As we gear up for the final weekend of horror pitches (starting tomorrow!), I wanted to broach the most common question I’ve been asked during this submission process. And that question is, “Should I reveal my big twist in the logline?”

In order to answer this question, a question I’ve been asked so many times over the years I’ve lost count, you have to understand what the purpose of a logline is. Because I don’t think enough writers know. I think they believe that a logline is like a trailer or a poster. You would never reveal your movie’s big twist in the trailer or the poster, so why would you reveal it in the logline?

The answer is that a logline has a different objective, and that objective is to place a movie idea in front of someone who has the power to make a movie so they can make a quick decision on whether that’s a movie they would want to make. If it sounds like something they’d want to make, they’ll request the script. They’ll then read the script and make a final decision on whether to make the movie or not.

Even if you’re not sending a logline to someone who’s directly responsible for greenlighting a movie, you are still sending it to someone who will be thinking in those terms. So, if you’re sending it to an agent, he will be looking at the logline through the producer’s point of view.

What does this mean in terms of what you should include in your logline? Well, what it means is that industry people are not reading scripts to enjoy them. Yes, everybody loves to read a good script. But they’re not reading scripts for the same reasons that moviegoers go see movies. To them, they’re reading the script for business reasons. They’re reading the script in hopes of finding something that can make them money so they can keep their jobs.

This is why, when you’re writing a logline, you want to include as much relevant information as you can.

Another relevant piece to this puzzle is that you’re competing against a ton of other loglines. This is something I think too many writers forget. They’re so wrapped up in all the time and energy they’ve put into their script that they think just conveying that they’ve written the screenplay should be enough for people to be interested.

But the reality is, since you’re competing with so many other loglines, it is essential that your logline stand out. Which brings us back to the original question. “Should I reveal my big twist in the logline?” Well, knowing what you know now, what do you think?

Chances are that if you have a big twist in your script, it’s the biggest selling point of the script. Therefore, if you don’t include it, you are not including the thing that has the best chance at making your logline stand out from the competition. “But Carson,” you say, “Then, when they read the script, it won’t be as enjoyable because they’ll already know the twist.”

Again, the job of a logline and a screenplay is not to entertain the person as much as it is to get them to make the movie. And smart producers can identify a great twist even if they hear about it ahead of time.

Of course, we can have the discussion about how powerfully a twist will hit someone in the moment as opposed to ahead of time.  But here’s the problem. If your twist is the main selling point of your script and you don’t mention it in the logline, the producer won’t request the script. So they never get to the point where they can experience the twist while reading the screenplay.

Now, just like any discussion about art, there is nuance. So, let’s get into the nuanced part of this conversation. We’ll start with what I call the “climax holy shit twist.” Think The Sixth Sense. Primal Fear. The Others. Saw. And The Usual Suspects. For scripts like this, you don’t want to include the twist in your logline. This is because the twist happens so late in the story and is so big, that you are literally destroying the reading experience by revealing it. So, if you have a twist like this, don’t include it in your logline.

But, what if you’ve written a script like The Matrix? That has a giant twist in it as well. Except that giant twist comes at the end of the first act, when we discover that Neo has been living in a fake constructed reality. In that case, you will DEFINITELY include the twist in the logline.

In fact, here’s a rule you can bank on 99% of the time. If you have a big twist that happens up to and including the midpoint of your script, you should include it in your logline. So, yes, that means that, if you’ve written From Dusk Till Dawn, where there’s a major twist at the midpoint, you would include that in your logline.

Some of you may call that blasphemous. “No! That must be preserved for the reading experience!” (Spoilers). Well let me ask you this. What does the logline look like without the big twist of the vampires? It’s just a bunch of random crazy shit happening. You could spend weeks obsessively trying to craft the perfect logline for that, but it’s not going to have anywhere close to the same request rate as the version of the logline that includes the twist of vampires.

Are there exceptions to this?

Yes, there is, actually.

The HUGE concept.

If you have a concept that is gigantic, it can override the need to expose the twist. And this goes back to my original explanation. A logline is meant to convey to a producer whether that movie could make money for them. Therefore, if you have a really giant idea, a la Jurassic Park, that’s enough to convince the producer that they can make a movie out of this. So the objective of the logline has been fulfilled.

But before you go off and start coming up with huge concepts with big twists so you can write loglines that don’t have to include those twists, it’s important to keep in mind that this combination is pretty rare. Mainly because if you have a giant concept, you don’t need a big twist. So that will be a very unique situation.

Let’s say, in spite of all of this, you’re still on the fence. You think that your script is different. You’re worried that if you reveal the twist in the logline that it will destroy the reading experience. I have good news for you. It won’t. In fact, it sometimes makes your script better.

Knowing what’s coming creates a fourth-wall breaking form of dramatic irony, which is when we, the reader, know more than the characters. In that sense, it can be exciting to know what our characters are in for!

If you have any doubt about this, look no further than how many times you’ve watched your favorite movie. Why do you keep watching it even though you know exactly what’s going to happen? It is this form of dramatic irony that still makes the movie entertaining. I know that Marty McFly is going to end up in his mother’s room, who’s going to fall for him, and he’s going to freak the hell out and look for any way to escape, and I can’t wait for the characters to catch up to me.

Finally – and this is something I hope you’ve learned over the last three pitch weekends – the more vague your logline is, the less effective it is. Every time a writer has tried to hide the cool things from their logline, that logline has failed. So, in almost every situation, if you’re debating whether to include the cool part in your logline, you should definitely choose to put it in your logline. It actually shocks me that writers would choose the opposite. A logline’s job is to sell the script. Obviously, then, you want to put your best, most detailed, most comprehensive logline forward!

Hopefully, this has charged a few of you up. If you have a logline that you think is on the “twist” fence and want professional advice, I can give you a logline consultation. They’re 25 bucks. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.

And speaking of twists, everyone should go watch “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” on Netflix. It’s got a whopper of a twist (what I would call a “holy shit twist”). Don’t look anything up online. Lots of spoilers out there. Just go watch it.

Today we discuss one of the most intensely debated topics in screenwriting

Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: A star quarterback hides a twisted secret—he’s a serial killer carving up victims between games. But when a relentless detective starts connecting the dots, his perfect season—and double life—begin to unravel. American Psycho meets Any Given Sunday.
About: This script finished as the fourth best entry in the Mega-Showdown contest. It was seen as the most daring of the four finalists, which made it polarizing. I always say that if you can’t be the best, then at least be polarizing because polarizing gets people talking. Which is exactly what this script has done.
Writer: Bill Lawrence
Details: 93 pages

Football season is upon us (daaaaaaaa Bears!). So what better way to celebrate than to review a script that debuted here on Scriptshadow!

This is our fourth place finisher, QB1, aka American Psycho in the football world. A few people have been asking if I’m still going to have the Second Chance Showdown for the entries that didn’t make it to the official showdown. The answer is yes. I will have two weekends of them, and those will occur in succession after this coming weekend. So the Showdown fun is not stopping any time soon.

QB1, which is our main character’s name, not just the title of the script, is not your average NFL quarterback. When QB1 watches as his safety blows a coverage, leading to their first week opponent scoring a touchdown and defeating our protagonist’s team, QB1 invites the safety to dinner. AND THEN LATER THAT NIGHT KILLS HIM.

Weak safety problem solved. Not only that, but QB1 starts playing better, and guides us through the process via his aggressive, sarcastic narration. There isn’t a towel boy, waiter, linebacker, or Starbucks customer that is safe from his ongoing opinionated voice-over. But it’s better to be a victim of his narration than his knife, which he next uses to slice up the abusive father of a cancer-stricken young girl who asked for his autograph.

The more he kills, the better QB1 plays. But you can’t kill everyone because then local law enforcement gets involved. And that’s exactly what happens when a young female detective becomes convinced that QB1 is responsible for the disappearance of his safety.

She starts coming around his place, asking all these questions, even demanding to see his basement (where the killing happened). Once QB1 realizes this detective isn’t going away, he uses his celebrity, making a call to the police captain, and insisting that the young detective is obsessed with him, providing made-up evidence, which is convincing enough for the captain to suspend the detective.

This allows QB1 to clear his head and focus on football, and the team storms into the playoffs, where they’re on an inevitable collision with the Super Bowl champs, a team with a coach who dissed QB1 in college, making the game extra important to win.

There are certain movies throughout time that screenwriters have become obsessed with and want to write their versions of. Heathers is one of them. Breakfast Club. And American Psycho. American Psycho may be right there at the top.

Which makes sense. It’s the perfect screenwriting show-off script. You get to write a delicious main character who prattles on about every possible thing he can think of. It’s almost like this cathartic channel by which to spout every annoyance or frustration that has ever popped into your head during the day.

As a result, I encounter these scripts a lot.

What makes them so challenging is that the main character is a killer. And his myriad of thoughts aren’t very nice. This brings the character into one the most highly debatable areas in screenwriting, which is “unlikability.” The character is inherently unlikable. And since he’s leading the audience, that can be unsettling.

How, then, do you make an “American Psycho” work? You have to make the protagonist’s observations a combination of funny and/or honest. “There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine,” Patrick Bateman says.

When I say “honest,” what I mean is that the character says what he’s really thinking, regardless of if it’s offensive. As long as it’s truthful, tons of people will inwardly relate to the observation, drawing them closer to the protagonist.

But here’s the reason unlikability hurts a script. When you get deeper into the story, during times when narratives tend to struggle, when the script engine isn’t as primed and we’re not close enough to the climax to keep us motivated, all we have is our hero to get us through that time. So if we don’t like him, the story can really drag.

And that happened to me here. I was mildly entertained listening to QB1 take us through the story. But once I knew where things were headed, I needed more than mildly amusing. I needed to like and want to root for this person.

To Bill’s credit, he understands this challenge, which is why he makes sure that QB1 kills cancer-stricken girl’s abusive father. And he designs entire scenes around making sure you like our hero. For example, late in the story, he wins 15 million dollars at the craps table and gives it all to the attendant. He tells her to spend the money wisely.

And while, technically, it’s a nice thing to do, I couldn’t help but feel like it was a move by Bill to stave off the exact criticism he knew would be coming. It was as if he said, “You’re going to call my hero unlikable!? Well check this out. I’m going to write a scene where he gives some random poor girl 15 million dollars! Try calling him unlikable now!”

But screenplays don’t work that way. They’re not buttons you can push that automatically change the way the reader feels. Every choice, every development, has to be organically and cleverly woven into the script so that we don’t realize when the writer is trying to make us love their hero in spite of the terrible things he’s doing. Which is hard. But that’s what you sign up for when you write a script like this one. If you’re going to write a 10 out of 10 difficulty script, then get ready for some super advanced level screenwriting challenges.

But look, I applaud Bill for taking a risk here. He’s known for a different kind of movie and this is exactly what you do when you want to break out of that pigeonholed role you’re in. It reminds me a lot of what Michael R. Perry did a decade ago with his script, The Voices. He was frustrated with the types of jobs he was getting and he wrote this weird serial killer script and it became a phenomenon around town and totally changed his career trajectory. All of a sudden, he was getting offered much more interesting projects. I hope the same thing happens for Bill, regardless of me not loving QB1.

Screenplay link: QB1

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

What I learned: Too many writers fall into the trap of creating what I call the “mildly annoying detective”—a bumbling investigator who asks a few questions, follows obvious leads, and poses no real threat to the protagonist. This character serves only as a plot device, checking the box for “law enforcement presence” without generating any genuine tension. The result? Readers remain emotionally detached, confident that the hero will easily outmaneuver this ineffective pursuer. Instead, you want to make your detective relentless. They should operate on a level that makes both protagonist and reader genuinely nervous. They should ask the exact questions that probe the weakest points in carefully constructed alibis, and pursue leads with a methodical precision that feels relentless rather than casual. — The detective in this story was very aggressive for the first 60% of the script. But then Bill let our hero off the hook. The captain suspends the detective, stripping her of her power. She wasn’t nearly as much of a threat anymore. During the end of the script, you want to do the opposite. You want the pressure to ramp up even more! So there was a missed opportunity there.

Let me start by saying, thank you to everyone who’s submitted to the Blood & Ink Showdown so far. I know it can be difficult putting your ideas out there to be judged. I always try and give some sort of explanation for why I say “no” but sometimes I have to get through a lot of pitches quickly which means I only have time to write a quick “no.” Please don’t take it personally.

Next weekend is the last weekend to pitch your horror ideas. If you’re not in yet, I would generate 5 pitches a day throughout the week and then, when the weekend comes, pitch the best 5 loglines you’ve got. You’ll have a better shot.

Next weekend will see the end of the “soft maybe” as there are no more weekends to carry your loglines into. And I do have good news for those of you who are stuck in Maybe-ville. I’m going to be accepting 5 “maybes” into the contest through the process of voting. That will happen AFTER next weekend’s pitches. So, at the very least, you’re going to want to get a “maybe.”

But today, I want to take a break from loglines to talk about the movie box office this summer, which isn’t doing great. Why do I want to talk about the box office? Because it affects the types of screenplays we should be writing. So, the better we can deduce what’s causing this rejection of current offerings, the better we’ll be at knowing what to write next.

And let’s start right at the top, since it’s so connected to the contest I’m running. The two big movie surprises this year have been Sinners and Weapons. Guess what genre those movies are in? Horror. Which means The Blood & Ink Showdown is right in the genre we want it to be.

But it’s not just that. It’s that both of these movies WERE ORIGINAL IDEAS. Which is awesome. It’s exactly what we’ve been saying Hollywood is missing. Audiences want original ideas. But I’m worried they’re going to focus more on the success of the genre and not enough on the fact that they were original.

I finally saw Weapons myself yesterday (here’s my old script review) and I thought it was great. But, more than that, it was different. It had this weird mystery at the center of it. It’s not told in a traditional easy-to-digest package. Instead, it’s told through individual points of view. These are things that studios traditionally believe mainstream audiences can’t handle. But they clearly can.

Even the number one movie of the year so far, Minecraft, FEELS different than other mainstream movies. And if you really look into it, it makes sense why it did so well. The mainstream big budget option for the past decade has been superheroes. We’re tired of that. So if you give us something even slightly different that also has the big budget treatment, we’ll flock to that movie.  And they have evidence of this every year yet they still don’t push it.  We saw it with Top Gun.  We saw it with Barbie. We’re done with these superhero movies.

I was holding out hope that James Gunn was going to bring something fresh to the table. But Superman was just a slightly more upbeat (and colorful) version of the superhero movies we’re used to. It wasn’t different enough. I truly think that we’ve reached the end with this genre. The last big hit was Deadpool and Wolverine and that’s going to be it.

They’re still hoping Avengers is going to save the day but I don’t see how it can. The reason that the original two Avengers movies were two of the biggest movies ever was because every Marvel movie was building up, both in story and box office, over the previous ones. So it really felt like the culmination of something special.

Not only is that not going on here, it’s actually headed in the opposite direction. The last three Marvel movies, Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four, have done terribly. I suppose you could argue Fantastic Four did okay. But that’s only because the bar for success on superhero movies has fallen so low that we now label something as successful if it makes half as much money as an equivalent Marvel movie would’ve made five years ago.

So what does this all mean for screenwriters? It’s hard to tell because what Hollywood knows and what they’re actually willing to do are two different things. Sinners and Weapons are telling them to make more original material. So that’s what they should be thinking. But Hollywood is notoriously terrified of going down the original route because it’s so uncertain. They have zero comps or rules they can rely on to know if something’s going to do well or not. This is why you usually only see big original chances being taken in horror, because horror is inexpensive.

But at some point, if Hollywood wants to survive, it has no choice but to move to original material. Whether they do that now or they wait for the overall box office to drop another 20%, there’s no way around it. And they know this. But a studio is like a person. Nobody truly changes unless their back is against the wall. So they will wait until the last second to accept this. When do I think the last second will be? D-Day will probably be Avengers Doomsday third weekend.

I know that’s a strange claim so let me explain. Avengers will be the true litmus test of if the superhero genre is dead. The first weekend, unless it’s drastically low, will be spun by the trades as a win. But the real data is in the second weekend drop. However, since Doomsday arrives on December 18, 2026, that means the second weekend will be Christmas, when a lot of families go to movies. So that second weekend should be strong. By the way, this is why they’re putting it a week before Christmas, so that the second weekend drop doesn’t drop much. They wouldn’t have that luxury if they opened in the summer.

Therefore, it’s the third weekend that you’ll see the drop. And how big that drop is is going to tell us everything. Literally the only way it’s not a giant drop is if the movie is good. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible. Bringing back a tired (and failed) Russo Brothers along with Robert Downey Jr. in a strange “other character” scenario feels desperate. Nor does anything here feel planned.  There are numerous stories about how they’re shooting without a script.  Nothing sounds promising here.  Even Deadpool joining the gang is tainted by Blake Lively’s mean girl parade lawsuit.

Despite that harsh criticism, Disney may be more ahead of the game than I’m giving them credit for. They’ve been letting agents and producers know they’re looking for male-dominated ORIGINAL material. I’ll believe this when I see it (if they start announcing a bunch of sales) but it’s an indication that they’re accepting originality is the only path forward. Which is saying A LOT about Disney, considering that they have more IP than anyone.

And let’s not overlook the male part of that request either. It seems like the era of the industry knee-jerkingly wanting a woman in the lead may be over. The studios have lost a lot of male moviegoers, and they’re sorry and want them back. Well, they’re not sorry. They just want money. But still. Men have always been the backbone of the movie-buying public, just like women have always been the backbone of the book-buying public. Disney either let politics cloud that reality or hoped to bridge the gap, or some combination of both. But they’ve come to the conclusion that dudes like movies more than dudettes so maybe you should gear a lot of movies towards dudes.

All right, what have we learned here? Originality is finally being valued in Hollywood and may become even more valued after the release of Avengers Doomsday next year. Horror is hot right now. And Hollywood wants men back. So male-centric concepts should do well. What else do you need to know? Start writing!

Pitching for this weekend is CLOSED.  Come back next weekend (the final one) to pitch your horror loglines.  Seeya then!

I have a direct line to, arguably, the biggest person in horror in all of Hollywood. And this person trusts my taste implicitly. If I send him a script, he’ll start reading it within 10 minutes.

This was the impetus for this contest. I want to send this guy a great horror script. But I thought, “How do I find a great horror script?” A truly great horror script from an amateur writer hits my desk maybe once every four years.

I wanted to speed up that process.

Which is how I got this idea. I realized that the big issue with all these horror scripts that get sent my way is that 95% of them don’t even have good concepts. So, even if the script is good, you know it can’t sell because its marketability can’t easily be conveyed to the next decision maker up the ladder.

So I thought, what if I create a contest where you only got in if you pitched a strong horror concept? This would dramatically increase the chances that we find a script that a studio would actually want to buy and turn into a movie.

So far, we’ve had two weekends of pitches and we’ve found roughly 30 concepts. We have two more weekends, which means we’re probably going to find about 60 concepts. From there, those people are in the official contest and their job is to write the best version of that screenplay possible.  There will be challenges and mini-showdowns along the way in order to keep them on schedule.

We will then have a showdown here on the site where you guys will decide what the best script is and, therefore, what I send to this Hollywood producer. But it’s got to be a really good script. This guy has such a high bar for quality and if all the scripts are weak, or just average, that’s not enough.

But we have half-a-year to write this script and get it in good shape, which is the same timeline a studio would ask for. Actually, a studio would want it sooner. So, this is not an unreasonable timeline.

You’re probably wondering, how does this work?

You pitch your horror logline down in the comments. Include your title and subgenre (i.e. horror comedy, horror thriller, etc.) and I will tell you whether the idea is good enough to advance to the official competition, in which case, you will write the entire script.

Here are the responses I will leave after your pitch and what they mean.

No – Doesn’t make the cut and DON’T re-pitch.
Soft Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again next week.
Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again immediately.
Strong Maybe – You’re in.
Yes – You’re in plus special treatment.

You get FIVE logline pitches. So, make sure they’re good.

If you’re worried that I’m too hard to please, you still have a shot. Consistent Commenters, Brenkilco, Jaco, Poe, Scott Crawford, and Arthur all still have ONE YES they can give over these final two weekends.

There is one other way to get in.

GET 15 UPVOTES

If your idea gets 15 upvotes, you’re automatically in. So, I encourage everyone here to be constantly screening the newest entries and upvoting any concept you like. It could literally change a writer’s life. And this supersedes a “no.” So, even if I “no” a concept, it can still advance with 15 votes.

For those of you re-pitching your ‘maybes’ from last week, those do not count against your 5 loglines.

A few final rules. If you have a strong maybe or even a ‘yes’ and want to pitch more ideas to try and get a ‘yes,’ or a second ‘yes’ that’s fine.  I’ve realized that if someone came up with a good idea, they’re capable of coming up with an even better idea, so have at it.  If you want to campaign for your logline to get 15 votes, you only get one campaign message. You can’t keep campaigning or that idea is disqualified. Also, you can’t double post your idea and add up the upvotes from both comments to get 15 votes. You’ve got to get 15 upvotes from the original comment.

This weekend’s pitch session goes until Monday, 11:59pm Pacific Time, since it’s Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S.

P.S. If you want to have more of a conversation about your logline pitches, rather than just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ or you want to pitch your ideas in private, you can order my logline service. It’s $25 for a logline analysis (along with a yes or no) and $50 for unlimited e-mails where we workshop a weak logline into something that is potentially contest worthy. There are no guarantees, though. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Let Scriptshadow arm you properly for the coming weekend

As we move into weekend #3 of the Blood and Ink pitches, I want to give you guys more ammo for your entries by reminding you what kinds of loglines generate the most interest. Here are five varieties of loglines you should be pitching if you want to get into the Blood and Ink Showdown.

THE BIG JUICY CONCEPT

The big juicy concept is when you have a concept that is so huge the logline doesn’t matter. “Logline doesn’t matter?? How can that be?” Because all that matters with any movie idea is that the audience a) understands what it’s about and b) wants to see it. Take Jake Barnes’ idea. President of the United States is possessed and needs an exorcism. Note how I don’t have to craft a perfect logline around that for you to understand what the movie is. That’s a big juicy concept. The nice thing about big juicy concepts besides the fact that they’re easy sells is that you don’t have to be a logline expert to pitch them.

This speaks to a wider-ranging conversation about logline construction. The juicier the idea, the less perfect the logline has to be. Conversely, the less juicy the idea, the more perfect the logline has to be. Let’s use the above logline example. Let’s say your movie is not about the president getting possessed but rather the mayor in a small Midwestern town getting possessed circa 1988. I’m going to demand more out of the way that logline is presented than I would The President’s Exorcism.

By the way, I’m not saying the 1988 Exorcism won’t be the better script. But that doesn’t matter yet. All that matters is can you present your story in logline form in a way that will make me want to read the screenplay? And it is possible for the 1988 idea to get reads if your sentence construction is perfect, if the details imply a unique specificity to your story, if the main character sounds interesting. Actually, that’s the perfect segue into our next logline option.

HOW TO WIN THE ‘BASIC BITCH’ LOGLINE GAME (HINT: IT’S CHARACTER)

One of the more frustrating things about being a screenwriter is that most of the stuff we tend to be drawn to doesn’t fit into the high concept paradigm. The stuff we’re really passionate about is often more grounded. And even when those impassioned ideas are bigger, they’re not “president gets exorcised” big. This puts us in a tough predicament when it comes time to write the logline.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an A24 movie. Like Friendship, which recently came out to rent. That movie is about a guy who strikes up a friendship with a weatherman who lives in the neighborhood. The friendship goes sour and he wants his friend back. That’s not a big movie idea. It’s hard to logline that into something compelling, like a lot of A24 movies. I call these loglines “Basic Bitch” loglines because they’re unspectacular movie ideas, the kind you wouldn’t look at twice if they passed you on the street.

So how do you logline these ideas? The only way to do it is to lean into character. If you can make the characters sound interesting, you’ll add significant shine to that basic concept. So, I might logline Friendship this way: “Craig, a lonely suburban husband who has extreme difficulty making friends, has his life turned upside-down when his neighbor, a popular network weatherman, invites him into his life.” Note how this logline is almost entirely character-based. It’s telling you as much about the characters as one has time for in logline form.

That’s how you should approach basic bitch concepts. If there isn’t a juicy hook there, focus on what’s interesting about your characters. And if you can’t focus on characters because you have a basic bitch concept with basic bitch characters, then you shouldn’t have written that script.

IRONY IS YOUR FRIEND YOUNG GRASSHOPPER

The logline that gets the most attention after the big juicy concepts is the ironic logline. And, surprisingly, we’re not seeing a whole lot of loglines featuring irony in the pitches. But boy is it crack for potential readers. So, it’s definitely something you want to consider. All movie execs love clever ideas. It makes them feel smart. And an ironic idea is the best way to achieve this.

A priest who lives a double life is more clever than a priest who is committed to the cloth. A therapist who’s on the verge of becoming crazy is more clever than a schoolteacher on the verge of becoming crazy. An influencer with 20 million followers is more interesting if she’s deftly shy in her day to day life than if she’s super outgoing.

Although the best ironic premises are built around character, you can build irony around plot as well. In the future, a new city is built so that committing crimes is impossible. It’s billed as the safest city in the world and everyone wants to live there. But then, one day, a string of murders indicates that there’s a serial killer on the loose.

It’s not the greatest idea but it’s a good example of how to build irony into your premise.

BE EFFING UNIQUE

Back in the day, you could be reading some back alley magazine and come across a wild true story about a giant hole that exists in the middle of Antarctica and have the beginnings of a cool movie idea that nobody had heard of before.

But these days, with podcasts and Reddit and social media, all of the unique things that are out there have been exposed a thousand times over. Which makes being unique harder than ever.

But it’s still one of the best ways to separate your logline from the pack. As many as 70% of the loglines that have been pitched so far I’ve rejected because they’ve provided absolutely nothing new. Here’s an example: “A guilt-ridden mother fights to protect her two young children from the disturbed spirit of a murder victim who covets their souls for the afterlife.” Where is the unique element in this idea? It’s not a guilt-ridden mother. It’s not protecting children. A spirit isn’t original. Nor is a murder victim. Nor is coveting souls or the afterlife. Without one single unique element, how do you plan to stand out against a thousand other loglines?

Contrast that with this “strong maybe” that made it. “When a young family’s first night camping in the remote Australian wilderness ends with their car, food, and gear stolen, they are plunged into a nightmare scenario, as they are forced to protect their two teenage children and make their way out of an unforgiving landscape, while staying ahead of the dreaded Kadaitcha, a demonic executioner from Aboriginal folklore, that stalks trespassers and demands blood payment for defiling sacred land.” I’ve never heard of the Kadaitcha in my life. That makes me curious. And that’s what being unique does.

Another strong logline involved moving an entire cemetery. I’d never heard of that before. It’s unique. You should always be pushing to come up with unique ideas so I expect at least one of your ideas this weekend to focus on something truly different.

THAT FRESH ANGLE SMELL

Sometimes it seems like every movie idea has already been done. How can you possibly come up with something new? Here’s how. You find a new ANGLE into an old idea. For example, here’s one of the “yes” loglines that made it directly into the competition: “From bite to bite, we follow the zombie infection as it spreads – each victim’s story unfolding from the moment they’re bitten to when they pass it on.”

We’ve seen a million zombie movies before. But we haven’t seen this angle before. So, when you approach your vampire or werewolf or haunted house or masked killer concept, you can’t just give us another vanilla version of it. You want to take a step back from your idea and see if you’re coming at it too predictably, which is often the case. Is there another way in?

There are many ways to write a movie about a conclave. You can write a world-hopping conspiracy thriller, which I think Dan Brown did in one of his novels. You can follow a journalist who’s trying to break a story about who the next Pope will be. You can write a mystery about how the previous Pope died. Was one of the Cardinals responsible? You can write a dark comedy about a bunch of old men in this church arguing with each other. Or you can write it the way “Conclave” did, following one Cardinal’s journey to try and get the best man for the job elected, only to get pulled into the conversation himself.

What angle you tell your story from can completely change the tenor of the idea. It can be the difference between something sounding dull or exciting, so it’s worth exploring every option before you pick an angle.

All right,

24 hours left before the festivities begin.

Get those loglines ready!

:)