Genre: Comedy-Horror
Logline: In a city where dangerous monsters emerge from underground every night, a monster-fighting patrol team is tasked with finding and killing them before they can kill the city’s citizens.
About: Ben Wheatley is coming and he’s coming hard. One of the most buzzed about upcoming films that doesn’t have “Star” or “Bat” in the title is High Rise, which displays a unique voice that’s inspiring many to call Wheatley the next big thing. Turns out Wheatley’s been hard at work for awhile now, writing scripts with his writing partner Amy Jump, as this one was conceived all the way back in 2012. The Ghostbusters influence is pretty obvious. But I’d say this is much closer to the Deadpool version of Ghostbusters than the cuddly 80s Bill Murray version of Ghostbusters.
Writers: Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump
Details: 81 pages (2012 draft)

So I’m reading through this script and I’m thinking to myself, “Sure, yeah, this is cool.” We got ourselves some ruthless monsters. A badass monster-hunting patrol team. Some dark comedy to keep things fun. But after about 30 pages, I had to be honest with myself (and with you). If this showed up on Amateur Friday, it’d get a straight “wasn’t for me.” The only reason I was seeing it differently was because I’d watched that High Rise trailer and I knew what Ben Wheatley could do with this idea.

That’s one of the complaints amateur screenwriters turn to when subpar material moves through the system. That professional writers are getting the benefit of the doubt because of their name while we, the unknowns, have to write something perfect just to get hip-pocketed by a sleazy manager in El Segundo.

But you know what? I don’t have any problem with that. If you go out there and direct something great, I’m going to give your script the benefit of the doubt over Joe Nobody. Because the goal of the screenplay is to create a great movie. And if you’ve already proven that you can create a great movie, I’m going to assume that the deficiencies in your screenplay will be overcome by your vision for the film.

Freakshift follows Diane Largo, a young Sigourney Weaver type who lost her family to a monster known as a “Bulk.” Bulks are huge nasty beasts that wait til nighttime to emerge from giant Bulk-created holes in the ground. And what do these Bulks do when they get topside? They kill human beings of course. And eat them. And sometimes fornicate with them.

This is why we need the Freakshift, a fire-fighter like crew whose job it is to go out every night and kill these Bulks before they kill others. I guess you could say they’re doing the BULK of the work. You see what I did there? Anyway, in addition to getting general revenge on these monsters, Largo also wants to find the Bulk that killed her family, which luckily is an easy-to-identify albino Bulk.

But Bulks aren’t all they have to worry about. There are other monsters that occasionally pop up, and it seems that if you get bitten by any of these creatures, you turn into something called a “moocher,” which is this world’s version of a zombie. Moochers are trying to kill you just like Bulks, so it’s safe to say the freak shift is pretty dangerous.

The story follows one crazy night shift for these guys which shows just how crazy their job is. Will Largo get revenge on Albino? Will any of her shift mates survive? Jump on the Freakshift to find out, baby.

Yeah, so, this is a cool idea. But Jump and Wheatley are handicapped by a major problem. They aren’t very good screenwriters at this point in their careers (2012). They write in a sort-of shorthand, as if the script is meant for a few close friends who already know the details and therefore don’t need to be bothered with things such as character descriptions. For example, Diane Largo is introduced without an age or any other info. Just a name. And a lot of details are introduced like that, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps for himself.

Then there are basic things. The script is only 81 pages?? And the formatting (which clearly isn’t Final Draft) is stretched super-thin. So this would probably be closer to 65-70 pages if properly formatted. Things like dangling slug lines (slug lines that start at the bottom of the page) leave the script feeling rushed. I mean, hell, they don’t even know the difference between “its” and “it’s.”

And there’s no structure here. A good story is supposed to set the world up, set the main character’s goal up (first act), send them off on their journey, have them encounter lots of obstacles, have them fail to the point where it seems like they’ve lost (second act), before revealing one last push where they finally conquer their goal (third act).

Freakshift is more like, “Set up the main character’s past (first act?) BATTLE MONSTERS FOR THE NEXT 70 minutes (first and a half act?).”

I know, I know. There are no rules! You can tell a story however you want. But there’s a reason stories have been told with three acts (beginning, middle, and end) for thousands of years. Humans are biologically attuned to receiving a story that way. You speed up the middle, don’t tell us the beginning, or cut off the end, we’re going to look at you like, “What the hell you talking bout, dude?”

But the script has its charms. Wheatley and Jump seem to have done a lot of world building here, spending plenty of time on the mythology of their universe. For example, there’s a curfew for everyone so they don’t get eaten at night. But if you want to see Bulks, you can pay for a TMZ like nightly tour where you hop into an armored tour bus that drives around, looking for battles between Bulks and the Freak Shift.

And the dark humor’s a nice addition, as it takes Freakshift squarely away from its most obvious influence (Ghostbusters) and gives us something way more fucked up. For example, one of the first monster breakout scenes occurs with the Bulks barging up into an old folk’s home. So they’re tossing around naked old people, eating them, killing them. Old people are running around begging for their life. You’re not going to get that in Paul Feig’s newest iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise.

As much of a mess as this script is, I would LOVE to see Wheatley turn it into a movie. Get a proper screenwriter to come in and shape this into a more cohesive story and then go out there and have fun. Maybe if the new Ghostbusters does well, Wheatley will be able to convince someone to put up the money for this.

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

What I learned: With world-building, always look to go a level deeper. Surface-level world building is easy. You have a movie about guys who take on monsters at night? Sure, you could stop right there. But why? Why not ask what that world would be like? What else would be going on in that world? One of my favorite parts of Freakshift was the nightly tour bus that goes out into the city and looks for Bulks in the wild. That’s the kind of second level world building that fleshes a screenplay out. And there’s no reason to stop there. Why not go down another level? And then another? The more you can learn about your world, the more we’ll buy into it.

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Logline: The show follows a troubled couple involved in the disturbing depths of the Los Angeles psychic community.
About: Last night Hulu debuted their Stephen King adaptation, 11-22-63, and if you think it was just another Hulu original, think again. When you get a Stephen King book produced by JJ Abrams starring a movie star, you’re announcing to the industry that you’re an official player. Netflix may be the bully on the block, but that doesn’t mean you and your big wheel gang can’t control the alley. One of their next big shows is Shut Eye, which features Burn Notice star, Jeffrey Donovan. It was created by Les Bohem, who came out of nowhere and landed a huge deal with CBS for his creation, Extant. Among the producing team is Melissa Bernstein, who of course worked on Breaking Bad.
Writer: Les Bohem
Details: 59 pages

TV is at a crossroads. Despite everybody and their daughter-in-law throwing their pilot scripts into the mix, we haven’t seen any breakout shows in awhile. It reminds me of the time when $300 video cameras started hitting the market and all you heard was, “Now anyone can make a movie!” And so everyone DID start making movies. And none of them were any good. Or the reality TV craze. Remember that? When you could say, “What about a dating show… with midgets,” and a network would give you a couple million dollars to play with?

I guess it makes sense. These networks and streaming services have to put SOMETHING on the air. But quality control seems to be at a minimum. Even streaming titan Netflix has a bit of a “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks” mentality. I think this speaks to just how difficult TV writing is. You don’t get to wrap everything up in 90 minutes. You’re responsible for keeping it going… and going… and going… I loved the first season of Orange is the New Black. The second season was an absolute disaster though. You could feel that the writing team had run out of ideas. Ditto the disastrous third season of House of Cards.

To be honest, if you keep a rapt audience past season three, you’re probably a writing genius. I don’t know where Shut Eye will end up in this discussion, but I know that its pilot is pretty good, and pretty damn weird too.

40-something Charlie Haverford is a psychic in Los Angeles. He lives with his cunning wife, Linda, who also works in the business. Charlie’s pretty good at what he does, predicting infidelity left and right, but there’s a sadness to him that belies a man looking for more. Is this really what he’s going to spend the rest of his life doing?

A lot of that comes from Linda, who’s clearly unhappy with their situation. And as we get to know these two, we realize they’re more wrapped up in the psychic community than we thought. Charlie owns a number of small outfits throughout the city, and is responsible for training and keeping those outfits kosher.

If he doesn’t, he has to answer to Fonzo, who’s like the drug kingpin of Los Angeles psychics. He’s in charge of everything. And because of his deep gypsy roots, he deals with problems a little… differently. When Charlie’s psychic sister, Sylvia, tries to con someone, Fonzo has her go through a humiliating ritual where all the other psychics spit on her and call her names.

Things get weird when Charlie gets into a scuffle with the boyfriend of one of his own clients and he bumps his head. Later that day, a hypnotist comes to Charlie and Linda for a job interview. The hypnotist puts Charlie under and something about the combination of the head bump and the hypnosis changes him. All of a sudden, Charlie starts seeing things before they happen. And that means, in a profession of con men… Charlie has become the real thing.

Whoa. This one was out there. You never knew what was coming next. And most of what came next was good. The best way I can describe it is, imagine if a really talented writer got really drunk and let himself go. We’ve got spooky ass seance sessions, weird psychic kingpins, a deeply troubled marriage, bizarre sex scenes, humiliating gypsy rituals, the ability to tell the future. It was like jumping on top of a bucking bronco and not stopping for 60 minutes.

I just wish it all connected more naturally. For example, we meet Charlie in a session and he seems to be honest about what he’s doing. There’s no indication he’s conning the person. So, in my mind, he’s the real deal. However later, he gets the head bump and hypnosis and starts seeing into the future. So now he’s… more the real deal? Or does that mean he wasn’t the real deal earlier but now he is? There were a lot of little things like that that weren’t clear.

But what I liked about Shut Eye was a) it introduced us to a world we knew nothing about and b) it was hella well-researched. From the sessions themselves to the cabal like network that linked all these psychics together – it felt like this is what really goes down. And I’m fascinated by psychics. So each page was like candy to me.

I do want to air a grievance, though. Weird sex stuff can become a crutch for writers of dark material. As storytellers, the ideal situation is that we come up with a plot beat or a character moment to keep the story compelling. In Ozark, when we find out that the main character’s partner has been secretly siphoning money from the drug kingpin, that’s a nice plot beat that adds another layer to the story and pushes it in a new direction.

But when we can’t think of those moments, we go to our trick-box. The trick-box is full of things that don’t require connective tissue to work. You can throw them in anywhere and they’ll titilate or surprise the reader. But the truth is, they’re tricks – a distraction to hide the fact that you haven’t figured out something else in your story.

Throwing in a weird sex scene is a trick-box move. Here we jump into this scene where Linda is beating the shit out of Charlie while having sex with him and while I guess it had a teensy bit of setup, it felt isolated and too much like a trick. You see the same thing in bad horror films. Show something really gross and fucked up that has no connection to anything. Audiences above the age of 12 are pretty keen at spotting these manipulative moves. So beware of the trick-box UNLESS your trick is tightly woven into the plot.

Despite that, Shut Eye achieves what very few scripts these days do – It brings you into an unfamiliar world and unravels in an unexpected way. For those reasons, I found it enjoyable.

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

What I learned: I’ll give you an example of how to use weird sex stuff without resorting to your trick-box. In one of my favorite films, The Sweet Hereafter, there was a high school girl who’d survived a bus accident that killed most of the other kids on the bus. It unfortunately left her in a wheelchair. Midway through the movie, we learn that, before the accident, the girl had been sleeping with her father. It’s the classic “shocking sex scene” that could’ve easily been a trick. However, late in the movie, the father is part a group suing the bus company for millions. And everything will come down to his daughter’s testimony. Now since the daughter is in a wheelchair, her father is no longer interested in her “in that way.” So guess what happens when the girl testifies? She makes sure to paint the accident as no one’s fault so that her father doesn’t get the money. You say how the shocking sex stuff WAS AN INTREGAL PART OF THE STORY? That’s why it works. But had they just inserted incest sex in there to be shocking and that was the last we heard of it, it would’ve been a trick.

Genre: Action/Superhero
Premise: Immediately after meeting the love of his life, a merc receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. After being turned into a freak by a fake experimental cure, he declares revenge on the man who made him this way.
About: Everyone knows the story by now. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Ryan Reynolds, and director Tim Miller have been trying to get this movie made for 7 years (Ryan Reynolds even longer). Fox didn’t think a hard-R superhero film would work but reluctantly gave the group a small amount of money to shoot some test footage. When it came back, the execs weren’t impressed and the movie seemed to die for good. But then one of the four (they won’t tell us who) leaked the test footage online, the internet went crazy, and Fox decided, eh, why not. Still, they considered it EXTREMELY risky and didn’t like the film’s prospects, giving the production a very non-superhero-like 60 million bucks, hoping for a tiny profit. Well, the film’s been setting all kinds of records, racking up 150 million dollars at the box office, blowing away expectations left and right. It’s safe to say that Deadpool may have just done for Fox what Iron Man did for Disney. Here is my previous script review.
Writers: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick

Let’s be honest here. There’s something about analysts, number crunchers, and marketing experts being wrong that tickles our film-loving posteriors. Formulas can’t tell us what audiences want. What audiences want are good movies, something fresh, something that resonates. And that can’t be quantified by a database of “comps” (by the way, when did the “comps” term migrate from the real estate market to the movie business??)

And the nice thing about this weekend’s screw-up is that nobody gets hurt. Deadpool made a bajillion dollars for the studio. They’re going to make bajillions more on sequels and an expanded universe. All is good at 20th Century Fox this morning, and I’m sure all those number crunchers are retroactively reframing their warnings (“I didn’t say it WOULDN’T do well. I said it wouldn’t do well if it was released in the SUMMER. Remember? That’s what I said. I never knew you were going to release it on Valentine’s Day. I would’ve redone the comps if you would’ve said that”).

For those who haven’t seen the film, it’s a superhero origin story with a twist. Or a few twists. This guy, Wade Wilson, falls in love with a prostitute. He’s then told he has terminal cancer. Resigned to his fate, Wade gets a hail mary pass from a mysterious man who says he can cure him.

Wade decides to take that chance, only to find out the whole thing is a front to torture desperate people. Wade is tortured in a lab for months, and the experiments turn him immortal (yeah, I know, I didn’t understand that either). They also burn his face into a crispy pizza pie looking mess, and when Wade finally escapes, he can’t exactly slide unnoticed back into society.

So he becomes a costume-wearing killer! Yeah! He also goes looking for the man who made him this way, AJAX, whose rather questionable power is that he can’t feel pain (c’mon, couldn’t we have found someone better than that?). Wade (now “Deadpool”) even grabs a couple of X-Men to help him, Colossus (a giant steel man) and Megasonic Teenage Warhead, a teenage girl who’s sooooo over it. Together, the three take on Ajax and his baddies, and Deadpool does (or does not?) get his revenge.

So how did this change from the original script that received so much buzz when it first leaked? It’s weird. It feels like it changed a lot, and yet not at all. Really, things were just moved around, or rephrased. I remember in the script there was this endless voice over where something awful would happen to Wade (I think being diagnosed with terminal cancer) and he’d tell us, “This is only the 7th worst thing that’s happened to me in my life.” Which was kind of cool, cause you’re going, “Jesus, I want to know how bad the first six things were!”

They got rid of that. And then there was stuff like the experimentation torture. If I remember correctly, the original script had Wade being tortured for 7-10 years. Somewhere along the way, they must have realized that it would be odd to throw Wade back into his buddy system 10 years later. So they kind of fudge it in the movie. It might’ve been 5 years, it might’s been 5 months. Whatever the case, it was a better choice. There was no need to torture Wade for 10 years.

The movie still kept the script’s schizophrenic timeline though. We’re in the present, then we’re in the past, then the later present, then the later past. Here’s the thing if you’re going to try to pull this off – it’s great to have a running voice over so that the narrator/hero can immediately tell us where we are. Where I see these excessive time jumping devices fail is when there’s little explanation of what’s happening. When we jump to the past in Deadpool, Wade is there to tell us where we are in a voice over, so we’re never lost.

One of the biggest changes from the script occurs in the area I was most worried about – character development. I didn’t FEEL anything in the Deadpool script. I just thought it was cool. But in the film, they really go all out in exploring Wade.

And this is a great lesson for writers who hope to work in the industry someday. The reason they made this so character heavy was because they had to. They didn’t have 200 million dollars like Iron Man. They had 60. That severely limits your show-stopping superhero set pieces. And from what I understand, nobody gets the exact budget they want. The studio always slashes it. So, like Reese and Wernick, you too will be asked to dial back your action spectacle and fill those set pieces in with something else.

And it’s kind of a win-win when you think about it. Your job when you write a script is to move people. When you have 200 million dollars worth of toys, you’re more interested in moving 50 cars across a highway in the greatest chase scene of all time. Deadpool REALLY gets into its love story (cheap to shoot!), really gets into Deadpool’s alienation (cheap to shoot!) and really gets into his mundane day-to-day life (cheap to shoot!). All of this not only kept the budget down, but it made this superhero film unlike any superhero film we’ve seen before (giving audiences the “fresh” take they’re looking for).

Deadpool also had a secret weapon that helped hide its low-fi approach – Deadpool himself. I don’t think Batman or Spider-Man or Superman could’ve survived a 60 million dollar budget because none of them have the personality to keep us entertained during long stretches of set-piece-less scenes. But Deadpool is his own stand-up comedy routine. Even when things “aren’t happening,” he’s still saying funny shit, either through voice over (“Now I bet at this very moment your girlfriend is wondering how you convinced her to come see this shit”), or to other characters (“Hash-tag, driveby”).

And then of course there’s Reynolds himself. I’ll be honest. Reynolds has always struck me as an okay to occasionally decent actor who was extremely lucky to keep working. He just never seemed to have the gravitas to break out. Bill Simmons even once wrote an article pointing out why Reynolds wasn’t a movie star. This goes to show that, as an actor, when you find the perfect part for you, you can shine. And that should be a lesson to screenwriters as well. When you’re stuck in a script you don’t believe in or that doesn’t highlight your talents, it’s not going to end well, no matter how hard you try. But if you find that story you love and that your type of writing is perfect for, you’re going to write something great.

As a movie, I thought this was on par with the script. A fresh and unique way into a stale genre that does a solid job. I’m more enamored with the story behind the story here. I’m just so happy for everyone involved.

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The making of Deadpool is a story of two qualities that are ESSENTIAL to succeeding in this business: passion and perseverance. Without these two qualities, you will fail. Hollywood is a cold place that doesn’t give a shit. But when you love something and you’re willing to put everything into showing it to the world, assuming you’ve done the hard work (you’ve studied the screenwriting craft and become the best screenwriter you can be), you WILL succeed. Don’t run away at the first, second, third, or fiftieth “no.” Keep going like these four and you’ll find your salvation. And there will be those who doubt this. But if you asked everyone who’s ever made a film how they got their movie made, the large majority of them will give you a story similar to this.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Dramatic Psychological Thriller
Premise (from writer): After a traumatic experience places them together, a young woman, fearful of large dogs, agrees to watch a stranger’s aged dog. When she tries to find the stranger to give it back, her search becomes a dangerous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I lost a pet recently. I went to a local pound to maybe adopt another. They say don’t look the dogs in the eyes at first. They may take it as a threat. Just stand close, let them feel you out. If the body language appears relaxed, then meet eyes with them. But it’s almost impossible. We communicate so much by meeting eyes. I could not do it. Besides, the looks from the dogs, one after the other, resigned to their fate, checked out totally or gone looney. So little hope. It was just overwhelming. So, I gravitated to those dogs who were blind. Found comfort in them. — And that day, with that experience, this story came to me. — It’s short for the time crunched AOW reader. It’s sweet. It has a girl and a boy who are meant to be together and life is cruel but does give them their moment. — It has a girl and a dog instead of a boy and a dog. It has grit and fight from both of them. — I did some cover art for it because I just couldn’t get that damn title centered on the page.
Writer: Randolph Scott Williams
Details: 85 pages

Thanks for all the help you guys gave the amateur writers last week. That’s what I love about this community. When you’re called upon to help your peers, you do so with gusto. I also want to congratulate yesterday’s “Off-The-Nose Dialogue” winner, Zadora, who took the day’s lesson and ran with it. He/She did everything I hoped for. Make sure to read Zadora’s scene (it’s about 6-7 comments down if you filter comments by “Top.”) to see how to pull off “off-the-nose” dialogue with ease.

Okay, on to today’s script. As I mentioned last week, this edition of Amateur Offerings included submissions I had problems with. With Minder, there were a couple of problems. First, the logline was a mess. “After a traumatic experience places them together, a young woman, fearful of large dogs, agrees to watch a stranger’s aged dog. When she tries to find the stranger to give it back, her search becomes a dangerous and heartbreaking journey of self-discovery.” There are a million things going on in this logline. It’s too big (two sentences?), too scattered, and not very well written (“fearful of large dogs?”).

Remember, loglines should be simple and to the point. I liked Scott Crawford’s suggestion: “After a young woman is rescued by a dog, she embarks on an epic journey to return the animal to its owner.” Blueblossom also made a good point on why this logline was so confusing: “When I read it, the genre and the logline didn’t seem to complement one another very well. Like, I suppose I don’t generally think of psychological thrillers as involving heartbreaking journeys of self-discovery.”

With that said, the “Why You Should Read,” indicated a script with potential. We’re all trying to move people with our stories, and this suggested a moving experience for the writer. Could he transfer that to the page? Let’s find out.

24 year old Thera is a bit of a shut-in. She’s happiest when inside her apartment, avoiding any and all who threaten the sanctity of her introverted utopia. On one of the few days she ventures into the world, she has the misfortune of losing her phone.

Lucky for her, a mysterious gentleman snatches it up and returns it to her. Thera is so thankful, she asks the man if he needs anything. Yes, actually. He’s going away for the weekend. He needs somebody to take care of his dog.

Thera doesn’t like dogs. But this gentleman’s gesture was so kind, she figures she’ll suck it up for the weekend. What she doesn’t know is that the dog is on its last legs. It’s blind. It’s sick. It’s dying. And to add insult to injury, it’s huge! Not exactly the cute little cuddle-machine Thera had in mind.

The man leaves Thera with a list of places the dog likes to visit and goes on his merry way. One problem: He doesn’t come back. The weekend passes and Thera’s still stuck with this big lug of a dog. So she opens an impromptu investigation, using the clues of these visitation spots to find out where the man lives so she can return the dog!

One thing leads to another and Thera finds out this dog used to be a fighting dog. But by that time, it’s too late. The dog-fighting criminals lock her up in a room and bring the dog out for one last fight. What Thera doesn’t know is that this mystery goes much deeper than dog-fighting, and that there’s a bigger reason she was chosen to take care of this dog in the first place.

I’m no stranger to loving dog-centric screenplays. One of my favorite scripts is Dogs of Babel. So while my first instinct was to say Minder was too off-kilter to work, I had to remind myself that I’d fallen in love with, if not a similar premise, one that covered much of the same ground.

That led to the obvious question: Why did I like Dogs of Babel so much better than Minder? For starters, Dogs of Babel was CLEARER. A man’s wife had taken her life, and in a desperate attempt to find out why, he developed a relationship with her dog. I don’t know. It just made more sense to me.

Minder feels more scattered, and it starts with the logline. Actually, I take that back. It starts with the genre. “Dramatic Psychological Thriller” screams, “I have no idea what my genre is.” And if you don’t know what your genre is, it’s going to show up in your writing. Screenwriting is all about being clear. And I was never clear on what this was.

The truth is, genres never cover one thing. Just because you’re writing a drama doesn’t mean you can’t include comedy. And just because you’re writing a thriller, it doesn’t mean you can’t include drama. BUT! You need to understand your dominant genre – the one that dictates 90% of the tone. That’s why I like single-denomination genres. DRAMA. COMEDY. THRILLER.

The next step in genre-assignment is combos (Dramedy, Sci-fi Horror), and those can work. But you still need to understand what the dominant genre is. Once we get into triple-combos, that’s when I know the writer doesn’t know what kind of movie he’s writing. And I think that’s the issue here. Is this a mystery? A thriller? A drama? A coming-of-age movie? I’m not saying you can’t include all of these in a single movie. You can do anything you want! There are no rules! BUT. Know that’s it’s insanely hard to balance all of these in a single script. Most of the time, you’re going to leave your reader confused.

If all that’s got your head on a top, here’s a simpler way to look at it. Is there a movie out there like the one you’re writing? Not the exact same thing. But something that could be presented in the same manner. If there isn’t, you’re probably writing something too weird. Now, of course, you may have stumbled upon the holy grail of unmade ideas (Being John Malkovich). But it’s more likely you’ve written a script without a clear identity.

Despite all of this, Minder is not a bad screenplay. There’s enough of a mystery here to keep you curious. There’s some very thoughtful character development that went into Thera. I liked the potential love story with the upstairs neighbor. And the writing (save for some occasional sloppy formatting) was thoughtful and painted a clear picture.

I just think this is a movie that only gets made if the writer makes it himself. And that’s not a bad thing. Most movies get made with passion. But this is a hard area to produce a movie in. One of the best scripts ever written, which is now six years old, is still looking for financing. So it’s an uphill battle. I wish Randy luck though. ☺

Script link: Minder

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

What I learned: Understand your dominant genre. It’s okay to create a hybrid, but know the genre that’s going to be carrying the majority of the genre load.

One of the unfortunate things I’ve run into from reading tons of amateur screenplays is that screenwriters rarely practice specific skills. Their only practice comes from writing entire scripts and while that’s better than not writing anything, it doesn’t improve the dozens of specific skills you need in order to become a master screenwriter.

When I used to teach tennis, I didn’t just hit balls back and forth with my students and say “Good luck” in their next tournament. We identified specific weaknesss and then drilled those weaknesss. If a player’s backhand sucked, I wouldn’t let him leave the court until he made 50 backhands in a row. If they were double-faulting in their last match, we’d spend an entire lesson hitting second serves.

Writing isn’t any different. If you suck at suspense, you need to practice writing suspenseful scenes. You’re not going to magically get better through writing a bunch of screenplays. You need to target the problem.

One of the best ways to do this is through writing scenes and short scripts. Whatever you’re lousy at, pick a scenario, write a short about it, and practice that weakness. That’s what I want to do with this practice series. Give you a common weak point in amateur writing and have you guys write a scene practicing it. You can link to your scene in the comments and the user who gets the most up-votes wins. Not sure what they win yet, but we can come up with something. If you guys like this series, we’ll continue it. If not, it will go the way of the Sunday Obscure Movie Recommendation.

We’re going to start off big. One of the most egregious mistakes I see amateur screenwriters make is on-the-nose dialogue. This just came up in a script I consulted on two weeks ago (actually, if I’m being honest, it comes up in 70% of the scripts I consult on). The writer had written a funeral scene. And at the wake, the mother and son talked about how much they loved the dead father, how important he was to their lives, the wonderful things he had done in life, how they were upset he didn’t keep in better shape, because maybe then he wouldn’t have died. It was ON THE NOSE to the max.

On-the-nose dialogue is two things. It’s characters saying exactly what they feel. And it’s characters saying what’s already obvious. We’re at a funeral where dad just died. We don’t need three pages of dialogue where mom and son talk about how sad they are that dad died. We already know that because we’re at a funeral and the characters look sad!

So one of the best ways to cure on-the-nose sickness, is with something I call “off-the-nose” dialogue. To practice this, set up an extreme emotional situation. Maybe it’s a funeral. Maybe it’s a break-up. Maybe it’s a promotion. Then write dialogue where the characters are allowed to talk about anything BUT their feelings OR what happened. What you’ll find is that your dialogue comes alive.

So let’s go back to that funeral scene. Instead of the son saying, “Man, I’m so bummed that dad is dead,” have him say, “What’s for dinner tonight?” And go from there. One of the most powerful things you can do in dialogue is to play AGAINST the emotion. So if someone’s died, have your characters joking around. If someone just won the 180 million Powerball, have him complain that now he has to get a new place and he hates the stress of moving.

Now I’m aware that in some cases, your characters WILL say what they’re thinking. And even sometimes in off-the-nose dialogue, you’ll allude to what happened (as our Powerball winner just did with his comment). This isn’t a black and white thing. It has some grey area. But overall, dialogue works best when you stay away from the obvious. And that’s what today’s practice series is about. So remember: Don’t allow the characters to discuss what they’re feeling and don’t allow them to comment on what’s already obvious.

Best short script and/or scene wins. Upvote your faves! Good luck!