Gone Girl had a really exciting second act.

So the other day, a writer told me he’d been excited about entering the Scriptshadow 250, but lately, he didn’t know if he’d be able to finish his script on time. “You’ve got over three months,” I told him. “What don’t you have time to do?” “I just can’t seem to figure out second acts,” he confided. “I can make it through about 15 pages, but then I have no idea what to do next.”

Getting lost in the second act is not a new problem for screenwriters. In fact, on the list of screenwriting fears, it’s usually up there with writer’s block. But just like any problem in screenwriting, the solution presents itself once you break down the issue. And what I’ve found is that the writers who have problems with second acts are the same writers who never learned how to tell a story properly in the first place. So let’s start there.

Most stories are told by introducing a problem into a person’s life. That problem becomes the impetus for that person to ACT. This is obvious when you think about it. If you encounter a problem, you only have two options. Do something or do nothing. Most people will do something. That something becomes their GOAL. And the unresolved nature of that goal (will he or won’t he achieve it?) pulls the reader along until, at the end of the story, our person either succeeds or fails. So, to summarize:

THE GOAL IS ALWAYS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Look at almost any movie and this sentence holds true. (Problem) Hitler is looking for the most powerful religious artifact in history and plans to use it to take over the world. (Goal) Therefore, Indiana Jones must find that artifact first. (Problem) A giant monster has emerged from the bottom of the ocean and threatens to destroy the world. (Goal) The military must stop it. (Problem) In the popular film, Gone Girl, a wife has disappeared and the husband is suspected of her murder. (Goal) The husband must find out what happened to his wife.

Once you understand this basic principle, you have all the tools you need to tackle your second act. Because while a story starts out as a problem a character must solve, it becomes, in its second act, a series of conflicts that put our main character’s success in doubt. Let’s see if we can summarize that:

THE SECOND ACT IS WHERE YOUR MAIN CHARACTER ENCOUNTERS CONFLICT

This is a very simplistic assessment of the second act, but as you’ll see, it holds true in just about every movie you’ve ever seen. During those middle 60 minutes, nothing seems to be going right for the hero. He always appears to be running into trouble. This “plot conflict” is the first of two planes you need to master in the second act.

As we’ve already discussed, your character’s goal is to solve a problem. The second act, then, must make solving that problem the most difficult thing your character has ever had to do. You achieve this by placing OBSTACLES in front of the character’s goal.

For example, in Gone Girl, Nick needs to find out where Amy is so he doesn’t get sent to prison for the rest of his life. That’s his goal. The second act, then, is a series of obstacles thrown at Nick to make his job difficult. One of those obstacles is that his affair with another woman is exposed. If Nick is having an affair, it’s all the more reason for him to get rid of his wife. Later, another obstacle is introduced in the form of Amy’s journal. In the journal, Amy talks about how Nick is “dangerous,” how she’s scared of him, and how she thinks he might harm her. Yet another obstacle that makes his goal more difficult.

True, not any old obstacles will work. You need to be imaginative. And the obstacles themselves must hold weight. But if you continue to come up with good ones, it’s not hard to keep the reader’s interest.

But plot obstacles are only half of the second act battle. You also need to explore your hero’s relationships.  When screenwriters give up on screenwriting, it’s usually right before they figure this part out. Because before you figure this tool out, your second acts are just plot. They’re robotic efficient story movers. But they lack emotion, lack soul, lack heart. In order to bring that feeling into the story, you need to master the art of inter-character conflict.

Inter-character conflict works like this. For every relationship between your main character and someone else, you need a SPECIFIC UNRESOLVED CONFLICT between them. Don’t be vague about this. Write it down somewhere. I’m going to make this very clear. Understanding the specific issue/problem/conflict in each of the key relationships in your screenplay allows you to explore your characters on an EMOTIONAL LEVEL so that your story isn’t just a robotic plot mover, but rather a living breathing exploration of the human condition. And that’s what makes a second act work. Here are a few unresolved conflicts between characters from well-known movies.

Silver Linings Playbook
Pat and Tiffany – She loves him, but he’s still in love with his ex-wife.

Frozen
Anna and Elsa – Elsa avoids a loving relationship with her sister in fear that she will hurt her.

Gone Girl
Nick and Detective Rhonda Boney – Despite wanting to believe him, she suspects that Nick killed his wife.

Neighbors
Mac and Teddy – Mac just wants to raise a family. Teddy just wants to have fun.

The Social Network
Mark and Eduardo – Mark is more interested in their company. Eduardo is more interested in their friendship.

Now I’m highlighting the main relationship in all of these movies, but your hero should have 2-5 key relationships in the script, and you should have a conflict for each of them. Once you have that conflict written down, every scene between those characters will, in some way, explore that issue. This is why we, as an audience, watch. We want to see if these characters are ever going to resolve their conflict!

When writers don’t inject problems/issues/conflicts into their relationships, the scenes between the characters are often lifeless. And why wouldn’t they be? If you don’t have anything to hash out, anything making your relationship difficult, it’s nearly impossible to draw drama out of the relationship.

Take a look at yesterday’s script, Huntsville. The key relationship in that story was 40 year old Hank and his friendship with 17 year old Josie. So I ask you – what’s the problem (or conflict) in this relationship? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Hank wants Josie but can’t have her. It’s illegal. Therefore, every scene they’re in together is laced with that unresolved conflict. Will Hank make a move? Will the relationship go to the next level? The idea is to create a circumstance where the reader asks the question: “How is this going to be resolved?” If that question doesn’t come up, you’re not doing your job.

Take another recent script review: The Founder. What was the main problem between Ray Kroc and Mac McDonald? Ray wanted to expand the business. Mac was fine with the way the business was. Every phone call between the two in that second act revolved around this unresolved issue. These contentious discussions upped the conflict, which upped the entertainment value. The Founder doesn’t work if there isn’t any problem between Ray Kroc and Mac McDonald.

When seeking out conflicts to explore in relationships, two great places to look are your own life and (yup, I’m being totally serious here) reality TV. One of my friends has a testy relationship with her mom because her mom thinks she needs to get married now when she’s still young and pretty. My friend, however, isn’t in any rush. There isn’t a phone call that goes by between the two where this isn’t discussed outright, passive aggressively, or through subtext. Someone else I know disavowed his best friend because that friend is now dating his ex-girlfriend. You should see what happens when those two are in the same room. I once knew a guy who was in a three-year relationship with a woman he loved dearly, but that woman was an alcoholic and refused to quit drinking. Every day for him was a struggle.

Reality TV does this in a more on-the-nose way, but they’re still good at it. Most reality shows these days depend more on character than plot, so they put a ton of emphasis on relationship conflict, which is the same thing I’m asking you to do. It’s why you always find the religious nut and the gay marriage advocate on the same show. Or why two exes who never quite got over one another are brought back together. Or why a father is featured on the show of a man who’s never been able to achieve his dad’s approval. I’d argue that almost every reality TV show these days is about relationship resolution. So don’t be ashamed to study them.

That’s pretty much the basics for how to handle your second act. Plot obstacles and relationship conflict. And actually, when you think about it, it’s all conflict. Obstacles create conflict for the plot. Unresolved issues create conflict between characters. Are there other things to focus on in the second act? Of course (your main character battling his flaw for one). But if you master these two things, you should be able to write some kick-ass second acts. Which you’ll need to if you’re going to win the Scriptshadow 250! ☺

Genre: Drama
Premise: An ex-Death Row worker who has since isolated himself from the world finds his life reinvigorated by the arrival of a beautiful teenage girl.
About: A lot of people chastise the Black List for celebrating scripts that already have production deals or writers who already have established careers. But baby scribe Anthony Ragnone truly is an “out of nowhere” find. Outside of some assistant work, he was just your average amateur writer trying to get noticed. He did so with “Huntsville,” which finished around the middle of the pack on the 2014 Black List. (Note: Due to some reveals in the screenplay, I would suggest you find and read this script before reading the review. A lot of people should have the script to pass around since it was on the Black List)
Writer: Anthony Ragnone II
Details: 92 pages

Michael Shannon for Hank?

If I heard that a band of eager young screenwriters were heading to Los Angeles and would be here tomorrow, and the city commissioner gave me one billboard to put up at the entrance of the city, in which I could offer any message I wanted to said screenwriters to give them the best chance at success, I know exactly what that billboard would say:

SIMPLIFY YOUR SCREENPLAY!

One of the most common mistakes I see new writers make – and it only seems to be getting worse – is biting off more than they can chew. An extremely complicated plotline following multiple protagonists with flashbacks and flashforwards where every third character’s motivations are shrouded in mystery… It certainly sounds fun from an eager young writer’s point of view. But the amount of skill required to pull something like this off is higher than you could possibly know.

And I know that sucks to hear because when you’re a young writer, you want to break the rules. You want to show why you’re different. So you conjure up some part-Charlie Kaufman, part-Aaron Sorkin, part-Scorsese screenplay that is simply too complicated to wrangle into any sort of enjoyable shape.

The scripts that I see which continue to sell or make an impression on the industry are often simple stories with a slight complication or two. If you look at the latest Black List, Catherine the Great (the number one script) is a very simple story following a woman who rises to power. The only complication is that it doesn’t take place in one continuous timeline. My favorite script on the Black List so far, The Founder, is even simpler. An ambitious man tries to create a fast food empire. There are no bells and whistles. Just the necessary conflict he endures while trying to achieve his goal.

The Brian Duffield script, The Babysitter, which finished 3rd on the list, follows a kid with a crazy baby sitter. The Wall, which finished sixth on the list, is about a one-on-one battle between two snipers. Achingly simple. The first script on the list that I would categorize as “complex” would be “Mena,” which uses an overly complicated 40 page montage before it gets into its core story. Not surprisingly, I think it’s the weakest of the scripts mentioned. Reading it was a struggle.

This brings us to today’s Black List script, which is, yet again, a simple story. It’s about a 40 year old man, Hank, who lives a boring isolated life. His job is to watch the local high school parking lot so that aspiring Ferris Buellers don’t try to play hooky. For fun, he occasionally goes fishing at a local lake. Other than that, he takes care of his turtles, and enjoys a drink or two.

Everything would’ve continued on this way had Josie not arrived. A smoking hot punky 17 year old, Josie isn’t who she seems at first. She’s actually thoughtful, sweet, and cool. She pushes Hank to open up, get out of his comfort zone, and actually go out and have fun. Within a few days, the two are practically best friends.

And that’s when Marcus gets involved. Marcus is one of those kids who would ditch school every day if it wasn’t for Hank sitting in that parking lot busting him every time he sneaks out of school. Marcus hates Hank, and that makes things very awkward when Marcus starts dating Josie.

Josie jumps back and forth between spending time with the two, and you get the sense that something here is going to break. It’s just a question of who snaps first. Of course, if that’s all there was to the story, there wouldn’t much to talk about. There’s something in Hank’s past that he doesn’t like to talk about, and it may be the thing that undoes them all.

Once again, we’ve got a super simple story here. A friendship between two unlikely people that’s thrown into disarray by a dangerous third party. The reason that simple stories are so effective is because it’s easy for the reader to understand what’s going on. And that’s a powerful tool as a writer. Once someone thinks they know what’s going on, you can mess with them. You can throw unexpected twists and turns at the story. You can build suspense. You can foreshadow standoffs between characters.

When everything is shrouded in mystery and hiding behind fifteen cross-cutting storylines or time jumps, the most effective storytelling tools become unavailable to you. It’s hard to be suspenseful if we’re not even sure who’s who or what’s what.

Huntsville uses a very simple device to keep our interest, and that’s an impending sense of doom. You usually only hear about this device in relation to horror scripts. But it can be used in any genre, and if you’re writing a slow-burn story, it’s pretty much a necessity. The impending sense of doom here is Marcus. He’s our bad guy who doesn’t like Hank. And the closer Hank gets to Josie, a girl he’s falling for, the more we get the sense that, at some point, Marcus is going to get rid of Hank.

Another reason I think writers are scared to keep things simple is because they equate simple with boring. To these writers, I’d say shift your complexities away from plot and into character. If you can create at least one complex character, readers will keep reading if only to try and figure them out.

What makes Hank such a good character are all these hints at his dark past. Every once in awhile, Hank will see a man sitting in his apartment, long gray oily beard in an orange jumpsuit, just staring at him. Part of the reason we keep reading is we want to know who this man is and how he relates to Hank.

But also, we want to know how far Hank will go. He knows he can’t and shouldn’t be with this girl. It’s illegal. And yet, this is the only person in the last ten years who’s reached out to him, who’s shown him that there’s still joy in life. I’ve said this before but whenever you have a character who’s fighting something within themselves, you, at the very least, have a watchable character.

(Spoilers) I’ll finish this off by saying I did NOT see this ending coming at all. It takes a lot to fool me since I’ve seen every trick in the book. But Ragnone got me good. No doubt, the ending is what got this script on the Black List. And I’ll go so far as to say it never would’ve worked had the rest of the story not been so simple.

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

What I learned: There’s a difference between a simple story and a simple concept. A simple story is just telling a story in a simple way, and is often preferred. A simple concept is another thing entirely. As much as I liked this script, I’m not sure I’d advise other writers to write a concept this simplistic (older guy meets younger girl and becomes friends with her). Unless you find an agent who sends it to everyone in town and it gets on the Black List, scripts like this more often fall through the cracks. I’d advise a high concept or a genre approach if you’re trying to get noticed as an unknown writer.

Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour Comedy
Premise: When the Devil gets bored with the goings-on of Hell, he decides to pack up, head to Los Angeles, and open a bar. What he never expected was to start caring about the people in the city.
About: Born in New York, Tom Kapinos moved to Los Angeles in the mid 1990s, got a job as a reader at CAA, and parlayed that into a script sale that got Jennifer Aniston attached. The movie was never made, but the spec was read by the Dawson’s Creek folks, where Kapinos soon became one of the writers. After the show was over, Kapinos fell into the Tinsletown Purgatory but five years later emerged with the hit show, Californication, on Showtime. Kapinos has now, smartly, jumped onto the comic book bandwagon, taking the DC character, Lucifer, and turning it into a TV show which will debut on Fox, probably as a companion to Gotham.
Writer: Tom Kapinos
Details: 55 pages

Okay, so I’ve just started Season 3 of House of Cards, and I’m worried. For those planning on watching the show in the future, avert your eyes, I’m about to get into spoilers. Basically, when you have a particular goal driving a TV show, the show will encounter a crossroads when the protagonist achieves that goal. Frank Underwood’s (Kevin Spacey) goal has always been to become president. That’s why we watched for the first two seasons – to see if he could do it. Now that he’s done it, where does the story go?

Now there are a million new story challenges you can create for the president of the United States. But no matter what you do, it’s hard to recapture the excitement of the underdog trying to become the top dog. I’m worried that the show will start focusing on plot (We must improve our relations with Russia!) as opposed to character, which is what makes all TV shows, and this one in particular, so good. Whatever the case, I’m eager to see how they solve this problem. It could lead to either some really good or some really bad screenwriting. I’m sure those who have already seen Season 3 will offer up their thoughts in the comments.  I only ask that they do so without spoilers.

How does this tie into today’s pilot? Well, Frank Underwood is a morally corrupt individual. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. It’s become apparent to me that these types of characters are great for TV shows. Someone who’s a little bad is so much more entertaining than someone who’s pure good. And today, we have a character who’s probably about as bad as they get. The devil himself. Let’s take a look at Fox’s upcoming show… Lucifer.

When we meet Lucifer Morningstar, he’s been chilling in LA for a good year, running his hot nightclub, Lux, and basically doing whatever naughty thoughts come into his head. The reason Lucifer has so much fun is that he’s devoid of that part of the body that actually cares about things – what is it called again? – oh yeah, the heart.

That’s about to change, though. One of Lucifer’s pet projects has been Delilah, a talented musician who debuted at his club and who has since become one of the biggest musicians in the world. However, like a lot of musicians, she makes terrible dating mistakes, and on this particular night at Lux, one of those mistakes drives by the club and guns her down.

What starts as anger eventually becomes sadness in Lucifer – a feeling he’s totally unfamiliar with. It bothers him enough that he insists on joining local hot but uptight cop, Chloe, on her investigation into the murder. Chloe doesn’t like the candid and sexist Lucifer, but she’s amazed by his Jedi-like power to get anybody to tell him what he wants to know.

The two go from Record Company owners to rap stars to movie stars as they trace Delilah’s sordid relationship past, before finally discovering that the wife of one of Delilah’s lovers got her bodyguard to do the hit. It’s a satisfying conclusion for Lucifer, who can now go back to his debauchery-laden ways. Except there’s one problem. He actually finds himself caring for this Chloe woman. Humph. Why does the real world have to be so complicated??

Let’s start off today talking about Investigation Simplicity Syndrome. 50% of the TV shows out there revolve around some kind of procedural format. Characters go on an investigation, usually to find a murderer. It’s a tried and true format where the goal and stakes are built right there into the genre.

But Investigation Simplicity Syndrome can destroy a procedural. This occurs when the investigation is too simplistic. Here Lucifer and Chloe go to a record producer, who says he didn’t do it and offers, “It was probably that rapper.” They go to the rapper, who says, “It was probably that movie star.” They go the movie star and, after talking to his wife, realize she was the one who did it.

It was so basic as to seem purposefully boring. Now when you’re writing a comedy series, which Lucifer basically is, you get a little more leeway in this area. If people are laughing, they’re not demanding Fargo-like complexity in their plot. But you have to put a LITTLE effort into the investigation.

Another problem with Lucifer is Lucifer’s key power – his ability to get people to tell him the truth. It makes things too easy! Characters throw the answers at him without any effort on his part: “Oh yeah, you should go check out that guy. He’s suspicious.” With any movie or show, you want to make things DIFFICULT on your characters – not simple – because then your characters have to struggle, and characters who struggle are always more fun to watch than characters who are handed everything.

So the combination of Investigation Simplicity Syndrome and Lucifer being handed all the information without having to work for it made for an incredibly boring investigation.

Which means I probably hated Lucifer, right? Not exactly. What Lucifer lacks in plotting it makes up for in fun. Lucifer is a funny character, throwing out punchlines faster than Mayweather throws punches (when an Angel visits his club: “Amenadude! How’s it hanging, big guy? Didn’t you see the sign?” “No angels allowed?” No? Hmm, maybe we should be using a bigger font.”)

And let’s not forget the wish-fulfillment, one of the more underrated components of character creation. We all wish we could do bad things and not have to suffer the consequences for them. That’s what’s so fun about watching Lucifer. He’s bad and he doesn’t give a shit.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough though. Kapinos smartly realizes that every good TV character needs somewhere to go. If there’s nothing they’re struggling with, then they’re basically a robot. So what’s hinted at, here, is Lucifer’s growing introduction to feelings – something he never had to deal with down in Hell. Once a character must deal with consequences, their choices become a lot more difficult, and we sense that’s going to be Lucifer’s journey as a character.

The script also benefits from Protagonist Dramatic Irony. This is when we know something about the character that nobody in the story does. This typically works best with serial killer protagonist flicks (American Psycho), but here, it’s simply that Lucifer is the devil. Therefore, whenever someone challenges Lucifer, or gets in his face, or gives him trouble, our superior knowledge allows us to delight in what’s about to follow. This happens several times in the script, such as when Scrip9 (the rapper) tries to intimidate Lucifer, only to end up on the floor crying like a baby when the conversation is over.

So what Lucifer lacks in plot, it makes up for in character. And for this reason, I give the pilot a passing grade. This is television, and in television, character is king. So if you nail that, you get some slack on the plot front. Still, if Kapinos thinks this show is going to last with investigations like this, Lucifer’s going to be buying property back in Hell before sweeps week. I hope that doesn’t happen because this series has potential.

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

What I learned: An easy way to avoid Investigation Simplicity Syndrome is to add COMPLICATIONS to the investigation. Just look for places to make things more difficult for your investigators. They go to their next lead – but the lead turns out to be dead. They go to their top suspect, but a lawyer opens the door and says his client won’t be talking to them. The chief of police tells them to stop investigating – the case is closed. It can be anything, as long as it throws the investigation off its typical path.

Genre: Drama-Thriller
Premise: A wife and mother finds herself forced to rob banks to save her family.
About: Matt Reeves has been writing for longer than you probably know. Most moviegoers place the start of the Reeves era at the arrival of Cloverfield, one of the most famous “out of nowhere” movies the geek world has ever seen. But did you know that Reeves wrote Under Siege 2: Dark Territory in 1995, a full 13 years before Cloverfield? He also wrote on Felicity, which, of course, was a JJ Abrams show, and how the two would eventually team up for Cloverfield. Reeves would later go on to write and direct the remake of Let the Right One In, and most recently directed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The Invisible Woman is supposed to be a passion project of his, and something he wrote all the way back in 2007. He claims to still want to make it, but when you’re being paid millions to direct some of the biggest movies in Hollywood, it’s hard to stop the money train to make an intimate character piece. So we shall see.
Writer: Matt Reeves
Details: 116 pages (April 14, 2007 draft)

Halle Berry for Carol?

I meant to go see “Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter” this weekend, about the woman who thinks “Fargo” was real and that there really is a hidden bag of money somewhere in Minnesota, so she goes searching for it. But when push came to shove, my in-between-work obsession with House of Cards took precedence. Outside of Breaking Bad and The Good Wife, I can’t think of a show where the writing is more consistent. Every single episode is good – not easy to do when you’re essentially covering a bunch of stuffy men talking in rooms.

Perhaps it’s apropos, then, that today’s script deals with another woman obsessed with money, albeit for different reasons entirely. Carol Elmer is a regular housewife living in the suburbs with a husband and a teenage son. Unfortunately, her life is far from perfect. It turns out her husband, Gerry, hasn’t had a job in six months. And while he seems to think this is fine, Carol, who’s in charge of the finances, goes to the bank to see how they’re doing, only to find out they’re about to lose their home.

So what does she do to solve this problem? Sit down and talk with Gerry to come up with a plan of action? Pft, no way! She starts robbing banks, of course! Carol develops a cliché little system where she throws on a cheap platinum wig, then goes into banks, pretending to have a gun, and telling tellers to fill up a trash bag. The problem is, Carol isn’t very good at it. And the tellers keep tricking her – stuffing one dollar bills inside of stacks of one-hundreds, giving her a fraction of the money she needs. So Carol has to keep robbing more banks.

In the meantime, Carol’s awkward teenage son, Christian, is failing music class. It’s gotten bad enough that the music teacher, Mr. Shaw, believes Christian needs a tutor. Carol is somewhat creeped out by the guy, but she can’t have her son failing school, so she agrees to the tutelage.

The problem is, Mr. Shaw stumbles upon Carol’s secret. But instead of turning her in, he offers to help, and becomes a sort of impromptu getaway driver. This leads to Mr. Shaw falling in love with Carol, and the two begin an illicit affair. The thing is, when Carol gets the money she needs to pay off the house, she plans to go back to her family life. But it doesn’t look like Mr. Shaw has the same plan in mind. Needless to say, this is all heading towards disaster.

I’ll start out by saying this was one of the more unpleasantly written screenplays I’ve read in awhile. Besides the extreme overuse of ellipses, Reeves has a strange tendency to underline the most random words in dialogue. I think underlining is fine if you do it two or three times a script and you underline relevant words. But it honestly felt like Reeves was using a random underlining generator. There was no rhyme or reason to anything he underlined.

Here’s a real line from the script: “Mrs. Elmer…! I’m sorry! I really do think it’s important we talk! I mean, I know you’re probably thinking, oh, it’s only band — !” I suppose you may be able to make an argument for underlining “sorry.” But “do?” And “oh?” And this was the case with almost EVERY line of dialogue. It was nuts!

This practice forced me stop at every underlined word to deem its significance, which gave the script a start-stop quality that destroyed any semblance of rhythm the script might have had.

That kind of stuff is easily taken care of though. Not underlining words literally takes 1 second to fix. The bigger issue I battled with was the concept. I kept asking myself, “Is this a movie?” The whole time, I kept waiting for some big twist to occur to give the story gravitas. But it really was just about a woman who robs banks because she needs money.

I guess the stakes are high (she’s trying to save her family). And there are adequate complications thrown in (she starts having an affair with another man). But I feel like in this day and age, you need more for a movie. The competition is fierce so you need to come to the table with a bigger idea.

The exception to this rule is if you’re telling the story with a unique voice. Your voice, then, becomes the “hook” that makes your screenplay different. Silver Linings Playbook is essentially a romantic comedy. But David O. Russell brings such a unique voice to the story that it doesn’t feel like any romantic comedy you’ve ever seen before.

I kept waiting for a daring choice to happen in The Invisible Woman, but everything pretty much happened how you’d expect it to. Take Mr. Shaw, for instance. The guy is presented as a creeper who’s infatuated with Carol. I thought, then, when he found out that Carol was robbing banks, that he was going to blackmail her into sex to keep quiet. That’s what I mean by a daring choice. Instead, they just became lovers, which didn’t even make sense since she didn’t like him.

If you want a movie, you need a concept. You have to come up with some cool hot hook that feels larger than life. I’m reminded of the book (and movie) A Simple Plan, where two brothers from a small town find a bag of 4 million dollars in a crashed plane, take it, and kill a man who finds out about their secret.  They spend the rest of the movie trying to keep authorities from finding out the truth, and the whole “simple” plan goes spiraling out of control.  That feels like a larger than life idea to me.

If all you have is character, you’re probably better off turning your idea into a TV show. That’s what this feels like to me. In fact, it has a sort of “Breaking Bad” quality to it – a woman constantly breaking the law to feed her family. I don’t know how you extend it past the first season but this certainly feels more comfortable in that space than as a film. In short, my entire Invisible Woman reading experience amounted to me wanting more. I never got it, unfortunately.

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

What I learned: Movies are becoming more and more of a concept-driven business. Everything is big and flashy so you have to come up with a big flashy concept of your own to stand out. If you’re writing character driven stuff, ask yourself if it can be turned into a TV show. Obviously, there are still smaller channels like straight-to-digital that will support character-driven films. If that’s where you want your finished film to end up, that’s fine. But chances are, a character-focused project is better off in the TV space.

Keep sharpening your Scriptshadow 250 Contest entries.  Your competition is only getting better with Amateur Offerings feedback.  Here are this week’s contestants, which include werewolves, cults, serial killers, and, of course, Harrison Ford.  Enjoy!

Title: Canine
Genre: Action
Logline: A special forces K9 unit, searching for an international terrorist deep in the Afghan wilderness, find themselves hunted by an ancient tribe of werewolves.
Why you should read: Carson is always encouraging his readers to take a genre and put a fresh twist on it. Which got us thinking… when was the last time we’d seen a kick-ass werewolf action film? Underworld? The Wolf Man? There’s definitely a gap in the market out there. Hopefully we can fill it. And even if you disagree, we’d love some feedback from the Scriptshadow community to help us take the script to the next level.

Title: To Dust
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A brainwashed young woman, conditioned to track and kill the remaining members of her parents’ cult, must outwit a relentless small-town Sheriff and regain her true memories before she kills her next target – the man she loves.
Why you should read: I submitted my last script, The Dark Parade, to Amateur Friday almost a year ago to the day. Whilst I had some great feedback and insight from the SS community (and the script got a few manager reads) – no one was gonna would splash down $150m on a VFX-heavy vampire spec from an unknown writer.

Title: The Rift
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Logline: When a soldier suffering from PTSD is told his symptoms are the result of an impossible space/time experiment, he seeks out the renegade scientist responsible, but being living evidence of the experiment’s success, a black agency is quickly on his trail to appropriate the technology.
Why you should read:”Get your work out there!” is often heard advice. “The Rift” started because one of the writers did exactly that. On a slow weekend with no AOW he posted the first 15 pages of an Industry Insider challenge entry that didn’t make the cut for feedback. Another writer read it, liked it, retouched and extended it, and send it back to the original writer for critical feedback. Countless emails over 8 timezones later “The Rift” was a fact. — “The Rift” is a complete screenplay that wouldn’t have existed if not for that first step: to put your work out there for the world to see. If you keep it for yourself, no one will know it exists, no matter how good it is. And so, as a logical extension of how the script came to be, we put it out there where it originated, on AOW, to see what might happen this time around.

Title: Vickie
Genre: Drama
Log lien: A seemingly docile nurse in Texas morphs into a serial killer of patients where she worked, after personal set-backs push her over the edge. BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Why you should read:  I’m Randall Alexander. I’m on the cusp of 40, and live in Texas. I’ve long been fascinated with the story of Vickie Dawn Jackson, who was not only a nurse in Texas, but also became a serial killer. We don’t hear a lot about female serial killers, mainly because they don’t usually exist. What makes a person go there? I envision it was a slow burn that teetered right under the surface, that needed some nudging here and there and then WHAM!…it got that final shove, and then erupted into a fire that Vickie could not contain. And that’s the way I wanted my script to play out. Looking for feedback! I think you should read my script, because I followed your advice, in regards to writing a FIRST PAGE that grabs the readers attention.

Title: Adventure Has A Name
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a fan accidentally receives Harrison Ford’s lab results in the mail, the fatal prognosis sends him and his friends on a desperate journey to find Ford and deliver the script they penned to win him his long deserved Oscar.
Why you should read: This script’s life depends on Harrison Ford. While my first concern is his well-being, his near fatal plane crash today also reminded me that life is too short to keep shelving my projects because someday I’ll wake up and it will be too late. I was holding off on submitting to Script Shadow 250 hoping I could get some feedback from amateur Friday (as you suggested), so here it is – a script about three guys trying to stop Harrison Ford from freezing himself. Been working on it a long time, but it’s not the years Carson, it’s the mileage.