Genre: Thriller
Premise: After a botched bank heist leaves nineteen people locked inside a state-of-the-art vault, the FBI recruits the world’s foremost box-man from federal prison so he can break them out before they suffocate inside.
About: This finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List and was one of my personal highest-rated concepts on the list. You can check out my thoughts on every Black List entry here. Screenwriter Adam Yorke has one credit, a 2021 Spanish thriller about a blind woman called, “See For Me.”
Writer: Adam Yorke
Details: 118 pages

When I started screenwriting, there was one word that annoyed me more than any other. It was the word “craft.” I’d occasionally spot it inside a screenwriter interview, often from some ancient screenwriter who’d get up on his high horse and pretentiously claim that screenwriting was a “craft” and that in order to get good at it, you needed to master the “craft.”

I rolled my eyes so many times at the mention of that word, they have the rarest form of PTSD – retinal PTSD – from excessive whiplash.

But now myself and my eyes love the word.

We love it because we *understand* it.

And you’re about to understand it too. But first we have to summarize the plot of Boxman.

After learning about the history of safe-cracking, we meet Frank Pierson, in prison, a man who is clearly going to be played by George Clooney if the writer has anything to say about it. Vault-cracker Frank is in prison for 30 years because of a diamond heist he orchestrated.

But Frank’s about to get a lucky break. At one of the biggest banks in town, some Russians have broken into the bank’s top-tier vault. They stole the money then locked all 19 employees inside. As it so happens, the only two people who can open the vault, who must do it from the outside, are part of that 19. Oh, and, the airtight vault has only 5 hours of air for 19 people.

FBI Field Office head, Kay Hollis, is brought down to the site and realizes quickly that they have to think outside the box. He makes the call to bring in Pierson, who will only do it if he’s immediately freed once he gets the vault open. There’s a lot of red tape up at the governor’s office but time is of the essence so they get the deal done.

Frank assesses the situation and develops a complicated multi-step several-hour plan to break through this annoying vault. As he goes about his job, we learn that Vitaly, the man who ordered this robbery, is upset that his son was killed during the escape, and wants revenge.

Who he wants revenge against adds another compilation to the proceedings. You see, there’s an inside man in the vault. One of these 19 was working with the robbers and Vitaly. They ultimately alerted the cops, which is how Vitaly’s son was killed. So Vitaly wants to make sure Frank doesn’t open that vault. If he does, the inside man/woman will live!

Oh, and if that isn’t enough, Vitaly worked with Frank on that diamond heist that put him in prison! Talk about onions here. This script’s got layers!! In the end, it’s still about if Frank can crack the most uncrackable safe in the world in time to save 19 lives. And once Frank realizes that he’s been given the wrong schematics to the safe, that reality is looking hella unlikely!

As I was saying.

When I read a script, one of the big things I’m looking for is a screenwriter who can carve together thoughtful sequences. It’s not just “Cold Open Scene,” “Character Intro Scene,” “Conflict Scene,” “Inciting Incident Scene.”

There’s a *craft* to it. There’s a creativity, thoughtfulness, and a “connectedness,” that’s been placed into the sequence. Boxman’s opening sequence is a great example of that.

We start in 1500 B.C. If anyone here saw the logline and thought we’d be starting in 1500 B.C., raise your hands?

Show of no hands? That’s what I thought.

That alone places this above 90% of applicants. You’re giving us something that we don’t typically get in this genre. Then, we travel through the history of lock-making and lock-picking. This isn’t entirely creative. Any writer can come up with a history lesson.

But Yorke adds a STORY to the history lesson. After we’ve established the key years in lock-making, he provides a story about a man who created an un-pickable lock and challenged the world to pick it. We watch (and listen, via a man’s voice over) people try but fail to pick the lock again and again. Over the course of decades.

Finally, a man is able to pick the lock. We then marry that image with the image of the man providing the voice over. This is Frank. And when we pull back, we see that he’s in prison. At the visitor’s window. Talking to his daughter. He’s the one who’s been giving this history lesson, and he’s been giving it to her.

Think about that for a second. We get the lock-picking history lesson. It climaxes in a fun story. And then we connect it with our hero, who’s not just casually living his life, but is rather in prison. We also get some great exposition (about locks) and backstory (about family) along the way.

That whole sequence required CRAFT. It required thought. It required planning. It required creativity.

An average writer would’ve started this script with Frank talking to his visiting daughter and telling her he loved her or something. That’s what the writer WHO HAS NO CRAFT would’ve done. Good writers craft sequences.

Ironically, Yorke follows this great opening with the worst section of the entire script. A big gigantic bulk character introduction.

Anybody here think, without looking, that they could pass a ‘who’s who’ test on all those characters? Yet the writer seems to think we can.

This is every screenwriter. Every screenwriter has strengths and weaknesses. Some of those weaknesses are the worst kind. They’re BLINDSPOTS. The writer doesn’t even know they have them so they can’t fix them. This is why it’s important to get a screenplay consultation every once in a while. You need someone telling you you have these problems.

Once we get through another 15 pages or so, and we hear the key characters’ names over and over again, we start to know who’s who and enjoy the script again. And it’s a good script! It’s one of those scripts that has enough going for it that it’s above the “lottery.” For those who don’t know, I call the giant pool of 50,000 scripts in Hollywood that are average to pretty good “the lottery.” Because the only way you sell one of those scripts is pure luck.

The attention to detail, the deep research that went into the safe-cracking, the multilayered story, the clever subplots (there’s an “inside man” in the vault), and the fun central plotline (will this safe-cracker both save 19 lives AND free himself from prison) combined for a script that is worthy of producing.

The only thing holding the script back is the ridiculous character count. I always complain about big character counts but it’s not a criticism without merit. Having too many characters isn’t just annoying. It severely cripples the read. Cause you’re never clear on who everyone is. So you’re only half-understanding major plot moments.

If you don’t know that Character X just double-crossed Character Y because both characters were introduced quickly then disappeared for twenty pages before being brought back again… you’re missing major plot moments. Professional writers know this stuff. I’m imploring young writers to learn it as well. It makes your scripts so much more readable when you understand the limitations of how many characters and subplots a reader can track.

Finally, a reminder about the importance of CRAFT. Not just with your opening scene. Do it throughout your script. Show us that you are creatively crafting sequences that clearly have a lot of thought put into them. Cause guess what? We know when you don’t put any effort into a scene. If you think you get away with that stuff? I promise you don’t.

I just consulted on a script three days ago where I had a come-to-Jesus moment with the writer. He phoned in a major set piece. I told him, “You don’t get to do that.” Readers see that and they don’t just lose faith in the script. They lose faith IN YOU. Which is way worse. Cause it means they don’t want to read anything from you anymore.

And yet it’s one of the easiest aspects of screenwriting to get good at. Cause all you have to do is put in EFFORT. We can tell when you do it. We can tell when you don’t.

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

What I learned: Learning how to introduce lots of characters quickly and MEMORABLY is one of the single clearest signs of a legitimate Hollywood screenwriter. This is one of the things they know how to do that amateurs or young repped writers struggle with. Knowing how to set a lot of people up quickly so that the reader remembers all of them? That’s a $100,000 skill right there. It’s too wide-ranging of a topic to teach in one “What I learned,” but it amounts to a combination of naming your characters smartly (so that their names sound like who they are yet not in an on-the-nose way), giving them a quick strong action that defines them, and giving them dialogue that’s both unique to them and memorable. Do that and you can introduce TONS of characters.

Did Christopher Nolan hoodwink Hollywood?

Can you really call it a successful Oscars if no one got slapped?

I got thoughts.

I got opinions.

But I’m not going to be hating today. I’m going to be celebre-hating.

Oppenheimer won the two biggies – Best Picture and Best Director. But it says a lot that it didn’t win Best Screenplay.

Why is that?

Because the screenplay was baaaaaaaad. It was bad, folks. It was. Nobody really knows who Oppenheimer was after that movie. Nobody understands why there were 45 minutes of movie left after the film was over. The cutting back and forth between all the time-periods was clumsy and disjointed.

But it shows just how amazing of a director Nolan is in that he was able to overcome that to win Best Picture and Best Director. And I support those wins. There was no movie this year that looked better, that felt more authentic, that was better constructed, that had a better cast of actors, that felt like a moviegoing experience, than Oppenheimer.

But, dude, Nolan. Get yourself a screenwriter. If you do that, you could literally become the greatest filmmaker ever. Right now you are limiting yourself with your weak screenwriting.

Okay, onto the screenwriting categories.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
American Fiction (Written for the screen by Cord Jefferson)
Barbie (Written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach)
Oppenheimer (Written for the screen by Christopher Nolan)
Poor Things (Screenplay by Tony McNamara)
The Zone of Interest (Written by Jonathan Glazer)

Winner: American Fiction

I can’t count how many people have recommended this movie to me so I just started watching it last night and, WHOA! A little heads up there on the bummer of a first act climax would’ve been nice! The trailer promised a fun funny movie! Here they are killing people off. Sheesh. But I will continue watching tonight. I loved the opening scene in the classroom. It brilliantly went after the ridiculousness of woke culture. I’m assuming it’s going to keep doing that and, if so, expect a positive review.

Personally, I would’ve voted for either Barbie or Poor Things. You can’t leave 2023 without giving Barbie a major award. It’s ridiculous. The movie deserved it.  Either for the directing, which was amazing, or the writing, where they took way more creative risks than they’re getting credit for.

The thing I loved about Poor Things is that it not only used the most basic story template of them all – The Hero’s Journey – but it took a lot of risks as well. The father character was such a weirdo and unlike any other character in 2023. I would say it lost because nobody saw it. But nobody saw American Fiction either and it still won.  I suspect Poor Things was too weird to catch on with people.

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Anatomy of a Fall (Screenplay by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)
The Holdovers (Written by David Hemingson)
Maestro (Written by Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer)
May December (Screenplay by Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik)
Past Lives (Written by Celine Song)

Winner: Anatomy of a Fall

The Original Screenplay category is always a bit of wildcard. That’s because most of the “serious” movies that Hollywood makes are adapted from something. If Hollywood makes an original movie with an original screenplay, it’s usually a genre film, like The Beekeeper. And we know they’re never going to celebrate one of those scripts at the Oscars. So we get this group of oddball contestants that always feels lacking on some level.

With all that said, I’m surprised that Anatomy of a Fall took down The Holdovers. The Holdovers was the favorite. It’s always a bit of a shock when a script that wasn’t even written in the English language wins Best Screenplay at the Oscars.

To be honest, I don’t know why this script won. Even those few people who saw and enjoyed the movie, if you asked them what they liked best about it, I’d be shocked if 1 out of 100 said, “the screenplay.” Most people would pick Sandra Huller’s performance.

I guess the script does keep you guessing. But any script that has a 100-page second act can f right off. I’m sorry, but seriously. Show some focus with what you’re trying to do, for God’s sakes. A 100-page second act screams, “I don’t know where I’m going so I’m just going to include it all.” And that’s how it felt. It wandered.

I still haven’t seen The Holdovers even though I’m one of the few people who has Peacock’s streaming service and therefore the film is free for me. As you know, I didn’t like an early draft of the script and even though you guys have told me that the shooting draft is vastly improved, it’s always hard for me to drum up motivation to see a movie where I disliked the script. Every once in a long while, the movie turns out great (Three Billboards Outside Ebbings Mississippi). But it’s usually impossible for the movie to be salvaged.

I’m sure I’ll check it out at some point.

As for the other major categories, I’m ecstatic that Cillian Murphy won over the thirstiest Oscar thirster in history, Bradley Cooper. If he would’ve won for that boring self-important piece of crap, I would’ve chosen violence.

I’m ecstatic that Emma Stone won for Poor Things. I thought she was amazing in that film. She had the single most interesting main character I’ve seen in a movie in over a decade. She holds nothing back in the movie. She’s funny. She’s weird. And I just respect any artist who takes a huge swing.

The one category where the Academy got it dead wrong was supporting actor. I can’t recite a single line Robert Downey Jr. said in Oppenheimer. I can’t recall a single memorable moment he was involved in. Of every actor who was in that film, I would say he was the 14th or 15th most memorable.

Ryan Gosling deserved to win this award. This speaks to a bigger question, possibly even a conspiracy. From the start of Awards season, the Oscars wanted nothing to do with Barbie. And I don’t know why. Barbie is not Transformers. It’s not mindless entertainment. It actually made you think. It’s a movie made by women celebrating women in an industry desperately trying to promote women.

And yet crickets for Barbie at the Oscars. I’m baffled by it. Does anybody have any theories as to why they’d turn their backs on the movie that’s most representative of what they’re trying to do? Is Margot Robbie secretly Scott Rudin behind the scenes?? What’s going on here! Tell me!

What are your 2024 Oscar hot takes?

Did anyone rob the Academy? Who didn’t win but should’ve? And, of course, I expect lots of comments telling me I’m wrong about Oppenheimer so I’m going to preemptively respond to them here. YOU’RE WRONG. It was a junk screenplay.

Happy Monday!

Today we take on the WINNER of one of the tightest Amateur Showdown races yet!  Did you guys do good picking Animosity as the winner??

Genre: Thriller
Winning Logline: After he discovers the body of a murdered 9-year-old girl near his house, a popular horror author’s neighbors decide he must be guilty of the crime and take justice into their own hands.
About: This script won the February Showdown (First Line Showdown) by a mere ONE VOTE. So it was a close one. The first line that helped get the script over the top? “BAM!–ANDY HOLLAND (30s) slams against the passenger window, his eyes wide with fear.” That first line seems to have changed during the rewrite. So let the controversy begin!
Writers: Mark Steensland & James Newman
Details: 93 pages

Joe Alwyn for Andy?

I saw a lot of chatter about this showdown. A good chunk of you thought basing a showdown on a first line was stupid. And you know what? Maybe you’re right. How can one line tell us how good a script is? It probably can’t.

However, the whole reason I did it was to use an inception-like hijacking of your mind to remind you that the reader’s judgment of a screenplay STARTS IMMEDIATELY. Which means you have to impress them with the very first line. I mean, look at how many opinions we got regarding the first lines presented. Managers and agents and producers – they’re looking at those first lines in the exact same way.

But now that we’re past that, we can focus on the next showdown, which is happening Friday, March 22nd. “Movie-Crossover Showdown” will have you using the old 90s way of pitching scripts by crossing over two popular movies. It’s “Titanic meets John Wick.” It’s “Avatar by way of John Hughes.” It’s “Oppenheimer meets Poor Things.” It’s “Mean Girls but with dads.” I have a feeling we’re going to have some really fun pitches so join the club and get your submission ready by March 21st!

MOVIE CROSSOVER SHOWDOWN!!!

What: Movie-Crossover Showdown

I need your: Title, Genre, Logline, and Movie Crossover Pitch
Competition Date: Friday, March 22nd
Deadline: Thursday, March 21st, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Okay, on to today’s winner!

30-something Andy Holland is his small town’s version of Stephen King. The man likes to write bloody novels. And he’s become quite successful at it. Although, he’s behind on his latest one and it’s adding stress to an already stressful life. His ex-wife, Karen, and his daughter, Samantha, are metaphorically beating down his door to take some responsibility and start spending time with his offspring.

One day, after walking his dog home from the local bookstore, Andy finds the body of a dead girl behind an unused home. He calls the cops, lets them know what happened, and that’s when we learn a little more about Andy. When he was 18, he had a sexual relationship with a 17 year old and he ended up pleading guilty in court for it. This raises the cops’ eyebrows.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Andy notices that his neighbors no longer treat him the same. They walk by his house more. They’re always pointing and whispering at it. His next-door neighbor buddy Ben is all of a sudden asking him more probing questions about his past. And a local reporter named Staci seems to have an axe to grind with Andy and hints strongly in her reports that Andy, being a horror novel writer, is highly suspicious.

After the locals start digging through Andy’s trash at night and poison his dog, Andy has had enough and calls for the police to do something. But the police aren’t interested in helping him. Once the neighbors sense this, they get more aggressive. They start hanging out near his house more. They yell at Andy. They throw things at him. It’s getting bad.

But when a second murder happens, it gets a hell of a lot worse. A lot of the neighbors and even one of the off-duty cops set up shop in front of Andy’s house. When night comes, they start bashing his windows, trying to get in. Andy fights them off as best he can. But things get really crazy when his ex-wife shows up. It’s a moment that will test just how far off the reservation the mob has gone. And it will turn this night into the worst night of Andy’s life.

Well well well.

We’ve got one heck of a dilemma here.

Because half of this script is really good. And the other half is really boring.

Before I get to which was which, let me ask you guys: What’s more important? Writing a good first half of a script or a good second half?

Thoughts please.

Okay, ready for the answer?

Both. Because if the first half is boring, the reader won’t make it to the second half. But if the second half is boring, all that good will you built up in the first half was for nothing. I’d say the ground floor level for what you need to achieve is an average first half and an awesome second half. But any other weak combo won’t work.

This script is tricky as heck because I understand the thought process behind Mark and James’ strategy. They knew that, in order for the house mob to work, they needed to do a lot of setup first. A mob isn’t just going to appear out of nowhere. They need multiple reasons to get to that point. So Mark and James introduced half a dozen plot points in that first half that got the mob to the angry point they needed to be at.

But the plot points were so bland. Even the two killings felt PG. And now that I’m thinking about it, the local reporter implying that Andy had to be involved also felt… how do I put this? Like the way a murder might be covered in one of those Hallmark movies. Like, “Oh no! There’s a murder in town! The local baker ended up dead!”

I feel like Mark and James need to go watch the first season of True Detective or that David Fincher serial killer series on Netflix to get more into that “brutal murder” mindset so you can sell these murders as the horrible things that cause all this chaos.

But man… once we get to the mob part of the script, which begins about halfway through, this script goes from “barely interested” to full-on “impressive.” These two captured mob mentality perfectly. It reminded me of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing in a lot of ways. Once the mob feeds off itself, logic no longer applies.

There’s this terrifying moment in the script (spoiler!!) where the ex-wife shows up and the mob rips her to shreds. That’s when I said, “We’ve got a movie now.” Not because every script needs over-the-top violence to be good. More so that you finally knew how bad this had gotten. Cause, up until that point, you were thinking, “Logic has to prevail at some point.” Once that murder happened, it was clear that logic no longer mattered to these people.

I think this script is worth pursuing and fixing. But to do that, we need to get to the mob by page 30. That doesn’t mean they have to start attacking Andy’s house by then. But they should be in their cars parked outside. Maybe a couple of the scarier ones set up chairs on the lawn. Start building that world of this growing mob. Cause you can get through all of those early plot beats a lot faster and it won’t hurt the script a lick.

As for the riot, you need to do some finagling there. I think that once the ex-wife is killed, some semblance of reality would set in for, at least, some of the people. They didn’t come here to hurt anyone other than Andy. And also, there’s a cop involved. Once he saw a murder happen, he’s probably peacing-out so that he doesn’t go to prison. It’s not like the old days where you could hide that stuff. Social media doesn’t allow it. Speaking of social media, the normal people in the neighborhood observing this are probably putting it all over social media within five minutes. There would be real cops there quickly.

The way to handle that is to probably keep everything contained to one night. Don’t wait til morning for the mob to reconvene. It’s gotta all happen during that night so that it’s reasonably believable that other people didn’t come and stop this.

Now, I had an idea for this that James and Mark might want to consider. What if we made Andy black? Then it turns this entire story into a metaphor with a much bigger meaning. I understand that a lot of stuff comes with that change. It becomes a “race” script instead of just a thriller. But I’m pretty sure that it would do better on the reading circuit. Curious what you guys think. Share your thoughts in the comments.

But this is a good script with the potential to be a really good script. And as you know from me talking about it all the time, I rarely encounter any script with the potential to be really good. So that’s a big deal.

Oh, and finally, I think we can come up with a better ending here. The revelation (spoiler) that they already found the killer was cool. But I’m wondering if we need a bigger twist. Anybody have any ideas?

Check out the script here: Animosity

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

What I learned: Earn your introductions! This script introduces a lot of characters. When you introduce characters weakly, you force the reader to remember them. That should never be the case. The reader should never feel “forced” to remember anything about your screenplay. It’s your job to make a character instantly memorable either by the memorable way in which they do something or the memorable way in which they say something. Only when you’ve created a memorable character do you earn the right to introduce your next character. A big issue with the first half of this script is that we RAN THROUGH a bunch of blasé generic character introductions. Put some actual thought into these intros because a screenplay *is its characters.* If we don’t know everyone (as in GENUINELY FEEL LIKE WE KNOW THEM), we’re only half-enjoying your script.

Here’s the introduction of Ben, a fairly major character. This just isn’t cutting the mustard. It’s an okay intro. But it’s far from memorable.

Week 10 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

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

Every Thursday, for the first six months of 2024, Scriptshadow is throwing you on his sleigh and flying you around Planet Screenplay. Planet Screenplay is a world that, at times, contains love, beauty and wonder. Other times, it is a world of fear, frustration, and uncertainty.

But don’t worry. I got ya! I will make sure you get through every single country of your script with all your limbs intact. Not promising you won’t lose your head. But limbs I’m pretty sure I’ve got.

That’s because I’m offering the easiest way to write a screenplay in the books. All you have to do is write 2 pages a day and you get 2 extra days at the end of the week to catch up if, for whatever reason, Captain Writer’s Block makes a visit to your brain condo.

The greatest thing about all this is that when it’s over, WE HAVE A COMPETITION. The biggest Showdown in Scriptshadow history will take place: Mega Showdown (Imagine those giant echoing voices they used to use for those monster truck commercials: “Megaaa-ahhh-ahhh-ahhh Showdown-down-down-down!” It’s going to be stupendous.

But first, we have to get through one of the toughest parts of the screenplay: THE MIDPOINT.

A lot of that initial excitement you had when you first came up with your idea and wrote those first few scenes of your script? Yeah, that’s long gone. Reality has set in. And with it, its mistress: frustration.

You’re starting to question certain plot points, certain characters. And, if you’re a real writer, you’re starting to question if you should give up screenwriting altogether. The “Give-Up” Dragon becomes a constant companion on this journey.  And he breathes failure-fire, that bastard.

One thing that helped me learn to finish screenplays (as opposed to abandon them) is to stop thinking of screenwriting as something that has to be fun all the time. If you’re a screenwriter, screenwriting IS YOUR JOB.

For your regular 9 to 5 job, are you allowed to stop showing up? No. You have to go. Even when you feel like crap. Even when there are seven fires you’ll have to put out that day.  Even when Annoying Bill is going to ask you to play racketball with him for the sixth time this month.  Even when you just plain don’t want to go. You still go.

Which is how you need to approach screenwriting. The real screenwriters are not the ones who can write when everything’s going well. They’re the ones who keep writing even when things are going badly.

A big part of the reason things go badly is judgment. Your brain is constantly judging your writing. Even as you’re writing stuff down, you’re thinking, “This doesn’t work. This is stupid. I don’t like this.” So you stop.

You can’t do that. The first draft will always be the messiest draft. It will be your worst draft. AND THAT’S OKAY. Cause the goal of the first draft is not to write something great. It’s to get it done.

I went on a sneaky little family vacation to Cancun a couple of weeks ago and my brother and I got in a long discussion about writing. He’s not a writer but he’s interested in what I do. He said, “All I know is that, in college, when I had to write a paper, rewriting it was going to be easy. So I knew that all I had to do was get a first draft done as fast as I could.  No matter how bad it was, from that point on, it was easy.”

That’s great advice for screenwriters as well. Get it down on paper so you can start rewriting it. Cause rewriting is easier than conjuring stuff up out of thin air.

Now onto more specific advice. We have arrived at your script’s MIDPOINT.

The midpoint is a critical checkpoint in your screenplay because the audience needs to feel some sort of SHIFT in the story in order to stay interested. This shift, when done well, works like a rogue wave in the ocean. There’s our screenplay, floating along, and then this giant wave picks it up and pushes it all the way to shore (our ending).

There are multiple ways to approach the midpoint. Some writers like to insert a surprising twist. Some writers like to up the stakes. Some writers like to kill a character off. Some writers like to introduce a new character. There’s one common denominator here and that’s that something bigger needs to happen.

In the original Top Gun, the midpoint has Maverick lose his wing man and best friend, Goose.

In the midpoint of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the four characters who are stuck in the game run into Alex, a mysterious character who has been stuck in the game for years. He then sets them on the proper path in order to get home.

In everybody’s favorite punching bag of a movie (but one I like), The Force Awakens, the midpoint is the demonstration of Starkiller Base, which uses its power to destroy dozens of planets at once. The stakes have been raised. We now know why it’s so important to defeat the First Order.

In Zombieland, the midpoint’s effect is a little more complex. It has our crew arriving at their destination, California. This doesn’t necessarily up the stakes. There’s no big twist. But since the first half of the movie was a road-trip, the arrival in California changes the make-up of the movie considerably. The conflict will now be contained to one area. That’s important: You don’t want the second half of your movie to feel exactly like the first half or we’ll get bored.

The midpoint of Equalizer 3, which has our hero Robert McCall hiding out in an Italian town, has him move from avoiding detection and staying undercover, to actively going after the evil crime syndicate there.

Steven Spielberg, the king of the action set-piece, uses his midpoint in Jurassic Park to mark the arrival of the T-Rex, which attacks our poor protagonists who are helplessly stuck in their jeep. It’s not so much a plot development as it is an antagonist arrival. The stakes have been raised considerably now that we know what we’re up against.

In the almost brilliant “Leave the World Behind” (Netflix), which follows two families stuck in a remote house as World War 3 begins, the midpoint has that amazing remote-Tesla driving attack scene, where Tesla cars shoot at our driving heroes at 130 miles per hour, crashing into each other at the highway entrance, gumming up the highways so that people can’t escape. Like the T-Rex scene, this scene upped the stakes and let us know just how dangerous this threat is.

In one of my favorite comedies ever, Dumb and Dumber, our two favorite morons break-up! Lloyd accidentally drives 600 miles in the wrong direction and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back for Harry. He’s out. He leaves (and starts walking home!).

A Quiet Place has one of the better midpoints in recent memory. It’s the moment when Emily Blunt’s character’s water breaks and she has to have her baby in silence, alone. Not only is it the best scene in the movie, but it ups the stakes considerably. Now there’s a baby involved for the second half of the movie. And babies like to make noise.

That’s something I only noticed by doing this research. For some of these movies, the midpoint includes the best scene (or one of the best scenes). So, if you don’t know how to raise the stakes or how to change the fortunes of your second half so that it doesn’t feel like the first half, or you don’t want to introduce a new character or kill one off, one thing you know you can do reliably is write a great set piece scene. That alone can JOLT a reader back to attention.

So there you have it. I’m excited that we’re crossing the halfway point of our scripts this week. We’re going to be finished with this thing in no time.

See you next week!

My friends, we actually have a good script today. A very good script.

Genre: Action/Period
Premise: Set in the 14th century, a shepherd watches as a group of mercenaries assault and murder his employing family, setting him on a path of revenge.
About: Today’s writer, Will Dunn, has been writing for a long time. He first made strides by getting into the Twentieth Century Fox writing program back in 2011. Since then, he’s sold a few scripts, including one called “Ion,” about a man who travels to other planets and dimensions in search of his reincarnated lover. The Peasant also made last year’s Black List.
Writer: Will Dunn
Details: 98 pages

This role seems tailor-made for the fast-rising Alan Ritchson

Katt Williams, my new muse, said something interesting in a recent interview. He said, “People think stand-up comedy is easy because you’re just talking. And everybody thinks they can talk and be entertaining. The irony is that the better I get at my craft, the easier it looks. But those people aren’t considering the 30 years of work I put in to make it look this easy.”

It’s the same thing with screenwriting. The better the screenplay, the easier it looks to write a screenplay. There’s no place that better represents this issue than the Black List. We’ve gotten a ton of bad scripts from the list and, one would think, it is partly due to the delusion people have of thinking this craft is easy.

It’s not. It’s hard.

But lucky for us today, we finally have a screenwriter who knows what he’s doing.

It’s the 1300s in Tuscany, Italy. War is so prevalent at this time that even when there’s no war going on, bored soldiers will join together in teams and just rape and pillage towns in order to accumulate as much wealth as possible.

We meet Oliver, a 40-something shepherd, as he’s teaching a young boy, Luca, how to use a sling. Oliver is staying with Luca’s family, including Luca’s father, Gio, after having shown up a month prior. It’s clear that Oliver has some sort of shady past but, at least at first, it’s unclear what.

That changes when a group of mercenaries show up, knock Oliver out, then go kill the family he’s staying with. A brutal “Patrick Bateman (American Psycho)” like leader named Janick revels in the destruction. But what he’s really taken by is the knight’s sword that was hidden in the barn. It is highly unusual for a peasant family to have a sword like this.

When Oliver comes to and learns of the family’s demise, he has one goal and one goal only. Go find Janick and kill him. Oh, and kill anyone Janick knows as well. Janick is staying at a castle town called Volterra nearby. His mercenary crew lobbed off the head of the king there and turned the place into their own little vacation villa.

After a brief detour, Oliver heads to Volterra, breaks in, and kills a bunch of mercenaries. But Janick and his men get the upper hand, forcing Oliver to retreat into Volterra’s only church. Here, the bad guys aren’t allowed inside, giving Oliver an intermission to recover.  It’s also here where we learn of Oliver’s true roots – that he was the Pope’s assassin!  It’s only a matter of time before he comes back out swords-a-blazing. But will the evil Jannick ignore God’s will and break into the church to get the upper hand? We’ll have to see.

Today’s screenplay highlights a little-known screenwriting hack.

What you do is take a thriller/action/revenge type scenario, add a dash of urgency, and place it in olden times. The reason this works is because audiences don’t associate period pieces with these genres. They associate them with movies like Titanic or Shakespeare in Love or Legends of the Fall.

That’s a gigantic reason why 1917 did so well. It took this hack and exploited it to the extreme (going so far as to set the movie in real-time).

Today’s movie is a Wick-type setup but set in the 14th century. So, right away, it had my attention.

However, the setup has the same challenges as the Takens and the John Wicks do in modern day. They’re working with a cliched template. Cliched templates have an increased likelihood of creating cliched screenplays.

But I’m going to tell you how to get around that.

You have to first make us like the person or people who is going to be killed in the first act. Here, Dunn doesn’t just casually introduce us to the family. He creates a specific bond between Oliver and Luca. Oliver teaches Luca how to use his slingshot. He then imparts wisdom on him in a heartfelt exchange.

The amateur writer often screws this up because they speed through it. They don’t find any specific moment between the two. They just sort of show our hero saying, “Good job, champ.” But the point is, if you can nail that first part, you’re golden. Cause if we loved the person who was killed, we will want them avenged.

Next, you want to create a bad guy who we hate. And as simple as that sentence is to write, it’s frustratingly hard to do. Cause you figure, just make him really mean! Then we’ll hate him! But it doesn’t work like that for whatever reason.

What you have to do is make the bad guy mean in a way that feels a little more complex. Dunn does that here. Janick doesn’t initially come up to Oliver and start berating him or kicking his ass. He actually offers an exchange of goods. He says to Oliver, “I’ll buy your flock of sheep from you.” Oliver then politely discusses why he can’t sell him the sheep, which ends in Janick knocking him out.

It’s a small thing. But that sort of stuff is important when creating a villain because we don’t normally assign rationale to villains. So when they’re being reasonable, it makes them more of a real person in the reader’s eyes.

Of course, after Oliver refuses, Janick kicks him in the face and goes and kills the family, establishing his true awfulness. But our first impression of him is of a reasonable man, even if we sense that sinister element beneath the surface.

The reason this is important is because when you combine the killing of a person we genuinely liked with a villain who we genuinely hate, that right there can power an entire screenplay. You can make all sorts of mistakes along the way and it won’t matter. Because the core of your story is so solid. And this script does make mistakes. It makes several of them.

There’s this silly little side-quest where Oliver has to go into the forest to find two forest-women warriors who dress like demons because they know the secret way into the castle. Just have him find his own way into the castle.

And then there’s a period of the script after he takes out a bunch of mercenaries where he’s pulled into the church and we just hang out in the church for like 20 pages and Oliver talks to a bunch of people. It’s fine to take a breather after an intense sequence. But 20 pages? Come on, man.

But in the end, these missteps don’t have much of an effect on the story because the core is so strong.

It’s why I always say, spend the majority of your script-writing on the PILLARS of your story – the things that affect how the audience experiences the movie the most. Is it a nice little subplot in Titanic that the captain is mad that the powerful figures on the boat bully him into going faster than he wants? Sure. But getting that subplot right holds 1/1000th the power of making sure that we believe in and care about the love story between Jack and Rose.

I don’t say that lightly. If you had written Titanic, I would beg you to show it to at least five people and ask them, “Do you care about the love story between Jack and Rose?” Cause if they don’t, that means your biggest pillar is weak, which means you don’t have a script yet, no matter how good the rest of the script is written.

It appears that this script was (smartly) written to become a franchise. There are so many John Wick clones these days, how do you separate yourself? You separate yourself in the way that I told you to at the beginning of this review. Jump back 800 years or so. That world is so different from ours today that you can literally copy the exact same template as John Wick and it feels like a completely different movie.

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

What I learned: When you’re writing a big long action sequence, consider underlining the truly important moments to draw the attention of the reader towards them. Because, often, readers will skim through repetitive action. It’s the unfortunate nature of script-reading in Hollywood. Therefore, let them know the important beats by underlining them. Just don’t do it too often or the underlining will lose its power.