is often a character’s most defining trait. Therefore stripping your hero of that makes them less defined.

By giving Zoe this mystery to solve: What’s on this jump drive? And, on a deeper level, who was her mom and how was she associated with Joel? It gave her more to do than just run away. She becomes an ACTIVE character.

So if there’s any big takeaway from this script, that would be it. If you’re writing a movie where your hero gets chased, add a storyline where they, themselves, are chasing something. My favorite movie ever, Star Wars, applies this device. Luke and Obi-Wan aren’t just running away from a pursuing Vader. They’re trying to deliver the Death Star plans to the leaders of the Rebellion.

Four Assassins is one of those scripts that you nod your head after and say, “Not bad.” The craft is strong. The concept is fun. You can see the poster. But the story didn’t feel like the writer took enough chances. There was a safety net feel to everything that kept the script from becoming memorable. Scripts need to take at least one giant risk to be memorable. That never happened here. With that said, I think the movie would make for a cool trailer. And if a director elevated it not unlike the way Stahelski and Leitch elevated the John Wick script, who knows?

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

What I learned: Be careful about using jokes that could’ve been used 20 years ago. Hell, be careful about using jokes that could’ve been used 3 years ago. Cause dated jokes put you in one of two categories. You’re either a) out of touch. Or b) giving us a dated screenplay. When an assassin with long blond hair attacks Todd late in the script, he screams the line, “F#%k you, Fabio! Get off me.” This is the definition of a joke that could’ve been used 20 years ago. With a little effort, you can come up with a more timely reference.

What I learned 2: Give your characters names that sound like their most dominant quality. You have your main antagonist here, who is the most VIOLENT of the assassin family. So what name does Hopper give her? “VIOLET.” Han Solo does his own thing. He operates independent of everyone else. Which is why his name is Han SOLO.

Is this JJ Abram’s big return to prominence? Or is it a five car pile-up waiting to happen?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: After losing his older brother in a fatal racing wreck, a just out of high school Speed Racer attempts to pick up where his bro left off.
About: As Mr. Crawford informed me, this 1994 draft was intended to be directed by Julien Temple, with a pre-Amber Heard Johnny Depp starring.  It was deemed too expensive to produce.  Alfonso Cuaron was attached to direct in 1997 but that didn’t work either. The Wachowskis would develop a different script and shoot that back in 2005. The movie did not do well and Speed Racer was quickly forgotten. But JJ never let go of his love for the property and has decided almost 30 years later to turn it into a TV show for Apple. What’s his vision for that show? I assume it’s something akin to his feature treatment, which we’re going to look at today.
Writer: JJ Abrams
Details: 126 pages

I am so torn by what I’m about to experience.

I love JJ.

I hate anime.

JJ. Anime. Anime. JJ.

Even as a kid, when you have zero storytelling discernment – if it’s flashing colors, you’re happy – even as a KID I watched this show and thought it was nonsensical. You can’t turn something nonsensical into a movie and expect good things. You need a base. You need a story. To this day, Speed Racer will be known as the movie that officially slammed the coffin shut on the Wachowskis being considered serious filmmakers.

Is JJ about to make that same mistake? Or has he cracked the code for making live-action anime actually good?

The year is the 50s. We watch as a young man named Rex Racer is racing in a high-stakes race where the tracks are long and weird and have jumps over mountains and stuff. During a particularly difficult section of the track, Rex crashes and DIES! The entire Racer family, including his younger brother Speed, are devastated.

Cut to 12 years later and Speed is now 18. All he wants to do is race but his family is still so devastated by Rex’s death that they don’t even talk about racing. Speed graduates high school and watches, longingly, as his crush, Trixie, heads to London to enter into helicopter school.

Speed finally gets the courage to ask his father if he can race because racing is in his blood and his father shocks him when he takes him to a remote garage and introduces him to the car he’s been building over the last decade. The Mach 5!!! Speed is so excited that he wants to race this weekend. But you haven’t even practiced, his father says. Speed proves that he can handle professional racing by easily beating the lap record at the local speedway.

Just as he’s about to race, he’s cornered by the mysterious Racer-X, who always wears a tinted visor. Racer-X says to him, “Don’t race,” in a very sinister manner. But Speed doesn’t listen, races, and finishes second to Racer-X, which turns him into an overnight superstar, due in no small part to being the younger brother of the deceased Rex.

The next race is a big one and it’s in England! Which means, guess what? He’s going to see Trixie! Except now that he’s a big popular racer, all the women want him, including the seductive Tatiana, who puts all her cards on the table and says she wants to “get naked” with him ASAP.

During the race, Speed realizes that the big time is a lot bigger than he thought. The race is way tougher. And during it, out of nowhere, a giant tree lands in the middle of the speedway and Speed crashes and his car catches fire. To everyone’s shock, Racer-X slams to a stop and runs over to save Speed (BIG SPOILER). When he lifts his helmet momentarily, it’s revealed that Racer-X is actually…. REX! His brother!

But how can this be!?? Later that night, Rex secretly informs Speed that there are higher powers fixing these races, which is why he tried to warn him off them. If you don’t play by the rules, they make you disappear. Is Speed going to give up? Or is he going to keep racing? Something tells me you can’t keep Speedy in the corner. And that both him and his brother are going to rule the racing world together!

Word on the street is that the development process for this project has been agonizingly slow. And I can see why. There are certain tones that have virtually no wiggle room. When you have, say, a romantic comedy, you can develop something that’s goofy, like The Lost City, or romantic, like Love Actually.

But with this… you need to nail a very specific type of humor along with porting what was meant to be animation into live-action, which is a whole other ball of wax that requires an adjustment so sensitive, it’s like trying to land a 747 on a runway the width of a balance beam.

Look no further than Cowboy Bebop to see how quickly things can go south.

With that said, JJ wins again.

This isn’t a great script. But what JJ is really good at, at least as a screenwriter, is telling a simple story well. Which is the foundation of screenwriting. You’re not trying to tell a complex story well. But a simple story. Which is what this is. It’s a kid whose brother died racing but he still wants to be a racer. And that’s it. He races and the races are all fun because they have a bunch of fun wacky car setups.

However, I understand that saying, “He tells a story well” is a vague statement that helps no one. So let me give you an example of what I mean. At the beginning of the second act, Speed reveals to his father that he dreams of being a race car driver, like his brother. So his father gives him his first racing car. Speed then says, “I want to race in the big race this weekend.”

Now most screenwriters would’ve just cut to the race. That’s what this movie is about right? A guy who’s a racer. Let’s put him in races! But the smart screenwriter understands that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for someone to race when they’ve never even practiced before. In these scenarios, YOU MUST MAKE YOUR HERO EARN IT.

So Speed says to his dad, if I can beat the lap record at the local speedway, can I race? And his dad says sure because, “that’s impossible.” Of course, Speed Racer does the impossible and sets the record. This is standard good storytelling. You can’t hand your hero anything. Make them earn it. Especially if they’re making a big leap in the script.

I also liked the big twist (SPOILERS FOLLOW). I’m not familiar with the Speed Racer show so I don’t know if this was JJ’s idea or not. But I loved that Racer-X turned out to be the dead brother. That moment jolted me out of an appreciate reading malaise and turned the script into something I actually wanted to finish.

Because now I could tell the writer actually cared. They thought about the story. Most writers will just kill off the brother in that opening scene to create sympathy. They don’t think beyond: I NEED TO MAKE MY HERO SYMPATHETIC. To bring that storyline back in a powerful way conveys a way higher desire to tell an enjoyable story.

I think I have a better idea of Speed Racer after this script. I always thought of it is as random weird anime. But now I realize it’s like the car version of Inspector Gadget. The cars can do all these fun things and there’s this deeper sci-fi spy story involved. It’s still going to be a hell of a tightrope to walk tone-wise. But if JJ is heavily involved and doesn’t leave it to one of these dime-a-dozen showrunners, I think it might actually be good. And that’s something I was not expecting to say going into this review.

Screenplay Link: Speed Racer

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

What I learned: The correction of “who” to “whom” is used in a dialogue scene in Speed Racer. You know what? Never use the word “whom.” Between the years 1993 and 1999, everybody was obsessed with the difference between the word “who” and “whom.” It became such an obsession that it began appearing in numerous movie dialogues, including films as big as The Phantom Menace. To this day, these silly debates have rattled, mobilized, and confused people to feel passionately about this debate yet I am here to tell you that “whom” is a stupid word that nobody who isn’t trying to sound pretentious uses and you can literally use “who” in its place every time and no one will care. I’m glad we can all agree on this.

I was going to review Stranger Things Season 4 today but there’s only one problem. I’m still on episode 6 of season 3. I had a brief flurry of motivation to binge the rest of the episodes up to and including season 4, but binging is so 2011. We’ve evolved past that, have we not? I’ll try to watch it all by next week assuming I don’t get consumed by a demigorgan.

Why am I still stuck on season 3, you may ask?

It’s complicated. I’m reluctant to say this because she’s so beloved but I’m kind of creeped out by Millie Bobby Brown. She’s like a 40 year old in an 18 year old’s body, playing a 15 year old. In fact, all the kids are looking a lot older than their TV ages. And this is in Season 3! I can only imagine how they look in Season 4.

You run into this problem when your storyline is continuous from season to season. The kids start turning into gigantic adolescent monsters despite only several days of movie time passing, lol. I full expect that in season 5, Finn Wolfhard will have graying temples and complain of seasonal arthritis.

Check out the stories of Patrick Fugit on the set of Almost Famous. Two weeks would go by and he’d grow 4 inches. So in the first half of a scene he’d be shorter than Kate Hudson, and in the second half he’d be taller.

It was interesting to see where I gave up on Season 3 of Stranger Things, since Netflix remembers exactly where you tuned out. It turned out to be the sequence where that annoying-as-sh%t girl who can’t act kept blabbering on to Gaten Matarazzo. She was it for me. I was like, “I can’t take this anymore. This show is made for 10 year olds.” That bad taste in my mouth prevented me from ever going back.

But when I started it up again, I realized that I like a lot of the actors here, despite Millie-Bobby Brown being 3 years away from receiving social security benefits. I love Gaten. I love Joe Keery, Sadie Sink, David Harbour, Maya Hawke. And the production value is astounding. There was a scene in a supermarket and I noticed that every single cereal box – of which there were 50 different brands – were all 1980s authentic.

The average person doesn’t think about that. But I think about it. It takes a lot of work to pull that off. I heard that Stranger Things currently has the highest budget per episode of any show. I believe it.

Something a lot of people are wondering is, can Stranger Things save Netflix? Season 4 doubled Bridgerton 2’s debut, which was the previous ratings record-holder. It occupies the only IP slot for the streamer that holds ongoing value – that drama/sci-fi genre spritz that geeks become obsessed with.

The reason this matters is because it’s the one area Netflix can’t compete with the studios on since there are puppies who have been around longer than the streamer. If Netflix goes the way of Blockbuster, a lack of IP will be the primary reason. So Stranger Things is valuable to them in that sense. However, it’s not a clear path forward for future stories. The main reason people watch it is because of the chemistry of these kids. As I’ve fastidiously pointed out, they’re not going to be kids for long. And then what?

Netflix’s only other IP plan seems to be to make Knives Out a franchise. Oh Netflix. Oh my poor Netflix. Never ever bet on Rian Johnson. The force will not be with you. But in all seriousness, who tries to make a franchise out of a very specific whodunnit? That’s not going to end well.

Meanwhile, you’ve got Top Gun 2 taking over the world. Some are calling it ‘the perfect movie’ and I know what they mean. They don’t mean it doesn’t have flaws. It means when you imagine going to the movies and having a great experience, Top Gun 2 fits that slot to a T. It’s action-packed. It’s fun. It’s got a movie star everybody loves. It leaves you with an excitement to go out and experience life. It’s the perfect entertainment experience.

And I know Hollywood loves to get excited about bombs. The sharks get so giddy whenever a highly hyped movie doesn’t perform well. But on the other side of that is how excited they get when they’ve got a hit. The town is so happy. Everybody’s celebrating. Everybody not named Netflix feels good about the possibilities of movies again.

And everyone eats. Joseph Kosinski is now going to become the most desired director in town. Miles Teller’s career has been revived. Tom Cruise is going to be re-courted by the super-franchises, like Marvel, DC, and Fast and Furious.

However, why would Cruise join those franchises when he could just start his own? Yes, Top Gun is about to become a franchise. Should Top Gun become a franchise? Of course not. It’s not built to be one. It’s about jet flying school. What’s the next movie going to be about – parachuting practice?

But the thing is, Top Gun is performing like a mega-franchise film. It’s going to top 1 billion dollars. For those wondering what that means, the last freaking Star Wars movie made 1 billion dollars. You don’t make that kind of money as a producer then waltz off in search of the next Paul Rudd dramedy (no offense to Paul Rudd).

The problem with a sequel to this sequel is that it would barf all over the good will this film garnered. Part of the allure of the film was not seeing Tom Cruise in this role for 30 years. Why then, would we get excited about not seeing him in this role after 2 years?

They could definitely move the starring role over to Miles Teller. I have no doubt in my mind that he would sign for three 20-dollar gift certificates to In and Out. The man was picked to be the next big movie star before making some of the worst career choices in Hollywood history and becoming an afterthought. Then this comes out of nowhere – you bet your a$$ he’d say yes to a sequel.

And you do already have the first sequel storyline ready to go. They want to close down the school for good and focus on unmanned fighters. Rooster has to prove it’s worth keeping manned fighters in service. He goes up against a group of remote desk jockeys piloting their smaller sleeker drone-jets from the safety of a remote facility in New Mexico before taking on Russian drones in a Siberian mission. The story writes itself.

And I suppose there’s no rule that says you have to stay in Top Gun school. So maybe we follow Teller (or other pilots) out on real missions. We’ve definitely got a clear enemy to fight in Russia. So you could have some fun there.

But the franchise would have some uphill battles. Because of Cruise’s star power, none of the other pilots really got a chance to shine. Even Rooster was in the background for most of the film’s first half. So they’d have to build up those pilots and make them worthy of carrying a movie.

But make no bones about it, this is now a franchise. There are going to be many Top Gun films going forward. And I would argue that they should go forward without Cruise. Because the irony is, Cruise’s star power holds everyone else back, which limits the direction the franchise can take. If they want to expand this thing out, we need to see the other characters shine.

And I just don’t see a storyline for Maverick. His storyline in this one was perfect. He was gone for 30 years. He comes back to teach the class. You don’t have that if you pick things up after 2 years. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see what Bruckheimer chooses to do. They’ll of course offer Cruise a bajillion dollars because they have to. But they may be better off if he turns them down.

Before I sign out, I have one last thing to share. I saw Ti West’s “X,” the homage to 70s horror flicks about a group of people who head out to a remote cabin to shoot a porno film. The film received a shockingly high 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is notorious for hating on horror films. So I figured I was in for something good.

Maybe my expectations were too high but the movie was just too darn silly. It’s about this old couple next door who slaughters our filmmakers. I’m not going to say it’s impossible for two hobbling 85 year-olds to slaughter 5 people between the ages of 20-40. But talk about some suspension of disbelief. At one point, the old man has to stop in the middle of a field to catch his breath from walking uninterrupted for 3 minutes. But killing people? Sure, that takes no effort at all.

The film does try to explore deeper themes about getting older and the loss of one’s sexuality and the effects it has on our psyche. And while it was noble and, at certain points, creepy (the old woman really wants to have sex with someone – anyone), the best scene in the movie was a crocodile chasing one of the porn actresses, which is a scene that could’ve been in any horror movie. The best moments of your movie should be specific to your concept. They shouldn’t be moments that could be in other films.

So it was a [x] wasn’t for me, unfortunately. But I’m not going to hate on you if you liked it. :)

Jurassic World or Stranger Things 4 review next Monday!

This mission is much easier than you’ve been led to believe.

We spend an awful lot of time on this site, and in the screenwriting community in general, discussing how difficult screenwriting is. And while it’s important to educate ourselves on the challenges of the craft, you don’t want to get too caught up in the roadblocks preventing us from writing a great screenplay. Us humans are notorious for using the negative aspects of our pursuits to justify not pursuing them.

It’s easy to say, “Well only 1 in a million scripts ever gets made so what’s the point?” And if you take a statement like that at face value, then sure, screenwriting does suck. But that statistic includes the 900,000 screenwriters a year who’ve only ever written one screenplay. The people who read this site are way ahead of anybody who’s only written one screenplay, trust me.

And to be honest, I don’t think there are nearly as many screenplays out there as people think there are. The biggest screenplay contest in the world gets 7000 entries (the Nicholl). And a good portion of those are from writers who entered two scripts. I’m just not convinced that there are that many screenplays to compete with. At least not many scripts from writers who actually put blood, sweat, and tears into the pursuit.

Which is the theme of today’s post.

Screenwriting is easy.

Or, at least, easier than you think.

The perception of any pursuit is influenced by the lens you choose to see it through. Therefore, it is in your best interest to frame things positively rather than negatively. For example, you can say, “It’s impossible to get anybody of influence to read my script.” Or you can say, “It’s 100 times easier to get people of influence to read my script today than it was 20 years ago.”

I remember I actually had to COLD CALL agents to try and convince them to read my script. Think about that for a second. And they didn’t even have managers back then. So you only had half the influential people on the representation side to help. Now you have agents AND managers. You can find most of their e-mails on imdb pro. And you can cold e-mail them with way more efficient and successful results.  Don’t even get me started on the perils and expenses of printing hard copies of screenplays and then physically sending them to agencies.  You guys should thank your lucky stars that you don’t have to deal with that never-ending sh#tshow.

Also, how many freaking TV shows come out a year? 1000? Back when I was coming up it was like 50. All these shows need writers. You are a writer. The opportunities are so much bigger today than they used to be.

As far as writing screenplays, you can see it as an endless list of beat sheets and writing tools you have to use and writing pitfalls you have to avoid and save the cat scenes and midpoint twists and dramatic irony and dialogue with subtext and, oh my god, make sure your voice is strong… whatever that means.

Or you can see it for what it actually is.

Which is telling a story.

That crazy thing that happened to you that one night in college? That story you love to tell when you’re around a bunch of friends sharing their own crazy stories? That’s all a screenplay is. It’s that. There’s a main character (in this case, you). Something happens to throw him into disarray. He now has to achieve something. A bunch of obstacles are thrown in the way. And then he somehow, against all odds, succeeds in the end.

Treat your script like that. Like you’re telling a real-life story. Then spread out the most exciting moments so that they’re evenly spaced over 100 pages. Then make sure your hero is actively pushing towards his goal in between those exciting moments. No need to overcomplicate it.

By the way, screenwriting is the least demanding art there is. You don’t need to buy anything. You don’t need extra people around. You’re not limited to doing it at a certain time of the day. You can write whenever. I am recalling, in this moment, that Scriptshadow writer who wrote a script ON HIS PHONE while riding the train every day to work.

In all honesty, it felt like a script that had been written on a phone. But the point is, you can write anywhere at any time.

Consider what a director has to do. He has to rent all this expensive equipment and find people to help him. And if he wants to shoot anywhere other than his apartment, he has to get filming permits. And if he wants to do anything even remotely cool, like pull focus, he has to hire an additional person and laboriously prep the shot.

You just have to type FADE IN and then whatever comes to mind.

Oh, and by the way, 90% of the screenwriting page is white. Talk about a forgiving medium. You don’t have to come up with these long thoughtful interesting inner monologues from your main character like novelists do. You just tell us what happens. And, when you’re not telling us what happens, you write dialogue – which, oh yeah, takes you all of three minutes per page when you’re on a roll. If that isn’t easy, I don’t know what is.

I write 1500 words a day here on Scriptshadow. At that rate, I could finish a script in 15 days. 15 DAYS! That could be you. Just match my output here on Scriptshadow and you’re celebrating a new script in less than a month.

But wait. Is writing a script really that easy?

Yeah, it kinda is.

1. Spend a week coming up with concepts, pick the best one.
2. Center your story around a character with a flaw that’s holding him back in life.
3. Come up with 2-5 other characters in your hero’s life he has some unresolved issues with, usually his family.
4. Introduce a giant problem in your hero’s life.
5. This forces them to pursue a goal.
6. Come up with a series of obstacles, both big and small, that get in the way of your hero’s goal.
7. Have your hero struggle against his flaw as well as with the people in his life, who he can’t fully connect with until he overcomes his flaw.
8. Introduce a few unexpected plot beats that both surprise the audience and add excitement to your story.
9. Have your hero seemingly fail, maybe even give up.
10. Have them regroup and, in your climax, go up against the antagonist to achieve the goal, at which point they will win or lose, and also finally overcome their flaw.

Doesn’t sound too difficult to me.

Once the script is finished, a lot of writers think, “What do I do now?” So I’ll remind you. You have more avenues to get recognized now that at any other point in history. You have no idea how much a screenwriter felt like an outsider before the Internet. Talk about a true helpless feeling. Back then, the only advice anyone could give to you was, find someone who’s in the industry and get them to read your script.

A lot of good that strategy’s going to do if you live in Germany.

These days, getting repped or getting optioned isn’t hard work. It’s just busy work.

It’s going through all the contests you’re considering entering and picking the ones that are right for your script. It’s going to IMDB Pro and getting e-mail addresses for all the agents and managers and production companies your script seems right for and writing up a simple but compelling e-mail query that highlights your irresistible logline (I consult on e-mail queries for $50 if you want outside help- carsonreeves1@gmail.com).

And then it’s sending your script out to the people who request it. After that, you’ve done all you can for that script. You can be proud of yourself and even if you only get no’s, chances are you’re going to gain a few fans who tell you to send any future scripts into them as well.

If you’re still on one of your first three scripts, you might not get any love yet.  That’s okay.  Keep at it.  You just need to figure out a few of the idiosyncrasies of screenwriting and you’ll be well on your way soon.

The process of screenwriting and getting an agent and getting on the Black List and selling your script and getting your script made – they all seem impossible when you look at them through a macro lens. It feels like there are too  opportunities for something bad to happen. Instead of that, just focus on the step in front of you.

That might mean coming up with an interesting main character. Or deciding which contests to send your script to. When you do that, things will feel much easier.

There’s way too much negativity out there. It’s like an evil fog that seduces you. It can provide you with a warm feeling to believe that nothing you do matters and it’s all luck.

I’m all for the occasional pity party. It can be an emotional catharsis that’s required to get back on the horse. But, overall, you should be thinking positively. It’s all in how you frame it.  Think about how easy screenwriting is compared to other arts. How much easier it is to write professionally today than it was 20 years ago.

By focusing on the good, you’ll be more driven to write. You’ll feel more like your writing matters. And you’ll be more positive when you pitch people, which in turn will make them more interested in you.

So keep writing everyone. It’s actually quite easy.

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Black List) Peter, a seventeen-year-old painter, lives with his controlling mother in a lonely house in the wilderness. When he meets a mysterious stranger, he begins to question the reality he was raised to believe, gathers the courage to leave his mother, and unveils the sinister truth behind his upbringing.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer has written several short films, which makes this script their big breakthrough.
Writer: Yumiko Fuiwara
Details: 85 pages

Millie Bobby Brown for our gender neutral mystery forest figure?

We’re going from one of the biggest blockbusters of all time to a script you might see Kogonada direct for A24. That’s why I love Scriptshadow, baby. You never know what you’re going to get!

17 year old painter Peter Mori has lived his entire life with his mother, Felicia, out in the middle of the forest. All Peter does every day is paint. And he’s really good at it, even if his paintings are excessively disturbing. Peter focuses on death and fear and evil in his paintings, with a particular love for fire.

Every few weeks, a 70 year old man named Mark shows up to the cabin and collects Peter’s paintings. Mark appears to be some rich dignified aristocrat of sorts. Which is impressive when you consider that society is no more. At least that’s what we’re told.

Things are starting to change for Peter, though. He’s going to be 18 soon, and the implication is that he will make his way into society once he’s a man. This has injected a healthy dose of curiosity in Peter, most of which is aimed towards a big metal door in their home that Peter is not allowed into. Talk about a mystery box.

In addition to this, Peter meets a strange character out in the forest one day. This is the description of the character in the script: “A TEENAGER – about Peter’s age. Gender-neutral. Skinny, a few inches taller than Peter. They wear an oversized hoodie, black jeans and leather boots. They have wild, curly hair that ends just below their ears, and falls over their large, searching eyes.”

Our gender-neutral “teen person” tells Peter that the real world isn’t nearly as bad as his mother has told him. And that Peter should come with “them” and find out for himself. Peter hems and haws over the course of a few meetings with this mystery figure, but finally agrees to run off with them.

A day before Peter plans on sneaking off, he can’t help but be drawn to the steel door that has stood between him and the mystery room his whole life. So he goes inside when his mom is out and finds out the shocking truth about his mother, and by association, him. (Major spoiler) It turns out Peter’s mom was a famous artist in the real world and that Peter’s entire life has been an art exhibit of hers, which she plans to show the world on his 18th birthday. Naturally, Peter decides to get the f$#k out of there. But will the real world be any better than his mother’s fake world?

It’s important to remember that not everything can be ideal screenplay or movie subject matter.

There are certain genres that fit perfectly into each. An action movie, like James Bond, is perfect for film. It celebrates everything the medium is good at. A lean thriller, a la Taken, is perfect for spec screenwriting. The narrative moves quickly and the writing is always sparse and, therefore, easy to read.

But we still need other stories or else the audience gets bored. And today’s script is definitely “other.” I’ve read plenty of scripts about people living in isolated areas. Even scripts about parents lying to their kids’ in these scenarios, keeping the truth of the real world from them.

But I’ve never seen one that evolves like this. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the big reveal. Cause in scripts like this, where the entire story is screaming, “JUST WAIT UNTIL THE END! EVERYTHING WILL BE REVEALED AT THE END! THE BIG END IS COMING AND IT’S GOING TO BE A DOOZY! JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE WHAT THAT ENDING REVEAL IS!” – the reader will not accept anything other than a perfect reveal.

An argument can be made that everything that needs to be set up in this story could’ve been done so in the first 10 pages. Then the next 60 pages are the story spinning its wheels, getting you all charged for the final reveal, and we get that reveal with 15 pages to go.

While I give the writer credit for a reveal I’ve never seen before, I’m not convinced its worth a 70 page tease. The script is a prime example of a “waiting around” narrative. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s when the characters don’t have a clear goal and are therefore passive. We’re essentially “waiting around” for things to happen *to* our hero as opposed to the hero going out and *making* things happen for himself.

These scripts are not impossible to make work. But they are definitely challenging. And if you’re someone who doesn’t understand the unique challenges of a waiting around narrative, it’s unlikely you’ll pull them off. Because even writers who understand the unique challenges of this template have a hard time making them work.

With that said, mystery is a primary interest-driver in these stories. And the writer does a good job setting up several mysteries. Who is our gender-neutral forest dweller? What’s behind the magical steel door? What is Mark doing with these paintings Peter paints? And just what’s going on in the outside world in general?

Those were just enough mysteries to keep me interested in finding out what happened. I wouldn’t say I was invested, though. And this is one of the issues you run into whenever you write a story with so many mysteries. It’s hard to delve into any character development because every character is a lie. You can’t tell us what’s really going on with them.

We do know, however, that they’re taking advantage of Peter. And that makes him sympathetic enough for you to care what happens to him (readers will always root for characters who are being taken advantage of).

The problem was that you just never had enough gears pushing the narrative along. And so the story felt like a car with only a couple of gears. That led to characters sitting around and being forced to say things that didn’t do much for the story. “Thing is, when I paint I can exist somewhere else… Like, outside of space, and maybe outside of time, even. I’m not here… I’m in a different realm.” This is essentially gobbledy-gook. You don’t want artist characters giving detailed thoughts about their process. It’s never as interesting as the art itself. Just show it through the art. And you don’t want characters offering up unprompted thoughts as a rule of thumb. It comes off as pretentious 99% of the time.

The Fire Outside reminded me of many of the Black List scripts you read today. You can see some talent on the page. But it’s too raw. There’s not enough technique to keep the story compelling from beginning to end.

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

What I learned: I’ve pointed this out before. But never have somebody physically push another character down, then have the fallen character bump their head, and either pass out or die. That doesn’t happen in real life. So it shouldn’t happen in the movies.

What I learned 2:

When writing monologues, or any dialogue really, don’t underline a bunch of words for emphasis. First off, it looks like you’re trying to direct the actor’s performances, which actors hate. But it also conveys that you don’t have confidence in what your character is saying. If you have to underline a bunch of words to REALLY EMPHASIZE those moments, it means the dialogue isn’t doing the job on its own. I don’t mind emphasizing a word once every 25 pages or so. Assuming you really need that emphasis to make your point. But don’t don’t do it multiple times in a monologue. Your monologue should speak for itself. And the truth is, it’s highly unlikely those words needed to be emphasized.