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: GRIPPER
GENRE: Horror
LOGLINE: 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: A new, original monster for the horror/nature gone wild sub-genre based on real science and current environmental concerns – and its a pretty swift read at 103 pgs. Plus, the first and last lines of dialogue are ‘fuck’ and ‘beautiful’ ;)

TITLE: Gone
GENRE: Supernatural Drama
LOGLINE: A woman’s past affair with a married writer haunts her in unusual ways.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m a huge fan of the 1986 French film “Betty Blue”. Even though it’s really quite terrible. I remember reading about some arthouse theater in Houston doing a retrospective screening back in the mid-90’s. Perhaps it was being a teen with hormones running amock, along with a burgeoning interest in all things cinema — especially movies I could never see growing up in Crockett, Texas — but those notorious opening 5 minutes of “Betty” had me intrigued. So, while not a great piece of work by any means (it’s a rambling mess, especially the longer three-hour version, with a goofball denouement and incredibly stilted dialogue throughout)… still holds a special place with me.

I think I like the idea of the thing more than the thing. Thus, wanted to pull central story elements and play around with them. Pay homage.

Also, I wasn’t aiming for a surprise at the end, but I’m kinda tickled it’s there.

TITLE: The Cloud Factory
GENRE: WW2 romantic drama
LOGLINE: Torn between family and college or the love of an aristocratic lesbian doctor, a badly-injured American pilot grapples with her burgeoning sexuality and WW2 Britain’s rigid social order.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: ‘The Cloud Factory’, is based on the true story of the women’s section of Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, with fictional protagonists. Now, I get that Hollywood seems to think period romances and period dramas are so boorrring. Let’s take ‘Philomena’ (part period drama, and part contemporary). Probably made for less than $10 million; its global box office gross to the end of January was $68 million. Making money’s so boorrring. ‘Atonement’ – made for some $30m with global box office of $120m+. Boring! ‘The English Patient’ – production budget in the high $20m region; global gross of around a quarter of a billion dollars. Really boring! They all had strong female leads involved in a romantic relationship that didn’t end well, in common. Women over 30 especially turn out in droves for relationship dramas with strong female leads because we get to see so darned few good ones. See Lindsay Doran’s TED talk on relationships in movies – women get it! It’s not rocket science. So that is what I’ve written. I’ve just given the period romantic drama a little twist to keep things interesting. And I could be wrong, but as far as I can see, the last time a period drama seems to have gotten a run on Amateur Offerings Week was ‘Templar’ back in August, 2013. Long overdue, surely.

TITLE: The Triennial
GENRE: Action/Thriller
LOGLINE: An elite Israeli secret agent is on loan to the US teams with an unlikely civilian in a race to infiltrate and eliminate a terrorist cell in Chicago.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: During the last couple years, I’ve had three comedy scripts show up nicely in the contest circuit, yet none gained any traction with agents, managers, or producers. Apparently, I crack myself up. So I changed lanes and wrote this action/thriller feature, because… it’s a business, right? Bottom line – I had a blast writing this one, so I’m really glad I left my comfort zone and tried a new genre. Only question – will anyone else be glad? Would love some scared straight feedback.

TITLE: Fantasy Man
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A fantasy footballer must convince a sports star to play, or else a mob boss will have him killed.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: The story. Period. Even if you’re not into fantasy football, there’s a heartfelt story here about friendship, love and going after your dreams. And it’s also pretty fucking funny. Happy reading and we appreciate everyone’s comments in advance. Thank you.

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/Contained/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a bed-ridden teen discovers his online crush has been murdered, he investigates her death, leading him on a hunt to stop her killer before he strikes again.
Why You Should Read: Gary’s script received many up-votes in the comments section!
Writer: Gary Rowlands
Details: 97 pages

Rising star Logan Lerman for David?

Gary had it out for me in yesterday’s comments. But I understand his frustration. I hadn’t sent out a newsletter in a few weeks, and I know it sucks not knowing when those things are coming, especially when they sometimes end up in the SPAM box (I believe this has something to do with providing links in each newsletter). But none of that matters anymore because the newsletter went out last night and boy was it a doozy. You’ll definitely want to fish for it as it’s well worth your time. And if you’re not on the newsletter list, then by golly you should be. Sign up here.

So why did today’s script get picked? Well, Gary informed me that his script had gotten over 30 up-votes in the Disqus comments. I’m not sure exactly what that means (does that mean these people read the whole thing? Part of it? That they just liked Gary?) but we didn’t have an Amateur Offerings post last week, so I needed a script to review. Call it opportunity colliding with luck. And hey, the horror market’s hot right now with a big horror spec sale yesterday (about that suspicious death on the top of that Los Angeles hotel), so maybe Gary can keep the streak going.

When we meet 17 year-old David Fletcher, he’s sprinting through the forest in the middle of the night. We’re not sure why, but we’re guessing there’s something behind him that he wants to get away from. That’s usually how midnight runs work. David makes it to a highway, and seemingly to safety, except highways are where those pesky automobiles dart around, and no sooner than David remembers that than one slams into him. This results in a powerful near death experience, where David sees the whole tunnel and bright light and everything.

Cut to David in his bedroom a few weeks later. He’s in bad shape, bad enough where he can’t even leave his bed. And we all know what that means. The perfect excuse to ALWAYS BE ON THE INTERNET! David surfs the internet constantly, and one night, late, runs into a mysterious hot little number named Debbie, who he starts webcamming with.

Debbie seems cool, until we realize she’s DEAD. Yes, David realizes he saw Debbie in the tunnel. And he can’t tell her because she’s terrified of dying. Meanwhile, a local female cop comes around asking questions about Debbie, since the person who killed her is a serial killer and will strike again once the next full moon strikes. There’s something suspicious about this officer so David keeps his info close to the vest.

Once David comes to terms with the reality that he’s web-camming with a ghost, he decides to call a psychic, a Chinese woman named Mei Li. Mei Li tells David he MUST find out who Debbie’s boyfriend was as she thinks that’s the guy killing all these girls during all these full moons. The problem is, Debbie’s a human lie detector and knows when David’s trying to juke her, which leaves David with no juking options.

Eventually, the killer kills again and it all comes to a head, with everybody a suspect. The cop, the mysterious driver who almost killed David, and David himself! And if that isn’t bad enough, David’s also gotta inform Debbie that she’s not a real person anymore. She’s a ghost. Talk about an odd way to start a relationship!

I gotta give it to Gary. Offline was super easy to read. Like most scripts that end up on Amateur Friday, the mechanics were very strong. The opening was a bit too poetic for my taste (be careful about being too lyrical. You risk sacrificing clarity for prose), but after that, the prose was simple and to the point.

After that first scene though, the script started to run into some problems in my eyes. It started with little things. Like David going through his photo album, which conveniently contained newspaper articles about him being arrested at 14 and his dad’s suicide. Why would you keep articles of these things in an otherwise happy photo album other than you’re trying to cheaply convey exposition?

Also, many of the characters and moments in Offline were either heavy-handed, cliché, or both. For example, voices in the room chant “Omnibus” which David looks up. Turns out it translates directly to “Death to all.” The keys on his computer randomly type on their own. What do they spell? “D-e-m-o-n.” The serial killer only ever kills on one day. When? During a full moon. David is asked what his favorite memory is. Going to a ball game with his dad. There were too many of these moments where it didn’t feel like Gary dug deep enough. He just went with the first thing that popped into his head, and that always amounts to an overall cliché story.

Once we hit the stereotypical inadvertently funny Asian psychic, that’s when I officially knew this story wasn’t going to work for me. Mei Li giving David advice in her funny Chinese accent just made this script too goofy. This led to other somewhat goofy choices, like how the killer only killed women who wore Jimmy Choo shoes (and would keep one shoe as a memento).

The dialogue also needed work. Much of it was very straight-forward and on-the-nose, like on page 47, where David talks about his dad committing suicide and not even leaving him a note: “Nothing matters. Not now. Not then. Least not me. Not to Dad. Fact he had a son who idolized him never made a difference. It didn’t matter… I DIDN’T MATTER.” Debbie gazes at him. Wants to say something. Hesitates. “You matter to me.”

I understand that sometimes you want you characters to say what they feel, but not this early, and this is way too on-the-nose. People just don’t talk this way in real life. Or later, on page 68:

[David] “kisses the tip of his index finger, gently presses it against Debbie’s soft lips via the screen.” Debbie: (smiles) “What was that for?” David: “Believing in me.” I know these moments feel “right” when you’re writing them because there’s so much emotion being conveyed. But when you’re looking at this exchange from the other side, you’re saying, “Oh man, that was so on-the-nose and over-the-top!” It can take a writer awhile to finally see that these moments aren’t achieving what he believes they are. Readers do not respond well to on-the-nose emotion.

And we haven’t even gotten to the most controversial aspect of this script, which is that it takes place in one room (except for the beginning). On the one hand, this is great. It means a really cheap movie that the writer can make himself! On the other, it’s bad, because it means lack of variety, considerably upping the probability that the reader (and audience) will get bored.

Gary does a pretty good job keeping the plot moving though, even with this handicap. There are lots of a little twists and turns along the way. And we do have our GSU firmly in place (David’s got to find the killer before he strikes again, which is very soon, with the upcoming full moon). He also has an intriguing character in the stepmom, who has schizophrenia and constantly abuses David. It was a bit too much like Misery at times, but different enough to feel like its own thing.

So that was good. But the overall problem remains: the story is too on-the-nose and too many cliché choices were made. If a malevolent entity is trying to scare someone, I don’t think they’re going to ghost-type “Demon” on the keys. They’re going to type something much more random and confusing, something so strange that it will scare the crap out of us.

In this next draft and moving forward, I’d love to see Gary challenge himself more and try and eliminate all his cliché choices. Take chances. Don’t give us what we’ve already seen before. Try to carve your own path whenever you write. That’s how your voice comes out. I wish him luck!

Script link: Offline

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

What I learned: Over-emotion on the page usually creates the opposite effect on the reader.

Inception’s first act is pretty awesome.  

It surprises me that people have trouble with the first act because it’s easily the most self-explanatory act there is. Introduce your hero, then your concept, then send your hero out on his/her journey. But I suppose I’m speaking as someone who’s dissected a lot of first acts. And actually, when I really start thinking about it, it does get tricky in places. The most challenging part is probably packing a ton of information into such a small space. So that’s something I’ll be addressing. Also, I’ve decided to include my second and third act articles afterwards so that this can act as a template for your entire script. Hopefully, this gives you something to focus on the next time you bust open Final Draft. Let’s begin!

INTRODUCE YOUR HERO (page 1)
Preferably, the first scene will introduce your hero. This is a very important scene because beyond just introducing your hero, you’re introducing yourself as a writer. A reader will be making quick judgments about you on everything from if you know how to write, if you know how to craft a scene, and what level you’re at as a screenwriter. So of all the scenes in your script, this is the one that you’ll probably want to spend the most time on. It’s also extremely important to DEFINE your hero with this scene. Whatever the biggest strength and/or weakness of your hero, try to construct a scene that shows us that. Finally, try to convey who your hero is THROUGH THEIR ACTIONS (as opposed to telling us). If your hero is afraid to take initiative, give them the option in the scene to take initiative, then show them failing to do so. A great opening scene that shows all of these things is the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

SET UP YOUR HERO’S WORLD (pages 3- 15)
The next few scenes will consist of showing us your hero’s world. This might show him/her at work, with friends, with family, going about their daily life. This is also the section where you set up most of the key characters in the script. In addition to setting up their world, you want to hit on the fact that something’s missing in their life, something the hero might not even be aware of. Maybe they’re missing a companion (Lars and the Real Girl). Maybe they’re putting work over family (George Clooney in Up in the Air). Maybe they’re allowing others to push them around (American Beauty). It’s important NOT TO REPEAT scenes in this section. Keep it between 2-5 scenes because between pages 12-15, you’re going to want to introduce the inciting incident.

INCITING INCIDENT (pages 12-15)
Introducing the inciting incident is just a fancy way of saying, “Introducing a problem that rocks your protagonist’s world.” This problem makes its way into your hero’s life, forcing them to act. Maybe their plane crashes (The Grey), they get someone pregnant (Knocked Up), or their daughter gets kidnapped (Taken). Now your hero is forced to make a decision. Do they act or not? — It should be noted that sometimes the inciting incident will arrive immediately, as in, on the very first page. For example, if a character wakes up with amnesia (Saw, The Bourne Identity) or something traumatic happens in the opening scene (Garden State – his father dies), the hero is encountering their inciting incident (their problem) immediately.

HELL NO, I AIN’T GOIN (aka “Refusal of the Call”) (roughly pages 16-25)
The “Hell No I ain’t goin” section occurs right after the inciting incident and basically amounts to your character saying (you guessed it), “I’m not goin anywhere.” The reason you see this in a lot of scripts is because it’s a very human response. Humans HATE change. They hate facing their fears. The problem that arises from the inciting incident is usually a manifestation of their deepest fear. So of course they’re going to reject it. Neo says no to scaling a building for Morpheus and gives in to the baddies instead. This sequence can last one or several scenes. It’ll show your hero trying to go back to what they know.

OFF TO THE JOURNEY (page 25)
When your character decides to go off on their journey (and hence into the second act), it’s usually because they realize this problem isn’t going away unless they deal with it. So in order to erase this eternal snowfall, Anna from Frozen must go off, find her sister and ask her to end it. This is where the big “G” in “GSU” comes from. As your hero steps into that second act, it begins the pursuit of their goal, which is to solve the problem.

GRAB US IMMEDIATELY
Now that you know the basic structure, there’s a few other things you want to focus on in the first act. The first of those things? Don’t fuck around! Readers are impatient as hell, expecting you to be bad writer (since you’re an amateur) and judging you immediately. So try and lure them in with a kick-ass scene right away and don’t let them off the hook (each successive scene should be equally as page-turning). This doesn’t mean start with an action scene (although you can). It could mean a clever reversal scene or an unexpected twist in the middle of the scene. Pose a mystery. A murder. Show us something that’s impossible (people jumping across roofs – The Matrix). Use your head and just make us want to keep turning the pages even if our fire alarm is going off in the other room. Achieving this tall order WHILE doing all the other shit I listed above (set up your hero and his flaw), is what makes writing so tricky.

MAKE IT MOVE
It’s important that the first act move. Bad writers like to DRILL things into the reader’s head over and over and over again. For example, if they want to show how lonely their hero is, they’ll show like FIVE SCENES of them being lonely. And guess what us readers are doing? We’re already skimming. Typically, a reader picks things up quickly if you display/convey information properly. Show that your hero is bad with women in the first scene, we’ll know they’re bad with women. There are some things you want to repeat in a script (a character’s flaw, for example) but you want to slip that into scenes that are entertaining and necessary for the story, not carve out entire scenes that are ONLY reiterating something we already know. This is one of the BIGGEST tells for an amateur writer, so avoid it at all costs!

ENTERTAIN US WHILE SETTING US UP
You’re setting up a lot of stuff in your first act. You’re setting up your main character’s everyday life, their flaws, the love interest (possibly), secondary characters, the inciting incident, setups for later payoffs. For that reason, a first act can quickly turn into an information dump. That’s fine for a first draft. But as you rewrite, you’ll want to smooth all this information over, hide it even, and focus on ENTERTAINING US. Nobody’s going to pat you on your back for doing everything I’ve listed above. That stuff is EXPECTED. They’re only going to pat you on the back if your first act is entertaining.  Think of it like this.  Nobody wants to know how a roller coaster works.  They just want to ride on it.

EVERY SCRIPT IS UNIQUE
One of the hardest things about writing is that every story presents unique challenges that force you to improvise. Nobody’s going to be able to follow the formula I laid out to a “T.” You’re going to have to adjust, improvise, invent. That shouldn’t be scary. You’re artists. That’s what you do. Just to give you a few examples, Luke Skywalker is not introduced in the beginning of Star Wars. Marty McFly doesn’t choose to go on his adventure. He’s thrust into it unexpectedly (when his car jumps back to the past). Some films, like Crash, have multiple characters that need to be set up. This requires you to set up a dozen little mini-stories (for each character) as opposed to one big one. Some scripts start with a teaser (Jurassic Park) or a preamble (Inception).  The point is, don’t pigeonhole yourself into the above unless you have a very straightforward plot (like Taken, Rocky, or Gravity). Otherwise, be adaptable. Understand where your story is resisting structure, and be open to trying something different.

IN SUMMARY
That’s probably the scariest thing about writing, is tackling the unknown. So what do you do if you come upon these unique challenges? What do you do with your first act, for example, if the inciting incident happens right away, as it does in The Bourne Identity? Do you still break into the second act on page 25? Well, I know the answer to that question as well as some other tricky scenarios, but they’d require their own article (short answer – you break into the second act a little earlier, around page 20). What I’ll say is, this is one of the big things that separates the pros from the amateurs. The pro, because he’s written a lot more, has encountered more problematic scenarios and had more experience trying to solve them. The only way to catch up to them is to keep writing a lot (not just one script, but many, since each script creates its own set of challenges) and figure out these answers for yourselves. The good news is, with this article, you have a template to start from. And remember, when all else fails, storytelling boils down to one simple coda: A hero encounters a problem and must find a solution. That’s true for a story. It’s true for individual characters. It’s true for subplots.  It’s true for individual scenes. If you follow that layout, you should do fine. And if you want to get into more detail about this stuff, check out my book, which is embarrassingly cheap at just $4.99 on Amazon! ☺

THE SECOND ACT!

Character Development
One of the reasons the first act tends to be easy is because it’s clear what you have to set up. If your movie is about finding the Ark, then you set up who your main character is, what the Ark is, and why he wants to get it. The second act isn’t as clear. I mean sure, you know your hero has to go off in pursuit of his goal, but that can get boring if that’s the ONLY thing he’s doing. Enter character development, which really boils down to one thing: your hero having a flaw and having that flaw get in the way of him achieving his goal. This is actually one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing. Because whatever specific goal you’ve given your protag, you simply give them a flaw that makes achieving that goal really hard. In The Matrix, Neo’s goal is to find out if he’s “The One.” The problem is, he doesn’t believe in himself (his flaw). So there are numerous times throughout the script where that doubt is tested (jumping between buildings, fighting Morpheus, fighting Agent Smith in the subway). Sometimes your character will be victorious against their flaw, more often they’ll fail, but the choices they make and their actions in relation to this flaw are what begin to shape (or “develop”) that character in the reader’s eyes. You can develop your character in other ways (via backstory or everyday choices and actions), but developing them in relation to their flaw is usually the most compelling part for a reader to read.

Relationship Development
This one doesn’t get talked about as much but it’s just as important as character development. In fact, the two often go hand in hand. But it needs its own section because, really, when you get into the second act, it’s about your characters interacting with one another. You can cram all the plot you want into your second act and it won’t work unless we’re invested in your characters, and typically the only way we’re going to be invested in your characters is if there’s something unresolved between them that we want resolved. Take last year’s highest grossing film, The Hunger Games. Katniss has unresolved relationships with both Peeta (are they friends? Are they more?) and Gale (her guy back home – will she ever be able to be with him?). We keep reading/watching through that second act because we want to know what’s going to happen in those relationships. If, by contrast, a relationship has no unknowns, nothing to resolve, why would we care about it? This is why relationship development is so important. Each relationship is like an unresolved mini-story that we want to get to the end of.

Secondary Character Exploration
With your second act being so big, it allows you to spend a little extra time on characters besides your hero. Oftentimes, this is by necessity. A certain character may not even be introduced until the second act, so you have no choice but to explore them there. Take the current film that’s storming the box office right now, Frozen. In it, the love interest, Kristoff, isn’t introduced until Anna has gone off on her journey. Therefore, we need to spend some time getting to know the guy, which includes getting to know what his job is, along with who his friends and family are (the trolls). Much like you’ll explore your primary character’s flaw, you can explore your secondary characters’ flaws as well, just not as extensively, since you don’t want them to overshadow your main character.

Conflict
The second act is nicknamed the “Conflict Act” so this one’s especially important. Essentially, you’re looking to create conflict in as many scenarios as possible. If you’re writing a haunted house script and a character walks into a room, is there a strange noise coming from somewhere in that room that our character must look into? That’s conflict. If you’re writing a war film and your hero wants to go on a mission to save his buddy, but the general tells him he can’t spare any men and won’t help him, that’s conflict. If your hero is trying to win the Hunger Games, are there two-dozen people trying to stop her? That’s conflict. If your hero is trying to get her life back together (Blue Jasmine) does she have to shack up with a sister who she screwed over earlier in life? That’s conflict. Here’s the thing, one of the most boring types of scripts to read are those where everything is REALLY EASY for the protagonist. They just waltz through the second act barely encountering conflict. The second act should be the opposite of that. You should be packing in conflict every chance you get.

Obstacles
Obstacles are a specific form of conflict and one of your best friends in the second act because they’re an easy way to both infuse conflict, as well as change up the story a little. The thing with the second act is that you never want your reader/audience getting too comfortable. If we go along for too long and nothing unexpected happens, we get bored. So you use obstacles to throw off your characters AND your audience. It should also be noted that you can’t create obstacles if your protagonist ISN’T PURSUING A GOAL. How do you place something in the way of your protagonist if they’re not trying to achieve something? You should mix up obstacles. Some should be big, some should be small. The best obstacles throw your protagonists’ plans into disarray and have the audience going, “Oh shit! What are they going to do now???” Star Wars is famous for one of these obstacles. Our heroes’ goal is to get the Death Star plans to Alderaan. But when they get to the planet, it’s been blown up by the Death Star! Talk about an obstacle. NOW WHAT DO THEY DO??

Push-Pull
There should always be some push-pull in your second act. What I mean by that is your characters should be both MAKING THINGS HAPPEN (push) and HAVING THINGS HAPPEN TO THEM (pull). If you only go one way or the other, your story starts to feel predictable. Which is a recipe for boredom. Readers love it when they’re unsure about what’s going to happen, so you use push-pull to keep them off-balance. Take the example I just used above. Han, Luke and Obi-Wan have gotten to Alderaan only to find that the planet’s been blown up. Now at this point in the movie, there’s been a lot of push. Our characters have been actively trying to get these Death Star plans to Alderaan. To have yet another “push” (“Hey, let’s go to this nearby moon I know of and regroup”) would continue the “push” and feel monotnous. So instead, the screenplay pulls, in this case LITERALLY, as the Death Star pulls them in. Now, instead of making their own way (“pushing”), something is happening TO them (“pull”). Another way to look at it is, sometimes your characters should be acting on the story, and sometimes your story should be acting on the characters. Use the push-pull method to keep the reader off-balance.

Escalation Nation
The second act is where you escalate the story. This should be simple if you follow the Scriptshadow method of writing (GSU). Escalation simply means “upping the stakes.” And you should be doing that every 15 pages or so. We should be getting the feeling that your main character is getting into this situation SO DEEP that it’s becoming harder and harder to get out, and that more and more is on the line if he doesn’t figure things out. If you don’t escalate, your entire second act will feel flat. Let me give you an example. In Back to the Future, Marty gets stuck in the past. That’s a good place to put a character. We’re wondering how the hell he’s going to get out of this predicament and back to the present. But if that’s ALL he needs to do for 60 pages, we’re going to get bored. The escalation comes when he finds out that he’s accidentally made his mom fall in love with him instead of his dad. Therefore, it’s not only about getting back to the present, it’s about getting his parents to fall in love again so he’ll exist! That’s escalation. Preferably, you’ll escalate the plot throughout the 2nd act, anywhere from 2-4 times.

Twist n’ Surprise
Finally, you have to use your second act to surprise your reader. 60 pages is a long time for a reader not to be shocked, caught off guard, or surprised. I personally love an unexpected plot point or character reveal. To use Frozen, again, as an example, (spoiler) we find out around the midpoint that Hans (the prince that Anna falls in love with initially) is actually a bad guy. What you must always remember is that screenwriting is a dance of expectation. The reader is constantly believing the script is going to go this way (typically the way all the scripts he reads go). Your job is to keep a barometer on that and take the script another way. Twists and surprises are your primary weapons against expectation, so you’ll definitely want to use them in your second act.

IN SUMMARY
In summary, the second act is hard. But if you have a structural road-map for your story (you know where your characters are going and what they’re going after), then these tools should fill in the rest.  Hope they were helpful and good luck implementing them in your latest script.  May you be the next giant Hollywood spec sale! :)

THE THIRD ACT!

THE GOAL
Without question, your third act is going to be a billion times easier to write if your main character is pursuing a goal, preferably since the beginning of the film. “John McClane must save his wife from terrorists” makes for a much easier-to-write ending than “John McClane tries to figure out his life” because we, the writer, know exactly how to construct the finale. John McClane is either going to save his wife or he’s going to fail to save his wife. Either way, we have an ending. What’s the ending for “John McClane tries to figure out his life?” It’s hard to know because that scenario is so open-ended. The less clear your main character’s objective (goal) is in the story, the harder it will be to write a third act. Because how do you resolve something if it’s unclear what your hero is trying to resolve?

THE LOWEST POINT
To write a third act, you have to know where your main character is when he goes into the act. While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, typically, putting your hero at his lowest point at the end of act two is a great place to segue into the third act. In other words, it should appear at this point in the story that your main character has FAILED AT HIS/HER GOAL (Once Sandra Bullock gets to the Chinese module in GRAVITY, that’s it. Air is running out. She doesn’t understand the system. There are no other options). Either that, or something really devastating should shake your hero (i.e. his best friend and mentor dies – Obi-Wan in Star Wars). The point is, it should feel like things are really really down. When you do this, the audience responds with, “Oh no! But this can’t be. I don’t want our hero to give up. They have to keep trying. Keep trying, hero!” Which is exactly where you want them!

REGROUP
The beginning of the third act (anywhere from 1-4 scenes) becomes the “Regroup” phase. This phase often has to deal with your hero’s flaw, which is why it works so well in comedies or romantic comedies, where flaws are so dominant . If your hero is selfish, he might reflect on all the people he was selfish to, apologize, and move forward. But if this is an action film, it might simply mean talking through the terrible “lowest point” thing that just happened (Luke discussing the death of Obi-Wan with Han) and then getting back to it. Your hero was just at the lowest point in his/her life. Obviously, he needs a couple of scenes to regroup.

THE PLAN
Assuming we’re still talking about a hero with a goal, now that they’ve regrouped, they tend to have that “realization” where they’re going to give this goal one last shot. This, of course, necessitates a plan. We see this in romantic comedies all the time, where the main character plans some elaborate surprise for the girl, or figures out a way to crash the big party or big wedding. In action films, it’s a little more technical. The character has to come up with a plan to save the girl, or take down the villain, or both. In The Matrix, Neo needs to save Morpheus. He tells Trinity the plan, they go outfit themselves with guns from the Matrix White-Verse, and they go in there to get Morpheus.

THE CLIMAX SCENE
This should be the most important scene in your entire script. It’s where the hero takes on the bad guy or tries to get the girl back. You should try and make this scene big and original. Give us a take on it that we’ve never seen in movies before. Will that be hard? Of course. But if you’re rehashing your CLIMAX SCENE of all scenes?? The biggest and most important scene in the entire screenplay? You might as well give up screenwriting right now. If there is any scene you need to challenge yourself on, that you need to ask, “Is this the best I can possibly do for this scene?” and honestly answer yes? This is that scene!

THE LOWER THAN LOWEST POINT
During the climax scene, there should be one last moment where it looks like your hero has failed, that the villain has defeated him (or the girl says no to him). Let’s be real. What you’re really doing here is you’re fucking with your audience. You’re making them go, “Nooooooo! But I thought they were going to get together!” This is a GOOD THING. You want to fuck with your audience in the final act. Make them think their hero has failed. I mean, Neo actually DIES in the final battle in The Matrix. He dies! So yeah, you can go really low with this “true lowest point.” If the final battle or confrontational or “get-the-girl” moment is too easy for our hero, we’ll be bored. We want to see him have to work for it. That’s what makes it so rewarding when he finally succeeds!

FLAWS
Remember that in addition to all this external stuff that’s going on in the third act (getting the girl, killing the bad guy, stopping the asteroid from hitting earth), your protagonist should be dealing with something on an internal level as well. A character battling their biggest flaw on the biggest stage is usually what pulls audiences and readers in on an emotional level, so it’s highly advisable that you do this. Of course, this means establishing the flaw all the way back in Act 1. If you’ve done that, then try to tie the big external goal into your character’s internal flaw. So Neo’s flaw is that he doesn’t believe in himself. The only way he’ll be able to defeat the villain, then, is to achieve this belief. Sandra Bullock’s flaw in Gravity is that she doesn’t have the true will to live ever since her daughter died. She must find that will in the Chinese shuttle module if she’s going to survive. If you do this really well, you can have your main character overcome his flaw, but fail at his objective, and still leave the audience happy (Rocky).

PAYOFFS
Remember that the third act should be Payoff Haven. You should set up a half a dozen things ahead of time that should all get some payin’ off here in the finale. The best payoffs are wrapped into that final climactic scene. I mean who doesn’t sh*t their pants when Warden Norton (Shawshank spoiler) takes down that poster from the wall in Andy Dufresne’s cell? But really, the entire third act should be about payoffs, since almost by definition, your first two acts are setups.

OBSTACLES AND CONFLICT
A mistake a lot of beginner writers make is they make the third act too easy for their heroes. The third act should be LOADED with obstacles and conflict, things getting in the way of your hero achieving his/her goal. Maybe they get caught (Raiders), maybe they die (The Matrix), maybe the shuttle module sinks when it finally gets back to earth and your heroine is in danger of drowning (Gravity). The closer you get to the climax, the thicker you should lay on the obstacles, and then when the climactic scene comes, make it REALLY REALLY hard on them. Make them have to earn it!

NON-TRADITIONAL THIRD ACTS (CHARACTER PIECES)
So what happens if you don’t have that clear goal for your third act? Chances are, you’re writing a character piece. While this could probably benefit from an entire article of its own, basically, character pieces still have goals that must be met, they’re just either unknown to the hero or relationship-related. Character pieces are first and foremost about characters overcoming their flaws. So if your hero is selfish, your final act should be built around a high-stakes scenario where that flaw will be challenged. Also, character piece third acts are about resolving relationship issues. If two characters have a complicated past stemming from some problem they both haven’t been able to get over, the final act should have them face this issue once and for all. Often times, these two areas will overlap. In other words, maybe the issue these two characters have always had is that he’s always put his own needs over the needs of the family. The final climactic scene then, has him deciding whether to go off to some huge opportunity or stay here and takes care of the family. The scenario then resolves the character flaw and the relationship problem in one fell swoop! (note: Preferably, you are doing this in goal-oriented movies as well)

IN SUMMARY
While that’s certainly not everything, it’s most of what you need to know. But I admit, while all of this stuff is fun to talk about in a vacuum, it becomes a lot trickier when you’re trying to apply it to your own screenplay. That’s because, as I stated at the beginning, each script is unique. Indiana Jones is tied up for the big climax of Raiders. That’s such a weird third act choice. In Back To The Future, George McFly’s flaw is way more important than our hero, Marty McFly’s, flaw. When is the “lowest point before the third act” in Star Wars? Is it when they’re in the Trash Compactor about to be turned into Star Wars peanut butter? Or is at after they escape the Death Star? I think that’s debatable. John McClane never formulates a plan to take on Hanz in the climax.  He just ends up there.  The point is, when you get into your third act, you have to be flexible. Use the above as a guide, but don’t follow it exactly. A lot of times, what makes a third act memorable is its imperfections, because it’s its imperfections that make it unpredictable. If you have any third act tips of your own, please leave them in the comments section. Wouldn’t mind learning a few more things about this challenging act myself!

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A submarine and its crew are shrunken down to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a woman in order to save her.
About: The original Fantastic Voyage came out in the 60s, and since everything must be remade, they’ve been trying to get this project going for a couple decades now. The good news is they have the firepower that is James Cameron behind it (as producer), although he’s so wrapped up in his Avatar universe, I’m not sure how much time he’s able to give. Sean Levy (helmer of the underrated “Real Steel”) was listed as director as late as two years ago, but there hasn’t been a lot of news on the project since, so it’s unclear if he’s still involved. The draft I’m reviewing is an old one (from 2006) since it is from a couple of my favorite writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. I really wanted to see what they did with the idea.
Writers: Screenplay by Harry Kleiner – current revisions by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver
Details: April 28, 2006 draft

I am a huge fan of Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa. Listening to their interview on Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast shows you just how dedicated they are and how well they understand this craft. Particularly hearing how they won over 20th Century Fox with their take on Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I believe to be one of the biggest risks a studio has ever taken. They made a silent movie. A SILENT MOVIE, where the main character is an animal and doesn’t speak. It’s NUTS. Anyone who could make that work, I’m willing to trust them with anything.

I profess to not knowing much about Fantastic Voyage other than the snippets I run into online every once in awhile, but if the last film came out in 1966 and I’m still hearing about it, there’s gotta be a story worth mining there, right? That’s not to say I don’t have concerns. Shrinking people down and sending them inside a human body has a bit of a kitschy dated feel to it. I’m sure that’s what all the development meetings come down to. How do we make this current? It’s a task I’d be terrified of as a writer. Which is why I’m so interested in Silver and Jaffa’s take. These guys have proven they know how to think outside the box and take chances. Let’s see if they did that here.

Megan Colby works at something called The Alliance Research Facility. The year is 2185. And there’s a lot of unrest in the world. For that reasons, everyone’s been implanted with a microscopic chip that tracks their whereabouts and can be remotely detonated if you’re a bad boy. Or, in Megan’s case, a bad girl. Which Megan very much is at the time we meet her.

She illegally sneaks out of the facility and meets up with some rebels who jam a resistor something-or-other into her neck that prevents the Alliance from remotely detonating her chip. The problem is, the chip is programmed to automatically detonate within six hours of no contact. So she’s not out of the woods yet.

We eventually learn that Megan has actually injected a second chip into her body, the Alliance’s new prototype chip that is going to change the way…. Well, I guess change the way they can execute people. That’s why she escaped the facility, to get this chip to the rebels. But therein lies the problem. These chips are INSIDE of her. Which begs the question: how do they get them out??

Enter Dr. Charles Grant, a handsome professor who used to be in love with Megan until she abruptly left him. Grant is an expert in the human body, which is why he’s recruited by the rebels to join them in their mission – miniaturize themselves inside a submarine, go inside Megan’s body, and retrieve the two chips.

They only have six hours before the chips explode, so they have to act fast. Megan is being kept in a coma in the meantime, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. As Grant tells everyone, the human body has evolved over a million years to fight any foreign body that enters its system. Which is exactly what they are – a foreign body. Their task, he professes (remember, he’s a professor) is almost impossible. Little does Grant know, it’ll be more impossible than he thinks, as later he’ll find out… they’re not the only foreign body inside of Megan.

Reading this script is like reading one giant set of challenges. This is the kind of thing, if you break into his business, you’ll be tasked with figuring out. You have an idea that doesn’t quite work. What are you going to bring to the table to make it work? Fantastic Voyage’s problem, through no fault of any of the writers here, is a story that reads like something that could be tackled in an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon. A small submarine flying through the body. Oh no, watch out for the white blood cells!

It’s just not easy to give this the weight to stand toe to toe with all the other big movies out there. Damon Lindelof was recently interviewed about writing summer movies, and he pointed out that when you’re spending 150+ million on anything, the stakes have to be saving the world. That’s this draft of Voyage’s biggest problem. The only thing that really seems to be at stake here is this woman (the world is sorta at stake, but it’s unclear how).

Don’t get me wrong. That can work if we really love this woman and really want to see her and Grant get together in the end. But we barely know Megan (we only got to see her in that first scene) and we definitely don’t know her and Grant together outside of Grant mentioning it a few times, so we’re not emotionally invested in them getting to happily ever after.

The thing is, that’s the angle I would’ve taken too. There has to be an emotional attachment between the saver and the savee. But since we never saw that attachment, it’s hard to care. And this is a screenplay problem screenwriters all over the world face. How do you show that attachment without grinding the story to a halt? Do you start in the past, showing the two together? That means the script starts slow. Do you add flashbacks throughout? That’s hard to do without feeling on-the-nose and cheesy. So I sympathize with the writers here.

I will say that there’s on easy switch they could’ve done that would’ve made this way better. Megan can’t be asleep. She’s got to be in her own pressure-cooker of a situation while these guys are inside of her. That way, you have a dual-storyline going on. You jump inside her, they’re trying to defuse the chips, you jump out of her, she’s running from some people, or trying to accomplish her own mission (which might involve saving millions of people from the Alliance – now you have your “save the world” scenario). Having Megan in a coma the whole time was a missed opportunity.

The Fantastic Voyage script was also unique in that it was one the few times where I realized the world was beyond the realm of description. Well, maybe not beyond, but as these guys tried to describe the inside of the human body, it was overwhelming. And I was never quite sure what I was looking at. I just imagined a bunch of globbery red stuff with veins shooting everywhere. I rarely encounter that situation where the world is just so complex, it can only be shown onscreen (unless you want to write a book of description) and that hurt the read, because whenever we were chasing or being chased or going anywhere, I only had a vague visual sense of what was going on.

Finally, I think there was too much plot and not enough character development here. This is ANOTHER thing writers deal with when writing big-budget films. These films demand lots of plot and action to happen, so that’s where most of the focus goes. But we have to remember that if we don’t care about the characters, the plot doesn’t matter. The big issue here is that the most important relationship in the movie (Grant and Megan) isn’t even explored because there’s no way for them to communicate. And the rest of the characters were more “plot-mover” types. There to do shit, but not develop. I would’ve liked to have seen more development.

Fantastic Voyage is an idea fraught with challenges. I will say, though, that if James Cameron directed this, I would see it. Because you know he’d do two years of researching the human body and learning every single little thing there is to learn about it. Hell, he’d probably finish sequencing human DNA and wipe out a few cancers while he was at it. But the attention to detail he would give to this would make it worth watching. As far as THIS old draft of the script though, it wasn’t quite there. Which is probably why they’re still developing it.

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

What I learned: As you make your way into this industry, you’re going to be asked to pitch your take on ideas a lot. I think it’s important to have a bold take when you walk into a pitch, an angle others haven’t thought of. That’s what Jaffa and Silver did with “Apes.” Everyone else was pitching the obvious versions of that story. They wanted to focus on one ape and his journey, even though he didn’t speak for 99% of the movie. That was bold. The take everyone has for Fantastic Voyage is pretty obvious and I think that’s what’s keeping it from becoming a hot project. This needs a hot take. What about you guys? What would your take be?

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A Maine-based lobster fishing family who has fallen from grace, finds a chance at redemption when their old fishing boat comes back up for sale.
About: Every year, AMC takes its six best potential scripts and allows their writers/creators to pitch them and the entire show in a more extensive format, via visual aids, or whatever else they can think of. Whoever still looks good after that gets a show on the air. This sounds like a good approach, but doesn’t always work. One of the shows to come out of this format was Low Winter Sun, the depressing took-itself-too-seriously bore fest. The strangely titled “F/V Mean Tide” (I don’t know why you’d put a forward slash in a title. – Unless “F/V” stands for “final version” maybe??) is another one of those scripts. You’re probably wondering, why did you pick this to review, Carson? Well first of all, I trust AMC. They have their misses (as documented above) but as far as alternative TV series, they’re right up there with HBO and Netflix. With that said, their line-up is getting old, with the exception of maybe The Walking Dead, which could conceivably go on forever. So they need some new juice in the fridge. Writer Jason Cahill has written for Fringe, The Sopranos and ER.
Writer: Jason Cahill
Details: 58 pages – 3rd draft

George Clooney to play the father?  Hey, more and more film guys are moving to TV and it’s a great role.  Why not??

One of the frustrating things about reading so much material is getting bored with so much material. Everybody’s pretty much writing the same stuff with the same characters with the same plots. It starts to depress you actually! But after awhile, you start to realize that you’re part of the problem. If all you’re going to read are sci-fi scripts and thrillers and rom-coms, you’re not going to find much variety in the writing. If you want to experience something unique, you have to take chances, read some offbeat things that don’t necessarily sound like slam dunks. Personally, I’ve never heard of a script based on lobster fishing, so I said, “Hell,” why not.

“Mean Tide” follows 29 year-old Matt Aegis, a lobster fisherman with a complicated past. When we meet Matt, he’s relegated to pulling up traps for an asshole captain whose alcoholism is so bad, he still tries to navigate his boat when it’s tied up to the dock.

For this reason, Matt wants his own boat to captain, but boats cost money, and he doesn’t have much. It just so happens, however, that one of the oldest fisherman in town is retiring and selling his boat. The boat is ancient and doesn’t come close to the technology on these new boats (that find their fish via fancy satellites), but Matt has a secret plan for finding lobster that the most cutting edge technology in the world can’t compete with. We’ll get into that later.

The irony is, the boat Matt wants to buy actually belonged to his father, who lost it because of some fucked up criminal thing that happened in the past (the thing that no one shall talk about!). Before that, Matt’s family was looked at as Gods. Their great great grandfather practically built the town. But nowadays, those looks of awe have turned sideways, to the point where the only people the owner of the boat refuses to sell to are, you guessed it, Matt and his family!

Now it wouldn’t be a show without a few pretty ladies to look at and we got ourselves some doozeys. Even though Matt’s taken with the local tomboy hottie, he gets swept up in the arrival of a mysterious new siren of a female who oozes sex.  It’s like if Kate Upton and Kim Kardashian decided to have a baby.  All the other fisherman warn him, however, that this wannabe mermaid is well known for banging men and making them disappear. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep his pincers in his pants. Matt lives life on the edge of the bow though, so the pincers come out.

So what’s Matt’s ultimate plan if he does get that boat? Ghost Trees. It’s a spot out in the ocean that’s a shoal forest. Lobsters are hanging out there in the thousands. But everyone’s too scared to go near it, less the shoals rip their boats to shreds. Not Matt though. He’s the only man willing to take the risk. First Matt’s got to get the actual boat though, and not be chomped up by this femme fatale. If he can do that, he and his family just might rise to prominence again.

So did the big risk pay off? Did reading a script/pilot that I would normally never read result in reading euphoria?

Not exactly.  But that doesn’t mean I regret reading Mean Tide.

Here’s the thing I continue to be reminded of with scriptwriting. In the end, it’s all about the characters. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing about. As long as the characters are interesting, you’ll pull the reader in. There are some catches to that, of course. You have to create an idea that continually puts those characters in interesting situations so that the characters will stay interesting. But for the most part – it doesn’t matter what the setting or idea is. If you write great characters, people will enjoy your script (or movie, or TV show).

Here’s the caveat though. Nobody’s going to find out about your great characters unless people want to read your script (or watch your movie, or see your TV show) in the first place. This is where concepts come into play. You have to have somewhat of an interesting concept to trick people into checking out your show (or movie, or script) in the first place so that they can fall in love with those characters and keep watching.

This wasn’t always the case. TV didn’t used to be like film, where concept is king. You could focus a show on something simple, like the ER section of a hospital, and you’d have a hit. But I think that’s changing. Mainly because TV is getting so big and all this new material is flooding into the medium. With all that material, the only way to stand out is similar to the way writers stand out in the feature world – a cool concept. It’s why shows like Extant and The Blacklist and The Walking Dead are getting picked up. Even Breaking Bad has a nice little ironic hook (a dying chemistry teacher is forced to cook meth to provide for his family).

To that end, you’re going to get a lot of gun-shy executives when they’re faced with shows like “Mean Tide.” It is fairly interesting subject matter. And the characters are deep and multi-faceted. But it basically comes down to that age-old screenwriting truism: The smaller the hook, the better the writing has to be. If you’re going to write about families in suburban America (zero hook) the writing has to be perfect for the movie to be made (American Beauty). The hook here is kind of small – lobster fishing – and I’m not sure the story is good enough to make up for that.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of good here. I love how the pilot is structured like a feature (Matt’s got 3 days to come up with the money to buy the boat — goal! stakes! urgency!). I love how the family is presented as an underdog, so we immediately like them. I liked how nobody was perfect (Matt’s dad has a wayward eye and is unloving towards his son). I liked the conflict (every single relationship was steeped in some kind of history, making for plenty of conflict and subtext). And I loved this looming dangerous gold mine that was the Ghost Trees. I loved that everybody else was afraid of it except for our main character. Made him heroic and kept up the suspense, as we wanted to see if he’d be able to navigate it and reap its rewards at the end (the dangling carrot that kept us reading til the end).

But the story never really built enough. It kind of stayed at an even keel. And there was this annoying voice over from Matt that ran throughout the entire script that was totally unnecessary. It was one of those voice overs where the main character is trying to sound thoughtful and philosophical as he describes the events and people and history of the town. But it comes off as pretentious. I hate voice over that, if you cut it out, wouldn’t have any bearing whatsoever on the story. And that’s the kind of voice over this was.  If you got rid of it, nothing changed.  That’s the very definition of unnecessary.

There’s no question Cahill is a good writer but this pilot is missing something and I’m having a tough time figuring out what that is. Is it that the concept’s too small? Are we missing a twist or a big plot point to give the middle section a jolt? That may be it because I was never really surprised by where the script went. I felt like I was ahead of it. As a writer, it’s your job to be ahead of the reader, not the other way around. But anyway, while this was a strong pilot, until that something extra is found, it probably won’t be ready for television.

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

What I learned: To find a goal that results in the story for your pilot, create a problem for your main character. From problems emerge goals. So here, Matt is frustrated as shit with his current job as a 3rd Fisherman on some trawler boat. That’s his problem: he doesn’t want to be doing this anymore. So when a new boat comes up for sale, he sees an opportunity to fix that problem. His goal (which emerges from the problem) is to get the money needed to buy the boat within 3 days. The problem leads to the goal which leads to the framework (or structure, or blueprint) of your story.

What I learned 2: AMC’s “Top 6 scripts” approach reminded me that every production house or studio or network is basically a writing contest. You’re entering their contest and the winner gets to be on the air (or in a movie theater). The difference between this contest and contests like the Nicholl or Page, is that instead of competing against amateurs, you’re competing against pros, writers who understand story and characterization and dialogue and structure. The competition is a LOT LOT better, so you really have to knock it out of the park if you want to “win” that contest.