Only six days until we start writing a screenplay and I know a lot of you want to kill me for not getting back to you on your loglines yet. The reason it’s taking so long is because 7 out of every 10 e-mails results in me giving all five loglines a 3-rating or lower and I feel like if I only leave the writer with numbers and no explanation they’ll hate me with every fiber of their being. So I always try to add a little comment here or there. “This is too familiar.” That’s what’s taking so long. I’ll continue to go through them as fast as I can, but maybe I just need to skip the comments and do ratings only, even if it drives some of you to build Scriptshadow VooDoo dolls to stick pins into.

Today, to help you get a little better understanding of what’s going on in my head, I’m going to share some of the loglines that were sent in, the ratings I gave them, and the reason for those rating. Hopefully this helps, especially if I’m not able to get to your loglines before next Thursday.

Title: The Angel of the North
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: A gambling addicted PI loses the ransom on his way to a kidnap exchange and now must get the victim back without any money.
My rating: 4
My thoughts: This logline is messy. “A gambling addicted PI” is an inelegant phrasing that already has me worried, and we haven’t even gotten to the second half of the logline yet. The “ransom” is then brought up before I know what the ransom is referring to. Not a huge deal, but it required me to read the logline twice to make sure I understood everything, which is never a good thing. And then the final phrase kind of limps onto the page. “…get the victim back without any money.” I feel like there’s a more powerful way to say this. I like the elements involved but nothing here feels that original, and with the clunky presentation, I couldn’t give this more than a 4. Still, a “4” is better than most loglines got!

Title: Medium Rage
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: When a young medium gains popularity by channeling hilarious crude jokes from a deceased comedian, a virtuous young woman decides to out the arrogant psychic as a fraud, since the comedian’s routines were always secretly written by her.
My rating: 2
My thoughts: It took me three full reads to understand this logline, and even then, I’m not 100% sure I got it. This seems to be a classic case of “too wordy.” But even then, the story seems to go on one beat too far. The young random whistle-blower was also secretly writing jokes for the person who is now being stolen from by the medium-turned-comedian? That’s way too complicated. Remember one of the key pieces of advice I told you yesterday, guys. Keep it simple!

Title: Untitled
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: On her way home from college, a free-spirited student disappears into thin air. When she reappears 5 years later having not aged a single day, she must not only attempt to reintegrate into her life, but also avoid the rogue scientists responsible for her disappearance in the first place.
My rating: 5
My thoughts: This logline has some marketable elements to it. People who reappear five years after a disappearence can lead to a good story. The reason it only got a 5, though, is because a) there was an entire flurry of “reappear after ‘x’ years” TV series that hit the marketplace recently. And b) the term “rogue scientists” killed the logline’s earlier momentum. Not only did it come out of nowhere, but the adjective “rogue” seemed to be apropos of nothing, always a red flag in my experience. All adjectives should be relevant to the rest of the logline.

Title: Wyldefire
Genre: Thriller
Logline: With the overbearing sheriff taken ill and a raging wildfire closing in, deputy Wylde vows to step up and protect the townsfolks’ homes from a gang of looters.
My rating: 6
My thoughts: It may not have received the coveted “7” rating, but Wyldefire has some good things going for it. It’s a simple easy-to-grasp concept and one I can totally imagine the movie for. The key conflict driving the movie – looters taking advantage of a wildfire to steal from innocent people – is interesting. I don’t know why we have another random adjective describing a character (the sheriff), though, when he appears to be a non-factor in the story. Then we have our hero, Deputy Wylde, who doesn’t get an adjective at all. But hey, the rest of the elements keep this idea strong. It’s no home run, but I didn’t give out a whole lot of 6s.

Title: The Extra Mile
Genre: Adventure
Logline: Stuck at the US Customs in Mexico for a technicality, an amateur marathon runner decides to cross the border illegally through the Sonoran desert in order to deliver a rare antivenom for his dying son.
My rating: 2
My thoughts: This one is rough. The beginning of the logline indicates our character is being held somewhere. This is followed by that same character running across a desert. How can he run across a desert if he’s being held somewhere? I see no point in mentioning that the runner is an amateur. Every word you add has the potential to gum up your logline. So get rid of anything that can be gotten rid of. The climax of a dying son who needs a rare antivenon (did he get bit? if so, when? I didn’t see it) not only comes out of nowhere, and feels forced, but seems like it belongs in a different movie. This is a classic case of too many disparate elements in the same logline. There’s too much going on here in general. Keep it simple, guys!

OMG, we only have a WEEK before we have to start writing our script! And most of you still haven’t come up with an idea that’s even close to being script-worthy. So today’s post is dedicated to supercharging your concept and coming up with a great logline.

The biggest problem I seem to be running into is writers who think splashy movie-friendly elements on their own equal a good idea. So by merely saying, “Five aliens arrive on earth and search for a vampire who they believe possesses the key to saving their planet,” that they’ve come up with a good idea. And why not? Hollywood loves aliens. They love vampires. Do you really need anything else?

Well, yes. Coming up with buzzwords (aliens, zombies, sharks, time-travel) isn’t difficult. Nor is placing two of them in the same sentence. I’m pretty sure all you have to know is how to type to pull that off. A good concept consists of manipulating elements into a storyline that sounds intriguing. “A professor who moonlights as an archaeologist must beat a determined Hitler to one of the most elusive and mysterious artifacts in history, the powerful Ark of the Covenant.”

The second biggest mistake is loglines that have way too much going on in them. The number of elements is endless, and the point of the movie seems to change several times during the logline. “A young wannabe ninja joins “Hitman Incorporated,” a school that teaches young men and women how to be hit men, but when he gets his first assignment, it ends up being a circus performer who used to be his best friend, so he will have to seduce the performer’s boss, who also happens to be the Hairy Woman, to help him pull off a fake hit, which ends up saving the circus in the process.” The scariest thing about this logline is that everyone is thinking how ridiculous it is, and yet at least 60% of you have sent me a logline similar to it. Loglines need to be simple. Loglines need to be focused. This is neither.

The third biggest mistake is, strangely, the opposite of the second. The logline is too simplistic and has NO HOOK, so it ends up reading like a bland TV episode. “When new evidence emerges in the death of an NYPD cop, his son plots revenge on the gangsters responsible, against the wishes of his fiancée and his father’s ex-partner.” Cops, revenge, gangsters? Gee, I haven’t seen that before. Where is the hook? Where’s the “strange attractor?”

The biggest violator of this tends to come from road trip ideas for whatever reason. I get a lot of stuff like, “A young man, still recovering from his mother’s death, takes a cross-country trip with his brother to heal.” Uhhhhhh, I’d volunteer to join that mother in her coffin before reading this script. Come on, guys. There isn’t a single original element or hook in this concept!

Remember, movies have to be bigger than life. There’s got to be something unique there, either in the concept itself or in the execution of the concept. For example, let’s rework the road trip logline. “A young man, grieving from his alcoholic mother’s death, must pick up his troubled sister from an addiction program and drive her cross-country to the funeral.” Conceptually, it’s no Jurassic Park. But now we can see a bit of a movie here, right? Obviously, the younger sister suffers from the same issues the mom had, so this trip becomes about saving the sister before she ends up like her mom. There’s more MEAT there to work with.

Next up are re-dos of past movies. While I kind of understand how this mistake can be made (writers are told to come up with ideas that are “familiar but different”), I’d advise against ideas that sound, in any way, similar to past movies, or similar to past movie types. It’s always better to be more unique than more similar. Let me explain that in more detail. Let’s say you come up with an idea about a shark that terrorizes a small Italian town. You’ve just written Jaws in Italy. Is that unique enough? No. Or I’ll get stuff like, “A group of space explorers crash-lands on an icy planet where a local alien species starts hunting them.” Come on! That’s Alien or The Thing.

You also want to steer clear of common movie TYPES unless you’ve found a fresh element to add. For example, do you really want to write another “group of people stuck in a log cabin with zombies movie?” Even if you tweak something here or there (maybe the occupants are trained hunters!), it still feels similar enough that people are going to go, “Eh, I’ve seen that before.”

Okay, so now that we’ve established what you SHOULDN’T be doing, let’s focus on what you should. Here’s a quick cheat sheet for your next logline.

1) An idea that feels simple and easy-to-grasp.
2) Some sort of unique element must be involved.
3) The story must feel big and important.

1) An idea that feels simple and easy-to-grasp – So many of the loglines I’ve received are agonizingly complex. Guys, you need to find that simple idea that people are able to grasp immediately. Here’s a recent Black List entry: “An underwater earthquake decimates a research crew at the bottom of the ocean, leaving two survivors with limited resources to ascend 35,000 feet before their life support runs out.” We all know what that movie is about at the snap of a finger.

2) Some sort of unique element – “Unique” is subjective, which is where this tip runs into trouble. What’s unique to you may not be unique to me. But the idea is, as an aspiring screenwriter in this business, you watch every movie and keep tabs on every script that sells so that you know, better than the average schmuck, when you’re introducing a truly unique element into the mix. That element can be the main idea – bringing dinosaurs back to life in modern society. Or it can be the way the idea is executed. Memento is a whodunnit detective caper. We’ve seen that a million times. But it’s executed in reverse. That’s a unique element.

3) The story must feel big and important – I’m not saying you can’t write that lesbian coming-of-age movie. What am I saying is that you better know someone with a million bucks in their bank account because that’s the only way that script is getting made. If you barely have enough money to pay your rent each month like the rest of us, think bigger. Think larger than everyday life. The absolute lowest level of “big” is a dead body. You can tell a small town tale if there’s a dead body involved. But I’d think bigger. I’d think high stakes. Give me the kind of thing I can’t get anywhere else but in the movies.

Okay, with that in mind, here are five common loglines that always seem to do well. If you’re writing one of these guys, you’re in good shape.

1) The mega-hook – Think Steven Spielberg for the mega-hook (or, the lower rent versions, Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich). The kind of idea that feels like a Friday night crowd-pleaser. Give me your Nazi-fighting archeologists, your modern-day dinosaurs, your Roboapocalypses, your Ready Player Ones, even your children befriending aliens.

2) The unique horror hook – Give us a unique setting or a unique setup for your horror film and these specs sell like hotcakes because the budgets are so low. “A woman revisiting the old orphanage she grew up in loses her child, and begins to suspect that he may have been taken by the souls of the children still living there.” (The Orphanage).

3) Larger than life real-world people – We all know that biopics are hot, but even when they inevitably calm down, larger than life figures will always be intriguing to the movie-going public. Think Wolf of Wall Street. Somebody who either has a lot of personality, a lot of character, or who has a lot of shit going on. Also big right now are REAL LIFE EVENTS. How the big crash went down (“The Big Short”) or how an astronaut drove halfway across the country in diapers to kill her boyfriend’s wife (the upcoming “Pale Blue Dot”).

4) Overtly zany dark comedies – The Black List has ensured that these scripts will always be celebrated, will always be seen as cool by the reader crowd, and therefore are always solid picks from a conceptual standpoint. But you have to be weird to pull them off. Living inside John Malkovich’s head. A puppet serial killer. A therapist who manipulates his patients to commit suicide. Weird, twisted, and funny is the key to doing these well.

5) A well executed ironic logline – Guys, this is the EASIEST way to make your logline stand out from the rest. Place your main character in an ironic situation and you have invented logline nirvana. Look, I’ll just come up with one off the top of my head: “The world’s greatest shark hunter finds his boat slowly sinking inside the most shark-infested waters in the ocean.” The un-ironic version of this would be, “An opera singer finds his boat slowly sinking inside the most shark-infested waters in the ocean.” Reads a bit different, no? Yet I see SO MANY SIMILAR UN-IRONIC loglines that would’ve been so much better had the writer used irony.

HOW TO ACTUALLY WRITE THE LOGLINE

Okay, now that you’ve got your idea, you have to write your actual logline. And this is where everyone freaks out. But I’ll save you some anxiety. If you can’t come up with a well-written logline, chances are you don’t have your idea yet. In other words, it means you have to go back to the drawing board. A good idea should be easy to convey. Because all good ideas are. Think about it. When was the last time a good movie idea took 20 minutes to explain?

So I’m going to give you two basic tips to help you turn your golden idea into a golden logline…

1) KEEP IT FUCKING SIMPLE – The more words you add to your logline, the bigger the hole you’re digging for yourself. A logline is like a mini-script, where all the fat needs to be cut out. Only tell us what we need to know. And what we need to know is the main character, the hook, and what’s in his way (the major source of conflict). Mileage may vary with unconventional ideas (Pulp Fiction, for example), but that’s where you start.

2) KEEP IT FUCKING PERSONAL – I prefer loglines that center around the main character. We’re human beings. So we identify with other human beings. The more impersonal your logline is (if it focuses on things as opposed to people), the less connected I am to it. So yes, that submarine logline I included above, while solid, doesn’t meet this criteria. To this end, find that preceding adjective or descriptive phrase that sells the emotion of the hero. For example, with E.T., I could start my logline, “A boy befriends an alien…” or I could say, “A lonely boy befriends an alien…” You see the difference? We feel more of an emotional connection to a lonely boy than we do to a generic boy.

With all of this in mind, here are few loglines to inspire you:

When a refined man of science is recruited to investigate a recent spat of killings in the recovering town of Salem, he must fend off growing resistance from the intensely religious locals.

When the president of the United States and his immediate chain-of-command are killed in a terrorist attack, the cabinet’s weakest member is vaulted into the highest office in the world to take his place.

When his survivalist father is sent to prison, a militant teenager raised in seclusion must enter society for the first time, where his father instructs him to plot an attack against the government.

A woman being kept in an underground shelter by men claiming the outside world is infected, must figure out a way to escape when she discovers evidence that the men may be lying.

The last logline post got too big so instead of doing Amateur Offerings, I’m going to start a new one. Now a lot of you are probably freaking out. The average score I’ve been giving the loglines I’ve received is a 4. Why? I’ll get more into that with Thursday’s article, but basically, many of these loglines are too ambitious (A man goes to 7 galaxies to procure DNA from seven different alien species to save his wife), too vague, too bland (A mobster kills his victim and must dispose of the body within 24 hours), don’t contain a movie-level hook (Two best friends join a dating service but then fall in love with each other), have zero irony, elements are too disconnected (A flower shop owner learns he’s going to die in six hours so he decides to run a marathon for the first time in his life), go on forever (way too many wordy loglines that go on and on and on – be quick and succinct), or a series of other things.

If you’re freaking out about your low scores, share the loglines here and ask others what’s up. And in the rare case that the readers tell you I’m nuts and the idea is good, discount my opinion. Majority always rules. I’ve seen some writers freak out about wording their loglines just right when the logline isn’t the problem. It’s the idea. You can’t polish a turd. We’re going to have to do another post on what makes a good idea, but hopefully I can cover some of that this Thursday. And if I haven’t gotten to your loglines yet, be patient. There are a lot of them!

p.s. a piece of advice. since there will be tons of people asking for logline advice, only ask for opinions on the loglines you truly care about. throwing up all five will probably get you less of a response.

Today’s pilot comes from one of the most successful spec writers of the decade and stars the biggest TV action star in the universe!

Genre: TV Pilot Thriller/Drama
Premise: When the president of the United States and his immediate chain of command are killed in a terrorist attack, the Secretary of State, a man ill-suited for the job, is thrust into the position.
About: David Guggenheim burst onto the scene when his spec, Safe House, went nuclear, garnering the rare “fast track” green light from the studio and nabbing Denzel Washington in the process. The success of the sale as well as the film allowed Guggenheim to follow up with several high-profile spec sales, and I’m sure untold lucrative writing assignments. Guggenheim has turned his focus to TV now, and Designated Survivor was probably the highest profile sale of the season, opening up a huge bidding war, no doubt helped by the addition of Keifer Sutherland in the lead role
Writer: David Guggenheim
Details: 69 pages (undated – no title page so I’m not sure what draft this is)

I swore it would never happen again. I was so disappointed with the straight-down-the-middle product that the Big 4 networks were churning out that I refused to ever read a Big 4 pilot again. Allow me to paddle down the stream of a Netflix adventure. Allow me to Hulu-hoop my way through a Hulu original. But one more of these cringe-worthy by-the-book eye-closers on a Big 4? I’d rather wrap my face inside of a Brisket Burrito (inside Twitter joke).

So let me tell you why I lifted my moratorium on these shows today. One, because I’m too tired to read a feature. Two, this is a very feature-like premise. Three, it’s written by one of the most successful spec writers of the last five years. And four, because it sparked a major bidding war. Now does any of this mean the pilot will actually be good? Probably not. But we can hope!

Man, can Tim Kirkman catch a break? The 41 year-old Secretary of State is seen by just about everyone as a governmental liability. His main issue? He isn’t strong enough. When the going gets tough, the tough may get going, but Tim Kirkman gets going in the other direction.

So it isn’t much of a surprise when the President of the United States calls him in and asks him to demote himself to a Canadian Advisory position. Kirkman tells the prez he needs a night to think about it (translation: I’ll do what you ask but pretend to think about it overnight to save face). And that’s when shit go cray-cray.

While giving a speech, someone blows the president and several other high-ranking government officers up, leaving guess-who as the successor to the presidential throne? None other than the guy who just got fired earlier in the day.

Kirkman is sworn in and, with the country on a high state of alert, immediately faces a whirlwind of problems. Is this just the first of many attacks? What’s coming next? What do they do? All eyes are on Kirkman, and not a single person in the White House believes in him.

Shit gets real when an oil tanker heading into an East Coast port won’t respond to a ‘stand down’ order. The tanker is just 60 seconds away from being capable of blowing up an entire East Coast City if, indeed, it’s being operated by terrorists. Everyone turns to Kirkman. Can they blow it up? Give the word. Their missiles are waiting. At the last second, the tanker stops, apologizing for a radio malfunction. Whoa, Kirkman thinks. A couple more seconds and he would’ve killed 250 innocent people. This job is hard!

Next up is the most important presidential speech in the history of the country. Kirkman must work hand in hand with a young speech writer to convince not just the United States that he’s capable of leading them, but every single man and woman working underneath him here at the White House. Will he succeed? We’ll have to see.

Straight up truth? This was good. A lot better than I thought it would be. And was it straight-down-the-middle Big 4 generic TV? Kind of. But what Guggenheim brings from his feature spec roots is an ability to MOVE THE STORY FORWARD QUICKLY. This pilot had a ton of urgency, preventing even the tiniest slivers of boredom to creep in.

You can usually spot a good writer by what they do after the setup. Because the setup of these shows/movies is always easy. Who’s going to screw up the president of the United States getting killed? Or our next-in-line being ushered by the Secret Service to get sworn in at the White House? Those scenes write themselves.

But once Kirkman becomes the president, what now? And Guggenheim immediately moves into a problem – the oil tanker. Our protagonist is immediately being tested.

And once that problem is solved, a new one arrives. Iran takes advantage of the U.S.’s distraction to secure the Strait of Hormuz, effectively choking off our access to oil. Kirkman now has to figure that problem out as well.

And while these scenes seem obvious in retrospect, most writers don’t know to write them. They’d rather deal with the mundane directionless details of “What happens when a new person becomes president?” You have an entire series to explore that. Right now, you need to place your protagonist in DRAMATIC SITUATIONS that test him. You’re going to find urgency in these moments and you’re going to find drama. I’d much rather watch that than a scene where Kirkman meets with his staff and discusses the do’s and don’ts of being a president.

Another smart move was not telling us who killed the president. There’s a tendency from TV writers to cram all the plot into the pilot. But remember, you have to give us reasons to come back. And you do that through big unanswered questions. The fact that who killed the president is going to be an ongoing mystery is a reason for me to come back. Otherwise, I’ve just a TV sized feature.

One of the more amusing discoveries from the script was when Kirkman was sitting with his wife, at a low point, thinking he couldn’t do this, and his wife takes him by the hand and says, “Do you remember STORY ABOUT HIS EARLY DAYS OF POLITICS?” As in, literally, that’s what’s written. And I just found it funny that even the top screenwriters don’t always know what to write and will put up a placeholder to figure it out later.

It’s a small thing but I know a lot of writers will refuse to keep writing until they figure out that problem. And what happens is, because they can’t figure it out, they’re not writing anything. One day of not writing turns into two. Two into four. Four into a week. A week into a month. Sometimes it’s best to leave a problem alone for now and keep writing so you’re getting pages down. Often what will happen is the solution to your problem will come while you’re exploring some other part of the story.

Look, is Designated Survivor going to be able to do what House of Cards did? Probably not. I don’t see Kirkman and his wife having a three-way with their security detail. But it’s a nice West Wing slash 24 hybrid that should satiate the wind-down-from-work crowd. I’ll probably check out the pilot this fall.

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

What I learned: When in doubt, present your hero with a problem. The more elaborate the problem, the higher the stakes the problem, the better. I loved the oil tanker scene here. I loved the Iran scene here. And all Guggenheim did was present our protagonist with a problem. When you think about it, this is the lifeblood of television. You place problems in front of your protagonist. If you can make those problems unique, if you can make them DIFFICULT, chances are you’re going to keep the audience entertained.

Congrats to yesterday’s “worth the read” amateur script. Lawrence e-mailed me to let me know he’s slogging through a particularly rough time in his life and this review helped him remember what he was doing this for. Let’s give more writers that moment. Bring your best stuff, guys. And if you’re new to Amateur Offerings and want a shot at getting your script reviewed, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, logline, and why you think your script deserves a shot. Don’t forget to include a PDF of your script. Now on to today. Read as much as you can from each script and cast your vote in the comments section (leave a comment with your pick). Let’s find an IMPRESSIVE! :)

Title: Vampire United
Genre: Comedy Horror Action.
Logline: A shamed ex-soccer pro must rise up against the new owner of his local team when he discovers he’s an Eastern European vampire bent on destroying the beautiful game.
Why You Should Read: I’m an English screenwriter living in Berlin aspiring to have a career in LA and would love to have my script reviewed to know if the script is ready to present to the industry, or not. I’m aware the story and its execution have to be amazing and I’m submitting the script in the hope I get notes to help reach that goal. The script is in the vein of Shaun Of The Dead, and The World’s End but with the heart of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot. I spent months in Whitby researching/writing the script. And for that I deserve good things to happen! Whitby is a small seaside town in North Yorkshire where Bram Stoker wrote and set much of Dracula. A goal I have is to make the association between Whitby and Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel more known. Why? Because despite there being 300 + movies, TV series, etc. made from the novel none have ever mentioned the location of Whitby, which I find incredible. Whitby is the place where Dracula landed in the UK from Transylvania on the Russian Schooner ship the Demeter to curse the nation with vampirism. Vampire United is inspired by that set up. I have an MA in screenwriting and attended the UCLA professional Program in screenwriting some years back. My previous script was a top 13 finalist of 4000 entries in the Scriptapalooza competition and Vampire United recently received three high grades on the Black List. I see this script as a perfect fit for Ben Wheatley and plan to get it to him when it’s ready.

Title: My Druncle Kevin
Comedy: Family Comedy
Logline: When her Mother goes missing on Black Friday, a strong-willed Teen is forced to quest into the shopping chaos with the person whose company she enjoys least – her perpetually immature and inebriated Uncle.
Why You Should Read: Why should you read My Druncle Kevin? I can sit here and make bold, downright blasphemous claims about my script being “Hughes-ian” or in the vein of a “Family Style Hangover,” but no one wants to hear that. Instead, here are ten stone cold bullet points…

1. It’s a comedy with heart for days.
2. It’s a script set during a time of year that is oddly underrepresented in movies.
3. It centers on a refreshing “buddy coppy” duo not often seen in film.
4. It’s all about family at its core.
5. It features the best dopey small car action since “The Italian Job.”
6. It cracked the ScriptShadow 250!
7. Too much pressure, skip to #8.
8. It’ll make you appreciate your mother.
9. My friend Joe said it was “pretty good,” and he doesn’t even read scripts!
10. It will put you in the holiday spirit just in time for… Spring. I’m nothing if not topical.

Title: The Mars Exploit
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: After telepathic extremists seize control of the Solar system, an elite programmer must sneak onto occupied Mars and subvert the enemy’s communications network, or say goodbye to freedom of thought forever.
Why You Should Read: When Alex told me this story, I don’t think he had any idea what it would do to me. How I’d be up until three in the morning writing down every word he’d said, because I was too excited about it to sleep. After he graciously gave me permission to turn it into a screenplay, I spent many more sleepless nights, first teaching myself screenplay format (which, as a novelist, I hadn’t touched since college), then working out each new plot twist and character – because I just couldn’t wait to share this amazing story with everyone else. I hope I’ve done it justice!

Title: Refugee
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: A dishonorably discharged Marine breaks a stalemate between the US military and the gangs that inhabit what’s left of a flooded New York City.
Why You Should Read: I’m a Sydney based writer with a mixed background. With an Iraqi father and an Algerian mother, I was born in Poland, grew up in Australia, lived in Italy and the Netherlands and traveled most of the world. I’ve been held up at gunpoint, jumped from 70 foot cliffs and out of aeroplanes. I don’t say it to boast, but to show how varied my experiences have been. Refugee was written with input from actual US Marines and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it. If it doesn’t get reviewed, I at least hope you enjoy the ride.

Title: Punks
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Four friends try to have a normal day, until everything starts going wrong.
Why You Should Read: My name is Ty Brantley. I am 15 years old and I am also an aspiring writer just trying to get his script read. I think you should read my script because of my age and this will most likely help get my name out there. Also, most people who have read it say it’s pretty good.