It’s time to learn WHY certain loglines didn’t have the power to push past my discerning eye and make it into the Logline Showdown.
Remember that I’m one person and, just because I didn’t like a logline doesn’t mean someone else won’t.
Which is the main reason I like posting these articles. It gives you some insight into why I choose (and don’t choose) certain loglines.
Let’s get into it!
Title: The Big Return
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Determined to right his father’s wrongs, the son of a legendary master thief embarks on an impossible mission: returning everything his father ever stole — without anyone noticing.
Analysis: I’ve come across ideas similar to this before. There may have even been a Black List script with an adjacent idea. My issue with these ideas is this: What are the stakes? Who cares if he succeeds or not? Let me give you a similar idea that uses stakes to make the concept a lot more exciting. You may recognize it. A history professor recaptures ancient artifacts and puts them back in the museums where they belong. He is then hired to find one of the most famous artifacts of all time, the Ark of the Covenant, before the Nazis get it first and use its powers to win the Second World War. Similar idea. But one adds an incredibly high amount of stakes, which improves the concept considerably.
Title: Help
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When a reclusive billionaire dies, the staff of his secluded estate makes an uneasy pact—hide his death and live in opulence, for once. But as greed, suspicion, and uninvited guests close in, their scheme quickly spirals into chaos.
Analysis: I wanted to include this one because I worked on it with the writer. This is a good example of how a logline and a concept must work in tandem. If they’re working against each other, you’ll always feel like something isn’t clicking. My issue here was not with the logline, but with the concept. My argument to the writer was, why would you risk everything to live in opulence for a week tops? Sooner rather than later, people are going to show up asking what happened to the billionaire. They’re then going to learn he’s been dead for a while and that you didn’t report it. You probably won’t get in a lot of trouble. But you’ll get in some. And for what? To waltz around the same grounds you’ve always waltzed around but this time without having to do any work? Where’s the upside? I told the writer we need a different angle for this to work. For example, add a murder-mystery to the plot. That gives the concept a lot more flexibility.
Title: Trust
Genre: Allegorical Thriller / Crime Drama
Logline: A farming couple on the brink of collapse is further divided when one secretly agrees to smuggle cocaine inside pineapples for a deceptive drifter. As tensions rise, a venomous snake slithers through their farmhouse—an ominous force that threatens to destroy them both in this modern allegory of Adam and Eve.
Analysis: You don’t want to send out loglines that put the burden on the reader to figure out the movie. The logline is supposed to do that for them. This idea starts off being about a struggling couple who decides to engage in criminal activity to pay the bills. Okay, it’s a small idea but it hints at a conflict that could drive a narrative. But then, out of nowhere, a snake arrives. Instead of explaining how this snake will engage in the plot, we’re thrown the very vague explanation of “an allegory of Adam and Eve.” Now it’s my job, as the reader, to guess what’s going on. My first thought is, “Well, if there are three people, then it’s not an allegory of Adam and Eve, is it?” This is what happens when you ask the reader to do the work for you. They will come up with things that I guarantee were not part of your plan.
Title: Override
Genre: SciFi/Action
Logline: When a suicidal but indestructible robot hitman botches his latest assassination, he teams up with the young girl he was supposed to kill when she agrees to give him the code that can rewrite his program and allow him to die, but only if he can help her escape to safety. -Leon the Professional, Logan in a cyberpunk world
Analysis: In my experience, when a logline starts to feel like a run-on sentence, it’s failing. NOT EVERY TIME. But, like, 95% of the time. That’s how this feels. Override is actually a pretty good idea when you break it down. I like the team-up between the hitman and the person he was supposed to kill. And their exchange of duties at the end makes sense based on everything that’s been set up. But there’s something about the abundance of wording that makes it hard to comprehend the logline on a single read. Case in point, I didn’t pick up the word “suicidal” until the third time I read it, which is probably because “suicidal but indestructible robot hitman” is a mouthful. Likewise, when you’re trying to work out the exchange of duties at the end, it doesn’t enter the brain smoothly. You really have to focus hard to get what’s happening. Reading a logline should be effortless. As proof, think of all the loglines that have worked for you. You understood and enjoyed everything after one read, right? You didn’t need an abacus.
Title: The Hunt for the White House
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi
Logline: A defeated Presidential Nominee must convince and unite his former military associates and incoming legislative friends that the opposition party and its nefarious worldwide allies are collaborating when they commit the most traitorous and audacious act in history – utilize radical technology to teleport the White House to an unknown location and exploit the President for their covert demands.
Analysis: This is an example of a cool idea – the White House gets teleported somewhere. It’s a concept I haven’t come across before that contains several different cool story directions it can go. But then you have to wade through a bunch of word salad to get to that part. When I read a logline like that, I think, “If the writer can’t come up with a cohesive presentation of their idea in the logline, why would I expect them to be able to tell a cohesive story through 110 pages?” Either that or they haven’t thought deeply enough about their idea yet to present it. You see, sometimes we come up with pieces of a cool idea rather than a full idea. It’s your job, then, to mold that crumb into a cake. And don’t show anybody that cake until it’s out of the oven!
Title: Omega Critical
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: When Miranda finally gets the chance to run her dream D&D campaign before graduation, she creates an epic, mind-bending adventure where her friends play as different heroes every session. But as the game nears its final showdown, the game begins to mirror her real-life battle for respect and validation from her long-time crush, the group’s former leader.
Analysis: This is the kind of logline you are forced to write once you’ve written a low-concept script. With any movie concept, you’re looking to generate a “special attractor,” that thing that makes the movie stand out from every other movie. Omega Critical has Dungeons and Dragons, which is slightly original. But it’s not big enough to drive people to the theater. That leaves us with the rest of the logline, which is essentially a woman who has a crush on a guy. That’s certainly not big enough to generate box office since anything that can be a subplot in another movie will struggle to be a main plot in its own movie. I bring this up because a lot of people come to me for logline help with these small ideas and they want me to juice them up, make them sound amazing. I can help make loglines sound as good as they can possibly sound. But I can’t make small ideas sound big. To be clear, I think this could be a good script! I’m not knocking its potential at all. But I’m judging it from the perspective of a producer. They read this and think, “Okay, that sounds like… maybe it could be okay.” The only chance you have of someone requesting this script is if they’re really really really into Dungeons and Dragons.
Title: Seeking Relationship Advice
Genre: Romantic comedy
Logline: A formerly anonymous sex and relationship columnist who based her advice on smutty fanfiction must pretend to be in a relationship with her best friend once her column goes viral and she is forced into the public’s eye.
Analysis: This is a pretty good idea. So, why didn’t I choose it? Because it wasn’t different enough. It feels like a movie seen already. It doesn’t have that unique differentiating factor that makes me want to pull the trigger. Some of you may say, “But Carson, you chose some ideas for the showdown that I felt like *I’d* seen already.” Fair enough. This is the subjective nature of picking ideas and it’s why if you gave 10 people these loglines, they would not all choose the same winners. I will say that with an idea like this, a great way to differentiate it is to modernize it. Can we use apps or programs or web sites or modern pop culture in a way to update the concept? Because a relationship columnist may have been common in the 90s. But not so much in 2025.
Title: Dead Stop
Genre: Horror
Logline: During their morning commute, passengers on a city bus are tested when the bus turns out to be a trap set up by a madman who demands one passenger be chosen to be sacrificed before every stop. (SAW meets SPEED)
Analysis: It’s hard for me to articulate exactly why I’m not a fan of this idea. But it comes down to not being a fan of overly forced concepts. This is what I mean: “A woman has 6 hours to run from the bottom of Manhattan to the top and a series of bombs are positioned across the city that will go off every time her heartbeat goes above 110.” For an idea to work with me, it has to meet a certain organic threshold, where it feels natural and believable (at least by movie-idea standards). I know that’s a vague target. I can’t tell you exactly where the line is. I just know that when I read this logline, it felt forced to me. I could feel the writer’s hand. When that happens, I tend not to connect with the idea.
Title: Hell Hole
Genre: Action/Horror
Logline: When a U.S.-Chinese drilling operation in the Arctic breaches the Gates of Hell, the crew must put aside their differences to seal it before its horrors emerge and destroy the world.
Analysis: This concept finished pretty high up in the contest. Which says a lot. Because, often, when the words “gates of hell” are in a logline, I’m out. Mainly because there’s something generic about it all. I just imagine a bunch of generic demons emerging from the ground and now it’s just a video game. Which is the whole reason I stopped playing video games. Every single game was mutated monsters/demons running at you. It didn’t seem like anyone cared about story anymore. So, I think if I had a better idea of what emerged from these Gates of Hell and what kind of plot resulted from their arrival – that would be the deciding factor of me either going in with this or staying out.
Title: How To Train Your Assassin
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When a financial analyst rescues an amnesiac stranger from a crash, he soon discovers she’s a hitman sent to kill him by his corrupt boss. As they grow closer, he must fight to survive, dodging the crypto crime syndicate hunting them while keeping her from remembering why she was sent.
Analysis: I’ll tell you why I wrote off this idea. The word “crypto.” “Crypto” is a word that has become so ubiquitous that it no longer means anything. To me it’s synonymous with “generic.” Therefore, its inclusion had me imagining a generic movie. In retrospect, I wish I wouldn’t have dismissed it so quickly. Cause I do like the idea of someone rescuing an amnesiac who, it turns out, was sent to kill them. And there is some connective tissue with the main character, since he’s a financial analyst. It feels a teensy bit similar to “Unknown.” But if you could create a unique and expansive mythology around this “crypto crime syndicate,” that solves the main problem I had with the idea – that crypto makes it sound generic. It’s not the most original idea but if I did the showdown all over again, I could imagine this logline making the top 10.
Title: Flooded Cage
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Logline: After a tsunami devastates a prison on a remote island, the warden must lead the survivors to higher ground, but when they discover a second, more devastating wave is approaching and rescue becomes increasingly unlikely, order begins to crumble forcing her to face unimaginable decisions.
Analysis: This was definitely one of the top loglines in the competition. I remember earmarking it early on, bringing it into my “maybe” document. But once I had to cut everything down, it was one of the last ideas to go. What’s clever about this idea is the second tsunami. Cause I think most writers wouldn’t have come up with that. And, by doing so, you add this extra element of urgency and tension within a group that historically doesn’t do well with tension. Looking back at this logline with fresh eyes, I’m thinking maybe I should’ve included it.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A broke TaskRabbit in debt to her estranged sugar daddy holds a stolen painting
she’s been tasked to deliver for ransom, leading to a deadly cat-and-mouse chase
across the weirdest corners of New York City.
About: This script finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. It is being produced by Rian Johnson’s production company.
Writer: Caroline Glenn
Details: 113 pages
Anger is helpful in some situations.
I’m not convinced it’s helpful when writing a script.
The pages start to feel more like you’re working out your issues than it does you’re writing a screenplay.
Let’s see where that experiment takes us.
25 year old Parker lives in New York where she’s barely surviving. She’s got her roommate, Hallie, an aspiring actress who does feet stuff on Only Fans. And the two are struggling to make this month’s rent. Parker needs 900 bucks by 8am tomorrow or they’re both kicked out. Parker tells Hallie not to worry. She’ll handle it.
Parker heads out on the town, turning on her Task Rabbit app. She does tasks like taking things out of boxes. Putting together Ikea furniture. Finally, she gets a legit job from someone named Grace, who gives her a box to deliver across the city.
Almost immediately, men start appearing out of nowhere attempting to snatch the box from her. So Grace runs into the M&M store in Times Square, opens the box, and finds a stolen painting worth 50 million dollars. Someone placed a tracker on the painting, which is why all these men are chasing her.
Back with Grace, we meet Ben, her boss slash fkbuddy, who screams at her when he learns that she gave the painting to someone instead of delivering it herself. Parker then calls them and says she knows what the painting is and wants 50 million dollars or she’s going to destroy it.
During this negotiation, her phone dies, which forces her to go to her old Sugar Daddy’s house nearby where she will have sex with him in order to covertly charge her phone and speed off. After she does this, she goes to her cruel ex-boyfriend’s place to steal his gun, just in case she needs it. While there, she talks to a girl who says their mutual friend is Hitler’s great grandaughter.
She eventually meets back up with Hallie, who informs her that these people she’s making a deal with probably aren’t going to give her the money. She then berates Hallie with insults and tells her she’s a terrible actress. We learn that Grace was actually playing Ben and was going to steal the painting from him. So now Parker has to deal with Grace. It’s time to make the exchange. Will she survive? Gosh, I sure hope she doesn’t.
A script that celebrates the worst of humanity – that asks us to endure 15 people who suck – is a hard sell to any reader. And it’s an especially hard sell to me.
The movies that most resonate with me are the ones that offer some element of hope. You’re introduced to a good person who’s struggling. That person then endures two hours of challenges where they keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down and keep getting knocked down. Despite all that, they keep getting up, until finally, they overcome the big bad wolf. I then leave the theater thinking, “If they can do it, I can do it.”
I’m not saying that’s the winning formula for all movies. But it’s the winning formula for most of them.
That formula, however, falls apart if the person taking us on that journey sucks.
And Parker sucks.
Throughout this story she demonstrates that she’s selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, judgmental, mean-spirited, not to mention morally bankrupt, as she’s invested a large portion of her life into being a sugar baby.
That’s not to say that a sugar baby character couldn’t be sympathetic under the right circumstances. One of the most beloved characters of all time is Vivan Ward, a prostitute (Pretty Woman). There were major differences in that character, though. She was nice. She was sweet. She had morals. She was funny. She saw the best in others.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
How you shape your main character is crucial, especially when writing something dark. If you’re not careful, the darkness can swallow your script whole, dragging it into the Sarlacc Pit. The experience can easily turn into a bitter, angry cry for help.
This script also proves that GSU is not a guarantee that your script will be good.
Cause this script has tons of GSU.
In fact, it uses the most reliable GSU formula there is:
GOAL – MONEY.
STAKES – IF YOU DON’T GET IT, YOUR LIFE IS OVER.
URGENCY – 12 HOURS.
Money money money money money.
Money, stakes, and urgency have been responsible for hundreds of great movies.
But, if you plop that formula down onto a script with not even a single likable character? It won’t work. Cause a reader isn’t going to be happy if they hate every time a character starts speaking.
And the thing was, the main character here started off so likable! If you would’ve just left that alone, we end up rooting for Parker the whole screenplay. In her first scene, she’s up for a job interview at a museum and when the interviewer makes fun of her lack of education, Parker digs in and fights. She makes strong points about how it isn’t her fault that she couldn’t afford Yale. She worked with what she had. Readers LOVE characters who fight. Love them! So we were all in.
Then Parker proceeded to insult and look down upon every single character who entered the script, even her supposed friends. Every time that happened, I liked Parker less.
So, you’re probably wondering how it is that this script is so high on the Black List. Note that I never said the writing was bad. Actually, it’s quite good. The writer clearly has a voice. I may not like that voice. But there are a lot of unhappy cynical people on the planet who are more likely to resonate with these miserable characters than I am.
And I suppose someone could make an argument that Parker is easier to root for than I’m making her out to be. I just, personally, don’t like people who hate everyone. In their world, they’re the only person on the planet who is worthy and everyone else sucks. That’s Parker in a nutshell.
This had the potential to work. Had you made Parker a good person caught in a bad situation, many of the script’s issues would have resolved themselves. But as it stands, this is the kind of story that lingers in the worst way, leaving the reader drained and disheartened long after they’ve finished.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be mindful of injecting personal commentary into your script. The goal is to immerse your reader so completely in the story that they forget they’re reading (this is the essence of suspension of disbelief). However, if you repeatedly insert your own opinions, especially overtly political or emotionally charged asides, you risk shattering that illusion. The moment the reader becomes aware of the writer’s presence, they’re pulled out of the narrative, making it far less impactful.
A peek into the mind of the modern successful spec script writer
Genre: Not going to tell you
Premise: A young boat cruise bartender who smuggles drugs up and down her ship’s route meets an intriguing but perpetually drunk man who takes an interest in her trade.
About: Zach Dean has been writing scripts that have appeared on The Black List for years. More recently, he wrote the Chris Pratt Amazon sci-fi movie, “The Tomorrow War.” He also wrote Apple’s upcoming “The Gorge.” He kind of reminds me of a supernatural sci-fi Taylor Sheridan. This script sold for big money to Lionsgate. It will star Johnny Depp in what he’s planning to be his big comeback role.
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 112 pages
When it comes to what type of spec scripts you should be writing to both sell your script and get a movie made, Zach Dean is a good writer to study. He seems to have tapped into this formula for writing scripts in the 2020s that people both respond to and, ultimately, produce.
Like a lot of Zach Dean scripts, there are twists and turns galore in Day Drinker. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read the review. Or, at the very least, seek out the script and read it yourself first. Cause the only way to talk about this script is by talking about its unique plot developments. Someone in the comments section should have access to the script.
Lorna is a bartender on a cruise ship called the MS Amnesia which hobnobs around the coast of Spain, stopping at every little port to allow its passengers to enjoy the wares of Spain and its surrounding countries.
One day, while she’s getting ready for work, a man named Kelly shows up. All Kelly wants is a drink. All Kelly ever wants is a drink. She’s not open yet but she makes an exception. He seems jovial enough. But if there was any indication that this would be romantic, she shuts it down immediately. She doesn’t like men. She likes women. Strangely, Kelly seems unbothered.
When the two get to a port in Morocco, Lorna heads inland where she meets some sketchy dudes. These dudes, who we will later learn are heirs to the infamous Lauzzana crime family, give her a bag full of drugs. It’s clear she hates this job but, for reasons we’ll learn later, has no choice but to do it. She heads back to the ship and stashes the bag in the ceiling of her bedroom.
A few stops later, late one evening, Lorna is approached by two scary dudes who inform her that their bag wasn’t where it was supposed to be. She says that’s impossible. She placed it where she always places it. Before the bad guys can press her on that, Kelly appears. He’s drunk, as usual, and the men tell him to get lost. When he says he won’t, they come at him. And boy is that a mistake. Kelly obliterates them with terrifying precision.
Kelly then takes Lorna aside and asks her about her old girlfriend, who went missing. It then becomes clear why Kelly is here. Lorna’s old girlfriend, who was killed by the Lauzzanas, is Kelly’s daughter.
Cut to Barcelona where the Lauzzanas, headed up by Emile and Cara, learn of the deaths of their men. Furious, they send their sons after him, along with several assassins. Bad idea. Kelly disposes of them as well, leaving only one son to regale his parents with the gruesome details of what happened.
We’re getting into some MAJOR SPOILERS going forward so read at your own risk. Lorna is forced to strike a deal with the Lauzzanas in order to get her young sister back from them. The deal is Kelly. So Kelly is brought in, shot dead by Cara, and presumably, our tale is over. OR IS IT!? Let’s just say that, 24 hours later, a howl is heard across the land. And that maybe, just maybe, Kelly isn’t finished killing yet.
I want to bring to light something that not a lot of people in the industry talk about. Because it’s important for screenwriters to know. When you’ve built a reputation, readers will give you more time at the beginning of your script.
They do this because they assume, even if the script starts slowly, you’ve proven yourself and therefore must be starting slowly for a reason.
Day Drinker takes 30 pages before it hits you with its big first plot point – Kelly has more going on than we thought he did, and is able to effortlessly take down three high level mob enforcers.
I would NEEEEEVVVVVVVER advise a new screenwriter to do this. Wait 30 pages before you write your first entertaining scene? Not a chance. The reader wouldn’t even get to page 5 before they gave up, much less page 30. It’s just me reminding you that new screenwriters operate under a stricter set of rules. Entertain them early. Entertain them often. If you want to pull a slow burn, sell a few scripts first.
So, why did this sell?
Well, I think that, for one, it’s a unique set up. I don’t think I’ve ever read a script that takes place on a cruise ship that’s going up and down the coast, focusing on a single bartender’s relationship with a passenger. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest setup for a story. But in the world of movies where everybody’s seen everything, you get points for ANY kind of unique setup.
Something else that Dean did well here was the strategic way in which he revealed information. I think a lot of writers are eager to tell you what’s going on in their story. Good screenwriters are more judicious about revealing key information points.
For example, we meet this young girl who’s in Emile’s care. We know that she’s not an official part of the family and that some people, like the mother, dislike her. But we don’t know anything else.
It isn’t until 70 pages into the story, after Kelly takes out Lauzzana’s son, that we reveal this girl is Lorna’s sister. She’s been taken hostage by the family to ensure that Lorna does her job. You could’ve easily told us this 50-60 pages ago. But I would argue it hits harder when you tell us now.
Dean is a good judge of that. He really thinks about information as something that can be split up and dispersed of when he sees fit. And I believe all screenwriters should do the same. Don’t always reveal information at the most obvious moment.
Now, let’s get to the final twist. MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. I’m sorry but Kelly being a werewolf didn’t work for me. And, just like Dean has strengths, this seems to be one of his big weaknesses. I saw him do it in Tomorrow War and, to a certain extent, in The Gorge as well. He goes ONE MORE BRIDGE FURTHER than he’s set us up for.
Where was the werewolf thing set up?? And what are we supposed to believe here? That Kelly was both a world class secret agent assassin AND a werewolf?? I don’t even know how to process that information. It just doesn’t make sense and also feels like a cop out – a way to give Kelly one last hurrah.
Not that I didn’t want Kelly to win in the end. I was hoping beyond all hope that he somehow managed to survive Cara shooting him. But a werewolf feels too convenient.
Then again, this is Dean’s thing. He likes the supernatural. He likes going nuts towards the end of his stories. So it’s a creative choice. Some are going to like it. Some aren’t. I would just say that if you’re going to go this route, you need to set it up better. Cause it’s a HUGE ASK of the audience when your script has existed in the real world for 100 pages and now it’s going to exist in the supernatural world for the final 15.
I still liked this script, though. Despite its faults, it’s entertaining. It’s definitely higher quality than the current slate of Black List scripts I review on the site. Check it out if you can.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Show don’t tell. There comes a moment in the script where Kelly has to reveal that he’s Lorna’s dead girlfriend’s father. For big moments like this, avoid dialogue if possible. Dean does this by cleverly having Lorna take the locket off of her neck. Inside is a picture of Lorna’s girlfriend when she was a child with her parents. Lorna takes a closer look at the parents in the locket for the first time, and recognizes Kelly. This allows us to easily understand that Kelly is the father of Lorna’s dead girlfriend without a bunch of stilted exposition. Show don’t tell!
Calling it early…
Title: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Logline: Two feuding inventors with a lifelong rivalry use their newly created time machines to destroy the other’s past, present, and future, in order to be remembered in history as the father of time travel. TIME AFTER TIME meets GRUMPY OLD MEN
Time of Your Life is one of those ideas that looks like it’s going to be fun to write until you sit down and study the ingredients. Because I sat down to tried to come up with an abbreviated treatment for this script and spent the first 30 minutes staring at the screen with no idea what to do.
Part of the problem is the two protagonists thing. Focusing on two separate protagonists in the same movie is tricky. The easiest script to write is a script with a single protagonist. Cause all you have to do is establish the goal, the stakes, and the urgency for that character and off you go into your story, which will unwind in a straightforward manner.
The second easiest is a two-hander because it works exactly the same way as a single-protagonist narrative, except that you have two characters working towards the goal instead of one. But it will still follow that same basic formula of establishing a goal, attempting to achieve that goal, and running into a lot of obstacles along the way.
An ensemble script (Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Avengers, Toy Story) works by the same rules. The team works as one, essentially making the entire team the protagonist. As long as they all have the same goal (kill Thanos) the narrative will be easy to write.
But Time of Your Life is not that. You have two protagonists which means you have two stories. Which means you have to keep jumping back and forth between the characters as they attempt to pursue their goals (in this case, to take out each other). But because you’re splitting things up, you’re writing two 55-page scripts (each that follows a protagonist with a goal) as opposed to one 110 page script. In my experience, when you try and do that, the script becomes clunky.
So, how do you solve that problem? The most obvious way would be to have one scientist be your hero and the other the villain. We’d then give 65-70% of the screen time to the hero and 30% to the villain. This would allow us to create the GSU aspect of the story with our hero and our villain just keeps getting in the way.
I’m also having a hard time imagining what it is each character does to sabotage the other. I mean how dark do we want to go here? If we want to go full-on, then they’d go back in time to try and prevent the other from ever being born. Possibly even killing them when they’re a kid. It wouldn’t take much research to figure out when, in the 12 years that their rival was a child, a period where they were alone and vulnerable for 30 minutes. So, just go to that time and kill them. Problem solved.
If you want to make this a lighter execution of the concept and take murder off the table, the reader (and audience) is going to ask that question: “Why would that be off the table?” But let’s say it was.
If I were a producer guiding the development of this script, I would be wary of continuing to jump back in time a dozen times. It will get too messy. And it will reinforce the one time travel rule you don’t want floating around in the reader’s head, which is that it doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail because they can always jump back and try again.
Instead, I’d try and focus on one specific leverage point in the Scientist’s life and build the opposing scientist’s goal around that. For example, if Scientist A were to figure out that, back when Scientist B graduated from college, he had an amazing opportunity to join a tech company that would later be the place where he’d discover time travel, and he also learned that Scientist B was in love with a young woman at the time and had to make a decision between her and this company, then Scientist A could go back in time, befriend the girl, and try everything in his power to have her win over Scientist B, so he would never go off to work at the company.
You could then have Scientist A inadvertently start to fall for this girl himself. Then, in the future, you could have Scientist B figure out what Older Scientist A was doing and then go back to let his younger self know what’s going on. Maybe he even recruits the older version of this woman to help him convince his younger self not to end up with her. Now you’ve got five characters in one timeline all operating against one another, which feels more manageable to me than jumping back to the 90s to stop a scientist, then the 80s when that didn’t work, then the 70s when that didn’t work.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Back to the Future, which only goes to one time period, is simple and easy to follow, whereas Back to the Future 2, which goes to four different time periods, is clunky and not as enjoyable. So you need to find a structure like the one I presented above that’s actually manageable.
But I’m willing to stay open-minded. When I look at the AI-generated poster from above, all that stuff *does* look exciting. I would love to have dinosaurs in this story somehow. But can you do it in a way where it’s organic and makes sense? That’s the question. Colin has had this idea for a while but he can’t crack it. Well, Scriptshadow Nation, here’s your chance to crack it for him.
:)
Last week we had the official Logline Showdown. But there were so many good entries in the comedy genre, I decided to do a second showdown week just for the comedy entries. That’s what’s so great about Scriptshadow. You never know what’s going to happen next!! There are no rules!
Well, except that you have to vote for your favorite logline in the comment section and that you have until Sunday, February 9th, at 11:59pm Pacific Time to cast your vote.
Also, get those first pages ready for First Page Showdown, which is just 3 weeks away.
What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Onto the competition. Maybe the funniest logline win!
Title: Higher Than The Moon
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Convinced by a cocaine loving alien that they can make a fortune in the intergalactic drug trade, ambitious New Jersey mobsters kidnap a disgraced NASA scientist and task him with developing a space program for the mob.
Title: Globe Busters
Genre: Comedy Drama
Logline: A lonely NY journalist reports at a flat earth convention and joins an extreme conspiracy society known as the Globe Busters where together they embark on an expedition to Antarctica to climb the Ice Wall and reach the edge of the world.
Title: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Logline: Two feuding inventors with a lifelong rivalry use their newly created time machines to destroy the other’s past, present, and future, in order to be remembered in history as the father of time travel. TIME AFTER TIME meets GRUMPY OLD MEN
Title: UNPROTECTED
Genre: Comedy/Action
Logline: A former unwitting mob doctor turned small-town veterinarian must rally his skeptical family to survive after FBI budget cuts kick them out of Witness Protection and put them back in the mob’s crosshairs.
Title: Meet Me in the Middle
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A transgender rights activist and a January 6th rioter find themselves seated next to each other on a chaotic holiday flight out of D.C., only to be quickly added to the No-Fly List. What follows is a planes, trains, and automobiles journey through middle America, where the unlikely duo must navigate their differences, find common ground, and muster a bit of compassion—all in the hope of keeping America’s holiday dinners drama-free.
Title: Adultery Alert
Genre: Romantic comedy (meets Minority Report)
Logline: In the near future, technology can predict cheating, allowing couples to break up before experiencing the trauma. So when Mark discovers, ahead of his fiancée, that one of them is going to cheat before their wedding, he will do everything he can to prevent it and keep her from finding out about the alert.
Title: T’d Up
Genre: Comedy
Forced into retirement and facing bankruptcy, the NBA’s most notorious trash-talker becomes a referee to claw his way back into the league and prove everyone wrong.
Title: IPOwen
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a down-on-his-luck insurance agent in a dead-end town loses his wife, his job and his apartment on the same day he turns 40, he decides to reboot his life by putting himself on the stock market, with an army of shareholders controlling his every decision.
Title: DEI HARD
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Due to DEI cutbacks, a portly and aging female assassin is unceremoniously shit-canned and forced to take a job working the front desk at hotel, but her past skills become helpful when the building is invaded by her former employers sent there to kill a star witness, her new asshole boss.
