Week 8 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act

Every Thursday, for the first six months of 2024, Scriptshadow is guiding you through the process of writing a screenplay. In June, you’ll be able to enter this screenplay in the Mega Screenplay Showdown. The best 10 loglines, then the first ten pages of the top five of those loglines, will be in play as they compete for the top prize.

We are moving into week 8 today. But we’re still at a stage where, if you haven’t started writing your script, you can catch up. We’re only through the first 30 pages. So, if you can manage 5 pages a day, you’ll be all caught up within a week. Again, we’re taking our time with this one. It only requires 45 minutes a day, writing 2 pages, and then you get two days at the end of the week to catch up or rewrite stuff.

Some of you have expressed confusion about including these extra days. “Why not just charge through the script and never look back?” You ask. That’s totally fine if you want to charge through. But what I’ve found whenever I’ve written anything is that, because you’re learning about your script as you’re writing it, you’re constantly changing direction. You thought you were going down this street when it turns out it was better to take the alley. If you stop, go back, and change a few things, you can better set up that alley.

Of course, you can wait all the way until you’re finished with the script, then start addressing issues in the next draft. But I find that, personally, if a first draft is too messy? If it zigs and zags and drops characters and adds characters randomly throughout the story due to my changing moods and changing ideas, the read is discouraging. And if I read a draft that’s straight up dreadful, I’ll never go back to it. It’s too depressing.

One of the things nobody talks about when you start this screenwriting insanity is that every good script gets crafted over an elongated series of rewrites. With every rewrite, you become more and more numb to your story and its charms. The screenwriters who can stay inspired in spite of these lulls are the ones who end up writing world-beating scripts.

One of the best ways to stay inspired is to write good drafts. If you pick up a script after a break and you read a great scene or a great character or some particularly awesome dialogue, you get pumped! You realize that there’s a reason to keep working on the script. You need those moments because inspiration creates motivation.

But it works in reverse as well. If you read a draft and it sucks, you’re uninspired and less likely to go in there and try to fix it. At no time is that a bigger deal than after the first draft. Tens of millions of screenplays have died because writers have read that first draft and said, “Nope. This straight up blows.” So I say, if you have the time while writing that first draft to go back in there and make some positive changes that help your script read smoother, do it!

Okay, onto this week.

Pages 31-40 have always been some of my favorite script pages to write. That’s because they’re smack dab in the middle of the “Fun and Games” section. What is “Fun and Games?” Whenever you come up with a concept, what you’re doing is you’re making a promise to the reader that if they come to your script, you are going to give them what you said you would give them.

One of the more unfortunate script experiences I have is a writer will send me a script about a really specific premise – like a time-traveling ballerina who yields nunchucks – and the first set piece rolls around and it has nothing to do with time-traveling, ballet, or nunchucks. The Fun and Games section is literally for you to show off your premise. So show it off.

Using the Hero’s Journey as a template, this is the moment in the script when they first go out on their journey. So, obviously, they’re going to start experiencing the very thing you promised in your concept. If it’s a dinosaur movie, our heroes will first meet the dinosaurs. If it’s Barbie, it’s Barbie’s first foray into the real world. If it’s Poor Things, it’s Bella’s first foray into the world of sexuality. It’s sex sex sex all the time. If it’s Cocaine Bear, you’re going to give us a gnarly set piece where Cocaine Bear attacks and kills people in a way that only a bear high on cocaine can.

If your script is a brand new Porsche, this is the first time you get to take it out on the open road and rev that engine. So rev it!

Now, what if you’re writing a non-traditional script. Does the Fun and Games section still apply? Not really. If you’ve got a scooter, I don’t want you driving on the Autobahn.

But, if you are writing a slower script or something that’s more character-driven, this section of the script should feel like *THINGS ARE RAMPING UP*.

So if you’ve written Anatomy of a Fall, you don’t even really have a concept to deliver the promise of the premise on. But that doesn’t mean you can just make up your own structure and think it’s going to fly. Chances are it will crash and burn.

When you hit page 30 on Anatomy of a Fall, a movie about a woman whose husband suspiciously commits suicide by jumping off their home’s roof, this is the period of the script where the first walls should start closing in on the wife. The cops have questions about what happened. It’s clear they’re less and less convinced it was a suicide. It might be time to get a lawyer, which are heroine does. In other words, you’re beginning to tell us what this movie is going to be about. What we can expect.

Another non-traditional movie was Coda, which won best picture a few years ago. That movie started off being about a high school girl who was the only person in her family who could hear. Everyone else was deaf. The family made money by fishing. That was the first act and while it was all kind of interesting, we’re sitting there going, “And?”

The movie begins ramping up when the daughter starts pursuing her singing at school. She’s really good but she’s going to have to work at it. That emerging storyline of her singing teacher laying out what would be required of her to compete for a scholarship was the “ramping up” process that, all of a sudden, gave the script direction, and by association, energy.

Some writers think I’m too restrictive when I talk about this stuff. But nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t care how you get it done as long as you get it done. I once told this extremely talented but unorthodox professional writer, “I don’t think you should follow what I teach. You come at writing in such a unique way, that way is probably going to serve you better.”

All I’m doing is laying out the way 95% of working writers do it in Hollywood. I promise you there isn’t a working screenwriter in town who doesn’t intimately understand the 3-Act structure. Or character arcs. Or personal vs. overall stakes. Or what on-the-nose dialogue is. Why? Because they have to! They get notes on it from someone at the studio. “Your second act doesn’t move fast enough and there’s zero shift at the midpoint.” You’ve gotta know what that means if you’re going to address the note.

So as long as you know that “doing it your way,” is dangerous and untested, that’s fine. You have to take risks somewhere. You have to do things different somewhere. That’s how you create a script that feels unique. But almost all of your favorite movies have followed the formula I’ve laid out so far.  And the ones that haven’t, I can almost guarantee that the writer was also the director on the film (aka, they weren’t spec’ing their script out on the market). Let that marinate. :)

5 days to write 10 pages
2 days to do rewrites of those pages or catch up

Genre: Thriller/Survival
Logline: A famous former extreme skier attempts to re-ski the mountain that ended his career, this time with the son of his old rival, with the threat of an avalanche looming.
About: If the name Kevin Sheridan sounds familiar to you that’s because he used to visit the site frequently. He’s since become a regular on the Black List. I reviewed his last script about police corruption last year. A strong “worth the read.” Well, he’s back on the Black List with another script, this one more fun.
Writer: Kevin Sheridan
Details: 105 pages

The new script trend is here. Are you ready for it?

Extreme sports!

I don’t think you’re ready.

Free Solo changed the game. We had five big rock-climbing specs (two of which are being made) after that film came out. We had that extreme running spec from Colin Bannon. And now we’ve got an extreme skiing spec.

I ain’t complaining. Anything with the word “extreme” in it is tailor made for storytelling. Nobody wants to watch a movie about “calm” sking. Right? You want extreme!

Brooks used to be the greatest extreme skier on the planet. But then one day, he skied the hardest mountain on the planet, Alder. And it destroyed him. He went flying off the side of the mountain, broke nearly every bone in his body, and was never the same skier again.

Cut to present day and Brooks’ old rival, Rick, comes to him and asks Brooks if he’ll take his 16 year old son, Zack, down Alder mountain. Zack is a rising superstar in the skiing world and if he skies Alder, it’ll be his coming out party. Brooks say, ‘no way.’ Until Rick, a successful real estate developer, offers him a quarter of a million dollars. That money could put his daughter through college. Brooks changes his tune.

Brooks and Zack head to the top of the mountain while Rick, Brooks’ wife Annie, and Annie’s husband, Teddy, stay near the middle, much safer, part of the mountain, so they can be part of the camera crew that’s going to capture Zack’s descent. Ready, set, go.

Despite a few hiccups, everything goes fine. That is until Brooks and Zack make it down to their families. Right then a giant avalanche hits and there’s nothing they can do but prepare their emergency equipment for being swallowed up by this snow tidal wave.

Brooks and Rick get lucky. They don’t get buried that deep and are able to get to the surface. But when they look at the destruction before them, they’re convinced that no one else made it. Still, they’ve got to try. So they waddle up the mountain looking for any signs of their family. And they’ve got to work fast since both of them know… another avalanche is coming.

My whole thing with any movies that pair your hero up with someone else is that that pairing be interesting. What you’re looking for is two things. What pairing generates the most conflict? And what pairing generates the biggest emotional punch?

With Zack, you don’t really get either. Zack adores Brooks. So there’s zero conflict there. And when it comes to any emotional beats to mine, there’s no history between Brooks and Zack. So there’s nothing they get to resolve during this movie that’s going to send our tear-ducts into overdrive.

Also, I can’t tell what to make of the plot. On the one hand, we know what’s going to happen from page 1. We know because before we even get to the story, a title card tells us there were more people killed in avalanches in 2021 than any other year in history. So we know an avalanche is coming.

But then if an avalanche is coming, that means Brooks’ journey to reconquer the mountain that destroyed him means nothing. We know before the story starts that he’s not going to ski it successfully since the avalanche will come first. But then what is the character journey if it’s not about defeating the mountain?

I guess you conquer it in a different way if you survive an avalanche. But is that as satisfying as skiing it successfully? I’m not sure it is. I think this is a better movie if he beats the mountain at skiing once and for all.

All of this changes, however, if you view the script the same way you watched Titanic. In Titanic, we know the ship is going to sink before the first page and that script still works brilliantly. Here, we know the avalanche is coming so, from a dramatic irony perspective, it creates a ton of suspense. We know our group is doomed. And just like in Titanic, the plot is about how the characters handle it. Whose actions lead to survival, and whose actions lead to death?

But since that’s the story engine that’s driving our interest, I’m not sure what all the setup was about. The setup is literally setting up an entirely different movie. If this is going to be an avalanche movie, we should be building the plot around that. Probably a group of skiing friends who decide to challenge themselves on one of the most dangerous ski runs in the world.

I also wanted more uncertainty in this story. For some reason, I knew everybody was going to be okay. Kevin would use these phrases like, “There’s no way someone could’ve lived through that,” which made me certain that that’s exactly what they had done. In a movie like this, you have to kill some people off. And not the least most important character. Cause, to Kevin’s credit, he does kill off Teddy. But Teddy is the character we care least about. If you’re going to kill someone off, kill off Obi-Wan Kenobi. Whenever you kill off a serious character, it tells your reader you mean business. No one is safe.

Remember when Game of Thrones was at is most unstoppable? It was after the Red Wedding, right? When major characters were slaughtered. We watched that show after that thinking no one was safe, which created an exciting undercurrent to every episode. But in those final seasons? Nobody important died. All of a sudden, the show wasn’t as cool.

Kevin does a good job describing the crappy situations our characters are in. For example, he doesn’t just say that a character is “buried.” He reminds us that they’re buried under snow that has been compressed so tightly due to the pressure of tons of it all racing down the mountain that it is the equivalent of being buried in concrete.

And there’s some cool stuff you learn about avalanche airbags and beacon trackers. It reminded me of James Cameron’s brilliant alien trackers in Aliens. Beep…beep…beep…beep. Except now you’re trying to get to the beacon instead of get away from it. And time is of the essence because they probably can’t breathe under there.

There’s one moment where they track Zack’s beacon, which beeps them to the spot where he’s buried. Brooks digs furiously, finding the airbag and tracker but… no Zack. They realize Zack has been separated from his beacon. He could literally be buried anywhere. It was a harrowing moment.

But what happened next is the epitome of what was wrong with this script. Seconds later, Zack stands up a few hundred feet up the hill and yells out to them. Zack is fine. Not just that. Zack is fine… without our hero’s help. If our hero isn’t solving problems, why even have a hero? Especially in a movie like this, people shouldn’t be miraculously fine without our hero lifting a finger.

Having said that, there currently aren’t any movies like this on the market. Extreme skiing and avalanches are marketable. If I had to guess, I’d say that this script is rewritten to lean into one or the other so it feels more singular. But it could definitely be a film. What’s more cinematic than extreme skiing in the face of an avalanche?

[ ] tumble off the side of the mountain
[x] get stuck on the ski lift for two hours
[ ] A cozy ski down the mountain
[ ] pull off your first ever backflip
[ ] double diamond mastery

What I learned: Be careful that you don’t telegraph what’s going to happen with the way you’re describing things. If you keep writing phrases like, “There’s no way anyone could’ve made it through that,” or “Even if they can get down to her in time, there’s a one-in-a-million shot she’s alive,” trust me when I say that we know the character is alive.

What I learned: When writing about things that have a lot of subject-specific technical terminology, which this had, don’t leave the reader behind. Give them an alternative reading of that stuff we understand. Kevin does that here. After giving us a technical visual of our two skiers barreling down the slope, he says this: “If this means nothing to you, that’s okay. Just know that this is a run no human being should ever attempt to ski.” I bring this up because I always had this issue when writing tennis scripts. I’d think, “Nobody knows what a topspin serve is. Or a slice backhand crosscourt winner.” I should’ve tacked on more sentences like Kevin wrote here.

Week 7 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge

Every Thursday, for the first six months of 2024, Scriptshadow will be guiding you through the process of writing a screenplay. In June, you’ll be able to enter this screenplay in the Mega Screenplay Showdown. The best 10 loglines, then the first ten pages of the top five of those loglines, will be in play as they compete for the top prize.

The first month and a half of these posts have gotten you to page 20 of your screenplay. But don’t worry if you’re just stumbling upon the challenge now. You can easily catch up. We’re writing an average of 1.5 pages a day. Which is nothing. So check out the previous posts, which I’ve included below, and spend 2 hours a day writing instead of 1. You should be caught up within two weeks. Here are those links…

Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident

The major thing we’re going to focus on today is the “Turn Into Act 2.” But before we get there, we have to talk about page counts because your major plot beats are going to take place on different pages depending on how long your screenplay is.

The desired length of a spec screenplay in 2024 is between 100 and 110 pages. The more simplistic your concept is, and the less characters you have, the lower the page count will be. So if you’re writing a movie like Gerald’s Game, about one woman in a bedroom the whole movie, that’s a simple story with a tiny number of characters. So it probably won’t be more than 90 pages. If, however, you’re writing Napoleon, which may take place over 20 years and have a cast of 30 characters, your script could be as long as 130 pages.

Once you have your page count, you’re going to divide it into four sections. So, if you have a 100 page script, it’ll look like this…

Act 1 – Pages 1-25
Act 2 (First Half) – Pages 26-50
Act 2 (Second Half) – Pages 51-75
Act 3 – Pages 76-100

If it’s 110 pages, it’ll look like this…

Act 1 – Pages 1 – 27.5
Act 2 (First Half) – Pages 27.5-55
Act 2 (Second Half) – Pages 55 – 82.5
Act 3 – Pages 82.5-110

Don’t get your tighty-whiteys in a bunch and complain that this is too restrictive. These numbers are GUIDELINES. You don’t have to abide by them exactly. But the majority of scripts operate best with an Act 1 (Setup), an Act 2 (where all the conflict and struggle happens) and an Act 3 (Climax). So it’s nice to have an idea where those major plot beats occur.

The reason we divide Act 2 into halves is because Act 2 is large and we’re trying to make it more manageable. By dividing it in two, you create 4 equally long chunks of screenplay. And, also, something big usually happens at the midpoint of a story. So I like to use that as a divider between the first half of Act 2 and the second half of Act 2.

Bringing this back to today, we will be writing pages 21-30 this week. Which means that, for those of us writing 100 or 110 page screenplays, we’re going to be writing our “Turn into Act 2,” which is just a fancy way of saying: it’s the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2.

Now, last week we left off at the inciting incident. Things got a little contentious in the comments section as people debated where the inciting incident was, particularly as it related to Star Wars. Don’t worry about that. Star Wars has a deceptively tricky inciting incident due to the fact that the main character doesn’t even show up until page 15.

It’s usually easy to identify the inciting incident, which is the incident that destroys the main character’s day-to-day life and forces them to address a problem. A simpler example would be Free Guy, when Ryan Reynolds puts on the glasses that show him that the real life he thought he was living in is actually one big video game.

We’re going to assume that you’re writing a 100 page screenplay. That means your Turn into Act 2 is going to occur at page 25 (exactly 25% of the way into your script). Since we’re starting this week on page 21, we first must know what to write BEFORE we get to the Second Act.

Well, remember what I said last week. Around page 15, you get the inciting incident. This creates a scenario by which a problem must be solved. Solving that problem is your hero’s goal for the movie. Barbie is having thoughts of death. She must go to the Real World to figure out why she’s having these thoughts.

But your hero is NOT YET READY to leave their normal life. As human beings, we are rarely told YOU MUST CHANGE NOW and then immediately we start changing. No. We resist it. We run away from it. We pretend it isn’t a problem. We ignore it. Whatever we have to do to NOT change, we do it. Which is how this section between pages 15-25 works. The character isn’t ready to go on their journey yet so they resist.

But a few of you are already thinking, “Wait a minute, Carson. So we’re supposed to write 10 full pages of resisting?” Good question. The answer is no. That would be a waste of space.

What I’ve found about pages 15-25 is that a number of things can be going on. Yes, resistance is one of them. Ryan Reynolds trying to ignore the fact that he’s just learned he’s living in a video game in Free Guy is an example of that.

But, also, there can be education going on in this section. In Barbie, Barbie must go visit Weird Barbie, who educates her on what she must do. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones talks to Brody about what he must do before he officially sets off in search of the Ark. So education (aka “exposition) is one part of this section.

You may also wrap up certain storylines from the first act. If you have a young character going on a big journey, he might have a scene with his parents where he says goodbye.

You may also use this section to cut to the subplots of your secondary characters.  You see this in Barbie.  Before she heads off, we cut to Ken and figure out what’s going on with him.  If you have a major villain, like Kylo Ren, you might cut to him as well – see what he’s up to and push his story along a little further.

In other words, you’re not just gearing YOUR HERO up for this journey, you’re gearing YOUR ENTIRE STORY up for this journey. You’re putting everything in place so that the screenplay is prepared to move forward.

This brings us to page 25, which is our Turn Into Act 2 and this is going to be the simplest plot beat you write in your entire script. Your Turn Into Act 2 is just your hero leaving on the journey. They’ve officially accepted the fact that they must go off and do this. And so here they go.

Now, what if you don’t have a traditional “Hero’s Journey” screenplay where your hero leaves their “home world” and goes off on a larger adventure? What if you have a movie like Killers of the Flower Moon or Coda or Parasite or Silver Linings Playbook?

So, this is where things get tricky. But, generally speaking, the moment your main character begins pursuing the goal that will drive your entire screenplay is the moment the second act begins. I say “tricky” because take “Parasite.” In Parasite, the family acts as one character. So the second they decide that their goal is to take over this rich family’s home is when Act 2 begins. In Coda, the moment the main girl decides that she’s going to enter this singing competition is the moment Act 2 begins. With Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper wants to be in the dance competition because his ex-wife is going to be there and he hopes to use the opportunity to win her back. It’s not as strong of a goal as, say, Promising Young Woman (take everyone down involved in my friend’s sexual assault). But it does the job of giving the narrative a clear spine.

After that, you hit the most fun part of the entire screenplay which is the “Fun and Games” Section. This is where you get to show off your concept. For example, when Barbie goes to the Real World, you get to show her clashing with people who are the complete opposite of her. Or in Star Wars, you get to see Luke and Obi-Wan go into an alien bar.

As always, this is just a guideline. There’s no such thing as the perfect blueprint for a script. So, if you don’t know what to do, follow your gut. Or take some risks. One of the reasons I’m slowly pacing us is to allow you to make mistakes and still have time to go back and try something else.

Okay, here’s this week’s assignment…

Friday = write 1 scene (Your main character resists going after his goal)
Saturday = write 1 scene (Prepare the script for the Journey)
Sunday = write 1 scene (Turn Into Second Act)
Monday = write 1 scene (Fun and Games)
Tuesday = write 1 scene (Fun and Games)
Wednesday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes
Thursday = go back and correct any issues with your five scenes

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: After his girlfriend dies, a guy who hates cats begins an unexpected bromance with her widowed cat, who reveals himself to be an alien that is here to save the world.
About: This one comes from a new screenwriter. The script made the Black List and is in development over at 21 Laps.
Writer: Andrew Nunnelly
Details: 107 pages

I was paws-itively looking forward to this one.

Whatever genre you’re writing in, you want to look for unique ways into it. We’ve got a quasi-rom-com here. Perfect for Valentine’s Day. But instead of some cliched boy meets girl rom-com clone, the movie is about a bromance between a guy and a cat. How much more unique can you get?

And to make matters better, Taylor Swift is in it! That automatically bumps the script up two notches.

But will the script be the cat’s meow? Or will it be claw-full?

Jeff, an assistant professor at UCLA, meets his dream woman in Emma. I mean check out this description: brunette, unconsciously pretty, unwittingly charming, infinitely empathetic. We’re all in love with this woman!

There’s one small issue. Emma is a giant cat-lady. She’s got her old black cat, Yugen. She’s got 10,000 cat toys and cat beds and cat pictures around the apartment. Jeff is not a cat person. It’s clear Yugen knows this. But Emma and Yugen are a package deal and there’s nothing Jeff can do about it.

Their relationship is built around their mutual obsession with finding alien life. Hey, I can relate to that. But before they can answer the eternal question of “Are we alone?” Jeff becomes alone cause Emma is killed in a car accident.

Jeff wallows in their apartment for weeks until, all of a sudden, Yugen talks to him. It takes Jeff a while before he believes he hasn’t gone crazy. That’s when Yugen hits him with a shocker: All cats are aliens. They are here to prevent humans from destroying the earth. Emma was The One and now that she’s dead, earth is doomed. UNLESS Jeff can take her place.

Jeff resists for a while but eventually comes on board. He must accomplish a series of steps that include things like rubbing Yugen’s belly, liking cat photos online, visiting cats at a Cat Cafe, and clipping Yugen’s claws. Once Yugen deems him “The One” ready, he reveals to Jeff that the final step is critical because if they can accomplish it, they will go back in time and save Emma’s life.

In order to explain my reaction to this script, I have to talk about another animal… Daaaaaa Bears.

As in, the Chicago Bears. Ditka. Sweetness. Da Fridge.

Don’t worry. This is all going to make sense.

The Chicago Bears are in a very unique position. They have this quarterback on their team named Justin Fields. Justin Fields is a solid quarterback who’s slowly getting better.

Now, due to a lucky break, the Bears have the number 1 pick in the draft this year. And the number 1 quarterback prospect, a guy named Caleb Williams, is, by all accounts very very good. Let me try and make some screenwriting analogies here. Caleb Williams is like a young Tarantino. Whereas Justin Fields is like Zak Penn (Ready Player One).

Just like lots of people in the NFL like Justin Fields, lots of production houses in Hollywood like Zak Penn. They would love to have him working on their scripts. However, if you have the option between getting Zak Penn or Quentin Tarantino, you go with Quentin Tarantino. Which is what it looks like the Bears are going to do. They like Justin. But they can’t pass up the opportunity of hiring a once-in-a-generation talent like Caleb Williams.

How does this relate back to today’s screenplay? Good question. I’m starting to wonder that myself.

Toxoplasmosis desperately wants to be Caleb Williams. But it can only muster up being Justin Fields. In other words, it so clearly wants to be great. But there’s a ceiling on the talent attempting to make it great.

The problem is that there’s an unhinged quality to the writing. It gets so untethered at times that you stop believing in what’s going on. Not in a “movie-logic” way, like we were talking about yesterday. This script is *supposed to be* zany. It’s supposed to push logic boundaries.

But in order for this approach to work, it still has to be clever. And having a cat drone on about the Cat Code and the Cat Planet and its 10-Step plan to bend time and space so that Jeff can travel back in time and prevent his girlfriend’s death — it’s just too goofy for its own good.

Luckily, we have the perfect comp for how to pull this concept off. It’s one of my favorite scripts of all time and it’s called Dogs of Babel. Here’s the logline for that one: “When a dog is the only witness to a woman’s death, her husband tries to teach the dog how to talk so he can find out what happened to her.”

Notice how even the logline promises a more structured story. There’s a mystery behind her death. So we have a goal: Find out what happened. That’s the impetus for him attempting to connect with the dog – so he can find out what happened.

In Toxoplasmosis, it’s more like Zach Galifianakis voicing a cat and just saying all this crazy weird stuff. “Jeff, you need to understand cats don’t socialize like humans. There is too much going on in our highly intelligent minds to just stop what we’re doing and have water-cooler chit-chat with someone using a fraction of their brain capacity.”

I remember, in Dogs of Babel, I wanted so desperately for the protagonist to succeed. Cause I could tell how heartbroken he was and how much he needed those answers in order to move on. In Toxoplasmosis, it didn’t really seem like it mattered.

That’s something we don’t usually talk about on the site: Just because you have a goal doesn’t mean that the reader will care or be invested in that goal. We technically have a great goal here. Jeff is trying to go back in time to save his girlfriend. But it’s dealt with in such a casual way that we never really care if he succeeds.

That’s why I always say, even if you’re writing a comedy, make sure you take the pillars of your story (Goal, Stakes, Urgency) seriously. You can have fun and get wild with everything else. But make sure those are solid. Go re-watch The Hangover if you want to see this done well. Some of the zaniest s**t you’ve ever seen happens in that movie. But the GSU is airtight.

Still, there were some funny things in this script. There’s this funny moment where Jeff wakes up out of a haze in the Petco line with 943 dollars worth of cat food in his cart. He has no idea how he got here. It turns out Yugen is controlling his mind now, making Jeff his own personal walking Amazon account. There’s an early scene where Jeff is still unsure if Yugen is talking to him. He goes to work and heads to a room filled with testing cats in cages, makes sure no one is around, and asks them if they can understand him.

I recently suffered a terrible tragedy, and… And since then, perhaps understandably, things have gotten a little… strange.
(beat)

Long story short: I need your help. You might know my cat Yugen? Well, he’s not really my cat, but… He started talking to me and I’m just a little worried that maybe I’m losing my mind so…
(pause)

If you can understand me, please just say something?
(beat)

And if you can’t — honestly I hope you can’t — then no worries at all and I can move on.
(beat)

Anyone? Anything? It doesn’t need to be anything profound.

There were moments like this throughout the script that made me laugh. But, in the end, the mythology of the cat world felt shaky and rushed, like the writer was making it up on the fly. I used to think you could do that as well when writing these wackier scripts. But nothing could be further from the truth. You have to create a strong mythology where you’ve thought through everything. Only then can you go nuts. I know it sounds like overkill but I promise you it makes a difference. The reader can tell when the writer knows their world intimately and when they’re just making s**t up on-the-fly, whether that be a movie about Napoleon during his greatest battle or a movie about talking cats from another galaxy.

I just wasn’t feline this one, guys.

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

What I learned: People! You have to stop spending 80% of your effort on your first scene. This is yet another script where the best scene is the first scene. It’s a clever scene. Nunnelly uses Carl Sagan’s pursuit of life in the universe to explain his love for Emma. It’s very well done. But then… there’s never a scene after that as clever or as good. Yes, your first scene is important so you want to put a ton of effort into it. But if every other scene you write, you put in 50% of that effort, we’re going to notice. I guarantee you we will notice. So, once again, use that opening scene as the bar. Don’t use it as your “SALE” sign to get us into your crummy clothing store on Melrose Boulevard.

With Valentine’s Day only 24 hours away, it’s only natural that we review a script about LOVE…. and killing.

Genre: Rom-Com/Action
Premise: (from Black List) After Liv, a world-class hitwoman, breaks up with her boyfriend, Martin, he puts out a massive contract on his own life to get her attention. What Martin doesn’t realize is that it’s an open contract with a 48-hour expiration, so now every assassin in the western hemisphere is coming after him. Liv makes a deal to keep him safe until the contract expires, if he pays her out the full bounty. With the clock ticking, the two must elude some of the world’s most prolific killers.
About: This finished Top 20 on last year’s Black List. The writer has one credit, which was pretty recent! Copshop!
Writer: Kurt McLeod
Details: 111 pages

Florence Pugh in a fun role for once?

It may not seem like it sometimes. But we here at Scriptshadow support LOVE.

TayTay and Travis? They’re like two giant halves of a heart in my eyes.

And so today, just 24 hours before the loviest day of love on the calendar, I present to you this Black List rom-com.

29 year old Martin is a software engineer who can count the amount of times he’s had sex on two hands. Not people, mind you. But ACTUAL TIMES. To put it mildly, Martin is not suave with da ladies.

MARTIN’S DATING PROFILE

PHOTO [harsh lighting, unflattering angle, same smile]
OCCUPATION: Software programmer, self-employed
LIKES: Romantic comedies, good wine, picnics in the park, spa days, quality time with family and friends
DISLIKES: Toxic masculinity, conspicuous consumption, heights, enclosed spaces, public swimming pools
LOOKING FOR: That perfect someone to spend the rest of my life with…

But due to a dating app screw-up, Martin has somehow been matched with the drop-dead gorgeous Lex. Lex does not hold back her disappointment when she arrives at the restaurant date, looking at Martin and saying, “Wait, who the f&%$ are you?”

LEX’S DATING PROFILE

PHOTO [sexy silhouette, sunglasses, bangs hiding pouty face]
OCCUPATION: work
LIKES: no
DISLIKES: yes
LOOKING FOR: no strings

For some reason (aka, because the writer needed a movie) Lex kind of likes Martin. So she sleeps with him that night and then starts sleeping with him on the regular. However, after several months, she ghosts him. And soon after is when we learn that Lex is a big game hitwoman. Which partially explains why she keeps her relationships short and surface-level.

Cut to a year later and Lex is following up a gigantic score – 2 million bucks. The reason it’s so big is because it’s an open target. Any assassin can collect. But when she gets to the target, she finds out it’s Martin, who’s been doing some development and looks a lot better. Martin says that he bought the contract on himself cause he’s since learned about her job and realized this was the only way to see her again.

Due to some complicated financials and a hit-man loophole, Lex concludes that she’ll make more money off the hit if she waits until it’s called off (or something). So she still plans to kill Martin. But, in the meantime, she has to help him evade all the other hitmen trying to kill him. However, when her handler, Francis, realizes she’s trying to game the system, she puts a separate hit out on Lex. So now Lex and Martin are running for their lives and, quite possibly, falling in love.

Let me start off by saying I’m noticing a trend in a lot of the scripts I’ve been reading.

Which is: THE FIRST SCENE (OR SEQUENCE) IS THE BEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE SCRIPT.

The scene where Lex shows up for this date with Martin and Martin bumbles through it is really funny. Nothing ever quite reaches the perfect balance of awkwardness and humor as this date.

Writing a great scene is hard. So kudos if you can achieve it at any point in your script. But if your first scene is your best scene, that means that the reading experience gets worse the further through your script the reader gets. Which is not what you want.

So why does this happen?

Writers want to show off the coolness of their concept right away. So they come up with an early scene that sells their concept. Also, the earlier you are in your script, the less dependent you are on the plot, which hasn’t locked you into any scenes yet. So you have more freedom to play around and have fun.

But you can’t allow that to be the best scene in your script. You just can’t.

When you write a great scene early, consider that THE BAR. And then, every subsequent major scene, try to clear that bar. If you can’t honestly say that your later scenes are better than that first scene, rewrite them.

This all comes down to laziness. Lazy writers start strong then fizzle out. Strong writers start strong then keep getting better. Yes, it will require more effort on your part. But embrace that challenge! Don’t be Mr. Lazy Pants.

Especially if you’re allowing your alter ego, Movie Logic A-Hole, to do your writing.
Movie Logic A-Hole is your lazy alter-ego. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t do any outlining, he wouldn’t do any research, when he ran into a script problem he wouldn’t try to figure it out. Instead, Movie Logic A-Hole barrels through the script regardless of whether what he’s writing makes real-world sense or not. As long as it makes “movie logic” sense, that’s all that matters to him.

Love!

Movie Logic A-Hole makes a big appearance in today’s script, destroying any legitimate chance the script has of working. This entire movie is based on the idea that a man who’s trying to get his assassin girlfriend back puts a 2 million dollar blanket hit out on himself. Let me reiterate that. A man knowingly pays money to have every major hitman in the world try to kill him in the hopes that his hit-woman ex-girlfriend will get to him first and he can try to get back together with her.

Movie Logic A-Hole is very persuasive. When Real World Writer says to him, “But no one would ever really do that,” Movie Logic A-Hole replies, “Chillllll dude. It’s a commmeddy. Comedies are funny. They don’t have to make sense.” When Real World Writer says to him, “But how could he know that another hitman wouldn’t find him first and kill him?” Movie Logic A-Hole replies, “Because she’s like, the best. She would get to him before any other hitman.” When Real World Writer says, “But how would he know that she was the best? I’m not sure you can go on a guess when you’re putting your life on the line.” Movie Logic A-Hole replies, “You’re thinking way too deep, man. Nobody cares about that stuff when they’re watching a movie.”

While it’s true that audiences never think of the word “logic,” when watching a movie, they do know when something feels off. If they sense that the storytelling is lazy, they stop being engaged. That’s the primary effect of movie-logic. If you use it enough, your story takes on a general feeling of laziness.

If you want to see how this looks in practice, go watch “Lift” on Netflix. Notice how quickly you stop caring about what’s happening. That’s because many of the creative choices (especially the sequence that opens the movie) reek of movie logic. It feels LAZY.

With that said, there is room for Movie Logic A-Hole to be involved in your screenwriting journey. Especially in comedy, where, if you have to make a choice between funny or logic, you pick ‘funny.’  BUT ONLY OUTSIDE THE MAIN PILLARS OF YOUR PLOT. You don’t want to hammer movie-logic nails into the pillars of your story. Those pillars need to be as logically strong as possible. This entire movie rests on the idea that a guy would put a contract on his life in the hopes that his hitwoman ex-girlfriend will get to him before the other killers. That’s the aspect of the story that needs to be the most convincing. Yet it’s the least convincing.

Save your movie logic for stupid stuff like a killer has your heroes trapped in the back of an alley and then a crazed cat leaps out of nowhere onto the killer’s head, allowing them to get away. I’d prefer you *not* write this scene. But if you’re going to use movie logic, that’s where you want to use it – on stuff that isn’t directly tied to major plot points.

The most dangerous thing about Movie Logic A-Hole is that he’s super convincing. Especially late at night. Especially deep into a writing session. Especially when a deadline is coming up and you’re running out of time. Movie Logic A-Hole starts whispering all types of nonsense in your ear and, unfortunately, he’s persuasive.

So watch out for him. Because he’s the difference between a solid well-constructed story and a messy weak one.

Ever since pure rom-coms became excommunicato, these “rom-coms with an edge” took their place. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this became a movie. It would make for a fun trailer. But the script wasn’t for me. Does this mean love loses?

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

What I learned: Okay, let’s take a look at the disastrous logline the Black List included…

After Liv, a world-class hitwoman, breaks up with her boyfriend, Martin, he puts out a massive contract on his own life to get her attention. What Martin doesn’t realize is that it’s an open contract with a 48-hour expiration, so now every assassin in the western hemisphere is coming after him. Liv makes a deal to keep him safe until the contract expires, if he pays her out the full bounty. With the clock ticking, the two must elude some of the world’s most prolific killers.

That is more of a mini-summary than it is a logline. With loglines, it’s about conveying the concept, the main character, the goal, and the major source of conflict. You should aim for 30 words or less. With that in mind, we get my rewrite…

After his hitwoman girlfriend ghosts him, a lovesick introvert takes out a 2 million dollar contract on himself in the hopes of luring her back into his life.

I do basic logline analysis for $25. E-mail me if you want to get your logline in shape! carsonreeves1@gmail.com