Genre: Thriller/Horror
Premise: Two years after a free solo accident nearly killed her, a fearless climber enlists the help of her old climbing partners to document her comeback.
About: This script finished number 2 on last year’s Hit List. It was part of a bidding war that Netflix won. Netflix always wins. The project will be produced by Ridley Scott and directed by his son, Jake Scott.
Writer: Colin Bannon
Details: 112 pages

You guys know I’m all about the Free Solo.

The more time I can spend with Alex Honnald’s people, the happier I am. So when I found out there was a free solo spec script, by golly I had to read it!

35 year old Hillary Hall is the best female free solo climber in the world. She’s got an achilles heel, though. She’s arrogant. And that arrogance leads to her downfall, literally, when in the opening scene she slips and falls off the rock cliff.

Lucky for Hillary, she hit a branch on the way down, which slowed her fall enough that when she plunged into the forest, she was able to survive. Two years later, after lots of rehabbing, Hillary wants to climb again. And she’s got her sights set on a virgin wall – the Diyu Shan, 4000 feet of sheer granite in the Sichuan Province of China.

She gets the band back together – the documentary crew who filmed her now infamous fall – to create a comeback story. The leader and head photographer, Neil, is game. He knows Hillary is his path to stardom, maybe even an Oscar. Rounding out the crew are Jen, a scrappy cameraperson, and Ernie, the guy who tried to save Hillary from falling that day and failed.

Off the crew head to China where they immediately start getting bad vibes. Their driver tells them a couple of Americans came here months ago and died on the cliff, their bodies never found. And when they reach the actual cliff, they see a giant cave right in the middle of the ascent, like a mouth waiting to gobble them up.

The good news is, they’re going to be using ropes this time. And Neil’s going up with her. This is a “first ascent” which you can’t do solo. Every foot you ascend is a mystery so you need to be safe. However, it turns out that climbing is the least of their worries. Hillary begins seeing visions of the two men who died on the cliff.

And back on ground control, Ernie becomes convinced that the wall is alive. That it’s going to kill all of them. Needless to say, this turns out to be anything but your average ascent. There’s a good chance that none of the crew is leaving this mountain alive. That’s what you get when you don’t bring Alex Honnold with you.

It’s been over two weeks so I was stoked to get back to reviewing scripts. Thirty pages into this thing, I was salivating. It was exactly what I was hoping for.

And then things started to take a turn.

So here’s the thing.

We’re all looking for that +1.

We’ve got the script idea but wouldn’t it better if we had that ONE EXTRA ELEMENT to put it over the top?!

In theory, that’s a good way to think when constructing a movie concept. But, in reality, 1 + 0 can equal 3 and 1 + 1 can equal 0.

Confused?

Let me clarify. Sometimes, you already have everything you need. You don’t need a +1. Take Rocky for example. Can you have a +1’d Rocky where you turn him into a boxing cyborg? Sure. But you already had a great story about an underdog boxer who takes on the heavyweight champion to begin with. That’s enough to entertain an audience on its own… as long as the execution is good.

And that’s where screenwriters get scared. They don’t know if they can execute the basic story so they add on some horror or supernatural element for insurance.

Which is what happened here, in my opinion.

This was a good character-piece with a marketable hook all on its own. The world’s best free solo climber nearly falls to her death then rehabs to make a comeback two years later on a never-before-climbed wall in China. There’s plenty to work with there, especially from a character development perspective.

Making the mountain a ghost isn’t a bad idea. I was just never convinced the movie needed to go there.

Also, you should always be wary of concepts that allow you to use the “Am I going crazy” trope to create scary moments then never have to explain whether those moments really happened or not. It’s a straight up cheat and while audiences will give you a couple of those in every horror movie, they don’t want you doing it every other scene. It just becomes this ongoing cock tease where you’re not really committing to one side or the other. Is it a drama and they’re just imagining all this? Or is the mountain really attacking them?

It’s not that you can’t make this work but audiences don’t like being fucked with for too long. Sooner or later, they want an answer. And this script doesn’t give them one until the final minute.

With that said, the script manages to finish the climb.

It’s got as clear of a structure as you’re going to find (goal – get to the top, stakes – if you fail, you die). There’s no urgency, per se, but you don’t need urgency if your timeframe is tight. We know this is a 2 day climb so we’re not clamoring for the story to speed up. We know when it’s going to end.

There are also some fun checkpoints Bannon plays with. We’ve got that mysterious cave halfway up. What’s in there? And they’ve already been told that the final stretch is a ‘point of no return’ situation. Once you get past that point, the only way off the mountain is up.

You always want things looming in your story. Give us stuff not just to look forward to – looking forward is good – but stuff to WORRY ABOUT. That’s the real special sauce that keeps us reading. I knew that cave and that point of no return were coming at some point which made me want to keep reading.

Also, Bannon makes his best choice of the script once we reach the point of no return. Hillary has to climb the last stretch of the mountain solo.

This is a tough one to rate because it’s one of those situations where I wanted a different story than the writer wanted to tell. So I can’t ding him for not giving me what I wanted. But I really think he missed an opportunity to tell a compelling character piece about a woman making an impossible comeback in the most dangerous sport in the world.

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

What I learned: When the size of something is a major component of your story, you must provide a reference for the reader. We’re told Diyu Shan is 4000 feet tall. I have a vague idea of how tall that is but I have no visual reference for that. Bannon clears that up for us with this line: “That’s higher than the Twin Towers stacked on top of each other.” That’s something I can visualize. — Remember that screenwriting is about helping the reader visualize the movie. Anything you can do in your description to facilitate that, do it.

Congratulations!

You’ve finished your script. Now what???

Before I answer that question, let’s talk about productivity, since that was a common theme that came up throughout this challenge.

At one point or another, everyone battled with putting words on the page.

From what I could tell, these issues fell into two categories.

Category one was writer’s block. You could open the script but you didn’t have any ideas for what to write.

Category two was resistance. You couldn’t muster the motivation to even open the document up and write.

Of the two, writer’s block is more manageable because it’s a temporary bump in the road. You’ve reached a point in the screenplay you don’t have ideas for and because it’s harder to come up with a solution than it is to give up for the day, you often chose to give up.

This is why it’s helpful to have a page count per day. It’s a psychological hack. If you know that you have to hit a certain page count, you won’t care that you don’t have the solution. You’ll push through. But if your only criteria for writing is that you have the perfect answers, chances are you won’t write anything.

I get that some people don’t like to write this way. They’d rather write nothing than write something bad. But in the grand scope of screenwriting, it’s a lot easier to work with something than it is with nothing. So write in that imperfect scene or sequence knowing that, with some distance, you’ll be able to come back later and make it better.

The second issue – resistance – is a much bigger problem that can be broken down into its own two categories.

The first is you’re not connecting with this particular script idea on an emotional level. There’s nothing you feel passionate about in the story, whether it be thematic or the characters themselves. One of the reasons Jordan Peele was able to keep working on Get Out for nearly a decade was because he had something to say about race. If his story was just about bringing home a boyfriend to some weird parents, he never finishes that script.

Or the recent spec sale, “Shut In,” about a recovering meth addict trying to save her children from an abusive husband. I’m guessing the writer, Melanie Toast, had an intense emotional connection with that main character. She may not have been a drug addict herself but maybe she’d been in an abusive relationship before and having her heroine overcome that issue helped her find closure with that abuse from her own past.

You’re more likely to get up and write every morning when you’re connected that deeply with your material. So get in there and create some characters that you have an emotional connection to!

The second is that you have some deep blockage when it comes to writing. Maybe it’s a pursuit of perfectionism. Maybe you don’t believe that you’re good enough. Maybe you experienced some screenwriting trauma whereby you wrote something you were proud of and everyone who read it didn’t like it. Maybe you’ve beat your head on the door so many times without getting in that you think, “What’s the point anymore?”

It’s hard to sit down and write anything when you’ve got that going on in your head.

But it should comfort you to know that every artist goes through this on some level. You’re not alone. In fact, I was just watching a video the other day from a successful guy in a separate craft who I considered one of the most confident people I’d come across. And, out of nowhere, he conceded that he still struggles with a basic belief in himself. That was shocking to hear because I never would’ve guessed that with him.

The difference is he didn’t allow it to cripple him. He felt it but he didn’t let it win. Which leads me to a couple of solutions for you.

One, look into the self-critic. Writers are particularly susceptible to the self-critic because they’re in their minds all the time. This breeds a nice warm nest for the self-critic to operate in.

Eckhart Tolle is the most respected voice in silencing our inner critic but there are newer books out there which offer new tools to take the self-critic on. I can tell you from my own experience that learning how the self-critic operates has helped me become a mentally stronger individual. You’d be amazed at how much more productive you can be when you’re not spending 75% of your mental energy each day beating away the guy in your head who tells you you suck.

Finally, you may need to reevaluate how you approach writing. If you’re approaching writing in a manner by which you’ll only be happy once you become rich and successful, you are not going to become rich and successful. In addition to handicapping you mentally, artists don’t create their best stuff when their only motivation is success. They achieve their best stuff when they have something to say.

So instead of trying to write something amazing that brings you tons of money and success, write to have fun. Write for yourself. That’s the whole reason you started writing to begin with, right? Well let’s get back to that. Once that becomes your definition of happiness, everything else is gravy.

Okay, getting back on track here.

You’ve just finished your script. Now what?

Some people will tell you to leave it alone for two weeks. Let it sit there. Get some distance from it. That way you can read it objectively and see what you’ve got. I’m not sure that applies here. We’ve written this so fast that I’m not sure we know what we wrote. So if you’re not burned out, read the thing right now! See what you’ve got!

If you see potential in the story, start a new document and write down ideas for the second draft. Usually, in first drafts, we’re coming up with all these new ideas in the second half of the screenplay. A second draft is about moving some of these ideas up into the first half. For example, if you unexpectedly realized that a secondary character is a lot more interesting than you thought they were, give them a bigger storyline in the first half of the screenplay.

One of the less heralded screenplay lessons I’ve learned is the importance of identifying which characters are working and which aren’t. Don’t get locked in to who gets the most screen time just because that’s how you originally conceived them. If one of your characters is killing it, give us more of them! Likewise, if someone isn’t working, throw them out.

From there, you’re just trying to identify the 2-3 biggest issues in the script and come up with solutions for those. For example, if your main character is boring, ask yourself, “How can I make her less boring?” It might be adding a sense of humor. It might be giving her a more controversial backstory. It might be making her more active.

You’re not trying to build Rome in the second draft. You’re just trying to build upon the potential of your first draft.

I’m really happy for everyone who participated in this and wrote an entire screenplay through this exercise! You now have a great base for a screenplay that, with some intense rewriting, you’ll have ready to go by the time the Last Great Screenwriting Contest deadline rolls around.

I’ll be taking tomorrow off but I will see everyone on Tuesday with a script review. :)

96 pages down!

That means you should be in the heart of your climax.

A lot of people have issues with climaxes (insert joke here) but I find them to be one of the easier sequences in a screenplay.

The trick is to treat the climax like its own movie.

It’s a shorter movie. But it should have a first, a second, and a third act. It should have a midpoint. It should have a lowest point.

Usually, when climaxes fall apart, it’s because they don’t have any structure. So by thinking of them as their own movie, you should be in good shape.

Start with the setup. Let us know the rules of the climax.

For Parasite, the rules were the rich son’s party. “Here’s how it’s going to go. Poor Father, you’re going to dress up like a Native American and then jump out and surprise my son when I give you the cue… blah blah blah.”

The reason you want to set up the rules of your climax for the audience is because, then, you can upend those rules. You can have things go wrong. If you don’t set up what first needs to be done right, then the audience isn’t going to know when you start undermining the plan.

So whether it’s our cowboy hero prepping everyone in town for how they’re going to beat the gang of bad guys when they arrive or it’s Vin Diesel explaining to his crew how they’re going to pull off their heist – you’re explaining to the audience what’s SUPPOSED to happen so you can then play around with what ACTUALLY happens.

And like I pointed out yesterday in the comments, your climax will have a “Lowest Point” as well, just like the end of your Second Act had a “Lowest Point.”

If there isn’t a moment in the climax where we are 100% CONVINCED that our hero is going to fail, you haven’t properly written your climax.

I would go so far as to say have something happen in that climax where NOT EVEN YOU THE WRITER knows how you’re going to get your hero out of it. That’s the only way you’ll convince the audience that your hero’s going to lose.

In Toy Story 3’s climax, which I’d heard in advance was dark and the last Toy Story, I legitimately thought they were going to perish in that incinerator. And that was a Pixar film! If a Pixar film can make me think the characters are going to die, you should be able to do the same in your script.

And from there you have to be creative and come up with a way where they figure it out. Deus ex machinas are not encouraged unless they were extremely well set-up (yes, I know Toy Story 3 uses a deus ex machina). Try to come up with a clever way for your characters to save themselves rather than be saved. But yes, if you’re a master at setups and payoffs, you can construct a deus ex machina for your climax.

After that, don’t stick around too long. I prefer the Rocky approach (just end it) to the Parasite approach (too much epiloguing distances the audience from the feeling they had during the climax). But each story is unique and has its own requirements so do what feels right for you.

Very excited for everyone who stayed with the challenge. Just one more day of writing!

88 pages down. 22 to go!

In this bizarre world where you can walk down a sidewalk and the people walking towards you beeline to the other side of the street the second they see you coming, 22 pages left feels like darn good news.

Oh, who am I kidding? People darted away from me long before this coronavirus.

So what’s today’s topic?

It comes from commenter Scott Serradell.

Scott points out that he rolls his eyes whenever he sees these generic structural monikers people use to write screenplays. “Lowest Point.” “Dark Knight of the Soul.”

These “paint-by-numbers” terms, as Scott refers to them, are preventing you from writing something impactful and memorable.

And look. I get it. I groan whenever writers become overly reliant on Blake Synder’s beat sheet (let’s just say I’m not an ‘Opening Image’ guy).

However, when it comes to endings, you don’t want to leave things up to chance. If you do (and when I say “up to chance,” I’m referring to going with what “just feels right”) you end up with The Platform. A really good film that falls apart at the end.

Due to the very nature that your story is ending, it needs to be structured. Think about it. Real life doesn’t have a story ending. It’s ongoing. So by creating an ending to your movie, you’re defying the logic of the real world. For that reason, you want to embrace the artificiality of the situation and give your audience something that’s both dramatically satisfying and well thought out.

To do so, you need to build up to the moment. And what’s intrinsic to every build? Structure. You literally need to build a structure that will hold up your climax.

Conversely, if you try and go off of “what feels right,” it’s HIGHLY LIKELY that your ending will be unsatisfying.

The only “feel” type endings that work are ones that are heavily tied to the theme.

Stuff like Lost in Translation, Three Billboards, and to a lesser extent, Parasite.

These movies are more about experiencing life than going after some big goal and so the endings are less obvious to the writers while they’re writing the script.

Parasite is about the gap between the rich and the poor so the story ends on an extravagant birthday party for the youngest son of the family, where the poor father is relegated to being a clown who dances for the rich son’s enjoyment. The poor father cracks and all hell breaks loose.

Of course, theme-centric endings require that your theme be strongly conveyed to begin with. I’ll see writers write a theme-centric ending who did a muddy job of conveying theme throughout the previous 100 pages, resulting in an ending that feels as if it came out of nowhere.

I should also point out that the worst endings I encounter tend to have the same problem. Which is that THEY WEREN’T SET UP WELL. If you create enough setups throughout your script, you can make almost any ending work. Cause endings are about bringing everything together. So if you’re paying off setup after setup in your ending, it’s going to feel organic.

This is why Back to the Future remains, to me, the best movie ending ever. It’s payoff after payoff after payoff. And we see that with Parasite as well. This Native-American themed birthday party didn’t appear out of thin air. We’ve been told and shown throughout the movie that the young son is fascinated with the Native American culture.

Is there an element of “feeling what’s right” in picking your ending? Of course. But structure should take precedence over that feeling. You can have the best “feeling” ending in the world but if it isn’t organically tied into the rest of the movie, it won’t work.

Almost there, everyone. As Richard Marx once famously sang, whatever you do, wherever you go, KEEP. ON. WRITING!!!

It is Day 11 of the 2 Week Script Challenge.

I’ve asked you to write 8 pages a day. Which would mean, if you’ve been good, you will be writing pages 80 to 88 today.

Now here’s the good news if you’ve gotten this far. The last 30 pages of your script are the most structured of the entire screenplay. Your script is ending which means all you have to do is write a series of scenes that build to a climax.

If your script is between 100-110 pages, this will likely be where you introduce your LOWEST POINT. Your lowest point is where your heroes experience their biggest fall in the movie up to this moment. It looks as if there is no chance they will survive or succeed.

Notable LOWEST POINTS from films include Darth Vader striking Obi-Wan down in Star Wars.

There’s the house flooding scene in Parasite. A huge storm sweeps into their lower-than-ground-level home, making it unlivable.

The attempted suicide scene in The Invisible Man. Our heroine is in a mental hospital. It doesn’t look like there’s any way out except for death. And so that’s what she tries to do.

In A Quiet Place it’s when the dad is killed and the family is left to fend off the monsters on their own.

The lowest point scene is usually one of the more fun scenes to write because it’s such a big moment in the script. So this is always an exciting moment in the writing process for me. Well, anything where I’m able to leave the second act behind is an exciting moment.

From there, you’ll have your “dwell on what’s happened” sequence. This can last anywhere between 1-4 scenes depending on genre, pacing, and just the overall story you’re telling. We have to feel the effects of what just happened to your hero.

After that they have a rebirth, put together a plan to achieve their goal, and off they go to the climax. Easy, right?

Most stories have a goal to begin with, which makes the ending easy to figure out (the goal in Raiders is to get the Ark of the Covenant!). But sometimes scripts don’t have obvious goals. Romantic comedies are famous for that. It’s more about the relationship than the plot. This is why so many rom-coms end up at the airport with someone leaving. Whenever your ending isn’t built into your plot, you lean into the only other structure you know – which is scenarios that have worked in other movies.

But there’s still hope for you non-goal oriented screenplay writers. I learned this one from Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, the writers of Wedding Crashers. They said that they toiled over how to end their script for months until the obvious answer came to them. It’s a movie about weddings. The climax needs to be a wedding!

So look at your subject matter and that’s typically where you’re going to find your ending. If you’re writing about two chess players who fall in love, your ending shouldn’t contain any trips to the airport. It should probably take place at the national finals of the chess championships.

Very proud of everyone who’s made it this far.

KEEP. ON. WRITING!!!!