So you’re currently preparing to write your next script. And it’s a drama.

I have some advice for you. Don’t do it. Stay away. Avoid the drama spec at all costs.

Why? There are tons of reasons. But let me break down some of the big ones for you. Drama specs don’t sell. Or, at least, they don’t sell nearly as much as comedy, thriller, horror, action, or sci-fi. Most of the dramas being made are on the indie circuit, where they don’t pay you for your script. They politely ask you for your script for free and offer you back-end profits. And those aren’t ever going to come. Because dramas don’t make money unless they’re funded by the studios, who give the films huge budgets, which allow for amazing production value and giant box-office promising stars. Oh sure, a little “Engine that could” drama comes along every few years or so and makes a good showing, but those are the rarest of the rare.

Most of the dramas being written in Hollywood are by the big name A-list screenwriters, the guys with a proven track record, and almost all of these are assignment work. That means the studio owns the rights to a project and interview a bunch of potential writers before hiring one. Rarely will you find a writer who actually wrote a drama on spec (all on his own – without studio money) and that script went on to sell. And under the rare circumstances where that does happen, it’s someone who’s already established himself in Hollywood. For an unknown writer to write a drama and sell it (a legitimate sale, meaning at least six figures), is practically unheard of. The last one I can think of is maybe Brad Inglesby, who sold “The Low Dweller” like 5 years ago? And of course he had to snag Leonardo DiCaprio as an attachment to secure that sale.

To get a better sense of the drama landscape in Hollywood, let’s look at the box office take for the top 5 dramas last year.

1) Lincoln – 182 million
2) Argo – 135 million
3) The Vow – 125 million
4) Life of Pi – 123 million
5) Zero Dark 30 – 95 million

Lincoln came in at the number 13 slot. It was adapted from a book. Argo finished at 22 and was adapted from a book and article (which was based on real life). The Vow was 26 and based on a book. Life of Pi was 27 and based on a book. And Zero Dark 30 was 32 and based on real life events, with the writer already hired to work with the director.

The first true drama spec-script-turned-film of last year (it sold for around a million bucks) was the John Gatins scripted “Flight.” The film did pretty well, considering its downbeat subject matter, grossing 93 million dollars. Unfortunately, scribe Gatins was not an unknown. He had written Hardball, Coach Carter, and Real Steel. He’d even directed the film “Dreamer.” Again, a reminder of how tough it is to sell a spec. You need 3 freaking credits to get people to trust your written word.

Let’s get to the point here. There are a ton of you who love dramas and are going to ignore my advice. You’re going to be that once-every-five-years exception who sells their drama spec for big money. Which is fine. You gotta be a little crazy to make it in this town. But if you’re going to be insane, it’s my duty to at least help you swing the odds in your favor. And Flight is actually a great script to analyze as far as drama spec writing. It does a few key things right, but is actually a horribly written screenplay. Therefore there’s a ton to learn from it.

Gatins makes three key decisions that allowed his script to be saleable and ultimately produceable.

1) Include something you can market your drama around, that you can put in a trailer – This is where most amateur drama writers fail. They write about a group of people droning on about their miserable lives and the terrible circumstances that brought them together and blah blah blah. There’s no hook. Just depression. Instead of that, include a hook or flashy story element that can be placed in a trailer and get people excited. I guarantee Flight sold most of its tickets due to the image of that upside-down airplane flying towards earth about to make a crash landing.

2) Include a tough part an actor will want to play – The one big advantage with drama is that you can create a dynamic interesting hero that big actors will want to play. So that’s what you gotta do. Make the character compelling, rich, complex, unique, filled with conflict, someone you can truly see an A-list actor (an actor who’s given ALL THE BEST MATERIAL IN TOWN remember – so they have a lot to choose from) fighting to play. A hardcore alcoholic was just the part Denzel was looking for to stretch his acting muscles.

3) A larger than life character – This isn’t a requirement like the other two. But it’ll help a lot. Actors may love to show off their acting chops, but they’re still actors. They have big egos. Therefore they want to play larger-than-life characters. If Whip Whitaker (the main character in Flight) is the exact same character but the movie takes place in all the bars of New York as opposed to in a plane that Whip saves with a daring heroic move, Denzel doesn’t sign on to this movie. He wants to play the drunk AND the larger than life character. We see the same thing in another successful drama, Good Will Hunting. Will’s not just some average kid off the street. He’s a genius.

In my opinion, this is why Flight sold and attracted the talent that it did. And Gatins is lucky that he got those three things right, because this was a horribly written screenplay outside of the plane crash sequence. It’s essentially a vehicle for Denzel Washington to try to win an Oscar with and nothing more. Unfortunately, nobody checked to see if this drama was actually DRAMATIC. Because it wasn’t. It was one of the least dramatic movies I saw all year.

That’s where you won’t get the same leeway Gatins did. Gatins was trusted because of his credits. You, as a struggling amateur, have nothing, which means that getting the above three things right isn’t enough. You must also write a COMPELLING STORY. And that’s done by creating a series of DRAMATIC situations. Situations that pull your reader in, that make him excited, fearful, curious, angry. Situations that milk tension, that bleed suspense. If your drama isn’t dramatic, you don’t have a shot in hell of selling it.

Let’s use Flight’s execution as an example of how NOT to write drama. The script and movie open up on the morning after a long night of drinking between Whip and a mystery woman in his hotel room. There’s little-to-no interaction between the two, implying that neither really gives a shit about the other. They just needed a warm body on a lonely night.

However, when Whip shows up for his flight in the next scene, we see that, oh my, the woman from the room is actually one of his stewardesses! When Whip makes his miracle landing, saving 90-some passengers, six people from the plane are killed, one of them being that stewardess. This ranks as probably the least dramatic choice you could’ve made with this character. Sex-Friend Girl turning out to be a stewardess has zero impact on the story. It’s a gimmick. It works for .2 seconds as that’s how long it lasts for the audience to go “Oooh” when her stewardess status is revealed. It’s clear the writer didn’t know how to handle this situation because later in the hospital, when Whip wakes up and learns she died, he starts crying. Wait a minute. What??? Whip doesn’t care about this chick. She’s a nobody to him. They fucked then ignored each other all morning.

Let me offer an alternative scenario that adds WAY MORE DRAMA to this situation. Start with the same scene. He sleeps with this chick. But in this version, the two don’t know each other. They met last night at some FAA banquet thing, got drunk, and ended up here. Now Whip doesn’t want her here so he does everything short of saying, “Get the fuck out” until she leaves. Pissed, upset, hurt, she leaves with a grudge. Then later, when the NTSB starts inspecting the crash and Whip is led back to the crash site, the lead investigator emerges out of a group of people and guess who it is? The woman he slept with. NOW you have a dramatic situation. He has to win over the person he fucked over earlier in order to come out of this okay. Not easy since she knows he was drinking that night. Now that may take the story in a direction you didn’t want to go. But Jesus Christ, give me something! Give me anything that creates drama. Not some random chick dying who our main character didn’t even like.

There’s another scene in Flight that I believe epitomizes what bad writers BELIEVE is drama but is actually the OPPOSITE of drama (or what I call “anti-drama”). It’s a freaking 10 minute scene where Whip, a female druggie (who overdosed and is therefore at the same hospital Whip is), and some random cancer patient meet up in the stairway of the hospital to sneak a smoke. Each character starts talking about life, particularly Cancer Guy, who dispenses a bunch of “wisdom” about how God decides our fate. This goes on for TEN MINUTES.

Bad writers think this is drama because characters are being deep and talking about the complexities of life. That’s not drama! Drama is creating DRAMATIC SITUATIONS! Where’s the dramatic situation here??? What aspect of the scene makes us want to keep watching? For almost any scene to have a dramatic situation, at least one of the characters in the scene should have a goal, an objective. You then place obstacles in front of that objective and that’s what creates the drama. Nobody in this scene wants anything! It’s clear Gatins just wanted a scene where Random Cancer Guy could dish out his philosophies on life so he forced his characters into a stairway to do it, even if that didn’t make sense and there was nothing interesting or dramatic about the scene that we would actually enjoy.

What if, instead, Whip finds out that his toxicology report (which hasn’t been tested yet) is somewhere in the hospital? The one that proves he was high and drinking during the flight? He finds an excuse to sneak out of his room and locates the blood lab. He gets there, gets in, but finds a doctor in the room. Maybe it’s the doctor of the druggie, who’s also there (if you still wanted her to be in this scene). Whip pretends he’s lost but the doctor ends up recognizing him as the hero pilot and becomes a bit of a fanboy. We have another three-way conversation, but this one includes a goal. Whip has to find a way to get his lab results without this guy noticing. I guarantee you this scene is going to be more exciting than talking-to-boring-druggie-and-Random-Cancer-Dude-in-the-stairway scene. And it’s not through any bit of magic. We’re just DRAMATIZING the damn scene!

I could literally list dozens of other bad choices this script made, but we’d be here all night. Let’s end this on a positive note and remind ourselves what gives us the best chance of selling a drama spec. First, write something that contains SOME ASPECT that’s marketable. The entire movie doesn’t have to be marketable, just a portion. Next, write a character an A-list actor will want to play. A drama is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to sell without an A-list attachment so this is big. And make that role larger than life in some way. Play to the actor’s ego. Finally, make sure you’ve DRAMATIZED YOUR STORY as much as possible. Dramas aren’t people depressed about their wives dying joining up with other depressed people and talking about how difficult life is. They’re about finding a series of compelling dramatic situations that cover every inch of the screenplay. If you’ve chosen the drama to break in with, you have a long journey ahead of you. Hopefully these words of wisdom will make that journey a little shorter.

Forrest Gump may be one of the biggest anomalies in the history of moviemaking. There’s nothing here to indicate it should’ve worked besides, maybe, Tom Hanks. As a story, it goes against pretty much every rule out there. There is no goal. There are no obstacles. There’s no urgency. No real stakes to speak of. Yet it was the highest grossing movie the year it came out. It won the Oscar for best picture, best director, best screenplay. It was widely successful on just about every level. Eric Roth (who adapted the novel) is a fascinating writer. In his 30 year career, he’s never once written a spec script (until last year, ironically, when he penned a mysterious sci-fi project). He doesn’t seem to have read or studied screenwriting on any level. His approach is very much intuitive. If you look at his body of work (Benjamin Button, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Insider) he appears to eschew structure. His style is more flowy, almost like he’s following the story wherever it takes him, as long as that avenue is interesting. It’s an approach that many screenwriters attempt and fail at, but for some reason it works for him. Of course, some may argue it doesn’t. Forrest Gump is one of the most polarizing movies out there. I think it’s great, but many people absolutely despise it. Either way, it’s such a unique movie that I thought I’d break it down and see if I couldn’t find some cool screenwriting tips from it. Let’s give it a shot…

1) Say it with me: UN-DER-DOG – Forrest Gump reminds us how damn likable the underdog character is. Think about it. Who doesn’t like an underdog? And Forrest is the king of the underdogs. He’s a simpleton. He’s got leg braces. Everyone makes fun of him. He wants a girl he can never have. It’s impossible not to root for this guy. And if you have an audience rooting for your character, you’ve done the majority of your work. Rootforability accounts for probably 80% of Forrest Gump’s success. We just love this character.

2) Take some risks in your screenplay – One of the constants in Forrest Gump is that it takes tons of chances, and risky ones at that. Forrest’s great grandfather started the Ku Klux Klan. His mother prostitutes herself to the principal to keep Forrest in school. These aren’t things you’d typically associate with a “feel good” movie. Therefore it’s one of the reasons Forrest Gump feels different from every other movie out there.

3) But only if you have a great character – I’m all for taking chances. Forrest Gump proves how good a movie can be when you take risks. But if you’re going to take risks, make sure you have one hell of a main character, as he’ll act as a safety net for risks gone wrong. Forrest Gump, love him or hate him, is an unforgettable character. He alone is the reason this script can buck traditional structure and still get away with it. Taking huge story risks with average characters (or even “good” characters) is probably a death wish.

4) CONFLICT ALERT – Remember that if your script lacks structure, there better be some major forms of conflict to drive the drama. Preferably, you’d like one big EXTERIOR conflict and one big INTERIOR conflict. The exterior conflict here is that Forrest loves Jenny, but she doesn’t love him back. The interior conflict is Forrest’s desire to be smart when he’s dumb. These two conflicts drive the majority of the story’s emotional component.

5) If you don’t have a goal driving your movie, make use of “The Dramatic Question” – You all know how much I like character goals. Yet there aren’t any in Forrest Gump. We’re just experiencing Forrest’s crazy life along with him. So, if you find yourself writing that kind of movie, make sure you AT LEAST have a “Dramatic Question.” That’s a question whose answer has large ramifications for your central characters. In other words, it must be DRAMATIC. Here, the question is, “Will Forrest get Jenny?” That’s the only consistent dramatic aspect driving Forrest Gump, and because we care so much about Forrest and Jenny as characters, it’s a powerful one.

6) Look to add a visual element that symbolizes your story – Forrest starts with a feather floating along in the breeze. This feather symbolizes Forrest’s journey, which floats along unpredictably as well, Ferris never knowing where he’s going to end up next. That feather became one of the bigger talking points after the film was released.

7) We despise people who complain about their shitty lot in life and do nothing to change it – We already talked about how likable the underdog character is. Yet another reason why Forrest is so likable is that he has all these disadvantages, yet never uses them as an excuse. He always pushes forward and tries to make the best out of his situation. I can’t stress how likable these people are in both real life and in the movies. If you can write this type of character into your movie, do it. We’ll instantly fall in love with them. (note – while this is true for main characters, it isn’t for secondary characters, like Lt. Dan.  Just make sure those characters change by the end of the movie)

8) The “Relationship Save The Cat” Moment – Lots of us focus on the ‘save the cat’ moment for our main character. But in a love story, I think you need a ‘save the cat’ moment for your couple as well. We need that moment that’s going to make us love them together, that’s going to make us want them to be together. To me, that moment comes when Jenny and Forrest hide from her drunken abusive father in the fields. It’s a “them against the world” moment that makes us sympathize and care for them.

9) IRONY ALERT – Irony is one of the most powerful tools in writing. Audiences LOVE IT. And it’s one of the reasons Forrest Gump is so popular. Forrest is the dumbest character in the movie, yet he’s the most successful character by far. This movie doesn’t work without that irony. For example, if Forrest was smart and he achieved all this, we’d be bored because, duh, why wouldn’t he be successful? He’s super-smart.

10) Comedy is your main weapon to combat melodrama – Forrest Gump could’ve been SUPER melodramatic. It has Forrest’s best friend dying on the battlefield, his mother dying of cancer, and the love of his life dying of AIDS. But the film places comedy at such a high premium, that it balances those moments out. Without all the comedy here, those melodramatic moments would’ve sunk this script.

Every day writers give up on their dreams. What can The Imperfectionist teach us about minimizing that possibility?

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: (my best interpretation of it) A loser husband lies to his adoring mother, telling her he sold a manuscript. When the lie spreads beyond the family, he plays along, not realizing the devastating effects it will have on himself and his daughter.
About: This script finished with 5 votes on the 2006 Black List. The writer, Craig Hoetger, was never able to parlay the achievement into anything bigger, and has since moved on to another profession.
Writer: Craig Hoetger
Details: 120 pages

Seth Rogen for Dan?

So there I was, trying to do a good thing – trying to dig into these spec scripts of the past and find another forgotten gem. I didn’t know anything about this one other than that it was on the 2006 Black List, ranked fairly low (implying not many people had read it), and so it sounded like the perfect script to take a chance on.

And then I started reading it. And 30 pages in, I started regretting my decision. Why? Well, for starters, nothing was happening! And the things that WERE happening weren’t making a lot of sense. But I dutifully read on. Where others would’ve given up, I kept going, determined to make it to the end. And the script actually did start to develop a plot, but it was too late. By that point, I’d already given up.

However, it wasn’t until I started doing research on the writer that I perked up and realized there was a lesson to be learned in all of this. It turned out that our scribe, Craig Hoetger, had given up on his screenwriting career, moved back east, and become a lawyer. He’d spent 10 years pursuing his dream before quitting. And all I could think was, if he’d had the right education, he could’ve made it. And how there are thousands of writers just like him. Talented, but for one reason or another, not getting the proper instruction on how to write a screenplay. These writers were quitting every day. Believing they didn’t have the goods and moving on. I want to talk about that in a moment, but first a quick breakdown on the imperfect Imperfectionist…

Daniel Merton was a childhood genius. He could spell his name with alphabet soup letters when he was two. His older brother, Kyle, was the opposite. A baboon in human skin, he’d be lucky to spell his name after graduating high school. As a result, Dan was tabbed the golden child by their mom, Cookie, who saw to it that he always got the best education, the best opportunities in life. He eventually graduated law school, living up to his promise.

Except that was ten years ago. Dan is now married to the monstrous nagging wicked bitch of the west, Cat. His only achievement in life is his adorable little eight year old daughter, Sophie. These days, Dan is anything but a prodigy. He loses every job he gets within a year. He doesn’t have any drive. He can’t even succeed at the simplest of tasks – like re-organizing his books (books he never finished reading, by the way). In short, Dan has turned into a loser.

And when he gets canned from his latest job, his wife has had enough. She leaves him and Sophie. Dan is so broke that he can’t pay the bills anymore, so having no other options, he takes his daughter and heads back to his mother’s house in Michigan. Cookie is more than happy to see the prodigal son return, but Kyle, his brother, isn’t. Kyle, of course, is still living at home.

Fearful that his mother will find out he’s a failure, Dan comes up with a story that he’s sold a manuscript for a cool $100,000. His mother is so psyched, she starts telling all her friends, who in turn tell their friends. While at a local town rally the next day, Dan’s achievement is announced to the entire crowd, and Dan finds himself being shuttled up to the microphone. He sees so many expectant eyes that he expands on his lie, telling everyone that not only did he sell the novel, but it’s going to be the next book on Oprah’s Book Club!

While this helps him achieve momentary celebrity status, Dan must explain to his confused daughter why it is he’s lying to everyone. She knows the truth, that Dan has written a total of 2 chapters of his “novel” in 4 years. Whatever the case, it doesn’t take long for the town to catch up with him and his lie to be exposed. Which leaves Dan at his lowest point of all. Will he find a way out? Will he resolve his issues with his wife, brother, and daughter? He’ll have to if he has any chance of salvaging what’s become one pitiful life.

The Imperfectionist has a lot of problems. Starting with the most obvious. It takes WAY TOO FREAKING LONG TO GET TO THE PLOT. A common beginner mistake. Now I’m assuming this script is about a guy who tells his town that he sold a book and then dealing with the aftermath of the lie. Here’s the thing though – we don’t get to that lie until AFTER PAGE 60! That means the plot of this movie isn’t introduced until half-way through the script!

Before that, I had no idea what The Imperfectionist was about (I didn’t have the benefit of a logline). The first act contained another common beginner error – the constant repeating of information we already knew. Dan gets fired. Dan’s wife tells him he’s a loser. We’re told Dan’s lost other jobs. Dan doesn’t pay his bills. Dan chooses porn over paying his bills. In other words, Dan is a LOSER. But we didn’t need 12 scenes to tell us that. We understood it after the first scene. No wonder we don’t get to the plot until the midpoint – we’ve spent the entire first act telling us over and over again that Dan is a loser!

There are a lot of other problems here (How Dan went from a super-genius to a super-loser is never clearly explained, leaving us baffled and confused for most of the story) but that’s not the point. The point is, Hoetger is like a lot of screenwriters. Guys come to Hollywood every day hoping to become screenwriters. Some spend a year or two here while others spend an entire decade (or more!). A lot of them don’t make it. And a huge reason for that is that they’re never told how to write a fucking screenplay!

I mean, these are basic problems in this script. You don’t need 12 scenes to tell us who your freaking protagonist is. A good writer needs 1. You don’t introduce your plot on page 60. You do it as soon as possible. Dan should’ve been fired by his boss by page 5, headed back to his hometown by page 10, and lied to his mom about the book by page 25. This is basic screenwriting 101 here. Get to your story as soon as possible! For whatever reason, tons of wannabe screenwriters don’t seek out the widely available number of books (or websites, or professional screenplays, or teachers) that explain how to do this stuff.

And in Craig’s situation, it was even worse! The Imperfectionist made the Black List (for what I’m assuming were a few clever moments sprinkled throughout) which told Craig that that was the proper way to write a script. You don’t need to move your story along quickly. You don’t need to get to the point quickly. So he continued writing screenplays for another five years believing that that was the correct way to write. No wonder he never found success. Had he gotten professional feedback or read a hundred scripts or a half-dozen screenwriting books, he would’ve realized that these were major mistakes that needed to be corrected, regardless of what his cheerleading agents were telling him.

I say this because I can tell, under the right guidance, Craig could have forged a career in this business. The writing here is pretty good. It’s just that there are some giant structural issues and inconsistencies in the way the characters were portrayed. Those things could’ve been fixed with the right feedback. It just terrifies me that there are all these aspiring writers out there like Craig who don’t know to study the craft and who are subsequently making basic correctable mistakes over and over again in all their screenplays, and who will therefore have to abort their dreams at some point. Study, people. Learn. Get feedback. Read scripts. Take classes. Know how to tell a story. By doing so, you give yourself the best chance at success in this business.

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

What I learned: This is the third script I read this week where the writer kept repeating the same information over and over again about his main character in the first act. If you do it right, all you need is one scene to establish your hero, then you get on with your story.

We don’t get to talk about the action spec much, which means today’s review is going to be an education on the matter…

Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped inside the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack; using his inside knowledge, Banning works with national security to rescue the President from his kidnappers.
About: Writers (and married couple) Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt had been writing together for over a decade before they sold their first script, Olympus Has Fallen. Rothenberger had actually won the Nicholl competition all the way back in 2002 (with a Korean war epic – total Nicholl-bait!). They struggled with numerous near misses over the next decade before signing with Gersh and Kaplan-Perrone off a script they wrote called “Cali.” The reps read through their entire body of work – 20 scripts – and said that Olympus Has Fallen was the one they wanted to go out with. However, they first spent a year revising the script, mainly updating it from its original incarnation, which was dated. The movie was then purchased by Millineum and got Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman attached. Antoine Fuqua directed the film. It just came out this weekend and finished second at the box office with a 30 million dollar take.
Writers: Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt
Details: 115 pages

The reason I wanted to review Olympus Has Fallen was simple: Action. Producers want action scripts. Why? Action films have the potential to make more money than any other genre because action sells everywhere. The guy who lives in the middle of the desert in Nigeria isn’t going to turn on an action movie and go, “Wait, what’s going on? I don’t understand. Why are things blowing up?” Blowing-up is a universal language.

Artistically, I have a problem with this. It hurts to admit that the writing of a movie doesn’t matter to the guy in Spain who doesn’t understand English. As long as his action appetite is satiated with enough car chases and explosions, he’s happy. To that end, it’s appropriate to point out that the most important aspect of an action spec is the concept. If you’ve got something a little unique that we haven’t seen before that has the potential for a lot of great action scenes, your spec has a chance of getting picked up.

But here’s why that’s not all you need, despite most writers believing that’s the case. The guy in Nigeria may not be discerning of what your love interest’s backstory is. But the guy at a studio desk in Hollywood is. You see, he gets hundreds of action scripts to read. So he’s going to be weighing all of them against each other. Concept will be the biggest determinant. But he’s also looking at execution, originality, castablity, character, etc. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, quality does matter.

Mike Banning is your typical secret service agent. The guy is big. Looks former athlete’ish. Flashes that alpha male smile. Or at least, he USED TO flash a smile. Not after tonight though. While hanging with the prez at Camp David, Banning is unable to save Mrs. President from falling through the ice pond and dying a cold airless death! Banning never mentally recovers from the ordeal, and when we cut to two years later, we see that he’s now a Secret Service GROUP agent. That’s, like, the level BELOW the lead agents! Olympus has fallen? More like Banning has fallen! Right after the First Lady has fallen. Through the ice!

President Benjamin Asher doesn’t have time to dwell on dead wives though. Tensions are heating up between North and South Korea, and decisions have to be made on how the U.S. will respond. South Korea’s new president decides to come to the U.S. to personally ask the president for help, but soon finds out he’s got his own secret service issues. Once in the White House, the head of his security, a nasty little bugger named Kang, snaps his fingers and his entire team enacts a plan to take over the White House! Looks like Kang is secretly North Korean! And he’s come here to re-unite his country with his Southern brothers!

In the meantime, Banning is off on the outskirts of the city doing some menial task when he sees a bunch of explosions and stuff in the distance. So he hops in a sewer and starts the long underground trek to the White House. At some point during his smelly stroll, Kang reveals that he wants the codes to a secret defense project called “Cerberus.” Everyone in the U.S. cabinet looks at each other with bulged eyes. How does he know about Cerberus???? But that should be the least of their worries. Because it turns out Kang isn’t here to re-unite the Koreas like originally assumed. His plan is MUCH more terrifying!

Beep beep boooop.

Scriptshadow verdict computing……….

Analysis…….

Well, I’ll say this. Olympus Has Fallen is better than most amateur action scripts I’ve read. Which may sound like good news. The problem is, I rarely come across a good amateur action script. That’s because most action writers just focus on the explosions. They don’t realize that the totality of explosions equals in a movie is maybe 2 minutes long and that there needs to be this thing called a, um, STORY in between.

Olympus has a story. But besides a few nice flashes (literally) in the first half, it’s a little too standard. I’m thinking the studio must have really REALLY loved this concept (concept is BIG in action scripts! Don’t bother writing an action spec without one!), because they allowed for a bit too much in the cliché department. In my opinion, if you’re going to write an action film, you gotta give us something different here and there. And there WERE some cool moments. For example, I liked when the North Korean plane came in and set off that blinding light weapon so that nobody could shoot them down. I’ve never seen that before. And the Cerberus storyline (which amounted to taking all American nuclear missiles off-line) was slightly…..er…different-ish than many of the plans I’ve seen in these movies.

And there were a few other things that told me I was reading a professional script here. Early on, as Banning is getting ready for work, he gets a phone call from a friend, and the resulting conversation tells us some things about his character. At the same time this is happening, Banning is watching the news, where reporters are telling us about the current North/South Korean situation. In other words, the scene is achieving TWO THINGS at once – exposition about Banning and exposition about the Koreas. Amateur writers would’ve typically separated these scenes. Pros are always looking to combine scenes so that they’re doing two/three things at once.

It’s also important to make the central plan in your action movie believable. You have to ask yourself, “How would this really happen?” and go from there. The more convincing you can be, the more you’re going to pull your audience in. I see too many amateur scripts where the writers don’t even consider this and as a result the reader is taken out of the story immediately. Within the context of the movie, the plan here was pretty believable. I had some reservations about the U.S. letting a C-130 cargo plane fly up to the White House (they do stop it but not before it’s able to help enact the plan), but the stuff on the ground was sound.

The big problem with Olympus Has Fallen – and I’m kinda shocked writers with ten years of experience made this mistake – is that its main character is sooooooo boring. Or maybe “boring” isn’t the word. “Standard” may be better. I’m actually not surprised that Gerard Butler plays the role of Banning because he’s the real-world equivalent of “standard” and “boring.” Despite Banning being the hero here, he doesn’t say or do much! I mean, he’s running around in the underground tunnels and running around in the White House, but I never really felt like I knew the guy because he didn’t say anything, ever!

It’s interesting, the White House Down spec (the competing White House hijack project that’s coming out this summer) took another approach. It paired its hero with the president, allowing for conversation between the two so we could get to know him. Then, of course, Die Hard has McClane talking to the cop (via radio) down below so we could get to know him. Banning doesn’t say much because he’s got nobody to talk to, poor guy. And in a movie market where we’ve seen a million agent-types before, you’re going to need any opportunity possible to get us into the head of your agent so you can differentiate him from everyone else. Of course, this was the sale draft I read. They may have changed it in the film. But it was a real issue in the script.

So the lead-up to the White House takeover was fun. But Olympus falters due to its bland hero and cliché second half. Which leaves a lot of you asking, “Well wait, I thought this was supposed to be an example of how to do it right.” That’s the scary thing – it’s actually better than most action specs. While it may not have been original, it was very competent, and 99% of the action specs I read aren’t even that. Those professional touches like having double-duty scenes, combined with a perfect execution of the three-act structure are things I don’t see in amateur screenplays. I’m still waiting for that kick ass modern-day Die Hard spec to give today’s audiences their first action classic, but scripts like Olympus Has Fallen will have to do in the meantime.

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

What I learned: This is a great reminder that these are the people you’re competing against as a screenwriter – people who have been honing their craft for over a decade, people who have won the Nicholl competition 10 years ago, people who have seen and experienced every kind of writing obstacle one can encounter and figuring out how to overcome it. Chances are, if you’re not throwing everything you can into your own writing, you won’t be able to compete with these guys.

I remember sitting in front of my computer six years ago and thinking, “What now?” I felt helpless. I felt lost. I felt blind. I’d been trying to break into this business known as “screenwriting” for years and I didn’t feel any closer now than I did when I started.

I’m sure all of you know what I’m talking about. That elusive job title known as “professional screenwriter” can seem so far away. Especially if you’re trying to break in from places like Ohio or Florida or Germany or Canada. Maybe you have a family or a job that takes up all of your time. You can only manage to write an hour a day, if you’re lucky. Heck, I remember a few weeks ago an amateur writer telling us that the only time he had to write was on his way to work on the train. So he was writing his script on his iPhone!

And yet, even though you put all that work in, even though you care so much, even though the only thing you can see yourself doing in life is writing movies that the public goes to see every weekend, the business always feels a million miles away. You’re one of hundreds of thousands of wannabe writers trying to get through the door. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you get this industry to notice you?

What’s even more frustrating is seeing these scripts that DO get writers through the door, especially some of these Black List scripts – supposedly the best scripts in town. The stories are thin. The characters are cheesy. If this is what’s needed to break through, then why haven’t YOU broken through? You begin to think the game is rigged. That the only way in is to “know someone.” And how can you know anyone? You’re in freaking Ohio! The closest thing you have to a Hollywood contact is your old gym teacher, who once was an alternate contestant on The Price Is Right.

So here’s the big question. How do you break into this exclusive club? What’s the secret? Well, I have good news for you. It’s not as impossible as it looks. The game isn’t rigged. Every producer, manager, and agent I know is DYING to find the next great script. Great scripts are what make their careers. Yeah, there are some top dogs who have their network of writers and directors who help them put together 100 million dollar movies whenever they want but those are the exceptions to the rule. Everyone else out there is desperate for an awesome script.

The first thing you gotta do is be honest with yourself. Are you in this for the long haul? If you’re not, screenwriting probably isn’t for you. Except for a handful of lucky souls, every successful writer I know has paid his dues. He’s written screenplays for at least five years. And there’s a reason it’s taken so long. Five years is the minimum amount of time it takes for writers to learn how to write a good screenplay. This craft is a lot harder than it looks. It’s a very specific type of writing that takes time to master. This is actually a good thing. That process weeds out the posers, the hucksters, the lazy wannabes, the writers who aren’t serious. It allows these guys to write a couple of bad action flicks and disappear forever. The only people who succeed here are the ones who are serious about it. Who keep writing, who keep learning, who keep reading scripts. Think about it. You’re competing against hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people. Half-ass is never going to cut it.

Assuming you’re serious, one of the most important elements to your success is: GET YOUR SCRIPTS OUT THERE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. There was a time, back in the 90s, where script secrecy was an important aspect to getting your script sold. Agents liked to tease a script, build up buzz, blanket the town with it all at once, and start fielding offers within a few hours. It just doesn’t work like that anymore. We’re too connected. Information and reaction via tracking boards and private backchannel communication helps sniff out the fact that most of these scripts aren’t very good. You can’t dupe the decision-makers anymore.

This is both bad and good. Bad because less writers sell scripts, but good because scripts now sell on their merits alone. In other words, the way to sell something is to write something truly good. Now as I’ve said before, there are still ways to game the system, to get bad stuff sold. But most of those ways are only available to working screenwriters. You’re not in the system yet. You’re an unknown. And for an unknown, the only way in is if your script kicks ass. Which brings me back to my point. If you write a good script, there’s no need for secrecy. A good script WILL sell. Look at The Disciple Program. That went out and everyone in town read it. The agency then pulled it back, packaged it, went out with it two full months later, and it sold. The fact that everyone already saw it didn’t prevent its success.

But even if you’re not as lucky as Disciple Program, the truth is that 95% of writers these days break in because they write something that gets around town and that a lot of people like. That’s their way into the business. So in my opinion, you should stop focusing on that elusive spec sale and just get your script to as many people as possible! The more people who read your script and like it, the more likely it is that someone’s going to offer you a rewrite job. And as soon as that happens, you’re in the business. It may be the fringe of the business, but you’ve gotten your foot in the door, which means the next script you send out there, more people will be eager to read it, and you’ll have a better chance of selling it (or it leading to an even bigger job). Almost every one of your favorite writers had a 2-3 year period where they were writing SyFy channel movies or uncredited rewrites for movies like Halloween 12. The writing business is just like any business. You have to work your way up. So after making sure your script is good (from honest friends to writing group feedback to getting a consultant to give you their honest opinion), I’m telling you: GET IT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. I’ve never met a writer yet who’s found success by not letting anyone read his stuff.

Now that you’re in the right mindset, you need to come up with a plan. If you’re mindlessly writing scripts without any direction, unsure of what you’ll do once those scripts are finished, you’re not going to get anywhere. In a sense, you have to think like a producer. Not a producer of movies, but a producer of your own career. You have to gameplan, think about what you can write that will generate the most interest, think of how you’re going to market that material, how you’re going to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. The great thing about writing a screenplay now is that there are more avenues than ever to get your script read.

What’s the ideal plan? Well, everyone has to come up with their own approach, but if you’re asking for the plan that’s going to get you the most bang for your buck, this is what I’d suggest. Write at least two scripts in the SAME GENRE, and make sure that genre is marketable. That’s action, thriller, comedy, horror, or sci-fi. The reason you write two is because everyone wants to know what else you’ve got. If you’re lucky enough to garner someone’s interest, you don’t want to have to say to them, “Well I’m working on something that will be done in five months.” The buzz you created with that person will die and they might not even remember you after all that time. By having another script in the same genre ready to go, you’ve made yourself both professional and marketable. It’s always easier for these agents to sell a new writer if they have multiple scripts from them. Even more so if those scripts are in the same genre.

From there, blanket the industry on as many fronts as you can afford. Enter all the contests. Get your script set up on the amateur Black List website. Hire consultants who will send your material to industry contacts if they like it. Make friends in all the online screenwriting forums. Create a writer’s group (as the members of the group improve, more of them will have access to industry contacts). Cold e-mail query every mid-level manager, agent, and producer in Hollywood. I’ll say this again: NOBODY CAN BUY YOUR SCRIPT IF THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT. So you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do to make sure everybody knows about your script?

Now of course, success is always dependent on the script you’re hawking. It has to actually be GOOD. There are a lot of writers out there who have created plans like this and not found success. But when I ask those writers how many scripts they’ve written, they respond with, “This is my first script.” Or, “I’m on number 2.” I’m not saying you’re not one of those lucky geniuses who can master the craft on your second try. I’m just saying it’s sure as hell not likely. That’s why I said before: MAKE SURE YOU’RE DEDICATED TO THE CRAFT. You gotta get to that point where you can gauge the level of your own material – know what’s good and what’s bad so you don’t put anything out there that sucks. And getting to that point takes awhile.

So in summary, make sure you’re dedicated to the craft. Put your head down and write a handful of screenplays. Once you hit your stride and start understanding screenwriting and what kind of screenwriter you are (what you do best), come up with a solid plan that includes two marketable genre scripts. Then get those scripts in front of as many eyeballs as possible. The better the writer you become + the more marketable your material + the more people who see your screenplay = your best chance at success. I’m rooting for you. Now get back to writing! ☺