So over the last few weeks, you guys have seen me bring a certain term up time and time again: CLARITY.  Or, more specifically, lack there of.  Clarity isn’t as sexy to talk about as character arcs or the first act turn, but unclear writing is a way-too-common problem for beginners and low intermediates, particularly because they’re not aware it’s a problem in the first place.  Tell them you didn’t understand something, and they think the onus is on you.  They believe that if it makes sense in their heads, it should make sense in yours.

The problem is that what works inside your gray matter doesn’t always work on the page. For example, say you’re writing about a movie that jumps back and forth between Present Day and the Old West.  As the writer, you’ve been prepping this dual-time story forever.  So by the time you start, everything about it makes complete sense to you.  Your first scene, then, follows a detective walking into a murder scene.  After the scene is over, you cut to a whorehouse in the Old West.  Now to you, this cut makes perfect sense.  To a reader being introduced to the story for the first time, however, it’s confusing as hell.  How did we get from a murder scene to a 19th century brothel??? The solution to orientating the reader is quite simple.  Just insert a title card that says “1878 – The Old West.” Now the cut reads as structured and intentional, as opposed to random and bizarre.  It seems quite obvious but beginner writers often don’t know to do this.

And that’s the problem.  If a script contains as little as three or four confusing moments in the first act, the script is shot.  It gets too confusing for the reader to follow along.  I mean sure, we have a vague sense of what’s going on, but the particulars are hazy, and the particulars are what make a script a script.  Now the more I started thinking about this problem, the more I realized there weren’t any articles out there specifically addressing it.  Which seemed strange to me because it’s an issue that comes up three or four scripts a week in my reading.  Hence, why I decided to write today’s post.  I want to give writers the tools to BE CLEAR in their writing.  So here are some guidelines to follow that should keep your screenplay easy to understand.

A CLEAR GOAL – One of the simplest ways to write a clear story is to set up a big goal for your main character in the first act.  In Trouble With The Curve, we establish that Eastwood’s character must correctly scout a minor-league player or lose his job.  In yesterday’s script, The Almighty, I was never clear on what the ultimate goal was.  Stop Lucifer maybe?  But we had to get through a lot of gobbledy-gook to get to that point, and even then, I wasn’t sure if that was the ultimate goal.  So, as a beginner, instead of having a bunch of changing or shifting goals during your story, keep it simple.  Your hero should be going after one thing (Indiana Jones goes after the Ark).  Following this one rule is going to take care of most of your clarity problems.

GET RID OF UNIMPORTANT SUBPLOTS – Lots of writers will add subplots that feel completely separate from the main storyline.  So instead of enjoying them, readers spend the majority of the time trying to figure out what they’re doing there in the first place.  This detracts from the primary story (the main goal), making the story difficult to follow.  Subplots are good.  Just make sure they’re plot related.

GET RID OF UNIMPORTANT CHARACTERS – I can’t tell you how many times I stop reading a script to ask the question, “Who is this person???”  Characters that have only a minimal effect on the story should be ditched or combined with other characters.  The more characters there are in a script, the harder it is for the reader to keep track of everyone, and the more confused they get.  They’ll start mixing people up, forgetting who’s aligned with who, and just outright forget characters.  This is a big reason for reader confusion.

REMINDERS – Depending on how complicated your story is, you may need to remind your reader every once in awhile what the goal is.  Even if your story isn’t complicated, you’d be surprised at how quickly a reader can lose track of why we’re on this journey.  In The Hangover, Bradley Cooper’s character is constantly reminding us that they need to find Doug.  For simple stories, you may only need to remind the audience twice.  For complex ones, you may need to remind them as many as six times.  Feel out the complexity of your story and determine the number from there.  But a good reminder of what we’re doing and why is always helpful to the reader.

STAY AWAY FROM FLASHBACKS, FLASHFORWARDS AND DREAM SEQUENCES – In the hands of beginners, these devices are script suicide.  I’m not even sure what it is, but when new writers attempt them, they almost always occur at random times and result in total confusion.  I just read a script two weeks ago that started with a woman getting married.  The very next scene had that same girl walking into a pharmacy and flirting with a different guy.  Questions: Why was our protagonist going to a pharmacy right after her wedding?  And why was she trying to pick up a guy hours after getting married?  Eventually I figured out that this was a flashback.  But how was I supposed to know???  This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME, even with more advanced writers.   So the best solution is to just keep your story in the present.  Use these devices if they’re necessary for telling your story (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind).  But make sure that they’re properly notated and that there really is no other way to do it.

KEEP YOUR WRITING SIMPLE – I was just discussing this with a writer the other day.  He’d written this huge lumbering opus and peppered every paragraph with 20 adjectives and 90% more description than was needed.  Even when I did manage to understand what was being said, it felt like I’d run a marathon through quicksand.  After awhile, it became so laborious to read through even the most basic scenes, that my mind tired out, and it became difficult to follow what was going on.  Therefore, it wasn’t that the information wasn’t on the page.  It was that we had to dig through a pile of words to get there.  Do that too many times and the reader gives up.  And when that happens, your script becomes unclear by reason of exhaustion.

MAKE SURE EACH SCENE HAS A CLEAR GOAL – Believe it or not, there are tons of writers out there who can’t even write a clear scene.  ONE CLEAR SCENE.  And it’s usually because they don’t have a gameplan.  They just sort of write what comes to mind.  So make sure going into a scene that you’re doing four things.  First, make sure you have a goal for the scene.  For example, you want your two leads to meet. Second, make sure the scene moves the story forward.  In other words, the scene should be required to get your protagonist (either directly or indirectly) closer to his ultimate goal.    By “indirectly” I mean, yes, Indiana Jones wants the Ark, but the scene where he goes to Marion is required because she has a piece of the puzzle required to find the Ark.  If she doesn’t have that piece, this scene isn’t moving the story forward, and therefore isn’t needed.  Third and fourth, make sure both characters in the scene have a goal.  So in the Marion Intro scene, Indiana’s goal is to get that puzzle piece, and Marion’s goal is to keep it from him.  This basic setup should ensure that every scene you write makes sense.

IF YOU DON’T TELL US, WE WON’T KNOW – In your mind, Indiana might be standing right next to Marion, but if you don’t tell us, how are we supposed to know?  In your mind, the bar might be full of people.  But if you don’t tell us, we might assume it’s empty.  In your mind, the bad guys are in the room adjacent to our hero, ready to strike.  But if you don’t convey that, we may assume they’re in a room all the way across town.  Writers leaving out basic information is one of the quickest ways to scene confusion.  For example, I just read a script where two friends were sharing secrets about a guy named “Joe.”  But Joe was right there in the room next to them!  I was so confused.  How could they secretly be talking about a guy who was right there???  The writer later explained that Joe was actually on the other side of the room, so he couldn’t hear them. Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?  Again, it’s a matter of assumption with a lot of beginners.  They assume things are obvious.  But the reality is, if they don’t tell the reader, how the heck is the reader supposed to know?

Now in the end, sound storytelling principles have the biggest effect on clarity:  A strong goal.  A hero we want to root for.  An interesting story with exciting developments.  Escalating stakes.  If you do that, you’ll keep the reader’s interest.  If you don’t, the reader will get bored and start checking out, missing things because they’re just not into your story anymore, and hence start getting confused.  And one last thing.  When you’re finished, give your script to a friend to read and just ask them if it all makes sense.  Drill them on parts of it.  Ask them questions.  Make sure it’s all clear.  Then, and only then, should you unleash your screenplay into the world.

Genre: Action
Premise: A young man who has the ability to see manifestations of evil in people, must save the world from Lucifer.
About: Okay, so a little history on this script.  This is not a spec sale.  Nor has it been optioned to my knowledge.  I’m reviewing it because it was highly recommended to me by a reader of the site.
Writer: Dempsey Tillman
Details: 108 pages

When you’re in my position, one of the things you get used to is people referring “amazing” scripts to you that turn out to be not so amazing, usually because it’s the person who referred it’s own script.  I actually had a hilarious experience recently where a guy e-mailed me and said he’d found this dusty old screenplay at an estate sale and that it was the best thing he’d ever read and he wanted to send it to me.  So he does, and it’s a PDF document clearly printed from the Final Draft program.  I mean come on.  If you’re going to lie, at least go through the process of making the lie look legitimate.

And hey, I get it.  You gotta try everything in your power to get read.  I will say this, however.  A reader will never be as relentless as when he’s told something’s amazing and it’s not.  Nobody likes to be conned.  So it’s fake referrals like this that get the most backlash.  That’s why I suspect there will be plenty of pissed off comments today.  People want a venue to vent their frustration.  And I have a feeling it’s going to get ugly.

So what is The Almighty about?

Oscar Renfro has been seeing creepy things ever since he was a kid.  Like people turning into monsters n’ stuff.  In that sense, he’s like Cole from The Sixth Sense.  He sees ugly people.  The doctors have a perfect explanation for this.  He’s a paranoid schizophrenic.  So they prescribe him a bunch of medication and the visions kind of go away, but never disappear completely.

In fact, Oscar’s walking through the city one afternoon when a homeless man approaches him telling him he best stop taking his medication because it’s covering up his gift.  He can see evil in people, which is something he should use to save mankind.  Apparently Lucifer’s making an appearance on Earth soon and if Oscar doesn’t use his power for…something (was never quite sure what), then Lucifer’s going to take over the world.

Oscar, who works at the DMV, ignores the crazy homeless man (and I don’t blame him), but later that day while he’s supervising a driving test, the woman driver accidentally scrapes against a school bus, sending sparks into the car, which make her catch fire and burn to ashes right in front of him, freaking Oscar out!  Except five seconds later she’s totally fine.  Errrr….ummm…what???

Oscar’s boss yells at him, and Oscar realizes that the pills just aren’t helping anymore.  Afraid that he’s going to hurt his wife and son during one of these freak-out sessions, he sends them away and admits himself into a psyche ward.  But not before a demon attacks him on the bus and the video goes viral.  Now Oscar has to go on the run, since everyone wants to know what the crazy demon-fight was all about.

Enter a dude called THE MESSENGER.  The Messenger really really really – like really really wants Oscar to accept his powers.  He tells him that Lucifer’s coming to steal his secret ability to see the bad in people (The devil doesn’t have this ability himself????) and once he does, he’ll be able to take over the world.  I think.

From that point on, for the final 50 pages, I truthfully have no idea what happened.  It was as if 20 random stories were thrown into a blender and spat out into one long 50 page action sequence.  I take notes when I read these scripts so I can keep track of the plot, and there was a point late in the story where I wrote, “Mom sucked into vortex.”  It was time to say goodbye to The Almighty, referral and all.

Something I’d like to remind people is that Hollywood is a VERY liberal town.  Look no further than the recent Chik-Fil-A spat as proof.  If there’s one thing that there’s a strong resistance to here, it’s a heavy Christian agenda.  So when you write an entire screenplay that’s clearly pushing that Christian agenda, chances are it’s going to be met with fire and brimstone.

I know, I know.  The Passion Of The Christ made a bazillion dollars, but nobody in town wanted to distribute that movie.  It was only because of Mel Gibson’s star power that it got out there.  So before even getting into the mechanics of this one, I kinda feel like this type of script is dead in the water.

Put plainly, The Almighty felt like a cliche jumble of ideas with no plot.  While at first I was able to decipher some semblance of a story, the script continued to get more and more confusing as it went on.  This happens a lot with amateur writers who spend a ton of time on the first 30 pages, but maybe 1/4, even 1/8 the time on their last 80.  And it shows.  I literally had NO IDEA what was happening after the midpoint.

Lucifer was coming to earth for some reason.  He needed the power of someone who could see evil to take over the planet?  Lucifer can’t see the evil in people himself?  I’m already confused.  Then there was this guy called The Messenger, who may or may not have also been the cliche Homeless Guy spouting out end of the world sermons at the beginning of the story.  The Messenger spends most of his time reminding Oscar how great God is.

The Messenger also, a la The Ghost Of Christmas Past, takes Oscar back to witness his childhood to learn some valuable lessons or something.  Some Fallen Angels show up, intent on kicking ass.  Oscar’s best friend, Cole, turns into Lucifer for some reason, but not by himself.  He becomes Lucifer in conjunction with his jail cell mate, so they both speak at the same time in Lucifer’s voice??

Random people, like the police detective, become Lucifer too – I think.  There’s a ton of bible gobbledy-gook spoken, about how “He” is our savior and “He” will make everything all right, and then lots of quotes from the bible, I think.  All of this is a big deal because Oscar doesn’t believe in God, even though he sees demons on a daily basis.

I don’t know.  After that, it just turns into this huge melee of confusingness.  I rarely knew where we were or why.  They need to take the Messenger to the hospital or something.  Cole, who was Lucifer, is no longer Lucifer.  Lucifer jumps into a bunch of other bodies.  Oscar has to find him and stop him.  Reading the final act was a bit like drinking a case of beer and being taught Calculus and Spanish simultaneously by a Chinese speed-talker.

I hate to beat a dead horse but this comes down to the same old same old – the writing isn’t clear.  It’s confusing.  The writer knows what’s going on in his head.  But he hasn’t yet learned the tools necessary to convey those thoughts in a coherent manner to the reader.  Therefore everything feels random and confusing.

You need to go back to basics.  A clear goal that the main character is going after.  Establish someone on earth as Lucifer.  Then establish that the main character is going to have to kill him.  That way, we understand the objective of the story right away.  KISS folks.  Keep things simple stupid until you have a grasp on the craft.  To be honest, I didn’t think The Almighty was that bad at first.  It wasn’t until the non-sensical second half that I had no choice but to give it the lowest rating. :(

What I learned: Recently, a writer chastised my consulting notes because I “missed things,” many of which he detailed in a rebuttal document.  When a script is written clearly, the writer has a point.  But when it isn’t, the writer has no idea how difficult it can be to follow along.  For example, if the reader doesn’t understand what happened in the last four scenes, if he doesn’t know who these three new characters are, if he doesn’t know how any of the characters are related to each other, if he doesn’t understand why we keep cutting to a character on a train who never becomes part of the story, if he can’t keep up with the time jumping since the writer never notates it, if it takes 2-3 read-throughs on every scene just to understand what’s going on… then the reader’ll be lucky to catch 40% of the details on the page.  Which brings me to my point.  If something is wrong, it is NEVER the reader’s fault.  Maybe the reader did tune out and miss something.  But it’s your job as the writer to figure out why you the reader tuned out in the first place.  So any time you’re told, “This didn’t work” about your screenplay, don’t fight it.  Figure out what you did wrong and fix it.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A strapped-for-cash woman agrees to be part of a lab study where participants are placed in a room for a month, but begins to suspect that she’s been in the room for much longer than that.
About: Don’t know much about this one other than that the movie is being made by Vital Pictures and will come out sometime next year.  You can see the writer’s early attempts at a Kickstarter page here, which has a trailer and some cool concept art.
Writer: Seda
Details: 108 pages

Liberace.  Madonna.  Beyonce.

And now…Seda.

Two names is so passé.  These days, it’s preferable to cap it at one.

Okay, am I thrilled that a screenwriter has given himself one name?  No.  Does it scream pretentiousness?  Yes.  But I have to remember that this is the entertainment industry.  You gotta market yourself to stand out.  And maybe I have a teensy bit of sympathy since I’m not using my real name on this blog either.

One name or not, when I started reading Subject 6, a script heavily influenced by Cube and The Matrix, I started to exert all kinds of worriedness.  I’ve read these kinds of scripts before.  And when I say “these kinds of scripts,” I mean scripts with a bunch of fucked up things happening for seemingly no reason.  The fear?  That the “seemingly no reason” is because there IS NO REASON.  The writer’s constructed a setting that allows him to make a lot of cool trippy fucked up things happen without having to come up with that all-important explanation  Which is why I almost universally hate these screenplays.  If you want to know what I’m talking about, read the pointless 2:22.

Now it started off okay, with our heroine, known only as “SIX” (in reference to the number listed on her fatigues), waking up in a bare-bones icy room that carries only the necessitates – bed, toilet, floor, ceiling.  There’s also a TV, which inexplicably allows our subject to watch hundreds of other people in their own experiment rooms.

From what we can gather, the experiment is some sort of psychological test.  Participants are paid 20 grand to come in and simply sit in a room for 30 days.  You can opt out of the experiment any time you want by pressing a big red button in your room, but if you do, you forfeit your payment.

Naturally, there isn’t much to do other than sit around and talk to the other participants.  Yes, for some reason, you have a video phone in your room that allows you to talk to any of the other rooms.  Seems like an odd freedom for the experimenters to allow, but anyway, it introduces Six to 33, a strapping young slacker philosopher type.

The two hit it off and pretty soon they’re planning a rendezvous inside the walls between their rooms (they happen to be placed right next to each other).  But the rendezvous goes bad when these things called “Technicians,” huge men in nuclear-fallout-type suits, intervene and shock Six, who wakes up once again in her room at the beginning of the experiment, as if none of her previous experiences happened.

Six grows suspicious and escapes through a ceiling vent.  It’s there where she’s rescued by a group of people who tell her the truth.  There is no 30-Day experiment.  The people who are here are stuck here forever.  The technicians just keep resetting them over and over again.  Which is why this group has formed.  They’re trying to find a way out – an escape.  But this facility – whatever it is – is ginormous.  So it ain’t going to be easy.

Another issue is that Six keeps flashing back to some psyche ward doctor’s office where a man is evaluating her.  He asks her about this experiment, about these “technicians,” about her escape, and Six begins to doubt whether any of it is real.  Is she crazy?  Is she just a looney chick locked up in a padded room imagining all this shit?  Her fellow escapees tell her “no,” that it’s all a part of the experimenters’ plan – to destroy the mind, to make you lose confidence in your reality.  But Six isn’t so sure.  And neither are we.

Is Six nuts or does this place really exist?  And if it does, how did she get here?  Or, if the psych ward’s real, what happened in her past that led to her insanity?  All those questions are…sort of answered in Subject 6.

Wheel me in and call me Sally cause I don’t know what to make of Subject 6.  There are moments where this script absolutely shines and there are others that left me searching for a bottle of aspirin.  I’ll say this about the script.  I rarely knew where it was going.  And anyone who reads this blog knows that goes a long way with me.  90% of the scripts I read are as predictable as the sun setting, so when one has me genuinely wondering what the next page holds, that’s impressive.

BUT, the thing that kept bothering me was all the silly random stuff, like the repeated religious references that seemed to be there for no other reason than their inherent creepiness.  For example, when we see a dead character in a hallway with the word “Foresaken” scrawled on the wall behind him in his blood?  Commence the eye-rolling.  What the heck does that have to do with the story?  As far as I could tell, nothing other than it looked cool.

There was also one obvious derivative component that bothered me – the Matrix team.  I mean, the group that takes Six in does so in a way that’s so eerily reminiscent of The Matrix that I thought I was watching an aborted take from the film.  And then you have this really HUGE Jabba The Hut like leader man named “One” who weighs 800 pounds.  All I kept thinking was…wait a minute here – this group has to go on super risky scavenger missions for food and one of them is 800 pounds?  How exactly is this possible?  Is he eating the other members when nobody’s looking?

Having said all that, I *did* want to turn the pages.  I mean, the script genuinely had me wondering where the hell it was all going and, more importantly, I wanted to find out.  But the big reason I’d recommend this to others is that the third act really comes together.  Which was surprising.  Because the third act is usually where these scripts fall apart, since the writer can’t answer all the questions he’s been asking.

But as Six keeps flashing back between the Insane Asylum and the Experiment, not only was I wondering which one was real and which one wasn’t, but I genuinely found myself empathizing with Six.  I wondered what it would be like to go “crazy” in this manner.  What if this really was your life?  Is this what people with mental diseases really go through?  Do they live this kind of life every day?  How fucking terrifying.

Once the script crossed that fourth wall, it’d done its job with me.  I didn’t agree with all the choices.  I thought things got a little goofy in the second act when the team was introduced. But the recovery in the third is what saved it.  For that reason, I say check this one out.

What I Learned: The introduction of One (the huge Jabba The Hut leader of the underground) is a perfect example of a writer wanting something so badly (the image of this huge overweight barely moveable leader) that he puts it in there without considering how illogical it is.  I mean, from what we’ve been told, this group has to risk their lives going out to find scraps of leftover food to stay alive.  Yet somehow we have an 800 pound man chilling out?  Does that make any sense?  These are the moments when readers lose faith in writers because they’re not doing their due diligence.  We all want to include cool things in our scripts, but if you’re going to do so, they have to MAKE SENSE.  If they don’t, ditch them or come up with an explanation.

Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: An aging baseball scout who’s losing his eyesight must enlist the help of a daughter who hates baseball to scout a young prospect.
About: This one has a really interesting backstory to it and should give screenwriters everywhere hope that it can happen, if not on the timeframe they planned.  Writer Randy Brown wrote this 15 years ago and actually had Dustin Hoffman attached at one point.  But Hoffman and the producer didn’t get along, so the project went belly-up.  15 years later, Randy’s writing for some MTV shows (and running a cafe).  He met a producer through a mutual friend, who gave it to someone close with Clint who thought it would be great for him.  Now this is where you’re really going to freak out as you realize just how important timing is in this town.  Clint couldn’t do it because he was doing A Star Is Born with Beyonce.  Well, Jay-Z got Beyonce pregnant and all of a sudden, Clint had an opening in his schedule. The script was purchased for a million bucks and the movie is coming out later this year.  How bout them apples?
Writer: Randy Brown
Details: This says it’s a 2011 draft but the references in it clearly indicate it’s the original draft from 15 years ago.

Usually, when a script has been ignored for 15 years, there’s a reason for it.  It’s just not good enough.  Either that or its time has passed it by.  Or sometimes, when there’s a popular script in town that can’t get made for one reason or another, everyone in Hollywood plunders ideas from it, to the point where the original script now feels derivative.  I remember that happened with The Tourist, a famous script that keeps coming up on many people’s “Best Of The Unmade” lists.

So to be honest, I kind of expected Curve to be terrible, some barely-above-average screenplay whose only redeeming quality was a prominent senior role for Clint Eastwood. But boy was I wrong.  Curve is almost textbook in how to write a screenplay.  I’ll get more into that in a sec, but right now, here’s the breakdown.

Senior citizen Gus Lobel is baseball scouting royalty.  Credentials?  Oh, he only found Hank Aaron.  And he was the guy who scouted Micky Mantle and bet his career he would become a hall-of-famer, something many people ignored, only to find out 30 years later how wrong they were.

But Gus is also a stubborn crotchety old fuck.  And he doesn’t listen to many people besides himself.  So nowadays, with all these fancy-schmancy computers coming around, detailing RBIs and OBPs and OBGYNs, giving new scouts a whole new arena to judge baseball players on, Gus is insistent that none of that shit does anything.

Which is why the upper levels of the team he’s working for, the Atlanta Braves, are starting to have questions about if Gus is stuck in the dinosaur ages.  Sure he knows his stuff, but as one executive points out, “Nobody cares who scouted Hank Aaron anymore.”

But that’s only the beginning of Gus’ problems.  Gus is also losing his eyesight.  He’s had to rearrange his entire apartment, in fact, so that he doesn’t randomly bump into furniture.  Because Gus is so stubborn, he’s in denial about this, but he’s going to have to figure it out fast.  The team is sending him out to scout Bo Gentry, an 18 year old phenom who’s projected to be the next Mark McGuire.

Across town, we’re introduced to Gus’ 30-something daughter, Mickey.  Yes, Mickey was named after Mickey Mantel, even though she’s a girl.  That right there shows you what Gus’ priorities are.  It’s baseball first – daughter second.  And that isn’t lost on Mickey, who loves her dad more than anything, but when you show up for family dinner only to find out you’ll be watching a 3 hour baseball game…well…EVERY SINGLE TIME, you begin to hate baseball more than hell.

But when Mickey catches on to her father’s eyesight problems, she worries for him, and imposes herself on his latest roadtrip, something he’s vehemently opposed to.  But as he follows Bo Gentry from game to game, he realizes it’s impossible for him to SEE whether this guy is the real deal or not.  And that means he has to depend on his daughter, a girl he groomed to love baseball when she was growing up, but who hates it now, to save him.  In the strangest of ways, this dependency brings them together in a way no other experience could.

Okay, to start things off, let me reiterate that you should NEVER TRY TO SELL A SPORTS SCRIPT that isn’t based on a true story (or novel) unless it’s a boxing script or a comedy.  Trouble With The Curve is the rare exception to the rule, although I will say that when this exception comes around, it’s usually with a baseball script.

Okay, now on to the script itself.  The writing here is amazing!  And I don’t mean it’s beautiful to read.  I don’t mean the prose makes my heart sing.  That’s not what a good screenplay should do.  When I say the writing is amazing, I mean that every sentence is carved down to only its bare essence, only the words we need to know, and nothing more.

I bring this up because of a couple of scripts I read recently.  The first was a confusing mess and a big reason for that was that there were too many words.   The writer kept tripping over himself because he was constantly navigating through a sea of alphabetical albatrosses.  He was trying to be too clever by half when he should’ve stuck with the “half,” as that’s how many words you should be shooting for when you’re writing screenplays.

I also compare it to tomorrow’s script, which is well-written and clear, but every page feels like it’s taking twice as long to get through because of the extra verbiage.  This kind of writing gets exhausting to read.  I mean, I’m enjoying the script because it’s an interesting mystery (I’m not finished yet), but I find it hard to get through because of that excessiveness. And I’m not even talking like HUGE BIG PARAGRAPH CHUNKS here.  It’s more that the simplest sentences, something like, “He darts over to the phone,” become, “He peers at the surrounding walls, which seem to be closing in on him, then darts to the phone across the room.”  It’s twice or three times as much reading as the reader needs to be doing.

But what I really liked about this script was the character work, and more specifically the relationship work.  It’s simple but clever, and very well done.  You have a man who thinks a sport is more important than his daughter, who must now depend on that daughter to save his position in the sport, even though she hates the sport because of him.  I don’t know if you can come up with a more beautifully constructed triangle of conflict.  Watching Gus start to reluctantly rely on his daughter, and the ironic way in which that brings them closer – it was perfect.

I could go on about this script.  It’s just really well done.  I don’t know if it’s Oscar worthy. That’ll depend on if it’s directed well.  But the foundation is definitely there.  This one surprised me!

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

What I learned:  Let me tell you when I knew I was dealing with a professional here, and not an amateur, or one of these pros who got lucky and cheated their way into the system.  The stakes and the deadlines.  Only the good writers know to contain their screenplays with them.  First, the end of Gus’ contract is coming up (deadline).  So if he doesn’t prove his worth with this prospect, he loses his job (stakes).  Then there’s Mickey, who just got a job at a prestigious law firm.  Now she has to go on this trip with Gus.  They’re upset and tell her, “That’s fine, but you need to be back to meet with the client by Thursday. (deadline)”  The implication is, “If you screw this up, we’re letting you go (stakes).”  From there, we keep cutting back to the Atlanta Braves’ offices, where the club’s brass are pushing harder and harder to eliminate Gus if he screws this up (raising stakes).  Stakes and deadlines need to be everywhere in your script.  They’re the plot mechanics that keep your audience invested in the story.

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Of all the Twit-Pitch First-10-Pages I read, this was tied as far and away one of the best two.  I had high hopes for it.  My only concern?  A wandering story.  The logline piqued my interest but as you can see, it doesn’t exactly tell us what the script’s about.  So I was really hoping this wasn’t one of those scripts that shows kick ass writing skills for the first ten pages and then just…never turns into anything.  Those are always killers as a reader.  You can tell the writer can write.  They just haven’t figured out how to tell a story yet.  Two very different skills.

But this one felt good.  I knew I was putting it in the “Definite” pile within the first two pages.  I mean go ahead and read the first 10 yourself.  Look at how confident the writing is – how self-assured.  You feel like you’re in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, which is rare when you read an amateur screenplay.  But it’s one thing to make it last 10 pages.  It’s a whole nother to make it last 110.

So in case you’re wondering, Gunplay is about terrorist bounty-hunting.  It’s kind of cool when you think about it. Those “Reward – $500” mugshots that were everywhere in the Old West days? They STILL do that.  But here, it’s 5 million dollars instead of 500.  And the players aren’t Two-Barrel Terry, but international terrorists who want to kill Americans in the name of Allah.

Our big daddy, the 5 million dollar jackpot (not sure why it’s changed from 10 mil in the logline) everyone’s after, is a man named Musab.  Musab is actually an American who’s turned on his country, zigzagging through the Pakistani/Afghanstan countryside, trying to escape all the newfound attention he’s gotten after becoming the last big paycheck on the Terrorist Most Wanted List.

There are two bounty hunters he’s gotta worry about.  The first one has no name.  He’s known only as “Stranger.”  This is the kind of guy that gives Clint Eastwood the willies.  He’s just a badass aging bounty hunter with one thing on his mind.  MONAY!  And he’ll do anything to get it.  The other dude is 50-something Wyatt, whose face is a “road map to hell and back.”  Wyatt’s got some other business to tend to as well, something about tracking down 25 million dollars of stolen moolah.

The story weaves through their individual pursuits until they eventually come together, as at one point all three men (including Musab) must escape some baddies, namely a corrupt policemen and a warlord or two.  Soon the 5 million dollar paycheck seems like a pittance compared to that big 25 million dollar payday.  But will they find it before it’s too late, or before they all kill one another?

In short, this is the best writing in the contest so far.  However, my biggest fear was realized.  The story starts out great, but becomes less and less coherent as it goes on.  In fact, when I reached the halfway point, I realized I had only a vague sense of what was going on.  You know when you’re reading something and all of a sudden you realize you weren’t paying attention the last two pages and have to go back and read it again?  I had to do that like 5 or 6 times, and I realized at that point that Gunplay had lost me.

So how did it lose me?  Well, let’s see.  It starts with Musab.  Here was this guy who was known as the most dangerous terrorist left on the U.S. Wanted List, and he didn’t seem dangerous at all.  In fact, he seemed like a normal guy.  So the whole time I was wondering, why is this dude worth so much money?  He’s just like you and me.  To be honest, I don’t even know what he did to get that price tag on his head.

So now you have two bounty hunters chasing a villain who isn’t really a villain.  Why do we care if they catch him?  That was another problem.  What’s the urgency here?  Why do they need to catch him now?  He doesn’t seem to have any immediate plans to kill more Americans, at least nothing concrete.  So why the rush?  And what are the stakes?  Again, it doesn’t matter if he escapes cause he’s got nothing planned.  So the stakes are nil.

Same thing with Stranger and Wyatt.  Why do they need the money so bad?  What’s so important about having 25 million dollars?  I mean sure it makes them “rich,” but who cares?  That’s such a boring reason for needing to do something.  Why can’t the pursuit be personal, for at least one of them?  What if Musab killed one of their daughters in an attack?

On top of this, Wyatt’s storyline was murky.  He was working for someone who wanted to recoup 25 million dollars that some thieves swindled from him.  But I could never really decipher the specifics of what happened.  And again, since Wyatt’s working for someone else who wants the money, the stakes were low.  Why couldn’t he have lost the money himself?  Or maybe he’s not hunting a terrorist, but rather someone who said they’d pay him if he killed a terrorist, but disappeared once the deed was done.  Now it’s personal.

Maybe this is the nature of going with bounty hunters as your protags.  Bounty Hunters go after things for money, not personal reasons.  But I guess I just wanted more.  At least somewhere.

But what really killed Gunplay for me was that the further the script went on, the less clear it became.  All of a sudden we’re in some compound with men using little boys as sex slaves and I’m thinking, “How did we get here?  What does this have to do with the rest of the story?”  None of it was set up very well so it all came out of nowhere.  To be honest, it felt like yet another script that was rushing to meet a deadline.  The best pages were the first 30, since they’d been worked over so many times.  And then you could tell that the last 70 didn’t get nearly as much attention, which is why they got so murky.

To me, this comes down to good old fashioned stakes and urgency.  A storyline needs to be written in that Musab is trying to get somewhere, and if he gets there, people are going to be killed.  That way, there’s some immediacy to the story.  Cause the way it stands now, nothing really happens if he gets away besides our bounty hunters not getting their money.

Since stakes and urgency are always intertwined, you have the same problem on the stakes end.  There’s nothing Musab is trying to do other than escape, so nothing bad happens to anyone if he gets away.

Another thing I’d consider doing is making Musab REALLY BAD.  This guy’s a terrorist.  Let’s find out what he did and hate him for it.  The worse of a person he is, the more we’ll want him to get caught.  That was part of the problem.  Since he was a normal guy, I wasn’t invested in whether Stranger and Wyatt caught up to him.

If you want to make Musab a hero – someone we root for – then make it so he’s been wrongly accused.  He’s not a terrorist.  He’s just been tabbed as one because of bad information or a mix-up.  Audiences love rooting for wrongly-accused characters (The Fugitive anyone?), and now we’ll be invested cause we’ll want to see him get away.  I mean when it comes down to it, I didn’t care if Musab was caught, and I didn’t care if Stranger or Wyatt caught him.  And that just can’t be the case.

Script Link: Gunplay

What I learned: In a chase movie, you want to show the bad guy do something bad, so we’ll want him to go down (Darth Vader chokes a man to death while interrogating him).  If you can’t do that, then show the good guy do something good, so we’ll root for him to succeed (Obi-Wan saves Luke from the Sand People).  In Gunplay, we don’t get either, so we never become interested in the chase.