Genre: Action/Comedy/Heist/Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) When a terrifying plague destroys crops and causes starvation on a global scale, the world’s greatest thief must break into the extremist-controlled Doomsday Vault to steal the one seed that could prevent the extinction of the human race.
About: Brian K. Vaughn is a comic book writer (Y The Last Man), a TV writer (Lost) and a screenwriter (Roundtable – recently reviewed on the site). The Vault is his newest spec, which hit Hollywood a couple of months ago and impressed many a people. It appears to be in one of those situations where they’re seeking out talent and/or a director before selling it.
Writer: Brian K. Vaughn
Details: 110 pages, January 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

I’m loving how this thing was modeled after a sandcrawler

One thing you gotta love about Vaughn. He doesn’t hold back. The man lets his imagination go hog wild and I think part of that is because he started in comic books. In comic books, every idea of yours can be realized by a jar of ink. You don’t feel the constraints because there are no constraints. Screenwriters don’t have that luxury because they know having their words realized as pictures is a virtual impossibility. Get too crazy with a character, location or situation (having your characters swoop in via space plane to a domed 2050 Tokyo for instance – one of the scenes in The Vault), and a producer might not be able to wrap their brain around it (or their checkbook). Hence a screenwriter is a mite more conservative.

That’s what took me by surprise with The Vault – is just how ambitious it was. This is basically Star Wars circa 2050. And we all know how eager Hollywood is to accept wild mega-budgeted material that isn’t part of a pre-existing franchise. But if there’s any one who can change their mind, it’s the man behind today’s script.

The year is 2050. Nearly all the crops in the world have been wiped out by something called “The Blight,” a malicious virus that has sent the entire world into starvation. Only the rich are holding on and even their stash is running out.

Introduce wisecracking Han Solo’esque Sebastian Card, a master thief. In fact, we meet Sebastian as he’s tunneling up and under Fort Knox, which doesn’t hold money anymore. It holds food. When Sebastian finally breaks in, we realize the whole point of this elaborate operation was to simply eat some cheese. No, I’m not kidding. He robbed Fort Knox for cheese.

Vaughn

Caught soonafter, the Secretary of Agriculture (the only 300 pound man left in existence – because he gorges on human meat) calls Sebastian in to propose a deal of sorts. In order to gain back his freedom, he wants Sebastian to go to an island near the North Pole where a vault is holding all the world’s seeds. Records have shown that the Vault contains a seed that is immune to The Blight. If they can get that seed, they can regrow the crop population and singlehandedly save the world.

There is a catch of course. The impossible to penetrate Vault is being guarded by someone named Baron, an African extremist with his own agenda. Baron is offering the seed to the first nation who gives him all of their nuclear submarines. He’s got the U.S. on the clock for 48 hours. If they don’t come up with the nukes, he’ll move on to one of the other superpowers. And if that happens, the most dangerous man in the world will have himself an arsenal of nuclear weapons which will allow him to basically make any demand he can think up. To put it simply, Sebastian has 2 days to break into the Vault and get that seed!

He’ll be joined by Maxine, a hot bald marine chick whose previous attempt at getting into the Vault resulted in capture by Baron. After months of torture she finally escaped. She knows the Vault inside out. Of course, Sebastian and Maxine dislike each other immensely, which makes their pairing entirely inefficient. However, since she’s the only one who knows her way around once they get inside, there’s nothing Sebastian can do about it.

The team zips around the world in a super plane capable of traveling thousands of miles in minutes, all in preparation for the biggest and most important heist in the history of the world.

Did you get all that?

I don’t know for what part, but I think Patton Oswald needs to be in this movie.

The Vault is….weird. There’s no other way to explain it. Then again, I’m sure people described the script for Star Wars the same way. There’s a guy in a black mask and cape? There’s a giant walking dog who doesn’t speak? While The Vault not only embraces its absurdity but flaunts it, there’s no avoiding just how absurd it gets in places. From characters breaking into Fort Knox for cheese to the Secretary of Agriculture feasting on human remains ground up from the prison population to a band of snowmobiling eco-terrorist soldiers. Sometimes these moments are fun. Other times they have you wondering if you’ve stumbled onto another screenplay. For example, it’s implied that Maxine was repeatedly raped and defiled while in Baron’s captivity. For a movie which I thought was a fun comedy, wedging in the whole rape angle felt a little out of place.

For me personally though, I just wanted the logic to be sound. I understand this is a comedy and that some leeway has to be given, but there were definitely logic issues that bothered me. For example, I had a hard time believing that the U.S. couldn’t break into the Vault on their own. If they still have nuclear weapons, they can probably scrounge together an army of 100,000 troops and I’m pretty sure that army could break into a Vault guarded by a couple dozen eco-terrorists. You put “eco” in front of anything and it immediately makes that thing four times more wimpy. So I’m not anticipating much of a battle there.

Then there’s Japan. Tokyo has domed their city to protect itself from The Blight. There’s green grass everywhere and they can grow any plant they want. While I can buy into the idea that exporting these plants would still result in them being affected by the virus and therefore dying, the existence of thousands of healthy plants in the world, domed or not domed, made the pursuit of a single seed seem a lot less important.

And while I’m guessing Vaughn will fix this in rewrites, I wasn’t crazy about spending an entire sequence flying to Los Angeles just to walk through a replica of The Vault to see what they were up against, mainly because there was no drama to the sequence. It was obviously there for exposition and exposition only.

But I liked a lot about The Vault too. I liked the Han Solo/Princess Leia like banter between Sebastian and Maxine. Their whole relationship definitely felt like an updated version of that memorable duo. I liked how brave Vaughn was with his choices. He really wasn’t afraid to do anything that popped into his head. There are sword-wielding killer female androids for God’s sake. I love the discussion it inspires. This may be fiction but all it takes is watching one of those History Channel specials to realize that if the farming and food distribution system broke down in any significant way, there’s a good chance our government would fall apart within months, maybe even weeks. Seeing the extreme version of that here just got me thinking how thin the line between prosperity and chaos really is. And to top it all off, it’s a good time. Most everyone I’ve talked to trumpets how fun the script is, and I can’t argue that.

Still, I think Vaughn may have hit the streets with The Vault a little too soon. That may be due to his experiences with Roundtable, which was also a little rough around the edges when it was purchased. But the difference here is that this is an entire universe, an entire mythology that needs to be created. And as exciting and imaginative as it is, there are times when it doesn’t feel fleshed out. The pieces are there, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Vaughn take another couple of passes and really weave a tapestry as opposed to just laying out the yarn.

I think that anything Vaughn writes is worth reading, and The Vault doesn’t change that opinion. But there are a few too many puddles in the journey to make me go gaga. If you have it, read it, and tell me what you think.

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

What I learned: Vaughn uses a lot of underlining in his screenplays. A lot. And unlike how it affects most readers, heavy underlining, bold, or italics doesn’t bother me, as long as there’s a purpose and a uniformity to it. But I have to admit, the more you accentuate your text, the less effective the purpose behind it becomes. So if you underline 3 times a page, sooner or later I just tune out the underlining. As a reader, I’ve found that underlining works best when it’s used sparingly, and as a tool to set up an important moment later in the story. So for example, in Back To The Future, if you remember the opening scene, we pan around to all the clocks, then come down to the door as it opens and Marty’s foot appears. He kicks his skateboard over to the bed. And underneath the bed, we see a radiation suitcase. That radiation suitcase is the perfect thing to underline because everything else in the scene is so irrelevant. The reader’s reading fast and if you don’t bring to their attention this item that sets up a HUGE part of the story later, we might not catch it. Ideally, there are probably five or six of these “underline-worthy” moments in a story. I’m not going to say you can’t underline to your heart’s content like Vaughn – everyone has their own style – but in my experience, that’s the way underlining seems to have the most effect on a reader.

Genre: Contained ThrillerPremise: A newly married couple find themselves stuck in an elevator with a strange man.
About: This script was optioned recently by Relativity Media. Russo has spent a lot of time perfecting his craft, writing 8 screenplays before this one was optioned. You can learn more about Greg in an interview he did over at Go Into The Story.
Writer: Greg Russo
Details: 96 pages – revised draft, Feb 29, 2010 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

I think it’s crossed all our minds at one point or another. What if the elevator stops? What if we get stuck here? It actually happened to me briefly when I was a kid on vacation in Mexico. Luckily, the building was only two stories tall, and as soon as we started yelling, the elevator started back up again. I remember someone who worked there saying afterwards, “Oh, that always happens.” Yeah, uh, okay. Thanks for the tip. I’ll be using the stairs from now on. My story pales in comparison to this guy though…

Talk about a nightmare. He was in some building that hadn’t officially opened yet, and was leaving right before the weekend when the elevator got stuck. There was literally no one in the building and he knew no one would be there for another 48 hours. But he lived! And I heard he got a nice little settlement out of it. So don’t feel too bad for him.

That brings us to today’s script, Down. We’re back in the ultra-competitive “contained thriller” market, and what’s more contained than an elevator?? Well, besides a coffin of course. The question with these scripts is always, can you make it interesting for 90 minutes? That’s the challenge. Because making it interesting for 30 minutes is easy. Every minute after that gets harder and harder. So did Russo do it? Well jump in and we’ll head down to the lobby together.

Kevin is a young unemployed filmmaker who’s about to elope with Kelsie, a cheerful bank teller with rich parents. These two are gaga in love. The kind of love that makes you roll your eyes. The kind of love where every five minutes you hear the words “Get a room.” The kind of love that makes The Bachelor look like Fear Factor.

The two don’t have time for all that ceremony nonsense. They just want to get married and go on their honeymoon. And that’s the plan. They’re going to grab their marriage license downtown, then hurry over to the airport and catch a flight to Tahiti. They’re giggly, they’re bubbly. Things are looking pretty damn good for Kevin and Kelsie. Well, so far that is. Heh heh.

After they get their license, they hurry towards the elevator lobby and just barely make it into the closing doors of one of the elevators. When they squeeze in, they see that there’s already a man inside, a pleasant looking Irish fellow we’ll soon know as Liam. The doors close, and away we go…

How long is a 15 floor elevator trip supposed to take? One minute? 90 seconds? Well, we’ll never find out because a few seconds after the elevator starts, it STOPS. It’s not a pleasant moment no matter who you are, but Kelsie gets panic attacks in ball rooms, and this is a lot smaller than one of those. So she understandably starts freaking the hell out.

In the meantime, Liam is as calm as a 20 year old tabby cat. He politely introduces himself and informs them that he actually works on elevators for a living. He claims that this kind of thing happens all the time. Not to worry.

This was one of my favorite choices in the script. As soon as we realize Liam is an elevator expert, we know something weird is afoot. And even though we’re ahead of the story, that’s what makes it fun. We know this guy is bad news for Kevin and Kelsie, and we can’t wait to see how.

The conversation that follows is that awkward “getting to meet you” conversation you have with people who you have nothing in common with. You latch onto the tiniest common interests like a piranha, and when those nuggets dry up, the awkward silence drives you to do stupid things, like talk about your personal lives. And that’s where the script gets interesting.

It turns out that Kevin is a struggling filmmaker who hasn’t worked in awhile, while Kelsie not only slaves away at a bank job she hates, but her parents are super rich. Liam finds this quite amusing, and while he doesn’t make any direct accusations, he does bring to Kelsie’s attention that a man without a penny to his name and no desire to work just married someone with an unlimited bank account.

Awwwwk-ward.

I think we all know where this is going. Liam isn’t in this elevator by accident. He knew Kelsie and Kevin were going to be here today. He possibly even planned being on this elevator, at this moment, leaving it open as they ran to it. And if Liam has been doing all these things, then Liam must have a really big beef with Kelsie and Kevin. And that beef is exactly what’s going to be Kevin and Kelsie’s “down” fall. heheh.

I know I keep saying that the contained thriller cycle is near the end of its rope, but there’s one thing I keep forgetting. Contained thrillers are cheap to make. Really cheap. So if you come up with a concept that’s compelling enough and you do a good job executing it, I can see companies taking a chance on it because the financial burden is so minimal.

I think what also gives contained thrillers a distinct advantage is that they’re basically the perfect fit for the spec format. In specs you want everything to read fast, you want a low page count, you want a low character count, you don’t want to waste a lot of space describing everything. The very nature of contained thrillers help them meet all this criteria. It’s the peanut butter to the spec format’s jelly.

But even though you eliminate some problems, you add others, and those others can be extremely challenging. Since you don’t have the advantage of jumping from location to location, character to character – since the story is so contained, so minimal – you have no other choice but to litter your script with surprises and revelations. The surprises need to be character based, as the setting usually doesn’t allow many surprises on its own. And this can be challenging, because audiences have pretty much seen it all. Do it right though, and you can get rich. That little twist at the end of Saw where the dead guy gets up and walks away helped spawn five sequels!

I thought Down did a pretty good job in this department. I mean, we know that Liam is bad. So that wasn’t really a surprise. But Russo makes some pretty bold choices here and man are there some surprises I didn’t see coming. Further still, he takes the script into another genre in the last act, and while I may not exactly agree with the choice, I thought it was an interesting one, and it does what it needs to do to keep the contained thriller going. It changes the dynamics. It changes the story. It keeps everything fresh.

I know they’re still working on this so I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, but overall I thought it was pretty good. More importantly, I think it could be even better if they can focus that second half. It got a little wily at the end there. A strong premise, and a pretty good execution made this an interesting read.

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

What I learned: One thing that annoyed me in Down, and I’ve mentioned this issue before, is that the main characters’ names are too similar: Kevin and Kelsie. The problem with this for a reader is that a lot of times in a script, there’s a pause in the conversation, then the same character will start talking again. The reader doesn’t pick up on this right away because of the assumed “his turn then her turn” rhythm of the dialogue. So they end up reading the wrong dialogue for the wrong characters. If characters are named JAMES and OLIVIA, this is easy to spot. But if they’re Kevin and Kelsie, you may read a full page of dialogue before you realize you’ve mixed the two characters up. So it’s always good to make sure your main characters have easily distinguishable names. The only exception is if the sameness in their names plays into the story somehow.

The Karate Kid makes 56 million on its opening weekend. I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Not even “I’ve never failed at anything in my entire life” Will Smith! This is great news for Jackie Chan as well, who was just about to commit to a The Spy Next Door sequel, which we all know would’ve been titled, “The Spy Next Door Too.” I did not see Karate Kid, but I have to admit, the trailers did not look awful. The actors seemed to be taking the movie seriously, and against all odds, it kinda worked. Have no idea if the full movie is the same. Here at Scriptshadow, I’m reviewing an Oscar winning screenwriter tomorrow, putting together what should be a fun little article for Wednesday, and am yet to commit to my Thursday and Friday reviews. Today, Roger comes at you with a script I’m 97% certain was written specifically for him. Here’s “The Book Of Magic.”

Genre: Fantasy Adventure, Horror
Premise: Harry Houdini teams up with the legendary author, H.P. Lovecraft, to track down a supernatural serial killer in 1920s New York City.
About: This script won first prize in the 2003 ManiaFest Screenplay Competition and landed Sheldon Woodbury a writing assignment for Jeff Sagansky, a producer who used to be the president of Sony Pictures.
Writer: Sheldon Woodbury

Surely, as deep calls to deep, mystery attracts mystery. Which is an idea explored in “The Book of Magic” (not to be confused with Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic), a tale where the infamous escape artist Harry Houdini teams up with the grandfather of horror fiction to catch a supernatural serial killer in 1920s New York City. That logline appeared in my inbox a few weeks ago and all I could do was stare at it and exclaim, “Seriously?” As a reader of this blog, it doesn’t take a lot of homework to know that I love two things:

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A man is forced to travel cross-country with his annoying brother in order to get to his wedding.
About: Disney picked this spec up back in 2009 for 250k. Kopelow and Seifert have been writing for TV for over a decade, having worked on shows ranging from “Kenan & Kel” to Oxygen’s “Campus Ladies.”
Writers: Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert
Details: 98 pages – May 16, 2008 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

My vote for the most annoying person in the world. Who’s yours?

The best “two guys stuck together traveling cross-country” movie is Dumb and Dumber by a mile. The script was actually a bit of a gamble when you think about it. Whenever you write about two people stuck together in any situation, the traditional approach is to make one guy the “crazy/dumb/weird” guy and the other guy the “straight man.” The extreme contrast between the two characters usually provides the most potential for comedy. The Farrelly brothers said screw that and just put two idiots together. Somehow, we got a classic.

The Most Annoying Man In The World goes back to the more traditional pairing of super extreme guy and super straight guy, and proves that it’s still a safe bet when done well. Stuart Pivnick IS the most annoying man in the world, and I have to give it to Kopelow and Seifert for giving us one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read in a comedy. Stuart is described as… “an enthusiastic, hyper, immature, naive, nosy, arbitrarily opinionated, completely un-self-aware, chronic complainer with no sense of personal space.” I love how they not only have fun with the description, but how it perfectly portrays Stuart in the process.

Across the country, finishing his bachelor party in Las Vegas, is Stuart’s brother, Alan. Alan is basically the opposite of everything Stuart is. He always wants to get everything right and boy has that become a problem with his wedding fast approaching. Everything seems to be going wrong and Alan is having to do damage control minute by minute from 2000 miles away.

Alan also hasn’t spoken to his brother in over a decade. Why? Well because he’s the most annoying man in the world! In fact, so relentlessly annoying is Stuart, that Alan’s created a ruse whereby he works at a remote research facility in the middle of the South Pole, one where he’s supposedly unable to communicate with anyone outside of his research operators.

But when Alan gets stuck at O’Hare and all of the day’s flights are canceled, he’s forced to call the only person he knows in town. Stuart.

Stuart, of course, is thrilled! He loves Alan more than anything. And when’s the next time the government is going to let his poor brother out of that research facility? So he welcomes Alan in with open arms, situating a second mattress inside his bedroom so they can both sleep together, then proceeds to read out loud and sing in his sleep all night so that Alan doesn’t get a wink of rest.

Despite being late the next morning, Stuart drives the exact speed limit to the airport, and this leads to a series of problems which result in Alan missing his flight. But Stuart comes up with the wonderful idea that they just drive to Philly together! With options dwindling, Alan agrees. Because Alan can’t tell Stuart *why* he needs to get to Philly so urgently (there’s no way he’s allowing Stuart to come to his wedding), it results in a logistical nightmare, as more and more wedding plans continue to fall apart, and Alan must manage them without letting Stuart on to what he’s up to.

The two take many detours, with Stuart repeatedly screwing everything up as much as humanly possible. He has a medical condition that forces him to eat at EXACT times, flipping out if he’s even a second late. He listens to movie scores in the car and makes up his own words to them (He’ll listen to E.T. and sing “E.T. likes reeses pieeeeces. He’s going home soooon.”) He likes to play games like “Guess a number between one and a million” where Alan picks a number and Stuart keeps guessing which number it is til he’s right. He truly is the most annoying man in the world. And for the most part, it’s really funny.

But like I always tell people who write comedies, you have to have the story and the emotional element up to the level of the comedy, and Kopelow and Seifert do a great job with that here. This is just as much about getting to Philadelphia without letting Stuart in on his wedding as it is about funny scenes. It’s just as much about two brothers reconnecting as it is about making an audience laugh.

I saw “Get Him To The Greek” this weekend and what baffled me was just how unimportant the story was. Nobody really gave a shit about GETTING TO THE DAMN GREEK! Outside of Jonah Hill half-heartedly reminding Aldous every few scenes, nobody, from the record label to the fans, gave a shit whether Aldous made it to his concert or not. I remember that at least in the original script, Aldous hadn’t played a concert in 10 years. So it felt like the concert actually meant something and was a special event. Here, he plays a fucking concert in the middle of the damn movie!!!, completely sucking dry any of the importance of the concert that’s supposed to be the whole damn point of the movie! – My point is, if we don’t feel the push of the story – If that isn’t completely dominating the narrative – then none of the comedy freaking matters. The Most Annoying Man In The World, much like The Hangover, feels like the characters’ plight actually matters and isn’t just a convenient destination for the movie to end.

My only real complaint here is that the script needs to axe some of the generic situations its characters find themselves in. At first, going to a carnival/theme park sounds funny, but in the end it has very little to do with their specific journey, and therefore feels more like a desperate laugh grab than a logical story sequence. In fact, I think all of the set piece scenes here could use a jolt, except for the car getting stuck on an ice sheet scene – which had me laughing for a good five minutes. I thought The Hangover did this well. In the initial draft of that script, one of the guys wakes up to find out he was at a gay bar the previous night. I couldn’t figure out why they ditched that in the film, but then I realized we’ve seen that before. We’ve never seen characters steal Mike Tyson’s tiger though. It just reminded me how you have to push yourself to come up with original sequences in comedies.

Overall, a solid comedy. And more importantly, one I think could make a great movie.

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

What I learned: Comedies, more than any other genre, allow you to tell your story in the title. 40 Year old Virgin. Knocked Up. This is obviously a huge advantage in an ADD Twitter-obsessed 5-second-version no-fat-allowed world. But don’t just sum up your movie in the title, make sure it’s still funny and/or jumpstarts the imagination for what kind of movie it could be. 40 Year Old Virgin did the best job of this (I immediately thought of all the hilarious scenes you could have of a 40 year old man trying to get laid for the first time) and the 2008 spec sale “I Wanna F— Your Sister” also did a wonderful job. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s still an art to it. “Two Guys, One Who’s Dumb, Roadtrip To Marriage,” may tell us your story, but doesn’t roll off the tongue. So if the opportunity’s there and you come up with something clever, do it. If not, specs like “Due Date” and “Cedar Rapids” are still selling. So don’t sweat it.

Everybody always says it. The one surefire way to break into the industry is to write a great script. “All you have to do is write a great script,” they say. “Ohhhh,” you reply, “That’s it? “That’s all I had to do all this time?? Was write a great script? Well why didn’t you say so? And here I was working on my 20th really bad script!” Bitter reactions aside, it’s true. Write a great script and you’re in.

What hasn’t been clarified is what “great” means. Well I got to thinking (yes, it does happen). Why don’t I post exactly what a “great script” is so there’s no more confusion? Now when we say, “Just write a great script,” people will actually have something to reference. This idea sounded brilliant when I first came up with it, but the more it marinated, the more I realized that if writing a great script could be explained in a 2500 word blog post, we’d probably all be millionaires.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t offer a list of 13 things I consistently see in great scripts. It may not be a step by step guide but at least it’s something. Yeah, I thought. That might work.

Now while I was hoping to provide an all-inclusive list of tips to best help you write a great script, the reality is I’ve probably forgotten a couple of things. So this is what I’m going to do. In the comments section, I want you to include what YOU think makes a great script. Over the course of today and tomorrow, I’ll update this post to include the best suggestions from you guys. Together, we’ll create *the* perfect go-to list when it comes to writing a great script. Isn’t this wonderful? Team Scriptshadow!

So here they are, in no particular order…

1) AN ORIGINAL AND EXCITING CONCEPT

This is the single most important choice you will make in writing your script because it will determine whether people actually read it or not. I used to hear agents say, “90% of the scripts out there fail before I’ve even opened them.” And it’s true. If you don’t have a compelling concept, nothing else matters. This slightly circumvents the “great” argument because nobody’s saying you can’t write a “great” script about a boy who goes home to take care of his ailing mother. But the reality is, nobody’s going to get excited about reading that script. Even the kind of people who WOULD want to read that script probably won’t because they know it’s a financial pitfall. It’ll take 5 years off their life and, in the end, play in 10 theaters and make 14,286 dollars. Now obviously an “exciting” idea is objective. But it’s fairly easy to figure out if you have something special. Pitch your idea to your 10 best friends. Regardless of what they *tell* you, read their reactions. Do their eyes and voices tell you they’re into it? If you get 10 polite smiles accompanied with a “Yeah, I like it,” it’s time to move on to the next idea. So give me your Hangovers. Give me your Sixth Senses. Shit, give me your Beavers. But don’t give me three people in a room discussing how their lives suck for 2 hours. And if you do, make it French. –

2) A MAIN CHARACTER WHO WANTS SOMETHING (AKA A “GOAL”)

Some people call it an “active protagonist.” I just call it a character who wants something. Ripley and the marines want to go in and wipe out the aliens in “Aliens.” Liam Neeson wants to find his daughter in “Taken.” The girl in “Paranormal Activity” wants to find out what’s haunting her house. The stronger your character wants to achieve his/her goal, the more compelling they’re going to be. Now I’ll be the first to admit that passive characters sometimes work. Neo is somewhat passive in The Matrix until the end. And, of course, Dustin Hoffman is the most famous passive character of all time in The Graduate. But these characters are tricky to write and require a skill set that takes years to master. In the end, they’re too dangerous to mess around with. Stick with a character who wants something.

3) A MAIN CHARACTER WE WANT TO ROOT FOR

This is one of the more hotly debated topics in screenwriting because a character we “root for” is usually defined as being “likable,” and there are a whole lot of screenwriters out there who would rather bake their craniums in a pizza oven than, gasp, make their protagonist “likable.” I got good news. Your hero doesn’t have to be “likeable” for your script to work. But you DO have to give us a character we want to root for, someone we’re eager to see succeed. He *can* be likable, such as Steve Carrel’s character in “40 Year Old Virgin.” He can be defiant, like Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke.” But he has to have some quality in him that makes us want to root for him. If your character is mopey, whiney, and an asshole, chances are we’re not going to want to root for that guy.

4) GET TO YOUR STORY QUICKLY!

Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man. As far as amateur screenplay mistakes go, this is easily one of the Top 3. Even after I explain, in detail, what the mistake is, writers continue to do it. So I’m going to try and make this clear. Are you ready? “Your story is moving a lot slower than you, the writer, believe it is.” For that reason, speed it the fuck up! In other words, that ten page sequence which contains 3 separate scenes, each pointing out in its own unique way that your hero is irresponsible? Well we figured it out after the first scene. You don’t need to waste 7 more pages telling us again…and again. Remember, readers use the first 30 pages to gauge how capable a writer is. And the main thing they’re judging is how quickly and efficiently you set up your story. In The Hangover, I think they wake up from their crazy night somewhere around page 20. You don’t want it to be any later than page 25 before we know what it is your character is after (see #2).

5) STAY UNDER 110 PAGES

This is a close cousin to number 2 and a huge point of contention between writers as well. But let’s move beyond my usual argument, which is that a 120 page script is going to inspire rage from a tired reader, and discuss the actual effects of a 110 page screenplay on your story. Keeping your script under 110 pages FORCES YOU TO CUT OUT ALL THE SHIT. That funny scene you like that has nothing to do with the story? You don’t need it. The fifth chase scene at the end of the second act? You don’t need it. Those 2 extra scenes I just mentioned above that tell us the exact same information we already know about your main character? You don’t need them. I know this may be hard to believe. But not everything you write is brilliant, or even necessary for that matter. Cutting your script down to 110 pages forces you to make tough decisions about what really matters. By making those cuts, you eliminate all the fat, and your script reads more like a “best of” than an “all of.” As for some of those famous names who like to pack on the extra pages, I’ll tell you what. For every script you sell or movie you make, you’re allowed 5 extra pages to play with, as your success indicates you now know what to do with those pages. Until then, keep it under 110. And bonus points if you keep it under 100.

6) CONFLICT

Does everyone in your script get along? Is the outside world kind to your characters? Do your characters skip through your story with nary a worry? Yeah, then your script has no conflict. I could write a whole book on conflict but here’s one of the easiest ways to create it. Have one character want something and another character want something else. Put them in a room together and, voila, you have conflict. If your characters DO happen to be good friends, or lovers, or married, or infatuated with each other, that’s fine, but then there better be some outside conflict weighing on them (Romeo and Juliet anyone?). Let me give you the best example of the difference between how conflict and no conflict affect a movie. Remember The Matrix? How Trinity wanted Neo but she couldn’t have him yet? Remember the tension between the two? How we wanted them to be together? How we could actually feel their desire behind every conversation? The conflict there was that the two couldn’t be together. Now look at The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Trinity and Neo are together. They’re always happy. And they’re always F’ING BORING AS HELL! The conflict is gone and therefore so is our interest. If your story isn’t packed with conflict, you don’t have a story.

7) OBSTACLES

Your script should have plenty of obstacles your main character encounters in pursuit of his goal. A big issue I see in a lot of bad scripts is that the main character’s road is too easy. The more obstacles you throw at your hero, the more interesting a script tends to be, because that’s why we come to the movies in the first place, to see how our hero heroically overcomes the problems he’s presented. He can’t be heroic if he doesn’t run into anything that tests his heroism. Go watch any of the Bourne movies to see how obstacles are consistently thrown at a character. And a nice side effect? Each obstacle creates conflict!

8) SURPRISE

A great script continually surprises you. Even if the story seems familiar, the characters’ actions and the twists and turns are consistently different from what we expected. The most boring scripts I read are ones where I have a good sense of what’s going to happen for the next 5 or 6 scenes. Remember, readers have read everrryyyyyything. So you really have to be proactive and outthink them to keep them on their toes. The Matrix is a great example of a script that continually surprises you. The first time you watched that movie (or read that script) you rarely had any idea where the story was going.

9) A TICKING TIME BOMB

Ticking time bombs can get a bad rap because they have such an artificial quality to them, but oh how important they are. What’s so great about them? They add * immediacy* to your story. If a character doesn’t have to achieve his goals right now, if he can achieve them next week or next year, then the goal really isn’t that important, is it? We want to watch a character that has to achieve his goal RIGHT NOW or else he loses everything. Sometimes ticking time bombs are clear as day (Hangover: They need to find Doug by noon on Saturday to get him back in time for his wedding), sometimes they’re more nuanced (Star Wars Luke needs to get the details of that battle station to the Rebel Alliance before they find and destroy the planet), but they’re there. If you don’t have a ticking time bomb in your script, you better have a damn good reason why.

10) STAKES

If your character achieves his ultimate goal, there needs to be a great reward. If your character fails to achieve his ultimate goal, there needs to be huge consequences. The best use of stakes is usually when a character’s situation is all or nothing. Rocky’s never going to get another shot at fighting the heavyweight champion of the world. This is it. Those stakes are damn high. If Wikus doesn’t get Christopher up to the mothership in District 9, he’s going to turn into a fucking alien. Those stakes are damn high. If all a character loses by not achieving his goal is a couple of days out of his life, that’s not very exciting, is it? And that’s because the stakes are too low.

11) HEART

We need to emotionally connect with your characters on some level for us to want to follow them for 110 minutes (NOT 120!). The best way to do this is to give your character a flaw, introduce a journey that tests that flaw, and then have him transform into a better person over the course of that journey. This is also known as having your character “arc.” When characters learn to become better people, it connects with an audience because it makes them believe that they can also change their flaws and become better people. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogan is a grade-A fuck-up, the most irresponsible person on the planet. So the journey forces him to face that head on, and learn to become responsible (so he can be a parent). You always want a little bit of heart in your script, whether it’s a drama, a comedy, or even horror.

12) A GREAT ENDING

Remember, your ending is what the reader leaves with. It is the last image they remember when they close your script. So it better leave a lasting impression. This is why specs like The Sixth Sense sell for 2 million bucks. If you go back into that script, there are actually quite a few slow areas. But you don’t remember them because the ending rocked. And I’m not saying you have to add a twist to every script you write. But make sure the ending satisfies us in some way, because if you leave us with a flat generic finale, we ain’t going to be texting our buddies saying, “Holy shit! You have to read this script right now!”

13) THE X-FACTOR

This last tip is the scariest of them all because it’s the one you have the least control over. It’s called the X-Factor. It is the unexplainable edge that great scripts have. Maybe it’s talent. Maybe the variables of your story came together in just the right way. Maybe you tap into the collective unconscious. A great script unfortunately has something unexplainable about it, and unfortunately, some of that comes down to luck. You could nail every single tip I’ve listed above and still have a script that’s missing something. The only advice I can give you to swing the dreaded X Factor in your favor is to write something you’re passionate about. Even if you’re writing Armageddon 2, create a character who’s going through the same trials and tribulations you are in life. You’ll then be able to connect with the character and, in turn, infuse your script with passion. Probably the best example of the X-factor’s influence on a script is American Beauty. A lot of people didn’t understand why they liked American Beauty. They just did. The Brigands of Rattleborge is another example. It just seeps into you for reasons unknown. I sometimes spend hours thinking about the X-Factor. How to quantify it. It’s the Holy Grail of screenwriting. Figure it out and you hold the key to writing great scripts for the rest of your life.

So there you have it. I’ve just given you the 13 keys to writing a great script. Now some of you have probably already come up with examples of great scripts that don’t contain these “rules.” And it’s true. Different stories have different requirements. So not every great script is going to contain all 13 of these elements. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a great script that doesn’t nail at least 10 of them. So now I’ll leave it up to you. What attributes do you consistently see in great scripts?

P.S. – Tomorrow I’ll post a review for a recent spec sale which you can read and break down to see if it has all 13 of these elements. So make sure to sign up for my Facebook Page or my Twitter so you’re updated when the post goes up. If I have to take the script link down, you’ll miss out.