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.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: An air marshal finds himself in the middle of a unique terrorist attack.
About: This script sold very recently, I believe two or three weeks ago. It sold via the popular method of the writers developing it with a producer, who got it to a point where he liked it, then went out and sold it. This seems to be the best bet for selling scripts these days if you don’t have anybody attached.
Writers: John Richardson and Chris Roach
Details: 109 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).

You know I have either read or heard about a dozen of these stuck on an airplane thrillers, mainly because I actively seek them out. I believe it’s one of the most naturally tension filled situations you can put your characters in. You’re stuck up at 37,000 feet. You’re in a long metal tube with no way out. And on top of dealing with whatever problem you’re dealing with, you also have to worry about keeping that damn plane up in the sky.

But for all these positives, there’s one giant negative. You don’t have a lot of room to play around in. I don’t think I need to tell you guys how little space there actually is on an airplane. They got us packed in like sardines so they can offer us those nice cushy low prices. So cinematically, it’s not an ideal location. On top of that, you have the issue of 200 or more extra people on the plane that you have to figure out what to do with. This is why you get scenes like the one in Knight and Day where there’s only 15 people on the plane. Even though it doesn’t make sense, it makes it easy to account for everyone. So anyway, this is a long prelude to me saying I’m always interested in what writers do with this set up and how they tackle these unique problems.

Bill Marks is a 50-something air marshal who’s mega bored with his job. Apparently these poor air marshals basically jump on one plane to the next without ever getting a break. Flying is their life and since 99% of the time, nothing dangerous happens on a plane, it’s easy to get bored. And Bill is really bored.

About the only thing that keeps him going is women. Yup, Bill is a pretty simple guy. If he can strike up a conversation with a pretty woman, he just might make it through the flight with his sanity intact. So when he’s seated next to 29-year-old hottie Jamie on his Hawaii to LA flight, he thanks the lucky stars he’s about to be 37,000 feet closer to.

The two get to talking and while she’s hesitant at first (he is like 20 years older) she starts to actually like Bill. But before the sparks can start flying, Bill gets a text that grounds him real quick. The text says that unless he kills himself right now, one person will start dying every 20 minutes. Bill leaps into action, heading back into Coach, and indiscreetly starts searching for the culprit. As he centers in on the obvious suspects, the best twist in the screenplay occurs. He gets a text that says, “I never said it was a passenger.” The plane starts flailing wildly and we learn that the Captain is dead.

Bill realizes now that this is serious and also realizes that the only person he can completely trust is Jamie, since she was sitting next to him when he got the first text. They also end up recruiting an Oakland police officer on the flight, who unfortunately turns out to be almost as gung ho in his pursuit of the terrorist as the terrorist is in pursuing them.

More people start dying. Bill searches frantically. The terrorist eventually reveals himself and it turns out that discreetly killing people was only the first part of a much more complicated plan. So Bill must search deep down for every skill he’s ever learned and figure out how he’s going to save everyone on this plane.

When I first wrote up this review, I read it back and realized how bitter it sounded. I want to make something clear. This appears to be these writers’ first sale and I couldn’t be more happy for them. This business is a heartbreaking lonely relentless profession that rarely lets new members through the door. So it needs to be celebrated when one of us becomes one of them. And you know, I can see why this script sold. It’s fast. It’s intense. It’s fun. It’s got plenty of twists and turns. It has a solid part to play for a well-known actor.

But having said that, I couldn’t get into it because I didn’t believe it. I suppose if you take this as more of a fun tongue in cheek type thriller, you probably won’t care about a lot of the things I’m about to bring up. And I did try to let myself go and not take things too seriously. But there were just some glaring issues that no matter how hard I tried to ignore, I couldn’t.

My first huge problem was that Bill practically pranced around with a sign on his chest that read “I am an air marshal.” While I don’t know the exact protocol, I believe it’s valid that the pilots and crew would know who the air marshal was on their plane. So that I didn’t have a problem with. What I did have a problem with was Bill walking up right in front of every passenger on the plane and chumming it up with the Captain, the Co-Captain and the rest of the crew. Could you be any more transparent?

Then, about 90 seconds after meeting Jamie, she says “You’re an air marshal aren’t you?” Now I’d imagine that the answer you’d be trained to say would be: “No.” But instead, Bill smiles and says “How did you know?” Is this the least professional air marshal in the history of air marshaling? So then later when Bill expresses some element of shock that the terrorist knows who he is, all I could think was, maybe if you didn’t pull out your bullhorn and announce it to the entire flight every time you got on a plane, you wouldn’t have this problem. So I really had no sympathy for the guy because he was so stupid. Once I’m not on board with the main character, it doesn’t matter how well the rest of the script is written. I’m probably not going to care. And that’s unfortunately what happened here.

And really, an oversight like this leads to a bigger problem. The second you give the reader something to doubt, they start looking for other things to doubt. They’re counting problems instead of enjoying your story. So for example, we have a terrorist who’s killing people one by one and yet this plane is flying through the sky problem free. As you may remember, just last Sunday, they sent two F-16s after a plane where a man was in the bathroom for too long. Hawaii and California have the largest defensive presence in all of the United States. So why F-16s weren’t scrambled to intercept this plane is beyond me. Especially since the plane had internet access, and everyone on it was giving CNN a second by second update of the ordeal.

I’m not going to get into the ending here because I don’t want to spoil it. But I’ll just say that it was way too convoluted. The coolest thing about these movies is what happens at the beginning. Part of the reason it’s so cool is because you want to know how and why it’s happening. Why would somebody want an air marshal to kill himself? How is this guy killing these people one by one, especially the Captain himself? That’s an intriguing question I want an answer to. So when the answer comes and it feels silly and doesn’t really make sense, it’s disappointing.

I received a handful of positive reviews for Nonstop, which is why I decided to read it. So I think there are people out there who are going to look at this as a fun ride and nothing more. If you’re not as anal as I am and aren’t really concerned about authenticity, or you don’t really know or care how things really work in a situation like this, there’s a good chance you’ll just go with the flow and enjoy this. And I’m guessing that that’s what the company who bought it is banking on. But unfortunately, that lack of authenticity killed it for me.

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

What I learned: The lazy “doesn’t really make sense” villain motivation. We’ve all done it. And I’ll tell you why it happens. Nonsensical villain motivations occur when you fall in love with your setup even though you have no idea how you’re going to explain it. You leave that up to your future self. Or, as the old saying goes, you “write yourself into a corner.” This forces you to come up not with the best possible ending, but with the best possible ending that still allows you to keep your setup. Often times, this forces the writer to patch together a forced overly explanatory climax that makes little sense. The best endings usually come when you back engineer your setup after you figure out your ending. Unfortunately, this often means reworking your setup into something that isn’t as exciting as you originally envisioned. But I still think it’s necessary, because the ending has to make sense. It has to be an organic extension of everything that came before it. If you have your bad guy going through a 5 minute overly complicated “Exposition Eddie” explanation of why he did this, it’s usually a sign that something is wrong.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a group of bank robbers kidnap his wife, an accountant must try and save her. But when they all end up in a strange Rube Goldberg-like trap-filled mansion, the kidnapping becomes the least of their worries.
About: John Burch, the writer, has informed me that he plans to shoot the first 11 minutes of this movie himself to drum up interest. You can donate to the movie or find out more over at his Kickstarter page – 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: John Burch
Details: 99 pages

I have a schizophrenic relationship with this script. There is some really good stuff in here. But there’s also some really questionable stuff. One page I’ll be flying through it, excited and feeling like I’m right there in the theater, and the next someone will say something cheesy or do something nonsensical that takes me right back into my living room. Knowing now that John plans to shoot this himself, I think I understand the inconsistency. He obviously has a strong visual sense of what he wants, which is why the house and the situation itself feel so compelling. But from a storytelling perspective, I don’t think the story is as intricate or as “thought through” as it needs to be.

The script starts out great. We wake up in the trunk of a car with our hero, Kole, an accountant who’s recently been having some problems with his wife, Nicoletta. But right now those problems are on hold because Nicoletta is up in front with five bank robbers who just snatched their ride when their own getaway car was blocked in after their robbery.

Kole tries desperately to phone for help but service is spotty and the next thing you know there are cops chasing them and a lot of shooting and bulletholes are puncturing just inches above Kole’s face. Our bank robbers shoot back, taking the cops out. The robbers then ditch the car with Kole still stuck in the trunk.

After tearing through the backseat and getting out just before the thing blows up, Kole realizes he’s in a half-deserted dead suburb with no help in sight. He follows the trail of the bank robbers and ends up at an enormous mansion, presumably where the robbers have taken his wife. It’s there where he meets Gunther, a slow witted caretaker of the mansion, who guides him into the basement.

In the meantime, our bank robbers are tending to their wounds trying to figure out what to do next. But when one of them sets off a tripwire, a series of mechanisms shifts into place locking all doors and windows and holding them captive. If that isn’t bad enough, the place is a hoarder’s paradise, with junk and trash stacked from floor to ceiling blocking every potential exit and making the house one giant maze. All of a sudden that money they stole doesn’t seem so important.

Back downstairs, Kole is trying to get Gunther to help him save his wife. Gunther eventually shows him a way to climb through the walls, which not surprisingly have been rigged for the specific purpose of climbing around and spying on people.

When our bad guys figure out that the cops are hot on their trail, they speed up their attempts to get the hell out. But when they come to learn that the reason the house is so protective is because it’s hiding something valuable inside, everybody’s plan changes. In the end, Kole will have to find a way to pry his wife away from these men and get the hell out of here before things get really bad. But if the house has its way, that will never happen.

So before I get into what I really liked about Captive, I want to point out some issues I had, because there are a few. The first thing I’m concerned about is the role of our hero. I’m not a fan of the main character being stuck in a wall for a large portion of the screenplay. I always get nervous when the main character isn’t driving the story. And in this case, Kole is definitely more of an observer than an active participant. I mean, imagine if John McClane just observed our terrorists from inside a wall during all of Die Hard. It probably wouldn’t have been a very good movie. I’m still not sure how I would change it, but I’d definitely like it if he were more active .

My next concern is the promise of the premise. For newbies who don’t know what this means, the promise of the premise is what the audience expects to see when they hear a cool idea. So when you hear about a movie set at a dinosaur park, you want scenes like Tyrannosaurus Rexes chasing your main characters. I think the Captive house only fulfills half of the promise that it makes. It’s a really cool house. It’s a really creepy house. I absolutely love this ticking time bomb bowling ball creepily rolling around the track that you can always hear in the bowels of the house. But after a while, it starts to feel a little repetitive. I would like to see more imagination going into the house other than basic traps that involve things shooting at you or slicing at you. Each room should probably be unique with a unique way to harm or kill you. Think Cube.

Problemo number three is the bad guys. Unfortunately, a lot of the time they come off as cliché. I thought Brody was a really solid leader. He was focused and he was scary. But the rest of the bad guys sort of bleed into each other. One of my problems with these types of movies is that all the bad guys basically become these faux macho meatheads who seem more concerned with spewing out witty one-liners than tackling the problem at hand. And the problem here is a pretty big one. They’re trapped inside a killer house where one wrong step could get them killed. So a lot of the banter didn’t feel authentic. I think it’s okay to have humor in these situations, but it has to come from an organic place. A nervous joke here. An angry justified outburst there. But guys can’t be making the same jokes that they would make walking down the street on a Saturday afternoon.

Finally, the ending needs work. It’s rushed and it doesn’t make total sense. This idea that the owner of the house is trying to protect the treasure is a neat idea. But right now it’s not exactly logical. (Spoilers follow) If the house is rigged to collapse into a giant heap in order to bury the treasure (a bunch of gold coins), well then all it would take was a day or two of construction company cleaning to uncover the gold. Even if it’s in a safe, it’s only a matter of time before somebody breaks into the safe. So if the objective is to never have anybody get the gold, it seems like a poor execution of that objective. Then there’s the twist of Gunther himself. There’s no real script analysis that needs to go into this. It just feels wrong. Sometimes we try so hard to come up with a twist, that we convince ourselves that as long as it’s surprising, it works. I don’t believe this works and is one of the key things I would change in the rewrite.

Now, onto the good stuff. There is a lot to like here. I love the opening. I love how we’re just thrust into this story right away. I like how we end up at this mansion. I had no idea where the story was going – at one point I thought we were going to be stuck in the trunk the entire screenplay and boy was I not liking that- so when we ended up in this mansion, I was like, hmmmmm, I didn’t expect this to happen. As you know, I love when stories do unexpected things and I did not expect it to go in this direction.

Then once we get inside the mansion and there’s all this mystery involved with the hoarding and the Rube Goldberg traps and this weird halfwit caretaker — I was all in. So many times, I read screenplays that are anywhere between fairly well written and really well written, that don’t have a chance of being purchased or made because the story is not a movie – not something people would pay 10 bucks for. Here, you definitely have a movie. Throughout the first 50 pages of Captive, I kept thinking to myself, if I were a producer, I would probably purchase this and develop it with the writer. Because I could see the poster. I could see the movie. And it’s just a little bit different from what we’re used to seeing with these types of films.

I also liked Gunther. I think he’s an intriguing obstacle to our main character achieving his goal. I mean what’s more frustrating than being 50 feet away from your wife, not knowing how to get to her, and the only thing that stands in your way is convincing a dim-witted simpleton to help you who could care less? Not to mention, he was kind of creepy, which fit the theme of the house.

Story wise, we have a clear objective. Get out of the house. We have twists and turns. The gold throws everything for a loop. We have urgency, with our characters monitoring the cops getting closer and closer. The stakes are high, obviously, since everybody here could potentially die. I know I’m on to something good when even though I’m encountering mistakes, I’m actively trying to solve them in my head.

Like I said, this is a schizophrenic script. It has some really great stuff and it has some really not so great stuff. There’s no doubt it needs to be developed more. But I like this idea so much and I’m so sure that this could be a real movie someday, that I would say it’s worth giving a shot. I’d also like to hear some of your insightful ideas on how to solve the problems I listed above.

Script link: Captive

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

What I learned: I still think it’s dangerous to have your main character not affecting the storyline for such a long period of time. Especially in a thriller, which is a genre built for active main characters. Besides the story implications (that your main character isn’t close enough to the action), I have questions about whether big actors would be interested in a role where they’re basically watching things from behind a wall. I don’t think it doomed the script because we do want Kole to save his wife. But there’s just something that never feels quite right about our hero playing such a passive role for the majority of the story.

So in the last two weeks since I wrote the GSU article, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about movies that ignore some, or in a few cases, all of the GSU variables and still manage to work. The truth is, goals stakes and urgency aren’t the only way to keep your audience interested. They’re just the most effective way. But because the other methods for keeping a story interesting are more intricate and difficult to apply, they require more skill and experience to pull off. Now in the past, I’ve merely alluded to these options like a magical potion you needed to attend Hogwarts to get a hold of. But today I’m going to get into a few of these subtleties by breaking down the most important element of GSU – the goal.

Everything starts with the goal. The stronger and more clear your goal is, the more drive and purpose your story will have. Get the Ark (Raiders). Find the treasure (Goonies). Win the fight (Rocky). How much simpler and easier is it to understand than that? However, there are different kinds of goals you can use to drive your story. None of these goals are going to give your story the same horsepower that that giant tangible goal will give you. But they can still work under the right circumstances. Let’s go over each of these goals and then look at some movies that utilize them.

CHANGING GOALS
It is perfectly okay for goals to change during the course of the movie. Things happen that change the circumstances for the characters all the time. It makes sense then that what the characters are going after would change as well. If you look at Star Wars, the original goal is to get the secret Death Star plans to Princess Leia’s home planet. But when they get to the planet, it’s no longer there, and they’re captured by the Empire. Therefore, the goal has changed. They must now escape the Death Star (after saving Princess Leia of course). Once they finally get to the Rebel Base, an entirely new goal presents itself – destroy the Death Star. So it’s completely okay to change goals over the course of the story. Just make sure that each goal is powerful.

A MYSTERY
Some movies are structured so that we don’t know the goal yet. Instead, a mystery is what drives the story. Assuming that this mystery is intriguing and that we want to know more about it, you technically don’t need a goal. This is how The Matrix is structured. The first 45 min. of the movie is designed as a mystery – What is the matrix? Because they did such a good job making that mystery compelling (we see normal people defying physics), we stick around to learn what it’s about. Once we do find out, the movie switches to a series of goals. Learn how to use your new powers. Go see the Oracle. And eventually, save Morpheus. But it all started with a mystery.

THE THROWAWAY GOAL
The throwaway goal is a goal a lot of indie movie writers use to give their stories a bare-bones narrative, even though the goal itself isn’t that important. This is a dangerous goal because it’s not a very active one. Sideways is a good example of a throwaway goal. Paul Giamatti’s friend claims that his goal on this trip is to get Paul laid. But in reality, that’s not really that important. What’s important is the development of these characters over the course of their journey. It is very rare that a throwaway goal screenplay will be purchased on spec. These movies just don’t have enough horsepower for studios to take a chance on them. Most of the time, these movies will come from writer-directors who are able to bypass the spec purchase stage and make the movies themselves.

SOMEONE BESIDES YOUR MAIN CHARACTER HAS THE GOAL
Now you’re moving into tricky territory because preferably, you want your main character having the central goal that drives the story. But there are instances where you don’t need this as long as *someone* has the goal. So in Good Will Hunting, it’s Prof. Lambeau who has the main goal. He’s trying to train Will so he can reach his potential. The biggest problem you run into with this approach is that your main character ends up becoming too reactive, or worse, inactive, and will therefore come off as boring. Good Will Hunting is one of the few movies where I’ve seen this work so I would be weary of using it yourself.

OPEN ENDED GOAL
The open ended goal is a goal without a clear end point. This goal is never as powerful as a tangible goal because the finish line is murky. Audiences like people who have clear and easy to understand motivations because it’s easier to understand what’s going on. However, this goal has been shown to be effective under the right circumstances. In Jerry Maguire, Jerry McGuire doesn’t really have a goal other than “to get back on his feet” or “to put his new business on solid ground.” (You may be able to make the argument that Rod Tidwell has the goal that drives the story – to get a new contract – but let’s not confuse ourselves). This type of goal still works mainly because it forces your character to be active. Because your character is still going after something, he’s constantly out there doing things and pushing the story forward.

THE NEGATIVE GOAL
The negative goal is when your character is trying not to do something. In my eyes, this is one of the most dangerous goals to give a character because it sets up a movie that does the exact opposite of what movies are good at doing, which is telling stories about people going after things. The most famous example of this is, of course, The Graduate. In that movie, Dustin Hoffman’s goal is to *not* make a decision. For this reason, Dustin is mainly reacting to everything around him, meaning everything is shining except for the main character, which modern audiences just have a really tough time accepting. Either way, in a story where there is a negative goal, eventually a positive goal needs to emerge. At a certain point, Dustin Hoffman’s goal becomes to get Mrs. Robinson’s daughter.

THE HIDDEN GOAL
Probably the most difficult goal to pull off is the hidden goal. This is a goal our main character has but we don’t know that he has it until the end of the movie. The reason this is so hard to pull off is because for 95% of the movie, the character appears to us to be inactive, which in most cases is boring. The most famous example of this is The Shawshank Redemption. For all we know, Andy Dufrene is just hanging out in jail trying to live his life. What we find out in the end though, is that everything he did was a plan to get him out of here and therefore a part of an extremely strong goal. While this situation tends to create a great ending (because of the surprise factor), it means you have to use a variety of subtle and less dominant storytelling techniques to make the other 95% of your screenplay work, which is really hard. If you plan to use this technique, I wish you luck, because it ain’t easy.

THE QUESTION
A close cousin to the mystery is the question – which is basically a central question that drives the story. The place where you’re going to find this the most is in romantic comedies, where neither character may have a clear goal, but the question of “will these two get together?” drives our interest. The most important thing to remember when applying a question instead of a goal, is that your character work has to be impeccable. And if it’s a romance, we have to like your characters (or at least be highly intrigued by them) and we have to want them to be together. If we don’t have that, then we don’t care about the answer to the question. It’s also a good idea to add some sort of work goal or subplot goal to add some drive to your story in these types of movies. If all that’s driving your story is a question, your audience might get bored quickly.

Now let’s look at a few random movies that don’t have the traditional dominant goal, and see which of these options they used and how they integrated them.

BEFORE SUNRISE – Like a lot of romantic movies, what’s driving the story here is a question – will these two people end up together? Or, if you want to get more specific, what’s going to happen when the night is over? Linkletter did a great job creating a really tight time frame so that the script had urgency. Even though the conversations themselves were somewhat mundane, because the end of the night was always so near, each of these conversations is interesting in a way they wouldn’t have been had the time frame been spread out over two weeks.

SWINGERS – Swingers is one of the trickier narratives you’ll see in a screenplay. For a lot of reasons, it shouldn’t have worked. It’s basically driven by the open ended goal of Mikey trying to get over his girlfriend. The reason it’s tricky is because Mikey isn’t actively trying to get over her. It’s Trent who wants Mikey to get over his girlfriend so he can have his friend back. That’s why they go to Vegas. That’s why they go out all the time. That means you not only have an open-ended goal, but a secondary character who has the main goal. What’s important to remember is that even though both goals are relatively weak in comparison to what normally drives movies, Trent’s goal forces the characters to get out there to do things and be active. As long as your characters are doing things, your story is going to have drive.

FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF – Ferris Bueller is one of the few successful movies that uses a negative goal. The goal here is to not get caught. Now if you wanted to, you might be able to switch this goal around and say it’s for this trio to try and make it through the day. But since they’re constantly being chased and constantly avoiding others, what’s driving the story is mainly the goal of not getting caught.

THE SIXTH SENSE – The Sixth Sense uses three methods to drive its story. The first is an open ended goal. Bruce Willis’s goal is to help this kid. Since we don’t know what constitutes the endpoint of that goal, that’s why it’s considered open ended. The second is a mystery. There’s something wrong with this kid and we want to know what it is. Once we do find out what it is, a set of changing goals (to help each of the ghosts) finishes up the story.

ROSEMARY’S BABY – Another tricky screenplay to break down in that it doesn’t have any clear objectives for its main character. I would probably categorize Rosemary’s Baby as a negative goal in that the main character is simply trying to make sure nothing happens to her baby. Now like I mentioned above, whenever you have a negative goal, you eventually want your character to have an active goal. That’s what happens here when Rosemary starts suspecting something is wrong. She begins investigating the people she’s dealing with, looking into the possibility that they’re a cult.

The thing you have to remember with screenplays is that each story is unique and no storytelling technique is set in stone. You have to adapt sometimes. You have to improvise. And don’t forget that some of what drives these stories is open to interpretation. I’m not claiming that my examples are perfect. But they should give you a better idea of the different kinds of options you have when constructing your story. The idea is to get to a point where you can start using all of these options interchangeably and when needed, sometimes three or four times in the same screenplay, kind of like what The Sixth Sense did. But it takes time and it takes effort and it takes lots of practice to learn to use all of them. So get out there, keep writing, and keep improving. Good luck!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: After a young couple accidentally records the killing of a mailman, they try to collect on a little-known reward the government hands out for proof in the killing of federal workers.
About: This is Roberto Patino’s first breakthrough script, which landed on the bottom half of the 2009 Black List. Right now, Matt Shakman is attached to direct. Shakman has directed tons of TV over the last decade, including episodes of House, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Chuck, Weeds, and Six Feet Under.
Writer: Roberto Patino
Details: 100 pages – August 24, 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).

I’ve seen a few comments lately about how if “these” are the scripts that are making the Black List, then the Black List can’t be that hard to make. A couple of thoughts on that. As I’ve already reviewed most of the top rated Black List scripts, most of the Black List scripts I review these days are from the lower half and lower third of the list. So when you’re using these scripts to identify the quality of the Black List, remember they’re scripts with the lowest amount of votes.

My feeling on the Black List is this. Just like there are only 10 to 15 really good movies a year, there are only about 10 to 15 really good screenplays a year. Since the Black List has around 100 screenplays, that means you’re going to have a considerable amount of scripts that aren’t “great.” But it’s important to remember that just getting your script to a point where people judge it on its story (and not on how many screenwriting mistakes you’ve made) is really difficult, because most screenwriters don’t have the experience yet to write a story that can stand on its own. They can write individual scenes and individual characters that stand on their own. But they have trouble putting the whole thing together. That’s what the Black List tends to be. 10 to 15 really good (and sometimes great) screenplays and 70 to 80 “good” screenplays. Now every once in a while, something really bad creeps in for who knows what reason (I’m still trying to find out what The Arsonist’s Love Story is doing on there), but for the most part, you know you’re not going to deal with any trash, which is unfortunately what you deal with on a regular basis when you read random scripts.

Now the cool thing about The Black List is that sometimes there are gems from smaller agencies that don’t get circulated as much as the bigger stuff, which means that every once in a while you find something really great near the bottom of the list. That’s why I try to read as much from the Black List as possible, because who knows when you’re going to find the next How It Ends? That brings us to today’s script. Is Cut Bank deserving of its low vote total? Or is it another gem?

Cut Bank (the name of the town the story takes place in) is about a 21-year-old kid named Dwayne who’s out with his girlfriend recording some practice footage she plans to send out to news agencies, when off in the background, the camera picks up a man in a mask stopping a mail truck and killing the mailman.

Later on, Dwayne and his girlfriend call the Sheriff over to show him the footage, and learn about a little-known clause that awards $100,000 for proof of the killing of any federal worker. Since this is very clearly proof of said type of killing, Dwayne stands to earn a lot of money for his footage.

Soonafter, however, we find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem. It turns out that mailman is still alive and part of an elaborate scam Dwayne has put together to get he and his girlfriend out of this small shit town. Unfortunately, people are starting to get suspicious. Dwayne’s girlfriend’s father thinks it’s awfully convenient that they were taping right in the spot where the murder happened. And when a federal agent rolls into town wanting a body, it’s something that, for whatever reason, the crew isn’t prepared for.

But things really start getting crazy when the local recluse gets involved. A man known simply as Derby, who many thought was dead he’s been holed up in his house for so long, seems quite upset about the fact that a really important package never made it to him. Derby is no fool. He doesn’t need to watch any videos or talk to anyone in town to know that this is a scam. So he methodically works his way up the chain of command, finding those involved one by one, and if they don’t tell him where that truck is, giving them an express ticket to that big mailbox in the sky. That’s right. Express Mail bitches. He doesn’t care that these guys are trying to pull one off on the government. All he wants is the location of the hidden postal truck so he can get his package.

As you’d expect, the scammers, the law enforcement, and the third parties all start clashing and people start dying, turning what was supposed to be an easy $100,000 into a game of survival for Dwayne and his girlfriend. The only way they’re going to win that game is if they somehow figure out how to take down Derby, and as everyone else involved can attest, that’s not going to be easy.

Cut Bank is about as close to a Coen Brothers film as you’re going to get without it being a Coen Brothers film. This is obviously heavily inspired by the famous siblings’ work, and while the dialogue and the intricacy of the plot aren’t as impressive or smooth as anything you’d find from the masters, there’s enough here to make it a worthy attempt.

My biggest issue with Cut Bank was the first 40 pages. The plot just didn’t unravel as smoothly as it should have. For example, it seemed awfully strange to me that these guys would’ve gone through this whole plan and not known that they eventually would’ve needed to provide a body. I mean, come on. I don’t know the first thing about scamming the government but I do know that if you want to collect reward money in regards to somebody being killed, you’re going to need physical evidence. So then later (spoiler) when Derby kills the mailman, it just seemed like a nice convenience that they now had an official body to collect the money with, when that wasn’t originally the plan.

There were other hard to buy moments as well. For example, instead of going right to the police after capturing this “murder” on tape, Dwayne and his girlfriend go hang out at her house for the evening. They then casually call the Sheriff over, who also seems strangely unaffected by the murder (I’m guessing this is a small town where there’s never been a murder before) and figures he’ll deal with it when he feels up to it. Again, I can’t claim to know much about police procedure in small towns, but this seems like a decidedly lazy reaction when weighed against the enormity of the situation.

To me, authenticity is so important in a script. The second I feel like things are happening in the screenplay that wouldn’t happen in the real world, I start to question the story. I am now no longer involved in your imaginary world. I’m questioning it. And the second I start questioning your world, your screenplay is basically screwed. Because the suspension of disbelief is dead. And not dead like that mailman. Really dead.

But I’ll tell you what saved this script for me. Derby. What a great freaking character. I love the idea of this random dude who could care less about what these guys were trying to pull off, and only wanted his package. Without him, I’m afraid this script would have been too straightforward. But adding this wildcard factor created a whole new twist to everything, ensuring that you wouldn’t know how this was going to end up.

It also added a nice mystery. We really wanted to know what was inside that damn package. Now I’m not going to say that the conclusion to that storyline was satisfying, but it had me curious and guessing all the way up to the end.

I would call Cut Bank a mixed bag. You got some junk mail in here. You have some personal letters. You have some bills. You have an eBay item you’ve been waiting forever for. It’s not the perfect bag of mail but there’s enough good stuff here to keep you happy.

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

What I learned: I think this script taught me to always keep in mind the possibility of a wildcard. We often think in terms of the “good side” (the side our main character is on) and the “bad side” (the side trying to prevent our character from getting what he wants). Since that’s the way most stories are told, we often get locked into that line of thinking. But you can always complicate a story and make it more interesting by adding a third element – or wildcard. Derby here was the wildcard that sparked this story and turned it into something unique. Without him, it would have been another average small-town mystery thriller.