We’re going old school here – an article that could’ve appeared on Scriptshadow 1.0. All you advanced word-slingers, take the weekend off. Cause I’m speaking to my newbie homies, those of you who just joined the craft and don’t know where to start or how to put pen to paper. You imagine a screenplay – those 120 pages – and think, “That’s insane, bruh. I could barely write a 5 page essay in college.” Do college grads still say, “Bruh?” God, I hope so.
This article is for those of you who have either never written a screenplay, have started one only to abandon it midway through, written a script and are so scarred by the experience, you never wanted to go back again, or who have written a couple of scripts which were so bad, you wouldn’t let your cat read them. I’m going to hollllld youuuuurrr hannnnd (Hootie and the Blowfish, playing ten times a day at your local supermarket). Because, when you break it down, it’s not that hard. You just need a plan, bruh.
The first thing you’re going to do is come up with a concept that’s easy to manage. One of the reasons screenplays become hard to write is that the writer is writing about the Kakstiblox Galaxy Civil War which covers destabilization in seven different star systems and has 186 characters and, oh yeah, an entire novel of backstory.
If you want screenwriting to be easy, pick a manageable concept, something easy to write. You want to pick Aged Keanu (John Wick) over Keanu Prime (The Matrix). Why? Because The Matrix has a very complex mythology that takes way too long to work out. John Wick is a guy who gets revenge because they killed his dog! You couldn’t come up with a simpler concept if you were eating vanilla ice cream on a slice of white bread. Ladybird over Titanic. Nightcrawler over X-Men. Palm Trees and Power Lines over Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Next, you’re not going to stress too much about your concept. I know, I know. This site mentally murders you every time you don’t repeat the mantra: “Concept is king!” That’s still true. Concept IS king. But “great” is the enemy of startyourfuckingscreenplay and one of the reasons we don’t write is because we keep waiting – endlessly waiting – for that perfect idea to come to us.
In lieu of a great idea, just make sure you have an idea you’re passionate about. You can write something great if you’re passionate about it. Take Alan Ball. He wrote about one of the most boring things in the world – suburbs. But it was a great movie because he was passionate about it. Passion can help make up for weak ideas. I see it all the time.
Give us a hero we love (preferably an underdog) and a villain we despise. This may sound like the most obvious advice ever but you’d be surprised at how many scripts I read that don’t have this. Again, we’re trying to keep things simple here so there are less barriers to entry on you writing your script. So go with the simplest hero/villain combo. Give us Star Lord and Thanos. Give us Daniel LaRusso and Johnny. Give us Frodo and Sauron.
Have your main character going through what you’re personally going through right now in life. Whatever that big hurdle you’re trying to get over in life is at this moment (fear of failure, perfectionism, selfishness, lack of self-awareness), have your character going through something similar. Not only is this going to make the character feel more authentic, but it’s going to make the character a lot easier to write. You won’t have to make up anything because you’re writing yourself! Yay, easy mode unlocked!
Okay, now let’s talk about the hardest part of writing the script: THE ACTUAL WRITING OF THE SCRIPT. Unfortunately, you can’t have ChatGPT write your whole script for you yet. So there will be some work on your end. But I’m going to make this as easy as possible by giving you a schedule and a plan.
Here’s how it’s going to work. You are going to write your script using The Sequence Approach. That means that instead of writing one big 120 page script (intimidating) you’re going to write eight 12 page scripts, also known as “sequences” (fun). The idea here is that once you start writing to never think of the whole script. If you start thinking of the whole script, you’re going to get intimidated and give up. Just focus on the current sequence you’re working on. Here are the eight sequences you’re going to write…
Sequence 1 – Setup: Set up your character’s life.
Sequence 2 – Resistance: Something shocking comes along throwing your hero astray. They must go off on a journey (either internal or external, but preferably external) but they don’t want to go. They want to keep their old life. That life you set up in sequence 1!
Sequence 3 – Leave for the journey: Off they go. Not ready to tackle this quest but they’re going to try anyway, darnit. This is also known as the fun-and-games section because the serious stuff hasn’t started yet which means your hero gets to have fun.
Sequence 4 – Encounter the first big obstacle: Something gnarly this way comes. The second act is basically about throwing a bunch of big obstacles at your hero and seeing how he deals with them. This is the first formidable one of those.
MIDPOINT
Sequence 5 – I’m still standing: The midpoint may have provided a dip in your hero’s confidence. But your hero is still determined to get the job done. So he’s got a little pep in his step, a little swagger going into the second half. A screenplay should look like roller-coaster ride. The hero starts off up (Seq 1), falls down (Seq 2), back up again (Seq 3), and down (Seq 4), back up again (Seq 5). You get the picture.
Sequence 6 – Things only seem to be getting worse: The reality of just how impossible this goal is is hitting our hero hard. The bad guys have the upper hand. The girlfriend leaves him. Nobody trusts him. This leads him to his lowest point. Either he’s almost dead or a good friend dies or maybe even HE dies (The Princess Bride). It will feel at the end of this sequence like the movie is over and the hero has LOST.
Sequence 7 – Rebirth and a plan!: Your hero has an awakening. He’s not going to give up. He’s going to take down the bad guy. But he needs a plan! So it’s time for him, along with the rest of the characters, to plan up!
Sequence 8 – Climax: It’s time to take the bad guy down!
You are going to write 3 pages a day for the first four days of each week. You then get to spend the last three days of the week catching up and rewriting. So if you only wrote 2 pages on Monday, this is where you make up that 1 page.
If you’ve written all 12 pages like a good screenwriter, use these three final days in the week to rewrite and make adjustments (maybe you realized a scene should come earlier so you have to move it). We do this so that everything REMAINS EASY. You don’t have excuses like, “I didn’t have enough time. I fell behind.” If you fall behind, you have 3 days each week to catch up. How easy is that!?
For those who forgot to go to math class, this means you will be writing one sequence a week. Since there are eight sequences, you will be writing for eight weeks. And at the end of those eight weeks, you will have a finished first draft of a screenplay. I have constructed this schedule so that you never feel rushed. This should keep things light and easy for you. Also, DO NOT JUDGE YOUR WRITING. If you judge, you will freak out and stop writing. Never judge yourself on a first draft. Judging is for later. :)
And there you have it.
Hey, what are you waiting for?? Come up with a concept so you can start writing your script THIS MONDAY!
Everything Everywhere All at Once meets Time Crimes meets Mulholland Drive
Genre: Drama/Supernatural/Trippy
Premise: Burdened by the loss of his wife to a suicide cult, an embittered investigative journalist infiltrates an elite secret society, only to find something far more sinister.
About: This script finished with 14 votes on last year’s Black list. The writer, Jonathan Easley, is on the cusp of having his first produced credit with the film, Red Right Hand, coming out soon and starring Orlando Bloom.
Writer: Jonathan Easley
Details: 112 pages
Garfield for Johnny?
Just yesterday I said I hated cult backstories. But for some reason, I like cult present stories. Don’t ask me why. Actually, I know why. Because the past is the past. And movies work best in the present. So, I can pretty much get on board with anything as long as it’s happening RIGHT NOW.
And right now, we’re going to jump into the midnight pool!
Johnny is the best writer at his Los Angeles magazine, Corrosion. But Johnny’s been distracted lately. His wife, Mary, ran off to join a cult called the Golgotha Saints. Like a lot of cults, it’s just an excuse for the leader, Dhanna Purandara, to do ayahuasca, have sex with people, and spout a lot of new age nonsense.
Because of this, Johnny wants to do a profile on the cult, but that profile gets upended when his wife leaves a voicemail saying she’s going to the other side. Johnny tries to get to the compound to stop her but it’s too late. Everyone in the cult commits suicide.
Cut to three years later and Johnny wrote a book about it that’s gotten him a lot of attention. One day, he receives some photos of a man standing on a beach in cult clothing. The man is him. Confused, Johnny has his tech guy analyze the photos to see if he can find anything, and the tech discovers metadata that they were taken in a small town north of San Francisco.
So off Johnny goes, and when he gets to the town, he starts meeting all these weird characters. Some burly twins. A MAGA type dude. A prostitute who loves to take off her clothes in front of Johnny within 30 seconds of meeting him. Through these new contacts, he learns about Bethel Horizon, a secret yearly party with billionaires that involves black magic, which he gets invited to.
Once inside, he starts hobnobbing with billionaires and is told by the party’s handlers that he can write about this 2023 Wicker Man party afterwards. Cool. Another story! Almost immediately, strange things start happening. The leader of the party, Beatrix Belladonna, paralyzes him with black magic then communicates with him without speaking. It’s trippy city here.
(Spoiler) Eventually, Johnny finds his way down to a secret pool in the basement of the central castle and hops in. Inside, he “finds God,” and when he emerges, he’s told that it’s actually 15 days in the past. Beatrix doesn’t even know who he is. After he finds his bearings, he agrees to team up with Beatrix to lure the other version of him here, the version of him that’s still back in Los Angeles. From there, they’ll figure out how to make these two Johnnies coexist together.
Noooooo!
This one started out sooooooo good. For 20 pages, my eyes were shaped like the word “impressive.”
But then I had to remind myself of a lesson I learned when I was a wee little boy. It occurred when I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “The Sixth Day.” That moment where Arnold comes home only to find ANOTHER Arnold with his family was one of the all time great movie moments for me. I was so pumped to find out what would happen next!
I then spent the next 100 minutes bored out of my mind.
This script reminded me of that. When Johnny sees those pictures of himself in a cult robe despite never having participated in a cult, I was deeply intrigued by how that was going to play out.
The reason I had more faith in this situation than that one was that today’s writer is exceptionally good at adding detail and specificity to his writing. That usually indicates a lot more effort has been put into the plot as well.
But as soon as we get to this manor, the story becomes a cornucopia of randomness. We got drugged out girls walking into rooms and tossing off their dresses, white horses that hang out in hallways, lumberjack twins, black magic paralysis, people who are dead one second but alive the next, time travel, multiple universes.
Even if you treat the randomness like you would a David Lynch film, I still felt that the writer missed some opportunities. What originally drew me in was the devastation this man went through losing his wife to this cult psychopath. Easily could’ve started the script with the wife already dead. But he created so much more impact by having us witness her death, especially with how pointless it was. After that, I was so connected to Johnny that I was willing to go anywhere with him.
So I thought Johnny was going to investigate and expose a similar type of cult. That way, even if he didn’t save his wife, he at least would find some peace in stopping another, similar, cult. But that’s not what this movie does at all. The Bethel Horizon is a totally different monster. They’re much grander in scope. They recruit billionaires. They seem to only meet once a year. They’re not even a cult, really.
Once we established that that was the movie, I grew less and less invested in the story. Cause I wanted to connect what happened to his wife to the experiences he was going through now.
To the writer’s credit, once we get into the midnight pool, which happened around page 80, the script finds its structure again. Post-Pool Johnny is determined to recruit his past self to come up to the manor. It’s here where we learn that all of the photos Original Johnny was sent and the mysterious messages he got came from himself in the future. This Johnny is sending him these messages.
Still, I didn’t really understand the stakes of this. Why do we need to bring this other Johnny here? And then we get a double trippy plot development where we find out we’re not in our past but we’re in another universe’s past. In this separate universe, the other Johnny got married and moved on.
Which is cool, I guess. You’re capitalizing on the Everything Everywhere All At Once train. But to what end? Now I’m just confused. I don’t know why we need the other Johnny to come up here. And it doesn’t feel like the writer knows either.
Usually, when you’re writing a script like this, you’re trying to find the character arc that ends the story on the highest emotional note. Like in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Evelyn must finally accept her family. That’s the whole point of the movie, is that character arc. I don’t know what Johnny is trying to accomplish here. He gets mad at the other Johnny for moving on from Mary. But what does that mean? Where’s the emotional catharsis in that?
Look, screenwriting is hard. Not only writing a great story but writing an arc for your character that works on its own and also effortlessly weaves in the plot, is tough stuff. But you have to keep rewriting until you get there or else you get scripts like this. Scripts that have good moments but that, ultimately, don’t come together in a satisfying way.
With that said, if you like absurdist stuff – David Lynch and those types of movies – you might dig this. It certainly has its charms. It just gets too messy in places.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This script reminded me of the power of seeing a death and the way it affects our hero as opposed to the death happening before the movie started. I think sometimes you don’t have a choice other than to place the death in the backstory, especially if you want to start your script with the plot already moving. But as an extended “cold open,” a family related death really makes us sympathetic to our hero. Easley nails that here in The Midnight Pool.
HOLY SMOKES! A GREAT SUBMISSION SCRIPT IS COMING YOUR WAY NEXT WEEK! STAY TUNED!
Genre: Drama/Light Sci-Fi
Premise: Set in the near future, a group of women partake in an experiment at a mysterious company that promises to solve their inability to find love, albeit do so in controversial ways.
About: Darren Aronofsky. Need I say more? He’s one of the executive producers on this show, which is written by a fairly new writer, Kit Steinkellner, who created the Elizabeth Olsen series, “Sorry for Your Loss.” The Answers, which will premiere on FX, is based on the book by Catherine Lacey. This is her second novel.
Writer: Kit Steinkellner
Details: 56 pages
Letitia Wright for Mary??
Okay, so I’ve got some awesome news!
I just read a submission script that was an “[X] IMPRESSIVE.” You know how rare that is around these parts so it’s time to get excited! What I’m going to do is reach out to a few people and see if I can help the writer out. And, then, what I’m going to do is review the script next Tuesday. I’ll post the script as well so you can all read it. It’s *really* good, guys. It totally took me by surprise. You’re going to love it.
NEXT TUESDAY – BE THERE!
Okay, moving on to the constantly evolving TV space. This medium is a strange beast. Every four months, the pieces seem to shift on the chess board. Outside of HBO, I don’t know if there’s a legitimate second tier contender for consistent quality television.
FX used to be high on that list with shows like Fargo and The Americans and Legion. Now, I’m not sure what they are. They do have The Bear, which is a great show. But they’re also torturing us with series like Y The Last Man.
I guess every network has their hits and misses. But it feels like FX is missing a lot more than they’re hitting these days. Let’s see if today’s script changes that.
Our pilot starts out with a series of interviews. Various women in their 20s and 30s are explaining their disastrous dating lives. One woman says she loves having sex but doesn’t ever like the men she has sex with. Another says that she’s so forgettable that men who she hooked up with literally forget her face the next day. Still another is angry that society tells her it’s bad to have high standards of men. And then, finally, we have our heroine, Mary, who is a year out of a relationship and she’s still not over the man.
We pull back to learn we’re in a place called “The Center,” which is run by doctor/therapist/CEO, Lawrence Crowe. Crowe assures all of these women that along with his principle assistant, Doctor Sylvie Ellis, that he can fix their problems for good. But, in order to do so, they will need to enter an experimental program. They all agree, of course, because they’re desperate.
As soon as our five candidates are confirmed, they’re told that they will be dating Christopher Sky, a movie star and one of the most recognizable celebrities on the planet. Apparently, Christopher is having relationship issues as well so he’s volunteered himself. Each woman will date Christopher in a different capacity. One will be his “emotional” girlfriend. One will be his “intellectual” girlfriend. One will be his “sexual” girlfriend.
Mary’s date comes first and she makes the mistake of telling Christopher that all his failed relationships, which he thinks were the girls’ fault, are actually his fault, since he is the common denominator (Mary’s flaw is that she says whatever she’s thinking). This causes Christopher to end the date abruptly and Mary considers leaving the experiment. But after Christopher has a couple more dates, he realizes Mary was right and asks her to stay so they can give this a shot. Which means, “Tune in next week when the experiment continues!”
I don’t see “The Answers” helping FX anytime soon. There are some pretty big errors at the core of the pilot script that I don’t think are possible to overcome. The biggest sin of all is that, after reading the pilot, I still don’t know what the series is about.
Mary is here because she’s broken-hearted. But another girl is here because she can’t fall in love with men. Another girl expects too much from men. Another girl is here because guys always ghost her after they hook up.
All of these problems are so different that I was never sure what the program was attempting to accomplish. The best answer we get comes at the end of the pilot when Crowe excitedly tells Ellis that they’re going to “hack love.” The moment is delivered with such emphasis that you’d think it would clear things up. But it just made me more confused. How does “hacking love” stop guys from ghosting you? They seem like two different things.
It sounds obvious but if you’re not 100% clear with what your show is about, your show is dead before it gets started. Even though a show like Severance doesn’t tell us everything right away, it makes it very clear what the core story is – that these workers have decided to sever their work lives and personal lives so that the two will never meet.
The experiment is also sketchy, strange, and, quite frankly, hard to buy into. They’ve recruited an A-list Oscar-winning DiCaprio type supermodel famous actor to date all the women in different capacities, one of those capacities being straight sex. I mean, we’ve got the very hard buy-in that Leonardo DiCaprio said yes to such a thing that, if anybody found out about, he’d be canceled immediately. And then we’ve got regular women agreeing to de facto prostitution in a post #metoo era.
Buy-in buy-in buy-in. The audience will buy into one big ask. In rare situations, two asks. But if you keep piling on the insane situations, trust me, they’re going to stop buying in.
You’ve also got cliche backstories like the main character growing up in a cult. Let me just tell you guys this in case you don’t know. I read a LOT OF SCRIPTS with cult backstories. They’re not as frequent as DKB (dead kid backstory) but they’re the go-to backstory if you want to create mystery around your female character and make them weird, which Mary is.
I dare give this show the worst comparison any show can get, which is that this is the TV version of Spiderhead. It’s got a lot of that same murky purpose and weak rule-set combined with two evil (but seemingly nice) lab experimenters – and if I remember correctly, that movie was about making people love each other too. Whatever the case, that’s definitely not a movie you want to be compared to.
Was it all bad? No. I thought some of the dialogue was quite good. Here’s Mary sharing what went wrong in her previous relationship: “I made all this space for him. It’s like my life is this house and I built this huge room in the center of myself for him and now he’s gone and I can’t fill the space and I can’t get rid of the room. So am I just going to be empty forever? Because I think that’s going to kill me.”
I love when metaphors aren’t just there to be admired, but when they actually create some insight that you wouldn’t be able to convey otherwise. That’s how this read to me. That was the pilot’s biggest strength, its dialogue. The characters were all quite verbose and intelligent and I was engaged by most of the conversations.
But the script just can’t overcome how unrealistic it is. I understand that this is set in the near future when, maybe, the world is a little more lenient about these things. But the second this celebrity came in to just offer his services to these women so that they’ll get better – as if Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t have better things to do – I mentally gave up on the pilot right there. There’s just no way that happens.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I think this wants to be the next Handmaid’s Tale. But if you want to be the next Handmaid’s Tale, you have to have a clear hook. The Handmaid’s Tale has a great clear hook. In the future, fertile women are forced into child-bearing slavery. The concept is so clear and powerful. “Hacking love” is way too vague. Audiences don’t do well with blurry concepts. They just don’t. If they’re even a little bit confused about what a show is about, they won’t watch it.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: An interplanetary explorer and a little girl crash land on earth 65 million years ago and must make it to their escape ship while avoiding the most dangerous predators the planet has ever known.
About: 65 inched its way towards a 13 million dollar opening this weekend, landing in third place behind Scream 7 and Creed 3. The subpar showing means we’ll probably never get the sequel, 66. Although, now that I think about it, that probably wouldn’t be a very good movie. Movie Trailer Voice Guy: “In a worrrllld consumed by fire and ash, where not a single living thing is still alive, one microbe is determined to replicate… in an attempt to repopulate the planet.” Yeah, probably won’t be at that one opening day. 65 was written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who burst onto the scene several years ago with their breakout screenplay, A Quiet Place. This is their directing debut. The two first-timers had only 40 days to shoot the movie! For reference, Jurassic World had 115 days.
Writers: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
Details: 93 minutes
Is there anyone who looks more like a movie star today than Adam Driver?
You may be thinking I’m covering the third biggest story today (Scream 7 and The Oscars being 1 & 2) but everything about this project, this screenplay, this movie, is infinitely more interesting to me than Scream or the Oscars.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods wrote the spec script, A Quiet Place, five years ago. How cool is it that the script you’re working on RIGHT NOW could be the next Quiet Place. And how cool is it that several years later you could be directing a movie with freaking dinosaurs in it?? I just think that’s the awesomest thing in the world. It definitively shows you the power of a great script.
If I were still writing screenplays, this is the type of script I would write. A huge concept with a simple story – the kind of thing that works both on the page and in the theater. At least, theoretically. Maybe I’m about to learn my latest screenwriting lesson after watching “65.”
65 follows an interplanetary explorer (from another planet – not earth) named Mills. Mills is dealing with a daughter who grows very ill and then dies. But work calls so he has to get out there and keep sussing out the universe.
Halfway through his latest trip, an undocumented meteor cluster hits the ship and he crash-lands on earth…. 65 million years ago. Everyone in the cryo-bays is dead except for a 10 year old girl named Koa. Unfortunately, Koa speaks another language, so her and Mills can’t understand each other.
Mills realizes that when their ship broke up, the escape pod landed about 10 miles away on the side of a hill. And it’s still in tact. So if they can get to that, they can pop back up into space and wait for a rescue vessel.
But it’s not going to be an easy trip. Cause it’s 65 million years ago when dinosaurs were at their hungriest. Right away, Mills is attacked by a little baby runt lizard thing that’s as big as a large dog. He barely survives. And that’s one of the weakest animals he’ll to have to deal with!
As they traverse the jungle and try and communicate with each other (poorly), Koa spots something in the sky casually zipping past the moon. (Spoiler) Later, Mills sees it too, and we’re introduced to the coolest plot development in the movie – that the anomaly is the meteor that wipes out the dinosaurs. Yes, our duo happened to arrive on earth just hours before the most devastating moment in the planet’s history. Talk about bad timing.
Now, getting to the escape pod takes on significantly more importance. But, along the way, our duo gets the attention of a couple of T-Rexes. Unknown to Mills, the T-Rexes stalk them from a distance to the escape pod where they perform an all-out attack on our heroes, determined to keep them here and make them suffer the same fate as them.
Probably the hardest thing to do in a script like this is come up with two characters who we actually care enough about that we want to spend an entire 100 minutes with them.
Beck and Woods do all the right *technical* things in this screenplay. They give Mills a traumatic backstory where his daughter died of an illness. That’s what we’re told to do as screenwriters. If we want to build sympathy towards our protagonist, create a sympathetic situation for them. What’s more sympathetic than a parent losing a child?
Then you have the girl. This is a helpless little girl who’s scared and who only cares about getting back to her family. Who’s more sympathetic than a helpless scared girl?
Beck and Woods also incorporate a screenwriting tip I routinely encourage, which is to make things difficult for your characters. You never want anything to be easy for them. So B&W make it so Koa speaks another language. This creates a language barrier. Now it’s difficult for Mills and Koa to communicate even basic things, which makes their task of working together that much more difficult.
So far, no mistakes have been made in this screenplay.
Then you have the most ruthless landscape in history. Literally every inch of the 10 miles you’re going to traverse has potential danger within it. This creates tons of tension and suspense, which is exactly what you want in a movie like this.
Finally, Beck and Woods create one of the coolest ticking time bombs I’ve ever seen in a movie: THE meteor that killed the dinosaurs. I had a huge smile on my face when that plot point was introduced. And I gave the writers extra credit because they combo’d the inciting incident (the crash) with that meteor’s orbiting rocks, setting up the meteor from the get go. This makes the meteor’s arrival feel believable as opposed to forced.
All that should add up to a great movie, right?
Yes.
But it didn’t.
Why?
I had to sit with this one for a while because I didn’t know the answer to that question right away.
All I know is that the movie had some cool moments for sure. But I wasn’t engaged the way I wanted to be. Something was missing. And I tried to figure out what it was.
The first thing you look at is the main characters. There is an enormous importance to the audience liking the characters in scripts like this because there are only two of them. There aren’t any other characters to cut to. So if we don’t love the main protagonist, and love the co-protagonist, as well as love both of them together, nothing else matters. Doesn’t matter if you have sixty gazillion dinosaurs. We’re going to be bored.
One of the mistakes Beck and Woods made was DKB. DKB (Dead Kid Backstory) is a cancer upon screenplays. It is the single laziest attempt to create sympathy the screenwriter has access to and, therefore, often creates the opposite effect of what the writer is going for. Especially if you do what Beck and Woods did here, which was to endlessly repeat DKB. We must have seen Mills’s dead kid a thousand times throughout the movie (in videos and flashbacks) despite the fact that she’s dead!
Dead Kid Backstory can work if the movie doesn’t depend on it. Gravity is a good example. We never once see Sandra Bullock’s dead kid. But that backstory was enough to motivate the character (in that she wanted to get away from earth) and that’s all we needed. I suppose there are a handful of examples of DKB working but that’s a handful out of thousands of attempts. It’s just lazy.
The other big mistake they made was having Koa speak a different language. I think I know why Beck and Woods did this. A lot of these adult-kid team-ups inadvertently descend into the kid being the “adult in the room.” They’re smart. They’re precocious. And it just ends up feeling false, with the kid snapping back at our hero in ways that would never happen in reality. By creating this language barrier, there was no way the script would fall into this trap.
But in a movie with just two characters and those characters can’t have any real conversations? You’re playing with fire. That’s a long time to ask the audience to spend with characters without a single extended conversation. People get restless. Even in Beck and Woods semi silent film, A Quiet Place, there were full conversations that were had.
This is where writers can sometimes get ahead of their skis. They want to make some profound silent film. But silent films are freaking hard to pull off. Audiences don’t have the patience – especially these days – unless you execute a perfect 10 on the dive. Mixing metaphors here – roll with me.
The thing that ultimately did the script in was there wasn’t enough variety. This is a challenge you’re always going to run into in a script like this. 90% of the scenes are walking through a forest with dinosaurs peeking around the corner. You need to find ways to mix it up. And the ways they mixed it up didn’t work. For example, they tired to have a cave scene. But it was sloppily constructed and not very clear. “Mixing it up” only works when the mixed up part is good. Duh but, yeah, that’s the reality.
Oh, and one other thing that hurt 65 was that a concept like this necessities a large scope. There’s a natural let down when that scope isn’t met. The reason a movie like Palm Trees and Power Lines, which also revolves around two characters, works, is because the expectations of the concept are low. It’s two people stuck in a small town. 65, however, is overwhelmed by its gigantic premise, which eventually swallows it up. The audience wants more than the movie can give them.
I’m bummed out. Because the movie wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. And I’m going to cheat here with the rating because while there is no way this movie is worth the 20 bucks it costs to see in a theater, I do think it’s a strong streaming choice where the expectations are lower. And I have to support spec scripts and original material. We need more shots like this or else we’re going to be stuck with “The Creed Universe.” Dear lord help us all.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There is no other artistic medium that thrives in the present better than the movie. Movies are the most alive when they’re focusing on the RIGHT NOW. Therefore, when you put too much emphasis on things that happened in the past, you move away from what makes a movie work. That’s not to say you should never include the past in your scripts. The past informs who your characters are in the present. But if you’re going to go down that road, know that you are purposefully moving away from what makes a movie work. Therefore, you better have a great reason for it.
What I learned 2: One way to fend off repetitive storylines is to add more twists than the average screenplay. Add more shocking moments. 65 could’ve benefited from a couple more of those for sure.
Yesterday, we discussed the drudgery of formulaic writing via Rob Liefeld’s 2 million dollar monstrosity, “The Mark.” Today, I’m going to thank Andrea Moss for pointing me to Seth Sherwood’s tweet thread, which takes on the current industry formula for writing “elevated horror.” Sherwood is probably best known for writing 2017’s, “Leatherface.”
1. HOW TO WRITE “ELEVATED HORROR! A thread in which I tell you exactly how to harness your PTSD and A24 the shit out of your script to the point you may actually be able to use your FSA health insurance fund to pay for it cause it’s basically therapy!
— 𝕾𝖊𝖙𝖍 𝕸 𝕾𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖜𝖔𝖔𝖉 (@SethMSherwood) March 1, 2023
The reason I found this thread so interesting is because Sherwood is making the point of how cliched every script he reads in this genre is by highlighting the absurdly common beats that he sees over and over again. Don’t get me started on how often I encounter the gaslighting boyfriend. At this point, you might as well just make “And the Gaslighting Boyfriend” the subtitle to every horror script that hits the market.
But this isn’t just about horror. Sherwood’s analysis can be extrapolated to represent every genre. Because every genre has its own formula that could be skewered in a similar way. If there’s anyone who knows this, it’s me. Cause I read these violating scripts all day long.
Because of this, I started getting a weird feeling while reading Sherwood’s thread. It was a feeling of, “Is writing a good story even possible anymore?” Because it’s all been done already. So why even try? What are you bringing to the table that hasn’t already been done to death? Aren’t you just matching these same story beats over and over again in your script?
Think about that for a second. Really think about it. Why do you write screenplays? I believe most writers write them because they want to show the world their unique vision, their unique ideas, their individual creativity. And then they want to be celebrated for that. But if your scripts are following the exact same formula that Sherwood lays out, aren’t you just copying what someone else has already done?
I grapple with this question nearly every day. Cause I still want to write stories in some form or another. But if I’m not bringing anything new to the table, then I don’t see any point in pursuing that endeavor.
For example, I love Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I think it’s the perfect movie. So let’s say I write a high school script about some teens breaking the rules. Is there any chance in my movie being better than Ferris Bueller? No. Not in a million years. So what am I doing here? Trying to write the bad version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Getting back to Sherwood’s thread, something surprising happened in the comments. A writer pointed out, “That’s the exact formula for The Night House and that movie was awesome.” To which, Sherwood agreed. Then someone else said, “That’s the exact plot for The Howling.” Sherwood acknowledged he was right.
Other movies that he acknowledged following this formula were Midsommar, The Witch, Hereditary, Smile. All movies that got either really high critical marks or did well at the box office.
And even though I learn this lesson once every two months, I always have to learn it again. While, yes, formula can hurt you, it can also allow your script to thrive if the execution is strong.
Now, that’s a vague term: “Strong.” It doesn’t really mean anything without context. So let me give you an example. Every horror script starts with a cold open. Something usually freaky and mysterious happens in the first scene. Well, how you EXECUTE that cold open can range from boring and uninspired to exciting and original.
I read an amateur horror script a while back that had a girl hanging out in her house – her parents were away for the night. The doorbell rings. She goes to the door. She checks outside. There’s no one there. She shrugs, goes back to the living room, plays on her computer for another 30 seconds, and then we see a shadow shoot across behind her. She turns around, peers into the darkness of the hallway. Can’t make anything out. She turns forward and, standing in front of her, is a freak in a mask who then kills her.
Contrast this with the opening of It Follows, where we see this barely dressed girl run out of her house at dawn, continuing to look behind her as if something is chasing her. We can’t see anything though. Her fear is palpable as we try to piece together why she’s acting so strange. She’s so scared that she gets in a car and drives as far away as she can. She hides out on a beach, looking off in every direction, before we cut to the next morning where she’s dead and looks like someone stuffed her inside a trash compactor.
Both of these scenes are following the formula of a cold open. But one gives you the “seen it a million times before” version that doesn’t try to elevate the scenario. The other gives something thoughtful and original that makes you want to keep reading in order to get answers on what happened.
You have this exact choice – lazy and uninspired versus unique and exciting – 15-20 times throughout your screenplay. You have that choice in the way you introduce your protagonist. You have that choice with how you handle your inciting incident. If you’re writing a haunted house movie, you have that choice the first time your characters enter the haunted house.
How are you going to innovate and make these common moments feel fresh?
In addition to this, you have to create a protagonist who we both relate to (we’re sympathetic to their situation because it’s similar to something that’s happened to us) and who we believe. The character must act in a manner that is consistent with real life and, therefore, feels like a real person. As opposed to a character who just acts however the writer wants them to act in the moment, even if by doing so they constantly betray the original character that was introduced.
This is why The Night House worked so well. You believed Rebecca Hall’s character. For those who haven’t seen the film, Hall plays a grieving widower who is cleaning out the lake house that her and her dead husband used to stay at. She then starts seeing things that indicate he’s haunting the place. Rebecca Hall’s part of the mourning widow was written so authentically that we were pulled into her grief.
To expand on that. You’ve gone on a million dinner dates, right? There are no surprises when you go to dinner with someone. And it has acts, just like a script. You’re going to get the menu. Your’e going to choose something to eat. You’re going to chat and eat. You’re going to get dessert. You’re going to hopefully get her to pay the bill and then leave. However, if the person you’re with is engaging and fun and you guys are vibing, that dinner date that you’ve had a million times before all of a sudden feels fresh and new, because you like the company.
We care so much that Rebecca Hall’s character is going to come out of this okay that experiencing this with her is the equivalent of great company on a date.
So, the next time you write a script and you worry, like me, that you’re rehashing a formula that’s been used to death, and, therefore, are unconvinced you can give the reader a fresh experience, remember the two rules I just laid out above.
For every major beat in your story, try to come up with something a little (or a lot) fresher/original than what’s usually used in that scenario. And then give us a relatable genuine hero who we’re really rooting for. Those two things will help you supersede the limitations of formula which will result in a great script even if it’s, technically, similar to every other movie in that genre.
