Includes a tip that will get the reader to turn all 110 pages of your script!

Today’s article was born out of this realization I had the other day that the entire goal of screenwriting boils down to making the reader turn the page.

I can’t emphasize this enough. The reader must have an insatiable appetite to turn the page. Because the second they don’t feel that need, they’re done with you.

That’s an important distinction between screenwriting and novel-writing because it’s different when you sit down and read a novel. You get the novel for the specific purpose of being entertained by it. So you’re willing to invest more time into it.

With a screenplay, the goal is different. It’s to determine if the script can be turned into a movie. The second the reader determines that it cannot, he’s free to stop. So that trigger is much faster on a screenplay, which is why understanding what makes a reader turn the page is so important.

Of course, I can’t give you universal reasons why readers turn pages. But I can tell you my reasons. And most of those reasons are going to line up with the people around town who read scripts. So let’s get into it.

A KICK-ASS CONCEPT
I can’t stress this one enough because it gives you a huge buffer for the start of your script. If someone sends me a really good marketable concept – like A Quiet Place or The Platform or Inception – you get 20 pages right off the bat. Even if the writing is bad, I will still give you 20 pages.

This is because a good marketable concept is hard to find. So even if the writing sucks, I’m thinking, “Could I bring another writer on to fix this?” I can see the movie so I’m willing to invest more of my time to see if there are solutions to the problems in the script.

But if it’s some indie concept or low concept (a road trip between a mother and daughter through the south), you don’t get any pages. I will literally stop reading on page 1 if the writing doesn’t capture me in some way. So, if you want 20 pages right off the bat, write that big concept script of yours. It’s going to make your post-script life so much easier.

VOICE
If the writer has a unique voice that sparkles on the page, that’ll get you 15-20 pages. I won’t go into what voice is in detail. I’ve written other articles on that. But, basically, it means the uniqueness in how the writer sees the world and their ability to translate that into their writing. It often involves a unique sense of humor. And you can see it by reading writers like Diablo Cody, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, Taika Waititi, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Yorgos Lanthimos.

WRITING IS A CUT ABOVE
If the writing is a cut above, that earns the script anywhere between 10-15 pages right off the bat. By writing, I mean the way the writer writes. Their sentence structure, their word choice, their turn-of-phrase, their intelligence, the way they weave their thoughts together. If that’s done in an advanced way, it usually (but surprisingly not always) means the script is worth reading. Look at Chandler Baker’s “Big Bad” short story that I reviewed. That’s what I mean by writing that’s a cut above.

Now, I’m not going to lie. If you have none of those things, your script is probably in a heap of trouble. But I’m about to surprise you. If you can be good at a few nuts and bolts things in screenwriting, you can still get that reader to turn the page. And if you keep rolling these things out, like breadcrumbs, throughout the script, the reader is going to be at the end of the screenplay before they know it.

A MAIN CHARACTER WHO I REALLY WANT TO BE AROUND
This is the biggest cheat code in all of screenwriting. Because as I said: The goal is to get the reader to turn the page. That goal remains the same whether we’re on page 1 or page 40. Interest can be lost so quickly during a read, it would shock you. The reader could be deeply invested in your story on page 27. But by page 35 they’re bored out of their mind. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count. So you want a situation where you don’t have to keep coming up with something amazing every single page in order to get the reader to turn to the next one.

Enter a main character I want to be around. Either I like him or I’m intrigued by him or he’s funny or he’s caught up in something crazy that I have to see how he’s going to get out of. Giving us a main character who we want to be around is the thing that makes us turn all 110 pages. Even if the rest of your script is average, the reader will keep turning the page. I’m talking about Jordan Belforte, Arthur Fleck, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Bella in Poor Things, Erin Brokovich, and Mildred Hayes in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

The large majority of the scripts I read have weak forgettable main characters. The writers seem comfortable with everyman and everywoman types who have no outstanding qualities. The story becomes the big star of the script and the main character, because he’s so bland, is overshadowed in the process. At the very least, give us a character with something to overcome. Because anything that is unresolved is a reason to turn the page. I must turn the page to see if it gets resolved.

If my character is a coward, I must turn the page to see if he ever becomes brave. But if my character is fine and has no flaws, what do I get by turning the page? To keep finding out they’re fine? Do you really think that’s enough to make me keep reading?

GOOD SCENE-WRITING
As many scenes in your script as possible should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you do this well, we will want to turn every page because every page gets us closer to finding out how the scene ends. However, I don’t care how a scene ends if you don’t set up a problem that needs to be resolved. If you don’t set up a goal that needs to be achieved. Pretend each scene is a mini-screenplay. It should have a setup (which gives us the goal or the problem), conflict (things get in the way of solving the problem or achieving the goal), and resolution. If you’re able to do this consistently in each and every scene, then the reader has to keep reading to see how each scene resolves. But if you’re just showing snippets of characters lives without structure, then hell no am I going to turn the page. I’ll be bored within 2 pages, 3 pages tops.

DANGLING CARROTS
Getting down to the nitty-gritty – the way to get a reader turning each and every page is to dangle carrots in front of them. If there are no carrots, there’s no reason for the donkey to keep walking. Let’s say your opening scene is your hero getting ready for work. Why should I keep reading about that? Honestly, tell me why. Cause you thought of it? Cause you wrote it? This is the error in so many writer’s thinking processes. The reader owes you NOTHING. They don’t turn the page to be “a good person.” They only turn the page IF YOU GIVE THEM A REASON TO TURN THE PAGE.

So, what you might do here is, while your hero is getting ready for work, have his wife trying to calm him down about his big meeting with the boss today. Today is the day that he’s going to ask for that raise. This is called DANGLING A CARROT. Now I have to turn the page to find out what happens when he asks for the raise! Does he get it or is he turned down!

Even better, the more meat you put on the carrot, the more pages the reader will turn. For example, if you open your script with a murder and you make that murder brutal and you make it so we really want to find out who did it, that’s a meaty freaking carrot right there. So you might get 10-15 turned pages out of it before the reader demands more information about the murder.

SUSPENSE
Any time you can create suspense, readers will turn the page. Suspense is the skillful withholding of information to keep the audience in a state of anxious anticipation. In screenwriting, it’s almost always tied to the negative. So, if you show us a terrorist secretly planning to blow up a plane AND THEN you show our clueless protagonist get on that very plane, you are creating an open line of suspense.

Any time you open a line of suspense, the reader has to turn the page. And, as you can see, that line of suspense can cover 5, 10, 15 pages easy, until the plan either succeeds or fails. But we’ve seen suspense work for even longer. Look at Titanic. That whole movie is suspenseful because we all know what the passengers do not: That the boat sinks. So we have to turn the page in a script like that so we can see who lives and who dies when the boat sinks.

UNEXPECTED THINGS HAPPEN
I read more screenplays than you can possibly imagine that never do anything surprising in them. As a result, I don’t want to turn the page. But when you do unexpected things, you STAY AHEAD OF THE READER. Which means the reader has no choice but to CATCH UP. What’s the only way they can catch up? By turning the page.

Strange Darling is a good example (spoilers). We think the killer is the guy. It turns out to be the girl. Scream kills off who we think is the main character in the very first scene. Kinds of Kindness has all sorts of unexpected things happening in its multiple stories. Poor Things goes bananas with some of its early creative choices. If I don’t feel like I have a handle on something, I have to turn the page to get a grip on that thing. Don’t overwhelm your script with unexpected moments. But a few smartly placed unexpected moments can keep the reader riveted (and riveted readers turn the page!).

Let’s wrap things up here. The most powerful thing you can do as a writer is to ask yourself, at every single point in your screenplay, “Why would the reader keep reading?” And the answer can’t be because you worked hard on your screenplay and you deserve it. I wish the world worked that way but it doesn’t. You need to be able to logically convey WHY the reader should turn the page. Whether it’s the concept, the writing, the voice, the main character, the unexpectedness, the suspense, or something out of your own bag of tricks! Whatever you have to do to get the reader to turn the page, do it. Cause they’re bored and they’re ready to give up the second they open your script. Don’t let them!

You voted for the scene. Now you get to read the screenplay!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A paranoid factory inspector touring the headquarters of a successful razor company on the verge of a sale is offered an exclusive glimpse of their newest – and most shocking – product yet.
About: Today’s script was the runner-up in last month’s Scene Showdown. In that showdown, five scenes went head to head against each other. I told the top three writers that, if they wanted to, they could send me the full script and I would review it on the site. Teddy is the only writer, so far, who’s taken me up on the offer. So here’s his script! You can go read Teddy’s runner-up scene here.
Writer: Teddy Abularach
Details: 99 pages

It always feels a little nicer when we get to review some homegrown Scriptshadow screenplays. I love supporting our own. And I commend the writers who put their scripts up for review because no matter how much myself and the readers love you, we’re always honest. And honesty can a big party on the proverbial dance floor or one of those big horse pills you have to swallow. Let’s see what Mr. Teddy Abularach has in store for us today with his offbeat tale, The Factory. I’m hoping for a dance party.

36 year old Scott Mangella is so exahusted from life that when he takes his 3 year old daughter, Eloise, on the subway train, he instantly falls asleep. This allows a gang of thugs to steal poor Eloise away. Scott wakes up but it’s too late. They’ve run off with his daughter.

15 years later, Scott has finally gotten over the trauma and has his life together. He’s got a wife, a new son, and a flashy job as a building inspector. In fact, he’s been hired to inspect a razor company’s production building out in the middle of the desert. So off Scott goes.

Once there, he sees that every single worker is sick. They’re all sniffling or vomitting. Scott needs wifi for some of his tools to work but he’s told they don’t have wifi. What about a phone, he asks. We don’t have those either. “Actually, there was a rumor about a payphone in the basement,” one worker says.

Scott heads to the basement to look for this pay phone where he stumbles upon large rectangular boxes. He opens them and sees that they contain unconscious children. Scott grabs one of the girls and attempts to escape to his car, but they capture him and, for some reason, put him down with the kids so he can learn their daily routine.

These kids are either going to be sex trafficked or eaten. And the reason this is a razor company is because a lot of these kids have acne and the people who eat children don’t like acne. So they need sharp razors to cut their acne-laden skin off.

Scott soon learns that his long lost daughter is one of the children being held here. He’s determined to get her out alive. He’ll have to get past company CEO Ferdinand, who wants to kill him but can’t, since the company inspecting them would be too suspicious if Scott disappeared. So he makes a deal with Scott to let him go but only if he never tells anybody about this. Scott agrees but of course he’s not going to give up. He must save his daughter! Will he??

Let me start out by applauding Teddy for writing something so unique.

In a world of SAME SAME SAME, it’s fun to see someone buck the system and do their own thing.

But as far as my own personal taste, this script was a little too weird for me. I’m not sure I ever bought into the premise. I’m not sure I ever synched up with the tone. I’m not sure I believed a lot of the things that were happening. You’re allowed, as the Pied Piper, to go as far down Zany Road as you like. But, if you keep heading out to nowhere, the rats that are following the tune of your flute are eventually going to head back to the center of town.

The first moment I became concerned was the 3rd or 4th scene where Scott takes part in a therapy session. We just watched the devastating kidnapping of his young daughter but now we cut to jokey-joke time with a stoned therapist who admits to smoking pineapple express right before their session.

Is this an intense thriller or a straight comedy? There is no way to tell after four scenes.

We eventually learn that Scott is an inspector and he’s doing an inspection on a razor company. Building this story around a razor company felt like a strangely specific choice and contributed to the wacky feel of the screenplay, despite it often trying to lean into intense drama.

Then begins a strange sequence where the company tells Scott that they don’t have wifi. A ten million dollar company that doesn’t have wifi??? You’re a liar as a writer if you’re trying to pass that off as believable. Anyway, there are “rumors” of a “pay phone” in the basement so Scott heads down there to call his bosses.

Why would there be a single phone in the entire company?  And why would it be in a basement? And why would it be a pay phone? I’ve never heard of a company with a pay phone before. Most importantly, why would you send the inspector guy down into the place that has your big secret lying around?

To Teddy’s credit, the razor company theme comes into play because it’s important they cut off the acne-laden skin first. The logic is a little bizarre but there’s at least some connective tissue between the company and the kidnapped children.

After that, the plot becomes clear: ESCAPE. But Teddy keeps bumping up against his own troublesome setup. Ferdinand can’t kill Scott since he was hired to inspect this place and it would be too suspicious to the hiring company if Scott disappeared. So Ferdinand must cut a deal with Scott whereby he allows him to leave as long as Scott refuses to ever talk about what he saw.

Which, of course, makes zero sense because what man is going to live the rest of his life voluntarily leaving his daughter to be eaten? Ferdinand would know this. Scott certainly knows this. So any deals the two make would either be a lie to each other or a lie from the writer. It simply isn’t happening that Scott would leave his daughter alone here.

In that capacity, The Factory is way too messy. The setup is messy. The tone is messy. And a lot of the plot logic is messy.

I suppose if you want to go full Kookyville, like Netflix’s “They Cloned Tyrone,” you could. In that case, I would strip away any and all seriousness and get as wacky as possible. But, if not, you need a more solid foundation here. You need more grounded choices. You need to abide by logic throughout the story (there is no such thing as a large company that only has one phone in the whole building, which is in the basement, and it’s a pay phone).

And you would need to build a plot whereby the villain wasn’t making deals with the protagonist that make zero sense. The plot should be designed so that if the bad guys get anywhere close to Scott, they kill him.

Despite all this, I thank Teddy for putting his script up here for all of us to read.  I suspect if you like early Charlie Kaufman, you might enjoy this.  I’m excited to hear what everyone else thinks.

Script link: The Factory

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

What I learned: Even when you’re writing satire or zany material, it does not mean you can abandon real-world logic. Actions still need to make sense. Motivations still need to make sense. Plot developments still need to make sense. People offering deals (I agree to leave and never talk about this) that, in the real world, they know a person would never abide by, is sloppy storytelling. You must infuse logic into those scenarios if you expect, us, the readers, to buy into them.

Genre: Thriller/Horror
Premise: An overworked mother, frustrated with the lack of duty-sharing in her marriage, gets wrapped up in a community of career-focused women who may be turning their husbands into mindless robots.
About: Author Chandler Baker is primed to make a lot of noise in Hollywood. Not only did her werewolf short story just sell, but this book of hers was snatched up by producing powerhouse Plan B, with Kristin Wiig attached to play the lead.
Writer: Chandler Baker
Details: about 340 pages

I picked this book up the second I finished short story Big Bad, which I loved. The thing I noticed about Chandler Baker while reading that story was: THIS GIRL CAN WRITE. There’s a difference in her writing compared to some of the trash you see gumming up the 405 and the 10 here in Hollywood. She’s got real talent.

So it didn’t take much convincing for me to read this. Let’s find out if it’s movie-worthy, though.

Lawyer and pregnant mother Nora Spangler lives in Austin, Texas with her occasionally annoying but, overall, sweet husband, Hayden. Now in her second pregnancy, Nora needs help every day doing things. But Hayden only casually offers that help. It’s getting to the point where Nora is pissed. She can’t do EVERYTHING herself.

The two are thinking of moving to a nearby pristine housing community called Dynasty Ranch. Nora, in particular, is enamored with the area because it has so many high-profile working women there. Not only that, but all of the husbands are super helpful! One even stops to help her when she gets a flat. And when she meets one of the ladies, she notes that *her* husband is eagerly cleaning out her closet!

Nora is more sold on the home but Hayden’s skeptical. So they’re not buying anything right away. However, while there, a woman named Penny recruits Nora to look into a devastating house fire that not only burned down her house but killed her husband. Nora accepts the case and starts investigating.

Not long after, one of the more popular women in the community, Cornelia, a psychiatrist, nudges Nora to do couples therapy with her. She has a unique method that has transformed the community as nearly every couple in Dynasty Ranch gets along great. Nora thinks Cornelia is a little weird but decides to give it a shot. And, to her surprise, Hayden takes to it well. He almost immediately becomes more helpful around the home.

The deeper Nora digs into this house fire, the more she suspects foul play was involved. Could someone have been… murdered? As soon as she starts operating on that theory, Cornelia becomes squirrely. She interjects whenever Nora wants to speak directly to Penny. Eventually, Cornelia admits that she has a bigger goal – one that involves deprogramming men and women until they reset back to their natural identities, identities where women are the breadwinners changing the world, and their men live to support them. What will this mean for Penny and Nora? I can tell you that when you live in Crazy Town, like Cornelia, you will do everything to make sure your vision is accomplished.

A big reason this sold was because it was pitched as a female-centric Stepford Wives. It’s kind of like Get Out in that way. Base your social horror concept around an old 70s movie and add a twist. I find it to be a great pitch. If I was a producer in the room and someone pitched me this idea, I would be excited. Especially 3 years ago, when this book was written.

But I’m not sure Chandler Baker was able to wrangle that concept into an exciting enough story.

She makes an interesting choice right off the bat. 99 out of 100 writers would’ve had Nora and Hayden buy the house in Dynasty Ranch within the first 30 pages. But they don’t buy the house. The connection between Nora and Dynasty Ranch is, instead, explored through this arson case. And I’m not sure that was the best idea.

If you want to create fear, which I think this story is keen on doing, then you place your characters inside that dangerous community. If they’re a million miles away and safe in their own home, where is the fear? It was a strange choice.

Also, the big hook here is the husbands being turned into obedient drones. But the manner in which this happens is a huge letdown. You’re thinking it’s some advanced lobotomy procedure that permanently changes them. But, instead, it’s this nebulous therapy that Cornelia uses. And it’s never clear why they’re changing. She asks them questions. She does a couple of jedi mind tricks to get them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. But nothing ever occurred where we understood why the man had turned into a mindless drone. I guess it was up to us to make that leap.

And the conclusion to this arson investigation was lame. It didn’t have that “Holy Shit” moment where everything comes together in some shocking way. It was basically Cornelia working her vague magic over this guy and that’s why he’s dead. In other words, it was something we could’ve predicted ourselves.

Now, this all might be confusing to you because I just told you how much I liked Chandler Baker’s writing. But let me reiterate what I said. I said I like: HER WRITING. This book was going to decide whether I liked HER STORYTELLING. Completely different things (as we talked about the other day).

Her storytelling was not good. A critical component of good storytelling is THE PAYOFFS to all of the earlier SETUPS. The payoffs here were lame. It’s never clear why the men have turned into drones. The payoff to the arson storyline – which was THE PRIMARY PLOT – was so casual, dare I say it was nonexistent.

And for a movie about turning husbands into drones, we know very little about Hayden in this story. I see this happen with weaker writers often. They know their main characters intimately, but any of the characters orbiting that main character get little-to-no depth. And it’s because the writers don’t want to do the work. They know that creating a fully-rounded husband character that feels like a living breathing human being takes time. It’s easier to convince yourself that secondary characters don’t need as much depth and leave it at that.

In that sense, it strikes me as the kind of story that was written too fast and not rewritten enough. I can tell when writers didn’t give everything and that’s definitely the case here. I don’t know if there was an unrealistic deadline involved but something prevented this story from reaching its potential. I’m sad to say The Husbands wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: I know it’s cheap. I know it’s easy. But gosh darnit, using the “mysterious thing that happened to our hero in the past” carrot WORKS ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Especially in these novels. We keep hearing about some crippling accident that happened in this family and we have to keep reading to find out what it was.

What I learned 2: Powerful payoffs. That ‘crippling accident’ carrot I just talked about? It had a really weak payoff. It amounted to a child crawling out onto the porch because Nora fell asleep. That was the big “accident” that had 250 pages of setup. Something Chandler Baker needs to work on as a writer is her PAYOFFS. Her payoffs sucked. This accident payoff sucked. The arson payoff sucked. The ‘turning husbands into drones’ payoff sucked. You have to go bigger and flashier with all these things if you’re going to make us wait 200+ pages to get that payoff. The payoffs here were worth 20 pages at most.

This might look like a stock image.  But this is what’s on my table right now!

Okay, if you’re coming here to hate on Venom 3’s box office, you do not have a co-conspirator in me. My buddy Kelly wrote and directed it and I would never say anything bad about her or her work so… we’ll have to wait until the next superhero movie to complain about the superhero genre.

Actually, I do have one negative thing to say about Venom. Why didn’t they ever make a Spider-Man Venom movie?? It was their only opportunity to create a big Spider-Man adventure in-house (at Sony) and not have to share it with Disney. Yet they didn’t even consider it! Don’t they have a name for that in the business world? Corporate malfeciense?

I see it as the final nail in the coffin of the “cinematic universe” strategy. It clearly doesn’t work. It worked for that one great Decade for Disney. But it was such a specific confluence of variables that allowed it to happen, it could never be done again. Even Marvel is realizing they can’t do it again.

What the HBO show, The Franchise, is confirming, is that when you rely on the “universe” approach and something goes badly in one of the movies, it screws up all plans to integrate that movie into the rest of the universe. You can’t include Captain Marvel in Iron Man 4 after The Marvels. Nobody wants to see her.

And, unfortunately, the way that movies are made, you have to put Captain Marvel in the Iron Man 4 production BEFORE The Marvels comes out. Which means you’ve already shot Iron Man 4 with a character everyone now hates, and you’re stuck with it.

Kevin Feige is starting to realize this and changing his strategy. He’s only allowing cross-integration between stories when it involves smaller characters and smaller plot developments. That way, you don’t have to worry about putting a poorly received character in the next Thor. The character is too small to matter.

But that then begs the question. If you’re pussy-footing around the universe, barely crossing over anything, then what’s the point of having a cinematic universe in the first place?

Look at how this has affected Star Wars. The Acolyte’s final season teaser is a behind-the-back shot of Yoda. But everyone hated The Acolyte. Which means now you’re tainting one of your most popular characters. There are a lot more pitfalls to fall into when doing cinematic universes than there are launch pads.

It makes me wonder where we’re going with movies. Some people have been speculating that the next big trend is going to be crossovers. Remember, a decade ago, when we were hearing rumors about a 21 Jump Street Men in Black crossover? That’s the kind of stuff we’re going to be getting. Because if the studios can’t depend on superheroes anymore, they don’t have many other options to make people show up to the theater. But putting two well-known IPs that you wouldn’t otherwise think would appear in the same movie, in the same movie, could be an easy way to get people to show up.

Of course, now you’re cannibalizing your studio because instead of being able to launch TWO big movies and take in all that money, you can only launch one. You also set a precedent to the audience that your character isn’t strong enough to have a movie of his own. Therefore, if you later try and release a movie with just him, people say, “But he’s no longer with Optimus Prime so who cares?” I mean, if they released another Deadpool movie with just Deadpool, how eager would we be to see it now that you’ve established Deadpool and Wolverine? “You mean it’s just… Deadpool? No thanks, I’ll wait for streaming.”

We all know what studios SHOULD do.

It’s obvious.

But they’re too chickenshit to do it.

They need to spend 3-5 years launching as many original titles as possible. I think their original titles make up 5% of their slate right now. They need to make that 70% of their slate. Some of those are going to hit big and now they have a number of cool franchises that can last years if not decades.

But they won’t do it!

They won’t do it.

Unless!

Unless you guys write an amazing spec script that the studios can’t say no too. But I’m going to be real here. A lot of you don’t write stuff that could become franchises. You don’t write stuff that’s commercial enough. You’ve got to find that commercial side of you that still allows you to write what you want to write about. It’s possible to do both, you know. I find the writers who *can* do both to be the ones who last the longest in this business.

What would I tell my young self to write if I was a brand new screenwriter coming on to the scene right now? I would write an action film but with some kind of interesting angle. It couldn’t be a generic idea such as, “A former NAVY SEAL finds himself running for his life when the Armenian mob becomes convinced that he killed their leader.” It needs some sort of interesting twist – something that would be a bit risky.

I know that can result in embarrassment. But let’s be real here. You can’t achieve anything in life without taking some risk. So you’re going to have to try and do something different. You can’t play it safe. I’m sorry but Die Hard on a riverboat isn’t going to cut it.

Let me be a little more specific about that because someone might point out the spec sale of John Wick and say, “The studios always buy generic action fare.”  Actually, John Wick was originally 70 years old.  That was the big risk screenwriter Derek Kolstad took.  But then Reeves signed on and they made him younger.

The action label will put it on the studio radar because studios have looked and will always look for action movies. Action plays EVERYWHERE in the world. So that’s never going out of style. And then your twist is what’s going to make it fresh. It’s what’s going to separate it from all those other action movies out there.

Here are some examples: Edge of Tomorrow, Upgrade, Wanted, The Beekeeper, Into the Night, Big Trouble in Little China. Not all of these movies were great. But all of them either did or would’ve garnered spec script interest FOR SURE.

That’s it for today.

Tell me what you’re watching, tell me what you’re reading, tell me what you’re loving!

Whenever I mention titles, I see a little dance going on in the comments section. It’s an exciting topic these titles, probably because they’re the most elusive element in screenwriting.

Ruminating about what makes a good title gets my anxiety pumping. Do I even know the answer to what makes a good title?

Or are good titles the thing you only know when you see them?

“Jaws.”

That’s a good title. I don’t know why. But I saw it and I felt something and I liked the way it looked on the page so, yeah, boom, I like that title.

Is this method scientific? Most certainly not. But therein lies the complexity of titling.

I also wondered if titles only work when they’re placed next to the logline or poster. Can they work by themselves?

Are loglines worthless unless we know the genre? So many questions.

But I got news. I have all sorts of titles from all the showdowns I’ve run. So let’s lay out 30 random titles from those submissions and use them as the starting point for a conversation about what makes a good title.

Here we go…

Noah’s Choice
The Best and Brightest
Quiet Storm
Triggered
Bloodlet
Sweepers
Demon Motel
Go Find Her
Hit Squad
Proselytes
A Theory of Wolves
Pariah
An Old Friend
Witness Protection
Oh, Hi Mark
Live Fire
20,000 Leagues Into the Sky
Violence Is the Way
Here Comes Santa Claus
Trephination Falls
Sugar Green
The Glen Meadows Reclamation Project
Our Dead Lives
Youngbloods
Things That Glitter
All American Boy
The Stationary Department
The Pot Washer
Avulsion
Devil In A World of Hurt
Variant
Slide to Survival
The Fourth Husband
The Last Fairy Tale
10 Things I Hate About Demons

I’ll be honest. Quite a few of these, if I’m just looking at the title, make me curious. Some more than others but it’s interesting when you strip everything else away what you find. There’s so little information that your mind is forced to fill in a lot of blanks. For that reason, titles without context will work as Rorschach tests to most. You see what you want to see.

“Avulsion” has a strong intensity to it. “Variant” has a mysterious quality that makes me want to know more. “Pariah” is not only mysterious but also hints at a compelling main character. I think you’re seeing a trend here. One-word titles create mystery. And for certain types of genres, mystery is good. You just have to make sure that word is powerful and memorable. It can’t be something like, “iPhone” or “Sheets.”

Some titles that clearly *didn’t* work for me begin with, “The Pot Washer.” Think of the image that puts in the reader’s head. Someone washing pots. Is there any way someone could interpret that as a compelling story? I don’t think so. So find another title.

“Slide to Survival.” The words don’t gel. A slide is something fun. Survival means “save yourself or you die.” Combining them feels like combining peanut butter and mustard.

“Live Fire” is straight-up generic. It doesn’t put any image in my head that even remotely resembles a movie. Which is what you need these titles to do. They can’t just be a combo of words that you like. They must have purpose. That purpose is to convey an image of a movie people would want to see. This does not do that.

“Here Comes Santa Claus” doesn’t have any creativity to it. You’re just taking part of the chorus of a well-known song and repeating it. Good writers find a spin on the title to make it its own.

At first glance, “10 Things I Hate About Demons” is kind of fun. But something’s missing. It took me a second to realize what it was. The ending of a “10 Things I Hate” title works best when the things hated are the opposite of what you’d expect. So if my title was, “10 Things I Hate About Killers,” you’d scratch your head and say, “I already know killers are bad. Why am I coming to you to remind me of that?” But if I titled my script, “10 Things I Hate About Puppy Dogs,” now you’re a little bit curious, as puppy dogs aren’t hated.

Are there any titles here that, if I saw them and nothing else, I would open the script and check out the first page? Maybe, “Violence Is the Way.” The title is a contradiction. So I have to read the script to figure out why we’re doing the opposite of what is right. Irony in a title is one of the few ways you can make a title work all on its own. Comps include True Lies, The Neverending Story, Dead Man Walking, and Wargames.

There’s something about Sugar Green that I like but I can’t put my finger on it. That’s the thing with titles. They can be personal in the way they affect each individual. Sugar isn’t green. So, that right there has me curious. But also it feels like the title of some indie movie I’d want to know more about.

What are some other lessons we can glean from this exercise?

In order to answer that, let’s take a look at 30 more titles. The difference is, these are titles from movies that have actually been made. Now, just because a movie got made does not make a title “better.” In fact, studios are notorious for getting cold feet on risky titles and replacing them with something boilerplate. Still, I expect these movie titles to be better than what we saw with the amateurs.

It Ends With Us
If
The Wild Robot
Longlegs
Migration
Civil War
The Beekeeper
Anyone But You
Challengers
Argylle
Madame Webb
Trap
Speak No Evil
Night Swim
The Boys In The Boat
The Forge
Imaginary
Abigail
Monkey Man
Arthur The King
Poor Things
Blink Twice
The Bikeriders
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Fly Me To The Moon
Unsung Hero
American Fiction
The Iron Claw
The Watchers
Tarot

Of these, several caught my eye right away. “Blink Twice” was at the top of my list. Which is funny because I have no interest in seeing the movie. But the phrase indicates that someone is in trouble (“Blink twice if you’re in danger”) and that can be all you need to get someone to open your script.

“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is an eye-catcher. Typically, the longer the title, the more dangerous. That’s because long titles can start to feel like run-on sentences. Also, the word choice has to be just right. For example, if I wrote a script titled, “The Dogwalker Sleeping In Albuquerque Has Designs On Running The World,” is that a good title? No. It’s a mish-mash of words that have no meaning.

Meanwhile, look at how many short titles we have here in the produced list. 21 of the 30 titles are 2 words or less. That’s the one title tip I’m sure you should take away from today. Go short with your title. UNLESS you have the greatest idea for a long title in history.

“The Iron Claw” is a strong title simply because it’s a strong image. “Civil War” is probably the only title where I would definitely request the script, even if I didn’t know anything else about it. Others agree. A lot of people who never go to indie movies went to this one SPECIFICALLY because of its title. It’s a title that promises conflict at the highest level.

That’s a good lesson: If you can imply conflict in your title, you are likely to get some interest. We see this with one of the earlier titles on the list, “Anyone But You.”

As for bad titles? “Argylle” is the worst title on the list. It tells us nothing. Is it a surprise, then, that nobody saw it? “If” is weak. I guess sometimes a title can be too short. The Forge is weak. The Bikeriders may be the most bland title on the planet. What does that title tell you about the movie? That people are going to ride motorcycles? That lack of specificity is exactly why myself and millions of other potential moviegoers never saw this thing.

Outside of that, most of the titles are solid.

What have we learned today? Not much! Well, a few things. 1) Make your title short. 2) Create irony if possible. 3) Imply conflict if possible.

You guys are always so vocal about titles. I can’t wait to hear your opinions on this.

There is still time left to grab an October Script Consultation Deal!  $100 off the full price + another $50 off if you have a horror or thriller script.  Also, while I don’t yet have a title consultation option (maybe I should – 99 cents per title consult?), I still have a great logline consultation.  Just $25 for me to evaluate your logline.  If you’re interested in the feature deal or any of my consults, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!