First of all, thanks everybody who submitted to the Showdown (a little over 300 of you!). You know I’d pick all of you if I could. But I could only choose SIX. Just know, I still love you! You should run your loglines by the readers of this site to see why you didn’t get picked. If you want to know straight from the horse’s mouth, you can order a logline consult from me. It’s just $25. E-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com and put “logline” in the subject line.

But overall, this showdown was a blast. If only you could’ve joined me while reading through the submissions. A robot detective who is simply described as, “he has sex and vapes,” was sent my way. That’s my new character description of the year. We got our first ever script adaptation of a meme. Man has screenwriting changed since I was a kid. We had a theme park with reincarnated historical figures that almost made the cut. Multiple vampire huntress submissions were made (three, to be exact). Oh, we have a writer whose submission had to be voided because, in the time between when he submitted and now, his script got optioned and is being packaged by CAA (Take a bow, David Williams!).

So yeah, going through all those scripts was fun. But now it’s time to celebrate our six finalists. And it is up to you, the readers of this site, to decide the winner. Read as much of each script as you can, then vote on your favorite in the comments section (just post a comment with your pick). The winning script will be reviewed next week. You know what to do. Voting ends at 11:59pm Pacific Time, Sunday, February 27th.

And to the six of you who made Amateur Showdown… GOOD JOB and GOOD LUCK!

Title: Fish Story
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
Logline: Four seemingly unrelated stories, spanning over five decades, reveal how one of the first all-black punk bands recorded a song in 1974 that could help save the United States of America from a present day nuclear attack.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been writing for 16 years, mostly in the TV pilot world. Fish Story (2009) is one of my favorite movies, mostly due its infinite re-watchability and kick-ass title song. It’s also a Japanese movie, and I’ve gotten the rights to the short story Fish Story is based on by Kotaro Isaka (his latest book, Bullet Train, is being adapted into a movie starring Brad Pitt). For reference, my other favorite movies are Memento, Fight Club, Se7en, and Shaun of the Dead.

Title: Gladiator Warrior Battle-Dome 3000!
Genre: Sci-fi-Horror-Satire (this is anything goes round!)
Logline: After a botched robbery leads to their impending death, five dysfunctional criminals are transported into the future to become contestants on a game-show where they battle against teams from different historical eras in a futuristic gladiatorial arena to win a second chance.
Why You Should Read: After making the “High Maybe” list in the Last Great Screenplay Contest, and with the recent international success of Squid Game, I’ve continued to refine this outlandish, satirical action-horror. There’s time travel, a heist, and plenty of surprises along the way. I’d love to hear what Carson and the SS faithful have to say.

Title: POSSESSIVE
Genre: Romantic Comedy (with a pinch of horror)
Logline: A plucky young woman still recovering from a bad case of demonic possession returns to the dating scene hoping to find love, but having the devil as baggage sure isn’t helping.
Why You Should Read: I was raised by a single mom in a family with much darkness. Violence and addiction were all around. I retreated into my own world to escape that darkness. My own world was movies. Movies let me dream and laugh. Later, when I started writing screenplays, I realized that my darkness came through, but I always seemed to take that darkness and make it funny and hopeful. I love to write romantic comedies, but always with a twist. With POSSESSIVE, the jumping off point was, What happens after a woman recovers from a Demonic Possession? Does she date? How does she break the ice? What happens if she tries to hide her Possession from a guy she’s dating for as long as possible? I also wanted to deal with the affects a Possession would have on a person, since it’s a complete violation. How would someone cope with that trauma? POSSESSIVE is about the journey of Anna Norman – she’s funny, smart, shy, a little goofy, silly, persistent, and just happens to have been Possessed. Anna deserves her happy ending just as much as everyone else. POSSESSIVE is funny, heartfelt, romantic, and unique, and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Title: DINAH
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: In a world where genetically engineered “teacup dinosaurs” have become the world’s most popular pet, a recently widowed dad finally caves and buys one for his kids, but things go off the rails when the tiny dino grows into a full-sized brontosaurus named “Dinah.”
Why You Should Read: Hollywood is about high concept ideas and what’s better than a WORLD WHERE TEACUP DINOSAURS ARE PETS. Cute, tiny dinosaurs. Think of the merchandising opportunity… cha-ching! Plus this isn’t your typical kid-friendly family comedy. We push the edginess and make this fun for ALL ages. Plus, our zany villain has major Elizabeth Holmes vibes. Jurassic Park has basically saturated the market for “dinosaur” movies but luckily we have a fresh take on a type of movie that the whole family can enjoy. I mean, imagine a world where you walk down to grab your UberEats and you see a woman walking a tiny triceratops. That’s OUR world. It’s part BEETHOVEN and part JURASSIC PARK. Enjoy!

Title: The Last Scion
Genre: Action/fantasy
Logline: A combat veteran fights to keep his inexperienced squad alive in the remote Scottish Highlands as they’re hunted by descendants of a Celtic Demigod.
Why You Should Read: I’ll let the logline speak for itself, either it’s your bag or not ;)…. Comparisons: Dog Soldiers/Wickerman/Southern Comfort.

Title: Average Joe
Genre: Satire, Political Thriller
Logline: The ‘true’ story of Joe McCarthy, where he was just a patsy and the real threat was a secret government capitalist conspiracy. To save America and clear his name, Joe must get help from his most despised nemeses; blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters.
Why You Should Read: The great myth of blacklisting is that it was all Joe McCarthy’s fault and his alone, the blacklist was all caused by that one bad apple and nobody else was involved and once he was gone everything was great again, another feel-good over-simplification to shift the blame to the dead and ignore our own complicity. Conflating the Army-McCarthy Hearings with the HUAC Hearings, hand-waving away ‘it’s all just more McCarthyism.’ This wasn’t the first American witch hunt or the last and it wasn’t all one man’s crazy evil power trip. McCarthy was a terrible person, yes, but he had supporters and enablers aplenty. — So I wrote a fun political satire that calls out all the great scheming assholes of the time (Hoover, Cohn, Nixon, Thurmond, Daddy Kennedy, etc) while viciously gutting all the ‘things were better back then’ 1950s nostalgia. McCarthy is more of a naïve Zelig figure here, meeting all the future presidents and teaming up with the blacklisted screenwriters (the goal not being to give McCarthy a pass but to indict everyone else by association). In terms of the worst crimes America has ever perpetrated on its own people, the blacklist is pretty far down the list but it deserves a good evisceration. We haven’t had a solid satire in goddamn forever and with a McCarthy biopic on the horizon (from the screenwriter of The Hitman’s Bodyguard and Fire with Fire, of all things), the time feels right.

The showdown is finally here. The five submissions that most piqued my interest will be posted tonight for the first Showdown of 2022! Then, over the weekend, you, the readers, will read as much of each script as you can and vote on which one you think is best. Whoever gets the most votes will get a review next week.

For those of you good at math, you may have figured out that THERE’S STILL TIME LEFT TO ENTER. You have until tonight (Thursday, February 24) at 10pm Pacific Time to send your submission. I need your title, the genre, a logline, A PDF OF THE SCRIPT, as well as why you think your script deserves to be chosen for the showdown. This is where you pitch me the bigger story about you, or your script, in the same way that, if you were on a press tour, you’d be trying to get people to go out and see your movie.

Entries should be sent to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Now might be a good time to remind everyone of the protocol for last second entries. You will be tempted to rewrite dialogue, rewrite entire scenes even. DON’T DO THIS. The only thing you have time to do right now is proofread. Make sure those first five pages, in particular, are error-free. And then proofread as much of the rest of the script as possible.

If you rewrite dialogue, you run the risk of erasing important info. Good writers have ensured that their dialogue is seamlessly packed with exposition and character development. By rewriting dialogue at the last second, you risk erasing all that. And you’ll kick yourself for doing it later.

Also, the main reason you’re tempted to replace dialogue in the first place, is because you’re tired of the dialogue you have. It’s not because the dialogue is bad. You’re just sick of it cause you’ve read it OVER and OVER and OVER again. Your dialogue is likely fine the way it is. You don’t need to rewrite it.

And same goes for reimagining or erasing scenes. I remember being hours away from a contest deadline and thinking, “I don’t like this one scene. I don’t need it.” And so I deleted the scene, only to remember, after I’d sent the script off, that the scene set up a critical reveal during the climax. That kind of sh#t happens ALL THE TIME when you do last second rewrites.

Also, be thankful that all of you live in an age where screenwriting software takes care of all the margins and spacing for you. Back in the day, you’d have to block off an entire week just to clean up all the formatting in your screenplay.

Can’t wait to see what all of you have baked up!

Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: A young woman and her devoted boyfriend’s lives are dramatically altered by a medical procedure that could potentially quadruple their lifespans.
About: Clearly, Matt Kic and Mike Sorce have a love for weird life-extending dramatic sci-fi ideas. They sold a script to Netflix in 2019 called, The Second Life of Ben Haskins, about a guy who gets cancer then goes into stasis until they can transfer his brain into a new body. So this is well-tread territory for them. By the way, these two loved contests before they sold their first screenplay, and the good news for all you aspiring screenwriters out there is, THEY NEVER WON! They semi-finaled a lot. But that’s as far as they got. To be honest, semi-finaling is usually a good sign in contests because often contests want to celebrate an artsy or profound script, which leaves the Hollywood scripts – the cool higher concept ideas – back in the semi-final round. So next time you semi-final in a contest, start looking for houses in the hills cause you’re about to hit it big!
Writers: Matthew Kic & Mike Sorce
Details: 118 pages

Today’s screenplay has a whopper of a twist. But does that twist result in a script worth reading? Let’s find out!

Maddie and Julian, both eight years old, are inseparable ballet dancers. They’re best buddies times a million. After a strenuous day of practice, Maddie gets word that her father is in the hospital. Her mother races Maddie there and her dying dad cryptically tells her not to screw up her life like he did.

Twenty years later, Maddie is still dancing and STILL with Julian. The two are so in love they got matching birdcage tattoos on their wrists. Maddie is a nurse at a place called Dohrnii Medical where she changes bed pans for a guy known as “Gramps,” and has daily battles with protesters, who are mad that Dohrnii offers a new medical procedure to increase your lifespan four-fold.

Maddie, who is still shaken by her father’s death, wants to get the procedure. But to do so would mean becoming sterile. This is something Julian does not accept. He wants to have many kids with Maddie. Maddie is so mad about Julian not wanting the procedure that she goes and bangs her new 40-something dance teacher, Mr. Ford. I’ve seen some rash decisions in my life but that was a little extra, Maddie.

When Julian next leaves town, Maddie secretly gets the procedure, which effectively ends their relationship. Before Maddie can process this, she finds out that her mom is dying. A week later, we’re at the funeral. Right before it starts, Mr. Ford shows up. After exchanging pleasantries, Maddie checks Mr. Ford’s wrist where we see… a birdcage tattoo?

Wait, wtf is going on here? Maddie gets birdcage tattoos with every guy she sleeps with? No. Actually. This is where we learn that Julian, Mr. Ford, and Gramps…. ARE THE SAME PERSON! We’ve been unknowingly jumping back and forth in time throughout the first 30 pages. Since Maddie doesn’t age, we just assumed all of this was happening in the present.

The rest of the script linearly follows Maddie in the year 2025, when she’s a hot mess alcoholic, in 2051, when she tries to conquer her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, and in 2083, where she looks back at all the dumb choices she made, particularly the one where she screwed over Julian. In the end, Maddie will learn whether becoming a “jellyfish” was worth it or not.

I think I would’ve titled this, “Hot Mess Jellyfish.” Cause it’s really about a character who is a total mess and has no idea what she wants, navigating her never-ending 20s over the course of 60 years.

I’m not sure how I feel about Jellyfish Days because it’s such a weird script. On the plus side, it’s not like anything else out there. On the minus side, it’s messier than my bedroom all throughout high school. It has these great moments, such as when we realize these three men we’ve been seeing have all been the same guy (Julian). And then it has silly moments, like this whole ‘follow your dream’ ballet storyline, which feels too lightweight for a movie tackling themes as heady as time and aging.

I do like that the script follows my advice of figuring out what’s unique about your concept and building your story around that. Because that’s going to be what separates your script from every other script. What’s unique about this story is that the main character lives for 300 years. So the writers smartly built in this storyline whereby we see all these aspects of Maddie’s life only to later learn they were happening in different time periods. That is a choice SPECIFIC to this concept.

I also thought it was a bold choice to drop that twist on page 30. Most writers would be tempted to save the twist til the end. The problem with saving twists for that long is that you have to lie for too long. You must strategically keep things out of the story that would normally be there. And if you do that enough, the story starts to feel distant, vague.

I’ll give you an example. Early in the script, Maddie and Julian have a fight about her getting the de-aging procedure. The next scene is her running through the rain to Mr. Ford’s house, ringing the doorbell, and when he answers, banging him. When I read that, I hated Maddie. She’s spent her whole life with Julian and all it takes is one argument to send her off having sex with her teacher?? Talk about a cold hearted b-word.

Of course, when we learn Julian and Mr. Ford are the same person, it makes sense. But had they waited until page 120 to tell us that, we would’ve hated her that whole time. And we would’ve been confused. There was nothing between her and Mr. Ford, up until that point in the movie, that would make you think she’d want to be with him. Of course, that’s because the writers can’t tell us too much lest we be onto them.

So it becomes this dance of lies you’re building and building for one shining moment at the end of the film. And while we’ve seen it work – The Sixth Sense – it more often than not doesn’t. So I like that these guys understood that and told us earlier.

I also like that the writers made some bold choices. For example, at first, I was annoyed by all the melodrama. Dad is dying of liver failure. Mom is dying of cancer. Big dramatic divorces are happening. These are the kinds of things you typically see in daytime soap operas. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all of this stuff fit the themes of the movie, which came down to the question, “What are the unique things you encounter when you live forever?” And experiencing a lot more heartache than the average person was a logical extension of that theme.

Still, the script is so freaking messy, it’s frustrating. Following your dreams is a subplot for an Addison Rae Netflix movie. It shouldn’t be part of a story trying to make this big profound statement. And then there’s this weird “secret son” storyline that pops up late. Apparently Maddie and Julian had a kid and she gave him up for adoption. But I thought the whole reason they broke up was because she wouldn’t have his kid. I had no idea what was going on there.

With that said, the script is one of those rare instances of something that’s discussion worthy. Yesterday’s script was the anti-discussion worthy script. But this actually has some stuff in it to talk about. And, for that reason, I’d say it’s worth checking out.

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

What I learned: This script could’ve used one more plot point. We coasted after page 30, patiently moving through each of the three time periods Maddie lived in. And it got a little boring. An easy place to find a plot point in these high-concept scripts is to use the “and then sh#t goes wrong” tool. If your hero gains the ability to fly, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong as a result of that power. If your hero gets into Harvard, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong. If your hero wins the lottery, at some point, sh#t needs to go wrong. Sh#t going wrong is where all the fun is. The writers were so focused on the character side of this equation, they overlooked a potential ‘sh#t goes wrong’ plot point in Jellyfish Days that could’ve spiced up a slow narrative.

Genre: Art Heist/Thriller
Premise: An art thief who takes priceless objects from museums and private collections and redistributes them to their original countries of ownership is tracked by a dogged FBI Agent across the globe.
About: This script finished top 30 on last year’s Black List. Writer Ola Shokumbi recently adapted a book for the upcoming animated movie, “Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun,” that will appear on Netflix. Will Smith is producing. She also wrote one episode of the show, “The Fix.”
Writer: Ola Shokunbi
Details: 109 pages

Can today’s script reinstate confidence in the Black List?

If not, can we at least find a new writer with a fresh voice? Someone to get excited about?

I’m always down for a cool art heist script but these are tricky. The genre is well-traveled and, therefore, difficult to be original in.

Let’s see if today’s writer has come up with something cool.

The art thief known as “Ghost” steals art from random museums across the world. But unlike these greedy bastards who sell their stolen art to the highest bidder, Ghost sends the art right back to its country of origin. I’m not clear on how she makes enough money to, you know, fund this expensive hobby. But maybe she gets paid in moral superiority.

Halfway across the world, at an FBI office in America, is Ghost’s rival, Pire. Well, she doesn’t know he’s her rival yet. But she’s about to. You see, Pire has been tracking Ghost’s European museum escapades and he’s come up with a theory. She’s coming to America! Or *he* is coming to America. Nobody yet knows that Ghost is female. They merely assume she’s male cause of their internal patriarchal biases.

Long story short, Pire blows catching her, and Ghost, who we’re now told has instituted a name change (you can call her “Indigo”), flies a plane to France because I guess in between late night museum robbings, she learned how to become a pilot. Once back in Europe, her true plan is revealed. She’s trying to find a mythical lamp that is said to have the power to “raise an army.”

Her mark is a man named Walter, a sort of “sinister Indiana Jones” type, who is said to have the lamp. But Ghost – I mean Indigo – falls in BFF love with Walter’s assistant, Nooria. Nooria, you see, is Walter’s operations manager. She makes it so Walter can easily rob all these caves around the world.

Indigo points out to Nooria that she’s a prisoner, much like how art is a prisoner when it is inside the museums of a country where it did not originate. From here, “Indigo” turns into a full-on globetrotting action movie with vespa chases through the streets of Milan. We will find out, when this is all over, that Indigo played everyone like a fiddle, executing the most intricate plan in the history of the world, which should set her up for 20+ years of additional adventures.

One thing I can never forgive, no matter how hard I try, is when the concept itself is faulty. Work through this with me because I’m struggling to understand it. Let’s say you steal a painting from an American museum that originally came from an Italian painter from the 1700s. So you then “give it back” to Italy.

Who, in Italy, takes responsibility for this painting that was stolen and then “returned” to them? The Italian president? The Commissioner of Art? And what do they do with it when they get it? Do they send an “lol” tweet to the US government then put the painting up in one of their own museums?

We are operating under reality here, are we not? If so, doesn’t that mean the painting will have been the property of that museum? In which case lawyers are going to get involved and eventually litigate that painting back to the United States. That’s assuming Italy didn’t just send the painting right back to the museum in the first place. No government is going to publicly accept a stolen piece of art.

This is why in all the art-theft movies preceding this one, it’s a criminal stealing the art. Or a thief stealing art for a crime lord type. Because that avoids the problem “Indigo” has. If you’re a criminal, you can hide your act of crime. There isn’t a scenario where a government is going to have to publicly accept a stolen museum piece unless we’re talking two countries that specifically hate each other, which wasn’t the case with this movie.

It sounds pretty when you say it – a thief who steals art from museums and returns it to their country of origin – but it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Strangely, just as you’re wrapping your head around that and deciding if you can buy into it enough to mentally commit to the screenplay, the movie changes gears and becomes James Bond. None of it is bad. I could imagine this movie looking pretty good if someone spent 150 million dollars on it.

But my criteria for any action movie is: Are you giving me things I haven’t seen before? Because when you’re writing a movie that costs this much money, you are placing your film in one of the most high-stakes competitive spaces in all of art – the blockbuster film. To stand out in that arena, you have to show us stuff we haven’t seen before.

For example, there’s a scene where Indigo is on a moving train and the cops are closing in on her and she heads up to the top of the train, activates a parachute on her back, that then extends backwards due to the wind, lifting her up into the air to safety. I don’t know if I’ve seen that exact scene before. But I’ve seen a thousand moments that are achingly similar to it.

I will cut action films some slack in this area if they give me a great hero. Like I always say, you should be spending tons of time on creating a great protagonist because they’re going to be in every scene. Therefore, if we like them, we’re going to like every scene. But I found Indigo to be arrogant and too cool for school. She was always 15 steps ahead of everyone so she never sweat. Therefore we were never worried for her.

Go through that opening scene in Indiana Jones and tell me that Indiana didn’t sweat. Literally every single obstacles nearly killed him. Yet Indigo could’ve touched up her make-half the times she was pursued. That’s how little danger she was in.

The Black List needs to be careful. When you hear those words – The Black List – you now associate them with “competent” rather than the word you used to use, which was “good.” It’s not the worst thing in the world to be competent. Competency is still hard to achieve in screenwriting. But a list’s job should be to get you excited about the items that are on that list. And The Black List isn’t doing that at the moment.

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

What I learned: Dramatic irony is when the audience has more information than at least one of the characters on screen. Usually, that information will imply a negative outcome for that character. There are two common ways you can use this. You can use it so that we have more information than OUR HERO. Or you can use it so that we have more information than OUR BAD GUY. Dramatic irony will always be more effective when the audience has more information than OUR HERO. Because it puts us in a state where we want to help our hero, want to scream to them to watch out, that there’s a bad guy around the corner, or that the person they’re talking to is dangerous. Early on in Indigo, Pire goes to a museum that was recently robbed by Ghost and meets with the curator, who we find out is Ghost in disguise. It’s a fairly decent dramatic irony scene, but because the scene is set up so that we have more information than OUR BAD GUY (Pire) as opposed to more information than OUR HERO (Ghost), it never gets to that next level of dramatic irony that grabs the audience by the neck. Compare it to the dramatic irony scene in Die Hard where John meets Hans on the roof, as Hans is pretending to be a hostage. In that case, we have more information than OUR HERO and that’s why the scene is more riveting. We want to scream to John, “THAT’S THE BAD GUY!” That’s why this version is always the more effective dramatic irony.

What I learned 2: I keep telling people – UPDATE THIS GENRE. Any movie idea that could’ve been written 100 years ago is going up against too much competition. It’s too hard to come up with fresh ideas in that space. Art heist movies should now be focusing on NFTs. I’ve given you your concept prompt. Now run with it!

I’ve spent so much time analyzing bad screenplays lately that it’s gotten a little depressing. This would be a good time to remind everyone that I *HATE* giving negative reviews. There are so many more benefits to reviewing good scripts. For starters, I get to read something I actually like. Which is way more enjoyable than trudging through yet another average screenplay.

But I also think you get more out of a good script than a bad one. Sure, it’s great to point out a bunch of things that aren’t working in a screenplay. But all that’s really giving you guys is stuff to avoid. And nobody writes a great script if their only focus is avoiding bad screenwriting practices.

You write great scripts because you’re inspired. And there’s nothing more inspiring than reading a great story. You also get a bunch of actionable tips you can add to your screenplay. Instead of avoiding stuff, you’re implementing new character tips, new plot tips, new scene tips, new dialogue tips, all of which you know work since you’ve seen the proof of concept with your own eyes.

So I’m glad that, at least for a day, we get to celebrate writing. I watched two great shows this weekend. The first was the finale for “Peacemaker” and the second was the new Ben Stiller-directed show on Apple TV called “Severance.” Severance follows a worker, Mark, who agrees to split his consciousness in two halves. The first half exists at work. This version of him knows nothing about his normal life. The second half exists outside of work and knows nothing about his work life.

By the way, what’s cool about this show is that it comes from a first time writer, Dan Erickson. Something I love about Red Hour Productions – Ben Stiller’s company – is that they’re open to anyone who’s got a good concept. You don’t need to be Aaron Sorkin to win them over. Them taking a chance on this neophyte writer is proof of that.

Erickson’s script actually first gained attention when it appeared on the 2016 Blood List. From there, it somehow got to Red Hour. And when Ben Stiller read it, he loved it. Stiller is always looking for things that bring both incredible comedy and incredible sadness and this script had both. Still, it took five years from when Stiller first read the script to make it to air.

Imagine waiting for that as an unknown writer. You’ve got nothing else going on. A major director loves your script but, because he’s so popular, he’s getting pitched new projects every day and, at any moment, one of those projects could catch his interest and become his priority. To wait all that time and see his show come to fruition? That’s the dream we all live for, baby!

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s one hell of a trippy show. For example, at one point, a new worker at the company says she wants to quit. The place is too damn weird. Mark points out that if she does that, it will essentially mean she’s killing herself. “How so?” She asks. “Well, since this version of you only knows this world (the work world), once you quit, everything that’s ever happened to you here disappears from existence. That version of you would, essentially, be dead.” Chew on that for a while.

Erickson’s rise to produced writer is not what I’m here to talk about, though. I’m here to talk about what makes the show so good. And, more specifically, what makes both Severance AND Peacemaker so good. There’s got to be commonality there, right? Something that explains why these two shows were so much better than all the other trash on TV?

The answer, not surprisingly, is character. But I’m not talking character in an abstract way. I’m talking about a specific type of character. And that is the character who is built around CONTRAST.

While adding contrast to a character does not guarantee that the character will be memorable, or awesome, or compelling, it exponentially increases the chances that those three things will happen.

Let’s look at why. When you have contrast in your character, it means that the character is out of balance. And because they’re out of balance, there’s always going to be conflict within them. That conflict is going to be what makes them interesting.

Let’s say you have a devoted priest who also happens to be a serial killer. For the sake of this argument, we’ll say that he only kills bad people. Think about what this character wakes up to every morning. He has to share the word of God with his followers, despite knowing that he just brutally murdered someone last night. You can’t square that away without being in extreme conflict with yourself.

Peacemaker has a similar issue. His job is to kill people. And yet, in his heart, he’s the kindest guy in the world. This means, like the priest, he’s in constant conflict with himself. It’s never as easy as point and shoot.

You can see the value of this contrast when you compare Peacemaker to his best friend, Vigilante. Vigilante is a fun character. But he’s not compelling enough to be a lead character. “Why?” you ask. Well, Vigilante, like Peacemaker, has one job – to kill. But unlike Peacemaker, he doesn’t care that he kills. He has no resistance to it whatsoever. Without that contrast, the character is fairly one-dimensional and, therefore, only mildly compelling.

Meanwhile, what’s so fascinating about Severance, is that it builds its character around the same concept – contrast – but does so under completely different rules. Mark’s contrast comes from the fact that he’s living two separate lives. The “extremes” come in the form of his home life, where he’s a sad lonely widow, and his work life, where he’s a happy and content company man.

Just to emphasize the importance of contrast, imagine this same setup but Mark was happy at both his home and work life. Or sad at both his home and work life. You need the contrast in order to create the conflict. That’s what creates dramatic questions such as, “Which one is going to win out here? The happy Mark or the sad Mark? Who is going to win out on the tug-of-war for Mark’s consciousness?”

When you don’t apply this contrast to your main character, you get characters like Nathan Drake in Uncharted. To Uncharted’s credit, it did better than expected at the box office this weekend (50 mil if you include President’s Day). But the knock on Uncharted is its excruciatingly vanilla. And “vanilla” is always what you get when you have a hero with no contrast. The fact that nothing’s rubbing up against anything else inside of this person is what’s providing a friction-free journey.

I’m sure some of you are wondering if your screenplay is doomed without contrast. Of course not. Does John McClane have contrast? He wishes he’d worked harder to keep his marriage stable but that’s not contrast. That’s personal family issues. Contrast is easier to avoid in features because you’re only with the characters for two hours and there are other ways to make characters interesting for two hours (such as giving them family issues).

However, it is essential in television that your hero contain contrast because not only are we going to be with your story a lot longer than two hours, but TV shows rely a lot more on character than spectacle, meaning the characters must be more captivating. And one way you ensure that a character is captivating is to give them that contrast. Peacemaker will always struggle with killing. Mark will always be changing back and forth between his happy work life and sad home life.

This is one of the most valuable tools you’ll ever use as a writer and if you can effortlessly integrate it into a character so that the contrast feels organic, you’re going to create a character for the ages.