Today’s quirky script feels like something that would’ve topped the 2010 Black List.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A Jewish immigrant accidentally gets brined in a giant pickle barrel, perfectly preserving him for 100 years, after which he’s discovered and must learn to live in the year 2020.
About: What’s that thing I keep telling all of you to do? What’s that thing I keep saying is the new spec script? Oh yeah, SHORT STORIES. Today’s movie is yet another adaptation of a short story, this one titled, “Sell Out,” by Simon Rich, which appeared in the New Yorker in 2013. Rich started writing short stories for the New Yorker in 2007. He would go on to be one of the youngest writers ever hired on Saturday Night Live. He would later become a staff writer at Pixar. He wrote this screenplay adaptation himself. An American Pickle can be seen on HBO’s new streaming service, HBO Max.
Writer: Simon Rich
Details: 90 minutes long

The great thing about the streaming boom is that it allows for non-traditional movies that never would’ve been produced to get made, widening the breadth of options the viewer has so they aren’t forced to watch superheroes and Jedi every day of the week.

It’s sort of a more audience-friendly version of the independent film boom of the 90s. That era also gave us a bunch of unique options when we went to the theater. But there’s more of a commercial spirit to today’s offbeat choices. An American Pickle feels like a weird hybrid between a Charlie Kaufman movie and Pineapple Express.

It begins with Herschel Greenbaum, a Jewish man who, with his wife, escaped poverty and war to immigrate to the United States in 1919. When he accidentally falls into a pickle brining barrel at his work, he is preserved for 100 years and wakes up in the year 2020.

The good news is that Herschel has a great-great-grandson, Ben, who allows him to stay at his place in Brooklyn. After getting used to all the creature comforts of the 21st century (Herschel has a particular affinity for seltzer water), Herschel finds out that Ben has spent the last five years trying to perfect his big idea app which tells you whether a company is ethically responsible or not.

Herschel asks why hasn’t he actually, you know, started the company? Ben makes excuses, saying it still needs work and blah blah blah. Herschel is confused. It looks ready to him. Later that day, the two get in a fist fight with two guys on the street due to a misunderstanding by Herschel, which leads to their arrest. Just like that, all Ben’s work has gone down the drain. How can you have an app that rates how ethical you are if you, yourself, have been arrested for assault and battery!

Ben kicks Herschel out, who now sees Ben as his nemesis. He decides to start a business in what he knows best – PICKLES! Herschel finds hundreds of daily discarded cucumbers and jars in the dumpster behind a supermarket and begins making pickles. When a hipster Brooklyn blogger stops to have a taste and learns that these are the world’s most natural pickles (Herschel even uses God’s water – rain!), Herschel becomes a social media sensation.

Ben becomes furious that Herschel has found success when he’s failed and makes it his mission to sabotage Herschel. After getting the New York Health Board to shut Herschel down, Herschel somehow becomes even more popular via his brash antiquated views on society. Women belong in the kitchen, he insists (keep in mind, he’s from 1919 Eastern Europe), and before he knows it, he has millions of conservative Americans thanking him for challenging the restrictions on free speech.

But when Herschel finally gets canceled, he’s forced to crawl back to Ben and ask for help. Ben decides to help him get to Canada and, along the journey, realizes that Herschel is the only family he has. The two apologize to each other and begin their friendship anew.

I have a bad habit whenever I start a movie where I check the running time. There’s an industry secret when it comes to running time. If a film is exactly 90 minutes, there was trouble somewhere along the way.

Outside of some super contained thrillers and pared down horror films, nobody sets out to make a 90 minute movie these days. There’s no need to. Sure, back when you had to pay for film, it made sense. But not when you shoot on unlimited storage drives. So when you see a 90 minute run time, the unofficial shortest running time the feature format allows, it’s an indication that the producers had so little faith in the movie they shot that they cut as much of it out as possible.

Which is exactly how American Pickle felt at first. After Herschel gets to the future, we get a 12 minute two guys talking in an apartment scene, which was odd considering this movie had the kind of budget that allowed it big special effects time-lapses of New York changing over 100 years. It felt like we’d missed something, a whole other subplot that had been axed, maybe.

But American Pickle picks up once Herschel and Ben become enemies. No doubt the ‘rivals’ plotline was manufactured. But you quickly overlook that because Herschel’s pursuit to become a pickle magnate was so funny. The idea of making pickles you found from the garbage and selling them for 12 dollars a piece in Brooklyn rides the line between reality and satire so perfectly, you can’t help but laugh when customers eat Herschel’s schtick up.

What I also liked about American Pickle is that it was ambitious. Simon Rich wanted to make a statement about where we were as a country and he used Herschel in every way possible to put a mirror up to ourselves. When Herschel learns about Twitter and starts making controversial statements and getting canceled for it but then also supported for it, it was a way to look at our current situation without ever getting into the annoying angry argumentative side of things. You could laugh no matter which side you were on. That takes a lot of skill in this environment.

The only reason I’m not rating this movie higher is the clumsily explored religious plot line. There’s this subplot about Herschel wanting Ben to take ownership of his Jewish heritage and Ben resisting. But it’s so scattered and inconsistent that it never works.

I suspect this is where the cuts happened that resulted in the 90 minute runtime. I feel like there were lots of extra religious-focused scenes and they determined those scenes either weren’t working or weren’t funny enough.

The problem is the climax is all about Ben accepting his religion. That meant they were locked into that storyline. So they had to include at least one other major scene about religion, which they did in the first act, and then ditched it until the end. So if that storyline felt off to you, that’s probably why.

It’s an interesting dilemma for screenwriters for sure. These are the kind of subplots that give our scripts meaning. It’s what makes a movie like this more than an Adam Sandler movie. Yet in a comedy, these are always the first scenes to get cut. The producers are looking at that edit every day nervous about the script losing momentum, nervous about 2-3 minutes going by without a laugh. And because they’re watching it over and over and over again, they have even LESS patience than the audience. So bye-bye religious plot.

But, as screenwriters, I believe we need to leave these plots in the script. If they don’t make the final cut, th e’s nothing we can do about that. But these are often the scenes that make the reading experience more potent and, therefore, our scripts more memorable.

On top of everything else, Seth Rogen does a great job as both characters, especially Herschel. I would often forget they were the same person. I’m usually wary of these “one actor two roles” movies because they’re always vanity projects. When was the last time one of these “one actor two roles” things genuinely worked? The Social Network? And that wasn’t even a vanity project. Armie Hammer was just trying to get a job. But yeah, as crazy as it is to say, the chemistry between Rogen and Rogen was really good.

If you have HBO Max, check this out!

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

What I learned: This movie doesn’t take off until Herschel has his goal – create a successful pickle business. Before that moment, I was sitting there thinking, “What the heck is this movie about??” So if your movie is wandering, or you’re getting that note from people, just have one of your main characters establish a STRONG GOAL. And he’ll bring the movie with him. That’s the thing about a character goal. It’s not about saying, “Screenwriting books say I need a goal so I must include one!” No no no. The reason you include a goal is because every goal requires ACTION to obtain it. In other words, a goal instantly makes your character ACTIVE (ACTION = ACTIVE). And characters who are active are always more interesting than characters who are not.

As some of you know, I used to play tennis competitively. Before Scriptshadow, I taught tennis for almost a decade. Unfortunately, teaching got me so burned out on the sport that I eventually limited my tennis exposure to raising my fist from the safety of my couch whenever Federer hit a passing shot on TV.

However, I’ve started to play again, and something I found which I didn’t have available to me when I was playing is Youtube. There are now hundreds of tennis pros teaching the sport through the internet. And a handful of them are really good. So good that I’m learning a bunch of new things that nobody ever taught me when I played (i.e. wrist lag, unit turn).

These things have allowed me to hit the ball with more confidence than I had even back when I was playing competitively! What sucks, though, is that I’ll never have the speed and quickness I had when I was 21. That’s the downside of sports. True, the older you get, the more knowledge you gain. But also the more athletic ability you lose. John McEnroe knows ten times as much about strategy as Rafael Nadal. But McEnroe is 60 so it doesn’t matter.

Why I am dragging you down this depressing road? Actually, there’s a silver lining to this anecdote. It made me realize that with screenwriting, THERE IS NO PHYSICAL REQUIREMENT. You can learn new things at 40, at 50, at 60, and KEEP GETTING BETTER. Nothing is stopping you from doing so.

There is a caveat to this, however. You have to be willing to be a STUDENT OF THE CRAFT. There is another version of Tennis Carson who thinks he knows everything. Bizarro Tennis Carson would never look up instructional videos on Youtube. He already knows it all. I see this same hubris in writers all the time. They think they’ve eclipsed some skill level that anoints them “learned everything they need to learn.”

The second you think you’ve learned everything, you’re toast. This is why you see wunderkinds come out of nowhere in their early 20s only to become one-hit wonders. Shane Carruth. Richard Kelly. Success gave them the impression that they didn’t need to learn anything else. After Primer, Carruth thought he was God and, as a result, spent the next two decades miffed that nobody understood the 500 page script he’d written about ice dragons.

I hear from writers 50 years old and older all the time concerned that Hollywood doesn’t want them because of their age. That’s not the way to look at it. You have more knowledge about this craft (not to mention, life experience) than 95% of the people out there. That’s a huge advantage.

The real reason most older writers struggle is because the older you get, the more you gravitate towards slow low-concept ideas. I see this a lot. I’ll read a slow moving medium-level concept and when I check the e-mail, the writer either says or hints that he’s older. Their understanding of the craft, their plot execution, and their character writing are always better than younger writers. But you can’t escape an unexciting idea.

Meanwhile, young writers have the opposite problem. They usually come in, guns blazing, throwing out the coolest idea ever. But when it comes to execution, there’s an inherent sloppiness. The writers have somewhat of a grasp on the fundamentals. But you can tell they haven’t been on the ice long enough to land a double-axel.

Just this week, I ran into a great premise for the contest. It was Harry Potter set in an inner city school. But the script only managed a “LOW MAYBE” because the execution was wobbly. And yes, the writer is young.

I’m telling you this so that you always keep trying to learn. There was a time before I started Scriptshadow where I thought I knew everything about screenwriting. I really did. Do you know how many new things I’ve learned about the craft since then? Easily 300. Probably closer to 500. A lot of that from reading screenplays.

One in particular is “dramatic irony.” That’s when you put your hero in a situation where we know they’re in trouble but they don’t. It’s the famous rooftop scene between John McClane and Hans in Die Hard. We know that’s a terrorist. But McClane thinks he’s a hostage. I can’t imagine writing a script without knowing that today. It’s one of the best ways to create suspense and tension in a scene.

I want to finish off today by featuring the first page of a script that made it into my “HIGH MAYBE” pile for The Last Great Screenplay Contest. For those who haven’t been following the contest, I’m in the process of reading the first ten pages of each entry and then I put the script in the “NO,” “LOW MAYBE,” “HIGH MAYBE,” or “YES” pile. The large majority of the scripts are ending up in the NO and LOW MAYBE piles. So if you get into the HIGH MAYBE, you’re doing something right.

This script – to tie it into today’s theme – helped me re-learn something I always forget the importance of. I’ll read two scripts back to back and they’ll be covering the same subject matter. Someone is murdered. Marines out in the battlefield. A meet-cute scene. But one script will be noticeably better. And what this writer demonstrates is the reason. Let’s take a look…

What writer Chris Dennis does so well here is he uses words to create sounds and images that put you inside the story.

“SMOKE billowing out of its open hood.”

“SINGES his hand, jerks it back—“

“The SOUND of tires creeping across gravel…”

“HEADLIGHTS sweep…”

“IDLES ominously.”

“squints, BLINDED by the lights.”

“shields his eyes”

“He slumps to the ground”

“BLACK BOLERO HAT. Leather sport coat. Dark eyes, darker expression”

Even if you only read these snippets I highlighted, you’d feel the intensity of the scene. That’s how effective this type of writing is. You’re seeing these images. You’re hearing these sounds.

What’s cool about this is that he never overuses the description. That’s the reason most writers shy away from this sort of thing. They think it bulks up the description. But there’s only a single paragraph on this page that reaches three lines. You can do this and still keep the writing lean.

So those of you self-professed students of the craft – which should be all of you – you now have a new skill to try out. Get to writing!

It’s time to find out what that 200 million dollar Russo Brothers Netflix project is all about!

Genre: Action
Premise: The world’s number one killer, The Gray Man, is targeted by a giant European corporation when their business model is threatened by one of his hits.
About: Last week, the Russo Brothers signed a deal with Netflix to make their highest budgeted project yet, The Gray Man, which will star Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling. The movie is based on a relatively successful series of novels by Mark Greaney. To be clear, the Russo Brothers are rewriting the script for their iteration of what, they hope will be, a major franchise for Netflix. The script I’m reviewing today was written by Adam Cozad and made the Black List in 2010. Yes, that’s how long they’ve been trying to get this made. By the way, this is why so many people quit Hollywood. They don’t have the patience!
Writer: Adam Cozad (based on the book by Mark Greaney)
Details: 122 pages (Cozad 2010 draft)

Yesterday was awesome.

A great Top 25 script came out of nowhere. Not only that, but it’s one of the rare Top 25s that didn’t have people rushing to the comments declaring, “This sucks. You’re so wrong Carson!” Imagine that. A good script that people actually agree on. A true rarity in this business.

Point is, I was riding a script high. And The Gray Man was the comedian who comes out after Jerry Seinfeld. There are tough acts to follow. And then there is Street Rat Allie Punches Her Ticket. Could this 200 million dollar behemoth and hopeful franchise starter hang with yesterday’s Nicholl winner? Let’s find out…

A mysterious super-assassin takes out the Nigerian president on a visit to Syria. The president’s brother, under Nigerian law, assumes his position. But he knows he won’t keep the presidency long unless he demonstrates an act of power. So he calls up Madame Laurent, a businesswoman who has billions of dollars of interest in Nigeria and informs her that if she doesn’t find and kill the assassin who killed his brother in seven days, he will denounce her business, effectively destroying the company.

So Laurent enlists her fixer, Kurt Reigel, a nasty German man, to find the assassin. Reigel traces the assassin to Iraq and puts in a call to a CIA rep there named Trent Archer. Reigel suspects the assassin is CIA so he needs Trent’s help. Trent does everything in his power to figure out the killer’s identity and comes up with a theory that turns to be right – he’s Court Gentry, a former CIA agent who went ballistic on his superior, killing him.

Reigel is able to identify Court’s handler, an older rich British gentleman named Fitzroy, and raids his house to kidnap Fitzroy, his adult daughter, and his two granddaughters, aged 7 and 6. Reigel takes them all to a command center and teams Fitzroy with Archer to find and kill Court Gentry. If they fail, Reigel kills the grandkids.

Fitzroy immediately enlists four kill-teams with a ten million euro reward for whoever gets the kill. These teams include the Lebanese, the Serbs, the Russians, and The Korean (yes, this guy’s so good they only need one of him).

Problem is, Court Gentry is next to impossible to kill. When he gets to his excavation team in Iraq and they fly out, he realizes that they’ve all been told to kill him. So he has a battle to the death with them on the airplane and, of course, Court wins. Court now knows that Fitzroy set him up. Fitzroy setting him up can only mean one thing. That Fitzroy’s granddaughters are being used as leverage. And this is when we’re hit with a shocking twist. Court is their father!!!

The plan changes. Instead of running away from Reigel’s plan, Court’s going to find where they are and save his daughters. This is a challenge Reigel enjoys. He’s got tens of millions of dollars worth of the world’s best assassins at his beck and call and he knows exactly where Court is headed. Of course, Reigel has never dealt with someone as lethal as Court Gentry before.

I’ve always struggled with the straight action globetrotting genre (Bourne, Mission Impossible, Bond). I just find it cliche and obvious and there’s nothing new anyone’s brought to the table in 30 years. That’s why I favor Fast and Furious over these franchises these days. I know that, at least with them, I’m going to see something new every movie.

But I decided that since this project has such big players attached, I wanted to give it a real shot. I want to know what makes an entry into this genre special enough that it gets a 200 million dollar price tag.

I’ll tell you the first thing I noticed about The Gray Man, and it’s something I love. The plot is simple. Kill Court Gentry. One of the reasons I dislike these movies so much is because I can never keep up with what’s going on. I think there were 974 double-crosses in the last Mission Impossible movie. If I had to explain that plot to save my life, I would be dead.

But The Gray Man keeps it simple. Kill Court Gentry. Even when they start talking about Nigerians and Syria, things that typically put me to sleep, I’m able to follow what’s going on because they made the goal clear. And when the goal changes at the midpoint, it also remains clear. Court Gentry is now coming to save his daughters.

I also like how Cozad and Greaney built up the legend of Court. We see him kill this Nigerian president in an impressive way. But we never quite see his face. We hear about his past – killing his superior. He both left the CIA but is so good they hire him for big jobs like this. He seemed like such a badass that I couldn’t help but root for him.

And they take a page out of what worked for John Wick 3 here (despite this being written eight years earlier, lol) where they assign these awesome international kill teams to come after Court. I mean we talk about making things difficult for your hero. There isn’t a step that Court takes in this movie that isn’t dangerous. He can’t trust anybody.

The only thing that disappointed me was that there weren’t any fresh set pieces. But I will tell you this. And this is a screenplay secret here folks so pay attention. If you get your protagonist right – if we like him and want him to succeed – your set pieces won’t matter as much. You still want to do the best you can. But if you can’t think of anything new, it’s not going to be a script killer because we’re so attached to your hero’s journey. Court is a cool character, no doubt. So I let the set piece issue slide for the most part.

So what do I think they’re going to change in the Russo version? Clearly, they’re going to make Trent Archer a bigger presence. Archer is the third most important guy in the control room. And even if he was the number 1 guy, he’s still in a control room. That’s boring. I’m guessing they’re going to get Archer out of that room and after Court, maybe even turn him into a fellow assassin. Or else I don’t know why Chris Evans or Ryan Gosling would take that part.

But the good news is, this should be a fun movie. And that’s all you’re looking for. It doesn’t have to be awesome. It just has to be fun. And it definitely has the makings for it.

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

What I learned: Another thing that they’ll probably change is the ticking time bomb in the movie. Right now, the Nigerian brother has given Laurent one week to get the job done. That sort of timeline works in a novel. But a movie is only two hours. So, usually, whatever your gut instinct is on your ticking time bomb, you should probably cut it in half. I am willing to bet six months of not being able to eat In and Out that the new ticking time bomb length in The Gray Man will be 72 hours. Mark my words!

It’s a true Mish-Mash Monday as the television/movie landscape has become more diversified than ever. Do you watch The Old Guard on Netflix? Greyhound on Apple TV? Palm Springs on Hulu? My Spy on Amazon?

In the absence of big juicy Hollywood theatrical releases, the B-movie (or second-tier movie) has become the alpha. The problem is, the places where you can watch these movies are so spread out that you don’t know where to find them, or that they even exist.

How confusing is it for someone who watched Tom Hanks dominate the box office for two decades to see his latest film debut on Apple TV? Your initial thought is, “It can’t be that good or else it would’ve been in theaters.” But is that true? Or is the line between theatrical and home movies blurring so much that a home movie can make a bigger splash than a theatrical one?

The answer may come in the form of The Gray Man, the new Russo Brothers project that will star Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling which will have a budget of 200 million dollars. This signifies Netflix’s first true commitment to a theatrical level experience on the small screen. They’ve dabbled. The Irishman and Extraction being two examples. But 200 million is theatrical level money.

The Gray Man is a book series Hollywood’s been trying to put together forever. I remember Adam Cozad wrote a draft that made the Black List back in 2010. I believe that got him some work on a Bond film but that he didn’t get final credit. He later wrote Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. And while he had a long stretch of no film credits, he recently wrote the sexily-shot sci-fi flick, Underwater. Maybe I’ll review his draft of Gray Man tomorrow.

The Gray Man appears to be building on the revelation that Netflix’s most popular movies are big splashy action flicks. The Old Guard, Extraction, Triple Frontier, 6 Underground. Who would’ve thought that even on the small screen, action would reign supreme? Why does action reign supreme? Because it’s like the language of love, baby. Everyone in the world understands a car chase.

Hence, if writing an action script has ever tickled your fancy, this is a good time to massage that tickle. All these streamers are global (or thinking global in the future). And since action is global expect Apple and Amazon to copy Netflix’s formula.

The question is, what kind of action script should you write to get Netflix, Amazon, and Apple to take your call?

As we established during Action Showdown and its subsequent winning script, one of the biggest hindrances of the genre is that it’s inherently generic. Extraction is about a guy extracting a kidnapped kid. Triple Frontier is about guys stealing money from drug lords. The Old Guard is about a de facto black ops team that’s immortal (and fights with swords!). Are any of these concepts all that unique?

If the answer is no, which it is, how are they getting made? Well, something to keep in mind is that these movies are being made for a lower barrier to entry. Tenet requires that we plan, drive, park, pay, and watch. The Old Guard requires that we click two buttons. We don’t even have to move our body.

So that takes care of SOME of the reason it’s okay for these ideas to be generic. But not all. Because these projects are still beating out other projects to production. The Russo Brothers of the world are still drawn to these projects over that recent script of yours about a Chicago cop teaming up with the FBI to take out a Ukrainian drug lord. Why?

The only thing I can identify from a story component is that they all have one slightly different angle. Emphasis on the word “slightly.” Extraction was about an extraction in India. We hadn’t seen a big action movie like that set in India before.

Triple Frontier took a similar route. It built its concept around this almost mythical area in South America known as the “Triple Frontier,” which represents more drug dealing per capita than any other place in the world. It was also somewhat of an extraction narrative in that they were extracting money and then had to escape with it. That was kind of unique.

The Old Guard is a black ops movie with a vampire component to it. The group is immortal. It’s a slightly different take on those kinds of movies. I read a lot of black ops scripts. So if one comes along with a twist like immortality, it *will* catch my eye.

And yet, if you sent me of any of these scripts as aspiring professional writers, I’d probably say, “There’s not enough here.” Cause I know from passing on scripts to the people who make these movies they’ll say, “There’s nothing different here. I’ve already seen this movie.”

This is where we get into the stuff aspiring writers hate, which is that most of these projects getting made stem from IP. I know that’s the case with The Old Guard. I know that’s the case with Extraction. There’s something about previously published material that makes creatives and suits comfortable. It allows them to say, “Well, it might not be that original. But I liked the graphic novel so that’s good enough.” You’d be surprised how effective it is to let a bean-counter see what you’re trying to do. There’s something about seeing pictures that helps people understand what the end result will look like. That’s always better than giving someone words.

Which brings us back to aspiring action writers. Since your idea isn’t based on a graphic novel or a comic, how do you compete? This is where the rubber meets the road. Cause the truth is, you are held to a higher standard than the established creative professional! I know that sounds unfair. But it is what it is. You have to come up with an action idea that’s better than these ideas. Or you need to deconstruct the action film in some way. Or you need to find a new angle.

That might sound impossible in the action genre, which has hundreds of thousands of films in the vault but it’s possible. Look at Greyhound. Here’s a World War 2 movie. How many of those have been made? 20,000? I don’t know. Yet they found a cool new angle. A caravan of war ships heading across the ocean for a major battle are led by a sub-hunter — a ship whose sole purpose is to hunt down Nazi subs so that they don’t sink any of the ships in the fleet. Fresh ideas can be found.

I think a trick you can use to come up with a fun original idea is to think in terms of a SITUATION rather than a catch-all action premise. For example, The Hunt. A group of conservatives are dropped into a Hunger Games like playing field and hunted by liberal-elites. Inception. A team of specialists must travel into a man’s mind and insert an idea. 300. 300 men must take on an entire army.

Do that rather than, say, follow a new black ops team that deals with even more difficult missions than before. By creating a situation, you put more of a movie into the reader’s head.

And from there, execute. If you create great characters and keep us guessing with a riveting plot. If the basics are all in place (strong clear goal, urgency, HIGH STAKES). If you’re giving us amazing action set pieces that we haven’t seen before. Your script is going to stand out. I’ll never forget that scene in Fast and Furious 5 where they bypassed breaking into the 5-ton safe and instead just rigged their cars to it and dragged it out of there, resulting in a crazy car chase throughout the city. I’d never seen anything like that in an action movie. You want to write action set pieces that get potential directors excited.

That’s another thing to remember. Action is a director-driven genre. Maybe more so than any other genre. It’s why a script about a man who hunts down cliche Russian gangsters because they killed his dog can become a billion dollar franchise. Weak concept but amazing direction. Your job, then, is to excite the director who’s looking for something to direct.

I guarantee you if you give them something unique that has some great set pieces, you have a shot.

By the way, let me be clear about something. You CAN be one of the lottery winners who writes a generic action script and someone somewhere chooses it because it was a ‘right time, right place’ scenario. You could write, say, “Skyscraper,” that dumb Rock movie, and it just so happens that a new Lionsgate executive who loved Die Hard has gotten a green light to make a huge action film. He reads that script and says, “That’s it. That’s the one I want to make. My Die Hard!”

Or you can write something original that gets EVERYBODY who reads it excited. In other words, you can make things hard on yourself or easy on yourself. We already know that writing words on a page and hoping someone likes them is a stratospherically difficult profession. With that in mind, it makes sense to align the rest of the variables in your favor.

I know we have some big time action movie connoisseurs on this board. Feel free to offer your own action screenplay insights. :)

Okay!

Time for our second update of The Last Great Screenplay Contest. The good news is that a lot of scripts are getting in the “Maybe High” pile. A bigger percentage than I would’ve thought. There was a string of scripts I read, about ten of them, where six went into the “Maybe High” pile. That’s a lot of good writing.

(for an explanation of the four piles I’m dividing scripts into, check out the FIRST UPDATE of The Last Great Screenplay Contest)

I’ve also come across the best script title so far. That would be “Dwayne Johnson vs. The Hollywood Zombie Apocalypse.” I don’t think anyone’s going to dethrone that title but we’ll see.

On the not-so-good front, I continue to receive scripts where the writer mentions that this is an “old” script.

I want to ask you a question. Let’s say we’re hanging out and I said to you, “Oh, you have to read this script I wrote 17 years ago.” What would you say? I would hope you’d say, “Don’t you have anything newer?”

There is no business, except for maybe the music business, where having something fresh and new matters more. I don’t care if your script is old. JUST DON’T TELL ME. And by the way, make sure, if you are reanimating an old script, to adjust everything for modern times. Cause if the characters aren’t acting like they live in the modern day, I’ll know you sent me something old.

The worst example of this was when a writer sent me a script and everybody was described like a hippy, there were a lot of hallucinogenic drugs, people were trying to save the rain forests. There wasn’t a single cell phone mentioned in the story. And no, this wasn’t a period piece. It was supposedly set in modern day. I asked the writer how long ago he’d written the script. He told me, “About 40 years ago.”

But, overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how many scripts are catching my attention. We’ve got some really good writers who’ve entered this contest.

Now, let’s get to today’s article, which is about DIALOGUE SCENE-WRITING.

I’m encountering a lot of dialogue scenes that could be stronger.

I’m coming up against two major mistakes. The first is the scene fragment. The writer has the best intentions in mind. They’re trying to keep their scene short and sweet – only the bare essentials – so that the script keeps humming along.

The second is writers who write long dialogue scenes, but those scenes feel pointless and rambling. The dialogue may even be good. But it keeps going on and on and you’re not really sure what the point of the conversation is.

The problem with the first issue is that scenes never get a chance to fill out. They end almost as quickly as they begin. Therefore, the reader doesn’t feel like they got anything out of them. Also, if your characters only ever talk to each other in brief spurts, we’re not going to get to know your characters. And that’s the real danger here. If your script is devoid of fully fleshed out dialogue, we won’t know the characters and, therefore, we won’t care about their journey.

The problem with the second issue is that you’ve exposed yourself as someone who doesn’t structure anything. If your scenes ramble, 99% of the time, the script will ramble as well. It’s an easy tell for a reader to spot. If a writer is writing long directionless dialogue, they know it’s going to be an unfocused script experience.

I’m going to help you solve both of these issues.

Here’s what you need to do.

When you’re writing a relevant dialogue scene (I’ll define “relevant” in a moment), you want to structure the scene like you would structure a script. That is to say, you want to give it a beginning (the setup), a middle (the conflict), and an end (the resolution).

What that means from a character’s point of view is that one person in the scene, usually your protagonist, will need to come into the scene WITH A GOAL. That’s what the setup is for. You’re establishing what it is your character wants (his goal) in the scene.

Let’s say Doug and Joe are at In and Out Burger after finishing their amazing meal of five Animal Style French fries. There’s a cute girl working the register who Doug wants to ask out. That’s the GOAL. Which you will SET UP. “I need an excuse to talk to her,” Doug says. “Go order another animal fry,” Joe replies. “And then ask her something to get her talking. Like, why is it called ‘Animal Fries?’” You’re setting things up now. Doug will then get in line, and when it’s his turn, he will attempt to have a conversation and, ultimately, ask her out.

From there, you have your second act of the scene. The CONFLICT. The conflict here could be other people waiting in line behind him. They are hungry for In and Out burgers too! And don’t care that Doug likes this girl. Doug will ask her about where the name animal style fries came from. She will say, “I don’t know, I just started here.” CONFLICT! You want to make things hard on your hero. Doug will ask her when she started. Or about In and Out’s notoriously difficult hiring process.

He might get her talking more. Things are getting better. But then her boss pops up, “Jenna!” She turns around and looks at him. He points at this watch. Shit, Doug has to hurry up.

And here’s the big difference between screenplay structure and scene structure. In screenplay structure, the hero usually achieves the goal at the end of the movie. But in scene structure, the hero often fails. Why? Because it’s more interesting and it means that the hero has to try again. And keep trying. If your hero wins every scene battle, you’ve probably got a boring movie on your hands.

Let’s get back to that “relevant” moniker. What is a “relevant” scene? This is not a universal term, by the way. I’m using it here specifically to help you out. A “relevant” scene is a scene that is important to the story in some way and has some weight to it. Which, if you’re a writing a good script, many of your scenes should fall under that category.

In my movie, “The In and Out Love Triangle,” with Doug, Joe, and Jenna, the example scene I mentioned above would obviously be a scene that was important to the story and have some weight to it. However, if I’m writing “Eight,” which is my serial killer sequel to “Seven,” some side subplot of asking a girl out probably isn’t that important (it could be, if she ends up being the serial killer, but it probably isn’t). In that case, you don’t need to write some big long dialogue scene with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If it’s just Detective Doug trying to get some action that night to take his mind off things, you would look to condense the dialogue as much as possible.

Literally, you might show Doug ordering his meal, Jenna looking up to him with a smile. Jenna saying, “Anything else?” Doug smiling back, and saying, “Yes. One more thing,” and then you’d cut to them in bed together.

The point I want to make clear is that NOT EVERY DIALOGUE SCENE will have a beginning, middle, and end. Just the ones that are important enough to warrant it.

Now if you’ve ever heard the 50 year-old screenwriting tip of, “Come into a scene as late as possible,” what I wrote might be confusing. “Aren’t we supposed to skip the beginning part, Carson, and come into the scene right when the good stuff begins?”

That’s a good point. So, to be clear, you can set up a scene BEFORE the actual scene. I just did it above. Before Doug talks to Jenna, we set up what he’s trying to do, which is ask her out. That way, we’ve taken care of the relevant exposition of what your character’s goal is so that we don’t have to spend the beginning of the scene setting that up. This is done a lot in scene-writing and is perfectly okay.

But let’s say we didn’t include the pre-talk of Doug and Joe before he went to talk to Jenna. Let’s say Joe isn’t here with Doug. Doug is all alone. He waits in line, his turn comes, and only when he walks up does he realize he likes this girl. Without the benefit of that earlier conversation to cue the audience in on what he’s doing, we need to do the setup right here in the moment.

That might be us noticing the way Doug looks at Jenna. He clearly has eyes for her. After he says his order, he might also say, “I like that necklace you’re wearing. Where did you get it?” Now, you’ve SET UP the scene. This guy likes this girl. He’s going to attempt to ask her out. From there, you can move to your middle stage (conflict), and your ending stage (resolution).

Another thing to remember is that the more important to the story the scene is, the longer everything will be. You’re going to have a longer beginning, a longer middle, and a longer end.

For example, let’s say we’re writing a script about a tech billionaire whose company is under threat of being bought out by a bigger company. Something you might see in the show, Succession. In that hypothetical scene, let’s say that MORRIS, the CEO of the buying company, has come to talk to SEYMOUR, the CEO of the company that doesn’t want to be bought.

The scene starts with Morris being shown into Seymour’s office by a secretary. Since this is a scene between two of the most important characters in the movie. Since this is the only time they’re going to talk. And since what’s at stake from this conversation is so high, this is the kind of scene that is going to have a longer beginning, a longer middle, and a longer ending.

In other words, this is the last scene you want to use the “come into the scene as late as possible” screenwriting tip on. If anything, you want to do the opposite. You want to linger in the buildup to their conversation. When Morris goes to pour Seymour a drink, you want to focus on the sounds of the ice cubes rattling against the glass as he stirs. You want to focus on the subtext of the “meaningless” chit-chat the two titans exchange before they talk about the takeover. This scene is where you want to bathe in the “setup” phase.

I bring all this up because it doesn’t seem like enough writers know what to do in a dialogue scene. Like I said, they try to come in late, like the screenwriting books tell them to. Then they leave as early as possible. Meanwhile, the exchange between the characters is so brief that, sure, we may have learned some relevant plot information from the dialogue. But we sure as heck didn’t learn anything about the characters.

So from now on, identify the relevance level of your dialogue scene, and if it’s an important scene, make sure it has a proper beginning, middle, and end. If it’s a lighter scene or a scene where you only want to get some exposition across, you can cut into those scenes later and end them sooner. But if LOTS of your scenes look like that, we won’t get to know your characters and, therefore, we won’t care about their journey.

Hope this helps!!!

Keep writing!