This is a re-post of the original Disciple Program review that I posted on February 24th because….The Disciple Program just sold! With Mark Wahlberg and Morten Tyldum attached, an awesome new director who directed a film called “Headhunters” (google for the trailer). Congrats to Tyler. I know he had higher offers out there but his goal was to get this movie made so he’s been carefully working with WME packaging the thing so that this is a movie and not just one of the 9 in 10 script sales that never gets made. I’ll be putting together an interview with Tyler soon so we can go over all of the nitty gritty details with you guys. It’s been pretty interesting watching the entire process of a script from that crazy first day to finally selling. Lots of stuff I never knew goes on behind the scenes. So for the weekend, chalk one up to SS and a fellow Scriptshadow reader. We’re on the board!

A review of the screenplay that’s turned into one of the rarer more interesting screenwriting stories in awhile.  And yours truly found himself in the middle of it. :)

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A man begins an investigation into his wife’s mysterious death, only to find that it goes much deeper than he imagined.
About: The first amateur script to ever crack The Scriptshadow Top 10. Tyler was an unsold unrepped writer out of Brooklyn when he sent this to me. After I sent the script out to half a dozen industry contacts on Wednesday, the script has found its way into every agency, management company, and studio in town. Late yesterday, Tyler finally made his decision to go with WME, who will put a package together for the project and go out with it in the near future.
Writer: Tyler Marceca
Details: 114 pages

As the creator of this blog, I dreamt of this moment. I wanted to find a script that nobody else knew about, that no studio or producer or agent or manager knew existed and celebrate it here in front of the world for the first time. I was hoping to do this on a regular basis. But as we’ve found out together over the past three years, good scripts are hard to come by.

Well, I finally found one. And it all happened rather unexpectedly. Tyler contacted me out of nowhere to consult on his latest screenplay. My prices have gone up a bit in recent months so I got the feeling he was reluctant. But in the end, he decided to go for it, and sent me a script called “The Disciple Program.” “Cool title,” I thought to myself, then prepared to note away.

I don’t know what time travel feels like but I’m assuming it feels something like this. I remember starting the script, then looking up and seeing that I was on page 30! *And I hadn’t written a single note down.* Just for reference, I usually have a couple pages of notes by the end of the first act.

Hmm, I thought. That’s odd. This never happens. But a small part of me was still worried. I’ve read a lot of good first acts, only to find a writer who doesn’t know how to navigate a second act. So I kept waiting for the jenga pieces to crumble. Not because I wanted them to. Good God, finding a great script is every reader’s dream. But because that’s what usually happens. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

But ten more pages passed and it still wasn’t crumbling. Ten MORE pages passed, and it actually *started getting better.* And then the midpoint came and I realized, Holy Shit, this is the real deal.

And when you hit the real deal as a reader, it’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world. The only thing better are those divine moments of inspiration you get as a writer.

So afterwards, naturally, I called up Tyler and said, “Where the f&%* did you come from???” And he said, “Brooklyn.” After talking to him for awhile, I learned that this script had actually started from a contest – The Writer’s Store “Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest.” They do a unique thing where they give you a high concept yet slightly generic logline from a professional screenwriter (in this case it was Robert Mark Kamen – the writer of “Taken”) and then you send them ten pages at a time, for which they provide feedback, and in the end they name the winner. He informed me that he had just won that contest. (I believe their new logline for this year’s contest is out if you want to check it out!).

That didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, Disciple Program looks like a winner from the very first scene. It takes that old screenwriting axiom of “Make your first ten pages great” and crushes it with a thousand megatons of failed screenplays. Great is for amateurs. It goes for amazing.

We meet Jocelyn, a psychiatrist at a mental hospital – that’s gotta be a rewarding job – who’s been tasked with probing the mind of a convicted serial killer. He’s not quite Hannibal Lecter territory. But I’m guessing this guy’s nibbled on his share of human flesh.

At this point I’m musing, “Okay, this might be a cool scene. Scary ass lunatic in a tiny room with a vulnerable woman. Only one guard nearby. I’m digging it.” Well, a few pages later, the man regurgitates a shiv, grabs the guard, stabs him a dozen times before he can blink, then, still handcuffed to the chair, he starts reaching out, desperately trying to do the same to Jocelyn, who’s inches out of his reach.

As long as she stays in this exact spot, he can’t get to her. That is until he starts CUTTING OFF HIS OWN HAND WITH HIS SHIV, desperate to get across that table and kill Jocelyn. Who the fuck is this guy? Is he nuts?? Well, yeah, I guess he is. But this goes beyond “nuts.” It’s like he values killing this woman more than his own life. That can’t be normal, can it? Then, just when it seems like he’s going to succeed, guards race in and save her.

In the meantime, we meet Jocelyn’s husband, Roger, one of those predator drone pilots. He gets to send planes into hostile territory, take the enemy out, fly home, without ever leaving his computer. When Roger hears about the attack on his wife, he hurries over to the hospital. But when he tries to console her, she’s stand-offish, distant. We realize that even a near-death experience can’t repair the issues these two have going on. Roger clearly wants to be closer to his wife. But she’s put up a wall.

So Roger takes Jocelyn home, figuring a little rest will calm them both, and maybe he can deal with this tomorrow morning. But he never gets that opportunity. When he wakes up, he finds Jocelyn dead in their swimming pool.

The coroner calls it an accidental drowning, but Roger has a funny feeling about it. Something’s not right here. So he looks deeper, going so far as to inspect the body himself, and what he finds is shocking. On the back of her neck is a piece of carefully placed synthetic skin, meant to blend in with her real skin. He rips it off to find a small pin prick.

There’s no doubt now. Somebody killed his wife. But who? And why? She’s just a psychiatrist who works at a mental hospital.

That’s where Roger begins the investigation. He wants to talk to Cut-Off-His-Hand Dude. Not surprisingly, the guy isn’t the best conversationalist. But to his credit, it’s looking like his attack and her murder are unrelated. Yet when Roger checks the security tapes, he sees that in the hour leading up to his wife’s attack, every camera in the facility was turned off. Hmm…Strange.

It doesn’t take long for Roger to realize that if someone wanted his wife dead, they probably want anyone looking into her death dead too. As if on cue, a couple of highly trained killers move in, Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist, gas Roger in his home, and take him out to a remote cliff to put an end to his life.

Roger barely squirms out of that one, and when he does, he realizes just how bad this is. While Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist are two of the most lethal killers on the planet, they’re chicken feed compared to the people he just pissed off. These men will stop at nothing – NOTHING – to kill Roger. What they don’t account for, however, is that Roger’s just as determined as they are, and he WILL hold responsible the people who killed his wife.

Where do I start with this one? I basically loved everything about it. Surprise, huh? Seeing as I’ve been tweeting about it every 10 seconds for the last 72 hours. The only thing that sucks about The Disciple Program is figuring out where to start with its awesomeness.

I guess I’ll start with its consistency. Bad amateur scripts have one good scene followed by 10 average scenes. Then another good scene, followed by 6 bad scenes. Tyler made sure EVERY – SINGLE – SCENE was worth reading here. There were no bridge scenes. He didn’t take any scenes off. Every single scene mattered. Every single scene was *dramatized.* That’s what was so cool about The Disciple Program. It never allowed you to NOT like it.

The next thing I noticed was the intelligence. Most bad scripts feel like they were slapped together by someone who keeps “Jackass 3” saved on their Tivo and eats Fruit Loops for dinner. There’s no depth to the writing. There’s nothing about the world they create that you haven’t seen before in other films or TV shows. So it all feels generic. Here, there was a genuine intelligence, uniqueness and understanding of the world in the writing. It was so convincing, in fact, that I called Tyler afterwards and asked him how long he’d been on leave and when he had to go back. He laughed and assured me he’s never been in the military. But I don’t know. I think there’s more to that story.

What really made this stand out though were the characters. Every single character in this script is memorable. I can’t BEGIN to tell you how rare this is. From the wife to Roger to the nurse to “The Arsonist” to the big man in charge, Ambrose, to the military men Ambrose hires (Arroyo and Vickrey) to the even bigger man in charge, Beau. This is the area that really separates the top dogs from the lap dogs. Strong writers know how to make their characters unique. Newbies don’t put any effort into character creation, therefore it’s rare for any of their characters to stand out.

I’ll say it again but they – along with everything else – felt so SPECIFIC. The way Ambrose goes about recruiting a couple of dangerous U.S. soldiers with sordid pasts to help him take down Roger – I’ve never read a scene like that. It was just so convincing. I’m used to writers bullshitting their way through those scenes. I felt that Tyler had either been in that exact same situation himself (yes I REALLY thought that) or he’d researched the shit out of how these conversations typically go down (which is even scarier when you think about it – where do you find people who have been in that kind of situation before?).

And the scene construction here – it’s just SO good. Every single scene BUILDS. There was suspense, conflict, curiosity. It was like each scene had its own story. Each scene stood on its own.

One of my favorite scenes was when Nurse Kathy and The Arsonist gas Roger. He wakes up, paralyzed in a car. He can SEE The Arsonist and Nurse Kathy in front of him, but he CAN’T MOVE. They’ve drugged him. So all he can do is watch helplessly as they set up his fake suicide – a plan that includes manually inserting a liter of whisky into his stomach then pushing his car off a cliff.

It was one of the most intense scenes I’ve ever read. He’s just WATCHING them casually plan his death and there’s nothing he can do about it. All you’re thinking is, “How the hell is he going to get out of this one??”

(spoiler) Then, just as the arrogant gloating Nurse Kathy puts the finishing touches on her Rembrandt, she looks into his eyes, as if to taunt him one last time. And there’s something she sees that’s not quite right. In a brilliant payoff (that’s too complicated to get into here), Roger wasn’t paralyzed at all. He swiftly GRABS her and proceeds to take both her and The Arsonist out, forcing Kathy, in particular, to suffer just as horrible a death as she was planning for him.

And that’s the thing about this character – he was so badass! He was so capable, so clever. Usually, when I read these screenplays, the methods by which the characters get out of situations are entirely dependent on the writer helping them. Here, Tyler writes himself into corners, practically daring himself to find a way out. This forces him to come up with really clever solutions to things. Every time it happened, I would just get this big smile on my face. A smile of, “I fucking never see this in screenplays. This is nuts!”

Another thing I’m always telling you guys to do is to make sure your script builds. Make sure that each challenge in the script is bigger than the last. Most of the scripts I read go in the opposite direction. Writers throw everything into those first 45 pages then don’t know what to do next. So the rest of the script is one long balloon deflating.

We start Disciple with serial killer Edmund, move up to third tier villains The Arsonist and Nurse Kathy. Then we get to Ambrose, who’s just about the coolest most confident villain you’ll ever meet. He hires two military men and goes on a personal vendetta to end Roger’s life. But Ambrose is nothing compared to our final villain, the man above him, Beau. This guy practically runs the CIA with an iron fist. So you really get the sense that our character is going up against bigger and bigger obstacles.

I haven’t even gotten to the dialogue, which was amazing (Go read the scene where Beau and Ambrose are out on their respective building decks with Beau giving Ambrose the business – fucking awesome). This had some of the best monologues I’ve read in a script. There wasn’t a single moment in the story where I didn’t believe what was coming out of a character’s mouth. That NEVER happens when I read a script.

Let’s see…the pace was great. The structure was great. The writing was top-notch. Am I leaving anything out? I mean, when I read a script, I’m charting about 8 things that show a mastery of the craft. They include things like character, structure, dialogue, pacing, conflict, theme, that sort of stuff. Most amateur scripts I read are lucky to have 1. This may be the first script I’ve read to have all 8.

There were really only a couple of things I thought could be improved. There are times when the prose feels a bit overwritten. I discussed this with Tyler and he’s just a guy who likes words. He’s not out to prove that he knows more than you. His inspiration is writers like Brad Ingelsby (The Low Dweller) so that’s just his style. I’d like him to keep it a little simpler but then again, I’m not the one who wrote this great script. So I’ll trust him.

And next, I felt like there was a missed opportunity with the Predator Drone. It pops up late LATE in the script. But I would’ve liked to have seen it featured somewhere. I mean you have this guy who pilots predator drones. That’s got set-piece scene written all over it. I suggested a scene to Tyler of having to access the drone from some ratty old laptop when surrounded in the remote cabin (he’s stuck in a remote cabin near the midpoint) and have to use a really bad internet connection to get the drone out there to kill his assassins before they move in and kill him. Tyler’s response to that idea was about five seconds of silence, lol, so I knew where I stood with that one. I’m just going to leave the writing to him. But I would like a bigger predator drone scene.

A couple of weeks ago, finishing Disciple, I knew I had found something special. I knew that these kinds of moments don’t come around often – finding a really great script from an unknown writer. But I had no idea that it would blow up as big as it did over the past few days. I mean, I had producers calling me saying they’d been forwarded the script by four different people in the last hour. I heard over a dozen producers were flying around trying to put the project together with multiple packages. My phone blew up (I don’t know how – nobody has my number) as I quickly realized I was in a strange sort of interim manager position since Tyler didn’t have any reps. That’s what was so unique about this. Usually when this kind of thing happens, it’s a calculated thing with agents and managers carefully orchestrating the buzz. It’s never really been done like this before so nobody knew – even seasoned producers – where to go or what to do. Including myself!

And it was a little nerve-wracking and fun talking with Tyler during the process, who when I first told him I was going to send the script out to some contacts, expected to field 3 calls, maybe 4 tops. He didn’t expect to be on the phone for 8 straight hours two days in a row. He didn’t expect to have to turn down calls from producers who just days ago he would’ve sold his left arm to talk to. It was insane.

But towards the end of yesterday, when Tyler finally signed with WME, and he finally had a second to just breathe, he said something that really stuck with me. He said, “Carson. I don’t want to deal with any of this stuff. I just wanna write.” And it was a really cool moment because I remembered that all of this craziness was just that – craziness. And what matters most is the writing. To that end, I think Tyler’s set for a long time.

Screenplay Link: The Disciple Program

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 10!!!)
[ ] genius

What I Learned: I have a funny little postscript to this experience. So after I finished The Disciple Program, raced to my phone, called Tyler, and asked him where the hell he came from, we had a couple of laughs and then he casually mentioned that he’d sent me a script 8 months ago for notes. What?? I said. You’ve sent me a script before?? There’s no way I would’ve forgotten a script by this writer. So after the call, I went back through my notes and indeed, found an old script that I covered for him. I quickly remembered it. It was a script with all sorts of talent. But the story itself was all over the place and muddled. And I remember giving him that note. That he needs to focus his story more because the talent is clearly there. And just 8 months later, he came up with this. And I think that should serve as a motivator to every writer out there. You’re going to learn with each script. You’re going to get better with each script. You just have to keep writing. So stay inspired. Your own breakout moment could be a script away. :)

I read way too many boring scripts. And the thing is, the whole time I’m thinking, “Aww man, if they had just done this or done that, the script would be so much better.” I want to reach through the screen and correct their mistakes for them. But I can’t. And that’s what’s the most frustrating. They don’t even know what they’re doing wrong – so they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again – and I’m helpless to stop it.

Which is why I’m writing today’s article. If there’s anyone who knows what makes a script boring, it’s me. And I’m here to reveal those mistakes so that you guys don’t make them anymore. Some of them will be easy to apply and some of them will take – gulp – years of practice. But at LEAST you’ll know what they are, which gives you a fighting chance. The biggest reason for a bad screenplay is ignorance – not knowing or understanding the mechanics of what make a story work. Well my friends, consider yourselves enlightened. Here are 10 possible reasons people are bored with your script.

Your movie idea isn’t interesting – This one seems obvious and yet it’s the most ignored piece of advice I give. Writers simply come up with uninteresting ideas. They want to write about a man coming to terms with the death of his mother or a woman’s road trip to discover the meaning of life. There’s no CONCEPT there. There’s no ironic component to make you sit up and notice. You need a SPECIFIC INTERESTING IDEA to explore or else we won’t care. So please, for the love of all that is holy, test-drive your idea with a dozen people before you write your script. If nobody seems that excited (beware fake excitement – which friends and family are good at) then move on to a better idea. It doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are if your idea is boring.

You’re writing scenes that say the exact same thing – New writers take four or five scenes to make a point. Pro writers take one scene to make a point. Because of that, their scripts move faster and because of *that*, their stories are more entertaining. For example, if you want to point out that your main character is afraid to get close to people, then give us an early scene showing them pull away from an emotional moment. Do NOT then follow that scene with four extra scenes specifically showing different versions of that exact same point. That’s not to say you won’t keep hitting on your hero’s flaw throughout the screenplay. But you should only have one scene specifically dedicated to it. That’s the problem with a lot of young writers. They repeat the same things over and over and OVER again when we got it the first time. It’s MUCH more important to keep your story moving than it is to drive your point down our throats. 

Lack of a compelling/interesting/intriguing main character – Oh my God this one is huge. Your main character is who we’re going to be following for the entire movie. So guess what? If he’s got nothing going on, we’re going to be bored! Too many writers make their characters Average Joes doing average things. And yes, some movies require that type of protagonist, but you HAVE to find something interesting about them if we’re going to follow them around enthusiastically. Maybe your hero’s like Indiana Jones, who’s a professor by day and a superhero by night. Maybe he’s a janitor at MIT who’s secretly genius. Or maybe he’s just a really funny dude who doesn’t have any ambition (Knocked Up). Whatever the case, your main character has to be interesting in some way because if he’s not, it doesn’t matter what your plot is. We’ll be bored.

There’s no point to your scene – Pointless scenes are script killers. I usually run into pointless scenes as early as the second scene of the screenplay. In fact, that’s a pretty common place to find them because most writers know what their big fun exciting opening scene is going to be before they write their script. But once that scene is over and they get to characters actually talking, it’s like the writer doesn’t know what to do any more. It’s like they think as long as two characters are having a dialogue – regardless of what they’re talking about – that they’re doing their job. Wrong. If there’s no point to your scene – if characters aren’t trying to get something out of the scene or out of the other character, you’re just talking to yourself. One of the easiest ways to make a scene interesting is to make sure the characters in it want something. That desire (that point) will suck the reader in.

Endless action – Endless action is one of those false security blankets. Young writers believe that as long as there’s a lot of action happening, the reader will be entertained. But actually, if you’re giving us endless action, it’s just as boring as giving us endless dialogue. The reason action scenes work is because of what’s at stake. They work because you’ve used the previous 20 pages to set up how important this heist is or this battle is or this race is. Without that prep to establish the stakes, it’s just mindless action. So if you’re jumping from one action sequence to another with little to no breaks in between, I guarantee you we’re getting bored.

Scenes without conflict – Think of your scenes as a tug-of-war. One person in the scene wants one thing – the other person in the scene wants another thing. You write the scene to figure out who’s going to win that tug-of-war. Maybe Person A wins. Maybe Person B wins. Maybe nobody wins. But the fact that something is trying to be gained is what’s going to keep the scene entertaining. New writers RARELY add conflict to their scenes which is why their scenes are so boring. Now conflict can be tricky. It’s not just two people being angry with one another. In fact, sometimes a character may not even know he’s in a tug of war. So yeah, a conflict-filled scene could be as simple as a wife and husband arguing about who’s going to pick up the kids today. But it can also be a girl who secretly likes a boy and is trying to get him to realize it. Or it can be a wife who’s trying to get her husband out of the house before her lover shows up. However you look at it, scenes work best when there’s some sort of imbalance in them that needs to be resolved. So add some damn conflict to your boring scene!

Your characters are thin – I know too many writers who don’t care about digging into their characters. Some will use the excuse that they’re writing an action movie. Some will just say they’re not interested. But if you’re not digging into your characters and learning about them and understanding how they grew up and understanding the complications they went through and what regrets they have and what their dreams are and who they still hold a candle for – if you don’t know all those things about your characters, then guess what? Your characters will be thin. And thin characters are BORING characters. One of the reasons Avengers was so well-liked was because, even as an action movie, every single one of those characters had an intense backstory. I mean look at the Hulk. If that’s not a character with depth, I don’t know what is. So if they can do that in the biggest popcorn action movie of all time, then you can do it in your screenplay as well.

Not understanding the phrase “stuff needs to happen” – Stuff needs to HAPPEN in your screenplay. The problem is that young writers don’t know what the word “happen” means. They think it means your character going to bars and talking with their friends or going to work for yet another boring workday. Yeah, technically something is “happening” in those scenes, but nothing INTERESTING is happening. In order to make something of interest happen, have the scene push your story forward. So instead of plopping two characters down in a location to discuss their lives, have them trying to figure out something that has an impact on the story. Maybe one of them is thinking of moving to a new city. Maybe one of them is thinking of asking their dream girl out. Now there’s an actual purpose to the conversation so we’ll be invested in how it ends. “Happening” basically means writing a scene where you’re pushing the story forward. If you’re not doing that, your scene’s probably boring.

An unfocused story – I can tell you right now, one of the quickest ways to reading boredom is when I lose track of what’s going on. The script’s become so unfocused that I don’t care anymore. We’ve ended up in a house in another state with a character whose goal I’ve forgotten trying to contact somebody I don’t know about something that’s never been fully explained. Of course I’m bored. A lack of focus almost always stems from an unclear character goal. If we’ve forgotten (or never been told) what the protagonist is after and why, then the script drifts into a sea of murkiness. So the lesson here is, MAKE SURE THE READER KNOWS WHAT THE CHARACTER IS AFTER. There’s never any doubt that Indiana Jones is going after the Ark. That’s why that script whizzes by. So make sure you establish that and don’t be afraid to remind us every once in awhile. Because as soon as we lose track of what’s going on, we start to lose interest.

You’re not putting enough effort into your choices – Recently I read this script I felt could easily be a movie. It was very marketable and the kind of thing a studio would want to add to their slate. But it was incredibly boring. And it was boring because every choice the writer made was the most obvious choice in the world. The main character was a cliche obvious choice. The scenes were all scenes I’d seen a million times before. The funny sidekick character had nothing new to him. It was like the writer never thought past the first thing that popped into his head. It’s your job as a writer to always ask the question: “Can I come up with something better, more interesting, more original, or cooler than this?” Chances are you can. But most writers don’t take the time because it’s too much work. Well I got news for you. Screenwriting ain’t all fun. It’s work. I would go so far as to say if writing a script is pure fun for you, you’re not working hard enough. Challenge your choices. Come up with better ones. Don’t be the guy who sends out a script where everything is obvious, general, and cliché.

And there you have it. Now get back to your current screenplays and make sure you’re not making any of these mistakes. Good luck!

Can an actor jump into the screenwriting world without a hitch? Past experience tells me no. But today’s actor may break the mold.

Genre: Crime
Premise: Two brothers go on a bank-robbing spree in rural Texas with a determined near-retired Texas Ranger on their tail.
About: This script sold just a few weeks ago! The writer, Taylor Sheridan, is actually best known for a recurring role on the TV show, Sons Of Anarchy.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Details: 113 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Have to admit, didn’t know much about this one going in other than that it sold. Oh, and that the writer was an actor. So that made it interesting. Always curious to see if the front-of-the-camera guys can hack it behind the camera. Or hack it before the camera even starts rolling. Can’t be an easy transition having assistants waiting on you hand and foot one day, then being kicked by those very same feet the next.

In fact, I have a writer friend who’s writing a project for someone right now and nobody cares what he says. They’re just changing everything. And I’m listening to these changes thinking, “They can’t be serious. They’re destroying the most BASIC things that make the screenplay work.” I mean, you’d think that common sense would take over at some point. And this is a known respected filmmaker he’s working for! Yet they’re just butchering the script. So sad.

The questionably titled “Comancheria” follows two brothers, Tanner and Toby, as they make rural Texas their bank-robbing playground. Toby is the sensible brother. He’s clean cut and focused and doesn’t take chances. Tanner, on the other hand, is a loose cannon if there ever was one. These brothers haven’t spent a lot of time together lately. Tanner’s been stuck in jail and Toby’s been taking care of their dying mother, whom neither of the brothers liked much.

Needless to say, the two have very different reasons for robbing these banks. Tanner just wants some easy money. Well, that and the thrill of the game. But for Toby, this is much more personal. His wife left him a long time ago and for that reason, he has to watch his kids grow up from afar. And since every person in the history of his family has been poor, he wants to break that chain and make sure his kids have the kind of money where they’ll never have to worry again.

So after they rob a few banks, 70 year old Marcus Hamilton, a Texas Ranger about to become a Texas retiree, is called in to take a look at the robberies and see if he can’t figure out how to stop these guys. The thing with the brothers is that they’re robbing these tiny little banks out in the middle of nowhere and only taking the drawer money, which can’t be tracked.

It sure takes a lot longer than robbing a single bank vault but it’s damn effective as it’s almost impossible to get caught. But as most bank robbing sprees go, at some point something goes drastically wrong or the bank robbers get greedy. With time running out on when they need the money, Tanner gets greedy, and it’ll end up costing the brothers, potentially with their lives.

The thing that stuck out to me most about this story was how simple it was. We had two brothers with a clear goal – to rob a series of banks. We also had two “villains,” Marcus and his partner, with a clear goal, to capture the brothers.

The key to making a narrative like this work is to make sure that your hero’s goal is strong. Sheridan did a great job establishing how important stealing this money was for Toby. Everything he was doing was for his kids, who he had a very complicated but loving relationship with. As long as you establish that your hero desperately wants to achieve his goal, then by association, we’ll want him to achieve it as well.

The strength of a goal is determined mostly by motivation, and how well you establish that motivation. What that means is digging into your character and getting to know him and getting to know why he wants to do what he wants to do. Sheridan spends a lot of time in the conversations between Tanner and Toby discussing Toby’s kids, the way they’ve pulled away from him, the way his ex-wife has facilitated that divide. This is a man with nothing in this world other than his children, and even though he doesn’t know them that well, he loves them to the point where he’d do anything for them. The specificity of this relationship is what makes us believe that it’s real and go along with it. In other words, it’s not just slapped in there by a lazy phone call at the beginning of the movie from his son saying something like, “I miss you dad,” and the dad replying, “I miss you too, son.” Believe me, I see that kind of cheap tactic ALLL the time.

Another thing that stuck out to me here was the dialogue. Boring dialogue is usually normal dialogue. Characters speak in a very plain obvious way. They use very plain obvious sentences. Good writers find ways to play with the sentences, to give them a slightly different feel so they pop off the page. But it’s a tough skill to learn because you have to do it without it FEELING like you’re doing it. So these heightened lines must sound as relaxed and normal as everyday conversation. Lots of writers have trouble with that. But Sheridan nails it. Let’s look at quick exchange in the middle of the movie. Ranger Marcus is asking an old man at a diner if he saw anything during the robbery.

MARCUS
Ya’ll been here for a while?

OLD TIMER
Long enough to watch someone rob the bank that’s been robbing me for thirty years.

Perfect example. I can think of a million boring versions of this line that average writers would’ve written. “Not long, nope.” “I suppose so.” “I wasn’t keeping track.” I could go on. There’s nothing wrong with these answers. But they’re average. They’re not memorable. They don’t pop. Why go average when you can go heightened?

MARCUS
You say you saw them?

OLD TIMER
Saw the guy running from the bank.

MARCUS
What’d he look like?

OLD TIMER
Had a mask on. But he ran pretty good, so I’d gather he’s youngish.

MARCUS
That so … What’s youngish in your book?

OLD TIMER
Younger’n you and me, but older than all these little girls running around here pouring tea.


We have another interesting answer here. He could have easily given an age. He could’ve said “25.” And again, that would’ve been fine. But when you’re writing scripts, and especially when you’re writing dialogue, you’re trying to elevate the reality of the world you’re portraying. This answer is brilliant. It answers his question but in an unexpected interesting way.

The only reason this script didn’t rate higher for me was because it’s not the typical kind of movie I like. With that said, I don’t think anybody could’ve executed this story as well as Sheridan did. I mean the writing is top notch. The dialogue is top notch. The character development is waaaay beyond what I’m used to in a screenplay. If I was into this kind of movie, Comancheira would get an impressive. As it stands, ‘double worth the read’ will have to do. Oh, and one last piece of advice to Mr. Sheridan – GET RID OF THIS TITLE. It screams “Don’t watch me.”

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be careful about mimicking real-life dialogue. There’s a certain rhythm to real life conversation that’s important to capture, but as far as the vocabulary and the flavor, real life conversation is pretty dull. When you’re writing dialogue for a movie, you’d like for it to be slightly heightened. Not overtly so. But it should definitely have more pop. “No thanks” might become, “Not for me, compadre.” “What are you up to?” might become “What the hell happened to you?” Now all of this is dependent on the character delivering the dialogue (i.e. an average Joe will speak in an average way) and the story you’re telling (comedy dialogue will be more flavorful than drama dialogue), but in general, avoid stale dialogue by looking to invisibly heighten it. Don’t be afraid to add a little flavor.

Today’s screenplay proves you can only hide for so long before something comes for you and makes you do something you don’t want to do…

Genre: Contained Horror
Premise: A family lives in a nuclear fallout shelter, hiding from a deadly race of mutated humans known only as, the breathers.
About: This is a script that’s been getting a lot of heat lately. Lots of people I talk to really love it. Hence, I had to read.
Writers: The Duffer Brothers
Details: 105 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

There is one type of script that is absolutely perfect for the spec market – this one. If you come up with a contained horror scenario that’s intense, that has immediacy, and that’s a little bit different from what’s come in the past, somebody will buy it. Shit, I’LL buy it. You can make these movies for a cheap price AND they’re easy to market. So they’re always going to be in high demand.

But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. You have to find that fresh angle. Hidden is by no means original, but it has just enough new that it doesn’t feel like yet another contained thriller clone.

For example, almost all scripts with people hiding from an unseen danger put several strangers together. It’s a smart way to go because you can create a mysterious backstory behind each character (that can be revealed over the course of the script) and the potential is high for conflict since you have a bunch of different personalities.

But Hidden took the unique approach of sticking us with a family. You definitely lost some potential conflict with the choice, but what you gain is an overwhelming sense of love between the characters and an “us against them” mentality. This created a strong bond between us and the characters, which meant we were rooting for them from Page 1.

And remember that when you have the audience rooting for your characters, you can pretty much get away with anything. You can even ignore some of the things I preach all the time because if we’re desperately rooting for the characters, the structure isn’t as important. We just want to see the characters win, regardless of the mechanics beneath them. The closeness of this family really helped in that sense. I read on because I wanted to see them survive.

Speaking of the family, it includes Claire and Ray Hewitt, former middle-class suburban parents, and their seven-year-old daughter, Zoe. They’re down in this shelter because a year ago, on an ordinary Sunday, a mass hysteria rose up when a unique virus started infecting everyone. The virus turned ordinary people into dangerous and uncontrollable beasts.

The Hewitt family tried to get away like everybody else, but when the military started attacking civilians, they fled into the woods and found this hidden shelter. They’ve been here ever since, hiding. And it’s gone pretty well. Except they’re finally running out of rations and will need to find food somewhere else – not an easy task since going to the surface is the equivalent of suicide.

But hunger is just one of many invisible clocks ticking down for this family. And those clocks start ticking a lot faster when an accidental fire sends smoke out the ventilation shaft up into the forest. It’s only a matter of time, now, before the breathers spot the smoke and seek out its origin. When that happens, it’s doubtful our family will be able to remain…hidden.

Lots to like about this one! The writing itself was top-notch. The brothers have an amazing ability to keep descriptions sparse, so that the script moves along quickly, yet still pack interesting shit into their action, so that the info both moves the story forward and paints a powerful picture of the situation.

I read lots of scripts from writers who hear their writing needs to be sparse, but they take it to the extreme. The writing ends up containing so little meat, so little detail or depth of information, that it’s as if the words disappear somewhere between the page and your eyes.

I loved how the brothers would take time, for example, to explain how a rat was able to get into their food supply and chew through the cans, cutting their survival time in half. It’s stuff like this that paints a detailed picture of their predicament – that shows the unique things a family in this type of situation would have to go through. There’s meat here. There’s specificity.

But the real power of the script came in the writers’ ability to tell a story. Again, so many new writers focus on how to string words together. And it’s not that that isn’t important. It is. But it’s not nearly as important as telling the story and keeping the reader interested.

Right away, we hear about these “breathers.” The way the family talks about them, you’d think that the devil himself was hunting them. And yet we don’t know what they are yet because the writers have chosen to make them a mystery. Well guess what? That mystery is a storytelling device to keep us, the reader, interested. We will keep reading until we see these breathers for ourselves.

Then there was the smoke that went up through the ventilation shaft. We knew that the breathers might see this and possibly find them. So from the moment that smoke went out, we’re in a deep state of anticipation as we hope against all hope that they’re not going to show up. That’s storytelling. You manipulate the plot in such a way where the reader *has* to read on because they *have* to find out what happens next.

And then there were, of course, the set pieces of the script. For a movie this small in scope, the set pieces are incredibly well-crafted. What I loved about the brothers was that they knew when they had a high-impact scene, and they milked the hell out of it.

Too many writers extend scenes that have no business being extended. You only want to milk scenes if the set-up is big, the stakes are high, and the situation is compelling. There’s a scene, for example, where the escaped smoke has caused the leaves hiding their doorway to blacken with soot. This means that the parents have to go topside to replace them with fresh leaves in order to stay hidden. So they do, leaving Zoe alone in the shelter.

This is the exact kind of scene you want to milk. You’ve set up a dangerous situation. The stakes are through the roof (literally). You’ve left your youngest character alone. Go to town with this scene. Zoe watches them, for example, from the underground “periscope,” and thinks she sees breathers running towards them. She has to warn them, but has no way to. We cut back and forth between the breathers getting closer and Zoe trying to open a hatch she’s not strong enough to open. The brothers milk every second of this scene, and appropriately so, as it’s the perfect kind of scene you want to milk.

What’s really impressive is they have about five of these sequences throughout the script, all about 10 pages long, all of which move like the Chicago wind. Truthfully, I was shocked at how quickly the brothers were able to make such a tiny movie move so fast.

For me, this was a guaranteed impressive through the first two acts. However, while I liked the twist ending, I’d heard there was a twist ahead of time, so I was anticipating something a little flashier. Unfortunately, while the twist did its job, it didn’t quite live up to the expectation in my head. Don’t get me wrong. It was cool. It just wasn’t “fall out of your seat” cool.

So even though that brought it down a notch, this is one of the better horror scripts I’ve read in a while. It’s a little different. The characters are compelling. The writing is great. You just don’t see all of those things in a horror script these days. For that, I commend these guys. A job well done!

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Show and Tell. Any good screenwriter will tell you to SHOW things, not TELL things. But there’s actually a way to show while telling, and I call it the “Show and Tell.” Here, on page 10, the brothers want to establish how many days the family has been down here. So they highlight hundreds of marks on the wall (this is them showing). Zoe then asks how many days they’ve been down here. Claire answers, “Count for yourself.” Zoe counts, and tells us the number (301). So technically, since there’s a discussion about the days, we’re telling. But the conversation is motivated by a ‘showing,’ the walls. So it’s a combination of the two. Which is way better than someone going, “Man, if we hadn’t been down here for 300 long days already…” which, believe it or not, is the kind of clunky exposition I read all the time.