Search Results for: F word
Titles are one of the most under-analyzed elements of screenwriting. That’s because titles don’t truly become important until the movie is being marketed. And since titles are only a few words, potential script buyers know they can easily change them. However, a good title can make a great first impression, getting a reader excited before they’ve even opened up your script. A *great* title can even get someone to greenlight a movie (as it famously did with the title, “Monster In Law”). So it’s worth carving out some time to come up with the best title possible. Here are a few all-timers…
Cool Hand Luke
No Country For Old Men
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Slumdog Millionaire
The Devil Wears Prada
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead
Blade Runner
Apocalypse Now
Kill Bill
Inception
Trainspotting
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Full Metal Jacket
The Last Picture Show
Jaws
Back to the Future
Dude Where’s My Car
Midnight Cowboy
To Kill A Mockingbird
Touch of Evil
On that note, I’ve found that talking about titles in the abstract doesn’t do much for screenwriters. In order to understand what makes a title good or bad, you need to SEE the title. So what we’re going to do today is look at 25 titles from The Last Great Screenplay Contest and I’m going to give each of them a 1-10 rating, as well as some insight into how I came to that rating. I’m also going to include the genre because you can’t really get a feel for a title unless you know the genre.
By the way, if your title shows up here and I give it a poor rating, that has no bearing on whether I liked your script or not, as I’ve gone into every script so far only focused on the first 10 pages. Today’s article is about titles and titles only. Feel free to share your thoughts about each of these titles below and how you’d rank them. Let’s get to it!
Title: We’re Doing Just Fine
Genre: Black Comedy
Analysis: Solid title. It’s not going to win any awards but the combination of the genre and the irony of the title (“Just” conveys that they’re doing anything but fine) imply that the writer gets comedy. To see how this title could’ve gone south, look what happens when we give it a more straightforward treatment: “We Are Not Doing Fine.”
Rating: 7 out of 10
Title: Out of Time
Genre: Time Loop/Thriller/Action
Analysis: “Out of Time?” Really? Come on!!! A time loop thriller titled, “Out of Time?” You couldn’t come up with anything more original than that?
Rating: 2 out of 10
Title: The Commune
Genre: Contained Horror
Analysis: The problem with titles like this is that they imply you’re not tuned into the business you’re trying to break into. I think there have been a dozen movies titled, “The Commune.” I’ve probably personally read 20 scripts titled, “The Commune.” It’s a very very common title. It’s your job as a writer to know this because I guarantee you every industry person you send this title to is going to dismiss the script based on its generic nature.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Title: BIG TROUBLE IN BRECKENRIDGE
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Analysis: You want titles like this to have some contrast, some fun. Look at its inspiration: Big Trouble in Little China. See how much better that reads with the contrasting of the words “Big” and “Little?” Overall, the title inspires more of a visual than most of the titles today but it’s random and not very well thought out.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Title: The Good People
Genre: Horror
Analysis: A fairly decent title. Maybe a teensy bit too bland? But I could see this inspiring some reads with a good logline.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Title: Way
Genre: Drama/Romance/War/Historical/Action
Analysis: There’s information. There’s not enough information. And then there’s this. “Way?” This title literally feels like a mistake was made – that the writer was in a rush and mistakenly forgot to put the whole title in. Yikes.
Rating: 1 out of 10
Title: Candyflip
Genre: Drama/Thiller
Analysis: Easily one of the most original titles submitted. Gets you thinking. Wondering what the movie is about, which is good. I’m a little thrown by the “drama” tag. If this was a straight thriller or action movie, I think the title would work even better. But definitely one of the best on this list.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Title: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me
Genre: Thriller
Analysis: I like this one! It definitely gets you thinking, which is always good. Why would tomorrow start without our hero? There’s a mystery there I want to know the answer to.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Title: Tigers
Genre: Thriller
Analysis: I’m going to break my code and provide a little insight on this one. It’s got a really good premise and it made it into my “Maybe/High” pile. “Tigers” doesn’t tell us nearly enough about this story. It’s just too darn generic and doesn’t provide the level of curiosity a good script like this deserves.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Title: A Violent Noise
Genre: Drama/Action
Analysis: Too obvious. When you think “noise” you think loud, so a “violent” noise isn’t that far off. Which smacks of redundancy. Look for contrast in these types of titles. “A Violent Whisper” feels like a title I’ve heard before so I’m not claiming it’s amazing. But it’s definitely better than the on-the-nose “A Violent Noise.”
Rating: 4 out of 10
Title: The Arcanum
Genre: Fantasy/Action
Analysis: It’s a fantasy-sounding title. So I’ll give it that. But it loses points due to the fact that I have no idea what an “arcanum” is.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Title: Lotus
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Analysis: On the plus side, intriguing mysterious single-word titles can work. Especially in genres like horror, sci-fi, and psychological thriller. The trick is picking a word that is genuinely intriguing but also original. Hard to do. I think that’s where “Lotus” stumbles. It uses a word that has me intrigued. But I feel like I’ve seen too many titles like it before, which puts it in the good but not great category.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Title: Dark Lands
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Analysis: Easily up there with one of the most generic titles you can come up with for a fantasy film. Fantasy is one of the more imaginative genres out there. You need to give us a title that displays some level of that. Let’s get that imagination going, man. Not use something from Tolkien’s trash bin.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Title: Dolly
Genre: Horror
Analysis: One of the more effective things you can do with a title is to juxtapose it with your genre. That’s what we’re doing here. “Dolly” is a positive, almost jovial, word. So when it’s contrasted against horror, it creates intrigue. Conversely, if your horror script is titled, “Axe Murderer,” that’s pretty darn boring.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Title: Goodnight Nobody
Genre: Contained Thriller/Horror
Analysis: If we’re going on title alone, I’m not sure I get this. Maybe it’s a play on “Goodnight everybody?” I think that’s a phrase. But the turn-of-phrase doesn’t play off the original phrase organically enough to feel clever. – Now, I also happen to know that this script is about snakes. Why you have a script about snakes and don’t imply that anywhere in your title, I don’t know.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Title: Skin
Genre: Sci-Fi
Analysis: This is one of those rare occasions where the sparse, almost innocuous, title works perfectly in conjunction with the genre to imply something cool. Skin can imply so many things in the sci-fi genre, both literal and metaphorical. So I’d give this title a positive grade.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Title: Getaway
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Analysis: It’s not the worst title. The word “getaway” implies characters taking action, which is always good for movies. It creates an image in the reader’s head of what the movie is about. But I think I’d tell the writer, is this the best you can do? Yeah, it’s solid. But there’s definitely an unimaginative quality to it. Here’s a pro-tip for everyone. With movies, the title doesn’t have to be as splashy because it’s being displayed along with the trailer, or along with a billboard. So we have additional visual context to what the movie is about. With a script, you don’t have that. So it’s in your interest to come up with something that grabs the reader.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Title: The Little Friend
Genre: Horror
Analysis: This is one of the weaker titles I received. It doesn’t provide any working visual in my head of what the movie is. It actually achieves the opposite. It makes me think of weird things like a friend who’s 18 inches tall. If this was a comedy, that would work better. But it’s a horror film. And nothing about this title scares me. Make sure you’re thinking about the image your title is putting into the reader’s head.
Rating: 1 out of 10
Title: Hexagram
Genre: Action Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Contained
Analysis: Ahhhh! The dreaded triple-genre genre. Stay away from triple genres, people! Two at most! This title is just boring. I’ve come across hundreds just like it. Pentagram, Hexagram, Octagram. Well, maybe not Octagram. But you can be a lot more imaginative than using “Hexagram” as your title.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Title: The Player Agent
Genre: Sports/Biopic
Analysis: Something about this title reads weird. I want to put an apostrophe-s after “Player” so it reads, “The Player’s Agent.” I don’t know what a player agent is supposed to be. Like, he’s good with women and sports agenting? Is he an athlete and an agent? I suppose if that’s the case, it makes sense but no title should create this much confusion.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Title: Better
Genre: Psychological Thriller/Horror
Analysis: Too little info. There are simple one-word titles and then there are words that provide so little insight into the story, they’re pointless. But I have some good news for the writer, Rosario, so that this analysis goes down a little easier. Your script made it into the Maybe/High pile.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Title: Bring Me The Head of Harvey Valentine
Genre: Action/Adventure
Analysis: One of the few titles I’ve received that really goes for it. It wants to make a statement with its title and I like that. It’s one of the more memorable titles I received. My only pushback would be that it’s not that original. I’ve come across that phrase enough that it doesn’t do a lot for me. Even the name is unoriginal. Had the name been something more outlandish, that would’ve helped the title a lot.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Title: Almost Airtight
Genre: Horror
Logline: I would avoid using words like “Almost” in your title for anything other than comedy scripts. The word has a flimsy implication and therefore doesn’t line up with horror. Words like “Maybe,” “Almost,” “Basically,” – these are comedy title words.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Title: Do Us Part
Genre: Rom-Com
Analysis. Obviously, we’re playing off the phrase, “Til Death Do Us Part,” but not in a way that’s clear. It took me a coupe of reads to understand it. This feels like one of those situations where the writer is trying to be too clever by half.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Title: Get Woke
Genre: Buddy Comedy
Analysis: Anything that makes fun of a current public ideology is ripe for a comedy title. The trick with comedy titles is that, while they don’t need to make you laugh, they need to imply a world where you can imagine laughing a lot. Which this title does.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Now that we have our 25 titles, let’s rank them. Yes, I know these don’t perfectly reflect my ratings but this is how I ranked them from memory. From worst to best!
25 – The Little Friend
24 – Hexagram
23 – Dark Lands
22 – Way
21 – The Commune
20 – Out of Time
19 – A Violent Noise
18 – Tigers
17 – Better
16 – Goodnight Nobody
15 – The Player Agent
14 – Getaway
13 – Do Us Part
12 – Arkanum
11 – Big Trouble in Breckenridge
10 – Almost Airtight
9 – Bring Me The Head of Harvey Valentine
8 – Get Woke
7 – Dolly
6 – Skin
5 – Lotus
4 – When Tomorrow Starts Without Me
3 – We’re Doing Just Fine
2 – The Good People
1 – Candyflip
Is this the best sci-fi fantasy short story ever written?
Genre: Short Story – Drama/Fantasy
Premise: A young half-Chinese half-American boy struggles to connect with his Chinese mother, who doesn’t speak English.
About: This is a multiple award-winning short story by Ken Liu from his short story collection, “The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.” You can find it on Amazon. I don’t think the short story can be found anywhere online, unfortunately.
Writer: Ken Liu
Details: Around 4000-5000 words
Ken Liu is really starting to blow up. The team that made 2018’s, “The Arrival,” is turning one of his short stories, “The Message,” about an alien archaeologist who studies extinct civilizations and reunites with a daughter he never knew he had, into a film. AMC is developing a series based on his short stories called Pantheon. You also have Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, adapting Ken Liu’s English translation of the epic sci-fi novel, “The Three Body Problem,” (which won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it the first translated novel to have won the award) for Netflix.
When I started looking into Liu, I learned that his big blow-up moment came upon the release of the short story, The Paper Menagerie. That story achieved something that had never been done before, which is sweep the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy writing awards. Everybody says this short story is amazing.
Which has inspired a secondary question as I go into this review. If this is his best work, why isn’t anyone trying to adapt it? There might be an obvious answer to this by the time I finish (some stories just aren’t easy to adapt) or, if not, maybe this article will be the impetus for someone finally buying it.
With that in mind, let’s do this!
(by the way, this story is best enjoyed without knowing anything so I’d suggest reading it first if possible)
Jack is a young boy who lives in Connecticut with his American father and Chinese mother. Jack informs us right away that his father found his mom “in a catalog” for Chinese women looking for American husbands. Even at this young age, Jack considers this weird and something to be ashamed of.
Because his mother was a Chinese peasant, she doesn’t know any English. She tries. But the words never come out right and she becomes embarrassed. Because his father makes him, Jack learns Mandarin, but he resents that his mother isn’t trying harder to learn English, and therefore refuses to speak her native tongue.
However, Jack’s mother finds another way to communicate with her son. One of the skills she learned from her village was creating special origami animals that are alive!
His family, being poor, couldn’t afford the fancy toys at the time (like all the Star Wars figures) so these origami animals became his toys. He would play with them for hours in his room, never tiring of them.
But when he became a teenager, his resentment for his mother skyrocketed. All this time and she still hadn’t properly learned English, meaning she couldn’t have a conversation with anyone, even her own son. Jack began talking to his mom less and less and even boxed away all her origami animals and threw them in the attic.
During his college application process, his mom gets sick. Her insistence to not be a bother to anyone had meant, by the time she checked in with a doctor, her cancer had spread too far to be treated. Even at this moment, Jack could not muster up any emotion for his mother. Here he was about to pick a college and his mom was still finding a way to mess it up. When he goes out to school in California, his mother dies.
Years later, Jack’s girlfriend finds his old box of origami animals and after she leaves for the day they, once again, come alive. Jack plays with them and it’s just like he was a kid again. Then he spots something on his favorite animal. As he unfolds it, he realize his mother has written a note inside. But it’s in Chinese. So Jack goes to someone who can translate it for him, and the woman reads his mother’s letter to Jack, which tells him the full story of her devastating childhood and how her life was meaningless until he showed up in it.
Okay.
I challenge anyone to read this story and not start bawling from the get-go. This is the saddest story ever. But good sad. “Gets to the heart of broken mother-son relationship” good sad.
I read a lot of screenplays that try to make you cry. Rarely do they achieve it. People think all you need to do to make a reader cry is give someone cancer. Have them die before ever saying “I love you” and people will eat it up. Making people cry is surprisingly difficult. There’s something about the act of trying to make someone cry that keeps them from crying. It’s almost like they know what you’re up to. For emotion to hit on that level, it has to feel like real life. Not like a writer trying to manipulate your emotions.
But one thread that seems to be present in a lot of cry movies is an unresolved family relationship. It could be a man and his wife, a father and daughter, a sister and brother, or, in this case, a mother and son.
I’m not going to pretend like I know the exact code for why this worked because I think nailing an emotionally brilliant story is always going to be a “lightning in a bottle” scenario. But I found it interesting that Liu reversed the typical roles in this kind of story. Instead of the parent being the one who disassociates from the child, it’s the child who pulls away from the parent. And for, whatever reason, that’s more heartbreaking. A child isn’t supposed to despise his mother.
That’s also a big reason why we’re turning the pages. Whenever you set up an unresolved scenario between two characters, we’re naturally going to want that relationship to be mended. It’s painful to walk away from something this emotionally powerful without knowing how it ends. Just by setting this scenario up, you’ve ensured that we’re going to read the full story.
But where Paper Menagerie separates itself from the 10 million other stories that have also tried and failed to make you weep, is this “strange attractor” in the origami animals. The story isn’t just mom and son arguing every day, which is the typical scenario I encounter in similar setups. The mom speaks to Jack through the animals. They become the only way the two communicate. And that adds a special element that elevates the story.
Another small detail was the meanness of Jack. Now, normally, you don’t want your main character to be mean. Once you cross a certain threshold of un-likability for your protagonist, the reader dislikes them and no longer cares about their journey.
What this does is it scares writers into always writing nice protagonists. The problem with that is that there’s nobody on the planet who’s perfect. We’re all flawed. We all have unpopular opinions. Mean thoughts. And if you take that arena away from your hero, you also take away their truth. You are now constructing something that doesn’t exist. And readers pick up on that.
The reason why it works here is because WE UNDERSTAND WHY JACK FEELS THIS WAY. That’s the key to making “mean” protagonists work. As long as we understand where their anger or meanness comes from, or, even better, we can relate to it in some way, then the meanness is going to work.
Jack is lonely. He is half-Chinese in a town where there are no other Chinese kids. Everyone knows his mom was purchased. When friends come over, his mom never speaks because she doesn’t know English. As a kid, this is embarrassing. Cause you have to deal with the effects of that every day. Of course you’re going to have resentment towards your mother. Once you’ve grounded the central story emotions in that reality, you’re golden. Because now we believe what we’re reading to be true and our focus shifts to, “Will this broken bridge ever be mended?”
Finally, I want to talk about the big final letter. The “final letter” scenario is actually something I see quite a bit in screenplays. Everyone thinks they’re being original when they do it but, trust me, it’s not original. And most of these writers fail gloriously with these letters. The reason being that they write something too obvious. “I always loved you. I think you’re going to become an amazing person. I wish we could’ve been closer but I’ve learned with time we will always be together spiritually… blah blah blah.”
This letter hit on some of those things, but it wrapped them around two key choices that elevated the letter beyond your typical “end of movie letter moment.” The first was she told the story of her childhood. Again, most writers are thinking literally: “I need to have mother tell son how she feels.” That’s obvious and rarely works. So to instead talk about her childhood shifts the focus away from her feelings about him and tells us about her. It was unexpected and her background was so detailed and interesting that it was almost like a story in itself we wanted to know the ending to.
The second thing Liu does (spoiler) is that the letter doesn’t end on a happy note. It isn’t one of those, “Go out there and seize the day!” endings. It’s more of a, “I was devastated we could never communicate and I always wished you gave me more of a chance” endings. That simple shift takes this from a perfect wrapped–in-a-bow Hollywood ending to something more realistic, more true to life.
I see now why everyone went nuts for this. It’s almost a perfect story. I don’t think they can turn it into a movie though. It works because its short form allows it to stay hyper-focused on the relevant variables (the mom, the origami animals). Once you extrapolate that and add a bunch of other plot, the concept becomes distilled and the animals don’t make as much sense.
I don’t know. Maybe someone would be able to figure it out. I’m surprised no one’s tried. Like I said earlier, maybe they will now.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[x] genius
What I learned: Ken Liu has an interesting philosophy in how he treats his first draft. He calls it the “Negative First Draft.” Here is his explanation to tor.com. – I usually start with what I call the negative-first draft. This is the draft where I’m just getting the story down on the page. There are continuity errors, the emotional conflict is a mess, characters are inconsistent, etc. etc. I don’t care. I just need to get the mess in my head down on the page and figure it out.The editing pass to go from the negative-first draft to the zeroth draft is where I focus on the emotional core of the story. I try to figure out what is the core of the story, and pare away all that’s irrelevant. I still don’t care much about the plot and other issues at this stage.
The pass to go from zeroth to first draft is where the “magic” happens — this is where the plot is sorted out, characters are defined, thematic echoes and parallels sharpened, etc. etc. This is basically my favorite stage because now that the emotional core is in place, I can focus on building the narrative machine around it.
In the newsletter I just put out, I talked about mindset shifts (“Don’t be Park Exercise Douche Guy!”). Mindset shifts are important in all areas of your life. But they’re especially important for artists. Unlike traditional business structures where there’s a clear path to move from A to B to C to D to vice-president, art is something where you disappear into a dark room then come out with your creation and get politely told by a lot of people, “No thank you.”
This is the main reason why so many people fail in Hollywood. Hearing the nos over and over again can become debilitating and even reach levels of PTSD for some. But it’s even worse for writers. For a writer, you’ll work on something for a really long time, unveil it to a group of individuals, they all tell you it’s “okay,” or “not bad” or even “good,” but their actions speak louder than their words because they didn’t like it enough to want to do anything with it. So now you’re back to square one.
So you go back into your cave and you write a new script with the additional knowledge you’ve gained from writing the last one and then emerge once more 6-12 months later and maybe you encounter a bit more enthusiasm than last time but the answer is still the same. “Not something I can do anything with. Sorry.” Imagine going through that three times, four times, five times, a dozen times! That’s psychologically debilitating for most people and they don’t want to keep subjecting themselves to it. It’s one of the reasons I think you have to be crazy to be an artist. Or, at the very least, a masochist.
The question, then, is, “How do we stop that cycle?” “How do we overcome that constant rejection and succeed?” I know the answer to this. You probably do, too. But there are psychological factors going on that are preventing you from realizing it.
Most writers put so much emphasis on writing the script itself that they forget it doesn’t matter how good of a job you do if people don’t like your concept. So you’re spending all this time researching, creating, and beta-testing this lipstick that you think is going to change the world. But when it comes time to sell it, you’re putting it on a pig.
This is a roundabout way of me reminding you that concept is king. It isn’t everything. But it kind of is. Of course character and plot and dialogue and actually knowing how to tell a good story are massively important. But if people don’t like your idea, they won’t ever get to your great storytelling. Even the ones who do read your script are likely doing so as a favor. They know you so they’re willing to give anything you write a chance. But they pretty much know, before they’ve opened the script, that they’re not going to like it. Because the concept is lame.
Look no further than the script I reviewed in the newsletter – Unknown Phenomenon. Now it just so happens I went into that script cold. So I didn’t know what it was about. But had you told me ahead of time it was about a mysterious small sphere that misbehaved and ruined a family’s lawn – I would never have read it. Or, if I had to read it for work or because someone needed me to, I would’ve mentally decided that there was a 99.999% chance the script was going to be bad going into it. Even if they would’ve miraculously managed to write a good script off that idea, the odds were I would’ve mentally checked out long before it got good. That’s the kind of effect a bad idea has on a reader. It can frame their opinion of the script before they’ve read a word.
Unfortunately, there’s no universal way to identify a bad concept. Just like everything in art, movie concepts are subjective. But you shouldn’t use this as cover for going with a low-concept idea. You shouldn’t be saying to yourself, “It doesn’t matter that Jake said my idea isn’t big enough to build an entire feature around. Ideas are subjective.” Instead, you should assume the reality of the business – which is that the large majority of script ideas are bad – and therefore push yourself to make sure you don’t end up in that majority.
I’m going to provide you with a hack on how to achieve this. I call it the “DO ME A FAVOR” test. Early on in my writing career, I tried to get people to read this road trip romance I’d written. At the time, I was so in salesman mode that I wasn’t able to pick up on some social cues I was getting that would’ve helped me realize it was a less than stellar idea. But later on, when I was able to get some distance from the experience, I noticed that over the course of pitching the script, my tone and demeanor were very much, “Please do me this favor and read my script.”
Now when you’re a nobody (and especially a beginner), you’re going to be in this situation regardless of what you write. Of course anybody in the industry will be doing you a favor by reading your script. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. What was happening with me was that I knew, deep down, that my script wasn’t commercial. It wasn’t high concept. It didn’t even have a clever ironic twist that smaller scripts need to stand out. It was just a normal unoriginal road trip story. And for something like that to get made, it was going to take people moving mountains. So my mindset when I was pitching it to people reflected that. Even when I talked up a big game, my subconscious was saying the opposite – Please do me a favor and read this. Please give this script a shot. I need your help to get this script made.
Now that I’ve had some distance from these attempts to sell scripts, I’ve realized that, at the concept stage, I should’ve been conceiving of script ideas that did the opposite. I should’ve been writing ideas that, when it came time to go out there and get people to read it, I WAS DOING THEM A FAVOR.
I want you to think about that for a second. Because it’s REALLY important. When you look at your current screenplay, is it an idea that’ll require you to ask others to DO YOU A FAVOR? Or is it a script where you’re going to make somebody the luckiest person in the world to have discovered your script first? That’s your concept-creation hack. You want to write ideas that, later on, when you give your script to people, YOU ARE DOING THEM A FAVOR. Because the first person that buys this thing is going to be rich and successful.
That doesn’t mean, by the way, that you should say that to people, lol. “I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR HERE, PAL.” But it should exist in your body language, the confidence in which you talk about it, and in your overall excitement for the script. You know you’ve got a “DOING THEM A FAVOR” concept when all those things happen naturally. You don’t have to force them at all.
This is hard for a lot of writers because when you spend a lot of time with anything – especially a script – you learn all of its flaws. So you’re afraid to oversell it. Which is all the more reason to think hard about what you’re going to write next. Cause you already know the script is going to beat you down during the writing process. They all do. That means you have to start with the strongest piece of oak you can get your hands on. That way, you know, when you call and e-mail and meet the people you’re going to give your script to – you’re going to remember that the idea you chose was one that was going to help others. Not one that was only going to help you after you somehow conned a bunch of people into getting your movie made.
Since I know the concept world is such a subjective one, I’m going to give you some examples of “PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR” and “I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR” screenplays. Keep in mind that it’s hard to give examples of bad movie ideas because they have to be successful enough that you’ve heard of the example. So remember that in many of these cases, the bad ideas only got made because of factors such as the writer was also an established director and therefore could’ve gotten financing for any idea they had. You must think of these ideas in the context of YOU pitching them, an unknown writer. Likewise, there are going to be bad movies that get the label “I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR.” That’s actually strengthening my point, not weakening it. It reinforces that concept is everything. Producers know that a good concept can withstand bad execution whereas a weak concept has to have an almost perfect execution. Okay, here we go…
WAIT! I have an idea. Before you see the examples, I’m going to give you all the movies. See if you can guess what they’re going to be before I tell you (PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR or I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR). If you get them all right, it means you have a good eye for concept creation. Bonus points for whoever lists their answers in the comments BEFORE they see if they’re right. Okay, here are the movies: Moonlight, The Invisible Man, Eighth Grade, Columbus, Gemini Man, A Quiet Place, The Kind of Staten Island, Seven, Honey Boy, Cabin in the Woods, O Brother Where Art Though, and Fantasy Island.
All right…
Now onto the answers!
Moonlight – PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR
The Invisible Man – I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR
Eighth Grade – PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR
Columbus – PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR
Gemini Man – I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR
A Quiet Place – I’M DOING YOU A GIGANTIC FAVOR
The King of Staten Island – PLEASE DO ME THIS FAVOR
Seven – I’M DOING YOU A HUGE FAVOR
Honey Boy – I’M BEGGING YOU TO DO ME THIS FAVOR
Cabin in the Woods – I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR
O Brother Where Art Though – I WILL GIVE YOU MY FIRSTBORN CHILD IF YOU DO ME THIS FAVOR
Fantasy Island – I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR
So, what about concepts that don’t fit nicely into either of these categories, but rather land in the middle? You’re not quite doing them a favor but you’re not doing yourself any favors either. “The Rental.” “Booksmart.” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” “The Tax Collector.” “Vivarium.” Are these ideas okay? Yes, they’re okay. But you have to realize that the further away you stray from a clear “I’M DOING YOU A FAVOR” concept, the harder your life is going to be when you finish the script. If you’re a hustler and like trying to get people to read your script, you can afford to write something with a little less zing on the concept. But if you’re like most writers and want the writing to do the talking, I would stay away from these middle class concepts. The execution almost has to be as great as the execution on a weak concept to get people interested.
Just remember, when you’re trying to decide which idea to write – close your eyes and put yourself across from the person you most want to pitch your script to when it’s done six months from now. Does it feel like you’re asking them for a favor or does it feel like you’re giving them the opportunity of a lifetime? If it’s the former, you probably want to go with another idea.
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In a post-apocalyptic future, the passengers on a maglev train traveling from Los Angeles to London get more than they bargained for when an alien creature gets loose.
About: Giddy with excitement. I haven’t read the script yet. All I heard was aliens on a train and I was in. Jim Uhls (Fight Club) wrote the original spec script of this idea for Ridley Scott. Scott developed it for a while but eventually left and Roland Emmerich would come on. This draft, by Steven de Souza, was supposedly a bit of a departure from Uhls’ version.
Writer: Steven E. De Souza
Details: 133 pages (1990 draft)
Snakes on a Plane? PFFFT!
Please.
That is so 2003.
Try ALIENS ON A TRAIN!
Yeah, baby. Now you’re talking bout movies that get the adrenaline pumping. Me? Love aliens. Me? Kinda love trains. What do you get when you add love and kinda love? That’s more than double the love. Love and three-quarters. Think about the person you’ve fallen in love with most in your life. This is more than that. Well, it’s not more than that yet. I haven’t read the script. I’m about to. But I’m fully expecting that there’s no way I will not love and three-quarters this script. Its pedigree precedes it.
I mean how did this not get made?
There’s aliens!
On a train!
Not a steamboat.
Not a stagecoach.
Granted, those would be awesome too. But they’re nowhere near as cool as aliens on a train.
It’s the future: Los Angeles, 2015. Okay, it’s the future *for this script*. Obviously, the writers didn’t budget for a time machine to come to 2015 and realize that we weren’t yet apocalyptic. I mean do your homework, guys. Come on! Anyway, things are bad in their version of 2015. For starters, most of Los Angeles is covered in desert. On top of that, there’s barely any ozone left. So lots of sunburn and breathing issues.
But there is still a society and still a world economy. One of the most promising industries is maglev train travel. The world government outlawed planes due to ozone issues so trains have become the only way to travel long distances. One of those trains, the big maiden voyage from Los Angeles to London, is leaving today.
In the spirit of an Agatha Christie novel, we meet the many passengers who will be trekking on the luxurious train. There’s Hedda, who’s escorting her fertile 15 year old granddaughter, Lisa (fertility is a rarity in this future world). There’s suspicious doctors Scanlon and Ruby. There’s the rich a-hole, Reggie. There’s the train manager, always prickly Sari. And then there’s Russ Prine, who secretly works for the company and is taking the trip undercover to make sure everyone who works on the train is doing a good job.
Once the train gets going, we cut to Scanlon and Ruby’s room where we realize these two are not doctors. They’re escorting a big tube thing that happens to have an alien in it. Their only job is to inject it with some pain juice (that’s the only way I understood it) which would keep it from doing anything naughty.
Meanwhile, we have a little comedic subplot of Prine trying to make Sari’s life a living hell. He asks for numerous things he knows she doesn’t have (a certain meal cooked a certain way, for example) to see if she remains professional. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t.
As the conflict between them grows, Scanlon and Ruby forget to inject the pain juice and this tentacled scary alien creature breaks out of its coffin and begins killing people before disappearing into the train’s innards. Sari and Prine run into the creature, surviving it, and realize they need to do something FAST. Except they can’t because the train is currently in some section of the US that has no air due to ozone issues. Which means they’re going to have to find and kill this thing while the train is on the move.
Sari tells all the passengers to move up to the first two cars, giving her, Prine, and a handful of other volunteers, the rest of the cars to find and trap this thing. Of course, they have no idea what this thing is and therefore underestimate it. And when it damages the brakes, the train loses all ability to slow down. Which means they’re barreling towards London at 1200 miles per hour with no way to stop. What’s going to happen??? How are they going to get out of this??? ALIEN ON A TRAIN!
Just like I expected, this was a wild read.
It’s got something going on. I always wanted to turn the page. But it’s messy and my guess is that’s because it’s over-developed.
Over-development is a word of the past. It infamously resulted in a lot of bad films in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, places like Netflix laugh at development. “Why develop something when you can just greenlight it,” is their motto. As a result, we get paper-thin movies like Project Power.
But back then they had the opposite problem. They’d hire writer after writer and have all of them doing endless drafts. Which resulted in one of three scenarios. The best scenario was that they eliminated all the script’s weaknesses, the movie got made, and it turned out great. Think Good Will Hunting or Gladiator.
The second scenario was that each successive rewrite would beat the originality out of the screenplay, giving us something with zero unique characteristics that was utterly bland. Think 1998’s Godzilla.
The final scenario is what’s happened here. With so many writers and drafts packing so many things into the script, the elements start to impede upon each other, competing for plot real estate. Think about it. There’s two movies in this script. There’s the maiden voyage of some post-apocalyptic intercontinental train (think the train version of Titanic). And then there’s an alien that gets loose on a train. I’m not convinced these two ideas can share the same movie.
Usually, when you have a cool concept, you want to treat it like Michael Jordan. Give it the ball and tell everybody else on the court to get the f*%# out of the way (as coach Doug Collins once famously said). This is not that. This alien is not only secondary but it doesn’t fit into the mythology. You’ve established we live in this giant desert now. When the heck did aliens show up?
Now, as it so happens (spoiler), it turns out this isn’t an “aliens on a train” script. It’s a “monster on a train” script. The creature is man-made. I get why they did this. BUT IT’S NO ALIENS ON A TRAIN! And that’s why I showed up. To see aliens. On a train. Ripping organs out of human passengers.
I bet the original idea here by Jim Uhls had aliens. Somewhere along the way, it became a monster. And this is what happens in development all the time. It’s one of the hardest things to manage for a writer, producer, studio, or whoever. Stories take on a life of their own. They want to do things you didn’t originally expect. So you have to decide if you’re going to give in to the new direction or stick to your guns.
I’m guessing that they couldn’t figure out why the aliens were on the train or why they would go around killing people so they came up with this storyline that better connected with the mythology (the creature, it turns out, was man-made to replenish the ozone).
I dunno.
I’m torn on which is the right thing to do. One part of me says, stick with the original cool idea you had. The further away you go from the original idea, the further away you go from the coolness. But then you hear stories like M. Night’s, whose original idea for The Sixth Sense was a psychiatrist helping a kid who painted paintings of things that hadn’t happened yet. The kid didn’t see ghosts. Bruce Willis was not a ghost. M. Night followed the story through multiple drafts before incorporating those two things. And that ended with, arguably, the most successful spec sale of all time.
But.
But.
But.
Aliens on a train!
I wanted aliens on a train!
Can someone contact Jim Uhls and ask him for the original spec script where we had aliens on a train? Please. That’s what I want to read.
Despite all that, this is still wacky in a fun way so I recommend it. Especially if you loved the high concept era of spec scripts.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Steven de Souza has some wisdom for those wondering why some things get made and others don’t: “Movies get made not because the script is great, but because somebody likes the script at that point.”
Is Simon Rich the new Charlie Kaufman?
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A struggling Hollywood director who’s had minimal success gets his first opportunity to direct a studio film. The only problem is the stage where he has to shoot is haunted by an angry silent film actress ghost.
About: Amblin, along with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World director Edgar Wright, have purchased this short story from Simon Rich, who’s quickly becoming one of the hottest writers in town. Rich’s most recent effort teamed him up with Seth Rogen for HBO Max’s first big feature film, An American Pickle. Like today’s purchase, that too, was based on one of Rich’s short stories. Here’s some storytelling advice from Rich: “When I write a story, the main thing I’m thinking about is, will it be emotionally visceral? Will it grab the reader? Will it make them interested in the characters and make them want to turn the page? That’s the main thing I’m thinking about, more so, even, than whether or not it’s going to be funny.”
Writer: Simon Rich
Details: About 10,000 words. You can read the story yourself here.
What if I told you that Simon Rich is as close to early Charlie Kaufman as any writer has gotten yet? I’m not talking about the 2020 Charlie Kaufman, the guy who thinks characters mumbling to themselves about suicide is a movie concept. But the Charlie Kaufman who took over the independent scene for a good seven years back in the 2000s.
Between American Pickle and Stage 13, Rich has shown he has that particular brand of offbeat humor that echoes Kaufman. The only difference is that his stuff isn’t quite as weird as Kaufman’s was. He leans into the joke more than the weirdness, which makes his stories more funny than unique.
But, make no mistake, this is a weird idea. Rich isn’t writing Kevin Hart vehicles like the rest of the comedy industry (“DMV: Undercover cop David Winston becomes a teller at the DMV to stop a drivers test cheating scam that has allowed thousands of bad drivers to pass their drivers tests!”). He’s actually trying something different. And for that alone, I’m a fan.
By the way, let today’s “horror” short story review act as a reminder that the Horror Showdown deadline is coming up! I’m accepting both horror scripts AND horror short stories. If you want a chance at your script/story getting picked for the Friday, October 16th showdown, send your title, logline, genre (horror or horror adjacent), why we should read your script/story, and a PDF of the screenplay/story to carsonreeves3@gmail.com. All entries must be in by Thursday, October 15th, 8pm Pacific Time!
Yoni is a 30-something aspiring Hollywood director with 95,000 dollars worth of film school debt. Yoni’s been thinking about giving up on his dream for a while now but the one thing that stops him is showing up at his parents’ doorstep and admitting failure, since they told him never to chase the dream in the first place.
But then Yoni receives the call he’s been waiting for. A studio suit tells him they want him to direct their next project. For further details, let’s meet in person. Yoni hurries over to the studio where Nikki greets him. They golf cart their way through the exciting backlot until they make it all the way back to the final sound stage – Stage 13.
The stage looks old and run down because it hasn’t been used in 70 years. It’s actually a relic from the silent film days. When they get inside, Yoni is shocked to see a woman descend from the ceiling. “Who’s that??” Yoni asks. Oh, that’s Clara. She’s a ghost, Nikki says, then darts out, slamming the door behind her.
Long story short, Clara is a pissed off silent film actress who never became famous and has, therefore, been killing crew members who have worked in Stage 13 ever since. The studio believes that if they finally make Clara “a star,” that she’ll be satisfied and leave to heaven, giving them their stage back. So the plan is for Yoni to direct a fake “one-reel” silent film then show up a week later with an early 20th century Variety that says, “Clara becomes a breakout star!”
Yoni is bummed. He’s not even going to be shooting anything. It’s all play acting to trick this dead woman. The studio gives him a script and hires a bunch of actors to play the crew and off we go. But Clara has suspicions almost immediately and since she likes to murder people, Yoni fears for his life. This gives Yoni one last idea. What if they shot a REAL movie and tried to make Clara a REAL star? That would solve all the problems, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it…?
I can see why this short story was considered for a film adaptation. A lot of short stories are quick ideas that don’t fall into a typical 3-Act structure. But Stage 13 does. You have the setup. Our main character is thinking of giving up on his directing dream until an opportunity comes along. You have the conflict act, where Yoni doesn’t get to shoot a traditional movie and must deal with the ultimate temperamental actress. And finally, the resolution. Yoni decides to ignore the studio and shoot the movie his way, to disastrous consequences.
I’d say that the only thing different is that the story doesn’t have a “happy” ending. And if you’re a writer who wants to explore the “quirky” “alternative” indie storytelling space, mastery of offbeat endings is a requirement. Usually, counter-culture artists hate the happy ending so much that they give you the negative equivalent. But the negative equivalent is just as cliche. You want to find an ending that isn’t “happy” but is still interesting. And Rich achieves that here.
*spoiler* When Clara finds out that Yoni tricked her, she kills him. So now they’re both stuck in this stage. However, instead of it just being a sad ending, Yoni is now defiantly on board with Clara. He’s going to make it in Hollywood as well, dammit! So the two will work together to become stars. That’s one of the qualities you’re looking for in an offbeat ending. It should feel bittersweet.
Stage 13 is also a good example of how to use character to find your ending as opposed to using plot. With plot endings, it’s often about logistics. Character X has the money. Character Y needs the money. So Character Y comes up with a plan to take the money from Character X. You’ll notice that characters ARE INVOLVED in this scenario. But it’s not a character driven ending.
A character-driven ending is what Rich does in Stage 13. Rich establishes that his hero’s inner conflict is his lack of success and his obsession with finding that success. Ironically, this is the same problem Clara is dealing with. She’s determined to find success as well. So when the ending comes around, it’s not about logistics. Well, I guess there are always going to be logistics involved in an ending. But it’s more about these two characters needing to resolve that conflict within them. They need to show the world that they’re talented and can be successful at their chosen craft.
That’s how you create a character-driven ending. You focus on resolving something INSIDE the character as opposed to OUTSIDE them. And, by the way, character driven endings are almost always more impactful on an audience than plot-driven endings. So it’s worth it to use them if you can.
Like all weird ideas, tone is going to be paramount in making this movie work. But the humor is strong and you’ve got this star-making role in Clara the Angry Ghost. It should be fun. If I were Edgar Wright, this seems way more worthwhile than The Chain. I’d make this first.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In an article with Longreads, Rich was asked how he comes up with such original ideas: “It’s all about finding the right angle, right? Because none of the stories I tell are particularly original, and none of the themes I write about are new, and certainly, hopefully, none of the emotions I’m writing about are unique. So it’s just about coming up with an original creative angle. So with “Sell Out,” I don’t think I’m the first person to wonder what it would be like to meet their ancestors. I mean, there’s hundreds of works of art about it—everything from Back to the Future to Time and Again deals with those issues—so it was just about trial by error, systematically telling the story in every conceivable way until I found one that felt fresh and interesting and honest. Or the story, “Unprotected,” in my last book (note: Unprotected is told from the perspective of a condom). —I mean, how old of a story can you tell? A teenage boy who wants to lose his virginity: It’s the premise behind dozens of popular films. So it was just about, what’s an original, creative and visceral way to tell this old story of a teenage boy trying to get laid?”