I hate when Hollywood promotes terrible films. And today, I’m speaking my truth!

I’m tempted to spend the next 1500 words unloading on the atrocity of a movie that was The Secret Agent. Let me explain why. People were trying to tell me this movie was good. People were hyping this movie up. But all I needed to do was see the poster, see 10 seconds of the trailer, and I was willing to bet my life that this movie would be terrible.

You know how I knew that? Because I’ve seen this song and dance for decades now. An indie distributor picks up a movie specific to another country where the production value is competent enough that you can distribute it in the US and not get laughed at. They then rev their spin machine up, throw out words like, “masterpiece,” “brilliant,” and “auteur director,” and I’m pretty sure the trades are co-opted into this wool-over-the-eyes tomfoolery, resulting in high RT scores, convincing everyone under the sun that this movie is amazing.

What’s The Secret Agent about?

I DON’T KNOW!

I watched 50 minutes of it and I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE MOVIE IS ABOUT.

“You can’t judge a movie if you’ve only seen 50 minutes of it, Carson.”

YES YOU CAN.

IF THE AUDIENCE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT A MOVIE IS ABOUT AFTER 50 MINUTES, THAT MOVIE SUCKS.

One of the truest screenwriting rules there is: SET UP WHAT YOUR MOVIE IS ABOUT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

This is such basic screenwriting advice, it’s on the verge of no longer needing to be taught. Cause people just know. Duh, tell the audience what your movie is about.

The Secret Agent starts off with a decent scene. It’s 1970s Brazil and a man is getting his car filled up at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. There’s a dead body covered up with cardboard off to the side. The gas station attendant says the man was a thief who tried to rob the place a few days ago so they shot him and the police haven’t come to pick up the body yet.

Then a cop car shows up and very methodically inspects our hero’s car. The scene is tense. It’s suspenseful. I thought, “Maybe I’ll be wrong about this movie. Maybe it will be good.”

Nope. It’s all downhill from here.

We then follow this random dude, our main character, driving this car across Brazil. He shows up at some random collection of apartments and starts staying there. Why? No idea. It takes the writer 20 minutes to, literally, set up arriving at an apartment.

Oh, you know what comes with the apartment? A cat with two heads. I’m not kidding. This is a serious movie by the way. It wants to be taken very very very seriously.

Cat with two heads though! Gotta throw that cat with two heads in there.

Why?

Because that’s the kind of random bullshit hack screenwriters think is good writing. Throw in random nonsense that does nothing for the story.

By the way, quick screenwriting tip. This is the easiest way to judge a creative choice as a screenwriter: Does it do anything for the story? This did nothing. That’s how you know it’s a garbage choice.

Then our hero goes and retrieves his son, who he hasn’t seen in a long time. It’s not explained who’s taking care of his son. Maybe it’s our hero’s parents? This screenwriter has no interest in helping us understand even the basic beats of what’s going on in this story.

Seeing his son again is treated like a really heavy deal.

BUT NOBODY TELLS US WHY!!!

God forbid the writer, Hacky McHackems The Screenwriting Wonderboy, share information that might help us enjoy the story.

Randomly, we cut to another plot about a shark with a human leg in it. No, I’m not kidding. It’s a shark story now. Then we come back and hang with our hero as he lounges around at his apartment complex, carelessly stripping away minutes that could be used for, you know, SETTING UP AN ACTUAL STORY.

Oddly, his son isn’t with him anymore. It’s never explained why. We literally just had this super intense scene where he comes and gets his long lost son back.  But now he’s banging some chick up in Apartment 2C and I guess Little Johnny doesn’t matter anymore.

We’re getting to about the 45 minute mark of the movie and NOTHING HAS HAPPENED! Just complete randomness with no character goals set up or overarching story set up. Atrocious screenwriting on full display.

Then, without any context, we cut to our hero…. WHO NOW WORKS AT A NEWSPAPER! How did this happen? Nobody tells us. Actually, it’s worse than that. We just see him at some work and are expected to know he’s a journalist now and this is a newspaper.

You don’t move a character to a brand new location in life and then just cut to him working. You have to SHOW HIM GET THE JOB, lol. There has to be a progression so that we understand a) what kind of job he wants, b) why does he want that job, c) what are his options, d) how difficult is it to get the job? e) show a freaking interview and the aftermath so we can build suspense around whether he gets the job or not. You know, basic drama.

This just cuts to him working. I didn’t even know this guy was a writer until 50 minutes into the film!

You’re probably wondering, at this point, why I’m so angry.

Here’s why.

Because I spend my life trying to teach people how to be good writers. It consumes most of the minutes in my day.

So when Hollywood unleashes this trash on us and brainwashes young ignorant writers into believing that this is good storytelling, it pisses me off. Because now you have young writers believing that randomly introducing cats with two heads into an extremely serious drama is great writing. And that writer is going to go off and write a bunch of garbage and be confused why nobody likes his screenplays. And he’ll give up because nobody ever taught him the correct way to write.

With that in mind, let’s try and use this failure of a film for good. Let’s at least learn a lesson here. So, here’s the big lesson I want you to take away from this film.

SET UP WHAT YOUR STORY IS ABOUT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

The more “Hollywood” a film is (by that I mean: a film made by a major studio) the earlier that setup should be. This means that if you’re writing a spec script, you want it to be very clear what your movie is about as soon as possible. This doesn’t mean you have to state the exact plot. But we should have a very good idea of what the movie is about within ten minutes.

We know we’re going to have people on an island full of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park within ten minutes.

You have more leeway with setup time in an indie-type script. But you’d be surprised at how quickly you’ve known what your favorite indie movies were about when you first watched them. It was likely within 15 minutes. And, at the very latest, it would’ve been 25 minutes in, by the end of the first act.

That’s because if you push the setup of your movie past the first act, it’s the equivalent of a drunk guy telling you a story at a party and they never get to the point. They’re telling you about all these little things (a shark with a leg in it, a cat with two heads, and then I was at this gas station and there was this dead body in front of my car covered up by cardboard) but you don’t know what it is they’re trying to say. This movie, The Secret Agent, is the cinematic equivalent of the drunk babbling party guy.

Now for those of you who will inevitably tell me that if I just kept watching, I would’ve gotten to the “good part.” Try telling a producer that the next time you don’t reveal the point of your story until page 50. “Well, Mr. Producer, if you just would’ve kept reading, you would’ve gotten to the good part!”

Yeah, tell me how that goes. Cause I don’t think it’s going to go like this: “Ohhhhhhh! You mean the good part came after the first hour!!?? Why didn’t tell me! If I would’ve known that, I would’ve kept reading!”

My final message to use is this: Don’t let Hollywood brainwash you. They try to tell you that every movie is great. They’re lying the majority of the time. And it’s up to you to use your own discernment to evaluate these movies. Don’t listen to other people. Pay attention to how the story is affecting you. Pay attention to if it’s propulsive or if it’s wandering. Pay attention to how the main character makes you feel and if you care about their journey. If it’s providing good feelings in those areas, it’s a good movie. If not, it’s probably bad, like The Secret Agent.

How to write a bland screenplay

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When eco-terrorists attack Los Angeles’ power grid and orchestrate a cascading citywide blackout, a jaded former Secret Service agent and a brilliant but unassuming engineer must fight their way across the metropolis – in the dark – to restore power before the city collapses.
About: This script made last year’s Black List. Kevin Yang made a movie called The Puppeteers last year, which is about the hidden world of transnational repression. Not sure what that means. It looks like Yang will also direct this film.
Writer: Kevin Yang
Details: 113 pages

My new plea to Black List writers? Hire me.

Not for my sake.

For your sake.

I can save you so much embarrassment from some of these really basic script errors, errors that are destroying your script from the inside out. I don’t know how you write a script about the fall of LA that feels this neutral, this devoid of energy.

32 year old Riley Smith is a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power junior engineer who’s inspecting some sort of electrical glitch at LAX which almost causes two planes to crash into each other. This near crash is the height of the script. It’s all downhill from here.

After doing some investigating, she sees that there’s a similar electrical problem at the Culver Electric Station, which is in a different part of the city. The problem is, none of her bosses think this is an issue. But she senses the connection could lead to a much bigger electrical issue across the city.

When LAX’s head of security, Magnus, learns of Riley’s theory, he tells her to join him because he’s headed over to a dam in the Hills which he believes might be linked to this electrical issue. The two head over there and find out that the dam has been messed with and that someone may be orchestrating these small infrastructure invasions to unleash a bigger attack on Los Angeles.

Indeed, Riley and Magnus run into a dude named Drake who is the “Hans Gruber” of this plan. When they ask Drake what the hell he’s doing, he tells them that he wants to show Los Angeles for what it really is, or something, and then vanishes. But he leaves behind henchman, who are constantly attacking Riley and Magnus.

Riley and Magnus continue to run around the city to prevent an attack of which we never really understand and are never clear on how bad it will be. The end.

Blackout is a good example of a script that shows what happens if you don’t know the basics. And, by basics, I’m not talking about likable main characters, start scenes late and leave them early, get to your second act on page 25.

There are a secondary set of basics that are just beyond the primary set. And here’s one of them…

Your stakes can’t be general. They have to be specific. The big thing that haunts this script is that it’s implied that something terrible is happening. But we don’t know exactly what it is, and, therefore, we don’t care.

First, we’re told the power is about to go out. Well, I’ve been in LA when the power is out. It’s actually one of the easiest cities to survive a lack of power in because the weather is rarely too hot or too cold here. So, all I’ve ever experienced during a power outage is inconvenience. If this version of a power outage is different, it’s your job as the writer to tell us that. It’s your job to lay all of that information out for us.

Having Riley and Magnus run around LA like chickens with their heads cut off is not enough to keep us engaged. We need to know what a successful mission for them looks like. Or a failed mission, for that matter. Nobody tells us what either of those things look like so we don’t care what happens.

Compare this to Independence Day. That movie is not the greatest. Like, its wacky cheesy tone nearly destroys it. But do you know why it works? Because the stakes are clear. Once we see the aliens blow up the White House, we know that if we don’t solve this issue, we’re goners.

James Cameron, who’s probably the best at writing giant stories, shows you how to do this correctly at the beginning of his opus, “Titanic.” In the present-day storyline, he has a computer tech take us through a simulation of how the Titanic ship went down. It lays out how the water gets in, where it gets in, and how it eventually overwhelms the ship. That way, later on, when we see people in the lower decks, we know, because of that computer simulation we saw, that they’re dead if they don’t find a way out of their soon.

This script didn’t give us anything like that. There’s one vague monologue early on that warns of terrible things that happen during a city-wide blackout. But, again, it’s not specific enough for us to understand the stakes. In a power outage, things get worse and worse the more time the power is down. But, how long before you have serious deaths? Cause I think, based on my own experiences, we’re talking weeks. Well then what’s the rush? It seems the rush is to prevent the inconvenient type of power outage. The kind where you’re mad your wireless is out for a few hours. Not the killer type. So, again, I ask: What are the stakes here? Cause they don’t seem that bad.

The script is also riddled with a lot of techy talk that we don’t understand. “We’re observing de-sync between automated signals and field status. Latency like this is unusual but we’re trying to figure it out.” “Something upstream took the power I redirected. And it’s not stopping.”

These create the illusion that something important is happening. But what good is it if we don’t understand what it means? I’ve already established that the stakes are unclear. Now we have unclear exposition. So it’s a double-dose of ambiguity, which is going to send us further into a state of boredom.

On top of that, your main character pairing has vanilla-as-hell chemistry. They both feel like characters we’ve seen before. There’s nothing unique about either of them. There’s no big likable quality for us to latch onto. And so, together, they’re just going through the paces of your basic “conflict-filled” coupling. Which is one of the quickest ways to bore a reader.

How do you prevent this? Go watch Project Hail Mary. One of the more common notes I give on a screenplay consultation is to GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS PERSONALITY. It’s strange the way writers think. They’re so focused on making their characters a product of the plot moving forward that they forget to stop and ask who this person is when there is no plot. What’s their baseline day to day personality? Are they fun, sarcastic, witty, weird?

Go watch the trailer for Send Help. Those two have PERSONALITY.

We’ve already got stakes problems. We’ve already got exposition problems. Now the people taking us through the story aren’t that interesting. Nor do they have any chemistry. I mean, at that point, I’m not sure anything can save the script.

The other day, I said that it would behoove young action screenwriters to go back to those 80s action classics, like Commando, and watch them to see how they were constructed. Because you learn things. And one of those things is: BE CLEAR ABOUT THE ACTUAL SETUP OF THE MOVIE so that we understand what the main character is doing, why he’s doing it, and where he is in relation to achieving or failing the objective at every stage of the journey.

And from there, you just make things as hard on him as possible so he has to overcome a lot of obstacles. I talked about the importance of saying “NO” to your character and how that creates better scenes.

There’s this really fun scene in Commando around the middle of the movie. Matrix and Cindy figure out the island Matrix’s daughter is being held on and come up with a plan to get there. But Matrix says, “First we need to go shopping.” And he goes to this giant closed gun store, breaks in, and starts loading up on all these insane weapons. It’s a fun montage. We’re into it because we can already imagine Matrix going crazy with these weapons.

And then, out of nowhere, you hear, “FREEZE!” And it’s a bunch of cops. And Matrix is arrested. It’s the ultimate “NO” to your character. He’s not able to do what he wants to do. We don’t get any “No’s” in this script. Sure, there are a few bad guys who cause some bumps in the road to Riley and Magnus’s investigation. But never anything that makes us say, “Oh no, how are they going to get out of this?”

When Matrix got arrested and placed in the back of an armored police vehicle, I literally had no idea how he was going to get out.

I don’t know, guys. Reading these scripts these days is frustrating. Most writers give you what I call “I finished it” scripts. These are scripts where the writer wants validation just for finishing the script. That should never be the goal of the writer. Nobody gets a gold star for finishing a script. You get the gold star for writing a great story. Finishing the script should almost feel like it’s getting in the way because your story is so damn awesome that nobody wanted it to end.

This script is an “I finished it” script. It wants accolades for getting to page 114 and not embarrassing itself. That is not, nor should it ever be, the criteria for writing a screenplay.

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

What I learned: Readers respond to the personal, not the general. If Commando was about a guy taking down bad guys because it’s the right thing to do, nobody would’ve cared. It was about saving his daughter from the bad guys. So we cared. Similarly, if Grace and Rocky aren’t trying to save each other in Project Hail Mary, nobody would’ve cared. Blackout could’ve used that tip before it was written. Instead of just trying to save a bunch of faceless souls in Los Angeles (of which, as I mentioned, we don’t even know if it’s that many), try to save one soul who we actually care for.

BLOOD & INK DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED ONE MONTH!!!

Very important news for all you Blood & Ink Contest writers. I knew a lot of you would take that script right up to the last second, changing scenes, adding subplots, erasing characters, all with just days to go. When you do that, your script is usually bad. So, now you have an extra month to smooth all those last second changes out. If you’ve already sent me your draft, you have the option of sending in a newer draft by the new deadline date. So, here we are…

I need: Your Blood & Ink screenplay
When: Sunday April 5th Now Tuesday May 5th (Cinco De Mayo!!!)
E-mail me at: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Include: Title, Genre, Logline, and a PDF of the screenplay
Subject Line Should Read: Blood & Ink Final Entry

Now on to our regularly scheduled programming.

I’m so insanely thrilled to see Project Hail Mary doing well. It’s important that when Hollywood makes a movie the right way and it’s good, that it be celebrated. Because as many mistakes as Hollywood makes, the one thing you can count on them to do is emulate their successes. So, with this movie doing so well, a lot of people in the industry are studying why that is and hopefully learning a few lessons.

I have a theory that’s a little ‘out there’ about how Project Hail Mary was able to separate itself, quality-wise, from, literally, the last 500 movies the studios have released. The theory? Hollywood has learned how to game the Rotten Tomatoes system.

Here’s what I mean by that. Hollywood knows that they just have to get an 80% RT score to give themselves a shot at the box office. They also know that to get a positive critic score from any one reviewer, you just have to make something that they like more than they dislike. So, a C+ movie. If you get 80% of critics giving you a C+, that’s still an 80% RT score.

So they’ve basically learned how to make the perfect C+ movie. Likable hero. A certain number of set pieces. A story that has some energy behind it.

The problem with that is, the formula taps out at C+. If you want to make an A+ movie, you have to put a lot more work into the script (be willing to try something risky, fail, and start over, be willing to write more drafts to strengthen weaknesses, etc). You gotta take some chances. You have to be willing to risk being terrible to be great. I mean, if they would’ve botched the Rocky character – which was, by no means, a slam dunk – this movie would’ve fallen apart.

I believe that the reason Project Hail Mary was awesome was that, unlike all the other movies in Hollywood right now, the creators weren’t interested in an RT proof C+ movie. They wanted to make a great movie.

You know how I know this movie’s doing well? This week, half a dozen random people I talked to brought up Project Hail Mary. “Hey, have you seen Project Hail Mary? What’d you think?” In this day and age, that’s shocking. Cause movies are no longer at the top of the pop culture food chain. Yet something about this film is breaking through. And now that we see its amazing hold through its second weekend, we know that it’s officially that word-of-mouth hit.

Speaking of good movies, a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the unmade screenplay for Commando 2. Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming back to some of his older franchises so reviewing it felt right. I thought it was an odd screenplay but a good one. And it got me thinking about the original film and how much I loved it. I hadn’t seen it in 30+ years so when the thought of revisiting it came up, I figured the older more sophisticated version of myself today would think it sucked. And my positive memory of the film would be ruined forever.

But curiosity got the best of me and I finally rented it.

I can now say that THAT MOVIE IS EFFING AWESOME.

It’s awesome.

It really is.

And what shocked me the most was the screenwriting. They wrote scripts different back then, specifically action scripts. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with action scripts these days but these modern-day action writers would be doing themselves a big favor to go back to movies like Commando to reacquaint themselves with the basics.

One screenwriting tip stood out more than any other for this movie and I would argue it’s the second biggest reason (behind Arnold of course) this movie was so awesome.

What’s the tip?

SAY ‘NO’ TO YOUR HERO AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

It took me 15 years in the screenwriting world to learn this lesson. But it’s a powerful one. The word “yes” is your enemy as a screenwriter. The word “no” is your biggest ally. Every time someone says ‘yes’ to your hero, you make things easy for them. Every time someone says ‘no’ to your hero, you make them have to work harder.

Let’s say that we’re following a “Superbad” group of teens. There’s a huge party tonight where the hero’s dream girl is going to be and they’ve been told that, to get in, they have to bring a case of beer. So they come up with a plan, go through the elaborate process of securing a fake ID, head to the liquor store, the oldest one goes in to buy the case, puts the beer on the counter, and takes out the cash to pay for it.

As the writer, you now have a choice. The checker can either accept the money and let him buy the beer or he can say, “No.” If he says yes, the plot moves steadily along and you can get them closer to the party.

But if he says “no,” things get WAY MORE INTERESTING. “No, sorry. You’re not old enough,” and he snatches the fake ID away. “Now, get out of here.” Well, now what does the group do? More importantly, what do we feel as the reader? We’re thrown into disarray. We’re unsettled. How the hell are they going to get into the party now??? That uncertainty is like crack to a reader and has them way more engaged than if the checker simply allowed him to buy the beer.

The reason Commando is so awesome is because the entire screenplay is one “No” after another.

The plot of the movie is actually more clever than I remembered. Bad guys kidnap former special ops commander John Matrix’s (Arnold’s) daughter. They tell him that they’ll kill her unless he goes to this South American country and assassinates a president there that they need dead.

They put Matrix on this commercial flight with one of their guys accompanying him but Matrix, in an amazing scene that still holds up today, has Matrix killing the bad guy, then escaping from the plane, jumping out at the last second. Matrix knows that the second that plane lands in South America, it will be relayed to the bad guys that Matrix isn’t there and they will kill his daughter. The plane lands in 11 hours so that’s how much time Matrix has to find and save his daughter.

GSU before GSU was en vogue!

Matrix forces his way into an off-duty flight attendant’s (Cindy) car and she ends up staying with him during this whole revenge plan.

There’s a great example of “The No Rule” in the scene following Matrix’s escape from the plane. Matrix kidnaps Cindy and her car, and they secretly follow another bad guy, Sully, who’d been tasked with making sure Matrix left on the plane. Cindy is kicking and screaming the whole time, with Matrix trying to calm her down.

They follow Sully to a mall, where he’s meeting someone, and Matrix realizes the place is too high profile to confront Sully face to face. So he tells Cindy that she needs to go to Sully, put the moves on him, and try to get him to a quiet place, where Matrix can confront him.

One thing you have to understand about “The No Rule” is that the word ‘no’ isn’t just a word characters can say. It’s a word YOU CAN SAY to your characters.

So, we watch Cindy head across the mall to the restaurant that Sully has entered. Now, I want you to see this moment through the eyes of a screenwriter writing the scene. If Cindy does what Matrix says and convinces Sully she’s into him and gets Sully into, say, a bathroom, where Matrix confronts him, THAT’S THE ‘YES’ VERSION OF THIS SCENE.

The ‘NO’ version is what we get instead. The second Cindy walks in the restaurant, she sees a cop and hurries over to him and says, “There’s a man out there who kidnapped me. Please stop him.” Notice how our heart sinks in this moment. Matrix just got the ‘NO’ as opposed to the ‘YES.’

And notice what happens after. The cop calls the other cops in the mall, tells them to close in on Matrix, a dozen cops move in on Matrix from every side and HOLY FRICKING COW we now have a scene that’s A THOUSAND TIMES more interesting than had Cindy done exactly what Matrix asked. I don’t even have to tell you what happens next in this scene and I can hear from inside of my computer how much you want to know.

So, why do writers write ‘yes’ so much then?

Because ‘yes’ is always easier on the writer. If you write ‘yes,’ you don’t have to write this big elaborate complex scene of John Matrix having to escape 12 cops in the middle of a giant mall in the middle of the day. So, your inclination is always to write ‘yes.’ Cause that inner writer wants to take the easiest route.

If you’re at all an action guy, rent this movie tonight. It’s really good. More importantly, study how many times the writer says ‘no’ to the main character. Even the subtle times. There’s this moment right after the mall chaos where Matrix is chasing Sully in the parking lot and gets in front of his car. And we’re thinking, “He can jump in this car and grab Sully now.” But then Sully bowls him over with the car, sending Matrix reeling off to the side. That’s a ‘no’ moment. Cause you could’ve said ‘yes’ and got him in the car where he would’ve been able to take down Sully. But by saying ‘no,’ the sequence becomes a lot more interesting.

Go through your current script right now, see where you’re saying ‘yes’ and, in a key moment, say ‘no’ instead. Watch that scene come alive.

Tip #13!

You will not get sceeewriting tips like this anywhere else on the internet. That’s why Scriptshadow is the best. You’ve got a dude reading thousands of scripts who sees real-life writing patterns every day and learns what works and what doesn’t then shares it with you.

ENJOY!

1) A good concept makes writing a script so much easier – A good concept doesn’t just get you more script requests. It actually makes writing your script easier because a good concept informs structure, scenes, and direction. Project Hail Mary gives us that clear accessible goal of saving the galaxy. Consider the alternative, writing this concept: a famous musician battling insomnia and a mental breakdown during a tour, is drawn into a dark, surreal odyssey after meeting a mysterious fan (Hurry Up Tomorrow). The latter concept has you lost, unsure, desperately trying to come up with logical scenes that move the story forward.

2) Twists are sexy, but they’re often fool’s gold – For every great end-of-script twist I read, I read 99 terrible ones. A good twist is one of the hardest things to pull off in screenwriting as it requires you to lie to the audience for the entire movie. And if you’re lying to the audience, you’re hiding so many things that can make your characters richer, make your scenes clearer, make your plot snappier. I would stay away from twists unless you have a whopper of one that you know works perfectly.

3) Keep your prose lean but descriptive – If you’re verbose and descriptive, it’s too much. If you’re lean and sparse, it’s too little.

4) Many scripts start strong then get messy – Writers become obsessed with their first act, going back to it again and again to make it perfect, then give 1/8th the amount of commitment to the rest of the script. I can’t convey to you how many scripts I’ve read that started off great then got messier with every ten pages that passed.

5) If you’re writing for studios, write a likable main character. If you’re writing for indies, write an anti-hero main character – Never do the opposite.

6) A day in the life of your hero – Open a new document and write down what happens in every single hour of your hero’s life on a typical day. I promise you you will learn new things about your character that you never knew and those things will inform the character in new ways that make them feel more real.

7) Give your hero one legitimate negative trait and your villain one legitimate positive one – Most characters are straightforward and boring. This little trick automatically makes your characters more complex.

8) Figure out the thing in your script that’s a refrigerator time machine, then upgrade it – As I love to remind you guys, the most memorable car in movie history, the Delorean in Back to the Future, was once a refrigerator in early drafts. That change resulted in several of the most memorable sequences in the history of movies.  Some would say it turned that movie into a classic.  There’s something in your script right now that is the equivalent of the refrigerator time machine. Figure out what it is, and find a way to upgrade it to a Delorean.

9) Reward characters who stand out, execute characters who don’t – We often go into scripts believing that “this” character will be a standout or that “that” character isn’t going to be important. But then you start writing and something changes. The awesome character turns out to be a dud and the side-dude ends up being awesome. Poor writers stay the course, trying to save the character they originally loved, while marginalizing the one that’s working.  Good writers realize that they’ve struck gold and change course, giving the overlooked character a featured role.

10) Come at an old genre in a new way – It’s an oldie but a goodie because it’s one of the most reliable ways to write a standout script. This is what Zach Cregger did with Weapons.

11) Place your hero in as many scenes as possible that force them to make difficult choices – We love watching characters who have to make a hard choice. And when I say a hard choice, I mean a choice that we, ourselves, wouldn’t be able to easily make. To be clear, if the choice is even a 55/45 type of choice, it won’t work. It must be exactly 50/50.

12) Give at least one character in every scene a goal, and make that goal as big as you can get away with – I promise you that if you do this, your scenes will read a lot better. Most scenes falter because nobody in the scene wants something and, even if they do, the thing they want isn’t big enough for us to care.

13) If there’s a shit-ton going on in your story, you need to add a hand-holder character – A lot of writers write complex plots with tons of characters and tons of subplots, then never hold our hand during the process. As a result, we’re already confused by page 30. Enter the “hand-holder,” a character designed to ask questions of the other characters and/or remind them of the current objectives so that we’re always up to date on what’s going on. See Bradley Cooper’s character in The Hangover. He spends most of the running time reminding everyone what it is they’re supposed to be doing right now and why.

14) If you need to cut pages, cut that subplot that, deep down, you know isn’t working – People get attached to subplots that add little to the overall story. But if pages need to be cut, cutting a 4 out of 10 subplot can easily erase 10 pages from your screenplay.

15) If you have to bulk intro a bunch of characters at once, give them highly distinctive names – If you bulk intro (introduce 5-10 characters in a span of two pages) there is literally no way we’re remembering all of them. So the trick you want to use is to make each name very distinct and, if possible, representative of that character (Seamus for the geek, Rocco for the stud). Some writers find this to be below them. Well, good luck to you when you bring a key character back 20 pages later and the reader has no idea who they are.  Which happens ALL THE TIME when I’m reading.

16) Don’t write a low-concept or no-concept idea unless your character writing is literally at an A+ level – Writing something Low concept (Sentimental Value) or no concept (Sorry, Baby) is like showing up at a glitzy Hollywood party dressed in a t-shirt and sweats. But if you have the charm and personality to be the life of the party, you can make it work. Same thing with screenplays. These low concepts get NO SCRIPT REQUESTS. But if you write amazing memorable captivating interesting deep characters, then the tiny portion of people who do read your script will fall in love with it and recommend it to others. But even if the characters are only B or B+, it will never be enough to override a low or no-concept idea.  What’s “A+ character writing?”  Mike White.

17) “And then, things got worse” – This phrase will make your screenplay awesome. Every ten pages, say that line to yourself, and then make it true in your script. Keep making things worse and worse for your hero. The harder they have to fight to claw their way to victory, the more we’re going to love them.

18) Win the reader over – I think most writers try to write something good. But I don’t think good is good enough. Instead, I want you to imagine a tired overworked reader reading your script at the end of the day. Starting with your very first scene, I want you to write to win that reader over. Watch your script come alive when you do this.

19) One of your opening three scenes should establish what’s missing in your hero’s life — A story is ultimately about your hero growing. They can’t grow if we don’t understand what’s missing in their life. And since you want to establish a character as quickly as possible, understanding what’s missing in their life should be conveyed within your first few scenes.

20) Cliches are fine as long as you write them with authenticity – Dude who gives his character a crack addiction to add “depth” but has no experience with drugs and does no extensive research to figure out how to write that character believably? That character will come off as cliche. Dude who was once a crack addict himself who writes his protagonist as a crack-addict and goes into all the deep-cut shit about what being a crack addict is REALLY LIKE? That character will never come off as cliche.

Yo!  Want some amazing feedback on your screenplay?  Let me help you out!  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and let’s get your screenplay in world class shape!

Genre: Adventure/Thriller
Premise: When a husband and wife research team travel to a remote African jungle to look for a real-life Yeti, the biggest problem turns out not to be the monster, but their mutual best friend scientist, who is secretly in love with the wife.
About: This script finished in the top 15 of last year’s Black List.
Writer: Paul Levitt
Details: 109 pages

Pattinson for Noah?

Today’s script is going to teach you something new.

Which is that some subject matters are not meant to be combined.

33 year old geeky scientist, Noah Garland, has been spending the better part of his career searching for something called “Aby” with his wife, Emery Luis-Garland. “Aby” is actually a Yeti. Yes, these two believe that Yetis are real and that if they can find it, it will give them new information about the human genome, which they can use to help humanity (or something – I was never clear on why they needed this thing – but it was basically the same plot as Jurassic World Rebirth).

They are joined by rockin’ badass Ryder Burk, who has a PHD in fucking. Well, not really. But based on the events in this film, for all intents and purposes, he kinda does really. The three of them have earned a grant from Proxima Industries, which allows them to descend deep into the Congo jungle, with a trio of locals helping them as guides, to find the Yeti.

As those first days go on, Noah notices that Emery (who’s been slapping him with the headache excuse whenever he wants to have sex) is cozying up to Ryder in ways that feel like they’re crossing a line. But it’s never bad enough to justify Noah freaking out. So he quietly tolerates it.

A few nights in, one of the guys, a young man, is mutilated by the Yeti. But the scientists aren’t sad. They’re stoked! They can use the guide’s body to study what this Yeti is. That pisses the other guides off but the scientists don’t care because they’re only funded for a few more days and need hard data before they go back.

Not long after that, Noah overhears a secret conversation between Ryder and Emery where they discuss whether they should tell Noah about their secret. Noah storms over to Emery’s laptop, logs into her e-mail, and looks through every e-mail between her and Ryder. And he finds out he was right! They’ve been in love with each other this whole time! So Noah then ties them up, douses them with some pheromone that Yeti’s like, and then leaves them so that it will come eat them. The end.

I’m going to start off with a pet peeve here. Because, whenever I see it, I know the writer is either a) a beginner, or b) someone who doesn’t read scripts. Look at these two names…

RYDER
EMERY

You are murdering a reader’s head if you use these two names for main characters in your story. They have THREE of the same letters in them – E, Y, and R – and they are the exact same length. What that means is that your reader is going to have to constantly double-check who’s speaking. Because as your eyes are moving down the page to read dialogue, those two names look exactly the same.

Advanced screenwriters don’t make this mistake. And it’s not as small of a deal as you might think. The big goal of screenwriting is to have the reader disappear into the story so deeply that they’re no longer aware that they’re even reading anymore. And if your reader is constantly having to stop to check who’s speaking, they can’t do this.

Check this out…

RYDER
JOSEFINA

Notice how different these two names are visually and, therefore, how much easier it is to tell them apart.

It’s stuff like this that’s really made me question who the Black List is rewarding.

Moving on…

Once you start getting into the advanced stages of screenwriting, your scripts start becoming less about the big marketable concept and more about the thing *you’re really trying to say.*

So, if you were one of these advanced screenwriters pitching your brand new giant tarantula heist script to a room full of fellow writers, you’d say, “But what my script is REALLY ABOUT is the destructive forces of capitalism.”

And writers LOVE talking about this shit because it makes them feel like REAL WRITERS. And I’m all for that. There’s definitely something to say about using marketable concepts to say something bigger about the world we exist in.

But there’s a caveat to that.

IT ACTUALLY NEEDS TO BE EXECUTED WELL.

Because if you’re trying to make some grand point about the world in your Hollywood film and it’s either sloppy or nonsensical or just plain bizarre, then all you’re really doing is ruining a fun premise. Because most movie goers who pay money to see a giant tarantula heist movie… WANT TO SEE GIANT TARANTULAS AND HEISTS.

The decision to make a Yeti movie ACTUALLY BE ABOUT a sexy love triangle is………

…… a choice.

It is definitely a choice. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I spent the majority of my read trying to figure out how this storyline and this concept had anything to do with each other. Cause I couldn’t figure it out.

The best I came up with was that this Yeti is the ultimate alpha male and Noah is the ultimate beta male. And Ryder was the ultimate human alpha male. And so Ryder is using this opportunity of hunting down the ultimate alpha male to show Noah that he’s not alpha enough for his wife.

I’m sorry but that connection isn’t very clever, nor is it very clear.  Nor is it even logical.

Look, if you have a Yeti in your movie and the goal of your characters is to find that Yeti, and yet your movie always places the Yeti in the background… I don’t know many people who are going to watch that without wanting to kill you afterwards.

I mean, it’s not even the same genre.

You’re putting a dangerous thriller love triangle in your movie, the kind of setup that would’ve had Michael Douglas starring in it in 1994, and combining that with a pseudo sci-fi adventure story. Those two genres don’t gel together.

It’s not lost on me how much this was like Challengers. There’s even a ménage à trois in the climax (oops, spoiler). And, the truth is, I don’t think that movie worked for the same reason. Those two worlds never came together in a harmonious way.

If you forced me to throw some credit at the writer, I’d say that at least he’s written something that’s different. But as I say around here all the time: “Different” just gets you to the cool kids table. You still now have to be a cool kid. And this script was the painfully pale weirdo kid who snorted strawberry milk up his nose while humming Hanson’s “Mmmmbop.”

This script isn’t bad, by the way. It’s just like all the Black List scripts. It’s disappointing. It’s muddled. It’s confused. It’s a writer who’s still trying to find their way. We’re getting ideas scribbled on napkins here instead of fully fleshed-out final draft screenplays.

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

What I learned: Don’t try and outthink the system. Deliver on the promise of your premise. The reason Project Hail Mary is a runaway hit is because it perfectly delivered on the promise of its premise. If your hook is scientists going into a jungle to find a Yeti, don’t give us Fatal Attraction.