So they’re making a TV series about the Angriest Woman in The World, the same subject matter that Michael Whatling won Amateur Offerings with. If you remember, I wondered if anybody would want to make something so uncommercial. Well, somebody is. This goes to show that the entertainment world is full of opinions and a lot of those opinions turn out to be wrong. If you feel passionately about something, don’t listen to me or anybody else who tells you no. Keep pushing your script until you find the person who connects with it.

Next week is Amateur Offerings Pilot Week. Send in your pilot scripts to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Include the title, genre, logline, and why you think it deserves to be chosen. If all goes well, we’ll find the next Ozark. Rock and roll people. You know what to do next. Read the below scripts and vote on your favorite! And no, you can’t revote for Time Shark.

Title: A Change Is Gonna Come
Genre: Sci-Fi Biography
Logline: In 1965 a white musician struggles to pursue a music career with his black friends, until he crosses paths with a singer who oddly resembles his lamented hero, Sam Cooke.
Why You Should Read: I’m a huge fan of alt-history and what-if scenarios. I’m going to be honest, this premise is very unique. It revolves around one of America’s greatest Soul singers, Sam Cooke, and sort of acts his biopic, but not to the point of boring facts and situations. The story is seen through the eyes of his biggest fan, Jeffrey, and starts on the day that Cooke was murdered in the 1960s. It creates a whole new set of rules for time travel and fuses its sci-fi characteristics with themes of race and breaking down barriers. With everything going on these days with police brutality, and even the more-frivolous “OscarsSoWhite” controversy, this story may be more relevant than ever. It’s intense at times, but also does it with an appropriate sense of levity. I guarantee you this will be a very fun read of epic proportions. Thank you for your consideration.

Title: The Devil’s Workshop
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Premise: After accepting a gig to craft a demon mask, a makeup effects artist must protect her and her daughter from her abusive husband and the sinister forces that stalk them.
Why You Should Read: I’m not a mother but I want to be (eventually). I also want to be a paid screenwriter, proficient Japanese speaker, dog owner and in another life, Cirque du Soleil performer. What most people know (especially in this industry), is it’s really hard to find balance and sometimes you must sacrifice something to get your heart’s desire.
Besides that idea, I wanted to pair movie horror with the real horror of domestic violence. I researched, googled and trolled forums to craft my story. It wasn’t until after a reading when a woman approached me that I realized I was telling her story. It hurt to hear her share her accounts of abuse that she’d mostly kept to herself. I hope if anything this story inspires people to take control of their own lives.

Title: The Playhouse
Genre: Contained horror
Logline: When seven strangers, with no memory of who they are, wake up inside an old, dark house with no way out, they become victims to a series of terrifying supernatural encounters… but if they ever want to escape this place alive, they’ll have to unlock the mystery of who they are, why they’re here, and what this place really is.
Why You Should Read: I want to do something a little different and a little special with my submission today, and take this opportunity to use Scriptshadow as the mighty marketing tool which I know it can be. Carson’s site is immensely powerful and it has already brought several writers and scripts to the attention of Hollywood producers. I want to see if we can make this happen again. — Firstly, for anyone reading, it’s important to think of The Playhouse, not as a single screenplay, but instead the beginning of a franchise. It’s true to say that the script is a self-contained story with a beginning, a middle and an end, but built into the fabric of its DNA is the potential for the continued expansion of its central concept. — The script is, essentially, a low-budget contained horror, but it has a unique hook at its heart. Without revealing any spoilers, what begins in the traditional haunted house genre quickly elevates into entirely new territory in the final act (while also keeping its hooks firmly within the conventions of horror). — Now, the interesting part: if my script gets enough votes and is chosen to be reviewed by Carson, I’ll be releasing a special pitch document attached to the script for you guys to read which will contain a synopsis for the next two sequels as well as outlining my vision for the evolution of the series as a whole, showcasing why this is the next horror franchise to step up after The Purge, Saw and Final Destination series. — I will also simultaneously be pitching the script to producers at the same time it’s featured here on scriptshadow, and I’ll be doing my best to keep you guys updated during this process. — My real hope, however, is that producers will concurrently find the script themselves through this amazing site. If you’re a fan of my project and you choose to vote for me, I hope you can help out by creating buzz, using social media to direct producers and industry professionals, that you either know personally or online, here. — You can consider this an exercise in hype, word of mouth, marketing or even a type of social experiment. Thank you for reading.

Title: Intelligent Design
Genre: Gothic Horror/Sci-fi/Crime
Logline: A grisly vampire-like murder sends an NYC Detective in way over his head when he suspects that the culprit he’s after might actually be a real vampire.
Why You Should Read: You’ve actually read this before, but a moderately longer version. It was in the “Almost Top 25” category for the Scriptshadow 250. The feedback I received from your site was that it was too long. Funny part was a management company (a very good one too) who saw the logline asked to read it, liked it, and had the exact same feedback. So, I spent the last month slowly killing my darlings a bit. I managed to shave off 8 pages from the script, 120 down to 112. Is it enough? I definitely think it reads quicker, but you never what you have until someone else reads it. I made a few narrative changes. I swapped the opening “teaser” with something that felt a little more gripping. I think the previous opening could easily be mistaken for weird pillow-talk. I tweaked the ending as well. I also did my best to get rid of over-description, which I think was one of the major hurdles when reading it. Alas, hope it makes the cut again…

Title: Wild
Genre: Crime/Thriller/Drama
Logline: In 18th century London, a con artist becomes the head of the police and uses this new power to secretly rise to the top of the organized crime world.
Why Read?: It’s the type of story that people can’t believe could be true, except it is! It’s based off of the real life story of Jonathan Wild, one of England’s most notorious criminals. This script was a Quarterfinalist in the 2015 Nicholl Fellowship, and a Finalist in the 2015 Scriptapalooza Screenplay Competition, so we’ve gotten a little bit of attention from some management companies, but haven’t been signed.

Is there such thing as the perfect concept? Today’s script poses that question. And no one makes it out alive before the answer is given! Time Shark baby! TIME SHARK!!!

Title: Time Shark!
Genre: Spoof/Action Adventure
Logline: A retired marine biologist goes back into the water when inter-dimensional time-traveling sharks invade our world. But an overzealous military-man has nefarious plans for the strange fish. Airplane! meets Jaws.
Why you should read: Hey there! So I’m a first time screenwriter, starting this a little later than most, (I’m in my early 40s) and I had a story to tell about time traveling sharks. So I did. I don’t live in California, I’m actually a tv sports producer in Florida, a cuban-american dad, and write as a hobby on the side. I think you should review my script because it’s a comedy about time traveling sharks. And time travel is awesome, and so are sharks. And spoof comedies aren’t all that common anymore, so why not? I really hope you give it a look. Thanks.
Writer: Enrique Bertran
Details: 97 pages

First off, I want to apologize to the four OTHER applicants of last week’s Amateur Offerings. Because, seriously? Did anybody REALLY stand a chance against Time Shark? We’re talking about time travel and sharks. The two greatest things that have ever existed on the planet. I once conducted a survey of the greatest pairings of all time once and you know what the number 1 pairing was? Peanut Butter and Jelly. Except there was an asterisk next to it. The asterisk stated: “Unless you’re counting time travel and sharks.”

The only bad thing about putting time travel and sharks in the same script is that the expectations are stratospheric. Anything less than genius would be a literary catastrophe. But no worries. We can be sure that today’s screenplay will be perfect. Why? Because if it isn’t, we can just send a shark back in time to rewrite it. Boom! Splash goes the shark’s fin.

Pentagon worker Sarah Lightman has just been informed of the impossible. All over the world, ancient sharks – sharks that have not existed in millions of years – are attacking and killing people. We’re talking megalodon sharks here, those giant prehistoric motherfuckers, and flying sharks, and sharks with two heads. Sarah and her co-worker, Chairman Higgins, are tasked by the government to figure out a solution to this growing problem.

It doesn’t take long for Sarah to realize they’re in over their heads. Luckily, she knows a man. Gil Baitman, the world’s number 1 shark expert. The thing is, Baitman hasn’t been seen in years. Ever since his wife was chewed up by one of these dorsel-finned gravy gobblers, he can’t so much as mouth the word “shark.” But desperate times call for desperate measures, and the curiosity factor of prehistoric sharks using our beaches as buffets is too big for even Baitman to resist.

The goal is to capture one of these sharks so the government can study what they’re up against. And somehow, Gil and Sarah pull this off. Little do they know, however, Chairman Higgins never had any intentions of studying these sharks and their time-traveling ways. He wanted to create the ultimate time shark army! So he starts cloning these sharks and strapping weapons to them (like lasers), and before you know it, he’s sending this shark army off on missions.

But wouldn’t you know it – those bastard sharks rebel. And now that they’re armed with weapons, they have one goal in mind – to settle the score with their makers. It’ll be up to Gil, the only person who knows enough about sharks to stop this kind of attack. But will he be able to put past tragedies behind to pull off this impossible feat? Only time will tell. Or should I say, only time SHARKS will tell.

I honestly considered giving this script a “worth the read” on its title alone. I’m serious. There have only been five screenplays in existence that were worth money on their title alone. Monster-In-Law, I remember, was one of them. Then there were… those other ones. And Time Shark would definitely be in that group.

But Enrique makes a critical mistake. He mixes two types of comedy that shouldn’t be mixed. “Spoof” is the kind of comedy that works when you have a generic subject matter – like an airplane. The spoofing is there to “spice up” up the otherwise bland concept. But when you have a spicy concept to begin with, you don’t need any more spice. Too much spice can turn a relaxed dinner at an Indian restaurant into an all-night date with your toilet.

I mean Russians speaking with subtitles, then looking down to read their own subtitles and then, because they’re upside-down relative to them, turning those subtitles right-side up so they can read them – that’s pretty funny and something that would work in a movie like Airplane. But it doesn’t work here when you’ve already got a wacky concept to begin with.

Every bit of comedy here needs to stem from two things – sharks and time-travel. When you’ve got scenes centered around the cloning of Kim Kardashian’s ass, you move from “buzzworthy so-bad-it’s-good” type movie, a la “Sharknado,” to “Vampires Suck,” which is the trash heap of the comedy genre. You don’t want to get anywhere near that. I mean a joke about Abe Vigoda? Really? I suppose that’s sort of time travel related. As in time traveling jokes from the 90s.

As for the plot itself, it’s a mixed bag. Having Sarah and Gil try and bag a time shark was okay, I guess. But once they deliver the shark, the movie shifts over to Chairman Higgins, who’s driving the story with his whole “weaponizing sharks” plan. In the meantime, our main characters are just hanging out on a boat for 30 pages.

There’s this misconception that when you’re writing comedy – ESPECIALLY broad comedy – that nothing matters. That you can do whatever the hell you want because ‘who cares, it’s comedy.’ But the standard pillars of storytelling still apply. And having your two main characters inactive for 30 pages is a bad idea. You want them to be driving the story at all times.

The script picks back up when the time sharks rebel and Gil and Sarah are tasked with cleaning up the mess (so they’re finally active again), but it’s too little, too late. By that point we’d gotten bored of the two.

I DEFINITELY think this is salvageable though. The idea of megalodon sharks attacking people on beaches is genius. I also like the idea of the government weaponzing them. I would try and keep Gil and Sarah closer to the action in that second act though. You never want your main characters waiting at the side of the ring to be tagged back in. They need to be fighting the fight at all times. And stop trying to mix two different types of comedy. I’d go so far as to say this will never go anywhere if you keep the spoof angle.

Out of my own curiosity, I’d like to hear other commenters pitch their Time Shark movies. This is something I’m almost sure will be turned into a film, even if it’s just on Syfy. And if we can help Enrique see a better version of this script, we could help him speed up that process. So, fire away!

Script link: Time Shark

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

[x] wasn’t for me 

[ ] worth the read 

[ ] impressive

[ ] genius

What I learned: Guys, if secondary characters are making the decisions that are pushing your story forward, it means your main characters aren’t. That’s bad storytelling 101.

One of the misconceptions I had when I first started sending my screenplays out was that they were special. That the endless months of hard work and care I put into creating them would be celebrated by those who read them – like the way an Olympic judge would lock in to a figure skating routine, marking scores for every little spin and jump. Now that I’ve been on the other side, I realize just how many scripts are being read, and for that reason, how quickly a reader can tune out if your script isn’t grabbing them.

I was talking about this very issue today with a manager, which led to a debate on what makes a script stand out from the pack. The first answer we agreed on was “voice.” But that’s become such a watered down buzzword at this point that further examination was required. We moved on to other topics before we could come to a consensus, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the question on the way home, especially with all the scripts I’ve been reading for the Scriptshadow 250. I can tell with 99% certainty if a script isn’t going to deliver by page 5. But then, every 20 scripts or so, a script will grab me. Just like that. BAM! I’m in it. I can’t wait to find out what happens next. How did this happen? How is this script so much better than the other ones?

Today, I want to identify that secret sauce, that difference between “stand out” and “standard.” You’re probably thinking there’s no way to determine this. The process of creating art is like magic. It arrives at the crossroads between talent and inspiration. But I refuse to believe that. Even the least talented writers can be taught to identify when they’re making bad choices. And if you can identify that, there’s no reason you can’t start making original choices. And original choices are the heart of what makes a screenplay stand out. Let’s see what some of the other ingredients are.

CONCEPT

A stand-out screenplay usually has a concept that’s a little weird, a little “off.” “Bubbles,” the number 1 script on last year’s Black List comes to mind (A biopic of Michael Jackson told through the eyes of his pet monkey, Bubbles). Fight Club is another one (who makes a movie about bored people fighting??). Stand-out writers tend to stand out because they do things differently. If they were doing things the same, then by definition, they wouldn’t be standing out. So while a unique concept isn’t required for stand-out material, it’s an indication that the writer enjoys exploring the less-traveled path.

SPECIFICITY

One of the things I’ve noticed with stand-out writers is that there’s a specificity to their writing. They don’t describe things in generalities. They add detail to better bring you into their world. Here’s a line I recently read from a generic amateur script: “Joe changes into his uniform. That of a chef. The head chef.” Then here’s a professional writer describing a similar moment in his script: “Now dressed in a puffy black snow jacket, Rose steps into a pair of snow boots, pulling on a pair of mittens.” It’s so much easier to see what’s going on in the second example, because of the detail. There’s a ceiling to this, of course. You can’t write too much description or you’ll gum up the read. But specific writers also tend to abide by one of the core rules of screenwriting: Say as much as possible in as few words as possible. They just do so with more detail.

POINT-OF-VIEW

The first two elements I mentioned are icing, but point-of-view is cake. “Point-of-view” is how you see the world, and is one of the most important factors in standing out. A unique point of view takes any situation and finds a new way to look at it. So for example, if I asked you what “romance” looked like in your head, you might answer, “When a man and a woman are deeply in love with each other.” When Spike Jonez is asked that question, though, he’d answer, “When a man and a computer are in love with each other,” as explored in his movie, “Her.” Or if I asked you to write a story about a woman and her son being held hostage by a man, your first instinct would probably be to tell the story through the mother’s eyes. Emma Donahue, the author of “Room,” however, decided to explore the situation through the eyes of the small child. Point of view isn’t just about concept. It extends to any choice you make in the story. If I told you to write a story about stock traders, your instinct would probably be to make all your characters overgrown frat boys with perfectly tailored suits and a penchant for swearing. The architect in The Big Short, Christian Bale’s character, however, has one glass eye, wears jeans and a t-shirt, is anti-social, and holds meetings in his office with heavy metal music blasting. Your point-of-view must be unique if you want your script to stand out in any way.

DO THE UNEXPECTED

I want to bring up a common misconception. That “instinct” is a good thing. Instinct is the unintentional repetition of an expected outcome. For example, say you have a scene with a guy and a girl in the rain. Your “instinct” may be to have those characters kiss. But the only reason your instinct is telling you that is because you’ve seen dozens of movies where a guy and a girl in the rain kiss. The stand-out writer, however, will show our awkward male character struggling to open an umbrella. As the girl waits impatiently, getting colder and wetter by the second, the guy can’t seem to trip the click device above the handle. As the girl starts to get pissed, the umbrella pops up, hitting the girl in the face. She grabs her nose, which is now bleeding. And the guy steps forward to help her only to have the umbrella get struck by lightning. That’s a more unexpected choice, and one that only comes to you if you greet instinct with skepticism. Here’s where things get tricky though. There are two types of writers. Writers who are truly original. Charlie Kaufman is the prototype for this group. Then there are the rest of us – people who see the world at face value. For the truly original, their instincts ARE unique, and therefore should be followed as-is. For the rest of us, we must learn to challenge our instincts. Every choice must be accompanied by a question: “Is this what usually happens?” Because if it is, then you probably shouldn’t write it. This is a long-winded way of saying that the stand-out scripts always keep me guessing. The writer is always ahead of me because he’s making unexpected choices.

UNIQUE PRESENTATION
To best understand what unique presentation looks like, I’ll present you with the opposite: Taken. “Taken” follows a single guy on a single mission to get his daughter back. It’s a straight-forward first person story. A unique presentation, on the other hand, changes things up in one of two categories: character or structure. Pulp Fiction’s structure jumps back and forth in time. Gone Girl’s first half tells the story through our protagonist’s eyes, but then switches over to its antagonist for the second half. Steve Jobs tells three 40 minute contained stories. As for character, the idea is to use your characters to help the reader experience the story in a unique way. The most recent example of this was Deadpool – our fourth-wall breaking never-stops-narrating main character. That character was partially inspired by another fourth-wall breaker, Ferris Bueller. “Bubbles” uses an animal to narrate its story. The Big Short uses celebrity cutaways to convey complex exposition. You never want to use these tools just to use them. They need to make sense within the story you’re telling. But an offbeat presentation is an easy way to make your script stand out.

DIALOGUE

The dialogue in a stand-out script tends to be more inspired than in lesser scripts. There’s a pop to it. And it’s hard to quantify what that pop is made up of. But for starters, the dialogue should be clever. You get the sense the writer really thought about each response. The vocabulary is more extensive than your average screenwriter. The writer must have a unique sense of humor, whether it’s dry, morbid, over-the-top, or just plain weird. There’s a specificity to the dialogue. “You get drunk at the bar last night again?” probably reads better as, “You chuggin Mai Tais at Finnegans all night again?” There’s a naturalism to the way characters speak. They use contractions. They use slang. They use nicknames. Words come out fast and loose instead of stilted and robotic (unless the script calls for a robotic character). Mostly there’s a freedom to the dialogue that mirrors the way we speak in real life, but at the same time, the wisecracks are wiser, the comebacks are sharper, and the vocabulary is more advanced.

EMBRACE THE WEIRD

Finally, embrace the weird, the offbeat, the macabre. If you want to stand out, you have to remove yourself from group-think and explore the oddities of life. I just heard about a script where a guy sheds his skin every day and turns into a different person. Those are the kinds of scripts people remember. What are you writing that will stand out?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: After a murderer escapes prison, the sister of the man he was convicted of killing puts a 10 million dollar bounty on his head.
About: This script sold a couple of years ago after it got Will Smith attached. Writer Sascha Penn has been slowly moving up the ranks in Hollywood. He’s written a couple of TV shows, most notably, “The Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives,” and I’ve spotted a few feature specs by him before. But this is obviously his big breakthrough, getting Will Smith attached. Smith is looking for that starring vehicle that’s going to put him back on top. And taking a “Fugitive” type roll might be just the trick to do it.
Writer: Sascha Penn
Details: 110 pages – undated

We just talked about this yesterday. There are certain premises that sound great on paper, but once you start writing them, they’re a lot more complicated than you thought. It’s like ordering spaghetti. You know it’ll taste good. But then you get the plate and the next 45 minutes are a war between you, the noodles, the fork, and your dexterity level. It sucks because you’ve finally come up with that head-turning six-figure idea. Only to realize you’ve been dropped into a literary minefield.

Bounty is a near-perfect logline. However, its cracks start to show less than 20 pages in. Once the premise is established, the questions begin. Like if a woman offers 10 million dollars to whoever kills a man, how would that person ever actually receive that money? Publicly offering money for a murder is illegal. And indeed, when the sister character offers it, she immediately goes to jail.

So let’s say you still kill the guy. Where do you bring him to get the money? I’m pretty sure those “cash for paychecks” places don’t accept corpses. But let’s say you somehow avoid this issue. How does this money get transferred into your account without the police tracking it? I mean, you’re a public figure now, easy to keep tabs on. And receiving money for a murder is illegal right?

It’s too bad that Bounty faces all these questions, because it really is a fun concept.

We meet our hero, Abel Ford, in prison. He’s been here for 10 years for the murder of a big shot one-percenter. The thing is, Ford didn’t kill him. Well, according to Ford at least. He’s so determined to prove his innocence that he’s been planning a prison break for the last few years so he can find the real killer and live happily ever after with his girlfriend and (now) 10 year-old son.

Ford does escape, but it doesn’t go as planned. The man he was convicted of killing has a weirdo sister named Vivian Standish who announces on national television that she’ll give 10 million dollars to anyone who brings Ford in dead or alive.

Imagine if 10,000 Dog the Bounty Hunters all descended upon Massachusetts looking to claim the payday of a lifetime. That’s exactly what happens, making Ford’s plan to find the real killer a teeeeeensy bit tougher.

Ford finds the one man he can trust, his half brother, and the two start driving around the city, asking sketchy criminals what they know about that infamous murder Ford supposedly committed. Bit by bit, a different picture emerges and Ford is able to piece together the truth. But will he be able to sell it to the media before he gets a bullet in his head?

As I’ve made clear, “Bounty” is a brilliantly conceived idea. Not just because of the idea itself, but because it embodies everything a saleable spec is supposed to be. It’s got a nifty high-concept premise. It starts fast and never lets up. And it features a 30s-40s male protagonist, which, because of the large marketable talent pool that exists in that acting demographic, makes it the quickest way to get a movie made. This harkens back to the formula that made specs so big in the 90s.

Also, thrillers are the easiest screenplays to write. The structure is built into the premise (a main character with a strong goal that he must achieve quickly) which allows most of the movie to write itself. If I were an aspiring screenwriter just starting out, this is the genre I’d write in. It’s by far the easiest to pick up.

There are couple of other teachable moments here as well. Penn realizes that a man on the run without an emotional connection is boring. We won’t care. That’s one reason The Fugitive did so well. We felt the love Richard Kimble had for his dead wife. So Penn wisely writes in a scene after the prison break where Ford goes to his old girlfriend, who he has a 10 year old son with, to show us what he’s fighting for.

I call these EMOTIONAL STAKES. There has to be something emotional on the line for your hero.

Penn also makes this bigger than your run-of-the-mill thriller by exploring an issue – gun violence in America. This movie is about a country riddled with a gun problem that’s only getting worse. At one point late in the story, multiple misidentified Abel Fords are getting shot. Everyone has gone gun crazy! If you can come up with a great premise that ALSO hits on a controversial social issue? You’re gonna have a lot of people asking to read your screenplay.

The problem with Bounty is it never overcomes the suspension of disbelief required to buy into the story. I kept asking questions that the script couldn’t answer. Namely: How would anybody be able to collect this money? Everything Vivian was doing was illegal.

Penn tries his best to distract us from this reality. For example, he focuses on how the bounty doesn’t just cover death. They can also bring Abel in alive as well. However, the draw here is the kill. That’s why this premise is so exciting. If it was just, “Bring him in alive and you get 10 million,” the logline doesn’t work. So it’s kind of a cheat.

Also, Penn tries to convince us that anyone who kills Abel is going to get off scott-free because no jury in America will convict him. I’m not so sure about that. The bounty hunters wouldn’t be killing some evil menace to society serial killer. They’re killing a dude who shot a rich guy. I’m thinking there are plenty of juries who’d have no problem convicting a greedy bounty hunter over that.

Finally, I thought Penn missed some opportunities. The promise of the premise here is bounty hunters coming after Abel! So I wanted to see various weird bad-ass bounty hunter personalities. Imagine how much fun you could have with that? Real life versions of Boba Fett using unique skill-sets to hunt down Ford. But the treatment of the bounty hunters is more scattershot, told more through Ford’s perspective than their own. So we never get to establish any of these potential actor-bait roles (think about it – this could be the modern day Con Air, with all these big actors coming in to play weird cool bounty hunters).

I’m torn because I love this idea and I think the script sets up a great story. It doesn’t deliver though.

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

What I learned: Send your character into the belly of the beast, the place they least want to go. A great way to ENSURE a good scene is to ask yourself, “Where does my character least want to go?” And then send them there. Early in the script, Ford needs to get information from a criminal to further his investigation. Guess where that criminal is? Prison. THE PRISON HE JUST BROKE OUT OF. So Ford has to go right back to the prison he just broke out of (in disguise, of course), to chat with the man who can help him out. These scenes work almost every time.

What I learned 2: If you find yourself trying to distract your reader from large plot holes in your script, you know you’re in trouble. Instead of creating distractions, go back and fill in the hole.

Get those pilots ready for Pilot Amateur Offerings Week (March 12th). To get your script into the competition, e-mail me the title, genre, logline, and why you think it deserves a read to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Drama
Logline: A tech billionaire purchases a troubled police precinct in the wake of a loved one’s murder. The series will explore if the eccentric and enigmatic figure’s cutting-edge approach can fix the broken ways of the blue blood veterans.
About: This script was sent to me with some high praise. It comes from David Slack, who was one of the primary writers on CBS’s “Person of Interest.” David’s been writing professionally for over a decade, starting off in children’s television before moving on to more adult fare like Person of Interest, Law & Order, and Lie to Me. The show will air on Fox later this year.
Writer: David Slack
Details: 60 pages – revised network draft – (January 22, 2016)

Cop pilots are funny. Everybody’s trying to find that angle that’ll allow them to explore this stale format in a fresh way. Last year we had Vince Gilligan’s Battle Creek which asked the question, “What if you worked in a precinct with no technology?” Fox tried out Minority Report, which asked, among other things, “What does crime-fighting look like with near-future technology?” And now APB comes in and asks, “What if you had an unlimited budget and could use any technology?”

It’s a cool setup. An Elon Musk-like cocky billionaire figures he knows how to fight crime better than the government and puts his money where his mouth is. But the more you think about it, the less convincing the concept becomes. It’s not like our billionaire is saying he knows how to do it better. He’s just saying he could do better since he has more money. But wouldn’t the government do better if they had more money also? That’s one of many questions this pilot had me asking.

APB starts off with a couple waking up to a home invasion. As the woman slips into a back room, she brings up an Uber-like app called “APB” that, just like Uber, shows you all the cop cars driving through streets in your area. She texts that she’s under attack, clicks the button, and immediately all cars on the map turn and start driving towards her. Within seconds (as opposed to the 15 minutes you usually have to wait for cops) police drones AND real cops are there to save the day. Welcome to the next level of crime-fighting.

Jump back a few months where we meet Murphy, the “female version of John McClane.” Murphy is the best cop in the worst precinct in the city. But that’s all about to change. Billionaire Gideon Reed, motivated by the system’s failure to save his wife, decides to buy his own precinct, privatize it, and turn it into the most technologically sophisticated precinct in the U.S. They’ll have drones, they’ll have Teslas, they’ll have body armor, they’ll have apps. And in a Bernsandersion move, everyone gets paid 40% more!

For some reason, Murphy isn’t having this (because an overfunded precinct and higher pay are bad things??) and wants a transfer. Despite their huge pay-raise, the rest of the cops don’t like it either. Everybody thinks this madman and his weird ideas are going to fail so they’re waiting for him to get bored and go back to launching rockets into space.

But Gideon not only believes in his system, he’s going to stay here and run it! That’s right. He sets up an office right here in the 13th precinct. As pressure mounts, Gideon sees that he can win over the team by stopping a band of home invasion murderers. Using his 24/7 5K video drones, he monitors the city until he finds out the bad guys’ identities. But he’ll need the cooperation of his reluctant team to put them away. And to ensure the future of his new system: APB.

I don’t know about this one. I feel like Olivia Wilde going up to present an Oscar only to see that my co-presenter has secretly transformed into Ali-G and may potentially say something insensitive (it’s true: Sasha-Baron Coen was not supposed to present as Ali-G!).

My issue here is that I don’t know what this show is. At first I thought it was about a rich guy proving to the government that he could do their job better. But then it morphed into a sort of “Minority Report” show that focused on next-level technology in the police force. That was until a key scene where Gideon insisted they switch their guns from lethal to non-lethal. So was this now a political statement show about policemen and gun control? As I settled into that mindset, Gideon starts doing all these zany things (shooting himself with a tazer to see how it feels). So is this now the cop version of House M.D.?

Not only do I not know what this show is about, but its entire foundation is built on a questionable conceit. It tries to make you believe that throwing an extra billion dollars at policing a precinct ISN’T GOING TO WORK. That using better computers, better gear, better cars, better weapons, and, oh yeah, crime-fighting drones, is going to fail when compared to… an understaffed underfunded uninspired badly run precinct. Am I missing something here? Explain to me how the latter option could be better.

Now I admit, I’ve never been a fan of this “one bad guy a week” cop-show format. It’s too generic for me, too restrictive. I’m such a “Lost” and “Breaking Bad” guy, I keep waiting for the story to bust out of its chains and go off into new unexpected directions. But I don’t think David Slack (or Fox) is interested in that. And I think that’s why the networks are dying. They’re terrified of trying anything unconventional. I can’t imagine how many meetings they needed over at NBC just to agree that Ray Liotta’s character in Shades of Blue could be gay. And Fox used to be the outlier of the networks. They used to take chances. I’m not seeing that anymore.

Even some of the basic TV stuff here was uninspired. When we cut to commercial (the end of an act break), you better leave us with a question we want answered. The question we were left with at the end of Act 2 was, “Will Murphy leave the precinct?” No. She won’t. We all know she won’t because then there won’t be a show. Not only that, but there’s no reason for her to leave. She’s now working at the most high-tech police precinct in the country. Why would you leave that?

I’m not saying every commercial break has to come with a Lost-level mystery-box question (why are there polar bears on a tropical island?). Character-driven questions are fine. But they have to leave us genuinely uncertain about the answer. I’ll copy and paste something MulesandMud said the other day that applies:

So many scripts that I read never bother to create a real sense of uncertainty for the future, and so I never actually wonder what happens next. Without that curiosity, I have no reason to read further.

For example, maybe it’s not the hero who’s diffusing the bomb; maybe it’s his brother, and our hero is feeding him instructions over the phone. Now I’m thinking about what life would be like for this dude if he gets his brother killed, and how brutal that would be, and I’m genuinely relieved when they both survive. A question with only one answer isn’t a real question. Your story path needs to constantly arrive at forks in the road, and you need to show us both paths, then prove to us that you’ve chosen the more interesting direction every single time.

I was thinking that a lot during APB. None of the questions had me uncertain. I was always ahead of the writer. The plot went according to plan. Even the obstacles (an angry sergeant who says Gideon has 24 hours left to prove himself or else) were expected. I was really hoping for something more here. We live in the age of 500 television shows. You can’t get away with decent anymore. You have to push yourself. You have to take chances. You have to do things that are unexpected. Or else you’re going to get swallowed up. Hopefully David Slack and Fox course-correct here. There’s something in this idea. It just hasn’t materialized yet.

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

What I learned: You are playing with fire when you cut to commercial after a soft question. You can get away with soft questions in episode 8, when your show has established itself. But not in your pilot, when trigger-happy viewers with a million choices are looking for any reason to watch something else. Think long and hard about every act break in your script. Make sure to put something there that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for your viewer to not stick around and find out the answer.