“I want the truth!”
Every time I put the month’s logline winners up for Logline Showdown, I always get a dozen comments that amount to, “THIS IS THE BEST YOU HAVE????” I get it. It’s the internet. We want perfection. We want the posts on our terms. I do it as well on other sites.
But, just so you have more context, I want you to see the loglines that aren’t making it so you can better appreciate the ones that do. Because it’s hard to come up with a good concept and it’s hard to write a good logline. I think Scott said this – just being able to come up with a sentence that sounds normal is difficult. Much less one that effortlessly conveys a compelling movie idea.
For those interested, we do a Logline Showdown every month. Send in your title, genre, and logline. I pick the five best. You guys vote for your favorite. The logline that gets the most votes gets a script review the following week. We’ve found several good scripts already. Let’s find some more! Here are the details for the next showdown…
JUNE LOGLINE SHOWDOWN!
When: June 23rd
Deadline: June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: e-mail all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: include title, genre, and logline
If you’re struggling with your loglines, you can always get a logline consultation from me. They’re 25 bucks. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll have feedback to you within 24 hours.
Okay, let’s take a look at some of the loglines that didn’t make it into the showdown and why. Actually, none of these loglines are bad. But they were all missing something. Let’s find out what those somethings were.
Title: Unwind
Genre: Dark Comedy/Mystery
Logline: Desperate for new material after her editor rejects her article, a high school journalist teams up with her ex-boyfriend to uncover a school conspiracy when she discovers a photo of a paraplegic kid standing on two legs.
Analysis: The first thought that went through my head when I finished reading this logline was, “So what?” The stakes don’t feel very high. Why do I care about a random kid who may have been faking his paraplegic-ness? In the writer’s defense, it’s a comedy. And the stakes for comedy scripts don’t have to be as high. But there’s something underwhelming about this mystery that’s preventing me from feeling that excitement I need in order to open a script. That’s not to say the script would be bad. If the writer’s got a really witty and sardonic voice, the script could work. But I’m just going off the logline and the logline isn’t giving me a big enough reason to care. This is one of those scripts that I’d read if someone else told me it was great. But it’s not a script that wins me over on the logline alone. Which is a good lesson for every screenwriter trying to write a spec screenplay. Try to win us over with your concept alone. It shouldn’t need any extra convincing.
Title: Kill and Make-up
Genre: Satire
Logline: Down on her luck and bearing the weight of her world, flight attendant Amanda meets Bailey, a solipsistic psychopathic serial killer, who might just be her key to happiness.
Breakdown: Fun title. Nice play on words. And the story is kind of intriguing. A love story with a serial killer. There’s some nice irony there. But it feels like it’s missing that element to put it over the top. Like the logline from a couple of months ago where the serial killer was done killing but then went to the engagement party of her rich fiancé and had to do everything within her power not to kill his insufferable family. There was more of a story there, more of a plot. This logline is an idea. “I fell in love with a serial killer.” But where’s the plot? What’s the end goal? Finally, I’ve included a lot of serial killer loglines on the Logline Showdown this year. And I just didn’t want to include another one so soon. That’s a tough reality about the industry. Sometimes you have a good idea but the producers you send the idea to just made a movie like that or they just started developing a movie like that. Your logline could just be bad timing. Which is one of many reasons not to take rejection personally.
Title: Influence
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A group of influencers stranded at the shoddy island resort they’ve been promoting is terrorized by a manipulative entity that wants to harness their immense reach.
Breakdown: There’s not enough meat on the bone here. We’ve got a group of influencers. They’re stuck together in some scary situation. This is a VERY COMMON setup right now. Lots of writers are starting with a similar premise to this. Which means you have to differentiate your idea somehow. An entity that “wants to harness their immense reach” is not enough of a differentiation. To be honest, I don’t know want that means. It’s not specific enough. A logline needs to place an image in the reader’s head. When you are vague, you are doing the opposite of that. We can’t imagine anything. And if we’re not imagining the movie, we’re not going to request your script. I would rewrite the second half of this logline and BE SPECIFIC.
Title: Wicked Morning Star
Genre: Horror
Logline: In 1986, two ambitious girls obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal, and Lucifer ritually sacrifice a wealthy classmate and attempt to conceal the crime as their friends gather for his birthday party in the basement where they’ve hidden his body.
Breakdown: When I read this logline, I have a couple of concerns. One, you’re asking us to root for two people who killed someone. There is a chance, of course, that you’ve made them sympathetic and the victim unsympathetic, so that we’re okay with the killing. But that’s the thing about loglines. There is no context. We don’t know for sure. Going off just the logline, I don’t want to give these killers my time. The other issue is that the idea feels small. I’m imagining this small basement, since all basements are small. I guess they’ve put him in a trunk or something. And the appeal of the story is, “Will someone find out?” But I only see that trick working for a few scenes, 30 pages at most. We’re not going to be on the edge of our seats on page 75, still wondering if Lucy is going to look inside that trunk and find the body. The gimmick will be up by then. So those two issues are the reason I didn’t feature this logline.
Title: The Men in White
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Action
Logline: When Mikey McKay, a kind but dimwitted drug dealer, dies searching for his missing brother, the two mysterious Men in White appear to protect Mikey from the dangers of purgatory and guide him to the portal to Heaven before his soul disappears forever.
Breakdown: You don’t usually want to include character names in loglines. It tends to be a rookie move. Which means the reader’s going to assume you’re a beginner writer, which means they’ll be less likely to request your script. The exception is when your hero’s name is in the title (Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire). But you should stay away from this if possible. From there, it’s too standard of a premise. I get pitched a lot of concepts where somebody dies and they have to do something before they can get to heaven. The more original the plot is between the death and getting to heaven, the more likely I am to request the script. This seems like a vanilla version of that journey. He has to avoid bad ghosty people and get to heaven. Feels like we’re missing that sexy “strange attractor” that amps an idea like this up.
Title: No Body Recovered
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: After escaping a brutal police raid on his unhoused community, a wounded man flees downriver in search of his missing dog; desperate for survival, he accepts help from a local bowfisherman who unveils a sinister plan — remove the unhoused from his river one by one.
Breakdown: There may be something to this idea but the fact that I had to read the logline four times before I mostly understood it is a problem. First of all, “unhoused” is a weird word. I was annoyed that I had to look it up. I suppose it’s the latest politically correct way to refer to homeless people. But even if you get past that, this missing dog enters the equation out of nowhere. So I guess this is a “look for your dog” movie now? Then, also out of nowhere, a bow fisherman appears. That seems like a random character type to be introduced into this story. And then the bow fisherman wants to kill all the homeless people, I think? Or just scare them off? It’s a little unclear. But then he’s also going to help our hero find his dog? Even though he hates that our hero is homeless? Or does he not know he’s homeless and that’s why he agrees to help him? Or are you saying that, that’s the inciting incident of the story, in which case, they’re now mortal enemies? Our hero will look for his dog while the bow fisherman tries to hunt him? As you can see, the fact that there’s so much going on here makes it difficult to identify what’s happening. And the second a reader is unclear what the story is, THEY’RE OUT. They don’t give you a second chance. Cause the way they see it is: If you can’t be clear in one sentence, why would I expect you to write a clear 20,000 word story?
Title: 21 Shots
Genre: Slasher Comedy
Logline: On the eve of her sister’s wedding, a woman takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. When she wakes to a room full of dead friends, she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer before the wedding begins… or the killer finds her.
Breakdown: Another confusing logline. I understood the story up to the point where she takes 21 shots to ring in her 21st birthday. So far so good. She then wakes up to a room full of dead friends. Okay, a mystery. It seems a little excessive but I’m still giving the logline a chance. Things fall apart with this segment: “she must retrace her 21 shots to figure out the killer.” How does one retrace 21 separate shots? “Hmm, I took my first shot over at the bed here. Then I took my second by the piano. Then my third in the bathroom.” Wouldn’t you be done with that investigation after five minutes? Also, how is that going to help her solve the mystery? If you get past that, you run into the logline’s biggest problem: who cares about making it to the wedding WHEN ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD!!!!???? I’m pretty sure getting to the wedding is the least of your worries at that point. Not to mention, instead of figuring out where your 17th shot was, why not just call the cops? There are just too many questions that pop up with this logline.
Title: The Girl Who Lived
Genre: horror
Logline: A young woman must survive a night of horrific attacks both by the living and the dead when she sets out to discover why she was the lone survivor of a mysterious plane crash as a child.
Breakdown: Tal complains a lot that his loglines don’t get picked so I thought I’d extend him the courtesy of explaining why I didn’t pick his latest submission. To start, why isn’t “horror” capitalized? You want to put your best foot forward. It’s not a dealbreaker but it implies you’re not taking the submission seriously – that you’re rushing through it. — Like a lot of Tal’s loglines, this sort of feels like a movie but, at least for me, I’m having trouble connecting the first part with the second part. She’s going to finally solve the mystery of being the only survivor of a plane crash. So as soon as she looks into that, random living and dead people start attacking her? I don’t get it. The fact that it’s not one or the other (dead or alive) scatters the focus of the idea, weakening its impact. If it was just ghosts that went after her – preferably dead passengers she remembers from the flight – at least then there’s a logical connection between the first part of the logline and the second. But trying to solve a plane crash mystery and having dead and alive people all try to kill you – it’s just not a very eloquent idea. It feels messy. Blunt. Quickly cobbled together without any self-scrutiny. I commend Tal for putting these elements in his idea that are high concept and sexy (plane crash, ghosts). But neither of those elements connect to one another in a harmonious way, at least from how they’re presented in the logline.
Title: Parousia
Genre: Psychological Horror
Logline: An apprehensive pregnant couple, still haunted by a past miscarriage at the hands of a doctor, go to a remote midwifery for the perfect birth but strange occurrences and sinister undertones soon signal the experience may not be so idyllic after all.
Breakdown: This is a good example of an intriguing logline that falls apart in the home stretch. I see this ALL THE TIME. You get to the part of the logline that may actually seal the deal. Then you shroud it in a fog of mystery. I get why this happens. You’re thinking: “I must create mystery!” But that’s one of the more common misconceptions about loglines – that you want to be mysterious. You actually want to tell the reader exactly what they’re going to get. You do this because reading a script is a business proposition. People will take the time to read your script because they think it might make them money. It’s not an enjoyment proposition, like paying for a ticket to go see a movie. That’s a different type of pitch and, therefore, one where mystery can be strategically infused. Know the difference!
Title: Her Deafening Silence
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a violent attack leaves her with a debilitating hearing disorder, a reclusive assault survivor fights to maintain her sanity as visions of her assailant and a distant, mysterious scream threaten her isolated existence.
Breakdown: You’re not giving us a movie here. You’re giving us a short film. I’m not saying that your script doesn’t have a full movie in it. But this logline? This logline implies a story that is, at most, 15 minutes long. A deaf person starts hearing a scream in the distance. Where’s the plot? Is it that the scream keeps getting louder? Closer? Okay. But screams happen all the time in horror movies. That’s not big enough to build an entire story around. I get the sense that there’s more that happens in this script. But then that needs to be in the logline. We need to be able to see the plot of the movie in order to gauge whether it’s something we’d be interested in.
Get a Script Consultation With Carson for $100 OFF! – In addition to logline consultations, I do full screenplay consultations, pilot script consultations, outline consultations, first act consultations. Anything you need help with, I can help! If you mention this article, I will give 100 dollars off a feature or pilot consultation to the first four people who e-mail me. :). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com
Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. So far, the writer, Julian Wayser, has made a couple of short films.
Writer: Julian Wayser (story by Julian Wayser & Rebecca Dayan)
Details: 93 pages
If you’re anything like me, you have gone down that internet rabbit hole late into the night and found yourself exploring the many inexplicable mysteries of our planet. Most of the time, for myself, that involves aliens. Cause we all know that they walk amongst us.
But one of the weird mysteries I’ve always been curious about is the dancing plague. Every time I stumble upon it, I’m not sure what to think because it’s so odd! I’ve always wanted to know more. I’m not sure I ever thought of the subject matter as a movie. But now that someone’s written a script about it, I’m curious what the angle is. Let’s see what today’s writer came up with.
Our story starts with a farmer named Joss Frizt who’s out planting seeds one night when a meteor kablams into his field. The next day, a priest shows up and wants the meteor. So, he orders Joss and Joss’s men (who are all lepers, including his brother) to load the meteor up so he can take it into town.
Take it into town they do – the town of Strasbourg, of the Holy Roman Empire, July, 1518. Strasbourg is off on its own island. And it is also very close to collapse. There is little-to-no food in the area, so everybody is starving to death.
After Joss heads back home, we stay with a young woman, Frau Troffea, named after the rare French delicacy of the time, fromage toffee, aka toffee flavored cheese. Frau helps out at a local orphanage and has a mental breakdown when she realizes how malnourished the kids are. So she walks into the town square and starts wildly dancing.
Nobody knows what to make of it. Eventually, her husband shows up and drags her back home. But the virus has been set into motion. A few days later, several other peasants are performing the wild endless dance in town square. That quickly rises to several dozen. And now, the authorities are getting worried. They don’t have any idea why this is happening.
We then meet Ida, a basket weaver who cares only about her daughter, Agnes, who’s been married off to a wealthy businessman. Ida thinks her daughter is miserable in this man’s care and dreams of rescuing her. But Agnes turns out to be so taken by the crazy dancers that she, too, heads down to dance.
We eventually catch up with Joss again, who implores the rich church (who is hoarding grain) to save the dancers. It is his belief that this is the dance of the poor. It is the dance of the hungry. They do not have anything left in their life and this is their last resort – moving randomly and endlessly. It is a reality that the church is ill-equipped to solve.
Well that turned out to be sad!
Wow.
Here I was all excited to learn about this weird spontaneous event that happened 500 years ago only to get sadness, death, and starvation. We even get a guy who drowns his baby to death cause he can’t feed him. I don’t read nearly enough stuff that depresses me so I’ll keep this one nearby in case I ever catch myself feeling happy about something.
I mean… look. I guess you have to tell the story that was given to you.
But do you?
After doing a quick wikipedia search, it appears that everything surrounding this dancing plague was sad. So that’s where the writer drew his inspiration from.
But this is still a movie. You still have to give people an experience that fulfills them in some way. And when people are going into a subject like this in a fun curious mood, you shoot yourself in the foot when you provide them with a version that makes you want to wither up in your bedroom for 5 days and suck your thumb.
I didn’t like how the writers teased you from the outset with the fun version that included a meteor crash. We’re thinking – okay, this meteor had something to do with this. But it didn’t. It didn’t have anything to do with it. If anybody reads this and tells you they understand what the meteor has to do with this story, they’re lying. Including the writers. It’s unconnected nonsense.
Yes, I’m frustrated because I wanted a cool story! Instead I got the Manchester By the Sea prequel.
Always always always consider what your reader is expecting. Because if you give them an experience that’s too far removed from their expectations, they will eviscerate you. This may be the most depressing script I’ll read all year. And it’s ruined my curiosity about this subject matter.
As for the narrative choice to follow multiple characters throughout the story – I like that kind of stuff. I was a big fan of Richard Linklater’s first film, Slacker, which used that approach. It’s a fun way to tell a story.
But you do sacrifice structural cohesiveness when you go this route. Without a main character to latch onto, it’s easy for the reader to feel lost and unsure where the movie is heading. Whose story is this, really? Who does it affect the most? I don’t think that question was answered here. I definitely struggled to find someone to latch onto.
I suppose Joss Fritz is the obvious choice. He has a strong opening scene where the priest shuns him for relying on lepers for labor. Joss reminds the priest that the church takes all their money so the lepers are all he can afford. The priest disregards the criticism. So we immediately sympathize with Joss’s crappy situation. But then Joss disappears for most of the movie. Which renders his introduction moot.
Straight up, I wanted something more fun, something that didn’t take itself so seriously. It would be like writing a movie about Stonehenge and the whole film is about how they used to beat and torture people then used Stonehenge to sacrifice them to the gods. Might that be accurate? Sure. Does that mean I want to watch that movie. No. There are a million other way more fun ways to take a story about Stonehenge.
As writers, WE CONTROL THE NARRATIVE. We are god. So we get to choose what to write. It’s why Quentin Tarantino can change how Hitler died. It’s why Bridgerton can change the racial makeup of the aristocracy. It’s why Mel Gibson can make up “prima nocta” to ensure we hate the bad guys.
Coming at this story from such a sad depressing place makes one wonder, “Who would want to watch this?”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time. Because that’s what these scripts are about. We’re constantly ditching characters to meet new ones so you have to be great at setting those people up, making them interesting, making them impactful. Look at, literally, any of Tarantino’s movies. Almost every character he introduces makes an impact right away. They’re extremely memorable. You need that in these kinds of stories to make up for what we lose by not being able to connect with a main character. If readers aren’t constantly complimenting you on your characters, DON’T WRITE THIS KIND OF MOVIE.
It’s time for an apology.
Or is it time for one of those apologies that aren’t really apologies? You know the kind I’m talking about. The kind where you apologize to anyone who was potentially offended by what you said? But not for what was actually said, which would denote the act that required the apology in the first place.
Last month, I laid the hammer down on Dungeons and Dragons. I said it was a dumb idea to ever think that an IP with such non-specific properties could ever hope to pull people into the theater.
Well, when I was going through my streaming setup, I noticed that Dungeons and Dragons was now available on digital. And not only that. It was available on Paramount Plus, which, apparently, I have! Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are. Those crafty little streamers have successfully wiggled their way into my financials to ensure that I will never stop paying their monthly fees for as long as I live.
Anyway, I started watching D&D, expecting to turn it off within a few minutes. Which I did. But then I couldn’t sleep so I turned it on again. And it was pretty good! I immediately understood what they were going for. They were making the big budget version of The Princess Bride. The humor was similar to that film almost to a T.
And outside of the perpetually-seems-to-hate-her-job-more-than-life-itself Michelle Rodriquez, all of the actors did a really good job. I wish I could win a “Hang out for a day with Chris Pine” contest. The “It” girl was also in it. She’s always good. The guy who plays the terrible sorcerer was really good. All contributing to a breezy good time.
However!
Was I actually wrong?
The movie was good. I was wrong to assume that it wasn’t without seeing it. But it didn’t do well at the box office. And not many people seem to know anything about it. So what does that mean? More specifically, what does it mean for screenwriters?
I’m going to say something controversial here which I may or may not apologize for at a later date: If you execute an amazing screenplay but it’s a weak or bland concept, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because people won’t want to read it. If they don’t see your film or don’t read your script, they’ll never find out that it’s good. So if they never find out it’s good, is it good? Does a tree fall in the forest?
Someone just sent in a logline consultation this weekend frustrated by the fact that they’d sent out 70 queries and not a single person had requested the screenplay. Which is why they wanted my help. Maybe I could work my magic on the logline and it would all of a sudden have the entire town bidding on it.
But the logline didn’t have a hook. Which is something the writer knew. They weren’t ignorant to this fact. But after discussing the concept over a series of e-mails, I told him, this just isn’t a “queryable” script. It’s a straight drama without a clear hook.
For those scripts, you got to win big contests or get multiple 9s over on the Black List. Then, when you query, you query the accomplishments. If you say you were a finalist in the Nicholl, most managers will request your script without even looking at the logline. Cause you’ve already proven that you can write. Which is the main thing they care bout.
Without that, I told him, you might as well query managers with: “Trust me, I can write.” Cause that’s what you’re doing when you query people with a logline that doesn’t have a clear hook.
The other option is to direct the script yourself. Then you don’t need anybody to like your script. Although now the onus is on your directing because you need to prove you can direct in order for someone to finance your film. Which has its own set of challenges. But it can be done. It happens all the time.
Segueing back to Hollywood, you can feel the fear in the theatrical air. Cause trust me. Paramount didn’t want to make a Dungeons and Dragons movie. They didn’t! They know it’s a weak property. But it’s still one of top 75 IPs out there. And if you don’t have superheroes – which Paramount doesn’t – you have to scrape the bottom of the IP barrel and hope to strike gold. I love mixing my metaphors.
It’s even infecting the king of the industry – Disney. The 3-day haul on their latest live-action remake, The Little Mermaid, was less than 100 million. That’s not a good opening for a Disney film. Especially one that cost 250 million. Plus another 100 for marketing.
Hollywood, now, is depending on these weird outliers, movies such as Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: Way of the Water to make the bulk of their money. One franchise took a decade to come out with its second film. The other one took three decades! That’s not a financial plan Hollywood can get behind.
And Disney isn’t doing themselves any favors. If they took the Top Gun route and stayed out of anything that might create controversy, then everyone would come to their films. But they’re doing weird stuff now that makes parents nervous about what exactly is in the movie. And if you have nervous parents, guess what? They’re not going to take their kids to your movie.
And I understand the other side. The side that says, do what’s right over what makes money. The problem is, Disney is the embodiment of the four-quadrant studio. That’s what they do better than anyone else, which is why they make so much money. So if you take a quadrant or two out of there, they’re not Disney anymore. They’re Paramount. They’re Sony. And if they’re okay with that, then go for it. But if they want to remain the sole superpower, they have to think long and hard about some of these decisions they’re making.
Despite these troubling theatrical questions, I’m still looking forward to seeing a number of movies in the theater this summer. The Flash. Indiana Jones. Mission Impossible. Oppenheimer. Maybe even Barbie! It depends on what people are saying about it.
By the way, did anybody see the end of Succession or Barry. My unofficial plan was to wait it out so I could binge them all at once. But then I started hearing all these spoilers. THANKS INTERNET! What do you think? Is it worth getting back into them?
By the way, did I ever apologize?
If not, I apologize to anyone who was offended by my non-apology.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: Maggie finds herself the target of her sister’s wedding-thirsty bridesmaids after unintentionally catching the bouquet, messing up the bride-to-be queue.
About: This script finished in second place in this month’s Logline Showdown. We have a new Logline Showdown every month. The deadline for the next one is Thursday, June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time. If you want to participate, send me your title, genre, and logline. The script *does* have to be written as the winner will get a review. You can send all entries to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Writer: Kevin Revie
Details: 88 pages
The Hailster for Maggie?
Okay, so we had a snafu behind the scenes this week. Adam, who won with his script, The Dinosaur War, had been submitting the script to Logline Showdown for a while. At one point, he was submitting it as a feature. And this time, he was submitting it as a pilot.
Except I didn’t list it as a pilot. I listed it as a feature. Since everybody voted on it as a feature, both Adam and I decided that it shouldn’t be featured this week, which means the second place script, Petal to the Metal, is stepping up to the plate for this week’s review.
I’m actually excited about this script. I’m in the mood for something light and fun. And we don’t review a lot of romantic comedies around here. So I’m curious what Kevin has in store for us.
27 year-old Maggie isn’t the wedding type. So she’s far from thrilled that she has to go to her sister, Sierra’s, wedding. And she’s even less thrilled when she inadvertently catches the flower bouquet, anointing her as the next single lady to put a ring on it.
Not long after this happens, Sierra’s wolf-like bridesmaids, Evie, Zara, and Kira, get dumped by their long-term boyfriends. They immediately believe that some sort of curse has occurred because Maggie caught that bouquet.
So they conspire with Sierra to find a man for Maggie. The sooner they can marry her off, the quicker they can get back in line for their own marriages. They go to dating sites, find some dudes, and send the dudes off to pretend-bump-into Maggie and work their charms on her.
There’s only one problem. Maggie’s gay! She doesn’t want any sausage with her eggs. And when she finds out that the men are only coming on to her because of the evil bridesmaids, she does a reverse prank where she pretends to get engaged to one of the men, only to then throw it in the girls’ faces with a big fat “PUNK’D!”
After the fallout from the punking, Zara confronts Maggie, wondering why she can’t just get married so the rest of them can get married… BUT THEN KISSES MAGGIE!!! Maggie’s down with it and she and Zara engage in some extracurricular activities. But afterwards, Zara is unsure if she wants to make their new love public. The uncertainty of their relationship pushes us towards the big climax where Zara will either go public with her feelings or take the more traditional route in life.
Man, this was a wild one.
I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. But it is definitely not what I got. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
I guess we should start with the main character, since that was the topic of yesterday’s article. I liked Maggie. She’s the one getting pushed around in this story. So there’s a natural inclination to root for her.
But I wasn’t sure if Maggie was the main character after the first act. I don’t know if she’s the main character after reading the whole script!
Let’s start with that first act, though.
We don’t meet Maggie right away. We only hear her voice as she narrates her sister’s life. We never see Maggie’s own everyday life, the section of the script that best shows the reader who your hero is. And then, even after the big “catching of the bouquet” moment, we shift our focus to these other girls – Evie, Zara, and Kira.
They then control the second act. They are the active characters. It is their goal – to find a man for Maggie and accelerate the courting – that drives the story.
If the first act barely focuses on Maggie and the beginning of the second act is driven by three characters besides Maggie… then who’s the main character here? Does this movie have a main character? Or is it meant to be an ensemble?
I still don’t know the answer to these questions.
Then, when you throw this sidewinder of a twist at us – that Maggie is gay – we’re really unsure what’s going on. After that reveal, the original concept disappears. We are in a completely different movie than the one we started with.
Then you have Zara revealing that she’s gay too! And that she likes Maggie! Which was an interesting way to go but it wasn’t set up at all. There was no official setup that Zara was gay or interested in Maggie. So when Zara plants a smackaroo on Maggie, it feels random.
Not to mention, Maggie comes out of that kiss looking bad. All we’ve seen so far is Zara be horrible to Maggie. And the second she kisses Maggie, Maggie’s down with it??? How bout showing a spine? Telling her to f-off for being such a terrible person to her. Rewarding awfulness does not endear us to your hero. Assuming Maggie is the hero!!
I was trying to think of a comparable movie that had this structure. It started off as one thing and became something else. The 40 Year Old Virgin comes to mind. That started off as a straight comedy with this guy trying to get laid for the first time. Then it shifted into a rom-com with him in a relationship.
But I’m not convinced this plot was as smoothly executed as that one. That plot felt planned. This plot felt like things were being thought up on the fly. That’s usually the case when a script deviates heavily from the original concept because the writer runs out of plot for that storyline and has to come up with something else to keep the keys depressing.
Then we’ve got this logline issue. The logline to Petal to the Metal is misleading. I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if I knew what was coming. So something like: “When a closeted 20-something unintentionally catches the bouquet at her sister’s wedding, she screws up the bride-to-be queue, resulting in the furious wedding-thirsty bridesmaids taking control of her dating life in an attempt to get her married ASAP. “
I know, it’s long. I would revise it a few times before sending it anywhere. But at least it represents what the script is. Readers can get pretty upset when the script is different from the logline.
Overall, I thought this script was okay. It’s too messy to get a ‘worth the read’ though. And I would’ve preferred to read the script I was promised. But it has its moments. It had a few lines I genuinely laughed out loud at, like this one: “I talked to an AI chatbot yesterday while drinking a sangria alone. That’s not okay.”
Now that you know the actual story, you can go in better prepared than I did, which will probably mean you’ll enjoy the script more.
Script link: Petal to the Metal
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Economy of words. Economy of words is SO IMPORTANT in comedy because comedy scripts must be easy to read. There were occasional lines in Petal to the Metal that violated the ‘economy of words’ law, like this one: “The bouquet, notably rose-less and stem-wrapped with ample precaution, comes HURDLING toward Maggie.” Why not just, “The bouquet comes hurdling toward Maggie?”
Or, on the dialogue end, we get lines like this:“Well, this is confusingly unnerving.” Why not just, “Well, this is unnerving?”
There will always be times when you’re more verbose. But, for the most part, screenwriting is about economy of words, saying as much as possible in the smallest package possible.
Back when I used to write screenplays, I would send them out to people and, just like many of you, be baffled when they weren’t met with unending praise.
At first I thought everybody was crazy. Don’t you understand what genius looks like!? But once reality set in that I wasn’t ready to break through the ranks and start rubbing shoulders with Shane Black and Spike Lee, I started looking at my screenplays analytically for the first time. What was it that I wasn’t giving the reader?
It turns out the answer was “a lot.”
And thus began my obsession with decoding the screenwriting matrix, a journey that would lead me to start reading screenplays, and then, later, analyzing them, which, of course, led to Scriptshadow.
Now that I’ve read 10,000 scripts, of which I’ve consulted on and reviewed thousands of, I’ve been able to isolate a handful of things that have the most impact on a script. These are things that you should be paying the bulk of your attention to when writing as they have an outsized impact on the quality of your script.
The most important of these is the one I’ll be writing about today: write a main character we want to root for
I was reading a script not long ago and the story itself was pretty good. If you just looked at the plot and the fantasy setting, you would’ve liked it. But I didn’t like it. And the reason I didn’t like it was because I didn’t like the main character. Which I explained to the writer. “You’ve done a good job with this story but I checked out on page 5 because I was put off by your main character.”
I give this note quite a bit. You’ve seen me give it here on the site a number of times, I’m sure. The issue is that main characters are usually in every scene. So if you don’t like them, why would you like any of the scenes they were in? And if they’re in every scene, why would you like the script?
But this isn’t another article about how to write a likable/interesting main character. This article is about why we write unlikable characters in the first place yet have no idea we’re doing so.
We do this because WE LIKE OUR MAIN CHARACTERS. Of course we like them. WE WROTE THEM! Why would we write someone we didn’t like? And therein lies the problem. We’ve decided our characters are likable without evidence. Just by writing them into existence, we assume that everyone will feel the same way we do.
There is no character a writer is more blind to than the main character. Sure, it’s the character they know best. But what they forget is that the reader only knows a fraction of the information about that character that the writer does. All the reader has to go on are the actions of the character. And if those actions don’t reflect anything that is likable, interesting, or compelling, we will not like your main character. And then your script is screwed.
As a screenwriter, your job isn’t to throw things on the page and hope for the best. You have to plan out how to persuade the reader so that they experience the emotions you want them to experience.
That means when you’re writing a character, you’re carefully plotting out what they’re going to do inside those first four scenes that is going to set the foundation for how the reader sees them.
I’m telling you, if you’re not obsessing over those early scenes and what your protagonist is doing in those scenes, you’re not screenwriting correctly. Those are some of the most important scenes in the screenplay.
If someone were to sit you down in a court of screenwriting law and make you give an argument for why people would like your character, you should be able to point to specific moments in those scenes that make your hero likable.
Let me give you an example. Imagine a really mean bully. Now imagine that bully embarrassing someone and reveling in it. The person they embarrassed? We are going to root for them. Cause nobody likes bullies. And everyone is sympathetic to someone who is unjustly bullied.
That’s something clear and convincing you can point to in a Screenwriting Court of Law for why people would root for your hero.
And it doesn’t even need to be that manipulative. It could be something as simple as your protagonist cheering up a friend who’s had a bad week. Who doesn’t love someone who’s there for their friends?
There’s a great moment in The Shawshank Redemption where convicted killer and central protagonist, Andy Dufresne, literally risks his life to get his friends a six pack of cold beer on a hot day. Who’s not going to like that person?
Andy Dufresne is an interesting case study for character creation because, if you look at him through a macro lens, he should be boring. He’s quiet. He keeps to himself. He’s introverted, a character-trait that rarely works. Yet he’s one of the most liked characters in movie history. Why?
It’s because my best friend, Stephen King, along with screenwriter, Frank Darabont, put him in sympathetic situations as well as created likable actions. In addition to the famous rooftop beer scene, Andy repeatedly gets abused and even raped by some of the nastier prisoners. Andy always picks himself up after these beatings and keeps going. He doesn’t let it defeat him.
Readers loooooooove that. They love when a character who keeps getting knocked down gets back up and continues to fight.
Andy also sacrifices a week in solitary to provide the prison with the most beautiful song he’s ever heard. Andy spends months of his time helping a young prisoner get his GED.
It’s these ACTIONS that persuade us (some might even say “manipulate us”) to like Andy.
That’s what the amateur screenwriter fails to do. They don’t think about actions. They just think that if they write their character, a character who is often an extension of themselves, a character who has had an enormously interesting life, even if that life only exists in the writer’s mind, that people will like them. But it’s not the case. As manipulative as it sounds, the creation of a likable (or interesting, or compelling) character needs to be constructed.
So stop assuming. Your main character is way too important for you to be assuming readers will root for him. Come up with a plan. You probably want to map out 2-3 moments within the main character’s first five scenes that you can point to and say, “Those moments make my hero likable.”
I’m telling you, this is one of the best “bang for you buck” screenwriting tips you’re ever going to use. Because if you can get good at this, you actually create the opposite effect of what I was talking about at the beginning of this post. We’ll like your main character so much that we’ll still enjoy the script even if we don’t like your story.
