NEWSLETTER COMING LATE TONIGHT: And it’s a doozy. Not only do I review an IMPRESSIVE script, but I also give you the SEEDINGS for the Scriptshadow Screenplay Tournament. There will also be some must-grab deals on script consultations. I’ll announce on Twitter and add a post here as soon as it goes out. Sign up by e-mailing “NEWSLETTER” to Carsonreeves1@gmail.com and be sure to check your spam and promotions folders!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from Blood List) When a couple living in a Brooklyn high-rise think that a man in the building across the street is looking through their window, their paranoia grows until they begin to suspect he might actually be a killer at large who the news refers to as The Headhunter.
About: This script finished number four on The Blood List, the annual list of the best horror, thriller, and sci-fi scripts. I reviewed the number one script on Monday and the number two script earlier in the year (my favorite so far).
Writer: Zack Ford
Details: 90 pages
I’m a nervous wreck. Two days ago, I’d accepted the Cubs’ fate. They were down 3 games to 1 in the World Series, no hope of coming back. It’d been a fun season. But mentally, I’d resigned myself and moved on. They weren’t going to win.
And then they had to go and win 2 games in a row. And now it’s tied. And the 7th game of the World Series is today. And I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t concentrate on anything. I keep thinking: What if this is actually the year?
Do you know how big of a joke the Cubs losing has become in Chicago? We have this saying, “Wait until next year.” We usually start using it around mid-season, as that’s when it becomes clear that the Cubs are, once again, not going to make the playoffs.
Well, it got so bad that we started using that saying on the opening day of the season. “Wait until next year.” It was an ongoing joke. WE were an ongoing joke. We knew the Cubs weren’t going anywhere. And we were okay with that.
Yet now, after 108 years, they actually have a chance to win the World Series. You don’t realize how bizarre this is for somebody who’s lived his entire life accepting that this would never happen. It doesn’t seem real. So, to be honest, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to mentally compartmentalize it so I can do other things.
I’ve just been staring at the wall most of the day with this weird “Huh?” look on my face.
Amongst these endless huhs, I will attempt to write a script review. Hope it’s more of a Kris Bryant Home Run than a Steve Bartman Interference.
Julia and Francis have just moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn, where Francis has secured a prime-time advertising job. But immediately – and when I say immediately, I mean within seconds – things start going wrong.
Julia’s convinced that there’s a man in the high-rise across the street who’s staring at her. When she tells Francis about him, he’s not so sure. But since there’s a killer on the loose, a man who slices people’s heads off, he can’t be too careful.
So the two monitor the man, first in his window, and eventually around the neighborhood. This dude is a big fucker, and he’s always wearing this raincoat and rain boots. But, of course, they can’t be 100% that he’s the headhunting serial killer who’s been turning people into real-life Halloween costumes.
Things get interesting, however, when Julia goes to the local supermarket and Raincoat Dude follows her there. Francis’s checking of the subsequent security footage proves that this man’s definitely following his wife around.
But that begs the question: What do they do about it? It’s not like you can go to the police and say, “This man stares at us from across the street so he’s probably the serial killer you’re looking for.” But Francis has got to do something. Julia wants out of this apartment pronto. And she’s counting on Francis to take care of it.
However, just when Francis secures a solution to the problem, he finds himself stalked by our rain loving face-collector. Is it too late for Francis? I’d tell you, but I don’t want you to get a-HEAD of yourselves. Heh heh heh.
Here’s what I liked about this script. It was a super fast read, and it had a lot of fun with its set pieces. I thought moving away from the traditional horror locations (attics, basements, old houses) really benefited the screenplay, with my two favorite scenes being the supermarket stalking and the late-night subway car confrontation.
The problem with The Watcher, unfortunately, is that it’s too thin.
Early on in our screenwriting education, we’re told to strip everything away and only focus on the areas of the story that push it forward. This is good advice unless you take it too literally. If you give us only the barest of bones, there’s no meat to grab onto.
It’s like if someone told you not to eat too much cause you want to stay skinny, and you took that to mean you should only eat exactly how many calories you needed to stay alive. You’d be a skeleton.
And that’s what this script felt like, a skeleton.
I mean we knew these characters for literally three seconds before Julia sees the man in the window across the street. It was like, whoa man, slow your roll. Let’s get to at least know you first!
The counter-argument to this is, “Well don’t you tell us to jump right into the story, Carson? Isn’t that what good screenplays do? Start quickly?”
Yes. But there’s a difference between jumping right into your story and jumping right into your concept. You want to build up to your concept (a man living across the street who watches you). Whereas with your story, you can jump into that in numerous ways without breaching your concept yet.
For example, in Rosemary’s Baby, the opening scene is our characters being shown an apartment. We’re pulled in by their excitement, as well as a mid-scene mystery — a secret closet our character spots that’s been hidden for some reason.
That’s important to remember. You don’t have to tear our eyes out with some balls-to-the-wall super-opening for your first scene to be a success. It only has to feel like something’s happening and we’re moving towards something that matters (in this case, towards the purchase of an apartment). If you can spike the scene to add curiosity (with a hidden closet), all the better.
But yeah, we’re not starting Rosemary’s Baby with Rosemary having her baby.
I was also hoping for more unexpected things to happen in The Watcher. Outside of a couple of scenes, when we were told something was going to happen, it usually happened. Scripts need to utilize the opposite approach. You tell the audience it’s going to happen one way, and then it happens a completely different way.
For example, after we see Julia stalked by the killer at the supermarket early in the story, Francis goes back to the supermarket and asks an employee if he can look at the security tape. When he watches the tape… everything happens exactly like we saw it happen with Julia. “He’s really stalking her,” Francis says.
How much more interesting would this have been if the tape showed that he didn’t stalk Julia at all? This would’ve made things so much more complicated. Now Francis is wondering if his wife is losing it. Yet she’s in such a fucked-up state, he can’t tell her that’s what he’s thinking. And everything, from how he talks to his wife to how he approaches the situation, becomes a lot more complicated.
That’s the world you want your characters dealing with in the second act. There shouldn’t be any easy choices. If the problem is: Killer is over here and the solution is: therefore we must go over there — that’s not very interesting.
But if the problem is: I’m not sure if that’s the killer. My wife might be crazy. But my wife is telling me she’s leaving me unless we get out of this apartment. But I emptied out my savings to get this place and we’re not getting our money back if we leave and I don’t have enough money to get us a new place… now you’ve got a movie.
I wanted more of that complexity here but unfortunately I didn’t get it. Then again, screenwriting is all about rewriting. And I’m sure there are some already well-versed managers and agents telling Zack this stuff.
So with that I say: Go Cubbies.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Things should rarely go according to plan in storytelling. Your characters should have a good idea of how things are going to go… AND THEN YOU MAKE SURE THEY DON’T GO THAT WAY. Try it out and watch your scenes improve. If your character is going to pick up his daughter after school, have the teacher tell him she needs to talk to him about something bad his daughter did that day. If your character plans to break up with his girlfriend, have her tell him she’s pregnant right before he breaks the news. If your character has been meticulously planning a bank robbery for six months, have him show up only to see that there’s a Police Appreciation Parade running down Main Street that day and the entire police force is out in tow. Things should never go according to plan!
Due to my impending death, I couldn’t get a full post up today. The good news is that a new Scriptshadow Newsletter is coming out within the next couple of days! In it, I’ll be reviewing another hot trend – studios buying specs to adapt into already-owned franchises. This one is a small but intense spec that a major studio purchased to jump start an early 2000s franchise that could’ve been awesome, but they screwed it up big-time (for those guessing, I’ve talked about the film here within the past year). So make sure you sign up for the newsletter if you’re not on it already. Just send the word “NEWSLETTER” to Carsonreeves1@gmail.com
Now on to today’s tip, which is actually inspired by yesterday. In the number 1 Blood List script, Orb, I discussed the notion of exposition in scene-writing, with backstory being a part of that. Backstory is any information you include about your characters or plot that occurred before your story started. If your main character’s mom died during child birth and you have one of your characters tell us this, or even jump back in time and show it? That’s backstory.
So today’s question is, when should you include backstory? The quick answer is: ALMOST NEVER. Seriously. Screenplays work best when they’re dealing with the present moment. Therefore, characters talking about the past or us going into the past is moving away from the strength of the medium. However, sometimes you need to add context to your plot and your characters and backstory is the only way to do that.
That leads us to the more involved answer: If the audience can approximately fill in the backstory themselves, you don’t need to include it.
“Approximately?” What the hell does that mean, Carson? Say we meet a Marlon Brando-like blue collar character who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Just from his weathered eyes, his defeated demeanor, some scars on his back, we know this dude had a rough life. Therefore, including a scene where he tells his girlfriend that his dad used to beat him up every Thursday after drinking with his buddies, doesn’t add anything to the narrative. We figured something like this must have happened, and this daddy abuse sounds about right. So it comes off as redundant.
However, if “Marlon” informed his girlfriend that, at one time, he was a chess prodigy ranked #3 in the world? That’s something we wouldn’t have guessed. This makes him a bit more interesting to us, and builds an extra layer into the character. Therefore, the argument for including this piece of backstory is much stronger.
Keep in mind, though, that as with any information you bring into a script, your backstory needs to be relevant to the story. If you’re going to tell us your character was a chess champion, that should pay off or slide into the story later. That doesn’t mean Marlon has to enter a chess tournament. But this “hidden intellect” might serve him well in a Good Will Hunting “How do you like them apples?” kind of way.
Backstory is a tricky monster that should mostly be avoided. But if you are going to use it, make sure it tells us things we wouldn’t have guessed ourselves. Or else what’s the point?
Genre: Sci-fi/Horror
Premise: Inspired by a true story, after a young couple finds a strange orb in the forest, they learn that it may have come from another world.
About: It’s Halloween folks! So what better way to celebrate than reviewing the number one script on Kailey Marsh’s Blood List! Oooh-oh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh (those new to the site, this is my go-to Dracula impression). Writing team Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman are quite new on the scene and have, thus far, written and directed a few short films.
Writer: Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman
Details: 98 pages
I’ve had a weird week.
I’ve been on my death bed with some rogue illness that I’m convinced will eventually turn me into a Walker. I’ve noticed that when you’re sick, everything in your life falls part. Your place goes from sparkling clean to a pig sty within a matter of hours. Your friendships come next, dissipating by the end of the day. And work becomes nearly impossible. I’d read a script for an hour earlier only to look up and see that I was on page 4.
It hasn’t helped that my Chicago Cubs have sucked worse than a Ron Howard movie. However, they somehow won last night’s game to keep their hopes alive. How is this relevant to today? Well duh. The Cubs are in the midst of a 108 year curse. And it’s Halloween. So, like, curses are what today’s all about.
The good news is, this idea is right up my alley. So if there’s anything that’s going to knock my flannel Cubbie socks off today, it’s going to be Orb. Let’s see if it succeeds!
“Orb” follows David and Claire Morgan, a young couple who are trying to put their lives back together after tragically losing their child.
Claire used to play piano professionally and David is a professor at the local University. Despite the loss, he’s moving up the ladder quickly. And he’s excited by the prospect of Claire finally moving on from the loss, possibly even looking to have another baby.
After a meteor shower, Claire goes for a stroll in the woods, and that’s when she finds a bowling ball-sized orb. She takes it home, only to realize that when she plays piano, it can mimic her.
She excitedly shows David, who’s also intrigued by the prospects of this thing, and the two discuss bringing it to the local scientific community. However, the orb starts communicating with Claire, telling her it doesn’t want to go anywhere.
To sweeten the pot on that request, it promises Claire that it can bring her baby back to life. That’s when David realizes this thing is dangerous, and begins concocting a plan to destroy it. But the orb is one step ahead of him, and will do anything… TO STAY ALIVE.
This was an interesting one. Orb starts off too breezy. A couple finds an orb and it starts acting weird. It’s like the adult version of E.T. without the benefit of a cute alien to fall in love with. It all seemed rather simplistic.
But once Claire started getting attached to the orb and became convinced it was going to bring her baby to life, it brought back shades of Rosemary’s Baby, that sort of dark “am-i-losing-it” tone centered around the love for a child that made that 70s film and others like it such classics. I was back in.
With that said, I want to use this review to talk about scene-writing, since good scene-writing is an essential skill for all screenwriters. And I’m going to highlight a scene early on in the script to make my point.
Now I don’t want you to think that all the scenes in the script were like this. Actually, the scene-writing gets really good as the script goes on. But I’m highlighting this problem because I see a lot of writers make the same mistake in their scripts and IT’S GOT TO STOP.
It’s got to stop people.
The scene takes place on page 12, following our introduction to Claire and David. It’s the next day and David is at work at the University. While he sits in his office, his friend Josh peeks in. Josh makes a comment about David being newly promoted, then indicates that the two have been friends for awhile, then David updates Josh on Claire’s well-being, filling us in on a little more of the backstory between David and Claire. And then the scene ends.
So what’s the problem here?
This isn’t a scene. Newish writers believe this is a scene because characters are talking to each other and a few jokes are being made. But nothing ACTUALLY HAPPENS during the scene. There’s no drama. There’s no conflict. No problem. Nobody’s trying to accomplish anything. It’s purely a collection of expositional snippets designed to fill us in on relevant story and character information.
So how would we make this a scene? Well, for starters, I don’t think we have to. Since all this is is information, we can simply get rid of the scene and insert those pieces of information in other already-established scenes in the script. For example, in the scene we learn that Claire used to play for a symphony but doesn’t anymore. However, in the very next scene, we see a montage of Claire, at home, teaching a series of students how to play piano. With a little extra info, we could easily convey Claire’s history with the symphony here.
That should always be present in your mind. Sometimes when you’re trying to make a scene work, the answer might be to get rid of the scene completely.
But we do have to introduce Josh, the friend, somewhere, so let’s say we needed a scene, at the very least, to accomplish that. One thing to keep in mind is that the exposition-driven conversation between characters should almost never be the primary engine driving the scene. Some form of drama should be driving the scene and the conversation should be sitting shotgun.
One of the easiest ways to turn a non-scene into a scene is to add a problem.
I’m reminded of the way the two main characters meet in my favorite film of the year, Swiss Army Man. The boring way to write their introduction would’ve been for Hank to be walking on the beach, find Manny’s dead body, and merely drag it up onto the sand and start their friendship.
Instead, the writers create a problem. Hank is trying to hang himself. And he spots Manny’s dead body just as he’s about to do so. He slips, accidentally choking himself, all while the first person he’s seen since he got stranded on this island is merely 100 feet away. But he can’t get to him because he’s choking to death!
Now whether you like that moment or not, you have to admit that you’ve gone from NO SCENE to SCENE. Something is HAPPENING. There’s a PROBLEM that needs to be OVERCOME.
Take another film that had the job of introducing two characters who were long-time friends, just like David and Josh: Ferris and Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Imagine if that movie would’ve introduced those two with Ferris and Cameron recounting old times together while setting up relevant exposition regarding the school and the other characters they’d be hanging out with. Boring, right?
Instead, the introduction to their relationship plays out in a series of scenes where Ferris is trying to get a sick Cameron to come over and ditch school with him (by the way, one of the best uses of irony in a movie ever – the guy ditching school is perfectly healthy, while the friend he forces to ditch with him is legitimately sick). That’s the problem that needs to be solved. That Cameron doesn’t want to come.
But honestly, it doesn’t even need to be that involved. Getting back to Orb, maybe someone Josh gave a failing grade to is causing a shit-storm and David and Josh are trying to figure out how to resolve the issue. While they’re talking about that, they’re dropping bits of relevant exposition. By creating this simple problem, the exposition will be more invisible than before, when it was the primary focus of the scene.
Outside of that issue, Orb was a fun script. It was a late-bloomer. I wish it’d been less predictable throughout its first half. But once it hits that midpoint, it turns into an entirely different screenplay that takes way more chances. It’s worth reading for that second half alone.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: To figure out if you have a scene or you’re just using a scene to convey information, imagine that scene playing as a short film, with none of the movie playing before it or after it. Would it be entertaining to an audience? I know that most scenes in a film rely on context that’s been set up beforehand. But ignore that for a second. Does the scene play out in a dramatic interesting way that would work on its own? If so, you’ve got a scene. If not, it probably means you need to add something extra (a problem, conflict, a goal, drama).
THE WINNER OF THE FINAL WEEK OF ROUND 1 HAS BEEN LISTED BELOW
It’s the FIIIINNNAL WEEK for the first round of the Scriptshadow Tournament!. The Scriptshadow Tournament pits 40 amateur screenplays against each other that you, the readers of the site, will vote on. Ultimately YOU will decide the winner. Today we have the last group of entries. Here are the previous weeks where you can find the 7 scripts that have already advanced…
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
As you make your way through the final batch of entries, make sure to vote for the week’s winner in the comments section. Although it’s not required, your vote will carry more weight if you explain why you chose the script (doesn’t have to be elaborate, just has to be convincing). I say “carry more weight” because a vote for a script without any explanation from an unknown voter may be seen as fake and not count towards the tally. I will announce the winner of this week here, in this post, on Sunday, 10pm Pacific time. That script will then go into the quarterfinals.
WILD CARD ROUND – So next week, we’ll be highlighting eight ALMOST MADE IT screenplays. Four of those will go through to the quarterfinals. I haven’t fully decided on how I’m going to choose those yet but I’m leaning towards Scott’s suggestion of highest percentage of votes. We’ll see though. For everyone who finished SECOND or A CLOSE THIRD in their respective weeks, feel free to send me an updated draft to carsonreeves3@gmail.com by this coming Wednesday. Yes, I realize that those in later weeks won’t have as much time to rewrite as the early weekers, but those are the breaks when you’re a wild card.
Onto today’s scripts!
Title: The Attacker
Genre: Action
Logline: After scoring the winning goal of a match by cheating, a soccer player has to go searching for his brother in the most dangerous neighborhood of the town that has just lost.
Writer: Jean Roux
Title: Brick House
Genre: Action
Logline: An ex-hitman must protect a child when his old gangster boss seeks retribution for a botched assignment.
Writer: Jason Prugar
Title: The Cheater
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A PI who specializes in helping AND exposing cheating relationships must navigate a business venture while juggling two lovers.
Writer: Evangelos Banks
Title: Felix
Genre: Horror, Coming-of-age
Logline: After his great-grandmother’s death, ten-year-old Felix is troubled by a potentially haunted family heirloom and his father’s increasingly strange behavior.
Writer: Casey Giltner
Title: Antiheroes
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Superhero
Logline: After a botched heist bestows a group of friends with superpowers, they decide to use them for their own personal gain, putting them in the crosshairs of both a ruthless villain and the organization of superheroes sworn to protect the city.
Writer: Patrick G. Emralino
WINNER OF WEEK 8: “The Attacker” by Jean Roux. Awesome job, Jean. The best concept doesn’t always win the week, but today it did. I’m excited to see how this one does moving forward. And let that be a reminder to all you second and third place finishers – send me new drafts by this Wednesday. The wild card round will consist of 8 scripts, 4 of which will be chosen to move on. Then we get to the nitty-gritty, the QUARTER-FINALS BABY! Can’t wait!
I’m a big believer in getting the most bang for your buck out of your screenplay. In many ways, a screenplay is an exercise in maximizing entertainment value. You take what, initially, feels like an average moment, and figure out a way to double, triple, even quadruple the entertainment value of that moment.
The most common example of this is the Hitchcockian break-up scene. Write a five minute scene between a man and a woman, then at the end of it, have her break up with him. While the break-up surprises the reader, and is therefore entertaining, that entertainment value lasts for all of five seconds.
On the flip side, you can inform the reader before the scene starts that our woman plans to break up with the man, and the exact same scene entertains the reader for five minutes instead of five seconds. Why? Because now we’re anticipating the dumping, curious how its going to go down and what the aftermath will be.
This leads me to today’s topic: scene-prepping. Scene prepping isn’t exactly like the Hitchcockian break-up, but it operates under a similar rule-set. The idea behind scene prepping is that instead of throwing us into a scene cold, you prep us for it beforehand.
The effect this has is two-fold. First, it makes the target scene bigger when it arrives. Think of it sort of like pre-game hype. You know how ESPN talks endlessly about what’s going to happen between LeBron James and Steph Curry when the two finally square off in the NBA Championship? We’ve been hearing about that match-up for so long, that by the time the game rolls around, we’re bursting at the seams to see what happens.
But there’s actually a more important effect to scene-prepping, and it dates back to the break-up example. By prepping us for a scene, say, 15 minutes down the road, you’re now entertaining us for 20 minutes (15 minutes prep + the 5 minute scene) instead of the only 5 minutes had you not prepped the scene at all.
Think about that for a second. You’re building up anticipation. And when your reader is anticipating something, they’re ENTERTAINED.
You may not know this, but you already do a form of scene-prepping without realizing it. Your entire script is one big scene-prep for the climax. Everything is gearing us up for that final showdown. Look at Swiss Army Man. The majority of that film is geared towards our lead character wanting to get back to the love of his life. This desire to see him make it home to be with her again keeps us more entertained than if there were no girl at all. Also, when they do reunite, it plays out with the weight of the world on it, since we’ve been prepping for this moment the entire movie.
A great example of scene prepping dates back to one of the best thriller scripts ever written – Die Hard. The entire opening sequence – before we get to the building – is one big scene prep for McClane seeing his wife. When McClane is in the limo talking to the driver, their primary discussion revolves around McClane’s troubled marriage. We learn that his marriage is on the rocks and this trip is his last chance to save it.
Again, this does two things. For starters, we’re now interested in what will happen when he sees his wife. The writer has looped an anticipation lasso around us, ensuring that we’re stealth-entertained until that meeting occurs. Second, when the two finally do see each other, the scene is much more powerful due to the fact we’ve been waiting for it. We know the key details. We know what’s at stake. So the scene plays like gangbusters.
I want you to imagine, if you can, how this scene would’ve played out if it weren’t prepped. Let’s say McClane got off the plane, took an Uber, said very little to his driver, showed up at the building, and then started arguing with his wife. We would’ve moved through the story quicker, sure. But we probably would’ve been like, “Where is this coming from? How did we get here?” The scene would’ve slammed into us. And by the time we caught up with it, it would’ve been over.
In my experience, a lack of scene prepping is one of the easier ways to spot amateurs. That’s because the pillars of scene-prepping – outlining and rewriting – are two areas amateur writers famously resist. To prep something takes planning, and good planning comes through outlining. Or, it comes from realizing a scene needs prepping after the fact, and going back and adding it through a rewrite.
An example of how a lack of scene-prep can hurt you occurred in The Force Awakens. Who was the weakest character in that film? I would argue that it was Maz Kanata, the alien tortoise thing that ran that little getaway bar. Now Maz had problems that went well beyond scene prepping. But the lack of scene-prep didn’t help. Do you remember how much time was spent getting us ready for Maz? About two seconds, when Han Solo looked back to Rey and Finn just before they walked into her place and said, “Oh yeah, Maz is a little weird so be ready.”
I mean, compare that to the scene prep of Hannibal Lecter, where we’re given a backstory on him, we’re going down a series of stairways and checkpoints and being warned by multiple people, we’re being shown pictures of what Hannibal has done to his victims.
The key term you want to familiarize yourself with here is ANTICIPATION. Anticipation is a storytelling turbo boost that excites the reader and encourages them to keep reading. You create anticipation by prepping what’s to come. If you don’t prep us and we just stumble from one scene to the next, only catching on to where we are in the moment, the audience never feels satisfied. To be satisfied, you need things to look forward to.
With that said, scene prep is one storytelling tool of many. You’re not going to use it in every scene. But it should definitely be utilized on multiple occasions in every script that you write. Go through your latest script and see if you’re prepping. If not, now you know how to do it!
