Want to turbo-boost your dialogue? Add a dialogue-friendly character.

Okay, it’s time for me to be… how to I put this nicely?

Parental.

I still love you but I have to teach you a couple of lessons.

I’ve noticed a good chunk of excuse-making in the comments section about why writers aren’t keeping up.

One of the biggest reasons is: Not enough time.

My response to that?

B.S.

And I can hear your resistance already. The anger is bubbling. You can’t wait to get down in that comments section and explain to me why YOUR situation is DIFFERENT from everyone else’s and how you actually truly seriously don’t have enough time to get your pages written.

B.S.

B.S. with a capital B and a capital S.

The only way you don’t have enough time to finish your pages is if there is an anti-screenwriting terrorist in your home pointing a gun at your head all 24 hours of the day and telling you that if you write anything, he’ll shoot you.

Unless that is going on, you have time.

If you are operating by the 2-Week screenwriting principle of not judging your writing, you can write 8 pages in 2 to 3 hours.

If you’re still convinced that you don’t have enough time, post every hour of your day and what you were doing during that hour in the comments section. I’m certain that the intelligent Scriptshadow community can help you rearrange some things to find two hours to write.

And if your excuse is that, sure, you do have the time, but you’re stuck and you don’t know what to write next – KEEP WRITING ANYWAY. I don’t care if you write a redundant scene or a scene that feels pointless. As long as you keep writing! Because when you write, you’re more likely to come up with ideas, and when you come up with ideas, you’ll have reason to keep writing.

“But… but… but… but…”

No buts. You know it’s true. You have time to write. Now stop making excuses and just do it.

On to something I’ve noticed a few of you having trouble with – dialogue.

Here’s the dirty little secret about dialogue.

Are you ready?

DON’T WORRY ABOUT DIALOGUE.

That’s it.

That’s the only thing you have to know about dialogue at this moment.

Why? Because there’s never been a script where more than 10% of the dialogue from the first draft made it into the final movie.

Dialogue is the most re-shaped component of a script and that’s because a) it’s easy to rewrite, and b) the more you learn about your characters over the course of a project, the better you understand what they’d say and how they’d say it. Not to mention plots are constantly evolving in rewrites, which means a lot of scenes are getting chopped, which means all those hours you spent obsessively slaving over that dialogue turned out to be for nothing cause the scenes no longer exist.

How insignificant is dialogue in the grand scheme of things? Remember how we talked about the Safdie Brothers writing 160 drafts of Uncut Gems?

Even WITH THOSE 160 drafts, they still did scripted takes AND “say whatever you want” takes with their actors. In other words, they knew that dialogue, while important, isn’t as important as your actors believing in and emotionally connecting with what they say. So after ten years of rewriting a script to death, the finished product still consisted of a ton of dialogue literally made up on the spot.

Yes, everyone, I understand that the Safdie Brothers are writer-directors and don’t need their dialogue to shine on the page. But still: dialogue should be one of the last things in the script you perfect. Once you’ve got your structure down (which usually takes about 6-7 drafts) and you therefore know you won’t be cutting many more scenes, that’s when your focus is going to shift to dialogue.

In the meantime, there’s two types of dialogue you should be writing in your first draft. Functional or fun. Functional dialogue when you’ve got exposition to convey to the writer. And fun for everything else.

So if you have a scene like in Jurassic Park where the characters are explaining the rules of the dinosaurs or how the theme park works, just get that dialogue down. It doesn’t have to be entertaining. You’ll make it entertaining in future drafts. Right now, it doesn’t matter if it’s dryer than sand. You just need to get it down.

And if you have a scene where two characters with some sexual chemistry are on their way to the next big set piece, have fun with their dialogue. Be outrageous, witty, silly, clumsy. You’re not trying to hit a home run your first at-bat. You’re trying to get a general feel for who these people are and the things they might say. These scenes can be twice as long as they’ll end up being in the final draft because you’re in exploratory mode.

With that said, I know that writing a good dialogue scene makes you feel good. And when you feel good, you want to write more.

So here are a couple of tips. One, try to have at least one dialogue-friendly character in your script, someone who likes to talk, has a lot of opinions, is clever, is funny, or all of the above (think Tony Stark, Harley Quinn, Oscar Isaac’s character in Ex Machina). Just having that character around will up the quality of your dialogue 30% without you having to do anything.

From there, look to dramatize scenes. Create some element of conflict within the scene. That conflict will force your characters to interact with dialogue that’s more fun to listen to.

For example, here are two scenes. You tell me which one is more likely to result in good dialogue.

The objective of the scene is to set up a pandemic virus that’s emerging so that the audience understands it for plot reasons we’ll explore as the movie goes on.

In our first version of the scene, Joe tells Sara why the virus is so dangerous. Sara, eager to learn, asks a lot of questions. “Where did the virus start?” “How many people have died so far?” Joe answers all the questions and when he’s finished explaining everything, Sara thanks him.

We’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do. The audience now understands the virus at the center of the movie.

Now here’s a second version of the scene. In this version, Joe and Sara have two different mindsets about the virus. Joe gets a lot of his news from conspiracy websites. He’s up to date on the latest unfounded theories. Sara, meanwhile, only trusts official fact-based data that’s been reported through official channels. The two debate each other on what’s real and what isn’t.

Note how, dramatically, this is a much more interesting way to talk about the pandemic than a simple Q & A session. The main difference is that there’s conflict between the characters and whenever you have conflict, the scene is more charged, and when a scene is more charged, it’s generally better.

This isn’t the only way to write good dialogue, of course. But it’s an example of where your mindset should be to set a stage for the most interesting conversations. You want to create a situation that has some dramatic value and isn’t just characters saying what you need them to say to set up the plot.

But don’t get too wrapped up in that. You don’t need to focus on dialogue in the first draft. You need to write the darn script. So whatever you do, keep writing. And stop sabotaging yourself. You have the time. And as long as you don’t judge your writing, you will get your 8 pages. Trust me. You just have to sit down and do it.

Congratulations!

You’re 8 pages into your screenplay.

If I were at your place right now, I’d give you a high-five.

Actually, that’s not a good idea in this environment. How bout I send you a virtual elbow-bump instead? Not as visceral but still gets the job done.

And, hey. Even if you’re not 8 pages into your new screenplay, there’s no need to panic. The opening of your script, where you set everything up, can be deceptively tough.

Think of it like a party. In order for everyone to have fun, someone has to order all the liquor, schedule the catering, make sure all the invitations have been sent out, prep the house, etc. That’s essentially what you’re doing with your first 15 pages.

Setting up all the characters, conveying relevant mythology and backstory, constructing the setup for your plot – that stuff doesn’t naturally flow off the fingertips. So give yourself a break if the opening is kicking your butt. You can make up for it in the coming days.

That actually brings me to today’s topic, which I, surprisingly, don’t see discussed often in the screenwriting community.

That would be the psychological effect of writing.

Let’s be honest. Some days, writing beats you up. I’ll give you an example from a script I wrote a long time ago. It was a big sprawling science-fiction script with a lot of characters and a lot of mythology. I’d been thinking about the script for a long time. I’d been living with the characters. I’d inhabited the world. I even spent hour-long meditation sessions attempting to “experience” what a real hour on this imaginary planet I’d created would be like.

Needless to say, I was SO EXCITED to write the screenplay. And when I finally sat down and wrote the first 20 pages, they were nothing like what I had imagined them to be. I learned quickly that I didn’t know some of the characters as well as I thought I did. There were small logistical gaps in the setup, such as where certain secondary characters were located geographically. And how to jump between different sets of characters and keep the narrative flowing. All of this stuff seemed insignificant during prep but now that I was facing it, it was anything but insignificant. This turned what I assumed would be a fun breezy writing week into a taxing depressing slog.

What I noticed after those 20 pages was that my desire to write went way down. So the day after that, I only wrote two pages. The day after that, I wrote one. And then I found myself avoiding writing the script altogether. All of this stemmed from those first 20 pages beating me up. Psychologically, I was defeated. And I let that defeat dictate my motivation.

Writing is still an art. All art contains a strong emotional component, both in connection with your characters and in connection with yourself. It’s like a relationship. You can’t go on auto-pilot. You have to emotionally invest to do the work. As everybody knows, when you emotionally invest in anything and it doesn’t go well, you become emotionally exhausted.

But here’s what I’ve learned over time. No matter how tough a script gets, you always get back to a high point as long as you keep writing. So I get it. You might experience what I experienced on that sci-fi script at some point in this first act (or later). If that happens, go watch a Youtube video that makes you happy (do NOT watch another fear-mongering pandemic video – that will NOT help). Grab a snack that always makes you feel good. It’s a pandemic. People will understand if you gain a little weight. Then get back in there and keep writing because it WILL get better.

4 scenes or 8 pages a day. That’s it. In 2 weeks, you’ll have a feature screenplay that you may be talking about in two years from the red carpet of the film’s premiere. They’ll ask you, “How did you come up with this idea?” And you’ll answer, “Actually, Scriptshadow made me write the script. I didn’t have a choice.”

Now get back to it!

Today I give you TWO new great screenwriting tips to add to your screenwriting tool shed. They’re called “upgrading” and “paralleling,” and The Outsider shows us how to pull them both off.

This weekend I decided to take a chance on The Outsider. Why do I phrase it like that? “Take a chance?” Because let’s be real. Another Stephen King adaptation? I saw It 2. I endured Pet Cemetery. They were awful. And The Outsider wasn’t exactly a worldbeater book. I remember it being advertised when it first came out, like all Stephen King novels, but after that, it drifted into the ether.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I sat down for the pilot of Outsider and within ten minutes I was hooked. And not just hooked. Hardcore “this is the greatest show ever” hooked. Okay, maybe not the greatest show ever. But anything that can make me forget about the hundred other things I have do in the moment is a darn good show.

And when you’re doing something that right, I have to figure out why. Because The Outsider has the most basic of basic hooks. A dead body. It’s a little more intense because it’s a child who’s been murdered. But it’s nothing we haven’t seen before if we’ve watched any cop or detective show ever. So why was this special? What did it do to rope me in? That’s what I want to find out.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!

1) It doesn’t waste any time – There’s nothing that says you can’t use the beginning of your pilot to establish your characters. This is television. In the last decade, they transformed TV specifically into a character development medium. However, it’s 2020, the year of the shortest attention span ever. So while you can certainly slow-build your way through your pilot, you probably shouldn’t. It’s a better idea to get us into the story right away, like a movie. The very first scene of this show is the crime scene of the murdered boy. We waste NO TIME. But what about character development, Carson? Do we toss it in the garbage? No. You do something called PARALLELING. This is when you push both the story forward AND develop character at the same time. In this case, Detective Ralph Anderson comes onto the scene and you start peppering his arrival with insights into his character. Through the music he listens to, through the downbeat manner in which he interacts with others, we see that this man walks with 10,000 pounds of hard life strapped to his back. You’re not telling us as much as you could if you built a scene specifically to tell us about the character. But that’s the challenge. We have to get into the story so you need to find little moments here and there to reveal character. And it’s never as hard as you think. You just have to pay attention to it.

2) Upgrade your key scenes – I want you to imagine you’re writing a TV episode about a murder. Your detective has gathered enough evidence to arrest the alleged murderer. Where does this scene happen? Go into your head right now and imagine where does he arrest this man? I’m guessing that the first image that comes to mind is the alleged murderer’s house. Our detective shows up. The murderer’s wife is confused. What are the police doing here? They ask her if her husband is home. He is. They barge in. Arrest him. The wife starts screaming. The kids start crying. It’s a perfectly fine scene. It’s probably even memorable. Viewers are going to be impacted by it. There’s only one problem. WE’VE SEEN IT ALREADY. And when it comes to key scenes, “seen it already” is screenwriting death. For every key scene you have, you should be looking to UPGRADE! You want to think bigger. You want to think ‘more original.’ And that’s what they do in The Outsider. Detective Anderson, who has some mysterious personal vendetta against Terry Maitland, makes the decision to arrest him at the little league game that Terry’s coaching. He doesn’t just want to arrest Terry. He wants to humiliate him. He wants everybody in town to see it. And so we get this intense arrest scene with cops walking onto the baseball field and arresting Terry for the murder of the boy (something they make loud and clear). This scene works for a few reasons. There’s irony here. A children’s baseball game is supposed to be innocent and safe. Yet we’re arresting our co-protagonist for murder in the middle of it. But the biggest reason it works is because it’s an UPGRADE on the scene we usually see. Whenever you encounter a key scene in your script, you better be upgrading.

3) An authenticity to the proceedings – One of the things that drives me crazy in scripts is when something enormous happens but the characters don’t act as if something enormous happens. For example, I’ve seen bad cop shows where someone’s been murdered and, in the next scene, the detectives are cracking jokes. Or nobody seems upset about what happened. The issue is that the writer is unaware of the temperature in the room. For him, a death is not a tragedy. It’s a way to get his plot moving. And since he doesn’t treat the death as real, none of the characters do either. The Outsider is the opposite of that. It doesn’t just ask what our key characters feel about this tragedy. It asks what everybody in town feels. And so the murder isn’t just a plot-starter. It’s an honest look at what happens when there’s tragedy in a small town. For example, the mother of the murdered child ends up having a heart attack and dying because the murder of her child is too much. We find out Detective Anderson’s child died recently so this murder of a young child hits him on a deeper level. Too many writers write with plot-blinders on. They see every event as a means to move their plot along as opposed to sitting down and thinking about the effects of the events they’re writing about. I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s one of the main reasons I dismiss scripts these days. There’s zero authenticity in the proceedings (note: I realize there’s a sliding scale when it comes to authenticity and genre – a comedy doesn’t have to play by the same authenticity rules as a show like The Outsider. But like every genre, it needs some basis for authentic behavior).

4) Look for the uncommon in your common scenarios – I’m going to cheat here a little bit but one of the best scenes in this series comes in the second episode. In it, there’s a moment where Terry is being transported from the jail house to the courthouse. It’s a scene we’re familiar with. It’s where the suspect has to be walked up through a crowd of angry yelling people who want the murderer to know just how terrible a person he is. For this reason, I call this a “common scenario.” The great thing about common scenarios is that you can use the viewer’s expectation of the scenario against them. I’ve been breaking down scripts forever. And I fully expected this scene to go as planned. We’re going to see him get out of the car, the lights are blinding, the noise is off the charts. He walks towards the courthouse and people are calling him terrible things and reporters are yelling questions and they have to fight their way through a collapsing crowd in the last 15 feet and barely get inside to the safety of the building. But what happened instead? Halfway to the building, a man steps straight in front of the group, raises a gun, shoots the first two cops dead, starts shooting at Terry, and then Detective Anderson is able to kill him. I don’t remember being this shocked watching a scene in a long time. And it’s because the writer used our expectation of a common scenario against us. — By the way, I know some of you might think of this as an UPGRADE scene. But it isn’t. An upgrade scene is when you change the scene at the conceptual level, starting with the location. Here, keeping the location is actually what you’re looking for. You’re trying to lure the viewer into a false sense of security.

5) Don’t take drama off – Too many writers focus on the big dramatic beats in the story and, in the process, overlook opportunities to explore drama in smaller scenes. When Terry is sent to jail, it could’ve just been a shot of him behind bars looking sad. Instead, we watch Terry go through the humiliating process of being signed into the jail, and also being spotted by a large scary cell mate who recognizes him from TV as “that guy who killed that kid.” He tells Terry right then and there that he’s going to kill him. And the moment arrives where it’s Terry’s turn to enter the big cell where all the criminals are located, including that man. We know that if Terry goes in there, he’s dead. So he tells the C.O. “I can’t go in there.” The C.O. shrugs his shoulders like, “I don’t care.” And just when he’s about to walk the plank, another cop comes over, recognizes the danger of the situation, and puts Terry in a separate cell. It’s an intense moment and it’s a moment that average writers could easily miss. There’s drama everywhere in your story. You just have to keep your eyes open for it.

In addition to this, The Outsider has a clever mystery at its core. Terry Maitland’s DNA is all over the crime scene. There are four witnesses who saw him come out of the woods where the boy was found, his clothes drenched in fresh blood. However, Terry Maitland is also on video in another town at the exact time of the murder. I bring this last part up because I like shows that focus on immediate mysteries AND an overarching mystery because it gives us two things to get excited about. Sometimes writers will only focus on the present and there’s no overarching problem that needs to be resolved. I would advise against this. Something to keep in mind if you’re entering a pilot script into The Last Great Screenwriting Contest. :)

Welcome to The Mandalorian Teleplay Chronicles. I will be reviewing every episode of The Mandalorian’s first season with an eye towards helping writers learn TV writing. Here’s a link to my review of the first episode here, a link to the second episode here, a link to episode 3, episode 4, and episode 5.

Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy (Half-Hour Drama TV??)
Premise: This week, Mando teams up with four fellow bounty hunters to spring a prisoner from a prison ship. In the process he learns that they plan to leave him behind.
About: We are six episodes in. Before this episode, we had two good episodes and three bad ones. The good news is the Rick Famuyiwa, who directed my favorite episode of the series (Episode 2 – Jawa Adventure), is back in the director’s seat. This week, he’s also writing, which is good news if only because it means he’s taken Dave Filoni out of the mix. Famuyiwa is joined by Christopher Yost, who penned Thor Ragnarok. Heads up for Mandalorian fans. Next week’s episode comes out Wednesday. Then they’re off for a week. Then the final episode is on the Friday of the week after.
Writers: Rick Famuyiwa and Christopher Yost
Details: 40 minutes? 42 minutes? (the credits are 80 minutes long every episode so it’s hard to determine the actual run time of these things)

I’m done with this show.

I mean, I’ll watch and review the last two episodes. And I’m sure they’re going to add some cliffhanger at the end of the season (Boba Fett? Jabba the Hut’s son?) that will make me check out the first episode of Season 2. But after that, I’m done.

This is not what I was hoping for at all. I thought we were going to get an expansion of the Star Wars universe with new and fun interconnected storylines. Instead we get this cartoon format “adventure-of-the-week” b.s. Literally 99% of the people who watch this show want an interconnected story. But of course that’s not the way Lucasfilm operates. Give the fans what they want?? Hezell no, that would make sense. We’ll make the Star Wars we want to make and you’ll suffer for it.

Some of you may say that I’m just mad that they didn’t give me what I was expecting. No no no. They legit hoodwinked us. They introduced baby yoda and this mysterious cloning guy – implying that we were entering a larger season-long story. Now Baby Yoda is nothing more than a meme. His inclusion in each episode is a strain. He’s a plot point that needs a character to say “You stay here” for 30 minutes while the episode happens.

And Friday’s episode? Friday’s episode was not Star Wars. Friday’s episode was Deep Space Nine Wars. It was Star Trek, complete with bad make-up and awful acting (the devil guy and purple girl especially). That’s another thing. I never watched an episode of Game of Thrones and thought, “They skimped on money there.” Yet I was constantly annoyed by the cheap production value in this episode. They built the entire episode around a single freaking hallway! They built ONE HALLWAY and kept running around in it.

For those who didn’t see the episode, count yourselves lucky. It follows Mando as he reconnects with an old terrible actor who always seems to arrive on a show’s worst episode. I remember this actor when he appeared on Lost and screwed up a few episodes of that show. Anyway, he puts together a team for Mando to go break a prisoner out of a prison ship. The team consists of Bill Burr, Twi-Lick, Devil Man, and Zero Bot.

They infiltrate the ship, go break the guy out, and we learn that the prisoner is Man Twi-Lick, the Twi-Lick woman’s brother! Somehow Man Twi-Lick’s makeup is even worse than his sister’s. Then, wouldn’t you know it – they turn on Mandalorian! Locking him up. They *could* just leave, of course. But no, they hang around for a bit, allowing time for the Mandalorian to escape and then hunt them down one by one. The end.

Last week, in the comments, I was arguing with a reader about isolated episode TV versus storyline TV. My argument was you should write something that connects. Almost EVERY SINGLE SHOW on TV today has a through-line.

Why? Well, you have to remember why they did it differently back in the day. It was because there wasn’t a medium that allowed people to re-watch shows. The only time a show was on was when it came on TV. If you missed it, you missed it. TV execs back then were worried that if someone missed an episode and that episode was critical to understanding the show, then the next episode would be confusing, dissuading the viewer from watching future episodes. The solution was to make every episode its own isolated thing (this is why sitcoms used to be so huge – they were ideal for this format).

But then DVDs came along and people were buying entire seasons of shows and so it made sense to create more of a through-line from show to show. Then the game really changed when Lost came out. That was the first show where you had to watch every single episode to know what was going on. After that, the further advent of “watch a show whenever you want” occurred when streaming arriverd. Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones became mega-hits specifically because you had to watch every episode to find out what happened.

Long story short, making The Mandalorian an “every episode is a standalone episode” show makes no sense. ESPECIALLY because it’s Star Wars, the biggest fictional world ever created. Why are you doing this? It makes it feel like a Saturday Morning cartoon, which it ISN’T. It’s a live-action 20 million dollar an episode show. Not only that, the seasons are SHORT! You don’t have to come up with a 20 episode arc here. It’s just 8 episodes! You can’t connect 8 episodes??

It’s frustrating and it’s maddening and it’s sad. It’s sad because this show is going to die. Probably not this season. But next season for sure. It’s been exposed. Everybody who talks about it says the same thing. “Yeah it’s kind of good… um… but why aren’t the episodes longer and why isn’t the story connecting?”

And look, if every episode was actually good, we’d be having a different conversation. If you somehow made this archaic format work for the show, I’d be all for it. But this isn’t Saturday Morning Cartoons. You have a rabid fan base desperate for a Star Wars with substance and you’ve given them the opposite. I don’t get it. I don’t get how they could’ve miscalculated so badly.

But okay, let’s get at least SOME writing tips from this abomination of an episode. What you have in today’s episode is a heist plot. A group of guys go in and try to retrieve something from a place where it’s theoretically difficult to retrieve that something. So that’s what we’re critiquing. Did they do a good job of executing that story?

I’ll start by saying this. A lot of writers will tell you that heists should never be about what’s being taken. That it should be about the characters and how they go about getting the job done. This is bad advice and I think I know where it comes from. It comes from the fact that all heist plots used to be about money. And money is boring. So it would make sense to say it shouldn’t just be about the money.

But heists have evolved over time and now heists can be about retrieving anything. That’s something you should take advantage of. Cause it means you can use the object being retrieved as a means to manipulate the plot. And what I like about this setup, in theory, is that by making the heist a prisoner, you’ve got more to work with in terms of plot evolution. You can make the prisoner a surprise. The prisoner can also have their own plans, want to do their own thing that doesn’t line up with the heister’s plans. So the setup to this episode isn’t a bad one.

But one of the principles of good writing is to find something new in an old setup. So if you’re going to be the 800,000th person to write a heist show/movie, you should add a new idea to the mix. There was none of that here. The execution here was so basic — THERE WAS ONE HALLWAY! — that we were ahead of the show the entire time.

One of the ways I measure good writing versus bad writing is to ask, “Is this something the average amateur writer could’ve come up with?” And the answer with this episode is undoubtedly yes. There is literally nothing in this episode that Joe Schmoe over at the Grove Starbucks couldn’t have come up with. It follows the beats so religiously that it’s practically begging to disappear the second it’s over.

And if that isn’t bad enough, there is ZERO resistance in this plot. There is never a doubt that they’re going to be able to get the guy out. These Battlestar Galactica droids were about as menacing as a can of Raid. Now some of you may say, “Well, how difficult really was it for the characters in the original Death Star?” I remember specifically feeling like they were f&*%d in that trash compactor. There’s one shot in particular where the walls are coming so close to each other that the edge of the moving wall starts covering the frame. I was legitimately worried that they weren’t going to make it.

That never happened here. Not once.

Then, on top of that, the show is way too short for this kind of storyline! This is the whole reason why you need to be connecting your storylines. You’re trying to set up six brand new characters AND create an entire heist story in 40 minutes?? Come on. Look at yourself in the mirror. Be real. If you’ve been building up to this for two episodes, you’re golden. But squeezing it into one episode? It’s disaster sauce.

One of the clearest examples of this is when Mando gets locked in the cell. The show is so short that they didn’t have time to establish that he was stuck there before they had to write a scene of him breaking out. And the problem with that is, if you don’t first establish that he’s REALLY STUCK THERE, that it’s GOING TO BE DIFFICULT TO GET OUT — maybe he tries a few things and they don’t work — if you don’t do any of that, then it feels too easy when he gets out. We don’t feel like he’s earned it at all. It’s only happening because the plot needs it to.

In retrospect, it’s clear to me that Favreau wrote those first three episodes as a self-contained story and didn’t have a plan afterwards. And we’re seeing that play out here. Each episode is less and less connected to the previous ones. And that’s too bad because Rise of Skywalker comes out Friday and it’s looking iffy. So I was hoping this series would take the Star Wars mantel and give us the great adventures and cool stories that Star Wars fans deserve. That isn’t the case.

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

What I learned: One of the biggest misconceptions is that the “bunch of bad guys joining together to go after something” is a slam-dunk show/movie setup. Just like any idea, you still need to do the work to make it work. You still need to create original characters that we’re interested in. You still need to make the heist itself unique in some way. You still need some genuine surprises along the way. A lot of people point to the fact that The Dirty Dozen was so great. But how many versions of that setup have been awful since? Way more than have been successful. Does anybody remember Suicide Squad? Never ever rest on your concept. You are starting from a better place than a lame idea – you’ve got that going for you. But you still have to put everything you’ve got into the story and characters if it’s going to shine.

Genre: Horror
Premise: Two outcast teenagers have their world turned upside-down when they start receiving mysterious DVDs with horrifying imagery on them.
About: Today’s writer, Adam d’Alba, sold his spec pilot, “The Pierce Signal,” to Starz in 2015 (which may be a companion piece to this – I haven’t been able to confirm that). He then sold this script to Paramount in 2017, with spec-friendly 21 Laps producing. D’Alba graduated from Brown University and then worked in the ICM mail room. The Infinity Reel finished with 29 votes on the 2017 Hit List.
Writer: Adam D’Alba
Details: 105 pages

Maise Williams is looking for a job, right?

October is right around the corner and you know what that means. SCARRRRY TIIIIIME! Let’s get things started with an early bag of Halloween candy – an ode to The Ring…. but with DVDs!

30 year-old documentary filmmaker Jude Pierce is chilling in his apartment when his wife, Caroline, comes home holding a yellow envelope. While he works, she goes into the other room, opens the envelope, and finds a DVD. She plays the DVD, the contents of which we don’t see, takes the DVD out, then casually walks outside and throws herself over the railing, sending her to her death (the DVD, of course, breaks in the process).

Three months later, a haunted Jude is on a mission to find out what happened to his wife. There was a tragic story of a couple of high school kids he wants to look into. We’re not told exactly what happened to these kids, but we know they both received DVDs in the mail, just like Jude’s wife.

So Jude speaks to Nora, the mother of 18 year old Nick, and Ted and Sheryl, the parents of 18 year old Sarah. Nick is your classic goth type with no friends. And Sarah is an obsessive geek, determined to get into a top college, mostly at the behest of her parents. After Nick and Sarah both receive ominous DVDs, each with their own unique imagery, they meet and discuss what the DVDs could possibly mean.

We cut back and forth between Jude’s interviews with the parents and the growing relationship between Nick and Sarah, which we know has a horrible conclusion. We just don’t know what that conclusion is! Soon, new DVDs are showing up, and they’re not just showing terrifying imagery. They include footage of Nick and Sarah hanging out together. Whoever is doing this has been watching them.

But it gets oh so much worse. In one DVD, Nick and Sarah watch as they’re taped having sex. There’s only one problem. THEY HAVEN’T HAD SEX YET! This convinces Nick and Sarah that the DVDs are from the future, taping things that are yet to happen to them. But then it gets even CRAZIER! In one DVD they watch at school, they see an image of them, live, watching the DVD. But that’s impossible! This is a DVD. It’s already recorded.

But it gets even CRAZIER! One of the DVDs never ends. It just keeps going. For hours, days. But that’s impossible! A DVD can only hold a finite amount of information. Then things really take a turn for the worse, as Nick becomes possessed by the magic of the evil DVDs. One night when they’re alone, Nick takes out a gun, shoots Sarah, then shoots himself. The End.

Huh.

Well, okay. How should we dissect this one?

Look, one of the most important things to get right when you’re inventing a new mythology is the rules. The rules need to accomplish two things. They need to be clear. And they need to make sense. Which is why the mythologies that work best tend to be simple. That way, there isn’t a lot of room to mess up.

“It Follows” had a simple mythology. You pass on the curse through sex. And only the person cursed can see the person following them.

I can’t stress this enough. One of the fastest ways to lose a reader is to start throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. Which is exactly how the rules in The Infinity Reel feel. At first you get a DVD and it makes you want to kill yourself right away. But then when our high schoolers get their DVDs, it’s different. They don’t want to kill themselves right away. Already the rules have changed and we’re not even out of the first act.

Then things get completely out of control. The DVD images go from random to including shots of the people watching the DVDs. Then it starts including things the characters haven’t done yet. So now we’re thinking the DVDs are from the future. Okay. But then, later, they realize that they might have been in a trance during their actions, and therefore the imagery is actually of stuff they’ve done in the past but forgotten. Then, the DVDs start including images that weren’t available at the time the DVD was recorded. So they’ve become magical DVDs, able to record after the fact. And then, to increase their magical ability, they contain never-ending video.

So here’s what goes on in my head when I read something like this: Writer is making up story as he goes along. He has no idea how he’s going to explain it in the end. But chances are he’s going to do what every writer who writes one of these scripts does once they’ve painted themselves into a corner – say that the characters were “going crazy” and so it was all in their heads. Which is pretty much what happens.

Look, there are a couple of ways you can go when you’re writing a mystery like this. Direction 1 is to make everything up as you go along and figure out the end when you get there. Direction 2 is to figure out the end first and then all of your story choices will be in service to that ending. Both directions have their advantages.

With the former, you can let your imagination go. Any wild idea you come up with, you can include it. When you do it this way, you end up finding exciting story avenues that you otherwise would’ve been afraid to try. With the latter, you’re going to have an incredibly focused story since every choice you make has to sync up with that ending you’ve already written.

But here’s the thing if you go with Direction 1. Once you come up with your ending, you’re going to have to go back and rewrite the s%&t out of your screenplay. Cause what’s going to happen is that most of those “out there” ideas you came up with no longer apply. And it’s probably going to take you 3-6 drafts of work before you get rid of all that junk and have something cohesive.

I didn’t see that here. Infinity Reel reads like Direction 1, but the writer only spent one quick draft cleaning up all the setups. Because nothing makes sense. How is the DVD able to go on forever? I know ideas sound great when it’s 3 am and you’re on your 17th Diet Coke and the juices of the caffeine are coalescing with early morning exhaustion and every wild idea that passes through your fingertips “feels right.” But it’s the duty of your next day self to bring some sanity to the situation and edit out all the nonsense. The nonsense never got edited out here which is why this script didn’t work.

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

What I learned: Orient your reader when something big is going to happen later in a scene. This movie opens with a man on a computer, his wife coming home, watching a video, then going outside, then jumping to her death. There was only one problem. I had no idea they lived in a tall building. The writer didn’t tell me. So the moment she jumped was the first moment I knew they were up high. All the writer needed to do was to tell us this was a “High Rise Apartment Building,” as opposed to “an apartment,” and I would’ve had the visual necessary to make the scene work. — Screenwriters, never forget this advice: We don’t know unless you tell us!