Can an actor jump into the screenwriting world without a hitch? Past experience tells me no. But today’s actor may break the mold.

Genre: Crime
Premise: Two brothers go on a bank-robbing spree in rural Texas with a determined near-retired Texas Ranger on their tail.
About: This script sold just a few weeks ago! The writer, Taylor Sheridan, is actually best known for a recurring role on the TV show, Sons Of Anarchy.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Details: 113 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Have to admit, didn’t know much about this one going in other than that it sold. Oh, and that the writer was an actor. So that made it interesting. Always curious to see if the front-of-the-camera guys can hack it behind the camera. Or hack it before the camera even starts rolling. Can’t be an easy transition having assistants waiting on you hand and foot one day, then being kicked by those very same feet the next.

In fact, I have a writer friend who’s writing a project for someone right now and nobody cares what he says. They’re just changing everything. And I’m listening to these changes thinking, “They can’t be serious. They’re destroying the most BASIC things that make the screenplay work.” I mean, you’d think that common sense would take over at some point. And this is a known respected filmmaker he’s working for! Yet they’re just butchering the script. So sad.

The questionably titled “Comancheria” follows two brothers, Tanner and Toby, as they make rural Texas their bank-robbing playground. Toby is the sensible brother. He’s clean cut and focused and doesn’t take chances. Tanner, on the other hand, is a loose cannon if there ever was one. These brothers haven’t spent a lot of time together lately. Tanner’s been stuck in jail and Toby’s been taking care of their dying mother, whom neither of the brothers liked much.

Needless to say, the two have very different reasons for robbing these banks. Tanner just wants some easy money. Well, that and the thrill of the game. But for Toby, this is much more personal. His wife left him a long time ago and for that reason, he has to watch his kids grow up from afar. And since every person in the history of his family has been poor, he wants to break that chain and make sure his kids have the kind of money where they’ll never have to worry again.

So after they rob a few banks, 70 year old Marcus Hamilton, a Texas Ranger about to become a Texas retiree, is called in to take a look at the robberies and see if he can’t figure out how to stop these guys. The thing with the brothers is that they’re robbing these tiny little banks out in the middle of nowhere and only taking the drawer money, which can’t be tracked.

It sure takes a lot longer than robbing a single bank vault but it’s damn effective as it’s almost impossible to get caught. But as most bank robbing sprees go, at some point something goes drastically wrong or the bank robbers get greedy. With time running out on when they need the money, Tanner gets greedy, and it’ll end up costing the brothers, potentially with their lives.

The thing that stuck out to me most about this story was how simple it was. We had two brothers with a clear goal – to rob a series of banks. We also had two “villains,” Marcus and his partner, with a clear goal, to capture the brothers.

The key to making a narrative like this work is to make sure that your hero’s goal is strong. Sheridan did a great job establishing how important stealing this money was for Toby. Everything he was doing was for his kids, who he had a very complicated but loving relationship with. As long as you establish that your hero desperately wants to achieve his goal, then by association, we’ll want him to achieve it as well.

The strength of a goal is determined mostly by motivation, and how well you establish that motivation. What that means is digging into your character and getting to know him and getting to know why he wants to do what he wants to do. Sheridan spends a lot of time in the conversations between Tanner and Toby discussing Toby’s kids, the way they’ve pulled away from him, the way his ex-wife has facilitated that divide. This is a man with nothing in this world other than his children, and even though he doesn’t know them that well, he loves them to the point where he’d do anything for them. The specificity of this relationship is what makes us believe that it’s real and go along with it. In other words, it’s not just slapped in there by a lazy phone call at the beginning of the movie from his son saying something like, “I miss you dad,” and the dad replying, “I miss you too, son.” Believe me, I see that kind of cheap tactic ALLL the time.

Another thing that stuck out to me here was the dialogue. Boring dialogue is usually normal dialogue. Characters speak in a very plain obvious way. They use very plain obvious sentences. Good writers find ways to play with the sentences, to give them a slightly different feel so they pop off the page. But it’s a tough skill to learn because you have to do it without it FEELING like you’re doing it. So these heightened lines must sound as relaxed and normal as everyday conversation. Lots of writers have trouble with that. But Sheridan nails it. Let’s look at quick exchange in the middle of the movie. Ranger Marcus is asking an old man at a diner if he saw anything during the robbery.

MARCUS
Ya’ll been here for a while?

OLD TIMER
Long enough to watch someone rob the bank that’s been robbing me for thirty years.

Perfect example. I can think of a million boring versions of this line that average writers would’ve written. “Not long, nope.” “I suppose so.” “I wasn’t keeping track.” I could go on. There’s nothing wrong with these answers. But they’re average. They’re not memorable. They don’t pop. Why go average when you can go heightened?

MARCUS
You say you saw them?

OLD TIMER
Saw the guy running from the bank.

MARCUS
What’d he look like?

OLD TIMER
Had a mask on. But he ran pretty good, so I’d gather he’s youngish.

MARCUS
That so … What’s youngish in your book?

OLD TIMER
Younger’n you and me, but older than all these little girls running around here pouring tea.


We have another interesting answer here. He could have easily given an age. He could’ve said “25.” And again, that would’ve been fine. But when you’re writing scripts, and especially when you’re writing dialogue, you’re trying to elevate the reality of the world you’re portraying. This answer is brilliant. It answers his question but in an unexpected interesting way.

The only reason this script didn’t rate higher for me was because it’s not the typical kind of movie I like. With that said, I don’t think anybody could’ve executed this story as well as Sheridan did. I mean the writing is top notch. The dialogue is top notch. The character development is waaaay beyond what I’m used to in a screenplay. If I was into this kind of movie, Comancheira would get an impressive. As it stands, ‘double worth the read’ will have to do. Oh, and one last piece of advice to Mr. Sheridan – GET RID OF THIS TITLE. It screams “Don’t watch me.”

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

What I learned: Be careful about mimicking real-life dialogue. There’s a certain rhythm to real life conversation that’s important to capture, but as far as the vocabulary and the flavor, real life conversation is pretty dull. When you’re writing dialogue for a movie, you’d like for it to be slightly heightened. Not overtly so. But it should definitely have more pop. “No thanks” might become, “Not for me, compadre.” “What are you up to?” might become “What the hell happened to you?” Now all of this is dependent on the character delivering the dialogue (i.e. an average Joe will speak in an average way) and the story you’re telling (comedy dialogue will be more flavorful than drama dialogue), but in general, avoid stale dialogue by looking to invisibly heighten it. Don’t be afraid to add a little flavor.

They attached, they waffled, they attached again, they waffled, and now, finally, Leo and Martin are back together again with The Wolf Of Wall Street.

A day off for me but this review is pretty darn good, so I don’t feel so bad. I actually read the book “The Wolf Of Wall Street” a long time ago and thought to myself, “They’ll never make a movie out of this. The main character is the most despicable human being ever.” Though I guess since Scorsese makes tragedies, that doesn’t matter as much. Still, I’m curious as to how he’ll keep us invested in what has to be the single most evil most disgusting flesh-container ever recorded in written form. I also want to know when Scorsese and Dicaprio are getting married. I mean, put on a ring on it already! Here’s guest reviewer Daniel Holmes to report on the script and potential nuptials.

Today’s screenplay proves you can only hide for so long before something comes for you and makes you do something you don’t want to do…

Genre: Contained Horror
Premise: A family lives in a nuclear fallout shelter, hiding from a deadly race of mutated humans known only as, the breathers.
About: This is a script that’s been getting a lot of heat lately. Lots of people I talk to really love it. Hence, I had to read.
Writers: The Duffer Brothers
Details: 105 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

There is one type of script that is absolutely perfect for the spec market – this one. If you come up with a contained horror scenario that’s intense, that has immediacy, and that’s a little bit different from what’s come in the past, somebody will buy it. Shit, I’LL buy it. You can make these movies for a cheap price AND they’re easy to market. So they’re always going to be in high demand.

But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. You have to find that fresh angle. Hidden is by no means original, but it has just enough new that it doesn’t feel like yet another contained thriller clone.

For example, almost all scripts with people hiding from an unseen danger put several strangers together. It’s a smart way to go because you can create a mysterious backstory behind each character (that can be revealed over the course of the script) and the potential is high for conflict since you have a bunch of different personalities.

But Hidden took the unique approach of sticking us with a family. You definitely lost some potential conflict with the choice, but what you gain is an overwhelming sense of love between the characters and an “us against them” mentality. This created a strong bond between us and the characters, which meant we were rooting for them from Page 1.

And remember that when you have the audience rooting for your characters, you can pretty much get away with anything. You can even ignore some of the things I preach all the time because if we’re desperately rooting for the characters, the structure isn’t as important. We just want to see the characters win, regardless of the mechanics beneath them. The closeness of this family really helped in that sense. I read on because I wanted to see them survive.

Speaking of the family, it includes Claire and Ray Hewitt, former middle-class suburban parents, and their seven-year-old daughter, Zoe. They’re down in this shelter because a year ago, on an ordinary Sunday, a mass hysteria rose up when a unique virus started infecting everyone. The virus turned ordinary people into dangerous and uncontrollable beasts.

The Hewitt family tried to get away like everybody else, but when the military started attacking civilians, they fled into the woods and found this hidden shelter. They’ve been here ever since, hiding. And it’s gone pretty well. Except they’re finally running out of rations and will need to find food somewhere else – not an easy task since going to the surface is the equivalent of suicide.

But hunger is just one of many invisible clocks ticking down for this family. And those clocks start ticking a lot faster when an accidental fire sends smoke out the ventilation shaft up into the forest. It’s only a matter of time, now, before the breathers spot the smoke and seek out its origin. When that happens, it’s doubtful our family will be able to remain…hidden.

Lots to like about this one! The writing itself was top-notch. The brothers have an amazing ability to keep descriptions sparse, so that the script moves along quickly, yet still pack interesting shit into their action, so that the info both moves the story forward and paints a powerful picture of the situation.

I read lots of scripts from writers who hear their writing needs to be sparse, but they take it to the extreme. The writing ends up containing so little meat, so little detail or depth of information, that it’s as if the words disappear somewhere between the page and your eyes.

I loved how the brothers would take time, for example, to explain how a rat was able to get into their food supply and chew through the cans, cutting their survival time in half. It’s stuff like this that paints a detailed picture of their predicament – that shows the unique things a family in this type of situation would have to go through. There’s meat here. There’s specificity.

But the real power of the script came in the writers’ ability to tell a story. Again, so many new writers focus on how to string words together. And it’s not that that isn’t important. It is. But it’s not nearly as important as telling the story and keeping the reader interested.

Right away, we hear about these “breathers.” The way the family talks about them, you’d think that the devil himself was hunting them. And yet we don’t know what they are yet because the writers have chosen to make them a mystery. Well guess what? That mystery is a storytelling device to keep us, the reader, interested. We will keep reading until we see these breathers for ourselves.

Then there was the smoke that went up through the ventilation shaft. We knew that the breathers might see this and possibly find them. So from the moment that smoke went out, we’re in a deep state of anticipation as we hope against all hope that they’re not going to show up. That’s storytelling. You manipulate the plot in such a way where the reader *has* to read on because they *have* to find out what happens next.

And then there were, of course, the set pieces of the script. For a movie this small in scope, the set pieces are incredibly well-crafted. What I loved about the brothers was that they knew when they had a high-impact scene, and they milked the hell out of it.

Too many writers extend scenes that have no business being extended. You only want to milk scenes if the set-up is big, the stakes are high, and the situation is compelling. There’s a scene, for example, where the escaped smoke has caused the leaves hiding their doorway to blacken with soot. This means that the parents have to go topside to replace them with fresh leaves in order to stay hidden. So they do, leaving Zoe alone in the shelter.

This is the exact kind of scene you want to milk. You’ve set up a dangerous situation. The stakes are through the roof (literally). You’ve left your youngest character alone. Go to town with this scene. Zoe watches them, for example, from the underground “periscope,” and thinks she sees breathers running towards them. She has to warn them, but has no way to. We cut back and forth between the breathers getting closer and Zoe trying to open a hatch she’s not strong enough to open. The brothers milk every second of this scene, and appropriately so, as it’s the perfect kind of scene you want to milk.

What’s really impressive is they have about five of these sequences throughout the script, all about 10 pages long, all of which move like the Chicago wind. Truthfully, I was shocked at how quickly the brothers were able to make such a tiny movie move so fast.

For me, this was a guaranteed impressive through the first two acts. However, while I liked the twist ending, I’d heard there was a twist ahead of time, so I was anticipating something a little flashier. Unfortunately, while the twist did its job, it didn’t quite live up to the expectation in my head. Don’t get me wrong. It was cool. It just wasn’t “fall out of your seat” cool.

So even though that brought it down a notch, this is one of the better horror scripts I’ve read in a while. It’s a little different. The characters are compelling. The writing is great. You just don’t see all of those things in a horror script these days. For that, I commend these guys. A job well done!

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

What I learned: Show and Tell. Any good screenwriter will tell you to SHOW things, not TELL things. But there’s actually a way to show while telling, and I call it the “Show and Tell.” Here, on page 10, the brothers want to establish how many days the family has been down here. So they highlight hundreds of marks on the wall (this is them showing). Zoe then asks how many days they’ve been down here. Claire answers, “Count for yourself.” Zoe counts, and tells us the number (301). So technically, since there’s a discussion about the days, we’re telling. But the conversation is motivated by a ‘showing,’ the walls. So it’s a combination of the two. Which is way better than someone going, “Man, if we hadn’t been down here for 300 long days already…” which, believe it or not, is the kind of clunky exposition I read all the time.

Will I still choose amateur zombie scripts after today’s review? Read on to find out.

NEW 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 effect 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: Horror/Comedy?
Premise: (from writer) The only thing worse than the deadly virus that infects the people of a small Minnesota town is the mysterious soldiers who arrive to cure them.
Writer: Phillip Walton
Details: 108 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Let’s begin the Zombie chant!

Zombies, zombies, zombies, zombies!!

Or wait!

What about this chant instead….

No zombies, no zombies, no zombies!!

Or wait. Huh?? What’s going on right now? I’m confused.

Well what if I told you that someone had written the perfect zombie movie? A movie that could appeal to both zombie fans and non-zombie fans alike? The zombie fans would get their zombie fix. And the non-zombie fans would get a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to endure yet ANOTHER zombie movie. Is that possible? Writer Philip Walton wanted to find out. But has Phil bitten off more human flesh than he can chew?

Ehhhh, no. Actually, I’m concerned with whether he’s bitten off enough. In fact, I’m not sure he’s bitten off any. If you’re going to write a zombie movie, you’re probably going to want to put zombies in it. And that’s where today’s review begins. Sit down my friends, grab a hot cup of cocoa. Throw a few extra marshmallows in there. Go ahead. No one’s looking. Make sure that fire’s burning bright. It’s time for Father Scriptshadow to tell you a tale….

Two pretentious quotes on the first page. Two!

Come on guys. The quote thing. Don’t do it. It makes you look like you’re trying too hard. Especially in a movie like this, which is essentially a horror-comedy. I mean, are we really busting out Leviticus 27:29 on page 1?

This is followed by a first page that looks like every alphabet in the world got together and had a party. Too much text! This is your very first scene! Do you really want someone opening your script to a mountain of text?? When that happens, the first thing they think is, “Oh god. This script is going to take forevvvver.” And then they get all depressed and hate every screenwriter who was ever born. Be inviting with your first page! Let them into your home. Lots of white space. White space = good.

Then we introduce two soldiers trading Tarantino-light dialogue (about the difference between horror movies and action movies). Nooooooooooo. Tarantino dialogue is one of those sure-fire tells of a beginner. Which made this three strikes before page 5. You got three strikes within 5 pages, it’s really hard to come back from that.

BUT – the script must go on. And so shall this review. Hopefully, Phillip can recover.

The story here follows a virus that has escaped into small rural Minnesota towns. So the government sends a containment unit in to quarantine the virus. But people keep seeping out, allowing the virus to infect other towns. So the containment unit keeps moving from town to town, taking care of business.

We begin in Rock Springs, Minnesota. It’s the kind of middle-of-nowhere spot that everyone’s trying to get out of but no one does. Oh how prophetic that will turn out to be. Although I’m not sure if there’s a main character, we spend the majority of our time around three teenagers: perfect Sarah, slutty Kelly, and Justin Bieber’esque Bobby. The three start to sense something is off when one of the locals gets really sick.

The next thing they know, an army moves in to quarantine the town. This army is led by a really evil sergeant named Hollis. Hollis has an interesting approach to quarantining. If he doesn’t like the way something’s going, he shoots people.

Once Sarah, Kelly and Justin Bieber realize that this is an evil army and not a nice army, they have to find a way out of town. But when Kelly gets captured, Sarah and Bieber have to go and save her. And that’s pretty much what happens. There is very little to no plot here.

So did Phil make that recovery?

Unfortunately, I have to say no. Let’s go back to that Tarantino dialogue. This is SUCH a tell that you’re dealing with a beginner so I have to bring it up again. Any time you have two characters *JUST* talking about their views on pop-culture or theories and such, it’s a wasted scene.

Here’s the thing though. You’ll see professional writers do this in moderation. But they’re ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING ELSE WITH THE SCENE AT THE SAME TIME. They’ll have their characters going after something, trying to achieve a goal. Look at the opening of Pulp Fiction. Those guys are going to kill someone WHILE they’re talking.

And the “while” is the key. If there’s no “while,” then all you have is a bunch of empty talking. Which means you’re losing the reader. And it’s all even worse if it’s happening within the very first scene!

Now I should cut Phil some slack because he’s cutting to a woman running while the guards talk, so there is *some* suspense involved. But the dialogue so dominates the scene that it doesn’t matter. You gotta keep in mind: Readers are ready to mentally check out on you within the first five pages! They will read the rest of your script with only 30% of their brain if possible. So you can’t take any chances in those opening pages. You gotta do something to wrangle us in.

But what really hurt this script was the fact that there were…no zombies! And I say this as someone who’s not a huge zombie fan. BUT, if you’re going to write a zombie movie, there’s a certain expectation the reader has that there are going to be ZOMBIES. When there isn’t, we’re just confused. I remember seeing page 57 here and thinking…WHY THE F$%& ARE THERE STILL NO ZOMBIES????

But that leads us to another question – was this ever a zombie flick in the first place? I’m still not sure. I mean, in that very first scene we talk about zombies. The infected sure look like zombies. Yet towards the end of the script, I started to wonder if this was just some random virus that had nothing to do with zombies. If that’s the case, and it *was* just a virus? Hmmmm…I think that’s boring. Especially since we learn absolutely nothing about the virus and only see it transfer to a couple of people the entire script.

There was some okay stuff with Big Meanie Hollis and his sort-of mini-terror organization. But it’s really hurt by the fact that there’s no threat from the virus. There are no zombies. There’s nothing but a few stragglers who get infected. I just think this was a huge miscalculation. It left this gaping hole in the story where the audience was waiting for something that never came.

If I were Phil, I would rewrite this to include zombies (or some new form of zombies). You can still have Hollis reining terror over everyone. But now there’s this second variable that poses a danger to himself as well as the people. It would add a complication the story desperately needs.

Some major work needs to be done with the characters as well. Outside of Hollis, I don’t remember anyone. We need to give these characters some history, we need to develop more compelling relationships between them, we need to give them some actual flaws. So little character work has been done here that it’s impossible to root for anyone.

There’s an inkling of a good idea here though. A group of people containing a zombie outbreak being more dangerous than the zombies themselves is a clever twist. But in order for it to work, we need those zombies in there threatening both sides.

I know this review was harsh but, as always, it was done with love. I care about Phillip getting better as I care about all of the readers of this site getting better. But one of the shitty things about getting better is that five minute period where you hear that honest reaction to your latest screenplay. It’s a terrible feeling after you put in all that work. You wanna go hang your laptop computer. But I promise you that once you get past that, as long as you have a positive attitude, you’ll be inspired. And you’ll write a MUCH better script. So I wish Phillip the best and thank him for letting me break down Population Zero in front of the world.

Script link: Population Zero

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

What I learned: The opening talky scene got me revved up. So here’s my advice to all…

1) Go through every single dialogue-focused scene in your script.
2) Ask if you can do the scene better by showing action instead of dialogue.
3) Change three of those scenes accordingly (to no dialogue).
4) Thank me because those scenes WILL be better.

One thing I believe I’ve done a fairly good job of on the site is reinforce the value of structure. You guys understand the inciting incident. You understand where the first act turn needs to be. You understand goals, stakes, and urgency. Some of the more advanced writers understand obstacles and conflict. All of these things are going to give you, at the very least, a solid screenplay.

But lately, I’ve been running into a lot of screenplays that do all of these things, yet are still boring.

You’d think that if somebody executed my precious GSU, I’d be preparing a 5 course meal of praise for them. But as wonderful as my darling little GSU is, it can’t make up for a crater-sized emotional void in a screenplay. And there are more craters in these scripts than there are on a full moon. They leave me feeling…empty. They don’t connect in some way.

A while back I wrote an article about the 13 things that every screenplay should have. At the end of that article, I talked about something called the “X-Factor.” The X factor is that indefinable thing that elevates a script above the pile. It’s that special sauce that makes all the pieces melt together. I call it the X-Factor because it’s hard to quantify. Something feels exciting and fresh and charged about the screenplay, but you can’t put your finger on what it is.

I believe I’ve finally figured out what it is.

SOUL.

These well-executed but boring screenplays don’t have any soul. All of the elements are where they’re supposed to be. But it’s the difference between a human being and a robot. You can feel a human being’s presence, the life beating out of them. The robot may look human, may even act human, but he emits no emotion, no love, no SOUL. So as neat as a human-looking robot is, you’ll never be able to connect with him.

So I set about trying to figure out the impossible: How to quantify SOUL. I realized I couldn’t do it in real life. But maybe I could figure it out in the screenplay world. After looking back through some of my favorite movies, I was able to identify a few things. These probably aren’t the only things that add soul to your script. But they’re the big ones. Naturally, most of them revolve around character.

RELATABLE CHARACTERS – Try to make your characters relatable in some way. There has to be something in them that’s identifiable so an audience can say, “Hey, that’s just like me,” Or “Hey, I have a friend going through the exact same thing!” This familiarity creates a connection between you and your audience that you can then use to extract emotion out of them. Because they now have a personal investment in your character, they’re more likely to care about what happens to them. It might be that your character loses someone close to them (Spider-Man), which is something a lot of people can relate to: loss. Or it might be that your character’s underestimated (Avatar), which is something a lot of us have felt in our lives. But make no mistake, if we don’t relate to the character in SOME WAY, chances are we won’t feel the power of your story.

CHARACTER HISTORY – Every day I believe more and more in character history (or character “biography”) and let me tell you why. The most boring characters I read are the most general ones. The characters I’m attracted to, the ones I want to know the most about, are unique in some way. And you can’t find the uniqueness in a person unless you know their history. Oh sure, you can give your character a quirky little habit to set them apart, like being a master harmonica player or something, but if you don’t know how or why he’s a harmonica master, it’ll just feel like a gimmick. The more work you do – the more you find out about who your character is – the more specific you can make them. If you know your character’s sister died in a car accident, for example, you can make them a cautious driver. If you know your character used to be fat, you can give him low self-esteem. If you know your character used to be a football star, he’ll probably always be bragging about the glory days. The more you know about your character, the more specific you can be. So take the time to write out those big character biographies and GET TO KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS.

CHARACTER FLAW – Creating a character flaw is a key part of giving your screenplay soul because it represents the thing about your character that most needs to change. We all have that, that monkey on our backs that won’t go away, that won’t allow us to reach our full potential. For some of us it’s that we’re not aggressive enough. For others it’s that we let ourselves be taken advantage of. For others still it’s that we don’t allow people to get close to us. By giving your character something to struggle with, you invite the audience to participate in whether they’ll overcome that struggle or not. And since we all have flaws ourselves, it’s something we want to see rectified. We believe that if our hero changes, WE CAN CHANGE TOO! It inspires us. It gives us hope. And for that reason, we *feel* something.

RELATIONSHIPS – In addition to addressing your characters individually, you want to address who they are with others. Remember that our entire lives are dictated by our relationships. The people we connect with on a daily basis are our world. So you want to spend a big chunk of your screenplay exploring those relationships. Start by finding relatable issues your characters are going through. Maybe a marriage is in trouble because the husband is a workaholic. Maybe two soul mates meet but it turns out one of them is engaged. You then want to explore the conflict and the issues in those relationships in a way that’s unique to your story. And really *think* about what your characters are going through. Treat them like real people with real problems. Lester Burnham in American Beauty had to come to terms with his wife no longer loving him. It resulted in a very real exploration of a dissolving relationship. Even the most famous action movie of all time, Die Hard, has a strong core relationship at its center – John and his wife. If you’re not exploring relationships as deeply and as obsessively as you can, you’re probably not writing very good screenplays.

THEME – The way I see it – Anybody can write a film with “stuff happening.” Those films can even do well at the box office if they’re targeted to the right demo. We’ve all seen (and quickly forgotten) Transformers. But the screenplays that are trying to say something, that are trying to leave you with something to think about, those are the screenplays readers put down and say, “Man, I have to tell somebody about this.” One of the most effective ways of doing this is to establish a theme in your movie, a “message.” Take a step back and look at your script as a whole. What is it about? What are the things that come up over and over again? Once you figure that out, you can subtly integrate that theme into the rest of your script. The Graduate, for example, is about feeling lost and directionless when you take your first steps into the world. Saving Mr. Banks is about learning how to let go. Screenplays without a theme, without a deeper message, will likely be forgotten hours after they’re finished.

IN SUMMARY
I don’t care if you’re writing a character piece, an action-thriller, a horror film or a coming-of-age movie, your script has to have soul. And it ain’t going to have it with a bunch of set-pieces and snappy dialogue. Those things help, but they mean nothing unless we’re attached to the characters, care about what happens in their relationships, and feel like there’s something deeper being said here. Plot is great. A great plot can take a script a long way. But if you want your script to hit the reader on an emotional level, if you want them to remember your script past tomorrow, you’ll need to inject soul. Hopefully these tips help you do it. Good luck!