Tomorrow is the SUPER SHOWDOWN we’ve all been waiting for where the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns face off. Considering that a previous Amateur Showdown winner took the top spot on the 2020 Black List, I can only imagine what will happen with the winner of Super Showdown!!! Is an 8-figure sale on the table? I don’t see why not.
But that’s not what today’s article is about. Today is about the eight scripts that finished at the bottom of the last four showdowns. Amateur Showdown mirrors Hollywood in that if a potential reader doesn’t think the script sounds interesting, they won’t open it. You almost have to imagine Amateur Showdown times 100. Or Amateur Showdown times 1000. That’s how many entries you’re up against. It’s only once you internalize that, that you realize how enticing your script idea needs to be to stand out from those other 5000.
So I’m going to break down the eight loglines that finished in last place and see if we can identify weaknesses that might help the writers – and, in turn, you guys – understand why the scripts didn’t score well. It may have nothing to do with the concept. Sometimes it’s the execution that’s the problem. But usually, if a script isn’t getting a lot of love, there’s something faulty in the concept. Today, we’re going to identify those faults.
Before we get to that, for reference’s sake, here are the winners of the last four Amateur Showdowns…
FIRST WEEK WINNER
Title: Our Hero
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: When 3 nerdy middle school kids discover the secret lair of a burned-out superhero; the world’s most powerful man agrees to be their friend in exchange for keeping his secret.
SECOND WEEK WINNER
Title: Bad Influence
Genre: Horror Comedy
Logline: After a popular child influencer gets possessed by the devil, her family, who rely on her income, struggle to keep her brand alive.
THIRD WEEK WINNER
Title: Archer
Genre: War
Logline: 1415 — As the English army marches towards doom in the greatest battle of the medieval age, a young archer seeks redemption for his past under the cruel tutelage of his ruthless and invincible sergeant. A medieval FURY meets PLATOON.
FOURTH WEEK WINNER
Title: POSSESSIONS
Genre: Horror
Logline: An estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding only to discover her mother’s cursed by one of her many, many possessions.
They will be facing off tomorrow so get ready to vote! Okay, now let’s try to fix the scripts that got the lowest number of votes.
Title: Violet Sun
Genre: Horror
Logline: Born with a severe allergy to sunlight, a maladjusted teenager struggles to cure his disease by consuming the healthy blood of unsuspecting victims so he can win back the girl of his dreams before she leaves his life forever.
Analysis: I thought this was going to do a lot better. One of the most common pieces of screenwriting advice you hear is to identify a successful concept then find a fresh angle on it. This is a vampire movie without actual vampires. I felt that was a good pitch. Not to mention, it’s been a while since we’ve had a big vampire movie. And since vampires ALWAYS come back, I thought this was showing up at just the right time. But that’s the weird thing about timing. It’s always too soon until one day it isn’t. And it usually “isn’t” when someone comes up with a killer screenplay in the genre. Alas, maybe Violet Sun just didn’t stick the landing.
Title: IN A FIX
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Amid growing tensions with a rival gang, a fixer must quit her job before her controlling crime boss discovers she is pregnant.
Analysis: I’m not as surprised that this one struggled. For starters, I don’t think everyone knows what a “fixer” is. It’s a general enough term that a lot of people won’t know what’s going on. And like I always remind everyone, generalities get you nowhere in loglines. It’s the specifics that win over the reader. In other words, it isn’t the “family lives on a farm and must avoid a world of monsters” that gets you to read A Quiet Place. It’s that the monsters have super-hearing which means even the slightest sound can get you killed. I’ve also found that words like “gang” without context can be logline killers. What gang? There are thousands of gangs. What’s unique about this one? Again, BE MORE SPECIFIC. Finally, it isn’t clear why the complication in the logline – being pregnant – is so bad. Is there a known pregnancy bias in this line of work? So this one had a lot of issues and my guess is that it’s low vote count had a lot to do with readers simply not opening the script. This is my weekly reminder to get a logline evaluation, guys (e-mail “logline consult” to carsonreeves!@gmail.com). I can help you avoid these problems.
Title: Get Woke
Genre: Buddy-comedy
Logline: An old-school police officer joins forces with his tech-savvy teenage daughter to crack the case of a social media influencer’s cyber stalker.
Analysis: I was so bummed when this one didn’t do well. It was one of my favorite titles. I think this is another case of choosing the wrong things to focus on in the logline. I don’t know what the actual story is (it’s been forever since I read the first ten pages) but I would hope that the specifics of the setup are more interesting than what I’m seeing here. We start off with too common-sounding of a team-up. It’s the “old school” police officer. How many times have we seen that in a logline? A million? That’s okay, though, if you get us excited about the team-up partner. But all we hear about her is that she’s “tech-savvy.” That’s the wrong thing to focus on in a concept like this. When you hear “Get Woke,” you’re immediately thinking of political correctness and social issues. But there’s no mention of either anywhere in the logline. In fact, if this wasn’t titled “Get Woke,” I would think it was silly comedy about the internet. So there’s a disconnect there. Lesson? Make sure your logline and title are simpatico.
Title: Unchained
Genre: Action
Logline: Two fallen out sister-soldiers must reunite and reconcile as they fight their way through a train of mercenaries to reclaim a mysterious WMD-classified object that drove them apart — before the ride reaches its destination.
Analysis: One of the reasons I put this one into the showdown is because I wanted some variety and there weren’t a lot of straight action scripts to choose from. But even as I was putting it up, I sensed that it would struggle. As someone pointed out in the comments, I don’t know what a “sister-soldier” is. Is it two sisters who were also soldiers and the writer just wanted to pare that down into a combo-word for faster reading? Is it that whenever two women fought in the army together, they are known as “sister-soldiers?” It’s frustrating because I don’t know. One of the fastest ways to kill a logline is to confuse the reader early. And there’s a specific reason for that. The reader says to himself, “If this writer can’t make one sentence clear, how is he going to make 110 pages of sentences clear?” I would’ve also told the reader what the WMD is. Once again, you do not pull in readers with generalities. You pull them in with specifics. “WMD” makes this sound like every other action movie ever.
Title: The Article
Genre: Contained Drama/Thriller
Logline: When the CEO of a large media news company invites a troubled Male escort to her apartment……things are not as they seem.
Analysis: I thought this one was going to do better. I liked the twist of a female hiring a male escort instead of what we usually see, which is the other way around. I liked the contained component of the story. I liked how the large media company implied that there were some stakes on the line. It’s not like this escort is showing up at some middle manager’s one-bedroom apartment. But now that I’m looking at the logline again, I can see why it didn’t do well. It contains the logline-killing “ending to nowhere” tag. “They get stuck in a haunted house where they realize… they are not alone.” “An antiquities dealer is presented with a choice… that will change her life forever.” “A politician must win the election while keeping… a horrifying secret from his past.” TELL US THE THING!!! TELL IT TO US! The “thing” is what gets us excited. It’s what gets us to read. Why would you ever not include it in the logline? Do you really think someone’s going to get excited to read something where someone… “experiences a terror they’ve never experienced before?” What’s the terror???? I think if the writer had included what ‘wasn’t as it seemed,’ he would’ve gotten a lot more reads and, therefore, a lot more votes.
Title: Big Stick
Genre: 1 Hr. TV Drama
Logline: After a crushing fall from grace, a Boston cop/mom with an anxiety disorder retreats to her California surf community where her rogue investigation into a young girl’s murder teases a career do-over requiring the takedown of a powerful judge and her surf-hero son.
Analysis: To be fair, this is a feature-driven contest. Having a TV idea is a handicap. With that said, there are a LOOOOOOOOTTTTT of TV ideas being pitched all over town. And while they don’t need to be as high concept as movie concepts, they do need some aspect of them that stands out. The most specific component of this logline is surfing. Everything else is general to the TV landscape(fall from grace, a girl has been murdered, returning home). So I would at least hope that there was something interesting going on with the surf aspect in the logline. But it feels like window dressing. ‘Oh yeah, and people surf here too!’ Maybe if the girl murdered was a surfer and the protagonists’s son is also a surfer, and the logline hints at the idea that he may be involved, now you’re getting closer to an appealing concept. But as it stands, nothing in this logline screams, “Oh my God, I have to read this now.” I’m not saying every logline has to do that. But I started out this article reminding you of just how many concepts your script is in competition with. So if you’re not going to write something that has an “Oh my God, I have to read this now” concept, you have to accept that your job just got a lot harder. Cause you’re going to be trying to get people to read something that, when they hear the pitch, they’re not going to be excited to read. That’s always a tougher road.
Title: Kelsey’s Crossing
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the helicopter she’s riding in over the Sonoran desert crashes in Mexico, the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel has to rely on a group of migrants to survive the dangers and brutality of the desert and help her travel 40 miles to get back to American soil.
Analysis: I was surprised this didn’t do better. This logline was one of, maybe, twenty-five in the entire contest, that truly understood how to develop a concept with irony. I don’t know if the execution was lackluster or what. But as I’m re-reading the logline now, I’m noticing one thing that may have hurt it. This part: “the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel.” While that does convey the concept to the reader, it doesn’t put an image in their head. It doesn’t even tell us if it’s a man or a woman (even though pronouns tell us later and the title implies it). Nailing the identity of this person is key to making this logline work. For example, if I told you the main character looked like Natalie Portman and wore a hoodie, that’s going to put a different movie in your head than if I told you she looked like Blake Lively and was quickly becoming Fox News’ next big anchor. Imagery is so important in envisioning movies so when you have an idea like this one where look is so important, make sure to tell us what the person looks like.
Title: Ambrosia
Genre: Time Travel/Heist
Logline: Three anxiety-ridden young adults discover an experimental drug that allows them to time travel back 36 hours after each overdose. As the side effects intensify and their tolerance builds, each time travel back becomes reduced (16 hours, 8 hours, etc), but they keep going back anyways to perfect a bank robbery. Meanwhile, the town’s leading detective chases them down.
Analysis: I think this is a pretty good idea but anyone who’s read a lot of scripts before knows that when time-travel rules get even a little bit complicated, the story falls apart quickly. Props to Alex because he makes the concept sound as simple as it can. But I heard right away in the comments that people were getting confused reading the script, and that wasn’t surprising at all. I do think this idea of continuing to go back in time to execute a heist could work. But I’d encourage Alex to simplify the rules. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point. I always warn writers away from complicated time travel. But they keep ignoring me!
