Doubt is an awful thing. It affects many areas of life. The worst part about doubt is that it fuels inactivity. The more you doubt, the less you do. Nobody knows this more than writers. And what exponentially sucks is that the more writing knowledge you accumulate, the more doubt you have. While this may seem counterintuitive, it’s not as illogical as you’d think. When you start out, you assume everything you write is great. This makes writing easy and fun. As you get older, however, and receive more feedback, you realize that a) you’re not as good as you thought you were and b) the craft is much harder than you thought it was. This makes you more critical. You become more aware when you’re writing badly. The realization that you can write badly is what begins the doubt train. In addition to this, you’ve experienced rejection – industry people ignoring you, not calling you back, ghosting you. That takes its toll. You realize your writing has to be amazing to prevent these things from happening. And the more you study screenwriting, the more you know how difficult it is to write something amazing.

It’s also hard to measure your progress in writing. If you’re a tennis player, you can have your serve radared to see how many more miles per hour you’re adding each year. Your rallies are lasting longer. You’re beating more opponents in tournaments. If you’re a bodybuilder, you can literally see the changes in your body in the mirror. Conversely, it’s incredibly difficult to measure progress as a screenwriter. You have contests. But there’s such a level of subjectivity when it comes to them that it’s hard to trust them. This lack of clarity on where you stand ramps up the doubt in your head.

Then, as you get older, a new pressure surfaces. “Time is running out,” you think. You’re not 24 anymore where you could spit out two practice scripts and not worry that they’ll never see the light of day. Each script has to count. This means it needs to be perfect. That perfectionism will only fuel more doubt. Can I do it? Am I able to write something great? It’s harder to sit down and write a scene when you’re doubting whether it can reach the lofty goals you have for it. And then there are the obvious things such as increased responsibilities. A spouse, children, a real job, paying the mortgage. All of that stuff takes up time, which gives you less time to write, which puts even more pressure on you when you do write.

All of these things combine to create an atom bomb of doubt. But unlike a traditional bomb, this one is suspended over you permanently. The bomb is always going off, always preventing you from sitting down and writing. And that’s the goal here. All I want you to do is WRITE. I don’t want you to worry about what will happen when you write. I don’t want you to worry about what will happen after you write. When doubt is a part of your everyday existence, all that matters is the present. Get in there and write. With that in mind, here are six strategies to stave off the doubt and keep you churning out pages.

Make Writing a Habit – The best way to curb doubt is to create a schedule that doesn’t allow it to enter into the equation in the first place. And you do this by scheduling in a time to write every day. It’s sort of like dieting. If you don’t have your meals picked out and ready for the day, there’s more of a chance you’ll crack and go eat something you’re not supposed to. Habit erases that evil part of your mind that wants to sabotage you. If you don’t have a schedule, you give doubt an opportunity to chirp away until it’s won.

Don’t Think, Just Write – Doubt is a voice. That’s all it is. It’s a voice inside of you who’s trying to make a point. And unfortunately, that point is a negative one. The less you’re doing, the more you allow that voice to make its argument. And so the best thing to do is just write. Don’t think about if you should write or what you’re going to write or why you thought this idea was good or not. Just get in there and start writing. I’ve found that once you start writing, you’ll keep writing. So stop thinking and start writing.

Write Whenever You’re Inspired – Make this a rule from now on. Inspiration is the greatest thing in the world. And the longer you do something, the less inspiration comes around. So make a deal with yourself. No matter what you’re doing – even if it’s the middle of a romantic love-making session – if you’re inspired, stop and write. Because you don’t know when that inspiration is going to come again. No pun intended.

Trick Yourself – I don’t love this technique. But we’re not trying to win style points here. As long as you’re writing, you’re winning. So if you’re really having trouble putting pen to paper, try this. First, tell yourself you’re not writing. I’m serious. For this to work, you have to trick your mind into believing that it doesn’t have to write. That way, all the pressure will be released. Then, go into your outline (or your script notes document) and look through it. Again, keep telling yourself you’re not writing today. Usually, however, you’ll come across a note or a scenario that makes you want to jump into your script and tweak something. The next thing you know, you’re in your script writing! And when you’re finished with that scene, why not keep going!? Another technique you can use is to proofread the last 1-3 scenes you wrote. Again, tell yourself you’re not writing. Just proofreading. However, once you’re actually in the document, there’s a much better chance you’ll start writing. It’s a very weird way to solve the problem, but when you think about it, your mind doing everything in its power to keep you from writing is also weird.

Write Any Scene – Don’t think that you have to write linearly. That’s a recipe for stagnation. And stagnation will lead to doubt which will keep you from writing. If you’re stuck in your script but you have a good idea for a later scene? Go write that later scene. Again, if you’re writing, you’re winning. If you’re hovering or thinking, you’re allowing doubt to creep in. I’m not saying to never analyze your choices. But there’s a time and place for that. If you’re struggling to put pen to paper, don’t use the excuse that you need to think through it first. That’s the Doubt Monster manipulating you so you don’t have to write. Only when you’re in a healthy writing place do you want to pull away and think about the script as a whole. When you’re struggling, you need to be writing.

Write Anything – If your doubt is through the roof and you’re really having trouble getting in there and writing your script, go write ANYTHING else. A short script. Dialogue practice. Anything. One thing I used to do is go to a random image generator site, find an image, and use it as inspiration to write a short script. This will get you in the writing mindset and remind you that writing can still be fun. This increases the chances that you’ll get in there and write some scenes in your current script. I’ll finish this off with an inspiring story. There’s a writer I know who was really struggling with the things I talk about in this article. He was going on 6-7 years and not having a lot of success. And I’ll be completely honest. I wasn’t a huge fan of his work. But then he sent me something not long ago and it wasn’t just good. It was really good. I asked what he did. What did he change? And he said that he was just messing around on screenwriting sites and one of them had a few of those scene challenge prompts. I don’t remember what the prompt was. It was something to the effect of, a dialogue scene between two characters in a room with lots of conflict. Anyway, he enjoyed writing the scene so much that he expanded the idea into a feature. And it was bar none his best script. And it all happened because he sat down and started writing. When you’re consumed with doubt, all you should focus on is getting in there and writing. Cause who knows what will happen. It might lead to something great, like it did for this writer.

Genre: TV – Drama
Premise: When former Cobra Kai boss John Kreese moves back into town, he challenges Johnny to take his students to the next level.
About: This is Season 2 of Cobra Kai, the Youtube Premium sensation that became the most unexpected hit of last season. The pilot episode was viewed by over 60 million people. The show dropped its second season last Wednesday, giving people something to do while they waited for Avengers to open. But can the sequel possibly be as good as the original?
Creators: Josh Heald & Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg (based on the screenplay, “The Karate Kid” by Robert Mark Kamen)
Details: 10 episodes

I have been waiting for this for the ENTIRE YEAR. Can I please get some Daniel LaRusso with a side of crane kick THANK YOU!

In this newest season of Cobra Kai, the evil John Kreese, the former owner of Cobra Kai and Johnny’s old sensei (the one who infamously told him to “sweep the leg” in that final fight), has come back to town with an eye on rejoining Cobra Kai. Johnny has conflicted feelings about it. Kreese was like a father figure to him. But in many ways, Kreese derailed his life. After giving it some thought, he allows Kreese in as an observer.

Meanwhile, Daniel LaRusso allows Robby (who’s Johnny’s son, remember) to stay at his house. He also starts a little Miagi dojo in the backyard for Robby and Daniel’s daughter, Sam, to get their karate on. And maybe, when Daniel isn’t around, some smooching. That’s right, the chemistry between these two is through the roof. But does Sam still have feelings for Miguel, even though he’s turned to the dark side and become Cobra Kai’s top student?

Kreese strategically works his way back into the Cobra Kai fold. First he’s observing classes, then offering tips, then teaching classes! Kreese is all about “no mercy,” which confuses Johnny’s students, since he’s always taught them that mercy is essential to being a great warrior. Needless to say, something’s going to pop here. And when it does, the Cobra Kai dojo and all of its students will never be the same.

You really get a sense of whether showrunners know what they’re doing in the second season. The first season is always the easiest to map out. Five hours of television is basically one long movie. So you can map out some sort of goal and move all your charaters towards it. Cobra Kai Season 1 uses the state karate tournament as its season goal. And that’s a big reason why the season worked. It had a clear vision of where the storyline was going.

The dirty secret about Season 2 is that most writers have never experienced it before. Almost all pilots that are shot never make it to air. And those that do make it rarely get to a second season. So whenever someone wins the lottery of having their show get to that elusive season 2, they’re in uncharted waters. They’ve never had to worry about this scenario before, so they make it up as they go along.

The one thing they do know is that television is about character. So they end up putting all the focus on character development. And while this is, of course, good, and while this medium is perfect for that approach, if you put all of your focus on character and none of it on plot, your audience is going to start wondering what we’re doing here. Why are we spending so much time with these characters if we don’t know where they’re going?

Cobra Kai’s creators said they weren’t going to do a tournament every season. And they shouldn’t. It would get too predictable. But that doesn’t mean you’re absolved of having any direction to your story. I was a good six episodes into Cobra Kai Season 2 and while I continued to enjoy the characters, there’s no doubt that the missing ingredient was momentum. And that was due to the fact that there was very little plotting.

Outside of a “sort-of there but not really” plot about Daniel starting his own dojo, the main plotting device used in this season is John Creese. Now this is a very important distinction so I want you to pay attention. There are two types of plotting devices you can use. One is to have your characters charge forward and bring the story with them (Rocky Balboa training for the heavyweight title of the world). Two is to throw something at your characters and see how they react. I call this the “disruptor” element. It’s self-explanatory. You throw something at your characters that disrupts them. John Creese is the disruptor. He comes in to shake up the Cobra Kai dojo.

You’ll use both of these plotting devices throughout a TV show. And while it’s certainly possible to only use the disruptor element, it’s dangerous. Because a disruptor merely makes your characters react. Ideally, you want your characters to act on their own. You want them making decisions and charging forward and bringing the story with them. And one of the problems with this particular disruption is that John Creese doesn’t pop the way they were hoping.

Unlike Daniel and Johnny, whose lives in 2019 are somewhat believable, it’s hard to buy that this old man has been doing absolutely nothing for 30 years but waiting to get back involved with a tiny karate dojo in the valley. And he’s old enough now where he’s lost a lot of his menace. So we’re not as afraid of him as we once were. Cobra Kai has been good at balancing reality with cheesy 80s movies logic throughout its run. But they may have pushed their luck with Kreese. And since he’s the only semblance of a plot for the entire season, that puts all of the pressure on the characters to carry the load.

The good news for Cobra Kai is that almost all of their characters are likable. I could watch Daniel and Johnny act together all day. His daughter, Sam, and Robby are also great. Miguel remains awesome, even though he didn’t get enough time this season. I loved the new bad girl. And I continue to perk up every time Hawk is in a scene. All you then have to do is place these characters in scenes with an adequate amount of conflict and your show will be relatively entertaining. For example, Miguel is constantly at odds with whether being a part of Cobra Kai is right. This conflict is carried into every conversation he has with Johnny or Hawk or Kreese, all of whom are ride-or-die Cobra Kai.

And then, of course, Cobra Kai’s secret weapon is its karate. When things get boring, it’s time for some karate in the woods, in the bar, or… AT SCHOOL! I’m telling you, that school battle almost single-handedly made up for the lack of plotting all season. At first I thought it was going to be your typical two people have a fight in the middle of the hallway with the rest of the school cheering them on. Then when the two guys ran up, I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be a four-way thing. That’s kind of cool.” But then when everyone started getting involved, my curmudgeonly screenwriting analyst self evaporated and I just sat back and marveled not only at how good the fight was, what a great payoff it had, but also how difficult it must’ve been to film the thing. I’m always conscious of when shows have to use minors because I know they have to be overly careful about anyone getting hurt. So to somehow pull off this super-stunt with tons of minors beating each other senseless – I was impressed.

And then, of course, that final shot of Johnny tossing his phone across the beach in anger and then seeing a close-up of the screen and it being a friend request from Allie. I was like, “Oh my God, put me in Season 3 right now!” Did they really get Elizabeth Shue to commit? That would be awesome.

Cobra Kai Season 2 wasn’t nearly as good as Season 1. But then again, Season 1 was perfect. It seems to me like Johnny may be teaming up with Daniel to teach at Miagi Dojo for Season 3, pitting them against Kreese. If you introduce a tournament back into the mix, we should be back to the level of Season 1.

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

What I learned: Character conflict in television is wonderful. It’s what drives the majority of the entertainment. But you need a season-long destination the characters are moving towards to give the season focus. And you want to do that for every season. Not just the first!

The new Scriptshadow Newsletter is here!!! In it, I take on where Marvel goes after Endgame, one of the last great spec projects from the 90s, deep thoughts on the Star Wars Episode 9 trailer, the industry looking to expand the way they see superhero projects, and a new script review from one of my favorite writers. Give it another hour. If you still haven’t received the newsletter, make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders in your e-mail program. If you can’t find it there, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you. Enjoy!

p.s. For those of you e-mailing me saying that you keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several invisible reasons your e-mail address/server is rejecting the e-mail.

Edit: DISQUS IS HAVING ISSUES. HANG TIGHT. HOPEFULLY THEY’LL FIX IT SOON.

It grossed more money than the GDP of France. But is Avengers: Endgame a good movie??

Genre: Superhero
Premise: The Avengers team must go back in time to prevent the Thanos snap in Infinity War from ever happening.
About: Avengers Endgame made 350 million dollars this weekend at the box office. That’s 100 million more than any movie ever. I’m going to try and cut through the hype and give you a balanced review of the movie.
Writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (based on the comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
Details: 3 hours

SPOOOOOOOOILLLLLLRS!!!!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!!!

Let me start off by saying I realize this is the most unique writing assignment maybe, ever. No writer ever has or ever will have to write a script quite like this again. So I’m not going to pretend like there’s some obvious way to do things. The whole screenplay is operating in unchartered waters.

But I mean… a little Screenwriting 101 could’ve gone a long way here. Whatever happened to the Screenwriting Bill of Rights rule “come into the story as late as possible?” Basically, the first hour of this movie is backstory. And I don’t know how you even do that since it’s a sequel. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a quick plot breakdown.

In the last movie, Thanos snapped his fingers and half of all living beings in the universe disappeared. Endgame starts with Captain Marvel showing up and saying she wants to go kill Thanos and get the infinity stones back. They do kill Thanos, but unfortunately, he destroyed the infinity stones. We then cut to five years later, where the world is really depressed because half the population is gone and people dock their boats at the Statue of Liberty.

Ant-Man then gets spit out of the Quantum Realm and rejoins the team, which now, for reasons I cannot understand, include a smart Hulk, destroying the entire point of the character. But anyway. Ant-Man says to Tony that the Quantum Realm is sort of like time travel and you’re smart so maybe you can figure out how to time-travel back and stop Thanos’s snap before it happened.

Tony tells Paul Rudd time travel is impossible but that night he’s bored so he plays with some numbers and in a couple of hours, figures out time travel. Yes, that happens. The plan is to go back and retrieve all the infinity stones before Past Thanos can get his hands on them. This splits them into several teams that must cover several planets. Of course, Thanos, who’s alive again because it’s the past, learns of their plan and goes to stop it. Big battle. The end.

I’m going to say the last thing I expected to say coming out of this movie: The only good thing to come out of Avengers: Endgame is Captain America. He was my least favorite character of the Big 5. But the only moments myself or anybody will remember about this movie in six months are the ones with Cap.

I wondered why that was and then it came to me. Cap’s weakness as a character, which is that he’s so one-dimensional, is actually an advantage in this film. There are so many characters and so much time travel sorcery nonsense that Cap acts as a stabilizer. We always know where he stands. We always know what he wants. So whenever he’s onscreen, we feel a sense of purpose, like the story’s on track. Not to mention, he’s got the best scene in the movie, when he fights himself.

As for everyone else, I’m disappointed. Everything is too messy. Yes, Tony’s death was a powerful moment. But it had nothing to do with the movie. You’ve already proven in this franchise that death means nothing. Loki is alive again after dying in Infinity War. Gmorrah is back after her dramatic death. Hell, you kill Thanos and bring him back IN THE SAME MOVIE. Death in the Marvel universe might as well be a nap. My emotions were more a reaction to this being the end of Robert Downey Jr. playing the role. Because if I’m going off the movie only, Tony’s storyline was awful. Who the hell cares if he goes back and sees his dad? I don’t know his dad. I don’t care about him. This is the reason this movie was so freaking long, because everybody had to meet their dead dad.

Then there’s the Hulk stuff, which infuriated me. It’s a total cheat so that they don’t have to do the hard work of writing a controllable Hulk. Ant-Man was only there to eat tacos and crack jokes. The Big Lebowski Thor joke should’ve lasted one scene. But for some reason they decided to make him Jar Jar Binks for three hours. Captain Marvel only shows up when she wants to, I guess. Then flies away on space vacations to get bad haircuts.

Maybe the worst choice was giving Blue Chick, literally the most unlikable character in the history of the universe, more screentime than Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, or anybody else not named Tony or Steve. I’m not sure what they were thinking on that one.

I’m still trying to figure out why everyone’s giving this movie a pass. Nothing happens for the first hour! It’s just superheroes sitting around talking about stuff! If this were any other movie, there would’ve been a revolt. Then I realized that Endgame had a secret weapon that no other movie in history had – the biggest superhero battle ever put to screen. When everyone knows they have that waiting for them, they’ll watch anything. They’ll watch Thor picking his nose for two hours, which is basically what we got.

And then we finally get that battle. Was it worth the wait? Sadly, no. There’s only one good moment in these giant cinematic army battles, and that’s the moment right before the fight. The line-up of the armies. The shots of all of our favorite heroes preparing. But once they start fighting, it’s a giant mess. I had no idea what was happening. Not only was the CGI bad, but there was too much going on to appreciate any of it. I can’t remember a single memorable moment from the final battle. If you pinned me down and forced me to pick something, I’d say the Scarlet Witch – Thanos fight. But is that why I came to Avengers Endgame? To see Scarlet Witch fight Thanos?

There’s a bigger discussion to be had here about where high budget filmmaking is going. It’s becoming increasingly clear that actors aren’t in scenes together. You could tell in this battle that many of these characters were on their own, no other actors, green screen behind them, a low-energy set, with a tired director telling them, “Okay, now yell to Iron Man, who’s going to be up and to your left.” Everybody is copy-pasted in and it leaves the action scenes feeling emptier than I ever remember them.

And then, on top of that, everybody’s getting de-aged and re-bodied. If you don’t like your actor clean-shaven, give him a digital beard! Why not? So everybody looks weird. Their eyes are floating around on their faces in the wrong place. Or their skin is too smooth. It’s like watching an animated movie. This is the stuff everybody warned us about when Lucas started doing it in the prequels. And they were right. I don’t feel like I saw a single shot in this movie of the actual world. Every single frame was altered in some way.

Could this screenplay have been fixed? Well, they definitely overthought things, particularly the time travel. They have something in their mythology called the “Time Stone.” I’m assuming that’s because it can alter time. So just build the story around that. They get the Time Stone, which allows them to go back in time, and then you don’t have to spend hours expositioning the Quantum Realm. From there, I wouldn’t have sent our characters off to different planets in the past. That was a bad choice. The stuff on Thor’s planet was some of the weakest in the script. The stuff on the dark planet was even worse. This is what happens when you try and make a story too complicated. You get all these messy threads that nobody cares about. The cool stuff was in New York. That’s where we should’ve spent all of the past scenes.

In the end, I wasn’t entertained by this movie. Sky-high expectations didn’t help. But I liked Infinity War waaaaay better. This was messy. It had too many unnecessary scenes early on. The final battle payoff was weak. You go to this movie for two reasons. Captain America and Tony’s death. Outside of that, this was a disappointing end game for the Avengers franchise.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me :(
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Big battle scenes are almost always big boring scenes. We think we want them, but once they begin, it’s just a bunch of context-less action. — For battle scenes to work, you must bring structure to them. You do this by having your characters lay out a plan ahead of time. This plan gives the audience a series of steps to engage in, which provides the sequence with structure. One of the best movies to do this is Braveheart. Braveheart has several giant army battles and in each one, William Wallace has a plan beforehand that he lays out for his army. And they’re often very simple. For example, one of his plans is to tell his cavalry to flee right as the battle begins (“And let the English see you do it,” he tells them). He then says, once the entire English army has committed to the battle, to ride around and flank them. And that’s what happens. The armies clash, and then the Scottish cavalry comes around and flanks them, putting the finishing touches on the English. This is so much better than sending two armies at each other and having a big generic battle.

Last week, The Sun Ghost ran away with Amateur Showdown. I was supposed to review it today, but as I started reading it, I realized that I was rushing, and this isn’t your typical Amateur Friday entry. I could tell that the writer put a ton of work into it and I didn’t feel like I was giving it its just due. I have a lot of work to do over the next three days so I’m going to postpone the review until next Friday.

But don’t be sad. Sunday night you get a Scriptshadow Newsletter where I review a script from one of my favorite screenwriters, Monday is Avengers: Endgame review, and Tuesday is Cobra Kai Season 2 review. So there’s a lot of fun coming up. If you’re not already on my mailing lis, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER.” Enjoy your weekend!