If you keep track of the things I loathe here on the site, this is your opportunity to say, “See Carson, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Let’s start with Sully, which just finished number 1 at the box office for the second week in a row. As I’ve stated on multiple occasions, the miracle landing on the Hudson River is not a movie. Nobody on the flight so much as twisted their ankle. And the big moment only lasts a few minutes. What do you do with the other 107 minutes?

Apparently, it’s a moot point, as people clearly want to see that Hanksy splash-tastic miracle! Excusing the fact that the film had weak ass competition (a bizarrely conceived Blair Witch reboot and Bridget Jones having a baby at 57) how does a movie without a story keep raking in the dolla bills? I don’t know because I haven’t seen it yet. But I did hear that they turned the focal point – the crash – into six separate crashes (dreams of what might’ve gone wrong). Whoever that screenwriter is, I’m giving them an honorary Oscar, cause that was some smart fucking shit. When you only have one good thing in your story, clone it!

But yeah, any of you seen this? Is there a screenplay? I’m still curious.

Moving on to the Emmys (which I coulda swore happened last weekend) we have a couple of big wins by shows that I hated on in the past. The first is Game of Thrones winning a writing award. A WRITING AWARD! This is a show that spends half its time in gardens and the other half killing off big characters for social media purposes. There was a purer time when Dargareus was a queen with principles. Now it’s all about them Snapchat likes. Look, I have no problem with Game of Thrones winning directing or general show awards. It’s a beautifully produced show. But writing??? C’mon. Half the show is an exposition dump.

The other big winner of the night was The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which if you remember my initial script pilot review, I chastised for being old-hat and stuck in “who the hell cares anymore” land. The writing was fine. I never thought that was the problem. It was the subject matter. We already know this. O.J. did it. The glove. Marcia Clarke. Blah blah blah. How many times do I need to be reminded in my life? They sure put some money behind that show though. It was a top-level production. But I can’t believe it’s gotten as much attention as it has. I tend to judge shows by “Has anyone I know seen it?” And nobody I know watches the thing. I guess the Emmy voters did though. That’s all that matters.

Okay you old curmudgeon, Carson. Is there ANYTHING about the Emmys that you liked? I’m glad you asked. I was thrilled when Alan Yang and Aziz Ansari won for outstanding writing in a comedy series (“Master of None”). I thought that show was great, like a lot of what Netflix does. It goes to show how much a writer can mature as well. Alan Yang wrote a spec that broke him into the business a long time ago called “Gay Dude” that was average and sophomoric and safe. The writing here is so much better in every way and it’s a testament to committing to always pushing yourself – never stop learning! Oh, and I think the reason we didn’t see more Netflix wins is because Hollywood is terrified of them.

I’d like to end today with a huge endorsement for Hunt for the Wilderpeople. They made it available on Itunes this week (for an exclusive engagement?). It’s directed by Taika Waititi, who made the hilarious vampire found footage mockumentary, “What We Do In The Shadows.” What’s interesting is that Wilderpeople got Taika the job to direct Marvel’s next film, Thor 3, which is said to be an intergalactic buddy road trip flick between Thor and the Hulk. You’d think these movies couldn’t be more different. But actually, Wilderpeople has its own quirky “buddy road trip” pairing in its star character (a chubby mischievous boy) and his foster father (who never wanted the boy in the first place).

This is such a great lesson for young writers and directors. What these big studio heads want is they want to see that you can create emotionally compelling relationships. They’ve got plenty of people for special effects. What they don’t have is someone who knows how to make an audience feel something. You definitely feel something between this boy and his foster father and they believe Taika can replicate that in a Marvel movie.

I’ll finish this off by saying, why the hell did anyone think it was a good idea to make an Edward Snowden movie? The days of making movies about these people are over. You want to do Snowden and those like him, you do 6-10 episode docs on HBO or Netflix. Then again, I don’t think Oliver Stone knows what Netflix is.

THE WINNER OF WEEK 2 HAS BEEN LISTED BELOW

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 second five entries. You can see who won Week One here. Read as much as you can from each of the entries and 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 make sense). 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. Good luck to this week’s contestants!

Title: A Darker Place
Writers: Andrew Rhodes and Robert Irvin
Genre: Contained Thriller/Sci-fi
Logline: In the home of her latest case, an obsessed social worker fights to save a girl being tortured in the basement of that very house … 24 years in the future.

Title: The Inheritance
Writer: Matt Lopez
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A wealthy man leaves a huge inheritance for his warring and estranged family. But to get a share, they must all agree how they split the money before they attend the funeral.

Title: Shifting
Writer: Jon Ridge
Genre: Horror/Drama
Logline: A teenage girl’s efforts to fit in at school by keeping her lycanthropy secret are tested when a boy from her former pack vows to bring her back and help defeat their rivals.

Title: Dionaea
Writer: Brian Kazmarck
Genre: Sci-fi/thriller/horror/action
Logline: As their ship is rapidly overrun by a malevolent alien intelligence determined to assimilate the entire crew, a biologist discovers a much darker secret she must expose to the world before they all die.

Title: Courageous Man
Writer: Philip Whitcroft
Genre: Family Adventure
Logline: A cowardly boy and his nerd friends have to step up when they get trapped in a comic book world and they can’t find the heroes.

WINNER OF WEEK 2: “DIONAEA” by Brian Kazmarck. Congratulations to Brian for winning a tight race and advancing to the QUARTERFINALS! And congrats to Andrew and Robert and Matt for making him earn it. Despite one commenter’s observation that my contest is a “shit show” (it’s too bad – I liked that commenter), I’ll continue to bring attention to as many writers as possible with the tournament. I’m figuring out a way to keep “almost winners” in the hunt. Stay tuned. Let’s meet back here next week!

After my last dialogue post some of you expressed the need for even MORE dialogue advice. Cue today’s post, baby! It’s time to conjure some magic dialogue spells! Shoozazah!

Remember that at the heart of all good dialogue is conflict, but more specifically some kind of imbalance in the interaction. Something is unresolved and the characters haven’t come to an agreement yet. This necessitates conversation, which is where good dialogue is born.

For example, let’s say that my girlfriend, Jane, was driving me to the airport. If we spent the entire conversation agreeing to all the things we needed to have done by the time I got back from my trip, the dialogue would be boring.

But what if last night, at 3am, I got a text from someone named “Lisa.” My girlfriend and I argued about it and left it at, “We’ll discuss it in the morning.” Here we now are, in the car, driving to the airport, and that text is still lingering. Our dialogue is going to be way more interesting cause there’s an unresolved issue dominating the conversation.

So that’s the main thing you need to keep in mind. Conflict will be at the heart of most good dialogue. Also, feel free to combo these tips up, bitches!!!

Each character should want something in the scene – This is the basic tenet for any meaningful conversation. Each person in the conversation should want something. If they don’t, they’re just babbling. And while the babbling will feel realistic at first (since that’s what we do in real life), it will quickly grow tiring, as we’ll drift further and further into aimlessness. It is sometimes okay for only one character in the scene to want something. But I’ve found that the more people with definitive goals there are in a scene, the better the dialogue gets. In the above scene, my girlfriend wants to know who the hell Lisa is and why she’s sending me a text at 3am. I, on the other hand, want to get to the airport without having to answer that question.

Contrast (character) – One of the easiest ways to create good dialogue is to place contrasting characters together. One character is selfless, the other selfish. One character is arrogant, the other modest. One character is smooth, the other a klutz. A stud, a dork. Intelligent, an idiot. The reason this works on the same level conflict does is that there’s an imbalance. Except this time the imbalance is in the characters themselves. Also of note: the goofier the movie, the further away the polarity should be. The more serious a movie, the differences between the characters will be more subtle.

Contrast (scene specific) – This is when you create contrast via a specific scenario. It doesn’t require that your two characters be permanently on opposite sides of the spectrum. Just temporarily. This could mean that one character is calm about something while the other is freaking out. One character is furious while the other is laughing. One character thinks something is a big deal while the other doesn’t think it’s a big deal at all. The opening scene in Fargo when Jerry Lundergaard walks into the bar to hire the kidnappers highlights this well. They’re pissed that Jerry’s late. Jerry believes this is incidental. That contrast leads to a scene laced with killer conflict (as the kidnappers become agitated that Jerry isn’t even acknowledging their anger).

Dialogue-Friendly Characters – No amount of dialoguing will help if you don’t have at least one dialogue-friendly character in a scene. You gotta have a character in a scene who’s witty or thoughtful or weird or manic or an arrogant prick or overly friendly or anything that necessitates an above-average output of words. It’s not impossible to write good dialogue without dialogue-friendly characters. But it’s hard.

Dramatic Irony – One of the easiest ways to write good dialogue. Place a character in a conversation where we know more than he knows. If Joe is reuniting with his high school friends in a remote cottage for the weekend and we previously had a scene showing that the friends plan to murder Joe, the dialogue is going to be great. A scene as simple as Frank (Joe’s best friend) welcoming him and showing him around the house, can result in riveting dialogue. Also, dramatic irony allows you to play around with and have fun with the dialogue! Joe: “This is going to be a memorable weekend.” Frank: “It sure is.”

Elephant in the room conflict – Elephant in the room conflict is when there’s an issue between characters that they’re not discussing. This issue then permeates whatever conversation they’re having, adding an extra layer to it. If a married couple loses a child and keeps their pain buried, they’re going to have a lot of “elephant in the room conflict.” They may be talking about taking their car in to get fixed. But you can feel that both characters have something much bigger on the brain. Elephant in the room conflict is not reserved for tragedies, by the way. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly could’ve just had a big unresolved fight in Step Brothers and then were called in for dinner. That dinner scene will be laced with the elephant in the room, the fight they just had.

Stakes – If there are no stakes attached to the conversation, we won’t care about the conversation. I watched this awful awful movie the other day called “The Intervention.” It was about a group of friends who spend a weekend together with the plan to tell two of the friends (who are engaged) not to get married because they’re terrible for each other. So what are the stakes here? If they fail at their goal, the friends get married. SO WHAT!!! Do we care if this couple gets married or not? No. So, of course, every single conversation in the movie fell flat. Stakes are not just movie-specific, but scene-specific as well. The bigger the stakes are for a scene, the better the dialogue. Let’s take that earlier example of Jane driving me to the airport. Let’s say that now my flight is taking me to the job interview of a lifetime – my dream job. Let’s move our conversation to right outside the airport entrance. My flight is leaving in 15 minutes. But Jane wants to know who the fuck Lisa is and why she’s texting me at 3am. We argue and argue some more, and all the while that plane is getting closer to leaving. Do you see how stakes (the job interview of a lifetime) beefs up the intensity of this scene? And by association, the dialogue? This is a great segue into our next dialogue booster…

A time constraint – Just like I showed you there. A time constraint is one of the easiest ways to juice up your dialogue. Simply make it so that one of the characters has something immediate they have to get to or has to leave in a few minutes, and instantly, the dialogue takes on a whole new intensity.

Specificity Over Generalities – The dialogue should seem specific and unique to the characters saying the words. The more general the details are, the less realistic the interaction seems. There’s a moment in Annie Hall where Alvy recounts his school days. He could’ve easily said. “I hated school. Everyone was a jerk-off. Those were some of the worst days of my life.” Talk about general!!! Instead, here’s what he says: “I always felt my schoolmates were idiots. Melvyn Greenglass, you know, fat little face, and Henrietta Farrell, just Miss Perfect all the time. And-and Ivan Ackerman, always the wrong answer. Always.” Specific!

Characters should be talking to each other, not to the audience – This is one of the easiest ways to spot an amateur. Even a lot of newer professional writers do this. Don’t write scenes where characters are only saying things to convey information to the audience. My Red Widow review (in the newsletter) is the perfect example. The married couple would reminisce about when and how they first met. None of that conversation was for them. It was strictly for us so that we understood their backstory. Hence, it felt unnatural. It’s true that sometimes you will need to fit exposition or backstory into a scene. But keep massaging the scene until you can legitimately say that this is a conversation your characters would have EVEN IF there was no one watching them.

In addition to the ten tips above, there are the intangibles. Wit, jokes, bullshitting, setting up and paying off lines, the ability for a character to go off on an interesting tangent. I’ve nicknamed this skill “small talk” as it mirrors the ability to converse in real life and it’s one of the skills most responsible for your dialogue feeling natural. It is also the part of dialogue most dependent on talent. The good news is, even if you’re bad at small talk, you can still master the ten tips above and do your best to sprinkle in enough “small talk” to write solid dialogue. You may not be Tarantino, but nobody’s going to dock you points for your dialogue either.

What about you guys? Any more game-changing dialogue tips???

Hey guys. No review today but that’s okay because the Scriptshadow Newsletter should be appearing in your Inbox any second now. I review a major new spec script sale that Hollywood’s been looking for forever. I’ve also got some writing links such as the intense debate behind Donald Glover’s all-black writing room. And I address that rewrite time issue with the Scriptshadow Tournament.

If you don’t see the newsletter in your inbox, check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. It should be in there. If it isn’t, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “NO NEWSLETTER” and I’ll send it to you personally. If you want to be added to the newsletter, e-mail me at the same address with the subject line “NEWSLETTER” and I’ll send. And hurry up if you want a shot at the half-off consultation trivia!

The writer of the best-written show on television comes to us with his next Boob-Tube project. Will it take over the airwaves like Fargo?

Genre: Supernatural
Premise: A schizophrenic man living in a nuthouse falls in love with a fellow patient who he must team up with when outside forces descend upon them, believing that their illnesses are actually powers.
About: Noah Hawley is best known for bringing Fargo to television and creating the best anthology series, well, I’ve ever seen. This is his new show which will appear on FX. (note: I originally wrote this review having no idea that this was a Marvel character. Now that I now that, a lot of the weaknesses in this pilot make sense. This isn’t Hawley’s baby. He’s constrained by the ubiquitous Marvel universe).
Writer: Noah Hawley
Details: 62 pages

It’s been awhile since we’ve dipped into the TV waters but that’s only because there haven’t been any highly buzzed about projects out there. If you believe all the networks, there’s a scarcity of good 1-hour dramas being pitched. And why wouldn’t there be? There are now 100 suitors for projects as opposed to the old days, when there were 5. So yeah, television, get used to competition.

I’ve been all over Noah Hawley like syrup on pancakes, looking for anything in my archives he may have written. I excitedly found a script he wrote with his brother called Dead in the Water, only to realize I’d already reviewed it (it was good! here’s the review). I was particularly excited to find Legion, since TV appears to be what Hawley does best (though I’d bet we’ll see Hawley dominate the feature world soon enough). Will Legion turn Hawley into the next Ryan Murphy?

For as long as 30-something David Haller has been alive, he’s heard the voices in his head. Sometimes these voices tell him to do good things, but usually they tell him to do bad things. He’s fought these voices tooth and nail, but at a certain point, the battle was too intense for him to fight alone.

So David now lives in a psyche ward with a bunch of other crazies, existing on a steady cocktail of anti-psychotics, which seem to keep the voices at bay.

David’s life is turned upside-down when Sydney arrives, a beautiful young woman who’s, of course, crazy in her own way, as in she refuses to touch anyone. The two begin a unique romance whereby they can never touch, which only seems to make their love stronger.

Then one day Sydney gets better and has to leave, and that’s when things get fucked up. David rushes to finally kiss Sydney and when they kiss they… switch bodies???

This takes the script in a whole different direction. All of a sudden we’re flashing forward to an interrogation session between some guy named The Interrogator and David. He’s asking David about an “event” that happened in the hospital.

Jumping back and forth in time, we eventually learn that this event consisted of all the windows and doors in the facility disappearing, people being locked in rooms, some people being seared into the wall itself. Oh, and this seems to have happened because when Sydney jumped into David’s body, she used his special powers to wreak havoc on the ward. Or something like that. Confused? I know I am.

As we gradually move away from the backstory and to the present, David uses his powers to escape the Interrogator and reunite with Sydney. But for what? What kind of plan does Sydney have in store? We’ll have to see.

Wow.

Um.

I did not like this.

I mean, there’s a lot wrong here. From big things to little things. I’m kind of shocked that this is the same person who wrote Fargo.

For starters, there is no ground floor in Legion. There is nothing to hold this story up. As a result, we feel weightless, unsure, constantly searching for something to grab onto. And there’s nothing but a boatload of confusion.

Not only are we unsure if David’s crazy or not, but we’re also jumping around in time, turning a disorienting experience into an even more disorienting experience. The tipping point for me was when David and Syd kissed and switched bodies. Did we really just pull a Parent Trap? Then Sydney’s using David’s powers to sear people into walls? Why???

When you pose a question in a story, it’s supposed to make the audience want to know the answer. I didn’t care why Sydney and David switched bodies. I didn’t care why Sydney seared people into walls.

Somehow the two go back into their own bodies but it’s never explained how. I guess their consciousness took a wormhole back to the source body after getting bored? Talk about bizarre.

And there were little issues too. Like the dialogue. The characters— would talk— like this— where they would— always— pause— every few words— to find— the next— thing to say. Imagine reading an entire script like that. Wow.

And I kept hearing about these voices David was hearing. Yet we never hear what the voices actually say. It’s written as, “David keeps hearing the voices.” It seems like that would be a really important plot and character point to know what the voices say. Yet we never get one word. If it’s going to be on the screen, it needs to be on the page.

A much better version of this show would be Stranger Things, which has its share of weirdness. But it’s grounded by a clear storyline. A kid is missing. Another kid has escaped a nearby laboratory. This allows for the other characters to make logical choices based on these problems. Either they’re off looking for one kid or helping the one who escaped.

I don’t know what the hell David and Syd are doing. I suppose The Interrogator is trying to figure out what happened that day at the ward, but there are so many unknowns involved and so many weird choices (switching bodies?? really??) that we lose track of what the point of it all is.

I don’t know. Lost got beat up for its constant mindfuckery. This is Lost x 100 at least. Nothing is clear. Nothing is normal. Nothing is explained. It’s one “what the fuck” moment after the next.

Did I like anything here? I liked the character descriptions. TV shows are more character-dependent than features. So a description like, “Syd is in her 30s and a handful” doesn’t tell me a whole lot. Hawley goes 5-6 lines deep for his character descriptions, and I liked that. Here’s his Syd description:

And here’s what you need to know about Syd, aside from the fact that she doesn’t let anybody touch her: she still believes in happily ever after. Yeah, she knows it makes her a sucker — that it Puts Her At Risk — but she just can’t help herself. Hope is like an ember she can’t stamp out, a place in her heart that knows somehow, one day, things are gonna work out.

Anything that helps me understand a character better, I like. Because most of the time writers will neither describe a character in any kind of specific way or pace them through enough relevant action to help me understand who they are. Any trick you want to use to circumvent this issue, I support.

When you wrap your mysteries in enigmas that are already wrapped in mysteries, the audience isn’t going to know which way is up. And I don’t think the average person is going to be onboard for that. I mean sure, you’ll have your iowaska demographic firmly in hand. “Yeah, make shit even more confusing!” But I don’t think a show can sustain even a few episodes of this level of mind-fuckery, much less 7 seasons. People won’t have the patience.

I was really confused by this one, guys. And sadly disappointed.

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

What I learned: In TV, character is king. So make sure to fully define your characters. It doesn’t have to be via 6-line paragraphs, like Hawley does here. But the more specific you can be in defining your characters, the better. Unlike features, where plot is the engine, characters are the engine in television. Make them big, bright, unique, and specific. Oh, and if you’re having trouble figuring out what’s unique about your character, so will the audience.