If you’re new to the Scriptshadow Script Challenge, here are all the previous posts…
WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
WEEK 9
Okay, this past week was all about identifying the main problems in your screenplay, coming up with solutions, then placing those solutions into your SECOND DRAFT OUTLINE.
For example, if one of your big problems was that your hero was boring, part of the solution may have been to give him a more powerful opening scene. Therefore you’d go into your second draft outline, find your hero’s opening scene (let’s say it was the second scene in the script) and write in a detailed synopsis of the scene you planned to write.
You’d then do that for every problem and solution. Some of these solutions may have required changing one scene. Some of them may have required changing entire sequences. And some of them may have meant changing multiple scenes across three acts.
The reason you outline all of this ahead of time is so you can a) see how the script looks zoomed out. And b) do all the dirty work of placing everything where it needs to go so you can make the changes linearly when you go to write the draft.
And that’s the plan here. You’ve got your 2nd Draft Outline all laid out. All you have to do is go down the list, from Scene 1 to Scene 60, and replace the scenes that you decided to change in the problem-solving process.
Now some people don’t like to be this organized. Their approach is more general. They have some ideas on what changes they need to make. They may even write them down in a document. This is perfectly acceptable. But I’ve found that the less organized you are going into a rewrite, the harder it is to wrestle the rewrite into shape.
And rewriting is one of the hardest things there is to do. Cause unlike first drafts, where you’re writing in a somewhat linear manner, rewrites require more bouncing around. You’ll write a new scene, realize it requires you to change something 60 pages earlier, go back to make the necessary changes in that scene, realize that the secondary character in that scene doesn’t work anymore because of the tonal change, requiring you to go back to your problem-solving document, figure out how to approach that character, and so on and so forth.
So the more you can mitigate that haphazard process, the better.
Simon Kinberg, who runs like five of the biggest franchises in Hollywood at the moment, says that he spends way more time on his outline than he does writing the script. He wants to be confident in the direction of the script before he writes it and he can only do that if he’s mapped out as much of the story as possible ahead of time.
Now before you jump in and start writing, I want to make sure you’ve got the proper rewrite mindset. The biggest problem with first drafts is that they’re messy. They don’t make a lot of sense. So in addition to fixing all these problems, you’re going to want to clean the script up as much as you can. You won’t be able to do it all in one draft. But you definitely want everything as cohesive as you can make it. To achieve this, you’ll be doing three things.
SIMPLIFYING
STREAMLINING
FOCUSING
Simplify – One of the biggest mistakes screenwriters make is overcomplicating their plot. Movies have deceptively simple plots. If something is not moving your plot forward, you’ll want to get rid of it. Whatever your hero or heroes are attempting to do, only write scenes where people are pushing towards that. Simplifying is the difference between the original Hunger Games and Hunger Games 4. In Hunger Games, it was about kids getting ready for and competing in a death match (simple to understand!). In Hunger Games 4, it was about half-a-dozen things, none of which were very clear. Not surprisingly, that over-complication doomed the movie.
Streamline – In rewriting, you need to become a ruthless editor who’s willing to get rid of ANYTHING that doesn’t work. If a character is average and they’re not integral to the story, GET RID OF THEM! If you have a subplot about an investigator who researches where a unique bullet came from and it doesn’t affect your main plot? GET RID OF IT! If you have two characters who are both funny best friends of your main character, consider combining them. Think of each draft as a company. Figure out where all the excess spending is happening and cut it out. I want your second draft to be as lean and mean as possible. 110, AT MOST, pages unless you’re writing an epic period piece.
Focus – Movies are not places to explore a dozen different ideas. They work best when they’re exploring 1 or 2 ideas. These ideas often boil down to your theme and your main character’s flaw. And in most cases, those two things will be the same. So if your main character’s flaw is that she doesn’t believe in herself. Focus a lot of her scenes on exploring that flaw. If your theme is “Seize the day,” ask yourself if the scene you’re writing explores that theme (whether it be in a positive or negative way). A lot of scripts go south when the writer starts following every thought that pops into their head, regardless if Thought A and Thought B are natural extensions of each other. I remember an amateur script I read once where the female hero was an airline stewardess mired in an airline strike and also the story of her as an up-and-coming MMA fighter. There was no thematic overlap between these storylines on any level and when I asked her what she was thinking when she wrote it, she said, simply, she was inspired by Tarantino movies. Needless to say, this approach leads to hacky scripts that become unfocused and never recover.
So, you’re going to move quickly here. Every week, you’re going to be covering 25-30 pages. Now all of those pages won’t need to be rewritten. You may only need to rewrite three scenes in a particular act. So don’t freak out. But if we’re going to finish a second draft in a month, we need to get through a quarter of the script each week.
Rewrite Goal (Week 10): End of first act! (pages 25-30)
Genre: Comedy
Premise: On the cusp of gaining independence from the British, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson lose the only draft of the Declaration of Independence in the world, putting the future of the United States in doubt.
About: A script about our founding fathers. I’m a couple of days late on this. But what creed do us Americans live by? BETTER LATE THAN NEVER! Yeah! Murica!! Actually, if these guys were smart, they’d change the title to “Murica,” and run away with a sale. United States of Fuckin’ Awesome is one of the few comedy scripts to have won the Nicholl Fellowship, which it accomplished in 2014.
Writers: Alisha Brophy & Scott Miles
Details: 98 pages
Screenwriting contests are funny. And I’m not excluding my own experiences running them from this observation. They’re basically competitions for writers who don’t really know what they’re doing yet. Therefore, the person who wins has rarely written the perfect screenplay. They’ve written something that has wonderful moments mixed with amateurish moments, with the determining factor being there’s more good than bad.
This can be frustrating for losing contestants who then read the scripts, as they expect them to be amazing. When they aren’t, they immediately focus on the fact that their screenplays aren’t amazing either. So why did THAT imperfect screenplay beat out THEIR imperfect screenplay?
Often, these writers are using the principle of Everything That’s Not Amazing Is The Same. And this couldn’t be less true. Whereas the winning script may have nailed important screenwriting elements such as concept and character, the losing writer may not even grasp the basics, like how to get into a scene late and get out of it early. Or how to use every scene to push the story forward.
Of course, the real problem is that they don’t know these things yet because nobody who knows anything has ever read their script, sat down, and explained these problems to them. If you’re unaware that you’re doing anything wrong, you’re going to think your script deserves to win every contest it enters.
And this is another misconception that people who don’t understand screenwriting have. That storytelling is this subjective thing. Like the only reason “The Killer Eagle” beat out “Recon Assassin” is because the reader loves eagles or something. That’s not true. There are storytelling basics you need to incorporate just to GET to the point where you’re being judged subjectively. And most aspiring screenwriters have been at this for so little time, they haven’t learned these things yet.
So when their third ever script doesn’t ellicit oohs and ahs, they convince themselves that it’s because the world of art is “subjective” and people just aren’t “getting” their script. You wanna know what smart screenwriters do? They figure out why their story isn’t landing, and improve on the things they have control over.
I can tell you right now that United States of Fuckin’ Awesome achieved in its first five pages something that 99% of aspiring screenwriters have no idea even exists. Irony. We talk about “red flags” on this site a lot. A reader is constantly red-flagging rookie mistakes to clue them in on if this writer knows their shit. But we don’t ever talk about GREEN FLAGS – ways you can tell a screenwriter knows what he’s doing. And irony is a big green flag.
Seeing several of history’s most iconic figures introduced banging whores, whining like cowards, and swearing like sailors, plays against our expectations and intrigues us. That’s a green flag.
Speaking of flags, it’s July 3rd, 1776, and we’re about to watch the story that the history books never told us. Ben Franklin, who it turns out is a borderline moron with an addiction to whores, has teamed up with Thomas Jefferson, the country’s biggest nerd, to finish the most important document in history, The Declaration of Independence.
They grab their good buddy, George Washington, obsessed with reclaiming the party lifestyle that defined his youth, to celebrate at a local pub. Unfortunately, the group get really trashed, and after Franklin heads to a whore house, wakes up to discover that his whore, Claire, has stolen the document!
This is not good, since Jefferson included every single name in the document who would be running America. This would act as a de facto assassination list if this got into the redcoats’ hands! So off the three go, Hangover-style, in search of the elusive document.
Along the way they run into Jefferson’s boss, Sam Adams, the biggest asshole in the world, Benedict Arnold, the nerd who’s only ever wanted to sit at the cool kids’ table, and Andrew Jackson, a bully of a man who only cares about kicking ass, specifically the nerdy ass of Jefferson.
The chase takes them all over town, only for them to realize Claire is at the biggest redcoat party of the year! Our trio will need to secure a canoe, paddle across the river while wasted, and infiltrate the party to get that Declaration! Cause if they don’t? We’ll never declare “Murica!”
Even though United States of Murica borrows liberally from The Hangover, it’s still a well-constructed screenplay that moves quickly. I liked the McGuffin (the lost Declaration of Independence), but what I liked more were the consequences of not getting the McGuffin. The British would have a Kill List which would allow them to destabilize the already shaky colonies and win the war. The stakes were high!
My main issue with the script is that, from there, it went on cruise control. This happens a lot during second acts in comedies. The writers have used most of their jokes up by the early part of the second act, leaving them to repeat story beats.
It takes a lot of work to make a second act great. And one of the challenges is not settling for those repetitive story beats. You have to sit down and do the dirty work of saying, “There are too many sequences like the one I just wrote. I need to come up with something better.” Newer writers and lazy writers never do this. And their second acts suffer for it.
But I’ll tell you where this script eventually won me over.
The climax.
One of the tried-and-true ways of writing a good ending is sending your heroes into the belly of the beast. In general, you want to look for scenarios that are conflict-heavy and do the bulk of the writing for you. When you send your heroes into the villain’s den (Silence of the Lambs anybody?), a lot of those scenes will write themselves.
I’m sure everyone reading this review can think of half-a-dozen funny scenes born from disguising our heroes as redcoats and forcing them to infiltrate a giant redcoat party. And those are the scenarios you’re always searching for as a writer – the ones where scene ideas pop up without you having to think.
United States of Fuckin’ Awesome does operate on a gimmicky premise. And the founding fathers swearing nonstop definitely gets old after awhile. But the writers add just enough creative and funny ideas to keep the script entertaining. It’s worth a read if you’re a comedy writer for sure, especially one who plans to enter the Nicholl.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Identifying milkable scenes. There’s a great setup here at the redcoat party where Washington, disguised as a redcoat, comes upon a group of British soldiers who are making fun of, you guessed it, George Washington. Washington must sit and endure this, and at the end, one of the soldiers looks at him and asks, “Enoying the party?” And that’s the scene. This so could’ve been a show-stopper scene had the writers identified it as milkable. Washington should’ve been forced to get in a full-blown conversation with the redcoats, to the extent where he’s using a terrible fake English accent. He should’ve been encouraged to tell his best “Washington is a loser” joke. There’s so much more that could’ve been done here that was missed. When you got those scenes staring you in the face guys, make sure you take advantage of them!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A paralyzed man who can only communicate by blinking is kidnapped by a nurse who knows his secret, that he robbed a bank eight years ago and has hidden the money.
About: Blink finished on the Black List a couple of years ago and managed to pull in Jamie Foxx to play the lead, with 300: Rise of an Empire director Noam Murro helming. Screenwriter Hernany Perla has spent most of his career producing, with his most well-known film being The Last Stand, starring Arnold Schwarzenneger.
Writer: Hernany Perla
Details: 90 pages
Can you believe what happened this weekend? Spielberg gets beat by The Purge 3? What kind of alternate universe am I living in? Everybody has their theories on why The BFG didn’t do well. Some say the title caused confusion. Others say the marketing was generic. I have my own theory. And it’s going to get me ripped in the comments, but I’m okay with that.
I think the reason nobody showed up to this movie is because the main character looked like a mini Lena Dunham. There, I said it. They took one look at that girl and went, “Nuh-uh.” And before you go nuts, remember that the face of a story is the person we have to relate to and care about. And I don’t relate to or care about a mini-feminazi.
Anyway, segueing to today’s unrelated topic: Gimmick scripts. While the word “gimmick” exudes a negative connotation, gimmick scripts are a legitimate option for the spec screenwriting crowd.
We don’t have many avenues to drive down as screenwriters, since Hollywood blocks the majority of them with their “IP or Die” rally cry. And for whatever reason, something about this quirky format encourages a good gimmick. Which leads us to the question: How do you write a good gimmick script? We’ll get to that after the synopsis…
Eddie Locke is paralyzed. The only thing he can move are his eyelids, leaving him with a binary communication process of “yeses” (two blinks) and “no’s” (one blink). Eddie’s been this way for eight years. Lying in the same hospital room staring at the same ceiling and the same stupid ass TV reruns. His nurses are pleasant but you get the feeling that if Eddie had the use of his hands for just 30 seconds one more time in life, he’d use that time to strangle them.
But Eddie’s life is about to get more exciting. A new nurse, country bumpkin, Moe, seems to know a thing or two about Eddie’s past. Like that he was paralyzed by a stray bullet during a bank robbery. A bank robbery where three men made off with a safety deposit box and were never seen again.
Moe, who’s clearly done his homework, is convinced that Eddie was the unknown fourth member of that team, and that he knows what they grabbed from that safety deposit box – a series of access numbers to an offshore account containing 40 million dollars.
Moe forces Eddie to answer all of his questions with blinks. And maybe now’s a good time to tell you, we never see Eddie. The whole movie takes place from his point-of-view. This allows us to experience the blinks from Eddie’s perspective, as well as all the other shit that happens. And a lot happens.
Moe kidnaps Eddie, brings him to his fellow bank-robbing brother’s house, only to find out his bro is dead, but that his daughter, Hayley (Eddie’s grown-up niece), knows a thing or two about the heist. Moe grabs Hayley and the three of them go on adventure to find those account numbers, which have been re-hidden.
With Eddie observing the whole ordeal helplessly, he’ll need to depend on Hayley to get him out of the mess alive. That’s assuming Eddie wants to be alive after this is all over.
So, the gimmick script. How do you write one? First, you gotta find the gimmick. I famously loved the gimmicky coffin contained-thriller, “Buried.” I reviewed a gimmicker not long ago, “The Shave,” about a cop who kills a man then goes to get a shave from the man’s father, where each side will make their case for whether the killing was justified. And it seems like every year we get a couple of “Balls Out” scripts, which are built on making fun of screenwriting conventions.
The big pitfall with gimmick scripts is that the audience is onto the gimmick quickly, usually between 10-30 pages. Once that happens, what’s left? Because if all you’ve got is a gimmick, and we’re onto your gimmick, boredom sets in.
The secret to writing a good gimmick script is NOT RESTING ON THE GIMMICK. Yes, you want to exploit your gimmick. That’s what’s going to set your script apart. Find everything you can that’s specific to your gimmick and make sure you write a scene that exploits that.
In “Buried,” for example, you better put a snake or some other freaky animal into that coffin at some point. That choice specifically takes advantage of your unique setup.
But after that, you need to make sure you’re doing two things. Going back to storytelling basics.
1) Always move your story forward
2) Always explore your characters.
If you’re not doing those, we’re not going to care. Your gimmick can only keep our interest for so long before we need more. And those two things are your “more.”
Blink achieved the first half of that equation. Unfortunately, it didn’t do enough of the second, and that’s where it fell short for me.
And this is an EXTREMELY common problem with scripts – moving the story but not the characters. I think it’s because the one thing that’s drilled into your head early on as a screenwriter is: KEEP THE STORY MOVING KEEP THE STORY MOVING KEEP THE STORY MOVING.
And you’re so focused on that, that you don’t think about anything else. You just care about getting to the next story goal or the next plot twist or the next deception.
And while that’s good advice. If that’s all you’re doing, and you’re not working to create a bond between us and the characters, we’re not going to care. It’s like the difference between me telling you that a man in Thailand got in a car accident and your best friend from high school got in a car accident. The first one you don’t even think about. Why would you care about some random man in another country getting in an accident? But as soon as I tell you it’s someone you know, you’re affected on a deep level.
To achieve this in screenwriting, go back to basics. Create an unresolved struggle WITHIN your characters and create an unresolved struggle BETWEEN your characters.
One of the unique attributes of Blink is that we don’t see the main character. So it’s hard to connect with him. That leaves us with Moe and Hayley. Moe is only about moving the story forward. There isn’t a single thing going on underneath the surface. He just wants money and that’s it. And while that’s great for the plot, it doesn’t help us FEEL anything in relation to his character.
I was just rewatching The Bourne Identity and the girl character that Jason Bourne picks up – we meet her in a very vulnerable place financially, where she’s just trying to get from paycheck to paycheck. It’s a small thing, but it creates some level of sympathy in us for the character. So we care about her on a deeper level.
With Hayley’s character, it’s a little better, since she seems to be more of an emotional person in general. But Eddie never really knew this girl. There’s no unresolved issues between them, outside of her belief that her father is dead because of Eddie. And she gets over that quickly, leaving us with nothing to resolve.
We do experience some internal strife with Eddie during his memories, and this is where the character exploration had the most potential, since Eddie was a terrible human being before he became paralyzed. But all exploration of that came late and it wasn’t very deep.
All this resulted in a fun setup and and an interesting gimmick (watching everything take place from a helpless POV). But that’s it. There wasn’t much more. And this is a great reminder for you guys. A good gimmick script can you get noticed. But if you write a gimmick script with a solid story THAT GENUINELY EXPLORES ITS CHARACTERS, that’s the kind of script that changes writers’ lives.
Blink isn’t a bad script by any means. It just didn’t have enough emotional juice to pull me in.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If the only thing that’s getting resolved in your screenplay is your plot, you’re not doing enough. You need to resolve internal characters issues and you need to resolve broken relationships. That’s how you add dimension to your screenplay.
THE SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER HAS BEEN SENT! And it has a new TOP 25 script review inside. Holy Moses was this script good. If you didn’t receive the newsletter, check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders. If you still can’t find it, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with subject line: “NO NEWSLETTER.” If you want to be added to the newsletter, e-mail me at that same address with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER.” Enjoy!
Read each script and vote for your favorite in the comments! Winner gets a review next Friday. Let’s find something great! Monday is a holiday here in the U.S. so I’ll be back on Tuesday…
Title: The Lone Ambassador
Genre: Sci-fi/Thriller
Logline: After a mysterious alien spaceship crash-lands near area fifty one, a ridiculed ufologist is forced to go rogue and uncover over sixty years of government secrecy.
Why You Should Read: I honestly never thought I’d be submitting one of my screenplays to script shadow, but here it is. The majority of my youth was spent in my imagination navigating beyond our world, hoping that the myth of another planet just like ours, was true. My dream was to write a story about a young-naive boy, abandoned by the naysayers who roam our society in hopes to deny our truth. Enjoy, and beat me down with brutal honesty. Thank You.
Title: The Inept
Genre: Dark Humor
Logline: Chaos ensues in quiet suburbia after Eddy finds a lost wallet and obsesses over how to return it and then win over its owner, the beautiful Lindsy Rocker.
Why You Should Read: Enter a world where dueling dildo fights, threats by midget bookies, baristas posing as psychiatrists, and mistaken identity over strippers with stomas simply represents a “bad week” for Eddy, a socially inept virgin obsessed with a photo found in a woman’s lost wallet.
Title: Damaged
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: A violent ex-con is hired as an investigative crime reporter under the agreement that he will perpetrate the crimes in order to write about them.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been trying for six months now to get this script read on Scriptshadow’s Amateur Fridays. If I had to pinpoint the reason that I keep failing, I would obviously turn to my logline. I know this one comes of as generic and vague. I’ve tried re-writing it a hundred times and short of lying completely and re-vamping it to feature robots and super-hero’s, there’s not much I can do. This is the story that I have and I do truly believe that it is a good one. I was aware going in how pedestrian the subject matter could be, so I concentrated primarily on scene construction, trying to make each scene as unique and memorable as possible.
Since finishing this script I have started on something new, something more high concept and reader friendly. But I still believe that all scripts are important as they all help us to improve. This is something that I can’t do until someone reads this and tears it apart for me.
So please, I’m at the mercy of the Scriptshadow community. To paraphrase Tyler Durden, tear me down so I can build something better out of myself.
Title: Ghost Story
Genre: Horror
Logline: Soon after moving into their new apartment, a young couple’s idyllic life begins to unravel in the most horrific ways due to the presence of a malevolent spirit.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been making a living as a screenwriter here in Mumbai for the last five years, before which I studied film in Los Angeles, and even worked on a few movies as a production assistant.
I’m a horror film connoisseur, and someone who swears by the holy trinity of horror cinema: “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” and “Alien.” Although horror is my genre of choice, I’ve also secured paid gigs writing a crime-thriller, and a Hitchcockian suspense-thriller.
Following months of depression after failing to get my first horror screenplay produced, I went about writing a story which was far more contained, thereby cheaper to produce, and thus “Ghost Story” was born. “Ghost Story” is a slow burn horror-thriller in the vein of “The Shining” and “Paranormal Activity,” but without the latter’s found footage aesthetic. What sets “Ghost Story” apart is its matter-of-fact approach in presenting supernatural events in a real and believable way. Imagine “Insidious,” but with the real world aesthetics of “The Lunchbox.” It felt great when “Ghost Story” made the quarter-finals in Screencraft’s 2015 Horror Screenplay Contest.
For the past year, I’ve been paying the bills developing concepts — two action-thrillers, and one superhero-urban fantasy — for a local production company.
I’d sincerely appreciate your feedback on “Ghost Story” — not to mention feedback from the rest of the ScriptShadow community as well — because really I want to make it better. So fingers crossed, hoping this query email piques your interest!
Title: A Falling Knife
Genre: Crime Drama
Logline: When a war erupts between two Philadelphia mob factions, a gang enforcer becomes a police informant – and falls in love with the the officer he’s feeding information. It’s THE DEPARTED meets BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.
About Me: I started my career as a writer for a variety comedy show, but my heart was always in drama. Last year I mustered the courage to quit my comedy job and do a career pivot into drama. It’s been a challenging transition, but something I’m really happy I’ve done. It’s been tough getting noticed in a new genre, and I’ve been quite humbled by starting from scratch. So in that sense, I very much consider myself an amateur.
Why You Should Read: I think it’s a very unique twist on an evergreen world. We’ll always want gangster movies, but the same old story won’t do anymore. It needs to go somewhere new. One thing I noticed about almost every one of these movies is that the energy between these intense male characters only ever manifests itself in violence. I saw a real opening to explore the emotional side of these violent, masculine guys by creating a love story between a cop and his informant. They’re in this forbidden relationship, a star-crossed love where they are enemies and lovers at once — they have to rely on and confide in each other, while at the same time struggling to fully trust one another. It lends an inherent tension to the script that to me feels fresh. It’s not all bombs and guns (though of course, there is plenty of that) but also something deeper and wholly unexpected in this genre.
Awesome news. I have a JULY 4TH WEEKEND NEWSLETTER coming out later today. I review a top secret script (no, you’ll never guess what it is in a million years) that attempts one of the toughest structural approaches in screenwriting. I then give you a super-hack on an easier rewrite style than the one I laid out for you yesterday. You won’t want to miss it. Check your Promotions Folder if you don’t receive it. I’ll post here on the site once it’s sent. If you’re not already on my list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER.”
Genre: Kids/Adventure
Premise: A trio of misfit kids must work together to protect a supernatural baby sloth from a deranged ex-child star and return it to the Oregon Zoo.
Why you should read (from writer): This is my first script. Awhile back, Carson talked about how we should write what we know. I spent the majority of my childhood outdoors — building forts, climbing trees and catching frogs. I wanted to write a fun live action kids script that captures what it was like growing up in a small town. Also, it’s got a sloth that shoots FRICKIN’ LASER BEAMS from its eyes!
Writer: Alison Parker
Details: 91 pages
From the site that brought you Time Shark and Dude, Where’s My Ferret, comes… LAZER SLOTH! Scriptshadow is definitely addressing the bad concept problem in Hollywood. The town just doesn’t seem to be listening. But that’s okay. If they don’t bite this time, I’m turning the Amateur Friday entries into an Amateur Friday Universe.
That’s right. We’re going to write cross-over scripts, cameos, team-ups. It’s only a matter of time before the ferret in Dude, Where’s my Ferret, and Lazer Sloth team up to ride a time shark into the future, where they’ll hop on a shuttle and visit Orbital, our Amateur Friday space station that only allows families who’ve watched The Shining in its entirety (deep deep inside joke only long-time Scriptshadow readers will understand). All we need now is casting ideas. I’m thinking Jackie Chan for Ferret and Rhianna for the shark.
9 year-old Logan Murphy and his best buddies, Hailey the Tomboy and Goose the UFO enthusiast, are about to experience the strangest day of their young lives. What starts out as your typical 9 year-old lizard-hunting expedition, turns into our crew finding an abandoned crate containing a sloth that shoots lazers out of its eyes. Score!
The group takes the sloth with them, having no idea said sloth was stolen from the local zoo and was to be delivered to Hans Offa, an animal-obsessed evildoer who’s been trying to weasel his way back into the limelight ever since his child star career ended with the cancellation of his show, Adventure Boy.
Hans really needs that lazer-shooting sloth so he can get back on television. So he sends his goons, Max and Toby, who lost the thing in the first place, to get it back. When Max and Toby learn that these grade-schoolers have their job security in their possession, they chase them all over town, even through the local UFO convention, which may or may not have a connection to why our mysterious sloth can shoot lasers out of his eyes.
When you’re writing a kid’s flick, you want to keep the bar in mind. And the bar is Pixar, with Disney Animation not far behind. True, this isn’t an animated film, but you’re competing for the same audience, so a lot of the same rules apply. And these movies require you to nail three things.
Be Clever
You can’t just put cute animals onscreen and call it a day. You have to take it a step further. Since we’re talking about sloths, in Zootopia, the highlight reel scene includes a trip to the DMV where all the tellers are, you guessed it, SLOTHS! Consider that for a moment. Could the tellers have been giraffes and still work? Sure. But would it have been clever? No.
Be Imaginative
Imagination is paramount in kid’s movies. You’re going up against the most active imaginations in the world – children. So the bar is set high. If kids are out-imagining you, you’ve failed. I loved the chase scene in Zootopia that went through Rodentia, a miniaturized city where our characters are running over rooftops that are 1 foot tall.
Character Exploration
Originally, when Pixar surpassed Disney as the top animation studio in the world, people thought it was because of the digital graphics. That wasn’t it at all. It was because Pixar upped the emphasis on character development while Disney was still focusing on witty banter and musical numbers. The reason Pixar films resonated with people was because you left the theater feeling like you’d met a new group of friends. That’s how powerful good character development is.
So how did Lazer Sloth fair in these three categories? Not terrible. But I’d be lying if I said better than average. I judge cleverness and imagination on, “Did the writer think of something I couldn’t have thought of?” And there was nothing here that surprised me. The villain who used to be a child star on an adventure show was fun. But there’s a similar plotline in “Up.”
This is where a lot of beginner writers run into trouble. They set the bar too low. And it’s not their fault. They haven’t written enough scripts and gotten enough rejections to know that the next time they submit something, they have to do better. If you’ve never been rejected before, you don’t have a baseline for what you need to exceed.
As for character development, that’s usually the last thing a writer figures out before he/she makes it, not the first. And there just wasn’t enough focus placed on the characters’ internal struggles here (or there struggles with one another). There was some okay stuff with Logan’s dad, but it felt perfunctory, like the writer was adding it more because she was told to rather than because she wanted to. And that never works.
Even in a movie like Finding Dory, which I didn’t like, I can say that their “bad” character stuff is better than the best character stuff on the amateur level. Dory is going through some tough shit. She’s plagued by this terrible affliction. She can barely function in everyday life. And on top of that, we really feel how the loss of her parents weighs on her.
What I mean by “really feel” is that it’s not just a box you check on some Screenwriting Instruction Manual (“If you want to create audience sympathy, hero should lose family member”). It’s integrated into the very fiber of the character. Dory’s every choice in the story is influenced by her desire to be with her parents again. They’re not perfunctory backstory. They’re her everything.
And a lot of screenwriters will say, “Well I just want to write something fun and silly.” That’s fine. But if you’re not moving us in some way, we’re going to tire of the fun and the silly. It’s the emotional peaks and valleys that allow the fun and the silly to stay fresh.
Don’t get me wrong. Lazer Sloth is fun. It’s driven by a tight structure. The combination of the sparse writing style and the chase plot kept it moving. The villain is funny. The lazer sloth itself is adorable. I’m just not sure things got crazy enough to live up to the title, “Lazer Sloth.” For comparison’s sake, one of the splashiest spec sales of all time, “Dude, Where’s My Car?” had people growing into giants. That script lived up to the craziness of its title! So while this was a solid effort for a first script, the laser feature faltered before it could inscribe a “worth the read.”
Screenplay Link: Lazer Sloth
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Understand the expectation your title or logline sets, and make sure your script lives up to that expectation. If your script is titled, “Wacky Jacky and the Curse of the Hackey Sackey,” and it’s a slow-paced drama, you’re going to have one frustrated reader on your hands.
What I learned 2: With every choice you make in an imagination-heavy concept, ask yourself, “Could someone else have thought of this choice?” Be 100% honest with yourself. If the answer is yes, go back and think of something more imaginative. The imagination bar is SUPER HIGH in kids movies.
