A Mars Western in the vein of Chinatown? Watch out!

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): When recent, inter-global events threaten to disrupt the idyllic life on the first Mars Colony, a woman with a secret to hide must do all that she can to prevent neighbors in her small town from taking up arms against each other.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I believe that audiences want to be challenged. Why? Because I go to the movies a lot and I like to be challenged. So, it stands to reason that when writing I choose topics that are challenging with characters who are flawed but relatable. This is what led me to write “The Only Lemon Tree on Mars.” Like all good sci-fi there’s an allegory about today buried in there; specifically the modern political process. And although there are a few action beats, it’s really a drama about a woman struggling to make the world better despite the machinations of men. Most importantly, she does this by being a woman, and not acting like a man. In this day and age, that’s an important distinction.
Writer: Chad Rouch
Details: 108 pages

I’m thinking Naomi Watts for Ellie

I’m really glad this one got in. Despite some readers believing I’m only in it for the straightforward “follow the rules” type screenplay (someone told me in my Steve Jobs review that I didn’t like the script because it didn’t adhere to traditional structure), I’m here to tell you that I embrace originality! I’m always looking for stuff that’s different. Different is where the genius lies.

What I’m NOT looking for, though, is BAD DIFFERENT. Or confused different. Or “film school experimental” different. In other words, I don’t like “different” that has to do with the writer’s lack of knowledge about storytelling. I like carefully cultivated different – the kind of different with a clear plan behind it. Unfortunately, I don’t see that much.

Hopefully we can get some “carefully cultivated different” today.

9 year-old James trudges down an old country road before meandering into a small town. For those who haven’t read the logline, you might assume you’re at the beginning of a Western. And in some ways, you are. But this Western doesn’t take place on Earth. It turns out James lives on Mars.

James’s mom, Ellie, is a NASA scientist who’s responsible for finding the best place on Mars to farm. And that’s where this American colony, the colony of Elzee, has settled. And it’s hard up here for a chimp. Crop-growth isn’t exactly breaking records. And Earth stopped communicating with Mars months ago.

We get the sense that Elzee is slowly dying. And if Earth doesn’t come to their rescue, everyone’s going to be in a lot of trouble. Luckily, Earth does call. Apparently, the reason they weren’t instagramming was because America was in a Civil War. Now that the war is over, American’s sending a ship up to say hi.

The Mars farmers (or, as I like to call them, the “Marmers”) aren’t so sure Earth’s visit is kosher. It’s quite the coincidence that a ship is showing up just days before the rare Mars rain season. Could Earth be coming to steal Mars’s crops? Might they grab the food, slaughter the colony, then hop on their ship all before The Voice starts?

Rabble-rousing farmer, Tom Dubray, doesn’t want any Earthlings threatening his livelihood. So he grabs a bunch of farmers and readies an army. It’ll be up to Ellie to keep the peace. But with her marriage falling apart and everybody seemingly strapped into their crazy cribs, the Martians very well might kill each other before the Earthlings ever show up.

The Only Lemon Tree on Mars is the best Amateur Friday script I’ve read in awhile. Not only does Chad engage us with one of the simplest easy-to-read writing styles you’ve read all year, he gives us a story unlike any we’ve seen before. As we’ve discussed – if you can offer the reader an experience they haven’t had before? You’re a hundred Mars miles ahead of your competition.

My big problem with Wednesday’s “Boy Scouts vs. Zombies” was that I didn’t know the characters. Even worse, I didn’t feel like the writers wanted to know their characters. Chad proves he’s not playing that game with Lemon Tree.

At the heart of his story is a complex love triangle between Ellie, her husband Reiner, and her lover Ansel. Reiner, a brilliant scientist, works for weeks at a time hundreds of miles away on Mars’s atmosphere machine. This has left Ellie to raise her family on her own. And quite frankly, she’s lonely! It’s only natural that she would fall in love with Ansel, who lives in town.

One of the most compelling character-storylines that plays out is Ellie trying to decide whether to divorce Reiner for Ansel, Reiner eventually realizing Ansel is his wife’s lover, and then later, when Reiner is forced to protect the very man who’s stolen his wife from him (from the militarized Martians).

With both those things said, there’s something missing from this script and I’m not sure what it is. As good as the writing is, the story feels a bit dry in places. And when Chad does try to inject drama, there’s something vague and misguided about it that leaves you wanting more.

How you infuse drama (the major plot points in your story) is the key to keeping your reader’s interest. Give them something small when they want something big, and that might be the moment when they decide to mentally check out.

Take Teddy for instance. Teddy is a Martian farmer who kills another farmer in a bar fight. But it was accident. Yet the event is turned into a major plot point where Reiner is asked to represent Teddy in a trial regarding the murder. Why a scientist is playing lawyer doesn’t make any immediate sense. And since this accidental murder’s not the main point of the story, we’re left to ask why we’d want to watch a trial about it.

The rain stuff is also confusing. The impending rain season is discussed dozens of times throughout the script. Yet it’s not clear why it’s so important. While farming seems to be slow on Mars, we’re never told HOW slow.

Farmers are also suspicious that the Earthlings are coming to steal their crops. But it’s not clear if Earth needs crops. It’s not clear if they’re short on food at all. Nor is it clear why Earth would send a ship to Mars to steal a bunch of subpar Mars vegetables. I mean what’s the crop yield in this small town? 30 acres? Is it really cost effective to fly 34 million miles for 30 acres of food?

Chad needed a scene to make clear what these rains meant. Tell us, for instance, that if this rain doesn’t happen, all of their crops will die before the next rain season comes. Which means everyone here on Mars will starve to death. Just because you’re writing an indie movie doesn’t mean you can’t add some good old fashioned STAKES. High stakes work in any story.

And you have a classic case of confused-protagonist here. Who’s your protagonist? Is it Ellie? If so, why are so many other people driving the story?

Remember, your main character should make the majority of the choices that drive the story. I hated that Ellie just did whatever the Mayor told her to do. I hated how when Reiner showed up (a guy we didn’t even like) he became the temporary protag.

Let’s stay with Ellie and MAKE HER MORE ACTIVE. That alone should infuse this script with some energy. Have her making a lot more decisions. Have her running around trying to get things right. The love triangle story is fine but Ellie trying to snag Ansel shouldn’t be the only thing that gets her out of bed.

Finally, I think you’re a draft or two away from your final plot.

You should simplify the story. In the first act, Mars learns Earth is coming and assumes it’s for good reasons. At the midpoint, they discover secret information (plot twist) that implies Earth is coming to steal their crops. From the midpoint (page 50-55) to the end of Act 2 (page 80-85) then, they prepare for war. And then Earth lands with a small marine-based crew of 200 soldiers, and the third act is the battle for the colony.

And I don’t mean trenches are dug and a traditional shoot-out occurs. You could stay true to the story’s low-budget roots and focus on skirmishes that occur in nooks and crannies of the town. Maybe a group of Marines comes to take down Ellie’s home. She and Reiner must defend themselves and that defense of their home sequence is the climax.

As for the inter-town conflict, I still think you can have that. I like the idea of nobody agreeing how to handle the approaching Earthlings. That’s perfect 2nd act stuff there. But instead of falling apart when the Earthlings arrive, what if they learn to come together? That might provide you with a nicer arc. That we are capable as a species of communicating and compromising and coming together for a common cause.

Or hell, if you wanted to make this super-indie, you could have the Earthlings land and the marines slaughter the entire town. The End. It wouldn’t be my choice but you’d get mad indie cred, that’s for sure.

The Only Lemon Tree on Mars is a messy script that’s not quite there yet. But boy does it show potential for both its screenplay and its writer. Chad Rouch can write. And if he hasn’t gotten attention from the industry yet, it’s about time that changes.

Script link: The Only Lemon Tree On Mars

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

What I learned: Important characters, even if they’re not who they appear to be at first, need to be introduced WITH PRESENCE so we know that they’re going to be important later on. The reason for this is, if someone isn’t introduced with PRESENCE, we forget about them. So when you try to bring them back, we’re like, “Who’s that?”

There’s this character in “Lemon Tree” named Tom Dubray who becomes a really important part of the farmer’s resistance. But the guy is given the most forgettable entrance ever. Here’s his intro line, which occurs during a town meeting: “Once inside, Ellie spots TOM and ANGIE DUBRAY, both 40s with a worn look of people who have spent their lives on a farm, who wave her over to sit near them.”

The guy doesn’t even get his own introduction line! He’s doubled up with his wife. That right there tells the reader: UNIMPORTANT. Then, as the meeting goes on, Tom offers a couple of forgettable lines and that’s it. His scene is over. With this character becoming so important later on, give us an intro line to remember. “TOM DUBRAY doesn’t look like much at first glance. But there’s something deadly about this man’s stare. He doesn’t see you. He sees through you.” That’s kinda cheesy but you get the point. You want to point out that there’s something important about this guy.

Genre: Horror-Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) Three scouts, on the eve of their last camp-out, discover the true meaning of friendship when they attempt to save their town from a zombie outbreak.
About: This script somehow made the 2010 Black List. It has steadily moved through the system, securing actor Tye Sheridan (Mud) and director Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: Marked Ones). It was written by comedy team Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Lee Wilson, whose only previous credit was the 2008 Martin Lawrence film, College Road Trip. The movie hits theaters later this fall.
Writers: Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Lee Wilson (the production draft you see in theaters was rewritten by Christopher Landon and Lona Williams).
Details: 114 pages (2010 draft that made the Black List)

Boy Scouts Vs. Zombies was one of the last of the zombie wave of scripts to sell back in 2010. You have to remember that this was during a time where a script titled “Zombie Baby” sold. A 2010 zombie spec was the equivalent of a lottery ticket. It was the trend that wouldn’t stop trending, kind of like biopics today.

Still, this specific sale has always baffled me. There’s nothing inherently clever or ironic about the premise. It’s so arbitrary, it’s as if they picked a random group of people, said, “Let’s pit them against zombies,” and that was it.

It’s no different from “Clowns vs. Zombies,” or “Politicians vs. Zombies,” or “Skaters vs. Zombies.” There’s no clear connective tissue between this group and the undead.

“Grocery Store Employees vs. Zombies!”

Yet still they managed to get one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood to join the film. What’s up with that?? I mean this guy was in Mud and Tree of Life. Was his agent high when he read this? “Okay Tye, you’ve worked on some pretty impressive stuff so far. But I found something can’t-miss. Are you ready for this? Boy Scouts. Vs. Zombies. Waddaya say?”

All of this supports my belief that the way things get made in this town is passion. This is the furthest thing from a quality project, yet clearly, somebody believed in it and put all of their effort into pushing it through the system. If you want to know why bad movies get made, this is why. Bull-headed producers who stop at nothing to get that theatrical release.

The “plot” to Boy Scouts vs. Zombies has our core crew of boy scouts, each 14 (there are 14 year-old boy scouts??), heading to the island of Playa Del Amor to engage in some weekend boy scout tomfoolery.

There’s Dylan, the cool one, Matt, the proud one, Lloyd, the geeky one, and then a few other human versions of Swiss army knives. The group is led by asshole assistant scout leader, Scott, and “takes this way too seriously” scout leader, Gary.

Little does the group know that on Playa del Amor, there’s a hidden research facility, and that some guy who works there named Carlos just got infected with the zombie virus. Carlos is able to escape from the facility, where he then mauls a few campers.

“Lawyers vs. Zombies!”

As Dylan, Matt, and Lloyd finalize plans to invade a high school house party (I guess there’s a high school on this island??), their plans are interrupted when some local islanders try to, well, eat them.

Unlike most zombie movies where the main characters don’t know what zombies are, our group is well-versed in zombie lore and know that they must get the hell off of this island or embrace an afterlife of animated rotting flesh. Unfortunately, they have to rescue some girl scouts first, and that’s where everything falls apart.

Boy Scouts vs. Zombies lies somewhere between Goonies and Piranha 3D. It wants that pure B-movie wackiness of Piranha, with a bit of the “kids in danger” heart that drove Goonies. And that’s its problem. Because it tries to be both, it does neither well, and what’s left is its surface-level infatuation with introducing zany zombies.

For example, someone gets bitten inside one of those blow-up sumo suits and becomes “sumo zombie.” And hey, that’s a fun idea, sure. But if all you’re doing with your zombie film is trying to come up with fun zombies, you’ve failed. I’m sorry, but you’ve failed big time.

Screenplays are supposed to be about characters. Connect us with the characters by making them relatable, by giving them flaws we can identify with, and then create problematic relationships (which are also relatable) that need to be resolved. Even if you only achieve the bare essence of this, you’ll probably make us care.

We don’t get that here. There’s a half-assed storyline where Matt is going to private school, leaving his best friend Lloyd all alone, but you get the feeling that the writers cared about that relationship 1/10th as much as they cared about sumo zombie.

And make no mistake. The audience feels that. They feel when you don’t give a shit about your characters.

“Pizza Workers vs. Zombies!”

Speaking of characters, there’s something that’ll happen when I read a script that’s a dead giveaway that I’m reading a bad writer.

As any script reader will tell you, sometimes you forget a character. Maybe their intro sucked. Maybe there were too many characters being introduced together and they got lost in the mix. Whatever the case, I can’t remember the character when his name is brought up again, which leaves me scrambling to figure out who they are.

Now if you’re a good writer, your character will speak and act in a way that’s so unique to them, that I’m able to pick up who the character is without having to go back and re-read the intro. This is ESPECIALLY true with comedy, where characters are exaggerated.

There’s a character named “Jim” here, who’s apparently a main character, whose introduction I missed. Every time he showed up in a scene, I’d try to remember who he was. But because his dialogue and his actions were so generic – because there wasn’t anything unique about what he did or said (or how he said it), I never knew who he was. He was a bland blob for all I knew.

This is important. Your character intro should not be the sole thing conveying who your character is. He/she must continue to act/speak in a unique enough manner that we’re able to identify them regardless of their introduction. In fact, we shouldn’t even have to see their name to know who they are.

“Truck Drivers vs. Zombies!”

Take a script like The Hangover. If you missed Stu or Alan or Phil’s intro, you still would’ve known who those characters were based on their words and their actions. Alan with his complete lack of social awareness, Stu because of how freaked out and OCD he was. Even the blandest of the three, Phil, was a narcissistic asshole who just wanted to have a good time, and that was evident every time he spoke.

You barely see any of that here.

And the script doesn’t even do a good job in the one area it cares about – the funny. There’s one memorable scene, when the group is attacked by a bunch of zombie bunnies. But other than that, it’s sumo zombies, bikini-girl zombies, and Chuck Norris jokes (yes, the second lowest joke on the joke totem pole, right above a fart).

In the end, I think this boils down to a flawed premise. Why a zombie movie about boy scouts? It’s too random – the kind of logline that wouldn’t have even made the Top 250 of my contest. Where’s the clever? Where’s the irony? I’ll be honest. I’m baffled this script was A) picked up and B) made. This freaking movie is getting a theatrical release! Can someone explain this to me??

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

What I learned: Let’s say a law was passed that prevented you from writing traditional introductions to your characters (“JOE, 20, is a space-cadet with a penchant for pinball”). Would your characters still be identifiable based on their actions and their words? If not – if you NEED your character introduction to do all the work for you – it means you’re not focusing hard enough on expressing your character through action and dialogue.

“Dog Walkers vs. Zombies!”

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise (from writer): In a future where robots run grisly human-fighting rings for sport, any human who survives 72 matches is given 72 minutes to win their freedom–or die.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I moved to Los Angeles to specifically pursue a career in waiting tables. I was originally gonna write a biopic about Nikola Tesla’s chef, but figured this would be more interesting. This script has such a big fat concept, that when it took a selfie, Instagram crashed. Do not read it if you hate: space, hyper loops, nihilism, invisible architecture, and futuristic theories. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m an alien that’s trying to blend in with everyone.
Writer: Robotic Super Cluster
Details: 85 pages

Hoult for president! And for this movie.

I suppose Game of 72 was the perfect script for today. As I struggle to decide on my last few slots for the Scriptshadow 250, my mind is on the verge of madness. And let me tell you, there isn’t a better script to read when you’re on the cusp of insanity than this one. I want you to imagine Steven Spielberg making A.I., but with Rob Zombie’s brain downloaded into his cerebral cortex. The word “trippy” doesn’t even begin to describe this bizarro eye-assault.

But before I get to that, I want to know which movie I should see and review for Monday. This is the best movie weekend of the year so far, with Sicario (great script), The Martian (great writer success story) and The Walk (amazing special effects) all coming out at the same time! I’m considering doing my first triple-feature in ten years, but I don’t think I’ll have the time. So which one do you want me to review? There’s no wrong answer!

Okay, on to Game of 72, which was my favorite logline of the bunch so I’m glad it won. Well, I should say I WAS glad that it won. Now? I’m not so sure.

The year is 2820. Earth is run by robots, aliens, and genetically modified monsters. The only thing these beings seem to care about is entertainment – specifically human-on-human fighting. They take the humans, chain them up like dogs, torture them, strip them of their names (replacing them with numbers), and force them to fight each other to the death.

Sounds fun, right?

The only way for humans to escape this misery is to win 72 fights (nearly impossible), after which they’re entered into something called “The Game.” In “The Game,” you have 72 minutes to catch a wandering orb. If you succeed, you gain your freedom, are upgraded into a human-robot hybrid, and get the choice to live forever.

So the stakes are high.

Our hero, 28 year old Finn, is one of the few fighters who’s managed to accumulate 72 wins. He joins two others who have managed this impossible feat – Nala and #9560 – and before the trio even knows what’s going on, they’re thrown onto an interplanetary train that shoots them off to Mars.

When they get to Mars, none of the monsters or aliens have ever heard of The Game. They don’t even know who these humans are. In fact, there’s no one to tell them how this game works. Complicating matters is that there’s a disembodied voice living inside of Finn who keeps telling him to do the opposite of what everyone tells him to do.

No more than five pages after we arrive on Mars, our players are told they’re going back to Earth, so they jump on another flight, and arrive into some kind of mind disco. Yes, a “mind disco.” As it’s explained to us, the music isn’t actually being played. It’s “transmitted through everyone’s bodies and souls, emanating from within.” Huh?

I could go on here, but I think you get the gist: THIS SCRIPT IS FUCKING NUTS.

Look, I’m all for imagination. Just yesterday I was complaining about writers who DIDN’T use imagination when writing their queries. But there’s adding jam to your sandwich and there’s dumping the entire jar on it. Game of 72 throws you into an information ocean, never letting you above water to catch your breath. Here’s a typical page from the script:

Let’s see what we’ve got here:

1) Italics-based writing.
2) Bolded writing.
3) Underlined writing.
4) TONS of information.
5) TONS of imagery.
6) Manic writing style.
7) Characters with number names.

The whole script reads like this. Here’s another line, picked at random: “He FALLS, an accordion of 100-copies of him are frozen mid- AIR. Thousands of MAGNOID thoughts enter his head. DEAFENING. The sensation of sinking into LAUGHING GAS, nitrous oxide.”

Huh?

I’m not even sure what to say. I mean, our writer is clearly talented. He had one of the best “Why You Should Reads” of the year. It showed that he’s clever, he’s imaginative, he can write. But it feels like for this script, he ingested an entire Starbucks store and wrote everything freehand, gripping the pencil like a knife, and stabbing 20,000 words onto the page without ever going back to see if he’d murdered anyone. Particularly the English language.

This is a cut and dry case of information overload. Too much style, too much imagination, too much action, too much information. As screenwriters, we do want our scenes packed with action and plot. But there’s a difference between drinking a beer and buying the brewery.

Truth be told there were a couple of red flags before my exhaustion kicked in. People use bitcoin in the year 2820? Space-X (created by Elon Musk) is the main form of transportation? I might buy into this if the year were 2075. The year, however is TWENTY-EIGHT HUNDRED! There wouldn’t be any recognizable brands still around, especially if the world had been taken over by robots and aliens.

The official moment I gave up on the story was when we went to Mars, and after five pages, came right back to Earth. To me, that indecision embodied the script’s biggest issue – its lack of focus. Our writer couldn’t find something interesting to do on an ENTIRELY SEPARATE PLANET, to the point where he had to bring our characters right back to the place they left just minutes ago.

And if you took the time to look deeper, it didn’t seem like anything had been thought out. Why didn’t anyone on Mars know about The Game? And if nobody knows about The Game, then aren’t you telling the reader that it’s not a big deal? And if it’s not a big deal, why should we care if these characters succeed or not?

In the flawed but fun Arnold Swarzenneger movie, The Running Man, the whole world watched that show. The writers made sure you knew everyone on the planet was obsessed with it. So the objective seemed important. With these characters, they’re not even sure if they want the prize (to live forever). Protagonists who aren’t even excited about achieving their goal? That’s a recipe for screenwriting disaster.

I like this writer here. I just think he tried to be too cute and stuff too much into every page. Dial the imagery back. Dial the world-building back. Get rid of the unnecessary details (the 9th version of the monster subset).

I say this over and over and over again, and nobody listens. The best screenplays are simple easy-to-understand stories with complex characters. Once you switch that emphasis around (to a complex story with simple characters), I won’t say you’ve hung yourself, but you’ve definitely tightened the noose.

This script was such an assault on my senses that I almost gave it a “What the hell did I just read?” Seriously, it got to the point where it hurt my head to keep reading. You’re a talented writer and better than this. Let’s nail the next one.

Script link: Game of 72

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

What I learned: Information overload is a script-killer. Nobody wants to be inundated with description-porn on every single page. Dial it back. If it’s not easy to ingest what’s on the page, we’re going to give up on you fairly quickly.

As we near Saturday, when I’ll contact all 250 writers who made it to the next round of my contest, I find myself emotionally exhausted. I’ve read so many stories from writers who have given up everything for this craft. Some have moved from other countries. Some have health problems so severe, they can’t leave their beds. Some are weeks from being kicked out of their apartments. A few are even homeless.

I wish I could make every one of those writers’ dreams come true. But the reality is, I’m not letting screenplays into this contest out of pity. If you didn’t bring your S-game (Script Game), your script didn’t get chosen. And as harsh as that sounds, it’s the way the industry works. If you can’t tell a good story – even in e-mail form – you’re not ready yet.

So today is about highlighting the mistakes I saw in your queries in the hopes that you never make those mistakes again. If there’s a theme to my observations, it’s this: Be professional. If there’s even a hint of sloppiness or laziness in your query, no one’s going to take you seriously. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at the ten biggest mistakes queryers made.

1) Generalities kill loglines – There were a lot of loglines where the writer didn’t give me any actual information. They wrote in vague generalities that didn’t convey what the script was about. Something like, “A mother who questions her life must combat a powerful force that threatens her very existence.” Honestly, it seemed like some of you were actively trying to say nothing. The whole point of a logline is to show what’s UNIQUE about your idea. To achieve that, you must be specific. “When a mother’s developmentally challenged son conjures up a haunting monster known as “The Babadook” from one of his books, she must battle her own sanity in order to defeat it.” That’s what I mean by specific.

2) Word-vomiting kills queries – Beware the writer who takes twenty words to say what they could’ve said in five. These writers add qualifiers and adverbs and adjectives and empty phrases to every sentence they write, making the simplest points exhausting to slog through. For example, instead of writing: “My movie is about a boxer who gets a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world,” they write: “I have a story about a boxer, the kind of man who’s kind, yet forceful when the moment requires it, embracing the challenge of a world that seems to be, but never overtly tries to be, his worst nightmare, and the way that man, my main character, struggles to achieve and eventually is able to secure, a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.” STRIP. YOUR. QUERIES. OF. UNCESSARY. WORDS. PLEASE. GOD.

3) Lack of conflict in a logline is a deal-breaker – You need to convey what the main conflict in your story is. Conflict is story! It’s the problem your main character must overcome to get to the finish line. I read a lot of loglines like this: “A young man experiences a spiritual awakening when he switches from being a Christian to a Muslim.” AND???? What is the conflict that tries to impede upon this switch? Lack of conflict in a logline means the writer doesn’t know what conflict is. If that’s the case, their screenplay is guaranteed to be boring. I mean 100% of the time guaranteed. Guys, if you don’t know what conflict is, go spend the weekend googling it.

4) The words/acronyms “CIA,” “agent,” and “FBI” combined with “terrorist threat” do not, on their own, make a movie – I must’ve read 50 loglines that were some variation of, “A CIA agent goes undercover to tackle a terrorist threat in London.” Secret agents and terrorist threats are some of the most potent plot elements in the movie universe. But they’re worthless on their own. They need a unique element to team up with.

5) Trending subject matter will always have an advantage in the query department – The trend of the moment is biopics. They’re the only thing that’s selling. So I admit that when I came across a biopic, as long as the query was competently written, it got in. Remember that everybody involved in the movie-making chain is trying to sell the project to the next guy up the ladder. I know Grey Matter will have to sell the winning script to the studio at some point. And the studio is more likely to buy a genre that’s doing well at the moment.

6) Focused loglines were always the best entires – One of the easiest ways to identify strong contenders was a focused logline. Unfortunately, the far more common logline was one that started in one place and ended someplace completely different. So I’d get something like this: “A down-on-his-luck mobster trying to open his own casino joins a cooking class and falls in love with his teacher.” Whaaaattttt??? How did we go from casinos to cooking class??? I saw this a LOT and the scary thing is, the writers who made this mistake are probably reading this right now and have no idea they’re guilty of it. That’s because everything connects logically in your own head. It’s only through objectivity that we see disjointedness. Take a step back and make sure you have a FOCUSED movie idea whose beginning, middle, and end, all tie together.

7) The overly mechanical query is digital Ambien – I read a lot of queries where writers were logical and succinct and measured in their pitch… and that fucking bored me to pieces. What these writers were saying was fine. It was HOW they were saying it that was the problem. There was no life to their words, no fun, no spontaneity. I’d read stuff like: “My goal was to eliminate the passive protagonist that’s been an Achilles heel to this sub-genre and replace him with a character that embodies the ideals of the thematic construct of revenge. In doing so, I’ve achieved an energy that was missing in my earlier drafts, but which I could never pinpoint. The resulting script is one that utilizes four out of five of the story engines that drive the classic “man vs. nature” tale…” AHHHHH! KILL ME NOW!!! Writing is supposed to be FUN TO READ. Even when you’re making a serious point, there should be a relaxed easy-to-digest demeanor to your writing. This style of query 100% OF THE TIME means the script will have no voice. So these queries were the easiest to reject.

8) Beware the logline that is at war with itself – I read a lot of loglines that felt like civil wars, with words jockeying for position as opposed to working together harmoniously. These writers had the “stuff it in there” mentality that should be reserved for the condiment section at a hot dog stand, not an e-mail query. Here’s an example: “A cowardly gunfighter is at odds with his idealism and the secrets he’s kept when a rival gunsmith rides into town, looking to settle a score that will help forge the frontier line between New Mexico and California.” A logline isn’t a contest to see how many words you can include. It’s a vessel to get your idea across as simply as possible. It should flow. If it doesn’t flow, rewrite it.

9) Don’t use weird adjectives to describe your main character – Every tenth logline I’d read, I’d get something like this: “A pestered train conductor plans a heist…” “Pestered???” The character adjective should give us both the defining quality of your hero, as well as CONNECT your hero to the plot of the movie. So let’s say your script is about a train conductor who decides to rob his own train. The adjective might be: “An exemplary conductor is forced by his wife to rob his own train after losing his family’s life savings.” I don’t love this logline but at least the adjective connects with the plot. This is a conductor who’s built his career on trust. He’s the last one you’d think would rob his own train.

10) Avoid the cliché opening-page overly-poetic description – Whenever I was on the fence about a query, I’d pop open the script and read the first few lines. If the overly poetic description opener made an appearance, it was bye-bye scripty. What is the “overly poetic description opener?” It’s when a writer who’s clearly uncomfortable with poetic descriptions starts their script with an overly clunky poetic description: “The sun-dappered late-afternoon light plays tic-tac-toe with the suburban rooftops.” No. Just no. Look, if describing an image in a poetic manner isn’t your forte, start with something else – an action, a mystery, your main character speaking. But if you dapper any suburban rooftops, goddammit I’m shutting you down, son.

If I could give writers one piece of advice when it comes to querying, it’d be the same advice I’d give them in regards to screenwriting: FOCUS. Get to the point. Convey your idea clearly. And being entertaining doesn’t hurt. It’s important to remember that you’re trying to convince a person to read something of yours BY READING SOMETHING OF YOURS. So if the short version of your writing isn’t enjoyable, there’s no way they’re going for the long version. Make your query focused and enjoyable to read, and there’s a good chance that reader will give you a shot.

Genre: Thriller/Serial-Killer
Premise: A killer exploits society’s over-reliance on mobile technology to pick off his victims one by one.
About: Today’s writing duo is one of the hottest in Hollywood. They shot onto the scene with their heavily hyped debut spec, “Die in a Gunfight” (straight out of college, no less). Unlike a lot of writers who get a sale and disappear into obscurity, they parlayed that sale into a few writing assignments, eventually landing one of the coveted Marvel projects (Ant-Man). That job has led to a job on Transformers 5. Make fun of Transformers all you want (I do) but landing a writing job on a summer franchise film is a huge freaking deal. Low Tide is a script the writing team sold to 20th Century Fox last year. This is a more recent draft.
Writers: Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari
Details: 121 pages – 3/21/15 draft

Kerry Washington for Shae??

What in the sam hell?? We’ve got a sequel-free, remake-free, biopic-free, not a true story, based-on-absolutely-nothing official spec screenplay here! If I weren’t such a cynic, I’d say that we’re reviewing a piece of original fiction. It’s been so long since I’ve actually done that, I’m not sure I’m qualified to do it anymore.

The way the spec market has gone, the buyers want you to stay in HARDCORE genre lanes. Like “Bed Rest,” which sold to MGM last month. That’s a clear horror genre flick that can be marketed right out of the Final Draft box. I was just reading an article about Robert Zemeckis’s new film, The Walk, and he said that every single production company and studio in town turned the project down. When asked why, he said, simply, “It doesn’t fit into any slot, if you know what I mean.” That’s the way this business works. So for Barrer and Ferrari to go against the grain and give us an offbeat serial killer flick, you gotta give’em knuckles.

But The question that kept popping up while reading Low Tide was, how far off the beaten path can you take a genre? Did these two go too far?

30-something Shae White is not your average detective. Not only did she lose her sister in a murder-suicide when she was just a girl, but she spends her off-time going to sleazy Atlantic City hotels and banging strangers with the explicit rule-set that they tell her they love her, despite her wanting nothing to do with them afterwards. She even keeps the dirty panties from the sex-sessions in a giant drawer in her bedroom. Hash-tag naughty.

Shae is assigned to a strange case where her daughter’s future boyfriend is attacked by a shark and loses his leg. When the police go fishing for the leg, they instead find another leg, that of a recently deceased female.

When the police find the rest of the female, they learn she was murdered, but they decide not to share this detail with the public in fear of wiping out 4th of July tourist traffic on the Jersey Shore.

Shae teams up with another detective, Pete, and the two discover that a man named Robin Goodfellow is texting young women from the fake accounts of their lovers in order to lure them into murderous situations. Goodfellow is sort of a cross between Jigsaw, Scream-Villain, and Hannibal Lecter, a philosophizing recluse who enjoys playing people for chess pieces.

It isn’t long before Goodfellow begins targeting Shae, texting her and calling her with an untraceable fake electronic voice. But Goodfellow may be targeting someone above his pay grade this time. Shae gradually puts the clues together and finds our psycho recluse, leading to a showdown that will leave only one of them able to keep texting those “lol’s.”

There’s a part of me that respects what Barrer and Ferrari have done here. One of the hardest things about screenwriting is walking that fine line between embracing traditional screenwriting structure, and adding just enough messiness to keep your script unique.

This is often what leads to that coveted “voice” we hear so much about but rarely understand. The way in which you break those well-worn rules is what makes your voice different, is what makes your work feel like you. But here’s where the “fine line” thing comes in. Those detours only look good if they work. And I’m not sure they worked in Low Tide.

Right from the start, I had a hard time finding my footing. We start with a cool scene where a girl gets a spooky text from someone while with her boyfriend. The text says only, “He knows.” It turns out our girl has been unfaithful, and now she’s in an isolated area with a guy who, if the texter is to be believed, plans on harming her. So she runs, and it doesn’t end well.

We then go to a woman throwing her dirty panties into a post-sex dirty panty pantry. We then jump to a girl who may or may not be her daughter (it isn’t made clear) who watches as the boy she has a crush on gets his leg bitten off by a shark. We then watch the police fish out the boy’s leg and bring it to the hospital to be reattached, only to realize it’s a different leg. We then find the source of this different leg – the now-murdered girl from the opening.

I suppose it sort of makes sense but it was all so disjointed that 30 pages in, I still didn’t know where the script was going. Eventually our killer, Robin Goodfellow, is introduced, and he provides some connective tissue to all this madness, but Low Tide spent the majority of its tide just trying to make sense.

I mean I’m still not clear on how Goodfellow kills his victims. He doesn’t do it himself, since he stays in his little room the whole time. I guess this means he recruits others to do it. But that’s pretty far-fetched, the idea that you can recruit random people willing to partake in your weird text and fake-electronic-voice phone murders.

That wasn’t the only sloppy part. One of the ways you can tell a script’s not working is if key characters disappear for long chunks of time. This indicates the writers weren’t thinking things out ahead of time or don’t know what do with the characters. Nancy, Shae’s daughter, gets a couple of key scenes early on (saving our shark-attacked boy), and then disappears for 40 pages at a time.

I know there’s an ongoing war in the screenwriting community between outliners and non-outliners, but this is where outlining really helps. You can see exactly where characters need more time and where they don’t.

The movie inspirations here were also too heavy. The shark attack and subsequent “hidden from the public to keep profits up” storyline was ripped straight out of Jaws. The electronic voice stuff was taken straight out of Scream. And our serial killer manipulating our female lead was too similar to Silence of the Lambs.

Look, it’s hard not to include plot points and characters from our favorite movies. That’s why we became screenwriters in the first place. Because we love movies! But the way you want to approach imitation is the way actors study subjects they’re going to play. They don’t ape their mannerisms or do impressions of those people. They take the ESSENCE of the person and let it inspire their own unique performance.

Take the ESSENCE of what you see in the filmmakers and writers you enjoy and apply that to your script. Avoid applying direct plot points and characters. I particularly see this problem with young screenwriters. For whatever reason, they’re more prone to bring in stuff from the movies they love. Veteran screenwriters actively look to create their own storylines and strive to be different from their predecessors.

The good news is, these two are visual writers. They’re definitely thinking about what’s going to be up on that screen. And that’s important. A woman stalking around in a sex-dungeon wearing a half-destroyed Pinocchio mask while an electronic voice taunts her is major trailer material.

And Shae’s weird sex addiction was compelling as well. The whole insisting on people telling her they loved her, while actively avoiding love, while also keeping this bizarre panty memoir. That had me wondering what this woman was going to do next. If you can write characters that have readers turning pages because they want to know what they’re going to do next? That’s a rare talent.

But in the end, this felt too patch-work for me. And I couldn’t get over the stuff taken from other movies. These guys are definitely talented and have a unique voice. But you can’t be unique if you’re blatantly bringing other movies into your story. I’ll be interested to see what you guys thought. There’s a bit of True Detective in Low Tide’s DNA. And I know you all loved that show (me, not so much!). This cold be one of those “Carson hates, but everyone else loves” scripts??

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

What I learned: Don’t write like a virgin. – There’s an old saying that pops up every once in awhile: “Kiss like a virgin.” It refers to the over-the-top, heavy lip and tongue, intense over-compensating kiss you give when you haven’t had sex yet. There’s an equivalent in screenwriting. “Write like a virgin.” This is when writers use big words, throw in a lot of heavy “look at how smart I am” philosophizing by characters, rounded up with lots of references to historic literary titans (both Twain and Nietschke get some love in Low Tide). This kind of writing, if overdone, makes the writer look insecure. The veteran pros know that it’s all about story. They don’t need to prove their worth in every line. If the sentence, “He walks over and grabs his wallet” is all that’s needed for the moment, despite it being an overly-simplistic presentation of the action, that’s what they’ll use. I wish Barrer and Ferrari would stop trying to prove how much they’ve read or studied or how many big words they can use and just write. They’re talented guys. Why all the fireworks?