Between reading all the first page entries and putting together the March Newsletter, I have zero extra time to read a script and post a review. So today is simply a reminder that in 48 hours from when this post goes up, your first pages are due. Keep sending them in!

What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Is this the most f’d up story of the year?

Genre: Horror
Premise: Back in 1989, a family receives an eerie visitor named Tommy Taffy, who sets up shop in the house, becoming a third parent, and torturing them in a way that only Tommy can.
About: We’ve got another big short story sale from Reddit’s Creepypasta subreddit, one of the most popular horror forums around. You can read the short story yourself here.
Writer: Elias Witherow
Details: 5000 words (about 1/4 of a screenplay)

Matt Smith for Tommy?

No. Horror short story sales are not over.

Remember, horror is the most bankable genre in Hollywood. So it’s the one that everyone tries to figure out. And they can’t. It’s still a genre where some movies hit and others crash and burn.

A big reason for that is that there’s way less IP in horror than in other genres. You’ve got Stephen King, of course. But great horror movies (Talk to Me, It Follows, Heretic, Quiet Place, Terrifier) constantly come out of nowhere.

The thing is, Hollywood is so uncomfortable with that, that they’ll do anything if it provides even a little bit of IP. Enter Creepypasta. Some of these stories have been beloved by hundreds of thousands of people. That’s enough for Hollywood to adapt.

Hence, The Third Parent sale.

Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

It’s 1989. 6 year old Matt is chilling with his family in their suburban home. There’s Spence, the dad. There’s Megan, the mom. And there’s Stephanie, Matt’s 5 year old sister. There’s a knock on the door. Spence goes to open it. And there’s this… man, standing there. Or some version of a man. Here’s how he’s described.

He was about six foot and had a shock of golden hair cut tight along his scalp. He wore khaki shorts and a white T-shirt that said “HI!” in red cartoon font.

But that wasn’t what caught my eye. It was his skin…it was completely devoid of pores, a perfectly smooth, creamy texture that looked almost like soft plastic. His face was a pool of gentle pink, his mouth a cheerful cut along his cheeks revealing a white strip of teeth…but they weren’t teeth. It was just a smooth, edgeless row, like he had a mouth guard on. His nose was just a slight rise out of his face, like a doll, void of nostrils.

And his eyes…

His eyes were twin puddles of sparkling blue, shining out at us from his flawless, eerie face. They were wide, like he was in a constant state of surprise, and they shifted around the room to look at us in quick, jarring motion.

Matt is both bewildered and baffled by this man’s entry into their home. But his confusion is just getting started. The father is terrified of this thing but simply says that Tommy will now start living with them.

Even though Matt knows something is very off about Tommy, the first real example that this is going to be bad is when Tommy takes Megan into the basement and, for the rest of the night, we hear the most horrifying screams that humanity has ever experienced.

You’d think that Spence would fight back but he doesn’t.  He doesn’t even fight back when Tommy takes Stephanie into her room and we hear the exact same screams of horror all night.

Matt finally confronts his dad about why he doesn’t fight back. It turns out that Tommy Taffy lived in his hometown growing up and was present in every single home in the town. They chopped him up. They burned him to death. It didn’t matter. He always came back. And when he did, he punished people with an iron fist.

Poor Matt gets his own dose of Tommy time after finding his first Playboy Magazine. Afterwards, Matt asks his dad how much longer they have to endure this. “Three years,” he says. Tommy always stays for five years total. Sure enough, three years later, Tommy leaves and never comes back. The end.

Is it true what people on Reddit have been saying about this story? That it’s the most f’d up story of the year?

I would have to say…. Yes.

But just how f’d up it is depends on whether you give this story the benefit of the doubt. Is it just a shocking skin deep tale? Or is it trying to say something deeper? If it’s trying to say something deeper, it’s actually quite affecting. But I’m not convinced that’s the case. If I had to guess, I would say that the writer just thought, “How can I write the most messed up story ever and really shock people?”

And you know what? That’s not the worst strategy for a writer. With every project that a writer writes, the ultimate goal is to stand out from the pack. The way you do that is to pick a lane and be faster in that lane than everyone else.

So, if you write something that’s dialogue-centric, your dialogue has to stand above the rest. If you’re writing a thriller, you have to have thrills that stand above the rest. And if you’re writing something to shock people, you have to be more shocking than the rest.

And there’s a lane open for shock-writing right now. For the last 7-8 years, everyone has been avoiding offending people. So the writing has been very careful. Even the stuff that’s been daring has only been daring on one side. Therefore, there’s been this entire mini-generation who hasn’t been offended about certain things.

Enter The Third Parent.

Now, this isn’t total shlock. There is some thought put into this. For instance, there’s a strong core of irony built into the concept. Normally, when you have some evil person doing evil things, they look evil. They’re dirty and smelly and unkempt. When you do that, you’re being on-the-nose.

Tommy is the opposite of that. He’s clean. He’s perfect. He smiles and laughs all the time. That kind of person isn’t supposed to be scary. You’re supposed to trust that kind of person.

Another thing this writer did well was he created a character that wasn’t like any other character we’ve seen. He has clown-like qualities. But he’s not a clown. He’s this weird hybrid of a clown and a full-sized doll.

However, beyond that, this becomes pretty basic. This doll thing rapes three of the four family members in the worst way imaginable. It’s unsettling but this kind of thing works in short story form.

My question is, can it work in feature form? I’m not sure it can. I’m not sure you can have some doll clown thing hanging out and raping children for 2 hours. People are going to be beyond uncomfortable. So they have to make a choice on whether to stop the sexual abuse BEFORE it happens. The story focuses more on the THREAT of that abuse rather than the actuality of it. Of course, if you do that, you take away the one thing about your story that stands out.

What will help is to make the family more active. One thing you definitely can’t do in a movie is have a family that does nothing – that just allows this to happen to them. In this story, that’s kind of what makes it terrifying. They have no choice. But in a movie, the audience will not forgive characters who do nothing. At a certain point, the characters need to attack.

Regarding my earlier statement of, is this surface level or does it go deeper? Here’s my take on the “deeper” storyline. You guys can let me know if I’m off-base. I believe what the writer MAY have been trying to say is that every family has secrets. Every family has abuse. There may not be a physical Tommy Taffy. But metaphorically, there’s always a Tommy Taffy.

Because part of the story is about how they don’t do anything about it. They don’t go to the cops. They don’t bring in the military to nuke the dude. The families are encouraged to keep Tommy Taffy a secret.

If that’s the metaphor, it’s a good one. But, again, this could still be shock shlock. What do you think?

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

What I learned: One of the harder things to achieve in horror is creating a truly terrifying horror character. Someone who REALLY scares audiences. Most horror characters I read are lame. This horror character definitely stands out. So, it’s a good idea, when writing horror, to spend that extra time creating the scariest most original horror villain you’re capable of coming up with.

I remember a few years ago when they leaked some information about how Brave New World was going to have a dozen hulks. And I said, “Hell yeah!” I want me a dozen hulks. Hulks are awesome.

But I guess making hulks is one of the most expensive things in the Marvel computer-generated world. So they only gave us one hulk. And now Brave New World has fallen to under 30 million dollars for its second weekend box office take. Which means it’s probably making less than 500 million total throughout the world.

That number is relevant because the benchmark for Marvel success is a billion dollars worldwide. So, if you’re only making half that, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for the movie and a problem for the franchise as a whole.

But let’s get back to those hulks for a second. If this movie had 12 hulks, would I have gone? I would’ve. Seriously, that would’ve made the difference. Because when I go see a Marvel movie, I want something bigger and badder than the last Marvel movie. And the last Marvel movies have given me three Spider-Mans and the iconic pairing of Deadpool and Wolverine.

You did this, Marvel. You raised my expectations. So when you only give me a subpar superhero and one hulk, no, I’m not coming to your movie. You were the face of raising the bar. Every movie either released a new superhero we wanted to see or gave us something bigger. Brave New World does neither.

So they’re going to have to figure that out. They’re close to having to pick their Avengers lineup and I don’t know if there’s anyone to pick. We’re at risk of She-Hulk making the team. If I were them, I would pay Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Tom Holland each a billion dollars and make them the leaders of the team.

From superheroes to super screenwriting, we are in Week 2 of The White Lotus and I’m hooked. It’s a darker hotel than usual but I’m here for it. I loved the second episode.

What’s funny, though, is that the excellence of the writing, here, is so nuanced that it’s hard to explain why it works so well. Because someone said last week, “I’m surprised you like this show, Carson, considering it goes against everything you preach on the site.”

I sort of understand what he’s saying. He’s saying that my screenwriting template for success is GSU (goals, stakes, and urgency) and really great structure. White Lotus doesn’t really use either of those things. Or, I should say, when it does, it does so in less obvious ways.

But, the reason that I love White Lotus despite it not having GSU and despite a less-than-obvious plot, is that it aces the other half of screenwriting, which is building interesting characters and creating interesting relationship dynamics.

Because it’s perfectly possible to write a good scene that doesn’t have GSU. The way you do it is you create conflict. If you can create an interesting line of conflict in a scene, the reader will be hooked by the desire to see resolution to that conflict.

Think about it. If I put two characters at a table and had them talk about their days, and each of their days were mildly entertaining. Each of them laughed at each other’s summary. If I wrote that scene, that’s not going to be a very good scene. Seeing two people remember and agree has no drama to it.

But, if one of those characters just found out that his 100 million dollar company back home is about to fall apart and there’s a good chance that when he gets back, he’ll be sent to prison. And, also, if that character (in this case, the father) goes to talk to his family and they’re all having fun and trying to include him in that fun, but his mind is somewhere else entirely? Now we have a scene!

Because we have conflict. We have an unresolved issue – in this case, with one of the main characters – and that means that, until that issue is resolved, he’s (the dad) going to bring conflict into every scene he’s in. That’s drama.

That’s a somewhat complex version of conflict but Mike White isn’t above using simple forms of conflict to create drama in a scene. In one scene, for example, the three 40-something girl friends are passing our weirdo family at the breakfast table and one of the friends realizes that she’s met the mother before.

So she stops at the table and says to her, “We know each other.” And she pitches this whole weekend that they shared on a mutual friend’s baby shower. In the scene, the mother just stares at the woman. She gives her nothing. Which forces the friend to try harder. She explains that they spent so much time together and that she’s still in touch with the baby shower mom. Which only results in the mother acting less interested.

It’s a simple scene. One person wants to connect. The other person doesn’t. But it’s effective. You watch that scene and you feel the cringe for the friend. That’s all conflict. Something is out of balance and we watch in hopes of it coming in balance.

That “out of balance” formula can extend to positive feelings as well. One of the oldest TV writing tricks in the book is putting two characters around each other who are not together – but who we (the audience) want to see get together.

If you write a TV show and you don’t have that storyline in your show somewhere, you’re doing it wrong. Cause it’s such a reliable storyline. You have so much time to fill in a show, you can’t afford not to put it in there because audiences eat these storylines up. Ross and Rachel. Jim and Pam. Mulder and Scully.

Here, we have these two workers at the hotel. The guy, a guard, is clearly in love with the girl. But she seems like she’s more on the fence. Boy do I want him to get her. I want them to end up together. That “will they or won’t they” tug of war that takes place in every scene they’re in?  That’s conflict.

It’s also how you keep a show going. You have to create multiple unresolved dangling carrots that viewers have to keep watching in order to eat.

So, if the formula for success is that easy, why do so many shows fail? Because there’s an essential ingredient to the dangling carrots that, if not met, the carrots become rotten.

WE HAVE TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS.

That’s what Mike White does so well. He makes you care about these people first. THEN he starts weaving in these plot elements, such as the dad’s company falling apart, that create these fresh carrots we want to sink our teeth into.

What happens with bad writers is that they create thinner characters than White. They don’t establish the characters well. They don’t make it clear what each character’s flaw is. They create weak character personalities. They create uninspired seen-it-all-before relationships between the characters that feel stale the second they’re introduced.

Therefore, when they try and dangle carrots, we don’t care. Cause we don’t even care about the donkey walking the carrot.

I continue to be amazed by Mike White. I think he’s a genius. I was worried that he couldn’t pull off the three-peat. But so far, he’s pulling it off with flying colors. Mighty impressive considering his last name is White.

And remember that the First Page Showdown is next weekend! If you want to submit, details are below!

Just a reminder, next Thursday is the deadline for First Page Showdown! And then, over the weekend, the top 5 submissions will compete for your votes. Here’s how to submit…

What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Okay, now it’s time to prepare you!

A lot of screenwriting people will tell you to write a great first scene due to the fact that you want to grab the reader. But, actually, you want to start even earlier. You want to write a great first page.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much the reader is judging the script during that first page. And it’s not that they’re doing it overtly. They do it subconsciously because they’ve read so many scripts and the large majority of those scripts are bad. They’re hoping and praying that this is the one that’s going to be good.

So, actually, they’re picking up on the bad things reluctantly. They’re hoping they don’t pop up. Cause if they encounter 2-3 red flags on the first page, it’s a 99% probability that the script will be bad.

What is it they’re judging? They’re judging if the writing itself is good (the sentences are pleasing to read). They’re judging if they like the writer’s voice (is it strong and assured). They’re judging if the page is building towards something. They’re judging if they like the scene you’ve started off with. They’re assessing whether you’re a storyteller, someone who understands the tools required to tell a good story. They’re assessing your confidence. They’re assessing what level you’re at.

I know. All of that is overwhelming. To be honest, if you tried to check all of those boxes, you’d probably write a bad scene. So, today, I want to give you a simple template that gets you the best chance to hit all those beats. Actually, with this template, you don’t even need to hit all the beats. You only need to hit the most important one, which is to be a good storyteller.

We’re going to do that with an example from the first page of one of the Oscar-nominated scripts, Conclave. It’s not perfect, which proves my point. You don’t have to be perfect to write a strong first page. Let’s take a look at the page and then we’ll discuss what it does well.

Before we get into the analysis, let me ask you a question. What is the most important aspect of a first page?

Anyone?

Here’s the answer: That it makes you want to turn the page.

Nobody can read the rest of your script if they don’t read page 2.

Now that you know that, what do you see within the first page of Conclave? Hopefully, I don’t have to point it out to you.

For the people in the back, the scene starts WITH SOMETHING HAPPENING. Actually, let me recontextualize that. It starts with something OUT OF THE ORDINARY happening.

If something was just “happening,” like a man eating dinner, that’s not enough to get people’s eyes to move down the page. It has to be something that doesn’t happen often. That’s what makes “the happening” unique and worthy of reading.

In this case, a man is sleeping, his window cracks, waking him up. Then he gets a phone call. We then cut to him walking through Rome. And there’s a key word there that you need to include on a first page – “QUICKLY.”

He’s walking “quickly.” That tells us something about that phone call was important. Especially because he left his home in the middle of the night. Something big has happened.

Another key word occurs in the slugline: “VATICAN.”

He’s not quickly walking through Costco. He’s walking through the Vatican.

Not to get sidetracked but this is where concept comes into play. You want your movie ideas to feel big. That way, you have more to work with on the page. If your script includes the Vatican, that’s going to feel bigger than if your script includes Costco. And I’m not saying you can’t write a great script about Costco. There are probably several hilarious comedies you could write with the store as a backdrop.

But in this game where you’re trying to keep peoples’ attention for 2 hours, the more high-powered your weapons are, the better the chance you have of striking your target.

The main reason this page works is because we’ve been thrust into a big situation where we want to find out what happens next.

Now that we know that, let’s look at the scene more specifically. Cause what you’re going to find is that it’s imperfect. But I’ll remind you why that doesn’t matter.

We start in a quiet neighborhood in an apartment, with a window pane that cracks. Now, on the surface, I like this. It creates curiosity. Again, something is HAPPENING. The sooner you can make something happen on your first page, the better. Cause readers then have to figure out why the pane cracked.

The thing is, I don’t think we ever learn why it cracks. So it’s a bit of a cheat. Yeah, I guess it could be “God,” but if it is, the script does a very poor job at making that argument, especially because there isn’t a single other act of God in the script.

From there, the phone rings. That’s another good beat. Phones that ring in the middle of the night usually don’t bring good news. So, again, something is HAPPENING. Something out of the ordinary.

The writer then takes a unique approach to the call – he doesn’t show the character answer the phone. This is a small thing but it’s something that tells me I’m dealing with, at the very least, an above-average screenwriter.

The beginner screenwriter probably includes the conversation from that call. The advanced writer says, “I don’t need it.” Or, he says, “It creates more mystery if I don’t include it.” But even the fact that he didn’t have the character pick up the phone tells me this screenwriter doesn’t waste ink. And that’s usually a good sign.

From there, we have the character speeding down the tunnel in the Vatican and now, as a reader, I don’t have any choice but to turn the page. Seriously. How can I NOT read the next page? It would be stupid to not at least check it out. Cause I want to know who called him and why he’s felt it important to get up in the middle of the night and run to the Vatican.

That’s the big tip that I want to get across to you here with first pages. You want to create a question within that first page that doesn’t just make the reader curious, but makes it impossible for them not to read the second page.

And you do that by throwing us into the mix of something happening that’s out of the ordinary. It’s very hard to screw up a scene like that.

By no means is this the only way to write a first page. I went through the opening pages of all the Oscar screenplay nominees and nearly all of them approach their first pages differently. But if you want to get the best bang for your buck, do it like Conclave.

Can’t wait to see what your first pages have to offer! :)

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A senator and his estranged son must fight to survive when they’re stranded
at a hunting ranch where mythical beasts from global folklore are genetically
engineered as dangerous game.
About: This script finished with 16 votes on the Black List. Grillot has one other Black List script from a year ago called The Tooth Fairy. Here was that logline: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her. – The guy clearly likes his high concept ideas!
Writer: Chris Grillot
Details: 108 pages

Today’s script reminded me of 1997 Hollywood where every single person you met in Los Angeles had a screenplay and 99.9999% of them were sky-high concepts.

American Monsters leans into that old school approach. You can’t get any higher concept than this. The only problem is, is the pitch “Aliens meets Jurassic Park” still relevant?

It is if the script’s good. And fun! Please, after yesterday’s anger management meltdown, give me a fun screenplay experience! For crying out loud!

Senator Remy Chatelain is up against reelection and it’s not looking good. He recently got caught using dirty tricks to smear his opponent. So maybe it’s good that his old friend, hunter Lane Marlow, shows up and asks him on a weekend trip. He can even bring along his 17 year old son, Zach.

Remy and Zach head to Lane’s highly remote Wyoming compound where he’s secured thousands of acres for his new venture – hunting monsters. Lane is also a bit of a scientist and has figured out how to bioengineer approximations of all the monsters we’ve read in books.

We’ve got chupacabras, ushi onis, giant bat things, and the real prize of the establishment – Yetis. Lane has created a giant hunting ground where you can kill your own monster. And this weekend, he’s going to take Lane and Zach into his creation where they’ll both be able to bag a Yeti. It’s going to be wonderful!

The trip requires going up into the mountains and it doesn’t take long for Remy to realize that Lane doesn’t have it all figured out. He falls into a sinkhole where a giant bull-spider thing easily could’ve killed him if it wasn’t so timid.

And don’t even get Remy started about the Yetis. The Yetis were created to be dumb. But since their creation five years ago, they’ve started to clump into packs. They’ve even created little villages. All of this is starting to feel very wrong to Remy.

Remy also learns why Lane brought him out here. It wasn’t just to catch up with an old friend. Remy has major influence on an upcoming bioengineering bill that, if passed, will shoot Lane’s business into the stratosphere. If the bill fails, however, Lane’s dream, along with the tens of millions of dollars already invested into the venture, will be toast. Sure Lane. First let’s focus on getting off this mountain without being slaughtered by a pack of Yetis!

Something I want you to take note of right off the bat with American Monsters is Lane’s motivation.

When I read bad versions of scripts like this, characters like Lane don’t have motivations. They’re just some knob that the writer uses to open a door for our characters to enter the movie.

The bad version of Lane is a guy who says, “Come on in” and “Let’s hunt.”

The good version of Lane – the one that’s being used here – is much more elaborately constructed. The reason he’s bringing Remy here is because Remy can help him pass a bioengineering bill that will infuse his operation with money. Money that he desperately needs.

Not only does this make Lane a stronger character (due to the fact that he has a goal with high stakes attached) but it infuses all interactions between Lane and Remy with an extra layer of subtext.

If Remy has a scary moment and wants to call the hunt off, and Lane says, “Trust me, what just happened was random. There’s no way it will happen again.” Well, because we know how badly Lane needs this to work, we know that there’s a whole other layer to that assurance. He’s probably lying about it because he needs Remy to buy into his pitch.

Lane is the character who sold me on this script. I can tell that Grillot put a lot of work into him. He’s got a lot lines like this one: “We might not have money, but we’ve got plenty of reach. I’ll pull in Outdoor Alliance, the Ag Coalition, the oil and gas roughnecks, police and fire unions… You fucking name it, I make the call… I bet your opponent drops before the election.”

Lines like that tell me RESEARCH has been put into this character.

He reminded me some of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thorton) on Landman. The reason that show works so well is the insane amount of knowledge the creator has about that world. So, whenever I feel like characters are smarter than me, I know I’m in good hands.

Cause, for the large majority of scripts that I read, there isn’t a single character who’s smarter than I am. Or as knowledgeable about the subject as I am. I’m serious! I’ll read a script about a nuclear apocalypse and I’ll know more about the science of the fallout than the writer does. That’s when you know the writer is barely putting in an effort.

Whatever the specific world it is that you’ve created for your screenplay, there better be at least one character who knows more about that world than Wikipedia and ChatGPT combined. And that includes pretend worlds.

If there’s a weakness to this script, it’s the competition. Every studio has a “big animals” franchise. And it seems that the bigger the animals, the more lucrative the franchise is. These animals are big but not enormous. On the plus side, our “monsters” are just different enough. If these were straight lizards and gorillas, it wouldn’t work. We’re putting in new variations of these animals and, from there, it’s up to the public to decide if that’s enough to get them interested.

I think most writers and producers in Hollywood attempt the “same but different” formula. You just never know how ‘same’ or how ‘different’ the audience wants. The target is always moving. Would I have thought a basic ‘guy with a gun’ movie like John Wick would become one of the biggest franchises in the industry? No. But it turns out it had that perfect balance of the same (guy with a gun) and different (this light hitman mythology).

This movie is going to open huge. In 1998. Can it open huge in 2025? I don’t think so because the lore and the mythology is not quite up to Jurassic Park standards. With that said, it’s strong! Stronger than most scripts I read in this lane. So I could see this being a big streaming movie. And, these days, that’s what we spec script writers should be gunning for. Get that big streaming feature paycheck and celebrate like it’s 1998. :)

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

What I learned: There’s always a more creative line of dialogue available to you if you take the time to find it. On page 35, Lane is telling Remy that he needs money. He explains that his current investor is running out of cash. If you were having Lane tell Remy this, what line would you write? Most writers say the first thing they think of. Something like: “The problem is, Ko’s (his financier) running out of money.” It does the job, but it’s not very creative. Instead, here’s the real line that was used: “Look, I’ll let you in on another secret, alright? Ko’s deep pockets are getting pretty shallow.” Clearly a more thoughtful line. That’s how most dialogue should read. You can learn all sorts of great dialogue tips like this in my dialogue book. So go get it!