Genre: Noir/Thriller/Period
Premise: The true story of a serial killer terrorizing the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
About: The Devil In The White City is one of the biggest books of 2005. It originally had Tom Cruise attached, but more recently Leonardo DiCaprio has snatched up the rights, with the hopes of playing the villain in the story. Any property that goes into Leo’s company runs the risk of disappearing, as he options a ton of stuff. But with #1 Black List screenwriter Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) doing the latest draft, it looks like Leo’s pretty serious about the project. Then again, you never know with Hollywood. Charlie Hunnam may be attached tomorrow.
Writer: Graham Moore (based on the book by Erik Larson)
Details: 3/16/13 draft

A lot of you may wonder, “Why does it take so long for projects to be developed?” I mean seven years til a movie gets made? Ten years? Fifteen years? What’s the deal? The last draft I saw of “Devil” had ‘2005’ on the title page. So clearly this project is yet another casualty of this confusing never-ending process.

Let me explain it to as best I can. When you sell a project, and it doesn’t mobilize immediately (like The Counselor or Safe House), you have no choice but to pull back for awhile. The studio’s cooled on you and trying to shove something down their throats isn’t going to solve anything.

So you pull away, then in a year (or two, or three) you come back, with some fresh news attached. Maybe there’s a new director involved. Maybe there’s a new actor who loves it. Maybe there’s a completely new draft. Or maybe someone new rewrites the script.

Having a fresh new take on the material typically gets the buzz going again. And the bigger and flashier that writer is, the more buzz it’s going to get. Which means bigger agents will pay attention which means bigger actors will pay attention, which means bigger directors will pay attention. All of which increases the chances of it getting made. That’s why people pay these big name writers outrageous sums for a rewrite. Because they know that when they go out with the script, people are going to pay attention.

The thing is, if you don’t keep that momentum going and get all the way to the finish line, people get tired of the material. The director gets bored and drops out. The actor (who wanted to work with that director) drops out. And now you risk going back into deep freeze for another two years. And each time you try to bring back the project, it’s tougher, because everyone’s asking, “Well why didn’t they make this already? There must be something wrong with it.” Before you know it, ten years has gone by. It happens all the time.

Something tells me, though, that “Devil” is going to get there at some point. It’s just too lush of a setting to not turn into a movie. Nobody’s ever seen the Chicago World’s Fair in its big budget glory before. And the serial killer angle makes that setting a story. But I say all of that without having read the book. So let’s see if the script backs up my instincts.

Tis the late 19th century in Chicago. Back then, the greatest city in the world hadn’t yet built its 16,000 hot dog stands or had one of its sports teams throw the World Series, or lived through the wrath of Al Capone. It was known more for being a really really dangerous place to live. Walk down the wrong street and you could end up with a knife in your gut.

Seems like the perfect place for HH Holmes to set up shop. The dashing upstart hotel owner engages in one thing and one thing only: killing women. Lots of them. He gets away with it because his murders get buried under everyone else’s. The cops don’t have enough time or manpower to investigate these tragedies properly.

The best part of all this, for Holmes, is that the World’s Fair has come to Chicago, infusing the city with a fresh new crop of young girls hoping to get in on the ground floor of Chicago’s rebirth. Holmes simply waits for these women to show up at his hotel, gets to know them, takes them on a couple of dates, and, well, you know the rest.

Call Holmes intrigued then, when he meets the first girl who isn’t interested in him. Emeline Cigrand is secretary to the fair’s director, Daniel Burnham. Holmes originally approaches Emeline to gleam information about the investigations into the murders he’s committed. But he soon begins to like her, and wants to make her the Mona Lisa of his killings, as it were.

But head of fair security Frank Pickett begins to sense that Holmes isn’t the upstanding citizen he claims to be, and begins investigating him as such. What we then explore is a series of firsts. The first “official” serial killer. The first well-known use of fingerprints to catch a killer. The first ever Ferris Wheel. With each of these characters having something at stake in the fair’s success, they must go through one another in order to come out on top.

This seems to be a byproduct of a lot of these period pieces, and we can now add “Devil” to that list: There wasn’t really a main character in this script. HH Holmes probably gets the most screen time. But Emeline is the one we get closest to. And Detective Pickett plays the closest thing to a traditional protagonist, since he’s the one going after the killer.

I guess to a lot of writers, period equates to “epic” and “sprawling” so they feel they must cover a lot of characters or they’re not doing their job. When you do that, however, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin. By not getting to know one character extensively, we don’t really connect with any. And worse still, since there isn’t a clear protagonist, we feel left out. We’re not really sure who to claim as our own.

And I’m not saying that multiple protagonists never work. All I’m saying is it makes telling the story harder. And I felt that here. I never really connected to anyone. In her description, I was told Emeline wanted to prove herself. Which is a character I want to see. That makes me think of someone tenacious and driven and goal-oriented. But I never SAW any of this in her actions. She basically just waited for people to tell her what to do. Had we given Emeline more time, got to know why she was here and seen that drive in her actions, of course we would’ve connected to her more.

Another issue is that the script moved at too leisurely a pace. This tends to happen when your main character isn’t active, as is the case with Emeline (I’m going to assume she’s our main character). Emeline is essentially waiting for the world to happen to her. She’s being told what to do by her boss, Burnham, and she’s waiting around for Holmes to keep courting her. So how can the story move if your main character isn’t moving?

Again, if your main character is waiting, we, the reader, are going to feel like we’re waiting, since we feel what our main character does. Now we DO have the threat of Holmes dating Emeline to add suspense to her plotline, keeping things with her somewhat interesting. But I don’t think that suspense ever worked as powerfully as her being a stronger character would’ve.

If I were these guys, I’d try to make Emeline more of a power player. She should be going after something, whether it be moving up the ladder at the company (instead of just being handed the job as Burnham’s secretary) or pushing her own big idea that she’s trying to get into the fair. Because it’s really hard to get on board with a character who’s so passive.

That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of good here. I enjoyed HH Holmes’s character. He’s by no means unlike any serial killer we’ve ever seen. But he’s so ruthless and such a sociopath that he’s pretty damn scary. When you placed that against the backdrop of this beautiful fair, mixed still with a surrounding city that resembled the modern slums of Bombay, I could so see those images on the big screen.

I also thought Daniel Burnham, the fair director, really got better as the script went on. Whenever you write a character, you always want him to HAVE A HUGE STAKE in the outcome of whatever he’s pursuing, whether it be a trip to the store or creating the World’s Fair. Burnham has millions of dollars of his own money on the line. He’s constantly being pressured by the Mayor to get this right. Investors are all doubting he can provide a return on their investment. We know that if Burnham doesn’t pull this off, his career is over. And that’s stakes. You want to do this not just for one character, but for ALL your characters.

To me, figuring out this project really comes down to the main character. First establishing who it is, and if it is, indeed, Emeline, doing a lot more with her character. She needs a bigger personality. We need to know more about her past. She needs bigger goals and dreams she’s pursuing. She needs to be able to hang with the boys in this script. Right now she’s too thin and passive. I hope they figure it out, cause this project has so much potential!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (just came in under the wire)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Sometimes in a scene, you need to use the action description to explain to the reader what’s going on, even though that’s not what action description is for. Action description is supposed to tell the reader what he’ll see ON THE SCREEN ONLY. A character walking. Two characters kissing. A character peering out from behind a curtain. But once in awhile, when there’s a potentially unclear plot point you need to get across, you can cheat, or else you run the risk of your reader being confused. Early on in “Devil,” HH Holmes goes to the cops as a concerned hotel owner, asking about the recent murders. But it turns out the cops don’t know anything and send him off empty-handed. Now at first, I didn’t know what the point of this scene was. But at the end of the scene, Moore includes this line:

ON HOLMES: Hmmm, How’s he going to get information?

Ah-ha! That’s what the scene was about. Holmes was trying to get information on what the cops knew about his murders. Okay, some of you probably could’ve figured that out via the scene alone. But not every reader catches everything. So it’s nice to clarify something just in case they don’t get it, even though it’s technically a no-no.

Genre: TV pilot
Premise: (from AMC) Set in the early 1980s, the series dramatizes the personal computing boom through the eyes of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time. Their personal and professional partnership will be challenged by greed and ego while charting the changing culture in Texas’s Silicon Prairie.
About: This is one of the next big shows coming to AMC, the network that brought you Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. As for the writers, I’ve actually reviewed one of their scripts before and WOW have they improved. I thought their spec effort, The Knoll, was below par, with my main beef being that it was stick thin. But this is the polar opposite. Very rich and detailed and deep. Good job guys!
Writers: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Rogers
Details: 64 pages

Breaking Bad is over. Mad Men has only one season left (well, two halves of one season actually – in a sly or slimy move, depending on who you talk to). Which leads to the inevitable question, what does the network producing the best shoes on television have next? Word on the street (or from a Google search) says that AMC has over 60 shows in development. So they’ve got plenty of potential successors. “Halt and Catch Fire” is first trying to take the baton. Will it succeed? Let’s find out.

It’s 1981. You know, when E.T. came out? When Michael Jackson had only a couple of facial reconstruction surgeries in the rear-view mirror (the MAN in the rear-view mirror)? And when the personal computer was just starting to hit the world. Computer systems salesman Joe Macmillan is someone who knows the PC boom is coming. The problem is he’s also suicidal, and actually drives his car off a cliff in the opening scene in an attempt to meet his maker. But he survives. Bummer. Or not bummer?

Joe, who used to work at IBM (and hated it), decides to use this second chance to take over the PC industry. He’s heard of this computer innovator named Gordon Clark, a bar-brawling family man (yeah!) who spends his nights pulling apart and putting back together Atari 2600s. Joe specifically comes to IBM rival Cardiff-Giant (at the time just a software company) to work with Gordon. His goal? To build a PC that’s better and cheaper than IBM’s.

And that’s exactly what they do (with a lot of resistance on Gordon’s part). They take one of IBM’s PCs and they reverse engineer it. Which is kind of a legal no-no. But Joe doesn’t stop there. He actually CALLS IBM and tells them that he did it. Which gets every lawyer within 5 miles of IBM’s headquarters together to take down Cardiff. What’s going on? Is Joe trying to destroy his own company?

Not exactly. In a somewhat difficult-to-understand development, the only way for Cardiff to avoid getting sued into bankruptcy is to pretend like they were working on a PC all along. This forces Cardiff’s top brass to allow Joe to head up the PC side of the company, where he of course brings with him Gordon, and a plucky (yet attractive!) young computer genius from a nearby university, Cameron. The three will do the impossible. They will take on the biggest computer corporation in the world and try to beat them at their own game – making PCs.

Lee Pace will play Joe.

Well, I don’t really know what I just read. I just know it was good! Almost an impressive. See, here’s what has me tripped up. This is a show about a company called “Cardiff-Giant” competing with titan IBM in the early days of the personal computer business. The thing is, I’ve never heard of Cardiff-Giant. Are they an also-ran company that eventually succumbed to IBM? Did Cardiff-Giant merge into some other famous company that’s still alive today? Or is this all just fiction? I mean, the Cardiff Giant IS one of the most famous hoaxes in history – a ten foot tall mummified man. So is the company title a hint that there’s more to this show than meets the eye? I don’t know!

Luckily, this is a really well-written pilot with a lot of good stuff going on. The first thing you notice about “Halt” is the irony (always use irony in your ideas if possible guys!). This is the computer business, a place where we expect dorks to huddle in their closets and basements and build computer boards. Which does happen here. But one of our two leads starts bar fights and the other is a ruthless closer that would make Alec Baldwin’s character on Glengary Glenn Ross feel like a spineless chump. These don’t feel like the geeky techies we associate with this industry, instantly giving the show some edge.

And Chris and Chris not only built those characters ironically, but used them to instill a lot of the conflict that drives the script. Joe is a suicidal dick who never takes no for an answer, and Gordon is a frustrated family man who isn’t afraid to tell someone to fuck off. The two don’t really like each other (or each others’ contrasting styles) and that adds a lot of fire to their scenes. Conflict, conflict, conflict people. It’s the oldest dramatic tool in the book. It’s gotta feel natural (you can’t force it) but if you set the characters up right and they’re naturally butting up against each other, the scenes will write themselves.

And the script just made some cool choices along the way. One of the easiest ways for me to spot a bad writer is to read a scene play out the exact way I’ve seen it play out 6000 times before. Only the good writers say, “How can I do this differently?”

There’s a scene early on where Joe needs an engineer for their group. So he goes to the local college to look for one. Now it’s important to see how this scene would’ve been written by a bad writer. We probably would’ve shown a professor type lecturing his students, and then a particularly difficult question would’ve been posed that stumped everyone, and our plucky young student, Cameron, would’ve answered it in an unexpectedly clever way. Joe would’ve been waiting in the wings, witnessing this, then caught up to Cameron afterwards and asked if he could talk to her.

Here’s how the scene went instead. Joe works his way in front of the class and tells everyone who wants to be an engineer to raise their hand. He’s going to list off several categories. Every time he lists a category they don’t have experience in, they have to lower their hands. He lists a bunch of stuff (electrical engineering, software design, microprocessing, etc.) and each time, more and more hands go down until there are three left. Of those three, he asks each to tell him one thing that will be true about computers 10 years from now. They each give their answer. Cameron ends up giving the best one. Macmillan says, “See me after class.”

I haven’t seen that scene before. And those scenes don’t just come to you off the top of your head. You have to fight for them. You have to go through a couple of cliché scenes until you find them. And the writers who are willing to put forth that extra effort and find that fresh take on a scene are typically the ones who succeed.

Speaking of Cameron, I loved how the Chris’s added ANOTHER layer of conflict within this three-person team. Later on, after Joe discovers Cameron, he gets drunk and sleeps with her. Realizing he screwed up everything, he ditches her the next morning. Later, however, when he becomes in charge of Cardiff’s PC division, he needs that engineer still. So he must go groveling back to this girl that hates him and ask her to join the team. She reluctantly does, and now we’ve got one big unhappy family.

We also have a boss who hates Joe. We have a rival (his old boss from IBM) who hates Joe. Everyone seems to hate these guys. And that’s PERFECT for a show because it creates drama. It creates resistance. It creates conflict. That’s what you need!

Now not everything is blueberries and soft shell tacos here. I had a couple of issues. Gordon’s character was inconsistent. He starts off as this guy who beats people up in bars. But when he meets Joe, he becomes meek. This tends to happen when you try and create two alpha males. In the scenes, one of them has to become dominant, and by association, the other’s going to disappear a little. However, Gordon disappeared too much. I liked him better when he would beat somebody’s ass. I hope they go with that guy in the show.

And also, this pilot was so heading for an impressive before the “Cardiff PC Division” plot point. This whole time, Joe looked like he was cleverly orchestrating this really cool plan that was going to outsmart everyone – an outsmarting I was dying to see – but it turns out they sort of accidentally get asked to start this new PC division because of a weird legal loophole that was never clearly explained. It drives me NUTS when major plot points are fudged over by unclear plot developments. I was hoping for more there.

Still, everything else here was top notch. Is it the next Breaking Bad? Too early to tell. I gave AMC show Hell on Wheels the same grade I’m giving this and thought it was headed for big things. But that show was bigger than AMC was capable of making it. It needed Boardwalk Empire dollars to do it justice. “Halt” doesn’t require a big production budget, so it will be all about the characters and the story. They’ve got some cool characters. Let’s see where the story goes from here.

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

What I learned: QUESTION MARK CHARACTERS – In a lot of good TV shows, you have characters who are question marks. You don’t know what they’re capable of or what they’ll do. You need to almost present them as ticking time bombs, waiting to explode. Here we have one protagonist who’s willing to beat the shit out of people (and get beat up) if they get in his way, and another who drives his car off a cliff at the beginning of the show, trying to commit suicide. Those are two big question mark characters if you ask me.

Genre: Drama
Premise: Cutting between two timelines, one that focuses on a famous author father, the other his emotionally reclusive daughter, we watch as the two struggle to overcome their inner demons.
About: Fathers and Daughters ranked number 12 on the 2012 Black List with 25 votes. It has since been cast with Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried and will be directed by well known Will Smith collaborator, Gabriele Muccino, who directed The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds. Not much is known about writer Brad Desch. He appears to have a couple of TV shows in development but this seems to be his breakthrough script.
Writer: Brad Desch
Details: 116 pages

Over the past couple of years, I’ve received these periodic e-mails of, “Have you read Fathers and Daughters yet? It’s really good.” And, “Fathers and Daughters. You have to review this. Great writing!” Of course, my response to these people is the same as yours would be: “How could a script titled ‘Fathers and Daughters’ be good?” Granted, it’s probably slanted towards a female audience, where it evokes more of an emotional response, but even taking that into consideration, it’s a very bland title, bordering on over-sentimental. So I put it off and put it off and put it off, until recently, when some actors signed on, reuniting Les Miserables cast members Amanda Seyfried and Russell Crowe. Now that I knew the project was moving forward and I could actually imagine (the assumed) father and daughter, I decided to give it a shot.

Author Jake Davis may remind you of Bradley Cooper’s character from Silver Lining’s Playbook. He’s just been released from the crazy house and is ready to start his life again. The big difference is that Jake has won two Pulitzers and is considered by many to be the greatest living author in the world. But just like Cooper’s character, Jake’s got wife baggage. His wife was killed in a car accident while Jake was driving. Since the two have a daughter together, Katie, that leaves only Jake to raise her.

A task complicated by his mental hospital stay. Actually, while Jake spent 18 months getting better, Katie’s Aunt and Uncle took her in, and in the process fell in love with her. The last thing they want, now, is to give Katie back to Jake. Jake tells them to screw off and begins a very difficult journey, trying to carve out a life for himself and Katie in the most expensive city in the world, Manhattan.

During this time, we intercut with the present, where Katie is a grown adult pursuing a career as a child psychologist. Katie is an emotionally void human being. She doesn’t feel ANYTHING, and as a result, stumbles around Manhattan, sleeping with any guy she meets, never remembering their names the next morning. In fact, one guy, who realizes Katie doesn’t like him, asks her why she had sex with him. She replies, flatly, “Because I didn’t get a chance to go to the gym today.”

Things begin to change for Katie, however, when she meets a couple of people – a young orphaned girl named Lucy, who hasn’t spoken a word since her druggie parents were killed. And then Cameron, a documentary filmmaker who manages to charm Katie enough to get beyond her standard one night stand. Both begin to give Katie purpose, and help her emerge from her shell.

From there we keep jumping back and forth between the past and the present. Jake’s new novel bombs, forcing him into a job he hates in order to keep Katie in private school. And Present Katie struggles with feelings for Cameron she’s never had before. (spoiler) Still torn up by her father’s death, she refuses to love, pushing the only man who can make her happy away. Will Katie change? And what exactly is the flashback storyline leading up to? What is it about Jake that we don’t know?

I’m getting better at understanding how these character pieces work. You guys know me. I want a big goal in my story driving the characters. Without that, the story tends to sit there and get boring. However, character pieces don’t always operate with big goals. Instead, they utilize dramatic questions to drive the story. The question in Adult Katie’s storyline is “Will she be able to love again?” The writer hopes that that question is compelling enough to keep you reading until the end. Is it? I would say yes. There’s something about Katie where you want to see her succeed.

But the question I always ask these character piece writers is, why stop at the dramatic question? Why not add a goal too? Then you have a dramatic question AND a goal driving the story. Sure Silence of the Lambs could’ve ONLY been about a young female FBI agent trying to prove herself in a job dominated by men. It could’ve been a really deep and trying female coming-of-age story. But didn’t the goal of trying to catch Buffallo Bill make it a hell of a lot better?

Having said that, what Fathers and Daughters DOES have is this dual-storyline thing. And that separates it from a lot of these boring straight-forward character pieces with ZERO story. The thing is, I wasn’t always sure what the past storyline was about. I believe what Brad was trying to do (spoiler) was use the past storyline as a mystery. We were supposed to wonder what happened to Jake. But we’re told (spoiler) pretty early on in the PRESENT storyline that he dies. So what’s the purpose of continuing to watch him? I guess you could argue we want to see HOW he dies, and there is some mystery in that. But I’m not sure the big reveal there was worth the wait.

Still, this was probably the most emotionally intense script in relation to how sparse the writing was that I’ve ever read. Paragraphs are often one line long, two tops, and yet we still feel the weight of the story on every page. This was surprising because usually when I see writing this sparse, there’s zero depth. So I’m not entirely sure how Brad did it.

What I can say those is that Brad used his dialogue to tell the story. People didn’t banter on pointlessly. Every scene was an exploration of the inner battle our character was going through. Whether it was Cameron indirectly asking Katie if she was really committed to him, or Jake begging a school principal to take his child in. You really got the sense that every conversation mattered, which is probably why Brad didn’t have to write much action. Everything was right there in the dialogue.

Having said that, there’s no doubt this script hits the drama bell hard. It’s a really “down” experience and that’s a dangerous game to play on the spec market. Truthfully, your only shot to do well with one of these scripts IS to get on the Black List. So I recommend staying away from them. But if you can add a little twist, like Brad did with the dual-storylines, you may be able to stand out enough to find a buyer. Always look for that angle that makes your script fresh.

Also, I’m surprised that Jake’s mental illness didn’t play a bigger role in the story. It was really smart to include a character suffering from mental illness to begin with. As I tell you guys, you want to write roles that actors will want to play. And what actor doesn’t want to play crazy? But the only embodiment of that “crazy” was when Jake would rock back and forth uncontrollably. Contrast that with Bradley Cooper’s character in Silver Linings where he got to scream things out uncontrollably. Jake’s issues just didn’t seem that… crazy. It’ll be interesting to see whether they do more with this in the shooting draft.

Fathers and Daughters was a tough script to categorize. It was uber-dramatic, but a fast read. The subject matter wasn’t unique, but it was executed uniquely. The biggest testament to this script though is that this isn’t my thing, yet I wanted to read the whole thing. That’s rare. It isn’t a perfect character piece, but it’s one of the better ones I’ve read in awhile. A good spec for writers to study if they can get their hands on it (especially for all you over-writers out there!).

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

What I learned: Readers get bored if one emotional beat goes on for too long. Just like a story needs to change itself up to stay exciting, so does emotion. You must bring us up, down, make us laugh, cry, fear, love. Fathers and Daughters did that better than Seven Pounds, but still stayed a little too close to that single emotion of sadness. I would’ve loved to have seen more humor here. More balance.

What I learned 2: If someone were to ask you, “What’s different about your script? What does it do that no other script out there does?” You should have an answer. Fathers and Daughters used a dual-storyline. What have you done? Whether it be the concept (District 9), the execution (Eternal Sunshine), an exciting twist (Gone Girl), a fresh take on an old idea (Hangover), give us something new or chances are we’re going to be bored.

What I learned 3: The spec market tends to celebrate the flashier emotions – fear, excitement, happiness. Fathers and Daughters, focusing almost exclusively on sadness, is definitely an exception to the rule.

UPDATE: Calling all female screenwriters – we want YOU to submit your best work for an upcoming Amateur Offerings Weekend that will showcase scripts written exclusively by women! Send a PDF of your script along with the title, genre, logline, and a ‘why you should read’ section in an email to carsonreeves3@gmail.com ASAP! :)

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: Pilot
GENRE: Science-Fiction/Thriller
LOGLINE: An intelligent spacecraft, crash-landed on an alien world, resurrects its failed-pilot-turned-engineer, in the hopes he can repair the damage before the planet collides with a dying star.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “So I was at a Hanson concert the other night… Don’t ask. Needless to say, I’ve earned myself some significant points with my significant other… Anyway, I started asking myself (silently): where did I take a wrong turn in my career endeavors? I mean, I’m a smart guy. I’m artistic. At age six, I wrote my very first book; A short Christmas story involving Santa Claus, magic dust and some wicked sweet pictures accented with glitter and elbow macaroni. But after more than two decades later, I have yet to break through the industry walls. Which brings me to my point; I have an incredible sci-fi script that I’ve been toiling over for the past year and some change, and I’ve the fourteen draft revisions to prove it. And when I say draft I don’t mean polish. Each and every draft I write has its own distinct outline. It’s been sort of an obsession to get this thing as perfect as can be, because… well…  I honestly obsess over my writing quite frequently. It’s a curse as well as a gift, because I’m willing to put the time in to perfecting my craft while my wife sits idly by feeling neglected… Which brings me full circle as to why I had to go to the Hanson concert to begin with.

The short and sloppy pitch is it’s Cast Away meets 2001. Both movies I liked but didn’t love for different reasons… Which is probably why I felt compelled to slap the two together. I loved the human element in Cast Away; Tom Hanks. Out on his own. Doing anything he can to survive and get back to the wife he loves… But I felt it lacked “stuff”, not to put too scientific a term on it. It lacked the miniature story twists, turns and surprises that I love so much. I didn’t come out of it feeling like I had discovered more about myself in the process. 2001 was a brilliant film, visually… But at the same time, felt very cold and distant (which no doubt was Kubrick’s intention) and lacking a human connection. You had Dave the astronaut, but by the time he came around, I was usually knocked out cold. It took me a good ten viewings before making it all the way through!

Sorry if I’m getting off point, but my script, Pilot, has the unique visuals; has a uniquely flawed character at its core; and well… I’m obsessed with it. You would be doing me (as well as my wife) a great service just to tell me to let it go and move on to the next script, because I’ve rewritten this thing over to death, and I honestly have no more drafts in me. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, by my hand alone. This is my best work, and I’m a self-judgmental SOB when it  comes to my own work. Check it out!”

TITLE: The Devil’s Jokebook
GENRE: Film Noir / Horror
LOGLINE: Heaven and Hell converge on New York when an ancient book disappears. But the only man that can save the city is a non-believer with a grudge against the Church.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ:  “My script is a 2013 ShriekFest Finalist. This is my fourth time being a finalist in that competition. My story meshes classic film noir elements with the supernatural. Think “The Maltese Falcon” with demons. But I’ve swapped out the old school cops with Vatican goons and the mob with demons to put a fresh spin on those tropes. Please consider The Devil’s Jokebook for review. It’s a DEMON NOIR with one hell of a punch line.”

TITLE: Stuart Frankfurt’s Middle Life
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: Tired of being overlooked and undervalued, Stuart Frankfurt lies to get attention. As his popularity grows, so do the lies—and then they start to come true.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “This is my seventh or eighth script, and the one that’s furthest from my comfort zone. I tend to prefer quirky indie films, but those loglines are harder to get noticed (I experienced this when I submitted one to your 20 logline day. It received all of a dozen comments, and while positive, it was certainly not enough to get picked). This time I tried to come up with a higher concept film idea and write it with the same attention to character. I wrote this script about two years ago, got notes, made changes, and promptly forgot about it. I recently remembered it, re-read it, and still liked it. Maybe you will, too.”

TITLE: Alex & Alex
GENRE: Romantic Comedy
LOGLINE: After meeting in group therapy, two depressed college students try to start a relationship even though they share many of the same personal demons.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I am passionate about telling stories with powerful emotion and I think I’ve captured something special with my script “Alex & Alex.” It’s based on my own dating troubles in college and is full of laughs and tears. I think this story perfectly blends sometimes-raunchy college humor with heartwarming romance. It also deals with the social issues of mental health much like the film “Silver Linings Playbook” and features two lonely and broken characters that find a kindred spirit in one another. I believe I have a ton of creative talent to offer and I have dozens of original, diverse and interesting screenplay concepts. I love working on the craft of writing and I’m always looking for inspiration in my daily adventures. I would love to become a filmmaker and have a chance to tell my stories. I hope you love what you read!”

TITLE: Breaking News
GENRE: Contained Thriller
LOGLINE: A flash drive is left at the door step of local news station showing a vicious murder of the town mayor with a mysterious message at its end. As the weekend anchor, on his final day, and his team investigate, they discover a bigger plot may be behind the mayor’s demise. (The Newsroom meets The Purge)
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “For the last couple of years, I have been writing screenplays only learn and improve at my craft. While I believe I’ll always be learning and looking to improve, I am confident that I have reached a point where I can put my work out there to be looked and, hopefully, be sold. Breaking News is that work. I really think this script can be turned into something and I wanted to put it out there for the Scriptshadow crowd to read. Give it a shot and your time won’t be wasted.”

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 if it gets 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: Contained Thriller
Premise: (from writer) Trapped in a shrinking air pocket deep beneath the ocean’s surface, the survivors of a plane crash battle to stay alive long enough for the rescue teams to locate them.
Why you should read: (from writer) “This is my eighth screenplay, all in the action thriller genre. Submerged adheres rigidly to all of the spec script rules laid out on Scriptshadow – it is a low-budget, contained thriller with a marketable concept, set in a unique location, featuring a proactive protagonist who must conquer a potentially fatal flaw to succeed. And it all happens in a reader-friendly 94 pages!”
Writer: Dan Hall
Details: 93 pages

You know, it’s funny that this came a day after my Breaking Bad article, because just like Dan promised, there’s a whole lot of GSU in this script. When the plane crashes, it gives us a problem that leads to a goal (get out of the plane and find safety), stakes (death), and urgency (the plane is taking on water, leaving them with less and less time to survive). There are plenty of obstacles along the way (asthma attacks, major injuries, sharks), and there’s a bit of conflict as well (mainly from douchebag brother-in-law Vinnie). It’s set up, structurally, almost exactly like yesterday’s Breaking Bad episode. So it’s a perfect script to compare and see how it holds up.

3 years from 30, Alice Shaw is a first year resident at a hospital trying to make it in the E.R. unit. Problem is, she always chokes. The intensity of the situation always gets to her and if she doesn’t have a superior to help, she’s very likely to hurt someone, or worse, kill them. For this reason, she’s told by her superiors that she may want to look for a more laid back doctor gig. This upsets her to no end. All Alice has ever wanted to be was an E.R. doctor.

Easing some of this pain is the fact that Alice is getting married to Matt, who, if you did a girlie checklist of everything you’ve ever wanted in a man, would meet all the boxes.  So Alice’s life isn’t so terrible after all.  With the wedding being out of town that weekend, Alice, Matt, Matt’s step-brother, Vinnie (a loudmouth asshole), Vinnie’s friend (brother?) Tavon, and Tavon’s secretly pregnant girlfriend Brooke, hop on a flight together to get to the festivities.

In a harrowing (and detailed) series of events, a fire erupts in the cockpit and the plane crashes into the ocean. The plane sinks into the water until it hits an unstable reef, and since our five protagonists were the only ones in the back (due to a previously set-up plot point), they’re the only passengers to survive, along with Columbian stewardess, Gabriela.

What follows is pure unadulterated survival. The backside of the plane contains a fairly large air pocket that, for now, allows them some time to formulate a plan. But soon Brooke’s having an asthma attack and since her inhaler is in the cargo hold, the team has to start splitting up. Things, of course, go wrong (when swimming into a submerged plane, try not to get trapped by a food cart), people start getting injured (and even die), and they realize if they don’t figure out something soon, they’re blowfish food.

Despite being in the middle of nowhere, they decide their best bet is to get up to the surface and signal for help. But that plan gets tricky when some leftover sharks from Sharknado come sniffing around. I have seen where this kind of thing ends up and it’s never good. With her future husband badly injured and the other friends desperately in need of direction, it looks like Alice is going to have to overcome that performance anxiety and figure a way out of this mess.

So here’s the thing. Really snappy script. Really crisp writing. Great structure. Active protagonist. Dan promotes all of these things in his pitch and, thankfully, he didn’t lie. And there are some miscellaneous gold stars to be given as well. The plane crash, in particular, was not only harrowing, but well-researched! Usually when I see a no-apologies Thriller, authenticity isn’t a priority. You might get a writer who doesn’t know the difference between a cockpit and a pit stop and decides to guess based on his previous movie experiences. Here, the pilots are going through a checklist, they’re reacting to the fire in a believable way. Their check-backs to the control tower are believable. That kept my disbelief suspended.

However, these days, I’m always reading a script with my producing hat on. And it’s a really different way to look at a script compared to an impartial internet blogger. Impartial Internet Blogger is looking more at the writing. Producer is asking, “Can this be a movie? Will people come to see it? Does it need to be developed a lot? If so, is it a good enough idea to put in all that time and effort for?” And when I look at Submerged, I say… almost.

I have two big problems. First, the characters are all really thin. And I battle with this all the time. I know thrillers aren’t supposed to have tons of character development. But I still have to feel a closeness and/or a connectivity to them ON SOME LEVEL so that I care about them. The GSU can be the greatest in the world, but if I don’t care about the people WITHIN the GSU, it doesn’t matter.  And if I don’t EVEN KNOW the people in the GSU, that’s even worse!  Yesterday’s Breaking Bad episode had an advantage of course (20 episodes to develop their characters), so we automatically cared about those guys. But that’s the big difference between why that episode was awesome and this script is just pretty good. Strong characters.

I also thought the stuff in the plane after the crash was pretty generic. An asthma attack? We’ve seen that so many times. And it takes up a good 12-14 pages! And from then on, everything in that section was pretty standard. Nothing that unique or memorable happened. It was all garden-variety “injury” and “plane-shifting” stuff. And it really brings us back to the characters. When your story slows down and it’s ONLY about your characters, they HAVE to be well-developed and deep and interesting enough for the limelight. Because they are now the only things holding up your scenes.

That’s not to say Dan wasn’t putting in the effort. April, for example, had this flaw that she broke down under pressure. But truth be told, that’s a really generic flaw. And it doesn’t really get into who she is as a person. It’s more about the surface-level issue of saving people, which is pretty thin. If her flaw was that she was afraid of commitment, for example, and this impending marriage was making her nervous, then this journey could’ve been more about her realizing how great Matt is. It would’ve been more about who she was on the inside, which is always more interesting.

As for the rest of the characters, I can’t tell you anything about them except that Vinnie was an asshole and Brooke was pregnant. I didn’t know anything about Matt. I didn’t know anything about Gabriela. I didn’t know anything about Tavon. Even Vinnie is only barely a character. He’s an asshole. But why? Because that causes conflict? Not good enough.

One way to solve this problem is to do something interesting with the relationships. Once you create an interesting dynamic between people, their dialogue is more likely to reveal parts of their lives, which in turn develops the characters. What if, for example, April used to be with Vinnie? And three years ago, she left him for Matt? Now that motivation we wanted for Vinnie being such an asshole? It’s right there. This guy stole his girl. Now we’re bringing up the past. Now we’re generating conflict both on top of and underneath the surface. And now, in those slower moments, you have something for your characters to actually hash out. It’s not JUST about hitting the plot beats.

Now where Submerged threw me was when the sharks showed up. Because up until that point, I kept thinking, “This is too thin.” “This is too thin.” “Focusing the whole story on trying to get out of the fuselage isn’t big enough for a feature film.” But then a little past the half-way point, they get to the surface, sharks start swimming around, and it almost becomes a different movie. It’s now a shark film. The whole time in the plane I felt like it needed that extra element, and then when I got it, I thought, “Wait, isn’t it too late for this?” Maybe we need to start teasing the sharks earlier, I’m not sure. But I admit, the shark angle definitely makes this more marketable. The producer side of me started to have doubts about my initial reaction.

But ultimately, my uncertainty about the half-plane/half-shark structure and the really thin character development would make this a no-go for me on the producer end. However, this is the kind of thing that one of these straight-to-video productions companies might love. And I know that’s not the dream six-figure spec sale scenario, but it’s something I’d consider if I were Dan. It might lead to enough money to spend more time writing, which means getting better faster, which means finally getting that big splashy sale.

Script link: script link taken down…

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

What I learned: Structure is your left brain. Character development is your right brain. You will be better at one than the other. Know which one is your weakness, PRACTICE IT, and get better. Because only being good at one side (like Submerged) leaves readers feeling gypped. Readers are greedy people. They want BOTH sides. If I were Dan, I would spend the next 4 weeks writing a character piece. Not for anyone to read, but to practice making a story interesting via character development alone. No big fancy plot!  Just interesting characters. That’s how you learn. Then come back and apply those lessons to these characters. Because if you make these guys strong, memorable, and interesting, I can promise you this script will sell.