Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When stranded on the far end of Manhattan by a mysterious city-wide blackout, a group of inner-city middle schoolers must fight through seemingly supernatural forces to make their way back to their parents in the Bronx.
About: Today’s writer, Chad Handley, did a little TV writing, mostly story editing, on The Righteous Gemstones. This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Chad Handley
Details: 125 pages (!!)

Seems like Caleb McLaughlin would be a slam dunk choice for the lead here.

Whenever I see a Black List script at 120+ pages from a writer not named Aaron Sorkin, I get worried. But, as we’re going to talk about today, page length isn’t as important as “page quality.”

“Page quality” is the concept of making sure your pages are entertaining. If you do that, it does not matter how many pages your script is. The irony is that writers who write over 120 pages tend to be the writers who believe that anything they write is must-see screenwriting. They don’t have that inner editor who’s able to say, “This doesn’t move the story forward,” or “This isn’t entertaining enough to warrant its inclusion.” So their 120+ scripts perpetuate the rule that all long screenplays are bad, as opposed to change the narrative.

We saw this just this weekend with Thor Love and Thunder. Taika had a 4 hour cut. He realized that two of those hours were neither relevant or entertaining enough. So he cut them out.

Okay, onto the plot!

For what it’s worth, I believe everyone in this story is a minority. David Wei is the CEO of a giant mysterious particle physics company and he’s built this thing called the “Inflation Reactor,” which sounds like something that’s responsible for my recent 90 dollar trip to the gas station.

Let’s meet our kids. There’s 15 year old Amir, who’s always stealing things. There’s his twin sister, Seneca, who also likes to get into trouble. They have their little brother, Isaac, who’s obsessed with science. Then have a dad, Seth, who’s never around.

We also have Kale, Amir’s football player best friend, and other friend Chance, who’s a loudmouth. We’ve got Parker, a hot rich girl Amir is in love with. And then Lily, Parker’s 8 year old sister.

The group all meet at the Science Museum because Isaac has to study something there for a school assignment. Then, on their way home on the subway, there’s an explosion, and they have to climb out of the wreckage and get back to the surface. Along the way, they lose their father, which, if we’re being honest, isn’t that different from their everyday life.

After stumbling around the city looking for him, they learn of these alien beings who have made it to earth through that Gas Hike machine David Wei built. These beings have stopped the planet from spinning and also stop random people in time and space, so random New Yorkers will be straight up frozen. Will our Goonies-esque team find their dad? And what about destroying these alien creatures? Can they use science to send them home? We’ll find out.

One of the most difficult things to explain in regards to “good screenwriting” is this concept of looseness. One of the biggest differences between really good screenwriters and really green screenwriters is that the good screenwriters have a tightness to their writing.

They can set up a character in just three lines who feels like you’ve known him your whole life. Then can craft a single scene that sets up a character, moves the plot forward, and is highly entertaining in under 2 pages. And their ability to pace the story so that it never feels slow is second nature.

Whereas, green screenwriters sort of ramble on unnecessarily. Scenes don’t alway have a purpose. They’ll take four scenes to set up a group of characters they could’ve set up in two. There’s a lackadaisical approach to exposition so that it takes way too many scenes to get relevant information across.

That’s the feeling I got while reading The Dark. The first 30 pages were SET-UP CENTRAL. Setting up characters. Setting up mythology. Setting up family relationships. Setting up birthdays. Setting up homework that’s due. Setting up friendships.

And I know that you have to set stuff up somewhere. It’s not like you can just skip all this. But this is where the good screenwriters prove their worth. They can move faster through this stuff. And they make it a lot more entertaining.

Which, by the way, is a secret way to speed up a story. Two screenwriters can be tasked with writing the same scene. Both scenes are exactly the same length – 4 pages. But, somehow, one feels WAAAAAAY faster than the other.

That’s typically because one screenwriter knows how to make a scene entertaining. They know how to use suspense or drama or anticipation or surprise or conflict to make the scene fun. And when we, the reader, are having fun, time doesn’t exist. When we’re not having fun, every line feels like a page.

To be fair, it’s always going to be harder to move an ensemble of characters along. You can’t just cut to the main character, show him experiencing an issue with his dad, then send him off on his adventure. You have to do that for ALL THE CHARACTERS IN YOUR ENSEMBLE. Which is why you want to think hard about if you can handle an ensemble script.

It’s hard enough creating one compelling main character. Imagine that job getting multiplied by eight. It’s why people have been trying to remake The Goonies for 30 years unsuccessfully. Because it turns out it’s hard to write a bunch of strong memorable kid characters.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. Screenwriting will never be a safe space. It’s more like a “drive you insane space.” But just know that the work LITERALLY gets eight times as hard when you have 8 main characters. Sure, you COULD be lazy and not develop half of them. Or make them stereotypes. But it will show. I guarantee you it will show.

Now, whenever I talk about moving the story along faster, I’ll occasionally get someone asking the legit question of, “If you cut out all the setup and only concentrate on moving the story forward, you’re going to get to your second act break by page 10. And the middle of the second act by page 30.”

“You have to add meat somewhere.”

Fair point. So let me try and come up with an analogy for you.

Let’s say you’re writing a story about a cat trapped in a tree. Your main character, Joe, comes out of his house, spots the cat, and decides to rescue it. How would you write a story like this that doesn’t end in ten seconds?

Because you could easily have Joe climb the tree and save the cat. Story over. Which seems to be in line with the note I’m giving today. That the writer should’ve ditched all this never-ending setup and gotten to the actual story.

No.

What you want to do is create entertaining obstacles and then use the time that your character is trying to overcome those obstacles to tell us about the character, or to provide exposition. In other words, you’re hiding the boring stuff inside the actual entertainment.

Let’s see what that looks like in action.

But first, let’s add a couple of scene boosters. 8 year old Jessica, the cat’s owner, is crying off to the side. This is her favorite cat in the world and she’s desperate to see it safe. This ups the pressure on Joe.

Also, we learned in the previous scene that Joe is on his way to a very important job interview that he cannot be late for. He’s dressed up considerably for this interview in a nice white pressed button down shirt and pants.

You can already see that saving this cat is becoming a bigger and more complicated ordeal.

Now, our cat is about ten feet up the tree. Joe knows he can comfortably climb up ten feet. So that’s what he does. But just as he’s reaching out for Scratchers, our annoying black cat, the cat freaks out, scratching Joe’s hand, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground, right on the freshly watered grass, which heavily imprints a lot of green on his white shirt. And meanwhile, the cat has climbed up another ten feet and is therefore, even higher on the tree.

Joe checks his watch. His important interview starts in less than 15 minutes. He’s got to go. He apologizes to the girl. She pleads with him. Please save my cat. “I can’t. I have to go to this interview.” “For what?” the girl cries. “It’s for a rare engineering job. This type of job never comes up.” Jessica pleads with him. Joe checks his watch. Checks his shirt. What does he do??

The point here is that you can extend any part of your story out for as long as you want. You can give us any amount of exposition (what job interview our character is going to) AS LONG AS YOU ARE ENTERTAINING US IN THE MEANTIME.

If you entertain, perfectionist readers like myself won’t even realize that your first act was 15 pages too long.

I know I didn’t really talk about today’s script. Which seems unfair since, once we hit the second act, that’s where all the action starts.

But therein lies the problem. If you put me through 35 pages of setup hell, I am no longer mentally invested in your story. I checked out a long time ago when I decided that I didn’t want to be subjected to setup torture. You could give me Avengers Endgame level action scenes at this point but it won’t matter. I’m already mentally checked out.

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

What I learned: “Page Quality.” Are your pages as entertaining as they can possibly be? Or are they merely setting up future entertaining scenes down the line? If all you’re doing with a scene is setting up a future good scene, that scene needs to be rewritten. I’m going to give you some homework. Go watch the first act of Back to the Future. Notice how there isn’t a SINGLE SCENE in the first act that isn’t entertaining. And that movie has more exposition and setup requiremnts than your last ten screenplays combined. So having to set lots of stuff up is not an excuse to write boring scenes.

A good portion of you Scriptshadow readers are intermediates. You’ve been at this for over five years. You’ve gotten a good handle on the craft. You understand many of the screenwriting pitfalls and know how to actively navigate them. And yet, here you are. Still in this frustrating nomenclature of unpaid unknown screenwriters.

And you’re sick of it.

We’re all sick of it.

So what’s keeping you from making that leap from intermediate to pro?

Before we can answer that, let’s talk about what “Intermediate” means. I consider an intermediate screenwriter to be someone who’s written more than five screenplays and who has a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

They understand the 3-act structure. They understand basic page-marks to hit (i.e. the first act should end around page 25). They understand how to build flaws into characters and how to arc them. They understand nuances like how long a scene should be. They no longer make beginner mistakes with dialogue, such as being too-on-the-nose, too over-the-top, or making characters say things that people would never say in real life.

They’ve outgrown that phase where they believe anything that’s happened to them in their life is worthy of being turned into a screenplay and are, therefore, more discerning about the concepts they consider for a script. And they have an overall theme to their story in mind – or at least an idea that they’re trying to get across (i.e. the destructive nature of greed).

The thing about being an intermediate is that you can write a solid script. And that’s commendable. Because the majority of amateur scripts that I read aren’t good. The problem, though, with a solid script, is that it doesn’t leave an impression on the reader. The reader appreciates the knowledge of the craftsman who has written the script. But they never cross that magical threshold whereby they now see the characters as real people encountering real situations. And if a reader never feels an emotional connection to a script, they’re never going to recommend it to anyone. And therefore, nothing’s ever going to come of it.

Which leads us to – HOW DO WE GRADUATE FROM INTERMEDIATE TO PRO?

To be fair, every writer’s situation is different because we’re all better at some things than others. So the path for one screenwriter could be completely different from another screenwriter. However, there are some common themes in the writers who are stuck at that intermediate level. Let’s go over the most common issues.

I’d say that one of the top, if not the top, reason, someone is stuck at the intermediate level, is because of concept choice. They are routinely choosing concepts that don’t get people excited. This works against you in a couple of ways. The first is that less people are going to request your script. Which means less reads. Which means less potential for a “yes.” The second is that even if they do read your script and like it, you’ve given them an easy reason to say no, which is that the concept isn’t powerful enough to make it up that steep Hollywood incline that every project must trek in order to get made. So it’s easy for people to not start that trek in the first place.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a script that had just sold called, “Classified,” which was “Die Hard meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It was the ultimate high concept. And now it’s being turned into a big movie. Do I think the writers who wrote Classified are that much better than the intermediates I see on this site? No. They might have a slightly better understanding of structure and character due to being in the game a little longer. But these guys are not obviously better screenwriters than everyone here.

However, they understand the value of a big concept. Actually, I shouldn’t use the phrase “big concept.” Because I’m not saying you need to write a 150 million dollar movie to get noticed. “Splashy” concept is probably better. A concept that feels like a fun interesting idea. Don’t Breathe would fall into this category. Get Out. Knives Out. Yesterday.

A splashy concept gets more read requests. People can envision it as a movie so it’s easier to push up the chain of command in Hollywood. It just makes everything easier and, therefore, more likely to get you out of that intermediate level.

If you don’t like splashy concepts, you have to AT LEAST give us a marketable concept. For example, a true World War 2 story. Hollywood can look at that genre and say, “We’ve made successful movies in this genre for over 70 years,” and therefore take your script seriously. Meanwhile, if you’re pushing your coming-of-age script at the same people, they’re going to look at you cross-eyed. That’s just not going to get anybody’s motor revving.

Next we have INVISIBILITY.

No, I’m not asking you to acquire superpowers. Though, if you do, make sure to write about it. I’m talking about one’s ability to apply all the screenwriting tools to a screenplay INVISIBLY. What often happens in the beginner, and even intermediate phase, is you learn about all these screenwriting tools you’re supposed to apply in a script. For example: start a scene late, leave a scene early. Or, more broadly speaking, how to give a character a flaw.

Because you’re learning this stuff, you apply it in a clunky manner. So while you’re technically doing everything right, the reader can see the gears and pulleys moving to make your story go. The most obvious example of this is exposition. When we first start writing exposition, it’s in big shining lights and way over-the-top. “But Barry, the only way we can defeat the monster is if Jeff wields the Rylok Sword, and that sword is in the Forlorn Dimension.” “Then we have to get to the Forlorn Dimension?” “But how?” “We first must use the Zeezuldorf Mirror to cross over and then…”

Over time, we learn how to distill exposition down to its essence so there isn’t too much to it. We learn tricks to hide it. We learn ways for our characters to talk about it that don’t sound like exposition (using humor to distract them, for example). In the end, our exposition becomes invisible.

In order to move up to professional writing, you need to accomplish this ‘invisibility power’ across the board. You need to introduce your character flaws in a way that doesn’t sound like, “HERE’S MY MAIN CHARACTER’S CHARACTER FLAW EVERYONE!” Same thing with your act breaks and your plot reveals and your dialogue. You keep making adjustments to all of these things until they no longer feel like writing, but rather like we’re reading about something that really happened. You’ve mastered suspension of disbelief.

Another way to make the leap to pro is to focus more on your voice. As I’ve talked about before on the site, an argument can be made that we’re either born with voice or we aren’t. So it’s hard to manufacture voice. Which I agree with.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t lean into what you’re good at. Much of “voice” has to do with your specific sense of humor. So you want to pick concepts that allow you to use your unique sense of humor as much as possible. Look at John Hughes, one of the Mt. Rushmore faces of “unique voices” in screenwriting. Imagine if Hughes was determined to break into the business as an action writer. He was writing movies like John Wick or San Andreas. Do you think he would’ve succeeded?

Probably not.

Because he was too far away from the voice he was most comfortable writing in. Maybe that’s what’s going on with you. You’re choosing these script ideas that aren’t allowing your voice to shine. And if you just picked concepts in subject matters that you were confident in and could have fun with, you’d excel at a much faster rate.

Next up we have dialogue. Dialogue is definitely something that can hold intermediates back from getting to the big leagues. What I’ve found is that it’s not that intermediate dialogue is bad. It’s fine. And that’s the problem. Is it’s fine. It’s never memorable. It never jumps off the page. You never get those characters having that really fun conversation, like you see so often in, say, a Tarantino script.

Basically you need to figure out how to make your dialogue BIGGER. How to give it more impact. Most of the time, your problem is that you’re using your characters to convey information in order to move the plot forward. So your dialogue is technically doing what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more.

One of the easiest ways to improve this is to add DIALOGUE-FRIENDLY CHARACTERS. Because when you do that, you don’t have to TRY to write good dialogue. The characters are going to write it for you. Give me a Jack Sparrow. A Louis Bloom. A Peter Parker. A Tallahassee. A Waymond Wang (Everything Everywhere All At Once). Those characters are going to upgrade your dialogue IMMEDIATELY.

Beyond that, try and improve your “dialogue effort.” Ask yourself, “Is this the most interesting way for my character to say this line?” There’s a clear difference in dialogue effort between, “That didn’t go well,” and “That was about as choreographed as a dog getting f@%$ed on roller skates” (Succession). Not that every line needs to be a show-stopper but, with a little effort, you can always make a line more impactful.

A few more to go. The next thing that holds a lot of intermediates back is not taking chances. Learning the laws of screenwriting is kind of like being forced to type all your scripts in golden handcuffs. You’re always going to write something that’s solid. But you’re never going to write something that’s exciting.

The whole goal of learning the rules of screenwriting is to throw them away. Let me be clear about that cause I know it sounds confusing. If you try to break rules before you understand them, you’re going to write big ugly messy screenplays. It’s funny because these writers always think they’re revolutionizing screenwriting when, in reality, the only thing they’re revolutionizing is the need for stronger over-the-counter headache medication for having to endure the abominations they call screenplays.

You need to learn the rules first because once you do, you can start making conscious choices about which of them to break so that your script stands out. The most famous version of this is Psycho. Our main character is killed off 45 minutes into the story, and we then follow the villain. Another good example of breaking the rules is From Dusk Til Dawn. The genre changes midway through the movie.

There are other ways to take risks as well. I remember when I first read the Gravity script and realized we were following this person stranded in space in real-time as they tried to get back to earth. I just thought, “this setup is brilliant.” I hadn’t seen it before. But it *was* a risk. It didn’t even make sense according to scientists on the internet. But the concept was so fun it didn’t matter.

The idea here is to move away from writing predictable rule-following screenplays where the reader is 30 pages ahead of you. You got to take risks somewhere. In the structure, in the concept, in the characters. You gotta try something that’s a little scary. I remember Michael R. Perry telling me that he was terrified when he wrote The Voices because it was so risky and so different from every other script he’d written up to that point. But it became one of the hottest scripts in town and lead to him getting a ton of jobs.

Second to last, write things that you’re an authority on. What separates a lot of screenplays is specificity. Let’s say that ten writers, all equivalent in skill, write a script about the war in Afghanistan. But only one of those writers was a soldier on the ground in Afghanistan. That writer is going to be able to give detail and context to what happened that none of the other writers can touch. Readers can feel that – when there’s authenticity to a story. So it’s a huge advantage when you can write about something so specifically.

For example, let’s say you were a blackjack dealer in Vegas for five years. You’re going to have insight into the way that blackjack and Vegas casinos operate that separates you from 99.9% of the rest of the world. That’s a huge advantage. So come up with a really cool movie idea about being a dealer. Cause you can tell that story with a level of specificity that is going to make it authentic. And authenticity is VERY hard to find in the screenplays I read.

Now, if you’ve done all of this stuff already, and you’re still struggling to move from intermediate to pro, there may be one final barrier you’re not addressing. Which is HUSTLE. It may simply be that you aren’t hustling hard enough. I know a lot of writers have trouble with this part of the business. But let me remind you that hustling has never been as easy as it is now. When I started out? I actually had to physically go to agencies and ask them to read my scripts.

Between managers and agents and contests and screenwriting sites like this one, it’s easier than ever to get your scripts out there in front of peoples’ eyes. So do it! I know it sucks. But all of this eventually comes down to a numbers game. The more people who read your script, the bigger the chance that you’re going to get that “yes.” So get your hustle on and make something happen. Cause this isn’t a ‘waiting around’ game. Just like the heroes in your screenplays, you need to take the initiative and be active.

So do it!

Happy weekend everyone. Thor Love and Thunder Monday. :)

Genre: Drama
Premise: Awkward and lonely, Jared is only able to find a community online — until the day he realizes that his favorite Youtuber lives nearby. Desperate for a connection, he becomes determined to find a way into her life… whether she wants it or not.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Alexandra Serio, has written and directed a couple of short films, one of which looks to be the inspiration for this screenplay.
Writer: Alexandra Serio
Details: 90 pages

One of the things I’ve been actively doing over the past month is weening myself off junk food internet content.

I’m doing this because, ironically, I watched a Youtube video about the effects of social media and what the video noted was that, a hundred years ago, you read the news in your small town and were immediately able to do something about it.

For example, if the local church burned down, you’d be able to get together with the community and help rebuild it. You’d have a physical outlet for the unresolved news issue.

But today, the news is always so far away – “Crazy Thing Happens in Washington!” – that you can’t actually do anything about it. So the energy that the news generates inside of you stays put, along with all the other junk you come across on the internet, creating a ton of anxiety that comes out in unproductive ways.

I bring this up because, as I’ve been detoxing, I’ve spotted more and more of these “black pill” videos. Since I don’t click on them, I don’t know much about the black pill philosophy. But from my understanding, it’s a negative defeatist way for men to look at the world.

Naturally, then, it’s a perfect backdrop for a screenplay! So let’s get into it!

Jared is in his 20s, lives in a trailer with his mom, and works at Wal-Mart. So, yeah, things aren’t going well for Jared. Jared deals with this through the “black pill” online community. Essentially, black pillers believe that certain men, aka “incels,” will always be invisible to women and therefore they should either accept this and not try to get with women or kill themselves.

But a tiny part of Jared is holding out hope. He watches this ASMR influencer online and she routinely puts out affirmation content where she whispers into your ears as you fall asleep that you are “worthy” and that “looks don’t matter.” Stuff like that.

Lo and behold, Jared can’t fathom his luck when he spots Dee AT HIS WAL-MART! As a Black Piller he can’t actually go up and talk to her so he follows her from a distance, even leaving work to follow her home. Once she’s home, he’s able to watch her livestream in person. As in stalking from his car across the street looking through her window “in person.”

When Jared sends her the livestream question, “Do you have a boyfriend?” And she ignores it, he goes ballistic. A primal incel force is triggered inside of him. He goes and buys a bunch of home improvement stuff and renovates an abandoned trailer near his home. He then sneaks into Dee’s home, waits for her, and kidnaps her (while wearing a mask) during her livestream!

He chains her up in his secondary trailer and starts reading all the news. Due to being kidnapped on a live stream, Dee becomes a national story. Jared spends the next couple of days not really sure what to do with Dee. He’s like the cat who finally catches the laser beam. Now what? He ultimately decides to execute a dramatic suicide on Dee’s channel. Will he be able to pull it off?

As you guys know, I love a good character description.

They’re an easy way for me to identify if I’m reading a good writer.

I really liked the description of Jared here. It’s a little long. But the main thing with any character description is that the reader HAS A GREAT FEEL FOR THE CHARACTER after they read it. So here’s Jared’s description in Blackpill.

JARED, a weary 20-something, enters and drops into a gaming chair exhausted. One look into his dark eyes reveals his exhaustion is soul deep; the look of a man who truly believes he’s never caught a break.

Let’s break this down piece by piece. First we get his age with the added bonus of an adjective. Right away, we’re learning things about this guy.

We’re then told he drops into a “gaming chair.” A “gaming chair” is a very specific piece of furniture. That’s what you want to do as a screenwriter. You want to focus on the SPECIFIC things your character has. Not the general things. If you would’ve told us that Jared, instead, dropped down onto “a couch,” that doesn’t give us nearly as much information about him.

The next sentence gave me even more insight into Jared: “One look into his dark eyes reveals his exhaustion is soul deep.” That’s a different situation than someone who’s simply “exhausted.” “Soul deep” means the exhaustion is irreversible.

Finally, we get this tag about how he “believes he’s never caught a break.” I love that description because we all know people like this, people who believe that life is against them and is determined to make their existence miserable, and how they use that as a sort of defense mechanism to explain not trying to improve. In 40 words, I have a great feel for this character.

Contrast this with yesterday’s character intros. Here’s one for the sister from that script, Brie:

SNIFF! BRIE MORGAN (38, pretty like a wilting flower) snorts a bump of blow like a pro.

The one good thing about this description is that we’re introducing the character during an ACTION, and actions are a great way to tell us about a character. The problem is that snorting coke is one of the most cliche actions in movies. Contrast this with the gaming chair. The gaming chair is SPECIFIC. Snorting coke is GENERIC.

We’re then told, rather clumsily in parenthesis, that Brie is “pretty like a wilting flower.” What does that mean? Is a wilting flower still pretty? So you’re saying she’s kind of pretty? Or are you saying a wilting flower isn’t pretty at all and therefore she’s ugly? Trying to be too clever by half when you’re not clever in the first place is a recipe for writing disaster. Clarity over cuteness, always.

Or here’s one from a script I’m going to review in the newsletter:

Subtle pockmarked scars surround sage eyes — eyes carrying oceans of weight. In another life he may have been a poet.

Holy Moses is this weak. Eyes carrying “oceans of weight.” Extremely clunky phrasing that doesn’t quite make sense. Avoid at all costs. “In another life he may have been a poet.” That’s a strange thing to say after the “oceans of weight” debacle. Where is the connection? Just because you have a lot of history in your eyes, you’re a poet all of a sudden? Weird description all around.

Just remember that when it comes to descriptions, the harder you try, the worse you do. Key in on your hero’s defining characteristic (like Jared, he’s almost given up on life) and give us a simple description that conveys that.

As for the rest of Blackpill, it was pretty good. I enjoy the sub-genre of characters in mental decline. There’s a built-in trainwreck aspect to the narrative and as much as we hate ourselves for it, we all look forward to seeing the crash when we pass it. One of the best versions of this sub-genre is Magazine Dreams. Very similar to this script.

Where I had some issues with Blackpill was with the plot. There wasn’t a whole lot going on in it. Man feels unseen. Man sees influencer he’s obsessed with. Man prepares to kidnap influencer. Man does kidnap influencer. Man executes plan to kill himself.

My issue here is that I couldn’t figure out which route the writer wanted to go down. If this was a stalker thriller in the vein of Single White Female, it needs more twists and turns. If it’s a character study like Joker, you need to dig into the character more. Or, in this case, into both characters. While I had a good feel for Jared, I didn’t know Dee that well. And in a narrative this simple, you probably need to expand the character work to include the co-star.

Cause I think that’s what would’ve elevated this. Let’s look at the circumstances by which a guy could be pulled into this dangerous online religion. But let’s also see how girls can be pulled into, arguably, the just as dangerous religion of influencing. I felt like Serio was starting to go there towards the end. But it was too little too late. I believe this becomes a much more intellectual experience if we’re showing Dee’s influencer obsession as well.

With that said, it’s an easy read and I wanted to find out how things were going to end. As long as you accomplish that, you’ve written a good script.

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

What I learned: This script is a great example of how point-of-view changes a story. If you write this from Dee’s point of view, it’s a survival story. If you write this from Jared’s point-of-view, it’s an obsessive stalker story. But there’s a third option. You can write it from both points-of-view. And then it becomes more of an intellectual experience, something that gets cinephiles and critics talking. So always explore every potential point-of-view before you write your script. You might be overlooking the best version of your screenplay.

If you can write a character like Mikey, in “Red Rocket,” you’re in the discussion!  

So, recently, a producer came to me saying he had a project he was trying to put together and needed a writer for it. This wasn’t some giant producer. But it was someone who could pay a writer real money. He hadn’t had a lot of success with literary agents, who he found pushed their weaker writers on him since he wasn’t A-List. Which is why he came to me. He knew I’d read more amateur screenwriters than probably anyone in town so, he figured, if there’s anyone who can find me a writer, it’d be Carson.

I get inquiries like this every couple of months and whenever I do, it helps me zone in on what it is that actually makes a good screenwriter. Because when you’re talking about screenwriters theoretically, there’s a leniency in your judgement. I want every screenwriter to succeed, especially the screenwriters on this site. So I see them through the lens of optimism and potential as opposed to reality.

But when someone’s paying money, all of that goes away. The last thing I want to do is refer a writer to someone, have that someone pay them a big check, only for the writer to deliver a weak script. Cause, of course, then I look bad.

So, all of a sudden, my eye becomes more astute. I’m able to see exactly what makes a screenwriter worthy of being a paid professional as I am literally recommending them to be paid. What is it I notice that prevents me from recommending someone and what is it I notice that leads to me endorsing them? That’s what I want to talk about today.

The first thing I notice is that the pool of writers I’d recommend to a producer is very small. We’re talking .5% of all the amateur writers I’ve read. Now before you freak out about that number, you have to understand that I’m not talking about recommending a writer to an agent here, of which the bar is more in the 3-5% range. I’m talking about actual money being transferred into the writer’s bank account. That’s a different conversation.

It’s the difference between potential and someone who’s got the goods. There are actually a handful of EXTREMELY TALENTED but raw screenwriters I know who I’d never recommend for this job because, to do this job, you have to understand the *craft* of screenwriting. You have to understand what the producer wants and have an actual game plan for putting it on the page.

These super-talented writers may have strong voices or a knack for great dialogue or a talent for taking stories to unexpected places. But many of those talents are connected to the freedom of constructing their own narrative. That approach doesn’t work as well when you’re adapting someone else’s idea.

To do that, you really need to understand structure. This is where the debate on whether there’s a “right” or a “wrong” way to write a screenplay leans towards “there is a right way.” Because the majority of Hollywood operates in the 3-Act Structure. Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. A beginning, a middle, an end. Setup, conflict, resolution. 25 pages, 50 pages, 25 pages. If you don’t understand that, it’s very hard to have a common language with your employer.

So that’s one of the first things I look for. I say to myself, “Do they understand the 3-Act Structure?” Cause if they don’t, it doesn’t matter what else the writer is good at, the script isn’t going to be paced well. It won’t have direction. It’ll feel like it’s wandering a lot. You got to have structure down, which, by the way, takes most writers about six scripts to feel comfortable with.

The next thing I think about is character. Specifically, have I read characters from this writer THAT I REMEMBER. Characters who jump off the page. Most screenplays – to be fair, even a lot of professional ones – give you characters who work for the story. But those characters don’t stick out. In other words, if you took the story away and just put that character in a bunch of random scenes, would they stick out? Would they be memorable?

For the majority of writers, the answer is no. They haven’t figured out how to do this yet. What do I mean by “memorable” character?  Any character who feels larger than life via their charm, their pain, their eccentricities, their personality, their presence. Arthur Fleck, Louis Bloom, Cassandra in Promising Young Woman, Thor, Mad Max, Mikey in Red Rocket (guy in Ferris wheel at the top of this post), Mildred in Three Billboards. These are characters who rise above the page.

If you can pull these two things off, you are in the running. Cause these are the two most important things when it comes to nailing an assignment.

Dangling just below these two is dialogue. I’m not so much a “dialogue has to be great” guy as I am a “dialogue has to be good” guy. The reason for that is, great dialogue is rare. Name me three movies with great dialogue from last year. You probably can’t. Also, ironically, the better the dialogue is, the more subjective it becomes. That’s because flashier dialogue has more personality, and whenever personality is involved, some people hate that personality and some love it. Look no further than Juno’s dialogue as an example.

So I’m looking for dialogue that’s solid. There’s an honesty to it. There’s an effortlessness when it comes to covering exposition. The writer understands what dramatic irony is. They understand what subtext means. They also have the ability to add some extra flair to the dialogue to make it sound heightened, without it feeling try-hard.

If you can do those three things well – structure, character, dialogue – you are very much on my radar. I am now considering you for a paying job. Because now I know, at the very least, you are going to deliver a competent draft.

So, we’ve shrunk our pool of writers down to a small group. Who gets the job out of the remaining scribes?

Before I give you the general answer, I’ll give you the real-life one, which is that it depends on the project. If the project is dialogue heavy, I’ll go with the writer who writes the best dialogue. If it’s a comedy project, I’ll go with the funniest writer. If it’s a project that requires a certain weirdness, like The Lighthouse, then I’m recommending the writer with the most offbeat voice.

But if it’s a more generalized project, like, say, a biopic, I’m simply going with the best writer, or the writer I think has the most talent. Not only are they able to do all the things I listed above, but they also have that rare x-factor where they’re able to construct fictional stories in fresh and unexpected ways that make you feel things that you don’t feel when you’re reading everything else.

Another way to look at it is, somebody who’s the opposite of the average writer. The average screenwriter – someone who’s studied the craft and written more than six screenplays – does everything well, but nothing exceptionally.

If you want to become a paid screenwriter, you have to do at least one thing exceptionally. It can be that you write memorable characters, it can be that you write great dialogue, it can be that you’re so locked into the human condition that you can turn the average moviegoer into a slobbering pile of tears. But it’s gotta be something.

And part of the process of becoming a professional writer is identifying not necessarily what you *want* to be good at, but what you *are* good at, then writing scripts that allow you to showcase that talent. And then writing more of those scripts. And then writing more of them. Until you become an expert in that one specific area of writing. Because that means that when that type of project comes around, producers are going to think of you.

Finally, being the best at any aspect of writing is really hard. So there’s another option. Create your own future. After watching Tangerine this week (shot on an iPhone) and Cha Cha Real Smooth (made by a 22 year old), I’m reminded that sometimes it’s better to bring your own stuff to life than wait for someone else to anoint you. Because, do I think that Tangerine or Cha Cha Real Smooth would’ve lit the screenwriting world on fire? No, I don’t. Tangerine might’ve made The Black List. But Cha Cha Real Smooth wouldn’t have. So if those two were waiting for someone like me to say, “You’re the best of 10,000 writers,” they’d still be waiting. They went out and put those pages on the screen.

The point is, you have options. If nobody else believes in you, you can still succeed by believing in yourself. Whatever route you take, make sure to give it everything you’ve got. Cause I promise you, the competition is too stiff for any other approach.

Happy writing this weekend!

$100 OFF DEAL! – I’m giving $100 off two feature screenplay consultations this weekend. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with subject line: “100.” I give screenwriting consultations for every step of the process, whether it be loglines, e-mail queries, plot summaries, outlines, Zoom brainstorming sessions, first pages, first acts, pilots, features. If you’re wondering where your structure, or characters, or dialogue, stand, you can ask me to focus on them in your notes and I’ll be happy to assess them. E-mail me and let’s set something up!

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A mysterious terrorist takes over a top secret U.S. mountain military base that contains within it every ancient artifact that the U.S. has ever collected.
About: New Line just won the auction for this project. John Wick 4 helmer Chad Stahelski will direct it. The writers are Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan, who are on a tear right now. They just sold a horror project to Neal Moritz based on a series of TikTok videos, another horror project to Netflix, and a third horror project to eOne with one of my favorite directors, Andre Ovredal (Trollhunter), set to direct.
Writer: Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan
Details: 114 pages

Today’s script makes me want to think of potential movie crossover pitches that would blow a studio executive out of the water.

The Matrix meets Shutter Island.

Star Wars meets The Joker.

Jurassic Park meets Deadpool.

Alien meets American Psycho.

Okay, fine. Those all suck. But today’s crossover does not suck. Die Hard meets Raiders of the Lost Ark?? Every 80s kid just got the visual material required for their next 30 wet dreams.

But here’s the funny thing with these monster crossover ideas: they can become a victim of their own amazingness. The reader is going in SO EXCITED that how can what’s delivered possibly live up to expectations?

We’ve had a few of those scripts come here only to plunge off a cliff. But I’m willing to bet that “Classified” will be different. Grab your whips, check your rear view mirror for stray boulders, and take a trip with me into this booby-trapped screenplay cave!  And watch out for snakes!

Cold open on the Cold War era, circa 1956. American Captain Carl Stoller escapes a laboratory right before a black sickness overtakes everyone inside. This disease came out of an ancient box scientists were studying.

Cut to present day and black market dealer Charlie finishes selling stolen ancient swords and vases for hundreds of thousands of dollars. As he’s packing up, Hamid Al-Ahtari arrives and tries to tell him a shield he claims belonged to Achilles. Yes, of heel fame. Charlie is incredulous but when a mysterious 90 year old man (Mr. X) backs Al-Ahtari up, Charlie gets the feeling the shield is the real deal.

But the second he buys it, the FBI charges in, led by Agent Jordan Gelman (a woman), and a kerfuffle follows. Charlie and Jordan end up on a Harley chasing Mr. X and Al-Ahtari in their truck, a truck that eventually crashes into a fuel tank, exploding! But somehow, there are no bodies inside the wreckage. Only the Achilles shield!

A couple of months later, Mr. X and Al-Ahtari break into a secret missile Silo base inside a mountain. That base happens to have a collection of Raiders of the Lost Ark like boxes in the back, things the U.S. military has collected over the past century. And guess what? They’re going to steal all of them.

It’ll be up to Jordan to lead a team in there (through a back tunnel connected via Camp David, the president’s vacation home) and stop Mr. X – who, by the way, sheds his old man skin revealing a 30 year old Carl Stoller! Jordan will need the help of the guy she hates most in the world, Charlie, to figure out what these guys plan to do with these artifacts!

Once the pair lead a team of agents into the mountain base, they realize what it is Stoller is looking for. PANDORA’S BOX. That’s right, the biggest artifact of them all, even bigger than the Ark of the Covenant! Since everyone’s aware that once Pandora’s Box is opened, it can never be closed again, the race is on to stop Stoller before her finds it.

I’m going to talk about something that’s a little uncomfortable but if we’re being real with ourselves as screenwriters, it’s an important conversation to have.

What is your level as a writer?

Are you a wordsmith on par with the genius of Cormac McCarthy?

Or are you more on par with the guys who wrote Sonic The Hedgehog?

To be clear, both writers can make money in the writing space. But you need to know which one you’re closer to as that will determine what kind of scripts you should write.

Put simply, the lower your writing ability is, the more high concept your ideas need to be.

If you’re an average writer, this is the exact kind of script you want to write. Cause any average writer who studies the heck out of the craft and writes a bunch of scripts to get their skill level up, can work in this industry if they’re writing concepts like this one. These popcorn blockbuster type concepts are very forgiving. They don’t need you to be a great dialogue writer or a thematic mastermind. They just need you to write fun characters, fun scenes, and keep moving the story along.

From there, the script will be elevated by imagination and research. You have to be someone with an active enough imagination to come up with memorable scenes, such as being dropped in a 2000 year old snake-infested Egyptian tomb. And you need to do a ton of research to find the cool antiquities that are going to make a script like this shine.

Which leads me to the script’s biggest strength – and I don’t know if I’ve ever celebrated this as a script’s number one quality before – the exposition!

Exposition, Carson?? The script is good because of exposition??

This script is chock full of so much fun exposition about secret societies and ancient cultures and exotic trinkets and fantastical history that every time someone started talking, I found myself smiling and leaning in, trying to “hear” them better.

“In Doha they were in possession of a shield that supposedly belonged to Achilles, the greek warrior. It and had originally been acquired by the CIA in the 50s, when Stoller was a Marine… The shield casts a 30 foot wide radius of complete protection, so much so that if you stood ten feet to the left, and I fired a grenade at you, you wouldn’t even feel a flutter.”

This is where research and imagination collide. As the writer, you have to do the hard work and read the history that gives you your ideas. And I’m not talking about wikipedia pages. I’m talking about books. I’m talking about hardcore hard to find microfilm level sh*t. And you have to read through all the boring stuff to get to the good stuff. Which takes time. Which is why no one does it.

But if you’re not Sorkin, if you’re not Tarantino, this is how you make up for it. Cause you need to give the reader SOMETHING they don’t get anywhere else. Let me repeat that because I don’t think screenwriters understand how important that is: If you’re not giving the reader something no other writer can, then why would they care about your screenplay? So if you can’t offer genius dialogue or effortlessly compelling drama, it’s gotta be something else.

For Classified, it’s the gobs of really fun exposition highlighting all this bonkers mythology.

Another thing I have to give these guys is that they actually NAILED “Die Hard meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Sometimes writers use juicy movie crossovers to hype up their script and you read the script and isn’t a representation of the movies at all.

But Die Hard meets Raiders is actually the BEST way to pitch this script. You have a bad guy who takes over a base (aka a building). And you have tons of magical religious artifacts being kept in that building that the bad guys start using (Raiders) and the good guys have to stop.

What’s impressive about this is that I’ve been hearing “What if…” pitches about those boxes at the end of Raiders for decades. Everyone has tried to figure out a way to build a movie around them. The problem is the same problem everyone runs into when they deal with mystery boxes. The boxes are almost always more interesting closed than they are open.

You got to do a lot of research to come up with even one interesting artifact inside a box. And these guys did a good job of making everything that was found fun. I mean at one point we even explore Korean myth Hong-Gil-Dong, Doppelgängers made out of straw that follow their master.

I’m not sure the script ever elevates beyond pure fun. But it sure understands fun. Which is why I had such a good time with it.

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

What I learned: This script is a great example of the writers asking themselves, “If someone heard this movie idea, what would they want in the movie?” And then they made sure to give you that. Too many times we come up with ideas and we sort of let them get away from us. Never let your script go so off course that you’re no longer giving the moviegoer the best things about the idea. It’s like if you wrote a movie called Wedding Crashers and the protagonists only crashed one wedding.  Audiences are going to be disappointed.  Top Gun Maverick is a great example of a film that lived by this mantra. They knew exactly what their audience wanted and gave it to them.