How to immediately gain 50% more interest in your script

Genre: Crime/FBI
Premise: Two FBI agents are pitted against a crew of bank robbers–and each other–as they grapple with order and chaos inside their department and home lives.
About: This script finished with 11 votes on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Will Hettinger wrote on the series, Painkiller, last year.
Writer: Will Hettinger
Details: 115 pages

Jon Hamm for Gamen?

I’m gonna jump right into it.

How do you gain 50% more interest in your screenplay?

Four words.

“Inspired by True Events.”

That’s what today’s script says on its title page and the best thing about it is that it only needs to be barely true. You can have the smallest most smidgeon-ish tiniest teeniest connection to a true story but if there’s a thread you can pull on, you damn well better say your script is inspired by true events.

Cause when you hand those four words over to a movie exec, dollar signs start appearing over their heads accompanied by the “ding ding ding ding” sounds of hundreds of slot machines.

50-something Robert Gamen is a tough FBI vet who lives to work in the gray. He likes mixing it up, crossing lines, crossing back, pushing the envelope. And right now he’s determined to take down the Armenian mob based up in Glendale, Los Angeles.

Assistant Senior Agent in Charge Katie Martin is in charge of Gamen’s crew and realizes that, in order to get the most out of the operation, she needs a translator. So she recruits the nerdy Andy Walsh, a former Air Force soldier who left the nitty gritty action of the Middle East to work as a translator at a desk.

Gamen and Andy seem to like each other all right. Gamen is more of a ladies man whereas Andy is dedicated to his wife. The two spend many nights hanging out outside Armenian bars and clubs listening in on bugged Armenian thugs in the hopes of figuring out where all their money is going.

But Gamen has a secret. He uses his Armenian operation as a cover to go rob banks with a crew of fellow agents. Andy is the only one inside Gamen’s crew who doesn’t know about the bank-robbing thing. But over time, he senses there’s more going on under the surface. Eventually, he’ll be thrown into opposition with his own group, and must decide whether to take out the partner he’s become so close to.

I have a question for you guys.

I know a lot of you don’t like romantic comedies. So, when you are forced to watch a romantic comedy (after your girlfriend mercilessly hassles you for two years), can you tell a good one from a bad one? Or are they all equally bad to you?

I ask this because these crime scripts all read the same to me. They all have the same perceived problems.

They’re either not covering a unique enough angle or the characters feel like the exact same characters I see in all of these movies.

But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I don’t understand these films.

All the crime films I have understood: Godfather, Goodfellas, Training Day, Heat…

They all had one thing in common: BIG MEMORABLE CHARACTERS.

You know what’s great about having big memorable characters? EVERY ONE OF YOUR SCENES IMPROVES. Because your scenes all have the benefit of operating with these big personalities.

When Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) in Goodfellas says, “Funny like how? Like I’m a clown? I amuse you?” That scene is amazing because that character is so amazing.

With Final Score… Gamen is fine. Andy is fine.

But do either of them have personalities that pop off the page? Do they say things that are memorable? Do they have backstories or internal conflicts that make them compelling?

There’s a bigger question at stake here… are screenwriters okay with writing an approximation of the types of movies they like? Are they happy with merely giving you a taste of what it’s like to read a good script in this genre? Or do they want to give you the full meal?

Most screenwriters are perfectly fine giving you a taste. And that’s not enough for me.

You also have to be aware of what genre you’re writing in and meet the bar of that genre. Yesterday, I covered Road House. I said I didn’t mind that the villain was one-dimensional. But there’s a reason for that. Road House is silly fun. Nobody’s going into that genre expecting to be moved or learn something about life. They just want to have fun.

But a movie like Final Score has a higher bar because it’s aiming at a higher-IQ audience. Therefore, you can’t get away with straight-forward obvious facsimiles of characters we’ve already seen in this genre. We need more.

I’m going to keep saying this until the end of time: 95% of screenwriters vastly underestimate how high the bar is.

And I get it!

I get that you see trash in theaters and on TV all the time. The Marvels. Citadel. Ricky Stanicky. The 6000th Walking Dead spinoff.

And that makes you think the bar is low. But the bar is always higher than you think it is. Which means, when you’ve come with a solid character, you’re not done. You have to figure out how to push that character and make them good. And then, once you’ve done that, you’ve got to push that character and make them great.

Cause the difference between that effort is the difference between Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things and Dakota Johnson’s character in Madame Webb.

THE READER KNOWS WHEN YOU DIDN’T PUT IN ENOUGH EFFORT.  You cannot and will not EVER FOOL THEM.

I’m mad about this because I see it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Reading one script after another. I can tell the writer didn’t put all of themselves into the characters or the script. And look, sometimes you get that rare newbie writer who puts every ounce of their being on the page but they don’t yet understand the craft enough to make it work.

Still, I’d much rather read that than yet another one of these “lottery” scripts. I call them lottery scripts because they’re not good enough to sell on their own. They’re good enough to go into the big Hollywood Lottery slush pile where their success will be determined by luck.

Don’t you want to write a script that doesn’t depend on luck?

Pick a unique and marketable concept. Outline a plot that moves all the way through the story. Come up with at least one extremely memorable character. If you do those three things, you’re ahead of almost everyone you’re competing against.

I’ll give you one snippet of the dozens of red flags that signaled to me I was reading a script that didn’t meet the bar. About halfway through the script, the boss woman asks Andy, “How’re you finding SA Gamen? You’ve been with him for months. What’s your impression?”

There are two MAJOR things wrong with this line. One, I had no idea it had been months since they were together in the first place. If you questioned me on their time spent together, I may have guessed a week or two. The fact that you’re not clear to the reader about how much time has passed is a major red flag. Cause it means time doesn’t matter in your script.

But also, it’s a red flag that your story is taking that long in the first place! And that we don’t have any clear ticking time bombs guiding the story. I’m not saying every movie needs a deadline and tons of urgency. But this is a movie with guns and crime. These movies need urgency!!!

Or, if they don’t have overarching urgency, you need each individual timeline within the story to have urgency. For example, your story may cover an entire year. But pages 30-50 need to cover the gearing up for a specific heist. Or bust. “We’ve got one week to pull this off.”  Now you’ve developed urgency for the next 20 pages.

Or else your story is just floating in the ether. We don’t feel any need for the characters to achieve anything. And if that’s where you are, your story’s dead. We need a reason to keep turning the pages. Urgency is a huge reason.

It’s funny, I threw on Next Goal Wins on Hulu the other day cause it was free. By the way, I had to scour the service to find it. That’s how much it didn’t want anyone to watch it. It’s about this Samoan soccer team that’s terrible. Then a new coach comes in and tries to teach them the game.

There’s an early practice session where the players are all haphazardly stumbling around the field randomly kicking balls in any direction they see fit. There’s no effort. There’s no purpose. Sometimes I feel like 95% of screenwriters approach screenwriting the same way. They don’t take it seriously enough.

The funniest thing about this rant is that today’s script is not a bad script. It’s fine. BUT ALL THAT FINE DOES IS PUT YOU IN THE LOTTERY. You have no agency over your career with fine. You’re dependent on everyone else. But when you put your heart and soul into a good idea and you have a strong enough understanding of the craft to execute a good story and you make it a priority to hold the bar up high and surpass that bar?

You’re unstoppable.

You’re literally unstoppable because so few other writers are doing that.

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

What I learned: Direct subtext – I see writers do this every so often. They’ll use their parentheticals to directly tell you what the subtext of the dialogue is. In this case, we’re just meeting the characters so we don’t yet know who’s sarcastic, who lies, who says one thing but means another. In that case, the writer has to directly tell the reader what the subtext is for them to get it. Here, we’re seeing Gamen and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Katie together for the first time…

An excerpt from my upcoming book, “Scriptshadow’s 250 Dialogue Tips”

It has been promised. But as of yet, it hasn’t been delivered.

Over the next month, I’ll be including excerpts from my upcoming dialogue book, which I’m planning on releasing a month from now. Here is the introduction to the book. The world of screenwriting is about to change forever.

What you’re about to read is the introduction to the book…

Not long after I started my website, Scriptshadow, a site dedicated to analyzing amateur and professional screenplays, I was hired by an amateur writer to consult on a script he had written. The writer had completed a couple of screenplays already and was excited about his most recent effort, a crime-drama (“with a hint of comedy”) he felt was the perfect showcase for his evolving skills. Although I won’t reveal the actual script for privacy reasons, we’ll refer to this screenplay as, “Highs and Lows,” and we’ll call the writer, “Gabe.”

Highs and Lows was about a guy obsessed with a rare street drug and, to this day, it is one of the worst screenplays I have ever read in my life. We’re talking 147 pages of unintelligible nonsense, a script so aggressively lousy, I considered submitting it to the CIA as a low-budget alternative to waterboarding.

After I put together the notes on Highs and Lows, I spent a good portion of the day debating whether I should call Gabe and aggressively suggest he pursue a different career path. I’d never done such a thing before. But, in my heart, I knew that if this man pursued this craft, he may very well end up wasting a decade of his life. If it wasn’t for my girlfriend ripping the phone out of my hand and telling me there was no way I was going to destroy this writer’s dreams, I would’ve made the call. Instead, I sent him his notes, detailing, as best I could, what needed to be improved and how to do so, and moved on.

Cut to five years later and I was contacted by a different gentleman (we’ll call him “Randy”) for another consultation. In stark contrast to Gabe’s script, I experienced what every reader prays for when they open a screenplay, which is a great easy-to-read story with awesome characters. But it was the dialogue that stood out. Randy wasn’t ready to challenge Tarantino just yet but the conversations between his characters were always clever, always engaging, and always fun.

I sent his script out to a few producers and one of them ended up hiring him for a job. He wrote back, thanked me, and mused that he’d come a long way since our first consultation. “First consultation?” I said to myself. “What is this guy talking about?” I looked back through my e-mails to see if we had corresponded before and nothing came up. But then I dug deeper and discovered that I *had* worked with Randy before. Under a different e-mail address.

The owner of that e-mail?

Gabe. Which was a pen name he had used at the time.

This was not possible. Randy wrote with confidence. Gabe wrote like he’d accidentally fallen asleep on his keyboard. I went back and re-checked, checked again, checked some more, only to return to the same baffling conclusion. This page-turning Tour de Force was written by the same writer who had written one of the worst screenplays I’d ever read!

After my denial wore off, I got in touch with Gabe and asked him the question that had been eating at me ever since I confirmed his identity: “What in the world did you do differently this time around?” I especially wanted to know how his dialogue had skyrocketed from a 1 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10. His answer is something I’ll share with you later in the book, as it’s one of the most important tips you’ll ever learn about dialogue.

But for now, I want to emphasize the lesson Gabe’s dramatic improvement taught me, something I remind myself whenever I read a not-so-good screenplay: You are always capable of improving as a screenwriter. If Gabe could go from worst to first, so can you.

Which is why I want to share with you one of the biggest lies you’ll encounter when you begin your screenwriting journey. I heard it a bunch when I first started screenwriting and I still hear it today: “You either have an ear for dialogue or you don’t.” This faulty statement, which you’ll hear mostly from snobby agents, jaded executives, and impatient producers, is dead wrong.

Writing good dialogue can be learned.

Let me repeat that:

Writing good dialogue can be learned.

To be fair, doing so is challenging. More so than any other aspect of the craft. Aaron Sorkin, who many believe to be the best dialogue writer working today, admits as much. In an interview with Jeff Goldsmith promoting his film, The Social Network, Sorkin confessed that while storytelling and plotting are built on a technical foundation, making them easy to teach, writing dialogue is more of an instinctual thing, and therefore hard to break down into teachable steps.

Indeed, dialogue contains elements of spontaneity, cleverness, charm, gravitas, intelligence, purpose, playfulness, personality, and, of course, a sense of humor. This varied concoction of ingredients does not come in the form of an official recipe, leaving writers unable to identify how much of each is required to write “the perfect dialogue.” Which has led many screenwriting teachers to throw up their hands in surrender and label dialogue, “unteachable,” which is why there hasn’t been a single good dialogue book ever written.

When screenwriting teachers do broach the topic of dialogue, they teach the version of it that’s easiest on them, which amounts to telling you all the things you’re NOT supposed to do. My favorite of these is: “Show don’t tell.” Show us that Joey is a ladies’ man. Don’t have him tell us that he’s a ladies’ man.

“Show don’t tell” is actually good screenwriting advice but why do you think screenwriting teachers are so eager to teach it? Because it means they don’t have to teach dialogue! If you’re showing something, you’re not writing any conversations.

Or they’ll say, “Avoid on-the-nose dialogue.” Again, not bad advice. But how does that help you write the dialogue that stumbles out of the mouth of Jack Sparrow? Or sashays out of the mouth of Mia Wallace? In order to write good dialogue, you need to teach people what *to* do, not what *not to* do.

If you ever want to test whether a self-professed screenwriting teacher understands dialogue, ask them what their best dialogue tip is. If they say, “go to a coffee shop and listen to how people talk,” run as far away from that teacher as possible because I can promise you they know nothing about dialogue. If someone is giving you a tip where there’s nothing within the tip itself that teaches you anything, they’re a charlatan.

What the heck is good dialogue anyway?

Good dialogue is conversation that moves the scene, and by association the plot, forward in an entertaining fashion. “Entertaining” can be defined in a number of ways. It could mean the dialogue is humorous, clever, tension-filled, suspenseful, thought-provoking, dramatic, or a number of other things. But it does need those two primary ingredients.

• It needs to push the scene forward in a purposeful way.
• It needs to entertain.

What prevents writers from writing good dialogue? That answer could be a book unto itself but in my experience, having read over 10,000 screenplays, the primary mistake I’ve found that writers make is they think too logically.

When they have characters speak to one another, they construct those characters’ responses in a way that keeps the train moving and nothing more. They get that first part right – the “move the story forward” part – but they forget about the “entertain” part. Don’t worry, I’ve got over a hundred tips in this book that will help you write more entertaining dialogue.

Yet another aspect missing from a lot of the dialogue I read is naturalism – the ability to capture what people really sound like when they speak to each other. You are trying to capture things like awkwardness, tangents, authenticity, words not coming out quite right. You’re trying to mimic all that to such a degree that the characters sound like living breathing people.

And yet, while being true-to-life, you’re also attempting to heighten your dialogue. You’re trying to make every reply clever. You’re trying to nail that zinger. You’re giving your hero the perfect line at the perfect moment. How does one combine realism with “heightened-ism?” That’s one of the many paradoxes of dialogue.

So I understand, intellectually, why so many teachers are terrified of dialogue. The act of writing movie conversation is so intricate and nuanced that the easy thing to do is leave it up to chance and tell writers that they either have an ear for it or they don’t (or to go to a local coffee shop and “listen to people talk”).

But dialogue is like any skill. It can be learned. It can be improved. And I dedicated years of my life looking through millions of lines of dialogue, ranging from the worst to the best, to find that code. And I believe I’ve found it. By the end of this book, you’ll have found it as well.

It won’t be easy. This is stuff you’ll have to practice to get good at. But, once you do, your dialogue will be better than any aspiring writer who hasn’t read this book. That much I can promise you.

So let’s not waste any more time. I’m going to give you 250 dialogue tips and I’m going to start with the two biggest of those tips right off the bat. If all you ever do for your screenwriting is incorporate these two tips, your dialogue will be, at the very least, solid. Are you ready? Here we go.

TIP 1 – Create dialogue-friendly characters – Dialogue-friendly characters are characters who generally talk a lot. They are naturally funny or tend to say interesting things, are quirky or strange or offbeat or manic or see the world differently than the average human being. The Joker in The Dark Knight is a dialogue-friendly character. Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad is a dialogue-friendly character. Deadpool is. Juno is. It’s hard to write good dialogue without characters who like to talk.

TIP 2 – Create dialogue-rich scenarios – Dialogue is like a plant. It needs sunshine to grow. If every one of your scenes is kept in the shade, good luck sprouting great dialogue. A scene where a young woman introduces her boyfriend to her accepting parents is never going to yield good dialogue. There’s zero conflict and, therefore, little chance for an interesting conversation. A scene where a young woman introduces her boyfriend to her highly judgmental parents who think their daughter is too good for him? Now you’ve got a dialogue-rich scenario!

I need you to internalize the above two tips because they will be responsible for the bulk of your dialogue success. Try to have at least one dialogue-friendly character in a key role (two or three is even better). Then, whenever you write a scene, ask yourself if you’re creating a scene where good dialogue can grow.

Don’t worry if these two things are confusing right now. We’re going to get into a lot more detail about how to find these dialogue-friendly characters and how to create these dialogue-rich scenarios.

A pattern you’ll notice throughout this book is that good dialogue comes from good preparation. The decisions you make before you write your dialogue are often going to be just as influential as the ones you make while writing your dialogue.

There’s more to come next week! If you want to hire me to take a look at your script and help you with your dialogue (or anything else), I will give you $100 off a set of feature or pilot notes.  Just mention this post.  You can e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Learning the difference between Type 0, Type 1, and Type 2 Concepts

One question I constantly go back and forth on is, “Is concept the most important part of screenwriting?” It’s a challenging question to answer because the other aspects – character, plot, dialogue – take so much more time to construct and integrate into a screenplay. So it’s easy to see them as being more important.

But the thing with concept is that it informs everything. It informs your characters. It informs your plot. It informs your dialogue and what kind of scenes you write. So even though it’s just this tiny little sentence, it’s probably the most important aspect of your script. Pick the right concept and the script writes itself. Pick the wrong one and you could spend years trying to improve something that’s already hit its ceiling.

For those who pop in and out irregularly, I’m challenging the Scriptshadow readers to write two scripts this year. I’m going to guide you through both of those experiences every Thursday for the rest of the year. I’ve given you two weeks to come up with a concept which means you’ve got one week left.

As I pointed out in my original “2 Scripts in 2024” post, I’d encourage you to choose a strong concept – something that would give you a clear poster and a clear trailer. Before you purists scream out that you will not be pigeonholed by the Hollywood establishment, take note of how you choose which movies YOU watch. You usually see a poster, watch a trailer, or hear about the idea online and it catches your interest.

If you’re not thinking about how people receive your idea, if you’re not asking whether they’ll be excited when they hear your idea, you’re probably picking a weak idea. Sure, you can utilize the strategy of, what I’m interested in, others will be interested in. But I’d only go that route if you have a good feel for popular culture and what people like. If your instinct is to write scripts like Past Lives or Drive My Car, you do not want to be using that strategy. Trust me.

Since talking about concept in a vacuum isn’t very helpful, I want to get more specific. After being pitched thousands of script ideas, I’ve found that you can break concepts into three types.

TYPE 0 – These are concepts that aren’t marketable or clever. This would be something like Minari or Mank or Roma. I’m not saying you should never write a script like this. But it’s important to understand that, by doing so, you are making a 1 in ten thousand shot a 1 in one billion shot. So write these at your own risk.

TYPE 1 – These are concepts that are marketable. They’re tried-and-true formulas that fit into specific genres and sub-genres that the industry has been making money off of for decades. If you write a body-swap script, that’s a Type 1. If you write a John Wick clone, that’s a Type 1. The good thing about Type 1 concepts is that they have a real shot at being turned into movies if they’re good. The bad thing is that they don’t give you anything else. It’s a straight-down-the-middle exploration of that genre and, therefore, you won’t get a ton of read requests. You’ll get way more than Type 0s. But unless an exec is looking for a project like that at the time, they’re going to be reluctant to request a read.

TYPE 2 – Type 2 concepts give you the marketability you get from Type 1 AS WELL AS SOMETHING EXTRA. Usually, this means an exciting x-factor or a component that makes the idea clever. For that reason, these are the concepts that are going to get you the most reads. The classic example of a Type 2 Concept is The Hangover. If that movie had only been about three guys going to Vegas for a crazy bachelor weekend, it would’ve been a Type 1 concept. By having them all forget the previous night and have to find the lost groom the next day using clues from the previous evening – that’s what made the premise clever and, therefore, graduate to a Type 2.

So there’s no confusion, these types don’t represent every idea out there. They’re only the types I see the most often. I’m not sure what category “Dream Scenario” would be in, for example. It’s not quite marketable but it does have a unique premise. There are also concepts like Knock at the Cabin. It has that marketable component as well as something a little bit different about it. But I’m not sure it has enough of a unique hook to graduate to Type 2. Maybe I’d place it at a 1.5. The point is, I want you to use these as guidelines, and guidelines only, for choosing your concepts.

What follows is a list of Type 0, Type 1, and Type 2 concepts for clarity.

TYPE 0 CONCEPTS (avoid these unless you’re extremely passionate about the idea)

Nomadland – People driving around without destinations. Type 0.

Fences – A drama about backyards. Type 0.

Dallas Buyers Club – Melodramatic script about AIDS. Type 0.

The Holdovers – Staying at a college during winter break and exploring character development during that isn’t a sexy enough idea to write on spec. Type 0.

A Good Person – When you have an idea that feels like something you can see in the everyday world – such as a movie chronicling a regular family’s problems – it’s almost certainly a Type 0.

The Iron Claw – A tragic story. The rareness of the wrestling subject matter gives it a little more gusto than your average Type 0. But it’s still a Type 0.

Marriage Story – Watching the last stages of a marriage in drama format is Type 0.

Licorice Pizza – This is an interesting one because it has a lot of unique elements. But it doesn’t have any clear concept that stands out, which is what makes it a Type 0.

Lady Bird – Straight-forward coming-of-age films are almost all Type 0s. They rarely get made unless the writer is directing the film.  That’s a good sign of a Type 0, by the way.  If no one OTHER THAN THE WRITER is interested in making the movie, it’s a Type 0.

Aftersun – From everything I’ve heard, this is a good movie. But it’s virtually unmarketable due to its concept-less premise. A good way to spot Type 0s are movies that get all these awards yet you STILL have no interest in seeing them. One quick extra note. Just because you want to see Aftersun does not make it marketable. As someone who follows the movie industry, you are a unique consumer. You are not the average consumer. When coming up with ideas, you want to have the average consumer in mind.

TYPE 1 CONCEPTS (a good middle-ground concept to build a script around)

The Equalizer – Straight-forward guy-with-a-gun story. A little bit of uniqueness (he helps the less fortunate fight the bad guys). But not enough for Type 2 status.

Bullet Train – An assassin on a bullet train. This may be a 1.5 but it’s definitely not a Type 2. There’s nothing unique enough or clever enough about the premise to warrant that label.

Moonfall – These giant disaster movies used to be Type 2s but they became so ubiquitous that they were sent down to Type 1.

Anyone But You – A straightforward romantic comedy premise.

The Boogeyman – Any horror movie with an evil monster is Type 1.

Extraction – This is a good example of what a solid Type 1 concept looks like. We’re setting the story in a place we don’t usually get to see in movies like this (India), which gives it just enough of a bump to get directors and actors interested.

Oppenheimer – Any biopic or true story that chronicles famous people throughout history is automatically a Type 1.

The Other Guys – Any mismatched cops teaming up is going to be a Type 1.

Knives Out – An established sub-genre: Get a whole bunch of people in the same area and have something go wrong. These setups are not far off from Type 2 if you can find a unique way in or an unexpected execution.

47 Meters Down – All shark movies are going to be at least a Type 1. The contained nature of the characters’ predicament gets this a little closer to Type 2. But there isn’t that one thing about it that truly stands out – that strange attractor – to bring it to that level.

TYPE 2 CONCEPTS (these are the concepts you want to write, if possible)

Plane – A plane making an emergency landing in a war-torn country is Type 1.5 territory. Needing to depend on one of the passengers, an accused murderer, makes it Type 2. Whenever there’s irony in a premise (The hero is a murderer), you’re usually in Type 2 territory.

Room – This one’s a little debatable. It’s a contained thriller, which is a high-grade Type 1 concept. I say “high grade” because people trapped inside a place, trying to get out, is always going to be an exciting situation to watch. The uniqueness of sharing a kid with her captor and using him to escape eases this up into Type 2 territory.

Cocaine Bear – A group of people running from something scary in the forest is an idea as old as time and is, therefore, a Type 1. But no one’s ever made the scary thing a bear high on cocaine. That’s what makes it Type 2.

Bird Box – End of the world scenarios are automatically Type 1. The unique element here is that if you look at the evil thing, you kill yourself, forcing everyone to walk around blind.

Gravity – Being stuck up in space after your ship’s been destroyed is almost a Type 2 all on its own. But the real-time component solidified this script’s Type 2 status.

Her – A romance between a man and a woman is Type 1 territory. But once you make one of the parties a computer, it’s a Type 2.

Get Out – An easy call with this one. It’s not just about a black man being introduced to his white girlfriend’s family. But it’s about the freaky weird stuff going on within that family.

The Lost City – Romance in the jungle is a lesser-known but established sub-genre that makes money for Hollywood. What elevates this to Type 2 is having the clueless model who is on the front of the main character’s books being tasked with playing the actual part of that model in this real-life adventure with the author. Irony = Type 2.

Leave The World Behind – This one’s debatable. There are a lot of “End of the World” concepts out there. But this one evolves via a series of mysteries that, I believe, elevate it to Type 2.

65 – If you’re intersecting human beings with dinosaurs, it is almost always going to be a Type 2 idea.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter – It’s not just Dracula killing people in a city. That’s Type 1. It’s Dracula being shipped on a boat, breaking free, and killing everyone on board. That’s what makes it Type 2.

Just so there’s no confusion, none of these examples represent the quality of the movies themselves. I’ve heard some great things about some of my Type 0 examples and watched several of my Type 2 examples fail at the box office. All we’re trying to do here is understand which types of scripts get requested the most, as that’s the biggest determining factor in your script getting optioned or sold. You can’t sell a script that only five people read. It takes A LOT OF NO’S before you find your yes. Which is why I encourage you to write Type 2 concepts if possible. If not, then at least Type 1.

One week left, people. The real work starts next Thursday! :)

One of the biggest short story sales of 2023!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: An American negotiator in London is called in to help deal with a unique situation – a construction worker is stuck on top of an old World War 2 bomb, which could detonate in response to the slightest movement.
About: This is the big flashy short story sale that happened recently, which landed Ridley Freaking Scott as director. Ridley Scott, who’s making Gladiator movies, for goodness sake, is not easy to lock down into a director role, especially at 85, when he only has so many bites at the apple left. So to say my anticipation levels for this one are soaring would be an understatement.
Writer: Kevin McMullin
Details: 5250 words. I know this because the writer tells us that on the first page. Will this now become the standard for short stories? (An average script is 22,000 words)

I have one question for you. Are you on the short story train yet?

Cause the train is moving people. It’s zipping and zapping its way around Hollywood – down through Culver City into the Sony Lot, up Highland before stopping at Paramount, over to Pico to give all the Fox Studio execs high fives, before muscling up the 101 into the Valley to visit all the valley girl studios.

Someone asked me the other day, “Is the spec script dead?” I said, “No! It’s just morphed into the spec short story.” And here’s the trick that writers are starting to get wise to – when you send your short story out there, you sell it with the stipulation that you get to write the first draft. Which means – if you’re paying attention – you ARE selling a spec script. You’re actually selling it before it’s written. Which means you’re a screenwriting time machine. That’s so much cooler than being a boring spec script writer.

Fear not, script purists. The short story craze does not mean you should drop all your screenwriting aspirations. The industry still needs screenwriters. They can’t live without them. So you should still be writing scripts that wow people so that you can get hired to write all those other projects Hollywood wants to make.

Today, however, we’re doing another short story dance. So throw on your dance shoes and join me. I’ll lead.

American Francis Ipolito, a negotiator, is getting married in the UK over the weekend. He’s staying alone in his hotel room the night before the wedding. That is until his best friend and best man, FBI officer Dwight, calls him and tells him to check the news. Francis does and sees that Piccadilly Circus (London’s Times Square) is cleared out.

In a dug-up construction area, a construction worker is standing on top of an old World War 2 bomb. These bombs are known to be delicate. Even the slightest move could detonate them. So the man is frozen. Less than ten minutes later, a UK government official shows up at Francis’s hotel and says to come with him. Francis says, “Only if my buddy Dwight can join me.”

Once at the bomb site, Ministry of Defense Aoife Greggor tells Dwight to beat it and informs Francis that the whole World War 2 bomb thing was a lie. They put that out there for the press. The real deal is that the construction worker BUILT THIS GIANT BOMB he’s standing on top of and has demanded to talk with Francis.

Francis heads over to the Piccadilly construction site, with no idea of who this dude is, only to learn that he’s his fiancé’s ex-husband! Francis is called back to base, where he’s then informed that his buddy, Dwight, was given clearance to join a UK reconnaissance team charged with clearing the surrounding buildings.

Their first building they’re clearing is actually the one Dwight happened to be staying in via Air BnB. Francis freaks out, tells them to get the team out of there as soon as possible. But it’s too late. We hear a big BOOOOM. Dwight is now dead from a second bomb that the bomber planted earlier. Francis turns to Aoife: ‘How many bombs are there?’ The End.

I kid you not. That’s the end of the story.

I sensed something was off with this one right away.

The writing was clunkier than a ride in a square-wheeled wagon. I was constantly having to go back and re-read things to properly understand them. Even then, I didn’t always get what had been written.

This caused me to lose confidence in the writer as the story went on. For that reason, I knew it wasn’t going to deliver. But what I didn’t know was how spectacularly it would fail to deliver. I mean this isn’t just a bad short story. This is bad everything.

I don’t want to be mean because it isn’t the writer’s fault that his story sold and nabbed one of the best directors in the business. But with that success, readers are going to go into this with high expectations. And man, let me tell, this is not the kind of story you want people reading with high expectations. You want them going in with subterranean expectations. Even then, though, they’ll be disappointed.

Let me give you an example of how bad the writing is. It’s late in the story. There are a few pages left. Francis has just come back from talking to the bomber dude and asks Aoife where Dwight is.

Aofie, who mind you hated Dwight and was trying to get rid of him since the second he showed up, informs Francis that Dwight has joined the British reconnaissance team. Even if we stopped there, that’s terrible writing. There’s no way any British service is going to have some random off-duty American FBI guy join their team on the spot. Also, you’ve set up that the Ministry of Defense hated this guy. So why would she allow him to join one of her teams?? In less than five minutes no less!!????

But it gets worse!

Aofie tells Francis that the team is investigating a building nearby, a building that just so happens to ALSO be the AirBnb apartment Dwight is staying at. In that moment, Francis realizes that this was all part of the bomber’s plan. So he tells Aofie to get the men out of that building as quickly as possible. But before they can act, the building blows up from a DIFFERENT BOMB the bomber planted earlier, and Dwight is dead.

Think about that for a second. The number of hoops we need to jump through for this to make sense is astounding.

In order for the bomber’s plan to work, he would’ve had to secretly set up a bomb weeks ago below Dwight’s AirBnB building AND THEN, since Dwight wasn’t actually at the building, the writer needed to construct a scenario by which the British bomb team recruited Dwight on the spot, and then, of the hundreds of surrounding buildings they could’ve gone to, the writer made the team coincidentally go to Dwight’s AirBnB building, so that the bomber could kill him.

All of this was done via a payoff THAT WAS NEVER SET UP. Because we didn’t even know about any other bombs until the second one blew up. So none of it feels earned or realistic. It’s the kind of sloppy writing that even low-level Hollywood execs don’t let fly.

Everywhere you look in this story, it’s bad. There are no positive attributes at all other than it’s sort-of high concept. It was one of those situations where I actually thought I got duped – that someone sent me the wrong “Bomb” story. That’s how ugly it got.

This begs the question. If this story is so bad, why was it purchased? One of the frustrating things I’ve learned about Hollywood is that every working individual has their specific movies that THEY WANT TO MAKE. Only that person and their close friends know what those movies are. We, outside the business, don’t know what they are. So we can’t write the script that Denzel Washington is desperate to make or pitch the movie Jacob Elordi has wanted to be in since he was five.

I suspect that Ridley Scott really wanted to make a negotiator movie or a bomb movie and this came across his desk. Boom. That’s it. He was in because this is the exact type of movie he wants to make right now. And make no mistake, after he lets McMullin write his contract-guaranteed first draft, he will bring in a much more established screenwriter to write a version of this that actually makes sense. Cause if he goes with this version, it will be one of his worst movies ever.

Of all the short story sales I’ve seen so far, this is by far the worst.

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

What I learned 2: Is getting married a short story sale hack? This is the second big sale in a row (the last was Run For Your Life) where an impending wedding was the centerpiece. Weddings give you ticking time bombs and heightened emotions, both of which create more drama. Not saying you SHOULD use a wedding. But there’s clearly something to it.

The Black List is rigged. It’s time for Scriptshadow to un-rig it

Which Top 10 script is this?

As we all know, by this point, the Black List is rigged. This is not the creator, Franklin Leonard’s, fault. It’s just that the list has been around long enough that managers and agents have figured out how to manipulate it.

But here’s the thing. I don’t think the scripts on the list aren’t worthy. I just think they’re ranked incorrectly. If a prominent manager wants to get his client’s script near the top, he can get it there as long as he’s willing to do the work. This is what skews the Black List. And it’s why you need someone who goes in there, reads all the scripts, and figures out which ones are truly the best.

Since there’s a lot of confusion about if these are really the best of the best scripts, the answer is no. I can tell you that I’ve read five consultation scripts this year that would’ve made the top 10 of the Black List. But, for various reasons (i.e. 3 out of the 5 are repped writers who have no interest in blasting their scripts around town) the scripts won’t come to the attention of voters.

And then, of course, you have the unending list of professional screenwriters doing big-time assignment work that would blow every script on the 2023 Black List out of the water. But most of these scripts are kept under wraps and, therefore, never seen by Black List voters.

The Black List has become more a celebration of new screenwriters. Which I think is a good thing. But it also puts undue pressure on the list to deliver when, in actuality, the writers who made the list, aren’t ready to deliver. They’re new (relatively speaking). They’re still learning the craft. If we’re lucky, five of them come up with something brilliant.

Which leads us to today’s list. I’m re-ranking all of last year’s scripts so that you know what the TRUE best scripts on the list are. There are 18 scripts (out of 74) that will not be included on the list because I didn’t read them. They were scripts that, mostly, sounded like I wouldn’t enjoy them no matter how well they were written. However, if anybody has read any of these and believes I’m missing out, by all means, tell me in the comments section. I’ll read the script and, if necessary, change the rankings.

Those scripts are: Resurfaced (biopic), Dumb Blonde (biopic), Total Landscaping (2020 election), Cheat Day (flimsy premise), Going For Two (gay NFL QB falls for teacher), Popular (GOP strategist hero), An Oakland Holiday (princess at an Oakland H.S.), Better Luck Next Time (gender vs. gender), Jerry! (Biopic), The Homestead (never got to it but best-looking of these options), The Twelve Dancing Princesses (title alone kept me from this one), Caravan (demon in the Silk Road – could maybe be good), It’s Britney, B*tch (I mean, do I have to explain?), Wildfire (mute and a trans woman), Black Dogs (Led Zepplin heist – could be good), Eternity (felt like one of those aimless indie films), The Trap (twin trapeze artists), You’re My Best Friend (felt like a bad YA book).

Are we ready? Okay, good. To create some suspense, I’ll be starting from the bottom and moving all the way to the top.

56. A Guy Goes to Therapy by Shane Mack
Logline: When his girlfriend catches her boyfriend doing something unthinkable, she leaves him, forcing him to consider the unthinkable – therapy.
Votes: 19 (Top 10)
From Review: “If the main plot is something that can be a subplot in another movie, your concept probably isn’t big enough.”

55. Viva Mexico by Miguel Flatow
Logline: When a washed-up superhero gets betrayed by a Mexican government, he must lead a populist social movement to fight the Narcos, topple the government, and free the people.
Votes: 15 (Top 15)
From Review: “It wasn’t even clear, at the beginning, if John *was* a superhero or a guy wearing a suit pretending to be a superhero. And then when we do find out he’s a real superhero (he’s kind of a low-rent Captain America), we’re told that he only got half-a-dose of the super-serum. So he’s not a true superhero. And, also, I think his shield is the only thing that allows him to have his powers?”

54. The Seeker by Camrus Johnson
Logline: A childhood folktale comes to life when children of the neighborhood start to go missing after playing hide and seek.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “What do we have here that is in any way redeeming to Black List voters? This isn’t a marketable idea. It’s not a cool idea. It’s not a heady idea. It’s not a clever idea. It’s not written in a unique voice. The execution is okay but far from exceptional. Why would people vote for this?”

53. They Came From A Broken World by Vanessa Block
Logline: The year is 1955. The small town of Boon Falls has provided a local forest as refuge to aliens fleeing their war-torn planet. When Mia–young woman dealing with the trauma of her mother’s death–stumbles upon an Alien woman who needs her help, a series of haunting revelations in the refugee forest leads her to an unimaginable truth.
Votes: 14 votes (Top 20)
From Review: “The script tried to do too much. We’ve got the illegal alien issue (some people in town hate the aliens). We’ve got climate change (people escaping a world that’s falling apart). We’ve got racism (the backstory alludes to discrimination in the 50s). We’ve got sexism (the aliens are all women). I’m not going to lie. At a certain point, it felt like a Black List bingo card.”

52. Jambusters by Filipe Coutinho
Logline: A mystery about what paper jams can teach us about life. After an inexperienced detective starts investigating a death at the Paper Jam department of a major corporation on the verge of its centennial, she unwittingly embarks on a life-altering spiritual journey that unearths her small town’s dark secrets.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “In the end, though, this script makes you wade through so much text to get to the relevant plot points, that it violates one of the most important rules of screenwriting, which is that a script is supposed to entertain the reader. The second it crosses over into making them work, you’ve lost them.”

51. Baby Boom by Jack Waz
Logline: A married couple attending a gender reveal party are quickly informed that they must stop the reveal party at all costs… or the world will blow up.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “The script is written in a brisk effortless style, as every comedy should be. The structure is solid, as it’s divided into five sections, each with a big goal (prevent the world from blowing up). But for me, it’s more of a “smile” comedy than an “lol” comedy.”
Additional: The comedy with the most potential on the list and they botched it.

50. There You Are by Brooke Baker
Logline: When a non-confrontational playwright loses her engagement ring, she must travel through Italy to get it back with a man who was supposed to be just a one-night stand, discussing love and lying along the way.
Votes: 15 (Top 15)
From Review: “You can make the argument that this movie is exploring reality as opposed to the bubble gum version of relationships and dating. Sometimes, as human beings, we do dumb illogical s—t. Sleep with the wrong people.  Hurt those we love.  The problem is, the script doesn’t have the requisite touch required to hold up to this more complex view of humanity.”

49. I Love You Now And Forever by Robert Machoian
Logline: After exhausting all financial options to save their dying daughter, Frank and Abby are forced into a final act of desperation: rob a local bank.
Votes: 8 votes (bottom 50%)
From Review: “You need narratives that give your characters purposeful things to do throughout the movie. Not just during the big obvious set pieces.”

48. Craigshaven by Nicole Ramberg
Logline: A Wisconsin high school girl teams up with her friends to look for a ghost ship she believes is connected to her mother’s disappearance.
Votes: 6 votes (Bottom 10)
From Review: “But in being so hyper-focused on this ghost ship plotline, everything else falls by the wayside. Not just the characters but the plot. It’s too standard and basic. With screenwriting, you have to do it all. Or you at least have to try. From the concept to the voice to the characters to the storytelling to the dialogue to the relationships to the plot to the structure. You can’t half-ass any of those if you want to write a great script.”

47. The Sisters by Alexander Thompson
Logline: Twin sisters live in a commune where, once they hit puberty, one of the twins becomes a monster and must be killed. But when the twins learn that their community is keeping big secrets from them, they make a run for it.
Votes: 9 (Lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “The YA genre has always been underwhelming. Anyone could come up with one of these concepts in thirty seconds. Here, I’ll come up with one right now. Children are all raised in a remote commune. At 10, all girls become vampires and all guys get telepathy. Boom, there’s a YA concept for anyone who wants it.”

46. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Logline: A pregnant pizza delivery girl becomes infatuated with a customer, a mother desperately trying to raise a son on her own.
Votes: 21 (Top 5)
From Review: “Like a lot of Black List scripts, Pizza Girl has some strong pieces to it. But the overall experience feels uneven and too depressing. I think I understood what the writer was trying to do but was just never able to get past that down feeling the story gave me.”

45. Oh The Humanity by Gillian Weeks
Logline: A dark comedy about the Hindenburg Disaster; or, the mostly true story about one of the biggest f—kups in history, the a—holes who tried to cover it up, and the female gossip reporter who made some Nazis very angry.
Votes: 15 (top 15)
From Review: “I wouldn’t say this was the most frustrating script I’ve read all year. But it was up there. There was a ton going on and I was always playing catch-up, trying to figure out the tone, trying to figure out the type of movie, trying to remember who was who and what they wanted. Trying to figure out who the heck the main character was.”

44. Marriage Bracket by Liv Auerbach & Daisygreen Stenhouse
Logline: Ten years after a group of girlfriends bet on which of them would be the last to get married, their adult lives and relationships are completely upended when they discover the $80 they drunkenly invested in Bitcoin
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “I’m fine with a little sloppiness in comedies. It can actually help the comedy at times. But if I don’t even believe that what’s happening would happen, it’s hard for me to invest emotionally. And if I’m not invested emotionally, it’s hard for me to laugh. I’ll chuckle. I’ll have a few of those surface-level laughs. But for those deep uncontrollable laughs, the screws have to be way tighter than they are here.”

43. It’s a Wonderful Story by Alexandra Tran
Logline: In the aftermath of WWII, a traumatized Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart use the making of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to attempt to find a way back into normalcy.
Votes: 9 votes (middle of the pack)
From Review: “I thought the script was going to do something clever like cover the production of It’s a Wonderful Life in a way that semi-mirrored the actual film. For example, what if James Stewart was feeling similar things about his own existence in relation to the fictional character he played? What does this world look like if James Stewart was never born? Fun stuff like that. But it’s more of this traditional biopic.”

42. Jingle Bell Heist by Abby McDonald
Logline: At the height of the holiday season, two strangers team up to rob one of New York’s most famous department stores while accidentally falling in love.
Votes: 12 votes (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “My advice if you’re going to write a heist screenplay is to stay away from a straight, sexy thriller, unless you’re one of the best dialogue writers in the world. Because these movies are all about the banter between the two main characters, as well as the sexual tension underneath that banter.”

41. Fog of War by Peter Haig
Logline: When a retired war journalist returns to the outpost where her son was stationed to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, she uncovers unspeakable horrors.
Votes: 12 votes (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I struggled with the storytelling here. The script relied too heavily on “crazy stuff happens” moments. Monkey attacks, 1900s era soldiers, goats voluntarily committing suicide, characters going insane. I’m all for something crazy happening in a script. It can be fun. I just felt there was an over-reliance on it.”

40. Pop by James Morosini
Logline: A 13 year-old boy blackmails his favorite pop star into being his best friend.
Votes: 8 votes (bottom 50%)
From Review: “The screenplay feels rushed. The writer never commits to any details to make me believe this is a real pop star. If you’re covering a specific subject matter, you have to give us AT LEAST ONE THING that we don’t know. In one of my favorite movies of the year, Blackberry, we get this early scene in the boardroom that goes into highly specific territory about how the Blackberry works. That helps sell us on the world, which, in turn, pulls us in. If anything, I got the opposite impression from “Pop.” Alice sells CDs at her concert! Because we all know those Gen Z 15 and 16 year olds love CDs. It’s just as important to them as improving their laserdisc collection.”

39. Match Cut by Will Lowell
Logline: A stunt man on location in Italy is mistaken for a famous assassin who just tried to take out one of the country’s biggest businessman. The businessman puts his entire financial weight behind finding and killing the “assassin.”
Votes: 11 votes (middle of the pack)
From Review: “Take the opening scene here. It’s as assassination scene. It’s well written. It’s paced well. It’s described well. There’s a little bit of suspense. It has an emotional moment between father and son. But I have read, literally, one thousand scenes just like it.”

38. Break Point by Zachary Joel Johnson
Logline: Courted by colleges and sponsors alike, a burnt-out tennis prodigy fights to maintain dominance against her Academy rival as she hurtles toward the existential decision of turning Pro–a choice that will force her to double down on her dream or walk away from the future she’s fought for.
Votes: 7 votes (Bottom 20)
From Review: “You need to create stakes that hold up in the real world. For example, Faheema decides she’s going to play the Nationals in the hopes of winning in order to double her contract offer from Prince. But what does that really mean? She’ll make 160 thousand dollars instead of 80 thousand. You have to think about these things from the perspective of the reader. Is the reader really going to say, “Oh man! I wasn’t interested when she was only going to make 80 grand. But now that she’s going to get 160 grand?? I’m all in!”

37. Life of the Party by Julie Mandel Folly & Hannah Murphy
Logline: Two teenage feminists struggle to create the perfect boyfriend, only to watch their experiment deteriorate as he succumbs to the ultimate perpetrator of casual high school misogyny: the football team.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “I just couldn’t get past all the technical errors, like the motivation, character inconsistency, the writers making things too easy for our heroes.”

36. The Boy Houdini by Matthew Tennant
Logline: When aspiring magician, Harry Houdini, discovers a mysterious puzzle-box, he must use his talent for illusion and escape to unlock the box’s powerful secrets and keep it out of the hands of a vengeful sorcerer.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “You can’t spell “movie” without “move.” A movie’s gotta move. A side quest THINKS it’s moving. It creates the ILLUSION of moving since your characters are going after something. But the main plot is stalled and therefore we feel stalled.”

35. Mega Action Hit by Sean Tidwell
Logline: After Hollywood’s leading action star hits his head on set and wakes up thinking he’s a real-life action hero, he embarks on an international mission to track down a real stolen nuke before it’s too late.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “Mega Action Hit is fun. But like a lot of these scripts, the fun is too empty. It’s not genuine fun. It’s the kind of fun you have passively watching TV while messing around on your computer. In other words, there’s not enough here for me to endorse it.”

34. Gather the Ashes by Vikash Shankar
Logline: Two young Indian brothers living in England head back to their dying grandmother’s home in a remote part of India only to learn that her house may be haunted.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “If you’re stuck in one location – which often happens with haunted house scripts – you need to move your plots along quicker because we’re going to get bored faster in contained locations. Characters sitting around is script ambien. So you need your plot to offset that.”

33. Goat by Zack Akers & Skip Bronkie
Logline: A promising first-round draft pick is invited to train at the private compound of the team’s legendary but aging quarterback. Over one week, the rising star witnesses the horrific lengths his hero will go to to stay at the top of his game.
Votes: 16 (Top 15)
From Review: “The script has its charms. I love the spec-y nature of it. Contained time frame. Low character count. Organic heavy conflict between the leads. Urgency. And the genre element makes it easier to sell. I was into all that. But the execution felt too basic and repetitive. Very repetitive.”

32. Weary Ride The Belmonts by Josh Corbin
Logline: After staging his death many years ago, an aging gunslinger is forced to reunite with his outlaw daughter during the dying days of the west.
Votes: 8 (low bottom half)
From Review: “There’s still 40 pages remaining in the script and we’re left to wonder, “Why are we still here? What’s left to figure out?” I guess there are some questions that need answering regarding why Ophelia hates her dad. But that’s the kind of question you want piggybacking on top of a bigger story goal. And you just ended your story goal.”

31. Undo by Will Simmons
Logline: A down-on-his-luck former getaway driver comes into possession of a mysterious watch that allows the user to go back in time by one minute. As he starts to uncover its uses and gets pulled into one last heist by his former crew, a dangerous group after the technology gets on his tail and will stop at nothing to get the watch back.
Votes: 8 (low bottom half)
From Review: “Let me think out loud here for a second. A minute ago, Benji was worried about some second-tier street thug maybe following Vince and figuring out where Benji lives. But Benji has no problems with a DEAD KGB AGENT IN HIS HOME?????!!! I’m thinking on the scale of “this is a problem,” that’s about a million times worse than a Latin King.”

30. Americano by Nico Bellamy & Chase Pestano
Logline: An everyday guy who accidentally starts working as a barista inside the CIA headquarters building gets lured into a spy mission by a beautiful secret agent, known only to him as Carmel Machiato.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I like “in over your head” comedy. You risk a little bit when you make your hero incompetent. If a protagonist is too dumb or too idiotic, the reader can rebel against them. Hubie Halloween comes to mind. But as long as he’s funny, we’ll forgive a lot of that incompetance.”

29. Who Made The Potato Salad? By Kyle Drew
Logline: A family’s Christmas dinner goes awry when a xenomorphic demon starts to duplicate and imitate each member of the family. What does it want? To show them their greatest fears.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of pack)
From Review: “I was ready to tap out after the first act. There were a lot of character introductions. A lot of dialogue that, because there was so much setup, was boring to read. I was worried this was going to be one of those scripts where we sit at a table the whole time and engage in endless dialogue. But then Bryan commits suicide. Which is followed by him coming back to life. And, all of a sudden, I found myself turning the pages with more energy.”

28. Let’s go Again by Colin Bannon
Logline: When her domineering director makes her film the same scene 148 times on the final night of an exhausting shoot, actress Annie Long must fight to keep her own sanity as she tries to decipher what is real, and what is part of his twisted game.
Votes: 13 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “I’m, self-admittedly, not a fan of descent-into-madness screenplays for one simple reason. The screenwriter never gets the line right between keeping the script understandable and the story crazy. They always bring the craziness and messiness into the writing itself so we’re not sure what’s going on. These scripts have to be understandable even if what’s going on in the story isn’t supposed to be understood. That’s a hard balance for even experienced writers to master. While Bannon’s tackling of the problem isn’t perfect, he does a pretty good job.”

27. What We Become by Amy Jo Johnson
Logline: A successful author/wife/mother plans a trip to a bucolic island to crack her next book and finds herself in a surprising situation.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “Sex scenes are tricky, to shoot as well as to write. Because if you’re too soft, they’re boring. If they’re too hard, they become exploitative and overwhelm the moment, pulling the reader out of the story. I thought Johnson wrote these perfectly. The scenes are sexy, slightly original, occasionally push the boundaries, and most importantly, remain authentic.”

26. Vitus by Julian Wayser
Logline: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time.”

25. Chatter by Chris Grillot
Logline: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “With that said, there’s a teensy bit more good to Chatter than bad. Like I always say, get the main characters right and that will act as deodorant for many of your script’s weaknesses. I felt that Grillot got the characters of Ceilia and Imani right. And then I always love when writers take a goofy idea and treat it really seriously. It always creates an unexpected tone.”

24. The Midnight Pool by Jonathan Easley
Logline: Burdened by the loss of his wife to a suicide cult, an embittered investigative journalist infiltrates an elite secret society, only to find something far more sinister.
Votes: 14 (Top 20)
From Review: “If you like absurdist stuff – David Lynch and those types of movies – you might dig this. It certainly has its charms. It just gets too messy.”

23. Court 17 by Elad Ziv (no review)
Logline: An over-the-hill tennis pro, trying to salvage her career, finds herself stuck playing the first round of the US Open over and over again against one of the top players in the world. The only way to stop the loop is to win the match, a seemingly impossible task due to how overmatched she is.
Votes: 22 (top 2)
Thoughts: I didn’t review this one because, as some of you know, I worked extensively with the writer on it. I couldn’t review it objectively no matter how hard I tried. Plus, when you work on a script, you only see the things that are wrong as opposed to what’s right. I did read the new draft though and I thought it was pretty good. Elad took the script in some new directions. But I can’t get over the fact that I thought this could be great. To me, it wasn’t just about a tennis match. It was a metaphor for life. Every day you keep getting knocked down and you have to get back up and keep fighting or give up. That’s what I wanted to capture in the script and I don’t think we ever got there.

22. Pure by Catherine Schetina
Logline: A young woman obsessed with eating healthy becomes convinced that all the food she puts in her body is rotting, leading to her having a meltdown at her sister’s wedding.
Votes: 25 (number 1 script)
From Review: “I like creepy obsession stories. We all feel like we’re close to being one of these people. We all have our unique obsessions. What would it take for them to become a legit medical condition? The line between the two is probably a lot smaller than we think.”

21. White Mountains by Becky Leigh & Mario Kyprianou
Logline: The famous 1961 UFO case of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who had a close encounter of the 4th kind with aliens on a remote highway.
Votes: 17 (Top 10)
From Review: “It’s a solid script, especially if you like this subject matter. I would’ve preferred more UFO geekery in the end than social commentary but that’s just me.”

20. Pikesville Sweep by Brendan McMugh
Logline: After a young, newly widowed janitor in a small mining village is unexpectedly elected Mayor, she navigates a new relationship with a mysterious man from the city and tries to determine how to use her new position of power to confront the corruption that has plagued the town for years.
Votes: 13 (Upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “Main character was great. Villain was great. Any time those two were in a scene together, I was on the edge of my seat. But nothing else in the script worked, unfortunately. So I can’t endorse this.”

19. The Demolition Expert by Colin Bannon
Logline: Blasting out of prison after being double-crossed by the Mastermind of a heist, a Demolition Expert uses his genius with explosives to enact revenge on the Caper Crew who set him up while simultaneously picking up the pieces of his personal life.
Votes: 8 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “This is clearly Bannon’s modern-day take on Speed and it’s probably how a modern-day version of Speed would look like. There wouldn’t just be one scenario (a bus that couldn’t drop below 50 mph). The social media generation needs more stimuli, which is what The Demolition Expert gives you. It entertains you with multiple bomb situations.”

18. The House in the Crooked Forest by Ian Shorr
Logline: A mother and her young son fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland are forced to take shelter from a blizzard in an isolated manor, where they discover the Nazis may be the least of their worries.
Votes: 10 (Lower middle of the pack)
From Review: You know what this script reminded me of?  Barbarian.  It’s like a 1942 World War 2 version of Barbarian, with its horror waiting in the innards of the house and its weird monsters waiting to make mincemeat out of the home’s guests. I could totally see Craig Zegger directing this.

17. Ravenswood by Evan Enderle
Logline: To save her friend, a maid in a decaying manor must unravel the secrets of its inhabitants while confronting spirits, her own terrifying abilities, and the very real horrors of Depression-era America lurking outside the door.
Votes: 10 (lower middle of the pack)
From Review: “This is DEFINITELY one of the better written scripts on the Black List. The writing is simple, descriptive, and, most importantly for a horror script, haunting. It feels professional right from the bump.”

16. Subversion by Andrew Ferguson
Logline: When her family is abducted, a disgraced submariner must pilot a narco submarine to its destination in less than eight hours or her husband and daughter will be killed.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “You wouldn’t be wrong to call this “Die Hard on a sub.” In fact, if the lead character was a 40 year old man and this spec was written in 1994 as opposed to 2023, I have no doubt it would’ve sold for 1.5 million dollars.”

15. Semper Maternus by Laura Kosann
Logline: On a private island off San Francisco, a nanny goes to work for a mother who is one of America’s most powerful tech entrepreneurs. Things slowly begin to devolve as the mother’s hyper-monitoring and surveillance become suffocating.
Votes: 11 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “I have to say, I LOOVVVEED the first half of this script. It was everything I wanted my contained thriller on an island screenplay to be. It was very much a female version of Ex Machina. I’m sure that was a big inspiration for Kossan.”

14. 42.6 Years by Seth Reiss
Logline: After waking up from a failed experimental lifesaving procedure in which he was cryogenically frozen for 42.6 years, a young man realizes he wants his ex-girlfriend back. He’ll have to overcome the fact that while he hasn’t aged a day, she’s lived an entire life without him.
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “It was probably inevitable that I would like 42.6 years seeing as it nails one of my concept prerequisites: whatever genre you write in, come up with an idea that allows you to explore it from a fresh angle. Here, we have a romantic comedy whose premise sets up a scenario whereby a 30-something man is dating a 70-something woman.”

13. Below by Geoff Tock & Greg Weidman
Logline: A lonely bounty hunter trying to improve his life goes around LA killing secret monsters hiding inside human bodies. His job gets a lot more complicated when he’s forced to team up with his first partner.
Votes: 6 (bottom 10)
From Review: “Something happens to this script when Boxer (the older female co-lead) arrives. Because, before Boxer, this was a cold sad depressing world. She then comes in with this enthusiasm that not only gives Our Man (the hero) hope – it gives US hope! I loved that she was older, which is a different kind of dynamic than we’re used to with these pairings. I loved that all she wanted to do was be friends with Boxer. And she wouldn’t let him off the friend hook.”

12. Colors of Authority by Kevin Sheridan
Logline: Based on a true story, a young Los Angeles Sheriff’s dream job sours when he realizes that the department he serves in is mired in corruption and a systemic culture of moral depravity. Based on a true story.
Votes: 14 (upper middle of the pack)
From Review: “I would be shocked if this didn’t become a movie with a big director and some heavy-hitting actors. It’s got that “Departed” aroma wafting off of it. And Kevin is really good at placing his hero in these impossible-to-navigate situations.”

11. Ripple by Max Taxe
Logline: A relationship is put to the ultimate test when time ripples keep reinventing one of the partners, forcing the relationship to begin again… and again… and again… and again… and again…
Votes: 7 (Bottom 20)
From Review: “Once we’re in the throes of over a hundred ripples, we start to feel the desperation of Miles, as well as the realization that he may have to come to terms with letting Sadie go.”

10. Madden by Cambron Clark
Logline: After being forced into retirement by the Oakland Raiders, fiery former NFL head coach John Madden teams up with a mild-mannered Harvard programmer to rewrite his fading legacy by building the world’s first football video game. Based on a true story.
Votes: 19 (Top 10)
From Review: “That’s when this script shined the brightest – when Madden was in the room with these dorks, who were all way more interested in Klorgan the Elf than an option shovel pass, trying to find a common language to get this game completed.”

9. Beachwood by Briggs & Wes Watkins
Logline: Shunned by elite society as a member of the gig economy, a sociopathic dog walker infiltrates an exclusive L.A. community with designs of reaching the top of the neighborhood’s social ladder.
Votes: 20 (Top 5)
From Review: This script is the most unpredictable script in the Top 10 of the Black List. It’s weird. It’s fun. Even though it has problems, it does leave an impression on you.

8. Sang Froid by Michael Basha
Logline: After a botched delivery of fresh blood, a world weary vampire and a pregnant nurse team up to rob a hospital of their supply.
Votes: 18
From Review: Sang Froid is the unofficial “grown up” sequel to Let the Right One In. It has that same tone but it feels more adult. I thought it was great. And I think it’s an awesome example of how to write a spec screenplay. A few characters. Sparse description. Keep the plot moving. This is what all of you should be doing!

7. Pumping Black by Haley Bartels
Logline: A desperate cyclist and his charismatic new team doctor concoct a dangerous training program in order to win the Tour de France. But as the race progresses and jealous teammates, suspicious authorities, and the racer’s own paranoia close in, they must take increasingly dark measures to protect both his secret and his lead.
Votes: 22 (Top 5)
From Review: “I love stuff like this. I love when you add multiple consequences and those additional consequences get bigger each time. At first, it’s just getting kicked off the team. Then, it’s possibly getting caught by the doping federation. Then, it’s death!”

6. Black Kite by Dan Bulla
Logline: After a devastating wildfire wipes out a small California town, a teenage girl is missing and presumed dead. A year later, an obsessive mother and cynical arson investigator begin to suspect that she’s still alive…and in the clutches of a predator.
Votes: 6 (Bottom 10)
From Review: “I thought I was on page 60 and it turned out I was on page 85! Usually, it’s the opposite. I think I’m on page 60 and I’m on page 20. That’s screenwriting code for: this script was awesome.”

5. Wild by Michael Burgner
Logline: A werewolf living on a remote farm with her older sister takes in a thief on the run just 72 hours before the next full moon.
Votes: 13 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “We’ve all heard of the “Meet Cute.” But how much more interesting is it when your male and female leads are introduced via a “Meet Mean?” Liz drives up to Nick, asks him a few questions, lets him know there’s no way she’s letting him in her car, then drives off. I find that WAY MORE interesting than if they had an instant connection.”

4. The Pack by Rose Gilroy
Logline: A documentary crew in contention at the Emmys for their film about wild Alaskan wolves is hiding several big secrets about their troubled 3 month shoot.
Votes: 10 (middle of the pack)
From Review: “When it comes to mysteries, nothing really matters unless the big reveal is great. But The Pack taught me something new about reveals. It doesn’t have a show-stopper “Sixth Sense” reveal. The reveal is character-driven. Which actually makes it even more impactful.”

3. Himbo by Jason Hellerman
Logline: A male stripper in Arizona who’s sleeping with his boss’s wife is propositioned by her to kill her hubby and run away together but things get complicated when they learn about the boss’s improbable money-making venture.
Votes: 7 votes (bottom 20)
From Review: “I already liked this script. But the second this random gold cave entered the equation, I loved it. I have never encountered something like that in a script like this before. Getting a WTF moment into your script that feels believable yet not too random is incredibly challenging. But when you nail it, like Himbo does, it takes your script up to a whole new level.”

2. Clementine by David L. Williams (newsletter review – to sign up for my newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com)
Logline: Set in real time, a Colombian mother barely escapes a pawn shop shootout and goes on the run from her violent ex-husband, a terrifying mob boss, and a bloodthirsty hitwoman sent to collect an overdue debt, all while trying to keep her diabetic daughter safe.
Votes: 12 (upper middle of pack)
From Review: “The script is just freaking RELENTLESS.”

1.Dying for You by Travis Braun
Logline: A low-level worker on a spaceship run by a dark god must steal the most powerful weapon in the universe to save his workplace crush.
Votes: 18 (Top 10)
Thoughts: Wow! Wow wow wow wow wow. How good was this script? It’s been an entire year and I STILL remember it better than any other script on the list, even some scripts I read as little as two weeks ago. It’s so funny. The tone is perfect. The story is fun. The world-building is great. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like The Princess Bride but set 200 years later in space and everyone is a lot cooler. Whichever young actors sign on to this movie are going to become superstars. No script made me feel better than this one. Wow!

If I’m being honest, there are only six scripts that I would say every screenwriter should read from this list. Those are the top 6 from my rankings. Every script below that feels more and more amateurish. They still have good moments. But they all have issues. The difference with the top 6 is that the stories are so compelling, you get lost in them and forget you’re reading a script. That’s the true mark of a great script – when the reader is no longer aware they’re reading it.

Congratulations to the biggest riser, Black Kite, which crawled out of the bottom of the heap to get into the Top 5. And also, Himbo, which was in the bottom 20 and finished in the Top 5. Biggest faller was A Guy Goes to Therapy. Jambusters and Baby Boom also faltered. Make sure to share your favorite scripts from the list in the comments section. Also, if there are any scripts I haven’t read yet that you thought were great, let me know!