Genre: Thriller
Premise: In the midst of a deadly bushfire season, a petty criminal with a fascination for fire becomes entangled in a game of cat and mouse with a desperate arson squad detective while attempting to save his one, true friend.
Why You Should Read: The Black Saturday bushfires occurred in my home state of Victoria, Australia in 2009 and killed 173 people. It was Australia’s deadliest natural disaster and I still distinctly remember the atmosphere on that day – you could actually feel the death in the air. I’ve often been drawn to thinking about the people involved that day – both those fighting and investigating the blazes and the pyromaniacs who helped exacerbate them. While this story is set a little while later, the memories of that day remain an inspiration.
Writer: Daniel O’Sullivan
Details: 97 pages

Hugh Jackman for McKenna?

We’ve got a WONDER-ful weekend ahead of us.

Get it?

Wonder Woman comes out today?

My jokes are so on point.

Here’s my script review of the old Joss Whedon draft of Wonder Woman, which it looks like they drew inspiration from.

“Inspiration.” There’s a funny word. I hope some people drew inspiration from yesterday’s article. However, I do want to make something clear. I wasn’t saying to write and direct a horror film if you hate horror.

In fact, I’ll be the first to admit that the element that trumps everything when it comes to picking an idea is passion. If you’re passionate about something – whatever that something may be (horror, drama, western musicals) – that’s what you want to write. Readers know when you love what you’re writing about as it bleeds into the pores of every word on the page.

Now you have to be smart about it. Find a hook. Find an angle into your passion that can be marketed. But yeah, passion is often the difference maker between an inspired script and an uninspired one.

Today’s Amateur Offerings winner feels like a passion-play, a fire-infused mix between Hell or High Water and Manchester By The Sea. Since we know I loved one of those scripts and hated the other, you’ll have to read on to figure out what I thought of Pyro.

Pyro takes place in Australia and follows a young man named Chris Dumont. Chris is a pyromaniac. His opening page voice over is a love letter to the act of watching things burn. Chris loves fire like I love In and Out.

And he’s even found a way to make money off of it. Folks looking for cash pay a local criminal to burn their cars so they can collect the insurance. And Chris is Bickie’s (the head honcho) main burner. Everyone else is an amateur compared to Chris. For Chris, burning things is an art.

Meanwhile, senior Detective Neil McKenna is trying to find out who started the city’s most recent bush fire. These Australian bush fires are dangerous as hell and spread like… well… wildfire. Since we’re smack dab in the middle of the burning season, McKenna figures if they don’t find their man soon, it’s a matter of time before Señor Burno wipes out an entire town.

It just so happens that Chris has been on McKenna’s radar for awhile. And even though Chris has alibis for all the recent bush fires, McKenna’s convinced that Chris is his man. Now if he can only prove it – an act that’s losing him support back at the station. Even McKenna’s own partner, an ambitious young detective named Lisa Mason, believes McKenna’s losing his mind.

Despite his itch to burn, Chris decides to get out of the pyro business so he can start a normal life. But Bickie’s not letting the LeBron James of pyromaniacing go that easily. Bickie threatens Chris unless Chris pulls off one more job – an entire luxury car showroom – to net him one last payday.

Chris reluctantly accepts the job but must figure out how to pull it off with an increasingly obsessive McKenna following his every move.

First impressions? I like the unique subject matter. This is a clever way to add a fresh twist to the garden variety procedural genre. The Australian setting was also a strong choice. I love when we’re in unfamiliar territory for a story. Everything feels new and exciting.

Here’s where Pryo ran into trouble for me though.

It didn’t feel like there was enough plot to fill the script. Which is funny since just yesterday we were talking about how plot is the enemy. But you can only minimize plot when your character development is awesome.

And while Pyro was largely focused on character, it never rose above lukewarm in that department. There were lots of “talking heads” scenes where the plot wasn’t pushed forward. There was little conflict to these scenes. Just theories about what was going on, discussions revealing backstory, talks between friends and old lovers. There wasn’t enough drama to keep me invested.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the stakes are so low. So the story’s already working from a point of weakness. This puts excess stress on the character development so if that doesn’t pay off, now the reader’s got nothing to satiate their appetite.

What was wrong with the stakes? Well, there was no impending danger that I could put my finger on. What happened if McKenna didn’t catch his man? Nothing, really. The possibility of more fires. But it wasn’t until the end that we learned how dangerous those fires might be. Through the first two acts, the danger was vague. And vague stakes are the equivalent of no stakes at all.

Plot-wise, it needed a few more “Ins” (remember my In and Out article?). Everybody was pushing out on the story. But the story wasn’t pushing back in on the characters. I wanted something to happen like Bickie forces Chris to move up to houses for insurances burns. And Chris burns a house which was supposed to be empty, only to learn afterwards that someone was inside and died. In other words, I wanted something unexpected to be thrown at Chris. For the most part, Chris was allowed to operate freely in this story. As was McKenna. They needed more and BIGGER obstacles.

With that said, the third act comes together well. All that plot and action that was missing in the first two acts fires up in the final one. I liked how we weren’t sure if McKenna was going crazy. I liked that a ticking time bomb was introduced (even though I would’ve preferred one earlier). I liked that not everything is what we thought it was.

But when I look at the script as a whole, it feels thin to me. More needs to be going on. Or, if this is going to be a straight-up character piece, there needs to be more conflict between the characters, more drama, flaws being tested, characters besides Chris and McKenna having deep backstories.

I guess one way to put it is that you’ve only got the stove burner on 60% here. You need to pump it up to 100%.

I do think Daniel is a screenwriter to watch, though. This is one of the best “not for me’s” I’ve reviewed on Amateur Friday. :)

Script link: Pyro

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

What I learned: Knowledge helps sell your story. If your script is about a unique subject matter, take some time to TEACH US about that subject matter. Not only do we learn something, which is fun. But now we trust the writer. We know that they understand this world. I read so many scripts – I can’t even tell you – where I know more about the subject matter than the writer does. If they didn’t even do enough research to know more than I do, how much effort could they have possibly put into the writing process itself? It’s an instant indication of an amateur writer and a script that’s not worthy of your time. Daniel clearly knows this world. McKenna gives a speech early on explaining how these fires spread, going into minute detail about the main culprits, eucalyptus trees, which carry an oil inside of them, that make them susceptible to explosions. Once I read that, I had instant confidence that the writer was going to be able to tell a solid story.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young husband feels that his marriage is slipping away. But he has no idea how bad it’s about to get.
About: Today’s script comes from one of my favorite screenwriters, Brian Duffield. I’ve reviewed all of Duffield’s scripts except for two, today’s script being one of those final two. My favorite script of his is Monster Problems, which is in my Top 25. And the script of his that is the closest to production is The Babysitter (about a babysitter from hell), which some have argued is Duffield’s weakest script. Vivien is one of the scripts that first put Duffield on Hollywood’s radar.
Writer: Brian Duffield
Details: 102 pages

Alexandra Daddario for Vivien?

Been saving this one for when I needed a pick-me-up.

Yesterday’s script left me with such a bored taste in my mouth, I needed a script I knew I was going to like – something weird and unexpected. That was my issue with Mr. Toy. It was just so… rote. You knew everything that was going to happen 30 pages before it happened, because the script never set a precedent for surprising you.

What do we say here? The enemy of entertainment is predictability. As soon as your story becomes predictable, you’ve lost your audience.

I went into this one completely cold. All I knew about it was the title. So let’s find out what it’s about together!

Tom and Vivien have been married for awhile, though like a lot of the details in this story, we’re not given exact numbers. What we do know is that Vivien is drifting away from Tom. He knows this. Somewhere, deep inside, he knows she’s fucking their neighbor, Charlie.

And so he’s gotten used to the fact that Vivien has stopped laughing at his jokes, that she now sleeps facing away from him, that in the tiny moments when he tries to make her jealous so she’ll notice him, she’ll notice but won’t care. That she’s, for all intents and purposes, checked out of this marriage.

“Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately” then asks the question: What if that were the best case scenario?

When Vivien starts walking on walls, Tom knows that his life has taken a turn for the worse. When she starts biting off her own fingers, he knows shit is getting bad. And when she starts beating Tom up mercilessly, he knows that his life has changed forever.

Vivien, Tom quickly learns, is possessed.

But, you see, Tom refuses to leave her. He tells the million plus demons who have now taken residence inside her body this. That he loves Vivien so much, he will stay until he finds a way to get them out of her.

And boy is he tested on that. Vivien does everything in her power to get Tom to kill her, kill himself, or leave forever. One day, she chokes Tom out until he comes to again, then repeats the process. Over and over and over again. For 24 straight hours. And still Tom won’t leave. He keeps probing, keeps trying to figure out how to save his wife.

Unfortunately, as we move through the story, and we experience just how dark things get in this home, we realize that this isn’t your average exorcism script. And that it’s very unlikely that there’s going to be a happy ending.

Wow.

I haven’t said that in a long time after reading a script.

This script was… wow.

I mean, holy shit. That had to be one of the most intense reads I’ve ever experienced. I’m still processing it. It’s basically about the person you love more than anything actively hating you every day for months on end.

It’s relentless. To the point where I had to stand up a couple of times and walk around just to assure myself that there was still good in the world.

But to this script’s credit, I couldn’t stay away for long. I had to sit down and find out what happened next.

I’m trying to get myself into the headspace where I can help you guys learn some screenwriting tips from this screenplay since it was so affecting. But I’m just not there. And that’s probably the biggest compliment I can give a script. It pulled me in so much, I wasn’t even thinking about screenwriting.

Or maybe I was abstractly. I know I’d catch myself thinking, “Holy shit is this brave. Holy shit is this unique. Holy shit nothing in this script is happening when it’s supposed to.” I mean, this is a possession movie and the exorcist shows up on page 17. Page 17! Most writers would’ve drawn the story out before bringing the exorcist in, padding the script until page 50 or 60. Our exorcists (plural) run away on page 20 here. I’m looking at this script going, “What the hell is he going to do now for 82 pages???”

And what he does is he turns this into a character piece. This is about – at least in my opinion – how difficult marriage is. It’s that things don’t go swimmingly all the time. And there are going to be periods where shit gets really bad. And you’re going to want to run away. And so despite the relentless negativity that is hurled at the reader throughout this story, it’s ultimately about a man who’s so in love with his wife, that he will stay with her at her worst.

But if that’s all the script offered, I don’t know if it would have been enough for me. It was the choices that Duffield took that really wowed me. Remember – writing is about making bold unexpected choices. Not all the time. Some of your choices have to be familiar. But every once in awhile, you have to be bold. Yesterday’s script didn’t have a single bold choice. Not one. Thats why it was so boring.

Here, for example, one of the surprising sequences was that Tom and these demons actually developed a relationship of their own – separate from Vivien. It’s a fucked up relationship where one second they’ll be laughing together and the next “Vivien” will hurl Tom against the wall, breaking his arm. But it’s so unexpected and weird that it adds to, easily, the strangest character piece I’ve ever read.

And on top of that is Duffield’s voice (‘Voice and Choice’ should be the new mantra I endorse here). He’s one of the best screenwriters, hands down, at painting a picture with as few words as possible. On the very first page, we get this line: “Their socked feet touch.” Not “their feet touch,” which is what 99 out of 100 screenwriters would’ve written. But their “socked” feet. That one word turns a cliche into a verifiable image that you can imagine. And once you’re imagining, you’re no longer outside. You’re inside the story.

On top of that, this is the kind of stuff writers should be writing to start their careers. You want to write stories with 2-3 characters that are cheap but that have a hook to them. And because 99% of writers who take this route go the “cliche contained thriller” path, trapping a few characters in a room with danger outside (Cloverfield Lane, for example), if you’re the 1% that can do this without using that trope, you have a great opportunity to stand out. And if you have any directing aspirations whatsoever, try to direct that script yourself. Because you’ll get your career moving a million times faster by directing your own script than you will waiting for someone else to direct it.

I have nothing but praise for this screenplay. It’s not easy to read. In fact, it might be one of the hardest reads you’ll have all year. But it’s hard for the right reasons. It’s hard because you want these two to end up together so badly but you have to go through so much pain to find out if they’re going to.

This was really good. And a new TOP 25!!!

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (NEW TOP 25!!!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you want to write about a relationship, don’t literally write about a relationship. Find a metaphor for the relationship, something with a hook, and write about that. To use Vivien as an example, if the original intent was to write about a troubled marriage, writing about a literal trouble marriage will put people to sleep. By using this possession as a metaphor, you’ve all of a sudden got a clever hook, and your movie can now be marketed.

What I learned 2: Be brave and write about the things you’re scared to admit to anyone in real life. Your scripts and your novels are the places where you have to let that stuff out. And the more honest you are, the more the reader is going to connect with your story.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: (from Black List) The true story of Marvin Glass, brilliant, charismatic, self-loathing, paranoid, demanding – and probably the greatest toy inventor of all time.
About: Mr. Toy finished on the low end of last year’s Black List. Chai Hecht made the Black List before in 2014, with his script, “In Real Time,” about a brother’s attempt to save his suicidal’s sister’s life by recreating her high school prom. I didn’t love that script, but it’s good to see that Hecht is still churning out material. Remember, you have to keep creating content. You never know which of your ideas is going to be the one that people fall in love with. Dan Brown wrote three books (all of which sold less than 10,000 copies) before he wrote The DaVinci Code, which sold 80 million copies.
Writer: Chai Hecht
Details: 111 pages

Jason Bateman for Marvin Glass?

Memorial Day Weekend is usually a time of reflection. Which it definitely was for two studios this weekend, Disney and Paramount, as their films, “Pirates” and “Baywatch,” drowned under the weight of their seafaring subject matter, leaving the presidents who greenlit them scratching the red, white, and blue off their heads.

Baywatch’s failure was the more obvious of the two. Don’t studios know that audiences no longer buy cheesy old shows repurposed into comedy features anymore? The oddest thing about Baywatch is whoever decided to approve its R rating. The original Baywatch was harmless fun. Why alienate millions of dollars of potential business for what I’m guessing is access to a few more swear words? Not that Baywatch was going to be a hit at PG-13, but I guarantee it would’ve made more money.

The new Pirates had a fun trailer, but this franchise has run out of peg-legs. I believe audiences are fine with studios and their money-hoarding ways AS LONG AS EVERYONE IS COMMITTED TO MAKING A GREAT FILM. The second we feel like you don’t care anymore? That’s when we don’t care anymore. And that’s what’s happened to Pirates.

Speaking of franchises, the biopic has turned into its own franchise – a never-ending train of biographies on a one-way track to Oscar Nomi-station. But with so many lives being documented, it’s become harder and harder to stand out. Let’s see if a toy-maker can locate the genre’s secret sauce.

Marvin Glass grew up in my wonderful home state of Illinois in the 1920s and had the unfortunate luck of being born to the worst father in existence, a verbally abusive man, who, when he discovered that Marvin had a talent for making toys, made it clear to him that men don’t make toys.

Perhaps that explains why, when Marvin graduated from college, he decided to become a painter. And he was pretty good at it, if not good enough to sell anything yet. Painting is where he met his wife, Dorothy, who was a model in one of his classes, and the two quickly had a child, a girl.

With the pressure to provide, Marvin was forced into the toy-making business, where he quickly built that famous wind-up “chattering teeth” toy, choosing to take a quick 400 bucks rather than hold on to the licensing rights. Marvin thought nothing of the deal. But when the item became one of the hottest selling toys ever, it would teach Marvin a valuable lesson. It’s better to play the long game than the short one.

This led to Marvin pioneering a way to sell toys that had never been done before – inventor royalties. He would sell the toy rights to the big companies then take a cut in perpetuity (I learned that word on Shark Tank!).

After someone stole one of Marvin’s idea, Marvin became obsessed with secrecy – turning into the Christopher Nolan of the toy industry. He built a fortress, blacked out the windows, and changed all the locks in his building every three weeks. He then introduced another new concept into the business – an NDA. His customers were not allowed to see his prototypes without first signing a waiver saying they wouldn’t steal his idea.

Throughout all of this, Marvin became insufferable, an asshole, and obsessed with making as much money as possible, ironic since he started out his career hating money. It was argued that Marvin hated his life so much (he’s famously quoted as saying: “I consider myself a complete and utter failure.”) because he pursued a profession he despised. Which, I guess, is the lesson of this story? Although there’s so much going on in Mr. Toy, I can’t be sure of that.

Let’s go over our “What Your Biopic Needs to Be Great” checklist.

1) Fascinating subject – If you don’t have this, don’t bother writing a biopic. That means someone who’s unique or strange or fucked up or had an incredibly complex life, good or bad (preferably both). Look at the biopic about the DHL guy. After he died, they found out he’d had basically been a pedophile all his life who had impregnated numerous young girls. That’s as fucked up as it gets.

2) A great character – More than any other genre, character exploration in a biopic has to be on point. That means inner conflict. It means a clearly defined flaw. It means vices (alcohol, drugs, women). Irony is strongly rewarded (a comedian suffering from depression). These movies are about exploring the inner life as much as the outer.

3) A fresh angle – A fresh angle in the biopic department pretty much means anything besides a linear cradle-to-grave story, as that’s the most obvious route one can go. Predictability is the enemy of all great movies. And there’s nothing more predictable than going cradle-to-grave in a biopic.

4) A great story – Just like non-biopics, a biopic needs to have a great story. It can’t just be a checklist of scenes that occurred during someone’s life. You should try and add GSU. You should try and add three acts. There should be compelling revelations, unexpected developments, drama, suspense, and, overall, a story that’s interesting. For whatever reason, biopics want to be boring. Their nature is to be the script version of someone’s Wikipedia page. So you have to work against that to find your story.

How does Mr. Toy stack up in all these areas? Let’s take a look.

FASCINATING SUBJECT
Mr. Toy is interesting in that he hates toys and he hates what he does, despite being so good at it. But I wouldn’t call him fascinating. His biggest career achievement seems to be pioneering royalties for toy makers. Unfortunately, numbers on a spreadsheet don’t translate well into film. Nobody’s pining for a scene where Marvin negotiates an extra percentage point on his deal.

A GREAT CHARACTER
There was a lot going on with Marvin for sure. He hated toys. He hated money. Yet he still focused on those things above his own flesh and blood, as his wife left him and his daughter despised him. However, this complexity was often more confusing than compelling. I couldn’t figure out why a man who hated money so much wanted it so badly. There was never a moment that linked those two conflicting ideologies together. By the end of the script, he’s trying to live like Hugh Hefner, yet he says numerous times he hates money and everything it represents.

A FRESH ANGLE
This was a straight cradle to grave biopic, so no freshness involved. The great thing about a fresh angle is that it can hide a lot of a script’s imperfections. Fresh takes are becoming harder and harder to find in this genre since it’s so crowded. But you have to be inventive. Arron Sorkin built Steve Jobs around three major product launches. It can be done.

STORY
There didn’t seem to be a structure here, so the script wandered for awhile as we got to know Marvin over the early part of his career. The script picked up, however, when Hecht added a goal – Marvin needed to come up with a new toy or lose his floundering company. All of a sudden, we had a goal, we had stakes, we had urgency. But above all, we had structure. The problem? This didn’t happen until page 70. Had we introduced some sort of plot earlier, Mr. Toy would’ve been a lot more focused.

This is the thing with biopics. Since they don’t naturally fit into the 3-Act structure, writers try to wing it. Just fill up the space with the person’s life and everything else will sort itself out. But storytelling doesn’t work that way. It needs a series of destinations to keep the story on track. And I couldn’t ever figure out where this one wanted to go.

I wanted to like it. There is something deliciously ironic about adults who make toys. But Mr. Toy never got there for me.

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

What I learned: To find a fresh angle for your biopic, look for inspiration within the character himself. For example, if you’re documenting a cartoonist, tell the entire story inside one of his cartoons. If you’re documenting someone who died of Alzheimer’s, tell the story out of order, the way they remember things. If you’re documenting a famous silent film actor, write a silent film. Just don’t write cradle-to-grave unless the life perfectly fits into the 3-Act structure and is amazing as is. Or – OR! – do write a 3-act structure if you’re documenting a famous screenwriter. And have the screenwriter admit to the audience that he knows you hate cradle-to-grave biopics but he’s going to tell you one anyway. Have fun with it. But always, above all else, be creative.

Genre: Horror
Logline (from writer): A home-invading female serial killer stalks a true crime author whom she wants to write her bloody life story.
Why You Should Read (from writer): The most famous home invader in all of fairy tale history has never gotten her own movie. This is a modern take on one of the most globally recognized public domain characters that Hollywood hasn’t cracked. The script was a Finalist in two screenwriting contests: Fresh Blood Selects & Search for New Blood 3. For this new Amateur Friday draft, I took the AOW notes to heart and trimmed down the opening pages and minimized the early voiceover.
Writer: Brett Martin
Details: 99 pages (note: This is a new draft that was sent to me tonight! So it’s hot off the presses and different from the drafts you guys read on Amateur Offerings).

Today’s Amateur Offerings winner got a big reaction out of me.

At times I was impressed. Other times I was angry. Sometimes I was intrigued. A number of times I was disgusted. A lot of times I was frustrated.

Whichever way you look at it, I was feeing something while reading this.

The important question, however, is “Was the ultimate feeling a good one?” And I’m still not sure I know the answer to that. Because there were times where I felt this script was more about the writer than it was about the story being told. It felt like Brett so badly wanted to put his mark on this that the story may have ended up playing second fiddle.

Despite that opinion, the script definitely has a voice. It doesn’t fall victim to the “Seventy-Five Percenters” curse, which is a term I use to describe the 75% of scripts I read that are so average, I forget about them the second I put them down. Goldie does what a script should do – it makes you remember it.

But remember it how?

The plot follows our title character, Goldie, a 20-something hot blonde who likes to murder families in her spare time, particularly units with a mom, dad, and blonde daughter. So, suffice it to say, she has issues.

Goldie’s latest obsession is a woman named Sara Berenson, the author of a best seller who’s reached a bout of writer’s block so crippling that she hasn’t written a word in months. Sara likes to do the Stephen King thing, leaving her family in the city while she writes at a remote cottage. And right now, she’s up there trying (and failing) to force out her next masterpiece.

Goldie google maps Sara, pitches a tent in the forest, and starts watching her from afar, learning her routine and looking for a way to integrate herself into Sara’s life. She finds a local hunter, Peter, and pays him to scare Sara while she’s out riding her bike. Then, just before Peter and his buddies can “hurt” Sara, Goldie comes swooping in and “saves” her.

Once back at Sara’s place, Goldie admits she knows Sara is a best-selling novelist and came up to these parts looking for her. Sara is predictably creeped out, but this Goldie girl did save her, so she allows her to stick around. Eventually, Goldie pitches a book to Sara about a young woman who goes around killing families.

For reasons that remain unclear, Sara doesn’t consider the possibility that the creepy weird fan who admitted she stalked her up into the woods might be the very psychopath Goldie’s “story” is about.

In the interim, the girls must fend off a slew of horny men who include Sara’s secret lover, Rick, and Peter’s hunting buddies. Rest assured, there is a lot of bloody slaughtering that goes on. All of which needs to be taken care of before Sara’s family comes to visit and she can finally finish this book and move on.

Brett’s done something I’ve been telling everyone to consider – take the fairy tale genre and flip it on its head. Now, to be honest, this isn’t what I imagined when I said that. But maybe that’s a good thing. If it’s what I expected, then the idea probably isn’t fresh enough.

Brett also takes a lot of chances here. I mean, things get weird. We’ve got a fairy tale heroine who masturbates to photos of happy families. And that’s just the appetizer. I’m not surprised at all that this kicked ass in a couple of horror screenwriting contests. The writing is bold and strong.

With that said, a couple of issues kept popping up while I was reading. The biggest of which was that the writing felt like it was trying too hard. This script became more about shocking you than it did about telling a good story.

The family photo masturbation is one example. There’s also a moment where Goldie breaks the fourth wall and tells us she’s going to kill us if we tell anyone her secret. There’s a moment where we inhabit the body of someone Goldie brutally slaughters. There’s a moment where Sara, who, up until that point was, at worst, a cheater, becomes sexually turned on when she sees Goldie torturing a man to death.

I just felt like the writer was asking the question: How can I best shock the audience in this moment? Rather than: How can I milk the most drama out of this sequence? How can I illicit the most emotion out of this scene?

Remember that shock is just that – shock. It lasts for a second then it’s gone. So it’s not a great screenwriting tool to utilize. As a screenwriter, you want to look for tools that keep the reader’s interest over an extended period of time. That’s why suspense is such a great concept to learn. You can use it to draw a reader in over 20-30 pages if you do it right.

Another thing I had an issue with was that the characters didn’t act like real people. They acted like movie characters.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Why would Goldie immediately tell Sara that she knows who she is and drove out into the wilderness to find her? You’ve just put your “target” on Terrorist Threat Alert Level 10. You might as well have worn a shirt that said, “I’m a crazy stalker who might kill you.” It would’ve made a lot more sense for Goldie to feign ignorance about who Sara was, then work her scheme in once she gained Sara’s trust.

As for Sara, I repeatedly asked why she was allowing this girl who was clearly a psychopath to stay with her. Goldie would scream at Sara, threaten her family, tell Sara she wished she had been gang-raped by Peter and his friends. Yet one scene later, Sara would be allowing Goldie back into her good graces.

True, there were times where there were extenuating circumstances (Goldie rushing to Sara’s defense when the man she was having an affair with was trying to rape her) but those scenes were so manufactured (How did Rick go from a casual affair to an obsessed rapist?) that you knew the only reason they were there was to create a scenario by which Sara giving Goldie another chance made sense.

This is something we don’t talk about a lot because these are the nuances of screenwriting and the nuances of screenwriting don’t have fancy names like “inciting incident” or “mid-point twist.” They’re mostly about feel. And where the mistakes are made in “feel” is when the writer wants something to happen so badly that he’s willing to look past a truthful moment in order to get the plot to where he needs it to go.

And that’s the thing that ultimately kept me from investing in this script. It was more about the writer than it was about writing a believable great story.

My advice to Brett, if he wants to write another draft, is to drop the gimmicks and the shocks. Instead, focus on writing a great story. Even if you made that one change of Goldie not telling Sara she knew who she was, you’d have a good 20-30 pages driven entirely by dramatic irony – the fact that we know Goldie is dangerous but Sara does not.

And really get into your characters’ heads and try to be truthful. Don’t write the movie scene. Write what people would really do. Because, right now, the swings in emotion (a character hates another character one second, then four dialogue lines later, they’re best friends again) just aren’t realistic. And the reason for that is you’re not treating these characters like real people. You’re treating them like pawns.

I hope you take all this to heart, Brett. You’re one of the most positive guys out there. And you clearly have talent. It’s just tweaks in the way you approach the writing that are going to pay dividends. Good luck!

Script link: Goldie (newest draft)

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

What I learned: One of the biggest problems I notice in the amateur scripts I’ve read lately is writers don’t treat their characters like real people. If a character is about to get shot, they’d rather write a cool move line (“Go ahead, do it”) than ask what that character would really feel and really say in that moment. In other words: THE TRUTH. Look, you have some creative license to massage reality in storytelling. And there are certain projects that are built around being unrealistic. But for the most part, you should look to be truthful. Because the more you manipulate reality to fit your writing agenda, the less we’re going to believe in what’s happening.

I once read a script that started off with a courtroom scene. A dirty cop was being tried for shooting a young man. Meanwhile, another cop (we’ll call him “Officer Jake”) who was friends with the victim’s family, and who had known the victim, was called in as a character witness, to make a case that the young man who had been killed was a good guy and that he never would’ve done anything to warrant being shot. Officer Jake made his case on the stand, but the scene ended with the jury ruling in favor of the dirty cop, and both the family and Officer Jake left the courtroom devastated.

I want you to think about that scene for a second. How does it make you feel? Is it a good scene? A bad one? Do you feel like an adequate amount of drama was mined from that situation?

The reason I bring this up is because this is the kind of scene most writers write. It’s not a bad scene. But nor is it a scene that makes an impact. And this is something you should always be thinking about as a screenwriter. Is your scene just “there” or is it making an impact?

So how could we improve this scene to make it an “impact scene?” Well, here’s what I suggested to the writer. Keep Officer Jake’s relationship with the victim’s family the same. Make them very close. However, this time, make it so Officer Jake works in the same precinct as the cop on trial, and have their Captain force Officer Jake to be a character witness for the dirty cop – “take one for the team,” if you will.

Notice how all of a sudden, this scene becomes a lot better. We’re no longer experiencing something obvious. We’re experiencing something traumatizing. A character is being forced to help a man go free who he knows is guilty of murder in front of the family of the victim who he’s good friends with.

Think about how that scene plays out now. How Officer Jake has to force every lying word out of his mouth to help a man he despises, all while betraying his friends, who are staring him down from the audience.

So how do you create a scene like this? What’s the magic formula?

There are three parts to it. Let’s start with the first one. Don’t give your character something they want to do. Force them to do something they don’t. The idea here is that if your character is ever comfortable in a scene, it’s probably not a good scene (unless you’re setting up the character for a later fall – but that’s another discussion).

So let’s say your character, Nick, goes to a party he’s been looking forward to for awhile. If that party is comfortable every step of the way? You’re not doing your job as a writer. So maybe you have his evil ex-wife show up. Now the party is anything but comfortable, as our character has to navigate around the party to avoid her.

That’s screenwriting 101 stuff there.

Let’s move on to the second part – UP THE STAKES. Remember that nothing bad you do to your character is that bad if the stakes are low. In the scene I highlighted at the beginning of the article, a man is either going to prison for rest of his life or get away with murder. The stakes are very high.

So if we stay with our party theme, we might tweak it so that the party is now a networking event and Nick needs to land a big client who’s going to be there. Now that there’s something to lose, the scene has a bit more weight. His ex-wife isn’t just an annoying presence. She could screw up the deal.

Finally, we have our third component. And this, my friends, is the secret sauce – the thing that really makes these scenes impactful. Wanna know what it is?

MAKE IT PERSONAL

In my first example, that scene doesn’t play the same if Officer Jake isn’t friends with the family or if the family isn’t there at the trial. What makes the scene work is his personal relationship with the family and the fact that he has to betray them right in front of their eyes.

So, in our “party” scene, an option might be for Nick to finally make his way to the company he’s trying to land as a client, only to see, at the last second, his ex-wife step up. He then realizes that she works for the company he has to land, which means he has to suck up to the very woman he hates more than anything to get the deal done.

I’m not in love with that option. I’d probably keep working on it until I found something better. But that’s the idea behind the formula. Force your character to do things they don’t want to do. Up the stakes if possible. And turbo charge it by making it personal.

Another famous example of this is The Good Wife. A wife who sacrificed her life to support her State’s Attorney husband finds out he’s been cheating on her over the years with dozens of hookers. She hates this man more than anything. Yet she’s asked to stand next to him at a news conference and tell the world that she supports him and still loves him. That’s the essence of this device. A woman who has to support a great husband? Boring. A woman who has to support a terrible one? Impactful.

Just remember that if Sophie doesn’t have to make a choice, you don’t have a scene.

If you’re looking for notes on your latest script, I offer screenplay consultations. If you want me to break down your script and tell you how to fix it, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “CONSULTATION” and we’ll get started!