Today, I discuss literary agents and how to know if they really like you. Also, is death by shin guard possible?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A woman who’s moved into a new home and is buying a lot of things from a giant delivery company learns that she is being used for a new delivery scam.
About: Today we have a director who directed a short film and used that film to create buzz for the feature script, which allowed him to get 25 votes on last year’s Black List, which was good enough for a Top 10 finish. I did not watch the short film because I didn’t want to spoil the script. I wanted the writing to do all the work.
Writer: Russell Goldman
Details: 94 pages
Gillian Jacobs for Julia?
Time to take a small detour to talk about something we don’t typically talk about on the site. This has come up because I’ve talked to several repped writers recently who are frustrated with their reps.
I want writers who think the end all be all is securing an agent to know that it’s more complex than you think. Here’s how it typically works. When you sign up with a rep, they will be your best friend. They will parade your script – the one that got them to sign you – out to the entire industry.
How that script is received will determine how your rep treats you from that point forward. If the script gets a lukewarm response around town (no sale, no options, no assignments), the rep will cool on you *a little bit*. But, you still have one more script to prove your worth to them. So the next script you write is super important. It needs to get sold or secure a big option or lead to an assignment or get genuine A-B level talent attached if they’re going to keep promoting you going forward.
But if that script also fails to make a dent in the industry, your rep isn’t going to do much for you going forward. You will have to do all the work yourself. There is one exception to this, which I’ll share with you in a minute. But first, we’ve got a script to review!
38 year-old Julia Day seems to have just lost her father and has bought a new house. I say “seems” because a lot of details in this script are vague. Julia is a recovering alcoholic and spends the majority of her time trying to fix up her house.
As a result, she’s constantly buying ‘building stuff’ online from an Amazon stand-in called “Smirk.” One of her early packages contains a ski mask by accident. But she’s a self-admitted weirdo and likes it. So she adds it to the many decorations she’s making for her home.
Julia tries to get a job (what that job is is unclear) while occasionally hanging out with her brother or sister, Tat (the gender is unclear), and developing a little crush on her Smirk delivery man, Charlie.
Things get weird when Julia starts receiving things that she didn’t buy – a blender, protein powder, a corkscrew – and she complains to the Smirk people. She’s eventually told that this is a developing scam where people send stuff to customers in order to game the Smirk review system. She should just send the stuff and not worry about it.
But Julia isn’t letting it go that easy. She thinks this is the beginning of an identity theft scam. She starts telling everyone she knows that she’s being targeted but there isn’t enough evidence for her claims to be convincing. One of her windows is broken, for example. She claims someone was trying to get in. But it looks like a harmless accident. As she dives deeper into online delivery scams, Julia becomes obsessed with proving she’s right. But at what point does she accept that this may all be in her head?
Okay, back to the secret to getting a rep who will ALWAYS fight for you.
The one exception to the “2 Script Rep Rule” is if the rep genuinely loves you as a writer. If they really really love your writing, they’ll keep pushing every script you write because they believe in you. Most reps only sign people because they think they can move that script. But if that script doesn’t move, they sour on them quickly.
So always gauge a potential rep to see how much they like your writing. Ask them questions about what they liked in your script(s) and gauge how genuine and thoughtful their responses are. If there’s real enthusiasm and attention to detail in the way they respond, that’s a good indication that they believe in you as a writer. Those are the reps you want. Cause those are the reps who are going to stick with you even if you’re not a shooting star right out of the gate.
I’ll talk about this more in the next newsletter if you guys want me to. Just give me a heads up in the comments.
Back to today’s script.
I’m not going to lie. This one was tough to get through.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the writer is a director. Cause I sense they’re a director first and they only write because they have to.
Go ahead and take a look at this script. It’s that kind of writing where if you even drift off for a second, you have no idea where you are or what’s going on, forcing you to go back to the top of the page and start reading all over again. The problem is, that the writing isn’t clear enough to prevent you from drifting off again. Which means you keep having to go back to read the pages all over again. As anyone who’s read anything knows, after doing this five or six times, you just give up on trying to re-understand the page and charge forward, accepting you’re going to be ignorant about some things.
I mean, I wasn’t even sure why Julia was home throughout the first half of the script. I wasn’t sure if she had a job or not. When you’re not a screenwriter first, you make the mistake of assuming too much. You assume the reader is in your head with you so you don’t have to make things clear. You may know the protagonist is a teacher so you just *assume* that the reader will figure it out as well.
There *were* some interesting ideas in here. For example, the script covers something called “brushing,” which is a scam where Amazon users will send you an item you didn’t order so that it ships as a “verified” purchase and then they use your account to write up reviews for those products they shipped, since verified purchases push you up higher on Amazon’s “featured” list.
But it isn’t explored in an interesting way. It’s mentioned. Characters seem upset. Julia complains. But it was more annoying than curiosity-inducing. In other words, it didn’t make me want to keep reading to find out what happened next. All it did was make me think, “Oh, I’d never heard of that scam before.”
This is how a lot of things played out in the script. Julia gets a mask in the mail from Smirk. So we think that’s going to be important. But nothing happens with it for half the script until another one shows up. And that one’s just as impotent as the first. We keep waiting for something to HAPPEN in this story and nothing ever does.
Ironically, the best scene in the script is the opening scene. It’s a cold open where this woman receives shin guards in the mail and proceeds to shove one down her throat and use the other one to try and choke herself to death. I’d never read a scene like that before. So it definitely pulled me in.
But then we just get 50 pages of Julia being annoyed. You promised us something and then completely backed away from it.
I see this mistake a lot where writers write their best scene as the first scene. They do this because they don’t need to connect it to anything and, therefore, they can do whatever they want. Which is why it’s so good. But you need to keep the spirit of that first scene in the writing of the rest of your script. Sure, it’s tougher to write engaging material like that if you’re setting up characters and a plot and having to make everything connect. But you have to try!
There may be something to the idea of random stuff being delivered to you. Each item is increasingly weirder. You don’t know how they connect but there’s clearly some message to them. That could be a movie. But the script I just read doesn’t have that clarity of purpose. It’s murky. It stumbles. It has moments but those moments are followed by ten pages that put you to sleep. It needs a writer-writer to come in and add that definition.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you give a reader a wall of text, they will revolt. Readers don’t have the patience. So, please, going forward, pages like this should be condensed to 1/4 of the space. Paragraphs, also, should be a lot slimmer.
As a means of comparison, here’s a page from Mercy, which got Chris Pratt to sign on and sold to Amazon. By the way, Mercy is a script that has 10 times the amount of mythology it needs to explain to the reader. So, if anything, Mercy should be the script that’s overwritten. Instead, the writer understands how important it is to keep the reader’s eyes moving down the page.
A new twist on the Logline Showdown that is sure to result in pandemonium!
Sorry there’s no official post today. I’m too exhausted. But I did think it was odd how the trades went all ballistic on Argylle “bombing” this weekend. Isn’t $17 million perfect for a movie like this? Was anyone expecting Marvel numbers for a movie about a cat? Unique footnote on this one. Did you know that, while the reported budget for Argylle was 200 million that, actually, Apple just *gave* Matthew Vaughn 200 million. The movie itself was made for much less and Vaughn pocketed the difference. Ahh, to be a director in today’s streaming market – they’re LITERALLY throwing money at you. Either way, why see this movie in theaters when it’s coming to Apple Plus soon? It looks fun to me. And since Taylor Swift secretly wrote it, you know it’s going to be awesome.
Okay, on to business!
January Logline Showdown may be behind us. But that doesn’t mean we have to pack our bags and head home on the next flight. NO! For those of you brave enough, for those of you with a spirit of adventure, it’s time to put those Hawaiian swim trunks back on and DIVE BACK INTO THE SHOWDOWN POOL. Cause the showdown continues people. The showdown continues to continue.
The theme of February Showdown? Anything goes! Just like January Showdown.
But just like any great film, there is a twist.
I will be including the FIRST LINE of your script with every chosen logline on Voting Day. So make sure that the very first line of your script grabs the reader and makes them want to keep reading.
And hence was born… FIRST LINE SHOWDOWN.
What: First Line Showdown
When: Friday, Feb 23
Deadline: Thursday, Feb 22, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me: Title, Genre, Logline + the first page of your script
Rules: Your script must be written to enter
Prize: Script review the next Friday
Where: E-mail all entries to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Holy smokes is this a big one! I give you the secret trick to generating great movie concepts. I tell you just how much longer you have to take advantage of the short story sale trend. I bring back Comment of the Month. One of you won it and you don’t even know it yet! I talk the shock movie team-up of the month, the surprise movie team-up of the month, the kick-butt movie team-up of the month, and give you a way-too-long assessment of the Mandalorian movie announcement, which I provide the blueprint for to make great. I end things with a big splash spec script sale review that was announced just this past week. In short, this may be the greatest Scriptshadow newsletter ever! So why aren’t you on my newsletter? E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on.
And please, anyone who’s on my newsletter list and not receiving the newsletter, e-mail me so I can yell at my mass mailer program.
P.S. As usual, I am fried from putting this thing together. So there will likely be no post on Monday. Feel free to use this comment section to get through the extended weekend. :)
The first Logline Showdown winning script of the year!
Genre: Dramedy
Winning Logline: An ambitious journalist for a cheap tabloid returns to his hometown where he’s forced to cross previously burned bridges with friends and family while investigating claims of a giant frog creature terrorizing the town.
About: Thanks again to Scott for doing all the hard work tallying votes for January Logline Showdown. Frog Boy pulled in 24 and a half votes, which was 32% of the vote, besting The Rhythm Police at number 2, which received 17 and a half votes (23%).
Writer: Zach Jansen
Details: 101 pages
For a while there, I didn’t know who was going to win. Rhythm Police was getting a lot of love. That would’ve been fun to review. But you know what? I thought The Glades (3rd place – 16 votes) was going to win the weekend when I put the loglines out. That one felt the most like a movie to me. But I’m kinda glad you guys went with something unique. That gives me hope that not every movie produced going forward is going to have iron man suits in it. Let’s see how the first winning logline of the year turned out…
20-something James works in the big city. Well, if you can call “Cleveland” a proper city. They do have the only lake in the United States that catches on fire. Sorry, Midwestern in-joke there.
James works at one of those tabloid papers that need to fit aliens into every headline. Personally, I don’t know why that’s considered “tabloid.” Aliens are real. It’s been proven on Twitter. Duh. Sorry, I’m getting distracted again.
After pissing off the city mayor, James’ boss wants to get him out of town and, by pure chance, there’s a story that would be perfect for their paper in James’ hometown – One of the city’s workers was recently attacked by a giant frog.
James hems and haws because he hates his small podunk town but agrees to go there when his boss threatens to fire him if he doesn’t. Immediately upon arrival, James runs into all the usual suspects – the reformed town bully, the angry ex-girlfriend, the father he can’t stand. But James is a professional. He’s not here for drama. He wants to solve the Frog Boy case. Or, more precisely, he wants to prove it’s nonsense.
Upon doing some research, James learns that the Frog Boy sightings date back decades, specifically around the town’s central lake. Could this frog boy phenomenon be true?? And then there’s the bigger question in all of this: Is anything true? James became a skeptic all the way back when he was a kid and decided there was no God. Which is why he and his religious father don’t talk anymore. James finally teams up with his ex to get the definitive answer on the frog. But what he ultimately finds just may ribbet his whole reality.
It took me a long time to understand why investigations were perfect storytelling vessels. The goal is built right there into the premise! Your main character’s activity is built right into the premise! This is why they can make 50,000 TV shows about cops. It’s because the cops always have an investigation, and those investigations effortlessly power stories.
But where the real fun in investigatory storytelling comes from is when you go off-road. You don’t just give us another murder to investigate. You have some fun with the investigative format. Which is why this logline was chosen. It gives us an investigation we don’t typically get to see. It’s different.
But even if you have a powerful engine pushing your story along, you still need some exciting sights and stops along the way. I didn’t see enough of those in Frog Boy.
One of the most common mistakes I see in screenwriting is assuming too much familiarity on the reader’s end. You think they know what’s going on but you haven’t given them enough information for them to understand the scene. Here’s an early example of that in Frog Boy…
Jansen assumes we know that the boss character is thinking about sending him to his hometown for this frog story. But I don’t know this boss character. I don’t know what he knows about the frog story. I don’t know that he knows James lives in Loveland. I didn’t even know James lived in Loveland at this point in the story.
So when we come into the scene with the boss asking James where he lives, we’re confused. The only indication of what’s going on occurs in a parenthetical (“realizes”). But I didn’t catch the meaning of that at first. I had to re-read the scene to understand it.
All of this could’ve been cleared up by simply being in the room with the boss as he’s looking at the frog story online before James walks in. Now we know why he’s called James in and we can enjoy the process of the boss yanking him around.
Too often, we writers assume the reader knows more than they do. They don’t know anything UNLESS YOU TELL THEM. Keep that in mind every time you write a scene, ESPECIALLY early on in the script when you hold TONS MORE information about your story than the reader. Those first 30 pages are when they need you holding their hand the most.
There were also some mistakes made on the dialogue end. Dialogue isn’t always about the words being said. It’s about the situation you create around the words to give them the most impact. In the middle of the screenplay, James goes to jail. He has no other choice than to call his father, whom he despises, to get him to bail him out.
The dad comes, bails him out, and on the car ride home, the dad starts making demands. “I want you to stay at home while you’re here instead of at the hotel.” But the demands hold no weight because the dad HAS ALREADY BAILED JAMES OUT.
This conversation would’ve had a lot more impact had the dad visited James while he was still behind bars and made the demands THERE. Now, the demands actually hold weight because James has to decide which is worse, staying in jail or staying with his dad. These are little things but they add up. They make a difference. There were several more scenes in the script where there was zero conflict or zero stakes so the conversations just sat there.
What the script does get right is its tone. It’s a fun little screenplay. It’s a fun investigation. It’s got charm. Some of the scenes of James investigating the loonier people in town made me giggle. Here’s an early exchange between James and his former bully from school.
The script had this dependable spine that always had you smiling, which stemmed from its quirky investigatory center. And it even had some character relationship depth. I thought the stuff with James and his dad about faith, which tied into the frog storyline nicely, was solid.
I would even react positively to anyone who asked me what I thought about the script. I would say, “It was cute.” That’s positive, right? But I just had this conversation with a writer the other day, who also had a cute script. I reminded him, “Cute is better than average. Cute is a lot better than ugly. But cute isn’t hot.” In the ultra-competitive world of screenwriting, cute gets you a smile. Hot gets you a date.
How do you make Frog Boy hot? The best way to make a script like this hot is to make it darker, weirder, or funnier. “Funnier” can be tough because it’s hard to write a consistently LOL script. But you can always make creative choices that are darker and weirder. You have a Frog Boy. You can push that into some risky areas.
But, in fairness to Jansen, I don’t think he’s interested in that. He wants this to be light. And movies like this *do* get made. This reminds me of a lot of films such as Welcome to Mooseport or Swing Vote. I think I imagined something a little wilder, though, something weirder. Which is why I can’t quite recommend the script. But it was right on the cusp of “worth the read.”
Script link: Frog Boy
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Show and Tell. When it comes to your hero’s flaw, you want to use a two-pronged approach. The first thing you want to do is SHOW the flaw. So if your hero runs away whenever things get tough, write a scene where we see him run away when things get tough. Then, what I encourage screenwriters to do, is to add a flaw “tell” somewhere in the script. For a variety of reasons, readers may not pick up on the flaw when you showed it. So you can tell it to the reader as well, just to make sure everyone gets it. Here, we have our “tell” moment when James is talking to someone from town to get information on the story.
The problem in Frog Boy is that we never got the SHOW. We only get the TELL. And when you do that, the reader always feels it less. So make sure you first show us and only then, later, tell us.
Week 5 of the “2 scripts in 2024” Challenge
We’ve chosen our concept. We’ve prepared our characters. We’ve written our outline.
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
It is now time to write our first screenplay of 2024. I’m going to guide you through the whole process, making crafting a screenplay as easy as mixing a smoothie. You know, I once tried to go on an all-smoothie diet? Big mistake. Biiiiiiiigggg mistake. Let’s just say I’ll never drink another smoothie again.
Hey! Focus, people. Stop getting distracted.
I’ve thought long and hard about how to approach this and I decided I wanted to go with the most realistic approach possible. So I’m not going to put you on some crazy-fast pace where you get left behind the second you run into trouble. I’m building “running into trouble” into this process because I realize that screenwriting is trouble-shooting.
It would be nice if you never had to look back – if every choice you made was perfect. But a screenplay is a living breathing thing and, just like we make mistakes in our lives, a screenplay “makes mistakes.” You might have screwed up the main character and have to replace him with a different character. You may discover that there’s a better way into your story. You may go down a road in your script that leads to nowhere and have to back up. This type of stuff happens all the time.
Which is why I’m going to set a leisurely pace here. You only have to write one scene a day. I’m also giving you TWO FULL DAYS during every week to go back and correct any issues with the other five scenes you wrote.
For those who don’t know, an average scene in a script is around 2 pages, which means that most scripts have between 45-50 scenes. At 5 scenes a week, we’re going to finish our first draft in 10 weeks.
So, to be clear
Friday = write 1 scene
Saturday = write 1 scene
Sunday = write 1 scene
Monday = write 1 scene
Tuesday = write 1 scene
Wednesday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes
Thursday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes
Simple, right?
Does this mean you can only write one scene a day? Of course not. You can write two, three, four, five, ten scenes. However many you want. The more scenes you write, the more time you’re giving yourself to correct problems that will pop up. But, at the very least, no matter what, you have to write one scene. Even if you don’t have any ideas for a scene, you still have to write one.
“But Carson, I don’t want to write a bunch of bad scenes and put them in my script.” Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. You are going to have a second Final Draft document open whenever you’re writing. This will be your “scrapbook” document.
Scrapbook documents are ideal for perfectionists, worrywarts, and writers who will do anything to not write. If you can’t make yourself write a scene into your script, you still have to write a scene in your scrapbook. The advantage of this is that there’s no pressure to write this scene since it isn’t actually in your script. Therefore, if it’s beyond terrible, you just erase it. But if you like it, you can always copy and paste it into the main document.
But just to reiterate, you must write a scene five days a week no matter what.
Again, if you struggle, you have those extra two days a week to catch up. So if you write a scrapbook scene on Monday that you hate and discard. If you write a scrapbook scene on Tuesday that you hate and discard. Use those final two days of the week to catch up.
“What if I want to write 30 pages right away?”
Back in 7th grade, I’ll never forget our P.E. teacher taking us outside and telling us that he was going to time us all for the mile. We had to run around this big blacktop in front of the school six times in order to equal a mile. We all, eagerly, asked what the world record was and he said 4 minutes (or something) so we of course were all determined to break that record.
We lined up, he yelled out, “On your mark, get set, go!” And you’ve never seen 40 kids sprint as fast as we did…. for about half a lap. By lap two, we were all jogging. By lap three, we were walking. By lap four, some of the kids had started throwing up. And by lap 5, most of us were writhing on the ground in pain a la Michael Scott during his Rabies Run.
I’m a big believer in “momentum writing.” When you feel that momentum, ride it as long as you can. Just know that it’s not going to last the whole screenplay. You will come to a screeching halt at some point. Once that happens, come back to these posts I’ll put up every week and use them to go back to this simpler output of one scene a day for five days a week.
That way, if you get a 40 page head start, you’ll just finish before everyone else, which will give you more time to REWRITE. Any extra time you have during this process, I want you to use it to rewrite. We’ll get into the specifics of rewriting in another post. But the basics are:
1) Assess what the major problems in your script are.
2) Write down solutions.
3) Execute solutions.
Okay, now that we have our daily goals set, let’s talk about these first ten pages you’re going to write. You’re free to write the script however you want, of course. But the advice I would give you is don’t fall into “Setup Mode.” “Setup Mode” is when, all you do, is set things up. Here’s my main character. Here’s why he’s a good guy. Here’s his flaw, which is why he hasn’t fulfilled his promise in life. Here are a few more characters you need to know. Here are some setups I need to establish which I will pay off later.
If you write this way, you are not writing a story. You are writing a checklist of things that the reader needs to know.
Instead, use the power of storytelling to ENTERTAIN THE READER as they’re learning all of this information. The act of entertainment should always be priority number one when writing a screenplay. Because, guess what? If the reader isn’t entertained, it doesn’t matter how well you set everything up. We won’t care. Why should we care if we’re not pulled into your story in an entertaining manner?
Think of scenes like mini-stories. Each one should have something that grabs us in some way, or pulls us in, or asks an interesting question that needs to be answered. With Barbie, it was, “Why am I having thoughts of death?” It’s like: BOOM! We have to keep reading cause that question doesn’t sound right in the Barbie World. Or go watch The Killer. Each scene is built to entertain you. Even that first scene, which some people had a problem with, creates this question that needs to be answered – when will he assassinate this person across the street? And then we get that great reversal of him missing and now we’re off to the races.
And don’t feel like your scenes need to be 2 pages each. You’ll find that, when you embrace this “each scene is a story in and of itself” approach, your scene-writing will be longer. It’s okay! You might only have 30 scenes in your movie. It will be based on your writing style and the kind of movie you’re writing. If you’re writing The Hangover, then you’ll write a lot of 2-page scenes. If you’re writing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, you’ll be writing 6-page scenes.
Okay, I’ve given you enough to get started so, what are you waiting for? Time to begin your screenplay. Good luck!
