Genre: The Hobbit – Fantasy.  The Returned – Supernatural (TV Pilot)
Premise: (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) The dwarves, along with Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey, continue their quest to reclaim Erebor, their homeland, from Smaug. (The Returned) A group of people who died in a horrific accident in a remote town, begin to reappear four years later.
About: Reviewing TWO things today. The Desolation of Smaug is part 2 in Peter Jackson’s never-ending Hobbit six-tology. The Returned is a French TV show that was brought over here to the states via The Sundance Channel. It’s being heralded as one of the best shows (some even say THE best) of the year. I’m talking some people believe it’s better than Breaking Bad, folks.
Writers: The Hobbit – Peter Jackson & Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro (based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien). The Returned – Fabien Adda
Details: The Hobbit (149 minutes) – The Returned – 52 minutes

Edit: I’ll put up a post about the Black List tomorrow – so save your thoughts until then. :)

There are very few people in this world who can pull off reviewing a giant fantasy blockbuster sequel AND an obscure French horror TV show, and tie it all together. I am not one of those people, unfortunately. So you’ll have to endure a very confusing Monday post.

You see, the plan was to review The Hobbit 2: Older Legolas’s Return. Problem is, the movie bored me so much that I didn’t know if I had anything constructive to say. So disinterested did I become with the film that I had to come up with things to occupy my brain in order to stay awake.

I noticed, for example, that Evangeline Lilly (Kate from Lost) was in the film. I then remembered that Lilly once dated Dominic Monaghan, another cast member on Lost, who also happened to be… you guessed it (or probably didn’t) a hobbit (in the form of Merry) from the Lord of the Rings trilogy! This odd connection swam through my head for a good ten minutes as I wondered if Peter Jackson auditioned her as just another actress, or if she was on set for the previous movies because of Dominic and THAT’S how she got the part.

But back to the story (I guess). My issue with this movie was two-fold: Too much talking and too much plot. Starting right out of the gate, we get a 7-8 minute scene (not positive on this but that’s how long it felt) of a hobbit sitting in a bar talking to Gandalf.

Now I understand WHY this scene was here. Jackson had to remind the audience (or explain to those who hadn’t seen the first film) what our main characters were going after. But see, this scene highlights one of Jackson’s key weaknesses as a writer. Straight up telling the audience, in a boring manner, what the characters are after is not the only way to do it. There are more entertaining ways to convey info.

Such as doing it on the move!

Start with our characters continuing forward from the last movie and figure out a clever way for them to remind the audience what’s going on. It could be as simple as a dangerous villain-like character stopping them and demanding to know where they’re going (which ends up happening later in the movie anyway). That way you don’t have to waste 7 minutes (7 OPENING minutes – some of the most precious minutes of a film) on something you can slip in in under 60 seconds while we’re hopping along.

And you want to know the funny thing? That opening scene didn’t even achieve what it set out to do! It was supposed to clear up what the goal was, but because there was SO MUCH TALKING, all the important stuff we were supposed to hear got lost in the noise. That’s actually a common beginner mistake – believing that lots and lots of explaining will lead to clarity.  It’s always the opposite.  The less you say, the more impact the words will have.  It’s sort of like a beautifully written song whose lyrics are drowned out by 5 electric guitars, two sets of drums, a synthesizer, a trumpet, and a tambourine. How are we supposed to hear the lyrics with all those instruments hiding the voice?

This became a theme throughout the script. Talktalk talk talk talktalktalk talk talk talk talk. So much freaking TALKING. If that Elf King guy had one more endless conversation with one of the other elves, I was about to stab myself with Orlando Bloom’s chin. Whatever happened to DOING??? Whatever happened to SHOW DON’T TELL?? Isn’t that what makes cinema great? I mean, sure, if we’re watching a Woody Allen movie, talk all ya want. But this is a freaking blockbuster about elves, orcs, bear-men, and monsters! Leave the damn talking to the radio jockeys.

Think I’m being too harsh? Consider this. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is based on 3 books. The Hobbit trilogy is based on 1 book. Yet each Hobbit movie is just as long as its Rings counterpart! Why are we adding 40-some minutes to a typical run-time if the source material is 1/3 the size? It makes zero sense. Which brings us back to WHY it’s 40-some extra minutes. BECAUSE OF ALL THE DAMN TALKING! If the characters did more DOING and less TALKING, this film would actually play out at an acceptable 2 hours.

Anyway, once we got to this Venice-like fishing village, I mentally checked out. I was so bored. I had no idea what was going on anymore (too much talking – I lost track!). And it just verified what everybody said about these films when they were first announced – that they’re not needed. They’re superfluous in the worst way. They’re smaller versions of the original films. If you’re going to make a sequel trilogy, it needs to be bigger and badder than the first one! Or else what’s the point?

Which brings us to The Returned. My favorite new show! I feel really good about trumpeting this one because I was pretty nasty to the French during my “French Week.” Mon amis, all that has changed! Whereas everything about the Hobbit world was tired and familiar, everything about The Returned feels fresh and different.

The opening pilot takes place in a remote mountainous French town where (big spoiler) we see a school bus lose control and shoot over a cliff. Everyone on the bus is killed. However, four years later, a mother and father, still grieving the loss of their child, are shocked when their daughter walks in the house like nothing happened. Naturally, the parents are beyond freaked out, and are so scared that this hallucination is going to end, that they do everything in their power to pretend like nothing’s changed (not easy since the parents have since divorced).

Also returned are a young man looking for his girlfriend (who has since married someone else and had a child) and a young freaky-ass boy, who follows a lonely woman home and convinces her (without saying a word, mind you) to let him stay with her. To round matters out, a young woman with no connection to the bus is murdered inside an underground walkway.

While much of what carries The Returned is the creepy melancholy directing style, the writing is just as stellar. Just like any good television pilot, the show starts out with an amazing teaser (spoiler). You are not expecting that bus to go shooting off that cliff. The writer then knows how much power there’ll be behind each “returned” character, so they milk each one, allowing your anticipation to grow as each “dead” kid is reunited with their loved ones.

That’s a nice trick every screenwriter should know. The amount of time you can milk a scenario is directly proportional to how big that scenario is. The dead coming back to their non-expectant families after four years? – that’s big enough to milk the shit out of (the long walk home home, the approach to the house, hanging out in the kitchen and getting food – screenwriter Adda really takes his time reuniting the family members). We’re dying as we can’t wait to see how the parents will react to seeing their kid again.

The script is also a great reminder of how important the “remote” scenario is to a story. I mean, it’s not for every story, but putting your characters in the middle of nowhere increases that feeling of helplessness that can really unsettle an audience. It’s a big reason Lost worked so well, and why movies like The Shining, Let The Right One In, and The Thing were so good. Cut your characters off from the rest of the world, and you add a heightened sense of fear.

I also loved how interesting the choices were. Remember that tidbit in my “Voice” article from last week? How a big part of your voice is reflected in your choices? (Spoilers) Here, they could have done the obvious and had people from the bus crash start coming home left and right. But then we learn the weird kid WASN’T on the bus. He was standing in the road and made the bus crash. So then who is he? We also have a murder in the middle of the script from two characters who had nothing to do with the bus. That also throws us off guard. These are the unexpected things that keep audiences tuning in every week.

I could keep going but instead I encourage you to go watch this show right now. It’s the first truly exciting thing to hit TV in years.

Desolation of Smaug rating:

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

The Returned

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

What I learned: Too much dialogue can dilute your point. When having your characters convey key plot points, don’t over-state them. Keep them simple. Tell the audience the information they need to know, then move on.

Guess whaaaaaat? There’s a super-sneaky surprise in these offerings. I’m not going to tell you what it is until I review the winning script. But it’s going to be a doozy! — Read the following amateur scripts and voice your opinions and constructive criticisms in the comments section of Saturday’s Amateur Offerings Weekend post! Good luck to all the writers!

TITLE: Fuse
GENRE: Sci-Fi/Thriller
LOGLINE: A cop in the near future hunts a killer who murders victims for their enhanced body-parts so he can utilize them himself.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I’ve been trying to get work as a screenwriter for a couple years now. By that I mean I’ve been trying to actually get paid, a common conundrum I know. It can be hard to get material read, so I’ve submitted a number of projects to various contests and I’ve been a finalist in the Austin Film Fest and Scriptapalooza, which is exciting but hasn’t meant much so far.”

TITLE: Terror in the Year 3000!
GENRE: Post-Apocalyptic Comedy
LOGLINE: An immature, belligerent survivalist and his on-again/off-again girlfriend fight for their lives after discovering and subsequently enraging a horde of flesh-eating mutants.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Howdy! I’m a recent grad from SUNY Purchase (with a BFA in Screenwriting) and, as of a month ago, an L.A. transplant. I’ve been reading scripts and writing non-stop since I got here in between job searching, and I can definitely see my work improve with each script and draft that I write. “Terror” comes from my recent binge on all the apocalyptic fare that came out this past year; I wanted to combine the usually very serious high-stakes story of survival in a nuclear wasteland and put my own comedic spin on it. The action is frantic and serves the story, and there’s more to the jokes than just gross-out junk. Hopefully it’s up your alley, enjoy!”

TITLE: Vindication
GENRE: Thriller
LOGLINE: An archeologist searches for a Viking ship buried in Washington State, while seeking justice for the murder of a friend.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Writing is who I am and what I do. It’s been said by writing professionals that I have a good handle on the craft of writing, and for that I’m proud and very humble. I’m heavy into characterization and the multi-faceted motives that drive my characters. My plots are always completely original and of interest to both adult males and females. I’d like to mention that my dialogue is crisp and often times caustic. Regarding pace, it’s usually tight and right. If you decide to read my script, I know you’ll recognize and see that I’ve learned a thing, or three from you also.

Aside from my publishing credits, I’ve completed a screenplay adapted from my fourth mystery/thriller novel entitled, VINDICATION. The logline for this script garnered first place in a recent logline competition.”

TITLE: In the Flesh
GENRE: Contained Horror Thriller
LOGLINE: A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Something interesting about me: Watch the pilot episode of “The Wire” and you will see my elementary school in the background behind the young Barksdale dealers. I went from playing marbles to shooting craps on the same corners where many of the show’s stories were ripped. I’ve loved movies and writing since childhood. They provided a 90 minute respite from an oft times less than ideal environment. I’ve had many people tell me that a career as a writer was a dream beyond my reach. Admittedly, I believed them. But even without the hope of making a dime let alone a living, I kept writing, reading scripts, and consuming all I could to learn about the craft from sites like Scriptshadow. I can’t stop writing. I’ve tried. It is a part of me. A part I want to make better. A goal I work on daily. “In the Flesh” is a sample of that effort. I believe a good one. One that people will one day read and enjoy. If I’m wrong, I’ll write something better tomorrow.”

TITLE: Tall, Dark and Handsome.pdf)
GENRE: Thriller
LOGLINE: A Manhattan trophy wife’s attempts to retrace the missteps of her romantic past lead to the doorstep of a mysterious doctor and down a rabbithole of hatred.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I wrote it.”

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise (from writer): After two friends leave the bar after a night of drinking, they discover their car missing 
from the parking lot, an RV in its place, and a woman trapped inside.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Coming from a fiction background has been challenging. But, I have worked with Victor Miller to find my voice in terms of saying what I want, and saying what the audience wants to hear. I think there is so much more that a story can tell that goes beyond the page and beyond the stage.
Writer: Justin DiSandro
Details: 85 pages

It’s the end of the week and Christmas is fast approaching. Which means DEALS folks. It means everything must go! Go grab the Scriptshadow Secrets book on Amazon. It’s only $4.99 and makes a great digital stocking stuffer. It also means notes and proofreading deals which you’ll see later tonight in the Scriptshadow Newsletter. Remember that the newsletter sometimes goes to SPAM (and in Gmail, it sometimes slides into the “Promotions” tab) so always check to make sure you’re getting your weekly dose of Newsletter fun.

Speaking of Christmas, let’s talk about blood. Red is a big color in the holiday season so naturally there’s some crossover there, right? Actually, “A Lot of Blood” may be a misleading title. There’s not THAT much blood here, and I actually think the title does the script a disservice. “A Lot of Blood” sounds like a bunch of cheap thrills. There are some cheap thrills here, but it’s a little more clever than your average Non-Contained Contained Thriller.

Wait WHAT did you just say, Carson? “Non-Contained Contained??” What does that mean?? Well folks, I think today’s script is the first of its contained kind. It’s a contained thriller where our main characters aren’t the ones contained. They’re actually on the outside of the containedness, trying to help the person inside. Are you following me? It might be tough cause I’m writing this review at 3 a.m. But contain yourselves. Because somewhere at the end of this screenplay rainbow is me, contained in my apartment writing up this post.

Kevin and Jared, both in their late 20s, are out experiencing life, man. They’re driving around the U.S. of A., doing the whole “Into the Wild” thing, albeit with a car. And on this evening, they’ve stumbled into some bumbleshit bar on a long winding forest road in the middle of nowhere. After the bar is closed up and the owner heads out, Kevin and Jared walk into the parking lot only to find that their car is gone.

Finally, they can do “Into the Wild” for real now! Unfortunately, Kevin and Jarod don’t share this same optimistic appraisal of their situaiton. Not only does it look like their car is stolen. But without a cell signal, there’s nothing they can do about it.

Curiously, there’s a huge RV parked in the middle of the parking lot, and when Kevin and Jared get close, they hear someone inside. A girl, Becky. Becky screams for help, explaining that she doesn’t know where she is or how she got here. She just remembers walking to her car after work. The boys commit to getting her out, but this isn’t any normal RV. The doors seem to be reinforced with steel!

Kevin decides to break into the bar and call for help while Jared stands guard at the RV. But back inside the bar, the power is out. Confused, Kevin walks back out to find Jared gone and a trail of blood in his place. He then hears Jared’s cell phone making noises… OUT IN THE FOREST. Yikes! So Kevin heads out there, looks around, only to turn back and see a man walking out of the RV with a giant bag. Ugh, this just got a whole lot worse.

So Kevin heads back to the RV, checks to see if Becky’s still there, which she is… WITH JARED! Yes, JARED is now stuck in the RV with Becky. Oh boy. After some finagling, Kevin’s eventually able to get Becky out. It’s a little trickier with Jared though, who we find out has been… modified in an unfavorable way. It becomes clear that someone (or someones) is out there fucking with them, and if they don’t find a way out of here before the night is up, they’re probably RV meat.

The key with contained thrillers is that they can’t feel like the writer is trying to fill up the time. They have to feel like the writer can’t possibly pack ENOUGH story into them because they don’t HAVE enough time. Typically, every contained thriller script feels well-packed (that’s a weird phrase) through the first 20 pages, and then we begin seeing signs of filler.

A Lot of Blood had a great first 20 pages, indeed. And it actually stayed packed for another 20 pages. But then the signs of not having enough story started to show. There was a lot more standing around, wondering what to do, repeating situations we’d already seen (here we go back into the bar!). Some urgency was lost. It just didn’t end with the same bang it started with.

Part of the problem was the mystery. What’s so cool about these scripts is the power of that initial mystery. That’s what excites us. How did this girl get in here? Who is this guy living in the RV and why didn’t he respond to our guys banging on the outside trying to help this girl? What’s in the bags this man is carrying? Where is he taking them? Who’s involved? Are they being set up?

The thing is, once those questions started to get answered, there were no new intriguing questions to take their place. So what started as a completely bizarre scenario became all too familiar. When you have such limited options (as is the case with most contained thrillers), mystery and suspense are your two best friends. So you want to draw on them as much as possible.

I also felt there needed to be more going on with Jared and Kevin. They were REALLY thin. HOW much more you want to add to them is up for debate. I’ve learned that you can actually BURDEN a script with over-developed characters, as their development starts to feel more like the result of a screenwriting class than reality. Since keeping your story real is a primary objective, you need to watch out for that.

You do this by weighing the situation (the setup, the setting, the genre) and determining if character exploration feels right. This is a light fun horror thriller, so you don’t want to develop the characters TOO much. Still, these two were so similar they were almost the same person. Adding a little conflict between them would’ve helped develop their characters, as conflict brings out your characters’ differences. Something as simple as one character being brave and the other being a coward could’ve led to some more interesting conversations and made the characters pop more. If you desired to give them even more weight, you could bring in an unresolved conflict from their past. Then use this problem as a catalyst for them to face and resolve it. But again, you then run the risk of the script feeling too “screenwriterly.” So it has to be done delicately.

I was also frustrated with a lot of the details in the script. Writers, don’t let the little moments sink you. Make sure you give them just as much attention as the big ones. For example, Kevin is out in the woods early on, looking for Jared’s cell phone, when he hears a man coming out of the RV. He turns around and starts screaming at the guy (who ignores him and keeps walking). Let’s take a closer look at this. It’s night. You’re in the middle of nowhere with no one else around. A man psycho enough to create a mobile killing machine has a girl locked up in his RV. And when you see him, you start yelling at him??? Alerting him to you? What???

OR: Early on we’re told that the gas station is forever away, which is why they can’t go for help. Yet later, Kevin runs to it, and we’re told that as he’s running down the road, he can see both the bar parking lot AND the gas station from where he’s standing. That’s how close it was this whole time??? Without question they should’ve gone there immediately then. That’s not far at all. There were 5 or 6 other moments JUST like this that didn’t make sense that need to be cleared up before this script is ready.

It may sound like I didn’t enjoy “Blood,” but I did. These notes come more from a place of frustration. As a reader, whenever those first 20 pages are great, you get excited and you start saying to yourself: “This is the one!” and you can’t help but dream about the writer getting an agent and the script being picked up and a movie getting made. So when it doesn’t keep that awesomeness going, it’s harder on you than if the script simply sucked to begin with.

But I do think something could come of this script. At the very least, it’s a million dollar film you shoot in 15 days that gets distribution on Itunes. Not the huge success story we all dream of. But a great start. Hope Justin cleans these problems up because I’d like to see that happen!

Script link: A Lot of Blood

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

What I learned: Describe in detail your important locations! If you have a major location where a lot of stuff takes place, you have to give us a lot of details about that space, so we can accurately envision what’s going on. Here, in A Lot of Blood, 90% of the script takes place in the parking lot, yet we were never told how big the parking lot actually was. Sometimes, then, I imagined it as a tiny bar parking lot. But other times, it’s implied that the lot is vast. Why would a tiny bar have a huge parking lot? — Why is this important? Because the script relied so much on distance. Being a safe distance away from the killers. Being within yelling distance. Because I was never quite sure how big of an area it was, I was robbed of having the correct experience. You don’t want to over-describe small locations that don’t have any important action going on in them. But major locations? Yes.

So the other day, I was sitting there surfing the net, coming up with excuses not to work (What!? Of course I want to see what those 80s stars look like now!) and like a flash of light, a reality hit me. We don’t have any new voices in screenwriting.

I mean who’s the new Charlie Kaufman? The new Tarantino? I mentally cycled through the last few years of film and came up empty. I mean, I guess you could say M. Night was a dominant “new voice” for awhile. And then, of course, we had Diablo Cody. But was that it? And do those two compare to screenwriting demi-gods like Tarantino and Kaufman?

And what does this say about “screenwriting voice” in general? Is it not as important as it used to be? I mean look at spec machines like David Guggenheim and Kurt Wimmer. They’re not exactly bringing anything new or unique to the table. They’re just really good at execution. And they’re selling plenty of pages because of it.

This got me thinking about the state of “voice” and how important it is. There are guys like Kyle Killin, who blew up a few years ago with his number 1 Black List script, The Beaver, a wholly unique dark comedy about a manic depressive who speaks to people through a beaver hand puppet. But what happened to that film? It disappeared. And while Kyle has written some challenging material in the meantime (Awake, Lone Star, Scenic Route), the public hasn’t warmed to it.

When you think about it, almost all of the major “voice” people aren’t writers at all, but rather writer-directors. Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Wes Anderson, M. Night, the Coens, Cameron Crowe, John Hughes. So it’s a little misleading. Because those writers get to build on their material in cinematic form and make it look more “voice-y” than it actually is.

To be honest, I think a lot of the more inventive writers are running off to cable television, where they can play around with their stories and actually have fun. Vince Gilligan wrote the mega-hit Hancock. Yet he opted to go to TV to write Breaking Bad afterwards. From shows like Community to Arrested Development to Orange is the New Black to Mad Men to Game of Thrones to Girls to Dexter, the “voices” in our line of work are choosing TV.

With that said, there are still some primarily writer-only screenwriters with strong voices. Diablo Cody. Eric Roth. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. And there are some new guys on their way up. Brian Duffield (who wrote the amazing Monster Problems and Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch), Max Landis (Chronicle), Brian K. Vaughn (who wrote the still unproduced sure-to-be-a-megahit Roundtable), Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe (who wrote the awesome pair of scripts, “When The Streetlights Go On” and “The Last Broadcast”).

So I still think writing with a unique voice is a great way to get noticed. Because readers respond to things that feel different. It may be harder and harder to get these “voice-centric” scripts made. But you’ll definitely get noticed off them and get an opportunity to start your career. The question is, how do you do this? What is voice exactly and what is it made up of? I looked back at the last few years of cinema and screenwriting to find an answer. Here’s what I discovered.

Voice can be broken down into seven distinct categories. Some of these categories are things you have a measure of control over. Some you have to be born with. Of course, you can always improve on a component with practice, but you gotta know what they are first. So let’s take a look.

1) How one sees the world – This is something that you can’t teach and is probably the most important component of voice. How do you see the world? And, more importantly, do you see it in a slightly different way from everyone else? If the answer is yes, your writing is going to come across as unique without you even trying. Alexander Payne obviously sees the world as a very cynical place, as a place of struggle. But he also sees it as a funny place, as a world where people say strange hilarious things at unexpected moments. The way he mixes those two ingredients is what makes an Alexander Payne film different from any other film out there.

2) Writing style – This you have control over. Do you write with a sense of humor? Do you write cold and to the point? Do you keep your prose moving quickly like David Guggenheim or do you focus on every little detail like S. Craig Zahler? Are you self-referential? Or do you never want to break the reader’s spell? Your writing style will influence how your voice is delivered.

3) Narrative – Non-traditional narratives are one of the easiest ways to differentiate yourself as a writer. Tarantino mixed Pulp Fiction’s narrative up. The Coens basically wrote an act-less plot-less feature in Inside Llewyn Davis. Oren Uziel (who’s now writing mega-assignment Men In Black 4) wrote his breakthrough screenplay, Shimmer Lake, starting from the end and going backwards. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber wrote 500 Days of Summer jumping around haphazardly. How you approach your narrative helps establish your voice.

4) Choices – A writer’s story choices are a critical component to his voice. Take the Coens, who decided to introduce their protagonist in Fargo, Margie, a full 40 minutes into the movie. Or Tarantino, who decided to kill off Hitler in Inglorious Basterds. Or Charlie Kaufman, who invented stuff like the seventh and a half-floor for Being John Malkovich. If your choices aren’t unique, chances are you don’t have a strong voice.

5) Character – This goes without saying. If your characters are straight-forward and familiar, like Melissa McCarthy’s character in Identify Thief, you’re not a “voice” writer. If they’re unfamiliar and unpredictable, like Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) in Django Unchained, you’re going to be seen as different.  Find characters that see the world the way you do, and your voice will come out naturally.

6) Sense of humor – There are some genres that play better with “voice” than others. And humor plays the best. Especially dark humor. It’s why The Beaver was heralded as such a unique voice. It’s why Being John Malkovich was heralded as having such a unique voice. It’s why Michael R. Perry’s “The Voices” (which recently finished shooting!) was so universally loved. How you play with humor, in your writing, in your choices, in your characters, in your dialogue, will have a huge impact on your voice.

7) Dialogue – If dialogue really pops off the page, like Diablo Cody’s did, everyone’s going to take notice. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that is very talent-based. The Coens or Tarantino or John Hughes – they have a talent for making characters sound different and for putting unique/witty/unexpected/well-written words in their mouths. Much like character, if you insert people into your story who share some of your views on life, your voice will naturally come out.  Also, you can always improve dialogue voice with practice.  Just make sure your characters don’t say what’s typically said in a situation.  Voice is about finding new ways to look at and say things.

Now here’s the tough thing. All of these things individually influence voice. But it’s how you combine them that determines your voice. Maybe you like writing crazy “out there”  dialogue but prefer traditional narratives. Maybe you’re obsessed with violence (how you see the world) but diffuse it with a healthy dose of over-the-top humor. Which ingredients and how much of each ingredient you use will determine how your “voice meal” tastes.

But this begs the question – are you born with your voice or can you create it? Or maybe the more appropriate question is, if you DON’T have a strong voice, should you try and create one? I mean, isn’t voice WHO YOU ARE? So if you try and manipulate it, aren’t you then becoming something you aren’t?

Not necessarily. Your voice is not unlike how you present yourself to the world. You know those guys who dress in sweat pants and t-shirts and don’t cut their hair and defiantly expect girls to like them because they’re being real? Because by changing they’d be lying about who they are? Well, you can still be who you are, just a better version of yourself. There are nicer clothes out there that will allow you to keep your relaxed style. You can still have that “messy” hair look, but make it look better with a recent haircut.

The same is true for voice. Find out what’s unique about your writing and exploit it. If you like sarcastic humor, write stuff where you can play with sarcastic humor. If you have a strong sadistic side, always try and add a sadistic character to your ensemble.

I think a big part of having an original voice is just seeing what no one else is doing and then, assuming that void gels with the kind of stuff you write, exploit that area. That’s what Shane Black did with his big over-the-top dark action comedies. What are you going to bring to the table that’s different?

Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Thriller
Premise: The Pope must decide what to do when a New York Archbishop ordains a woman, threatening everything the Catholic Church stands for.
About: Showtime is hoping this controversial new show (although the creator claims controversy is not the goal) will extend on the network’s breakout critical hit, Homeland. Writer and creator Paul Attanasio is best known in the TV world for creating the hit show “House M.D.” on Fox. Attanasio seems to have some high pedigree in his DNA. A Harvard Law grad, his brother is the principle owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, a professional baseball team. In addition to being a film critic at the Washington Post (in the 80s), Attanasio has been nominated for an Academy award and an Emmy. He penned feature films “Sphere,” “The Sum of All Fears (which kind of sounds like ‘Sphere’ if you say it fast),” “Quiz Show,” and “Donnie Brasco.” The Vatican is being made in partnership with Ridley Scott, who is currently the only man in Hollywood history attached to every single project in town.
Writer: Paul Attanasio
Details: 68 pages – “Revised Draft, September 18, 2012”

Kyle Chandler will play Cardinal Thomas Duffy

I don’t know much about the whole Pope thing. What I do know boils down to a really old man who often looks like he’s on the verge of death riding around in a funny looking bullet-proof glass car waving to people. In fact, most of my understanding of organized religion comes from The DaVinci Code (the book, not the movie. Come on. As if.).

But in retrospect, I wish I’d known more. I believe as a screenwriter, there are four things you owe it to yourself to study as much as possible, because they ALWAYS come up in some form or another in stories. If you DON’T know them, your story always loses some credibilty. These are: law enforcement, hospital/medicine, the legal world, and, of course, religion.

I mean how often are you going to have a big group of characters and not even one is religious? If you’re completely ignorant on the topic (like myself) your character either looks generic (since you don’t know the details of what makes the man tic) or you get scared off and take the character out of the religious realm, losing the religious dynamic entirely from your story.

And religion’s resulted in some pretty amazing stories. I mean how cool is it that Vatican City is its own country, with its own set of laws and rules (according to Dan Brown)? That right there is enough to base a story on. And my guess, when I saw this show, is that that’s what it would be about, that intricate quirky world. If indeed that’s the case, I’m in.

Although there are a billion characters in “The Vatican,” the show focuses on a handful. The first is cooly named Pope Sixtus, a fussy 70-something who’s trying to be open-minded about the Church’s future. Then there’s Cardinal Marco Malebra, the Secretary of State here in Vatican City and the No. 2 man in power. He’s a hardliner who wants the Pope to rule with more of an iron fist. Then across the pond is Cardinal Duffy, a young up-and-coming New York Archbishop who’s just gone against everything the church stands for and ordained a woman.

Even for church ignorants like myself, Attanasio keeps this plot surprisingly easy to follow. Basically, Duffy thinks that in the age of Twitter, it’s time for a change. People are losing interest in the church, and he knows that this kind of thing is going to get folks talking again, make people realize that the church CAN change and IS willing to evolve. Important to America since giant contemporary issues are bumping up against the church more and more every day, starting with gay marriage.

Back in Vatican City, Cardinal Malebra is not down with this at all. He thinks the Pope should take a stand and publicly oppose the move, then remove Duffy from the Church. But the Pope isn’t so sure. While he believes that Duffy is probably wrong, he wants to see how the public reacts to it. Eventually, however, the news gets so big, that Malebra wins out. The Pope is forced to fly Duffy into Rome to give him a talking-to.

Or so that’s what Malebra thinks. In actuality, Malebra, who’s spent the last 20 years maneuvering to become Pope, is shocked when the Pope confides in him that he plans to give Duffy his (Malebra’s) job. Realizing this would destroy his career, Malebra must act fast. But what follows is something nobody could have predicted (well, nobody who’s not a screenwriter at least). It will change not only the fabric of Vatican City, but the fabric of the entire world.

Anna Friel will play Duffy’s wife

So here’s what I always wondered about the hardcore political folk. The people who live in Vatican City are probably the most religious people in the world, right? Yet trying to become Pope requires so much political maneuvering that many of them have to get screwed, right? So do those screwed Cardinals then get pissed off?? Or do they smile kindly and claim that it must have been “God’s will?” I always wondered where God ended and people began in those dust-ups.

As for the story here, I thought it was… angelic? Even I know ordaining women is a big deal, and I loved the pressures that created for our characters – forcing the Pope to take a stance on it. And really, that’s what I loved most here. When you’re coming up with any idea, whether it be film or television based, you’re looking for something that creates a pot-boiler – a kitchen full of people who are feeling the heat from the outside, and don’t like who they’re looking across at inside.

That’s “The Vatican” in a nutshell. The Catholic Church is always under heat for something. Whether it be child molesting priests or the hardline stance on gay marriage. So you’re always going to feel that heat. And then you have a bunch of people inside this church who all have their own motives and ideas on how things should be run. Malebra and his cronies are trying to surround the Pope from every side and squeeze him until he gives his position up.

Add a dose of irony and it gets even better. These are people who are supposed to be kind and caring and doing “God’s will.” But they’re all double-crossing and scamming and scheming – the very opposite of the oath they took when they committed to the Church. And when you add really strong writing on top of that (Attanasio knows this world well, his prose is strong, his description is strong, his writing is self-assured), it all came together rather nicely.

Then, of course, when you write a TV pilot, we have to be able to see the future episodes. This setting is so rich that they could honestly keep writing episodes until the end of time. I mean when is the Church not going to be controversial? When isn’t there going to be some big issue they have to deal with? When won’t they have to fight hypocrisy? When won’t they have to defend their place in society? And with many around the world claiming religion a dying ideal, how does the Church stay relevant? What lengths won’t they go to to do so?

The only things I’d call negatives were the over-abundance of characters. I understand it’s a necessary evil, but the only time the pilot stumbled was when I tried to remember who someone was and what they had to do with everyone else. And then the story itself could’ve had a little more pop. I mean, there’s a big pop at the end, but the pilot must spend so much energy setting up its extensive world, that the story itself wasn’t able to have as much fun as maybe it wanted to.

But this was good stuff.  No doubt about it. I’ll have to wait til it hits Itunes since I don’t have Showtime, but this one’s certifiably worth checking out.

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

What I learned: If possible, try to have conflict coming from your characters’ OUTER world as well as their INNER world. Here, the Pope is being bombarded by his Archbishops in America (who are ordaining women), as well as having to fight off Malebra, who is gunning for his job right here in Vatican City. You can apply this to smaller stories as well.  Say you’re writing a movie about high school, like the Alexander Payne film, Election.  Matthew Broderick’s principal character is fighting the “outer” world, in Reese Witherspoon’s character trying to take over the election, as well as his “inner” world, the fallout with his wife over his affair with another woman.