Today’s amateur script was beaten out in the last amateur showdown. But today’s review will point out how wrong those voters were.

Genre: Heist
Premise: An estranged group of musicians, of a once successful band, reunite in order to pull a series of robberies at major concert venues, all in one night, in an attempt to take back the millions they feel were stolen from them by their ex-manager, who now runs the venues they target. Their greatest hits, are robberies.
Why You Should Read: I love heist films. Primarily, grounded heist films. Shit that could happen. Shit that, if we put our minds to it, and had just the right opportunity, for just the right reason, we might be able to pull off and would risk doing so. Any heist situation is absolutely nuts to attempt, so it has to be about more than the money. There has to be something so wrong with the system, the person, the past or the present where it seems there is no other choice. Vultures N Doves is unique twist on the heist film, something I’ve never seen in a movie before, it’s amped up fun, there’s a couple of outrageous set pieces, and most importantly, a main character with a rockstar ego, who is struggling to keep his band, marriage, and life together.
Writer: Lawrence Lamovec
Details: 115 pages

As if there is any doubt who would play this role.

I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t thrilled with this premise. It’s the kind of thing you can see working as a real life story. A middle-of-the-road band spent the entirety of the 70s and 80s robbing the very venues they worked at. But once you turn this premise into a fictional story, it feels a bit absurd. I was wondering if I’d be able to suspend my disbelief.

On top of that, you have an endless logline, which almost always indicates a bad screenplay. Why? Because when writers can’t stop going on in their logline, it probably means they can’t stop going on in their script – that things are going to be uncomfortably unfocused and rambling. I’m not sure why this is such a problem for writers – eliminating extraneous words and phrases from their logline. It’s something that has to be done.

So for Lawrence’s logline here, I’d rewrite it as: A once successful band reunites to rob a series of music venues and take back the millions that were stolen from them by a corrupt concert promoter.

Now here’s the thing. We find out in the script that the “corrupt concert promoter” is actually their ex-manager, who happens to also promote these concerts. It’s a detail that can be explained properly over the course of an entire screenplay, but not so much in a brief logline. However, if you write, “…that were stolen from them by their ex-manager, who also happens to be a concert promoter,” it’s clunky as shit. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the small details of your story so that your logline reads cleanly.

While the logline itself may have been a bad experience, I was surprised to find that the script itself was not. In fact, Vultures ’N’ Doves surprised me on numerous levels. This was some damn fine writing, my friends.

35 year-old Cash used to be a rock star. His band, Vultures N Doves, played all the biggest venues in the world, and turned out numerous number hits along the way. The only problem is that they signed a shitty record deal when they were teenagers with a slimy Chicago manager named James Degrazia, leaving them broke and Degrazia a millionaire many times over.

If there were a face for “music industry corruption,” Degrazia would be it. Even worse, his father ran all the concert venues in the area, which Degrazia has since taken over. The borderline mobster basically owns the Chicago music scene.

When Cash and his band lose their final court battle to Degrazia to get the money they’re owed, Cash comes up with an idea. There’s nobody who knows how concerts work better than they do. What if they robbed two venues in town on the biggest night of the year?

His band, which consists of a British twerp named Legend, a scrawny sweetheart named Zero, and a tough-as nails Latino named Matador, think he’s crazy. But Cash is a brilliant pitch man. And as he points out, they’re not really robbing anyone of anything. They’re taking back the money that Degrazia owes them.

Complicating matters is the fact that Cash’s wife, Rosa, is secretly sleeping with Degrazia and thinking of running away with him. As much as she loves Cash, life with him has been one disappointment after another, and she needs someone who can take care of her, which Degrazia is more than happy to do.

The plan is to rob the United Center first where the Rolling Stones are playing, and then head up to Grant Park, where a younger crowd participates in Lollapalooza. The idea is, if they don’t hit up both venues on the same night, the robbery will result in bolstered security that will stave off any future heist attempts.

So in the course of 24 hours, Cash and crew are either going to get their revenge, or end up in jail. But it’s going to be a hell of a wild night either way.

One of the first things I realized with “Vultures” was how focused it was. We start off seeing Cash and company lose to Degrazia in court, then we’re right into “What now?” which results in Cash coming up with the heist scheme. As I’ve told you guys numerous times, you want to get into your story quickly. Show the reader that you’re not going to waste their time.

Another good sign was the dual-heist format. One of the things you get used to after writing a lot of screenplays is how long stuff is going to take. You know that a heist, for example, probably isn’t going to last more than 30 pages. That leaves you 80 pages left. Do you have enough story for those 80 pages? Are you going to give us 80 pages of the band preparing for the heist?

Of course not. Half of that will end up being filler. So to add another heist during the evening was smart. The heist just got twice as difficult (more uncertainty in the character’s goal is always good) and you’ve got 50 pages worth of heists (assuming each one moves a little faster) instead of 30.

That still leaves 60 pages though. So what are you going to fill that up with? Part of it will be preparation, yes, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to keep preparation alone interesting for 60 pages.

So from there, you go to subplots. Find the most interesting characters in your script and see if you can explore parallel storylines with them. One of the subplots Lawrence chooses is the Rosa-Cash love story. Making Rosa Degrazia’s secret lover made us hate him even more, and it made Rosa a lot more complex.

Lawrence also builds a subplot that involves some back-door corruption between the well-connected Degrazia and the Chicago Mayor. The duo have some shady dealings together that Lawrence cleverly links up with the money Cash is stealing from the venues. Degrazia realizes that he can’t just go to the police, as the dirty money is tied back to the mayor.

I think that’s the moment where the script truly came together for me. When writers can weave a subplot and a main plot together in an unexpected and satisfying way, it’s the sign that they know what they’re doing.

And Lawrence definitely knows his stuff. This premise still might be too weird for me, but I have to give Lawrence credit for executing the shit out of it. :)

Screenplay link: Vultures ’N’ Doves

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

What I learned: Try and plot out, to the best of your knowledge, how long each key event in your script is going to take to get an idea of how many pages will be left. So if your key events add up to 40 pages, that still leaves 70 pages to fill up. If you don’t have a solid plan for filling up 70 pages, you’re going to have a lot of filler. Either add another main event like Lawrence did here, or be prepared to include a wealth of subplots.

Genre: Period (Based on true events)
Premise: After a lifetime of failure, John Brown attacks the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry in one last ditch effort to free the slaves.
Why You Should Read (from writer): In earlier forms, this script placed in the top ten in Final Draft’s Big Break, was a semifinalist in Page and received a “Consider” from Coverage Ink. I’ve worked hard on the notes I’ve received and I think I’ve made it better. I understand that it’s a period piece (but isn’t Catherine the Great?), however it’s a really cool moment in history that has been ignored on the big screen. I like to think of this story as the American version of Braveheart.
Writer: George Gier
Details: 110 pages

Little tip for those of you who want to be industry readers. Don’t watch a new Star Wars trailer 814 times and then try to read a slavery script. You kind of have to be in a certain headspace for slavery. And replaying Forest Whitaker saying, “If you continue to fight…” [wait, I forgot what he says next – an excuse to go watch the trailer again! – one second] oh yeah… “What will you… become?” When you get all warm and whitaker, it’s not easy to shift into slavery.

BUT I’M GOING TO TRY.

59 year-old Reverend Isaac Smith seems to be your average devoted man of God. His sermons are powerful and engorge local churchgoers with plenty of faith meals, important on the to-do list of most people living in 1859, especially since they didn’t have Uber Eats yet. But Smith has a secret. His real name is John Brown, an abolitionist on the lam, and he’s got a plan that’s going to change the United States forever.

Brown wants to invade a large armory in nearby Harper’s Ferry, steal all their guns, recruit local African-Americans to join him in his cause, then go from plantation to plantation to liberate those black men and women who are still being held by slave owners.

So Brown puts together a ragtag crew and heads to Harper’s Ferry. Here’s where things get dicey though. You see part of Brown’s plan is to simultaneously recruit local African-Americans while he’s taking over the armory. Without those men, he has nobody to carry out all those guns. So his plan is really two plans, and one will not work without the other.

Brown actually takes over the armory easily. But every local man his team tries to recruit tells them… well, they basically tell them to fuck off. In real life, the average person doesn’t want to join a revolution. They’d rather stick to what’s familiar, even if what’s familiar sucks. This recruiting delay allows a militia to sneak into town and challenge Brown, which, unfortunately, is something Brown’s not prepared for, and dictates the unfortunate series of events that follow.

You know, it’s funny. This setup is actually quite similar to Rogue One. A ragtag crew is thrown together to tackle an impossible mission. So maybe this wasn’t such a bad script to segue into after all. But there was a major difference. That was Star Wars. This was a period piece.

Today’s writer, George, seems well aware of the difficulties of writing period pieces, and I’ll get into one of the biggest challenges of tackling that genre in a second. But first I have to get this off my chest. When you write a script where race is a crucial component to the story, it is ESSENTIAL that you tell us the race of all the characters.

Because you know what? I didn’t know if John Brown was black or white! This in a story where it’s critical that I know the main character’s race. And it was a good 30 pages before I was able to guess.

This is a common problem, where the writer is so close to the material that they assume you know what they do. We don’t know. I mean, some people might know. But I didn’t. So I know other readers won’t either. And this kind of mistake isn’t forgivable. It’s a first class script-killer.

But back to period pieces. Here’s one of the reasons readers hate period pieces: They know they’re going to have to memorize 30 characters. And no one can memorize 30 characters. So one of two things happens. If the reader is considerate and has time, they’ll write down every character with a little description next to them so they can check back later if they forget who’s who.

Or they just keep reading and accept the fact that they’re not going to remember half the people they come across. This results in a strange pseudo-read, where the reader has a general idea of what’s going on, but all the subtleties and subplots are lost on them.

But even if the reader is taking notes, do you know how annoying it is when you don’t remember a character, and have to read back through a list of 30 people to figure out who they are? EVERY TIME you forget? Which is a lot? It takes the reader out of the script, which means instead of being fully immersed in your story, they’re playing “Who the hell is this guy again?” And that game’s only enjoyable when sex is involved.

This is one reason I encourage writers to read a lot of scripts. Once they’ve read a handful of huge-character-count scripts, they think twice every time they’re going to add a character to their own script. “Do I really need this character?” they ask. And often times they realize they don’t.

So what does this mean? Does this mean you can never write a script with a high character count? What if the story you’re telling naturally requires a bunch of characters? Yes, THERE ARE WAYS to make high character counts more palatable. I won’t go into all of them, but here are a couple. Develop a description hierarchy that you STAY CONSISTENT WITH. Big characters get longer extensive descriptions, medium characters get one sentence bare-bone descriptions, and small characters get one or two word descriptions. This is a nice subliminal way to indicate to the reader who they need to commit to memory and who’s okay to forget (if they must forget someone).

But the REAL key to making a big character count work is that when your characters are introduced, you need to introduce them with something MEMORABLE. If a character gets a distinctive memorable intro scene, I WILL REMEMBER THEM THE ENTIRE SCRIPT. If a character introduces himself with a nod, I will probably need to check who they are every time they reappear. And when I have to do that, I get really annoyed. And if I get annoyed a bunch of times, I take that anger out on the writer. I think to myself, “Why doesn’t this writer understand how to make characters memorable?”

Now you may say, Carson, I’ve seen plenty of movies where characters don’t have big memorable entrances. Shit, Neo is introduced in The Matrix sleeping in front of his computer. I’d say, first, a lot of those movies had smaller character counts. But second, you have to understand that THOSE WERE MOVIES. It’s a lot easier to remember a physical face. But we’re not seeing a physical face on the page. We’re seeing words. So you need to do other things to help us remember that face.

And that means, yes, you will approach your script differently than if you were writing an already-greenlit-movie. In fact, a lot of writers will write bigger memorable character intro scenes understanding that, once they film the script, they’ll likely get rid of that scene and bring the character in more naturally.

But getting back to John Brown’s Body as a story. I thought this had potential. You have a group of people with a clear goal and the stakes for that goal feel pretty high. But my big issue with John Brown’s Body was that John Brown’s plan kinda sucked. It didn’t seem well-thought-through at all. Other characters even tell him that. Which I guess is okay, but the thing is, it makes John look kinda dumb. If he doesn’t even know where he’s going to get his army by the time he takes over the armory, I’d say that most intelligent people wouldn’t go through with that plan.

This conceptual faux pas weaves its slimy tentacles throughout the rest of the plot. Because every thing that goes wrong reminds you just how ill-conceived this plan was in the first place.

So if I were Greg – and it seems like he’s open to criticism – that’s the first thing I’d fix. Give John Brown a stronger plan. The more solid the plan, the more delicious the drama when things start to go south. From there, I’d stop introducing so many darn people, especially since half of them never make appearances again. Place your focus on the key characters and make sure all those characters get the kind of memorable introduction a big character deserves. That’s going to help a lot of things here. I wish Greg luck. Many Bothans died to help this review get written.

Script link: John Brown’s Body

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

What I learned: Think of character introductions in terms of camera shots. If a character is important enough to get a close-up in the finished film, he/she’s important enough to get a proper description and memorable opening scene.

Today’s GUEST ARTICLE comes from stellar long-time contributor MulesandMud, who often offers the best advice on the board. Even I get jealous of his vast knowledge at times. Since some of you have been asking what the hell treatments are and how to write them, Mules has kindly offered to write a guest article about the elusive little buggers. Hope you enjoy it!

The standard look a screenwriter gives when told to write a treatment.

I know some of you think that loglines are the ugly babies of the screenwriting world, but a logline is an adorable toddler compared to the deformed, puberty-stricken creature that is a film treatment.

A treatment is by definition incomplete, even moreso than a screenplay. It’s a work in progress, an idea on its way to becoming a script (which in turn is on its way to becoming a movie).

That’s the reason that treatments are so much harder to find than screenplays. Most writers have no desire to show their treatments to anyone. They are almost always ungainly and imperfect documents, so seeing one is a peek behind the curtain of a writer’s process.

And as you all know, it’s not very pretty back there.

Still, whether we like treatments or not, a pro scribe needs to know how to write them, full stop. Anyone who claims to have a screenwriting career that doesn’t require treatment-writing is either lying or living a charmed life that has no relevance to the rest of us.

So, with that in mind…

WHAT IS A TREATMENT?

Like a lot of film industry jargon, the term “treatment” is intentionally ambiguous, so that important people can toss the word around without quite knowing what it means.

To understand what a treatment is, it’s helpful to understand it in the context of other story-building documents often used in the development process. Here’s a quick and not-at-all-comprehensive list:

BEAT SHEET – This is exactly what it sounds like, a list of the major story beats. That list might be just a series simple words or phrases at first, and rarely exceeds a page.

STEP OUTLINE – This is also essentially a list, only more elaborate, charting out each individual scene of your script with descriptions for each entry, often detailing things like locations, characters present, and dramatic or thematic developments.

SYNOPSIS – This is a short prose description of your story. It typically ranges from one to five pages in length. Depending on the size and the purpose of the document, it might also be called a SUMMARY or ONE-PAGER (hint: don’t call it a one-pager if it’s three pages long).

TREATMENT – This is a longer and more comprehensive prose version of your script, normally around 10 to 30 pages long; the level of detail varies accordingly. As with step outlines, longer treatments may attempt to detail each individual scene. The longest ones might also include lines of dialogue or scene headings, at which point the document is probably more of a SCRIPTMENT, a hybrid of prose and screenplay formatting.

Now, you’re likely to hear all of the above terms used vaguely or interchangeably. And to make things especially confusing, the word OUTLINE can be used to refer to any or all of the above. Don’t go crazy over the semantics, just try to be consistent about what you refer to as what.

Also, never be afraid to ask for clarification when someone requests a particular type of document from you. To paraphrase a great swordsman, they might not think it means what you think it means.

When asked to write a treatment/outline/whatever, your smartest move is to ask the asker to send you a sample treatment/outline/whatever that they’ve received in the past, to show you exactly what format they’re looking for.

Framed properly, this request won’t sound amateurish, it’ll prove you’re a pro who knows how unreliable these terms can be. Plus, it might give you a chance to see another writer’s treatment, which is always interesting.

WHEN TO WRITE A TREATMENT

Almost without exception, treatments are written early in the development process, before you start writing the actual script. If a producer asks you to write a treatment or outline for an existing script, they probably mean a synopsis (see above).

Here, we need to understand that there are two very different reasons why you might write a treatment:

1.) Because you find treatments useful for your own story development.

In this case, the treatment is a WORKING DOCUMENT, a writing tool for the eyes of you and your collaborators. This is a purely optional tool, and its value depends on each person’s individual writing process.

Personally, I tend to create all sorts of outline- and treatment-type documents before beginning a script. I’ve also been known to make look books, research binders, etc, plus unique documents tailored each project (e.g., for a TV pilot I made an elaborate family tree mapping the genealogies of my characters; for a contained horror script I used drafting software to mock up a small town police station).

Again, this is a completely optional version of a treatment, whereas the second reason makes a treatment trickier, if not impossible, to avoid.

2.) Because someone asks you for a treatment.

In this case, the treatment is a PITCH DOCUMENT, a selling tool designed to convince someone else that your story would make a great movie. Most often, a producer or exec will request one of these after a pitch meeting or development conversation.

This kind of treatment (or outline, or synopsis, etc…see above) is inevitable; sooner or later, someone will ask you for one. I’ve done a couple dozen of these over the years, both for ideas of my own and for ideas pitched to me by producers or execs. A few have gotten me paid in one way or another, but most of them haven’t. That’s the nature of the beast.

It’s important to note here that good treatments take serious time and effort.

Most folks who ask you for a treatment won’t want to pay for it, even though they realize it’s a lot to ask. In my opinion, once a tight treatment has been written, all of the hardest parts of the screenwriting process have essentially been done. You need to think long and hard about whether the project in question is worth that kind of commitment.

It may be seem worthwhile to write a treatment for a concept that a manager or producer has sent your way, even just for the sake of building a relationship. Depending on the situation, that may be true, especially for an unproven writer looking for industry access or representation.

However, make sure you don’t go in blind. Do your best to understand who you’re getting involved with, and what the realistic prospects are for the project.

HOW TO WRITE A TREATMENT

This bring us back to the distinction between a WORKING DOCUMENT and a PITCH DOCUMENT. That is, a treatment you write for yourself vs. one you write for someone else.

Though we could call both of these documents treatments, they have nearly opposite goals.

What’s the difference? In short, BULLSHIT.

When you write a working treatment, bullshit is your enemy.

Here, you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Lay your story out in graphic, unsexy detail, leaving nothing out. Identify all of its flaws. Make its weak points clearly visible. Figure out which beats you’ve left half-considered and which ones you may have overthought.

This way, when it comes time to write the script, you have solutions in mind, or at least a firm grasp of the problems. Otherwise, why bother?

On the other hand, when you write a pitch treatment, bullshit is your friend.

Let’s say a producer or exec was intrigued by your pitch, and is now asking for a treatment to see if your idea can go the distance. The document you present may decide whether or not you make a sale.

That means you need to bring the sexy in a big way.

You probably won’t know every detail of your story, but the treatment needs to read like you do. You’ll need to gloss over plot gaps or character issues, hiding any problems you haven’t solved yet (fact: no matter how much work you do, there will always be problems left to solve).

The treatment needs to be paced right, giving enough specifics to suggest that you know what you’re talking about, but not so much that it gets bogged down in a rushed list of plot and scene ingredients. Don’t try to cram everything in there: for the sake of clarity and rhythm, you’ll have to leave some things out.

These pages need to read like a movie, in some ways even more smoothly and cinematically than a screenplay does.

Most importantly, the treatment needs to nail the tone of your story. It can’t be just a list of characters and scenes. You need to get your script’s personality across. Give the thing a little sizzle, as they say.

The good news, sort of, is that you basically have to write a version of this document anyway as preparation for a good verbal pitch, which normally amounts to a 10-minute monologue in which you, the writer, introduce your concept and walk listeners through the entire story, hopefully without boring the hell out of anyone.

In most ways, a great pitch treatment reads exactly like a great verbal pitch sounds: as though someone were telling you the story a film so well that by the end it felt like you’d just watched the actual movie.

If that sounds hard, well, it is. Most treatments, even by great writers, tend to be boring reads, more functional than entertaining. In some ways, treatment writing is harder than scriptwriting, since you’re forced to accomplish a screenplay’s worth of story in just a fraction of the words.

Finally, a quick word on treatment length:

For a working treatment, the longer the better. That doesn’t mean pad the thing unnecessarily; it means make an effort to get everything relevant down on paper, without prejudice. There’s no such thing as too much information here. It’s all grist for the mill of the actual screenplay.

For a pitch treatment, less is more. Try to keep things short, around 15 pages, otherwise the treatment may get bogged down in minutiae. This may sound like less work than the longer version, but in my experience, it’s actually more work, since you usually have to write it all before you know what you can omit. Especially with complex genre plots, paring down a verbal pitch or treatment to a streamlined length can feel impossible at times.

Genre: Comedy (Stoner)
Premise: After accidentally losing her company’s mascot, an uptight junior food scientist reluctantly enlists the help of her pothead building superintendent and together they battle against a relentless vermin exterminator to recover the missing ferret before her career goes up in smoke.
Why You Should Read: With marijuana being legalized all over the place, it’s a topical subject, plus it has a fresh twist with the ferret angle. Stoners and ferrets go together like macaroni and cheese! I’ve directed several short films featuring ferrets, including a short called DUDE, WHERE’S MY FERRET? that is meant as a teaser for the feature version, featuring Bubbles from The Trailer Park Boys. I also directed THE MAGIC FERRET, which was Jacob Tremblay’s (Room) first leading role. I like working with ferrets because it’s something different than what most people are used to seeing – and I know something about them because I have one as a pet (used to have two, R.I.P. Falcor the Ferret). I think this is a great recipe for a stoner comedy – but we need some help to get it to where it needs to be. I say ‘we’ because I’m the director but not the writer – I found someone to write this for me while I learn the craft. We could highly benefit from a review by Carson and our peers. I’m smishsmosh22 and promise to participate in the comments if we get chosen!
Writer: Tim McS
Details: 93 pages

Dude, where’s my ferret?

It’s fun to say, right? Go ahead, try and say it without smiling.

Like a talking ferret, it’s impossible.

Unless, of course, you believe in talking ferrets. And in that case, you’ll like this script. In fact, one of the first things you’ll realize when reading today’s script is that Tim McS really likes ferrets. No, I mean like really really really likes ferrets. And while we’ve always supported the mantra, “Write what you know,” at what point has that philosophy gone too far???

26 year old Laura Frye is a junior food scientist. That means she designs food to taste better, last longer, or look more interesting. And her latest project is improving the lifespan of a pet food company’s ferret food line. As you might imagine, the CEO of the company, Peterson, is none too pleased with this development. The faster ferret food goes bad, the sooner the customer has to buy more ferret food. So Laura’s invention will lose the company money.

After dropping a couple dozen F-bombs on her, Peterson punishes Laura by assigning her to watch the company ferret (lovingly named “Ferret Bueller”) for the evening and bring him to his big ad photoshoot tomorrow. Ironically, Laura doesn’t even like ferrets. But she waltzes back to her apartment with the ferret and somehow ends up in 25 year-old All-Star stoners, Spoke and Noodle’s apartment.

After accidentally eating their pot cookies, Laura inadvertently lets Ferret Bueller loose. With her job on the line, Laura desperately enlists the help of Spoke and Noodle to find Ferret Bueller, who has since crawled into the walls and is running around the insides of the apartment complex.

Laura and Spoke team up, following the screams from apartment to apartment, while Noodle heads down to the basement, which he seems to think is the best place to find stray animals.

I should mention that Noodle lost his memory in a terrible accident years ago and has no idea who he is. So, of course, he starts seeing hallucinations of Ferret Bueller, who begins talking to him, revealing pieces of his past, from which he finally starts putting together his identity.

Meanwhile, unlikely sparks are flying between Spoke and Laura. She’s educated, driven, and organized. He’s jobless, dumb, and addicted to pot. But if you’re both high, none of that matters. And you can never predict how the search for an elongated rat-animal-thing can bring two people closer. But will they capture that little minx before it’s too late? Dude, read the script to find out!

Hey, I got a joke for you. How did one ferret receive money from another ferret? He inferrited it.

Haha. You get it?

Right.

Anyway, Dude Where’s My Ferret is a surprisingly well-constructed screenplay considering the subject matter. Typically when I read these kinds of wacky comedies, there is zero effort or even understanding of how to add structure to the story. The scripts are usually a series of loosely-connected sketches.

We’ve got some great GSU here (goal, stakes, urgency). Goal – find the ferret. Stakes – Laura’s job. Urgency – the photo shoot. So we’re always clear on what needs to happen and where we are in the story. That’s important. A lot of writers don’t know how to do that, causing their scripts to wander.

It’s a clever little plot too. The fact that we get to chase the ferret through the building allows us to go into the apartments of a varied cast of characters. It was basically a license to go crazy with character, and as anyone who writes comedy knows, crazy/weird/outrageous characters are key. Melissa McCarthy’s character in Bridesmaid’s. Mr. Chow in The Hangover.

I also liked the technologically sophisticated pest exterminator. An exterminator who uses drones to search for his prey – I’d never seen that before. But more importantly, McS was employing a classic storytelling technique. Figure out what your main character wants, then put as many obstacles in front of that “want” as you can. The more creative the obstacle, the better.

So with all this good, why didn’t I love Dude, Where’s My Ferret? Well, to put it plainly, I thought the comedy was too standard. One of my big red flags when it comes to comedy is excessive swearing. It’s not that swearing can’t be funny. With the right character, it can be hilarious. But usually it’s a sign of the writer not being creative enough. A guy who swears a lot (in this case, Peterson, who says “fuck” every other word) tells me, “I’m not willing to put in the effort to come up with genuine thoughtful comedy.”

I mean look at one of the movies this was inspired by – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hilarious movie. Not a single swear word.

If it’s an organic part of the character (for instance, the character has Tourette’s), that’s fine. Otherwise, it’s a signal that you may be reading something where the comedy’s not going to rise above “swearing is funny” level.

Another issue with the comedy here is that it feels dated. These stoner characters could’ve been transplanted right out of a 1980s film. They talk, sound, and act exactly the same as the characters from those movies used to sound.

It’s fine to be inspired by movies from your past. But the difference between creating a movie that’s inspired by old films and movies that feel plain old is taking what worked in those old films then ADDING SOMETHING NEW.

Where’s the “new” in Spoke and Noodle? How have you made their stoner schtick different from past stoner schticks? I’ll give you an example – the movie, “Friday.” That was a movie about potheads, but told in a completely different cultural setting from where we were used to seeing potheads.

So all the spaced-out jokes were crammed up against new environments and fresh problems. In the past when a stoner got high, he ate cereal. In Friday when Ice Cube got high, he ate cereal with water cause they were too poor to buy milk.

That’s what I mean by fresh, and it’s something I discuss here all the time. It doesn’t stop with comedy. You have to ask yourself, “What am I bringing that’s new to the table?” I’m guessing McS would say that the ferret is the new element. But typically the “fresh” component has to be represented by the characters somehow, and that’s not happening here. These characters are exact replicas of 1980s stoner movie characters.

That’s why I read this with an occasional smile, but never laughed out loud (okay, that’s not entirely true. I did laugh at them trying to figure out if the exterminator was actually an “ex-Terminator”).

So moving forward, my suggestion to McS would be to add fresh angles to both Spoke and Noodle to bring them into the year 2016. I don’t know if you need to change their culture, their race, their ages, their sexual preference, but it has to be something. 25 year old white stoners is the most “first choice” of choices a writer can make, and therefore shows a lack of creativity.

Next, push yourself with the comedy. A lot of these jokes feel safe, and a bit dated to be honest. Again, it seems like you’re writing a comedy spec from the year 1988. You’ve got to modernize this somehow. Make it feel current. Or else I’m afraid people are going to label you with the dreaded “dated” tag like I just did.

With that said, losing a ferret in a building is funny. And while I’m not the biggest fan of stoner comedies, this is a prime situation to add pot to. So I think you have a foundation to build on. Oh, and I agree with that commenter who said you should change your title. You don’t want to use a variation of a mildly successful 10 year old movie title. Distinguish yourself. Show that you’re original by coming up with an original title. Good luck!

Script link: Dude, Where’s My Ferret

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

What I learned: One of the best ways to avoid cliche characters is to ask yourself, “What kind of person would never be this cliche?” What this does is it places you on the other end of the spectrum as far as stereotyping, opening up new avenues to create unique characters. Stoners are one of the most cliche character-types out there. So ask yourself, “What kind of person is never a stoner?” A businessman with his shit together. An intensely religious person. A police officer. You don’t have to choose any of these but they’re great starting points for going against the grain and coming up with somebody original.

One of the most important skills in a screenwriter’s tool bag is being able to convey a character’s attributes through action. So if you want to show that a character is a dick, show him kicking a dog. If you want to show that a girl is kind, show her holding the door open for an old lady.

Where this skill becomes truly powerful, though, is when you use it to highlight a character’s fatal flaw. This combination not only has the power to tell the audience what kind of person your character is, but also highlight the thing that’s holding them back in life, and therefore the weakness they will need to overcome by the end of the movie.

Weak or inexperienced writers try and sell these flaws through dialogue. So if their hero’s flaw is that they don’t believe in themselves, they’ll make sure that character utters the words, “I just don’t think I’m good enough.” Or “I don’t believe I have what it takes.” Not only is this on-the-nose. It’s lazy. If you want to be a power writer, find an action to sell that flaw. A good example is Neo in The Matrix. Whether he’s fighting Morpheus in the dojo or about to jump between buildings, his demeanor is fear. He’s not sure he can do it. That action (or non-action) tells us he doesn’t believe in himself yet.

I’ve figured out a few things about conveying flaws over the years. In comedies and animation, we’ll see flaws expressed through action right when we meet our hero. The first moment we meet Stu in The Hangover, he’s being pushed around by his wife. The first moment we meet Joy in Inside Out, she’s obsessed with everyone being happy. Because these genres tend to celebrate the extremes, being more “in your face” with actions is acceptable.

However, once we get into more dramatic films, writers tend to take their time, exposing flaws gradually and subtly over a series of scenes. Going back to The Matrix, we don’t know that Neo doesn’t believe in himself for awhile. We spend some time getting to know his daily life first, and the Wachowskis drop hints here and there, but we don’t really know that that’s his issue until we get to his training.

I’ve also found that certain flaws are more “actionable” than others. For example, selfishness is a popular flaw in modern cinema at least partly due to how easy it is to convey through action. All you have to do is show Han Solo decline an invitation to do something for the betterment of the group and we know he’s selfish. Ditto with arrogance or stubbornness or envy. These are very “actionable” flaws.

The REAL writers out there can express even the toughest “non-actionable” flaws through action. And that’s today’s challenge. I want you to write a scene – it can be about anything – but you must convey the main character’s fatal flaw through an action. What’s the flaw in question? The character is emotionally distant. They don’t make emotional connections with anybody. Oh, and did I mention that the scene had to be entertaining? Yeah, that’s the thing with screenwriting. Just pulling off one thing in a scene isn’t enough. You have to do it while entertaining the audience.

Hey, I warned you this would be hard. So write out your scenes in the comments. Upvote your favorites. I’ll give a shout-out to the winner tomorrow. Good luck!