Is Zach Cregger now better at writing Stephen King stories than Stephen King?

Genre: Horror
Premise: When every kid from a third-grade classroom runs away into the night at the exact same time, disappearing, the town centers their suspicion on the children’s teacher.
About: Zach Cregger barreled into the crowded horror market after his film, Barbarian, became a surprise box office hit, allowing him to set up numerous movies around town. This was the first big project he set up. It stars Julia Garner.
Writer: Zach Cregger
Details: 118 pages

I’m on a good script-reading run.

I read three genuinely good consultation scripts last week, which is rare.

That streak continues today because we’ve got a kick ass horror script. It’s so good, in fact, I’m thinking this is going to blow up when it hits theaters. Not only that, but I believe it’s going to change the horror game. Because it’s not your average horror film. These days, everybody makes the same horror movies again and again. The whole industry has gotten lazy. Cregger is about to change that.

Justine Gandy is a 3rd grade teacher who’s about to have her life turned upside-down. She shows up to class one morning and all but 1 of her 18 kids is gone. It turns out that, the previous night, every kid in her class (except that 1) got up at 2 in the morning and ran away, their arms stretched out wide, like an airplane, something captured by all the home Ring cameras.

Because the only constant in this mystery is Justine, everyone assumes she had something to do with it. Principal Andrew has no choice but to put her on temporary leave, which means Justine is hitting the bottle every night, trying to make sense of what happened.

The script changes POVs throughout. So, even though we start with Justine, we eventually move to Archer, one of the parents determined to get his kid back. He’s convinced Justine knows more than she’s letting on. We also follow Officer Paul, a married policeman who Justine is hooking up with. And, finally, a homeless drug addict named Anthony.

We’re going to get into some semi-spoilers here so you have been warned. Justine is very concerned about the lone surviving kid in her class, Alex, and goes to his home, only to find that, by peeking through the window, his parents are on the couch not moving at all. They’re alive but, for some reason, they’re frozen in this awkward position. Whatever’s going on seems to be tied to this house.

When Justine and Archer come back to the house later, they’re shocked to see a brain-dead bloodied Principal Andrew charging them. I think it’s best that I not continue summarizing the script because it is built on surprises and reveals. But what I will tell you is that, from that point on, things get craaaaaaaaazy.

The best way I would categorize Zach Cregger is to say he’s the mainstream version of Ari Aster. His movies are way more thoughtful than the average horror film, but he cares more about scaring people than shocking people. Which makes his movies more fun than Ari’s.

Just yesterday, I was talking about non-traditional narratives and how they’re hard to write. But you wouldn’t know that after reading Weapons. Even though the narrative weaves all over the place, taking on different points of view, occasionally jumping back in time, you’re never lost. And I know exactly why that is.

It’s because Cregger writes full scenes.

Let me repeat that. Cause it’s important. CREGGER WRITES FULL SCENES.

You see, when you do something complicated on one side of your script, you have to balance that out by doing something simple on the other side. This is a potentially confusing narrative with all the jumping around. Therefore, when we do get into these POV sections, Cregger writes long scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends. This allows us to settle into the new POV and get our bearings. Also, it improves the entertainment value, since we’re getting these mini-stories within the larger story.

For example, Anthony, the drug addict, comes to Alex’s house, hoping to steal something so he can buy some drugs. And we follow him as he stakes out the house (beginning), sneaks in and steals stuff (middle), then tries to get out when other people in the house come after him (end).

I don’t see that in enough scripts these days. Every writer has become a scene-fragment writer. So, it was refreshing to be able to sit in these scenes for a while and build up suspense and get pulled in and want to see what happens next. I just don’t see that anymore and Cregger shows you why writing out full scenes matters. Because they’re more engaging! I’m not engaged by a half-page mini-scene where one character tells another character some exposition.

The main reason this movie is going to work, though, is that it’s different. We’ve got a very unique mythology here that I’ve never come across before. More importantly, we’ve got horror images that I’ve never seen. Just these kids running outside in the middle of the night with their hands out is both creepy and original.

You have to understand that in every horror script I read, there’s someone at a mirror seeing a scary person behind them. If you’re writing that scene into your horror script, you’ve already lost. Not because nothing with a mirror jump scare works. But because it demonstrates laziness. You’re just doing what you’ve already seen before.

I don’t see that when I read a Zach Cregger script. I see someone striving to avoid cliché. And it pays off. Cause this script is the best of both worlds. It’s a storyline you haven’t seen before. But it’s still familiar enough that people are going to want to see it. It’s not like Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, where you watch the trailer and you have no idea what’s going on.

Finally, this script possesses that rare x-factor *thing* that some writers just seem to have. And I’m envious of it. It’s this thing that you can’t quite put your finger on where they’re able to tell this slightly unique story in a slightly unique way and you mix in these shocks and these scares and this mythology and this imagery, and you still tell a good story with each scene, all of which creates this exceptional experience that can’t be replicated by many writers. We were just talking about AI last post. AI could NEVER write a script like this. Ever. Cause you need to be part fucked up, part messy, part good screenwriter, part oddball. You need to be flawed. And AI doesn’t have that tool in its toolbox.

The only mark against this script is the character writing. Justine was too one-dimensional for my taste. She just drank a lot and lashed out at people. And none of the other characters are that deep. For example, Archer just wants his son. There is nothing more to his character than that.

But, strangely enough, it doesn’t matter. We’re so pulled in by this bizarre mystery that we’re determined to keep turning the pages until we find out what happened. And what happened is crazy. Definitely recommend this one!

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

What I learned: Make the mystery at the center of your story more interesting. This is EASILY the biggest lesson I learned from this script. Every horror script I read is a scary monster with a mask, or some kid’s been kidnapped, or some slasher is on the loose. This setup is so much more compelling because it doesn’t make sense. And our minds are determined to make sense of things that don’t make sense. So people are going to show up to this movie just to find out what the hell happened with these kids.

Talk about being a victim of your own success. Thunderbolts had a respectable 76 million dollar opening this weekend. Respectable if you’re any other franchise besides Marvel. Of course the industry is trying to prop this up as a win but when the last Marvel film, Brave New World, universally accepted as a bomb, opened to 88 million, you have to be honest with yourself. It’s not looking good for this band of superhero misfits.

I’m still on the fence about whether to see the film. I may check it out today or tomorrow based on what some of you say. So, if you saw the film, leave me a quick “recommend” or “don’t recommend” in the comments section. If there’s some genuine enthusiasm there, that should push me over the top.

I was a big fan of the show, “Beef,” and I believe that’s the same team that made this movie, right? So there’s got to be some level of quality there. I just feel bad for them cause they’re working with such an uninteresting group of superheroes. When the strongest guy on your team is “Mechanical Arm Guy,” you are playing with a severe handicap. But maybe that’s the point. These are underdogs. They’re not supposed to be the best.

If you’re looking for something a lot more energetic and exciting, I recommend checking out the 2023 show, Rabbit Hole, on Paramount Plus. My buddy Grok helped me discover it. It looks to be one of these shows that was canceled not because of its quality but because they just never gave it any publicity. The show is shockingly good. So much so that I challenge anyone to watch the first episode and not get hooked.

I don’t want to spoil too much but it follows this guy named John Weir (Keifer Sutherland), who specializes in corporate espionage. He finds clever ways for giant companies to take down other companies, or steal from them, or get them to implode. But, as a result of this unique job, John is always paranoid. He doesn’t trust anybody, as he figures everyone is trying to screw over everybody else in some way. Then, a sequence of insane events occurs (I’m talking more insane than in any TV pilot you’ve ever seen) that force him to trust those around him if he’s going to survive.

The reason the series is so fun is that you don’t know which way is up or down. You’re just as lost as the characters. And the writers, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, always keep you on your toes. This thing has so many twists and turns, I advise not going out afterwards, as you will have real-world vertigo. Now, usually when there are this many twists and turns, the story eventually collapses. If everything is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and nothing is tangible, the wheels fall off. But I’m 5 episodes in now and the wheels are as sturdy as ever. The writers really thought this through.

From a writing perspective, it’s a good example of how to write a compelling TV protagonist. If a character is at war with himself, he is always compelling no matter what scene he’s in. John Weir has lived such a screwed up life that he doesn’t trust anybody. But, because of the situation he’s been put in, he has to trust some people. Cause he can’t do it by himself. Therefore, every scene he’s in, he’s looking at the person across from him and thinking, “Are they telling me the truth?”

And what’s fun about the show is that the person across from him very well might be lying. There’s a female character he teams up with, Hailey, who proves to him time and time again that she’s loyal. And yet a part of us is still looking at her, thinking, “I don’t know. Maybe she is playing him.” So his paranoia rubs off on us, breaking that fourth wall.

More importantly, though, I read a bunch of TV pilots where the main character has no conflict within themselves. And that’s a quick way to write a boring character. To be clear, you don’t HAVE TO inject an inner conflict into your hero. But I find that it helps tremendously in TV because TV is more character driven. There are more scenes of characters standing around talking. So, if there isn’t inner conflict, those scenes can easily become boring.

True, you can create conflict BETWEEN characters in a scene, and if it’s done well, that will be enough. But why have only one source of conflict in a scene when you can have two? Conflict within the character and conflict between the characters.

What sucks about Rabbit Hole is that it didn’t get picked up for a second season and I get the impression that these guys wrote this giant sprawling narrative that I’m never going to see. I’m worried that the final episode is going to be some big cliffhanger to a shocking reveal that was never filmed. But the show is so good that I don’t care. I want to watch the whole season. And, for anyone who likes that buzzy show, Paradise, on Hulu, the writers of Rabbit Hole are heavily involved in that series.

Finally, this weekend, I checked out Four Seasons, on Netflix, mainly because I like Steve Carell and will watch anything he’s in. It was also written by Tina Fey. I’m not a huge Tina Fey fan, but in the working writer community, she’s a God. People absolutely love her. So I was hoping the combination of those two things would make this work.

But there was a third reason I wanted to check it out. Back when I got into screenwriting, this type of narrative was my jam! By the way, Four Seasons is a TV show but it’s based on a feature film from the 80s. So I’m going to speak of it from a feature standpoint.

I used to love weird unique narrative formats in screenwriting. I liked Memento. I liked Run Lola Run. I liked Pulp Fiction. So, a movie like Four Seasons was right up my alley. Instead of a traditional “a to b” narrative, the movie was divided up into four sections, each representing a season where the same group of characters would meet. It’s kind of a fun way to show the passage of time and this is the same thing Tina Fey did with the TV show (which is 8 episodes long – every 2 episodes is dedicated to one season).

But, these days, I don’t like these formats as much because I find them gimmicky. I’m not saying they don’t work. But going into a script like Four Seasons is a lot more challenging because you’re working with a format that hasn’t been battle-tested. So every scene, every sequence, every season, is a gamble. You’re hoping it all works but you have no idea cause you’re flying blind.

Also, one of the things I’ve personally discovered over the years is that urgency is a pivotal component to storytelling. The less urgent your story is, the more it sits there, collecting dust, as it plods along. As a perfect example, Run Lola Run understood this. It’s one of the most urgent screenplays ever. I don’t think it’s an accident, then, that the director, Tom Tykwer, never made anything half as good after that. He moved into slower narrative stortyelling and it destroyed his screenplays.

Films like Four Seasons are particularly susceptible to this. They’re less a narrative than they are an experiment. That was the biggest leap I made as a screenwriter ever, when I stopped looking at scripts as experiments and started looking at them as movies meant to entertain people. Once you go into “experiment” territory, you’re basically saying, “I’m writing this for myself and I don’t care what anybody else thinks.” Which is not how good movies are made.

Maybe this is why Tina Fey got the idea to remake Four Seasons as a TV show. Because she knew that, being so character driven, it would work better as a TV show.

So, did it?

It KIND OF works. But here’s the real problem with the show: IT’S HARMLESS. And, sometimes, harmless is worse than bad. Because harmless means that we’re not pushing anything in the series. We’re not pushing the plot. We’re not pushing the characters. We’re not pushing the dialogue. We’re not pushing the voice.  Every creative choice here is so safe, no height requirement is needed to ride.

I’m not saying every show has to be edgy. But if you’re going to make something that resonates with people, at least ONE ASPECT of your show should be pushing something. For example, Rabbit Hole, which I just mentioned. That show pushes “twists and turns” to a whole new level. Game of Thrones, at least originally, was ruthless. It would kill off major characters in its very first episode! The most recent TV darling, Adolescence, pushed the envelope narratively and cinematically, where every episode was a single shot in real time. White Lotus was constantly pushing boundaries.

So when you have this show, in Four Seasons, that just wants to lightly rub your arm for 4 hours, it kinda feels like, “What’s the point?” If you only wanted to barely entertain us, why waste 2 years of your life putting this together and shooting it?

Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it! We all have that friend who’s just casually there and is in a semi-good mood all the time, so there’s comfort in him being around. That’s what this show is. It’s comfortable. It’s the definition of a Netflix show that, if the “automatic next episode” button wasn’t invented, you never would’ve continued watching it. But, since it does, you’re like, “Why not?” And hey, to its credit, it’s a lot more exciting than Andor. So, there’s that. :)

40% off Script Notes from me! I’m only giving out two of these deals. Be the first or tenth person to e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “May Deal” and you get one!

I’ve noticed that people are talking about AI a lot in the comments section. I do think AI is going to make some big leaps in the world of writing in the next couple of years, but not in the ways many assume. It’s not going to be able to write a good script for you, unfortunately.

But I’ve been privy to some behind-the-scenes chats about word processors incorporating AI in a way where they’re constantly evaluating your story and giving you real-time options on where to take it. For example, after you write a scene on page, say, 15, it will have a little prompt you can click on that brings up three potential directions you can take your story next.  Or it may give you options for how you can make your hero’s flaw more consistent with the theme of your story.

It’s gonna be your virtual writing partner, in a sense. And it will probably take a while to get good at it. That’s the thing about AI and writing right now, is that when you truly put it to the test of writing something, it’s still not very good.

I constantly test it with dialogue prompts. I give it a scenario or provide an already written scene and ask it for dialogue suggestions. It has never given me a line that I would use. It *does* prompt new ideas on your end for certain lines. But it never gives you an actual line you’re satisfied with. I think because it still doesn’t understand humanity and how we think. Because how we think is a big part of what we say. It doesn’t get that.

However, there is one area where AI has made writing 1000% better, which is that you can now literally write about ANYTHING.

Through reading thousands of scripts, what I’ve learned is that if the writer doesn’t know the world they’re writing about, the script is always bad. Like 99.9% of the time the script is bad. But when someone really truly knows their subject matter, the quality of the script goes up dramatically. Cause the story is specific and authentic and, most importantly, feels like it’s really happening.

It makes a difference when a cop writes a screenplay about a cop. It makes a difference when a club promoter writes a story about a hot club in downtown Miami. They can get to places that nobody else can, and it makes a huge difference. Which is why we’ve always had the advice: WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. Because when you write what you know, you can write the most authentic story possible.

Well, you no longer have to write what you know. AI has made that advice obsolete.

I realized this because, for the longest time, I had this movie idea about a murder that occurs inside Area 51. I thought it would be fun to explore an investigation where the setting makes it impossible to do your job. And, also, inside a place that has so many secrets!

But I never wrote it because I knew NOTHING about that world. I don’t even know the difference between a general and a sergeant. I truly don’t! I don’t understand military hierarchy. And I definitely don’t understand what the day-to-day operations on Area 51 would be like. I would just be making things up and, trust me, when the writer is making shit up, the reader knows.

But a couple of months ago, for shits and giggles, I popped open Final Draft, opened up a tab in Firefox for Grok, and I started writing the script. Every time I had a question about how it would really be, I’d ask Grok. How do workers get into Area 51? It told me they fly over on a covert flight from Las Vegas airport every day. The movie is set in 1996, so I would ask it, “What kind of plane would they have flown into Area 51 at that time?” It told me the exact plane and what it looked like.

I asked it, “Who would greet my investigator when he arrived in Area 51?” It told me it didn’t know but based on common military protocol, it gave me its best guess. And I quickly realized how realistic I could make this all feel just by having this AI helper by my side.

And that’s when I realized, the world is wide open for writers now. You can never have engaged with an FBI agent in your life yet write a realistic FBI espionage thriller. You may have always wanted to write about The War of Scottish Independence in 1296 but were terrified that you wouldn’t be able to get the cadence or dialogue right for the time. Well, now you can just ask AI and it will tell you.

Or even something simple, like a legal show. We all know the notorious story about how the writer’s room of She-Hulk, which was a legal show, realized that none of them knew anything about the law or legal proceedings in a courtroom. If they would’ve written the series now, it would’ve been a million times easier. You can literally ask AI exactly how each step of a courtroom case would go down and it will tell you.

This is the most exciting thing to me about AI in the writing space by far. There have been so many fun ideas I’ve had over the years that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole because I knew I didn’t have the knowledge to pull them off. And now it’s like… the floodgates have opened. Anything is possible. It’s exciting.

I’m curious if anyone here has taken advantage of this. Or if you’re using AI for other writing tasks. Let me know!

The fastest way into Hollywood is to write a script like this

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A widowed woman out on her fist date in years receives a drop on her phone telling her she must kill her date.
About: Although it’s unclear if this was a script sale to Platinum Dunes or something they conceived of internally, today’s review is going to be about how this is the TYPE OF SCRIPT you want to write if you want to sell a screenplay. It was written by Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs, who are all about high concept thrillers (Fantasy Island, Truth or Dare).
Writer: Chris Roach & Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Landon
Details: 90 minutes

We all wrangle over what script we should write next.

I’m hoping that today’s review helps make that choice easier.

“Drop” follows a 30-something mother, Violet, five years after she killed her abusive husband. Needless to say, it’s been hard for Violet to gain the confidence to get back on the dating scene. But she’s been talking to a photographer, Henry, online for several months and the two are finally going on their first date.

The date takes place at a restaurant on the top floor of a Chicago building. Violet’s date is a little late getting there, allowing her to meet a few other people (the hostess, the bartender, another guy on a first date) at the restaurant while she waits.

Henry finally arrives and the two grab a table by the window overlooking the city. Violet starts receiving drops on her phone, funny little memes at first. But then she gets one that says to check her Ring cameras back home. She does and sees that there’s a man in the house with her kid and babysitter.

The dropper proceeds to give her a series of tasks to accomplish, which amount to destroying information on her date’s camera, oh, and then POISONING HIM! The dropper makes it clear that if she tells Henry what’s going on or tries to call the police, her kid is dead.

This results in Violet having to excuse herself during the date approximately 6,373,872 times where she either accomplishes a task or tries to figure a way out of this. Her extremely patient date, Henry, is none the wiser, figuring she’s just having issues leaving her son at home for the first time in five years. It will be up to Violet to figure out who, in the restaurant, is sending these drops. Because if she can’t, she’ll have no choice but to kill poor Henry.

I chose to feature this movie today because this is the number 1 type of script to write if you want to break into the business. Let’s explore why. Cause there are actually two components to this.

On the movie side…

It is high concept.
It is easily marketable.
It has two locations, making it cheap to produce.

On the script side…

Tons of GSU – clear goal, stakes, and urgency
Low character count, which are the easiest scripts to read, cause you don’t have to remember much to keep track of what’s going on.
Contained location, further making things easy to follow
Real-time – which keeps the narrative exciting

But do you want to know the biggest reason to write one of these scripts?

BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE GOOD.

There. I said it.

“Drop” isn’t a very good script.

In fact, it’s borderline bad. The gimmick of these drops wears out quickly, to the point where every time we get one, we’re annoyed. Cause they’re showing up every 60 seconds. The story is never able to breathe.

Also, it doesn’t make sense. You can imagine a date sticking around after 2 to 3 interruptions. But there’s no way in a million years that your date is sticking around after 75 interruptions. That doesn’t pass real-world muster.

But guess what?

IT DOESN’T MATTER.

That’s the benefit of writing a script like this. All that matters is that the person reading it can see the movie in their head and that that movie can be produced cheaply. They’re not concerned with quality.

And the few that are concerned with quality will tell themselves that they’ll fix the script issues on the way up to production. Which they may even try to do. But this setup never quite works on paper. You can’t disrupt a date 75 times and it make sense. You just can’t. But the people making the movie can see the poster, can see the trailer, they know how to cast it, they know how to market it. That’s all that matters to them.

Sure, you can write a script like Love of Your Life and make a million dollar sale as well. But the catch with that is, you actually have to be a good writer. You’re going to have to execute the hell out of that thing to make it work. Whereas here, you don’t have to be good at all. You can be someone who just understands the basics of screenwriting. Seriously! If you read Scriptshadow a lot, you can write a script like this.

I’m not saying this movie was trash. I liked the mystery element of it. I was genuinely unsure of who the “dropper” was in the room and I really wanted to figure out who it was. That tells me the movie must’ve been working on some level. The constant interruptions just strained credulity so much that I was constantly being pulled out of the movie.

Watch this movie to learn how to sell scripts but NOT if you want to be massively entertained. :)

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

What I learned: It pays to understand what Hollywood can produce for cheap these days. Because, sometimes, when you’re writing low-budget scripts, you limit yourself in order to keep the cost of the production low. But not everything is as expensive as you think in the days of green screen and AI. So, here, they could’ve easily set the centerpiece restaurant on the ground, like a normal restaurant. It’d be a very cheap easy-to-build set. But, these days, it’s super cheap to create a realistic city skyline at night. So, our writers put the restaurant on top of a building, making a 7 million dollar movie look like a 15 million dollar movie. It’s a small thing but it definitely makes a difference.

This is a big recent spec sale to Lionsgate. It is being pitched as a “negotiator” version of Source Code

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Unable to prevent a bomber from blowing up a hotel, a hostage negotiator finds himself stuck in a time loop, using the extra time to figure out who the determined bomber is and what he wants.
About: This script sold to Lionsgate last week. Here’s Deadline’s account of how it went down – “Townend’s deal is remarkable, we’re told, for a writer with no produced credits, particularly given that the script was taken out without any talent attachments. Sources described the outcome as a three-way bidding war that resulted in a mid-six-figure guaranteed fee against a low-seven-figure purchase/bonus. The script was taken out on the first Monday of April, and by Friday of that week, 20 premium production companies were chasing aggressively.” And for those long-time screenwriters who want a little bit of motivation, I have an e-mail from Mark dating all the way back to 2014!  11 years of writing to get to the sale.  So, always keep writing!
Writer: Mark Townend
Details: 108 pages

Hot spec alert hot spec alert hot spec alert hot spec alert.

And a very “Carson” hot spec it is. Sci-fi? Loop? Was this written just for me?

Let’s find out!

40-something Billy Aubrey is a negotiator. He’s also a terrible family man, which is why he’s on the outs with his wife and son. One day, he gets a call from his lawyer wife, who says she wants to have a big conversation with him.

First he goes to work, then he attends a conference, then he shows up at the hotel to talk to his wife. Only to spot a man in a parka with a detonator in his hand. Billy tries to approach him, ready to use his negotiating skills, but the man presses the button and everyone in the lobby, including Billy, is blown to bits.

But then Billy wakes up at the beginning of the same day. At first he assumes he had a nightmare. But when everything in the day happens exactly as before, he comes to the shocking conclusion that he’s stuck inside a loop. He’s a little more ready for the bomber (Chris) this time. But Chris still detonates the bomb.

Billy wakes up again, this time with new information. On day 1, he woke up at 6:47 am. Day 2, 7:47 am. Today, he’s woken up at 8:47am. He’s losing an hour with each reset. And the bomb? The bomb always goes off at 12:47. Which means he only has a few more shots to figure out what’s going on here.

He ropes in his disbelieving partner, Josie, and learns that there’s a major tech titan at the hotel that day. That must be Chris’s target. But with each reset, Billy finds out more about Chris, eventually getting his address. So he visits Chris’s house in the morning, where he finds that there are men there, men who are making Chris do this.

(Spoilers follow) That’s when things get really crazy. The men are talking to someone on the phone. They’re telling the mystery phone man, “He’s here. The target is here.” Which means that Billy…. IS THE TARGET. Which means now Billy has to figure out why he’s the target. He eventually realizes that a man from his past, his old partner John Rosen, who’s about to become mayor, is trying to dispose of him. With only one loop left, Billy will have to confront him and take him down.

We all know I love myself a time loop script.

But – and this is a continuation of yesterday’s theme – what are you adding to the time loop genre that’s new?

Here, the fresh addition is that, after every loop, we start the day 1 hour later. This adds a ticking time bomb (literally) to the proceedings since, sooner or later, we’re going to start too late into the day to prevent the bomb from blowing up.

The obvious question, then, is, “Is that different enough?”

My gut instinct answer is no. Like we talked about yesterday, the objective, when creating the “different” part of the “same but different” formula Hollywood likes, isn’t to win the logic debate. The “different” aspect that you add must *feel* genuinely different. And this doesn’t feel that different to me. It feels like a lot of other time loop scripts I read.

That doesn’t mean the script doesn’t work. From a structural standpoint, I like the idea that one hour disappears each day. It creates urgency inside a genre that is all about anti-urgency (a loop is endless – that’s the obstacle the hero faces). And the writer explains a potentially complicated rule-set (the loop moves forward 1 hour every reset) effortlessly, which I can tell you does NOT always happen. Many amateur scripts I read fall apart because their writers don’t explain their rules clearly enough.

I can tell you exactly when I knew this script would be ‘worth the read.’ It happens halfway into the script when Billy is at Chris’s house, trying to figure out why he’s determined to bomb the hotel, and he overhears the men in the other room – the ones making Chris do this – on the phone with someone saying, “We don’t know why but he’s here.” In other words, the tech guy isn’t the target. Billy is the target.

Why is this such an important plot development? Because I read scripts like this a lot – not loop scripts per se, but mystery thrillers – and nine out of ten writers would’ve gone with the tech guy as the target. The tech guy as the target is an *okay* plot choice. But it’s not sexy. It’s not that interesting. What’s interesting is your hero being the target because now the mystery deepens and the story becomes more personal.

So, why then, doesn’t the script score higher than “worth the read?” Because nothing surprising happens after that. The writer ties up the story threads he’s set up. But that’s all that is – tying up plot threads.

This is a dangerous trap that’s easy for screenwriters to fall into. They set up the pieces of their mystery and, at a certain point in the story, once we know what’s going on, the writer just goes through the motions of wrapping up every plot beat. (Spoilers) We know Rosen is the bad guy now so it’s just a matter of getting to him and taking him down. There are no new developments.

As screenwriters, we should always be looking to stay ahead of the reader. The reader should never get too comfortable, especially in the final act. But here, everything that I expected to happen in the final act happened. We could’ve still pushed in a few areas – had one last surprise or two.

White Lotus did a great job of this in its season finale. I don’t know anybody who predicted what was going to happen in that final episode. Because Mike White knows that you have to stay ahead of the reader. You can’t just use your final episode (or act) to tie everything up. You still have to titilate and excite and throw some curveballs at us.

With all that said, this is another good example of how sexy concepts capture the attention of readers. It doesn’t always mean they’re going to sell, like Renegotiate, but it gives you a much better chance in the marketplace.

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

What I learned: Beware of this word – INEVITABLE.  If anything is inevitable in your story, we’ve lost interest.  I’ll give you an example.  Return of the Jedi.  Everybody already knew that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.  But Luke and Leia had not had that conversation yet.  So it was INEVITABLE that Lucas had to write that scene.  Which is why the scene is one of the most boring in all of Star Wars.  Well, maybe not as boring as episodes 1-15 of Andor, but boring in the OG Star Wars universe.  My point is, you should always try to give a little more than what’s expected when you’re wrapping storylines up.  Cause it’s always going to be more interesting than that inevitable scene we’re all waiting for.  Here, once we knew about John Rosen and we’re just waiting for the inevitable showdown, I thought more could’ve been done.