I want you to imagine a scenario with me. You’ve just become the hot cool screenwriting thang on the block. Your nifty biopic about the woman who invented the trampoline finished with 27 votes on the Black List. All of a sudden everyone wants to meet with you. So you go to meeting after meeting and it’s all smiles and high-fives and then, at your final lunch with an executive at at Paramount Pictures, you learn that Michael Bay liked your script so much, he wants you to write the new Transformers spin-off! He feels like your inherent understanding of life’s complexities are going to work great for an Optimus Prime origin story.

So you go off and you write what you feel is a really good Transformers movie about how working in the trucking industry for 20 years helped him become the great autobot leader he is today. You’re not patting yourself on the back or anything. But if they film this script as is? It will be the best Transformers movie by far. There’s more depth and nuance in the final 10 minutes than there have been in all the Transformers movies combined. You’ve heard nightmare stories about getting bad notes from clueless executives, so you’re ready. This is your big shot and you’re going to look at everything through a positive lens.

Well, the primary executive you’re working with on the project, Colin, tells you that he really likes your script, but he’s been mulling it over and wants to go in a different, more exciting, direction. He wants Optimus Prime to be a dinobot. You see, Jurassic World 3 just came out and did bonkers box office and it would be a lot easier to sell this movie with a dinosaur as the protagonist. Uhhh… but this means erasing the truck delivery storyline, which is a key part of Optimus’s transformation. You’d basically have to scrap the whole script and start over. Don’t worry, Colin tells you. You’re a good writer. You’ll figure it out.

So you go and you write a new script, this one starting in the dinosaur age, where Optimus, now a dinobot, has to hide out from the Decepticons. You add a great climactic set piece where Optimus barely escapes death by meteor. You send this new draft in and Michael Bay wants to meet with you. He’s been busy filming a movie so this is the first draft he’s read. “Why is Optimus a dinosaur?” he asks. This movie is about a truck. It’s about truck-driving. You try and explain what happened but all Michael can say is, “Let’s go back to the truck story. Except I had a new idea. We’re going to set this in the future. Way in the future. We’ve seen present-day Transformers too many times. We’re going to give them something different this time around…”

One of the complaints that always bugs me about writers is when they moan and groan about the different writing standards for amateurs and pros. They see a hackneyed sloppily written stinker like Hobbs and Shaw, a movie that’s being played in over 4000 theaters in America alone, and they say, “This script is terrible. Nothing makes sense. Yet my script is dismissed because I had a spelling mistake on page 2.”

Let me say this. I understand every aspiring screenwriter’s frustration. I don’t know if there’s a more inherently demoralizing pursuit than writing. You spend six months writing a screenplay or two years writing a novel, and after you finally finish, a bunch of people tell you, “Meh. It was okay, I guess.” You’ve got to be quite the masochist to put yourself through that experience time and time again. So from the bottom of my heart, I understand your pain.

But now let’s remove feelings from the equation, since nobody in Hollywood cares about your feelings. And let’s look at this objectively. When screenwriters are called upon to write a movie for a studio or a production company, they are no longer the author. The person who’s bankrolling the movie is the author (or whoever the bankroller anoints as the project head). Therefore, you’re not so much writing as you are solving problems. People are coming to you, just like my Transformers example, and they’re telling you to change what you believe are good ideas into bad ones. They’re telling you that an actor wants their character to have more jokes even though that character isn’t a joker. They’re telling you they can’t afford to shoot at Times Square, so you’ll have to move the scene to a forest, even though that fundamentally changes everything about the movie. And these are just normal problems. Wait until you run into a director who decides to rewrite the script you just spent four years on two weeks prior to production.

When that movie then comes out and it doesn’t make sense at all… you blame that all on the screenwriter? The screenwriter is usually the person with the least amount of say on a project. All they can do is pick their battles and try to keep some semblance of a good story together.

Now some of you might say, “Well The Departed was a great script,” or “Schindler’s List rocked.” “So obviously IT IS possible for good movies to be made.” Well yeah. Of course. There are people in Hollywood in powerful positions that understand story. And when those people are shepherding a project, they’re going to be successful more often than not. But, unfortunately, most projects have people working on them who don’t know storytelling well. They may know marketing well. They may know character well. But they don’t know how to put together an A to Z story so they force a lot of bad ideas that you have to incorporate into your script. Does that make you a bad writer? No. Of course not.

Maybe the most high-profile example of this is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It is one of the worst screenplays you’ve ever seen make it to the big screen. Long time A-list screenwriter David Koepp wrote that screenplay. Now do you think that David Koepp had any input on that screenplay whatsoever? David Koepp was a glorified exposition typist. They gave him a bunch of set pieces and story beats that didn’t fit together then asked him to make it make sense. This is why it’s so confusing for outsiders to process this. They see David Koepp’s name on this awful movie and they think, “Why would they keep hiring him? That film was trash.” Yeah but everyone knows Koepp had little to no say on how that screenplay went.

Now let’s turn to you, the amateur screenwriter. Your audience is completely different than the professional screenwriter. Let’s start there. The professional is more or less transcribing what someone else wants. That someone is the only audience they have to please. You, on the other hand, are writing to a very specific audience – and I want you to internalize this because it’s probably the most important point I’ll make all post – your audience is people tasked with reading terrible scripts over and over and over again. They have read so many bad screenplays, that by the time they read your script? They are both exhausted and assuming it will be just as bad as everything else they’ve read. Not because they’re trying to keep you down. Because that’s been the reality of their job. So, obviously, you’re going to need to come up with something pretty great to win them over.

There’s a second challenge to this. And I can speak about this from experience. Nobody is interested in you passing them a script that’s pretty good. In every instance where I’ve passed something up to someone – an agent or a producer – that I thought was pretty good, I was basically told to stop wasting their time. The only time anyone wants you to pass something to them is if it’s awesome. And even then, they usually read it and say “no thanks.” The reason why this is important to understand is that a lot of times, a reader will read something that’s genuinely decent. It’s got problems but they weren’t bored while reading the script. Unfortunately, these readers know that even though they thought the script was good, their boss or whoever had them read it, won’t care. They’re only going to care if you’re over-the-moon about the script.

This is a big reason the standards between amateurs and pros are different. You’re writing under a completely different set of circumstances than the pro writer. Now of course, there are other scenarios besides the “studio assignment.” A writer who just had a big sale comes out with another spec and it’s not very good. Well, a producer only cares about getting movies made. And if they have a spec from one of the hottest writers in town, that’s worth something, even if the script isn’t very good. “Us” wasn’t a very good screenplay. It was kind of all over the place. But is there any studio in town who wouldn’t have made Jordan Peele’s second movie? Of course not. So you have to factor that in.

How do you write one of these scripts that blows people away? Or wins a screenplay contest? There is no magical formula. But I can tell you this. Make sure you’ve got a professional presentation. Don’t let the reason you lose a reader be laziness. All of the “basics” need to be on lockdown. From there, it’s about picking a great concept – you can improve your chances of this by sending your ideas to friends and asking them to honestly rank your idea from 1-10. And then executing the story in a way that continually keeps the narrative exciting. We should always WANT to turn the page. We should never feel like we HAVE to turn the page. The more you study screenwriting, the more scripts you write, and the more scripts you read, the better you’ll get at that last part. And to all of you I say, I hope you eventually write the greatest script ever. Because it’s so much easier to read a good script than a bad one.

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: Sci-Fi (short story)
Premise: In the near future, “Tardy Men” – a new breed of firefighter with high-tech fire suits fused into their spines – go into dangerous fires to retrieve valuable items for the rich.
About: This package is still coming together and, along with hot spec sale, Don’t Worry Darling, last week, is drawing major bids from multiple studios. It looks like Simon Kinberg, who will direct, discovered the short story, which appeared in The New Yorker, and changed the main character from a male to a female so that Reese Witherspoon could play the lead. A cool footnote is that the author of the short story, Thomas Pierce, will be writing the screenplay. The film will be retitled, “Pyros.”
Writer: Thomas Pierce
Details: short story – 1200 words

I never cared about Simon Kinberg being a big successful Hollywood writer/producer despite a body of work that suggested below-average talent UNTIL he joined the Star Wars team. Cause I love Star Wars. I wanted great Star Wars movies. And then, out of nowhere, I’ve got the guy who’s making some of the worst superhero movies in history involved in Star Wars in a major capacity. That’s when I began the anti-Simon Kinberg movement.

When this project hit the airwaves, my interest was piqued because it’s such an odd move for everyone involved. You’re going to have a studio committing major dough to a 1200 word short story. You’ve got Reese Witherspoon taking on her first ever hard sci-fi role. And you’ve got Kinberg trying his hand at original material, as opposed to the safety net of well-known IP. On top of that, it’s an admittedly intriguing premise in that it’s a sci-fi idea I’ve never seen before. That’s hard to do in any genre, but especially sci-fi.

Also, these are always good reminders for writers about what kind of stuff Hollywood is searching for. We spend so much time in our delusion bubbles convincing ourselves that any idea we come up with is genius, we forget to look at real-world “this is what sells” data.

Let’s take a look.

Tardy Man begins with a man talking to us using abbreviated language. “Can’t talk thru suit. That’s why note cards,” he tells us. He then proceeds to explain that he’s a “Tardy Man,” as in “fire retardant.” His “Tardy Suit,” he explains, is connected to his spine and he can’t remove it without help “or else death.” That’s why he has to “use note cards.”

He explains that his job is to run into big fires, the kind that take up entire neighborhoods, and recover things for rich people. The company he works for, Wick, has one rule. The item they paid you to get is the only thing that matters. Doesn’t matter if you see a dying dog. Doesn’t matter if a person is stuck under a dresser on the second floor. You get the item and that’s it.

In today’s case, he needed to obtain a bin that kept important items for a rich family. While he was walking to the house, he saw a little kid in the pool. Only place for him to stay safe. He walked by the kid but later goes back to get him, even though Wick has been known to kill Tardy Men who disobey the rule.

He then places the boy in the bin and goes on a long trek through the fire-fueled forest, to the safety of a random home just outside the fire. That’s when we realize this is the woman he’s been telling the story to the whole time, the woman he’s asking to take the boy. Now he has to get back to Wick and hope they don’t find out what he did. The End.

Well, I may not be the biggest Simon Kinberg fan, but in this case, he nailed it. This was really good.

For starters, it’s cleverly written. I love the mood the abbreviated style creates and I love that the abbreviation is motivated. Not only that, but it’s used as a semi-mystery to drive the story. Why is this person talking like this, we’re wondering.

But here’s the real reason I liked this story.

One of the most pivotal moments in this business is when you pitch someone an idea. In that moment you’re either going to get a yes or a no. And the significance of this is that it will be added to the total tally of yeses and nos, which provide you with a pretty clear picture of whether your idea is good or not.

However, what a lot of writers forget is that there’s a secondary pivotal moment within the pitch itself. It’s the moment when you give the person the definitive image that proves your idea is worthy of being a movie. In Blake Snyder’s book, Save the Cat, he talks about this moment with his big spec sale, Don’t Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot. During the pitch, there was a moment where he described a car chase where his protagonist was forced to be a passenger in his mom’s car during the chase, leading to the slowest car chase ever. It was that moment that the producer said, “This is a movie.”

That’s the goal of the definitive image. It’s your highlight image that sells the movie. Another example would be the birth scene in A Quiet Place. Establish that monsters kill you if you make any noise and then force one of your characters to give birth within that construct. People hear that and they go, yup, that’s a movie. No question about it. A more specific way to look at this is, “What’s going to be the moment in the trailer that makes people want to see this movie?”

That moment occurred while I was reading this short. Early on, the Tardy Man was walking through the backyard of this house he had to go into, and he sees this desperate child in the pool. And he just… keeps walking. That’s it right there. That’s the movie. You show a man in a giant deadly fire who sees a boy who needs saving and he just walks right past him? That shocking image is going to sell the movie. And, actually, it’s going to sell it even better when Reese Witherspoon is doing it. Because women are supposed to be motherly. And for her to coldly walk past a boy who needs help… that’s going to get literally “ohhhhs” from the audience.

There was another line I really liked here as well: “Very, very sad situation. Tardy Man a good person. Too good. Wick doesn’t like good ppl.” This implies that “Tardy Men” need to be cold and unfeeling. They must learn to eliminate their emotions. They’re here to do a job and the job is all that matters. That’s a really interesting character for actors to explore, and I’m going to assume it’s the reason Reese signed on.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kinberg uses the entire story here as the basis for his screenplay or if he only uses the core concept. Because while transporting a boy in this box that supposedly only has an hour of air in it gives the movie a nice ticking time bomb, something tells me there’s so much more you can do with this idea. You could create an entire mythology behind the house and the people who own it and what they want the Tardy Man to retrieve and maybe it’s something illegal. I like the idea of him having to save someone, but I don’t think it should be a real time 90 minute “walk through a fire” story. I’m afraid that might get boring.

This is easily one of the best short stories I’ve read. It’s so hard to come up with a good story in a thousand words, but somehow this Thomas Pierce guy pulled it off. I’m really looking forward to this now.

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

What I learned: This was a wake-up call to me that not every low-to-mid budget sci-fi idea has to be some dumb time-travel thing or “people stuck in a ship” or “wake up in a strange room” idea. Not that you can’t write good versions of those movies. But of the hundreds of low-budget sci-fi scripts that I’ve read, 90% of them are those three setups. Expand your imagination and look for sci-fi ideas in unexpected places.

Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Lawman Luke Hobbs and outcast Deckard Shaw form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain threatens the future of humanity.
About: Hobbs and Shaw contains a ton of drama, and that’s just in the production of the film! Tempers flared when Fast and Furious OG Vin Diesel learned that they were going to make Fast and Furious movies without him. Tyrese Gibson, who plays Roman on the series, even took to his Instagram to call out the selfish Rock for prioritizing the spinoff over the next Fast and Furious sequel. Needless to say, there were a lot of people wanting a lot of different results from the Hobbs and Shaw box office this weekend. The film is said to be a success with its 60 million dollar domestic opening. However, it should be noted that the last Fast and Furious movie made 100 million dollars its opening weekend. So is this really a success? I don’t know. Long-standing franchise scribe Chris Morgan is back yet again to write the spin-off.
Writer: Chris Morgan
Details: 2 hours and 17 minutes

Before I get to Hobbs and Shaw, can I just say something?

F&%$ Christopher Nolan.

No, seriously. F&%$ Christopher Nolan.

There isn’t a director on this planet more full of himself than this schmuck. Talk about a clueless dolt who gets high off the smell of his own s$&#.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Nolan put up a teaser trailer for his new movie, Tenet, this weekend in front of Hobbs and Shaw. Nolan, he who still spends his off-time marching for 35mm film rights and denouncing streaming services, couldn’t be bothered to put his trailer up on the internet first. Why? Because he’s Christopher Nolan. A Christopher Nolan film, according to Christopher Nolan, is such a monumental life-changing event, that its trailer cannot, will not, be shown online first. It will only be shown in theaters, the way they used to do it 30 years ago.

None of this would matter if this self-appointed genius’s teaser trailer was actually, you know, good. But let me break this trailer down for you and you can decide. We open on a shot of a bullet hole in glass. Behind the glass is a man who’s out of focus. We then get some weird title card that proclaims, “It’s time for a new kind of protagonist.” We cut back to see the camera moving across the glass and we see… ANOTHER bullet hole. Ooooooooh. Man, the anticipation is killing me. Two bullet holes in glass? A new kind of protagonist with no explanation of what that means!? Wooooowwwwww, bro.

But it gets better. The out of focus man then comes INTO focus and INSPECTS the bullet hole. Yeah. That’s a new kind of protagonist all right. Guy knows how to inspect a bullet hole! I’ve never seen a protagonist like that before. But we’re not done yet. We then cut to a quick stock footage shot of a riot. HOLY BALLS! Riot stock footage! You’re right Christopher Nolan! This teaser trailer could only be appreciated in theaters. Youtube never would’ve done this stock footage justice. Annnnnnnnnd…. that’s the trailer.

THAT’S IT! That’s all we get.

This is the kind of trailer that signifies a director who’s out of touch. He thinks he’s still Six Weeks After Dark Knight Came Out Christopher Nolan. Brother? You put out a sci-fi movie that ended in a bookshelf. You don’t get to cut together 12 seconds of footage that you shot in your basement, throw in a couple of title cards, and people go crazy anymore. You need to give us something of actual substance. I hope this trailer wins top prize for worst trailer of 2019. Because that’s how unnecessary it was. Call us when you’ve actually shot some of your movie, dude.

Hobbs and Shaw.

Hobbs and Shaw is the anti-Christopher Nolan film. There are no spinning dreidels. They are not purporting to do anything other than make people laugh and have a good time. This movie doesn’t carry a single serious bone in its body. But that directive comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s a breakdown of the plot if you didn’t see it.

Hobbs (The Rock) – who I think is a CIA agent? – is called onto a case where a British agent, Hattie, was forced to inject herself with a secret black-plague level virus to escape a bad guy. But now everyone, including the British government, wants to kill her because this virus is so dangerous. It will be up to Hobbs, who is the best tracker in the world (I’m just learning that this movie) to find her and bring her back to safety.

By the way, can someone tell me how it is that when movie people get injected with deadly viruses that could wipe out the entire planet they don’t die themselves? That’s kind of an important detail don’t you think? I mean, you’re trying to convince us that the world is in danger, yet the only person we see that actually has the virus in them is running around and beating the crap out of people without so much as having to re-apply eyeliner.

Anyway.

When Hobbs gets to London to start looking for this girl, he’s told he has to team up with, oh yeah, you guessed it, Shaw (Jason Statham). They actually find the girl pretty quick, but there’s a twist. Hattie is Shaw’s sister! And she’s clearly got the hots for Hobbs. It’s Shaw’s worst nightmare!

The three of them are attacked by self-proclaimed “bad guy,” Brixton (Idris Elba), who could do so many villainous things if he could just get his hands on that virus! But after a couple of car chases around London and, I think, Russia, the three of them escape the pesky Brit, who I forgot to tell you has been fused together with an artificially intelligent machine so that he has super strength. I swear I didn’t make that up.

Hobbs realizes that the only place they’ve got a shot at defeating Brixton is in his home state of Hawaii. Only problem is he hasn’t been back there in 30 years and everyone in Hawaii hates him. Lucky for him, his family and friends are big fans of Braveheart. Cause they prepare for a showdown with Brixton and his army (I guess Brixton has an army now) that is a beat for beat remake of that film’s famous battle. Who’s going to win? How dare you ask me such a question. Pay 15 bucks and find out yourself!

Before I break down Hobbs and Shaw, let me tell you what I require from a film like this. First, I want the chemistry between the leads to be great. Honestly, if you pull that off, nothing else matters. Two, I want to see some things I’ve never seen before. The reason I’m paying 20 bucks (with parking) to come see your movie in the theater as opposed to waiting for it to come out on digital? Is that this is a mega-budget movie that can show me things non mega-budget movies can’t. And finally, I require a good plot. It doesn’t have to be great. These movies never have great plots. But it needs to feel like they’ve put some effort into it. Again, I’m paying more money and giving more of my time, which means stringing together a bunch disassociated content isn’t going to be enough. It’s got to be coherent and keep me engaged.

So how did Hobbs and Shaw do in those three categories?

CHEMISTRY: C+

The chemistry between The Rock and Jason Statham is adequate but never good. The script isn’t doing them any favors. Nothing is written here that would imply these two hate each other. The only reason they hate each other is because it’s a movie. That’s one of the biggest sins you can commit as a screenwriter. Not doing the work. Hoping the casting will do it for you. On top of that, watching these two together never feels natural. You can feel them forcing their hatred on one another. And just to show I’m not a blanket hater, I think the chemistry between The Rock and Kevin Hart in their movies is A+. They’re amazing together. Meanwhile, the conflict between Hobbs and Shaw feels phoned in.

STUFF I’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE: D

There’s nothing here I haven’t seen. All the chase scenes were basic. The fighting was standard choreographed stuff. The best set piece was the running-down-the-side-of-the-building sequence, but that went by fast. The stuff in Hawaii should’ve given us something new but didn’t. I don’t even know why they start these movies without specifically having a meeting about what they’re going to give audiences that they haven’t seen before. Because if you don’t do that, your movie opens to 60 million instead of 100 million.

PLOT: D

I considered giving the plot an F but then I threw on David Robert Mitchell’s “Under The Silver Lake” Saturday night and realized, oh, it can be so much worse. The plot to Hobbs and Shaw made sense in so much as we always knew what was going on. But it was extremely cliched. And I don’t use that word flippantly. The whole buddy team up angle + world-ending virus + the girl is carrying the virus. We’ve seen so many movies using these tired tropes. Everything felt familiar except for the Hawaii sequence and, unfortunately, that had its own issues, namely that we got there too late to set that environment up.

A fun question to ask after watching Hobbs and Shaw is, is this as good as a Fast and Furious movie? If not, why? Well, there’s a major difference in the Fast and Furious films. They contain a specific identity. Car chases + tough dudes trying to get an impossible job done + family. The nice thing about that formula is that if you don’t like one of those elements, it’s never long before one of the other ones comes along. So if you’re not into Vin and his boys having a barbecue in the backyard and busting each other’s chops, that’s okay, cause an amazing car chase is right around the corner.

Hobbs and Shaw doesn’t have an identity. It’s more an amalgamation of every action movie ever made. You can hear the story meetings for the screenplay, “What’s something cool we can do here, or cool we can say there?” as opposed to what they would say in a Fast and Furious meeting, which would be closer to, “We need to weave the family theme into this part of the story better,” or “This car chase is too much like the highway chase in F&F 4. We can come up with something better.” In other words, there’s more of an understanding of what their movie needs to do to give the audience what they want.

I love The Rock. He’s always entertaining. But not even he can save a film that doesn’t know what it is. I mean, I’m pretty sure Brixton is a robot. And that choice symbolizes how all-over-the-place this idea is. If you’re 13, you will love this. But if you’re 14 or older, save your money for something else.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: We’ve gotten to a point where even the people writing these movies treat their “end of the world” threat as a joke. They know the audience knows it’s b.s. but they put it in there anyway because movies need stakes. Did anybody who watched this movie actually think the world was in danger? Same thing with the last Mission Impossible. Did anyone think the nukes would actually be used? We need to get back to basics as a screenwriting community and not only try and come up with stakes that feel real, but also COMMIT TO THEM. If you, the writer, treat the stakes as a joke? So will the audience. Once you go down that “a threat to the world” road, you must commit to it 100%. Try to make it as real as possible so we believe it. But also, believe it yourself!

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Hit List) Set against the austere backdrop of pig-hunting in modern day Hawaii, an unlikely bond is formed when an orphaned wild piglet takes shelter in the back yard of a grieving couple, leading to a series of emotional journeys and consequences for man and pig alike
About: This script finished on last year’s Hit List with 29 votes. It comes from Ariel Heller, who graduated from USC. He directed James Franco in an experimental film called The Mad Whale, which for some reason isn’t listed on Rotten Tomatoes. But it appears to have been directed by 10 other people as well. No, don’t ask me what’s going on. I just work here.
Writer: Ariel Heller
Details: 112 pages

It’s funny how Hollywood works. One second your live action animation pig screenplay is just another bottom-of-the-hit-list nothing script. Then a live action animal movie that breaks a bunch of records comes out, and all of a sudden your live action animation pig movie is looking pretty darn tasty.

Recently injured Hawaiian pig, Red Salvador, talks to us in voice over as he bleeds to death. He lays down in the middle of the highway and waits to be hit by a car so he can die. Cut to black. Six years earlier. We meet Joshua, a priest of sorts who’s just planted a Caro Leaf in honor of someone who died. 40 year old Kulani and her husband, Hal, observe the ceremony in tears.

We jump two weeks earlier. It’s here where the pregnant Kulani is told by a doctor that the baby in her is not alive. Hence, we now know what that ceremony was for. Cut to DAYS LATER when the stillborn baby is born. It’s also during this time that we meet Red, the baby piglet version, as he watches his herd of pigs get slaughtered by hunters! Red then walks over to Kulani’s garden, who’s happy to have someone to talk to.

Cut to one year later! Kulani is still struggling to connect with her husband, who was able to move past the stillborn baby easily. Her husband’s sister, Sylvie, is married to one of the big hunters in the area, Brian. Brian and his hunting dogs are mad that the local pig population is getting out of control. Red now has a new gang he rolls with. They go out, eat off all the farms, then come back to Kulani’s backyard, where they know they’ll be safe.

You get the idea. Tensions begin growing. Brian doesn’t like that the piglets have shelter and he can’t kill them. Sooner or later, he’s going to find a way to take them out, which is probably going to have us cutting to that opening scene again, to find out Red’s fate.

One of the first screenwriting lessons I ever learned came from Blake Snyder’s book, Save The Cat. In it, he said that there’s zero reason to write a script until you’ve got your logline down. I remember reading that and getting very angry for some reason. In retrospect, it was probably because I’d written a number of screenplays and I hadn’t worked out the logline beforehand on any of them. Usually, that’s why we dismiss new ideas. Because we want to protect the way we’ve been doing it ourselves.

But the more I thought about it, the more I understood the logic behind the tip. Snyder’s logic was that you need a single defining line that tells you what your movie is about so if you ever get lost or stumble into the weeds during your screenplay, you can always look at that logline to know what you’re supposed to do. So, in Avengers: Infinity War, your logline might look something like… “A group of the most powerful superheroes in the universe must stop a galactic villain from obtaining all five stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, which, when obtained, will allow him to erase half the universe.”

Now let’s look at the logline listed on the Hit List for Red Salvador: “Set against the austere backdrop of pig-hunting in modern day Hawaii, an unlikely bond is formed when an orphaned wild piglet takes shelter in the back yard of a grieving couple, leading to a series of emotional journeys and consequences for man and pig alike.”

Notice the difference between the two loglines. In the first, there is a clear goal, a clear conflict, and clear stakes. A bunch of superheroes trying to stop a bad guy from killing half the people in the universe. Now look at Red Salvador. There are some specifics to latch onto. An orphaned piglet. A grieving couple. Pig-hunting. I can sort of imagine a movie in there. But note the last part of the logline, “…leading to a series of emotional journeys and consequences for man and pig alike.”

You know what that line says so me? It says, “I don’t know where this story is going. Stuff is going to happen. Emotions will be involved. Eventually there will be an ending.”

I want to be fair. This very well may not have been the writer’s logline. Sometimes the managers or agents write these up. But I bring it up because as I’m reading the script, I’m thinking, where is this going? It doesn’t seem to have a point. We’re with the nice family for a while, we’re with the hunters for awhile, we’re with the pigs for awhile. Five years ago. Two weeks ago. A week passes. A year passes. Five years pass. This script reads like the writer is making it up as he goes along.

It is therefore a prime candidate for Blake Snyder’s logline rule. Had the writer written out a logline ahead of time, they would be forced to come up with a clearer narrative and, probably, would’ve had a more focused screenplay.

Now do I think the Blake Snyder logline lesson is essential every time out? No, of course not. If you’re a seasoned writer who understands goals, stakes, urgency, clarity, and how to properly structure a story, you very well might be able to pull this off instinctually. But if you’re still in the “Under-6 Screenplays” category, it may be something you want to try.

Because, frankly, this screenplay is all the f&*% over the place. Between the random time jumps and sketchy world-building and wandering narrative, it was nearly impossible to stay focused on what was happening. Which is frustrating because the story has some nice elements. Kulani dealing with her stillborn child at 40 years old has the seeds for an interesting character study. The mythology of Hawaii and pig-hunting in the region and how it affects farming – that had some potential.

But here’s where the writer made their mistake. And it’s the same thing I see with thousands of writers. They tried to do too much. They’re covering too many sides. There’s no true main character, no true narrative guiding our story. And that’s fine if you’re Quentin freaking Tarantino and you can handle it. But if you’re Joe This is My Fourth Screenplay, you can’t. Trust me, you can’t. You gotta live in reality and come up with a narrative you can handle.

A woman has a stillbirth. It effectively destroys her marriage. She’s broken, trying to find meaning in her life. She befriends a stray pig who likes coming to her garden. And that pig is in danger of being killed as the pig-hunting in the area becomes more aggressive. That’s all you need. Don’t complicate it! I swear, I’m going to put that sentence on my grave. Those three words could’ve saved millions of screenplays.

I’m not going to say this script is a lost cause. But it would need at least half a dozen rewrites before it was in shape. Some writers need a producer to help them find their story. I think that’s the case here.

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

What I learned: The main thing that writing out a logline ahead of time does, is it helps you understand what your main character is trying to accomplish, and what stands in his way of doing it. Those are two of the most important parts of the story and they happen to be the two crucial components to writing a good logline.

So far in our Dialogue Series, we’ve talked about how to set up a scene for good dialogue. We’ve talked about the importance of adding personality to your characters, as that’s a driving force behind good dialogue. Today I want to talk about the kind of dialogue that makes me want to kill myself. Because I read it all the time. And if I can just steer screenwriters away from these two things, I can ensure that all the screenplays I read from now on will have 50% better dialogue. So what are these script-killers?

ON-THE-NOSE DIALOGUE

and

GENERAL DIALOGUE

On-the-nose dialogue is dialogue where the characters are speaking only to service the plot and the scene. It’s as if they have a direct line into the writer’s head and are making sure that they’re saying exactly what the writer needs them to say for the reader to understand what they’re thinking and what’s going on. On-the-nose dialogue is obvious and straightforward. “I am so tired this morning.” “You should sleep in.” “But I have the big meeting today.” “Oh yeah. I’ll cook you breakfast.”

On-the-nose characters speak like cave men. Whatever they’re thinking, they share it. This gives the entire conversation a false reality. The audience isn’t even sure why they’re so bored. Characters are speaking on the screen. Usually they like this. But nothing the characters are saying is interesting. And that’s because there’s no human element to the conversation.

What’s the human element? Well, for starters, humans rarely say what they’re thinking. If Jane shows up at work with a disastrous new haircut and asks her friend, Sally, what she thinks, is Sally going to say what she thinks? Probably not. Conversation is a dance where you’re balancing what you’re thinking against what you’re saying. And I think that’s what a lot of newbies get wrong. They have the character say what they think as opposed to considering how that character might present that thought once it goes through their filter.

Here, in The Breakfast Club, Andrew (the Jock) is mad at Bender (the Burnout) and lets him know it….

You can see that John Hughes even wrote it into the script. Bender wants to say something nasty. He’s angry. But instead of being a robot who conveys exactly what he thinks, he pretends that he’s unaffected and comes back with a jab. This is the human element. We think about what we’re going to say so that when we do say something, it frames us in the light that we want to be perceived in.

I can tell a writer is thinking “off-the-nose” (which is what you want!) when obvious questions are asked and non-obvious responses are given. Here’s a quick exchange in Erin Brokovich, where Erin is going to a woman’s house to get some information on the water scandal that’s hit the county.

I’ve read a hundred scripts where a character asks a question just like this. “Are you a lawyer?” And the on-the-nose response from the lawyer is, “Yes, do you have a moment?”

It should be noted that on-the-nose dialogue becomes harder to avoid the more heavily plotted your script is. If you have a ton of plot, then your characters will become mouthpieces for the plot instead of real people having real discussions. This was a problem with yesterday’s script, Escher, which had a lot of plot going on, so all the characters needed to say exactly what needed to be said.

I bring this up because on-the-nose dialogue is often a result of circumstance. You’ve created stories or situations whereby the characters have to say exactly what they’re thinking. This is why you want to leave enough freedom in your story to let your characters talk without the constraints of needing to convey a plot point every three lines.

To avoid on-the-nose dialogue, avoid logic. Logic is your enemy in dialogue. Try to be playful. You want to have fun with your characters as opposed to just asking and answering questions. And try to incorporate scenes where one character isn’t being completely honest with the other. Or is holding back on some truth or their feelings. Once you have characters who aren’t being 100% honest, it’s hard to write on-the-nose dialogue.

Let’s move on to GENERAL DIALOGUE. General dialogue is dialogue that is the bare bones generic version of what a character can say. For example, if a character is at Thanksgiving dinner and wants more mashed potatoes, he might say, “Can someone please pass me the mashed potatoes?” This is a perfectly acceptable thing to say in real life. But in a movie, the line is so generic, it’s invisible.

The way you battle general dialogue is through specificity and playfullness. You add words and phrases and angles that add flavor to the line. Your hungry character might nudge his sister and whisper, “Hey, snag me the mashed potatoes before Uncle Rick engulfs them.” It’s not a crazy better line. But it’s more specific. The word “snag” is a little different. “Uncle Rick” makes the line unique to the story. “Engulfs” is a slightly dressed up way of saying “eats.” How specific you get will depend on the character, the story, the situation, and the genre. This line wouldn’t work in, say, Schindler’s List. Let’s take a look at an exchange from Deadpool.

Notice how specific this dialogue gets, particularly towards the end with those last few lines. The two get into some pretty graphic experiences. Of course they’re not real, which makes the dialogue “off-the-nose,” and a solid example of everything I’m trying to teach in this post.

For the next exchange, we’re going to Fast and Furious 4. In the scene, Han is paying Dom for the job they just did…

Look at the specificity in the words and phases. “Skippin’ out?” “Simple economics. Profit’s drying up here.” “Getting a little tired of rice and beans.” “I hear they’re doing some crazy shit in Tokyo.” “This nickel and dime stuff.”

All that’s really happening here is that the writer is willing to play with words. That’s the attitude you want to have whenever you’re writing dialogue. Obviously, the extent with which you’ll play will depend on the scenario and characters. But even if it’s two stiff accountants sharing plot information, you should still find ways to play with the words so it doesn’t come out like two robots talking.

That’s the worst thing that can happen to dialogue. On-the-nose generic “just the facts ma’am” conversation. Throw in some off the nose specific dialogue – be willing to play with words and phrasing – and your dialogue’s going to get a lot better.

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 and I’ll send you a quote!