Genre: Comedy
Premise: A family of private investigators investigate each other just as much as they investigate their cases.
About: This is a low-level 2008 Black List script based on the novel of the same name, written by Lisa Lutz. Lutz started out as a screenwriter, writing a screenplay titled “Plan B,” which by all accounts ended up being a terrible movie. She later began writing novels, and her first one, The Spellman Files, reached number 27 on the New York Times bestseller list. The screenwriters adapting the book may sound familiar to you. That’s because Bobby and Josh still hold the record for the highest selling spec sale by unproduced screenwriters in Hollywood history – 1.5 million – for their sale of The Passion Of The Ark, which I reviewed a while back.
Writers: Bobby Florsheim & Josh Stolberg (based on the novel by Lisa Lutz).
Details: 122 pages – August 26, 2008 draft (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).
This week we have a script written by an Academy award-winning screenwriter. A script written by the man who made in the vicinity of 40 million dollars in his screenwriting career. And a script written by the guys responsible for Evan Almighty. Which one would you bet got the impressive?
One of the prerequisites of comedy scripts is that they be…you know…funny. Unfortunately, if you look at the recent track record of comedy scripts here on Scriptshadow, there have been about as many laughs as the season premiere of Two And A Half Men. I’m beginning to wonder if the screenplay format is just not conducive to laughs. Maybe it’s so technical, that even getting someone to chuckle is a monumental achievement.
Still, this sounded like a premise with potential. It’s not exactly the kind of movie I’d see on a Saturday night, but I knew if the writers could find the comedy in the situation, we might have a winner. So is this just another in a long line of failed comedy attempts at Scriptshadow, or that rare five-star knee slapper in waiting?
20-something Izzy is out on a date with a young suitor. We get the sense that Izzy isn’t very good at dating, but boy does she try her darndest. Unfortunately, just when the conversation is getting good, Izzy can’t help but notice a car that’s driven past the restaurant a third time in the last 10 minutes. Her date thinks she’s a little nutty for pointing it out, but she insists they’re in danger.
The next thing you know she’s screeching through the downtown streets with her date hanging on to his seat for dear life. Eventually, after a few deft maneuvers, Izzy pulls up around the car, gets out and storms over to the passenger window. The window rolls down and we meet a slightly older man and woman. These are Izzy’s parents, doing reconnaissance on her date. Welcome to the Spellman family.
The Spellmans operate a private investigation business that’s run sort of like the mob. If you’re born into the family, you’re born into the business. Besides Izzy and her parents, there’s Ray, the grandfather, who started the business. And then there’s little Rae, a preteen devil of a girl who loves private investigation just as much as Izzy hates it.
And that’s really the issue here. Izzy wants out. At the very least, she wants her family to stop butting into her private life so she can meet a man, get married, and start a normal life. And when she finally finds the man who fits the bill, a handsome conservative dentist, it’s full steam – and lots of free toothpaste – ahead. The problem is she has to solve one more difficult case before she can officially be let go.
That case involves a brother and sister whose ancestors were involved in one of the biggest unsolved bank robberies in US history. It happened in San Francisco back in 1906, where three brothers stole millions of dollars worth of rare government bonds. The thing is, the brothers hid them, and nobody’s been able to find them since. So the brother and sister hire the Spellman family to find the money.
In an interesting choice, we repeatedly flash back to 1906 to learn about the brothers: how they planned the robbery, how they were able to do it without getting caught, and what eventually happened to the money. To me, this is what elevated the script beyond your average comedy. While I thought the Spellman’s comedy was solid, it wasn’t anything “fall on the floor” worthy. So this added element of depth and mystery took some of the load off. This is what I always say. Create an interesting story and characters first, and then try to find the comedy within that – as opposed to trying to find a bunch of funny situations, and then building characters and story around it. The former always ends up in a better screenplay.
I have to admit though – I was skeptical of The Spellman Files at first. It seemed like one of those screenplays that thought it was a lot more clever than it actually was. Everybody’s double-crossing each other. Everybody’s secretly following each other. Everybody’s got something on everybody else. It just seemed a tad predictable. But then a funny thing happened. The script actually did become as clever as it thought it was.
For example, later in the script, little Rae sneaks off to monitor the bad guys, something her parents specifically told her not to do because the bad guys were getting dangerous. Because the parents are always one step ahead, they’re already on Rae’s trail as soon as she leaves the house. Then, across the street, they see a man behind the bushes watching Rae. They sneak up on him (figuring he’s one of the bad guys), and tell him he’s dead meat if he doesn’t explain who hired him. “She did,” he replies. Huh? “She gave me 20 bucks to follow her and take her picture. She said I could stop when two lunatics came up to me.” When they look up, Rae’s gone.
And really there’s all sorts of fun little plot developments. Later on, for instance, the sister (the client) comes back in, convinced that her brother already has the money and is hiding it from her. So she hires them a second time to look into him. Now, the family isn’t just trying to find the money. They’re trying to find out if this brother is conning his sister. Usually when you try to cram too many plot points into your script, it can become confusing. I was impressed by how many layers this story had, and yet how simple and easy it was to follow. That’s not easy to do.
But in the end, it’s all about the main character. Your main character has to be compelling in some way – they have to be going through something – trying to overcome something. And even though the idea of breaking free of the family business is kind of silly, we really felt Izzy’s struggle and her need to be an individual. The boyfriend himself was probably a little lame, but I totally understood this character, identified with her and felt like her struggle was real. I love when a script is trying to say something with its characters. And breaking free of your family is a theme that everybody can relate to at one point or another in their life.
How this movie does is going to depend on how they make it. If they make it like Spy Kids, it’s going to suck. If they treat it with the weight and sophistication that are present here in the script – don’t add any fart jokes or pop culture pandering nonsense – I think this could be a really good movie. It’s fun. It’s fresh. It’s one of the better scripts I’ve read in awhile. Bobby and Josh have really improved since that first sale of theirs way back in the day.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a good example of how to use flashbacks effectively. Remember that most of the time, it’s best to convey backstory in the present storyline. That’s because every time you go backwards, you stop your story. So for instance, if we were to flash back and show Izzy’s early years with her family – see that her struggles with her family have been going on since she was a little kid – that’s basically a pointless flashback. That can easily be implied in the present day storyline – which is exactly what they do. But the flashbacks here tell the story of the three brothers who robbed the bank. Because that story helps push the present day story forward (the more we understand about their story, the closer we get to finding the money in this story), it doesn’t feel like a flashback. It feels like a natural extension of the story. Again, always be wary of using flashbacks, but there are occasions where they can be effective.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: While investigating a recent murder spree, a cop gets lured into the unique lifestyle of his main suspect, an ex-rocker turned club owner.
About: This script sold back in 1994 to Savoy Pictures. At the time, it was the richest deal for a screenwriter ever made. Joe got $1 million up front with another $4 million production bonus, plus 2.5% of the box office AND video gross and finally 1% of the soundtrack sales. Keep in mind this is when Eszterhas was at the top of his game and selling badly scribbled to-do lists for millions of dollars. He still remains the most successful spec screenwriter in cinema history. Oh, and this is a first draft. Whether this is the draft that got the deal done, however, is unclear. I can see Joe sending this off to someone to give them an idea of what he was going for and them just throwing a bunch of money at him, assuming he’d get it perfect in the subsequent drafts.
Writer: Joe Eszterhas
Details: 110 pages – first draft (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).
The theme of the week seems to be the 90s. Yesterday’s script felt kind of 90s retro, but this script takes it to a whole new level with pop culture references and everything. And really, if you want to get right down to it, it feels like Basic Instinct except the main suspect is a man instead of a woman. That definitely makes things interesting for the first half of the script. I was right there with it. But then, either because this is a first draft or he just ran out of ideas, the story nosedives faster than Taylor Lautner’s acting career.
30-something Vince Cochran probably isn’t the cop you want working your case. His veins are usually juiced with a fresh coat of whiskey, and he often looks like he just got off of a three day bender. Anyway, Vince is pulled into a case where a woman has been sliced and diced and left on the beach. She’s one of a handful of recent victims who’ve been killed in a similar manner. Nobody has any idea what the connection with all the victims are, except that they were all seen at one point or another at a really hot downtown club.
That club is owned by Billy Hawks. Billy is in his 40s and used to be quite the famous rocker. But he gave that life up to own a few high profile clubs and reap the benefits of being a local icon. And boy does he reap those benefits. Usually decked out in an Armani suit, he’s always on the prowl for young ladies to add to his growing list of sex groupies. This guy makes Charlie Sheen look like Jon Cryer.
Naturally, Vince wants to ask Billy some questions, but the police force isn’t keen on the idea. Billy makes a lot of money for the city and contributes a lot of it back to the city, making questioning him a bit of a risky proposition. Say the wrong thing and maybe that year’s donation doesn’t come in.
Vince goes in there anyway, his question gun cocked, but has no idea just how out of his league he is. Billy is a master at identifying people’s weaknesses, and can tell that Vince is a bit of a partier, so he encourages him to join him for a night out on the town. While Vince asks questions, Billy introduces him to lots of drugs, lots of alcohol, and lots of ladies. The next thing you know, Vince wakes up with no idea what he’s done, but the implication is that he got into a wild sexual encounter, one that didn’t just involve women, but may have involved Billy himself.
In the meantime, Vince starts drooling over Billy’s prized prospect, a hot sweaty reckless rocker named Trish. Trish is either a master at playing hard to get, or really doesn’t want to be gotten. Either way, Vince is infatuated with her, and tries to make headway whenever he can steal a minute or two. Naturally, none of this stuff is really helping his pursuit of the killer, but in the end, maybe none of that matters.
Like I said, this script is pretty awesome through the first half. Eszterhas is a master at creating characters whose work lives and personal lives overlap. This creates a dangerous gray zone where a mistake in one has profound implications in the other. How is it that Vince is able to objectively do his job if he’s hanging out with the main suspect?
Eszterhas is known for his dialogue and part of the reason his dialogue is so good is because he works in that gray zone so often. Lots of the dialogue is laced with subtext because people are hiding things or covering up things or keeping information from each other. For example, because Vince spent this crazy night with Billy and doesn’t remember any of it, Billy can use that against him. So when they have discussions, Billy throws out an implication here or there about the things Vince did that night. Because it’s Vince’s job to be in control, he has to act as if he knows what happened. As a result the dialogue feels more like dancing than the straightforward on the nose “I’m telling you exactly what I think” dialogue you see in a lot of amateur scripts. For that reason, if you’re a beginning writer, Eszterhas is a great scribe to study when it comes to dialogue and subtext.
Ironically, this is what ends up getting the script into trouble. All the lying and the deception is great for a while, but sooner or later the reader has to know what’s going on, and I’m not sure I ever did. I don’t know what Eszterhas’ process is, but it seems like he gets a sense of what he wants, then tries to discover the rest along the way. That’s why the second half here seems to fall off a cliff.
There’s a random thread where it turns out that Trish ran away from her rich parents a long time ago. But when they try to reclaim her, she claims her father used to have sex with her. Huh? It’s a familiar situation we writers go through. We don’t know where our story is going, so we just try to throw in something shocking to make up for it.
Then there’s this whole thing with some killer in jail who somehow married a really rich woman and they go and interrogate this woman, who may or may not be a psychic. By that point I had no idea what was going on or what the point of anything was anymore.
But it gets even more wacky in the end when Vince’s partner, an older cop who’s completely baffled by all the sex and drugs and craziness that goes on in today’s world, goes postal because he can’t take it anymore. It’s such a weird choice and a complete detraction from the main storyline that it just felt, again, like a writer who didn’t know where he wanted to take his story so he just came up with something crazy to distract you from the fact that there was no story.
If there’s something wrong with your third act, you probably need to fix your first act. I think Eszterhas was so focused on creating this interesting relationship between Vince and Billy – which was definitely the highlight of the script – that he didn’t set up where he wanted the story to go. Maybe subsequent drafts fixed this. If they did, producers may want to pull this script out of development hell. There’s definitely some cool stuff in here. But this draft is too messy to recommend.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The less you outline your screenplay ahead of time, the more work you’re giving yourself in the rewrites. Why? Because the rewrites will be less about making what you already have better, and more about fixing the faulty structure and character work. As every good writer knows, restructuring the story and figuring out where everything goes is what takes the most amount of time. If you get all that stuff figured out ahead of time, there will be less moving scenes around, less moving plot points around, less re-of imagining your characters, less trying to figure out character motivations, and you can just work on making what’s already there better.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: An ex-military man is brought in to help figure out the mystery behind a mass sniper shooting.
About: This is going to be Tom Cruise’s next, after that strange musical he’s making. It’s based on the book of the same title written by Lee Child. Cruise brought in his Valkyrie writer, Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie, to adapt the book. McQuarrie is best known for writing The Usual Suspects (for which he won the Oscar).
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie (novel by Lee Child) (previous drafts by Josh Olson)
Details: 122 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 get this out in the open right away. Christopher McQuarrie can write. After reading last week’s offerings, you forget what real writing looks like. This is it. The man has such a visually exciting style, that even mundane scenes have an energy to them that you just don’t see with other writers. And he does some controversial things to get there. For example, McQuarrie uses camera directions (you see “extreme close-up” several times in the opening pages), which is supposed to be a big no-no. But he likes how they orient the reader’s eye to what’s important, and if they don’t bother you, they definitely achieve that (having said that, it should be noted that most readers will tolerate professionals doing this, but get annoyed when amateurs try it).
He also writes some pretty big paragraphs. We were just ragging on Montana the other day for doing the same thing. But the difference is, McQuarrie rarely writes anything unnecessary, so even the big paragraphs work. Is this a double standard? Probably. But hey, Brett Favre threw off his back foot into double coverage for over a decade. A rookie quarterback should not be afforded the same leniency. He hasn’t earned it yet.
So what is this script about? It’s actually a fairly basic plot. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess I thought since Cruise was making it a potential franchise, there was going to be more action. But this story is more a procedural. It starts off with a mysterious man pulling up into a parking garage overlooking a heavily trafficked pedestrian area, pulling out a sniper rifle, and randomly shooting five people dead.
When the Feds investigate, they trace the shooting back to a man named James Barr. But when they bring him in, he insists he had nothing to do with it. When they try to get a written confession from him, he gives them three words instead: “Get Jack Reacher.” So they send James off to jail and start looking for Reacher. After figuring out he’s an ex-military special something or other who’s an expert at pretty much everything, including staying invisible, they conclude that there’s no way they’ll ever find him. Which is the exact moment they get a knock on the door. “Someone’s here to see you.” “Who?” “Jack Reacher.”
It turns out Reacher knows this guy from the Army, and that James did a lot of bad things there. Reacher wants to make sure he goes to prison for a long time. But before he can talk to James, James is beaten to within an inch of his life at jail and is now in a coma. So Jack teams up with James’ plucky female defense attorney to cross the T’s and dot the I’s on the investigation.
But one look at the crime scene and already Reacher knows something’s off. It turns out, for example, James paid the meter before he shot everyone. Why would a man pay a parking meter before he was about to kill five people? It also starts to look like this was less a mass shooting and more a targeted shooting. The question is, how are all these people related, and why did James, or whoever killed them, want them dead? Of course, the closer Reacher gets to the truth, the more sketchy people come out of the woodwork trying to kill him. But if there’s one thing you find out pretty quickly, it’s that you don’t fuck with Jack Reacher.
The biggest surprise with One Shot is that there’s almost nothing new here, and yet it’s still pretty damn exciting. You have a couple of choices when you write a script. You can write something that’s been done before and try to execute it perfectly or you can write something unique and execute it adequately. McQuarrie does the former.
That’s not to say One Shot is totally by the book. In a typical procedural you have police officers or the FBI doing the investigating. Here, we have a defense lawyer and a mysterious ex-military man. This allows McQuarrie and Child to play fast and hard with the rules. Not everything has to be by the book because neither of these two belongs to a body that follows a book. It gave the script just enough freshness to differentiate itself from similar screenplays.
As far as GSU, the goal here is clear. Figure out who killed all these people and why. The stakes and urgency aren’t as clear. The stakes are the safety of our protagonists, since the deeper they dig, the more the bad guys want to kill them. And the urgency is also vague at first. There’s no real ticking time bomb. Instead, the urgency comes from the bad guys closing in. We know they’re always close by. We know they plan on killing our heroes. And that’s what keeps the momentum up.
One of the bigger lessons to come out of One Shot is one that Leslie Dixon reminded us of in an interview leading up to the release of her movie, Limitless. When asked why she chose to write the movie, she said she was tired of writing movies with main characters that movie stars didn’t want to play, because they never got made. She knew that the only way her movie was going to get greenlit was if she wrote a main character for a star. Say what you will about Limitless, but the movie definitely has an intriguing central character that a big Hollywood star would want to play.
We have the same thing here. Jack Reacher is a man with a mysterious past who plays by his own set of rules – who isn’t afraid of anything. I mean how much more appealing can you make a character for a movie star? It’s Han solo. It’s Indiana Jones. It’s the template for every character you ever pretended to be when you were a kid. So as important as the craft itself is, never forget that you have to wrangle in a movie star to get your script made. So that main character better be interesting.
There were a few things that bothered me, notably that a big deal is made out of James Barr saying “get Jack Reacher” (which, let’s face it, is an awesome moment) and yet it’s never clear why he did this. We find out later that Reacher hates James. So why in the world would James call him in? I guess James thought Reacher was the only one who could prove he didn’t do this, but since Reacher had been trying to get this guy behind bars for years, who’s to say he wouldn’t use this opportunity to finally do so? Maybe someone can explain this to me.
Also, the bad guy here is too cartoonish. As writers, we can get so carried away with trying to come up with somebody different, that we forget that that person still has to exist in the universe we created. The idea of somebody known as The Zec being stuck in some prison to the point where he started eating off his fingers… I’m sorry but that’s just silly. That was the one area that really disappointed me with this because when you have such a cool hero, you want him going up against the best. And if the best is Zec The Finger-Chewer – I’m just not sure that’s a matchup I’m looking forward to.
But man, the writing here is good. I’m so happy this came around when it did because when you read a lot of subpar scripts in a row, you start to think that there’s no good writing left. This proves that there is.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here’s a scene that always works. Have your protagonist go talk to somebody suspicious, and have that suspicious person handling a gun for an innocuous reason. For example, Reacher believes that our bad guy did some training at a gun range, so he goes out to the range to ask the owner if the man he’s looking for was there. On its own, it’s a basic question and answer scene. But McQuarrie gives the gun range owner a gun he’s cleaning. This adds a whole new dimension to the scene. Whenever things get testy, you cut to the gun, and a normal conversation is layered with all sorts of subtext. Is he going to pull it out? Would he try and shoot Reacher? These are questions the audience is asking while watching the scene, making the scene much more exciting.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: (from writer) A marine biologist, up to her ankles in oysters, flounders on Capitol Hill trying to save the Chesapeake Bay from a silk suited, Republican lobbyist.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.
Writer: Montana Gillis
Details: 96 pages
Montana is probably one of the nicer funnier guys who e-mails me. He just seems like a real genuine person interested in bettering his craft. He also has an interesting backstory, in that he was a Marine, if I’m not mistaken. Which makes this review all the more difficult. Like every Amateur Friday screenplay I pick up, I want to love it. And while Montana can definitely write, I think he gets in his own way at times. This script is really dense, which isn’t what you want if you’re writing a romantic comedy. The number one thing I want to say to Montana going forward is: less is more. Everything needs to be pared down and the story itself needs to come to the forefront. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Dr. Turner Dixon, a 30 something “fresh-faced shapely stick of dynamite” is doing her best to try and save the Chesapeake Bay. Like a lot of bays in the US, this one is being polluted to the point where all the marine life has disappeared. So Turner is trying to pass a bill on Capitol Hill that will get all these greedy corporations out of the water.
In the meantime, we meet Jack Ward, 39, roguish, and very handsome. A lobbyist, Jack owns a breathtaking boat (the “Influence”) that he takes a lot of political bigwigs out on, presumably to wine and dine and get his way from.
Anyway, Dr. Turner is that annoying thorn in all the Senators sides, always pushing one of those liberal “save the world” agendas that will destroy the very economy allowing the town she lives in to thrive. So when Turner heads to a big Capitol Hill party and starts talking up the Senators to vote her way, she’s pawned off to Jack, who just the other day nearly killed her when his boat almost slammed into hers.
Naturally, the two get to talking, one thing leads to another, and the next thing you know they sleep together. It’s only after this, of course, that Turner realizes Jack is a lobbyist for the bad guys, and therefore her enemy. There’s also a group of shady characters behind the curtain who are aggressively trying to get rid of this annoying Turner and her stupid bill – the very people who allow our Jack to live such a wonderful life. So at some point Jack will have to decide between the cushy life he now lives or the woman he has fallen for.
Okay. I’m going to prep this critique by saying I know very little about how things work on Capitol Hill. So while this script is titled “Influence,” you might be able to title me “Ignorance.” I just don’t know how lobbying and all of that other backroom stuff works. So at least some of my confusion regarding this plot has to do with that. Having said that, I don’t think this story is nearly as clear as it needs to be.
Let’s start with one of the main characters, Jack. I originally read the logline for this eight or nine weeks ago. So when I picked Influence up the other day, I didn’t remember exactly what it was about, which is how I like it, because I want the script to speak for itself. However, I had absolutely no idea who Jack was for half the screenplay. It was only after I went back to the logline that I realized he was a lobbyist. One of the things I just pointed out yesterday was you have to make it clear who your character is as soon as possible.
So how is Jack introduced? He’s introduced on a boat barely saying or doing anything. The entire scene focuses on the other character on the boat, the senator, leaving me with no idea who Jack was. In fact, his entrance was so weak, I just figured he was the driver of the boat and therefore a character we’d probably never see again. If the reader thinks one of your two main characters is nobody important in their introductory scene, you’re in trouble.
But this continues on for the rest of the script. Jack barely ever says anything. He doesn’t have any defining characteristics. He never does anything unique. It was impossible to get any sense of him at all. I mean take the first scene with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. You see him in a big business meeting. You see that he’s frustrated. You see that he wants to get away from this world. You see that he’s been so pampered his entire life, he doesn’t even know how to drive a car. I mean we learn so much about that character in that first sequence. And I don’t know anything about Jack after this entire screenplay.
Personally, I think the big mistake here was making him a lobbyist. It just doesn’t have any “oomph” behind it, particularly because he never seems that interested in lobbying. In fact, I don’t remember a single scene in the entire screenplay where I see him lobbying for anything. That’s awfully strange for a lobbyist, don’t you think? Why not just make Jack a Senator? It would instantly give him more clout and clarity as a character. It would force him to be more active. The stakes would be higher since he’d have more to lose. It just seems like the much more powerful choice. I guess the lobbyist angle could work, but not as it’s currently constructed, with a weak character who doesn’t seem interested in lobbying and isn’t active in any sense of the word. Still, I would strongly consider the Senator option.
The next huge issue here is the writing itself. It’s way too dense. It seemed like every single scene was over-described. It felt like there was a line of description or action between every single dialogue utterance. There was just way too much writing going on here. We only need the essence of the scene, just enough to fill in the rest of the gaps ourselves. Let me give you an example. Here’s a paragraph from the script:
“A four story behemoth rises up behind Turner as she stands at the curb. Bright sunlight reflects off car windows and the white stone building. Turner pulls a small purse out of her large bag. She sets the bag down on the edge of the street as she digs in the purse.”
The paragraph should probably read closer to this:
“A four story behemoth rises up behind Turner. She digs her purse out of a large bag then places the bag on the ground.”
Actually, I probably wouldn’t even mention the building, as it’s not a necessary component to understanding the scene. I’m going to tell you why this is such a problem. When every single description is a bunch of details that don’t matter, that aren’t essential to understanding the story, the reader starts skipping over them. So after reading 20 paragraphs like this, I just started skimming because I just assumed all of them weren’t important. Then, when you actually do have a paragraph with some important plot information inside of it, the reader’s going to miss it. It’s the screenwriting equivalent of crying wolf.
I would try to cut down the amount of description by 50 to 60% here. That’s not an exaggeration. Everything needs to be pared down. Not just big paragraphs, but all of the needless descriptions in between the dialogue. Not only would this be a problem in a normal screenplay, but this is a romantic comedy, which should be one of the lightest flowiest screenplays out there. It should be the essence of minimalism. And yet the approach here is the opposite. So I’d definitely encourage Montana to fix that.
There were a lot of little problems here as well. For example, we have a scene where Turner gets out of a car and bumps into Jack. Okay. We create a little conflict between the characters. That’s fine. Except then we also have a scene where Jack’s boat almost runs over Turner’s boat a scene or two later. Why do we need two separate scenes showing the exact same thing?
Also, never give your female character a male name in a romantic comedy. It’s too cute, every beginning writer does it, and it drives readers nuts. I mean I’ve seen readers explode over this because it’s done so often. But even besides that, it’s confusing. It always takes me 5 to 10 pages to get used to associating a female with a male name, so even if you don’t care whether you get the reader upset, you should care that it hurts the reading experience, which is the last thing you want to do in a screenplay.
Lastly, I don’t think this script is fun enough. This is supposed to be a romantic comedy and yet the majority of the script focuses on boring backroom politicking. I’m not saying that that stuff can’t be interesting, but it’s false advertising. People don’t come to a romantic comedy to learn the specifics of what goes on behind the pushing of a bill. They come for romance and they come for laughs, and both of those things take a back seat to a lobbying plot here. To use Pretty Woman as an example again, it would be like if they erased half the scenes of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and replaced them with the details of Richard Gere’s business deal. So unfortunately, even though I love Montana, these issues really affected my enjoyment of the script.
Moving forward, I would focus on a few things. First, pare all the description down. You have to make this script more readable. Second, go back over yesterday’s article, specifically how to introduce characters, and make sure we like these characters right away. I never ever felt like I knew Jack and a big part of that was the way he was introduced and the lack of characterization. He just didn’t have any defining characteristics. Finally, I would cut out 75% of the bill plot. We only need the key scenes revolving around that plot. If you want to get into the details of that kind of story, I would recommend writing a drama or a thriller. But here, people are going to be more interested in the romantic comedy aspects of a romantic comedy. This was a fun exercise Montana. Hopefully you don’t hate me after this review. All I care about is making the script better. :)
Script link: Influence
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I want to introduce a new term: Readability. As writers, it’s our job to get carried away with every detail. We want to make sure we get this important plot point in and that this character arcs correctly and that our theme is consistently hit on. We become so consumed with all the minutia of our script, that we lose the ability to perceive it as a whole. When this happens, we’re not able to judge how readable our script is. So after you’re finished with your screenplay, you need to ask, “Is this readable?” Not, are all the plot points in the right spot and are all the characters perfectly drawn? But simply, when somebody sits down to read it, is it easy to read? I’m not sure that question was asked here. So save a couple of passes at the very end of your process just for that question. If the read is taking too long or you’re not flying through it, ask why? It might be that your description is too thick. It might be that you have too many needless lines gumming up the spaces between the dialogue. It might mean you have scenes that don’t need to be in your screenplay. But this is a question that definitely needs to be asked because it’s not just about getting everything into your screenplay, it’s about how quickly the reader’s eye moves down the page.
I was originally going to post something else today but had to scrap it at the last second. So I decided to post my character checklist document instead. This is something I’ll occasionally send off to people I give notes to who are having trouble creating interesting characters. The problem with most screenplays isn’t that the writer doesn’t have an interesting character in mind. It’s that they don’t understand how to convey that character in a way that the reader sees what they see. So many writers believe that everything about their character will simply emerge onto the page magically, like something out of a chapter of The Secret (Australian accent and all). Wrong. We don’t know something unless you tell us. So to help you, here are eight ways to make your characters come alive.
1) A great description – A reader must get a sense of your character after you’ve described them. “Tall and thin” is boring. “Ichabod Crane on crack” evokes an image. Having said that, make sure the description matches the tone and genre of your story. I wouldn’t use “Ichabod Crane on crack” in a drama, for example, but I might use it in a comedy. Here’s a description of Christina in the original draft of Source Code. “In contrast to the corporate suits around her, her appearance is thrift store funky: black nail polish, dark lipstick, black hair with blue streaks, a button-down blouse edged in black funeral lace with silver skull and bones cufflinks.” I would probably encourage something more sparse, but as long as your description gives us a strong sense of who your character is, you’re in good shape.
2) A great entrance – Usually reserved for your key characters – give them an entrance that’s worthy of their character. Obviously, the best example is Indiana Jones. One of the key reasons we love that character so much is because of his entrance. He’s exciting. He’s brave. He’s great at what he does. But hey, that’s not the only way to create a memorable entrance. Look at Lester Burnham in American Beauty. Between his hypnotizing voice over, and his sad assessment of his daily routine (“That’s me, jacking off in the shower.”), we know just as much about Lester as we did Indiana. Memorable entrances are so important in making your character jump off the page.
3) An action that immediately tells us who they are – This is sort of an extension of number 2, but I can’t stress it enough. There’s so little time in a film, and just like in real life, first impressions are everything. So you want to make sure we know *exactly* who a character is when we meet them. If your character is a genuine asshole, give us an *action* that *shows* us he’s an asshole (he’s yelling at another character for a trivial reason). If a character is weak, give us an *action* that *shows* us that he’s weak (show him/her backing down from a confrontation). In Jerry Maguire, for example, we meet Rod Tidwell complaining about how he doesn’t get any respect, which is his defining trait throughout the film.
4) A fatal Flaw – That one thing that defines your character, that’s held them back their entire lives. The thing they’ll need to overcome to solve the big problem facing them at the end of the story. Rocky Balboa’s flaw, for example, is that he doesn’t believe in himself. This is something that should come up repeatedly in the script, something your main character should be bumping up against again and again. So in Up In The Air, for example, George Clooney’s fatal flaw is his inability to get close to other people. That’s why he’s easily able to fire people. That’s why he has meaningless sexual relationships on the road. That’s why he barely talks to his family. That’s why he gives seminars about the power of being on your own. At the very least, you should give your main character a fatal flaw. But I like to give a few of my secondary characters fatal flaws as well. It just makes them deeper.
5) Backstory – Anything to give us a little context about your character’s life is a good thing. But backstory is tricky because just like exposition, it needs to be integrated in a way that doesn’t slow the story down. Nobody likes when a character starts talking about their past for four pages. Borrrrring. Also, you only want to include backstory that will later play into your current story. So it’s fine if your character was abused as a child. But if they’re not going to confront that abuse at some point (such as the way Will Hunting does in Good Will Hunting), then we don’t need to know about it. Contact is a great example of a movie that uses backstory to dramatize the present story. The backstory was her father’s unexplainable death. Which could’ve been pointless and merely an attempt to draw sympathy from the audience. But the father’s death ends up shaping everything that the main character does. The whole reason Jody Foster starts studying aliens is to find an answer to all of this, to find some meaning to her father’s death. So the right backstory can really propel your character forward. You just have to integrate it in a way where it doesn’t slow the story down and where it informs the current story.
6) Goals – This is a Scriptshadow article so you knew there was going to be some discussion of goals. I like to give my characters two goals. The first goal is the story goal, the one that drives them forward. So in Back To The Future, Marty’s goal is to get his parents together so he can get home. The second goal is one I don’t think enough writers think about – the life goal. It’s what the character’s ultimate plan in life is. The reason this is so important is because it’s one of the biggest insights into who a person is. If you know a person, for example, whose life goal is simply to become rich, that’s very telling. If you know a person whose life goal is to bring fresh water to 60% of Africa, that’s very telling as well. Just by those descriptions, I’m sure you’re imagining two completely different people. So in Back To The Future, Marty’s life goal is to become a musician. It’s not profound. It’s not the most original life goal in the world. But it does give us more insight into who Marty is. Had Marty wanted to be a pharmacist, for example, he would have been a completely different character. So make sure to think about what your character ultimately wants to do in the long term.
7) Secrets – Secrets always make characters more interesting, whether it’s something from their past or something about themselves they don’t tell other people. What your characters hide is very telling. In the upcoming Shame, Michael Fassbender’s secret is that he’s a sex addict. In Black Swan, Natalie Portman hides her fear that she’s not good enough, which is a big part of her character. The right secret can add a lot of depth to a character.
8) Characteristics/quirks/clothes/personality traits/grooming – Any detail you can give a character to make them stand out, do it. Maybe they have a soul patch. Maybe they have OCD. Maybe they wear jean shorts. Figure out who your character is, and try to find some detail that symbolizes their essence. So if you have a character who’s lonely, such as Steve Carrell in The 40 Year Old Virgin, have him be a collector of toys/action figures. Or look no further than Napoleon Dynamite to see how a combination of all of the above can create a unique memorable character.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how little or how many of these character tools you want to use. My opinion is that your leads should utilize all eight of them. As you go down the ladder of supporting characters, that number will go down as well. But if you want characters with depth, this is how you get them. Good luck!
