James Bond has a secret.  Transformers spin-offs are coming.  The Scriptshadow 250 deadline is four months away.  Add that all up and divide it by two and you get… Amateur Offerings!

Title: FIELDS
Genre: Sci-fi Thriller
Logline: When a group of dysfunctional teenagers are thrust through a gateway into a dangerous alien world, they must race to escape before the gateway closes forever.
Why You SHOULD Read: So this is screenplay number 12 for me. Needless to say, I’m really hoping this is the one. It’s the product of just over a years work. I’ve stressed and struggled to deliver an adventure that not only makes the audience clinch at their armrests, but allows them to watch relationships develop against the theme of perseverance. Thanks and good luck to the other writers.

Title: The Runner
Genre: Action / Adventure
Logline: Back-stabbed by his employer and marooned in Mexico, a tough, drug-running pilot struggles to fly himself and the family that rescued him back to America alive.
Why you should read: Growing up on the border, there are lots of crazy stories you hear about trafficking (mostly from your friends that are doing it). With this story I wanted to take a lot of that raw material and structure it with an action adventure spin and a solid protagonist while still having some of the authenticity of experience. It was a trickier line to walk than I imagined, but I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the script so far so something must be working. I’m excited to see what the SS readership thinks (and if they think I pulled off the balancing act) and I’m pumped to use any and all feedback to keep improving the writing!

Title: The Demon Within
Genre: Horror / Psychological Thriller
Logline: After witnessing the brutal massacre of her family and undertaking years of institutionalized psychiatric treatment, Karen Reed returns to her secluded childhood home where she discovers her parents may be involved in a devilish secret.
Why You Should Read: I’m a self-taught writer that enjoys old fashioned horror movies. I was a horror geek as a kid back in the 80’s. I used to visit the old VHS video stores, staring at the beautiful covers on display but never having enough money to pay for them, or being old enough to rent them for a night or two. When my dad would allow me to see them, he’d pay the rental fee and that movie with the awesome movie cover was mine. — The Demon Within is a throwback in someways to those moments and a homage to the 70’s ABC movie of the week. It’s House Of The Devil meets Amityville. It’s Crowhaven Farm catching up with Burnt Offerings and then inviting Rob Zombie over for a glass of wine. Get to the ending. You’ll see.

Title: Mad Muses
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: A group of troublesome psychiatric patients band together to destroy their sadistic android nurses.
Why You Should Read: I’m in desperate need of honest criticism. I’m surrounded by non-readers or family/friends who are completely love-biased and only provide encouragement and compliments which is wonderful for my ego but doesn’t aide in my progression as a writer. Mad Muses is a lighthearted and witty depiction of mental illness, the focus is placed on character relationships and action so that even non sci-fi fans will be able to enjoy this story.

Title: Roomies
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a sister he never knew existed claims equal rights to their deceased father’s house and promptly moves in, straight-laced Jake is determined to do whatever it takes to get his childhood home back, while the presence of his out of control sister puts pressure on his marriage and threatens his dream of the perfect family.
Why You Should Read: I’m gonna keep it short. This is what I believe to be a fun and simple story in the same comedy sub-genre as “What about Bob?”. — I was fortunate enough to have it read by a story analyst at Universal (mentorship through school) and, along with some great notes for improvement, he wrote: “What’s most impressive is that you’re genuinely funny – you’ve got that essential thing: the comedy gene.” — That’s only one man’s opinion, so make of it what you will, but this section is for me to convince you to read it, so I’ll use what I have. — I’m a frequent reader of the site and have the utmost respect for you and your knowledgeable community, and I would be honored if you would read it and help me improve this screenplay, as well as my overall writing.

Keep sharpening your Scriptshadow 250 Contest entries.  Your competition is only getting better with Amateur Offerings feedback.  Here are this week’s contestants, which include werewolves, cults, serial killers, and, of course, Harrison Ford.  Enjoy!

Title: Canine
Genre: Action
Logline: A special forces K9 unit, searching for an international terrorist deep in the Afghan wilderness, find themselves hunted by an ancient tribe of werewolves.
Why you should read: Carson is always encouraging his readers to take a genre and put a fresh twist on it. Which got us thinking… when was the last time we’d seen a kick-ass werewolf action film? Underworld? The Wolf Man? There’s definitely a gap in the market out there. Hopefully we can fill it. And even if you disagree, we’d love some feedback from the Scriptshadow community to help us take the script to the next level.

Title: To Dust
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A brainwashed young woman, conditioned to track and kill the remaining members of her parents’ cult, must outwit a relentless small-town Sheriff and regain her true memories before she kills her next target – the man she loves.
Why you should read: I submitted my last script, The Dark Parade, to Amateur Friday almost a year ago to the day. Whilst I had some great feedback and insight from the SS community (and the script got a few manager reads) – no one was gonna would splash down $150m on a VFX-heavy vampire spec from an unknown writer.

Title: The Rift
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Logline: When a soldier suffering from PTSD is told his symptoms are the result of an impossible space/time experiment, he seeks out the renegade scientist responsible, but being living evidence of the experiment’s success, a black agency is quickly on his trail to appropriate the technology.
Why you should read:”Get your work out there!” is often heard advice. “The Rift” started because one of the writers did exactly that. On a slow weekend with no AOW he posted the first 15 pages of an Industry Insider challenge entry that didn’t make the cut for feedback. Another writer read it, liked it, retouched and extended it, and send it back to the original writer for critical feedback. Countless emails over 8 timezones later “The Rift” was a fact. — “The Rift” is a complete screenplay that wouldn’t have existed if not for that first step: to put your work out there for the world to see. If you keep it for yourself, no one will know it exists, no matter how good it is. And so, as a logical extension of how the script came to be, we put it out there where it originated, on AOW, to see what might happen this time around.

Title: Vickie
Genre: Drama
Log lien: A seemingly docile nurse in Texas morphs into a serial killer of patients where she worked, after personal set-backs push her over the edge. BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Why you should read:  I’m Randall Alexander. I’m on the cusp of 40, and live in Texas. I’ve long been fascinated with the story of Vickie Dawn Jackson, who was not only a nurse in Texas, but also became a serial killer. We don’t hear a lot about female serial killers, mainly because they don’t usually exist. What makes a person go there? I envision it was a slow burn that teetered right under the surface, that needed some nudging here and there and then WHAM!…it got that final shove, and then erupted into a fire that Vickie could not contain. And that’s the way I wanted my script to play out. Looking for feedback! I think you should read my script, because I followed your advice, in regards to writing a FIRST PAGE that grabs the readers attention.

Title: Adventure Has A Name
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a fan accidentally receives Harrison Ford’s lab results in the mail, the fatal prognosis sends him and his friends on a desperate journey to find Ford and deliver the script they penned to win him his long deserved Oscar.
Why you should read: This script’s life depends on Harrison Ford. While my first concern is his well-being, his near fatal plane crash today also reminded me that life is too short to keep shelving my projects because someday I’ll wake up and it will be too late. I was holding off on submitting to Script Shadow 250 hoping I could get some feedback from amateur Friday (as you suggested), so here it is – a script about three guys trying to stop Harrison Ford from freezing himself. Been working on it a long time, but it’s not the years Carson, it’s the mileage.

 

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young woman inherits a curse where she’s followed by an entity that cannot be killed. The only way to get rid of it is to pass the curse on to someone else.
About: “It Follows” has been playing the festival circuit for a year, gaining momentum via ecstatic reviews from both critics and festival-goers alike. The film opened this weekend in four theaters across the U.S., grossing an average of 41,000 per theater. That’s the highest per-theater average of the year. It’s set to expand next weekend, and if it continues doing well, will continue to expand. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell is an unconventional choice for the most buzz-worthy horror director of the year. His only previous film was an indie comedy coming-of-age film titled “The Myth of the American Sleepover” and he claims that he’d like to keep jumping from genre to genre instead of being pigeonholed into horror.
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Details: 100 minutes

A few people planning on submitting horror screenplays to The Scriptshadow 250 Contest have asked me, “What makes a screenplay scary?” And I reply, “Bad dialogue.” Haha, Carson. But seriously. You mean what makes a scary screenplay? Well, that’s a little harder to quantify. But I’ll tell you where it starts. It starts with making the reader believe in the characters and the world. The more realistic you can make the people inhabiting your story, the more we’ll believe they’re “real” like us. And thus, whenever they encounter dangerous situations, we won’t just be scared, we’ll FEAR for them. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. Being “scared” is fleeting and cheap. Genuine fear strikes deeper.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that that paragraph is somewhat gibberish without context. Anyone can say, “You have to make it more real n stuff!” So let me put it another way – If you’re trying to write a scary movie, you’ll fail. If you’re trying to write a movie about people in a scary situation, you’ll succeed. Do you see the difference? One is about cheap scares. The other is about a person experiencing fear.

And that brings us to It Follows, one of the more fascinating horror films I’ve ever seen. Now I’m not here to proclaim this film perfect. Actually, the screenplay is somewhat lacking, which I’ll get to later. However, the writer-director, Mitchell, seems to be aware of his limitations as a writer, and camouflages them in a way  where they’re practically invisible. It’s borderline miraculous how he pulls it off. And it goes to show the advantage the writer-director has. He can hide weaknesses in a script inside the filmmaking, a luxury the spec writer doesn’t have.

The plot here follows 19 year-old Jay (a female – I’m ready to give up trying to stop writers from giving their female characters male names), who’s trying to navigate the uncertain world of post high school. She meets a hot dude, Hugh, goes out with him, has sex with him, only to then be strangled by him until she passes out.

She wakes up strapped to a chair in an abandoned building where Hugh promptly apologizes, and informs her that he had sex with her to transfer this “curse” to her. The curse, he explains, means you will be followed by something, an entity of sorts, who will try to kill you. The only way to get rid of the curse is to have sex with someone else, passing it on to them. But if “it” gets to you, it will start going right down the line of the curse. In other words, if it kills her, it will come back and kill him, and so on and so forth. So please find someone else and transfer it quickly.  “It should be easy,” he encourages her.  “You’re a girl.”

That Hugh, what a charmer.

So Jay starts seeing people follow her that nobody else can see. And these people seem to be taking the form of past curse kills, people down the sexual line. This is where It Follows gets interesting. As we see the people following her (an old man, a mother, her father) we get these glimpses into the underbelly of this town and who’s had sex with who. It’s clear, in some cases, that rape was involved. And in others, it’s pure speculation – such as where did Jay’s father, who’s already dead at the beginning of the film, fall into this line? Who did he have sex with? It’s all rather mind-trippy, and the secret sauce that makes this horror story unlike any other – and that’s the thing we’re all trying to achieve – creating something unlike anything else.

Okay, let’s start with the screenplay here. This screenplay is suuuuuuuper-minimal. Which wouldn’t have worked on the page as a spec. Everyone would’ve said, “We need to explain this curse better. We need a scene where we explain the backstory of the dad,” and to be honest, I probably would’ve been one of them. On the page, it would’ve seemed like barely anything was going on.

But here are the things that directing can bring that screenwriting cannot. Cinematography, score, and overall vision. And in these areas, Mitchell knocks it out of the park. This is the first “real” horror film I’ve seen in forever where it doesn’t look like a Hollywood costume designer dressed all the characters. The characters are all wearing what real people wear and that went a long way towards making the characters feel authentic (see the importance of that back in the opening paragraph). Ditto the locations. We were never on a set or a perfectly chosen house in the perfect neighborhood. It looked like REAL America. That went a long way towards suspending my disbelief. That’s what I mean by vision.

Then there was the score. Which was really eeire. There were just these long drawn-out horns that never seemed to end and they added an unease that’s pretty much impossible to add on the page. Coupled with the amazing cinematography, these shots set a mood for the film that was like no other, which is one of the reasons the film is playing so well. It doesn’t feel like anything else you’ve seen. I mean, at one point, there’s an 870 degree shot. That’s right. Mitchell places the camera down, and slowly spins it around as we catch one conversation going on in one room, while one of the entities keeps getting closer and closer every time we pass the window. It’s super-freaky.

Because you’re so pulled in by these atmospheric touches, you’re not thinking about the fact that the story is far from perfect, or even logical for that matter. Jay’s mother lives in the house where Jay’s loudly attacked a couple of times, but seems to sleep through all of it. She’s also never around to offer support after Jay is essentially raped. The focus is squarely on the kids, which I think it should be, but this oversight was borderline ridiculous.

The minimalistic writing approach does help in some cases though. Paul, the geeky best friend who’s in love with Jay, engages in a satisfying emotional arc with her that’s spared from the overwriting that plagues most Hollywood scripts. We don’t exaggerate the big plot turn where she finally falls for him or anything like that. It’s all a lot more subtle, and helps the relationship achieve exactly what the rest of the script has achieved – a sense of realism.

So does this mean you should all go start writing minimalistic screenplays with barely any plot beats and parents who don’t know that their children exist? Assuming you’re not writing the next Peanuts movie, I wouldn’t recommend it. Actually, It Follows has an ace up its sleeve that allows it to pull this risky move off. It’s something I’ve brought up a lot recently: Come up with a concept that does the work for you.

The concept here – this notion of someone following you, trying to kill you, that in turn can’t be killed – is what keeps the story moving without Mitchell having to do much. The scenarios write themselves. Girl in a house, friends don’t believe her, then one of these things walks in, even though the friends can’t see it, and she must run for her life. This is the basis for most of the scenes in the screenplay, which are just set in different locations. But they work because the situation is freaking scary! Imagine being in a public place and anyone you see could be there to kill you. You’d go nuts!

On the flip side, I’ll read a script where there’s a ghost in a house and it runs out of juice quickly because the concept isn’t providing enough for the writer to work with. So you always want to make sure you have a concept that creates scenes for you. That way you won’t be sitting there on page 50 going, “Uhhhhh, what do I write next?” A good concept will fuel the majority of your scenes for you.

I’d recommend everyone go see this movie. It’s definitely “indie,” but it’s way more accessible than, say, “The Babadook,” which resulted in me losing recommendation privileges with a couple of my casual moviegoing friends (“That was borrrr-ing” said one. “I don’t get it.  There’s a children’s book that attacks people?” said another). What’s cool about It Follows is it still has a little camp left in it, a little bit of John Carpenter’s Halloween, so it feels more mainstream in that sense. Oh, and one last thing. If you come out of this film wondering where you can find a clam-shell reader, I’m sad to say I checked and there is no such thing. You’ll have to see the movie to understand this. Let me know what you think when you do!

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: “Concept” is the alcohol at the party. It does the hard work for you. If you’ve ever been to a party without alcohol and you feel the strain in the room as everyone tries really hard to talk to each other and look interested, you know what I mean. Give everyone drinks, however, and they loosen up, stop worrying, and start having fun. In other words, alcohol takes the strain out of the party. A good concept does the same. It lubricates the story so that everything just flows naturally. Of course, you can also bypass this analogy and just get drunk.  Which should help your writing as well.

You know the deal. In between writing scenes for your Scriptshadow 250 entry, sample today’s amateur offerings and help the writers with some constructive feedback. Also, vote for the winner at the top of your comment.  If you only have time to read and help one writer this week, check out I Shall Be Released.  I don’t think I’ve ever known someone to be so passionate about a screenplay.  Greg really cares about making this script the best it can be and he’s a dedicated Scriptshadow reader and fellow commenter.  Good luck to him and everyone else!

Title: I Shall Be Released
Genre: Drama / Biopic
Logline: Losing his voice to cancer, Levon Helm reflects on his life with The Band, and how their meteoric rise to fame comes with a heavy cost.
Why you should read: I grew up listening to The Band. Not from the dull playback of a stereo, but from backstage at the concerts my parents would bring me to, and from the comfort of Levon’s living room when we went to visit. My family shared a close relationship with Levon, Rick, and Richard for over thirty years. When I left college, Levon told my father that he would do anything for me, and suggested I consider pursuing a book or film with him. Now that our friend has passed, I want nothing more than to secure his legacy, and bring the personal insights I have into the man to the silver screen, so that he, his music, and the impact he had on a generation of rock and rollers can live on.

Title: The Beard
Genre: Sex Comedy
Logline: After landing a reality TV show on Bravo — the gayest network on television — a straight YouTube star, whose popularity hinges on the world’s belief that he’s gay, hires a “beard” to keep up the front. Suffice it to say, things don’t go as planned.
Why you should read: In the wake of R-rated comedies like Neighbors, 21/22 Jump Street and This Is The End — films that absolutely cracked me up — I set out to flip the bromantic comedy on its head while sending up reality TV shows for good measure. Thus the concept behind THE BEARD was born, and I gotta admit, it was a shitload of fun bringing it to life. I wrote the first draft pretty quickly and submitted it to Carson for a consultation. He thought there were some issues with the execution, but overall, he thought the script was “very funny” (which he says is rare). The biggest problem he had was that he didn’t care for any of the characters. So I’ve revamped the structure and streamlined the execution, and tried my best to make unlovable characters lovable. Now I need a second opinion! :) Basically, I need to know if the humor and execution of the story makes up for its unsympathetic characters. Please give it a read and let me know what you think. But be forewarned: This script is VULGAR with a capital V.

Title: Thy Enemy
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: After learning his estranged brother is a spy, a disgraced FBI cadet goes rogue to stop his sibling from detonating an experimental nuke in New York City.
Why you should read: In 2011, I met Shane Black. We were both waiting at a crosswalk after a lecture he gave. I dared to ask him a question: “What’s your biggest fear when you open up a script?” He thoughtfully replied: “Interchangeable action scenes that don’t affect the story or characters. I see it all the time and it saddens me. Set pieces must have consequences or what’s the fucking point.” The light changed. Shane was gone. I never forgot his words while I wrote this beast of a script. Thanks, Shane. — And thank you to all of Scriptshadow’s contributors. Readers here deserve a lot more back and forth from candidate writers. Don’t see enough of it. So, if picked for AOW, I 100% guarantee that I’ll be available to interact with readers. No excuses. It’s the least I can do for a community I’ve benefited so much from.

Title: Blind Curves (AKA “The Shot”)
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Logline: After accidently killing a female hostage during a botched robbery, LAPD Officer Michael Egan is exiled to a small desert town, where he’s forced to deal with his estranged daughter and face his greatest fear come true.
Why you should read: This script has tortured me for the past four years. Just when I thought it was “finished”, I’d get feedback that would prompt another rewrite. Last year, this script made it to the quarter-finals in the Bluecat competition (Top 5% of over 4,000 submissions). I was elated but knew deep down why the script didn’t place higher. It became my poster child for the adage “learn to cut your darlings” and I shelved the script for nearly a year. The script continued to plague me, I knew what needed to be fixed but resisted making the change. Finally, I broke down and dismantled the whole thing and did what needed to be done. This script is the result of letting go, listening to your gut and not being content with just getting to “Fade Out”.

Title: Be a Hero
Genre: Action-Comedy
Logline: After accidentally killing a beloved vigilante superhero, a smartass slacker takes over as defender of the city to cover his tracks, but soon finds himself being hunted by a psychotic crime lord.
Why you should read: Well, I’m a young, fairly inexperienced screenwriter looking to kickstart my career. I believe you should give my script a shot because have you ever met someone from Ireland who wasn’t talented or awesome? No, of course you haven’t. We’re a wonderful people. But while we have a talented, artistic and creative population of ginger alcoholics, we’re also a country that often gets overlooked on a global level. This is especially true in the film industry. We have so much to offer, with so little opportunity. So, this struggling ginger alcoholic would kindly ask that you do his career a major favour by checking out his little screenplay. I would be ever so appreciative, and I think you’ll enjoy the script if you give it a chance.

As the Scriptshadow 250 Contest looms, contenders wisely sharpen their screenplays with feedback from the community. Help them make their scripts as good as they can possibly be. And to those writing in solitude, best of luck. Can’t wait to see what you’re cooking up!

TITLE: Dating Jennifer
GENRE: Romantic Comedy
LOGLINE: Working as an elementary school teacher can be very hard for Greg, a single parent of one, but when his friends enter him into a contest to date Jennifer Aniston, he gets more than he bargained for.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I am an aspiring writer, looking to make a splash. I have been teaching 3rd grade students Reading/Language Arts for 11 years, teaching the basics of story, plot, theme, etc. and that has always been a passion of mine. I started getting into writing screenplays in college, but never really got into it until four years ago, completing a script I started back in 1997. But in my case, my first is my worst – it has a good story, but the characters are weak. My second script, I continue to retool. My third script, “Dating Jennifer” is finished and was just named a semifinalist in the Nashville Film Festival (finalists chosen next Friday 3/13 – hope I’m not jinxing myself). Anyway, I’ve also entered it in the usual big competitions, Scriptapalooza, Page, Pipeline. However, I just read an article about your site and would love a review – kind of wish I found out about it before submitting it to some of those competitions. Going forward, I’d love to have some real criticism on it.

TITLE: Monsters Under the Bed
GENRE: Thriller/Drama
LOGLINE: A salt-of-the-earth father, trying to leave a checkered past behind him, is put through the ultimate test when his estranged son gets in deep with a human devil in the Appalachian woods.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: My 6th spec, feeling like it’s all coming together now. Taking an honest look at my writing prior, it would be easy to say I was trying to write “the next great American story” (large, sweeping political storylines, obtuse, lush descriptions, “profound” dialogue) and this time, I’m just trying to write a movie. I hit a lot of things this site discusses: race against the clock, continually mounting problems, clear stakes and goals, a memorable villain and short action descriptions which I think makes for a fun and quick read. Recent films like BLUE RUIN, THE ROVER, and A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES have rejuvenated my passion for writing gritty thrillers.

TITLE: The Shittiest People In The World
GENRE: It’s a fucking comedy.
LOGLINE: An ex-con and his hipster nephew kidnap an obnoxious housewife on the orders of a crooked judge, but when her shady financier husband refuses to pay the ransom it sets a dirty cop and the worst hitman on the planet hot on their tails.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m an asshole and so is my co-writer. They said “write what you know” so we wrote a script about a bunch of assholes. Why should you read my script? Because you’re probably an asshole, too, and would enjoy it.

TITLE: Scare Fair
GENRE: A Coming of Age Horror Romantic Comedy
LOGLINE: A high school senior tries to win the heart of the girl he loves while avoiding various killers at a local horror fair on Halloween Night.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Sam and I are best friends. We have known each other since we have been kids and have always appreciated films of just about every genre and especially enjoy films which subvert expectations. We know this script will surprise you and impress you while you enjoy the twists and turns it provides. Scare Fair is fun and scary (with some depth)–the perfect components to a horror film.

TITLE: Echoes
GENRE: Supernatural Thriller
LOGLINE: On the run from two ominous stalkers, a woman’s bizarre visions of a pair of 1930s murders lead her and her mysterious new friend to danger and answers in the Mississippi Delta.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m a prolific writer (20 features) addicted to screenwriting and I placed in the 2014 Nicholl Semifinals with a different screenplay. I believe I have a problem in that I finish a first draft and then follow up with a minor rewrite or two before I move on to the next idea – leaving that newborn script unfed, crying, and wallowing in a shitty diaper. I’m looking for some feedback on this one – which is somewhat of a “structural experiment” for me as it’s told in two stories, with the first one playing forward and the second one playing backwards, meeting in the middle at the end. Help me change this script’s diaper and stick a wet nurse’s breast in its mouth.