Note: The Scriptshadow Tournament winning screenplay, The Savage, will be reviewed next Friday. I’m actually going to review all tournament semifinalists next week from Tuesday – Friday.

It’s time for the Scriptshadow Short Screenplay Contest!!! And with this one, we’re going to do something different. Whoever wins, I’m going to team with a director to produce your short. We’ll also debut it here on the site. Yahoo!!!

I already know your first question. “How many pages does it have to be?” I’m going to strongly recommend 8 pages or less. But if you have an idea that’s absolutely fucking amazing, I’m willing to extend the maximum page length to 15 pages. I’m just going to warn you though, longer scripts will be discriminated against. There are very few short films that play longer than 6 minutes online and do well. So go over 8 pages at your own risk.

If you’re unsure what you should write about, check out this post I made last week about how to write a great short film. Not only does it have some good tips in there, but it has links to some really great short films. The comments sections is also packed with reader recommendations. A great resource for getting inspired.

I admit that, in an ideal world, the winning short will hint at a bigger story that can be turned into a feature film, as if this short does well, it will be easy to get funds to turn it into a feature. However, I don’t want that limitation to stifle your creativity. I just want the best story, regardless of whether it has feature potential or not. WRITE THE BEST IDEA YOU’VE GOT!

Everyone gets TWO script submissions. Submissions begin TODAY and will go for SIX WEEKS. Knowing that, here’s what I would do if I were you. Write AT LEAST five shorts. Then, trade reads with as many writers as you can. Ask them what they like best. Get a consensus on which shorts are your best and submit those. If you don’t have anyone to trade reads with, use the comments section below to look for feedback partners.

CONTEST GUIDELINES

1) Submissions begin today, January 26th.

2) The deadline is 11:59pm Pacific Time, Sunday, March 12th.

3) Send all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com (subject line: “SHORT SCRIPT”)

4) Your submission should include.

The title of your script.
The genre of your script.
The logline of your script.
A PDF attachment of your script.

5) You can submit a total of two short scripts. If you are caught submitting more than two scripts under separate e-mail addresses, you will be immediately disqualified from this AND all future contests.

6) Page length…

Recommended number of pages: 8 or less
Maximum number of pages (anything over won’t be read): 15

7) Eligibility Rule #1: Represented writers (writers who have a manager or agent) are eligible.

8) Eligibility Rule #2: You are not eligible if you have made more than $10,000 as a screenwriter. This does not apply to contest winners, however. You may still submit if you’ve won $10,000 or more in screenwriting contests.

9) The winner will be announced on a date to be determined later!

GOOD LUCK AND START WRITING!

When you start out as a screenwriter, it’s a bit like being dropped into the middle of the Atlantic on a life boat. You have a vague sense of how to survive for the time being, but you have no idea how you’re going to get to shore.

When I started screenwriting, I remember spending an endless amount of time on things that I would find out, many years later, weren’t nearly as important as I thought they were. If only I could go back and communicate with that young man, I could’ve opened up 15 hours a week for him. 15 hours that could’ve been used for, you know, having a life.

Luckily, I’m going to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did. Here are 10 things that you need to stop obsessing over.

1) Agents – While agents will be important later on in your journey, they’re not important now. An agent won’t be able to do anything with a beginner’s script. They won’t even be able to do anything with an intermediate script. Agents are mainly built to manage the career of writers who have one. You don’t have one yet. Focus on getting better. Enter contests. Try to get your script reviewed here. Get a consultant who can tell you where you need to get better. Self-publish a book. Write and direct your own short. When you’re ready, the agent will come. I promise you that.

2) Description – I used to spend hours – fucking HOURS – trying to get one descriptive paragraph just right. I got news for you. Readers don’t care about poetic description. They just want a clear sense of what’s going on in the scene. I have yet to see a script sell “because it had great description.” All that matters is that you have a compelling story unfolding. So focus on that.

3) Flashy writing – Damn you Shane Black. Anybody who got into the game in the 90s knows how Black’s flashy writing inspired countless screenwriters to try and break in with a coked up self-referential writing style. Who cares about story when you’re writing lines like, “Joe shoots his gun like he’s fucking your wife, a one man wrecking crew who’s so cool he’s probably reading this script right now while taking a shit.” No. Just no. Flashy writing is the essence of screenwriting insecurity. You’re scared your story and characters aren’t enough, so you try to distract everyone with a bunch of pixellated fireworks. Every once in awhile a writer comes along who makes this style work for his script, but usually it’s just a prelude to screenwriting embarrassment.

4) Action, action, and more action – I used to think that whenever your script was getting slow, you could add an action scene and immediately you’d have the reader’s rapt attention. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. What keeps readers interested are compelling characters that we care about and want to root for. If you do that, you don’t need a single action scene to keep the reader invested.

5) If you have a great concept, you can phone the execution in – Pay attention because this one runs a little deeper than you think. I don’t believe any writer purposefully phones a script in. However, when you have a great idea, you don’t hold yourself to the same standards as you do when you have an average idea. I used to write these high concept scripts that ended up being so bad because I didn’t put enough into the execution. I always went back to, “Well, I don’t have to be perfect because they’re going to love this idea so much.” A good concept is only a starting point. It gets you in the party. But it’s still going to take some work to get that beautiful girl’s number. The name of this game is, and will always be, keep the reader’s interest from page 1 to page 110. They may jump into your script excited as shit. But if you’re half-assing it, they could be bored out of their mind as early as page 10.

6) Outlining is for idiots – I’d say 90% of new screenwriters believe this. I’d also say 90% of working screenwriters outline. You tell me which segment has it figured out. The number one reason you run out of screenplay by page 50, 60, or 70, is that you don’t outline. Like it or not, screenwriting is the most mathematical of all the long-form writing mediums. A script is 110 pages long and 3 acts, which means you have to space things out proportionately to hit the requisite plot points at the right time. Outlining is the most effective way of doing this.

7) Dialogue is the most important thing about screenwriting – Dialogue is just the easiest thing to discuss, laud, or criticize. So it gets the most mainstream attention of all the screenwriting elements. That’s not to say dialogue isn’t important. But the underlining levers and pullys that are moving your story or your scene along are way more essential to writing something good. Take the Big Kahuna Burger scene in Pulp Fiction. Wonderful dialogue. But the dialogue wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t have the suspense of whether they were going to kill this guy or not. If similar dialogue would’ve been used while they all sat around and enjoyed playing a video game, nobody would be talking about how great the dialogue was because they’d be bored by the scene.

8) Your main character has to have a flaw – I thought this for so long. Why shouldn’t I have? It was taught in all the screenwriting books. The truth is, a flaw is just one thing you can add to a character to give them dimension. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing. As long as your hero has some kind of unresolved inner conflict – like not being able to get over the death of someone (Manchester by the Sea), or they’re consumed by a vice (Flight) – that may be enough to create a compelling hero. I will say that SOMETHING should be going on underneath the surface of your hero if you want to make them compelling. But a fatal flaw is not the only option.

9) Sadness is the best way to extract emotion from the reader – I always thought if a character was sad or depressed, that the audience would feel the same way. It doesn’t work like that though. With enough sadness and depression, the reader gets impatient, eventually cracking: “For the love of God! We get it! They’re sad!!!” The best way to produce emotion is to take the reader on a ride. Bring them up (character experiences a high) then bring them down (characters experiences a low). Make them laugh. Then make them cry. Pixar is wonderful at this, which is why their screenplays are so well liked. A screenplay should work as an emotional rollercoaster.

10) Break lots of rules cause Hollywood’s movies suck – Everyone who’s at least 5 scripts deep in their journey knows what I’m talking about. Everyone’s written that 150 page behemoth, INSISTING that every page is necessary. Everyone has ignored the 3 act structure or defied every convention they could locate. If Hollywood makes movies like 9 Lives and Paul Blart, they argue, then there’s obviously a way to do it better. And you (the screenwriter who’s never written a script before) knows the secret sauce. Unfortunately, because you don’t even understand why these rules are in place, all you’re breaking is the reader’s trust. They see that you have no plan, no concept of how to write properly, and they immediately know (I’m talking within 5 pages) that your script will be terrible. Do not break any rule until you understand why it’s there in the first place. Otherwise you’re just flying a big flag over your head that reads: “BEGINNER SCREENWRITER HERE!”

Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: When an old blade runner flies into Los Angeles to find someone who can save his dying soul mate, he’s targeted by a young breed of blade runner who’s tasked with taking him out.
About: If there is a project that more exemplifies “Development Hell” than Blade Runner 2, I’d like to know what it is. Over the past 25 years, the project was happening, then it wasn’t, then it was, then it wasn’t. Harrison Ford was involved, then he wasn’t. Ridley Scott was involved, then he wasn’t. Well the project has finally come together with one of the flashiest packages Hollywood can offer. You’ve got Harrison Ford reprising his role. You’ve got Ryan Gosling playing the young blade runner. And you’ve got Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) directing. It should be noted that this is a 1997 draft of the script so I have no idea if they’re using the same plot or not. A novel for Blade Runner 2 was written, which is what this draft is based on. The writer, Stuart Hazeldine, has been pretty absent in Hollywood since he wrote this draft, until recently when he just got a huge directing gig with The Shack.
Writer: Stuart Hazeldine (based on the novel BLADE RUNNER 2 by K.W. Jeter)
Details: 126 pages (November 1, 1997 draft)

Okay, real talk.

Blade Runner is a visual and aural masterpiece and one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made. There’s no disputing that. The iconic shot of a car flying towards the giant exterior television with the Vangelis soundtrack playing in the background? Magical.

HOWEVER.

From a screenwriting standpoint, the film leaves something to be desired. Narratively, it starts out strong, then wonks around through a casual second act, before sort of coming together at the end. The reason given for why Blade Runner was never popular with audiences was that it was too “edgy” or too “dark.”

B.S.

In reality, the screenplay wasn’t very good. A stronger story would’ve meant stronger word of mouth which would’ve meant more people seeing the film.

Look at Arrival (ironically directed by the same person who will be directing Blade Runner 2). Offbeat sci-fi film that’s been a box office bonanza built entirely on word-of-mouth.

I guess that’s what makes the movie unique though, and like an obscure band, it’s always more fun to prop up what others don’t like. Will Blade Runner 2 change the narrative, or keep the offbeat sensibilities of the first film?

It’s been a decade since we last saw Deckard, our former LAPD blade runner who’s now hiding in the countryside with Rachael, the replicant he fell in love with. Replicants are only supposed to be able to live four years. But Deckard has built a cryo-chamber that’s extended Rachael’s life.

Unfortunately, even with life extension, Rachael’s going to die soon. That is, unless, Deckard can find someone who knows how to hack the “life limitation” code inside replicants. So he heads back into dangerous Los Angeles to visit an old friend who may be able to point him in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Deckard’s old boss learns that he’s back in town. Since aiding a replicant is illegal, he tasks a snazzy new blade runner, Andersson, to find and kill Deckard. In case you were wondering, the extra ’s’ in Andersson stands for “slick.”

Deckard’s journey leads him back to the Tyrell corporation, the place that makes the replicants, where a new woman named Sarah is now running the company. Sarah tells Deckard she wants him to finish the job he started a decade ago – find and kill the sixth replicant. If he does that, she’ll give him the key to extending Rachael’s lifespan.

And so the race is on. Deckard has no idea who this replicant is or what he looks like. But he must find and kill him before a determined Andersson finds and kills him first.

Blade Runner 2 has a traditional story setup. Deckard’s “wife” is dying. So he agrees to “one last job” in order to save her. What’s unique about Blade Runner, though, is the replicant twist. The person our hero is trying to take down could be anyone. Hell, he could be the guy staring back at you in the mirror.

Also, as with every good story, you want to add urgency if possible. Deckard running off and trying to find a replicant unimpeded is fine. But not as exciting as if Deckard is being chased by a cop who’s trying to kill him as well. Every moment is heightened when there’s someone on your heels.

A lot has been made of Blade Runner’s unapologetic darkness. As we all know, the word “dark” gets geeks more revved up than an IMAX preview of a new Christopher Nolan film. It is the operative word for cinephiles getting hot and giggly. It doesn’t matter if a sci-fi film is TERRIBLE. If it’s dark, there will be geeks who stand by it til the end.

One of the distinguishing characteristic between a dark and a “light” movie is the goal of the protagonist. If the protagonist is attempting to KILL someone, the overall tone of the movie will be dark. If the protagonist is trying to SAVE someone, the overall tone will be light.

What’s the goal of the original Blade Runner? – Go and kill some dudes. What’s the goal of this new one? – Go kill the final replicant. We even have a SECOND blade runner being tasked with trying to kill our hero.

Hollywood knows that darkness equals less box office, so they’re always fighting back against these narratives to give them some light. For example, Deckard is doing all of this to SAVE SOMEONE’S LIFE. This offsets the darkness a little, improving the chances that more butts show up in seats.

I think that’s why one of the darker movies in history, Silence of the Lambs, also made a ton of money. Yes, Clarice was tasked with (essentially) killing a man. But she’s also trying to save someone as well. They found the perfect balance in that story.

In comparison, did any of you see that 2010 movie, Edge of Darkness, starring Mel Gibson? You probably barely remember it if you did. That’s because the movie is about a dude who wants to kill the people responsible for killing his daughter. It’s dark and sad because it’s solely about killing. There is no light.

And therein lies the quandary. You get “street cred” as a writer for going dark. But you get money and jobs for going light. It’s why writers are obsessed with straddling that line to find the perfect balance – writing the next Silence of the Lambs.

Getting back to Blade Runner 2, this script, from a storytelling perspective, is actually stronger than the first film. It has more going on. But that doesn’t mean the film itself will be better. Blade Runner is one of the top 5 directed sci-fi films of all time, maybe top 20 directed films of all time period. From a DIRECTING perspective, it’s amazing.

So if Denis is able to capture that same magic, and he rides this more active plot (assuming they’re doing something similar) he may achieve what Scott could not – a dark movie that also breaks through to the popular masses.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you’re struggling with a tone that’s too dark, add more saving!

THE SAVAGE!!! BY CHRIS RYAN YEAZEL!!!

Genre: Historical Biography
Logline: The incredible true story behind one of America’s founding myths. After being kidnapped from his lands as a child, the Patuxet Indian Squanto spends his life fighting impossible odds to return home, setting in motion a series of events that changes the course of history.

You can download and read the script yourself here:

THE SAVAGE

For those coming across this tournament for the first time, I wanted to try something different. Instead of doing the traditional screenplay competition thing where you send a script out, wait four months, and desperately hope to get that e-mail that says you’ve advanced, I wondered what it would be like to play the competition out publicly. Not only that, but to have real people vote on the scripts. Not a couple of overworked screenplay competition readers.

A little over 500 scripts were submitted. I then chose 40 of those to partake in the competition. And via tournament-style elimination, the scripts fought against each other one round at a time. The Savage, which went in as the top ranked script, came out as the top ranked script. That’s better than Andy Murray can say at the Australian Open.

I want to take a moment to congratulate the runner-up, Billie Bates, and her script, The Bait. Billie had a strong showing all the way up the final, winning all her rounds soundly. And I want to thank and congratulate everybody who participated. This was such a unique experiment. I know it got bumpy at times. But overall, I had fun with it. I’m actually curious about what kind of changes you would make if we did the competition again. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

I will be reviewing The Savage this Friday. One of the hardest things about this contest was not getting too caught up in the script discussion. I knew I’d be reviewing one or more of these scripts eventually, so I didn’t want to know too much going into the reviews. FINALLY I get to see what all the hype is about.

Once again, congrats Chris. Amazing job. And, oh yeah, start getting those short scripts ready people!

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) Tasked with finding a game changing take for the sixth Jason Bourne movie, Tom Milton goes deep down the rabbit hole of cracking the story. With the guidance (and abuse) of a professor from his past and Bourne himself, Tom begins workshopping scenes that begin to bleed into real life in unexpected ways.
About: Mattson Tomlin is a writer/director born in Romania who’s been active on the short film circuit. But this Black List entry (at 8 votes) is the first thing that’s put him on Hollywood’s map.
Writer: Mattson Tomlin
Details: 103 pages

Before we get to today’s script, can we take a moment to acknowledge that M. Night’s latest film just made 40 million dollars on its opening weekend? What year is this, 1999? I thought “Split” would make half that if it was lucky.

The new narrative on Night is that he’s financing his films himself so there’s no studio interference, the idea being that all those Night misfires you had to sit through weren’t Night’s fault. They were the studio’s fault!!!

Hmm, I’m not sure I buy that. There isn’t a filmmaker on the planet who had more freedom than Night after Signs (which, despite being an average movie, made huge box office). He had three movies there where they let him do anything they want.

Anyway, did anyone see Split? Was it any good?

Moving on, I chose today’s script for one simple reason. I secretly think all Bourne movies are exactly the same. Not in the way that all Star Wars movies take place in space or all Bond movies have Bond traveling the world. I mean like, they all have the same plot, they all have the same cinematography, they all follow the same narrative. I’m not sure there’s a franchise that’s squeezed more mileage out of its one-trick pony than this one.

So the idea of a writer trying to crack the next Bourne film is funny to me. I mean, seriously, how do you make one of these movies different?

29 year-old Tom Milton finds himself in one of those ‘battle-it-out’ writing assignments. Him and another writer have been separately assigned to write drafts of Bourne 6, and the writer who writes the best script gets the job.

But Tom is struggling. Everything he writes comes off as (surprise surprise) the same boring action stuff Bourne always gets caught in. Specifically, Tom’s stuck on a scene where Bourne walks into a building and is attacked by two henchman, just as the cleaning lady walks into the room.

The scene is so difficult to write that Tom goes to his grumpy old professor, Ron Sparrow, at AFI and asks him for advice. Sparrow, who’s as no-bullshit as they come, notes that Tom’s not finding the truth of his characters. He wants Tom to dig deeper, to figure out the lives of every single character in his screenplay.

As Tom descends into the madness that is writing a screenplay that isn’t working, he begins placing himself in the scenes along with Sparrow. The two then interact with the characters, even Bourne himself, to figure out how to solve the script. But will the executives dig a Bourne script with actual character depth? Or will they go back to the tried and true formula that’s made them billions worldwide?

I feel like every writer, at some point in their career, writes at least one of these scripts, where you’re deconstructing screenwriting, a la Charlie Kaufman, to the point where the writer himself is including himself in the story.

But there’s a precedent here. Kaufman used to write these scripts in his sleep. And Sam Esmail, before Mr. Robot fame, used to love writing these kinds of screenplays. And, of course, Woody Allen used to do this. So you can’t just roll up and say, “Look at how creative I am.” Just like any genre, you have to find a fresh take on the formula.

To “A Deconstruction’s” credit, it didn’t go where I thought it would go. And there are a few moments in the middle of the script where it shined. But this never felt like anything more than an experiment. Whenever I feel choices are being made right there on the page (the writer is figuring out a plot point as he’s writing), I lose confidence in the story.

For example, late in the script, (spoiler) Tom looks directly into the camera and we back up and see all of the crew shooting this movie in which Tom is the star. That seems like something you write when you’re out of ideas. It wasn’t in alignment with the rest of the script, which was a simple but fun movie about deconstructing an action franchise to find the truth in the characters.

With that said, “Deconstruction” had this really nice sequence that all screenwriters should read. In Tom’s first draft, he keeps getting stuck on a boring scene where a Henchman tries to shoot Bourne before Bourne dismantles him. He asks Sparrow, “Why is this scene so boring?” And Sparrow says, “It’s because you’ve named this guy ‘Henchman.’ You need to find out who this guy is. Once you do that, the scene will come alive.”

So Tom goes back through the henchman’s life, learns he had a really tough upbringing, followed in his mentor’s criminal footsteps because it was the only option he had, and before his mentor died, he gave Henchman his switchblade. And the henchman cherished that switchblade. It was the entirety of his memory of the only man who ever cared about him. In many ways, he was his father.

So now we go back to the Bourne scene again. But this time, instead of pulling out a gun, our henchman pulls out that switchblade. And instead of going down easy, he fights with the zeal of a thousand henchman. And he brandishes this switchblade like he was born holding it. Because that switchblade is his life.

It’s not just a fun moment. It’s a valuable lesson on how to improve characters and scenes. A character comes alive once you actually know something about him. If you know nothing, they will offer nothing.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the rest of the script is there yet. There are a dozen little messy things about it that keep it from reaching its potential. For example, I didn’t understand what kind of professor Sparrow was. I think he was an acting teacher. So it didn’t make 100% sense why he was helping Tom with screenwriting. There were a lot of little incongruent things like that that threw me.

With that said, the script is different. It’s not a biopic or a true story. So if you’re tired of suffering through those, Deconstruction is a nice change of pace. It wasn’t for me in this iteration. But maybe future drafts will help it reach its potential.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Every character has a history. Even characters without names. I’m not going to tell you to write backstories for every single character in your script, even the waiter. But I can promise you this – THE MORE YOU KNOW ABOUT A CHARACTER, THE MORE THEY’LL BRING TO THE SCENES THEY’RE IN. If you look at the henchman example, the scene DEFINITELY became better once the henchman attacked with that switchblade as opposed to a gun. So if you’re stuck in a scene, the answer may be to get to know the characters within that scene better by separately diving into their backstories. Their past may hold the key to unlocking the scene.

Come one, come all, to the finals of the Scriptshadow Tournament! The day has finally arrived. After 500 entries, a first round of 40 chosen participants, a quarterfinal round, a semifinal round, and a whole lot of controversy, the checkered flag is just 48 hours away!

The Scriptshadow Screenplay Tournament is the only tournament that tells competition know-it-alls and Hollywood “gate-keepers” to screw it. That’s because you – yes YOU! – the readers, choose who wins the competition.

Here’s how voting works. Read as much from each script as you can then vote in the comments which script you think deserves to win. Please explain why you voted for the script. This is the finals and we want to make sure everyone is voting for something they loved.

Today’s face-off isn’t unexpected. These two scripts were ranked number 1 and number 3 going into the tournament. They were expected to do well. The Bait has basically cruised into the finals, winning all of its rounds easily, whereas The Savage had an incredibly close Quarterfinal round, barely squeaking by Divide and Connor, before rebounding with a strong semifinal win.

These scripts are so different, I have no idea how the final will play out.

If you are a frequent or just a casual Scriptshadow reader and you have time this weekend, please read these scripts and vote. Your vote could determine the winner.

Voting closes at 10pm Pacific time Sunday night and the winner will be announced in a separate post Monday morning.

And with that… GOOD LUCK YOU TWO!

#1 SEED
Title: The Savage (new draft)
Genre: Historical Biography
Logline: The incredible true story behind one of America’s founding myths. After being kidnapped from his lands as a child, the Patuxet Indian Squanto spends his life fighting impossible odds to return home, setting in motion a series of events that changes the course of history.
Writer: Chris Ryan Yeazel

VS.

#3 SEED
Title: The Bait (new draft)
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: An untrusting woman, employed to test men prior to marriage for concerned wives-to-be, has her world upended when she falls for her latest target while he remains rocksteady in denial of their mutual attraction, and she must reconsider her beliefs on love, trust, and what it means to tempt fate.
Writer: Billie Bates

You may not have heard yet, but the next contest here at Scriptshadow is a SHORT SCRIPT CONTEST. And the winner is going to get his short PRODUCED. We’re going to shoot it, edit it, then premiere it here on Scriptshadow. How exciting will that be!

We’ll get into the details of the contest in the coming weeks. But right now, I want you guys to start writing shorts. That’s right, shorts with an “S.” One of the shitty things about a feature script is it’s a huge commitment. That’s why you have to prep so much (getting feedback on concepts, outlining, etc.). Cause once you get on the train, you’re not getting off for months.

The great thing about short scripts is you can bang them out quickly. Hell, you could write a short in five minutes. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS. I would encourage all of you to write AT LEAST 10 short scripts before choosing which one to send me. Write five of them today. Or make a deal with yourself to write one a day for the next ten days. Identify the one that pops the most, then rewrite it into a masterpiece.

How do you write a short masterpiece? Here are some guidelines to get the most out of your short script…

CONCEPT
This doesn’t change from features. If you don’t have a good concept, nothing you write will matter. A good concept feels bigger than real life. The opening to the movie, Scream, is basically a short movie. A young woman home alone. A man calls her. Wants to play a game where life and death are at stake. If you’re going with something more “real life” driven, try to find some irony. An ice cream truck owner who gets in a nasty war with the adjacent ice cream truck. But these are specific examples. A good concept is anything that excites someone when they hear it. Imagine yourself pitching your idea to someone. Do they say, “Whoa!” or do they politely reply, “Sure, that sounds cool?” If you can’t come up with anything, start with a dead body. Lots of great movies start with a dead body.

BUDGET
Because short movies don’t make money, budget is always a concern. Therefore, your locations will need to be limited. However, instead of letting that deter you, let it excite you. You can use contained locations to your advantage, as they provide an opportunity to trap or limit your characters, both things that lead to more dramatic storytelling. You should never limit your imagination. But keep in mind that funds are scarce for this format. Best, then, for your story solutions to be simple rather than elaborate.

GENRE PIECE
The reason that a large majority of short films garner less than 200 views on Youtube is because they don’t embrace genre. Bread-and-butter shorts about friendship or philosophizing or life or two people in a coffee shop talking – it’s not that those shorts can’t be good. But nobody watches those shorts and says, “Oh man, I HAVE to send this to my friend!!!!” Science-fiction, horror, time-travel, fantasy, action – these are way more likely to excite viewers and get them to pump up your view-counts. If you have a choice between a non-genre piece and a genre piece, I advise you to go with a genre piece.

JUMP IN RIGHT AWAY
One of the most common things I see in successful shorts is that the story starts out immediately. The reason for this is that all shorts are watched on the internet, where the viewer’s hand is on a device that, the millisecond it’s bored, has the ability to jump to another website. So if you bore someone within the first 20 seconds of a video, they’re gone. For this reason, you want to try and capture the viewer’s interest right away. This does not mean with action. It could be with mystery or just a weird mysterious shot. At the very least, make sure something is happening. Because if you’re not thinking about capturing the viewer right away, you’re limiting the appeal of your short.

SHOCK VALUE
Some may see shock value as cheap. But when you’re telling a 4 minute movie, you have to use every tool at your disposal, and shock value shorts get passed around all the time. Shock value could be a character screaming racist things right at the camera (early Spike Lee). Or could be something with intense violence. Or my friend wrote a short about a guy who was cursed with seeing everyone naked (until meeting the girl of his dreams, the only person he could see clothed). A short with all naked people? That would get passed around. Shock value is not necessary to write a good short. But a good shock value concept can get a killer amount of views.

SUSPENSE
Suspense is one of your best friends in short film writing. One of the simplest and effective setups is to introduce us to a character, imply that something bad is going to happen to them, then suspend the outcome of that bad thing until the end of the story. Watch Psycho for research, which is really a series of short suspenseful films. Notice how a scene where a criminal is buying a car, with a suspicious cop nearby, can turn into a hell of an entertaining scene. Any Hitchcock research should give you lots of short ideas.

EMOTION
Emotion is the one area where most short films fail to shine. And that’s because most shorts are director-driven and directors don’t know how to mine emotion as well as writers. So this is the area where you can bring your expertise to the table. Emotion mainly boils down to creating characters we care about and placing them in peril (whether it be emotional or physical). A man negotiating the release of his kidnapped son can be heartbreaking if written well.

GET CLEVER
Short films are one of the best places to experiment. Wacky narratives that get tiresome over 100 minutes could be perfect for 5. Don’t limit yourself to linear storytelling. Jump around in time, in space. You could tell your story backwards. You could do a Sliding Doors type thing where you’re showing two different timelines of the same person. You could do time travel. You could do an unreliable narrator thing where what we’re being told isn’t what’s happening. Shorts are one of the best places for super-creative people. This is your opportunity to show just how clever (or weird) you are. Just make sure it makes sense in the end.

A GREAT FUCKING ENDING
Shorts are these bite-sized stories that we watch quickly and move on from. In order for us to want to share them with others, they really have to resonate. One of the easiest ways to do this is a big ending, a twist or a shock that hits the viewer right between the eyes. And because your story is so small to begin with, it almost feels pointless without a punch of a finale. For this reason, try to think of your ending in conjunction with your concept. Go out with a bang if possible.

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS
Pictures can be helpful in coming up with short ideas. Go to one of those random image sites (can anyone list a good one in the comments?) and watch your imagination spark to life. — Don’t write a short with people in an apartment while the end of the world is happening outside. That short idea has been done to death. Unless you have a fresh take on it of course. — Also avoid “multiplicity” type shorts, where one person keeps getting cloned. I’ve seen that idea far too often. And it’s never good. — Finally, a great idea trumps everything. If you have a stupendous short idea that doesn’t follow a single rule I listed above, WRITE IT. The above are merely guidelines for what tends to work best in short film writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the winning short is so unique that it ignores many of the thing that I’ve talked about.

INSPIRING SHORT FILMS
Stutter – emotion, concept
Controller – genre, emotion
Fortune Cookie – clever, ending
Cargo – genre, emotion, ending
Dead Island – emotion, clever
Noah – Clever, emotion
The Black Hole – clever, ending

PLEASE SHARE LINKS TO YOUR OWN FAVORITE SHORT FILMS IN THE COMMENTS! LET’S INSPIRE EACH OTHER!

Back in the good old days for screenwriters (the 90s), getting rich quick meant selling one script. The path takes a little longer now, but it’s potentially more lucrative. The new blueprint looks like this. Write a splashy spec (this could mean selling a spec for 300k, writing something that makes the top 20 of the Black List, or writing anything that makes some noise). This leads to assignment work. Write drafts for a couple of semi high-profile projects (sorry, the super high-profile stuff is reserved for Hollywood’s top guns). Write a TV show, have it last more than a year, start counting your money.

That’s the path today’s writer took. And it’s a path I’m seeing more and more writers take. It used to be, write feature scripts to make feature movies. But with 400 shows on television and TV being a lot more lucrative for writers, why WOULDN’T you write a feature to write a television show? Today’s script is one of those semi high-profile assignments that Jason Rothenberg had to write to get to The 100. Let’s hope it blows us away.

The Forbin Project begins with nine airplanes being hijacked at once. It’s not looking pretty. These are nasty terrorists who want to inflict more damage on America than has ever been inflicted before. Air traffic controllers watch in horror as these planes zoom towards their targets.

Except within sixty seconds, all nine planes level off and gently fly to Wyoming. What the hell is going on? It’s the world’s first introduction to Colossus, a computer program created by genius, Dr. Charles Forbin, and bankrolled by the military that’s been programmed to anticipate and solve any attacks on the United States.

Within moments, all planes have been remotely landed on a military base, and before the terrorists can enact Plan B and start slicing up hostages, a video feed is beamed into the cockpits of all the terrorists’ family members being held at gunpoint. That last part was a Colossus flourish.

Just as Dr. Charles Forbin and his team are about to be commended for this coup, the president learns that all of the military’s nuclear codes have been changed by Colossus. In fact, all the nuclear codes of EVERY military have been changed. Other countries got shifty after seeing Colossus in action, threatened nuclear war if the technology wasn’t shared, and Colossus found that the only way to diffuse the situation was to take away the keys to the cars.

Naturally, all the leaders start freaking out. But after a few displays of power by Colossus (killing the Russian president, for one), they shut the fuck up. And Colossus is only getting started. He informs the world that HE and he only will lead. He will decide what’s best for everyone. And to take it one step further, he orders all military personnel to get computer chips inserted into their brains so he has better access to them.

Charles Forbin’s team realizes this is hella not good for a free world. So they come up with a plan to kill Colossus which requires them to “cut four streams” to his consciousness at the same time. Unfortunately, these streams are all over the world. One of them is even up on a satellite! They also must conspire secretly so that Colossus can’t hear them. Not easy since Colossus can hear everything. I don’t know. It doesn’t look good for freedom.

The Forbin Project starts out solid. That opening scene was like a symphony, and watching all the pieces come together to neutralize the flabbergasted terrorists was one of the more satisfying action sequences I’ve read.

The transition of Colossus from trustworthy referee to maniac dictator was also fun. I’m usually keen on leaps of logic in these “computers take over the world” scenarios, but most of it seemed pretty plausible. For example, Colossus starts giving orders to marines. At first I was like, “Nah, they’d just say no.” But the military gave Colossus access to the military hierarchy, which allowed it to set its own rank, and what are soldiers anyway? They’re cogs. They do what they’re told. So it made sense.

But then Rothenberg made a fatal flaw. He shifted from a tight-thriller style pace to an elongated “passing years” style pace. If your script moves along for 40 pages at one pace, then you radically shift it to a pace that’s completely the opposite, it feels odd, like we’re watching a different movie. And that’s exactly how the post-40 page stuff felt.

Honestly, everything after that first 40 pages sucked. And that’s the thing with fatal flaw choices. Once you make them, your script is doomed. There is nothing you can do to bring them back to life unless you go back and erase the fatal flaw.

Another talking point The Forbin Project brings up is the practice of MASSAGING PLOT POINTS. Sometimes, you can slam a giant plot point into the story and the reader will go with it. Other times, it needs massaging.

Immediately after the terrorist sequence, Colossus takes over the nuclear codes because, “North Korea heard about what happened and they’re threatening to launch a missile at us if we don’t share the technology. China is cooperating with them.”

This plot point may keep your story moving but it’s not believable at all. A country hears you stopped a terrorist attack so they threaten nuclear war against you? No. This kind of plot development needed an extra couple of beats, where something happens that’s a direct threat to North Korea and China. Then, and only then, would they threaten nuclear retaliation. Know when a plot point needs massaging and massage it. Otherwise you have a room full of people going, “Pft, like that would ever happen.”

Ironically, it’s the script’s fatal flaw that probably led to this. The writer’s looking at the 3-4 years of story he has to cover in acts 2 and 3 and says, “I need this plot point to be quick or else I won’t be able to fit all of this in.”

Had the rest of the script stayed on a more contained time frame, he would’ve had plenty of time to massage that plot point. It just goes to show that everything affects everything in a script. A choice you make on page 80 could influence a scene on page 12.

If Rothenberg really likes this drawn out “many years” approach to telling this story, he should turn it into a TV show. He’s already got The 100. So it makes sense. But as a single movie, this timeline needs to be contained.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Strategize now for what you want to write down the line. Say you want to follow the model I listed above and eventually get rich writing a TV show. If that TV show is going to be horror, start off writing horror. And when you choose assignments, don’t take whatever’s offering the most money. Take horror assignments only. The chances of you then selling a horror TV show go up exponentially. The people who rise the fastest in this industry tend to be the ones who become an expert in one specific genre and then exploit that genre all the way up the ladder.

Genre: Period/Action
Premise: Maximus is brought back to life to stop a nasty henchmen from killing all the Christians in Rome.
About: This script has become famous (or infamous) based on the fact that it got written in the first place. Many people who have read it have used superlatives such as, “Crazy!” “Ridiculous!” and “Bananas!” I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but they’re not using the most accurate superlative, which would be: “Bad!” The script was written by Nick Cave, who’s best known as a musician, but who occasionally dabbles in screenwriting. He wrote 2012’s “Lawless,” and he’s credited as the screenwriter for the upcoming remake of The Crow. Apparently his pitch beat out every other writer in town, which is why he got to write this. Which has led to the pinnacle of this script’s 15 year journey – a Scriptshadow review.
Writer: Nick Cave
Details: 102 pages (in a weird font that may be obscuring the page count)

I was never the biggest Gladiator fan when it came out. These were pre-obsessed-with-screenwriting days and all I remember thinking was, “This really wants to be Braveheart but isn’t.”

However, in retrospect, I see why so many people loved it. It has the ultimate main character. Not only is he an underdog (AUDIENCES ALWAYS LOVE UNDERDOGS) but he’s the most badass underdog in cinema history.

There is a problem with the movie that doesn’t make it ideal for a sequel though. The main character kind of dies. Why then, would you even bother writing a sequel? The answer is simple.

A tub of popcorn.

Hollywood needs you to buy more tubs of popcorn. So if a movie makes money – ANY movie – there will be an attempt to sequelize it, no matter what. They’ve had meetings about a sequel to Titanic. Don’t buy the lies. They’ve had meetings about a sequel to Rogue One. If it’s within the realm of possibility, they will explore it.

Which is why they paid Nick Cave to write this script. It’s a tiny investment for a potentially huge payoff. If the script is amazing, the studio could get Crowe back onboard and make hundreds of millions of dollars. If not, it’s 300 grand you can shave off of profit participation. Let’s find out if Maximus and his breastplate are any good this time around.

So Maximus is buzzard-food.

That is until the ghostly Mordecai wakes him up and tells him he’s in some kind of informal afterlife. While Mordecai tries to tell Maximus about the rules of this world, Maximus screams a lot that he wants to see his son and wife. But alas, those two are in a DIFFERENT afterlife.

WAH-WAH-WAHHHHH

Maximus is pissed and travels across the desert to find a man who can help him find that afterlife, but this ugly selfish bastard tells him he needs a favor first. There’s this really bad dude named Lucius who kills Christians for sport and he’s on his way to Rome. Maximus’s new friend wants him to get to Rome first and warn a Christian named Cassius that Lucius is coming.

In a stroke of luck (or screenwriting coincidence), Maximus’s wife made a deal with an afterlifer to go to a THIRD afterlife if her son could live again. Which means Maximus’s son is alive. And get this: Cassias is his new father!

So Maximus goes to Rome, his old stomping grounds, and keeps running into people who are like, “Didn’t you die?” And Maximus is all, “Yeah, you got a problem with that?” Strangely, they don’t.

Once Lucius gets to Rome, he goes all Hitler on the Christians, who are being very disruptive with their “Jesus Loves” bumper sticker mentality. And the Christians can’t even fight back! Cause that goes against the teachings of their leader. That makes things pretty easy for Lucius.

Until Maximus intervenes. You see, his son, Marius, is one of Christ’s followers. So if Max doesn’t teach him and his buddies to brawl, it’s going to be lights out for all of them. And that’s what Maximus does. He puts together a little mini-army, teaches them how to shoot flame-arrows, then beats Lucius’s ass.

Then he finds out he can’t die. So we just keep cutting to war after war, with Maximus fighting away, until we’re finally in the present, and Maximus is in the Pentagon, full vampire status, diddling away on Firefox. The End.

I mean, do I really have to analyze this?

There’s an accepted belief that if you put 10,000 hours into something, you’ve mastered it. Well, I have a new belief. If you make 10,000 bad choices in a screenplay, you need to go back and start your hours over again.

Of the many issues this script had, a lack of spectacle was the most obvious. The first 50 pages follow Maximus walking. That’s it. He walks. The only variety we get is when he passes either a) a poor woman or b) a dirty boy and they give him a lingering look as he walks by. That happened like 90 times.

The only action we received outside of the third act was implied rather than shown. For example, the king talks about flooding the Colosseum and using alligators. Cool, right? Yeah, we don’t get to see that.

In the entire script, there’s only one memorable scene, and that’s when Lucius busts in on a Cassian lecture and convinces everyone in the room to murder Cassian… WITH THEIR PENS! So they all charge Cassian and stab him to death with their pens. There’s some, like, irony in there and shit. Cool.

The underlying conflict was built around this notion that the Christians won’t fight. Marius, Maximus’s son, personified this. Which is why Maximus had to get involved.

What would’ve worked better, in my opinion, is if Maximus was the one who refused violence, not Marius. It makes sense from a character point of view since Maximus led an entire life dedicated to violence and look where it got him. Here in the next life, it’d make sense for him to refuse to fight anymore.

Then the third act comes around where violence is the only way to solve the problem and Maximus finally gets on board, does what he does best, and initiates the fall of Rome – bloodbath style. YEAH BABY!

But alas, we get him checking ESPN.COM instead. Who knew Maximus played Fantasy Football?

Was there anything better in this than the first film? I’d say Lucius. He was a better villain. I like a villain who’s unapologetically nasty and Lucius fits the bill. I never liked that the big villain in the first film was a giant weasel. I wasn’t afraid of him like I was afraid of this guy.

Gladiator 2 doesn’t get going until its second half. And even then, there’s not much to get excited about. Maximus is neutered. His son is boring. And there aren’t enough set pieces to appease us between the boringness. I can see why they nixed the green light on this one. Even though I think, some day, they will make another Gladiator movie.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Want your next script idea? Find that thing in history that people today CANNOT BELIEVE used to happen, then build a story around that. A civilized society used to send people into a ring TO DIE FOR ENTERTAINMENT. How crazy is that? The same principle is what makes the Holocaust a hotbed for storytelling. We can’t believe that used to happen. There are hundreds of things in history they used to do that we can’t fathom were once “okay.” Find them. They might be your next movie.

Genre: Western/Thriller
Premise: When a poor but ambitious family man finds a barrel of gold, he attempts to follow his dreams without allowing his greed to drive him insane.
About: This script finished in the middle of the pack on last year’s Black List. These days, many Black List scripts come already optioned or purchased, or, at the very least, campaigned for. Let the Evil Go West is one of the few scripts that made the list bare naked. That implies that it was passed around due to the quality of the script alone – a rarity. Screenwriter Carlos Rios is an alumni of Universal’s Emerging Writer’s Fellowship, which is becoming a hotbed for finding strong emerging talent.
Writer: Carlos Rios
Details: 117 pages

One of the things you become keen on when you read a lot of scripts is knowing when you’re reading a writer and when you’re reading a pretender. The pretender is like the annoying guy at the party. He’s got nothing of substance going on so the only way to get your attention is to yell and scream and jump in the pool several times.

On the flip side, good writers are like Andy Warhol. They’re so confident in themselves that they’ll stand in one place, barely say a word, and let the party come to them.

Let The Evil Go West is one of the coolest written scripts of 2016. I LOVE this guy’s style. First off, he grounds that style in the format’s most dependable approach – SIMPLICITY. His writing is descriptive, but always stays on point, rarely eclipsing 3 lines.

On top of that, he uses a “continuous style.” A continuous style continues sentences and paragraphs even after a line break, sometimes bypassing capitalization in order to keep your eyes moving.

It’s a best of both worlds scenario. The only benefit of “wall of text” writing is that the sentences visually connect one after another so it feels like one continuous thought. The problem with walls of text is that they’re daunting and readers feel overwhelmed by them.

With a continuous writing style, we jump down to a new paragraph, and yet we’re still within the same thought, action, or description. However, we don’t have to deal with the cumbersome mass of text that usually accompanies that kind of connective writing.

Rios is a such a snazzy writer, he even innovated the format. More on that in a second. But first, let’s learn what this script is about.

30-something Abner Ellis is a lot like Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood. He’s an ambitious man who wants to take advantage of a country that’s still in its infancy. He’s got a beautiful wife, Elspeth, and a handsome little boy, Benjamin, who he plans to bring along on this journey.

The problem is, Abner is poor as shit. And back then, the only way to make money was to have money (actually, that hasn’t changed). Unfortunately, Abner’s been stuck in a string of low-paying jobs that eventually brings him to the Trans-Continental railroad.

While working for 2 dollars a day clearing land, Abner lucks out when he finds a barrel of gold in the nearby forest. Sure, there are four dead men laying by it, all of whom killed each other over the stash. But that’s the last thing on Abner’s mind. He’s finally in the game.

Abner moves his family up to Wyoming where he puts his grand plan into motion. Abner will build an entire town that the brand new railroad will run through. Elsbeth isn’t so sure, but Abner’s dogged determination to make something of his life eventually convinces her.

There’s one problem. Abner’s losing it. He’s so obsessed with his barrel of gold and so convinced that the next guy is around the corner, plotting to steal it, that he becomes more protective of it than he does his own family. And when real threats do surface, he’ll do anything to keep his gold. Even if it means killing those closest to him.

You’re dying to know what that innovation is, right? Okay, let’s do it.

One of the annoying things about reading is the inefficient syntax that delineates DAY from NIGHT at the end of a slugline. Most of the time, readers shoot past slugs to get to the important stuff, and often become confused as a result, needing to back up and check what the slug said to gain context. DAY and NIGHT are just one casualty of this glitch.

So Rios REVERSE BLOCKS his nighttime slugs. This way, we get an instantaneous VISUAL CUE that it’s night time. It’s genius! This was the first script I’ve read where I instantly knew whether it was night or day without having to read anything.

Daytime slug example —>

Nighttime slug example —>

Now if someone could invent a visual slug that also delineated EXTERIOR and INTERIOR we could streamline screenwriting forever and push these janky math-like documents one step closer to a natural storytelling medium.

Well that’s great, Script Nerd Carson. But what about the script?

The script was great. There were so many hallmarks of good storytelling here.

Start with Abner. Scripts work better when the main character has a strong drive. Not only do we like people who are driven more than those who aren’t, but driven characters create a natural reason for us to keep reading. We want to see if the character is going to achieve what they’re driven to do.

Abner wants nothing more than to become great. So we want to see if he can do it.

Contrast that with a character who’s fine with where he is in life. Maybe something terrible happens to him and that’s what begins his story. You can still write a good script this way, but the story’s always going to be more powerful and the main character more likable when it’s HIM WANTING SOMETHING that drives the story as opposed to the story driving him.

But what really placed this script above so many others was the VARIETY IN STORYTELLING. What this means is that when you write a movie like Taken or Bourne, there’s only one beat being repeated throughout the movie – CHARGE THROUGH OBSTACLES TO CONQUER THE GOAL (“take down the CIA” in Bourne, “find my daughter” in Taken).

That can get tiring if every section is like that. Sometimes what intermediate writers will do to alleviate this is write a slow “sit-down-and-talk” scene. But all that does is momentarily alter the pacing. It doesn’t add VARIETY to the way the story is being told.

Variety in storytelling means creating entire sections that have a different purpose and feel than other sections. When you do this right it’s like magic because it keeps the reader off-balance and unable to tell where the story is going.

For example, early on we have a section where Abner goes off to make money on the railroad. It’s a goal-oriented sequence – get a job to support my family. However, when Abner brings the gold home, that section is entirely different. It has no goal. Instead, Rios builds a sense of fear surrounding the gold – that someone may have followed Abner and is planning to kill the family and take the gold.

So even though we’re sitting in one location for 15 pages, we have something that’s driving our interest – a potential threat from outside. And that fear permeates every scene. More importantly to my point, IT FEELS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE RAILROAD SECTION.

So that’s something to keep in mind – that you’re not hitting the same story beat over and over again every sequence. Granted, it’s easier to do this when the timeline is extended, like it is here, but crafty writers can achieve this in time-crunched narratives as well.

The only reservation I have about the script is that the ending gets really dark. The whole movie was such a rush and then we’re hit with this hard-to-take finale. I guess it was inevitable but still tough to swallow. However, if you liked There Will Be Blood and The Shining, you’re going to go fucking go apeshit over this.

What a script!

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There’s no need to draw attention to jumps in time (writing down: “6 months later”). Remember that time jumps can kill plot momentum. We’re zipping along and then we see: “1 Year Later.” We feel the wind sucked out of the plot. We’ve got to start building momentum all over again. For that reason, only notate time jumps if it’s necessary for clarity. Otherwise, do what Rios does here and use visual cues to show we’ve jumped forward. For example, we’re on an empty strip of land that Abner’s just purchased for his town, than we cut to an almost completed train station and we just seamlessly keep moving through the story.