The winning script of the Second Wave Showdown – and the long-time Scriptshadow reader who wrote the screenplay – gets a review!

Genre: Action-Adventure
Premise: After one of their own murders a Comanche boy, a skirmish leaves a small group of Spanish cavalrymen stranded without horses deep in hostile territory, facing the dangers posed by vengeful warriors, nature and each other.
About: A few months ago, we had a giant showdown (screenwriting competition). This past weekend, I put up five scripts that just missed making that showdown to see if I had overlooked a gem or two. You guys voted on your favorite one and that ended up being this script, Enemy. I know that the writer, Clint Williams, has been reading the site forever. So it’s fun to see his latest script get featured.
Writer: Clint Williams
Details: 110 pages

I have an inkling that Westerns are going to make a small comeback. I know this isn’t a prototypical Western but it’s Western-adjacent. I believe this because the Superhero genre is limping badly. It may finally be on its way out if they don’t come up with a fresh new superhero franchise soon. And, in the chasm that that genre will leave behind, it only makes sense that one of the most reliable genres in Hollywood history will start churning out movies again.

The year is 1731. We are in West Texas. A group of Spanish warriors, led by Tomas De Torquemada, are up in Texas territory looking to spread the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. But that plan gets interrupted when they encounter a Comanche town. Since the Comanche men are out hunting, Tomas orders his team to burn the town down (he doesn’t kill anybody though).

Later, as they continue up north, they encounter a young Comanche boy. Cristobal, the troublemaker in the group, proceeds to kill him, which pisses Tomas off. Now, he says, they’re going to come after us.

And come after them they do. While camping out in the prairie, a group of roughly a dozen Comanche warriors on horses attacks. There are casualties on both sides but the Spanish lose their horses.

A second round of fighting ensues, ending in a stalemate and Tomas decides it’s time to escape north. So the group heads north into the forest. There, the Comanche, led by Nacona, whose son is the one who was killed, strategically sets fires throughout the forest to push the Spanish where they want them to go. After three days of intense trekking, they end up right back at their old camp. They were tricked!

The two sides gear up for a final battle but, just as it’s about to commence, a new enemy enters the fray, pushing the Comanche towards the Spanish. This showdown was inevitable. Who will win? Who will perish? Only one way to find out (script link below!).

Let me start off by saying what I liked most about this script. I liked the conflict between Tomas and Cristobal. Every time we were inside of this group and the tension between these two rose up, I was entertained.

And it was a smart move by Clint. Cause one of the things I always maintain about screenplays is that you want to focus on the things that give you the most bang for your buck. If two characters are going to be around each other for 80% of your script, and you can come up with a compelling unresolved conflict between them, that’s going to pay dividends in 10, 15, maybe even 20 scenes.

The other conflict in the story, between the Spanish and the Comanche, did not work for me. And I kept asking myself, “Why?” I eventually figured it out. It came down to two things. Number one is that the side that’s done the bad thing (killing someone) is the side we’re asked to root for. The Spanish kill this Comanche warrior’s son yet we stay with the Spanish the whole movie. Why should I be invested in the “bad” side? Why should I want to be with them?

Number two, the hook that got me to pick this script was the Spanish getting stuck in a huge underdog situation. From what I understood, this small group of people were stuck in this overwhelmingly uneven battle where they had no chance of survival. Underdog scenarios are one of the most dependably dramatic scenarios you can write. Audiences always root for underdogs.

But based on what I was reading, this was more of an even battle. There were more Comanches than Spanish but it wasn’t a ridiculously high number. Somewhere around 15 Comanche I think? Meanwhile our Spanish group had WAY BETTER technology. They had guns and armor. The Comanche had bows-and-arrows.

This “even battle” was solidified after the first skirmish when the Spanish took out so many of the Comanche that the Comanche momentarily gave up and decided to collect their dead.

In storytelling, understanding how to craft a collection of variables that make the audience root for who you want them to root for is an essential skill. As writers, you should be able to set up the dynamic exactly how you want and then dial it up or down depending on how intense you want it to be. Unfortunately, we don’t get that here.

I’m going to finish off by saying something some of you may push back on, but hear me out. If this had been 200 Comanche warriors against five Spanish soldiers—that’s a movie I would see. I would not see this current movie. The odds are too even.

In storytelling, the safer we feel about your heroes’ situation, the less dramatic tension there is in the script. And I felt very safe here. But 200 Comanche warriors chasing a group of five? I would feel an unending anxiety throughout the script, which is what you want your reader to feel. You want them feeling that unease. That’s what keeps them reading.

You might counter my suggestion by saying, “Making the Comanches 200 versus 5 is ridiculous. But how in the world would the Spanish soldiers escape?” That’s exactly my point!!! That question you just asked is the same question readers are going to ask: “How in the world are they going to get out of this?” Which is exactly what makes reading the script so exciting!  You want to see how they pull off the impossible.

Do you absolutely need 200 Comanches to make this script work? No. There are other combinations of variables to weight things heavily in the Comanches’ favor. My point is that one of those must be established. Because the way this script was constructed, I never feared much for the Spanish soldiers. Even at their worst, I thought the odds were pretty good for them to survive. And the second the reader believes your heroes are safe, you’re done—because they’re not being entertained anymore.

I think this script is okay. It’s definitely cinematic. But I can’t personally recommend it only because I didn’t think it gave me enough. I think you got 60% of what the concept promised. I need that number to be up above 85%. Simply making the odds much worse for the Spanish could do wonders for this story.

Script link: Enemy

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

What I learned: Yesterday I talked about risk. It’s important that we continue to take risks as writers because the lack of risk will equal a predictable screenplay. So, I asked myself, what risk could’ve been taken here? Because it’s not just the risk itself you must take into consideration—it’s the aftermath. The script still needs to make sense.  I could have a herd of buffalo mow all the Spanish down, eliminating the threat to the Comanche. That’s a risk.   But what would that do to my screenplay? The story would be over. Instead, what I would’ve done here is, at the midpoint (a great spot to take a big risk), I would’ve had Cristobal kill Tomas. And now, the devil is in charge of your group. I would be much more excited to read the second half of the script had that happened than this draft.

Taking a look at the 5 best concepts in The Blood & Ink Showdown

(Today’s article references pitching for the Blood & Ink Showdown. If you want to learn more about the showdown, here’s the original post).

Now that the fun of pitching horror concepts is behind us, the hard work begins. Many of you wondered what I meant when I said that, by receiving a “YES” from me, the writer would also receive “special treatment.” What is this special treatment you speak of, Carson?

What it means is that I’m going to be taking a more active interest in the development of these five concepts, since they are my favorite concepts pitched to me. Part of that will be featuring the concepts in articles, like today. But I also plan to check in with the writers and, with what time I have available, help guide them when I can.

So, what I want to do today is lay out all five concepts and, based on my experience reading so many screenplays, talk about 1) where these ideas can go wrong and 2) how to get the most out of the ideas. Also, since I know some of the scripts I choose for these showdowns confuse writers, I will tell you exactly why I chose each script.

Let’s get to it, shall we!?

Title: And All The Sinners Saints
Logline: After her family is murdered by the mob, a religious woman lets herself become possessed by a demon in order to get revenge.

Why I chose it: The main thing I’m prioritizing when choosing concepts is whether I can realistically see a path for them to become a movie. The road towards a produced film is riddled with hundreds of obstacles. So, the more clearly a concept is as a movie, the easier it will be to overcome those obstacles. And All The Sinners Saints is the highest ranking Blood & Ink concept based on that criteria. It’s one of those no-brainer ideas. But what really sets it apart is the interesting choice the main character is making at the heart of the story. She’s risking harming herself in order to achieve her goal. Journeys are always more captivating when the main character must pay a tax in order to achieve the objective. The higher the stakes are attached to that tax, the more powerful the story engine will be. Which is this idea in a nutshell.

Where it can go wrong: These concepts fall apart when they choose a generic path. Action scripts can be the most boring scripts to read because 70% of the writing is about running, dashing, ducking driving, shooting, fighting – just really boring monotonous scenes to read. You’re obviously going to have to incorporate some of these things into your action script. But it shouldn’t be page 1 to page 110. Try to be thoughtful with your action scenes instead of writing 30 scenes that we’ve seen in every other action movie.  The more I feel that a writer has thoughtfully crafted an action scene (the setting is unexpected, every character in the scene wants something, there’s some x-factor that we don’t typically encounter in an action scene), the more readable that scene becomes.

How to do this concept right: There are two main things you must focus on getting right. 1) Make the main character easy to root for. The whole dead wife and dead dog thing in John Wick was cheap but it did the job of making us sympathetic to him. Once you have that, you need FIVE SET PIECES that COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN YOUR SPECIFIC MOVIE AND NOT IN ANY OTHER ACTION MOVIE. In other words, your set pieces must focus on what is unique to your concept, which is this girl who’s willingly possessed. In other words, if you have a choice between stealing the famous Daredevil hallway fight set piece, and a set piece in a giant church during mass, choose the latter. The former could occur in any movie. A church fight scene is specific to this subject matter.

Title: Bite After Bite
Logline: From bite to bite, we follow the zombie infection as it spreads – each victim’s story unfolding from the moment they’re bitten to when they pass it on.

Why I chose it: I said the main criteria I used in judging ideas was how realistically I could imagine them becoming movies. BUT. I only said that was the “main” criteria. I didn’t say it was the only criteria. About 10% of the entries I picked because they felt different. They’re not your typical movie. I knew Bite After Bite was not a slam dunk. It’s a risky premise. But it reminded me of those mid-90s indie films where filmmakers were taking more risks. And that was exciting to me.

Where it can go wrong: Scripts like this can go wrong quite easily, actually. The second you move away from a single protagonist hero’s journey, you’re flying blind regarding structure. And without structure, screenplays fall apart quickly. Because without a clear objective pushing the narrative forward (kill Thanos), stories can easily wander. That’s going to be the biggest challenge by far.

How do to do this concept right: What I would do is create structure in the form of eight sequences. You don’t have the clear GSU formula working for you. But, if you break things down into eight 12-page sequences, each following someone getting bit then gradually turning, then becoming a zombie on the hunt for its next bite, you’ll get back some of that structure you lost. From there, you want to tell 8 different stories within those 8 different zombie turns. They should all feel different. For example, in one, it’s a mom inside her house with her children. We know she’s turning and will be a threat to her kids soon, but she’s in denial about it. Dad is on the way home but will he get there in time to save his kids when she turns? Then the next is a zombie who’s walking through the neighborhood. In other words, his story is completely different from the story of the mom in her house. And I would treat them each like individual 12-page mini-movies. And, of course, there should be some twists and turns along the way.

Title: Black House
Logline: When the President’s increasingly erratic behavior brings the United States to the brink of nuclear war, a young White House correspondent becomes convinced the most powerful man in the world must be forced into an exorcism.

Why I chose it: This one felt like a movie the second I read it. It’s big. It’s high concept. This is the kind of script that would’ve sold for a million bucks twenty minutes after it was sent out back in 1996. And while these ideas don’t have the same cachet as they used to, big ideas still get lots of interest. And I love new takes on old ideas that raise the stakes considerably. The Exorcist was a great movie but the stakes were local. Here, the stakes are enormous. The president could be leading the world into a nuclear war. That’s as high stakes as it gets.

Where it can go wrong: It’s pretty clear where movies like this can go wrong. If you lean too hard in either political direction, you lose half your readers. But that’s okay because it should be easy to not make this political. Anytime you have an outside threat – in this case China (or Russia, if you prefer) – the country tends to unite. So as long as you’re focusing on that and not hot button political topics, you should be fine.

How to do this concept right: I was thinking a lot about how to execute this story. And I realized, you can’t just jump into the possessed crazy nuclear-weapons button-pushing insanity right away. There needs to be a lot of build-up, just like the original Exorcist, which, if you go back and watch it, you’ll be shocked at how much setup there is with her becoming possessed before they bring in a priest. And the way I think I would do this is to have the story focus on a young priest’s assistant. The threat of nuclear war with China is increasing by the day. The main priest liaison to the White House comes in for a publicity photo shoot with the president. He’s going to bless him and pray for peace. But, while there, the assistant priest (who’s a bit of an unorthodox modern priest) notices some things are off about the president. He shares with his boss afterwards that he thinks the president may be possessed. And this starts a chain of events where major religious figures in the area secretly get together and discuss if this could be true. Most aren’t buying it but the young priest is insistent.  They come to the conclusion that they need more information. This needs to be handled delicately. So they want to first interview the president. Ask him some questions to covertly find out if he’s possessed. This is complicated by the fact that some people in the White House aren’t at all religious and they have no interest in letting this happen. But the point is, they have to work their way up to confirm that he is possessed and then, once they think he is, they have to perform the exorcism, which is its own shitshow in getting approved. And it’s just a night of total chaos.

Title: RED SHIFT
Logline: His first night on the job, a paramedic must contend with the reality that the city he is working is on the brink of a zombie outbreak, and the patient he’s got in the back of his van is ground zero.

Why I chose it: To me, the most exciting part of any zombie movie is the initial outbreak. That’s where all the chaos is. That’s where you get all the fun stuff. So by constructing a concept that allows you to play exclusively in that period is exciting. But what took the idea over the top was creating this specific job we see the outbreak through: the paramedic. You can create so many fresh movie ideas just by changing the point of view of how we’re watching the story unfold. Rushing around in an ambulance during a zombie outbreak is an extremely exciting angle to tell this story from.

Where it can go wrong: Funny enough, I did not like part of this logline. I never resonated with the patient in his ambulance being patient 0. I just don’t see how that makes the story better. Who cares who patient zero is in the middle of a chaotic zombie outbreak? Patient zero isn’t going to help you now. I bring this up because I want to remind everybody who writes a logline not to think you’re beholden to it. That’s just your starting point. It is not written in stone. If you can come up with a better main character or a better goal for the story, I don’t care if those things conflict with what you originally conceived. You should always make the choices that are best for your screenplay and sometimes those ideas come to you long after you’ve written the logline.

How to do this concept right: Of the five concepts that received a yes, this one should be the easiest to write (no pressure!). I say that because this concept comes with a cheat code. You can create the next bit of story momentum whenever you want by simply injecting a new dispatch. The operator tells him where he needs to go next and then it’s a race to get there, as the outbreak is worsening. And the drama will come from each dispatch being harder to execute than the last. I also suspect that, at some point, he’s going to be placed on a run for a high-profile person needing assistance. And that will be the hardest run of all.

Title: IT’S THE WORST TIME OF THE YEAR
Logline: Two successful, single businesswomen from the big city get trapped in a Hallmark movie nightmare where it’s always fall — but weirdly somehow also always Christmas. They’re forced to open a bakery, enter the pie contest, solve the weekly town murder, and date the impossibly hot plaid-wearing widower — all while trying to find a way to escape before increasingly aggressive townspeople trap them in this hellscape, force them to give up their lives and drink pumpkin spiced lattes….forever.

Why I chose it: This is the most interesting concept in the entire competition, in my opinion. That’s not to say it’s a slam dunk. This is a unique take on a horror film and that means it may not work. But if the writer executes it well, it could be genius. I’ll tell you the exact part of the logline that gave me the hope it could achieve that. It was this part: “…but weirdly somehow also always Christmas.” That line tells me that the writer understands the world of Hallmark movies on a microscopic level. Because that’s exactly what they’re like. They want the best of both worlds – the cozy fall stuff for the romance and then Christmas for the family conflict and something to build the climax around.

Where it can go wrong: When you have unique ideas, you have to be willing to take more risks with those ideas. Because the worst thing you can do when you have a weird idea is to execute it in an obvious, predictable fashion. I will give you some ideas below for the script but I don’t trust those ideas because it only took me one minute to come up with them. You should be spending hours thinking about the directions in which you could take this. And push yourself to explore avenues that the average writer wouldn’t have thought of.

How to do this concept right: I would start by asking the writer, why does it have to be two businesswomen? Shouldn’t it be a man and woman who work at the same company who are here on a business trip, who aren’t attracted to each other at all, but maybe that romance grows over the course of the movie? That way you’d have a real relationship to compare to all these fake manufactured cheesy Hallmark relationships. Or, if you want to go darker, maybe they’re both in separate relationships but cheating on their spouses. That way, they’re also in contrast with the perfect smiling happy couples in Hallmarkville. As for the plot, it should be easy to pull off. Your heroes have a goal: To get out of this. But they have to work within the Hallmark movie structure, which is classic generic screenplay structure (everything is leading up to the big town Christmas dance). And you would somehow set it up so that, if that Christmas dance comes and goes, they’re stuck here forever. So, they need to find a way out before that dance.

Curious to hear your thoughts on where these writers should take their scripts. All ideas welcome!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a psychiatrist and his sickly wife travel to their country cabin for a quiet Thanksgiving weekend, they will have to deal with an unexpected visit from one of his patients, who claims his dead twin brother is after him for revenge.
About: This script finished with 11 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Dani Feito
Details: 113 pages

(note: I strongly encourage you to read this script before reading the review. This is a spoiler-heavy screenplay).

A funny thing happened when I went through the loglines on the 2024 Black List to see what to review today. There isn’t a single logline on that list that’s better than the top 75 loglines in the Blood & Ink Showdown.

My bar for loglines has risen considerably after this month. And everything on the Black List is just so tame in comparison to what we were able to generate for the Blood & Ink Contest. So, good on you guys.

The reason behind my decision to read this script is that I like these setups. I like when people are in a remote area and you throw some potentially dangerous x-factor character into the mix. I love the psychological games that are played in those early parts of the screenplay, before all has been revealed. I like that you can take advantage of dramatic irony, choosing which information to share with the reader before sharing it with the characters. They’re just fun setups to play with and fun setups to read.

But this is the Black List! And as I was just telling a couple of writers the other day, the industry only pays attention to the top 5 scripts on the list these days. I’m the only one in town who really pays attention to anything past the top 10. And I do that because there are still a handful of gems in those bottom 60 and it’s fun to discover them.

Case in point: There is a swimming pool.

Extra Scriptshadow points to those who know that reference.

Is today’s script the next “there is a swimming pool?” Let’s find out.

Dr. Howard Lacey, 50s, is a psychiatrist who’s recently ventured into podcasting to detail some of his patients’ woes. Specializing in twins, his latest series focuses on David, who had a twin brother with cerebral palsy. Later in life, his brother would die in an accidental fire in his home and David has always felt guilty about it.

Howard is looking forward to Thanksgiving with his wife, Karen, who’s recovering from open heart surgery after a heart attack. The two head up to their remote cabin in the mountains and share a meal with their neighbors, George and Megan.

Afterwards, Howard gets a call. His patient, David, is outside the house! He claims that his brother is trying to kill him. Karen is terrified and begins hyperventilating but Howard insists he can de-escalate the situation, letting David in.

David insists his brother is in the house. Karen is deteriorating quickly. Howard gets into a scuffle with David. And the next thing we know, David has Howard on the floor and strangles him to death. He then turns to Karen, insisting that she is his dead twin, and comes to kill her but it doesn’t matter. She has a heart attack and dies.

(Spoilers start now)

As soon as she dies, Howard stands up. He’s… fine? Not only is he fine but David starts speaking in a British accent? Ah, it turns out that this was planned out months ago. David is a completely constructed person. He never had a twin. It was all a lie to lead up to this moment. Howard’s business is crumbling. He’s in financial duress. And his wife (along with all her annoying medical expenses) was bleeding him dry. So he needed her 5 million dollar life insurance policy.

Howard and David rejoice. Howard goes to get David’s share of the money and when he comes back, shoots David. He was never going to give this punk a dime. He then orchestrates a pretend freaked out phone call to the police, and soon they’re there. But there is now a problem. It turns out that Karen is still breathing!

They take Karen to the hospital as Howard tries to figure out what to do. That’s when he’s confronted by Amanda. Amanda is David’s ACTUAL twin! And she wants the money that was owed to David. When the hospital only agrees to release Karen back to Howard if there is a nurse present, Howard and Amanda concoct a plan where she’ll be the nurse and the two will scare Karen to death (as Amanda will pretend to be David’s original ghost twin) so she’ll have her final heart attack. Will this plan work? You tell me!

When screenwriter Dani Feito went to the Twist Store on La Brea and Olympic to buy herself a prime twist for her screenplay, the store must’ve been offering a deal. Cause instead of picking up just one, she bought half a dozen!

Does it all work?

No.

You can’t possibly make a script work with that many twists. But, is the script entertaining?

Welllllllllll… let me put it this way: It sure as hell tries to be.

Everything leading up to that first twist is great. I mean it really is. I thought I might be giving out an “impressive” rating, which doesn’t come often for Black List scripts these days.

But a big question lingered: How does a script with 80 pages left to go get better after a world-beater of a twist? I didn’t see how it was possible. And I turned out to be right.

Every 20 pages of Twin Soul gets sillier than the previous 20 pages.

The first issue was the hospital. We were neck-deep in conflict and suspense and excitement for those first 30 pages. Everything before that twist was built up at the perfect pace. Now, all of a sudden, we’re waiting around?  Doing nothing?

Feito has to abide by some level of real-world believability in regards to the hospital and police allowing Karen to come back home. So, we have to wait 24-48 hours for her to be released from the hospital. And, when that happened, all the momentum and energy seeped out of the story like air out of a cheap balloon.

Then David’s real twin, Amanda, shows up, and I knew the script was cooked. It feels way too forced. And then when the two come up with a plan to work together to kill Karen, whereby Amanda is going to be pretend to be the nurse – any hope that the script could rebound melted away like ice cream on a hot summer day.

Why didn’t this work?

Because the writer already established a very clever first act. I wouldn’t say it was perfect in the sense that you could believe Howard would get away with it. But it was definitely plausible. He thought of everything and was very careful about even the smallest of details.

Meanwhile, once the wife comes back to the house and he and Amanda are planning to kill her again, Howard literally does two-dozen sloppy things that any cop would easily catch. In retrospect, it destroyed that genius opening. Because all of that meticulous planning was erased by the sloppiest murder plan ever.

How could this have been fixed?

For one, the script can’t be 113 pages. It needs to be 100. More pages just means more areas to screw up in a script like this. Keep it lean. Have the shocking murder twist happen at the midpoint as opposed to the end of the first act. Now, you only have 50 pages to fill instead of 80. You’re in a much more manageable place structurally.

I would get rid of the stupid female twin character and bring in a real mandatory nurse for Karen, as was originally suggested by the hospital. That nurse is the only thing standing in the way between Howard being able to kill his wife or not. You could add some ticking time bomb whereby Karen’s mom, who lives across the country, is showing up in two days to help her daughter recover. So, he’s only got two days to kill her. And this nurse character gives you one more opportunity for a final twist (she could have her own agenda).

In other words, keep it simple. Where these scripts suffer is when writers try to add too many variables. The more variables, the more sloppy things are, the more the writer has to keep track of. And because it’s impossible to keep track of everything, you inevitably create a ton of plot holes.

There were so many good things in the first 30 pages of this script. But with how spectacularly the plot falls apart after that, I unfortunately can’t recommend it.

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

What I learned: Cleverness in screenwriting demands precision. There’s no tolerance for sloppiness, not even a trace. When you promise the audience intelligence, you’re committing to a script without holes. In fact, you want the opposite: every creative choice must be meticulously crafted and purposeful. That level of care clearly wasn’t maintained in Twin Soul beyond the first act. Which is too bad. Because boy what a first act it was.

If you haven’t been on the site lately, we’ve spent the last two weekends pitching horror loglines.

It’s a cool experiment and, even better, it’s an experiment that’s working. Regardless of whether people enter or get into the Showdown, what I wanted to convey with this challenge is the risk of going with the first movie concept you come up with.

We all like our movie concepts, no matter how dumb they are. Because there’s something in them that speaks to us. But what we often ignore is whether they speak to other people. And, unfortunately, those other people matter. Because you’re not writing a movie for yourself. You want other people to see it.

I’ve seen so many instances in this challenge where a writer pitches a bad idea and my thought process is, “What the heck are they thinking? This is awful.” It gets a ‘no’ and it gets no upvotes, confirming that it’s not a good idea.

Then, three hours later, that same writer will pitch something that gets 20 upvotes and a ‘strong maybe.’ All of a sudden you’ve got a genuine movie idea on your hands. And, without this contest, that writer may have never considered the better idea because they didn’t get any feedback on the first one, then assumed it was good, and wrote it instead, wasting 8 months of their life on something that never had a chance.

Here’s a great example. An early pitch by Stephen that got a no.

People of Walmart

The day before Turkey Day. Ruthless Walmart crowds. A mark takes refuge from pursuit by a dogged bounty hunter. But this hunter has some special gadgets up his sleeve… because this mark? A shapeshifting Chimera. Will the people of Walmart turn on one another or band together to survive this mythological foe?

And then here’s this idea he pitched that got a yes.

Red Shift

His first night on the job, a paramedic must contend with the reality that the city he is working is on the brink of a zombie outbreak, and the patient he’s got in the back of his van is ground zero.

No shade on Walmart or Chimeras but one of these is a clear movie and the other isn’t.

And people… THAT’S FINE.

That’s what this is all about. It’s about trying ideas out to see what works and what doesn’t. That’s a huge strength of this community. It gives us an advantage over the studios. Because everybody in a studio has an agenda and a ton of those agendas have nothing to do with trying to make the best movies possible.  But here, if your idea is good enough, it will find a way through, one way or another.

Now, what surprised me about this weekend was that none of the Star Commenters voted an idea in. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing. I’m just surprised is all. But it tells me that maybe I’m a little more lenient than I thought I was. These guys are the true tough crowd.

Going forward, I’m worried for anyone who has a serial killer idea. I’m so sick of seeing “serial killer” in a logline at this point that my knee-jerk reaction every time I see it is to give it a ‘no.’

Too many writers think that certain subjects or phrases or words are enough for the concept to be worthy. For example, if they want to write about something mundane, like an Amazon factory worker, they think they can end the logline with “serial killer” and they’ve all of a sudden got a movie.

No.

Any tried and true horror element you use has to still be integrated into the story in a clever way. A logline is not a series of separate pieces. It’s a series of interconnected pieces that add up to a compelling whole.

So it’s not that I’ll never like a serial killer idea again. But the second I sense that “serial killer” was shoved onto a half-baked premise, there’s no way that logline is advancing.

And “serial killer” is a stand-in for any horror trope – vampires, hell, werewolves, witches. The elements around those things have to be well thought out if you want a chance to compete in the Blood and Ink Showdown.

The more frustrating thing is that there are quite a few writers who keep posting weak loglines and they’re not reflecting on them to figure out what’s wrong. So they keep making the same mistakes. And I don’t have the time to coach them through the problems and help them get better.

But if you’re one of these writers who hasn’t gotten at least a ‘soft maybe,’ I would do some reflection and consider whether there’s a consistent mistake you’re making.

For example, some loglines are so long that we get lost when we read them. Some loglines lack a big enough hook. Some loglines stay so much on the surface that we don’t feel anything deep enough to care about. Some loglines are clearly rushed. So many loglines start out with a hook then devolve into such vague actions for the hero that it’s clear the writer has no idea what the movie would be past the first act.

Ask for feedback from the people on the site. If you get a note once, consider it. If you get the same note from two different people, that’s a confirmation that there’s a real problem there.

And I know some of you think of loglines as these necessary evils that you just aren’t good at and you think they don’t matter because what really matters is the screenplay, so you assume this contest just isn’t for you.

I’m sorry but loglines definitely matter. You know how I know? Because every good writer I’ve ever known knows how to write a good logline. The reason they know is because they understand that if you can’t explain what your movie is about quickly in written form, then there’s probably something wrong with the idea. Because the logline should be an overall directive for what happens in your script. If it’s unclear, your will script will be unclear.

You can fight this notion all you want but I’m one of the few people in this town who can actually confirm it. Because I’ve read thousands of loglines then read the scripts for those loglines, and I can tell you that a poor logline is one of the surest signs that the script will not only be bad, but be bad in the exact same way that the logline was bad (for example, if the logline is unfocused, the script will be unfocused).

Unless you’re a writer-director and know how to use cinema’s visual language to make up for weaknesses in your screenplay, that’s going to be the case.

So, what can we expect for next week? Will there be a new way to get in? I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. I can tell you this, though. We have to do something about the campaigning. I get that it’s hard for people to find loglines to upvote inside 2500 comments. But more scripts are getting through via upvotes than I expected. So I think the formula is working just fine.

I’m thinking of eliminating writers who delete their pitches after they’ve received my vote. This pitch session is a learning experience for writers who come to the site and we can’t learn if pitches are being deleted. And it’s just bad form. I might allow for one deletion since everybody has that one precious idea that they want to protect. But that’s probably it.

I haven’t counted all the submissions that have gotten through yet but I believe we’re on pace for 60 scripts in the contest, which would be perfect. I’m expecting that a third of the entrants won’t complete their screenplay, which depresses me but I’m just being realistic. That leaves 40 scripts, every single one of them a good movie idea. That’s more than enough.

Next weekend will be an extra long pitch session as Monday is Labor Day. So that should get crazy. Keep working on those loglines people! Don’t wait until the last second. Loglines need to be rewritten until they’re perfect, just like scripts.

And if you need help, you can always order a logline consultation from me. Just e-mail me here: carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Thank you everybody for a fun weekend! And if you haven’t made it through yet, KEEP TRYING! You’ve got two more weekends.

P.S. If your soft maybe, maybe, strong maybe, or yes haven’t been counted, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and let me know. Also, if I never responded to your pitch, e-mail me as well and I’ll remedy that.

Pitching closed for the weekend!

Last weekend, we had over 1000 logline pitches for the Blood and Ink Showdown. A lucky dozen writers got a golden ticket into the official competition. How do you get a golden ticket? Let me tell you a little about the contest first.

I have a direct line to, arguably, the biggest person in horror in all of Hollywood. And this person trusts my taste implicitly. If I send him a script, he’ll start reading it within 10 minutes. But, his bar is EXTREMELY HIGH.

So, I thought, let’s build a screenplay contest around that.

Instead of allowing anybody to enter, I will only allow good horror concepts that I know will have a realistic shot with this person. That’s where these pitch sessions come in. You pitch your horror logline down in the comments and I will tell you whether the idea is good enough to advance into the official competition, in which case, you will write the entire script. Don’t worry, you have time. The deadline for Blood and Ink will be mid-to-late February.

Here are the responses I will leave after your pitch and what they mean.

No – Doesn’t make the cut.
Soft Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again next week.
Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again immediately.
Strong Maybe – You’re in.
Yes – You’re in plus special treatment.

You get FIVE logline pitches. So, make sure they’re good. Last weekend people were throwing anything and everything against the wall and it didn’t work. What worked were when writers pitched well thought-out ideas. I’ve been pitched upwards of 30,000 loglines in my life so I can tell when a writer hasn’t put in the effort.

If you’re worried that I’m too hard to please, you still have a shot. Consistent Commenters, Brenkilco, Jaco, Poe, Scott Crawford, and Arthur all get ONE YES they can give out over these final three pitch weekends. But don’t get too excited. I overheard some of them saying they wouldn’t have given anything a ‘yes’ last weekend. For all I know, they may be harder to impress than me.

There is one other way to get in.

GET 15 UPVOTES

If your idea gets 15 upvotes, you’re automatically in. So, I encourage everyone here to be constantly screening the newest entries and upvoting any concept you like. It could literally change a writer’s life. And this supersedes a “no.” So, even if I “no” a concept, it can still advance with 15 votes.

For those of you re-pitching your ‘maybes’ from last week, those do not count against your 5 loglines. But, you only get one shot with them. I will decide if they’re dead or move on.

For each pitch, all I want is your…

Title:
and
Logline:

Okay, let’s get to it!

P.S. If you want more of a conversation about your logline pitches, rather than just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ or you want to pitch your ideas in private, you can order my logline service. It’s $25 for a logline analysis (along with a yes or no) and $50 for unlimited e-mails where we potentially workshop a weak logline into something that is contest worthy. There are no guarantees, though. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.