These sci-fi submissions did not make the Science Fiction Showdown. Find out why!
One of the most frustrating things that writers go through is sending their scripts out there only to get rejected time and time again, and having no idea why. I had two instances this week where writers e-mailed me and wanted to know what they were doing wrong.
In one instance, a writer said they had sent their script out to half a dozen contests but that it didn’t advance in a single one. What was wrong? The other writer conceded that his concept wasn’t very good but that if I’d read the script, I’d realize how amazing it was. I sympathize with both of these writers. You spend months, sometimes years, working on a script and then nobody seems to care. You feel like you’re doing something wrong but you don’t know what.
Well, I’m going to clear it up for you. There are two areas you have to execute to break into this business and they must be completed in order. One, you must execute the concept (come up with a compelling concept that makes people want to read your script). And two, you must execute the script (write a script that entertains from the first page to the last). Except for rare situations, it doesn’t work when you only execute one of these.
The reason you need to execute the concept first is because it doesn’t matter that your script is genius if nobody wants to read it. A lot of writers turn a blind eye to this reality. They convince themselves that as long as they write a great script, it won’t matter. Well, it does matter because you need to get people to read the thing and they’re not going to read the thing if it sounds boring.
If you pass that test, the hard part begins because, now, you have to keep people entertained for 110 straight pages and even the best writers in the business struggle to do that. Most amateur screenplays I read fall somewhere between “sub-par” and “average.” That won’t do. I’ll say it again. As an amateur writer – someone who isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt – you have to entertain the reader on page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, all the way to page 110. You don’t get any pages off.
But again, none of that matters if you don’t get the concept right because people aren’t even going to give you their time if you don’t do that. Look at the concept that won Amateur Showdown last week. “When a photosensitive alien force blacks out the sun, a dysfunctional family must survive together in a perpetually dark world full of predatory creatures, while trying not to lose the only thing that can protect them: the light.” That’s a movie concept right there. You can see that trailer. You can see that movie making money.
I don’t think enough writers think of concepts that way. They come up with something they think is cool and turn a blind eye towards what anyone else thinks of it. To that end, I’m going to go through some of the sci-fi concepts that were submitted to me for Sci-Fi Showdown and take you into my head as to why they didn’t pass the “concept” test. I’m hoping to not only help the writers who sent these in. But to show you, the readers, how people receive ideas and what makes them say yes or no. Let’s take a look…
Title: The Billionaire Battle Royale
Genre: Sci-fi, Action, “Dystopian”
Logline: 2045–in a world that has combated wealth inequality by hosting an annual fight to the death between billionaires, the inner circle of the world’s richest man tamper with the event to ensure he loses.
Analysis: This one falls under a category I occasionally see with concepts which is that it’s presented as a serious story when it sounds like it could be a comedy. I imagine 2045’s version of Elon Musk fighting 2045’s version of Jeff Bezos and there is nothing in that scenario that makes me think I could take it seriously. On top of that, the central conflict isn’t very interesting – one of the teams ensures their guy loses. Feels like you could come up with a way bigger conflict than that. There are shades of The Purge and Hunger Games here that might entice some. Curious what others think of this idea.
Title: Surrogate
Genre: Contained Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline: To pay for an exhibition, a starving fine art photographer agrees to be a surrogate for a wealthy couple, but confined to a lavish house, her mind and body start to unravel.
Analysis: One of the more common movie concepts I get sent is characters going crazy. What I’ve found is that these scripts are extremely execution-dependent. Coming up with a story where someone gradually loses their mind for 100 pages is a lot harder than you think. In my experience, almost all of these scripts go off the rails, becoming muddy and uninteresting the further the protagonist progresses into crazyville. Also, this logline isn’t doing the concept any favors. It doesn’t tell us WHAT is going on in the house to cause her descent into madness. Which means that the only thing we have to go on is that she’s stuck in a house. That isn’t very compelling to me which is why I didn’t pick this.
Title: Astaroth’s Children
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Logline: When stranded on an abandoned space station, a crew of military freelancers encounter the survivors of a horrific scientific project gone wrong. Unable to contain the effect, an agoraphobic engineer must destroy this threat to humanity’s existence.
Analysis: The reason I passed over this is pretty simple. It sounds like every video game ever. Resident Evil. Doom. Halo. You can’t just repackage the same movie (or game). You gotta give us something different. There wasn’t anything in this concept that made me think I haven’t already seen this story before. That’s something you gotta think about when you’re putting together your logline (preferably before you write the script). Does this sound too much like other movies we’ve seen? If so, you may want to think twice about writing it.
Title: Infiction
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: A female con artist is allowed to ply her trade against an alien group in human form to help them grasp humanity’s evolutionary need for fiction.
Analysis: I read this logline several times and struggled to understand it. By the way, this is one of the biggest reasons to get a logline consult. To see if your logline is clear. A female con artist is allowed to ply her trade? Her trade of con-artistry? Or a different trade? “against an alien group in human form” – had to read that several times to understand it. “to help them grasp humanity’s evolutionary need for fiction.” The stakes of the story are that aliens want to know why we write books like Harry Potter? The stakes need to be much higher than that for a movie.
Title: Future Shock
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: New York’s last ‘accountable’ cop has one night to find four prison-escapees fitted with pacemakers designed to kill them if they leave the city.
Analysis: The idea seems to contradict itself. Four people have escaped prison. Presumably, their goal is to flee the city. A cop must stop them from fleeing the city. But why is he needed if they’re all going to blow up the second they try to leave the city anyway? Problem solved, right? Unless this is a movie about saving bad people from dying. But that doesn’t seem to be the writer’s focus. Wouldn’t this work better if one of the prison escapees was the protagonist? Also, don’t put quotes around words unless it’s clear why you’re doing so. I’m not sure why ‘accountable’ needs quotes around it. This may seem like a nitpick, but every single script I’ve read where someone has put quotes around a random word in a logline has been bad.
Title: E-TEN
Genre: High concept/Sci-fi/contained thriller
Logline: An insecure hotel janitor and 5 other guests are held captive in a small library where a mysterious voice tells them to find the perfect political system for humanity under 90 minutes if they don’t want to be gassed to death. Things get out of control as they soon realize the game is hiding a traitor…and an axe.
Analysis: There’s nothing realistic about this setup. Why would someone pick six random people and tell them that if they don’t solve something that nobody’s been able to solve in 4000 years, they’re all going to die in 90 minutes? Why would you think these people were capable of doing this? And why so dramatic? If coming up with the perfect political system is important to you, wouldn’t you want to give them an adequate amount of time to do so? This concept didn’t make sense to me.
Title: Earthbound
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: When an inmate in a prison orbiting Neptune finds that she’s pregnant, she begins a desperate attempt to escape and reach Earth, a place she’s only heard rumors about.
Analysis: This is one of those ideas that kind of sounds like a movie. But my first question after reading it was, “Why did you wait until now?” If getting to earth was important to you, then try to get to earth regardless of whether you’re pregnant or not. Now, if what you’re saying is that she needs to get to earth because they’re going to terminate her baby the second they realize she’s pregnant? Or if she knows the only chance her child has if she raises it on earth, well then that needs to be included in the logline. And the fact that it isn’t included in favor of the vague, “a place she’s only heard rumors about,” indicates to me someone who hasn’t written enough to know how to craft an effective logline. I know every writer hates writing loglines because of this very reason. What do you choose to include or not include? But the thing about loglines is that if you stay in the game long enough, you figure out how to write them effectively, and so when I read a good logline, I know that’s a writer who’s been at this for awhile and knows what they’re doing. In the past, when I see little mistakes like this, I’ve found that the script reflects those mistakes. It has problems as well. And while “Earthbound” may very well be the exception to the rule, I’ve been burned too many times to take a chance on it.
Title: REMOTE
Genre: Sci-fi Drama
Logline: A dysfunctional family’s devoted android confronts the true nature of his role in humanity’s impending demise.
Analysis: This logline starts out okay. But then it becomes waaaaay too general. We go from a “dysfunctional family” (a very contained story) to “humanity’s impeding demise.” Where’s all the stuff in between? Remember, a logline isn’t supposed to tell people the generalities of the story. It’s not a teaser. It’s supposed to tell you the specifics of the story and what’s going to happen. I have no idea what happens in this story (which is the problem) so I can’t accurately fix this logline. But here’s an example of a more specific version: “A dysfunctional family’s devoted android must find and destroy its maker before being updated with the latest software, which will have it turn on and kill its family.” That’s admittedly a dumb idea but do you see how specificity in the plot explanation creates a clearer movie than “confronts the true nature of his role in humanity’s impending demise?” There are actual specific tasks being alluded to, something the reader can visualize.
Obviously, subjectivity plays a role in picking loglines. So my analysis here should not be seen as the end all be all. But this is a pretty accurate breakdown of how your loglines will be received. Do some market research BEFORE you write a script. Send your friends five loglines and ask them to rank them 1-5. What happens when you’ve spent 6 months on a script is that you become emotionally attached to the idea and can’t see it clearly. Whereas when you’re still in the idea stage and several people tell you the idea isn’t good, it’s easier to let it go.
Curious to see what you guys thought of these loglines. Did I overlook any?
Are you sending your screenplay out into the world without getting professional feedback? That is dangerous, my friend. I can tell you exactly what they’re going to criticize you for and help you fix those problems ahead of time. I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “CONSULTATION” if you’re interested. Chat soon!
