Genre: Period Political Thriller
Premise: Set in one of the most volatile cities during one of its most volatile eras – Beirut in the 1980s – High Wire Act follows a bottomed-out alcoholic diplomat who’s called upon to negotiate the release of a CIA agent who used to be his best friend.
About: From the writer who brought you Michael Clayton and FOUR of the Bourne scripts (Tony Gilroy) comes this hot project, which will star Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike.
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Details: 120 pages
High Wire Act got me thinking about the types of movies Hollywood makes these days. Cause it ain’t movies like High Wire Act. Unless you have a prestige director and an Oscar campaign ready to roll, I know execs who’d be more welcoming to the Zika Virus than an obscure period political thriller.
Remember when they used to make movies like Boiler Room? Or Rounders? You didn’t even need a concept! All you needed was a subject matter. Uhh… traders on Wall Street. Uhh… poker players! We’ll figure out the story later.
Truth be told, I’m kinda glad those movies don’t get made anymore. They sucked. I mean go back and try and watch one of them. You’re sitting there going: This is basically about a guy named Matt Damon playing poker. They didn’t even try and hide it.
Luckily, High Wire Act is more sophisticated than those scripts, plus it has the benefit of being written by someone who actually understands screenwriting.
Mason Skiles, an American diplomat in 1972 Lebanon, has managed the rare feat, along with his wife, of becoming friends with many of the locals. There’s one boy in particular, 15 year old Kamir, who Mason has personally mentored and will soon send to school in the United States.
Unfortunately, however, school will not be in session for Kamir. A group of masked men crash one of Mason’s parties and take Kamir, who it turns out is the brother of a high profile terrorist. During the scuffle, Mason’s wife is shot and killed.
Cut to 10 years later and Mason is a drunk back in the states with a bargain basement arbitration practice. Just when things can’t sink any lower, he gets a call. It’s the CIA. They want him on a plane to Beirut pronto. But they won’t tell him why.
Mason reluctantly goes, where he finds out that his former best friend and fellow diplomat, Desmond, has been taken. And the kidnappers are requiring they deal with Mason only. Hmmm… that’s interesting.
So Mason goes to meet them and wouldn’t you know it, guess who the kidnapper is? That little boy, Kamir, is all grown up and ready to make a deal. The Israelis have kidnapped Kamir’s troublemaker brother. If Mason can get him back, Kamir will deliver Desmond.
And that’s where things get REALLY complicated. Kamir’s brother is essentially Osama Bin Laden to the Israelis. There’s no WAY they’re going to give him up. Which means Mason is going to have to pull off the greatest negotiation of all time in order to save his friend. Can he do it?
This script starts with a bang and never lets go. My issue with these scripts is that the writer will get too wrapped up in the politics side of things. That stuff isn’t interesting to me. Nor is it interesting to most. What audiences care about are people. If you can set up a cast of characters who are interesting and put them in dramatic situations that are compelling, it doesn’t matter what the overarching storyline is. WE WILL CARE.
And that’s what Gilroy does. He opens with a flashback that introduces us to our happy main character, his happy wife, his happy best friend, and the happy teenage boy he mentors.
Immediately after making us fall in love with them, the terrorists arrive and kill Mason’s wife. I was devastated. And why? It’s just words on a page. But this is the power of good screenwriting. You create moments between characters, make us care about them, then take those characters away.
Even more brilliant? PERSONAL STAKES. What bad writers do in these scripts is they introduce a bunch of random people with random ranks who we don’t know, and expect us to give a shit if one of them is kidnapped.
What Gilroy does is he makes the kidnapped guy our main character’s best friend (PERSONAL STAKES). And who’s the kidnapper? The kid Mason mentored (PERSONAL STAKES). Everything here is personal, which makes the bonds and thus the plotlines stronger.
Gilroy doesn’t stop there. He utilizes what I’ve deemed the “mystery goal.” The mystery goal adds flavor to a goal, it adds a spike. When Mason is called upon 10 years later to go back to Beirut, he isn’t told why. It’s a MYSTERY. So you’re not just sending your character somewhere (their goal) but strengthening it with a mystery along the way. Of COURSE we’re going to want to keep reading. Just like Mason, we want to find out what the fuck they want him for.
Another key tip is to make your mystery goal IMPORTANT. Typically, when you lay down a mystery, you can keep that mystery going for 10-15 pages and the reader’s going to stay invested. People naturally will stick around until the mystery is solved. But the more IMPORTANT you make that mystery, the longer you can stretch out the reveal.
The way the CIA talks to Mason about this Beirut trip, they make it sound like a really big fucking deal. Like this is one of those things you can’t pass on. As a reader I’m going, “Ooh, this seems big time. I have to know what this is about.” If the same person had come to Mason and said, “I heard these people are sorta interested in talking to you. Maybe you should check it out.” Does that sound important enough to make you care? Of course not.
Lots of great scenes here too. Bad writers take common scenes and play them out the way they alway play out. Good writers take common scenes and they TURN THEM in a way where they play out unexpectedly. So when Mason goes to meet with the kidnappers for the first time, there are two men in masks he’s talking to. The main one, the older guy, is screaming and yelling at Mason, telling him that Mason’s going to play by their rules. After about 3 minutes of this, the other masked man calmly raises his gun and shoots the man in the back of the head for being difficult. He then takes over the negotiation.
WHAT THE FUCK?? Wasn’t expecting that.
After all this, you’re probably expecting me to give this an impressive. I was actually going higher than that at the midpoint. This was going Top 25. But then the script started doing exactly what I said you shouldn’t do at the beginning. It started focusing on the politics, the web of lies, the world of the impersonal as opposed to the personal.
One of the issues here was that Beirut had a dozen warring factions inside of it in the 80s. So there were SO MANY bad guys. So many different clubs who were part of the problem. Add onto that people double-crossing each other and after awhile, you couldn’t keep track of it anymore.
It’s the double-edged sword with these types of scripts. As they move towards their climax, they have to get bigger. But the bigger they get, the harder it is to keep track of what’s going on. So you have to either deftly calibrate how much the audience can take, or be an expert at keeping loads of information clear and easy to digest.
I eventually got lost in all the madness. And that’s too bad, cause this script had a hold on me for a big portion of its page count.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the oldest writing tricks in the book. Place your hero where he least wants to be. The last place Mason wants to be after his wife was murdered there is Beirut. So where is he sent to? Beirut. You do that and I’m telling you, most of your movie will write itself.
What I learned 2: You’re never going to write the perfect screenplay. The goal is simply to do more good than bad. If you can achieve that, you’ll have a script worth reading.
Genre: Superhero
Premise: When the government attempts to gain control over the Avengers, it fractures the team, leading to an inevitable battle between those who believe they should be contained, and those who want freedom.
About: People in the industry have been calling this Avengers 2.5 for awhile now, not just in scope, but in budget. Apparently this was one of Marvel’s toughest productions, with the top brass complaining that way too much money was being spent on something that wasn’t an official Avengers film. Maybe the 180 million dollar opening (just 11 million less than the more heavily hyped Avengers 2) has alleviated some of those fears. The script was written by the top writing duo at Marvel, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. The two also wrote the upcoming Avengers 3 & 4, which will be filming back to back.
Writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (comic by Mark Millar) (characters by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby)
Details: 147 minutes long!
Whenever I write about these superhero movies, people say, “These movies have nothing to do with screenwriting.” And while I can understand where they’re coming from, they’re wrong. In fact, scripting a superhero film, especially one like Captain America: Civil War, is one of the hardest things a screenwriter will ever have to do.
Because you’re not just trying to please 20 different people who all have their own ideas of how the script should go. You’re balancing a ton of characters. And that’s probably the hardest thing to do in screenwriting, is balance a huge cast of characters.
I’m still of the old-school belief that movies are best served with a single dominant hero. It’s the formula that works best for the feature film format. Indiana Jones, John McClane, shit, even the recent Deadpool.
Every scene where you focus on a character who isn’t your hero, you are taking time away from your hero. And when you do that, it becomes difficult to develop the hero, to arc the hero, to give them any sort of meaningful journey. And with a movie like this, you’re jumping around to so many damn people, all Captain America has time to do is say, “I don’t like what’s going on.” And how fucking interesting is that?
But franchises like Harry Potter and Marvel and Fast and Furious have made this the new norm for summer films. It’s not about character development anymore. It’s about character variety. And I’ve come to realize how they’ve handled this change.
Fast and Furious and Avengers films have become giant TV shows. What do TV shows do? They stuff their shows with lots of characters and each scene moves along a couple of those characters at a time. That’s what Civil War was. We’d jump to Cap and Buckey, then Scarlet Witch and Vision, then Iron Man and Spider-Man.
The difference is, movies weren’t built for that. With TV shows, you always have a new episode next week. So you can afford to go 15 minutes without mentioning a key storyline between characters because we know we’re going to see those guys next week. With movies, everything has to be figured out by the end of the film.
So we get this weird hybrid movie-TV structure that never feels comfortable with itself, like a dress that doesn’t fit right. And that was my beef with Civil War. We’re jumping around so damn much that I’d forget what the fucking movie was about.
Honestly, I think that’s why they called it Civil War. So that anytime you forgot, you’d go, “Oh yeah, this is called Civil War. So the superheroes are going to fight each other. That’s what this is about.”
But is it what it was about? Not really. Captain America: Civil War is about the latest trend in superhero films – PUBLIC DESTRUCTION. It’s as if everyone’s just figuring out now that when Iron Man knocks over a skyscraper, there may be a few hundred people inside that just died. Which is kind of cheap when you think about it. Because the whole reason you placed your characters in a city in the first place was because it looks cool. Superheroes fighting in the Sahara is never going to be able to convey as much visual awesomeness as an 80-ton metal slab colliding with the Hulk.
So for them to conveniently just be figuring this out now? Come on.
Anyway, Tony Stark (Iron Man) gets all emotional about these real-world people dying and wants to sign a treaty with the United Nations where they would hand over control of the Avengers. Strangely, this takes everything about Stark that’s cool and fun and emasculates it, turning Tony into a depressing little whiner. Captain America, for no other reason than the plot requires it, steadfastly disagrees, and the rest of the Avengers are forced to take sides.
This leads to what is probably the best action scene in superhero history, the showdown at the airport. These Russo Brothers guys are incredible directors and, in many ways, saved a script that was burdened with trying to do too much for too many.
My favorite moment was when the tiniest superhero (figuratively and literally), Ant-Man, became the most influential in the whole battle. And it reminded me that right now, Ant-Man is probably the most interesting thing Marvel has going for it. He’s the only character that allows you to do things that you haven’t previously done in these movies.
The problem was, once that scene was over, you wanted to go home. I mean, isn’t that why we came? It’s not like we were on the edge of our seat, desperately wondering where the story was going to go next. Especially because you needed a spreadsheet to keep track of all the storylines.
With that said, the writers tried. There was this Buckey storyline – a superhero from Captain America’s past who was either good or bad, we couldn’t tell – that Civil War kept coming back to. But a) how are we supposed to care about little old Buckey in a movie where there’s going to be a full on war between the Avengers, and b) Buckey as a superhero is fucking lame.
The dude has a MECHANICAL ARM. That’s your superhero? A strong arm? Ooooh, what’s next? A superhero with a disease-free toe? One with a leg that has 70% more endurance than the other leg?
And why don’t we make this a call out to Marvel. Marvel: GET RID OF ALL YOUR LAME SUPERHEROES. Guy with mechanical wings? Not a superhero. Guy who shoots arrows? Not a superhero. Girl who jumps on people with her legs and twists them onto the ground really hard? Not a superhero. The only people who should be onscreen in these movies are real superheroes. Seriously now.
Captain America: Civil War has confirmed a truth I’ve found to be correct 90% of the time. The bigger a script gets, the more it suffers. That’s why the previous Captain America was better than this iteration. Simpler story. And it’s why Deadpool, a super-simple story about revenge beat out Batman vs. Superman, which got lost in its dense and unfocused storyline.
I understand that going lower-budget scares the hell out of executives. There’s pressure to give the audience a visual experience that they’ve never had before. And you can’t do that without lots of money. But they need to keep the simple storytelling spirit. They need to ask what makes a good movie. Because, believe it or not, it is possible to have a big movie also be a great story.
I thought this movie was okay. But superhero fatigue, a forced superhero war, and a lame b-story with Buckey the one-armed bandit, kept this out of recommend-territory.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me (except for the airport fight)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: For those of you resisting those character bios I’m making you write, every superhero in this movie has at least 30 years of backstory/biography to draw from. In essence, these characters have lived entire lives already. This is what you’re competing against so figure out as much about your characters’ pasts as you can.
You’re allowed to play around here on Amateur Offerings for a teensy bit, but you should really be working on your outlines and character bios, especially if the weekend is one of the only times you get to write. With that said, here are this week’s entries. Read and vote on your favorite (just add a comment with your vote). Whoever gets the most votes gets a review on the site next Friday! May the best script win…
Title: Onion
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: In order to fend off a home invasion, a troubled man descends into a fierce, animal-like state – from which he seems unable to emerge – and goes on the run in an increasingly violent, single-minded quest to return to his childhood home.
Why you should read:
– Received both a 5 and a 9 on the Blacklist website. What’s with that – or more importantly, which one is it really closest to?
– Vicarious wish fulfilment for anyone who’s been bullied;
– Some jaw-dropping ‘can’t believe that just happened’ moments;
– An amazing third act TWIST – which I bet you won’t see coming.
Title: Pandora’s Box (this week it works!)
Genre: Supernatural horror
Logline: After the tragic death of their five year old son Ryan, the Taylor family begin to experience
paranormal phenomena. In a desperate attempt to contact their son, the family turn to a Voodoo
witch, who is cursed with the gift, to see the dead.
Why you should read: Do you love rainbows? Cute and cuddly care bears? Unicorns? Rose smelling farts? If so, this is NOT a script for you. I repeat, this is NOT a script for you. I eat cute and cuddly bears and shit out unicorns for breakfast. This is a script that will make your legs quiver (like a dog taking a shit), this is a script that will make The Sixth Sense look like a romance movie (That’s just trash talk, The Sixth Sense is one of my all time favorite movies). If, like me, you love suspenseful horror, and you love to shit your pants (like a crying baby) then maybe… Just maybe, this is a script for you. A low budget horror, in the genre of The haunting (1991), Insidious, The Conjuring, and The Shining, “designed to jack you up”.
I hope you enjoy guys, and thank you for taking the time to read Pandora’s Box, co-written with my sister, (yes, we need MORE female writers)!
Title: The Other Princess
Genre: Comedy, Romance (live action)
Logline: When a broke kingdom gets a second chance with a sponsored contest to find the “next Cinderella,” a common girl who competes to help her family must decide if all the drama and a charmless prince are really worth it.
Why you should read: A while ago I was watching Shrek with my toddler niece, and thinking “I would’ve loved a whole movie on the funny fairy tale kingdom stuff.” That thought led to: “imagine if after the Cinderella story, Fairy Godmother became a washed up drunk”…and “imagine if another kingdom tried to find the next Cinderella through a “Bachelor” like competition”…those were just a couple of the “imagines” that resulted in this script, and if it’s something that might appeal to you, I hope you enjoy whatever you have time to read! (as for me: my background began in narrative fiction, and after publishing 3 novels, I started learning all I could about screenplays, as it seemed natural given my love of writing dialogue. A previous script was a top 20 finalist with Script Pipeline in 2014, and with this new one I’m just trying to see if readers find it interesting and fun!)
Title: Game. Set. Match.
Genre: Sports/Drama
Logline: On the day of the U.S. Open Championship, a washed up tennis-star, facing his last chance at winning a Major, is presented with a tempting offer to throw the match to his opponent: his younger brother.
Why you should read: I’ve been writing screenplays for about 5 years now, but in the last year I’ve gotten very serious about it and am moving out to LA next month. Over the past year, I’ve really pushed myself to write as many scripts as possible, and I think that Game Set Match might have some potential. I know that sports dramas aren’t exactly the sexiest drama and neither is tennis (despite Maria Sharapova’s efforts), but I think this story is told in an interesting way and will pull people in. Other than that, there’s some racket smashing and John McEnroe… what more could you ask for?
Title: Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)
Genre: Drama/Adaptation
Logline: A eunuch suffering from PTSD makes a trip to Spain with the woman he loves, succumbing to the hedonism and despair consuming post-war America in the 1920s. Don’t worry. There’s also bull-fighting.
Why you should read: I can’t remember Script Shadow ever reviewing an amateur script that’s ALSO an adaptation. I understand there are a bunch of reasons for this
1. An unproven writer should not be adapting major material he doesn’t own the rights to.
2. See above dummy.
But…
1. I really wanted to see this wonderfully poignant and romantic story as a movie. There is a version (50s), but it kind of blows. So I wrote it. Out of love, passion and with absolutely no notion it could ever be made. I’m very proud of it, and just wanted to have an advanced reader let me know what they think. After all, getting screenplays read is hard, but getting screenplays read that require literary rights is impossible.
2. Wouldn’t it be cool to examine an amateur adaptation? It’s certainly something that’ll probably prove unique from other reviews. I can definitely take the licks that might arise from such a scenario.
I’m probably really dumb. But I wanted to see this thing as a movie. This was the way to do it. It would be amazing to hear what you think.
Genre: Psychological Horror/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When ancient relics wash ashore in the south pacific, a team of scientists set sail to investigate. The closer they draw to their origin, the further they flail from reality. (A Modern day take on The Call of Cthulhu. The Shining on a boat).
About: Craig Mack first hit the airwaves here on Scriptshadow, when he submitted The Devil’s Hammer for Amateur Offerings. I really liked the script, and others took notice, allowing Craig to land a couple of assignments, one of which was a sequel to the hit indie horror film, “Contracted.” Craig has always valued the feedback of this community, so I’m sure he’s eager to hear what everyone, including myself, has to say today. Let’s check out his latest.
Writer: Craig Mack
Details: 99 pages
So last week’s Amateur Offerings got a little testy. Craig tried to come in under the radar, submitting his script anonymously. But I think some people are upset that someone who has a couple of produced credits is competing in Amateur Offerings.
I have mixed feelings about this. Everyone assumes that the second you get something made, you’re inside the golden palm trees and never have to worry about struggling again. The reality is, even if you get in, unless you write a major studio release, you’re basically an advanced amateur, or a fringe professional. You still struggle to get people to pay attention to you. You’re still writing specs, desperately hoping someone will like them enough to hire you. As Craig points out, he’s not in the WGA, nor does he have an agent. And plus he’s a longtime Scriptshadow reader and contributor, so heck, why not give his latest a shot.
Professor Joseph Wexler is just getting back into teaching after a horrible tragedy when a visit from Alexandra Young, an oceanographer, throws everything off-axis. Wexler and Alex clearly have a history together, but how deep that history goes is something we won’t find out until later.
Alex is here because a recent earthquake in the South Pacific seems to have triggered a bunch of ancient relics washing up on nearby islands. Strangely, local island tribes are entranced by these relics, chanting to them in strange languages and drifting in and out of consciousness while doing so.
Alex convinces Wexler to join her and her crew to sail off into the ocean and see if they can locate the source of this phenomenon. Wexler and his plucky t.a., Steve, join the club, only for Wexler to immediately start experiencing intense daydreams.
In these dreams, we learn about the tragedy that’s shaped Wexler. While on a ship, his wife, Lily, and son, Carter, got up and walked off the side of the boat, never to be seen again. Eventually, we learn that the reason Wexler’s relationship with Alex is so complicated is that he was banging her when this happened. And oh yeah, Alex is Lily’s sister! You’re not a true mister until you’ve had the sister.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that Wexler is on a full cocktail of drugs. But that’s making his scientific analysis skills spotty at best. And as they get closer to ground zero, Wexler goes crazier and crazier, mistaking everyone and their mom for his dead wife and son.
Will he be able to pull it together in time to solve the relic riddle? Methinks Iron Man has a better chance of convincing Captain America to hand over control of the Avengers to the United Nations.
So Craig is going to kill me because he sent me an updated draft of this – I’m sure one where he addressed all of your concerns. But I’m a man of routine. When it’s time to read the amateur Friday script, I go to the Amateur Offerings page and download the winning script there. So Craig, I apologize.
A quick glance through the comments section seems to reinforce the big issue I had here – the dream sequences. Holy Moses were there a lot of them. It felt like every five pages, Wexler or someone else was having a dream, usually about how Lily was dead and so was Carter.
I’ve said this before but I hate dream sequences. So a script that’s built around them isn’t going to fare well on my judging scale. But even if that weren’t the case, there were way too many. Anything you do too much of in writing loses its impact with each successive iteration.
Put a magician in front of a group of kids at the beginning of a birthday party, and they’re on edge with every trick that magician does. Bring that magician back an hour later for a second round, half the kids are bored. Try to pull the magician card a third time – those kids won’t even pretend to be interested. They’ll just get up and walk away.
I was also trying to determine if these dream sequences were necessary. As long as something is pushing the story forward, the writer can make the argument that it’s necessary. And Eternal Lies pushes the argument that these relics are causing people to lose their minds. So the sequences have a little more going for them than simply, “I’m going to write a fucked up dream sequence cause I don’t have any other ideas at the moment,” which are scenes I’ve read a lot of.
Still, every time the sequences came around and Lily would give us yet another version of, “He’s waiting for us,” I felt like I’d washed up on Deja Vu Island. This was compared by Craig to The Shining in his logline. But I’m thinking Groundhog Day might be more accurate.
The bigger problem here, though, is the lack of originality in the story. Do you know how many scripts I’ve read in the last month that involved a main character who wasn’t sure if they were going insane or not? Nine. That’s no exaggeration. NINE.
And this goes back to something I said the other day. One of the ways you beat out your competition as a writer is being diligent in your script reading and movie watching so you know what else is out there – you know what everyone else is writing. That way, you can make sure you’re not writing the same thing.
The “am I going insane or not” main character trope is one that’s been used for half a century. So you either want to avoid it altogether or bring something new to it. And I’m not sure this does. In fact, if you read my last newsletter, you read my review of one of the highest profile spec sales of the year, Max Landis’s Deeper.
What is Max Landis’s Deeper about? About a man who’s going to the bottom of the ocean while he slowly goes insane. What’s the final act of Eternal Lies about? About a man and a woman who head towards the bottom of the ocean while they slowly go insane.
I’m trying to think back to The Shining, which I haven’t seen in a decade, but which I liked quite a bit. And I’m trying to remember how many dream sequences they had in that movie. Cause they didn’t bother me. The question then becomes, is that because dream sequences just work better onscreen? Or is it because Kubrick’s story was simply better? I don’t know. Someone else can answer that in the comments section.
What sucks for screenwriters is they never know what’s going to turn a specific reader off. I don’t like dream sequences. So any script that has them enters a mental wrestling match with me that they lose 99% of the time. For another reader, it may be main characters who are alcoholics, or comedies where the characters don’t take anything seriously. You don’t know. Which is why you should never let one opinion sway you. Always try and get multiple opinions on your script.
My opinion on Eternal Lies is that it ignores exploring what could be an interesting story in favor of a wild trippy pseudo-psychological mindfuck. If that’s your jam though, you might end up digging this.
Script link (new draft): Eternal Lies
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Avoid patterns in your script. The more established a pattern becomes, the easier it is for the reader to predict what comes next. That’s what hurt Eternal Lies for me. We established this pattern of: Wexler is fine, Wexler dreams of his wife and kid, Wexler is fine, Wexler dreams of his wife and kid. This must’ve happened between 8-10 times. Once we know what’s coming next, we’re bored. It’s your job as the writer to BREAK THE PATTERN so we keep guessing.
For the next three months, every Thursday, I will be guiding you through writing a feature-length (110 pages) screenplay. Why are we doing this? A few reasons. For new screenwriters, it’s a chance to learn how to write a screenplay. For experienced screenwriters, it’s an opportunity to learn a different approach to writing a screenplay. And for every screenwriter, it’s an opportunity to light a fire under your ass, keep you moving, and have a finished script in your lap in just 90 days.
We have three months to achieve this, which equates to roughly 13 weeks. Each week I’m going to give you a task, which you will need to finish by the following week. I’m going to need, at minimum, two hours of your time a day. However, the more time you can contribute to the cause, the better. More time means more thought, more trial and error, more swings, which means an overall improved product.
One of the biggest pushbacks I expect to encounter in this exercise is writers saying, “Well I don’t do it that way. I do it a different way.” Tough. This is about trying something new. It’s about going outside of your comfort zone so you can grow. I don’t expect you to write every script this way from here on out. But I do expect you to discover some new methods you’ll be able to use in future scripts. So don’t complain. Just do it.
The plan is to write both a first draft and a second draft. Afterwards, the best scripts will be chosen for a tournament. You do not have to participate in the tournament if you don’t want to. It’s merely there to incentivize you throughout your journey. Those tournament scripts will be put up for critique by the Scriptshadow Faithful, who will vote for the best script each week. The feedback they give you, you can then use for further rewrites to improve your script for the later rounds.
Are we ready? Okay, let’s get to it.
First and foremost, you need a concept. We’ve been trying to come up with those for the last two weeks. Guys, I tried to get through all the loglines you sent me but there were just too many. I’ll attempt to rate a few more today but don’t hold your breath. If you didn’t get any feedback, you’ll have to go with your gut and write the idea you like best. And really, let’s be honest. You were going to write your favorite idea anyway. :)
If you didn’t participate in the last two weeks, you’ll need to come up with a concept and logline pronto. Check out last week’s post, as well as the comments, and you’ll get an idea for which concepts tend to work best. Once you’ve identified your concept, it’s time for the first task. And the first task is one that 50% of screenwriters detest. I DON’T CARE. This is your week 1 assignment.
OUTLINE AND CHARACTER BIOS
For those of you who want to start writing your script, TOUGH. Unless you’re a genius, the screenwriter who jumps into his script immediately runs out of gas by page 45. Oh, they won’t admit it. They’ll keep writing. But deep down they know they’re lost. This week’s assignment is designed to prevent that from happening.
DAYS 1-3 – THE OUTLINE
There are six main points you want to identify in your outline. But before we get to those, let’s go over the basic blueprint of a story. A protagonist is breezing along in their life. Then something happens that jolts the status quo. This thrusts them onto a journey where they try to achieve a goal. They encounter lots of obstacles and uncertainty along the way. Then, in the end, they somehow pull off the impossible and achieve their goal (or fail!).
We’re writing 110 pages here. So you’ll break your outline down into Act 1 (roughly pages 1-27), Act 2 (roughly pages 28-85), and Act 3 (roughly pages 86-110). Your scenes will average between 2 and 3 pages long. That does not mean every scene will be 2 or 3 pages. It means this is the AVERAGE. Some scenes may be 7 pages. Others may be half a page. In the end, you’ll be writing between 45-60 scenes.
The more scenes you can fill in for your outline, the better. But the only ones that are required for next week are these six. If you can figure out more, great. But these are the essentials.
The Inciting Incident (somewhere between pages 5-12) – The Inciting Incident is a fancy way of saying the “problem” that enters your main character’s life. For Raiders, that’s when the government comes to Indiana Jones and says they’ve got a PROBLEM. Hitler’s looking for the Ark of the Convenant. You, Indiana, need to find it first. Or, more recently, in The Revenant, it’s when Leo is mauled by a bear. Everything is irrevocably changed in his life after that incident.
The First Act Turn (page 25-27) – The first act turn is when your main character will start off on his journey to try and obtain whatever it is he’s trying to obtain. So what happens between the inciting incident and the first act turn? Typically, a character will resist change, resist leaving the comfort of his life. But most of the time it’s just logistics. We’ll set up what needs to happen, how they plan to do it, how impossible the task will be, etc. It all depends on the story.
The Mid-Point Twist (page 50-55) – If your story moves along predictably for too long, the reader will get bored. The Mid-Point Twist is designed to prevent that from happening. It changes the rules of the game. And there’s a bit of creativity to it. It could be an unexpected death. It could be a major betrayal. It could be a twist (Luke and Han get to Alderran, but the planet they’re going to has disappeared!). The point of the Mid-Point Twist is throw your story’s planet off its axis.
The End of the Second Act (page 85-90) – This will be your main character’s lowest point. They likely just tried to defeat the villain or the problem and failed miserably. Along with this, everything else in your character’s life should be failing. Relationships. Their job. Their family. It’s all falling apart. Your hero will be AT HIS LOWEST POINT. Hey. HEY! Stop crying, dude. It’s just a movie. He’s going to get back up and kick ass in the third act. But right now, it looks like he’s fucked.
The Early Second Act Twist (page 45) – We’re going backwards here only because I wanted to get the important plot points down first. Once you have those, figure out page 45. Basically, page 45 will be 15-20 pages into your second act, typically where most writers start running out of ideas. You need to add some sort of unexpected moment here. Something that lights a fire under your plot. It’s not going to be as big as the Mid-Point Twist. But you can’t have 30 straight pages of the same pacing. You have to mix it up. The Early Second Act Twist in The Force Awakens occurs when Rey and Finn get captured by Han Solo. Notice how Han’s entrance into the story takes everything in a different direction.
The Late Second Act Twist (page 70) – This is the same idea as all the other “twists” we’ve been talking about. If you mosey along for too long without anything new or different happening, the reader gets bored. You need to be ahead of the reader, always coming up with plot points that they didn’t expect. I’ve seen writers use The Late Second Act Twist to kill off a character. In Frozen, it’s the moment where Hans reveals to Anna that his entire courting of her was a sham designed to take over her kingdom.
Once you have these six key moments in the script mapped out, you’re in great shape. Why? Because now you always know where you’re going. You always know where you’re sending your characters, which will give your script PURPOSE, something people who write randomly and without an outline rarely have. And don’t worry. These moments are not set in stone. As you write the script, you’ll have new ideas, and these key points may change. That’s fine. But by having something in place initially, you’ll be able to write a lot faster.
It should also be noted that not every story will follow this path. Not every script’s structure is based off of Raiders of The Lost Ark. I get that. Still, you want to think of these moments in a script as CHECKPOINTS. Whether you’re writing the next Star Wars or the next Magnolia, every 15-20 pages, something needs to happen to stir the pot. So if you’re going to take on something unique, no need to fret. Give yourself those 6 checkpoints so that your script is moving towards something.
DAYS 4-7 – CHARACTER BIOS
I know. You HATE CHARACTER BIOS. Look at it this way. Remember when your parents told you to eat your vegetables but you never understand why when Captain Crunch and pop tarts tasted so much better? Then when you hit adulthood and you were 40 pounds overweight, you looked back and thought, “Hmm, mom and dad may have been right about that one.” Well, the same thing’s going on here. Character bios may not be fun. But you’ll thank me for them later.
What you’re going to do is write a character bio every day for your four biggest characters. One of those characters will likely be your villain. Here are the things I want you to include in each bio. Try to get between 1500-2500 words for each character.
1) Their flaw – Figure out what’s holding your character back at this moment in their life, the thing that’s keeping them from reaching their full potential as a human being. Stick with popular relatable themes. Selfishness, egotistical, stubbornness, fear of putting themselves out there, doesn’t believe in themselves. You may not explore this flaw in the movie. But it’s good to know, as it will be the main thing that defines your character.
2) Where they were born – A lawyer from the projects in Chicago is going to talk and act differently than a lawyer from the upper crust of a rich East Coast suburb.
3) What their family life was/is like – Our relationships with our siblings, but in particular, our mother and father, influences our personality and approach to life more than anything else. Know your character’s relationship with each and every family member.
4) Their school history – Were they a nerd? The popular kid? A drug dealer? An athlete. Our school experience, particularly high school, affects who we are and how we act for the rest of our lives. So the more you know about this period in your character’s life, the better.
5) Their work history – Work is 50% of our lives (for many of us, a lot more). It has a big effect on who we are. So you want to establish what your character used to do before they got their current job, and also the events that led to them getting their current job.
6) Highlights of their life – This is basically everything else, the character’s highlight reel, if it were. When they lost their virginity, any devastting breakups, their highest points, their lowest points. Just let loose here and use this section to discover what your character’s life has been like.
And that’s it! You’ve completed your weekly task. If you finish ahead of time, go back to your outline and fill in the areas between the major plot points. The more scenes you can outline ahead of time, and the more detail you can add to those scenes, the easier it will be to write the script when that time comes. Okay, all of this starts RIGHT NOW. So what are you waiting for???
