Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.
About: This upcoming Showtime show comes from Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who created the Netflix show, Narcos: Mexico.
Writers: Ashley Lyle & Bart Nickerson
Details: 65 pages
The other day I was reading a consultation script and I found that one note kept popping into my head. I kept dismissing and dismissing it because I didn’t see any way it would improve the story. So the question was, why was this note so determined to be expressed? I realized, after finishing the script, that the reason the note wouldn’t leave me alone is because the industry is high on it right now.
That note was “Change the main character to a woman.”
There was literally no story reason for the writer to do this, though. Yet the note wouldn’t leave me alone. Which is frustrating because your character choices should be dictated by your story, not what Tinseltown’s latest obsession is. Yet the female-led project is so hot at the moment that when I looked up Yellowjackets, I learned that it wasn’t even the only girls in a plane crash who must fight for their lives in the wilderness show in production (there’s another one called “The Wilds” that’ll be on Amazon).
So if you’re a writer out there, what should you be doing?? Follow the trend or do what you want to do? I think a few things come into play. You shouldn’t blindly ignore a trend. If something markedly improves the chances of your script’s success, you should consider it.
Another big consideration if you’re *not* a female writer is how comfortable you are writing outside your gender. I remember early on when I started writing, I gave my script to a female friend and she eviscerated my main female character. She pointed out half-a-dozen things I’d written that “a woman would never do.” That was a big lesson for me.
Then again, you have writers like Nicholas Sparks and John Green who seem to have an effortless feel for writing female characters. So you need to do a self-assessment on how comfortable you are writing the opposite sex. Cause the advantage you gain from following the trend might be offset by the weakness of the character.
But the most important factor in determining the gender of your protag should be your story. I’m not going to say Fight Club couldn’t be made with all women but that’s an example of a movie specifically about masculinity. Exploring masculinity in an age where men were feeling less masculine than ever was one of Chuck Palahniuk’s main objectives when he wrote the novel. Same thing as I wouldn’t suggest re-imagining “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as “Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.” It’s probably not going to work. So that’s the biggest thing that needs to be considered.
Okay, despite this introduction, I’m super excited about today’s pilot. I hated every book they made me read in high school. EXCEPT FOR ONE. Lord of the Flies. It’s one of the most powerful setups I’ve ever seen for a story. Plus it’s got a plane crash. And I love plane crash stories! Let’s take a look.
We start off in a snowy wilderness where some kind of ritual is taking place. A teenage girl is running from something before falling into a tiger trap where she’s impaled by numerous wooden spikes. A group of similarly aged girls emerge looking emaciated and wild. They seem satisfied with their kill.
Then we learn that that event we just saw? It happened back in 1994. The people we’re following – the girls who crashed on that island – we’re watching them now in their 40s, long after they returned to society.
There’s Taissa, a popular player on the team who’s now a senator. Shauna, once the team’s best player, now a depressed housewife who masturbates to pictures of her daughter’s boyfriend. And Natalie, a gothy outcast on the team who, when we meet her as an adult, is leaving her latest rehab center.
We’re given bits and pieces of what happened since that life-changing crash but not much. We do know, however, that an eager reporter, Jessica Cruz, wants to do a new story on what happened after the plane crash. And from Shauna’s reaction, we get the feeling that these girls covered up a lot of terrible things, and if those things got out, they’d all be f%#@d.
The narrative jumps back and forth between the present day and the days leading up to the soccer team leaving for Nationals. It’s fun as we get to contrast who these people have become with who they once were. Taissa, for example, orchestrates a plan to injure the weakest character on the team, Allie, so she won’t be a liability on the field. Meanwhile, in the present, Taissa has become a senator.
The pilot wraps up with one big high school party before they head off to nationals and, in the present, Shauna realizing that Jessica Cruz could be a liability if she keeps digging into what happened. So Shauna calls up Taissa, the senator, and tells her that Jesscia has to be “taken care of.” All as we get one final look at a horrid ritual deep in the forest, as a group of teenage girls cook one of their own. Fade to black!
Can I just say something?
THANK YOU!
Thank you to these writers for not only being good writers but for taking a concept and pushing it to its limits. Too many times I read scripts where concepts are barely pushed at all. And when you don’t expand upon a concept to see its potential, you give audiences exactly what they expect. Which leaves them bored out of their minds.
As soon as I realized that this show was going to take place in the present *as well as* in the past, I knew they had a winner.
What usually happens when writers take a familiar concept and put a new spin on it is they execute the story exactly how it was already executed, just with different characters. That’s a recipe for a boring show.
To create a good show, you have to ask WHAT YOU CAN DO to make your version DIFFERENT. And once they decided, “We’ll show both what happened on the island AND what’s happening when these girls grow up,” they added an entirely new dimension to the idea.
For example, the team deliberately injuring their worst player so she can’t fly to Nationals is petty high school shenanigans in your typical one hour teen drama. But in this show, the first thing that comes to mind when they break Allie’s leg during practice is, “That injured girl doesn’t know it yet. But they just saved her life.” When people talk about stories that have depth, this is one of the qualities they’re referring to. The things that happen on screen extend beyond the initial event. There’s a contrast to them that allows the reader to experience a bigger picture.
Also, I think there’s this fear going on with writers right now where they’re afraid to write anything that could potentially offend someone. As a result, we’re getting all this safe p.c. boring nonsense. Lyle and Nickerson have zero interest in that. They know that this is a story where you need to lean into the things that you’re not supposed to lean into. People get killed here. People need to survive here. Peoples’ lives could be destroyed if secrets are exposed. You can’t sugarcoat a story like that. And they don’t. Characters are going to do horrible things in this show. Which is exactly why it’s going to be so good.
Whatever you’re writing, always try to find the truth of it. If you try to write what society says is right to write, you’re going to bore people. Guaranteed. It all has to be organic to the story of course. You never want to write controversial things just to be controversial. Just be honest with what your story is asking of you. For example, early on, we see a 40 year old woman masturbating to a picture of her teenage daughter’s boyfriend. It’s shocking. But it makes sense. A part of Shauna is always going to be stuck back in that traumatic experience that happened to her in high school. You’d be suspicious if she *wasn’t* f&%@d up in some way.
I loved about every decision here. I went into this pilot thinking I was getting a plane crash and a lot of girls trying to survive the aftermath. Instead, 95% of the pilot occurred in the present. And that created this intense level of suspense throughout because I so wanted to keep reading and get to the actual crash.
I’m telling you guys. This show is going to be savage. It’s Lost for grownups. I can’t wait.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A “beat” is a screenplay-specific term that denotes a small pause in time. “A beat as Joe recovers from the fall.” You can play with what comes before a beat to give it more of a mood. “A loaded beat.” “An extended beat.” “An unexpected beat.” Have fun with it. Here, in Yellowjackets, we get “An infinitesimal beat.”
What I learned 2: In one of the loglines I found for Yellowjackets, they used the word “talented” to describe the soccer team that was going to nationals. So, it was close to my logline but approximated this: “A talented girls high school soccer team flying to nationals crashes in the remote wilderness. Here, the girls descend into madness while trying to survive.” With loglines, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. One of the ways to do this is to eliminate redundant and repetitious words. We can already assume that a team going to nationals is talented. Which is why it’s a no-brainer to eliminate the word. (e-mail me to get a logline consultation at carsonreeves1@gmail.com)
