Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Procedural
Premise: A veteran cop teams up with an unconventional young partner to take down Charles Manson in the days before Manson’s infamous killings.
About: Aquarius has been steadily gaining buzz ahead of its premiere next month. The gritty team-up of two cops in search of Charles Manson seems to have been at least, in part, inspired by True Detective. If not in this draft (which is dated 2013), then in its subsequent rush to get to the small screen. Writer John McNamara is a bit of a journeyman, writing for 15 different TV shows dating back to 1983. He’s arguably experiencing the biggest moment of his career, not only writing this, but also the feature, “Trumbo,” starring Bryan Cranston, which chronicles the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the screenwriters blacklisted during the red scare. Trumbo will be his first feature credit. Oh, and the series will star X-Files alum, David Duchovny (playing the lead cop, not Manson, although I’d be way more interested in this if he played Manson.  Now that would be funny).
Writer: John McNamara
Details: 55 pages (Revised Draft – October 28, 2013)

“What are you talking about? I’m not crazy, man!”

I’m going to try and say this politely. This was one of the most visually unpleasant scripts I’ve read in awhile. When you look at a good page of writing, it’s like walking into a clean apartment. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. The person living there cares about the placement of the chairs, the tables, the television, everything. You feel comfortable and safe.

Walking into Aquarius felt like walking into your derelict drug-dealing friend’s basement.  There’s a 3 foot tall stack of dishes in the sink. A trail of ants on the wall. Garbage bags lean against objects, their shape molded into them because they’ve been there so long.

Simple things like paragraphs. You want to have uniformity to your paragraphs. 2 lines here. 3 lines there. Aquarius would rock us with a 6 liner, then hit us with a 1 liner, then a 2, then another 6. It was an assault. It was all so jagged and crude.

We also had WAY too many characters, even for a TV show. I’m fine with lots of characters if they have a place in the show. But there were like 80 cops introduced, 70 of which  surely won’t be around for episode 2.  And it took me until page 30 before I knew who our protagonists were.

There were also little things that made reading unnecessarily difficult. Tons of needlessly CAPITALIZED WORDS. Underlined words. Three line parentheticals!!! And that was standard. It was like this was written during a 3 day Vegas bender.

After weeding through all that mess, I was able to discover somewhat of a story. Aquarius follows LAPD Sargent Sam Hodiak. Hodiak’s called in by Grace Karn, a woman he used to date, whose 16 year old daughter, Ella, is missing. Because Ella’s father has political aspirations, they can’t make this public. So they were wondering if Hodiak could, you know, find Ella on the down-low.

Since Ella was last seen partying, Hodiak calls on Brian Shafe, a young cop who’s recently infiltrated the hippy drug scene. Shafe becomes an undercover secret weapon who works his way into the parties where he finds out a certain somebody is hoarding up all the hot girls, promising them a life of love and happiness. That somebody is a young drifter named Charles Manson.

While Manson’s interest in Ella appears random at first, it turns out there’s more than meets the eye. Ella’s lawyer father used to represent Manson. And when he stopped returning Manson’s calls, Manson took it personally. Therefore, his seduction and defloweration of Ella was payback. He lets her father know that if he doesn’t start cooperating, this is just the beginning.

Abercrombie & Fitch ad or a scene from Aquarius? You decide!

Aquarius feels like Ryan Gosling may have consulted on it. It takes forever to get started, with a never-ending line of character introductions before any real story begins. I mean if you don’t know who the main character in a pilot is before page 30, the captain needs to be notified that the plane is going down.

This meant the last 26 pages contained all the good stuff. And there are a couple of nice scenes. Like when Shafe takes a fresh-out-of-training undercover female cop to convince Manson’s right-hand man to take them to Manson. The henchman tells them sure, but the price of admission is that he gets to bang the girl. Shafe did not prepare the female cop for this and they can’t blow their cover so he goes along with it, leading to the only scene in the pilot that contained some actual suspense.

My biggest issue with Aquarius is that if you take out the Manson element, there’s nothing left.  I understand that the dramatic irony of Manson’s involvement drives the story.  But that doesn’t mean you can just phone everything else in. Without Manson, these are just a couple of cops looking for a guy who kind-of kidnapped a girl (but not really, since she wanted to go with him). Not exactly a high-stakes scenario.  It’s hinted at that Manson killed a girl a few months earlier.  Why not start there?  Now you’ve got a show.

I’m also worried about the show’s arc. We all know where it’s headed. And it’s not good. The good guys lose. So why are we watching again? Resting on the celebrity of Manson isn’t enough. Then again, maybe this is another True Detective scenario where I just don’t get it. That’d be nice. I don’t want the show to be bad. But going off this pilot script alone, it doesn’t look good.

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

What I learned: It’s hard to make the reader care when he’s way ahead of the investigation.  We all know that Manson took Ella. We saw it. The next 40 pages, then, are waiting for Hodiak and Shafe to catch up to us. You can add suspense to this scenario IF the victim is in imminent danger (Silence of the Lambs). But Ella never seems to be in danger at all. She’s a little unsure of being here. But that’s it.  Not exactly a ticking time bomb scenario.

After yesterday’s spectacular surprise, the buzz is high for this week’s Amateur Offerings.  If you’re too shy to display your script to the world, maybe doing the Scriptshadow 250 dance is a better option.  You know how it works.  Read til you’re bored.  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Title: Guilt
Genre: Dark Comedy (99 pgs)
Logline: A crack-smoking lawyer, witness to a murder, tries to redeem himself by vindicating the teen prostitute wrongly accused of the crime.
Why you should read: Though I’d love to come up with some touching, true-life moment that makes this story personal, I cannot. I simply wasn’t born into the same dire circumstances as those typically faced with the horrors of an unjust justice system. I’m also not a self-absorbed coke fiend like my protagonist. But while this story isn’t a reflection of my life, I know it is for many others, and I hope I was able to capture at least some of that strife, in addition to bringing some moments of ironic hilarity.

I’ve been a long time reader of Scriptshadow, mainly because no matter what the article or review, you seem to provide something fresh every time. You could throw a rock in any direction and hit five blogs on “how to write a screenplay”, or “the 10 mistakes young writers make”, but every one of them seems to just regurgitate the same points. It’s like no one has an original perspective on the business, except you and maybe a handful of others. And to your perspective, I made this script as lean as possible, while creating a fun character that any A-list actor should be dying to play.

My initial goal in writing Guilt was to meld the tragic angst of the Verdict, with the drug-fueled narcissism of The Wolf of Wall Street, along with a healthy GSU, because this young girl doesn’t have long before she’s put away for life.

Here’s what one Blacklist reader had to say: “What makes this script so interesting is how intelligently it tackles the unjust practice of forcing innocents into accepting plea deals. It’s rare to see a comedy that can highlight such a serious social ill while still keeping the laugh factor high, but thankfully, this script does just that. Reginald is a well-developed anti-hero; his heart is usually in the right place, but his actions don’t’ always reflect his good intentions. Though not perfect (see below), his relationship with his daughter Becca is what ultimately grounds Reginald as it gives him the greatest high of all time, one he could never receive from a drug. The dialogue, in particular Reginald’s monologues, is also extremely funny and well-written.”

I hope you find it a fun read!

Who doesn’t believe in second chances!?
Title: The Creation of Adam
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: When Adam, a troubled teenager, learns from his father that they both carry an evil that is passed from father to son, Adam must decide to fight the demon…or become one.
Why you should read: Last year, when my script was featured on AOW, I got a very enthusiastic email from an actor-director who wanted to make the film with his friend, a famous actress, and a couple of other talents from CAA. My screenwriter’s dream was crushed when the actress decided that it wasn’t for her.The director probably went to look for another project to do with her and I was back to writing something new.

Here it is, a thriller/horror script, Shining meets The Omen, a movie I feel so passionate about, I’m willing to cheat the lottery, direct-produce-edit it myself if I need to. So, why should you read it? Because this script has mystery, thrills, horror, very cinematic set pieces you’ve never seen before and a weird father-son relationship gone horribly bad. A reader wrote “This script takes coming of age to a whole new level” Hope you agree.

Title: Drawing Dead
Genre: Crime
Logline: An opportunistic and ambitious sniper-turned-hitman gets the opportunity of a lifetime to fulfil his ambitions when he gets the job of killing the woman he’s falling in love with.
Why you should read: I work in an advertising agency, where I’m a strategist. My best work to date by far has been the strategies I’ve developed for how to appear hard at work in an open-plan office where my screen is on public display. And so, in emails to myself, word documents and in the notes section of powerpoint slides, this script slowly came together. When people were getting too close I’d switch to my native Norwegian, just in case.

Anyways, the script is a blend of three crime sub-genres (all with a twist): the hitman movie (Gen-Y has entered the workforce), the film-noir (the femme fatale and private detective join forces) and the Mafia film (a dysfunctional crime family replaces scare tactics with modern marketing principles).

I can but hope that the whole proves greater than the sum of its parts and that the result is a fresh and interesting read. I hope you enjoy it and I very much look forward to your feedback!

Title: Cielo Drive
Genre: Action
Logline: Taken set against the Manson Family murders. Sharon Tate’s father, an Army Intelligence vet, takes matters into his own hands when he infiltrates the L.A. underground scene in order to find her killer. — Tate’s father do go undercover but it’s never been revealed what he actually found. He was close enough to finding something that the LAPD were nervous about his presence.
Why you should read: My name is Erik Stiller, and I’ve just been promoted to Staff Writer for the upcoming season of CBS’ CRIMINAL MINDS. If you like LA history and revenge-action with a good man doing brutal shit then check out this feature.

Title: THE FUSE IS BURNING…
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Logline : A troubled man tries to find solace by searching a desert canyon for dinosaur fossils. But everything changes when a young girl is found murdered in the same remote region.
Why you should read: There’s nothing like a good story. And this one begins one hundred sixty five million years ago.

It’s time for another edition of “Didn’t Get Picked.” It’s often debated how much query letters matter. I’m here to tell you that THEY DEFINITELY MATTER. As someone who receives a ton of queries (for Amateur Offerings, for The Scriptshadow 250), I  assure you, I can determine a lot from a query. In fact, I have an unofficial checklist of how I go from e-mail to full script read. It starts with me opening the e-mail. This is what happens next.

1) Can the writer put together basic sentences without any errors? If so, go to 2.
2) Is the query well-written? Does it display thought, care, passion? If so, go to 3.
3) Does the writer know how to write a proper logline? If so, go to 4.
4) Is the idea a good one? If so, go to 5.
5) Read the first page of the script. Does it pull you in? If so, go to 6.
6) Read until page 5. Is the script still keeping you interested? If so, go to 7.
7) Read until you get bored. If you’ve done your job, I will not want to put your script down until the last page.

Obviously, you can’t get to number 7 without first getting through numbers 1-4. I’d say about 50% of the queries I read don’t get past number 2. But if you get past number 2, there’s a good chance you know a good idea from a bad one. Or that you can at least craft a solid logline. So, many who get past 2 at least get me to read their first page. Of the people who get that first-page read, I’d say 25% of them get past number 6 (read at least five pages). Of those who get that far, I’d say I finish about 5% of those scripts. And I’m guessing the industry average is similar.

The lesson here being that nobody even touches your script unless your query letter and logline are solid. The frustrating thing about this is that writers don’t receive queries. So they have little reference for what it’s like to read a query letter. How can you get good at something if you can’t study it? Well, that’s what today is about. I’m going to put up some real-life queries that were sent to me and explain why they didn’t make the cut. We’re not here to bash people or to tell them they suck. We’re here to help each other learn. Let’s get started!

SOCCERROCK by xxxx xxxxxx

A retired pro soccer player from the United States has his career
resurrected to help the British Secret Service capture an elusive
terrorist cell and Kris Sanderson is also reunited with Dead Egypt,
the world’s most famous heavy metal band.

The world’s most popular sport is soccer. More countries are
registered with soccer’s governing body, FIFA (Federation
International Football Association), than in the United Nations.
From the slums of Argentina, to the sub zero temperatures in Siberia,
someone is playing soccer as you read this. Since the days of Elvis
Presley, to the sold out stadiums featuring Metallica, rock & roll
music is a global phenomenon. When you combine these two genres, the
results are electric and this is truly an original concept. Almost
every soccer movie ever made involves kids and cute animals, and is
usually a G-RATED affair. Every other sport has films of a more adult
nature. Hockey has “SLAP SHOT”, baseball has “MAJOR LEAGUE”, football
has “THE LONGEST YARD”, and golf has “TIN CUP”, just to name a few
examples. Where is the great adult soccer movie?? Using my experiences
as a professional soccer player for twelve years, as well as being a
sports writer and roadie for rock bands, SOCCERROCK is an
action/adventure story that is void of all the corny formulas that
exist in every Hollywood soccer production.

You want to start out a query letter by introducing yourself. Even if it’s a quick introduction. To jump right into your logline without saying anything is jarring. I’ll excuse this if the writer uses my format preference (genre, title, logline, why you should read), but as you can see, that wasn’t the case here.  As it turns out, I didn’t have to read any further to know that the script was in trouble. As passionately as the writer pitches his project, the logline indicates a story so unfocused as to be unreadable. From my experience, if a one-sentence logline is unfocused, the script will be extremely unfocused. There are three separate ideas here. A soccer idea. A heavy metal band idea. And a British Secret Service idea. True, the mixing of these elements is what makes the idea unique, but that doesn’t matter if the script sounds all over the place. I’d encourage the writer to focus on one subject with his next script.

Hi,

thanks for taking the time to read this email (and hopefully the script). I’m a Welsh based writer working in the tv industry as an assistant director. For the past two years I’ve placed in the quarter finals of the Nicholls with this script, and have used the notes from them to improve the script to get it to a stage where I think its ready to be pushed out into the industry.

This is where you come in Mr. Reeves. Hopefully you’ll agree and feature this script on your website and offer some good notes. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Title: Big Red
Genre: Sci-Fi / Family
Logline: Erin is a child orphan who runs away with a fugitive robot to find a new home.

Okay, so this time we have someone who greets me! That’s good! Unfortunately, the first letter of the opening paragraph isn’t capitalized. That tells me the writer hastily sent this query out and therefore doesn’t care enough about the craft. Later I also see an “its” instead of the correct, “it’s,” and that pretty much ensures the submission won’t make the cut. I’m looking for writers who care, who take this seriously, and who put effort into the written word – ALL the written words. Finally, the logline doesn’t introduce any conflict into the story. Someone runs away with a robot. But then what happens to ruin their plan? You need to include the key conflict in your logline.

Carson,

Hope your weekend was productive. I’ve been a fan of your site for nearly five years. It’s been a huge part of my screenwriting education. Below are the details of my Amateur Offerings Weekend submission.

-MAQ

Title: Page Turn Her
Genre: Drama/Comedy

Logline: A love-struck ad writer finds a magical journal that controls his unrequited crush’s actions, but he hesitates using it because the men who get close to her have a tendency to die.

Why you should read: I’m a longtime Scriptshadow reader whose last script, “King of Matrimony,” made it into Amateur Offerings Weekend. Based on the comments, I thought it would have been selected. Regardless, this new script is better in every way.

I have to give it to Michael. The man is persistent! He consistently submits his script every week, so I feel like the least I can do is explain why I haven’t chosen him. This is actually a pretty strong query. Michael keeps the introduction brief and catches my attention with flattery (been a fan of the site for five years). He can obviously write a clean sentence. There isn’t anything wrong with the query itself. It’s when I get to the logline that I have a problem. The logline starts out as a sort of magical What Women Want type film (ad writer who finds a magical journal that allows him access to his crush) but then becomes something much darker at the end (people are dying??). Put simply, it feels like a confused idea. Making matters worse is that it’s listed as a “Drama/Comedy.” So in addition to the comedy element (magic journal) and thriller element (people dying who get too close), there’s also a dramatic element? I don’t know if this idea needs to be scrapped or Michael just needs someone to help him focus it. But for future reference, you want your idea to be clean and easy to understand. If it results in even the slightest bit of confusion, rethink it. Hopefully this helps, Michael. And keep writing!

Title: The Psycho Sweethearts Reality Show

Genre: Dark Comedy/Satire

Logline: A reality show follows newly wed husband and wife serial killers as they try to keep their sanity as their celebrity increases.

Writer: Writer’s Anonymous

Why You Should Read: I was chatting with a group of friends when reality shows came up. I watch NOT ONE currently and never will again which I’m extremely proud about when a idea hit me.

Hey, maybe, I would watch a reality show if it were on street gangs, mafia, drug cartels, serial killers, spies, banksters or even the Illuminati. That idea thoroughly cemented in my head, I decided to try this idea for my next script. Finished the first draft in a month and rewrote it a month or two later. I believe I have something “SPECIAL” for the Scriptshadow community though I readily admit may be a draft or two away.

Scriptshadow community, you’re happy to run with the other ideas if you want.

This is a superficial script on superficial couple in a superficial world and I need all the constructive criticism you can give me.

I tried to keep the formatting of the e-mail to show that it had 2-3 line spaces between each section but it wouldn’t stick. Wonky formatting is an easy way to dismiss a writer. If you want to know how your e-mail is being seen, open up another e-mail account (if you’re on gmail, get a Hotmail account) and send your query to that e-mail. It’s an easy way to see how your query looks.

There are some other red flags here as well. How are you going to write about something you know nothing about? Just about the only way to give us an authentic story is to know as much about your subject matter as possible. Case in point: I think there ARE reality shows for all the subjects he mentions but because he doesn’t know anything about reality shows, he doesn’t know that. This said to me this was more of an experiment than a script the writer actually cared about. The last sentence also has an error in it: “This is a superficial script on superficial couple in a superficial world…” Writers have to remember that this is a PROFESSION they’re trying to break into. So you have to present yourself and your script professionally. If you didn’t put 100% effort into a 200 word e-mail, there’s no way you put it into a 20,000 word screenplay.

Title of script: HIT YOURSELF

Genre: Thriller / Dark comedy

Logline: When a retired hitman is hunted by his former employers for refusing to kill a homeless witness, they murder his best friend, causing him to seek revenge by writing a book, exposing their secrets to the public. But when it fails to sell, he is forced to pick up the gun, one last time.

Why you should read my screenplay:
This being my very first attempt at screenwriting, I feel it is a good example of just how much one can learn within a six month period. While the story itself went through several changes, the characters do not let their fictional roots ruin their ability to feel real.
The ghetto / drug area setting is very real, as I used real life experiences for my backdrop.
My style differs from the everyday writer, as I tried to take risks which I knew could either lose the reader, or keep them interested.
The main story and subplot blend together nicely, with some great twists. The further you read, the more things make sense, and things you thought seemed pointless become clear, up to the final image.
Finally, while it is a fairly simple story, showing how karma really can be a bitch, no matter how guilty you feel for your actions, it still manages to challenge you, as you keep track of timeline jumps and plot points that make you realize that what you thought you knew, was wrong. Not everything is what it seems.
Thanks for your time!!
Phil Golub

This isn’t a bad query. But there are a few reasons I didn’t pick it. First, the logline is more summary than logline. A logline sets up your concept, your main character, and the main conflict. It’s very succinct.  This one rambles.  You can also spot some story issues within it. Everything seems okay when we’re talking about a hitman being hunted, but then all of a sudden someone is writing a book? And we have to wait for that book to be released before the real story can begin? Writing and releasing a book takes, what? 6-12 months? What are we doing in the story during that time? Watching the character write? That’s not going to sell any tickets. You could do a time jump over this period, of course, but then you have a big weird time jump in the middle of your movie. Hitmen movies shouldn’t have time jumps. They should happen within a contained time frame.  Imagine if Taken had a 1 year jump at the midpoint.  It wouldn’t be Taken.  As if to confirm my fears, the writer than tells me this is his first screenplay. I get that some people use Amateur Friday to learn. But you don’t want to tell anyone this is your first script in a query. Everybody in the business knows that first scripts are terrible (with the rare exception – usually from writers who have written in other mediums). So the query reader immediately loses faith in you. Finally, the “why you should read” reads too formal (“I feel it is a good example of just how…). There’s a lack of freedom to the writing that tells me the script will feel the same. Writing should feel effortless to the reader, not like you’re proving a point in a senior thesis.

To all the writers whose queries I featured today: Don’t let any of this discourage you. You’re now armed with more knowledge so that your next script and  next query will be better. As long as you love screenwriting and dedicate yourself to it, you’ll eventually write something great and pitch it perfectly. But you need these speed bumps along the way to learn how to do it right.

Genre: Action
Premise: A group of hot-shot car enthusiasts help a secret government black ops group take down a terrorist, all while avoiding the vengeful brother of a man they put in the hospital.
About: This is the latest installment of The Fast & The Furious phenomenon, and easily the most talked about. That’s because one of its key actors, Paul Walker, died, ironically, in an unrelated car accident during shooting. They had to stop production for a few months to rewrite the script, since they only shot half of Walker’s scenes. They eventually brought in Walker’s lookalike brothers to finish the film, and went to Peter Jackson’s WETA digital effects company to do some cut and paste jobs with Walker’s face. The film came out this weekend and was the first to make 9 gablillion dollars at the box office.
Writer: Chris Morgan
Details: 137 minutes

So let me see if I got this right. Michelle Rodriquez has amnesia and can’t remember she’s married to Vin Diesel. A guy named Deckard Shaw, who’s part of a double secret probation London Black Ops organization, destroys a hospital because he’s mad that they’re not giving his patient brother enough attention. He then leaves his brother in said burning hospital to go fight the people who hurt his brother in the first place.

There’s an international terrorist named Mose Jakanda who’s kidnapped a hacker who’s created something called the “eye in the sky” which can find anybody in the world within two hours. Snake Plissken, who’s now an army general for an American Black Ops team that specializes in having really expensive cars around, promises to help Vin Diesel get Deckard Shaw before Shaw gets him if he’ll go reverse-kidnap the hacker who created the eye in the sky.

The thing is, this new terrorist only travels on roads that are inaccessible to cars (huh?) so Vin’s crew has to parachute the cars onto the road via plane only. After Vin steals the hacker back from the terrorist, Deckard Shaw shows up to try to kill Vin, despite not having access to a plane that parachutes cars out of it. Vin survives, and somewhere around this point I realize that I’ve never seen Furious 6 even though I was absolutely positive I had.

For reasons that never become clear, Mose Jakanda teams up with another American Black Ops unit that has access to predator drones and uses one of these drones to stalk Vin and his buddies in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Deckard Shaw, who it’s still not clear if he’s working with Jakanda or just always shows up when he’s around, also attends this Los Angeles showdown, where he corners Vin on the top of a parking garage and fights him with crowbars, all while Tyrese yells a series of phrases through an unknown radio channel that all basically amount to, “Oh hell no! That shit did not just happen!”

To try and hold Furious 7 up to the standards of proper screenplays is kind of like trying to hold the McDonald’s drive-thru guy who needs you to repeat your order three times up to a Michelin chef. It’s not really fair.

And that’s a problem. Young screenwriters who want to write cool action movies are going to see this and think it’s what you need to write to sell an action spec. It’s not. Furious 7 is a series of set-pieces held together by threads so loose, they feel like an autistic child trying to socialize at a birthday party.

There’s a desperation as characters try to explain what they’re doing, and despite the writer’s best attempts to distract us from this reality (distractions that are almost always Tyrese yelling something like, “Oh hell no! This shit is WHACK!”), it’s clear that unless action is involved, Furious 7 is like a hipster at a biker bar.

So I’m watching all this go down and wondering, like many in Hollywood, what makes these films so successful. They started out doing solid numbers, but the third installment was a B movie and made 27 dollars at the box office. Episodes 4-7, though, became box office titans, competing with the most powerful comic book properties for yearly domination.

You might say, “Well yeah, it’s got hot women and fast cars. Of course it’s going to do well.” Ehh, but so did Need for Speed. Why didn’t that film do Furious numbers? Or you might say, “Duh, it’s because of Vin Diesel.” The problem with that theory is that Diesel isn’t exactly tearing it up at the box office outside of the Furious films.

And then, as I was watching this film, it came to me like a ray of light shining through a lone hole in the clouds. It’s no secret that the franchise plays extremely well to Latinos (they make up the highest audience for the films at 37%). What do Latinos value over everything else? Family. Family is extremely important to the Latino culture. What are the Fast and Furious films about? You got it. Family. The Fast and Furious group considers themselves a family. The characters are getting married and creating families. Vin’s sister is married to Paul Walker.  Paul Walker’s character now has a child. The Rock reveals he has a kid in the movie. The word “family” is uttered somewhere in the neighborhood of 732 times (Vin Diesel to Shaw: “I don’t got friends.  I got family.”).

There’s no doubt that fast cars and hot women are going to bring in moviegoers. But for a film to become a phenomenon, there’s got to be something more to it. You got to find a way to connect with the audience on another level. Here, that level is emotion. It’s the importance of family that makes this franchise more than a bunch of car chases.

And this is actually good news for writers. For everyone who thinks you have to sell your soul to break into Hollywood – this proves that audiences want to connect on a deeper level with their movies. Do I think Furious 7 rivals the emotional intensity of, say, The Imitation Game? No. But the fans of this series obviously do.

Now before you go off to write Terms of Endearment with cars, let’s back up to the make-or-break component of any action script – the set pieces. The key to writing a saleable action spec is to write set pieces that haven’t been seen before. So here we have cars jumping out of planes. We have cars jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper. These were things we hadn’t seen before. They were stupid fun – sure – but they were original stupid fun.

If you’re going to accomplish anything in your action script, make sure it’s to give us UNIQUE SET PIECES. If I read a set-piece in a script that I’ve already seen before, I’m done with that script. Just like in a horror script, you have to give us unique scares. Just like in a thriller script, you have to give us unique thrills. In an action script, the one job you gotta get right is to write unique action.

Speaking of action, I want to finish with a warning to all future action writers out there. Beware of writing huge crews into your action scripts. As convoluted as the plotting here was, I have to give it to Chris Morgan for juggling all these characters. In each action scene, he was usually cutting between a dozen different characters. For any of you who’ve had to write scenes like this, you know how difficult it is to keep track of that many people.

Usually, you only have one or two featured segments in an action scene. But if you have 12 characters, you now have to keep the audience abreast of where they all are. You can’t just focus on the Vin Diesel part for the whole 10 minutes and then show Michelle Rodriquez at the very end or everyone will go, “Where the hell was she the whole time?” This forces you to come with things for everyone to do. And the more people you’re cutting between, the harder to follow everything is.

If you have a clear goal (get the hacker from the bus) a set piece can survive this complexity. But if the goal is even mildly unclear (as is the case with Furious 7’s climax – why the hell was a terrorist coming to Los Angeles again????), cutting between that many people can destroy the sequence. It’s yet another reason to celebrate movies like Star Wars. They make it so damn clear what the ending goal is that the set piece can survive any level of complexity.

Now you might think with all this criticism that I hated Furious 7. Actually, that’s not true. As sketchy as the screenwriting is here, the action is borderline amazing. Like I said before – we see things in this movie that we’ve never seen before. And this installment of the franchise seems to be more reliant on real stunts than the others, making for a much more realistic experience. I mean they really did drop cars out of planes for that plane drop sequence. I’m not sending any aspiring screenwriters to the theater to study Furious 7’s script. But if you want to enjoy the hell out of some amazing action, there are worse ways to spend your evening.

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Figure out who you’re targeting and write what matters to that group into your screenplay. The writers and producers of Furious 7 realized they were targeting the Latino audience here, so they focused the story on family. A few years ago, The Blindside knew it was targeting Christians, so it infused a lot of Christian values into the script. Know who you’re writing to and then give that group what they relate to.

Genre: Crime-Thriller
Premise: An alcoholic woman who becomes obsessed with a couple whose home she passes every day on the train, is convinced she knows what happened when the woman in the relationship goes missing.
About: This is Paula Hawkins’ first official novel, but she has written a few chick-lit books under a pseudonym, although you couldn’t’ get her to tell you the titles if you tried. A former financial analyst and journalist, Hawkins explains The Girl On The Train as her last-ditch attempt at becoming a novelist. Hawkins says of how she came up with the idea: “I used to commute when I was a journalist, from the edges of London. I loved looking into people’s houses. The train went really close by apartments, so you could see in. I never saw anything shocking, but I wondered, if you saw anything out of the ordinary, an act of violence, who would you tell and would anyone believe you?” Dreamworks has optioned the book, although the film doesn’t have a star or director attached yet. That could change soon. The book now has 10,000 Amazon reviews (Gone Girl had 20,000 when David Fincher became attached).
Writer: Paula Hawkins
Details: 326 pages

Just Monday we had a guest author chime in on how much freedom one has when writing a novel – being able to play with the narrative, taking different points of view – and boy does today’s novel support that claim.

There will be, of course, people who shrug The Girl On The Train off as a Gone Girl clone, a book that came along at just the moment Gone Girl movie mania was sweeping the nation. The novel, like Gone Girl, is a crime-thriller, takes us through different points of view in regards to a missing woman, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, has the word “Girl” in the title.

But what might surprise you is that “Train” is better than Gone Girl. I don’t say that easily. Gone Girl’s amazing first half and mid-point twist help it win the “first half of the book” award. But whereas Gone Girl starts running out of steam once it leads to its inevitable conclusion, “Train” only gets better as its climax approaches.

That was always my big problem with Gone Girl – the book, and then the movie. As much as Gillian Flynn tried to convince us that her dark weird ending was the way she preferred it, it was clear that she simply wrote herself into a corner – confirmed later in an interview where she confesses to not outlining – one of the most important aspects in writing a great ending. The Girl On The Train has no such issues.

Middle-aged Rachel Watson has pretty much given up on life. She ruined her marriage to the perfect man by drinking too much, then watched as he moved into the arms of a younger prettier woman. Rachel moved out of town, got fat, and now rides the train every day to a job she doesn’t have anymore, but which she must pretend to have in order to keep her flatmate from kicking her out of her apartment.  And oh yeah, she’s rarely sober.

The lone light in Rachel’s life is Jason and Jess, a perfect couple who live in a house she passes on the train every day. The two are always outside, kissing, hugging, living that perfect life Rachel once had. Of course, their real names aren’t Jason and Jess. Those are the pretend names Rachel has given them, which seems appropriate, given her happiness exists only in a fantasy world she creates.

Rachel first noticed Jason and Jess because their home is a few houses down from where she used to live. Her ex-husband still lives there, now with his perfect replacement wife, Anne. Rachel would like to say that she’s a big girl who’s moved on from that world. But the truth is, she gets drunk every night and stalks her husband, both on the phone and at the house. We learn very quickly that Rachel isn’t exactly… stable.

Then one day, everything changes. As she’s passing by in the train, she sees “Jess” outside her house with ANOTHER MAN. Her fantasy world destroyed, she’s unable to process this information for days. However, it’s what happens after that really shakes her foundation. “Jess” goes missing, and no one has any information on what happened to her. No one, that is, but Rachel.

Rachel, excited to actually have a purpose in life again, goes to the police to inform them about the man she saw outside with “Jess” (real name: Megan). But they dismiss her as a sad middle-aged drunk woman. It’s for this reason that Rachel must take on the case by herself.  Well, at least in her opinion that is.

The book jumps back and forth between the points of view of Anne (Rachel’s replacement), Megan (the missing woman before she goes missing), and of course, Rachel. What makes the investigation so fascinating is that Rachel is wasted half the time, so she’s just about the most unreliable narrator ever.

She wakes up each morning only vaguely remembering the night before, making her investigation a puzzle where all the pieces are upside-down. The whole time we’re excited as we get closer to the answer. But we’re always wondering: Can we really trust anything we know here? Or is Rachel just a sad lonely woman who’s making this all up?  Or is the answer much worse?  Could Rachel somehow be… involved?

Michelle Williams, Hawkins’ dream acting choice for Rachel.

Whether you’re writing a novel or a screenplay, there’s one thing you’ll almost certainly need to succeed – and that’s a compelling main character. I don’t know if characters get more compelling than Rachel Watson. Imagine being inside the mind of a train wreck who does the most horrible things, but can justify each and every one of them, and maybe even convince you they’re not so terrible too.

At one point in the story, Rachel steals a baby. Let me repeat that. THE MAIN CHARACTER STEALS A BABY. And we still root for her!

Sound impossible? Well, there’s a bit of a trick going on here. In a movie, it’s hard to have a character do something like steal a baby and the audience root for them. That’s because we only see their actions. We’re not in their head with them. Girl On The Train has the advantage of placing us inside Rachel’s head. So when she explains WHY she steals the baby, it doesn’t sound all that crazy. I mean, she still shouldn’t have done it. But we can at least understand what she was thinking at the time.

This is why you’ll often hear voice over in movies when bad characters are the protagonists. The writers know you’ll never justify their actions from afar. But if you’re in their head with them, it’s possible to understand where they’re coming from. (House of Cards Season 2 spoilers). For example, in House of Cards, Frank Underwood is always talking directly to us, explaining why he’s doing the horrible things he’s doing. So even though we might not agree with him, we see where he’s coming from. When he throws Zoe Barnes into a train, killing her, a few words explaining how dangerous she was makes the pill a lot easier to swallow. And “Train’s” Rachel Watson benefits from this same “first person perspective” halo.

Another reason we’re lenient towards this character’s terrible tendencies is because she’s ACTIVE. Readers and audiences like characters who DO STUFF. Characters who are passive, who watch the world go by and do nothing, we have no patience for these wallflowers. But no matter how “bad” someone is, if they’re at least trying to do something, we’ll want to see if they succeed. And Rachel, while not exactly Sherlock Holmes, throws herself into this investigation with gusto. She wants to solve the mystery, so of course we want to see if she pulls it off.

In addition to this, Rachel is, at her core, doing a good thing. She’s trying to solve a murder. Sure she’s lying to everybody. Sure she steals babies. Sure she gets blackout drunk every night. Sure she stalks her ex-husband and leaves 20 screaming voicemails on his phone every night. But she’s trying to solve a murder and expose a killer.

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve read versions of this story where there is no killing. There’s just a drunk main character who stumbles around the city feeling sorry for him/herself the whole time. I’m much less inclined to root for that character than I am one who wants to solve a murder, who has an honorable goal to execute.

I don’t want to spoil too much here because the brilliance of this book is in its surprises, but I will leave you with one more thing. MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS LIARS. Everything becomes so much more interesting when people are hiding things. Part of the deliciousness in Girl On The Train is that Rachel lies to everyone. Seeing if she’s going to get caught is part of the fun.

For instance, when she approaches “Jason,” the missing girl’s husband, to let him know that she saw “Jess” with another man, she can’t tell him that she’s watched them every day for the past two years on the train. That would make her sound crazy, right? So she makes up a little lie about knowing “Jess” from her art gallery. Of course, as their relationship grows, Jason requires more information about her friendship with Jess, and Rachel is forced to add more to the lie. At a certain point, she’s locked into a story that’s completely made up. And when that story gets exposed to other people, like the cops, Rachel has to come up with more lies to explain away that lie.

I know a lot of you don’t have time to read books but this one reads like a screenplay. It’s really fast. And I highly recommend it.

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

What I learned: Use LIES WITH LEGS over simple lies. A simple lie can result in a fun scene. Frank secretly takes some money from his wife to go gambling, comes home to see his wife home early, she asks him where her money is, and he makes up a lie. The lie doesn’t quite make sense to her, so she questions him about it. The suspense comes from whether he’ll talk his way out of the suspicion or not. But a much more powerful lie is a lie that has legs. It’s a lie that the character HAS TO KEEP BUILDING ON. That’s what’s so great about Girl on The Train. Rachel tells all these little lies. But they’re lies that matter in a detail-oriented missing-woman’s search. So they’re brought up again and again to her (How does she know “Jess” exactly?) and she has to come up with more lies to cover for her previous lies. That’s one of the areas where this book really shined. A lie was never just a simple lie. It was forced to keep growing.