Edit: This draft going around is not the Scott Brick draft, but rather a chopped-up version of another writer’s draft of Rama (one of the risks of reviewing older scripts). Now we need to find the official Brick draft, as Coming Attractions says it is great.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When a giant mysterious cylindrical ship is spotted barreling through the solar system, a small team of astronauts goes to inspect it.
About: This project was a hot property for a few years in the early 2000s as both David Fincher and Morgan Freeman really wanted to make it. This was going to be Fincher’s make-up film for Alien 3. Unfortunately, it never came to be due to them never getting the script right. This is why good screenwriting is so important. A good script can thrust a project through a green light. A bad one can keep you at that stoplight that always stays red. And big directors only have so much patience before they blow the light and move on to the next big shiny thing. I still think this film will get made at some point. It’s too cool of a premise not to be. A lot of writers have tackled Rama. This draft was written by Scott Brick and is said to be one of the better offerings.
Writer: (edit) Philip Whitcroft (again, someone cut sections out of this script, so this isn’t the full representation of Whitcroft’s screenplay)
Details: 103 pages (2001 draft I think?)
I’ve known about this script for almost a decade now. The only reason I never read it was because I heard the book was good. So I wanted to read the book before I read the script. Well, I finally read the book!
And what a strange book it was. Rendezvous With Rama is a book with, maybe, the least amount of character development I’ve ever seen in a novel. Characters are only given cursory backstories and no meat whatsoever.
The reason, however, that Rendezvous with Rama is so revered is because it contains the most compelling mystery of any science-fiction novel ever. This is something I love to remind screenwriters about. Your script can be shit in one area as long as it’s really amazing in another. When Harry Met Sally has zero story. It’s just people talking for 2 hours. But it has the best romantic comedy dialogue ever.
Anyway, back to Rama. I never finished the book. Even though the mystery was, indeed, fascinating, the author had an excruciatingly annoying habit of describing the orientation of the characters. Since we’re inside a cylinder, he loved discussing whether the characters were not quite facing up, and not quite facing down either – TO THE TUNE OF 100+ TIMES! At a certain point, I was like, enough is enough, dude. This isn’t orientation porn. It’s a sci-fi novel. So I bailed.
Which is great news for me going into this script, as I can finally find out what happened! Let’s get into it…
It’s way way off in the future. We’re at the point where we have cities on each of the major planets in the solar system. Commander Norton is one of the best space pilots in the business, based out of Mars. Just as he returns from a routine mission, his science buddies hit him with a whopper of a discovery – there’s an alien ship shooting through the solar system, heading straight for the sun.
Due to the trajectory of this thing, humans will only have a brief window to inspect it. And the closest folks are Norton and his Mars team. So Norton’s team hops on their ship, the Endeavor, before shooting towards what the media is now calling, “Rama.” Unfortunately, they leave a little too fast, as ZOINKS, Norton’s 12 year old daughter, Myrna, was able to stow away on Endeavor, joining the mission!
The group gets to Rama and finds a giant streamlined sphere. There’s only a single blemish on the sphere, which they realize is a way in. So they land next to it and head inside. The hollow Rama goes on for hundreds of miles, so they can’t see it all, but it appears to have several giant cities inside.
However, when they get closer, they see that these aren’t cities at all, but rather giant featureless rectangles. This is commonplace on Rama. Everything has the appearance of life, and yet is completely dead. They see a giant sea, except when they get to it, it’s like one enormous piece of plastic. What the hell is going on??
The teams split into two to explore, and that’s when shit gets crazy. Rama begins to heat up, and as it heats up, things change. That plastic sea begins to melt into a real sea. Also, out of nowhere, various robotic entities the groups deem “biots” begin appearing. For example, spider biots skitter about, grabbing debris and disposing of it. It seems as if Rama is preparing for something. But what?
As our group gets closer to the answer, they realize they are in great danger. If they don’t get off of this ship soon, they’re going to be casualties of this Rama transformation. A good 100 miles away from the exit, that escape begins to look like a pipe dream.
Rendezvous with Rama was… frustrating.
I think I liked it. But I hated the first act so much that I’m not sure I can give it a passing grade. This was one of the shittiest first acts I’ve read in a long time. The writing was terrible, to the point where I thought I’d been duped and that this was a fan script. Luckily, the stuff on the ship (Rama’s mystery) redeemed the story. But only barely.
So why did I hate the first act so much? Let’s start with the first page:
Where the f*&% are the character introductions???? Are we just supposed to know who these people are telepathically? And does Norton have a first name? That’s a mystery ready for its own novel.
Things get worse when we meet Myrna, the commander with no name’s 12 year-old daughter. Myrna appears to be a character constructed just for this screenplay, a bad producer note likely suggested to expand the demographic. Because, oh yeah, a hard science-fiction movie about an alien invasion isn’t complete without a precocious 12 year old daughter who stows away on the ship. What is this? An episode of Star Wars: Rebels?
Anger reached a crescendo when the Hermians (the people who live on Mercury) threaten to blow up Rama with a nuclear bomb. That’s when I almost put the script down. However, once the script moved past those problems (thankfully, Myrna the Menace stays in the background for most of the story), it got good.
And it got good because Rama is awesome. The ship I mean. It’s just such a great mystery. What is this thing? What’s happening to it (why is it heating up)? What’s coming? If this is an alien race, what do they want? As each new mystery is introduced, I found myself thankfully forgetting more and more about the first act.
But if your script is only as good as its weakest link, this one needs an entirely new setup. For starters, the weight of finding an alien freaking space ship for the first time in history needs to be built up! We need to feel the importance of this moment so that we know how important it is to go and investigate Rama. The discovery of Rama in this screenplay is given as much focus as finding a dollar bill in the dryer. “Oh look! I found a dollar!”
From there, there seems to have been zero outlining. With a discovery this big, the first thing that would happen is a giant question and answer session with the media so humanity could find out what’s going on. Instead, that moment comes when our group is on the ship, almost at Rama, a clear sign of, “Oh yeah, I forgot to include this scene. I’ll just do it now.” It fed into to the laissez-faire approach in which the script was written and in which all the characters seemed to approach Rama.
I mean it’s only the biggest discovery of mankind.
The time period for this is also wrong. We’re staked a couple of hundred years in the future, to the point where we have cities on all the planets. That in itself is amazing achievement, which dilutes the amazingness of discovering an alien ship. This needs to be set as close to present day as possible.
Not to mention, get rid of this nerdy Mars nonsense. Not only is it not 1954 anymore, but we need to be able to feel the shock and awe from people that this ship has been discovered. We can’t do that if we’re camped out on Mars.
And finally, we need a writer who understands character. The characters here are so thin. I’ve already pointed out that the main character doesn’t even have a name! Late in the script (spoiler) a “major” character comes back to life. It’s supposed to be this huge moment but we’re like, “Uhh, I don’t even know you, dude.”
It’s frustrating because this is a movie that could be great. This is a movie that someone should make. But we need a screenwriter who knows how to write. That’s going to be the first step towards giving Rendezvous with Rama a rendezvous with reality.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: NEVER. EVER. take character introductions for granted. Give us a good description. Have the character perform an action that defines them as soon as possible. Have them talk and say things that let us know what their personality is immediately. And start feeding in their backstory as soon as you can invisibly do so. If we don’t know your characters, your script is doomed.
Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour drama
Premise: A Russian fund manager educated in the UK must deal with the fallout of his fund when rumors begin to swirl that he operates in dirty Russian money.
About: AMC’s doing this new thing where they partner with BBC One to deliver a show that plays in both countries. So far the collaboration has given us two strong shows: Humans and The Night Manager. This series is also scripted by one of my favorite screenwriters, Hossein Amini, who, as long-time readers know, wrote that kickass draft of Nicholas Windng Refn’s “Drive.” After that film, Refn started writing his own screenplays and… well, I think we can all agree how valuable good screenwriters are on projects.
Writer: Hossein Amini
Details: 60 pages
Let’s get the most important thing out of the way. They have to change this title. “McMafia” sounds like a new cheeseburger at McDonald’s. Cheese, pepperoni, olive oil, spaghetti noodles. And it so happens McDonald’s is, indeed, the inspiration for the title. A mobster wants to run his crime business like the biggest fast food chain in the world. What does that mean? Let’s ask the script… “What’s the difference between McDonald’s and Burger King?” one of the characters’ inquires. “What?” the other character asks. “There’s more of them.”
That’s great that they drew inspiration from that exchange, but nobody’s going to take a show seriously that’s called McMafia. Titles are a funny thing. While it’s rare that a title can kill a movie/show before its release, it happens. Look no further than, “Gigli.” We’ll leave the title changes up to the producers. In the meantime, let’s figure out if this latest AMC offering is any good.
30-something Alex Godman has lived a charm life. His extremely rich Russian family sent him to America and the UK to be educated, and he took to it so much that he now identifies as British, running a well-known hedge fund that’s allowed him to keep his distance from his family.
You see, Alex has always resented being Russian. It’s only led to others making fun of him, pitting him as an eternal outsider. With this fund, he’s finally independent, finally carved out his own niche in life.
Alex’s family’s history is complicated. His father, Dmitri, had to leave Russia after a fallout with Putin. And Alex’s uncle (Dmitri’s brother), Boris, followed him to the UK. Boris is a bit of a black sheep, and you get the sense that his business dealings are as legitimate as a Chinese iphone. So when Boris comes to Alex asking to invest some money in his fund, Alex delicately lets him down.
But then things change. Alex’s fund becomes plagued with rumors that it’s filled with dirty Russian money – a blatant lie as Alex has worked hard to make sure all his money is legitimate. But before he knows it, most of his investors are dropping out. In order to save the fund, you know what he has to do. He must go to Boris and ask about those investors of his.
Boris assures him that the money is legit. It comes from a wealthy Jewish man so it won’t go on the books as Russian money. Alex flies to Israel to meet the would-be investor who, unsurprisingly, is shadier than a lamp store. Alex knows he’s dancing with the devil, but what can he do? He needs to save his business.
(spoiler) Then, right after he decides the Israeli money isn’t worth it, Boris is killed, a present from the man who exiled Dmitri back in Russia. The implication is clear. Boris the little brother first. Dmitri (Alex’s father) is next. That is unless Alex can talk the nasty Russian mobsters out of it. But what does he have to offer them? Oh yeah. A hedge fund that can potentially hide large sums of money, just the sort of thing an international mobster might have need for.
We’ve got a clever setup here. The pitch is: The “international modern day” version of The Godfather. You’ve got your big mobsters trying to run their crime businesses and the outsider son who doesn’t want anything to do with crime getting pulled in anyway.
And, truth to be told, TV is a better format to tell Godfather-like stories. These stories are about the characters more than the plot. It’s more natural for storylines to be drawn out. There are always lots of characters as well, requiring more time to get to know all these people. So I can see why AMC jumped on this.
And the central plotline is good. The hero, Alex, who wants so badly to steer clear of crime, is faced with a crippling reality: To stay afloat, he must accept dirty money. That’s something I’ve talked about before. The best drama revolves around good people being forced to do bad things. If you’re struggling with finding a script idea, that setup is a great place to start.
The plot of the pilot is pretty good itself and utilizes a popular trick born from the feature format – a midpoint twist. (spoiler) Alex is trying to figure out who started the rumors that his company is using dirty Russian money. The midpoint twist rolls around and the culprit turns out to be… Boris! His uncle. Boris knew the only way Alex would accept his dirty money is if he was desperate. So he started the rumor of dirty Russian investments so that he could, ironically, get Alex to accept dirty Russian investments.
The plot point is a reminder that the best twists are personal. If the rumors had been started by a rival company, so what? The fact that they were started by a man Alex was able to trust is what ignites the story. That’s what gets us juiced up.
My only issue with the pilot was that it was a bit… high-brow. It feels like the kind of thing rich 60 year old well-educated men might watch on a flight from Dubai to New York. There isn’t a lot of accessibility here. That was the secret ingredient of The Godfather. Despite us not being a part of that world, we felt close to those characters. For whatever reason, these characters feel further away. Maybe it’s the international thing. The financial thing. I don’t know but something’s keeping me from really caring about these people.
With that said, the script is well-written and well-researched. I mean everything sounds so specific to this world. Take this quote late in the pilot, where a character is being offered caviar: “This is Iranian Beluga. Much better than the caviar from our country. Less pollution on their side of the Caspian.”
To the untrained eye, this is a throwaway line. Who cares? To people who know their shit, this is the kind of detail that transports readers into the writer’s world. Great writers are not going to use stock dialogue and stock details. They’re going to do research and tell the reader things they don’t know. That line could’ve easily been, “This is great caviar. You’re going to love it.” That’s the kind of thing you see in amateur scripts. Seeking out the specificities of your world is a key component of transporting readers into your universe.
To summarize: a solid pilot if a little dry. And a title that needs a whopper of a change.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Complicate your character relationships. Especially in television, where the character storylines are elongated. You need to sustain tension and conflict in those relationships for as long as possible. You achieve this by looking for ways to dirty up the relationships. For example, Alex is engaged to a woman with a rich father. Think about that for a moment. How could you use the father to complicate Alex’s relationship with his fiancee? Amini does this by having the father invest in Alex’s fund. When the fund starts to tank, the father is pissed and wants answers. This small detail makes Alex’s relationship with his fiancee a lot more more complicated.
Genre: True Story
Premise: How the best-selling autobiography of all time, The Diary of Anne Frank, navigated an endless number of rejections to get published.
About: This is one of, if not the, most prestigious spec sale of the year so far. It sold to Fox Searchlight in January after a bidding war. The spec comes from the writing team of Samuel Franco and Evan Kilgore, who leapt onto the scene last year with their spec, Mayday 109, about a lesser known heroic tale from John F. Kennedy’s youth.
Writers: Samuel Franco & Evan Kilgore
Details: 107 pages
Today’s script is part of a new growing trend of specs about deeper weightier historical subjects. The trend is seen as an evolution of the biopic craze dominating the market these last few years. There are only so many cradle-to-grave (or young man-to-crowning achievement) stories you can tell before audiences rebel. So writers have adapted and are giving us true stories that are more contained, and as much about the story as the person.
The reason this is happening is because movie stars need vehicles. The blockbusters have become bigger than them, leaving their only route to prestige and notoriety the Oscars. How do you win Oscars? True stories about real people that resonate with audiences. Hence why this spec trend is growing.
Do I like this trend? Not really. At heart, I’m a sucker for a great idea born purely out of a talented writer’s imagination. But until one of you Scriptshadow readers blows the doors off of Hollywood with some killer fictional spec and start a new trend, I’m stuck with what we’ve got.
And, truth be told, when these scripts are good, they can be really good. I actually reconnected with Anne Frank’s diary recently. It itself is a masterful demonstration of the power of simplicity in writing. So I’m curious to see where Franco and Kilgore take this.
Keeper of the Diary follows two main characters. The first is Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank. We meet Otto when he and his family are first found by the Nazis in the Annex, then when he’s released from his concentration camp a year later. Otto is devastated when he finds out that his wife and daughter, who were at a different camp, are dead.
Five years later and an Atlantic Ocean away, we meet 23 year-old Barbara Zimmerman. Barbara was set to marry a wealthy man and live a comfortable life when she realized she didn’t want to be comfortable. She wanted to make a difference. So she canceled the wedding and ran off to New York to be a publisher at the prestigious Doubleday & Co. Unfortunately, because she’s a woman, she’s thrown in the typing room and forgotten about.
Meanwhile, Otto has zero reason to live. Everything he held dear has been taken away from him. But that changes when he reads his daughter’s diary. He sees a side of his daughter he never knew, one who was painfully insightful and impossibly optimistic. After he finishes it, he has purpose again – he must publish his daughter’s work. He must bring this same hope to others.
Back in New York, Barbara, while looking for a manuscript in the discarded bin, comes across The Diary of Anne Frank, which had already been discarded by two of Doubleday’s most trusted readers.
Barbara decides to give it a shot and is transported by the writing. She falls in love with Anne and her message, and she, too, makes it her destiny to publish her work. There’s only one problem, the two men who rejected the manuscript are her boss’s personal assistants. It seems that men don’t understand what a little girl could possibly know about war.
Otto isn’t having much luck with publishers in Europe either. Everyone seems to think that the book is too mature for kids and too juvenile for adults. The only publishing house even considering publishing it wants Otto to cut out 50,000 words and pay to produce the book himself.
Will Barbara finally convince the bigwigs at Doubleday to give the manuscript a chance? Will Otto give up spreading his daughter’s message? We all know the answer. But what we don’t know is how it all came together, a question that Keeper of the Diary answers.
Let’s start with the first question that most people who’ve read this script will have – What’s up with the prose?? The prose here is thick. Like really really thick. If you told me to count how many times light was described reflecting off surfaces in Keeper of The Diary, I’d probably lose count.
What’s the deal, Carson? I thought you said we couldn’t write thick prose. Especially on the first page!
A couple of things are going on here. First, this is an historical weighty true story. And when you’re writing one of those, you have more leeway to thicken up the prose. It’s important when you’re writing about history to transport us there. That requires more detail, more description, more atmosphere. So I get it. Still, there was a TON of prose here. And I think the same thing could’ve been achieved with 20% less of it.
Another thing to keep in mind – and I know it’s something amateurs hate hearing – is that these guys had recently sold a big spec. This gives them a lot more leeway with reads. As an unknown, you simply don’t have that leeway, and therefore need to write for shorter attention spans.
Despite this, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s one rule that supersedes all others. If you do this one thing right, you can break every rule you want. And that’s write a great story. If your story is interesting, if it has great characters and suspense and mystery, and you’ve managed to create a big question (Will the diary get published??) that we want answered, that’s the most important thing.
To help drive this point home, imagine a flying saucer came down and beamed some guy into its ship then flew away. Then imagine you showed up literally one minute later and had missed the whole thing. It wouldn’t matter if the least qualified person to tell you that story – a drunk homeless man slurring every word – you would still be riveted by his story.
However, if you happened to run into JK Rowling at Starbucks and she began to tell you about a woman a second ago who almost spilled her coffee, you’d be like, “That’s great J.K. But I gotta get to work now.”
Keeper of the Diary was a great story. What’s so great about it is it doubles up in the underdog department. Underdogs are obsessively likable. Even more so if their cause is noble. Even more so if they’re good people. And that’s the case with both Otto and Barbara. These two are basically impossible not to root for. And when you’ve got that, you’ve got the foundation for a great script.
The script also does a clever job of integrating dramatic irony. We, of course, know that The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most important books ever published. So whenever somebody tells our heroes “no” or that the book “sucks,” we’re screaming through our screen: “Are you guys f&*%ing idiots!!??? This is the freaking Diary of Anne Frank! The most important autobiography ever!”
I call this “breaking the fourth wall” and it’s a clever way to approach well-known true stories because it engages the audience’s knowledge of the event and, sort of, uses it against them. James Cameron did the same thing with Titanic. We all know the ship is going to sink. So every time some smarmy oil magnate says it’s unsinkable, we’re screaming, “No it isn’t! Slow the damn thing down!”
Above all, Keeper of the Diary does the thing I always tell you to do: FIND A UNIQUE ANGLE INTO THE STORY. Had they simply adapted Anne Frank’s diary, it probably still would’ve been good because it’s a fascinating story. But it wouldn’t have been FRESH. And that’s why I’ll continue to bring this up whenever I see it. One of the biggest mistakes rookie writers make is they don’t find a fresh angle into their stories. They’re always giving us retreads of their favorite movies or favorite genres. Find that unique point-of-view and tell your story from it. It makes a huge difference in setting your script apart from the pack.
You’re going to want to bring your tissues to this read. It was really good. And despite debuting in January, it will probably finish atop this year’s Black List.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can break rules if you offset them by more important rules. In our opening page, the writers do something I tell you not to – provide a wall of text. However, they also follow a far more relevant rule – SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. The Nazis are charging towards the secret Annex and are about to find Anne Frank and the other families.
A quick reminder on loglines, friends. Avoid general phrasing to describe big swaths of your script, particularly the last act. “A young man meets an alien only to realize that friendship is a two-way street.” “An older woman discovers a cave full of gold before coming to the ultimate conclusion… greed kills.” “A famous actor starts believing that he’s living in a movie, and that life is a lot more complicated than it seems.” Do you see how the second half of every one of these loglines TELLS US NOTHING? Every time I see one of these loglines I want to strangle somebody.
Be specific! Tell us what the plot is! “A famous actor who believes he may be living in a movie sets out to find the director so he can get back to the real world.”
There were so many of these submitted that I was forced to include one in the offerings. But no more! Please avoid this in the future. You want people to know what your script is about, right? Tell them what the plot is with your logline.
Okay, on to this weeks’ picks.
Read the scripts and vote in the comments for your winner. Top vote-getter gets a review next Friday.
To submit your script for a future Amateur Offerings, send me a PDF, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, why your script deserves a shot, to: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the ramifications of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or script title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every few weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Good luck to all!
Title: King Solomon’s Mines
Genre: Action/Adventure
Logline: Victorian-era big game hunter Allan Quatermain leads a daring expedition into unexplored African territory in an attempt to locate an explorer who went missing while searching for the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon. Based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been fascinated with the novel King Solomon’s Mines ever since I first read it and while reading it I’ve always envisioned it as a movie because of how cinematic it is. Even though the book has been filmed several times before, the last theatrical adaptation was released in 1985, and I feel that now would be a good time to reintroduce the story to modern audiences.
Title: Cal Bain
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Seven English twenty-somethings discover the island they’re camping on has a hidden history of murder. And history has a way of repeating.
Why you should read: It’s got a killer first page.
Title: Never Stops (Endless)
Genre: Crime/Fantasy
Logline: Stuck in a perpetual psychedelic trip, a drug dealer has until midnight to retrieve stolen goods from the girl of his dreams and return them to a ruthless kingpin.
Why You Should Read: I just moved to Los Angeles from New York City to pursue a career in screenwriting. “Confessions of a Failed Screenwriter” was on loop in my head almost every day leading up to the move. I’m currently contracted to write a script for a Canadian production company (paid), which is exciting, and hopefully a step in the right direction. As for the script, it’s pretty out there. I tried to infuse elements I like about the crime genre (Victoria meets Enter the Void) and create something that makes you say “the f*ck did I just witness?” But in a good way.
Title: GOLDIE
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A female serial killer with a penchant for porridge stalks a true crime author she wants to write her life story.
Why You Should Read: The most famous home invader in all of fairy tale history has never gotten her own movie. This is a fresh modern take on one of the most globally recognized public domain characters that Hollywood hasn’t cracked. The script was a Finalist in two screenwriting contests: Fresh Blood Selects & Search for New Blood 3.
Title: NADA
Genre: Contained thriller.
Logline: Fleeing from Cuba to Florida inside a shipping container, a pregnant young woman must fight for survival when her container falls into the sea during a storm.
Why You Should Read: I wanted to add new and different twists to the recurring elements we see in the lost-at-sea genre while having one sole female protagonist. And why should you read it? This is not my first script, but it is the first I’m really proud of. I’ve been working on it for the last nine months and I’m still having fun with it, so I guess that’s a good sign! Honestly, I can’t wait to read Carson’s thoughts on it, whether mixed, bad or horrible.
There’s an old saying in baseball. “You can’t win the pennant in April. But you can lose it.” For the uninitiated, a baseball season is 162 games long. The first month of the season is April. And what that saying means is this: Even if you win every game in April, you haven’t won the pennant. You still have 140 games to go. BUT. If you lose 17 of your first 20 games, no team ever comes back from that. You’ve ensured that your team is screwed.
The same thing can be said for a screenplay. You can’t write a great screenplay in one page. But you can prove that you’ve written a bad one. This is why, when a reader or producer says they read “one page of a script” before “throwing it away,” it’s not as asinine as it sounds. There are lots of things a writer can do on that first page to kill a script. And that’s the topic of today’s article.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Make sure there are no misspellings on your first page. No misused words. No grammatical errors. No screw-ups when it comes to tense. And make sure the formatting is error-free (easy if you have reputable screenwriting software). If there’s a single spelling or grammar mistake on the first page, I don’t bail on the script, but a huge red flag goes up. If there are two, I know the script is bad. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That’s right. In the 7000+ screenplays that I’ve read, when there were two errors on the first page, the script was bad 100% of the time. So don’t make that mistake.
The above should be a given. But the rest of this stuff isn’t. Some will depend on your skill level and the amount of time you’ve put into the craft. But don’t let that deter you. This is what I call the “weeding out” process. Those screenwriters who don’t have the stamina to master the craft will eventually drop out during this phase, leaving you with less competition and a better chance to succeed.
ACTIVE VOICE
Writing in the active voice is part of the unique writing-style of this medium. Because it’s so specific to screenwriting, when you don’t see it, you know the writer’s a newbie. “Active Voice” means conveying things as they happen. The idea is, we’ll be seeing it happen on screen, so you should write in the way that it will be seen. “The man cuts the rope,” as opposed to, “The man is cutting the rope.” There is some leniency here, as there will be times when you want something to happen in the moment: “He starts cutting the rope.” But you should be using the active voice 95% of the time.
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION
The style in which you write is how you distinguish yourself as a writer. However, there is a basic truth that must be present in every style. Your sentences must be readable. They must be smooth and easy to digest. If your sentence construction is clumsy, overlong, too descriptive, wrought with pretentious vocabulary, or confusing, people won’t want to keep reading. To some degree, subjectivity comes into play. A writing style that is pleasing to some may not be pleasing to others. But there’s a mantra here that should serve every screenwriter well: Keep your writing simple and easy to read.
Here’s an example:
He watches Vivian in the adjoining kitchen as her arthritic fingers bring a nub of a cigarette to her angry lips.
VS.
With his mother in the kitchen, he focuses on her, from which he notices her cigarette in her fingers, which are arthritic, but also angry, and which twitch in tiny angry spurts every time she lifts the cigarette to her mouth.
The first is a sentence from the opening page of “Palmer,” a script I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. The second is a butchered version of that sentence which is the kind of thing I’ll see a lot of in amateur scripts. You’ll notice that, technically, the sentence is fine. But it’s overwritten. It’s redundant. It goes about describing things in a roundabout way (“With his mother in the kitchen…”). The first sentence is clean and direct. There is no confusion when you read it. And that’s the important lesson here.
GENERIC WRITING
The other kind of writing you want to avoid is the opposite of the above: GENERIC writing. This is when the writing has no style or character at all. Writing needs some personality. And as long as you don’t go overboard with that personality, you’re good.
Joe opens a coke. He drinks it. He finishes it. He throws it in the garbage can.
If you give me an entire script of that, I’m going to kill myself. Here’s a line from the first page of Juno…
She swigs from an absurdly oversized carton of juice and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
There’s a little more color here. A little more style. But not TOO MUCH style. Just enough to create an image in your head.
HUGE PARAGRAPHS (AKA “WALL OF TEXT”)
If I see a first page with a TON of description, I’m on high alert. That means any paragraphs that contain 5 lines or more or pages that have multiple 4-line paragraphs (four or five in a row). This isn’t a script-killer. And if the writing is pleasing and smooth, I’ll look past it. But more often than not, this is an indication that a) the script is overwritten and will be a chore to read, or b) this is a newbie screenwriter who doesn’t understand that “less is more” when it comes to description.
DIALOGUE
Since we don’t know the characters yet, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in first-page dialogue. For example, if a character has really boring dialogue, that may be because he’s a really boring character, something I’ll find out once I keep reading. But there are one of two criteria I want met with first page dialogue.
1) I either want to notice that the dialogue is really good.
OR
2) I don’t want to notice the dialogue at all (it’s so natural that it’s invisible).
If I’m reading the dialogue and it’s extremely on-the-nose (“I hate that you abused me when I was a child, father!”) or doesn’t sound anything like how real people talk (in a drama script: “How are you? I haven’t seen you in so long.” “I contracted cancer recently. How are you?”), I know the script is in trouble.
SOMETHING HAPPENING
Okay so, everything we’ve gone over so far is the technical end. The other thing you have to nail in your first page is that something needs to be happening to grab us, to pull us in and make us want to keep reading! What does that mean, “happening?” It means one of these four conditions must be met:
1) Jump into the story immediately.
2) A great intro for your hero.
3) A teaser.
4) A story is told.
Jump right into the story – The first option is the easiest. Introduce your character as soon as the story is ready to begin. So in the example I used above, from Palmer, that first page has Palmer being released from prison. It’s not big. It’s not flashy. But we’ve jumped right into the story. Had we spent 15 pages hanging out with Palmer in prison or fuddy-duddying around the neighborhood before meeting our main character, that wouldn’t have worked. Unless you used one of the remaining three options…
A compelling hero intro – If you’re not going to jump into the story, you better jump into your character. Give us something that makes us interested or excited about your hero. Put them in a scenario that tells us who they are. The classic example of this is Indiana Jones going into the cave. More recently, Deadpool. Juno is a good example. The first Star Trek reboot. This option is a great choice if you’ve got a flashy main character. Throw him and all his glory at us immediately.
A teaser – If your story starts slowly, consider adding a teaser. The cool thing about teasers is they don’t have to linearly line up with your story right away. You could start with a scene from 200 years ago. You could jump to the end of the movie first, showing your main character dead. You can show a drug deal between two characters that gets ugly, despite it seemingly having nothing to do with your story yet. A teaser is an easy way to grab us right away. The Sixth Sense, an otherwise slow movie, starts with an intense break-in from six months ago where an old patient shoots our hero.
A story – This is the hardest thing to do, but the thing that best conveys you’ve written a good script. Write a first scene that’s a mini-movie in itself. Construct a scenario that has mystery or suspense or dramatic irony. Give it conflict or an unexpected twist. Make sure it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like a movie. The best example of this, in my book, is the opening scene in Fargo (the movie) where a husband meets two criminals who he’s hiring for an undisclosed crime. There’s mystery (we don’t yet know what he’s there for). There’s conflict (the other guys are pissed off that he made them wait for an hour and he won’t acknowledge it). There’s suspense (we have no idea what’s going to happen here. It could go any way). And an unexpected twist (they reveal that he’s hiring them to kidnap his wife). That last piece is what sets this scene apart from so many others. He’s not hiring them to kill a drug dealer. He’s hiring them to kidnap HIS WIFE. That bizarre request is what makes us want to watch the rest of this movie.
It should be noted that the first page may only carry a portion of the above four options. You don’t have to begin and end the scene in one page. But the point is, that first page will have a purpose, since we’ll see that it has a clear plan. Which means we’ll want to turn the page. And in the end, that’s the goal of screenwriting. To make the reader want to turn the page. As soon as they stop wanting to turn the page, your script is dead to them. And that process begins on the very first page of the script.
