I would’ve had more Star Wars stuff to discuss in the newsletter if, you know, Lucasfilm actually released any new Star Wars information! But don’t worry, I still have you covered. We’ve got rumors that Tarantino was going to use tons of characters from his Tarantinoverse for his final movie. We’ve got screenplay tips from the best show currently on television. We’ve got some wild industry news to break down, including Post Malone becoming a woman and Silver Surfer becoming a screenwriter. Or wait, I may have got those two mixed up. Plus, a sneaky cool project that was announced recently that went totally under the radar. People are calling it the next Misery! I also review one of my top five most anticipated reads from last year’s Black List. Does it deliver? I’ve also got some killer screenplay notes deals for readers who are quick on the draw.

If you didn’t receive my newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list!

Memento started as a short story.

I’ve got some bad news. We’ve been swindled! The Beckys writer e-mailed to inform me that there is no Beckys script. Honestly, he doesn’t sound like he knew the rules. He just thought it was a logline contest. So what we’re going to do is I’ll review the second place script, Devil in Transit, sometime this week. Maybe in the newsletter. Maybe on Monday. Maybe next Friday. So, a review will be coming.

In the meantime, start your engines. Your SHORT STORY engines that is. Cause this month’s showdown is a Short Story Showdown. It’s everybody’s chance to take a brief respite from screenwriting and try their hand at this other writing medium. What I need from you is your title, genre, logline, AND the first page of your short story, which will be posted in the showdown.

This is the most excited I’ve been for a showdown this year. I think short-story writing is fun. It allows you to be more creative. Try some weird stuff. It doesn’t take a lot of time to write them. But you’re not going to be in the competition unless you have a good idea. So make sure you’re writing from a strong concept. Or an interesting one. Here are the submission deets…

What: Short Story Showdown

I need your: Title, Genre, Logline, and FIRST PAGE

Competition Date: Friday, May 24th

Deadline: Thursday, May 23rd, 10pm Pacific Time

Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Week 16 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

Argylle teaches you how *not* to rewrite a script

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!

The last time I saw you guys, we’d completed our script! While I wasn’t planning to leave two weeks in between articles, I’m glad we did. Because one of the most valuable commodities in rewriting is DISTANCE. The more distance you have from what you’ve written, the more objectively you can judge it.

The scripts of mine that I’ve found the most clarity over are the ones that I hadn’t read in years. When I pick those up, it’s obvious to me what’s wrong with the script. Conversely, the reason it’s not obvious right after I’ve completed a draft is because all writers have something called “EAS.” Emotional Attachment Syndrome.

Writing is, and always has been, an emotional endeavor. This is because you’re almost always writing about yourself. Or, if not yourself, the things you personally like and personally believe. Therefore, you have an attachment to those beliefs that go beyond writing. To you, those things are part of who you are as a person.

So when you go back and read your characters and your scenes and your plot beats, your EAS goes into overdrive. It becomes impossible to judge anything objectively.

For example, one of my favorite themes to explore in stories is people who don’t believe in themselves. I love it when those characters overcome that flaw. I just watched Back to the Future again recently via one of these “First Time Youtube Watch” videos (one of my favorite new activities) and I tear up at the thought of George McFly not believing in himself. In his original timeline, he doesn’t show his writing to anyone. But after defeating Biff, he gains confidence and ends up becoming a successful author in the subsequent timeline.

So, if I write a character who struggles to believe in themselves, I will only see that character through my stubborn EAS lens. Therefore, if that character is humorless or passive or annoying, I won’t notice it. All I see is the character arc that I so desperately want to execute in my story.  And nothing will get in the way of me executing that arc!!!

This is why so many scripts stay boring throughout rewrites. The writers are too attached to their original ideas and their EAS prevents them from making the changes they need to make in order to improve their scripts.

Probably the best professional example of this is M. Night Shyamalan’s career. Night has talked openly about how important certain plot themes and character themes are to his stories. As a result, he can’t see the forest through the trees. He is too blinded by his EAS, leaving each of his movies worse than the last.

This is something it took me forever to figure out. It should never be about what you’re trying to say through your creative choices. It should only be about WHAT IS BEST FOR THE STORY. Good writers are able to detach themselves emotionally and admit when a particular variable isn’t working and then get rid of it (or fix it) in the next draft.

If you keep doing that draft after draft, your script will get better. And that’s the end game. We’re trying to write the best script possible.

So bringing this back to today, all I want you to do this week is READ THROUGH YOUR SCRIPT. I don’t want you rewriting too much. I know, as writers, when we see something we hate, we have to change it immediately! But try to limit those changes as much as possible. Because what you don’t want to do is spend four days rewriting a sequence only to find out two drafts later that you never needed that sequence in the first place.

Instead, try to read through your script as a reader. Readers aren’t allowed to change scripts. They just read. Some of you are going to be tempted to at least jot down notes. If you have to, that’s fine. I always have to write down ideas as they come to me. But the advantage of reading straight through is that you’re mimicking the reader’s experience. Which is what I want. I want you to feel exactly what the reader feels.

As you’re reading your script, please give yourself grace. You will hate a lot of what you’ve written. That’s fine. I would even go so far as to say, if you don’t hate a lot of what you’ve written, you’re doing it wrong. Cause that means you have an overly optimistic opinion of your writing. Every first draft is messy. And that’s okay.

After you’ve read your first draft, write down the three biggest problems you had with your script. Some common problems include a first act that goes on for too long. A lot of on-the-nose dialogue. An unlikable main character. A main character who isn’t active enough. Major supporting characters who don’t pop off the page. A third act that comes around too quickly. A third act that isn’t nearly as powerful as you imagined it would be. Way too much exposition. A rudderless second act. A weak forgettable villain. Things come to your hero too easily (you, as the writer, are giving them a hand rather than challenging them). If you’re writing a sci-fi script, the sci-fi choices don’t feel imaginative enough. Ditto your set-pieces in action scripts. It’s hard to come up with set-pieces, especially in action films, that are new and fresh.

But the three things that are probably the most important are: 1) A main character that’s working. 2) A strong 3-Act structure, and 3) A second act that stays purposeful the whole way through.

That second act is usually where readers give up. That’s because a lot of screenwriters don’t know what to do in that second act. We readers can feel that when we’re reading the script. It’s like we’re in the writer’s room with them as they lose faith in real time and just throw any scene on the page in order to keep the story going. So that second act is a big one.

You don’t have to know how to fix these problems yet. We’ll talk about that more next week. All I care about now is you figuring out your script’s issues. I know this can be challenging cause it’s not always clear. So the way I like to do it is to NOTE the exact moments in the script WHERE I GET BORED.

Once you know WHERE you started to get bored, you can backtrack to figure out what caused the boredom. For example, I watched Argylle recently (not a good movie). And I was bored instantly. Agent Argylle walks into this dance club and meets some hot chick who it turns out is another agent trying to kill him. John Wick moment where everyone on the dance floor points guns at him.

We’ve seen this before. We’ve even seen this version of the story where it turns out to be a writer writing this scene. That’s how fast a screenplay can become boring! One early cliched scene. What are you doing differently with it? Nothing? Okay, then expect the audience to be bored. This movie was released and what did everybody universally agree upon? It was boring.

So, in that case, if you had written Argylle, you need to start your rewrite from the very first scene. What’s a more original secret agent set piece I could put here? And you’re on your way to a better script.

By the way, cliched scenes and characters are going to be a major problem in every first draft. That’s because, when you write a script, the things that feel “right” to you when you’re writing them only feel right because you’ve seen versions of them before. So you’re inadvertently copying what’s familiar to you. It’s only in the rewrites that you then challenge those weak cliched choices and try to come up with something fresh.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Your job this week is to simply read your script and write down what isn’t working. Feel free to get a jump on next week by writing down potential solutions for these problems.

By the way, if you didn’t participate in the 6-month Script Challenge, you can still do the Rewrite Challenge! Just go back into your archives of scripts and look for that script you always liked but never had the motivation to rewrite. Now that I’m guiding you, I can be the motivation to fix that script.

Seeya next week, when we come up with actual solutions for these problems! :)

Genre: Action/Horror
Premise: A Miami cop joins a secret Black Ops team who are fighting a gang war against a mysterious, possibly even supernatural, opponent.
About: Blood Rush comes from Scriptshadow vet, Andrew Ferguson! The script made last year’s Black List.
Writer: Andrew Ferguson
Details: 113 pages

You know how yesterday I bitched about writers not giving their all in a script, and how easy it is for readers to tell when that’s the case? Well, we can also tell when a writer puts everything into a script. And today’s script is what that looks like.

From the extremely-detailed description:

To the personality-driven dialogue: “Half ton of grade A nazi prime, cut and cooked medium rare. Don’t see that on an average street beat.”

This is a writer who came to play. And guess what? He reads Scriptshadow. So of course he knows you gotta come correct. Let’s check out his script…

We’re in Miami, the city of big behinds and even bigger clubs. 35 year old cop, Vick Lake, heads into a building to take down a perp when she stumbles upon 10 dead neo-nazis tied to the ceiling, all of whom are pale as a ghost.

Miami has been experiencing a giant uptick in gang activity recently, due to a mysterious new gang that’s been going around killing the old guard. The question is, how are they doing it so easily? They’re slicing through these punks as if they were random pedestrians. But these are some of the most violent gangs in the world!

After Vick gets back to the station, she’s introduced to a guy named Mark Bishop and his quiet partner, Atticus. The two want to recruit Vick onto their team. Vick’s intrigued but doesn’t understand why they’re so vague about what they do. But when they tell Vick all they want is to take down this evil killer gang, she accepts.

They first head to a dark side of town run by a Haitian gang that hasn’t been seen in months. They figure these guys might be the ones doing the killing. But when they meet up with the head guy, he tells them a Keysar Soze story about some mysterious dudes who killed a bunch of his buddies as well!

Vick starts getting annoyed by the fact that Bishop and Atticus seem to know more about what he’s talking about than they’re letting on. But the more Vick questions them, the less they reveal.

Off they go to their next lead at some warehouse dock and that’s when a bunch of guys on Ninja motorcycles show up. A firefight ensues and when Atticus takes one of them down, the guy evaporates into smoke. This is when Vick realizes that she’s way above her pay grade. But there’s no time to complain cause they’re in the middle of a battle!

Once they’re free and clear, (spoiler) Vick learns that Atticus is… well… a vampire. And that he once had a kid with a human. That kid is being kept from him. So in addition to stopping this gang of crazy-ass vampires from killing at will, they also want to find Atticus’s kid. But will Vick be able to normalize all this and contribute? Or will she say, “Seeya” to this blood-sucker and her keeper? Curious cats are itching to uncover the truth!

Andrew wrote the sheeeyite out of this script. I mean, the word “exsanguination” is used. I checked online and learned that that word hasn’t been written in 23 years. So kudos to Andrew for bringing it back.

To be honest, I thought the script was a bit overwritten at times. This is an action movie so you want those eyes moving down the page quickly. But at least Andrew got his money’s worth. He’s not just writing big chunks of text without thinking about them. He’s clearly obsessed over every word. It actually reminded me a lot of early Andrew Kevin Walker, who I’m sure Andrew is inspired by.

A couple of things popped out at me right away.

This is a tri-team-up as opposed to the typical two-hander you get in these movies. Why is that relevant? I actually don’t know. But I know it’s not *irrelevant.* One of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is DYNAMICS.

Every group of characters, whether it be a group of 2 characters like Training Day, three characters like Challengers, or a group of characters, like Knives Out, has a dynamic. And how little or how extensively you explore that dynamic can be the difference between a boring movie and an exciting one.

You really want to think about how all of the characters in the dynamic connect to each other. You want to make each of those connections as interesting as possible. That’s why Challengers worked for me. The writer meticulously explored each individual relationship within that trio to make sure there was something compelling going on with each edge of the triangle.

There’s a version of today’s screenplay that doesn’t include Atticus. It’s just Vick and Bishop. But you know what? We’ve seen that dynamic before. By adding Bishop, you not only disrupt the cliche, but you give yourself an opportunity to charge the overall dynamic. Which Andrew does successfully.

Atticus is mysterious. He doesn’t say much. He’s cool and collected and a little bit weird. It takes what was your bargain basement 2-man cop team with a little sexual tension and it builds it into something more ethereal, more exciting. One of the main reasons I kept turning the pages was cause I wanted to know more about Atticus. He was cool.

Another thing I liked about this script was how long Andrew held onto the vampire information. Amateur writers all pop their balloons too quickly. Why not hold onto the fun information as long as possible? Even if we know it.

I knew these were vampires within the first 15 pages. However, THE MAIN CHARACTER DIDN’T KNOW. So there’s still value in seeing our hero catch up to us. It’s fun. It’s fun seeing Vick realize she’s dealing with something supernatural. So hold onto that information. Andrew holds on to it all the way until page 50.

This is a great showcase script for the site. It tells me that people who are reading the site are actually listening to what I say. Cause sometimes I wonder if anybody listens. I do these reviews cause I want everyone to get better. I say these things a thousand different ways in the hopes that you internalize them and use that knowledge to write great scripts.

We’re on a hot streak now. Been reading lots of good scripts lately! Let’s keep it up!

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

What I learned: Every genre has its typical number of characters it uses. Cop movies have 2 partners. Whodunnits have 6-8 characters. Teenage horror movies where the characters head out to some cabin in the woods tend to have 2 or 3 couples. Don’t be afraid to disrupt the standard number for these setups. Play with them. Cause different numbers really do change things. For example, if you’re writing a cabin in the woods horror movie, having two couples go to the cabin is going to give you a different movie than if you have one couple along with one other person. Cause that person is now a third wheel, which is a totally different scenario than two couples. So play with that number as you’re conceiving of your plot. Sometimes going with a number that scares you is exactly what’s going to make your movie different from every other movie out there.

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: Two members of an Upper Peninsula drug enforcement team have their quiet days rocked when a mysterious man who doesn’t speak English races across the border on a snowmobile filled with money and drugs.
About: This script finished on the Black List last year. Ben Bolea has made a short movie as well as a small feature film.
Writer: Ben Bolea
Details: 112 pages

Bring Jennifer Lawrence full circle back re: Winter’s Bone?

Yesterday, in the “What I Learned” section, I talked about a way you can make up for your low-budget movie ending by using setups and payoffs to make the ending feel bigger.

I think about that all the time. As writers, you can technically write anything. You can write a 200 million dollar movie if you want to. But the reality is, you probably need to start small and tell smaller stories. The reason for this is, when you’re an up-and-comer, the studios don’t trust you to write giant movies.

And because you’re writing a smaller movie, you’re starting with one hand tied behind your back, at least in how it relates to competing with the big Hollywood movies.

Therefore, I’m always looking for hacks to make your small movie feel just as big and important as a Marvel movie. Or a Fast and Furious movie. You’ll never compete with their set pieces. But there are ways to trick the reader/viewer into things feeling big even though they’re small.

For example, that movie Boiling Point just dropped on Netflix – it’s a movie about a restaurant kitchen in New York City. The movie takes place all in one night. That URGENCY makes this tiny story feel bigger than it is. So there’s another tip for you: URGENCY can make small movies feel bigger.

Another easy way to make a small movie feel bigger is what today’s script does – it covers drugs. Drugs, guns, murder: All three of those things are cheap to produce. You don’t need a lot of money to shoot a movie that has them. So it’s yet another hack you can use to compete with the big boys.

U.P.S.E.T. takes place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. For those of you who don’t know, Michigan is a state that has this giant vertical shape. Then, above it, is a lake. Above that lake is a SECOND part of Michigan. That’s the Upper Peninsula, which borders Canada.

I like the use of the Upper Peninsula in this movie because I’m always looking for something new and fresh and this area of the country has never been written about before. The title, by the way, stands for a tiny drug force up there. It’s called U.P.S.E.T. and it stands for The Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team.

Heading up this team are 30-somethings Janice and Glenn. But Janice has finally hit the big time and is moving down state to join the DEA. That night, the small force celebrates and Janice makes the mistake of sleeping with Glenn.

The next morning, right before Janice is about to leave, they get a call that there’s a mysterious group of people who are snowmobiling around up north. So Janice and Glenn head up there where they run into a Mexican man speeding across the frozen lake on his snowmobile.

The man, Fausto, crashes and passes out. When Janice and Glenn catch up to him, they find him with a bag containing a million dollars and a ton of fentanyl pills. They take him back to the station but when he wakes up, it doesn’t matter because he can’t speak English.

Janice feels it’s their duty to look into this further and that’s when they find out that this is a major drug operation happening just north of the border and it’s probably – as in DEFINITELY – above their pay grade. But ever the determined cop, Janice heads up to the rich guy’s home that the drugs were supposed to be delivered to to find out more.

From there, the REALLY BAD guys get involved, and now it’s almost certain Janice and Glenn are goners. But if that isn’t bad enough, it turns out Janice’s own boss is involved. Which means they have no help from the outside and no help from the inside. The only way they’re getting out of this is to pull a John Wick and shoot up everyone they see.

I liked the way this script started. Once again, I’m always looking for ANYTHING FRESH in a script. The more freshness you can provide to your script salad, the more eagerly I will chow down. So to start with a cop snowmobile chase was a cool opening! I don’t remember ever seeing a cop car snowmobile going after the bad guys. So I was in.

And when Janice and Glenn slept together, I thought that was a strong choice as well. One of the harder things to do in screenwriting is make the primary character relationships interesting. Most of the writers I encounter take those relationships for granted and barely pay attention to them.

But if you can make that primary relationship interesting in some way, it adds a layer to the story. The more of these layers you can add, the deeper your story plays. The fact that they’ve known each other for years and slept together for the first time last night and now they have to engage in their biggest case ever — that adds subtext to every single conversation they have.

To understand the advantage of that choice, imagine the story without it. Imagine these two as cops who have a normal working relationship. It’s not as interesting. This is why I liked Challengers. Everything we kept learning throughout the movie added more and more layers to the primary relationship (the two players) and that final match.

If you want to know the difference between the okay scripts and the really good ones, it’s the writers who pay attention to details. They really think about that main relationship. They really think about the internal conflict with the protagonist. They really think about how to construct the plot in unexpected and gripping ways.

I realize it’s hard to explain but the short of it is: I can tell when a writer’s put 100% in. I can tell. I can actually tell the EXACT percentage they put in. For instance, I can tell when a writer has given his script 60% of what he’s capable of. These are the scripts I hate reading because I don’t feel like the writer cared enough to put his heart and soul on the page.

Most scripts I read hover between 60-70% effort. I maybe read 4-5 scripts a year where I feel that the writer gave me everything they’ve got. So I’m just warning you, while most readers may not have this nerdy percentage marker in their minds that I have, every reader can tell when a writer isn’t giving their all.  You’re not fooling them.  Trust me.

I always like to remind writers of that because it’s one of the most controllable variables in screenwriting: effort.

This script I’d put around 80-85%. There’s tons of effort here. But I’m not sure that the story ever did anything exciting. These small-town crime scripts all kinda feel the same. It’s tough to do much new with them. That’s what holding this script back. You read it and you think, “I’ve read this script before.” Not this EXACT script – but ones similar to it.

It was solid.  Just never exceptional.

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

What I learned: Add at least one layer to the primary relationship in your screenplay so that the scenes between those characters have an extra layer to them.  These two slept together. Glenn wants more out of the relationship than Janice does.  That ensures all of their conversations have an added layer of subtext!