Genre: TV pilot – police procedural/fantasy
Premise: In a modern day San Francisco-like city where the laws of physics are superseded by hard magic, the deputy mayor’s right hand man is murdered, leaving some to suspect he is responsible.
About: Writer and show-runner Ronald D. Moore went to Cornell but failed out when he was a senior, and was only passively interested in writing while there. Afterwards, his interest in writing for TV grew, and he ended up writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. After the relative failure of his third Star Trek series, Voyager, Moore vowed to treat his next sci-fi project more seriously. It was that serious dark tone that ended up making his Battlestar Galactica so popular. 17th Precinct Is Moore’s newest show, which is fighting for a spot on NBC’s lineup this fall.
Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Details: 65 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).

TV really is turning into the final frontier of experimentation.  And if writers out there are taking more chances like this, I want to be there when they do. Because 17th Precinct is OUT THERE. I reviewed a script a couple of weeks ago called “Atlas” about a magical city that existed parallel to ours. Overall it felt like a soft treatment of the premise – wrapped in the safety of 8 dollar popcorn and stale boxes of milk duds. This is a way more interesting exploration of similar subject matter. In this world, Moore asks, what if our cities were fueled by magic? Not the Harry Potter kind. But “real life” practical magic. Sound interesting? It is.

17th Precinct begins with a dark figure murdering a man in an alley. The man cries out. But we hear nothing. I was a little disappointed in the writing of this scene only because it wasn’t made clear whether the lack of sound was a stylistic choice or we really couldn’t hear him. It was only later, once I understood the world, that I realized his screams had been muted out by some magical means. A small plant sprouting out of a crack nearby turned out to be the culprit, emitting a sound bubble around the immediate area. Clearly, it had been planted there earlier for that exact purpose.

Welcome to Excelsior.

The murder in question was that of Gilmore Pettigrew, which is a big deal, because Gilmore Pettigrew advises the Deputy Mayor on visions of the city’s future. No, I’m not talking about speculations. He can actually see the future. And that makes his murder all the more troubling. How can a man who sees the future not predict his own death?

We realize this is a different set of rules right away when inspectors Jeff and Caolan come in and begin investigating the crime scene. In this world, you can shift the blood around with the flick of a finger to see how it shot out of the body. You can also bring in necromancers to briefly bring the murdered victim back to life (in smoke-filled form) and get clues about what they saw before they were attacked.

What makes this murder so suspicious is that the Deputy Mayor lied about receiving Pettigrew’s yearly prophesy the night before. Coupled with a wild well-documented fight on the phone, the mayor definitely seems to be hiding something. The question is, is he lying to hide his hand in the murder? Or is he lying because that prophesy said something so horrible that it could never be uttered again in public?

What’s interesting about 17th Precinct is that you’ve never seen anything quite like it. In features, I always say, “Don’t fall in love with the details of your sci-fi world. Move the story along instead.” However, I don’t know if that applies to TV. Obviously, you have over a hundred episodes to delve into your characters’ storylines, so I guess it’s more acceptable to explore the details of your world. Here, for example, a lot of time is spent describing skyscrapers that are wrapped in some sort of living plant life. Or how the physical presence of someone might not be who they are on the inside (an old man could be a young woman). In the 17th Precinct, people keep cabinets full of spells the same way we keep cabinets full of food. I’ve never seen magic taken this seriously before. And that made getting into the details fun.

But make no mistake, that choice had residual effects. Whenever you spend too much time on one thing, you’re taking time away from something else, especially if you only have 48 minutes to tell your story. And the big weakness of 17th Precinct is that there wasn’t a single central character who popped off the page – who you remembered. The “rugged” Detective Chief Inspector, Wilder Blanks, looks the part. But at least in this draft, there’s nothing going on with him underneath the surface. No flaw. No fear. No inner conflict. And that, disappointingly, was the case with pretty much everyone. I’m writing this a week after I read the script, and I don’t remember any notable flaws that any of the characters were battling. Granted this is a pilot, but at least the hint of a flaw would be nice. I remember in that pilot for Lost, every single character looked like they had something to hide. You were drawn into that mystery, desperately hoping to learn more about them. I didn’t feel that here.

However, if I had to pick the most memorable character of the bunch, it would be Detective Mira Barkley. Why? Because she’s overweight and in her 60s. In all these procedural shows, I can’t remember a single one that featured a 60-something overweight woman in a detective role. It was refreshing and different and intriguing. I wanted to learn more about her. Having said that, even her character was lazy. One second the recently retired Mira is refusing to come back and be a detective again unless she gets the star treatment. The next she barely bats an eye after being paired with a rookie cop at the bottom of the barrel.

The most memorable characters from the pilot episode of 17th Precinct were, in fact, the single-episode characters, the characters being focused on in the investigation, which included the Deputy Mayor’s girlfriend and her son. And I admit to not knowing pilots that well but is this normal? I watch something like The Shield and the character I remember most is Detective Vic Mackey. I know not everyone can be the crazy out of control “my way or the highway” asshole, but your main characters should be memorable, right?

Here’s the thing though. 17th Precinct still works. Because the star isn’t the characters. It’s the city. And luckily, that part is so fascinating and so different, it makes up for the lack of interesting characters, who you figure have plenty of time to grow in future episodes anyway. Still, I’m curious how the hell they’re going to pull this off. You’re going to have these huge buildings covered with plants, trees running through the middle of offices, people coming back to life in the form of smoke. If you’re not careful, it could end up looking like a Sonic The Hedgehog game. Everything is going to depend on how the directors approach the material. But like I said at the beginning, at least they’re taking chances. At least they’re trying something different. And who knows, if they manage to pull it off, we could have an amazing original series on our hands.

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

What I learned: When writing about a visually exciting unique world, don’t let that world overshadow your characters. This is not to say you should tone down your world. Rather, bring the level of your characters up to the world you’ve put them in. Memorable characters would’ve easily put this into impressive territory.

Happy they finally got to Osama.  But man is this burying him out in the sea less than 24 hours later going to feed the hell out of conspiracy theorists for the next 50 years. 

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A Bob Ross-esque PBS painting show host must fight for his career when his station brings in a rival painting host.
About: “Paint” landed on the bottom half of the 2010 Black List. Brit McAdams, the writer, directed the Daniel Tosh web series, Tosh.0. He’s worked on some other internet related content, but this appears to be his first feature script (or at least the first one that got noticed).
Writer: Brit McAdams
Details: 112 pages, Sept. 09 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).

20 pages into Paint, I wondered if it wouldn’t have been a better idea to watch paint dry. Was this Franklin Leonard’s idea of a joke? A Black List entry meant to test just how much influence he had in Hollywood? “Hey guys, look! I can make anything a hot property!”

The problem with Paint was that it was just so…weird. I assumed it was a comedy going in. But the humor was so dry I needed a humidifier to make it to the second act. It wasn’t until the halfway point that I began to warm up to McAdams’ unique sense of humor. If I was forced into summarizing the tone, I’d say it was like an adult Napoleon Dynamite, even though I’m not sure exactly what that means.

I’d never seen Bob Ross (the real life guy who “Paint” was based on) before, but I looked him up on the internet and the first video Youtube returned was a 2 minute clip from his show that had over a million hits. A million hits? I pressed play, half-expecting his hair to catch on fire. Not the case. It was just him. Painting. A mountain. And talking about it.

What the hell??

Carl Nargle plays the fictional version of this man. He’s in his mid-40s, has a large unseemly afro, speaks in a whisper, and never paints without a pipe. Every day he does a show where he paints a mountain. And bushes. And animals. But never animals in front of bushes. He always paints animals behind bushes. That way the viewer has to work to imagine the animal, forcing them to become a part of the painting.

Carl Nargle also loves the ladies. Well, he loves to make love to the ladies. And he has bedded four generations of women here at the station, including 55 year old former secretary Wendy, 45 year old former secretary Beverly, 35 year old current secretary, Katherine, and most recently his 25 year old assistant Jenna.

What’s unique about this situation is that all the women still carry a torch for him. This was a big reason why it took me so long to “get” this script. I didn’t understand a) why all these women still loved a man who dumped them once they got too old, and b) why they’d talk openly about how much they still loved him. I mean here you have his current girlfriend, Jenna, getting advice from the other girls on what to expect when her and Carl have sex for the first time, as well as hearing how much they still wanted him. Yeah, cause women love to hear how much their boyfriend’s exes are desperately trying to get him back.

But this God-like domination he has over his staff is about to be swashbuckled. That’s because a new painter who’s even more soft-spoken than Carl is hired to do a second painting show for the network. Stephan is 20 years younger, handsome (relatively speaking), but most threateningly, does not just paint mountains. He paints people, underwater villages, even animals IN FRONT OF BUSHES! Blasphemy!

Carl writes Stephan off as an MTV flash in the pan (Carl’s old enough to believe that MTV is still “in”). But when Stephan starts getting higher ratings in the younger 12-24 demographic (“higher” meaning a .2), Carl’s show all of a sudden doesn’t look so important. In fact, whereas before all the crew would take their lunch breaks to watch Carl’s show, they now take their breaks to watch Stephan’s!

Their brewing rivalry reaches a head during the PBS fund drive, where 2 lucky bidders win a chance to have their portraits painted live by Carl and Stephan. Carl gets the higher bid, which secures his spot as PBS’s top painter, but falters under the pressure, painting a mountain instead of the woman’s portrait. He’s let go soon after, and his life spirals out of control.

I remember seeing Wes Anderson’s Rushmore for the first time and having no idea what I was watching. It was so weird and different that I couldn’t tell if I was enjoying myself or if I was miserable. It wasn’t until weeks later, still thinking about the movie, that I began to understand its brilliance. I’m not going to put Paint in the same category, but it is a script that requires a cool down period.

What saved it for me was the second half. Once Carl fell from grace, the humor really kicked in. He’s forced into a teaching job where everyone thinks he’s a hack, becomes a greeter at the state welcome center, and is finally forced to take a snow-plowing job. We delight in his misery because, quite frankly, he was a pompous asshole who used his “fame” to take advantage of people.

From a structural standpoint, Paint is interesting in that there’s no character goal driving the story. We talked about how important this was during Comedy Week (it was present in every script), so then why didn’t it matter that it wasn’t used here? Well, it did matter. A big reason why the first half wanders so much is that we don’t know where the story is going because there’s no goal.

However, an alternative that works in comedies (and thrillers for that matter) is throwing your character into a conflict-heavy situation and watching their world unravel. So in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, the mom doesn’t have a goal. But when the new nanny shows up, her world begins crumbling around her, and that’s where the entertainment comes from, us seeing that world unravel. This works especially well in comedies because watching that world unravel isn’t just interesting, it’s funny, as is the case with Paint.

Still, I only recommend this route if you know what you’re doing because it practically requires going with a passive protagonist (obviously if your protagonist doesn’t have a goal, he’s passive), and we all know how difficult it is to make a passive hero work over the course of an entire movie.

The only other big issue I had was the opening. It just took too long to get things going. We get like 80 scenes telling us that all the girls love him when we could’ve had a single scene with him painting and all the girls with hearts in their eyes. We would’ve “gotten it” and been able to move to Stephan’s arrival, which is where the story really starts to pop. But I have to say, for a script that was 10 runs down in the fifth inning, it was nice to see a comeback. I’m not sure it won the game, but at least it made it entertaining.

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

What I learned: Oftentimes I read a script that takes forever for the story to begin, only to check the page count and realize that everything is happening exactly where it’s supposed to. So here, Stephan shows up on page 23. That’s about where the first act break should be. Which is weird, cause it felt like he showed up on page 50. Here’s why that happens. There’s a difference between how long a script ACTUALLY is and how long it FEELS like it is. Everyone who reads this blog knows what I’m talking about. You’re trudging through a script, bored out of your mind, check the page count, expecting to be on page 70, and realize you’re only on page 30! Ahhhh! This is usually due to the fact that the script is repeating itself, is dragging out unnecessary plot threads, or in the case of Paint, setting up characters instead of pushing the story along. The first act of Paint is a series of scenes setting up Carl as a painter and the 5000 girls who like him. Contrast that with a comedy we just reviewed, There’s Something About Mary, where an actual story emerges. A nerd impresses the popular girl and wins the opportunity to take her to prom, which then goes horribly wrong once he gets to her place. Those early pages fly because something is HAPPENING. It isn’t just a bunch of people being set up. So set up your characters at the beginning of your story, but try to do so while telling an entertaining story.

Genre: Drama
Premise: After the wife of a missionary is killed, we jump back and explore the couple’s life together.
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.
Writer: Karl D Larsson (“Karlosd” in the comments section).
Details: 113 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 always get a little worried when I can’t come up with a logline for a script I just read. This is by no means a death sentence. Films like American Beauty have imperfect loglines. Amores Perros, Heat, Babel and Pulp Fiction have imperfect loglines. But my experience has been when you can’t summarize your story cohesively in a single sentence, the script itself probably lacks focus. The reason for this is that a logline doubles as a controlling idea. It’s the idea that controls your story. If that idea is unclear, the story itself is going to be unclear. And I think we have a little of that going on today’s script, Blood and Fire, a subdued chronicling of a couple’s life together.

Blood and Fire starts out strongly. We meet a family living in an unfamiliar country having breakfast. They’re slightly dysfunctional but no more so than the average family. The key players are the father, Shane, a 40 year old Salvation Army officer, Kara, his beautiful wife, and Chloe, his 17 year old goth-ish daughter. After they finish eating, Kara goes out for her morning jog, only to be shot and killed by the local thug tandem of Carnel and Faron.

Jump back to Afghanistan in 2002 where we discover how Shane and Kara met. He was a soldier and she was a nurse. After getting injured and brought in to her hospital, the two begin to bond, and Kara, who’s actively religious, introduces Shane to the power of faith, going so far as to bring him to a local Afghanistan church service, a dangerous endeavor in a country currently at war with his people.

The story then jumps back 3 days earlier to highlight an event that (I believe) got Shane sent to the hospital in the first place. He and another soldier were on patrol in the city and his dim-witted partner caused a panic that got some poor pedestrian trampled, causing all sorts of mayhem that resulted in the two barely getting out alive.

We then jump forward in time to Los Angeles, years later, where we learn that Shane has become a preacher, is now married to Kara, and has a couple of children. Shane is actively involved in helping the community, but also worried that his teenage daughter, Chloe, is heading down the wrong path by dating suspect guys. Eventually, the Salvation Army decides to make Shane a missionary, and he takes his family to Belize, which is, of course, where our story began.

It’s here that we meet the local crime lord Carnel, and his cronie, Faron. Carnel likes his community nice and dirty, as it’s easier to operate as a criminal that way, and therefore doesn’t like Shane and his family barging in, trying to clean things up. Things only get worse for Shane when his daughter Chloe starts dating Faron. But Faron is like a meek little bunny compared to Carnel, who’s constantly warning Shane to go back to America.  When Shane ignores him, Carnel finally takes matters into his own hands, and kills Kara.

This is a tough one. With no hook, no discernable character goals and no real story structure, there isn’t a whole lot to grab onto with Blood and Fire, especially because we spend a lot of the story randomly bouncing around in time. In any story, you’d like for the reader to have an idea of where things are going by the end of the first act. I never pinpointed that direction, and thus had a hard time staying interested.

Part of the problem here is the lack of clarity in why we’re jumping around so much.  Take the jump backwards to the Kabul incident for example. We watch as mayhem occurs and a girl is trampled. This is probably one of the more active moments in the script. But ultimately, it doesn’t have anything to do with the story. The person responsible for the pedestrian’s death isn’t even our main character. It’s another character altogether, one who we never see again. Which leads me to wonder, why include the scene at all? If it was our main character, Shane, that would have huge implications on the story and his character. But since it isn’t, it’s just a scene where something bad happens to someone we don’t know by someone else we don’t know.

The inclusion of the Los Angeles storyline also stumped me. To me, backstory is backstory for a reason. It’s not important enough or exciting enough to document in the main story. And I felt that a lot of this script, in particular the Los Angeles section, was background story on our main characters. I say that because there were very few things in the Los Angeles thread that influenced the central question of the story, which is, why did Carnel shoot Kara? Instead, it’s just a bunch of scenes showing a married couple trying to live together while raising a family. If there was a more immediate problem in Los Angeles, more interesting story threads, higher stakes, more conflict between the characters (there’s conflict between Shane and Chloe, but it’s too subtle to spend 40 pages on), these scenes could have been justified. But for me, at least, it all felt like backstory.

It’s only natural, then, that I feel that the bulk of this story needs to take place in Belize. The last 30 pages of this script are its best, and there’s a reason for that. That’s where all the conflict and drama is. We could feel the tension growing between Carnel and Shane’s family, Carnel and Shane’s work, which is why we’re so invested in this part of the story. You always want to ask yourself, “Why am I including this section? Is it worth including? Is there enough conflict here? Enough tension? Enough story? Enough shit going on? Does it pay off?” I would argue that the whole Los Angeles middle act does not. It just tells us about the characters. Belize is where all the drama is.  All the conflict, stakes, and story progression. Let’s keep as much as the story there as possible.

This is where I’m going to put my producer hat on and pretend like this is a project in my vault. How can I move this out of passion project territory and into “worth the 20 million dollar investment I’m going to make” territory? How bout this? Instead of following Kara off on her jog, don’t show her beyond when she leaves the house. 30 minutes later, Shane gets a call. He goes out to find out his wife has been killed. But in this version, we don’t know who it was. We know they have people in custody (maybe even Carnel), but they’re denying they were involved.

Now we have a mystery. So when we jump back to 2 weeks ago, here on the island, we as an audience are more actively engaged in the story, cause we’re trying to figure out, which one of these characters killed Kara? This is exactly what they did in American Beauty. Had they spun that story so that you knew who killed Lester at the beginning of the movie, I’m not saying the film would’ve stunk, but it certainly would’ve been less interesting. A lot of what drove our interest in that film was, “How does Lester die?”

As for the stuff in Afghanistan and Los Angeles, I don’t think you need it. It really is backstory and most of what’s shown is monotonous. I understand you want to build up how the two fell in love to make Kara’s death more impactful, but by giving the couple a key unresolved issue here on Belize, you can delve into a lot of the same themes and issues, yet still keep the story moving along (and not stopping for 50 pages to learn how the two met and spent their day-to-day lives). And if you absolutely must jump back to when they first met, just show a couple of those scenes and keep them sparse. And make sure they reveal something new and interesting about their relationship that we didn’t know before. If they’re just average scenes about two people getting to know each other, that’s not worth stopping the story and going back in time to see. We’re imagining something similar to that anyway so to show it to us is just redundant. Instead, use those early meeting scenes to surprise us. Not that you’re writing Lost here (I understand this is a completely different genre), but sort of that same idea. We thought we knew those people. When we jumped back though, we realized we were dead wrong, and that made seeing them again, in this new light, interesting.

This sounds very much like the “passion project” problem I was describing yesterday. I can feel you exploring some really deep and meaningful themes and issues in the writing of this story. I can tell that it’s moving you. But now take a step back and put yourself in the reader’s shoes. We have a slow-moving, structurally confusing concept-less meditation on faith and family. That’s not an easy sell, nor is it an easy story to invest in in screenplay form (I could see this working more as a novel where you could get into these characters’ heads). So the trick is trying to find a stronger way into the story (a better concept/hook) which allows you to do the same things you’re doing here, yet make it more market-friendly. Maybe you cross-cut an investigation into Kara’s murder with the two weeks leading up to her murder. Or maybe something else entirely. But I do think there needs to be a more active story here, and not just a look back at a couple’s relatively predictable life.

I will say that the writing itself is strong, succinct, and professional though. While I didn’t respond to the story as strongly as I would’ve wished, I felt like you were telling the exact story you wanted to tell. You just need to bring the structural aspects and the conceptual aspects to the same level as your writing skills. Good luck. :)

Script link: Blood and Fire

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

What I learned: You are no longer a struggling writer barely able to pay his rent. You are now a low to mid level producer who’s desperately trying to keep his job at a studio. These are the eyes you should be looking at your screenplay through. You’re a producer who needs to make money to live. To pay the rent. To support your family. To put your two daughters through college. — Now does that mean you have to write a zombie flick to impress this person? No. But it does mean you need to find a marketable hook to the story you’re telling. Black Swan could’ve easily been about a struggling ballerina who lived in an apartment with her overbearing mother. Instead, it was about the cutthroat pursuit of one of the most coveted roles in the world of ballet while fending off an evil adversary. Always look for that hook/angle that will appeal to the person tasked with buying your story. You’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to convert your passion project into that kind of story with a little imagination.

The thing that keeps every screenwriter up at night is the fear of boring the reader, the fear of writing a screenplay that isn’t any good. And here’s the terrifying reality. We’re all capable of writing horrible screenplays. From the guy who’s just starting out to the famous writer-director who pulls in 10 million a picture. Every single one of us, no matter how much we’ve studied the craft, no matter how many screenplays we’ve written…we’re all capable of writing a bad story.

But how can that be? You’d think that the more experienced you got at something, the better you’d get at it. Well, that’s true. The more time you put into screenwriting, the more likely it is that you’ll write something good. But it doesn’t guarantee you’ll write something good. In fact, I’ve received dozens of screenplays from writers who know way more about screenwriting than I do, and more than a third of them have been bad. So of course the first thing that pops into my head is, “Well if this guy, who’s an awesome writer, can write something shitty and not know it, where the hell does that leave my chances?” Is anyone safe? Is it that much of a crapshoot? Is there any way to minimize this horrible reality?

That’s why I’m writing today’s article. I’ve discovered some trends – or at least some red flags – that, if mitigated, can help avoid the deadly “bad script” pitfall. This is not the “end all be all” answer to this question. It’s more of a, “Be aware of these things whenever you write, as they often increase the likelihood that you’ll write something shitty.” We’ll start with one of the most common mistakes, “miscalculation.”

MISCALCULATION – Remember this: What is interesting to us may not be interesting to others. This is the number one reason a script from a good writer can fail. They’ve conceived of a story idea that they believe people will enjoy. But they were wrong. And really, everything that comes after that moment is doomed. Doesn’t matter how expertly they execute the idea. People just don’t care. Look at Spielberg with 1941 (I know he didn’t write it but he shepherded the writing of it). Look at Cameron Crowe with Elizabethtown. Look at M. Night with…well, everything after The Village. These stories were doomed from the outset because they weren’t interesting enough to be explored in the first place. The good news is, this one is correctable, and it goes back to what Blake Snyder preached in his first book. You gotta go out and test your story idea on other people. See if they’re interested. Look for that excitement in their eyes when you pitch it. Be wary when you get the polite “That sounds good.” By simply testing your idea beforehand, you minimize spending the next year of your life on a bad screenplay.

PASSION PROJECT – (Incupatisa from the comments section defined a passion project perfectly, so I’ll repeat it here: “Broadly speaking, it’s a script one writes without a care in the world as to whether its sensibilities appeal to anyone but the writer.”) I’m not going to say that passion projects are bad. What I am going to say is that you’re playing with fire when you write them. You’re moving from the blackjack table to the dog races. As long as you realize you’re stacking the odds against yourself in a business where the odds are already stacked against you, then I’m okay with you writing a passion project. But here’s why I’d advise against it. Passion is good. It’s what keeps those page returns coming. But passion is also irrational. Passion blinds us from the truth. For that reason, whenever we’re working on our self-proclaimed “passion project,” we’re not seeing it the same way that the rest of the world is seeing it. We’re seeing this idealized perfectly constructed emotionally dazzling display of themes and symbolism and character flaws and introspection. They’re seeing a boring directionless story without a hook. The problem is (and I’m just as guilty of this as anybody), as writers get better, they’re more prone to believe they can overcome weak premises. This results in pretentious screenplays with no entertainment value. There are lottery winner examples of these scripts working (American Beauty) but more often than not, they’re never purchased or made, and even when they are, they’re both bad and lose a lot of money for people (Towelhead, Away We Go, The Pledge). My suggestion with these scripts is to know what you’re getting into. Use them as character development practice or as a way to decompress in between sequences of that monster flick you’re working on. But please don’t depend on them. I know how satisfying they are to write, as they allow you to get into your own head and tackle some of those issues that have been bothering you. But 99% of the time, they’re boring to everyone else who reads them. If you ignore this advice and want to write one anyway, please please please add a hook (yesterday’s script, Maggie, is a good example – drop the zombie angle and that script never makes it past the first reader).

CHOICE – Regardless of whether you’re a structure nut or not, whether you follow Robert McKee’s teachings or avoid him like a fraternity bathroom, your script is going to require somewhere between 5000 and 10000 choices. From the characters to the subplots to the plot points to the scenes to the individual lines of dialogue, you’re constantly making choices when you write. And CHOICE is the one thing that comes from inside of you – that isn’t dictated by a screenwriting beat sheet. From what you find interesting, to the tone you’re trying to set, to the pace you’re trying to generate, to the level of complexity you’re trying to build. Every single choice you make affects your script. And this is where I think the good scripts get separated from the bad ones. A good script is a collection of good choices. And what I mean by “good choices” is choices that are unique, that are imaginative, that feel fresh, but most importantly, choices where you can tell the writer put some effort into them. I read so many scripts where on the very first page, the writer goes with the first choice that comes to mind.  That to me signifies laziness. So I’m never surprised when the rest of the script is lazy as well. I mentioned a couple of months ago how Chinatown started with an investigation that turned out to be a lie. That’s an interesting choice. That’s what you should be aiming for. As a writer, you should be approaching your choices the same way you approach your concept. You wouldn’t write a so-so movie idea would you? So why write a so-so line of dialogue? A so-so character? A so-so story twist? I’ll tell you why you do. BECAUSE IT’S EASIER. The path of least resistance is always easiest. And sometimes we just want to take the easy way out. If you’d like to avoid writing a bad screenplay, put every choice you make to the test. Always ask yourself if you can come up with something better. Laziness, which extends from the bottom of the screenwriting totem pole to the top, is avoidable with effort.

ELEMENTS DON’T MESH – Now we’re getting into real trouble territory here. Of all the potential setbacks I’ve mentioned so far, this is the one you have the least amount of control over. Sometimes you have a good idea, and you write the screenplay, but for whatever reason, it just isn’t working. The problem is, when we work on anything for an extended period of time, we’re less likely to let it go. So we keep trying to force the elements together and make it work, unwilling to admit what we know in the back of our minds – that it’s never going to work. I’m not talking about problems in a script. Every script has problems. I’m talking about scripts where it’s clear the elements aren’t meshing the way you originally intended for them to. The 2006 movie, Reign Over Me, with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle is a good example. It had good intentions, with a man grieving the loss of his family on 9/11 and reconnecting with an old friend. I still remember seeing the trailer and thinking, “That could be good.” But the video game stuff and the stilted reconnection scenes and the uncomfortable dramatization of the still raw 9/11 tragedy and the weird woman at the dentist subplot…. That combination of elements was never going to gel the way the writer imagined it would. So the lesson here is that you gotta be able to move on. Being honest with yourself is painful, but it’ll be less painful than the drubbing you’ll get when someone reads your script and thinks you’re a boring writer.

X-FACTOR – This one isn’t so much about what makes your script bad, as what makes your script average. If you don’t find that X-factor, no matter how hard you work on something, it’s never going to rise above “liked it didn’t love it” status. The X-factor is basically that indefinable “thing” that elevates a script into something special. In the above section, I talk about what happens when the elements don’t come together. The X-factor is the opposite. It’s what happens when the elements not only come together, but come together perfectly. Take a look at a movie like Zombieland. You have voice over, a set of rules for escaping zombies, four very distinct characters, flashbacks, a road trip, a unique and fresh sense of humor. All those elements lined up perfectly to make that script pop off the page. Star Wars is probably the best example of this, as it contains a good 30 central unique elements and they all come together perfectly. Had that not happened, we could’ve easily gotten Dune a decade early. The surest path to locking down that elusive X-Factor is to come up with a concept/hook that gets you excited (never write anything that doesn’t get you excited), give it a story you’re passionate about, and populate it with characters you love. In other words, you need to love the story you’re writing. If you don’t love it, people will always comment that there’s something missing, and that something is usually the “x-factor.”

Hey, it sucks that despite all these scripts we’re reading and how much we’re learning about this craft, we’re still capable of writing shit. But at least this way, you have an idea of what causes that shit. I’m sure I missed some things though, so if anyone has any theories on why the man who wrote arguably the best screenplay ever (Chinatown) can also write Ask The Dust, as well as similarly talented screenwriters stinking it up, drop some knowledge in the comment section below.

Genre: Drama/Zombie
Premise: A high school girl has been contaminated with the zombie virus. However, in this treatment of the zombie dilemma, the change takes months to complete.
About: Zombie spec script “Maggie” drummed up a lot of excitement a few weeks back when a bidding war erupted for the original screenplay and was eventually won by Wanted director, Timur Bekmambetov, for mid six figures. For whatever reason, something happened and the spec went back on the market, where I assume it will be picked up by someone else soon. A big reason for the interest seems to be that the genre project would be cheap to produce (with an under 5 million dollar price tag). Deadline.com reports that the writer, John Scott 3, works with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory for NASA, which takes photos of X-ray photons in deep space. Someone will have to confirm this for me, but I think the script also won the Page Screenwriting Contest.
Writer: John Scott 3
Details: 101 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Maggie’s been burning up the internet ever since it became a hotly sought after spec script a few weeks ago. Speaking to those who have read it, I can tell you that the reaction has been all over the map. Some liked it and some absolutely hated it. With Hollywood firmly committed to making zombies the next vampires, you can say that the zombie trend is here to stay. And right away, before even reading Maggie, I had a pretty good idea why this zombie flick sold.

Once again, a writer has taken a tired genre and found a fresh angle on it. I guarantee we’ve never seen a zombie flick about a six month incubation period before (or is it six weeks? – wasn’t clear on that). Nor have we seen one where the main characters are never in any danger of, well, being attacked by zombies. This, of course, is going to be why the opinions on this one run the gamut. People are going to expect certain things from this script that they’re never going to get. And that’s going to piss them off. The question is, will the ones who survive that knee-jerk reaction fall in love with what is essentially a slow-moving allegory for cancer?

The world’s been overrun by zombies. We’re talking hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of zombies. Luckily, the powers that be have finally gotten things under control and, at least for now, the zombie issue has been contained.

The strange thing about this zombie virus, however, is that you don’t turn into a zombie right away. Instead it’s a gradual change, about six months, and this allows those who are infected to go back to their homes and live with their families until the big switch arrives.

16 year old Maggie is one of those victims. She ran out into the world unprotected and got bit by one of them. Now, she’s living in her rural home with her overly emotional father Wade, and her stepmother, Caroline. She’s got a couple of siblings as well, but they’ve been moved out of the house until Maggie, you know, officially becomes a zombie.

The story centers mainly around Maggie’s relationship with her father. Naturally, he feels helpless that he can’t save his little girl, and therefore every single moment between them becomes precious.

One of the problems people have been having with this script is the lack of story density, and I can’t say I disagree with them. There simply isn’t a lot going on here. While there is a ticking time bomb (her switch), there’s no real goal for any of the characters, resulting in a cast of passive characters. As many professional writers will attest to in their work-up to becoming professionals, one of the most important lessons they learned was to stay away from passive main characters. If nobody’s doing anything, it’s just a bunch of characters sitting around talking to each other, complaining about things, trying to make it through the day. And it’s almost impossible to make that interesting over an extended period of time. Indeed, Maggie suffers from characters who don’t have much to do, and therefore each scene is either a repeat of an earlier one or a slightly different variation of it (i.e. Maggie vents her frustration about being sick half a dozen times).

That’s not to say none of it works. It’s a sad circumstance for sure and the theme of impending death – our fear of it, the world’s fear of it, the way people distance themselves from it, the way family is forced to deal with it – is powerful and heartbreaking stuff. Maggie essentially has cancer of the zombie, and her and her family’s unwillingness to accept this feels like one of millions of cases of the same scenario playing out around the world as we speak.

But I think my problem with Maggie was that it didn’t give us anything that we weren’t expecting. For an idea that’s so unique, you’d want the scenes and the twists and the characters to all carry that same uniqueness. For example, I was thinking, ‘I hope there’s not a bunch of overly dramatic scenes where the characters complain about God,’ and sure enough, there were a bunch of overly dramatic scenes where characters complained about God. We’ve seen that before. We know it’s coming. In the book for The Lovely Bones (the book, not the movie), the daughter is raped and killed. They could’ve easily gone down depression alley with the characters slumped in dark corners complaining about how life isn’t fair. Instead they bring in the drunk grandmother character who cheers everyone up. It’s not where we expected it to go, and therefore it was refreshing.

Also, I would’ve looked to have added waaaaaay more conflict to the story. For example, why make it so easy to keep Maggie at the house? What if, instead, at the beginning of the movie, the government, fearing a recent uptick of zombies, declares home incubation illegal, and demands that all the infected be brought in? Imagine the tension you could create from officials showing up at the house and asking where Maggie was. Imagine Wade hiding Maggie and the officials looking through the house.

Also, all the characters in Maggie treat the title character the same way. They’re worried for her and feel sorry for her. I’m sorry but that’s boring. You have a stepmother living in this house! Let’s utilize her. What if she doesn’t agree with Wade about Maggie staying here? What if she wants Maggie out? In conjunction with the change I just mentioned, what if the step-mom is considering selling Maggie out? Telling the officials she lives here? The point is, we needed some sort of conflict inside the house, and we weren’t getting it.

There were other things that concerned me as well. There were too many monologues. Too much clumsy exposition. There’s a point, for example, where Wade lays out his daughter’s entire history on the phone to a bank manager. It’s long and awkward and not a very inventive way of conveying information (although I did like how the bank’s impending repossession of the house upped the stakes and made things more difficult for the family).

I’d be interested in a rewrite here. There needs to be less repetition in the story, more conflict, not so much melodrama, more twists and turns, more variety in the emotions (everyone’s so bleak!), more story density, and probably more humor to relieve the tension. There’s a good message here, but the wrapping is too saccharine and monotonous.

There were some good things though. I thought the script became more interesting as it went on. In particular, when we start to see Maggie craving live meat and not able to control herself around the family. Watching her father’s denial was beyond heartbreaking, especially as she neared death – easily the script’s best moment. But like I mentioned, the journey to get to that point was too predictable and too maudlin. Will be interesting to see where the rewrites take this.

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

What I learned: Someone just brought this up in the comments section of “Great Hope Springs.” And I think it’s a great note. Every script needs emotional peaks and valleys. We need to be brought way up then we need to be brought way down. You need to run the gamut of emotions on us. If it’s just one emotion all the way through, it’ll feel one-dimensional and stale. Bring your characters and your audience through emotional peaks and valleys!