If you haven’t been on the site lately, we’ve spent the last two weekends pitching horror loglines.
It’s a cool experiment and, even better, it’s an experiment that’s working. Regardless of whether people enter or get into the Showdown, what I wanted to convey with this challenge is the risk of going with the first movie concept you come up with.
We all like our movie concepts, no matter how dumb they are. Because there’s something in them that speaks to us. But what we often ignore is whether they speak to other people. And, unfortunately, those other people matter. Because you’re not writing a movie for yourself. You want other people to see it.
I’ve seen so many instances in this challenge where a writer pitches a bad idea and my thought process is, “What the heck are they thinking? This is awful.” It gets a ‘no’ and it gets no upvotes, confirming that it’s not a good idea.
Then, three hours later, that same writer will pitch something that gets 20 upvotes and a ‘strong maybe.’ All of a sudden you’ve got a genuine movie idea on your hands. And, without this contest, that writer may have never considered the better idea because they didn’t get any feedback on the first one, then assumed it was good, and wrote it instead, wasting 8 months of their life on something that never had a chance.
Here’s a great example. An early pitch by Stephen that got a no.
People of Walmart
The day before Turkey Day. Ruthless Walmart crowds. A mark takes refuge from pursuit by a dogged bounty hunter. But this hunter has some special gadgets up his sleeve… because this mark? A shapeshifting Chimera. Will the people of Walmart turn on one another or band together to survive this mythological foe?
And then here’s this idea he pitched that got a yes.
Red Shift
His first night on the job, a paramedic must contend with the reality that the city he is working is on the brink of a zombie outbreak, and the patient he’s got in the back of his van is ground zero.
No shade on Walmart or Chimeras but one of these is a clear movie and the other isn’t.
And people… THAT’S FINE.
That’s what this is all about. It’s about trying ideas out to see what works and what doesn’t. That’s a huge strength of this community. It gives us an advantage over the studios. Because everybody in a studio has an agenda and a ton of those agendas have nothing to do with trying to make the best movies possible. But here, if your idea is good enough, it will find a way through, one way or another.
Now, what surprised me about this weekend was that none of the Star Commenters voted an idea in. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing. I’m just surprised is all. But it tells me that maybe I’m a little more lenient than I thought I was. These guys are the true tough crowd.
Going forward, I’m worried for anyone who has a serial killer idea. I’m so sick of seeing “serial killer” in a logline at this point that my knee-jerk reaction every time I see it is to give it a ‘no.’
Too many writers think that certain subjects or phrases or words are enough for the concept to be worthy. For example, if they want to write about something mundane, like an Amazon factory worker, they think they can end the logline with “serial killer” and they’ve all of a sudden got a movie.
No.
Any tried and true horror element you use has to still be integrated into the story in a clever way. A logline is not a series of separate pieces. It’s a series of interconnected pieces that add up to a compelling whole.
So it’s not that I’ll never like a serial killer idea again. But the second I sense that “serial killer” was shoved onto a half-baked premise, there’s no way that logline is advancing.
And “serial killer” is a stand-in for any horror trope – vampires, hell, werewolves, witches. The elements around those things have to be well thought out if you want a chance to compete in the Blood and Ink Showdown.
The more frustrating thing is that there are quite a few writers who keep posting weak loglines and they’re not reflecting on them to figure out what’s wrong. So they keep making the same mistakes. And I don’t have the time to coach them through the problems and help them get better.
But if you’re one of these writers who hasn’t gotten at least a ‘soft maybe,’ I would do some reflection and consider whether there’s a consistent mistake you’re making.
For example, some loglines are so long that we get lost when we read them. Some loglines lack a big enough hook. Some loglines stay so much on the surface that we don’t feel anything deep enough to care about. Some loglines are clearly rushed. So many loglines start out with a hook then devolve into such vague actions for the hero that it’s clear the writer has no idea what the movie would be past the first act.
Ask for feedback from the people on the site. If you get a note once, consider it. If you get the same note from two different people, that’s a confirmation that there’s a real problem there.
And I know some of you think of loglines as these necessary evils that you just aren’t good at and you think they don’t matter because what really matters is the screenplay, so you assume this contest just isn’t for you.
I’m sorry but loglines definitely matter. You know how I know? Because every good writer I’ve ever known knows how to write a good logline. The reason they know is because they understand that if you can’t explain what your movie is about quickly in written form, then there’s probably something wrong with the idea. Because the logline should be an overall directive for what happens in your script. If it’s unclear, your will script will be unclear.
You can fight this notion all you want but I’m one of the few people in this town who can actually confirm it. Because I’ve read thousands of loglines then read the scripts for those loglines, and I can tell you that a poor logline is one of the surest signs that the script will not only be bad, but be bad in the exact same way that the logline was bad (for example, if the logline is unfocused, the script will be unfocused).
Unless you’re a writer-director and know how to use cinema’s visual language to make up for weaknesses in your screenplay, that’s going to be the case.
So, what can we expect for next week? Will there be a new way to get in? I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. I can tell you this, though. We have to do something about the campaigning. I get that it’s hard for people to find loglines to upvote inside 2500 comments. But more scripts are getting through via upvotes than I expected. So I think the formula is working just fine.
I’m thinking of eliminating writers who delete their pitches after they’ve received my vote. This pitch session is a learning experience for writers who come to the site and we can’t learn if pitches are being deleted. And it’s just bad form. I might allow for one deletion since everybody has that one precious idea that they want to protect. But that’s probably it.
I haven’t counted all the submissions that have gotten through yet but I believe we’re on pace for 60 scripts in the contest, which would be perfect. I’m expecting that a third of the entrants won’t complete their screenplay, which depresses me but I’m just being realistic. That leaves 40 scripts, every single one of them a good movie idea. That’s more than enough.
Next weekend will be an extra long pitch session as Monday is Labor Day. So that should get crazy. Keep working on those loglines people! Don’t wait until the last second. Loglines need to be rewritten until they’re perfect, just like scripts.
And if you need help, you can always order a logline consultation from me. Just e-mail me here: carsonreeves1@gmail.com
Thank you everybody for a fun weekend! And if you haven’t made it through yet, KEEP TRYING! You’ve got two more weekends.
P.S. If your soft maybe, maybe, strong maybe, or yes haven’t been counted, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and let me know. Also, if I never responded to your pitch, e-mail me as well and I’ll remedy that.
