THE NEWSLETTER IS OFFICIALLY IN YOUR INBOXES! CHECK YOUR PROMOTIONS FOLDERS IF YOU DIDN’T GET IT!

Genre: Heist/Sci-Fi
Premise: Still reeling in the wake of her husband’s death, master thief Viola Crier signs on to a risky, last-minute job set to take place inside a man-made time loop, but as the number of loops increases, the job begins to spiral out of control.
About: Today’s writer and her script finished with 10 votes on the Black List. She is repped by William Morris Endeavor. This is her first screenplay. Or at least the first that’s made any noise.
Writer: Lindsay Michael
Details: 120 pages

How in the world do we follow yesterday?

I’m still thinking about it. Every time I think about what happened, I still can’t believe it. This guy hit someone on stage and then 15 minutes later, everyone gave him a standing ovation. We have to be living in a simulation for that to have happened, right? It defies all logic. There have to be some repercussions. Or are we going to all pretend it never happened, like the Oscar audience?

Anyway, we shall try to move on. And what better way to move on than with a new loop script! I’ve developed one of these myself so I know how tricky they can be. Let’s see how today’s writer handled it.

It’s 2038. A young female thief, Viola, is doing a job in Shanghai with her thief-husband, but he’s killed by the people they steal from. Viola is barely able to get out of Shanghai, with the help of a mysterious man named Okafor. Okafor tells Viola that he wants to hire her for the hardest job she’s ever done – stealing a 53 million dollar diamond. Go put a team together, he says.

She first gets 50 year-old Sybill, who is a master of disguise. She then flies to another country to pick up 19 year old safecracker, Cass. She then grabs explosives expert, Nemo, in Uzbekistan. And finally she gets pilot, Jackie, who’s going to fly everyone out once they steal the diamond.

The target is a place called Sandpiper Resort, in the Namib Desert. The place is a sand ski resort for the rich and famous. Okafor’s brother, a war profiteer named Wangari, took the diamond their dead father left for Okafor and Okafor wants it back. Wangari is in town to vacation at Sandpiper and Okafor knows he’s brought the diamond with him.

Once everyone is together, Okafor reveals their ace in the hole – he’s got a time-looping device. That means they’ll have not one, not two, not three, but four full shots to get the diamond. Anything after that and the time distortion field will destabilize. Nobody is very happy about this unpredictable device but since each individual’s take is 10 million bucks, they get over it fast.

The first run-through, the bomb they use to break into Wangari’s room ends up accidentally blowing a hole in the underground resort and sending a stream of suffocating sand in to snuff everybody out. Once the loop resets, they decide to spend the next shot on a test run. There are too many unknown variables that they need to figure out to pull this off. That leaves them with only two tries left. As you can imagine, the pressure mounts quickly, and the group come to the realization that four tries at the heist of the century might not be enough.

With scripts like this, you have to watch out for information overload and subsequent reader disorientation. Screenwriters are notorious for forgetting just how much information they’re throwing at the reader. To them, this information is common knowledge, so they assume it’s common knowledge to you, as well. This is what gets them into trouble. They’re operating on the assumption that you’re on the same page they are, when, in reality, you’re still ten pages behind them, trying to figure out that thing that happened on page 9.

Sandpiper starts out with a woman standing over a dead body in a morgue, a man whose wedding ring is featured prominently and, therefore, may have been our hero’s husband. Our hero then runs off with a Chinese detective, escaping a team of policemen, only to later get double-crossed by the detective.

At this point, I don’t know who my hero is, why we’re in China, what just happened to her maybe-husband, why she’s playing secret games with a Chinese cop, and what her job is. The next thing you know we’re meeting some random guy named Okafor who helps us escape on a train, then offers us a job to steal a diamond, then minutes later we go on a 4 continent montage to collect a mission impossible team, meeting four team-members who are going to help Viola do the heist.

It’s only after all this is over that we learn her and her husband were a thief-team and they’d been caught, which is why he was killed. In other words, I’m only learning what happened on page 1, on page 40. That’s not acceptable. I know, as writers, we think we’re cleverly withholding information and creating suspense by drip-feeding relevant backstory twenty pages at a time, but you have to be realistic. I’m supposed to keep track of those details while memorizing 4 different people on 4 different continents. That’s unrealistic.

This particular mistake is almost always a beginner one as it takes a while, as a screenwriter, to understand what a reader can and can’t keep up with. That comes through feedback from dozens of people reading your scripts. Which is one of the reasons I encourage new writers to first master simple one-character stories before moving on to Marvel-level 22-parallel storyline screenplays.

This issue continues throughout the script, making relatively straightforward plot points difficult to keep up with. For example, Viola gives up her 10 million dollar share to Jackie. Jackie says why would you do that. Viola says why does it matter? Then, 30 pages later, Viola reveals that Okafor promised her that, if she could steal this diamond for him, he’d use his time loop machine to send her back to save her husband.

Why all the cloak and dagger? Why not just tell us FROM THE BEGINNING that Okafor offers Viola this? I would’ve been way more invested in Viola’s pursuit since I’d know that the stakes were much higher. I just didn’t understand why everything needed to be a secret from the reader. Sure, sometimes you want secrets but not with basic important story elements, like motivation.

I’m not going to knock everything about the script. The loop heist idea is cool. And, strategically speaking, this is the kind of script you want to write if you’re trying to get those Mission Impossible studio jobs. You write in a “big action script” adjacent genre, like sci-fi action. But the hard stuff should be the characters and plotting in a screenplay, not conveying basic stuff like GSU. It just killed any potential enjoyment of the script.

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

What I learned : Never make a script exactly 120 pages. It makes seasoned readers think that you read a screenwriting book that a script couldn’t be over 120 pages and so you nipped and tucked your script relentlessly until you finally got it down to exactly that number. There are definitely things in your script that are not precious enough for you to hold onto that number. If you’re at 120, try to get it down 115. Even 117 is better than 120. 120 has “newbie” written all over it as it reeks of OCD adherence to ancient screenwriting requirements.

The newsletter will be hitting your Inboxes sometime today (Monday). If you are not on the newsletter list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get it. I will, of course, be talking about the slap heard round the world and what it means for Hollywood going forward. I’ll be talking about the best picture winners as well as the best writing winners. I finally got to sit down and explore my thoughts on the Kenobi trailer. And there will be an opportunity to get a discount on your next set of screenplay notes. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts about that wild Oscars!

As we tighten up our first acts for the next Scriptshadow contest, the First Act Challenge, which you can start submitting to tomorrow (YAAAYYY!!!), I want to take a trip back to the last contest, the “Anything Goes Showdown,” and look at some of the scripts that didn’t make it.

I know how frustrating it can be, entering your scripts in contests and not knowing why they didn’t advance. So I wanted to give you a little behind the scenes look at what goes into the decision-making process. Granted, my contests are subjective, since it’s only me judging, but at least you can get an idea of why people turn down submissions. Let’s take a look!

Title: Bunker
Genre: thriller
Logline: A financially-struggling father is hired to keep up the maintenance of a luxury underground bunker, only to find himself in possible danger when a mysterious group on a retreat arrives
WYSR: This is a one location thriller with sci-fi elements and an arc for the main character.  I’d write more but it’s 10 pm

Why it didn’t get chosen: Funny enough, this is the kind of logline I usually go for. I like contained thrillers. I like mysterious groups showing up and throwing everything into disarray. I just like that setup for a movie. Also, as I’m thinking like a producer, stuff like this would be really cheap to make. The reason I didn’t pick it, though, is because the submission feels rushed. The word “thriller” is not capitalized. There are no periods at the end of the logline or “Why you should read” sentences. Even the WYSR admits that there’s a “rushed” component to this submission. My experience tells me that when a submission feels rushed, or sloppy, that that’s going to carry over into the script itself.

One of the mistakes screenwriters make is forgetting how many other people they’re competing against. They don’t know that the person reading their submission may have read 50 other submissions that week. Or 100. Or more. These readers are making direct comparisons between your submission and everybody else’s. So if they sense that you haven’t put everything into that query, they’re probably going to pass you over. The only exception would be if you have the greatest idea ever. But, as you can see, even someone who likes these types of movies wasn’t willing to risk their time on such a hastily written submission.

Title: Miss-Understanding
Genre: Guy Rom-Com
Logline: When a comedian’s attempted clever marriage proposal goes awry, he must find his upset girlfriend in her hometown, a city he’s never been to, right before she’s set to fulfill maid of honor duties at her younger sister’s wedding.

Why you should read: I have written in the double digits for screenplays, mostly with comedies.  This could be a Hangover meets Bridesmaids type of film that would once again involve finding someone for a wedding, but with more emphasis on the female aspect compared to the Hangover. This also would involve the bond between sisters, so you get the wedding conflict and the older sister wanting to be there for the younger sister dynamic as older sister’s typically do. That’s on top of the conflict between a romantic relationship. In this day and age, people try to always be overly creative, theatrical if you will, and often it can blow up in their face. This plays upon that and is a throwback to more risque comedies of the past.

Why it didn’t get chosen: I feel like this submission could’ve been improved 75% with a better logline. A reminder to hire me for your loglines guys (carsonreeves1@gmail – just $25!). The logline is both clunky and hard to understand. “When a comedian’s attempted clever marriage proposal…”. This is too vague. I’d prefer to know what actually happened in the proposal if it could fit into the logline. “…he must find his upset girlfriend in her hometown…” Why is she in her hometown? Didn’t he just propose to her? Did he propose in his own town and then she flew to her town? Or were they already in her town when he proposed and she ran off? There should never be this many questions when reading a logline. You also want to avoid these siphoned off comma-asides (“a city he’s never been to”) whenever possible. They give the logline a start-and-stop feel. Loglines should flow. Then a separate wedding is thrown into the mix at the last second. And even if you understand all of this, it still basically boils down to, “Guy has to go find his mad girlfriend,” which I’m not sure is big idea enough for a movie. So please, guys, come to me in order to fix these issues, preferably before you write the screenplay, so I can tell you what you’re up against.

Title: OUR TOYS IN MIAMI
Genre: Profane Comedy
Logline: A Cuban American private driver is recruited to cover a toy car patent case after her court reporter client gets shot and unable  to do so.
WYSR: As a toy car collector, I couldn’t help but be drawn to a real court case involving two European toy car companies that fought in a US court over a little motor.  What makes it more interesting is the case was set in 1985 Miami at the height of some serious drug cartel action at the time and all the assorted things that make Miami a unique setting and open to roast.  And I’ve put them all out here, wrapped up in a profane, no holds barred, but romantic, and often tender telling that dulls the offensive to a point.  I don’t like to brag about my expensive trips, but I just came back from the gas station. We need comedy more than ever.

Why it didn’t get chosen: I actually considered this script for the top 5. I’m always looking for unique stories that I haven’t seen before and this definitely fits the bill. The reason I backed off was because I don’t like made-up genres (Profane Comedy). In the past, that tends to mean a rookie script with a lot of mistakes. And while I love specificity in loglines, since it helps differentiate your idea from everyone else’s, this idea seemed almost too specific. A Cuban American private driver (extremely specific), a toy car patent case (super specific), a court reporter client who gets shot (oddly specific). If all three of these things felt more organically connected, I might have posted the script. But each of them feel like different movies. This might be a logline problem. I would only know if I read the script. But, as written, I just felt it was too messy to take a chance on.

Title: BLACK MARKET
Genre: Horror/Crime-Thriller
Logline: An aging African-American war veteran tracking her missing family must take down a criminal network which targets people of color — as a desired cuisine for the rich and powerful.
Pitch: BLACK MARKET is a disturbing and metaphorical peek into America’s racism toward and consumption of Black and Brown communities by way of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers in an after hours session at A24’s main office — or so I dare imagine.

Why it didn’t get chosen: A lot of you might see this idea and think, “This should’ve made it, Carson.” It’s timely. These types of scripts are getting snatched up all over the place. The Black List would probably put it on the list based on the logline alone. What’s the deal? Well, I did consider it. In the end, though, I felt it was a couple of notches shy of being clever enough. White people eating people of color. It’s a bit blunt and on the nose, in my opinion. You’re always looking for those ideas that have that clever, possibly ironic, undercurrent. The example I always use is that magazine story that sold a couple of years ago about two ice cream truck owners who start a war with each other. Ice cream is associated with fun, happiness, and good times. So it’s a funny idea that two ice cream trucks would start a war with one another. If the political commentary in this script is really sharp, it may prove me wrong. But when I read a logline, I want my eyes to pop out. With this one I sort of squinted and said, “Ehhhh, maybe that could work,” which wasn’t enough for me to post it.

Title: High Society
Genre: Comedy / Romantic Comedy
Logline: A stoned slacker follows his frisbee into his rich neighbor’s yard, and then follows his heart as he courts a beautiful heiress who is 1000% out of his league.
Why You Should Read: This fish-out-of-bongwater story is a mashup of the stoner film and comedy of manners genres — a stoner comedy of manners, if you will. — Inspired by a summary of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, it’s a tale of class and grass in which traditions go up in smoke and sparks fly as a pair of star-crossed lovers learn that their high hopes can only be realized with a joint effort.

Why it didn’t get chosen: I loved the fun play-on-words throughout this submission. That’s the kind of thing that tells me, unlike the top entry, “Bunker,” that this writer really thought through his submission. My favorite was “fish-out-of-bongwater” story. But this is a simple case of knowing your audience. I’m not keen on stoner comedies. 99% of the regular comedy scripts I read are sloppy messes. The stoner comedies I read are even messier. So I’ve kind of given up on this sub-genre unless you send me the greatest stoner-comedy idea ever. You need to know who you’re sending your script to. If you’re sending a script to Nicholl, it better not be a sci-fi script, since no sci-fi script has ever won there. And you probably shouldn’t send a stoner comedy to Scriptshadow, although I guess it was free so why not take a chance. P.S. Nobody in Hollywood is well-read. So mentioning Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey might get you a lot of confused stares.

Title: PAST TOPEKA
Genre: Western
Logline: Years after their father betrayed a gang of outlaws to steal a fortune, 14-year-old Patrick and his two younger brothers greet one of that gang who comes searching for the fortune — and treats the boys like his own sons. When Patrick and his brothers discover the truth about the stranger, they must confront him and reclaim their father’s legacy.
Why: A good story well-told should count for something.

Why it didn’t get chosen: Westerns are hard to slip through the system because a lot of them sound the same. Someone betrayed someone and someone has to confront someone. I feel like Western writers make the mistake of loving Westerns so much they assume that just the offering of another one gets them points from a reader. No. A Western logline has to be even more clever, even more unique, than a logline from the other, more popular, genres. And this one just didn’t have anything in it that I felt I haven’t seen before. I also didn’t like the pitch. “A good story well-told should count for something.” That shouldn’t be a pitch. That should be a given. Everyone should think they have a good well-told story. If you have an idea that’s a little bland, like this one, your pitch should tell the recipient why it isn’t bland. On top of all this, the logline is clunky and, I suspect, leaves out information that might’ve helped it sound more intriguing. It could definitely use a rewrite.

Title: MATE
Genre: Horror
Logline: After a one night stand with a mysterious working girl, a man on the run in rural North Dakota is confronted by the reality that she may be pregnant with his child. When the man is welcomed into her family’s home, he believes the unborn baby will fulfill his dream of being a father. However, he soon comes to find that the woman and her kin have far more sinister intentions for him.
WYSR: We are a writing team that have been lurking Scriptshadow for over a decade, so this submission is a long time coming for us. Inspired by traditional gothic fiction we took a classic European horror monster and brought it to the oil fields and farmlands of North Dakota. Over the years, we’ve had several reputable producers and a-list talent attached to this script, but an official production has never come to fruition. Our goal this year is to finally get representation as writers, and we hope this script can help us do that.

Why it didn’t get chosen: This is another script I considered for the top 5. But I would say the logline falls into the category of “intriguing but not oh-my-god-I-have-to-read-this-now” worthy. Believe me, I know that coming up with an oh-my-god-I-have-to-read-this-now movie idea is hard. But you work so hard on these scripts and then you put them up against all these other ideas that are floating around, and people only have so much time to read stuff. So if that idea doesn’t scream “movie” to them, it’s a risk. It’s a risk of time. Because maybe it is a good script. But if it isn’t, then the reader just wasted their time reading something that was going to be a hard sell in the first place. For this reason, I would advise that these writers tell us, in their logline, what the sinister intentions are. That seems like the most unique aspect of the concept, and this a logline light on uniqueness. So why not make it a little flashier to increase the number of reads it gets?

Title: DOLL. MISTRESS. WIFE.
Genre: Drama / Erotic thriller
Logline: A frustrated air-con salesman installs a love doll at a secret rooming house, but finds the real women in his life increasingly unstable.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Carson’s most recent newsletter bemoaned the current dearth of thrillers in the vein of Fatal Attraction. Well, look no further than this character-driven script with a unique conceit, suspense sequences influenced by the likes of De Palma and Argento, and terrific roles for two Asian actresses. Indeed, the Mistress and Wife became crucial to my original concept as I soon realized that a ‘Man and Doll’ story by itself would be too static. Ultimately, DOLL. MISTRESS. WIFE. strives for edge-of-the-seat entertainment wrapped up in a literary, cinematic and philosophical cocktail with a dash of personal experience thrown in for good measure!

Why it didn’t get chosen: I keep seeing this mistake over and over in loglines. It’s easily fixable with a quick logline consult (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). The first half of the logline doesn’t connect organically to the second half. An air-conditioning salesman installs a love doll at a room house, which makes us think we’re going to find out how that affects the rooming house. Instead, the logline takes a sharp 180 degree turn and starts talking about the women in the salesman’s life. Where is the connective tissue that links these two halves? It’s not there and, as a result, the logline sounds nonsensical. I hate to see this because writers are shooting themselves in the foot by simply not getting logline feedback. And it doesn’t even have to be from me. I’m sure any one of the commenters here on Scriptshadow could’ve helped with this one because it was so obvious.

What do you guys think? Did I miss out on a gem here? If you liked any of the loglines, I’m sure the writers would be more than happy to send you a link to their scripts. Let me know what you think of the pitches in the comments. And let me know if you want me to do another one of these because I have a ton of entries that didn’t make it.

AND KEEP WORKING ON THOSE FIRST ACTS! GET THOSE PAGES WRITTEN!

Is today’s thriller the best script of the 2021 Black List so far?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A ride-share driver who’s just purchased his dream car, a 1969 Ford Mercury Cyclone, goes on the Tinder date from hell.
About: Today’s writer, Stefan Jaworski, started writing for TV in Sweden. He has made a few inroads writing here in the U.S., with the TV series, “Those Who Kill,” and the 2021 film, “The Devil Below,” about a group of amateur adventurers who specialize in exploring remote and forsaken places. This script of his landed on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Stefan Jaworski
Details: 92 pages

We are BACK on the script review train, checking out a top 10 script from last year’s Black List. I know the writer has been at it for a while as my files show he had a script in circulation all the way back in 2010. This is a long game, everyone! Gotta keep at it.

[NOTE: Spoilery summary – you should probably read the script first!]

Our 20-something lead is Michael Smith, who we meet buying a car, a 1969 Ford Mercury Cyclone, from an old man. I don’t know much about cars but according to our characters’ conversation, the Cyclone was the fastest car you could buy in 1969.

Michael then texts his date, Laura, that he’s coming to pick her up. Laura’s someone he met on Tinder (or Hinge, or Bumble) and they seem to have a great connection. He picks her up in Beverly Hills and they immediately begin some meet-cute dialogue, talking about what sort of superheroes they would be.

After they picnic at Griffith Park, Michael and Laura are engaged in another lovey-dovey conversation while on the freeway when – BAM! – a black SUV rams them from behind. And then – BAM! – rams them again! Concurrently, Laura starts getting all these text-dings on her phone. Michael speeds off the highway and gets to a safe place and stops.

It’s here where Laura comes clean. She has a baaaaad ex-boyfriend. He’s threatened to kill her ever since she left him. He’d disappeared for a while so she thought she was free and clear but I guess not. Laura confides in Michael that she’ll never be able to ditch this guy. He’s too crazy. She’s been planning to escape to this town in Mexico. Maybe tonight needs to be that night.

She’s sorry she got him involved and demands Michael let her go and forget about all this. But Michael is not the kind of guy who leaves a damsel in distress. He will help her escape. What does she need? She’s got to go to three places, she says. Her real house (which is on Skid Row – NOT Beverly Hills), her sister’s, and a friend’s. She needs some personal things before she disappears forever.

But as soon as they’re on the road again, Laura’s ex, Jason, once again comes barreling into the picture, trying to kill them at every turn. When Jason sends a message that if Laura doesn’t surrender, he’s killing everybody she knows, Michael has no choice but to deliver her to Jason’s house.

They show up at the house, head inside, but there’s no Jason. That’s when Laura turns to him and apologizes. Apologize for what, Michael says. For what’s about to happen to you, she says. Michael hears sirens in the distance.

That’s when he realizes he’s been set up. He doesn’t know why. But he knows he has to make a choice in that moment that will change his life forever. And he decides to get in that 1969 Ford Mercury Cyclone… AND ESCAPE AT ALL COSTS. Little does Michael know, his problems are just beginning.

Okay, let’s talk about first acts since First Act March is still going. You probably noticed that, because of the setup, there was no way to first set up our main character’s world. We meet Michael buying his new car. And then we go straight to the date.

This is a good example of the basic challenges you encounter whenever you’re trying to follow a particular screenwriting blueprint. Every story is unique and therefore they don’t all fit the same beat-sheet.

In this case, you have to set up Michael’s world THROUGH DIALOGUE, specially the dialogue of this first date with Laura. That becomes the stand-in for being inside Michael’s world. The good news is that the situation is organic to that information being shared. This is the first meeting between these two. So it makes sense that they’d ask those kinds of questions.

We learn why Michael loves this car so much. That it has a strong connection to his family. We learn that he’s an Uber driver. We learn that he’s a loner and that online dating is new for him. Likewise, we learn things about Laura. In other words, if you can’t get one of these first act components into your screenplay, you have to find substitutions and do the best job you can.

The inciting incident (the SUV ramming them from behind) comes a little late – page 18. That’s even later than usual since the script is only 90 pages long. For a 90 page script, you probably want to hit your inciting incident between pages 10-12. However, the writing is really lean. There’s a lot of dialogue early. And the action lines are 1-2 lines long. So it certainly doesn’t feel like 18 pages have gone by. In fact, that’s a feather in the cap of the entire script, which is written in a really fast fun-to-read style.

We also get the refusal of the call. Michael is tasked with either helping Laura escape or forgetting this night ever existed. And, at first, he decides not to help. But then, of course, he can’t leave her in danger. So he decides to go on the journey. That launches us into the second act, where we get this clever 3-step process that Laura must first execute before she can leave.

I say “clever” because think about it. If all they have to do is get on the 405 south to Mexico, there ain’t a lot you can do plot-wise. By forcing them to zig-zag around Los Angeles, you give the characters more opportunities to run into the bad guys.

In my last newsletter, I spoke about Richter scale moments. Here’s what I said: “The idea behind Richter scale storytelling is simple. Every script needs big moments, moments that “register” with the reader. These are your Richter scale moments, where you hit your reader with plot beats that register 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 on the Richter scale.”

“Mercury” is one of the best examples I’ve seen of having consistently strong Richter scale moments. Spoilers follow. We get the arrival of the car-bashing crazy ex-boyfriend (8.0 on the Richter scale). We get the moment 40 pages in where we realize she’s set him up (9.0). We get the moment where the mob makes him retrieve what Laura and Jason stole from them (7.5). One after another these Richter scale moments keep coming. It’s great.

Another thing Jaworski does well is he sets up and pays off every single beat of the story. Nothing feels random. For example, there’s this moment in the script where the mob has told Michael that if he doesn’t find their money by sunrise, they’re killing him. And he has NO IDEA where Laura and Jason (who have the money) are. So what does he do?

Jaworski subtly sets up several different times, early on, that Micheal is an Uber driver. And, after Jason rammed into them and Laura came up with that fake plan to get her stuff from her place, she had to confess to him that she didn’t really live in Beverly Hills. She lived near Skid Row and took an Uber to Beverly Hills where he picked her up. He asks why she lied to him and she says, “I was afraid you wouldn’t like me.”

When Michael remembers this moment, he realizes he can use his knowledge and back door access to some Uber information to find out where her Uber originated from, which gives him a destination. There were a ton of moments like this, which were really well thought-through.

And I can hear some of you already saying, “Well, that’s not *that* well thought-through, Carson.” No no no no no. TRUST ME. Read ten other random scripts from this Black List and find me one that puts 10% of the effort into setting up and paying off plot beats that this did. You won’t find one. This has been my biggest beef with the 2021 Black List. Every single script is messy. This is the one script where you can tell the writer actually put in the work.

It’s for all these reasons that, as of this moment, Mercury is the best script of the 2021 Black List. I highly recommend it.

Script link: Mercury

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

What I learned: There’s a moment early on in the car (before all the chaos starts) where a song comes on the radio. Here’s how it’s described: “She blinks when the radio shifts to a melancholy POP-ROCK SONG. That echoes loneliness and longing. A favorite of Laura’s.” This is how you introduce music in scripts. Do not give us actual song titles. Everybody likes different music. You may love Britney Spears’ amazing breakout single, “Baby One More Time.” But for others, it is like listening to audio lava. So, instead, give us the genre and the mood of the song, like Jaworski does here. That’s enough to convey the mood you’re looking for.

Stop making excuses and just get the pages written

Here are the previous “How To Write a First Act” posts…

Day 1: Writing a Teaser
Day 2: Introducing Your Hero
Day 3: Setting up Your Hero’s Life
Day 8: Keeping Your Scenes Entertaining
Day 9: The Inciting Incident
Day 10: Refusal of the Call
Day 15: Dealing with Exposition
Day 17: GSU

It’s funny that I can espouse all the screenwriting knowledge in the universe, much of which will make you better writers, better teachers, and more knowledgeable about the screenwriting process overall. Yet the most common issue in screenwriting still seems to be GETTING THE PAGES WRITTEN. I’ve noticed in the comments section some of you saying you are 10 pages behind or 15 pages behind. You weren’t able to get the pages down and so I’m here to tell you today, IT’S TIME TO GET THE PAGES DOWN.

I once had this writer hire me for a consultation. He wanted me to consult on his opening scene. I said sure, of course. He sent it to me. It was pretty good. I gave him some notes and wished him luck. A year and a half goes by and I get another e-mail from this writer who wants another consultation. I was like, “Sure, you have a new script you want feedback on?” He said, “No. I’ve written the second and third scenes in my screenplay that you read last year.”

Naturally, I assumed he’d taken time off and recently decided to start writing again, which is what I asked him. He said, “No. I just want to get it right.” Now, anyone reading this story can do the math. A screenplay has about 50-55 scenes in it. If you’re writing one scene every year, and I’m conservatively estimating you’re 30 years old, there’s a very good chance that you may not finish your screenplay before you die.

It was so ridiculous that I assumed he had to be messing with me. But he wasn’t. It was the most severe case of fear in regards to the pursuit of screenwriting that I’ve ever come across. He was convinced that this was the correct way to go about writing a screenplay.  He was going to meticulously work on every single scene until it was perfect.  I’m not even going to bring in the pressure this put on me.  What were the ramifications if I told him a scene sucked?  I could set him back an entire decade!

The reason I bring this up is because human beings have this weird tick whereby whatever it is that they want the most, they deliberately construct a series of artificial obstacles in front of it in order to ensure that they never succeed. A common example of this is getting into the extreme nuts and bolts of screenwriting. Convincing yourself that you have to understand every single rule down to the most meticulous detail before you can write a script.

I get it. I talk on here all the time about how high the bar is to break into the industry. You hear that enough, you become convinced anything less than perfection is pointless. However, I can promise you that while half-assing it isn’t going to get you anywhere, going to the other extreme and overanalyzing and overstudying everything to the point of paralysis isn’t going to get you anywhere either.

At a certain point, you have to get the damn pages down.

One of the reasons I came up with the First Act Challenge was to circumvent this issue. We are taking away the overwhelmingness of having to write 110 pages with a perfectly thought out beginning, middle, and end. By only having to write the first act, you’re off the hook.  You don’t need to have any idea what happens after page 25 of your screenplay if you don’t want to. You just have to get those 25 pages down.

You cannot convince me, under any circumstances, that writing 25 pages is hard. A screenplay page is 95% white space. It’s the easiest page of all the writing mediums to write except for, maybe, poetry. I’ll tell you what is hard, though: Writing 25 pages that need to live up to an artificially created perfection you’ve demanded of yourself.  Yeah, that’s hard.

I get it, guys. When you write a sh#tty scene, you feel sh#tty. So it’s easier to not write the sh#tty scene than to write it. But I’m telling you that this is a horrible habit to create as a writer because it establishes that not writing the scene always takes precedence over writing it.

For a lot of you, this is a deep-set problem that goes way beyond anything that has to do with screenwriting. This is a mental block. And until you address it, and what it is that’s blocking you, you’re never going to be able to complete any assignment, whether it be a screenplay, an act, or even a scene. You assign too much importance to it, and once that happens, the thought of failing at that assignment convinces you that not writing it is the better option.  Because not writing it means you will never have to face failure.

Let’s not split hairs here. That’s what this is really about. It’s a fear of failure that’s stopping you. And those of you who have been doing this the longest, have the most fear of all. Because every time you write something and it doesn’t garner interest, you consider it one more nail in your “Am I actually good at this?” coffin.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a gift. It’s a simple mindset change that should solve this problem for you. You ready for it?

STOP TRYING TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL SCREENWRITER

From now on, I only want you to write to enjoy writing. With every project you begin, you are no longer trying to break into Hollywood. Instead, just write for the enjoyment of writing. Write to feel good. Write to feel accomplished that day. Write that movie you’ve always wanted to see that you’ll now get to see because you wrote it.  And then, when you put the script out there in the world, if something good happens with it, consider it gravy.  If not, you still win.

Once you start writing for yourself, you’ll find that all those artificially created obstacles that you convinced yourself you needed to overcome before you were able to write that great American screenplay – they’re gone. Because it doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that you’re enjoying yourself. And if you’re not enjoying yourself? Then, honestly, I don’t know why you’re writing at all. Is the goal to be miserable? How is that working for you?

You have to release all this judgment that’s dictating your writing. Once you segue from “is this good enough?” To “am I enjoying myself?” writing is going to be so much easier.

But Carson, we’re supposed to submit this to you for your contest. We want our first acts to be as good as they can possibly be. Let me alleviate your fears here. A first act that you send to me is going to have a one million percent higher chance of me liking it than a first act that you never sent to me because you never finished it.

I know this is a little confusing because this site focuses on the minutia of screenwriting and now it sounds like I’m saying none of that matters. No, it matters. But if I’m being honest, I could give you one sentence that would take care of 80% of what you needed to know to write a good screenplay. And it would be this: Write as much as possible and read as many screenplays as possible. That would be it.

Come on, guys. I want a lot of submissions for this contest. So stop creating excuses why you can’t write and just get the pages down. You still have 5 weeks. Even if you haven’t started yet, you could get a first act written in that time easily. Hell, I’ve given you a blueprint for writing an entire script in one weekend!

I love you guys. I believe in you guys. Now get the f$#*ing pages written.

:)