The Hunt

I remember back in the day where all I needed to start a screenplay was an idea and a little inspiration. I wrote a lot of bad screenplays with that approach. The problem with those scripts was that there wasn’t a whole lot of substance to them. Either the idea was too light, the characters too bland, or the plot petered out. Over time, through my own experience and by reading a lot of screenwriter interviews, I learned that professionals approach movie ideas a lot differently than beginners.

Most beginners will get a new idea and, just because the idea excited them, start writing the screenplay. They don’t need anything besides that. Some of the advanced beginners (a screenwriter who’s written 2-3 screenplays) might go one step further and ask, “Is this a movie I would pay to see?” If the answer is yes, they write it. Believe it or not, there’s an advantage to this approach. If the only question you have to ask is that one, you cut through all the bulls*&$.

But there’s an advantage to the Hollywood approach as well. A lot of the criteria they ask for does end up helping the script. So if you completely ignore these things, you are potentially ignoring stuff that would make your script better. What are the questions pros asks themselves before starting a screenplay? Let’s take a look.

1) Is the idea fresh? – All this means is, is your idea current in some way? Are you giving us something new? Or, if you’re giving us something old, have you found a new spin on it? I’ll give you a couple of examples. The “Don’t Worry, Darling” spec that had a huge bidding war last month was exploring #MeToo issues as well as creating a new spin on that subject matter, with its “1950s altered reality” component. “The Hunt” spec is another good example. It follows a group of elite liberals who’ve created a game of hunting down conservatives. Ironically, the idea turned out to be a little too current, and therefore, too hot to handle. But that’s why it got made. Because it was a fresh take on an old idea. An example of an un-fresh idea would be the 2017 Reese Witherspoon movie, “Home Again.” Haven’t heard of it? Exactly. Look it up. It’s a movie about a woman coming back home. There isn’t a single fresh exciting element to that concept, which is why nobody saw it.

2) Is there at least one character that an actor would die to play? – Seasoned professionals know that a project doesn’t take off and start getting people excited unless it’s got a hot actor or a hot director attached. So you want to create at least one character that would be exciting for an actor to play. Maybe they get to chew up the scenery like Tony Stark. Maybe they’re extremely complex – they’re a high school teacher heroin addict, like Ryan Gosling in Half-Nelson. Maybe they live a double-life. Maybe they’ve got complicated medical issues. There’s a reason Chris Pratt signed onto the project, “Cowboy, Ninja, Viking,” where a somewhat mentally deranged guy slips in and out of those three characters. The project was later delayed, but that’s not the point. If you can come up with a character that one of the top 10 grossing actors in the world wants to play? Hollywood will eat out of the palm of your hand.

3) Is the idea/genre trending? – A long time ago, when I was thinking about trading stocks for a living, my dad talked some sense into me. He explained that the people who were successful doing this were people who spent every waking hour inside of it, and therefore had all the information way before I did. The same could be said for the professional screenwriter. They are on top of what’s trending, what trends are ending, and what trends are right around the corner. Ideally, you want to write something in a trend that’s just starting. You wanted to be writing the female-centric comedy one day after Bridesmaids came out. Or, if you’re really on top of it, you know of a unique movie coming out in four months, you’re convinced it’s going to be a hit, and you’re writing a script in the same spiritual genre. That way you’ve got your script ready right when that trend begins.

4) Does the concept have legs beyond the first act? – As creatives, you’re coming up with ideas all the time. Or, at least, I hope you are. But not every idea is a movie. Some ideas are just a hook (see yesterday’s review – The Phantom Hook). This is a spot where professionals have a HUGE advantage over beginners. They’ve written so many screenplays that they have a better sense of which concepts are going to peter out and which can last an entire 110 pages. Namely, you’re looking for ideas that have a clear goal after the first act, and also, enough character conflict that you have something to do with your characters in the second act. Remember that the second act is the “conflict act.” So if you don’t have any character relationships that are hampered by deep-seated conflict, your second act will be all plot, and we won’t feel a deeper connection to the story.

5) Am I passionate about this?/What am I trying to say with this story? – Passion is like gasoline. There’s a finite amount of it. So you want to start with as much passion as possible. Seasoned writers know that there will be second drafts, third drafts, if they’re lucky and a producer becomes interested, 10th drafts, 15th drafts. So if you’re not all-in on an idea, you will run out of gas at some point. Also, do you have something to say with this story? It might seem like an unimportant question initially. “It’s a cool idea, Carson. Who cares about all that deep English class nonsense.” One of the reasons writers give up on scripts 6, 7, 8 drafts in, is because they’re empty. It was a cool idea and nothing more. When Jon Favreau was at a low point in his career, having made the dismal Iron Man 2 and the dismaler Cowboys and Aliens, he came up with this idea, “Chef,” about a disgraced Michelin Chef who decides to start a food truck, and the reason it grossed 20 times its budget can be attributed to Favreau wanting to say something with the movie. He talked about it in his interviews. This movie was all about making mistakes in life, owning up to them, and getting back on the saddle. Because that’s a universal theme everyone can relate to, it helped that movie become something more than a lol food truck flick.

So look, am I saying that you have to do it like the pros do it? No. The pro way has its own downside in that these writers are so far inside the system, they sometimes struggle to see the forest through the trees. I’ll give you a real world analogy. There’s this NBA player, Joakim Noah. He was on the Chicago Bulls for awhile and even made the All-Star team. But Joakim Noah started breaking down in his last couple of years with the Bulls to the point where he was a fraction of his former self. The following summer, when Joakim became a free agent, the New York Knicks shockingly signed him to a 72 million dollar 4-year contract!

Here we have a general manager who’s being paid tons of money for his expertise and who has an entire staff dedicated to understanding the value of players around the league. And not only did they get it wrong, they got it REALLY WRONG. Joakim would average 5 points a game his first year with the Knicks and 2 points a game his second year before they booted him. Now here’s the remarkable part of this story. There wasn’t a single NBA fan surprised by this. In fact, they all said at the time of the signing that it was one of the worst signings they’d ever seen a team make. How is it that the casual fan knows more than the general manager? The answer is the same as the professional screenwriter evaluating an idea. Professionals have a propensity to over-think things. Whereas all the beginner cares about is whether he likes the idea.

So which way is right? That’s up to you. I like the way Jordan Peele puts it: “Write the best idea you have that hasn’t been a movie yet.” But I think it’s worth going through these five questions just to see where your idea stands. Because good ideas are rare. I know that as I’ve seen over 10,000 loglines. So the more punch you can start your script with, the better the chance you have of writing something great.

What boxes must be ticked for you to write a screenplay?

Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: A young man man tragically loses his wife on the day of their wedding. He is devastated, until four years later on their wedding anniversary, he awakens to find his beloved wife alive and well beside him.
About: This script crept onto last year’s Black List with eight votes. Alanna Brown used to be an actress, where she was able to get a few small parts. But she seems to have moved on full time to writing. This script caught the eye of Greg Berlanti who currently has 6000 shows on TV.
Writer: Alanna Brown
Details: 110 pages

Zoe Kravitz for Dulcie?

Today I want to talk a screenwriting no-no that is so powerful in its no-ness, you want to avoid it at all costs. We’re going to be looking at another one of these drama sci-fi concepts. As I told you last week with The Second Life of Ben Haskins, these are tough sells. TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH sells. That’s because the thing that makes them cool – the sci-fi element, is always neutered by the dramatic element. Sci-fi seems to work best when it can fly. And drama keeps it from flying.

The 29th Accident is about a guy named Bennett Carter. Bennett is a Californian who got a full swimming scholarship to the University of New Orleans. It’s here where he meets Dulcie, an African-American girl, and it’s love at first site between the two. In fact, they don’t wait long before they decide to get married.

But Dulcie’s father, Robert, is not a fan of Bennett, and doesn’t approve of the marriage. It doesn’t matter what either of them think, though, since one night when Robert’s driving Dulcie home with Bennett right behind them, they swerve off the road and plunge into a lake. Despite Bennett’s kick butt swimming skills, he is only able to save Robert and not Dulcie.

Cut to four years later. A subdued unhappy Bennett heads back to New Orleans for the first time to find some closure with Robert, and the strangest thing happens. While at the airport waiting for his bags, he spots Dulcie’s bag. And then he spots Dulcie! And then he spots his young daughter, Emma! That’s right, cause Dulcie was secretly pregnant when she got into that crash.

Bennett is trying to make sense of all this, despite the fact that Dulcie and Emma are like, chill dude, we’re real. They head back to their house and Bennett experiences the best day of his life! His wife is still alive! Except that the next day he wakes up and the two are gone. Were they ever really here? Bennett seeks help from anyone he can find, his dad, Robert, a shrink, a doctor, a psychic. Some of them say he imagined it. Others think there’s more to this. Specifically, he gets this idea that the multiverse may be involved in his wife’s reemergence.

A few days later, Dulcie and Emma are back! This time, Bennett comes clean with her. He thinks she’s dead, that she’s not real. But she keeps insisting that he is. Eventually, he buys into this multiverse theory and starts looking for something called an “anchor” that will lead to a “porthole” that connects his world to Dulcie’s world. Will he find it? Will he make the leap? Or is this all just a really sad guy who can’t get over his dead wife? What do you think?

Writers LOOOOVE mutliverses. LOVE THEM. I have been reading multiverse scripts for over a decade. But recently, for some reason, they’ve become really popular. I’m guessing the multiverse has been in the news more? Maybe that’s why?

Whatever the case, the multiverse is not a great story device. I mean, go ahead. Count the number of good multiverse movies out there. I’ll save you the trouble. There aren’t any. And the reasons for that is the multiverse is the ideal writing crutch. It’s a catch-all explanation for anything weird the writer wants to come up with. There’s three versions of Jake? That’s cause of the multiverse! Only our minds can travel through parallel dimensions, not our bodies. That’s cause of the multiverse!

The biggest problem I have with multiverse stories is that the writer usually thinks they’re first ones to have thought of them. That leads to them believing the word “multiverse” alone will hypnotize the reader.

There’s another problem problem with this script. It’s got a PHANTOM HOOK. A phantom hook is a movie hook that sounds good but has no legs. A great example of a phantom hook is Flatliners. Some people flatline themselves to see what the other side of death is like. Except once they do this on page 30, there’s nowhere left for the story to go. You’ve shown us the cool thing. Now what? Yesterday’s script, Spontaneous, about spontaneous combustions, was also a phantom hook. It’s cool to see people spontaneously blow up the first couple of times. But then what is the movie about?

So here I was, reluctantly turning the pages of 29th Accident, feeling very much like I’ve been here before. And then, about midway through the script, it actually started to get better. And I can tell you exactly when that was. It was the moment THE MAIN CHARACTER DECIDED TO PURSUE A GOAL.

What do I tell you guys? I drone on and on about it all the time. But the reason I have to keep saying it is because writers keep not doing it. The big problem with yesterday’s script was that the main characters weren’t pursuing anything! People were blowing up and our characters kept walking around, doing absolutely nothing about it, talking to each other. You want your characters to be drivers in your story, not passengers.

This script was boring when Bennett was a passenger. When he was stumbling around, sometimes seeing Dulcie, sometimes not, the script went nowhere. But once he started trying to figure out if this was real and coming up with a plan to permanently be with Dulcie, the story took shape. It still had the wishy-washiness of the multiverse weighing it down. But Brown did a better job explaining the rule-set of the multiverse than most writers. For example, coming up with specific words like “anchor” and “porthole” give us physical things we can envision and places we know we have to go. A lot of these multiverse-as-catchall-explanation writers fudge their way through the mythology, making weird stuff happen and then screaming out “multiverse!” As if that explains all.

You guys know at this point that I like structure in my stories and I like simplicity in my stories. If you’re not simple, you’re going to have to do an ace job explaining the rules of your world so that I understand what’s going on. The 29th Accident did enough of that that I was able to get to the end. It even had a nice little twist ending I didn’t see coming. But I can’t cosign the first half of this screenplay. It was too directionless and if I wasn’t reviewing the script on the site, I definitely would’ve stopped reading. So I’m afraid this wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: Beware the Phantom Hook – The phantom hook is an idea that has a great first act hook, but then gives the rest of the story no structure to work with. It’s easy to figure out if you have a phantom hook. Just ask if you have a story to tell after the big hook in your movie arrives. If you don’t? And you’re merely hoping to “figure it out along the way,” it is HIGHLY LIKELY you are wasting your time.

Genre: Sorta Horror/Teen
Premise: A high school begins to fall apart when its students start spontaneously combusting.
About: This project is based on a recent novel written by Aaron Starmer. It will star Katherine Langford from 13 Reasons Why. Brian Duffield not only adapted the screenplay but is also making his directorial debut. The movie was shot in January of last year so I’m not sure why it hasn’t come out yet. Spontaneous is one of the first films to come from AwesomenessTV, which is one of the biggest channels on Youtube.
Writer: Brian Duffield (based on the novel by Aaron Starmer
Details: 110 pages (First Draft)

I like going into Brian Duffield scripts as naked as possible. Not physically of course. But I don’t want to know anything. One of the great things about Duffield scripts is that crazy things can happen at any moment and I don’t want to spoil them before they happen.

With that said, I heard through the grape vine that this was an adaptation, and that definitely colored my reading experience. Duffield has worked almost exclusively on original material, which has been great because his mind doesn’t work like anyone else’s. So if he’s working off of someone else’s idea, he has to reign in some of that famous creativity.

And as we’re about to find out, that’s not the best way for him to work.

Spontaneous is Thirteen Reasons Why meets John Hughes meets Warm Bodies. 17 year old Mara is sitting in Pre-Calc when the girl in front of her, Katelyn, explodes. At first, everybody assumes it’s a school shooting so they run around the hallways like chickens with their heads cut off. But eventually they learn that Katelyn wasn’t shot. She spontaneously combusted. Or exploded.

While Mara and her best friend, Tess, struggle to make sense of what happened, fellow senior and kinda weirdo, Dylan, crashes the party to say hi. Dylan, it turns out, has been in love with Mara from afar all throughout high school. Lucky for Dylan, Mara’s kind of liked him, too. So the two start dating. Which should be a happy time. Until another senior, a gay football player, spontaneously explodes.

Now it’s an epidemic. Which means the media and the authorities descend on this small town, E.T.’ing it so no one can come in or out. They start doing all these experiments on the kids, until they eventually develop a pill that keeps people from spontaneously exploding. And so it’s BACK TO SCHOOL for everyone, where it seems like everything is normal again. That is until a mass of spontaneous explosions occur (spoiler) including Dylan!

With the love of her life gone, Mara suspects that she’s the curse that killed everyone. I mean, Katelyn was right in front of her when she exploded. Dylan was around her all the time and he exploded. So it must be true. But eventually Mara philosophizes that life sucks no matter what and that all you can do is your best before you die. The end.

Hmmm…

I don’t know who to direct my disappointment towards here. While Duffield wrote the script, everything is based on the book. And, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your source material.

Look, the good news is that this is an original premise. No zombies. No vampires. No aliens. No monsters. The spontaneous combustion premise is unique.

The problem is, the author didn’t know what to do with that premise. For starters, it’s a terrible premise for building tension. At least when you have zombies, you can create suspenseful situations as those zombies slowly move in on our trapped characters. But with spontaneous combustion, it’s random. There’s no way to build tension with randomness. You’re sitting around for 25 pages of dialogue and then you hear how a new person just blew up. I’m not sure there’s any way to fix that problem.

Nor is the structure here story-friendly. It’s a car ride where nobody tells us where the destination is. So we’re not even the annoying kids in the back screaming, “Are we there yet?” We’re the annoying adults screaming, “Where are we going?”

Theoretically, this sets the stage for what Duffield does best. He can plant two characters in a room and let them dialogue away. Indeed, the dialogue here feels effortless and flowing. The problem is, because there’s no plot, and therefore nobody’s trying to get anywhere in these scenes, they start to get tiring. And repetitive.

And this is why it’s so important to figure out your structure ahead of time. Because if you repeatedly drop characters into scenes where they don’t want anything other than to talk to each other, the story’s never going to feel like it’s advancing.

When you’re writing a story like this, you have two directions you can go in. Direction 1 is to create a mystery behind the problem (spontaneous combustions) that the characters are trying to solve. This gives your heroes a goal and therefore a purposeful journey. “Why are people exploding,” Mara can say. “Let’s investigate.” They don’t do that here. Scientists come in and try to figure things out. But our heroes spend that time sitting around waiting. The other option is to use your story as a metaphor for something. At least that way, we get the feeling that there was a purpose to the experience. If this teaches us a powerful lesson about life, it can work.

But this didn’t do that either (or, at least, this draft didn’t). And I think it’s a source material problem because I went to Amazon afterwards and I was seeing the same complaints in the reviews. The author had his characters talk the whole time while a bunch of people blew up without explanation and in the end, capped it off with, “that’s the randomness of life.” I think I speak for writers everywhere when I say that if your theme is, “randomness of life, bro,” you probably haven’t dug deep enough.

I’ll say it again: you’re only as good as your source material. You’re never going to teach Danny DeVito to be Roger Federer. Then again, it’s important to note that this is a first draft, that Duffield likely added more structure in the subsequent drafts. But for this to have worked, somebody would’ve needed to come up with a radical idea on how to make this concept movie-friendly. I hope that’s what Duffield did. Cause if this movie does well, he’ll get to make some of his own scripts. And that’s what I’d really like to see.

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

What I learned: It’s dangerous to give characters other than your heroes the active storyline. In other words, the goal here is to find out why these spontaneous combustions are happening. But that goal is given to the FBI and scientists while our heroes sit around and wait for them to finish. You want your heroes to be involved in the ultimate goal of the screenplay. 99 times out of 100, that results in a better script.

Heads up! Going to share some good news tomorrow about Jason Gruich, who wrote “Cop Cam.” Let’s keep the good vibes going. Submit your script for this weekend’s Amateur Showdown Contest! You can find the submission rules here. See you soon!

Roman (left), Kendall (right)

One of the best ways to learn dialogue is through comparison shopping. You compare similar scenes between bad dialogue and good dialogue. Or you take a great scene of dialogue you remember from a movie and, without rewatching it, write your version of the scene, then go back and compare the two. Trust me, you’ll learn a thing or two about how to write good dialogue.

The show with the best dialogue going right now is, without question, Succession. Succession follows a Rupert-Murdoch-Slash-Robert-Iger type, named Logan Roy, who has a stroke, forcing his incompetent family to take the reins of the business. The show manages to perfectly balance a serious tone with offbeat humor. And that’s your first dialogue lesson for the day. Most of what we think of as “good dialogue” has a humorous component to it.

So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to write your own version of today’s featured scene before you read it. You’re then going to compare it to the real scene. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t seen the show. I’m going to give you some background on the scene in a second. For those of you brave enough, post your scene in the comments. Let’s see if anyone can top the dialogue from the show. I doubt it will happen. The dialogue here is really good. But if you get a ton of upvotes, I’ll concede.

The scene in question occurs after Shiv (Logan’s daughter) and Roman (Logan’s youngest son) are flying with their dad in a helicopter. During their conversation, the dad has some kind of head rush and passes out. They rush him to the hospital and have a quick talk with an Indian doctor before they’re reassigned to a new room with the rest of the family. They don’t have an official diagnosis yet but they think it may be a brain hemorrhage. The point of the scene is for the family to find out what just happened and then decide what to do next.

The five characters in the scene:

Kendall Roy – 30s, a Donald Trump Jr. type. Talks a big game but is insecure. He’s the leading contender to take over the company but the rest of the family has zero confidence in him.
Roman Roy – late 20s, Kendall’s eccentric younger brother who hates work and just wants to screw around and have fun. Very much a “dialogue-friendly” character.
Shiv Roy – 30s, the sister. The most level-headed of everyone. The only one here who’s more concerned about dad’s health than the company.
Connor Roy – Oldest son from a previous marriage of Logan’s. A bit of a weirdo who goes off on tangents.
Tom – Shiv’s fiance. We’re not sure if this guy loves Shiv or loves that he’s found a way into the Roy family. The family is a little hesitant about him.

I couldn’t find the script for this show, so I’m transcribing the dialogue myself. I’ll only refer to action when it’s necessary. But the description here is not the writer’s. It’s mine. Okay, let’s get to it!

Now if you have an acute dialogue eye, you’ll notice something off about this dialogue. IT SUCKS. That’s right. It sucks. I call this “Basic B@%$# Dialogue.” It’s dialogue anybody could write. You could literally pluck a tourist off the streets of LA and teach him to write this dialogue in ten minutes. I wrote this dialogue. To teach you a lesson. That dialogue can be so much more than you make it. Wanna see the actual dialogue? Okay, here it is.

Same situation. Same things are accomplished. Why is the dialogue in the second version so much better? For starters, note that we’re playing against the obvious emotion here. This is a sad scary situation, yet we’re still injecting humor into it. There’s something else going on here that you see throughout the show and I brought it up during the last dialogue article. There’s a sense of playfulness in the writing, a desire to take chances and go outside the strict confines of a nuts and bolts conversation. If you want to write better dialogue, be more playful. Have more fun.

Now let’s look at some specific moments. Notice Roman’s response to Kendall’s initial question. “Uh, I don’t know, ‘exactly.’ It was weird. Um, it happened fast, we were just sitting there—“ “We were talking—“ “We were talking. Shiv kind of started hard-balling Dad a little bit—“ To be honest, I don’t know if the “ums” and “uhs” were written or if they were an acting choice. But I’m going to assume they were written. Normally, writers would be afraid to write a response like this. There’s something “unclean” about it. One “um,” maybe. But two? In one response. They would be scared of that. And yet it’s what helps the dialogue feel so natural.

In addition to that, notice how the character isn’t allowed to finish before another character butts in. Interruption is ANOTHER thing that helps make dialogue feel natural. So doubling up on these “naturalistic” flourishes is already selling the dialogue way better than the Basic B@%$# version.

Notice also that when someone asks a question, the answer is not a robotic 1 or 0. It isn’t “This” or “That” happened. Roman takes the answer off on an aside. “Shiv kind of started hard-balling Dad a little—“ Already, we’re drifting away from the straight-forward on-the-nose dialogue in Basic B@%$#. Not only that, it gets Shiv to defend herself, which further derails us from getting the answers. This is the trick to dialogue. You don’t want it to be a straight-forward exchange of information. You want it to be messy, like real life! And that’s what the writer was doing here.

What really brings the scene up a notch, though, is Connor randomly bringing up cryogenics. First off, this dialogue is born out of character. It’s not just a writer trying to be funny. This is who Connor is. He’s a weirdo who’s an outcast of the family. He always says stupid stuff like this. This keeps his tangent grounded. If Shiv had said this, it wouldn’t have worked. It works because it’s born out of character. And now we’ve gone even further away from getting the answers we need. Which is what you want to do with dialogue. You don’t want it to be easy. You don’t want everybody to agree and read each other’s minds with perfect responses. You want it to be difficult. Because that’s how conflict is created and what keeps the dialogue fresh and fun.

So what about you? What differences did you notice between the Basic B@%$# version and the real version? What differences did you notice between the real version and your own version? Compare compare compare. The more you compare your dialogue to the best dialogue in the industry, the better you’re going to get at it. Now let’s see how your own scenes turned out.

Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!

Genre: Vampire
Premise: After the United States survives a vampire war, a young human girl going through puberty learns that she may be turning into a vampire.
About: Bill Kennedy is best known for writing a number of episodes for House of Cards. With this spec, he got onto last year’s Black List, garnering a respectable 10 votes.
Writer: Bill Kennedy
Details: 95 pages

MacKenzie Foy for Samantha?

One of the tricks that savvy screenwriters use to gain traction in this industry is to take a big idea and execute in a small way. The way it works is that you get the conceptual residue of the big idea, but you do it in an affordable manner. The backstory for this script revolves around a giant war with vampires. Yet we never see that war. We’re just living in a small town 25 years after it’s ended.

If you do it right, the reader is imagining this big expansive world all by themselves. You don’t have to show any of it. And because there are no big production expenses, the number of potential buyers for your screenplay skyrockets. This is similar to what they did with the movie Maggie. Although I would argue that Kennedy does it better in Just a Girl.

In addition to introducing this trick, Kennedy incorporates another time-tested narrative, which is to use a flashy gimmick as a metaphor for puberty/adolescence. In this script, our 16 year old hero is turning into a vampire. But what she’s really turning into is an adult. You savvy Scriptshadow readers probably remember a few similar scripts I’ve reviewed here. In one of them, a 16 year old girl is turning into an insect. And, in another, one is turning into a superhero.

The great thing about these two “tricks” is that not many writers know about them. So you can use them and, assuming you execute them well, look like a genius. So how did Just A Girl turn out? Let me down this Big Gulp cup full of blood first and I’ll tell you.

We meet 16 year old Samantha in her small town during a parade. But this parade’s a little different from the ones you’ve been to. It’s celebrating the anniversary of the end of the Human-Vampire war. 25 years ago, humanity finally figured out how to defeat the vampires, and since then, the planet has been a vampire free zone.

Samantha’s best friend is Annabeth. The two are somewhat outsiders at high school. They’re pining over the popular boys who already have their popular girlfriends. But the cool kids start taking a liking to Annabeth, who eventually pulls away from Samatha to join the popular clique.

Samantha is devastated by the loss of her best friend, but it turns out she’s got bigger fish to fry. She’s starting to crave blood for some reason. Finally, one day, she can’t take it anymore, so she kills a squirrel and drinks its blood. The experience is euphoric so it isn’t long before she’s killing bigger animals. Meanwhile, she’s getting stronger, and more importantly, stops giving a sh*&.

This “whatever” attitude ironically gets the boys’ attention. And Samantha isn’t shy about letting those boys know she wants to lose her virginity. Soon, her and Annabeth are hanging out again and it isn’t long before Samatha is pressuring Annabeth to do naughtier things. Let’s get drunk. Let’s go to parties. Let’s have sex with boys. There’s a recklessness to Samantha. She needs constant chaos.

Unfortunately, Samantha’s parents become suspicious and when she least suspects it, the cops show up and take her to the hospital for tests. They find out she’s a vampire, which is impossible. There hasn’t been a vampire on earth for over two decades. It’s clear what they have to do but Samantha is able to escape before they do it. She finds Annabeth and prepares to make a run for it. Will they make it into the wilderness in time? Or will they both be hunted down and killed?

This was quite good. Not only is the premise clever. But the execution is sound.

And this is where most new writers falter. They’ll come up with a premise like this and not have a plan for what to do next. They’ll have 4-5 scenes in mind. They know Samantha’s going to be at school a lot and get into some dustups with the popular girls. They know she’s going to have sex at some point. But that takes up 30 pages of the script. What’s the rest of the story? You could argue that this is the crux of the screenwriting struggle. Who can only fill up 30 pages of material and who can fill up 90. I know a lot of people who can fill up 30. Very few who can give us another 60.

So what’s the trick to it? Besides the basics, one of the tricks is escalation. And what escalation is, is that every 12-15 pages, the story needs to make a jump. Let’s say you write a version of this movie where Samantha and Annabeth go to school and deal with the typical issues that teenage girls deal with. Okay. Go ahead and do that for 15 pages. But then you have to escalate. You have to give us something new that makes these next 15 pages feel a little bigger and a little different from the previous 15.

So Bill has Samantha being shy and introverted at first. And then 15 pages later, she starts killing and drinking animal blood, resulting in a bolder more reckless Samantha. And then 15 pages later, she’s gone full-goth and needs to have sex at all costs. And then 15 pages later, she’s getting in a fight with the entire LaCrosse team, using her vampire strength to beat all of them down. In other words, the story keep escalating. Each 15 pages feels bigger than the last.

And to some of you, this might sound obvious. But I can promise you, based on all the amateur scripts I read, it is anything but obvious. For some new writers, it’s just that they don’t know that the story has to keep advancing. But the bigger fault lies with writers who DO know this rule, and yet they love their writing so much that they feel they’re exempt it. They see this as a “gimmick” that their script is somehow above. They believe that they can write 45 pages of Samantha and Annabeth chilling out at school with no major plot advances. But the reality is, you’re boring us. You need to keep your story going. You need to keep escalating it to the next level. Especially a story like this that’s stationary. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of writing a passive story when your characters aren’t physically moving anywhere.
Ironically, that leads to the script’s one fault, which its ending. In the desire to keep upping the stakes, the ending of this script becomes… I don’t want to say like a superhero film. But, tonally, it felt like the wrong ending. Going on the run and having police chase you doesn’t quite work. We needed to finish this in the town. But to be clear. Escalating the stakes to make the climax bigger than the rest of the script was the right move. I just didn’t like the creative choice of going on the run and making it Dark Phoenix 2.

Still, I’m very happy that I reviewed this script. It’s yet another in a string of scripts I’ve reviewed these past two weeks which are all great examples of spec scripts you should be writing. From Don’t Worry Darling to Pyros to Cop Cam and now Just A Girl. Each of them have components that make them spec sale friendly. Check this script out if you get a chance.

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

What I learned: If you’ve ever received the note that your script is “repetitive” or that “not much happens?” these are indicators that you don’t escalate your script every 12-15 pages. After 12-15 pages of story, try to imagine that there’s a ladder that you have to climb your script up to get to the next level. Cause if it stays down here on the street it’s been on for the last 15 minutes? Chances are people are getting bored.