Genre: Comedy
Premise: Three friends with the worst bosses imaginable decide to solve their problem…by killing them.
About: Michael Markowitz sold this script to Rat Entertainment and New Line back in 2005. After busy scribes John Goldstein and John Francis Daley gave it a rewrite, it was able to land Aniston and Colin Farrell in two of the juicier boss roles. Markowitz, the original writer, has been working in Hollywood as early as the eighties, where he acted in a couple of small movies. He’s worked as a producer and writer on TV since, most notably on the Ted Danson starrer, Becker. Markowitz recently worked on another script that sounds funny, titled Tapped Out. It’s about an unemployed man whose life is turned upside down when he accidentally knocks out the Ultimate Fighting Champ at a bar. Shooting right now, Horrible Bosses stars Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day. New Line seems high on Sudeikis and Day, both of whom teamed up in New Line’s Going The Distance.
Writer: Michael Markowitz (current revisions by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley)
Details: 120 pages – April 14, 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

The Switch.

Bounty Hunter.

Love Happens.

He’s Just Not That Into You.

Common factor between all these movies? I’ll give you a hint: It ain’t that they’re good! Give up? The scripts were terrible! The other common factor? Jennifer Aniston chose to star in all of them. I don’t know why I’ve never seen it before but my brother pointed it out a few weeks ago. Jennifer Aniston is terrible at choosing roles.

So when I opened Horrible Bosses, knowing only that Aniston had chosen to play a part in it, I felt a little like a guy diving head first into an active volcano. But the good news is, Aniston does not play one of the leads here. More like a large cameo. Which meant that the script had a chance. What I wasn’t expecting was that Horrible Bosses took this chance and ran with it like hell.

Nick Waters works a nondescript office job and has been busting his ass for 17 hours a day in hopes of getting that big promotion his slick boss, Dave, keeps telling him he’s the frontrunner for. Nick’s eliminated any chance of having a girlfriend or a life with this schedule, but it’s all going to be worth it when he gets that new cushy office! Oh, except that Dave decides to give the job to…himself! He then readily admits to Nick that he lied in order to get him to work harder. It’s called ‘good managing,’ he says. Furious, Nick threatens to quit, but his boss tells him that if he does he will make it his mission to make sure he never gets a job anywhere else ever again.

Ladies man Kurt Gamble works at a chemical company. His grandfatherly boss, Jack, is one of the nicest men you could imagine. He and Kurt see eye to eye on everything. Jack even promises to write Kurt into his will that night. Except ten minutes later Jack has a heart attack and dies, leaving the company to his 20-something coke-fiend mega-dickhead son who hates Kurt more than anything.

Dale Stevens is a dental hygienist, high on his recent engagement. In fact, Dale’s got a lot of good things going for him. Except, that is, for his boss. Dr. Julia is hotter than June in Mexico City. The problem is she’s just as dirty. Julia spends the majority of her work day sexually harassing Dale, to the point where you might even call it her real job. From commenting on the potential size of his dick, to explaining how horny she is, and even insisting, every time they put a patient under anesthesia, that they make him/her an unwilling participant in a sexual three-way. The conservative monogamous Dale struggles minutely to perform his job.

The three of these guys are best friends and after discussing just how miserable these bosses make their lives, they wonder what it would be like if they could just…be erased. The thought is funny and euphoric but the once the alcohol takes over, they take it to the next level. What if they actually killed their bosses?

After some initial hesitation, they go marbles in and hire a “killing consultant” to help them plan the kills. As you can expect, nothing goes according to plan after that.

Horrible Bosses roped me in from the very first page. Above all other things, it’s just a funny script. I was laughing throughout the entire first act, especially at all the scenes with Dr. Julia (Aniston’s character), When she invites Dale’s fiancé in for free dental work, puts her under with anesthesia, and suggests they have sex on top of her sleeping body, I mean, I both couldn’t believe what I was reading and couldn’t stop laughing. This character will be one of the funniest characters you’ll watch all year. Mark my words.

The script also makes good on my “what I learned” section from Friday’s script, Flora Plum. Nearly every story improves when you add a villain! And Horrible Bosses has three! Let’s go back even further to my review of Shawshank Redemption. As I pointed out, one of the big reasons for that film’s success is just how much we hated the villains and wanted to see them go down. Horrible Bosses may be flying through different genre airspace, but boy do we want to see all these villainous bosses pay.

One of the things I noticed early on about Bosses is that despite liking it so much, the writers made the strange decision to end their first act on page 37. That’s the moment when the trio comes up with the idea to kill their bosses (the end of the first act is usually determined by when the central plot of the movie is initiated). I usually HATE when scripts wait this long to get to Act 2. Not because I care about some arbitrary page number, but waiting 37 pages to get to the point of your movie is usually going to bore your reader to death (a better place to end your act is somewhere in the 23-28 page range). So I was wondering why this didn’t bother me. Then I realized we were setting up three separate storylines (Dale’s, Kurt’s, Nick’s) instead of one, which requires more time. And the fact that we have multiple storylines and characters to jump back and forth between is what kept everything fresh and moving.

The script also handles its problems well. One mistake I see a lot of amateur comedy scriptwriters make is they never care about believability. They think, “Ehh, it’s a comedy. Who cares if it makes sense?” Now it’s true you get a little more leniency with comedies, but it doesn’t mean you can make up your own logic. One of the challenges in Horrible Bosses is you have to convince the audience that killing their bosses is the only option for these guys, because if it isn’t, then you don’t have a movie. So as a writer you need to ask yourself questions like, “Why can’t they just quit and get jobs somewhere else?” So the writers added a scene where an old friend of our trio pops in. He’s a guy who finished at the top of their class and graduated from Yale. Looking barely presentable, the friend tells them how he’s been out of a job for a year, that the economy has made it impossible to find work, and that he actually needs to borrow money from them. It’s a funny scene but it also slyly takes care of that problem. We know that leaving their jobs isn’t an option.

The only thing that didn’t work for me – and I was bummed to see that they had already cast the part cause I was hoping they’d get rid of it – was Cocksucker. Cocksucker is a guy they hire to help consult on the killings for them. True this script is pretty broad, but Cocksucker just moves it into Super-Silly territory, to the point where he feels like a different movie. Even worse, they hire him off Craig’s List. If I had a dime for every time someone hired somebody from Craig’s List in a comedy I read, I’d be able to buy Craig’s List. This script is about 10-15 pages too long, and it’s all because of Cocksocker, who disrupts the flow worse than Kanye West in the middle of an acceptance speech.

But this is a minor misstep in an otherwards very funny comedy.

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

What I learned: Always look to go against type with your characters. What’s the first image in your head if I say, “I hate my fucking boss.” Chances are you’re picturing a bloated white male in his early 40s who looks like an asshole, right? Well guess what? The runaway scene-stealer in Horrible Bosses is Dr. Julia, and the reason she’s the runaway scene-stealer is because you’ve never seen a sexually harassing female dentist boss before. It’s a totally unique character. So push yourself and steer away from cliche. Give us a character that surprises us.

Genre: Dark dramaPremise: A haunting erotic tale about a student who drifts into a unique form of prostitution.
About: Starring Emily Browning and currently in post production, this script landed somewhere in the middle of the 2008 Black List. The writer, Julia Leigh, is making her writing and her directing debut. Have to give her props for that. Not many people can swing that their first time out. This is the original draft that ended up on the Black List two years ago. But I’m betting it’s been reworked and fleshed out since then.
Writer: Julia Leigh
Details: 66 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Staying with yesterday’s theme, I have yet another script which laughs at widely accepted screenwriting practices. As you can see, it’s only 66 pages long! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. The writer, Julia Leigh, may have been writing this as sort of an extended scriptment, a la James Cameron, for herself. Since she directed the movie as well, a lot of the heavy literal description may have just been her preparing for the visual task of each scene. Either way, it appears this unique draft got out and gained a cult following.

The story follows a young woman named Lucy. We meet her as she’s subjecting herself to a trivial medical experiment. We understand right away that Lucy needs money. After working an additional waitress job that evening, she goes out for the night, does some coke with a strange woman, and sleeps with a man she just met. Apparently Lucy’s moral compass is a little out of whack. This young woman is detached from just about every emotion available.

Then one day she answers a mysterious ad in the paper, travels to a mansion in the countryside, and is offered a job by a “Madame” named Clara. Lucy will be a “waitress” at high end events. The pay will be $250 an hour. However, it’s understood that men may “choose” her. This is where things get interesting. If she’s chosen, she’ll be taken to a room and drugged so that she will have no memory of the events. The men may do anything they want to her as long as they don’t leave any marks, and as long as there’s no penetration. When she wakes up, she leaves and goes on with her everyday life.

Obviously, the story begins focusing on these events. We watch hesitantly as a nervous Lucy goes through the meeting process with the men, takes the “forget” pill, then wakes up the next day with no memory of anything. Like her, we don’t get to see what happens. We don’t get to see what these men do. This throws our curiosity into overdrive and is the big hook of the movie. In our minds, we’re thinking: “No penetration. No marks. What in God’s name are these men doing?” The possibilities are endless and the longer the story goes on, the more curious we get.

Of course, the story *doesn’t* go on for very long (it’s only 66 pages!), and the lack of an extensive middle act prevents an opportunity to get into why Lucy chose this bizarre lifestyle, how she’s become so absent and detached from life. We only get glimpses into these past windows, such as her friendship with a dying alcoholic, and it never quite feels like enough. We want more.

However, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Once she starts the “sleeping beauty” job, we’re entranced. We want to know what’s happening when those men come in and how it’s all going to fall apart. Because it has to fall apart, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re subjecting yourself to sleeping beauty fetishes, it can’t end well, right?

Despite the bizarre structure, the curious first act, and some strange characters whose point I’m still trying to figure out, Sleeping Beauty excels in two categories. The first is tone. The tone here is dark, dreary and unsettling. The way Lucy subjects herself to life’s worst situations is just a sad empty experience. But it’s consistent and it’s real and it works. It hits us hard enough that we want her to find happiness. We want her to find a way out of it. The second is the big one. This script’s central mystery – what happens during those sleeping beauty sessions – is so powerful as to make you forget every other misstep in the script. It’s just such a compelling question. What are these crazy men doing to her??

I know there are some people who are going to hate this script. One of my friends I recommended it to wrote back, “What the fuck was that?” But that’s its strength. It’s a weird polarizing story that doesn’t follow any sort of structure, and I’m betting that’s why it caught the imagination of enough people to vote it onto the Black List. Step into this one cautiously. It’s an odd but strangely entertaining journey.

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

What I learned: This does NOT negate the 13 Things that make a great script post. In my opinion, following that list still gives you the best chance at writing something great. I’m merely showing you that there are other ways to do it, even if these other ways are a huge gamble. If you can blow someone away with one aspect of your script (in this case – the mystery), you can make people forget about a lot of its weaknesses.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A man is forced to travel cross-country with his annoying brother in order to get to his wedding.
About: Disney picked this spec up back in 2009 for 250k. Kopelow and Seifert have been writing for TV for over a decade, having worked on shows ranging from “Kenan & Kel” to Oxygen’s “Campus Ladies.”
Writers: Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert
Details: 98 pages – May 16, 2008 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

The best “two guys stuck together traveling cross-country” movie is Dumb and Dumber by a mile. The script was actually a bit of a gamble when you think about it. Whenever you write about two people stuck together in any situation, the traditional approach is to make one guy the “crazy/dumb/weird” guy and the other guy the “straight man.” The extreme contrast between the two characters usually provides the most potential for comedy. The Farrelly brothers said screw that and just put two idiots together. Somehow, we got a classic.

The Most Annoying Man In The World goes back to the more traditional pairing of super extreme guy and super straight guy, and proves that it’s still a safe bet when done well. Stuart Pivnick IS the most annoying man in the world, and I have to give it to Kopelow and Seifert for giving us one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read in a comedy. Stuart is described as… “an enthusiastic, hyper, immature, naive, nosy, arbitrarily opinionated, completely un-self-aware, chronic complainer with no sense of personal space.” I love how they not only have fun with the description, but how it perfectly portrays Stuart in the process.

Across the country, finishing his bachelor party in Las Vegas, is Stuart’s brother, Alan. Alan is basically the opposite of everything Stuart is. He always wants to get everything right and boy has that become a problem with his wedding fast approaching. Everything seems to be going wrong and Alan is having to do damage control minute by minute from 2000 miles away.

Alan also hasn’t spoken to his brother in over a decade. Why? Well because he’s the most annoying man in the world! In fact, so relentlessly annoying is Stuart, that Alan’s created a ruse whereby he works at a remote research facility in the middle of the South Pole, one where he’s supposedly unable to communicate with anyone outside of his research operators.

But when Alan gets stuck at O’Hare and all of the day’s flights are canceled, he’s forced to call the only person he knows in town. Stuart.

Stuart, of course, is thrilled! He loves Alan more than anything. And when’s the next time the government is going to let his poor brother out of that research facility? So he welcomes Alan in with open arms, situating a second mattress inside his bedroom so they can both sleep together, then proceeds to read out loud and sing in his sleep all night so that Alan doesn’t get a wink of rest.

Despite being late the next morning, Stuart drives the exact speed limit to the airport, and this leads to a series of problems which result in Alan missing his flight. But Stuart comes up with the wonderful idea that they just drive to Philly together! With options dwindling, Alan agrees. Because Alan can’t tell Stuart *why* he needs to get to Philly so urgently (there’s no way he’s allowing Stuart to come to his wedding), it results in a logistical nightmare, as more and more wedding plans continue to fall apart, and Alan must manage them without letting Stuart on to what he’s up to.

The two take many detours, with Stuart repeatedly screwing everything up as much as humanly possible. He has a medical condition that forces him to eat at EXACT times, flipping out if he’s even a second late. He listens to movie scores in the car and makes up his own words to them (He’ll listen to E.T. and sing “E.T. likes reeses pieeeeces. He’s going home soooon.”) He likes to play games like “Guess a number between one and a million” where Alan picks a number and Stuart keeps guessing which number it is til he’s right. He truly is the most annoying man in the world. And for the most part, it’s really funny.

But like I always tell people who write comedies, you have to have the story and the emotional element up to the level of the comedy, and Kopelow and Seifert do a great job with that here. This is just as much about getting to Philadelphia without letting Stuart in on his wedding as it is about funny scenes. It’s just as much about two brothers reconnecting as it is about making an audience laugh.

I saw “Get Him To The Greek” this weekend and what baffled me was just how unimportant the story was. Nobody really gave a shit about GETTING TO THE DAMN GREEK! Outside of Jonah Hill half-heartedly reminding Aldous every few scenes, nobody, from the record label to the fans, gave a shit whether Aldous made it to his concert or not. I remember that at least in the original script, Aldous hadn’t played a concert in 10 years. So it felt like the concert actually meant something and was a special event. Here, he plays a fucking concert in the middle of the damn movie!!!, completely sucking dry any of the importance of the concert that’s supposed to be the whole damn point of the movie! – My point is, if we don’t feel the push of the story – If that isn’t completely dominating the narrative – then none of the comedy freaking matters. The Most Annoying Man In The World, much like The Hangover, feels like the characters’ plight actually matters and isn’t just a convenient destination for the movie to end.

My only real complaint here is that the script needs to axe some of the generic situations its characters find themselves in. At first, going to a carnival/theme park sounds funny, but in the end it has very little to do with their specific journey, and therefore feels more like a desperate laugh grab than a logical story sequence. In fact, I think all of the set piece scenes here could use a jolt, except for the car getting stuck on an ice sheet scene – which had me laughing for a good five minutes. I thought The Hangover did this well. In the initial draft of that script, one of the guys wakes up to find out he was at a gay bar the previous night. I couldn’t figure out why they ditched that in the film, but then I realized we’ve seen that before. We’ve never seen characters steal Mike Tyson’s tiger though. It just reminded me how you have to push yourself to come up with original sequences in comedies.

Overall, a solid comedy. And more importantly, one I think could make a great movie.

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

What I learned: Comedies, more than any other genre, allow you to tell your story in the title. 40 Year old Virgin. Knocked Up. This is obviously a huge advantage in an ADD Twitter-obsessed 5-second-version no-fat-allowed world. But don’t just sum up your movie in the title, make sure it’s still funny and/or jumpstarts the imagination for what kind of movie it could be. 40 Year Old Virgin did the best job of this (I immediately thought of all the hilarious scenes you could have of a 40 year old man trying to get laid for the first time) and the 2008 spec sale “I Wanna F— Your Sister” also did a wonderful job. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s still an art to it. “Two Guys, One Who’s Dumb, Roadtrip To Marriage,” may tell us your story, but doesn’t roll off the tongue. So if the opportunity’s there and you come up with something clever, do it. If not, specs like “Due Date” and “Cedar Rapids” are still selling. So don’t sweat it.

Everybody always says it. The one surefire way to break into the industry is to write a great script. “All you have to do is write a great script,” they say. “Ohhhh,” you reply, “That’s it? “That’s all I had to do all this time?? Was write a great script? Well why didn’t you say so? And here I was working on my 20th really bad script!” Bitter reactions aside, it’s true. Write a great script and you’re in.

What hasn’t been clarified is what “great” means. Well I got to thinking (yes, it does happen). Why don’t I post exactly what a “great script” is so there’s no more confusion? Now when we say, “Just write a great script,” people will actually have something to reference. This idea sounded brilliant when I first came up with it, but the more it marinated, the more I realized that if writing a great script could be explained in a 2500 word blog post, we’d probably all be millionaires.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t offer a list of 13 things I consistently see in great scripts. It may not be a step by step guide but at least it’s something. Yeah, I thought. That might work.

Now while I was hoping to provide an all-inclusive list of tips to best help you write a great script, the reality is I’ve probably forgotten a couple of things. So this is what I’m going to do. In the comments section, I want you to include what YOU think makes a great script. Over the course of today and tomorrow, I’ll update this post to include the best suggestions from you guys. Together, we’ll create *the* perfect go-to list when it comes to writing a great script. Isn’t this wonderful? Team Scriptshadow!

So here they are, in no particular order…

1) AN ORIGINAL AND EXCITING CONCEPT

This is the single most important choice you will make in writing your script because it will determine whether people actually read it or not. I used to hear agents say, “90% of the scripts out there fail before I’ve even opened them.” And it’s true. If you don’t have a compelling concept, nothing else matters. This slightly circumvents the “great” argument because nobody’s saying you can’t write a “great” script about a boy who goes home to take care of his ailing mother. But the reality is, nobody’s going to get excited about reading that script. Even the kind of people who WOULD want to read that script probably won’t because they know it’s a financial pitfall. It’ll take 5 years off their life and, in the end, play in 10 theaters and make 14,286 dollars. Now obviously an “exciting” idea is objective. But it’s fairly easy to figure out if you have something special. Pitch your idea to your 10 best friends. Regardless of what they *tell* you, read their reactions. Do their eyes and voices tell you they’re into it? If you get 10 polite smiles accompanied with a “Yeah, I like it,” it’s time to move on to the next idea. So give me your Hangovers. Give me your Sixth Senses. Shit, give me your Beavers. But don’t give me three people in a room discussing how their lives suck for 2 hours. And if you do, make it French. –

2) A MAIN CHARACTER WHO WANTS SOMETHING (AKA A “GOAL”)

Some people call it an “active protagonist.” I just call it a character who wants something. Ripley and the marines want to go in and wipe out the aliens in “Aliens.” Liam Neeson wants to find his daughter in “Taken.” The girl in “Paranormal Activity” wants to find out what’s haunting her house. The stronger your character wants to achieve his/her goal, the more compelling they’re going to be. Now I’ll be the first to admit that passive characters sometimes work. Neo is somewhat passive in The Matrix until the end. And, of course, Dustin Hoffman is the most famous passive character of all time in The Graduate. But these characters are tricky to write and require a skill set that takes years to master. In the end, they’re too dangerous to mess around with. Stick with a character who wants something.

3) A MAIN CHARACTER WE WANT TO ROOT FOR

This is one of the more hotly debated topics in screenwriting because a character we “root for” is usually defined as being “likable,” and there are a whole lot of screenwriters out there who would rather bake their craniums in a pizza oven than, gasp, make their protagonist “likable.” I got good news. Your hero doesn’t have to be “likeable” for your script to work. But you DO have to give us a character we want to root for, someone we’re eager to see succeed. He *can* be likable, such as Steve Carrel’s character in “40 Year Old Virgin.” He can be defiant, like Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke.” But he has to have some quality in him that makes us want to root for him. If your character is mopey, whiney, and an asshole, chances are we’re not going to want to root for that guy.

4) GET TO YOUR STORY QUICKLY!

Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man. As far as amateur screenplay mistakes go, this is easily one of the Top 3. Even after I explain, in detail, what the mistake is, writers continue to do it. So I’m going to try and make this clear. Are you ready? “Your story is moving a lot slower than you, the writer, believe it is.” For that reason, speed it the fuck up! In other words, that ten page sequence which contains 3 separate scenes, each pointing out in its own unique way that your hero is irresponsible? Well we figured it out after the first scene. You don’t need to waste 7 more pages telling us again…and again. Remember, readers use the first 30 pages to gauge how capable a writer is. And the main thing they’re judging is how quickly and efficiently you set up your story. In The Hangover, I think they wake up from their crazy night somewhere around page 20. You don’t want it to be any later than page 25 before we know what it is your character is after (see #2).

5) STAY UNDER 110 PAGES

This is a close cousin to number 2 and a huge point of contention between writers as well. But let’s move beyond my usual argument, which is that a 120 page script is going to inspire rage from a tired reader, and discuss the actual effects of a 110 page screenplay on your story. Keeping your script under 110 pages FORCES YOU TO CUT OUT ALL THE SHIT. That funny scene you like that has nothing to do with the story? You don’t need it. The fifth chase scene at the end of the second act? You don’t need it. Those 2 extra scenes I just mentioned above that tell us the exact same information we already know about your main character? You don’t need them. I know this may be hard to believe. But not everything you write is brilliant, or even necessary for that matter. Cutting your script down to 110 pages forces you to make tough decisions about what really matters. By making those cuts, you eliminate all the fat, and your script reads more like a “best of” than an “all of.” As for some of those famous names who like to pack on the extra pages, I’ll tell you what. For every script you sell or movie you make, you’re allowed 5 extra pages to play with, as your success indicates you now know what to do with those pages. Until then, keep it under 110. And bonus points if you keep it under 100.

6) CONFLICT

Does everyone in your script get along? Is the outside world kind to your characters? Do your characters skip through your story with nary a worry? Yeah, then your script has no conflict. I could write a whole book on conflict but here’s one of the easiest ways to create it. Have one character want something and another character want something else. Put them in a room together and, voila, you have conflict. If your characters DO happen to be good friends, or lovers, or married, or infatuated with each other, that’s fine, but then there better be some outside conflict weighing on them (Romeo and Juliet anyone?). Let me give you the best example of the difference between how conflict and no conflict affect a movie. Remember The Matrix? How Trinity wanted Neo but she couldn’t have him yet? Remember the tension between the two? How we wanted them to be together? How we could actually feel their desire behind every conversation? The conflict there was that the two couldn’t be together. Now look at The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Trinity and Neo are together. They’re always happy. And they’re always F’ING BORING AS HELL! The conflict is gone and therefore so is our interest. If your story isn’t packed with conflict, you don’t have a story.

7) OBSTACLES

Your script should have plenty of obstacles your main character encounters in pursuit of his goal. A big issue I see in a lot of bad scripts is that the main character’s road is too easy. The more obstacles you throw at your hero, the more interesting a script tends to be, because that’s why we come to the movies in the first place, to see how our hero heroically overcomes the problems he’s presented. He can’t be heroic if he doesn’t run into anything that tests his heroism. Go watch any of the Bourne movies to see how obstacles are consistently thrown at a character. And a nice side effect? Each obstacle creates conflict!

8) SURPRISE

A great script continually surprises you. Even if the story seems familiar, the characters’ actions and the twists and turns are consistently different from what we expected. The most boring scripts I read are ones where I have a good sense of what’s going to happen for the next 5 or 6 scenes. Remember, readers have read everrryyyyyything. So you really have to be proactive and outthink them to keep them on their toes. The Matrix is a great example of a script that continually surprises you. The first time you watched that movie (or read that script) you rarely had any idea where the story was going.

9) A TICKING TIME BOMB

Ticking time bombs can get a bad rap because they have such an artificial quality to them, but oh how important they are. What’s so great about them? They add * immediacy* to your story. If a character doesn’t have to achieve his goals right now, if he can achieve them next week or next year, then the goal really isn’t that important, is it? We want to watch a character that has to achieve his goal RIGHT NOW or else he loses everything. Sometimes ticking time bombs are clear as day (Hangover: They need to find Doug by noon on Saturday to get him back in time for his wedding), sometimes they’re more nuanced (Star Wars Luke needs to get the details of that battle station to the Rebel Alliance before they find and destroy the planet), but they’re there. If you don’t have a ticking time bomb in your script, you better have a damn good reason why.

10) STAKES

If your character achieves his ultimate goal, there needs to be a great reward. If your character fails to achieve his ultimate goal, there needs to be huge consequences. The best use of stakes is usually when a character’s situation is all or nothing. Rocky’s never going to get another shot at fighting the heavyweight champion of the world. This is it. Those stakes are damn high. If Wikus doesn’t get Christopher up to the mothership in District 9, he’s going to turn into a fucking alien. Those stakes are damn high. If all a character loses by not achieving his goal is a couple of days out of his life, that’s not very exciting, is it? And that’s because the stakes are too low.

11) HEART

We need to emotionally connect with your characters on some level for us to want to follow them for 110 minutes (NOT 120!). The best way to do this is to give your character a flaw, introduce a journey that tests that flaw, and then have him transform into a better person over the course of that journey. This is also known as having your character “arc.” When characters learn to become better people, it connects with an audience because it makes them believe that they can also change their flaws and become better people. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogan is a grade-A fuck-up, the most irresponsible person on the planet. So the journey forces him to face that head on, and learn to become responsible (so he can be a parent). You always want a little bit of heart in your script, whether it’s a drama, a comedy, or even horror.

12) A GREAT ENDING

Remember, your ending is what the reader leaves with. It is the last image they remember when they close your script. So it better leave a lasting impression. This is why specs like The Sixth Sense sell for 2 million bucks. If you go back into that script, there are actually quite a few slow areas. But you don’t remember them because the ending rocked. And I’m not saying you have to add a twist to every script you write. But make sure the ending satisfies us in some way, because if you leave us with a flat generic finale, we ain’t going to be texting our buddies saying, “Holy shit! You have to read this script right now!”

13) THE X-FACTOR

This last tip is the scariest of them all because it’s the one you have the least control over. It’s called the X-Factor. It is the unexplainable edge that great scripts have. Maybe it’s talent. Maybe the variables of your story came together in just the right way. Maybe you tap into the collective unconscious. A great script unfortunately has something unexplainable about it, and unfortunately, some of that comes down to luck. You could nail every single tip I’ve listed above and still have a script that’s missing something. The only advice I can give you to swing the dreaded X Factor in your favor is to write something you’re passionate about. Even if you’re writing Armageddon 2, create a character who’s going through the same trials and tribulations you are in life. You’ll then be able to connect with the character and, in turn, infuse your script with passion. Probably the best example of the X-factor’s influence on a script is American Beauty. A lot of people didn’t understand why they liked American Beauty. They just did. The Brigands of Rattleborge is another example. It just seeps into you for reasons unknown. I sometimes spend hours thinking about the X-Factor. How to quantify it. It’s the Holy Grail of screenwriting. Figure it out and you hold the key to writing great scripts for the rest of your life.

So there you have it. I’ve just given you the 13 keys to writing a great script. Now some of you have probably already come up with examples of great scripts that don’t contain these “rules.” And it’s true. Different stories have different requirements. So not every great script is going to contain all 13 of these elements. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a great script that doesn’t nail at least 10 of them. So now I’ll leave it up to you. What attributes do you consistently see in great scripts?

P.S. – Tomorrow I’ll post a review for a recent spec sale which you can read and break down to see if it has all 13 of these elements. So make sure to sign up for my Facebook Page or my Twitter so you’re updated when the post goes up. If I have to take the script link down, you’ll miss out.

For the month of May, Scriptshadow will be foregoing its traditional reviewing to instead review scripts from you, the readers of the site. To find out more about how the month lines up, go back and read the original post here. Last week, we allowed any writers to send in their script for review. This week, we’re raising the bar and reviewing repped writers only. The caveat is that they cannot have a sale to their name. The idea here is to give aspiring writers an idea of the quality of writing it takes to have a professional manager or agent take an interest in your work. Monday, Roger reviewed the Western, “Quicker Than The Eye.” Tuesday, I reviewed the 80s’esque comedy “Duty.” Yesterday, I reviewed the JFK thriller “The Shadow Before.” And today I’m reviewing another thriller called “Skin.”

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A New Orleans tax lawyer finds himself mixed up in the world of rare animal smuggling after investigating the death of a homeless man with the same name as him.
About: Our 4th script for Repped Week. Brannstrom is managed by The Radmin Company.
Writer: Johan Brännström
Details: 104 pages

Of all the scripts I’ve read these past couple of weeks, this one has the most potential, and I’ll tell you why. The majority of thrillers I read these days are about some guy from the future running around trying to escape the bad guys. Or a CIA agent being swindled by the government and/or some secret organization. And I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m reviewing a script next week that falls under that category. But I think the thriller genre has become stale lately, and this trend needs to change. “Skin” is the first thriller I’ve read in awhile that really tries to approach the genre from a different angle. It’s about a tax attorney wrapped up in an exotic animal scam. That’s about as far away from the future and the government as you can get.

And for about 55 pages, everything here was clicking. The setup was intriguing, the twists were original, the subject matter was fresh. The problem “Skin” runs into is that it’s playing in a sandbox as rare as the animals it dramatizes. There aren’t a lot of “zoological thrillers” out there to use as reference points if your plot starts running amok. And, unfortunately, for the second half of this screenplay, there’s a lot of “amok” running around. And “Skin” never quite recovers from it.

Still, there’s something really neat about this idea. It’s just “out there” enough to be different but not so “out there” that it alienates you. The closest movie I can think of is the underappreciated “The Freshman” with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando. But that was a comedy. So while I think Brannstrom runs out of rope here, it sure was a fun rope to climb on.

Robert Deville is a tax lawyer in a still devastated New Orleans. As a result, his clientele can be quite diverse. “Sumo” Suma is his latest defendant, a trader in the lucrative rare animal business. He’s currently trying to get a tax write-off on an extremely rare yellow turtle, but the judge doesn’t think the turtle exists.

So off Robert goes to get proof of this turtle at a local zoo, when he runs into a strange non-talking homeless man, who, after a quick “conversation,” hands the missing turtle over to Robert. Hmm, that was weird. Why would this man have the turtle? And who is he? Before Robert can get answers, the homeless man shoots off.

Later the next day, Robert finds out that the homeless man committed suicide. And not only that. But the man had the same name as him! Whoa, this is getting weirder by the second. Naturally curious, Robert decides to do a little digging, and finds out that this man hasn’t always been homeless, and may have been employed as recently as a couple of weeks ago. His curiosity turns out to be a devastating mistake though, as he comes home later that day to find his wife brutally murdered.

Exacerbating the problem, his wife’s father, a powerful judge, believes that Robert is the killer, and tells all the policeman in town to shoot first and ask questions later. Within 24 hours, Robert’s on the run with no one to turn to. And it’s not lost on us that Robert’s situation is starting to look a lot like that other homeless guy, the one with the same name. What’s going on here? And what does the trading of all these rare animals have to do with it? Robert better find out soon. Or he could be the next person who “committed suicide.”

There’s a lot of good in this script, and most of it comes from how the mystery is set up. Every twist adds more pieces to the puzzle, and we’re just dying to figure out how they all fit together. Brannstrom’s biggest strength though, is how he creates tension in his chase scenes. He makes sure his hero is in a bad situation. Then he makes it worse for them. And worse. And worse. There’s a scene in a Bingo parlor for example, where Robert’s pretending to be one of the players, and the cops come in looking for him, and just one thing after another goes wrong (i.e. the person playing in front of him turns around and recognizes him), so it was really fun watching Robert continue to escape these impossible to escape situations. In general, all the chase stuff was top notch.

Where this story falls apart though, is when Robert meets the wife of the homeless man who was murdered. From their very first meeting, something felt off. Robert has never met this person before, yet just seconds after meeting her tells her her husband is dead. Her reaction? Nothing. She doesn’t cry or get upset or anyting. But that’s not what bothered me. Because maybe she hasn’t seen her husband in a couple of years, or maybe they’ve grown apart, or whatever. What bothered me was that Robert just assumed he could hit her with this and start asking questions about who he was. The scene just had no truth to it.

If you’re going to tell someone their husband is dead, you’re going to do it very carefully. And you’re definitely not hopscotching into the details of his life after a 15 second cool down period. You’re going to ask if they need to sit down. If they need a minute. And odds are, they’re going to need a lot of minutes before they can say anything. So that one single scene really changed the way I saw the script. Because up until that point, people were acting realistically. Now I started to wonder if “Skin” was falling into that tragic trap, where a writer is making choices solely because it’s convenient for the plot.

The scene then unexpectedly becomes a key turning point in a lot of ways, because the wife then becomes a central character, and eventually a love interest. Introducing a key character halfway into the script is always a risky proposition, but introducing the main romantic interest halfway into the script is almost impossible. This combination of a late-arriving character, a tough-to-buy love interest, and circumstances that make it nearly impossible to believe these two would be together, really hurt the second act. In short, it feels like someone told Brannstrom “You need a love interest here,” and he complied with them, even though he never truly bought into it.

Another thing I was hoping for was that the plot would hinge more on the rare animal element. That’s what makes the script different. That’s the worm that hooks us. So when the animals become more Beyonce’s background singers than Beyonce, I was disappointed. They’re actually a big McGuffin when you think about it. This is really about a group of back alley thugs orchestrating run of the mill scams. The animals could easily be substituted for anything: drugs, weapons, pirated DVDs, what have you. My point is, you don’t want to hint at an exotic mystery thriller, only to finish the story with something we’ve seen a million times before. You want to deliver on the promise of the premise.

But as I mentioned earlier, this script has a lot of upside. I would just keep going at this thing until I got it right. A fun read. Just gets way too messy in the second half.

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

What I learned: I’ve actually encountered this situation a lot lately, so I think it’s relevant enough to address in a “what I learned” section. Here’s the deal: It’s really hard to kill off your hero’s spouse in a movie, then try to give them a romantic interest later on. Think about The Fugitive. What if they would’ve added a love interest for Harrison Ford’s character? How wrong does that sound? Now there are circumstances where it can be done. For example, in Braveheart they do it, and it works because years have passed since his wife’s death. It can also work if a couple is having serious problems in their marriage, then the wife dies. Since we know the hero had already emotionally moved on, we buy into him hooking up with another woman. But if two people love each other, and one of them dies, and your script doesn’t have any large time jumps, it’s really hard to buy into that person falling for someone else. That’s why I always say, kill that person off before the movie starts if you can. That way you have romantic reign in the story.