Genre: Contained Thriller/Drama + Mystery Genre
Premise: (from Black List) A seemingly progressive suburban husband and wife renting their garage through AirBnB become suspicious of their Muslim guests. As they investigate their visitors, they unwittingly trigger events that will forever change the course of human history.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 8 votes. The co-writers, Travis Betz and Kevin Hamedani, have both written and directed their own work. However it’s mostly low-budget stuff you haven’t heard of before.
Writers: Travis Betz & Kevin Hamedani
Details: 113 pages
When you get to the bottom of the Black List, you start encountering some dicey material. I mean, there is actually a script called, “Jihotties.” Want to know what it’s about? Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s about two women who catfish ISIS to “fund their startup” but get “more than they bargained for” when they’re recruited by the CIA as spies. Yeah, I don’t see myself reading that one anytime soon.
It’s always a risk when you get to the bottom of the barrel. But The Saviors sounded like it maybe possibly wasn’t bad.
Sean and Kim Harrison (a mixed couple, him white, her black) may still be living under the same roof. But their marriage is over. It’s gotten so ugly that every night Sean goes to sleep, he has weird nightmares of his wife divorcing him then walking outside into a desert wasteland.
A big problem is that Sean doesn’t have a job. That financial stress has widened cracks that already existed in the relationship. Luckily, he has a temporary idea. Turn the garage into an AirBnB!
This leads to their first tenants, Jahan and Amir Razi, muslim siblings who need a place to stay for 10 days while the house they’re moving into is being cleaned. Amir seems like a totally cool guy whereas Jahan is deaf and therefore stays in the background.
Right away, things get weird. Late at night a loud rumbling comes from the garage followed by a giant flash of blue light. This makes Sean curious, and because he doesn’t have anything else to do during the day, he does his best impression of Jimmy Stewart and starts watching the Razis.
Later, he accidentally opens up a package sent to Amir (he thought it was his) and finds blueprints to something. With the Vice-President doing a high-profile deal in the Seattle Space Needle next week, Sean becomes convinced that these AirB&B’ers are actually AirB&T’ers. As in T stands for Terrorists!
When he comes to Kim with his findings, she’s furious with him. She’s spent much of her life being discriminated against because of the color of her skin. She’s not going to do the same to other people.
But when Sean brings Kim evidence that the two lied about their future home, Kim starts to come around. The act of teaming up even puts a spark back into their marriage. But as the Razis start acting weirder and weirder, the two begin to wonder if this is a terrorist act or… god forbid… something worse.
I liked how this script started out, particularly after yesterday’s stinker, which took ages for anything to happen. This script is written more traditionally, with Jahan and Amir acting strange from the drop. Which means we’re pretty much hooked by page 10.
And I loved the choice to make this a broken marriage. If Sean and Kim had a perfect marriage, there’s no conflict in their interactions, and there’s no subtext either. That last one’s an advanced tip for you aspiring screenwriters. Because Sean and Kim have a broken marriage, when Sean brings to Kim his suspicions about the tenants, it’s not just some surface level disagreement. Each argument contains within it an unspoken argument about their marriage. That makes their conversations way more interesting.
There’s also POPULATION going on here. Populating your script is the act of adding subplots or extra characters or detail that FILLS UP YOUR SCRIPT. Yesterday’s script was the anti-population script. Absolutely NOTHING was going on other than advertised (the house being haunted), leaving the story feeling incredibly thin.
These two are getting divorced, which means they’re selling the house. The problem is, the basement ceiling has major water damage. Which means they need a quote. And once they get the quote, they find out it’s too much. And now they need to find a solution. So Sean is always consumed by that problem. It seems minor, but populating your script with these extra elements is what makes it feel like a FULLY REALIZED movie, and not just a one-sentence idea that’s been padded to death.
Everything was going so well on my Saviors flight that I didn’t even consider we might hit turbulence.
And then we hit turbulence.
The script started to get goofy. For example, Kim, who’s frustrated that Sean is acting so racist, decides to go to a bar to blow off steam. When she gets there, she sees that Amir is also there, in the corner! But not only that, he’s stolen and is reading her diary!
I’m sorry but diary-reading twists should not be present in a movie about terrorism. Save that one for the next Parent Trap remake.
Then, when Kim gets hard evidence that the people renting their garage are terrorists who are going to blow up the Seattle Needle, she reacts by excitedly telling her husband, “We should order pizza.”
The thing with this script is that it’s trying to comment on something very serious. Racism. Prejudice. Stereotyping. But it never stays sophisticated enough to make you believe it’s worthy of exploring those topics. If I find out that my neighbors are terrorists, I don’t order pizza.
I mean, well, maybe if I still lived in Chicago I would. But that’s besides the point.
You can’t really discuss this script in whole without discussing the ending. Unfortunately, the ending is a huge spoiler and I don’t want to put in the review. I will say that it’s a surprise. And it manages to add a lot to the themes explored in the film.
I’m just not sure it all comes together. It feels very, uh, forced. In other words, when it comes, you can feel the writers writing it. But hey, maybe it will fool people who haven’t read thousands of scripts before.
If you have a couple of hours to waste or you want to see how to update a classic idea (Rear Window), you could do worse. But things got too goofy for me to officially endorse this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s always more interesting in a two-hander mystery if the two characters disagree. It allows for conflict, which makes their scenes more entertaining. But it also allows the writer to play both sides of the fence, and by doing so, keep the reader off-balance. In other words, Sean can make a great point and we think, “Yes, they’re definitely terrorists.” But then Kim can make a point and it’s like, “Oh yeah, maybe she’s right.” If both characters are on the same page, you don’t get that.
What I learned 2: When presented with a situation where it doesn’t make sense why your characters wouldn’t just go to the cops, you can use this cheap trick. You have them go to the cops, but the cops are so busy, and the evidence is so weak, that they shrug you off. So that’s what happens here. When they think the Razis are terrorists for sure, they go to the FBI, and the FBI is like, “Right, so they light up the garage sometimes and they stole your diary. Come back to us when you have some real info.” I don’t love this solution, but it’s better than the characters not going to the cops (or in this case the FBI) at all.
Genre: Drama-Horror
Premise: A married pair of Sudanese refugees are granted a temporary stay in the UK that can become permanent if they can only avoid trouble, a task that becomes problematic when they move into a haunted house.
About: This project was held up for awhile due to a snafu with The Weinstein Company. But since there is no Weinstein Company anymore, they can finally make their film! Remi Weekes is a first time writer-director who’s made some noise around the UK with a couple of short films. This script made the Blood List last year.
Writer: Remi Weekes
Details: 93 pages
This one came recommended from a couple of sources so I was eager to check it out. I like scripts – especially genre scripts – that are able to take me to places I’ve never been before. This story about Sudanese refugees stuck in a haunted house felt refreshingly original. So all the arrows were pointing up on this one. Let’s find out if those arrows didn’t die of a heart attack due to a Scriptshadow jump scare.
When we meet Sudanese married couple Bol and Zainab, both 28, they’re sleeping in a detention center with hundreds of other refugees, all from different countries. The couple has escaped unimaginable horror in their home-country, Sudan, where villagers were being hacked to pieces on a daily basis.
The two win the equivalent of the lottery when they’re chosen for a six-month program to live in the UK. It’s made clear to them that they are not citizens until they finish the program without causing any trouble. They’re ecstatic. Being good for 6 months? A piece of cake.
The two are moved into a house in a blue-collar neighborhood and while the neighbors don’t seem very friendly, they feel lucky to have a home. And everything goes well for awhile. That is until Zainab starts seeing something around the house. A… creature. A creature that lives in the walls.
At first, Bol tells Zainab to tough it out. She can’t be going crazy on him. They could lose the house and get sent back to the hostels. But the truth is, Bol has begun seeing the creature as well. He keeps telling himself it’s a part of his imagination but deep down he knows it’s not.
During this time, we learn that the couple lost a daughter on the journey out of Sudan. The loss haunts Zainab. But Bol is over it. And he wants his wife to get over it too. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to link the creature living in the house with their lost daughter. The two are obviously connected. But if you dare think you know what the creature wants, guess again.
His House is the kind of script you get when you have a writer-director who’s better at the directing side than the writing side. Clearly, Weekes has a vision for this film, some of which he charts specifically in the script, as he tells you exactly where the camera will be placed and how it moves.
We also get plenty of amazing visuals here, such as Bol walking across the ocean in a dream, and then when we pan up and look down to see that the ocean is filled with billions of dead bodies to signify his countryman lost in the war.
But when it comes to the writing, there are a lot of problems with His House, the biggest of which is that very little happens. That’s because the story is thinner than a Blumhouse budget breakdown. And a lot of basic screenwriting mistakes are made.
For example, the characters have nothing to do. They just hang around the house waiting for the writer to come up with the next scary scene for them to participate in. Occasionally, Bol will leave for the day, but we have no idea where he goes. In any script, you want your characters to be active. You want them doing things, affecting the outside world. Both of these characters are passive and it makes for a very bland experience.
The dialogue is frustrating. There are no conversations in this script. Only conversation fragments. If two people speak, it’s for less than 30 seconds. And when characters do speak, they often use as few words as possible. “What is this?” “It’s the best I can do.” “This is wonderful.” “Wonderful.” “But maybe next time we can use the table.”
The reason this is problematic is because we leave tons of conversations feeling like nothing was accomplished, nothing was said. It’s as if conversations are only there to fill up space. I understand being understated and avoiding on-the-nose conversation. But you can go too far in the opposite direction, to the extent that words are noise. They mean nothing. And there were too many times here where that happened.
It’s also important to remember that there are two kinds of “not a lot happens” stories. There’s the good kind. And there’s the boring kind. You have to know the difference. Just putting two characters in a quiet scene to pass the time isn’t going to keep readers invested. Contrast this with A Quiet Place, whose concept is so powerful that even a quiet family game of monopoly can be heart-pounding, since we know that, at any second, someone can make a mistake and they’ll all be dead.
To be honest, I had so given up on this script by the time it hit the third act that I had to prop my head up with a series of pillows. But then something crazy happens. His House becomes a movie.
And what do you know? It’s because we leave that boring house and jump back to the Sudan run, where Bol and Zainab escape the country. It’s a harrowing sequence and all I could think about while reading it was, “Why isn’t THIS the movie?”
It also leads us to the big twist in the film (spoilers moving forward), where we’re watching these two make a run for it and we’re wondering, where is this daughter they kept crying about? She’s nowhere to be found. Then, as they’re approaching the last UN bus, which won’t let them on, Bol sees an abandoned little girl nearby, grabs her, and uses her to convince the bus to take them.
Later on, during a difficult part of the journey, they don’t really need the girl anymore and so they kind of let her go, which they suspect will lead to her death. So that’s the reason there’s this devil creature in the house. It’s punishing them for what they’ve done.
It’s a nice twist and a strong ending. Unfortunately, no matter how much I liked it, it couldn’t make up for the 70 prior pages where I could barely stay awake. It’ll be interesting to see how this movie does and if the director’s vision can blind audiences to the script’s problems. Then again, maybe they’ve improved the script since then. I hope so because this idea is unique and has potential.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I know a script is in trouble when storylines are introduced then forgotten. That tells me the writer isn’t committed to his ideas. The script starts out with the neighbors bothering our couple, but then that gets kicked to the background before never being mentioned agin. Ultimately, it had nothing to do with the story anyway. So if you’re thinking about introducing a subplot into your script, either commit to it, or get rid of it completely. There’s nothing worse than a subplot stuck in no-man’s-land.
The “A Quiet Place” team has already set up their next project, an adaptation of a short story about Mars colonists.
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: A small group of Mars colonists are shocked to find out that one of their members can breath the Mars air.
About: A Quiet Place nearly took down box office titan The Rock this weekend, scoring 32.6 million dollars in its second week. That’s less than a 35% drop. To add some perspective, most horror films drop more than 50% in their second weekend. The scalding hot Krasinski has already used the buzz from the film to set up his next project, which he is producing and directing, We Have Always Lived on Mars. The origin material is a short story that no one has heard of published on Tor.com. This continues the trend of short stories being bought up for feature adaptations this year. Aspiring writers take note!
Writer: Cecil Castellucci
Details: Roughly 15 pages
Outside of the key spec-friendly genres (Horror, Thriller, Biopic), this is where I see the spec market going – alternative IP. Short stories. Podcasts. Short films. Hollywood has this strange obsession with needing something to be created in another medium before they can accept it in this one.
Here’s what confuses me about this logic, though. You’d think that they’d want the IP to be successful, right? Apparently that’s not the case. This new trend of buying up short stories, particularly this one, which nobody has ever heard of, means that just the nature of something being in another medium is enough. Bizarre.
With that said, short stories and dramatic sci-fi go together like coffee and donuts. The last big dramatic science-fiction success was Arrival, also adapted from a short story nobody had heard of. So maybe when you’re writing sci-fi that doesn’t include space battles and killer robots, starting out as a short story is the way to go.
“We Have Always Lived on Mars” begins with a 20-something girl named Nina contemplating how frustrating her life on Mars is. Her ancestors lived on Mars. And her ancestors’ ancestors lived on Mars. And that’d be all well and good if Mars didn’t suck.
There have only ever been 24 colonists. That’s because living quarters are tight. So you can only bring a baby into the world when someone else dies. And Nina’s sick of it. She wants to run. She wants to breathe. She wants to live like humanity used to and expand.
We learn that a second group of colonists were supposed to arrive after the first but never showed up. Then came the storms, which blacked out the sky. Now the colonists can’t even see space, making their existence even more miserable.
One day when Nina goes out walking, she trips, ripping her suit. There’s no way to survive a rip so she anticipates her death. But she doesn’t die. As it turns out, Nina can breathe the Mars air just fine. The other colonists are thrilled. It’s taken generations, but finally a human has adapted to the Mars atmosphere.
That night, Nina’s father shares a secret with her. The original colonists only made it so the oxygen packs could hold 2 hours of oxygen. Which means they’ve never been able to travel beyond an hour’s walk from the base. Nina’s dad wants her to walk as far as she can and tell him what she finds.
And so the next day, Nina walks out, past the immediate base, past the ridge, until she finally runs into something so shocking, it will change the colonists’ lives forever.
Okay so, let me start off by saying this. I’m confused. Someone wants to make this into a movie?? I’m going to try and put this nicely. This is way too basic of a story for a feature film. On top of that, it exists in a genre where creativity is key. Yet there’s nothing creative here. It’s all basic rehashed sci-fi tropes.
For starters, every science fiction movie ever where the characters land on a new planet includes the moment where someone either accidentally or purposefully takes off their helmet only to find out that they can breath the air. Oh, come on, Carson. It’s not that common. Actually it’s so common that JUST LAST NIGHT I was watching the pilot episode of Lost in Space on Netflix, and that moment occurs.
But the cliches don’t stop there. I suppose I’m going to “spoil” this ending. But if you honestly don’t know what happens after the summary I gave, you’ve never read a story in your life. Nina walks over a hill and sees… a road! That’s right. They’ve been on earth this whole time.
I’m trying to contain myself because I’ve actually seen high school kids write this ending before. That’s how obvious it is.
I know Krasinski has repeatedly said in his Quiet Place interviews that what drew him to the project was not the monsters or even the “be quiet” hook. It was a family trying to survive. Which is actually great advice for aspiring screenwriters. Don’t get caught up in the bells and whistles of your concept. That’s not what makes a movie work. What makes a movie work is the human element. That’s what the audience connects to. If you get that right, everything else will fall in place.
So what I’m guessing is that Krasinski sees something in this colony that appeals to him. Essentially this colony is one big family that’s forced to live a close-knit existence. Maybe that’s what he wants to explore?
The problem is that there’s very little detail to the colony or what they’re going through. We’re barely told anything about how they operate. We only learn two characters’ names. Two! I’m sorry but I’m struggling to find any emotional connection to this story.
On top of this, this is going to be a nightmare to adapt. It’d be like trying to expand a story about a boy who gets stuck in a tree. Not only that, but you have to logically explain nonsensical things that are only in the story as a convenience to make the twist work, such as the sky is always cloudy so they can’t see that they’re still on earth. My fear is that Krasinski thinks this ending is the next Sixth Sense, so much so that he’s ignoring how little meat there is in this story.
If he did have the next Sixth Sense ending, I’d say it’s worth trying to figure it out. But come on. Who’s not going to see this ending coming after the first five minutes of the movie?
I’m going to chalk this up to a writer who got really lucky. So many people have an idea like this. For her to be the one to cash in the lottery ticket is a coup. So I’m happy for the writer. But Krasinski is in for a rude sophomore ride if he thinks this is going to work.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Get your work out there. Too many writers hold onto their stuff, thinking it’s so good that they can’t POSSIBLY allows other people to see it and, gasp, STEAL IT! But if nobody sees your idea, nobody can buy it. Nobody can become a fan of your writing. The writer put this story up on tor.com, which is what got her this sale. I beg of you guys. Stop hiding your work. Get it out there so something can happen with it!
Genre: Horror
Premise: A PTSD-afflicted Marine must fight for his own survival when he finds himself held captive in the Alaskan wilds by a family with a horrifying secret.
Why You Should Read: This script has done well in some notable contests and I’d like to see how it fares in the AOW battlezone. Clocking in at a lean and mean ninety pages, Greenhorn is crammed with GSU, moves at a swift pace and has the kind of deeply flawed hero an audience wants to root for. Thanks in advance for the reads.
Writer: Ryan Lee
Details: 90 pages
It’s always fun talking about what you thought you were walking into before you read a script, especially in the context of Amateur Offerings. Because if I’m being honest, I thought 1500 Degrees Fahrenheit was going to win. It was a fresh take on a thriller as opposed to being yet another monster or contained thing. And it had that emotional element built right into its DNA with the family struggling for survival. Yet poor 1500 barely managed 2 votes, giving it a paltry 1502 degrees.
In the case of Greenhorn, I thought it would finish near the bottom. I actually threw it in the mix as an afterthought, figuring it’d be lucky to get one vote. Why? A couple of reasons. For starters, whenever I see “PTSD-afflicted” anything, I groan. But I groan twice if it’s a marine. Can’t we have one marine come out of a war who ISN’T afflicted with PTSD? Just one? As for the rest of the logline, it’s a mish-mash of generalities. “Fight for his own survival.” “Held captive.” “A family with a horrifying secret.” The ONLY specific element in the entire logline is the word “Alaskan.” That’s the only thing that differentiates it from other ideas.
And here’s the irony about that. The script is one of the more unique amateur thrillers I’ve read in years. It just goes to show that you can be a good script writer but a terrible logline writer. You have to work on both, guys. Your logline is your movie equivalent of a billboard. It’s your sales’ pitch. This logline could’ve been so much better. And if Ryan would’ve contacted me, I could’ve helped. Here’s a quick rewrite that would’ve been way more effective (and accurate): After a cash-strapped ex-Marine is forced to take a dangerous job on a mysterious crabbing vessel, he learns that the Nordic crew has ties to an ancient pagan religion that worships a Norse Sea God.
30 year old former marine Sam Brennan is trying to make some money for his growing family. That’s right. In addition to having the perfect wife, Sam’s going to be having a baby soon. One of the only things he knows how to do is crab, so he’s in Alaska for one of those month-long sea trips where you fish a bunch of crab and come away with enough money to get you through the year.
Unfortunately, the captain of Sam’s crab boat tells him at the last second that they’re fully staffed, and Sam is stuck searching for a job. As luck would have it, he meets a Nordic guy named Henrik in a bar, who says they’re short one spot on their boat. Sam jumps at the chance, even though the boat and the men on it are all a bit, shall we say, fucking weird.
Sam is joined by one other newbie, a tough-talking 19 year old named Cody. Cody is so brash, so cocky, that the crew expects him to be the ringer and Sam to be the bust. But right from the start, Sam proves himself to be an all-star crabber. Cody, meanwhile, starts to have second thoughts about the job, to the point where he asks the Captain if they can leave him off at the nearest island. The Captain laughs and tells him to suck it up. As time goes on, we find out Cody has no idea what he’s doing and thought he could con his way into some easy cash.
While the crabbing is going great, Sam’s starting to sense that something ain’t right between the bows. That’s confirmed when, after Cody goes apeshit, the Captain chops his hand up in one of those fish shredders. When the crew senses that Sam may be encouraging Cody to hold out til they can get to land and call the cops, they head to a tiny remote island where we learn that these guys are part of one big Nordic chainsaw massacre family… THAT SACRIFICES PEOPLE TO THE NORSE SEA GOD.
The wimpy Cody doesn’t last long on the island. And Sam doesn’t look like he’ll fare much better. But he’s able to escape, running around the island Rambo-style, killing the chasing crew members one by one. But the island’s small. The only way Sam’s going to survive is if he finds a way off. And that option is anything but guaranteed.
Greenhorn is a good script. I’m not surprised it’s done well in competitions. But everybody who does well in competitions wants to know, “Why doesn’t it do BETTER in competitions?” Or if it does better in small competitions, “Why doesn’t it do better in BIG competitions?”
I can tell you exactly why Greenhorn is capping out in its competition run. Its second half isn’t as good as its first.
The first half of Greenhorn is great. It was hovering around a double worth the read or impressive for me. I especially liked Cody’s story. The writer could’ve easily brought only Sam onto the ship. But I think if he did, the story wouldn’t have had legs (or “sea legs”). By adding Cody, you get this whole fun storyline where Cody starts off as a cocky asshole, falters when it comes to work, is revealed to be a fraud, and then is brutally maimed. It was the perfect way into this creepy crew. And it set up a situation where it was now: Okay, so how is Sam going to handle this?
One of my favorite scenes was when the coast guard boarded the boat and the crew hid Sam and Cody inside the walls of the engine room. The suspense of whether they were going to find our heroes or not made for… while not a “Quiet Place” level labor scene… something that was almost as fun.
Then we get to this island and something about the choice is… off. I don’t know what exactly. But I immediately felt safer. When you’re in a boat out in the middle of the ocean… there’s nowhere to run. Now we’re on land. You have options. I wasn’t as afraid.
But the bigger problem is that the boat added structure. The island turned the story into this all-or-nothing chicken-with-its-head-cut-off mess. You don’t get scenes like the coast guard scene because there’s no form. It’s just a guy running around trying to survive. It was messy and not nearly as compelling.
After thinking about it, I believe the problem is that we get to the island too soon. I think it’s at the midpoint? That’s too long of a time to be on the island. And it’s one of the reasons the script’s pacing gets all wonky. We’re used to the island within 20 pages yet we still have 25 to go. I would take a page out of sister movie’s “The Ritual’s” book. Save the island for the last act. That’s going to mean packing more story into the ship, but I think that’s the more interesting stuff anyway.
This one has a lot of potential for sure. I would keep working on it. In addition to shifting the structure, I would keep populating the characters, Sam included. He’s a little thin. Everybody here needs about 20-25% more depth (save for maybe the Captain). Spend as much time figuring these characters out as you do describing this boat.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I would only include PTSD-afflicted marines in your story if they’re absolutely ESSENTIAL and ORGANIC to the situation. Otherwise, these guys are at the top of the cliche food chain. Why not make Sam a former Navy officer? Wouldn’t that make more sense anyway?
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Type 1 On-the-nose
On-the-nose dialogue comes in two flavors. Type 1 is where characters say exactly what they’re thinking. The reason it reads false is because, in real life, people hold back on what they’re thinking. They talk around things instead of about them. If you want to see the truest form of this dialogue, watch an episode of The Bachelor. Notice that the contestants say things like, “I have really deep feelings for you.” “I have really deep feelings for you, too.” “Are you ready for marriage though?” “I want to be. It’s tough though. With my mom’s death last year I’ve been in a bad place.” The reason these conversations are so on-the-nose is because the producers have spent 200 grand on the date. They need the characters to talk about real shit for that kind of money. So before the characters sit down, they tell them, “Make sure to talk about how much you like her.” Or, “Remember, we really want people to understand how difficult your mom’s death has been for you.” The Bachelor wouldn’t work if the two characters sat around all night and talked about their pets. To defeat the evil known as on-the-nose dialogue, have your characters talk around things instead of about them. If Mark cheated on Lucy, don’t have Lucy ask, “Why did you cheat on me?” the next time they meet. Have her ask, “How was your day?” This way, the real conversation happens underneath the dialogue (what’s referred to as “subtext,”) which is way more interesting. It should be noted that on-the-nose dialogue is okay in some scenes. Characters have to confront each other and say what’s on their mind at some point. But those moments should be few and far between.
Type 2 On-the-nose
Type 2 is where characters say exactly what the movie needs them to say in that moment.
This can best be summarized by the mother’s line in A Quiet Place when she says to the dad late in the story, “Who are we if we can’t protect our children?” Then, in the very next scene, the dad runs off to protect his children! Clearly, the only reason for that line was to motivate the father to go save the children. Had they approached this moment more naturally, they wouldn’t have had to resort to on-the-nose dialogue. “Where are the kids?” “I don’t know. I thought they were with you.” “I haven’t seen them.” Then they work through the options of where the kids might be and off they go. This mistake is made when writers throw out the truth of a situation to talk directly to the audience. And it’s almost always because there’s something wrong with your story. So you have to pause it to remind the audience why you’re doing what you’re doing. To avoid this mistake, stay away from any situation where characters are only saying something for the benefit of the audience. As hard as it sounds, you have to “hide” all motivations within the natural conversations that occur between your characters.
Exposition
Exposition is when your characters set up the plot or explain things. One of the most blatant examples of exposition occurs in Inception when Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s character explains to Ellen Page’s character how the inception process works. It’s question after question. Answer after answer. And it goes on forever. No matter how cool your concept is, audiences can only take so much of characters explaining things. They want conflict. They want drama. They want sexual tension. They want characters trying to figure things out. Not explain stuff. With that said, explaining things is a necessary evil in movies. And the more elaborate your story (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings) the more exposition is going to be required. The trick with tackling exposition is two-fold. First, cut all exposition down to its bare bones. There shouldn’t be a single extra word. We didn’t need Neo and the Manager discussing how the machines work in Zion for 5 minutes. You could’ve cut out every word there and nothing about the movie would’ve suffered. And second, be clever or fun or dramatic in how you convey exposition. For example, in Back to the Future (the best movie ever at handling exposition), before Marty goes back in time, we have to explain the fate of the Clock Tower. A bad writer would’ve had Marty sitting in his bedroom and his mom walk in and say, “Hey, I was downtown today and they’re still trying to resurrect that old Clock Tower. It’s been 30 years since that thing went kaput. I can’t believe it. I still remember when the bolt of lightning hit that thing and put it out of commission.” Instead, we have Marty trying to steal a kiss from his girlfriend downtown and then a crazed woman shoves a jar in front of him and screams, “Save the clock tower!” Because she’s crazy, we can’t help but laugh as she goes into her spiel about how the Clock Tower was destroyed. Just remember that there’s usually a more clever way to dish out exposition than two people talking in a room.
Melodrama
Melodrama is when you take emotional beats – positive or negative – and dial them up to inauthentic levels. One of the more famous examples of this is the Anakin and Padme dialogue in Attack of the Clones. “I love you.” “No, not as much as I love you.” “But I love you more.” Notice that there’s some crossover here with on-the-nose dialogue. But the point is, the writer goes overboard in trying to convey the emotions of the characters, which, ironically, achieves the opposite effect. But where melodrama really gets writers in trouble is on the negative side. Characters exist in an alternate universe where every moment of their lives has been miserable. “My dad was never around much. After he beat my mom for 20 years, he decided to turn the old Winchester on himself.” “I’m sorry.” “That wasn’t even the worst part. He left a letter for me with his lawyer. The letter said, ‘I never considered you my son. In fact, I wished you were never born.’ “That’s terrible.” “So if you want to know why I think of suicide every day, now you know.” And the whole scene takes place while the two are doing meth, of course. Again, there’s some crossover with on-the-nose dialogue here. But the main point is that the character is hitting us with numerous over-the-top dramatic beats. And because they’re so extreme, we don’t believe them for a second. Now there will be a couple of moments in your script where extreme emotion is required. But treat it like a newborn kitten. Only let it out of the box for a few minutes during the day. Otherwise, it should stay out of sight. And here’s one last tip to avoid melodrama. Never have your character openly offer intense emotional details about their life. Always build the scene around someone pulling it out of them. It takes Sean the whole movie of pulling and pulling and pulling to get Will Hunting to finally break down about his abusive father. Imagine how awful that movie would’ve been if Will had come in the first day and said, “The abuse started when I was five years old and here’s what happened for the next 20 years…” Reluctant admission is a nuclear weapon to combat melodrama.
Cheesy
Cheesiness is a tough one because every reader has a different tolerance for cheese. Keeping that in mind, cheesy dialogue is a result of two things. It’s a tonal miscalculation and it’s a genre miscalculation. I have this writer I give notes to who writes serious thrillers, like Sicario. However, every time he writes a scene between a man and a woman, he switches into romantic comedy mode. What was once serious morphs into exchanges like, “What are you doing here?” “I could’ve asked you the same thing.” “Truth?” “I expect nothing less.” “Cinnamon.” “Cinnamon?” “When I saw you last, you smelled like cinnamon. And I remembered this bakery because they’re famous for their cinnamon buns.” “Ah, so you’re obsessing over my buns now?” “I don’t know about obsessing. Intrigued maybe.” “So what’s next?” “I add some sugar to that cinnamon.” Now granted, this is cheesy no matter what movie it’s in. But it’s much more comfortable in a movie like The Wedding Planner than it is Sicario. Cheesiness is the result of overly cute dialogue packaged inside a genre meant for more serious exchanges. So if you understand the tone of the genre you’re writing in, you should know what constitutes as “too cheesy” for that tone.
Bland/Lifeless
This is the worst kind of dialogue you can write. And it’s unfortunately the most common. Characters speak, but it’s the dialogue equivalent of a gray room with gray furniture and gray fixtures. It’s functional. But it’s so lifeless that even if your plot and characters are strong, you risk boring the reader to death. As bad as my above example of cheesy dialogue is, it at least had personality. Let’s examine how that dialogue changes if we apply the bland filter to it. “Oh, hey. What are you doing here?” “I eat breakfast here every morning.” “I wouldn’t have guessed.” “Yeah, I only started a few weeks ago. What about you? Are you here for breakfast?” “No, just picking up pastries for the office.” “It’s a good choice. I love this place.” “Are you going to be around this week?” “I’m busy working but if you want to talk you can call me.” “Okay, that would be fun. Do you still have the same number?” “I do.” Bland dialogue stems from two places. Boring characters and a lack of creativity. If characters say boring things a lot, chances are you’re constructed a boring character. Every character needs an element of personality. Their dominant personality trait, then, will dictate what they say. I’ve been watching Silicon Valley lately. One character is overtly nervous and anxious. So he speaks in a bumbling nervous manner. Another character believes he’s better than everybody else. So he speaks in a pompous cocky manner. Another character is consumed by negativity and frustration, so he makes a lot of snarky negative comments. Granted this is a comedy where character personalities are more exaggerated. But even if you’re writing a drama, look to define every character’s main personality trait to figure out how they’re going to speak. In Three Billboards, Deputy Dixon never grew up. So he speaks like an 8th grader. As for creativity, that should be self-explanatory. Dress up your dialogue a little bit. You have a choice between, “How are you?” and “Wussup, kemosabe?” You have a choice between, “I like your tie” and “Killer threads.” You have a choice between, “I’m hungry” and “I could devour a herd of buffalo right now.” As long as it’s organic to what that character would say, you should be dressing up the majority of your dialogue.
And finally, remember, the starting point for good dialogue in any scene is a character who wants something, and some sort of tension or conflict that’s present. Whether that be from another character or external forces (weather, a time crunch), find the conflict and you’ll find your characters saying much more interesting things.
