Genre: Drama
Premise: A young woman gets a job at an investment firm where she’s the only African-American at the company.
About: This script made last year’s Black List, finishing with 7 votes. The writer, Meredith Dawson, wrote on Mindy Kaling’s Hulu adaptation of Four Weddings and a Funeral. She also wrote one episode of The Mindy Project 2 years earlier.
Writer: Meredith Dawson
Details: 107 pages
What I was hoping for when I opened this script was something akin to a workplace “Get Out.” Not only would that be a great pitch, but it’d probably make a good movie. If a friend told me, “You have to see this movie. It’s like Get Out, the New Girl at Work version,” I’d throw that in the Netflix queue right away.
Unfortunately, that’s not what we get. And I’m trying not to hold that against the script. One of the first lessons they teach you in review school is to review the movie you saw, not the movie you wish they’d made. I’m not sure that applies as much on a screenwriting site because sometimes the best way to explain something is to show how you could’ve done it better. And there’s a lot here I think they could’ve done better. Let’s take a look.
Naomi is a 27 year old African-American recent graduate of Stanford Business School who watches way too much Frasier on Netflix. On the night of her graduation, she hooks up with a gorgeous bearded white guy named Ben (page 9). The two are going their separate ways in life, however, so after they sleep together, they don’t talk again.
Naomi then starts her job at Harvey, Larter, and Saw, a venture capitalist firm where she quickly finds out that she’s the only African-American there. No worries. Naomi is used to this dynamic. But what she isn’t used to is when GUESS WHO shows up to team with her on her first job? That’s right, Ben (page 26). It turns out he works here as well!
Despite her attempts to keep her private life separated from her career, Naomi can’t help but fall into a steamy relationship with the sexy Ben. But Naomi’s beta-male co-worker, Nick, who secretly loves her, warns Naomi that Ben is bad. “How?” She asks. Nick says he knows these things and just has a feeling.
Noami and Nick put together a proposal for a new company to finance but Naomi’s boss, Iyana, flippantly rejects it. Weeks later, during a big company party, Naomi is shocked to see that Ben has brought a date. But not just any date. His girlfriend of six years (page 62)! Needless to say, Ben and Naomi’s relationship sours quickly.
But it gets worse. Ben tells Iyana she should invest in the same company Nick and Naomi liked, and this time Iyana likes the idea. So much so that she puts Ben in charge. Naomi asks Iyana what’s up and she says Ben was just more convincing.
Later, Naomi goes to a business dinner meeting with a client they’re trying to sign, an older man, and he puts his hand on her leg (page 88). Noami tells Iyana about it but Iyana does nothing. Disgusted with the way she’s been treated, Naomi decides to let the press know just how little her company cares about keeping women safe.
You’re probably wondering why I included page numbers in today’s summary. I did so for a specific reason. These are the only plot points in the script. By plot points I mean major plot developments that send the story in a new direction. Page 9, page 26, page 62, and page 88.
Four plot points for the entire movie doesn’t provide enough dramatic entertainment for an audience to stay invested. These are movies. They’re not real life, where it takes time for big things to happen. In movies big things need to happen consistently. We go nearly 40 pages between Ben’s arrival at the company and the reveal of Ben being in a relationship. And I would even argue that that’s B-story stuff. It shouldn’t even be the main plot.
Another issue is that there isn’t enough conflict. Conflict is the screenwriter’s best friend. You should always be looking for it. Your hero should be encountering obstacles and problems and issues from every direction. That’s what makes watching characters interesting, is seeing how they deal with the things that are thrown at them.
The first 60 pages of “Spark” is basically Naomi loving life, a party on the page, a 1 hour drive down Easy Street. That’s unacceptable in a feature screenplay. It also makes the ending weird. Because for 60-80 pages, this is a light soap opera. Girl meets guy. She falls for him. Turns out he’s in a relationship. So to then make the ending incredibly serious with major sexual misconduct allegations felt like it came out of nowhere. Had there been more conflict at work and had the tone been darker throughout, it might’ve worked. But in its current iteration, the final act felt like a different movie.
How would you fix a script like this? For starters, you have to understand the 3-Act structure. Something big needs to happen at the end of the first act. Something that sets the story in motion. Today’s writer made Naomi starting work the end of the first act. That’s not enough. It’s just continuing the good vibes. A seasoned writer would’ve gotten Naomi into work within the first five pages. And they would’ve had the sexual misconduct happen at the end of the first act. The movie, then, would be about dealing with the ramifications of what happened, trying to get someone to do something about it while, at the same time, trying to maintain your professionalism, your relationships, and your job. I haven’t read the Roger Aisles script that’s coming out but I can guarantee you the first instance of sexual misconduct isn’t going to happen on page 88. What this essentially means is that Spark has an 88 page first act. And that’s just not understanding screenplay structure.
There were other problems as well. 10-line paragraphs (this is one of the easiest ways to spot a new writer), a lack of clarity in the genre (is this a drama, rom-com, a dramedy?). All the business-speak consisted of buzz words and buzz acronyms minus the necessary specificity to connect it to the story (“But HEAL is puttering out high dividends for a company as young as it is AND we’re on track for FDA approval within the next year.”).
With that said, the writing itself was strong. Unlike that awful script I reviewed in the newsletter where I could barely get through a sentence, the prose was never overbearing and the writing was insanely easy to read, to the point where my eyes were shooting across the page and I never got lost.
But this script is not ready for primetime. There are too many Screenwriting 101 mistakes here. I was hoping for more.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As a screenwriter, one of the things you have to be good at is getting a lot of story across quickly. Take the storyline of Naomi sleeping with Ben and then finding out he works with her. That took 26 pages here. In the Gray’s Anatomy pilot episode, they use the same storyline. And yet it took them less than 8 pages. And that was a TV show! Where they don’t even have to move fast. Whatever you think is the proper pacing for moving your plot along, it could probably move along faster.
