Many of you know Mastai’s work through “The F Word,” one of my favorite scripts I’ve read here on the site, and a 2007 Black List member. Since then he’s done a lot of assignment work, and it’s really paid off recently. He wrote an upcoming film starring Sam Jackson called “The Samaritan,” and is currently working with Oscar winner Alan Ball on his next directing project. This is one of my favorite interviews yet.  There’s a ton of great screenwriting advice in Elan’s answers. 

SS: How much time had you put in as a screenwriter before you finally found success? Are we talking years? Decades? How many scripts had you written?

EM: The short, simple answer is about seven years and fifteen scripts before I wrote “The F Word” and it launched my career in LA, scoring me my agents and manager, getting on the “Black List” and picked up by Fox-Searchlight, and opening doors for me to start writing studio projects, which I’ve now been doing since late-2008.

The longer, convoluted answer is that of those fifteen scripts, four got produced as low-budget independent features of varying degrees of quality, three got optioned but never made, five were assignments I got hired to write or rewrite, one of which also got produced but without my name on it (thankfully, because it’s atrocious), and three were semi-successful attempts to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be, what my quote-unquote “voice” was, that I never did anything with because I knew they weren’t there yet.

Even though I was making a living as a screenwriter (in Canada, where I’m from), it wasn’t as rewarding as it maybe should’ve or could’ve been, because I wasn’t writing stuff in my own voice.

So, a super-low-budget movie I co-wrote premiered at Sundance in 2007. And everyone was very complimentary and all that, but deep-down I knew I couldn’t really present that movie, or any of the scripts I’d written to that point, to anyone as an example of what I felt I could really do as a writer. I realized I needed to re-think my approach to screenwriting.

And that led to me writing “The F Word”, which was the first script I wrote that conveyed my point of view, told the story in a way that only I could. In retrospect, it makes sense that it was the script that got me all kinds of attention in LA. But I had a lot of kinks to work through in my writing before I had the solid storytelling skills to pull off a script as low-concept and voice-driven as “The F Word”.

SS: During that time, when everything’s so uncertain, and that big beautiful dream of being a “professional” screenwriter is so unclear, what kept you going? How do you know whether to keep pushing through or not?

EM: Basically, I met other aspiring filmmakers through film festivals and film-related events. We watched movies, talked movies, made short films, read each other’s stuff and gave candid feedback, helped each other improve, kicked each other in the ass a little when it was needed.

In general, though, I’m pretty clear-eyed about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. So I also spent those seven years writing scripts that allowed me work on my weaknesses. I wrote, like, kid’s movies, horror flicks, crime thrillers, teen comedies, sports movies, anything that would teach me something I didn’t know and fill in a blank in my toolkit.

It was very cool to read your review of “The F Word” and the ensuing comments thread because, whether people love or loathe the script, they’re seriously engaging with my writing. That’s awesome. But it’s also a little odd for me because the draft everyone’s discussing is, like, three-and-a-half years old. I’m proud of the script and it’s been a fantastic calling card for me, but I’ve also had the chance to rewrite it twice for Fox-Searchlight and write four or five other movies since then. And it’s funny because all the points being discussed in the comments are the exact same debates I had with the producers and execs when I was rewriting the script. I’d say, in fact, basically all the criticisms you voiced in your review have been dealt with in subsequent rewrites.

My roundabout point is that being hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, without being so self-critical that you paralyze yourself from actually writing anything, is just as important before you break through as it is once you have.

Working as a professional screenwriter in LA, you have to present this confident, positive version of yourself to potential employers and creative partners. But you also have to be chronically objective about your limitations in order to improve as a writer. So the arguments in the comments thread (is my writing innovative and hilarious or overrated and boring?) are the same ones I ask myself every single goddamn day when I sit down at the keyboard to write something new.

SS: You’re from Canada. How difficult was it breaking into Hollywood from a different country, and what do you think the key was? (i.e. Did you have to travel there a lot? Get a second home there?)

EM: I’ve never lived in Los Angeles. I got my agents, manager, and lawyer and set up all of my studio projects coming to LA for a week at a time every few months. In between trips, I keep in touch via phone and email. I have a good long-distance plan on my cell.

But the key was definitely getting great representation. If my agents and manager weren’t doing the day-to-day groundwork for me in LA, it would’ve been impossible to build a career without living there.

SS: Every writer has their own journey finding their first agent. How did you find yours?

So, this is a story that people either find kind of inspiring or totally aggravating…

I didn’t do anything.

I wrote “The F Word”. It actually started as an assignment to adapt this one-act play, which was very funny and charming, but ran about 30 pages, only had two characters in it, and was confidently “stagey” in execution. Which was great because, like a good short story, it allowed me to fill it out to movie-size with my own eccentric inventions.

The plan was to make it as a low-budget indie. So the original producer (Marc Stephenson of Sheep Noir Films, currently working hard to get the movie into production) sent it to a few agencies hoping to attract interest from someone who represented an actor who might possibly meet our at-the-time hilariously low standards of “bankability”…

So, what happened was, people at the various agencies liked the script and, for reasons I’ll never entirely understand, passed it along to other people at other companies. And those people liked it enough to do the same. And so, without me even knowing it, my script started circulating through Hollywood. And I’d cite all these people by name but I don’t know who any of them are. They’re total strangers who basically gave me a Hollywood screenwriting career by liking my script and recommending it to other people, who did the same thing, all for absolutely no possible personal gain, until it somehow ended up in the in-box of my future agents at Gersh. And they called me out of the blue one day and said, you know, they love my voice as a writer and they’d really like to meet me sometime to talk about my future.

Honestly, it was completely crazy and before it happened to me I’d have been way too cynical to ever believe that’s how this stuff works. Random strangers read your script and recommend it to other random strangers and eventually someone reads it who can change your life.

So, I don’t know, you tell me: inspiring or aggravating? Kind of both, right?

SS: What’s your number 1 tip for aspiring screenwriters? How do you break in?

EM: I wish I had some magical secret insight to offer. But all I have is the usual advice that’s so easy to give but so tough to actually take: write your ass off until you find your voice as a writer, and then choose a story to tell that will highlight that voice in the clearest possible way. Because your voice, your unique storytelling point of view, is the thing that creates a market for your work. If anyone else can write a script the way you do, why should anyone hire you instead of them?

SS: As I pointed out in my review, The F Word is sort of a low-concept idea. With the screenwriting market being so competitive, what do you think the key is to sending a script out that doesn’t have that obvious high concept hook? How do you make up for it? And do you recommend it?

I think it has to be the right kind of low-concept. In the case of “The F Word”, the draw was the universality. Everybody has been through their personal version of this story, either from Wallace’s point of view (falling for someone who is in a serious relationship and convincing yourself you’d be happy as just friends) or Chantry’s point of view (being in a relationship and meeting someone you find really interesting and convincing yourself there’s no reason you can’t be just friends) or both.

So I took a lot of generals with development executives who spent most of the meeting telling me about the time they had an experience just like the one in “The F Word”. Or even better were going through it right now. So instead of a stressful quasi-job interview kind of thing, we bonded about our personal relationship histories and how they made us who we are today. So, for me, the universality of the story was a huge boost.

I think that, fundamentally, the audience doesn’t care about anything other than empathizing with characters. Everything else in a movie is window-dressing on empathy. Now, in an absence of characters that the audience cares about, well, yeah, they’ll accept explosions and nudity and shocking plot-twists that make no sense when you really think about them.

So, with “The F Word”, I guess going low-concept showed people I could write characters you care about, especially since they weren’t operating in this propulsive plot-engine with world-rumbling stakes. Low-concept can be a great way to show off your pure writing skills. But, look, first you’ve got to spend a lot of time developing those pure writing skills. Or at least I had to.

SS: Your dialogue is great. Any tips you can give us to write better dialogue?

EM: Well, something to remember is that your dialogue will be read many times in script-form before it’s ever spoken by actors. So I use a lot of simple modifiers to make the dialogue read better.

Off the top of my head, here’s a flat line of dialogue: “She’s not coming back.”

Or you could write it like: “Look, I mean, you know she’s not coming back, right?

The two versions contain the same essential information. And I’m sure a great actor could make the former version sound awesome. But the latter version imbeds a lot of implied character information into the dialogue itself, the written-equivalent of all the nonverbal nuances an actor will eventually bring to the delivery.

Of course, you can overdo it with the “likes” and “you knows” and “wells” and “I means”. That’s why I read and re-read every line of dialogue out loud until the balance is there.

I also do live script-readings with actors. I did five full readings of “The F Word”, each with a completely different cast, so I could hear every line of dialogue in a different actor’s voice, hear what each line sounds like with varying intonations, pauses, verbal tics, emphases, and so on.

SS: One of the interesting things I found about The F Word was that the situations our characters found themselves in were situations I’ve seen characters in before. For example, we’ve seen the “both in the changing room scene” in Tootsie. Yet I still loved all of them. Knowing that you’re walking on ground that’s already been walked on, how do you still make your own scenes fresh?

EM: I guess my approach is, look, how many times have you had a “first kiss” moment in your life? Is it ever boring? Every first kiss I’ve been involved in was pretty electrifying because I really wanted to know what was going to happen next.

A person pointing a gun at another person can be tedious or riveting if you care about the people involved. The bond you create between your audience and your character, right off the top, that’s the fuel for the rest of your story.

The thing is, the audience brings certain expectations to every genre. And expectations are meant to be fucked with. When the audience anticipates something because they think they’ve seen it before, their guard goes down and that gives you a lot of narrative power to play around with them, sometimes without them even realizing it.

I mean, I don’t want to overstate it, because “The F Word” isn’t exactly “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. But basically I think about what the audience expects to happen in a given set-up and how I can mess with that a bit. And if you do that a few times, the audience gets a little off-balance, unsure whether their assumptions are correct, and that builds a useful slow-burn tension the audience isn’t necessarily even aware they’re feeling. Then if you do go for the expected result of a set-up every once in a while, the audience gets a little jolt of pleasure from being correct. And then on the next set-up you throw them off-balance again, and so on.

SS: You got to work with Alan Ball, who I think may be the best screenwriter on the planet. Did you learn any screenwriting advice from him? Feel free to go on as long as you’d like with this one. :)

EM: Well, look, I’m in the middle of the working relationship right now, so I don’t have a sweeping, incisive analysis of the experience for you. It’s a work-in-progress. And out of respect for the process, I don’t want to get too into it.

But, I mean, it’s been a fantastic experience so far. Alan is a writer first, thinks like a writer, talks like a writer, has a shockingly laser-like eye for raising stakes, revealing character details, propulsive storytelling. He’s the real deal and I’m lucky as hell to be working with him.

And, yeah, I know that’s all kind of vague and self-congratulatory and unhelpful to anyone reading this. So, okay, here’s something specific. When you introduce your main characters, give them an immediate decision that tells the audience who they are, right away. It doesn’t have to be a big moment. It can be a small, everyday choice. But it lets the audience notice that they probably would or wouldn’t make the same choice that the character just did. And that immediately tells them something important about who that person is.

SS: What do you think is the most common mistake beginning screenwriters make?

EM: Probably waiting for their big break to magically appear instead of writing as much as possible as often as possible. Because when you do get your big break, it really sucks if you’re not developed enough as a writer to take full advantage of it.

I say that as someone who did have their big break magically appear. But when it happened, I was more or less ready to jump on it. I was (thankfully) a much better writer than I’d been in previous years because I’d spent the previous years writing as much as I could.

SS: The relationship comedy genre is a crowded one. It seems like every 20-something writer is trying to break in with one of these specs. What do you think the key is to writing this kind of script successfully?

EM: The thing I really like about relationship comedies is that it’s the one genre you can’t hide in. You can hide inside horror flicks and family comedies and crime thrillers and sci-fi epics. But everyone is an expert in attraction. Everyone has intimate personal experience with falling in love and heartbreak and unrequited feelings and romantic longing and sexual tension and flirtatious banter and unforgettable first encounters. So what you have to say about those things exposes you in a very personal way to whoever happens to read your script.

Of course, many relationship comedies are bad. And the bad ones tell you a lot about the person who wrote them. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve got really screwed up ideas of what’s attractive to another person. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve had their ass kicked by love and still can’t stand up. Maybe it’s telling you they can’t open themselves up to a genuine human connection. Or maybe it’s telling you they’re not funny.

If there’s a key to writing a relationship comedy, it’s taking a good long look in the mirror and asking yourself if what you might accidentally show people is something you’re okay with them seeing.

SS: Screenwriters are constantly evolving, learning new things all the time. What’s your most recent revelation that you’ve been applying to your writing?

EM: I have the kind of brain that tends to not learn from other people’s advice, so I need to make the mistake myself to figure out how not to do it again, even if it probably seems like totally obvious screenwriting territory.

Like, here’s something completely self-evident and basically corny when you boil it down to a snappy sentence: there’s no success without risk. I know, I know, such a brilliant piece of advice that no one has ever mentioned before…

But the point for me is to always try, as much as it’s possible, to work with people I can fail in front of. Because unless you take some real chances with your storytelling, try something bold enough to potentially veer into humiliating failure, you’re never going to truly excite anyone. Especially in comedy, but really in any genre. Anytime I’ve played it safe with a script, because I didn’t feel like I could take the chance of screwing up, I ended up with a screenplay that everyone liked but no one loved. And if no one loves it, it’s never getting made.

Now, taking bold chance with the storytelling means being potentially divisive. Some people may hate it. Hopefully the people who love it have more clout. It’s risky. But it’s the only way to get your material to stand out.

So, yeah, it’s a well-worn notion. But when you’re actually doing what you always wanted to be doing, writing studio movies, it’s so easy to not want to screw it up by doing anything too bold, even though being bold is what got you there in the first place.

SS: And finally, the question we’ve all been waiting for…Can a man and a woman really be just friends?

EM: Probably. But it kind of depends on your definition of “just”.

It comes down to whether or not both people are being honest about what they really want from each other. And that includes being honest with themselves.

Which is a good screenwriting lesson too. Being honest with yourself about whether or not your script is ready for outside eyes. About what your strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. About what you’re doing to enhance those strengths and bolster those weaknesses. About whether every line of dialogue sounds like an actual human could say it, since an actual human will have to when it gets made. About whether you’re avoiding that last polish because the script is really perfect or because you just want it to be done. And so on.

If there’s a basic theme to all my writing it’s this: You can’t lie your way to happiness.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A guy begins hanging out with a girl under the pretense that she’s single, only to later find out she has a boyfriend.
About: The F Word has been in my Top 25 since the beginning of my blog! And I’m finally getting around to reviewing it. Don’t worry all you lonely screenplays out there. With a little patience, you too will get your shot. This script made the 2008 Black List with 10 mentions (just below Everything Must Go and with the same amount of votes as Up In The Air). The script seems to have impressed big-time writer Alan Ball so much that he’s working with Elan (the writer) on his next directing project.
Writer: Elan Mastai (based on the play “Toothpaste and Cigars” by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi)
Details: November 28, 2007 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I have a bad habit of avoiding scripts I read and loved from a long time ago, only because I’m afraid they won’t live up to their original awesomeness. That’s why I STILL haven’t seen Everything Must Go. And an experience I had this weekend seeing another one of my favorite scripts turned into a movie did not help (Tune in Thursday for the full scoop on that debacle – yuck squared).

So anyway, that’s why I’ve been avoiding reviewing The F Word, a script that’s been in my Top 25 since the beginning, but a script I don’t remember a whole lot about to be honest. I’ve read over 2000 scripts since then and am much harder to please these days. Would it still hold up? Or would the unthinkable happen? Would I need to take The F Word out of my Top 25??? I can tell that the suspense is killing you so let’s get to the review, shall we?

Wallace and Chantry are a couple of 20-somethings doing what 20-somethings do on a Saturday night. Hanging out at a party that they don’t really want to be at. Wallace is conservative, nice, a little quirky. And Chantry is fun, intriguing, a little sarcastic. The two find themselves meeting in the kitchen and putting together goofy sentence combinations with those refrigerator letter magnets (“THIS TURKEY SANDWICH SAT IN MY HAT ALL WINTER”)

The two clearly have a connection, but later that night after walking home, right when it seems like they’re about to have the kiss to end all kisses, Chantry mentions that she has a boyfriend. Oops.

Wallace goes home and confesses to his best friend Allan (who also happens to be Chantry’s cousin) that he can’t stop thinking about the girl, which eventually leads to them beginning a friendship. They go to movies, talk on the phone, eat at fine establishments. For all intents and purpose they act like a couple. But they’re not a couple. Because Chantry has a boyfriend.

Complications arise when Chantry’s boyfriend goes off to Paris for his job, and the two are allowed to spend even MORE time together, resulting in them getting even closer. They go shopping together, camping together, skinny dipping together. And yet, Chantry is steadfast on keeping the line drawn. They’re just friends. And Wallace completely respects that.

The F Word asks that question that has been debated since the caveman era. Can men and women JUST be friends?

So how did The F Word hold up after all this time? Would it be meeting up with another word, the 26th word, if you know what I mean? (I mean placing it outside the top 25). The answer, thankfully, is no. But I’ll tell you this. I was worried there for a little while. The F Word starts out slow. The alphabet refrigerator letter scene, while cute, goes on for way too long (it feels like a holdover from the play) and it makes you wonder if this is going to be one of those talky indie relationship movies that make you hate hipsters.

This is followed by a second rough patch, before the relationship actually begins. Chantry hangs out at work. Wallace tries to forget the other night. Very little seems to be happening. I kept thinking to myself, “Hmmm, this isn’t nearly as good as I remember.”

But once we hit Wallace and Chantry’s friendship, the quality of everything, from the story to the characters to the dialogue, jumps up a few notches. Mastai does a great job of building this relationship, nailing the “trifecta rule” of romantic comedies: We like the guy. We like the girl. We want to see them get together. If you’ve achieved this, you’re 70% of the way there in your Rom Com spec.

The next rule is having a legitimate reason why your couple can’t be together. The F Word may have gone with the most basic solution to this problem, but it works. Chantry has a boyfriend. It’s clean, it’s identifiable. We do not question why Chantry and Wallace don’t just get together. Now while I admit to not believeing Chantry truly liked her boyfriend, Mastai made up for it by selling Chantry as a loyal woman with strong morals. I believed that Chantry didn’t want to cheat, and that sold everything that came afterwards.

In fact, my favorite thing about The F Word was how Mastai constantly puts his leads in situations that test their resolve, such as throwing them in a changing room together or having them go skinny dipping together. We’re constantly wondering as an audience, “Are they going to break here?” “Are they going to break here?” And if your audience is excitedly asking those sorts of questions, you’re in good shape, particularly because the majority of the time, readers are asking questions like, “Good God, when does this end???” “How come it’s page 80 and I still don’t know who the main character is?” “For the love of all that is Holy, end this now!” (yes, that last one is considered a question by readers).

The key here is making things TOUGH on your characters. That’s what creates drama and that’s what keeps things interesting. These two going on a group date to the Opera and sitting five seats away from each other isn’t a difficult situation for either of them. Swimming in the moonlit water naked less than a foot away from each other? Now THAT’S testing your characters.

There are a lot of things this script has to be proud of actually. Once you get past the opening, where I felt the dialogue was a little forced, it gets really good. And Mastai threw in all these little touches to take the script away from the stage (where it was born as a play). We have Chantry’s animated robots having conversations with her. We have Wallace imagining jump cuts of what Chantry’s boyfriend looks like. We have an “asking questions about each other” montage that takes us through 20 locations, cleverly selling the evolution of their relationship. It isn’t 500 Days of Summer inventive. But it has that same sort of vibe.

The negatives are few. Chantry’s boyfriend could’ve been a little better developed. I never got a sense of him. But in a strange way, that almost helped (I imagined this is how Wallace saw him too – as this vague entity). The script needs to start faster or have more going on early. Technically, things are “happening” in the opening ten pages, but you get the feeling that it’s not as good as it should be. I’d like to see Mastai get into that party more, have Wallace and Chantry dance around each other a bit, as opposed to just standing in front of a refrigerator for 12 pages. The Allan-Chantry connection (being cousins) felt a little convenient. But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent script.

The F Word is that rare bird. It’s a clichéd “been there, done that” idea that is so well executed that you don’t realize how “been there, done that” it is. It’s a reminder that the key to any screenplay, in the end, is simply creating characters that we care about. If you do that, we’ll be willing to go anywhere with them, even to places we’ve been before. After last week’s crop of duds, it was nice to remember what a great screenplay looks like.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you have two romantic leads who aren’t allowed to be together, you better be tempting them CONSTANTLY. This is what the audience came to see – your leads being tempted. So create as many of these scenarios as possible. Put them in a dressing room half-naked together. Put them in a lake completely naked. Make them sleep in the same sleeping bag. Tempt tempt tempt!

There was a time, many years ago, where I thought the extensive analysis by a lot of the screenwriting teachers out there was overkill. I remember when Terry Rossio, on his site, Wordplayer, said he sometimes took weeks just to figure out the NAMES of his characters.

“Weeks?” I thought. They’re character names! Name them Bob, Jane, and Sara and move on to the important stuff!

Today? I couldn’t agree with him more. Names are soooooooo important. The right name projects an image in the reader’s head. Imagine if Hannibal Lecter had been named Bob Harris. Well-named characters also make a script way easier to read. Weak names that writers didn’t put any effort into are always the characters I forget first.

But this article isn’t about naming characters. At least not directly. Yesterday, in my “What I learned” section, I pointed out that different adverbs created a different impact in how the reader envisioned the character.

“Olivia, hair now pulled lazily back in a bandana…”.

“Olivia, hair now pulled defiantly back in a bandana…”.

“Olivia, hair now pulled playfully back in a bandana…”.

“Olivia, hair now pulled joylessly back in a bandana…”.

“Olivia, hair now pulled painfully back in a bandana…”.

There were some comments indicating it didn’t matter what you chose. It’s a stupid adverb so, so what? A reader is not going to like or dislike your pilot based on what adverb is used on page 5.

I understand this point of view because it’s the exact same point of view I used to have. It’s a tiny sentence in a sea of 25,000 words. There are bigger fish to fry than a dumb adverb.

But over time, I’ve learned that while not EVERY word matters, a lot of them do. Not understanding the importance of which moments need those stellar word choices is holding you back from taking your writing to the next level.

In the case of this adverb, there’s a lot more going on than you realize. Forgettable characters is one of the top five mistakes I encounter in script reading. Characters are either so weak, so bland, so generic, or so simplistic, that they leave zero impression on me and I’ve forgotten them within ten minutes of finishing the script.

I’ll read 10-20 scripts in a row where not a single character makes an impression on me. Which shouldn’t be surprising when you think back to your own recent moviegoing experiences. How many characters do you remember from the last ten movies you saw? And these are characters that have the benefit of an actor playing them. They’re easier to remember than characters who only have a name to remember. And still there are so many forgettable ones.

Another detail to keep in mind is that most characters are made or broken in their first few scenes. We either get a good feel for the character and are interested in seeing more of them or we’re apathetic towards them and have little interest in seeing more.

So what you say early on about a character MATTERS. It matters A LOT. I wrote an article about this. I think it was titled, The Fastest Way to Improve Your Script Right Now, and it talked about the importance of your characters’ introduction scenes.

Screenwriters often make the mistake of assuming that the complex charming dynamic character they have in their head is just going to naturally ooze out onto the page, like syrup being poured over fresh pancakes. That’s not how it works, folks. You must use targeted words and actions to properly sell your character to the reader.

Let’s say you have a protagonist named Larry. It’s early in the script. This is one of Larry’s first scenes. Larry is driving home from work and he gets to a stoplight with a sign that says, ‘No right turn on red.’

This is a prime opportunity for a reader to tell us about the character. Larry can wait patiently all the way until the light turns green or he can check both ways to make sure he doesn’t see any cops, then take a right turn on red.

That little clip tells us a lot about Larry. In one instance, he’s a guy who always follows the rules. In the other, he’s an impatient dude who’s always taking shortcuts.

Now you may think to yourself, “Well that’s dumb Carson. It’s one small moment. Who cares?” Congratulations, you’ve just identified yourself as the writer who doesn’t think about the moments that EXPLAIN to the reader who your character is.

You defiantly know your rule-following protagonist will organically come out over the course of the screenplay. Guess what. You’re then also the one getting the note, “I never had a good feel this character.” By the way, that’s one of the most common notes I give. And it can be solved simply by putting more thought into the words and actions you give your characters early on.

That’s an example of an action. But let’s get back to words because that was the original inspiration for this article.

Let’s say Larry parks his car in his driveway, gets out, and walks inside. This may seem to most writers like an insignificant moment and, therefore, something to get out of the way as soon as possible. They have this great scene in their head about how Larry’s wife is mad at him so the quicker we get to that, the better.

But this is another opportunity to tell us more about Larry simply by THE WAY HE WALKS. Check out some options you have…

Larry walks to the house.

Larry struts to the house.

Larry proceeds to the house

Larry wanders towards the house.

The practice of tagging in more expressive verbs for common actions should never be about varying the way the read is presented. It should be about CONVEYING INFORMATION. Larry “walks” to the house gives us absolutely zero information. It’s so generic as to almost not exist.

But consider what a reader thinks when you say your hero “struts” to the house. That implies something. It implies a character who’s confident. Things are going well for him. It paints a picture for us of who this man is.

Same deal with “proceeds.” “Proceeds” has an almost robotic connotation. This is a man who deals in ones and zeroes. Not a lot of complexity. See house, proceed to house. In comparison, “wanders” implies Larry is more of a space cadet. Or maybe that his mind is somewhere else.

While this is a simplistic example, it’s one of the best representations of how powerful words are in a screenplay. By switching out just ONE WORD, we get three completely different versions of Larry. And when it’s early on in a script and the reader is desperately trying to get a handle on who all the characters are, stuff like this helps A TON.

You want to extend this practice out into the characters’ environments as well. If we’re in Larry’s office, the words you use can convey a ton about him. It doesn’t even have to be some pretty word or sentence. It can be matter of fact. “Larry’s desk is drowning in unfinished work.” That gives us a different feel for Larry than, “Larry’s desk is so spotless it shines.”

Again, you want to find words that place images into your readers’ heads. “Drowning” is better than “overwhelmed.” “Shines” is better than “really clean.” Coming up with strong visual words is always challenging but it’s better than writing the generic version. Generic thoughtless description leads to generic bland imagery in the reader’s head. The reader is never going to do the work for you. That’s your job.

Which brings us back to Olivia’s hair. Is it really that bad if we just say, “Olivia, hair now pulled back in a bandana?” No. This sentence will get the job done. But if this is your approach to writing in general, the chances that you’ve written a generic screenplay are high. Every scene is an opportunity to put us inside the movie with your characters. If you’re not taking that opportunity, the reading experience is often forgettable.

As tempting as it is to be lazy and give us the quick version, remember that readers not only appreciate you going the extra mile, but also have a lot more fun when you do so.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

JJ sold his first screenplay at 23. If he’d read this article, he would’ve done it at 22.

So you want to write a screenplay? First, you gotta find a great concept. Something that’s got some pop to it. Imagine pitching your idea to someone you’ve never met. Would the idea excite them? Be honest now. If the answer’s yes, you’re ready to move forward. The second most important thing is a big strong memorable main character. “Strong” is a relative term. But if I were you, I’d go with someone who’s active, who goes after what they want. Someone like that is going to keep your story moving.

Speaking of character, at least one key character in your story should arc. You can do this with your main character. But a lot of people prefer to do it with a secondary character. Either way, give a character a flaw that prevents them from being whole, from being happy, from living up to their full potential as a human being. They could be selfish, stubborn, introverted, self-destructive. Whatever feels organic to the story you’re telling. You will be placing this character in numerous situations that challenge this flaw. So if your character is Buckles Under Pressure Peter, put them in a lot of tough situations that show them buckling under pressure.

Next, you need to know where your script ends. You need to know the Death Star is going to blow up. Once you know where you end, you can start charting how to get there. Don’t worry. Writing is rewriting. So if you come up with a better ending later on, you can change it. Now it’s time to figure out your first act. Start off with a scene that introduces us to your hero. Think of your hero’s introductory scene as an interview with the audience. The most important thing you have to accomplish in this interview is prove why your hero is awesome. We’re about to spend 2 hours with this guy. If we think he’s lame after the scene, you’re doomed.

Next, you need to figure out your inciting incident (roughly page 15). This is the meteor that comes crashing down into your hero’s life and challenges them to go off on their journey. They won’t want to go yet. They’ll resist it for another 10 pages. Human beings don’t like change. They want to stay in their safe little bubble. But then on page 25, the end of Act 1, you’ll send them into the Matrix. Their adventure will begin.

Before we get to the second act, a word about scenes. Writing a good scene is like writing a good story. And here’s the best way to do it. Have one character (usually your hero) come into the scene wanting something. It could be to break up. It could be to get back together. It could be to get information. It could be to inspire the team with a half-time speech so that they come back and win the championship. Whatever it is, you want the other character, or characters, to resist. Whatever Character A is trying to get, Character B doesn’t want to give it to them. You may say, “Well why would the characters on the team not want to come back for their coach?” They may want to come back, but they don’t want to play the way the coach is telling them to play. Resistance is the easiest way to create CONFLICT, and conflict is the lifeblood of a good scene.

You’re now in the second act. This is where 99% of amateur screenwriters are exposed. So I’m going to make it easier for you. The second act is 50-60 pages long. We’re going to say 60 pages to keep the numbers clean. You will break your second act into four 15-page sequences. You will no longer think of it as a giant second act. You will think of it as four stories you have to tell. The easiest way to tell these stories is to have a character goal for each one. In The Mule, one of the sequences is Clint Eastwood proving he can deliver the drugs successfully. So there are several scenes of him delivering the drugs to the target point. It’s important that during these sequences, you provide obstacles that make the goals difficult. Clint delivering the drugs without a hitch is boring. A suspicious cop stopping him is what gives these small stories pop.

Sequences should never constrain you. Just because a sequence is about Clint delivering drugs doesn’t mean you can’t include a scene where he goes to his granddaughter’s wedding. As long as you can fit it into the sequence naturally, you can include it. And as long as the overall sequence stays focused on the drug delivery, you’re good.

Also, this formula is malleable. Since each movie is unique and contains its own set of challenges, you may have to adapt the structure. For example, I don’t remember exactly what happened in Endgame, but I know it was a long movie and probably had more than four sequences. And that some of those sequences were longer than 15 pages. Getting the band back together was a sequence. Figuring out time travel was a sequence. Putting the time machine together was a sequence. Going to get the stones in the past was a sequence. As long as you have characters trying to obtain an objective, you will always have a sequence to write.

Once you get to your script’s midpoint (after you’ve written the first 2 sequences of your second act), you want to introduce something that changes things around (the ‘Midpoint Shift’). This is primarily done to raise the stakes of the second half of the film, but it should also be an event that makes the second half of the film feel different from the first half. In The Force Awakens, the Midpoint Shift is when the First Order destroys an entire solar system (I’m not saying it was the greatest Midpoint Shift – but it’s an example of one).

As you move into your third and forth sequences of the second act, you will be doing the same thing you did in the first two, but with one key adjustment. You will create a growing sense that your hero is going to fail at his mission. The bad guys are getting closer. The bad guys are getting stronger. The obstacles are getting harder. The allies and friends are dying. (Kylo is killing Han). We should feel that with each passing scene, we are barreling towards certain failure. All of this will culminate in your hero failing. For good. Yes, they will either be dead or almost dead. This will signify the end of your second act, and occur somewhere between pages 85-90.

Don’t forget your flawed character. At some point in the 3rd and 4th sequences, your hero (or secondary character) will have a breakthrough in regards to their flaw. A mentor character teaches them something. Or they see someone with the same flaw suffer a terrible fate because of it. This will not be the thing that changes your hero. But it should give the reader a glimpse – however tiny – into the possibility that there’s POTENTIAL for change. In Star Wars, it’s an extremely subtle moment with Han Solo. Princess Leia snaps at him not to worry because he’ll have his money soon enough. The look on Han Solo’s face shows that, just for a moment, he sees himself for who he really is – a selfish scoundrel, and he doesn’t like it. Without this moment, it won’t make sense in the end when your character finally overcomes their flaw. Readers will complain that the change “came out of nowhere.” So include this scene!

You are now in your third act. I want you to think of your third act as similar to your second. But there will only be two sequences, each about 12 pages long, instead of the four sequences you wrote for Act 2. The first sequence of your third act is called the “Reborn Sequence.” Wesley may have been dead. But his buddies have saved him and convinced him to rescue Buttercup. It might take a couple of scenes to get your hero convinced he can take one more shot at this. But he’ll come around. He has to. He has no other choice. Once he’s ready to go, you have two scenes left in the sequence. “The Plan” – He and the team need a plan before they take on the villain! And “The Calm Before the Storm” – One last deep breath before going at it. This is often where the hero and the love interest (or best friend, or family member, or fellow soldier) share some deep final thoughts, which makes sense, since they probably aren’t getting out of this alive.

Before we get to our final battle, don’t forget about our flawed character! That character is going to complete their arc during the climax. This means you have to structure the battle in a way that challenges their flaw. So let’s say we’re still working with Buckles Under Pressure Peter. He’s our captain. The battle is going south quickly. They’re getting mauled in the air, on the ground, and in the sea. Everyone’s looking to him. What do we do next, Captain Peter? Because you’ve placed Peter in numerous pressure-filled situations throughout the script, giving him valuable experience, and because you included that one brief moment where he had that breakthrough, Peter will take a deep breath, look everyone in the eye, calmly step forward, and say, “Okay, everybody, pay attention. This is what we’re going to do.” And he comes up with an amazing plan to turn things around. By the way, if this is a secondary character who’s arcing, some writers like to place their “change” scene earlier. That way, they can keep the climax focused on the hero.

Our final sequence will be the big battle, the big game, the showdown with the bad guy, the attempt to win over the girl. The success of this scene will be determined by everything you’ve done up to this point. If your characters are great. If your story was engaging. If you created a proper sense of doubt and hopelessness as we moved towards our climax, you should, at the very least, write a good ending without even trying. To elevate your ending to something great, though, you need two things: 1) You need to surprise us with something we didn’t see coming. 2) You need to make it emotionally nuclear. Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank was something no one saw coming. And Red getting out of prison years later and reuniting with his best friend was emotionally nuclear. “Didn’t see it coming” does not mean a “twist.” It can mean a twist. But you can give the audience something they weren’t expecting without a twist. I just don’t want everyone to think that the only way to write a great ending is with a twist.

Now go write a script!

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Our first look at one of the 2018 Nicholl Winners!

Genre: Drama
Premise: A gifted young black mathematician’s life is thrown into disarray after a terrible accident sends him to prison.
About: Today’s script was one of the four WINNERS of the 2018 Nicholl Contest, the most popular of all the screenwriting contests.
Writer: Grace Sherman
Details: 117 pages

John David Washington for prison-aged DeMarcus?

What’s the only thing that gets screenwriters talking more than a two-page preface proclaiming one’s awesomeness and that all men are evil? A Nicholl winning script, that’s what! This one came recommended to me by commenter, Da Choppa. I find that he and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of screenplays, so I was excited to check it out.

I have a love-hate relationship with Nicholl. I feel that they prioritize a script’s message over its storytelling, whereas for me it’s the opposite. With that said, they usually find a few talented writers every year, so it’s worth checking out who won.

15 year-old DeMarcus Daniels lives in the ghetto with his mother, who’s dating a no-good dickhead loser, Nate. DeMarcus doesn’t plan to be living this life for long, though. He’s a borderline genius when it comes to mathematics, and his goal is to solve the most difficult math problem ever created, The 500 year-old Pythenian Hypothesis.

DeMarcus is one of two kids from his neighborhood who commute to a rich white school in the suburbs. The other is 12 year-old child prodigy, Beth, a bookworm who’s constantly pushing DeMarcus to read more. DeMarcus considers this Harry Potter dork an annoyance, and mostly keeps her at arm’s length.

One day, at home, DeMarcus gets into an anything-goes fight with Nate that ends with DeMarcus bashing him with a bat. Nate is able to grab DeMarcus’s mother at the last second, throwing her in between them, resulting in DeMarcus bashing in the head of and accidentally killing his mother.

DeMarcus then goes to prison for 26 years, where he loses all hope in humanity. His only friend at prison is Clint, a college kid who use to pay him to do math problems, who also got thrown into prison for a drunk-driving accident that crippled his girlfriend. After DeMarcus finally gets out at 41 years old, Clint (who got released a long time ago) helps him reintegrate into society.

DeMarcus only cares about one thing these days – finding and killing Nate. But when he runs into Beth again, recently divorced from her husband, their friendship slowly helps chip away at the hard shell he built up during prison. Beth encourages DeMarcus to get back into math – maybe even solve that unsolvable theorem he always talked about. But DeMarcus claims to be too far gone for that. In fact, DeMarcus only has one goal left on this planet, and that’s getting even with the man that killed his mother.

Well, this is definitely a Nicholl script, that’s for sure.

As I’ve told you guys plenty of times before, this is the kind material the Nicholl responds very positively to. They’re receptive to stories led by minorities and anything that has a strong social message about the world. Especially right now. So I can see why this won.

But as you also know, all I care about when I read a script is: Is the story good? And, unfortunately, with Numbers and Words, that question is hard to answer. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a script this ambitious, this frustrating. I was so on board with the first ten pages. I liked the friendship built up between DeMarcus and Beth, the way he pushed her away and yet was the first to stand up for her if she got in trouble. I loved the math equation stuff. There’s always something mystical about an unsolvable equation, which is probably the same reason Good Will Hunting is one of my favorite movies.

But the script takes a giant left turn at the end of the first act that was so shocking, I’m not sure I ever recovered from it. That would be when DeMarcus accidentally kills his mother. There were a couple of issues with this. First of all, it felt contrived. I just didn’t believe that it would happen. I would’ve preferred if he had killed Nate, to be honest. I would’ve bought that in a second.

But it was more the after effect of that choice. It turned the story into something completely different than what I thought it was going to be about. All of a sudden, we’re in prison for 40 pages and it’s like, “Oh, it’s one those movies?” That was not an easy transition to make.

Also, every 15 pages, right when the story had me again, something would happen to pull me back out. For example, what are the chances that the 19 year old privileged white rich kid who pays you to do his math homework ends up in the same prison you’re in? That was hard to buy into. Later still in the prison section, a program is implemented where college kids come in to tutor inmates. And guess who, coincidentally, happens to be one of these college kids? Beth. All grown up.

Despite this, I was still invested in DeMarcus’s journey. Yeah, it was too melodramatic at times. But you wanted this guy to overcome the conflict within himself. And, most of the time, that’s all you need to make a script work. You establish a compelling character, you introduce something broken inside of them, and the audience sticks around to see if that character can be fixed. This works because we all have something broken inside of us. And there’s some psychological trickery whereby we believe that if this fictional character can be fixed, then we can be fixed as well.

And I have to give it to Sherman. The level of difficulty in any theme-heavy script that traverses an extended passage of time is in the 8 out of 10 range. Movies are not good at conveying the passage of time. Books are. Which is funny because while I was reading this, I kept thinking that it would work better as a novel. As it stands, it’s a flawed but intriguing story. And the Nicholl has always said that they’re more interested in finding good writers than good scripts. By that logic, they’ve done a good job. Sherman is talented. Also, this is a GREAT example of the kind of material you should be sending to Nicholl if you want to advance far. If you plan on entering the contest in the future, it’s worth reading Numbers and Words just for that.

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

What I learned: Make sure to add low-key goals to “living life” stories. A “living life” story is any movie where the focus is more on the characters living their lives (Ladybird being a recent example) than a clear focused plot (Ocean’s 8 being a recent example). A neat trick you can use to add some low-key narrative thrust to these scripts is to pepper in some softer goals. There are two of these in Numbers and Words. The first is The Pythenian Hypothesis. We want to see DeMarcus solve that. The second is when he’s released from jail. He wants to kill Nate. Again, these aren’t big overarching plot goals. But they’re strong enough to keep the story focused. Without them, some readers may not be sure what they’re sticking around for.