Genre: Comedy-Horror
Logline: In a city where dangerous monsters emerge from underground every night, a monster-fighting patrol team is tasked with finding and killing them before they can kill the city’s citizens.
About: Ben Wheatley is coming and he’s coming hard. One of the most buzzed about upcoming films that doesn’t have “Star” or “Bat” in the title is High Rise, which displays a unique voice that’s inspiring many to call Wheatley the next big thing. Turns out Wheatley’s been hard at work for awhile now, writing scripts with his writing partner Amy Jump, as this one was conceived all the way back in 2012. The Ghostbusters influence is pretty obvious. But I’d say this is much closer to the Deadpool version of Ghostbusters than the cuddly 80s Bill Murray version of Ghostbusters.
Writers: Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump
Details: 81 pages (2012 draft)

Wheatley’s upcoming “High Rise.”

So I’m reading through this script and I’m thinking to myself, “Sure, yeah, this is cool.” We got ourselves some ruthless monsters. A badass monster-hunting patrol team. Some dark comedy to keep things fun. But after about 30 pages, I had to be honest with myself (and with you). If this showed up on Amateur Friday, it’d get a straight “wasn’t for me.” The only reason I was seeing it differently was because I’d watched that High Rise trailer and I knew what Ben Wheatley could do with this idea.

That’s one of the complaints amateur screenwriters turn to when subpar material moves through the system. That professional writers are getting the benefit of the doubt because of their name while we, the unknowns, have to write something perfect just to get hip-pocketed by a sleazy manager in El Segundo.

But you know what? I don’t have any problem with that. If you go out there and direct something great, I’m going to give your script the benefit of the doubt over Joe Nobody. Because the goal of the screenplay is to create a great movie. And if you’ve already proven that you can create a great movie, I’m going to assume that the deficiencies in your screenplay will be overcome by your vision for the film.

Freakshift follows Diane Largo, a young Sigourney Weaver type who lost her family to a monster known as a “Bulk.” Bulks are huge nasty beasts that wait til nighttime to emerge from giant Bulk-created holes in the ground. And what do these Bulks do when they get topside? They kill human beings of course. And eat them. And sometimes fornicate with them.

This is why we need the Freakshift, a fire-fighter like crew whose job it is to go out every night and kill these Bulks before they kill others. I guess you could say they’re doing the BULK of the work. You see what I did there? Anyway, in addition to getting general revenge on these monsters, Largo also wants to find the Bulk that killed her family, which luckily is an easy-to-identify albino Bulk.

But Bulks aren’t all they have to worry about. There are other monsters that occasionally pop up, and it seems that if you get bitten by any of these creatures, you turn into something called a “moocher,” which is this world’s version of a zombie. Moochers are trying to kill you just like Bulks, so it’s safe to say the freak shift is pretty dangerous.

The story follows one crazy night shift for these guys which shows just how crazy their job is. Will Largo get revenge on Albino? Will any of her shift mates survive? Jump on the Freakshift to find out, baby.

Yeah, so, this is a cool idea. But Jump and Wheatley are handicapped by a major problem. They aren’t very good screenwriters at this point in their careers (2012). They write in a sort-of shorthand, as if the script is meant for a few close friends who already know the details and therefore don’t need to be bothered with things such as character descriptions. For example, Diane Largo is introduced without an age or any other info. Just a name. And a lot of details are introduced like that, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps for himself.

Then there are basic things. The script is only 81 pages?? And the formatting (which clearly isn’t Final Draft) is stretched super-thin. So this would probably be closer to 65-70 pages if properly formatted. Things like dangling slug lines (slug lines that start at the bottom of the page) leave the script feeling rushed. I mean, hell, they don’t even know the difference between “its” and “it’s.”

And there’s no structure here. A good story is supposed to set the world up, set the main character’s goal up (first act), send them off on their journey, have them encounter lots of obstacles, have them fail to the point where it seems like they’ve lost (second act), before revealing one last push where they finally conquer their goal (third act).

Freakshift is more like, “Set up the main character’s past (first act?) BATTLE MONSTERS FOR THE NEXT 70 minutes (first and a half act?).”

I know, I know. There are no rules! You can tell a story however you want. But there’s a reason stories have been told with three acts (beginning, middle, and end) for thousands of years. Humans are biologically attuned to receiving a story that way. You speed up the middle, don’t tell us the beginning, or cut off the end, we’re going to look at you like, “What the hell you talking bout, dude?”

But the script has its charms. Wheatley and Jump seem to have done a lot of world building here, spending plenty of time on the mythology of their universe. For example, there’s a curfew for everyone so they don’t get eaten at night. But if you want to see Bulks, you can pay for a TMZ like nightly tour where you hop into an armored tour bus that drives around, looking for battles between Bulks and the Freak Shift.

And the dark humor’s a nice addition, as it takes Freakshift squarely away from its most obvious influence (Ghostbusters) and gives us something way more fucked up. For example, one of the first monster breakout scenes occurs with the Bulks barging up into an old folk’s home. So they’re tossing around naked old people, eating them, killing them. Old people are running around begging for their life. You’re not going to get that in Paul Feig’s newest iteration of the Ghostbusters franchise.

As much of a mess as this script is, I would LOVE to see Wheatley turn it into a movie. Get a proper screenwriter to come in and shape this into a more cohesive story and then go out there and have fun. Maybe if the new Ghostbusters does well, Wheatley will be able to convince someone to put up the money for this.

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

What I learned: With world-building, always look to go a level deeper. Surface-level world building is easy. You have a movie about guys who take on monsters at night? Sure, you could stop right there. But why? Why not ask what that world would be like? What else would be going on in that world? One of my favorite parts of Freakshift was the nightly tour bus that goes out into the city and looks for Bulks in the wild. That’s the kind of second level world building that fleshes a screenplay out. And there’s no reason to stop there. Why not go down another level? And then another? The more you can learn about your world, the more we’ll buy into it.

Can the darlings of Hollywood, who have turned everything they’ve touched into gold, add one more gold bar to the vault?

Genre: TV Pilot – Half-Hour Single-Camera Comedy
Premise: An unpopular computer science professor invents a time machine and goes back to 1776, where he falls in love with a girl and, in the process, changes the course of history.
About: There is no hotter team of writer-directors than Phil Lord and Chris Miller. These two have worked their way up through an impossible landscape of surefire duds (21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie) to always end up with smash hits. This led to their inevitable move to TV, where they brought us one of the freshest shows on television, The Last Man on Earth, and also to being announced as the directors of the Star Wars Han Solo spinoff. Everything these guys touch turns to gold. And their newest, In Time, looks no different. Written by Julius Sharpe, a longtime TV writer who’s worked on such shows as Family Guy and The Grinder, this is about as “sure-thing” as a pilot gets.
Writer: Julias Sharpe
Details: 32 pages – undated

I love how writerish these guys look!

Movies get you all the glory. But TV gets you all the money. Ask anybody who worked on Forest Gump. According to the studio, that film STILL hasn’t broken even. I have no doubt that despite The Force Awakens being the biggest box office movie IN HISTORY, Disney will tell you that the film is still deep in the red.

But you write a TV show that stays on the air a few seasons? Even better, if you write a half-hour COMEDY that stays on the air? You are raking in the dough, Carolina Bob. Okay, I admit I’m laying the sales pitch on thick cause some of you hate when I review TV. But you’ll have to suck it up today. Our show features time travel and comes from the guys putting together the Han Solo origin movie. I couldn’t not read this if I tried.

“In Time” follows Dan. Dan is that nerdy kid no one liked who grew up to be… that nerdy adult no one liked. And it’s not that he’s a bad guy. He’s just… not the kind of guy you want to have a beer with. Or a 10 second exchange with. Take the computer science classes he teaches at the university. Out of the 45 people in his class, he’ll be lucky if 5 show up.

But that’s okay these days. And that’s because these days, Dan can control the days, or at least the ones he travels to. That’s right, Dan’s built a time machine (out of a bag), and regularly travels back to the year 1775, where he has a girlfriend, Deborah, who thinks he’s the most wonderful man in the world.

The thing is, Dan starts noticing little differences in the world every time he travels back to the present. Like the fact that his five students are now eating fish and chips instead of hot dogs. And Starbucks features tea instead of coffee. It looks like something Dan’s done… has changed the future.

You’d think Dan would’ve known that the man responsible for initiating America’s independence, Paul Revere, wasn’t the best man’s daughter to fall in love with. And that’s why Dan needs Chris. Chris is the opposite of Dan. An African-American well-loved star professor of history at the University. Chris’s students regularly give him standing ovations at the end of his lectures.

Chris doesn’t like Dan, so he’s weary when Dan tells him he has something to show him at his house. But when Dan takes Chris back to 1775, Chris changes his tune. What the two realize is that Paul Revere has been so caught up in rumors that his daughter is cavorting with a local reject (ahem, Dan), that he doesn’t care about the thing he’s supposed to start – the Revolution.

Dan wants to know if he can keep the love of his life and still prevent the British from owning America in the future. Chris lays down the law, telling him he absolutely needs to dump this girl. And as reluctant as Dan is, he’s about to do just that. Except something happens that changes everything, and of course, changes the future along with it.

There’s a new format sneaking its way into television programming. It’s the serialized half-hour comedy. And Phil Lord and Chris Miller are leading the charge. What’s really cool about this format is that it allows you to be funny and tell a compelling story.

In times past, TV only allowed you to do one or the other. Actually, it wasn’t until recently that TV allowed you to serialize DRAMAS. But now that they realize that works, they’re open to doing it with comedy as well. And I can’t tell you how wonderful that is. Because for every Modern Family, there are five The Goldbergs. Individualized stories are great. But sometimes you need a hook to bring you back next week.

Ironically, the one thing lacking in In Time’s pilot is more time. As most writers find out, one of the hardest things about telling a time travel story is how much freaking exposition you have to go through. And half-hour comedies aren’t exactly the formats of choice for dishing out exposition.

So Smith decides to excise all exposition in favor of story. While that was probably the right decision, the story seems rushed as a result, and we’re constantly wondering why really big things (like how this whole time travel thing came about and how it works) are glazed over.

The biggest effect it has is on Chris, who’s a huge history geek, yet doesn’t freak out about the fact that, say, he’s speaking to Sam Adams. In reality, this man would pass out from excitement. Instead, we barely get a, “Ooh, there’s Sam Adams.” And it robs the story of some authenticity.

What they probably should’ve done is what Lord and Miller did with The Last Man on Earth pilot, which is tell it in 60 minutes. They still might do that so we’ll see. But if you get past that fault – and the writing’s so good, it’s easy to – this is a delightful little comedy that’s extremely refreshing.

When you’re in Analyst mode, you’re always trying to figure out why something works. And 9 times out of 10, it comes back to the characters. If you like the characters, you like the story. If you don’t, you dislike the story. And I loved these characters.

Dan is perfect as the modern day misfit everybody ignores who’s found an outlet where people actually appreciate him. And his plight is relatable. Anyone who’s struggling with acceptance wants to find someone who accepts them. So we relate to his pursuit of Deborah. As Chris puts it, “Time travel could be used for infinite good and instead you’re just trying to get laid!” Well, yeah. But there’s something revealing in that. This is a man who no one loves. For him to go to the ends of time to find that love tells us a lot about him.

Chris is the perfect contrast to Dan, as he’s the popular mega-star professor everybody loves. When you’re writing a comedy, you want to look for extremes. When you’re pairing people together, go as opposite as you can. So if you have the nerd, pair him with the stud.

But the REALLY clever thing here is that when they go back in time, those roles are reversed, mainly because African-Americans didn’t exactly have the same status in 1776. So there’s this established dynamic that flips 180 degrees midway through the script that isn’t just fun, but you can tell it’s something the writer thought about.

My problem with all these amateur scripts I read is that you can tell the writers haven’t THOUGHT about everything. They’re just proud of whatever they came up with because, by golly, they finished a script and therefore they deserve a pat on the back for it. They treat writing “The End” as if it’s something the city should announce a parade for.

Show me that you’ve thought about every angle of your story, then I’ll be impressed. And that’s what we get here. The fact that the woman Dan’s fallen in love with so happens to be Paul Revere’s daughter, and that his frustration with that has shifted his focus away from the Revolution, which is changing the future, that’s really clever.

Not just because it’s fun, but because it sets up a choice. And remember, when you’re writing a story, you’re always searching for tough choices for your characters. Dan has to figure out if his love for this woman is more important than America winning its independence. And the fact that he waffles on that choice is hilarious in itself.

This would’ve been impressive if there was more time to tell the story. But even in its rushed form, it’s really good. I expect this to be a huge hit.

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

What I learned: The one miscalculation here was a history professor not being more excited when he was taken to the time in history he lectured about every day. He was too casual about the whole thing. Whenever you write characters – specifically when they’re placed in extraordinary situations – you need to put yourself in their shoes, and ask HOW WOULD I REACT? You should get a good feel for how to write the character simply by asking that question. This should lead to much more authentic characters overall.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): When a young man serving on the zeppelin Hindenburg discovers that a deadly, shape-shifting alien is hidden on board, he must defeat it or the girl he loves will suffer a fate worse than death.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I already sent you two of my other scripts for the Scriptshadow 250 contest, but what you wrote about the lack of big idea scripts inspired me to send you my biggest idea script. With its love story on a doomed vessel coupled with an alien which can assume the form of anyone it devours, it’s like TITANIC meets THE THING… I worked hard to make the script as easy to read as possible (no paragraph over 2 lines, only 97 pages) and to keep it moving and entertaining. If you’ll like it I’d really love for you to come on board as a producer!
Writer: Tal Gantz
Details: 97 pages

A little Ansel for David here?

I’m throwing EVERYONE for a loop today. There was a lot of discussion over last week’s group of scripts, but not a lot of voting. I think that says something. If people aren’t compelled enough to even type “I vote for [x]” in a comment, then something’s missing from your script. So I decided to look into it more deeply until I finally figured out what the problem was. I can’t believe, in retrospect, how obvious it was.

The writers didn’t center their title pages.

As we all know, the most important part of any screenplay is not just the title page, but how well you center that title. I try to get this across to new writers all the time. It’s not about character or dialogue or structure. It’s about centering. Think I’m exaggerating? Let me put it this way. I heard that the best script ever submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship was rejected because the title wasn’t centered properly.

Yes.

I got in touch with the writer and apparently his centering was 4 and a half pixels off. In his defense, his title included a hyphen and an ellipses, which confused the matter, but you know what? That’s no excuse. He should’ve known better. You can’t have an improperly centered title page and expect this industry to take you seriously.

All of this forced me to go back a few Amateur Saturdays to find a script that DID center its title properly, and boy am I excited. This script exuded one of the most center-positive attitudes I’ve ever seen. So much so that I’m nominating it for the prestigious “Center Award,” which as you all know rewards the most centered objects of the year. It is time, my friends, to review a script that dares to care about the things that really matter. Let’s take a trip back to… The Hindenburg Alien.

It’s 1937, a year before the world lost its innocence, and when Germany graced us with the largest flying machine anyone had ever seen, the Hindenburg. We join this gargantuan airship while its loading up passengers for its impending flight. This is where we meet 20 year-old David Grant, a ship hand who’s trying to kick ass and not be a Nazi.

David is joined by his comic relief co-worker, Harry, and the demonstrably stodgy captain, Mr. Lehman, along with a host of other worker bees that make flying the Hindenburg so exciting, when it’s not bursting into flames and roasting its passengers alive that is.

Shit gets Nazi-real when a professor rolls up a giant iron box that looks like it could be a Steampunk transformer “before” picture. Following him is 19 year-old Anna, the girl of David’s dreams, who is unfortunately followed by Hans Muller, her Nazi fiancé. So much for that love connection. I’m guessing that’s nazi-gonna happen.

After the Hindenburg takes off, David wanders downstairs in time to see a co-worker, Eric, get pulled into the iron box and EATEN by whatever’s in there. David runs upstairs to tell the captain, but when they come back down, it appears that Eric is fine. OR IS HE? Eric’s acting strange, and after a bit of sleuthing, David figures out that whatever was in that box has taken the form of Eric.

David eventually finds Anna, and because she’s just so darn dreamy, he informs her of what he saw. She believes him and wants to help, but her evil fiancé, Hans, keeps hanging around and being all clingy. Those Nazis. We eventually find out that Anna is only marrying this jerk because he’s agreed to smuggle her father out of the country to safety.

While evil alien-monster thing jumps form one host to the next, David realizes that if this planet-hopper lands, there’s a good chance it’s going to spread its seed and earth as we know it will turn into an intergalactic truck stop. So David must overcome his fears and take Alien Yucky Head on. One on one. May the best… biological… living creature win.

I’m digging the concept here. Tal’s obviously been influenced by Titanic, but he knows if he takes that approach, it just becomes Titanic on the Hindenburg. And we’ve seen “Titanic on the…” films before and they never end up well (Pearl Harbor). So he wisely turns this into a sci-fi film and makes it more of a monster-in-a-box movie.

Here was my issue while reading The Hindenburg Alien though: It was too darn simplistic. And I know this might sound confusing because I’m always harping on you guys for being too complex. But rarely does ANY extreme work well, and that includes being too simplistic.

I don’t want this to come off the wrong way but “Hindenburg” felt like it was written by a third grader. That’s not to say there were a lot of spelling or grammar errors. But the grammar was devoid of any color or nuance. There was no flavor to the way anything was written, leaving the script feeling so basic that it was hard to get excited about anything.

Here’s an example: “David and Harry sneak into the deck. All is silent and still. Eric is nowhere in sight.”

You see how rudimentary and lifeless those sentences are? Even the book our romantic lead is reading is titled: “Romantic Poems.” The only title I can think of more generic than that would be, “Written Stories.”

I can overlook colorless prose sometimes if the character work or dialogue is exceptional. But both of those suffer from the same problem. Here’s a dialogue exchange from when David meets up with Anna. David: “How did you know it was me?” “Your footsteps gave you away. Quiet, but strong. Just like you.” Is it just me or does that sound like it was spoken by an animatronic automaton?

You know, it’s funny. Technically speaking, Tal does what myself and many screenwriting folks teach in regards to dialogue. Keep the lines sparse and to the point, usually under three lines. But while this sounds great in practice, if EVERY SINGLE SPOKEN LINE OF DIALOGUE is like that, it feels generic and lifeless (and worse – predictable). And plus, in the real world, everyone talks differently. Some do keep it short and to the point. But others can’t shut up. I didn’t get enough of a sense of different personalities and talking styles here. To that end, changing up the dialogue length for each character would’ve helped a ton.

But yeah, in general, we needed more color to everything. In the description, the dialogue, the backstory, the plotting. A basic plot point would be “Let’s follow Eric” and at a certain point I felt like I’d asked for a Chinese chicken salad and they’d brought me a head of lettuce and a few ketchup packets.

I will say this about The Hindenburg Alien. It’s not as simplistic as Monday’s “Free Fall,” which sold. And Tal’s got the right idea here. This is a big enough concept that it could be turned into a movie. But if he wants to improve his chances, he needs to add more complexity to the characters and the plotting, and he needs to add some color to the writing himself. I would recommend he check out Osgood Perkins’ script, “February,” for how to add color through prose, and Aaron Sorkin’s, Jobs, for tips on how to write more colorful dialogue.

Good luck, my friend. You’re on your way to something here. ☺

Screenplay link: The Hindenburg Alien

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

What I learned: Be mindful of long absences by your characters (30+ pages). You can’t just bring them back whenever. It’s very likely we’ve forgotten who they are. Or even if we remember their name, we’ve forgotten the exact circumstances by which they’re attached to the story. That’s what happened here. We meet Anna’s father, Rosen, when he arrives on the ship, but I’d forgotten about him by the time he showed up again 50 pages later. I thought to myself, “Wait, did we see him board in the opening?” I wasn’t sure. And because there were a lot of dream-scenes in The Hindenburg Alien, I thought she may have been dreaming about her father. To eliminate confusion, add another scene with Rosen somewhere between those two scenes. That way he stays prominent in our minds, and we’re not playing the “Who’s This Dude Again?” screenplay game (a game I have to play way too much!).

How did a TV pilot about incest, drug addiction, and imprisonment lead to today’s writer getting Pixar’s “Inside Out” assignment? Read on to find out!

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: We follow a group of adults in various stages of arrested development, highlighted by a strange man who’s secretly imprisoning his wife.
About: So you know that mega-hit from this past weekend, Inside Out? Well, it wasn’t just Docter who wrote it. One of the writers was Meg LeFauve. How did a relatively unknown writer score a writing gig on one of Pixar’s biggest movies? This pilot is how. Just goes to show that if you write something good, it might not sell, but it can open a lot of doors for you. “Girl in a Box” is said to have been LOVED by Disney and Pixar CCO, John Lasseter.
Writer: Meg LeFauve
Details: 66 pages

Ben Mendelsohn to play the evil “Frank” all the way

What I love most about this success story is that Meg LeFauve’s pilot about the terrors beneath the surface of our everyday lives couldn’t have been further from a children’s movie about animated emotions. Then why was she chosen for Inside Out? It’s because this industry celebrates one skill above all others – character development.

If you can write convincing interesting characters, you can do it in any genre. Sci-fi, Western, Drama, Comedy, Adventure, it doesn’t matter. Character creation is about finding the truth of the character, giving them unresolved issues in both their exterior and interior lives, and then throwing a bunch of shit at them and seeing how they react. To this end, Girl in a Box is a terrifying delight. With emphasis on “terrifying.”

Our seemingly unrelated cast of characters begins with Jane, a sort of zoned-out 24 year-old beauty who’s just moved into the neighborhood. When we meet her and her older, socially awkward husband, Frank, the two have crashed neighbor, John’s, home, so that Frank can find some clients for his one-man computer business.

It becomes clear to us that something’s off about Jane. She seems eternally zoned out. But that doesn’t stop John, who’s a few months away from marrying his wife, from flirting with her. Despite Jane’s beauty, flirting seems to be a new experience for her, but one she cannot reciprocate for long. There’s fear in the back of Jane’s eyes. That much is clear.

You see, Frank is imprisoning Jane. He keeps her in a box at night, and controls her every move. How long this has been going on, we can only guess.

Meanwhile, across town, we’ve got 20-something drug-addict Dara, who’s just moved back into town. Dara needs a place to shack up while she gets sober and hits up her cousin, Michael, a local attorney with a big future ahead of him. The two seem to have some kind of weird chemistry together, and we can tell that he’d never say no to her.

We also learn that when Dara was young, she snuck out at night when she was supposed to be babysitting Michael’s sister, Casey. While partying with her friends, Casey walked off and that was the last anyone ever saw of her. Needless to say, Dara’s never been forgiven from either Michael’s side of the family or her own. Which has only pushed her into using more.

Towards the end of the pilot, we figure out what’s going on. Jane, the girl in the box, is Casey. And neither Dara or Michael realize that their sister/cousin is only a few blocks away from where they live. Will they ever figure this out? And will Jane, who’s finally building up the courage to take chances, find a way out of this prison she’s lived in since she was a little girl?

Kristin Kreuk for Jane?

The first thing that popped out at me about Girl in a Box was LeFauve’s VOICE. The writing here was stronger than the writing I’ve been seeing lately. And you don’t realize how plain writing is until something comes along that’s better. LeFauve’s stuff is better and it’s because her words and her choices have more life to them.

For example, when we first meet Jane, we hop inside of her POV. And the world becomes FLATTER, less colorful, because Jane’s entire life has been a nightmare. She hasn’t lived a minute of freedom in 20 years. So naturally, she’s going to see the world differently. That was clever.

And there were little things – breadcrumbs almost – to keep you turning the pages. Like when Jane goes to the bathroom at this party and slips one of the pretty seashell-shaped bars of soap into her pocket. We’re curious. Why would she do that? We want to know more about this girl.

The conversations between characters didn’t have that nailed down stiff feeling to them I read in a lot of scripts/pilots either. There was an electricity floating just beneath the dialogue. Like when John meets Jane out in the garden.

John is out there hiding from his fiancé and her mother. So right away, the scene’s got some charge to it. We’re not standing in the middle of a room full of people boringly sharing backstory. John’s got a secret and since we just saw Jane steal that bar of soap, we know she’s got a secret too. This is how you bring a conversation to life.

And it’s also because these characters are so distinct. Creating distinct characters takes a long time for screenwriters to learn. The problem is that you’re only one mind as a writer. So even though you’re switching back and forth between characters on the page, you’re still staying in your own brain.

This is why a common criticism a lot of new screenwriters get when people read their screenplay is: “All your characters sound the same.”

When creating characters, you have to define something unique about them, a dominant trait that makes them stand out. You do this for everyone and now, when you shift between characters, your mind shifts into that trait, allowing you to “speak” from a different perspective.

And we see that here. Jane is detached. Frank is socially awkward and creepy. Dara is mischievous. Michael is the golden boy trying desperately to live up to his reputation. There’s very little overlap in any personality traits here, which is another thing that helps each character feel like their own person.

This all might sound obvious to you. I can hear writers saying, “Duh, that’s what you do. You make characters different.” And yet time and time again when I read amateur scripts, the characters are laughably undefined. Either writers try to make them too complex, giving them so many traits that you don’t know which one defines them. Or they haven’t defined their characters at all, assuming you’ll get a “feel” for them because they, the writer, have a “feel” for them.

If you’re selling your characters on a “vague feeling,” I got news for you. Your characters suck.

Any time you read a script and each character in that script feels DIFFERENT, you know you’re reading someone who knows what they’re doing. Because most writers either don’t put the effort into making their characters unique, don’t think it’s important, or don’t know how. If you can nail character creation – if you can write 5 or more distinct characters that all feel like individual people – that’s when companies like Pixar start calling you.

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

What I learned: This is a really easy way to improve your character creation. Go through every character in your screenplay and assign them ONE DOMINANT TRAIT. Then make sure you hit on that trait over and over again. Han Solo – He’s a cocky motherfucker. Claire from Jurassic World – all she cares about is work. Anna from Frozen – she’s a goofball. Amy from Gone Girl. She was vindictive. The character will evolve out from that dominant trait to have a number of secondary traits. But you need that dominant trait as an anchor. That’s the trait the reader needs to identify that character.

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Genre: Horror
Premise (from writer): A documentary producer’s search for the cause of her father’s suicide leads her to a remote mountain weather station. A horrifying truth is revealed when she and her team are stranded by natural , and supernatural forces seeking revenge. Based on True Events.
Why You Should Read: As an adventure documentary filmmaker, rI’ve been in numerous places where I found myself saying – “This would be a great setting for a film”. A few years back I did a film on Mount Washington. More people have died there than on Everest. Having spent 3 nights up there in the desolate Weather Observatory, trapped by the elements, I can assure you that the place is a cosmic focal point of bad karma. “The Peak of Fear” is based on a true story which makes it even more terrifying. It’s full of “dramatic irony”, “flawed characters”, “mystery boxes” and “realistic dialogue”. Think “The Ring” meets “Cliffhanger” with a dash of “Mama”.
Writer: Kevin Bachar
Details: 99 pages

So yesterday we were talking about MOVIES. Have you written yourself a script? Or have you written a script that could be turned into a movie? Today’s script is definitely a movie. And most horror scripts are. The visceral thrill of fear, of being scared, is a charge that makes it worth paying your hard-earned dollars for. IF you do it right, that is.

In 1987, the adventurous Pomeroy family decides to climb the dangerous Mount Washington, a mountain in New Hampshire that has the distinction of killing more of its climbers than Everest. The family, which includes a nine year old boy named Billy, gets stuck, requiring the mountain’s rescue team, headed up by superstar rescuer Chris Tanner, to save them. Sadly, they save everyone but Billy.

Cut to present day, where the daughter of Chris Tanner, Suzanne, is heading to the mountain to get footage for her Discovery channel reality show. Basically, the mountain is known for having insane winds, and she hopes the thrill of seeing those winds in action will boost her ratings.

Before she goes, however, her father starts babbling nonsensically about “Billy” and then kills himself. It’s a mighty blow to Suzanne, who loved her father, but now her journey has even more purpose, as she can use it to find out what happened that fateful day, the day that Billy died.

She takes her trusty cameraman Tom with her, and they meet up with Chris’s old rescue team, Rick and Phil, as well as the new guy, Toby. We immediately get the sense that something’s off with Phil, who may or may not still talk to “Billy.”

Once up on the mountain, the group starts hearing… sounds. A little boy giggling. A little boy saying things like “remember what happened that day.” Not the kind of stuff you like to hear, well, at all. But is it just the high altitude playing games with them? I mean, Billy’s ghost can’t really still be on the mountain, can it? And if it is, what does it want? Suzanne will have to find out, and learn the truth about what her father did that fateful day, the day that Billy died.

I want to talk about two things today. Momentum and relationships. We talk about momentum in passing a lot. But it’s such an important part of storytelling, I want to give it more attention in this review.

Momentum is the feeling that your story is being PUSHED along. Not pulled. It’s not strolling. Or crawling. Or waltzing or limping. We must get this feeling that we’re being PUSHED along, a hurricane of motion. Your story should have so much momentum that even as the writer, you couldn’t stop it if you wanted to.

Momentum typically has to do with a couple of things. A strong goal and intensely high stakes. Your main character must always need something, preferably quickly, and we must feel like if they don’t get it, everything is going to fall apart, either externally or internally for the character (preferably both).

In Gone Girl, for example, Nick NEEDS to find out where Amy is. Not only does his freedom depend on it, but the entire country is getting angrier and angrier with him. He’s becoming more and more hated. Finding Amy is the only thing that matters in this moment. That movie has some really strong momentum.

I didn’t get that sense with The Peak of Fear. The reason to go to this mountain – a reality show – felt weak. But I also sensed that Kevin (today’s writer) thought it was weak, because he almost hid the reason we were up here. We hear off-handed conversations about how it’s important to get the ratings up for the show or else Suzanne will lose her job.

Just saying something doesn’t make it true. We have to EXPERIENCE IT. It’s the old “show don’t tell” rule. We must SEE Suzanne’s life at the channel and feel the weight of her show failing. It’d be like in Gone Girl if there was no media, no investigation, and we met Nick in the midst of his everyday life casually telling someone that his wife had disappeared and he’d like to find her. There’d be no WEIGHT to his situation.

Even still, I’m not sure the show angle works. We need an entirely different reason to be up on the mountain. Why not have Suzanne follow in her father’s footsteps? She becomes one of the rescuers? This is her first week on the job, and it just so happens to be during the worst weather in a decade. They get a mysterious call about a family who’s stuck and must go save them. I don’t know, that sounds more natural to me.

The next problem here is relationships. Your plot should have momentum. Your relationships should have MEANING. There’s gotta be a unique problem inherent in each relationship. You do this so that outside the plot, the reader still has a reason to stick around. They want to figure out what happens in that relationship!

I don’t mean to keep referencing Gone Girl because it’s a different kind of movie, but one of the more interesting relationships in the film is that between Nick and the detective on the case. She goes back and forth on believing Nick, leading to a lot of great subtext in their dialogue and just an overall complicated relationship we want to see the conclusion to. Especially (spoiler) once we find out that Amy’s alive. We can’t wait for that cop to choke down her assumption that Nick is guilty.

There wasn’t a single distinctive relationship here. But worse, there wasn’t even an ATTEMPT to create a distinctive relationship. Why not hone in, for example, on one of the rescuers not wanting Suzanne to be here? There’s an icy distance between the two during this story. Something Suzanne needs to crack.

Or heck, why not introduce a romantic storyline into the mix? One of my favorite characters was Steve, a local in the town that sat at the foot of the mountain. There was clearly some chemistry between him and Suzanne, but then we leave him and don’t see him again until the script is almost over.

Get Steve up there on the mountain with Suzanne! Make him a bit of a mystery box to give the relationship some extra pop. Steve is hiding something too, which fits in well with the theme of this journey, that this mountain has a lot of secrets.

All of this is not to say that The Peak of Fear is bad. It has its moments, my favorite of which was the Billy mannequin stuff. That freaked the hell out of me. Granted, as a child, one of my friends convinced me that all mannequins were from hell and were out to get me, but regardless, Billy the Mannequin was scary as shit.

But yeah, the script needs to improve on those two key fronts – momentum and relationships – if it’s going to make any noise. Kevin seems like a great guy. He’s eager to get feedback for “Peak” and make it better, so do what you do best, guys. Help him out!

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

What I learned: Don’t just recite action. Create EXCITEMENT in your action. This line stuck with me: “He loses a grip on the camera which smashes into pieces on the desert floor.” That’s a really boring way to say a camera is destroyed. It should be something more like: “He shifts his body, and in doing so LOSES A GRIP on his camera. He grabs at it, JUGGLES, almost gets a hold of it. But it SLIPS out of his hands. He watches it float towards the desert floor. CRASH. It shatters to pieces.” I might pare that down with a rewrite or two but you get the idea.