Here we go again!

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: Colossal
GENRE: Horror
LOGLINE: A deeply disturbed man, diagnosed with a growth disorder, hunts down the daughter of his childhood bully and must face off against the girl’s protective mother.

TITLE: Red Devils
GENRE: Thriller/Horror
LOGLINE: Two families vacationing on a yacht must survive an attack by jumbo squid while an old secret threatens to turn them against each other.

TITLE: The Turning Season
GENRE: Thriller/Drama/Horror
LOGLINE: A mother grieving the loss of her son becomes obsessed with a runaway boy who turns out to be vampire.

TITLE: Monster Mash
GENRE: R-Rated Comedy/Horror
LOGLINE: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped by a legion of monsters and her sorceress-possessed father, a timid teen must rally his misfit friends and faithful mummy to save his crush before her sacrifice unleashes Armageddon.

Today’s writer shows us how approaching a subject matter from an angle that’s never been done before can make your script instantly interesting.

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: Dark Comedy
Premise: (from writer) A demented 14 year old girl strikes up a weird relationship with a convicted sex offender. Shit gets crazy when they embark on a twisted road trip in a “rape van.”
Why you should read (from the writer): Goodbye Gene has recently been named a semi-finalist in the BlueCat Screenplay Competition. My evaluation from the readers of Scriptshadow said “it wasn’t overwritten, but still incredibly telling.” They also said some kick-ass things about my character development. PS — it’s in the BlueCat Competition as The Repairable Brightness of Gene. Not everybody gets the Milan Kundera reference, which is understandable. So I simplified it.
Writer: Derek Williams
Details: 106 pages

Chloe Moretz for Kiley?

I’d just read American Bullshit and written a review of it for today’s newsletter, so most of my energy had already been sapped. I didn’t have the attention span or the desire to read and review another script. My mind was already swimming with pre-weekend fantasies. That’s what writers forget. Your script may be the second that reader has read that day. Or the third. And if it’s a contest, it could be the fourth or the fifth. Writers need to be reminded that when a reader reads your script, it’s typically not under ideal circumstances. They aren’t recently fed. They aren’t bursting with energy. They probably want to get to their own writing or their own work. And you’re in their way. You and three others.

Now the best of the readers (like me, of course), understand that this is often a reader’s only shot. And you have to respect that by giving them your full attention. But after writing an article and playing tennis and an argument with the neighbor and reading and reviewing another script and putting together a newsletter and it’s 10:15 pm and the ladyfriend’s blasting “Say Yes To The Dress” in the background…I’m sorry but I’m just tired. The only reason I’m reading this script is because I have to review it tomorrow. If I can muster up any interest for the story, it’s going to be a mini-miracle.

And then the main character bites off the head of a hamster in chemistry class and WADDAYA KNOW, I’m WIDE AWAKE again. The power of a shocking first page. Hey, not every story is designed to start with this kind of shock. But good writers know they have to jolt those eternally exhausted readers out of their stupor. So they put something in those first few pages that wake their ass up. Kudos to Derek. I was officially awake now. But was this just a gimmick? What about his actual ability to tell a story? Would he be able to do that?

The girl in question is 14 year old Kiley Waters. To say Kiley is an outcast is a chunderstatement. That’s an understatement that’s so far under, it actually inspires vomit (I told you it was late – just go with it). Kiley bit off the hamster’s head because a) her mom died when she was a kid, b) her rich father isn’t a good daddy, and c) her fucked up friends, Joanna and Lonnie, create “Sickest Shit” contests where they lay bets down on who can do the sickest shit. Newflash, Kiley won this round.

But the Sickest Shit contests are getting boring. Kiley needs a bigger rush. Lately, her and Joanna have been crafting up a new game: try to get molested by a sex offender. Yes, this is really happening. Luckily (unluckily?), Kiley runs into Thomas Jay, a pet groomer who can’t keep a job because sooner or later his employers find out about his sex offender past. Perfect target! But Kiley soon finds out, to her utter dismay, that Thomas isn’t REALLY a sex-offender. He was a senior who had a Freshman girlfriend in high school. They had sex and the state arrested him. So he’s not a slimy “legitimate” pervy. He’s just a really horny senior who doesn’t know you’re not allowed to have sex with freshmen.

Kiley won’t have it though. She needs to get molested! So she keeps tricking Thomas (who wants nothing to do with her btw) into these meetings where she can encourage him to molest her n stuff. For example, she purchases a “rape van” for him as a present. Thomas is repeatedly annoyed but since he’s jobless and bank account-less, he has to take the little monetary scraps Kiley offers him to keep going along with these ventures.

Across town is parole officer Josh Dean. Josh is the world’s worst P.O. If someone raises their voice at him, he starts crying. It’s gotten so bad that he signs up for a Tony Robbins-like Parole Officer Seminar. It’s there where he sees Ferman T Ash speak, the coolest parole officer in the world. Ferman is so cool and confident on the podium that he inspires Josh to do a complete TLC-like makeover. So Josh buys a Dog The Bounty Hunter-type outfit and starts ending all of his sentences with “Bra.” He also renames himself “The Crocodile.”

The Crocodile becomes obsessed with taking down sex offenders. And when he gets wind that Thomas Jay is spending all this time with 14 year old Kiley, he decides to make an example out of him. And the Crocodile doesn’t play by the man’s rules anymore. The Crocodile wants to make Thomas Jay DEAD. Naturally, we believe that poor Thomas Jay, the unwitting recipient of this disturbed girl’s schemes, is going to get wrongly offed by the newly transformed The Crocodile. But there’s one thing I can promise you about Goodbye Gene. Don’t ever think you know what’s going to happen next. You will almost certainly be wrong.

Okay, I know this is a fucked up subject matter. It’s about 14 year old girls trying to get molested. But dammit, this shit was funny. And clever. Derek is a really good writer. You get the sense that this guy could make an adaptation of the Bible funny. I usually hate asides to the reader UNLESS it’s a comedy and funny. Lucky for us, Derek is hilarious. After Josh’s physical and mental transformation are complete, he insanely starts accusing one of his parolees, because he has a Chinese restaurant menu on his windshield, of building an underground sex bunker for Asian delivery boys. When his co-worker tries to calm him down, addressing him as “Josh,” Josh corrects him with, “The Crocodile. I’d appreciate it, if you could make the adjustment, and refer to me as The Crocodile from now on, bra.” Derek then writes:  We’re definitely going to make that adjustment. JOSH DEAN is now THE CROCODILE. And from that point on, his character name in all the dialogue is “THE CROCODILE.” It’s hilarious.

But probably the real reason this script succeeds is that it flips the script, so to speak. By going against audience expectations and having the young girl TRYING to get molested, everything in the story feels fresh. I mean, I’ve seen the indie movie with the pervy old guy trying to nail the young girl. Seen it a hundred times. It’s fascinating, then, how by approaching the same subject matter from the opposite angle, you encounter all these new situations you’ve never seen before. Like our 14 year old character trying to give her sex predator a rape van as a gift. Granted, the humor here is pretty edgy. Some people are going to be REALLY offended by it. But I’ll say this to the end – I’d rather you be edgy with your humor than Jay Leno with your humor.

(Spoilers!) Now I do have some issues with the script, and they revolve around the last 20 pages. First off, the twist where Thomas really was a molester was shocking. It totally got me. But here’s the thing. This is still a comedy. It’s a black comedy. A very dark black comedy. But it’s still a comedy. You can’t have Thomas rape her. You just can’t do it. It takes what was funny and makes it uncomfortable. After that moment, the script completely lost its footing. It “jumped the perv” so to speak.

I actually thought the impending collision between the newly transformed “Crocodile” and Thomas Jay was great. I was really curious what was going to happen. Was the Crocodile going to kill an innocent man? Even if you did go with the twist and had Thomas be a real molester, seeing these two meet in a giant final showdown would’ve been fun. I just feel like that’ll be way more exciting than what happens now, which is basically that Thomas anti-climactically gets caught and anti-climactically gets yelled at by The Crocodile while going to jail. So take out the actual raping. Imply the raping is GOING to happen unless the Crocodile saves Kiley. And then have the big showdown between the two.

Someone on Twitter called this script “unsellable,” and I’d probably agree with them. But man does Derek have a unique voice and a biting sense of humor. And he’s also a really good storyteller. I’d definitely snatch this guy up if I were an agent or manager. The next thing he writes, assuming it’s more marketable, is going to get made. That’s what my gut’s telling me.

Script link: Goodbye Gene

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

What I learned: There’s something from last week that bothered me. After telling Z that the ending for his script, Verona Spies, fell apart, he said, “Yeah, but if I change it, it’ll go against the entire theme I set up.” Here’s how I see it: If you have to write a “lesser” ending to stay consistent with your theme, then change your theme. I just want a good ending. I don’t leave the theater saying, “Man, that ending sucked but dammit if he didn’t nail the theme with it.” A good story should take precedence over any “under the hood” work with your script. I don’t know if that’s the case here or not, but this ending went out with a whimper instead of a roar. So please people, good endings over thematic consistency. Thank you.

So in last week’s newsletter, I sent out 5 amateur comedies to the Scriptshadow community to choose from for an Amateur Friday review. You can see these loglines discussed in the Amateur Offerings post here. The overall consensus was not good. People didn’t like what they saw. And keep in mind, these were the BEST OF the comedy loglines sent in. They weren’t just a random five people. Regardless of that, it got me thinking. What the hell is going on with comedies? The genre, in my opinion, is at an all time low.

Think about it. When was the last time you HAD to go to the movies to see a comedy? Six months ago? A year? I honestly can’t remember myself. And that’s a troubling development. Unlike superhero flicks and action-adventure films, comedies aren’t dependent on the big-screen experience. They can just as easily be enjoyed at home. Which tells me if this trend continues, comedies will follow the same route as dramas and indie movies: straight-to-digital. And as soon as that happens, the price for comedy specs goes way down. Why is that a big deal? Because comedy is the biggest market left for spec writers, one of the few genres left writers can consistently sell a spec script in.

Now I understand discussing comedies is tough. Sense of humor differs wildly from person to person. It’s the only genre where one person can absolutely hate a movie that someone else absolutely loves. I mean, believe it or not, some people actually liked Paul Blart: Mall Cop. This makes discussing the issue tricky. However, even with people’s widely divergent tastes in comedy, I think it’s safe to say that the overall quality of the comedy has gone down. I mean when a comedy like “Jack and Jill” can get made, the genre has to be suffering, right?

Good comedies have always been hard to come by, but in better times, we got at least one bona fide comedy classic a year. By classic I mean movies that you’d want to buy and watch again. So in 1993 we had Groundhog Day, 94 we had Dumb and Dumber, 95 we had Get Shorty, 96 we had Happy Gilmore (or “Scream” if you want to count that as a comedy), 97 we had Liar Liar, 98 There’s Something About Marry, 99 American Pie, and in 2000, Meet The Parents. I mean that’s a pretty good run. I haven’t seen anything approaching that run in the past decade.

Of course, maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I don’t like the same things the kids these days like. Maybe the comedies coming out now ARE classics, and I’m just not hip to the new haha. Well, let’s go to the books, shall we? Below are the top 5 box office comedies in each of the last 5 years. You’ll notice that 2012 was the lowest ranking box office year for comedies of the five by over 100 million dollars. But that’s not what I want you to focus on. Focus on the movies themselves. Are these really the best Hollywood can do?

2012
Ted – $218 million
21 Jump Street – $138 million
The Campaign – $86 million
This is 40 – $67 million
Pitch Perfect – $65 million

2011
The Hangover Part 2 – $254 million
Bridesmaids – $169 million
Horrible Bosses – $117 million
Bad Teacher – $100 million
Crazy Stupid Love – $84 million

2010
Grown Ups – $162 million
Little Fockers – $148 million
The Other Guys – $119 million
Jackass 3-D – $117 million
Due Date – $100 million

2009
The Hangover – $277 million
Night At The Museum, Battle of The Smithsonian – $177 million
Paul Blart: Mall Cop – $146 million
Couples Retreat – $109 million
Zombieland – $75 million

2008
Hancock – $227 million
Get Smart – $130 million
Tropic Thunder – $110 million
Step Brothers – $100 million
You Don’t Mess With The Zohan – $100 million

Now there are some okay titles in this list. But I’m pretty sure the only comedy the majority of us would agree is a bona fide classic is The Hangover. I mean, we had one year off this list where the top two movies were, gasp, Grown-Ups and Little Fockers!!! The combined Rotten Tomato scores for these two films was 19%. No, I didn’t forget one of the percentages. One was 9 percent. The other was 10!! Jackass 3-D was the fourth biggest comedy of that year. A bunch of guys looking for inventive ways to land on their balls. The Other Guys was the only semi-legitimate comedy that year, and the plot for that film was unintelligible.

Which leads me to my big problem with today’s comedies. Nobody pays attention to story anymore. Instead, the trend is bit-comedy – little individual bursts of comedy that have little to no connection to one another. The rallying cry seems to be, “If it’s funny, include it, no matter what.” Miss Scriptshadow calls them “Youtube-able Moments” – bits that would play well in one or two minutes on Youtube (the “white trash name guessing” scene in “Ted” for example), but don’t have any story value.

Seth McFarlene has been leading the charge for this kind of comedy in the TV world. If you look at cartoons like The Simpsons and South Park – they put a lot of effort into building a story that the comedy can emerge from. Family Guy is the opposite. Nothing is connected. There’s no story to speak of. It’s just random bits of comedy that are born out of whatever the writer thinks is funny at the moment.

Now because a TV show is only 22 minutes long, this lack of coherence can work. But on an entire film? Outside of the Naked Gun and Scary Movie franchises, we haven’t seen it seep into “narrative” features much. But now we have Seth McFarlane’s “Ted,” which is about as “Youtubable Moment”-centric as it gets. And people came out in droves. It finished with 218 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was the biggest comedy of the year.

Now I’m assuming I speak for everyone when I say that Ted isn’t a classic. Or at least I hope I do. So what does its anointment mean? Does it mean that this is what audiences want now? Or does it mean that the comedy scene has gotten so terrible that this is what we’re left with?

Call me old fashioned, but here’s what I believe is going on. The wrong people are dictating the comedy scene, people who put the emphasis on the wrong things. It’s not that these people aren’t funny. Some of them are. But nobody’s taught them the value of story, and how if you pull an audience in emotionally, if you build a strong narrative with something at stake where the characters are charismatic and likable and interesting, then everything about the story becomes much better, including the humor.

A good story is like a spell. It makes you forget everything else around you. It pulls you in and makes you believe in its make-believe world. Once you do that, you can manipulate any emotion you want out of an audience, with humor being no different than fear or sadness or anger. What I’m trying to say is that a movie like Ted could’ve had everything it has now but a lot more. It could’ve been twice as captivating, twice as funny, and made even more money.

What kills me, though, is that this new comedy approach has begun to trickle down to the spec-writing community. New comedy writers are coming onto the scene and believing this is how they need to write comedies, without a strong story or strong direction. This has resulted in an overall “lowering of the bar” and now the best of these patchwork comedy specs are bought at prices ¼ of what comedies used to go for. The buyers need to buy something, but pay small amounts because…well because the comedies aren’t very good anymore. I’m trying to think of the last big comedy spec sale in Hollywood and I can’t. Can you?? Maybe El Tigre (about a middle class man who gets mistaken for a Mexican drug cartel leader). And that was horrible.

There’s actually good news to come out of all of this. The laughably low quality in the comedy genre for both scripts and movies opens the door for someone with a good comedy idea who can actually execute a story to cash in. Basically, you need 3 things. You need a marketable concept. You need strong funny characters. And you need a story that stays strong all the way through. Instead of trying to come up with funny scenes and building a story around that, come up with a funny story and let the comedy emerge organically from it. Also ask yourself, would your story still be interesting without the comedy? Would the audience still care? Would they still want to know what happens next? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you’re on the right track. I, for one, am wishing you luck. Because I’d love to start laughing again when I go to the movies.

Every day writers give up on their dreams. What can The Imperfectionist teach us about minimizing that possibility?

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: (my best interpretation of it) A loser husband lies to his adoring mother, telling her he sold a manuscript. When the lie spreads beyond the family, he plays along, not realizing the devastating effects it will have on himself and his daughter.
About: This script finished with 5 votes on the 2006 Black List. The writer, Craig Hoetger, was never able to parlay the achievement into anything bigger, and has since moved on to another profession.
Writer: Craig Hoetger
Details: 120 pages

Seth Rogen for Dan?

So there I was, trying to do a good thing – trying to dig into these spec scripts of the past and find another forgotten gem. I didn’t know anything about this one other than that it was on the 2006 Black List, ranked fairly low (implying not many people had read it), and so it sounded like the perfect script to take a chance on.

And then I started reading it. And 30 pages in, I started regretting my decision. Why? Well, for starters, nothing was happening! And the things that WERE happening weren’t making a lot of sense. But I dutifully read on. Where others would’ve given up, I kept going, determined to make it to the end. And the script actually did start to develop a plot, but it was too late. By that point, I’d already given up.

However, it wasn’t until I started doing research on the writer that I perked up and realized there was a lesson to be learned in all of this. It turned out that our scribe, Craig Hoetger, had given up on his screenwriting career, moved back east, and become a lawyer. He’d spent 10 years pursuing his dream before quitting. And all I could think was, if he’d had the right education, he could’ve made it. And how there are thousands of writers just like him. Talented, but for one reason or another, not getting the proper instruction on how to write a screenplay. These writers were quitting every day. Believing they didn’t have the goods and moving on. I want to talk about that in a moment, but first a quick breakdown on the imperfect Imperfectionist…

Daniel Merton was a childhood genius. He could spell his name with alphabet soup letters when he was two. His older brother, Kyle, was the opposite. A baboon in human skin, he’d be lucky to spell his name after graduating high school. As a result, Dan was tabbed the golden child by their mom, Cookie, who saw to it that he always got the best education, the best opportunities in life. He eventually graduated law school, living up to his promise.

Except that was ten years ago. Dan is now married to the monstrous nagging wicked bitch of the west, Cat. His only achievement in life is his adorable little eight year old daughter, Sophie. These days, Dan is anything but a prodigy. He loses every job he gets within a year. He doesn’t have any drive. He can’t even succeed at the simplest of tasks – like re-organizing his books (books he never finished reading, by the way). In short, Dan has turned into a loser.

And when he gets canned from his latest job, his wife has had enough. She leaves him and Sophie. Dan is so broke that he can’t pay the bills anymore, so having no other options, he takes his daughter and heads back to his mother’s house in Michigan. Cookie is more than happy to see the prodigal son return, but Kyle, his brother, isn’t. Kyle, of course, is still living at home.

Fearful that his mother will find out he’s a failure, Dan comes up with a story that he’s sold a manuscript for a cool $100,000. His mother is so psyched, she starts telling all her friends, who in turn tell their friends. While at a local town rally the next day, Dan’s achievement is announced to the entire crowd, and Dan finds himself being shuttled up to the microphone. He sees so many expectant eyes that he expands on his lie, telling everyone that not only did he sell the novel, but it’s going to be the next book on Oprah’s Book Club!

While this helps him achieve momentary celebrity status, Dan must explain to his confused daughter why it is he’s lying to everyone. She knows the truth, that Dan has written a total of 2 chapters of his “novel” in 4 years. Whatever the case, it doesn’t take long for the town to catch up with him and his lie to be exposed. Which leaves Dan at his lowest point of all. Will he find a way out? Will he resolve his issues with his wife, brother, and daughter? He’ll have to if he has any chance of salvaging what’s become one pitiful life.

The Imperfectionist has a lot of problems. Starting with the most obvious. It takes WAY TOO FREAKING LONG TO GET TO THE PLOT. A common beginner mistake. Now I’m assuming this script is about a guy who tells his town that he sold a book and then dealing with the aftermath of the lie. Here’s the thing though – we don’t get to that lie until AFTER PAGE 60! That means the plot of this movie isn’t introduced until half-way through the script!

Before that, I had no idea what The Imperfectionist was about (I didn’t have the benefit of a logline). The first act contained another common beginner error – the constant repeating of information we already knew. Dan gets fired. Dan’s wife tells him he’s a loser. We’re told Dan’s lost other jobs. Dan doesn’t pay his bills. Dan chooses porn over paying his bills. In other words, Dan is a LOSER. But we didn’t need 12 scenes to tell us that. We understood it after the first scene. No wonder we don’t get to the plot until the midpoint – we’ve spent the entire first act telling us over and over again that Dan is a loser!

There are a lot of other problems here (How Dan went from a super-genius to a super-loser is never clearly explained, leaving us baffled and confused for most of the story) but that’s not the point. The point is, Hoetger is like a lot of screenwriters. Guys come to Hollywood every day hoping to become screenwriters. Some spend a year or two here while others spend an entire decade (or more!). A lot of them don’t make it. And a huge reason for that is that they’re never told how to write a fucking screenplay!

I mean, these are basic problems in this script. You don’t need 12 scenes to tell us who your freaking protagonist is. A good writer needs 1. You don’t introduce your plot on page 60. You do it as soon as possible. Dan should’ve been fired by his boss by page 5, headed back to his hometown by page 10, and lied to his mom about the book by page 25. This is basic screenwriting 101 here. Get to your story as soon as possible! For whatever reason, tons of wannabe screenwriters don’t seek out the widely available number of books (or websites, or professional screenplays, or teachers) that explain how to do this stuff.

And in Craig’s situation, it was even worse! The Imperfectionist made the Black List (for what I’m assuming were a few clever moments sprinkled throughout) which told Craig that that was the proper way to write a script. You don’t need to move your story along quickly. You don’t need to get to the point quickly. So he continued writing screenplays for another five years believing that that was the correct way to write. No wonder he never found success. Had he gotten professional feedback or read a hundred scripts or a half-dozen screenwriting books, he would’ve realized that these were major mistakes that needed to be corrected, regardless of what his cheerleading agents were telling him.

I say this because I can tell, under the right guidance, Craig could have forged a career in this business. The writing here is pretty good. It’s just that there are some giant structural issues and inconsistencies in the way the characters were portrayed. Those things could’ve been fixed with the right feedback. It just terrifies me that there are all these aspiring writers out there like Craig who don’t know to study the craft and who are subsequently making basic correctable mistakes over and over again in all their screenplays, and who will therefore have to abort their dreams at some point. Study, people. Learn. Get feedback. Read scripts. Take classes. Know how to tell a story. By doing so, you give yourself the best chance at success in this business.

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

What I learned: This is the third script I read this week where the writer kept repeating the same information over and over again about his main character in the first act. If you do it right, all you need is one scene to establish your hero, then you get on with your story.

You may remember Trainspotting as one of those 90s movies that was changing the guard in Hollywood. Writer-directors Tarantino and Rodriquez were rewriting the rules on how stories should be told. Screenwriters like Shane Black were changing the way screenplays were written. And then this British heroin-addict flick came along and landed perfectly within that counter-Hollywood culture that many assumed would change the way films were made forever. Well, that change both happened and didn’t happen. There’s definitely more of a “do-it-yourself” attitude in today’s filmmaking community. But that brash no-holds-barred way of writing and shooting died off with the folding of most of the indie companies. It just wasn’t as easy to find money outside of the studio system anymore. So everyone started playing it safe again, and we really haven’t had a Pulp Fiction or Trainspotting for a long time. Frowney face. Based on the novel by Irving Welsh, adapted for the screen by John Hodge, and directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later), Trainspotting was nominated for a screenwriting Academy Award in 1996. It’s also ranked 10th by the British Film Institute in its list of the top 100 British films of all time. It just so happens that Hodge and Boyle have reteamed for the new James Mcavoy flick, Trance, which comes out soon. There have been persistent rumors that a sequel to Trainspotting will be made, with Boyle leading the charge, but Ewan McGregor has stated he wants to protect his character, and therefore doesn’t want to make an inferior second film.

1) When you have a lot of characters to set up, create a situation/scene that allows you to show us their differences – Here we have Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy and Renton. Instead of giving them each their own individual scenes to set them up, which would’ve taken forever, Hodge throws them all into a soccer (football) game. We see Sick Boy commit a sneaky foul and deny it. Begbie commits an obvious foul and makes no effort to deny it. Spud, the goalie, lets the ball go between his legs. Tommy kicks the ball as hard as he can. This game allows each of the characters an individual action that tells us exactly what kind of character they are.

2) Voice over tends to work better when the pace is fast – When the story’s slow, it draws attention to the voice over, which in turn sounds preachy, as if it’s trying to carry a boring story. Trainspotting has one of the best voice overs in history (“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.”). And a big reason it works is because the story’s moving fast (we open on our characters running from the cops). It’s not that you can’t use voice over with slow material. It just seems to fit better when the pace is quick.

3) Write a story that’s opposite in pace and tone from the subject matter – One of the cool things about Trainspotting is that it’s about one of the most depressing subject matters out there – heroin addiction – and yet the story is fast and fun a lot of the time. This contrast in expected pace and actual pace gives the story an unpredictable exciting feel. I mean imagine if Trainspotting would’ve been slow-paced and focused on all the depressing moments related to heroin addiction. It probably would’ve sucked, right?

4) CONFLICT ALERT – Remember, movies do not work without conflict. You need to mine it wherever you can. Conflict between characters is a given, but not always a necessity IF you have a strong inner conflict with one of your main characters. Here, it’s addiction. That’s what Renton (Ewan McGregor) is fighting. That’s his battle throughout the movie. Without it, this movie doesn’t work.

5) Once again, use voice over to help a story in need – We saw this with Fight Club, but here it’s even more evident. The more you shun structure, the more you need voice over. The opening of this movie is guys trying to steal items to sell so they can buy dope. Then a sequence where they come off heroin. Then they try to get a job. Then they’re all hanging out, going to bars. Then they’re back on dope. 30 pages in and no story (no goal) has emerged. But it all flows pretty seamlessly because Renton’s voice over is guiding us along. Use voice-over to patch up a patchy story.

6) Talky friend movies need a theme or a unifying element – In these types of movies that don’t have much of a plot and are basically a bunch of friends hanging out, you need a unifying element – something the story can keep coming back to. Failure to do so leaves you with a bunch of friends talking, and those scripts are both boring and concept-less. The way to make these movies work is to add that BIG unifying element. Fight Club had fighting. Trainspotting has heroin (or addiction). It turns a situation that really isn’t about anything and makes it about something.

7) Give your characters personalities – I think one of the problems with writers is they’re so focused on creating character backstory, character flaws, and character relationships, that they forget to give their characters an actual personality. You technically have an “interesting” character, and yet the reader thinks all your characters are boring. So after you’ve added those elements, simply ask yourself if your character has a personality. Are they someone who people would find interesting in real life? Take Sick Boy, for example. He can’t stop talking about those damn Bond films. His obsession with them is a dominant personality trait that helps define him. A personality is what ensures your characters will be memorable.

8) In non-traditional storylines (stories without goals), try to give your characters problems – While your story won’t have the same drive as a goal-fueled story, a strong character problem will ensure that the reader will want to keep reading. Take Renton, for example. He has sex with a girl and it turns out she’s 14. She then threatens to tell the police if he doesn’t continue seeing her. The less structured your storylines are, the more in need they are of problems for your characters.

9) If you’re going to do dream sequences, make sure they’re motivated – There’s nothing more amateur than a trippy dream sequence slapped into a script. They’re often weird, random and pointless. One way to write a dream sequence that actually works is to make sure it’s motivated. That way, it’s no longer pointless. A great example of this is towards the middle of Trainspotting when Renton is coming down off his addiction. He’s locked in his childhood bedroom and has an intense dream that includes babies on the ceiling and his doctor as a cheesy game show host. The dream sequence works because it’s motivated. The character would obviously have these delusions when coming down off his addiction.

10) For better dialogue, look for a playful alternative to a predictable conversation – After a court appearance where he agrees to rehabilitation, Renton heads to his dealer’s apartment. Now this conversation could’ve gone like this: “Give me the hit of all hits.” “That’s going to cost you.” “I don’t care. I need it.” Borrrr-ing. Instead, we get this, RENTON: What’s on the menu this evening?” SWANNEY (DEALER): “Your favourite dish.” “Excellent.” “Your usual table, sir?” “Why, thank you.” “And would sir care to settle his bill in advance?” “Stick it on my tab.” “Regret to inform, sir, that your credit limit was reached and breached a long time ago.” “In that case –“ He produces twenty pounds. “Oh, hard currency, why, sir, that’ll do nicely.” Renton prepares. SWANNEY: “Would sir care for a starter? Some garlic bread perhaps?” “No, thank you. I’ll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.” Way more fun of a scene, right?