The creator of Mad Men decides to tackle his passion project while on hiatus from the show.

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: In the vein of Sideways, an alcoholic weatherman and his bi-polar unemployed best friend find out that the friend’s recently deceased father has left him a small fortune.
About: Matt Weiner, of Mad Men fame, writes a script that is just about as far away from Mad Men as Don Draper is from fidelity. Maybe that’s because Weiner has been writing and rewriting this script for over a decade! This is his dream project, and Mad Men’s success has finally allowed him to make it.
Writer: Matt Weiner
Details: 120 pages – August 21, 2011 (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).

I am here!

So are you guys.

What a way to start this review.

I definitely need SOME way to start the review because…wow…what a weird script. Talk about a lack of structure. I’d categorize this more as two friends bumbling around for 2 hours than I would a movie.  Stuff *does* happen in “Here,” but not often. And when it does, it always happens too late. I mean I guess the first act turn – the reading of the inheritance – happens on page 30, close to where the end of the first act should be in a 120 page screenplay, but it sure felt closer to page 50. And that, again, is because so little happens before it.

Remember that the placement of your first act turn should be determined by the amount of plot you need to set up. If, for example, you’re writing a movie like Inception, which has a ton to set up, then your first act turn is going to come later. But if you’re writing something with very little plot – say “Dumb and Dumber” – then your first act should end sooner. If you’re just hanging around in your first act until page 30 because the screenwriting books tell you to, then your first act is going to draaaaag.

And look, I’m not telling Matt Weiner how to write. The great thing about Mad Men is that it doesn’t follow conventions. It makes unexpected choices. The tone and the feel of that show are divinely unique. But I’m not feeling the desire to create something like Mad Men here.

Our heroes are slightly non-traditional, I suppose. There’s Steve Dallas, a weatherman who moonlights, sunlights, and dusklights as an alcoholic. And then there’s Ben, a bi-polar nutbag who sits in his apartment all day and does nothing. While they’ve known each other since high school, their friendship is primarily driven by a desire to abuse illegal substances, which they do a lot of.

Eventually, Ben gets called back to their home town for the reading of his father’s will, to which Steve attends. It’s there where they meet Angela, the father’s widow. Oh yeah, Angela’s in her twenties. Ben’s dad was in his 70s. Doesn’t take a math major to figure out our dear young Angela is probably a modern day gold prospector.

However, the estate reading turns everybody’s world upside-down when the land, the house, and the grocery store are all left to Ben – an estate totaling 2.5 million dollars! Ben’s sister is furious since she knows how much of a fuck-up he is and that he’ll likely squander all of it. But Angela is strangely unaffected by the reading. Which intrigues Dallas, who loves having sex with intriguing woman.

So Dallas makes an excuse to stick around, “comforting” the grieving Angela. But Angela’s the one woman who’s not falling for his charm and good looks. Which is really all Steve has. So when he can’t depend on that, what can he depend on? The only way to find out may be to sober up for the first time in 20 years, and it ain’t clear if Steven’s going to be able to do that.

Someone told me after reading this that it’s clear a TV writer wrote it. While I’m not exactly sure what that means, I think I have an idea. There’s a scene early on where Ben talks for a really long time about being a vegetarian. I’m not sure what the point of it is, but I know it doesn’t push the story forward. It feels like one of those scenes writers write solely because they’re interested in the subject matter and want to get it into their screenplay – regardless of whether it has to do with anything.

Since TV storytelling evolves at a more leisurely pace, a scene like this might work. But in movies, where every scene must be an integral piece of the puzzle that thrusts the story forward, a scene like this dies on the page. And that was my issue with the first act. There were a lot of scenes like the vegetarian one.

But I think the thing that really baffled me was the characters. I’m still not sure who the protagonist was in You Are Here! The script starts out focusing on Steve, implying to us that he’s our main character. But this is actually Ben’s story. He’s the one whose father dies. He’s the one who all of the important shit happens to. So shouldn’t we be starting with him?  Except we can’t start with him.  He’s the wacky sidekick.  So we start with Steve, even though Steve has absolutely zero at stake with anything in the movie.

I get the feeling that someone like Weiner would read this and roll his eyes, maybe even laugh – the implication being, “People like you are idiots. You don’t analyze this shit. Just enjoy the fucking story.” But that’s the thing: I had a hard time enjoying the story because I couldn’t even understand the roles of the characters.

There’s a segment in You Are Here, for example, where Steve takes off back to the city for awhile, and we stay with Ben and Angela. Wait a minute. WHAT??  So we established that we couldn’t start with Ben, even though his life is pushing the plot forward, because he’s too much of a wacky sidekick.  But now it’s decided, midway through the movie, he’s going to be our main character??  I’m sorry but this sounds like a writer who couldn’t make up his mind.  And what the hell happened to Steve??  Why did he LEAVE??  What character just LEAVES a movie??

As far as our character triumvirate went, Angela was probably the most interesting of the three. I liked that Weiner avoided clichés with her. We assumed Angela was a gold digger. She wasn’t. We assumed she was selfish. She taught special-ed children. We assumed she would fall for Steve. She didn’t. The reason anything at  the house worked was because we didn’t know what to expect from Angela.

However, at a certain point, Angela became the epitome of what was wrong with You Are Here. I couldn’t get a handle on her.  Just like I couldn’t get a handle on any of these people. Steven is an alcoholic. But I didn’t definitively know that until the third act when Angela literally says it. I just thought he partied too much. Ben starts the movie beating the shit out of Steve, then inexplicably bursting into tears. In retrospect I suppose this was to demonstrate his bi-polar personality, but at the time it was bizarrely confusing. And with Angela, I couldn’t figure out what she wanted. She seemed confused a majority of the time.

There are some good things about You Are Here. Stuff gets fun when the sister challenges the will. And I like the idea of Ben stuck in this house with a woman who was the wife of a father he barely knew. It made for an interesting dynamic. Especially with weirdo Steve popping in every once in awhile. I just wish there was more of a structure to the story. Everything felt too fast and loose. And in the end, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take away from it.

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

What I learned: Look out for “Mouthpiece scenes.” These are scenes where you use your characters as a mouthpiece for your own theories and ideas. They never feel natural because we can tell that the character has been replaced by the writer, who just HAS to get out his feelings on this one topic. These became popular in the 90s after the famous “Why should I tip?” monologue in Resevoir Dogs. But now they just stop a screenplay cold. That was my problem with the early Ben vegetarian scene. I read it and thought, “This has nothing to do with anything.” I guess it told us Ben was a vegetarian but we could’ve easily achieved that by showing Ben refuse meat on his sandwich.  The point is, mouthpiece scenes tend to feel unnatural. If you absolutely have to include them, make sure the scene is pushing the story forward. Otherwise, they’ll stop the story cold.

There may not be any White Houses exploding today as previously planned, but we do get the man who played the part our White House exploding screenplay was inspired after. That’s right – John McClane, aka Bruce Willis, adds another film to his arsenal.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a fireman witnesses a gang-murder, he must stay alive long enough to testify against the leader.
About: Tom O’Connor is the same writer who brought us the Black List script I reviewed/liked a few weeks ago called “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” Fire with Fire has actually already completed production and stars Bruce Willis.
Writer: Tom O’Connor
Details: 105 pages – 5/12/10 (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).

So the other day I was reading some Twit-Pitch First 10 Pages, and I was feeling bad that I was reading them so late. I was exhausted. I was slow. I kept thinking I should be reading these under better conditions. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that these are the conditions most scripts are read under. Readers, and really anybody in Hollywood, are likely reading your script when they’re tired. Industry folks are notorious workaholics (as I’m discovering more and more), and always trying to fit that one more call in, that one more script in. Which means your script is probably being read in that 45 minute period between putting the kids to bed and brushing one’s teeth.

But in this case, I want you to magnify that exhaustion by a thousand – That’s where I was when I opened this script. I’d actually planned on reviewing a different script (let’s just say there was a White House involved) when the writer politely asked me to hold off for awhile. (note: No more live-tweeting script reviews!) Which meant I had to add another script onto an already endless day. Honestly, I think I started reading it at 3:30 a.m. All I could think about was the sweet nectar of my freshly washed sheets against my back. I could feel the coolness already. Oh sweet bed sheets. I love you.

So if ever there was a script that didn’t stand a chance, it was this one. But guess what? It pulled me in almost immediately. THAT, my friends, is good writing. Being able to wake a reader from his impending slumber. And it proves my theory – which is that no matter how distracted or tired or uninterested a reader is, if you write something good, you can get’em. So when you’re writing your next script, ask yourself that question – “Would a dead-tired reader stick with this?” Cause that’s likely your audience.

Anyway, Fire with Fire introduces us to Jeremy, a firefighter who’s so dedicated to his job that when a bar goes up in flames, he runs in to save a case of scotch for he and his buddies. In other words, if you can’t take the heat then take the scotch from the kitchen.

Afterwards, he and his boys decide to celebrate with some early morning snacks. So they head over to the local convenience store and Jeremy goes in to snag some food. An overworked Latino man and his teenage son are cleaning the place when a trio of very bad looking men enter. There’s Boyd, Sean, and Neil Hagan, the leader (a man with Arayan tattoos bursting out of his suit).

Doesn’t take long to realize these guys aren’t here for a Big Gulp.

Turns out Neil wants to buy this store as it’s a perfect location for his drug business. The owner stands strong, though, saying he’s protected by a Latino gang and that they should leave. Hagan responds by SHOOTING HIS SON and then him. Sort of an odd negotiating tactic if you ask me but this Hagan guy’s a bit unconventional.

With Jeremy being a witness, he’s now collateral damage. But a nifty move at the last second allows him to escape. If only that were the end of it. The Feds have been trying to catch this Hagan fellow for years. And now that they have a witness to one of his murders who’s willing to testify, Christmas has come early. But that means Jeremy will have to go into witness protection until the trial.

So he’s whisked off to the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, supposedly safe from the reaches of Hagan, especially considering he’s now in jail. But it doesn’t take long for Hagan to work his magic and find Jeremy. He then sends two hitmen to erase the problem.

Jeremy is able to escape, but soonafter, accepts the truth. Jail or no jail, this man will hunt him down until he kills him. So Jeremy does the unthinkable. He goes on the offensive – He’s going to kill Hagan. This seems insane at first, but it turns out that rival Latino gang is more than eager to help him out. And that just might be enough to tip the scales.

Lots of good things about this script. First thing I noticed was the plot device O’Connor used to frame the story – a trial. Specifically getting to a trial where one man could prove another man guilty. Just like The Hitman’s Bodyguard! This was not by accident. Notice how the device creates the trifecta of a goal, stakes, and urgency. The goal is to make it to the trial. The stakes are if he doesn’t, Hagan goes free. And the urgency is the ticking time bomb of the trial, coupled with Hagan’s men on his tail. I’m not surprised at all that O’Connor leaned on this device a second time, as it’s an effective way to frame a story.

O’Connor also followed the old Scriptshadow staple of making your bad guy REALLY BAD. The badder he is, the more we’ll want to see our hero take him down. Hagan shoots a fucking father and son without blinking. That’s bad. But note how he did it. Anybody can have the bad guy shoot someone to make the audience hate him. That’s a cliché choice and probably won’t resonate. So O’Connor has his bad guy shoot the man’s son first – right in front of him! That hits us way harder (a father watches his son get shot right in front of him!!).

The script had some really cool moments as well. I thought the convenience store scene was inspired. I mean you were IN that store, BEGGING for a way out just like Jeremy. That’s the scene that officially woke me up from my slumber.

Another great moment is the line-up scene. They put Hagan in a lineup with the classic one-way glass and Jeremy having to identify him. Each man is asked to step forward and read out the line that Hagan uses at the store. When Hagan finally steps forward to read the line, he reads his own line instead: JEREMY’S NAME AND ADDRESS! It was one of those f*cking awesome “movie moments” that people are going to be buzzing about when they leave the theater.

But Fire With Fire started running into problems in the second act. If you read the site often, you know I like clean narratives. I like when we know what the story is about and where it’s going. For example, The Disciple Program. We know what that story is about. It’s about a man getting revenge on the men who murdered his wife.

With Fire with Fire, the narrative kept changing. At first I thought we were in a firefighting movie (it’s called Fire with Fire, it’s about a firefighter, and the first scene is a fire). Then it becomes a witness relocation movie. Then it becomes a revenge film. Then it turns into a gang war film. I’m not saying you can’t change directions in a script. We were just talking yesterday about doing this at the midpoint. But if you keep doing it, the reader starts becoming confused. I know I was. “What kind of movie is this exactly?” I kept asking. You really have to be a great writer to pull this off and while O’Connor is a very good writer, I would’ve loved to have seen more focus in this area.

It’s too bad because the script started off so awesome. I was thinking it could be a classic. Then it never quite decided what it wanted to be. Still, the story’s fun enough to keep you entertained. And there’s easily enough here for a recommendation. It just didn’t quite reach the heights that it could’ve.

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

What I learned: Don’t blow your best scene on the first act. A lot of writers – especially young writers – make the mistake of putting their best scene in the first act. The problem with this is that every other big scene afterwards will feel like a letdown in comparison. If you’re going to put a great scene in the first act, then you have to be willing to top it again and again throughout your script. That was an issue I had here. The scene I remember most is the convenience store scene. And it happens inside the first 15 pages. You’re now going to have me sit around for another 100 pages and not read a better scene? I’m gonna feel let down. So when you get to those big scenes in your script, always try to top yourself from the previous big scene. You want your best most powerful stuff happening in the last third of the script if possible.

The Black List strikes again with this high-octane sci-fi thriller. But does it have the stamina to make it to the finish line?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: The United States is attacked by an unknown enemy that is vastly superior to them in every military category. Who could it possibly be?
About: On A Clear Day finished on last year’s Black List. It currently has Jaume Collet-Serra attached to direct. Collet-Serra was the director of Orphan and Unknown. He is also attached to direct the long-gestating live-action adaptation of Akira. Ryan Engle, the writer, gets the Fascinating Adaptation Award of the year, as he adapted “Rampage.” You guys remember that one? The video game where monsters leapt onto buildings and smashed stuff up? I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall during those development meetings.
Writer: Ryan Engle
Details:116 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).

You guys know how I feel about How It Ends. L-O-V-E luv it! Anything where the end of the world is coming and you gotta figure out a way to stay alive is a conflict mating call. Unless, of course, you do it realllllyyyyy slowwwwwwwly. I won’t mention any scripts by name but I think you know which end of the world script I’m talking about.

Anyway, if How It Ends had one of those cousins that looks so freakishly like you that you start seriously considering you’re a clone, On A Clear Day would be that cousin. The two scripts start very similarly. In fact, they start in the exact same city – Seattle! Coincidence?

So Seattlein Peter Fox is a normal family guy who, oh yeah, just lost his job. Not ideal when you’re trying to support two daughters and a wife. Oh yeah, and you have another one on the way, which you don’t know about yet because your wife, Molly, hasn’t told you. Things are looking very bleak on the economic front for the Fox family. The hare has passed them by.

That’s the one good thing about a bloodthirsty attacking army – it puts things in perspective. All of a sudden, a middle-management job with above average health benefits doesn’t seem so important. Indeed, just minutes after Molly comes back from dropping the kids off at school, explosions start ringing out everywhere.

Peter and Molly know that their immediate job is to get back to that school and save their daughters. But as soon as they get outside, they realize how bad it is. There are explosions happening in EVERY DIRECTION. Operation Daughter Save is too important though so they head into the heart of the city.

That’s when they first see the enemy. A tank. Shockingly huge. All black. Sleek. Blowing everything to pieces.

*They* may have not figured it out yet, but us sci-fi geeks have. The future has sent back an army to take over the past! Eventually, Peter and Molly catch up to us, but that doesn’t make things any easier. In fact, when Molly gets injured, they’re forced to split up. And that’s when Peter sees the extent of the attack – the army is carting everyone away in trucks. Something tells me they’re not getting a sightseeing cruise around Pugent Sound.

But it’s about to get way worse, and you can blame James Cameron for that. Our Terminator-inspired army is hunting down specific people who could cause them harm in the future – and PETER IS ONE OF THEM! Also, because they’re, you know, from the future, they know where Peter’s going to be before he does! Somehow, then, Peter has to circumvent this army and these odds to get his wife back and save his daughters. All before Future Army And Friends destroy the city.

This script took you by the tail and swung you around like a giant ferris wheel. The first 25 pages were probably the best I’ve read all year. I didn’t know what was going on (hadn’t read the logline) so I was having a blast trying to figure out who this mystery army was.

And it was just so easy to read!

That’s something I’ve been appreciating more and more lately: easy to read writing. I’ve been reading through all these Twit-Pitch scripts and it’s strange how some of them allow your eyes to just fly down the page while others keep you reading the same paragraphs over and over again. And it’s not even obvious what’s wrong. They’re competently written. It’s just the way the sentences are constructed is clunky. Either there’s too much information or the order of the information is off or something. It’s unnecessarily difficult.

But the thing I really loved about this script was that Engle always had a huge goal pushing the characters forward. AND… as soon as that goal expired, he’d replace it with a new goal. So there were never any lags in the script. It always moved because his characters always had something immediate to do.

So it starts out with Peter having to save his kids. That’s his goal. But on the way there, Molly gets injured. So there’s a new goal: Get her to the hospital. Once at the hospital, they get split up because the Army moves in. So there’s a new goal, he has to find Molly. Once he does, we go back to the original goal. They have to find and save their kids. This process is essential for a movie like this because a movie like this needs to move. If you don’t have a sense of urgency in a movie where the United States is being attacked, then you probably haven’t written a good script.

For the record, setting new goals for your characters every 10-15 pages for is one of the easiest ways to keep the pace of your screenplay brisk. I read scripts all the time where writers don’t introduce a new goal right after they’ve finished a recent one and let me tell you, those scripts get boring REALLY fast. You ALWAYS want to have your character driving towards something. The second they’re not, they’re passive. And passive people are boring.

I do have to admit, though, that the pace got a little exhausting towards the end. I felt like I was on the 23rd mile of a 25 mile marathon and my legs finally gave out. It’s strange because the pace was “Day’s” biggest strength, but at a certain point we needed to relax. Even Weekend-long benders in Vegas require some nap time.

Another problem was that the first half of the script was so good, it was almost impossible for the second half to live up to it. In any “on the run” script like this, the big danger is that things are going to get repetitive. To prevent this, you want to introduce a new element at the midpoint that adds some sizzle to the story. I always use Pitch Black as an example of this. In the first half, they’re discovering the world and looking for a way off of it. In the second half, darkness comes and millions of flying beasts shoot out of the middle of the planet to make that search infinitely more difficult. That’s what saved that movie from being repetitive.

I didn’t get that here so the redundancy factor kicked in.

Still, this was just so well-written, so strongly paced and such a structurally impressive screenplay, that in the end, the positives outweighed the negatives. And I loved the idea of the future attacking the past. I’ve been waiting for a script to take advantage of that idea for awhile.

So I would recommend this one – especially to sci-fi geeks. If the second half had given me a little more, this may have finished a rating higher. 

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

What I learned: What I liked about this script was that it never let the characters off the hook. There’s a moment where Peter’s survived an extended battle with a soldier in the hospital. As soon as he kills the guy, however, he hears two more soldiers coming down the hall. So he hides behind a corner. In almost all the screenplays I read, after an extended battle like this, the writer lets the character sneak away. Engle doesn’t. The new soldiers spot Peter immediately and come after him. It’s a small thing but it’s what makes this script so intense. Nobody’s ever allowed an easy out. Every single moment is difficult. – So always look to make things difficult for your hero. Never let them off the hook!

She’s turned a number of your boring loglines into logline tour-de-forces. Now she gets her screenplay reviewed on Scriptshadow!

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: Drama/Romance
Premise: (from Dianne) After one of her alter-egos seduces the guy she’s been crushing on, a shy college student with multiple personalities struggles to get rid of her meddlesome headmates and find love on her own.
About: Dianne Cameron has been a longtime reader and commenter on the site. She may be the best I’ve ever seen at breaking down and fixing loglines. But a logline is a lot different from a script. So let’s see if that talent extends to writing screenplays!
Writer: Dianne Cameron
Details: 104 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).

It’s pretty amazing what a title change can do. When this script was titled Plurally Inclined, I wanted to stay as far away from it as possible. The title made me squirm and wiggle uncomfortably. When it popped up in my Inbox as “We, Myself and I,” however, I couldn’t imagine NOT reading it. It was all of a sudden friendly and approachable. So my friend, a word to the wise: Never stop until you have the perfect title! It REALLY DOES affect how someone sees your script.

And now to the main event…

Heather Lee is a 19-year-old intelligent shy figure skating sophomore. Her best friend Zoe is an outgoing fire cracker hot fashionista. Her, um, little sister maybe(?), B.J. is cute and precocious. And then her oldest friend, Suzanne, is a moody French chick who spends way too much time complaining about the world.

Oh yeah, by the way, these are all one person – Heather. That’s because Heather has multiple personality disorder. All of these people are just figments of her imagination.

So Heather has a crush on frat boy Matt but has been too shy to do anything about it. Well Heather, waiters become lonely neighbors. Your alternate personality number one, Zoe, takes over your body, then takes over Matt, leading him back to his dorm room and giving him multiple…other things. By the way, Zoe is 17 years old. Which means Matt’s just committed statutory rape. I think?

When Heather finds out Zoe stole her man, she’s furious, but such is the life of a Multiple Person. It’s hard enough to control the urges of one woman, let alone four!

Anyway, the one person who understands Heather and what she goes through is her best friend Tyler. He knows about her multiple personalities and is her one shoulder to cry on. In fact, the two seem like a perfect match, yet Tyler is inexplicably dating someone else who he doesn’t have NEARLY the same chemistry with. So what’s going on?

I’ll tell you. (spoiler) – In the best moment of the script, we find out the girl Tyler’s dating isn’t real. It’s another one of Heather’s personalities! Zoinks! Tyler’s actually in love with Heather, but can’t do anything about it, since you can’t be with a girl who goes off and sleeps with other guys, even if they’re not technically sleeping with them…yet they are.

So we follow Heather as she navigates through this minefield of multiplicity, experiencing the trials and tribulations of a young woman fighting an already difficult stage of her life with 5 times the obstacles. Will she find a way to be with Tyler? Does she really like Matt? How does she satisfy her other personalities and still satisfy herself? Questions abound in “We, Myself and I.”

Okay, I have a lot to say about this one. I know people will want to talk about the pictures on the title page, but the pictures are the least important piece to this puzzle. And it is a puzzle. A great big giant puzzle we only have one third the pieces for.

I think Dianne may have bit off more than she could chew. The difficulty level for this script is through the roof. I’m not sure she knew just how challenging it would be to convey what she was trying to convey when she started this thing.

Let’s start with the rule-set. The rules in We, Myself and I are never made clear. Sometimes Heather can become one of her other personalities. Other times she can sit down and talk with her other personalities. I’m betting Dianne did her research and both these things are possible, but boy was it confusing to someone reading the story.

For instance, sometimes she seems to forget when she becomes other people (Zoe sleeping with Matt) and other times she can remember. So what *does* happen when she’s another personality? Does the rest of her just black out? Does she only remember a third of her days, for example, since she’s another personality for the other two-thirds? I know there’s only so much time and you can’t explain everything to the reader less you bore them to death, but these are extremely important details if we’re to understand what, exactly, is going on.

On top of this, what’s happening doesn’t make sense. A girl with multiple personality disorder has snuck into a college? Do her parents know about this? Are they okay with their daughter, who can become a different person at any moment, roaming around freely? Isn’t that dangerous? Wouldn’t they be worried something might happen to her? Unless she’s tricked her parents too? Although maybe her parents aren’t around anymore and I missed that. Still, that would make this way too convenient.

And wouldn’t her professors or someone at the college have figured her secret out by now? She can’t control when these personalities take over, right? So the chances of her walking around freely and never once slipping into another personality in class or somewhere else are next to impossible. Yet she still seems to be fooling everyone.

This begs the obvious question – why not make this a comedy? If it were a comedy, the audience wouldn’t be asking any of these questions. Or, I should say, they wouldn’t care as much. But by treating the subject matter seriously, you have no choice but to explain these plot holes. And the fact that they aren’t explained undermines any chance of us taking the story seriously.

Personally, I think it would be a lot more interesting to tell this story as a comedy from the point of view of a guy who starts dating a girl who has multiple personality disorder. Now you don’t have to worry about covering this complicated rule-set because Heather would no longer be the main character.

In addition, I’d probably take out the college setting. There’s something very “low stakes” about college. People go to college to take classes and party. There’s nothing to lose (unless you stress a scholarship or graduation they’re in danger of losing). It feels like the kind of subject matter that you’d have more options with in the real world. And plus we’d take it more seriously (if that’s the route Dianne wanted to stick with). I never felt that Heather was in danger of losing that much in this story.

On top of this, I’m not sure there’s any GSU. Not that GSU is the end all, be all, but I definitely felt like this story was lacking momentum and forward thrust. What were we pushing towards? What was the point of all this? Was it just to experience a semester in the life of a young woman with this disorder? I guess you could go that route but from a story point of view it just isn’t very interesting.

The lack of GSU also led to murky writing choices. If your main character’s not after something (a goal), you, the writer, don’t really know what to write next so you basically guess. I remember at one point, for example, towards the end of the screenplay, we switch over to Matt as sort of a mini-main character. I barely knew Matt and definitely didn’t care enough about him to be alone with him for a sequence. At that point I truly had no idea where the story was going anymore.

In Dianne’s defense, I see even the biggest A-list writers struggling with this idea. It’s just so complicated. My suggestion would be to simplify it as much as possible and make it a straight comedy. It would make writing the story so much easier. But I wish Dianne the best of luck with it. Her contributions in the comments section have been invaluable!

Script link: We, Myself and I

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

What I learned: Be aware if you’re writing a rules-dependent script. There are certain stories where the rules have to be spelled out clearly for the audience or else we’re not going to know what’s going on. Sci-fi (Matrix, Inception) and fantasy (Lord Of The Rings) usually fall under this category, but every once in awhile you write a story like We, Myself and I that requires the same amount of explanation. In these cases, you have to think about EVERY SINGLE QUESTION THE AUDIENCE MIGHT ASK ABOUT THE RULES and make sure they’re answered. Not only that, but make sure they’re answered invisibly – hidden inside dialogue and action so as not to draw attention to themselves. Star Wars does a good job of this. We learn the force through actions (Darth Vader force-choking an official for questioning him) and intriguing backstory (Obi-Wan telling a desperate-to-know Luke about how his father used to be a jedi). Diane DID use a lecture scene explaining what multiple personality disorder was, but not only did it feel forced (a professor who just happened to be talking about the very disorder our main character suffers from in a lecture?) but it wasn’t enough. It was only about 30% of what we needed to know. Rule-sets have no “one-size-fits-all” solution, but as long as you’re aware of what the audience needs to know in order to “get” your story, you should be able to write in what you need to.

Okay guys, Twit-Pitch is alive and well. And if you were following my Twitter feed every night, you’d be seeing me analyze the first ten pages of these entries in REAL-TIME. That’s right. I actually tweet what I’m thinking AS I’M THINKING IT. What other contest does that!? This is unprecedented stuff here so if you’re not following me on Twitter yet, you best remedy that right away!

Now, I bring up Twit-Pitch because when you read ONLY the first 10 pages of a bunch of scripts in a short span of time, you REALLY start paying attention to what makes those pages work or not work. And while it’s nothing new to say “Make sure your first 10 pages are awesome,” it really hit me how important that piece of advice is during this exercise. I realized how quickly that feeling of going one way or the other comes for the reader.

The thing is, when writers hear this advice, they get the wrong idea. They believe “make your first 10 pages great” means immediately assaulting the reader with a huge car chase or a big action set-piece. I’m not saying those won’t capture the readers’ attention if done well, but a generic action scene is just as boring as a generic dialogue scene.

So I sat back and thought about all the openings I liked (both with these pages and with other scripts I’ve read) and while I can’t say I’ve come up with a definitive formula for roping in the reader, I can tell you that when comparing the first ten pages of all these scripts, I found a few go-to approaches that give you the best shot at grabbing the reader’s attention.

One of the best ways to open a script is to introduce a problem. When you introduce a problem, the reader will want to stick around to see if that problem is solved. So in The Sixth Sense, the movie starts with husband and wife having a quiet moment in their bedroom, when, all of a sudden, an old patient breaks in and starts threatening them. This patient is the *problem.* He’s threatening our hero and his wife. I don’t know any readers who would not want to find out how this scene ends.

But you don’t have to be telling a ghost story or writing an action film to start with a problem. You can inject a problem into anything. Maybe you open with a teenage girl on the subway with two menacing hoodlums staring at her from across the car. Maybe you start with a woman finding out she’s pregnant. Maybe you start with a lawyer losing his job. Just introduce a problem and you’ve got us.

The next thing you can start with is a mystery. A reader is always going to be roped in if there’s some sort of mystery presented to them. You need look no further than Inception to see how to open your script with a good mystery. We see our main character washing up on shore. We see our main character asleep in an apartment with a mob approaching. We see our main character asleep on a train. If I’m a reader, I want to find out how this is happening. I want to keep reading.

The third thing you can start with is a good old-fashioned Scriptshadow staple – a GOAL. Just give your character a goal and we’ll want to see if he gets it or not. The prototypical example of this is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones’ goal is to get the gold monkey in the cave and get out. Throw a few obstacles in the way and you have yourself a great opening sequence.

Another solid opening move is a surprise. I like this one because it actually allows you to start slow. You can introduce your characters. Establish a little bit of setup along the way. And then at some point in the scene, throw in a shocking surprise that jolts the reader. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Iron Man, but if I remember correctly, we start with Tony Stark in a Humvee with some other soldiers chatting away, then out of nowhere – BOOM! – his vehicle is attacked.

If none of these openings float your script’s boat, then AT LEAST start us off with some conflict. Give us an imbalance that projects a feeling of instability. If something’s unstable, we intrinsically want to stick around until it stabilizes. So in Fargo, a man walks into a bar to discuss the kidnapping of his wife with a couple of contract men. Immediately, the two parties are not on the same page. They point out how our protagonist is late. Our protagonist counters by insisting he’s on time. This conflict seeps its way into their conversation, making a somewhat straightforward dialogue scene interesting!

Now you don’t have to use any of these approaches if you don’t want. There are plenty of other ways to open a screenplay and I encourage you guys to list them in the comments. But from my experience, if you want to hook a reader right away, these are extremely solid bets. Now if all this stuff intimidates you or confuses you, or you’re convinced there’s no way to use any of these methods in the kind of script you’re writing, then there’s one failsafe rule to fall back on: Make sure something interesting is happening. That’s all. Don’t bore us with two people talking about something that’s ultimately irrelevant. Give us a scene where something interesting is happening and we’ll be intrigued.

So now that you have a good idea of how to rope a reader in with your first 10, I thought it would be the perfect time to look over the first 14 entrants I’ve read in the Twit-Pitch contest. Of these 14, 8 of them did not make it to the next round. 5 of them received “maybe” votes, meaning I’ll revisit them after I’ve read everything, and 1 received the coveted “definite” vote (“The Tradition – 1867 After losing her father, a woman unwittingly takes a job as a maid at a countryhouse of aristocratic cannibals”). Below, I’m including all the scripts the writers let me post. Check out what you can and study the first ten pages. Determine why you liked some and disliked others. Share your observations in the comments section. And if you know of any other tricks to pull the reader in in the first 10, share those too!

DIDN’T MAKE IT

Tusk
The ghost of a legendary movie star gets tangled up in his own biopic when he needs the help of the heartthrob cast to play him.

Untitled Hoarder
A hoarder finds the girl of his dreams only to lose her in his apartment.


Treetop
After running away from home, an eight foot tall teenager stumbles upon a retirement town for sideshow performers.

Nuts & Rats
An ex-cop awakes in an alternative reality where normal people are locked up in mental institutions and society is run by lunatics.

Open House
Desperate to divorce but cash-strapped, ornery newlyweds must put their feuding aside to sell their house, much less agree on a price.

Godfathers
Two guys have one weekend to battle for the coveted ‘Godfather’ title to their best friend’s new daughter.

Local .357
Ex-CIA assassin unionizes an eclectic group of freelance hitmen to “negotiate” with their mob employers. Norma Rae meets RED

The Lipschitz Affair
When an art heist interrupts a wedding at the Guggenheim, everyone’s a suspect — even the bride and groom

MAYBE

The Last Rough Rider
It’s 1901. Terrorists have just taken over the White House. And only Theodore Roosevelt can stop them.

Blackhats
A hacker for hire finds himself in a deadly web of corporate espionage after being hired to steal the 1st sentient A.I.

Ridin’ The Gravy Train
With his favorite fast-food sandwich facing its final week before it’s phased out forever, an obsessed man leads a protest to save it.

Gino And Me
In early 1980s New Jersey, a 12-year-old decides to profile the local mob boss for his seventh grade English project despite the vehement disapproval of his mother.

Crimson Road
Can it get any worse than living next door to a serial killer? It can if you live on CRIMSON ROAD… the whole street is full of them.