NEW TOP 10 SCRIPT! NEW TOP 10 SCRIPT! AND IT’S AN AMATEUR ENTRY!

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” 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: Crime/Drama
Premise: A suspended inner city social worker tries to protect a young girl and her mother from the girl’s father, a psychotic killer who’s just been released from prison.
About: Where Angels Die beat out all the Amateur Entries a couple of weeks ago. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter to get the Amateur entries early and vote for which one should be reviewed come Friday. Writer Alex Felix JUST MOVED to LA to pursue screenwriting more seriously.  Little else is known about him but I’m trying to find out!
Writer: Alexander Felix (based on the novel “In the Place Where Angels Die” by Richard Seal)
Details: 93 pages

Update 1: Contact Brooklyn Weaver or Thomas L. Carter if you’re interested in script.
Update 2: Script going out to prodcos and talent.
Update 3: Thomas L. Carter (Station 3) co-managing Alex on this script.  Offers have started coming in.  Alex and group looking for best fit.  Still listening.
Update 4: Alex now with CAA.  CAA is looking to package material.  

A scruffed up down-on-his-luck Matt Damon for Parker??

Holy shit!

Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit.

Immediate background. I started reading this at 4 A.M.

How many scripts have I been able to finish that I’ve started at 4 A.M.?

Zero. It’s never happened.

Except for this script. Except for this MASTERFUL script. This is the kind of script you dream about. I have sent out an e-mail to Alex basically begging him to let me work on this with him. Not only do I want to give him the highest praise, I want to thank all of you who participate in Amateur Offerings. Without you guys filtering these scripts, there’s a good chance Where Angels Die never would’ve made it in front of me. Because it doesn’t have the splashiest logline. It has the kind of logline that actually makes you think the script’s going to be boring.

But then you have this writer, Alex, who’s come out of freaking NOWHERE, getting hold of this novel by Richard Seal, which doesn’t come up anywhere if you search for it on the internet (is this a published novel??), and you have these guys who just…nobody’s ever heard of before. And they produce this??

I’m still gob smacked. This is like Drive meets The Equalizer but with ten times the character development and depth. There’s so much going on here. I have to apologize because I’m writing this at six in the morning and I’m still a little loopy, but wow. I will GUARANTEE you that this will be made into a movie. I don’t know how soon from now. But it will happen. You don’t run across scripts like this often. And Alex, wherever you are, wake up and answer my e-mail. I want to be a part of this.

Okay, where do I start? The plot! Right, the plot. Okay, so we have this guy, Parker Jode. He’s a social worker with OCD. I know that sounds hackneyed but trust me, Alex makes it work. In fact, he makes it sing. Everything that happens in here, you believe, no matter how nutty it is. I mean at one point our bad guy dresses up in drag to blow to bits an entire strip club. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. So basically Parker is this social worker living in a shitty town (Detroit) with a shitty life.

But he’s trying to make the best of it. One of the people he’s working with is a stripper, Dhalia. Dhalia’s got a daughter Parker checks in on every once in awhile. It’s a mild case, nothing like the really bad cases where the parents are ODd on heroin while their babies haven’t eaten in two days. Dhalia’s actually back on the straight and narrow, taking care of her daughter. And Parker has a thing for her, a thing he’s been unable to pursue because of the job he’s supposed to do. And Parker takes his job really serious. It’s one of the things you love about him.

But anyway, Dhalia’s psychotic husband, Horatio, has just gotten out of jail on a technicality and boy is he fucked up. He’s manic-depressive. He’s got AIDS. He’s bipolar. He’s a jack-in-the-box nightmare on a stick. I’m not talking about the good kind with the 2 tacos for 99 cents deal either.  This compadre’s evil.  And he doesn’t like some “cracker” social worker hanging around his home.

So one of the first days back he finds out that Dhalia’s gone to her stripper job. This is something he thought he made clear can’t happen. So he heads to the strip club, and not only kills everybody there, but kills the damn cop who’s getting a lap dance from his wife. It’s a massacre. And this guy just doesn’t give a shit. He mows these people down with the same nonchalantness as a Sunday stroll.

When Parker figures this out, all he wants to do is save Dhalia and her daughter, because he knows this psychopath is a few days away from offing them too. So that’s exactly what he does. But Horatio isn’t just going to stand around and let that happen. He sends his boys to take Parker down. And when that fails, he sends himself. This reckless imperfect crazed social worker is going to take on this psychotic berserking ex-con, and insides are going to become outsides when it’s all said and done. But who’s insides will they be? Is the man we’ve grown to love and root for going to come out with his valentine’s day card still beating?

While there are some standard elements to this plot it’s HOW Alex tells this story that’s so impressive. We have men-in-drag slaughtering strip clubs, we got hated fathers who are orchestra conductors, we got seemingly pointless grudge matches with street kids who steal car radios (that for some unexplainable reason we care immensely about), we have a stapler incident at headquarters that makes the OFFICE SPACE stapler incident look like a minor dust-up. We have AIDS, OCD, Aspergurs, 7 year olds carrying around 200 grand. But most of all, we have someone who captures the grime and grit of the Detroit streets, of the disgusting lower than low filth that’s settled over that city and turned so many promising lives into lost ones. You FEEL this world on the page, and I just don’t see that on this level very often. Or at all.

When I pick up a script, one of the first things I focus on is, “Will an A-list actor want to play this part?” Or, more specifically, is the lead role challenging and interesting and unique? I don’t think there’s ever been, onscreen, a kickass alcoholic OCD gun-wielding social worker who’s based in REALITY. Who’s based in TRUTH. Parker’s not played like Denzel’s super-hero character in The Equalizer. This man is heavily flawed. He saves kids from troubled homes but he’s wasted when he does it. And he’s imperfect and he holds grudges and he can’t leave the past alone and THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT MAKES HIM POP OFF THE PAGE. I just can’t see a major actor reading this character and not wanting to play him.

Another thing I look at is the villain. Does he stand out? Because every big hero needs another equally big villain to oppose him. Someone with equal weight. I don’t even think The Equalizer had that. Horatio is fucking memorable. He’s a little cliché at times, but his powder-keg personality makes him unpredictable enough that you’re just not paying attention to that cause you’re so damn scared of the dude.

If there are notes to give they would probably be to take this story a little further away from Drive where you can. There are some similar plotlines here and you want to stand out from that movie more. I also think there could be a little more unpredictability in the last 30 pages. One of the mistakes I see a lot of writers make is when they get to the more action-y stuff in their third act, they fall into that predictable run/chase/shoot trap, because there’s not as much room to play around as you had earlier on when you had time.  I want to see some of that same cleverness in the final act that I saw in the first two.

But really, those are my only complaints. This script was freaking awesome. The character building was incredible.  Second to none!  I’m going to sleep now. And when I wake up, I hope to hear from a few people that I sent it to and see if we can get it where it needs to be, which is at a studio or a big production company and getting MADE.

Good job Alex!

Script link taken down.  Shit is happening.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 10!!!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: The ONLY thing that annoyed me the entire script! I don’t like it when writers put their opinions in the action text. The only opinions that should be coming out are those of the characters. Look, I’m not a Katy Perry fan either, but I don’t want to know that you, the writer, aren’t. That’s not what scripts are for. The only time I was taken out of this entire script was when I read, “KATY PERRY or some other POPPY RADIO TRASH plays through the store’s P.A.” It was the only time I stopped and thought about the person writing the story. Which was a CRIME because I was so damn sucked into this story otherwise. So even though I love you Alex, don’t do this anymore!

Unless you’re a genius like Bradley Cooper, you’ll want to outline.

Screenwriting, more so than most writing mediums, is about structure. You’re telling a story within a very specific framework (usually three acts: A beginning, a middle, and an end). If you don’t plan ahead for how you’re going to lay that story out, it’s kind of like trying to tell a joke at a party without practicing it beforehand. You’ll start to wander, repeat things, and forget stuff. You’ll see your audience getting bored, checking their phones, losing interest. When it comes to screenwriting, you don’t have that luxury. You won’t see the people getting bored, which means you’ll have no idea that the “joke” isn’t working.

So think of outlining as “practice” for your screenplay. It’s where you test and try out everything until you get it exactly where you want it to be. If you don’t outline, chances are your script will feel lost. Screenplays require a certain pacing and escalation to keep a reader’s attention. Outlining fosters that process. Now everybody has their own methods, their own outlining styles, so what I’m about to share with you is only one approach. But it should familiarize you with the process and give you a base point to start from.

STEP 1 – FIGURE OUT YOUR ACT BREAKS

Assuming you’ve already got an idea, the first thing you’ll want to do is set your act breaks. On a 100 page script (which is what I’ll be using as the page count basis for this article), your act breaks are going to occur around page 25 and 75 (or at 25% through and 75% through, if your script is longer). The first act break (act 1 into 2) will be when your hero leaves on his journey and the second act break (act 2 into 3) will be when it appears he’s failed at his journey. For this to work, you’re going to want a protagonist with a goal (find the Ark, save the wife from terrorists, snag the girl, survive the Purge, find and get Doug back to his wedding on time). It becomes a lot harder to structure a screenplay if you don’t have a protagonist with a goal.

All you have to do, then, is figure out how these moments play out in your specific story. So let’s say I’m writing a movie about a plague that’s threatening to destroy the human race and our main character is looking for an exotic monkey he believes has the cure (I think this is an actual script I reviewed – it sounds familiar). Hence, our main character, Jason (a primatologist), must find this monkey. Page 25, then, might be outlined as: “Jason takes a plane to Kansas City where the plague began and where he believes this monkey escaped from the zoo.” Boom, you just outlined your first story beat!

Page 75, the break into the third act, will require a little more thought, because you have to think through your entire story to figure out how your protagonist will get to his lowest point. In the case of future blockbuster “Monkey Plague,” it might be that Jason is rushing to the labs with the monkey, only for our villain to race him off the road and steal the monkey away.  It looks like poor Jason has failed at his mission.  :(

STEP 2 – HOT SPOTS

Now that you have the two most important places in your screenplay mapped out, you have a solid sense of where your story needs to go. This should make tackling your story easier. But remember that the average screenplay has 50-60 scenes. We’ve only written two of those. I’ve found that the more advanced the writer, the more specific they want their outline to be. So if you want to take this a step further, here are the next set of scenes you’ll want to outline before you start. I call these major beats “Hot Spots.”

The inciting incident (Page 10) – The inciting incident happens in the first act, somewhere between pages 5-15, and is the thing that throws your hero’s world upside down. It could be the death of someone they’re close to, getting fired, wife divorcing them, someone tries to kill them, aliens showing up. Everything’s cool for your hero until this moment happens, so it’s a good (and usually obvious) moment to map out on your outline. In Monkey Plague, this might be the announcement on television of the plague. Or, if you already started with the plague, maybe the government announces an official quarantine on the city Jason lives in. You’ll notice how this conflicts with the First Act Turn I outlined above. How can he take a plane somewhere if his city is quarantined? I’ll go back and change the First Act Turn to him paying a black market bus to take him out of the city. These kinds of changes happen all the time while outlining and are part of the process.

First major obstacle/jolt (Pages 35-40) – I’m a strong believer that something exciting should happen every 10-15 pages in your script, something that jolts the reader a little, whether it’s a major obstacle, a reversal, a mystery posed, a surprise, a character intro, a mystery answered, a twist, or just something that ups the stakes. Use these moments to reignite the flame of your story, which may have grown dimmer as your reader has settled in. Keep in mind that most of these moments should be based in resistance. They should make your protagonist’s journey more difficult. In Monkey Plague, Jason may get to Kansas City only to find that the city infrastructure is crumbling as everyone flees to the safety of their homes. Electricity is starting to go out, public transportation is shut down, looting has begun.

The Midpoint Shift (second major obstacle/jolt, page 50) – The Midpoint Shift is one of the most important pieces of the outline because the second act (between pages 25-75) is where most stories fall apart. It’s such a big gap that writers don’t know what to do with all that space. Enter the Midpoint Shift, which is basically the most extreme obstacle/twist you’re going to write into your movie. The idea is to shake things up and turn the story on its head a bit so that the second half feels different from the first. I can’t stress this enough. Without a solid midpoint shift, your second half will feel like a repeat of the first and we’ll get bored. So in Monkey Plague, I’m thinking of two things happening. First, everybody in the city is mysteriously disappearing. Something’s up, and Jason doesn’t know what it is. On top of this, Jason finds out he’s infected (either by random exposure or someone infecting him on purpose). Notice how this changes up the story (the danger becomes more personal) and ups the stakes (our own character’s life is at stake, and he doesn’t have long to save himself).

Third Major Obstacle/jolt (page 65) – This is probably the least known hot spot, but an important one as the late second act is often the most boring part of a movie. Therefore we need one more jolt before we get to the end of the second act. What that jolt is (a twist, raising the stakes, a giant obstacle) is up to you, but a lot of times it has something to do with death (the death of Obi-Wan for example). But it can also be a good guy who’s secretly revealed to be a bad guy. It could be a false victory (the guys in The Hangover find Doug only to realize… it’s not the real Doug). Or it could just be something strange and unexpected, such as the discovery of the Guinea Pig Island in Life of Pi. In Monkey Plague, maybe Jason comes upon a slaughter house. They’re killing all the monkeys to get rid of the plague. But as he gets closer he realizes they’re not slaughtering monkeys. They’re slaughtering HUMANS! Ahhhhh!!!

Ending (page 95) – Michael Ardnt (Toy Story 3 and Star Wars VII) says he doesn’t write scripts until he knows the ending.  That’s because the ending dictates everything that comes before it.  The more specifically you know your climax, the more direction your story will have.  Period.  But endings are also really hard to figure out.  Coming up with an original one that will surprise an audience is rare.  So you’re not always going to get it on the first try. Still, try to put something down, even if you think it might change later.  It’ll give your writing direction and purpose. I’m having a hard time with the ending for Monkey Plague, so for now, I’ll just say that Jason gets the monkey back and creates the antidote, with mere minutes to spare…only to find that it was the wrong monkey!

SETP 3 – FILL IN THE REST

Okay, now you have the basic story beats laid out. These will be the pillars of your plot. From here, you have a choice. You can either charge forward and start writing your script or you can start filling in the gaps. My advice is to fill in the gaps. The more scenes and beats you know, the easier it will be to write the script and the less of a chance you’ll encounter writer’s block. Depending on the length of your script, you’ll have anywhere between 10-15 scenes in the first act, 25-30 scenes in the second, and 10-15 in the third (the number of scenes will also vary based on what type of script you’re writing as well as your writing style). Since you have the Inciting Incident, the First Act Turn, the First Major Obstacle, the Midpoint Shift, the Third Major Obstacle, the Turn into The Third Act, and the ending, that means you already have seven of these scenes set. You just have to come up with the final 50. As you keep working on your outline, both before and during the writing of the script, you’ll become more specific with each beat and scene (even adding notes to yourself in sub-headers as to what you’re trying to accomplish with the scene). If you can get your outline to the point where every scene is noted (should be easy after the first draft), you’ll be able to see what needs to stay, what needs to go, where things need to speed up, etc.  Wordpress won’t let me add sub-headers without learning Fortran, but the outline will look something like this (I’ve added a few scenes to fill out the outline).

ACT 1 (numbers denote scene numbers)

1 – Jason working in the lab on a monkey that’s showing exceptional abilities.
2 – Jason goes home. Girlfriend pissed cause he spends too much time at work.
3 – Jason gets a surprise phone call – told not to come into work tomorrow. Government has called in to suspend all primate studying for the time being.
4 – Inciting Incident – The government announces an official quarantine of the city.

12 – (break into act 2) Jason heads to Kansas City on a sketchy bus.

ACT 2

18 – (Obstacle 1) City infrastructure is crumbling. Violence is erupting in the city. Phones go down so no one can call him back.

25 (Midpoint Shift/Obstacle 2) – Jason betrayed by Sara after getting injured. While asleep she injected him with the plague and is now gone. Plague kills within 72 hours. (where is everyone disappearing to??)

32 – (Obstacle 3) Jason finds out that government has taken over all slaughterhouses and is using them to slaughter humans with the plague.

38 – (Lowest Point/Break into Act 3) Is chased after getting the monkey, rammed off the road. The monkey is taken from him. He’s at his lowest point. Has nowhere left to go.

ACT 3

50 – (climax) Jason infiltrates the government base where the monkey testing that created the plague was happening. Takes down the bad guys, completes the antidote… but finds out it’s the wrong monkey!

CONCLUSION
Besides Monkey Plague starting to sound more and more like a midnight Sy-Fy channel flick (hey, what did you expect? It was called Monkey Plague!), I think this gives you a pretty good idea of how to outline. What’s important to remember is that this is a very general approach. It’s tricky to put a one-size-fits-all approach on outlining. When Harry Met Sally, for example, doesn’t have a character goal driving the story. This meant finding another way to structure the script, and therefore another way to outline. They did this with time jumps, which divided (structured) the story into five parts.

Multi-protagonist movies (Crash) and multiple storyline movies (The Dark Knight) don’t follow the traditional “Character goes after a goal” structure either. These are trickier to outline because there just aren’t as many successful movies in those formats to draw from. With that said, it’s even more important to outline these scripts since they’re more likely to lose focus.

Outlining should also work closely with rewriting. The more complicated your story is, the harder it will be to figure out all the beats right away. The Dark Knight, with its many storylines and characters, is going to require some playing around to discover the storyline. So feel free to get the basics down in your initial outline, then write a draft that helps you discover where everything else is going to go. As you write, you’ll feel yourself coming up with ideas, which you can fill in on the outline on the fly. Your second draft, then, will be the powerhouse draft.

Now there’s no law that states you must outline. You can drop into your script guns a’blazin and see where it takes you. But the more you know about your story, the more it frees you up to just write (as backwards as that sounds). If you’ve never outlined a script before, give it a try and see if it helps. And if you already do outline, maybe I gave you a few extra tricks to use. Next Thursday is a Character Outline article so try to have your plot outlined by then!

I predict today’s writer will be writing movies we see one day. So how come I’m not onboard with this skill-rich script?

Genre: Drama/Coming-of-Age/Comedy
Premise: (from writer) Fatherless Copywriter, Nick Adams, uncovers a stash of immaculate love letters dated the year he was born and post marked from Key West and Havana, Cuba. Convinced he is Hemingway’s bastard love child, he travels to Key West with teenage son in tow to usurp his birthright.
About: This is an amateur script that came referred to me by one of my consultants.
Writer: Eric Brown
Details: 113 pages

Paul Rudd for Nick?

Now that we’ve proven there’s undiscovered talent out there just waiting to be found (Patisserie baby!) I’m back on the amateur bandwagon, hoping to bring more scripts to Hollywood’s attention. Hemingway Boy, I’ve been told, has a shot at being one of those scripts. The script was given to one of my consultants for notes and later recommended to me (which doesn’t happen very often).

In the time it’s taken me to finally read and review it on the site, it was picked as one of the coveted “referrals” on The Tracking Board’s site. One person recommending a script can always be a fluke. Two? Means we probably have something good here. And since my taste matches up well with Christian’s (my consultant), I figured Hemingway Boy might be able to bring me to my screenwriting happy place.

40 year old Nick Adams feels trapped. As writer Eric Brown points out, he’s like “all of us” in that respect. You know when you’re a kid and you plot out where you’ll be in 30 years? Yeah, well, Nick’s at the opposite of wherever that is. How opposite? Well, he writes advertising slogans for baby food. And while he gets paid a lot of money for it (he’s even in line for a promotion!), how excited can you get when you’ve won over a target audience who’s not only illiterate, but hasn’t learned their ABCs yet?

In addition to the career stuff, Nick has to take care of a chirpy mother with early onset dementia. He must contain an increasingly rebellious teenage son (Sam). And he must learn to be civil with his irritating ex-wife.

Well at least one of those problems gets solved when Nick’s mom kicks the bucket. But just when he thinks that’ll calm things down, Nick stumbles upon an old box of love letters written to his mom from a mysterious man. After doing a little research, Nick becomes convinced that that man is Ernest Hemingway, and that his Mama Mia’esque mother made him the bastard child of the famous author.

Feeling some purpose for the first time in his life, Nick grabs his son and heads to the town in Florida where Hemingway spent most of his life. He hopes to ask around, find out if anyone saw Hemingway and his mom together, and go from there. When he gets there, he’s greeted by his tour guide Joe Jack, a step-father of sorts who dated Nick’s mother for awhile. Back then he was a pretty selfish prick, and now he wants to make up for that phase in his life by helping Nick however he can.

Once set, Nick meets a bus driver named Charlie (noooo – not the female love interest with the male name!) who he starts to fall for, while Sam ends up meeting a too-cool-for-school hottie named Stacee who he falls madly in love with. We jump back and forth between these relationships as they equal parts sputter and sparkle. With time running out before Nick has to be back in Detroit for work, it’s looking like he’ll never find the truth. That is until he locates an old friend of his mom’s who lives in Cuba. Going there is a risk, but Nick HAS to know. So grabs a boat and endures the final leg of his journey.

Here’s the thing about Hemingway Boy. It’s written by a real writer. It’s not one of those amateur scripts you read and say, “This guy isn’t even ready to be judged because he doesn’t know how to write yet.” Brown knows how to write. He’s very comfortable in this medium. For that reason, I see this more as a professional script than an amateur one. And for that reason, you’re going to judge it like a real movie, not on its mistakes, but rather its choices.

While I can understand why people responded to this, it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. Let me try and explain why. I don’t react well to scripts that are high on quirk. Scripts that feature the kooky grandmother, scripts where billboards are talking to our characters, scripts where every other character is flamboyant or over-the-top. I’m a big believer that the story always comes first. So if I feel that the writer is more interested in coming up with a wacky character than they are pushing the story forward in an interesting way, I start to turn on the script.

I do this because I’m now focused on the writing instead of the reality the writer’s created. In other words, I’m out of the story. And you don’t want your reader to be outside the story thinking about YOU, the writer, writing this. The spell is broken once that happens. And I found myself increasingly reacting to things other than the story.

The first moment this happened was Grandma Janice (I say “grandma” if we’re looking at her through Sam’s p.o.v.). As soon as she came in and started acting kooky and quirky, I said, “Uh-oh,” under my breath. I’m not going to lie. I hate the unpredictable “says whatever’s on her mind” grandma character. I see it so much. I think it’s so cliché. It’s kind of like screenwriting kryptonite to me (ahh, I can’t seem to forget Man of Steel!). And I’m not saying you should never write the character. Obviously people respond to it (who doesn’t like Betty White in The Proposal?). But that character kills me so much that when she showed up, I instantly turned on the script.

And if that was all, I might have rebounded. But it felt to me like every character was over the top. For example, Joe Jack, the grandfather character, almost seemed like a male version of Alice. He was big, loud, over-the-top, and always said embarrassing things. So again, we’re favoring quirkiness over reality. And I get that that’s a choice. I’m not saying it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work for me.

On top of this, I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly Nick wanted to know if Hemingway was his father other than it would’ve been kinda cool. He mentions a couple of times that he just wants to know where he came from, but we seem to be missing out on a potential bigger story here. I wanted to know exactly why Nick needed this answer because it was the question driving the entire story. And if I’m not even sure on why he’s going after it, it’s hard for me to 100% engage in that quest with him.

With all that said, there’s definitely something here. While I didn’t like how extreme the characters were, there was a lot of depth to them. And all of them stood out, which can’t be said about the majority of amateur screenplays out there – which struggle to come up with a single memorable character. That’s a big-time writer skill. I thought the stuff with Sam and Stacee was interesting (although I was hoping he would end up with Stuckey, her younger sister). There’s definitely a goal here (trying to find proof if he’s Hemingway son). There’s some urgency (he’s only got two weeks). There’s plenty of conflict in the scenes, with characters meeting obstacles in whatever goal they’re pursuing. The 3-Act structure is in place.

So it’s clear Eric knows what he’s doing. My preference was just that the script be a little more grounded in reality and less proud of itself. I wanted more people who acted like people as opposed to caricatures of people. That would’ve pulled me in and made me believe in everything more, instead of concentrating so hard on the person writing the script. Then again, the same thing can be said for writers like Tarantino or Shane Black, and they’re doing all right. So maybe I’m just being Grumpy McGrumperbottoms. What did you guys think?

Script link: Hemingway Boy

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but this writer shows a lot of promise)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I’m a firm believer in the hero going after the goal hard. If he’s not going after the goal hard, that tells me he doesn’t want it that much, and if he doesn’t want it that much, then why should I want it for him? Nick’s actions never matched up with his words. He always felt a bit too casual in his pursuit. I wanted him to be dedicating more time to this endeavor. I wanted to feel more urgency and desperation.

There’s a reason I’m busting out The Dark Knight for this week’s Ten Tips. This weekend I experienced a super-human catastrophe in Man of Steel. And I want to look at an actual well-made superhero film to see how to do it right. What’s interesting here is that two of the major players are the same in both projects (Christopher Nolan and David Goyer). The big flashy addition is Zack Snyder, which tells me that his paws may have been the ones that dirtied up the Man of Steel waters. With that said, I’m not going to pretend like The Dark Knight is some tour de force in screenwriting. I’ve battled many a time with this screenplay and feel that it has just as many weaknesses as it does strengths. With that said, it’s a far superior screenplay to Man of Steel, particularly in the area of character. So let’s see what we can find when we compare the two behemoths.  I suspect some some nifty tips!

1) Give us a main character who’s active – It’s one of the simplest and often-stated screenwriting rules there is, and yet us screenwriters constantly forget it, finding ourselves 60 pages into our screenplays and wondering why they’re so boring. One only needs to watch Man of Steel to see how an inactive main character can destroy a movie. It makes them (the main character) bland, which forces the story/plot to work overtime to overcome this issue. That’s likely why we had so much overplotting in Man of Steel. The writers sensed something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what, so they just kept ADDING MORE PLOT. The simplicity of having an active main character is that they forge forward, carving out the story on their terms. Look at Bruce Wayne. The guy wants to make a difference so he creates Batman to do so. He WANTS to fight crime and clean up the streets, so he’s always out there actively pursuing that.  Superman in Man of Steel is the opposite.

2) Beware the reluctant protagonist – Building on that, Man of Steel made me take a hard look at the reluctant protagonist. By “reluctant,” I mean a character who’s reluctant to engage in the central conflict of the film. That’s Clark Kent. He’s reluctant to get involved in the world’s problems. A big reason this doesn’t work is because by being “reluctant,” you’re basing the entirety of your hero on a negative trait – avoidance – which pretty much goes against everything that’s fun about movies (our hero ENGAGING in the adventure). There are movies where it works (Michael Corleone in The Godfather) but it usually doesn’t, especially in action movies. The word “reluctant protagonist” now scares me. It should probably scare you too.

3) Just tell us what’s happening dammit – I’ve read a few amateur screenplays recently where the writer tries to do way too much with their action description. They write stuff like, “Sweat glistens off Joe’s knuckles as he wrestles the gun out of his pocket.” There are times where you want to add a little flair to your writing, but for the most part, just tell us what’s happening. Here’s how Jonathan and Christopher Nolan write an early scene before the bank robbery in The Dark Knight: “A man on the corner, back to us, holding a CLOWN MASK. An SUV pulls up. The man gets in, puts on his mask. Inside the car – two other men wearing CLOWN MASKS.” These are two of the top writers in the business and every word in that description is something a third grader would understand.

4) “A&P” (An Active main character with Personality) – The character type who’s typically the most fun to watch is ACTIVE (making his own decisions and pushing the story forward himself) with PERSONALITY (is charming or funny or clever or smart or a combination of all these things). Look no further than one of the most beloved characters of all time, Indiana Jones, to see how that combination works. Or Iron Man. Or Sherlock Holmes. While I wouldn’t say Bruce Wayne is going to open at The Laugh Factory anytime soon, he does have a personality, likes to have fun with his money, and has a sense of humor. Combined with his desire to fight crime (being active), he’s got the coveted A&P. Superman in Man of Steel has neither the A or the P, which is why he’s so forgettable. As a rule, try to have the A and the P for your protag. If you can’t, give him the A or the P. If you can’t give him either, I guarantee you you have a boring protag.

5) Backstory is the enemy – Remember that superhero origin stories are by definition required to show us the backstory that led to our hero becoming who he is. In the real world of spec screenwriting, backstory is the enemy. Unless there’s some really unique or traumatic or shocking thing that happened in our character’s past, don’t show us. And if you do, show us only the bare minimum of it. It can even be boiled down to a quick expositional sentence if you do it right. Batman Begins handled its backstory a lot better than Man of Steel, but in both cases, the main plot (taking down the Scarecrow and Zod respectively) had to be pushed to the second half of the script, something that will never be accepted in the spec arena.

6) Invisible Backstory is your friend – You may not tell us a single thing about your main character’s past, yet you – the WRITER – should know everything that happened to your hero since the day he was born.  This knowledge leads to SPECIFICITY OF CHARACTER, a character who is unique because of the extensive “real” life he’s lived in your imagination.  The less you know about your hero, the less specificity you’ll be able to infuse him with, which leads to genericness.  This is one of the quickest ways I can differentiate the boys from the men in screenwriting.

7) Conflict is your weapon against exposition – One of the earlier scenes in The Dark Knight has Bruce talking to Alfred about needing improvements to the Bat Suit as well as getting info on the new District Attorney (who’s dating Rachel). It’s a straight forward exposition scene and, for that reason, one of the more forgettable of the film. Contrast this with when Bruce meets Harvey Dent (the District Attorney) out for dinner. Harvey’s with the love of Bruce’s life, Rachel, and Bruce has brought along a hot ballerina. There’s a lot of exposition in this scene, mostly in regards to Harvey trying to save the city, but the scene is fun because of the conflict: Wayne sizing up Harvey and the jealousy between Bruce and Rachel. Conflcit is your weapon against exposition. Use it whenever the evil EXPO rears its head (Nolan forgot this simple rule in Inception, which is why so many of his early scenes are boring. They’re pure exposition with zero conflict).

8) Brains over brawn – I think one of the reasons Batman is more popular than Superman is because he can’t just fly away. He can’t just use his heat vision to burn a hole through a guy. He’s gotta use his brains. Granted, he’s got a lot of money and that money has created a lot of gadgets, but Batman’s way more dependent on his wits than his powers. I bring this up because I read so many scripts where the writer gets his hero out of a battle with a gun or a roundhouse kick or a superpower. The thing is, it’s always more rewarding when the hero uses his wits (his INTELLIGENCE) to get out of that situation. So always look to your hero’s mind to solve his problems, first.  Only use physical force as a last resort.

9) Have your bad guy earn his keep – Whenever I re-read The Dark Knight, I’m always studying the villain, since the Joker is one of the most famous villains of all time. He’s lasted decades, whereas most villains last the two hours that make up the film (Die Hard With a Vengeance anyone?). Upon reading The Dark Knight, I realized that for truly timeless villains, you gotta like them a little bit. And I think one of the reasons we like watching The Joker is because the guy earned his keep. He wasn’t handed anything. He had to rob a bank and infliterate and intimidate the biggest baddest nastiest dudes in town. As crazy as it sounds, we kind of respect him for that, and it makes us sorta like him. So make your bad guy earn his keep. We’ll respect him (and actually like him) more.

10) Rational vs. Irrational Villains – Something I noticed while comparing The Dark Knight to Man of Steel, is that they have two polar opposite villains. General Zod is rational and calculated and has strong reasoning for doing what he’s doing. The Joker, on the other hand, is irrational and unpredictable and confusing. No doubt The Joker is the much scarier of the two. Through this, I learned the value of bad guys who are a bit unpredictable, a bit out of control. When you think about it, those are the scariest people in life because they don’t have that “rational” button you can push. I was never scared of General Zod cause the guy was just so darn rational.

These are 10 tips from the movies “The Dark Knight” and “Man of Steel.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Superman is back and he’s moody as hell. I explore the consequences of that decision and much much more.

Genre: Superhero/Action
Premise: (from IMDB) A young man is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race.
About: Warner Brothers is getting a little jumpy these days. Without the gargantuan Harry Potter franchise pumping out a new film every year anymore, and without Nolan directing Batman movies, they’re in desperate need of a huge new franchise they can depend on. They put all their chips into Man of Steel, and it looks to be paying off. The film made 125 million dollars this weekend, despite some not-so-enthusiastic reviews. Since Friday, public reaction has been split. Some like the film, some not so much. What did I think? Read on.
Writers: David S. Goyer (story by Goyer and Christopher Nolan) – Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Details: 143 minutes

I wanted to love this movie.

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you know that. I was so ready to fall in love with Man of Steel, I almost asked it to marry me. Of course, before the wedding, you have to buy the ring, and I bought mine, only to find out the diamonds were fake.

I really thought this Superman movie was the one. The last Superman (Superman Returns) was so miscast and uninspired, it nearly destroyed the brand. It was that catastrophe that helped Warner Brothers realize they needed to take Superman in a new darker direction, and I applauded them for that. That’s exactly what Superman needed. It needed filmmakers willing to take risks. Because the idealistic version of Superman is dead. Today, we want our superheroes flawed and a little dark. And that’s exactly what the trailer promised.

Too bad it was only a trailer.

Man of Steel was not just badly written, it was terribly written. Even more terribly written than Iron Man 3. I mean, at least Iron Man 3 had Robert Downey Jr. to make the dialogue sound kind of good. I do not have enough blog space to note all of the terrible writing mistakes here. And blog space is infinite.

For those new to the site, I don’t sit there and tally up “screenwriting mistakes” as I’m watching a movie, and if the movie violates too many screenwriting “rules,” give it a failing grade. I don’t care how a movie is written, as long as it entertains me. If a movie doesn’t entertain me (or in this case, lulls me to sleep), I go back to the screenplay to figure out why. There were certainly a few director choices that annoyed me in Man of Steel (the 15,000 shots of someone about to be rammed into, only for someone to fly across the screen and intercept the projectile/person at the last second), but if a script fails to connect this severely, it’s always the script’s fault.

So what was Superman about? Krypton, Superman’s planet, is dying. So Superman’s dad must save the future winged one by sending him to earth. The catch here is that Military Leader General Zod, who’s upset that the Krypton Government put them in this mess in the first place, wants to make sure Superbaby never gets off the planet because… well, I’m not entirely sure why. I think because he doesn’t want the Kryptonian bloodline to survive. Which doesn’t really make sense because I’m pretty sure Zod wants to survive. And he’s Kryptonian. Superman experts can clear this up for me in the comments.

Anyway, once on earth, this new 2013 Superman (now Clark Kent) is a drifter. He doesn’t have a job at the Daily Planet and wear glasses. He goes crab fishing and wears a beard. This new Clark Kent is reallllly moody. He’s so down all the time, and I suppose it’s warranted. He has these super powers but knows if he uses them, even for good, people will think he’s a freak, or worse, the government will lock him up. So all he really cares about is hiding, which is why we see him drifting from town to town, ignoring our good nation’s hitchhiking laws.

Unfortunately for Clark, the U.S. government finds another ship sent from his planet embedded in ice (I believe the ship was a scout ship sent to Earth to determine if it was a viable planet for invasion – which is how Superman’s dad knew to send him here). This attracts Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane to see what the government’s covering up. This results in Lois and Clark meeting and beginning a friendship, which is quickly ruined by our old buddy General Zod showing up and demanding the world give up Superman or be destroyed. Clark believes Zod’s going to destroy Earth regardless, so he takes on Zod and his Kryptonian clique in a fight to the death.

This is sooooo a simplified breakdown of the screenplay. So much more happened. DNAs, planetary codexes, terraforming. I could get into the immense amount of exposition-heavy plot there was here, but there were so many other issues that doomed this script, the first of which was the protagonist himself.

Superman was boring. Whether he was Clark Kent or the caped crusader, he was boring. I didn’t realize until now what the original Clark Kent reporter angle did for the character. It gave him a personality. Superman had to be stoic and on top of shit. Clark Kent didn’t. And it really made us fall in love him. New Clark Kent just mopes around and complains about his situation all the time. In a screenplay, your main character is everything. For that reason, you have to be aware of how any choice you make will affect the audience. If you make your main character a moping moody drifter, chances are he’s going to depress the audience.

But what really killed Man of Steel was that Superman was an inactive character. This is one of the first things they teach you in any screenwriting class and there’s a reason for it. If your main character isn’t carving out his own path – if he’s not leading the charge, he has a big chance of fading into the background and becoming boring, or worse, forgettable. There are stories where this kind of character can work, but in a Superman movie?? I don’t think that’s one of the places where you want an inactive protagonist.

I just remember in the original Donner Superman movie, Superman was always going out there and trying to save people. Here, we had the school bus scene and the oil tanker scene. So he DID save people, but both instances were in flashbacks (or pseudo flashbacks) and therefore felt like a thing of the past. And even if they weren’t, the writing made these moments feel so… depressing. Like something wrong was being done. It was bizarre. And even when Superman DOES decide to start doing things, the movie is ¾ of the way over, and the decision isn’t really his. He’s practically gotta be talked into it. In combination with a personality-less and depressing Superman, this overt inactivity made him an extremely boring character (not to mention he barely says anything the entire movie).

My next issue was the endless backstory being shown. When the movie started on Krypton and we were introduced to that world, I was like, ‘Ooh, this is cool.’ I liked the technology, the originality of the planet, even the political stuff, with Zod trying to take down the government. But then it kept going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. I don’t know how long it actually was, but it felt like half an hour.

That’s THIRTY FREAKING MINUTES of backstory they’re showing us. While I understand there’s a LITTLE bit of exposition required for Zod’s later arrival on Earth, it did not warrant a 30 minute opening that could have easily been boiled down to a quick montage and/or some later exposition. Hey, I’m all about the showing and not telling. That is unless your showing takes FOREVER.

Which brings me to the flashbacks. Why were these flashbacks necessary?? I suppose there are a FEW people in the world who don’t know Superman’s origin story. Even still, the flashbacks prevented any rhythm at all from developing. Maybe, MAYBE, they might’ve worked if you didn’t make us sit through a half hour of backstory that could’ve been edited down to 3 minutes. But because it took us so damn long to get down to earth, we were already impatient. And that impatience meant we weren’t okay with stopping every 8 minutes for a flashback that told us something we already knew (or could’ve assumed).

Now, here’s the thing with the flashbacks. Goyer uses them to establish Clark’s flaw. Or at least his central inner conflict – that he can’t help people even if he wants to. Goyer wanted to establish that in order show change in Superman later on, when he decides to go against his father’s wishes and fight for the planet. So I get why that was included. But here’s the irony, that choice is what made Superman so boring. By creating a flaw that states you “can’t do anything,” you limit your character to an inactive tumbleweed.

Now, here’s an example of how screenwriting mistakes start compounding on top of each other. Because we spent the first 30 minutes of the movie on backstory and because we spent ANOTHER 40 minutes showing Clark try to adapt to the world amidst a series of flashbacks, we didn’t get to the actual freaking STORY until over halfway through the film – Zod showing up and demanding Superman be returned.

This should’ve happened 30 minutes in, at the end of Act 1, and could’ve happened without all the backstory. One of the oldest storytelling tenets there is, is “Come into the story as late as you can.” Never start earlier than you have to. And if you really really wanted the Krypton stuff, you could’ve done it in a three minute montage without dialogue, which would’ve been so much more impactful anyway.

On top of all this, I couldn’t BELIEVE how melodramatic, on the nose, and over the top all the writing was. Here’s a screenwriting tip: If you’re writing a human interaction that would never ever happen in real life, you probably shouldn’t write it. There’s this scene where Young Clark, at school, is overwhelmed by all his new powers (mainly his X-ray vision) and escapes into a custodian closet in the hallway. His entire classroom follows him as his mother comes along and has a heart-to-heart with him, through the door. We get this dialogue. “The world’s too big mom.” “Then make it smaller.” AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! This conversation would never happen! The teacher would’ve whisked the kids back to class so Clark and his mother could be alone, not waited for a mom to try and coax her kid out of the closet. And what kid says, “The world’s too big mom,” after finding out they have x-ray vision?? What about, “Why the hell can I see through people??” The combination of the falseness of the scene, the falseness of the dialogue and the overly dramatic handling of the interaction, destroyed any realism this scene had the hope of accomplishing.

I mean there isn’t a single genuine moment in this film. In the original Superman, Clark’s dad dies of a heart attack. It’s quick and tragic and never lingers. Here, Clark’s dad dies IN A TORNADO!!!! He actually stands outside the car, with the tornado coming his way, as Clark watches him from an underpass, wanting to save his father. His father raises up his hand and just says, ‘No,” and allows himself to be whipped up by the tornado. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!!!??? Again, I understand that this is an exploration of Clark’s inner conflict going on here – whether he should show his powers or not (and all the Jesus themes that come with that). But do you have to use a dad dramatically waving his son off from a LEVEL 5 TORNADO to get that conflict across??? What are the chances of ONE MAN finding a crashed alien and being killed by a tornado in the same lifetime????  A quadrillion to 1?

I loved the set-design here. I loved the new Superman uniform. I loved Russell Crowe as the father. I love Michael Shannon (who played Zod), period. And when Zach Snyder’s on, he’s an A-List director. But the writing in this was so freaking bad, it was embarrassing. And what’s so baffling is I know Goyer knows what he’s doing. Even on his worst day, he’s not this bad, which makes me wonder where some of these script decisions came from. Is Snyder known for over-the-top melodrama? Is he the cause of this? I know Christopher Nolan (who oversaw this) loves exposition, which explains the first 60 minutes. But the worst scene in The Dark Knight is better than the best scene in Man Of Steel, so it couldn’t have been him. Maybe Jon Peters (infamous for parlaying a Barbara Streisand hairdressing relationship into a producing career) was still contractually allowed to make some story decisions? I don’t know. My gut tells me people who don’t understand screenwriting got to make some major story decisions because I can’t imagine a top level screenwriter writing a script this bad.

[x] trash
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be wary of an internal conflict that makes your protagonist uninteresting. It can be so rewarding finding that flaw or inner conflict that allows you to explore your character on a deeper level throughout the script. With Will Hunting, it’s that he refuses to open up. With Luke Skywalker, it’s that he doesn’t believe in himself yet. With Clark Kent in Man of Steel, it’s that he CAN’T ACT. Does that allow you to dig into your protagonist and explore him on a deeper level? Sure. But the conflict dictates that your main character take on the very trait that makes characters uninteresting – not acting, which is what doomed this. Even if you got everything else right here (less backstory, cleaner plot) an inactive, reclusive Superman will always be boring. Let this be a warning not to write yourself into a corner with your main character’s flaw.