Hello all.  A quick heads up.  I’m in the midst of a project I have to finish which is going to affect my posting for the next week and a half.  Expect sporadic posting during that period.  I know a lot of you are wondering when the Shorts Contest announcements are going to rev up.  And I promise you that after I’m finished with this, the Shorts are my main priority.  The director is on me every day to get this going so we’ll get’er done.  Don’t worry.

In the meantime, let’s all check out the latest Star Wars trailer.  And… I don’t know guys.  Something’s not doing it for me here.  The first half of the trailer looks like three people got a cool location, shot there for a day, then cobbled together a Star Wars fan film.  There isn’t a single iconic shot in here.  And the story looks like it can be boiled down to, “Luke’s Mad.”  That sucks.  I was hoping for a lot more. What’d you guys think?

THE WINNER HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED BELOW

Look who’s back, baby! It’s the Scriptshadow Tournament!! In the last quarterfinal battle, blood was shed. Wars were waged. Commenters were banished. Some opined that the tournament would never return. It would become a footnote on the bottom of the Scriptshadow page. “Here lies the tournament that always is and never was.”

But alas, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the internet, it’s that when there’s an argument, throw yourself further into that argument! Stoke the fires with the blood of cheetahs. Bask in the sunshine while laughing with unicorns! And when it’s all said and done, sleep in the pouch of the nearest kangaroo–

Okay, now I’m not making sense.

Right, so, we’re on WEEK 3 of the Quarterfinals. Already into the Semifinals are Katherine Botts with her detective take on A Christmas Carol, “Cratchit,” and the surprise winner of Week 1, “Odysseus and His Boy,” by Steffan DelPiano.

Here’s how this works. Read as much from each script as you can. Then vote in the comments section which script you think deserves to go into the semifinals. Please explain why you voted for the script so that we know you’re a real voter and not a friend of the writer. As always, I’ll leave it up to the writers to decide if they want to summarize their changes in the comments.

Voting closes at 10pm Pacific Time Sunday evening, when the winner will be announced.

Good luck everybody!

#3 SEED
Title: The Bait
Writer: Billie Bates
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: An untrusting woman, employed to seduce men prior to marriage for concerned wives-to-be, has her world turned upside down when she falls for her latest target.

#6 SEED
Title: The Attacker
Writer: Jean Roux
Genre: Action
Logline: After scoring the winning goal of a match by cheating, a soccer player has to go searching for his brother in the most dangerous neighborhood of the town that has just lost.

WILD-CARD
Title: Hellfire Alley
Writer: Kenneth Kleemann
Genre: Western/True Story
Logline: The gritty, UNTOLD story behind the real outlaws who inspired the classic film, THE WILD BUNCH.

WINNER OF QUARTERFINAL WEEK 3: Nice work to all the contestants in this week’s quarterfinal. Getting this far is not to be taken lightly. But only one can move forward. And that script moving forward is… “The Bait,” by Billie Bates, our first seeded script into the semis (#3 seed). Congrats, Billie! I know this process has been difficult for some. Keep in mind, I wanted to do something that’s never been done before. And when you do something that’s never been done before, the first time is going to be rough. We’re learning what works and what doesn’t. And the next time we do this will be better for it. That’s why I’ve always treated this contest as a fun experiment (it’s FREE remember!). Don’t take it too seriously and have fun guys. It’s writing. It’s supposed to be enjoyable. Next week are the last 3 quarterfinal scripts. Shouldn’t take a mathematician to figure out what those are. So if you want to start reading them early, get to it. I’ll meet you back here next week!

If you’re new to the Scriptshadow Script Challenge, here are all the previous posts…

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
WEEK 9
WEEK 10

Week 11!

Week 2 of the rewrite!

Happy times.

Assuming you haven’t ditched your script in favor of catching Pokemon, you’re knee-deep in a rewrite that’s probably causing you a lot of consternation. One of the shittiest things about rewriting is that, a lot of the time, the solutions you came up with in your outline won’t work. And because of this, instead of rewriting, you’re back to problem-solving. And when you’re problem solving, you’re not writing. Which means your script isn’t progressing.

What a lot of writers will do is let these difficulties linger. A day goes by, then two, then a week, then a couple of weeks. All of a sudden, you’re in the middle of full-blown writer’s block. The script becomes the enemy, and the only way to defeat it is to avoid it.

I read an article once by a professional screenwriter who said that with every script, you’ll have 3 to 4 moments where you encounter an INSURMOUNTABLE problem. You become convinced that your script is flawed and that it cannot survive. So before you freak out, know that this is something LOTS OF WRITERS endure.

Here’s the great thing about these moments. Solving them almost always raises your script to the next level. Something about solving this problem helps you see the script in a whole new way, and all of a sudden you’re reinvigorated, because you know your script is THAT much better. So don’t go jumping off a cliff when these moments arrive. Engage in the challenge, knowing that on the other side is a pot of gold.

What I DON’T want you to do is take time off. Or fiddle around on the internet. We don’t have time for that. We’re on a deadline. And remember, part of this experiment is preparing you guys for when you have real deadlines in the professional world. You need to be fighters. So here are five things you can do to overcome your script problems.

Book It – Read a book in a similar genre – Reading other peoples’ work, especially really good work, inspires people. And that inspiration can lead to ideas. And it’s only a matter of time before one of those ideas leads to a solution. There are a couple of things to keep in mind here. Do not read a book that’s in the exact same genre as your movie. The reason for this is that the solution you find may be the exact same solution they used, and now your script comes off as a copycat. Read something slightly different. So if you’re writing Star Wars, read something like Cloud Atlas.

Now if you’re really struggling to find the solution this way, here’s a trick. With every single unique element that pops up in the book, stop and ask yourself, “Could this work as my solution?” Let’s say, for example, that your problem is you want a unique murder scene in your movie, something unlike any murder scene ever made. You’re reading your book and you come across the sentence, “Joe moves the shower curtain to the side.” Think to yourself, “Shower curtain. Is there anything I can do with shower curtains? Hmmm. Maybe the murder takes place in a shower. Maybe we put the murderer, who’s really a man, in woman’s clothes to add to the confusion.” And just like that, you’ve created the shower scene from Psycho! That’s a bit of a stretch but the point is, YOU NEVER KNOW where solutions will come from. So consider every angle, even something as mundane as a shower curtain.

List it – One of the problems a lot of writers have is they think too logically. And to a certain extent, that’s a required mindset for screenwriting. Your movie has to make sense and characters have to act in a logical manner. But to come up with solutions, you may have to think illogically to spark the unconscious side of your brain, the side that’s truly creative. Lists are a great way to do that. What you do is open a new document and write down TEN or TWENTY solutions to your problem. The catch? You can’t judge your answers. The second you start judging, your logical mind takes over. We don’t want him around.

Now the reality is, a lot of your solutions will be cliche, because cliches are always the first things that come to mind. That’s why I prefer 20 solutions to 10. Once you get past 10, you’ll find yourself being more creative. Again, don’t filter yourself. Anything goes. Solutions often come from the most unexpected places. If we’re the writers of Zootopia, the best movie ever, and our problem is that we have no idea where our climax should take place, here’s what our solution-list might look like…

1) The forest.
2) Inside of an apartment.
3) The zoo.
4) Out on the farm where she grew up.
5) In the human world.
6) Underground.
7) In a supermarket.
8) We reveal that their amazing zoo world has actually been a simple zoo in the Bronx all this time. They just imagined it to be this way.
9) In a museum.
10) In a giant human office building where they have to steal something from the humans. Maybe the humans who own the zoo?

Are these great ideas? Uh, not really. But that’s okay! You’re not being judged on how great the idea is. You’re trying to spark your mind and think of the problem and its solution in a slightly different way. By not filtering yourself and writing down whatever the hell comes to mind, you just might find the answer you’re looking for.

Walk it – No, this doesn’t mean go for a walk and look for Pokemon. It means go out and THINK about your script. The reason walks work better than staying in your apartment is that you already know everything in your apartment. You know that TV over there, that chair over there, that plant over there. Your mind isn’t being challenged with any new information. Walk around and really TAKE IN your environment. Look at things you don’t normally look at. For example, look up. We stopped looking up when we were kids. Look fucking up! Look anywhere but the places you usually look. And during your walk, keep your problem front and center. Whatever you see, apply it to your problem. If you see a pink cadillac, ask yourself if a pink cadillac is part of the solution. If the driver has a handlebar mustache, ask yourself if disguising your main character in a handlebar mustache is the solution. Really let your mind wander and be creative. And try to take different routes each time out. Don’t always go on the same walk. Just like your apartment, the information will cease to be new.

Sleep it – This should be something you’re doing regardless of your rewrite. Every time you go to sleep, you should be thinking about the biggest problem in your script and trying to come up with a solution. This is the most peaceful time of the day, when your mind is at its clearest. Take advantage of that. But there’s a trick to this. Write the problem out in the form of a question AS SPECIFICALLY AS POSSIBLE ahead of time. One of the reasons writers struggle to solve a problem is they never clearly define the problem in the first place. The more specific the question, the easier it will be to solve. So let’s say we’re writing Ant-Man and the heist sequence isn’t working. You don’t want your question to be, “How do we make the heist sequence better?” Take a deeper look into WHY the scene isn’t working so your question can be more specific. Maybe it seems too mechanical, and you feel like it needs more emotion. Then the question can be, “How do we add more emotion to the heist scene so that the audience actually feels something?” And you can be even more specific than that. In fact, the more specific the question, the closer you are to the answer.

Write it – This may seem like the most obvious solution. Write your way out of the problem! But this is a complicated solution. If you don’t have a plan and you just start writing, you may write something so shitty that you never want to look at your script again. You may write something so shitty that you convince yourself the problem is unsolvable. You might dirty up the screenplay with some weird random glub of junk that, if complex enough, would require a lot of careful seeking and deleting to return your script back to the place it was before that horrible tangent. So here’s a compromise solution. Open a new document separate from your script and write the scene or sequence or changes in there. With it being an entirely new document, you don’t have to worry about it affecting your script if it sucks. You’re just experimenting, playing around, and seeing what works. This can be quite liberating as there’s literally NO PRESSURE. And I actually encourage writers to write several variations of the scene in the same document. Just see where your mind takes you. If you happen to come up with something that works? Simply cut and paste it into your official script!

These are just a few ways to help solve problems in your script so you don’t go into Writer’s Block World. Feel free to offer some of your own ways of solving script problems in the comments section.

Rewrite Goal (Week 11): End of first half of the script! (somewhere between pages 50-60, depending on overall script length).

Seeya next week!

If you’re new to the Scriptshadow Script Challenge, here are all the previous posts…

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7

Holy Joe Estherez.

We’re here! Can you believe it?

The final 10-15 pages of our screenplay! By this time next Thursday, we will have an official COMPLETED FIRST DRAFT!

But we’re not there yet. We have to complete the last section, a section we shall refer to as… THE CLIMAX.

The climax is your hero’s final confrontation. Whatever they’ve been chasing, they’re finally confronting it. It’s John McClane staring down Hans Gruber in Die Hard. It’s Mark Watney trying to rendezvous with his crew’s ship in The Martian. It’s Michelle in Cloverfield Lane finally escaping the house and having to get past the aliens. It’s Jay trying to lure the spirit into the local pool to kill it in It Follows.

Now, here’s the thing. It’s called a climax for a reason. You literally want the audience to climax. Well, maybe not literally. But you want them to have this feeling inside of them that’s euphoric, that they will never forget. And the reason most endings are bad is because writers forget that.

In fact, I’ve found that there are three types of endings.

The Everything and the Kitchen Sink Ending – The EATKSE seems like you’re doing the right thing. EATSKE writers tend to adopt the philosophy “more is more.” You see these most often in comic book movies, Transformers movies, or any huge action-driven franchise. The writers come up with some gargantuan set-piece, and we watch it play out. Unfortunately, we feel NOTHING after these sequences because they were driven purely by visuals. The epitome of this is the island-lifting climax in Avengers 2.

The Give’em What They Want Ending – The “Give’em What They Want” ending is a step up from the EATKSE. The writers know that pure action isn’t enough to satisfy the audience, and work hard to come up with an ending that’s thoughtful, creative, and well-executed. You don’t necessarily orgasm after a “Give’em What They Want” ending, but you feel satisfied. The Martian is a good example of a “Give’em What They Want” ending. We couldn’t have asked for a more exciting and creative finish to that story, and we felt good afterwards.

The Character-Driven Ending – The Character-Driven Ending approaches the ending from inside the character as opposed to outside. What have they been struggling with this entire story? What have they been struggling with their entire lives? Good writers build their endings around THAT. Because the only way to give the audience that climax is to touch them from the inside. Look at The Martian’s inspiration, Cast Away. The climax for Cast Away had Tom Hanks escaping the island just like Mark Watney escaped the planet. But which escape moved us? Cast Away’s. Because Tom Hanks lost his best friend, the only thing that kept him company during this ordeal, Wilson.

Needless to say, the Character-Driven Ending is the climax I want you to use. Look at your characters, figure out what’s going on inside of them, and build the climax around that. This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie ever despite being a franchise film. Its climax is about Luke overcoming his flaw (he finally believes in himself) and Han overcoming his flaw (he finally becomes selfless). The actual destroying of the Death Star is the least impactful moment in that trio of events. It’s the characters CHANGING that moves us.

But it doesn’t just have to be about overcoming flaws. As long as you build the climax around something character-related, you’ll have a better chance of creating a great ending than if you go surface level.

Take my most recent fascination, Zootopia. I’ll tell you exactly how a bad screenwriter (or even an average one) would’ve handled that ending. They would’ve thought, “It’s Zootopia. There are tons of animals everywhere. Our hero will recruit all the animals and they’ll attack the corrupt mayor in a giant stampede set piece!” Would it have been visually impressive? Sure. Would it have moved us? No.

Instead, the climax takes place in a closed-down museum with our corrupt mayor throwing our hero bunny, Officer Hopps, into a pit with her fox partner, Nick, who’s just been shot with the predator virus, making him “wild” again. The whole movie has been about Officer Hopps trying to trust Nick, a natural predator who’s a threat to bunnies. Just when they’ve finally become friends, they’re put to the ultimate test. Will Nick be able to put his friendship above his primal instincts and not eat Hopps?

It’s all about the characters, baby.

The last thing I want you to remember about the ending is that THIS IS THE MOMENT WHERE YOU UNLOAD YOUR BIGGEST PAYOFFS. Screenwriting is about setting up and paying off, setting up and paying off. But your climax is reserved for your biggest payoffs of all.

There’s a magic that happens when you bring something back that the audience has forgotten about. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why it works every time. But it does. And when you combine that with a character-driven finale, it’s the recipe that results in that perfect unforgettable climax.

I mean one of the reasons The Shawshank Redemption stays with us 17 years later is because of the way it uses payoffs in its climax. The rock-hammer, the Raquel Welch poster, the “hidden within” bible moment. That’s the power of setups and payoffs in film. But this means, of course, you will have had to set all that stuff up in the first place. You can’t just decide to add a payoff at the last second. Or if you do, you need to go back and meticulously weave in a series of setups so the payoff works.

After your hero’s won the final battle, you have a choice. End it immediately (a la Rocky), or give us a post-script. The trend these days is to add a post-script and I have no issues with that. Just keep it short. We see Mark Watney teaching now that he’s back from Mars. But then we’re done. One of the biggest mistakes beginner screenwriters make is sticking around long after the climax. Once the air is out of the balloon, the audience doesn’t want to stay at the party. And the longer they’re forced to stay, the more bored they get. So show us a post-script scene (two TOPS!) to let us know they’re doing okay, then it’s time for credits.

Congratulations guys! It was fun going on this journey with you. Breaking the script down this way helped me see things more clearly as well.

But now the real hard work begins – rewriting. I’ll see you next week for when that madness starts. :)

Pages to write this week: 10-15
Page number to hit on a 110 page screenplay: 110 (THE END!)

New to the Scriptshadow Screenplay Challenge? Here are the rest of the posts…

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6

So if you remember from last week, we left you at the beginning of the third act. Your hero was at his/her lowest point. They may have been fired from their job, lost the girl, been captured, or their best alien friend in the world who loves Reeses Pieces may have kicked the bucket. On top of that, they’ve destroyed all of their relationships, usually because of insecurities, stubbornness or focusing on their pursuit rather than those closest to them.

Where the hell do we go from here with our story?

It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? When you’re at the bottom, the only way to go is up.

But before we go up, it’s important to note that the third act is the shortest act of the three, and will land somewhere between 20-25 pages. You don’t want to linger forever in the third act. The audience isn’t interested in drawing anything out at this point. Once we get out of the low point, things have to move.

So assuming a 110 page screenplay. Your final act will look closest to this…

First sequence of Third Act: 85-98 (this week’s sequence)
Second sequence of Third Act: 99-110

Don’t freak out if it doesn’t fall perfectly within that range. The point is, you should err on the side of faster. And I personally think that the best breakdown is 12 pages for that first sequence and 10 for the final one. Why two extra pages for the first section?

Well what typically happens after the lowest point in the story is a couple of scenes of your character stewing around in their misery. I just watched the surprisingly awesome Zootopia. And the “lowest point” in that film is when Officer Hopps inadvertently divides the city, causing all of the “prey” species to discriminate against the “predator” species.

As a result, she realizes she’s done the exact opposite of the whole reason she became a cop in the first place (to help people/animals), and decides to go back home to her parents’ carrot farm and give up on her dreams.

As a side note, Disney and Pixar movies (most of them anyway) are AMAZING films to study for screenplay structure. Because they’re made for children, they hit the screenplay structural beats a little harder, so you can really see those beats in action. When watching a drama or a period film, those beats won’t be as apparent (nor should they be).

Anyway, after the two stewing scenes, your hero becomes motivated to give it one more shot. Usually what happens is they have a revelation. So in Zootopia, Officer Hopps realizes what’s causing all the predators to go “wild” and endanger the city and believes she can fix it. What’s great about using a revelation is that it propels your hero back into action, getting us from 0-60 very quickly.

Now if this doesn’t sound anything like your movie’s structure, that’s okay. Star Wars has a bit of a wonky “low point” of its own. It takes place when Luke, Han, and Leia attempt to escape the Death Star, and Obi-Wan is killed by Darth Vader. Does this really hamper their mission? Not particularly. It’s just a great big bummer. But using classic story beats, we do have the stewing scene (Luke being depressed) and then a jump right back into action (when Tie Fighters from the Death Star attack them).

The point here is to include a story beat where it looks like the gig is up for our heroes. And once that beat is over, have a moment or two to solidify that beat so we can really feel the effects of it. If it’s TOO short, it won’t register. However, after it’s over, it’s time to start moving again.

What tends to happen next is also dependent on the story your telling. But one of the most common situations will have your hero needing to repair a relationship before they can achieve their final objective. Because your hero will be at the lowest point IN EVERY ASPECT OF THEIR LIFE, that will mean at least one key relationship is broken.

So the next scene may have them going to repair that relationship so they can get the character on board. In Zootopia, we have Officer Hopps having to apologize to Nick Wilde, her fox partner, for ruining his and the rest of the predators’ lives in Zootopia.

Once you move past this moment, it’s time for your characters to form a plan that will set up the last sequence of the movie. In Star Wars, that’s the scene with all the fighter pilots sitting down and watching a demonstration on what they need to do to destroy the Death Star. Of course, if you’re writing a simpler story, it may just be two friends sharing a quick plan with one another.

One more thing before we go. This section needs to be the biggest challenge for your hero yet. For that reason, you want to strip them of as many resources as you can. This is why, in cop movies, the main character’s always been kicked off the force for the third act. That way they don’t have any help.

This is an often overlooked component of writing a good screenplay. Whereas the second act is mostly about conflict BETWEEN characters, the third act is about characters overcoming conflict within themselves. So whatever issue they’ve been ignoring their whole lives, they’re going to have to deal with it here.

So ask yourself, “What can I take away from my character?” For example, if they’re a cop, maybe take away their gun. That may be scary for you. Because then you’ll wonder, “Well then how will they kill the bad guy?” But guess what? That’s the EXACT same question the audience will be asking as well. Which is what you want. If the audience already knows and you already know how your hero is going to defeat the villain, you’ve failed as a storyteller. Because there’s no suspense.

Taking this approach will also force you to flex muscles you weren’t prepared to flex – figuring out how they win when the odds are so stacked against them. I’m telling you, it’ll suck balls trying to come up with those solutions. But when you finally do? There’s no better feeling as a screenwriter in the world. Because you know that you’re delivering to the audience as opposed to phoning it in.

Speaking of phoning, I’ll be calling you guys next week, where I’ll tell you how to complete the last section of your screenplay!!!

Pages to write this week: 10-15
Page number to hit on a 110 page screenplay: 96-100