Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: After an astronaut’s space capsule crash lands in the African desert, we discover that he’s carrying a secret that may change the world forever.
About: Ares finished on last year’s Black List. Geneva Robertson-Dworet is a writer who has quickly risen up the ranks to become one of the bigger sci-fi writers in demand. She’s part of the writing team writing Transformers 5. She’s writing the new Tomb Raider. And she co-wrote Hibernation, a script I reviewed on the site, which will be directed by one of the hottest young directors working today, Justin Lin. All of this and she doesn’t even have a produced credit yet. Crazy!
Writer: Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Details: 105 pages – May 2015 draft
Hey, we had some success with yesterday’s screenplay so I thought, why not go with another “List” script, this one having finished in the middle of the 2015 Black List.
Also, Ares is an example of the power of changing locales. Moving the location of your story can be the difference between it feeling exactly the same as every other movie in that genre and being fresh and exciting.
Think about it. If you were writing a romantic comedy, wouldn’t it be beyond cliche to set it in New York? But if your romantic comedy took place on the moon? We ain’t never seen that before. So you’d have our attention.
The location change here is the African desert, a place I haven’t seen a whole lot of sci-fi scripts take place in. Let’s see if it paid off.
Evan Lange is an astronaut, but that’s all we know when we meet him, hurtling towards earth in a re-entry capsule with his two co-astronauts, both dead and rotting for who knows how long.
Evan is deliberately trying to steer his capsule towards an African city, where he plans to tell the world “the truth” about what he’s found on his mission. But we get the sense that this won’t be easy, since there seem to be people who want to make sure this information doesn’t get out.
Evan shoots 200 miles shy of his destination and lands in the African desert. As he travels across the endless sand, we flash back to better times when Evan met the love of his life, Chloe, who he had a son with.
That relationship gets a big fat “no longer together” tag on Facebook though, since leaving your fam to hang out in space for three years doesn’t exactly build family bonds.
Anyway, Evan is trying to deliver some secret piece of material he’s secured to the U.S. Embassy in this African City, but must navigate a desert swarming with cops who are looking for him due to a “wanted – reward” poster gone up everywhere.
We eventually learn from flashbacks that Evan was working for a Russian billionaire who secretly sent Evan to Mars. Now that Evan is going to expose what they found, our billionaire is doing everything in his power to get to Evan first so he can kill him.
Evan meets up with his ex-wife, who’s working in the city, as well as his son, who’s now 14. Now’s a good time to let you know that Evan has a mental condition where he hallucinates. And if we believe Chloe, everything Evan’s been telling us is in his head. He needs to see a doctor, pronto.
Or is it? That’s the question, as Evan tries to lead the family to safety in the hopes of exposing this Russian billionaire’s scam. That’s assuming there really is a Russian billionaire. And that there was ever a mission in the first place.
I’m a strong believer that spec scripts (and by that I mean specs that unknown writers write on their own to sell or get noticed) need to bring you into the story right away. If you’re being hired to write Spotlight and you’ve got your director set and financing behind you and the studio figuring out their release strategy, you can start as slow as you want. Hell, start with the history of the Catholic church if you’re feeling frisky.
If you’re a “nobody” writer writing a spec, bring us into the story right away. Imagine it this way. Spec scripts? They go to a special kind of reader who works inside of a special kind of building where every single person there has ADD. You are not allowed to walk into that building unless you have ADD. These are the people you’re trying to win over.
Ares starts with us in that cockpit, speeding towards earth, two fellow astronauts dead and rotting nearby, our main character disobeying a command from control. Hell yeah. You’ve got my attention.
And despite the rest of Ares taking place in the desert, it never lets up. We’re always moving forward. Even when we’re doing flashbacks. I guess we can call this an extension of yesterday’s discussion, since this is yet another way to do flashbacks right.
Now normally I’d say don’t do flashbacks unless they’re built into the concept. Ares’s spiritual cousins and inspiration, The Martian and Gravity, could’ve used flashbacks for cheap backstory. But neither did. Because both writers know the law of flashbacks. Which is that if you’re going backwards, you’re not going forwards. And movies always work best when they’re moving forwards, dammit.
BUT.
If you place a mystery at the center of your story – in this case: what the hell happened in space that put Evan in this position? Then you can use the flashbacks to gradually feed the audience clues that will lead them to the answer of your mystery. They’ll allow the flashback because it’s GIVING THEM SOMETHING.
That’s important to remember. Flashbacks tend to take. They’re like shitty relationships. Take take take. If you can get your flashback to give though? It just might be okay.
However, now we get to the question of all questions. Was the answer to the mystery satisfying? That depends on how you like your movies. Do you like them grilled? Baked? Deep-fried? If you like ambiguity, if you like when writers make you formulate your own answers, you might like this.
Because it’s one of those movies where you’re constantly asking, “Is this really happening or not?” I’m not going to answer that question but what I can tell you is that I’ve grown skeptical of this format. It seems to be a free pass to fuck around with the reader instead of tell a clever story.
With that said, Robertson-Dworet does a pretty good job with the device. And as with all good sci-fi stories, it’s not really about the plot so much as it is about this broken family. I was discussing this with a writer the other day. She said “I don’t get sci-fi. It seems too complicated to write.” And I explained that actually, the best sci-fi isn’t complicated at all. It’s rooted by a simple relationship or two. Like Ex Machina. Get the main relationships sorted out and build the bells and whistles around that.
That’s what Ares does, and it does a good enough job that I wanted to get to the end. That makes this worth the read, baby. Let me know if you feel the same.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The two main story engines in screenwriting are the GOAL (find the Ark – Raiders) and the MYSTERY (What happened to Amy Dunne? – Gone Girl). But remember you have a third engine. I’m talking about the MYSTERY GOAL. This is what powers Ares. Evan’s goal (get this information to the Embassy) is coupled with a mystery (the mysterious element he’s found that’s going to change the world). And it works. I definitely wanted to know what he had found and I also wanted to see him get to the Embassy. So, bravo!
Guys, the submissions have to get better. I cycled through 75 submissions in a row at one point and not a single idea showed promise. Ideas either weren’t big enough, had no inherent stakes attached, or were unfocused to the point that I didn’t understand what the movie was about. If you’ve submitted to Amateur Offerings in the distant past and never got picked, it may have been because you got lost in the shuffle, not that your premise was rejected. So re-submit (carsonreeves3@gmail – include title, genre, logline, why we should read, and a PDF of the script). We need a better pool of scripts to choose from. P.S. If your script isn’t getting chosen, feel free to post the logline in the comments and ask for help. Just remember that the primary duty for today is to read and vote for your favorite script. Good luck.
Title: The Ballad of Will Scarlet
Genre: Action/historical
Logline: An older Will Scarlet leads the woodsmen of Sherwood Forest, protecting the lands from the sociopathic Robin Hood. Their frayed bonds are tested when the Sheriff of Nottingham hires a legend to rid history of Robin once and for all.
Why You Should Read: I’ve written and directed some short films and standalone TV projects, directed some commercials, got some moderate festival play, in all likelihood nothing you’ve seen. Professionally, I know just enough to tie my own noose. I also teach filmmaking on occasion, and as some of my students are now making features that are getting decent buzz and international distribution, I don’t feel my path is idly travelled. I have no complaints about being a Mr. Holland. — So, with all this on my mind, I figured I’d take a big ol’ swing for the bleachers with the first feature-length screenplay I’ve written in quite a few moons. Also, I’m deeply concerned about the dwindling supply in the National Strategic Reserve of Robin Hood spec screenplays and figured I should do my part.
Two things I’ve long found fascinating about the Robin Hood mythos are the elasticity of its timeframe before it was codified as being of the era of King Richard I, and the extremely brutal nature of some of the early Robin Hood ballads. This was the starting point for what I hope is an involving and idiosyncratic spin on the Robin Hood story.
Title: The Wrong Stuff
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: A terminally uncool Dad accepts a mistaken invitation into NASA’s astronaut training program, believing it will redeem him in the eyes of his son, but sadly unaware of how much it will test him.
Why You Should Read: I think this will be a good example of the power of a great, simple concept. In the comments for Carson’s review of Pale Blue Dot, Scott Crawford jokingly suggested the title, The Wrong Stuff. I think it’s a brilliant title, but for another story. Why? Because it says so much in just three words. It immediately conjures up images of space flight training and daring test pilots, but the juxtaposition created by the word ‘Wrong’ suggests the irony of a trainee who is totally unsuited for the training. We can immediately picture some scenes: Imagine the G-force training centrifuge with a shit-scared passenger screaming his head off. — So the title leads to the concept which easily lead to the premise in the logline above. — And that ease continued into the planning and writing. I had way more material than I could use, so it allowed me to keep just the good stuff. (Hopefully I’ve done the material justice.) But I can say that though this is an early draft, it is easily better than anything else I’ve ever written.
Title: Dude, Where’s My Ferret?
Genre: Stoner Comedy
Logline: After accidentally losing her company’s mascot, an uptight junior food scientist reluctantly enlists the help of her pothead building superintendent and together they battle against a relentless vermin exterminator to recover the missing ferret before her career goes up in smoke.
Why You Should Read: With marijuana being legalized all over the place, it’s a topical subject, plus it has a fresh twist with the ferret angle. Stoners and ferrets go together like macaroni and cheese! I’ve directed several short films featuring ferrets, including a short called DUDE, WHERE’S MY FERRET? that is meant as a teaser for the feature version, featuring Bubbles from The Trailer Park Boys. I also directed THE MAGIC FERRET, which was Jacob Tremblay’s (Room) first leading role. I like working with ferrets because it’s something different than what most people are used to seeing – and I know something about them because I have one as a pet (used to have two, R.I.P. Falcor the Ferret). I think this is a great recipe for a stoner comedy – but we need some help to get it to where it needs to be. I say ‘we’ because I’m the director but not the writer – I found someone to write this for me while I learn the craft. We could highly benefit from a review by Carson and our peers. I’m smishsmosh22 and promise to participate in the comments if we get chosen!
Title: Hard Copy
Genre: Drama
Logline: In 1994, a narcissistic co-host of a tabloid news show struggles to keep his job and life from unraveling as a young challenger emerges touting a new form of media, the internet.
Why You Should Read: Look, this is a bit of a tough sell based on the logline, I know that. It’s my eighteenth script, and I’ve been writing for eight years now, so the pressure is starting to mount, especially with this one. I wanted to write a drama that was big enough for the screens I hope to see it on. I wrote it the way I felt it needed to be written, and I took chances whenever possible. Honestly, it was time to stop writing handcuffed and just trust that I know what I’m doing. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this, and I look forward to all the notes. Good luck to everybody and thank you!
Title: The Odd Symphony
Genre: Comedy
Logline: An aspiring conductor who’s fallen on hard times starts a revolution by uniting New York’s various street performers into a misfit symphony.
Why You Should Read: This script was on the top of the blacklist for a long while (not the main blacklist but the web version). This is a funny, sad, uplifting, overly ambitious romantic, slightly expensive…independent film. A number of directors have courted this project and right now Trish Sie who directed all those wonderful OkGo viral movies is the latest suitor.
I recently submitted one of my TV pilots. I have written a ton of stuff over the years. I developed, wrote, and sold an adaptation of Kurt Busiek’s award winning comic book Astro City a few years back to Working Title. I am now back on the market with another comic book adaptation for Johnny Depp’s company. I have written 13 films and 5 or 6 pilots. The Odd Symphony is one of my favorites.
A HUGE shout out to yesterday’s mini-contest scene winner. Deanb absolutely NAILED the “show two people fall in love without any dialogue” scene. Head back and sort the comments by “best” to read his killer interpretation of the challenge. Also, Nick Morris finished in second place with a strong emotionally charged scene of his own. You guys exceeded my expectations with this challenge. Congrats!
Genre: Thriller/Anthology (aimed at Netflix/Amazon/HBO, etc)
Logline: When the main suspect commits suicide on the twentieth anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, a woman soon finds out that everything she held true about what happened all those years ago is shattered and she must partner with an unstable Texas Ranger to save her own life and uncover the truth.
Why You Should Read: I grew up in a small Texas town (pop. 2000). After a local woman simply vanished in the ’90’s, I would listen to my dad come in late at night and tell my mother about the case, which he was investigating. The stories were replete with local scoundrels, psychics, and drugs. — Even as I entered adulthood and went on in the world, the case never left my psyche. It’s exacerbated each time I see her daughter, who was a few years younger than me, posting on Facebook each year on the anniversary. — Although the real-life story and my version are vastly different, I still owe the seed being planted, so many years ago, to those late night stories about the case. A case that I feel is hard for me to let go of emotionally, although I have no deep personal connection to any of the parties that were involved.
Writer:Randall Alexander
Details: 63 pages
I’m on a Scriptshadow Reader high right now. Last week’s amateur script was kick ass. The scenes you guys have been writing for the Scriptshadow Lesson series have been awesome. I just feel like the hardcore readers of this site are starting to come into their own. It’s all starting to click.
And it goes to show that this strange code known as screenwriting can be cracked with hard work and perseverance. You target the key areas of the craft (structure, drama, character, dialogue, goals, stakes, urgency, obstacles) and try and master them one by one. Once you have a good feel for all of them and you pick the right concept? You’re going to write something good.
The Remains feels like it’s going to continue the hot streak. The script won a lot of fans over last Saturday, and Randall’s passion for the material ensured that we weren’t going to get some run-of-the-mill AMC clone. Let’s check it out!
Trina Littlejohn is 30 and has a beautiful young daughter and a brother she loves more than anything. But Trina’s been carrying a monkey on her back since she was a child. Her mother disappeared 20 years ago and she’s convinced that her neighbor, Red, killed her.
This has caused a really awkward 20 years in the community as Trina and her brother, Jesse, have dedicated their lives to making Red’s life hell. And when Jesse is released from his latest stint in prison for beating the shit out of Red, he and Trina are shocked to find that Red has hanged himself.
Trina has mixed feelings about this. Yeah, the asshole’s finally dead, but now he’ll never be able to tell them where he buried their mom.
As if that isn’t frustrating enough, there’s a new cop in town, Shane Webb, a Texas Ranger who isn’t buying into this whole suicide scenario. I mean, what suicide victim handcuffs himself before a hanging? Is that even physically possible?
Maybe what Trina’s really afraid of is if Shane is right. What if someone framed Red’s suicide? And if that’s the case, why did they do it? Could it be to stop Trina from looking into her mother’s disappearance. Could it be to stop her from finding out what really happened that day?
The Remains is like a lot of scripts I read. It’s really good in places. And not so good in others. This is the issue that holds back a lot of “almost there” writers.
Inconsistency.
It’s no different at the top of any profession. What’s the difference between Joe Benchwarmer and Lebron James? Joe Benchwarmer can occasionally throw down the dunk to end all dunks. But he can’t do it consistently. Lebron James is able to do it every single night.
A script isn’t going anywhere if you write a great opening scene, followed by two decent scenes, followed by three not-so-good scenes, followed by another good scene, followed by a bad scene… You have to bring it scene-in and scene-out.
The Remains starts off great. Our main character has stashed someone in her trunk and is driving him somewhere to kill him. All the while, she’s giving us a smoothly constructed voice-over of who she is and what’s most important to her. I’d give this scene an “A.”
But then things get clunky when we realize (I think) that the opening scene was a flash-forward. And quickly after bouncing back to the present, we get a flashback scene (to Trina’s childhood). One of the reasons I dislike flashbacks is because they ask the reader to split their brain in two. On one side, they’re told to keep up with the present-day storyline, and on the other, they’re told to keep up with the past storyline.
Things get even more complicated with every new time frame you add. And that’s what happened here. My mind started doing somersaults trying to figure out where we were. And when you’re telling a story, the last thing you want your reader expending energy on is “Where are we again?”
Also, once you get into three-timeline territory, you’re presenting the possibility of four, five, six, seven timelines. Where does the time-jumping end? Your reader doesn’t know. And when they don’t know, they start wondering where they are.
I’ll give you an example. The movie starts with Trina drilling into our heads how important family is. So when Jesse gets out of prison, why isn’t Trina picking him up???? Trina has pretty much been YELLING AT US for the past five pages how important family is, yet she doesn’t pick up her only brother from prison??
For this reason, I assumed we had to be in a fourth timeline where Trina couldn’t pick Jesse up for some reason. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you start fucking around with multiple timeline trickery. Our answer to confusion is, “Oh, we must be in another timeline.”
After that, the script starts to pick back up. Randall lets us in on all the valuable pieces of information he’s been keeping from us (who is this woman everyone keeps talking about? who is this man Trina keeps screaming at?) but by that point, I was so frustrated with how much energy I had to expend just to keep up with basic plot points, I’d checked out.
And it’s too bad, because the pilot does set up an intriguing mystery. And the characters were really well-developed and given the kind of depth required for a long-running TV series. But we have a simple story here that was muddled up due to too many bells and whistles.
Now whether those bells and whistles could work with a “clarity rewrite” or they need to be ditched altogether, I can’t say. I’d need to see the clearer version first. But I do believe the lesson of the day is one I’ve droned on about for years now: You go down Complex Avenue and you’re asking for trouble. Keep it here on Simple Street.
Script link: The Remains
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a fine line between being clever and being too cute. Time-jumping is fun. Keeping important details from the audience for extended periods of time is fun. But if you go overboard with those sorts of things, you’re no longer serving the story. You’re serving yourself. Stop trying to be too cute and just tell your story.
Today we’re going to explore one of the most important components in the craft of screenwriting – visual storytelling. If you can master this part of the craft, you’ll have seriously leveled up. That’s no joke. The best writers tend to be the ones who consistently convey things visually.
Why is this? Because ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. The action of an unexpected kiss will always be more interesting than two lovers talking about how much they like one another. The action of a character turning his gun away from his enemy and towards his friend will always be more interesting than him telling his friend he’s betraying him.
Visual storytelling can be broken down into four components.
Action
Framing
Choice
Creativity
The heart of the visual scene is action. Instead of a character saying something, see if you can achieve the same thing with an action. So instead of a character saying, “You look cold,” have him take his coat off and hand it to the other character.
Framing is the process by which you re-frame what would typically be a dialogue scene and turn it into something that can be conveyed through action. So let’s say you’ve thought up this big blowout break-up scene outside of a night club. To write this same scene visually, why not put it in the night club? The noise will force you to show the breakup through actions.
Choice is like action on crack. You give your character a choice (or a series of choices) and those choices give us insight into the character (as well as push the scene forward). At the end of Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character comes upon a murder where the victim is still barely alive. Does he call an ambulance or get the footage that’s going to net him his biggest payday yet? That choice is what makes the scene so compelling.
Creativity is the final piece of the puzzle. Come up with a neat or inventive way to visually tell your story. I’ll never forget one of the commenters bringing up Ben Kingsley’s movie, You Kill Me, where Kingsley played an alcoholic. To show this, the movie opens with Kingsley shoveling snow while drinking a bottle of vodka. He’d toss the bottle a few feet forward in the snow, shovel to it, take a drink, toss it a few more feet, shovel to it, take another drink, and so on.
999 out of 1000 writers would’ve shown the character in a bar getting cut off at the end of the night, or waking up on their couch with an empty liquor bottle nearby (and a bad headache). This writer’s desire to push beyond the obvious, to be creative, led to a way more interesting visual scene.
Now what you may notice is that a lot of great visual scenes have dialogue in them as well. The climactic scene of Luke blowing up the Death Star isn’t dialogue free. We see him make the choice to use the Force instead of his targeting system, but it still contains some discussion with the base. And that’s fine. Dialogue and action are teammates, fighting the same opponent, trying to win the same game.
All I’m saying is that scenes tend to be more interesting when they’re first approached visually. And if the scene still feels incomplete after that, you can always sprinkle dialogue in where it’s needed. If you only ever see a scene through the words the characters speak, you’re probably writing a lot of boring scenes.
Okay, now time for today’s scene challenge. In this pretend movie, our main characters, Claire and Nick, are a married couple who have been together for 20 years. But that’s not where we start. We start on the day they met, where Nick spots Claire on the street and is instantly smitten with her. I want you to show us, in a single scene, how Claire fell in love with Nick that day. Not just, “Oh, he’s cute, I’ll go on a date with him.” She has to FALL IN LOVE with him right then and there.
You don’t have to use anything I taught you today. You can make up your own visual rules. The only stipulation is that the scene can’t have any dialogue. Write your scene in the comments below and make sure to up-vote your favorites! Winner gets a shout-out tomorrow and Scriptshadow brownie points. Good luck!
Genre: Horror
Premise: Years after two girls sacrifice their friend to an entity they refer to as “the boy,” the less violent of the two gets out of prison and tries to rejoin society, only to start seeing the boy all over again.
About: This script finished second on the 2015 Blood List to “Eli.” Writer Owen Egerton has a couple of low-budget produced credits, but this is the first time he’s written a genre piece. Take note my friends. You want Hollywood to start looking your way, write in a genre they like to sell movies in. Simple as that.
Writer: Owen Egerton
Details: 96 pages – 5/28/15 draft
Forgive me Lord of Films for what I am about to say.
Raiders is a dead franchise.
And if we’re really being honest? It was a dead franchise since the second the first sequel came out. They haven’t made one good Indiana Jones film after the first one. “Oh, but the third one, Carson! The third one was good!” No it wasn’t. It was a little bit better than the second one, which sucked so everybody was TRICKED into thinking it was good, much like Revenge of the Sith was a bad movie but looked good after Attack of the Clones.
Why are they making ANOTHER Indy movie? We’ve already got our awkward old Indiana Jones film to watch if we so desire. Now you’re going to add a really old Indiana Jones film to the mix? The man is going to be 80. I know Harrison Ford stays in great shape but come on. Say this out loud: “I’m going to watch a movie with an 80 year old action hero.” That’s like trying to pass Betty White off as Jennifer Lawrence. No amount of make-up, lighting, or Hollywood trickery is going to help.
I’m really confused, guys. Between this and Ghostbusters XX chromosome edition, we’ve taken nostalgia to an uncomfortable level. And what does it say about nostalgia when all of it sucks? Aren’t you killing nostalgia when you do that? Aren’t we killing the very thing we desire?
I could talk about this all day but we do have a script to review, one that doesn’t have Indiana Jones in it, thank god. But it does contain an old horror trope that threatens to turn our horror tale into a cliche. Will that choice doom today’s offering? Or will the script manage enough originality to come out on the right side of the pile? Let’s find out, boy!
Pre-teen friends Rebecca, Marina, and Lily are puttering through a dying forest on an overcast day, seemingly enjoying each other’s company, when all of a sudden Rebecca grabs a rock and cracks it over the back of Lily’s head. As Lily lays dying, Rebecca demands that Marina drag her into the lake and drown her, all in the name of pleasing “him.”
“Him” is the “the boy,” a ghost child from the early 20th century who’s become the girls’ friend, but only if they sacrifice their buddy for him. Rebecca and Marina complete the sacrifice, but since they’re 12, aren’t exactly whizzes at covering up the crime. As a result, they each go off to separate juvenile halls, and eventually to prison.
Marina gets out when she’s still in her 20s and moves in with her older sister, Alice, who’s helping her sister mainly out of guilt for not visiting her. Alice has an 8 year old son, Bryce, who takes a liking to Marina, until he finds out about her past. When he does, he starts looking up “the boy” online and becoming obsessed with him.
Also obsessed with Marina and the boy is Alice’s dick boyfriend, Will, who keeps trying to get Marina to co-write a book about the incident in hopes of cashing in. It doesn’t take long for Alice to dump his ass. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), only a few days later, Will turns up dead. Guess he can write his book in dead font.
Around this time, Bryce begins acting funny, and hints to Marina that he now sees the boy too. Marina has spent every day since she was 12 convincing herself that the boy was a figment of her imagination. And now Bryce has to come along and screw that all up.
Eventually, Marina heads off to find the third member of this equation, good old Rebecca. But Rebecca’s not doing so hot. And her visit leads Marina to find a horrible truth, one that will come back to haunt her, and one that will finally shed light on what happened that day in the forest.
The Boy is a good example of a well-executed horror premise… and nothing more.
This isn’t to disqualify the script. Writing anything that keeps a reader’s interest the whole way through is amazing. 99 out of a 100 scripts cannot achieve this. Shit, 70 out of 100 scripts can’t keep you interested past page 5! So let’s not discount what Egerton’s achieved here.
But The Boy’s fatal flaw is that it doesn’t take chances. Chances are what separate your script from other well-written material – the special sauce that helps it rise above “worth the read.”
Instead, The Boy hits all the typical beats these kinds of movies hit. The creepy boy who appears in the corners of rooms, who leaves notes in crayon, who’s there and once you blink he’s gone. We’ve got the “researching the boy’s past” section, and of course the big fire that killed him and his family.
I was invested, but all of these familiar story beats kept a little bell ringing in my ear: “You’ve seen this before.” “You’ve seen this before.” “You’ve seen this before.” The writer seems to go out of his way to remind you that you’ve already lived through this ghost tale.
That’s not to say The Boy didn’t show flashes. For example, there’s a moment when Marina moves in with sis and nephew and they’re having dinner for the first time. Alice and Bryce are about to chow down but stop when they see Marina whispering grace to herself.
Why does this moment matter? Because it shows that the writer is thinking about what these characters’ lives must really be like. Marina has spent her entire adult life in prison. Knowing that prison is a religious place, Egerton surmised that Marina would probably be religious. And because he included that specificity, Marina felt real to us.
A huge mistake beginner writers make is they don’t think to differentiate their characters. They construct any perceived differences in their characters on “feel.” To them, Marina “feels” different from Alice in their head, and therefore that difference will come across naturally on the page.
That’s not how screenwriting works, unfortunately. For readers to see differences, they must see DIFFERENCES IN ACTION. If one character says grace while another says nothing, that signifies to them a difference in character.
Speaking of character, Egerton made a critical choice early on to show us the original flashback where the girls attack their friend. He then keeps us with Marina so that we see her grow up in juvie and prison.
This allows us to get to know Marina so that when she moves in with Alice, we feel like we know her. I’ve seen the opposite approach to this where writers start with their hero as they’re getting out of prison. The advantage to this is that Marina is more of a mystery to us, and the hope is that the reader will want to stick around to learn about her.
Both choices are valid, but the first stresses character development, making us feel closer to the character. Since connection between hero and reader is one of the most important things in storytelling, this is a smart way to go.
Now advanced writers can pull that kind of connection off quickly (sometimes in a single scene!). So they might go with the mystery approach, knowing that when they need you to connect, they can do so quickly. But when you’re still in the learning stages of the craft, taking the longer drawn-out approach is probably the safer bet.
The Boy also has a couple of memorable scenes, which is essential for any good horror script. Marina’s visit with adult Rebecca freaked me out. And I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t see the ending coming. Bryce potentially being the new version of “the boy” also lead to a couple of nice moments.
Still, I kept waiting for this to distinguish itself as its own screenplay and not an ode to all the similar films that came before it. But it never did. And that left me sad. Sad like the boy.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The easiest way to show differences in characters is to place them in the same situation and have them act differently. In the example I mentioned above, where Marina says grace and Alice does not – that difference hits us right between the eyes. That doesn’t happen if, say, we show Marina go to church while Alice is at work. We’d know Marina was religious, but miss out on the opportunity to show that Alice isn’t.
