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!
Genre: Thriller/Sci-fi
Premise: When her husband goes missing, a woman investigates the cult who may have taken him, only to find that they’re involved in something way beyond basic brainwashing.
About: He’s baaaaaaack. The man who’s written one of my top 5 favorite scripts (The Brigands of Rattleborge) and the film with the most harrowing death scene ever (Bone Tomahawk) comes at us again with one of his many sold spec scripts – They Repair Us! In fact, Zahler has spoken openly about the fact that he’s sold or optioned 21 different screenplays, and until Bone Tomahawk, none of them had been made. Now that Zahler has a produced credit under his belt (he also directed Tomahawk), I’m sure that will begin to change. I’m also hoping that the success of The Magnificent 7 will help get Rattleborge made.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: 125 pages – undated
Yesterday (my post went up late, so check it out if you missed it), I was complaining about the lack of originality I’ve seen in the screenwriting community lately. So when I was choosing a script to read for today, I knew there was one writer I could turn to who would guarantee a unique read.
S. Craig Zahler, baby.
You see, there’s one element that, when it comes to originality, transcends concept, and that’s voice. Someone with a unique voice can take even the most mundane topic – say, living in Suburbia – and because they see that world in such a unique way, write something that feels wholly original (American Beauty, by Alan Ball).
This is why “voice-y” writers have such an advantage in this business. With everybody writing the same damn shit over and over again, the writers who can stand out in any way feel like superstars.
Now does that mean you should write like Zahler? 10-line paragraphs on the regular? A deep description of every room, every character? Taking “slow-build” to the next level? No. This is ZAHLER’S style. You need to find your own. Whether it be a relentless millennial pace like Max Landis. A weird comedic irreverent style like Brian Duffield. Or an “each-scene-is-a-mini-movie” approach like Quentin Tarantino. Find what works for you and embrace it.
Okay, now let’s check out some Repairing, shall we?
38 year-old Gail Linder, a violinist, has been struggling lately. Her husband, Emmet, has gone missing. While this has shattered Gail’s reality, it’s not completely unexpected. Gail and Emmet recently lost a child, and Emmet’s been unable to move on.
The police have discovered that Emmet may have turned to a shadowy cult for solace. The problem is, they don’t know anything about the cult. So when Emmet finally reappears, bald and a borderline vegetable, Gail becomes determined to find out what happened to her husband. Maybe whoever did this to him can get him back to normal.
So Gail follows the few clues that she has, eventually tracking the cult’s supposed gatekeeper, Alain Bertrand. Unfortunately, when Gail follows Bertrand to a hotel, she gets too close. Bertrand is able to turn the tables on her, and the next thing Gail knows, she’s in a strange holding room all by herself.
Since this script works best if you don’t know what happens next, I suggest you download and read the script yourself. Moving forward, there will be spoilers. So anyway, Gail is told that this is a place where they “repair” people. If you’ve lost someone close to you, or you’re a pedophile, or a murderer, they have a machine that goes into your brain on a sub-atomic level and erases the place that’s hurting you.
In Gail’s case, if they’re going to allow her back into the world, they’re going to have to erase the part of her brain that despises their “cult.” Otherwise, she will expose them. To that end, Gail will need to go through the same procedure her husband went through. And my friends? That’s where things get really fucked up in They Repair Us.
I wanted originality in a screenplay. I got it in this final act. It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s polarizing. And it was a great reminder that there are still strong screenwriters taking chances out there.
Reading today’s script was a lesson in confidence. When a writer has confidence, everything about the read changes. What is “confidence” in writing? It’s a few things. But the main one is that the writer has a plan. He knows where he’s going.
I remember yesterday, when I read that script, that the writer seemed to be making stuff up as they went along. You could see them searching on the page. “Hmm, I wonder where this will take me.” Since you could tell that she didn’t know, you weren’t convinced she would take you to the right place.
With They Repair Us, I knew Zahler always had a plan. And his confidence resulted in my confidence in him. Even when the script was taking its time through that first half, I never doubted that Zahler was taking me to a good place.
And if there’s anything I’m taking away from this script, it’s that. If you’re a slow-burn type writer, like Zahler is, YOU MUST WRITE WITH CONFIDENCE. That’s the only way we’ll stick with you. If you’re a slow-burn writer and we suspect you don’t know where you’re going with your story? Forget about it. We’ll give up on you long before we get to the good stuff, assuming there is any good stuff.
They Repair Us is also the PERFECT EXAMPLE of the mid-point twist. Remember that a mid-point twist is something you add near the midpoint so that the second half of the script feels different from the first half. Otherwise, you have one entire script that feels exactly the same.
In They Repair Us, literally RIGHT AT THE MIDPOINT, Gail wakes up in the underground facility where the “repairing” takes place. This ensures that the second half (escape the facility) is different from the first half (find the cult). I thought that was really clever.
Another choice I liked about that second half was adding a fun character. Sometimes what happens when you’re writing a deep and dark screenplay is that every choice you make is also deep and dark. There’s no contrast. And when there’s no contrast, things become too predictable, too monotone. Zahler introduces a doctor, Doctor Howard, who’s fun and jokes around a lot, and who therefore added some much needed contrast to the situation, some levity. It broke up the monotony and kept things fresh.
The only thing I didn’t like about They Repair Us was some of the third act technobabble. In my experience, readers/audiences don’t like to know the micro-details of what’s happening. It’s similar to the blowback George Lucas got when he added midichlorians to the Star Wars lexicon. We don’t need to know exactly how this brain-scanning thing works on a micro-level. We’re always going to be more interested in the drama of the situation.
It’s nice to read some good thinking man’s sci-fi again. If Arrival does well, someone should come and give They Repair Us a shot. It doesn’t have quite the hook that Arrival does. But there’s a good story here, it wouldn’t be expensive to make, and there’s nothing else out there like it.
They Repair Us should be easy to find on the internet. Check it out if you have the time!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you don’t have a unique voice as a writer, you must work hard to create ORIGINAL CONCEPTS. Because if you write something that’s unoriginal AND you sound just like every other writer out there? Forget about it. Your scripts will never stand out.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: An astronaut in 1969 tries an experimental aircraft that accidentally sends him 50 years into the future.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on the 2014 Black List. The writer, Kimberly Barrante, graduated from the NYU Tisch School of Arts. According to an interview, this is the first script Barrante wrote, and one she started while at NYU.
Writer: Kimberly Barrante
Details: 111 pages
One of the things I’ve been struggling a lot with lately is originality. I’m reading the same shit over and over again, from concepts to execution, and, in most cases, am so far ahead of the script, I might as well skip to the last five pages.
This led to me asking the question: How do you find originality in a world with 100 years of cinema history and 400 tv shows? Do you just give up? Accept there’s nothing new to say and copy your favorite writers?
Then last night I turned on Black Mirror, the unexpected British hit on Netflix, which spurned Netflix to produce another season, recruiting top level talent from the acting and directing worlds (Bryce Dallas Howard and Joe Wright take on the first episode of Season 3).
The show is about modern technology’s effect on society – and it was from this synopsis that I realized: BAM. That’s where you find originality, in the ways our world is changing, in the new developments, whether they be technological or sociological or psychological, stemming from the way our world evolves.
Of course, there’s a caveat to that. You are now competing in a brainspace occupied by a LOT more people. For example, if you wanted to write a movie about the effect of Instagram on the populace, you’d be competing with the 50 million people who use the app and 50 million others who have heard of it.
In that sense, it’s a double-edged sword. You’ve been given some originality real estate, yet everyone on the planet already owns a piece of it.
The connective tissue between this and Celeritas is that writer Kimberly Barrante has somehow managed to find originality in a world where it doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve never seen a story told quite like this. But as we’ve pointed out here before on Scriptshadow – coming up with something original is one thing. Making it good is another. Let’s see if Celeritas is good.
It’s 1969 and Paul Hawkins is an ace astronaut about to get the opportunity of a lifetime. He’s been chosen for a top secret project called “Janus,” which will put him in an experimental aircraft that will attempt to break the speed of light.
Meanwhile, in 2020, NASA has just recovered a ship called “Janus” that has landed in the ocean. This is, of course, the same ship, which would imply the project was a success. However, NASA seems confused by the arrival of Paul, believing that his ship had blown up during take-off back in 1969.
Speaking of 1969, we repeatedly jump back to it where an entirely different story plays out. Paul has a twin brother, Norman, and both are in love with the same girl, Maggie. While Paul was always considered the Golden Child, Norman was more the workhorse of the family, the guy who gets all the shit done that nobody wants to do.
We keep cutting back and forth between the past and the future, eventually meeting Old Norman and Old Maggie, who are now married, as they attempt to break Paul out of NASA. Will NASA take Paul out? Or will this rag-tag group somehow escape? And if they do, how does Paul live in this new unfamiliar world?
Celeritas feels to me like a concept in search of a story. We have this pilot who jumps forward in time (the concept), yet the story doesn’t want to focus on that. It would rather focus on 1969 and the more mundane story of this twins love triangle.
It’d be like if you wrote Jurassic Park, but instead of focusing on a group of people getting stuck in a park with killer dinosaurs trying to chase them, we instead focused on a young man who was trying to be the first in his family to graduate college.
We have fucking dinosaurs man! But instead we’ve got our eyes on a Diplomasaurus.
Celeritas is also lacking major GSU. Now I’m aware I have a bias towards GSU. And I recognize it’s not the only way to tell a story. But when a script seems to openly avoid using any story-enhancer, I get frustrated.
Because without a goal, what are we looking forward to here? What’s the end game? What are these people trying to do? Even when they break Paul out of NASA, which is around page 75, there isn’t a plan to it. It’s kind of like, “Okay, let’s just go somewhere where NASA isn’t.”
The great thing about a goal is it gives your story purpose. The reader understands what needs to happen for the characters to complete the journey. And the added benefit with a goal is that you can now add STAKES, you can now add URGENCY, two things that turbo-ize a story.
Take the upcoming alien arrival flick, Arrival. That script could’ve been very similar to this one. Aliens are coming. But instead of focusing on them, you focus more on the psychological effects of people in a post-aliens world. There’s no point. It’s more of a character exploration.
But instead, Arrival gives us a clear goal – figure out the alien language so we can communicate with them. They then add stakes. Other countries are also talking to the aliens. Whoever breaks the language barrier first will receive alien tech that could alter the balance of the world. That naturally lends itself to urgency. It’s imperative that they beat out these other nations.
A lot of newbie writers make this mistake. They attempt to write character-driven fare, but do so at such an expense to story, that there’s no meat to the script. Sure, we’re kind of interested in how Paul lost Maggie to Norman back in 1969. But since the cool conceptual stuff is so passively developed, it’s hard to care that much.
There’s a brief moment in Celeritas where the honchos at NASA imply that Paul may be connected to the Soviets somehow. That there’s more going on here than meets the eye. I was like FINALLY! We’re exploring this cool concept! But that thread is dropped as soon as it’s raised, and we’re stuck again with more hang-dog looks between Paul and Norman as they reconcile Maggie choosing between them.
I give Barrante major props for trying something different here. And as I mentioned before, this script reads unlike other scripts out there. But creating something different is just the beginning. You need to embed a compelling story along with it, preferably one with those storytelling tenets (GSU) that can take an average tale and turn it into a kick-ass one.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful about running away from your idea. If you have a cool idea, it probably shouldn’t be the B-story. Doing so will definitely make your script more original. But unless you create a hell of an A-story, you’re going to have the reader wondering why you aren’t focusing on the coolest part of your premise.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A CIA drone coordinator battles his sanity while trying to figure out if his wife has been replaced by someone else.
About: Canadian Christopher MacBride broke onto the scene with his film, The Conspiracy, about a documentary crew who stumbles upon a secret society. Since then, he’s been pitching projects all over Hollywood. In addition to this one, he’s got a project called Amnesia, which asks, “What if the human race was rebooted because the entire planet was struck with collective amnesia?” Gotta give it to MacBride. He steers clear of low-concepts! Echo made the top half of the 2014 Black List.
Writer: Christopher MacBride
Details: 119 pages – 2nd draft
If you asked me what is the ideal genre for the screenplay format, I wouldn’t hesitate. Thriller a hundred times over. A Thriller rarely requires a ton of description, so the prose stays lean. Screenplays like stories that move quickly, and Thrillers move faster than anything else. And for whatever reason, Thrillers fit inside the 110 page package better than other genres. Comedy works well, too. But Thriller has it beat because the genre is so damn movie-friendly.
Then what’s the least ideal genre for the format? I’d say period pieces. More specifically, anything that moves us through multiple passages of time. Screenplays are at their best when we’re moving in one continuous timeline, and when that timeline is urgent. Period pieces are more about taking your time. Many work hard to build up momentum, only to break it with a 5-10 year time-jump forward, forcing us to build up momentum all over again.
Does that mean you should only write Thrillers and never Period Pieces? Of course not. But it’s important to know the odds before you get started. That way you can make an informed decision. You may believe that your 80 year exploration of the North Pacific logging industry is so fucking good that it’s worth the issues you’ll encounter when writing a Period Piece.
The one major drawback to Thrillers, however, is their tendency to be one-dimensional. Call it the “Taken Syndrome.” Does Echo fall victim to this weakness? Or does it discover a way to excel within the template?
Bob Neven doesn’t know how it happened. But the woman he sleeps next to every night, his wife, Anna, isn’t the same woman he met. And no, he doesn’t mean she’s changed over the course of their relationship. Bob believes that Anna is physically not his wife. Someone, or something, has replaced her.
If that’s true and “Fake Anna” exists, she chose the wrong man to try and fake out. You see, Bob works for the CIA. His specific skill-set involves deciphering details and mannerisms of human beings to determine if they’re dangerous.
So Bob will watch hundreds of hours of drone footage of potential terrorists to determine if the U.S. should blow them to smithereens with one of them fancy drones we like to strike ISIS with.
This talent is how Bob’s so certain his wife isn’t really his wife. All her mannerisms have changed. She acts suspicious whenever they’re together. Even her eyes seem to have been replaced by empty voids.
But as our story unfolds, we learn that Bob was in a major car crash a couple of years ago, and this happens to coincide with when he became convinced Anna wasn’t Anna. Could it be that Bob suffered a debilitating brain injury and THAT’S the reason he thinks Anna isn’t herself?
When Bob discovers a boatload of evidence that that’s the case, he walks back his theory. For the first time in a couple of years, Anna starts acting like Anna again, and Bob is ready to admit he fucked up. But there’s always something in the back of Bob’s mind telling him that it doesn’t add up. That if he can just catch Anna at the right moment, he’ll prove what he’s known all along. That she’s an imposter.
One of the easiest ways to find a good movie concept is to genre-switch an idea. So take an idea that worked in one genre and switch it over to another. Cast Away – a drama about a man who’s stranded on an island alone – becomes The Martian – a sci-fi flick about a man who’s stranded on a planet alone. Three Days of the Condor, a conspiracy thriller, becomes Captain America 2 – a superhero film.
Where you’re going to find the most bang for your buck in genre-switching, though, is with comedy – either going into or coming out of it. So in the case of Echo, our writer basically took the premise of True Lies – a comedy about a CIA agent who used his unique skills to track his wife, and asked, “What if we made a thriller out of the same concept?” What if a CIA agent’s wife really was dangerous, and he was forced to use his unique skills to figure out her end game?
Sounds like a cool idea to me!
And right from the get-go, things looked good. As you know, one of the critical things every screenplay must do is pull the reader in immediately. Now I’m of the belief that if you have to choose between an action scene or a mystery scene to achieve this, you go with mystery.
For example, if you open your script in the middle of a car chase, yeah, I’m going to pay attention for at least a few more pages. But if you jack into my brain with a cool mystery, you’ve got me for at least the first act. And here we’re presented with a pretty sizzling question. After establishing this married couple, we see the husband go to a shack in his back yard, where he’s got a full-blown multiple-monitor surveillance project built around watching his wife.
Uh, yeah, I’m sticking around to see what comes next.
But now Echo enters into the Mystery Thriller trouble zone. Does it merely ask questions, refusing to reward its reader for all his hard work? Or does it answer those question then introduce new more complex questions that surprise us and keep us curious? You want to do the latter. And while Echo gives us some of that, it doesn’t give us enough.
I liked, for example, the introduction of Bob’s brain injury, and how that led to Bob realizing he was wrong. His sickness had concocted a false reality. This happened near the midpoint of the script and it’s a direction I didn’t expect MacBride to take. But then, Bob starts discovering hidden cameras in his house that he knows he didn’t install. And so we’re back on again. Now we have proof that something nefarious is going on. However, we still don’t know what that is. So the mystery is alive and well.
Overall, though, the ratio of questions to answers was too lopsided, and that’s when the script started to lose its magic. For example, there’s this whole mystery back at CIA headquarters about this magical place in a desert they’ve been surveying where cars just disappear. It was kind of cool. But because it wasn’t made clear what the stakes were with these disappearing cars, the mystery felt empty, the kind of crutch plotline a writer introduces when they know their script isn’t delivering the goods. Hey, I’m not mad at ya. We’ve all done it!
With that said, I loved MacBride’s commitment to the concept. And the final act does get pretty damn trippy. There’s enough here to keep the average reader entertained, and that’s enough to recommend the script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I loved how MacBride used Bob’s therapist to guide the exposition needed to explain our complicated setup. I’ve seen this used before and it’s quite effective. If you have a hero with an issue (in this case, a conspiracy theory) and need to convey that issue to the audience, you can do it with voice over, which always feels forced, you can do with a friend he confides in, which feels like an exposition dump, or you can layer in therapy sessions where a therapist organically asks our hero to explain his theory. “Why do you think your wife isn’t real?” Your hero gets to expose his thoughts in a manner that seems entirely natural. And when done well, it operates invisibly.
THE WINNER OF WEEK 7 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 seventh group of entries. You can see who won Week One here, who won Week Two here, who won Week Three here, who won Week Four here, who won Week Five. And finally, who came out on top last week.
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 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. Good luck.
Title: Thrills, Kills and Scotch
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Dark Comedy
Logline: When a figure from his past is hired at his prestige magazine, a creative director reignites a destructive rivalry that threatens both their sanities.
Writer: Mayhem Jones
Title: Seeing Red
Genre: Drama/Action
Logline: A group of docile 1950’s housewives are forced to fight for survival when the men in their town start inexplicably turning into monsters.
Writer: Joseph Scalise
Title: Odysseus and His Boy
Genre: Period
Logline: With only one night to act, two rival soldiers must sneak behind enemy lines to complete a last-ditch suicide mission that will finally put an end to a decade-long conflict.
Writer: Steffan DelPiano
Title: The Fuck-Ups
Genre: Action/Buddy Comedy
Logline: An irascible, homeless vet reluctantly teams up with a young, gung-ho soldier to recover a closely guarded secret in the modern day jungles of Vietnam.
Writers: Wally White & Marc McTizic
Title: The Boom Town Beast
Genre: Gothic Horror/Thriller
Logline: On the eve of World War I, a misanthropic drifter must catch a bloodthirsty beast to save an industrial town and its people. But when a shocking truth emerges, it threatens to unleash the beast in everyone.
Writers: Patrick Buckley & Joseph Ackroyd
WINNER OF WEEK 7: “Thrills, Kills, and Scotch” by Mayhem Jones. Tremendous job, Mayhem. I haven’t read the script but the one thing I know about Mayhem is that she’s got voice to spare. When the competition is even, otherwise, an original voice will help elevate you above the pack. Something to keep in mind for all aspiring screenwriters. Thanks again to Scott for his tireless work on the voting. Reading through the mini-quotes is quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of this process. Next week is the last week of the first round (then we get Wild Card Week). Seeya then!
