Genre: Action
Premise: When his family gets stuck in Hong Kong’s newest super-scraper during a fire, a former FBI agent must figure out a way to save them.
About: The Rock is big. Therefore, it makes sense that he only goes big. Big monsters (Rampage). Big earthquakes (San Andreas). And now, Big Buildings. Rawson Marshall Thurber is writing and directing. Thurber directed two movies that over-performed beyond everyone’s expectations (We’re the Millers and Central Intelligence), and is therefore moving up to the big leagues – Summer Tentpole Action. This is actually a smart path for directors wanting to get into action. Direct a comedy (cheap to make). Use your comedic success to pitch an action-comedy. Use that film’s success to go straight action.
Writer: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Details: 117 pages – 3/10/17 draft (Revised)

There’s a story in Hollywood that goes like this. Die Hard comes out. It becomes a smash hit. Everyone in town loves this movie so much that a pitch trend is born: “Die Hard on a…” If you weren’t pitching your script with those four words at the beginning of it, you were out of touch. “Die Hard on a boat.” “Die Hard on a bus.” “Die Hard on a space shuttle.”

This pitch trend goes on for YEARS, with “Die Hard on a…” eventually becoming the single most popular way to pitch a movie ever. It went on for so long, in fact, that young execs a decade later who’d never even seen the film, were now pitching “Die Hard in a…” to their bosses. One cocky exec hushed the room, as he felt like he had the Die Hard pitch of all Die Hard pitches. “Are you ready for this?” He says to his boss, adding a dramatic pause for effect. “What about… Die Hard in a building?”

In many ways, this story was bigger than just the joke, as it was a commentary on how ignorant studio execs had become – these bean counters with zero artistic ability were making major decisions about what made it to the big screen. And they didn’t even know they were pitching the original Die Hard. But maybe – JUST MAYBE – that infamous studio exec was ahead of his time. Because guess what? 20 years later. We finally have it. Die Hard in a building.

Will Ford is a former FBI agent who specialized in hostage situations. After one of those situations goes bad enough that Will loses a leg, we cut to ten years later, where Will is now looking for a job. Luckily, his old friend from his unit, Horace, gets him set up with one. In Hong Kong.

The billionaire owner of a new skyscraper, Zhao, needs a security and safety evaluation of his building in order to get the insurance people to sign off on it. The building is called The Pearl, and it’s the tallest building in the world. In fact, it’s its own little city, with a mall and a garden and elevators without cables. Shit, I think there’s even a zoo in it somewhere.

Will’s staying on the 98th floor with his family while in town. The floor is bare, as everything above the 95th floor needs Will’s ‘okay’ before they can start renting it out. When Will heads outside to take a quick breather, his laptop, which contains the only copy of the building’s secret security system, is stolen.

This starts a chain reaction of events across the city where Will must get his laptop back. However, back at the Pearl, someone sets fire to the 96th floor, just a couple of floors underneath where Will’s family is staying. He will now have to get back inside the Pearl somehow, entering the building above the level of the fire, and figure out a way to rescue his family. I, for one, hope he succeeds.

I really liked this script for 40 pages. Then it started crumble, like a past due Pepperidge Farm cookie. I take that back. Those cookies crumble regardless of if they’re past due. But you get what I’m saying.

This building was so damned cool. And I liked that Thurber didn’t throw some generic bland description at us like: “It’s a rad technologically advanced building with cool gadgets in it!” Just like we discussed with Club Lavender the other day, there’s a ton of specificity built into this skyscraper, and that’s what kept my suspension of disbelief suspended. Thurber’s description was so specific, in fact, I even looked up the building online, assuming it had to be real.

Thurber also did a good job of conveying how big and impressive this thing was. When size matters in your screenplay (if your script follows a giant monster, a huge spaceship, an enormous skyscraper), it helps if you VISUALIZE that size for the reader. Just saying, “It’s really big” or “It’s 3000 feet tall,” isn’t a visual. Thurber includes this line in the video demo of the building: “It’s so tall, you could fit the entire Empire State Building in it twice.” Aha! Now that I can visualize.

Unfortunately, the plotting in this script is very clumsy. We have these weirdly specific setups, such as the family being placed on a deserted 98th floor. Or that the bottom half of the building is filled up but the top half is empty. And we also have this deal where an insurance company needs to okay the top 100 floors before Zhao can rent them out. Each of these setups were so blunt in their conception, it made it blatantly obvious that a writer had shoehorned them in there.

Remember that your job as a writer isn’t just to plot. It’s to make that plot invisible. That’s one of the primary skills of a screenwriter. Anybody can write big obvious plots. It takes a skilled hand to mask the exposition or place a sheet over the plot gears, not unlike a top-flight real estate agent steering potential buyers eyes away from the house’s weaknesses during a showing.

But the biggest problem with the plotting is that the main character spends almost half the movie OUTSIDE THE BUILDING. The building is your strange attractor. Plot-wise I sort of understand this decision. It creates an action-movie-friendly scenario by which the main character must do the impossible and find a way into the building through one of its upper floors to save his family.

But when you have a toy everyone wants to play with at the party, you don’t toss it in the closet and lock the key. 90% of this story needed to take place inside the strange attractor, which is the building! That’s the big ticket item we paid for. We don’t want to see your hero running around the streets of Hong Kong. We can get that in any cheap Hong Kong B-Action movie. We want the building, baby.

With that said, once Will does get in the building, things get fun. There’s a lot of cat-and-mousing around the unique super-structure as Will’s family attempts to escape the bad guys, all while the fire continues to grow. And there are plenty of twists and turns, with allies turning into foes, and a growing plot that may or may not lead back to Zhao. I could see all of this being entertaining if they nail the production of the The Pearl.

But the makers of the film would’ve done well to study why Die Hard was so successful – it had a simple yet powerful plot. This plot was too messy for its own good.

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

What I learned: I never understand why writers do this. Stay with your strange attractor. You have a cool ass super-building unlike anything we’ve seen on film before. Why is our main character outside of it for half the movie? Spend every second of the film playing with your toy.

Shhhhhh. Don’t tell In and Out.

Sorry guys. I couldn’t get into Gerald’s Game. I wanted to watch and review it but I immediately realized the movie was less about the story and more about Acting! With a capital “A!” I’ll revisit it at some point because I want to see how they handled the ending – still one of the most gruesome and clever endings I’ve ever read in a book. But that will have to come at another time.

Instead, I decided to do something I’d been putting off for years. I have this giant folder of screenplays I haven’t filed away yet. Every pdf is just a script title. Which meant I would have to open the script, see who wrote it, Google the info, then file it away depending on what I discovered (Read, Produced, Black List, Read Later, etc.).

These scripts ranged from 2 years old to 20 years old. After about an hour of this, I noticed that my mood had changed considerably. Earlier I was watching football, eating a Shack Burger, feet up, happy. I was now noticeably downbeat, on the verge of depressed.

What had happened?

Well, every time I looked up a script, it went like this: Find an old article mentioning the script (made the Black List, got a director attached, optioned it, if they were lucky sold it). And then, when I checked their IMDB to find out what they’d done since… NOTHING. It was like every one of these writers had been erased from existence. This happened a good 100 times, lol. And I chuckle when I say that more as a coping mechanism than anything.

It depresses the hell out of me when writers don’t succeed. I want them to reach their dreams of paying their way through life as a professional screenwriter. I don’t want anyone to fail.

This led me to the question: How DOES a screenwriter succeed? How do they avoid this curse? Is there one thing they can do to rise above everyone and become one of the cool kids for good?

This is a harder question to answer than you’d think. I remember asking it to the agent of a writer who’s on my Top 25. We both agreed that his client was a much better writer than several big name screenwriters who wrote in his genre. So why wasn’t it him who was getting those big assignments? Why was he still struggling to break into the A-List? Point blank the agent looked at me and said, “I don’t know.”

One reality that might help answer this question is how Hollywood determines success. They do so via produced credits. There are some caveats to this (a straight-to-VOD credit doesn’t carry a lot of weight) but for the most part, that’s the endgame. Because while selling a script makes YOU money. Getting that script turned into a movie makes EVERYBODY ELSE money.

So how do you do that? How do you write a script that gets made into a movie? There are clearly a dozen ways to answer this question. You can write something “marketable.” You can write something “actor-driven” in order to attract high-caliber actors. You can hop on the current trend (Jane Wick The Biopic). And if you’re a good writer who’s honed their craft, any of these can result in a sale. But I think the best way to break in and stay in these days, is to write a script that gets people excited. Scripts that get a lot of buzz get major talent interested. And once talent is interested, the movie finds a way to get made.

The formula for a “Get People Excited Script” is four-fold.

1) Give us a concept that’s fresh in some way.
2) Give us something that promotes your unique voice.
3) Give us something that takes chances.
4) Give us something you’re passionate about.

The reason I highlight these four things specifically is because these are the things that are directly responsible for getting people to talk about your script. Whenever you come across a fresh original idea, you feel the hair on your arms stand up. Whenever there’s a writer with a weird new voice, everyone wants to talk about them. Whenever you read a script that surprises you with the chances it takes, you want to tell someone about it. And the way passion works is: if you’re passionate about your script, we’re going to feel that passion on the page. Your passion then becomes our passion.

Because think about it. All of these readers and managers and agents and producers are essentially filing through the same ether of screenplays I am. And if they’re anything like me, they’re seeing all these scripts they’ve already read before: “Really, another version of Crank?” “Really, another dark Western?” “Really, another biopic about the first whoever?” That’s not to say those scripts can’t be executed well and turn out good. But everyone’s looking for that script that’s unlike anything they’ve seen before – something they can get behind, announce to the world, and really be excited about.

And once you’ve written a movie that’s pulled in big actors and a big director? You’ve bought yourself work for the next ten years. So when you sit down to write your next script, I’m not saying you need to check all these boxes. Writing a great screenplay is never that black-and-white. But you should definitely be thinking about this list. In other words, if you don’t have the “take chances” component, maybe you make up for it because you’re Level 100 passionate about the story. Cause, in the end, I do think that the way you become a part of this town is to write something they’re never going to forget.

You guys have been KILLING IT with the submissions and the votes. We continue to find and celebrate good writing. Let’s do it again this week. What do you say!

By the way, I’m probably going to be reviewing Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game on Monday. So if you have Netflix, watch it so you can participate in the discussion. It’s the ultimate Contained Thriller and a huge writing challenge (which is why it’s taken so long to make). But I hear the writer nailed it.

How to play Amateur Offerings: Read as much of each script as you can and submit your winning vote in the comments section. Votes will be counted through Monday, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a script review next Friday!

Title: Human-Like
Genre: Horror
Logline: After learning her deceased mother might still be alive, a young woman traces the mystery to an abandoned farmhouse occupied by eerie mannequins – mannequins that move when no one’s looking.
Why You Should Read: Haunted dolls/puppets/mannequins. Staples of the horror genre for decades. But here’s my problem: most of the time, the real threat turns out to be something else — like ghosts or a masked killer. Did Annabelle even blink? Of course, there’s the “Child’s Play” and “Puppet Master” movies, but those are closer to black comedies. “Human-Like” is my attempt to create a sincere, creepy film that delivers on the promise of inanimate objects coming to murderous life. The story was inspired by the John Lawson house in upstate New York, a supposedly abandoned residence with oddly dressed mannequins on the porch. When I read that, I knew immediately – horror film! Thanks for your time and I appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Title: Therapist of the Year
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A marriage counselor’s quest for the coveted therapist of the year award gets put in jeopardy when the world’s worst couple decides to blackmail her into taking them on as clients.
Why You Should Read: A hysterical breakdown of relationships. A rounded ensemble of oddball and memorable characters. Billed as “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” meets “What About Bob”, Therapist of the Year is guaranteed to make you laugh and possibly even cry, as well as providing a litany of unforeseeable plot twists, generally not seen in the broad comedy genre, which will keep the audiences at the edge of their seat.

Title: Anything Helps
Genre: Dramedy
Logline: An ad agency copywriter feeling unfulfilled at work and annoyed by recent run-ins with pushy panhandlers decides to leverage his marketing expertise to become the Don Draper of beggars.
Why You Should Read: I’m a huge fan of Sorkin, Mamet, and Tarantino for their dialogue-driven scripts. If you like dialogue-driven scripts, I think you’ll like this one.

Title: The Firefly Gang
Genre: Western Action-Adventure
Logline: When a young girl’s family is threatened over unpaid debts, her older brother goes after the bounty on a killer bear. When he doesn’t return, she pulls together a rescue party of ragtag friends to find him, venturing out into a Wild West full of bandits, native tribes, and monsters.
Why You Should Read: My partner wanted to write a monster movie. I wanted to write a Western. So we did. Our last monster script placed in the quarter-finals of the Nicholl, so it was a challenge to take that similar element in a new direction. This is pure adventure in cowboy land, driven by heart and studded with the fantastical. It’s Stranger Things meets True Grit. It’s a movie on the page.

Title: Leo In The Dark
Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama Adventure
Logline: When a grieving man stumbles upon a strange camera that can peer into the ghost world, he sets out on a journey to find his late son and find the closure he never got… But as the owner of the device comes after him for it, a deeper plot begins to unfold that not only puts his son’s ghost in danger, but his living family as well.
Why You Should Read: You reviewed a much earlier draft of this script back in 2013 and told me verbatim, “you have what Hollywood needs — an original mind”. You called my story Chinatown meets Ghostbusters, but it needed to be drastically simplified. In the 4 years since, I moved on to focus on producing and sharpening my writing craft—writing one other feature and two pilots. Earlier this year I had a cathartic moment: I decided that if I could only tell ONE story in my life and get it made into a film, it would be this earlier story you reviewed. SO, I dedicated 2017 to revising this story, taking the common denominator of notes I received professionally, and tweaking… And here it is. Based on your film sensibilities, and focus on theme, I truly believe you will love this revised, simplified script. It’s story world is Maine in 1992; Amityville meets Derry. Hope you enjoy.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Who’d you rather? Jon Snow or Jack Pearson?

It’s the goal of every producer in Hollywood, the dream of everyone who’s ever had an idea for a TV show – to not only create a hit show. No no. Creating a hit show is easy. But to create a WATER COOLER show – the kind of show that’s so good, so exciting, so twisty-and-turny, that people MUST talk about it the next day. Let’s list some of these shows.

But before we do, let me put the needle on the record of some Barry White. Get a good vibe going. Oh yeah, can you hear Barry? I can. Okay, let’s get to that list…

Lost

Breaking Bad

True Detective

Walking Dead

Game of Thrones

This Is Us—

SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH

I’m sorry. Run that last show by me again. This is Us??? A show about family with no dragons, no drug dealers, no serial killers, no zombies, and no Others. The show is just about… people? How did a show that ONLY explores interpersonal relationships become so addictive? And what can we learn from it that we can apply to our own TV writing?

Water cooler shows used to be common. That’s because only 30 shows aired a week and even the lowest rated shows did better than the highest rated shows today. Everybody was watching the same stuff so, chances were, you’d want to discuss the latest episode of Seinfeld with your co-worker the next day. Today, with 300+ shows a week to choose from, everybody can pick their own little weird show to watch. And that means writing a show that a lot of people watch and that generates widespread discussion has become almost impossible.

Every network wants the next Game of Thrones but what does that even mean? You can’t just make another swords and sandals dragon show or else it looks like a cheap version of Game of Thrones. The same thing happened when Lost was big. Everyone wanted the next Lost. But you couldn’t replicate Lost. It was too unique.

Enter “This is Us,” the most unlikely water cooler show of them all. And maybe that’s our first lesson of the day. Whenever there’s a mega-hit show, the collective industry response is to try and copy it. But what you’d be better off doing is finding something that’s the opposite, which is what This is Us is.

But that doesn’t explain how this show got so buzzy. Once again, the show relies solely on internal and external character conflict to drive episodes. So how can it possibly compete with a show that spends 25 million on movie-level battles every other other week, or kills off multiple beloved characters in a singular blood-curdling wedding? It seems impossible.

For those who haven’t seen This is Us, go watch the pilot right now. I’m serious. Stop reading this and watch the pilot, because it’s one of the best written episodes of television ever. Also, it’s impossible to talk about the show without indirectly spoiling the pilot. And I need to get into the pilot to explain why this show is so buzzy. Okay, did you watch it? Are you sure? Cause every sentence going forward is a spoiler. You’ve been warned!

For those who don’t have the time, This is Us follows “triplets” Kevin, Kate, and Randall Pearson. Kevin is a handsome successful sitcom actor who decides to quit his show to pursue theater in New York. Kate is his extremely obese manager whose entire life revolves around trying to lose weight. And Randall, who is black and was adopted by the same parents of Kate and Kevin, is an extremely smart and successful businessman with a great family.

The show, however, doesn’t just cover the triplets in the present day. Half of every episode is dedicated to 30 years ago, where we show their parents, Jack and Rebecca Pearson, going through the struggles of being a young couple trying to raise three kids.

There is one more major plotline, which is that Randall seeks out his biological father, William, who left him at a fire station that night that Jack and Rebecca adopted him. Randall learns that William is dying, and extends an invitation to move in with him and his family, where he learns about William’s unique life as a struggling artist/addict.

Okay, now that we’ve got the basics, let’s get to why this show, which, once again, is just about people, is able to compete on the same buzzworthy plane as Game of Thrones. We’ll start with the number one reason, which I’m guessing nobody here picked up on. If you did, kudos to you. Cause it took me awhile to figure it out.

This Is Us’s PAST-PRESENT structure allows it to introduce sexier twists and turns than your average character-based show.

Case in point: The pilot. This is Us hides the fact, with clever directing, that Jack and Rebecca’s storyline – they’re at the hospital about to have triplets – is happening in the past. It also hides the fact that Randall, who’s black, is in any way related to Kevin and Kate. This allows them to throw a quadruple-whopper at us in the pilot’s climax. Jack and Rebecca’s storyline is set in the past, one of their triplets dies during birth, Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt Randall, who was dropped off to the hospital during delivery, which, of course, means that Kevin, Kate, and Randall are all siblings in the present. Wow! Now that’s writing.

However, even after the gig is up on the hidden past storyline, This is Us still uses it to deliver dose after dose of surprises. For example, at the end of the second episode, Randall, Kate, and Kevin’s parents stop by the house. “Grandpa and Grandpa are here!” Randall’s daughters excitedly yell. We open the door to see Rebecca…. but she’s not with Jack. She’s with Jack’s best friend. Cut to black. End of episode. WTF. This is a twist you can only pull off inside of this unique PAST-PRESENT format. And This is Us goes back to that well again and again (mostly to success, but not always).

It’s funny, when I looked up at my list of water cooler shows, I noticed there are two others that use this exact same format – Lost and True Detective. So there’s obviously something writers have discovered that’s like this little miracle worker for twists. Nobody had figured out how to do that for a character-driven show yet, though. So kudos to Dan Fogelman, the creator of This is Us, for doing so.

From there, This is Us utilizes good old fashioned solid-writing to make sure you love it. In television, your primary job in the pilot is to make us either a) fall in love with or b) be intrigued by each and every character. If you can accomplish that, it’s an investment that pays dividends for a loooong time. We’ll endure some bad episodes if you’ve given us characters we love. And This is Us has some bad episodes. But I don’t care. Because I want to see if Kate’s going to prioritize her relationship over her eating issues, if Kevin ends up with the playwright, or how Will, the biological father dying from cancer, is holding up.

This is Us also utilizes a cheap, but effective, tool for keeping its show buzzworthy. It’s not afraid to kill people. Or, when it isn’t killing people, it’s coming damn close to it. When you look at all those buzzworthy shows – Walking Dead, Game of Thrones – they love to kill off characters. And look at the time tested TV genres – cop shows, medical shows – death is basically built into their DNA. This is Us understands that just having a bunch of people lollygagging around, sharing jokes, isn’t enough. There had to be the threat of death hanging over each episode to give the show weight and generate discussion.

In closing, let me offer you some TV writing advice. And this extends to the feature world as well. I have no problem with writers capitalizing on trends. If you’ve got a Game of Thrones like show that takes place in a completely different setting and feels new and fresh, that’s a powerful marketing tool for you when you go out and pitch it. “I’ve got the next Game Of Thrones” does perk up some ears. However, remember that TV producers hear “I’ve got the next Game of Thrones,” all the time. So going in the completely opposite direction, like Dan Fogelman did with This is Us, may be just as lucrative.

The other day, I was talking to a friend. He’s more a director than a writer. So he doesn’t write unless he has to. And it so happens this is one of the rare times he’s writing one of his scripts. He said he could use my help. So I met with him and we talked through a bunch of ideas regarding the characters and the plot, and by the time I left, I felt like the script was ready to go.

A couple of days later I called and asked how the writing was going. “It’s not,” he said. I naturally asked, “Why not?” There was a long pause. “Because I don’t even know where to start.”

I live and breathe screenwriting. I know all the ins and outs of the medium. So it’s easy for me to forget that for many people, looking at 110 blank pages is like looking down into an endless black hole. The prospect of knowing where to begin, and then of how you’re going to fill in all those pages, seems impossible.

I’m hoping to erase that fear today. To give you all a little guidance. You see, to write a great script, your writing must have PURPOSE. We, the reader, must feel like you have a plan in place – that you’re bringing us somewhere. So before you do anything with your script. Before you write a single word. You need to know HOW YOUR STORY ENDS.

Think about it. How can your driving have purpose if you don’t know where the trip ends?

I call this: The Check Point Method.

You set yourself a series of check points to write towards. And you start with your ending. That’s going to be your final check point.

How do you come up with an ending if you haven’t even started your script yet? It’s easier than you think. What is the problem that sends your hero on his/her journey? Once you have that, you know what they must do to solve the problem. And the climax will be their attempt to solve it.

In Wonder Woman the problem is the evil German baddie who’s waging World War 1. The climax, then, will be her battling that villain, trying to take him down.

If you were to, say, came up with an idea about a group of kids in a small town who start seeing a creepy clown, it’s pretty clear how that script should end. They will have to battle the clown! So there you go. You’ve just identified your climax. Which gives you your first check point to write towards.

BUT.

That check point is still really far away, isn’t it? You’ve given your script SOME purpose. But it still has the potential to wander around in circles before it gets to that final check point. Which means we need MORE check points!

The big plot beat that comes before the climax is the second act climax. What typically happens at the end of the second act is you main character reaches his lowest point. The bad guy gets away. The hero loses his girlfriend. Your NAVY SEAL’S entire team is killed. Your character has hit rock bottom.

Which means that for your second check point, all you have to do is figure out how your hero reaches his lowest point. In “It,” for example, all the friends get in a fight and break up. They leave one another. How the hell can they defeat It if none of them are talking to each other? Look at that. Another check point’s been added that’s even closer to the start of the script than the climax. All of a sudden, this giant black hole isn’t looking so giant anymore. Crafting a story starts to seem possible.

Let’s keep it rolling and find another major plot beat that happens even closer to the beginning. For example, in “It,” you have that haunted house the kids always see. You know you’re going to have to build a set piece into that haunted house somewhere. You may not know what the scene is yet. But you know something big needs to happen there. So, once again, you make that another CHECK POINT. “Kids get stuck in house for some reason. Major battle occurs there.” We’ve just added a third major check point to the story. This isn’t looking difficult at all.

By this point, we’re almost backed up to our midpoint. The midpoint is usually when a major plot beat occurs, something that adds another dimension to the story or sends it off in an unexpected direction. You could argue that in “It,” this occurs when the “Losers Club” fends off the bullies and befriends Mike Hanlon. A new member has joined the group. An EVEN CLOSER check point to write towards. The script, now, is even smaller.

We also know that early on, we want a series of scenes where It scares the children. That can become our first major check point of the movie – “Each kid gets scared by It in a unique way.” That means that after your script’s opening, when you set up your characters, you have FIVE CHECK POINTS to write towards.

1) Series of scenes where kids get scared by It
2) The Losers group befriends Mike Hanlon after fighting off the bullies.
3) Big haunted house set piece.
4) Friends break up.
5) Friends battle It.

The idea with these check points is to make it so you always have something to write towards, which means your story always has purpose. If you don’t set up these check points ahead of time, you’ll find yourself scrambling for plot ideas and story directions, which inevitably lead the story nowhere. If you’ve ever run out of steam on a screenplay around pages 40-60, this is usually why.

Now remember, you don’t have to limit yourself to five check points. You can include as many check points as you want. And I’d argue that the more you figure out ahead of time, the better. The writers of “It,” for example, may have known beforehand that they wanted “It” to kidnap Beverly near the end, which motivated the Losers to regroup and go after It. So you’d slip that check point in between numbers 4 and 5.

To truth is that the less check points you have, the more likely you are to get lost. If you have to cover even 20 pages in your script with no check points to write towards, there’s a good possibility that that section will lose focus.

Also, you don’t have to start at the climax like I did and work your way backwards. I just find it easier because the two easiest plot beats to figure out are the Climax and the Hero’s Lowest Point. And both are at the end. Feel free to start forming check points at the beginning if you want. Just make sure you have your ending figured out before you start writing. That’s the one non-negotiable check point. Your climax guides the entire story as well as all the check points before it. So you want to have that one down.

I find that one of the most common issues in amateur screenplays is an unfocused narrative. The writer doesn’t have a plan. And a lot of that comes from not having your major plot beats figured out ahead of time. Figure those plot beats out, CHECK POINT THEM, then write towards each, one at a time. Keep it simple guys. That’s the name of the game.