The knives are out with today’s question!

A reader e-mailed me yesterday and asked a good question: Do you write a logline before you write the script or do you only write it afterwards? The question stemmed from an idea that “Save The Cat’s” Blake Snyder promoted, which is that he would never write a script until he had the logline figured out.

The reason he gave for this proclamation is that unless you can conceptualize your screenplay in a single sentence, then the idea doesn’t work as a movie. His theory boiled down to good movies have a “point.” They have a “goal.” And as long as you have one of those two things, you should be able to convey it in one sentence.

Parasite is about a poor family that tries to take over a rich family’s home. Invisible Man is about a woman trying to take down her abusive dead boyfriend. Knives Out is about solving a murder. Tenet is about… oooooh, wait a minute. We may have something to discuss here.

What is Tenet about? Tenet is a movie you cannot summarize well in a logline. Is it a coincidence, then, that the movie is unwieldy and difficult to understand? There’s no way to prove it for sure but I just shook my magic 8-ball and it came up with “Signs point to yes.” Christopher Nolan would probably shoot us for saying so but had he sat down and distilled his concept into a logline, he may have discovered its weaknesses and changed some elements around until Tenet became stronger.

One of the biggest enemies of screenwriting is vagueness. Wherever there’s vagueness, there is a story unsure of where to go. So if you’re vague before you’ve written your script, there’s a good chance portions of the script itself are going to be vague. Now in a logline, those portions may amount to a word or two. But in a screenplay, they may amount to 10 to 25 pages at a time.

Let’s take this further and think of a good movie that covers a lot of ground and therefore, theoretically, shouldn’t be able to fit into a single logline. Can The Godfather be summarized in a logline? I did a google search and found this: “The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.”

This would seem to say “no.” It’s too vague and doesn’t convey any direction in the story. But I’ll give you a logline tip. Always try and write the logline from the point of view of the character driving the story (which is almost always the hero).

Therefore we’d get something like this: “A reluctant son is forced to take over his father’s organized crime dynasty while fending off the other mob families in town who are determined to eliminate his family for good.” This clearly conveys what The Godfather is about without any trickery or vagueness. So I say it passes Blake Snyder’s logline test.

Let’s challenge ourselves further, though. What about Joker? That’s a good movie. But, on first glance, it wouldn’t pass the Blake Snyder logline test. There isn’t a clear goal in the movie. I’m not even sure there’s a clear point. It’s more about a man’s descent into madness and the things that come about due to that madness. It’s also sort of a “divided in two” movie where the first half of the film is about Arthur Fleck trying to make a living as a comedian and the second half is about him fighting back against the city and losing his mind. It’s not easy to write a logline where the direction of the film changes midway through.

We’re getting into a complicated area here that necessitates a nuanced discussion. But, generally speaking, character pieces are harder to confine to a logline because the journey happens inside the character as opposed to outside. And that never reads well in logline form. “A man with mental health problems attempts to deal with his demons in an increasingly violent New York City while trying to become a stand up comedian.” It’s okay. But notice the main thrust of the logline is “deals with his demons.” That’s an internal battle. The logline still lacks plot clarity, which, 99% of the time, means the script is going to wander. It just so happens that Todd Phillips is aware of this pitfall and made sure to troubleshoot it so that the script still worked.

Which is to say, YES, it’s possible to write a good script without having a good logline, but there are mitigating factors. It’s usually a character piece. The writer inherently understands the weakness of his narrative and gameplans a way to counter that weakness.

The writers who I deal with aren’t even aware that there’s a pitfall in their concept in the first place so, of course, they can’t troubleshoot it. Which results in a messy unfocused screenplay.

Which is a long way of me saying, “Yes, you should try to write a logline BEFORE you write your script. Because not only does doing so force you to learn what your script is really about (distilling anything down to its essence will achieve this). But you may be able to identify holes in the story that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

I received a logline recently that went something like this (I’m going to change some things around to protect the writer’s idea): “An older woman gets a call that the baby who was taken from her 30 years ago wants to meet her.” At first glance, this logline sounds like a movie. There’s definitely something interesting about your baby being stolen from you and never meeting them until they’re an adult. But where is the story? Or, a clearer way to put it: “And then what?” Does her daughter show up, say how much she missed her, and then leave? Where does the movie go? Cause all that you’ve given me is the first act.

Here’s a better logline. I’m writing this literally off the top of my head so I’ll be the first to admit it’s not perfect. But it’s an example of how figuring out the logline can help you discover what your movie is really about. “After an older woman is reunited with her daughter, who was stolen from her 30 years ago as a baby, she begins to suspect that the visitor is not who she says she is, and that her ultimate plan is to harm her.”

Let me reiterate. Not a movie that’s going to be made any time soon. But you can see more of a movie in this version than the previous version. We get the “and then what” part of the story that was missing from the initial logline. Too many writers start writing their screenplays without figuring out the “and then what” part. So when they get to that moment in the screenplay, it’s no coincidence why they run out of ideas.

Now, to answer the original writer’s question, just because you’re basing your movie on the logline you wrote ahead of time, that doesn’t mean you won’t discover a better movie along the way. And, if that happens, you should go back to your logline and write it again. And if your story improves again while you’re writing it, go change your logline again. And when you’re finally done, you’ll write the big final logline that reflects what the script became. This will be the logline you send out to people.

I know lots of screenwriters think loglines are evil. But they can help you write a good movie if you let them. The more vagaries your concept includes, the more you should turn to your logline as a way to figure out the script’s problems.

So go forth and write those loglines, my friends! And if you’re having trouble, I offer two services that can help. One is a quick-and-dirty rating and analysis of your logline that goes for $25. The other is a more involved process where we can e-mail back and forth, collectively working on your logline until we get it right. That’s $40. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “logline help.”

KINETIC by Chris Dennis!!!!!

Bradley Cooper for Clay?

Here’s the logline for Kinetic: “Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife.”

If you missed it, you can see all five finalist loglines here.

To be honest, today’s winner was a difficult call. Crescent City, Mother Redeemer, and Kinetic were neck and neck all weekend as I tried to decide who the winner was. The argument for Crescent City was its deep interesting mythology, its modern lead character, its enormous potential as a franchise, and it being the highest concept of the bunch. The argument for Mother Redeemer was that it had the best character development, the lowest budget, and has an amazing third act. Mark my words, when this movie gets made, the line “I’m the Mother Redeemer, motherf#cker,” will be one of the most quoted lines of the year.

In the end, the reason Kinetic edged out the others is that it knew exactly what it wanted to be and gives the audience exactly what they want. This is a good old fashioned action movie. It’s about a dude in a truck who some bad people decide to f*ck with and in the process they unleash the kraken. There’s no other script in the top 5 that has a clearer poster or trailer than Kinetic.

It’s The Equalizer. It’s John Wick. It’s Taken. But wrapped in this dirty messy rural universe. Clay, the main character, feels like a descendent of the cowboys from those old Clint Eastwood movies. And the trucker angle is just unique enough to set this movie apart from its influences. This is the blue collar version of Taken. And I have no doubt there’s a huge audience for that.

On top of all that, I see franchise potential. This main character is such a badass that he could carry three or four more Kinetic movies if we want. That factored into the win as well. Because like I told you guys from the very beginning of this contest. I wanted to find MOVIES. Not scripts. MOVIES. And this is the most movie script of all 2000 entries I received.

There’s one more thing that pushed Kinetic over the edge. The main character, Clay, is surprisingly deep for an action movie hero. Chris Dennis, the writer, explains what he was thinking when he conceived of the character:

“Clay isn’t your typical one-dimensional hero seen in this sort of script. He’s broken. He’s unsure of himself. He’s planned out this life with his wife but he’s not sold on it. Only when he realizes that he’s about to lose it all does he steel himself to recover it at all costs. There’s been mention of the cocaine scene in the truck, the one where Clay is forced by his captor to snort it off the steering wheel. The cocaine isn’t his ‘Popeye spinach’… no. It’s symbolic of this life he’s worked desperately to put behind him. The hurt, the loss, the pain of everything he’s experienced encapsulated in that thin white line. And when that asshole puts a gun to his head and forces him to partake, Clay sees that life he’s built starting to crumble, and realizes that the only way out is if he takes matters into his own hands. It’s devastating for him in the moment, but if he doesn’t act, what follows will be even more heartbreaking!”

If you’re wondering how Chris wrote such a great script, his story should be inspiring to all of you. It’s basically what I’ve been telling you guys all along. Keep writing, keep reading, and keep learning. You do that long enough, you’re going to write something great. Here’s Chris on how he got to this point:


“For a brief time I thought I wanted to direct films, even went to school for it, but as I became more aware of the movie making process, I was instinctively drawn to how films looked on the page, which led me to buying Syd Fields’ classic, “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.” From there, I started to track down the screenplays of my favorite movies to read and compare them with how they looked on the screen, which helped me understand how the written word is translated visually (I also read a certain spectacular blog! – Carson note: I added the word “spectacular”). I played around with writing screenplays for a bit, wrote some absolutely utter crap, but it was around ’08/’09 that I fully committed to taking writing more seriously, to really try to hone my craft and find my voice. I scheduled time to write; tried to never miss a day unless I absolutely had to. Ever since then I’ve made it a goal to write 2-3 feature length screenplays a year – some years it’s easy, others it feels like a monumental task (and that was in pre-pandemic times!).

“A lot of people pause when I tell them I’ve been at this for over a decade now without ‘breaking in.’ Sure, it’s a loooooooong time, I know, but I keep going because deep down I love screenwriting. It satisfies some strange desire in me, and I figure if I love it enough to do it for free, it’ll be that much more fulfilling the moment someone wants to write a check for me to do it. Plus I’m an optimist… I just know my next script is going to be my best. I won’t say the journey’s been easy… not at all. The entire time I’ve been writing I’ve had to juggle a ton of obligations, ranging from full-time jobs to being a husband and a father to 3 kids under the age of ten. But I still find time to write. I wake up at 3 am before the rest of my day starts to write. I stay up late on the weekends to write. And much to the chagrin of my wife, I often skip out on non-essential family functions to write. Why? Because I love it, and because deep down I know that I still need to hone my craft.

“Though I’ve yet to ‘break in,’ I have some modest success in contests along the way, which keeps signaling to me that I’m on the right path. I’m a 3-time Page Awards winner (Grand Prize shy of the Grand Slam), a 3-time Launch Pad Feature Finalist, WeScreenplay Feature winner, along with high placements in several other contests. Now I can add another to this list — THE LAST GREAT SCREENPLAY CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!”

I also asked Chris what inspired him to write Kinetic specifically:

“The seed of the idea came to me while driving and listening to the song “Thinking On A Woman,” by Colter Wall. The song is kind of a lamentation on the tragic side of long-haul trucking… about missed time, lost love, and the vices a man turns to in order to ease his troubled mind. I had been on the search for an idea that was somewhat contained, so I took the character of this song and flipped his situation. What if he’s overcome his demons? They’re there, sure, but he’s managing to keep them at bay. And what if he’s on his last haul, heading home to a pregnant wife to leave this lonely life on the road for good? But what if that happy life he’s heading home to is suddenly put into jeopardy? What lengths would this man go to in order to preserve that little slice of heaven that he’s built?

So with that as my jumping off point, I molded this truck driving character, Clay Cutler, as a disgraced Special Forces veteran and a recovering addict, who’s nearly got his life back in order when the shit hits the fan and he has to overcome obstacle after obstacle to get that life back. I set out to write an old school action flick with no filler, semi-contained (pun intended), with one hero and one goal: to get his wife and unborn child back, no matter what it takes. And once Clay makes that decision, there’s nothing that’s going to stop him.”

As I’m reading back Chris’s answers, I’m reminded of something else I loved about the script – the recklessness of both the story and its hero. I’ve been reading a lot of screenplays lately where the writers let up on the gas, which leaves the script feeling neutered. Kinetic, true to its title, barrels forward in a way that other writers are scared to do. It’s almost like they’re afraid they’ll be unable to keep it up til the last page. Kinetic is this don’t-stop-til-the-last-credit-rolls force of nature. It really wants to deliver on its promise for a great fun action movie. And it does that.

So what’s next for Kinetic, Chris, and myself?

GETTING THIS MOVIE MADE, BABY!

I’ve just started talking to close contacts about Kinetic. I’m trying to find out which production houses want to make a movie like this. I’m going to be coming after Original Film (Fast and Furious guys). I’m going to be coming after 87Eleven (Stahelski and Leitch’s company). G-Base (Gerard Butler’s company) is going to get a call. Atlas Entertainment. Village Roadshow. Thunder Road. Millenium.

And hey, if you’re a production house that makes movies like Kinetic and you’re reading this post right now, E-MAIL ME (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). I’ll jump on Zoom with you tomorrow and if we click, we’ll set this up somewhere by the end of the week! I see this as a slam dunk. It’s not a matter of if it will get made. It’s a matter of who makes it with us.

Congratulations to Chris Dennis one more time. By this time next year I hope we’ll be sharing with you all the crazy stories from the set. :)

WANT YOUR OWN SCRIPTSHADOW GLORY? – This is a reminder that the next Amateur Showdown (High Concept Showdown – where only high concept scripts can compete) is coming in March! So get those scripts ready! If you don’t know what a high concept is, check out this post here…

Amateur Showdown Genre: HIGH CONCEPT
Where: Entries should be sent to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: Include title, genre, logline, why you think your script deserves a shot, and a PDF of your script!
Entries Due: Thursday, March 4, 6:00pm Pacific Time

P.S. Tomorrow, the SCRIPTSHADOW LAST GREAT SCREENPLAY CONTEST finalists are announced!

We’re almost there!

We’re exactly one day away from the announcement of the finalists in the Scriptshadow Last Great Screenplay Contest.

But before we get there, I wanted to share some final thoughts about the competition. When you’re reading 3-4 screenplays a day, a clarity comes over you about why some screenplays work and others don’t. It has something to do with seeing good writing and bad writing side by side.

The biggest difference between an okay script and a good script is that okay writers put the onus on the reader while good writers put the onus on themselves. What I mean by that is, okay writers feel that the very act of writing a screenplay should get them points from the reader. “I spent all this time on this. I created all these characters. I wrote seven drafts. You owe me your appreciation.”

Good writers don’t care about that. They know that’s the last thing that is going to affect a reader’s interest in their screenplay. Instead, they know only one thing matters: Does the reader want to keep reading?

Do they want to keep reading after the first scene?
Do they want to keep reading on page 10?
Do they want to keep reading at the end of the first act?
Do they want to keep reading at the midpoint?

Having a vague belief that the reader wants to keep reading at those checkpoints is not what I’m talking about. I’m saying you’ve specifically designed your story in a way that you’re using story devices in those moments that keep a reader interested.

You’re using suspense. You’re using mystery. You’re creating intrigue. You’re creating worry. You’re creating tension. You’re offering questions that need to be answered. You’re using conflict. You’re throwing difficult challenges or complications at your characters. You’re building a sequence towards a clear climax. You’re setting up interesting unresolved problems between characters (that readers have to stick around for to see them resolved).

Let’s look at yesterday’s script, which did a great job keeping the reader invested all the way up to its climax. The first part of the script is a “building” sequence. That means you’re clearly building towards a mini-climax (a climax that’s going to come within the next 8-15 pages). Tom meets Sandra and they start dating. Everything is going well. But, uh oh, Sandra’s troubled brother enters the picture. He owes a lot of money to someone and if he doesn’t pay it, they’ll kill him.

This is a complication in the relationship. Readers naturally want to then see if your characters can overcome this complication. We also get the sense that Sandra might not be who she says she is. So we’re worried that Tom may be getting played (another complication). More importantly, we’re still building the storyline. The two get closer. The brother’s problems get worse. Until, finally, they have to deal with it. Tom gives Sandra the money to pay off her brother’s debt. And the next day, she disappears.

We then cut backwards in time to Sandra months ago. She’s a coked-out hooker. Huh? A mystery (or you could call it a question): Why is Sandra a coked-out hooker? Gotta keep reading to find out! We then build our second sequence. Sandra meets a mysterious guy (mystery!) who offers to help her out. This new guy, Max, then takes her under his wing and builds (a key word here – when the reader can feel you building towards something, they’re more likely to stick around) her into a con artist. But then we start worrying that Max may be doing the same thing to Sandra that Sandra was doing to Tom. And we have to keep reading to find out!

That’s such an important thing I just said so let me repeat it. You want to create a series of situations where the only way for the reader to find out what he wants to know is to keep reading. If you don’t pose any questions, the reader doesn’t need any answers. You need to dangle a series of carrots in front of the reader at all times. If you give the donkey (your reader) any of those carrots to eat, you must replace it with a new carrot. The less carrots you dangle in front of the reader, the harder it is to keep them invested. Most good stories have 3-5 carrots dangling at all times.

Conversely, I was reading a script from the contest and after a strong first scene (which is why the script advanced) it went 25 pages of straightforward setup. Setup of characters. Setup of their situations in life. Setup of where they lived. There was no thought at all put into keeping the reader invested during this time. I was bored out of my mind. Which is what I’m talking about. A good writer never lets that happen. Even when the task is difficult. I would guess that this writer’s argument would be, “Well, I had a lot of characters to set up. I didn’t have a choice.”

No. No no no no no no no no no no.

You never have an excuse to NOT ENTERTAIN the reader. Don’t ever sell yourself that lie. That lie is why you haven’t broken in yet.

Earlier this year, I read an Agatha Christie type script – a bunch of characters come to an island to visit a mysterious rich guy – and the writer had a dozen characters to set up. Did he spend the first 20 pages giving us a boring rundown of each character? No, he set up a few characters on the boat ride in. Then when they get to the house, the caretaker is waiting at the front door but he’s difficult. He has a set of rules about who gets in and who doesn’t. This leads to a few heated arguments. In other words, the writer built a scene around CONFLICT to keep the reader entertained while he was introducing his characters.

Now you may say, “Big deal, Carson. That’s not hard.” Tell that to the thousand-plus scripts I’ve read that introduced their characters in the most boring way possible. This writer could’ve easily had the caretaker be nice. Offer no resistance at all. Open up the door. Everybody walks in. Continue the character introductions for another five pages. And we’re already bored. You have the option, at every point in your screenplay, of asking, “Is the reader entertained right now?” If there is even a small chance that they are not, you need to start troubleshooting and figure out how to keep them invested. Add some conflict. Add some mystery. Build towards an approaching mini-climax (something that’s going to come to a head within the next 8-15 pages).

I realize it’s hard to quantify this stuff into a clear set of rules. But basically you want to change your mindset from being a “writer” to being a “designer.” You’re designing a series of sequences in your screenplay that are constructed to keep a reader’s interest.

You’re not writing “whatever comes to mind” and hoping for the best. If you write like that, your reader will lose interest at some point. Unless you’re one of those 1 in a million writing geniuses. But I wouldn’t bank on that. Instead, design each segment of your story to be impossible not to keep reading.

There’s one caveat to this. You have to know how to create strong interesting characters. Nothing I’ve said above works unless we either like or are intrigued by your main characters. I recently read a script by a beginner writer that technically checked a lot of these boxes I talked about. But the characters were way too thin. They didn’t act like real people at all. So even though the writer created conflict between his characters, even though he came up with plenty of complications for them to endure, I was still bored because I didn’t care about anyone.

I’m not going to get into what makes a good character because that would take another 40,000 words. But I’ll leave you with a tip. Think of each character as their own individual story. Because they are. They’ve lived this whole life up until this movie started. Draw from that life to create the things that make us interested in them. There are a lot of qualities that make characters likable or interesting. The Queen’s Gambit used a popular one – a girl who loses her mother in a car crash and is forced to live in an orphanage. Who’s not going to have sympathy for someone in that situation?

Make no mistake. The writer didn’t just stumble onto that. He DESIGNED it. He designed the character’s life in a way so that you would feel sympathy for her. It was calculated. Which is exactly how you need to be. You need to design characters we like or are interested in. And then you need to design a series of sequences in your screenplay that are impossible not to keep reading.

That takes humility. You are admitting that just throwing your stream-of-conscious thoughts onto the page isn’t enough. You need to design it. Then, and only then, will writers lose themselves in your work.

Seeya tomorrow with the CONTEST FINALISTS!

Is Karma the next Matrix, the next Wanted, or the next Assassins Creed?

Genre: Action/Supernatural
Premise: After an aimless woman wakes up from a short coma, she begins exhibiting special abilities.
About: David Guggenheim is one of those writers who experienced the screenwriting dream. It’s one thing to sell a script. A lot of writers have done that. But to get a script made into a movie is a rare thing. When Guggenheim sold his first script, Safe House, it just happened to be exactly what Universal Studios was looking to make at the time. So they fast-tracked it, and 8 months after Guggenheim sold his screenplay, his film was being made. That’s insane. And the thing is, when you get a produced credit from one of the big studios, you’re set for the next decade at least. And probably for life. Because writers who get stuff made are highly coveted. People think if they’ve done it before, they can do it again. So you’re going to keep getting work. Guggeneheim would eventually parlay his success into the show, Designated Survivor. On this one, he’s partnering with super-producer, Simon Kinberg.
Writer: David Guggenheim
Details: 128 pages

Can we get J Law back on top?

It’s the first spec sale of the year!

And if it’s going to be the first, it’s gotta be big! Big concept. Big page count. Big rating on Scriptshadow, though? Let’s find out.

Rachel is a 30 year old grade-school teacher who’s sleepwalking through life. It’s not that she isn’t motivated. But she has no direction. Her one love – painting – is something she happens to be terrible at. Her younger sister thinks she’s dying of boredom and wants Rachel to move to Chicago with her.

Meanwhile, we get a look at some Indiana Jones motherf#$%#r running through caves and throwing ancient daggers at people. This is Boone. Boone is a force to be reckoned with, according to Aegis International, a private security company that has dedicated all its resources to capturing Boone, something it’s been unable to do.

But that’s about to change. One day Rachel gets blindsided by a car, then a few days later wakes up in the hospital just as the doctor is trying to decide what to do with her. Rachel makes a suggestion, citing, word for word, an operating procedure from a 1915 English medical journal. Huh? How did she know that?

But that’s not all Rachel knows. A couple of days later, in the elevator, she has a fluent conversation in Arabic. But Rachel doesn’t know Arabic. Freaked out, Rachel heads home, only to have Aegis CEO John Gartner burst into her apartment with a team of men. He explains that she needs to come with them now! A minute later, a car BARRELS THROUGH THE WALL. It’s Boone! Who starts shooting at Rachel. Chaos ensues and Rachel flees!

John finds Rachel later and explains to her that she’s special. And if she wants to find out how special, she’ll come with him. He flies her to Aegis in France, where they begin the training sessions! You’re a “past-lifer” he explains to her. Someone with the ability to recall your past lives. This means that any skill anyone in your past lives had, you can obtain. “How?” She asks.

“Follow me.”


Rachel is placed in the “womb,” which allows her to be guided through an advanced form of regression therapy. Here, she can go directly into her past lives. And with every life she experiences, she retains their skills. Magician, samurai warrior, pianist, chess prodigy, you name it. Get in my way and I’ll check-mate yo a$$. Most past-lifers can only access up to 15 of their past lives. But Rachel is special. She completes 15 in her first day!

A newly energized Rachel is now ready to take on her nemesis – Boone. Aegis locates Boone hiding in Germany. So off they go. Oh, but if you think you know what’s going on, think again. When Rachel finally comes face-to-face with Boone, he tells her that it’s all a lie. That he isn’t the enemy. John Gartner is! Hmmm, is Boone just trying to protect himself? Or is he telling the truth? I know one thing’s for sure. Ya better protect your queen, b#$%h.

CHESS CHAMPION!

Okay, so let’s talk about this idea because it’s uncanny that I’m reading this after yesterday’s post about the next Amateur Showdown genre. For those who didn’t catch it, the next showdown is for HIGH CONCEPT scripts. “Karma” is the DEFINITION of a high concept. Here, the writer takes an idea that was accessible to everyone – past lives – and sexes it up. What if you could access those post lives? What if you could access the abilities of the people who lived those lives? You would be… superhuman. And just like that, you’ve got a high concept.

A common through-line with high concept ideas is that, when you hear them, you wonder why you didn’t come up with the idea yourself. We’ve all read that news story about the person who wakes up from a coma and all of a sudden starts talking fluently in a language they don’t know. Why didn’t we ask how to turn that into a movie? Guggenheim did, and he’s reaping the benefits.

It’s also an example of how to come up with a high-powered movie ready version of an idea as opposed to a boring variation of that idea. Cloud Atlas was also about past lives. But instead of packaging it in a cool action format, it expanded it out into a three hour drama. Which of these ideas do you think an audience is more interested in?

So Guggenheim gets an A+ in that department.

But I have the same issue with this script that I do with a lot of Guggenheim’s scripts. The execution is too by-the-book. I understand that these Matrixy concepts need to go a certain way. But if I’m predicting things that are happening 60 pages ahead of time, that means you’re not taking any chances. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still fun. But there’s a difference between those summer movies you see once then never watch again and the ones that you keep coming back to. The ones you keep coming back to are the ones where the writers took chances.

The writers and scripts I’m most impressed by are the ones where I’m reading them and thinking, “I could never do that.” I mentioned The Misery Index yesterday, a semi-finalist in my contest. When I read the dialogue in that script, I knew that if you put me in a library with all the greatest writers of all time teaching me how to write for 50 straight years, I still could not be able to write dialogue like that.

Yet, in Karma, I feel like the top 30% of writers here on Scriptshadow could write it just as well as Guggenheim. I’ll give you an example. One of the major components of this screenplay is the past lives. So the writer has to come up with all of Rachel’s past lives she’s lived. Here’s a sampling of what we get… Feudal Japan, Renaissance Painter, World War 2 pilot, Shaolin Monk, a blacksmith, ancient Egypt, Sherpa on Mount Everest, pre-historic man.

In other words, past lives that you could’ve come up with after literally 30 minutes of research. There’s nothing unique here that another writer wouldn’t have come up with. I want to stress that because it’s important. Your job as a writer is to come up with things that the rest of the world and your competition (other writers) couldn’t come up with. Or else why do we need you? If you’re giving us what we already thought of, well, that’s lame. We, the audience, are supposed to be creatively inept compared to you.

So that bothered me.

But mark this one down on the list of why concept is king. Even with its weaknesses, it still works, because the concept is so fun.

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

What I learned: Often times, high concept is about taking a cool ‘what if’ scenario and placing it inside a high octane genre. Writers get this wrong all the time, so pay attention. Past lives is not a high concept idea on its own. It’s just as capable of being low concept in the wrong hands. You could write a movie about a guy who discovers he had a past life as a sheep farmer and becomes inspired to leave the city and live a self-sustainable life in Wyoming. You’ve technically got yourself a past lives script. But is it a good idea? To get the sexier logline, take your ‘what if’ scenario and plug into a bigger flashier genre, like Karma did (supernatural action). Big flashy genres include action, thriller, sci-fi, and horror. Those genres always make the idea feel bigger.

“Lakewood” may be the single most intense script I’ve ever read.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: (me being deliberately vague cause I want you to read the script yourself) A school shooting told in a very unique way.
About: Man, Chris Sparling has come a long way. He started out placing a man in a coffin for 90 minutes. His latest movie, Greenland, is a studio disaster film. Now, he’s going back to his roots. “Lakewood” comes from the same production house, Limelight, that produced Scriptshadow Top 10 2020 film, “Palm Springs.” It stars Naomi Watts.
Writer: Chris Sparling
Details: 97 pages

(Scriptshadow Recommendation: Read this script before you read the plot synopsis! The power of this script is in its exciting plot developments)

The Obvious Angle.

Why is it every screenwriter’s worst enemy?

The Obvious Angle is the movie idea that approaches the subject matter just like everybody else would. If I told you to write a Western, the obvious angle is to have a mysterious no-name dude strut into town and start to stir up trouble. Borrrr-ing.

What makes or breaks a writer on the conceptual level is finding a fresh angle into well-explored subject matter.

And today’s script does that as well as any script I’ve ever read.

42 year-old widow, Amy, is going for her morning jog. This is the only time for Amy to clear her mind and alleviate some stress. Which she’s had a lot of lately. Her husband died two years ago in a car Amy was driving. And her kids – a daughter in elementary school and a son (Noah) in high school – are both still battling depression.

While on the outskirts of her town, Amy observes a strange sight. A couple of cop cars zoom along the road. It’s not something you typically see in this middle class suburb, but she doesn’t think much of it. Instead, she answers a couple of calls from her bougie friend, Heather, and her mom, who’s annoyed with Amy’s lack of communication.

And then Amy sees a couple of other cops zoom by. These with lights and sirens on full blast. This gets her attention. A quarter mile later, Amy receives a text: “THIS IS A CODE RED ALERT FROM THE LAKEWOOD SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. YOU WILL RECEIVE A RECORDED MESSAGE FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT WITH INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT DISREGARD THIS CALL.”

The call comes in and a recording explains that “All Lakewood schools have been placed on lockdown due to an ongoing incident.” Amy immediately calls a teacher at her daughter’s elementary school. The teacher assures her that her daughter is okay. The problem, it turns out, is at the high school. The thought of something horrible happening at the high school is terrifying but luckily for Amy, her son, Noah, stayed home sick today.

At least, that’s what she thought. Amy calls Heather back since Heather has a daughter at the school, and learns that Noah did, indeed, go to school today. Amy hangs up and tries to call Noah, something she will attempt to do a lot over the next hour. But he’s not answering. So she decides to call the police. Except the police call her first. They want to know some information about Noah. “Why?” Amy asks. They refuse to say. Amy tells them everything she can, including one detail she’d forgotten until now, at least in how it relates to her son – tomorrow is the anniversary of her husband’s death.

During this time, Amy is desperately trying to get people to pick her up. But everybody’s already at the school, trying to figure out if their own kids are safe. So she calls an Uber. An Uber that’s going to be there in 5 minutes. Then 10 minutes. Then 15 minutes. Everything in town is being affected by the situation at the school. If Amy’s going to get there, she’s going to have to do it with her own two feet.

Amy is able to get in touch with an auto technician working on her car who happens to be right next to the high school. She orders the guy to go to the school to try and see if he can find her son. Within minutes, the technician tells her that the cops are towing away a car – HER SON’S CAR. Now Amy is really freaking out. As she continues her journey towards the school, she makes a series of frantic calls to try and figure out where her son is and what’s going on. Until finally, Noah answers… and she finds out the truth.

“Hey, Screenwriter A. I want to make a school shooting movie. Can you write it for me? Please come up with a good idea.” 999 out of 1000 screenwriters are going to come up with the Obvious Angle, which is something like this.

But Chris Sparling learned, early on, that it’s possible to tell stories in the unlikeliest of ways. And so he came up with a really cool angle for a school shooter movie. A school shooter movie told in real time through the point of view of a mother out in the middle of nowhere whose son may or may not be the school shooter.

That’s freaking genius.

Because think about it. When you put us in the school with the shooting, what kind of scenes are you going to get? Students pleading for their lives while an outcast kid in a black jacket shoots them dead? How many times have you seen that image before? A lot. Moments lose their dramatic impact the more that you see them.

Okay, so you can’t use that. What can you use? Well, what’s just as horrifying as a school shooter? Being a mother who learns that there’s a school shooting in progress and not knowing if her son is dead or not. That’s real horror. So Sparling built an entire screenplay around that. It’s so simple yet so brilliant that it makes you feel like every great idea does: Why didn’t I think of that myself?

Watching Amy desperately call person after person seeing if there’s anything she can do to help her child is way more riveting than anything you could’ve shown us inside the school.

Plus, Sparling adds this fun secondary plot element. It isn’t just, is my son okay? But is my son the person who’s killing everyone? In a way, that’s even worse than your son dying. So we go through a good 30 pages wondering if Noah is the shooter or not. But even after that question is answered, Sparling uses his concept to his advantage. We’re still nowhere near the school. We still don’t have all the answers. So we still have a series of phone calls to make where Amy is trying to figure out what’s going on.

The script is also a reminder that immediacy is a spec screenwriter’s best friend. Concepts with immediacy work well with specs because spec scripts are the ones readers give up on the quickest. Spec script are usually from writers trying to break in so they’re often not as good. Even if a reader likes a spec, there’s a good chance they can’t do anything with it since it’s harder to get original material made. So when you have a concept that’s immediate, the reader has no choice but to keep reading. That’s on full display with Lakewood.

Another nut that Sparling has cracked is the old screenwriting trick of making every beat of your hero’s journey difficult. A common beginner mistake is to roll out the red carpet for the protagonist. Give them all the help they need every step of the way because you want them to win at the end. Unfortunately, that’s not how good stories work. You need to make things hard for your hero. And Lakewood is a great example of the benefits of doing so.

How do you get information about someone inside a school during a shooting when nobody has any information? How do you get to the school when you’re in the middle of nowhere and everyone you know is too busy seeing if their own kids are okay? How do you get in contact with your son when he won’t answer? Sparling doesn’t give Amy a single break during this movie. Even ordering an Uber is a nightmare. Who hasn’t experienced the fury of seeing your Uber three minutes away… then check a minute later and now it’s eight minutes away? Well imagine that happening when your son’s life is on the line.

It was fun seeing Sparling go back to his roots here. This is, essentially, Buried. A guy in a coffin with a cell phone. It’s just that, this time, the coffin is the “middle of nowhere.” It’s also a GREAT way to get a movie made – a big idea (school shooting) and you could literally shoot it in 12 days. It’s just Naomie Watts out on a road. It’s crazy how cheap this probably was yet it feels HUGE. That’s the dream concept.

Don’t have anything bad to say about this one. Definitely a script all amateur screenwriters should study.

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

What I learned: Throw out breadcrumbs instead of the whole loaf. The writer could’ve easily said, “Your son is the shooter” up front. But that’s boring. That’s the whole loaf. Writing is about leaving breadcrumbs. We learn that Noah didn’t go to school today (breadcrumb). Then we learn that’s not true. Someone saw him show up (breadcrumb). Then we learn that the police are towing his car (breadcrumb). Then we learn tomorrow is the anniversary of Noah’s father’s death (breadcrumb). Another great thing about breadcrumbs is you can lead the reader wherever you want to lead them. In other words, you can make them believe Noah is the shooter and then flip it on them. Turns out it’s someone else. Of course, none of this is possible if you throw the loaf at them right away.