Number 5!

One of the big problems screenwriters run into is that they’re good with the writing part but they have no idea how to strategize their career. They don’t know how to break in. Without a concrete plan, they just sort of write stuff and send it out to a few people and if nobody says it’s great, they cry in their Cheerios, spend several months watching bad television and eating a lot of donuts and Reeses peanut butter cups, before jumping back on the horse and trying again.

Much like your protagonist needs a goal in his story, YOU need a goal. Today, I’m going to give you ten goals to choose from in regards to what your plan should be. Once you know what your goal is, you can cater your screenwriting break-in strategy accordingly. Here are the ten best ways to break in as a screenwriter in 2023 from least effective to most effective. Are we ready?

LET’S GET STARTED!

10) Be the ultimate self-promoter – Be someone who’s on every screenwriting message board there is and constantly promote your work. Get people to read it. The trick with this is you have to be genuinely nice about it and reciprocate the gesture. If you’re out there asking everybody to read your scripts, you should be offering to read their scripts too. What’s going to happen if you do this consistently is that you’re going to grow a network and people in the screenwriting community are going to know who you are. And what ends up happening is that, in these bigger networks, there are always industry people dipping in and out of that network. So they’re going to be aware of you. And if people are talking about how your writing keeps improving and then you come out with some great concept for your latest screenplay, I guarantee you a few of these industry people are going to be curious and want to check the script out. We have a few of these promoters here on the site. I will allow them to share with you their secrets in the comments section.

9) Contests – Contests aren’t what they used to be because they used to be the only middle-ground between being a no-one and being a repped screenwriter. Nowadays, obviously, you have this thing called the internet which, if you’re smart, you can use to circumvent the contest route. But the bigger contests still hold some sway in the industry. Managers and agents still pay attention to the people who win a Nicholl Fellowship. They’ll even take a look at your logline if you were a finalist. There are a few more good contests. Austin. Sundance Screenwriters Lab. And I’m sure a few of you will post others in the comments section. Contests aren’t as helpful as they used to be. But you can definitely parlay a good showing in a big contest into representation.

8) Short stories on Reddit – Short stories naturally lend themselves to feature film ideas and one of the bigger trends over the last five years is production companies snatching up the rights to original horror short stories being posted on CreepyPasta on Reddit. I believe they also have subreddits for sci-fi and romance and drama and whatever else tickles your fancy. Although horror seems to be the genre that gets the most attention. The great thing about this is that your story doesn’t need to be crazy elaborate. 2000-5000 words is all you need for a good short story. And that’s just one-quarter of the words you would write in a feature script. You also get instant feedback from readers so you’ll know right away if your story is working or not. If not, you’ll find out why and you can go back to the drawing board, improve, and try again. Short horror stories are one of the avenues that have filled the vacuum of the long lost spec boom.

7) Spec Sale – The days of giant spec sales are long gone. They just don’t happen anymore for a number reasons, the biggest of which is that in the 1990s studios got burned for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on good first acts and terrible second and third acts. So they went the more dependable route and started hoarding IP. However, you can still break in with spec sales under the right circumstances. Those circumstances are writing lower budgeted big concept genre material (horror, sci-fi, contained thriller). You’re not going to get paid as much. But you can sell those scripts and, because they’re cheap, there’s a good chance of them getting made. And now you’re in the system. You know that movie about the two girls who climb up a tower called, “Fall?” Stuff like that you can sell as a spec script.

6) Find some IP and write a script based on it – Industry people like IP better than they like sex. It’s a magical word to them. I bring this up because you’d be surprised at just how interested someone will be in a marginal idea solely because it’s previously established IP. The trick with IP is to go in one of two directions. One, look for overlooked material. Books (or games, or comics) that made a little splash in the 80s and 90s and 00s, but not a big enough splash to become a part of popular culture. I remember Akiva Goldsman got the rights to some unicorn book from the 90s for a bag of pistachios and a half-finished can of Busch Light. You can option these more obscure materials for next to nothing from the authors if you’re charming enough. Cause what else do they have going on? The other avenue is to look for stuff in the public domain. You probably want to stay away from your Peter Pans and Robin Hoods only because everybody picks those. Keep an eye out for books that will be in the public domain A YEAR FROM NOW. That way, you can write the script over the course of the next year and have it ready the second the book enters the public domain. Sites like this one will tell you what’s upcoming.

5) Write a Pilot Script – As a feature guy, it pains me to say this. But pilots sell more than features these days. And the great thing about pursuing this avenue is that, unlike fifteen years ago, where you had to be a seasoned veteran to get a show on the air, these days, virtual no-names can get on the air (True Detective, The End of the F***ing World, Severance, PEN15). There are so many slots to fill for networks and streamers that they have no choice but to take a chance on young writers LIKE YOURSELF. So write a pilot, preferably with a juicy concept (think more “Stranger Things” and less “This is Us”), then do your research, see who reps the writers of shows like yours (on IMDB Pro), and START QUERYING THEM!

4) Black List – The Black List continues to be a touchy subject around here. It used to be great. Now the town has learned how to game the system so a bunch of crappy scripts make it on the list. Also, woke scripts get heavily weighted regardless of whether they’re good or not. So the Black List is definitely less prestigious than it used to be. But getting on the list is still going to give your career a bump. And if you make the top 10, it will be a sizable bump. You’ll be able to get meetings with everyone in town and, hopefully, parlay a few of those into writing jobs. How do you get on the Black List? Go through the last two Black Lists. Write down every manager who has more than one entry. Note what kind of scripts they like. And write a script in that universe (woke and biopics are most managers’ entry point). Query them with a logline. They’ll probably want to read it if your script is in any way similar to the kinds of scripts they usually promote onto the list. And if the script is good, they’ll send it out. And now you get to be on the Black List. Simple as that!

3) Write and direct a short film – A short film that gets a lot of views online allows you to e-mail lots of reps and producers in Hollywood and get a meeting with them. It’s the ultimate business card. Because it’s not just a short film. It’s a promise of what you’re capable of if someone gave you the money to make a feature film. And everyone’s going to want to be in on that because they’re going to make money from it. But you have to give us a short film that’s special in some way. It’s got to be legitimately scary. It’s got to be incredibly moving. It has to have a world-changing twist to it. It has to have something shocking in it. It’s got to be controversial in some way. People always say, “There’s a million short films. It’s impossible to stand out.” Well, yeah, if you write some lame handheld mumblecore drama in a one-bedroom Hollywood apartment, nobody’s going to care. But, luckily, you’re a writer. So you know what captures audiences. Especially if you read this site. Use that knowledge and make something memorable.

2) Get on a TV writing Staff – The last time I counted, there were 700 shows on TV. If each of those shows averages 5 writers, which is probably a lowball estimate, that’s 3500 writing jobs. Are you one of the 3500 top writers in the United States? If you read this site and you’ve been at this for while, you should be. Or you should be close. There are just so many of these jobs, mathematically, it’s easier than trying to sell a spec or make the Black List. If you want to get on one of these shows, identify what kinds of shows you would love to write for, then write an original pilot script in that genre. Then query all of the managers and agents who represent TV writers (through IMDB Pro). Then they’ll send your script in to the right people and hopefully you get staffed on one of those shows. You also want to submit to all the studio TV writing programs, which someone can list for me in the comments section.

1) Direct a movie from your own script – By far, this is the fastest way into the system. Because the thing that Hollywood values most is a finished product. And if you do it this way, you’ll have a finished product. The rub is that you have to want to direct and you have to have some money. With that said, part of being a writer is being financially creative. It’s something you’ll be asked to do over and over again when you’re hired for jobs. So try to write something that would be cheap to shoot. A writer recently sent me a script for a consultation that was limited to a computer screen, like Searching. And it was a good script! So it can be done. And if you do it, it really is a “jump to the head of the line” situation.

And there you have it! Did I miss any? Rank them incorrectly? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her.
About: This script finished in the bottom 25% of last year’s Black List. Chris Grillot had one other script on the Black List several years ago called “Bella.” Grillot is using his former job as a crime journalist in New Orleans as inspiration for much of what happens in today’s script. Except for the tooth fairy demon stuff, I’m assuming.
Writer: Chris Grillot
Details: 100 pages on the dot!

It’s been a while since we’ve reviewed a horror script on Scriptshadow so I thought, let’s bring the site back into equilibrium.

There have actually been some cool horror films that have come out lately. We had M3gan. We had Barbarian. We had Smile.

What I like about horror is that it’s very flexible tone-wise. You can take the exact same premise and construct three very different experiences depending on the tone you choose.  While older viewers dismiss the genre as a jump-scare fest, you can write some pretty dramatic horror movies. Which is definitely what we get today.

29 year old drug addict, Celia, has just finished her latest court-ordered rehab. Celia lives in the heart of New Orleans and on this particular night, the night she goes to get her daughter back, it’s raining like hell.

Celia picks up her 10 year old daughter, Imani, from the girl’s father. Imani has a cast on her arm. Celia knows what that means so she storms back in the house and all we hear is a gunshot. She races back out and tells Imani that they’re going to California. TONIGHT.

They don’t get very far, though. The rains are so intense that Celia’s Corolla gets stuck in 3 feet of water. The two have to practically swim over to the nearby gas station, where Celia asks the checker for a ride. He laughs at her but a couple minutes later, a local Louisiana swamp lord zooms up to the station on his boat!

The man, David, says he’s got a B&B down the street and Celia can stay there the night then get their car fixed tomorrow. Without any other options, Celia is forced to accept and, oh yeah, the home also happens to be an Antebellum plantation! As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.

Once there, Imani’s tooth pops out, and one of the maids at the B&B, Jeanine, tells her to *make sure* she puts that tooth under her pillow tonight. Celia shakes her head. Now they’re dealing with crazy weirdos obsessed with the tooth fairy? Can this night get any worse!

But after the two fall asleep, the night does get worse. The tooth fairy creature, nicknamed “Le Feu Follet,” nearly snatches Imani. Celia storms up to Jeanine and asks her what’s up. Jeanine tells her the whole backstory of this thing, that amounts to if you don’t offer your tooth, it takes your kid.

So what do they do now?? Jeanine says they’re lucky in that all of the candles here at the home are blessed by Jesus or something. And since the tooth fairy won’t go near them, they just have to stay in the light. Except that these weak candles won’t last the whole night. Which means they have to escape.

The team gears up to make a run for it, but then the crafty tooth fairy snatches Imani away! Now, the plan changes. They have to go find the only person left in town who knows where this tooth fairy creature lives. Then Celia is going to save her daughter!

Here’s the way I look at horror scripts these days.

You’ve got your horror monsters.

And you’ve got your horror scripts.

If you’ve got a horror monster, you have to create a short film proof-of-concept.

If you’ve got a great horror premise that doesn’t rely on how your horror monster looks, then you can still get away with trying to sell the script by itself.

In other words, if you’re writing “Mama,” which is entirely dependent on how the “Mama” creature looks, you need to do a proof-of-concept short. You even need to do that for simple monsters, like the shadow monster in Lights Out.

But if you’re writing something like The Sixth Sense, that’s not a horror script where you need to put a monster on the poster. So that’s one that can get by on the script alone.

What’s interesting about Chatter is that it’s somewhere in between these two options and I don’t know if it’s good enough to get traction as a script alone. You probably need to do a proof-of-concept short on the tooth fairy creature.

With that said, the character work here is intense. And dark. This isn’t some light-hearted funzo horror movie, like M3gan.

We feel Celia’s addiction. We feel the physical abuse in her relationship, as well as the abuse from the father towards the daughter. We feel this “all hope is lost” vibe as they’re trying to start a new life. It’s intense, man!

That’s probably the script’s best quality. Its darkness. These people felt like they were genuinely at the end of their rope.

The script probably would’ve been a lot better, though, if the writer had patched up his mythology. We’re told that this creature used to steal children all the way back in the Civil War. But once word got out that it was doing so, everybody made sure to always put their teeth under the pillow.

Apparently, only one person didn’t do this in the last 50 years, and that was Jeanine, who didn’t do it for her son, which is why the tooth fairy took him. I’m trying to do the math here.  How many teeth fall out of a child as they grow up? 15? Okay, now how many children have grown up in New Orleans in the past 50 years. 10 million? So we’re looking at 150 million teeth, and only once did someone not put a tooth under their pillow? I’m not sure I’m buying that.

I think a good question is, does stuff like this matter?

Does it really matter to a reader if that aspect of the story doesn’t pass muster?

It’s a good question. And the answer is, “It depends.” If I’m super invested in the characters and the storytelling and the script is really good, then I probably don’t care about it. But If I’m where most readers are when they’re reading a script, which is they think it’s pretty good and are hoping for a big exciting ending that’s going to put the script over the top. If that’s where a script is, then anything that’s shaky in the script could be the deciding factor that makes the reader give up.

That’s why details, in and of themselves, don’t matter. But taken in totality, with all the other details of the story, one lazy detail could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

For example, you have these candles. These candles are special god-approved candles that scare away the tooth fairy. Well, hold on here a second. These candles won’t last the night? Then what good are they? And does that mean you have to go to the church every morning to relight the candles? That seems like extremely specific mythology. Or are you saying they last for a long time but Celia and Imani just happened to show up on the night where they were running out of wax? If that’s the case, then that’s a bit coincidental, don’t you think?

Again, by themselves, these things don’t matter much. But when added up, they definitely matter. Because the reader is asking these very same questions in their mind as they’re reading your script INSTEAD OF doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is enjoying your story.

With that said, there’s a teensy bit more good to Chatter than bad. Like I always say, get the main characters right and that will act as deodorant for many of your script’s weaknesses. I felt that Grillot got the characters of Ceilia and Imani right. And then I always love when writers take a goofy idea and treat it really seriously. It always creates an unexpected tone.

So, much like Monday’s movie review (You People), this one squeaks by with a ‘worth the read.’

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

What I learned: Early in the script, Celia walks into the dad’s house. We stay outside so we can’t see anything. We hear a gunshot, we see her hurry out of the house, and then her and Imani make a run for it. However, later in the story, we learn that she didn’t shoot him. She merely fired a warning shot. I believe that the audience would rather you imply something bad DIDN’T HAPPEN only to later reveal IT DID, than imply that something bad DID HAPPEN only to later reveal THAT IT DIDN’T. Because it’s a letdown. Celia is bada$$ if she killed him. The stakes are much higher, since now they must completely disappear in order to survive the rest of their lives. Whenever something cool happens in your script and you later say, “Psyche!” the reader doesn’t like you.

Hey, Jordan didn’t make the cut of his high school team either.  So if you’re on this list, it may be a good thing!

This is a reminder that on the second to last Friday of every month, we’ll have a logline showdown here on the site. Send your title, genre, and logline to me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. I’ll vet the best five, put them up on the site for competition. Winner gets a review the following Friday (so your script has to be written!). The next deadline is Thursday, February 16th, 10pm Pacific Time.

Unfortunately, not every logline can be a winner. So in the spirit of both teaching and making sure that everyone doesn’t keep sending me loglines that have no chance, I’m featuring 7 loglines that will not make the Amateur Showdown cut. If you entered with one of these, learn from your mistakes, and enter another showdown with a fresh concept. We’re doing these all year long so you have time!

Title: HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Disturbed by the disappearance of a pretty blond white girl overshadowing that of her black best friend, an 11-year-old white girl fakes her own disappearance in hopes of it leading authorities to her friend.

Analysis: I sort of understand what’s going on here but it’s one of those ideas that’s not quite formulated when you lay it out. And this is a challenge that a lot of writers run up against. These ideas that *kind of* sound like movie ideas. But if you actually break down the logline, they don’t make sense. In this case, we’re exploring the well-documented phenomena that the news only reports on pretty young white girls that go missing, never black girls. So our hero fakes her disappearance… to make people look for her black friend. Wait, hold on, what?? How does her going missing get people to look for her friend? Aren’t they only going to look for her? And doesn’t that only solidify the ‘missing young white girl’ phenomena? Maybe she leaves messages for the cops like, “Don’t forget my friend who’s also missing!” I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. And a logline MUST MAKE SENSE. Let me say that again. A logline MUST MAKE SENSE. You don’t get to explain your logline to someone. They just read the logline. So IT MUST MAKE SENSE.

Title: Office Murder Mystery
Genre: Mystery
Logline: Waking up in a locked office next to the dead body of his boss, a man suffering from a schizophrenic disorder must find the real murderer by the end of the business day with the help of his five favorite dead mystery writers that only he can see, hear or speak to.

Analysis: This one comes from a longtime reader of the site, Alex, who I really like. But this logline doesn’t work for me. It definitely has a high-concept feel to it. But two things are keeping me away. One, whenever you start talking about schizophrenics, the writing level needs to be 10 times that of a normal writer. It’s a very specific disease and in order for it to come off as authentic, the writer really has to understand it, and in my experience, 999 writers out of 1000 don’t. So it always ends up being lame. Also, the “dead mystery writers” thing comes out of nowhere. One second we have a dead body of a boss and the next we have mystery writers??? Where did these mystery writers come from exactly? I know. They’re in his head. But they’re not set up well. We weren’t told that our hero was a vociferous reader or an aspiring novelist. Just a “man.”  So there’s zero connection to the mystery writers component.  For these reasons, the logline doesn’t work.

Title: Eagle Heart
Genre: Period drama – WWII
Logline: When his father comes home from war without legs and without hope, a nine year old boy believes that by saving a dying bird he can stop his family from falling apart.

Analysis: These are always hard for me to turn down because I can tell the writer has written a very heartfelt story that he cares deeply about. But the logline still has to work. A big problem I’ll see in a lot of loglines is that the writer makes a HUGE leap from one dot to the next. A ton of necessary information in between is skipped over, making the logline seem awkward and disconnected. We start out with a dad coming home from war, injured and hopeless. Okay, so far so good. Then we’re saving a bird. Wait, what??? What about saving dad?? Then we find out he’s saving the bird so that his family doesn’t fall apart. What about saving the bird to save his dad!!?? All three sections of the logline do not operate in harmony, which is why I passed this one over.

Title: SINNERMAN
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a home invasion ends in murder a mother of two young children is ‘haunted’ by the intruder’s malevolent spirit but she soon discovers that she’s the undead and is being held in purgatory…

Analysis: First of all, when a writer hits me up with 4 or 5 submissions, I pretty much don’t trust those entries. As writers, we typically have 1 or 2 screenplays that are RIGHT NOW our best work. We do not have five equally good scripts. Three of those are older work and not nearly representative of what we’re capable of now. So if you’re just spamming people with your five most recent screenplays, chances are you’re not really trying to show someone your best work. Hence, I wouldn’t use this strategy (on my site or anywhere else). As for the logline, it has a bunch of those buzzwords that make it sound like a movie (home invasion, haunted, undead, purgatory) but nothing unique to help it stand out from the pack. A script idea usually needs a unique attractor of some sort. This one doesn’t have one.

Title: WEIRD WAR
Genre: Epic Vietnam War Era Supernatural thriller
Logline: A young grunt in denial about his psychic ability is assigned to an elite squad of spirit hunters and is forced to come to terms with his family’s own supernatural past.

Analysis: If you follow my site, you know that extended genre descriptions take you out of the running immediately. You want one genre descriptor, two at most. In very rare situations, three. But whatever you do, you don’t want to add things into the genre description (Epic, Vietnam Ear Era) that aren’t accepted known genres. Not only does it come off as unprofessional, but it indicates that the script is all over the place. So, what do we see with this logline? Well, it sounds all over the place. Psychic abilities. Spirit hunters. It sounds out there and, based on my extensive experience reading scripts, like it’s going to have a very wonky and muddled mythology. Now, could I be wrong? Of course. But this is what my experience tells me is coming, which is why the script didn’t make the showdown.

Title: Edge of Humanity
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Earth faces the final stages of environmental collapse from climate change. The global government secretly commits genocide to avert human extinction, while rival factions fight to uncover the truth.

Analysis: First of all, this writer sent a nice e-mail saying that he recently received his first “RECOMMEND.” So good on him! But, when it comes to Logline Showdown, the recommends are rarer than snow in Los Angeles. We’re tough graders here, and the problem with Edge of Humanity is that the logline is way too broad. There isn’t a single mention of a character. So who do we connect to? And what’s the actual story, since presumably we’re going to be following someone on a journey? On top of that, the broad strokes are too generalized and don’t set the script apart. More generic buzzwords: “environmental collapse,” “climate change,” “global government,” “genocide,” “human extinction.” It just sounds like a million other scripts, movies, and tv shows. This is your monthly reminder that a logline should not be about what makes your movie SIMILAR to others. It should be about what makes your movie DIFFERENT from others.

Title: Controller
Genre:  Sci-Fi
Logline:  A young fugitive, still traumatized from a high school assault, uses an experimental mind-control device to save a new lover from a jealous techno thief.

Analysis: This logline has several problems. For starters, the high school assault should not be in the logline. That’s backstory. It doesn’t add anything relevant that we *need* to know to understand the story. From there, you have “experimental mind-control” and “techno thief.” These are two major aspects of the logline and they don’t go together at all. The featured words in a logline MUST CONNECT for your logline to feel whole. So, for example, if you say your hero is a vegan, then it works well if, later in the logline, they find themselves in a slaughterhouse. Finally, I don’t really know what a techno thief is. You mean like they steal bitcoin? It feels like a dated word and it’s not clear enough all on its own. If any word in your logline has a chance of being even mildly misunderstood, you don’t want to use it.

Carson gives logline consultations for $25 a pop.  E-mail him at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if interested. 

The second episode always reveals the truth of whether you have a good show or a bad one

If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m fascinated by this series.

I think it’s kinda gangster, and also kinda insane, to try and make a show that looks exactly like another show that happens to be one of the most popular shows of all time in The Walking Dead.

So from a screenwriting perspective, I’m interested in how you get around that. It’s a big challenge. And I wanted to see how they were going to do it. I became even more interested when they went all in on the marketing. It showed they were really backing this show. So maybe they did figure out the trick to make it work.

But then last week, the same thing that happens to me when I read a bad script happened to me when I watched the pilot. Which is that these little red flags popped up. The super-generic post-apocalyptic city, for example. A main character who wasn’t compelling enough to carry an entire series. A secondary character – the girl – who has some standard lame secret power that’s going to be revealed later.

All of it felt way too familiar.

And that’s why I’m reviewing this second episode. I’m curious to see if my suspicions are correct. I believe that this show is in major trouble. The only hope I have for it is if they sacrificed story quality for setup purposes.

The weakness I saw in that pilot were a crippling reminder of how critical character is in a TV show. If we don’t fall in love with those characters right away… the show is screwed. And what’s so frustrating about screenwriting is that, theoretically, I should like Joel. We meet him, we see how much he loves his daughter, then watch his daughter get killed in front of him. Why am I not all-in on this guy?

I don’t know. All I know is that when we fast-forward 20 years Joel is this grumpy guy you kind of sort of like but also don’t. You know who he reminded me of? Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Obi-Wan show. Same idea. Grumpy. Head down. Goes to work every day. “Grumpy” is a tough character trait to make work. Audiences generally don’t like grumpy people. It’s possible, of course. “Up” did it. But, usually, it’s a bad move.

I want to be proven wrong about all this. Let’s get into episode 2’s plot and see if I was.

In this episode, we start back in 2003 in Jakarta. It’s here, apparently, where the virus was born and is starting to spread. The government’s head scientist determines that there’s no hope and they should immediately start bombing the city they’re in!

Cut to Joel and Ellie (the little girl) and Tess (the girlfriend) in the present. The three need to get through downtown Boston for some reason that isn’t well explained at all. I think they’re going to a courthouse for some reason? It’s confusing.

That setup is mostly an excuse to start playing with this world and seeing what it looks like. Buildings have fallen over onto each other. Hotel lobbies have become frog ponds. And the infected monster people are scattered about in various locations. Although, surprisingly, for most of our trio’s journey, we barely see them.

Eventually, our group get to the courthouse – again, I don’t know why they’re going there but they get there – and that’s when Tess reveals that she’s infected. Which means she’s going to have to off herself soon. Joel and Ellie then have to get out of Dodge, leaving Tess to lure in some other monsters so she can take them out along with herself. The End.

So… was I entertained?

Funny enough, this episode felt a lot like the first episode. It started off strong. Then got worse from there.

The show’s central problem continues to be its weak characters. Joel doesn’t talk much and, when he does, he usually says boring stuff. Tess is like a female version of Joe. She’s equally as moody and talks in that sort of angry whisper that all cliched characters in these shows talk like.

I guess Ellie, the girl, is supposed to be the comedic relief. But comedic reliefs only work when they’re not annoying.

With that said, at least we’re on the move now. We’re walking through this city. There’s potential danger around every corner, which heightens the tension whenever we’re in a scene.

But there’s just no X-FACTOR here. There’s nothing about this show to get you excited. Nobody’s going to finish an episode of this show, text their friend, and say, “Oh my God, did you see the latest episode of Last of Us!!??” And that’s what you need these days. Because the modern day equivalent of telling your friends is telling the internet. So if nobody’s running to social media to talk about how awesome the episode was, your show is in trouble.

House of the Dragon had that quality. White Lotus had that quality. This is missing something. And I think the problem is two-fold. Boring characters and a world that’s too familiar.

The one big difference between this show and The Walking Dead, I guess, is that these zombies are more like monsters. They can morph into more exciting beings. But is looking forward to these monsters enough to drive an entire show? I don’t think it is.

What matters most is CHARACTER. We need to love the characters. I wish I could put up one post a week that just repeated that line a thousand times. And I’m not even going to lay all this at the feet of the writers. Casting comes into this too. This is the fourth role in a row for Pedro Pascal where I am not impressed by him at all (Mandalorian, WW1984, The Bubble were the other three). I’m not sure how this guy became popular. But I think he’s freaking boring. He’s like Gerard Butler without the charm. So that’s probably playing into it why the show feels stuck in second gear.

Look. This show is better than some of the other high-profile releases that have come out recently. Rings of Power. Willow. Obi-Wan. But it’s nowhere near the class of House of the Dragon, White Lotus, and Stranger Things. It’s not even as good as Westworld.

This marks the last time I will watch The Last of Us. What about you?

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

What I learned: I love the writing move of a character sitting down somewhere random and the military comes up to get them, because this person is needed by the president to help them figure out a top secret problem. I love that moment where they walk up, stop in front of them, and then no words are spoken. We just cut to them in the car. Or in the helicopter. Because why do you need your characters to say anything? The audience understands what’s going on. Don’t write a line if you don’t have to. — This happens in the opening of this episode.

As I continue to read tons of amateur screenplays for my consulting services, I’ve noticed that I continue to give one note again and again. That note is, “Take a risk!” Take a risk SOMEWHERE in your screenplay. Because if you don’t take any risks at all, it’s very hard to write a screenplay that people actually remember.

Risks are scary. If I were to assess where I went wrong as a screenwriter, a lack of risk-taking would be up there near the top of the list. I can write you the most technically proficient screenplay that you’ve ever read. But without any risks taken, that’s all it would be.

Sometimes readers of this site erroneously assume that I’m Mr. Follow The Rules. And if you don’t follow the rules, that I believe it’s impossible to write a good screenplay. Well, I’m Mr. Follow The Rules with one major caveat. I want you to take at least one big risk in your script. Because that’s what’s going to bring your script alive.

But telling someone to take a risk is a weak note because what is a risk? Does anyone know how to break the word down into actionable tasks you can actually implement?

Yes.

I do.

Risk-taking breaks down into five distinct categories. I’m sure there are a few more. But these are the main ones. They are…

Concept
Plot
Character
Perspective
Time

Concept – Concept is picking a movie idea that is challenging just through its concept alone.

Plot – Something BIG happens in your plot that’s completely surprising and sets the story onto a previously unexpected path.

Character – You do something with one of your key characters that’s very risky. Something most movies wouldn’t do.

Perspective – The perspective from which you tell your story. Make it a little different, a little unexpected.

Time – Playing with time in such a way that challenges the story and challenges the audience.

Recently, I’ve been watching this show on Hulu called Fleishman is In Trouble. It’s about a New York doctor in his 30s, Toby, who’s in the midst of a divorce and, one weekend, when he’s taking care of the kids, his wife doesn’t show up to pick them up. She’s pretty much disappeared. We then spend the episodes bouncing back and forth in time, learning about how Toby met his wife and how they got to this point.

The show often contains narration by a third character, Libby, who is a former friend of Toby’s. She’s the one who takes us through Toby and his wife’s past and how they got to this point in their marriage.

So, in the case of Fleishman is in Trouble, the show is taking two of the six risks. First, the perspective. We’re not in some standard CW high school show where we dutifully see the story through each of the four main characters’ eyes, jumping back and forth between them in a very traditional 1-hour drama way. Instead, we’ve got Libby equal parts shot-putting and dragging us through this complicated relationship. The choice to make this random third character our narrator is definitely a big risk.

The other risk is Time. We’re jumping all over the place here. We’re in the present. We’re a year ago. We’re fifteen years ago. We’re five years ago. We’re never on this straight-forward linear path. That’s a risk.

Go watch an episode and see for yourself. The show doesn’t feel like other shows out there. And that’s because it’s taking two of the six risks!

In order to make this all a little bit clearer for you, here are five movies that took risks in each of the five categories.

Title: Parasite
Risk Type: Plot

Parasite was already a good movie before the big plot risk it took. This story about a family infiltrating another family’s home was one of the most entertaining commentaries on the disparity between the rich and the poor that we’ve ever seen. But the midpoint twist of there being an unknown basement in the home where another character was living, one who was even poorer than our protagonist family, elevated the film into an all-time classic.

Title: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
Risk Type: Perspective

If you haven’t seen Marcel The Shell, it’s an animated film (for the most part) about a shell who’s living in this AirBnB house. The big risk the writers made was to tell the story in documentary style. This was a particularly risky choice due to the fact that animated films just don’t ever do documentary style. Which is a good lesson to internalize. Some risks are riskier than others. And this was definitely a huge one.

Title: Red Rocket
Risk Type: Character

One of my favorite movies from a couple of years ago, Red Rocket, follows a character, Mikey, a former porn star who’s been forced to move back to his tiny Texas town. Mikey starts dating a teenager who works at a local donut shop. The reason I liked this movie so much was because it was the biggest risk-taking character movie of that year. Sean Baker, the writer, made Mikey extremely likable. And you’re not supposed to do that in a story like this. And it made for a very complex viewing experience where you were constantly battling with how you felt versus how you were supposed to feel. And it was amazing for that very reason. I hold this movie up in the pantheon of how to take a big risk with a character.

Title: 1917
Risk Type: Time

When I say the words, “World War 1 movie,” what comes to mind? I’m guessing long-drawn out narratives about soldiers on the front lines for months if not years, and then coming home and dealing with the PTSD of war and not being able to re-integrate into society. Boring s—t, right? 1917 erased all that with one simple risk-taking choice. It made a World War 1 film real-time. Boom. Just like that, you have the most original World War 1 movie ever made.

Title: A Quiet Place
Risk Type: Concept

A Quiet Place did something very similar for the horror genre. It came up with a concept where nobody can speak. This instantly turned the movie into a silent film. That’s a pretty darn big risk. A major studio budgeted and promoted a horror film that was silent? Risks don’t get much bigger than that.

So I’m sure plenty of you are wondering, “Do you HAVE to take a risk?” The answer is no. You don’t have to. There are plenty of movies, with scripts, that didn’t take much of a risk at all. John Wick comes to mind. Top Gun Maverick. Black Widow. Free Guy. Knives Out. These are movies that know their lane and stay squarely inside of it.

But, here’s the thing. When you write a screenplay, you are now competing for readers’ interest. And readers read a lot of stuff. They see the same stories over and over again. The same characters. The same tropes. So, while it is possible to write this perfect version of a basic story, you can kind of hack the system with one big risky swing (assuming it pays off).

Uncut Gems is a huge character risk. We’re rooting for a truly despicable man. Barbarian took a plot risk. After that captivating opening, it jumped to a completely different character and now we don’t know where the script is going. Everything Everywhere All At Once, I believe, takes risks in all five categories. Which is why the movie is so beloved by the film community.

Risks are just like a lot of tools in screenwriting. You have to decide whether you want to use them or not. I can tell you, from personal experience, that when a writer a takes a big risk, that screenplay is always more memorable than the scripts that didn’t take a risk. Even if the risk doesn’t work.

So go out there and put your testicular fortitude on the line and take a risk in your screenplay. Something tells me it’s going to pay off.