It’s time for another edition of “Didn’t Get Picked.” It’s often debated how much query letters matter. I’m here to tell you that THEY DEFINITELY MATTER. As someone who receives a ton of queries (for Amateur Offerings, for The Scriptshadow 250), I  assure you, I can determine a lot from a query. In fact, I have an unofficial checklist of how I go from e-mail to full script read. It starts with me opening the e-mail. This is what happens next.

1) Can the writer put together basic sentences without any errors? If so, go to 2.
2) Is the query well-written? Does it display thought, care, passion? If so, go to 3.
3) Does the writer know how to write a proper logline? If so, go to 4.
4) Is the idea a good one? If so, go to 5.
5) Read the first page of the script. Does it pull you in? If so, go to 6.
6) Read until page 5. Is the script still keeping you interested? If so, go to 7.
7) Read until you get bored. If you’ve done your job, I will not want to put your script down until the last page.

Obviously, you can’t get to number 7 without first getting through numbers 1-4. I’d say about 50% of the queries I read don’t get past number 2. But if you get past number 2, there’s a good chance you know a good idea from a bad one. Or that you can at least craft a solid logline. So, many who get past 2 at least get me to read their first page. Of the people who get that first-page read, I’d say 25% of them get past number 6 (read at least five pages). Of those who get that far, I’d say I finish about 5% of those scripts. And I’m guessing the industry average is similar.

The lesson here being that nobody even touches your script unless your query letter and logline are solid. The frustrating thing about this is that writers don’t receive queries. So they have little reference for what it’s like to read a query letter. How can you get good at something if you can’t study it? Well, that’s what today is about. I’m going to put up some real-life queries that were sent to me and explain why they didn’t make the cut. We’re not here to bash people or to tell them they suck. We’re here to help each other learn. Let’s get started!

SOCCERROCK by xxxx xxxxxx

A retired pro soccer player from the United States has his career
resurrected to help the British Secret Service capture an elusive
terrorist cell and Kris Sanderson is also reunited with Dead Egypt,
the world’s most famous heavy metal band.

The world’s most popular sport is soccer. More countries are
registered with soccer’s governing body, FIFA (Federation
International Football Association), than in the United Nations.
From the slums of Argentina, to the sub zero temperatures in Siberia,
someone is playing soccer as you read this. Since the days of Elvis
Presley, to the sold out stadiums featuring Metallica, rock & roll
music is a global phenomenon. When you combine these two genres, the
results are electric and this is truly an original concept. Almost
every soccer movie ever made involves kids and cute animals, and is
usually a G-RATED affair. Every other sport has films of a more adult
nature. Hockey has “SLAP SHOT”, baseball has “MAJOR LEAGUE”, football
has “THE LONGEST YARD”, and golf has “TIN CUP”, just to name a few
examples. Where is the great adult soccer movie?? Using my experiences
as a professional soccer player for twelve years, as well as being a
sports writer and roadie for rock bands, SOCCERROCK is an
action/adventure story that is void of all the corny formulas that
exist in every Hollywood soccer production.

You want to start out a query letter by introducing yourself. Even if it’s a quick introduction. To jump right into your logline without saying anything is jarring. I’ll excuse this if the writer uses my format preference (genre, title, logline, why you should read), but as you can see, that wasn’t the case here.  As it turns out, I didn’t have to read any further to know that the script was in trouble. As passionately as the writer pitches his project, the logline indicates a story so unfocused as to be unreadable. From my experience, if a one-sentence logline is unfocused, the script will be extremely unfocused. There are three separate ideas here. A soccer idea. A heavy metal band idea. And a British Secret Service idea. True, the mixing of these elements is what makes the idea unique, but that doesn’t matter if the script sounds all over the place. I’d encourage the writer to focus on one subject with his next script.

Hi,

thanks for taking the time to read this email (and hopefully the script). I’m a Welsh based writer working in the tv industry as an assistant director. For the past two years I’ve placed in the quarter finals of the Nicholls with this script, and have used the notes from them to improve the script to get it to a stage where I think its ready to be pushed out into the industry.

This is where you come in Mr. Reeves. Hopefully you’ll agree and feature this script on your website and offer some good notes. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Title: Big Red
Genre: Sci-Fi / Family
Logline: Erin is a child orphan who runs away with a fugitive robot to find a new home.

Okay, so this time we have someone who greets me! That’s good! Unfortunately, the first letter of the opening paragraph isn’t capitalized. That tells me the writer hastily sent this query out and therefore doesn’t care enough about the craft. Later I also see an “its” instead of the correct, “it’s,” and that pretty much ensures the submission won’t make the cut. I’m looking for writers who care, who take this seriously, and who put effort into the written word – ALL the written words. Finally, the logline doesn’t introduce any conflict into the story. Someone runs away with a robot. But then what happens to ruin their plan? You need to include the key conflict in your logline.

Carson,

Hope your weekend was productive. I’ve been a fan of your site for nearly five years. It’s been a huge part of my screenwriting education. Below are the details of my Amateur Offerings Weekend submission.

-MAQ

Title: Page Turn Her
Genre: Drama/Comedy

Logline: A love-struck ad writer finds a magical journal that controls his unrequited crush’s actions, but he hesitates using it because the men who get close to her have a tendency to die.

Why you should read: I’m a longtime Scriptshadow reader whose last script, “King of Matrimony,” made it into Amateur Offerings Weekend. Based on the comments, I thought it would have been selected. Regardless, this new script is better in every way.

I have to give it to Michael. The man is persistent! He consistently submits his script every week, so I feel like the least I can do is explain why I haven’t chosen him. This is actually a pretty strong query. Michael keeps the introduction brief and catches my attention with flattery (been a fan of the site for five years). He can obviously write a clean sentence. There isn’t anything wrong with the query itself. It’s when I get to the logline that I have a problem. The logline starts out as a sort of magical What Women Want type film (ad writer who finds a magical journal that allows him access to his crush) but then becomes something much darker at the end (people are dying??). Put simply, it feels like a confused idea. Making matters worse is that it’s listed as a “Drama/Comedy.” So in addition to the comedy element (magic journal) and thriller element (people dying who get too close), there’s also a dramatic element? I don’t know if this idea needs to be scrapped or Michael just needs someone to help him focus it. But for future reference, you want your idea to be clean and easy to understand. If it results in even the slightest bit of confusion, rethink it. Hopefully this helps, Michael. And keep writing!

Title: The Psycho Sweethearts Reality Show

Genre: Dark Comedy/Satire

Logline: A reality show follows newly wed husband and wife serial killers as they try to keep their sanity as their celebrity increases.

Writer: Writer’s Anonymous

Why You Should Read: I was chatting with a group of friends when reality shows came up. I watch NOT ONE currently and never will again which I’m extremely proud about when a idea hit me.

Hey, maybe, I would watch a reality show if it were on street gangs, mafia, drug cartels, serial killers, spies, banksters or even the Illuminati. That idea thoroughly cemented in my head, I decided to try this idea for my next script. Finished the first draft in a month and rewrote it a month or two later. I believe I have something “SPECIAL” for the Scriptshadow community though I readily admit may be a draft or two away.

Scriptshadow community, you’re happy to run with the other ideas if you want.

This is a superficial script on superficial couple in a superficial world and I need all the constructive criticism you can give me.

I tried to keep the formatting of the e-mail to show that it had 2-3 line spaces between each section but it wouldn’t stick. Wonky formatting is an easy way to dismiss a writer. If you want to know how your e-mail is being seen, open up another e-mail account (if you’re on gmail, get a Hotmail account) and send your query to that e-mail. It’s an easy way to see how your query looks.

There are some other red flags here as well. How are you going to write about something you know nothing about? Just about the only way to give us an authentic story is to know as much about your subject matter as possible. Case in point: I think there ARE reality shows for all the subjects he mentions but because he doesn’t know anything about reality shows, he doesn’t know that. This said to me this was more of an experiment than a script the writer actually cared about. The last sentence also has an error in it: “This is a superficial script on superficial couple in a superficial world…” Writers have to remember that this is a PROFESSION they’re trying to break into. So you have to present yourself and your script professionally. If you didn’t put 100% effort into a 200 word e-mail, there’s no way you put it into a 20,000 word screenplay.

Title of script: HIT YOURSELF

Genre: Thriller / Dark comedy

Logline: When a retired hitman is hunted by his former employers for refusing to kill a homeless witness, they murder his best friend, causing him to seek revenge by writing a book, exposing their secrets to the public. But when it fails to sell, he is forced to pick up the gun, one last time.

Why you should read my screenplay:
This being my very first attempt at screenwriting, I feel it is a good example of just how much one can learn within a six month period. While the story itself went through several changes, the characters do not let their fictional roots ruin their ability to feel real.
The ghetto / drug area setting is very real, as I used real life experiences for my backdrop.
My style differs from the everyday writer, as I tried to take risks which I knew could either lose the reader, or keep them interested.
The main story and subplot blend together nicely, with some great twists. The further you read, the more things make sense, and things you thought seemed pointless become clear, up to the final image.
Finally, while it is a fairly simple story, showing how karma really can be a bitch, no matter how guilty you feel for your actions, it still manages to challenge you, as you keep track of timeline jumps and plot points that make you realize that what you thought you knew, was wrong. Not everything is what it seems.
Thanks for your time!!
Phil Golub

This isn’t a bad query. But there are a few reasons I didn’t pick it. First, the logline is more summary than logline. A logline sets up your concept, your main character, and the main conflict. It’s very succinct.  This one rambles.  You can also spot some story issues within it. Everything seems okay when we’re talking about a hitman being hunted, but then all of a sudden someone is writing a book? And we have to wait for that book to be released before the real story can begin? Writing and releasing a book takes, what? 6-12 months? What are we doing in the story during that time? Watching the character write? That’s not going to sell any tickets. You could do a time jump over this period, of course, but then you have a big weird time jump in the middle of your movie. Hitmen movies shouldn’t have time jumps. They should happen within a contained time frame.  Imagine if Taken had a 1 year jump at the midpoint.  It wouldn’t be Taken.  As if to confirm my fears, the writer than tells me this is his first screenplay. I get that some people use Amateur Friday to learn. But you don’t want to tell anyone this is your first script in a query. Everybody in the business knows that first scripts are terrible (with the rare exception – usually from writers who have written in other mediums). So the query reader immediately loses faith in you. Finally, the “why you should read” reads too formal (“I feel it is a good example of just how…). There’s a lack of freedom to the writing that tells me the script will feel the same. Writing should feel effortless to the reader, not like you’re proving a point in a senior thesis.

To all the writers whose queries I featured today: Don’t let any of this discourage you. You’re now armed with more knowledge so that your next script and  next query will be better. As long as you love screenwriting and dedicate yourself to it, you’ll eventually write something great and pitch it perfectly. But you need these speed bumps along the way to learn how to do it right.

Genre: Independent/Romantic Comedy
Premise: A Texas Lottery fraud investigator investigates a woman who has won the lottery three times, which amounts to septillion-to-one odds.
About: The hottest spec in town right now is Septillion to One. The quirky story has Alexander Payne circling and as soon as you get Payne onboard, you’re in the Oscar discussion. Which means the script will probably get someone like George Clooney for the lead, and I’m guessing Olivia Wilde for the co-lead. But what about our writers? Well, the writing team consists of Adam Perlman, who wrote on Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, and Graham Sack, who doesn’t have a writing credit to his name. Sack was a child actor, however, known for such movies as Dunston Checks In and Miracle Child.
Writers: Adam R. Perlman & Graham Sack
Details: 119 pages

Many people equate selling a screenplay to winning the lottery. They point out all the scripts registered by the WGA each year and how only 75 of them sell, or something ridiculous like that. The truth is, the odds aren’t as bad as you think. I mean, how many screenplays are really written each year? Maybe 100,000? If 75 of those sell, those odds are a hell of a lot better than septillion to one.

Plus, unlike the lottery, skill factors into the equation. You can game the system with a couple of hacks, dramatically increasing your odds. Writing in one of Hollywood’s favored spec genres increases your odds. Making your main character a male between the ages of 30-50 increases your odds. A high concept increases your odds. If you’ve added enough of these hacks, and you’ve put a lot of time and effort into the craft, your odds of selling a spec aren’t that ridiculous at all.

For whatever reason though, despite KNOWING these hacks, tons of writers ignore them, pushing the odds out of their favor. Doing so will never skew the odds as bad as septillion to one. But they will keep you from becoming the next Septillion to One.

Texas State Lottery Investigator Clark Hauser is a stickler for the rules. And when I say stickler, I mean he went after his own step-father for taking bribes. Of course, that was back when Clark worked for the FBI and his step-father worked for Congress. And it was because his step-father worked for Congress that he was able to pull some favors and get Clark fired for coming after him.

Now Clark is stuck in the miserable position of working for the Texas State Lottery. And to add insult to injury, his step-father has primary custody over his daughter, Megan. Not only that, but Step Daddy wants sole custody. There’s nothing Clark can do for this girl anymore, he points out. If his daughter’s going to flourish, she’s going to need Grandpa’s money.

But Clark’s luck is changing. When the Texas Lottery starts vetting its past winners to find a poster-worthy candidate to sell a flashy new lottery drawing, Clark becomes aware of Joy Taylor’s story. Joy has won THREE lotteries in three different states. The odds of that happening are so astronomical, Clark knows she’s cheating. All he has to do is prove the scam, and his job prospects will go through the roof.

Despite Clark clearly liking Joy, he has always been, and will always be, about the rules. And even as their friendship grows, Clark continues to accumulate evidence that will help him prove that Joy’s a sham. The problem is, nothing he finds sticks. And if Joy is guilty, she seems to be the most casual most unworried suspect in the world. Could it be that Joy truly is the luckiest person in the world? Or is there something more sinister going on here?

Scene construction is one of those quick ways for me to determine whether I’m dealing with an amateur or a pro. If a scene is constructed in such a way that indicates an understanding of the craft, I know I’m in for a good read. If there is no form whatsoever in a scene – just people talking, babbling on endlessly without a point – I know I’m about to check into the Boredasaurus Hotel.

So when Clark first comes to question Joy about her amazing luck, the scene takes place during a bingo game, with Joy as the presenter. Therefore, Clark is forced to ask Joy questions WHILE she calls out numbers to the crowd. It’s little things like this – an element that’s agitating the conversation – that tell me I’m dealing with a pro. You never want to make things easy on your characters, even conversations. This choice may seem insignificant to the uninitiated. But it tells me I have a real writer on my hands.

We have the basics taken care of as well. Clark’s boss wants to use Joy as the poster-girl for the upcoming mega-lottery draw in a week. Clark knows that if Joy’s a fraud, she’s going to destroy the public’s trust in the lottery. So he makes it his goal to find out her scam before the lottery has the opportunity to embarrass itself. There’s your “U” in GSU. One week to prove she’s a cheater.

If the script has an Achilles heel, it might be Clark himself. The guy is super annoying. He’s such a stickler for the rules that you feel like if you ever had to spend five minutes with the man, you’d shoot yourself in the face. I mean who likes sticklers? That quality is almost universally saved for the villain (think Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

So what do they do to cancel our hatred out and actually make us root for the guy? They start by giving Clark a daughter who he loves more than anything. It’s hard to dislike dads who will do anything for their daughters. I mean Clark is willing to give up every penny he has to send his talented daughter to the best music school in the country. Audiences absolutely LOVE selfless people. They love people who help others. And they love dads who put their kids first.

The writers also create a villain who’s way more of an asshole than the hero is annoying. The step-dad here tells Clark he’ll pay for Megan (the daughter) to go to the elite school, but only if Clark gives him full custody. He also regularly reminds Clark how pathetic he is and how far he’s fallen. Kind of makes you forget about the whole stickler issue.

I’ve seen the “make your hero more likable by making the bad guy more hateable” approach used to great effect. They actually do it a lot in the reality show, Survivor.

I’ll notice, for example, that I don’t particularly like one of the contestants. But as soon as the show builds up a villain who bullies that contestant? I can’t root for that character enough. The show is so aware of this secret power that when their big villains get voted off the show, they use clever editing and selective scenes to create ANOTHER villain out of the remaining contestants, just so it builds up support for the remaining players.

Finally, if you want to study how character flaws work in screenplays, find this script and read it. “Septillion” puts heavy emphasis on Clark’s obsession with the rules (his flaw). That’s what he needs to overcome to grow as a person. (spoilers) So the end of the script puts him in a position where he can either continue to follow the rules (and in the process screw over Joy) or loosen up (let Joy get away with it). It’s a little heavy-handed and on-the-nose but it’s this over-the-top quality that helps you see how arcing works. A great character arc is yet another script hack you can use to increase the odds of winning the spec lottery.

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

What I learned: Child custody is one of the most effective emotional plotlines you can add to your screenplay. If you create a situation where your main character doesn’t have primary child custody, and over the course of the screenplay make it more and more likely that he’ll lose custody, that’s almost guaranteed to pull a reader in. No one wants to see a parent who loves their child lose that child. So know that this subplot can be used to great effect to emotionally manipulate and pull a reader in.

Genre: TV Pilot – Thriller
Premise: When a naked woman shows up in the middle of Times Square covered head-to-toe in tattoos, a special FBI unit realizes that the tattoos are some kind of treasure hunt… but for what?
About: Let’s be honest. Nobody’s really pining for the next NBC show. The Peacock’s been trying to play cards at the cool kids table for a couple decades now and failing miserably. I’ve seen mom jeans with more swag. But I think they’re finally realizing that if they don’t change, their feathers will wither and die. The Big 3 networks are being squeezed out slowly enough that they don’t quite realize it, and it’s the young guys with no power inside these companies who are screaming: ACT NOW! A cool show at least gives you some leverage, and Blindside is a show they’re putting a lot of hope into. Not only did it snag THE hottest actor that EVERY network in town wanted for their show in Sullivan Stapleton, but it had the coolest poster title page I’ve seen in a year reading scripts. Blindspot is a JJ Abrams 7 course mystery box feast. And that is both its biggest strength, and most crippling weakness. Creator Martin Gero has written for the HBO show, Bored to Death, as well as for BOTH Stargate shows.
Writer: Martin Gero
Details: 4th draft (Jan 18, 2015) – 61 pages

Pilots are funny. You have to give us something so captivating that we’ll want to come back for episode 2. But you don’t want to give us something so big that there’s no way episode 2 (and 3, and 4) can match it. Who wants to go Coney Island after you’ve been to Disney World? After reading Blindspot, I’m wondering how it’s going to make every ride Magic Mountain.

I mean, we have a scene where a subway train must race to avoid an underground tsunami. And we also have a man who’s trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. What’s episode 2 going to be about? Preventing the space station from falling out of orbit? Episode 3? Going back in time to kill Hitler?

Blindspot is a ride and a half. But something tells me it’s unleashing a hurricane so strong, it has no choice but to run out of steam by the time it hits land. It’s the kind of experiment that’s worth taking though in this ultra-competitive market. If you’re going to set the bar, you might as well set it high.

Blindspot starts out with an immediately arresting image. A naked woman emerges from a bag in the middle of Times Square covered in tattoos with no memory of who she is. One of those tattoos reads simply: “Kurt Weller – FBI.”

Cut to Kurt Weller, a member of FBI’s CIRG unit (Critical Incident Response Group). No idea how this group’s different from every other FBI unit, but that’s not important when you see Weller being a BADASS and taking down an Ariel Castro type before he can kill the four women he’s been holding hostage in his house for a decade.

Weller’s notified afterwards of our mysterious Jane Doe and her artistic rendering of his name on her back. They do some tests on the poor girl but she can’t remember a thing. It’s Weller who realizes that her tattoos are some kind of treasure map. He keys in on one that leads them to an address where a Chinese man lives.

It’s here where Jane first learns she speaks Chinese, and, oh yeah, CAN F*&%ING TAKE PEOPLE DOWN WITH THE FORCE OF RHONDA ROUSEY. Clearly, Jane’s had training. But from who? From where?

A clue at the house leads them to Cho who they quickly learn is on the run. A video he’s left on his laptop indicates that he’s going to destroy the Statue of Liberty. Weller and Jane rush to stop him and as they get closer, it’s less clear who’s conducting the train. Is it Weller? Or is it Jane?

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say they prevent Lady Liberty from being destroyed, but it’s afterwards when the real fireworks fly. Maybe, just maybe, Mysterious Jane is Weller’s long-lost sister. And maybe, just maybe, she was a co-conspirator in this little amnesia party. But why? What is it, exactly, that Jane plans to do once she regains her memory?

Sullivan Stapleton

Somewhere, between approving a digital X-Wing shot and adding a deeper Chewbacca roar, JJ Abrams is smiling. If there’s a pilot that celebrates Abrams’ mystery box method more than Blindspot, I haven’t read it. Jane Doe is a mystery. Jane Doe’s tattoos set up a mystery. Weller’s sister disappearing when he was young is a mystery. Our Chinese man on the run is a mystery.

But as a wise writer once told me. “Yeah sure, you can mystery box your script to death. But at a certain point, if that’s all there is, people will get bored.” Indeed, I think Blindspot falls a little too much in love with its own mysteries, and ignores some of that emotion you need in order to connect with the audience. Which is what we were just talking about yesterday with Furious 7.

It’s funny because a couple of weeks ago I reviewed AMC’s “Badlands,” and complained how although it set up a lot of intriguing relationships, it lacked the multiple mystery boxes required to pique our curiosity for future episodes. Blindspot does the opposite. It gives us all the mystery boxes we could ask for, but doesn’t do anything on the relationship front.

If you’re forced to choose between these two, I’d much rather you focus too heavily on relationships than mystery boxes. That’s because TV, more so than film, is CHARACTER DRIVEN. We have to see a future with the characters, since we plan on being with them for years. Mystery boxes are a lot like heroin. Their emergence gives us this big initial high, but that high dies out quickly. And then what do we have left? Character exporation, whether it be between characters or within the characters, reaches the audience on a much deeper (and more lasting) level.

That’s why I loved Lost so much. Sure that show was Mystery Box Theater, but you can’t deny how intensely it explored its characters. It devoted half of every episode to flashbacks specifically so we could explore the characters. That may be the biggest lesson here. If you can write a pilot that pulls off the mystery boxes AND character exploration, you’ve probably got yourself a winner.

I’m torn on what to rate Blindside. Despite its shortcomings, it moves breathtakingly fast. I may not know these characters as well as I wanted to after the read, but how many 60 page scripts can be read in 30 minutes? And not just because the writing is sparse – but because the plot is so well-paced.

And it’s FUN! We can’t dismiss the fun-factor after seeing the way Furious 7 dominated the weekend. The average person isn’t like you and me, nitpicking every little issue in a story. They’re people who like to unwind and watch something entertaining. Blindspot is definitely that. So for that reason alone, you should probably check it out.

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

What I learned: If a script is very strong in one area, chances are it’s weak in another. Identify that weak spot and address it. Blindspot’s strength is that it moves exceptionally fast. It’s an extremely well-paced script. But a big reason for that is that there’s no character exploration. The script’s fast cause it doesn’t have any of those slower scenes that explore character conflicts or character problems. You need those in a script (especially a TV script).

Genre: Action
Premise: A group of hot-shot car enthusiasts help a secret government black ops group take down a terrorist, all while avoiding the vengeful brother of a man they put in the hospital.
About: This is the latest installment of The Fast & The Furious phenomenon, and easily the most talked about. That’s because one of its key actors, Paul Walker, died, ironically, in an unrelated car accident during shooting. They had to stop production for a few months to rewrite the script, since they only shot half of Walker’s scenes. They eventually brought in Walker’s lookalike brothers to finish the film, and went to Peter Jackson’s WETA digital effects company to do some cut and paste jobs with Walker’s face. The film came out this weekend and was the first to make 9 gablillion dollars at the box office.
Writer: Chris Morgan
Details: 137 minutes

So let me see if I got this right. Michelle Rodriquez has amnesia and can’t remember she’s married to Vin Diesel. A guy named Deckard Shaw, who’s part of a double secret probation London Black Ops organization, destroys a hospital because he’s mad that they’re not giving his patient brother enough attention. He then leaves his brother in said burning hospital to go fight the people who hurt his brother in the first place.

There’s an international terrorist named Mose Jakanda who’s kidnapped a hacker who’s created something called the “eye in the sky” which can find anybody in the world within two hours. Snake Plissken, who’s now an army general for an American Black Ops team that specializes in having really expensive cars around, promises to help Vin Diesel get Deckard Shaw before Shaw gets him if he’ll go reverse-kidnap the hacker who created the eye in the sky.

The thing is, this new terrorist only travels on roads that are inaccessible to cars (huh?) so Vin’s crew has to parachute the cars onto the road via plane only. After Vin steals the hacker back from the terrorist, Deckard Shaw shows up to try to kill Vin, despite not having access to a plane that parachutes cars out of it. Vin survives, and somewhere around this point I realize that I’ve never seen Furious 6 even though I was absolutely positive I had.

For reasons that never become clear, Mose Jakanda teams up with another American Black Ops unit that has access to predator drones and uses one of these drones to stalk Vin and his buddies in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Deckard Shaw, who it’s still not clear if he’s working with Jakanda or just always shows up when he’s around, also attends this Los Angeles showdown, where he corners Vin on the top of a parking garage and fights him with crowbars, all while Tyrese yells a series of phrases through an unknown radio channel that all basically amount to, “Oh hell no! That shit did not just happen!”

To try and hold Furious 7 up to the standards of proper screenplays is kind of like trying to hold the McDonald’s drive-thru guy who needs you to repeat your order three times up to a Michelin chef. It’s not really fair.

And that’s a problem. Young screenwriters who want to write cool action movies are going to see this and think it’s what you need to write to sell an action spec. It’s not. Furious 7 is a series of set-pieces held together by threads so loose, they feel like an autistic child trying to socialize at a birthday party.

There’s a desperation as characters try to explain what they’re doing, and despite the writer’s best attempts to distract us from this reality (distractions that are almost always Tyrese yelling something like, “Oh hell no! This shit is WHACK!”), it’s clear that unless action is involved, Furious 7 is like a hipster at a biker bar.

So I’m watching all this go down and wondering, like many in Hollywood, what makes these films so successful. They started out doing solid numbers, but the third installment was a B movie and made 27 dollars at the box office. Episodes 4-7, though, became box office titans, competing with the most powerful comic book properties for yearly domination.

You might say, “Well yeah, it’s got hot women and fast cars. Of course it’s going to do well.” Ehh, but so did Need for Speed. Why didn’t that film do Furious numbers? Or you might say, “Duh, it’s because of Vin Diesel.” The problem with that theory is that Diesel isn’t exactly tearing it up at the box office outside of the Furious films.

And then, as I was watching this film, it came to me like a ray of light shining through a lone hole in the clouds. It’s no secret that the franchise plays extremely well to Latinos (they make up the highest audience for the films at 37%). What do Latinos value over everything else? Family. Family is extremely important to the Latino culture. What are the Fast and Furious films about? You got it. Family. The Fast and Furious group considers themselves a family. The characters are getting married and creating families. Vin’s sister is married to Paul Walker.  Paul Walker’s character now has a child. The Rock reveals he has a kid in the movie. The word “family” is uttered somewhere in the neighborhood of 732 times (Vin Diesel to Shaw: “I don’t got friends.  I got family.”).

There’s no doubt that fast cars and hot women are going to bring in moviegoers. But for a film to become a phenomenon, there’s got to be something more to it. You got to find a way to connect with the audience on another level. Here, that level is emotion. It’s the importance of family that makes this franchise more than a bunch of car chases.

And this is actually good news for writers. For everyone who thinks you have to sell your soul to break into Hollywood – this proves that audiences want to connect on a deeper level with their movies. Do I think Furious 7 rivals the emotional intensity of, say, The Imitation Game? No. But the fans of this series obviously do.

Now before you go off to write Terms of Endearment with cars, let’s back up to the make-or-break component of any action script – the set pieces. The key to writing a saleable action spec is to write set pieces that haven’t been seen before. So here we have cars jumping out of planes. We have cars jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper. These were things we hadn’t seen before. They were stupid fun – sure – but they were original stupid fun.

If you’re going to accomplish anything in your action script, make sure it’s to give us UNIQUE SET PIECES. If I read a set-piece in a script that I’ve already seen before, I’m done with that script. Just like in a horror script, you have to give us unique scares. Just like in a thriller script, you have to give us unique thrills. In an action script, the one job you gotta get right is to write unique action.

Speaking of action, I want to finish with a warning to all future action writers out there. Beware of writing huge crews into your action scripts. As convoluted as the plotting here was, I have to give it to Chris Morgan for juggling all these characters. In each action scene, he was usually cutting between a dozen different characters. For any of you who’ve had to write scenes like this, you know how difficult it is to keep track of that many people.

Usually, you only have one or two featured segments in an action scene. But if you have 12 characters, you now have to keep the audience abreast of where they all are. You can’t just focus on the Vin Diesel part for the whole 10 minutes and then show Michelle Rodriquez at the very end or everyone will go, “Where the hell was she the whole time?” This forces you to come with things for everyone to do. And the more people you’re cutting between, the harder to follow everything is.

If you have a clear goal (get the hacker from the bus) a set piece can survive this complexity. But if the goal is even mildly unclear (as is the case with Furious 7’s climax – why the hell was a terrorist coming to Los Angeles again????), cutting between that many people can destroy the sequence. It’s yet another reason to celebrate movies like Star Wars. They make it so damn clear what the ending goal is that the set piece can survive any level of complexity.

Now you might think with all this criticism that I hated Furious 7. Actually, that’s not true. As sketchy as the screenwriting is here, the action is borderline amazing. Like I said before – we see things in this movie that we’ve never seen before. And this installment of the franchise seems to be more reliant on real stunts than the others, making for a much more realistic experience. I mean they really did drop cars out of planes for that plane drop sequence. I’m not sending any aspiring screenwriters to the theater to study Furious 7’s script. But if you want to enjoy the hell out of some amazing action, there are worse ways to spend your evening.

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

What I learned: Figure out who you’re targeting and write what matters to that group into your screenplay. The writers and producers of Furious 7 realized they were targeting the Latino audience here, so they focused the story on family. A few years ago, The Blindside knew it was targeting Christians, so it infused a lot of Christian values into the script. Know who you’re writing to and then give that group what they relate to.

NOTE: THE SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER HAS BEEN SENT! CHECK YOUR SPAM AND PROMOTIONS FOLDERS IF YOU DIDN’T RECEIVE!

It’s a delicious screenwriting Saturday.  Not only are you getting today’s offerings, and not only are you getting your daily reminder to enter the Scriptshadow 250, but later tonight, the Scriptshadow Newsletter will be hitting your mailboxes.  Yaaaaay!!!  And I’ll be reviewing a certain high-profile screenplay that is guaranteed to become one of the biggest movies ever.  So make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders later tonight.  And if you’re not yet signed up to receive the newsletter, you can do so here!

Title: Miss Universe
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Logline: A vapid beauty queen is abducted by aliens who think her title means she’s Earth’s ambassador to the universe.
Why You Should Read: It’s “Galaxy Quest” meets “Legally Blonde.” Deep space has never been more shallow (Carson note: When everyone pitched their ideas on “pitch your script day,” this idea shot to the top of the list!)

Title: Time to Forget
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A CIA agent whose memory has been erased is given four hours to assassinate the President of Palestine, but when he starts to doubt the validity of his mission, he finds himself hunted by authorities and mercenaries alike as he races to discover his true identity.
Why You Should Read: In the past Carson has written that theme and message are what tie a story together. In that sense, I’ve tried to knit this script up as tightly as possible. Rather than use amnesia as just a standard identity quest, I wanted to pose the question, “at what point does holding on to the past become damaging, and what is the cost of letting go?” In ways both direct and subtle, every major character is an expression of that theme. — Why else should you read? It’s also an action filled, GSU-loaded, race against the clock thriller that doesn’t get bogged down by its message or forget to have fun. Hopefully the SS community enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Title: Street Sharks
Genre: Family / Sci-Fi / Action-Adventure
Logline: A timid college student and his three brothers search for their missing father until they are kidnapped by a technology mogul and mutated into superhuman sharks.
Why you should read: My partner and I are both college graduates looking to get into the screenwriting industry. We wrote this script intending to pitch it to the industry, but as this is our first screenplay we do not have enough of a reputation to acquire the film rights to the Street Sharks franchise. We realize there’s no point in letting the script sit around, so we would like to receive feedback from you and the community on our writing. I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as we had writing it!

Title: Rose
Genre: Drama
Logline: After a rebellious slave falls in love with her master’s step-son, the two attempt to run away together before she can be sold to a villainous new owner.
Why you should read: I started out as an actor, and got into writing around ’08. I have two produced screenwriting credits (but don’t let those fool you, I wait tables). Most of my work, to date, has been comedic. This script is not. I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 2011 and a story with a female lead popped into my head. I was compelled to write it. People around me were like: what…? A story about slavery? You’re crazy, Brooks. But, I wrote it. I know it’s a Sisyphean task to get it produced but perhaps it can do well in competition. SS had been like a second film school for me. A great place to improve your script. So I submit it here to the Scriptshadow faithful today.

Title: Valentino’s
Genre: Thriller
Logline: In a quiet New Jersey town, a struggling Italian family discovers bags of stolen mob money buried in the basement of their restaurant – and someone is coming to collect.
Why you should read: You reviewed this a few years ago for me. A first draft actually. You seemed to like it and I really liked the notes you had to give. I spent a few months on rewrites, submitted to the Blacklist where it did well with an 8. That reviewer really liked it as well. Ok. Great. Heard nada. Then this went into Warners last year and they passed. I’d never just give up because one studio passed. Hell no. But now what? — I’ve always loved this story and am ready to give this another look now that some time has passed. It seems to get somewhere then go nowhere. What is missing from this story to push it above par?