As we near Saturday, when I’ll contact all 250 writers who made it to the next round of my contest, I find myself emotionally exhausted. I’ve read so many stories from writers who have given up everything for this craft. Some have moved from other countries. Some have health problems so severe, they can’t leave their beds. Some are weeks from being kicked out of their apartments. A few are even homeless.
I wish I could make every one of those writers’ dreams come true. But the reality is, I’m not letting screenplays into this contest out of pity. If you didn’t bring your S-game (Script Game), your script didn’t get chosen. And as harsh as that sounds, it’s the way the industry works. If you can’t tell a good story – even in e-mail form – you’re not ready yet.
So today is about highlighting the mistakes I saw in your queries in the hopes that you never make those mistakes again. If there’s a theme to my observations, it’s this: Be professional. If there’s even a hint of sloppiness or laziness in your query, no one’s going to take you seriously. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at the ten biggest mistakes queryers made.
1) Generalities kill loglines – There were a lot of loglines where the writer didn’t give me any actual information. They wrote in vague generalities that didn’t convey what the script was about. Something like, “A mother who questions her life must combat a powerful force that threatens her very existence.” Honestly, it seemed like some of you were actively trying to say nothing. The whole point of a logline is to show what’s UNIQUE about your idea. To achieve that, you must be specific. “When a mother’s developmentally challenged son conjures up a haunting monster known as “The Babadook” from one of his books, she must battle her own sanity in order to defeat it.” That’s what I mean by specific.
2) Word-vomiting kills queries – Beware the writer who takes twenty words to say what they could’ve said in five. These writers add qualifiers and adverbs and adjectives and empty phrases to every sentence they write, making the simplest points exhausting to slog through. For example, instead of writing: “My movie is about a boxer who gets a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world,” they write: “I have a story about a boxer, the kind of man who’s kind, yet forceful when the moment requires it, embracing the challenge of a world that seems to be, but never overtly tries to be, his worst nightmare, and the way that man, my main character, struggles to achieve and eventually is able to secure, a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.” STRIP. YOUR. QUERIES. OF. UNCESSARY. WORDS. PLEASE. GOD.
3) Lack of conflict in a logline is a deal-breaker – You need to convey what the main conflict in your story is. Conflict is story! It’s the problem your main character must overcome to get to the finish line. I read a lot of loglines like this: “A young man experiences a spiritual awakening when he switches from being a Christian to a Muslim.” AND???? What is the conflict that tries to impede upon this switch? Lack of conflict in a logline means the writer doesn’t know what conflict is. If that’s the case, their screenplay is guaranteed to be boring. I mean 100% of the time guaranteed. Guys, if you don’t know what conflict is, go spend the weekend googling it.
4) The words/acronyms “CIA,” “agent,” and “FBI” combined with “terrorist threat” do not, on their own, make a movie – I must’ve read 50 loglines that were some variation of, “A CIA agent goes undercover to tackle a terrorist threat in London.” Secret agents and terrorist threats are some of the most potent plot elements in the movie universe. But they’re worthless on their own. They need a unique element to team up with.
5) Trending subject matter will always have an advantage in the query department – The trend of the moment is biopics. They’re the only thing that’s selling. So I admit that when I came across a biopic, as long as the query was competently written, it got in. Remember that everybody involved in the movie-making chain is trying to sell the project to the next guy up the ladder. I know Grey Matter will have to sell the winning script to the studio at some point. And the studio is more likely to buy a genre that’s doing well at the moment.
6) Focused loglines were always the best entires – One of the easiest ways to identify strong contenders was a focused logline. Unfortunately, the far more common logline was one that started in one place and ended someplace completely different. So I’d get something like this: “A down-on-his-luck mobster trying to open his own casino joins a cooking class and falls in love with his teacher.” Whaaaattttt??? How did we go from casinos to cooking class??? I saw this a LOT and the scary thing is, the writers who made this mistake are probably reading this right now and have no idea they’re guilty of it. That’s because everything connects logically in your own head. It’s only through objectivity that we see disjointedness. Take a step back and make sure you have a FOCUSED movie idea whose beginning, middle, and end, all tie together.
7) The overly mechanical query is digital Ambien – I read a lot of queries where writers were logical and succinct and measured in their pitch… and that fucking bored me to pieces. What these writers were saying was fine. It was HOW they were saying it that was the problem. There was no life to their words, no fun, no spontaneity. I’d read stuff like: “My goal was to eliminate the passive protagonist that’s been an Achilles heel to this sub-genre and replace him with a character that embodies the ideals of the thematic construct of revenge. In doing so, I’ve achieved an energy that was missing in my earlier drafts, but which I could never pinpoint. The resulting script is one that utilizes four out of five of the story engines that drive the classic “man vs. nature” tale…” AHHHHH! KILL ME NOW!!! Writing is supposed to be FUN TO READ. Even when you’re making a serious point, there should be a relaxed easy-to-digest demeanor to your writing. This style of query 100% OF THE TIME means the script will have no voice. So these queries were the easiest to reject.
8) Beware the logline that is at war with itself – I read a lot of loglines that felt like civil wars, with words jockeying for position as opposed to working together harmoniously. These writers had the “stuff it in there” mentality that should be reserved for the condiment section at a hot dog stand, not an e-mail query. Here’s an example: “A cowardly gunfighter is at odds with his idealism and the secrets he’s kept when a rival gunsmith rides into town, looking to settle a score that will help forge the frontier line between New Mexico and California.” A logline isn’t a contest to see how many words you can include. It’s a vessel to get your idea across as simply as possible. It should flow. If it doesn’t flow, rewrite it.
9) Don’t use weird adjectives to describe your main character – Every tenth logline I’d read, I’d get something like this: “A pestered train conductor plans a heist…” “Pestered???” The character adjective should give us both the defining quality of your hero, as well as CONNECT your hero to the plot of the movie. So let’s say your script is about a train conductor who decides to rob his own train. The adjective might be: “An exemplary conductor is forced by his wife to rob his own train after losing his family’s life savings.” I don’t love this logline but at least the adjective connects with the plot. This is a conductor who’s built his career on trust. He’s the last one you’d think would rob his own train.
10) Avoid the cliché opening-page overly-poetic description – Whenever I was on the fence about a query, I’d pop open the script and read the first few lines. If the overly poetic description opener made an appearance, it was bye-bye scripty. What is the “overly poetic description opener?” It’s when a writer who’s clearly uncomfortable with poetic descriptions starts their script with an overly clunky poetic description: “The sun-dappered late-afternoon light plays tic-tac-toe with the suburban rooftops.” No. Just no. Look, if describing an image in a poetic manner isn’t your forte, start with something else – an action, a mystery, your main character speaking. But if you dapper any suburban rooftops, goddammit I’m shutting you down, son.
If I could give writers one piece of advice when it comes to querying, it’d be the same advice I’d give them in regards to screenwriting: FOCUS. Get to the point. Convey your idea clearly. And being entertaining doesn’t hurt. It’s important to remember that you’re trying to convince a person to read something of yours BY READING SOMETHING OF YOURS. So if the short version of your writing isn’t enjoyable, there’s no way they’re going for the long version. Make your query focused and enjoyable to read, and there’s a good chance that reader will give you a shot.
Genre: Biopic/Action/Period
Premise: A young George Washington fights to gain the respect of the British Army during the French-Indian War.
About: This is a juicy mid-six figure sale from a couple of weeks ago. The script is from Aaron Sorkin protégé Michael Russell Gunn, the son of a Christmas tree farmer (hey, what’s more American than that!). Gunn’s written on The Newsroom and Black Sails, but this is his first feature effort. New Line, the buyer, will now race to get the movie made before a competing project from Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. There have been some rumblings (mostly from the internet PC police) that a movie about Washington should not be made, since he owned slaves.
Writer: Michael Russell Gunn
Details: 115 pages – undated (but I believe this is the draft that went out a couple of weeks ago)
When you think about the explosive biopic trend, you wonder why a George Washington spec hasn’t hit the town sooner. I mean we’re talking about the most famous man in American history. Even 9th graders at Hollywood High who couldn’t name our vice president without the help of Siri, recognize Washington’s name (albeit because his picture gets them an order of fries at the nearby In and Out, but still).
So why haven’t we gotten a big George Washington biopic before? I think because the guy’s boring, right? He never lies. And movies are about lying. Think about it. Every movie is based on some form of lie, deception, or the withholding of information. So if a guy can’t pull a cherry tree hit-and-run without feeling guilty, where are you going to go with the character? To that end, it doesn’t matter how popular you are. If you’re boring, people don’t want to watch you. Well, unless you’re Kim Kardashian of course.
As if sensing our collective skepticism, Gunn throws us into the story with Washington mercileslly beating down two Indians to save one of his soldiers. We immediately realize this isn’t our grandma’s George Washington. Or our grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s grandma’s George Washington. No, this is George Washington by way of 1989 Arnold Swarzenegger.
Not to get too “history” on you, but the story is set during the French-Indian War, when Britain was still occupying the U.S., and fighting France for control of this bountiful new world. Washington was one of the few locals to rise through the ranks on his merit (and not his family name) alone to become captain.
But after losing a town to the pesky French (French were still pesky even back then), he’s stripped of his captain rank and told he doesn’t have the goods to lead an army. Pissed off, Washington accepts a job surveying land for a local divorcee, Martha, whose farmland is drying up due to her neighbor controlling a nearby river. A master surveyor (this is how Washington made his name), she wants him to find a way to save the land, and along with it, her estate.
Unfortunately, Washington is pulled away by the British, who need his land-surveying prowess to take a key Frech city up north that, according to them, will determine who wins the war. Limited to consulting duties, Washington is itching to get back into action. But the British don’t believe he can lead an army. Will Washington be able to prove them wrong?
First off, I want to commend Gunn for selling this script. Part of getting that elusive script sale is strategizing (not unlike Washington) what Hollywood is looking for and how your particular writing strengths can give it to them. Too many writers write whatever comes to mind, never doing any research into whether Hollywood would actually want the material.
Coming off of Lincoln’s success, it was clear that audiences were willing to pay up for stories of historic American heroes, and so Gunn pounced on a Washington biopic.
I also loved the opening of The Virginian. Remember, you always want to use the reader’s expectations against them. George Washington is synonomous with the stately proper figure on the face of the one-dollar bill. So what’s the opening scene? Washington recklessly ripping two Indian soldiers to shreds. Boom, everything we thought we knew about Washington is turned on its head.
But that’s not all. As soon as Washington saves his soldier from these crazed warriors, he reaches down to pull him up, only to have the soldier CLOCK him upside the head and RUN. Wait a minute – WHAT??? Our hero just beat down two Indians and saved this man from getting scalped alive and he hits Washington and runs???
What we find out is that American militia are deserting their army in droves. They don’t want to die for a stupid war.
This is when I know I’m getting a good writer. Someone who not only establishes their hero in the first scene, but who uses the SAME SCENE to establish an important plot point. Any time writers are doing 2-3 things at once in a scene, it’s a good sign.
However, that’s where my praise of The Virginian ends. The rest of the script wasn’t bad. But after that opening, I was expecting more. When Washington gets the call to use his mapping skills to help the British in a battle up north, I assumed it was a minor battle that would lead to a major battle that’d be the climax of the story.
But no, this was the only battle. And the longer we stayed in it, fighting the same enemy over and over again, our main character relegated (mainly) to staying back and giving advice on terrain, the more bored I got.
The strangest thing about the script, though, was the emphasis placed on Washington and Martha’s letter-exchange courtship, which was oddly built around a remote land survey subplot. It did give us a break from the monotony of the battle, but there aren’t many love stories built around long-distance letter-based relationships that work (maybe in novels, but not in film).
And that brings us to our first big tip of the day. If a storyline doesn’t work, drop it. Because here’s the thing. I get that you want to show how George Washington met his wife. If I’m starting a screenplay about George Washington’s life, that’s something I’d want to include. However, what you plan to do and what becomes feasible to do once you’re in the throes of your story are two different things. You can be stubborn and force something in there that never quite works because that was your original plan, or you can ditch what’s not working and replace it with something more dramatically compelling.
As for Washington himself, I loved the “Washington with Attitude” approach. It energized him in the same way JJ Abrams energized the Spock character in the new Star Trek movies. But that was offset by the heavy attention paid to Washington’s map-making prowess. I don’t care how good of a writer you are. It’s impossible to make map-making cool. And there was a LOT of map-making here. Like, Rand-McNally should sponsor this movie there’s so much map-making.
I think Gunn got The Virginian half-right. Making Washington a tough quick-tempered brawler desperate for respect from the British Army was great. But the film’s main battle felt small for some reason (even though thy told us it was big). The repetition of the fighting was frustrating. And the fact that your main character was barely in those battles was the biggest faux-pas of them all. With that said, it was still way better than the Lincoln script, and I hear that movie did all right.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a wonderful tip for writers stuck in this situation. If your subject matter is perceived as boring (so, for example, you’re writing a movie about an opera singer), start with a scene that goes directly against that perception (so start with the opera singer snorting coke or getting in an alley fight). This approach jolts the reader and assures them they’re getting something completely different from what they thought. If The Virginian started out with Washington giving a four-page courtroom speech about taxes, I can guarantee you this script wouldn’t have sold.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: In this “The Burbs” meets “Horrible Bosses” meets “Homeland” mash-up, three middle-aged men suspect their new neighbor of being a terrorist.
About: We’re looking at a sure-fire 2015 Black List entry here. Jeff Lock made his first Black List last year with his meaty absurdist comedy, Beef. Since then he’s obviously been busy. “See Something” hit the town in July with a lot of buzz. And while that buzz hasn’t panned into a sale yet, you get the feeling that has more to do with its box office jinxed genre (black comedy) than the quality of the script. If it does well on this year’s Black List, a sale should follow quickly.
Writer: Jeff Lock
Details: 113 pages – July 13th, 2015 draft
Not that there’s any “best” way to break in as a screenwriter, but if you’re looking for that ideal track, it’s my opinion you want to sneak on the scene with a good but not great script. Sure, it’s bubalicious to get that half-a-million dollar check your first time out. But if you do that, the pressure’s on to deliver on your next script. And if you fail, the industry goes colder on you than Lake Michigan in February.
Jeff Lock did it right. He came on the scene with Beef, a solid but not spectacular script that landed him on the Black List. This allowed See Something to hit the town with a lot of fanfare but no ridiculous expectations. It’s sort of like starting your acting career on one of those good but not phenomenon shows. That’s where you find your Johnny Depps and your Jared Letos.
I liked Lock’s first script, Beef, and mentally tabbed him as a voice to watch out for. What surprised me about his follow-up effort was just how mainstream it was. And I mean that in a good way. See Something definitely embraces a non-PC sensibility, but in the end this exists in the same universe as Horrible Bosses. And that’s not a bad place to be.
30-something Ryan Appleby has just made the transition from working in an office to working at home. He’s not sure how to approach this newfound freedom, and his wife and kid aren’t helping, repeatedly asking him what it is exactly that he does.
To battle the boredom, Ryan hangs out with his two best suburban buddies, Clay and Adam. Adam is one of those fake progressive types who thought buying an African baby would enrich his life, and Clay is that socially unaware hick who thinks that any place that isn’t America is Mexico.
Well, Clay’s about to learn that the new neighbor isn’t Mexican. Pakistani couple Sam and Yasmina look like your typical middle class Americans. But Clay is convinced that because they’re Muslim, they must be terrorists.
When Sam gets a suspicious package delivered to his home, Ryan is curious enough that he joins the trio’s impromptu “Is Sam a member of ISIS?” neighborhood watch campaign. The three begin their investigation by breaking into Sam’s home, move to tracking his car, and eventually come to the conclusion that he’s planning to assassinate American icon, Joe Montana.
While the evidence for terrorist involvement is mounting, the group must weigh the price of freedom against the right to privacy, and that’s something Ryan is never completely comfortable with. Then again, if they can prevent a terrorist attack, isn’t all this moral compass hogwash justified?
See Something had me DYING in the first act. Through the first 30 pages, I was ready to anoint this the best comedy screenplay of 2014 AND 2015. Clay is absolutely hilarious as the dadbod version of Donald Trump: “I know you socialist pansies won’t understand this, but this is America. Other heathen countries in the world are poor, dysfunctional, and living in a big pile of their own shit. (quickly to Adam’s black son) No offense, Abel. (back to guys) They see how awesome America is and they hate us. But, being this awesome comes with a price. You have to watch for all the haters trying to tear you down to get to the top. So we gotta look out for the #1 Emcee in the game… Uncle Sam.”
Even the straight man, Ryan, comes up with some great zingers. His response to Clay’s rant: “You are like some sort of Drake-Rush Limbaugh hybrid.” I’d say I laughed out loud 25 times in the first 30 pages. That is a HUGE number. On the average professional comedy script I read, I might laugh 5 times total. And on the average amateur comedy script, I might laugh once (I’ll be honest, more than often I don’t laugh at all).
But I’ll tell you where See Something (a reference to the government’s message of “If you SEE SOMETHING, make sure to tell the authorities.”) began to lose me. A comedy only works when the plot is working. If the plot is naturally suspenseful and the characters are active and the stakes are high, I laugh at the jokes. Because it all feels real and reality is where the best comedy lies.
But 50 pages in, our guys let Sam know that they think he’s a terrorist. This ripped away the best part of the script, that our trio must sneak around to investigate our potential terrorist without him catching on. Because once he’s onto them, they’re no longer preventing anything. If Sam WERE a terrorist, he now has the option to cancel the mission. Doesn’t this effectively end the story?
The best scene in the script is in that first act when our guys sneak into Sam’s house to look for evidence when he’s out shopping. Why is this a great scene? Because there’s the threat that Sam could come home at any moment and catch them. Once you eliminate the fear of being caught, you eliminate all the conflict and suspense driving the story.
Lock replaces this with a mystery ticking time bomb – the group finds a calendar in Sam’s house with an upcoming date circled. While the looming date does create suspense, it never reaches the previous level of suspense where we were freaked out that Sam might figure out what our guys were up to.
So while the jokes were still sharp, they never hit as hard as they did when I was invested in the story. This is something that comedy writers never consider. If the structure and plot and story aren’t firing on all cylinders, the jokes don’t matter. Jokes only hit when the reader’s invested.
With that said, it’s an easy fix if the producers want to fix it. And I definitely think this should get made. It’s one of the few comedy premises that feels different from all the derivative garbage that’s been hitting the market lately. And I could see top talent dying to play these roles, especially Clay. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware the THIRD LAME FRIEND. One thing I’ve found with these “three friend” comedies is that the writer always neglects the third friend. The reason for this is obvious. The first two friends write themselves. There’s always the over-the-top guy and there’s always the straight guy (Phil and Alan in The Hangover). The third friend is the only one in the group whose identity isn’t clearly laid out, so writers are never sure what to do with him.
To fix this problem, I advocate the “label” approach. Label your three friends. So here, Clay is the over-the-top racist. Ryan is the sensible grounded one. Now do the same for the third character. The Hangover is one of the rare comedies that did this well (Stu was the easily-freaked-out pushover). Once you’ve labeled your character, you can focus on demonstrating their identity on the page. But if you never label them and instead write the character on “feel,” I guarantee the character will feel mushy. Adam wasn’t the worst version of this problem. The Ned Flanders label helped a bit. But there was something mushy about his identity that never allowed him to hit as hard as Ryan or Clay. A clearer label at the outset would’ve helped.
Genre: Thriller/Serial-Killer
Premise: A killer exploits society’s over-reliance on mobile technology to pick off his victims one by one.
About: Today’s writing duo is one of the hottest in Hollywood. They shot onto the scene with their heavily hyped debut spec, “Die in a Gunfight” (straight out of college, no less). Unlike a lot of writers who get a sale and disappear into obscurity, they parlayed that sale into a few writing assignments, eventually landing one of the coveted Marvel projects (Ant-Man). That job has led to a job on Transformers 5. Make fun of Transformers all you want (I do) but landing a writing job on a summer franchise film is a huge freaking deal. Low Tide is a script the writing team sold to 20th Century Fox last year. This is a more recent draft.
Writers: Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari
Details: 121 pages – 3/21/15 draft
What in the sam hell?? We’ve got a sequel-free, remake-free, biopic-free, not a true story, based-on-absolutely-nothing official spec screenplay here! If I weren’t such a cynic, I’d say that we’re reviewing a piece of original fiction. It’s been so long since I’ve actually done that, I’m not sure I’m qualified to do it anymore.
The way the spec market has gone, the buyers want you to stay in HARDCORE genre lanes. Like “Bed Rest,” which sold to MGM last month. That’s a clear horror genre flick that can be marketed right out of the Final Draft box. I was just reading an article about Robert Zemeckis’s new film, The Walk, and he said that every single production company and studio in town turned the project down. When asked why, he said, simply, “It doesn’t fit into any slot, if you know what I mean.” That’s the way this business works. So for Barrer and Ferrari to go against the grain and give us an offbeat serial killer flick, you gotta give’em knuckles.
But The question that kept popping up while reading Low Tide was, how far off the beaten path can you take a genre? Did these two go too far?
30-something Shae White is not your average detective. Not only did she lose her sister in a murder-suicide when she was just a girl, but she spends her off-time going to sleazy Atlantic City hotels and banging strangers with the explicit rule-set that they tell her they love her, despite her wanting nothing to do with them afterwards. She even keeps the dirty panties from the sex-sessions in a giant drawer in her bedroom. Hash-tag naughty.
Shae is assigned to a strange case where her daughter’s future boyfriend is attacked by a shark and loses his leg. When the police go fishing for the leg, they instead find another leg, that of a recently deceased female.
When the police find the rest of the female, they learn she was murdered, but they decide not to share this detail with the public in fear of wiping out 4th of July tourist traffic on the Jersey Shore.
Shae teams up with another detective, Pete, and the two discover that a man named Robin Goodfellow is texting young women from the fake accounts of their lovers in order to lure them into murderous situations. Goodfellow is sort of a cross between Jigsaw, Scream-Villain, and Hannibal Lecter, a philosophizing recluse who enjoys playing people for chess pieces.
It isn’t long before Goodfellow begins targeting Shae, texting her and calling her with an untraceable fake electronic voice. But Goodfellow may be targeting someone above his pay grade this time. Shae gradually puts the clues together and finds our psycho recluse, leading to a showdown that will leave only one of them able to keep texting those “lol’s.”
There’s a part of me that respects what Barrer and Ferrari have done here. One of the hardest things about screenwriting is walking that fine line between embracing traditional screenwriting structure, and adding just enough messiness to keep your script unique.
This is often what leads to that coveted “voice” we hear so much about but rarely understand. The way in which you break those well-worn rules is what makes your voice different, is what makes your work feel like you. But here’s where the “fine line” thing comes in. Those detours only look good if they work. And I’m not sure they worked in Low Tide.
Right from the start, I had a hard time finding my footing. We start with a cool scene where a girl gets a spooky text from someone while with her boyfriend. The text says only, “He knows.” It turns out our girl has been unfaithful, and now she’s in an isolated area with a guy who, if the texter is to be believed, plans on harming her. So she runs, and it doesn’t end well.
We then go to a woman throwing her dirty panties into a post-sex dirty panty pantry. We then jump to a girl who may or may not be her daughter (it isn’t made clear) who watches as the boy she has a crush on gets his leg bitten off by a shark. We then watch the police fish out the boy’s leg and bring it to the hospital to be reattached, only to realize it’s a different leg. We then find the source of this different leg – the now-murdered girl from the opening.
I suppose it sort of makes sense but it was all so disjointed that 30 pages in, I still didn’t know where the script was going. Eventually our killer, Robin Goodfellow, is introduced, and he provides some connective tissue to all this madness, but Low Tide spent the majority of its tide just trying to make sense.
I mean I’m still not clear on how Goodfellow kills his victims. He doesn’t do it himself, since he stays in his little room the whole time. I guess this means he recruits others to do it. But that’s pretty far-fetched, the idea that you can recruit random people willing to partake in your weird text and fake-electronic-voice phone murders.
That wasn’t the only sloppy part. One of the ways you can tell a script’s not working is if key characters disappear for long chunks of time. This indicates the writers weren’t thinking things out ahead of time or don’t know what do with the characters. Nancy, Shae’s daughter, gets a couple of key scenes early on (saving our shark-attacked boy), and then disappears for 40 pages at a time.
I know there’s an ongoing war in the screenwriting community between outliners and non-outliners, but this is where outlining really helps. You can see exactly where characters need more time and where they don’t.
The movie inspirations here were also too heavy. The shark attack and subsequent “hidden from the public to keep profits up” storyline was ripped straight out of Jaws. The electronic voice stuff was taken straight out of Scream. And our serial killer manipulating our female lead was too similar to Silence of the Lambs.
Look, it’s hard not to include plot points and characters from our favorite movies. That’s why we became screenwriters in the first place. Because we love movies! But the way you want to approach imitation is the way actors study subjects they’re going to play. They don’t ape their mannerisms or do impressions of those people. They take the ESSENCE of the person and let it inspire their own unique performance.
Take the ESSENCE of what you see in the filmmakers and writers you enjoy and apply that to your script. Avoid applying direct plot points and characters. I particularly see this problem with young screenwriters. For whatever reason, they’re more prone to bring in stuff from the movies they love. Veteran screenwriters actively look to create their own storylines and strive to be different from their predecessors.
The good news is, these two are visual writers. They’re definitely thinking about what’s going to be up on that screen. And that’s important. A woman stalking around in a sex-dungeon wearing a half-destroyed Pinocchio mask while an electronic voice taunts her is major trailer material.
And Shae’s weird sex addiction was compelling as well. The whole insisting on people telling her they loved her, while actively avoiding love, while also keeping this bizarre panty memoir. That had me wondering what this woman was going to do next. If you can write characters that have readers turning pages because they want to know what they’re going to do next? That’s a rare talent.
But in the end, this felt too patch-work for me. And I couldn’t get over the stuff taken from other movies. These guys are definitely talented and have a unique voice. But you can’t be unique if you’re blatantly bringing other movies into your story. I’ll be interested to see what you guys thought. There’s a bit of True Detective in Low Tide’s DNA. And I know you all loved that show (me, not so much!). This cold be one of those “Carson hates, but everyone else loves” scripts??
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t write like a virgin. – There’s an old saying that pops up every once in awhile: “Kiss like a virgin.” It refers to the over-the-top, heavy lip and tongue, intense over-compensating kiss you give when you haven’t had sex yet. There’s an equivalent in screenwriting. “Write like a virgin.” This is when writers use big words, throw in a lot of heavy “look at how smart I am” philosophizing by characters, rounded up with lots of references to historic literary titans (both Twain and Nietschke get some love in Low Tide). This kind of writing, if overdone, makes the writer look insecure. The veteran pros know that it’s all about story. They don’t need to prove their worth in every line. If the sentence, “He walks over and grabs his wallet” is all that’s needed for the moment, despite it being an overly-simplistic presentation of the action, that’s what they’ll use. I wish Barrer and Ferrari would stop trying to prove how much they’ve read or studied or how many big words they can use and just write. They’re talented guys. Why all the fireworks?
Hope everyone’s enjoying their weekend. Just one week away from the 250! Writers who made it into the coveted top quarter-thousand will be notified by the end of next Saturday. In order to distract you from that looming announcement, here are some amateur script entries to get your bloody analytical hooks into. As always, let’s find something good! Scriptshadow points to the first person who guesses my favorite logline of the pack (if you’ve been a longtime Scriptshadow reader, this should be easy). I’ll reply to the winner. :)
Title: She Wants to Have My Babies
Genre: Rom-Com
Logline: A perfect couple’s relationship becomes a rollercoaster when she wants a baby and he flat-out refuses to start a family.
Why You Should Read: The baby conflict. Now who doesn’t know a couple that struggle(s/d) with this issue? You – yes you – who answered “me”, go back to your cave. Now you, in-touch people, do you think such an emotional topic can be dealt with humorously considering the stakes? No, don’t answer. Can’t you recognize a rhetorical question when you see one? Now after you read “She Wants to Have my Babies”, and only then, will you be allowed to answer my question based on your experience of the read. You will be welcome to in fact. I know, I’m a prince.
Title: Shotgun Wedding
Genre: Action / Comedy
Premise: A timid guy from a small town gets cold feet on the eve of his wedding and incurs the wrath of his bride’s unhinged religious family.
Details: 91 pages
Why You Should Read: I love fun, quirky movies with plenty of silly jokes and cool action scenes, and Shotgun Wedding is chock full of both! It’s tone and sense of humor has been compared to films like Raising Arizona and Hot Fuzz. It’s a light, entertaining read and would definitely be a crowd pleaser on the big screen. Thank you for your consideration and I hope you enjoy my script.
Title: Game of 72
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: In a future where robots run grisly human-fighting rings for sport, any human who survives 72 matches is given 72 minutes to win their freedom–or die.
Why You Should Read: I moved to Los Angeles to specifically pursue a career in waiting tables. I was originally gonna write a biopic about Nikola Tesla’s chef, but figured this would be more interesting. This script has such a big fat concept, that when it took a selfie, Instagram crashed. Do not read it if you hate: space, hyper loops, nihilism, invisible architecture, and futuristic theories. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m an alien that’s trying to blend in with everyone.
Title: #uCantMakeThisUP
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: After a sour exchange online, a military wife must protect herself and her daughter from an anonymous poster’s offline threats.
Why You Should Read: I wanted to explore a section in horror without the supernatural bent, thus UCMTU was born. I’d pitch it as a character-driven piece that’s grounded in realism. I believe it checks off the list of things needed to sale: Female Protag; Thriller; Present-Time; and Few Locations (HELLO BLUMHOUSE!!!). Any feedback to help strengthen the script is appreciated.
Similar films: Catfish, Unfriended, Ex Machina.
Title: EXTRACTION
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Logline: Two military veterans with PTSD scan an abandoned war zone for technology that will remove their war experiences. But other forces are at play…
Details: 108 pages
Why You Should Read: I’ve been destined since I was in elementary school to write screenplays. It was a combination of watching kung-fu flicks with my grandfather, and writing 90 paged graphic novels that were side-sequels to the movie “Twister.” Since studying screenwriting in college, I’ve been hammering away at the craft for almost ten years now, and 24 scripts later I can say I’m closer than ever to finding my voice, and the feedback has been consistently good. I’ll be taking a trip to LA soon to meet film industry friends, and feedback from scriptshadow will certainly let me know what I need to get to the next level. I hope you’ll find something to enjoy here! Love the site.
