The Russo Brothers loved this book so much they’re ditching superheroes for it. So what’s all the hype about??

Genre: War/Drama
Premise: A young man growing up in Cleveland decides to join the army, after which he suffers PTSD, leading to a string of bank robberies to feed his drug addiction.
About: Today’s book was a huge “out of nowhere” million dollar sale, highlighted by the fact that the author, who’s in prison for the crimes he writes about, couldn’t complete the sale for the movie rights because he ran out of his allotted prison phone minutes. He would need to wait a whole extra week to get it done. Meanwhile, the project became so hot that Avengers Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo made Cherry their first post-Avengers directorial project.
Writer: Nico Walker
Details: 300 pages

I was cautiously excited to read this one. Excited because of the rags-to-riches backstory. Cautious because I know Hollywood gets so wet for these war books that they can’t see the forest through the trees. Case in point: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Hollywood LOOOOOVED that book. Couldn’t wait to turn it into a movie and win a billion awards. Except I read that book and it was easily one of the three worst books I’d read in my life. So I was hoping they hadn’t made the same mistake here.

The story follows the author, Nico, in 2003, as he attempts to figure out his life in Cleveland post high school, a life which seems to have no direction other than the love he has for his girlfriend, Emily. When finding a promising job proves difficult, Nico joins the army, and is shipped out for training soon after.

He’s eventually transferred to Iraq where he becomes a medic. His tour is one year, the majority of which is spent cleaning up human remains after IEDs blow up army vehicles. Nico quickly learns that this is war with all of the downsides and none of the glory. There are no soldier-on-soldier battles, just people getting blown up and shot in small skirmishes in the night, and the requisite clean-up afterwards.

Nico in prison

Nico bides his time by thinking about Emily, calling her, e-mailing her, and seeing her during the few times he gets time off. Emily is not a fan of what Nico’s doing, and he soon begins to suspect she’s cheating on him. Since Emily is the only thing that keeps him going, he descends into a mental spiral of depression, knowing that if she is sleeping with other guys, there’s nothing he can do about it in Iraq.

When his tour is finally up, his worst fears are confirmed. Emily has been in numerous relationships while he was off in the army. The two break up, and Nico turns to booze and oxycotin, which eventually turns to oxycotin and heroin. He moves from woman to woman, but none of them make him happy the way Emily did.

Eventually, Emily reemerges and Nico gets her hooked on heroin. Every day is a hunt for the next score. When they run out of money, Nico has no choice but to start robbing banks so they can get their fix. When one of the banks publishes a camera shot that is as “clear as if I were sitting for an oil painting” Nico is arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He won’t be released until 2023.

Every young actor in Hollywood will be angling for this role. But Lucas Hedges looks the most like the real Nico.

I can totally see why this author is getting attention. His style is raw, in your face, fearless. Most importantly, it’s truthful. One of the hardest things about writing yourself is that you’re always trying to come off as the good guy. Deep down you want people to like you – think you’re funny, cool, interesting, good. So you don’t write the bad things that you think or do. You’re afraid they’ll get in the way of the image you want to portray. The irony is that the bad parts are what make you human, and without them, you don’t seem real, you don’t seem flawed. The most powerful thing about this book is its lack of a filter.

The book also gives you something you can’t get anywhere else. And I think writers forget about this. They forget to ask, “What am I giving the reader that they can’t get with any other story, any other writer?” Because if you’re one of the 95% of writers who are rewriting movies we’ve already seen, why would I need to read your script? I’ve already seen it. Cherry gets extremely specific, especially when we’re in Iraq, and every page is filled with shit I never even thought about. I’m genuinely learning something new in every chapter. Here, after a dead body is called in, Nico and the rest of the crew try to figure out who it might be…

I’m not getting that kind of detail from the screenwriter who does his war research by renting Saving Private and Platoon.

Nico also wisely inserts an anchor into his story. When you’re writing one of these wandering narratives, it’s easy for the reader to feel lost. “Where is all of this headed?” is a common question. You allievaite this by adding an anchor, something to keep coming back to. This anchor grounds the story. The most common anchor used is a relationship. So, for Nico, it’s Emily. Whenever things start to get a little loose, we’ll call Emily, or we’ll e-mail Emily. They did the same thing in Forrest Gump with Jenny.

Nico even turbo-boosted this storyline because he inserted an element of dread into it. It wasn’t just, “Hey, it was nice to talk to Emily again!” There was an underlying sense that she wasn’t as committed to their relationship as he was. Maybe she had found someone else. Since we knew Emily was Nico’s world, we had to keep reading to find out if, indeed, Emily would leave him, or if it was going to be okay.

If the book has a weakness it’s that it’s too depressing. Depressing is fine if it’s earned. If, for example, Nico has this rosy outlook on life and then he experiences the carnage of war and it changes him – that makes sense. But Nico is a downer from the get-go. He’s never a happy guy. So there isn’t enough emotional variance throughout the book. We keep hitting that same “life sucks” beat over and over. Remember, guys – you need highs for the audience to be able to appreciate the lows, and vice versa.

As for the movie adaptation, I’m not sure how the Russos are going to approach it. The most interesting thing about the story is the bank robberies, but those robberies get the least amount of time in the story, as they’re mostly tacked on to the very end. They could focus on the war stuff, but I feel like we’ve seen a ton of Iraq war movies already. On the page this stuff sounds amazing. But I’m not sure it will look any different from the last mainstream Iraq flick. Or the one before that. Nico has such a pronounced voice that I fear this is one of those books that works best as a book, not a film. But we’ll see.

For those interested, this is a good companion piece to Hillbilly Elegy, a book that covers the same demographic, but through the prism of education rather than war. I’d say Elegy is better. But Cherry is still a solid piece of work.

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

What I learned: Keep at it. Everything you write will be a struggle. Don’t give up. Nico wrote this book at the urging of a couple of guys working at a small publishing company. He didn’t think he could do it. He only wrote it because they believed in him. After three full years and dozens of rewrites, they gave the manuscript to one of the higher-ups at the company, and he said the writing wasn’t good enough to publish, and so Nico would have to rewrite the whole book over again and so he did. After they finished that version, one of the editors came in and made a few changes to the main character and Nico said, “What the fuck are you doing changing my story?” The editor said that when people read Nico’s version, they think the main character is a total asshole, but when they read this editor’s version, they think Nico is an asshole, but they kind of like him. So they went with the editor’s version.

What I learned 2: If you’re a really good structural writer who’s been told that your description, dialogue or characters are stiff, read this book. It really shows you what can happen if you just let go and write. It literally feels like the words are going straight from the writer’s brain to the page. There’s no, “I have to make this sentence perfect,” filter.

Today I take a second look at a movie that has slowly and quietly become a sci-fi classic.

There is no movie in recent years that has gained more fans after underperforming at the box office than Edge of Tomorrow. I can tell you from personal experience that no fewer than a dozen people (many of them casual moviegoers – not industry types) have said to me, unprompted, a variation of, “You know what’s a great movie that nobody knows about? Edge of Tomorrow.”

When Edge of Tomorrow first came out in script form as a million dollar spec-sale slash adaptation (its original title was “All You Need Is Kill”), I loved it. But the second Tom Cruise came on board, I was confused. The script’s main character was 18, and much of the story was built around the fear you have as an ignorant young soldier. Tom Cruise was 50+ when he was cast. That’s a huge change. How, I wondered, is this going to work after you take away one of the defining elements of the story?

It turns out it didn’t work. Or, at least, it didn’t work for me. In this new iteration, Cruise was a veteran officer who was inexplicably forced to become a soldier. Why? I’ll tell you why. BECAUSE THEY NEEDED A MOVIE. It made zero sense and I never got past it. The entire movie was built off of artificially constructed writer logic to get our way-too-old main character into the same situation that the original, 18 year-old, character had been in. To me, that’s when the movie ended. When it sold logic down the river.

But clearly, others weren’t bothered by this. In fact, I’d guess that if you polled 100 average moviegoers who saw this film, not one of them would’ve brought up this problem. And this speaks to the analysis mindset myself, executives, producers, and agents are obsessed with. You see, we know how difficult it is to get a movie made. We know that the more things that are in place, the better the chance is that the movie will be produced. Therefore, when we see a glaring error like a character who would never be in this situation being placed in this situation, we tell the writer, “You need to change this or else.”

But to an audience member, this makes all the sense in the world. It’s Tom Cruise. OF COURSE he’s going to have to fight. What are you going to do? Have him sit in an office the entire movie? They don’t care how Tom Cruise gets on the battlefield. As long as he gets on the battlefield.

So where’s the disconnect here? Why is it that I get all up in arms about this and won’t accept the movie after the choice is made, yet the people who made the film and the people who watch the film had no problem with it at all? The answer is complicated and comes down to the process a script goes through and how what may be important in one step will not be important in another.

When you’re writing a spec script, it’s crucial you get this kind of plot beat right. Remember, your movie is not getting made at this point. You’re a nobody with words on a page. Therefore, every single beat of your screenplay – in particular the pillar beats, the ones that hold up your story – will be scrutinized. This is why in the original All You Need Is Kill, we have a young scared soldier. Because that’s consistent with the reality of young men getting drafted into war.

However, once your script reaches the “Actor Attached” stage, it’s less about logic and more about getting things as good as you can get them by the time the cameras start rolling. The film is getting made whether you solve the “50 year old dude gets drafted into the army” problem or not. So you do the best you can do, knowing that the audience isn’t going to be as discerning as the script reader who needs things to be as logical as possible to recommend the script to their boss and not get yelled at.

It’s one of the trickier realities about screenwriting – that the same rules don’t apply across the board. While this can be confusing, it’s important to remember that when you’re on the bottom rung and your script needs to stand on its own, plot beats like this have to make sense. You don’t get the “we’re making this movie whether we solve this problem or not” leeway.

This is a long way of saying I wanted to give this film another shot. I want to remove the internal script analyst in me and try to enjoy this film as the 2 hour shot of entertainment adrenaline it became for so many others. And I feel like I have enough distance from the film and its script to do that. With that in mind… what did I think?

For those who’ve forgotten, Edge of Tomorrow follows a public relations officer, Cage, who, due to the escalating nature of an alien invasion, is forced to become an on-the-ground soldier. When Cage is killed during a D-Day attack on a beach, something happens that sends him into a time loop. Every time he dies, he wakes up at the beginning of the day again. This allows him to master the art of battle through repetition, kind of like a video game. Along the way, he meets Rita, a young woman who had the same power as him, but who’s since lost it. Rita uses her knowledge to help Cage find and destroy the mother alien.

Okay!

So what did I think??

You know what. This screening was DEFINITELY better. Way better than I expected. And that surprised me. I was fully ready to feel the same way about the film. The opening still bothers me (in addition to Cage’s age, why are we putting a man in a 5 million dollar suit he’s never trained in before then throwing him into battle an hour later?), but I zen-meditated through it all and focused on the other aspects of the story that did work.

Speaking of, I noticed that the Groundhog Day-like time-looping device was so fun, it helped divert attention away from the script’s weaknesses. I had to remind myself that while I knew the time jumping was coming (because I read the script), the people who skipped this movie in theaters and stumbled onto it on digital were likely shocked when Tom Cruise died in the first fifteen minutes, only to be reborn again. That was the hook point, and once it happened, nobody was thinking about whether a 50 year old would be an army grunt.

The script also handles exposition and plot development much better than I remember. The mythology of the Scourge (the invading alien species) is complex, with a hierarchy of alien fighters, several of which (Alphas) carry an “antennae” feature that allows them to see into the future and direct the army so that the Scourge can always predict the humans’ next move. When Cage kills an Alpha and the blood covers him, he inherits the same power.

It’s far-fetched when you think about it, but in an early exposition scene, a doctor character lays out all of this very simply. As a result, I was never confused about what was going on. That’s a major level-up as a screenwriter – when you can take complex mythology and explain it simply. It’s an art to know just how much information you need to give the reader and not a letter more. And the writers here nailed it.

The script also fixes a loophole that has doomed many a time travel script in the past: non-existent stakes. Remember, whenever a character travels in time and fails, he can just go back in time and try again. This is one of the reasons The Terminator series can’t be revived, despite attempts to do so every five years. We know if the Terminator fails to terminate… they can just send another one. So where are the stakes?

One of the cooler script choices in Edge of Tomorrow is when Officer Cage loses his power before he’s accomplished his goal – to find and kill the future-transmitting alien. Remember, up until this point, he has a safety net (the loop), allowing him to test new things every day. But when that power is all of a sudden gone, the stakes are sky high. He doesn’t get any more lives. Knowing he couldn’t screw up even once in the final act made for a really tense finale.

There are still some things that bother me, such as the fact that we spend the entire first half of the movie trying to bust through the defending Scourge on the beach. However, once they accomplish this, they’re inexplicably able to freely drive a truck down long stretches of country highway. Seeing as we’re on a landmass as giant as Europe, wasn’t there an easier way to get to this highway than through a beach full of killer aliens?

And yes, it still bothers me that there is literally NO reason for why Officer Cage is sent to the front line. They don’t even try to come up with an explanation. The Commander just says, “I’m sending you to the front line,” and that’s it, lol. BUT, at least this time around, I didn’t let it get in the way of the rest of the story. And I’m glad, because if you let that go, you realize that Edge of Tomorrow is a damn good movie.

What I learned: LEVEL UP BY CONSOLIDATING EXPOSITION – One of the most important skills a screenwriter can possess is the ability to take complex mythology and/or plot elements, and distill them down to short and clear exposition passages. Most amateur writers view exposition as information that needs to be conveyed, regardless of length. Instead, they need to see exposition as information that needs to be consolidated.

Sorry for the late post. I spent all last night watching a triple feature of Meg + Crazy Rich Asians + Slender Man. In the process, I was taken to a higher plane of existence where I was told by a man in a purple elephant onesie the meaning of life. I asked the man if I could share the answer with you, but he informed me that I would first have to take a trip to the planet Glufonix and “get initiated” by singing the Seven Hymns of Layamaise to Princess Dave. I chose instead to go to In and Out and sing the seven items of the secret menu. There’s a 5% chance that I was sick and had a fever dream and imagined all this stuff, but I’m fairly certain it was the former. The good news about the wait is that we’ve got some interesting scripts today. I’m personally interested in how three of them turn out. Can’t share which ones, unfortunately. Don’t want to influence the votes!

Here’s how to play Amateur Offerings: Read as many of this weekend’s scripts as you can and VOTE for your favorite in the comments section. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete on Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck to all!

Title: Crater Lake
Genre: Drama / Thriller
Logline: When a young widow’s son mysteriously disappears in Crater Lake National Park she will have one week to find him before the snowy season begins & buries any trace.
Why You Should Read: Much of my writing has always been complex, so I took this opportunity to write something simple, short, sweet and a quick read. I call it Flightplan in the woods. Mother loses son and will do everything to get him back, but has everything in her way. Singular park location with limited characters, a mysterious level of suspense and intrigue, mixed with the paranormal. As this is my first foray into something this simple, I’d love to hear any feedback the group has and take in any suggestions.

Title: The Reckoning
Genre: Action/Thriller/Horror
Logline: After being led to investigate the death of a papal candidate, a world-weary, former member of the Swiss guard finds himself embroiled in a dark conspiracy, one that spans across borders, over generations, and if unstopped, will uproot the very fabric of human existence.
Why You Should Read: Hey there! Mike here. Finally decided to throw one of my scripts in the running. Little background first… I went to high school in Rome. There, I met these guys that used to be in the Swiss Guard. We were at a bar one night and they started telling me how they got into it. Basically, they left their homes at the age of twelve to start training for a career that was in their words “a sacred duty.” They finished at the top of their class and were recruited into a special division inside the Vatican. And let me tell you…when your place of work is an ancient city surrounded by walls, the word “special” takes on new meaning. One of their missions involved an extraction of some Catholic parishioners during the Second Congo War that I’m sure would have made headlines if weren’t commissioned by an institution that’s been keeping secrets for thousands of years. So, long story short, I took some of their history, threw my twist on it, added some subtle supernatural elements, and came up with the Reckoning. It’s less Dan Brown, more 24 meets the Exorcist. Hope you enjoy it!

Title: The Trouble With Ringo’s Soul
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the Beatles discover that Ringo sold his soul to be in the band, they make a bet with the Devil to win it back, and in the process create one of the greatest albums of all time.
Why You Should Read: Biographies are hot, but they bore me to death. Bubbles was a nice way to inject some life into a biographical story, but then it faltered because it didn’t really give me what I wanted, which was Michael Jackson. The Trouble With Ringo’s Soul splits the difference, melding the real world Beatles with the movie Beatles to yield a fourth “Beatles” movie. So far it’s not doing well at contests, though I feel like it’s the kinda script that if the right person saw it (maybe a Beatles fan like Ron Howard), it could get some attention. The script might be best suited for animation, or, like, puppets or something.

Title: Easy as Pie
Genre: Comedy, Satire
Logline: When a hardworking, driven sales rep, in need of money for her sister’s operation, battles her conniving rival in a contest involving the world’s first negative calorie pie, she realizes that kindness is an important part of the winning recipe.
Why You Should Read: Many moons ago, I placed a small classified ad in The Toronto Star, seeking people looking for “a great business opportunity” (it was for an MLM program I got roped into and soon abandoned). I only got one response. It was from a young lady. She wasn’t looking for “a great business opportunity.” She was looking to get me involved in her “great business opportunity.” — After I signed up for her MLM program, I got to know her a bit. She was fun, driven and didn’t take “no” for an answer. Even so, I soon lost interest in her program, but I always had fond memories of her. I knew in my tiny little heart she’d make a great lead character in a story exposing the realities of multi-level marketing. — Many years later, I wrote it. And while it started off as a satire on the MLM business, it slowly shifted to a satire on business (and to a certain extent politics) tackling issues such as love, greed, and kindness. — The result is “Easy as Pie,” a “non-serious comedy.” I call it “non-serious” because the plot is centered on something that sadly the world may never see, a negative calorie pie.

I was thinking about major screenwriting mistakes the other day and it got me thinking: “What’s the single most common screenwriting criticism given?” I didn’t even have to blink before I had my answer. Or maybe I should say, I didn’t even have to sniffle. ON-THE-NOSE DIALOGUE. Every writer, from beginner to advanced, has heard that criticism numerous times throughout their career. So I thought, “Let’s nip this on-the-nose thing in the bud once and for all.”

But before we do, we must define what on-the-nose dialogue is. I see on-the-nose dialogue as obvious surface-level conversation where the characters say exactly how they feel and/or exactly what they’re thinking. Here’s a blatant example of on-the-nose dialogue:

“How are you today?”

“I’m doing well. How are you?”

“I had a tough day but I’m feeling better now that you’re home. Thank you for asking.”

Ugh. Notice how straight-forward the words are. There’s no emotion. There’s no nuance. There’s nothing unexpected. The characters are basically robots going through the motions.

On-the-nose dialogue can also extend into exposition, where characters will often skip subtlety and deliver only the lines that the audience needs in order to understand what’s going on.

“How are we going to defeat Ragbob the Zombie-God if he’s undead?”

“You said he hated water right?”

“Yes.”

“So we’ll lure him to Smith River and throw him in.”

“But Jake said he becomes immortal at midnight.”

“Then we have to hurry.”

While it’s true that you need to explain what’s happening in your plot at times, notice how these characters don’t appear to be talking to each other, but rather directly to the audience. That’s a good indication that your dialogue is on-the-nose.

So I was searching for an easy way to identify on-the-nose dialogue and I think I found the answer. On-the-nose dialogue is LOGICAL. If I ask you the question, “How many miles per gallon does your car get?” the logical answer to that would be, “I think 28 miles per gallon.” Logically, you’ve answered my question. However, you’ve done so in a very boring, on-the-nose way.

This is what screenwriters have to realize. Real conversation isn’t always logical. Sometimes it is. But often it isn’t. It’s a topsy-turvy mess of fragmented thoughts, unfinished sentences, sarcasm, unspoken secrets, suppressed information, humor, you name it.

Under that reality, you can move away from on-the-nose and give us dialogue that feels more alive. “How many miles per gallon does this car get?” “I don’t know who do I look like, Mario Andretti?” Or, if you were writing a drama: “How many miles per gallon does this car get?” “Not enough.”

As writers, the logical side of our brain is extremely important because we’re constantly having to keep the plot sorted and make sure every scene has a purpose and make sure every character’s motivation is clear and blah blah blah. So it’s only natural that once we segue into dialogue, we keep that logical side of our brain with us.

However, if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this article, it’s that once you segue into dialogue, you want to turn off your logical brain and embrace the illogical. Again, if you listen to real-life conversation, it’s messy as hell. People ramble. Questions are asked and never answered. Or a question is asked but the question reminds the other person of something else they wanted to talk about. People ignore each other because they just received a text on their phone. People aren’t always present in a conversation because their mind is worrying about something else.

You can’t completely capture the randomness of real conversation because real people sometimes have hours to talk, whereas your dialogue scene may take place over three minutes. But you can approximate some of these things to simulate it.

Let’s get back to exposition because in some ways, it’s harder to avoid on-the-nose dialogue in instances where it’s imperative that the audience understand what’s going on. I mean, imagine if, in Back to the Future, they never had any conversations about how they were going to get Marty back to the future and instead just threw us into that end scene. We’d probably be pretty confused.

The most common way to avoid on-the-nose expositional dialogue is through humor. That’s what they did with Back to the Future, and more recently in Avengers: Infinity War, when the Guardians of the Galaxy find Thor and have to split up into two teams to achieve two different goals. I’m not going to say the scene was perfectly-executed, but the use of humor (namely through Starlord’s jealousy of Thor) made all that exposition more palatable.

But sometimes, the genre isn’t conducent to humor. Or, at least, over-the-top humor, such as the examples above. So what do you do then? Well, one thing you can do is go back to basics. What’s the principle tool that makes a scene work? You know this because I made it a focus last week. CONFLICT. If you add an element of conflict, the focus of the scene becomes bringing that conflict into balance as opposed to focusing on the exact words the characters are saying. If you do this, and also sprinkle in a few illogical responses, you can avoid that “on-the-nose” label.

Let’s look at a scene from the movie Tully. This scene occurs late, when Tully (the night nanny who’s been helping our hero take care of her baby) asks Marlo (our hero/overworked mom) to come out with her for a night. While this script isn’t plot-heavy, it’s probably the most plot-centric beat in the movie. This night needs to occur for Margot to finally have fun again and have her breakthrough that will allow her to arc.

Notice how the simple inclusion of conflict (Tully’s asking Marlo to go – Marlo’s resisting) keeps us less focused on the dialogue and more on whether she’s going to do this or not.

You’ll notice that there are some on-the-nose “logical” lines here. “You know, I feel like I’ve been very useful around here. In many regards. And I don’t think this is an unreasonable request. I don’t have a lot of friends my own age, due to the unusual nature of this job, and I just need to get out.” But I never said that everything needed to be illogical. Only that there is a mix of the two. There are plenty of instances of messy fun conversation as well. “Where?” “Out. To the city.” “The city-city?” “Yeah. New York. Big Apple. City that never sleeps.” Later: “Who’s going to take care of Mia?” The logical response to this is, “Your husband.” Instead, Cody went with, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s almost as though there’s another responsible adult at this address. Named Drew.”

It should also be noted that sometimes on-the-nose dialogue isn’t on-the-nose dialogue. That it all depends on the context. For example, let’s look at that opening dialogue example again. “How are you feeling?” “I’m doing well. How are you?” Boring and on-the-nose, right? Except, what if, in the previous scene, we just saw this character brutally murder someone? Cut to them walking in their home and their wife, none-the-wiser, greeting them. “How are you feeling?” “I’m doing well. How are you?” The line feels completely different now, right? It’s actually not on-the-nose at all. A shift in context can quickly change the perception of any dialogue. Important to remember.

But, again, the main thing I want you to take away here is that your mind needs to shift when it moves into the dialogue portions of your script. You need to ditch the robot in your head that’s trying to keep everything sorted and give in to the organic nature of the conversation you’re documenting. Don’t try and force words out of your characters’ mouths. Let them say what they want to say.

Genre: TV Pilot – 1 Hour Drama
Premise: After a real estate developer accepts a half a million dollar loan from a new friend, he learns that the money comes with lots of attached strings.
About: Pitched as a “Hithcockian” thriller, Suspicion is based on a book and adapted for television by Jessica Goldberg, who created the Hulu television series, The Path. It will premiere this fall on NBC. Goldberg studied writing at NYU and started her career as a playwright, winning the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play, Refuge, about a young woman who must take care of her siblings after her parents abandon the family. She would later adapt the play into a script and direct the movie, which starred “Jessica Jones,” Krysten Ritter.
Writer: Jessica Goldberg (based on the novel by Joseph Finder)
Details: 60 pages

One of the reasons network TV is in a bind is because the networks aren’t sure what they’re trying to do anymore. The cool shows that get all the accolades are on premium cable and streaming. So you’d think that the networks would focus on lightweight comfort food, the kind of soapy dishes that don’t require more than a passing investment.

The problem with that is the rise of reality TV, which hasn’t just taken the pole position for comfort food, they’ve injected it with even more comfort. I can turn off my brain, watch Million Dollar Listing, and finish my TV viewing for the day a happy man. This leaves network shows caught somewhere in the middle. And right now the only person who’s figured where that sweet spot is is Shonda Rhimes. And she’s leaving for Netflix.

I bring this up because until the networks figure out how to give people something they can’t get elsewhere, their ratings are going to keep falling. I picked up Suspicion because it sounded slightly different. It wasn’t yet another medical/cop/agent/legal show and it was trying to explore the Hitchcock formula through long-form writing. I liked that pitch. Let’s see how the final product turned out.

We meet 40-something real estate developer Danny Goodman dragging a body from the back of his car. He tells us, through voice over, that it wasn’t always like this. Cut to three months earlier and Danny is asking his beautiful girlfriend, Lucy, to marry him. Oh, and get this. Danny’s 16 year old daughter, Elise, whose mother died of cancer five years ago, actually LIKES her new mother. After much pain, Danny’s life is finally back on track.

As is Elise’s. She’s finally making friends again. Her new best friend, Tatiana, happens to belong to one of the wealthiest families in town. And when Tatiana’s family asks Danny’s family over for dinner, Danny doesn’t hesitate.

Except that before he goes, he learns that the building he recently bought, the one that he bet his entire business on, is decrepit and falling apart. It’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs, money he doesn’t have.

Once at the dinner, Danny meets Tom Canter, Tatiana’s father. Tom is brazenly charming and overly thankful for the emergence of Elise in Tatiana’s life. Before her, Tatiana was on a path of destruction. In Tom’s eyes, he owes Danny everything. So when he overhears Danny talking to his lawyer later about the building, he offers to help Danny out. Danny feels odd about it, but he’s really in a bind, so the next day he accepts half a million dollars from Tom.

It doesn’t take long for the FBI to show up at Danny’s work. They explain that Tom is involved in money laundering, securities fraud, illegal campaign contributions, you name it. They tell Danny that unless he works with them, he’ll go to prison for the next 30 years. And that’s how Danny finds himself working as an informant for the FBI to take down one of the most dangerous men in Boston.

Let’s get back to that question. Was this different from any of the other network TV shows on the air?

Not really.

But if you want to write for TV, this is a really good pilot to read in order to understand structure and pacing.

Last week I reviewed Lodge 49 and that pilot read like the writer kept falling asleep between scenes, only to wake up a few hours later, down a bag of chips, smoke a joint, write another scene, then go to sleep again. It didn’t seem like he cared about your time at all.

This reads like a writer who understands how quickly stories need to move in 2018. We get the teaser with the car dragging the body. And in the VERY next scene, which we cut to three months prior, the main character asks his girlfriend to marry him.

After a few brief scenes with the family, we establish that Danny is in a lot of trouble with the building. From there, the family goes to Tom’s. We meet Tom. But we don’t fart around. A major story beat is introduced (Tom overhears Danny’s phone call then offers him money).

The very next day, Tom goes to work, and the FBI is there. Again: THIS IS HOW QUICKLY YOU WANT THINGS TO MOVE. After that, the agents force Danny to download information on Tom’s phone. So that becomes a set-piece.

Always moving always moving always moving. If your story isn’t moving, it’s dying.

If you need help moving your story faster, use Act Breaks. There are FIVE ACTS in a pilot. And you know that at the end of each act, there needs to be a cliffhanger. So all you need to do is write towards that cliffhanger. Every scene should be moving that portion of the story towards that cliff.

Here, the end of Act 1 takes place on page 20. The end of Act 2 takes place on page 32. The end of Act 3 takes place on 41. The end of Act 4 on page 49. And the end of Act 5 takes place at the end of the script, page 60.

I don’t know why the acts are set up this way, with such a long first act. But I’m guessing that it gives you extra time to introduce all the main characters as well as their situations. Either way, it’s easier to keep the pace up if you’re writing inside of a small portion of pages. If you’re not using acts and just trying to get to page 60, you’ll likely write something with a similar urgency to Lodge 49.

So yeah, there’s no new ground being broken here. But wow is this a tight teleplay. There isn’t an inch of page space that’s wasted. Every moment is moving the story forward. If you’re a writer who’s been told that your scripts are slow or boring, you can learn a lot from this pilot.

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

What I learned: Don’t use the word that’s correct. Use the word that’s real. — Check out this line of dialogue:

“I’ve spent my entire adolescence sad and scared– thinking I’d never be a normal, happy kid…”

The line comes from Ellie, the daughter, complaining to her father after he retrieved her from a party. Why am I highlighting it? Because of the word “adolescence.” A 16 year-old wouldn’t use that word. And yet, I understand why it was chosen. As writers, we focus so much on getting the word CORRECT that we often overlook what the character would ACTUALLY SAY. In the writer’s mind, Ellie’s sadness and fear began with the death of her mother, which occurred at the beginning of her “adolescence.” Hence, it technically makes sense to use that word. But dialogue isn’t technical. It’s off the cuff. It’s messy. The wrong words are often used. You have to honor that when your characters are speaking. It’s more likely Ellie would say something like, “I’ve spent my entire life…” or “I’ve spent so long…” or “I’ve spent the last five years terrified…” It’s easy to forget this. Use the word that’s real, not the one that’s technically correct.