Genre: Period
Premise: Set in 1862, after his sister is kidnapped by soldiers, a half-white, half-Comanche teenager teams up with several members of his tribe to track the soldiers East in an attempt to rescue her.
About: Today’s script finished with 6 votes on last year’s Black List and has a pretty good pitch – from the Black List: “A reverse SEARCHERS from the perspective of the Natives going East into the unknown, the metropolis, the belly of the beast, late 1800s New York City.” Screenwriter, Esteban Orozco, has written several successful TV shows, the most popular of which is “El Chapo” on Netflix.
Writer: Esteban Orozco (based on a story by Esteban and Felipe Orozco).
Details: 6/29/19 draft (107 pages)
I got the message loud and clear yesterday.
Superhero = bad.
Bad, Carson!
So I decided to go 180 degrees in the other direction. The only superpower you’re going to see in today’s script is the power to watch pretty sunsets. The power to ride wild horses. The power to eat buffalo meat.
The year is 1862.
The Comanche tribe’s numbers are dwindling. Just a few decades ago, they had all the buffalo they could devour. Now, the herds have dwindled, creating a situation where the last active nomadic tribe in America has to constantly be on the move in order to stay fed.
That’s how we meet them in this story, settling in an area where there were SUPPOSED to be buffalo, but there are none. The Chief is yelling at his main buffalo guy, Yapa, about it. Now they’re going to have to move AGAIN.
The Chief thinks his half-white son, 14 year old Naconi, should be on the next hunting trip. They head north, finally run into some buffalo, but Naconi makes a crucial mistake and almost gets himself and the best hunter in the tribe, Quan, killed. He’s so embarrassed that the very next night he hops on a horse, determined to leave the tribe forever.
However, his 8 year old full-Comanche sister, Etenia, sees him and follows him out. After he tells her to go back home, several members of another tribe take her. And then that tribe is attacked by American soldiers, who take her.
Once it’s determined that not only did American soldiers take Etenia, but that they’re heading east fast, the Chief teams Naconi up with Quan, Yapa, their medicine guy, and 15 year old Tenewa, a young female warrior who thinks guys are gross. They will be tasked with getting Etenia back.
The group tracks the soldiers all the way to Oklahoma City, where they learn they’re too late. The soldiers boarded a train and went back to New York City. Team Comanche has never even seen a train before. And they realize that going to New York is suicide. Comanches are not thought of well during this time. But Naconi is determined to right his wrong, and lead the group into the belly of the beast.
Simple story. Complex characters.
Let me say that again.
Simple story. Complex characters.
This is the recipe for most great screenplays.
Lots of writers are afraid to give you a narrative this simple – “Go retrieve sister” – because they believe that great writing needs to be complex and multi-layered and have twelve themes running underneath it at all times. Complexity has its place in writing. But it’s best saved for the characters. Give us someone like Beth in The Queen’s Gambit who had this crazy mom who tried to kill the both of them and she’s a math genius and she feels no emotion and she’s thrust into the world of a sport dominated by the opposite sex. There’s so much to delve into character-wise there that you don’t need a bunch of complex plotting.
Ironically, we have the same thing going on today that we did yesterday. A young girl has been kidnapped. That’s not a coincidence. The reason so many writers do this is that it creates a simple, powerful, narrative that’s easy to understand.
One of the problems I’m constantly running into with the contest submissions is that I’m getting confused about what’s happening. And that’s just in the first 10 pages! I can only imagine how lost I’d be if I had to read all of these scripts cover to cover. Writers are obsessed with cramming a million things into the first ten pages and then they’re surprised when you can’t keep up.
I was so at ease reading this because I understood what was going on immediately.
Another thing I like in scripts is when the task seems impossible. The more impossible you make it, the better. Orozco establishes early on the Comanche are persona non grata. They have a bad reputation with Americans so when they’re caught, they’re killed. Or enslaved. And now you’re telling us that, in order to save this sister, we have to go to the most populated place in all of America?? Of course I’m going to keep reading to see what happens.
However, Nomads makes a crucial structural error that keeps it from reaching double worth the read status. It puts us in New York City a little after the midpoint.
Yikes.
Why is this an “error?” Well, the script is designed around geographical momentum. We’re physically getting closer and closer to our destination, encountering obstacles along the way. Once you put us in New York City, there is no more movement. It’s all waiting. Waiting sucks away plot momentum. And the script nosedives as a result. It’s clear Orozco doesn’t quite know what to do because, after having his characters set up shop in a warehouse, days start going by. Then weeks. Then whole seasons!
Waiting…waiting…waiting…
What do I always say? WAITING NARRATIVES ARE HARD TO MAKE WORK. And here they’re waiting for some ship to come into port that they heard Etenia is going to be placed on. So Etenia is actually somewhere around them, but they don’t know where. Yet they hear she’ll be put on this ship once it arrives. So they have to wait for that ship. A quick Carson consultation could’ve solved this issue pronto. This decision killed much of the story’s momentum.
So when should the plot have got to New York? It’s simple. The third act! The break into the third act is when you want to get to your final destination. From there, you still have 25 pages to have them locate the sister and rescue her. That’s plenty of time.
This script was good. But it could’ve been really good.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I find that some writers are reluctant, when writing period pieces, to include urgency. I get it on some level. The further back you go in time, the slower the world was. So it seems inauthentic to add some highly urgent timeline. I mean, it took 4 days by train to get to New York from Oklahoma. If they get to New York and learn that they only have 30 minutes to save Etenia, the audience would be like, “Excuse me, what?” HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean you should employ the opposite tactic – giving your heroes months to “solve the crime.” The way you want to do it is to add as much urgency as is acceptable in that time period. I think a few days would’ve been perfect. It still seems like time is running out in 1864. But it’s not so immediate that it comes off as unrealistic.
