In two weeks we’re having First Ten Pages Week, where I’ll review the first ten pages of five amateur scripts. I’ve been working with Scriptshadow Nation in the background to determine which scripts those will be. Due to the animated nature of the e-mails I’ve been receiving, I figured you guys would want a place to talk about these loglines so here they are. The 50 loglines being voted on. Feel free to tell us what you think.
GENRE: DRAMA
TITLE: THE OSWALD SOLUTION
LOGLINE: When a prison guard falls in love with the wife of a death-row inmate, he’s forced to choose between his love for her or reveal the discovery of crucial evidence that will save her husband’s life.
GENRE: Action
TITLE: HELL AWAY FROM HOME
LOGLINE: An unhinged former DEA agent sneaks into Mexico (all the while being hunted by his ruthless ex partner) to get revenge on the Chief of Police/Narcotrafficker who captured and tortured him nine months earlier.
GENRE: Comedy-drama
TITLE: Stationary
LOGLINE: A businessman begins seeing Post-It Notes that give him directions on how to improve his life
Genre: Comedy
Title: Abraca-Bastard
Logline: Chuck Cleaver finally gets the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams. But as soon as things start to heat up, her ex-boyfriend who’s also the Internet’s hottest new magician Dane St. Clair (think Criss Angel meets David Blaine with more eye liner) rolls into town, dead set on winning her back.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: It’s a Long Way to Tipperary
LOGLINE: When a wealthy Jewish man is buried in an Catholic cemetery
in Ireland, he comes back from the dead and forces a grave digger to
carry him to Tipperary, USA before he decomposes and his soul ends up
in hell (Sheol)
GENRE: Action/Thriller
TITLE: THE FOURTH HORSEMAN
LOGLINE: Hired by Homeland Security to envision terrorist attack scenarios, a skillful ex-soldier turned novelist, must battle anarchists when they hijack his nightmare plot to destroy new York
Genre: Action Adventure
Title: The Wreckage
Logline: A wild young woman gets seduced into a high tech, storm chasing motorcycle gang that loots and murders under the chaotic veil created by natural disasters.
GENRE: Action/Adventure
TITLE: 10/31/87
LOGLINE: Worried that his three best friends are growing apart, a 13 year-old boy convinces them to go trick-or-treating one last time in an effort to break their town’s all-time trick-or-treating record and save their friendship.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: The Boys Are Back In Town
LOGLINE: When three friends return to college for a reunion to find their once glorious fraternity in shambles, they decide to stay to help bring the house back to prominence.
Genre: Thriller
Title: Deep Burial
Logline: Posted out to a remote nuclear waste dump site in the Australian Outback to secretly assess the mental state of the ex-addict Aboriginal worker who mans the plant, an anxious young female psychiatrist is forced into a fight for survival when they find a mysterious stranger stranded in the desert.
GENRE: Sci-Fi/Action
TITLE: Foe
LOGLINE: In a near-future world shattered by an alien invasion, a lone Special Forces soldier stumbles on a group of military veterans holding their abandoned VA Hospital as the invaders lay siege.
GENRE: Science Fiction/Thriller
TITLE: SCINTILLATION
LOGLINE: A disturbed woman fleeing an abusive marriage finds work at an observatory in New Mexico where she discovers a relativistic attack is about to be launched against the Earth — and she’s the only one who can do anything about it.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: Get Fired
LOGLINE: In order to afford his girlfriend’s dream house – before losing her to her rich ex-boyfriend – the too-modest Ben Douglas sets out to GET FIRED from his depressing cubicle-job so he can get his severance money.
GENRE: Action/Adventure/Sci-fi
TITLE: Bob and the Teleporting Backpack
LOGLINE: “A quirky physicist invents a teleporting backpack with the help of his wicked-smart female grad student. When the CIA and a group of Somalian terrorists find out, he and his family become their number one target.”
GENRE: Horror
TITLE: HUNTING GROUNDS
LOGLINE: Loggers and environmentalist must put aside their bitter differences and track down a creature which has staked a claim to their forest, and in that effort they learn nature’s number one rule: everything that eats, gets eaten.
GENRE: Action/Adventure
TITLE: The Resurrected
LOGLINE: When a hardboiled detective becomes a test subject for an ex-government scientist, he must cross the globe to save his own life and stop the protege of Nikola Tesla from conspiring with the Third Reich to unleash Tesla’s most devastating weapon.
GENRE: Sci-Fi, Thriller
TITLE: C.L.O.T.H.
LOGLINE: In a future Los Angeles where each citizen is free to commit one murder without repercussion, a programmer battles the agency in charge and unveils the true motive behind its creation.
GENRE: Sci-Fi / Coming-of-age / Romance
TITLE: Sagittarius & The Crab
LOGLINE: Until he can accept that he is no longer in love with the ex who broke his heart, a hopeless romantic is stuck in a time-loop with her that will repeat itself every two days and will do so as long as he still believes she’s ‘the one’.
GENRE: Comedy (R-rated)
TITLE: A Job
LOGLINE: A down on his luck young man gets a part-time job as a personal driver thru Craigslist, which leads to him becoming entangled with two rival drug organizations.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: Finger Lickin Code
LOGLINE: Once the two most senior members of a famous chicken organization are murdered by a one-legged man, a disturbed puzzle solving whiz finds himself with a possibly schizophrenic sidekick, 11 sealed cryptexes, and one secret recipe he must save.
GENRE: Action Comedy
TITLE: Escape From Aunt Barbara
LOGLINE: A grounded college kid is forced to spend the weekend with his Aunt he hasn’t seen in years, only to learn she’s a super-spy.
GENRE: Sci-Fi, Drama, Mystery
TITLE: A Stone Heart
LOGLINE: On the eve of the Third World War, a troubled soldier abandons the military to investigate one last lead regarding his father’s mysterious death.
Genre: Drama, Crime, Sports
Title: Short of a Miracle
Logline: A basketball prodigy escapes the inner city to play collegiate basketball, but the actions of his father, a corrupt NYPD officer, threaten to derail his promising career.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: The Ugly Sister
LOGLINE: An ugly girl gets the chance to live life as a beautiful woman when she discovers that she and her pretty fraternal twin sister switch bodies thanks to a Hello Kitty Lip gloss mishap. As they try to live each other’s lives, one is getting married and the other her PHD, while desperately seeking a remedy, their parents reveal a long-held family secret that makes the reversal impossible.
GENRE: Contemporary Noir Thriller
TITLE: ELLA CINDER
LOGLINE: When a sexy female private investigator in Los Angeles tracks down a femme fatale for a playboy from a famous family, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy to rob the family’s fortune that may be linked to her own mysterious childhood as an abused orphan.
GENRE: Dramatic Horror
TITLE: The Lost Colony
LOGLINE: A Cartographer and his wife buy an ancient beach house in the exact location the Lost Colonists of Roanoke Island disappeared 400 years ago. They quickly experience the violent and horrible truth behind it – and they’re next!
GENRE: Quirky Drama / Romance
TITLE: Plurally Inclined
LOGLINE: After one of her alter-egos seduces the guy she’s been crushing on, a shy college student with multiple personalities struggles to rid herself of her meddlesome headmates and find love on her own.
Genre: Action
Title: Hail Mary
Logline: A reformed hitwoman must return to the world of bullets and bloodshed she left behind, and take on the organization she helped build, in order to avenge the death of her younger sister
GENRE: Science fiction/thriller
TITLE: FLYOVER COUNTRY
LOGLINE: An airliner is forced down in the dreaded “Blue Zone”: the primitive interior of America, now inhabited by predatory mutants. The survivors must fight their way out, not realizing that they, in turn, have become subjects of a genetic experiment .
Genre: Action Comedy
Title: Nice Girls Don’t Kill
Logline: When a meek and universally abused copy editor is mistaken for the professional killer she accidentally bumped off, she decides to take on this violent new identity until the killer turns out to be not so dead, and very pissed off.
GENRE: Sci-Fi, Action-Adventure
TITLE: Monster World
LOGLINE: 300 years after a global tectonic catastrophe, two men and one fish travel around watery Earth ruled by giant sea monsters looking for a missing female scientist — who’s kidnapped by the world’s largest, most dangerous beast.
TITLE: Ron
GENRE: Drama/Horror
LOGLINE: The loneliest man in the world finds keeping an escaped zombie for company is better than stewing in his own solitude but how long can he keep the zombie a secret?
GENRE: Supernatural/Comedy
TITLE: SORHORRITY
LOGLINE: Four Sorority pledges accidentally burn down their house and with only a week before the “Best Home on the Row” competition, they’re forced to renovate the Haunted House at the end of the street.
GENRE: Horror
TITLE: Fetalgeist
LOGLINE: A pro-life student group finds itself trapped inside a long since abandoned yet very much haunted abortion clinic.
GENRE: Drama/Thriller
TITLE: The Accidental Lawyer
LOGLINE: During his first week on the job at a prestigious law firm, a lazy unmotivated associate uncovers a deadly secret involving the firm’s largest client, which just happens to be his father’s multi-billion dollar company.
GENRE: Sci-Fi
TITLE: On This Day In History
LOGLINE: History knows him by his alias, D.B. Cooper – the only person to ever successfully highjack a commercial airliner – but whether history will know him as someone else – depends on whether he can prevent terrorists from highjacking four planes on a fateful September day in 2001?
GENRE: Heist Movie
TITLE: The Inside Job
LOGLINE: To save a sick little girl, a master thief must team up with his doctor ex-girlfriend to steal stem cells from a vicious mobster who can’t know he’s had surgery.
GENRE: Science-fiction thriller
TITLE: Coyote
LOGLINE: As the Mexican drug war spreads north, a desperate US government unleashes a covert team of militarized vampires to hunt down all illegal border crossers. Now, a dutiful Arizona Border Agent caught in the crossfire is forced to follow her conscience and ferry a young migrant to safety before they’re both hunted down and bled dry.
GENRE: Horror/Thriller
TITLE:Tainted
LOGLINE: When a wayward teen discovers her mother was murdered by a cult 18 years ago, she finds herself in a race to learn the truth before she becomes their next sacrifice.
GENRE: Action/Thriller
TITLE: Freedom, N.H.
LOGLINE: When a married couple desperate to escape their mysterious past witness a roadside murder, they must rely on their own dangerous skills and unstable new alliances to survive an explosive small town war.
GENRE: Thriller
TITLE: Please Be My Predator
LOGLINE: A fugitive President takes refuge in a family’s farm, demanding they care for him until his military supporters arrive, but with a reward for his capture the family will do whatver it takes to cash in.
GENRE: supernatural thriller
TITLE: THE GHOST MACHINE
LOGLINE: When Thomas Edison and his young assistant investigate a haunted mansion, they must use his secret ghost machine to unravel an age-old mystery before they fall prey to a sinister entity.
GENRE: Family
TITLE: Puppy Kindergarten
LOGLINE: After a recently divorced dad adopts a puppy to win his kids’ affections, his competitive neighbor also adopts a puppy, igniting a feud when they enroll in the same Puppy Kindergarten class.
Genre: Commercial Comedy
Title: Psychic Hotline
Logline: A rag-tag group of small-town friends set out to kidnap a New York City psychic they believe wrongly predicted in-group infidelity.
GENRE: Western/Thriller
TITLE: The Wake
LOGLINE: After seven shadowy men kill him and kidnap his wife, a volatile sheriff strikes a deal with the Devil to return to Earth and mete out revenge – only to find himself facing down his own evils as he discovers that justice isn’t as straightforward as he thought.
GENRE: drama/mystery/horror-lite
TITLE: Resurrection
LOGLINE: A couple’s deteriorating marriage is further tested by the arrival of a mysterious young boy who bears a strong resemblance to their long-lost son.
GENRE: COMEDY / DRAMA
TITLE: ONE LAST SHOT
LOGLINE: Frank Donnelly is living the dream: he’s a playboy running a message parlor offering “full service” treatment for his beautiful clients. All is well until his world comes crashing down when he learns he has a rare disorder – if he has sex one more time – he will die!
GENRE: Adventure
TITLE: Untitled Sea Monster Movie
LOGLINE: A mathematician with a phobia of the sea and a marine biologist with something to prove have to travel into a treacherous stretch of the Atlantic Ocean to uncover why entire ships are being lost to rogue waves and the population of blue whales are going extinct, where they realise that none of their theories or models could predict the cause had come from the age-old depths of the ocean itself.
GENRE: Romantic comedy
TITLE: License to Carry
LOGLINE: A child-averse pastry chef must dissuade his fiancée from having children in order to save their relationship.
GENRE: Dark Comedy
TITLE: Eugene’s Hotline
LOGLINE: After his best friend seemingly commits suicide, a self-centered pleasure hound convinces his equally selfish friends to start a depression hotline … little do they know, they’re entering a world of deadly competition.
GENRE: Comedy
TITLE: Why I Hate Dogs, A Love Story
LOGLINE: The failed son and only child of a wealthy family, comes home after his father passes and is forced take care of the family dog to get his inheritance.
GENRE: Horror (Realism ala “Carrie”)
TITLE: Deafo
LOGLINE: In a town torn apart by enforced pit closures, a deaf teenage loner sets out on a dark journey of violent revenge against everyone who has ever wronged him
GENRE: Drama
TITLE: Untitled Drama
LOGLINE: A troubled Cupid-like figure gets snared in a love triangle with the woman he meant to set up.
P.S. If you are one of the many jilted and angry readers who didn’t get picked and sent me an e-mail about it, feel free to post your logline here and either get your revenge (“Carson, why didn’t you pick this??”) or be informed by the savvy Scriptshadow Commenters on why it didn’t make the cut.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from writer) When Chanley Hightower hires an ex-con to kill his cheating wife, he doesn’t count on the ex-con sub-contracting the hit and his old-friend-turned-enemy the Chief of Police taking a sudden interest in the health of his marriage. Hightower’s a capable man, but this is a lot of shit to shovel.
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: Will Alexander
Details: 113 pages
Will has been pushing HARD for me to review his script, making all sorts of claims to its awesomeness, saying it was better than Casablanca and Chinatown combined. He claimed it was going to win him an Oscar and that if I didn’t read it, I would be missing out an opportunity to discover the first classic film of the 21st century.
I’m just kidding around Will. No everyone, Will never said those things. But he definitely had confidence in his script, believing it was at least better than most of the stuff reviewed on Amateur Friday. So let’s take a look and see if he’s right.
Hightower opens up with Johnny Wayne Stubb and Deesa Hightower, both 26 years old, having sex. We pull away to see that this is happening on a closed circuit television which Dessa’s husband, Chanley Hightower, is watching. Needless to say, Hightower isn’t happy with this development, especially since it seems more like lovemaking than fucking. It appears that this relationship is real. And that means he and Deesa are on the outs.
Well, Hightower doesn’t plan on going quietly. In fact, he’s going to take care of this the old fashioned way: hire someone to kill his wife. So he locates some out-of-work stooge, a local named Chigger, to kill his wife for 50 grand. Since Hightower is the richest man in town by a country mile, 50 grand is a drop in the town well.
In the meantime, we meet Police Chief Garrison McElrath, a man who grew up with Hightower and apparently has a bit of history with the millionaire. That history is a complicated one and from their first interaction, we can tell there’s plenty of tension between the two.
In addition to wanting to kill his wife, Hightower also wants to buy some property off her. You see, there’s only one building in the entire town that he doesn’t own, and that property is hers. He ruthlessly attempts to get her to sign a deed transferring the building over to him, but she steadfastly refuses.
Hightower’s hitman, Chigger, also turns out to be a pretty lousy choice. Not only is he prancing around talking WAY too much, but he decides it’d be much safer to have someone ELSE do the hit, and therefore subcontracts the assassination to some drug dealer, who in turn (I believe) subcontracts it out to some druggy. Needless to say, the hit is starting to look less and less like a sure thing.
All this talk makes the chief suspicious and he heads over to the Hightower mansion to ask him what’s up. Once Hightower realizes McElrath is on to him, he makes the snap decision to kill him. And thus begins a mad dash to dispose of the body – not an easy task with the entire town now looking for the missing chief.
In the meantime, Deesa is planning to run away with Johnny Wayne, and we’re wondering if that’s going to happen before whoever the hell ends up as the hitman comes to kill her. And Hightower also has to settle one last secret with the mysterious and sexy Chevelle, a waitress at the local diner who clearly has some tangled past with Daddy Warbucks.
Hightower reminded me of a book in a lot of ways, with its numerous characters and intricate plot. Because of that, Will has created his own biggest hurdle: a complicated story. The more complicated your story is, the better a writer you have to be. We were just talking about this yesterday. We need to be CLEAR about what’s going on in order to stay interested. And the more stuff you PACK IN to your script, the harder it is to stay clear. So I guess the question is, did Will bite off more than he could chew?
Sort of. I say sort of because he ALMOST pulled it off. You see, I hadn’t read this logline in three months (since it was originally sent to me). So all I had to go on was the story as written, not the logline you read above.
And about a third of the way through, Deesa refers to Hightower as “Daddy.” All of a sudden, I was confused. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Deesa is the daughter of Hightower??” I thought she was his wife. But the more I thought about it, the more it actually made sense. First, they never acted like husband and wife – I mean not even in a “We’re pretending to look like husband-and-wife to the rest of the world,” sort of way. They only saw each other in passing, which indicated more of a father-daughter relationship. There was also the hefty age difference. So I went back and re-read the opening scene to see if I misunderstood it. It clearly said Deesa was his wife. Okay, what’s going on here? Is she the daughter or is she the wife? In the end, I decided that “Daddy” was being used sarcastically. But it took me 15 full minutes to solve that mystery when it could’ve been solved in a second with a simple “sarcastic” in parentheticals or by putting “Daddy” in quotes. I’m willing to accept this as my fault, but remember, when you write extremely intricate plots with lots of characters, you’re going to run into this kind of problem. The reader is tasked with sorting out a lot of information. If you’re not clear on every single piece, they can easily get lost in the forest.
Another thing that confused me was the whole obsession Hightower had with this building he didn’t own. I couldn’t understand why he gave a shit about it or what it had to do with anything. But what really baffled me was why he couldn’t get a building from his own wife. First of all, since they’re married, don’t they both own the property? Once you get married to someone, isn’t all your property split evenly? If not, why wouldn’t his wife have given him the property? Maybe not now but earlier, when they were happy? Either way, there were no clear stakes (as I could tell) to owning this place so I just didn’t care about it.
Also, there was this strange subplot about Hightower fucking high school girls. A fairly large chunk of the story is dedicated to it and yet it had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. If you’re going to write an extremely complicated story, the last thing you want to include is an incidental storyline. The same could be said about the Chevelle subplot. It was more story relevant than the statutory rape stuff, but it ultimately had nothing to do with the present story, and since you already have a ton of more relevant balls you’re juggling, why confuse things by adding another?
Luckily, once Hightower hit the midway point, it started to rebound. Instead of drowning itself in multiple story threads, the script became more about the present and the actions our characters were taking to survive. A particular highlight was Hightower having to get rid of the Sheriff’s body as more and more townspeople closed in on him. It was nice to simply watch a tension-filled sequence unfold instead of having to remember 15 different things at once. A lot of that energy continued through the second half because Will didn’t have to spend any more time setting things up. All of his setups had already been taken care of.
I also thought the dialogue was pretty good here. Here’s an exchange Hightower has with Chigger, after he’s seen him chatting with too many people around town. “I don’t give a merry shit you tell me you “ain’t said nothing;” you’re a crook and a mental deficient. Talking to me, then my wife – IN FRONT OF THE FUCKING CHIEF OF GODDAMN POLICE – tells a story to a man like him regardless of whatever loose stool does or does not spew from that rancid hole in your face. Now, you fuck up again—“ CHIGGER: “—I just seen your truck there, I got some questions about—“ HIGHTOWER: “—I’ll kill you. I will kill you.” Hey man, I know good dialogue is subjective, but I was pretty darned impressed with that, as I was with most of the dialogue here.
I think Hightower is a screenplay worth pursuing. But it needs some work. Strip away the stuff that doesn’t matter. Chevelle adds context but not enough to warrant her inclusion. And please, get rid of the high school stuff unless you can make it more story-relevant. Hope you guys can give Will some more ideas. If I were working at a production company, I’d pass on the script in its current state, but I’d definitely recommend the writer for future submissions.
Script Link: Hightower
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “Kick the dog.” Just like you want to give your hero a “save the cat” moment so we love him, you want to give your villain a “kick the dog” moment so we hate him. But twisting kittens heads off? Come on. Guys, no animal cruelty in your scripts. Nobody likes animal cruelty. Even if you only include it to make us hate your bad guy, we’re still focusing more on you twisting the kitten’s head off than we are getting angry at your villain for doing it. Besides, you can be so much more creative than that.
Readers Rejoice, your Top 25 script (at #16) is getting made. Seems Mr. Cruise can’t get himself enough Scripthshadow. “What??!” Tom Cruise is said to have screamed while leaping off his couch. “Scriptshadow Nation has voted this their 16th favorite script?? What are we waiting for! Let’s make it!” Doug Liman is still directing. I’ve read the script (about a young soldier on an alien planet forced to fight an impossible battle against an alien force every single day as if the previous day didn’t exist. In doing so, he becomes an ultimate warrior) and it’s absolutely INSANE. I have no idea how the hell they’re going to pull it off. Cruise’s character will be literally battling hundreds (thousands even?) of aliens at a time. It’s the most ambitious sci-fi movie to be produced in the last decade – even bigger than Avatar I think (if they stick to the script). And it’s got a fun little catchy hook with each day repeating itself. Should be a blast.
So earlier this month I was reading a screenplay and about 30 pages in I just stopped and thought, “I’m bored.” The script itself had quite a few of elements that I preach on the site – a clear goal, high stakes, urgency. But something wasn’t registering. So I decided to take a harder look at that feeling – boredom – since, as a writer, it’s the worst crime you can commit. But what causes it? Is it some invisible force that one has no control over? Or can it be systematically shut out via a carefully designed approach? That’s the question I set out to answer. And as I looked back at the recent scripts I was bored by, I came to a hard truth. The most influential factor in a reader being bored is something that the writer has no control over – subject matter. If somebody hates baseball, you’re probably not going to win them over with your baseball script. On the flip side, if somebody loves slasher movies, you probably have a good shot at entertaining them with yours. However, assuming all else is equal, these are things you absolutely CAN NOT DO in your script, as they almost always lead to a reader being bored out of their mind.
1) Take forever to set up your story – This is just a killer. The writer is using 4-5 scenes to set up their hero when they could’ve done it in two. It takes them 30 pages to get to the inciting incident. The story doesn’t seem to be pushing towards anything – setting anything up. That’s when you know you’ve failed, when you’ve bored your reader before you’ve even hit the main storyline. So set up your story quickly. Move things along faster than you think you have to. Avoid slow burns unless you have a LOT of experience writing and know how to build a story slowly while keeping the audience’s interest.
2) A passive main character – If your main character is spending the majority of the script waiting for things to happen instead of going out there and pushing the story forward himself, it’s easy for us to lose interest in that character and, by association, their story. Whether it’s the guys in The Hangover actively trying to find out where their friend is, Jake Sully actively trying to infiltrate the Na’vi, Edward Asner (Up) trying to make it to South America to keep a promise to his wife, or Colter looking for the bomb in the train in Source Code, readers like characters who go after things (are ACTIVE). Those tend to be the most exciting scripts. Now there are great movies where the main character is reactive. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle is a good example. Our main character isn’t really doing anything. However a lot of things are happening to her, which keeps the movie entertaining. But if you don’t have a scenario like “Cradle” where there’s a lot of conflict and danger affecting your main character, then you probably want your hero to be active.
3) Boring writing – We are taught as screenwriters to give the reader exactly what they need in order to understand the story and nothing more. And that’s good advice. Nobody wants to read six line paragraphs dominated by pretentious thesaurus-laden prose. But if you take that advice too literally, you risk becoming too sparse and boring with your writing. Then by association, WE get bored. An analogy might be a guy telling a story at a party. If that guy’s staring at his shoes and mumbling the whole time, it doesn’t matter how great his story is, it’s going to be boring. But if he’s excited and into it and vocal and looking everybody in the eye, that story’s going to have life. So the trick is, within the confines of a minimalist style, adding flavor and atmosphere to your writing. “Joe walks over to Mandy and looks at her with a mean stare and then walks away, ” is robotic. “Joe charges towards Mandy, rage emanating from every pore. They come face-to-face. Silence. So much unspoken here. He finally shakes his head and pushes past her.” Not Oscar worthy but definitely more visual.
4) Unexciting subject matter or concept – There are certain stories that inherently lack drama or entertainment value. It is your job to avoid telling these stories. I’m talking about spiritual journeys, plot-less stories, characters in a house discussing life. I’m not saying it’s impossible to make these movies work, but it’s the difference between having the Yankees payroll and the Oakland A’s payroll. Theoretically, the Oakland A’s could win the World Series. But with 200 million dollars more, you’re going to have a much better shot with the Yankees. A movie about a mother taking care of her son lacks drama and entertainment value. A movie about an unstable fan who’s imprisoned her favorite author in an isolated house in the mountains (Misery) is an idea jam-packed with drama and entertainment value.
5) Thin characters – You’ve heard this so many times it probably makes your head hurt. But this is probably the most misidentified reason for people being bored while reading a screenplay. That’s because when someone is bored, they tend to look at the immediate issue. This scene is empty. This dialogue is stale. But the reality is, it has nothing to do with either the scene or the dialogue. It has to do with the characters, who were never developed into interesting people in the first place. You’ve given us no reason to sympathize with them. No clear goal they’re going after. They’re not battling any internal conflict or flaw. They don’t have any interesting relationships in their life that need resolving. Their backstory is nonexistent. Everything about them is empty. Once you’ve made that mistake, it doesn’t matter how good your story is. We won’t care because your thin characters have sent us into a near-vegetative state. So get your character development on. Or else you’ll end up in Boringsville.
6) Scenes that don’t push the story forward. – The more scenes I read that seemingly have nothing to do with your story, the more bored I get. This is why I tell you to have a clear goal for your main character at all times. If you have a clear goal for your hero, then you always know what scenes are necessary and what scenes aren’t. If your character has to deliver a droid to Princess Leia’s father for instance, he’s going to need a way off the planet. So obviously, he’ll need to go to a cantina where a lot of pilots hang out. If your scene isn’t *in some way* pushing towards whatever the current goal for your character is, then it isn’t necessary.
7) Obvious choices – As readers, we read all day. That’s what we do. We read scripts. By the time you finish your script, we’ve probably read 30 to 50 scripts just like yours. That’s your audience – people who read variations of the same thing over and over again. So if all you’re doing is making obvious choices with your scenes, your characters, your plot, your twists, then we’re going to get bored with your story quickly. Your job as a writer is to assess every one of the major choices you make in your screenplay and ask the question, have I seen this before? If you have, consider altering it and making it something that you haven’t seen before. You’re not going to be able to eliminate every cliché in your story. And quite frankly, you don’t want to (we need some sense of status quo to latch onto). But the idea is to constantly push yourself to come up with enough different ideas or spins on old ideas that your script feels fresh.
8) Generic action scenes (especially if they’re endlessly strung together) – This is a common amateur gaffe. Amateur writers tend to mistake “keeping the story moving” for “keeping everything fast.” So they throw action scene after action scene at you, believing that it’s going to keep you interested. But here’s a little secret you should know: The majority of action scenes are actually pretty boring on the page. There aren’t too many ways you can write a car chase or a gun battle that we haven’t seen before. For that reason, all of the bullets and the race scenes and the battling and the fights eventually become one giant blob of generic action. I actually skim through a lot of action sequences because of how predictable they are. What you begin to learn as you get better is that the best action scenes are carefully set up ahead of time. The stakes have been established. The motivations are clear. The dynamics between the characters have been carefully planned out. That way, when we reach the action scene, it’s not so much about the action itself as it is you caring about what’s going to happen to the characters inside of that action. So it’s essential that you’ve set up everything ahead of the action scene instead of focusing on how cool you can make the action scene itself.
9) Lack of clear motivation -This is a huge one. There is nothing more frustrating than losing track of what the hero is trying to do. This happens a lot in plot-heavy stories, since the hero is constantly jumping from new situation to new situation. The second we lose track of what the hero’s role is in these situations – what their objective is – we’re no longer participating in the story. We’re simply trying to figure out what’s going on. And if we’re trying to figure out what’s going on for too long, boredom sets in. So your job is to include “checkup” moments, lines or scenes that remind the audience what we’re doing and why. Imagine, for example, the final Death Star sequence in Star Wars without the “mission breakdown” scene beforehand. X wing fighters would be flying all over the place with us cluelessly wondering what the hell the point of it all was. This is why you get so bored watching sloppily-written movies like Transformers 3 and Pirates Of The Carribean 8. You rarely know what the characters are going after or what they’re doing in a battle. Since we don’t understand what the character’s motivation is, we simply don’t care what’s happening, and that leads to boredom. But this extends far beyond action scenes. I can go through 50 pages and a dozen scenes sometimes where I’m not clear what the hero’s motivation is. That’s when a script becomes really boring.
10) Zero surprises/reversals/twists – Never forget the power of the unexpected. Audiences have grown up on TV and movies. They know every trick in the book. So if your story is too predictable for too long, the audience starts to get ahead of you. And if the audience is ahead of you too frequently, they’re probably bored (except for the use of dramatic irony which I won’t get into here because I don’t want to confuse anyone). So your job as a writer is every 15 to 30 pages, depending on the type of story you’re telling, to throw something in there that that we aren’t expecting. Maybe it’s a character dying who we never thought would die. Such as Colter in the first 10 minutes of Source Code. Maybe it’s the introduction of a new dangerous character, like Mila Kunis’ character in Black Swan. Maybe it’s an action from a character that we weren’t expecting, such as the babysitter in Crazy Stupid Love taking naked pictures of herself to send to Steve Carrel’s character. It doesn’t have to be some mind boggling nuclear-level surprise every time out. But you do have to throw things in there every now and then that the audience isn’t expecting in order to keep them honest. If you don’t, they’re going to get way ahead of you, and once they’re ahead of you, the boredom sets in.
So now what you need to do is go back to your latest screenplay and assess if you’re making any of these mistakes, because if you are, you’re boring the reader, and as we’ve established, that’s the worst possible thing you can do as a writer. I’d also love to hear what you bores you guys when you read scripts. Feel free to vent in the comments. :)
Genre: Ghost Story/Light Horror
Premise: After a young man is killed in an apartment building, he becomes a ghost, and must save his family from the same fate.
About: Erik Kripke sold Haunted to Warner Brothers earlier this year and the plan is for him to direct the film as well. Kripke is best known as the creator of the TV show “Supernatural” (also produced at Warner Brothers). Born in Ohio, Kripke graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1996. His first big writing credit was 2005’s “Boogeyman” but he actually had some success many years earlier, in 1997, with his film Truly Committed, which won the Audience Award at Slamdance. Wow, that’s pretty impressive. Having a film at Slamdance the year after you graduate college. It’s also a reminder of how much work and perseverance is required in this business, as he had to wait another 8 years before his first major credit was produced.
Writer: Eric Kripke
Details: 102 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).
I hope you’re not easily SPOOKED. Because today’s entry is verrrrrryyyyyy spoooooooky. Okay, I’m lying. It’s not spooky at all. But it is an example of a high concept premise that’s executed just well enough to sell to a major studio. A lot of people ask me about that actually. They say, “Carson, you tell us we have to write a perfect screenplay in order to sell. So why do I see all these decent-but-not-great screenplays selling?”
Because of one simple factor. The more high concept/marketable your premise is, the less impressive your execution has to be. That’s because producers have TONS of writers in their rolodex that they know can fix a script. So if they come across an awesome premise but the characters suck, they have a writer in waiting who’s awesome with character that’ll clean it up. But the less marketable your premise is (aka the less it looks like your movie would actually make money), the more impressive the execution has to be to make up for it. And even then, you’re probably just going to become one of those writers that producers call to help fix a script as opposed to one of the writers who actually sell a script. High concept/marketable premises people. Probably the most important factor in your script selling.
Anyway, on to today’s script, Haunted.
Detroit. The happiest place on earth! Errr, not exactly. And especially not exactly at The Rossmore, the apartment complex where our story takes place. It’s here where teenager Max Maitland moves in with his family. Max’s family has money issues, and truth is they’d rather be anywhere but here. But since beggars can’t be choosers, it’s here they will be. And almost immediately, they hate it. Not only is it dingy and depressing. But it’s also kind of…spoooooooky.
It isn’t long before we figure out why. It turns out numerous people have been murdered in this complex, a few of them right here in their apartment. And at the end of the first act, poor Max becomes one of the victims. Yes, our lead character is MURDERED. We later find out he’s been offed by the evil Caleb Grady, a spirit who committed suicide many years ago, blowing his entire jaw off with a shotgun. He now roams the complex, looking for opportunities to eliminate new victims.
After the shock of being a ghost wears off, Max befriends some of the other ghosts in the building, which include a man hanging in the lobby, a girl drowned in a bathtub, and a cute teenage girl named Christina whose fashion sense tells us she probably wasn’t born in this century, or the previous one for that matter. Christina and Max become fast friends, and she helps him with his transition into a ghost, giving him the lay of the land and how Ghostville at the Rossmore works.
Eventually, Max realizes that Caleb Grady is targeting his family for his next kill, and he has to figure out a way to get them out of the complex before it’s too late. But how do you get someone out if they can’t see you? Why, you learn to “haunt” of course. So Max goes through a crash-course in haunting with the other ghosts in a desperate attempt to save his fam. But it might be too late. Grady is already on the prowl.
Haunted is a light haunted house movie that packs just enough of a punch to keep you interested. The twist of having the main character be a ghost was an interesting one, and made for a story you’ve never seen told this way before. I think the biggest issue I had with it was its tone. There were many times where it felt like this script wanted to go DARK, into The Ring and Sixth Sense territory, but would then pull back into PG territory. I’m not even sure what movie I’d compare it to. Some have said Beetlejuice, but it’s been awhile since I saw that film so I couldn’t tell you. Personally, I would lean towards making this darker, but I concede younger audiences may enjoy the “safer” feel of the film.
Despite the subject matter being light, Kripke does a pretty good job exploring the relationship between Max and his father. I liked this idea that his father never listened to him when he was alive, and that ironically, only now when he’s dead, is he truly able to hear him. The problem was Max died so early that the relationship never had time to establish itself. Just as I was getting a feel for the two, Max was murdered. I would’ve liked just a little more setup there.
I also caught Kripke using a little writing trick that a lot of good writers utilize. Use your action description to slip in reminders of your character’s flaws, fears, and weaknesses. After one of the ghosts points out how lonely a lot of the ghosts here are, Kripke writes: “CLOSE ON MAX. Thoughtful. If there’s one thing he understands… it’s loneliness.” Sure, it’s a little bit of a cheat. But sometimes you have to hold the reader’s hand and let them know what it is your character is feeling/fearing. If that can be done in little asides like this, why not take advantage of it?
Throughout the script, I was going back and forth on what I would rate it. It was simply too safe of an execution to get revved up about. But then a nice little twist appears near the end that I never expected (no, it’s not a “Sixth Sense” like twist) that spins the story in a different direction. That twist saved this script in my eyes and made it worth the read. I have to hand it to Kripke. I did not see that coming at all.
So this was good. And I think most people will agree. In fact, everybody I know who’s read it so far has liked it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As a testament to writers who have discovered the importance of theme in their work, Kripke looks back at his approach to his show “Supernatural” now as opposed to when he started: “When we started out, we were going to make a horror movie every week. It was about the monsters, and it was about Hook Man and Bloody Mary and the urban legends and the boys, honestly, in the beginning, Sam and Dean, were an engine to get us in and out of different horror movies every week. [Now] for me, the story is about, ‘Can the strength of family overcome destiny and fate, and can family save the world?’ If I had a worldview, and I don’t know if I do, but if I did, it’s one that’s intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole — it’s about human connections.” This is the kind of THEMATIC approach that tends to resonate with audiences, that makes your story more than just a forgettable 2 hour slice of entertainment. You can see that in how Kripke explores the relationship between father and son here. You may argue whether he succeeds or not. But it’s certainly a better approach than seeing how many scares or “cool kills” you can pack into 90 minutes.
