Is The Martian the best movie of the year?
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: When an astronaut is mistakenly left on Mars, he will have to draw upon all of his survival skills to stay alive until NASA can rescue him.
About: The Martian was a huge self-published e-book success, which led to a major book publisher buying and repackaging the novel (selling it for a lot more money, of course), which led to 20th Century Fox buying the film rights, which led to Ridley Scott and Matt Damon coming onto the project, which led to production this past year, which led to it coming out this weekend, which led to a 100 million dollar worldwide weekend. Cabin in the Woods writer Drew Goddard adapted the novel from Andy Weir.
Writer: Drew Goddard (based on the novel by Andy Weir)
Details: 2 and-a-half hours
The Martian is an awesome film. It may even beat out Fury Road as my favorite film of the year (way to keep the suspense going from that header, huh?). That’s because while Fury Road was pulse-poundingly awesome, The Martian actually made me feel something. This is the kind of film that reaches inside of you, twists your insides around, before wrapping you in a big warm motherly hug.
It’s also a movie every screenwriter should watch as it plays with the format enough to challenge it, yet always stays respectful of the storytelling techniques that make movies work. This is the first project I’ve ever reviewed as a book, then a script, then a movie, so I’ve seen it go through all of its incarnations. Watching that metamorphosis happen has allowed me to observe the specific choices the filmmakers made that turned this into one of the best movies of the year.
For those who don’t know anything about The Martian, it follows a botanist-astronaut named Mark (as in one letter removed from “Mars”) Watney, who’s been left up on Mars after he was presumed dead during a violent storm. Mark realizes he has 300 days worth of food, and the next Mars mission is 1400 days away. Mark will have to turn to science to bridge that gap.
At a certain point, NASA realizes that Mark is still alive, makes contact with him, and over the course of the next couple of years, the two sides plan a rescue. Of course, everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and the final rescue is fraught with so many hiccups that it is literally a 1 in a million shot. Will they bring Mark home? Or will Mark become the first ever human being taking up permanent residence on the big red planet?
So if you remember, the thing that always worried me about this project was time. Mark Watney is stuck on Mars. And we’re told it will take four years to save him. For those of you who read the site regularly, you know the final essential ingredient for my screenplay formula (GSU) stands for “urgency” (the first two stand for “goal” and “stakes”). If your hero’s problem doesn’t feel like it needs to be solved RIGHT NOW, there’s a good chance the story will move to slowly for the audience and they’ll get bored.
I’m not the first one to say this. Practically every professional screenwriter will tell you the same thing. However, despite forever-away four year ticking clock, The Martian never once felt slow. So the question becomes, how the hell did they pull that off?
This is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like I learned something BIG from a movie. The Martian taught me that if you don’t have an urgent timeline, you can create urgency in the moment. That in-the-moment urgency will then distract the audience from the big goal being so far away.
For example, Mark Watney learns that he’s stuck on Mars for four years. However, Mark has a very pressing issue RIGHT NOT. He’s got to learn how to grow food or else he dies. What follows, then, is a sequence (a mini-movie basically) where Mark figures out how to grow food.
We are so riveted by this objective that we’re not thinking about the four years. We’re thinking about right now. We’re thinking, is Mark going to learn how to grow food RIGHT NOW? In a way, it’s a distraction technique. Distract the audience by entertaining them in the moment.
We see this approach being used throughout the movie. When Mark’s finished with the food, he must learn how to create water to grow the food. He then must figure out how to communicate with Earth. When he’s done with that, he has to figure out how to get a truck, that was only meant to drive 20 miles, to drive 1000.
For you advanced screenwriters, you’ll see that sometimes Goddard switches the current story goal over to NASA. When you’re a beginner, you focus on keeping your main character goal-oriented, but when you get some experience, you realize that as long as SOMEONE in the script has an immediate goal that matters, the story will continue moving.
So for example, at a certain point, NASA must figure out how to send a re-supply ship to Mark. That’s their goal. And for a 12 minute sequence, that’s what drives the story.
Another thing The Martian does that I’m constantly telling you guys not to do, is it offers a complex story. What do I always say? Simple story, complex characters. Not the other way around.
Here we have a super long timeline. We have TONS of characters. We’re jumping around a lot. It’s far from the simplicity of a movie like Taken or Die Hard. So why does it still work? Because The Martian’s storyline is so clear. Let me repeat that. A complex story only works if the engine behind the story is EXTREMELY clear.
We are NEVER confused about what’s happening here. Mark Watney needs to be rescued. That’s it. It’s a very clear setup. In addition to this, Drew Goddard does a great job CHECKING IN on us. “Checking in” is the process by which you remind the audience what it is the characters are doing and why. If your story is even remotely complex, you will rely on checking in.
Contrast this with a similar movie that DIDN’T check in enough. Interstellar. There were times in that movie where we weren’t sure what it was Matthew McConaughey’s character was doing. He was visiting 8 planets or something? Looking for a solution to earth’s food problem? All while Michael Caine was create a gravity-machine to lift the earth’s population into space. What??
If, in The Martian, NASA needed to build and send a supply ship to Mark, there was a scene where the characters clearly discussed this. They told us why they were doing it and what the repercussions were if they failed. The combination of a VERY CLEAR OVERALL GOAL and constant CHECKING IN made this seemingly complex story easy to follow. That’s strong writing.
The script also offers some advanced screenwriting techniques, one of them being WEAVING (in the past I’ve referred to this as “interweaving.”). Okay, this might be hard to follow so pay attention. When you write a movie that has a series of goals one after another, like this one, you run the risk of the script becoming too compartmentalized.
You end up breaking things into very obvious sequences that occur in an overly-ordered sequential fashion.
1) Mark Watney must figure out how to grow food.
2) Mark Watney must figure out how to make water.
3) Mark Watney must figure out how to communicate with Earth.
4) Mark Watney’s bay just blew up. He must put it back together.
While there’s nothing wrong with this, especially if the story is compelling, good writers weave these compartments into one another so that the story feels more organic.
For example, two of the goals Watney must achieve are a) figure out how to communicate with earth and b) figure out how to drive his truck 1000 miles to the rescue destination.
If you’re thinking about these story beats in a linear fashion, the placement of each sequence is obvious. You first write the sequence where Mark goes to find the old Mars rover so he can communicate with earth, and then, later in the story, when it’s time for Mark to get his truck to the rescue point, you write the sequence where Mark figures out how to make a limited 20-mile truck drive 1000 miles.
And it would be fine if you did it this way. But what WEAVING does is it takes a part of a future sequence, and sets it earlier in the story, so as to break up the monotony of this “And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens” ordering.
So Watney actually starts testing his 1000 mile truck drive BEFORE he deals with the communication problem, despite the communication problem being the immediate problem he has to deal with. It’s this displacement of events that keep a story from feeling too structured. And with screenwriting being such a structure-heavy form of storytelling, this is an invaluable tool to have in your arsenal.
Moving on, one of the hardest things to do in an adaptation is decide what stays and what goes. Goddard did an amazing job here. He knew exactly the story beats to include and got rid of all the fat. There was one part he got rid of, however, that surprised me. When I first reviewed The Martian in book form, one of the big story beats was the final drive to the rescue point, which included a HUGE STORM Watney had to drive into.
It was the perfect final obstacle to Mark Watney’s incredible journey. He was so close after all this time, yet now this storm threatened everything. At the time, I noted they should consider building the story around this storm. Start with Mark Watney driving through the storm, then tell the story in flashback form, so you had to include the exciting parts of his Mars stay.
In the final film, however, there is no storm. It was eliminated from the story.
And you know what? They were 100% right to get rid of it. While the storm did provide a huge obstacle, Goddard and Scott realized that we had just spent 2 hours watching Watney battle every obstacle imaginable. The audience was ready for the climax. One more big obstacle would’ve felt like one too many.
And that was a big lesson to me. I love throwing obstacles at characters. It’s the lifeblood of storytelling. But there comes a time when it’s too much – when you need to dress your hero up in that gown and get them to the ball. Mark Watney was ready to dance.
The final masterful stroke of this film was one of the most age-old storytelling techniques there is. MAKE THE SITUATION IMPOSSIBLE. The Martian is all about Mark Watney surviving the impossible, over and over again, much like they did with Gravity. But they went a step further. They made sure the CLIMAX was THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION OF ALL.
[spoilers below]
And that’s a lesson I want you to take away from this. Make the situation impossible. But make the ending ESPECIALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Mark Watney has to blast into space in a capsule that has a TARP for its top. The ship rescuing him is only going to have one shot to catch him and it’s going WAY TOO FAST to do so. The attempted meeting point is way off. At one point, Mark must puncture his own suit to use as a jet to guide him to the ship. I mean WTF!!!!
The reason the end of The Martian is so impactful is because they make it seem like there’s no chance for success. The odds are just too far out of Mark’s favor. So when they actually succeed, we’re so shocked, we’re overcome with emotion.
Not enough writers challenge their heroes during a screenplay. They’re afraid to put them in the worst situation possible because, frankly, they’re not sure how to get them out of it. But part of your job as a screenwriter is to say, “how can I make this as bad as possible for my hero” and then, after you’ve put them in that terrible situation, rely on your intelligence and imagination to get them out of it.
But if you never put them in the bad place to begin with, chances are your story’s going to lack drama.
The Martian is a masterful movie on every level. There are so few cracks in its armor that it’s borderline perfect. It’s Cast Away for a new generation. If you haven’t seen this movie, drop what you’re doing right now and do so!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Create urgency WITHIN the moment. If the timeline of your screenplay is long, like The Martian, look to create a series of sequences that contain urgency. If your reader is focused on the urgency of the moment, they’ll forget about the lack of urgency in the long run.
I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who entered the contest. Don’t get down on yourself if you didn’t make it. There were a good 50 scripts right on the cusp of getting in that missed for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason was that their idea didn’t feel big enough for a feature film treatment.
Even if you aimed for the indie market, you still have to have that idea that stands out. And I think a lot of writers sent in ideas that didn’t have enough irony, didn’t have enough conflict, or didn’t have that unique element. With that said, a few writers who had really stellar pitches were able to overcome this limitation. But overall, if your idea didn’t stand out in some way, there were enough entries that you fell by the wayside.
But don’t let that get you down. The people who succeed in this business are the ones who persevere. If one script doesn’t work, they go on to the next one, and then the next one. Sooner or later, everything comes together and you write something great. I see that breakout moment happen for a writer every few weeks in this town.
As for what happens next, I’ll be reading these scripts over the next couple of months. So at some point in December, I’ll be announcing the Top 25. Those scripts will then get read by Grey Matter, who are chomping at the bit to see what you guys have come up with.
For those who didn’t make it, feel free to share your logline and/or your e-mail pitch in the comments below. While you won’t know for sure why *I* passed you over, the always awesome Scriptshadow community may be able to give you an idea on what was missing from your pitch/logine.
Again, thank you to everyone who entered!
EDIT: Okay, everyone who made it is asking if they can send in a new draft. Since we’re trying to find the best script, and I’m tired of all of you trying to trick me (“Oh, Carson. I think I sent you the wrong draft. Here’s the correct one.” Come on guys, how dumb do you think I am??), you can send in a new draft if you do so by Tuesday 11:59 pm Pacific Time. It must be sent as a REPLY E-MAIL to the acceptance e-mail I sent out. Back to work!
I know you’re all wondering about the Scriptshadow 250. I’ve already started e-mailing the top 250. I’m going to be doing that ALL DAY. Since I’m also going to the movies, I may be e-mailing some people deep DEEP into the night. But if you haven’t received an e-mail by midnight Sunday (Pacific Time), it sadly means you didn’t make the cut. Make sure to check your spam and promotions folders just in case. And to help you pass the time so you don’t go insane, here are 5 amateur screenplays to check out. Vote for your favorite in the comments. To make it easier on me, place your vote (My Vote = Script Title) at the top of your comment. Thanks. This should be a fun day!!
Title: By Forces Unseen
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A drifter with a secret past finds friendship and love in Portland’s animal liberation underground, but the longer she stays, the more she puts everyone at risk.
Why you should read: Our relationships with animals are complicated, if not morally schizophrenic – pet this one, eat that one. Is the Animal Liberation Front made up of heroes willing to risk their freedom to save animals, or are they violent terrorists? Or something else? Regardless, I think these people lead interesting double-lives.
Title: Pinchers
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Sci Fi
Logline: The 100th annual Crab Fest is right around the corner and a small town starts to experience a series of grisly murders that could be the work of a serial killer… or giant crabs.
Why you should read: As a fan of Scriptshadow, I wanted to submit something that was a little more “fun”. There’s a lot of great scripts that come through the site, but I feel like there aren’t a lot that fit into that “Tremors” or “Pirahna” mold. I wanted to submit Pinchers because I wanted to submit something that’s meant to be watched on late night cable with beer and pizza. I’m excited to get feedback from a community of writers who may not read these types of scripts that often. After reading your review of “See Something” I thought it would be interesting to get your thoughts on a script like “Pinchers”.
Title: La Guerra! (Spanish for War!)
Genre: Action, Comedy
Logline: A couple, who together runs a powerful drug cartel, files for divorce and ignite a turf war when neither party can reach an agreement as to who gets what share of the massive empire they’ve built.
Why you should read: I’m all about the big idea. The big concept. This script is proof of that. Not too long ago, you had a post asking everyone to talk about the kind of movies that they want to see made. Well, I only write the kind of movies that I want to see. This being one of them. I believe this has the potential to be one of those fun, summer tentpole movies. But is it any good? I’ll let you decide…
Title: Born to Die
Genre: Horror-Thriller
Logline: A career con-man with a terminal illness gets a last chance at survival and redemption when the CIA tap him to help locate an old associate thought to be the source of a zombie pandemic.
Why you should read: As for me, I’m a Chicago-based amateur screenwriter focused on features and pilots and like everybody, looking for representation. I’m also looking to learn and improve as much as I can with each script. “Born to Die,” is a horror crime-thriller in the vein of “28 Days Later” meets “Zero Dark Thirty.” (i.e. Zero Dark Zombie) The zombie genre is well-trodden territory but what my story aims to do is focus on character, spine-tingling thrills, and thoughtful twists to create a unique take on why audiences find these films terrifying and compelling. It blends the horror and crime-thriller genre with the goal of creating an intelligent, thrilling, and terrifying script with a unique voice.
Title: The Only Lemon Tree on Mars
Genre: Science Fiction
Logline: When recent, inter-global events threaten to disrupt the idyllic life on the first Mars Colony, a woman with a secret to hide must do all that she can to prevent neighbors in her small town from taking up arms against each other.
Why you should read: I believe that audiences want to be challenged. Why? Because I go to the movies a lot and I like to be challenged. So, it stands to reason that when writing I choose topics that are challenging with characters who are flawed but relatable. This is what led me to write “The Only Lemon Tree on Mars.” Like all good sci-fi there’s an allegory about today buried in there; specifically the modern political process. And although there are a few action beats, it’s really a drama about a woman struggling to make the world better despite the machinations of men. Most importantly, she does this by being a woman, and not acting like a man. In this day and age, that’s an important distinction.
Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise (from writer): In a future where robots run grisly human-fighting rings for sport, any human who survives 72 matches is given 72 minutes to win their freedom–or die.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I moved to Los Angeles to specifically pursue a career in waiting tables. I was originally gonna write a biopic about Nikola Tesla’s chef, but figured this would be more interesting. This script has such a big fat concept, that when it took a selfie, Instagram crashed. Do not read it if you hate: space, hyper loops, nihilism, invisible architecture, and futuristic theories. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m an alien that’s trying to blend in with everyone.
Writer: Robotic Super Cluster
Details: 85 pages
I suppose Game of 72 was the perfect script for today. As I struggle to decide on my last few slots for the Scriptshadow 250, my mind is on the verge of madness. And let me tell you, there isn’t a better script to read when you’re on the cusp of insanity than this one. I want you to imagine Steven Spielberg making A.I., but with Rob Zombie’s brain downloaded into his cerebral cortex. The word “trippy” doesn’t even begin to describe this bizarro eye-assault.
But before I get to that, I want to know which movie I should see and review for Monday. This is the best movie weekend of the year so far, with Sicario (great script), The Martian (great writer success story) and The Walk (amazing special effects) all coming out at the same time! I’m considering doing my first triple-feature in ten years, but I don’t think I’ll have the time. So which one do you want me to review? There’s no wrong answer!
Okay, on to Game of 72, which was my favorite logline of the bunch so I’m glad it won. Well, I should say I WAS glad that it won. Now? I’m not so sure.
The year is 2820. Earth is run by robots, aliens, and genetically modified monsters. The only thing these beings seem to care about is entertainment – specifically human-on-human fighting. They take the humans, chain them up like dogs, torture them, strip them of their names (replacing them with numbers), and force them to fight each other to the death.
Sounds fun, right?
The only way for humans to escape this misery is to win 72 fights (nearly impossible), after which they’re entered into something called “The Game.” In “The Game,” you have 72 minutes to catch a wandering orb. If you succeed, you gain your freedom, are upgraded into a human-robot hybrid, and get the choice to live forever.
So the stakes are high.
Our hero, 28 year old Finn, is one of the few fighters who’s managed to accumulate 72 wins. He joins two others who have managed this impossible feat – Nala and #9560 – and before the trio even knows what’s going on, they’re thrown onto an interplanetary train that shoots them off to Mars.
When they get to Mars, none of the monsters or aliens have ever heard of The Game. They don’t even know who these humans are. In fact, there’s no one to tell them how this game works. Complicating matters is that there’s a disembodied voice living inside of Finn who keeps telling him to do the opposite of what everyone tells him to do.
No more than five pages after we arrive on Mars, our players are told they’re going back to Earth, so they jump on another flight, and arrive into some kind of mind disco. Yes, a “mind disco.” As it’s explained to us, the music isn’t actually being played. It’s “transmitted through everyone’s bodies and souls, emanating from within.” Huh?
I could go on here, but I think you get the gist: THIS SCRIPT IS FUCKING NUTS.
Look, I’m all for imagination. Just yesterday I was complaining about writers who DIDN’T use imagination when writing their queries. But there’s adding jam to your sandwich and there’s dumping the entire jar on it. Game of 72 throws you into an information ocean, never letting you above water to catch your breath. Here’s a typical page from the script:
Let’s see what we’ve got here:
1) Italics-based writing.
2) Bolded writing.
3) Underlined writing.
4) TONS of information.
5) TONS of imagery.
6) Manic writing style.
7) Characters with number names.
The whole script reads like this. Here’s another line, picked at random: “He FALLS, an accordion of 100-copies of him are frozen mid- AIR. Thousands of MAGNOID thoughts enter his head. DEAFENING. The sensation of sinking into LAUGHING GAS, nitrous oxide.”
Huh?
I’m not even sure what to say. I mean, our writer is clearly talented. He had one of the best “Why You Should Reads” of the year. It showed that he’s clever, he’s imaginative, he can write. But it feels like for this script, he ingested an entire Starbucks store and wrote everything freehand, gripping the pencil like a knife, and stabbing 20,000 words onto the page without ever going back to see if he’d murdered anyone. Particularly the English language.
This is a cut and dry case of information overload. Too much style, too much imagination, too much action, too much information. As screenwriters, we do want our scenes packed with action and plot. But there’s a difference between drinking a beer and buying the brewery.
Truth be told there were a couple of red flags before my exhaustion kicked in. People use bitcoin in the year 2820? Space-X (created by Elon Musk) is the main form of transportation? I might buy into this if the year were 2075. The year, however is TWENTY-EIGHT HUNDRED! There wouldn’t be any recognizable brands still around, especially if the world had been taken over by robots and aliens.
The official moment I gave up on the story was when we went to Mars, and after five pages, came right back to Earth. To me, that indecision embodied the script’s biggest issue – its lack of focus. Our writer couldn’t find something interesting to do on an ENTIRELY SEPARATE PLANET, to the point where he had to bring our characters right back to the place they left just minutes ago.
And if you took the time to look deeper, it didn’t seem like anything had been thought out. Why didn’t anyone on Mars know about The Game? And if nobody knows about The Game, then aren’t you telling the reader that it’s not a big deal? And if it’s not a big deal, why should we care if these characters succeed or not?
In the flawed but fun Arnold Swarzenneger movie, The Running Man, the whole world watched that show. The writers made sure you knew everyone on the planet was obsessed with it. So the objective seemed important. With these characters, they’re not even sure if they want the prize (to live forever). Protagonists who aren’t even excited about achieving their goal? That’s a recipe for screenwriting disaster.
I like this writer here. I just think he tried to be too cute and stuff too much into every page. Dial the imagery back. Dial the world-building back. Get rid of the unnecessary details (the 9th version of the monster subset).
I say this over and over and over again, and nobody listens. The best screenplays are simple easy-to-understand stories with complex characters. Once you switch that emphasis around (to a complex story with simple characters), I won’t say you’ve hung yourself, but you’ve definitely tightened the noose.
This script was such an assault on my senses that I almost gave it a “What the hell did I just read?” Seriously, it got to the point where it hurt my head to keep reading. You’re a talented writer and better than this. Let’s nail the next one.
Script link: Game of 72
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Information overload is a script-killer. Nobody wants to be inundated with description-porn on every single page. Dial it back. If it’s not easy to ingest what’s on the page, we’re going to give up on you fairly quickly.
As we near Saturday, when I’ll contact all 250 writers who made it to the next round of my contest, I find myself emotionally exhausted. I’ve read so many stories from writers who have given up everything for this craft. Some have moved from other countries. Some have health problems so severe, they can’t leave their beds. Some are weeks from being kicked out of their apartments. A few are even homeless.
I wish I could make every one of those writers’ dreams come true. But the reality is, I’m not letting screenplays into this contest out of pity. If you didn’t bring your S-game (Script Game), your script didn’t get chosen. And as harsh as that sounds, it’s the way the industry works. If you can’t tell a good story – even in e-mail form – you’re not ready yet.
So today is about highlighting the mistakes I saw in your queries in the hopes that you never make those mistakes again. If there’s a theme to my observations, it’s this: Be professional. If there’s even a hint of sloppiness or laziness in your query, no one’s going to take you seriously. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at the ten biggest mistakes queryers made.
1) Generalities kill loglines – There were a lot of loglines where the writer didn’t give me any actual information. They wrote in vague generalities that didn’t convey what the script was about. Something like, “A mother who questions her life must combat a powerful force that threatens her very existence.” Honestly, it seemed like some of you were actively trying to say nothing. The whole point of a logline is to show what’s UNIQUE about your idea. To achieve that, you must be specific. “When a mother’s developmentally challenged son conjures up a haunting monster known as “The Babadook” from one of his books, she must battle her own sanity in order to defeat it.” That’s what I mean by specific.
2) Word-vomiting kills queries – Beware the writer who takes twenty words to say what they could’ve said in five. These writers add qualifiers and adverbs and adjectives and empty phrases to every sentence they write, making the simplest points exhausting to slog through. For example, instead of writing: “My movie is about a boxer who gets a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world,” they write: “I have a story about a boxer, the kind of man who’s kind, yet forceful when the moment requires it, embracing the challenge of a world that seems to be, but never overtly tries to be, his worst nightmare, and the way that man, my main character, struggles to achieve and eventually is able to secure, a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.” STRIP. YOUR. QUERIES. OF. UNCESSARY. WORDS. PLEASE. GOD.
3) Lack of conflict in a logline is a deal-breaker – You need to convey what the main conflict in your story is. Conflict is story! It’s the problem your main character must overcome to get to the finish line. I read a lot of loglines like this: “A young man experiences a spiritual awakening when he switches from being a Christian to a Muslim.” AND???? What is the conflict that tries to impede upon this switch? Lack of conflict in a logline means the writer doesn’t know what conflict is. If that’s the case, their screenplay is guaranteed to be boring. I mean 100% of the time guaranteed. Guys, if you don’t know what conflict is, go spend the weekend googling it.
4) The words/acronyms “CIA,” “agent,” and “FBI” combined with “terrorist threat” do not, on their own, make a movie – I must’ve read 50 loglines that were some variation of, “A CIA agent goes undercover to tackle a terrorist threat in London.” Secret agents and terrorist threats are some of the most potent plot elements in the movie universe. But they’re worthless on their own. They need a unique element to team up with.
5) Trending subject matter will always have an advantage in the query department – The trend of the moment is biopics. They’re the only thing that’s selling. So I admit that when I came across a biopic, as long as the query was competently written, it got in. Remember that everybody involved in the movie-making chain is trying to sell the project to the next guy up the ladder. I know Grey Matter will have to sell the winning script to the studio at some point. And the studio is more likely to buy a genre that’s doing well at the moment.
6) Focused loglines were always the best entires – One of the easiest ways to identify strong contenders was a focused logline. Unfortunately, the far more common logline was one that started in one place and ended someplace completely different. So I’d get something like this: “A down-on-his-luck mobster trying to open his own casino joins a cooking class and falls in love with his teacher.” Whaaaattttt??? How did we go from casinos to cooking class??? I saw this a LOT and the scary thing is, the writers who made this mistake are probably reading this right now and have no idea they’re guilty of it. That’s because everything connects logically in your own head. It’s only through objectivity that we see disjointedness. Take a step back and make sure you have a FOCUSED movie idea whose beginning, middle, and end, all tie together.
7) The overly mechanical query is digital Ambien – I read a lot of queries where writers were logical and succinct and measured in their pitch… and that fucking bored me to pieces. What these writers were saying was fine. It was HOW they were saying it that was the problem. There was no life to their words, no fun, no spontaneity. I’d read stuff like: “My goal was to eliminate the passive protagonist that’s been an Achilles heel to this sub-genre and replace him with a character that embodies the ideals of the thematic construct of revenge. In doing so, I’ve achieved an energy that was missing in my earlier drafts, but which I could never pinpoint. The resulting script is one that utilizes four out of five of the story engines that drive the classic “man vs. nature” tale…” AHHHHH! KILL ME NOW!!! Writing is supposed to be FUN TO READ. Even when you’re making a serious point, there should be a relaxed easy-to-digest demeanor to your writing. This style of query 100% OF THE TIME means the script will have no voice. So these queries were the easiest to reject.
8) Beware the logline that is at war with itself – I read a lot of loglines that felt like civil wars, with words jockeying for position as opposed to working together harmoniously. These writers had the “stuff it in there” mentality that should be reserved for the condiment section at a hot dog stand, not an e-mail query. Here’s an example: “A cowardly gunfighter is at odds with his idealism and the secrets he’s kept when a rival gunsmith rides into town, looking to settle a score that will help forge the frontier line between New Mexico and California.” A logline isn’t a contest to see how many words you can include. It’s a vessel to get your idea across as simply as possible. It should flow. If it doesn’t flow, rewrite it.
9) Don’t use weird adjectives to describe your main character – Every tenth logline I’d read, I’d get something like this: “A pestered train conductor plans a heist…” “Pestered???” The character adjective should give us both the defining quality of your hero, as well as CONNECT your hero to the plot of the movie. So let’s say your script is about a train conductor who decides to rob his own train. The adjective might be: “An exemplary conductor is forced by his wife to rob his own train after losing his family’s life savings.” I don’t love this logline but at least the adjective connects with the plot. This is a conductor who’s built his career on trust. He’s the last one you’d think would rob his own train.
10) Avoid the cliché opening-page overly-poetic description – Whenever I was on the fence about a query, I’d pop open the script and read the first few lines. If the overly poetic description opener made an appearance, it was bye-bye scripty. What is the “overly poetic description opener?” It’s when a writer who’s clearly uncomfortable with poetic descriptions starts their script with an overly clunky poetic description: “The sun-dappered late-afternoon light plays tic-tac-toe with the suburban rooftops.” No. Just no. Look, if describing an image in a poetic manner isn’t your forte, start with something else – an action, a mystery, your main character speaking. But if you dapper any suburban rooftops, goddammit I’m shutting you down, son.
If I could give writers one piece of advice when it comes to querying, it’d be the same advice I’d give them in regards to screenwriting: FOCUS. Get to the point. Convey your idea clearly. And being entertaining doesn’t hurt. It’s important to remember that you’re trying to convince a person to read something of yours BY READING SOMETHING OF YOURS. So if the short version of your writing isn’t enjoyable, there’s no way they’re going for the long version. Make your query focused and enjoyable to read, and there’s a good chance that reader will give you a shot.
