I’m always on the lookout for the next big thing.

What’s coming around the corner that has the potential to be a new outlet for screenwriters?

Lots of people have been talking about virtual reality as the next big thing. I think that’s – pardon the language, but – bullshit. We’re 25 years out from those first rudimentary VR demonstrations and many of the same problems exist.

Here’s what I think the next potential REALISTIC avenue for screenwriters is: PODCASTS

I’m not talking about podcasts ABOUT screenwriting. I’m talking about using podcasts as a fictional storytelling medium. Because here’s the biggest problem facing screenwriters as I see it: IT’S HARD TO GET NOTICED. You somehow have to convince somebody that your words on a page – WORDS ON A PAGE! – are good enough to buy, to invest tens of millions of dollars in, to spend the next five years of your life with. This is why everyone chooses intellectual property over words on a page. Seeing that something has worked in a previous medium is a nice insurance package in a business which is, at its heart, a gamble.

This is why I tell screenwriters that if you’re at all interested in directing, direct your own script. It is, bar none, the fastest way to establish yourself in this business. You don’t have to wait for person after person to approve your script until it gets to the last guy on the chain, two years after you started sending it out in the first place, to get that, “Sure, yeah, okay.”

Instead, you become your own personal greenlight. No yeses required.

Unfortunately, the barrier for entry in filmmaking is high. It’s expensive as hell to make a film. Even if you wanted to direct your own stuff, you’d have to raise the money to do so. Seeing stories like this guy’s doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the process.

That’s what I like about this podcasting idea. The barrier for entry is INSANELY LOW. All you need is a script, a microphone, a few actors, and you’re in.

But what I really like about podcasting is that nobody has cracked the fiction space yet. There hasn’t been a “Serial.” And Serial should be great motivation. While everyone else in the podcast space was interviewing D-list celebrities, Serial came up with something that wasn’t just unique, it inspired an entire genre on the format. You can’t kick a stone these days without hitting a true crime podcast.

This means that whoever cracks fictional podcasting first? Becomes a sensation. You get all the press. All the adulation. Everyone loves the pioneer, the guy or gal who managed to open the pickle jar. And because of this, I guarantee. GUARANTEE. That whoever creates that first breakout hit, gets a movie deal out of it. That’s something to keep in mind. Everyone in Hollywood wants stuff based on IP.

Well, once you produce your podcast, you’ve got your IP.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some attempts at fictional podcasts. High profile even. Believe it or not, there’s a fictional podcast out there with Oscar Isaac playing one of the leads. It’s called Homecoming. Unfortunately, it’s bad. And I’m not surprised. This is a new medium, which means there are going to have to be some stumbles before somebody learns how to sprint. But to show you how desperate people are for this medium to produce something, even that show managed to get an Amazon order for its next season.

The question then becomes, how do you write for a fictional podcast? Well, I think we can look at the failure of Homecoming to see how NOT to write one. Homecoming is billed as a “conspiracy thriller” and formats itself similar to a TV show you might find on AMC. And therein lies the problem. Podcasts are not TV. Whenever you’re writing for a medium, you have to ask, “What are the strengths and weaknesses of this medium?” In writing a play, for example, you have a limited number of characters and a limited number of locations. So a lot of emphasis is placed on dialogue. In film, however, which is a more visual medium, you try and convey things through what the audience can see as opposed to hear.

Since nobody’s written a great fictional podcast show yet, we don’t know the answer to what works and what doesn’t. But that’s the exciting part. You can be creative. You can try things. You can, for example, set up a “faux interview-type podcast” that, on the surface, feels like every other podcast out there, then spin it into a horror film when something goes wrong during a recording session. Ironically, your best bet may be to go back to the old radio days to find inspiration. Remember that one of the most famous figures in Hollywood history, Orson Welles, became famous for his radio telecast of the War of the Worlds. And that was just a guy talking.

By the way, I’m not saying you can’t tell a traditional story on a podcast. Good stories will work on any medium. I’m just thinking that to get that media buzz, the first breakthrough fictional podcast will need to be inventive in some way. Maybe each podcast is a series of interviews from old tapes found in a psychiatric ward. No context given. Each conversation gets progressively freakier. That’s off the top of my head and probably too obvious of an idea. But hopefully it gets the creative juices flowing.

My point is that you could have something WRITTEN and PRODUCED for the world to experience in… less than a week. That’s how low the barrier for entry is here. So, if this interests you, start kicking around some ideas in the comments section. Brainstorm. Maybe a few of you can work together to create something awesome. I’d rather it be a Scriptshadow reader who makes the big podcast breakthrough than some rando. Let’s get to it!

Genre: TV Pilot – Period
Premise: At the beginning of the 17th century, an English sailor washes up on the shores of Japan, which is on the verge of civil war.
About: Shogun was written in 1970 and was turned into a mini-series in 1980. A new version of the show has been off and on in development since 2010. More recently, after the success of Game of Thrones, FX has decided to take a crack at it. Today’s screenwriter, Ronan Bennett, has a bit of a controversial past. He’s endured two stints in prison for participating in a Republican Army bank robbery, although it was ultimately decided that he was wrongly convicted.
Writer: Ronan Bennett (based on the novel by James Clavell)
Details: 60 pages, April 26, 2017 draft

Hunman was built for this role

I’ve tried to read this book several times as it’s one of the highest rated books ever on Amazon. All in all, I’ve foraged through about 200 pages. It’s hard to give those pages a rating. The book’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: its obsession with detail.

A good story makes you believe you’re in that time and place, and the level of detail here achieves that, providing a richness and authenticity that even the best historical fiction writers would struggle to match. But the more detail you add, the slower your plot moves, and that was why I could never finish the book. I needed more to happen.

With that said, it’s fertile ground for a TV adaptation. The focus on detail as opposed to plot gives any writer wanting to tackle the material an endless trove of information to build a story around.

And while the lack of fantasy elements may prevent FX from creating what they really want out of Shogun, which is their own Game of Thrones, there are still some cool toys to play with. I mean, who doesn’t like samurais?

So I’m hopeful that a show can be cobbled together out of this. Let’s see if I’m right.

The year is 1600. Englishman John Blackthorne, the pilot of a trade ship, has just washed up on a mysterious foreign shore. Clinging to life, he’s rescued by the locals, who nurse him back to health at a nearby village. When he wakes up, he learns where he is: The Japans.

Blackthorne is shocked. You see, the 1600s were some really rudimentary times in the seafaring trade. Deep sea navigation was near impossible unless you were traveling popular routes like England to France. The Japans were like Atlantis to European sailors. Only a few had ever found it. And even those who had were unconvinced they could find it again.

As soon as Blackthorne can get up, he sets out to find his crew, but learns that this strange land has a set of customs unlike any in Europe. The psychotic leader of the village, Omi, beheads one of his own men right in front of Blackthorne for not bowing low enough. Hmmm, maybe Blackthorne should play it cool until he figures this place out.

Meanwhile, we jump inland where the emperor of Japan, or “The Taiko,” is dying. There are 5 main provinces in Japan at the time, all led by different men. It’s well-known that the Taiko’s death will provoke a war between these provinces to become the next Taiko, so the Taiko invites all these leaders together in the hopes of finding a leader before that happens.

Back at the village, Blackthorne demands to see his crew, who he learns are being held captive in a pit. When he rejoins them, he’s told by the locals that one of them will be killed tonight, and that the group must decide who that’s going to be. There seems to be a complicated past between Blackthorne and his crew built upon this most recent mission. So that conversation is far from a happy one.

While at first we’re rooting for Blackthorne and his crew to escape these strange savage people, we begin to sense that they’re not exactly angels themselves. This leaves us wondering who we should align ourselves with. And where, exactly, all of this is headed.

For bigger pilots, the Shogun formula is a good one. Part of the pilot should focus on the smaller picture and part of it the big picture. There are two main storylines here. The first is Blackthorne and his crew. He’s got to get his crew and get the hell out of this place. The second is the impending death of the Taiko. This entire country is on the verge of war.

Without the bigger picture (the Taiko), you don’t feel like the smaller picture matters as much. Not only that, but the big picture lets us know there’s tons of ground to cover, that this is an actual SHOW. I read too many pilots so small in scope that you wonder how they’re going to get past episode 5. I mean, we meet the leaders of all five provinces in Shogun. The places we can potentially go and people we can potentially meet in those provinces is endless.

Shogun also institutes another popular format for shows like these. A leader is about to die. Who’s going to take his place? This is the perfect starting point for a TV show for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that we know “shit is about to get ugly.” And since human beings can’t look away from ugly, you’re probably going to get lots of people tuning back in to see the ugly. And this isn’t limited to period pieces. This is what they did with Fox’s Empire.

So what about the nuts and bolts? What’s good here?

I liked the uncertainty of how dangerous this culture was. It added an extra level of tension to every scene. Once Blackthorne sees that you can be killed on the spot for something as trivial as an improper bow, he knows that every interaction going forward will be a tightrope walk. And that’s a dream scenario for a screenwriter. You’re always looking to infuse scenes with tension and conflict beyond the obvious. And that’s exactly what this does.

I also liked the mystery behind Blackthorne’s crew. I don’t remember how they handled this in the book. But here they set it up that Blackthorne presents himself as a trader, but the truth is he may be a pirate. We get these quick flashbacks where his crew is pillaging a wedding. This makes us wonder who these guys really are. And you need a few big questions like that leaving the pilot. If we feel like we’ve already got all our answers, why do we need to tune in for more?

This is the big difference between feature and TV writing. You need to leave threads open and those threads need to be wrapped in mysteries that are actually intriguing.

What Shogun will have to fight against is its incredibly complex mythology. I didn’t count, but I think there were something like 40 people introduced in this pilot. That’s a little less than 1 character per page. Ouch. And while I did my best to summarize the Taiko situation above, the truth is it was so complicated that I could only bastardize the summary. Will audiences be patient enough to sit through all that? Or will they find it to be too specific?

As producer-ish as this note sounds, I’d focus more on samurais and violence, at least early on. Pull people in AND THEN hit them with the intricacies of your mythology. Bore then early and often and they may not stick around for the good stuff.

I liked this pilot. It’s slow. But you can tell there’s many avenues to explore. With that said, I’m wondering if it has the WOW-factor. There are plenty of shows that succeed without the WOW-factor. But it sure makes things easier when you’ve got it. And I’m not convinced Shogun does. We’ll have to see.

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

What I learned: The “choose who dies” scene. This scene ALWAYS WORKS. Always. Every time. You put your characters in a situation where they have to choose between themselves which of them must die and it’s always interesting. In this case, the crew must choose someone to be handed to the Japanese for sacrifice.

Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: On a safari trip, a family are driven off-road by rhino poachers and forced to survive a harrowing night in the bush.
Why You Should Read: In 2017, a reported 1,028 rhinos were poached in South Africa. At this current rate, wildlife experts warn that rhinos may become extinct as early as 2020. About me, I’ve been a dedicated screenwriter for over six years and like the majority on this site are determined to move to the next level. “Night of Game” is a unique concept with high stakes, emotional conflict, and bloodthirsty action within an urgent timeline. It’s a movie that will spread awareness of the barbaric act of poaching horn to sell to China and Vietnam. I’m truly passionate about the cause and hope that Carson and the scriptshadow faithful can help this scripts journey to the silver screen.
Writer: It’s a Mystery
Details: 113 pages

Ava DuVernay gets a DC movie nobody’s ever heard of and the INTERNET EXPLODES. While everyone else debates whether film geeks are racist, here’s the question I want answered. Why did Disney let DuVernay go? If you like someone and what they’re doing, you wrap them up. You keep them in the company fold. For Disney to let her flee says loads.

You may think the answer is Wrinkle’s box office. But these deals take time. This DC thing was put together awhile ago. Which implies Disney knew they were dealing with a stinker and were more than happy to let Ava exit. DC, meanwhile, probably signed DuVernay during that 1 month “Ava DuVernay is the greatest filmmaker of our generation” tour. So will DC now have buyer’s remorse? Will box office hindsight lead to a text break-up? This is more dramatic that anything in a Wrinkle in Time so I can’t wait to see what happens next.

On to today’s AMATEUR OFFERINGS WINNER…. Night of Game! No, this is not a sequel to Game Night.

First impressions after reading the logline? This could be a movie. That’s the first question you need to ask with every concept: Is this an actual movie idea? And I believe it is. Sort of a real-life version of Jurassic Park.

But skimming through the comments section, I saw a lot of, “The writing’s not very good here.” The writing’s not very good yet it won Amateur Offerings in a landslide?? What’s going on? I must find out.

20-something Miles Abbot is on vacation in South Africa with his family. He’s with his mother, Lori, his cute 11 year old sister, Caitlyn, and I think his dad. Though that’s up for debate for reasons I’ll get into later.

The three (four?) of them decide to take a safari ride to see all the wild animals. They meet up with a group of tourists which include the hot Anna, her dick boyfriend, Logan, an older couple, and Barry, their driver.

The safari seems to be going well until they’re attacked by an elephant. Luckily, they get away. But moments later, they’re attacked by the most dangerous animal of all – PEOPLE. Poachers to be exact. Miles’s father is shot and killed, even though I was never clear he was with them in the first place, and soon after, Miles gets split up from Caitlyn and Lori.

It turns out the poachers are trying to slaughter a group of rare white rhinos. It just so happens that on the night of their big poach, these tourists got in the way.

While Miles tries to avoid getting eaten by lions, tigers, and bears, he eventually teams up with his crush, Anna, who was somewhere else for some reason. He recruits her to help him find his mother and sister and she’s game. But in the meantime, THEY’RE GAME – as in game for the poachers who can’t leave any witnesses behind.

This script should’ve worked. The core elements are sound. Characters have to survive a night in the bush with deadly animals all around them. AND we have a Taken-like goal of saving a mother and a sister.

So where does it go wrong?

Well, first of all, I had no idea who this family was. I didn’t know why they were in South Africa. I didn’t know what their normal lives were like. I didn’t know why there was this random 14 year gap between siblings. You don’t just throw that in there and not explain it. The most I could gather was that they were a rich entitled bored family with houses on multiple continents. Why am I rooting for people like that exactly?

That’s not to say audiences can’t root for rich people. But you need to then give us a reason to root for them if the first image you give us is that they don’t have a care in the world.

But there’s a bigger issue here. How you set up your core group of characters will determine EVERYTHING that happens after. Cause if we don’t know the characters, understand the characters, sympathize with them on some level, like them on some level, then we won’t care what happens to them on page 40, or 60, or 80.

Therefore it doesn’t matter how dire of a situation you place them in. We never gave a shit about them in the first place. So the first change that needs to be made is an entire backstory needs to be written for this family. We need way more information about them and why they’re here. Also, add some texture to the family dynamic. Right now, it’s so generic.

Off the top of my head, maybe the mom died recently. The dad took the kids here to get their minds off their mom. Miles suggests to Caitlyn, who’s taking mom’s death really hard, that they go on the safari. She’s reluctant but agrees. It’s a chance to heal. At least now you have some history with the family – something they have to overcome.

This leads us to the bizarrely over-complicated plot. You had these poachers who wanted the white rhinos. You had a break within the ranks of the rhino poachers. You had a random local female getting kidnapped. You had a rival tribe warring with the poachers. What the heck is going on here?? I thought this was supposed to be about a family. Instead, it’s about these poachers.

The lesson here is KEEP THINGS SIMPLE. You hear me talk about it all the time on the site yet writers continue to make the mistake. There are some seasoned PRO-FES-SIONAL screenwriters who can pull off complex plots. But if you’re not yet a professional, keep it simple. All we needed was good guys and bad guys here. We didn’t need Rhino Poaching meets The Godfather. Staying in line with that, I like ONE PERSON being kidnapped. Not two. The sister should be kidnapped. That’s all.

Finally, the writing here was EXTREMELY taxing to read. Every paragraph was 3 lines long. And while I’ve said before that you should limit your paragraphs to no more than 3 lines, that doesn’t mean that every page should be twenty 3-line paragraphs. That’s just a sneaky way of writing one 60-line paragraph.

Vary your paragraph lengths. 2 lines here. 1 line there. 3 lines occasionally. You don’t want to get too predictable or monotonous. But the bigger tip here is to ask if you really need three lines in the first place. In screenwriting, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. Constantly be asking yourself, “Do I really need to include that detail?” Don’t get sloppy and always write the long version.

Here’s an example (this paragraph is three and a half lines long in courier font)

Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. Trying to act disapprovingly, she pushes him away. A half-smile appears on her face. He pulls her in close.

You could’ve said this…

Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. She playfully pushes him away.

This is the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got Screenwriting 101 problems, such as the writer not even writing in the active voice (in the above example, you’d change the tense of the sentence so that “swinging” would be “swings,” “swooping” would be “swoops”). The script needs a lot of work. But if I could give the writer one piece of advice, it would be to stop making the story so complicated. 3-5 tourists stuck in the bush all night is enough. Stop jumping around to so many locations. Miles has to survive the local animals and get to his sister. That’s what we came to see. We’re not interested in poaching politics.

Script link: Night of Game

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

What I learned: The Wall of Text Loophole – Most of you know that readers hate “walls of texts,” pages full of 6-7 line paragraphs with little-to-no dialogue. They’re script killers. But the loophole to this isn’t to write a page full of 3-4 line paragraphs. It’s still going to look like a wall of text. You should be mixing in 1-2 line paragraphs. And unless you’re writing a silent movie, there should be a good amount of dialogue to even it out.

The topic of villains has been hovering in the Scriptshadow background for the last month or so. We found out what a great villain can do for a movie like Black Panther. We found out what no villain does to a script like The Man From Tomorrow. Tuesday’s script was straight-up titled “Villains.” Yet when I thought about it, I realized we haven’t directly discussed villains in ages. Let’s change that. And let’s change it by identifying the number one mistake writers make when trying to create a villain. Are you ready for it?

They try to create a villain.

There’s no such thing as a “villain” in real life. It’s a made-up term to identify fictional characters who do bad things and want to hurt the hero. And therein lies the problem. When most writers put their villain together, they make them a vague bad dude who does bad things because… well because he’s the villain! This is a guaranteed way to make a villain forgettable.

The first thing you need to understand about villains is that they’re real people. They don’t not exist until it’s time to hang the hero over a lava pit, or when it’s time to hold the hero’s wife hostage. Even when they’re off-screen, they’re doing something. And if you don’t see them as a real person, you won’t know what those somethings are.

It doesn’t stop there. Your villain has had an entire life with ups and downs just like your hero. It’s just that somewhere along the way, due to a series of unfortunate events, their perception of right and wrong got warped. Which is how they ended up being the bad guy. But here’s the catch. They don’t believe they’re the bad guy. Villains believe they’re the good guy. And that the hero is the bad guy.

In other words, a villain doesn’t rob a bank because he’s a villain and that’s what villains do. He robs a bank because he believes the system’s been fucking him over the last 40 years. That the government and the banks have pushed him around, stolen what’s his, and disposed of him in the process. He’s robbing that bank because he believes he’s OWED THAT MONEY. That’s an important detail when it comes to villains. They always have a reason for why what they’re doing is right.

Keeping all this in mind, I’ve compiled some miscellaneous thoughts on villains that I think should help you the next time you need to write one. Let’s get started…

MAKE SURE YOUR VILLAIN’S BACKSTORY IS AS EXTENSIVE AS YOUR HERO’S
The reason most villains suck is because they’re too simplistic. They’re “the bad guy” because they’re “the bad guy.” For this reason, the more you know about your villain’s history, the more you’ll be able to fight this, adding dozens of unique characteristics that build life into the character. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to write a big fat backstory for your villain, as big as your hero’s. Hannibal Lecter is considered the greatest villain of all time in part due to how extensive his backstory is and how much Thomas Harris, the author who created him, knew about the character.

IF POSSIBLE, MAKE IT PERSONAL BETWEEN YOUR VILLAIN AND YOUR HERO
It’s a good idea for your villain to have a personal motivation for taking down the hero. Black Panther’s Killmonger hated T’Challa because T’Challa’s father killed his father and left him to grow up on the streets. He’s not just coming back to be the king of Wakanda cuz. He’s doing it to avenge his father’s death. There’s so much more weight to a hero-villain dynamic when the two have history with one another.

VILLAINS ARE OFTEN RIGHT, THEY JUST TAKE IT TOO FAR
A lot of great villains are villains sheerly because of how much further they take their pursuit than is acceptable. Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction is technically right. This married dickhead lied to her, fucked her, then ditched her. But it’s how far she took the retribution that made her the villain. Ditto with Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He’s right! This smarmy little entitled dipshit shouldn’t be able to keep ditching school and get away with it. But it’s the lengths to which Rooney goes to catch him that make him the villain. Remember, villains are heroes in their own minds. They believe they’re doing the right thing.

GIVE YOUR VILLAIN AN ANGLE TO PLAY OTHER THAN ‘VILLAIN’
I would go so far as to not even think of your villain as a villain. Once you see them that way, you start making them do a bunch of generic “villain” things. Instead, be as specific as possible in how you categorize them. Maybe they’re a weasel, like Paul Reiser’s lawyer character in Aliens. Or a bully, like Prince Joffrey in Game of Thrones. Or controlling, like The Governor in The Walking Dead. The right negative-skewing adjective can do wonders for focusing your villain.

THE MOST MEMORABLE VILLAINS PRESENT THEMSELVES AS ANGELS
There’s nothing more terrifying than a villain who acts as if she’s your best friend right before bashing your feet in with a hammer. From the ultra-polite Hannibal Lecter to the bubbly Annie Wilkes (Misery) to the gospel-spewing Warden Norton (Shawshank) to the friendly Colonel Hans Lunda (Inglorious Basterds). This formula is the best shot you have at creating a villain for the ages. But even if you don’t use it, the spirit of the tip – that every villain has an offsetting positive trait – is something to keep in mind. Even the ruthless Hans Gruber was charming.

GIMMICKY VILLAINS ARE THE HARDEST TO PULL OFF
Beware of gimmicky villains who are known more for their eccentric qualities than their broken humanity. I’m talking about characters like Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men and even Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. These are the flashiest of the villains but they’re hard to pull off because writers approach them the wrong way. Instead of asking, “How did this person get this way?” they ask, “How can I make this guy really fucked up?” So they try and come up with the dance moment with Buffallo Bill tucking his penis in or Anton’s unique weapon. But those things don’t come out of nowhere. Thomas Harris and Cormac McCarthy are authors who are willing to do the deep dive into characters’ psyches to find out how they got to this place. The average screenwriter is lazy as shit and thinks a half-hour brainstorming session is enough is to come up with the coolest villain in history. If you’re going to write weird quirky villains, make sure you do a deep dive on how they got to this point in their lives.

CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE BAD PEOPLE BY ASKING HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY
When you read about a man who robbed a 7-11, don’t think of him as a bad person. Ask WHY they would do such a thing. Chances are they needed the money. Okay, why? A lot of times it’s for drugs. Okay, why do they want drugs so bad? Because they’re likely an addict. Okay, how did they become an addict? They probably got mixed up with the wrong crowd when they were young and never learned how to properly discern right from wrong. Okay, why did they get mixed up with the wrong crowd? Maybe their dad was never around and their mom had to work three jobs. They had no parental guidance or father figure, leaving them to make their own decisions. Hard to know the right path when you’re 12. Knowing this, would you consider our robber a villain? A bad person? Maybe. But, as you can see, it’s never as simple as a label. Every “villain” has a past and it’s up to you to figure out what that past is so that you can build some authenticity into them.

And there ya go. The advice I most want you to leave with today is to stop thinking of your villains as villains. Think of them as misguided souls who got shoved down the wrong path at some point in their lives and now have an axe to grind. That axe might be against society, it might be against a symbol for who they believe wronged them, and it might be against your hero himself. The more you know about how your villain got to this place in life, the deeper and more memorable a character he’ll be.

Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) Two small time robbers become prisoners when they break into a house and discover a ten year old girl chained up in the basement.
About: This one popped onto my radar because they just signed up two actors who I really like. The first is Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise on “It.” And the second is Maika Monroe, who played Jay in “It Follows.” The script comes off of 2016’s Black List, where it finished in the middle of the pack with 13 votes. The writers, Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, are trying to take that next step in their careers, as they have, up until this point, only worked with actors like Dolph Lundgren. Not that I have a problem with Dolph “If he dies, he dies” Lundgren. But it’s much better to be writing for two of the hottest young stars in Hollywood as your leads.
Writer: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Details: 89 pages

Today we’re going back!

Back… to the screenplay.

That’s right. We’re actually reviewing a script today, folks! Let me hear ya’ll in attendance give me an “Amen!”

I can’t hear you! I said give me an “Amen!”

We’re going to be reviewing one of the standard sub-genres in the spec screenwriting world – the Contained Thriller. Why are so many specs written as Contained Thrillers? Limited location equals cheap. Small character count plus a simple situation equals a fast easy read for overworked readers. And the Thriller genre is easy to market.

If you want to write something that has a legitimate chance of getting made, I’d put Contained Thriller or Contained Horror at the top of the list.

The ONLY reason I’d tell people not to write in this genre? Is because the competition is stiffer than the ubiquitous corpse that shows up in Act 2. That and the limited location makes it hard to keep the plot fresh. Let’s find out if today’s writers pull it off.

20-somethings Mickey and Jules are an aspiring Bonnie and Clyde. Not that they have any idea who Bonnie and Clyde are. You get the feeling neither of them are very cultured. Hell, I’d be surprised if they made it past their sophomore year in high school. Which is probably why they’re robbing a gas station when we meet them.

Because they’re high on coke, the stick-up gets sloppy, and they forget to do the one thing you’re supposed to do at a gas station – fill up your car with gas. So their runaway lasts barely five miles, and the baffled duo stumble up to a nearby farm house with plans to steal a car. After they break in and can’t find any car keys, they explore the basement, where they find a 10 year old girl chained up to the wall.

Mickey wants to jet and pretend none of this ever happened. But Jules looks at him like he’s a monster (which he is. He’s Pennywise). There’s no way they’re leaving this girl here. Mickey reluctantly agrees and when they go upstairs to look for a saw to break through the imprisoned girl’s chains, they run into 50-something homeowners George and Gloria, who’ve just walked in. Mickey and Jules scream at the couple that they’re taking the girl with them, but former salesman George asks them to sit down and think this through. They just committed a crime. Do they really want to make things tougher on themselves?

It’s all a trick to buy time, of course. And the suave George gets the upper hand soon enough. The next thing you know Mickey is tied to a bed with a sexually repressed Gloria ready to turn him into her love slave and Jules is tied up in the basement in place of the little girl they were trying to save. It seems as if Mickey and Jules are 48 hours from becoming human manure. But these two feisty criminals aren’t going down without a fight. No matter how ugly that fight gets.

Remember what I told you last week? 4-6 characters is ideal for a spec script. This keeps your story focused AS WELL AS allows you to spend the time to properly develop all the characters. Every new character you add is time taken away from the characters you already have. So you want to add characters judiciously. That doesn’t mean you never do it. I’m not against movies with 10 characters or even 20 characters as long as the story calls for it. But when you’re writing specs, concepts that focus on 4-6 characters are the sweet spot.

Onto the story. Villains is a classic example of where most successful Contained Thrillers end up – in the “decent” category. Actually, let me retract that. The vast majority of amateur Contained Thrillers end up being terrible. But I’m talking about the ones written by competent writers. Most end up in the “yeah, that was pretty good” category. And that’s because this genre is hard! What’s hard about it is that after the hook, it’s nearly impossible to come up with fresh fun ideas.

Cause that’s where the real writing begins. Writing to where there’s a girl in the basement is the easy part. It’s almost impossible to do wrong because the reader already knows that moment is coming (assuming they read the logline). So they’re excited to get to that point. From there, they give you about a 10 page grace period. A sort, “Okay, now let’s see what you’re going to do.” And what most writers do is retread a bunch of scenes from other Contained Thrillers.

Villains hangs on for awhile. My favorite scene was when George and Gloria arrive and suggest talking this out like adults. A lot of writers would’ve jumped right into the violence or the running around and hiding. This scene worked specifically because it goes against that expectation. Not just that. But George made a lot of good points. You two are criminals. Is saving this girl really the best way to handle this? A lot of writers would’ve written this scene with George spouting out a bunch of movie logic. It was refreshing to hear some arguments that actually sounded convincing.

The stuff where Gloria is prepping Mickey to become her sexual toy was also pretty good. But you could sense that the writers were running out of creative steam. I find that whenever writers dip into weird sexual territory, they’re running out of ideas. Strange sex plotlines contain a certain amount of shock value. But shock is the antithesis of substance. It has a short shelf-life. I’ve encountered a few scripts where the sex stuff was so unique that I remained engaged. But it’s rare. And it turns out I was right. Quickly after this scene, the script turns into a conventional series of scenarios where the characters try and escape.

Another key problem the writers should address before production is that George and Gloria aren’t scary enough. They’re too rational. And so I was never worried that something bad was going to happen to our heroes. If you’re going to lock our characters in a house with two supposed psychos, you need to sell their psychoness. That never happened.

With that said, this is worth the read in that I genuinely wanted to know how it was going to end. That’s my litmus test for a ‘worth the read.’ If I want to read the ending, something’s working. Because the large majority of the time, if you told me I could stop reading a script whenever I wanted, I would stop. These two made me like Mickey and Jules enough that I cared about their fate. Which is saying something. If you’re thinking about writing a Contained Thriller, add this one to the list.

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

What I learned: A recent obsession of mine is differentiation in dialogue, which is a fancy way of saying make sure your characters sound different. Check out these slices of dialogue. The first is from Mickey and Jules after the gas station robbery and the second is from George when he encounters Mickey and Jules in his house.

MICKEY: FUCK yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ bout baby! You were incredible in there! The way you ripped that thing of chips down? Fuck!

JULES (excited; flattered) I don’t know, I was just, like in the zone you know? I don’t even remember doing it!

And now George…

GEORGE: I understand. You’re the ones with the gun, you’re making the rules. All I’m asking for is a chance to state my case, maybe enlighten you as to a couple of things you may not have thought of. You can keep the gun pointed at me all you like, I just ask that you sit down and listen to what I have to say.

Notice all the ways the dialogue is different. There’s a difference in education level, in command of language, in the use of swearing, in length. If I told you to close your eyes and I read those two blocks of dialogue to you, you’d have no doubt that they came from different people. And that’s what you want your dialogue to do.