The deadline for January Logline Showdown is THIS THURSDAY at 10pm! So if you have a logline you want to enter, follow this link and it will give you instructions on how to submit. This is the first Logline Showdown of the year so it’s a big one. Best five loglines will be posted Friday for the weekend competition.
Genre: Horror
Premise: A dysfunctional family’s weekend is interrupted when a strange man shows up at their door claiming to know the wife from many years ago.
About: Christopher Landon is one of the biggest horror directors in town. He was unfortunately part of that Scream 7 disaster where the entire movie imploded within seven days (lead actress getting canceled, the industry’s hottest young actress, Jenna Ortega, not counting Sydney Sweeney, also dropping out). Maybe there’s a movie idea there. A horror movie is a week away from shooting and the actors start getting killed one by one. Somebody write it. Anyway, Landon quickly moved onto this project which is none other than a… SHORT STORY! So, once again, we’ve got a big short story sale. If you’ve got Amazon Prime, you can read “Big Bad” for free over on their site.
Writer: Chandler Baker
Details: 62 pages
Yes, I know this is a site about screenplays thank you very much. But how can you expect me to ignore the hottest trend in story sales: SHORT STORIES. I just go where the money is, baby. And, as I’ve mentioned before, short stories aren’t that different than screenplays. In fact, today’s story is probably the same number of words as a 90 page screenplay. You’re just telling the story in a more descriptive medium.
Also, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a great werewolf movie. There was that one awesome werewolf script from last year. But I’m still looking for a werewolf movie that gave me the same feels as when I first saw The Lost Boys. Can Big Bad give me that oh-so-good feeling I’ve been waiting for? Time to bust out the dog treats and find out!
Sam and Rachel are the unhappy parents of girls Odie and June. The family lives in Eugene, Oregon and, right from the start, we sense this is a majorly dysfunctional crew. Rachel is a renowned academic with a good professorial job but her job is the only thing good in her life.
Sam was also once a renowned academic – that’s how they met – but these days he’s more of a recluse who writes in spits and spurts. We’re not sure why yet. But after switching POVs from Rachel to Sam, we learn that Sam despises something deep within his wife, something that, it appears, has infected their marriage since the beginning.
The town is dealing with a recent problem – landslides from the nearby mountains have taken down some of the town’s infrastructure. This has brought more animals into the area. And the predators have followed. The main predators that everyone is worried about are wolves.
A sick Rachel comes home from work and immediately starts arguing with Sam. The daughters watch. Sam sends them to bed. Then Sam takes Rachel downstairs into the basement. He comes back up without her. But before Sam can go to bed, there’s a knock on the door. It’s some guy claiming to be an old friend of Rachel’s. He wants to see her. Sam tells the guy to beat it but it takes a while to send him away.
Sam senses something is off, heads downstairs, and that’s when we realize Rachel is a werewolf. This is where she’s chained down when she turns. But the chains have been shed and there’s no sign of Rachel. This is VERY BAD NEWS. Sam hurries upstairs, ushers the girls into the attic, and goes down to find Rachel.
Instead, he finds the man from earlier, who reveals his true purpose for being here. He’s a werewolf hunter. And he’s not leaving until Rachel is dead. Heck, Sam can even help him if he wants. A scuffle ensues and Sam is able to kill the man. But that still leaves one x-factor floating around: Werewolf Rachel. Will he have to kill his wife? And is that something he’s wanted to do all along?
I don’t know what I was expecting here. But I definitely wasn’t expecting something this dark. This story is f&%$ing dark dude. DARK. Right from the start, these two don’t like each other. It’s not a casual dislike. It’s a deep dislike. So you’re trying to figure out why that is.
Baker, who’s a really good writer, baits you with a few misdirects, making you think Sam is the werewolf. So when it turns out to be Rachel, we’re surprised. As he’s gradually revealing all the toys in the story, he’s keeping you primed with this mysterious stranger who keeps showing up wanting to know where Rachel is.
Even the scenes that have the potential to be boring, like when the girls are stuck up in the attic, contain entertainment value. They start looking through old pictures kept in boxes and find out they had a brother. Where is that brother now? It doesn’t take long to add 2 + 2. I told you. This story is DARK.
I must reiterate how valuable it is when the writer can stay ahead of the reader. It’s even better when the reader THINKS he’s ahead of the writer only to be proven wrong. Which is what happens here. I thought I knew how this was going to end. I was wrong. And it really solidified the writer’s commitment to writing a TRUTHFUL DARK tale. He was never going to “Hollywood” this up. Maybe Landon and the studio change that in the movie but they shouldn’t. The ending is perfect.
Strangely, you know what this story reminded me of? Anatomy of a Fall. For those who haven’t seen it, the story is built around this marriage that completely fell apart. Crumbled on every level because the husband and wife hated each other. This is the werewolf version of that movie.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Landon saw Anatomy of the Fall, was then pitched this book by coincidence, and he realized that he could capture that same dysfunction and collapse of a family, in the form of a werewolf movie.
For those still struggling to come up with their own short story, one of the ways to write these is the way Big Bad was written, which is create ONE BIG SCENE. The family is at the house. The wife is turning into a werewolf so she needs to be tied up. A mysterious dude shows up at their door. There’s your scene. Have fun. And that’s exactly what Baker does. She milks every crevice out of that scenario. I would go so far as to say nobody could’ve written it better.
Also, a big reason why this worked – and this is something you can do a lot more in short stories than you can in scripts – is it gave the reader more detail about the world and more detail about the past. You can go into how Rachel and Sam met. How they were once happy. The specifics by which they were happy (meeting at school – were both hotshot academics). And really detail how they got to this point.
But it’s not just providing the facts. It’s providing the facts in the most dramatically advantageous way possible. Give us a little bit here, but not enough to form the entire picture. Just enough to make us curious and to get us to start forming that picture in our head. Then wait until 4 pages later to give us a little more information.
For example, we show the kids looking through the pictures. Then we see some little boy with dad. Who’s this boy? Don’t give us the answer yet. Cut back to Sam looking for Rachel. Four pages later, show the girls discussing this boy, trying to figure who he is. Only then do we start realizing – this was their brother and Rachel killed him. THAT’S why their marriage is so bad. It’s pretty hard to be happy when mommy murdered your son.
Another thing that stood out in the writing was that everybody was DOING SOMETHING when the story began. Bad writers start their characters’ lives as soon as they write “FADE IN.” Good writers know exactly what those characters have been doing for the past year, for the past month, for the past week, yesterday. (This is why I had you guys doing all that pre-script character work this week!!!)
That may not seem important. But when you read this story, you learn exactly why it *is* important. Since Baker knew exactly what was going on in Rachel and Sam’s lives, she could place them in situations where they’re DOING THINGS when we meet them. Things that matter. It makes SUCH A DIFFERENCE.
Someone needs to change the cover of this book. Cause this cover makes this look like it’s going to be a YA book. But this is one of the darkest stories I’ve read in a year. Wow.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Usually when I write these “What I Learneds,” I’m regurgitating things I already know. They’re important things – things that help screenwriters. But I’m no longer always learning something new from a script. This story was different. I genuinely learned something. Create a disturbance at the beginning of your story. A town that is going about its daily business is boring. A town that is cleaning up after a devastating landslide – that’s more interesting. It gives your location and your story an immediate energy cause everybody’s reacting to what just happened. I’m definitely filing this one away. Create a recent disturbance to your story’s location to start your story off with an extra spark of energy.
