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!

Something happened with the bogus joke of a blogging system that is Blogger, and when I woke up this morning, the look of my page had changed.  I’m not sure why this happened and since I haven’t gone into the design segment of Blogger in over a year, it’s probably going to take me a couple of days to figure it out.  Viva Las Blogger!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A pair of pharmaceutical reps, one crazy, one conservative, travel to a drug expo to try and land the most important deal of the year.
About: This finished on the lower half of the 2009 Black List. Outside of that, little is known about the script. It appears to be Eric Lane’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Eric Lane
Details: 116 pages – December 1, 2009 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).

Today’s script is a comedy so I’m going to take this moment to talk about another “comedy” that I saw last night. After all of this hype, I decided to watch the “Two And A Half Men” season premiere. I’d never watched Two And A Half Men before, so I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but what I got was quite possibly the worst 22 minutes of television I’ve ever witnessed. I’m not sure if it’s possible to die just by watching a TV show, but I’m pretty sure I came close a couple of times. I’ve never seen anything more juvenile, more stupid, more on the nose, and more insulting than those two and a half men. I’ll tell you when I turned it off. That would be when the kid answered a question by farting. I don’t have any other words. I’m just baffled that people watch that show and enjoy it.

Anyway, that leads us into today’s script. Yay! The good news is, this is way better than Two And A Half Men. Then again, so is soaking your eyeballs in sulfuric acid. But at least Con Men doesn’t try and insult your intelligence. Well, actually, that’s not true. Maybe I should just get to the review.

Con Men is about 25-year-old Greg Weinstock. Greg is really good at what he does, which is sell prescription drugs, and all things considering, he’s got a lot going for him, except for his material girl who lives in a material world girlfriend, Tiff. Tiff’s big beef with Greg is that he’s not really a take charge guy. He’s too comfortable with his lifestyle.

So when the boss man asks Greg to join up with the company party boy, Kevin, and try to land the biggest deal of the year at the Milwaukee drug expo, his initial reaction is, no way. The reward may be high but so is that damn risk. However, after Tiff dumps him, Greg gets it into his head that if he lands this deal, maybe he can prove to her that he is a risk taker, and she’ll end up taking him back.

Like the recently released Cedar Rapids, Greg is all business and Kevin is all party. In fact, as soon as they land, Kevin heads straight to the bar and starts having sex with as many women as possible. A scary prospect if you’ve ever been to Milwaukee before.

Anyway, they eventually run into the reason that they got this job in the first place – Sheera and Mandy. These two used to be the top pharmaceutical reps at their company until they quit and started working for the competition. Because they are hot and because they will do anything to get the sale, they are every pharmaceutical rep’s nightmare. Our guys basically have no chance against these two. And to make matters worse, Sheera is Kevin’s kryptonite – the only girl he’s ever truly loved. He basically turns into a drooling half-witted Nerf Herder whenever he’s around her, which Sheera uses to her full advantage.

I’d detail more of the plot but that’s about it. There’s a lot of double-crossing. A lot of sex. A lot of drinking. A lot of lying. Each side tries every trick in the book to land the big fish but only one will come away with the prize.

Con Men is a script from an extremely talented writer who has a huge future ahead of him. I say that mainly because his dialogue is so strong, some of the best I’ve read in a while. Here’s one of Kevin’s many meanderings in the script: “A few months ago Lindsay came over. She’s a middle reliever I keep in the bullpen for weeknights. Anyway, we’re changing the batteries in the smoke detectors. One thing leads to another. You lick a nine volt battery and put it against your chode during sex. Turns out, when you climax, fireworks. Buttermilk into thunderbolts, lead into gold. You can literally singe the minge. It’s a K Russell Orig. But yours if you need it. Point is, Lulu dug the spark. Lucha libre.”

I don’t know how to put it other than to say his dialogue has a lot of texture. It’s interesting and unique and, most importantly, memorable. Which is going to make it all the more confusing pointing out Con Men’s biggest weakness: the dialogue.

What? Carson, have you gone mad? Didn’t you just tell us the dialogue was great? The content of the dialogue is great but it seems like Eric knows this and as a result goes way too far with it. There is so much needless dialogue here that pages upon pages go by where nothing happens but people talking (about nothing). Every time someone speaks it’s a mini monologue. We’re consistently getting 10 to 12 line dialogue chunks and it just kills the momentum. There’s a reason this script is a needless 120 pages. It’s because people talk for too damn long! I don’t care how good your dialogue is. You have to show restraint. Everybody loves cake. But nobody wants to eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Unfortunately, there are a ton more beginner mistakes in the script. Character actions don’t match up with their motivations for example. When we meet Kevin, he’s the one dying to go on this sales trip. He’s the one who wants this more than anything. So it’s beyond strange that the second he lands in Milwaukee, he doesn’t spend a single moment trying to land the sale. You could even argue that he could care less about the sale. If a character really wants something then does the complete opposite, you have character problems.

The character flaws are also clumsily executed. When you have a character flaw, the best way to convey it is through action. So if you have a character who’s selfish, you want to show them encountering a situation where they can either help themselves or help someone else. You show them helping themselves and you’ve conveyed their flaw. The lazy way to do it is to have somebody come up to that person and say, “You know what. You’re selfish,” which is exactly what happens here when Tiff tells Greg exactly what’s wrong with him. This is okay if you’ve already shown the flaw in action. But here, all we’ve seen from Greg is how awesome he is at his job. It’s not like this is Seth Rogan in Knocked Up. Greg has a high-paying job with a great future ahead of him. So his girlfriend telling him that he doesn’t have his shit together doesn’t make sense.

And outside of that, this story is just all over the place. Once they actually get to Milwaukee, there’s no form. There’s no structure. It’s just a series of repetitive sequences where people get drunk and try to bang each other. Combined with an extremely inconsistent tone, the script never finds itself. I mean, Con Men starts off feeling like a sophisticated comedy. The first 10 scenes convey tasteful and occasionally sophisticated humor. Open the script to the middle however, and you’ll read a scene where a character shoots his sperm up into an exposed wire, which starts a fire and turns on the entire hotel sprinkler system. That’s Scary Movie 5 territory there and an example of a young writer just trying to make anything funny without thinking how it fits into the bigger picture.

I will say that I loved the inclusion of Sheera and Mandy though. Usually in these scenarios the competition is two men. So to make it two women was a good twist as it created a whole new dynamic between the main players. Now sex could be used as a weapon. An old relationship that still had ripple effects on the characters could be included. It just gave everything a fresh feel. I wish Eric could have brought more of that freshness to the rest of the screenplay. But I still think he has a great future. He just needs to learn how to hone the rest of his craft.

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

What I learned: Less is always more when it comes to dialogue. If you bust out screenplays for your five favorite movies, you’ll probably find that the large majority of time each person speaks, they’re doing so in 3 lines or less. Not 10 to 12 lines or more, which is the problem with Con Men. Now obviously, each story is unique with unique requirements. Some characters talk more than others. Some stories require more exposition than others. But I promise you that your dialogue will be a lot better if, on the whole, you show restraint.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young woman at a care facility for at-risk teenagers deals with an unexpected pregnancy.
About: One of the winners of the 2010 Nicholl Fellowship.
Writer: Destin Daniel Cretton
Details: 121 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).

Well, we have another Nicholl winner here, which means we’re probably jumping into a character development sandwich with a healthy dose of thematic honey mustard. Gone are plot mechanics and the kind of poster that will bring the teenagers in in droves. But in their place is hopefully something that hits a little deeper and stays with you a little longer. And hey, it’s about teenagers. So maybe those mini versions of ourselves will show up.

Short Term 12 is a short term foster care facility for at-risk teenagers. 20-something Grace, one of the head counselors at the facility, has just learned of some unfortunate news – she’s pregnant. Now Grace is in a happy loving relationship with fellow counselor Mason, so that’s not the problem. The problem is that, like a lot of these kids she takes care of, she had a horrible childhood, and isn’t keen on bringing another child into the world. So she doesn’t tell her boyfriend, and sets up plans for an abortion.

But in the meantime, she’s got a job to do. Over at Short Term 12 we meet the major players. There’s 14-year-old Sammy, small for his age and someone who loves to run around without any clothes on screaming at the top of his lungs (for a similar story, see Carson’s childhood). There’s 17-year-old Mark, a beast of a teenager who rarely talks to anyone. There’s 15-year-old sex-obsessed Kendra. And then there’s the new girl, Jayden, a small girl with a big chip on her shoulder who reminds Grace of herself when she was younger.

Short Term 12 doesn’t really have a plot. It’s more about the day-to-day happenings of this facility. And it’s quite a facility. All of these kids are here for a reason, that reason being that they don’t fit into the confines of “normal” society. They’ve been left here mainly because they’re considered rejects, and most of them are aware of this label and seem to live up to it if only because the world expects them to. A normal day might have one kid trying to escape, another kid trying to kill himself, and a third kid beating the hell out of his roommate. Being a counselor here and dealing with this stuff isn’t easy, but most of the people who work here work here because they were at-risk kids themselves, and feel it’s only appropriate that they give back.

The bulk of the story focuses on Grace and the new girl Jayden. We eventually learn that Grace was abused by her father when she was a kid and that Jayden is currently going through the same thing. The problem is that Jayden is afraid to admit it because she knows it means losing her father and being stuck in a place like this forever. So as Grace tries to save her, she’s constantly running up against a wall. And of course, there’s the reality that she’s approaching this from a slightly selfish perspective. She feels that if she can help this girl, she can find closure in her own relationship with her father.

And then of course there’s the whole pregnancy thing. She knows that if Mason were to find out, he would be thrilled, want to get married, and want to have the kid. But even though Grace knows she would never be the way her parent was with her, she’s terrified of just how cruel this world can be to children and she doesn’t want to put any human being through that, especially one she brings into the world herself. So the ultimate question, I suppose, is will Grace come around and want to have her child?

You know, this was a tough one to judge, especially after reading yesterday’s script. Because yesterday’s script was so full of fluff and so devoid of any real…well…anything, this script feels like reading American Beauty in comparison. It’s all character development all the time. But even though it was nice to just experience the inner battles people go through every day, especially people like this who are so damaged, I was still craving some sort of story, some sort of wrapper, to bring it all together. I’m a greedy reader. I don’t want all of one thing or all of another. I want everything. So even though this script had so much more depth and richness and passion than yesterday’s offering, I still found myself moving my hand in a circular motion and subconsciously saying, “Okay, but where’s the plot?”

But the script does teach some good lessons. I think the most obvious one is that you’re able to bring more to the table if you write what you know (I would be shocked if the writer, Destin, didn’t work at one of these facilities himself). What that affords you is specificity. Now it by no means guarantees a good story. Sometimes you can write what you know, yet only seem to find the most mundane boring parts of what you know. Believe me, I’ve read plenty of those scripts. But as long as you channel in on something that has dramatic potential, you can bring specific things in that nobody else who doesn’t know that subject matter can, and the reader feels that. For example, Sammy running around naked. That feels very much like something that happened in real life that only someone who worked at a place like Short Term 12 would experience.

I also think the character development here is pretty good, especially for the character of Grace. When you don’t have a plot driving your story, you need your characters to develop in an interesting way. You need interesting things about their backstory to come up (we find out some disturbing things about her father from early on in her life). You need interesting choices that cut to the core of the issues they’re having (she has to deal with whether or not to have her baby). You need to put them in positions that force them to think about their point of view (she meets someone who reminds her of herself when she was a kid). That’s how you develop an interesting character. I don’t think that this is ever going to be as compelling as if you have a story driving things forward, but if you don’t have that story, you better have an interesting character. And I think Short Term 12 does.

There were also a couple of signals that this writer had studied his craft. Destin knew he would be constantly explaining how the facility worked, so he brought in the “question character,” a new counselor who would constantly be asking questions so that the other characters could explain things to him (and by association, to us). This is a tool that every writer should have in their tool shed.

I also liked how Destin used the pregnancy as a soft ticking time bomb. Again, we have a story here without any real form so it’s important to frame it in any way possible so that the audience has some sense of when it’s going to end. The decision on whether or not to have the abortion was a great way to do that. Incidentally, I would’ve liked if it would’ve been highlighted more, such as a specific day that was coming up, or maybe just have the characters talk about it more (it seemed to be forgotten a tad in the second act), but I still thought it was well executed.

You know, I wish this script would’ve had more story, but when I’m taking everything into account, I would have to say that it does a lot more good than bad. Destin did a great job with character development here, much better than most scripts I read, and to that end this is deserving of a “worth the read.”

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

What I learned: Writing what you know does not guarantee a good script. What it does guarantee is knowledge. You know that subject matter better than 99% of the people out there and that’s what you want to take advantage of. The reason David Seidler was able to write that memorable scene in The King’s Speech where Birdy reads while listening to music was because Seidler himself was a stutterer and was taught the exact same thing. Those are the kinds of memorable moments that only come from experiencing that stuff yourself (or through heavy research). Still, no matter how well you know a particular subject matter, no matter how much you’ve lived it, it’s always best to wrap that subject matter in an entertaining concept/story. Don’t get me wrong, Short Term 12 was a solid script, but this is a script that never would have been heard of without the Nicholl Fellowship, as it’s the only place that really celebrates these kinds of screenplays.