A spec screenplay with no Black List play makes a strong late-year debut and asks the screenwriting community, “How could you miss me?”

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A top secret deep space crew comes upon a strange deserted futuristic ship. After boarding, key members of the crew start experiencing time loops.
About: Echo Station was recently shot in Australia with Daybreakers directors Michael and Peter Spierig at the helm. Half of the writing team, Patrick Aison, recently sold Black List spec “Wunderkind” to JJ Abrams’ “Bad Robot.”
Writers: Patrick Aison & Brad Kean

Uhhh, how in the world did this not make the Black List??

Everyone but two people have told me it’s awesome. I was a little skeptical because people have called it “the next Source Code” and I’ve read several “next Source Codes” and they’ve all been full of programming glitches. But holy shit, Echo Station comes close! I thought the time loop device was dunzos after it reached Gangnam style use in the screenwriting community, but these guys figured out a way to make it fresh.

What shocked me most was how lost I got in “Echo.” I know I say that every time I read something good, but it still surprises me. In 95% of the scripts I open, I’m already thinking about the writing by page 2. I’m considering the writer’s choices or annoyed by how hard the prose is trying or upset by a weak character introduction. When somebody’s able to grab you and pull you into their story so you’re not thinking about any of those things – that’s a hell of an achievement. Even doubly so today due to the “This won’t be as good as Source Code” chip on my shoulder.

The plot here is really cool. It’s the near future and we’re in a space station far away from earth because they’re doing top secret dangerous experiments. The military has just sent up Air Force Colonel John Cole to take a look at the place and make sure everyone’s doing the jobs they’re supposed to do. The crew is wary of the corporate invasion and therefore don’t take kindly to Cole’s visit.

The key players on the 7 person crew besides Cole are Viktor “Stas” Stanislas and Natalie Rouvier. Stas is technically still married to Natalie but things clearly aren’t cooking at home anymore. And it doesn’t help that the strapping Cole immediately makes a connection with her. If you’re guessing that’s going to play into the story later, you’re guessing right.

“Later” doesn’t take long, as almost immediately after Cole docks, the crew is shocked to spot a sleek deserted futuristic ship called the “Amaranth” gliding past their station. Naturally curious, the seven of them jump in the shuttle and chase after the thing, docking soon after. After some initial analysis, it’s clear that the ship is decades ahead of any technology they’ve ever seen. Which is spooky in itself, but spookier in that there’s no one onboard.

A few hours after poking around, a surprise meteor storm hits the ship and the thing is ripped apart. But as everyone’s dying a horrifying fiery space-vacuumed death, a flash of light comes and Cole finds himself back in the compression chamber of the ship right before boarding. He’s looped back.

Naturally, he doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, but when he tries to tell the crew, they all think he’s nuts. Until, of course, the meteor shower hits again. And kills everyone again. And Cole loops back again. Cole quickly realizes that if he doesn’t figure something out, he’s going to be looped inside this ship forever. But that’s not the only thing he has to worry about.

After a dozen loops, Stas approaches him. Stas has been looping too. For a good three weeks. Which you’d think would be good news because now Cole has someone to brainstorm with. But Stas seems to look at this looping a little differently than Cole. He humiliates people, beats people up, tricks them, hurts them, all under the guise that they’re going to be looped back anyway so who cares? Stas has one simple rule for Cole. You can go do whatever you want, but stay away from Natalie.

But after awhile, Natalie becomes aware of the loops too, and her and Cole start scheming to figure out what Stas is up to. What they find is beyond disturbing. Stas has been looping for much longer than he’s let on. And video from those loops shows that he’s done everything imaginable to every member of this crew, including killing them hundreds of times. Stas has made Echo Station his own personal playground. If they don’t figure out a way to stop the looping and get out of this, they could be stuck in Stas’ hell forever.

I think the scripts I like best are the ones with an intriguing mystery at their core and a strong goal. Because, to me, those are two of the strongest story engines you can arm your script with. With these time-looping stories, it’s all about “Why is this happening?” That’s an intriguing mystery I want solved. My problem with this device, typically, is that the answer to that mystery is never satisfying. Here it was not only a great revelation, but it actually made sense!

(Spoiler) The reason the ship is looping is because it has a defense mechanism so that it can never be destroyed. If it encounters anything that disables it beyond repair, it jumps back in time to before it happened, theoretically allowing the crew to avoid the problem before it happens. That made total sense to me and I can’t tell you how important that is. Most writers will write In the cool mystery and figure that’s enough. “Oh, it doesn’t really matter WHY it’s happening,” they’ll convince themselves. “As long as it’s cool, who cares?” Err, no. When your script is more than a jumble of ideas, when it actually follows real-world logic and there are solid REASONS/MOTIVATIONS for things happening, everything about your story solidifies, because the reader TRUSTS you. They know you didn’t just throw this together on a Saturday night. This is a story with some real thought and effort put into it. And those are always the best scripts.

And the goal here is strong too, of course. Get out of the loop! That’s the thing with goals. The best ones are usually simple and obvious. It’s when we’re NOT sure what the goal is that we lose interest in the story.

If the script has a fault, it may be Stas. Don’t get me wrong. I thought he was a wonderful villain. But the more I thought about his motivation, the more I questioned it. He was okay with living this same loop over and over again so that he could be God, despite having to spend it inside a confined ship within a 4 hour time frame? I’m assuming you’d get bored with that after awhile.

Still, he was one fun little bastard. I both loved and was horrified by the videos showing Stas provoking crew members in early loops, then using subsequent loops to learn how they fought and anticipate their attacks in order to defeat them effortlessly later on. It really made the end a blast because you were genuinely terrified of this guy. You knew there was no way he could be defeated because he literally knew everything you’d do before you did it.

I would’ve liked to have known a little more about a few loose ends though. A cool revelation was when they find a picture of Stas, 20 years older, as one of the original crew members on the ship. This had my mind racing throughout as I tried to figure out what that meant, but I’m not sure it was ever explained. Also, how did this ship get here in the first place? It appears to be from the future. But that’s all that’s known. And yet, a part of me kinda liked it. It gave the script life after it was over, as it still has me wondering what it was all about. I guess that’s what happens when you read a great script. You even like its faults.

This is easily one of the best scripts of the year. I guess it just didn’t get the exposure it needed in order to make The Black List. Which reminds me, have you guys read anything good on the list yet? A few people have e-mailed me to say that “Devil’s At Play” is awesome. 

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

What I learned: Take a popular device/story type/character type and EVOLVE it. If all you’re doing is giving us the same device we’ve seen in other scripts, you’re going to look like last guy on the block to own a Mini Cooper. Especially if you’re integrating a recent trend, like time-looping. Echo Station evolves time looping by having MULTIPLE CHARACTERS LOOP. This adds all sorts of character and plot possibilities we hadn’t seen before. People are hiding loops from each other. People are using their looping experience against one another. It just made the device feel fresh. You should always try and evolve the type of story you’re telling in some way so that it’s different from from came before it.

UPDATE: There are still countries where the discount hasn’t updated yet, so I’m going to keep the $4.99 special going on for one more day (Wednesday).  Take advantage!

The book with more screenwriting tips than you’ll know what to do with is just $4.99 through Christmas Day.  Snatch it while you can.  And Merry Christmas!  (non U.S. Amazon territories will see the discount show up within 24-48 hours).

Lincoln’s screenplay reverses the adage of “show don’t tell,” leaving us a show that doesn’t tell us much at all.

Genre: Historical
Premise: (from IMDB) As the Civil War continues to rage, America’s president struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield and as he fights with many inside his own cabinet on the decision to emancipate the slaves.
About: Lincoln was written by Tony Kushner, whose play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” earned him a Pulitzer Prize. His last feature credit before this was 2005’s “Munich.”
Writer: Tony Kushner (based in part on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin)
Details: Dec 20th, 2011 draft (shooting script)

I don’t want to offend any Lincoln lovers here. I assume this movie is kind of like their baby.  There’s none of that ridiculous goosed-up Hollywood bullshit with splosions or vampires or anything else that might be mistaken for “entertainment.” Entertainment is not the name of the game when Spielberg does serious. One need only watch the trailer to see that. Period Piece men in wigs talking in rooms about things like Amendments and Bills for two hours. THAT’S what you’re getting here. Again, if I’m a Lincoln-era history buff, this is nirvana. But if I’m a moviegoer? This sounds like hell. I shall now put on my script-pray boots and hope that I’m wrong.

It’s January 1865. Two months have passed since Lincoln’s re-election. The American Civil War is in its 4th year. This is actually one of the few things the script did well – let us know where we were in history. This is critical when you’re writing a period piece because the mood of the world (or a nation) in one era can be completely different from the mood in another. The overall tone is going to be different if we’re following, say, Rome at its peak, than if we we’re following Europe after the Black Plague. So it’s a smart move to start your story by putting everything into context for us.

Lincoln starts with a scene that’s pretty indicative of the entire screenplay. CHARACTERS TALKING. Two black soldiers are chatting with Lincoln about the war. They’re noting how white soldiers have better guns and provisions than them.  Lincoln looks sort of troubled by this.  So we use our crucial opening scene to establish that Lincoln wants to help black soldiers. Wow, profound stuff here. Talk about beginning your movie with a bang.

Lincoln then heads back to chat with his wife (more characters talking in rooms) who expresses disappointment that he’s so set on passing the 13th Amendment. Now I may have this wrong (again, you have to realize how dense this script was) but the central conflict of the story seems to be that Lincoln has already freed the slaves during the war.  However, he’s afraid that once the war is over, the democrats are going to say he abused his war powers and therefore reverse the ruling. For this reason, Lincoln wants to make it official, and he feels he’ll have an easier time if he can get the amendment passed now as opposed to after the war.

As it stands, all the republicans in the house are going to vote for the Amendment. But with the democrats outweighing the republicans in the House, Lincoln’s still going to need over a dozen democrat votes to pass the bill. Getting democrats to vote for the 13th isn’t going to be easy, with most of them fearful of the repercussions of going against their party. So Lincoln starts telling his Cabinet to offer the democrats jobs to convert them. I’m not kidding you. This is the rollicking story we get. Men in rooms trying to convince other men in rooms to vote their way by bribing them with jobs.

There are some semi-relevant things going on in the war (which we never see – why would we? That might be interesting!) but none of it was very clear or compelling. Or maybe it was clear and I just didn’t find it compelling. I’m trying to give the script the benefit of the doubt and hope that I missed something because I’d hate to think that this is all that’s going on here – 70 scenes of lobbying. The script even ends with a huge 20 minute sequence where we watch almost every single person in the house say “yay” or “nay” to the bill. Good lord, someone shoot me now.

Look, I’m not downplaying the importance of Lincoln’s achievements. But there are so many ways to dramatize events like these so that they’re actually entertaining and this script didn’t do any of them. Its slow redundant action-less narrative felt like it was daring you to hate it, as if by doing so, you weren’t  appreciating one of the most important moments in American history.   I’m not saying it had to be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I’m saying give us SOMETHING compelling to watch.  A central battle that would have immense implications on the bill.  Anything other than men talking. And talking. And talking!

There’s an old screenwriting saying that goes, “Show, don’t tell,” and everything about this script did the opposite. It’s ALL telling and NO showing. Every scene is important men wearing silly wigs having boring conversations in small rooms. Everyone’s telling everyone else what to do and why to do it and what they feel. There’s very little subtext here. You have the “good” guys on this side and the “bad” guys on that side and that’s that. And the monologues. Oh God, the monologues. There were a million of them. I had monologue-fatique by page 60.

Lincoln even relies heavily on the dreaded “dual-line dialogue.” This is a signature of a screenwriter who’s a) just starting or b) doesn’t write many screenplays. Because the longer a screenwriter’s around, the more he/she realizes how incredibly unpleasant dual-line dialogue is to read. And that goes double for a script like this, which is already struggling to keep our attention. You’re telling me that I not only have to read ONE endless chunk of dense exposition theme-laden dialogue, but TWO? And I don’t get any further down the page by doing so??

The funny thing is, the script does follow the GSU model pretty closely. You have the goal (get the 13th Amendment passed), the stakes (if you fail, slavery might be reinstated), and urgency (they had to do it by the end of the war, which was coming up soon). But what was different about this goal than say, the goal in Zero Dark 30, was that THE REASON for killing Bin Laden was so damn clear. Here, the goal’s a little vague. Lincoln has already freed the slaves. Now he thinks MAYBE that MIGHT be overturned when the war is over? But he’s not sure?  So he’s going to double down? It just all seemed a bit uncertain to me and if the goal isn’t imperative, if it isn’t 100% necessary, the sakes suffer, and so does the audience’s interest.  And then of course there was the issue of 70 straight scenes with characters in rooms talking.  That didn’t do Lincoln any favors.

If there’s one good thing to say here it’s that Kusher’s script got Daniel Day-Lewis on board. I think writers forget how important this is. Getting the star you want (or the actor who’s going to make your project a go) is one of the hardest things to do in show-business and that’s because the best actors have the best material, which means the competition is fierce. That’s actually what happened here. Spielberg wrote a draft of Lincoln that Day-Lewis turned down! So it’s a major achievement to write the draft that the big actor says yes to. But whatever Day-Lewis saw in this part didn’t transfer to the rest of the story. Again, history geeks are going to have orgasms over this. But people who like watching good movies are not. Tony Kushner seems to be an incredibly accomplished and talented man. But I don’t think screenwriting is the best venue for his talents.

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

What I Learned: Monologues are a toughie. Story-wise, they’re script killers, because they often slow the script down to a crawl. However, actors LOVE monologues. And that has to be factored in. So here’s how I would play it if I were you. If you’re writing to get your foot in the door, don’t have more than two monologues in your script. Producers want fast scripts and two monologues is usually the maximum you can get away with (this number, however,  will vary depending on the particular story and the writer’s ability to write dialogue.  Tarantino or Woody Allen, for example, can get a way with a lot more monologues than, say, David Guggenheim). Now if you’re getting your script to a big ACTOR, you can add another monologue or two for that character. This actually happens a lot. When a producer/writer team are about to send a script to a big actor, they do a pass beefing up the part to make it more interesting. I have no idea why Daniel Day-Lewis turned down Spielberg’s draft but accepted Kushner’s, but I have a sneaking suspicion all those monologues played a part.

UPDATE: First off, thank you to everyone who applied for free notes!  Sometimes, when I’m doing this, I forget that these are all real people with real lives struggling to do this thing that they love.  That happens because it’s the internet and I see all these names but never any faces.  Hearing your stories sort of helps put a face to those names.  And it reminds me I have a duty to do as much as I can to help you guys, which makes moments like these a little harder.  I wish I could read everybody’s script but I just don’t have the time.  Which means, despite all of your wonderful e-mails, I can only pick one.  And I’ve decided to pick…

BEN PICKLES’ SCRIPT!

Ben’s been a fairly regular contributor in the comments section but the reason I picked him is because he seems to have a unique way of seeing things.  As a reader, you’re always looking for writers who have a unique take on the world, and a unique way of conveying that take.  Ben feels like he could potentially be that writer.  His script is titled, “Of Glass And Golden Clockwork” and the logline is: “On the eve of the Third World War, a conflicted young soldier goes AWOL to pursue one final lead towards his father’s mysterious murder.”  I’ll let you know when I finish the notes and post them in the Script Notes section. :)

ORIGINAL POST BELOW:

For Christmas I’m offering one Scriptshadow reader a free five page consult on their script (script notes).  The only catch is that I might use the notes as my “sample” on the Script Notes page.  If you’re okay with that, all you have to do is write down in the comments section why I should give you the notes.  You can make me laugh, make me cry, make me confused.  It’s up to you.  And if you’re not keen on blasting out personal reasons for reading your script, e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com and in the subject line put: “FREE NOTES” and make your case there.  I’ll read everything and post the “winner” on Wednesday morning.  Merry Christmas everybody! :)

The controversy over this film is at Mach 5. But Scriptshadow doesn’t care about any of that nonsense. I just want to know if it’s a good screenplay!

Genre: War/Action/Drama
Premise: A CIA agent who experiences countless failures in her search to find Bin Laden, finally becomes convinced she knows where he is. With her superiors doubtful, she must put everything on the line to finally take down the most wanted man in the world.
About: This Oscar-contender has been catching some flak lately as, according to the CIA, it doesn’t accurately depict how they found Bin Laden (something about how the CIA doesn’t use torture). The film is written and directed by the same team that made the Oscar best-picture winner The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal.
Writer: Mark Boal
Note: I watched this as a film but am critiquing its screenwriting elements.

If I’m being completely honest (and why wouldn’t I be), I kind of wanted to hate this movie. Let me tell you why, as I feel quite justified in my pre-hatred. Zero Dark 30 is one of those movies that tells you it’s an Oscar winner before you’ve even seen it. And I don’t like when marketers tell me what to think of a movie. I like to decide things for myself. But hey, that’s the name of the game, right? If you don’t have a big hook or a big actor, something to market your movie around, the only way to make money is to convince everyone your movie is award-worthy. So I get that. But what bothered me was that Zero Dark 30 started promoting itself as an Oscar winner before they even shot the thing! Aren’t we getting a bit presumptuous here? Is this what Oscar jockeying has become? We’re now promoting our movies as Oscar-winners before anyone turns on the camera? Ick. I’m not a fan.

The opening scene didn’t do much to quell my animosity. We watch on uncomfortably as CIA agents torture a Middle Eastern man via water-boarding. Ugh, they’re now stooping to this level? Throwing in a controversial topical torture technique that dominated the press for a year? They might as well have shot the scene on the Oscar stage. By the way, I have to get this off my chest. I’m sure experiencing water-boarding is really terrible. But it sure doesn’t LOOK terrible. You’re basically pouring water on a guy’s face. I can think of 10,000 torture techniques that look a hell of a lot worse than that, so whenever I see someone water-boarded in a film, it doesn’t have any effect on me.

Whoa whoa whoa. What’s with the grump stump Carsonigin? It’s Christmas Eve! You’re supposed to be jolly n stuff! You’re supposed to be caroling or baking cookies for Santa that somehow disappear before they’re ever put over the chimney.

Okay, fair enough. The truth is, Zero Dark 30 is a good movie. In fact, it WILL probably win the Oscar. Mostly because it’s one of those movies people feel like they’re supposed to vote for. But also because it has the best third act of any film this year. And as I like to say, if you give them a great ending, it can make up for a lot of problems earlier in the screenplay. And there were some problems here. Let’s explore what they are after the synopsis.

Zero Dark 30’s main character is a young innocent-looking fair-skinned CIA agent named Maya. Maya’s recently been assigned to the Middle East to help interrogate those who had ties to 9/11. She gets a wake-up call when she realizes these men are being tortured for their information. But instead of cowering in the corner like a little girl, she puts her big girls’ shoes on and tells the terrorists they better get with the program and start spitting out names because that’s the only way they’re getting their lives back. Yes, Maya is a hardass.

Maya’s research eventually leads her to a courier who she believes might have ties to Bin Laden. Unfortunately, nailing down this courier is next to impossible. He never uses the same routes twice. His cell phone use is erratic at best. And no matter how hard the U.S. tries, they can’t seem to figure out the naming system here in the Middle East. Whenever they think they’ve got someone, it turns out to be someone else.

Years pass and Maya’s superiors encourage her to focus on other potential terrorist attacks, but she can’t get her mind off that damn courier, the one she’s sure has something to do with Bin Laden. So she does some more digging and eventually finds the REAL courier, the one she thought she had all along but who, it turns out, was someone else. She traces this man back to a compound in Pakistan. She tells her bosses about her theory, but the compound is so well-designed, it’s impossible to know who, for sure, is in there. To Maya, it’s obvious, but you have to understand, the CIA gets hundreds of these tips a day. Who’s to say it isn’t a drug dealer living there? There’s just no way to know.

But Maya won’t stop. She demands her superiors keep looking. And tells them to have THEIR superiors keep looking. And after what seems like forever, even though there’s only a 50% chance that Bin Laden is actually living here, they get the call from upstairs that the president has okay’d a raid. Maya must now leave the final piece of the puzzle up to Seal Team 6, who are less than thrilled to be going on yet another [sure to be] bogus chupacabra hunt. What they don’t realize is that this is the real deal. This is the moment that will make them famous.

I was discussing this movie with a friend and I was going on one of my typical rants about how there “wasn’t enough urgency in the movie.” And I had a good point (if I don’t say so myself). I mean we start the story 10 years before the killing of Bin Laden and there are just all these scenes through the years of people talking in rooms about finding terrorists who might lead them to other terrorists who might lead them to someone who knows someone who might know Bin Laden.

While I’m sure if you broke these down scene by scene, you’d be able to make a case that they were all PUSHING THE STORY FORWARD (remember – every scene in your script must push the story forward!) but I couldn’t help but feel like we could’ve consolidated and streamlined the hunt more. For example, there was a cool scene near the middle of the movie where Maya and her co-worker are chatting about boys at an Afghan Hotel when a bomb BLOWS UP. Fun scene. But afterwards all I could think was, “Ummm, was that scene really necessary?”

But here’s what my friend said. She said, “True, but starting with this girl 10 years before she finds Bin Laden makes us care a lot more about her and her goal when she finally gets close to finding him.” And she was right. As we watch Maya go year after year chasing red herrings and losing friends and being blocked by red tape, we become heavily invested in her journey in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had we started the story 2 weeks before the raid.

In this case, urgency would’ve actually worked AGAINST our story. And that got me thinking. As you all know, I’m obsessed with GSU – that stories work best when they have a GOAL, high STAKES, and URGENCY. However, if you were only able to use two of these and one had to go, I’ve realized that urgency is the easiest one to drop. That’s because if the goal is REALLY BIG and the stakes are REALLY HIGH, the audience will want to stick around whether there’s a time limit on the characters’ actions or not.

And what do you know? Zero Dark 30 fits the bill perfectly. The goal is about as big as you can get! Find and kill Bin Laden! And the stakes are immense as well! If you don’t, he keeps sending out orders and more and more people get killed. Add the personal stakes are high as well (Maya dedicating a decade of her life to this hunt). It’s no wonder we’re willing to stumble through ten years to finally get to this ending.

Another thing I found interesting was that this is being marketed as this super serious big important movie. Yet they use one of the oldest tricks in the book to get you onboard – the underdog. Audiences LOVE underdogs. They will follow underdogs anywhere because who doesn’t want to see the little guy who nobody gave a shot to score the big touchdown in the end? Maya is the ultimate underdog. She’s a woman in a male-driven business. Nobody gives her a chance. Nobody believes her. So at its heart, this is really about a character overcoming adversity and disbelief to win in the end. That’s a universal story that anybody will love.

My biggest problem with Zero Dark 30, however, was that there were sooooo many scenes with guys in rooms talking. Granted there was usually a lot of tension and conflict in those scenes, I suspect these scenes are what made the slow parts of this screenplay feel so slow. And while Maya’s underdog status made her easy to root for, there was something cold about her character. I’m not sure if that was Jesscia C’s performance or if that’s how it was written but I suspect it was how it was written because there’s very little if any background into who Maya is outside of the agency – what brought her here, why she’s so obsessed with capturing Bin Laden. I mean I knew more about Claire Danes’ character after 20 minutes of the Homeland pilot than I did about Maya in this entire movie. The only reason you should have a 2 and a half hour movie is if you’re doing some major character exploration, and strangely enough, only the minimum was done here.

But despite its flaws, it all came together in the end. So much had been built up before going into this raid, (not to mention our own REAL-LIFE feelings about Bin Laden), that the compound sequence was gripping. I particularly loved how messy it was. I guess I thought that the SEAL team just barged in there, ran upstairs, and shot Bin Laden. But there was so much more uncertainty here, with a lot of unknown variables chiming in: The downed helicopter. Compound doors not opening. Hundreds of neighbors moving in. The threat of the Pakistanis finding out and sending their military over. You really felt that if they didn’t find Bin Laden right away, they’d have to leave and squander the best opportunity they’d ever have at getting him.

I’ll probably never watch Zero Dark 30 again. It’s not a movie you can pop in on a Sunday afternoon and just enjoy. It’s deep, it’s dark, it’s intense, and it’s serious. You feel at times like you’re obligated to watch it as opposed to volunteering your time to watch it. But that ending. Oh that ending. It makes all the warts go away. And it’ll probably win the film an Oscar.

[ ] I want to return this Christmas present
[ ] This Christmas present wasn’t for me
[xx] good enough to re-gift
[ ] just what I wanted
[ ] best gift ever!

What I learned: At some point in your story, there needs to be urgency. I know I just said urgency isn’t as important as goals or stakes, and that may be true. But you cannot go an entire screenplay without eventually adding urgency to the mix. In Zero Dark 30, this happens as soon as Maya positively identifies Bin Laden’s compound. Every day they don’t act is a day he could possibly move. And we feel that tension (as a good ticking time bomb will do) as days turn into weeks turn into months. We’re sitting there going, “Jesus! You’re losing what may be your only shot!” So avoid urgency if you dare (I still think you should incorporate it if possible), but if you don’t use it to frame your story, you’ll almost certainly need it for the final third of your script.