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No reviews Thursday or Friday (Thanksgiving and Black Friday). So I’m giving you the Thursday article early. There will be a little surprise post tomorrow that you’ll want to check out for sure though. Wish I could tell you more. :)

Say you have a great concept. No, say you have a great concept and a great main character. Say you’re also good with structure and pretty nifty with dialogue as well. You’re rolling into your script like a pitcher on a 15 game win streak. If screenwriting success is a game of odds, you’ve stacked them in your favor.

Why, then, is this scenario not a slam dunk? How come so many writers dribble down the floor, only to get weak knees as they approach the basket? How come those gimme points all of a sudden look like a half-court heave? The answer may surprise you.

I want you to think back to your most memorable movie-going experiences. What is the common denominator? What is it that stays with you from your favorite films? Chances are, it’s emotion. I still remember seeing E.T. as a kid and crying my ass off when he died. At the time, I didn’t know movies were capable of emotional punches like that. Likewise, I’ve never felt so elated as when E.T. came back to life! I was sobbing like the little boy that I was.

The way you can still fail with a great concept and a great character, is if you don’t make your reader FEEL anything. That’s what today’s post is about. If you can make a reader or a moviegoer cry, you’ve given them something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. It’s the ultimate suspension of disbelief achievement. You’ve done such a great job fooling this person into thinking your story was real, that they actually sobbed about it.

So the question becomes, how do you achieve this? A lot of writers assume that emotional giving is the same as emotional receiving. They think that if you have a character cry, that means the audience will cry too. Think about how many times you’ve watched characters crying in movies. Did you cry too? Usually not.

Getting a reader to cry comes down to one thing: DEATH. Or, more specifically, the “Death-Rebirth” formula. But death doesn’t always have to be literal. As you’ll discover below, any loss can have a death-like effect. However, we’ll start with the literal definition first so you can learn the basics for turning grown men into cry-babies. Then we’ll get to the advanced stuff.

LITERAL DEATH
The most obvious way to get those tear ducts flowing is through a character death. But the journey starts a lot sooner than that, all the way back when we first meet your character. Your first job is to make us like this person. This may seem obvious but in a world where more and more writers are afraid of the word “likability,” it’s important to remember that nobody cries for jerks.

Look no further than E.T. to see this in action. What character in history is more likable than E.T.?? Obviously, the more we like someone, the more we care about them. And once the audience cares about someone, it’s easy to manipulate their emotions. We love E.T. so much by the time he dies, of course we’re sobbing.

To see how the antithesis of this works, look at the recent hit film, Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn has gone on record as saying she hates the word “likable” in relation to characters. And you see that with her characters. Amy is a terrible person and Nick is not a very good one. So guess how you’d feel if either one of these characters died? Would you cry? Would you get emotional like you did in E.T.? No. Because despite the characters being interesting, the fact that you don’t like them prevents you from getting emotional should they perish.

To really ensure that those tears come, though, you need another character who cares deeply for the person who dies. Death alone is not a sad thing. It’s our empathy for the character who’s lost someone that gets us. We saw that with E.T. and Elliot. And we saw it at the end of Titanic, with Jack and Rose.

NON-LITERAL DEATH
Now that you see how that works, let’s look into non-literal deaths. Non-literal deaths include anything that dies. A friendship, a dream, a job, one’s faith. At the end of Casablanca, we have the DEATH of a relationship – Rick and Ilsa, which has led to quite a few tears over time.  There’s a trick to this however.  Whatever dies has to have meant something to the characters.  You can’t kill a trivial job and expect the reader to care.  But if you kill a job that we’ve seen a man put his blood, sweat, and tears into for 40 years, like in the film, Mr. Holland’s Opus, then you better believe we’ll get emotional when it’s ripped away.

But I’m not going to talk about death itself because that’s pretty straightforward. The heavyweight emotional moments come from the belief that death is permanent, only for our subject to be reborn again. It’s the non-literal equivalent of E.T. dying before coming back to life. It’s that one-two punch that always gets the reader.

LOVE
Let’s take love as an example. Watching two people fall in love does not make one cry. We need the relationship to suffer before that can happen.  We need it to DIE.  So just like before, start with a main character we like.  Couple that with a romantic interest we like.  We should want to see these two end up together.  Throughout the movie, throw obstacles at them that prevent them from being together. Maybe they’re involved in a rocky relationship, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Maybe they’re in relationships with other people. Maybe they’re stuck in a friendship, a la When Harry Met Sally. At some point, you KILL the relationship. This is the death part. This happens when Harry dumps Sally after sleeping with her. This destroys us because it feels like death to us, like there’s no coming back from it. How elated are you, then, when the writer brings the relationship back from the dead (Harry tells Sally he loves her and she accepts him)? The REBIRTH moment is what really triggers the emotional response here.

CHARACTER FLAWS
It’s the same thing when you’re dealing with character flaws. Again, start with a character we like. Then give them a flaw. Let’s say it’s that they don’t believe in themselves. Make that flaw a HUGE obstacle in their lives – something that holds them back from their hopes and their dreams. Now create a high-stakes scenario that will directly challenge that flaw. The movie scenario I’m thinking of is Rocky. Rocky never believed he was good enough. The high-stakes scenario that will challenge this flaw is the Heavyweight Boxing Title. How do we get the most out of this moment? If you’ve been paying attention, you know we have to KILL any hope of Rocky overcoming his flaw. We see this when Rocky starts severely doubting himself before the fight. There’s no way he can beat this guy. Rocky doesn’t think he’s good enough. Then, in the fight, Rocky goes toe-to-toe with Apollo, believing in himself more with each round. In the end, he goes the distance with a champion, allowing him to overcome his fear. We thought Rocky’s belief was dead, which is why it’s so emotionally cathartic to see that belief REBORN, to have him conquer that fear. That’s why we tear up.

HOPE
You can apply this death-rebirth model to almost anything. In Toy Story 3, we’re incredibly sad when, at the end of the movie, the toys are designated for a life in the attic. Their hope to ever be toys that are played with again is officially DEAD. So what happens? They’re donated to the sweet little next door neighbor. A REBIRTH. We’re crying because, darn it, we were sure those toys were dead in the water. But now they have a whole new life again.

The more you can convince us of the death part – that there is no chance whatsoever that our character is coming back from it – the more powerful the tears will be when the rebirth occurs. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see any way that our Toy Story 3 toys were going to be played with again. I thought those chances were dead. So that donation to the girl shocked me, creating a hell of an emotional response.

Of course, this isn’t the only way to make a reader enjoy a story. There are all sorts of emotions to draw upon. There are thrills, for example, like riding dragons through the sky in Avatar. There are scares, like in any good horror movie. There are laughs, of course. There’s shock, like when you find out Bruce Willis is a dead person. All of these emotions should make their way into your story. But there’s nothing quite like making the reader cry. I guarantee you, if you make the reader cry, he will recommend your script to other people.

I’d love to hear what storytelling practices you guys use to elicit emotion from your reader. If you don’t know, go find the movies that made you cry growing up and reverse engineer them until you find the cause. Again, nothing stays with a reader more than a good cry. So it’s in your best interest to figure out how to get them there.

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A young Pakistani New Yorker stumbles into the best night of his life, only to have it fall apart in the worst way imaginable.
About: I don’t know where writer Richard Price has been hiding for the past 15 years. His last official writing credits include a bunch of episodes from the acclaimed HBO show, The Wire, back in 2002. Maybe it’s appropriate, then, that Price has come back to HBO for his current gig, Criminal Justice. HBO is high on this series and expects it to be the next “water cooler” show, which is a bold statement for a show that doesn’t include white walkers or zombies (none in the pilot at least!). Criminal Justice, which is based on a BBC show, was a passion project for James Gandolfini.  Gandolfini’s death led to Robert DeNiro taking the role.  But a scheduling conflict led to the role ultimately going to John Turturro.  Strangely enough, the pilot for the series was directed by Steve Zallian, who wrote yesterday’s “Exodus.”
Writer: Richard Price
Details: 59 pages

Gandolfini’s passion project

The great thing about reading is that one day you’re learning about queens from 1500 B.C. And the next day you’re riding shotgun with a character from Queens.

I was excited when I heard about this one. While I don’t always like the pilots coming out of HBO, I can’t argue that they’re often the deepest and most thoughtful in the business, even more so than AMC (which used to lead the pack but has been faltering as of late). And the buzz behind this one is big.

Criminal Justice introduces us to two Pakistani best friends living in Queens – Nasir “Naz” Khan and Amir Farik. Naz and Amir are as Americanized as it gets. They go to college here. They have an unhealthy love for basketball. At 19 years old, both hope to graduate, work hard, and do something with their lives.

But Naz is a little more experimental than Amir. And when one of the basketball players from their team invites them to a party in the city that night, Naz doesn’t hesitate.

Problem is, Amir backs out at the last moment and Naz doesn’t have a ride. So he steals his father’s cab at the last second. This leads to some funny situations where he keeps having to turn people away trying to get into his cab. That is until a beautiful young African American girl, Andrea Cornish, pops in.

Andrea doesn’t really have a destination. She’ll go anywhere there’s adventure. And after some flirty conversation, the two find themselves back at her apartment. Ecstasy is downed. Alcohol is consumed. And one thing leads to another.

After sex, Naz leaves the room and passes out. When he wakes up and comes back, he finds that Andrea has been stabbed to death. Naz freaks out, leaves, but is so drunk he crashes his cab. Over the next hour, police gradually put together that their DUI arrest may be Andrea’s murderer. And just like that, Naz’s life is changed forever.

I want to talk a little bit about structure today because we can learn a lot about structure from the Criminal Justice pilot. Remember that for every moment in your script, there needs to be an engine underneath the surface, something driving not just the story, but our interest in the story.

Here, we start off with an introduction to Naz and his life. Nothing technically needs to be happening at this point in the story. Readers will give you time to introduce your main character in his element (show us the world he lives in). You can’t keep this going for too long though. Sooner or later, an engine has to be added.

The first engine is when Naz gets invited to the party. Now we have direction – a place to go – something to look forward to. So we’re going to stick around to see what happens when Naz gets to this party. The next 10-15 pages are about that preparation, about the obstacles that pop up which throw the party in doubt, and how Naz overcomes them.

The next engine is when Andrea arrives in the story. You hear me talk about it a lot – a looming sense of dread. We get the sense right away that Andrea is a dangerous harbinger for things to come. I mean how many times do you meet a gorgeous girl in the middle of the city and she just throws herself at you? If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. So our curiosity for how this is going to end up keeps us reading.

The next engine is when Naz goes back to Andrea’s place. The car’s practically driving itself at this point. We’re at the climax of their adventure together. Of course we’re intrigued to see what will happen. And we’re not disappointed. What happens is murder.

The engine for the rest of the script, then, revolves around a question: Will Naz get away? As the police catch him and, piece by piece, put him at the crime scene, we’re wondering how the hell Naz is going to get out of this.

A lot of writers will tell you that they want to create a “slow build” with their script, but beginner writers will often misinterpret this to mean, “I can write 20 slow scenes in a row and you just have to deal with it.” There’s a lot more to it than that. This pilot may seem like a slow build, but as I’ve shown you above, there are carefully created engines running underneath every section of the story designed to keep you interested.

Despite that, Criminal Justice was still missing something. It was good. But something was keeping it from being great. I thought some missed opportunities may have been the issue. For example, early on, Naz uses Mapquest to map out his trip to the party. Since nobody uses Mapquest anymore, I thought this was a hint that the story was taking place in the past.

To that end, I thought Naz was going to get arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, then the very next day, the payoff would be that it was 9/11, 2001. And Naz was going to find himself going through a court system set on making an example out of him. Basically, the show would chronicle the worst time ever and worst place ever to become a middle-eastern man implicated for the murder of an American.

Once that wasn’t the case, I thought Naz was going to get away that evening, the cops missing the connective tissue that would tie him to the murder, and the subsequent episodes would chronicle Naz tiptoeing around his secret as the police investigation got closer and closer to finding him.

Instead, the end of Criminal Justice’s pilot has them realizing Naz is the killer and arresting him, which gave the pilot a finality that almost made you think, why do I need to tune in anymore? I suppose we’re meant to wonder if someone else killed Andrea. But for some reason, Price didn’t make that option exciting enough. I don’t know if it’s that he skittered past it too quickly or didn’t put enough emphasis on it. But this mysterious “other person” scenario wasn’t given enough weight.

Finally, I’m left to wonder why is there all this emphasis on race when race doesn’t really play a part in the story? Again, if this was happening closer to 9/11, the Pakistani angle would feel more relevant. But there’s nary a mention about Naz’s nationality by any of the characters except a random black witness. The main character just as easily could’ve been a white guy and nothing would’ve changed. If you’re going to play with race, go full steam ahead.

Then again, maybe these are questions that will be answered in the coming episodes. And let me reiterate that I think this is a good pilot. I’m just not sure some of the choices in the episode’s second half were as strong as those in the first.

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

What I learned: A slow build can work – even 20-30 pages of story where not a whole lot is “happening” – as long as there are engines underneath the story pushing our interest forward. Here we had a destination (the party), an impending sense of dread (Andrea) and a powerful question (would Naz get out of this terrible situation?). These are not the only engines you have at your disposal. But the point is, when you’re starting slow, have a plan for how to keep those slow parts interesting. You can’t just set characters up for 30 pages and expect the reader to stay interested. It ain’t going to happen.

Genre: Period
Premise: Moses takes revenge on his cousin Ramses after being cast off from the city he was supposed to help rule.
About: The biblical epic trend continues! We had Noah. Now we’ve got Moses. It’s a good bet that J-swizzle is getting his own movie soon. If you’re like me, you have no idea what any of this means. The Bible is one giant collection of words like “overfloweth.” Consider my cup confused.  Exodus comes out in three weeks, stars Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as Ramses. The film was directed by Ridley Scott.
Writer: Steve Zallian draft (previous drafts were written by Adam Cooper & Bill Collage)
Details: 7/6/13 draft – 132 pages

This wouldn’t be on my radar if it wasn’t for Steve Zallian writing this draft, one of the few screenwriters who’s worth the dough you pay him. The question is, can his writing overcome a film that has the special effects team that pixel-poked Dracula Year-Zero? I mean we know the guy’s a good writer. But you can’t write, “Don’t use bad green screen” in a slug line, can you?

Hey, here’s an idea for Hollywood. You’ve got this whole “Universe” approach going now. First it was Marvel superheroes. Then it was DC superheroes. Then it was Star Wars. Universal’s monsters are setting up their own universe.

Why not get some Bible Universe up in hurr!? You don’t even need the rights. I’m pretty sure the Old Testament is public domain by now (although I’m sure Disney’s trying to change that). Jesus was basically a superhero anyway, right? Came back from the dead if I’m not mistaken. Eat your heart out, Wolverine. Actually, I think I know why no one’s hopped on this chariot yet. The Bible’s stories don’t exactly lend themselves to Hollywood structure. As you’re about to find out with Exodus.

Exodus starts out strong. It’s 1300 B.C. The current Egyptian Pharaoh, Seti, is trying to decide who’s going to succeed him. On the one side he’s got his son Ramses, the hands on favorite. On the other, his nephew, Moses, who’s clearly the better leader.

One day during battle, Moses saves Ramses’ life, and because a prince is never supposed to need saving, Ramses doctors the history scroll to omit Moses’s act. This pisses Seti off, and has him seriously considering making Moses the next Pharaoh.

But then Ramses learns that Moses is the offspring of slaves! His whole life has been a lie. So Ramses casts him out of the city, and Moses goes on a spiritual journey where he becomes, of all things, a sheepherder.

One day while herding, non-believer Moses bumps his head and sees God, who tells him to go back and save all of Ramses’ slaves! Ramses threatens Moses once he arrives, so Moses uses his new God-like powers to turn the sea red, send disease at Ramses, rain down hail, and kill all of Ramses’ crops.

But it isn’t until Ramses actually gives Moses his slaves that Moses will face his most difficult test – getting all 400,000 of them home alive.

Whenever you write a swords and sandals pic, the danger is in getting lost in the grandiosity of it all. It can be scary stuff, trying to juggle so many characters and locations and subplots and passages of time. So your first order of business is to FIND YOUR CORE. You need to find what your story is REALLY ABOUT and place that front and center so the reader has something to grab onto.

With Exodus, that’s the relationship between Ramses and Moses. And Zallian (along with the earlier writers) does a really good job with this. All the cousins’ early interactions are laced with tension, a sub-textual jockeying for the throne. Remember that you want all your scenes to contain some element of conflict, tension, or suspense. We see that here.

And Moses was a really strong character overall. There’s this early sequence where he’s sent off to check on the slaves where he comes in contact with the slave king, Hegep. Hegep is a greedy car salesman type who has no respect for Moses and treats him like dirt the whole time he’s there. This is a writing trick we’ve talked about before on Scriptshadow. If you want to make us like your hero, put him around an asshole, someone who takes advantage of or disrespects him. We’ll immediately gain sympathy for your protag.

So things seemed to be going well.  Strangely, however, this is the last moment in the script that contained any structure. We had this clear goal where we knew what Moses had to do and why he was doing it. But once he got back from the slave trip, the script turned into one of those slip and slides you see in the heat of summer, the screenplay equivalent of a runny nose.

Moses is cast out of the city and then sort of wanders around for awhile. He eventually finds a small farm and hangs out there for ten years. Then there’s a storm where he sees a burning bush (why is a burning bush such a big deal by the way?  Isn’t it easy for a bush to burn?), and now, instead of clearly defined plot points guiding the story, we’re being pushed forward by symbols and ideas.

This is why clear goals and clear mysteries are SO IMPORTANT in screenwriting. When you tell us what our character needs to do and why, we feel a part of the story, like we know what’s going on. Seti says go find out why the slave owners are complaining. So we know that Moses needs to find out why the slave owners are complaining!

Where’s the goal in stumbling around on a farm and seeing a burning bush? It just felt… random. And I don’t know if that’s because Zallian was following the bible story or made the choice himself. But we needed structure here.

My guess is that Zallian was limited by the bible. 2000 years ago, they didn’t have 3rd acts with heroes overcoming their flaws right at the climactic moment of the story. Nor did everything end in an elevated battle. And that’s where Exodus really falters.

Ramses gives Moses his slaves and tells him to leave. And so the whole climax of the film is to… run away? Try to sell that on a modern-day project. I get that the climax here had to be the parting of the Red Sea, but even that was anti-climactic, as the parting was the slaves waiting for 12 hours until the tide made the sea shallow enough to walk across.

Satisfying character development also had to be sacrificed due to the Bible text. One of the storylines here was that Moses had no faith. He didn’t believe in God. Ideally, then, you want to play that out during the big Red Sea moment, where he had to believe in God to part those waters. The ultimate test of his faith and his flaw.

But we’d already spent the last 45 pages watching Moses use God to tear apart Ramses’ empire. So his battle with his faith was never in question by the time the Red Sea arrived, leading to a heck of an anti-climax. This is why Bible stories are so tricky. You can’t change the Bible to make the story better. You’re stuck with what they give you. And often that’s at odds with what mainstream audiences expect.

But the truth is, this script lost me all the way back in the second act. You have to recognize that period pieces are the genre most susceptible to becoming boring. It’s not like a comedy where a good joke can bring the reader back in, or horror where a good scare can do the same. If you get complacent and let the story slip away from you – meaning NOT MUCH HAPPENS for too long a period of time – the reader’s eyes will glaze over and they’ll stop caring.

Once Moses got to that outpost and became a sheepherder and just hung around all day, that was it for me. There wasn’t enough happening in the story to keep me invested. It’s true that period pieces need their “downtime” scenes, but that never means the scenes shouldn’t entertain. It’s your job to know when things are getting slow, and to look for ways to keep those scenes entertaining, as tough as it might be.

I still remember the scene in Braveheart where the two new Generals were brought in.  The story was between big battles and could’ve easily gotten bogged down in a boring sequence.  Instead, the next scene showed William Wallace hunting, and we find out one of the generals is an assassin here to kill him.  The rest of the scene plays out with the second general saving Wallace’s life.  That scene energized a potentially boring section.

Exodus started off strong, but ended like a day at church, with you discreetly checking your watch as the pastor prattled on.

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

What I learned: Find your CORE for your period piece, which is almost always a key relationship between two characters. Here, it’s the relationship between cousins Ramses and Moses. Whenever you’re lost in your script then – things have gotten too big or too out of control – go back to that core. That’s your real story. Everything else is secondary.

P.S. If anyone wants to share their keys to making swords and sandals scripts (or period pieces in general) work, please do.  The difficulty level on these scripts is so high.  Any help will do.

Read as much as you can from each and let me know which script I should review!

Title: Midas
Genre: Science Fiction
Logline: A teen who seeks vengeance against his treasure obsessed father joins a rogue spaceship on its hunt for a legendary asteroid of solid gold.
Why You Should Read: “I was recently told that Hollywood only makes this kind of sci-fi if it’s based on existing IP. Ironically the expert that told me this cited Star Wars and Star Trek as examples, ignoring the point that both of those come from original stories developed for the screen. So this is a dead end script, unless someone reminds Hollywood that they used to take chances on scripts like this, and sometimes those chances paid off in a really big way.”

Title: Monster’s Holiday
Genre: Christmas Fantasy/Comedy
Logline: Terminally single Merrily Campbell, a female music executive, is a modern-day Scrooge. But life changes for her when she meets an overly optimistic orphan, his alter-ego (a devilish, seen-only-by-her angel), and a pompous, powerful businessman — all determined to help her renounce her holiday hating ways.
Why You Should Read: I saw your review for the Otis Kringle Hates Christmas script, and no offense to the writer, but I think I’ve written a better Christmas script! That’s right, I’m throwing down the Christmas script gauntlet. I grew up watching movies like this, and while they can be as corny as hell, in a world full of crazy, if done right, they can offer an enjoyable welcome respite. The truth is, I read your site every day, but don’t comment much, because I am so busy learning and taking in what others on the site have to say. I’d love to know what they have to say about my script, Monster’s Holiday. While I was a semi-finalist in a well-known Screenwriting Competition a few years ago and I was a semi-finalist (top 33/500) for a studio fellowship program last year, I can’t seem to break through. I feel I’m on the right track with my writing and storytelling, and I’m wondering will this script help me get my foot in the door, or will I end up with a broken foot when door after door gets slammed on it? I challenge the Script Shadow Nation to decide if this script could possibly be the one to help jumpstart my screenwriting career. I am super excited about discussing my script with them on your site.

Title: Super Epic
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A closeted superhero wrestles with both of his secret identities, as the world embraces his superhero alter ego but his friends and family can’t accept the man behind the mask.
Why you should read it: I saw that The Almighty Stud got really negative reviews based on the fact that it conveys a misogynistic message and displays a gay character that perpetuates the flawed association between homosexual men and predatory inclinations. So, why not offer a superhero screenplay that does the opposite of all that? My protagonist is a gay superhero that challenges the stereotypes, it has a cool feminist superheroine and the villain, although in a first moment seems to be just like The Almighty Stud villain, actually hides a secret that mocks through subtext the current trend among certain men of demonizing feminism and feminists.

Title: The Killing Man
Genre: Western/Thriller
Logline: A bounty hunter pursues an elusive serial killer through Gold Rush San Francisco, but the line between hunter and hunted starts to blur in the ultimate fight for survival and redemption.
Why You Should Read: THE KILLING MAN is a unique entry in the Western genre. It has a strong protagonist, the type of character most A-listers would love to play. It is not your typical shoot-em-up either. The supporting characters, the dialogue, and the tone of the script also leave a strong impression on everyone who reads it. THE KILLING MAN is a quick read with numerous historical references that don’t bog down the story, but instead give it a singular identity. I have written several screenplays, but I am most attached to THE KILLING MAN. I hope you will give it a read and find out why.
PAGES: 102

Title: Intelligent Design
Genre: Crime/Horror/Sci-fi
Logline: While investigating a gruesome vampire-like murder, an NYC Detective gets in way over his head when he discovers that his prime suspect has been dead for over twenty years.
Why You Should Read: Because you might like it.
About me: Been a writer/director for about 7 years. Done 3 shorts and a feature. Am about to have a sci-fi thriller optioned (lawyers and producers are ironing out the details). If all works out, it will have a low 7-figure budget. Fingers crossed.