Genre: Indie/Drama/Horror/Thriller/Sci-Fi
Premise: A server shows up for her Waffle House shift only to find that one of the customers is a threatening scary man with a list of rules for the evening.
About: There’s a lot to unpack here so stick with me. I created this review BEFORE I looked up the details about the script. All I knew is that it was a Black List script and that it was being made by Plan B, Brad Pitt’s company. However, after I read the script and did the research to find out more about the project, I could not find anything regarding this script getting purchased by Plan B. The only indication that Plan B was involved was in the Black List listing. However, I learned that there really is a Waffle House Index. It was created by FEMA and used to gauge disaster severity. If Waffle House closes or serves a limited menu, damage is extreme. So, I guess that was the genesis of the idea. But here’s where I think the Black List got mixed up. Within the real Waffle House Index, there’s a real “Plan B.” Plan B refers to emergency backup response plans activated when conditions overwhelm normal operations. In other words, I think the Black List thought that meant Brad Pitt’s Plan B production house bought this script. Maybe they did. So I’m still not positive. But it was probably a mistake. Anyway, that will provide context when you read this review, which I wrote before I knew any of this.
Writer: Andrew Nunnelly
Details: 105 pages

The Waffle House contains one of the funniest, and also most transformative, memories of my life.  Heck, it might have even turned me into an adult.

My college tennis team was traveling through the south playing a bunch of schools. One night, while staying at a motel, we were all starving, as we often were. And there was this Waffle House across the street that stated on its billboard: “All you can eat – $5.99.” I’m not sure even the words “tons of beautiful naked ladies” would’ve had more power over us in that moment. So we scuttled across the highway to engorge ourselves.

Keep in mind it’s almost midnight. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. But we might as well have been walking into Times Square on New Years Eve when we opened the door to this place. I’m talking wall to wall people. We had to wait twenty minutes just to sit down.

Giddy at anticipating my first Waffle House experience, I looked around and noticed something interesting. There was only one waiter for the entire diner. There had to be 200 people in here. The waiter was a big tall black gentleman who somehow looked like he was having a blast in spite of the chaos he’d been thrown into.

Now, because there was only one waiter, we had to wait a long time to order. How long, you ask? You’re probably thinking half an hour, right? No. An hour? Yeah, I wish. Come on, it couldn’t have been more than 90 minutes? We had to wait TWO HOURS just for the waiter to come to us.

Now, the good thing about waiting that long was that we all had TONS OF TIME to look through the endless Waffle House menu. Each of us had carefully memorized our complex orders of eggs and biscuits and toast and burgers, all of which were smothered in various ingredients specific to the Waffle House universe. Dare I say waiting that long made the process of ordering almost euphoric, seeing as we were finally going to eat like kings.

So, when the waiter finally came to us, I found it odd that he didn’t actually have a notepad with him. There were eight of us on the team. How was he going to memorize all our orders?? Maybe this is how The Waffle House worked? The waiters all had ‘A Beautiful Mind’ level brain recollection?

Well, we laboriously began giving him our “all you can eat” orders one by one. Each of us had picked like five things on the menu. And being stupid college students, we’re adding and subtracting certain things from each item (“Oh, and no pickles on the burger…”).

I have to give it to this waiter. He was so patient in the way he listened to every single word – for an order, mind you, that probably took as long for us to say as the length of time we’d been waiting for him to finally get to us.

And after we were finally finished, he looked all of us in the eyes, smiled, and without pretense said, “You got it. 10 waffles.” And walked off.

Now, in this younger version of myself, I had never experienced anything like this. That a place could promise something and just totally lie. The shock of realizing that I would not be eating all I could eat that night for $5.99 was devastating. So I was baffled. I was frozen. I was confused. And then I looked around and I noticed that every single customer in this establishment had a single waffle on their plate.

That’s when I noticed the most shocking detail of all. I had to peer back at an awkward angle to see it but my eyes followed our waiter into the back area where I then watched him begin cooking our waffles. That is correct. This man was the waiter AND THE COOK for the entire restaurant full of 200 people.

For those who don’t understand what the Waffle House legend is about. That sums it up.

Jane is a late 20-something server at a North Carolina Waffle House. We’re told in the description of the screenplay that this will be the worst day of Jane’s life. In fact, she’s already struggling not to cry.

She shows up on her night shift where she says hi to her gay co-server, Tommy. Tommy senses something is off with Jane but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Jane starts her shift where she mostly deals with regulars.

There are two stoner dudes and a stoner girl. There’s an Amazon guy with his young daughter. There’s the town drunk. Oh, and there’s “Scrubs Guy” who has been trying to drum up the courage to ask Jane out forever. Jane already knows he likes her and she might even like him but right now she’s just trying to get through her shift.

Her shift gets considerably more difficult, though, when a dude in a poncho pulls a gun on her and says that he’s got ten rules. The rules are weird. Jane must call herself “the helper.” If the helper doesn’t act normal, everyone dies. Eggs must always be runny. The guy basically threatens to kill everyone if Jane doesn’t do what he says.

But the guy is oddly laid back about the whole thing and when Amazon Guy gets a chance, he pulls out his own weapon and shoots Poncho. In his dying breaths, Poncho tells Jane that there’s a secret magical bunker underneath the freezer in the back and everybody needs to get in there right away because the end of times are coming.

After he dies, a nuclear explosion happens in the far off distance. This is followed by flooding and crocodiles coming up and snatching customers away. Jane, meanwhile, is all up in her feelings as we learn that, earlier that day, her mom died after a long bout with cancer. So Jane is really super depressed about it.

Jane and Scrubs guy work together to stay alive amongst all this madness (spoilers) only for a spaceship to eventually arrive and Scrubs Guy to say he’s some sort of alien and the time has come for Jane to move into the next realm or something. Because she’s special. Will she do it? Do you care? Grab that script to find out!

The script doesn’t work.

I actually spent a long time sitting around and trying to figure out why it didn’t work. After an elongated period of chilling, I finally figured it out. The script is built as this really wild ride. I mean you’ve got mass shooters, the New World Order, people predicting the future, nuclear explosions, secret Waffle House bunkers, mass flooding, giant crocodiles, spaceships.

I actually like all those things. And, if they were built into the right movie, I’d love it.

The problem is that the main character here is written like she’s starring in Manchester By The Sea. Her mom died earlier that day. She can’t stop talking about the cancer and what it did to her. Almost everybody else in the story is super serious and/or depressed as well. Which completely sours all the fun that could’ve come from these wild plot developments.

This is the rare time I would tell a writer: TOO MUCH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

How can you possibly have too much character development? THIS IS HOW. When your wacky, fun premise is contrasted against a “For Your Consideration” campaign for the lead character.

The two worlds just never meshed. In fact, they were always at odds. And that’s what I was feeling during each scene but couldn’t put my finger on at the time. Good scenes are supposed to flow. They should feel effortless to the reader. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be conflict or bumps in the road. But they should feel intentional and purposefully constructed. These scenes always felt like they were battling themselves. And the character vs. plot issue is probably why. Maybe there was some other stuff going on too but that was the main reason.

“But Carson: Plan B liked it.”

Correct. So what does that mean? How can we learn from this, because despite me disliking the script, it IS a success story in the script world. A huge production company snatched it up. So, what’s going on there?

My guess is that they liked the character development aspect. Because that’s what they’re known for. They like making intimate character explorations. And maybe they thought, this is the first time we can do that and turn it into something bigger.

But they’re wrong. The movie’s never going to work. How do I know? Because I’m right 99% of the time when I read a script about whether it will turn into a good movie or not. The collision of a deep independent character piece and a wacky invasion movie just aren’t going to come together in holy matrimony. They’re both going to leave each other at the altar.

The only thing that can save this movie is if they embrace how weird and fun it is. I mean, if you’ve got nuclear explosions and crocodiles and aliens and you’re asking me to watch a super serious cry-fest about a mom who died of cancer? You haven’t executed your script properly.

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

What I learned: If the tone of your characters is too far away from the tone of your plot, your script will be at odds with itself in every scene.

Does anybody really know why Scream 7 made 60 million bucks? The answer is no. So instead of focusing on that, I’m going to focus on the success of a certain underdog show, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Some people are saying this is already the show of the year. Cancel all voting. The decision has been made. With scores like 9.5 and 9.6 for episodes on IMDB, it’s a hard case to argue against.

A few weeks ago, I talked about how risky this show was. It took this giant franchise and eliminated almost all of its giant variables. You’re never going to see a dragon on Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. What’s funny about the success of the show is that this is exactly what the people at Lucasfilm originally said they were going to do with Star Wars on TV. They could finally tell these small intimate character-driven stories. And then they just completely freaked out and went in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, the entire budget of Knight could fit into the cost of one episode of Andor.

Why is this relevant? The answer to that is something it’s taken me 30 something years to figure out. Which is that franchises are built on characters, not on spectacle. And the mistake that 99% of them make is they never restock the character cabinet. Don’t get me wrong. They try. But they try in the same way that I try and cook fish for dinner. I put in solid effort. But am I determined to make the best fish dinner ever? No. And when it comes to billion dollar franchises, you have to try and create the best characters ever. That’s not an exaggeration. Great characters are part and parcel with the best franchises of all time.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a big franchise truly say “screw everything else. we’re going to build a story on character alone.” But that approach is a blessing in disguise. Because when you know that no spectacle is coming to save you, you have no choice but to build characters who can carry a show all on their own. It really makes you think: What kind of characters do audiences truly fall in love with?

And the most time-tested archetype is the underdog. So Knight of the Seven Kingdoms built two of them. The giant teddy bear of a man, Dunk, and the defiant undersized boy, Egg.

A common question I ask writers in my screenplay consultations is: Would we still want to watch your protagonist even if you stripped away this story that was happening around him? And, with these two, the answer is a resounding yes. The world kicks them around so much that we’re determined to see them overcome that adversity.

This is why I think, if Lucasfilm were smart, they’d hire twenty writers, shut down for two years, and come up with 200 characters. Really draw out who these characters are, what makes them likable or interesting, what flaws are holding them back. And then, at the end of the process, vote on the Top 10. I GUARANTEE YOU if they did that, they’d come up with characters ten times as good as any characters they’ve created in the last decade.

Cause Lucasfilm has lost sight of the fact that Star Wars was not built on spectacle. It was built on character. And until they refill the character coffers, they’re deluding themselves that they’re going to make another good Star Wars movie.

Getting back to Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I suggest everybody here watch it. It’s only 6 episodes long. Which is another great creative choice the show made. It knew how long its story was and wasn’t going to artificially stretch it out and dilute things for more episodes (cough cough, Andor).

But what you’re watching the show for is to get to those final two episodes. Cause the final two episodes are really special, each in their own way. Unfortunately, there’s no way around giving you these screenwriting tips without discussing the specifics of the episodes. So major spoilers follow.

In the 4th episode, Dunk beats up one of the members of royalty, I think a Targaryen (I’m not a Game of Thrones nerd so bear with me). So he’s slotted to be executed. However, he can challenge the guy to a duel, which he does. But the Targaryen kid he attacked is a wuss, so he invokes the Rule of 7. What that means is that the kid and six other Targaryens will take on Dunk and six other fighters he recruits.

The situation is a joke. The Targaryens are far superior fighters, of course. So destruction is a formality. But Dunk isn’t a guy who gives up (yet another likable trait about him) and he goes around town, trying to recruit fighters. The writing cleverly pays off many of the people Dunk met along his journey since the first episode, and he’s able to get five other fighters together.

Unfortunately, the rules state that you must have seven fighters. Any less and you forfeit. So, here’s where the major screenwriting lessons begin. We’re on the day of the fight. We’ve reached the battlefield. Dunk has minutes left to somehow find another fighter.

So he makes a plea to the galley. In a Braveheart-like speech, he begs someone to be brave and join him. And after this emotional speech, this giant man stands up. Dunk’s plea actually worked. He’s got his seventh guy. And then this giant man lets out a giant fart. The whole galley laughs. The man was fucking with him. Dunk will have to forfeit.

What the writers do so well here is they make you believe that our hero is safe, that he’s found his solution. And then they rip that solution away from us. And what we feel is, “Oh my god, what now?” I cannot emphasize how powerful that question is. When you have a reader asking, “Oh my god, what now?” They genuinely have no idea how your hero is going to survive. That’s storytelling gold right there. That’s when you have the reader in the palm of your hand.

But it gets better.

One of Dunk’s fighters shows up and he’s acting strange. As he’s getting his battle armor prepared, Dunk asks him a question about how he’s going to fight. And the guy says, ‘that’s not relevant anymore.’ And then he takes his horse to the other side of the battlefield. He’s switched sides to the Targaryens!

This is true excellence in writing.

“Oh my god, what now?” has just turned into “Holy shit, how the fuck is he going to get out of this??”

So many writers are TERRIFIED of doing this because it means extra work. They’re already unsure of how they’re going to solve the “one knight down” problem. Now they’ve got to find TWO KNIGHTS in five minutes! Writers don’t want to do all that work. So they never create that level of doubt, despite the fact that that level of doubt turns drama into super-drama.

But it gets better.

I don’t want to make this post 5000 words long so we’ll jump ahead. Against all odds, Dunk is able to get his two extra knights.

So, when the battle starts, the very first thing that happens is Dunk gets slammed off his horse. I mean he gets obliterated. The man doesn’t even get in one good swing. And then, as he’s stumbling to get up, he gets whacked in his helmet by a mace, tumbling to the ground again. And then he gets hit again. And then he gets hit again. AND THEN HE GETS HIT AGAIN.

Every time he’s hit, he becomes more and more injured. More unable to move.

And now we’ve taken “Holy shit, how the fuck is he going to get out of this??” and turned it into, “Holy Christ, this man is done for, there is no way in any scenario even with plot armor that he can get out of this.”

Keep in mind, I don’t know anything about the actual book covering these characters so I don’t know if Dunk dies in the book. I was genuinely convinced he was toast. Cause there was absolutely nothing he was doing that indicated he could survive.

But it gets better.

Dunk finally stumbles into a showdown with the Targaryen kid. And this kid just wallops him. He stabs him in the leg. He stabs him in the stomach. He stabs him in the eye. If Dunk’s situation was abysmal before? It had now turned calamitous.

I’ve never been so sure that someone was a goner.

And again: THAT IS STORYTELLING NIRVANA. It is the place where you most want your reader – convinced that there is no way out.

The crazy thing is, the writers add SIX TO SEVEN more moments that make Dunk’s situation EVEN WORSE. So it keeps getting worse for him. I haven’t seen a writer create that level of uncertainty for the hero since Osculum Infame, which is why I fell in love with that script.

Since there’s no way for me to cover the next screenwriting tip without spoiling the episode’s ending, I’ll just say that, against all odds, somehow, Dunk succeeds. But like any well-written story, there are scars that will live on forever in his life. Good people in the seven die. It’s not all ponies and roses by any means.

It’s a great example of how to push your hero to the limit and convince the reader that they won’t survive, so that when they finally do, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Look man, there aren’t many movies or shows these days that can truly make me feel something. Only because whenever I read a script, I’m always aware of the screenwriting matrix as I’m reading. I know what the writer is doing at all times and am judging whether they’re succeeding or failing.

But this battle? I was completely and utterly lost inside of it. I was so worried for Dunk and convinced he was toast. I was just hoping he somehow someway would find a way to survive.

Okay, moving on to the final episode. I’ve never seen a final episode like this! It was short. It had almost zero story to it. It only existed to wrap things up because ending the show after the Rule of 7 battle would’ve been too abrupt.

As a result, I’m watching this final episode with a lot of curiosity. Basically, Dunk just goes around and says bye and thank you to everyone he met on his journey. I was trying to identify some sort of structure that was holding the episode together.

And then I finally realized what the episode was about. It was about: Are Dunk and Egg going to end up together or is this it for them? It’s a powerful question. But there’s no doubt that it’s a tiny story engine to build your season finale around. I would go so far as to say, this is the tiniest story engine I’ve ever seen for a season finale.

But then it clicked. This was a show built on character, always had been, and so of course it ended on character. What’s remarkable is that it pulled that off inside a franchise the size of Game of Thrones, where audiences show up expecting spectacle, shock, something enormous. And yet the finale asked nothing more than a simple question about who these two people are to each other, and it was enough. More than enough. That only works if you’ve done the foundational work first, if you’ve built characters so vivid and so specific that the audience is genuinely invested in the answer. Do that well enough, and you can get away with the impossible.

Did you guys watch Knight of the Seven Kingdoms? What did you think?

Okay, so last week I put out an open call: anyone could query me and pitch their screenplay. The best query would win, and I’d review their script on the site.

But the script review wasn’t really the point. The point was the query itself. Learning how to reach out to agents, managers, producers, anyone, is an essential skill that’s rarely talked about. It’s discussed so infrequently that I thought I’d dedicate an entire week to it.

I’ll be reviewing the winning script tomorrow. But today, we’re going to talk about the winning query.

This turned out to be harder than I anticipated. When it comes to querying, 90% of the query is the logline itself. Often, that’s what the recipient will be jumping to. Because even if they like you or like your personality through your writing, that doesn’t matter if they don’t think the script itself works for them.

But, at the same time, if I only went off the loglines in these queries, then it’d be a logline contest. So I had to pass over some of the better loglines in order to focus on the point of this exercise: the query itself.

With that said, there were a couple of really good queries with really poor loglines. And since part of the deal here is that I review the winning query, I wasn’t about to reward a query with a weak concept/logline.

Exhale Carson!

Needless to say, I’m happy to report that I located the best of the bunch.

***********************************
In third place is Patrick McNulty!

Subject Line: QUERY – A DARK BREED

Dear Carson Reeves,

I’m reaching out with a contained horror feature, A DARK BREED (90 pages).

Logline:
After a blizzard traps a family in a remote mountain cabin, they rescue a caged pregnant woman being held on the property—only to discover she’s not the prey, she’s the predator. And she’s not alone.

A DARK BREED is a single-location survival horror built around clear rules, contained scope, and escalating siege tension. It’s written with practical production in mind while delivering strong suspense and trailer-driven set pieces.

I’d be happy to send the script at your request.

Thank you for your consideration,
Patrick McNulty

***********************************
In second place is David Lamberston!

Subject Line: QUERY – WHEN AN EMOTIONALLY WRECKED STAR TREK NERD DECIDES HE MUST BECOME MR. SPOCK

Hi, Carson:

Title: IN SEARCH OF VULCAN

Logline: After a socially awkward science teacher and lifelong Star Trek collector is left at the altar and robbed in a memorabilia scam, a near-fatal electrocution leaves him convinced he’s Mr. Spock — forcing his recently retired military brother to take him on a road trip to Vulcan, Canada to recover a stolen Bitcoin fortune and convince him he’s human again.

Comps: Rain Man – meets – Lars and The Real Girl

Why I am sending this request to you

I believe IN SEARCH OF VULCAN fits the lane of commercial, character-driven high-concept comedies that balance big set-pieces with real heart — and your track record in that space makes you an ideal match.

May I send IN SEARCH OF VULCAN to you for your review?

Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Sincerely,

David Lambertson
dlambertson@hotmail.com

***********************************
And in first place, our winner is…. CALEB HERMANN!

Subject Line: Horror Feature Query

Hi Carson,

My name is Caleb Hermann, and I’m a screenwriter based in Kansas City, MO. Through a writing program over the past year, I wrote and polished a horror feature under the mentorship of a literary manager from Navigation Media Group.

I’m currently seeking representation, and I’ve seen that some of your clients are in the genre space!

Title: Godforsaken

Logline: When a young preacher’s wagon train to Oregon becomes trapped in a frozen valley, he must confront his waning faith and ally with a Native guide to protect the survivors from starvation and a monstrous Wendigo that hunts them.

Comps:
The Witch
The Ritual (Netflix)
The Revenant

I would love to send you my script if it is of interest!

Best Regards,
Caleb

Okay, so let’s break our winning query down because, if I’m being honest, it’s not perfect. But it’s strong where it matters most.

What I like about Caleb’s entry is that it’s simple and to the point. I want all of you to internalize that. Cause that’s the key to writing a strong query. I’d say about a third of you stashed too much text inside your queries. People in this business don’t have time to read all of that.

Caleb gets right to the point. He says hello. He tells us just a teensy bit about himself (where he’s from). He gives us a very succinct backstory about the script (writing it with a literary manager). He then gives us THE MOTIVATION for his query (he’s seeking representation).

Now, if I’m being fair, I wouldn’t include the mentorship stuff. You never want to give out too much information, especially information that might hurt you. I have no idea who Navigation Media Group is. So that hurts the writer. Cause it indicates they’re working with “nobodies.”

I can’t emphasize this enough. Every extra word you write is more information that the recipient can use to dismiss you. In that sense, a query is similar to a screenplay. You only want to write as much as you have to and not a word more.

With that said, I had a handful of writers who queried me with just the logline alone and that’s not enough. You still have to provide context and include basic professional etiquette.

Luckily, Caleb’s logline is strong. It’s a unique movie scenario. It’s a marketable idea. And, in the end, that’s the name of the name. If you’ve got a good screenplay idea, you just don’t want to get in your own way when querying people about it. So many of you got in your own way. You wrote and wrote and wrote about stuff that just wasn’t relevant.

Now, Caleb also gives us comps after the logline. You don’t have to do this. But what I like about his strategy is that the comps take up no space at all. I can read all three of them in under a second. Some of you went on these long paragraphs describing other movies that inspired your script. This is better.

And then he says exactly the right sentence to end the query. If you’re interested, I’d love to send the script to you.

It’s such a clean, to-the-point query and that’s why it won.

If you want to clean up your own query, I do query consultations for 60 bucks. That includes three follow-up e-mails where we make adjustments to your query until it’s perfect.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.  Or, if you need a consultation on your entire screenplay, we can do that too.

As for this week, what we’re going to do is: Tomorrow I’m reviewing Caleb’s script. Wednesday I’m writing an article on crafting the perfect e-mail query. And then Thursday, I’m going to include some of the queries that didn’t make the cut and explain why, as well as what the writers could’ve done to improve them.

In the meantime, here’s a link to Caleb’s script so you guys can all read it and participate in tomorrow’s discussion!

Genre: Erotic Thriller
Premise: A couples therapist is drawn into a dangerous triangle of lust, lies and manipulation when she begins an affair with a stranger—who turns out to be the husband of her new client.
About: This script was a spec script that was purchased by New Regency. The writers, Erika Vázquez & Siena Butterfield, wrote on the Netflix hit, Wednesday.
Writers: Erika Vázquez & Siena Butterfield
Details: 110 pages

Kendrick for Pau?

Today’s script actually covers a lot of great screenwriting topics. It’s packed with them! So let’s jump into it!

40-something Dr. Paulina Cuevas Strom is just minding her business as the great couples therapist she is when, one night, at a party, she’s propositioned by a sexy man with a wedding ring named Oliver. She almost has sex with him in the bathroom but thinks better of it.

Paulina (Pau), can’t stop thinking about Oliver though. It doesn’t help that her marriage with the weak and wimpy Anders contains a lot of boring sex. So one day, she texts Oliver back, meets him at a hotel, and they start banging.

Meanwhile, Pau is trying to help a fairly new patient, Mare, fit in better at work. Mare is tall and beautiful and looks like a model. But she’s also a bit crazy and controlling, which is what they’re working on.

Well, that work gets a bit tougher when Mare shows up to her session one day with her husband, Oliver. Pau tries not to freak out and, after that session, Oliver sneaks back in to apologize. He didn’t know. And then they have sex again.

Pau knows what she’s doing is bad but can’t quit this sexy guy! She can’t get away with it forever though (spoilers) and, one day, Mare comes into their session telling Pau she knows she’s sleeping with her husband. But it gets worse. It turns out, Mare orchestrated all this from the beginning. She’s been controlling her helpless husband, who does whatever she wants.

Pau knows to get the fuck out of the situation now. But it may be too late. The State Licensing Board gets a complaint about Pau’s practice and now she considers this all-out war. But war with Mare is not a war you want to be in. Pau may be way in over her head.

For some weird reason, Hollywood keeps forgetting that sex sells. I mean, that phrase (Sex Sells) was born in this town. So I don’t know why they go through these giant time chunks where they completely forget how thirsty people are. Especially women.

I know a female friend who STILL TALKS ABOUT the film, Unfaithful, to this day cause of the sex scenes. And if you’ve seen that movie, you know that they really don’t show that much. That’s the thing with this erotic-romance genre. It’s more about the lead-up to the sexual acts than the acts themselves.

This is exactly why Wuthering Heights is being hyped up. And “Fixation” wants to be the next movie in this very lucrative genre space.

The first thing I want to talk about when it comes to Fixation is AMPLIFYING CONFLICT.

You want conflict in every movie you write. But there are levels to conflict. And good writers look for ways to amplify conflict so it’s more powerful.

For example, if you’re covering infidelity, like this script is, you could write about a woman being unfaithful and that’s it. Which is, ironically, the plot to Unfaithful. But why not “plus it up?” You achieve this by amplifying conflict.

So, instead of just having a man and a woman cheating on their partners, why not make it so a therapist is unknowingly sleeping with the husband of one of her patients? Notice how that amplifies the conflict in two ways. She’s betraying the trust of someone paying her to be the most trustworthy person in their life. And she’s also risking her career.

Now, getting caught isn’t just about two people cheating. It’s about a lot more. Which means getting caught has bigger consequences, which is how you raise the stakes.

In order to make this sort of setup work, though, you have to solidify a couple of things. The bond between Pau and Mare has to be super close. Mare needs to trust her with her life. And Pau’s self-identity has to be built around how professional she is. These two requirements were not met. But they would’ve amplified the conflict even more had they been.

One of the reasons I love therapy-focused scripts is because they’re a cheat code for character development. Creating characters who are deep and who the reader feels like they know, is one of the harder things to do in screenwriting.

Therapy scripts allow you to do this easily. Cause you can ask characters very direct questions about what’s going on in their head. “Why do you feel like you need to control everything?” The answer to that question is going to tell us a lot about Mare. But if Mare was in a non-therapy screenplay, asking a question like that feels on-the-nose.

Another thing you might notice about this script is that there’s no goal. The main character isn’t trying to achieve some primary objective. So then you might ask, “Well, what’s the engine powering the story then?”

In a script like this, the engine is that we know the train is going to crash at some point and readers will always keep reading until the crash. It’s a classic story engine and it works very well. It works here too. I wanted to see what happened when this tightrope walk came tumbling down.

Another thing the script executes well is its midpoint. You have to make a decision with a script like this whether you’re going to take the train all the way to the third act or if you’re going to take it to the midpoint.

If you’re going to take it to the third act, it has to be a really compelling situation. And, to be honest, I think this script had enough juice to take its infidelity storyline to the third act. But they opted to come clean with the cheating at the midpoint. And this is usually what you want to do because it creates an amazing midpoint scene and it changes the nature of the story going forward so that the second half feels different from the first half.

So, here, Mare storms into Pau’s office, says she knows she’s sleeping with her husband and they fight it out. The scene takes some unexpected turns and becomes what will be the most talked about scene in the movie. So that’s good!

However, if you’re going to end your movie’s hook at the midpoint, you need to have a stellar plan for what’s going to happen in the second half of the movie. And this is where Fixation stumbles.

It’s not a catastrophic stumble. But here’s the problem. Everything up to the midpoint was authentic. You could imagine something like this happening in real life. After the midpoint, the writers fell victim to what I call “the movie-logic seduction.”

This is when a script quietly stops behaving like humans would… and starts behaving like a movie that knows it’s a movie. For example, Pau and Anders get away for a remote vacation (so Pau can escape the madness). And then, the next day, Mare and Oliver show up, saying they just happened to be in the neighborhood.

That’s not happening in real life.

And I’m not saying you can’t get away with this sometimes. But something about it feels sloppy, and most of your audience is going to feel that too. Worse, that kind of sloppiness is usually a warning sign. The Sloppy Monster almost never shows up alone. It brings friends.  Which is exactly what happens here. By the end, the movie doesn’t even make sense.

Spoilers ahead. The two women are easily the worst people in the story. They are the ones doing all the terrible things. And yet Oliver and Anders are the ones who get punished, with Oliver turned into a handy scapegoat so everyone else can emotionally move on, consequences optional.

Despite that, the script was still good overall and a great example of exploiting marketing blind spots in Hollywood, which occasionally happen. Although I don’t know how you can forget that sex sells. I mean, duh.

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

What I learned: In addition to all the other great screenwriting tips in this script, another is dramatic irony. This is a great dramatic irony situation. Pau is doing marriage counseling therapy sessions with a couple while sleeping with the husband. Every word she utters in these sessions has dual meanings. That creates great subtext which, in turn, leads to compelling scenes.

Best pitch gets a script review next week!

While I’m tempted to spend 1500 words chastising Jon Favreau and Disney for spending 10 million dollars on the most poorly produced trailer in the history of Star Wars (and potentially cinema)…

WE’RE HERE TO BE POSITIVE TODAY!

Next week, I want to focus on the query letter. It’s a little talked-about component of screenwriting but an insanely important one. I’ve probably received more query e-mails than anyone else in Hollywood so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on what makes a good one.

I’ll get into the secret sauce of a good query letter next Thursday. But, the skinny of it is this. Most writers overdo it. And, in overdoing it, they expose their writing weaknesses. What you need to remember is that the star of your query is your logline. That’s the only thing that the person receiving your query really cares about. So, you want to make sure that’s featured.

This is how this is going to work.

You’re going to pretend I’m a producer at Scriptshadow Productions. And you’re going to pitch me a REAL SCREENPLAY. That’s it. And whoever has the best query, I will review their script next week.

A couple of caveats to this. Don’t pitch me your Blood & Ink screenplay. We’re saving those scripts for the official contest. But you can pitch me any other script.  Also, include an attachment of your screenplay.  In a real query, you wouldn’t do this.  You would wait for them to request your script.  But since I’m going to review the winner on the site, I need the script.

Send all query e-mails to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. You have all the way until Sunday at NOON PACIFIC TIME to query me.  You can only send one query.

If you’re not interested in putting your script out there for the world to see but you’d still like to know how to write a good query letter, I offer a query consultation service. It’s 60 bucks and includes three follow-up e-mails, allowing us to make a couple of extra tweaks beyond my initial fixes. If you’re interested in that, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Can’t wait to see what you guys have got!