I originally started reading a script to review today. It was called “Propel.”
It starts off with this ocean diver woman and she goes diving with a partner. Then, out of nowhere, this whale comes screeching by. It’s upset because it’s got a net caught on its head. She somehow ends up in its mouth. And then, not long after, she ends up in its stomach.
The movie is about her trying to get out of this whale’s stomach before she runs out of oxygen.
Does this sound familiar?
It should.
I reviewed THE EXACT SAME STORY last year via a book called “Whalefall,” which is being turned into a movie.
The reason I bring this up is because I get a dozen e-mails a year from writers telling me that someone stole their idea. Usually from movies that have been made. They’ll say, “Nope was my idea! Jordan Peele stole it!” for example.
Propel is proof that nobody stole your idea. 99.9% of these, “someone stole my idea” stories come from newer writers who assume that they’re so genius, even though they don’t have any movie credits, that people are actively looking to take their ideas. Therefore, if someone writes something similar, it clearly must have been stolen.
Who would’ve thought that two scripts would’ve been written about a diver getting caught in a whale’s stomach and needing to get out before their air ran out? And yet that’s exactly what we have.
The truth is we’re all slurping from the same bowl of ideas. If you come up with an idea that was inspired by something you read ANYWHERE, chances are other people read that too and a portion of them likely came up with the same idea you did.
I’ve seen this TIME AND TIME again, where very specific movie ideas appear in two different scripts.
The only way you can convince me that someone stole your idea is if you had a relationship with this person and you talked a lot about your script with them. Or their script has the exact same dialogue as your script.
But even if you tell me some scenes are similar, that’s not enough. Because certain movie ideas lead to common scene ideas. If 100 people came up with an idea about a dinosaur theme park, I’m guessing 70 of them would’ve thought up the T-Rex car chase set piece. Cause it’s obvious.
Dueling ideas are a reality of this business.
However, if you don’t want to deal with that reality, there are ways around it. The number one way to avoid this problem is to NOT COME UP WITH AN IDEA that is inspired by something you read in the news. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people have read the same thing. Which means of course someone else is going to come up with the same idea.
I would also avoid ideas inspired by any place on the internet that gets a lot of views. Forget about coming up with movie ideas based on Reddit posts. Those posts have been read to death. Other people are going to write the same movies.
The number one place to find an original movie idea that nobody else will write is YOUR OWN LIFE.
What are the 2 or 3 most original compelling stories from your life? Chances are that there’s a movie there and it’s going to be so specific to your life experience that you won’t have any competition.
That’s why Baby Reindeer has become so huge. It’s a show based on this guy’s own personal experience. And that experience is SO specific that no one else can come up with something similar.
The number two way – STORIES FROM PEOPLE CLOSEST TO YOU.
Again, what we’re looking for are stories that are not publicly available. Once they get online, they’re there for the picking. But if only your friend knows about this crazy story, that’s the perfect story to turn into a screenplay. Cause you two, and maybe a few others, are the only ones who’ve heard it.
Which leads me to the third best way to come up with an original movie idea.
Which is to be okay with coming up with an idea that others might write BECAUSE you’re a good enough writer that your version is going to be better than anything anybody else can come up with.
Let’s go back to Jurassic Park for a second.
70 out of 100 writers would’ve come up with a T-Rex car chase.
But how many writers would’ve come up with the scene where the water in the cup starts vibrating? Where the jeep gets turned upside down? Where the people are stuck in the jeep as the T-Rex’s big snout spins the upside-down car around like a top?
Maybe 5 out of 100? Maybe 3?
That’s all EXECUTION. It’s the writer coming up with a unique scene within that larger movie idea. If you can do that consistently, you’ll write a great script and it won’t matter that other people are writing their version of it as well.
Execution is the primary currency that screenwriters offer in Hollywood.
So, to be clear, find a great story from your own life and write that. If you don’t have that, think back to the stories friends have told you over the years. Is there a movie in one of those ideas? If yes, write that. If you don’t have either of those things, find the best idea you can come up with and then execute it in a way that YOU KNOW nobody else could match.
The only other option I can think of is to be an idea historian. You’ve seen every movie. Every TV show. You track all the scripts that are being sent around town (which you all basically do since you read this site). If you’ve heard of the top 100 movies of each of the past 50 years, then chances are you know when you’ve come up with something truly original.
But even then, it’s difficult. Cause I probably have heard more movie ideas than anyone in Hollywood. Seriously. I can’t think of anyone who would’ve heard or read more than me. And even I sometimes learn that ideas I’ve come up with have been used before.
It happened not long ago. I came up with this idea about violent criminals being forced to endure the exact crimes that they committed on their victims and a friend of mine was like, “Yeah, they did that 70 years ago in The Twilight Zone.” 70 years ago! I thought I’d come up with this brand new idea and someone used it SEVENTY FREAKING YEARS AGO.
So just do your best to come up with the idea and then spend all that energy and effort on the execution. Cause that’s what really matters. :)
Of the many discussion points that have come out of this movie, the one I care most about is that Tom Burke (Praetorian Jack) now needs to be in every single movie going forward for the next 50 years
Genre: Action/Sci-fi/Epic
Premise: A young girl is taken from her people, grows up in a desolate desert city, and learns to become a great road warrior, an essential job in a post-apocalyptic world where everything of value that is transferred between towns will be attacked by outsiders.
About: Director George Miller loved the character of Furiosa so much that he immediately went about creating another movie for her after Fury Road. Ten years later, a new Mad Max movie is born. The plan was to do a Mad Max prequel for Tom Hardy’s character as well. But with Furiosa coming in at just 35 million over the 4-day holiday weekend, it looks like that movie, sadly, will never happen. Miller wrote Furiosa with longtime collaborator, and mainly actor, Nick Lathouris.
Writers: George Miller and Nick Lathouris
Details: 150 minutes!
Furiosa is going to go down in history as a symbol of change in the public’s consumption of theatrical movies. On Hollywood’s biggest movie weekend, it scored the lowest opening of that weekend in 30 years.
I find that unfortunate because Furiosa shouldn’t be the movie that represents theatrical box office’s fall. It should’ve been a movie like Transformers 9 or Fast & Furious 11. Cause those are the movies that have gotten us into this muck.
Furiosa is the kind of movie Hollywood SHOULD be making, which is bigger budget movies that actually have ideas and take risks. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s a very good one. And it could’ve been iconic if not for a couple of factors working against it.
The main factor is expectation. You can’t put this movie after Fury Road. Fury Road was pure adrenaline. To follow that with a years-long character-driven epic is confusing. Whereas, if they put this movie FIRST and Fury Road SECOND, it would’ve been one of the best one-two combos ever. EVER.
For those who haven’t seen it, and apparently there are a lot of you, Furiosa is a complex movie that follows a little girl, Furiosa, who’s taken from a hidden “Eden” if you will, to become the de facto daughter of a rising menace in a post-apocalyptic desert world, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).
Dementus wants to conquer the big swinging d**k in the region, Immortan Joe, so he can have his cool rock water town. When his initial efforts are thwarted, he goes about a years long plan of taking over Gas Town, where all the region’s gas is kept, and Bullet Town, where all the weaponry is made.
During this time, Young Furiosa gets transferred over to the care of Immortan Joe (in one of the few sloppy plot beats) and is able to escape the high society slavery there to live secretly amongst the townspeople, where she gets a reputation as a fearless go-getter.
This gets her a position as a truck-protector for whenever Immortan Joe needs to get gas or weapons from the two other towns. Through this process, she becomes close with Joe’s star driver, Praetorian Jack, and soon the two are riding together (and kissing together! – well, offscreen at least). Everything’s going fine until Furiosa’s nemesis, Dementus, makes an aggressive bid to take over everything, forcing Furiosa to square off against him in one final battle.
Furiosa is a script you could never write as a spec.
Which is both a strength and a weakness.
It’s a strength because the script is unlike anything you’ve seen from a studio in two decades. It’s basically a period piece masquerading as a sci-fi action movie. Years upon years pass in several different places within the script. It’s not just one time jump and we’re done. We move through time gradually, and Hollywood movies just don’t do that. Hollywood movies, and spec scripts for that matter, like urgency. They like their time to be contained because it makes everything feel like it needs to happen right now. Which adds a ton of energy to the story.
So that choice alone makes this script feel unique.
It’s a weakness because we’re never quite sure where we are in the story. A couple of times in this movie I kind of sat up and asked myself, “Where are we going here?” It wasn’t clear.
The reason it wasn’t clear was because George Miller would focus on one particular time period within this multi-time-period epic and not give us any goals, stakes, or urgency to work with. One section was just about building Furiosa’s relationship with Praetorian Jack. There wasn’t really a goal within the sequence, which was frustrating.
But once you figured out that this was an epic, you sat back and let it happen, instead of trying to control it. Which is when the movie really started showing its mettle. Cause I can’t remember an epic sci-fi movie that has done it better than this one. I remember certain writers trying. Christopher Nolan tried with Interstellar. But that movie comes nowhere close to this one in both quality and vision.
One of the more interesting choices Miller made was to stay away from dialogue in regards to his main character. This is something I get into in my amazing dialogue book – this concept of showing as opposed to telling. And Furiosa is definitely a show-don’t-tell character. She rarely speaks.
There are two reasons to take this approach. Number one is that you don’t feel confident in your dialogue-writing ability. Which is fair. If you don’t feel great about your dialogue-writing, then write stories where your characters don’t talk much. It’s a legitimate strategy.
The other point is that delivering believable dialogue is notably challenging. I’ll give you a quick assignment to see what I mean. Go to Youtube and search for short movies. Not the best ones. Ones with 50,000 views or less. What you’ll find is that a lot of these short films actually look quite professional. However, the second one of the characters starts speaking, the suspension of disbelief is lifted and we’re aware of how fake everything feels. It’s because the dialogue is lousy. Which you can hide if characters don’t speak much. Even at the professional level.
Cause let’s be real: No writer has ever lived in a post-apocalyptic world before where guys ride around on giant stages in full hair-band makeup playing guitar. Any dialogue you try to create for that world risks sounding ridiculous.
This is why almost all of the dialogue in Furiosa is centered around big speeches (Dementus screaming up to Immortan Joe how he plans to take over his town). Big speeches are theatrical in nature, which hides the potential ridiculousness of what’s being said. Big speeches also often contain logic, which is less susceptible to sounding stupid. “You will adhere to our demands or we will attack you!” That’s a much less tricky line to pull off than something that contains emotion, such as, “You complete me.”
Which is why when we’re outside of these speeches, the characters rarely say much. And I think that’s by design due to what I just said.
But the thing that really surprised me about Furiosa was the character work. Ironically, not with Furoisa herself. Furiosa was solid. But the stand-out characters were Dementus and Praetorian Jack.
The thing you always have to worry about when you’re doing prequels is finding villains that are worthy of the villain precedent you set in the original movie. Literally nobody has figured that out yet. Which makes sense. If the villains in these prequels were so awesome, *they* would’ve been the big villain in the next movie.
As a result, a lot of these prequel villains are middle-management types. Orson Krennic in Rogue One, for example. Who was scared of that guy? Nobody.
Miller was actually in a tricky spot because, while he had a cool villain already in Immortan Joe, there was no way to make him the villain of the movie. Why? Because Immortan Joe had to live. He has to survive to make it to Fury Road. That means Furiosa can’t defeat him. She would have to lose to him. Which would’ve led to a weak ending.
So Miller created this other character named Dementus, giving Furiosa somebody she could defeat, making her victorious at the end. And because of the “period piece” format, Miller was really able to explore this character on a deep level.
He wasn’t your average villain. He’s kind of dumb. He’s a terrible organizer. Everything falls to sh*t that he tries to manage. But he’s aggressive and he’s determined. So he’s always moving forward. He’s always trying to get to the next level, which is what you want out of your villain AND your hero. Because that means, inevitably, the two are going to run into each other, which is exactly what happens.
The other standout here was Praetorian Jack and it’s SOOOOO depressing that this movie bombed because, if it didn’t, this guy would’ve had his own movie. He’s so cool! He’s basically the original Mad Max (Mel Gibson) but more in control. He’s like the guy who walks into the bar and every single guy inside wants to be friends with him. He’s just cool! There’s no other way to put it.
It’s hard to write one really good character. This movie had three of them: Furiosa, Dementus, Praetorian Jack.
And those characters were bolstered by that unique George Miller flair. Like George Lucas, he never just puts characters in front of the frame. He’s always got all this other stuff going on in the background. Like Dementus’s “mimicer.” There’s this guy who hangs around Dementus and mimics everything he says and does. It’s hilarious! It’s just like Rock Star Guy. You wonder how he comes up with these things.
This movie proved to me what I thought was impossible. That a prequel can be good and not just backstory.
I’m fine if you didn’t go out to the theater to see this. But for all that is good and holy, watch this when it comes out on digital. For people who love sci-fi? It’s one of the best movies in the genre ever made.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s amazing how easily you can make a character likable by showing how kind they are to your hero. The main reason we like Praetorian Jack is because he’s so kind to Furiosa. It’s simple but so very effective.
Sorry about the late post. It took me a lot longer to get through all the entries due to the fact that I not only had to read the loglines, but the first pages as well!
It made choosing contestants hard. There were some great loglines that had weak first pages. And there were some strong first pages that had weak loglines. I wasn’t sure which to give more weight to. In the end, I decided to split the difference. So you’ve got entries that have good loglines, you have entries that have good first pages, and hopefully a couple that have both. :)
For those who haven’t played the Scriptshadow Showdown game before, I’m giving you six contestants below. These were chosen from over 250 submissions. Your job is to look at all six and then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever gets the most votes receives a review next Friday.
The deadline for voting is Monday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. The reason it’s Monday and not Sunday, like usual, is because in the U.S. we have a big holiday (Memorial Day) on Monday. So there will be no post that day. It’s all about the Short Story Showdown.
Okay, let’s check out our entries.
Good luck to all!
Title: Roadkills
Genre: Dark Urban Fantasy / Horror
Logline: After her son’s tragic death in a car crash, a grieving mother uncovers a chilling truth: shapeshifters stalk rural America’s interstates, morphing into beasts to engineer fatal accidents and devour the souls of the dying.
Title: Pitchforks
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When a soft-spoken church organist in rural Ohio reads an article about the emergence of a new technology that allows police to solve old crimes using something called “DNA,” he must return to an old crime scene to ensure a 12-year-old secret remains unearthed.
Title: The Empty Seat
Genre: Suspense
Logline: A recently demoted executive finds himself being harassed by a dangerous thug sitting next to him on the last bus back home to the suburbs.
Title: Mantrap
Genre: Adventure
Logline: An American tourist struggles to survive, caught in a trap while on safari in Africa.
Title: Closure
Genre: Crime/Supernatural
Logline: A grieving father seeks vengeance when a serial killer sends him a vial containing his daughter’s last breath.
Title: The Haunted House Game
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A 47-year-old, ex-convict, Pac-Man video game champion competes in a real-life version of the game involving cutthroat contestants, terrifying challenges, and deadly ghosts to win 10 million dollars that can pull him out of his misery.
I know, I know. You want to get that new iPad Pro. Or all the ingredients for your Memorial Day Grilled Cheese Hot Dog. Or that extra-small pair of Speedos so you’ll be beach-ready come June 1st. But if I were you, I’d use that cash on some Grade-A script notes from none other than ME! I’ve read over 10,000 screenplays, which means I’ve seen every problem in the book and I’m the only one who knows how to fix them all.
I’m giving away THREE half-off screenplay consultations this Memorial Day Weekend. If you want one, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the code ‘MEMORIAL DAY.’
Note: The Short Story Showdown deadline is extended until tomorrow at noon! We’ve got an entire extra day of voting due to Memorial Day Weekend so I’m allowing last-minute entries. Here’s how to enter!
Remember, the Short Story Showdown contest deadline is TONIGHT (Thursday) at 10:00pm Pacific Time. Do you have a short story? You definitely want to enter. If it’s great, it’ll be celebrated here and maybe even sold. Here’s how to submit!
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax
Week 15 – The End!
Week 16 – Rewrite Prep 1
Week 17 – Rewrite Prep 2
Week 18 – Rewrite Week 1
One of the things you hear me talk about a lot on this site is FIRST CHOICES. So let’s get into what they are and why they’re relevant.
First choices are any creative choices that come to you as you’re writing your script that you feed directly into your screenplay. You need to add a new character and you immediately know who that character should be. You get to a car chase scene and you immediately know how you’re going to write it. You want a big twist and you know which GOOD GUY you’re going to turn into a BAD GUY.
When you’re in the flow of writing, these choices feel great because you don’t have to think about them. They just come out of you. And because they flow out of you so easily, you interpret them as “correct.” Which makes sense. Anything that’s allowing you to write 15 pages a day, you reason, is good.
But what you have to understand is that these choices you’re making are not your own. They are an accumulation of all the movies and TV shows you’ve seen and the most common thing that happens in that specific moment of those movies and shows.
Back in the day, when romantic comedies were huge, every single romantic comedy ended at the airport. Why? Because that’s what the writers knew. When they watched romantic comedies, they ended at the airport! So they didn’t even question the choice. That’s how conditioned they were to make these choices.
I’ve been reading a lot of horror consult scripts lately and, lo and behold, there are a ton of scary kids in these screenplays. Why? Because scary kids are in a lot of horror movies. Therefore, we need to include them in our script!
That’s the real danger. These choices become so common in movies that they actually feel like they’re the only choices available to you.
I remember writing a thriller once where a guy is being chased by the police and I thought, “Let’s make a set piece where he’s downtown and runs around in between the all the buildings, barely escaping them.” And I wrote the heck out of that scene. I used every little trinket available to me in his escape.
But it was forgettable. And it was forgettable for an obvious reason. It was a first choice. It oozed screenwriter comfort. The writer – me – was not challenging himself. He was giving the reader something he’d seen before and figured: “That’s what people want.”
Which is why first choices happen. We think, “This is right because this is what happens in movies.”
Plot twist: Making first choices in first drafts IS OKAY. It’s expected even. You should push yourself to come up with as much originality as you can in that first draft. But the reality is, you don’t know your world well enough yet to come up with frequent unique creative choices. It’s like going to a restaurant for the first time. You don’t know the menu yet so you can’t order the best food. You can only order what you’re familiar with.
The reason I’m telling you this is because identifying and eliminating first choices is a big part of rewriting your script. When you see that cliched character, when you note that boring scene location, when you roll your eyes at that expected plot development that anyone could’ve guessed from a mile away… Change it. Come up with something better.
The very fact that you’re changing your first choice is going to improve the script. The rest of your rewrites, then, are about pushing deeper, changing your second choices, your third, your fourth, all the way until you can honestly read that choice and be happy with it. Cause once an idea has been battle-tested enough to withstand an honest critique from you, that’s when a script really starts to shine.
By the way, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to come up with a strong creative choice. A lot of the time, it’s about changing some variables around so that the common scenario feels fresh. Take my thriller script I mentioned above. The Fugitive had Richard Kimble running around the city in one sequence as well. But they added the St. Patty’s Day parade to the set piece and, all of a sudden, the chase felt more specific. Which is what you’re looking for. You’re looking to create a specific experience as opposed to a generalized one.
I cannot emphasize that enough so let me say it again.
When you write a screenplay, you’re looking to create a specific experience as opposed to a generalized one.
The more specific you can make each variable, the more original your script will read.
As a reminder, you are rewriting 3 pages a day, 6 days a week. We should be 18 pages into our rewrite today. By next Thursday, I need you to be 36 pages into your rewrite. Keep at it!
The reward?
Entering the first ever Mega Showdown……..
I may come off as a homer here but that sounds like the single greatest reward in earth’s history.
