Genre: Horror/Drama
Premise: (from writers) The residents of the small town of Grover’s Mill are trying to put their lives back together, make sense of what they had to do for survival, and remember those lost during the Week of Hell, the seven days the dead walked the earth and then, just as mysteriously, stopped. It’s the one-year anniversary and fear and uncertainty are rampant. Could it happen again?
About: You probably remember Nathan Zoebl. He wrote a script I really liked last year called “Keeping Time.” Now you may be mad that I’m bringing a ringer back on TV Pilot Week. But what can I say? I get excited when I see a writer I like and the opening to this was good. I was intrigued to see what Nathan would do with the zombie genre. Plus now he’s got a partner!
Writers: Ben Bailey and Nathan Zoebl
Details: 58 pages

I was talking to this really talented up and coming director, Tze Chu (who directed Bryan Cranston’s new movie) and I asked him about selling pilots, since he had recently sold one himself. And he told me that when he goes in to pitch pilots, the things they tend to be most interested in are the teaser (the opening scene of the pilot) and the characters. This made sense. The teaser is that thing that has the potential to hook a viewer so they watch the whole pilot, and well-crafted characters have the potential to hook a viewer to watch a whole season. So get those things in order, my friends. You do that and you’re well ahead of your competition.

So how does State of Decay fare in these categories? Let’s find out.

State of Decay’s structure is hard to get used to. We basically start in the past, one year ago to be precise, in the small town of Grover’s Mill, where a zombie outbreak terrorizes the town. We meet characters like Alex, a 20-something who gets cornered by zombies only to watch them all mysteriously die right before they’re about to kill him. Then there’s John, who’s on a fishing trip with his son, takes his eyes off him for a second only to find him being attacked by a zombie when he looks up again.

We then cut to the present, one year later, long after the zombie outbreak has died (it only lasted a week). The town’s kind of nervous, a little fidgety about the reunion, as there’s something in the back of their minds telling them that since they never found out what caused the outbreak in the first place, who’s to say it couldn’t start up a second time?

However, except for a few exceptions (like John losing his son), many of the people seem to be doing okay. It was one wild ride for a week there, but now they’ve pretty much put their lives back together.

The driving force of State of Decay’s pilot episode is rather elusive, but seems to be guided by two motors. The first is a town hall memorial ceremony for everyone to remember the men and women who fell during that terrifying week. And then there’s Brian, our narrator, who keeps us on track by describing how everything went down via both webcam and voice over.

And that’s pretty much it. We’ll occasionally jump into the past to see gruesome scenes where zombies kill town members (like when a group that’s locked themselves inside a building would rather play it safe than let a begging fellow town-member inside), but for the most part we establish there was a zombie outbreak and meet all the people who were associated with it.

So the first thing that worried me did so before I even opened State of Decay. This was a big issue I had with one of the early drafts of World War Z, which followed the book’s storyline, which had us watching the world try to get their lives back together after the zombie outbreak had been contained. My big issue with that was, “How do you make a zombie movie interesting when you don’t have any zombies?” The producers of the film eventually felt the same way, which is why they changed the setting to the ACTUAL zombie outbreak (a VERY good move in my opinion). However, I knew Nathan was a clever writer so I had confidence he’d come up with a way to circumvent this.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, that issue wasn’t addressed. We get shots of zombies killing people in the past. But nothing where the zombies are killing now. Which left us with a lot of moody, broken-down characters and not a lot of action. I feel like Nathan and Ben are trying to echo the tone of Walking Dead here. The problem with that is that Walking Dead had active zombies. You can get away with those thick dramatic melancholy moments because there could always be another zombie right around the corner to infuse tension and suspense into the episode if needed.

And that’s an important word here. Suspense. I didn’t feel it here. And I think we need to feel it when we’re dealing with this kind of subject matter. There’s no real problem, real issue, in this story. Everyone (when we’re in the present) isn’t doing much. They’re chatting with each other. They’re talking about the memorial. But there’s nothing driving the story. No goal. No problem. No mystery. No suspense. I kept waiting for something fun or unexpected to jump start the story, but it never did.

True, we did have the zombie attacks from the past to jump back to, but every zombie attack was very basic, stuff we’ve seen hundreds of times before. Turn around, there’s a zombie. A person outside being attacked by zombies. Someone wants to save him. Someone else doesn’t. We’ve SEEN that. I mean remember the scene in The Walking Dead when Rick goes into the city and is surrounded by hundreds of zombies and he goes under the tank and they’re reaching in on him and we’re wondering how the hell this guy is going to get out of this situation. That’s the kind of fun innovative never-before-seen zombie moment I was waiting for.

I maybe would’ve been able to deal with this IF the characters kicked ass. But these characters are too low-key. There’s nothing dynamic or memorable about them. John’s still sad about his family’s death. Jenny’s sleeping with Alex behind her boyfriend’s back. The gas station attendant lost his friend and co-worker. There are a lot of sad people, which keeps the tone dark and restrained. But never let tone take precedence over drama. You need interesting people who have interesting problems with other people.

There’s actually a great movie Nathan and Ben should watch if they haven’t already that has a very similar set-up to this. It’s called The Sweet Hereafter and, like State of Decay, it takes place in a small town. The difference is, instead of a zombie outbreak, it’s a school bus accident that ends up killing a lot of children. The story jumps back and forth between the past, with the town happy and optimistic, to the present, with the town beaten down and undone.

The big difference is that in the present, all the characters have carried over the baggage from the crash and turned against each other. Daughters are turning on fathers. Parents are blaming the bus driver. Families are fighting over the best way to get the most settlement money out of their children’s deaths. In other words, there’s CONFLICT! Blame is being tossed around. Everything that everyone had was changed by that bus crash and NOBODY’S relationship with anyone else in town has been the same since. I’m not getting that from State of Decay. Everyone here is too agreeable. Everyone’s patting each other on the back, saying, “Glad we beat that, right?” I wanted to see repercussions here. I wanted to see problems. Too many people here seem fine. And “fine” isn’t dramatic.

Now all of this may become moot as the season progresses. It’s hinted at that another zombie outbreak is coming. But no one’s going to get that far unless the pilot is awesome. And right now I’m sensing Nathan and Ben think they can get by on tone alone. We need cooler more original zombie kills. We need more dynamic characters with bigger secrets (Locke anyone?). We need way more conflict in the character relationships. We need more suspense. And we need something more to drive this first chapter of what will hopefully be a 100 chapter story. A memorial isn’t going to cut it.

I mean what if you add ONE mysterious character to the mix (like Robert Hawkins in Jericho) or an out-of-towner, a lawyer even (just like The Sweet Hereafter), who’s helping people settle zombie-related lawsuits. Someone who just gets in there and MIXES SHIT UP. Because nothing’s getting mixed up right now and the pilot is too restrained as a result.

While I know this review is harsh, it’s only because I know what Nathan is capable of. We’re never as good as when someone’s pushing us to be our best.

Script link: State of Decay

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

What I learned: Don’t hold back too much in the pilot — TV shows are tough because there are so many surprises you plan on unveiling in future episodes. And I’m sure that’s what Nathan and Ben were saying as they read this review. “But, but, but we’re going to do all that in Episode 3 and Episode 6 and Episode 9.” I understand that. But you don’t want to hold too much back for later episodes. You need to give us some crazy shit in the pilot. Something to get us excited and make us want to come back. ESPECIALLY in a genre pilot. This needed one or two much bigger surprises. Had that happened, I probably would’ve been more accepting of the slow pace.

Welcome to the week where I review Amateur TV pilots. This competition was held exclusively through my weekly newsletter. To make sure you’re aware of future writing contests and opportunities, sign up for the newsletter here.

Genre: Hour-long Drama
Premise: (from writer) In a world where superheroes are real, a shell-shocked journalist obsessively follows the exploits of a city’s new vigilante. All the President’s Men meets Heroes.
About: (from the writer) I’m a comic book nerd and I wanted to see what happens between the panels, to the people who have to live in a world of super-powered battles. The series will follow a vigilante, but through the eyes of a normal newspaper reporter, Eugene McGuire. The catch is that McGuire isn’t starry-eyed over the superheroes of his world. He doesn’t trust them. And if no one else is going to question these “walking weapons of mass destruction”, he will. Moreover, in The Times, figuring out the vigilante’s identity will be half the draw of the show. It’s the story that we would see if Superman was about Lois Lane.
Writer: Kyle Jones
Details: 55 pages

So how has Amateur TV Week been going so far? Not bad, I suppose. It’s forcing me to look harder at what’s on TV and why those shows are on TV and what kind of script to write to also get on TV. There’s definitely a similarity to looking for amateur features. A lot of the writers and pilots are pretty good. But “pretty good” isn’t good enough. This is the top of the heap. This is fucking Hollywood. Your pilot needs to knock someone over to get noticed. And too many of the pilots I’ve read feel like those safe middle-of-the-road episodes you get in the middle of the season that pass the time until the good season-ending stuff comes. They’re polite. But they’re not a PILOT. A pilot’s got to engross you. It’s gotta be fucking exciting or earth-shattering or mind-blowing or dramatically gobsmacking.  It’s got to make someone think they could build 100 episodes out of this. It’s got to make a viewer go, “Holy shit. I’m in.” You know when you love a show so much that you mentally block out the period of time next week when it’s on? That’s what a pilot needs to do.

There hasn’t been a pilot yet (from all the entries or the ones I’ve reviewed so far) that’s made me do that. Everything is about potential. And potential’s fine. Potential’s great. But you never know when potential is going to turn into fulfilled potential. So you’d prefer for a pilot to just be… ready. “The Times” felt like it could be ready. It had a big idea (superheroes) and it had a new spin (told from the perspective of mortals).  And it had some tight writing.  Now I’ve seen this kind of thing before. And it’s a tricky thing to get right. I mean, how are you going to convince us, in a world of really cool fucking superheroes, that it’s actually more interesting to follow a normal person? That guy better be the most fascinating person ever, because otherwise, you run the risk of a bewildered audience going, “Why aren’t we following one of the super heroes again?” Funny enough, this is the same curiosity I have for the Fall’s upcoming Avengers show. Now the advantage of that show is that they’re talking about super heroes we actually know. The Times is building its super-heroes from the ground up. Let’s see if it succeeds.

30-something Gene McGuire’s been a stellar journalist all his life. But at the moment, he’s just trying to find a job. He’s back from Afghanistan and the world over here is a little less exciting. Well that’s about to change. While at a job interview for a magazine, the building McGuire’s in blows up. Well, mostly up anyway. As McGuire stumbles around trying to save the few survivors, he sees two superheroes. One, a man who can become fire, and another, a masked vigilante.

The vigilante (superhero name: Vigilante) ends up saving McGuire but despite the near-death experience, he’s not fazed. You see, this is the world we live in. Superheroes (or meta-humans, as they’re called) run rampant. The bad ones kill people. The good ones save people. It’s kind of old hat by this point. Nobody points into the sky and says, ‘Look, it’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman!” It’s more like, “Is that Supes again? His hair is getting thin.”

McGuire’s quickly able to find a job at the city’s top newspaper, and starts looking into the bombing. What he finds is that the bad meta-humans were trying to destroy some biotech server on the floor below the magazine, which housed the DNA breakdown of their kind. You see, scientists are obsessed with learning the genetic code of these mutations so that, one day, anyone who wants to can become a superhero. The superheroes aren’t too keen on that.

McGuire becomes convinced that the key to finding out the deeper meaning of all this is to find Vigilante. So he heads to the recesses of the city’s underbelly where he ends up running into Fire Dude again. Fire Dude tries to kill him, but once again Vigilante comes to the rescue. Despite saving him twice now (I’m thinking he must have a human-crush on McGuire), Vigilante warns him to stop following him. He then disappears, and we’re left with McGuire. It’s clear Vigilante’s words have no effect on him. He will not be satiated until he knows who the mysterious crime-fighter is!

Okay, I’m not the president of the comic book geek squad, but I like a good comic book movie or TV show. Remember Heroes? That was awesome (for about 7 episodes – until it was clear the writers had no idea what they were doing).

The Times is a cool little pilot. But there’s something nagging at me here. There’s a certain… I don’t know… lack of sexiness. In trying to make the super hero world SOOOOOO nonchalant, I think Kyle’s actually gone too far. Part of the fun of these shows is watching the characters experience super-heroic acts for the first time and be wowed by them.

I get that that’s not this show, but I’m wondering if there’s a middle ground somewhere. Maybe a certain superhero (or villain) shows up and does something that no one’s seen before? Because otherwise, it’s all so bland. Everyone is so blasé about everything (McGuire isn’t even shaken after he’s saved by a superhero from a burning building!). And because they’re blasé about it, I’m blasé about it.

With that said, the pilot is well-written. And it does have a different take on superheroes. We’ve always known that Superman was secretly Clark Kent. That Batman was secretly Bruce Wayne. Imagine if we were one of the billions of people who didn’t know. I could see us wanting to find out.

Ahh, yet that was another issue I had with The Times. I think Kyle is banking too much on us wanting to find out the identity of Vigilante. To him, that’s going to be enough to drive interest through the entire series (or first season). I beg to differ. Remember, you’ve established that nobody cares about these superheroes (someone even says to McGuire – “No one wants to read about the Supers.”). And that blasé-ness is the exact same reason we (or at least, I) aren’t desperate to find out who he is.

So if I were Kyle, I’d try to come up with a mystery that’s much bigger. Like Lost. I want to see a bunch of people looking at a fucking big-ass thing in a forest and going, “What is this place?” I’m there for the long-haul after that. Once McGuire figured out why the building had been blown up (the supers were trying to destroy bio data), I was like, “What’s left to keep me reading?” All my questions had been answered. At that point, I was kind of done with the series.

You know, maybe it’s as simple as making Vigilante a new superhero. Instead of everyone being like, “Oh yeah, there’s that Vigilante guy again. I just saw him getting a burrito on 4th and Madison last night,” make him a new kind of superhero with a new approach. It’s the first superhero people can’t explain. Make people excited about it, wanting to know more about this guy. And because they’re excited, WE’LL be excited. And it will make sense for the story, because our main character’s a reporter. He wants to find out too (and am I the only one who’d like to see the lead change to a female for that situation?  Following Lois Lane in her quest to de-mask Superman?)

Ironically, Kyle, a self-professed comic book geek, may love comic book heroes so much that he’s become numb to them. Because that’s what this feels like. I don’t feel the passion on the page that a superhero lover would have. If we can get more passion, more sexiness, a bigger feel to this comic book show (keeping the same general approach to the material) it could be really good. I’m afraid that now, it’s a few damsel-in-distresses from being a worth the read.

Script link: The Times

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

What I learned: I never understand these dark shadow characters giving a puzzle to our hero instead of giving them the freaking information they need! Our secret shadowy informant (who knows everything) tries to help McGuire solve his case by saying, “Go back to the beginning. There’s something you’re not seeing.” Why the puzzle? There’s no logical reason whatsoever for the character to not just TELL HIM what the answer is. Writers do this because it’s cooler but it’s not realistic. That’s movie (or TV) logic. If a character has the information our hero needs and doesn’t tell him, there has to be a reason for it. Don’t just create a puzzle to make the plot cooler. It must make sense!

For the fully immersive 4-D experience, make sure to read today’s review on your commute to work!

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script with your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. 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 found-footage (although the writer prefers the term: “live streaming event”)
Premise: A trio of car-poolers who podcast their commute every morning come upon a mysterious van that begins defying the laws of physics. The longer they follow the van, the stranger and more suspicious it becomes.
About: Writer Bryan Stumpf is looking to either sell Commute outright or raise money to direct it himself.
Writer: Bryan Stumpf
Details: 90 pages

So Wednesday night, I was getting through the last of the pilot scripts in preparation for PILOT WEEK (which is next week. Yahooo!), and, not surprisingly, I was losing my sanity. I had to read so many scripts back to back that my eyeballs had courier font burned onto the retinas. But these moments are often the most enlightening as a reader. When you read so many scripts next to each other, you realize how few people actually write anything unique.

We’re all telling the same stories with the same characters, using the same writing style, with the same plot twists and the same endings. Sure, there are little differences here and there, but the majority of writers are rehashing their favorite movies in one form or another, copying their favorite writer’s style, instead of looking for new ideas and telling stories in new ways. So when one of those scripts does come around, it’s impossible NOT to notice. It’s like, “Oh, finally, something different.”

“Commute” is not a pilot. It’s a feature. But when I picked it up, I noticed right away that I hadn’t seen this idea before. First and foremost, we’re introduced to a new take on found footage. A video podcast commute. Okay, I’ll admit, it was a little weird. But it was so unique, I wanted to know how it would play out.

The man in charge of this podcast is Adam Earling, a 25 year old who works at a ski resort outside the city and therefore must make a long commute to work every day. He’s decided to create a commute podcast with two of his co-workers (cameraman Jorma and Tweet-Girl Dawn) to move the ride along faster, and it’s worked out pretty well. For a tiny podcast, they’ve amassed a substantial audience. Nobody’s going to confuse them for the Adam Corolla Podcast, but at least folks find them entertaining.

On this particular day, the commute seems to be going fine until a black van crashes into them, then drives off as if nothing happened. Curious (and let’s face it, because it’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to them on their commute) Adam starts following the fan. Strangely enough, the thing isn’t speeding away. Rather it seems… determined. Determined to reach its destination.

As Adam and crew document this strange event, they receive news updates that a huge irregular meteor shower hit last night. When Adam notices the wheels on the van seemingly skidding across the ground, he starts putting together a theory. What if this black van and those meteors were related somehow?

As the real-time event continues, Adam’s listeners tweet him with their opinions on what to do. Some say to engage the van, others say to stay away. But it’s what Adam, Jorma and Dawn hear on the news next that really changes the game. People are spotting these black vans all over the world. And just like this one, they’re barreling forward, knocking into cars, and continuing on.

Eventually, it becomes clear why the vans are acting so strange. They’re alien. Adam theorizes that each of them, then, is trying to get to a particular spot on the planet where they can “triangulate” a laser, allowing them to take out the whole damn planet. Adam figures that if you take out one link in the chain, you take out the whole chain. In other words, our podcasters are the only shot at saving the world. And because these vans seem to be indestructible, they’re going to have a hell of a time figuring out how to stop theirs.

Commute is a hard script to analyze. At first glance, it has a lot of good things going for it. It’s different. It takes chances. It reads fast. It’s short. There’s a clear goal. It builds. The stakes are sky high. It’s marketable. There are lots of mysteries. There are some fun sequences (like having to throw one of their cameras inside the van to see what’s inside).

Despite all this, when you’re reading Commute, something about it feels off. And I struggled to figure out what exactly was causing that feeling. One of the issues, I surmised, was the characters. They didn’t feel real enough. Yesterday we talked about flaws, inner conflicts, and vices. I barely saw any of that with these characters. And the one sort-of inner conflict happening with our hero, Adam, surrounded a race-car past that was too cheesy and on-the-nose to take seriously.

The way these characters interacted just never felt genuine, particularly early on, and that’s the time you need the reader to latch on to your characters the most, not pull away. I pulled away early and for that reason, I never became invested. I say this time and time again. We need to either fall in love with or become fascinated by your main characters right away so that we care for and root for them immediately. If we don’t, we’ll tune out before we get to the meat of the story.

But the big issue with Commute was that there were too many strange and unbelievable choices being made. Take the lack of cop cars for example. While the alien van isn’t doing anything “wrong” at first (besides hitting them), and because the world starts falling apart in the second half of the script, an argument could be made that there’d be no cops. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t envision a scenario where tons of cops weren’t following and trying to stop this thing.

Then there were strange things like a motorcycle podcast fan riding next to them, tweeting them his communication. A motorcyclist communicating by text? Then there was the fact that our characters became super-human due to their proximity to the alien van. Super-heroes?  Then at one point, they realize the van is held together by a sort of gelatinous compound. So to destroy it, they start scooping parts of it out with their hands. Scooping?

Alien vans, a gelatinous construct, no cops, characters with super-powers, a motorcycle accomplice communicating via tweeting. At a certain point, there are just too many things for the reader to buy into. If you challenge a reader’s suspension of disbelief enough, sooner or later it’s going to break. That’s how I felt here. I mean it’s hard enough to buy into the fact that aliens are constructing vans. You’re asking a ton from your reader right there. So to keep laying more and more outrageous things on top of that? Like superpowers? You’re really pushing the envelope at that point.

With that said, there’s something to this idea. There were moments where I could see a movie here. But it needs to be stripped of all its outrageousness and weird choices, and approached from a more grounded point of view, not unlike the tone of War of the Worlds. Some really crazy shit happened in that movie. But the execution of the film was always straight-forward and realistic.

So, what about you guys? How was your commute?

Script link: Commute

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

What I learned: There’s a moment early on in Commute where Kawasaki Karl (our motorcyclist) tells Adam (via tweet) to check his Youtube channel for some info on the meteors. Adam does, and we see that Kawasaki Karl does a show of his own called, “Rooftop Stoners.” During the video, we hear a meteor crash, seemingly the point of Karl’s request, but instead of cutting out there, the conversation shifts between Karl and his co-host to Adam. The two start discussing how Adam used to be this amazing race car driver until he got into this big accident. An accident he could’ve avoided if he hadn’t froze. Now to Bryan, our writer, this is a necessary moment. He wants to inform the reader that Karl used to race, as that will come into play later as he chases the alien van. But to us, it feels really obvious and on-the-nose and “let’s stop the movie so we can tell the audience Adam’s backstory.” This is an important lesson. It doesn’t matter how badly you have to get some exposition or backstory into your story. Until you can get it in in a way that’s invisible and doesn’t draw attention to itself, you haven’t tried hard enough. Because audiences will spot this kind of thing every time.

Ripley – Character flaw: Lack of trust

I remember when I first heard the term “three-dimensional character.” It sounded like one of those things clueless producers mutter when they don’t know why they don’t like something. Oh yeah, the characters weren’t, umm, “three-dimensional.” That’s why I didn’t like it. Occasionally, you’d run into one of the more affluent execs, who might throw this curve ball at you: “Your characters never popped off the page.” What the hell does that even mean? It’s a freaking piece of paper. If you want things popping off pages, head over to the children’s section at Barnes & Noble.

Ah, but as time went on and I came into contact with more intelligent and established entertainment folk (purely by accident of course), I noticed them using these same darn phrases. “Sorry, the characters have no depth.” “They were paper thin.” “The plot was okay but the characters never popped off the page.” Urgh. Wherever I went, this three-dimensional character thing was following. I needed to find out what was going on.

So I did a little research into this “3rd dimension” and repeatedly came across the term: “character flaw.” This seemed to be the all-elusive key to achieving character depth. A character flaw, I found out, was a negative trait holding your character back from becoming whole. Okay, I could get on board with that. I started watching my favorite movies and, lo and behold, it was true! There were character flaws everywhere I looked. Neato!

But then tragedy struck (well, subjectively speaking). I was on a screenplay message board one evening and found a thread discussing this exact topic. The head screenwriting message board guy in charge (HSMBGIC) was saying that not all characters had character flaws. Indiana Jones didn’t technically have a flaw. John McClane in Die Hard didn’t have a flaw. My whole screenwriting world came crumbling down. What next? Were there screenplays without words?? How could anything make sense anymore!!!

If only that were it. As if some phantom force was set on getting me to commit scripticide, I was introduced to yet another term: “Inner Conflict,” which writers were using interchangeably with “character flaw.” Yet another screenwriter cornered me and whispered, “Don’t listen to those bums. The key to a great character? A VICE.” Don’t even get me started on 70s Writer Guy, who kept telling me all I needed was a good “character fear.” Character fear?? What the hell was that??! It was at that moment I did what any slug-fearing screenwriter would do. I bought a case of Bud Ice at the corner liquor store and got drunk.

I won’t get into how that began a three year bout with alcoholism that ended with me on the top of a stoplight on Santa Monica and Wilshire screaming (the cops informed me), “Knick-Knack Paddywack, give E.T. a phone!” The good news is, I’m better now. And I have medication. Which allows me to drive by myself. Which led to a lot of library visits, where I actually learned what all these terms meant! And because I don’t want you to have to go through what I went through, I’m going to break all of them down and show you how you can use them to add depth to your characters. Get ready for your life to change.  As one of the greatest philosophers in history once said…”I’m tan mom. Biyyyyyyaaaaattttcchhhh.”

Flaw – A character (or fatal) flaw is the dominant negative trait that’s held your character back from becoming the person he’s meant to be.  Selfishness, lack of trust, won’t open up, won’t stand up for themselves, being irresponsible – these are all flaws you’ve seen hundreds of times in films.  The most powerful character flaws tend to be the ones that have hindered your character their entire lives. So in Rocky, Rocky has never believed in himself. But flaws can occasionally be a more recent problem, typically the result of a recent traumatic experience. So if a character was recently dumped by someone they loved, maybe their flaw is that they don’t trust love anymore.

When done right, the character flaw is the most effective way to add depth to your character. This is because once a reader identifies a character’s flaw, there’s an intrinsic need to see that flaw overcome. Being able to change is one of the most universally relatable experiences there is. So seeing someone else do it makes us believe we can do it. It’s almost like we’re living THROUGH the character, and that’s what creates that deep emotional connection.

Inner Conflict – The term “Inner conflict” is often mixed up with “character flaw” because they both infer struggle within our character. But inner conflict is less about overcoming one’s big weakness and more about a battle being waged inside the character. To execute a great inner conflict, you want to give your character two opposing forces that are pulling at him. Luke Skywalker (as well as Darth Vader) is being pulled by both good and evil in Return of the Jedi. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is trying to decide between being good or bad. A newly announced Andrew Garfield film is about a real estate agent who starts illegally kicking people out of their homes. He becomes rich doing so, but his conscience starts to eat at him. He’s conflicted with whether earning a living this way is the right thing (inner conflict).

Again, the advantage of adding an inner conflict is that you’re tackling a universal experience. We’re constantly dealing with our own conscience, with what’s right and wrong, being pulled in opposite directions. The most unsettled we tend to be in our lives is when we’re fighting these inner battles. It’s a very intense experience, and therefore we relate to and engage when we see a character going through the same.

Vices – Vices are often used incorrectly in screenplays, as many beginning writers believe that simply adding a drinking or drug addiction will give their character that elusive “depth” all these producers and agents talk about. 99 times out of 100, however, the characters unfortunate enough to be created this way feel cliché. Why? Because unless you’re exploring the vice in all its depth and complexity, it feels sprayed on, a false veneer hiding the fact that you don’t know how to build depth. A vice is the physical manifestation of an inner conflict. It’s drugs, food, alcohol, sex, gambling – any physical addiction your character can’t control.

In my experience, the only time vices truly add depth to characters is when the writer commits to them 100% – when they explore all the complexities and faults and issues and pitfalls and devastations that come with them. We saw it in Flight, we saw it in Leaving Las Vegas, we saw it in Half-Nelson, we even see it in The Dark Knight (The Joker’s vice is chaos). The screenplay almost has to be ABOUT the vice for it to truly resonate. Otherwise, if you’re just slapping it in there to try and make your character feel “deep,” it’s probably not going to work.

Fears – Fears are the last and typically weakest way to add depth to your character. The reason being, they’re surface level. Unlike a flaw, an inner conflict, or a vice, there isn’t a whole lot going on under the hood with a fear. Take Indiana Jones. His fear is snakes. Good for a chuckle, not much else. Or Brody from Jaws. He’s afraid of water. Cool for later when he must go into the ocean to kill the shark, but it doesn’t really add much depth to his character. Or Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. His fear is heights. Sets up a nifty little finale where he must climb up the building to get to Julia Roberts, but there’s never a moment in the film where we feel the depth of Richard Gere being afraid of heights. It’s just a cute little setup and payoff, as are all these examples.

Now this doesn’t mean you don’t want characters who are afraid in your screenplays. Fear is a very powerful emotion. And as you can see from the examples above, it’s a nice little addition to a character who already has depth. You just don’t want fear to be the only element of depth in your character. Any fear should be in addition to, not in place of, these options. The one exception is if the fear is integral to the storyline. For example, if your character was raped, and now they’re afraid to leave the house in fear of getting raped again, obviously the fear is adding depth to your character.

Moving forward, my suggestion for adding depth to your character would be to start with the character flaw. If a character flaw doesn’t feel right for that particular story (Hey, Ferris Bueller didn’t have a character flaw), move to inner conflict. If your character doesn’t seem like the kind of guy with a lot of internal strife going on (aka Seth Rogan’s character in Knocked Up), go with a vice. Only use fear as a last option or if it’s integral to the kind of story you’re telling. There are a few other things you can do to add depth (backstory, mystery, your character’s relationships with others), but for the most part, if you’re not using one of the four elements featured in this article, your character will feel flat (leading to the dreaded, “Your characters never POPPED off the page.”).

Also, it’s okay to mix and match these elements. It’s okay to give a character a flaw and a vice. Or a vice and an inner conflict. If you really commit to one of these elements, one is all you need, but I’ve seen plenty of characters that are battling two or even three of these things. My only advice, if you take that route, is to connect the elements so they feel organic, as opposed to mechanically adding multiple things because a screenwriting blog told you to. For example, if your character’s flaw is that they don’t think they’re worthy of having a boyfriend, an addiction (vice) to food could keep them overweight and unattractive and therefore allow them to perpetuate that belief.

Remember that the main reason readers label characters as “thin” is that there isn’t a lot going on with them. I read so many scripts where I don’t remember the characters five minutes after I finish because there WASN’T ANYTHING GOING ON UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE. These four options are the things you place underneath the surface. Because the characters now have something underneath them, by definition, they have DEPTH. And just like that, you’ve created a three-dimensional character.

I must apologize about the late post. You know, ever since it was announced that Kate Middleton went into labor last night, I’ve been unable to eat, sleep, or concentrate. Just like all of you, life cannot go on until this baby is delivered. I mean so many things can go wrong in childbirth. Is it not natural that one need to know that the baby is okay? And then of course we all need to know if it’s a boy or a girl. Well, she’s FINALLY delivered. And it’s a boy! (spoiler alert) So everyone can take the rest of the day off and relax after all that intense anxiety you’ve been under. I know I will.

But that’s not the only thing that happened this weekend. R.I.P.D. was officially R.I.P.D. upon its own delivery. I reviewed the script a year ago and thought it was pretty good. But man did it land with a thud. I’m trying to glean some lessons for writers from this but I’m not sure I have any. On the one hand, I encourage writers to come up with high-concept ideas, like R.I.P.D., but I think in this case it was so similar to Men In Black that audiences had no interest in seeing a lower-rent, lesser-cast version of that film. I mean, people aren’t even interested in seeing sequels of the original M.I.B. Why would they be interested in seeing a copycat film? If there’s a lesson here, it’s to write something familiar but different, with a little more emphasis on the different than the familiar.

Speaking of, R.I.P.D. is yet another example of the Ryan Reynolds Isn’t A Movie Star Paradox, which was most famously explored in an article written by sports/entertainment writer Bill Simmons. Indeed, it is strange that Reynolds continues to be so popular amongst studios when he’s never been able to open a movie on his own (his biggest successes like The Proposal and Safe House have him coupled with bigger stars). I like Reynolds. He seems like a good guy. I love that he takes chances in his career, and I think some of his movies have been really good, like Definitely, Maybe and Buried. But he’s gotta take advantage of this time. Unless he starts giving a better return on his investment, I’m afraid he might go the way of Ben Affleck in the first phase of his career.

Also, in news that has nothing to do with that, I’m hearing an awful, awful rumor. JJ Abrams is thinking of quitting Star Wars. The main point of contention is that Abrams has a family here in the States but will have to shoot the movie in England. It’s something I actually worried about as soon as Abrams took the job. He stated that he really wanted to shoot the movie here because of his family and an issue like that just doesn’t go away. Imagine being away from your wife and kids for a year. This isn’t a simple 3 day business trip to Cedar Rapids. We’re talking AN ENTIRE YEAR.

If he drops out, I don’t know who the heck is going to take his place. But the mad scramble will probably dictate a less-than-desirable replacement. Nightmare names like Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright popped into my head. I know those names bring about happy thoughts in certain geek circles, but trust me, those guys would destroy Star Wars. That’s why JJ was so perfect. He was a big director who knew what he was doing and also had that sensibility that could make Star Wars great. I’m afraid if he leaves, there are no super-big directors who would be interested, which means taking a shot in the dark on one of these lesser guys who hasn’t proven himself. Ugh. May the force be with us.

So, in slightly less depressing news, I saw The Conjuring this weekend with Miss Scriptshadow. We’d both read the script, both liked it, and so were interested in seeing the finished product. Well, long story short, Miss Scriptshadow hated it. Which kinda baffled me because she loves scary movies.

The scene that set her off was the opening one, in which paranormal investigator husband and wife team, the Warrens, investigate a creepy doll that keeps writing to its owners, “Miss me?” in really bad crayon handwriting. Indeed, the scene felt like it was part of another movie. Coupled with its cliché scary doll cheesiness, there was a goofiness to it that contrasted heavily to the otherwise “take me seriously” tone the rest of the film exhibited. It just goes to show how powerful an opening scene is. Give us the wrong one, and we could decide we hate your film within a couple minutes. The scene didn’t turn me off as much as it did her, but something did feel off about it.

My problem with the film had more to do with the same issues I saw in the script stage. Now to their credit, the writers did eliminate a lot of the “one month later” and “two months later” stuff they had in the screenplay that gave the story a laid back feel. Instead, after the opening scene, they kept everything in one continuous timeline and made it build. In other words, they added URGENCY, which is important in any movie, but especially a horror film, where you should feel the danger increasing at a scary rate.

But getting back to my main issue, it really bothered me that every time the Warrens saw something freaky, they went, “Oh yeah that. Ppffhhh. That’s just the demon wanting attention.” “Oh, the reason the clocks stop? That’s just because it’s the time the ghost died. No biggie.” Even when they’re researching the haunting, the answers seem to bore them. “No wonder these guys are experiencing hauntings. A witch used to live here and killed her child.” I don’t know about you, but I’m scared when people have no fucking clue why they’re being terrorized and they’re freaking the fuck out about it. Everybody here was too damn calm. We needed the Warrens to be like, “Yo, we’ve never seen this before. We’re scared. We don’t know what to do.” Remember The Exorcist? Part of what made that so scary is that the priests themselves seemed terrified. We never get that with the Warrens, who always seem to be in control. That was a super-big issue with me. If they could’ve fixed that, this might’ve been a classic.

I did learn something cool from the script-to-screen translation though. One of my favorite moments in the screenplay was when Lorraine Warren was in a crawlspace in the house, and starts pulling on this rope, and pulling on it and pulling on it, and all of a sudden, at the end of it is… THE WITCH’S HEAD (who had hanged herself when she was alive – hence the rope connection). It was terrifying. But they didn’t do that in the movie. Instead, she lifts the rope up and sees at the end… a noose. Scared for a moment, the floor of the old house then breaks beneath her, and she goes shooting down through the walls into the basement. Injured and unable to move, she starts hearing scary-ass shit. She now must fend off potential danger from every side of her. In other words, the writers sacrificed what was originally a jump scare (the witch’s head), and milked an entire scene of scares out of it. There’s your lesson. If you have a choice, no matter how good your jump scare is, see if there’s a way to milk one long scene of scares instead. That’s always the better option.

Finally, I still think the script itself, while interesting and original, was clumsy. I was never entirely sure who the main characters were. Was it the parents in the house or was it the Warrens? It felt like the writers weren’t sure either, as we’d occasionally jump back to the Warrens’ home where a barely-there subplot was happening with their daughter. The entire Warren’s Home storyline felt like that friend who nobody wants to bring to the party. “Oh man, I guess we have to call Bill.” Everybody rolls their eyes. Yeah, I guess so. Everything that happened over there felt like an afterthought. But in retrospect, I’m convinced that the studio sees the Warrens as their franchise. They’re the ones with all these scary stories to tell. Sequels upon sequels upon sequels. Therefore, they have to give them weight in the story. The problem with that was, because we had to spend so much time with the Warrens, we didn’t really get to know the Perrons. I mean, somebody tell me anything about the father in this script. You can’t.  There was nothing. But hey, The Conjuring 2 is already ramping into development so it ended up working.

With The Conjuring and The Purge being two of the biggest return-on-investments this summer, you best start thinking about writing that horror spec. People love to be scared, so scary movies will always have an audience. Just try and come up with an idea that’s either based on a true story (Conjuring) or that has a really high concept (Purge). You do that, we’ll be analyzing your film here on Scriptshadow soon.