Million dollar spec Tuesday! wooooooo-heeeeee!
Genre: Spy Thriller/Period
Premise: The origin story of MI:6, Britain’s secret intelligence service, that came about out of necessity after the horrors of World War 1.
About: I’d forgotten about this script, which sold for a million bucks back in 2013. I was reminded about it recently when I saw that the writer, Aaron Berg, was in the news for his Atlantis project that sold to Netflix and is teaming him up with Batman director, Matthew Reeves. The reason Section 6 hasn’t been made yet is said to be that the Bond franchise is prickly about the similarities between the project and its own famous spy character. The two were going to go to court over the matter but Bond got cold feet when they realized that, by going to court, they would have to define exactly what makes James Bond “James Bond,” potentially offering a blueprint for other studios to “write around” those tenets and create a bunch of James Bond clones. We’ll see what ultimately happens but with the movement on this other Berg project, expect Section 6 to gain new life.
Writer: Aaron Berg
Details: 122 pages
Scripts like Section 6 aren’t easy reads. They’re sort of like mini-novels with the more extensive world-building, lots of history, and longer descriptive paragraphs. Outside of readers who love the subject matter, these scripts are often met with a groan because the reader knows the read is going to take twice as long.
Why?
Well-written spec scripts have a lot of white space. A lot of dialogue. This means your eyes fly down the page. There’s nothing anyone who reads scripts for a living loves more than their eyes flying down the page.
So what do you do if you’re a writer who likes to write this sort of stuff? How do you overcome this reader bias? Six simple words: Make sure your script is good.
We open on the British Embassy in Russia in 1918. World War 1 has recently ended. It’s a different world we’re told by many a character in Section 6. Ain’t that the truth. A Russian officer charges into the British Embassy being trailed by a bunch of mean Russian soldiers. Those Russians not only kill the officer, they kill all the British workers as well!
Not long after this, a British spy named Thomas Hawthorne heads to the Embassy to retrieve a secret piece of paper that’s been hidden. As soon as he gets it, though, the lights come on and standing there is this meanie named Ivan Vostok. Ivan grabs him to take him back to his torture den to get him to decode the message on the secret coded piece of paper.
Back in Britain, we meet Mansfield Cumming, a former soldier (who now uses a cane) who directs MI-1, the British Foreign Intelligence Service. Cumming is informed by a then spry Winston Churchill that the secret piece of paper Russia now has is a list of Russian politicians to assassinate for Russian revolutionaries (that’s what the opening Russian soldier was running from – he’d just assassinated a high up Russian politician)! If they figure that out, Russia will most assuredly attack Britain.
Cumming’s job is to find someone to infiltrate the Russians and get that piece of paper back before they decode it! There’s only one problem. Britain’s spies at this time were all spineless rich wimps. They were good at hiding and sneakily exchanging information. But they couldn’t do the dirty work. Cumming needs someone who can do the dirty work.
Enter 23 year old Alec Duncan, a soldier who’d been smack dab in the middle of World War 1. If there’s anyone who saw dirty, it was this guy. Currently making his living pickpocketing pedestrians and cheating at poker, Cumming collects Duncan from jail after he’s caught by a local policeman.
You know what happens next. That’s right: training! Cumming helps Duncan ditch his soldier impulses and approach things like a spy would. You have to be sneakier. You have to be faster. You have to be strong under pressure. The only thing Cumming is worried about is whether Duncan, a brute at heart, can hang with high society types. So he sets up a test at a local upper crust function that ends with Duncan crashing two 1918 subway train cars. I’d say that’s a success, wouldn’t you?
After his training, Duncan is sent by boat to Helsinki (this is around page 72) where he meets up with another spy, a beautiful woman named Nightengale, and they sneak down into Russia, find a badly tortured Hawthorne, and get him out. But the Russians don’t give up easily, pursuing them all the way to the sea. Will our tiny team be caught resulting in World War 2? Or will Section 6 be born?
Section 6 is a solid script.
I’m not the biggest spy film fan. But when I do like spy films, it tends to be when they’re doing something differently. I like this angle of a time before spies could be spies. And this was the transition to get them from these polite hoity-toity wusses who got mad if they spilled wine on their shoesies to dudes with a license to kill.
This is always a good thing to keep in mind when it comes to concept creation. You don’t want to just look for subjects. You want to look for subjects in transition. For example, you could make a story about the train industry in the U.S.. Or you could make a story about the train industry during the birth of the American highway system. Because the highway system is going to make the train industry irrelevant, you’ve got a much more conflict-heavy playground to play in.
Disruptive forces are entertaining. Polite spies don’t work in the post World War 1 era where hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lips have been seared off from exposure to chemical weapons. You need a dirtier spy, someone with a more varied, nastier, skillset.
The reason the script doesn’t get higher marks with me is because of the structure. We don’t send our hero out on his mission until page 72. This creates a second half of the script that feels rushed. For example, we’re meeting this primary character in Nightengale on page 75. Considering how well we know everyone else by this point, she feels paper thin and never quite makes sense for the mission.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the writer’s dilemma. This is essentially an origin story. With origin stories, you need to lean into the whole learning process. When Spider-Man first gets his powers, you don’t send him after Octopus Guy five minutes later. Spider-Man must first learn how to use his powers, as well as balance out how these newfound abilities affect other parts of his life. That takes time.
I guess it comes down to if you’re an origin-story guy or not. Some people like getting into the nitty gritty of the origin. I just found it hard to reconcile that time was “of the essence” with the Russians getting closer and closer to cracking Hawthorne, and yet we’re taking weeks to train Duncan here. I understand it’s 1918 but still. The whole timing of the separate plotlines didn’t organically mesh.
I did like, however, that by making this a period piece, we got a more interesting McGuffin. These days, the spy film Mcguffins are all the same. They’re some variation of “the nuclear launch codes.” I liked that this was a list of assassinations to be made.
You have to understand, as a reader, we’re experiencing what you experience at the theaters, times 20. So every time you see “nuclear launch codes” in a movie, I’ll read 20 scripts with “nuclear launch codes.” Which means I’m easily turned off by any highly used trope. In contrast, I value writers who change these tropes up. And one of the easiest ways to change tropes is to do it at the concept level. Take us to places we don’t normally go. Naturally, when you do this, you’re going to find things you don’t normally find.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this because it’s one of the better scripts I’ve read in the genre in a while. But it does seem to have this giant hurdle to leap in the looming Bond Producer Brigade who are at the bridge, 24/7, shouting, “Though Shall Not Pass.”
And yes, I’m thinking the same thing all of you are thinking. Which is that I should’ve had Scott review this. :)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Section 6 has one of the more interesting Save The Cat examples. It’s “Befriend the Cripple.” Duncan is friends with a fellow soldier who got half his face blown off in the war and now wears a Phantom of the Opera type mask. It’s a bit cheap. But the love Duncan has for him is very effective in making us like him, especially because he’s a pretty harsh guy that isn’t the easiest to root for.
The Razzies have their winner! The Devil All The Time is the worst film of the year and it isn’t even close.
Genre: Southern Gothic Period Drama
Premise: Um, a group of god-fearing individuals weave in and out of each other’s lives after returning from the war.
About: If you ever see a bad movie, especially one with a weak concept, and wonder, “How did they get such a great cast?” The answer is almost always they landed a big fish first and the rest of the cast signed on because of them. Everyone wants to be in a movie with a hot or great actor. From what I understand (though someone can correct me if I’m wrong), director Antonio Campos socializes in the same circle as the Safdie Brothers and became friendly with Robert Pattinson while the Safdies were shooting Good Time. He got Pattinson to commit to “Devil,” and all the rest of the young buzzy actors (Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgaard, Riley Keough, and Sebastian Stan) followed suit. “Devil” was originally a novel written by a man with an inspiring story. Donald Ray Pollock spent thirty-two years employed as a laborer at the Mead Paper Corporation in Ohio, before enrolling in the MFA program at Ohio State University. His first book, Knockemstiff, would go on to win the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. It’s never too late to become a successful writer!
Writer: Antonio and Paulo Campos (based on the 2012 novel by David Ray Pollock)
Details: Too long
We’re in a really strange place with movies right now. I don’t know if The Devil All The Time gets made in any other era but this one. It has an indie sensibility that implies it could’ve been made by 1990s Miramax. But the cast feels too young for this type of material, which may be why it’s not rating high on Netflix’s most-watched ladder (it’s currently at #5 on its first weekend). Audiences aren’t sure what to make of it.
To the streamers’ credit, this is what a streaming service is able to do that movies beholden to the traditional distribution system could not. They can make stuff that doesn’t need to be “marketable.” But it’s becoming clearer that the more you throw these unproven creatives into the deep end of the pool, the worse the content gets.
I mean I watched 30 minutes of that new Netflix show, “Away,” about going to Mars. They crammed more melodrama into those first 30 minutes than that Fox show, “Empire” did in five seasons. That’s one of the more obvious indicators that a creative is a beginner. They go all in on the melodrama.
But Netflix seems determined – outside of the 2-3 big artistic names it recruits each year to win an Oscar – to embrace the quantity over quality approach. And, in doing so, figures that some of that quantity will rise to the top just by sheer odds. Let’s see what’s going on with its latest big feature effort.
A fair warning. There’s no plot to this movie so attempting to summarize it is impossible. But here’s my best stab at it. First and foremost, there’s a narrator who begins speaking gibberish that has nothing to do with anything. He’s a big part of the movie so get used to him.
A young man named Willard returns home to his small town after the war. I think World War 2 but if you told me it was the Civil War I wouldn’t be able to confidently tell you you were wrong.
Willard falls in love with a waitress and has a son with her but, uh oh, his wife gets cancer. Willard and his son, who I think is named Arvin, go down to a special place in the forest every night to pray like crazy for God not to kill off his wife. But God does not grant their wish. Poor Little Arvin is really upset but he’s about to get even more upset. That’s because, right after the funeral, Willard kills himself!
Meanwhile, there’s this young woman named Helen who marries this batshit crazy weirdo named Roy who’s super-religious, so much so that he does this little parlor trick whenever he goes to church and pours a box of live spiders over his face. So is anybody surprised when, after Roy has a daughter with Helen, that he stabs his wife in the trachea? Not me. Is anybody surprised when, after he kills her, he tries to revive her with God’s help? Not me!
A dozen years later we’re hanging out with Arvin again, except he’s in high school now. Oh, and he’s half-brother or step-brother to Lenora, Crazy Roy’s daughter. Have you tuned out yet? I know I have. This is a real movie. Like, people gave other people money to make this.
Oh, then we have the local preacher who preys on underage girls cause this movie is going to hit all the tropes so get used to it. The preacher takes a special liking to Lenora, Arvin’s half-sister or step-sister or step-uncle or whatever, and has sex with her. She ends up pregnant! When the preacher says to get an abortion, she’s devastated so she hangs herself.
Okay, stop. Stop stop stop.
Do I even need to go on?
Where does one begin with a movie like this?
I guess I’ll start with the narrator.
There are two reasons to choose a narrator for your screenplay. Reason one is that it’s an artistic choice you believe will enhance the story. Reason two is that you have no fucking clue what your movie is about and therefore you need a narrator to desperately keep your random wackadoodle movie on course.
That’s exactly what this narrator is for. Nobody knew what this movie was about. None of the characters had any actual purpose or goal. So we needed someone to trick audiences into believing there was actually a point to everything.
While I don’t believe this movie is good enough to warrant actual analysis, I’ve seen the following screenwriting mistake a lot so I’ll share this one observation with you. THE FIRST ACT OF THIS MOVIE IS BACKSTORY. It’s backstory. It’s backstory. It’s backstory. We don’t need to see ma and pa’s life for 30 (THIRTY!) minutes before the main character’s story begins.
How do I know this is backstory? Because we don’t see Tony Stark’s mom and dad’s story for 30 minutes before we meet him in Iron Man. We don’t see Bradley Cooper’s parents’ story for 30 minutes before we meet him in American Sniper. We don’t meet Mad Max’s parents for THIRTY FREAKING MINUTES before the nuclear war that turns him into the Road Warrior.
We COULD’VE written the parents story for all three of those characters. Why didn’t we? BECAUSE IT’S FREAKING BACKSTORY THAT’S WHY!!!! BACKSTORY BACKSTORY BACKSTORY. Maybe if I yell it enough times, someone out there who’s currently using half their screenplay for backstory will have an epiphany.
But let’s give the writers the backstory conceit. This is an artsy movie. The rules are different for artsy movies. You’re allowed to bore audiences more so why not take advantage of it. Okay, even if I give you that, someone explain to me the odds that you could murder your wife in the woods, try to unsuccessfully have Jesus resurrect her, and then, just ten short hours later, meet a serial killer couple who forces you to have sex with the wife while the husband takes pictures, and, when you refuse to, he kills you.
Give me the basic odds on that happening to someone in 1960. Would you think… 1 in 10 billion? 1 in 100 billion? My guess would be somewhere around there.
And yet, the Devil All The Time writers would have you believe this was as common as getting a flat tire.
By the way, this happens AFTER a woman dies of cancer and the husband kills herself. These writers pulled a DOUBLE-DEATH on us then a murder, then a SECOND MURDER less than 10 hours later.
That’s where this movie really bothers me. You can tell by the cinematography and the introspective monologuing by the narrator that this movie wants to be taken seriously. And yet every choice is so over-the-top that there isn’t a serious bone in the film’s body. It’s all inelegant clumsiness, like a 6th grader trying to write Moonlight.
I don’t know why I’m getting so triggered by this flick. I think I have issues when the writing is so bad that I don’t even know how anyone involved got this far in their career. I mean this is such trash. These writers would be struggling to come up with good soap opera material. Honestly, they would be lucky if the producer even gave them a call. But, the director is also one-half of the writing team so they don’t need their script to win over anyone.
And guess what? When you don’t have to win anyone over with your script, this is what you get. An incoherent poorly written melodramatic hodge-podge of dumb ideas that can only be called a movie because the editor cut them together in Final Cut. This is so bad. Like train-wreck level awful. I don’t know how anything like this gets made. I mean, I do. I understand logistically how people make the mistake of greenlighting something like this. But I’m still baffled that something this bad could be released to the public.
Wow.
[x] gothic trash
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Double-deaths are the embodiment of desperate writing – you have so little faith in your product that your only tool is hail mary story beats like repeatedly killing characters off (usually through cancer or murder – the two most cliche ways to kill characters off).
The word on the street is that Pascal is out. Gone. No longer a part of The Mandalorian. He left mid-season because they refused to give him scenes with his helmet off. Ya gotta give it to Star Wars. This franchise loves drama.
How weird is this development? Well, it comes after learning, in the first season, that Pascal wasn’t even around for the show. They had John Wayne’s son in the Mandalorian suit instead (this is real! Look it up!).
So you’ve managed to make someone quit… who wasn’t even officially on the show. Only Star Wars, man. Only Kathleen Kennedy.
But let’s get to the trailer for season 2. Was it any good? It was pretty good. The Mandalorian is the closest thing so far to the original trilogy so it’s got that going for it. I love Baby Yoda putting up his “stroller shield.” That was fantabulously cute. I like the opening shot of a damaged ship. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before in a Star Wars property (not done like that, anyway). There isn’t a money shot but the trailer is solid. All Star Wars trailers are solid.
If you remember, I soured on The Mandalorian for two reasons. The lack of story connectivity was frustrating. Making this a pseudo anthology series goes against the connective tissue that helps make Star Wars so great.
But more frustrating was this choice to recruit second-tier Star Wars concepts from such shows as the animated “Star Wars: Rebels.” You’ve got our series villain now wielding something called the “dark sabre” which is such a dumb weapon concept I refuse to beleive it came from anyone over the age of eight.
The Mandalorian didn’t market itself that way. This is the series that started off with storm trooper helments on stakes. This is the series that opened up with a decapitation scene in a bar. Now we’re importing ideas from shows where every other character chimes in with a “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” before commercial break?
Star Wars is better than that.
And yes, I realize this is the franchise with little booping robots, characters named “Dooku,” and a giant slug for a villain. How is the dark sabre any different? I don’t know. I just know it is. This is why Star Wars has been so hard for so many creators to nail down. There are these indefinable variables that each fan has worked into their own “This is what Star Wars is” equations.
I will probably watch the series because the episodes are short and there’s bound to be one or two good episodes in the mix. Oh, and since Pascal is no longer around and there’s a rumor that Boba Fett is back from the dead, it might be fun to have Boba Fett kill the Mandalorian and slip into his armor moving forward. Talk about dramatic irony! We know this is Boba. But nobody else does.
That could get me back permanently. :)
There was a time, many years ago, where I thought the extensive analysis by a lot of the screenwriting teachers out there was overkill. I remember when Terry Rossio, on his site, Wordplayer, said he sometimes took weeks just to figure out the NAMES of his characters.
“Weeks?” I thought. They’re character names! Name them Bob, Jane, and Sara and move on to the important stuff!
Today? I couldn’t agree with him more. Names are soooooooo important. The right name projects an image in the reader’s head. Imagine if Hannibal Lecter had been named Bob Harris. Well-named characters also make a script way easier to read. Weak names that writers didn’t put any effort into are always the characters I forget first.
But this article isn’t about naming characters. At least not directly. Yesterday, in my “What I learned” section, I pointed out that different adverbs created a different impact in how the reader envisioned the character.
“Olivia, hair now pulled lazily back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled defiantly back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled playfully back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled joylessly back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled painfully back in a bandana…”.
There were some comments indicating it didn’t matter what you chose. It’s a stupid adverb so, so what? A reader is not going to like or dislike your pilot based on what adverb is used on page 5.
I understand this point of view because it’s the exact same point of view I used to have. It’s a tiny sentence in a sea of 25,000 words. There are bigger fish to fry than a dumb adverb.
But over time, I’ve learned that while not EVERY word matters, a lot of them do. Not understanding the importance of which moments need those stellar word choices is holding you back from taking your writing to the next level.
In the case of this adverb, there’s a lot more going on than you realize. Forgettable characters is one of the top five mistakes I encounter in script reading. Characters are either so weak, so bland, so generic, or so simplistic, that they leave zero impression on me and I’ve forgotten them within ten minutes of finishing the script.
I’ll read 10-20 scripts in a row where not a single character makes an impression on me. Which shouldn’t be surprising when you think back to your own recent moviegoing experiences. How many characters do you remember from the last ten movies you saw? And these are characters that have the benefit of an actor playing them. They’re easier to remember than characters who only have a name to remember. And still there are so many forgettable ones.
Another detail to keep in mind is that most characters are made or broken in their first few scenes. We either get a good feel for the character and are interested in seeing more of them or we’re apathetic towards them and have little interest in seeing more.
So what you say early on about a character MATTERS. It matters A LOT. I wrote an article about this. I think it was titled, The Fastest Way to Improve Your Script Right Now, and it talked about the importance of your characters’ introduction scenes.
Screenwriters often make the mistake of assuming that the complex charming dynamic character they have in their head is just going to naturally ooze out onto the page, like syrup being poured over fresh pancakes. That’s not how it works, folks. You must use targeted words and actions to properly sell your character to the reader.
Let’s say you have a protagonist named Larry. It’s early in the script. This is one of Larry’s first scenes. Larry is driving home from work and he gets to a stoplight with a sign that says, ‘No right turn on red.’
This is a prime opportunity for a reader to tell us about the character. Larry can wait patiently all the way until the light turns green or he can check both ways to make sure he doesn’t see any cops, then take a right turn on red.
That little clip tells us a lot about Larry. In one instance, he’s a guy who always follows the rules. In the other, he’s an impatient dude who’s always taking shortcuts.
Now you may think to yourself, “Well that’s dumb Carson. It’s one small moment. Who cares?” Congratulations, you’ve just identified yourself as the writer who doesn’t think about the moments that EXPLAIN to the reader who your character is.
You defiantly know your rule-following protagonist will organically come out over the course of the screenplay. Guess what. You’re then also the one getting the note, “I never had a good feel this character.” By the way, that’s one of the most common notes I give. And it can be solved simply by putting more thought into the words and actions you give your characters early on.
That’s an example of an action. But let’s get back to words because that was the original inspiration for this article.
Let’s say Larry parks his car in his driveway, gets out, and walks inside. This may seem to most writers like an insignificant moment and, therefore, something to get out of the way as soon as possible. They have this great scene in their head about how Larry’s wife is mad at him so the quicker we get to that, the better.
But this is another opportunity to tell us more about Larry simply by THE WAY HE WALKS. Check out some options you have…
Larry walks to the house.
Larry struts to the house.
Larry proceeds to the house
Larry wanders towards the house.
The practice of tagging in more expressive verbs for common actions should never be about varying the way the read is presented. It should be about CONVEYING INFORMATION. Larry “walks” to the house gives us absolutely zero information. It’s so generic as to almost not exist.
But consider what a reader thinks when you say your hero “struts” to the house. That implies something. It implies a character who’s confident. Things are going well for him. It paints a picture for us of who this man is.
Same deal with “proceeds.” “Proceeds” has an almost robotic connotation. This is a man who deals in ones and zeroes. Not a lot of complexity. See house, proceed to house. In comparison, “wanders” implies Larry is more of a space cadet. Or maybe that his mind is somewhere else.
While this is a simplistic example, it’s one of the best representations of how powerful words are in a screenplay. By switching out just ONE WORD, we get three completely different versions of Larry. And when it’s early on in a script and the reader is desperately trying to get a handle on who all the characters are, stuff like this helps A TON.
You want to extend this practice out into the characters’ environments as well. If we’re in Larry’s office, the words you use can convey a ton about him. It doesn’t even have to be some pretty word or sentence. It can be matter of fact. “Larry’s desk is drowning in unfinished work.” That gives us a different feel for Larry than, “Larry’s desk is so spotless it shines.”
Again, you want to find words that place images into your readers’ heads. “Drowning” is better than “overwhelmed.” “Shines” is better than “really clean.” Coming up with strong visual words is always challenging but it’s better than writing the generic version. Generic thoughtless description leads to generic bland imagery in the reader’s head. The reader is never going to do the work for you. That’s your job.
Which brings us back to Olivia’s hair. Is it really that bad if we just say, “Olivia, hair now pulled back in a bandana?” No. This sentence will get the job done. But if this is your approach to writing in general, the chances that you’ve written a generic screenplay are high. Every scene is an opportunity to put us inside the movie with your characters. If you’re not taking that opportunity, the reading experience is often forgettable.
As tempting as it is to be lazy and give us the quick version, remember that readers not only appreciate you going the extra mile, but also have a lot more fun when you do so.
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Drama/Sort of Supernatural
Premise: When the sequel to a fringe graphic novel masterpiece unexpectedly emerges, the lone copy draws a group of superfans from different walks of life to buy it in a one-day only auction.
About: We have some weird connections to yesterday’s World War Z 2 review. This show is based on a British show written by Dennis Kelly. Who wrote yesterday’s script? Dennis Kelly. This script is written by Gillian Flynn. Gillian Flynn adapted her own book, Gone Girl, for David Fincher, the man who was supposed to direct Dennis Kelly’s script for World War Z 2. Did you follow all that? The show has recruited John Cusack, Rainn Wilson, and Happy Death Day star, Jessica Rothe. It will premiere on Amazon Prime.
Writer: Gillian Flynn (based on the original show created by Dennis Kelly)
Details: 65 pages
When it comes to TV shows that have the potential to be great, HBO has re-taken the pole position. You may remember when AMC and FX had some really great shows. And even Netflix, for a while, until they went algorithm crazy, favoring wackadoodle experiments such as The Floor is Lava, over the next House of Cards. So when they put something into production, I pay attention.
And yet, somewhere along the way, HBO gave up on Utopia. This happens quite a bit. HBO has a TON of shows in development and only lets the cream of the crop into the on-air lineup. Which leaves us to wonder if Amazon Prime is receiving a 1998 Chevy Impala with a bad transmission or a 2020 Tesla with some of them bulletproof windows. Let’s all hope it’s the latter. Cause I need a new show to watch!
After inheriting her grandfather’s cabin, Olivia and her hubby, Ethan, find a dark disturbing graphic novel in his home titled “Utopia.” Ethan looks it up online and realizes that it’s a sequel to the small but fiercely loyal fanbase of a graphic novel titled “Dystopia.” Figuring this might mean some *ka-ching*, Ethan posts online that he’ll be selling Utopia to the highest bidder at FringeCon this weekend.
Over the next 30 pages, we meet all the players. There’s hot Samantha, who’s a super hardcore Dystopia nut. There’s Wilson Wilson, an intense private guy who thinks the whole world is after him. There’s Grant, a 10-year-old kid. There’s Becky, who has a rare disease but is in a relationship with fellow Dystopia obsessive, Ian, who lives with his grandma.
All of these people know each other online due to their intense love for Dystopia. But none of them have met in real life. They don’t even know that Grant is 10. They think he’s a photographer for supermodels. That’s about to change since they agree to all get together at FringeCon and bid on Utopia.
On to FringeCon we go, where Olivia and Ethan have set up a hotel room where bidders come in one at a time, get to look at a single page from the book, then make a bid. Highest bid wins. By the way, this is where I should tell you that everyone in the group believes Dystopia predicts the future. It’s predicted numerous pandemics since it came out. And the sequel is said to have bigger, more dire, predictions.
Everybody makes their bid but no one here is rich. The highest bid doesn’t even crack 1k. So it sucks for them when the well off Carson (as far as I know, no relation) shows up and says he wants to take the comic off the market… for 20 grand! Ethan and Olivia say, “Ka-Ching” and sell it, thinking they just made out like bandits.
Except that a couple of hours later, two sketchy-looking dudes, Arby and Rod, show up demanding to know where the graphic novel is. They inform them Carson bought it. He’s in the penthouse. That’s not enough for them. They want to know everybody who looked at it. (spoilers) Ethan and Olivia get the sense that these aren’t a couple of angry buyers. These are dangerous people. Their sense is correct, cause Arby and Rod kill them. They then head up to the penthouse, where they learn of a disturbing development. Grant, the 10-year-old kid, has stolen it. And he’s getting away. To be continued…
Utopia makes a bold choice here in deviating from the original. In the original, we start out with a gruesome murder. Flynn, however, uses the first 45 pages to set up characters. There’s barely any story or plot. It’s us meeting character after character.
Now you may say, wait a minute Carson. You told us never to do this. Why does Gillian Flynn get to do it? Well, here’s the thing. You don’t have to add any plot to the first 40 minutes of your pilot script either. But if you’re going to go down that road, you better…
a) be really good at character creation.
b) be really good with dialogue.
Gillian Flynn is good at both. Plus, she has an advantage. She’s working with established material which already did some of the heavy lifting for her. It was a character-centric show, so she has the baseline for her characters set. Also, any character who didn’t work in the previous show, she can get rid of and replace with a character she thinks up. That’s a nice luxury to have when you’re writing something. Because, in my opinion, character creation is the hardest part of writing.
The point is, if you’re not using plot to hook us, you need to have been told numerous times that your character writing is strong and/or that your dialogue is strong too. Because they’re what’s going to be front and center without plot. And even if they’re “kind of good,” readers are going to tune out. The characters need to be “really good” or better.
Now what I found interesting about Flynn’s Utopia was that it took the opposite approach to Kelly’s pilot. Kelly put the first kill scene in the pilot’s teaser. Flynn puts her first kill scene all the way at the end of the pilot.
Which of these is the better choice? Do you kill right away? Or do you LEAD UP to the kill?
Each has a different effect on the audience. If you kill in the opener, it immediately grabs our attention. But then it’s gone. We can’t use it again. Or, if we do, it’s not as surprising anymore and, therefore, less impactful.
When you lead up to a kill, it gives the reader something to look forward to. If we establish that Arby and Rod are bad guys looking to do bad things and they’re on their way to FringeCon, we the reader are pulled along by a powerful line of suspense. We know that these two bad guys are going to collide with our heroes, which means we’re going to keep reading to find out what happens.
The downside of this choice is, not a lot of exciting things are going to happen prior to this collision. This means the reader is mainly reading setup and exposition. Not exactly the most riveting story experience.
Still, I would say that the second option is better because you get much more out of it. You get all that ongoing suspense. Whereas, if you kill right away, you suck up some of the story’s air. We’ve already seen the worst. It’s like that bad movie, U.S. Marshalls, the unofficial sequel to The Fugitive. They had that amazing plane crash scene in the opener and then nothing else in the script came close to it.
The problem is Flynn’s Utopia doesn’t take advantage of the second option. It never implies that the kill is coming. It doesn’t even imply the bad guys are bad. So we don’t get any build-up of that suspense, of that anticipation. Which means the kill is a surprise.
In screenwriting, you want to get the most bang for your buck out of every plot development. If the only entertainment we get from a scene happens within the scene itself, you’re leaving a ton of entertainment on the table. The right move would’ve been to heavily imply that Arby and Rod were going to do very bad things, which would’ve gotten so much more out of this plot point. As it stands, we get that surprising kill and— then it’s done.
But like I said, the characters are all really strong here. So I still enjoyed the experience. I still want to see what happens next.
Oh, and I wanted to give you guys a THIRD VARIABLE example from Utopia since I talked about that last Thursday. When Olivia and Ethan first find the book, they need to figure out what the book is. So they go on the internet on his phone. Now, we could’ve stopped there. He checks Google. Google tells them. Exposition handled. Scene over. But because they’re out in the middle of nowhere, Ethan keeps losing the connection in the middle of a Youtube explanation of what Utopia is. This is the THIRD VARIABLE that makes the scene more interesting. The explanation keeps stalling, forcing them to keep moving, creating more suspense, and making what could’ve been a boring straight-exposition scene into something a little more dramatic.
This show could be good assuming episodes 4-10 don’t devolve into “running around with your heads cut off” storytelling. I hope Flynn has a plan for that!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Olivia, hair now pulled pragmatically back in a bandana…”. This is an early description in the script. The funny thing is that I read it as “dramatically” instead of “pragmatically,” which created a different image in my head. Like she really went all out on putting her hair back. But when I realized it was “pragmatically,” I thought, “Oh, that’s more straight-forward,” and my image of the visual changed. This reminded me how much words matter when describing things, particularly adverbs. And how you can use them to change the tenor of the image. Note how all of these adverb substitutions create different images in your head, as well as make you think of Olivia differently.
“Olivia, hair now pulled lazily back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled carefully back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled defiantly back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled playfully back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled sharply back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled joylessly back in a bandana…”.
“Olivia, hair now pulled painfully back in a bandana…”.
I read so many scripts where I never get any sense of the characters at all. Little things such as including the perfect adverb can help solve that problem. Not to mention, it’s a lot of fun trying to find the right adverb.
