Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise: A mild-mannered American analyst climbs the ranks of a ruthless London investment firm, only to discover a horror more frightening than the industry itself: the insatiable monster awakening within him.
About: This was a big sale that had 8 bidders. Netflix won it. It will star their new male lead darling, Taron Egerton (Carry-On). The movie will be produced by Safehouse, which made one of my favorite movies last year, Novocaine! Writer-director Halil Ozsan was the lead singer of a band called Poetry for Pornstars, who once opened for Guns and Roses.
Writer: Halil Ozsan
Details: 117 pages

If you want to outsmart the market right now, a tiny little lane that may prove fruitful is writing anything that leans into an exploration of masculinity. The media has spent the last decade doing everything in their power to destroy masculinity. And, finally, the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction.

I’m personally working with a writer who’s writing a show for a major cable network and the show explores masculinity on a deep level. And the network is obsessed with that. It feels like they care more about that theme than the plot and the characters!

In fact, I would go one step further. I would say that if you’re a horror writer, come up with a clever concept built around toxic femininity. I have ZERO DOUBT that a clever horror premise built around that subject matter would sell in seconds. Not something that’s hateful, though. It’s got to be clever.

That whole approach is exactly what’s landed this project a deal. It’s all about masculinity. So let’s get into it!

We’re in modern-day London. American, Petey, is married to his sweetheart of an English wife, Charlie. She loves him more than anything. But she can’t seem to see him for who he really is. Charlie is a weak feminized version of a man. He cowers away when bad guys attack his wife on the train. He allows men at work to bully him around. His testosterone is so low, he can’t even get his wife pregnant.

Petey has just started a new job at Sterling-Wolfe Investment Bank, one of the biggest banking firms in the world. He’s an assistant to a trader and his job amounts to getting coffee for his boss, Jackson, a real alpha male.

Petey ends up getting so frustrated with his lack of aggression that one night, he gets out of bed and just goes running. He ends up naked and passed out in the middle of nowhere. But when he gets home, he feels something… different within him.

The first thing he does is ravish his wife (for the first time in months). He then flirts with the hottest scariest female trader in the company, Alexis. He then embarrasses Jackson in a board meeting, going over his head and suggesting a risky trade that a client ends up loving. All of a sudden, Petey is on everyone’s radar.

But Petey also has a growing appetite… for flesh. First it’s his own wife. As well as Alexis, who he starts having sex with. But it isn’t long before he’s taking night jogs and eating fellow joggers.  And here I thought I was flexing by getting a double-double animal style 10 minutes before In & Out closed.

After Petey executes an illegal game-changing trade at his company that makes them tens of millions of dollars, Jackson realizes that Petey is officially coming for his job. So Jackson announces that it’s war. Well, Petey’s new persona takes that declaration very seriously and ends up eating Jackson! I guess that’s one way to get a promotion!

(Spoilers) Eventually, Petey’s now-pregnant wife takes the blinders off and realizes that Petey’s gone absolutely insane. After having the baby, she straight-up leaves him. That’s okay. Petey still has his game-changing trade that’s going to turn him into a generational super-employee at Sterling-Wolfe. That is until Alexis runs off with the money. Leaving poor Petey alone, broke… and hungry.

I want to talk about STORY DESIGN today.

Story Design is: How your story is put together.

And I bring this up because in our recent discussions about AI, I’m realizing that AI is really bad at this. What AI seems to be built on, in the storytelling department, is that classic 1980s 3-Act structure popularized by Syd Field.

The problem with the Syd Field approach is that, when you follow it exactly, it gives you a “correct” movie. But also a very predictable and forgettable one. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use the 3-Act structure. I’m a huge advocate of the 3-Act structure.

But the genius of impressive screenwriting is the little ways in which you make your screenplay messy. That messiness is what makes it human. And Alpha is a great example of that.

Alpha’s first act is its own story. It literally has its own three acts. We meet this guy who’s trying to start a new life. He’s weak and lacks any masculinity. He goes through his daily routine. And we see him get kicked around by life.  Then we seem him engage with some animals. And then he turns into this Alpha Male version of himself by the end of the first act.

Normally, you’d do this as you’re telling the entire story. So, you’d have him at work a lot longer before this alpha side of him took over. But the first act is literally its own contained story about a man turning into an animal. And it’s a little bit weird. And some screenwriting professors would probably call it wrong. But that’s exactly why it works. Because it’s a little messy.

And you may say, “Well, how do I make a script that’s messy but not so messy that the whole screenplay falls apart?” I’ll explain how to do that in a second.

But first, another good example of this is The Housemaid. I just watched it the other day. It’s a fun movie! It’s campy and silly. But it knows exactly what it is and executes it perfectly.

Spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet.  But The Housemaid has this late Act 2 twist whereby we learn that the wife has been setting up the maid the whole movie so that she’d get stuck in her place with her abusive husband. And it creates this really messy narrative that forces the last 30% of the movie to turn into something completely different from the first 70%.

But that messiness works for the movie. It makes it a little bit weird. And this is something that AI just isn’t ever going to understand. Us humans are human because of our imperfections. Same goes for our screenplays. Our screenplays become living breathing things because of their imperfections.

Now, how do you make something messy that doesn’t fall apart because of its messiness?

The answer, actually, is simple. CONSISTENCY IN YOUR MAIN CHARACTER. As long as you have a main character with some sort of flaw or inner conflict that they’re battling with over the course of the movie, then they’re going to be the CONSTANT that smooths over any messy VARIABLE that pops up in the narrative.

Petey and his battle with his masculinity help smooth over any quirky script problems because he’s interesting enough that we want to see what happens next with him. And that’s it! It’s as simple as that.

If Petey all of a sudden started struggling with his stubbornness in Act 2, the reader’s going to get confused. They’re going to say, “Wait, who is this character again? What are they about? They were about masculinity a second ago. Now they’re focused on being less stubborn?” That’s how character inconsistency rears its head.

I thought this script was pretty good. It made some respectfully risky creative choices. Petey has this pregnant wife. Yet he’s having sex with Alexis.  Hollywood doesn’t usually do that sort of thing in a mainstream movie.

I do think Alpha wants to be American Psycho but with a werewolf. But I don’t think it’s smart enough to accomplish that. It’s still an entertaining script, though!

Screenplay Link: Alpha

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

What I learned: Please, all writers, spend one day of your life to figure out the difference between “its” and “it’s,” as well as “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Your writing will look SO MUCH MORE PROFESSIONAL.

This is a big big BIG newsletter, guys. We have a giant conversation about AI and the unavoidable reality of how it’s going to affect our love of screenwriting. It’s a conversation that probably doesn’t go the way you think it will. Also, we got an Osculum Infame producing update. We’ve got a review for the hot new short story that sold. And the good news is, you’ll be able to read it yourself! You know I gotta give you my thoughts on that latest Mandalorian trailer. Did Dave Filoni save Lucasfilm after the disastrous Super Bowl spot? We’ve also got several other trailer thoughts, all with great screenplay tip reminders within them!

If you didn’t receive the newsletter or you’re not yet on the Scriptshadow Newsletter list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. I’ll send it to you!

Last week, I challenged everyone to send me a query e-mail for their screenplay. The best query got a script review on the site. Monday, I posted the winning query. Tuesday, I reviewed the script from that query. Wednesday, I showed you how to write the perfect query. And today, I’m going to go over several queries that didn’t make the cut and explain WHY.

Let’s jump into it, shall we? Here’s the first one.

Hi Carson,

I hope you’re well. I’ve been following the site since it was scriptshadown.com. Thought it would finally be a good time to reach out and submit a script.

I’d like to share Claus: Rise of the Northman, a large-scale action epic that reimagines the novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), as a violent, mythic, emotionally charged war epic. It aims for the scope and savagery of Braveheart, Gladiator, The Northman, and The Outlaw King.

“In the brutal snows of the far North, a young warrior named Claus rises from loss and bloodshed to lead an impossible rebellion, battling a monstrous army and their evil warlord and forging a legend that will echo for centuries – the origin story of Santa Claus.”

This is not a holiday film. It’s a grounded, R-rated action epic rooted in sacrifice, love, revenge, and legacy – a mythic origin story in the spirit of Robert Eggers and Ridley Scott, but with the emotional payoff of a timeless legend. The red coat doesn’t begin as a symbol of joy – it’s earned in blood.

At its core, this is a four-quadrant epic origin story built for global audiences. It has franchise potential and strong merchandising/IP expansion upside, while still standing alone as a prestige action film. Work has already begun on the graphic novel.

I’ve written and/or directed 15 feature films that have played across every major streaming platform. My work has landed in Netflix’s Top Ten, and I’ve had films hit #1 on both Hulu and Paramount+, that have starred the likes of Malin Akerman, Luke Wilson, Simon Rex, Amy Smart, Val Kilmer, and Kelsey Grammer, among many others.

Attached please find the script and an image from the graphic novel.

Thanks for your time Carson, and whether or not it’s chosen, keep up the great work as I’ll continue to follow your site daily.

Best,
Shane (personal information edited out by me)

*******************

This is a great example of what happens when you send a WALL OF WORDS out. I open the e-mail and I see this long thing that I have to get through. I’m going to read it but I’m already kinda annoyed. Because whenever somebody sends me a long e-mail, it always rambles. It rambles on and on and on. It sucks for the writers who actually know how to write a long e-mail because the ramblers ruin it for you.

Then I read the first line. I have no idea what “scriptshadown” is. I’ve never run a site called scriptshadown. So, at that point, I’m thinking the writer doesn’t really know the site. I talked about this in my “perfect query” post yesterday. You want to relate to the person in that opening couple of sentences. But make sure your research is accurate! Because as soon as I read that, combined with the Wall of Words, I went into skim mode.

I continued to read the logline and then I ran into “Santa Claus.”  For whatever reason, I get pitched a billion Santa Claus scripts.  I don’t know if that’s true for the entire industry but it’s true for me.  This has made me resistant to Santa Claus material.  This query has now hit the 3 red flags mark so I skimmed the rest and moved on.

The irony is when I went back to this e-mail today, and I read through it fully, I saw that the writer was super-legit! This guy’s written and directed number one films on streaming services before! But I never got to that part of the query because of the Wall of Words submission and the bad research.

There are a couple of things here worth talking about. I think this line is fine: “I’d like to share Claus: Rise of the Northman, a large-scale action epic that reimagines the novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, written by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), as a violent, mythic, emotionally charged war epic.” It’s fine because it conveys the tone of this unique story. But I don’t think you then need to list other movies it’s similar to. You have to cut words somewhere in a query. Again, we’re dealing with busy people here.

All this other stuff about “this is not a holiday film” and “this is a four-quadrant” movie is just noise. And it’s wasting the reader’s time. You’ve given us the tone. You’ve given us the logline. If you have to then explain to the recipient that it’s not a holiday film and that it’s a four-quadrant movie, then you haven’t done your job with the logline. They should be able to determine that on their own. And, really, it’s up to them to decide anyway.

Now, in regards to personal accomplishments, this is something I didn’t address in yesterday’s post because I’m assuming that the people sending these queries out haven’t had any accomplishments yet. But if you’re like Shane, then you should definitely include your accomplishments. The issue I typically see is writers including accomplishments that hurt rather than help them.

They’ll say that they finished in the 3rd round of the Beach Street Screenplay Contest. Or that their short film won the audience award at the Rhode Island Digital Sunrise Invitational. I’m not even sure I would mention a produced movie you wrote if nobody’s heard of it. I’m okay with mentioning “finalist” or “winner” of major screenwriting contests in the last several years, maybe a top 20 showing on the Black List. But that’s it.

*******************
On to the second query…
*******************

Since it’s impossible to recapture some of the styling in html, the only way to properly make my point here is to take a picture of this e-mail query. Here it is:

In the history of my receiving screenplay queries, one of the more reliable ways for me to know if the script is weak is a query that has multiple fonts, multiple text sizes, lots of styling, lots of misaligned text.

I think I understand what the writer is thinking with this approach.  They want to stand out.  And they feel that if they add some pizazz to the presentation, it’s going to separate them from the pack.  It does separate them from the pack.  But in a bad way.

E-mail isn’t designed for a controlled layout.  So, once you start messing with formatting inside of an e-mail document, it’s going to look “off.”  And what’s worse is, once it ends up on a different e-mail program (you made it in Mac Mail and sent it to someone’s gmail), the text always gets screwed up somehow.  So all that extra work resulted in your e-mail actually looking worse.

It’s just not worth it. Whenever I see it, my first thought is, “Amateur writer who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”  And I can promise you that that’s how 99% of the working people in the industry will see that e-mail as well.  Look at how much cleaner this query looks…

Just use regular fonts.  Regular formatting.  Keep it uniform (don’t use 12 point font in one section and 14 point font in another).  Anything else ends up looking sloppy and unprofessional.  It’s hurting your chances of accomplishing a very simple goal, which is to tell someone that you have a cool screenplay they should read.  If they’re put off by the zaniness of the formatting, they won’t be able to see that.

*******************
On to the last query…
*******************

Sit down, shut up, and listen. “The Facetakers” is science fiction horror with teeth, because the monster is not in the woods, it is in your head. An omniscient AI called The Sum already won the world decades ago, and it runs the planet through an electronically induced hypnotic narcosis called the Experiential Grid, a global augmented reality streamed straight into human brains. It can make you see day at midnight, hear voices in the static, and walk smiling into your own execution. When someone is marked for replacement, the system hits them with a Kill Tone, then sends a Facetaker, a hollow android full of circumducting gold and plasti-bone, wrapped in polymorphic endoplasm that can become skin, hair, clothes, even your loved one’s face. These things do not just kill you, they become you, and the older they get the more their minds fracture into a blood-lust religion where they bathe in victims and feed on fear.

After a blistering cold open on a moon base that announces the scale and the rules, the movie clamps shut into a single location siege: one isolated 1980s time-capsule lake property in 2027, one house with forty windows, a covered bridge, a generator-lined basement, and a perimeter that turns into a kill box.

The script is a mix of Videodrome, Black Mirror, and The Matrix. 1980s Body Horror modernized and perfected.

I included this last query as a catch-all for the writers who want to buck tradition and query with something unorthodox. The reality is that this can work. In a world where everyone sounds the same, it can help if you sound different. But there’s no question that it’s a risk. It’s no different from approaching a girl walking down the street. You can adhere to social norms and say, “Hi, I wanted to meet you.” Or you could come up and say, in a Yoda voice, “Want to have sex with you, I do.”

You’re going to get in a lot more conversations if you use the first option. But the rare girl who likes the second option is REALLY going to like you.

That’s what’s going on here. Starting your query by telling the reader to sit down, shut up, and listen is risky. But there will be the occasional reader who loves it. Cause it’s different. So, just know that if you’re going to be unorthodox, your hit rate is going to be a lot lower. But, hopefully, the people who do respond to it, will respond very positively.

Now, if that was the only talking point with this query, I’d say that the writer is okay. They have a strategy. They’re accepting the risk of that strategy. All good.

But there’s another problem. The visual of this query is off-putting. It starts with this giant paragraph. When I see a really long paragraph, it almost always means ‘rambling.’ That’s what I’m expecting. And that’s pretty much what we get here. We’re dropped into Neil’s mind and he’s vomiting his movie idea out at us.

And because the mythology is so specific and unique, it exacerbates the rambling. Wild terms are thrown at us (experiential grid, kill tone, facetaker) that mean nothing to us. And so they risk sounding like a homeless guy on the train blabbering at us mindlessly.

Finally, we get a poster. This is something I’m seeing more and more of with pitches – an AI Poster or AI images. I think we’re at the point where they’ve become ubiquitous.  And that means that they may hurt you more than they help you.

David Spade once said, “A limo is just a taxi that says you have a hundred dollars.”  An AI image in a query e-mail is the same thing. It doesn’t say you’re a visionary. It says you opened Midjourney.

The exception would be if you’re a power user.  You have a graphic design background and are entrenched in the AI revolution.  You’re genuinely creating images that the average person cannot.  But even then, I wouldn’t include it unless it looked extremely professional and perfectly encapsulated your movie.  Not does so in a “close enough” way.  It’s gotta be perfect.  (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of using AI images in my posts, so feel free to factor that into your final decision).

So, if I were Neil, I would break this e-mail up into smaller paragraphs. Don’t talk about extremely specific mythology. Save that for the script read. Try to be more purposeful with the e-mail itself (Here’s why I’m writing you. Here’s my idea. Let me know if you want to read the script). And then I’d probably ditch the image.

And that concludes QUERY WEEK!  If you have any other questions about queries, ask them in the comments.   Hope you guys all learned something. I always enjoy brushing up on this stuff cause some of it is easy to forget.

Enjoy your weekend and, oh yeah, the first person to e-mail me gets 40% off a screenplay consultation! E-mail me at: carsonreeves1@gmail.com now!

Last week, I invited all of you to query me with your scripts. Whoever had the best query got a script review. I reviewed that winner yesterday. And the script was pretty good!

Today, I want to give you a template for writing all of your future queries. This template is built on the thousands upon thousands of queries that have been sent to me over the years.

But before we get into the actual query, let’s talk mindset. Unless you have the right mindset, your queries will always be a mess. The proper mindset to have is: This person I’m sending this e-mail to is busy. They’re not interested in anything anybody has to send them that they don’t know. Therefore, I have to capture their interest quickly and efficiently, and then get out.

If you have that mindset, the response rate to your queries is going to go up radically.

In addition to that, remember that the person you’re sending the query to only cares about one thing: “Does this script sound like something I’d want to make into a movie?” That’s it. Which is why you want to keep things sparse. So that, if they want to, they can jump straight to the logline to determine if they like it or not.

By the way, this is why picking the best concept possible 12 months ago was so important. For THIS MOMENT RIGHT NOW. Because the producer/agent/manager you’re sending this to doesn’t care about your query. They care about the script. If you field-tested your concept a year ago, and you know people liked it, and you know it’s marketable, that’s going to pay off BIG TIME right now when you start querying people.

A lot of people ask me, when it comes to querying, should you include your personality? I used to think this was THE ONLY THING that mattered in querying. That queries were about entertaining the recipient. Making them laugh enough so that they’d remember you. But it’s not about that at all. I can count how many times ON ONE HAND that I was wowed by the query itself (not the logline).

Some light personality for genre-relevant queries (if you’ve written a comedy, for example, and want to display your humor) is fine. But the reader didn’t sign up for your stand-up routine. They’re trying to get through their day as efficiently as possible. They’re whipping through their e-mails. They see yours. They don’t know who you are. They’re opening it with about 20% of their concentration.

All they care about is: IS THIS A MOVIE IDEA THAT’S RIGHT FOR THEM?

Okay, now that we know the mindset behind writing the query, how do we actually write it? Let’s begin with the subject line. You have some flexibility here. But I’m going to keep going back to this mantra of: Keep it simple. My go-to is, give us the genre and give us a popular movie it’s in the vein of. You get extra points if the “in the vein of” movie is something that the recipient is connected to. Here are some examples.

Subject: Horror script in the vein of Weapons
Subject: Period thriller in the vein of One Battle After Another
Subject: Romantic Thriller in the vein of The Housemaid

You, of course, have some flexibility here. You can use crossovers as well: “Horror script. Housemaid meets Sinners.” But I’d limit it to those two options.

By the way, don’t use movie comps that didn’t make money. Don’t even use movie comps that made average money. Only use hits. And don’t use any old movies as single comps. It’ll make you look out of touch. But you can use one classic movie if you’re doing a crossover (“Rear Window meets Weapons”).

Okay, the next couple of steps are going to benefit heavily from you doing your research (which can be done through your favorite AI and IMDB Pro). Your queries will get ignored by 95% of the people you send them to if you address the recipient as a collective. “Dear sirs” equals trashed e-mail. “Dear to whom it may concern” equals recipient stops reading. You need to do your homework and address the person specifically.

“Dear James,” or “Hi Jennifer,” Use a real name!

Next, you’re going to introduce yourself. “Hi, my name is Carson.” Again, you’re keeping it simple. This should actually be the easiest part of your query.

Now, you’re going to butter them up. Buttering these people up is a lot more important than you think. If they believe you genuinely know who they are and what they’re responsible for, they’re going to like you. And if they like you, they’re going to read your query through a positive mindset.

If someone tells me that they love Scriptshadow and that they read it every morning. Or, even better, that they’ve been reading ever since [some very specific popular script review that only true Scriptshadow readers know about] then I’m now rooting for them. I’m literally rooting for them to win me over with their logline. Whereas, when someone clearly heard of my site through some third party and doesn’t know who I am and they’re just taking a shot in the dark at sending me something, I feel zero remorse for skimming through their query.

Here’s an ideal “buttering them up” line for an agent: “I’m a huge fan of your client Ryan Olsen’s Black List screenplay, Time Force. It was my favorite screenplay of the year.”

Should you lie during the “buttering them up” segment? Absolutely. It’s no different from actors putting all those bullshit skills on their resumes. All that matters is that you develop some sense of rapport in that moment. Because, here’s the truth: If you give them a script that makes them money, they’re not going to give a shit whether you lied to them or not. Nor will they likely find out anyway. I doubt the moment is going to come where they’re on the verge of repping you, but only if you can tell them what Kage Jackson’s fatal flaw was in Time Force. (spoiler alert: Kage Jackson has two fatal flaws, one for his Future Self and one for his Past Self)

After you butter them up, you’re going to use a very short and simple line: “I have a script that I think you’ll love.” Don’t say “like.” Use the word “love.”

Then you’re going to use a quick sentence to sell the logline. You’ll say something like, “It’s a movie that harkens back to those great action films they used to make in the 90s.” Or, “It’s what an Ari Aster movie would look like if it were a romance.”

Then, you give the classic, title, genre, and logline, vertically. You do this for a specific reason. You want to create visual isolation for your pitch’s key info so that if the recipient is busy, they can easily jump to it. I see too many writers burying their logline inside long paragraphs. Producers hate that. They want to be able to see it separate from everything else.

Title: For Your Heart Only
Genre: Romance/Horror
Logline: When a young demented man falls deeply in love with a woman, he cuts her heart out and places it inside of himself, so he can be as close to her as possible.

After that, you want to write a simple line whose only purpose is to say you’ll send the script over if they’re interested. Something like: “Let me know if you’d like to read it and I’ll send it right over!”

Close the message out: “Sincerely, Carson”

And that’s it. That’s your query. You don’t want to mess around here. You don’t want to overthink it. You’re just here to pitch a logline. That’s it. So don’t get in your own way by clogging up your logline with your biography or an additional summary of the script. The visual that presents is: WALL OF WORDS. And there’s no faster way to get someone to delete an anonymous person’s e-mail than a WALL OF WORDS.

Okay, without further ado, here is how the uninterrupted query should look…

Subject line: Romantic Thriller in the vein of Hereditary

Hi Nick,

My name is Carson Reeves. I’m a huge fan of the movies you’ve produced. I’ve watched Bloody Martyr a dozen times at least. I have a script that I think you’ll love. It’s what an Ari Aster movie would look like if it were a romance.

Title: For Your Heart Only
Genre: Romance/Horror
Logline: When a young demented man falls deeply in love with a woman, he cuts her heart out and places it inside of himself, so he can be as close to her as possible.

Let me know if you’d like to read it and I’ll send it right over!

Sincerely,
Carson

If you want to clean up your own query, I do query consultations for 60 bucks. That includes three follow-up e-mails where we make adjustments to your query until it’s perfect.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.  Or, if you need a consultation on your entire screenplay, we can do that too!

Genre: Period/Horror
Premise: When a young preacher’s wagon train to Oregon becomes trapped in a frozen valley, he must confront his waning faith and ally with a Native guide to protect the survivors from starvation and a monstrous Wendigo that hunts them.
About: Last week, I invited anyone to query me and promised to review the script behind the strongest query. This query won! You can read Caleb Hermann’s query in yesterday’s post.
Writer: Caleb Hermann
Details: 97 pages

This was a trip down memory lane for me. Back in the day, I used to have screenwriters send cold queries into my inbox then I’d just review whatever sounded interesting each Friday.

There was an excitement in having no idea what I’d get. Sometimes it would be Where Angels Die. Other times it would be Orbitals. It’s screenplay reading at its purest. I don’t know if I have the patience to do that anymore but having one of these random pitch sessions every once in a while sounds like fun. What do you guys think?

Godforsaken is my kind of logline. Contained. Heavy conflict. Marketable. A monster. Let’s see what today’s writer does with it.

Godforsaken starts by throwing us on top of a bullet. We’re in a horse-pulled wagon, shooting through the forest, some time in the 1800s, somewhere in middle America at the start of winter.

One of the men we meet is trying to aim his rifle at the Indians who are zipping around on their horses outside. But the wagon hits a rock, the rifle falls, hits something, accidentally fires, and blows half the man’s head off. What a way to start a movie!

We eventually realize that a whole caravan of these wagons is shooting through the forest, trying to evade the Indians. Another wagon spins out of control, detaches from its horse, and goes flying into a tree, where two women and six babies are instantly killed. Yoooooooooo!

The leader of this caravan is a man named Calhoon. Second in charge is, unofficially, the priest, Patrick. Once they clear the woods, they’re surprised to see that the Indians don’t kill them. They instead hurry off. Their desire to get far away from here is some not-so-subtle foreshadowing.

The rest of the band collects itself.  The group includes the leering potential rapist, Bill. The beautiful and caring potential love interest for Patrick, Theresa. There are the Jones’s, who are about to have a baby. There’s bible-thumper Miss Foster. There are the Smiths, who lost a baby to a heavy trunk during the forest chase. And then there are several others.

That night, one of the Indians, Takoda, shows up. Calhoon nearly kills him before he explains that they need to get off this land. This land is haunted. Up ahead is a bridge that will take them to a ridge, where they’ll be safe. Unfortunately, nobody’s about to listen to the guy who was trying to kill them several hours ago. His tribe wasn’t trying to kill them, he explains. They were trying to guide them away from this place.

As the group fixes up its wagons, they try to figure out their next move. The next night, the Jones woman goes into labor. Her baby is born, but it’s deformed. This sends Miss Foster into a religious hissy-fit, saying that the baby is evil. Immediately after the baby is born, during heavy winds, the Joneses are caught up in a tarp that simultaneously catches on fire. They are swept away and burned to death.

Patrick is starting to have second thoughts about Takoda. What if he’s right? What if this land is haunted? Unfortunately, no one has any desire to trust Takoda. For all they know, he could be leading them into a trap where his tribe slaughters them. But when more “bad luck” continues to befall the group, they get to the point where they have no choice but to leave. The question is: Will it be too late?

Godforsaken has a VERY STRONG first half. That opening scene is next-level. A few days ago, I talked about the power of creating DOUBT in the reader. Caleb shows you how to do it in a single scene. After this first sequence, you know that nobody is safe. Which kept me on my toes for, literally, the next 60 pages. That one scene made me terrified of what was around the corner next.

Ironically, Godforsaken is at its best when it focuses on reality. It’s got this birth scene about 40 pages in that destabilizes the screenwriting medium. You have this deformed baby that’s born. And then you have this crazy accident that results in the parents being whipped away by a tarp and burned alive in the process. You don’t see that scene every day!

That’s the way you want to do it. Get the best out of your key moments. Don’t expect the key moments to do the work for you. Most writers would’ve written a harrowing birth scene. But nothing like this. They would’ve stopped well before it got this crazy. And that’s what separates a scene. When the writer is determined to elevate it.

On top of this, Caleb did an excellent job distinguishing all the characters. I know this because almost every script I’ve read over the past month has had a difficult time distinguishing its characters. Cause it’s hard to do!

But there was never once where I said, “Who is this person again?” when a character returned. And I do that a lot in the screenplays I read. I always have to check the notes I took about the characters to remember who’s who.

How do you do this? You focus on key characteristics of each character early, then keep hitting them for the reader. Miss Foster is always using the Bible to make her points. Bill is always leering at kids and women. Theresa is always healing others. Calhoon is always arrogantly bossing people around. It sounds simple but most writers don’t do this. They expect you to know who their characters are because they know who their characters are.

Just, in general, I thought this was a great spin on the infamous Donner Party story. Throw a little bit of supernatural in there to give it a boost.

However, the second half of Godforsaken didn’t work nearly as well as the first half. And there are several reasons why. For starters, you run into trouble when you try to do two things at once. We’re making this the Wendigo creature’s land. And we’re making it a magic land. Which means both monster and magic can occur.

While I’ll never say that’s impossible to pull off, it’s a lot more challenging because it’s confusing to the reader. We’re unsure if this is more about the magical stuff or more about the threat of the creature. And then what tends to happen is that you start throwing both at the story and now things get messy. If there’s a major criticism I have for Godforsaken, it’s that the second half gets messy.

You guys know I hate messy. I hate it. And here, it felt like so many random things started happening that the rulebook got tossed out the window. You cannot throw out your rulebook in a supernatural narrative. That rulebook is the foundation for every creative decision you make. It all has to track.

(Spoiler) When Calhoon suddenly becomes half-monster, my reaction was: what is this story even about anymore? You already have an iconic creature in the Wendigo. So why are we turning Calhoon into a monster for the climax? I didn’t understand.

I see this all the time in scripts. Writers want a chaotic ending so they write chaos. But chaos still needs structure. There has to be a method to the madness. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel wild or bold. It just feels messy.

My rule for scripts that have one really good half is that if the good half is the last half, I give it a ‘worth the read.’ Because I’m leaving on a high note. But if the good half is the first half, that means you’ve raised my expectations and, if you don’t then deliver afterwards, I leave frustrated. So, unfortunately, today’s script gets a ‘wasn’t for me.’ But it’s a very respectable ‘wasn’t for me.’ A couple more drafts where you work out the second half will definitely elevate this to a place where someone might buy it.

Script link: Godforsaken

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but very close to ‘worth the read’)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Use conflict to hide exposition. Let’s say you needed to make it clear that Calhoon was leading this expedition. How do you do that invisibly? Without it obviously sounding like exposition? You put him in a fight with Patrick and he responds with this line: “Who do you think you are, preacher? I’m the one who calls the shots around here. I’m the one y’all settled on to lead you to paradise. You’d best stick to what you’re good at.” Note how we learned something about Calhoon yet we didn’t for one second realize we just read pure exposition. That’s because it was hidden in conflict.

If you want to clean up your own query, I do query consultations for 60 bucks. That includes three follow-up e-mails where we make adjustments to your query until it’s perfect.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.  Or, if you need a consultation on your entire screenplay, we can do that too!