Genre: TV Pilot (Drama)
Premise: After tragedy sends a local judge into a spiritual awakening, he starts making judgements based on faith over fact.
About: Amazon is tired of being left out of the TV discussion so they’ve decided to come hard to the table. “Hand of God” will star everyone’s favorite character actor, Ron Perlman, and have super-helmer Mark Forster (World War Z, Quantum of Solace) directing the pilot. The cool thing about these big TV pilots is that they’re written by “nobodies,” so every time we read one, we get to experience a new voice. “Hand of God” was written by Ben Watkins, whose only work up to this point has been on the show, Burn Notice. Recently, Ben was asked what the most difficult challenge was about this business.  He answered, “This business is built on one ridiculous challenge after another. In my opinion, there’s only one condition that is fatal – losing faith in yourself.”
Writer: Ben Watkins
Details: 68 pages

I’m not going to mince any words here. I’m pissed this is going to Amazon. Because if it’s on Amazon, no one’s going to see it. And this is too good of a show (or pilot) not to be seen. I mean honestly, how do you watch a show on Amazon? I go to Amazon and I see 10 billion different links. I’m lucky if I can find the electronics section.

I get that Amazon wants to rule the world but the reason Netflix is so dominant in this space is that you know what it is when you go to it. I want to watch something. Click. Netflix. With Amazon, you have to jump through 18 dozen hoops. Combined with the fact that most people don’t know that Amazon even offers TV shows, and I’m not sure how Hand of God is going to get any attention.

It won’t always be like this. I can see a future (maybe 10 years from now) where TV and cable are dead. Everything will be on demand and a la cart via services like Netflix and Amazon. But we’re not there yet. Which means Hand of God might go down as the best show nobody’s ever seen.

We find 50-something Judge, Pernell Nathaniel Harris, in a park, naked, speaking in tongues. Nobody’s seen him for days and this is how he decides to reintroduce himself. Pernell has a pretty good excuse, though. His son shot himself a few days ago and is brain dead on life support.

As the mayor, attorney general and police chief all try to delicately bring Pernell back to the land of the sane, they realize this religious awakening he’s had isn’t going away. Pernell has pledged his loyalty to a con-artist wacko priest who claims to have a direct line to God – to the tune of a 50 thousand dollar endorsement check.

In the meantime, we learn that the reason Pernell’s son tried to off himself is because seven months ago, he was forced to watch his wife get raped. Although he tried his hardest, he couldn’t live with the fact that he didn’t do more to try and stop it, so a bullet to the cranium seemed like a pleasant way out. Pernell is now on a mission to find the rapist and make him pay for what he did to his step-daughter and son.

The problem is, Pernell’s kind of crazy now. And instead of listening to logic, he’s listening to “God.” Voices and signs have taken precedence over testimony and facts. So when a religious sign points to a random member of the police department as the rapist, the authorities have to stop Pernell from taking the man down. But it’s too late for that. If Pernell has his way, he’s going to make sure Officer Rapist meets his maker, whether he’s proven guilty or not.

Wow.

I think this is my favorite pilot I’ve ever read. Tyrant was good, but this is REALLY good. Speaking of Tyrant, I don’t know what happened to that show. They took a gritty show about 3rd World dictators and tried to turn it into an 8 o’clock NBC family drama.  Parenthood 2. Ugh, I’m still smarting from that. But Hand of God is getting me back on track. For a lot of reasons.

First of all, Watkins got the NUMBER ONE thing right when writing a pilot. He wrote a great meaty main character! How ironic is it that a man whose job is based on listening to facts, is making his decisions based purely on faith? Add in a healthy dose of crazy, the fact that he’ll hire hit men to get the job done, and you’ve planted the seeds for one hell of a harvest.

But as we know, every harvest needs rain. And Hand of God’s got plenty of that too.

The opening 10 pages are crucial for ANY script, pilot or feature. And they usually fall into three categories.

1) Nothing interesting happens in the first ten pages at all; I’m miserable that I have to spend the next 2 hours with this thing.
2) One or two interesting things happen in the first 10 pages, enough to pique my interest. I read on with desperate hope.
3) Every single one of the first ten pages is good, in which case, I know the script’s going to be awesome.

Number 3 is a rarity but that’s where Hand of God falls. We start off with this bizarre mystery. A man is naked in a park speaking tongues to the sky. At the end of the scene, we find out he’s a judge. Hmm, how did he get here, we ask? We’re intrigued. We then move to a hospital where a devastated beautiful woman tries to keep him from seeing someone named “PJ?” Who’s PJ.  Ahh!  We learn he’s Pernell’s son. And he’s in a coma. Why is he in a coma?? What happened? I need to know more!

In other words, there’s a lot going on in the first 10!  Usually, amateurs will bumble along in their first 10 pages setting up the characters well, but in boring ways.  They don’t have their heroes in parks, naked, speaking in tongues.

I also thought the whole “botched sucide” storyline was a great choice, and I’ll tell you why. 99 out of 100 writers, in order to motivate our hero, would’ve given Pernell a daughter and killed her off.  Someone raped and killed her, now he’s out for justice. It would’ve worked, but it WOULD’VE BEEN BORING. Because we’ve fucking seen it before!  The quickest way to disappoint a reader is to open the gates to The Kingdom of Safe and Predictable Choices.

The “watched rape/botched suicide” setup poses a more interesting set of questions. There’s not only a rapist on the loose we need to find. But there’s also the question of whether PJ’s wife is going to pull the plug on Pernell’s son or not. A big deal because Pernell, who’s riding dirty on Miracle Lane, now believes PJ will live. But he doesn’t have a say in this decision.  And since she doesn’t want to see her husband suffer anymore, she calls to pull the plug.  Interesting choices always lead to more interesting choices.  Boring choices lead to… well, you get what I’m saying.

Then there were little things that shined like characters playing against the obvious in a scene. When Pernell’s wife goes to threaten Reverend Paul to stay away from her husband, she plays the whole scene calmly and with a smile.  Her threats were veiled and implied. A lesser writer would’ve written this more on-the-nose, with the wife coming in and angrily warning Paul to “stay away from my husband!”

We even get some classic urgency (ticking time bomb style) to the pilot, with Pernell’s daughter moving quickly to pull the plug on her husband (in two days!). Pernell’s got to figure out a way to keep him alive, as he believes God will perform that miracle.  But he can’t perform a miracle once the plug is pulled.

But what tipped this into the impressive category was the ending. The ending is almost always responsible for whether a script makes the “impressive” list. You can kick ass for 60 pages, but if you suck for the last five, nobody cares. Hand of God gets really good when one of Pernell’s religious visions points the noose at a random man who couldn’t possibly have committed the crime.

Not only are we wondering if he’s going to kill this man, vigilante style, but we’re fascinated by the question of: What if he’s right?  I mean what if this totally random man really did commit the crime?  What does that mean moving forward?  Could Pernell truly be channeling God?

This was a wonderful pilot. Now, if only Amazon can figure out how to show it to people. That would be great! Oh, and since Amazon Studios is all about posting and getting feedback of their projects, I’m including a link to the script. Enjoy!

Screenplay link: Hand of God

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

What I learned: Never set foot in The Kingdom of Safe and Predictable Choices. It’s a land littered with 7-11s, McDonald’s and Supercuts. It’s comfortable. But it’s never inspiring. Aim instead for Paris in spring time.

Genre: Crime/Comedy
Premise: When the female TV star for a popular children’s show commits suicide, two low-life investigators are hired to look into claims that a dead-ringer for the actress has been seen around town.
About: One of the biggest specs out there right now, “The Nice Guys” has actually been around for over a decade, originally written in 2003. But the project has been jolted back to life, with both Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling preliminarily attached. Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3) co-wrote the script with Anthony Bagarozzi, who, despite this script being a decade old, is just now seeing his career blow up. He has four projects in various stages of development as a writer or director, including Doc Savage. Important to note: the script I’m reviewing today is the original draft written back in 2003.
Writers: Anthony Bagarozzi & Shane Black
Details: 135 pages (April 14, 2003)

Isn’t Hollywood great? No matter how deep into obscurity you sink, the town will always give you another chance. Shane Black was on one of the biggest screenwriting streaks in history in the 90s, selling every spec that spat out of his printer for a minimum of 1.3 trillion dollars. But then the printer carton burst on stylistic over-the-top dialogue-heavy specs and, Black found himself no longer able to heat his apartment with a fire full of hundred dollar bills.

Oh sure, Black probably got plenty of money in those “lean years” doing rewrites. But once you’ve tasted the frosting at the top of Hollywood’s cake, you never want to go back to the frozen Sara Lee stuff again. So Black did something smart. Instead of waiting for Hollywood to re-recognize his genius again, he directed his own script, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And for a brief moment, Black was back.

The flick didn’t make enough money to catapult him back to the top but it just so happened to get him a strong relationship with Robert Downey Jr., who became a super star when he starred in the surprise hit, Iron Man, a few years later.

Fast forward another few years, and guess who was now calling to ask Shane to direct the newest entry in the franchise?

What’s funny about all this is that a script Black wrote all the way back in 2003, which he couldn’t get the local community theater director to read, was now the hottest script in town. Does Black’s return celebrity make this script better than it once was? Or was the script overlooked in the first place? Let’s find out.

Suzy Shoemaker is the adorable 20-something star of one of those kids shows that every 4 year old in the universe loves. She’s also dead. Or, she kills herself at the beginning of the movie after a private sex tape surfaces of her.

Cut to Jackson Healy, a “private enforcer” of sorts, the adult version of a bully-for-hire, who thin-timidates anybody who messes with you, for the right price of course.

If Healy’s low-rent, Holland March is a 20 dollar a month storage unit. The 40-something private investigator makes most of his money by taking advantage of the Alzheimer’s crowd. Say a mentally absent old woman needs to find her husband (who’s, of course, dead). Holland has no problem taking the dough and “looking for him.”

These two winners are forced to team up and find “Alice,” a mysterious lookalike for the dead Suzy Shoemaker, and a semi-professional porn actress. Is it a coincidence that Suzy killed herself over a porn tape when there’s someone who looks exactly like her that does porn? That’s what these two need to find out.

Oh, and Suzy Shoemaker also happens to be the daughter of presidential hopeful David Shoemaker. All of a sudden, these suspicion crumbs are starting to look like they may belong to a freshly baked conspiracy scone.

To throw just one more wrench into this equation, March’s 14 year old overly-inquisitive daughter, Holly, wants to help. March knows this is a bad idea, but there are so many hip young folks involved in this mystery, that having a teenager around to do some undercover snooping may end up paying off.

Of course, you know if a 14 year old girl is getting involved in a case with dead people, that at some point said 14 year old girl is going to be in danger. So March and Healy aren’t just going to have to solve this case. They’re going to have to keep Holly safe, something that becomes harder and harder to do the deeper this mystery gets.  And in case you’re wondering, it gets real deep!

Black (along with co-writer Bagarozzi) does what he does best. He puts a couple of flawed ill-matched individuals on a case together and allows them to equal-parts succeed and stumble their way to success. It’s what made Black one of the most successful screenplay writers ever.

But as we all know, this is one well-worn genre.  The audience has seen it all.  Therefore, if you want to succeed, you have to do more than follow a formula. And The Nice Guys separates itself from its competition in a couple of ways.

First off, this is Shane Black. He’s so fucking good at writing this kind of movie, that he stands out from everyone else just by showing up. Everything from the action to the dialogue is a level above. It’s funnier. It’s smarter. It’s better. Every other page we get a line like, “Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate.” Or, “If you had me ‘figured,’ jagoff, you’d start running – and you wouldn’t stop ‘til all the signs were in Spanish.”

Then there were the descriptions: “The Counter Girl is a punkish looking freak with pierced everything.”

We even get fun little moments that your average writer never thinks of. For example, you ever wonder where those stray bullets go? In a scene where Healy’s struggling to get away from the bad guys, he barely avoids a shot to the head. Instead of that being the end of it, we watch the bullet go out the window, across the street, and strike an unsuspecting woman at her window in the shoulder. She yelps and falls down out of frame. It was hilarious.

But just being the best at a genre isn’t enough. You should always be pushing yourself, looking for little angles to make your story different from any other “buddy cop” flick out there. Here, Black and Bagarozzi do this with Holly, March’s 14 year old daughter. I mean how many buddy cop movies have you seen where the cops are forced to lug a 14 year old girl around? Not many.

And it’s not just for show. You see, when you add an unknown element to a known situation, you get a new dynamic. Your cop duo can’t just hurl predictable insults at each other for 90 minutes. Healy has to be careful with what he says, since Holly’s always around. March has to stop every once in awhile and figure out how to keep Holly out of harm’s way.

There are even situations where March needs his daughter to get the job done (fitting in with a younger crowd to infiltrate a party). So his daughter temporarily becomes the most valuable commodity of the three, giving her the power, and shifting the dynamic, once again, to something that feels unfamiliar. Which is good! The last thing you want in a buddy-cop movie is brain-numbing familiarity.

Here’s the thing with The Nice Guys, though. It has a lot of moving parts. It’s basically like “The Other Guys,” but with a brain. And while that’s certainly nice (yay for movies that don’t pander!), it feels like it needs a simplicity pass. I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, why Suzy Shoemaker’s aunt hired March to find Alice (the Suzy lookalike) in the first place. Did she think Alice was her niece? Did she just want to see a woman who looked like her niece? I don’t know.

And I know that information is in the script somewhere.  But I had to process so much information, it slipped by me.  This happens a lot. I’ll confusedly ask a writer, “Why did Ace want to double-cross Mary if he was in love with her?” And the writer, huffing and puffing, will animatedly respond with, “Did you even read the script!? The answer is on page 55 line 12. She gives him the copy of The Grapes of Wrath, which, if you remember, he read to her on page 12 in their childhood flashback, and she said, if you ever see this book again, it means I can never be with you.” Um, right.

The point is, the more complicated a plot is, the more hand-holding the reader needs. ESPECIALLY in the early-going, since that’s when the most new information is being thrown at the reader. Later, when we have all the names and relationships down, we can handle those details.  But early on, it can be tough. So we need your help.

The only other issue I had is that it didn’t feel like there was enough conflict between Healy and March. This is always a sticky issue when you write a buddy-cop flick because, on the one hand, you don’t want to write another clichéd: two “cops” hate each other for no other reason than it leads to lots of conflict-fueled arguments!

But if you go away from this cliché, you run the risk of the relationship being bland. I mean sure, you can claim, “I didn’t do the cliché thing!  Points for me!” But was it really worth it if we’re now bored by an uninspired relationship?  I still haven’t figured out this balance.  How does one write a genre where the very core rules of the genre are cliche, and then not make it cliche (I’d love to hear thoughts on this in the comments)?

Indeed, I felt like there was something left on the table between Healy and March. While they were definitely different characters, the longer the script went on, the more similar they felt. Maybe that’s because Black and Bagarozzi were looking to avoid the “clashing personalities” cliché. Maybe not. I don’t know. But I hope in subsequent drafts, they address it.

Anyway, regardless of its issues, The Nice Guys was a fun little script. Definitely worth reading. I mean, how can you say no to the newest/oldest Shane Black joint?

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

What I learned: Dialogue set ups and payoffs. Shane Black loves setups and payoffs. But he doesn’t only do it with his action. He’ll use the device in dialogue as well. This is a great way to get an easy laugh. For example, when March is forced to take Holly to a party to help them find Alice, they first walk in and see a bunch of sketchy characters. “Dad, there’s like, whores here and stuff.” March responds with, “Holly, how many times have I told you..? Don’t say, “and stuff.” Just say, “There are whores here.” Later on, Holly finds herself in a room watching porn with an overtly sexual redhead. Holly, working for her dad, casually asks the redhead if she’s seen Alice. “What’d she look like?” the redhead replies. “Well,” Holly says, “Sorta like that woman on TV, that kid’s show chick who died—“ “The one who just offed herself? That’s rad! She’s all, “remember kids, politeness counts,” meanwhile she’s like, doing anal and stuff.” Holly capitalizes on this: “Don’t say, “and stuff” – just say, “She’s doing anal.”

What I learned 2: What I’m about to tell you may be the most important advice you ever hear. Like, EVER, and stuff. I’m serious. Tape this to your wall. Tattoo it on your forehead. Ready? Never wait for this town (or for that matter, the world) to give you anything. If you want something, you will never have it unless you GO OUT AND GET IT. Black was in a downward slope in his career.  If he would’ve kept writing scripts in his multi-million dollar basement, hoping for success again, I’m not sure we’d be hearing Black’s name today.  Instead, he went out and MADE A MOVIE HIMSELF, which led to a relationship that would later turn him into one of the hottest directors in town. If I say it once, I’ll say it a thousand times: NEVER WAIT FOR ANYTHING.  GO OUT AND GET IT.

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: TV Pilot (Crime Drama)
Premise (from writer): An ambitious junkie and his severely traumatized war veteran sister, struggle with working for their manipulative crime boss father’s drug trafficking business.
Why You Should Read (from writer): The Sopranos meets Breaking Bad…. Could the bar be set any higher? Back in February when I uploaded Shrapnel to the Black List, it was ranked no. 2 overall on the monthly list. At its core, Shrapnel is about a brother and sister fighting their true identities trying to be people that they’re not in order to please those around them. Anyway, with the main goal of becoming a TV writer, the purpose of Shrapnel is to serve as a convincing staffing sample for similar genre/tone shows. It is not the most high concept of ideas and as a consequence I don’t expect to become the next Mickey Fisher with this project. I simply wrote the show that I want to watch. But concepts aside, the reason why we tune into our favourite shows each week is because of the characters, and hopefully the dried blood of my passion for the characters/story world is evident on the page.
Writer: Cameron Pattison
Details: 70 pages

Iwan Rheon for Tommy?

Meth.

Need I say more?

It’s everywhere.

Who wouldn’t want to write about meth after watching one of the greatest shows in television history?

Bitch.

Not only that, but one of the best internet time wasters in the world is looking at those “Faces of Meth” sites. You see the user before meth and then after meth, and let me tell you. It’s the most entertainment you can have on your own outside of, well, doing meth!

But I got bad news for meth lovers. You don’t want to write about meth. Ever since Breaking Bad, half the pilots out there cover meth-dealing, heroin-dealing, or some other drug dealing. That’s the problem with chasing trends. You never know if you’re going to snatch onto the trend’s tail, or fall down on your face and watch it float away.

I’d go so far as to say Meth/Drug centered pilots are the pilot version of zombie specs. Everyone’s got one. And when everyone’s got one, there are only two ways to stand out. You have to find a unique angle that hasn’t been done before (meth addicted talking unicorns?) or you have to be an amazing writer who writes the shit out of your pilot. Let’s hope Cameron beats the odds and nails one of the two.

Shrapnel follows a rather informal narrative, jumping back and forth between different sets of characters in different situations. Our main character is Tommy Harris, a 20-something young man who lives in a small town where everyone’s struggling to pay the rent. The best way to keep a roof over your head in these parts is to… you got it… sell meth!

Tommy doesn’t want to do that. He’s got a nice thing going with his fiancé, Sarah, and despite his Drug Kingpin father, Vincent, pushing him to commit to the family meth business, you get the sense that Tommy wants to live an honest life.

Meanwhile we meet Rene, a 30-something lesbian military vet who’s in an even tougher situation than Tommy. She’s got a wife, Dani, and the two are trying to raise their 4 year-old son, Luke, despite Dani’s overbearing mother trying to gain custody of the child.

The two storylines each have their own twists. In a flash-forward at the beginning of the pilot, we see that Tommy’s killed Sarah for “the family.” We then jump back to a week earlier to figure out what led to this.

Rene and Dani are so broke they’re forced to live in a cheap hotel. It gets so bad that Rene pawns their wedding ring to pay for their room. But when Dani spots her wife ringless, she gets upset, so Rene goes about trying to get the ring back, eventually connecting with an old war buddy to steal it. As you’d expect, that doesn’t go well. At all.

There are other players involved. A young naïve kid, Chris, is working for Vincent. When he does something wrong, Vincent has him make up for it in the worst of ways. Then there’s a highway massacre where another meth-connected family mows down a group of cops.

There’s also the degenerate Mickey, Vince’s right-hand man, a soul so devoid of a moral compass, he’d probably skin a man alive if Vincent told him to.

In the end, we learn whether Tommy did, indeed, kill Sarah. We also reveal that Rene is Tommy’s sister and Vincent’s daughter, and that the only way she’s going to be able to provide for her wife and son is if she gets back into the family business, a move she’s been avoiding her entire adult life.  I guess it’s true what they say.  The family that draws breath together sells meth together.

I don’t know if Shrapnel’s a show. But Cameron sure is a good writer. Read the first scene of Shrapnel and I dare you not to keep reading. There’s a heavy atmospheric intensity to the way this man sees the world that makes you an audience member when you read him, not a critic.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Cause this site is about learning, I have to be critical, and while Shrapnel is, by and far, a strong sample, there were some things that didn’t quite click.  Or, to use meth-speak, Shrapnel was only 70% purity.

My biggest issue is that if you didn’t tell me what the pilot was about beforehand, I’d have a hard time figuring out what the story was. Don’t get me wrong. The writing is stone cold impressive:

But as we jumped back and forth between Tommy, Sarah, Rene, Dani, Vincent, Chris, and Lou, I had a hard time keeping up with how it all fit together. And I get that that was the idea – we needed to keep reading to figure it out. But because I didn’t know how, specifically, Rene and Dani were involved with Tommy and Vincent, their story felt a little out of tune for me.

With Tommy, we get that opening scene which adds purpose to his storyline. We see his fiance dead, cut to a week earlier, and we see him with her, alive. Happy. Therefore as that story progresses, we have a reference point for what to look for.

I didn’t have that reference point with Rene and Dani.

You can sometimes pull that off if the “out in left field” storyline is compelling on its own merit, but the struggle of trying to get a job and retrieve a wedding ring didn’t quite do it for me. Without understanding these characters’ importance, I didn’t care if they succeeded or not.

One of the problems with writing “Traffic” narratives (multiple story threads that are happening independent of each other), is it’s a lot easier for the reader to get lost. A writer must ALWAYS take this into consideration so that they throw in the occasional reminder of what’s going on. I call it “holding the reader’s hand.” The higher the difficulty level of your story, the more you need to hold the reader’s hand throughout it.

Cause I needed that. I got lost. In one scene, Chris ends up sleeping with Sarah (Tommy’s fiance) while Vince videotapes it, and I guess all three parties were in on it. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would do this, but it definitely felt like one of those “throw real-world logic out the window” situations. The audience always smells it when characters aren’t acting honestly, so the scenes never work.  And I didn’t believe Sarah would fuck Chris under any circumstances.

As for Sharpnel as a TV show, here’s how I see it. The script definitely achieves what it sets out to do. Sopranos meets Breaking Bad is EXACTLY how I’d pitch this. And while Cameron isn’t David Chase or Vince Gilligan, he’s pretty darn good. This guy can make dirt sound exciting.

I’m just worried about the lack of a hook here (which he admits is a problem).  Breaking Bad had a chemistry teacher who was forced to cook meth to save his family. Sopranos had a mobster with a therapist. Shrapnel needed something to stand out.  I so often hear writers say what Cameron said up above.  “I knew there was no hook but I just wanted to write it anyway.”  You can FIND a hook, people, and still write the show that you want.  It takes a little longer to figure it out, but it’s worth it.  A hook ALWAYS gets you a leg up on the competition.  And this is a competitive fucking industry so you need every leg up you can get.

Still, if you’re a producer looking to develop dark gritty TV ideas and need a writer, you’ll definitely want to sample Shrapnel. It’s one of the better amateur TV pilots I’ve come across.

Script link: Shrapnel

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

What I learned: An “out in left field” plotline is a sub-plot that operates independently from the main plot. There’s zero crossover into the main plot until some point later in the story, when the two plots finally intersect. Father Karras’ sub-plot in The Exorcist is an “out in left field” plotline. The idea behind this device is to create a dramatic curiosity in how this “isolated” storyline is going to connect to our “central” storyline. The problem with these, though, is that if they’re not great, audiences tire of them quickly. They become impatient with the fact that they don’t seem to have anything to do with our movie/show. I didn’t think Shrapnel’s “out in left field” Rene storyline was bad, as the characters involved were strong. But the storyline itself didn’t interest me, and I turned on it as a result. So my advice with these, is, if you’re going to write them, make sure they’re an excellent standalone story. They have to work on their own. That way, even if we can’t figure out how they connect with our main plot, we’re still enjoying ourselves.

Stop being a little girly-man. Use power words to pump up your prose. 

Today we’re going to talk about something I don’t talk about much on the site.

Writing.

Yes, you heard that right. The big W.

I’ve written about structure, about conflict, about plot. About characters, about dialogue, about suspense. I’ve written about Jersey Shore, Star Wars, and Honey Boo-Boo. But I haven’t yet written an article about writing. About the words you physically write down to create your stories.

I’ll tell you how this came about. A few weeks back, I read an amateur period piece. Then a few days later, I happened upon a professional period piece that covered the same subject. The plot, the structure, and even some of the characters were similar.

The difference? The amateur script felt empty while the professional script was immersive. Now there was more than one reason for this. The professional writer had a better grasp of the craft. He clearly had more experience. He knew, that especially with period pieces, you had to research the hell out of the period so that it felt authentic. You had to do a ton of character work so the characters felt fully-fleshed out and real. And the complexities of the plot were expertly woven together as opposed to being clunky and confusing.

The thing was, I’d covered all that before. I knew all that stuff was better. However, even with that, there was something about the professional script that was stronger and I couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t until I physically started comparing the pages side by side that I noticed a difference. The prose. The prose in the professional script wasn’t just “better.”  It was SAYING SOMETHING. The words were specific, and when an important moment came around, the professional writer always had a word ready to capture the moment. He had an ability that the other writer did not – to transfer me to the movie theater during the read.  I could see what he was describing.  How the hell did he do that? He did it in two ways.

1) Power Words
2) Specificity

Power words are words, usually verbs, that evoke one of the senses. They often look the way they sound and therefore have an OOMPH about them that other, more casual words, can’t create. For example, I could say that blood “trailed” out of a severed artery, or I could say it “gurgled.” “Trailed” is a weak spineless word. It gives me the barest visual of what’s happening with the blood. “Gurgle” paints a more vivid picture. And it adds another sense to the element – sound. You can HEAR gurgling.

Or, if a woman is running from her attacker, and she finally gets to her car, writing that she “sticks” her key into the lock isn’t as powerful as if she “JAMS” it in there. And I probably wouldn’t say that she “runs into” the car. I’d say she “PLOWED” into it. Notice how the power word evokes more of a sensory reaction. And the cool thing about power words is that they’re fun to come up with. Go through your text and when you find a weak verb, see if there’s a more powerful substitution.

Joe Hero shouldn’t “remove” the cap. He should “pop” it off.

Jane Heroine shouldn’t “fall” from the building. She should “plummet.”

Sidebuddy Bob shouldn’t “twist” the peanut butter jar. He should “manhandle” it.

Now the question is, should we use power words in every single sentence? No. There are so many quick and dirty sentences in a script that to try and infuse all of them with a power word would be counter-productive. Plus, if Joe PLUNGES to the fridge where he SUBMARINES to the bottom shelf and JACKHAMMERS his hand to the back where he KITTYHAWKS an Orange Crush, it starts to sound stupid. Use power words judiciously and only if the word fits the moment. Overuse them and it’ll feel like you’re trying too hard.

Specificity is the process of using specific words and phrases in your description/action passages. This is what I noticed when I read those two period pieces. In the case of the amateur, his sentences had a bland and generic feel.  He chose general words that didn’t create any imagery in the reader’s mind.  This is not an actual sentence from his script. But it’s similar to how a lot of his sentences read:

The town is lain over the hill, its ancient buildings centered around a statue of a man swinging a hammer.

The only thing specific in this sentence/paragraph is the statue, and even that’s been described in the most bland way possible. “Town” is a general boring word. So is “lain.” So is the phrase “over the hill.” “Ancient” gives us some sense of a visual, but it’s still quite vague. Both an Egyptian pyramid and an English castle can be ancient, but the two are very different structures with very different details. Let’s compare this with a description from “Killing on Carnival Row,” Scriptshadow Readers’ favorite script.

An urban hodgepodge of crumbling rooftops, grimy belfries, and smoke-stained spires. Chimneys and smokestacks pump towers of soot into a stone gray sky.

Okay! Now we’re talking! Right away, the coupling “urban hodgepodge” helps us imagine a specific type of city. Also, note how the rooftops aren’t just “ancient,” but “crumbling.” That’s a power word. We can SEE that as soon as we read it. “Grimy” is another beautiful sensory word. “Smoke-stained” chimneys sure is better than, say, “old” chimneys. “Pump towers of soot.” We even have an ACTION that’s bringing this city to life! It’s no longer static. It’s alive!

THIS is what I mean by being specific with your words. Words have power. Every one you choose is another million you didn’t. Could one of those million have been a better option? You owe it to yourself to dig into that pile and find out. Because if all you offer is generic words every time you write a paragraph, you’re going to lose us.

Just like power words, specificity must be used judiciously. There’s no reason to dissect the DNA of a sentence conveying a simple meaning, like passing a cup. Just as there are passages like the above in Carnival Row, Travis Beacham also includes lines like “He takes out a notepad.” But if the occasion warrants it (an important location that needs to be described or an intense battle between two warring nations), then specificity is where you’re going to separate yourself from your competition.

I know that for some of you newbies, this may be confusing. You’ve probably heard that screenplay writing is about being sparse. “Less is more.” This is true. The problem is that too many people believe “sparse” is synonymous with “generic.”  Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s because you’re only allowed to use so few words when you write for the screen, that they must be specific.

I’ve also encountered a new breed of writing where the focus is on being SO sparse, that there aren’t enough words left to provide meaning. All 500 paragraphs in the script are variations of “Joe zips down the street.” Yeah, the reader’s getting through the script faster, but it’s an empty experience. Which is leading to what I discussed in this week’s newsletter – studios aren’t buying scripts now because they’re all so damn thin. Nobody’s applying depth to their stories, to their characters, or to the prose itself.

There’s a happy medium here. Don’t write short. Don’t write long. Write SMART. Choose your words carefully. Think of every paragraph like a screenplay-version of a tweet, where every word matters. The sentence length should be the same as if you wrote generally. The difference is you’re pouring over every word. The steak “sizzles” is better than the steak “cooks.” The man “glares” is better than the man “looks at.” Power words and specificity are what bring your prose to life. Utilize both and I promise you, your writing will be better.

Here are few more examples…

(Bad version)
The witch walks into the room. Her black dress drags behind her. She pushes her deep gray hair out of her face.

(Carnival Row version)
[The witch] hobbles into the room, an old crone, frazzled gray hair, bandaged eyes behind black spectacles. A dark cloak flowing behind her. She leans on a crooked walking stick.

(Bad version)
The car skids noisily across the pavement until it comes to a full stop.

(Back to the Future version)

The car wheels lock up and the DeLorean comes to a SCREECHING HALT, smoke pouring off the body.

(Bad version)
She sits across from him, nervous but trying not to show it. She looks at him every once in awhile as she checks her menu.

(American Beauty version)
He smiles, then opens his menu. Carolyn picks hers up mechanically, but continues to stare at him, enraptured, like a fervent Christian who’s just come face to face with Jesus.

(Bad version)
After finishing the form, he looks down proudly at it and finishes it by adding his signature.

(Dances With Wolves version)
He looks over his work with a schoolboy’s excitement and affixes his signature with a wild flourish.

Genre: Crime Drama
Premise: A team of corrupt cops come up with a unique plan for a heist that involves eliminating one of their own.
About: Writer Matt Cook has been pushing his way up the seemingly endless ladder to a produced credit for awhile now. He first hit Hollywood’s radar back in 2010 with his Black List script, By Way of Helena. That’s what a lot of aspiring writers forget. The system doesn’t allow screenwriters to just barge in and start snagging movie credits. It makes them work for it, prove that they have staying power first. Then, and only then, are they given a shot at the big time. Well, Matt’s certainly making his debut count. Triple Nine will star Aaron Paul, Kate Winslet, Norman Reedus (Walking Dead), Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and future Miss Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot. John Hillcoat, the director, is best known for his gritty apocalyptic flick, The Road. The irony of all this? Matt’s script was originally written back in 2010, the same year he broke out. That’s the draft of the script I’ll be reviewing. But I’m sure they’ve since gone through plenty of rewrites.
Writer: Matt Cook
Details: 126 pages (June 22, 2010)

Pinkman’s being smart by staying within his genre wheelhouse.

We love our movies, don’t we? We love them so much we strive to bring them back to life with every script we write. Why else would JJ Abrams make Super 8 (E.T.)? Or Ben Affleck make The Town (Heat). The problem with re-writing your favorite films is that they don’t have their own identity.

One of the biggest tests for an artist, and what truly separates the trendsetters from the trendfollowers, is to let the movies of your past influence and inspire you, but never overcome you. When you find that magic balance, you become a Wes Anderson or a Quentin Tarantino, someone who was influenced by something, but not dominated by it.  In the end, what you see is a unique voice, which is what everyone should be striving for.

Triple Nine has enough Heat in it to remind you of diner conversations between De Niro and Pacino, and that Val Kilmer used to be skinny and important. But I didn’t want to see another Heat. I wanted to see something new. And as I flipped through the first 20 pages, I wondered if Triple Nine was going to give me that. Let’s find out if it did…

Chris Allen is brand new on the job. He’s come over from Venice Beach patrol to the LA gang unit, where the big boys play. He’s nervous when he’s teamed up with street-wise veteran Terrell Tompkins, a 40 year old black cop who plays by his own rules, but soon Allen’s showing Tompkins that he’s not the pushover he assumed he was.

Too bad Tompkins has a secret. He rolls with a crew of cops that rob banks, using their knowledge of cop procedure against the very institution they work for, against the very people they swore to protect.

But greed does funny things to people. Somehow, by turning this into a system, they got hooked up with the nasty Richard Lustick, a tall tanned sylista who’s pissed off that they almost fucked up his last job. So now he wants them to make up for it. They’ve gotta hit one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the city, Homeland Security. If they don’t, Lustick’s going to pluck all their little families’ heads off and feed them to the seagulls.

The crew’s fucked. How the heck are they going to get into Homeland Security? Well, one of them postulates, what if they called in a “999?” What’s that, you’re asking? It’s an “officer’s been shot” call. And when it happens, every cop in the city collapses on that area to take down whoever’s shooting cops. Which, of course, leaves the rest of the city wide open for the taking.

The crew has one last decision. Which cop are they going to kill?  You guessed it. Poor little Chris Allen. Which seems all fine and dandy at first. Until Tompkins starts liking the guy and wondering if, when the time comes, he’ll be able pull the trigger. That’s all part of the fun. Figuring out if our oblivious hero’s DNA is going to become a permanent part of the LA landscape.

Wonder Woman will be bringing her truth lasso to Triple Nine.

I was worried early on in Triple Nine. There’s no doubt Matt can write. But all I could think about while reading this was that I’d seen this opening heist before.  Like in at least a dozen movies and TV shows. It’s the “I love movies” problem all us writers have. We remember those favored passages from movies we’ve watched infinity times, and we want to do the same thing. We want to do what our idols do!

Luckily, Matt’s writing is strong enough to keep us engaged throughout this derivative section. What Matt does well is he doesn’t relegate the character development to our hero, Chris. He gets to know all the players, especially our corrupt cops.  You want to know the benefit of doing that?  Look at the beginning of this post and read the cast sheet again.  That’s why you do it.  Because the more developed characters you write, the more good actors are going to want to be in your movie.

You pull this off by remembering that individuals in a group always have their own thoughts, their own opinions.  How boring would it be if every one of these bank robbers saw their job the same way?  The oldest member of the group, Michael, looks at everything like a business decision, so he has no problems killing Chris. But the youngest member, Gabriel, doesn’t think it’s right, and battles back and forth between whether to stay involved.

The only time a group should think the same way is when it’s so big that you can’t explore everyone individually. Michael Arndt learned this while writing Toy Story 3. He realized it would be impossible to give every single one of the toys their own storyline. He conveyed this frustration to one of the other writers, who pointed out, “Yeah, outside of the big four, the toys think and act as a unit.” As soon as Arndt figured that out, everything about the script became clear to him.

Regardless of Matt’s job with the characters, though, it took way too long to get to the hook here. We don’t hear about the 999 plan until page 52. That’s super-late and should’ve come at the first-act turn at the latest (page 25-30). How do you set up 8 big characters in under 30 pages so you can get to that plot point early? Welcome to the life of a screenwriter. You have to figure it out. Because it wasn’t until we hit the 999 plot point that the script came alive, and more importantly, started to differentiate itself from Heat.

In fact, the structure then became almost genius. We have a strong line of dramatic irony pushing the central story thread. We know that Tompkins is planning on killing our poor hero, Chris, and that Chris is completely oblivious to it. Therefore there’s nothing we can do for him, which drives us nuts (and more importantly, forces us to keep reading in our desperate hope that he’ll figure it out in time).

By itself, this would’ve been fine, but Matt adds an extra layer by having Chris’s uncle, another cop, investigating the opening heist. As the movie continues, he gets closer and closer to finding out it was these cops, which gives us hope that Chris can be saved. This wisely added a sense of urgency to everything.

After the 999 introduction, the only thing that bothered me was the action writing. Action writing needs to be laid out differently than standard description writing in order to visually show that time, on the screen, is moving differently. The problem with Triple Nine was that whether we were describing a character or running down a hallway while being shot at, every paragraph was written the same – in three lines.

So for example, you’d get something like this (my version).

Here’s how that action probably should’ve been written (my version).

The first choice may not seem terrible. But imagine an entire page of that. It would slow the read down to a crawl, which is the exact opposite of how you want the script to read during an action sequence. Of course, every situation will be different, which means there are some scenes where bulkier-written action may work, but the second example is generally how you want to approach it.

Triple Nine wears its influences on its sleeve (Heat, Training Day), but it’s got just enough of a unique take to stand out on its own. And I’m sure the script has only gotten better with time and rewrites. Congrats to Matt for finally getting his ‘produced credit’ wings.

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

What I learned: One of the top reasons I see writers using lots of big paragraphs during action scenes is to lower their page count. Don’t do it. It isn’t worth making your action slow and boring just to hit a low page count. Use other established methods for cutting pages instead (get rid of unnecessary characters, combine characters, combine scenes, etc.).