Genre: Swashbuckling Adventure!
Premise: A rebel fighter is sent to the island of Jamaica in 1685 to spend the rest of his days as a slave. Instead, he becomes one of the most notorious pirates on the high seas!
About: The most recent word is that Warner Brothers wants to create Captain Blood in space with the Spierig Brothers (Daybreakers) directing. But it’s clear from this 1994 draft that they’ve been wanting to revive Captain Blood for much longer than that. What’s fun is that this was written by one of THE de facto writers of the 1990s era, Jonathan Hensleigh, who wrote Armageddon. Slap on some extra fun when you learn that none other than Frank Darabont rewrote this draft along with Chuck Russell, who directed The Mask and 2002’s The Scorpion King, and you’ve got yourself a cornucopia of script history.
Writers: Jonathan Hensleigh (Revised Screenplay by Chuck Russell & Frank Darabont)
Details: 123 pages – October 26, 1994 (Revised First Draft)

Pitt for Captain Blood??

Arrrgggh.

Shiver me Oscar timbers. Get me some chum so I can get over the absurdity of a Birdman win. Okay okay, maybe I’ve been a little hard on the Birdman screenplay. But while I admit it’s got feathers, it’s also got some tar. Let me explain.

On the plus side, Birdman has a unique main character, it has the balls to tell its story in real time, and it takes chances (giving its main character telekinesis for no reason, for example). These are all things that should be celebrated in scriptwriting. However, the two things that remain the most important to me in a screenplay are a good story and a set of characters I care about. Birdman had neither. It was an experimental film first and a story second. And while I think it’s important that films like Birdman get made, it just didn’t resonate with me.

So where does that leave us today? I’ll tell you where. The 1930s! That’s when the original Captain Blood came out. And despite trying to bring the film back from the dead numerous times, it’s still failed to make it to the multiplexes. Today, we’re going to look at one of those attempts from 1994 – and try to figure out why they didn’t make the film then.

It’s 1685. Peter Blood, a surgeon, is fighting for the rebel forces, who are trying to dethrone the current English king (King John or King George or something). The rebellion fails and Blood, along with the remaining surviving rebels, is sent to Jamaica, where the Spaniards buy he and his crew into slavery.

Blood lucks out though, and somehow becomes the property of the Governor’s hot daughter, Arabella. You know you’re hot when even your name is hot. Blood and Arabella develop a flirtationship, which pisses off the local commander of the island, Major Edward Bishop, who’s been trying to get sum of dat action for awhile now.

Bishop tries to kill Blood a couple of times, but Blood is not your average movie hero. This dude makes all the other 90s heroes look like Chang from The Hangover. And when a pirate ship disguised as the King’s emissary attacks the island, Blood uses it as an opportunity to grab his rebels and take the ship for himself.

Soon, Blood is roaming the seas, looking to pirate himself some treasure (taking from only bad people of course). There are a couple of problems though. The most evil and terrifying pirate on the sea, Don Diego, kind of wants his ship back. And Bishop needs to save face with the King by getting the rebels back to Jamaica.

And let’s not forget, of course, about Arabella, who Don Diego has plundered for himself. Naturally, this is all going to collide in one big galactic swords and sandals battle. Will badass Blood kill the bad guys, get the girl, and keep on plundering? Or will he experience another 85 year drought before another movie about him can be made?

Goooooood plotting.

We don’t talk about this much but plotting – how you piece together your story – is one of the most important factors in keeping your screenplay exciting. If you go along one path for too long (the opening 40 minutes of Interstellar), the reader can get bored. It’s your job to maximize the emerging storyline’s structure in a way that keeps things moving along.

I LOVED how Captain Blood did this.

We started with this great battle of the Rebels taking on the Brits. The Rebels lose and, as punishment, they’re sent to Jamaica, where they’re then forced to work as slaves. Then a pirate attack on the island occurs. Our hero, Blood, uses the opportunity to steal the pirate ship and become a pirate himself. Then he’s off to get supplies for his ship. Then he must save Arabella. Etc. Etc.

The lesson to be learned here is that things were ALWAYS MOVING. Now every story is different. Some stories you’re going to stay in one place. But being a sea-faring version of Star Wars, this was the kind of script that needed to keep moving from one location to the next. And I don’t think a lesser group of screenwriters would’ve been able to do that satisfactorily. I could see them taking forever before our rebels were shipped off to Jamaica. And then, once in Jamaica, taking forever before Blood got his pirate ship. But Hensleigh (along with Darabont and Russell) stays everywhere JUST LONG ENOUGH to establish that place in the story, and then gets to the next section as soon as he can.

This actually leads me to a very powerful tool you can use in screenwriting. And it’s called “the disruptor.” The disruptor is any disruption you throw into a story that changes its course. I read so many scripts that just…. stay… on… the same… track… all… the… time. The story doesn’t evolve ever, and therefore we get bored.

The disruptor throws everything off, forcing your characters, and therefore your story, to act. The original disruptor is the inciting incident – the thing near the beginning of the story that rocks your main character’s world (Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed in Star Wars). But this should not be the end of your use of disruptors in your story.

In Captain Blood, just as I was wondering how long we were going to stay in Jamaica and where the story was going to go from here (it didn’t look like it could go in too many interesting ways), Hensleigh throws in the disruptor, the arrival of Don Diego’s pirate ship. IMMEDIATELY the story was exciting again. That’s the power of this tool.

Even beyond the plotting, this was just a really well-written screenplay. I think I was expecting some over-the-top 90s Bruckheimer thing. But the tone here feels surprisingly realistic for an adventure story. I would even argue that that may have been the reason it didn’t get made.

If you look at Pirates of the Caribbean, that whole franchise had a tongue-in-cheek component that made it more accessible to the masses. This is a little more hardcore, a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean and Master and Commander. Blood is an especially worthy hero. I usually see through these manufactured “I’m very aware I’m in a movie” characters. But Blood somehow feels like a real live hero. And you just don’t see that in adventure movies these days. Or ever, really.

The only weird thing about this script is the way it’s written. ’94 was still smack dab in the middle of the golden spec days – where spec screenplays were focused not just on becoming movies, but being entertaining experiences on their own. Captain Blood takes more time describing things and creating its mood and maybe that’s why it feels more substantial than a lot of the stuff I’ve been reading lately.

And the great thing about this script is that, because it’s a period piece, it doesn’t really need to be changed at all. This could still be filmed today without substituting a word. Of course, why do that when you can put it in space? But Captain Blood could be the “serious” alternative to the no-longer relevant Pirates franchise. I’d love to know if you agree. Because, yup, I’m actually posting the script. Enjoy!

Screenplay link: Captain Blood

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

What I learned: Is your screenplay starting to feel stale as it creeps into that second act? Disrupt it with a disruptor! Throw something unexpected at the characters that forces both them AND THE STORY to act.

P.S. Do you have the next Captain Blood?  Enter your script in the SCRIPTSHADOW 250 CONTEST, go check it out here!

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Comedy
Premise (from writer): A dysfunctional family must band together to save their outcast daughter from marrying into a cult.
Why You Should Read (from writer): My name is Allison Raskin and I’ve been a fan of the site for years. I graduated from USC’s screenwriting program in May 2011. I’ve been lucky enough to snag a manager (after working as his assistant for a year) but he hasn’t done anything in terms of my writing (instead I go out on audition for roles I’m not pretty enough for because my headshot is misleading). If my logline sounds familiar, it’s because there was a 2008 blacklist script with a similar logline (APOSTLES OF INFINITE LOVE). I wasn’t aware of this until I was halfway through my first draft. I also wasn’t aware that my management company is the one trying to produce it…Despite these obstacles I decide to continue because it was a story I really wanted to tell. Hopefully it will be a story you want to read.
Writer: Allison Raskin
Details: 103 pages

I realize this goes against ethnicity in the script, but Gina Rodriquez for Jenny?

I feel like some of you are holding back on the amateur submissions lately because you’re saving your scripts for The Scriptshadow 250 Contest. Getting your script reviewed here is actually going to IMPROVE your chances of getting into The Scriptshadow 250 since any script good enough to get a review will definitely get into the contest. Also, there isn’t another place on the internet that helps a script get better than Amateur Friday. You not only get feedback from me, but from a group of really smart people who put a lot of time and effort into giving thoughtful notes. After a review here, your script is going to be so much better going into my contest. So keep those submissions coming!

I picked this script today because a few of you personally e-mailed me to tell me you liked it. I also think it’s interesting to review scripts from writers who have representation (“Anonymous” is a huge management company) but haven’t yet broken out. I also love giving female writers a shot since it’s a little harder for them to get a leg up in this male-dominated industry. So let’s take a look!

20 year-old Jenny is going to school at an obscure college in California, light years away from her weird family, which you can probably guess is planned. Jenny is a chubby sci-fi loving nerd who aches for any kind of attention, and secretly wishes that her family will finally wake up and realize how important she is to them.

So it probably isn’t a surprise that when mini-celebrity sci-fi author Bozeltus shows up at her bookstore, she falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Bozletus has a little L. Ron Hubbard in him, and has created his own religion based on his books. Still, when he asks Jenny to marry him, she’s so happy that someone’s finally given her the time of day, she says yes.

When the fam finds this out, they decide to make a cross-country trip to save Jenny, but they’re so ignorant of her life, that finding her proves to be a lot harder than they expected. You’ve got the selfish mom, the selfish hot older sister, the sister who has since had a sex-change and is now the brother, the dad (who’s just been diagnosed with MS), and the pretty sister’s new psychologist boyfriend, the only level-headed member of the group.

The script is really about the family learning who they are during the trip, with the occasional cut back to Jenny at the compound. It’s back there where Jenny learns that Bozeltus keeps everybody high or drunk so they’re easier to control, he’s already married to several other women at the compound, and, oh yeah, the consummation of their marriage is going to happen in front of all the members.

As Jenny becomes more and more nervous about her decision, her family races to get to her before L. Ron makes her his galaxy queen. But can the family figure out their own issues in time to do so? And will they finally realize that it was their fault that Jenny got into this situation in the first place? Read the script to find out!

WHAT I LIKED
The script has a great energy to it. Even if you’re not a fan of the sense of humor being used, you can appreciate the way the comedy pops along. The main character is original – a 20 year old female who loves science-fiction books. I don’t run into many characters like that. Overall, the family was very colorful and unique. A common complaint in most amateur screenplays is that the characters all sound the same. That’s not the case here. Everyone definitely sounds and acts differently. And finally, this isn’t an empty comedy premise. We’re exploring something here – broken families and the importance of love, attention, and support.

THE FIRST ACT
The first act moved too slowly. I’m not sure the opening flashback where a 13 year-old Jenny is bombing at her bat mitzvah is needed. Maybe if it was funnier I’d keep it – but the comedy was very straightforward – a girl is a bad singer at her bat mitzvah. A comedy has to take a funny idea and find a fresh angle on it. This was pretty standard stuff and I don’t know if it deserves the most important section of real estate in the screenplay – the first five pages. I actually tell a lot of writers to get rid of these opening flashback scenes and they often come back to me saying, “But then you don’t know how bad her family life is. I need to establish that” The thing is, we get that her family relationship is bad in the very next scene, when Jenny calls home and the family doesn’t give a shit. In that moment, we can imagine that there was a shitty bat mitzvah (or something like it) without having to spend 3 pages on it. Never underestimate how much you can convey to the reader in a very short amount of time. Getting rid of this scene also allows you to set up Jenny’s adult life better, since you can jump right into it.

SIMILAR SCENES IN THE OPENING ACT ARE DEATH
There are either two or three scenes in the opening 15 pages with Jenny sitting somewhere alone. They each have something a little different going on in them, but they’re generally the same thing – Jenny is sitting alone proving she’s a loner without friends. We don’t need you to show us that three times, especially since each time is so static (character sitting down being lonely). Especially early on, you want to show movement. For example, if you want to show how much Jenny loves sci-fi books, maybe instead of showing her reading one (boring) she’s at a bookstore trying to hunt down a rare print of one of her favorite books (note: to Allison’s credit, she did have a scene with Jenny in the car listening to a sci-fi audiobook – but the scene still wasn’t necessary. There was nothing going on in it that told us something we didn’t know through these other scenes – that she’s a sci-fi book nerd).  This is actually a great opportunity to combine scenes.  Why not combine the scene where she’s calling her family with the scene where she’s listening to her audiobook in her car?

THE COMEDY
I don’t love to give comedy advice since comedy is subjective and my own sense of humor is a little left-of-center, but I wanted to make a couple of observations about the comedy here. First, I don’t think “on-the-nose” comedy is a great option. I suppose it can be used ironically but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. Giving a character the name “Buzzkill Jones?” Wouldn’t it be funnier if he’s got a regular name and, through his actions and dialogue, you show him to be the biggest buzzkill ever? Also, I’d be careful about featuring debilitating diseases in comedy. It’s not that they can’t be funny. And I know 50/50 did okay. But it’s typically something people find more depressing than funny. Remember that you’re a writer. And therefore you have the power to do ANYTHING. That means hitting the same joke without bringing people down. Why, for example, can’t the father go online and self-diagnose himself and become convinced (without any medical knowledge whatsoever) that he has MS? Now you can play with him reacting to what he thinks the disease is doing to him. He can accelerate through all the stages during the trip. That’d be my advice.

JENNY
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Jenny because she seemed so needy. Whenever you write a main character, consider how that character would be received in real life, and you’ll get a pretty good indication of how they might be received by readers/viewers. The way Jenny hangs up the parent phone call after they forgot her birthday and says to herself: “Happy birthday to me.” Or when she hears about how another character’s mom smothered him, you write: “She’d kill to be smothered.” It’s so desperately needy. I understand that you need to convince the reader why she would marry a cult leader, but that doesn’t 100% excuse it. I think you need to calibrate the situation here and look for a way to get the same point across without jeopardizing our support of your hero. For example, you can use “offset traits” – positive traits you can give characters to offset their negative vibe. Or, you can find another personality trait to hit with Jenny (low self-esteem?) that doesn’t turn the reader off so much.

IN SUMMARY
I think there’s something here. This is an inherently funny premise. It was a little too over-the-top for me, but so was Little Miss Sunshine, a similar film. So taste could be playing into that assessment. I think Allison is a good writer and I hope some of these observations help her improve.

Screenplay link: Jenny’s Got a Cult

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

What I learned: Yesterday we talked about “leading,” a very powerful storytelling tool. Today’s script actually used leading IN THE TITLE, which I thought was interesting. The first 20 pages are a little slow, but I wanted to keep going since I knew that Jenny was going to be in a “cult” at some point. So I was committed to, at the very least, getting to that point. The lesson here is, you can use your title as a lead if you want to.

Hey guys, sorry for no Amateur Offerings Saturday and the re-post of a Newsletter review today (sign up for the newsletter here). Busy at work putting the Scriptshadow 250 Contest together. So hang tight and discuss all the goodness that directors like Matthew Vaughn bring to the world…

Genre: Action/Spy
Premise: A young British hooligan is recruited into a top secret agency founded on the principles of the Knights of the Round Table.
About: This is Matthew Vaughn’s (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) upcoming film, which he wrote with longtime collaborator Jane Goldman. It’s based on the comic book, “The Secret Service.” Vaughn was offered pretty much every major movie property in town, but the director likes to challenge himself and so avoids working on the same kind of movie twice. That may change with The Secret Service, which is clearly set up to be a major franchise in the vein of James Bond. Rising star Taron Egerton will play the lead role of Eggsy.
Writer: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (based on the comic book by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar)
Details: 125 pages – April 2013 draft

If you’re looking to write the next breakout franchise, this is one of the most franchise-friendly formulas you can use. You take a nobody. Have him recruited into a secret organization of some sort. Show him training and getting better. Then have him take on the bad guys. He’ll fail at first, then get stronger, and in the end, he’ll finally defeat the villain. It worked for The Matrix. It worked for Wanted. It worked for Harry Potter. It worked for Remo Williams.

Well, wait. Okay, it didn’t work for Remo Williams. But that wasn’t Remo’s fault.  It was Chiun’s fault.

There are so many qualities about this setup that make it work. You have the underdog conceit (everyone loves an underdog), the training (we love watching someone train and get better at something), and the revelatory mythology that goes with all these stories (all the little nooks and crannies of how the organization came to be).

The setup is so ideal for storytelling, in fact, that you wonder why there aren’t more of these films being made! Well, the one trick in getting them right is coming up with a fresh enough take on them. All the examples I used above felt fresh at the time. Except for Remo Williams. So how does The Secret Service fare?

Jack Lincoln – call him our Galahad – starts off the film leading a group of secret agents (with names like Merlin and Lancelot) to take down a nasty terrorist. But once they capture the terrorist, one of Jack’s men, Lee, notices that the terrorist has a bomb. Lee jumps on him as the bomb goes off, and is killed instantly so that the rest of the group can live.

In a token gesture, Jack goes to Lee’s family (his wife and young son) and tells them that if they ever need a get-out-of-jail-free card, to call. 17 years later, Lee’s son, Eggsy, a hooligan who spends most of his days burglarizing cars and drinking pints of Guinness, needs just that. After getting arrested, he calls to get out of a looming prison sentence, and Jack keeps his promise.

But Jack doesn’t stop there. Jack sees a lot of Lee in Eggsy, and invites him into his top secret organization, Huntsman and Sons. The thing is, Huntsman typically only recruits the best of the best, people from the best backgrounds and the best educations. So Eggsy is a bit of an outsider.

But while everyone else is smarter than Eggsy, Eggsy has that street experience that makes him tougher than his fellow private school recruits. And he’s going to need it. There are some nasty little men the Hustman have to take on, such as “Gazelle,” a guy with  Olympic running blades for legs (I see they’ve changed this character to a female in the final film), except his blades are razor sharp, allowing him to chop up his prey with a Michael Jackson swish of his knee. Woo-hoo! Jam-mone!

Eventually, a true villain arises in the form of a Mark Zuckerberg’esque tech giant who’s unhealthily obsessed with earth’s well-being. Huntsman and Sons begin to suspect that his next product may give him a little too much control over the people who use it. Therefore, Eggsy and his band of merry men will have to put on their big boy secret agent pants to take down Zuckerberg and save the world.

I really like what Goldman and Vaughn are doing here. It’s smart. They’re bringing back the fun to Bond movies without the baggage of Bond. It allows them to create a less kitchsy version of 007, and play with a lot of the humor that the ultra-serious new films are so devoid of. As a kid, my favorite part of the Bond movies was always the gimmicky weapons introductions, and we get plenty of that here (Jack fights with an umbrella with about 50 different gadgets attached to it).

Connecting the Secret Service to the Knights of the Round Table fable was also a clever idea, although I thought this would’ve been so much cooler had the agency literally still have been the Round Table. That the Knights never went away and this was their modern incarnation. But hey, beggers can’t be choosers.

But The Secret Service does have one major problem. It whiffs with its main character. I’m talking about Eggsy. In every one of the movies I mentioned above, the formula is the same. We get to know our underdog hero’s shitty and/or normal life, before they’re recruited into the super-secret organization.

With The Secret Service, the first act is dedicated almost exclusively to everyone BUT Eggsy (our main character). We get to know Jack. We get to know Jack’s boss, the head of the agency. We get to know our Mark Zuckerberg bad guy. When Eggsy does come around, he’s usually gone before you know it.

I think I understand what Goldman and Vaughn were thinking. They wanted to use that time to sell the agency. And there’s no doubt, it’s a cool freaking agency. But the problem with not establishing your hero early, is that the audience feels lost. They don’t have that character whose hand they can hold onto. They don’t have anyone to lead them through the story.  In many ways, the reader in the writer-reader relationship is kind of like a child.  They need the reader to show them the way.  And that’s hard to do if there isn’t a character who steps up to play the “follow me” part.

Granted, this approach has worked before (there’s a ton going on in Star Wars early on outside of Luke), but just because an unorthodox approach worked in another movie doesn’t mean you can just port it over and expect similar results. Every time Eggsy came around, all I could think was, “I don’t know this guy!” When the other recruits made fun of him, I didn’t have a good enough sense of him to know what they were making fun of him about.

Think of another recent film that did this – Godzilla. Now Godzilla was kind of fun. But they spent the first 20 minutes on two characters (the hero’s mom and dad) who both died! They weren’t even in the rest of the movie. That time could’ve been spent getting to get to know our hero!! And what was one of the biggest complaints about Godzilla? That its main character was the most boring part of the movie. Why? Well, there were a few reasons. But not spending the first 20 minutes of the movie getting to know him certainty didn’t help.

Another thing that happens if you don’t feature your hero early is that, when he finally gets his moment, you’re rushing through it.  You’ve lost out on pages and pages of screenplay real estate and now you’re playing catch-up.  It can be done.  In fact, I think Star Wars does this brilliantly.  That one dinner scene with Luke, his aunt and his uncle, conveyed everything we needed to know about Luke (that he had bigger dreams and that he wanted to leave the farm and make a greater impact on the universe).  But what I usually see when writers get themselves in this situation is a lot of on-the-nose statements about the character because the lack of time prevents the use of any subtlety.

This can have a catastrophic effect on the script moving forward.  Since a reader/audience will rarely care about a story in which they don’t connect with the hero, this false rushed set-up of the hero eliminates any chance of connection.  And once an audience makes that choice, they don’t change it.  They will feel that way about the character for the rest of the movie.

With that said, The Secret Service is saved by its pure celebration of fun. This is a world where villains with Olympic blades for legs can slice you in half at a moment’s notice. It’s a world where the training exercises include real bullets. It’s a world where people can kill other people with a text message.

We’ve been missing a film like this. Guardians of the Galaxy proves that people are ready to laugh again. I just wish The Secret Service was more than a fun escape. I wish Goldman and Vaughn gave us a lead with more meat. This could’ve easily been a double worth-the-read or an impressive with a great protagonist.

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

What I learned: Another great reminder that one of the best ways to approach ideas is to look for a previously established idea and update it. Knights of the Round Table? Let’s set in in the present day. Boom, you have yourself a movie.

What I learned 2: There are two people your characters are talking to during dialogue. They’re talking to the other character in the scene (one) and they’re talking to the reader/viewer (two). If you want to excel in dialogue, make sure your characters are first and foremost talking to each other.  The second your characters are talking more to the audience than each other, is the second you’re writing bad dialogue.

#3 – A great central character

The Scriptshadow 250 Contest is coming! And that means all of you will have an opportunity to get your script optioned by a real Hollywood producer (more on that in the upcoming official announcement). Some of you are probably working on scripts already but even if you aren’t, we’re all thinking about our next screenplay. In fact, the “next” screenplay is often the screenplay we like most, since it hasn’t laid its myriad of soul-crushing issues upon us yet. That next script is still perfect, still untouched by the cruelties and realities of filling up 110 pages of unboring material.

Well, don’t write that next script just yet. One thing it took me a long time to realize is how important planning your scripts is. There are certain boxes you want checked before you embark on that new ride, lest you find yourself halfway down an abandoned alley inside your  mind wondering how the hell you thought writing this mess was a good idea in the first place.

Fear not. I’m going to give you a 5 box check list to help you make that all important decision. While this list will be prioritized, everything here is important. A screenplay is something that you’re going to spend at least a year on (that’s not to say you won’t be writing other things during that time – but the good scripts take at least a year to write). And because 365 days is such a long time to dedicate to anything, you need to put a lot of thought into WHY you would want to spend it on this particular idea. So with that, let’s get started.

1) The Script Must Be A Story You Desperately Want To Tell – A lot of you probably assumed that the number one thing on this list would be “concept.” Here’s why it isn’t. I’ve seen a lot of great concepts go really bad on the page. When that happens, it’s for one of two reasons. Number 1, the writer isn’t skilled enough yet to pull off the story. Number 2, the writer’s heart was never into the idea in the first place. Sure, it’s nice to have an eye-grabbing concept that every producer in town wants to read. But that doesn’t matter if the writer doesn’t commit their mind, their body, and their soul to getting everything out of that idea. And that only happens if the writer NEEDS to tell this story. Writing a great script is no different from the creation of any piece of art. It cannot be great unless you give it your all. And you can’t give something your all if your heart isn’t in it.

2) The Concept Must Be Great – It may not have made number 1, but concept is still HUGELY important. Let me tell you a story. I know a talented writer who lived in Hollywood a long time ago, and he actually found a producer who liked one of his screenplays – the dream! After the producer helped him re-write a few drafts, the script wasn’t improving, so the producer moved on. The writer was so devastated, he stopped writing and eventually moved out of Hollywood, figuring he missed his shot. The good news is, this writer is writing again, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see him break in soon. But here’s the reason I’m telling you this story. Hollywood is a numbers game. There’s no such thing as your “one shot.” People break in by having numerous shots and eventually capitalizing on one of them. What a great concept does is it gives you a lot of shots, because more people will want to read your screenplay. So for all of you writing that introspective coming-of-age screenplay, I’m not saying that you haven’t written the greatest story since War and Peace. But I am saying that nobody will ever know, because the demand to read the script will be so low. Give us a concept with irony, or a ton of conflict, or something completely original, or something wholly inventive. Write your idea down in logline form then put your producer hat on and ask yourself, honestly, if that’s something you’d be interested in spending millions of dollars on. If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.

3) A Great Central Character – Notice how I didn’t say a great MAIN character. Sure, it’s preferable that your main character be the most interesting person in the script, but as long as one of the principle characters is fascinating in some way, you’re in good shape. Take Foxcatcher for instance. Channing Tatum’s character is reserved and hardly an eye-catching role. But that’s okay since the character Steve Carrel played is eerie and uncomfortable and weird. A screenplay without at least one fascinating central charater is like a recipe without one of the main ingredients. Have you ever had a sugarless cookie? Yeah, they suck. And it’s not hard to figure out why. So look for a character that’s either unique (Pee-Wee Herman), high-energy (Tony Stark), weird-energy (Captain Jack Sparrow), quirky (Juno), has a limitation holding them back (Forrest Gump), polarizing (Martin Riggs), dickish (Han Solo), opinionated (Pat from Silver Linings Playbood), conflicted (Chris Kyle), dangerous (Patrick Bateman), damaged (Hancock), an outlier (Alan Turing), battling demons (Whip Whitaker in Flight), funny (Buddy from Elf), sees the world in a way nobody else does (Walter Mitty). Think about the most interesting people you’ve met in your life. Ask yourself why they’re interesting. It’s usually because they contain one (or more) of these qualities. Use that as a base to come up with interesting characters of your own. But let me leave you with one warning. The story will ultimately dictate who your characters are. So don’t try to write a moody, dangerous, opinionated, former child molester protagonist if you’re scripting Herbie: Fully Loaded. Understand the kind of story you’re telling and build your interesting character around that.

4) Theme – It took me FOREVER to figure this out, but now I’m a big believer in it. And I’ll try to explain it like this. Writing a great script requires CREATIVE FUEL. Now creative fuel can come from a lot of areas. Your excitement about the story. Your excitement about one of the characters. Anything that puts you in that seat at night is creative fuel. The problem is, when you get to the fourth or fifth draft, that fuel starts evaporating. You’ve been with the script for so long that it’s become more about solving problems than creation. This is where theme comes in. If you REALLY WANT TO SAY SOMETHING with your screenplay, you’ll never run out of creative fuel. Because this isn’t just about a story for you. You’re trying to say something to the world. Whenever someone gives the feedback that a script felt “empty,” it’s almost always because the writer wasn’t trying to say anything. Take the recent film, Chef. John Favreau didn’t write that movie because food trucks were trendy and he wanted to capitalize on them. He wanted to explore what it was like for a divorced middle-aged man working in an industry that demanded all of his time to connect with his son. That’s what Chef was REALLY about. So before you start your next script, go ahead and ask if this concept allows you to say something about the world. More importantly, since everything in the world has already been explored, ask if that something is something that you have a specific point of view on – something where you can add to the conversation instead of repeat it.

5) Know Your Endgame – If you’re someone who’s just starting out in screenwriting, don’t worry so much about everything here. Take it in, understand what you can, but right now you should just be writing what you want and finding your voice. But as those of you who have written a few screenplays know, the worst feeling is getting finished with a screenplay and not really knowing what to do next. Do you enter it in contests? Do you query managers? What do you do? Well, understanding your end-game informs your writing of the script. So for example, if this is a script you want to direct yourself, you can be less conscious of the screenplay “rules” and focus more on creating something visually expressive – since you don’t have to get anyone’s approval on your script. Likewise, if you’re living really far from Hollywood, say another country, then your best avenue is probably entering contests. To that end, you won’t have to worry as much about a flashy concept because contest submissions are guaranteed reads. Therefore wow us with your storytelling instead. If your goal is to query every manager in town once you’re finished, then yeah, your logline better be eye-catching. If you’re trying to make the Black List, write something quirky with a weird main character. The better you know your endgame, the easier it will be to choose what kind of script you’re going to write. And if you’re someone who wants to explore every single avenue out there, then make sure to follow all four of these previous suggestions. Good luck!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Or, I should say, Happy New Year in 15 hours or whatever it is. If you’re anything like me, you’ll pour yourself a drink, turn on Ryan Seacrest or Anderson Cooper, look at the big ball ready to drop in New York City, get all warm and cozy, do a double-take, and say, “What the hell am I watching this for?? This is the dumbest excuse for entertainment I’ve ever encountered.” Then turn it off and go to sleep early.

2014 has been a strange year for the screenwriting community. We’re at a crossroads, with previous paradigms dying and new ones struggling to form. The closest we have to a working model is: Shift over from writing features to writing television. The problem is, if you’re anything like me, you love movies. You want nothing more than to write them for the world. So that paradigm doesn’t work for you.

Well, I don’t think it has to be all or nothing. Chances are, you have a few feature ideas that would work well within a longer format. And since a lot of TV shows these days are basically long movies anyway, are you really missing much by writing them? Either way, you should add at least one TV pilot to your portfolio. Trust me, when you break through with your feature script and every producer you meet wants to know what pilot you have in the pipeline, you’d be wise to be prepared.

But this speaks to a larger problem. Why is the feature screenwriting world sucking so badly? I’m not as down on this year’s Black List as some. But I admit that it’s probably the worst collection of scripts yet. And there were no super-sales to speak of either. I don’t know if it’s because all the good writers are moving over to television, if the market’s new focus on super-franchises (with their big expensive veteran writers) has placed less importance on the emerging screenwriter, if specs-turned-failures like Draft Day and Transcendence have scared studios off, or if writers simply aren’t doing the work.

It very well could be that last one. Writers are putting in less work at a time when they need to put in more – when the competition is as fierce as ever. Screenwriting takes a long time to master. There are too many key elements to learn all at once. You have to write a script, fail, write another one where you learn from your mistakes, fail again, write another one where you learn from those mistakes, fail again, and keep writing until you finally figure out what works for you. It’s like any other skill. You need to practice. And I don’t know if writers are out there practicing enough.

One of the problems is the amateur screenwriter isn’t kept accountable. You don’t write as much as you should because you don’t have anyone telling you to. This is why you can get to the end of a year, like we are now, look back, and say, “Where did the time go? Why don’t I have a screenplay written?” Screenwriters work in the Las Vegas of jobs. There are no clocks. Just the sudden shocking realization that, holy shit, it’s 2015!

So the first thing I’m going to ask you to do is set some goals for yourself. You’re going to write two, or if you have a lot of free time, three, screenplays in 2015. An easy way to hold yourself accountable is to pick three screenwriting contests spaced throughout the year and enter each of them with a new screenplay. Don’t worry about winning. Don’t worry if you think contests are bullshit. Use them as motivators for finishing your screenplays. I can give you one date right now. June 1st. That’s the deadline for The Scriptshadow 250 Contest. Boom. You have your first script deadline.

Another thing I want you to do is drop the excuses. One thing I’ve come to learn about writers – and I’m just now coming to terms with my own problems in this space – is that the majority of them are afraid of action. They’re afraid to finish a work (whether it be a book, a screenplay, a project) because that then means their script will be out there for the world to judge.  Which means people may not like it.  Which means they’ll be miserable.

So they tell themselves that they have to study screenwriting more or do more backstory work or read more screenplays or whatever – all so that they can “truly” be ready to write that screenplay. What they don’t realize is that they’re creating barriers to finishing, to putting themselves out there, and if they keep that up, they’re never going to finish anything.

The lies we tell to protect ourselves aren’t limited to procrastination. We might blame the rest of the world for not “getting” us. Or we might blame Hollywood for their “shitty” movies as a reason why they could never understand our “good” script.  And if that’s the case, why write anything at all?

We have to start being honest with ourselves. The mind is a very complicated device but the one constant it craves is the status quo. The mind doesn’t want change. Change requires new challenges and unfamiliar situations and life adjustments.  And the mind’s terrified of that. Why go through all of that when it’s so much easier to sit around and rewrite your opening scene for the 80th time? If you never finish, your life never changes.

This can be applied to EVERY aspect of your life. From work to personal relationships to losing weight. Change is a hurdle we’re biologically wired to avoid. So to leap that hurdle takes a lot of effort. The good news is, if you can take that first step towards change, the rest of the change becomes easier.  And lucky for you, a new year brings with it the perfect excuse to make that change.  As you step into Thursday, you have the opportunity to reboot your life.  Take it.

So where does that leave us on the artistic front? The town would like you to believe that the only outlet for creativity is through television. But I don’t think that’s the case. Whenever an industry becomes too reliant on one thing – as the studios have with comic book movies (and huge franchises in general) – a door opens up for a revolution in the opposite direction. Audiences WILL get bored and they WILL crave something new. Why can’t you be the person who brings it to them?

I still remember when The Matrix came out. At the time, cinema was dominated by cheesy Bruckheimer films and all those “earth gets blown up” movies. But they were clearly running out of ideas and audiences were hungry for something different. Then this Matrix movie came out and everyone was like, “Whoa. What’s this??” They’d never seen anything like it before. Ditto when the original Star Wars came out. Whenever an industry gets stagnant, that’s the time to strike.

And hey, if you want to play it safer, I can respect that. A lot of people break into this business by giving Hollywood what it wants. If that’s the case, my suggestion would be to write a feature inside your dream genre (i.e. Action-Espionage). Make it the same-but-different (a confusing way of saying give the genre a slight twist, like Matthew Vaughn is doing by turning the James Bond franchise younger and funnier with “Secret Service”) and don’t expect to sell it. Treat it as a writing sample with the hopes of getting assignment work in that genre.  So if you do a great job with an Action-Espionage script, who knows? Maybe you’ll get to write Bourne 6. That’s just as awesome as selling a spec, in my opinion.

But whatever path you choose, whether it be trying to change the system or embracing it, set up some goals for yourself this year – create a system where you’re held accountable (if not screenwriting contests, then something else) and then write your butt off. DO NOT create excuses for yourself for why you can’t finish the script. You may not have heard yet, but 2015 is an official NEAY (No Excuses Allowed Year). So you’re stuck with no other option than to write your scripts and send them out.

I think you’ll do a great job. And who knows. Maybe I’ll get to read one of your screenplays myself.

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!