Genre: Mystery/Horror/Sci-Fi
Premise: Deep in the middle of Europe is a mysterious gorge that has been guarded since World War 2. An American Sniper is sent to the gorge by the US military for the latest watch. What he finds there shocks him.
About: The great thing about selling a script is that when you’ve got another one, there’s a good chance that same company will buy that too. That’s what’s happened here. Skydance, which just made Zach Dean’s “The Tomorrow War,” bought this Dean script as well. The Gorge is being sold as a weird love story but hold the train on that description. It’s more of an original sci-fi horror idea. Dean is one of the few writers out there at the moment selling cool spec scripts. If you’re a “I want to sell a spec” guy, you want to pay attention to Dean’s career.
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 109 pages
Long-time Black List participant, Zach Dean, is one of the more dependable screenwriters in town. I’ve liked every one of his scripts. More recently, he’s gone from Black List darling to A-List Hollywood screenwriter, penning Chris Pratt’s new movie, The Tomorrow War (which recently signed a deal with Amazon). But Dean has yet to write his Magnus opus, his screenplay that truly shows he’s a master of the craft. This one sounded different so I figured, if there’s a script that’s finally going to get him there, it’d be this one. Let’s take a look-see at…… THE GORGE!
Levi is a special operations sniper. You send him out in the middle of nowhere to take out a drug kingpin from a mile away, then fly him back home. But Levi’s next mission will be unlike anything he’s experienced before. It’s so unique, in fact, that nobody tells him what it is. They simply tell him it’ll take a year.
After a long flight, Levi is dropped over an endless forest with a map. He follows the map and comes across an enormous gorge. The gorge is so deep that it is constantly filled with fog. Levi spots a watchtower where an Australian sniper, JD, greets him. JD has been on this beat for the past year. And boy is it a doozy.
JD explains that Levi’s only job for the next year will be to make sure nothing gets out of that gorge. There are these things, nicknamed “hollowmen,” that try to crawl out of there sometimes. Your job is to shoot them. Oh yeah, you’re in charge of the west side of the gorge. And if you look over there, there’s another watchtower where someone is in charge of the east side.
JD leaves with one last tidbit. There’s a rumor that after you complete your service at the gorge, they kill you. Nice. Something to look forward to. After a couple of nights in the watchtower, Levi hears celebrating across the gorge. Levi picks up his sniper scope to look across the way and sees that his co-guard, Drasa, is partying it up. When she realizes Levi is looking at her, she starts writing messages for him to see. It turns out it’s her birthday. She’s celebrating.
Over the course of the next few weeks, they write messages to each other until, finally, Levi shoots a cable over to the other side of the gorge and ziplines across it! The two spend the night of all nights together and, the next day, when Levi ziplines back, the zipline BREAKS! Which means, that’s right, Levi falls into the gorge!
The bottom of the gorge is a bunch of trees, a stream, and a never-ending supply of a weird-smelling fog. Drasa jumps down into the gorge to save Levi and they’re immediately attacked by Hallowmen (basically, zombies). They begin to put the pieces together. This was some strategic base for World War 2 before something went wrong and it needed to be abandoned. And when Levi runs into his old buddy JD, now 20 years aged, he realizes just how wrong things got.
I have to give it to Zach Dean. He knows how to come up with a high concept. More importantly, he knows how to keep surprising the reader.
When you come up with an idea like The Gorge, you have two ways you can go. You can keep everything on the surface – focus on the two watchtower guards and their ongoing attempts to keep the hollowmen from escaping the gorge. Or you can do what Dean did. You can go into the gorge and fully embrace your concept.
Both options have pros and cons. The first option creates a situation based on mystery. We, the audience, are wondering what’s going on in the gorge. And we fill in the blanks with our own imagination. Usually, the reader’s imagination of what’s happening is better than anything the writer can come up with. So it’s fun to play in this sandbox.
However, your story ends up being a lot simpler. I actually thought this is the route Dean was going to take and he would focus more on the love story. So falling into the gorge was quite the surprise.
The second option gives you more of a movie. You get to visit hell instead of just talk about it. The problem is explaining everything. You have to come up with an entire mythology about the Gorge that’s unique and intereting. Most writers aren’t able to do that. The “hollowmen” the average writer comes up with ends up being generic and the more you explore that world, the dumber it gets. That’s what I experience in the majority of similar scripts I read.
Dean gave me a little more than that. But I wished he would’ve pushed further. We ultimately find out that the hollowmen are former watchtower guards who have been thrown down here after their watch, and that this World War 2 experimental site is turning them into creatures.
Dean did a good job setting up the World War 2 connection early in the script so all of this felt like an organic payoff. But, like a lot of mystery scripts, the more you thought about it, the less it made sense. After each watch, the guards are dropped down here, where they become hollowmen, that the new guards must keep from getting out. But wouldn’t it be easier to just kill everyone after their watch? Instead of adding to the Hallowmen population?
I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to think that much.
It was a fun script regardless and it did keep me guessing. For those reasons, this is worth a read. But I’m sad that Dean still hasn’t executed his perfect script yet. He’s got the talent. He just needs to push himself more.
Actually, that’s a lesson we could all remind ourselves to follow. Push beyond what you think you’re capable of. That’s where the best writing lies.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of my favorite moments in this script is when JD, before he passes the torch to Levi, says to him, “There’s one more thing I have to tell you. There’s a rumor that after you finish your watch, they kill you.” The reason I like this is because it subconsciously introduces a reason to keep reading. If I stop reading, I never find out what happens after the watch. I never find out if it’s true that they kill you. Any little trick you can use to convince your reader to keep reading, use it. Nothing is off-limits. If you can get someone to read your entire script, you’ve done more than most amateur writers. Most people bail on scripts long before that. Take a page out of Zach Dean’s book and introduce something in the future that your reader has to find out if it’s true.
Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Week 5 (third act)
I had a contemplative moment this weekend.
I was trying to find something to watch after a long day of work. I checked Netflix. I checked HBO Max. I checked Disney Plus. I checked Hulu. I checked Peacock. I checked Amazon Prime. I even sat around for several minutes convinced that I owned another streaming service that I’d forgotten about.
Long story short, I couldn’t find anything to watch.
But that’s not what made me introspective.
The sheer volume of movie/show thumbnails I scrolled through was an eye-opener. There was so much. I still remember the days when you turned on the TV and you had five choices. You went to the movie theater and you had one, maybe two choices.
To see all of this stuff in front of me available with a single click was almost scary. How can any writer possibly surprise an audience anymore? Or write something original?
There are only so many ways you can arc a character. There are only so many plot tricks you can use. There are only so many ways you can tell a story. Is it even possible, anymore, to write something that feels unique? That feels honest and original? Has this ocean of media swallowed that option up?
I thought about that for a long time. I had two good hours since I wasn’t able to find anything to watch, remember.
I came to the conclusion that, yes, it is still possible to achieve these things. The analogy that convinced me was that we have billions of people on this planet. We run into people all of the time. And yet we still end up meeting people we really like. Maybe as a friend. Maybe as a romantic interest. Maybe as mentor or a business connection.
In other words, we never get bored of people, despite how many of them there are.
That tells me that we’ll never get bored of good TV shows and good movies.
However, we must concede that there is more competition for storytelling than ever before. And, for that reason, giving 65%, 75%, 85%, even 95%, of what your story could be isn’t enough. It has to be 100%. You have to give your all. You have to be able to look at your script and say, “This is the best I can do.” If you want ANY shot at breaking into the business, that’s the bar you need to clear. Because there are plenty of above average projects floating around Hollywood. You need to write something beyond that to get noticed.
The question then becomes, what gets you to 100%?
The answer is REWRITING.
Most first drafts will be lucky to cross the 50% threshold. That means, after one draft, your script is 50% of what it could be. Which, obviously, means, you’ve got 50% to go. While it would be nice if that 50% was writing a second draft, that’s not how it works. If you’re doing it right, your second draft might get you to 65%. And, from there, you’re aiming for each draft to get you another 5%. If you can write a great script under 10 drafts, you’ve done an amazing job.
Remember that Good Will Hunting was rumored to have 50+ drafts. Uncut Gems had something like 200 drafts. But I consider that overkill if you’re doing your job right. A good rewriting strategy can get you to that 10 draft marker.
So what is rewriting?
Rewriting is about identifying problems in the current draft and coming up with solutions. And that’s what we’re going to do this week. We’re going to read our script and we’re going to figure out the five (rough estimation, could be more or less) biggest things that are wrong with it. But in order to do that well, you need to put your script down for at least a few days. That means, either Wednesday or Thursday, you’re going to pick your script back up and read the whole thing from start to finish.
What I want you to focus on while reading is how you feel during the read. Don’t focus on characters or plot yet. Just focus on, are you bored? Are you annoyed? Is this section good? Is this section bad? Your emotions will signal to you when something isn’t working. Write all that down. Note every time where something doesn’t feel right. Or even doesn’t feel as good as it could be.
Once you’ve done that, go back through your notes and ask WHY you felt that way. The WHY is where you will find your answers for how to approach the next draft.
I’m working with a writer on a sports script right now and one of the first things we noticed while re-reading the script was how disinterested the main character felt. This was by design, something that the hero would learn and correct over the course of his character transformation. But it didn’t work. The disinterest led to a passive character, and that’s something you can’t have in a sports movie. Your hero needs to be active.
There were also subplots that didn’t work. Whenever our hero was around certain characters, their scenes would drag. It was a telling sign that those characters weren’t working.
There were also parts of the script that felt disconnected from the main storyline. This was a sports movie and yet certain situations had our character a thousand miles away from his sport. There were legit reasons why these choices were made during the writing of the script, but if something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
One of the hardest things to get right is your hero’s transformational arc. They start with a flaw. They gradually learn about their flaw. And then, at the end, they overcome the flaw. This is hard to execute in a first draft because flaws are negative and you want your hero to be likable. So you’re trying to find that balance between likable and flawed. And then you’re trying to set up an ending that organically allows your hero to overcome the flaw. It’s asking a lot of one draft. So you almost always need to play with this and fine tune it over multiple drafts.
Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you thought they would. Your amazing villain turned out to be cheesy and forgettable. All of this is common in a first draft and none of it should deter you. This is what rewriting is about.
So I want you to read your script Wednesday or Thursday with fresh eyes. I want you to write down everything that isn’t working. And then just start to consider solutions. Some solutions will come to you quickly. For example, if your hero is unlikable… give him a couple more likable traits! Or add a save the cat moment.
Some solutions you won’t have answers to right away. I once wrote a comedy script with four main characters (think Eurotrip). Three of them were guys. One was a girl. And it just wasn’t working. The energy my female character was bringing wasn’t funny for some reason. So I battled over getting rid of the female character and replacing her with a guy. But then it’s an all guys movie and that didn’t feel right either. So maybe I needed to reinvent her so she was funnier.
You have to make decisions like that all the time in screenwriting. Sometimes you have to marinate on these problems for a while before you come up with a solution. That’s what this week is about. It’s about reading your script, figuring out what isn’t working, writing down the obvious solutions, then taking the rest of the week to try and solve the more complex issues.
The good news is, you don’t have to figure everything out this week. Normally, I prefer you have at least a month before you write your second draft. You want a solid plan going into this draft. But we’re working on an accelerated schedule, so we’re going to do this in two weeks. This week is about identifying the problems. Next week is about coming up with an official outline for our second draft.
For those of you who want to rush this and start your second draft right away, I encourage you to try this method instead. At the beginning of this post, I talked about the unbelievable volume of media you’re competing against. To be better than all those other thumbnails, you need to take this seriously. You need a plan of attack every time you write a draft. That’s what I’m trying to teach you. Have a plan of attack so that you get the most out of each draft. That way, you’ll get 15% closer as opposed 3% closer.
A big shout out to everyone who’s stayed up to date with their writing. Awesome job. I’m super proud of you!
One of the most common questions I get asked is, “Should I write this or should I write that?” Should I write my aliens invade earth script or my biopic about Geronimo? Should I write a horror script or should I write an action-comedy? Should I write a script that I’m passionate about or should I write something designed for Hollywood?
The answer to these questions is never easy.
I mean, if you send me two loglines of ideas you’re thinking about writing (carsonreeves1@gmail.com for a logline consultation – they’re just $25!), I can tell you which one is the better concept. Or which one has a better shot on the spec market. But what I can’t tell you is how well you’re going to execute that idea. I don’t know that. If you’re more into one idea than you are the other, chances are you’re going to put more effort into that idea, which means the technically “worse” idea will end up being the better script.
So today I’m providing you with an equation that helps you decide which idea to write next. It requires you to focus on four key variables. Let’s go through them.
CONCEPT
The first, and most important, thing you need to take into consideration is your concept. Does the concept leap off the page? Does it sound compelling? Is it a big idea (even small movies can be big ideas)? Does it have some clever irony embedded within it. This is the most subjective of the four variables, which is why you want to get others’ opinions. But I think we can all agree that there are certain ideas that have more potential than others.
A movie pitch that just sold yesterday is “Universe’s Most Wanted.” Here’s the logline: When a spaceship carrying the universe’s most dangerous criminals crash lands in a small town, the local sheriff must help an intergalactic gatekeeper find the fleeing aliens before they escape and take over the world.
Meanwhile, here’s a movie idea I was pitched a few years ago called, “Oregon Spirit”: After an aging logger is severely injured on the job, he becomes a vociferous reader and a regular at the local library.
One of these ideas is not like the other. And when I say not like the other, I mean, in no way is it a good enough idea to become a movie. However, writers still make the mistake of writing ideas like Oregon Spirit. And there’s a reason for that. It’s hard to objectively see an idea if you’re emotionally attached to it. For example, if the writer of the logging concept is a logger himself, he doesn’t see that there’s no where to go with the story. He only sees the experiences he had as a logger that he’s going to be able to write into his script. It’s for this reason why you need an outside opinion. Try to get at least five people to rate your ideas on a scale from 1-10. That will give you a good feel for where they are.
GENRE
The second thing you want to take into consideration is genre. There are genres that sell well, genres that sell decent, and genres that rarely, if ever, sell. Genres are usually set in stone but do change depending on current trends. Currently, here’s where we’re at…
BEST
Horror
Thriller
Action (within a manageable budget)
Comedy (which is trending)
True Story
Biopic
World War 2
NOT BAD
Sci-Fi (mid-budget)
Crime
War (non World War 2)
Adventure
Romantic Comedy
Mystery
Boxing
WORST
Western
Period Piece (unless based on a true story)
All sports besides boxing
Fantasy
Sci-Fi Fantasy
Drama
Musical
Noir
ARE YOU ACTUALLY GOOD AT WRITING IN THIS GENRE?
One of the most overlooked aspects of choosing an idea is, are you actually good at writing this kind of script? Not long ago, I was talking to a writer who’d been writing for over a decade. We were trying to figure what his next script should be. He started pitching me all these ideas and I noticed that they were all over the place. A Western, a science fiction script, a sports movie. I stopped him and I said, hold on. What are you actually GOOD AT WRITING? Let’s start there. And he was kinda shocked by the question because nobody had ever asked him it before. But it’s such an important question. You don’t want to go write whatever wily idea you come up with. If you don’t understand the genre and the world and all the specifics that go into writing that type of movie, it’s not going to be good. If you’re good at dialogue, write a dialogue-heavy movie. If you’re really imaginative, write a sci-fi movie. If you love history, write a World War 2 movie. Write in the genres you’re the most comfortable in. It shows on the page.
PASSION
Finally, you need to evaluate how passionate you are about the idea. This is where screenwriting gets tricky because what usually happens is that your least commercial ideas are the ones you’re the most passionate about. Which puts you in a quagmire. On the one hand, you have this great idea for a movie. On the other, you’re not passionate about it at all. The reason passion matters is because 99% of the best scripts I’ve read have gone through 20+ rewrites. And the only way a writer gets to 20 rewrites is if they love the idea. You may be able to write five drafts of a cool idea you don’t care about. But rarely will you have the energy to write a sixth. So those scripts die before they ever reach a draft they need to get to to become great. Meanwhile, you’ll do whatever it takes to perfect your passion project. So those scripts often end up better.
Okay, now that we’ve identified the four categories, we need to see where our ideas fall.
CONCEPT 1 – 20
GENRE 1 – 10
CAPABILITY 1-10
PASSION – 1-10
Figure out the rating for each. Add them up. That’s the concept’s numerical score. You now have an easy way to compare ideas in regards to potential. You’ll notice that concept has a 1 – 20 score and there’s good reason for that. The concept is the most important variable. It outweighs everything else. So if you have a great concept, it should heavily influence the score. Let’s take a recent film as an example.
GODZILLA VS. KONG
CONCEPT: 19
GENRE: 9
CAPABILITY: 9 (I’m assuming the guy they hired to write the script was good at writing these types of movies)
PASSION: 5 (They may have hired someone who absolutely loves these movies but I’m thinking you can only be so passionate about a big mindless Hollywood movie).
TOTAL SCORE: 42 out of 50
One last thing I’ve noticed is that some writers just don’t care. They get locked in on an idea and it doesn’t matter how weak it is. They want to write that movie and they’re going to write it. I wouldn’t advise this but I get it because this has happened to me numerous times. But learn from my mistakes. It rarely ends well. The only scenario whereby I’m okay with it is if you’re starting out. If you’re still writing your first five scripts, go ahead and write whatever you want.
But if you’ve been at this for 6, 7, 8, or more years, you owe it to yourself to be more strategic about which ideas you choose to write. You have to look into the future and imagine sending that logline out into the world and be realistic about how people would respond. If your big pitch is, “I know the logline isn’t exciting but the execution is really good,” people don’t like that. They don’t care. What they’re thinking about when you tell them your idea is, “Do I see this as a movie?” They need to imagine that before they read the script. Not after. The script is about delivering on the potential of that idea.
I hope this helps you with your next script. Good luck!
Genre: Action
Premise: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
About: Writer Brooks McLaren wrote the 2018 Netflix movie, How it Ends. Co-Writer DJ Controna is an actor who was most recently in Shazam as one of the grown up super-kids. The script was picked up by Thunder Road. It doesn’t have a director or any actors attached yet. It finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writers: Brooks McLaren & DJ Controna
Details: 107 pages
A couple of promising things going on with today’s script. First, the script is co-written by Brooks McLaren, who wrote one of my favorite early scripts on Scriptshadow, How it Ends. It was a super fast read with a determined hero shooting across a United States which was quickly becoming overwhelmed by a mysterious apocalyptic event. The movie would go on to be subpar, unfortunately. But I loved that script.
Also, I love plane movies! You guys know this. And this one’s got Thunder Road attached to it, the production company I want making Kinetic! (You hear that Scriptshadow readers working at Thunder Road? Let’s make it happen). I don’t see how I’m not going to like this. But the Black List has been on an extended Scriptshadow losing streak so who knows what’s going to happen. Let’s find out together.
CIA agent Aaron Hunter gets a call from headquarters to get the hell to work! They’ve got a problem. That problem is “Ghost,” an infamous assassin who’s been off-grid for a year, but who has just taken out an entire team of CIA agents in Malaysia! Since Ghost is so hard to find, this is one of the few times they’re close enough to track him. And they track him to Singapore where he’s getting on a plane.
Lucas Reyes, a contract killer in the area, is called by the CIA and told to get to Singapore Airport immediately. They believe Ghost (who nobody’s ever actually seen) will be on a plane to San Francisco soon and they want him on that plane STAT! He has to kill this guy! Lucas isn’t in the mood but he’s so low on cash, he doesn’t have a choice.
Once the double-decker A380 is in the air, Lucas gets a text that they made a mistake. Ghost duped them and got on a flight to London instead. So you can relax, they say. Uh-huh. Riiiiight. We know something is up because this is a movie! Immediately, Lucas’s seat-mate tries to poison him. So he kills that guy and stuffs him in the first class bathroom.
Then Lucas starts looking around for Ghost. When he gets attacked by another passenger, he suspects this job is more complicated than what he was told. Lucas finally tabs the charming stewardess, Isha, as Ghost, and just as he does, they’re BOTH ATTACKED. After a little recon, Lucas finds that these assassins on the plane have both his AND Ghost’s pictures on them. They’re trying to kill them both!
Still with no idea what’s going on, Lucas and Isha make a temporary alliance to fight off all these assassins together. What they ultimately learn is the CIA may have tricked all these assassins to be on this plane at once so they can all kill each other off. Will Lucas survive that plan? Will he spare Ghost if he does? You’ll have to jump on this flight to find out. And make sure to wear a mask!
Friends, lovers, fellow script readers. Quick SPSA here (Screenwriting Public Service Announcement)
If it all possible, don’t put a peanut allergy character in your screenplay. I encounter a dozen of them a year in the scripts I read. It’s far too frequent a choice.
And you don’t want to get in the habit of including gimmicks in your screenplays anyway. Gimmicks are things you know will work but have a very low ceiling of effectiveness. These include peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering. Strive for better. Strive for originality.
Fight or Flight is basically Bullet Train in the air.
I love comparing scripts like this because you get a direct comparison of how different choices affect a screenplay. Both of these scripts are about assassins on a moving public vehicle. But Bullet Train took a more artistic approach, backing up a few hours at a time to introduce characters before they got on the train. It felt like there was a clear plan in place. And that structure worked well.
Fight of Flight engages in a messier approach where chaos reigns supreme, both in how the villains operate and how the plot unfolds. We’re sort of stumbling from one section of the plane to the next where battles ensue. For example, when Lucas gets into the first class section, he’s attacked by a team of Chinese Triads. After that, he must take on a service dog who’s had half his skull replaced with metal, which means he has steel teeth.
There’s also this sort of wild mystery of who Ghost is, and then, once we find out who Ghost is, why all these people are trying to kill Ghost AND Lucas. This question keeps pinging back and forth between our plane and CIA headquarters as we learn bits and pieces about who’s really in charge and who’s screwing who over.
The script moves fast and has an undeniable energy to it. But it’s that messiness that kept getting in the way. I was constantly stopping to ask, “Wait, what’s going on right now?” I still don’t entirely know why they’re targeting Lucas and I’m not sure you can have that. It leaves too much up to interpretation. I wanted clearer answers sooner so I could engage with what was happening.
All of this is a reminder that while I love plane concepts in theory, they’re incredibly difficult to pull off. I would even say they’re harder than simplistic contained locations such as basements. Cause you have to explain what’s going on in the cockpit and why they don’t get involved. You have to account for the 200+ clueless passengers. If people start killing each other, surely the passengers would find out. And they would freak out. And now you’re dealing with rogue passengers running around.
Just to give you an example of this in practice, once Lucas and Isha couldn’t keep their killing a secret anymore, they had to go up and tell the pilots what was going on. Of course, by doing this, you run into the issue of how this event would be treated in real life. The pilots would call for a military escort and be forced to land at the nearest airport. But you can’t have that happen or you don’t have a movie. So, instead, we get a conversation with the pilots where they think this might be good for their careers. They could get a book deal, “like Sully.”
Once you make a decision like that, it has seismic repercussions. Since the pilots wouldn’t really make that choice, you have to slide your script from “action” over into some version of “action comedy.” With the tone now shifted, not everything feels as scary as before because we’re all just having a good time with a goofy plane comedy-action flick.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Arnold Schwarzennegar and Sylvester Stallone made an entire decade of those movies, some of which I still love to this day. All I’m saying is that you don’t want your script to control you. You want to control the script. If the script is taking you in a direction you don’t want to go in because you have to explain away some difficult things, take a step back and figure out how to keep the tone the way you envisioned it. This used to happen to me all the time. The script would keep pulling me away from my original vision. And even though it felt wrong, I’d let it.
Even as I type this review, I’m still not clear what the tone is. Sometimes it seems goofy and sometimes it feels serious. Comparatively, I understood the tone of Bullet Train within five pages.
If Bullet Train does well, expect this to be rushed into production. It’s one of the operating procedures in Hollywood – luck. You must depend on things outside of your control to get your project through the system.
This was a tad too messy. Feels 4-5 drafts away from its best life.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s not uncommon to finish a first draft with an unclear tone. The script feels serious sometimes, goofy others, an action movie sometimes, a drama others. One of your jobs in rewriting is too establish which of those tones you’re going for and taking the stuff out that doesn’t fit. This can be very hard for writers who fall in love with their stuff. For example, a writer who LOVES a joke he wrote may refuse to get rid of it, even if he’s going for a full-on dark drama. He’s like an addict when you bring it to his attention, coming up with a million reasons why the joke “still works.” Don’t be that guy. Understand what tone you’re going for and get rid of anything that doesn’t support it.
What I learned 2: Just to be clear, when I said to avoid writing gimmicks (peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering), I’m not saying they NEVER WORK. They can work under two conditions. One, it’s organically infused into the concept/story. If you have a movie about a family that struggles with diabetes, an insulin injection character is a natural extension of that. Two, if you can find some spin on the gimmick that people haven’t used before, by all means include it. If you’re bringing us a stutter in some new fresh way we’ve never experienced and it works for your story? Hell yeah put it in there.
Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Many a time people have asked me, “Carson, what’s the key to a great third act?” And I answer, “A good retirement plan.”
But seriously, writing a great third act is all about planning. And planning out your third act isn’t that difficult. You only need to hit a couple of key beats and the rest of the ending should write itself.
On last week’s episode, we brought you right up to the third act of your comedy screenplay. And, as astute students of the screenwriting profession know, that means we’re at our hero’s LOWEST MOMENT (known as the “All is Lost” moment). Through the eyes of our protagonist, everything is f$#%@. He’s given it his all. But his all wasn’t good enough. He. Has. Failed.
The reason you do this is because at the end of your movie, your hero will win. We, then, want to create the largest emotional leap that we can. We can only do that if we start at the bottom. If our third act ends with our hero only at a ‘sort of low’ point, there’s a much shorter distance to success and, therefore, the emotional payoff isn’t as intense.
You know those movies where you’ve had the biggest emotional reaction at the end? You’re either crying with happiness or flush with emotion? That emotion came because, 20 minutes prior, you were CONVINCED your hero had failed. That’s the power of going from the bottom to the top.
But let’s start at the beginning (of the third act)
We’re at our hero’s lowest point. You can’t go straight from a character’s lowest point to immediately defeating the bad guy, or winning the tournament, or getting the girl. You need the ‘feel sorry for yourself’ scene and you need to follow that up with the ‘pick me up’ scene.
“Feeling sorry for yourself” is not literal, by the way. It can be. Your hero has just failed to achieve his goal. He thinks it’s over. Technically speaking, this is the single worst moment of his entire life. It’s only natural that you would feel down in this moment. But the ‘feeling sorry for yourself’ scene is more about giving your character a moment to process what’s happened and emotionally recover.
This scene is almost always followed by a “pick me up” scene. That pick me up usually comes from a friend or a family member. They tell the hero, “Hey, it’s not as bad as you think.” And, often times, they’ll say something in the conversation that inadvertently gives the hero an idea they can use to TRY ONE LAST TIME.
From there, it’s a quick scene where they go over their plan, and, off they go!
This brings us to the final sequence. If it’s an action-comedy, like Spy, it’s when everybody squares off against each other to stop the bomb. If it’s Popstar, it ends at an awards show with a big performance. If it’s Happy Gilmore, it’s the final day of the tournament. If it’s Neighbors, it’s the big end of the year frat party.
By the way, if you’re ever unclear on what your big ending sequence should be, your concept will tell you. The writers of Wedding Crashers couldn’t figure out their ending at first. Until they realized… this movie is called Wedding Crashers. It needs to end at a wedding. In the movie, Notting Hill, they could’ve ended at an airport like every other romantic comedy. Instead, because the movie was about a regular guy dating a movie star, it ended at A PRESS CONFERENCE. Your movie’s concept will tell you how to end it.
Naturally, your ending is going to work best if your character has a strong goal with high stakes attached to it (going after the girl, defusing the bomb, taking down the bad guy, nailing the performance, getting the time machine to send you back to the future). This will make your hero ACTIVE, which is ideal.
And since everyone here is writing a Hollywood comedy as opposed to a dark comedy, I don’t see any scenarios where you should have a passive final act. I’m thinking of something like “The Kids are All Right” – character driven comedies that are more about sitting around tables and talking. None of you should have anything like that. There’s a way to do those endings but we’ll cover that another time when it’s relevant.
From there, you want to frame the ending in a way where IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to succeed. Your entire third act should be dictated by the audience’s doubt that the hero will succeed. If the audience has mild doubt or no doubt that the hero will succeed, you’re writing a boring third act.
In screenwriting, we talk about being cruel to our heroes – throwing a lot of bad shit their way. Your ending should be that x10. Lean into making things impossible for your hero. The more impossible it seems, the more doubt we’ll have that they succeed, the more ecstatic we’ll be when they finally win.
Another thing most of you will be doing is having your main character arc in the final sequence. It’s not necessary. But, when done well, it elevates the experience. The thing about comedy is that the arc should be extremely simplistic. You shouldn’t be doing complex arcs in comedy. For Happy Gilmore, it’s about a guy who always lost his temper things got tough. The final day of the tournament, then, has Happy given the chance to, once again, lose his temper. But he’s learned from his mistakes over the course of the movie and, therefore, stays calm, which allows him to win the tournament.
And that’s pretty much it, guys. Don’t make things overly complicated for yourself.
I do want to offer one final warning. Don’t fall for the 3RD ACT DRAMA TRAP. I remember when I first noticed this. It was in the movie, Keeping the Faith, a comedy about a priest and a rabbi who both fall for the same girl. That movie has some really funny scenes. However, once it gets to the final act, they straight up ditched the comedy label and went full drama. I remember watching it and thinking, “Why aren’t they being funny anymore?”
It’s because, in the process of wrapping up everyone’s story, there are naturally going to be some emotional moments. But never forget that you’re still writing a comedy. People came to laugh. And since a final act should be the ultimate embodiment of what you promised with your premise, you need to deliver laughs first. Laughs first laughs first laughs first. Always with comedy. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.
Okay, so, you have until next Monday to finish your first draft. But you actually have a few extra days because next week is about taking a few days away from the script and then going back in with fresh eyes to prepare for your rewrite.
Congratulations to everyone who’s kept up. And for those of you behind, don’t get down. Keep writing! If all you get out of this exercise is a first draft, that’s still huge. :)
