Genre: Comedy
Premise: A man and woman working for a black market organ delivery service try to deliver a heart to a client while being pursued by the woman’s insane female boss.
About: Nat Faxon & Jim Rash are plenty busy these days. The Academy Award winning duo (The Descendants) jump back and forth between writing and acting projects (you’ve seen Rash as the unforgettable Dean in the recently cancelled “Community”) and are coming off of the indie flick, “The Way Way Back.” Their newest project, The Heart, has Kristin Wiig attached, and seemed like a go movie until a couple of months ago, when Indian Paintbrush got nervous about the budget. From what I understand, the movie isn’t cancelled or anything. I think they’re just trying to figure out how to make it for cheaper.
Writers: Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
Details: 109 pages (February 24th, 2014 draft)

I don’t know what Kristin Wiig is doing. Ever since Bridesmaids, she’s chosen to be in all these tiny indie movies that go straight to Itunes. And look, I think going indie is fine. You develop some street cred. Show everyone that you’re about the art.

But those decisions only work if the movies are actually good. And none of Wiig’s have been. Friends with Kids. Girl Most Likely. Hateship Loveship.

Hateship Loveship???

Someone really made a movie called “Hateship Loveship?” And people allowed this to happen?

Part of the problem is that the roles Wiig’s been choosing aren’t very interesting. The whole point of going indie is to play characters that you wouldn’t be able to play otherwise. Stretch your acting muscles a little. Her characters have been one step above mumblecore – which is to say they’re invisible.

And that’s my biggest problem with The Heart. Our main character (or, co-main character), Lucy, is invisible, keeping her emotions and opinions inside for the most part. This is one of the trickiest things a writer can tackle, is creating a reserved main character. Reserved main characters don’t “pop” on the page. They get lost amongst the action paragraphs and the sluglines while any character with something to say overshadows them.

That’s why I loved Cake so much, another female-driven indie flick. Cake’s main character, the grieving, angry, says-what’s-on-her-mind Claire made her presence felt on every page. Lucy keeps her thoughts in check unless she feels something needs to be said. The thing is, if that person isn’t active or constantly making choices that are disturbing the story, they just become the “boring character who doesn’t talk.”

Oh, I haven’t actually told you what the plot of The Heart is, have I?

So this woman, Lucy, has a grandmother who needs special care. So she needs money. Her current job, which entails delivering equipment for Chuck E. Cheese type establishments, isn’t exactly satisfying, particularly because her psycho boss, Dawn, is currently trying to prostitute her to clean up a bad business transaction.

So when Joe comes around, a courier for an illegal organ trade operation, and offers her ten grand to help him deliver a heart to Florida, she doesn’t have a choice. She has to take it. Of course, Lucy thinks this is all above the board. So when the only stipulation is that they use her van, she doesn’t think much of it.

However, when shit starts going south, Joe’s failure to mention the “illegal” part of his job comes out quickly. But Lucy isn’t exactly an innocent party here. She quit work without telling her boss. And she didn’t deliver the box of stuffed animals she was supposed to deliver. And those stuffed animals just happen to be packed with COCAINE because Dawn – it turns out – is running more than just a Chuck E. Cheese product delivery service.

That sends Dawn on their trail, who believes Lucy stole the cocaine on purpose. When she then finds out about this heart though, a heart that’s worth half a million dollars to its recipient, Dawn decides that she’ll be taking that heart and upping the delivery price. Throw in Joe’s criminal boss and our angry heart recipient (who’s a Pecan Roll Restaurant magnate), and pretty soon everyone’s trying to get their hands on this heart before it stops beating.

The Heart starts off really clunky, as the script strains to introduce all of our characters. Beware ye, the screenwriter, of the hero introduction scene. This is the scene where you need to tell us who our main character is. If said character is afraid of commitment, you want to open with a scene where they break up with a girlfriend because things are moving along “too quickly.”

Good screenwriters know this, and therefore spend a lot of time trying to perfect this introductory scene so the audience knows exactly who’s taking them through the story. Here’s the problem though. We writers can get TOO wrapped up in these scenes. We’re working so hard to sell the character, we fail to notice that the scene is starting to feel like a great big advertisement for our main character instead of, you know, a seamless piece of a giant puzzle.

Lucy’s introductory scene, where she’s trying to get a kid off one of the machines so she can re-stock it, feels too “set-up-y.” You can feel the writers underneath the scene “making sure” that the character is coming off the way they need her to. And the irony is that when you do this – when you spend more time on this scene than any other scene in the script to make sure it’s right – it ends up feeling the least natural of them all.

Here’s the solution. Whenever you write this scene (or really ANY scene that requires you to stuff a lot of shit in it – like exposition), take an “entertainment pass” on the scene. In other words, don’t read the scene seeing if you were able to slip in that one key character trait. Or see if you accurately portrayed their flaw.  Just read the scene to see if it entertains you. Does the scene work on its own, independent of any of the things you’re trying to sneak in there?

Because here’s the shitty thing about writing. I know when a writer is trying to do something clever – like slip some exposition into a line of dialogue. And I commend them when they do it well! But the audience doesn’t know or care about that stuff. They don’t clap and say, “Yeah! Did you see the way that writer hid his exposition!? Wow!” All that stuff is invisible to them and supposed to be a given. All that matters to the audience is that they like the scene. So if anything feels stilted, they’re not going to enjoy it.

However, once The Heart gets on the road, it gets a lot better. I mean, for awhile there, I was like, “What were these guys thinking?” But I’ll tell you when I changed my mind. It’s when we find out that Lucy’s boss was secretly a coke-dealer using her business to deliver the drug. That was the first time I felt like the writers hadn’t just slapped this together.

That’s important. Because unless we encounter some unexpected plot points along the way in your story, the implication is a lazy effort. As soon as a reader senses laziness – that you didn’t work your ass off on each and every decision – they know that script is going nowhere fast. But yeah, after that moment happened, the script really started to take off and challenge the reader. I thought I knew where this was going, but instead, I was inundated with surprise after surprise.

Probably one of the best things these guys do is they have something going on with EVERY CHARACTER, even the smallest ones. And I think I know why. Faxon and Rash are character actors. They’re used to playing characters who were an afterthought to the writer. You can tell they use their writing to make sure that that never happens to an actor in one of their movies.

And what’s great about beefing up your secondary characters is that it often opens up new plot possibilities. For example, we have Gordy, our heart recipient. He has this whole backstory with his family and his restaurant franchise. That allowed Faxon and Rash to discover Gordy’s brother, who has his OWN backstory (he secretly likes Gordy’s wife and therefore wouldn’t mind if Gordy bit the dust). Because they went so far as to build up those backstories, it allowed them to come up with the brother trying to interfere in the heart transfer, as he becomes yet another player who goes after Joe and Lucy. In his case, he wants to destroy it.

So not only does it make the characters pop more. It invigorates the imagination and opens up more avenues for you to be creative.

As for the script as a whole, it’s got solid GSU (Goal – get the heart there, Stakes – both our heroes lives are on the line PLUS they both need the money badly, and urgency – the heart stops beating in 36 hours). Along with the unexpected twists and turns in the plot, it was a really fun read.

But the opening and the underwritten Lucy kept this from being anything more than a casual recommendation. Lucy is so restrained and so introverted for the majority of the time, combined with the fact that she’s not dictating any of the action (Joe is), that she’s not memorable enough. And the opening is trying to set up too much. We don’t get on the road until page 35, and I think that’s a direct result of too much information being jumbled into that first act.

So it was a cool script. It just needs to be tuned up in a couple of places.

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

What I learned: In a big rowdy movie with lots of big personalities, the quietest character is usually going to get lost in the shuffle.  So you have to think real hard about making that quiet character one of your protagonists. It’s not that a quiet protagonist can’t work. You’re just severely handicapping yourself when you use one.  So think twice about it.

TV Pilot edition! Play nice.

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TITLE: Shrapnel
GENRE: Crime Drama
LOGLINE: 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: 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.

TITLE: Jane
GENRE: N/A
LOGLINE: A woman posing as an IT security specialist lives a secret life as an assassin for hire.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m an aspiring screenwriter from New York. You should read JANE because it’s only 50 pages. It’s also very divisive. Two notable amateur Friday alums had this to say about it:

“Until the very, very end, the script has a few storylines that vie for attention but seem inconsequential to one another. Jane’s mission in the pilot doesn’t really give us further insight into her character despite her resourcefulness and how lethal she can be.”

and …

“I want to read it again tonight because, for the second time in a row now, I enjoyed it so much I came away with no constructive notes whatsoever. It’s making me feel like a fanboy.”

TITLE: Cartella
GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE: After her father dies in a shootout, a single mother finds herself to be the unexpected heir of a Mexican drug cartel.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Let me ask you something, AOW vets. When’s the last time you wrote an hour-long pilot in a week? I’m talking pitch to polished draft. Well, that’s the story behind “Cartella.” I was a finalist for the Television Academy Internship in the TV Writing Drama category, and had a week to submit an original script. For months I’d been searching for an opportunity to get this project off the ground, and this was it. After six grueling days, I busted out 49 pages of blood, sweat and tears. Even though I didn’t get the internship, I’m damn proud of the result.

I’ve been doing paid script coverage for almost a year now, while attending school full time as a screenwriting major. So when I say I know this pilot is good, I know it’s good. I wouldn’t have submitted it to the illustrious Scriptshadow if I didn’t believe it had a shot. This is my second original pilot and third TV project.

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 (from writer): Action/Adventure, Fantasy
Premise (from writer): At the end of the world, young loner Pete Garey and his unicorn companion, Ariel, fight to survive in the chaos of the Change, where magic rules and they battle a dark sorcerer who covets the powers of her horn.
Why you should read (from writer): I have written a fantasy/adventure called “ARIEL” based on the 80′s cult classic young-adult novel by Steven R. Boyett. The script won Best Action/Adventure Screenplay in the Script Exposure Screenwriting Competition, and was chosen by Stephanie Palmer to be pitched from the stage at the AFM in November 2013. I first fell in love with this story when I was 14 years old. It really made an impression on me, (mythical creatures and post-apocalypse, whee!) and I always thought it would make a great movie. ARIEL seems to have a lingering effect on many of its fans. So, fast-forward to thirty years later: I optioned the rights and wrote the screenplay. I hope you and your readers will enjoy it too! — ARIEL is an edgy post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, an exciting road adventure, and a surprisingly funny story of courage and trust on Pete’s journey to becoming a man. — P.S. I had to laugh when I saw Friday’s newsletter and the presence of FIREWAKE on Amateur Offerings. I hope you will not be put off by the idea of TWO talking unicorn scripts – really, what are the odds?? That said, I have read FIREWAKE and the only similarity between the two is a talking unicorn character – they are very different stories.
Writer: Stacy Langton (based on the novel by Steven R. Boyett)
Details: 118 pages

Due to a mix-up in me being an idiot, I just discovered that today’s slated review, Black Autumn, was written by S.D., who’s other script (Primal) was reviewed just three weeks ago. I didn’t think it was fair to give up an amateur slot to someone who had just been reviewed, which sent me scrambling for a replacement. If you guys still want to get a Black Autumn review, let me know and I’ll figure out a day. But today feels like we must release someone new from the Matrix.

Where do you go for replacements at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night? I’ll tell you where. Unicorn Land!

Luckily for me, I had TWO unicorn scripts to choose from! It was a toss up, but I ended up going with Ariel. What did I hope to learn from this experience? Well, let me say this. Some writer (whose name I’m forgetting) once noted that if Harry Potter was the EXACT SAME STORY but written as a spec script called, “Limpy Ladderbottoms and the Candles of Pegasus,” it never would’ve sold. People only take chances on this “out there stuff” if it’s been proven in another medium first. Well, with Ariel being based on a book, I figured if it’s any good, we can give it a Potter platform!

18 year old Pete Garey is just a regular high school dude… until The Change comes. The Change is when the entire world stops working, all electricity, all machines, all batteries. Nobody knows why this happened. All they know is that they can’t cycle through Netflix movies for 30 minutes at a time anymore.

Oh, and that mythical creatures have invaded the earth!

While bumbling around, trying to figure out what’s going on, Pete meets Ariel, a unicorn. Ariel pulled a Harrison Ford so Pete must nurse her back to health, and along the way, they become friends!  You may be asking how that can happen.  It’s because Ariel can talk!  She speaks in a little girl voice, and over time, Pete teaches her the entire English language so they can communicate.

As they head to the library to try and figure out what’s happening, Pete and Ariel feel the presence of a very powerful man, the Sorcerer, who they believe wants to find and kill Ariel so he can take Ariel’s horn! For those of you ignorants who know nothing about unicorns, a unicorn’s horn is said to be packed with magic. Therefore, they’re in high demand.

After the sorcerer hires some horn-men (get it? Instead of hit-men) to steal Ariel’s horn, it becomes clear that the only way they’re going to stop this meanie is to go mano et unicorno with the Sorcerer. Problem is, he’s in freaking New York, which is forever away. So they head down that way, picking up a samurai, a little boy, a horny woman, and a few other peeps, hoping to resolve this Sorcerer problem once and for all.

Hm.

I’m going to have a tough time with this one. First of all, we have to be fair here. This isn’t the kind of script that most people who visit this site are into. So right off the bat, Stacy’s got a tough sell. I’m sure if this was being reviewed on one of those Twilight sites, it’d be a whole different story.

But it does lead me to my first question. Who is the audience here? Because you’d think if we’re following talking unicorns, we’re looking at a 5-11 year old demographic. But the thing is, sex is a huge part of this script. One of the major threads is that only virgins can touch unicorns. And Pete is a virgin. That’s what allows Pete and Ariel to become so close.

That leads me to my next question. Why did it matter if only virgins could touch unicorns? Virgin or not, everybody was still able to see and talk to Ariel, so losing your virginity only deprived you of touch. You could still hang out, crack jokes about zebras, and get wasted on moonshine. Right?

Issue three was that I got the feeling there was a weird sexual thing going on between Ariel and Pete. I don’t know if that was on purpose or I was totally misreading it. But it made me feel the way the rope in gym did when you slid down it.  Then you start imagining where everything goes and it’s just… well, it’s not church conversation, let’s just say that.

But let’s move past all that stuff. If I’m being honest, it’s hard for me to see what makes these magic worlds work or not. As crazy as a sexually frustrated talking unicorn sounds, is it any stranger than Harry Potter casting Griffensporf Level 5 spells on his ginger friend, turning him into an eagle spider? Not being the audience for this world, trying to gauge its logic is a hornless endeavor.

All I can do is comment on the story. Everything else being even, did the characters and the plot compel me to read on?

In a word, they did not.

First off, there was the double time-jump-forward in the opening ten pages (we jump a year forward after the opening scene, then jump another year forward after another scene). Not only is this clunky, it indicates a writer who doesn’t know where to begin their story. If we’re going to jump, just do it that one time. Two years ahead.

From there, there was a LOT of expositional dialogue with very little drama. It was a lot of characters talking about people they knew and how “you should meet this person” and “you can go to the library” and how “I’ve heard of this sorcerer,” and then “who is the sorcerer” and “what does he want” and “where are we going.”

Instead of scenes being used for dramatic purposes, they were used to talk about plot details plot details plot details. Characters talking about the plot is boring. Readers want drama!

For example, there was a scene in The Walking Dead (zombie apocalypse show) where Rick, our hero, shows up with his son and a friend at an abandoned house. He wants to rest and they want to go into town to look for food. So he takes a nap and they leave. While they’re out, some violent raiders come to the house, and Rick must hide. He knows his son and friend are coming back soon, and when they do, these men will surely kill them. But Rick can’t do anything about it. He’s trapped, unable to warn them without letting the raiders know he’s there. That’s drama!  We have no idea how our characters are going to get out of this so we have to read on to find out!  We don’t get a single crafty dramatic scene like that here.

There was also ZERO subtext going on under any of the scenes. Characters almost exclusively delivered two kinds of dialogue: They’d say exactly what they were thinking, or they would discuss plot exposition that set up later events.

This kind of thing becomes apparent once you run into a scene that actually does display subtext or conflict. And that’s what happened here. I noticed, all of a sudden, that I was drawn into a scene. It was when the new girl joins the group, and Ariel becomes jealous of her. Ariel tells Pete that she doesn’t trust her, but that’s not what she’s really saying. She’s saying, “This girl is trying to take my man.  And I don’t like it.” They then kind of dance around that reality, without saying it out loud. That’s what I mean by subtext. But that was the only time it happened in the entire script.

Remember, the reader likes figuring things out. They enjoy trying to measure what two people are really saying while they’re talking. It’s like a little adventure. When you have two people saying exactly what they feel (“I love you.” “I love you too”), we don’t get to go on those adventures. So we become bored.

In addition to that, the goal was too muddy. Everybody talked about this Sorcerer guy, but I couldn’t figure out who he was or why he was important. People would say his name and then everyone would get jittery. So for a big portion of the script’s first half, we’re just talking about this guy but not doing anything about him.

Then, at some point, they say, “Okay, well, let’s go get him.” Which was good, because now our characters were actually moving forward. But I still didn’t know what the plan was. Was it to kill him? Talk to him? Strike a deal so he didn’t take Ariel’s horn? When the motivation for the main goal driving the story is muddy, the reader loses interest. How can someone be into something if they’re not sure why it’s happening? Look at Lord of the Rings. We know what Frodo is doing the whole time. He’s going to the volcano to destroy the ring. That’s always clear.

I think this script needed a clear goal right away. The motivation behind that goal needed to be strong. The scenes themselves needed less exposition, more drama, and more subtext. And it would’ve been nice if some of the rules had been clearer. Again, why does it matter if you can’t touch a unicorn if you can still see it and talk to it? Other than petting privileges being revoked, it’s the same thing.

On the plus side, the script was properly formatted. There was some imagination behind the world. And there was a certain charm to some of the characters. I think Stacy was up against a tough crowd. Even if this was the greatest talking unicorn movie ever made, you’d still have to drag me to the theater.  That shows you just how high the standards were.  I dearly hope this doesn’t hurt my chances of seeing a real unicorn someday, but this wasn’t for me.

Screenplay link: Ariel

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

What I learned: For a dramatically potent scene, create a complicated situation where success is in doubt. That’s all that Walking Dead scene was.

Tarantino’s writing probably contains more exceptional elements than any other writer in the business.

The worst scripts in the world?  They aren’t the worst scripts in the world.  There are scripts even worse.

Make sense? Probably not. But it will be by the end of this article.

Consider yourselves lucky.  Here at Scriptshadow, we don’t let you see the bad stuff. The scripts you see on Amateur Offerings every week? Those writers have at least demonstrated an understanding of the craft. But the truly bad ones? Those don’t make it in front of your eyes. For that reason, you don’t know what it’s like to read something truly bad.

I remember a couple of years ago, I read this script where I had ZERO understanding of what was going on.  This writer had the ability to write pages and pages of story where nothing actually happened, so I’d find myself having read 10 pages, but not being able to remember anything that transpired.  If you put a gun to my head, I’d probably tell you it was about a goddess trying to blow up a volcano. But if the writer had told me it was about a Christmas tree who fell in love with a menorah, I wouldn’t have argued. It was that vague.

But look, the truth is, these “really bad” scripts are often the result of new writers who haven’t studied the craft and who have never gotten feedback. They write down exactly what’s in their head as they’re thinking it, believing it will make sense to us because it makes sense to them, not realizing that writing a screenplay requires a stricter kind of logic that takes some trial and error getting used to.

So to me, those aren’t the worst screenplays. The worst screenplays are the AVERAGE SCREENPLAYS.

There’s no emptier feeling I get than when I read an average screenplay. I mean, at least with a really bad script, you remember it. With an average script, it’s forgotten as soon as you put it down. It goes through you like fast food. And the sad thing is, I’ve been reading 15 of these scripts a month.  It feels like this huge collective of screenwriters has accepted mediocrity.   So when I see the spec market starving, it doesn’t surprise me.  Who’s opening up their checkbook for another average script?

Let me give you an example. I once read a buddy-cop script (I had to go back to it to re-familiarize myself) that had the two cops who hated each other, it had the standard “witty” back-and-forth banter, it had the familiar drug plot, it had the cop who was secretly one of the bad guys. This is the exact dialogue going on in my head as I read it (“Seen that before. Seen that before. Seen that before. Seen that before.”). I must’ve said that to myself 80 times. There wasn’t a single elevated element in the story.

I don’t know what writers expect after writing these scripts. Do they think they should be praised because they successfully gave us an average version of something we’ve already seen before?

With a script, you have to stand out somehow. A series of average elements isn’t going to cut it. Readers want to see original takes on elevated material. Which brings us to the term of the day: Exceptional Elements.

An exceptional element is any element in your script that’s better than average. You’d like to have as many of these in your screenplay as possible. But realistically, you probably won’t get past 3. Which is fine, because that’s all you need to write something noticeable, and definitely all you need to write something better-than-average.

To add some context, there are three scripts I really liked over the last few weeks: Hot Air, Cake, and Tyrant. Let’s see what the exceptional elements were in each. With Hot Air, the dialogue (especially Lionel’s) was an exceptional element, the characters were an exceptional element, and the plotting was an exceptional element (I never quite knew where things were going next).

In Cake, the creation of a severely unlikable protagonist who we still ended up caring about was an exceptional element, the unusual premise was an exceptional element (haven’t seen that before) and the unique voice (the offbeat weird way the writer saw this world) was an exceptional element.

In Tyrant, the intricate nature of the relationships were an exceptional element, the lack of fear in pushing the boundaries was an exceptional moment (a few uncomfortable rape scenes, etc.) and the ending was an exceptional element (in that it revealed something shocking about our main character that we never would’ve guessed).

Before we get into specifics here, I want you to think about the screenplay you’re working on now. And I want you to take off your bullshit hat. Put your critics hat on, the guy who can tear down the latest blockbuster in a 300 word paragraph. That’s the guy we need judging your script. Now ask yourself, what are the exceptional elements in your script? What can you honestly say stands out from anything out there? Need some reference? Here are a dozen of the more popular screenplay elements to choose from. If you’re exceptional with just three of them, tell us in the comments section, cause we’re going to want to read your script.

Clever or unique Concept – One of the easiest ways to elevate your script is a great or unique concept. Dinosaurs being cloned to make a Dinosaur Theme Park (Jurassic Park). People who go inside other people’s heads (Being John Malkovich).

Unique or complicated characters – This is a biggie. If you’re going to have only one exceptional element, it should be this, because a script is often defined by its characters. Give us Jack Sparrow over Rick O’Connell (Brendan Frasier in The Mummy). Give us Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street) over Sam Witwicky (Transformers).

Spinning a well-known idea – Taking ideas and spinning them is one of the easiest ways to stand out. Instead of that same-old same-old buddy cop script I talked about earlier? Make it two female cops instead (The Heat). Or set some ancient story in a different time (Count of Monte Cristo in the future – a script that sold last year). This is what’s known as a “fresh take,” and Hollywood loves fresh takes.

Take chances – How can you expect to be anything other than average if you don’t take chances? Playing it safe is the very definition of average. So you’ll have to roll the dice a few times and get out of your comfort zone. Seth McFarlane made a comedy about a grown man who was best friends with his childhood teddy bear.  Nobody had ever written anything like that before.  That’s rolling the dice.

Push boundaries – This will depend on the script. But if you’re writing in a genre that merits it, don’t play it safe. Push the boundaries. That’s what Seven did when it came out. We’d seen serial killer movies before. We’d never seen them with kills that were THAT sick, that intense.

Plotting – A deft plot that keeps its audience off balance (with mystery, surprises, dramatic irony, suspense, setups, payoffs, twists, reversals, drama, deft interweaving of subplots, etc.) can put you on Hollywood’s map. Hitchcock’s big exceptional element was his plotting.

A great ending – A masterful ending is a huge exceptional element because it’s the last thing the reader leaves with. If you can give them something immensely satisfying (The Shawshank Redemption) or shocking (The Sixth Sense) and it works? You’re golden.

Dialogue – One of the hardest elements to teach and the most dependent on talent. There are definitely ways to improve your dialogue, but usually people are either born with this element or they aren’t. Don’t fret if you aren’t though, because you still have all these other elements to choose from.

Imagination – If you’re writing fantasy or sci-fi, you better show us something we haven’t seen before. For example, if you’re going to put your characters in yet another mech suit (Matrix sequels, Avatar, Edge of Tomorrow), why should we trust you to give us an imaginative story? These are the genres that demand originality. So if you don’t have anything besides what you’ve seen in previous sci-fi movies, don’t play in this sandbox.

Voice – If you see the world in a different way from everyone else, it’s one of the easiest ways to stand out. This is all about the unique way you write and the unique way in which you observe the world. Having a truly original voice is almost the anti-average, because if someone can identify who you are by your script alone, it means you have a unique take on the world.

Scene writing – Are you an exceptional scene writer? Are you able to pull readers into every scene? Read Tarantino’s scenes like Jack Rabbit Slims or the Milk scene at the opening of Inglorious Basterds. Or watch the scene where the detective questions Norman Bates in Psycho. The level of suspense in these scenes is off the charts.

A great villain – Typically someone who’s complicated and not just evil for evil’s sake (which is the case in almost every average script I read). I still can’t get over The Governor in The Walking Dead. The way he fell in love with a woman and cared so deeply for her daughter, only to set up a plan to kill women and children a few scenes later.

In general, to avoid writing something average, you have to be your harshest critic. You have to be self-aware enough to call yourself on your bullshit. Look at every individual element in your screenplay and ask yourself, “Is this unique?” In some cases, it won’t be. That’s fine. As long as you have exceptional elements to offset the average ones. The Heat had an average plot. But by putting two women in the cop rolls instead of men, it gave the genre a fresh take. Exceptional element success.

The truth is, readers really want to love your script. But you’re preventing them from doing so when every element in your screenplay is something flat, derivative, uninspired, or rushed. Writing a great screenplay means doing the hard work, and that means not being satisfied with a bundle of average components. Average dialogue, average scene-construction, average concept, average imagination, average characters. We’ve already seen all these things so what do you gain by showing them to us again? Get in there and raise the quality of your script by infusing it with as many exceptional elements as you can. I’m rooting for you because the better you get at this, the more good scripts I get to read. Good luck!

Genre: Book (Sci-fi)
Premise: When a resilient and clever astronaut gets stuck on Mars, he must use every trick in the book to get rescued.
About: A computer science geek, Andy Weir, took three years to research his novel before writing it, wanting to make sure the story was as realistic as possible. After being ignored by publishers, Weir offered the book for free on his website, before eventually selling it on Amazon for 99 cents. After the book shot up Amazon’s best-seller list, Crown Publishing came in and offered Weir six-figures for the book. That’s a big leap from 99 cents. This, of course, led to Fox optioning the movie rights, which, it’s been rumored, will have Matt Damon starring and Ridley Scott directing.
Writer: Andy Weir
Details: 385 pages

Okay, remember what we do here on “Adapt This Book Wednesday.” We take a book that’s been optioned by Hollywood and we figure out how we’d adapt it. When you get into this business, adapting material will be your number one source of income, so it’s a skill you’ll want to get good at.

Generally speaking, when you read a book you’re going to adapt, you’re looking for a couple of things. First, you want to find the component of the book that’s going to be the narrative spine. This might end up being the entire story. But other times a book will be so big or so complex, you’ll be forced to tell only a piece of it. Figuring out what piece that is could be the difference between a good script and a bad one.

Also, you’re looking for potential problems in the material and creative ways to solve those problems. In some cases, you can just cut the problematic part of the story out. But there are some problems that are so ingrained in the story that you can’t avoid them. Take the whole Chilean Miner incident from a couple of years back. You had a few dozen men trapped in a tiny mine space. How do you even begin to shoot that story?  How do people move around?  Or will everyone just stay in one spot?  How do you keep that interesting for two hours?  Would it be better to tell the story of the people trying to save the miners?  These are key choices that need to be figured out in the script stage. And while some solutions are easy, there are usually a couple of big ones that make your life miserable. With that in mind, let’s check out The Martian.

Mark Watney is fucked. His team just abandoned him on Mars. It wasn’t really their fault. A dust storm threatened to blow over their rocket. A quick decision needed to be made. And Mark was presumed dead.

So poor Marky wakes up, barely alive, and heads over to his little Advanced Mars Tent where he realizes that his communications satellite was destroyed and he has no contact with anyone. He does some calculations and determines that the soonest NASA can save him is in 4 years.

So Mark starts keeping a journal (which is what we’re reading) chronicling the end of his life. But then Mark starts doing some math in his head (there is a LOT of math in The Martian), and tries to figure out if he can generate enough food and water to last four years. Mark is a botanist, so he realizes that if he uses the square footage in his tent to grow potatoes (of which he has a few frozen), he may get close. And so begins Mark’s journey to stay alive.

Things keep going wrong along the way (he gets communication with NASA only to later lose it, his tent blows up, he loses all his food, he gets stuck outside with low oxygen, etc.) until he and NASA figure out a way to send his crew-mates back to get him, while Mark drives the Mars 4-Wheeler 3000 miles to a future land-sight, and use the rocket there to lift off in a precisely timed one-and-done rendezvous with his ship. I’m not going to tell you if Mark makes it or not. But you can probably figure it out.

Okay, so before we get to the adaptation part, I have to say that THIS BOOK ALMOST DROVE ME INSANE! It starts out great. We’re in Mark’s head, he’s trying to plan out the square footage of farmland he can use to grow potatoes so he can stay alive (he fertilizes it with his own shit by the way). He has no way to talk to anyone. It seemed exciting. How was he going to get out of this???

This “prep to stay alive” section went on for what I figured was 1/3 of the book. Then I looked at the Kindle progress bar. 10%. TEN PERCENT!!!??? How the hell was he going to keep this going for another 90% of a book? It felt like an uncrossable chasm, which is exactly what it turned out to be.

The Martian isn’t so much a story as it is a math textbook. This entire book is math!!! Every single page was some variation of this: “I figured if I tripled the oxygen in the HAB unit, I would decrease the percentage of the neutrons, which would allow me to create 340 liters of water every six days. The problem was, if I tripled the oxygen, I increased the chance of a fire by 32%! Not to worry. By dividing the square footage of the room by 7 and adding the appropriate carbon offset, I would decrease that percentage by 73%, which, while dangerous, was still within reasonable levels.”

The 250 middle pages in the book were ALL like this.

Adaptation Problem #1 – The whole fucking book is math!
Obviously, showing a main character do math in his head for two hours, even if it’s Matt Damon, isn’t going to get anyone into the theater. So this is a pretty big issue. It’s such a big issue, in fact, that you can’t include it. Or you can’t use any math equations that we can’t show visually. I guess we could show Matt Damon counting out potato spuds and planting them. But everything else was percentages and elements and a bunch of math gobbledy-gook. So as difficult as it is to say, for a book that is based almost entirely on math, I don’t think you can include any of that in the movie, other than some throwaway lines to NASA (“I figured if I decreased the hydrogen load by half, I’d have a little more energy”).

Adaptation Problem #2 – Almost the entire story takes places inside Mark’s head
So what do you do about this? Is Mark going to be silent the whole movie? You could use voice over, but listening to Matt Damon speak to us in his head for two hours will get annoying fast. You could pull a “Wilson,” like they did in Cast Away, but it’s a delicate balance to get those things right. You also run the risk of everyone saying, “They just copied Cast Away.” You could pull an “Avatar” and make him use a video diary. That’s probably the best option of the three. — Mark does have a communication line with NASA for awhile, so I guess you could have him tell them what he’s doing while he’s doing it. But the best thing about this story is Mark being alone with no help. What might work is having Mark work silently while cutting to NASA where all the talking happens during their surveillance (they have satellites watching him that are orbiting Mars). It’s sort of a clever way to get into his head without really being in his head. “What is he doing now?” “It looks like he’s packing to make a trip. I think he’s going to try and find the Mars Rover.”

Adaptation Problem #3 – Story Length
The length of this story is really freaking long. It’s somewhere between 2 and 4 years (it’s hard to know for sure because the actual time gets buried in numbers). That’s a really long time to cover in a film. Of course, Tom Hanks gets stuck on that island for four years, but that’s a big beautiful island he can prance around. Mark is stuck in a 75 square foot room for the majority of The Martian. It’s not the same thing. You have options here. You can make the tent a lot bigger. Maybe it has multiple rooms, which would allow you to mix up the visuals a bit. You can condense the time with montages of course. Or you can cut out a lot of the story entirely and just focus on one particular section of the story. I’d lean towards that. There are some escapades that get Mark out of the tent (he goes to get the Mars Rover), but for the most part, he’s in that small room calculating solutions for his current problems.

I think I know how I would do this. The most exciting parts of The Martian are the beginning and the ending. The beginning because it’s that shocking moment when he’s first left alone on the planet. And the end because he’s got to drive this Mars truck thing 2000 miles across bumpy terrain that his vehicle was never made for. He gets stuck in a dust storm. His car flips on its side. He’s got to get to the location in time to be launched up so he can catch the fly-by of his crew-members. This is all visual stuff that we can SHOW on a movie screen that would keep the audience engaged. Nobody’s going to be engaged by a man in a room with a calculator.

So if I were these guys, that’s where I’d start the film, with Mark in the Mars Truck, driving, looking ragged and beaten, like he’s been through hell and back. We may not know exactly what happened to get him here, but his face tells us a lot of it. You can knock this journey down to 10 days, which is a good solid timeframe for a movie (much better than 4 years at least!).

If you wanted to, you could occasionally flash back to how Mark got here, like the original storm that knocked him down, the swirling dust making it impossible for his crew members to see him. He watches as one of his crew walks only 5 feet away but can’t see him. Mark can hear them talking to each other, frantically asking where he is, but Mark’s com is out so he can’t communicate back. I don’t usually like flashbacks, but if you used them to show harrowing moments like this, they’d raise our understanding of how difficult it was for Mark just to get this far, and therefore make us root for him more.

I don’t think Mark should talk in this. First of all, actors love that shit. So Damon would be all over this. You’d get all the exposition you needed by cutting to NASA or the Mars Ship while they watched him. If you needed to know what Mark was doing, you’d have one of them say something like, “It looks like he’s re-calibrating his course. Shit, that’s going to take him right into the storm. And he doesn’t know it!” The rest of the script is pretty self-explanatory and visual (launch into space and catch a ride), and should pretty much write itself.

That’s how I’d approach it at least. What about you guys??

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

What I learned: A lot of books take place over a long period of time. One of the first things you should try and do is find a way to condense the time-frame if possible. Condensed time-frames are much easier stories to tell. If you’re doing an adaptation of a Martin Luther King biography, for example, maybe focus on one super-charged summer of King’s life rather than trying to bring us through all 39 of his years.