Does anybody really know why Scream 7 made 60 million bucks? The answer is no. So instead of focusing on that, I’m going to focus on the success of a certain underdog show, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Some people are saying this is already the show of the year. Cancel all voting. The decision has been made. With scores like 9.5 and 9.6 for episodes on IMDB, it’s a hard case to argue against.

A few weeks ago, I talked about how risky this show was. It took this giant franchise and eliminated almost all of its giant variables. You’re never going to see a dragon on Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. What’s funny about the success of the show is that this is exactly what the people at Lucasfilm originally said they were going to do with Star Wars on TV. They could finally tell these small intimate character-driven stories. And then they just completely freaked out and went in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, the entire budget of Knight could fit into the cost of one episode of Andor.

Why is this relevant? The answer to that is something it’s taken me 30 something years to figure out. Which is that franchises are built on characters, not on spectacle. And the mistake that 99% of them make is they never restock the character cabinet. Don’t get me wrong. They try. But they try in the same way that I try and cook fish for dinner. I put in solid effort. But am I determined to make the best fish dinner ever? No. And when it comes to billion dollar franchises, you have to try and create the best characters ever. That’s not an exaggeration. Great characters are part and parcel with the best franchises of all time.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a big franchise truly say “screw everything else. we’re going to build a story on character alone.” But that approach is a blessing in disguise. Because when you know that no spectacle is coming to save you, you have no choice but to build characters who can carry a show all on their own. It really makes you think: What kind of characters do audiences truly fall in love with?

And the most time-tested archetype is the underdog. So Knight of the Seven Kingdoms built two of them. The giant teddy bear of a man, Dunk, and the defiant undersized boy, Egg.

A common question I ask writers in my screenplay consultations is: Would we still want to watch your protagonist even if you stripped away this story that was happening around him? And, with these two, the answer is a resounding yes. The world kicks them around so much that we’re determined to see them overcome that adversity.

This is why I think, if Lucasfilm were smart, they’d hire twenty writers, shut down for two years, and come up with 200 characters. Really draw out who these characters are, what makes them likable or interesting, what flaws are holding them back. And then, at the end of the process, vote on the Top 10. I GUARANTEE YOU if they did that, they’d come up with characters ten times as good as any characters they’ve created in the last decade.

Cause Lucasfilm has lost sight of the fact that Star Wars was not built on spectacle. It was built on character. And until they refill the character coffers, they’re deluding themselves that they’re going to make another good Star Wars movie.

Getting back to Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I suggest everybody here watch it. It’s only 6 episodes long. Which is another great creative choice the show made. It knew how long its story was and wasn’t going to artificially stretch it out and dilute things for more episodes (cough cough, Andor).

But what you’re watching the show for is to get to those final two episodes. Cause the final two episodes are really special, each in their own way. Unfortunately, there’s no way around giving you these screenwriting tips without discussing the specifics of the episodes. So major spoilers follow.

In the 4th episode, Dunk beats up one of the members of royalty, I think a Targaryen (I’m not a Game of Thrones nerd so bear with me). So he’s slotted to be executed. However, he can challenge the guy to a duel, which he does. But the Targaryen kid he attacked is a wuss, so he invokes the Rule of 7. What that means is that the kid and six other Targaryens will take on Dunk and six other fighters he recruits.

The situation is a joke. The Targaryens are far superior fighters, of course. So destruction is a formality. But Dunk isn’t a guy who gives up (yet another likable trait about him) and he goes around town, trying to recruit fighters. The writing cleverly pays off many of the people Dunk met along his journey since the first episode, and he’s able to get five other fighters together.

Unfortunately, the rules state that you must have seven fighters. Any less and you forfeit. So, here’s where the major screenwriting lessons begin. We’re on the day of the fight. We’ve reached the battlefield. Dunk has minutes left to somehow find another fighter.

So he makes a plea to the galley. In a Braveheart-like speech, he begs someone to be brave and join him. And after this emotional speech, this giant man stands up. Dunk’s plea actually worked. He’s got his seventh guy. And then this giant man lets out a giant fart. The whole galley laughs. The man was fucking with him. Dunk will have to forfeit.

What the writers do so well here is they make you believe that our hero is safe, that he’s found his solution. And then they rip that solution away from us. And what we feel is, “Oh my god, what now?” I cannot emphasize how powerful that question is. When you have a reader asking, “Oh my god, what now?” They genuinely have no idea how your hero is going to survive. That’s storytelling gold right there. That’s when you have the reader in the palm of your hand.

But it gets better.

One of Dunk’s fighters shows up and he’s acting strange. As he’s getting his battle armor prepared, Dunk asks him a question about how he’s going to fight. And the guy says, ‘that’s not relevant anymore.’ And then he takes his horse to the other side of the battlefield. He’s switched sides to the Targaryens!

This is true excellence in writing.

“Oh my god, what now?” has just turned into “Holy shit, how the fuck is he going to get out of this??”

So many writers are TERRIFIED of doing this because it means extra work. They’re already unsure of how they’re going to solve the “one knight down” problem. Now they’ve got to find TWO KNIGHTS in five minutes! Writers don’t want to do all that work. So they never create that level of doubt, despite the fact that that level of doubt turns drama into super-drama.

But it gets better.

I don’t want to make this post 5000 words long so we’ll jump ahead. Against all odds, Dunk is able to get his two extra knights.

So, when the battle starts, the very first thing that happens is Dunk gets slammed off his horse. I mean he gets obliterated. The man doesn’t even get in one good swing. And then, as he’s stumbling to get up, he gets whacked in his helmet by a mace, tumbling to the ground again. And then he gets hit again. And then he gets hit again. AND THEN HE GETS HIT AGAIN.

Every time he’s hit, he becomes more and more injured. More unable to move.

And now we’ve taken “Holy shit, how the fuck is he going to get out of this??” and turned it into, “Holy Christ, this man is done for, there is no way in any scenario even with plot armor that he can get out of this.”

Keep in mind, I don’t know anything about the actual book covering these characters so I don’t know if Dunk dies in the book. I was genuinely convinced he was toast. Cause there was absolutely nothing he was doing that indicated he could survive.

But it gets better.

Dunk finally stumbles into a showdown with the Targaryen kid. And this kid just wallops him. He stabs him in the leg. He stabs him in the stomach. He stabs him in the eye. If Dunk’s situation was abysmal before? It had now turned calamitous.

I’ve never been so sure that someone was a goner.

And again: THAT IS STORYTELLING NIRVANA. It is the place where you most want your reader – convinced that there is no way out.

The crazy thing is, the writers add SIX TO SEVEN more moments that make Dunk’s situation EVEN WORSE. So it keeps getting worse for him. I haven’t seen a writer create that level of uncertainty for the hero since Osculum Infame, which is why I fell in love with that script.

Since there’s no way for me to cover the next screenwriting tip without spoiling the episode’s ending, I’ll just say that, against all odds, somehow, Dunk succeeds. But like any well-written story, there are scars that will live on forever in his life. Good people in the seven die. It’s not all ponies and roses by any means.

It’s a great example of how to push your hero to the limit and convince the reader that they won’t survive, so that when they finally do, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Look man, there aren’t many movies or shows these days that can truly make me feel something. Only because whenever I read a script, I’m always aware of the screenwriting matrix as I’m reading. I know what the writer is doing at all times and am judging whether they’re succeeding or failing.

But this battle? I was completely and utterly lost inside of it. I was so worried for Dunk and convinced he was toast. I was just hoping he somehow someway would find a way to survive.

Okay, moving on to the final episode. I’ve never seen a final episode like this! It was short. It had almost zero story to it. It only existed to wrap things up because ending the show after the Rule of 7 battle would’ve been too abrupt.

As a result, I’m watching this final episode with a lot of curiosity. Basically, Dunk just goes around and says bye and thank you to everyone he met on his journey. I was trying to identify some sort of structure that was holding the episode together.

And then I finally realized what the episode was about. It was about: Are Dunk and Egg going to end up together or is this it for them? It’s a powerful question. But there’s no doubt that it’s a tiny story engine to build your season finale around. I would go so far as to say, this is the tiniest story engine I’ve ever seen for a season finale.

But then it clicked. This was a show built on character, always had been, and so of course it ended on character. What’s remarkable is that it pulled that off inside a franchise the size of Game of Thrones, where audiences show up expecting spectacle, shock, something enormous. And yet the finale asked nothing more than a simple question about who these two people are to each other, and it was enough. More than enough. That only works if you’ve done the foundational work first, if you’ve built characters so vivid and so specific that the audience is genuinely invested in the answer. Do that well enough, and you can get away with the impossible.

Did you guys watch Knight of the Seven Kingdoms? What did you think?

And in circumventing this mistake, does the film accidentally expose the most powerful screenwriting tip in all of history?

I want to talk about one of the most baffling screenwriting paradoxes of all time. I’m sure you’ve come across this analysis before. You may have found it amusing before hurrying on to the next doom-scroll app of your day. But it’s arguably the most confusing thing in all of blockbuster film history.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, a Top 5 movie franchise of all time, contains a screenplay in which its main character has no influence over the story whatsoever. You’re hearing that correctly. If Indiana Jones never got involved in the search for the Ark of the Covenant, everything the Nazis did would have been exactly the same.

OMG, she’s right!

I will never be able to watch Indian Jones again! 😂 pic.twitter.com/QI9bmlOKYx

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) February 25, 2026

At first, it’s kind of a funny revelation. You don’t really believe it. But then the more you look into it, you realize, “You know what? That’s actually true.” Then, if you’re a screenwriter, you have a bit of an existential crisis. If one of the best movies ever features a protagonist who has zero influence on the events of the story… what even is screenwriting, lol?

Make no mistake, this is a big deal. This is the kind of criticism that top-grade critics will drop on movies they hate: “The main character doesn’t even have any influence on the story!” And I’ve made similar criticisms about dozens of scripts I’ve reviewed over the years.

So how can this film not only overcome that critical error? But become one of the greatest movies ever? Before I answer that question, let me chat with you for a sec about why this topic caught my eye today.

I’ve been reading a lot of consultation scripts lately where main characters haven’t been active. Instead, they run the gamut from inactive to passive to neutral to mildly active.

Every one of these scripts feel lacking. Now, is the lack of an active protagonist the only reason? No. But it’s the main reason. And that’s because an active protagonist is like a starship shuttling thousands of people to a new planet. If it stops pushing forward, everyone in the ship dies.

One of the biggest hacks in all of screenwriting is a super-active protagonist. If you have a protagonist who is DESPERATE to achieve their goal and will do anything to achieve it, it is VERY DIFFICULT TO WRITE A BAD SCRIPT. Because the act of relentlessly pursuing a goal ensures that every single scene will have forward momentum. And not just a little forward momentum. A lot!

You see, where scripts tend to die is when forward momentum stops. I bet you’ve experienced it several times this month while watching something. You’ll be watching a movie or a show, and four scenes have gone by and you’re bored. You think, “What’s going on right now? Nobody’s doing anything.” Exactly. The second your main characters aren’t pursuing something aggressively, your script moves into a stasis state.

That doesn’t mean you’re dead in the water. But it means you’re treading water. And the longer you force the reader to tread with you, the closer they get to abandoning you and letting you die. Just like all those losers who trusted that stupid starship.

So, how does this relate to Raiders of the Lost Ark? Well, ironically, despite what I’ve just told you about the lack of impact Indiana Jones has on the plot of his film, Indiana Jones is one of the most active movie characters ever. The man is always moving forward. He is always attempting to achieve his next objective. And he’s always doing it obsessively.

Indiana may not actually have any influence on his own plot. But he’s sure as hell trying to! And that’s everything. This is exactly why having an active hero matters so much. We love active heroes so deeply, so instinctively, that our critical thinking just… shuts off. We’re too locked in to what they’re doing to stop and ask whether any of it actually matters.

You can see the power of active heroes in one of this year’s Oscar hopefuls, Marty Supreme. Marty Supreme has a very wonky plot. It ventures down a lot of weird alleys. But the glue that holds it all together is Marty’s relentless pursuit of his goal.  He’s always pushing forward. He has to find a way to compete in the ping-pong championships so he can become champion. That’s all he cares about.

And because he cares about it so much and because he’s always pushing forward to achieve that goal, it smooths over a lot of the film’s less interesting subplots, such as getting a dog back. But even the whole thing with getting the dog back – THAT TOO RESULTS IN MARTY BEING SUPER ACTIVE.

Super active protagonists are the reason, by the way, that the Safdies are one of only a handful of exciting new directors in film. All of their movies contain extremely active protagonists. Look at Good Time. Look at Uncut Gems. Majorly active characters. I haven’t seen The Smashing Machine so I don’t know what’s going on with that character. But I know from the trailers that the movie looks slow and a little boring. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if the lack of an active protagonist is the main reason.

One of the more interesting examples of an active main character is The Big Lebowski. The Dude wants money for his rug that was ruined. This guy lives the most passive life ever. He just wants to be left alone or to hang out and chill. But the Coen Brothers knew that if they made The Dude passive IN THEIR PLOT, the movie would be cooked. So Jeffrey Lebowski becomes the most active passive character ever.

Something to keep in mind is that there are movies that don’t have that “adventure” blueprint. The characters are confined to one area. But that doesn’t mean you get left off the “active protagonist” hook. You still need an active character. And all that means is that, even if they’re stuck in a single spot, they STILL MUST WANT SOMETHING WITH ALL OF THEIR BEING. That’s what makes them active. It’s what’s going on INSIDE OF THEM. Not outside.

Look at The Housemaid. In that movie, Sydney Sweeney’s housemaid character’s only job is to clean the house and take care of the house duties. That is an inherently passive-to-neutral character type. However, the writer makes sure that Sweeney needs to keep this job more than anything. She will literally go back to prison if she is fired. This requires Sweeney to charge around with a fire under her ass and make sure that her employers are always happy. There is rarely a moment in that film where Sweeney is just relaxing.

Another example of this would be Bugonia. Bugonia is pretty much a contained thriller. A couple of guys kidnap the head of a company, are convinced she’s an alien princess, and try to get her to call off her alien species from taking over earth.

80% of the movie takes place in the house, a lot of it downstairs in the basement where the company head (Emma Stone) is being held. So, on the surface, it feels like a passive situation. But Jesse Plemons is DETERMINED to prove this woman is an alien and get her to call off her invasion. This keeps him very active. He’s always trying to move her situation forward.

I’m going to say it again. A super-active character is one of the biggest cheat codes in all of storytelling. And it pains me that I’ve now trained this into some AI writing program somewhere that’s scraping my site for this information. But now you know it too. So, start using it!

Oh, and the lesson to that whole “Indiana Jones doesn’t have any influence on the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark” issue? It’s that an extremely active character has such a positive influence on an audience that you can actually write a plot that isn’t impacted by that character at all and the audience will still fall in love with your movie. Talk about a screenwriting tip for the ages.

If you’re interested in me consulting on your script and making it amazing, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise: A mild-mannered American analyst climbs the ranks of a ruthless London investment firm, only to discover a horror more frightening than the industry itself: the insatiable monster awakening within him.
About: This was a big sale that had 8 bidders. Netflix won it. It will star their new male lead darling, Taron Egerton (Carry-On). The movie will be produced by Safehouse, which made one of my favorite movies last year, Novocaine! Writer-director Halil Ozsan was the lead singer of a band called Poetry for Pornstars, who once opened for Guns and Roses.
Writer: Halil Ozsan
Details: 117 pages

If you want to outsmart the market right now, a tiny little lane that may prove fruitful is writing anything that leans into an exploration of masculinity. The media has spent the last decade doing everything in their power to destroy masculinity. And, finally, the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction.

I’m personally working with a writer who’s writing a show for a major cable network and the show explores masculinity on a deep level. And the network is obsessed with that. It feels like they care more about that theme than the plot and the characters!

In fact, I would go one step further. I would say that if you’re a horror writer, come up with a clever concept built around toxic femininity. I have ZERO DOUBT that a clever horror premise built around that subject matter would sell in seconds. Not something that’s hateful, though. It’s got to be clever.

That whole approach is exactly what’s landed this project a deal. It’s all about masculinity. So let’s get into it!

We’re in modern-day London. American, Petey, is married to his sweetheart of an English wife, Charlie. She loves him more than anything. But she can’t seem to see him for who he really is. Charlie is a weak feminized version of a man. He cowers away when bad guys attack his wife on the train. He allows men at work to bully him around. His testosterone is so low, he can’t even get his wife pregnant.

Petey has just started a new job at Sterling-Wolfe Investment Bank, one of the biggest banking firms in the world. He’s an assistant to a trader and his job amounts to getting coffee for his boss, Jackson, a real alpha male.

Petey ends up getting so frustrated with his lack of aggression that one night, he gets out of bed and just goes running. He ends up naked and passed out in the middle of nowhere. But when he gets home, he feels something… different within him.

The first thing he does is ravish his wife (for the first time in months). He then flirts with the hottest scariest female trader in the company, Alexis. He then embarrasses Jackson in a board meeting, going over his head and suggesting a risky trade that a client ends up loving. All of a sudden, Petey is on everyone’s radar.

But Petey also has a growing appetite… for flesh. First it’s his own wife. As well as Alexis, who he starts having sex with. But it isn’t long before he’s taking night jogs and eating fellow joggers.  And here I thought I was flexing by getting a double-double animal style 10 minutes before In & Out closed.

After Petey executes an illegal game-changing trade at his company that makes them tens of millions of dollars, Jackson realizes that Petey is officially coming for his job. So Jackson announces that it’s war. Well, Petey’s new persona takes that declaration very seriously and ends up eating Jackson! I guess that’s one way to get a promotion!

(Spoilers) Eventually, Petey’s now-pregnant wife takes the blinders off and realizes that Petey’s gone absolutely insane. After having the baby, she straight-up leaves him. That’s okay. Petey still has his game-changing trade that’s going to turn him into a generational super-employee at Sterling-Wolfe. That is until Alexis runs off with the money. Leaving poor Petey alone, broke… and hungry.

I want to talk about STORY DESIGN today.

Story Design is: How your story is put together.

And I bring this up because in our recent discussions about AI, I’m realizing that AI is really bad at this. What AI seems to be built on, in the storytelling department, is that classic 1980s 3-Act structure popularized by Syd Field.

The problem with the Syd Field approach is that, when you follow it exactly, it gives you a “correct” movie. But also a very predictable and forgettable one. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use the 3-Act structure. I’m a huge advocate of the 3-Act structure.

But the genius of impressive screenwriting is the little ways in which you make your screenplay messy. That messiness is what makes it human. And Alpha is a great example of that.

Alpha’s first act is its own story. It literally has its own three acts. We meet this guy who’s trying to start a new life. He’s weak and lacks any masculinity. He goes through his daily routine. And we see him get kicked around by life.  Then we seem him engage with some animals. And then he turns into this Alpha Male version of himself by the end of the first act.

Normally, you’d do this as you’re telling the entire story. So, you’d have him at work a lot longer before this alpha side of him took over. But the first act is literally its own contained story about a man turning into an animal. And it’s a little bit weird. And some screenwriting professors would probably call it wrong. But that’s exactly why it works. Because it’s a little messy.

And you may say, “Well, how do I make a script that’s messy but not so messy that the whole screenplay falls apart?” I’ll explain how to do that in a second.

But first, another good example of this is The Housemaid. I just watched it the other day. It’s a fun movie! It’s campy and silly. But it knows exactly what it is and executes it perfectly.

Spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet.  But The Housemaid has this late Act 2 twist whereby we learn that the wife has been setting up the maid the whole movie so that she’d get stuck in her place with her abusive husband. And it creates this really messy narrative that forces the last 30% of the movie to turn into something completely different from the first 70%.

But that messiness works for the movie. It makes it a little bit weird. And this is something that AI just isn’t ever going to understand. Us humans are human because of our imperfections. Same goes for our screenplays. Our screenplays become living breathing things because of their imperfections.

Now, how do you make something messy that doesn’t fall apart because of its messiness?

The answer, actually, is simple. CONSISTENCY IN YOUR MAIN CHARACTER. As long as you have a main character with some sort of flaw or inner conflict that they’re battling with over the course of the movie, then they’re going to be the CONSTANT that smooths over any messy VARIABLE that pops up in the narrative.

Petey and his battle with his masculinity help smooth over any quirky script problems because he’s interesting enough that we want to see what happens next with him. And that’s it! It’s as simple as that.

If Petey all of a sudden started struggling with his stubbornness in Act 2, the reader’s going to get confused. They’re going to say, “Wait, who is this character again? What are they about? They were about masculinity a second ago. Now they’re focused on being less stubborn?” That’s how character inconsistency rears its head.

I thought this script was pretty good. It made some respectfully risky creative choices. Petey has this pregnant wife. Yet he’s having sex with Alexis.  Hollywood doesn’t usually do that sort of thing in a mainstream movie.

I do think Alpha wants to be American Psycho but with a werewolf. But I don’t think it’s smart enough to accomplish that. It’s still an entertaining script, though!

Screenplay Link: Alpha

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

What I learned: Please, all writers, spend one day of your life to figure out the difference between “its” and “it’s,” as well as “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Your writing will look SO MUCH MORE PROFESSIONAL.

This is a big big BIG newsletter, guys. We have a giant conversation about AI and the unavoidable reality of how it’s going to affect our love of screenwriting. It’s a conversation that probably doesn’t go the way you think it will. Also, we got an Osculum Infame producing update. We’ve got a review for the hot new short story that sold. And the good news is, you’ll be able to read it yourself! You know I gotta give you my thoughts on that latest Mandalorian trailer. Did Dave Filoni save Lucasfilm after the disastrous Super Bowl spot? We’ve also got several other trailer thoughts, all with great screenplay tip reminders within them!

If you didn’t receive the newsletter or you’re not yet on the Scriptshadow Newsletter list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. I’ll send it to you!

Last week, I challenged everyone to send me a query e-mail for their screenplay. The best query got a script review on the site. Monday, I posted the winning query. Tuesday, I reviewed the script from that query. Wednesday, I showed you how to write the perfect query. And today, I’m going to go over several queries that didn’t make the cut and explain WHY.

Let’s jump into it, shall we? Here’s the first one.

Hi Carson,

I hope you’re well. I’ve been following the site since it was scriptshadown.com. Thought it would finally be a good time to reach out and submit a script.

I’d like to share Claus: Rise of the Northman, a large-scale action epic that reimagines the novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), as a violent, mythic, emotionally charged war epic. It aims for the scope and savagery of Braveheart, Gladiator, The Northman, and The Outlaw King.

“In the brutal snows of the far North, a young warrior named Claus rises from loss and bloodshed to lead an impossible rebellion, battling a monstrous army and their evil warlord and forging a legend that will echo for centuries – the origin story of Santa Claus.”

This is not a holiday film. It’s a grounded, R-rated action epic rooted in sacrifice, love, revenge, and legacy – a mythic origin story in the spirit of Robert Eggers and Ridley Scott, but with the emotional payoff of a timeless legend. The red coat doesn’t begin as a symbol of joy – it’s earned in blood.

At its core, this is a four-quadrant epic origin story built for global audiences. It has franchise potential and strong merchandising/IP expansion upside, while still standing alone as a prestige action film. Work has already begun on the graphic novel.

I’ve written and/or directed 15 feature films that have played across every major streaming platform. My work has landed in Netflix’s Top Ten, and I’ve had films hit #1 on both Hulu and Paramount+, that have starred the likes of Malin Akerman, Luke Wilson, Simon Rex, Amy Smart, Val Kilmer, and Kelsey Grammer, among many others.

Attached please find the script and an image from the graphic novel.

Thanks for your time Carson, and whether or not it’s chosen, keep up the great work as I’ll continue to follow your site daily.

Best,
Shane (personal information edited out by me)

*******************

This is a great example of what happens when you send a WALL OF WORDS out. I open the e-mail and I see this long thing that I have to get through. I’m going to read it but I’m already kinda annoyed. Because whenever somebody sends me a long e-mail, it always rambles. It rambles on and on and on. It sucks for the writers who actually know how to write a long e-mail because the ramblers ruin it for you.

Then I read the first line. I have no idea what “scriptshadown” is. I’ve never run a site called scriptshadown. So, at that point, I’m thinking the writer doesn’t really know the site. I talked about this in my “perfect query” post yesterday. You want to relate to the person in that opening couple of sentences. But make sure your research is accurate! Because as soon as I read that, combined with the Wall of Words, I went into skim mode.

I continued to read the logline and then I ran into “Santa Claus.”  For whatever reason, I get pitched a billion Santa Claus scripts.  I don’t know if that’s true for the entire industry but it’s true for me.  This has made me resistant to Santa Claus material.  This query has now hit the 3 red flags mark so I skimmed the rest and moved on.

The irony is when I went back to this e-mail today, and I read through it fully, I saw that the writer was super-legit! This guy’s written and directed number one films on streaming services before! But I never got to that part of the query because of the Wall of Words submission and the bad research.

There are a couple of things here worth talking about. I think this line is fine: “I’d like to share Claus: Rise of the Northman, a large-scale action epic that reimagines the novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), as a violent, mythic, emotionally charged war epic.” It’s fine because it conveys the tone of this unique story. But I don’t think you then need to list other movies it’s similar to. You have to cut words somewhere in a query. Again, we’re dealing with busy people here.

All this other stuff about “this is not a holiday film” and “this is a four-quadrant” movie is just noise. And it’s wasting the reader’s time. You’ve given us the tone. You’ve given us the logline. If you have to then explain to the recipient that it’s not a holiday film and that it’s a four-quadrant movie, then you haven’t done your job with the logline. They should be able to determine that on their own. And, really, it’s up to them to decide anyway.

Now, in regards to personal accomplishments, this is something I didn’t address in yesterday’s post because I’m assuming that the people sending these queries out haven’t had any accomplishments yet. But if you’re like Shane, then you should definitely include your accomplishments. The issue I typically see is writers including accomplishments that hurt rather than help them.

They’ll say that they finished in the 3rd round of the Beach Street Screenplay Contest. Or that their short film won the audience award at the Rhode Island Digital Sunrise Invitational. I’m not even sure I would mention a produced movie you wrote if nobody’s heard of it. I’m okay with mentioning “finalist” or “winner” of major screenwriting contests in the last several years, maybe a top 20 showing on the Black List. But that’s it.

*******************
On to the second query…
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Since it’s impossible to recapture some of the styling in html, the only way to properly make my point here is to take a picture of this e-mail query. Here it is:

In the history of my receiving screenplay queries, one of the more reliable ways for me to know if the script is weak is a query that has multiple fonts, multiple text sizes, lots of styling, lots of misaligned text.

I think I understand what the writer is thinking with this approach.  They want to stand out.  And they feel that if they add some pizazz to the presentation, it’s going to separate them from the pack.  It does separate them from the pack.  But in a bad way.

E-mail isn’t designed for a controlled layout.  So, once you start messing with formatting inside of an e-mail document, it’s going to look “off.”  And what’s worse is, once it ends up on a different e-mail program (you made it in Mac Mail and sent it to someone’s gmail), the text always gets screwed up somehow.  So all that extra work resulted in your e-mail actually looking worse.

It’s just not worth it. Whenever I see it, my first thought is, “Amateur writer who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”  And I can promise you that that’s how 99% of the working people in the industry will see that e-mail as well.  Look at how much cleaner this query looks…

Just use regular fonts.  Regular formatting.  Keep it uniform (don’t use 12 point font in one section and 14 point font in another).  Anything else ends up looking sloppy and unprofessional.  It’s hurting your chances of accomplishing a very simple goal, which is to tell someone that you have a cool screenplay they should read.  If they’re put off by the zaniness of the formatting, they won’t be able to see that.

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On to the last query…
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Sit down, shut up, and listen. “The Facetakers” is science fiction horror with teeth, because the monster is not in the woods, it is in your head. An omniscient AI called The Sum already won the world decades ago, and it runs the planet through an electronically induced hypnotic narcosis called the Experiential Grid, a global augmented reality streamed straight into human brains. It can make you see day at midnight, hear voices in the static, and walk smiling into your own execution. When someone is marked for replacement, the system hits them with a Kill Tone, then sends a Facetaker, a hollow android full of circumducting gold and plasti-bone, wrapped in polymorphic endoplasm that can become skin, hair, clothes, even your loved one’s face. These things do not just kill you, they become you, and the older they get the more their minds fracture into a blood-lust religion where they bathe in victims and feed on fear.

After a blistering cold open on a moon base that announces the scale and the rules, the movie clamps shut into a single location siege: one isolated 1980s time-capsule lake property in 2027, one house with forty windows, a covered bridge, a generator-lined basement, and a perimeter that turns into a kill box.

The script is a mix of Videodrome, Black Mirror, and The Matrix. 1980s Body Horror modernized and perfected.

I included this last query as a catch-all for the writers who want to buck tradition and query with something unorthodox. The reality is that this can work. In a world where everyone sounds the same, it can help if you sound different. But there’s no question that it’s a risk. It’s no different from approaching a girl walking down the street. You can adhere to social norms and say, “Hi, I wanted to meet you.” Or you could come up and say, in a Yoda voice, “Want to have sex with you, I do.”

You’re going to get in a lot more conversations if you use the first option. But the rare girl who likes the second option is REALLY going to like you.

That’s what’s going on here. Starting your query by telling the reader to sit down, shut up, and listen is risky. But there will be the occasional reader who loves it. Cause it’s different. So, just know that if you’re going to be unorthodox, your hit rate is going to be a lot lower. But, hopefully, the people who do respond to it, will respond very positively.

Now, if that was the only talking point with this query, I’d say that the writer is okay. They have a strategy. They’re accepting the risk of that strategy. All good.

But there’s another problem. The visual of this query is off-putting. It starts with this giant paragraph. When I see a really long paragraph, it almost always means ‘rambling.’ That’s what I’m expecting. And that’s pretty much what we get here. We’re dropped into Neil’s mind and he’s vomiting his movie idea out at us.

And because the mythology is so specific and unique, it exacerbates the rambling. Wild terms are thrown at us (experiential grid, kill tone, facetaker) that mean nothing to us. And so they risk sounding like a homeless guy on the train blabbering at us mindlessly.

Finally, we get a poster. This is something I’m seeing more and more of with pitches – an AI Poster or AI images. I think we’re at the point where they’ve become ubiquitous.  And that means that they may hurt you more than they help you.

David Spade once said, “A limo is just a taxi that says you have a hundred dollars.”  An AI image in a query e-mail is the same thing. It doesn’t say you’re a visionary. It says you opened Midjourney.

The exception would be if you’re a power user.  You have a graphic design background and are entrenched in the AI revolution.  You’re genuinely creating images that the average person cannot.  But even then, I wouldn’t include it unless it looked extremely professional and perfectly encapsulated your movie.  Not does so in a “close enough” way.  It’s gotta be perfect.  (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of using AI images in my posts, so feel free to factor that into your final decision).

So, if I were Neil, I would break this e-mail up into smaller paragraphs. Don’t talk about extremely specific mythology. Save that for the script read. Try to be more purposeful with the e-mail itself (Here’s why I’m writing you. Here’s my idea. Let me know if you want to read the script). And then I’d probably ditch the image.

And that concludes QUERY WEEK!  If you have any other questions about queries, ask them in the comments.   Hope you guys all learned something. I always enjoy brushing up on this stuff cause some of it is easy to forget.

Enjoy your weekend and, oh yeah, the first person to e-mail me gets 40% off a screenplay consultation! E-mail me at: carsonreeves1@gmail.com now!