Search Results for: F word
Are you trying to sell a script? Do you want to make the Black List? Then today’s article is for you! I’ll be going through each and every major genre and break down how likely it is to sell a script or make the Black List in that genre. This is not meant as an end-all be-all determination for what you should write. There is no 100% sure-fire formula for writing a script. But you do want to load the odds up in your favor. All genres will be rated on a scale of 1-10 in the two categories, 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Spec sales are hard to come by so don’t expect any 9s or 10s in that category. But you can still sell a spec in the right genre. Let’s take a look…
Genre: Super-Hero
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Black Panther, The Dark Knight, Avengers: Infinity War
Breakdown: There’s no point writing in this genre unless you’re adapting from something else that was successful in another medium. I suppose if you did an action-comedy type thing with it, like Will Smith’s “Hancock,” that could work. But generally speaking, the super-hero genre is strictly an IP zone. Screenwriters should steer clear of it at all costs.
Genre: Contained Thriller (Horror)
Script Sale: 8 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: 10 Cloverfield Lane, Get Out, Saw
Breakdown: Welcome, my friends, to the most lucrative genre for spec screenwriters and filmmakers. Contained horror is cheap to produce. Horror audiences don’t require much from the genre other than to be scared. You’re not going to get a million dollar paycheck writing in this genre. But your chances of selling one of these is better than in any other genre on this list.
Genre: Contained Thriller (Sci-Fi)
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Alien, Ex-Machina, Primer
Breakdown: These movies don’t do as well at the box office as horror, which is why their numbers are lower. They’re also more expensive to make than contained horror. Your best bet is probably to mix the two, like they did with the original Alien.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 4 out of 10
Comps: How to be Single, Love Simon
Breakdown: This is how bad the romantic comedy has gotten. One of the biggest romantic comedies of 2016, “Why Him,” didn’t even focus on the romantic relationship. It focused on the hero and the romantic interest’s father. With that said, I think I saw a romantic comedy on last year’s Black List for the first time in a long time (Daddio?). So maybe there’s hope. Here’s my take on the romantic comedy. Someone needs to do with the rom-com what Christopher Nolan did with the super-hero movie when he made The Dark Knight. Cut out all this goofy wish- fulfillment nonsense and make it more realistic.
Genre: Action-Comedy
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 2 out of 10
Comps: The Spy Who Dumped Me, Central Intelligence
Breakdown: I consider the Action-Comedy to be a hidden gem for spec sales. Hollywood has always loved making these movies. Unlike the straight comedy, which has fallen in recent years because it doesn’t travel well, any sort of action plays well to international audiences. So Hollywood has shifted their priorities over to this genre from the comedy, despite the fact that they cost more to make.
Genre: Western
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Bone Tomahawk, Hostiles, The Homesman
Breakdown: This is a tricky genre. At first glance, it seems antiquated. Yet they continue to make 3-4 Westerns a year. I think the reason for this is that directors love to shoot them and actors love to be in them. There’s something inexorably cool about playing a gunslinger or getting that classic wide shot of the old country. You just can’t go crazy when you write these. Nobody’s making big budget Westerns anymore. The ideal setup would be something like “High Noon” where everything is localized (aka “cheap”).
Genre: Period (War)
Script Sale: 6 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge
Breakdown: When I say “Period War,” I mean any war dating back 2000 years. From the 300 Spartans to the Iraq War. War always sells. There’s something visceral about it that speaks to audiences on multiple levels. But these days, your war film MUST BE BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Otherwise don’t bother. The only reason this gets a 6 on the “sale” rating instead of a “7” is because these movies are expensive to make. So studios have to think a little harder before pulling the trigger.
Genre: Zombie
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Train to Busan, Maggie, 28 Days Later
Breakdown: Five years ago, the zombie genre would’ve been a good 2-3 points higher. But the genre is currently in an ice age. Luckily, ice ages only last five years in Hollywood, which means it’s only a matter of time before the zombie pic comes back to life! You like that? “Back to life?” Ah, I kill myself. Then I re-animate myself. Just remember to always ALWAYS try to reinvent this genre. If your zombie script is anything like what I’ve seen in the past, I’m throwing it in the trash. And so is every other reader in Hollywood.
Genre: Romance
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: Call Me By Your Name, The Notebook, Dear John
Breakdown: This is the least glorious of the genres. Nobody remembers who wrote or directed these movies. But there’s definitely a market for them. Unfortunately, for right now, that market is dominated by Nicholas Sparks, and, to a lesser extent, John Green. It’s not a spec-friendly genre, which means you should probably steer clear of it. Self-publish a novel instead.
Genre: Comedy
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Father Figures, Daddy’s Home, Bad Moms
Breakdown: Like I said above, if you’re going to write a comedy, I’d suggest writing an action-comedy. But you can still sell a straight comedy. Right now, the trend for a sale has three branches. 1) Make it female-centric. 2) Go with an age old situation that has built-in conflict (a step-father being forced to co-parent with the real father). Or 3) Pick whatever the latest trendy tech thing is and write about that (those two Uber comedy spec sales from a couple of years ago are an example). The nice thing about this genre is that the big name comedy actors have cut their fees, so comedies can be made for cheap. That means there are still sales to be had!
Genre: Biopic
Script Sale: 8 out of 10
Black List: 10 out of 10
Comps: The Founder, Catch Me If You Can, The Imitation Game
Breakdown: This genre is right up there with Contained Horror as the most lucrative on the list. The reason being that this is the last outlet where movie stars can still be movie stars, as opposed to cogs in a machine. Also, as long as you can spell, your biopic will make The Black List.
Genre: Period
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: The Other Boleyn Girl, Victoria and Abdul, Love in the Time of Cholera, Tulip Fever, The Danish Girl
Breakdown: If you’re writing a period piece that isn’t associated with war, do so at your own risk. These movies make less than no money. Even the ones that get a boost from Oscar noms rarely do well. On the plus side, these movies do okay in the UK, on the Black List, and in the Nicholl Competition. So if you love these stories, there are outlets for you. But these are some of the toughest pitches in the business. You’ll get 1/1000 of the read requests than had you written a contained horror film. If I was a producer and someone pitched me a story set in the 17th century where an artist and his lover invested in the tulip business, I might just shoot myself right there.
Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy
Script Sale: 0 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Star Wars, Jupiter Ascending, Avatar
Breakdown: This genre is a death-trap. It’s the most expensive genre to produce. The sprawling nature of these stories and their enormous character counts are the exact opposite of what screenplays do well. Don’t bother defending why the sci-fi fantasy script you’re working on is different. This is the one genre I can say, without knowing anything about your script, that if you’re working on one, STOP. You’re wasting your time.
Genre: Horror
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 4 out of 10
Comps: It, The Conjuring
Breakdown: With the emergence of “It,” the straight horror film (not contained) is harder to gauge. Hollywood hates spending money on horror since the formula has proven for so long that you don’t need to. But 700 million worldwide is a quick way to change opinions. We also have to remember that these bigger budget horror flicks are based on IP. With that said, I think a good horror script, regardless of whether it’s contained or not, can sell. I also think big-budget horror is about to blow up. So better get on the trend early than late.
Genre: Action
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 6 out of 10
Comps: John Wick, The Fast and the Furious, The Bourne Identity, Taken, Die Hard
Breakdown: Straight action plays EVERYWHERE. Everywhere, guys. Nobody needs subtitles for it. So studios are desperate to find that next great action property. They usually get it from books (fifth-tier versions of James Bond). But this is one of the few genres still open for spec screenwriters to create something on their own. They’re expensive to produce, so a sale isn’t guaranteed. But I don’t see this genre dying out… well… ever.
Genre: Drama
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Three Billboards, Suburbicon, Room
Breakdown: This is a unique category because on the surface, you don’t want to mess with it. The genre requires more skill to pull off than any other genre. You have to rely strictly on great storytelling and strong character development, which most writers don’t master for a decade or more. A bad drama script is a script reader’s nightmare. Wrought with melodrama and cliched story beats, it’s the reading equivalent of Hell. With that said, these movies win studios Oscars. So studios are always going to be intrigued by them. It’s for this reason that if you write a drama, your aim should be to make The Black List and get the film made as opposed to secure that big flashy script sale.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: The Matrix, Source Code, The Martian, Inception, Ready Player One
Breakdown: Straight sci-fi is fun but it’s such an expensive genre and it’s competing directly with such a juggernaut of a genre (Super-Hero) that it’s hard to get a studio to bite on non-IP material. The Black List doesn’t really like them either. If you like sci-fi, I’d write something in the time-travel or “time-travel adjacent” genre (like Source Code), where you can create a big premise for a smaller price tag.
Genre: Faith-Based
Script Sale: 6.5 out of 10
Black List: Negative 8 out of 10
Comps: Heaven is For Real, The Shack, I Can Only Imagine
Breakdown: I don’t know much about this genre. But I do know the faith-based market is coming of age. And if you’re a screenwriter looking to make a living, there’s no reason you shouldn’t take advantage of that. It seems like a lot of these movies are based on books, but as long as you convey a positive message in your script about doing the right thing, and wrap it inside a good idea, there’s no reason to think you can’t sell your screenplay. Also, if a writer can figure out how to subvert the overtly melodramatic tendencies of these scripts so that they can cross over, they’ll become extremely wealthy. Unfortunately, the Black List’s “No Conservatives Allowed” policy means you’ll have to wave goodbye to any Black List aspirations.
Genre: Fantasy
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The BFG
Breakdown: The only reason this genre isn’t at zero is that it’s a little more accessible than sci-fi fantasy. Still, this genre is built exclusively off of IP, usually books. I occasionally see fantasy scripts hit the Black List (A Monster Calls) but if you have a great fantasy idea, it’s highly advisable that you write a novel instead of a screenplay.
Genre: Action-Adventure
Script Sale: 4.5 out of 10
Black List: 2 out of 10
Comps: Indiana Jones, Jurassic World, Pirates of the Caribbean
Breakdown: This is a weird genre because it SHOULD be a great outlet for spec screenwriters. It seems to be open for new ideas. And the family-friendly aspect of the genre means that they’ll play to anybody. That’s the main reason a movie as average as Jurassic World can make 1.6 billion dollars. I suppose that when movies in a genre start making that much money, studios are more likely to look for previous success in other mediums than buy a spec. Still, something tells me that a writer who comes up with the next Indiana Jones could quickly find themselves on the front page of the trades.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Script Sale: 2 out of 10
Black List: 8 out of 10
Comps: Ingrid Goes West, Me Earl and The Dying Girl, Little Miss Sunshine, Fargo
Breakdown: There’s a lot of crossover with Drama here. Dark Comedy is a really tough genre to master. But, when done well, it could put you in the Oscar race. So it can’t be dismissed completely. With that said, these movies rarely make money. Even the good ones. There’s one every five years that becomes a mega-hit but other than that, there are hundreds of dark comedies that are never seen or heard from again. The good news is, the Black List looooooves dark comedies. It’s probably their favorite genre behind biopics. And if your script makes the list, there’s a 50/50 chance it’ll get made into a movie.
Genre: Straight Thriller
Script Sale: 6 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Gone Girl, Buried, The Girl on the Train, The Circle, The Gift
Breakdown: There’s some natural crossover between Thrillers and Action-Thrillers. So to distinguish the two, I see straight Thrillers as more real-world based and suspense-driven. In the past we may have called them Hithcockian Thrillers. These movies aren’t as lucrative as horror, but there’s a market for them for sure. If you’re going to write a thriller, try to have a really clever concept and one great twist. Those two things make these reads a lot more memorable, which increases the chance of a sale exponentially.
Genre: Family
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Night at the Museum, Goosebumps, The Goonies
Breakdown: The reason this gets a slight nod on the script sale chart over the more mature Action-Adventure is because I know that Hollywood has been spending 25 years now looking for the next Goonies. Which means they’re willing to buy good family scripts. And let’s not forget that Night at the Museum was a spec sale as well. And that spawned a huge franchise.
Genre: Musicals
Script Sale: 2 out of 10
Black List: 6 out of 10
Comps: La La Land, The Greatest Showman, A Star is Born
Breakdown: The simple fact is that these movies tend to be either director driven (La La Land) or studio driven (The Greatest Showman). They rarely, if ever, are driven by a screenwriter. And the reason for that is simple: it’s hard to imagine songs on a page. With that said, the few times I’ve seen this work are when a writer tries something really zany. Like a zombie musical. Or a post-apocalyptic musical. So it can be done. It’s just rare.
There you have it. Now get to arguing in the comments!
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. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. 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!
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
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.