A quick thought on the Emmys.  Breaking Bad dominated with 5 wins in important categories, taking out True Detective, which only received one (for directing).  Mad Men shut out again.  Has that show lost its juice?  Also, why is Game of Thrones ignored at the Emmys?  Is that just a show for geeks?  Is it because 75% of the writing is exposition?  Do voters not take it seriously?  Share your thoughts on the Emmys in the comment section…

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: When three high school girls do a porn video for some quick cash, the repercussions of their actions take a toll on the small town where they reside.
About: Sea of Fire was originally a Dutch show, ported over here for an American treatment. The show is being described as a modern-day Twin Peaks (I will confirm after reading it, that it is nothing like that show). This draft of Sea of Fire was written by long time TV writer, Steve Maeda, who’s written on such shows as The X-Files, CSI: Miami, and Lost. – It should be noted that this is not the final draft. They would later bring in one of Shonda Rhimes’s writers (on Grey’s and Scandal), Jenna Bans, to do a rewrite, where she changed all the character names. Whether that means they just wanted different names or they totally scrapped this draft by Maeda, is yet to be known.
Writer: Steve Maeda (original show written by Frank Ketelaar & Robert Kievit)
Details: 60 pages (1/19/13 draft)

“Whoa whoa whoa. Say that again. My daughter’s in what??”

When someone throws these ingredients at you, you’re thinking, at the very least, you’re going to read something interesting:

1) 3 high school girls secretly create a porn tape.
2) The town they live in finds out about it and the tape’s repercussions slowly destroy said town.
3) Adapted from a Dutch television show.
4) Said to be David Lynchian.

This is the kind of scandalous subject matter that if you take chances and push boundaries, you can create something epic. Unfortunately, that’s not what we get here. Instead, “Sea of Fire” is like a cross between the recent 90210 update and that show “Revenge.” Now I’ve never seen Revenge, but I’m going off their over-the-top promos, where someone’s always dying, coming back to life, cheating, or getting pregnant. Sea of Fire is very much in that mould.

It follows three 17 year-old girls in the town of Santa Cruz, California. There’s bad girl leader, Megan, gorgeous second-in-charge Polly, and third wheel, Elena. When we come into the story, Elena is pissed at Megan for reasons that will be revealed later. But Megan couldn’t care less. Being the bad girl that she is, she’s already off stealing a dress for tonight’s party.

Which is ironic because her father, Mark, is a cop. When we meet Mark getting ready for work, he checks his e-mail to find that someone’s sent him a preview link to a new porn site. Mark is shocked when he sees that the girls in the video are Megan, Polly, and Elena.

Now this is sensitive stuff. Mark can’t just put the site on blast. He doesn’t want anyone to find out his daughter was in a porno. So he approaches Polly’s dad, Peter, to get his take. The two agree that they should keep it quiet for now, and they definitely can’t tell Elena’s dad, who would go insane if he found out.

It just so happens Elena’s dad is having his 50th birthday party tonight, which all the adults and all the children will be attending. It’s here where Mark finds his daughter and questions her about the site. Megan is defiant. “So?” she says in that carefree way only teenagers can pull off. She wanted the money.

In the meantime, Elena storms out of the party for what is believed to be porno PTSD, and is chased by her drunk boyfriend, Slater (yes, her boyfriend’s name is Slater), towards a cliff. The two get in a fight, she scratches his face, Slater passes out, and when he wakes up, Elena is gone.

Slater stumbles back to the party, where he’s immediately questioned as to the whereabouts of Elena. When he says he lost her, an impromptu search begins. But when questions start getting asked, everybody’s individual secrets prevent would-be clues from being revealed. And for that reason, it doesn’t look like poor Elena will ever be found alive.

I want to start off by talking about false hooks. A false hook is when you hook us with one element, but then the show or the movie really isn’t about that element at all. So here, we’re hooked by this idea of a scandalous porn video. That’s the unique factor that pulls us in. But Sea of Fire really isn’t about a porn tape. It’s about a girl who’s gone missing. And isn’t that the premise for every other show on television?

So I felt a little duped. On top of this, it drives me crazy when writers fudge the catalyst moment. The catalyst moment is the moment that propels your story into motion. So here, it would be the disappearance of Elena. If you cheat as a writer – if you artificially hide what happened when there’s no reason that the moment should be hidden other than that you want to create a mystery – that’s cheating.

Here’s how the disappearance plays out. Drunk Slater is near a cliff with Elena. He’s yelling at her, asking her what’s wrong. He grabs her. She scratches him to get away, he falls on the ground and…COMMERCIAL BREAK! When we come back, waddaya know! Slater is conveniently passed out. When he wakes up, Elena is gone. This conveniently sets up a multitude of possibilities of what could’ve happened (Elena fell off the cliff, she ran away, Slater did something to her and forgot, she was taken). But the moment is so manufactured (why would someone pass out after getting scratched, drunk or not??) that we don’t buy it.

And now, the entirety of the show – the next 100 episodes – is built off a catalyst that was a cheat. I can’t stand that. Why not just have Elena walk into the night to get some air then never come back? That would’ve been so much more honest and terrifying (our imaginations would’ve gone crazy trying to conceive of what happened). I guess because with the scratches, that makes Slater a suspect, a plot point they can play with early on. But if you’re sacrificing a believable catalyst to get that plot point, is it worth it?

Sea of Fire also had a bad case of “old people trying to write what they think young people sound like and are 7 years behind” syndrome. So the teenage characters were using ill-fitting words like, “A’ight” and “True dat,” – real cringe-worthy stuff. If you’re older and you want to write teenage dialogue, go over to Youtube and search videos of teens talking. Don’t go off your memory, as your memory is typically way behind. Teenage-speak is constantly evolving. If you’re behind on it, the story loses credibility.

I’m not saying Sea of Fire is all bad. It’s soapy (REALLY soapy – like you won’t need to bathe for weeks after watching it). But it niftily gives all its characters secrets that prevent an easy case. For example, Polly’s mom, Kristen, is cheating on Polly’s dad. When Kristen and her lover leave the party for a make-out session, they see troublemaker Freddy break into a construction site. When Freddy is later tabbed as a suspect in Elena’s disappearance, Kristen can easily provide an alibi for him, but of course won’t, since she would then have to admit to her affair.

There was a lot of stuff like that in Sea of Fire, and for the most part, it worked. But there’s a big difference when you see all these soapy elements in a show like Sea of Fire, which is taking itself seriously, and a show like How to Get Away With Murder, which is just having fun. You know “Murder” is silly entertainment so you go with it. With Sea of Fire, you get the feeling it’s aspiring to be more, so the over-the-top soapy stuff sometimes undercuts the drama.

But it’s weird. One of the things I’ve noticed since focusing more on TV is that it draws a lot more on its soapy elements that I’d previously thought. Even some of the most esteemed shows, like Game of Thrones, are essentially about who’s sleeping with who, who just got pregnant, who murdered who, and so on and so forth. But I’m not sure how a show like Game of Thrones gets away with it while Sea of Fire comes off looking cheesy. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

It’s important to note that when I don’t like one of these pro scripts or pilots, they’re still pretty solid. I mean, this is definitely better than all the amateur scripts submitted to the site. But I couldn’t shake the feeling the whole time that I was reading “90210: The Edgy Version.” Maybe the creators felt the same way, which is why they brought in Bans? Either way, I hope they figure it out. It’s definitely an intriguing premise that I don’t feel was utilized to its full potential.

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

What I learned: Tell us your story through action and dialogue. Do not tell it through description. If I see the bartender discreetly place his hand between married Kristen’s legs and she seems to like it, and this is then followed by some flirty banter between the two, I don’t need the writer to tell me in the description: “And that’s when we realize it. KRISTEN IS HAVING AN AFFAIR.” I think it’s pretty clearly implied that Kristen’s having an affair already. (note: I’ve heard professional writers complain that when they try and be subtle about this stuff, dumb execs don’t get it, which requires them to be more on-the-nose in subsequent drafts. So that may be the case here. But it’s still a practice I’d avoid as a spec writer, as it can easily ruin a shocking moment).

Genre: Horror
Premise: When a father-son team performs an autopsy on an unidentified female found under mysterious circumstances, strange things start to happen inside the morgue.
About: The Autopsy of Jane Doe finished near the middle of last year’s Black List (it should be noted, however, that this draft is from a year earlier). The script was written by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing. This will be Naing’s first produced credit, although he had an associate producer credit on Better Living Through Chemistry, which starred Olivia Wilde. Goldberg, on the other hand, has been around for awhile. He wrote on The Sarah Conner Chronicles, Criminal Minds, and Once Upon a Time. Probably the most interesting thing about this project is that it’s being directed by Andre Ovredal, who directed the amazing TrollHunter. Going from full-on wilderness, where you can shoot anywhere and include anything, to a tight underground room, is going to be a tough challenge. But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s the guy who found and documented real live trolls.
Writer: Ian Goldberg & Richard Naing
Details: 91 pages – June 2012 draft

Something that will always be true through the end of screenwriting time: If you can come up with a fresh way to place a high-concept inside a contained location, and you can execute it adequately, someone will buy your script. It may not be for a ton of money, but it’ll sell.

The problem with the contained horror/thriller is that everyone did it to death three years ago and ran out of ideas. We were stuck in coffins, stuck in cars, stuck in ATM booths, stuck in ski chairs. There are only so many places one can get stuck in (Open Me – A man accidentally gets stuck inside a gift-wrapped box on Christmas.  The problem is, nobody wants to open him.).

But here’s where The Autopsy of Jane Doe was smart. While all these other writers explored their concepts through “what contained scenario haven’t we done yet?”, Goldberg & Naing approached it from the idea side. Come up with an interesting situation, regardless of place, then see if there’s a way to contain it.

When you look at The Autopsy of Jane Doe, it could’ve easily been a procedural thriller. A mysterious woman dies in the basement of a home – we have to find out who she is and how she died. The autopsy turns up some strange conflicting clues, and we follow a couple of cops who hit the pavement and try to find out what happened – a Silence of the Lambs or Seven type thing. In other words, this could’ve worked as a normal movie.

But once we get to the morgue, that’s where we stay for the entire running time. The script follows 50-something Tommy and his son, 25 year old Austin. Tommy has been in the autopsy business his whole life and loves working with his son. But Austin wants bigger and better things in life than… death.

That night, the two are delivered a strange “Jane Doe” discovered at a murder scene and get to work. But everything about the body feels off. The tongue is severed. There’s a synthetic strand of string in her mouth. Her lungs are blackened as if she’s been smoking for 50 years. And then it gets creepy. Here insides were slashed, yet her body has no indication of surgery. How could someone have gotten inside of her to cut her?

Complications arise when a bad storm moves in and starts knocking out the electricity. It gets so bad that one of the trees outside the morgue crashes up against the doorway, locking them in. Oh, and that’s when the shit really hits the fan.

After going back downstairs, they find that all the body drawers have been opened… with ALL THE BODIES GONE. They start hearing noises all around them. At first they go looking for the source of the noises, but once it becomes apparent that said noises may be … paranormal… they head in the opposite direction.

The problem is, there are only so many places to hide down here. And whatever spirit this Jane Doe brought into the morgue is, it doesn’t want to let them off easy. Flap…flap…flap. Those are the sounds of footsteps coming from bodies that shouldn’t be walking. One of the many bodies who follow the bidding of… Jane Doe.

This script does a lot of things right. Like I mentioned before, the writers created a high concept that could be shot cheaply. They set up a mystery immediately (grab that reader IMMEDIATELY!) when, in the very first scene, the cops find Jane Doe in the basement of a triple-homicide.

Then, once we meet our morticians, we see them doing their job, in detail. This is a very important but underrated part of screenwriting. Whatever the main trade or subject matter in your movie is, you have to convince the reader that you know more about it than they do. That’s because the moment you achieve this, the reader trusts you. Goldberg and Naing get into the itty-bitty details of an autopsy (order of procedure, tools, etc.), so that you trust them to tell this story.

I continue to see amateurs make this mistake and it’s a surefire way to know if a script is bad. If I know more than you do about the main subject matter you’re covering, then how much effort did you really put into this script?

But let’s be honest. When it comes to a horror script, one thing matters above all others. IS IT SCARY? Jane Doe is scary. There’s a moment in the morgue hallway where one of our previously dead bodies is walking towards us, a bell on his toe (put there earlier just in case he was still alive – ring-a-ling-a-ling), and with each cut-out of the lights, he emerges 10 feet closer. I needed a steady stream of “turn on all the lights in the house” after that one.

And I like stuff like this because it emerges directly from the concept. We’ve seen dead bodies walking around in a million horror movies before, most of the time with no explanation. But here, in a morgue, it wouldn’t make sense UNLESS the bodies were used. Why set your story in a morgue if you’re not going to utilize all the dead bodies?

I did have a few issues with this draft though. It rests a little too heavily on common horror movie tropes, such as the oldies song that keeps popping up on the radio. A lot of jump scares. Looking through keyholes and seeing scary eyes looking back. And there are only so many times you can run back and forth in a hallway before things start to feel repetitive.

Of course, this is the classic challenge of a contained horror film. You’re ALWAYS going to run into this problem and it’s never an easy solution. All you can do is run through as many options as you can think of to make sure you’re using the best ones.

I also thought the relationship between dad and son could’ve been better executed. The way it stands, Austin doesn’t want to be here, and the dad kind of knows this and accepts it. It felt to me like there needed to be a lot more conflict between these two – that the dad should’ve been more adamant about Austin sticking with the family business. You need that kind of thing because there’s a lot of downtime between scares in a horror script (always more than you think when you start writing it), and if your characters don’t have something interesting to hash out, the reader gets bored quickly. Always remember that a horror movie needs to be ABOUT PEOPLE FIRST. We won’t be engaged in the horror unless we’re pulled into the relationships.

I hope Naing and Goldberg have figured out solutions to some of these issues in subsequent drafts. With Ovredal at the helm, this could be really fun. From my understanding, this is in pre-production.  So with horror movies shooting and editing quickly, we’ll probably be seeing it soon.

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

What I learned: This is something I honestly have no answer for. How do you come up with new scares in the horror genre? Literally EVERYTHING has been done. As I was reading this, I’d read a scare that I’d seen before, but then I thought, “I’d have probably done the same thing.” I mean aren’t there only so many ways to scare people? I’m going to challenge you horror aficionados (Poe! Are you listening??). How do you come up with fresh scares? And I’ll go one step further. Give me some fresh scares you would’ve put into this specific script.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Comedy
Premise (from writer): To save his scandal-plagued career, a sex-addicted footy star enters an experimental Swedish rehab facility that is actually a castle of machismo-draining vampires.
Why You Should Read (from writer): You’ve read the title, right?
Writer: Scott Robert Chamberlain
Details: 99 pages

Whoa. This Amateur Offerings was TOUGH. Four scripts received equal mention in the AF comments section. Lost Continent, Swedish Lesbian Vampire, The Tallest Darkest Leading Man, and Code Black. I don’t know if the competition was too stiff or too easy, but I kind of wish someone would’ve mixed all of them into a super script. Code-Breaking Black Lesbian Vampires Confuse Sweden for The Lost Continent. That’s a movie I’d see tomorrow.

Let it be known that I TRIED to read Lost Continent. And the writing was good! But my focus was so zapped from two unrelated scripts earlier in the day, I kept having to go back and re-read every name and city twice (with them being ancient and unfamiliar and all). After that occurred a dozen times, I was like, “This is going to take me forever!” So what did I do? You better believe I asked Swedish Lesbian Vampire to the dance. I was fully expecting her to make me buy a corset. But this girl was an easy date. All I had to do was show up (IQ not required). How did the dance turn out? Did I get laid? (this analogy is starting to get weird). Read on to find out!

Asking “What’s the plot” to a movie called “Swedish Lesbian Vampire Wonderland,” is kind of like asking, “What are the ingredients?” in mashed potatoes. In fact, you can pretty much excise the “L” from “plot” when you’re dealing with a script like this, and just light up a doobie.

But for those curious, there ARE a series of events happening in a cause and effect manner here, indicating a loose definition of the word “plot.” And so I’ll do my best to relay said events to you.

Blake is a dude. A football dude. He’s a star player football dude. But what he’s really a star of is banging.

Blake loves the mamacitas. Well, he loves each of them for ten minutes, but then he loves another one. And then another one. Let’s be honest. Blake is a slut. He smashes and dashes. But one night it all catches up to him when he bangs an entire sorority house, and the girls sue him for sexual harassment.

Blake’s told by his lawyer that they’ll drop the suit if he goes to rehab, so Blake heads to one of the best rehab facilities in the world, some Swedish castle place filled with sex-crazed lesbians.

Blake takes his pot-smoking less talented little brother, Dave-O, and off they go, Blake to meet his rehab stay quota and Dave-O to prove this place is a sham. When they arrive, they’re greeted by a bunch of gorgeous women who seem to have the magic touch. Every man under their care is turned into a docile loving commitment-centric partner.

But Blake and Dave-O figure out quickly that they’re achieving these results with the vampire equivalent of a ponzi scheme. If you don’t acquiesce, they turn you into vampires. If you do acquiesce… they turn you into……. Vampires? I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure when they turned you into vampires and when they didn’t. I just knew we didn’t want Blake or Dave-O to be turned into vampires.

There’s a sort-of queen vampire chick who wants to take Blake down. There’s a hot vampire chick that kind of likes him. And then there’s “the one that got away,” Blake’s true love from childhood (who’s ironically, a virgin) back home. She’s getting married next week so Blake figures if he can just get out of here alive with his brother (or without him, it doesn’t really matter), he’ll do the right thing, marry the girl of his dreams, and live happily ever after.

A script like this has one quota to hit. It has to be fun. That’s all. It doesn’t matter how the writer achieves this. Whether you’re a Blake Snyder beat sheet maniac or you’re a first-timer following your instincts: Be fun. We’re happy.

But here’s the catch. There’s a big difference between the writer having fun and the script being fun. Just because the writer’s having the time of his life doesn’t mean that’s translating to the page. But that’s exactly what the writer assumes. It’s one of the 7 great screenwriting paradoxes. You want to have fun. Just not for yourself.

So where does the fun land with Swedish Lesbian? It’s hard to say. I know that I wasn’t laughing a lot, and I was trying to figure out why. Let’s look at the first scene. A guy bangs a girl, then walks into another room and bangs 12 girls. Then we’re told he’s a sex-addict and needs help.

It all felt a little too on-the-nose for me. He’s a sex addict and then he’s just banging an entire sorority. There was nothing surprising about it. Then again, if I were playing devil’s advocate, I’d say, “That’s the point. That’s what’s funny. It’s over-the-top.” Okay, I thought. So let’s say it’s funny. Why am I still not laughing?

Let’s look at Blake, our main character. Blake is a guy who seems upset by the fact that his life is complicated by being able to bang too many women. This is the man we’re being asked to root for, to relate to. A man who feels bothered by having too much pussy. Hmmm. Not sure I feel bad for the guy.

This is why most comedies follow underdogs, because it’s a lot easier to care about underdogs. That’s not to say asshole main character comedies don’t work. There’s something we enjoy about seeing the jerk get what’s coming to him. But without that “connection” factor between the main character and the audience, it’s always more of a risk.

The battle between writer and reader is usually won or lost early on. If the reader likes the main character and likes the setup, there’s a good chance you have them for the rest of the script. If they don’t, you’ve probably lost them, no matter what you do from that point on (a point I know I make a lot – but I want to drive home how important this is).

It certainly didn’t help that the rest of the setup didn’t make sense. Our main character, Blake, is a womanizer. He’s going to be sued by a bunch of girls he banged for harassment unless he goes to rehab. So the rehab he goes to is a sex-crazed lesbian wonderland? Does this make sense to anyone? I know a character brings the preposterousness of this up: “I know it sounds weird. But trust us.” Still, I would’ve made the rehab a giant secret. It’s only when Blake gets there that he sees all the hot women and wonders what’s going on.

But yeah, once we get to the castle/wonderland, there’s a clever little “Alice In Wonderland” theme going on. But things start to get redundant pretty quickly. We’re running away from lesbian vampires. And then we’re running away from more lesbian vampires. And then we’re…you guessed it… running away from more lesbian vampires. It’s funny in a silly “you definitely need to be stoned to read this” sort of way. But again, since I never connected with Blake, I didn’t care what happened to him amongst all this chasing.

Of course, this brings up the obvious question: does it matter? I mean, you’re going to have half-naked lesbians running around for 100 minutes. Is 15 year old Timmy who secretly rented this on Itunes going to say to his Tinder-obsessed best friend Char-Dog, “Well Charry-Dee, I certainly would’ve enjoyed that more had they included a better mid-point twist. Alas, they did not, and the second act really fell apart as a result.” Probably not.

But I would warn Scott not to depend too heavily on the T&A factor. Outside of the concept, these scripts still need fun characters that we give a shit about. And having an entitled asshole who’s whining about the fact that he can’t bang more girls leading your story might need some tweaking. If there’s any way to make him more likable, do it. Or maybe make underdog Dave-O the main character? And Blake the co-star? Food for thought. That reminds me. I need a snack. Got the munchies for some reason.

Script link: Swedish Lesbian Vampire Wonderland

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

What I learned: The setup of your main character and the setup of your plot are the two most important things about your first act. Unless you nail both, there’s a good chance your reader won’t be interested in reading on.

Genre: Adventure
Premise: An archeologist who moonlights as an adventurer goes on a quest to find one of the most important religious relics in history, the Ark of the Covenant.
About: This is the first draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark, written by a young Lawrence Kasdan. Kasdan wrote the draft off of 100 pages of notes from Spielberg and Lucas. Every studio in Hollywood passed on Raiders, thinking it too over-the-top. Finally, Paramount stepped in to finance. Kasdan would write four more drafts before production.
Writer: Lawrence Kasdan
Details: 144 pages! (June 15, 1978 draft)

A great exercise for any screenwriter is to read early drafts of movies they love. One of the toughest things for beginners to understand is how much cutting is done from draft to draft. When you start out in writing, you want to include EVERYTHING because you want to show the world just how big and amazing your imagination is. But great screenplays trim every snippet that isn’t necessary. That’s why they read so well (and play well) – because there’s never a dull moment.

I was particularly eager to read this first draft of Indy, a film many consider to be perfect. Was that there in the first draft? Or did it start off as a total stinking mess? Because the first draft of another 80s favorite, Back to the Future, was all over the place. I actually have no idea how they got that to where they did. But the difference here is that Spielberg and Lucas gave Kasdan 100 pages of notes. They outlined this screenplay to the T (yay, more outlining debate in the comments!) before a word was written. Let’s see how it paid off.

For those who don’t know Raiders of the Lost Ark well, there’s this guy, Indiana Jones, an archeologist/adventurer, who specializes in getting hard to find items. He’s told that Hitler is trying to find a supposedly mystical object called The Ark of the Covenant. The army wants Jones to find it before the Nazis do. Indiana must find a series of items first that’ll help tell him where the Ark is, a job complicated by the fact that the Nazis have the exact same information he does.

I learned quite a bit here. You can see the differences from the very start. Do you remember when Indiana is walking up to the cave with the guides? Remember how it was all about looks? About glances being exchanged? About the tension in the air? That’s the way you want a scene to play.

But in the first draft, the characters are exchanging on-the-nose dialogue about the cave they’re going into and the plane that’s going to be waiting for them afterwards. It’s not a ton of dialogue, but the difference in tone is striking. Watching a character assess the situation in a quiet and composed manner creates so much more tension than two characters exchanging even the most sparse lines of exposition.

The next thing I noticed was there was no Belloq (the villain) waiting outside the cave for Indy. Belloq didn’t come into the story until much later, and he was only around sporadically. It was clear that none of the three writers knew their villain yet (there was actually another separate villain who was later eliminated or merged into Belloq).

This happens a lot in first drafts. You’re so focused on the heroes of your story, you don’t give the villain enough thought. It’s only in later drafts that you start fleshing the villain out. This may be why there are so few good villains in screenplays. They’re only getting half the attention of their hero counterparts.

One of the more telling first draft moments was after Indy’s approached by the army agents who tell him he needs to go get the Ark. Kasden included ANOTHER SCENE where Indy is woken up at home by the same agents, who remind him how important this mission is and how they really think he should do it.

This is something every writer does. We tend to believe we need to convince the reader more than we do. “Hmm,” we think, “Will the audience really think that Indy would go on this mission after only one scene?” So we write another. And sometimes another. But these scenes are almost always redundant. It’s the same thing and therefore not needed. This is why they got rid of the scene and just sent Indy off on his mission right away.

The next scene had Indy going to a museum in Shanghai to find part of The Staff of Ra. Once there he must defeat a group of samurais.  This scene felt uninspired and unnecessary, which is likely why they cut it. But it’s yet another lesson in writing. Just because you can write a set-piece scene doesn’t mean you should. Technically, you can create a set-piece out of any scenario. A man who wants to brush his teeth encounters a dozen assassins in front of his bathroom. Does that mean you should write it?

Set-pieces have a diminishing-returns effect. The more you include, the less special they become. So you only want to include the a) best ones and b) most necessary ones. Otherwise you’re just creating action where there shouldn’t be any, and the audience/reader is stuck wondering why they’re so bored.

So they cut this scene in the final draft and just took us straight to Nepal, where Marion, Indy’s ex-girlfriend, was. Marion is another interesting aspect of this draft. It’s clear, once again, that the three writers hadn’t thought enough about her character. This is an especially huge problem with male writers writing female leads. They just don’t give them as much thought, and it shows.

Here, there are way fewer scenes between Indy and Marion, and as a result, we never really felt any chemistry between them. With the exception of their first scene in the bar, which they obviously thought a lot about, the rest of the script was more about the plot. And when you’re writing a plot-centric idea like this (find the Ark), it’s easy for your character stuff to get lost. But yeah, after we believe Marion has been killed, she disappears from the screenplay for about 30 pages.

Remember the famous scene in Raiders where Marion and Belloq drink in the tent together? Well that wasn’t here, because neither character had been thought through. This is what rewrites do for you. They allow you to explore areas you neglected previously. And what you’ll often find, is that by improving one neglected area, you’ll improve another. It was probably after someone said, “You know what? Marion isn’t in the script enough. We haven’t seen her for 25 pages. We need something with her.”

So they said, “Hmm, maybe we can create a scene with her and Belloq.” This scene may have then allowed the writers to know Belloq better, which in turn encouraged them to get him in earlier and earlier as each draft went by. To the point where, in the final film, Belloq appears in the very first scene. The scene also exposed how cunning and clever Marion was, which made her more fun to write, which in turn encouraged them to write a few more scenes with her and Indy.

Amongst all this unneeded fat, there was one scene I wish they hadn’t cut. In the scene where Marion is smuggled around the city in a basket while Indy tries to find her, this was originally a chase through the city ON CAMELS. It had this really humorous aspect to it, with Indy awkwardly trying to figure out how to ride a camel as he chased away, navigating low overhangs and uncomfortable humps. It could’ve been really funny.

The funny thing is, that where Raiders Draft 1 encounters its worst stretch is where EVERY 1st draft encounters its worst stretch, which is its second act black hole. It just goes on and on and on, to the point where we’re not sure what’s going on anymore.

I don’t think it’s til page 90 that Indy and Marion get stuck in the pit of snakes. 90 minutes in! It’s because too many of the previous scenes were people talking about where things were and where they needed to look next, and why they needed to look there next. All that was pared down for the final version. We rarely need as much explanation as you think we do. Make it clear what your character is looking for (The Staff of Ra) and let them loose. We shouldn’t need 7 dialogue scenes discussing where that Staff might be. Action over discussion.

The final change was that the climax did not occur with the Nazis opening the Ark of the Covenant. Instead, we get a coal cart chase on rails, much like the one in the second Indiana Jones movie.

This was a perfect example of the writers putting action over story. They’re thinking, “The audience is going to want a great big chase at the end!” They forgot that the story was about getting the Ark. So obviously, in the end, we’re going to want to see what’s in the Ark! That alone will be able to carry a climax, sans a big chase scene, which they eventually figured out.

The first draft of Raiders reinforced to me how much bloat we subconsciously add to our scripts. Keep your eyes on the prize when you’re writing. Make sure your characters are always focused and pushing towards their next goal. If you get stuck in no-man’s land (a lack of clarity in what your characters are doing), you can easily lose an audience.

The bloat kept this from being an “impressive.” But the guts of a great film were still there.

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

What I learned: Use the uniqueness of your environment to create the sequences that drive your story. Every environment is DIFFERENT. You need to then utilize the differences of that environment to make your script different. In other words, a break-up should play differently depending on if it’s in an airport (a couple breaks up while they’re going through security), in a grocery store (the couple destroys a fruit stand while breaking up), or in a a cappella group (the couple breaks up with each other a cappella). When I saw a camel chase in Cairo I thought: “Perfect!” That’s the exact kind of chase that could only happen in this movie in this moment.

Genre: Superhero!
Premise: An Amazonian Princess living on a remote island is brought to the real world, where she uses her unique set of powers to take down a mega-corporation with world domination on the brain (basically every comic-hero plot ever).
About: This is the Joss Whedon draft of Wonder Woman he wrote in 2006! Whedon, as many of you know, has left his DC buddies in the dust to become the head directing honcho of Marvel Universe with his Avengers films. To give you some context of the movie business when Whedon wrote this, the two big superhero films preceding this draft were 2005’s Batman Begins and 2004’s Spider-Man 2. Both films were considered dark (Batman moreso than Spider-Man of course) and so the dark realistic super-hero trend was beginning.
Writer: Joss Whedon
Details: 115 pages (2006 draft)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yay!!! Michael Bay is a kajillionaire. Can’t say I ever got into the whole mutant turtle thing. But I knew when Dr. Explosion decided to put his particular brand of vapidness on the turtle tale, I definitely wanted nothing to do with it.

I was rooting for Swetnam’s Into the Storm (spec script) to do some hurricane like damage at the box office, but it just goes to show how difficult it is to play with established properties (remember that spec script writers – it’s why your concept has to be really awesome for Hollywood to take notice). Into the Storm needed at least a couple of recognizable faces to sell the movie, like Twister and The Perfect Storm before it. I don’t think a storm by itself can do all the heavy box office lifting.

Speaking of storms, what happens when a Marvelnado and a DCunami meet? You’ll find out today. Whedon, the flagship director for the third biggest movie ever, Marvel’s Avengers, wasn’t always chummy chummy with the Marvel comic book family. He was once playing for the other team, scripting the DC script for Wonder Woman.

Stories like this always intrigue me. Because if Joss Whedon wrote a Wonder Woman script today, while he’s on top of the world with the biggest franchise in the world, everyone would be DESPERATE to read it. It would be the hottest script in town, right? So what changes if he wrote it eight years ago? Was Joss Whedon any worse of a writer? He may not have been a household name at the time, but he’s still the same guy. So why not use this script for a wonder woman movie. Say it’s written by Joss Whedon and everyone wins, right?

Well, that’s assuming he overcame the same problems everyone who’s been trying to adapt Wonder Woman over the decades has run into. Which is that her character’s not fit for today’s super hero audience. A lasso that makes people tell the truth? How dumb is that? It looks to me like they finally said fuck it and Zack Snyder is going to change the character to make her a straight-forward ass-kicking female, kind of like how he dropped the whole Clark Kent glasses reporter stuff. Screw history.

But what if Joss Whedon had been in charge. What would he have done? Let’s find out!

I don’t know if you knew this or not. But Wonder Woman is an Amazon. You know that legendary island full of tall beautiful ass-kicking ladies? Well it’s real. At least in this script it is. A pilot named Steve is bringing food and supplies to child refugees when his plane goes down and crash-lands on this Amazonian Island.

At first Steve goes looking for Jeff Bezos, but he ends up running into Diana instead. Diana is the Princess of the island. And when her mother, the queen, finds out that a man has entered the perimeter – a huge no-no on this island – she sentences him to death! (probably why Beznos is hiding)

But Diana’s developed a little bit of a crush on Steve, and challenges her mom to a duel for the right to help Steve get off this island and save the children! She ends up winning, and the two head off, where Diana learns the complicated multitudes of the real world, namely that when you deliver supplies to kids, a local warlord is going to want 75% of the goods for himself.

After the Warlord shoots Diana for questioning his motives, she gives him a taste of his own medicine, beating some ass, and Steve realizes he’s got something special here. So he takes Alice/Wonder Woman back to the U.S., to a crime-ridden city called Gateway, which I guess is Wonder Woman’s version of Gotham.

In Gateway, there’s this super-huge company called Spearhead that poses as a wonderful company that manufactures weapons to help the United States defend itself.

Wonder Woman, pissed that there’s so much lying and corruption in this city, takes it upon herself to work her way up the local gangster ladder to find out who’s ultimately responsible for all this crime. Using her truth lasso (which forces people to tell the truth), it eventually leads back to, you guessed it, Spearhead.

The problem is, Spearhead’s being protected by a super-human of its own, some freaky-faced metallic skull-capped dude named Strife who, oh yeah, just happens to be the nephew of Ares. Ares as in THE GOD OF WAR! Yup, craziness is happening all over. So if Wonder Woman is going to save the day, she’s basically going to have to defeat a God to do it.

I’m going to give Whedon this. He somehow made Wonder Woman cool. I thought there was no way around the whole truth-lasso thing. But Whedon doesn’t use it much, and when he does, it’s with attitude (for example, with one gangster, Wonder Woman slings the rope around his neck like an Indiana Jones whip, before asking him who he works for).

But the biggest reason this worked was that Whedon went all in. He committed to this character, to this world, to the rules of this universe. And I think that’s what you have to do with these scripts.

When amateur writers tackle comic material, they typically have a vague sense of the hero they liked growing up, then they use their own imagination to fill in the gaps, whether it be their heroine taking down a gangster or kicking ass in some big set piece fight. It all feels very thin, like a writer who really loves movies including all his favorite movie moments in one script.

When you read the opening of Wonder Woman, the detail involved in this Amazon tribe, where they came from, the hierarchy, the connections between the characters. It feels like Whedon really immersed himself in the comics and knew this world before he wrote anything. And when you do that, even if the world is silly and weird, the audience believes it, because you, the writer, have committed to it.

That’s one of the biggest differences I see between amateur and pro writers. Pros commit themselves to the world. Amateurs learn a little bit here, a little bit there, and think that’s enough.

I never really knew how good of a writer Joss Whedon was until this script actually. His writing always seems to have this immediacy, yet it never feels rushed. It creates this propelling motion as you’re reading, spinning you down from one paragraph to the next.

In amateur screenplays, it always feels like the writer is fighting his sentences, writing himself into corners he must clumsily write himself out of.

And I noticed that what Whedon is really good at, is that no matter how intense things get, he’s not afraid to undercut it with a joke to lighten the mood. For example, near the middle of the script, amongst a lot of chaos, a girl stops Wonder Woman and with giant puppy dog eyes says, “My cat’s stuck up in the tree.” Wonder Woman looks up at the cat, then back to the girl. “Climb it.” She then runs off. This is something Christopher Nolan can learn from the Firefly scribe.

The only weakness in the script is that no matter how skilled Whedon is, he can never get too far away from the fact that this is a super-hero movie. There are only so many surprises you can pull on the audience. It’s why I liked X-Men: First Class so much. Because for once, there was something different going on that we weren’t used to in the comic book world. It’s why Batman Begins made such a big splash when it came out. Because it approached the superhero genre from such a realistic place (Nolan’s got Whedon there). It’s why, I believe, Guardians of the Galaxy did so well. Because these weren’t your typical super-heroes and it wasn’t your typical super-hero movie.

Those movies found little black holes to slip into that took them to parallel universes which allowed them to tell a new story.  But Wonder Woman is stuck in the land of garden-variety comic book movies.  It tries to break out (the first act, away from the city, felt pretty unique), but ultimately is pulled back in (giant egomaniacal city villain alert).

I’m actually shocked that audiences haven’t grown tired of the genre yet because, like Wonder Woman here, we’re basically seeing the same movie over and over again.  So kudos to Whedon for writing what really is a cool script. It’s just too bad he was limited by the genre.

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

What I learned: In fight scenes, it’s not as important to detail every punch or sword swing, as it is to give the reader a sense of what kind of fight it is. Tell us how each fighter fights, and we’ll be able to fill in the visual gaps ourselves. So when Wonder Woman fights her mother, Whedon writes: “Everywhere Diana strikes, Hippolyte counters. Diana tries to control the fight through youth and relentless strength, and though she responds with no less, Hippolyte relies on experience over enthusiasm.” Obviously, you’ll detail fight specifics after this, but sentences like this allow you to summarize pieces of the fight so you don’t have to detail. Every. Single. Swing.