***NOTE: MONDAY REVIEW IS BELOW!***
***NOTE: AMATEUR OFFERINGS POST IS UP – SCROLL DOWN!***

Hey guys, wanted to divert your attention to something really cool. My friends over at The Tracking Board just came out with a full 300 page book tracking all the spec scripts from last year. Not only that, but the book goes into which managers sold the most scripts, which agents, which studios bought the most scripts, which genres were the highest sellers. If you want to know what’s selling, who’s repping what, and who’s buying, you need to download this book now. The best part about it is it’s FREE.

Also, for those of you who aren’t yet members of The Tracking Board, they’ve agreed to give a 25% discount to all Scriptshadow readers, bringing the yearly membership down to $59.25. Here, you’ll be able to get all this information in real time, allowing you to track trends, and more importantly, figure out who’s selling and buying what, so you can target your query letters to the agents and producers who make the kinds of movies you write. This is the site I use every day to track the industry. So I highly recommend it. The offer is good through Sunday!

Genre: Dystopian/Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) In a world divided by factions based on virtues, Tris learns she’s Divergent and won’t fit in. When she discovers a plot to destroy Divergents, Tris and the mysterious Four must find out what makes Divergents dangerous before it’s too late.
About: The next attempt at a YA novel franchise debuted this weekend to about 55 million dollars. It wasn’t quite Hunger Games numbers, but it’s probably enough to ensure a full trilogy. Divergent was adapted by Evan Daugherty, who broke out a few years back with a screenplay contest win that eventually led to a 7 figure sale and ended with the hit film, Snow White and the Huntsman. Possibly because Kristin Stewart starred in that film, the godmother of the female-driven YA franchise, the Divergent folk brought Daugherty in to script another success story. Coming in to give the script some female sensibility was Vanessa Taylor, who wrote the Meryl Streep film, Hope Springs.
Writer: Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor (based on the novel by Veronica Roth)
Details: 139 minutes!

When you invest in a franchise these days, you don’t have any choice but to cram it down the world’s throat. So competitive has this business become, that it’s better to blanket the world with advertisements and make them HATE your movie, than display a respectful number of billboards and remind everyone that you exist. Hate is irrelevant. What’s important is that they KNOW.

Divergent is the latest film to get the “blanket your eyeballs” marketing treatment. And it’s unfortunate. Cause I’m one of these people who’s been wishing for the death of the female-driven YA novel franchise. I shall not fib. I came to Divergent ready to split the movie in two and send the halves back to the literary world, where they would remain hidden inside the minds of whoever picked them up. But that didn’t happen. My reaction is more…divergent than expected.

The “Divergent for Dummies” plot breakdown goes something like this. It’s Chicago at some point in the future, after war has decimated the world. In order to make sure this doesn’t happen again, the good people of Chi-Town have divided their population into five factions. These factions have names, but they’re way too complicated for the sake of this review. So we’ll just call them the Borings, the Smarties, the Exercisers, and two others that are irrelevant to the plot.

Tris is our hero. She’s part of the Borings, the unofficial ruling group of the city. Her life is dedicated to doing boring things like helping others. But her Choosing Moment is coming up, where she chooses the faction she’ll join for the rest of her life. Why someone is born into a faction but has to choose a faction is beyond me. But that’s this world for ya.

Luckily, it gets more complicated. Before you choose, you get tested to find out which faction you’re a part of. After you find out, you’re supposed to choose that faction. But you don’t have to. You can still choose any faction you want. Which begs the question – why the hell do they need this test in the first place?

It probably has something to do with what happens during Tris’s test. Tris isn’t picked for ANY of the factions. She’s a DIVERGENT! Which is a huge no-no in this society because Divergents can’t be controlled. Luckily, the tester decides to keep this a secret. So Tris is safe. For now at least.

I say “for now” because Evil Kate Winslet, a part of the Smarties Faction, is set on rooting out all the Divergents and killing them. To think, it was only a few years ago she was flying with Jack on the front of the Titanic.

In a surprise move, Tris joins the Exercisers on Choosing Day, who are known for NEVER WALKING. The Exercisers are the chosen defenders of the city, which means Tris has decided to train and become a soldier.

Towards the end of her training, Tris learns of a plan by the Smarties to take over the city, killing the only faction standing in their way, the Borings. The worst part? The Smarties are going to use mind-control on the Exercisers to do their dirty work. The irony! Tris’s current faction is going to kill her old faction! Ah but remember, Tris is immune to mind-control. She’s a Divergent. The question is, is that enough to thwart this plan and save the city?

If you should ever stumble into a showing of Divergent, you may feel like you’re in an alternate dimension. Soon after you sit down, you’ll be bombarded with a dozen scenes of the Exerciser Faction running around, smiling, high-fiving, jumping, cheering, all to an annoyingly catchy tribal beat. It’s one of the weirder things you’ll ever experience in a theater.

But here’s why Divergent survives the nuclear bomb that sent it to its dystopian reality in the first place. This story is almost exclusively focused on character development, and it does a pretty good job of it. Tris is confused about her place in the world, not unlike all of us after our institutionalized years, and therefore must find herself. She joins a faction where she’s the underdog, and that choice is the main reason why this script works.

Like I’ve told you guys in the past, an underdog character goes a long way. And Tris is so far down this ladder (everyone tells her she’s toast – she’ll never make it through the training) that you can’t help but root for her. I loved how they made the odds so impossible (always make your odds impossible!) that you’re never sure if she’s going to succeed or not.

Now because this movie was about character development, much of it is Tris being challenged, having to overcome her fears and her flaws. The problem was, they got a little carried away with that. I wasn’t counting, but 70-80 minutes of Divergent is dedicated to training. I kept waiting for a more concrete story goal to emerge (a danger outside the city they would have to battle perhaps?). But that never came. So I wondered where this was all going.

When I realized this wasn’t The Hunger Games, with its big fancy goal of the Games at the end, but about a secret uprising, I found myself fascinated by the choice. Because it’s the much more dangerous choice of the two. With The Hunger Games, your audience is always looking forward to that juicy goal of trying to win the games.

Divergent’s plot is happening underneath the surface, not unlike The Shawshank Redemption, where the main plot is being kept from the audience. The reason that’s a dangerous move is because it’s easier for the audience to lose interest. If they can’t see the endgame, what’s motivating them to stay interested? Audiences usually need that clear finale (those “Hunger Games” if you will) to stay committed.  Think about it.  If I told you we were going to your favorite restaurant at the end of the day, your whole day would be great.  You’d be so excited for later.  If there was no restaurant visit, however, your day would feel kind of boring. There’d be nothing special about it.

This finally helped me realize why the trailers felt so confusing – why every time I saw them I didn’t know what the movie was about. They couldn’t reveal what the movie was about because the whole plot is the third-act twist! It’s the secret uprising plot that was invisible for 2 hours.

Did this work? Sort of. The twist itself was kind of cheesy. We have serum-centric mind control going on, and whenever you throw in serum-centric mind control, I’m sorry, but it’s going to be cheesy. The thing was, you liked Tris so much, you wanted to see her win. You wanted to see her take down Evil Kate Winslet.

I give it to the Divergent writers for keeping the plot focused, despite its long run time and all the weird things they had to include from the novel. The training was long, but they constantly reminded us how important it was. That’s what you have to remember when it comes to adaptations. The writers have to find ways to make things work even though they know they don’t work. If you’re lucky, someone will be paying you to do that some day.

I mean why the hell does this Exerciser Faction never walk? Why are they always cheering? And the biggest question of all – WHY THE HELL DOES THE TRAIN IN CHICAGO NEVER STOP??? There’s no way to get on the train in this movie unless you run and jump on it.

You’d think that one of the many engineers in the city would figure out a way to solve this problem (I hear brakes still work in the future). It was weird stuff like this that gave Divergent a schizophrenic feel. But Daugherty and Taylor found a way to include just enough of it to sell the world, but not so much that we rolled our eyes (well, okay, I rolled my eyes a couple of times).

Did Divergent benefit from extremely low expectations? Yes. Am I recommending you all go out and see it? No. But if you’re walking around on a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do and you can get a matinee ticket, you may find Divergent not nearly as bad as you’d expect it to be.

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of a matinee ticket
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There should always be a sense of doubt that your main character will succeed. If there isn’t, why would we care? There would be nothing to worry about.

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: AESOP THE COURAGEOUS
GENRE: Adventure
LOGLINE: When his mother is kidnapped and sold into slavery, the legendary fableist must overcome being a short, ugly mute and outmatch Greek philosophers and bloodthirsty kings to rescue her and save the kingdom.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: If I have to sit through another movie starring a chisel chinned, barrel chested, cooler-than-christ anti-hero, I’m gonna start drinking. And when I drink, I get all existential. And when I get all existential, I go searching for myself. And when I go searching for myself, I take trips to exotic countries. And when I take trips to exotic countries, my planes mysteriously disappear. And when my planes mysteriously disappear, I end up on Lost island. As cool as that would be for about a week, please don’t let me end up on Lost island, Carson! For a change, let’s give the short and uglies of the world a chance at being heroic. And you can start right here with this inspired, true-ish tale.

I’ve always been intrigued by ancient Greek culture and stumbled upon this story in college. It is tailor-made for the big screen, but very few people know about the man behind the fables. A cute, straight forward fantasy adventure this is not. Think more along the lines of the dark and dirty original versions of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. The Zemeckis’, Burtons, and Depps of the world would have a field day with this.

TITLE: The Disappearance of Flight 229
GENRE: Drama / Thriller
LOGLINE: A grieving father will stop at nothing to uncover the truth when his family goes missing in an airline disappearance.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’ve placed in just about every competition out there and am looking to take it to the next level. I first wrote this script a few years back and it has recently become a timely topic in the world today, so I thought I’d throw it out there again.

TITLE: Eve
GENRE: Sci-fi/Comedy
LOGLINE: In a future where the government chooses your spouse for you, a group of married friends rebel by starting an underground sex club.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Imagine a world without war or racism, without adultery or hurt feelings, depression or diseases… oh yeah, and no sex, either. Your Friends (the people in power) choose your job and spouse for you. When they think the time is right, they deliver a baby to you via drone. Everyone takes a vitamin each morning that helps them remain perfectly content. Eve fits right into this world… but one day she stops taking her vitamin and discovers everything that she never knew she was missing.

TITLE: From the Wild.pdf)
GENRE: Mystery/Drama
LOGLINE: After a massive wildfire, a small Oregon town starts to experience strange occurrences that could end up altering modern science forever.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This script was the first time I’ve ever really written from my heart, and it’s inspired by the Spielberg films I love. I entered it in the most recent script contest on trackingb.com but it didn’t place anything. I wasn’t expecting much. It was the first time I’ve submitted anything to anywhere. Still, I like the script and hope to get some great feedback from the vast amounts of screenwriting knowledge that frequent Scriptshadow. Tear it apart!

TITLE: Doggone
GENRE: Dramedy
LOGLINE: A suicidal man’s plan to off himself is thwarted by a stray dog.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’ve been writing two years, and well, I’m probably the most unlikely to succeed in this business, but I love writing(maybe I’m somewhat masochistic)! This is a buddy-dog story. Coverage readers have given it a consider. It found me an agent the first year I began writing(yes, I recklessly sent out old fashioned queries before the script was ready). My cowriter/best friend, could’ve killed me for doing such! Anyway, it’s been optioned(once) and the first-time director recently backed out, so I’d love to give it some sort of shot in the dark. I figure if anyone could give it a shot… Carson could! :) So why not? Hell, it’s got a damn DOG in 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: Horror
Premise (from writer): When a young geneticist attempts to save the world’s forests from a rabid insect infestation she unwittingly unleashes a plague of apocalyptic proportions.
Why You Should Read (from writer): A new, original monster for the horror/nature gone wild sub-genre based on real science and current environmental concerns – and it’s a pretty swift read at 103 pgs. Plus, the first and last lines of dialogue are ‘fuck’ and ‘beautiful’ ;)
Writer: Drew Bryan
Details: 102 pages

Ellen Page for Gemma?

I’m open to these kinds of scripts because they make movies. It’s not high art. It’s not Citizen Kane. But you have to see a script for what it’s trying to be, and judge it on if it succeeds. If you’re trying to be a dumb fun horror film, then you gotta try and make the “A” version of that. I downloaded a cheap fun B-movie called “Splinter” from Itunes the other day and loved it. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. And it was the exact kind of movie you want to watch on a Saturday night.

I need to find the people who like to make these movies though cause when I find a good B-horror script, I don’t know who to send them to. Lots of producers are afraid to touch these because they don’t want to be known as the “B-horror” guys, even though there’s a lot of money in B-horror. So if you’re one of these producers, e-mail me. Cause I wouldn’t mind being part of the next Tremors franchise.

Is Gripper one of the winners?

Well, it sure has a hell of an opening. We’re in the middle of a forest fire with two firefighters, 25 year old Gemma and 25 year old Bobby. This fire is bad news. So bad that it four-walls them. No way out and not wanting to burn to death, Bobby allows Gemma to kill him. So she takes a fire axe and SPLITS HIS HEAD OPEN! Good thing he axed nicely.

Before Gemma can join Bobby, a small hole opens up and she’s able to escape the fire. Gemma is so scarred by the ordeal that she does some investigating and finds out that forest fires are created by a certain beetle that eats away at the trees and makes it really easy for forest fires to spread. So if she can find a way to kill that beetle, she can stop the forest fires, and she won’t have to split anybody’s head open anymore.

So Gemma, who’s now a scientist of some sort, finds this fast growing-fungus that kills these beetles. But when she tests it, the fungus is out of control. It’s a bust. But it’s enough for Gemma’s former lover and boss, the darkly handsome Darius, to take the product out in the filed and test it.

So he hires a bunch of clueless assistant-types and takes them to a recently burned-down forest to see if he can get this fungus operating. Meanwhile, Gemma heads out to another part of the same forest to perform some other fungus related experiments with her new boyfriend, surfer-dude, Tor.

After a night of crazy sex though, she wakes up to find Tor not in the tent, but up on a tree, frozen in a strange comatose like state. It’s creepy. And it’s also the exact same thing the beetles in her experiment did when they were infected with the fungus. Uh-oh. This could be bad.

So Gemma heads over to Darius’s little operation, since she knows they have better equipment than her, and asks for help. They hike there, cut Tor down, but he’s acting nutso, twitching and cracking in weird ways, and desperately trying to get back up on that tree. This begins the infestation, where one by one, our team will get infected, with no help in site. Will they figure out a way to stop the mad fungus before it turns them all into fungus-creatures? Click on the link at the end of the review to read the script and find out!

Gripper started off great. I was NOT expecting that first scene. But then things start to get a little messy. We get one giant 10 minute scene (split into two halves) documenting this beetle experiment, and that was the first time my impatience set in. You never want to give a scene any more time than it needs. As soon as the reader feels like we’re hanging around too long, we get uncomfortable. And this goes double for anything within the first fifteen. Readers expect you to have them laser-focused during that time, or else how can they expect you to keep their interest 60 pages from now?

In addition, it was unclear to me why our main character, Gemma, who was a firefighter in that first scene, was now a scientist. Those are two completely different jobs that require two completely different skillsets. In retrospect, maybe they were in that fire AS SCIENTISTS and not firefighters, but if that’s the case, that needs to be made clear.

From there, we set out to this dead forest, and I was confused again. I thought Darius and Gemma were going out there together. I swear there was something in the dialogue that implied that. So later, when Gemma comes to Darius’s camp for help and he asks her what she’s doing out here, I was confused as hell. I eventually realized that they had both come to the same forest, but separately, for different reasons. That seemed overly-complicated. Why wasn’t the story written to get them there all together?  Having two teams just confuses things. It makes it harder for you to write. And it makes it harder for us readers to follow. So it’s a lose-lose.

From there, I don’t think the story got going soon enough. I believe I was on page 50, halfway through the script, before they tried to get Tor out of that tree. That’s 50 pages without very much happening. Remember that you need STORY DENSITY in your script. You need to fill the pages up. Not drag things out. I felt like things were being dragged out.

The characters were okay. But nobody felt “real” enough for me to really care. Gemma herself was a strange character. It appears she has three different boyfriends in this (Bobby, Darius, and Tor), which is fine. I’m all for banging as many people as you want, but in a script, it just looks unfocused. We don’t know what to make of it.

And then when Tor starts turning into one of these spore-like hybrid monster thingeys, Gemma is strangely unaffected. She’s more concerned about capturing and quarantining Tor than she is losing someone she cares deeply about.

When you’re writing one of these movies, which is basically a zombie movie (or an “infected” movie), this is one of the best conceits you have. Is having someone love someone else, and then that person gets infected, and our hero has to figure out whether to kill them or not. Watch that opening episode of Walking Dead, where that father has to decide whether to shoot his zombie wife. How hard it is for him. That emotion is pouring off the screen. We don’t get any of that here. Nobody really seems to care about one another so it doesn’t really matter if someone gets hurt. That needs to be fixed.

This is all very hard for me to say because I think there’s something here. I think the monsters Drew’s created are borderline genius. I’ve never seen anything like them before. Where I see writers fail in this genre, is when they make monsters that they just think are cool. They haven’t really thought about them, their origins, their evolution, the reasons for why they look the way they do.

Gripper put a lot of thought into its monsters. I love the way they crick and crack and twist. The way they have to climb up high on the tree, just like the beetles did, the way the long spine grows out of their mouths and the spores explode up out of them, populating more areas in order to spread the disease. It’s freaky as hell and is going to make for one hell of a visual.

But none of that matters unless this other stuff is shored up. Cut down all the techno-babble in that early ten-page scene. Get them out to the site sooner. Make it one group, with Darius and Gemma together, instead of two separate groups. Cut down your character count. There are way too many people here and it was hard to keep track of them. And then just work on your character building. Make sure people actually care about each other so that when they start dying, there are emotions involved.

Oh, and one more suggestion. Usually in these movies, there’s one big final ‘super version’ of the creature. This is a really cool creature you’ve created. I wouldn’t mind seeing a version of it that’s balls-to-the-wall insane.

There’s something here, Drew. It’s just not there yet. Good luck on the rewrite though. You seem like a fungi. ☺

Script link: Gripper (note: This is an updated version of the script from the one in Amateur Offerings with changes made based on commenter feedback)

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

What I learned: Before you kill off a character, make sure there’s someone who cares about that character. That’s the only way you’re going to get emotion out of us. My favorite example of this is in Aliens with Vasquez and Drake, who were best friends. When Drake got killed, Vasquez went nuts, so we actually cared. Had they not known each other, our reaction to Drake’s death would’ve been less intense. That was my problem with Gemma and Tor. I didn’t think Gemma gave two shits about him. So who cares if he turns into a monster. And they don’t even have to be boyfriend-girlfriend for this to work. They could’ve been best friends since they were kids. But they need to care for each other.

This man could SERIOUSLY benefit from a writing group. (“Ehhh, you could probably lose the werewolf made out of grass, Mr. Night.”)

One of the more frustrating things about reading amateur scripts is seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again. These are simple mistakes that, had the writer had any sort of feedback community, they’d have nipped in the bud a long time ago. This is why writers can go 5-6 years without significant improvement. They have no idea what they’re doing wrong because they have no community to tell them that they’re doing anything wrong.

I also get a good e-mail a week from writers looking for writing partners. They ask me where the best place online to find a writing partner is, and their hearts sink when I tell them there isn’t one. At one point, I was going to create a Scriptshadow Social Network that highlighted and paired writers looking for partners, but it would’ve taken a year and too much money so I gave up on it.

Today, I’m going to solve both of these problems. You, my slug line slinging friends, are going to use the comments section to set up writers groups and find writing partners. The process for how you do this is up to you, but let me offer a few suggestions.

1) Tell us the genres you like to write in.
2) Tell us how many scripts you’ve written.
3) Tell us what level you’re at.

The third one is a little subjective, but it’s important, since no one likes to exchange work with people significantly below their level. So I’d suggest using my Screenwriting Rating System as a general scale. Keep in mind – and this is just in my experience – that women will tend to be honest with this scale, while men will rate themselves one or two levels higher than they are. C’mon guys, you know you do it.

Once you find someone you think could make a great partner or group member, contact them and trade a script with them. Lots of writers talk a big game, but there’s no way to know if their stuff is any good unless you read it. If you’re looking for a partner, you should really like the writing, since you’ll be working closely with the person. You can be a little more lenient if you’re looking for a group member, though. You don’t have to love someone’s work. You’re just looking for another set of eyes to give you feedback. As long as the person seems like they have a good grasp on the craft, they’ll probably be a good fit for your group.

Another reason I wanted to set this up was that it was a good opportunity to talk about feedback. Feedback is one of the most critical components to becoming a good writer. Not everyone has money for a professional consultation or is friends with a professional writer who’ll spend 8 hours breaking down your script and helping you. Agents and producers usually reject scripts with a form letter, so they’re not helpful when it comes to feedback. And while some contests offer notes, you don’t really know who’s giving those notes. It could be some 21 year old who doesn’t know the difference between irony and Iron Man.

Other writers reading your work, then, is your only real chance at getting critical feedback. However, feedback is not as simple as it sounds. It’s actually kind of complicated. There’s a little hidden language that goes on, and it changes from person to person. It’s important that you know how to speak this language, or you’ll have no idea if your script is actually good or not. So here are a few tips to keep in mind.

NOBODY’S MEAN
People are inherently nice (well, except for Grendl). They understand how much work you put into your script and how much you care, so if they don’t love it, they’re not going to anoint themselves your dream-crusher. They’ll look for any positives they can and focus on those. It’s actually hard to find someone who will be brutally honest and tell you your script sucks, so every bit of praise you hear during feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. How do you get honesty out of readers then? I’ll get into that in a bit.

FOCUS ON THE MEAN
For this reason, when you’re getting feedback, move past the compliments and focus on the negatives, even if the negatives weren’t that negative. Because the reality is, if someone says they thought your script was okay, it means they didn’t like it. If they say they didn’t like it, it means they thought it was awful. Nice people hide truths in between compliments. So it’s your job to read between the lines, find out what they didn’t like, and address those issues the best you can.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Family and friends are necessary to making us writers feel good. Writing is such a lonely journey, that there aren’t many opportunities to get praised. Giving your script to a family member or friend, someone you know is going to be supportive, is important for your self-confidence. But do not base any major script decisions on the feedback you got from family or friends. They are the least reliable in terms of if your script is any good.

EVERYBODY’S GOT AN ANGLE
One thing I’ve found over years of feedback is that everybody who gives feedback has an angle. And it’s your job to identify that angle and factor it into the feedback. For example, if a professor is giving you feedback, his angle is that he’s there to encourage you. So his notes are going to skew towards the positive. I’ve seen plenty of instances in “opposite sex script trading” (which sounds worse than it is) where one of the people secretly likes the other. Naturally, their feedback is going to be really positive in the hopes that you’ll like them. Even past history can influence script feedback. If you give a script to someone and they rip it apart, which sends you into a spiral of despair and lots of drinking, well, what do you think is going to happen when you give that person your next script? They’re not going to want to ruin your life again, so they’ll be a lot nicer. It’s your job to sniff out what the angle is of the person giving you feedback, and factor that in.

FIND THE MEANIES
We’re writers. Which means we’re insecure. We want praise so badly that we’ll do anything to get it, including deluding ourselves. We’ll seek out that guy or girl who has a crush on us to read our script, because we know they’re going to tell us everything we write is great. But if you really want to improve with your writing, you want to seek out those people who are mean (or, at the very least, brutally honest). The people who you know are going to tell you when something sucks. As long as they’re willing to tell you WHY they thought it sucked, so you can learn from their feedback, these people are invaluable. Because the truth-sayers are the only ones who are going to improve your script. When I give notes, the writers I like the best are the ones who say, “Be brutal.” Because they know that sugar-coating problems isn’t going to solve anything. Don’t look for Paula Addul. Find your Simon Cowell.

ASK ASK ASK
The best way to get true feedback is, after someone’s given you their thoughts on your script, ask specific questions. I’ve found that while people are really nice in their prepared post-read statement to you, that filter comes off once you start asking questions. For example, they may have casually mentioned that the characters didn’t pop off the page, making it seem like it was a minor problem. But when you ask them specifically about your hero, Jack, they get snarky. “I don’t know. He just seemed like an asshole.” Listen not only to what they’re saying, but HOW they’re saying it. Do they seem annoyed? Pissed? These are important emotions to track because they’re not the emotions you were hoping for. The more you can sniff out these problem areas through questioning, the better off your script is going to be.

HONEST FEEDBACK
The best way to get HONEST feedback from fellow writers is through a long-term relationship with them. The more scripts you trade with someone, the more you begin to trust each other, the more honest the feedback becomes. Just like any relationship, comfortability sets in, and you’re less worried about hurting each other, since you know that you’re both after the same thing, writing a better script. Let’s start that right now. Use the comments to find that group of people (or partner) who are going to help guide your writing through your amateur, as well as your professional, career. Good luck!