If you have a pilot script burning a hole in your hard drive, it’s time to submit it! I’m taking entries until June 20th.
In our lead-up to July’s MEGA SHOWDOWN, we’ve got one showdown left. And it’s for the TV writers out there. So start sending in your title, genre, and logline now.
What: Pilot Showdown
I need your: Title, Genre, and Logline
Optional: Crossover Pitch, Tagline
Competition Date: Friday, June 21st
Deadline: Thursday, June 20th, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
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I was going to use today’s post to bring up another sad box office take this weekend (a legit summer month and the top movie made 13 million bucks – yikes!) but since I already spent the newsletter talking about that, I decided to go in a different direction.
I stumbled upon this video about the upstart water brand, “Liquid Death.” If you haven’t heard of it, it’s water in a can. The crazy name and packaging are specifically designed to shock you so you’ll be curious. That curiosity has led to a 700 million dollar business.
But when you’re asked to come up with the worst idea, you’re more likely to find an original option. That’s how this business was born. What’s a terrible idea for a food product? “What about water in a can?” What’s the worst name we could call that? “Liquid Death.”
Part of the reason this strategy intrigued me was because I remember the Daniels (directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once) once saying that that’s how they come up with movie ideas. They ask, “What’s the dumbest idea we can come up with?” That’s how they came up with a farting-corpse movie. That’s how they came up with Matrix meets an Everything Bagel.
So I leave the table to you. Each of you generate, what you believe, to be the worst movie idea. Call me crazy. But I think one of them might end up being amazing. Please upvote the BEST worst idea.
Let’s see how crappy you can be!
It’s June. The month of passion. The month of heat. The month of Wimbledon! I’ve got another doozy for you guys. This month’s newsletter has the latest big spec sale. It contains the “script sale trifecta,” which you can only learn by reading the newsletter. I muse about Steven Spielberg’s new top-secret UAP project. Could it be the long-rumored sequel to one of his earliest movies? I provide Hollywood with my plan to save the box office. I announce the next showdown. And I only contradict myself a couple of times. Feels like a new record.
If you want access to the Scriptshadow Newsletter, all you have to do is e-mail me and I’ll put you on the list.
E-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER.”
Genre: Suspense
Premise: (winning logline) A recently demoted executive finds himself being harassed by a dangerous thug sitting next to him on the last bus back home to the suburbs.
About: The Short Story Showdown was one of the tightest races we’ve ever had. The top three vote-getters were separated by less than 3 votes. The story that won ended up being the only one of the writers who vetted their logline in the comments section. Could lead to similar strategies in the future.
Writer: Jason Diggy
Details: 8 pages (4800 words)
William H. Macy for Daniel?
Short stories.
They’re ELUSIVE!
What makes a good one?
I don’t know. I think it’s one of those deals where you know it when you see it.
If you’re anything like me, you want to find out if The Empty Seat is one of those ‘know it’ stories. Let’s find out!
Daniel Lowry is an aging office worker with a lousy boss and mostly lousy co-workers. He’s upset because he was told by his boss that he had to work late. This screwed up his transportation so now he has to take the late-night bus home.
A lot of this story focuses on Daniel’s wait for the bus. During that time, we learn more details about how much of an a-hole his boss is. Daniel spots a half-drunk woman from his work who he suspects is trying to get ahead through physical means with her own superior and he hates her for it.
As Daniel laments the late bus, he thinks about how he’s only got a couple more years before his kids are out of the house. Then he’ll have a lot more power at work. He won’t have to kiss the ring every single day and do whatever he’s asked. But right now, the bills are large and they’re frequent which means he has to suck it up and do whatever his stupid boss says.
Finally, the bus comes and it’s almost full. Daniel finds two seats together and semi-straddles the adjacent one to make sure nobody sits by him. We hit another stop, some more people get on, Daniel is antsy about whether his precious adjacent seat is going to be used. But luckily no one takes it.
That changes at the next stop. Some 25 year old punk with long hair gets on the bus and, this time, the seat gods do not bless him. The guy goes straight to Daniel’s seat and sits next to him. As the bus starts up again, the guy starts smoking. The smoke is going right into Daniel’s face. Daniel can also feel a potential weapon (a gun? A knife) in the guy’s pocket as it keeps bumping up against him.
Daniel starts to freak out. But he finally gets to his stop, he leaps up, and slides past this seat demon, then hurries down the block without looking back, convinced that this punk is going to chase him down. Daniel clears a corner, stops, catches his breath, and waits. Was all that just in his mind? Or is Daniel actually in danger?
In the comments section of the Short Story Showdown, ChinaSplash posted their logline which began a discussion about why I didn’t choose their story for the showdown. It came down to that the logline promised a big sci-fi concept, which was what hooked me, yet the story started with a woman who really wanted to eat a donut. My feeling was, “What’s the point of including that? It’s a short story. You don’t have time to waste. Start deeper in when the story is already moving.”
I feel the exact same way about this story.
If you read this logline, you assume you’re getting a story about a guy who deals with a scary, potentially dangerous, individual who sits next to him on a bus.
But that’s not what we get. Our malcontent bus villain doesn’t sit down next to our hero until halfway through the story.
To me, that’s unforgivable. I was even getting antsy that we weren’t in the bus conflict by the end of the first page. Yet I had to read three more pages to get there.
But let’s look at this from Jason’s point of view. I’m guessing he wanted to do some character development first. He wanted to get you in Daniel’s head so we could learn what makes him tick. Because what good is an antagonist if we don’t understand the person he’s antagonizing?
That’s a fair argument.
However, there are ways you can achieve this that are a lot more likely to keep the reader’s interest. For example, when we’re waiting at that first stop with Daniel, introduce the scary rider then. He’s standing over by the side but you can just tell there’s something off about him.
Now, when we go into Daniel’s head and learn about his day and what makes him tick, we’re doing so underneath a line of suspense. Because we see the antagonist. We know the situation with him is only going to get worse. So we’re more compelled to turn the pages, even though “nothing” is happening yet.
The Empty Seat was struggling in another area as well, which was that Daniel wasn’t a very likable guy.
When I originally heard this pitch in the comments section, I endorsed it! I said, “This sounds good.” But the way it was pitched, I was imagining a weak, potentially cowardly guy, who was being unjustly bullied. In other words, an easy person to root for.
But that’s not Daniel. Daniel is King Complainer. Give this guy a topic and he can give ten hours on things he dislikes about it. He’s complaining about his boss, his co-workers, the women there, the transportation, his bills, the other riders.
But the action he took that killed it for me was when he sat down on the bus and took over two seats to make sure nobody sat next to him. How am I rooting for that guy?
I honestly thought, at that point in the story, that Jason was flipping the script on us. He was making us think Daniel was our hero when, in actuality, he would be our villain. And the guy who sat next to him would end up being the “character who was intimidated by another passenger” – Daniel himself.
But no, Daniel was just a really upset guy who hated his life and wanted to get it all out of his system. It compromised the character to such a degree that it was impossible to root for him.
I actually see this issue occur frequently once writers enter the short story (or long-form storytelling) format. Unlike screenplays, you can now take us directly into the character’s mind. And often, since our characters represent us, we use that character to get out all of our own frustrations.
I’m not saying that there isn’t value in observation and frustration. But you have to be careful with this stuff because when the reader is introduced to your main character, one of the first things that goes on in their head is, “Do I want to go on a journey with this person?” If the answer is no, you’re screwed.
I don’t think Daniel is someone you want to go on a journey with.
One of the most successful character types you can write is not the guy who gets kicked to the ground and complains. It’s the guy who gets kicked to the ground, but gets back up and keeps trying. Audiences LOVE those characters.
The Empty Seat’s potential to redemption was the antagonist. If that interaction was strong, I think we could’ve turned things around. But there’s not much to it. I understand what Jason was doing. He was exploring how we can get lost in our heads and build things up that aren’t there. I do think that’s an interesting topic to explore.
But, in this case, the logline kind of promises conflict and we don’t get much of it. It was too much of a tease.
Story link: The Empty Seat
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the hardest characters to make likable is a complainer. It’s not impossible! But the only times I see it work are in comedies. In one of my favorite movies ever, Office Space, Peter is a serial complainer. But he’s also funny. So be wary of going the complainer route. If you do, make it a bug, not a virus.
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Week 14 – The Climax
Week 15 – The End!
Week 16 – Rewrite Prep 1
Week 17 – Rewrite Prep 2
Week 18 – Rewrite Week 1
Week 19 – Rewrite Week 2
One of the more frustrating things about rewriting, at least for me, is when you come up upon one of your big story problems and you don’t have a solution for it.
Because what often happens is you get so caught up in the fact that you don’t know how to solve the problem that you allow it to stop production. You feel that until you know how to solve that issue, what’s the point?
A big problem I always ran into in my screenwriting days was the ending. My endings always took the longest to figure out. They felt 5-6 drafts behind everything else in the story.
It drove me nuts cause I knew nothing mattered unless that ending brought it all together. And sometimes my endings would be so generic that I knew I needed to completely reimagine them.
Or sometimes it was a logistical problem. If I was writing a sci-fi thriller where the final act had my hero running through some high-tech underground facility, I would have to figure how he was able to do this considering he’d never been in this facility before and was just a normal guy.
Problems like that require you to do some deep searching. Is this believable that an average Joe would be able to run around a 5 billion dollar secret government facility and not get caught by anyone? Definitely not. So does this mean I need to rethink the character? Should I give him a military background so that performing these tasks makes more sense? But if I make him more of a military guy, doesn’t that change his entire character? He becomes more confident, more active, more assured. Turning him into that character changes the whole dynamic with his ex-wife as well, who I had leaving him because he was so passive. That situation changes now so I’ll have to come up with a different reason why they got divorced, as well as a different dynamic for their relationship.
Do you see how quickly these changes affect the story? That’s why problem-solving is so difficult. Any major change to your story is going to have repercussions and echoes throughout the rest of the story. You have to decide if those changes are worth it.
For a lot of writers, their solution to this is inactivity. It’s easier to do nothing than to do all those somethings. Cause “something” is going to change things and once things start changing, you’re afraid you can’t press rewind.
I get it. I’ve been there.
But writer’s block is not the path around these obstacles. So here’s what I suggest you do if you have these big problems in your script that you don’t know how to solve.
The easiest thing to do is to work on other problems – preferably smaller ones. There are always other things you can fix in your script. You want to keep fixing those things cause it’s going to keep you writing. And, what often happens, is that when you work on these other things, you get ideas on how to solve the tougher problems.
Another thing I like to do is have a book, or a script, that I’m reading concurrently with my rewrite. I suggest a book that’s in the same postal code as your script but not in the same ballpark.
So, if you’re writing Gone Girl, read something like Silence of the Lambs. Don’t read The Girl On The Train.
You don’t want to read something directly like your script because any ideas that you get from that story are going to feel like you’re copying that story. Whereas, when the book you read is in another genre, any ideas you get from it will feel original, since they’re not happening in the same type of story.
As you’re reading this book, have that big problem in your screenplay in the back of your mind. Always have it sitting there because sooner or later something’s going to happen in that book that makes you realize, “Ooh, I could do that. That’ll help solve my problem.”
To be honest, you should be doing that same thing in your everyday life. As you’re walking around, carry that problem along with you in your brain basket. You never know what you’re going to run into that will give you that lightbulb moment to solve the problem.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the second draft does not have to be Chinatown amazing. Some writers try to knock the second draft out of the park. I disagree with that approach because you’re still in a stage where you’re trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in your script.
All you have to do is be a little better than the last draft. Even if you only make a scene 5% better because you found a little dialogue exchange within it that was more clever, or funnier – that’s progress. Which is all you’re looking for. You want this draft to be better than the previous draft.
Finally, I want to remind you that there’s no such thing as writer’s block.
There is only fear.
Fear that you will write something sub-par. That’s the only reason you get “writer’s block.”
I’m not saying you should just write down anything even if you know it’s bad. But trust yourself that you understand your story a little better than you did when you started your first draft. And, like I said, use that knowledge to make the script 3% better in this area, and 5% better in that area. Keep making every variable a little bit better and you will have a superior second draft.
Once again, we are rewriting an average of 3 pages a day. We are writing 6 days a week. That means you are rewriting 18 pages a week.
After this week, you will be finished with 54 pages, which is halfway through your rewrite.
Use the comment section below to vent but also to provide support! Writing’s a lonely venture. We’re all here for each other.
Keep punching that carriage return. :)
I originally started reading a script to review today. It was called “Propel.”
It starts off with this ocean diver woman and she goes diving with a partner. Then, out of nowhere, this whale comes screeching by. It’s upset because it’s got a net caught on its head. She somehow ends up in its mouth. And then, not long after, she ends up in its stomach.
The movie is about her trying to get out of this whale’s stomach before she runs out of oxygen.
Does this sound familiar?
It should.
I reviewed THE EXACT SAME STORY last year via a book called “Whalefall,” which is being turned into a movie.
The reason I bring this up is because I get a dozen e-mails a year from writers telling me that someone stole their idea. Usually from movies that have been made. They’ll say, “Nope was my idea! Jordan Peele stole it!” for example.
Propel is proof that nobody stole your idea. 99.9% of these, “someone stole my idea” stories come from newer writers who assume that they’re so genius, even though they don’t have any movie credits, that people are actively looking to take their ideas. Therefore, if someone writes something similar, it clearly must have been stolen.
Who would’ve thought that two scripts would’ve been written about a diver getting caught in a whale’s stomach and needing to get out before their air ran out? And yet that’s exactly what we have.
The truth is we’re all slurping from the same bowl of ideas. If you come up with an idea that was inspired by something you read ANYWHERE, chances are other people read that too and a portion of them likely came up with the same idea you did.
I’ve seen this TIME AND TIME again, where very specific movie ideas appear in two different scripts.
The only way you can convince me that someone stole your idea is if you had a relationship with this person and you talked a lot about your script with them. Or their script has the exact same dialogue as your script.
But even if you tell me some scenes are similar, that’s not enough. Because certain movie ideas lead to common scene ideas. If 100 people came up with an idea about a dinosaur theme park, I’m guessing 70 of them would’ve thought up the T-Rex car chase set piece. Cause it’s obvious.
Dueling ideas are a reality of this business.
However, if you don’t want to deal with that reality, there are ways around it. The number one way to avoid this problem is to NOT COME UP WITH AN IDEA that is inspired by something you read in the news. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people have read the same thing. Which means of course someone else is going to come up with the same idea.
I would also avoid ideas inspired by any place on the internet that gets a lot of views. Forget about coming up with movie ideas based on Reddit posts. Those posts have been read to death. Other people are going to write the same movies.
The number one place to find an original movie idea that nobody else will write is YOUR OWN LIFE.
What are the 2 or 3 most original compelling stories from your life? Chances are that there’s a movie there and it’s going to be so specific to your life experience that you won’t have any competition.
That’s why Baby Reindeer has become so huge. It’s a show based on this guy’s own personal experience. And that experience is SO specific that no one else can come up with something similar.
The number two way – STORIES FROM PEOPLE CLOSEST TO YOU.
Again, what we’re looking for are stories that are not publicly available. Once they get online, they’re there for the picking. But if only your friend knows about this crazy story, that’s the perfect story to turn into a screenplay. Cause you two, and maybe a few others, are the only ones who’ve heard it.
Which leads me to the third best way to come up with an original movie idea.
Which is to be okay with coming up with an idea that others might write BECAUSE you’re a good enough writer that your version is going to be better than anything anybody else can come up with.
Let’s go back to Jurassic Park for a second.
70 out of 100 writers would’ve come up with a T-Rex car chase.
But how many writers would’ve come up with the scene where the water in the cup starts vibrating? Where the jeep gets turned upside down? Where the people are stuck in the jeep as the T-Rex’s big snout spins the upside-down car around like a top?
Maybe 5 out of 100? Maybe 3?
That’s all EXECUTION. It’s the writer coming up with a unique scene within that larger movie idea. If you can do that consistently, you’ll write a great script and it won’t matter that other people are writing their version of it as well.
Execution is the primary currency that screenwriters offer in Hollywood.
So, to be clear, find a great story from your own life and write that. If you don’t have that, think back to the stories friends have told you over the years. Is there a movie in one of those ideas? If yes, write that. If you don’t have either of those things, find the best idea you can come up with and then execute it in a way that YOU KNOW nobody else could match.
The only other option I can think of is to be an idea historian. You’ve seen every movie. Every TV show. You track all the scripts that are being sent around town (which you all basically do since you read this site). If you’ve heard of the top 100 movies of each of the past 50 years, then chances are you know when you’ve come up with something truly original.
But even then, it’s difficult. Cause I probably have heard more movie ideas than anyone in Hollywood. Seriously. I can’t think of anyone who would’ve heard or read more than me. And even I sometimes learn that ideas I’ve come up with have been used before.
It happened not long ago. I came up with this idea about violent criminals being forced to endure the exact crimes that they committed on their victims and a friend of mine was like, “Yeah, they did that 70 years ago in The Twilight Zone.” 70 years ago! I thought I’d come up with this brand new idea and someone used it SEVENTY FREAKING YEARS AGO.
So just do your best to come up with the idea and then spend all that energy and effort on the execution. Cause that’s what really matters. :)
