One of my favorite new writers, “The Bear’s” Christopher Storer, chooses his big “level-up” project, aka, his first feature film.

Genre: Crime
Premise: A retired mob enforcer living the breezy surf life in San Diego is targeted by an unknown entity who wants him dead at all costs. But if you come for the Machine, you better not miss.
About: This project has a long history. Robert DeNiro was attached. After that, Michael Mann was attached. More recently, Matthew McConaughey was flirting with the project. It was recently raised from the dead again when The Bear’s Christopher Storer came on board. Word on the street is that Storer will work from the Brian Koppelman & David Levien draft they wrote for Martin Scorsese.
Writer: Don Winslow
Details: 300 pages

As we make the inevitable segue from hyper-femininity to hyper-masculinity, I must concede that I’ve never been the biggest fan of mob movies and their over-the-top displays of machismo.

If somebody looks at you the wrong way in these films, you shoot him in the face and exclaim with a big throaty yell, “Badaboom badabing, baby!” then walk out and get your family promotion, which entails managing more strip clubs or something. I struggle to figure out the appeal of such stories.

The only mob movie I truly love is Goodfellas. I admire The Godfather but I’ve always thought it was a bit slow. Believe it or not, I’ve never even seen past the first episode of The Sopranos.

So when I heard that The Bear’s Christopher Storer was going to be doing a mob movie for his first feature, my heart sank a little. Not just because I don’t like the genre. But because nobody does anymore. They don’t put these donuts in the oven these days because the audience has shrank to the size of a donut hole .

But you know what? Sometimes, when you go into something with the lowest of expectations, that’s when you’re most likely to be rewarded.

60-something Frankie Machine runs a bait shop on the San Diego coast. For all intents and purposes, he’s happy living the retired life. The problem is that the life he’s retired from doesn’t allow for the typical retirement plan. Frankie used to be the fiercest hitman in the business. That’s where he got his nickname, “The Machine.”

One day, Frankie is visited by a couple of low-level mob dorks who tell him that he’s been asked by the guys back in Detroit to meet with a gangster named Vince on his boat. Frank does a little reconnaissance. It checks out. So he goes to meet with Vince, only to realize he’s been set up. A 400-pound man tries to decapitate him, but even a 65-year-old Machine is immune from decapitation and shoots both his attempted killer and Vince dead.

The mob, we learn from Frankie, is complicated. There are different factions (San Diego, Los Angeles, The Valley, Vegas, Detroit) that are all interconnected with each other. Which means Frankie can’t just walk away from the botched hit and sell bait again. He has to figure out who wanted him dead, why, and then kill all the parties that are on that “Frankie sleeps with the fishes” chain.

What follows is a very complicated investigation with well over three dozen characters, all of whom are related, in some capacity, to those five factions. Along the way, we delve into Frankie’s past and how he started in the industry, rose up, and eventually became the most feared hitman on the planet. Ultimately, Frankie learns that this goes higher up than the mob, where ‘honor among thieves,’ the only thing allowing him to stay alive, doesn’t apply.

This book was a great reminder of the power of scene-writing.

Because, as I was reading through the first 40 pages of Frankie Machine, I was on the fence about whether I was going to continue. It wasn’t bad. But it was all setup. It was all how Frankie’s job worked. His love of surfing. His complicated romantic relationships. His daughter getting into college.

I still think that even professional writers make the mistake of going on cruise control with this stuff. They think, “You owe me your attention,” as opposed to the proper way to think as a writer, which is, “It’s my job and my job solely to keep you entertained.”

In the end, all of this information Winslow provides us is crucial because when Frankie gets set up, we wouldn’t care if we didn’t feel like he was a real person. And everything Winslow did to this point turned Frankie into a real person in our eyes.

But there are ways to offer this information in a more entertaining manner. While you have the right to lay it all out like a list, it’s better to build scenes that are entertaining where the byproduct is the character’s life.

As an example, if you wanted to establish your character’s day, you might show them go to the ATM to get some money for that day’s activities. You can do that alone with no drama whatsoever. Or maybe some guy shows up and cuts in front of your protagonist. Says he’s in a hurry so he’s sorry, even though he’s not.

Now you’re showing us your hero’s daily activity but doing so with a little storyline. How your hero reacts to that situation will tell us a lot about him. And I guarantee it’ll be more entertaining than him grabbing 200 bucks out of the ATM and we’re off to the next scene.

Luckily, Winslow’s big inciting incident scene finally arrives. And that’s when Frankie gets set up. When he walks onto that boat and a 400-pound man appears behind him and throws a wire over his neck and starts pulling, while we hear the two young mobsters run away, signifying that Frankie’s been set up, we feel this immense anger towards those guys, as well as these two men in the boat who try to kill him.

There are few better scenarios for making a character likable than having someone try to hurt them. So despite my issues with the non-entertaining setup throughout the first 40 pages, I still felt connected to this character due to that work and was very angry when these two tried to kill him. From that point on, I noticed a huge shift in my investment in the story. I was now determined to see Frankie take down whoever did this.

Not long after that scene, we get one of the most intense scenes I’ve read in a couple of years. Frankie is a young buc mobster just starting out, and he gets tasked with driving home the wife of a mob boss.

Things get tricky when said mob boss’s overly sexual drunk wife starts putting the Missus Robinson moves on Frankie. When he rejects her, she tells him that if he doesn’t sleep with her, she’ll tell her husband that he tried to. It’s a devastating situation for Frankie because if he sleeps with her, there’s a good chance the mob boss will find out and he’ll be killed. And if he doesn’t, the wife will tell her husband he tried to and he’ll be killed.

If the scene only covered the resolution of that quagmire, it would’ve been great. But it gets even more intense when both the mobster husband shows up as well as a senior mobster who Missus Robinson was flirting with all night to piss her husband off, who now wants to close the deal, and he doesn’t care that her husband is in the way.

What follows is not a scene that you’ll ever see written in 2023 (this book was written in 2006), and left me with my jaw permanently extended.

Those two scenes being in such close proximity to one another built up so much good will in the writing, that I was all in. Even if the rest of the book never quite reached those heights, mainly because it spent too much time in the past (the past always pauses the more important present storyline that your readers are there for) and there were sooooo many characters that it was hard to keep up.

But, again, the power that those two scenes had over me kept me invested in what was going to happen to Frankie all on their own.

Scene-writing, everybody. If there’s one skill that will provide massive dividends for you in screenwriting, it’s scene-writing. If you learn the mechanisms for writing a great scene (three acts, goal, stakes, urgency, conflict, unexpected developments, with clever uses of suspense, anticipation and/or dramatic irony) you’re basically unstoppable. Cause you don’t even need to worry about the larger picture. You’ve become a master at hooking the reader in the present. This is what Tarantino is so good at.

It’ll be interesting to see how Storer simplifies this. Cause there’s no way he can keep all these characters and all these mob divisions. But I’ll be there for whatever he does.

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

What I learned: You should aim for 3 great scenes in your script. You know how the other day I was saying, try to make every scene at least an 8 out of 10. Well, three of those scenes should be 10 out of 10s. They’re the kind of scenes that you could imagine being talked about 30 years later. Coming up with great scenes is as hard as anything in screenwriting. But you should try. I’ll remember the Missus Robinson scene in Frankie Machine for the rest of my life. That’s the power that great scenes have over readers.

Also: Here are ten screenwriting lessons from The Bear!

I’m way too busy at the moment to do a proper post. However, I’ve been wanting to post about the “Give it 3 Pages” test for a while now and this seems like the perfect time.

The “Give it 3 Pages” test is this idea that it’s impossible to get people to read your script. But anyone will read 3 pages. So you should be asking people not to read your script. But to read the first 3 pages of your script.

And guess what? If you’ve done your job, they’ll keep reading. In other words, it’s a cheat code. You get people to read your script who would never otherwise read your script.

There’s a caveat, of course. Those first 3 pages need to be good enough that people want to keep reading. But guess what gift you receive if they don’t keep reading? You get the gift of knowing you need to improve your first 3 pages.

So here’s what I want everyone to do. In the comments section, ask as many people as possible to read your first 3 pages. As the reader, you simply tell the writer if you stopped after page 3 or kept reading. If you kept reading, that’s a win for the writer.

Since I know [almost] everyone here is nice, a lot of you are going to say you stopped on page 3 but “plan to keep reading.” No no no no. Sorry writers. That doesn’t count if the reader says that. They have to actually have kept reading. Not say that they plan to keep reading.

If you’ve done your job, they will keep reading because they will not have been able to stop.

All right.

Have at it, everyone.

The “Give it 3 Pages” Test.

I want everyone who’s reading this post to stand up.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Are you standing?

Good. Now, I want you to start clapping.

And Hollywood? Take a bow. Because you’ve earned it.

Over these last three years, there was a strong belief that the theatrical box office was dead.

Even when mega-hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water, racked up gobs of money, those were still sequels. Audiences were coming “back” as opposed to coming “to.”

Would people still come “to” a movie?

It turns out they will. And this is such a great development because I was honestly scared. I thought theatrical film might really be on its way out. When a goofy movie like Barbie and a 3-hour historical film chronicling 200,000 deaths can both dip less than 45% on their second weekend after gigantic first weekend takes, that’s not just unheard of in 2023. That’s rare throughout the history of cinema.

To give you some perspective, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning dropped 65% in its second weekend. And that was off a much smaller opening than either Barbie or Oppenheimer.

So, what’s happening here? Why are we getting this amazing surge in moviegoing interest?

I get it when it comes to Barbie. Barbie isn’t so much a movie as it is a movement. A big part of that movement is that the movie oozes fun. You see the marketing and it makes you feel good. It’s bright. It’s goofy. It’s pink. It’s exactly what you want out of a summer film.

The movie that’s perplexing me is Oppenheimer. This is the kind of movie that you release in October and market it as an Oscar contender for six months. How a film with such depressing subject matter is performing so well in the middle of summer is something box office aficionados are going to be studying for years.

It’s funny, I overheard a couple of people discussing Oppenheimer at Trader Joe’s the other day and I couldn’t help but join in. They both loved the film. I asked them if they got bored after the bomb dropped and they said no. They liked seeing the fallout and how Oppenheimer dealt with it.

It’s something I’ve thought a lot about since the movie. Am I such a slave to structure that I’m unable to comprehend a movie that doesn’t use it in a traditional way? Usually, when the bomb drops, you get to the epilogue and roll those end credits.

In the interest of full disclosure, both those guys I talked to were clearly cinephiles. After we finished our Oppenheimer discussion, they were trying to sell me on an outdoor silent showing of Lawrence of Arabia. I told them, politely of course, that I’d rather take a long walk off a short pier.

In other words, I know cinephiles will love anything Nolan does. But regular moviegoers seem to like the never-ending story as well and I think I know why. When you like a movie, you don’t want it to end. So I suspect that’s what’s going on here. Instead of Mr. Obsessed Structure Guy (me) mechanically complaining that now that the bomb has dropped, the movie should end, they’re just happy this movie they’re enjoying isn’t over yet!

I’m not going to try any harder to figure it out. Regardless of whether I liked it, I’m very happy it’s doing well. Cause this is going to give studios confidence again. Studios with confidence are a lot more fun than studios without confidence. Because studios without confidence bank on boring safe IP. Studios with confidence take chances.

A question a lot of smart people are asking in the wake of this success is, “How do you create a movement?” A movement is bigger than a movie in that the audience becomes both customer and disciple. The experience isn’t just a passive trip to the theater. It’s a party.

This is particularly true with Barbie and it goes back to one of the oldest rules in the Hollywood book – one that they often forget – which is to GIVE US SOMETHING FUN. It may be cool to write something dark. But outside of LA and New York, audiences want something fun. They want to ESCAPE THEIR EVERYDAY LIVES for two hours AND FEEL GOOD WHILE DOING IT. And I’m not sure there’s ever been a more perfect option than Barbie.

I’ll never forget what Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio said when they were on one of the most lucrative screenwriting streaks ever (Shrek franchise, Pirates franchise, Zorro). They said they don’t understand why writers handcuff themselves with super dark material when there’s way more money to be made by writing fun stuff that people feel happy while watching.

Of course, this fails to explain Oppenheimer. But like I said. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain why this movie is doing so well. There are several factors (Nolan is his own brand, the impossible-to-foresee Barbenheimer movement, one of the most star-studded press tours in history) that are making it hard to nail down.

But like I said – WHO CARES??!! All that matters now is that people are coming to see movies and they’re really excited about it. So suck it Netflix, TikTok, and video games. Movies are back, baby!

Shocker: It’s only three things.

As I come up on two decades of meticulously studying this craft, I’ve been thinking, what is my “theory of everything” when it comes to screenwriting? What is the “whole ball of wax” in regards to how to write a script that’s genuinely good?

I use that phrase “genuinely good” because the screenwriting world is packed with screenplays that range from bad, to not very good, to okay, to good. It’s actually kind of easy to write a good screenplay if you’re a working screenwriter. Cause you know all the tricks of the trade.

But how do you write something that’s genuinely good? Something that moves people?

I wanted to use today’s post to explore that question because a lot of writers are misguided in regards to how they approach screenwriting, shooting themselves in the foot long before they’ve typed a word of their screenplay.

There is not, nor will there ever be, a perfect formula for writing a great script and that’s because the world is constantly changing and the things that people like and accept and are interested in are changing with it. So something that was exciting six months ago might feel stale and uninteresting today.

There are also too many variables within a screenplay to be able to control them all. No matter how good of a writer you are, there are always going to be things that get away from you when you write.

There was a recent interview in Variety with the director of the infamous cinematic dud, Gigli, Martin Brest. He stated in the article that, during editing, he was looking at this scene that wasn’t working and he thought to himself, “I knew why this scene used to be in the movie and what its purpose was. I don’t have any idea why it’s in the movie now.”

That’s screenwriting in a nutshell. You have all these grand ideas but, over the course of writing a bunch of drafts, some of those ideas stick and others falter. Despite this, the remnants of every one of those ideas are still stuck in your script’s DNA, making your screenplay part story, part time capsule.

At times, it makes screenwriting feel impossible. Screenplays are like children. You can try to parent them. But, at a certain point, they want to become their own person.

So, in the pursuit of writing a great screenplay, you have to accept that there’s a certain lack of control. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set yourself up for success. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. Here are the three most important things when it comes to writing a genuinely good screenplay.

CONCEPT

Field-testing a concept is probably the most important thing you can do in your pursuit of writing a great screenplay. And it’s the part of the process that the majority of writers get wrong. Especially beginner writers. Cause beginner writers assume that any idea they come up with is amazing.

The reason concept is such a problem is because the idea-inspiration process is antithetical to the idea-generation process. Most of us get inspired by something and want to write a movie about it. But just because it inspires us doesn’t mean anyone else would want to watch it. I may love the scientific exploration of algae. But would any sort of reliable audience be interested in a movie about algae? Probably not.

On the flip side, when you try to manufacture a concept, you may come up with a more technically marketable premise. But gone is the inspiration. And because you’re not personally inspired, the idea has no soul. It’s nearly impossible to write a great script if you don’t feel that soulful connection with it.

This is why you have to field-test concepts. You have to come up with ideas that both inspire you as well as contain marketability then run them by at least five people who you know aren’t trying to make you feel good (you know you’ve got a good field tester if they’ve told you one of your previous ideas was garbage). You need at least a couple of those people to be really excited about your concept. Preferably more than that. And five testers is just the minimum. Try to get as many opinions as you can.

I’d estimate that 80% of all screenplays written are doomed before the writer writes a single word because of a weak concept.

AN INTERESTING MAIN CHARACTER

There are three facets to the main character that you have to get right. The first is that we must make our main character interesting. A huge mistake writers make is they create a boring protagonist. This is rarely done on purpose. Most writers assume their hero is interesting simply due to the fact that they’re in the center of their story’s chaos for two hours. All these crazy things may be happening to your hero. But that doesn’t make *them* interesting.

So, look for ways to make your main character unique, charming, weird, have a big personality. Maybe a more succinct way to put it is to make them larger than life. Ferris Bueller was this untamed nuclear blast of energy. From Tony Stark to Deadpool to Daniel Plainview to Elle Woods to Juno. These characters are not wallflowers. They exert their force upon the world.  As such, it is impossible for them not to impact us.

Next, we need a hero we can root for. That doesn’t mean they have to be likable.  In fact, complex “unlikable” protagonists (Louis Bloom, Travis Bickle, Arthur Fleck) produce some of the best movies.  But that complexity can never come at the expense of rootforabiality. Which essentially means, if one lacks likability, they must possess our sympathy.  “Joker” is a masterclass in creating sympathy (getting bullied, takes care of sick mother, has a mental condition) for a genuinely unlikable person.

Finally, I’ve found that the best scripts have characters that are torn. They’re being pulled in different directions and the attempt to reconcile the chaos within them makes them compelling to read. Because even when there’s zero plot going on, there’s still something going on within the character himself.

A good recent example of this is Hijack, the series on Apple. Sam Nelson is torn. He just wants to get back to his family alive. And to do that, he’s willing to help the hijackers. But he, of course, also wants to protect the passengers. So he’s constantly having to make these tough choices regarding what’s more important – the safety of the passengers or himself.

And this doesn’t just have to be a dramatic thing. One of the most famous comedies of all time, Liar Liar, has Jim Carrey’s character in this never-ending battle of wanting to lie but having to tell the truth. There isn’t a single moment in the film where he’s comfortable. That’s a good indication that you’ve constructed a character with some genuine inner conflict.

A GREAT PLOT

Finally, you need to nail your plot.  An understanding of the basics is essential here. You’ve got to have a character who wants something badly (their goal). You have to give that goal consequences if it’s not obtained (stakes). And you have to create urgency in the plot somehow.

You also want your plot to build. Every 15-20 pages has to feel bigger than the previous 15-20 pages. And you want to throw a lot of obstacles at your protagonist. It must feel like the universe is against them. Everywhere they look, there’s a new problem (see the second season of “The Bear”).

But the real trick with plot is that YOU MUST STAY AHEAD OF THE READER. 99% of the scripts I read, I know what’s going to happen in the next scene, five scenes from now, ten scenes from now. The weaker the writer is, the less they monitor where the reader is in relation to them. Which is how the reader gets way out in front of you, impatiently waiting for you to catch up.

You should always be asking yourself, “What is the reader expecting in this moment?” Sometimes, you should give them what they’re expecting. But you should also surprise them occasionally. Because if your reader isn’t sure what’s coming next, they’re a lot more interested in turning the pages.

Some recent movies where I didn’t know what was coming next were Parasite, Coda, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Us, Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and Avatar: The Way Of Water.

Obviously, this is more difficult to do when you’re writing mainstream movies. But it’s definitely possible. Who saw that Liz’s father twist coming in Spiderman: Homecoming? And the great thing about throwing a twist like that in is, you place the reader on shaky ground. They no longer think they know what’s coming. Therefore, even if you decide never to include another twist again, you’re ahead of the audience just by the mere fact that they know one *could* come.

Obviously, having a unique perspective on life that informs your writing, giving it its own unique flavor, is going to improve all three of the facets I mentioned above. But this post is more for the writer who doesn’t have that game-changing unique voice. I want those writers to know that, with word work, they can still write a genuinely good screenplay.

There will never be a one-size-fits-all-formula for screenwriting. It’s why even AI will never master this craft. How can you master a moving target? But if you focus on the above three steps, you will give yourself the best opportunity to write something great.

What’s your personal “Theory of Screenwriting Everything?”

TV Pilot loglines are due tonight (Thursday) by 10pm Pacific Time!

“Pick me!”

Get those TV Pilot Loglines in! Here are the details!

What: TV Pilot Logline Showdown
When: The Showdown is on July 21st
Deadline: Thursday, July 20th, 10pm Pacific Time
What: send your title, genre, and logline
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

When we do these, “Why didn’t my logline get picked” posts, we usually do them after the fact. But I decided to change things up because we have a lot of TV loglines and I know all of you are eager to see if your entry made the top 5. So, at least this way, a few of you will know where you stand ahead of time. Let’s jump into it!

Title: THE LOCAL
Genre: Drama (one-hour)
Logline: A labor union president facing a tough re-election hires the estranged daughter of a hospital CEO to go behind enemy lines and help the union organize her father’s workforce.

Analysis: One of the tougher things about judging TV pilot loglines is that they’re rarely as concept-heavy as movie loglines. So I’m inherently aware that I’m not going to get “Source Code” in any of these pitches. With that said, your logline still has to leave an impression on the reader. There has to be some level of excitement on our end. And all that happens when I read this logline is I think, “That’s it?” There’s very little specificity to help this idea stand out from all the other TV shows out there. I mean, contrast this with the TV Pilot I just reviewed the other week with a group of rich people who hide out in a countryside mansion while they wait out the Black Plague. Note how specific that is. You feel like you’ve never seen anything like that before and that’s because you haven’t. Re-elections and unions and workforces… it goes right through one ear and out the other. The one specific element in the logline is the hospital CEO. But it isn’t woven into the presentation in a way that feels interesting.

Title: The Villainesses
Genre: Action/Comedy/Indie
Logline: In a small town where Villains are banished to live out the rest of their days, three female Villains must ban together to stop the other Villains from destroying the town. But the sociopathic Dictator that put them there, disagrees…

Analysis: It’s always a red flag to me when a logline contains unnecessary capitalization. Cause what I immediately think is, “If this person doesn’t even know that certain words shouldn’t be capitalized, how can I trust them to write a full story?” I know it seems trivial to some why industry people reject ideas. But, at the very least, your presentation should be spotless because too many people have come before you with bad presentation and taught those readers that their subsequent scripts are always bad. So the readers are just going off of past experience. Maybe your sloppy presentation is the one time where the script is still awesome. But most people aren’t going to give you that chance. And these are easy things to take care of with a quick logline consult ($25 – carsonreeves1@gmail.com). As for the idea itself, I don’t dislike the idea of villains being relegated to a, sort of, purgatory. And a showdown between villains in the town seems fun. But I don’t know why they have to be female villains who take on everyone else. Seems kind of random. And the final sentence about the dictator feels tacked on and inelegant, destroying any momentum that the logline may have had.

Title: Pwned
Genre: Action / Adventure
Logline: After being transported to a strange world where their earth-bound video game skills are manifestly real, four gamers use their respective skills of driving, shooting, athletics, and impersonation to join an uprising against a fascist politician in order to win their freedom and return home.

Analysis: So, with an idea like this, you run into a huge problem, which is that a great version of this concept has already been made, in Jumanji. I’m sure the writer would contend that his movie is nothing like Jumanji. But you have to look at things through the reader’s eyes. The reader is ALWAYS looking to compare movie ideas. It’s automatic. So you can’t really escape comparison if your idea is even slightly similar to another idea. And when you’re going up against a really great execution of that idea, your idea will almost uniformly feel like the “not as good” version. And that’s kind of what I felt here. Jumanji was just so fun because the characters got stuck in bodies that allowed them to play the complete opposite of who they were in real life. It was quite clever. Whereas this just seems more straightforward. Gamers who each have a particular skill team up inside a game to try and get home. It’s not a bad idea. But you don’t get points for writing “not bad” ideas. Your idea has to be something special. Despite this critique, I liked the title.

Title: The Wilderness
Genre: Dark comedy
Logline: A lonely, workaholic lawyer risks spending his entire life in prison after he chooses to harbor a mysterious fugitive with whom he’s fallen in love.

Analysis: I wanted to get one in here that had a specific “TV” reason for why it wasn’t picked. Can anybody guess why this didn’t make the cut? I’ll give you a second because I think it’s obvious. Ready? It doesn’t have enough meat on the bone to extend out into a full series. You’ve only got two characters, for starters. Most TV shows have a ton of characters because they need enough people to cut back and forth between to fill up a full season of television. On top of that, the central conflict is too simple. Someone is allowing a fugitive to stay with them. You have to put yourself in the eyes of the logline reader and ask, ‘what kind of show does the reader imagine from this logline?’ I’m imagining a guy talking to a fugitive in his house for 48 minutes a week. And the conflict isn’t even strong enough to support one episode of that. There was a show on Apple TV not long ago where Domhall Gleeson was holding his therapist (Steve Carrell) hostage. At least that setup had some genuine conflict. This feels too small time. I hope there’s more to this. If there is, it needs to be in the logline.

Title: Horror Adjacent
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: Fed up with living next door to a haunted house, the Peevey family are desperate to move, but soon discover how hard it is to sell when your neighbor is a poltergeist.

Analysis: So, with this setup, we’ve at least got something marketable to work with. There are the beginnings of a fun idea here. My problem is a similar problem I have with half the loglines sent to me, which is that the end of the logline peters out. It doesn’t make sense. Why would the poltergeist in the house *next* door prevent you from selling *your* house? Maybe there’s a reason in the script. But we don’t have the script. We just have this logline.  I see this mistake ALL THE TIME. The writer assumes we know just as much as he does. Honey, I got news for you. We only know what you show us. And I’m not making the logical connection of why a neighbor’s poltergeist won’t let you sell your own home. I could maybe understand why a poltergeist wouldn’t let you out of the house you both shared. But even then, I’m not sure why the poltergeist would want you to stay. That probably needs to be in the logline.

Props and thank you to the five writers in the line of fire today. You guys are brave for allowing your loglines to be put on blast. And just so you know, LOGLINES ARE HARD. Don’t feel bad. 99% of writers can’t come up with a good concept AND write a good logline. It’s hard.

The only reason I know how to do it is because I spent a decade having no choice but to write up loglines for the scripts I was reviewing. So if you want to practice, do that. Watch a movie and, afterward, write out the logline. Do that for every movie you see and script you read and you will get better. If the only time you ever write loglines is whenever you finish a script? You’re only going to be practicing loglines once a year.

Seeya tomorrow where our top 5 TV loglines will be revealed.  And if you need help crafting your logline, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.  A basic logline consult is just 25 bucks.