Genre: Horror
Premise: Three teens rent a cursed VHS video tape and are pulled into an ’80s slasher movie that threatens to trap them there forever.
About: Lionsgate just picked this one up last week. Seth Rogen is producing with Greg Silverman’s Stampede Ventures. The script was written by Chris Thomas Devlin, whose sparse (some might say, too sparse) horror script, Cobweb, finished high on the Black List a few years ago. He also penned the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Details: 100 pages

I’m going to start today with a public reminder that these “fun” slasher-horror scripts do well on the market. First, they’re easy to read. More so than traditional horror scripts. That’s because there’s more dialogue (so eyes fly down the page faster) and the subject matter has a breezy easy-to-digest quality to it (as opposed to, say, Dune). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fellow “fun” slasher-horror script “Scream” is one of the most famous spec sales in Hollywood history. So if you’re good with dialogue and you like fun bloody horror scenarios, this is a lucrative genre to write in. Let us now find out if this is one of the good ones.

15 year old Lena and 14 year old Shawn are sister and brother. The two are total horror nerds, spending a big portion of their lives making little slasher horror movies based on all their favorite horror films. But the two are dealing with a huge shift in their lives as their father just died and they’re forced to move out of the city to a small town where living is cheaper.

A few months after moving, Shawn’s biggest nightmare comes true. Lena has found a significant other – Izzy, a cool girl at school that Lena is absolutely smitten with. So much for Team Horror! One weekend, however, when their mom goes out of town, Lena agrees to watch a horror movie with Shawn, like the good old days. So Shawn goes into town and finds a mysterious old VHS video store. The owner, a freaky woman with white hair, takes him to the back and gives him a special movie called, “How They Bleed.”

Thrilled that he has something new to watch with his sister, Shawn gets home only to find out… Lena is hanging out with Izzy! Boooo! Shawn goes upstairs to angrily watch the movie by himself and, while doing so, notices that the young actress in the movie looks exactly like a picture of a missing girl he saw back in town. Then he sees her, in the movie, running towards a house. Wait, that isn’t just any house. That’s THEIR HOUSE!

Yup, we got ourselves a Jumanji situation here. The movie has come to them! Once Lena and Izzy realize what’s going on, they have to run for their lives from a killer wielding a giant scythe. Long story short, there’s been a lot of missing children in this town over the years, and that’s because they’ve all gotten caught in this movie! When one of those children steals the movie video tape, Shawn, Lena, and Izzy will have to chase him around town all night to get it back, all with a persistent Scythe Guy chasing them.

Video Nasty does some good things and some not so good things.

For starters, I liked that Devlin focused the story on this broken relationship between a brother and sister. I advocate for this all the time on the site. Instead of only focusing on a character, what’s broken about them, and their battle to fix that brokenness, do the same with a relationship.

In Video Nasty, Shawn’s sister is growing up. She’s not making movies with him anymore. And he’s trying to resolve that in his head. The script even goes so far as to give Shawn a choice at the end. The creepy video store lady says he can stay in this movie forever and she’ll make it so that Lena would never like Lizzy, and therefore Shawn and Lena will have their old relationship back, which they can live every day, over and over again. Or he can continue down this path of destroying the movie to get back to the real world, where the chasm between him and his sister will only grow larger over the years. Which would he rather have?

But here’s the frustrating thing about screenwriting. Just because you’ve got this noble idea of how you’re going to do something, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to execute it effectively. The reality with this relationship is that you have a 14 year old boy acting 8 years old the whole movie. Shawn follows Lena around like a little puppy. We are to believe she is the only thing in his life worth living for. I could MAYBE see that if Shawn was 8 years old and looked up to his big sister. But 14 years old? I’ve never seen a relationship like that before.

And I know why Devlin chose those ages. It’s so that the two could have this horror filmmaking past together. This happens all the time in screenwriting where you have these ideas of how you want something to work that’s not believable, however if you change them to the believable version, they take away something that you like. And most writers don’t like to give up the things that they really like, even when they’re not essential to the story.

The filmmaking backstory is a nice touch and creates a unique relationship between these two siblings, but it is not necessary for the story to work. You can just as easily make them horror aficionados who enjoy watching horror movies. That way you could change Shawn’s age to the one makes more sense here – 8, 9, or 10.

Can it still work the way it is? Yeah, it’s a fun slasher horror movie. This genre is very forgiving. But it’s just weird that the emotional core of this script is built on a 14 year old crying himself to sleep every night cause his 15 year old sister doesn’t hang out with him anymore.

There’s also something chunky salsa about the script’s mythology. The missing kids from the town who become locked in the movie – some of them are aware they’re still themselves, while others have forgotten who they are completely? But they always remember right as they’re about to get killed?? After you kill the Monster, he’s able to reanimate into any other character in the movie, a la Agent Smith from The Matrix? And, at a certain point, everyone in the movie starts to realize you’re trying to change the film so they all start attacking you?

I’m not sure I’d call any of these things script-killers. But you don’t want audience members leaving any movie that you’ve written asking, “So wait a minute… how did that work exactly?” “Why are they able to do that?” “Why could they only do that later in the movie but not earlier?” You gotta get that mythology as airtight as possible. Not just to appease annoying critics like myself. But because it genuinely makes your movie better when everything is tied up nicely.

This is a tough script to pick on a final verdict on. It’s definitely not bad. But it’s a bit too messy for my taste. From the brother-sister relationship to the 65%-of-the-way-there mythology, I’m not feeling it. With that said, Rogen and Co. are supposed to develop it. So hopefully it’ll get better.

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

What I learned: I like whenever somebody can come up with stakes WORSE THAN DEATH. Not that death is bad stakes. But it’s kind of… obvious? Here, in Video Nasty, the stakes are that if they get killed by the killer, they’re stuck in this movie forever, having to relive this day over and over and over again, getting killed by this monster every night. Now that is a scenario I do not want to get caught in.

CONGRATULATIONS if you are one of the 42 total writers to make it to the semi-finals of The Last Great Screenplay Contest! (Note: I miscounted the other day when I said there were 53 total – sorry!) For those who weren’t around when I started this contest back in 1897, The Last Great Screenplay Contest works like this: People sent me their script. I promised to read the first 10 pages. If I loved the first ten pages, the script advanced into my “YES” pile. If I really liked the first ten pages, the script advanced into my “HIGH MAYBE” pile. If I sort of liked the pages, it went into my “LOW MAYBE” pile, and if I didn’t connect with the pages, it went into my “NO” pile.

The semi-finalists – all of which will be listed today – are scripts that finished either in my “YES” pile or my “HIGH MAYBE” pile. What this means is that I will now read at least the first 60 pages of the HIGH MAYBES and the entire script for the YES’S. The plan is to announce the finalists in the first week of January and then, a few days later, the winner. The goal is to get the winner a manager and agent and I will also produce the project, for which I plan to keep the Scriptshadow community updated on, while we do everything in our power to get the film made.

Okay, now on to a couple of things I anticipate will be brought up in the comments. Yo Carson, where are all the female writers????? Part of the problem is that for every 12 men who entered, only one woman entered. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something about my content, writing style, and/or types of scripts that I cover that don’t appeal to a lot of female writers. So I just don’t have as many female readers.

I still think, even with those numbers, that there should’ve been more female semi-finalists. But I can promise you that, once I started reading those pages, all I cared about was, is it good or not? That’s it. If it was good, I advanced it, if it wasn’t, I didn’t. I don’t think it would’ve benefited anybody had I graded on a curve. So as frustrating as the low female semi-finalist count is, I can’t do anything about it. Tell your female friends to start reading Scriptshadow!

On to loglines. I know – I JUST KNOW – that the “my logline is better than these loglines” brigade and the “Really?? This is the best you could do??” Club will be out in full force. So let me remind you, the first round of my contest was about one thing – the first ten pages. It didn’t matter if I loved the logline or hated it. All that mattered was if the first ten pages were good or not. If they were good, I advanced them. If not, I didn’t. So don’t get too caught up in logline drama.

Speaking of loglines, I came up with an idea over the weekend. I have almost 100 scripts that made the “LOW MAYBE” pile. I still plan to read at least 10 more pages of each of those in the hopes that the scripts get better. But I also thought it would be fun to take the 20 most promising of the LOW MAYBES and spend the next four weekends doing four Amateur Offerings with those scripts. Then, if one or two are really good, they would advance to the finals. I don’t 100% know if I can do this yet because not everyone likes their script posted online. So I’ll have to send some e-mails ahead of time and make sure everyone’s game.

Finally, if your script didn’t advance, please don’t get down on yourself or do anything drastic like quit screenwriting (I’ve gotten a few of those e-mails from people who didn’t advance in the past). A big part of finding success in screenwriting is finding the people who “get you.” Finding the people who like the genres you write in and the unique voice you bring to the page. There are so many people who work in this town that you have to get your scripts out to everybody in order to find those connections. Sure, drink some whisky. Feel sorry for yourself for a few days. But then get back to writing. I have absolutely NO DOUBT that some of the people who didn’t advance in The Last Great Screenplay Contest will have long fruitful careers as screenwriters. Hell, two Nicholl winners didn’t advance and a dozen plus writers who have produced credits didn’t either. So don’t give up. Definitely not on account of one guy’s opinion.

Thanks to everyone who entered. And congratulations to the semi-finalists!

EDIT: Since I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about this, everyone who made the semis can send me an UPDATED DRAFT if they want to. You must to do so by Friday!

FIRST, OUR HIGH MAYBES!

Title: White Lobster
Genre: Adventure romance
Logline: When a timid young woman winds up marooned on a deserted island; she’s forced to do battle with a fellow male castaway over a million dollars’ worth of cocaine found buried in the sand.
Writer: Stephanie Jones.
(Note: Long time Scriptshadow reader’s perseverance pays off!)

Title: Crescent City 
Genre: Action-Horror 
Logline: A woman with the ability to control ghosts is forced to protect a witness being hunted by supernatural assassins.
Writer: William McArdle and Andy Marx

Title: Severed
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: After receiving an item belonging to his mother who vanished 13 years prior, teenager Andrew Thompson returns to his hometown to finally uncover the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
Writer: Ryan Bliss

Title: The Bear
Genre: Magical Realist/Supernatural Drama
Logline: A young woman who has recently inherited her father’s ranch in northern New Mexico begins to suffer mysterious misfortunes after saving a bear from a trap.
Writer: Sarita Shera

Title: The Radix Unknown
Genre: Science-Fiction
Logline: Finding themselves prisoners in a government bunker during a global pandemic, a child prodigy and her estranged father must unite to not only save one another, but the future of mankind itself. 
Writer: Alex Ross
(Note: A previous script of Alex’s, Hexen, won Amateur Friday years ago)

Title: Blind Trust
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Man orders hit on himself. Changes mind.
Writer: Michael Burke
(Note: Yes, I am well aware this is a bad logline. But what can I say? The pages were good!)

Title: DAYLIGHT
Genre: Horror/Contained Thriller
Logline: An Ivy League graduate who authored and profited from a popular blog on graduating college debt-free must fight for her life when she’s trapped in a hotel by a menacing woman and her cult-like following. They have one simple demand: the grad must reveal to the world that she paid for her education by moonlighting as a high-end escort or die before daylight.
Writer: Mike Morra

Title: The Last One Alive
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: A bloodied, hysterical teenager emerges from the woods claiming that a masked man murdered her friends at a remote cabin. But as the local Sheriff starts investigating the mass killings, he begins to suspect the teenage survivor may not be telling the truth.
Writer: Joseph Davidson

Title:  KINETIC
Genre:  Action, Thriller
Logline: Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife. 
Writer: Chris Dennis.

Title: Gladiator Warrior Battle-Dome 3000!
Genre: Sci-fi Horror/Thriller
Logline: After a botched robbery leads to certain death, five dysfunctional criminals are given a second chance when they are transported into the future to become contestants on a game-show where they must battle against teams from different historical eras in a futuristic gladiatorial arena to win a second chance.
Writer: Paul Clarke
(Note: Previously won his genre category in the Page Screenwriting Competition)

Title: Roxbury Manor
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: After her husband passes away, a stubborn elderly woman refuses to move from their rural farm. But when a group of thieves target her, she uses her intimate knowledge of the giant secluded manor and all its secret passages, along with a collection of ancient weaponry, to fend them off and prove her independence.
Writer: Paul Clarke.

Title: No Setting Sun
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: A hypnosis expert infiltrates a religious cult in an attempt to deprogram a young woman from the inside, but he quickly loses control as he and the formidable cult leader, who seems to have supernatural powers, fight for power.
Writer: Chris Rodgers
(Note: Chris Rodgers is one of three writers with two scripts in the semi-finals. Can you find the others?)

Title: Where Neon Goes to Die
Genre: One Hour Crime Drama
Logline: After losing her job, a single mother gets in over her head when she agrees to become the getaway driver for a vicious crime syndicate.
Writer: Keem Tory.

Title: Honey Mustard
Genre: Horror
Logline: After being stiffed, an unhinged waitress, hellbent on revenge, torments the customer who didn’t tip her and his surprisingly resourceful family. “Don’t Breathe” meets “Joker”.
Writer: Michael J. Kospiah
(Note: Writer of Austin Film Festival award-winning indie thriller, “The Suicide Theory,” on Amazon Prime, 79% Rotten Tomatoes Score)

Title: NANOPOCALYPSE
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline; A young couple with one hell of a pest problem: their new home is the battleground between two armies of evolved nanotechnology.
Writer: James Hutchinson.
(Note: This is up there as one of my favorite concepts entered)

Title: The Brink
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
Logline: A dying man takes his teenage son across country to avenge the murder of his wife on the brink of a societal collapse.
Writer: Henry Sullen.

Title: Mother Redeemer
Genre: Psychological Horror / Thriller
Logline:  When Allie – a devout member of the Children of Ra – receives a sign from their God that she will soon be the mother of Earth’s messiah, she must find a way to protect herself and her divine child from the cult’s corrupt leader, who intends to use the newborn for his own malicious purposes.
Writer: Brian Accardo

Title: TIGHTER
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Logline: When a Japanese rope bondage workshop is taken hostage by masked intruders, a couple must find a way to escape their captors while tied together at the wrists. 
Writer: Arun Croll.

Title: Lights on the way to Eastpoint
Genre: Sci-fi Horror
Logline: A headstrong tourist struggles to get his terminally ill father back home during an eerie alien encounter in Uruguay.
Writer: Federico Fracchia.

Title: Almost Airtight
Genre: Horror
Logline: When an airborne chemical attack causes widespread madness, a woman drives cross-country in an airtight van to rescue her son after his father becomes violently insane.
Writer: Jeff Debing

Title: Better
Genre: Psychological Thriller/Horror
Logline: After recently moving to a new home in the suburbs, a married couple discover a secret room above their garage, that becomes an obsessive project for the wife, driving a rift between the couple, as the husband grows more paranoid about the community they’ve moved into.
Writer: Rosario Pellerito.

Title: Tigers
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Two estranged sisters, trying to free tigers from captivity, instead get trapped aboard the ship of a deadly crew of animal smugglers… along with three man-eating tigers on the loose.
Writer: Tim Keen

Title: The Misery Index
Genre: Dramedy/Musical
Logline: A terminally ill, improvident father spends the last day of his life touring NYC with his estranged daughter, and has only a few hours to right a lifetime of wrongs…and make 1.2 million dollars.
Writer: David Burton
(Note: Made the top 50 of the Nicholl last year. Evolves into a musical: think Little Miss Sunshine meets La La Land)

Title: A Sacrifice For a Pregnancy
Genre: Folk Horror
Logline: After suffering from a miscarriage, an engaged couple putting off the marriage for 4 years travel to a rehab centre to help them recover – only for it to be controlled by the Irish Púca; bent on driving the couple apart and extracting the foetus.
Writer: Robert O’Sullivan.

Title: HOLLY
Genre: Thriller
Logline:  When a traumatized woman thinks she’s killed her abusive husband, she goes on the run with the help of a compassionate pregnant woman, while staying one step ahead of her violent husband and a relentless female Texas Ranger.
Writer: Jeff Williams
(Note: His script Pure won a Nicholl Fellowship and the Austin Film Festival in the same year)

Title: Killing Squirrel Creek
Genre: Comedy/Mystery
Logline: America’s favorite mystery author returns home for his father’s funeral and reluctantly teams up with his unhinged sister who believes their father was murdered. 
Writer: Erik Howard.

Title: BORDERLINE
Genre: Drama / Survival Thriller
Logline: When she’s enslaved by a dirty border patrol agent, a provincial Guatemalan farmer’s wife must use her newfound English skills and survival wits to plot an escape and secure asylum in the U.S.
Writer: Kenyetta Raelyn.

Title: Artificial
Genre: Sci-Fi/Contained Thriller
Logline: An amnesia-ridden victim of a pandemic virus wakes up in a mysterious house with a woman who’s nursed him back to health. As the two grow close, he begins to suspect she isn’t telling him the whole truth, and must do everything he can to get out alive.
Writer: Jonathan Dillon

Title: Between The Raindrops
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Logline: Struggling with a tough decision, a teenage boy accidentally stops time and can’t figure out how to restart it. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND meets ABOUT TIME
Writer: Jori Richman.
(Note: Writer is repped at Verve)

Title: Black Friday
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A troubled father and his teenaged daughter witness a murder at the local mall on the eve of Black Friday. Together they must set their differences aside to avoid the killers, survive the night and stop a terrorist attack on the biggest shopping day of the year.
Writer: Jonathan Dillon.

Title: Sepulveda Pass
Genre: Action Thriller
Logline: When an armored car transporting a captured drug lord is ambushed on the Sepulveda Pass, an off-duty CHP officer driving her junkie son to rehab must defend the gridlocked freeway against a ruthless cartel hit-squad.
Writer: George H. Stroud.
(Note: This might be my favorite title of the bunch)

Title: The Dead Hours
Genre: Anthology Horror
Logline: After being tasked with watching the police station overnight during a storm, two police offers are given a mysterious cache of interview tapes, which they decide to listen to.  Each tape interview describes a tale of terror, and the two officers find how the tapes they are listening to are related to them personally.
Writer: Luke Hutchinson.

Title: Cul-De-Sac
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: The newly crowned Chair of a ritzy neighbourhood’s Strata Council will stop at nothing to eliminate a defiant neighbour who threatens the street’s chances at maintaining its dynastic hold on a home & garden magazine’s annual award for the city’s ‘best block’.
Writer: Paul Vaughan.

Title: Family Forever
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: Following a Yoruba Myth where the dead return to unsuspecting loved ones to lure them to the afterlife, a family of six must figure out whom amongst them is dead, before they all meet their end.
Writer: Gbolahan Akitunde
(Note: Have read one of Gbolahan’s other scripts – House Boy – which was quite good! Nigerian writer.)

Title: Demonology
Genre: Horror/Action
Logline: A former criminal turned priest relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has gone missing in the seedy and supernatural underbelly of Los Angeles.
Writer: Adam Simmons.
(Note: Winner of the ‘First 10 Pages’ contest last year with ‘The Woman Who Disturbed the Rat’.)

Title: And the Light Shines In
Genre: Contained Drama/Thriller
Logline: The video diaries of a woman facing terminal cancer who suddenly becomes a national phenomenon when the fame of her live-stream unexpectedly skyrockets.
Writer: Maya Suzuki.

Title: Shelby
Genre: Comedy/Dark Comedy
Logline: A small town Sheriff unwittingly becomes an internet meme after killing a childhood acquaintance in the line of duty. 
Writer: Derek Williams

AND NOW, OUR FIVE YES’S! (THESE ARE ‘FIRST TEN PAGES’ ENTRIES THAT WOWED ME)

Title: Osculum Infame
Genre: Contained Survival Thriller
Logline: Logline: A young woman is about to be hanged in the middle of nowhere. She’s already tiptoeing with the rope tightened around her neck, when her executioner dies unexpectedly. So now she’s literally hanging on for dear life. ‘Buried’ meets ‘The Revenant’.
Writer: Bernhard Francis Brookman
(Note: Writer is from Germany)

Title: MASKED
Genre: Horror
Logline: A suicidal woman who literally can’t kill herself finds a reason to live after befriending an unusual teenage boy.
Writer: Ryan Kirkpatrick
(Note: Ryan won my very first Scriptshadow Screenplay Contest with “OH NEVER, SPECTRE LEAF!”, and now here he is primed to possibly do it again in the final one!).

Title: Wish List
Genre: Thriller/Action
Logline: An Amazon delivery man is ambushed in Mexico by a group of gangsters who mistake him for a drug mule, and must survive using only the packages inside his van.
Writer: Joseph Fattal.
(Note: Is this the most clever logline in the semi-finals?)

Title: SB-3
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: When an earthquake and tsunami trap them in a sub-basement of their research facility, a trio of workers must escape through the labyrinth of air vents while being hunted by genetically-altered predators.
Writer: Sam Kerr
(Note: Won last year’s Halloween Showdown with entry, “Genesis”)

Title: That Wind Come Down
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After taking the fall for a horrific crime and spending twenty five years in prison, a neurologically disabled ex-con must confront his troubled past as he desperately tries to find a kidnapped young woman whose disappearance may be connected to his past transgressions.
Writer: Chris Rodgers

It’s finally here. It only took a year. Somebody buy me a beer. Soon, it will all be clear!

Yes, the semi-finalists are about to be announced and I wanted to give you a heads up on how this is going to work. For those that don’t know, I had four piles for my contest. A “YES” pile. A “HIGH MAYBE” pile. A “LOW MAYBE” pile. And a “NO” pile. On Monday, I will be revealing scripts that landed in the “YES” pile and the “HIGH MAYBE” pile.

As of this moment, there are 5 scripts in the “YES” pile and 38 in the “HIGH MAYBE” pile. Those numbers might change over the weekend as I’ll be reading the remainder of the entries. My plan for the next round is to read to at least page 60 on all the high maybes and read the full script of all the yes’s. I’ll give you a post date for the finalists and winner on Monday.

Unfortunately, people in the LOW MAYBE pile will not get shout-outs but that does not mean you aren’t still in it. Low Maybes consist mainly of concepts I liked where the writing wasn’t up to par (in the first 10 pages at least), and strong voices who don’t yet have a feel for how to write a screenplay. There are currently 73 entries in my LOW MAYBE folder. I’m going to give LOW MAYBES at least 10 more pages to see if they hook me. The chances of advancing to the next round are slim but you’ve still got a shot!

Buckle up. Monday’s going to be fun!

Good news! It looks like I’ll be posting all scripts that made it into the next round in The Last Great Screenplay Contest THIS MONDAY. Mark your calendars!

I was perusing Youtube as I am wont to do when I’m in Procrastination Mode, which is pretty much all the time. And I came across a video with the title – “What Did Darth Vader Do In His Free Time?”

I found myself fascinated by the question. We know Vader reluctantly attends meetings with regional generals. We know he stays updated on rumors of where Luke Skywalker might be. We know he meditates in that egg-shaped cryo-chamber of his.

But that only accounts for what? 30% of his day? Okay, let’s be generous and say 50%. What does he do with the rest of his day? I don’t think they have internet in Star Wars so he can’t sit around and waste time. He possibly has a few more meetings to go to than the ones they show. I could see him seeking updates on the performances of all his generals, since he doesn’t have time for a shred of ineffectiveness.

What else, though? If you were to chart Darth Vader’s day from 6 in the morning to 12 midnight, what would each hour look like? Does he shower? Does he read? Does he eat lunch? Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Darth Vader eat. How does he eat? Is it all intravenous? And does Darth Vader do anything for fun? Actually, “fun” is a misleading word. Does he do anything for enjoyment?

I am asking these questions because I’m genuinely fascinated with the subject matter. But I’m also bringing your attention to a lesser-known strategy for writing strong characters, and that is to know them beyond the scenes they’re in.

I came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that the most important part of a screenplay is character. A script can survive a bland concept. A script can survive an average plot. But a script cannot, under any circumstances, survive weak characters.

Now normally when we discuss strong characters, we go to the staples. Character flaw. Unresolved relationships with other characters. Addictions. Unresolved conflict with the past (trauma, death). But you can still do all of that stuff and your character feel bland. There’s a reason for this. You may know the psychological makeup of your CHARACTER when you apply these things. But you don’t yet know the PERSON. To find the person, you have to figure what their life is like beyond the page.

Now, there are a few ways to do this. The most common way is to write out a biography for your character. I like character bios but it doesn’t always give you what you want because the directive is vague. Covering 20-30 years of a character’s life in 5-10 pages can be daunting. What do you focus on? What do you leave out? And since your summarization is spanning so much time, are you at risk of resting on cliche (her parents died in a car crash, for example – a backstory I see in about 1 out of every 5 scripts).

The most helpful option I’ve found is to chart out an average day with your character. I’m talking about a day BEFORE your movie started. Start from the top. 7 am. They wake up. What’s the first thing they do? From there, assuming they have a job, what’s their pre-work ritual? Do they make breakfast or does their spouse make breakfast? If they make breakfast, do they go the fast and processed route – Pop-Tarts? Or do they take their time and cook a fluffy healthy omelette?

This may seem like overkill but think about it. How much can you learn about a person through what they eat? My experience is that you can learn a lot. Let me prove it to you. Here are two breakfast meals for two different people. Our first character gets their meal on the way to work. He goes to McDonald’s and gets a Hotcakes meal with two extra sausages, along with a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle, along with a large Diet Coke. Our second character makes a green smoothie along with some steel cut oatmeal with a chopped up banana and a drizzle of peanut butter. Along with two hard boiled eggs.

You tell me you can’t envision these two people from these two meals. And had you never had a breakfast scene in your script, you never would’ve known this. Talk about an effective exercise! You’re already learning things about your character and you haven’t even gotten to work yet!

From there, what time do they go to work? And where is work? Is it an hour commute in heavy traffic or is it the 12 feet between the bed and the couch, like the commute your friend Scriptshadow enjoys? If it is an hour commute, what do they do during that hour? Do they listen to music, podcasts, sports radio? Note how each choice further shapes your character. A guy who listens to NPR segments about water shortages in Africa is a different beast than one who’s obsessed with whether his Dodgers picked up a new pitcher by the trade deadline.

Or what if they drive in complete silence? Good god, how creepy is that? This would be the choice I’d come up with for a serial killer.

Once they get to work, what’s the first thing they do? Do they say hi to others at the office or do they avoid everyone? Is there someone at work they like to flirt with? Do they seek her out and say hi?

This is going to be a grandiose statement but I’m going to say it anyway. If you don’t know what your hero does at work on an hour by hour basis, you don’t know character well. I can feel your resistance already. But trust me. You don’t. I have 7000-8000 screenplays in my rearview mirror as evidence. Most people spend more hours at work than they do at home. So if you don’t understand that part of their life, do you really understand them? Me says no.

Really figure this out. Know what they do. I know it’s annoying because we’re often writing about jobs we have no experience in. But that’s exactly why you’re avoiding it. Because researching it is too difficult. Well guess what. That bored audience member doesn’t have any sympathy for you. They’re not going to give you a break because figuring out what a regional manager does all day is “weally weally hard.”

Where do they go to lunch? What do they eat (again)? You can learn so much about a character from these moments in their day. For example, you might realize that your hero is trying to eat better. So they bring a healthy bagged lunch. Then they have to eat with everyone else in the break room who have all ordered pizza. Just the way your character stares at that delicious pizza they’re not allowed to have tells you so much about them.

Do they check in with their spouse during the day? When they get out of work, do they go straight home? Do they pick up the kids from their practice or activities? Or do they leave that duty for their spouse? These choices matter. They give us further insight into who your character is. Maybe your character *could* do that but they’re selfish so they leave it up to their overworked spouse.

Or maybe your hero usually stays late at work because they hate their home life. They’re bummed when they run out of work to do and everyone else has left because now they actually have to go home. Or maybe they’re the opposite. They hate work more than anything. Or love their kids more than anything and therefore leave the second the clock strikes 5pm.

Once they’re home for the night, is it a family dinner where they all sit at the table and talk about their day? Or does everyone scatter off and do their own thing? Does their rebellious teenage daughter secretly order Doordash every night, compounding an insane food bill that infuriates both parents? Do you see how much we’re learning about this person’s life through these questions?

And all we’ve done is gone through their day. So I implore you to RIGHT NOW drop whatever you’re doing and write out an average daily schedule for the hero in your current screenplay. Come back to these comments and I promise you – PROMISE YOU – you will happily concede that you learned a few new things about your character. And once you’re finished, do it for the next three biggest characters in your script.

It doesn’t take long. What do you have to lose? Besides your lightsaber-wielding son.

Genre: Period
Premise: Set in 1862, after his sister is kidnapped by soldiers, a half-white, half-Comanche teenager teams up with several members of his tribe to track the soldiers East in an attempt to rescue her.
About: Today’s script finished with 6 votes on last year’s Black List and has a pretty good pitch – from the Black List: “A reverse SEARCHERS from the perspective of the Natives going East into the unknown, the metropolis, the belly of the beast, late 1800s New York City.” Screenwriter, Esteban Orozco, has written several successful TV shows, the most popular of which is “El Chapo” on Netflix.
Writer: Esteban Orozco (based on a story by Esteban and Felipe Orozco).
Details: 6/29/19 draft (107 pages)

I got the message loud and clear yesterday.

Superhero = bad.

Bad, Carson!

So I decided to go 180 degrees in the other direction. The only superpower you’re going to see in today’s script is the power to watch pretty sunsets. The power to ride wild horses. The power to eat buffalo meat.

The year is 1862.

The Comanche tribe’s numbers are dwindling. Just a few decades ago, they had all the buffalo they could devour. Now, the herds have dwindled, creating a situation where the last active nomadic tribe in America has to constantly be on the move in order to stay fed.

That’s how we meet them in this story, settling in an area where there were SUPPOSED to be buffalo, but there are none. The Chief is yelling at his main buffalo guy, Yapa, about it. Now they’re going to have to move AGAIN.

The Chief thinks his half-white son, 14 year old Naconi, should be on the next hunting trip. They head north, finally run into some buffalo, but Naconi makes a crucial mistake and almost gets himself and the best hunter in the tribe, Quan, killed. He’s so embarrassed that the very next night he hops on a horse, determined to leave the tribe forever.

However, his 8 year old full-Comanche sister, Etenia, sees him and follows him out. After he tells her to go back home, several members of another tribe take her. And then that tribe is attacked by American soldiers, who take her.

Once it’s determined that not only did American soldiers take Etenia, but that they’re heading east fast, the Chief teams Naconi up with Quan, Yapa, their medicine guy, and 15 year old Tenewa, a young female warrior who thinks guys are gross. They will be tasked with getting Etenia back.

The group tracks the soldiers all the way to Oklahoma City, where they learn they’re too late. The soldiers boarded a train and went back to New York City. Team Comanche has never even seen a train before. And they realize that going to New York is suicide. Comanches are not thought of well during this time. But Naconi is determined to right his wrong, and lead the group into the belly of the beast.

Simple story. Complex characters.

Let me say that again.

Simple story. Complex characters.

This is the recipe for most great screenplays.

Lots of writers are afraid to give you a narrative this simple – “Go retrieve sister” – because they believe that great writing needs to be complex and multi-layered and have twelve themes running underneath it at all times. Complexity has its place in writing. But it’s best saved for the characters. Give us someone like Beth in The Queen’s Gambit who had this crazy mom who tried to kill the both of them and she’s a math genius and she feels no emotion and she’s thrust into the world of a sport dominated by the opposite sex. There’s so much to delve into character-wise there that you don’t need a bunch of complex plotting.

Ironically, we have the same thing going on today that we did yesterday. A young girl has been kidnapped. That’s not a coincidence. The reason so many writers do this is that it creates a simple, powerful, narrative that’s easy to understand.

One of the problems I’m constantly running into with the contest submissions is that I’m getting confused about what’s happening. And that’s just in the first 10 pages! I can only imagine how lost I’d be if I had to read all of these scripts cover to cover. Writers are obsessed with cramming a million things into the first ten pages and then they’re surprised when you can’t keep up.

I was so at ease reading this because I understood what was going on immediately.

Another thing I like in scripts is when the task seems impossible. The more impossible you make it, the better. Orozco establishes early on the Comanche are persona non grata. They have a bad reputation with Americans so when they’re caught, they’re killed. Or enslaved. And now you’re telling us that, in order to save this sister, we have to go to the most populated place in all of America?? Of course I’m going to keep reading to see what happens.

However, Nomads makes a crucial structural error that keeps it from reaching double worth the read status. It puts us in New York City a little after the midpoint.

Yikes.

Why is this an “error?” Well, the script is designed around geographical momentum. We’re physically getting closer and closer to our destination, encountering obstacles along the way. Once you put us in New York City, there is no more movement. It’s all waiting. Waiting sucks away plot momentum. And the script nosedives as a result. It’s clear Orozco doesn’t quite know what to do because, after having his characters set up shop in a warehouse, days start going by. Then weeks. Then whole seasons!

Waiting…waiting…waiting…

What do I always say? WAITING NARRATIVES ARE HARD TO MAKE WORK. And here they’re waiting for some ship to come into port that they heard Etenia is going to be placed on. So Etenia is actually somewhere around them, but they don’t know where. Yet they hear she’ll be put on this ship once it arrives. So they have to wait for that ship. A quick Carson consultation could’ve solved this issue pronto. This decision killed much of the story’s momentum.

So when should the plot have got to New York? It’s simple. The third act! The break into the third act is when you want to get to your final destination. From there, you still have 25 pages to have them locate the sister and rescue her. That’s plenty of time.

This script was good. But it could’ve been really good.

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

What I learned: I find that some writers are reluctant, when writing period pieces, to include urgency. I get it on some level. The further back you go in time, the slower the world was. So it seems inauthentic to add some highly urgent timeline. I mean, it took 4 days by train to get to New York from Oklahoma. If they get to New York and learn that they only have 30 minutes to save Etenia, the audience would be like, “Excuse me, what?” HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean you should employ the opposite tactic – giving your heroes months to “solve the crime.” The way you want to do it is to add as much urgency as is acceptable in that time period. I think a few days would’ve been perfect. It still seems like time is running out in 1864. But it’s not so immediate that it comes off as unrealistic.