Last month, we had two winners. There was Rosemary, the actual winner. And then there was Fear City, which got second place but was able to attain the nearly impossible Showdown rating of an “Impressive.”
Who will emerge this month? I, for one, can’t wait to find out!
Every second-to-last Friday of the month, I will post the five best loglines submitted to me. You, the readers of the site, will vote for your favorite in the comments section. I review the script of the logline that received the most votes the following Friday.
If you didn’t enter in time for this month’s showdown, don’t worry! We do this every month. Just get me your logline submission by the second-to-last Thursday (April 20 is the next one) and you’re in the running! All I need is your title, genre, and logline. Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com.
If you’re one of the many writers who feel helpless when it comes to loglines, I offer logline consultations. They’re cheap – just $25. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Are we ready? Voting ends Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time!
Good luck to all!
Title: Chipped
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When the sitcom about a talking possum that gave Blair Murphy her fifteen minutes of child stardom 30 years ago gets rebooted without her, she foregoes her aversion to the internet and installs a chip in her brain that livestreams her every moment on social media in a desperate and ultimately disastrous attempt to claw her way back to relevance.
Title: Integrating Anna
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Set fifty years in the future, an optimistic young man brings his A.I. fiancée home to meet his technophobic family.
Title: Blood Moon Trail
Genre: Thriller/Western
Logline: In 1867 Nebraska, a Pinkerton agent banished to a desolate post for an act of cowardice finds a chance at redemption when he decides to track down a brutal serial killer terrorizing the Western frontier.
Title: Compulsion
Genre: Horror
Logline: After suffering a near fatal heart attack, a peaceful woman discovers that her new pacemaker requires consistent blood sacrifices in order for it to operate.
Title: Kill Box
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: Submerged by a tsunami while commuting along the San Francisco bay, a bus driver and his passengers must find a way to safety when they realize the tsunami has brought with it a pack of bloodthirsty sharks.
Get your loglines in for the Logline Showdown tonight (Thursday)!!!
If you’re planning on entering the Logline Showdown, get your logline into me by tonight (Thursday) at 10pm Pacific Time! The top five loglines will be posted tomorrow (Friday) so you’ll get some instant gratification as to whether your logline made it or not.
Send me: Title, Genre, Logline
E-mail: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Rules: Script must be written
Deadline: Thursday, March 23rd, at 10pm Pacific Time
Cost: Free
I stumbled upon Swingers over the weekend and, of course, had to watch it. What’s crazy about Swingers is that it has a really strange screenplay and, from a purely technical place, is a bad example of how to write. Yet it remains one of my favorite movies ever. That’s what gave me the idea for today’s article. The following movies are responsible for teaching me the ten biggest screenwriting lessons I’ve learned. Let’s get into them!
Swingers – Swingers is a really messy movie. It has a ridiculously long first act. The main character, Mikey, is not very active. He’s just torn up about a recent break-up. After partying it up in LA for a while, his buddy, Trent, convinces him to go to Vegas. They go to Vegas, have some adventures there, only to come back to Los Angeles and continue partying. The plot was so directionless that the editor threatened to leave the project if Jon Favreau didn’t inject some purpose into the narrative, which Favreau refused to do. Yet it still works.
What I learned: Great characters will make up for a weak plot (but never vice versa). If we like the characters, we will follow them anywhere. No matter how weak the story is, we will still be engaged because we want to see what happens to these people. So, the next time you write a script, double the amount of time you spend on creating characters. Really think about how you’re going to construct characters that the audience will love.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Three friends decide not to go to school one day. Does that sound like a big concept to you? It doesn’t to me. If you pitched this idea to a studio exec in 2023, they’d politely stare back at you before replying, “Is that it?” There just isn’t enough there. Yet it has become one of the most iconic movies in cinema history. Another script in this category is Dazed and Confused. A bunch of junior high and high school students hang out on the last day of the school year. Sound like a movie to you? It doesn’t to me. Yet both movies were great. What’s going on here?
What I learned: Weak concepts can be turbocharged with very tight time frames. This was a huge one for me. I realized that very tight time frames create pressure. Pressure is conflict. Everything that happens takes on a higher significance because time is so precious. If you have a “weak” concept or “bland” subject matter, consider tightening the time frame of your movie. You’ll notice that things immediately become more interesting.
Parasite – I’m cheating a little bit because the movie that really taught me this was Star Wars. But I talk too much about Star Wars as it is (and boy do I got some Star Wars opinions coming up in this latest newsletter – sign up: carsonreeves1@gmail.com). One of the biggest dangers in writing a screenplay is monotony. Repetition. We feel like nothing’s evolving or changing in the story.
What I learned: Both Parasite and Star Wars taught me the power of a big mid-point development, sometimes referred to as “the midpoint twist.” For Star Wars, it’s when they get to their destination, planet Alderran, and the planet is gone. For Parasite it’s when they reveal that there’s a secret basement in the home with another character living there. A strong midpoint plot development (midpoint just means the middle of the screenplay) can not only shake up your story, but it helps the second half of your script feel different from your first half. Which is important because so many scripts die a slow painful death due to the fact that nothing in the story is evolving or changing.
The Hangover – The Hangover isn’t just the last giant theatrical comedy release. It contains a lesson that goes beyond comedy and encapsulates an approach that every screenwriter should be taking when coming up with a concept.
What I learned: Find a less obvious, more unexpected way into a concept. The obvious concept for The Hangover is a bunch of guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party, get into some shenanigans, and comedy ensues. That’s the way into this idea for 99 out of 100 screenwriters. Jon Lucas and Scott Moore found a fresher angle into it. What if you skipped the bachelor party and focused on the next day, with a friend missing and everyone too hungover to remember what happened the night before? Now you’ve got a concept that most writers never have a prayer of coming up with.
Hide and Seek – Hold on hold on hold on. Am I reading this right? Is Carson talking about the 2005 Robert DeNiro Dakota Fanning horror film for an all-time screenwriting lesson? Yes. Yes I am. But not in the way you think. 1999 gave us one of the most famous horror movies of all time, The Sixth Sense. That’s where this lesson begins.
What I learned: A good twist ending is almost impossible to pull off. The amazing twist ending in The Sixth Sense spurred a ton of copycats over the next decade. Every horror film was an attempt to shock you at the end. And they were all REALLY BAD. Hide and Seek has a twist ending that I don’t even remember. I just remember leaving the theater seething that I had paid money for such garbage. But it was just one in many terrible twist endings that I’d watched since the Sixth Sense’s success. I finally realized how difficult it was to write a good twist ending. So the lesson is, don’t write a twist ending unless you are 100% super clearly obviously there’s-no-way-I-can-be-wrong sure you have a whopper of a perfect twist. If there’s even a little bit of doubt in you, your twist ending probably sucks.
Inglorious Basterds – This lesson is, in part, one I learned in Inglorious Basterds, but it’s really a lesson I learned from all of Quentin’s films, cause he does it so well. It stems from the “Milk” scene that opens the script. Or the OD scene in Pulp Fiction. Or the Manson scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
What I learned: Scenes can be self-contained mini-stories. A scene is an opportunity to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you can embody this approach, you are unstoppable as a screenwriter because it will be impossible for your scripts to get boring. If readers are getting wrapped up in each individual scene because that scene contains a compelling story, they’ll never be able to put your script down.
Mad Max: Fury Road – People remember this film as one of the most visceral experiences they’ve ever had at the movies. Technically, I shouldn’t be including it, though, since it was constructed without a screenplay. However, there is a GIGANTIC screenwriting lesson in here that is so critical, I can’t not highlight it.
What I learned: The power of urgency. This film is the epitome of urgency. There is no free time. Things need to happen RIGHT NOW. That’s almost always when movies work best – when things need to happen right away. Not next week. Not tomorrow. RIGHT NOW. It gives your script so much energy. You may be thinking, but I’m not writing a big Hollywood movie, Carson. I’m writing something smaller. Okay, stop what you’re doing and go watch the French movie, Full Time, right now. Very small movie that has EVEN MORE URGENCY THAN Mad Max: Fury Road.
Die Hard – Perfect movie? There are about 50 screenwriting lessons you can learn from this film. But the biggest thing I took away from it was, “What a great character.” And I went about trying to figure out why I rooted for this character as much as I did. What I realized? He was insanely active.
What I learned: The more active the main character, the better. Movies love characters who are ACTIVE. Active characters push the story along since they’re always trying to achieve an immediate goal. John McClane is always trying to get somewhere, to take down someone, to get one step closer to defeating the bad guy and saving his wife. The most boring scripts I read are almost always the ones with the least active protagonists.
Titanic – Every night, in my dreams. I see you. I feel you. No amount of hate or ridicule will ever prevent me from promoting the spectacular screenwriting feat that is Titanic. Any movie that’s 3 hours-plus has an incredible challenge in front of it. How do you remain engaging for so long? Especially if you don’t have the spectacle of superheroes fighting each other?
What I learned: The incredible power of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we, the audience, know something our heroes do not. Usually that they’re in danger. The reason we’re willing to hang around for an hour and a half of an, arguably, cheesy love story, is because WE KNOW THE SHIP IS SINKING AND THEY DON’T. That’s why. And that’s the power of dramatic irony. It can be used over the course of an entire movie, like Titanic, within sequences of scenes, or within individual scenes.
Fargo (the movie) – The opening scene of Jerry Lundgaard walking into a bar to set up the kidnapping of his wife with two criminals remains one of the biggest ‘ah-ha’ moments I’ve ever had in screenwriting. Because it could’ve been a straight-forward scene. But, instead, the two criminals are furious with Jerry because he’s late. And that lateness infuses the scene with this anger and disdain, elevating an average dramatic situation it into a tightly wound uncomfortable experience.
What I learned: Add conflict to your scenes! Without conflict, most scenes are just exposition. They are characters exchanging information that pushes the story forward. But if you only do that, there is no drama. You need drama to keep the reader entertained. Enter conflict. Find some sort of unresolved issue and have it play into the scene, either on the surface or under the surface. As long as there is conflict, your scene has a good chance of being entertaining.
Tomorrow is the deadline for logline entries in March’s LOGLINE SHOWDOWN! We’ve already found one great script through Logline Showdown. Let’s find some more! Submission details are inside this linked post.
Genre: Horror
Premise: A promising first-round draft pick is invited to train at the private compound of the team’s legendary but aging quarterback. Over one week, the rising star witnesses the horrific lengths his hero will go to to stay at the top of his game.
About: This script finished number 13 on last year’s Black List. The writers wrote a successful podcast called Limetown, which they were able to parlay into a TV production for Facebook. That show would star Jessica Biel.
Writer: Zack Akers & Skip Bronkie
Details: 119 pages
Jake G. for Connor??
I had my eye on this script as soon as I saw the logline on the Black List because I find sports mortality to be an interesting subject. In order to be a professional athlete these days, you have to start playing at the age of 5 and train 3+ hours a day for the next 30 years of your life. In other words, it isn’t just part of your life. It *IS* your life.
And then one day, the train stops rolling. You’re 35, 36, 37. You still have your ENTIRE life in front of you yet you have no context for how to live it. The only thing you’ve ever known is to practice and play. It’s the reason Tom Brady retires then unretires immediately afterwards. It’s the reason Michael Jordan played for the Washington Wizards. They realize that this is the last time they’re going to get a chance to do this.
So to build a story around a character like that immediately gives you a compelling character study. Which is one of the key components that needs to be there in order to write any movie under 100 million bucks. Stories should be about struggle. Not just the external struggle. But the INTERNAL struggle. You want your characters fighting something inside of themselves. If they’re not, there’s a good chance they’ll come off as bland.
The real question here though is, can a movie in the sports genre be a straight-up horror film? That’s what I’m going to try and answer by the end of the review.
Connor Dane is 44 years old and has won six Super Bowls for the Dallas Cowboys. And he doesn’t seem to be slowing down. But the Cowboys are realistic. At some point, there’s going to need to be a change at the quarterback position. And they don’t want to get caught with their tight little football pants down. So they draft the guy everyone thinks is going to be the next Connor, Benny Mathis.
Everyone’s shocked when the Cowboys trade up for Benny. But what’s even more shocking is that Connor calls. He tells Benny that he wants him to come work out with him for five days at his Vegas home. Benny’s handlers think it’s some kind of trap. But what’s Benny going to do? Say no to the greatest quarterback ever and his new teammate?
Benny arrives at the giant compound in the middle of the desert and is alarmed with what he sees. Connor lives in one of those Kardashian type homes. The ones with excessively sparse surroundings. How sparse? Connor doesn’t even have doors! There are doorways. But no doors!
After an intense first day of workouts, Benny hears wild screaming in the middle of the night. He also finds a sheep hanging around outside his bedroom window. Oh, and his bathroom sink is also filled with blood for some reason. When Benny shares these things with Connor, Connor seems aloof. He says not to worry. His handlers will take care of it.
After Connor leaps out of his swimming pool in a single bound, Benny starts sensing something is up. He goes on a trek into the desert and finds a shrine in an old church that has both all of Connors’ achievements pasted to the walls and HIS OWN achievements.
The caretaker pleads with Benny to ask for a night off from Connor and then takes him into the city. At a dance club, he tells Benny that he needs to get out of here. Then Benny sees Connor in the crowd dancing! But it’s not Connor. It’s 20-years-younger-Connor! What the heck is going on??? We eventually learn that Connor may be calling on forces more powerful than our own to achieve the amazing career he’s had. And that he wants to pass that power on… to Benny.
I think it’s cool when writers mash up genres that don’t normally go together. Cause you’re guaranteed to get something different. With that said, there is a risk in making untested creative choices. Because, usually, if you’ve never come across something in the creative world, it’s because it’s been tried and failed badly.
This is probably the case with combining horror and sports. I’m just not seeing any evidence that these two genres can harmoniously co-exist. The biggest problem is that the people who come to these genres come to have a very specific experience. If you’re a sports nut, you want to see that great sports movie. If you’re a horror guy or gal, you want to be scared.
That means every time a scare happens, the sports people are angry and every time competition happens, the horror people are angry.
But the problems in GOAT go deeper. The entire movie is one giant setup for something that we pretty much figure out by page 20. We don’t know exactly what’s going on with Connor. But through the process of elimination, we know there’s some supernatural reason he’s been able to stay good for so long. He probably made a deal with the devil. And, lo and behold, that’s what happened.
I’m not kidding when I say that every single scene in the movie has Connor doing something weird, the subtext being: “Connor’s not normal! There’s something not normal about this guy!” Giving us 30 different variations of that message does not pique our curiosity. Cause we’ve already figured the reveal out. Now we’re just waiting for the writer to catch up with us.
That’s the worst place you can be as a writer. That the reader is waiting for you to catch up with him. You should always be ahead of the reader UNLESS you’re deliberately trying to trick them, in which case you let them THINK they’re ahead of you, only to pull the rug out from under them, which is one of the more fun things you can do in storytelling.
In other words, you would have all these setups towards Connor having made a deal with the devil, and then you’d throw a 180 at us and give us a payoff that we missed because we were following those deliberate bread crumbs pointing us towards the devil deal.
I also wanted more out of the scenes themselves. Every scene felt “first-choicy.” What does that mean? It means that if 100 people wrote this script, 95 of them would’ve also chosen the same scene you wrote. So if you have a scene – like this script did – of Benny lifting heavy weights and Connor being his spotter. That’s a scene 95 out of 100 writers would’ve chosen. It’s low-hanging fruit.
That’s not to say “don’t do it.” The scene has potential. Connor literally holds Benny’s life in his hands if he chooses to move away from the bar at an inopportune moment. But at least try to find some spin on the scene so it doesn’t go exactly as expected. This script wasn’t doing that. It was always giving me the version of the scene I expected.
The script has its charms, though. I love the spec-y nature of it. Contained time frame. Low character count. Organic heavy conflict between the leads. Urgency. And the genre element makes it easier to sell. I was into all that. But the execution felt too basic and repetitive. Very repetitive. For that reason, I can’t recommend the script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the mistakes writers make is assuming that just because the reader doesn’t know EXACTLY what the big reveal of their script is going to be, but still has a pretty good idea, that they’ll be eager to keep reading. We don’t need to know your twist ahead of time to get bored. We only need to have a good idea of what it’s going to be. That’s the mistake this script made. It put everything on the reveal then proceeded to use every scene to tell us what that reveal was likely to be. There needed to be way less repetition here. And there needed to be more misdirection. This script could’ve benefited from moving the “deal with the devil” reveal up to the midpoint. Because that way, we have no idea where your script is headed. Which would’ve made things a lot more interesting.
A rare submission script that lands an IMPRESSIVE rating!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A serial killer has an entire city living in fear – until he is kidnapped by three petty crooks looking to make their big score. The ransom demand they make to City Hall is chillingly simple: “Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go again”…
About: Today’s script finished in SECOND PLACE in last month’s Logline Showdown competition. I read it last week, was blown away, and immediately started hyping up this review. Now, you’re not going to get your perfect rags-to-riches story here. Mike Hurst, the writer, does have several credits. But he is currently rep-less so he’s been forced to hustle like everyone else here. Today’s script has made it sacrosanct that after every Logline Showdown, I review the first AND SECOND ranked scripts. Even more of a reason to ENTER LOGLINE SHOWDOWN THIS WEEK!
Writer: Mike Hurst
Details: 93 pages
Fresh off White Lotus, James for Danny?
March Logline Showdown is THIS FRIDAY!!! That means all logline entries need to be in by THIS THURSDAY, March 23rd, at 10:00pm Pacific Time. Here are the submission details.
Send me: Title, Genre, Logline
E-mail: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Rules: Script must be written
Deadline: Thursday, March 23rd, at 10pm Pacific Time
Cost: Free
For those of you complaining that we shouldn’t have competitions based solely on loglines, today is your validation day. You have been proven right. Fear City finished second to another script and, yet, it was the best script in the bunch. By a wide margin!
But you could also make the argument that the contest worked. Because the logline got a ton of votes. It just ran up against another strong logline.
The more egregious error was made on my part. After I read the script and realized how awesome it was, I did a quick search into my e-mail and found that I’d read it already! Or, at least, tried to read it. It was a submission in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest. And it didn’t even make the second round!
How did that happen?
There’s actually a good lesson to learn here. I remember there was a period during that contest where I was reading like 10 entries a day (the first act of each script). And anything that was mildly annoying became a PASS. Well, this script has bolded underlined slugs. It’s ugly. It’s awkward. It’s invasive. And that may have been enough for me to move on.
This is why I encourage writers not to do anything too out-of-the-box with their presentation. You don’t want to give overworked undernice industry people any reason to say no. Only reasons to say yes! Still, I’m disappointed in myself for missing this one because it’s always been one of my biggest fears – that I have these amazing scripts on my hard drive that slide by me for some reason or another.
Okay, let’s jump into the script!
The city is under siege. There’s a shooter on the loose. Someone is waiting until nighttime and then, once the streetlights go on, blam! Some poor guy or gal gets shot in the head. There are 14 people who have fallen victim to The Midtown Maniac and the cops don’t have a clue where to start looking for him. It’s gotten so bad that as soon as it gets dark, the entire city hurries inside their homes.
Joe, 20 years old, sickly, lives in a crappy apartment with his older brother, Danny, and Danny’s unstable criminal pal who just got out of prison, Vin. Joe thinks he knows who the Midtown Maniac is. Every time there’s been a shooting, Joe sees a mysterious loner dude park his beater car down in the lot and mope his way to his apartment.
Meanwhile, Danny sleeps with a girl just to steal her sister’s medication, which is the same medication Joe needs but can’t afford. Vin, a volcano on the verge of eruption, is just looking for a reason to snuff out Joe, who he hates. You get the feeling if you look at this guy the wrong way, he’ll curb stomp you until your face is compost.
The lack of any financial prospects are taking a toll on the trio, who are getting on each other’s nerves. When Joe tells the others about his Midtown Maniac theory, they think he’s nuts. But the more they look into it, the more they realize he may be onto something.
That’s when Danny gets his big idea. The city is paying 1 million dollars a night for cop overtime to keep the city safe from this animal. Danny figures if they kidnap the Midtown Maniac and demand a million bucks (or they’ll let him go), it’s a no-brainer. The city won’t be able to pay fast enough.
They wait until the Midtown Maniac is coming home one night, put a gun to his head, and kidnap him. They then escort him, in the middle of the night, to an old crappy farmhouse Vin owns outside the city. Once there, Danny drives to a public phone, calls the police, and makes his demand: “We’ve got the Midtown Maniac. Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go…”
Back at the farmhouse, John Sadowitz, aka the assumed Midtown Maniac, says he has no idea what these guys are talking about. He is not and cannot be the shooter. He keys in on Joe, who he realizes is the weakest of the three, and starts injecting doubt into his theory. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, the police find evidence that tracks the shooter back to the trio’s building. The only ex-con in that building is Vin. So they think he’s the Midtown Maniac!
As the team tracks the saga over the news, they soon realize they’re out of their league. Panicking, Danny makes a hurried deal with the cops to have them drop money off in a pre-chosen area of the forest. They head to the spot to pick up the bags and, of course, they’re surrounded. But somehow, some way, Danny finds a way out. The question is, for how long?
There was so much to like about this script.
First and foremost, what awesome character work! I learned a valuable lesson right off the bat: Specificity helps SO MUCH in making characters feel realistic. When we meet Danny, he has sex with some woman he clearly doesn’t like. The next morning, before she wakes up, he steals pills from her bathroom. We’re thinking he’s a drug addict or something.
But we learn he stole the pills cause his sick brother needs them. They’re too expensive otherwise. It’s a highly detailed way to set up a) that Joe is sick, and b) that Danny will do anything to take care of him.
In the 99% of scripts I read, writers will set up that Joe is sick by describing him as pale and saying he coughs a lot. They’ll set up that Danny is a good brother by having him literally say, “You know I’d do anything for you, right? You’re family. Family sticks together.”
The difference between the way these situations are set up (Mike’s way and the generic way) create a totally different effect. The effect Mike creates is that this situation is so specific, it’s hard not to see these as real people. That’s the gold star achievement and it’s what you’re trying to do as a writer – make readers believe that the characters in your story are real people. Extremely specific dramatic events achieve this.
Vin is a little more straight-forward. He’s just angry. But Hurst still gives him this plotline of fiery defiance regarding going back to prison. Something devastating happened when he was in prison. And he’s determined not to revisit it. That defines every single decision he makes. And it works.
John Sadowitz then throws a wrench into everything because Sadowitz insists he’s not the shooter. And the truth is, these guys don’t know for sure that he is the shooter. What if he isn’t? Then they’re all going to jail for kidnapping. And we know how Vin feels about that.
There’s one scene that always comes up in a great script. It’s the scene where you realize, “I’m reading something special here.” We get that scene midway through the script when Danny, determined to prove that Sadowitz is the shooter, goes to Sadowitz’s apartment to look for his gun. If he can find his rifle, he’ll know they have Sadowitz.
As he desperately tosses the apartment that evening, he sees something shoot past the window. He looks up. Then he sees it again. A SWAT TEAM MEMBER quietly runs by. Danny freezes. He’s toast. They’ve come for Sadowitz and now here he IN SADOWITZ’S APARTMENT! With a SWAT TEAM surrounding him. What is he going to do?? He quietly moves to the window and that’s when he realizes, they’re not breaking into Sadowtiz’s place! They’re surrounding Danny’s apartment! Which is just across the way in the same building. They were going after Vin.
This scene is followed by a great dramatically ironic moment where the cops cluelessly come to everyone’s door, including Danny, and ask questions about if he knows the people in that (Danny’s) apartment. Danny must assume the identity of Sadowitz to escape the cop’s curiosity. All of this as Danny eventually finds the rifle and walks out with it in a bag, through 50 cops standing around! It’s a great scene.
But, truthfully, the whole script is fraught with this level of tension. I can’t remember the last time I read a script where every single word was needed and not a single extra word was included. Which is the thing they TELL you to do when you write a screenplay but it’s almost impossible to pull off. Unless you’re Mike Hurst I guess!
There were two things that I had issues with in the script. First was the plan itself. It wasn’t well thought-out enough. Making a demand with no further instructions and no way for the police to contact you seemed about as effective as trying to operate an elevator via mind control. At the very least, tell them when you’re going to call them next. There needed to be a lot more communication with them and the cops.
The second issue I had was that we knew, almost immediately, that our trio was screwed. They were so overmatched, we never once thought they had a shot at that million bucks. For a movie like this to cook, we need to think our protagonists have a shot. Cause you want the audience to hope that, somehow, some way, they’re going to pull this off.
And yet EVEN WITH these problems, I still think this is an IMPRESSIVE script. It’s shockingly believable. The characters were great. But where the script really stood out was in the plotting. This was probably the best plotted screenplay I’ve read all year. It moves with so much purpose and with such great rhythm. And it has all these surprises. Characters you’d never thing would die, die. This on top of a killer concept! That’s a rare package.
If Mike fixed up those two issues I mentioned above, I’d put it in my Top 25.
Script link: Fear City
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Display how characters care for each other by SHOWING instead of TELLING. Having Danny steal medicine for Joe conveys how he cares for his brother A MILLION TIMES better than if Danny tells Joe how much he cares about him. Yet the large majority of writers will do the latter.
Yet another million dollar sale on a story that can best be pitched as A Quiet Place meets The Sixth Sense!!
Genre: Horror
Premise: After a devastating health diagnosis, a recently divorced woman moves back in with her estranged father and becomes the only person who can see oddly inactive creatures hanging around their small town.
About: They just keep coming, these short story sales. But this one has kind of an interesting backstory. The writer honed the story, which is a meagre 20 pages, over the course of THREE YEARS(!!). He wanted it to be absolutely airtight before he went out with it, leaving nothing to chance. And you thought you were a perfectionist. 5 bidders over 72 hours fought for the project, with Netflix winning via a million dollar bid. The film will star Jessica Chastain. Misha Green will adapt the script as well as direct.
Writer: Chris Hicks
Details: 20 pages long
Something I constantly think about in how it relates to screenwriting is the elusive “bar.” I am referring to the bar your writing must rise above in order to be purchase-worthy. The quirky thing about the “bar” is that there’s the objective bar – the level at which your writing actually has to be at. And then there’s the subjective bar, which is where each individual writer *thinks* the bar is. That’s where everyone gets screwed up. Because their subjective bar may not be anywhere near the objective bar.
So how do you rectify that gap between where you assume the bar to be and where the bar actually is? Getting a lot of feedback helps. The more you’re told what’s wrong with your writing, the better you’re able to gauge where the bar is. But I’ve found the best way to locate the bar is to read a ton of scripts. The more you read, both professional and amateur, the better you’re able to see the key differences between the two and, in the process, find the bar.
In the absence of knowing how high or low the bar is, lean into the Chris Hicks strategy. Which is to rewrite the heck out of your script (or short story) until you honestly believe you have nothing left to give. Because even if you don’t meet the bar, you can say that you tried with all of your might to get there. And, in the end, that’s all you can do!
“I began seeing the creatures about a week before Zoe’s visit.” That’s how this story starts. We then cut back in time to find out that our heroine, Julie, is having a bad year. She’s a recent divorcee and, oh yeah, she gets brain cancer! Glioblastoma. One of the bad ones.
While she’s in treatment, Matt, her ex-husband, gets custody over their 4 year old daughter, Zoe. To make matters worse, after the treatment is over, the hospital refuses to release Julie without adult care supervision. The only person who can care for her is her father, who she has no relationship with.
So she moves to the small Kentucky town she grew up in and helps her older dad with simple tasks around the hardware story he owns. In the meantime, she desperately attempts to set up visitation with Zoe, something she finally gets after a lot of hassle.
But right before Zoe comes to town, Julie starts seeing things. Creatures. Big ugly things that sit around downtown. Just sitting there, doing nothing, occasionally looking Julie’s way, locking eyes with her. Nobody else can see these things. Just her. And when Julie’s dad sees her staring out at nothing, he gets concerned. He tells her it’s time to go back to the hospital.
As these spottings increase, Julie knows she needs treatment but wants to spend one last day with her daughter during the annual town fair. The dysfunctional trio head downtown and watch the locals prepare. Again, Julie sees the creatures, just sitting around in the middle of the street, doing nothing. But she also notices something odd. The people walk AROUND them. Which means maybe they are real.
As the fair reaches a crescendo, the creatures multiply. There are now 20 of them. Julie gets a sixth sense that something bad is about to happen and starts screaming at the police to get ready. They have no idea what she’s talking about. Until a creature walks over and pops the cop’s head like a walnut. Then all hell breaks loose.
The town is a barrel and the people are fish. They try and run but the creatures have the exits blocked. They pick off everyone easily. Nobody has any idea what’s happening though because they can’t see these creatures. Only Julie can. So Julie locates her dad and daughter and they make a run for it. But as they drive out of town, they are led to an even more terrifying realization: This isn’t the only town this is happening in.
So, why do you think Hollywood is going gaga over short story purchases? Treating them like spec scripts in the 90s? My theory is that everyone’s looking for that shorter time commitment to make a decision. This short story is 5000 words long. A screenplay is 20,000 words long. It allows them to do their jobs faster.
I’m also starting to realize that these short stories are like extended synopsis pitches. They’re definitely not formed yet. This is not a 100 minute movie that we get in this short story. All told, you’ve probably got 10 scenes here. So what you’re doing is you’re giving executives “the best of both worlds.” You’re allowing them to see the concept, which is the most important thing. And you’re allowing them to see it in some sort of fleshed out form, as opposed to a logline.
In addition to this, the writer is DRAMATIZING the events. This isn’t just a straight synopsis, which would be cold and lifeless. In the I Am Not Alone short story, we’re building tension. We’re building suspense. We’re building mystery. We’re exploring relationships. That’s a lot more fun to read then a synopsis.
It worked for me. I was invested in this story. One thing I’m finding that these good short story writers do is they wrap things around an emotional center so that the story explores the human condition on some level. It’s not just creepy imagery and jump scares.
We’ve got a triple-threat here on the emotional front. We’ve got the devastation of this brain cancer diagnosis. We’ve got the broken relationship between Julie and her father. And we’ve got the desperation of this other emotional relationship, whereby Julie is trying to retain a relationship with her daughter, despite everyone else trying to strip it away.
These are real-life issues that you could legitimately build a movie around. My question is, is it too much? Cause, usually, it would be for me. But Chris Hicks seems to know when to put his foot on the dramatic gas and when to ease up. Just when things start to get too depressing, we get a scene where she sees one of these creatures and it’s fun again. Maybe that’s what he spent three years on – trying to find that perfect balance.
The next question is, can you flesh this short out into a full movie? I think you can. But it comes with its own set of challenges. Here, we get four separate set-ups of Julie seeing the creatures, each one building in intensity. That’s fine for 20 pages. But what about 100 pages? You can’t have four scenes of “seeing creatures.” It’s not enough.
So Green will need to make a decision. Do you keep the slow-build “seeing creatures” format the short has, in which case this becomes more of a drama than a horror film? Or do you introduce juicer scenes that utilize these creatures in more dramatic ways leading up to their big attack?
I’m sure some of you are curious about my thoughts on the concept. Is it original? Good question. It’s sort like A Quiet Place meets The Sixth Sense. You’ve got the “I see dead people” aspect and then you have these terrifying “Quiet-Place”-looking creatures lingering about. So, it’s not entirely original. But, at the same time, I don’t know that I’ve come across anything exactly like it. Which factored into my final grade…
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The latest round of these short stories selling to Hollywood are, basically, high concepts extended into synopses that have been dramatized so that they’re more entertaining to read than the average synopsis.
