Genre: TV Pilot – Period/Drama
Premise: (from AMC) Set in the summer of 1778, “Turn” tells the story of New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence.
About: “Turn” is a new show that premieres on AMC this April. For those hardcore fans of Billy Elliot (“Go Billll-ly!”) who are waiting for that Kickstarter campaign to fund a sequel, here’s a consolation prize. Billy Elliot himself, Jaime Bell, is starring in “Turn” as the main character, Abe. Writer Craig Silverstein has written on shows like Bones and Terra Nova.
Writer: Craig Silverstein (based on “Washington’s Spies” by Alexander Rose)
Details: 60 pages – 11/01/12 draft

One of the things I’m still trying to figure out is if it’s harder to sell a feature script or harder to get a TV pilot on the air. The more I look into it, the more I’m finding that it’s really hard to get a show on the air. When you’re outside of it, and you see new shows on TV all the time, you just assume everyone who wants a show gets one.

But I suppose that’s the same way I saw movies before I moved to LA. There were so many of them, I erroneously assumed that all you had to do was write something reasonably competent and you could start planning your red carpet poses. Once you entrench yourself in the industry, however, you realize how few of those coveted golden tickets are being handed out.

Personally, I think the TV industry is about to enter a tough phase. Everything’s looking rosy now, but what everyone’s finding out is that just because you come up with a hip unique idea, it doesn’t mean people are going to watch it. The competition is so fierce and spread out amongst so many platforms and channels, that more and more shows are arriving with a thud. AMC found that out when they premiered Low Winter Sun.

I mean what if I told you that JJ Abrams was producing a supernatural show and Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron was going to direct the pilot episode. You’d say, “Home run,” right? Well, I don’t know if you saw the pilot or not, but Believe is a lot closer to a strike-out than a home-run. And that gets you thinking – if THOSE GUYS can’t create a sure thing, then who can??

Well AMC takes a lot of pride in their development style and their shows, so let’s see if they’ve gotten back on track with a formula.

It’s Connecticut, 1778. Now my history is a little rusty. But I thought that was 2 years after American gained independence. That doesn’t appear to be the case though, as Connecticut, as well as many other states on the East Coast in “Turn,” appear to be under English rule. Maybe we only signed our Declaration of Independence in 1776, but it took us a few more years to actually get everyone else to realize it?

Jesus, I couldn’t even tell you what year Scriptshadow started. Why am I trying to give you a history lesson about America?

Anyway, a young farmer named Abraham Woodhull is struggling to get his cabbage crop ready to sell (everyone knows, if you need quick drama, add cabbage), but it turns out half of it is rotten. Woodhull’s forced to sell the remaining cabbage on the black market, where he can get a higher price, but while he’s away, a key British general is killed, and he’s blamed!

Luckily, Abe’s father is in tight with the British (he even lets them stay at his house!) and convinces them to let his son go. Since Abe’s father’s maid knows how to cook a mean pulled pork sandwich, the British figure they’ll overlook Abe’s errant ways and blame some other innocent soul.

This would end up being costly, however. Soon after, Abe’s approached by the rebellion (sorry, I only know how to use Star Wars terms sometimes) and asked to start SPYING on the British so the Yanks can get a leg up on when and where they’re being targeted.

To complicate matters, Abe must include his secret childhood love interest in the ruse, even though both he, and her, are married to other people! Scandalous! With his lover’s house being at the top of a hill, it’s viewable by all, and therefore the perfect hill to send messages from.

His lover starts using special laundry drying combinations to alert the Americans when and where the British are going to attack next. Can you believe that! We’re alive today because of somebody’s laundry! Which reminds me that I have to do my laundry. Hmm, I wonder if my laundry will save someone someday.

How will Abe justify a life where he’s lying to the person he loves most in the world (his father) and loving a woman who he can never have in his life (his childhood sweetheart), all while trying to run a business and not allow anyone – his wife, his friends, the Redcoats – to find out that he’s helping America win their independence? You’ll have to watch Turn to find out.

Despite being off my rocker, I knew I was going to like Turn within a couple of pages. It had a really good opening scene specifically because it said “f*ck you” to the period piece.

What I mean by that is, when a reader opens a period piece, they’re expecting boring men in costumes to talk about politics and the latest price of silk. Your job is to let them know that you’re not going to be that writer. You want to tell a story. Doesn’t matter if it’s 1778 or 2278. You’re going to give them a compelling dramatic scene that could work in any script.

So here, we’re coming in just after the British have massacred a group of American soldiers. The liefeless soldiers are on the ground, and a British soldier is going to each one and PLUNGING his bayonet into them to make sure they’re dead. But we learn something early on that the British soldier doesn’t know (dramatic irony!). The final American soldier is still alive!

The British soldier gets closer and closer. When he gets to our soldier, he JAMS his bayonet down, only for the American to spin out of the way and stick his own knife in the British soldier’s groin, then killing him soon after.

But there’s another problem. The rest of the British soldiers are up on a nearby hill, waiting for this soldier to finish the job. So our American must discreetly switch uniforms with the Brit. When he stands, he’s immediately spotted by the other soldiers, but since he’s facing the other way, they assume he’s still their soldier.

They ask him what’s taking so long, and in order to sell the ruse, he has to go back through all of his soldiers, soldiers he was fighting with 15 minutes prior, and stab them one by one with his bayonet.

It’s a wonderful scene, and it draws its power not from anything distinctly “period,” but from a clever use of suspense and dramatic irony. A lesser writer might not have shown that our soldier was still alive as the bayonet got closer. They might have waited until the British soldier tried to stab him before revealing the American was alive (there goes the suspense!). They also might have had the American run for it right afterwards. But Silverstein knew he had a great scene in the making and so he milked it, creating a SECOND leg to the scene where our American had to pretend to be a British soldier. It was really good stuff.

“Turn” is also a show that utilizes one of the most powerful storytelling techniques in our writing arsenal – the secret. Give your character a secret and make the stakes of revealing that secret HIGH (such as death), and you can captivate an audience for hours.

This is why spy films and TV shows (Alias, for example) do so well. The main character is usually hiding something from everyone else, which means there’s subtext built into every scene they’re in. When Abe is forced to lie to his father in front of the British, we feel his struggle. We could never feel that if we didn’t know he was lying, or if there was no lie to be told in the first place.

Go ahead and try it. Give one of your characters in your current script a big lie, then put him in a scene with people who would be negatively affected by that lie, if it came out. I bet you you’ll have a pretty good scene.

There were simple other things that worked too. People didn’t say to each other on-the-nose lines like, “Oh, the crops are rotten again.” We SHOWED Abe bend down and check his cabbage, only to find maggots on it. By disgustedly hurling the cabbage into the field, that’s all we needed to know the cabbage was rotten. Much more effective than a dialogue line (always SHOW, don’t TELL).

Silverstein also avoided a common period piece pitfall, one that many amateurs make – slow plodding scenes they believe are excused by the fact that it’s “period.” Despite it being 1778, most scenes here were taut, driven by some urgent need from one character or another.

For example, when Abe goes to his old girlfriend’s place (Anna) to set up their first signal, Abe isn’t allowed to just sit down, have a lemonade, and talk about whatever comes to mind, no worries in the world. He had to be quick. He couldn’t be seen with Anna, less others get suspicious. So the two are trying to talk about a million different things at once, but Abe must leave, terrified that the British could be back at any second. There was never a “safe” feeling in this script. Everyone was always looking over their shoulder, worried about something. And those are the things that elevate a script, that give it that next-level dramatic punch.

The only bad thing I have to say about “Turn” is that I could care less about the Revolutionary War! Go Paul Revere. Go Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan. I love all you guys. But when I have free time, I’m not checking out how many soldiers got knee wounds in the Battle of Terre Haute. It just isn’t my thing. And as I’ve stated before, a script can only wow you so much if the subject matter isn’t your cup of tea.

So I’m afraid some of my rating has to be dumped along with that tea into the Boston Harbor. And just a day after St. Patty’s Day. Still, this was a really well-written pilot. Definitely worth checking out if you can find it. Or just wait until April.

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

What I learned: Sometimes the threat of danger is more compelling than danger itself. Anna was living alone until a slimy nasty British General was positioned at her home. You knew this guy was bad news, that it was only a matter of time before he did something awful to Anna. But the thing was, it never happened. It didn’t have to. Just the THREAT of it happening was enough to put us on edge. Writers are so obsessed with having something terrible happen, that they forget the IMPLICATION that something terrible is going to happen can have so much more power.

What I learned 2: When in doubt, add cabbage.

Genre: Mystery/Drama/Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) Years after walking away from her past as a teenage private eye, Veronica Mars gets pulled back to her hometown – just in time for her high school reunion – in order to help her old flame Logan Echolls, who’s embroiled in a murder mystery.
About: If you hadn’t heard by now, Veronica Mars was a TV show that aired on UPN which ran for three seasons. It was cancelled seven years ago because of low ratings. The silver lining was that star Kristin Bell carved out a nice little career for herself (appearing in movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Couples Retreat, and most recently, Frozen). But the fans of the show, impassioned as they were, never gave up on seeing Kristin and their favorite show again. They hemmed and they hawed every year. But it wasn’t until creator Rob Thomas took a unique approach at raising the money for the film by going to Kickstarter (their original goal was 2 million dollars, but they got nearly 6), that that dream became a reality. Just this weekend, the film debuted simultaneously in theaters and digitally. Creator Rob Thomas’s career has been an embattled one. He seems to get things on the air only for them to be cancelled within 1-3 years. He’s written a bunch of pilots that have gotten to within a splinter’s width of going to series, only to be axed at the last second. Rob has gone on to say that it’s very rare that a cast and crew love making a show as much as everyone on Veronica Mars, which is part of why he wanted to make this movie so much.
Writers: Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero
Details: 107 minutes

We’re approaching that spot in the yearly schedule where distributors are actually starting to place movies they care about into theaters. A short climb up almost any hill and you can see summer coming. Need For Speed is by no means a behemoth, but it was something that was hoping for blockbuster status (I’m afraid it didn’t get there). Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel is slowly expanding, and it’s looking like one of Wes’s better movies. I considered reviewing both movies today.

But I decided to go with Veronica and Co., only because it has a lot of talking points, what with its Kickstarter campaign and its taking a show that was never very popular in the first place, has been dead for seven years, and turning it into a film. It’s probably one of the more bizarre examples of a movie ever being made.

The challenge is tying all this into screenwriting. Because this project is so darn unique, it’s almost screenwriting proof. What, the story doesn’t make sense? That’s because you never watched the show and therefore don’t know the intricate backstory. What, the parts of the story you did understand were ridiculous and over-the-top, like a random sex-tape subplot that had nothing to do with anything? Silly non-original-Veronica-Mars-watcher, that’s a reference to well known episode 17 of season 3, when Veronica joked that at least she wasn’t stupid enough to ever make a sex tape. What, the dialogue feels turned-based and overly-written? That’s because it’s based on a TV show originally meant for teenagers who favored that kind of dialogue. As I played around with the idea of critiquing this movie, which I didn’t like, I realized that everything I came up with had an excuse. In that sense, Rob Thomas, the creator, is a freaking genius.

So what was this once-in-a-lifetime movie experience about? I will only say that if you are a Veronica Mars buff, you will want to skip my summary, because as hard as I tried, I was able to pick up only about 2/3 of everything that was happening. There was always a plot point seeping into the story that made no sense either due to bad writing or proprietary TV backstory new viewers weren’t privy to.

But from what I can tell, Veronica Mars, now in her late 20s or early 30s, had once been a high school private investigator in the small town of Neptune, California. She was considered a troublemaker and now, 10 years later or whatever it was, was on her way to becoming a lawyer. She’s even got the perfect boyfriend. Neptune is finally in the rear-view mirror.

OR IS IT!

This is where it gets confusing. Veronica Mars’s old high-school boyfriend (who we can only assume was on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, a constant unknown in her tumultuous life) is being accused of killing his girlfriend, a well-known pop star – because former boyfriends who now date pop-stars and then are accused of killing them is, apparently, very plausible in the Veronica Mars universe.

So Veronica heads back to Neptune to “help” Old Boyfriend find a good lawyer (you know, since she’s about to become a lawyer and all). In a baffling non-turn of events, her current boyfriend has zero issues with her going home and spending time with a guy she had a steamy on-again-off-again affair with for three seasons. Yup, makes sense to me!

Oh but wait! It gets better. Turns out that she and Old Boyfriend have a sex tape together! And that it just appeared on Perez Hilton! When this sex occurred (when they were in high school? Recently?) is never clearly explained. But that’s not the craziest part. It has absolutely no bearing on the story. It doesn’t affect the plot or what’s going on at all. Again, I guess this kind of stuff is commonplace in the Veronica Mars universe and we’re just supposed to “go with it.”

Naturally, Veronica Mars settles back into her old P.I. ways and starts investigating who killed this pop star. After Veronica’s sex tape is shown at the high school reunion to humiliate her and a giant bar fight breaks out for no other reason than they got more money from Kickstarter than they planned, she eventually traces the killer back to an old high school bitch who hated her who may or may not have hired a guy she was banging to do the job. This was all wrapped up, of course, in the very simplistic and shoddy way you’d expect a weekly episode of an average WB TV show to wrap up. Hooray!

Most boring actor in the history of cinema?

One of the hardest parts of viewing Veronica Mars: The Movie, was trying to figure out what in the world people liked about the show in the first place. I’m not trying to be snarky, really. I honestly want to know. It felt like literally anything you’d see if you turned on the WB between 7-9 pm any night. Teenage characters spouting out really obvious over-written dialogue at each other. Except these days, at least those teenagers have powers. So it’s actually kind of cool!

I guess the show may have succeeded due, in part, to its unique concept? Putting a high school girl into the role of a private investigator was kind of ironic, seeing as when you hear “private investigator,” you usually think of an alcoholic middle-aged man whose life has fallen apart. I agree that that’s kind of different.

But almost every decision the creators made in regards to this show seems wrong. I can honestly say that I have not seen a more boring uncharismatic actor in the last 20 years as the guy who plays Veronica Mars’s “love interest,” this “Logan” guy.  There were times where I had to actually pause the movie to make sure he wasn’t sleeping.  He alone was probably responsible for driving away the millions of fans this show needed to stay on the air. I’ve seen more personality and acting ability in a chicken embryo.

Ahh! And don’t get me started on the dialogue. I’m guessing this is the component that kept Veronica Mars TV fans coming back every week. And I say that not because I liked the dialogue, but because it was clear that the writers LOVED writing the dialogue and the actors LOVED performing the dialogue. You can actually see the actors licking their chops getting ready to deliver lines like, “You get the cliches?” when asked “You know what you get when you mess with the bull?”

Maybe what was so strange about this was that when the show originally aired and every character was in high school, starting each scene with characters making fun of each other with witty one-liners for five minutes made sense, at least in the universe of a TV show about high school. But here, with grown men and women delivering the lines, the banter now felt like it’d stumbled out of a cryogenic chamber.

So little makes sense in the storytelling and the plot and the dialogue when you watch Veronica Mars, that after awhile, you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a conversation that wasn’t meant for you. And every time you try to get closer to hear more so you can make SOME SENSE of what they’re saying, Veronica and everyone else turn around and glare at you, shaming you for even considering trying to understand a movie meant for only the purest of fans.

Look, I get it. You have to give the people who made this movie happen priority. Those are the fans of the original show who donated on Kickstarter. But I guess I was hoping for at least an attempt at bringing new fans in, since this movie isn’t going to spawn any sequels (which is what Thomas is hoping for) unless it makes more believers out of us. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything to believe in.

The bigger question, of course, is “Did the Kickstarter model work?” Is this something that’s viable for the industry moving forward? Veronica Mars’s Kickstar success story was celebrated when it happened, but since there’s this thing called the internet, any happy koala bears and rainbows must be destroyed before happiness can spread, and the media quickly turned on the model, claiming that it basically gave studios permission to double-dip from us poor unsuspecting ticket-buyers. Make them pay to fund the movie, then make them pay to buy it.

Some of you might be saying that everyone who invested in the Veronica Mars Kickstarter Campaign got a free movie ticket, so that argument’s not relevant. But from what I understand, these ravenous fans are ALSO paying out of pocket to see the film to beef up its box office so it can spawn MORE incomprehensible plots and bad dialogue. Sigh. I don’t know what to believe. I think any other avenue to make movies is a good one, since the kind of money needed to make a film is always out of reach for the average (and even semi-successful) filmmaker (although call me when Zach Braff’s “Wish You Were Here” comes out and my opinion may change).

Veronica Mars was a bizarre trip into movie no-man’s land that I’m still trying to find my way back from. My advice to Kristin Bell is to stick with that little Frozen franchise instead. Sure, it may not make complete sense, but it makes more sense than this planetary drek.

[x] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware of “wait your turn to burn” dialogue, the kind of dialogue where every character seems to be waiting to ZING the other person with a perfectly constructed overly-clever “burn” that no real life person could’ve possibly come up with that fast. Real people don’t talk this way. There is a time and place for this kind of dialogue (high school based TV shows where the “clever burn” is part of the conceit) but using it in any other type of setting (save for some high-school-based comedy films) is going to sound unnatural and overwritten.

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: The Dark Parade
GENRE: Fantasy Action
LOGLINE: On the night of Dracula’s resurrection, a past-his-prime vampire hunter and his estranged son must protect the virgin marked for sacrifice by fending off a demonic horde until sunrise.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Like vampires and monsters? Great, come on in. Don’t like vampires and monsters? Don’t worry, this script isn’t really about them. It’s about fathers and the stupid things they do.

TITLE: Demise
GENRE: Supernatural Drama, Thriller, Mystery
LOGLINE: A depressed, yet vengeful detective investigates the recent murder of a teenage girl, and he soon realizes that his prime suspect is hiding more than just the truth.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I just completed the fifth revision of this script and feel I am too close to the content to see the big picture – the “can’t see the forest for the trees” adage comes to mind. Any and all forms of feedback and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

TITLE: Monty
GENRE: Action/Comedy
LOGLINE: After his dog is kidnapped by a ruthless criminal, a man suffering from depression is forced into a bizarre and dangerous underworld not only to save his dog but himself as well.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I have always been a huge fan of the British-style Hard-R-rated action/comedy movies like In Bruges and Snatch. This is my American-ized ode to them. In all honesty, I believe I’ve written something absurd, unpredictable, and frenetic with a great mix of humor and ass-kicking while intertwining brutal violence you might expect out of a horror movie. Also, there are 116 iterations of the word ‘fuck’. I plan on submitting to Nicholl so any ideas the SS community can give me to improve the piece would be amazing.

TITLE: Of Glass and Golden Clockwork
GENRE: Contained Sci-Fi Drama
LOGLINE: On the eve of the Third World War, a young soldier abandons his post to search out a robot claiming to have information regarding his father’s unsolved murder, only to discover these two are more connected than he ever could have imagined.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: The previous draft of the script won Carson’s ‘Free Notes Giveaway’ back during Christmas of 2012. The intention was for him to use those notes as his permanent set of ‘sample notes’ from then on. But he never posted them. I’m not sure of the reason, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that he called them one of the most challenging set of notes he had ever had to write. Why is that? I’ll let you find out for yourself…

After that, I put the script down for a good eight or so months and took a big step back from Scriptshadow and writing as a whole. But then, a few months ago, I picked it back up and rewrote the whole thing. The result is a script I’m personally very proud of, and it even managed to earn an [x] Impressive rating from a Scriptshadow regular. If that’s not incentive enough, I don’t know what is!

If you have ever been a fan of contained films, period dramas, complex characters, or just bold imagination, you will undoubtedly appreciate this script. It is a small, intimate fairy tale for the modern age, about love and life and loss. Hope you enjoy!

TITLE: Rapture
GENRE: Dark Comedy
LOGLINE: Two con men engineer a scheme to fleece religious zealots who are awaiting the rapture and find themselves to be the only decent people around when the apocalypse arrives.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’m a 24 year old film student who started writing a little over a year ago and haven’t looked back since. Rapture is loosely based on a true story about a group of men who offered insurance against the rapture to religious fanatics. I wasn’t sure anyone would ever buy the premise until one day, while researching, I stumbled upon a Christian internet forum where the members were openly discussing buying rapture insurance. As absurd as it seemed to me, it nevertheless validated the premise in my eyes. A few months and a few dozen rewrites later, Rapture was born. I hope you enjoy it.

Last year, in anticipation of the upcoming Star Wars films, I invited anyone who wanted to send in their own Star Wars script to do so. I would review the Top 5 and if one was really awesome, who knows, Disney might see it and get the writer involved in a future installment of the series. I received 20 Star Wars scripts in total. This week I’m reviewing the best of those. Monday we got Old Weapons. Tuesday we had rising shadows.  Wednesday we had the most badass lobster in the galaxy.  Thursday we had lots of children.  And for our final Star Wars entry, we’ve got RELIGION!

Genre: Sci-fi Fantasy
Premise: (from me) A thousand years after the fall of the Empire, a dangerous new Jedi Master named Rivada has found a way to weaken those with the Force, and will stop at nothing to facilitate this new power.
About: Robert is a super nice guy who’s actually been reviewed on the site before in a drama-filled (okay, I’m exaggerating for effect) debate on if it’s okay to write 140+ page scripts. It’s been a couple of years since then, however, and one would presume he’s improved considerably. Indeed, the page count of his latest entry is a paltry 109 pages, so I expect good things!
Writer: Robert Cornero
Details: 109 pages

There seems to be two trains of thought when it comes to these Star Wars entries: Stick with the original characters a few years after Episode 6, or (as Robert does), fast-forward hundreds of years into the future and create a new cast.

Let me offer my feelings on the matter (if I may – and I will). When I heard they were bringing back Han for the new film (as well as Luke and Leia), I didn’t like it. Mainly because 70 year-old, wise-cracking scoundrels aren’t very cool. I had the same issue with that fourth Indiana Jones film. You can continue to play that cool franchise character you established as a young actor until maybe around 50. After that, it starts looking desperate. And more importantly, weird. I mean, now we have to prepare for a 70 year-old Arnold in a Terminator film? I pay my social security taxes and am all for assisted living, but at a certain point these actors have to embrace age-appropriate roles.

Apparently, Robert Cornero agrees with me because he said adios to Harrison, Red Foxx, and Betty White, and embraced an entirely new cast. How did that cast do? Well, I can tell you this. Of the five entries this week, Secrets of the Ancients was definitely the most heady and spiritual of the bunch. If you want to give your thinking cap a workout, today’s Star Wars script is the entry to go with.

As we’ve established, it’s a thousand years after Endor’s clean-up party and the Jedis are officially back in business. Well, sort of. See, there’s a new Jedi trending on Twitter named Rivada, who’s got this juicy plan where he’s going to suck away the Force Powers of all the other Jedi out there and probably become the most powerful Jedi ever as a result.

A few parsecs away, another Jedi named Aurius is the only person standing in the way of Rivada achieving this. He’s stolen the possible coordinates to the previously hidden Sea of Ages, where the majority of the Force in the universe is concentrated. If the wrong guy were to get to that Sea, who knows what could happen.

But Aurius can’t do this alone, which is why he locates his old apprentice, Khalia, and asks her to tag along. Khalia used to be a rising padawan until she lost interest, got out of Dodge. But when Aurius starts saying stuff like the Galaxy will be taken over and the Empire will rise again – well, Khalia becomes open to listening.

But finding the Sea isn’t as easy as advertised. They have to travel to Coruscant, request the help of a Jedi who hates Aurius, all with Rivada hot on their trail. Khalia finally starts connecting with the Force again, which allows her to find this sacred “Sea,” but when she gets there, she sees that Rivada is ready to do anything to have it himself. Let the light-saber battles begin!

Secrets of the Ancients is less about plot, and more about the spiritual underpinnings of the Force itself. Gone are big bulky Death Stars. In their place are meta-physical ground Zeroes that bind the universe together. Even the names we encounter seem to be speaking to a different plane of existence. The “Sea of Ages,” which is located in the “Temple of Bal-Shur.”

We have Khalia communicating with dead monks via astral-projection, sending her sleeping soul billions of miles away for a little Karma chameleon phone call. It’s all rather trippy and reminded me in some ways of the famous Leigh Brackett draft of Empire Strikes Back (which, in one scene, had Luke and Darth Vader fighting a light saber battle literally in the middle of space). We got a little Wachowski philosophizing in this one, for better or worse.

So did it work? Well, it certainly added a lot more depth to the mythology, which is something I haven’t seen a whole lot of this week. But there was no doubt it came at the expense of some fun. I think of Star Wars as a rip-roaring space adventure. Slow it down too much and it stops being Star Wars. There were a handful of times where I was astral-projecting my thoughts at Robert, telling him to “keep it moving!” Not sure if he heard them.

Character-wise, we have a mixed bag here. The most interesting character is Aurius. He’s a “good” Jedi who wants to take down the “bad” Rivalda, but he’s not a choir boy. He’s killed a couple of good Jedis himself. In his mind, if it means saving the universe, he’s not afraid to shed some blood. I liked that about him. It brought out the grey in the character.  Call him the “Riddick” of Jedis.

Unfortunately, I was never clear on who Khalia was. I didn’t entirely understand her backstory. I think she used to be an apprentice on Coruscant. Then some major catastrophe happened. She abandoned the Jedi as a result, and resorted to farming back on her home planet.

So she was someone who was already a Jedi, kind of forgot how to be a Jedi, and now she has to re-learn how to be a Jedi? Doesn’t have the same punch as a total underdog nobody (Luke) having to learn the Force from scratch, does it?

You know who Kahlia reminded me of? Christopher McQuarrie’s Clark Kent. How instead of starting with Superman, we had this weird half-backstory about how Superman had already been Superman but then left Earth for awhile, only to come back and not want to be Superman. It was totally unnecessarily complicated. That was Khalia to me. I think she should’ve been a nobody, like Luke. Not only does it make her easier to buy into, but she just would’ve been easier to identify with since she would’ve been more like us (nobodies!).

I will say that I liked this whole “Center of the Universe” Force place, and I actually wanted to see Robert do more with it. Here’s a place where all the Force in the Galaxy is concentrated. Imagine two Jedis fighting in a place like that. What they could do with all that power. It would make that Yoda-Dookoo fight look like Pong. I was hoping Robert was going to push the envelope with all that power and get really imaginative, but it didn’t happen. ☹

What we haven’t talked about all week is villains – which is ironic since much of Star Wars’s success is attributed to its villain. Looking back at it, why IS Darth Vader the greatest villain of all time? Is it his badass outfit, cool breathing apparatus, and distinguished voice? Or is there something written into him that makes him stand above all the competition?

Cause if you look at him objectively, he’s just a badass dude who doesn’t take shit. He can force choke you. He can dangle choke you. And he has some history with another Jedi (Obi-Wan Kenobi). But he’s not a nuanced complicated layered bad guy in the vein of Hannibal Lecter. Well, if you’re only going off the first Star Wars film, that is.

I don’t know what makes Vader so great. Maybe you guys can help me with that one. But what I can tell you is that no one came close to writing a memorable Star Wars villain this week. Every bad guy was either bland, predictable or both. I think one of the things you’re looking for in a villain is “something different,” something you weren’t expecting to see. And everyone here was just a garden variety Jedi with galaxy-domination on his/her mind. I needed more than that. Makes me think I should write an article about villains soon.

But yeah, at the very least you have to start with a character that’s defined. An easy way to tell if your villain (or any character) is hitting the reader is to ask them, “If there’s one defining trait you’d label my villain as, what would it be?” If they have a hard time answering, you didn’t do your job. And if Robert were to ask me that question about Rivada, I’d have a hard time answering it. At least with Aurius, I knew he’d do anything to get the job done, moral or not. He felt like he had a solid foundation under him. Rivada? I’m still trying to figure anything that sticks out about him. Thoughts?

So what have I learned from this week’s experience? Well, it’s really hard to write a Star Wars script. That’s number 1. But honestly? Probably that whatever you’re writing, whether it be your own spec or an assignment for a major studio franchise, you have to come to it with your own take. You have to create your own story, your own characters. If all you’re doing is resting on the laurels of what came before you, your script is going to come off as lazy and uninspired. You have to at least TRY to infuse your own voice and ideas into it. While nobody knocked it out of the park this week, the scripts were almost always the most fun when the writers were trying something different and blazing their own trails.

Script link: Secrets of the Ancients

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

What I learned: Something occurred to me while I was thinking about all six Star Wars films today. The movies were always at their best when the characters wanted to be anywhere BUT where they were. From Luke wanting off Tatooine, to the group wanting out of the Mos Eisley, to the group wanting off the Death Star. It reminded me that stories are often the most interesting when you put your characters in places they don’t want to be.

Last year, in anticipation of the upcoming Star Wars films, I invited anyone who wanted to send in their own Star Wars script to do so. I would review the Top 5, and if one was really awesome, who knows, Disney might see it and get the writer involved in a future installment of the series. I received 20 Star Wars scripts in total. This week, I will review the best of those. Monday we got Old Weapons. Tuesday we had rising shadows.  Yesterday we had the most badass lobster in the galaxy.  And today, we’ve got twins, baby.  Twins!

Genre: Sci-fi Fantasy
Premise: (from writer) With the fate of the galaxy in the balance, two-young Jedi and children to the heroes of the New Republic, must come to terms with their destinies as they set out to save the lives of millions from a dark force with deep ties to their family’s past.
About: Star Wars Week continues! Team Jedi wins! I was especially moved by Tom Albanese’s comment about how thoughtful Nicholas has been in the comments all this week. Yes, Nicholas’s script was 150 pages, but after I heard that, I felt like he deserved a shot. Let’s find out if he delivered!
Writer: Nicholas Saraceno
Details: 149 pages

As we continue to get closer to the greatest day in the history of the universe, December 21, 2015, the day Star Wars VII comes out, I must admit that I grow more and more worried about the script. Here’s what I know so far, based on three-quarter-truths that most news outlets agree are probably accurate.

Michael Arndt came in before the Disney-Lucasfilm deal was finished to create an outline for Episode 7. He was working off a treatment from George Lucas himself. Now as we know, Lucas only really understood Episodes 4-6. Everything outside of those films he only knew bits and pieces of. So this outline for Episode 7 was likely based on a few really flimsy ideas.

One of the strangest parts of this whole odyssey is that Arndt started writing the Episode 7 script before a director was chosen. As most everyone who’s worked in Hollywood knows, writing a script within the studio system without a director guiding it is pointless, because once a director comes on, he’s going to change everything anyway. But I guess they wanted to get a head start, which I suppose makes sense.

Needless to say, JJ was then chosen as director and started guiding Arndt to a script closer to his own vision. Somewhere during this process, something broke down. Maybe it was that Lucas’ flimsy idea for the film never worked in the first place. Maybe JJ and Arndt weren’t getting along. I don’t know. But soon, Arndt was fired and JJ (who started as a screenwriter and had a very successful career doing so) pretty much took over writing duties himself. He then rewrote the entire script within three months.

Now I think JJ is talented as shit. I’m so behind him helming this film. But this is Star Wars we’re talking about. You can’t write a good Star Wars film in three months (while prepping the biggest movie ever, while running a company, while shepherding 15 different TV shows, while putting the kids to bed every night). There’s too much imagination involved. Sure, you can slap something together. But if you want it to stand out, you need time. And since JJ had to start building sets and doing pre-viz, time is the one thing he didn’t have. So for better or worse, whatever he came up with in those three months is what we’re getting. And that scares me to shit, only because I believe Star Wars deserves more, and the franchise now has a history of bad films due to shoddy writing. I don’t want that trend to continue.

Nicholas Saraceno to the rescue? Maybe that’s asking to much. I will say, though, out of the four Star Wars scripts I’ve reviewed this week, Saraceno’s is the most faithful and exciting. It was the first time I saw the potential for what the new Star Wars films could be. It’s not without its faults though. It’s extremely ambitious and there’s a lot going on, but let’s see if Nicholas was able to wrangle it all in.

It’s 20 years after all that Ewok dancing. But despite yet another “Nyug Nyug” video going viral, not all is well in the universe. There’s still a lot of poverty, a lot of crime, and an upstart terrorist group known as the “Children of the Sun” which is using all this unrest to push its agenda.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy in the Spice mines of Kessel, a young man named Jacen Solo is following in his father’s footsteps, buying and smuggling spice between planets. On this particular run, one of the mine’s slaves sneaks on his ship, the Falcon, because she’s sick of working for nothing. Her name is Kayla. And although Jacen would never say it out loud, he thinks she’s darn cute.

Kayla seems like a nice girl alright, all the way until they get to Tatooine to sell their spice to Babbee the Hutt. That’s when Kayla reveals that the whole slave thing? FAKE! She played Jacen to get here. Before Jacen can figure out what just happened, the Hutt palace is attacked by the Republic, and everybody must run for their lives.

Somewhere in this mix, both Luke Skywalker and Jaina Solo (Jacen’s twin sister) show up, and everyone’s trying to get to safety. After they get away, it’s revealed that the attack was some kind of front to trick the Hutts into aligning with the Children of the Sun in a growing war, led by a nasty Sith-in-Training named Dragil.

If you’ve lost track yet, don’t worry, it gets more confusing. Luke meets up with his old friends-with-benefits Jedi pal, Mara Jade. Turns out, Luke’s 5 years late on Republic Credits child support. Because he be a baby daddy!  Do I smell a “Jedi and Pregnant” reality show coming to TLC?

Not that that matters, because we learn that some other children, the Children of the Sun, are planning on blowing up Coruscant with a rare super-weapon made of red spice and a powerful Jedi infant, that infant being the son of the Emperor’s brother, who’s been hiding out on his estate on Naboo all this time!  Jar-Jar?  How could you let this one slip by!

Over the course of the story, Jaina is trying to get Jacen to be a Jedi. Jacen is trying not to fall in love with Kayla, who keeps changing sides. Luke is trying to train Jaina, who keeps doing non-Jedi things like making out with hot soldiers, and Han is trying to figure out why his family is so damn dysfunctional. This will all end in a Hutt battle on Naboo and a race to stop a super-bomb from destroying Coruscant.

Naturally, you can guess what my biggest problem with Children of the Jedi was. There were 8 billion things going on! You have to admire Nicholas for trying to go big, but in the end, he bit off more than he could chew. Actually, he bit off more than anyone could chew. Too many characters, too many storylines, too many twists and turns. I kind of felt like I’d been dropped into an Industrial-sized trash compactor along with every single Star Wars character ever created.

Part of the problem was that Children of the Jedi tried to invent a universe instead of just telling a story. That was the problem with the Prequels. They were trying to invent a universe. What I mean by that is that they had to set up a million things before they got to a single storyline that mattered.

I keep telling everyone that about Star Wars. Its genius is in that it wasn’t trying to be an epic. It jumped into a story that was already moving, that had already been set up many years ago. We were coming in when the good stuff started, after the Death Star plans had already been stolen. That’s what gave the story such urgency.

If Star Wars had, instead, tried to invent a universe, it would’ve started by introducing everybody on their home planets. It would have had the rebels come pick Leia up and say, “Hey, we want to go steal these Death Star plans. You in?” We would’ve met Han Solo smoking cigars with old friends on Planet Takator before saying, “Yo, I gotta go visit Tatooine.” Instead, Star Wars fast-forwarded over all that stuff and put us in the thick of the moment.

In fact, that’s the whole point of the Star Wars crawl. To get all that exposition taken care of in 60 seconds so that you COULD start in the middle of the action.

I’m not going to say that Children of the Jedi didn’t have any action. It had plenty. And there were instances where characters were introduced in the heat of the moment. But by biting off an unheard of character count, and having to then set all those characters up, Nicholas gave himself no choice but to repeatedly stop the story to let us know who these new people were.

I must remind everyone of The Power of Simple. When in doubt, simplify. This script should’ve been Jacen Solo’s story through and through. He was the most interesting character. He had the most going on. We needed to strip away all those cumbersome non-essential plotlines and focus on his deal. That’s how I would’ve approached it, at least.

Overplotting is kind of like throwing a grenade. There’s the explosion that kills anyone within the explosion radius. But those aren’t the only deaths. Frags also shoot out, hit people, and kill them slowly. One of frags of an over-plotted story is confusion. I just wasn’t always sure what was going on.

For instance, when Jacen originally arrives at the Hutts to trade spice, Luke Skywalker is hiding out in the crowd. What he was doing there I still don’t know. I know that Nicholas knew. But by forcing the reader to sift through and remember so many things, even the simplest things can be hard to understand. All I could think was, “How long has Luke been here? Does he always just pretend to be a bad guy and hide out at the Hutts for no reason? Has he been here for days? Months? Years?” Maybe he has early onset dementia and is trying to save Han, who’s frozen in carbonate?

I think identifying the solution here is easy. This script needs a clear main character on a cleaner, easier-to-understand journey. I understand why Nicholas ran into this problem. He loves the original characters so much and wanted to find a way to get them in there. But if characters are only in a story because a writer wants them to be, they never feel quite right. Characters only feel right when they’re organically grown along with the story. This is a problem that not only Nicholas had to deal with, but JJ will as well. I wish him luck!

Script link: Children of the Jedi

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

What I learned: The more complicated the plot, the less double-crosses work. Double-crosses (characters being on one side then switching over to another) can be fun – a great surprise to shock the audience. But the more complicated a plot is, the less effective they are, because we’re trying to figure out what’s going on period, much less figure out who’s on who’s side. When Slave Kayla kept changing sides, I got confused and stopped keeping count. I didn’t know if she was good or bad. In a simple plot, I would’ve figured it out, but because I had to keep track of so many other things, multiple double-crosses were information overload.