Genre: Horror
Premise: A young inspector in 19th century Scotland investigates a serial killer who may or may not be Dracula.
About: This project was getting a ton of buzz a couple of years back, as it had Russell Crowe starring and Leonardo DiCaprio producing, with an eye towards possibly starring in the project as well. I’m not sure where the project stands at the moment, however. It’s written by Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, who created the Netflix series, Hemlock Grove. I do think a movie-star laden Dracula movie is due, so we’re going to get this story in one iteration or another. But who makes it and with what actors is still just as big of a mystery as the one at the center of the screenplay.
Writers: Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy
Details: 119 pages – undated

Ah, the power of buzz.

When you really boil it down, taking advantage of and managing buzz may be the key to making it in this business. For example, Shipman and McGreevy were able to use the buzz from their upcoming series (at the time), Hemlock Grove, to get this project onto the front burner at Warner Brothers. Yet when Hemlock didn’t maintain the following that some of the bigger Netflix shows nabbed, that buzz died down, and with it the buzz for this project, which now stands in limbo. Had Hemlock killed in the same way that House of Cards did? You better believe this movie would’ve been released already.

The reality is, Hollywood likes to bet on winning. When you’re winning – when you have stuff that’s going UP – they want to capitalize on you. When you’re even or going down, that’s when they start questioning any projects they have of yours.

It sort of makes sense and sort of doesn’t. But it’s how the industry works. And it’s something you need to keep in mind. The more ducks you can have in a row for when something of yours DOES create buzz, the more you can capitalize on that buzz, and keep climbing each buzz-cloud until you make it to the tippy-top. Every director, actor or screenwriter at the top of the Hollywood food chain rode a series of buzz-worthy projects to that spot. And everybody who had a chance to get there but didn’t? They ran up against negative buzz for something of theirs. It really makes you want to think about every single project you get behind.

Jonathan “The Hawk” Harker is the buzz of 19th century Scotland. The 30 year-old inspector is thrown into the hot seat when women start turning up dead and mutilated. The papers quickly turn on poor Harker, questioning just how safe the city is under his protection.

Harker’s finally able to nab the killer, a crazy dude name Renfield who keeps saying he’s doing this for his “master.” Harker’s fiance, Mina, happens to work at the nut house where they send Renfield, and becomes infatuated with helping him, to the tune of entering his cell unprotected to read him poems at night. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Meanwhile, a hot new dude has just come in by sea. They call him Dracula. Dracula is high-class in every way possible (he can dance like a fool), and has all the ladies swooning over him within hours. So when these ladies start dropping like Hollywood sequels, Harker is once again put on blast by the newspapers. Yo Harker, why you keep lettin’ our ladies be treated like Carpri Suns*?? (*This is not a real line from the script)

Harker’s pretty sure that Dracula is the killer, but he’s so damn charming that nobody else believes him. He’s going to have to get someone to believe quickly though. When Dracula gets chummy with Harker’s fiance, inviting her to his ball, Harker will have to revert to violence to get the job done. Except there’s one problem. You can’t exactly kill Dracula. So how do you stop him?

Harker is a very sloooooo-ooooowwww reeeeee-eeeeead.

Everything from endless action paragraphs to dialogue lines that go on three times longer than they need to. Sorkin’s Molly’s Game, which clocked in at 200 pages, read twice as fast as this script, which tips the scales at 119.

Granted, this is a different type of story and you always want to cater your writing to the genre you’re writing in. So I get that we’re trying to create an eerie atmosphere here and that generally occurs at a slower pace. But even if the writing is slow, the story itself needs to move. And this story didn’t move at all.

For the first 70 pages, we’re desperately waiting for Harker to catch up with what we already know. That this is Dracula’s doing. The second scene of the movie is of the Demeter (the ship Dracula famously comes in on) sailing towards the coast. So we know this is him.

I suppose you could argue this is a case of dramatic irony (the audience knowing more than the hero), but sometimes, when we have to wait this long for our hero to wise up to what we, the audience, already know, dramatic irony backfires.

I was about to jump in the nearest coffin and take a nap on Harker when it finally came alive in its second half. The introduction of Van Helsing revved things up. He was much livelier and way more interesting than Harker, to the point where I wondered – why not just center the story around this guy?

I also liked the exploration of the British Class system and how it played into the investigation. Harker was marrying someone a class higher than himself. This resulted in his fiance’s parents putting pressure on her to ditch him (and possibly find a man like Dracula?).

Harker’s boss was also routinely stifling his investigation when it involved anyone higher up than working class. And finally, when Harker wants to take down Dracula, he can’t, because the man is too high up the food chain.

All of this may seem like old hat to you Brits, but it’s something us Americans never had to deal with. I also like anything that adds an extra layer to the investigation. If it’s as simple as “I want to arrest this man, therefore I’m going to arrest him,” that’s boring. You want other factors involved that make that arrest difficult (more on this in the “What I Learned”).

I actually think Harker and yesterday’s American Gods suffer from the same rotund error. They’re too confident in themselves. They believe they can waltz through their story at a snail’s pace and lure you in one elongated beat at a time. But 70 freaking pages before anything truly interesting happens is too long. And while the script gets a lot better from there, that’s not going to matter if everyone’s already mentally tuned out.

I would’ve cut the Renfield investigation in half and brought Van Helsing in a lot earlier. Remember that time moves differently between writer and reader. Writers think time is moving a lot faster in their story than it actually is. Readers think almost everything is too slow. I can count the number of times someone complained that a movie was too fast on one hand. I’d need a million hands to count the number of times people complained a movie was too slow.

With all that said, this isn’t exactly my cup of tea. So I’m probably seeing this differently than fans of the genre would. If you liked the recent release, Crimson Peak, there’s a good chance you’ll like Harker as well. They’re definitely cut from the same cloth.

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

What I learned: So what do I mean when I say that more needs to be going on in an arrest than just, “I shall arrest this person now?” Imagine that Detective Joe’s wife has a criminal brother who she loves very much. She’s convinced he’s getting better, that he’s going to turn his life around. And he has to. Due to past offenses, if he gets caught one more time, he’ll be in prison for 30 years at least. Later in our story, let’s say Detective Joe breaks into a drug den and cuffs the head dealer, only to realize that he’s… (drum roll please) his wife’s brother. Now it’s not as simple as arresting this person. There are other factors involved. That’s the kind of complicated situation you want to routinely put your characters in. Nothing they do should be easy.

What I learned 2: You are the initial buzz creator. You, the writers, are the only people in the business who are capable of creating your own buzz. Directors, actors, producers, are all dependent on finding a great script/book/idea to start their buzz. So take advantage of that power and write something that will get people excited.

CHECK YOUR SPAM AND PROMOTIONS FOLDERS!

I’ve heard that Gmail’s getting super-harsh on anything that isn’t a personal e-mail, so if you didn’t receive my Scriptshadow Newsletter in your Inbox, make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. This is one of the bigger newsletters I’ve written in awhile and it contains a script review of the best screenwriter in the world’s hot new script. So if you didn’t receive it or want to sign up, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER,” and I’ll send.

On to today’s review…

Genre: Horror/Fantasy?
Premise: A recently released convict travels to his wife’s funeral, only to meet a mysterious man along the way who tricks him into becoming his employee. Employee for what though? That’s the question.
About: I’m surprised American Gods (a multi-award winning novel) hasn’t made it to our television sets sooner. The geek-friendly IP is a favorite amongst horror and fantasy savants and its author, Neil Gaiman, celebrated to the level of deity. You’d think with super-show Game of Thrones pulling in watch parties that rival that of The Bachelor, a show based on “Gods” would’ve been next on deck. Now that it’s finally here, the question is, will anyone be able to find it? The show will air on Starz, and while that network has put out some quality television, it doesn’t seem to have the footprint that buzzier destinations Netflix, HBO, and AMC have. This one’s being adapted by some heavy hitters though. Bryan Fuller is the creator of the beloved (but ultimately little-watched) NBC show, Hannibal, and Michael Green scripted the new Alien AND the new Blade Runner movies.
Writers: Bryan Fuller & Michael Green
Details: 57 pages

So let me tell you about my history with Neil Gaiman. At 12 years old, I, like every other kid, started reading Stephen King. And if you remember what it was like to read Stephen King at 12 year old… well it was akin to running through -12 degree weather with a pack of wild dogs chasing you. In a word – thrilling. And the metaphor truly is apt because when you finally escaped them, just like when you finally escaped “It,” you felt like you got away with something.

But then you hit your teens and all of a sudden books weren’t cool anymore. Sports were cool. Going out was cool. Girls were cool. And even if you didn’t totally agree with the notion, you felt like you’d outgrown King. I mean how does King compete with your first trip to second base?

Somewhere around that time I began to hear of Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman, people said, was the next Stephen King. With me being “over” King, I felt it only obvious that I couldn’t then read another version of King. Which means my history with Neil Gaiman is zip. I don’t know anything about the guy. I don’t know anything about any of his books or anything that he’s done.

As I’ve grown up, I realized that King still had a lot left to say and that being too cool for him or any author is silly. But I still never got back to Gaiman. That leaves me writing this review from a place of ignorance. But sometimes that’s for the best. It means I can judge the pilot solely on its story and not on if it’s meeting the expectations of everyone who loves the book so much.

Shadow is a 30 year-old prisoner with five more days left on his sentence. Luckily for Shadow, the warden calls him in to let him know he’s being released tomorrow. Unluckily for Shadow, it’s because his wife just died in a car accident.

Shadow hops on a plane to head home for the funeral, and that’s where he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, a 60 year-old chatterbox who looks like he should be hustling a 2 for 1 Miller Lite deal in some sleazy south Florida bar.

Sensing his taste for law-breaking, Mr. Wednesday wants to hire Shadow to work for him. Shadow kindly declines, but when the plane is diverted due to weather, and Shadow tries to drive the rest of the way, Mr. Wednesday keeps showing up at all of Shadow’s stops, inquiring about that hiring. We get the sense that there’s something otherworldly about this fella.

Shadow finally gets home, only to learn that there’s more to his wife’s death than he was told. As in she died with another man’s dick in her mouth. That dick belonging to Shadow’s best friend. This leaves Shadow in a very dark place, which we can only guess will spur him to take that job with Mr. Wednesday. Now if we only knew what Mr. Wednesday planned to do with him.

American Gods contains symbols, philosophy, and dream sequences. In other words, all the stuff that I hate. Why do I hate this stuff? Because it’s cheap. 9 times out of 10 it’s a go-to crutch for when you don’t know what to do with your story. Don’t know where the characters are going next? Uhhh… Here’s a tree made out of bones to distract you! And someone talking about how storms are like birds!

To put this in perspective, this is the same thing I knocked a little pilot script called True Detective for. And that turned out all right. Well, for you guys anyway. Not for me.

But American Gods gradually pulls itself out of that haze and provides us with a narrative (Shadow trying to get to his wife’s funeral). While things do start to pick up, I couldn’t help but feel like not enough was happening. Yes our hero’s got a goal. Yes there’s something intriguing about Mr. Wednesday. And there is a holy-shit scene where a woman swallows a man up in her vagina during sex.

But I was never compelled to find out what happened next. The goal didn’t seem important enough (if he doesn’t get to the funeral, so what?). The mystery didn’t seem mysterious enough.

But the biggest problem with American Gods is one that I’m assuming they discuss all the time in the writers room. This is a complex world. I don’t even know what the fucking genre is. The final scene has Shadow, our main character, as a stock ticker, and his value doubling. What the hell does that mean?

For readers of the book who know exactly what’s going on, a moment like this makes them grin. Me? I don’t have any reference points. There’s nothing for me to compare this to. And as I kept reading, I wondered if that was going to be a blessing or a curse. How “out of the loop” can non-fans of the book be before they give up? Do you try to play to them then? Or stay with the super-fans?

Another thing I still haven’t figured out in the TV world is how little plot you can get away with. You can’t have fast-moving plots in every TV episode. It’s impossible. It’s more about putting characters in rooms and exploring the conflict between them. Which is exactly what they’ve done here.

And yet it doesn’t feel like enough. At least in your pilot, you gotta go bigger, don’t you?? Then you can pull back in subsequent episodes. But I don’t think you can sneak into your story with a TV show these days. There are too many of them out there, too many reasons to turn the channel. If you don’t wow us right away, we won’t tune in again. I keep trying to remind people that the Game of Thrones pilot, while slow, ended with a brother and sister having sex and the brother pushing a young boy off a tower to his death. Uhhhh… I’m going to come back to see what happens next after that. I’m not so sure I’m coming back to see what Stock Ticker Shadow means.

Long story short, I wanted to be punched in the gut by this pilot. Instead I was massaged. And while that massage was relaxing, it’s not compelling me to come back for more.

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

What I learned: I personally think choices are more dramatically compelling if we understand the stakes. The major choice driving this story is “Will Shadow work for Mr. Wednesday?” Unfortunately, we don’t know what Mr. Wednesday does. So we don’t know if working for him is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. And hence we’re not that interested in whether Shadow says yes or no.

ALERT! ALERT! – There will be a new Scriptshadow Newsletter hitting your E-mail boxes today! Keep an eye out for it in your spam and Promotions folders. I’ll announce here when it’s been officially sent out. The newsletter features a script review from arguably the best screenwriter in the world, who’s attempting to do something in his script that’s never been done before. If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, e-mail me at: carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: NEWSLETTER

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A convicted felon at the top-secret facility of Spiderhead subjects himself to a dangerous mood-enhancement experiment in order to lessen his sentence.
About: Almost every newly minted professional screenwriter ditches the spec script in favor of the big money assignment. So it’s nice to see guys like Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick still betting on themselves. The Zombieland writers got hot again after Deadpool became the biggest box office surprise of the year. They quickly parlayed that into another Ryan Reynolds project, the Alien-like “Life.” Today’s script is purported to be their directing debut.
Writers: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (based on the short story by George Saunders)
Details: 102 pages – July 12, 2013 draft

In the newsletter I’m sending out today, I pose the question, “Where are all the new ideas?” We keep getting the same ideas repackaged again and again and because the booming Chinese box office has helped mask the lack of interest Americans have in these carbon copy catastrophes (a Huntsman sequel????), the options don’t look to get better any time soon.

Leave it to screenwriting superheroes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, then, to be two of the only writers unafraid to try different shit. And yet, their newest script forces Originality Proponents to ask some tough questions. Such as, is being different enough? Don’t forget that the reason we keep seeing the same stories over and over again isn’t ONLY because Hollywood is creatively bankrupt. It’s because those stories (the hero’s journey, buddy-cop, stop the villain with a plan, heist films, contained thriller) work.

If there were a boatload of great new story types out there, chances are, someone would’ve found them by now. It’s a reminder that whenever you go down this dimly lit path of originality, prepare for successful ideas to be tough to find.

30-something Jeff is a resident at Spiderhead (so named because it’s shaped like a spider), a giant facility in the middle of nowhere. Though we’ll later find out that Jeff is a felon, he’s treated more like a patient in a science experiment.

Jeff (along with the other residents) has something called a “mobipak” embedded in his back that contains various vials of liquid which, once administered, affect your mood. Our administration team, led by the snake-like Steve Abnesti, have control over these vials, and remotely inject doses into the residents to see how they react.

For example, they will bring a woman into Jeff’s room. Neither Jeff will be attracted to the woman or she to him. But Abnesti will release some happy juice into their system, and all of a sudden they want to fuck each other’s brains out.

On the flip side, Abnesti will release something called “Darkenfloxx” into their system. Darkenfloxx makes the patients sad, angry, even violent. Where things start to get really messed up is when Abnesti forces the patients to choose who he should administer the Darknefloxx to.

Jeff is tricked into choosing a young woman, who then stabs her face in with a giant wooden stake until she dies. The only person Jeff can talk to about any of this is fellow patient, Lizzie, a trouble-maker who Jeff is secretly in love with. As the intensity of the experiments increase, Jeff and Lizzy must decide if enough is enough, and do something about Spiderhead.

Reese and Wernick seem to be interested in something beyond mere entertainment with Spiderhead. This is a movie about depression first, story second. Here’s my problem with that. Movies always need to be about story first. Unless it’s story first, the audience won’t care about your message. Name me one good movie that’s ignored this rule.

The whole time I was reading Spiderhead, I kept thinking to myself, “What’s the point?” I mean, we’re watching these people walk around in this cage, get experimented on, talk about it, get upset, then continue to be experimented on, then talk some more about it, then walk around some more. There’s no actual story. There’s no problem that the characters have to solve.

Even the obvious problem and solution – Jeff and Lizzie realizing they need to do something about this place – is something they don’t even consider until 10 pages left in the screenplay.

There are two movies I believe could’ve served Wernick and Rheese well here for research. The first is one that hasn’t come out yet: The Story of Us, about an alien arrival where a famous linguist is brought in to try and communicate with the aliens.

That movie could’ve been set up just like Spiderhead, where we watch this woman try and find commonalities in language with the aliens until they finally break through and can communicate.

Instead, it added a subplot by which all the big nations were talking to the aliens and also trying to decode their language. It became clear that if one of them beat out the U.S., they would have access to alien knowledge and technology that could potentially put the U.S. in danger.

This urgency gave the story a bigger (and more entertaining) engine. Figure out the language fast or our country was fucked. In Spiderhead, there’s no impending reason for these experiments to matter. It’s all very, “Eh, hopefully this mobipak will improve lives at some point in the future. Thanks, patients, for doing your job.”

The other film is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In that movie, which also followed a group of patients in an institution, we had a DISRUPTIVE main character who was MIXING SHIT UP. So even though we didn’t have an impeding big problem that needed to be solved, there was constant drama. The main character was so active that something was always happening in the movie.

Jeff is a nice guy. He does what he’s told, even if he doesn’t like it. But that’s the extent of his character. He’s not very interesting. So both on a story and character front, Spiderhead didn’t go anywhere.

And it’s frustrating because it’s clear that Rheese and Wernick are trying to tackle something important here and I LOVE that they’re doing something different. But as much as I was pushing myself to like this, the story never went anywhere. A simple problem that our main character needed to solve which would’ve made him more active (and therefore more compelling) could’ve done wonders. I don’t think this is the kind of story you can just watch play out and hope the audience will care because it’s multi-layered. You need to entertain first. At this moment, in this draft, Spiderhead isn’t entertaining.

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

What I learned: The famous Samuel Goldwyn saying, “If you’re trying to send a message, use Western Union,” isn’t exactly accurate. You can send a message in your script. It just can’t be the only thing you send. Send a gift, send money, send pictures. But if all you care about is your message, expect the audience to respond in kind.

We’re about to get weird today. Like Studio 54 weird. First offs, señor Carson apologizes about no post offices yesterday. He got stuck in the back room of a Chuck E. Cheeses for reasons he’d rather not divulge. But Paul Clarke’s winning Amateur Offerings script WILL get reviewed next Friday. And that means today’s winner will get reviewed THE FOLLOWING Friday. Confused? So am I. Yeah, so, today’s showdown has a subplot. In addition to voting for which of these five scripts is the best, Mayhem and Klmn have challenged each other to a screenplay Death Match. I’m not sure what the rules of this match are, only that the loser has to jump into a pool of expired jello or something. Hey, it could be worse. They could have to jump into a tub of jello pudding pops with Bill Cosby offering to take care of the drinks. Read and vote for your favorite script in the comments. And if you want to enter your own script, send it to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the genre, title, logline, why we should read it, and a PDF of the script. Good luck to all! And to all a good jello fight!

Title: ALEXXXA
Genre: SCI-FI
Logline: In the year 2122, an insane humanoid recounts his epic quest to save a troubled sex robot he won off a space lotto scratch card.
Why You should Read: I was standing in line at In-N-Out wondering how the hell I could bribe Carson to get on AOW to face my robot nemesis, Klmn Jong-Un. I then gotta brilliant idea: ATTACH IN-N-OUT!! So I ordered $70 worth of food (not 100% sure what he likes). “Want these to go?” they asked. “No, to EMAIL. It’s for someone who potentially only exists on the internet.” I hopped on Gmail and clicked “ATTACH”. I smacked Double-Double’s into the screen. I poured Neapolitan milkshakes into the USB port. I replaced the motherboard with grilled onions. I dumped a pint of “SECRET SAUCE” on the keys. Finally, something called the “White Screen of Death” popped up. It was THEN I knew: my email had gone through!!! At least, I think it did. The people in lab coats only let me use the internet twice a month.

Title: DESTRUCTO
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: A young programmer uncovers a conspiracy involving murderous androids. As he digs deeper, his investigation endangers his job, his brothers, and the woman he loves.
Why You Should Read: Some time ago, Mayhem Jones threw down the gauntlet to me – her robot script against mine. Well, she has advised me that she is now ready. So, I’ve oiled up my ‘droids and I’m ready to send ’em into combat.

She has intended this as a package deal, so we’re each attaching both scripts to our respective emails.

I hope you allow this to happen, lest the wrath of Mayhem befall you.

Title: Bon Jovi Sucks!
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In 1987 New Jersey, an aspiring rocker can win the big break of a lifetime opening for Bon Jovi, but when handicapped by a life threatening hairspray allergy, he attempts to cleanse the world of all hair-metal, beginning with hometown heroes Bon Jovi.
Why you should read: So, did you see X-Men this weekend and say to yourself “Damn! They really nailed what it was like to be a teenager in the 80s!” Then have I got a screenplay for you.

As aspiring writers of film, we all love movies and have our concerns about the current state of cinema. If you’re anything like me, when you open up Rotten Tomatoes and see the latest 370 million dollar CGI crap-fest that was written and rewritten by a team of fourteen professional writers using source material that was based on a video game, that was based on a theme park ride, that was based on a cartoon, that was based on a Hasbro toy, that was based on a different Japanese toy, that was based on a religion, that was based on a fever-dream induced by syphilis, and it’s sitting number one at the box office with a very robust 18% on the tomato-meter, then a little piece of you dies.

Now imagine you wake up one day with a literal allergy to CGI. You can’t go to a Cineplex or pass a Redbox or “Netflix and chill” without developing a rash and having your throat swollen shut. Your dreams of working in Hollywood crushed, because movies are literally trying to kill you. Would you lock yourself in your basement and cry yourself to sleep every night on your pillow of unproduced, Oscar caliber spec scripts or would you do everything in your power to rid mankind of the Michael Bays of the world? Well, Bon Jovi Sucks! is a slightly more realistic version of just that but with rock n’ roll.

It’s a subject I think most of us can relate to on some level, even if you haven’t a recollection nor an opinion of 80s popular culture. Plus it’s a comedy so it better damn well be funny. I’m really looking forward to some of that always great SS community feedback.

Title: Killing Machine
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: When an MMA fighter discovers that she has been infected with a nanotech that will transform her into the ultimate killing machine, she must regain control of herself in order to stop those responsible from launching a viral outbreak of the cyborg-creating technology.
Why You Should Read: Fourteen years of writing and about five years of following Scriptshadow have lead to this brash and edgy full-throttle action thriller.

KILLING MACHINE is roughly my thirteenth feature and the fact I’m actually submitting something to AF means I finally feel I’m onto something special. It is a project that is fun and exciting whilst being tough and grim in a manner that injects a FIGHT CLUB-style attitude into the skin of a Marvel origins movie.

If you’ve ever wondered what a movie focusing on the transformation of a Ronda Rousey-style badass into THE TERMINATOR looks like, then this script would be well worth your time.

Actions speak louder than words so I’ll let Deanna and her unique journey take it from here…

Title: Interloper
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: As a devastating storm isolates their small town, an idealistic cop must stretch her moral boundaries to team up with a brutal and relentless Interpol agent as they race against time to find a deadly assassin trapped in the town with them.
Why You Should Read: This story is based around the events of the 1987 hurricane that devastated England, my country of birth. I was only a young child at the time, and I remember quite clearly my house being obliterated by an oak tree that came through the window, smashing everything in sight.

I always wondered what other people must have gone through that night. I had an overactive imagination. What if there was a killer, trapped in my town on the night of the storm and everyone was in danger unless we found him?

Years later I took that concept and started to flesh out the idea a little more.

Earlier this year, I decided to adapt a sequence from this feature script and shoot a 10 minute short film, revolving around one of the main characters, The Stranger. It was played at the Cannes Short Film Corner, and received positive feedback.

Living in the UAE at the time, I was unable to truly capture the events and locations that I wrote in the original script, but I did the best I could with what little I had.

The trailer is here. Hopefully it gives you the kind of tone I was going for in this script.

Interloper by definition means “a person who becomes involved in a place or situation where they are not wanted or are considered not to belong.” Having lived in three different continents in the last 15 years, I truly understand what that means. This was a chance at some sort of catharsis.

If you’re into tense and uncomfortable situations, commentary on 1980s England, contrasting and challenged characters, and a few twists and turns on the way, then I would invite you to read my script.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing and filming some of it.

Wow, I can’t believe it. We’re only three weeks away from finishing a first draft!

As a reminder, you should’ve completed somewhere between 70-80 pages of your screenplay by this point, or, if you break your script into 8 sequences (each sequence lasting 10–15 pages), you should’ve just completed sequence number 5. That means we have 3 more sequences to go.

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5

This is another little-talked about section of the screenplay, but I consider it a little easier than last week’s section, since we’re writing towards a clear story beat: the end of the second act. Any time you’re writing towards something definitive, it’s easier to figure out how to get there.

So what happens at the end of the second act?

THE LOWEST POINT

This is the point in the script where your heroes, in that big final push to achieve their goal, will definitively fail. While you, the reader, will know this isn’t true, the idea is to convince the audience that the movie is effectively over. They’ve lost, they’ve given up, they have no options left.

The trick here, like any creative choice, is to make it specific to your own movie. For Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s when Indy and Marion get captured by the Nazis. In Deadpool, it’s when Ajax kidnaps Deadpool’s girlfriend. In Room, it’s when Ma is taken to a mental institution.

The operative word here is: DOUBT

This moment in the script should be the moment when the audience has the MOST DOUBT that the hero is going to achieve their goal than at any other time in the movie.

Now that you know what that plot beat is (and many of you should already know from completing your outline six weeks ago!), you can write towards it. If you know, for example, that you’re going to have Indy and Marion get captured at the end of the second act, you can construct an 8-scene sequence to get them to that point.

This is why movies with goals are so advantageous when it comes to structuring. If your hero is actively trying to achieve something, it’s easy to come up with ways to get them there. You just write another sequence with them trying to achieve that goal and have them fail.

When you’re writing a character piece, however, it’s trickier. The goals will be more abstract. But for the script to work, SOME sort of “this is what needs to happen” directive must be put in place by the writer so that he can work against it.

Again, let’s take character piece “Room” as an example. Once Ma and Jack get out of room, the abstract goal “for mother and son to survive in this new world” is what drives the story. That’s why we’re still reading – to see if these two are going to be okay.

Once you’ve established that, you can play against it, by infusing a major event that creates DOUBT (the end of the second act!). So what do they do? Ma has a mental breakdown and is forced to go to a mental institution. Our goal (for mother and son to survive in this new world) is now put into serious doubt. So of course we’re going to stick around to see if Ma’s going to make it out of the institution and reunite with her son.

The only way to understand how important that plot choice was, is to imagine the movie without it. If Ma stays on an even keel at this point in the story, or even gets better, we’re feeling GOOD going into the final act, and as counterintuitive as it may sound, if you make the audience feel good (or “safe”) for too long, they get bored. They need that doubt. They need that uncertainty. Which leads me to my next point. This moment in the script must feel like the pinnacle of uncertainty.

You should’ve been raising the stakes throughout the script. At this moment, we should feel like it’s all or nothing. Whereas in that first journey out into the world (sequence 3 – right after the first act), there’s still a feeling that they could somehow salvage their lives if this doesn’t work out, at this point it should feel like if they don’t achieve their goal, they lose everything, whether that be their literal life or their figurative life (their job, their family, their home, their reputation). If we’re not feeling that kind of pressure moving into the end of the second act, you’re not doing it right. Because then when they do fail (and reach their “lowest point”), it won’t really feel like they’ve failed.

That’s what’s happening on the surface. But if you really want to make this section sing, you want to be exploring the same low point BETWEEN your characters and WITHIN your characters.

So remember how we were talking about your hero’s flaw? Well, this is the moment in the script where overcoming that flaw must be at its lowest point as well. In essence, this is the moment when your protagonist should doubt himself the most. Are they good enough? Do they believe in themselves? Has their selfishness finally doomed them? In When Harry Met Sally, Harry’s flaw (his fear of commitment) has left him alone and depressed.

And finally, you want to do the same with your relationships. Every one of them should be on the ropes. In romantic comedies or dramas, this is easy. You just split the main couple up. But you should be doing this in every script. Friends, family members, lovers – almost every one of them should be at odds with your hero. Every relationship should be in jeopardy.

Again, remember what this is: THE LOWEST POINT.

That means your hero should be at his lowest point in every facet of the story: plot, relationships, himself.

You may be noticing a pattern here. In many ways, this sounds like what we did with the midpoint. The heroes hit a major speed-bump, fell into a mini-depression, had to regroup and go back after their goal. We’re doing the same thing here, just more intensely. Well, the reason these sections feel similar is because that’s what storytelling is. It’s a rollercoaster. You bring the audience up to a high (yay! everything’s great!) then pull them back down to a low (oh no, we’re screwed!). And as the story goes on, each high will get higher and each low will get lower. This moment in the script – the end of the second act – will be the lowest. Orrrrr…. maybe it won’t. More on that in a couple of weeks!

Minimum page number to meet: 90 (that’s 15 pages this week guys, less than 3 pages a day!)